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Dolce glares down at her ankle like it, personally, is offending her. Because it is.

She has always been quite fond of taking walks in the evening, ever since she was little; Mama and Papa had made a tradition of it, and she's never let it go. After moving to-- or rather, in some capacity, waking up in-- Selphia, Dolce has continued the habit.

Tonight is a hot Summer evening, the sun nearly done making it's slow descent over the horizon. The walk had gone just like any other, with Pico floating nearby and chatting away while Dolce watched the way shadows fall over everything, steadily growing as the night progressed.

Then, of course, she hadn't watched where she was going and ended up tripping over one of Selphia's many sets of cobblestone steps on Melody street.

'Dolly!' Pico cries in pure agony, as she sees Dolce cradle her ankle and wince. 'You've been hurt!'

"It's really nothi--" The young women tries to stand, but stumbles down again the moment she puts weight on her injured ankle.

'DOLLY!'

"I probably just twisted it, you don't have to--"

Pico has already started swinging her head around wildly, and upon not seeing anyone else on the street loudly declares, 'Stay here Dolly! I'll get help, please survive this!'

Dolce raises a hand in protest, but before she can open her mouth the ghost is already gone, flying down the street towards the clinic.

Dolce is left sighing, sitting on the sidewalk, and glaring down at her offending ankle again. She undoes the clasps on her boot and gingerly slides it off, then rolls down her sock. Her ankle stares angrily back at her, colored a reddish-purple and immediately swelling.

"Ugh," she declares again aloud, and tips her head up to glare at the night sky for betraying her like this.

Except. It's not the night sky that she sees, but rather a head of bright, reddish-pink hair glancing down at her, upside down.

Were Dolce more prone to reacting she would probably startle and yelp, but instead she simply widens her eyes as Doug tilts his head with a look of friendly confusion.

"You alright there, Dolce?" Then his eyes trails down, and bulge as he takes in her ankle. "Woah! That's a nasty one. D'ya need help getting to the clinic?"

"No," Dolce replies monotonously, putting all her energy into fighting off the heat that is threatening to prickle at her cheeks. "I'm fine."

The dwarf squats down so they're at level with each other, and Dolce very, very begrudgingly has to admit that he is much more handsome when not upside down. Of course, she would rather die and have her soul be surrendered to whatever sentimental, horrifying whims strike Pico for eternity than admit to a single person of the budding crush she's been trying to squash down for the last couple weeks.

"You sure?" The object of her begrudging affection asks, staring skeptically at her injury. "It looks pretty rough from here."

"I'm fine," Dolce grits out, then to make her point begins to stand again. She does manage to stand up to her full height, albeit she does so by leaning most of her weight on the fence railing beside her, and keeping her injured foot hovering slightly off the ground. "See? Perfect. You can leave now."

Doug raises an eyebrow at the display a little skeptically, and then grins. As if he enjoys seeing her stubbornness-- the thought of which is both aggravating, and makes her have to fight off another blush. "Oh yeah? then why don't you go ahead and walk yourself to the clinic?"

Glaring at him, Dolce weighs her options in her head. Pico should be back any minute, but somehow the idea of her catching them like this seems like the worst case scenario; even if she doesn't know anything, Dolce has always found her to be terribly perceptive. One look at Dolce's face with the other man around might be disastrous.

Determinedly, Dolce takes one step forward.

And immediately her leg is a burning lance of pain, before Dolce is sent tumbling to the ground again.

"W-woah!" Doug yelps from behind her.

This time, it's not hard cobblestone that catches her, but something soft and steady. Two somethings soft and steady.

When Dolce glances down at her waist, she sees that Doug's arms have wrapped around her before she could hit the ground.

"You okay there?" he asks above her.

His arms feel... surprisingly strong and warm, despite his thin, boyish appearance.

Dolce's face immediately catches flame, and she wishes the earth would swallow her up this instant.

"Okay..." Doug says, sounding even more concerned. "Yup. Alright. We're getting you to the clinic, no protesting. Grab your boot and hold on tight."

"What do you--" before Dolce can finish, Doug is squatting and looping an arm underneath her knees, and then she's being hoist up into the hair.

"Up we go!"

Immediately her free hand shoots out to his chest for stability, though the hold does feel steady. Dependable.

Dolce's face burns even hotter.

She wants to die.

"Sorry about this," Doug says above her, and Dolce is surprised to hear a certain bashfulness in his usually unflappably casual, friendly voice. When she glances up, she swears she sees pink dusting his cheeks as well, though it's hard to say what's from the summer heat.

"It's-- it's fine," Dolce says, voice quiet. She curses the timidity she can hear in her voice, and the way her heart is beating out a nervous staccato rhythm at how warm and comfortable it is to be held like this in the dwarf's surprisingly strong hold.

As they make their way towards the town square, the sun has fully finished it's descent across the horizon, and night has spread all around them. Fireflies have even started to emerge, their yellow-green lights sprinkled across the warm sky and bouncing off of every surface.

Unable to help it, Dolce glances up again, and is breath-taken to see the way the lights play off of Doug's eyes-- they're like silver pools of light, taking in everything around them and reflecting it back tenfold.

As if sensing her eyes on him, Doug glances down too. His eyes suddenly widen, and a blush unmistakably flares across his handsome, boyishly cute features.

Our faces are so close, Dolce can't help but think, before her mind tunes out to pure white noise. She can't hear anything except the pounding of her heart.

Only one noise could possibly cut through this moment and it--

'DOOOOLLLYYYYY I'M COOOMING!'

Pico comes soaring into view, flying down the street so quickly that she's nearly a blur. She stops short at the sight of the two of them, and even in her ghostly form has to stumble to try and stop short of flying straight through them.

She fails, and a shiver passes through Dolce's skin at the unmistakable feeling of a ghost going through someone. She can feel Doug shiver similarly.

'Dolly?'

A second later two other sets of footsteps sound off, sprinting down the town square.

Nancy and Jones also stop in front of them, though they do so with much more grace and decidedly don't crash into Doug and Dolce.

"Is everything alright, sweetie?" Nancy asks, eyes wide and somewhere between concern and curiosity. "We heard you were hurt."

Doug comes to her rescue for the second time tonight, awkwardly fumbling out, "Oh, yeah! I just found her near the uh, General Store, and it looked like she hurt her ankle and couldn't walk so I was-- uh, bringing her over to you guys. G-good timing!"

Dolce simply nods.

Nancy and Pico are watching Doug carefully, like they could see straight to his soul if they stare hard enough, but thankfully Jones has already moved forward to inspect Dolce's ankle more closely.

"Thank you, Doug," he says with a nod. "Please do bring her, I'd like to make sure there's no fracture."

"Yes, thank you, Doug," Dolce says at last, her voice soft but otherwise level.

Dolce can feel more than see Doug nod above her, and pointedly doesn't look at the other two women as they begin to make their way back to the clinic.