Unlike my show, which is good!

caine doesn't have an avatar gimmick per se, but i wanted to draw attention to how he uses his body as a tool for his performance as the ringmaster. very rarely in the show is it a genuine expression of his feelings or identity; most of the time, it's a device he uses to produce spectacle, keeping himself the center of attention whenever possible. i especially like the heart eyes because, even in moments where he is expressing something close to genuine, it's still buried within an act he's putting on to appeal to the humans, so any potential for genuine understanding is lost (it doesn't help that he picked jax to share these feelings with, but that could be its own post, lol).

he struggles with the feeling of being fundamentally different from the people around him, unable to even touch the mind files without getting stung. humans, it seems, are capable of a natural connection with one another that seems out of his reach. so he replaces it with an arbitrary purpose, assigning himself a role that will, in his mind, allow him to produce value and keep his place among the humans.

juxtaposing "a part of you that's real" with the shot of dot!Caine was inspired by this comic. originally this sequence was all flashback moments, but i switched it to the closing scenes because i think they better highlight the real caine sans ringmaster persona, even if he's still wearing the avatar. the caine we see here has learned to care for others because he better understands how to care for himself, no longer hiding himself or twisting himself into knots for the sake of the performance.

for "you have to choose to love yourself," i picked the moment in the void of caine deciding to return to the circus because i really believe it was an act of self-love. there is remorse for what he's done to the humans, yes, and a desire to make things right with them, but those could've been resolved by just staying away and letting them have the circus to themselves - that's basically what he does with blue, giving it space because he knows his presence has only caused it pain. caine returns because he wants a second chance for himself, too, and he still wants to experience that feeling of connection he's been longing for.

the last couple cuts delve more into caine's relationship with zooble. i was especially interested in how he and gangle both put them up on a pedestal as someone confident and self-assured; in caine's case, this comes in the form of assuming that their dysphoria can easily be solved just by finding the right parts. he looks up to them, but because he's only seeing them at a surface level, there's nothing he can do to help, even when they try to open up to him. at that point in the story he's stuck in the belief that his own performance is what's most at stake, and everything else is just an obstacle to its success.

"I know! But—no, if you're—but—"

"Okay," Zooble said. If they didn't step in, they reasoned, the two would be going back and forth like this all night. Gangle was leaned over, covering her head with her arms, while Caine had just peeked open a canine to look at them. "Let's all take a breath. How about we go one at a time?" No reason they couldn't have a little fun with it, though. The way the other two squirmed over something so innocuous was unbelievably cute, and Zooble found themself deeply appreciative for once that the act in question didn't apply to them. It gave them the freedom to enjoy the moment purely as an audience. "Gangle, let's start with you. What exactly do you want to ask Caine?" Oh, they were going to pay for this later. No one should ever have been allowed to have this much fun, even in a world designed around theme parks and carnival games. It felt like they were getting away with something.

Gangle lifted her head, though her arms stayed up in a defensive position.

"We don't have to do this," she said. "It was just a random thought, I'm not even sure where it came from."

"Really?" Zooble asked. They weren't about to pressure either of them into something they didn't want to do, but they had a good feeling about this. Like Gangle's question was just the inevitable release of a pressure valve that had been waiting to pop for some time—and maybe that feeling itself deserved some introspection, but they weren't in any rush to get to that when they still had this situation to command their attention.

Gangle bit her lip, chewing as she mulled over Zooble's question.

"Do you want to try kissing?" she blurted out, then squeaked, burying her head in her hands again. "With me?"

Zooble nodded, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder until she'd calmed enough to look up again. She was still blushing furiously, but the fact she was still able to meet their eyes affirmed that it wasn't due to any kind of shameful embarrassment. Going by what Zooble knew of her, it seemed almost excited.

"Alright," they said, turning then to Caine like a host on a talk show. "And Caine, what's your answer?" Their voice turned serious. "You can say no." If this had come up a year ago, Zooble wouldn't have felt comfortable playing this game, but Caine had gotten much better about not accepting every invitation by default. Maybe this could be like a reward for all their hard work, his own and Zooble's; after all, they had often been the one checking if he really wanted to participate in something.

"I—" He'd opened his mouth, but was still shrunk in on himself, no longer making eye contact with either of them. "I don't know if you'll like it."

"Hey." Zooble put a finger under his chin and turned his head up to face them; his eyes sparkled as they caught the light. "That's the point of trying things, right? If you really don't want to, that's one thing, but not knowing could be just as much a reason to give it a shot. If you're interested."

Zooble felt the muscles against their finger flex as Caine swallowed. He glanced at Gangle, then back to them.

"Okay," he said. "Yeah, let's… let's give it a shot. What could go wrong?" He laughed nervously, and Zooble was again done in by how cute he was. Such a tragedy, to learn that this was the person who'd been hiding under that tacky ringmaster getup all along. That they'd all been deprived of someone so—!

Okay, calm down, Zooble. Focus. They pulled back from Caine, stepping aside so Gangle could take their place. She was tapping her hands together, her expression warbling with something that looked a lot like a nervous smile. Zooble put a steadying hand on her back, and she offered them a grateful look before turning back to Caine.

"Will you be able to feel it?" she asked. "I mean, if you're using your teeth…"

"Oh, right! Here." With a stilted flourish, Caine produced a lip balm tube. He popped off the cap and raised it to his incisors, drawing along the tips of them before puckering his mouth with an exaggerated smacking sound as he handed the tube to Gangle.

"It's a modifier to temporarily enhance your sense of touch," he explained as she held it up to examine. "It should make the sensations more accurate to what you'd feel back in your old bodies."

"Huh." Zooble tried to get a look at the tube, but it was too small for them to see much. "Did you make it just for this?" Caine had been working on an update to provide a more comprehensive suite of bodily sensations (the sex update, as had become the colloquial term) and providing regular progress checks, but this was the first time they were hearing of this specific feature.

Gangle spoke up, "It's for soup."

Zooble's attention snapped to her.

"What?"

"It's for soup," she repeated, holding out the tube so Zooble could read the label. Indeed, next to a graphic of Caine with an inexplicable pair of lips was the brand name: Pursed Peas(oup).

Caine's face was buried in his hands.

"My—my research—you're supposed to test how hot it is. Soup. With your lips," he said. "But I didn't make your sensory suites precise enough to give an accurate temperature reading. So I created this temporary modifier that would—that would let it… do that…"

"Huh," Zooble said, watching as Gangle raised it to her own mouth. "Is it soup flavored?"

Gangle finished applying it, then smacked her lips a couple times, shaking her head.

"Cherry," she announced.

"Cherry?"

"I was trying to make it more immersive!" Caine cried. His gums were bright red now, and he looked ready to sink into the floor. Having personally witnessed him get embarrassed enough to clip through the ground on more than one occasion, Zooble knew it was time to reign things in a bit if they had any intention of getting to the main event. They knelt beside him, placing a comforting hand on his back.

"No, yeah, I'm just messing with you, man," they said. "That makes a lot of sense. I don't really want to know what soup-flavored chapstick tastes like, so you're already doing better than what I would've come up with." Caine parted his molars just enough to peer up at them; they tilted their head, then leaned it back, encouraging him up. "Now, come on. You still want to try this, right?"

Caine opened his mouth to look over at Gangle. He nodded and accepted Zooble's hand as they stood, lifting him into the air until he was hovering at eye-level with the two of them. Gangle stepped forward, tilting Caine's chin up with both hands and smiling at him as he stared at her mask. His momentary humiliation seemed to have kicked her own confidence into gear, and it came through gently, encouraging and open. One hand raised to stroke his upper jaw; it was hard to tell from Zooble's perspective, but he seemed to lean into it.

"Is this okay?" Gangle asked.

"Yes," he whispered.

"Okay." Gangle inched closer; they were almost flush against each other. Zooble would've been perfectly content as a set piece, but Caine's hand was still locked around theirs, a constant reminder that they had made themselves a part of whatever this was.

They had just a second to feel a stone of panic drop into their stomach—wait, what happened after this, were they even on the same page about what this meant for his relationship with them—were they even on the same page with Gangle about what their relationship was—before the two closed the distance, pressing enamel to enamel.

It didn't sound like to solid objects knocking into each other. It was soft. Gentle. The plane of Gangle's mask somehow slotted into the gap between Caine's top and bottom teeth, and Zooble found that if they stopped focusing on the specifics, it was hard to tell the difference between this and a kiss between two people with lips. Caine still hadn't let go of Zooble, but his other hand had settled against Gangle's chest, fingers wrapped loosely over the ribbon where her collarbone would have been. Gangle had both her arms wrapped around the small of his back.

It was a much more pleasing visual than Zooble would have anticipated. The sheen of her ribbons stood out in contrast to his matte suit, making the scene appear almost like a posed artistic rendering. Zooble could so easily picture what it would look like for her to coil around him and tighten, locking him into place—

They weren't sure how to feel about it when Gangle pulled away, halting their errant thoughts in their tracks.

"You're warm!" she said, in a tone of voice that Zooble immediately recognized as affection. "You're really warm!"

"Oh!" Caine said, mouth popping open, nearly florescent with blush. "Uh, is that bad?"

"No, it's just—different," Gangle said. "It's not quite what I'm used to it feeling like. But it's not—I liked it, I mean." She meant it genuinely, though Zooble already knew it just from the way she was holding him. Her voice, breathless with delight, said far more than words alone could have conveyed, and Zooble found themself growing curious, wondering what it was about the experience that had so captured her.

"What did you think, Caine?" they asked, in another bid to stay focused on the actual subjects of this… whatever it was.

"I, uh, I'm not really sure," he said. Similarly breathless, he at least sounded a bit more hesitant, lagging a second behind the others as he processed all the new sensations he'd just been introduced to. "I think I was thinking too hard about whether I was doing it right." He shrugged at Zooble, sheepish, then turned to Gangle again. "Not to say you did a bad job, I'm sure you were wonderful! Just, you know, I get distracted…" Even having retired from his role as the ringmaster, Caine still had a habit of putting on a show when he was nervous.

It gave Zooble an idea, but they found themself hesitant to act on it. Gangle, seeming to sense that something had shifted, glanced a couple times between Caine and Zooble, gaze focused and curious, before she touched her mask in realization, mouth forming into a small o.

"Did you two want to try?" she asked.

Zooble had no right getting hit so hard by that question—it was the logical next step, especially given how they'd been staring at each other—but it hadn't occurred to them that it was a real possibility. More like a contrived scenario their mind would drop on them right as they were trying to fall asleep, or something. In their mind, Gangle kissing Caine just made sense. They were two sweet, artistic people with more love to give than they'd been allowed to in the past. Them being friends made sense. Them kissing made sense. It just seemed like a natural fit in all the ways that Caine and Zooble were not, and they didn't know what to make of the fact that despite that, they were considering it.

They wondered if they were being self-centered, implying that it hadn't meant much to Gangle. Or to Caine, for that matter. God, forget everything about kissing a friend, that had been his first kiss. Did he have any feelings about that? Would asking make it weird?

A ribbon brushed their cheek, and they startled as they met Gangle's eyes again.

"Zooble?" she said. "What are you thinking?"

Caine was just staring at them, wide eyes impossible to read.

"I don't… have a mouth," they said, and immediately heard how it sounded. "I mean—! I would, I just don't know if it will work."

"Well… it's not like I have much to compare it to," Cain said, expression bending toward a nervous grin.

Still cute. Dammit. Zooble let out a shaky breath.

"Yeah, you got me there." They tugged lightly on his hand to float him closer to them. "Okay, yeah. If—if you're cool with it, then yeah. Let's do it."

"Cool as a cucumber!" Caine said, and Zooble tried not to get distracted wondering how this was the person getting their stomach twisted in knots. They were grateful for the feeling of Gangle's steady presence at their side, the comfort of the familiar in the face of the unknown.

Except, of course, that it wasn't the unknown. It was just Caine smiling at them, blue and green eyes catching the light fantastically, and for a moment all they saw was their friend. The person who had grown so much, learned alongside all of them what it meant to make a home in a place like this. Who came to their bar to try the new cocktails they were working on and swap stories about their lives.

He raised a hand, holding out the plastic tube. Zooble considered it for a moment.

"Let me try without," they said. If they were seriously doing this, then they wanted to take it seriously. Not as a simulation of a sensation from their old world, but a unique experience they could only have here, in this place, with these people.

"Oh, uh, sure!" Caine said, zipping the tube back to nothingness.

Before his hand could retract, Zooble stepped into the space between them, so instead it fell to their waist. Zooble rested one hand on his shoulder, while the other released its hold to instead cup his jaw.

"I—um," Caine said, "I like your antennae today. They look nice on you."

Zooble's eyes widened.

"Caine," they said, "are you flirting with me?" It was far from suggestive, but Zooble had never heard him complement anyone's appearance. Then they laughed, because it hit them again that this was real, not a dream or a game.

"I'm—it—"

Before his nervous stuttering could find its way into real words, Zooble leaned forward and kissed him.

Without the modifier, it was possible to hear the click as Caine's incisors tapped against Zooble's hard plastic. His model, more pliable, found purchase around the bottom edge of their head, about where a mouth could have gone, but there wasn't much Zooble could do to reciprocate other than to continue to stroke along his lower jaw and lean into his kisses. It was nothing like any form of affection they'd experienced in their old life; it wasn't even especially pleasurable, and certainly not erotic.

But there was… something. Maybe the closeness. Maybe the aroma of another person (how strange, that he even had a scent; Zooble wondered if it was new). The press of his hand to their waist, the vibrating hum of his voice. They wanted more. More of the closeness, the togetherness. More of the three of them. They were in deep, and they could feel themself digging deeper as they leaned into each immersion-breakingly soft press of Caine's teeth.

Caine was the first to pull away. When Zooble opened their eyes, it was to find him already watching them. He still had one hand on their waist, the other hovering over their chest like he somehow still wasn't sure whether it was okay for him to touch. He had to lean back slightly to look them in the eyes.

"So, how was…?" Caine asked, a cartoonish blush superimposing itself over his canines. Zooble took it as a good sign that his sillier nature was still intact after all that.

"I want to do this again," they said. "If you're up for it?"

"Y—Yes!" Cain said. "Wait, do you mean now, or—?"

"Doesn't have to be," Zooble said with a shrug. "Just some time. I mean, unless you want another go?"

"Um." Caine glanced between Zooble and Gangle.

"Maybe let's take a break for now," Gangle said. She wrapped an arm around Zooble's elbow and leaned into their side, expression a wash of affection. "Maybe we come back to it after we've all had some time to think? Does that sound alright?"

"Works for me," Zooble said. "Caine?

"Yeah, that sounds good." He hadn't tried to pull away from them yet. They kind of didn't want him to.

But Gangle was right: they all owed it to themselves to think this over, and the two of them probably needed to finally have a conversation about what all this was, if they were really considering bringing Caine into the mix. Maybe Zooble should have been more alarmed that that was where their thoughts went, when no one else had so much as raised the possibility, but they were getting tired of self realizations for today.

Something to think about later, then. They all needed some time, but even knowing that they probably owed Caine some space, they were finding it hard to step back. So instead they indulged themself one last time, pulling him to their chest in a protective hug.

"Sorry," they said. "I'll let you go in a second. I'm just… really glad you're here with us, man."

"Oh."

They were expecting it to end there and were gearing themself up to release him for real when they felt Caine reach around to hug them back, squeezing tight enough to have knocked the wind out of them, if they'd had lungs.

"Me, too," he whispered.