Want to elaborate on the Flinstore dynamic in your head? I'm intrigued.
Don't mind if I do! 😃
This would be their dynamic in Happy Scrappy-verse specifically, of course.
After the events of 6.3, the defeated Dottore is brought on board to help out with the "Repairing Sandrone" project with Aino as the de facto boss, which he has some good reasons to grudgingly agree to.
But of course, no matter how skilled and capable she is, the other heroes don't intend to leave Aino alone with That Guy, so they take turns on guard duty to babysit the whole situation.
For Flins, that works out pretty well since it means no paperwork there's a Wild Hunt spawn point just off the scrapyard he can keep an eye on at the same time.
It also works out since he's a rather bored and mainstream-conforming "human" these days, exceptionally polite to all those deserving. Dottore, he feels, is not deserving. 🙂
He is in fact fair game to unleash all that pent-up fae trickster instinct upon, like a magpie finding it hilarious to nip at a fox's tail - there are just so many buttons to push, and it's always great fun to get to see Dottore's rather overbearing and in-control demeanour slip!
Humans are such interesting creatures after all. Especially if you can make them squeak a bit. 😌
Dottore, meanwhile, is not at all pleased with the 180 from being a God setting out to finally Fix The World, to ending up doing unthankful work in a little Nod-Krai junkyard. It's not as bad as it could be, granted, but he hates feeling constrained, and diminished, and told what to do.
And then Pantalone drops by to inform him that at least for the time being, the Fatui have cut him (this specific segment, they've got spares) loose. Heavily implied this also goes for Pantalone himself, personally (he also has access to said spares. He likes this particular segment, he's fun! But also frankly the biggest asshole among them. It's Not Over, We Just Need A Bit Of A Break. To spend with nicer versions of you.)
So that leaves an even more frustrated Dottore who is now also freshly dumped and about ready to start gnawing his limbs off if he doesn't get some enrichment in his enclosure.
Flins will just have to do.
Flins turns out to be an utter bastard about this, insisting on things like "perhaps you could try asking nicely", and then just smiling that stupid smug little enigmatic fae smile of his the more annoyed you get.
Their relationship is very utilitarian, a mutual scratching of various itches. At least for the time being not romantic at all.
In modern terms, I hc Dottore as aro-allo, zero interest in conventional romance but considering sex a simple physical requirement that needs satisfying occasionally, like eating, sleeping or a good sneeze when your nose itches. There used to be a Pantalone and various other segments around for that, but stuck in the scrapyard, there's a notable lack of those.
Flins I hc as sex-neutral aro-ace in this story. Being a literal aarnivalkea flame with a rather loose connection to his physical form in the first place, he has little interest in sex for its own sake (though the occasional orgasm is pretty nice) but he does find the intricacies of human intimacy interesting and entertaining. You poke at them and they make funny noises! Definitely more fun than paperwork!
Navigating the whole arrangement is a beautiful transactional "with negotiations we all got what we wanted/what stops you from negotiating with me to get what you want" unstoppable force Dottore vs "you're bargaining with a fae" immovable object Flins fireworks show. When to push, when to yield, when to compromise and on what... the raging battle of wills is half the foreplay at this point.
("The trick is to get him really worked up," says Flins serenely, "and then grab and twist his harness and pinch him a bit, in strategic locations. He unravels beautifully after that.")
Honestly, half of what they get up to would barely constitute as conventional sex at all. It works out, somehow.
At the start of the story, Dottore's also lost his mask, laying bare the forehead implant beneath. And Flins (actual magpie) does love his interesting gemstones. He finds the sensory processor gem absolutely intriguing. It's a beautiful journey of mutual self-discovery to find out just how sensitive it is to touch. 🥰
(And for all that Dottore usually comes in at a bit of a disadvantage on account of wanting those itches scratched more than Flins does, there is at least one glorious occasion when he smacks a fun little device he made onto Flins' lantern, binding him in his physical body and then spending all night enacting horrible revenge for all the times Flins edged him for hours. A journey of mutual self-discovery, indeed. 😃)
That's the general gist of it! There are many more layers of headcanons there, but that's for some other time.
I do very much like their aspect of this story! But ship art, especially weird art for rare ships, gets very few notes on rednote, and that's currently pretty much the only social media where people actually comment on my things these days, so the flinstore ends up a bit on the back-burner.
So thank you so much for encouraging me to talk about them! It means a lot! 😃🙏❣️
