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The wind whipped around Wilson’s face as he crouched to pick the flower. He sniffed, crinkling his nose. Damn nature. Damn coldness. Damn that Maxwell fellow. Just damn the world in general. He was far too intelligent to be crawling around in the dirt, picking flowers to feel better about himself.
He sat down in the centre of the circle of trees he had planted around the fire pit. Despite providing no actual safety, somehow they made him feel better… Which was preposterous, because nature was disgusting. And vile. And he was trapped in it.
Narrowing his eyes, he concentrated on threading the stems of the hideous flowers together. His tongue snaked out to the side of his mouth without him really noticing, his fingers cleverly- and dare he say it, expertly- weaving them together.
He’d been making these crowns for himself for too long now- it was a ridiculous practice, one that he felt carried absolutely no scientific value whatsoever, but…
Well, he’d crafted one for himself before, and it had made him feel a little better. Even now, the slightly drooping petals of the flowers that perched atop the aggressively angled styling of his hair provided some herbal relief, or something. He didn’t know how they worked; he’d never really gone in for that aromatherapy nonsense. It didn’t really make sense to go in for it now, given that he had tentacles and enormous dogs and monsters made from shadows coming after him.
Something that did not require any scientific proof, however, was the fact that these crowns made his companion happier. So did fire, but crowns were a lot safer he felt. Less inclined to burn him, or spread in an all-consuming inferno of terror that he would find himself running rapidly away from as she stood in the centre of it all, smiling manically.
Her smile was rare, he had observed. Being one of the best scientists he knew- scratch that, he was the best scientist that he knew. Did he count as the only scientist he knew? He wasn’t sure. Regardless, he had observed, like any good scientist should, and he had observed that Willow’s smile was enigmatically rare.
He blinked, aware that he’d finished the crown a while ago and had become side-tracked by both thoughts of himself being the best scientist ever and her smile when she was genuinely pleased. Both thoughts had a tendency to take him away from this tree covered hell hole and into some location where he was nowhere near as miserable as he was here. In fact, rather the opposite.
It had been so far away, Wilson hadn’t even noticed he’d been smiling.
“Why are you sat on the ground smiling? I thought you hated being near the dirt.”
Wilson blinked rapidly, scrambling to hide the newly assembled flower crown behind his back as he stood up, wiping himself down with one hand.
“Oh, yes, right. Dirt. Disgusting stuff. Blugh. It’s all… Uh. Dirty. Nothing in comparison to… uh… Science. Yes.”
Willow stared at him, as he plastered an awkwardly uncomfortable expression on his face, holding both hands behind his back in an effort to hide the crown. She narrowed her eyes, leaning to one side to try and look behind him.
“What are you holding?” she asked suspiciously. He shuffled away slightly.
“It’s a, uh…” he trailed off, casting around their depressingly bare base for any kind of explanation as to what he could be holding. Of course nature would fail him- it always did. It was nature. He gave a sigh, before holding it out to her, palms up.
“It’s for you. To make you feel better, as you need a new one since your old one drooped.” He admitted, attempting to, and failing, to keep eye contact with her. He’d always been terrible with eye contact. She was no exception.
The long silent pause filled with the occasional bird song made him more stressed than he cared to realise. Of course, he realised anyway; biological changes were always worth noting by any scientist who knew what he was doing.
Wet palms, butterflies in the stomach; all things that he couldn’t ignore.
After what seemed like an eternity, her thin lips broke into a wide smile, and the twisting feeling in Wilson’s stomach dissipated.
She took the crown from him, turning it over in her hands as she examined it.
“Thank you.” She replied eventually. “You put the strange little orchid type ones in- did you know they were my favourite?”
“What? No- I mean, of course…? Yes. Of course.” Wilson blurted, before frowning. Had she told him that? He couldn’t remember, something which infuriated him for reasons he couldn’t exactly place. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly as he watched her put it delicately atop her head. The garland stood stark amongst her black hair, and he felt his face slip into a small smile.
“You’re smiling again. It’s weird.” She interrupted him as his thoughts threatened to slip him into that happy little plane of existence again. He blinked, forcing his expression to drop into its usual ill-tempered frown.
She was looking at him intently, and he almost wriggled uncomfortably at the sustained eye contact. Instead, he reached up to the garland atop her head and straightened it gently, his hand lingering a little longer than he would have liked it to.
Suddenly conscious of how this might be interpreted, he snatched his hand away, stepping backwards away from her, only just realising how close they actually were.
His foot was suddenly not where it was supposed to be, and, much to Wilson’s horror, the world was suddenly catapulting away from what might be considered normality- or as normal as being stuck on an apparently magical island was- and he was falling.
He landed with a heavy ‘thump’, wincing at the indignity of falling on his rear end in front of someone. The fact that it was Willow put him into a strange kind of anxiety that he’d not before documented, and he cast around for what might have caused this.
His gaze fell on a tree root he could have sworn wasn’t there before. He opened his mouth to begin a tirade of hate towards that particular root, the entire island, that damnable Maxwell, NATURE-
Wilson stopped short as Willow covered the distance between them, bent down, and kissed him lightly upon the cheek, before turning on her heel and departing back towards whatever she had been doing before.
He blinked in a sort of mute astonishment, rubbing at his cheek with one hand, not even caring- or noticing- that it was currently covered in dirt.
Of course, when he would later come to the conclusion that he’d smeared disgusting, nasty dirt all over his face, he would whine about how horrendous everything upon this island was- and then he would remember what had directly preceded the dirt wiping…
Perhaps then, he would be willing to admit that maybe not quite everything on this island was as horrible as he thought it was.