Author's Note: There was one line in that AMAZING 6x03 episode where Zari's assistant Les-Lay was like "you think you can say something to make Zari cry?" And for whatever reason that just felt like a poker stabbed into my chest. So to un-stab myself, I had to write this little bit.

"If you were just going to be on your phone the whole time, I woulda gone out to dinner with Gary instead," John sniped as he glared across the table at Zari.

She waved him off absently, fingers tapping the small screen in her hands. There was a plate of very expensive, very beautifully arranged stuffed rigatoni in front of her, still steaming, but she hadn't touched it.

"Love," John tried again, attempting to waggle his head into her line of vision. "Zari."

She finally looked up. "What?"

"What are you doing?" he asked. "If you're not going to put away that bloody device, you could at least tell me what you're working on."

"I'm not working on anything," Zari snapped, tossing the phone onto the table with a surprising amount of disregard. She was usually very careful with her devices, though she had more than enough money to replace them at a whim. "I was… it doesn't matter."

Now legitimately annoyed, John crossed his arms over his chest, his own meal of lobster bisque forgotten. "Funny how something that 'doesn't matter' gets to receive your full and undivided attention while your boyfriend can't. And people say I need to get my priorities checked."

Zari glared at him angrily, but a second later the fire faded and her eyes welled instead. John stiffened, feeling like one of the lobster claws floating in his bowl had leapt out and cut into his chest.

You think you can say something to make Zari cry?

"Zari," John said quietly, reaching across the table and covering one of her hands with his own. "What is it, love?"

Zari huffed, eyes flicking to the ceiling as she fought through her emotional wave. "It's really stupid."

"Enough," John groaned. "Who bloody cares if it's stupid? You know how much stupid I've unloaded on people in my lifetime?"

"Sometimes I think that you try to make yourself sound ancient," Zari sniffed, dabbing underneath her eyes with a napkin. "But fine. Sometimes there are people that don't like what you do. When you're an influencer, and 'what you do' is basically just your personality, well… it means sometimes there are people who just don't like you. And they don't hesitate to make that opinion very… vocal."

John let out a soft groan. "So you're ruining the makeup you nearly made us late for because of an internet troll? Love, they're not worth your time. I'm not even on the internet and I know that."

Zari's lips twitched for a second, but the smile soon vanished. "Not a troll," she corrected. "A critic. There was a review of my product drop video that…" She shook her head. "What they said wasn't important. I just- I just happened to catch sight of it before we walked in and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. I told you it's stupid."

"And I told you that I don't care about that," John reminded her. "If you wanna talk about it an' get it off your chest, I'm here. Literally. Right here. I don't know what else we're gonna talk about tonight so it might as well be that."

Zari smirked. "Oh, I have plenty of things we could talk about," she said, taking a delicate forkful of her meal and placing it in her mouth like a fairy princess who ate glitter and lived in an acorn cap and…

John was spiraling.

"Like what?" he asked a little suspiciously, taking a large slurp of his soup as a direct counter to her ladylikeness.

Zari leaned across the table. "Like what I do to treat myself after a bad review brings me down."

John leaned forward, too, a breath away from kissing her. "Mmm?"

Zari grinned widely and bumped his nose. "Face masks!"