Armando and Marlena enjoy their first date after the events of Sweetheart's Day. Prompt: Sweetheart's Day.
It started as many things in Avalor do, with a wayward spell. Armando couldn't say that "wayward" meant "gone wrong", though—an afternoon of embarrassment as his accidental singing curse swept across the Kingdom was well worth an evening with a bowl of sweetheart's stew on the table, an orchid twirling between his fingers, and the bright laughter of the most amazing woman in Avalor across from him.
"So Doña Paloma was swinging on the piñata?" Marlena managed between laughs, her eyes all crinkled up from her smile. "Even as she was singing?"
Armando's own chuckle bubbled up, feeling a bit dizzy just at the memory of the frenzied musical number. "Yeah, and that was still before she got the fruit hat out!"
Marlena snorted again, looking back down to eat another spoonful of stew, and Armando swore he could see glittering dancers twirling in her eyes as she tried to picture it.
She swallowed and grinned, looking almost mischievous. "Although with how she was at Carnaval, I'm wondering if that's just a normal day for her, cursed or not." She looked embarrassed for a moment, her smile turning sheepish and her fingers twisting around a lock of her auburn hair. "Is that too mean of me?"
"No, not at all!" Armando quickly reassured. Doña Paloma was a bit of a character, to say the least, and Marlena had borne the brunt of her self-centered antics and gaudy costumery at the Carnaval parade. "She really is just like that sometimes—I was able to see a little bit of how she was dancing once I'd finished leading the parade. But I'll admit," he went on, suddenly feeling far more forward, "I was mostly just watching you that day."
A blush darkened Marlena's cheeks as she tucked the loose hair she'd been toying with back behind her ear.
He'd done a lot of watching her, actually, ever since he'd first seen her perform. It was the day Shuriki had been ousted from the palace, and the whole of the Kingdom was celebrating. Dancing, singing, laughing—the people were making forty one years worth of forbidden noise, and Marlena was among them, her guitar playing a bit rusty from years of only practicing in secret, but her voice carried bright and clear across the crowds as she sang for the joy they were all feeling. The moment she'd opened her mouth, Armando had thought she sounded like an angel, so much so that he'd frozen up in terror like he really was encoutering something divine when she'd politely tried to introduce herself later that day. He'd barely been able to squeak out his own name before making a hasty retreat toward the palace with an excuse he could no longer remember.
He'd admired her distantly for years after, and the more he saw of her, the more wonderful she seemed. She was kind to strangers, patient with children, and she always seemed to know how to cheer someone up. Her musical technique was matched only by the creativity of her songs, and she carried herself with grace whatever she did, be it playing her guitar, dancing, or just walking across the town square.
And the more he saw of her, the more Armando became certain that she was far out of his league.
So it was far beyond his wildest dreams when he found himself walking hand-in-hand with her toward the city, when she cooed over the craftsmanship of his puppets and praised the expressiveness of his shows, when she tenderly brushed her fingers against his cheek for the second time that day as they took their seats at the restaurant.
The thought of the restaurant pulled him halfway back to reality, and he suddenly realized that he'd been staring at her in silence for far too long. She fiddled with the napkin in her lap, looking self-conscious.
"Is there something on my face?" she asked, a nervous flutter peeking through her otherwise playful tone.
Imagine—Marlena, nervous to be talking to him, of all people. The thought seemed so absurd and unreal that Armando felt lost in a dreamlike haze, barely even aware of what he was saying as he replied.
"Just your beautiful smile," was what came out on a wistful sigh, and before he could properly realize how corny that was, Marlena had burst into a delighted laugh, her blush deepening.
"Oh, Armando," she said, and reached out to rest a hand over his on the table.
They sat quietly for a moment, just basking in each others' presence, before Marlena spoke up again.
"So… that song you sang for me—you wrote it yourself?"
"Oh!" Armando straightened up in his seat. "Yes! Did you—did you like it?"
She beamed. "I loved it! It was so personal and sweet—I wanted to play it back to you for a reason." She sighed, turning her smile toward where the Armando and Marlena puppets had been propped up at the edge of the table, watching over their human counterparts' dinner. "I've always known you were creative with all the work you put into your puppet shows, but I didn't know you wrote music, too."
"I actually used to write songs to go along with my shows," Armando admitted, "but my singing voice is, well…" He squirmed in his seat as the glow of Marlena's praise dimmed under his insecurity. "I figured it would be better for me to just stick to spoken narration."
"I'd still like to hear them sometime," Marlena said. "If you're alright with that. Or if you're not comfortable," she quickly added, no doubt catching his grimace, "maybe I could try singing them?"
The image flitted through Armando's mind of him and Marlena, curled up together on a loveseat and poring over sheet music and puppet designs, chatting about anything and everything as they worked, of him and Marlena, rehearsing together with her lovely voice floating overhead as he stitched pieces of soft felt, of him and Marlena, holding hands as they took a bow at the end of the show they'd created as a couple. But perhaps he was getting a bit ahead of himself.
"I would love to hear you sing them," he answered, and then tentatively added, "And… maybe we could even write a new song together?"
She was holding both his hands now, her smile still as dazzling as before, and she answered with an echo of Armando's own words from that afternoon. "Nothing would make me happier."
Shipping for me is very much about the sandbox aspect of it - exploring different characters and their different dynamics, seeing what happens when you toss different people into the same locked room, etc. - so even though super romantic stuff is normally outside my comfort zone for writing, I really like doing these ship week events since it gives me an easy opportunity to practice writing characters I don't normally write in situations I wouldn't normally come up with.
I kinda took that to its logical extreme this year - whereas last year I was focused on rearranging the amigos half a dozen times over, this time around I've decided that to both ensure I'm trying out new stuff from last year but still have a cohesive theme (and to also try to sell people on more ships! There are so many good options out there!), I'm going to exclusively do rarepairs, my criteria for which is that the ship has to have one or fewer fics tagged with it in AO3.
So naturally I started with a pairing that's actually canon lol. It's one of those ships that I was just kinda like "oh okay" when I first saw it in the episode, but now I think there's a lot of cute, unexplored space with them both being creative types and I can really see how that relationship could develop in the long term. I like to think they designed the puppet show from the beginning of Coronation Day together.