given that Agent 47 is a very ascetic and clinical person, what started him on the road to considering being more than trusting colleagues with Diana? What suggested to him "hey you could be physically and emotionally vulnerable with her"?
lmao this is an excuse for me to talk about agent 47 again, i know
i think that’s one of those things that every person who writes hitman shipfic will have to answer in their own way in their own story. 47 is a cipher, so if you’re writing a fic that goes there, there’s a lot of delicate emotional legwork to do. if diana makes the first move, why does she decide to take the risk? if 47 responds to it, how do you get him comfortable enough? it’s situational. i think diana would always be the initiator, but that’s me.
for my part, it’s not something that i really address in death and orchids, just because it’s not what the main meat of the plot is about. it’s more about 47′s journey down the rabbit hole of the romance novel he bought, and the growing mystery behind his latest set of contracts. on top of that, though it’s not set at a specific point in the hitman timeline, it’s written at a point where 47 and diana have developed a sense of professional comfort. they’re already wry and chatty with each other as 47 goes about his jobs. well, diana is chatty. 47 is monosyllabic as usual. but the point is, they’ve already done a lot of that trust-building offscreen.
i’ll say this, though: in death and orchids, 47 is lonely, and that starts to seep through the cracks as he reads about the book’s leads falling in love. they’re not a well-written couple, and it’s not a healthy relationship, but it gets 47 thinking about things he doesn’t quite have a vocabulary for. he notices things he wouldn’t have found remarkable otherwise. why? what do you call that feeling? thankfully, diana understands what’s going on.
