(Originally published on 02/16/2021 at AO3. Original Author's Notes will be mostly preserved and shown below.)

Author's Note: Done for the eighth USOE 24-hour Ficjam Challenge! The given prompt was "tight".

Let me introduce you all to my EC crack ship OTP, lol. Even if it's just Adam/Eve with extra steps. (Yes, this fic assumes that Kyle is an Adam reincarnation/fragment)

In all seriousness, this is a sorta crack AU/premise I have called "Marlonswap", where Kyle and Kaspar switch arcs somehow, by any means I feel like at that moment. So Kyle gets to live in Sloth era, while Kaspar takes his place in the Pride era. I hope I can write more things with this premise in the future, because ngl I just want good things for Kyle and Margy.

Anyway, I wrote this really quickly as I was trying to finish another fic at the same time, but I hope you enjoy it all the same.

She surprises Kyle in the garden behind the Blankenheim mansion.

He was wandering among the flowerbeds, still wondering if this was all a particularly vivid dream he's having, if at any moment he would awake in his room in Marlon to a summons from his mother, or in his cabin with the sea rocking beneath his bunk. But the scent of the Elphegort air mixed with the various flowers felt too real, as did the various colors that met his eye. The way the sun shone through the leaves, leaving speckled patterns on the mansion wall. The way the green blended from pale to dark in a blade of grass he plucked from the ground. The way the grey stone bench was speckled and rough as he sat on it, the cracks running through the surface more random and complex than he could ever paint himself.

She appears as he is entranced with his observations and he nearly falls off in his surprise. His wife (!) asks if he's alright and he manages to keep his composure, laughing and shaking his head, saying that he was only startled. She sits next to him, and he watches the way her hair sways in the wind, and how, in the sunlight, he can't tell whether her hair was green or sky blue or something in between. Already, he's thinking of what it would be like to paint her.

His wife, someone he's only known for only a short while yet feels like he's known for all his life and even longer, hands him a bouquet of flowers. He wonders what the occasion is. She says he seemed so interested in the flowers, so why not?

Words rise to his mouth, words he tamps down on instinct because he's around strangers. But he reconsiders, because Margarita isn't really a stranger, is she? Is she? She waits for his response, curiosity in her sky blue eyes, and deep down something tells him to speak.

He points out the colors of the garden flowers, how some complement each other beautifully but how others clash unpleasantly, and if the roses could be there next to the begonias instead of the asters, perhaps it would make a better landscape, especially with how the oak tree frames the garden perfectly, and with the right light near sunset-

He's spoken so much it feels exhilarating, yet terrifying, and part of him wants to stop out of some irrational fear (of what, he didn't know), but Margarita is listening intently and even responding. She points out that the begonias wouldn't really grow well with the asters, but the yarrows would, and he pictures it in his head and finds that he likes that result a lot better and asks how she knows so much. She laughs as if he's missed something obvious, because he always is missing something obvious, somehow, and says that knowing her way around plants is necessary for someone of her parentage.

He nods, feeling like he's heard something like that before. They talk, and keep talking, until the sun is close to setting and Kyle could see it now, the perfect landscape, and his chest suddenly tightens with the worry of having to sneak his tools and canvas past his mother, and then it hits him that his mother isn't here.

Or anywhere.

Margarita points out the evening star, already shining brightly in the orange sky. She offers to watch him paint if he, in turn, watches the stars with her, and he wonders how in any world could she think this could ever be a negotiation. He says yes to both, no questions asked, and she laughs in delight and hugs him tightly.

At her embrace, he is stunned. Her head is pressed against his neck, and he can feel puffs of her breath against his skin. Slowly, almost clumsily, he returns her hug in kind, resting his chin on her hair and closing his eyes.

If all this was nothing but a vivid dream, Kyle wishes he wouldn't have to wake up.

fin.