Its a Crush, I Win (TMOTH)
Caine for the past year had been able to keep up with his projects, but with some convincing from Kinger, he didn't do as much in the Abstraction Restoration Project anymore. It didn't mean that Ragatha and himself didn't see each other. They always had breaks around the same time, and had an hour for the meal breaks. Ragatha and himself had so many conversations, things as silly as what colors parents should be ashamed of putting on their kid's walls. It was beige.
More serious conversations came around a few times, but hadn't gone too deep yet. They talked more about their pasts, and talked about how it was effecting their lives at the moment. He really did trust her almost fully now. Caine was still amazed how fast she had accepted his apologies, and was actually willing to work with him. Even though Caine was well aware of her flaws, that part about her felt perfect. The kindness, the willingness to forgive, it made him love her so-.
Where did that come from?! Maybe he was just feeling extra odd today, yeah, that was it! He was basically platonic soul mates with Ghost, and he never felt anything like this with her. Ghost and himself treated each other like siblings that still annoyed each other, but also deeply cared about the other one. Caine thought really hard about all the other people he had been close to at one point or another. This had never happened before. Did his code get messed with? Did a rogue virus get into the circus somehow despite the fact there was no internet?
Caine felt a panic coming on, and knew he needed to calm down. Kinger could just check and make sure everything looked okay. It would probably take 15 minutes, a half hour at the very most. He would do his meal break with Ragatha like usual, and then go get things checked out by Kinger. It was a perfect solution because he knew not coming to the normal table they sat at today would worry her a little bit. So he sat down across from her like he always did.
"Hey Caine, I know you said you were working on updating the back ups today, is that going well?" Ragatha asked because she knew he had told her yesterday that was what he was going to work on.
"...Its going fine, luckily nothing odd has showed up so far." It seemed like Caine would be able to hold a conversation for now. He felt he was moving his eyes a bit more than he usually did, but that was okay.
"You always prefer smooth sailing to an exciting day when it comes to back ups as you have told me before."
"Excitement is usually not what you want when it comes to programs and programming." He now needed to fidget his hands under the table. Caine felt more need to release that energy than he had before Caine had needed to a bit with Ragatha in the past, but not like this.
"...Caine, are you... okay? You seem a lot more fidgety today."
Oh no, it was the exact question he didn't want her to ask! "I uhh... am just a little under the weather today." Caine paused for a second. "I am going to have Kinger look at it later, it will be f-fine."
"Well, that's good at least. Since you aren't feeling well, don't push yourself too hard okay?" Ragatha's kind words, while most of the time very comforting, they also felt like a bomb was being thrown at him this time. This was a lot worse than he had thought.
"O-of course, Kinger should be able to fix it in no time." Caine was trying to reassure her about something that he didn't know if he believed or not at this point.
"Are you sure you shouldn't go now?" Ragatha was starting to get rather concerned at this point.
"No." He managed to squeak out. What was that? Why was he doing this? His own mind and emotions were going haywire. Caine at this point was worried about glitching or blue screening. These type of things were what caused things like that. He had to get out of there! "Sorry I had to cut this short, bye!" He got up and raced away at this point. It looked like he didn't even try to take any of his stuff with him.
Ragatha yelled while he was running off. "Caine you forgot... all your stuff. Should I just find a way to give it to you when you come back?" She hadn't gotten a response to the question, but decided that was what she needed to do. Queenie was at another table, and in her mind smirked. She was about to get some money for a bet she had been having with Kinger.
He rushed into Kinger's office without a knock or hello as he came in. "Something is wrong, you need to fix it!"
Kinger looked at him, and was a bit startled. "Caine, what is going on?"
"I don't know! That's the problem! I need you to do a scan, right now!" Caine insisted.
"Alright, I will do the scan, but do one of the grounding exercises you do when your emotions are getting too high for you like they are right now."
"Right." Caine had somehow forgotten about those while he had been with Ragatha too.
Kinger let out a sigh a relief as Caine seemed to calm down. He could be quite the drama king sometimes. "So, now that you are calmed down, we will do that scan. It is more accurate when you are calm anyways." He had a suspicion it would find nothing, but he was going to keep that to himself. Queenie had won though, damn it! He made sure it was the most complete scan he could do to erase all doubts in the results.
Caine felt a lot better now, but why were things different today. Feeling better was usually a Ragatha and Kinger thing, he didn't understand. "I couldn't calm myself down until I got here. Usually I really enjoy my conversations with Ragatha, why did things change?"
Kinger kept quiet until he saw the results that confirmed his suspicions on the scanner. "It looks like you are clean, congratulations."
"Let me see that!" Caine grabbed it from Kinger and read everything line by line. What he saw didn't lie though, there was nothing.
"I am guessing you want an explanation about what is wrong since the scan says you are clean."
"Well, obviously!"
"I see why it would freak you out, you never had those types of emotions before until recently, which is a pretty large period of time. Honestly, I thought for awhile they might be emotions you would never feel. That was fine for me because you have done a lot without needing a romantic partner."
"...What are you talking about?" Caine looked rather confused.
"I felt something similar to you at one point in my life, you know. I wasn't always just myself around your mom. As I got to know her, things kept slowly ramping up. I had never felt that way before. Trust me, there were a lot of opportunities, but they never really came. Things with myself and Queenie had felt... different." Kinger looked at Caine. "You are feeling like I felt."
"...What." Caine looked at Kinger still trying to process it. There was silence for a quite a bit of time, but he was still struggling with it.
"...I have a question. When you are around her, what do you feel like?"
"Like it'd be okay if the meal breaks we use to talk just lasted forever, that just having her across from me would be all I needed. She is so kind and means so much to me, even before this point. Maybe it would at one point even be boring for the two of us, but I'd still enjoy it." Caine said the words rather calmly but was thinking through all of it.
Hearing that made Kinger's heart melt a little bit, but he had to focus. "That's how, at one point, I figured out I had a crush on your mom. Not the exact scenario, but the feeling of a scenario like that. Being satisfied with just her around."
"...So, what do I do?"
"Well, there is a lot of things you could do, but I am not you despite going through something similar. These are going to be your choices to make. I can give you advice, but in the end, every bond with someone is unique, it always is because every person is unique."
"...What's your advice then?"
"I would try to find a way to see if she feels anything similar, that way if it isn't mutual, you at least know pretty quickly. Waiting on that is always a bad idea because you keep feeling more feelings about them, not less."
"But how do I do that?"
"Well, the way that is the hardest and also the one that is the most honest and open is to ask directly."
"...Oh no."
"Obviously, you don't have to do it right this second. You can arrange it somewhat, find a place that you are usually pretty calm in. A setting you are naturally comfortable in when talking about it is what I suggest. Not being somewhere comfortable will make it harder to do. Your emotions will still run wild at points, but you could remind yourself of your grounding in some way. That way, all the stuff you can control you have planned out. It'll be something you can grab on to, metaphorically speaking."
"...But I just have to let go of the things I can't control?"
"Yes because if you don't, that will also make things more difficult. I usually don't suggest this, but you should at some point talk to Queenie about it. It might give you some dos and don'ts to think about."
Caine smirked. "Let me guess, yours did not go as planned, at all."
"...It did not." Kinger looked a tiny bit embarrassed, but spoke again. "But, I must have managed to tell her, considering where her and I are now."
"True, and she could also give me the side of someone who is just finding out about it."
"Exactly, I didn't get to have that when I was doing it, so you should be glad you do, even if it isn't going to be exactly the same."
"That makes me feel better. How do I deal with all of... whatever that was in the meantime?"
"Well, like with the confession itself, find a way to remember to ground yourself. That way even if it starts getting out of hand you refocus and calm down."
Caine hugged Kinger gently for a second. "Thanks dad. I am sorry I just basically busted in."
"...You have done this many times before, and it will not be your last. I am used to it."
Caine returned back, there wasn't much time left in the meal break, but he could at least apologize and grab all his things. He closed his eyes before entering the cafeteria and grounded himself. He walked over, giving a small smile. "Thanks for keeping track of my stuff, sorry about that." He rubbed the back of his neck nervously.
"Its okay Caine, you do seem better now, so whatever Kinger did must have helped."
"Dad's pretty good at that, and you know that."
"Yeah, though mom can sometimes give him some pretty stiff competition."
"If I was the personification of bad feelings, I would be terrified of both of them."
"True." Ragatha looked at the time on her watch. "Well, it looks like the meal break is over, I hope we have a chance to chat more than we did today."
"I will do my best for that to be the case."
She got up and started to head out. "See you tomorrow Caine!'
"See you later too." He was blushing a bit, but was thankful Ragatha couldn't see it.
Queenie couldn't wait to shove this in her husband's face, the bets were always mostly for fun. This was part of why she enjoyed them though.
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