Chapter Text
“Oh? You got a new bow for your hair Dylas?” Lest spoke up and asked when he entered the restaurant.
Usually Dylas kept her long flowing purple hair down all the time, but now her hair was kept in a low ponytail as she cleaned up the restaurant by herself.
“Margaret gave it to me, she said that it would look cute on me,” the taller girl answered him as she focused on cleaning the leftover plates the last guests had left there when they had finished their food, “It wasn’t my idea she just kind of shoved it on me all of a sudden and I found it hard to refuse.”
Margaret could be a surprisingly stubborn elf when it came down to it, it was hard to go against her when she was really passionate about something.
“So she gave it to you as gift like she did with Forte?” Lest pointed out with a playful smile.
Maybe Margaret secretly thought girls with ponytails were cute and that’s why she kept giving them to people.
“Kind of, she said she was giving it to me to help me catch the attention of the guy I’ve got a crush on,” Dylas absentmindedly remarked as he cleaned a particular stubborn stain off of one of the plates.
“Oh? Who is he?” He hadn’t been aware that Dylas had a crush on someone, but now that he did he was kind of curious to know what kind of guy was her type.
“You want to know my c-crush?! I’m not telling you that!” She looked up from her work and spat back at him with an embarrassed look on her face.
It seemed this was too sensitive a subject for her to share with others on. He bet the only reason Margaret had even figured out that Dylas had a crush on someone in the first place was because she had seen how Dylas acted around them herself.
“Well, okay then,” Lest conceded his defeat with gentle smile, “but you should know Dylas I think you look pretty cute with your hair up or down and if the guy you like can’t realize that then he isn’t worth the time.”
Dylas was such a beautiful woman no matter what hairstyle she had, so she deserved someone who cherished her for whatever she looked like.
Nearly dropping the plate she was washing at that sudden compliment, a blush rose on the taller woman’s face as she recovered and nervously asked, “You really think so…?”
“I do,” he genuinely answered her, “You’re an amazing person Dylas anyone would be lucky to be with you.”
“Idiot…” Dylas mumbled out under her breath with somehow an even redder face than before.
Lest really could be dense when it came to not noticing what was right in front of him sometimes.
“Still, I’m surprised you let Margaret give you a bow like that considering it had a horse and carrot pattern sewed across it, I was sure you were sensitive to that kind of stuff.”
Dylas had been trapped as a horse guardian for the longest time before he freed her, so whenever someone compared her to a horse she couldn’t help but get a bit peeved by it.
“Well, I’m not a horse so why should I be sensitive to it?” Dylas replied clearly trying her best to show how not bothered she was, but failing miserably in the process.
“Right, of course you’re not,” Lest said trying to hold back his laughter in the process because of how adorable Dylas looked pouting like this.
Even when Dylas was frustrated she looked really cute, whoever ended up with her one day really would be one lucky guy to get to have her all to himself.
“So did you have a reason for coming here? Or are you just going keep standing around and watching me clean this place up?” Dylas asked feeling self-conscious of the other man’s gaze on her.
She swore Lest could look at her with the most innocent and gentle expression in the world and it was enough to make her a blushing mess. He really was her biggest weakness even when he wasn’t doing anything.
“To come by and see you of course!” Lest answered with a happy expression on his face before he added, “Well, and to also come by and see Porcoline and whoever else was in the kitchen too, but it seems like it’s just you running the place today.”
Margaret usually popped in every once in a while to perform her music and being the main chef of the kitchen Porcoline was always in when the kitchen was open, but it seemed that the two of them were out at the moment and there were no customers in here either so it was just Dylas and him in at the moment.
“Sorry to disappoint you then.”
He hadn’t come by to just see her at all! It was mean of him to get her hopes up like that, especially since he had made her heart jumped there. He was totally going to have to owe her back for that.
“Hey, I’m never disappointed when I see you! I always get happy when you’re by! I think to myself, there’s Dylas again I can’t wait to go over to her and speak to her! It just makes my heart start racing whenever I think about being with her!”
“S-shut up!” Now Lest was just making fun of her at this point.
“But I’m serious!” Lest insisted with a serious look on his face. He didn’t know what he could do or say to convince her of that.
“Well, whatever the real reason you’re here for you might as well eat something,” She changed the topic and said as she begun to prepare a meal for the other man, “Since knowing you, you’ve probably been running all day without having eaten a single thing at all yet.”
Lest had confided in her that sometimes he’d go days without realizing he hasn’t eaten anything at all because of how busy he kept himself. It was comments like that, that were going send her to an early grave because of how worried she got about him.
“Then I’ll finish cleaning the plates as you do that then,” “Lest joined her behind the counter and said.
He knew Dylas wasn’t the type to accept a “no” if he said he was fine and didn’t need her to make anything for him, so he figured he might as well help her out with her waitress duties as thanks for what she was doing for him.
“Ah! Be careful Lest! The plate isn’t dry yet, so it’s slippery!” Dylas started to shout when she noticed the plate begin to slip out of Lest’s hands and onto the floor.
Her heart started to drop at the idea of Lest getting hurt on her watch, so she hurriedly grabbed the other man on both sides of his arms and turned him around so that he was facing her as she pulled him closer to her. She didn’t want any of the broken shards of it to bounce back at him and scrape him, so this was the only way she could think of protecting him at the moment.
The two of them had both braced their ears for the loud cracking sound of the plate colliding onto the floor and breaking into a million different pieces, so they weren’t totally caught off guard when it actually finally happened.
“Are you alright Lest?! Did the plate hurt you anywhere?!” Dylas looked down and asked to check if the shorter man was alright.
But Lest could only mumble out an indiscernible response to her. Why? Well, that was because the height distance between the two of them was so big that when Dylas had suddenly pulled Lest close to her he had accidentally landed in a face full of her chest which he couldn’t release himself from no matter how he tried because of Dylas’s still tight grip on him.
“Sorry!” The taller woman panically apologized before she finally released Lest again and allowed him to get another fresh breath of air.
This was humiliating! He knew Margaret had told her to do something to get Lest’s attention if she wanted him to get him to notice her as someone romantically and not just as a friend, but she had never meant to get his attention with her body like this!
“It’s… It’s alright, I’m fine,” Lest responded with a red face of his own, though he wasn’t really sure if his red face was due to the lack of oxygen he had just then for a few seconds there because of how his face had been submerged in her chest or if it was because of the humiliating situation he had found himself in, either way he was fine in regards to the breaking plate incident at least. I mean he did have a soft landing after all.
“Are you okay yourself Dylas? You know with the plate breaking?” Lest nervously asked. He wanted to make sure she herself hadn’t gotten hurt over his stupid mistake either.
“I’m okay too,” she reassured him, “It’ll probably take a minute or two to clean this all up but otherwise that’s it.”
As long as the two of them were both alright she could handle the minor inconvenience of cleaning it all up.
“No, it’s my mistake! I’ll be the one to clean it up and I’ll be sure to tell Porcoline when he comes back that it was my fault that I broke it too,” Lest insisted.
He couldn’t handle the idea of Dylas cleaning up after a mistake he had made nor could he allow her to get in trouble for it either, so that’s why he was going to take full responsibility for what he had done and do everything he could to make it right.
“Porcoline doesn’t care about that kind of stuff all that guy cares about is that the two of us are alright,” Dylas reminded him, “which the two of us are, so a broken plate will be the least of his problems.”
Lest knew as well as she did that Porcoline wasn’t the type of person to make a big deal about this sort of stuff, so he didn’t need to worry about it.
“I know, but I feel like I have to do something to make up for what I did,” Lest answered her. He wouldn’t be satisfied doing nothing after what he had done.
“Well, if you’re looking for atonement, then you can make it up to me by going out with me, with just the two of us tomorrow,” Dylas nervously looked off to the side and suggested as she fiddled with her hair.
“Going out with you where?” Did Dylas have somewhere she needed to go to go?
“Just around town, you know just chatting with each other and keeping each other company and all that,” she said feeling her face grown redder and redder the more she explained it.
“Oh, I get what’s going on…” Lest replied with a knowing look on his face, “You want me to go on a pretend date with you right? To practice for your crush?”
Dylas really was a smart person for thinking up a plan like that.
“No, that’s not it I meant! I want…!” Dylas started to trail off and say before she got lost in her thoughts deciding what the best thing would be to say next, so she didn’t mess this whole thing up.
“I want it to be real…” She nervously whispered out.
“A real pretend date?” Lest confusedly asked. Pretend dates were fake dates by nature, so he wasn’t really sure how real they could make it.
“No! A real date between you and me!” She frustratedly shouted back at him. She didn’t know how much she would have to make that clearer to the other man!
“Oh… Ah…!” Lest and Dylas awkwardly replied in turn after one another when the meaning of the last words she said finally hit the both of them.
You’re such a damn idiot Dylas! It’s clear you made Lest uncomfortable with that last suggestion, since there was no way he would ever be into you like that and-
“Umm… I would like that, is meeting up at 10:00 am in the town square tomorrow okay?” Lest cut off her internal self-berating and answered her.
“You would?!”
Lest just wasn’t okay with the idea, but he liked it too?!
“I do,” Lest assured her, “so is the time and meeting up place okay? Or would you prefer to meet up somewhere else at a different time.”
“No, that should be fine,” She looked down at him and said as she fiddled with her hair once more. She still couldn’t believe that Lest had actually agreed to the whole thing.
Maybe I should wear that new skirt out that Margaret had Dolce make for me when I go out with Lest tomorrow, Dylas thought to herself, she hoped that Lest would find it cute just like Margaret said he would.