funny how true colours shine in darkness and secrecy

Koa

Don't you just wanna wake up dark as a lake
Smelling like a bonfire, lost in a haze?

Where Koa is a blunt instrument swinging into action, Flora is precision and caution and grace. Strong fingers close on nothing but air as the Doubletake turns away from him, a flash of confusion pulling his brows together in a frown. He wonders, briefly, if he's failed some test, if this is going to be another situation where he's left feeling bemused and inadequate for reasons he has no way to understand.

But then Flora stops, settling like a faerie princess into a throne of green and gold, the sunlight glancing off her rings as her fingers busy themselves with the flowers. It's an uncharacteristic level of reserve and stillness, and it catches Koa entirely off guard. Already disoriented by the lurching changes in tonal direction this encounter is continuously taking, the young man is helpless to do anything but watch her, mouth dry as he gives up trying to predict what she'll say next.

Although perhaps this time he should have predicted, because for once he would have been right. His heart rises into his throat at I want to talk about us, only to come crashing back down at I have to talk about Jack. "I kinda figured." His lips curl into something like a smile, but it's wry and bitter because even if he knew that the captain would come into this, it doesn't lessen sandpaper sting that his name drags through Koa's mind.

But he doesn't falter, doesn't retreat; he accepts the invitation to settle on the grass, though with far less ease and grace than she. The roots and rocks have made it so that to be comfortable he must be close enough for their knees to brush together, the pair of them side-by-side in a way they never seemed able to sustain. Koa lets his hands splay out onto the ground, clover peeking through his fingers as it reaches for the sun. "Okay," he says for a second time, turning to her with an expression that is boyish and encouraging, vulnerable and afraid. "What's this big scary secret, then? Please don't tell me you have a secret baby or something," he adds, mostly in jesting reference to her own wild narrative about him and Sohalia, though a tiny part of him is now wildly suspicious that this is, in fact, the case.

If you're drunk on life, babe, I think it's great
But while in this world I think I'll take my whiskey neat