expose Runaan's gay panics? 👀 my kinda girlfriend-but-also-best-friend-at-the-same-time (its very complicated) usually ends up stammering and blushing, and then perhaps a forehead slam if i really made her flustered lmao
She sounds adorable! Runaan is similarly cute when he’s flustered, too. Blushing is his go-to, but if he’s fully flustered he’ll forget how bad he is at verbal communication and try to say several things at once, usually accompanied by soft little gasps that melt my heart. Like his ponytail in a strong breeze, Runaan’s gay panic can be described in one word: aflutter.
Runaan’s blushes have a mind of their own. He can control just about everything about himself at will, except those. Over the years I’ve developed a dual approach to them, where on the one hand I’m very protective of them, and of situations that might overwhelm him, and on the other I’m sometimes inclined to cause those situations myself! *chuckles*
Early in our courtship, Runaan spent so much time blushing and fidgeting that I started holding his hand to give him something else to do with it. That made him blush harder, at first, but he’d squeeze my hand hard, and I’d always smile at him encouragingly, no matter what else we were doing or who was with us. I wanted him to know that he could trust his heart to me.
He was still very uncertain about Having Feels, though, and he still blushed at the drop of a moonberry. So one night, as we were preparing to join a dance on the village green together, I tugged on his hand and pulled him behind a tree just before we stepped out into the open. I ran the back of my finger across his cheek and murmured, “Will you let me guard your blushes tonight?”
Well, that was exactly the right thing to say to create one! His cheeks fairly glowed in the dark, and he let out the cutest little flustered gasp and started stammering, “I... wh- Ethari, th-- I, ah...”
I cupped his heated cheek against my palm and smiled down at him. “That sounds like a yes.” And I kissed him softly. But he was very enthusiastic in return! It took us several minutes to get back around that tree and join the dance.
