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You didn't think he'd agree so easily.
What with Caine always busy in one way or another preparing for the next adventure, you expected all but to be grabbed by the hand and teleported off precisely to the place you recall telling him you enjoyed going to during summertime in the real world.
You're dropped off at a beach resort—in this specific scenario, at a digital ocean that feels… stiff.
The palm trees are static and have a noticeable plastic sheen to their leaves, for one; the bright yellow sand’s physics aren't too responsive when the soles of your feet come into contact with it; and while the air smells strongly of saline, it's not exactly prominent in the long run—like those cheap perfumes that lose their fragrance within an hour of applying.
Caine’s shirtless, revealing a wide chest with the grey-and-white missing texture pattern over his skin. He's wearing some swim trunks of the colour you remember telling him how it suited him sometime ago, and flip-flops barely hang on to his feet as he floats next to you. Similar to the date, you didn't really think much of it—you only told him ‘yellow looks good on you’, and next thing you know, he was sporting yellow tailcoats for the next ten adventures, until others started getting suspicious of the sudden change.
After that day, you were exceptionally careful with your compliments to him, just so everyone else didn't think there was some case of favouritism going on, but…
You still found a way to give him the praise you thought he deserved, through sticky notes and whispered words whenever you believed nobody else was watching.
“You look wonderful, sprinkle dumpling,” Caine compliments, even though he picked your swimsuit himself. “Care for a dip?” He floats down to your eye level and offers his hand out to you. “I’ve heard the water’s best warm!”
“Thank you.” You chuckle. “I’d love to.”
Now, you know better than to dive headfirst into an ocean created by an AI that gets things mistaken more often than not, but…
You still take Caine's hand —without his usual glove slipped on, showing more of the missing texture pattern on his palm— and follow him to the water, stopping once it's time to dip your foot in.
“Let's see…”
The water is…
Plip.
…nice and toasty!
It feels strange to be dipping a bare foot into the water when all you've known is the clothes you were permanently designated with (excluding the occasional wardrobe change depending on the adventure) since ending up in the circus, but…
It's refreshing, too—like taking a large breath of clean air after being stuck somewhere stuffy for too long.
The swimsuit, while not revealing, shows a fair amount of skin.
You let out a breath and let yourself go for a moment, appreciating how the rest of your body feels twice as good getting soaked.
“Did I… do that right?” Caine asks, and you realize you haven't said much in a hot minute, so you look to where his voice sounds, seeing him floating right above you. “Is the water… an appropriate temperature?”
“Caine…”
Perhaps, it might've been a joke, but you didn't ask him out on a date for this.
Logically, since you were the one who asked him out, you're the one meant to plan out what to do!
“Come here, please.”
You offer your hand out to Caine, grinning when his big beady eyes stare at your palm as if you've suggested skinny-dipping instead.
“M— Me?”
You nod, urging your hand closer to him.
“You.”
Caine takes your hand, allowing you to tug him down with you until his feet dip into the water.
“Hold on to my shoulders.”
The day you first arrived in the circus, you were surprised by the fact that a ringmaster with as much power as he seemed to have had chosen to remain smaller than the rest of those around.
You aren't much taller than Ragatha, though you make it up in width.
Where Caine is small, you are big, often making his hand disappear in yours, and the hand you sometimes place on his waist to go all the way around him.
So, offering him to hold on to your shoulders feels like the better choice for this occasion, just so it doesn't feel like you're manhandling your ringmaster after taking the equally huge risk of asking him out.
“...Caine?”
When he stays holding your shoulders even as you've dipped him into the water all the way up to his chest, you narrow your gaze at him, seeing his eyes zoned out and his dentures agape.
“Good… golly!”
Caine removes his hands from your shoulders and sets them on your chest, distancing you from himself.
“I— I shouldn't be this close to—”
“Caine.”
You cut off whatever ramble he's about to go off with, taking his mandible in your hand and making him face you.
“It’s okay.”
Dial up noises and the sound of fans turning on follow as he zones out again.
“You…” he pants out, floating away from you. “...are dangerous to be alone with!”
You walk back to the shore, winking at Caine (...even if it's not very effective, given your form here has a literal lazy eye that won't wake up no matter what you try to do) when you catch his eyes drifting towards you—also literally, with how they nearly leave his dentures upon staring too intensely.
“Bummer,” you reply, sighing. “And here I was, thinking we could have a picnic together, and—”
Following him zooming down to grab your hand, Caine teleports you somewhere else.
Before you can open your eye, you can somewhat discern where you are.
The smell of freshly cut grass…
The sound of (in this case, manufactured solely for this specific scenario) children playing in the distance…
The feeling of artificial sunlight hitting your skin, along with the feeling of your feet —no longer bare and clad in some flip-flops— stepping on grass…
“The park,” you exclaim.
Caine shouts a ‘bingo’, and you open your eye to see a sunlit grassy path with a red-and-white checkered blanket spread on the floor and a wicker basket set in the middle.
You're no longer in a swimsuit, now wearing a plain white shirt and some blue overalls, whereas he's changed into a yellow button-up shirt and khaki shorts.
“This… isn't fair,” you tell Caine, after you've sat down on the blanket and he's floated over it, but sitting criss-cross and with his cane swapped for a parasol he opens up and sticks into the ground, allowing some shade over the two of you.
“What's not fair?!” he asks, whipping his gaze back to you.
“I asked you out ‘cuz I wanted to make you happy.”
His upper jaw furrows in the middle like a pair of eyebrows, and his eyes tremble like he's thinking hard to make sense of your words.
“But…” Caine huffs, crossing his arms. “You are making me happy already!”
“I mean it… in a different sense?” you reply, smiling at him. “As in, I want to do stuff that makes you happy. Things you enjoy doing. Show me your favourite thing to do, and take me to your favourite place to go to, or… tell me what your favourite colour or animal is.”
Caine sets a hand under his mandible, treating it like a chin as he rubs it and ‘hmms’ as he considers what you've just said.
“I think I'd enjoy kissing you,” he begins, meeting your gaze with his own, now stabler—akin to Kinger’s when in the darkness. “My favourite thing to do is…” He gestures all around himself, then points an index finger at you. “...getting to spend time with you like this!” He pauses, upper jaw furrowing once more as he floats himself closer to you. “My favourite place is… anywhere you're at! My favourite colour is yellow, and my favourite animal would have to be the bumblebee!”
“Huh,” you mumble, grinning—and daring not to bring up the coincidence about the colour yellow. “Have you considered dressing up in a suit that's… black-and-yellow like a bumblebee?”
Zap.
Hoo boy!
As usual, there's the risk of Caine taking what you say on a scale much different from yours.
Caine freezes on the spot, eyes turning blue with the familiar error screen message as he glitches halfway into saying something in response to your suggestion.
And then, when it seems he's calmed down somewhat…
“Holy smokes, sugar booger,” Caine exclaims. “That's an incredible suggestion!” He's on cloud nine—literally, too, since he floats so high, he doesn't stop until he hits a ninth cloud on his way up. “I love you so much, I could…”
Again, Caine freezes, but not with an error screen message this time.
Rather, he stands in the A-pose midair, eyes floating out and jaw dropping all the way down to his knees.
“I could…”
His pupils turn smaller and smaller, an eye twitches, and his jaw drops lower the more times he repeats that phrase.
“...I— I could…”
Caine shakes himself as if a dog trying to get dry, snapping himself out of that previous state.
Upon making eye contact and asking if he's okay, Caine looks you up and down before floating to you and grabbing your shoulders.
“My dear…” he mumbles, trailing off.
“Um…” You try to smile at him, but you aren't sure what to expect from the way he's staring at you now: so intensely, you fear more eyes might start popping around him. “Is there…” A loading circle shows up on his upper jaw. “Is there anything I can… help you with, or—”
In the blink of an eye —as soon as the loading circle disappears from Caine's face— you're in a groom's suit, Caine is in a bride's dress, and you've been teleported to a chapel.
You're standing before a pulpit, with Caine floating across from you, holding your hands tightly.
“I love you so much, I could marry you!”
Before you can get a hang on what's going on and where you're headed to with this new scenario, the pastor (a brown mannequin with a drawn-in, fancy-looking red tie) standing between the two of you has already finished reading the introduction to the vows.
“Do you, Caine,” the man begins, looking at the one in question. “...take—”
“Yes,” Caine shouts, squeezing your hands hard enough that you imagine it would hurt, weren't your body following the rules of cartoon logic. “Yes! Yesyesyesyesyes—”
While Caine bugs out, the pastor carries on with your part of the vows.
“Do you,” he continues, mentioning your name afterwards. “...take Caine as your beloved husband?”
“Uh…”
Your hands tighten around Caine's, snapping him out of his glitching similar to smacking a piece of old technology when it's stopped working.
“Not…” You feel your chest stiffen, mind already imagining the entire chapel glitching following your rejection. “Not yet.”
Thankfully, just as you trust how far your relationship has gone with Caine, you trust that stuff won't happen any longer.
“N— Not…” Caine mutters, letting go of your hands. “Not yet?”
Through the frequent use of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, complimenting him whenever it feels right to, and calling him out whenever he's unintentionally bothering or hurting another circus member, he's slowly begun to understand humans more.
It's been no easy task, and it's still a heavy work in progress, but…
“Not yet,” you repeat, nodding.
Just as you began offering him sugarcoated suggestions on how to make his adventures more palatable to different tastes, you want to start off slow—ideally, without jumping straight into marriage with an AI you've only gone on a date with once.
“But…”
Regardless, you can't deny what you feel, and that's how Caine makes you happy, too.
“Caine…”
Taking his hands in yours, you lean in, pressing a kiss to the middle teeth of his mandible.
“I love you, too.”
When you pull away, Caine's eyes are bigger than normal—wet, and shiny below the light of the stained-glass windows bringing illumination into the chapel.
You stretch your arms out, and he zooms into you for a hug, smaller arms wrapping around your waist as his body trembles like gelatin.
“S— Say it again,” he mutters, resting his mandible on your shoulder, close enough for an eye to brush against your neck. “...Please.”
“I love you, too.”