#agoco

But is Coco any good at hiding her crush? Yes.

Does she acknowledge she has one? ...Maybe a bit...

Who wouldn’t admire Agott for her strength, her determination, her wisdom, her loyalty--

Coco helps Agott in relaxing and not being obsessed with her studies.

Took a while, but it was worth it: seeing Agott smiling, smiling!, is worth it.

First time Coco heard Agott laughing without a care in the world she was all ‘cute’ and some time later ‘oh no...!’ while blushing.

Coco, suffering PTSD, really appreciates how Agott, unused to physical affection, tries to calm her with soothing back rubs here and there.

When Coco first had nightmares Agott would get annoyed by being awoken up, only to then, overtime, soothe and support Coco.

They shared a bed one night after a terrible nightmare woke them both. 

Agott actually thinks Coco’s green hair is pretty and suitable for such a lively girl. (Spring = liveliness).

Coco blurted once that she thinks Agott’s eyes are pretty and the usually super serious girl appeared flustered.

Coco may had died for a second when Agott eventually admitted that she sees her as a friend.

Over time the two just... know what the other is thinking just by looking at the other.

One time they accidentally held hands after some dangerous event and they blushed so hard that one could see their blushes from space.

It’s going to take a long time for the two to realise their feelings, but hey they’re getting there.

It didn’t mean she wasn’t jealous, when Tartah was Coco’s first kiss, but she got over it quick.

Things kept happening. They went for the third trial; Coco and Tartah had a dramatic but painless breakup; Qifrey took them on a repairing tour; they went for the fourth trial. The years kept passing. Coco got a new boy, except this one sucked, and didn’t last very long before he got in an enormous fight with Tetia Agott regrets not being there for and was summarily dumped. Coco was always a little awkward, talking about what led up to the actual dumping.

Coco went for the fifth trial. Agott didn’t.

It took a long time.

There was a conversation, with Olruggio. One of many, but this time it struck Agott, who was ready to think about it, ready for it after years of the slow unlearning of all the unspoken rules. After learning what could and couldn’t be changed.

Olruggio had been a girl for a while, as a child. He wasn’t anymore, sometimes said that he wasn’t sure he’d really ever been, but he did like to talk about it with Agott. He let her sit in on his inventing sessions, just watching, studying how he solved the problems, until she was ready to ask.

Agott figured himself out in a slow slide, and a sudden and merciless impact. It felt like learning magic was something he could love: his body was something he could like. Something that he could change.

He’d been writing to Coco— he’d wanted to keep up their friendship, while she was away at the tower and he was alternatingly touring around the land fixing things with Professor Qifrey and completeing what totally wasn’t an apprenticeship with Olruggio except he was teaching him all of the tricks he’d learned in his own career of contraption-making.

He’d forgotten to mention the gender. He wasn’t sure why— or how— when a quick ‘oh by the way, I’m a guy now’ could have been appended to any one of the many letters they sent. It was so important that it just— slipped his mind once, and then well of course he’d told Coco, because he told Coco everything, and of course everything included his gender.

Really it was probably because around the time he was figuring it out Coco was trying to decipher this one really interesting book and well. Magic was cool, and more interesting than the boy thing. Especially because Coco thought that one of the symbols should be able to form magic into brushbugs.

It was a little— more than a little— embarrassing to call out to Coco and see her not recognize him, until—

“Agott!!” She was running to him, and then they were hugging, and he was taller, now, wasn’t he? He hadn’t noticed, but either he was taller or Coco was shorter. “Agott, is that you? You look so happy!”

“Yeah,” He said. “It’s me. Hey, wait, you said you’d show me that new installation—“ And it really was all the same, wasn’t it?

Coco passed the fifth test, deservedly so, and Agott continued to not take it. It felt transgressive of him, every day that went by where he didn’t. He didn’t want to.

Coco moved back into the atelier, and it felt nice. Good. Right, almost: of course it would be the four of them. Qifrey, very politely, didn’t kick them out, but suggested that maybe they’d like to see what it was like being witches in a town for a while?

It was partly that, and also partly that Coco got a letter from Tartah inviting her to come and see the shop he’d recently set up in a space that was separate from his grandfather’s, and also help out because he was just swamped. So Coco went to help, and Agott, because he didn’t really have anything better to do, went with, and— well. He had been making contraptions, and now he was selling contraptions. And it was pretty good.

He pretended not to notice the way Coco would glance at him. He tried not to think about it. They were best friends. Coco, categorically, didn’t like him. Anyway, they lived with her ex.

Probably Coco just forgot he was a guy now, and it surprised her sometimes. It still surprised him, when he caught glimpses of himself in the mirror, the way it made him feel real.

He mentioned it to Tetia, once— how it kind of seemed like Coco liked him, sometimes, but he’d confessed and been rejected already so he was probably imagining it.

Tetia had reminded him that they’d been thirteen, and also had all thought Agott was a girl at the time, and ALSO also like ten years had passed, and people changed. Feelings changed.

Agott’s feelings on the matter kind of hadn’t, much. Except for the squirmy thing in his stomach that turned over when he considered it, and found it to be the vestiges of discomfort at the thought of loving someone in a body that wasn’t really his and that he didn’t really like.

It wouldn’t have been serious, when they were thirteen. It would have been the summer, maybe, and then nothing. It was serious now, though. It could be.

He’d never been good at hiding how he felt, or beating around the proverbial bush— he did just ask her. They were cooking together, and Coco was— watching him peel turnips, and— he’d always been good at shutting up, except around Coco.

“Um,” she said. “Yeah. It doesn’t have to mean anything, though.”

Agott kind of wanted it to. He said so.

They made it mean things.

later, Coco said she had liked him, not when he’d asked, but later, around when she was dating that boy whose name neither of them actually remembered. She’d been so confused, because she didn’t like girls, hadn’t ever been attracted to another girl, so it did make sense Agott wasn’t one, honestly, she could really see it, even back then, and— (coco had buried her face in her hands, before she was able to say it) the confidence was hot.

Agott had blushed to the roots of his hair at that. He got it, kind of— Coco was very attractive ink-smeared and exultant— but Coco was always like that. she loved magic. She’d taught him how to break rules.