veryroundbirdfics | Arknights | Franka and Liskarm's Questionable Guide to Dating

Rating: Mild
Words: 946
Characters: Franka, Liskarm, Jessica
Relationships: Franka/Liskarm, also Jessica has a crush on Frostleaf
Summary: Franka accidentally hits a little too close to home when teasing Jessica; now it's up to her and Liskarm to try and sort out their junior's first girl crush.
Notes: 2021 Pride Month request!

After seeing Jessica heave a long, miserable sigh for the fourteenth time that hour, Franka had meant it as a joke to lighten the mood—perching on the table next to her and asking, "So, who's the crush on?"

She hadn't expected to be right, she was explaining to Liskarm, who was busy swatting her with a file folder and telling her to mind her own business while Jessica hid in her jacket and mumbled something vaguely insensible.

"Honestly," muttered Liskarm, rubbing her temples. "You're lucky I'm not going to get you written up."

"You know they do things differently here at Rhodes Island, Miss Always-To-Regulation, and—besides!" Franka reached over to pat Jessica on the shoulder, reassuringly. "We can help!"

"We—?" sputtered Liskarm, abruptly, at the same time Jessica looked up at said, "You mean it?"

Which is how the whole thing unspooled, although it still took some gentle coaxing to get it out of Jessica. She was a rich girl, after all, and there were a lot of things that good girls with a good upbringing thought were The Rules when they were, in fact, just for suckers who listened to their parents.

"Oh, we're not going to make fun of you. For being into girls," Franka added, hastily, to be actually believable. "I mean, do you know how many girls I've—"

She was immediately prevented from continuing that sentence by Liskarm's hand. "What Franka means," said Liskarm, with a long-suffering glance that Franka didn't feel like she had sufficiently earned today, "is that it's more common and normal than you think. Franka's dating statistics being a prime indicator."

Franka almost rolled her eyes out of her head at Liskarm's omission of herself, but then again, Liskarm was just annoyingly private.

(Then again, would Franka like her so much if it didn't feel like a hard-won treat to get her to open up? Probably not.)

"Besides," Franka said, prying Liskarm's hand off her face, "you've gone all the way across the world with Blacksteel, and you're your own woman. You might as well start trusting your own instincts a little more."

Jessica scrubbed at her eyes, lightly. "I-if you think so," she said.

"Of course," said Liskarm, crisply, and glanced at Franka in a slightly surprised way; Franka, for her own part, gave her a smug look back. Her advice was always good, after all; shame it was so rarely appreciated.

"But you gotta tell us who the girl is," Franka said, leaning against Jessica's shoulder. "Someone you deployed with, or something?"

It turned out the answer was yes—some girl named Frostleaf who'd been on a particularly tense expedition to a Chernobog sub-city during the border incident there. The one that had also nearly gotten Jessica sent home—but the one she'd come out of very, very firmly insisting that she wanted to continue working with Rhodes Island.

"So that was the reason..." Liskarm mused.

Jessica flushed. "Not—entirely! She was really nice to me, then, but... I think, um... well, Miss Amiya talked to me in a way that I think..." She paused, chewing on her lower lip. "Made me feel more confident, I think...? So, I wanted to keep doing that, and—it felt easier to make connections with the rest of the squad, too, afterward..."

Franka flipped through her mental list of Rhodes Island operators—she was pretty sure she remembered seeing a Frostleaf in a file, at least. Another Vulpo; a real cutie, always wearing a beanie and headphones and a dour expression to match Liskarm's. Huh. Wouldn't have expected it at all, but then again, the overbearing type probably wouldn't do, either.

She tapped her chin. "I think I've seen her at the after-hours cantina now and then," said Franka. "You could just buy her a drink. It usually works as a conversation starter."

"Oh." Jessica's eyes widened a little, like a hoofbeast caught in headlights, but she nodded, very seriously. "That's—that's pretty easy, but..." She wrung her hands, slightly. "...what. Um. Do I do after that...?"

"Ask her if she'd like to go someplace quieter with you!" said Franka, at the same time Liskarm said, "Ask about how her day's been."

They looked at each other, and then Franka dipped her head, sighing. "Liskarm's advice is probably better for you," she said, stretching. "You're kind of the same temperament. But yeah, like—just talk to the girl, ask her about stuff, like what she's listening to on those headphones. I never see her without them, so she probably likes music, you know?"

"...sensible," Liskarm agreed, after a moment. "You can do that without ordering her a drink, too. But at least you know one place you can keep an eye out."

Jessica nods again, eyebrows scrunched up in determination. "I think... I can do that. Probably."

"And once you do that, we can talk about next steps. Baby steps first." Franka stands to set her chin on Liskarm's head, arms looped around her shoulders. "Our little ones... they grow up so fast, don't they?"

Liskarm whacks her in the face with the back of her hand. "Hey. What'd I tell you."

"No chin on the head, I know, I know," recited Franka, turning up her nose—guard down just briefly enough for Liskarm to perform a perfect grapple-break, spin Franka around, and drop her into a dip without changing expression once. (She really was going to have to tackle Liskarm in private later.)

Liskarm sighed. "And if there's hope for us, there's hope for you, too, kid."

...well. Okay. She was going to give Liskarm a hard time first for that one, and then tackle her.