Archive of Our Own ^beta

2012, December

It was an unusually warm day in winter when Coiny grabbed Pin’s arm, put his head next to hers, and asked, “You don’t think Needle and I are dating, do you?”

Pin stopped in her tracks. “What?”

The two of them were nestled in the woods behind the competition grounds, off on one of Coiny’s self-proclaimed adventures. In the interim between challenges, there was nothing to do except keep each other entertained, which wasn’t a severely difficult feat when he always dragged her around wherever they could reasonably go. The sun was high in the sky and shining bright on his body.

“Dating,” he repeated unhelpfully. “Does it seem like we are?”

“You and Needle?”

“Yeah.”

“Um,” she began, trying very hard to understand why he sprung the question on her at all. “No?”

Coiny leaned in. “Is that a solid no?”

There was nothing that suggested he and Needle were dating, she thought. They were friends. Needle had made a handful of passing comments about him before—Coiny’s more fun to hang out with, or wait, let’s recover Coiny first!—but the most she’d ever seen him do physically with her was a high-five here or there which, from Pin’s experience, wasn’t really romantic.

“Yes,” she said, still leery. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want your honest opinion,” he said.

“OK. Then, no, I don’t think you are dating.”

Coiny nodded. “Alright. We aren’t, but”—as if he could sense her unheard question—”I heard a rumor.”

Pin tilted her head. “A rumor?”

“Yeah. Can we sit?”

“Are you gossiping?” she asked skeptically, plopping down on the prickly grass anyway. They were shielded just under a tree, but it provided little shelter with its bare branches.

“Gossiping? Nah,” he said, sitting down in tandem. “I’m… debunking… a rumor.”

“I haven’t even heard the rumor,” said Pin.

“Well—” Coiny rubbed his eyes, exasperated, even though Pin didn’t think she had done anything wrong. “It’s barely a rumor. I just don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

That seemed logical enough. “So someone thought you were dating Needle?”

“Yeah. That someone was Nickel.”

“Oh. Of course it was,” she said.

“Nobody’ll believe him, I don’t think, because he’s crazy, but he also doesn’t know when to shut up.”

“You were wondering if he told me.”

Coiny nodded. “I was only asking ‘cause he apparently told Spongy.”

“Of all objects,” Pin said dully.

“Exactly! Geez!”

She couldn’t bite back her smirk at his enthusiastic reaction. From the day she joined W.O.A.H. Bunch, she had found herself particularly attuned to him, mostly because both of them were horribly spiteful. It was easy to bond over their shared hatred of their sometimes-useless teammates. Her enemies became his, and his hers.

“Is it bad if anyone else thinks you’re dating?” she asked.

“I mean, not bad,” Coiny said, shrugging. “Just not true. Like I said, I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea, especially if I—uh, have a crush on someone else.”

That caught her attention. “You have a crush on someone?”

“No!” He waved his hand, cheeks seeming a little darker than before. “It’s a hypothetical.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I haven’t even had my first kiss, so—”

Coiny slapped a palm over his mouth. He was definitely blushing now. “Hah-hah,” he chattered nervously. “Um.”

Pin froze. She felt her chest lighten. She barely even registered the sensation as relief. “You haven’t.”

“Nope,” he bit out. “It’s weird, I know, I just—”

“Wait, wait,” she said, hand shooting out in front of his face. “It’s not weird. I haven’t kissed anyone either.”

His eyebrows flew up. “Oh. Wait, seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”

Coiny fell quiet, a few uncomfortable seconds of suspense. His expression was unreadable until he scoffed and said, “I guess we’re in the same boat.”

“I guess so,” Pin said, though she could hardly believe it. She and Coiny clicked so well, it was almost ridiculous to think that no other object had been interested in him like that. He was nice, funny, and—disregarding his height—on the more objectively appealing end of objects. He could always be Puffball, or—food, like Gelatin. The thought made her stomach turn.

“But I can’t believe,” she continued, “you haven't kissed anyone?”

“Neither have you,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, but I’m me.” Her hand passed up and down the length of his body. “You’re you.”

“What's that mean?”

“Er.” Pin’s cheeks warmed, trying to pretend like she didn’t notice the blowing of his pupils. “Don’t—don't worry.”

“No, I’m worrying.” He straightened. “Are you complimenting me, or insulting yourself?”

“Coiny.”

It was supposed to sound like a warning, but it came out more inviting than anything.

“You look good,” he said eloquently.

Pin made a pained noise.

“That was dumb. My bad.” His eyes trailed down to her face, her hips, her thighs. She squirmed a little under his gaze, shuddering at the thought of being examined so thoroughly. She hadn't ever really thought about Coiny—or any contestant, for that matter—in such an intimate way before. “You're not unattractive, I mean.”

She crossed her arms. “Gee, thanks.”

“Agh! I'm trying!”

She sniffed out a laugh. “It's fine. You don't need to compliment me.”

“I’m just telling you, since you feel like you’re ugly, or something,” Coiny said.

“I don’t think I’m—” Pin shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Okay.” He bent closer. “Then what?”

A breeze blew through the woods then, and they both shivered. Her eyes fell down to follow the movement of his fingers, watching as he clenched them and his forearms flexed. She wasn’t attracted to him, but—

“I just can’t believe you haven’t kissed anyone,” Pin said quickly, eyes flitting away. “Actually—I think Needle likes you. Maybe you two should—”

“Didn’t you just say you don't think she does?”

She huffed. “I meant—”

“Plus, I’m not really into Needle anyway,” he said, leaning back coolly.

“You’re not?”

“Nah, she’s too tall,” said Coiny. “She makes me feel short.”

“Um.” Pin scratched her head. “But you are. Short.”

“Too short,” he clarified, then reached out and flicked her knee in retaliation. The sensation shot up her leg. “I’m, like, half her height.”

“Right.”

“And, what,” he went on, “you never kissed Leafy or something?”

She startled. “Leafy?”

“Uh, yeah. I thought you guys were friends back in BFDI.”

“We were, but—” Before the stealing Dream Island thing, she and Leafy had been amiable, that was true. She remembered trying to play chess with her and failing because neither of them knew the rules. They were playing games in their free time, not kissing. “No, I did not kiss Leafy.”

She smoothed her palms over her thighs and Coiny quirked a brow.

“Pin, I’m not gonna judge you,” he said.

“I didn’t,” she insisted.

He whistled. “Sure.”

“I’m serious! But,” her voice lowered, “Eraser used to make fun of me.”

“Huh? How?”

She grimaced. “He called Leafy my girlfriend. When I said I hadn’t even had my first kiss, he laughed at me.” Her eyes fixed their gaze on the ground, flushing at the memory. “And he said Firey was gonna… steal Leafy from me.”

Pin had also gotten mad and spat at him, but she chose not to mention that.

“Oh,” Coiny said. “Wow.”

“I know.”

She wasn’t completely sure why she told him. Her legs shifted along the brittle grass.

“Did you have a crush on her?” he asked.

Pin thought about it. After a moment, she shrugged.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a crush on anyone,” she said honestly. “Is that bad?”

“No,” Coiny said, but he sounded surprised.

“Have—you?”

“Yeah.” His tone changed when he said it. “You haven’t even thought someone was—I dunno—cute?”

Her face heated up again, embarrassed at her own inexperience. “I don’t know. What does it feel like?”

“Just.” He gestured. “I can’t describe it! It’s just like, oh, your point’s really shiny, or”—a cough—”that was dumb. You just know, I guess.”

“Do you feel like you want to kiss them?” she asked.

“I think so. But I haven’t done it before, so.”

“Right.”

“So, yeah.” He looked down, cheeks pinking up. “Maybe.”

Pin wasn’t sure how to continue the conversation on that note, and Coiny was just staring at her, lips pursed. His hand rubbed up and down his bony shin. He looked like he was considering the question, but he never really thought much, so she was doubtful. Suddenly, an idea popped in her head; it was so absurd that she couldn’t even picture his reaction to it, let alone fathom him agreeing.

She leaned forward and opened her mouth. “Should we try?”

He choked. “What?”

“Do you want to try kissing?” she asked. “‘You know, to see.”

“Pin, you can’t—you can’t just ask that,” Coiny said. His voice cracked.

“Why not?” she said. “We’re experimenting.”

“Experimenting… how?”

“To see how it feels.”

“Because you don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t either,” Pin added. “But at least we can actually say we’ve had our first kiss.”

“Uh.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I can’t say I’m super bothered by it, but okay.”

“Snowball doesn’t make fun of you?” she asked, then pressed a hand against her own lips. She was hanging out with him too much, she thought, if she knew who his other friends were.

“Snowball couldn’t get a girl to kiss him even if he paid her to,” Coiny said, wincing. “Sorry, SB.”

“Oh,” Pin said. He wasn’t wrong. “Well. We still don’t have anything better to do.”

He hummed, then said finally, “Okay.”

“OK?”

“It couldn't hurt, I guess.”

She nodded and sat up, tucking her legs beneath her body. Coiny scooted forward and sat criss-crossed.

“Alright,” he said.

“Uh,” Pin said, “what do we… do.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

She scowled at him, even though there was no reason he should know either. Pin wondered if there were tutorials for this, or if everyone just felt it out like idiots.

“I guess we just—” Coiny puckered his lips in a very exaggerated manner. Pin pulled a face.

“Please don’t do that,” she said uncomfortably.

He frowned. “Oh.”

She was vaguely familiar with the mechanisms of kissing (not too intense, attentive, natural?), and Coiny’s own inexperience did reassure her. If she was terrible, at least he couldn’t comment on it.

“Let’s just try this,” said Pin.

She tipped her body towards him, hands planted firmly in her lap. He did the same, and for a moment they just leaned together. She didn’t know where to look; his eyes were too close for her not to go cross-eyed, but looking at his lips felt—seductive, strangely, an emotion that had never stirred in her before. She sighed and her breath fanned out against his face.

Coiny fidgeted with his hands. “This is kinda—”

“Be quiet,” she said.

He swallowed and shut up.

They sat like that for a while, completely unmoving, breathing on each other. Coiny, Pin noticed, smelled almost exactly like she expected, which was metallic and salty—like a coin. There was something spicy there too, an indiscernible warmth that she wanted to bask in. It wasn’t a pleasant scent by most means, but she thought she could get used to it.

Pin could see that he was wired, somehow more nervous than her, and she smirked, because it was ironic. He was so confident when it came to the competition.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Hah.” He chuckled breathlessly. “Yeah.”

“OK.” They leaned towards each other, maybe a little more on Pin’s side, until their mouths bumped together.

The kiss—if it could even be called that—was unceremonious; Coiny’s lips were cold and chapped and anything but passionate. Before Pin could make sense of the details, they were already pulling back from one another, faces blank.

He gave her a once-over, fingers twitchy. “How was that?”

“…Easy?” she tried. “It didn’t feel like anything.”

“Everyone made it sound like such a big deal,” he said. “Like kissing was something I couldn’t miss out on.”

“Hmm. Maybe we didn’t do it right?”

They stared around each other, feigning indifference but still unable to maintain eye contact. Coiny licked his lips. Pin’s heartbeat throbbed in her limbs. She opened her mouth at the same time he did, and—

“Should we—”

Their jaws snapped shut. Coiny’s cheeks went blush-red, and Pin felt heat rise to her own.

“To see, right?” he supplied.

That was as good a reason as any. She nodded fiercely.

“To see.”

Then they went in again, only this time his hands rose from his lap to rest gently on her cheeks. They kissed once, twice, thrice—Pin was unsure what it meant to make out, so she just kept planting light kisses on his lips, sweet and chaste.

She pulled away but kept their mouths close together. “Am I doing it right?”

Coiny groaned. “How am I supposed to know?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“I think it’s good,” he said, then went back to kissing her.

One of Pin’s hands reached for his and laid it over his knuckles, feeling very much like a blundering idiot—it was difficult, mentally, to do anything else with her body while she was so focused on pressing their lips together. She had never been a skilled multi-tasker, and thankfully Coiny didn’t seem to expect anything more out of her. He brushed his thumb across her smooth plastic exterior.

Their kisses weren’t wet or intimate, but she relished the thrill of the moment anyway; even if it wasn’t gross, it was risky, she thought defiantly. Letting her barely-friend-cum-teammate claim her first kiss. A small act of rebellion she cherished.

They kissed for a scant while longer, long enough that their breathing grew labored. Coiny took it as a sign to lean away for good, Pin’s lips tingling with the last vestiges of his touch, though when his hands fell their fingers intertwined like it was natural.

He inhaled. “Wow.”

“Wow?”

“We just had our first real kiss,” he said, voice awed. “Did that count as making out?”

“We did,” said Pin. “And, um, I don’t know if it counts. I think… maybe.”

“I thought it would suck, but it actually wasn’t bad,” Coiny said.

She couldn’t help but feel a little insulted by the off-handed comment, so she retorted back with, “I mean, your technique could use some improvement, but…”

He lurched. “Ah—hey! You weren’t perfect, either.”

“It was my first time,” she grumbled.

“It was mine, too!”

“OK, fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We both need practice.”

“Practice,” Coiny repeated. His tone was level.

“Yeah. You can’t get good from just one kiss.”

“Sure. But,” he started tensely, “who are we gonna be using for practice?”

“Well—oh.” Pin’s lips tightened into a thin line. “I wasn’t thinking about that.”

He shrugged. “The competition doesn’t take up all our time. If you, er, ever want to get some practice in, I’m not… opposed to the idea.”

Coiny’s hands squeezed hers and she looked down at them reflexively. His skin was warm, and her palms had begun to sweat, glued to his. The very offer thrilled her.

“Pin?”

She nodded. “Yes. I’m not opposed to it, either.”

His shoulders went lax. “Oh, good,” he said. “I’d feel really bad if I accidentally just—came onto you.”

“You kind of did, but that’s OK,” she said.

“Y’know what I mean.”

“I do.” Then, because he was friends with more contestants than her, she asked: “Do you think anyone else has done this?”

“What, kissed someone?”

“Yeah,” Pin said. “I don’t know.”

“Hmm.” Coiny narrowed his eyes in thought. “Actually, yeah. Maybe Pencil?”

Her top lip curled. “Ugh. Why her?”

“I mean, she and Match are pretty cl—”

“Match?”

“They are best friends—”

“—that’s crazy! They’re best friends,” Pin argued.

“Oh, c’mon.” He scoffed. “You think best friends can’t kiss?”

“How can you kiss as best friends,” she said disbelievingly.

“Well, we just kissed, and we’re friends,” he said.

“Not best friends.”

“Ouch!”

Her muscles jumped. “I meant we’ve only known each other for a few months—”

“Kidding, kidding,” he laughed.

“Oh.” She recoiled. “Right.”

“Yeah,” Coiny said. “Anyway. If you’re ever feeling like you need some practice…”

“I’ll ask you,” she finished. The words felt heavy on her tongue, like she was accepting a weighty proposition. In some ways, she was, even though she and Coiny were too much of acquaintances for there to be any real tension between them. It was a favor between teammates, and if Pin’s failed friendships with her past alliances were any indication, it wasn’t something that would become meaningful anyway.

“And I’ll ask you,” he said, “if you don’t mind.”

Pin could feel his warm hands within her own. It had been a while since she felt that kind of contact. Most of the other contestants shied away from her, disturbed by her intensity. They certainly wouldn’t touch her like this.

She nodded slowly. Coiny’s grip didn’t waver.

“I don’t mind at all.”

2018, May

They did a lot of asking after that, or at least until W.O.A.H. Bunch split and their camaraderie effectively ended. When they began spending a more-than-average amount of time together in IDFB, there was already a mutual understanding between them that their former arrangement was just that—former. Coiny had miraculously managed not to mention it in the five years since, not even as a passing joke, which Pin was thankful for. She couldn’t think about it without feeling a trademark flutter in her chest, traces of her juvenile desires. Even past all the murder and betrayal, it still was, she thought, the most thrilling thing she’d ever done.

It had to have been past midnight when Coiny tugged Pin into a secluded area behind the restrooms. Everything smelled charred and ashen and awful, and her nose turned up to signal danger! even though the lava had long ago disappeared.

The most alarming thing now, she thought, was his behavior. Pin died early on in the challenge, a casualty of the initial lava eruption. Apparently Coiny had survived through the whole thing. She didn’t even have time to ask for the details before he was dragging her away from everyone, waving a sympathetic hand to their team as they left.

“Coiny,” Pin started when he finally released her, “What—”

“That was crazy.”

“What?”

“The lava,” he said vaguely. “The challenge. It was—wow.”

She looked down at the scorched grass, not quite understanding why he pulled her away from everyone. It seemed like a conversation they could have in any regular place.

“All the grass died,” she said, kicking the ground.

“Everyone died,” Coiny said. “And Four and X just… didn’t do anything.”

“Did you actually expect them to do something?”

He groaned. “Good point. The only reason they recover anyone is because we ask them to.”

“Coiny,” Pin said, glancing up. “Why are we here?”

“Where? Behind the bathrooms?”

She nodded.

“Um,” he said, quieter. His hand snuck out to grab her bicep. “I wanted to ask you about Leafy. Have you talked to her?”

She scowled. “You dragged me away before I could.”

“Okay, well.” He brushed past her sullen expression. His eyes flitted around like he was looking for eavesdroppers. “Firey… Firey told everyone that she stole Dream Island.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Most everyone was dead by that point, but Eggy heard her, and I saw her gossiping about it earlier, so—” Coiny cleared his throat.

“You wanted to warn me,” she said.

“Uh, well.” His voice got weird. “I figured you deserved to know, since she’s your—girlfriend.”

Whenever Coiny mentioned their relationship, his tone adopted a strange quality, like the word girlfriend and its synonymous terms were completely foreign to him. Pin was unbothered by his hesitance, even though she and Leafy had already been dating for months. Their getting together had been a surprise to everyone involved.

“Yes,” Pin agreed. “Thank you.”

Following her rejoin, Leafy was green and desperate to prove herself to The Losers, and—what better way to do that than by dating their official-unofficial team leader? Their relationship was nothing concrete, but Leafy was friendly and liked to hang around Pin whenever she got the chance to. When the competition became mundane, it was a nice reprieve.

With the news of Leafy stealing Dream Island getting out, that peaceful stasis probably wasn’t going to last much longer. Pin’s brows furrowed. She liked Leafy, but the thought of the rift it would create in their team made her twitchy. The last thing she wanted them to do was pick sides.

“How was it?” Pin asked, not wanting to dwell on the theoretical destruction of her girlfriend’s reputation any longer. “The challenge.”

Coiny perked up. “Oh, it was fine. It was a race.”

“A race?”

“Yup.” He let go of her arm and leaned back. “The last team to get all their living members back to Four was up for elimination.”

“We didn’t lose, did we?” Pin asked, nervous for them.

“No, otherwise Four totally would’ve grilled us.” He winked at her. “Even though you and I would’ve been safe.”

“Hmmh.” She exhaled. “Doesn’t that make you nervous?”

“Does what make me nervous?”

“Not knowing what the viewers think of you,” she said. “It’s scary.”

“Kinda,” he said. “But, Pin—we were the first ones safe last elimination. And it’s not like we’ve done anything… bad.”

“I guess so.”

“I know so. You baked a cake for X, and you even recovered Four!”

“And you’ve always been nice, especially with me,” she replied. If she were a viewer, he’d be her favorite. “Everyone loves you.”

Pin saw him blush, though only for a second. “Thanks. Yeah. We’ve got this in the bag.”

He definitely did, but maybe BFB 7 had just been a strike of luck for her, and she really didn’t want to bring the mood down with meaningless possibilities but—

“You don’t think,” she started before she could stop herself, “that me being with Leafy, though…”

“What, the viewers would hate you for dating her?”

“Uhm. Yes?” Pin’s voice was soft, clipped. Leafy had been the second one eliminated, after all.

“Pin, that’s crazy talk,” he said. “If anything, they’d love you for caring about her. And Leafy’s been nice these past few episodes too, if you’re worried about her.”

She wasn’t not worried about Leafy, but she honestly hadn’t even thought about her until—

“OMPF, I’m horrible,” she blurted, slapping a hand over her mouth.

“What? Horrible how?”

“I didn’t think about Leafy!” she cried. “I should have thought about her first. She even said that I—” her mouth snapped shut. That was probably better left unsaid, so she finished weakly with, “Nevermind. I’m a bad girlfriend.”

“You’re not a bad g—you’re not bad, Pin,” he said, swerving around the word. “Leafy doesn’t have to be your entire life. You’re stressed, and that’s fine.”

“But I should still think about her! Right?” She pushed her palms into her cheeks. Leafy mattered to her, Pin reminded herself.

“Sure, but”—Coiny inhaled—”you just got recovered. And it’s been a crazy few days. And, no offense, but you two have only been dating for a few months. I hope nobody expects you to be perfect about all this.”

“But.” Pin gestured fruitlessly with her hands. Her entire vocabulary had somehow escaped her.

“But you want to be perfect about this,” Coiny said as if he could read her mind. It wouldn’t even be surprising if he could. “I get it. I’m just here to remind you that that’s unrealistic. It’s okay to prioritize yourself sometimes.”

She nodded, although she felt like his advice was straying from the problem. She couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not; he was always shifty at the idea of Pin and Leafy’s relationship. He was affectionate now in ways he hadn’t been before they got together, and he rarely ever encouraged Pin to talk through their relationship problems. In some ways, she had a sneaking suspicion that he was trying to prevent Leafy from overtaking his influence in her life, which was weird and selfish and made her stomach swoop bizarrely.

“Thanks,” Pin said finally.

Coiny smiled. “It’s no problem.”

“We aren’t even up for elimination,” she said. “I don’t know why I got so nervous.”

“Seriously, Pin, don’t worry. Everyone gets in their own head sometimes.”

He punctuated that with a comforting hand on her waist, and she tried desperately not to shiver. That casual intimacy—which, recently, had ramped up to an unbearable degree—kept her reeled in beyond her senses. It made her forget everyone and everything.

Coiny allowed for a few more seconds of taut silence before speaking up again. “What did she say?”

“Huh?”

“When you were talking before,” he said. “You said Leafy said something to you, but you didn’t finish.”

“Oh.” Pin’s eyes skated around. “I—I don’t think I should tell you.”

He straightened. “Is it bad?”

She looked him in the eyes, her expression sad and sensitive—not for him, but for Leafy. He seemed to get the hint.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Coiny said, less insistent now. “But—you know you can trust me, right?”

“I know,” said Pin.

“Good.”

She cringed. “Do you really want to hear?”

“If you wanna tell me,” he said.

“OK.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat.

“Do you remember,” she began, “in BFDIA, when we used to… practice on each other?”

“How could I forget?”

Pin sniffed. “Well, Leafy said I’m a good kisser.”

“You did get pretty good at it.”

“That—that’s the thing. She asked me… who else I had,” she paused, “kissed.”

“Ah.” His expression changed. “And you told her—”

“Yes.” She could feel her voice becoming pitchy, defensive. “It was so long ago, I didn’t think it would matter.”

“But she cared?”

“She cared that we’re still friends.” She looked down shamefully. “Best friends.”

“Does she, uh, want us to stop being friends?”

Pin shook her head. “She wouldn’t ask something like that.”

“Then what’d she say?” Coiny asked, still pressing for more. It was a trait she both loved and loathed in him.

“She asked if I was in love with you,” she said quietly.

He wheezed. “What. I mean, what. Seriously?”

“S-Seriously.”

Pin could feel her teeth chattering in her skull, even though it wasn’t the slightest bit cold. The memory played through her mind in horrifying accuracy; she remembered Leafy’s face, sympathetic but insistent, and feeling the warmth drain from her own at the question.

Coiny mustered enough sense to eke out, “I’m assuming… you said no?”

“I said no.” She wrung her hands together. “But I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Well,” he said. “Reasonable.”

“Coiny,” she said slowly. “Have you… kissed anyone else?”

She could hear him swallow. “No,” Coiny said. “No, I haven’t.”

“Oh.”

He shrugged. “Hey, I’m not mad about it. I have the game to focus on.”

“You’re wasting your skills,” she said, trying to sound teasing. She didn’t.

“Don’t say that,” he said, flushing. “I’m probably super rusty by now. It’s been years.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t kissed anyone since then,” Pin said. Especially with all the new contestants, she thought. Surely there had to be one that struck his fancy.

“I just haven’t wanted to,” he said. “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

She scoffed. “I think so.”

“But, Leafy,” he started, circling the conversation back around cautiously. “Is she… good for you?”

“Yes.” Pin stopped. “Well, she’s kind of, um.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how to say it,” she said awkwardly. “She’s really—scared.”

This was true. With everything Leafy had been through, Pin wasn’t surprised she was on-edge, but—with Coiny, it was just different, even back when they were little more than teammates. Leafy wanted it to be perfect for her, but Coiny made assumptions. That was nice sometimes, because Pin overthought enough for the both of them.

What had come as the biggest shock was how soft Leafy was, how fragile she felt to hold. Her mouth was soft and her lips were utterly smooth. It was pleasant, mostly easy, and they meshed together well. Pin and Coiny didn’t, not really. Coiny’s body was hard, unforgiving, and every time they kissed their lips would clack together and make a strange sound. Kissing Leafy satisfied her, but kissing Coiny—it was unusual, more thrilling. It fulfilled her. She told herself she didn’t miss that feeling.

“She doesn’t kiss like you,” she continued, hating herself for even mentioning it.

“She’s scared to hurt you, I’m sure. Especially since she’s already been eliminated once.”

Pin nodded.

“She’s really, um, soft,” she went on. She saw the muscles in his arm stiffen.

“Okay,” he said.

“And nice. She’s warm.”

Coiny’s tone was strained. “Are you telling me, or yourself?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t know?”

Pin leaned in. “She’s a good girlfriend.”

“I’m… I’m glad.” He licked his lips in a gesture that was meant to be inoffensive, but it made her stomach tighten. Her eyes trailed traitorously down to his mouth.

“Coiny,” she said.

“Pin.”

Leafy smelled earthy, which only made sense. It was nice; Pin liked being able to shut her brain off in the times they were together, to close her eyes and envision a peaceful forest budding inside her. But a deeper, more indulgent part of her had grown attached to the weird mineral scent of Coiny’s skin, and how he always seemed to know exactly what she wanted, sometimes even when she herself didn’t. It was easy to get hooked on.

“I can’t believe you haven’t kissed anyone since me,” she whispered.

“Is it really—that hard to believe?” His voice was hushed now, too. She brought her face even closer, and his shoulders tensed.

“You’re funny,” she said. “Gentle. Nice. You care about me.”

“Of course I do.” She hoped fleetingly that he would refute her claims—tell her it wasn’t true, that he didn’t really love her. But he did, so he never would. “You’re my best friend.”

“You’re my best friend,” she repeated back to him. “Leafy isn’t my best friend. When she kisses me, I… think about y—”

He shushed her before she could finish.

“You—you’ll regret saying that,” he said, shuddering.

Pin didn’t think she would. His words rang in her head like a gong—it’s okay to prioritize yourself, over and over, even though it wasn’t like that, that Coiny was the one she prioritized, that Leafy carried a noble title but Pin’s mental hierarchy had always been screwed up anyway. She kissed her girlfriend with the same mouth she once kissed her best friend with. She always secretly hoped she’d taste him on her lips. She wanted to take back what was rightfully hers.

Pin reached out and clutched his arm. “Coiny. Any object would be lucky to date you.”

“Th-thank you.”

“Or even,” she murmured, eyes lidded, “to just kiss you.”

“Pin,” he said tightly. Her lips came to rest just above his. She tilted forward, anticipating the comforting weight of her mouth against his, but then—

He leaned back. “Pin, wait.”

“What?”

“We—we can’t,” he said.

Her heart sank. “Please.”

She could feel his breath on her lips, hot and damp. His hands slid up to her cheeks, holding them gently, lingering there for one sacred moment, but—he just pulled her head down and pressed a kiss against her forehead, instead.

“Why,” Pin said, voice wobbly.

His lips moved against her forehead. “We’re not… young anymore. We can’t just—do this, not with Leafy.”

She slumped against him and he kissed her again, lighter this time. It had been years since their last kiss, but his mouth still felt familiar.

“Why not,” she said again. “We’re best friends. You care about me.”

“Exactly.” He moved back and rubbed his thumb over the spot his lips had touched. “You’re my best friend. That’s why we can’t.”

He was short-spoken, but Pin understood what he meant. Back in BFDIA, they were barely more than teammates. Their kisses—and they never even referred to them as such, just practice—were personal favors. This, she knew, was completely self-indulgent. It was something she should want with Leafy.

But I don’t want it with Leafy, Pin thought, and she wondered why she didn’t. Why Leafy’s affection wasn’t enough, why Coiny’s attention stoked a small fire in her chest that became a wildfire before she could extinguish it. It burned brighter the more time passed between them, burned her—licked at her skin, overrode her senses. It was hot and fierce. It had burned away all the foliage in her body.

I don’t want her, she thought again. I want how it used to be. I want you.

But of course she wouldn’t say that. Just thinking it was sacrilegious.

“You’re tired,” he said, pressing their faces together. “I mean, we just escaped a—a whole lava eruption, and with the Dream Island stuff getting out… that’s exhausting.”

“I know what I want,” said Pin. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

Coiny sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Her head pounded. His apology settled like poison in her stomach, even though she knew it was genuine, because—the last thing he ever wanted to do was make her feel bad. He always apologized, even when he wasn’t really wrong.

“Don’t be sorry,” Pin said.

“Why not?”

“Just,” she nosed his cheek, “don’t be.” She didn’t feel like explaining. She barely had the words to, anyway.

Coiny seemed content with that and he grabbed her hands, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “Do you wanna go see Leafy?”

“No,” she said.

She didn’t even know what she’d say to her. Sorry, I think I lied, maybe I actually am in love with him.

“No?”

“I don’t want to.”

His thumb stilled.

“Do you want me to stay with you?” he asked slowly.

Her breath quivered. She nodded.

“Okay.”

Pin wanted to say sorry, but she wasn’t. She didn’t even know who deserved the apology more: him, or Leafy. Further away, she could hear the chattering of the other objects, suddenly very thankful that they were tucked away from the crowd.

“I shouldn’t have tried to kiss you,” she said wearily.

“Pin,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Her eyes fell down to where their hands met. Their palms were flush together. It was romantic, she thought—pressing that raw, open patch of skin against his. You couldn’t do that with someone if you didn’t love them.

“Don’t leave me,” she said.

Coiny squeezed her hands. “Where would I go?”

“I don't know. Away from me.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said. “Gosh, how could I ever leave you? Why would I leave you?”

Her tongue felt clumsy in her mouth. “I—I made things weird.”

“I don’t care.” He drew her closer. “Pin, I’m not gonna tell Leafy that you tried to kiss me.”

She looked up. “Do you want me to?”

“Well, logically, you should. She’s your girlfriend.” Then he gulped, voice faltering on the last word, and Pin’s pulse sputtered at the implication. “But I’m your best friend. And I say we keep it between us.”

“Coiny,” she started, about to argue back with that’s bad, because it really was, but she stopped short. She didn’t want to tell Leafy, and they had barely done anything anyway. How much did it matter if she knew? “That’s… um.”

“It’s okay you wanna tell her, I just wanted to—”

“I won’t tell her,” she said. “She doesn’t need to know.”

Coiny stared at her with knowing eyes. It always felt like his gaze was boring right through her, into her soul. “Alright,” he said.

Pin had already thoroughly embarrassed herself for the night, so she took no shame in tipping forward and bringing him into a hug. He sighed at her touch, relaxing into the embrace instantly. It felt so good, so right. She wanted to crumple to the ground and stay like that forever. Coiny’s arms slid around her waist. His fingers pressed against her lower back. Warmth spread through her body.

Coiny lolled his head so that his face pressed into her side, right above her shoulder. She thought she felt him plant a kiss there, but she couldn’t be sure. Then he did it again, this time closer to her cheek, and her eyes shut tightly.

He kept on like that, long enough that his pecks became less like kisses and more like smears of his lips over her body. It wasn’t enough—could never be enough, not after their practice in BFDIA had spoiled her for everything else—but, if he couldn’t give her more, she would accept what little he could.

Pin wondered how it was possible to be a good best friend to Coiny and a bad girlfriend to Leafy. Maybe she was both, or neither. Or maybe, in the six years since he first invited her onto his team, everything had gotten all messed up. Maybe it was supposed to be the other way around. She hoped badly that it was.

2023, January

The night was as fine as pitch and Pin’s hands were balled into fists when she heard the crunching of footsteps approaching, rudely interrupting her sulking.

“Pin,” Coiny said. It was probably the absolute last voice she wanted to hear at that moment. She pulled her legs up to her chest instinctively, teetering over the stage she sat on.

Pin had known he would confront her, had seen him skulking around pretending not to care, hoping more than anything that he would just walk up and come sit silently and respectfully beside her like a normal object, but that was a pipe dream, especially when it came to Coiny. If he wanted something, there was little he wouldn’t do to push until he got it.

“What,” she said. She glanced over at him but didn’t meet his eyes.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said.

She expected him to hop up on the stage with her, but he only stood in front of her, watching as her toes curled over the edge. The S built it for the challenge earlier; it was rickety and uncomfortable, but there weren’t many other places she could sit given the annihilation of their team’s restaurant—not that it had been a gold-star idea to begin with. Her stomach clenched.

“About what.”

The words came out pricklier than she anticipated, and she saw Coiny’s muscles tighten. “Cheating,” he said.

This time, it was Pin’s turn to tense up.

“Cheating,” she repeated.

“Uh, in the challenge,” he added.

“What is there to talk about?” She pinched a patch of skin on her knee between her fingers. “I don’t like it, Coiny. That’s all.”

“But you used to,” he said. “Don’t you like winning?”

“Of course I like winning,” she said, drawing herself up. Surely he didn’t think she was that stupid. “Nobody likes losing.”

“Eggy wasn’t gonna use that restaurant idea,” he said. “So why were you—”

“You were eavesdropping.”

“Yeah, well,” Coiny gestured around, “it’s not exactly a big amusement park.”

“It doesn’t matter. You stole her idea.”

“Her idea that she wasn’t using.”

Pin kicked her legs out, savoring the small bit of satisfaction she felt at his flinch. “Did you only come here to argue with me?”

Coiny sighed and his breath plumed out like smoke. He crossed his arms. “No,” he said. “I want to understand.”

Then try, she thought, glowering.

“I know it’s not just about cheating,” he continued.

Her eyes narrowed into slits. “How long did it take you to figure that out?”

That earned another wince from him, though Pin took no pleasure in it. Those snide insults reminded her of a much worse part of herself. Coiny had opened up so much throughout the years, been so vulnerable with her—back when they first met, it felt like she was stabbing at a formidable opponent. Now, the sword she wielded was positioned directly over his bleeding heart. All she had to do was bring it down.

“It’s about BFDIA,” he said, unrelenting.

Goosebumps raised along Pin’s arm.

“We’ve never talked about BFDIA, Pin. How have we never talked about it?”

“I’ve never talked about it,” she said. “You talk about it plenty.”

“Well, it was fun,” he said.

“Fun? How was it fun?” she scoffed. “Coiny, I was terrible.”

“I don’t think you were terrible. Upset, yeah, but—nobody can blame you for that.”

“What?”

“You had your limbs removed,” Coiny said, “then your face, then your size, then you got stuck with… a mech suit. That’s not really anyone’s idea of a good time.”

“I know,” she said. “But that wasn’t an excuse. You had to crash a spaceship into me for me to realize.”

“I only did that ‘cause I let my emotions get in the w—”

“Well, I betrayed you first, so—”

“Pin,” he said. “I don’t blame you for that now—I didn’t even blame you for it back then. You were playing the game, just like always.”

“Just like always,” she repeated, eyes glued to the ground.

“Yeah.”

“What if I don’t want to,” she said.

“Huh?”

“What if I don’t want to play the game?”

Coiny scratched his head and Pin’s hope began to wane. “What?” he asked. “We’re playing right now.”

“I don’t care about winning Two’s power,” said Pin. “Not really.”

His mouth slid open. “…If this is your version of forfeiting—”

“I’m not forfeiting.” She clenched her fists until her knuckles went white. “Is it crazy that my first priority isn’t winning?”

“I mean, it isn’t mine either, but, you know,” he said, “BFDIA. It used to be all you cared about.”

Pin rubbed the bridge between her eyes tiredly. “BFDIA was ten years ago.”

Coiny hummed his agreement.

“That’s a long time for someone to stay the same,” she said.

“So?”

“So I’ve changed, Coiny.” She surged forward, face pulled tight. “I like to compete, but it’s not my life. You—do you think I don’t regret how I acted back then?”

“I”—a pause—”I don’t get it.”

“Of course you don’t,” she said.

“What does that mean—”

“You were my first actual friend,” Pin went on. “I was stupid. I didn’t know how to act. But I’m different now. Don’t you think so?”

“Obviously you’re diff—”

“I want your actual answer,” she said. Coiny’s breath stuttered.

“I thought you liked BFDIA,” he said weakly. Meaning: I don’t know.

“You thought I liked it because you do.”

“I just thought… since we were so close back then. It’s when we met.”

“I know. I don’t hate everything about it. I like that we met, and—” the practice, she thought wildly. “And I learned from it. But I don’t want to act like that again.”

“What about W.O.A.H. Bunch?” he asked. “You still like being a leader, don’t you?”

She licked her lips and wished the cold would freeze her to death. “Coiny, we kicked almost everyone else off the team. I can be a leader without being—evil.”

“So you don’t like it. W.O.A.H. Bunch, I mean.”

“We don’t even talk to Nickel and Bomby now,” she said. “We made so many enemies back then.”

“It was fun,” he objected. “You’ve always been competitive. It’s cool!”

Pin wondered how that was possible. How he could possibly enjoy those competitive—no, selfish—facets of her when all they’d done was hurt him. She had destroyed their alliance in BFDIA, and when things were finally good between them in BFB she responded by—trying to kiss him, which made things more than a little awkward. The darkest parts of her were always trying to compete for something. It didn’t matter if it was a paper farm or his lips. Somehow, it all became the same thing: desire, desire, desire.

For Pin, it was a humiliating reminder of her immaturity. She was dumb and blind and battle-obsessed. She didn’t know how Coiny could love such terrible parts of her, or—if, maybe, it was all he ever saw her as. If he had been sent down by the universe to illuminate the worst parts of her.

“Which one of us is your best friend, Coiny?” she asked, looking up. She wanted to sound threatening, but the words came out earnest, broken. “The me right now, or the me in BFDIA?”

Coiny went rigid. He licked his bottom lip, then closed his mouth wordlessly. It was the longest he had taken to respond yet. Pin couldn’t stop herself from scouring his expression desperately, fingers fluttering from the cold, searching for any sign of remorse or resignation. Or—disagreement.

He took a step back and his hands fell to his sides. His eyes cut away. He opened his mouth once, twice, three times, before finally speaking.

“I’m your biggest regret, aren’t I?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Me,” Coiny said, gaze fixed on the ground. “That’s your biggest regret.”

“No,” Pin said quickly. “You’re my best friend. I’m happy that I met you.”

“But you regret our relationship.” His shoulders slumped. “You regret how we treated each other.”

She didn’t reply.

“You regret what it’s turned us into.”

Pin sank down into herself. When he looked up to meet her eyes, she couldn’t stomach looking back at him. She knew that was just as good as a verbal confirmation.

“It’s fine,” Coiny said, tone unreadable. “I just wish I knew, like, a decade ago.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Pin didn’t want him to apologize. He always did, and it was starting to lose its meaning. She wished both of them could be wrong, for once.

“I’m sorry,” she parroted back. “We should have talked about it earlier. I didn’t want to.”

He scoffed. “We do a lot of not talking about it. It’s kinda our specialty.”

“This is how it ends up,” she said, though she didn’t make a point to bring up any of their other untouched topics—which consisted of juvenile makeouts and borderline infidelity. Maybe, Pin thought hopelessly, they could sweep those under the rug forever.

“How would you feel if we never met?” Coiny asked. The words dragged in his mouth as if he didn’t want to risk speaking them into existence. “If you said no to joining W.O.A.H. Bunch?”

Pin turned the thought over in her mind.

“I would probably still be dating Leafy,” she said first.

“Oh.”

She knew it wasn't true the second she said it. The truth was that the two of them probably wouldn’t have dated at all; without W.O.A.H. Bunch, they wouldn’t have reconnected, and certainly neither of them would have been on The Losers. They might have been friends eventually, she thought, but there was no guarantee.

“Or I might not date her at all,” Pin corrected quickly. That was already a significant change. “I might not have lost my limbs,” she said. “I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

The more she considered it, the less desirable it sounded. Coiny was silent, so quiet that she could barely hear the gentle beat of his breathing. The very thought of his absence was disturbing enough.

No matter which way she looked at it, it didn’t make sense. When she joined BFDIA, she had already built a shield around herself, retracted from the idea of friendship. Friends were allies, and allies were expendable. But when she met Coiny—before she even understood the emotional depth of kissing, when it was just something they did—he didn’t just encourage her to let down those walls; he tore them down, and she wasn’t fast enough to reconstruct them before they were entirely gone. Even when she tried to fight back, when she deployed her safeguards, he didn’t resist. She was too busy locked away in the rooms of her mind, obsessively strategizing a way to destroy him for good, to realize how much she really loved him.

But once she realized that she did—

“My first priority would still be winning,” she said. There was no question about it.

Coiny nodded and stepped forward again. Pin relaxed. “What priority is it now?” he asked.

“What?”

“Like, is it your second priority? Your third?”

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t know. My fourth?”

Coiny’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You really have changed.”

“You changed me,” Pin said.

She thought she saw his face go red at that, or maybe it was because of a particularly well-timed breeze. He held his hands up to his face. “Don’t—don’t say that.”

“It’s true,” she said. “I don’t get it. I would still be as bad as I was in BFDIA if it wasn’t for you. Why do you like that season so much?”

“Pin,” Coiny said softly. “Do you really think that?”

“Think what?”

“That you would still be as”—air quotes—”bad as you were in BFDIA.”

“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“You’re right, you don’t,” he said, which made her bristle only until he stepped forward and put a delicate hand on her knee. “Sure, you were kind of—rude back then, but none of us were perfect. I literally crashed a spaceship into you.”

“I deserved it.”

Coiny snorted. “We can agree to disagree. But my point is that you would’ve changed no matter what, because you’re good. You have a—a good soul.”

“My point still stands,” Pin said, though her heart had jumped to her throat. “I don’t understand why you like BFDIA.”

“I met you,” he said easily. “That’s all.”

“Even though I was kind of rude.”

“Even though you were kind of rude, yes,” he said.

She rubbed her arm. “I don’t regret meeting you.”

Coiny spread his fingers along her thigh comfortingly. “I’m glad.”

“I regret how I treated you,” she said. “I told myself you were just my ally. I thought that I only cared about winning.”

“But you don’t.”

“No. I care about—my friends. I care about my teammates. And—” Pin stopped, took a breath, felt the warmth of his hand radiate through her veins like lifeblood. “And my first priority is you.”

Coiny’s mouth fell open.

“I was too stupid to realize it in BFDIA,” she said.

He stared at her. He stared into her eyes, down at her lips, tilting closer.

“Coiny?”

He didn’t respond. She drew in another anxious breath.

But when she opened her mouth to question him again, he leaned up and sealed their mouths together.

Coiny kissed her in one calm, confident movement, his lips dry and soft. It felt perfect, just like it always had, and when he pulled back Pin tipped forward without meaning to, chasing his touch.

She knew she was staring at him dumbly, eyes wide in her face. She thought she might die from asphyxiation—Coiny’s breath was hard, heavy, but she was barely breathing at all, frozen in the moment. His mouth curled up in a small smile.

“What?” he said, trying to sound blasè. His voice faltered anyway.

Her pulse beat senselessly in her head. It felt like her whole body was throbbing, aching, both for air and for him.

“I just wanted to,” he explained uselessly.

Pin’s lips parted. It didn’t seem real. It shouldn’t be real—years of them skirting around the topic, years of ignoring the kisses they shared in BFDIA and her fruitless advances on him in BFB, just for him to swoop in and kiss her like it was nothing. She wanted to tackle him, beg him for answers.

But what she wanted most was for him to do it again. So, instead, she angled her head down and kissed him back.

Coiny took it as an invitation to slide his hands up her face, cupping her cheeks, guiding the kiss in a way he hadn’t done in years. It evoked a feeling in her she almost didn’t recognize, it had been so long since she felt it—the swelling of her heart deep inside her chest. The sensation was reckless, unchained, and Pin worried that she might lose herself if Coiny didn’t pull her down with him, slipping off the stage and locking their bodies together.

He kissed her over and over, the chaste presses of their younger days giving way to longer, rawer kisses, deep enough that Pin moaned softly when he pulled away.

“You’re not my first priority,” Coiny said, breath puffing in the air. “You’re my only priority. I don’t care about how you acted in BFDIA. I care about you now.”

“You should have told me that years ago,” she said, whispering against his mouth.

“I know,” he murmured. “I probably should’ve kissed you years ago, too.”

“I gave you the chance to,” said Pin.

“Yeah, while you were dating Leafy.” He rolled his eyes, though he didn’t look the least bit annoyed. “Besides, I was waiting for the right time.”

She snorted. “You think this was the right time?”

“Uh, well.” Coiny blushed. “I kinda realized that there wasn’t gonna be a right time. And… I didn’t want to wait any longer.”

“Me neither. Does it really not bother you how I acted in BFDIA?”

He chuckled sheepishly. “No. I love every version of you, including the one in BFDIA. I don’t think I can change that.”

“I don’t want you to,” she said. “I just want you to—understand how I feel about it.”

“Okay,” he said. “I think I can do that.”

Pin nodded thankfully, and when his thumb brushed her cheek she leaned tenderly into it. Her eyes fell shut. It was nice to let her walls down sometimes, she thought.

“You could’ve confessed, y’know,” Coiny spoke up.

“I like making you do all the work.”

“Is that right?”

She nodded again.

“Um,” he said cautiously, making her open her eyes, “but, in BFB, when you tried to kiss me, I—”

“It was a mistake,” she said earnestly.

“Pin,” he breathed. “I thought about it all the time. What would've happened if I just let you.”

She shuddered. The thrill almost made the guilt worth it. “Me, too.”

“Did you think about me?” he asked. “When you were with Leafy?”

“Coiny,” she said, a warning.

“Pin.”

“I was a bad girlfriend.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Coiny said.

“When I was with her, I wanted you.”

His head tilted. “But you dated her for a while.”

“I didn’t think about you all of the time,” Pin said, although she mostly did but didn’t want to flatter him like that. “I loved Leafy, but I wasn’t… in love with her. And—she knew. She said I was more like your girlfriend than hers.”

“Is that why you guys broke up?”

She shook her head. “No. After the show split, it just happened. Our relationship was never very solid.”

“Okay,” he said, chuckling. “Maybe you were kind of a bad girlfriend.”

“Thank you,” Pin said, and she really meant it. Coiny was the only object she would ever want to hear those words from. He had spent so long treating her like she was perfect, it was nice to just not be.

He smirked. “That’s an emphasis on were, by the way.”

Her mouth dropped. “Oh,” she gasped, “you mean—”

“I wanted you and Leafy to break up,” Coiny said, blowing out a harsh breath. “Geez. I’ve never said that out loud.”

“Rude.”

“Sorry. I was jealous—really jealous. Whenever you guys would kiss, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I got to do it first.”

She smiled dizzily. “Mm, my first kiss.”

“You’re my only kiss,” he said. “Now and forever, if you’ll let me be.”

“You’re asking me out,” Pin clarified.

Coiny laughed. “Trying to, yeah.”

“You’re nervous,” she said, which earned a wince from him.

“A little,” he said. His face was pink.

“I’m going to say yes. But you have to ask me first.”

“Because you like making me do all the work.”

“Well, every heroic leader needs a sidekick,” she said.

“Sidekick? That’s all I am to you?” Coiny clutched his chest and careened back like he’d been shot. “Ouch.”

Her brows raised defensively. “I didn’t say it was bad, I just—”

“But what if I don’t wanna be your sidekick,” he interjected, leaning in so his lips brushed the corner of her mouth. “What if I wanna be your partner?”

Pin couldn’t stop a strained whine from escaping her throat, like a prey animal caught in the jaws of a trap. She talked big, she thought dryly, but Coiny’s touch and voice and presence all around her made her lose sight of that confidence. She felt it all the way down—her hands loosening, grasp slipping, falling from that lovely pedestal of leadership. As her best friend, he was interminable, near the sun but never too close. As her partner—or boyfriend, or what-have-you—he would fly right beside her, close enough to burst into flame. With how things went with Leafy (wings scorched, sent spiraling back down), she couldn’t imagine why he wanted to risk the flight.

“You said you’d say yes,” Coiny continued, a little darker, in a tone he’d never used with her. Pin’s gut clenched, and her eyes fluttered. “I’m waiting.”

She turned so their lips were touching, breathing hot and shaky into his mouth, and muttered, “What if I say no?”

“Then I’ll wait longer,” he said, “until you don’t.”

“So I don’t have a choice.”

“The day we met, we both stopped being able to choose, Pin.”

That was true. She really didn’t believe in soulmates, but even before they kissed for the first time, the attraction was there, a gentle current running beneath their time together. She only didn’t have a choice because she didn’t want to have one.

“Yes,” Pin said.

“Yes, you agree?”

“Yes, I will be your partner,” she said. “You already know I agree.”

“Oh,” he said, smiling impossibly wider, enough that she could feel his teeth against her lips. “I’m gonna kiss you again.”

“Is that a question?”

“No,” Coiny said, and it wasn’t, because his lips were on hers before she even had the chance to close her eyes. Pin could feel her mouth pulling up into a grin. She tried to pull it back down and failed, almost leaning away from embarrassment, but Coiny just snorted and kept kissing her anyway, right against her smiling mouth.

2025, March

Two years later, Pin was swept away by Four’s hand and popped out in a red room, and the first thing she noticed was that the door was suspended upside-down on the ceiling. The second thing she noticed was the picture across from it.

It was hanging upside-down too, but the subjects were clearly her and Coiny, both of them grinning contentedly. Pin found herself mirroring their expressions. In every photo she took, he always beamed that way, like it was the only pose he knew. He also wouldn’t let her pose any other way—she had a phase during BFB where she made a habit out of smiling anxiously in their team photos. Coiny noticed it when he was compiling them together one night, and when he did he grabbed her and said just think of that time where I fell off the Yoyle Needy, okay? and pulled her cheeks up into an uncomfortable grin. So she tried to, though she mostly always ended up thinking of that night, which worked just as well.

Wait, Pin thought suddenly, sucking in a gasp. Coiny.

The door handle jostled.

Her stomach lurched.

Then it swung open with a powerful push, and she was greeted with the faces of Foldy and Remote.

“Oh, flap,” Foldy said. She stared down at Pin, then towards Remote, both of their eyebrows shooting up in surprise. They were speechless for an excruciating second, so Pin opened her mouth and said:

“Where’s—”

“Coiny,” they said in unison. Their attention landed swiftly back on Pin. It felt like she was shrinking under their gaze. She nodded once.

“We’ll find him,” said Foldy, slamming the door closed and leaving as abruptly as they had arrived.

“Oh,” Pin said, alone again. Her fingers played nervously along her thigh. She hoped they wouldn’t be long.

From somewhere that she assumed was further away, she heard the slamming of doors and a muffled voice. Blood thrummed in her ears. She and Coiny hadn’t done so much as sent a letter to one another. She wondered how he’d react, if he’d missed her, if he still wanted to be with her—

The door opened again and Foldy literally kicked Coiny through it, forceful enough that he fell from the ledge and onto the floor. Pin heard him grunt angrily, pull himself up to object, and watch defeatedly as Foldy made a flawless escape.

“Coiny,” Pin said, weak enough to be a whisper. He whipped around and his face softened instantly.

“Pin!”

They met in the middle of her bedroom, pulling each other into a tight hug. Coiny spun her around and it shocked a laugh out of her, bright and happy, thinking delightedly: this is real, this is real, he really does love me and he’s missed me. As if she had any reason to be worried in the first place.

He was the first to lean back, hands still wrapped around her. “I wanna kiss you,” he said.

Her eyes crinkled. “You don’t need permission.”

“Just making sure,” he said, even though she didn’t know why, because the answer would only ever be yes. He held her wrist and brought her hand up to his face and kissed the back of it, along her knuckles. He planted another further up her forearm, then in the dip of her elbow, then on her shoulder, and finally his lips trailed up to her face. Pin didn’t want to wait any longer. She bridged the gap before he could.

“Pin,” Coiny said into it, sounding worshipful. “I’m sorry—you got eliminated. The viewers don’t know what they’re doing, I swear.”

“It’s OK,” she said.

“For the record, I really wanted you to win.”

He dragged his wet mouth along her cheek and she giggled. “Thank you.”

“But now that you’re here, I don’t want you to leave,” he added.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” said Pin. “You better not leave, either.”

“If there’s a rejoin,” he promised, “I’ll forfeit.”

“Me, too.”

When their lips met for the second time, Pin wished that they would never stop. She wanted to spend the rest of her days like that, feeling his touch bloom throughout her body like a beautiful flower, forever warm and watered.

“Pretty girl,” Coiny said, pressing his lips to her chin. “I went crazy thinking about you.”

“Oh,” Pin sighed. Her spine throbbed with need. “Coiny.”

“It’s true.”

He nuzzled her and she did the same, inhaling deeply, smelling the familiar metallic scent of his body. She caught the musk of his sweat, too, and thought strangely that he smelled like sweet black olives. She reached out and brushed her lips along his skin like she was trying to taste them.

“We have a lot to catch up on,” she said. “Like—the world almost ended.”

Coiny reeled back. “What?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Pin said, because seeing him again was already overwhelming enough. “It’s a long story. What was that about you going crazy over me?”’

He sighed out a laugh. “Oh,” he said. “I was pathetic. I almost asked Two if they would let me out, just for a little.”

“Let you out?”

“To see you,” he said. “But I didn’t know the right way to ask. Like, hey, can you pretend I’m not eliminated for like an hour so I can see my girlfriend?”

Pin blushed. She would’ve liked that. She could imagine it now: the surprise at seeing him again, how they would be glued to each other’s sides for as long as Two let them be.

“What would you have done if they let you out?”

Coiny kissed above her lip. “Whatever you wanted me to do.”

“Really?” she asked, even though it was the answer she expected.

“Of course. I would’ve wanted to kiss you, though.”

“Good,” Pin said. She inched closer. “I want you to do that now.”

His mouth pulled up in a sharp grin. “That’s funny, ‘cause if your tongue isn’t down my throat in the next ten seconds, I think I’ll die.”

“Coiny!” she exclaimed, but it lost all its heat when he crushed their mouths together and she groaned helplessly.

The kiss was deep, more intimate than the ones they first shared, and Coiny walked her back and pushed her onto the bed without another word, leaning over her and chuckling. She didn’t want him to die, so her tongue licked up delicately towards his lips, but he responded by shoving his own tongue into her mouth, crude enough that she gasped in surprise. He swallowed it up with another kiss.

Coiny’s hands crawled all over her body, and when he squeezed the underside of her bicep she made another whining noise. Pin thought she might as well be a squeaky toy with how receptive she was. Who could blame her, though, when it had been over a year since she’d gotten this?

“Pin,” he moaned, their lips dragging together. He swirled his tongue around hers and her breath hitched, choking out his name in response, though it was half-muffled by his mouth. It was all very good and messy and Pin hooked her legs around his eagerly.

“I had so many dreams about you,” Coiny continued, voice throaty.

“Me too,” she said. “I kept thinking about—that one morning, in the hotel—”

“Oh,” he snorted, “when we were late to the challenge?”

“Yeah.” She shivered when his tongue slid out and licked a stripe up her neck.

They had spent the night together before a challenge once—the first and last time they’d ever done it. Pin woke up to Coiny kissing her in literally every place he could get his hands on, and when she looked outside and balked at how many objects had already gathered there, he just dragged her back into bed and pinned her down and kissed her until she was green in the face and panting. Then he left her like that, citing that they didn’t want to be too late, and Pin was as mad about her tardiness as she was being unsatisfied.

“I remember,” he said. “You got so mad at me.”

“Coiny, there are many legitimate excuses for being late to a challenge, but—mm—kissing me is not one of them.”

“To you. It seems totally legit to me.”

He sucked her bottom lip into his mouth and she began to lose sight of her argument.

“Besides, you looked so cute,” he pressed on. “That’s not my fault.”

She responded in a groan, pushing their mouths together again. He smiled into it and pulled her up so that they were effectively sitting in each other’s laps, legs spread. It was pointless to argue with him when his hands were on her waist and his tongue was licking its way into her mouth, hot like a flame.

This, she knew, was Coiny’s favorite kind of kiss—messy, reckless, indulgent. He was a gentleman most days, especially in public, but not just once had he surreptitiously turned Pin’s head away from their team while they were kissing and slid his tongue past her lips. It was a far cry from the kisses they shared in BFDIA, back when they were too terrified to risk ruining their sacred arrangement.

“We used to—not do this,” Pin said, words lilting.

“What? Kiss?”

He nipped at her mouth and her nails dragged across his cheeks. “Kiss like this,” she panted. “It was too intimate.”

“In BFDIA, sure.” His ankle rubbed against her back. “Not now.”

“Definitely not now,” she said wryly, more than a few filthy images of them racing through her mind—sneaking into each other's hotel bedrooms, a warm hand on her inner thigh, that same hand pressing her into the mattress—and when they locked eyes she knew Coiny was thinking the exact same things, flushing heavily. Pin had to lean away or their reunion was going to get a little raunchier than she planned.

“We still used to call it,” she said, “making out.”

Coiny flicked his tongue along her lip. “Mmh, we were young. We didn’t know what it meant yet.”

“No,” Pin agreed. They were certainly much better at making out now. “How are you still so good at this?”

“I did a lot of practice on my… hand.”

She shot him a mischievous look.

“Are you sure you didn’t kiss anyone else?”

“Pin, I’m totally serious.” Coiny’s hand snuck down to stroke her leg. “The first time I kissed you, I knew I never wanted to do it with anyone else.”

“That’s possessive,” she said, shuddering at both the thought and his touch. He always had been.

“Ah, sue me,” he said. “You decided to date me.”

She snorted and said, “That’s true,” and Coiny brought their lips together in another open-mouthed kiss, evidently done with conversation. It was so good, matching her rhythm with ease, sucking at each other’s faces like they hadn’t kissed in years, and—well, technically, they hadn't.

After a moment, she broke the kiss again and said, “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

“Like, a lot.” She wrapped her arms around him, their cheeks pressed together warmly. “We’ve been dating for over two years now.”

“And most of that time has been spent away from each other,” he said.

“Yeah.”

Pin felt him trace a heart shape on her back and say, “We’ll just have to make up for it, then.”

That was true. There were a lot of things she wanted to tell him—some of them good, some of them bad. But she was exhausted, and it was easier to relax with him than it had ever been with anyone else.

“Can you stay here tonight?” she asked, sagging against him.

“Yes,” Coiny said immediately. “Obviously. I mean, please.”

Her lips curled up happily. “Yay.”

“To sleep,” he clarified.

“Um. Yes?”

He squirmed stiffly and said, “Okay,” though his voice was tense. With a mind like Coiny’s, Pin had no idea what dirty ideas could be floating around.

“Why, Coiny?” Her eyes narrowed. “What else would we do?”

He blushed. “I was just making sure you didn’t expect us to be—making out all night, I dunno.”

“Not all night,” she said, which only made him redden further. “I want to go see everyone else first.”

She sat up and got off the bed, feeling tired and wobbly and happy.

“Wait,” Coiny said quickly. He reached out and grabbed her arm.

She stopped. “Huh?”

He grinned. “One more kiss?”

Pin rolled her eyes. He always wanted one more kiss, his reasoning usually being for the road as if she were embarking on some treacherous adventure.

“Fine,” she said, and she leaned down to do just that.

The kiss was soft and quick. She heard Coiny make a pleasant sound.

“Have you noticed,” Pin began again after breaking away, “that you can never do that only once?”

“What?” Coiny said, stealing another peck from her.

“You always kiss me twice. Or three times. Or… four.”

He tilted his head boyishly. “Do I?”

“Yes.” Even back in BFDIA, he was never satisfied with just one. In TPOT, before every challenge, he always kissed her twice, like a sneeze he couldn’t suppress. Pin loved it, but that didn’t make it less funny.

“My bad,” he said, then kissed her again, too fast for her to reciprocate. “I like to kiss you, that’s all.”

“That’s three in the past minute,” Pin stated.

He pushed his mouth against hers again. “There, that’s four. And”—another kiss—”five.”

“You are so weird,” she said, pulse jumping happily anyway. When he didn’t lean back in for another, she followed up with, “Are you going to leave it on an odd number?”

“Oh, no,” said Coiny. He kicked himself back on the bed and crossed his legs expectantly. “You’d better go say hi to everyone now.”

Pin’s brows raised. “Huh? Why?”

“Well, you might be here a while,” he said wickedly, “‘cause I think we can make it to a hundred.”

2027, August

Somehow, in the years following Pin’s elimination, she and Coiny managed to share almost as many death scares as kisses, a feat she was amazed but not impressed by. Pin mentioned it to him once, and he did good work to combat it by waking her up with kisses and stealing them from her throughout the day, just because he could. Just because he wanted to. It was almost always chaste, with the exception of the times they got carried away and Coiny pulled her into a corner or a bathroom and kissed her stupid, hard enough that they both stumbled away and avoided each other for the rest of the day. But that was only until night fell, when they would make up for that lost time in bed together, fall asleep on the same pillow, and wake up entangled. Then the process would repeat.

All apocalypses considered, the two of them were very happy. Pin didn’t have a more eloquent way of saying it—it felt like her time with him stretched out long before they met, before she even gained consciousness, when her existence was barely more than a concept. For the longest time, it had just been Coiny. Coiny’s voice, Coiny’s words, Coiny’s touch, Coiny’s smell, tomorrow and yesterday and forever. Her best friend, her other half, and—maybe not her entire purpose, but at least a quarter of it.

In honor of celebrating their very-belated four year anniversary, Coiny took her to Yoyle City, a place they hadn’t visited in over a decade. For him, she knew, it was a reminder of BFDIA, when they met; for her, it was just nice to get away, especially to a place that had become so nostalgic. They had never taken a solo vacation before, and his selling point was this: I can kiss you whenever I want, wherever I want.

Pin’s response was you already do, but she was sold anyway. He originally wanted to visit the BFDIA competition grounds too, but she shot that idea down swiftly. There were some limits even she wouldn’t cross.

That didn’t mean Coiny wasn’t willing to push the boundaries of what she would allow, though. That was why, as they were trudging up a hilly street, he nudged her and pointed to a vast plain in the distance and said, “We totally kissed there once.”

Pin shrugged off his grasp. “You are so annoying.”

“What! Annoying?!” He prodded at her again. “I’m reminiscing about old times.”

“No, you’re trying to annoy me,” she said.

“And it’s working. So, mission accomplished.”

“If your idea of a romantic vacation includes annoying me, I have mixed feelings on it.”

He laughed. “Okay, okay. Sorry.”

“Whatever.”

She sped up her pace the slightest bit, enough that Coiny groaned and raced to keep up with her. Even after everything that had happened in TPOT, Yoyle City looked the same. In some ways, it was like she never left at all. Pin felt a strange cognitive dissonance cloud her mind; back then—an entire decade ago—her problems seemed impenetrable, like the search to rebuild her broken relationships was useless. She considered resigning herself to a life of loneliness many times. But Coiny was always there, welcoming her with open arms despite everything, loving her enough that eventually she started to love herself, too. What she had been, and what she was now—both of those versions of her had walked this exact path, seen the same sights. Everything and nothing had changed.

“Can you believe we haven’t seen this place in over a decade?” Coiny blurted, somehow on the same wavelength.

“No,” she said, scanning the surroundings. There were too many buildings she recognized—a furniture store here, a bakery there.

“It hasn’t changed at all,” he said.

“Yeah.” It hadn’t, except for a few extra layers of dust and cobwebs. Plants sprouted through the sidewalk almost everywhere, and the asphalt road was split from disuse.

Coiny cleared his throat awkwardly. “I was hoping this would be a nice vacation, but now I’m feeling kinda sentimental.”

“Me, too.”

He looked over at her. “Do you wanna find a place to stay for the night?”

Pin knew why he was asking: he didn’t want to make it painful for her. Many years and conversations had passed between then and now, long enough that BFDIA no longer felt like an open wound, but the scar remained. It ached at his concern.

“Not yet,” she said. “I want to see the sunset.”

“Okay.” He glanced up at the sky. The sun had already dipped below the buildings. “Well, we’d better work fast. I know a place!”

Coiny slipped his hand in hers and began walking even faster, somehow already set in a direction. When they reached an intersection, he took a sharp left, and she grunted.

“Coiny, it’s been years,” she started. “How do you—”

“—know where to go?” he finished, turning back to her. His voice was loud and excited. “Pin, Yoyle City is abandoned. It can’t have changed that much!”

“Right,” she said.

Coiny slunk through the roads with ease, and all at once Pin remembered the adventures he liked to take her on in BFDIA. After the competition ended and they settled here, he resumed those same adventures, though Pin was mostly confined to what little exercise was permissible with Golf Ball and could never go with him. He did carry her up a hill once to see the sunset, and he was so exhausted by the end that he dropped her on the grass and she almost rolled down, moaning that Golf Ball was going to kill him for it. She never tattled.

Pin had the strangest sensation that the memory was on Coiny’s mind, too, as he pulled her up the cobbled steps of an office building. He tugged her off the concrete and onto the grass, then behind the building. They had to push through a thicket of overgrown bushes, which made her grumble.

“You did that the last time we came here, too,” Coiny commented, dragging her through to the other side.

Immediately they were blinded by the radiant light of the sun. “I knew it looked familiar.”

“Yep,” he said, flopping down on the grass. Heat wafted off the stalks. She sat down beside him.

The sky was a bright russet color, warm and beautiful—the only time of day where the yellow haze of the city matched the sky. She tilted her head further up to meet a deep gradient of indigo and red.

Below it was the rest of Yoyle City, or at least as much as they could see from their perch. The sun cast a dark shadow on the buildings, and even further out was the river, forever purple, but only until it fed into the Goiky Canal. The sunsets here and there looked one and the same.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t want to see the competition grounds,” Pin said. She knew he would’ve liked that.

“It’s fine,” said Coiny. “It’s still the same sunset.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s pretty.”

Their sides bumped together. His hand slid across her back and around her waist.

“What do you think we’ll do here?” she asked.

Coiny shrugged. “I mean, we’ll need to find a place to sleep.”

“A clean place,” she said pointedly.

“Yeah.” He coughed. “Um, a semi-clean place.”

“Coiny, your definition of ‘clean’ and my definition of ‘clean’ are very different.”

He nudged at her teasingly. “Fine. You can choose the place.”

“Thank you.”

“I guess we can do whatever we want,” he continued. “I didn’t really think about it.”

“Me neither,” she admitted.

Coiny turned. “Really?”

Pin blinked. “Yes?”

His lips pursed to form a weird expression. He stared at her hard enough that she felt her skin prickle.

“What?” she said, insistent.

In an instant, his expression dropped and he grinned innocently. “Nothing. That’s just unlike you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What is?”

“Not thinking about it,” he said. “I thought you would’ve had a whole host of ideas by now, that’s all.”

“Well,” Pin started defensively, “I didn’t have much time to think about it, and I thought, with you, it—”

Her mouth snapped shut when she saw that his benign grin had become an evil smirk.

“Go on,” Coiny said, devilish.

“No.” Then: “Oh, no.” Her head spun. “You’re rubbing off on me.”

“Whaaat?” he drawled. “I don’t think so!”

“No, you were right.” She stabbed a finger at his chest. “I should have ideas! You are a bad influence!”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Coiny grabbed her finger. “I’m not a bad influence!”

“I think you are!”

He pushed her hand away. “How?”

“I should have ideas!” she repeated. “You’re making me—lazy.”

“Lazy,” he said incredulously.

“Yeah!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe I never noticed!”

“Pin, I’m pretty sure the reason you didn’t notice is because you don’t care.”

“I’m caring now.”

Coiny tilted his head skeptically. “Mmm, are you? I think you secretly enjoy it.”

She sputtered. “What—OK—whatever!”

“You even sound like me,” he said, pressing closer to her.

“Stop.” Pin couldn’t stomach the smirk on his face, because he was right. “You are terrible.”

“Whatever you say,” he whistled.

“I’ve rubbed off on you, too,” she said.

“I mean, probably.”

Pin grumbled. “Can you at least pretend to be bothered?”

“What?” Coiny leaned back and locked eyes with her. “I don’t care.”

“You don’t?”

“I wouldn’t be with you if I didn’t love you for who you are,” he said.

“Oh.” She groaned and shielded her suddenly-burning cheeks with her hands. “Coiny.”

He took her hands in his and peeled them from her face, palm against sweaty palm.

“So, no,” he added, “you rubbing off on me doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.”

“You always compliment me,” Pin said.

“‘Cause I love you.”

She swallowed. “I—I love you, too.”

“I know.”

But that wasn’t what Pin meant to say. She loved him domestically, but she also loved him wildly—like a juvenile crush, one she never quite got past.

“I mean, I like you,” she said instead. “I have a crush on you.”

“Pin, we’ve been dating for four years.”

“I know. I haven’t gotten used to it.”

His eyes widened curiously, falling quiet. Good, she thought.

“When I think about you, I, um—I start sweating,” she said. She squeezed his hands, reminding herself that everything was still perfectly real. “I still feel—I don’t know—new to this. I can’t get used to it. I think I fall in love with you all over again every day.”

He gaped at her. Pin wished desperately for a more encouraging reaction.

“Is that weird?” She jerked one arm away, wiping her oozing palm on her thigh. “Forget I said anything.”

His free hand shot out and grabbed her wrist at lightning speed. “Uh. I don’t think I’ll be able to forget.”

“Oh.”

“In a good way,” he said immediately. “Pin—” his voice cracked. “Really?”

“Yes. Really,” she said. “You always say nice things about me, and I don’t say them about you as much. I love you, but I also… like you. I hope I never stop liking you. You’re my best friend.”

“Pin,” he said again, his voice wavering badly. “How—why—geez, I’m sorry, I’m not prepared for this.”

His eyes were damp, and one of his hands snuck up to rub at his face. She squeezed his bicep.

“It’s OK,” she continued, giggling. “I wanted to catch you off guard. It’s cute.”

Coiny flapped his hand frantically. “Pin! Mint! You’re torturing me!”

“Why?” she asked. She stroked down his arm, tugging him so they were sitting face-to-face. He was hot in the face and sweaty to the touch.

He groaned, not meeting her eyes. “‘Cause you’re—you’re being really nice.”

“I can be nice.” She blinked innocently. “Do you want me to continue?”

“Continue,” he repeated dumbly.

“Yes.”

He cleared his throat. “I—I guess I want you to.”

Pin’s lips curled up. There were few occasions where she was on the delivering end of blunt affection, especially with how mushy Coiny liked to get. It was a nice change.

“Hmm,” she hummed. “OK. I love you. You know that. You’re so funny. I like it when you make a joke and everyone laughs.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re mine. And—I want other objects to like you, too.” When his eyebrows raised, she leaned forward. “But not too much,” she added.

“Do you laugh the hardest to make sure no one else does?” he teased, face red anyway.

“No. Sometimes. But usually I laugh most because I like you the most.”

Pin punctuated her words with a kiss on Coiny’s cheek, which elicited a strange wheezing noise from him. She pulled back. It sounded like he was asthmatic.

He coughed hard, which at least meant he could still breathe. “Pin.”

“Also, you’re handsome,” she continued, relishing the torment. “And cute, and sometimes hot”—even Pin could feel her own face lighting up at the words—”and, oh, I like your voice.”

Coiny’s mouth fell open and he shifted closer, probably without meaning to. “You like my voice.”

“I like it when you tell me things.”

“When I,” he swallowed, “tell you things?”

“Yes,” she said. “Like when you said you didn’t want to kiss anyone except for me, or whenever you miss me—”

“Pin—”

“—I just like it. And, well, you know that I like coins, so there’s that, but you also have very… kiss-able lips.”

“Then kiss me,” he said.

“What?”

“Kiss me,” he insisted. “Seriously, Pin, if you don’t kiss me right now I—”

“OK,” said Pin, and she wrapped a hand around his body and kissed him bruising-hard.

The second their lips met, Coiny fell back onto the grass, yanking her down with him. When she landed on top of him, he made a satisfied noise and put one hand on her cheek and another around her waist, snaking down to her flared edge. His warm tongue reached out and brushed hers at the same time his fingers pressed against the bottom of it, and maybe it was the quiet environment or the sudden stimulation but—Pin moaned sharply, pulling at him. Coiny resisted like he was playing tug-of-war.

“I want this,” he said, face hot from the sun, “now—forever, I—four years isn’t long enough—”

She sucked at his mouth. “Our first kiss was fourteen years ago.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Every time we kiss, it feels like my first kiss.”

“Is that a compliment?” Pin snorted. “Our first kiss sucked.”

“Not to me,” Coiny said.

“Why not?”

“‘Cause,” he began, “it was magical, Pin. It gave me the biggest crush on you, it was kinda embarrassing.”

She pulled back. “It did?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“No.” Her eyes widened. “What? I was so weird back then—”

“Yeah, you’ve always been weird,” he said, continuing before she could protest, “but I love it. I didn’t have a crush on you at first, but every time we kissed, I just kept wanting to do it more and more. Then one day I realized, oh, wow, I want to kiss her all the time ‘cause I’m in love with her.”

“I was that good of a kisser?”

“No, you sucked back then. But it was you, and that’s what mattered.”

“This is what I meant,” she started, “about how I fall in love with you again every day. How did I get so lucky—”

“More like how did I—”

Pin put a finger against his mouth, smiling wide. “How did either of us?”

He grinned and brought their faces together again, hands curling around her body and turning her so they laid side-by-side. Throughout BFDIA, Pin missed so badly being able to touch him when they kissed, and by the time she got her limbs back it was too late. Now, she reciprocated in all the ways she hadn’t been able to before, stroking over his biceps and forearms and knuckles, pulling him flush against every part of her, wishing for a split second that they could stay like that forever in a warm cocoon of their own making.

The sun was setting, but it was stiflingly humid. Pin could feel ooze forming on her body, behind her knees, in the crook of her elbows. She knew there would be smudges on Coiny’s metal exterior from where her sticky palms had groped him.

“Geez,” Coiny groaned, practically eating her mouth. “So good. You’re so good.”

She panted, dizzy at the praise. “I am?”

“Yes,” he said. His kisses began traveling lower than her mouth, down her chin and over her abdomen, to the base of her body—

“Wait,” Pin gasped, a ripple of heat running down her back. “Right here? In the open?”

“Abandoned city,” he reminded her.

His fingers tickled the underside of her base and she made another noise, more like a whine. “Nh—wait,” she repeated. “The grass is too prickly.”

That almost didn’t stop him, fingers creeping closer, until Pin reached out and flicked him in the forehead. He yelped.

“Pin!”

“Only kissing,” she said sternly.

So he did just that, pressing their lips together again hotly. “What if I find us a room?”

“I thought we—we were watching the sunset—” she started to say until he smothered her voice with his mouth.

“We can watch as many sunsets as we want,” Coiny said. His legs tangled with hers.

“Oh,” Pin said. “You’re right.”

The sun had pulled beneath the skyscrapers, marking the beginning of twilight. She could see, further down, the lighting of the street lamps (how the city still had power was a mystery to both of them).

He moved back, extricating himself from her grip. “I know I’m right.”

Then Coiny hoisted her up, and she almost toppled over. Her body clacked against his.

“Oops,” she said.

He snorted. “I’m getting deja vu.”

Pin elbowed him. “Yeah, from back when you dropped me?”

She began stepping away from him, wary of her unsteady legs. He stumbled after her.

“It was an accident!” he exclaimed. “And I apologized a thousand times!”

She huffed, her mouth shaping into a small half-moon anyway. As she crept through the hedge, she was half-tempted to look back to make sure Coiny was still following her, but his footsteps were loud enough that she didn’t need to. In the barren city, there was no one else it could be.

They popped back out onto a street shrouded in darkness. Coiny’s fingers encircled Pin’s wrist when he finally caught up.

“Wait,” he started, breath heavy, “we might be looking for a while.”

“What?” She turned to face him. “You don’t have any ideas?”

“I remember where our old apartment complex is, yeah. We already went past it, but it kinda looked… half-burnt down,” he said, grimacing.

“Great.”

During their time in Yoyle City, most of the objects lived in the same complex, though not really by choice. It was simply the least decrepit. Apparently now was when their luck ran out.

Coiny tugged her closer. The streetlamp above them winked playfully. He set his mouth against her cheek. “I really don’t wanna be looking for a place all night.”

Pin exhaled and said, “I know.”

He looked up, locked eyes with her.

“You are the only one I would—do it for,” she said, voice soft.

“Do what for?”

“Sleep in a dirty apartment building.”

His eyes glinted in the artificial light.

“Then I guess I’m pretty lucky, huh?”

“Only for tonight, by the way,” Pin added, but his hands were already snaking up her arms, bringing her into another kiss.

“Don’t worry,” Coiny said. “We have the whole trip to find a nice place.”

“But hopefully we find it early,” she said. “And if we see bugs, we’re leaving.”

That was mostly because she didn’t want to go through the arduous task of recovering him if he died, but also because—she was terrified of them.

He chuckled. “Okay. I’ll find you the best room this city has to offer. Or I’ll clean it myself. It’ll be better than the hotel on Dream Island.”

Pin snorted. “That’s a high bar.”

“You think I won’t do it?”

“No,” she said. “I think you will. That’s the scariest part.”

But that wasn’t completely true. She wondered how it would be for the next few months—spending as much time as they could together, going out and exploring but always coming back to one another. Pin wished they could find a place with a garden. She wanted to pick strawberries with him and eat them from his mouth. Her heart thumped frantically in her chest.

“Coiny,” she said.

“Hm?”

“I might not want to leave.”

His breath caught. His hands slid up her body.

“Then,” he said, “we won’t.”

Pin could hear the relief in her own voice. “Really?”

“Sure, Pin,” said Coiny. “If it’s what you want.”

“What about what you want?” she asked.

“I want whatever you want.”

“No,” she said. “Honest answer.”

“That is honest—”

“Please,” she begged.

“Okay. Fine,” he said. “C’mere.”

Coiny pulled her in again, close enough that Pin’s eyes fell shut, anticipating another kiss, but it never came. Her brows knitted. She cracked her eyes open confusedly. He was just beaming at her, every one of his teeth visible.

“That’s your answer?” Pin asked.

“Yeah.”

She pulled a face. “You’re just smiling at me.”

“Yeah,” he said again. “You make me happy. It doesn’t matter if we live in an abandoned apartment or a—a penthouse. As long as you’re there, I’m happy.”

She kneed him gently. “You’re a liar. You would totally want the penthouse more.”

“Okay, fine. But I’d rather have no penthouse and Pin than a penthouse and no Pin.”

Pin started laughing, partly in disbelief, mostly in delight. She remembered a time when she thought the Dream Island she wanted was a square mile of paradise (with a five-star hotel and robot servants). Now, she knew what it really was: a small copper coin that, for some strange reason, really loved her, too.

“Oh, is that funny?” Coiny said.

“Yes,” she snickered. “You are funny.”

He huffed, grinning anyway. “I feel like you’re making fun of me.”

“But you’re still smiling,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,” he said, leaning in, “because I’m happy.”

She fell against him, lips bumping his, and this time they just stayed like that, laughing and smiling into each other’s mouths. Coiny cupped her cheeks in the exact same way he had fourteen years ago, back under that warm winter sky. It wasn’t quite a kiss, Pin thought, but it sure felt a whole lot like love.