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After Tetia and Richeh whisked away the feuding brushbugs, Coco and Agott were once again left alone in their room. Coco turned back to her ruined desk with an intense pout. Her hands hesitantly hovered over the mess, frozen as if she was overwhelmed on where to start, as also made clear by her gaze frantically flickering back and forth from askew item to askew item.
Agott heard a strangled noise escape Coco's throat. She was really worked up about this. She padded up beside Coco, their shoulders brushing together ever-so-slightly. Her tense shoulders seemed to drop a little when Agott joined her side.
"I can help you, if you need it," Agott offered. It required a lot of her energy to not shy away and mumble the words. She was still worked up and embarrassed about the impassioned lecture she gave Coco — her initial plan was to approach it with a far cooler head, but her emotions took control of her. She didn't know what else she expected, considering she had been holding it in the whole night. She could only channel so much of that passion into her dinner-making.
Coco breathed a deep sigh, shoulders completely relaxing. Her unsure hands dropped to knead at the front of her dress. She turned to Agott and gave her a small smile. "I would like that," she said.
She kneeled at her desk, awkwardly shifting her weight to push the paper scraps beneath her away and into a pile. Agott joined her.
"This probably won't take too long," Coco said. "My problem is just that I should probably use this opportunity to sort out some of my older drawings." She let out a short, sheepish laugh.
Coco kept nearly everything, in the name of learning from her past mistakes. The extent of this was revealed now that the brushbug had knocked them everywhere. But realistically, she far from needed each and every one of those examples — Agott had seen the notes she dutifully wrote in her journal, observations of the intricacies of every spell she learned. It was mostly sentimentality now that compelled her to keep them.
Sentimentality, Agott would have once spit the word. She instead suggested, "Master Qifrey might want to hold onto them."
She blinked. "Are you sure?"
"Might as well ask," Agott said. She couldn't know for sure, because like Coco said not long ago in her frenzy, Agott was more liable to destroy things in her frustration. It had been happening… less, but it was a habit not so easily shaken off.
"Great!" Coco cheered. "I'll look through these. Um, can you just handle the few other things?" She gestured to the books and the knocked over pen jar.
Agott nodded and got to work. She shut the books that were open and organized them into a neat stack, then returned the pens to their jar. It was not a terribly hard job she was assigned, and she found Coco was still busy by the time she finished. Agott occupied herself by gathering the last stray shreds of paper into the pile Coco started, but that was about all that was left for her.
Agott could excuse herself. She had done her part and helped Coco out. But she couldn't fight the compulsion to stay, willing to do nothing if it meant peacefully sitting beside her a little longer.
She could only train her eyes on the ink-stained desk for so long before they began to wander to more interesting things — her head turned to observe Coco.
Coco's face was focused, the tip of her tongue poking out from her mouth as she thumbed through the wrinkled papers before her. The curve of her cheek was a round, clear expanse of skin, like the empty page of a palm quire. Though she could not see it now, on the other cheek, the next page, was a splatter of ink — a raw, angry pink. She looked no less Coco with the injury, but the thought that she suffered a blow like that in the first place made Agott’s stomach flip.
It gnawed at her: brilliant, kind Coco — the girl who flipped her perspective of magic, of the whole world, upside down — being so often pushed straight into the storm.
She wanted to curl herself around Coco, sheltering her from enduring any more pain. She wanted her warmth to soothe any lingering pains until they dissipated into nothing. Never before had Agott felt such a deep urge to do selfless things for another the way she did now, and trying to sit with that (and coming to realize that perhaps there was a name for this feeling) was often dizzying, especially in combination with her persistent worry for Coco.
"Agott?" Coco's voice jolted her out of her trance. She had been staring. And now Coco was looking straight at her too, head tilted slightly with a curious expression on her face and her scar in full view.
Agott swallowed. "Ah… sorry," she said sheepishly, willing herself to not stutter. "I got distracted." Internally, Agott smacked herself. Distracted? By what, Agott? What will you say? 'You'? It was always in moments like these, under Coco's sparkling gaze, when she lost her ability to think straight and all of her eloquence went with it.
Her eyebrows furrowed — not judgmental, rather still in curiosity. She had shifted her legs slightly to better face Agott, and now leaned her face in a little closer to her. Agott wasn't sure whether she had paled or gone red. Her body fluctuated violently between warm and cold. What she did know was that her heart was pounding furiously against her ribcage in a valiant attempt to break out of her chest.
They were still a reasonable distance apart, but the act itself of Coco leaning in closer to her made her breath hitch. Agott's eyes flickered to the wound unsubtly. It would not even take the careful attention she usually paid to Agott to figure out what was on her mind.
"Agott," she started to say, voice soft. Before Coco could continue, Agott impulsively reached out, clammy hand cupping the wounded cheek. Under her touch, she felt a small flinch wrack Coco's body. Panicked, cursing herself for being so forward so suddenly, she went to retract her hand.
Agott flinched herself when a hand covered the back of hers before she could escape too far, guiding it back to cradle Coco's face. Coco kept her hand in place and leaned into it. Agott knew for certain now her face was colored with a deep blush.
"I'm fine, Agott," Coco reassured her, a gentle smile on her face. "But I'm glad you're always here to worry about me."
She let out an irritated huff. What a Coco way of putting it. "I don't want to have to worry about you."
The response seemed to give Coco pause. The curved line of her lips twitched slightly and her gaze became distant before it shifted down to the ground.
"What I mean," Agott clarified, speaking quickly, "is that I wish you didn't have to face all of this danger and carry so many burdens."
Coco's eyes, glassy and vulnerable, peered back up at her. She had seemed so cheerful and carefree when she returned to the atelier and ate dinner with them, but now more of what laid underneath reared its head. "I know," she said. "Thank you. I don't want to worry you, either."
Agott harrumphed. "I'll accept your gratitude when you're nicer to my heart." She knew that there were circumstances outside of Coco's control. The Brimmed Caps had their sights set on her. It was not a matter of her always throwing herself into danger, but of it chasing after her. But she wanted Coco to always confide in her, letting her in more as Agott had her, so she could know how to best have Coco's back.
It then also occured to Agott that she could not truly imagine a world where Coco did not twist her heart into knots. Then, with ease, she untangled it into better shape than before. She would always find a way, if not stress-induced: with her silly antics and encouraging words and disgustingly infectious determination.
Coco laughed a little, a single tear escaping in the process. Her fingers curled against the back of Agott's hand, which was still pressed to her face. Gently, Coco guided her hand away, weaving their fingers together. Their hands came to rest on the floor in the space between them, remaining intertwined. Despite the slight discomfort of the sweat accumulating on both of their hands, she felt no desire to let go.
They sat there, unspeaking. Coco's tears had dried and her face also took on a rosy tint, if Agott was not imagining things. The silence stretched on, though she found it was quite bearable now.
Ultimately, she was still the one who broke the silence, blurting, "For what it's worth, I think you look really cool."
That got more laughs out of her. The sound grew wings in Agott's ears, spreading a fluttering feeling throughout her body.
With her unoccupied hand, Coco reached up to absentmindedly stroke at her left cheek. "You really think so?" She asked, half teasingly, and half something else Agott could not identify. Though, it came off as sincere to her and made the fluttering double.
Agott turned her head away defiantly and clamped her mouth shut, despite the urge to shout out a defense. Coco seemed to get the message in the side eye Agott gave her: don't make me repeat myself.
"Sorry," she giggled, giving Agott's hand a squeeze.
Coco's desk was littered with marks: ink stains, spots where her pen made indents through the paper, whitened circles from hot drinks often left to go cold. But they were not unsightly, not even close. Each perceived mishap was proof Coco was there — that Coco worked hard, that she persisted, that she was willing to risk creating more marks.
Coco had been hurt, and had the scar to show for it. But she, despite the hardships, sat steadfastly here in this room. There were rough days behind her, inevitably more rough days ahead, but was that reason enough to forsake her dreams? Not only that, but she did it with a smile, with tightly held hope. It was the sort of drive Agott would have scoffed at, back before Coco wiggled her way into her life. It was something too lofty to truly pay off in this dog-eat-dog world.
But Agott had only seen a fraction of the world. It was Coco that made the picture whole. Coco's persistence worked because she knew no one should go it alone — ultimately, it was only through connection that Agott could start to rise above her own hardships. And now, sincere words exchanged, hands clasped together, Coco could continue to bloom beautifully.
"Ah!" Coco suddenly exclaimed, once again breaking Agott out of her thoughts. "I still need to finish sorting my drawings."
Reasonably, the moment could not last forever, however much she longed for it. Their hands broke away from each other's, and Coco promptly went back to work. Agott still stayed.
Later, after all of Coco's stuff was organized, they both retired to their beds. Agott could rest easier having talked with Coco, but sleep still did not take her easily. She twisted her cold hands in her bedsheets, imagined she was holding Coco's again, and finally drifted off to the thought.