SYNOPSIS. You have made it your personal mission to crack Flins' impossible composure. Unfortunately, the first person to break is you.
NOTES. All fluff!! No pronouns used for the reader. Please help, I'm head over heels in love with Flins...
Flins was a man of composure. Everything about him suggested careful cultivationâthe way he carried himself, the measured cadence of his voice, the deliberate grace of his movements. He was the type to unintentionally fluster any who interacted with him.Â
More than amusing, if you were being honest. There was something deeply satisfying about watching someone so perfectly put together navigate everyday interactions. You found Flins to be an enigmatic creature, and something inside you just burned to get a rise out of him. Sure, maybe it was simply the thrill of the mischief, but you wanted to test him, push him a little, see how he would react to some casual flirting.Â
And if you were particularly enjoying the challenge of trying to get a reaction out of him, well. That was harmless, wasn't it? Just a little teasing. Just a bit of flirtation to see how exactly this manâthe one who managed to charm literally everyone around him with effortless graceâwould handle being on the receiving end for once.
The fact that you were attracted to him was beside the point.Â
It didn't matter that whenever you caught even a glimpse of his purplish-blue hair, your heart did something stupid. It meant nothing when he leaned down to hear you better, his voice dropping into that velvety register that made you feel like some fundamental part of you had just ceased existing. None of it mattered. Certainly not.
And hey, if nothing at all, what harm could some light flirting cause?
Your first opportunity for mischief, you were sitting together near the lighthouse. The evening light cast everything in soft amber. Conversation had drifted from topic to topic; nothing particularly important, just the easy back-and-forth of people comfortable in each other's presence. You'd been leaning against his side, playing with the cuff of his sleeve. He'd let you, the way he always did.
At some point, you'd mentioned something about having to leave soon. Return to your duties. The usual obligations that kept pulling you away.
"I'll be gone for a few days," you'd said.
Flins had simply nodded, listening.
And that's when the impulse struck.
"I bet you'll miss me," you said, your tone light but deliberately aimed. You tilted your head to look at him, watching for a reaction.
He turned to face you. His shoulder brushed against yours when he did, and you caught the faint scent of something cool and unfamiliar. Flinsâ smile seemed to stretch just a little, his eyes narrowing. He reminded you of the Fae.Â
You'd expected a deflection. A joke. Instead, he'd just said it, and the weight of his attention suggested he meant it. That he understood exactly what you were doing and was letting you do it anyway.
"Like, really miss me," you continued, letting your fingers trail down his sleeve. "You'll probably think about me the whole time I'm gone."
He watched you for a moment. "Likely."
"I'll be devastated without you," you added, testing how far you could take this.
"Will you?" he asked softly. And his gaze was fixed squarely upon yours. You seemed to pick up on the slightest lilt of teasing towards the end of that question. But still, the manner in which he faced youâthe utter unabashed composureâseemed genuine.Â
âThat's interesting," he continued.Â
Your heart was doing something ridiculous. "What's interesting about that?"
"That you're telling me you'll be devastated rather than simply asking," he said. There was no mockery in it. His tone was almost contemplative, like he was turning over a puzzle piece in his mind. "Though I suppose indirect approaches are more entertaining."
Heat crept up your neck. He'd just called you out. Gently, without any edge to it, but he'd absolutely just pointed out exactly what you were doing.
"I'm not being indirect," you said, but your voice had gone softer.
"No?" He tilted his head slightly, and in the amber light, you noticed the precise line of his jaw, the way his hair caught the glow. When he looked at you like that, with complete attention, it made you feel like you were the only thing worth looking at. "That is up for debate, then, I suppose.â
Well. There would be other opportunities. Plenty of them, actually. This whole one-sided âgameâ had yet commenced, and you were only just beginning. It didn't matter that you were getting quite the pleasant rise from being able to flirt so brazenly with a man you'd been quietly obsessed with for the past couple of months. It was harmless. Just teasing.Â
Over the next few days, you made it your mission.
Make him crack. That was the goal now. Get somethingâa blush, a stumble, a clever comeback. Anything that suggested the composed exterior had a weakness.
You started with compliments, delivered casually while you were walking through the cemetery together. "You have nice hands, you know," you said, watching as he adjusted something on one of the graves. He simply thanked you, like you'd complimented the weather.
Then came the flirtation. You'd lean closer than necessary when you were standing beside him. Play with his sleeve. Find excuses to touch his arm. Every gesture was wrapped in humor, safely deniable if he called you out on it. And every single time, he met it with the same patient calm.
A brow raised here. A small smile there. An acknowledgment that he noticed what you were doingâbecause he absolutely didâbut no matching energy. He didnât stumble over his words, his pale skin didnât darkened with the hue of red blush, and he most certainly did not tease you back. Intentionally, that is. Flinsâ very existence seemed to upset your carefully curated balance.Â
On the third day, you tried jokes. Teasing comments about how he was probably the type to be good at everything. How his composure must be exhausting to maintain. How it was unfair that he managed to make even mundane tasks look graceful.
He listened to all of it with that infuriatingly gentle expression, like you were providing him with observations rather than attempting to dismantle him.
The frustrating part was that he clearly knew. There was awareness in the tilt of his head, in the way his eyes tracked your movements. He understood exactly what you were attempting. He just wasn't playing along. And that made it worse. Better. You weren't entirely sure which.
By the fourth day, you were running out of ammunition.
The previous few days had been a study in futility. You'd tried everything you could think of. Compliments delivered with a knowing smile. Flirtation wrapped in humor. Little jokes designed to catch him off guard. Nothing had worked. He'd simply absorbed each attempt with that same unflappable grace, and somewhere along the way, it had stopped feeling like a game you were winning and started feeling like a game only you were playing.
The worst part was that he clearly knew what you were doing. You could see it in the way his eyes tracked your movements, in the slight tilt of his head when you said something particularly bold. He understood exactly what you were attempting. He just wasn't giving you the reaction you wanted. No flustering. No stumbling. No moment where his composure cracked and revealed something underneath.Â
In fact, your attempts had been so famously (infamously) fruitless that even Illuga had made it a point of note. "You know, perhaps Mr. Flins simply enjoys the attention," he'd said when he'd caught you trying to get a rise out of Flins during a supply run. "Some people are harder to rattle than others."
You had huffed then, indignantly, âSure, but itâs absurd how he treats every comment I make as though it is the most obvious thing in the world!â
Illuga smiled then. Conflict avoidant as always, and a tad bit skeptical of Flins, he kept his opinions to himself. But you could have easily guessed what he was going to say: this is pointless. Shouldnât you be focusing on your patrols?
It was starting to make you wonder if there was anything underneath at all, or if he was simply always like this. Infuriatingly calm.
But then, there was Nefer. You didnât even know why you bothered to hide anything from her at all. She always found out about your little schemes; even the tiny, playful ones.Â
âPersistent, arenât you?â She commented. âAre you quite sure your crush on Flins hasnât driven you up a wall?â
âI do notââ You began, but then stopped abruptly as you came to the (very obvious) realisation that your face went hot the moment his name and âcrushâ were in the same sentence. ââfine whatever. Still! Itâs so⌠strange, how he never reacts.â
âAw, poor you,â Nefer purred. You shot her a look.
She tilted her head, considering you. "Actions speak louder than words sometimes, you know. Especially with someone like him." She paused, adjusting the items in her arms. âBesides⌠the Fae are rather adept at words, soâŚâ
You spent the last day turning both conversations over in your mind.Â
Towards the end of a particularly gruelling patrol is when your next, hopefully successful opportunity for teasing presented itself. You were sitting on a bench near the lighthouse, close enough that your shoulders were almost touching. The afternoon was quiet. The snow twirled in the sky, a transient, glacial staircase coiling into the wind. Nod-Kraiâs frost always seemed to have a mind of its own. Conversation flowed the same way the snow did. Gently, with easy flow and expected lulls. Sort of the perfect moment for a detour, really.Â
"You know," you said, your tone deliberately playful, "if you asked nicely, I'd hold your hand."
You were grinning. Already prepared for the laugh, the deflection, the way he'd turn it into something clever. You had your exit strategy ready. In all honesty, you expected Flins to look at you kindly. Make a small comment about âhow that would be ideal, considering the coldâ but then simply pocket his hands into his jacket. Or something that would reduce the simmer of the conversation into a still pool, like every other time.
Instead, Flins simply glanced down at his own hand. Then, without a word, he turned his palm upward and offered it to you.
"...What are you doing?" you managed.
"Asking nicely," he said, smiling at you, elfishly.
You stared at his hand like it had personally betrayed you. Because this wasn't supposed to happen. He was supposed to laugh it off. Instead, he'd somehow turned your own joke into something sincere, and now you were sitting there unable to do anything but take his hand because the alternative was admitting that you completely miscalculated this entire interaction.
Your fingers found his, and his grip was warm and certain. His thumb brushed gently across your knuckles in a gesture that felt far too intentional for someone who was supposed to be unaffected.
You spent the next twenty minutes very carefully not combusting, acutely aware of every point of contact, every small movement of his hand against yours, every time his thumb made that gentle pass across your skin.
This was fine. Completely fine. You'd simply bitten off more than you could chew, that was all.
You thought you were recovering. You were not recovering.
The problem was that you'd learned absolutely nothing from the hand-holding incident. If anything, it had made you more confident. More reckless. You'd convinced yourself that you could still win this game, that one successful moment of sincerity didn't change the overall trajectory of your campaign to crack his composure.
So when you'd finally extracted your hand from his (after what felt like an eternity of trying to act unaffected), you pushed just a bit more. Surely, it could not get worse from now, could it?
"You know..." you started, already smirking.
"Hm?" He turned to look at you, waiting.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you actually liked me."
You grinned. You were expecting a smile. A laugh. Maybe something playful that would let you both pretend this had all been harmless banter.
Instead, Flins went quiet. An awful kind of silence. The kind of silence that realistically only lasts a couple of seconds, a minute at max, but in your head rang for an hour. It seemed to consume you, settle the snow around you. What was most awful though was the fact that Flins was actually considering it. You could see the cogs turning in his head. The way he was turning over your comment, looking at every square inch of it.
Then he turned fully toward you, giving you his complete attention in a way that somehow felt worse than any response could have been.
"You needn't be so indirect," he said.
Your heart stopped. Actually stopped. "...What?"
"If you're asking whether I have feelings for you, you may simply ask."
If you thought the previous silence was bad, this was worse. Your brain had essentially ceased functioning. Flins simply waited, patient and composed, like this was a perfectly reasonable conversation to be having.
Then he tilted his head slightly. "Go on," he said, and his voice was gentle. Encouraging, even.
You'd walked directly into this. Deliberately constructed your own trap and then stepped into it with both feet while grinning the entire time.
The frustrating thing was that Flins didn't seem remotely aware that he was holding your entire nervous system hostage. Or perhaps he was aware. That possibility was somehow worse. While your thoughts scattered in every conceivable direction, he remained exactly as he'd always beenâpatient, attentive, and entirely willing to wait for an answer. There was no pressure in his expression, no trace of triumph at having finally cornered you. If anything, he looked faintly curious, as though he'd simply presented you with an obvious solution and couldn't quite understand why you were struggling to take it.
You swallowed. And then: "Do you?"
The question came out embarrassingly quiet.
For a moment, he simply looked at you. Then something softened in his expression, subtle enough that you almost missed it. "I've been quite fond of you for some time."
The words settled between you with alarming ease. That was it. He spoke as though he were commenting on the weather, or confirming some small detail you'd already known. As though admitting he liked you was not, in fact, causing every coherent thought in your head to immediately abandon ship.
You stared at him. Flins stared back. The snow continued drifting lazily through the air. Somewhere in the distance, waves crashed against the shoreline.
"You can't just say that,â you said, heat flooding your cheeks.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "You asked."
"That doesn't mean you were supposed to answer so easily."
"I wasn't aware there was a correct amount of difficulty involved."
The laugh that escaped you sounded slightly hysterical. Of course that was his response. Of course.
The realization struck all at once then, arriving with the force of a physical blow. Every conversation from the past week rearranged itself inside your mind. Every compliment. Every flirtatious remark. Every ridiculous thing you'd said in the hope of getting a reaction. Not once had he denied any of it. Not once had he brushed you off. The problem was that you'd spent so long trying to make him flustered that you'd never stopped to consider the possibility that he simply wasn't interested in pretending otherwise.
The immediate confirmation nearly killed you.
Your hands flew to your face. Some distant part of your brain registered that you were behaving like a complete fool. Unfortunately, that same distant part of your brain had become vastly outnumbered by the much louder part that was currently screaming.
When you finally lowered your hands, Flins was still watching you with that infuriating calm.
Suspicion immediately took root. Narrowing your eyes, you pointed accusingly at him. "What if you're teasing me?"
That earned a quiet laugh. "And what would lead you to that conclusion?"
"Because this feels suspiciously convenient."
"You've spent days letting me embarrass myself."
The amusement in his eyes deepened. For a moment he simply regarded you, and then, to your immense frustration, his gaze dropped briefly to your mouth before returning to your eyes.
"Would this convince you?"
You opened your mouth, fully intending to answer. To say something clever, preferably. Something capable of restoring at least a fraction of the dignity you'd lost over the past ten minutes.
Unfortunately, you never got the chance.
Flins leaned in and kissed you.
His lips were warm against yours, soft in a way that felt unfair after all the time you'd spent trying not to think about them. For one dizzying moment, all you could focus on was the sensation of himâthe brush of his mouth against yours, the faint pressure of his thumb where it rested against your knuckles, the cool air gathering at your cheeks while everything else felt impossibly warm. It wasn't a long kiss. It wasn't demanding. If anything, it felt terribly, devastatingly fond. Like a question he'd already known the answer to.Â
And the worst partâthe absolute worst partâwas that you could feel him smiling. The faint curve of his lips brushing yours, as though he found your complete inability to function endearing. By the time he pulled away, your heart had lodged itself somewhere in your throat, and you were left staring at him with the distinct sensation that something irreversible had just occurred.
You stared at him, owlishly.
And, for the first time in days, you caught something in his expression that hadn't been there before. Or perhaps it had always been there, hidden beneath the effortless composure you'd spent so much time trying to unravel. The fondness in his gaze was almost unbearably soft now, no longer filtered through amusement or polite patience. It was simply there, warm and open and directed entirely at you.
And then there was the faint dusting of pink at the tips of his ears.
Flins, apparently realizing exactly what had captured your attention, looked away for the briefest of moments.
After days of teasing him, days of trying to make him crack, days of wondering whether anything could possibly ruffle that impossible composure, there it was. Not embarrassment, exactly. The discovery hit you harder than the kiss had.
"Oh my god," you whispered, for the third time that day.
His gaze flicked back to yours. The corners of his mouth curved upward.
You pointed at him immediately. "You are blushing!"
The smile threatening at his lips made the response entirely unconvincing.
It occurred to you then that perhaps Flins had been right all along. You needn't have been so indirect. The realization should have been embarrassing. Instead, it only made you smile.
thank you for reading :)) check out my other fics if you'd like !!
dividers by: @cafekitsune
