Hi again. I'm writing a fanfic that involves two kids, not the main focus of the story but part of their family, who begin as friends but eventually fall in love. T is a canon character, but was only shown in one episode and was two years old, therefore did not display much characterisation. He is the younger brother of the female half of the main pairing of the story, with an age gap of thirteen years. We first meet him, aged two, in the second chapter of the fanfic. His father is arrested for treason a year later, so he has no memories of the gentleman, and six months later, his mother and sister (who had been abused by her parents as she wasn't the son they wanted) fight, leading to his sister's expulsion from the family home. Due to her marriage to the ruler of the nation, he is allowed by his status-obsessed mother to continue seeing her, and he feels more closeness with the royal family than with his mother. Then, he meets M. By this time, he is six years old, and so is she. His sister's fiancé departs to find his exiled mother, and finds that he now also has a step-father and half-sister as well. This is M. They originally don't get on (due to the typical six-year-old sexism) but after making mischief together out of boredom, embark on a friendship. Cut to a few months before the end of the story. T and M are now twenty-one and still the best of friends. They do everything together, and since M failed to form a friendship group at school, she's now a member of T's ("one of the lads", if you will). Then, T begins to realise that he has romantic feelings for M. M begins to feel the same way not long after, but dismisses the feelings as platonic. They regularly tease each other about being single and wish each other luck in their pursuit of a partner. T feels he has to. He's worried about losing M's friendship. So how do I show chemistry? How do I show the changing dynamic? All the articles I've read suggest things that could apply to a close friendship as well - they already relax around each other, sympathise, etc. They're comfortable discussing pretty much everything, and they're happy with physical contact - lingering embraces when comforting the other, kisses on the cheek in celebration or thanks for a particularly big favour. So how do I show the changes? The only way I can think of is T having occasional romantic thoughts ("she looks so beautiful when she does that", "her hair's so soft" when touching it, thinking how nice she feels in his arms during a friendly hug, etc.), but that can get old quickly. And how can I show M's feelings without constantly stating them? Thanks.
Constantly being aware of the other is a good bet. This could develop after the duh-moment (the moment when each of them finds out that something is there which wasn't before. Pointer: it needn't happen at the same time.) Following movements with the eyes, noticing little things that prior have gone unnoticed (a new haircut maybe, thinking how good it looks on her), a smudge on her cheek that he wants to rub off slowly.
Thanks. He does often mention how much he likes her hair; she once mentions to him that she had it cut short when she was eleven because he kept pulling her plaits, and he is very apologetic.
For me, liking someone that you already were friends & comfortable with can actually create an awkward distance. Instead of lingering embraces, during the period of recognition of feelings, you cut it short really quickly. Or when you'd normally be open with compliments, you suddenly are reluctant in praise or quick to try to adjust what you said to be less flattering. Basically every form of perfectly innocent intimacy suddenly becomes suspect of revealing the change of your feelings from platonic to romantic. So you sort of back-pedal on the intimacy. Because the change makes you feel uncomfortable and afraid. Because you have determine whether you want to persue them romantically—potentially losing the friendship intimacy if they don't recipricate when they also view you in the filter of romance, or whether you can keep a lid on your romantic feelings for the sake of safely maintaining the friendship, or whether you need to extricate yourself from their company because your attraction & affection is too strong to just be friends. But instead of growing closer, when you already start intimate, you tend to put up distance in the confusion of new feelings. Sometimes it hurts the other person, because they don't understand why you seem to be pushing them away. Sometimes they think you're just going through something, and try to get you to open up to them like before so they can help you figure it out. And sometimes they get angry and come to the wrong conclusions. One in a million times, they realize what's happening and respond according to their feelings (once they get their own sorted.) This is all from a single experience of my own in high school, and my best friend's just a couple years ago. Might not be universally true, but it was true for us.
