It was almost suffocating to have Floyd mindlessly following you around like a stray.

Maybe you should have known better than to involve yourself with somebody like him. He was big and intimidating to everybody around, sure, but to you he was cute in a way. How he would tilt his head whenever you’d smile at him, how dumbfounded he would look whenever you’d wipe his face after a meal, or adjusted his uniform, or fixed up his hair.

He was probably just touch starved. It would make sense, nobody apart from his parents, his brother or Azul would go near him—and neither Jade nor Azul were particularly affectionate with him. Now that you’ve shown the slightest bit of kindness, he’s grown attached and won’t leave your side.

You can’t even count the number of times he’s come knocking at Ramshackle’s door, even at odd hours of the day. He always has some sort of excuse: he can’t fall asleep, he can’t get his hair right, he can’t finish his leftovers, he found a trinket that reminded him of you, he needs help tying his tie (though it’s always undone and hanging around his shoulders again the moment you send him away), anything to return back to you. Even if you don’t answer the door because you’re too distracted or simply napping, he has no problem waiting outside until you can give him attention.

He was something else when he sees you, how easy it was for him to melt just at the sight of you, how easy it was for him to need comfort from you.

Maybe it was a mistake to be kind to him.

It’d only been a few hours since the last you’d seen him, and he was already knocking again. You opened the door to see him fidgeting with his hands with his eyes to the ground, wanting nothing more than to let himself fall apart just for a moment of tenderness from you.

“Shrimpy…” he mumbled. He hadn’t yet come up with an excuse to see you this time. “I can come in, right?”