[se] wish i didn't know

flora

"Mmmm, a little higher, maybe?" Standing on her toes with a garland made of seashells and dried seaweed, Flora was doing her best to lift her end while Spice managed the other. Given that she didn't own a ladder, Flora was standing on one of her dining room chairs in her highest heels to try and reach the overhang of her roof while her dragon did her best to try and affix the garland with heavy stones. It was an imperfect system at best and a potentially dangerous one at worse, but so far so good.

The Doubletake had left open her windows and her front door so that the music within could spill out into the front garden as she and Spice decorated, and though the sound wasn't terribly loud, Flora was able to sing along to it well enough to keep her mind occupied.

Between her recent reunion with her twin, to sorting out her feelings for Koa, to learning Jack's secret only to find out that he was yet another person with which a member of her family had slept, Flora was thoroughly exhausted with the state of her own heart and mind, such that a bit of wreckless physical exertion seemed like a brilliant idea. Although that might have something to do with the fact that she was working her way through a bottle of gin on an empty stomach.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Koa

I don't want to wonder if this is a blunder

Think of the handsome devil and he shall appear.

Koa has been doing a lot of thinking - not his usual forte, I know. But if there's one thing having your life totally upended will do, it's open up your eyes, and make you realize some of the ways in which you're being an ass. And though it had taken time for Koa to shake the decision paralysis brought on by his traumatic exile, he's since been able to restructure his thoughts, to gather perspective and think outside his head.

Which has brought him here.

There was much agonizing over how, exactly, he would approach Flora, but in the end the Dragoon had decided that simple would be best. No gaudy displays, no secret baubles: just him, Koa, earnest and honest, his hat quite literally in his hands. The path to Flora's house is surprisingly unfamiliar - Koa isn't sure he's ever properly visited, not a great sign - and as he makes his way up it he is both relieved and terrified to find Flora already outside. It means he cannot run away, the thing she has so often accused him of and has never wanted to do more than now today. Her back is to him, her arms upstretched. For a moment he imagines what it might be like to come up from behind and snake an arm around her, to pull her close against his chest and chuckle when she squeals. He can almost hear it, almost feel it.

But then he thinks of his talk with Ronin, and the instinct fades.

So he stops at a respectful distance and loudly clears his throat. "Hey, Flora." Pip trills cheerfully up to Spice, eyeing her frenemy with wary playfulness. "Need a hand with that?" Koa proceeds to offer- which wasn't the thing he was supposed to say, but now that he's here standing before her he finds it impossible to come out with that ever-dreaded, We need to talk.

When I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

flora

The gin had made Flora feel rather buoyant as if her limbs were being partially held aloft by the seasonally chilly air, such that as she precariously balanced on the edge of her chair, she wasn't worried at all about falling. She should have been, especially given the painfully high shoes she wore that forced her onto her toes, but with her attention firmly on the garland, she thought of nothing but where the next rock ought to go.

It all happens quickly.
Or is it slowly?

Turning at the sound of Koa's voice, Flora has all the time in the world to register his smile and the almost nervous distance that he'd placed between them. She has time to think of playing it cool and just sending him on his way, or better yet, might she imply she already has help inside? Or, better still, she could just accept his offer and then invite him in for a drink.

Whatever she decided, it was with her chin prettily lifted and a laugh bubbling up in her throat that Flora lost her footing as the chair wobbled on the uneven ground. Disappearing almost comically from sight behind the row of hedges that separated her garden from the sideway, the queen's sharp inhale of surprise and then bellow of pain were matched only by Spice's croons of concern as she dropped down from the roof. "Owwww! I think I broke my ankle!" She didn't it was only a sprain, but who was Flora to know the difference?

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Koa

I don't want to wonder if this is a blunder

It all goes tits-up rather fast (and rather literally, in Flora's case). Where things may seem to occur in slow-motion for the Doubletake, to Koa it happens in the blink of an eye. One moment she's perched atop the chair, chin tilted up in a signature imperious look; the next she's gone, fallen out of sight, and Koa's springing after her, his heart caught in his throat.

"Flora!" Koa vaults over the hedges, thudding down into the grass on the other side. It's a rather impressive display of physicality - too bad the blonde isn't in a fit state to enjoy it. "Don't try to move it - let me look." There's a firm authority in his voice, soothing and practiced and reassuring, the mask of a soldier with medic training clicking naturally into place.

Dropping down to kneel beside her, Koa gently lifts her ankle, resting her calf on his bent knee. His fingers are tender as they press against her, calloused tips drifting oh-so-delicately across her swelling joint, assessing for displacement of the bone. "Can you feel my touch?" He doesn't think it's anything that needs emergency treatment, but the possibility of a fracture can't yet be ruled out.

When I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

flora

"It's broken!" Flora wails again, her cries gin-soaked and wobbly as she tries to sit up. Dressed in a pair of lululemons sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt, the Doubletake is far from the picture of poise she'd have presented had she known another meet cute was in the cards. Given that it was LongNight and that the previous year Koa had been spending it in Stormbreak defending the city, Flora hadn't bothered with donning an outfit and had indeed only put on mascara before stepping out into the dusk-dark street to work on her decorations.

"Nnnnnnn!" The queen complains, though she does as she's told. Part of her would normally be inclined to flex her leg to accentuate the muscles beneath the dragoon's fingers, but just the thought had pain flaring behind her eyes so sharply that she cringed at the idea. Koa would find her ankle appropriately swollen, and though there were a number of sparkly straps around her lower leg and over the top of her foot, nothing would seem broken or immediately discoloured. "Yeah, of course I can." The words are said on a sharp inhale of breath as his fingers ghost across one of her ligaments. Mewling miserably, Flora reached out instinctively to grasp at Koa's arm, her fingers tightening as she fought not to cry out any more than she already had.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Koa

I don't want to wonder if this is a blunder

"It's not," Koa reassures her, unable to keep a sympathetic smile from curving at his lips. Not that he knows this - he doesn't have x-ray vision - but he's found it's better focus on the positive end of potentials, in a situation like this.

"Good, that's good." Sensation is a positive, and Koa can feel the knot of dread he's buried in his chest loosen just a touch. "That means it's probably ligaments, or even a muscle tear." This isn't technically his fault, but Ronin's threat of a swift death should he hurt Flora still rings an alarm bell in the poor Dragoon's mind. But then Flora is grabbing at him, and any thoughts of Ronin disappear from his head, replaced by concern for the beautiful woman who lies wounded in his arms.

Well, not in his arms yet. But we can fix that.

"Can you have Spice cool some towels for us? I'm going to take you inside," Koa announces, because out here in the dark hardly seems like a place for this to continue on. Before he has a chance to think better or she a chance to protest, the young Dragoon's muscled arms slip under knees and around her back, pulling her in close.

In an easy motion Koa rises, Flora's body a delicate thing nestled against his chest. "Okay?" the Dragoon confirms softly, gazing down through copper eyes at the face far, far too close to his. He stares for just a breath too long, captivated by her flyaways, the flush upon her skin. And then he realizes he's staring and looks away, clearing his throat and hoping she can't feel it as his thundering heart pounds an unsteady beat.

When I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

flora

Koa's request sounds like a complex one—Spice? Towels? Inside?—and before Flora's mind can cut through the gin-soaked warbles of pain ricocheting up from her ankle to form an answer, she's suddenly flying, (or floating at the very least). Curling her arms around Koa's neck and pressing her nose beneath his jaw in an effort to steady herself, the Doubletake hiccups a small moan as the dragoon's rise— however gentle—moves her ankle. Trembling slightly with the pain, Flora swallowed hard as she clenched her teeth together. For all the things the queen possessed, a high pain tolerance was not necessarily at the top of the list.

Taking her cues from Koa, Spice offers up a crooning reply as she races inside. The sounds of various cupboard-related items will be heard falling onto the floor as the little dragon tugs at several towels and begins blasting them with her breath.

"Okay." Flora manages, the word stiff from her lips as she tries to keep her entire body still. Tilting her head slightly, it's only out of the corner of her peripheral vision that she sees the glimmer of copper in the firelight, but it's enough to have the breath she was already holding lodge painfully in her throat.

Wait. Koa?

"But...we're fighting." She protests, suddenly far too aware of the way that the scent of the ocean had started to cling to him as it never had when he'd been stationed properly in Stormbreak. Then something else occurs to her.

"Did you make me fall on purpose?!"

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Koa

I don't want to wonder if this is a blunder

They make it through the waiting door without too much fanfare, a slow procession punctuated by pauses whenever Flora winces in pain. With her held against his chest Koa's able to pick out the alluring aroma of her perfume - as well as a layer of tell-tale sharpness, herbal and pleasant and thick with juniper, the calling card of gin. It accounts her unsteadiness, as well as the poorly thought out decision to stand upon a wobbly chair instead of finding a ladder.

And it soothes his annoyance at her protest, helps keep his hackles from rising up. "We can go back to fighting later," he informs her indulgently, shoving a coffee table off with his foot to allow him access to the couch. Carefully he kneels beside it, ginger and methodical as the precious parcel is delivered into its waiting embrace. "Here, lift your leg up," he directs her, grabbing one of the plush throw pillows to wedge beneath her knee.

He's turned to Spice to collect the towels when Flora's voice warbles out again. It makes him, well, do a double-take, an incredulous laugh rolling from him at the suggestion of such foul play. "Yup," Koa confirms wryly, "You caught me. I used my secret powers of telekinesis to push your chair over, so I could swoop in and be a hero and you'd be so grateful we'd stop fighting. Did it work?"

As he's spoken he's also knelt beside her, the ice-cold towel in his hand. Gently he wraps it around her ankle, hoping that the playful banter will distract from that first frigid touch. Yet behind the playful sarcasm is something earnest, because while no, he didn't make her fall on purpose, he would really like for their fight - or whatever it is they're doing - to be done.

When I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

flora

Mewling softly in his arms as Koa began to lean forward, Flora held on perhaps a touch longer than she should have as if intending to tug the dragoon down with her onto the couch. It was only thanks to a rather demanding warble of pain that the queen's grip loosened in favour of reaching down for her leg as if she might be able to do anything to quiet the roar herself. Slipping her foot out of the strappy shoe had a hiss of pain parting her lips, and had it not been for that, she too might have done a double-take in response.

"You...?" It sounds laughably plausible in a rom-com sort of way that has Flora very nearly believing it. "—well, you should have caught me as I was falling." Like in the Princess Bride when Wessex jumps out of the window. "Then I wouldn't have needed to—ow, fuck." Clenching her teeth together as Koa softly wrapped her ankle in the cooled towels, Flora grasps at the cushions of her couch as her eyes squeeze closed.

The sprain has a sobering effect, not that the Doubletake is necessarily able to think any clearer for the pain or Koa's sudden appearance and nearness. Trying to exhale as steadily as she could, Flora opened her eyes and slowly turned her head toward the man kneeling at her side. "So why are you here then?" Not in her living room necessarily, but on her street. In Torchline. (She had after all, asked a certain Captain to have a chat with the dragoon).

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Koa

I don't want to wonder if this is a blunder

"Next time I will," he promises, never mind that the end of this visit might spell a permanent hold on next times.  He's steady and methodical as he dresses the ankle, his training a bulwark against intrusive thoughts.

And he does not look at her slender fingers clenched against the plush edge of the couch; does not imagine them instead on his bicep, on his shoulder, below his belt. That would be wholly unprofessional.

It's a good thing she can't read his mind.

He doesn't answer the question immediately, letting the weight of it sink into his skin, percolate like morning coffee through the coarse grounds of his mind. It mixes in with Ronin's warning, the promise of death if he hurts her again. A promise he hopes has some flexibility, because don't hurt her and talk to her seem like irreconcilable ideas; Koa can only hope the path he's chosen will lead to the lesser ill.

Flora's ankle secured in cooling towels, Koa at last lets her go, sinking to sit on the floor beside her, his back propped up by the coffee table. He doesn't look up at her, instead staring at the edge of the sofa beneath her shoulder, tracking a run where the fabric has frayed. "Here in Torchline, or here here?" he asks, a crooked smile not enough to dispel the nerves that cloud his face. "I guess they have the same answer. I wanted to see you, Flora. I... I think we need to talk."

When I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

flora

It's a blessing, really, that his gaze is lower than her own because it affords her the time to be able to look at him as she hasn't been able to in months. Too busy trying to appear aloof and effortlessly beautiful during the appreciation event and too instantly relieved and then furious with him when he'd washed up on her shores, it felt like ages since she'd been able to actually see him without either of them posturing to be or seem more than they actually were.

Clearing her throat softly as a hush seemed to envelop the room, Flora's eyes flitted from the slope of Koa's eyelashes down to the flush on his cheeks. In another lifetime she'd have reached out and tried to smear the colour away, joking that he was wearing blush in an attempt to draw out even more pigment from his skin. Now, she could only quietly meditate on his tanned complexion while silently willing his eyes both to stay right where they were, but also to rise and meet her own.

Parting her lips to speak—and say what?—Flora busied herself with kicking off her other shoe, and when it clattered to the ground, she made a show of being concerned about where it had fallen in order to buy herself more time before having to reply. When silence descended once more, the Doubletake shifted uncomfortably as she tried to position herself toward him, but also not at the same time.

"But I thought you said you didn't want to fight anymore." She said in a low voice; now it was her turn to drop her eyes, her breath held in a knot at the back of her throat.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Koa

I don't want to wonder if this is a blunder

He glances up as she fidgets and moves, tracking the path of her escaping shoe, the way she adjust the cushions beneath her. It's an interruption to what might otherwise have been just awkward silence, and Koa finds that focusing on Flora's actions keeps him from dwelling too hard on her - or rather, them, and the ties that strain between them, fraying from a lack of care just as surely as that couch.

When she does speak it's low and quiet, though still enough to draw a strangled chuckle from the lump of anxiety in Koa's chest. "No more fighting," the Dragoon agrees, eyes lifting at last up to her face. He shifts his weight, sitting up straighter, as if by posturing confidence he might find some in himself. "No more... I dunno. Being a shit, I guess." He means it about himself, the chagrined smile saying as much. Nervously rubbing the back of his neck, Koa opens his mouth and lets it shut twice more before finally deciding where to start.

"I bought you that arm band," Koa begins slowly. "The one you were wearing at the ball. I saw it and thought, 'That matches Flora's eyes'. I think that about a lot of things - how they'd look on you, whether you'd like them. And I thought it about the arm band.

"And so I bought it, and I planned to give it to you, but then I thought, maybe it would be the wrong message if I did? Maybe you'd think I was trying to, I dunno, buy my way back into your good graces, or that it was ugly, or that... that you wouldn't want to own something that reminded you of me."

He's picking up in speed and confidence, though he still cannot quite meet her eyes. The handsome face is more boyish than usual, earnest and open as he carries on. "I do that a lot - overthink how people will react to things. You may not have realized this about me, Flora, but I'm kind of a dumbass sometimes." He chuckles sheepishly, glancing up from beneath thick lashes in hopes of finding softness within her cerulean eyes.

When I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

flora

"Do we even know any other way?" Flora counters dryly. Perhaps it was a consequence of a relationship born out of serendipity and sarcasm that moments which might turn into something real were necessarily ruined.

"You..?" Forgetting herself, Flora tries to sit up as if she might swing her legs off the couch and lean forward to peer down at the dragoon. No sooner has her brain sent this thought down to her legs than pain throbs up from her ankle and her body tenses instantly in response. Sighing with annoyance and forcing herself to relax, Flora can do little more than try and rest her cheek fully against the pillow as she listens.

"I loved it." The Doubletake interrupts softly, realizing now that it hadn't just been aqua stones, but aqua stones inlaid in copper. It occurs to Flora as Koa speaks that he's saying exactly all of the right things—thinking of her when she wasn't around, wondering how things would look on her, worrying over her reactions—so why did it feel so hollow? Was it because everything there had ever been between them had been left untended for so long as to have dried up and blown away entirely? Was it because her affections had been moved, out of necessity as much as petulant pride, somewhere deep and dark leaving the room of their budding romance barren?

"Sometimes?" She asks ruefully, the barb an entirely harmless one. "Don't look at me like that. You know I can't stay mad at you when you do." Flora complains through a tentative smile, stretching out one of her hands as if to paw the puppy-dog eyes right off of his face.

My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

Koa

I don't want to wonder if this is a blunder

"Yeah, well." Koa shrugs, letting himself begin to feel the tiniest bit of hope. She hasn't kicked him out yet, hasn't laughed in his face, so maybe, maybe this talking thing isn't as bad a plan as he feared. He bats back at her extended hand, playfully pushing it out of his face - a face which briefly looks more puppyish, an affectation he puts on with his usual charming ease. Koa doesn't grab her fingers, though he wants to; but he does leave his own resting on the couch. An offering, should she want to take it.

This is about what she wants, after all.

"After y'know, I fucked up the first time--" He pauses, allowing her a chance to quip back on that a monumental fuckup it was, "--I figured I blew any chance you'd ever want anything to do with me. So when we started hanging out... I dunno, it seemed so delicate, and I think I was so scared to break something again that I didn't let myself look or think too hard. I was scared that if I did, I'd realize that I wanted..."

The potential ending hangs in the balance, a thousand options and only one. More. Love. Sunlight. Romance. To cause your smile. To hold you in public. To bring you flowers. To call you mine. To see you. To hold you. To kiss you. To love you. You. You.

"You."

When I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!