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foggyfanfic · 3 months

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The Wedding Gift

Oneshot Preview: Juan's ears turned red and he frowned again, “I’m not complimenting you, this is just fact. If I measured your facial features the math would back me up.”

“I mean, it’s ok if you are complimenting me,” Mirabel said.

“Well, I’m not. Your face is mathematically sound. That’s all there is to it.”

Summary: As Mirabel gets to know one of the men from the village, she tries to figure out if he likes her for her, or because she's a Madrigal.

Words: 15.7K

“Oh! Mirabel! Perdon señor, uno minuto,” somebody called, Mirabel turned to find the voice and was surprised when the guy manning the bean stall waved her down, “Señorita Mirabel, do you have a bit of time?”

“Sure, yeah, what uh, what’s up?” Mirabel said, hoping to hide the fact that she did not remember this guy’s name at all. He was maybe a year or two older (or younger) than her, she vaguely remembered seeing him on the playground back when they were children. She was pretty sure. They may have even exchanged polite words at a party once. Possibly.

“It’s Juan,” he said, a little dryly.

“Right. I know. Of course I know. Juan, what can I do for you?” Even as she spoke her eyes ticked over his face for some distinguishing feature she could attach the name to. But there were none, his nose was flat, but not especially so, his hair was black with very normal brown undertones, his skin wasn’t especially light or dark, his head neither very round nor very angular nor very square. Ultimately, his face could best be described as a face. No additional adjectives necessary.

Juan very clearly did not believe she knew his name, but instead of being annoyed he gave her a rueful smile and said, “It’s fine. Pretty sure my parents couldn’t have chosen a more generic name if they’d actually just named me ‘generic’.”

Mirabel chuckled, a little sheepishly, “I probably would remember that better.”

“Maybe I should change my name to that, is that the sort of thing we’ll be able to do at this new-fangled city hall?”

“Yeah, actually, it is,” she said, “although it might be a while before we set up a procedure for that sort of thing.”

In the past nine years since the miracle was reborn, Mirabel had slowly come to the realization that one of Abuela’s problems was the fact she was doing the job of at least three people. Emphasis on the “at least”. Abuela had acted as the de facto mayor of the Encanto since its inception, which probably wasn’t that bad back when Encanto was a handful of refugees. Now though, now their village was edging ever closer to being a small town, and having a one woman town government was not an option. It took a bit of research, and a lot of talking to people, but Encanto’s City Hall was under construction, and Mirabel was currently running around trying to recruit people to run for the city council.

“Well, when you do I may just be the first in line,” he leaned on the little bit of counter that wasn’t covered in baskets of beans, “but believe it or not, I didn’t interrupt your day to talk about how forgettable my name is.”

“Of course, yeah, what do you need?” She stood up a little straighter, she was doing her best to take as much work off Abuela’s plate as possible so Abuela could focus on prepping the newly elected mayor. They wanted the transition to be as smooth as possible.

“I wanted to hire you for a commission.”

Mirabel actually jolted a little out of surprise, “You- what?”

“A commission, an embroidery commission,” he said, clarifying when she just stared at him, “my sister’s getting married soon and she’s really into fashion so I figured for a gift-, well, one of your pieces might be the obvious choice, but they don’t call me generic for nothing.”

“Oh.”

“Do you-? I completely understand if you’re too busy. You can say no.”

“No, no, it’s not that, I’d be happy to uh to make your sister’s gift,” Mirabel said, quickly. She decided not to tell him she was just surprised to have her embroidery acknowledged. It wasn’t like she lived in her familia’s shadow anymore, but people were a lot more impressed by her communication and leadership skills than her skills with a needle and thread.

It felt surprisingly good to have a spot light shined on this particular talent.

“Oh good,” he smiled, “no offense to the town tailors, but everything they make is meant for function, I really want to give her something that’s actual art.”

Mirabel felt her face heat up, and it was all she could do to keep her smile pointed up at him instead of smiling down at her shoes, “I-, that’s-, thank you. That’s very nice of you to say. What uh, what did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know, something in her favorite colors I guess?” he shrugged, “I have no idea how you artist folk come up with ideas, so I kinda have to trust your judgement on this one. What’s a good design that says ‘Yay, you’re in love’?”

Artist. He called Mirabel an artist.

“Um, a heart, maybe? Or I can ask Isabela to lend me her flower dictionary, I could probably embroider a bouquet that means true love and good blessings and stuff. What were you thinking of putting the embroidery on?”

“One of our Má’s old blouses, my sister loves that thing and Má has been planning to fix it up and give it to her for ages. Figure this is as good a chance as any.”

“I’d have to see it to get an idea what designs would look good on it.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense. You free for dinner? Around six? She’ll be eating with her in-laws tonight, so we wouldn’t even have to be sneaky.”

Mirabel thought about her schedule a little, slowly starting to nod, “Sí, I can do dinner.”

“Great, let me write down my address for you,” he turned away, quickly scribbling on a piece of paper then handing it to her.

She laughed when she looked at the piece of paper and all it said was, “It’s the house right behind me.”

“Cute,” she told him.

“I can write down directions if you need me to,” he shrugged.

“Hm, gee, I think I might be able to find it myself.”

“You sure.”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Well that’s good, because I can’t think up a good follow up joke,” he grinned a little sheepishly.

“This one is good enough to stand on its own,” she said, neatly folding up the paper and putting it in her pocket.

“Gracias, I’m here all week,” he replied, leaning on the counter again, “except for tonight, when I’m at dinner. See you at six?”

“Yeah, see you then,” she chirped, before practically skipping away.

An artist!

—

A little less than a week later, Mirabel flipped through her sketchbook, lips pursed as she considered the designs she’d come up with for Juan’s sister. She couldn’t decide which ones she liked best.

Sighing, Mirabel looked up at the clock. If she walked fast she might be able to catch Juan before he went home for the day. The bean stall wasn’t one of the market stalls that rotated vendors. Like a lot of the other staples, it was in the market five days a week, which meant Juan was in the market five days a week.

Dinner with him and his parents had been alright, but Mirabel had been surprised by how quiet Juan had gotten once his parents were at the table. It wasn’t an upset sort of quiet, more like every time she started to talk to him, he would redirect the conversation so his parents could take over. He seemed pretty friendly in the market, but when he was home he suddenly became-, well he was still friendly, he just didn’t talk much.

With her sketchbook in hand, Mirabel walked through town, being sure to wear her “busy face” to make it less likely somebody would try to stop her for a favor. She reached Juan just as he was carrying the last basket of beans into the storage shed between the stall and his house.

“Juan, hey,” she called out, trotting the last few steps to his side, “you got a second?”

“Technically, I have forty-three thousand seconds, but I have to fit dinner, sleeping, and breakfast in there,” he said, then grunted as he placed the basket of beans on a sturdy looking shelf. Mirabel quickly glanced away from his arms as his biceps flexed.

“Oh,” Mirabel wasn’t sure how to respond to that, “well uh, you mind sharing a few of those forty-three thousand seconds with me?”

“Do you want any specific seconds, or would just any do?”

“I was hoping for the next few uh hundred? Thousand?”

He cocked his head, eyes narrowed but unfocused, “That would be about sixteen minutes.”

“That should be enough, I think? I just want you to look at my ideas for your sister’s blouse.”

“That I can do.”

“Right, great,” Mirabel got her head back in the game, “here, I know you said you were going to trust my judgement, but I want your input on the design. I just can’t pick my favorite.”

Juan quietly took the proffered sketch book and flipped through her ideas. He carefully considered each one of them. When he was done, he went back to the first one and started again.

“Something wrong?” Mirabel asked.

“No,” Juan said, not looking up.

She waited for him to finish looking, then when he seemed ready to take a third pass, prompted, “What do you think?”

“I think I see why you can’t pick your favorite,” he said, continuing to stare at option one, “these all look really good.”

Mirabel blushed, even as she rolled her eyes, “Thank you, but that doesn’t help me make a decision.”

“No. I suppose it doesn’t.”

He idly turned the page and stared at option two for as long as he’d stared at option one. Mirabel waited for him to say something else, something helpful. He turned to option three and stared at it as well.

Mirabel cleared her throat, he looked up at her, still silent.

It took her a second to figure out how to politely rephrase the question in her head, “Which would you choose?”

“All of them,” he said, then turned back to her sketchbook.

“Putting all of them would make the shirt look gaudy.”

“Oh. Would it?”

“Sí.”

“Only some of them, then.”

“You are zero help.”

He snorted, then nodded, “You are correct.”

Mirabel shook her head as a chuckle bubbled past her lips, “How about I go calculate how much each one would cost to make, then come back and we try this again?”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” he perked up, and finally handed her the sketchbook back, “I’ll come with you. Where do you get your thread?”

“Uh, Lucia’s,” she said, jabbing her thumb in the direction of her preferred fabric store, “but you don’t have to do that, I’ll honestly probably be there for hours. We’ll blow right past the thousand second mark.”

“Does it take that long to find the right thread?” He looked simultaneously startled and impressed.

“Meh, it’s more that I’m friends with Lucia. And her back room is where the sewing club meets.”

“Ah, so you’ll be chatting,” he nodded, “will I also be required to chat?”

“A tiny bit, I mean, when I drag my Tío Bruno along everybody is fine with him just standing sorta awkwardly next to me. Unless Jo brought Adelaide, then they talk about something called NASA.”

“That’s what I’ll do then.” He started walking in the direction she’d pointed, and Mirabel trotted after him so she could take the lead.

“Stand awkwardly next to me? Or talk about NASA?”

“The first one.”

Mirabel huffed out a surprised laugh, “Do you hate talking that much?”

“No, I just do it all day,” he shrugged, “I handle numbers quick, so it just makes sense to have me run the stall, but I’m not-. I would prefer if it was just me and the numbers, and maybe a few people like you.”

“Like me?”

“Yeah, you know, people who are-,” he cut off and made a vague hand gesture, he actually reminded her a little of her Tío Bruno when he did that, “people who aren’t draining to talk to. People that make you feel more energetic, not less.”

“Oh,” Mirabel glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, “uh, thank you?”

A frown flittered across his face, then he said, “I didn’t mean that as-. You're welcome, but I’m not trying to be nice. It’s just the way it is.”

“Uh, pretty sure it’s pretty subjective actually,” Mirabel said, “in my experience feelings always are.”

“It’s not a feeling, it’s probably science.”

“Science?”

“Sí, I bet all your smiling does something to people’s brains. Like caffeine,” he nodded along with himself, “Or maybe your voice is just the right frequency to help people wake up, like sunlight.”

“You think… my voice sounds like sunlight?” she asked slowly, trying not to laugh.

“Well, obviously not literally, but I think your voice makes people feel more awake, like sunlight does.”

“Right, and uh, do I smell like laughter?”

“Now you’re just being preposterous.”

Mirabel couldn’t help but giggle, “I don’t think it’s science, I think you just enjoy my company.”

He huffed, “Everybody enjoys your company, and there’s probably a scientific reason for that too.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really,” he stopped walking so he could narrow his eyes at her, “maybe you give off pheromones.”

Mirabel couldn’t help but laugh outright at that, “I do not!”

“You might,” he insisted, then pursed his lips, “or it could be psychology. People like things that are pleasant to look at. You are pleasant to look at and covered in art. Ergo, people like being around you.”

“Pleasant to-. Are you saying I’m pretty?” She didn’t know whether to be flattered or laugh some more.

“If that’s what you want to call it, but it’s hardly scientific, now is it? You are well proportioned and symmetrical,” he sniffed, continuing on his way. Mirabel followed him, trying not to be too amused at his expense.

“Well, thank you,” she eventually said.

His ears turned red and he frowned again, “I’m not complimenting you, this is just fact. If I measured your facial features the math would back me up.”

“I mean, it’s ok if you are complimenting me,” she said.

“Well, I’m not. Your face is mathematically sound. That’s all there is to it.”

Mirabel blushed, despite how much she still wanted to laugh. Who talked like this?! It seemed Juan genuinely believed what he was saying, but it was also possible he was choosing to put the moves on her in the weirdest way possible. He wouldn’t be the first guy to make a pass at her. Hell, she’d even gone on a few first dates that went nowhere.

If this was his way of making a move, he got points for originality.

“Well, I’m going to choose to be flattered and say thank you,” she declared.

“I’m just being logical,” he grumbled, and she swallowed another laugh.

By the time they got to the fabric store he was done pouting, and instead seemed prepared to stop and read every price displayed in the shop, whether it was connected to their project or not. Mirabel left him to it, she wanted to ask Lucia about how her recent trip to the city went, anyway.

The conversation took at least half an hour, and when she turned to look for Juan, he was standing in the corner, examining the thimbles.

“Are you bored?” she checked with him.

“Not at all,” he said, “take your time.”

“Are you sure, I don’t have to chat with-.”

“No, Mirabel, please, I mean it. Take your time, have fun, don’t ignore your friends on my account,” he said, putting the thimble down and giving her an earnest look.

“Ok, then I’m going to slip into that back room there and see if anyone from my sewing club is in today,” she pointed the door out to him, “come find me if you need me.”

Mirabel peaked her head in through the door and was pleased to find three of her friends in the room. Katrina, or Kat, sat at the table, cutting out a pattern for a new dress. Meanwhile, Josephine, or Jo, and Jo’s best friend Adelaide sat on the couch, Adelaide holding half of Jo’s latest project in her lap so it wouldn’t drape on the ground. Mirabel greeted them all enthusiastically and asked how they were doing. After twenty minutes, Juan slipped up next to her and quietly took the sketch book.

“Hey Adelaide,” he said.

“Hey,” she said back, voice quiet enough to be a whisper.

“Hola Señoritas Josephine and Katrina,” Juan nodded at each of them in turn.

“What? I don’t get a casual ‘hello’?” Jo asked, with a friendly grin, “Is this because I ditched astronomy club?”

“Sí,” Juan said, while Adelaide nodded.

“Astronomy club?” Mirabel asked.

“Not a real club,” Jo explained, “but Adelaide loves astronomy, and Juan loves math, so they-. What’d you guys do again?”

“Adelaide takes measurements of the bodies in the night sky, and I use those measurements to calculate the answers to questions she had about them,” Juan said.

“Yeah, the only part I have in it was making Addy a quilt based off some of their science stuff that one time,” Jo shrugged, “actually, you guys helped with that, remember?”

A quilt based off “science stuff”. As far as descriptions went, it was severely lacking. Josephine came up with brilliant projects for their club to do together, but there was a reason she always drew them out on a sheet of paper.

Before Mirabel could ask for more information, Juan told her, “You embroidered pictures of all the constellations. With gold and silver thread.”

Adelaide snorted, just a quiet huff of air through her nose, for some reason she was giving Juan a look that was almost, almost, hinting at being amused.

“Oh! That quilt! Sí, I remember,” Mirabel nodded happily, “that one was really fun. I didn’t realize you were involved.”

It had been fun, Jo had brought the idea to their sewing/fiber arts club, a quilt that was an accurate depiction of the night sky on Adelaide’s birthday. While Jo did most of the work, she had gotten Mirabel to help with the embroidery, Kat and Suzane had helped with some of the more tedious stitching, and Lucia had made some beautiful button stars. They had spent three months working on it together then invited Adelaide to a meeting so they could present it to her over cake. Adelaide was the quiet sort, never one for big expressions, but she had cried and even hugged each of them. The whole thing was a very fond memory for Mirabel.

“He did all the calculations by hand,” Adelaide said, “isn’t that impressive Mirabel?”

Juan gave Adelaide a look, his ears bright red, while Adelaide focused on Mirabel, making very steady eye contact for a woman that... well. Let’s just say Adelaide got along really well with Tío Bruno.

Mirabel watched Juan very closely while she said, “Yeah, that actually is pretty impressive. I can’t even imagine how complicated that math would be.”

Juan tensed up, looking anywhere but at Mirabel, “It’s not-. Numbers aren’t that complicated, it’s just most people have better things to do than sit around and play with them.”

“Mirabel complimented you Juan,” Adelaide said, and she was definitely smirking just a little.

Juan shot her a glare, then said in an almost normal voice, “Thank you Mirabel. You are too kind.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I’d call it a compliment,” Mirabel said slowly, “you’re smart. It’s just the way it is. In fact, it’s probably science.”

Juan looked at her, a little startled, “It’s-. That’s not how science works.”

“No, no, I think it is,” she pretended to think for a moment, “maybe it’s pheromones.”

Adelaide actually giggled, Juan shot her another glare.

“I see how it is, well fine, if the two of you are just going to gang up on me, I’m going go play with my true friends,” he began walking away, the sketchbook hugged to his chest, “numbers.”

Mirabel watched him go, then as soon as he was out the door, turned back to Adelaide, “So am I reading this right?”

“How long has Juan had a crush on Mirabel?” Jo asked at the same time, grinning from ear to ear.

“Are you going to go for it?” Kat asked Mirabel, then shrugged, “He’s kinda cute, in a plain way.”

“I don’t know,” Adelaide said, seemingly answering Josephine’s question, “his sister told me about it a few days ago.”

“I-,” Mirabel hesitated to tell Kat she wasn’t sure in front of Adelaide, it seemed like Adelaide and Juan were close, “I want to get to know him better. And, you know, actually hear from his own lips that he’s interested in me.”

Mirabel had discovered the hard way that her life did not have room for any games. She needed somebody blunt, who could tell her what they wanted without making her guess. The closest thing she’d had to a relationship had fizzled out because the guy kept trying to play it cool while Mirabel was just trying to juggle her many interests and commitments.

“That’s smart,” Adelaide said, back to her usual almost whisper.

“You think so?” Mirabel asked, she’d sort of expected Adelaide to press the issue on her friend’s behalf.

Adelaide nodded, face giving away nothing.

“If you don’t go for it, I might,” Kat said with a shrug, “he seems stable.”

“Does he, though?” Josephine asked, “He gets flustered easily.”

“Flustered easily is way better than angered easily,” Kat shrugged again, “trust me.”

Mirabel placed a quiet hand on Kat’s shoulder. She had recently broken off her engagement to her school yard sweetheart, who had quit being so sweet once he discovered a love of tequila.

The conversation moved on to other things, eventually Mirabel separated herself to see if she could find her sketchbook and the man who took it. When she did, she waited a while to announce her presence, instead she watched him scowl at two nearly identical colors of thread for a few seconds. He did seem stable, safe.

Mirabel hadn’t spent much time thinking about romance, not until she reached her twentieth birthday and suddenly every Má, Tía, and Abuela in town were throwing their single sons, nephews, and grandsons at her. Even now, she wasn’t sure if it was romance she was thinking of, or just marriage. Romance was what Dolores and Mariano had, marriage was what Isabela and Mariano almost had. It was an important distinction.

She wanted both, well, technically she wanted kids and she wanted romance, so marriage seemed like the right way to go.

The problem was, Mirabel wanted somebody that let her be herself. That didn’t seem like it’d be hard to find, Juan was half right, everybody loved being around Mirabel. But that was because Mirabel was a leader in the community these days. All those first dates that went nowhere, went nowhere because it was clear that the guy was on a date with Señorita Madrigal, not Mirabel. She was proud of what she had done for their town, proud of the ways she’d stepped up and grown in the past nine years, but she still wanted space to be imperfect.

Would Juan get that? Did he understand Mirabel was human, not just a Madrigal?

Only one way to find out, she decided, clearing her throat as she approached him.

“First you and Adelaide ganged up on me, now I’m being defeated by the color red,” he said in greeting, “it would seem I am very bad at going to craft stores.”

Mirabel laughed a little, “Why is the red defeating you?”

“Which one of these goes better with the little blue flowers you’ve drawn here,” he held the two spools of thread up to her sketchbook so she could compare.

“Uh, well,” she tried to say it as gently as possible, “neither of them. That’s not embroidery floss.”

“Embroidery-? Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Mirabel. I am absolutely abysmal at going to craft stores.”

“Ah, you’re not that bad,” she took the chance to awkwardly pat him on the shoulder, “I don’t think it’s something a person can be good or bad at, really.”

”And yet, here I am.”

Mirabel looked down at the two threads, “Here, put these down, and I’ll show you where the embroidery section is.”

“This is why I’m trusting your expertise,” Juan sighed, following her.

“Did you look at the other supplies? Pretty sure I have everything but the right sized hoop.”

“Well, thread was supposed to be the last thing, but clearly I can not be trusted,” he shook his head, “my numbers are probably all wrong.”

“Oh, I’m sure you did fine,” she said. But she was wrong, Juan did not do fine, she couldn't fathom why he thought she would need so many needles, even after he repeatedly insisted it was better safe than sorry. Furthermore, he could not be trusted to color coordinate his socks with his shoelaces, much less an entire embroidery project. By the time she’d collected all the thread she would need, she had a pretty good idea why he always wore beige.

He had enough money to buy the thread and hoop right then and there, so he did, plus a couple of embroidery needles.

“In case yours break or get dull,” he’d said, when she once again tried to talk him out of buying her more needles.

“I mean, I have a lot of extras,” Mirabel had argued, feeling a bit bad that he was paying for everything. Even if this was, technically, a commission.

“Well, now you’ll have two more.”

He walked her back to Casita, and she tried to pull more information about himself out of him, but he only seemed interested in talking about her.

When she asked about his day, he deflected. “Oh, I just sold beans all day, nothing interesting. What’d you do today?”

When she tried to connect with him by letting him vent, he downplayed. “Bah, sure, sometimes customers can be a bit testy, but I’m sure I’ve never dealt with any problems like building a town government from scratch. How’s that going?”

And when she desperately tried to learn more about his interests, he dodged. “Meh, I don’t really have any hobbies, what about you? I know you also make the occasional stuffed animal, and play the accordion. Anything else?”

When they parted ways at the front door Mirabel once again found herself watching him go, thinking about the differences between romance and marriage. She was moderately sure they both required knowing a bit about your significant other.

Shaking her head, she decided it might not be meant to be. Juan was handsome and nice, but if he wouldn't let her get to know him, they could never have a real relationship.

Pity. He had some nice arms.

—

“Hey Mirabel, the bean guy’s here to see you,” Antonio called, poking his head through her door.

“Oh, Juan? Uh, send him up,” Mirabel said, over her shoulder. She was sitting on her floor, trying to come up with a rough budget to get the town’s new government started. Spread out around her was every bit of information she could find on Encanto’s financials. It was, to put it mildly, a lot.

“You sent for me?” Juan said, knocking politely on her door while he walked through it.

“Yeah, uh, you’re good at math, right?”

“Sí?”

“Great, I need a budget,” she held up a list of all the infrastructure repairs planned for the next year with one hand, and the estimated tax revenue with the other, “I’d ask my Pá but he’s busy helping the merchants work out a-. I guess that doesn’t really matter. He’s busy, and I can’t figure this stuff out.”

Juan joined her on the floor without a word and began looking over the various paperwork. After he had been reading for a while, it became obvious that whenever he finished reading something, he sorted it into one of two piles. She sat patiently, a part of her worried that if she spoke or moved, she’d scare away her numbers guy and be stuck with the evil budget. Instead of moving, she just watched him.

Eventually, she started to notice little details that escaped her the last few times they'd spoken, like the mole on the shell of his right ear that almost made the ear look pointed. His eyelids were naturally very hooded. He had very little stubble on his jaw line, but a fair amount on his chin and extending down from his sideburns, which were currently trimmed to a perfectly average length.

“Have you ever thought about growing your sideburns out?” Mirabel suddenly asked, surprising herself.

He paused, a list of improvements the village wanted to make to the church hovering over the farther pile, “My side burns?”

“Sí,” she plowed on, ignoring the burning in her cheeks, “it looks like you could.”

She reached out and traced her fingers down the stubble to indicate what she meant. He turned to look at her and Mirabel slowly drew her hand back. For a few seconds neither of them said anything, then he chuckled.

“Uh no, I’ve never thought about it, I’ve always trimmed them,” he shrugged, “I’d probably look real goofy with giant sideburns and no beard.”

“Well-. Ok, you would,” Mirabel leaned back on her hands, “but I always thought if I could grow facial hair I’d have fun with it. Like Camilo can’t grow a full goatee, but he could technically grow a goatee in the shape of a question mark, but he refuses cause he thinks it’ll look weird.”

“Hm, tell you what, you spend a day with clown makeup on, and I’ll grow out my sideburns,” he said.

“I’ve already done that,” Mirabel pointed out with a grin, “my Pá and I pretended to be clowns for my nephew’s birthday last year.”

“Oh. Well. Guess I’ll have to grow out my sideburns then.”

“Really?”

“I said that I would.”

“Even though you’ll look goofy?”

“Meh, what’s my pride worth,” he shrugged, “hopefully not as much as my word.”

“Oh, very profound,” Mirabel chuckled, “I might embroider that on a pillow.”

“If you do I demand you give me the pillow, that is probably the wisest sounding thing I’ll ever say,” he said, “I need to remember it and share it with my grandchildren.”

Mirabel nudged his shoulder with hers, “I’ll put it on a handkerchief for you. That way you can have it in your pocket wherever you go.”

“Genius,” he breathed, “absolutely genius.”

He turned back to sorting the paperwork, after a moment more of watching him, Mirabel stood and walked over to her sewing desk. She got out a leftover scrap of soft, blue fabric, scissors, some needle and thread, an embroidery hoop, and an embroidery needle. She opened her drawer of embroidery floss and debated the colors she had to spare, after a moment, she grabbed a deep teal that she’d used to shade the water on a beach themed project a while back. Mirabel sat back down next to him, and got to work making a handkerchief.

They sat on the floor, working in silence, for what must have been an hour before he requested some paper and a pencil.

“Do you want an abacus?” she asked, rummaging through her desk for a good pencil that still had an eraser.

“Don’t need one,” he said, carrying not just his sorted piles, but her crafting supplies over to one of her sewing tables, “although I do enjoy playing with the little beads.”

Mirabel chuckled, but admitted, “Yeah, me too.”

She placed the paper and two pencils down in front of him as he set up the piles of paperwork how he apparently wanted. Mirabel picked up her hoop and the newly hemmed handkerchief. They went back to working in silence for a little.

“So, you like math?” Mirabel eventually asked, rolling her head around to ease the growing stiffness in her neck.

“I know, not very exciting,” he chuckled sheepishly, “and not always as useful as being able to sew.”

She had to smother an eye roll at the way he insulted his own interests. It reminded her of some of her more frustrating conversations with Isabela, who occasionally relapsed into trying to be perfect, or Bruno, who was just generally pretty down on himself.

“Most hobbies aren’t exciting to the people who aren’t into them,” Mirabel pointed out, “and it’s clearly very useful, because you’re here helping me.”

“Sí, but I don’t use anything other than basic arithmetic for actual practical stuff,” Juan pointed out, “most of the fun math is for sailors and scientists.”

“So why not be one of those?” She let humor color her voice, she knew as well as he did that he didn’t want to live anywhere other than Encanto. Their town may have had some problems, but not nearly as many as the rest of the world. Better the bean guy, or gift-less Madrigal, in a loving paradise than a captain on cold, apathetic seas.

“Oh please, could you imagine me sailing a ship,” he rolled his eyes, even as he humored her.

“Hm, not right now, but maybe once you grow out your sideburns.”

He laughed, the sound seeming to take him by surprise. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then apparently gave up and just shook his head, chuckling.

Mirabel considered her handkerchief, she was halfway done with the phrase, and she could already tell it was going to be pretty bland. The other end of the handkerchief needed something to balance it out. She took some of his unused paper, tore off a shred, and slid it in front of him.

“Write down your favorite equation,” she said.

“Um, ok?”

“Trust me.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, writing a collection of Latin symbols and parenthesis on the scrap paper.

“What is it?”

“It’s a quantum physics equation,” he said, “uh, speaking of things that are not useful, it’s a new realm of study. Relatively new, I mean. It’s only about as old as our parents. This one has to do with uh Einstein’s thoughts on quantum entanglement.”

Mirabel cocked her head, plumbing the depths of her memory for when she helped purchase new books for the library, “That’s something to do with atoms being connected, no?”

“You-?! Sí! Well, close, particles being connected. Not necessarily atoms,” he said, “I’m surprised you’ve heard of it.”

She shrugged, and in a blithe voice said, “You’re not the only genius in the room.”

“No, because that would be you.”

“Oh come on,” she groused, she was getting kind of sick of him putting himself down.

“I’m serious,” he said, “look at that. You just made that, out of nowhere, in the time it’s taken me to read a few lists and stuff.”

“That’s not what I-,” Mirabel hesitated, she had only hung out with Juan two times before this, she didn’t want to get too personal.

“What? Not what you what?”

Then again. Maybe if this were nine years ago, Mirabel would have been more patient about this sort of thing, but it wasn’t nine years ago. Mirabel had spent the past almost decade dealing with her Tío Bruno’s self loathing, and she’d found that “being patient” with things like this didn’t do much to solve them.

“Why do you keep putting yourself down like that? You’re not going to burst into flames if you admit you’re impressively smart,” Mirabel said.

“Oh,” Juan looked down at the paperwork, eyes clearly staring right through it, then he shrugged sullenly, “I uh I just don’t want to give off the impression I think I’m better than anyone.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Juan grimaced sheepishly, “I used to try to impress people, y’know, with how smart I am, but uh it just kinda made folks think I’m an arrogant asshole. So now, I don’t do that. I do the opposite actually, it seems to work better.”

“So you don’t actually think you’re an idiot.”

“No, not really, but bragging about how I can calculate the Earth’s distance from the sun based off some shadows doesn’t make people like me.”

Mirabel examined him for a minute, turning what he’d said over in her head, “So do you mean it, you know, when you compliment me? Or is that just to get me to like you?”

“It’s- both? Or, ugh, ok so this isn’t me putting myself down, but I am so much better with numbers than words.”

“I mean, you’re putting yourself down a little.”

“I know, but it’s also me complaining, so it doesn’t count,” he said. She did roll her eyes this time, but let him have this one.

“Well you don’t have to answer right away, you can think about it for a minute,” she offered, putting a hand on his arm.

He smiled at her, and seemingly accepted her offer, eyes going unfocused for a few minutes. She waited patiently, hand still on his arm.

“I know that a lot of people know how to sew, I know that not a lot of people know how to do math like I can,” he said slowly, “but uh, I had a lot of time to think y’know back when I was driving people away by trying to impress them. Common skills are common because people need them, because they’re genuinely useful. There might be a whole club dedicated to your art, but that’s because your art creates something people can use everyday. It’s not just that I don’t want to seem arrogant, I also don’t want to seem like I don’t appreciate what you can do. Like I take your skill set for granted.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that you can compliment me without insulting yourself?”

Juan started to say something, but froze halfway through the first letter of whatever word he was planning to start his sentence with. He pressed his lips together.

“Has it ever occurred to you that you could compliment me without insulting yourself?!”

“It is entirely possible I am only this good with numbers because my brain isn’t storing any other information,” he said, quietly.

Mirabel snorted, gently swatting his arm before taking her hand back, “I wouldn’t say it isn’t storing any other information, you seem to have a good memory.”

He nodded slowly, “Sí, all the better to remember every time I’ve embarrassed myself.”

“Everybody embarrasses themselves,” she said.

“Name one time you’ve embarrassed yourself.”

“Only Madrigal grandkid without a gift.”

“That doesn’t count, at worst it’s because that candle was a moron,” he waved her statement off. She giggled at the idea that a candle could be stupid, but decided she didn’t want to get into the whole miracle thing at that moment.

“I fall off of things a lot,” she said.

“Oh please, you-. Huh. You do, don’t you?”

“I really do.”

“That does make me feel a little better,” he gently nudged his shoulder against hers, “I mean, if even the great Mirabel Madrigal could fall every once in a while.”

“The great Mirabel Madrigal,” she scoffed.

He shrugged, “You have accomplished 30% more in your time on this earth than everybody else in the village. Except your Má and Abuela, of course.”

She felt her cheeks burn, “What? I have not. How would you even-?”

“Calculate it? Simple, an accomplishment is anything that takes work, and one is proud of when they’ve achieved it,” he said, “so a lot of your embroidery projects count as accomplishments. I am also counting giving birth and raising the child to adulthood as accomplishments (which is why your Má and Abuela are beating you). And that’s the sort of accomplishments that most people in the village have. But you’ve also modernized Encanto’s school curriculum, gotten new books for the library for the first time in decades, created a system where people can privately ask for help when they’re struggling to make ends meet, and now are setting up a new town government. Keep in mind, of course, that each of these accomplishments come with additional sub-accomplishments that must be accounted for-. What? Why are you smirking at me like that?”

“Nothing, I just had no idea you were paying so much attention to me,” she said.

“I’m not,” he argued, blushing, “not anymore than anyone else is.”

“Oh please, my own sister doesn’t keep track of all my projects like you apparently have,” granted, that was mostly because Isabela had gone from planning her wedding, to being pregnant, to being a new mother in very quick succession. All things that tended to monopolize a person’s attention. But still.

“That’s-. Adelaide talks about you a lot.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. Really. Of course she does, you’re one of her favorite people.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Oh. Yes, really, she thinks you’re pretty great,” Juan said, “I know she can be really quiet but uh, if you get her one on one she tends to open up a bit more. Whenever we’re working on some astronomy project she talks about you, Josephine, Suzane, and Katrina a lot.”

“Huh, I had no idea,” Mirabel idly picked up the handkerchief and continued working on it, “I actually have been meaning to spend more time with her, anyone that gets along with my Tío Bruno has to be interesting.”

“Ay, she never shuts up about him,” Juan chuckled, “to hear her tell it, he’s the second funniest person in the village.”

“Whose the first?”

“I’d like to say me, but honestly, I think it’s whoever she has a crush on,” he shrugged, “but neither she nor Josephine will tell me who that is.”

“Ah,” Mirabel nodded. She didn’t have anything else to say, so she just kept sewing. After a few seconds, Juan picked his pencil back up and kept calculating.

He ended up staying for dinner, where he barely said a word. He seemed perfectly content to sit next to her in silence, listening to the conversation around him, but not adding anything. Considering that Tío Bruno was sitting on her other side, doing the same thing, it made it easy for Mirabel to dip in and out of the conversation without seeming rude.

When he left, Mirabel handed him the handkerchief. He stared at it with something bordering on awe.

“It’s just a handkerchief,” she said.

“It’s a Mirabel original,” he argued.

“You came up with the words.”

“You made them better, smoother,” he read it out to her, “May my pride never be worth more to me than my word.”

“That’s basically what you said.”

“I’ll keep it on me at all times,” he said, “can’t promise I’ll use it, but I’ll probably look at it twenty times a day for at least the next year.”

“I didn’t make it so you’d look at it,” she shook her head.

“Maybe not, but one does not wipe their brow with the Mona Lisa.”

That had been too much praise for Mirabel, face burning she had wished him a good night and fled back into the safety of Casita.

—

“You are never allowed to make fun of me for Bubo again,” Isabela said in way of greeting, pushing Mirabel’s door open without so much as the notion of knocking.

“Oh, hello Isabela! Please, come on in. No, no, no, don’t worry about knocking,” Mirabel said sarcastically, not looking up from the flowers she was embroidering, “I don’t ever want privacy or anything.”

“Seriously, the bean guy? You’re dating the bean guy?” Isabela asked.

“Still better than marrying Bubo,” Mirabel grumbled, “and I don’t know yet. He’s nice, but I’m not sure if, y’know, he likes me because I’m me, or because I’m a Madrigal.”

Isabela paused, then sighed, chuckling ruefully, “That right there is exactly why you’re not allowed to judge me for being with Bubo. She- He loves me for me. For the parts of me I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to share with the village.”

Mirabel’s hand froze, reluctantly she admitted, “As annoying as his machismo is, I do like how happy he’s made you.”

Isabela glanced at the open door, then closed it, “The machismo isn’t real. I- he’s not like that when he feels like he doesn’t have to be. It’s like how I used to try to be perfect, y’know; there’s more to him than he pretends there is.”

“In that case, can you tell him to knock it off? Or at least pick a different facade?” Mirabel huffed. Bubo had been getting better, calming down, acting more genuine. Mirabel had actually started to like her brother in law. Then his son was born and suddenly it was like somebody cranked the machismo up to eleven.

“I can try, but… let’s just say there’s a very specific reason he’s chosen this one.”

Mirabel made an unimpressed sound and continued sewing. She had figured something was going on, the way Bubo almost seemed to panic that one time Mirabel and Luisa had caught him with some of Isabela’s lipstick on his lips screamed Issues. But this family had gotten a literal crash course about why you needed to work through your issues rather than bury them, so Mirabel had a lot more patience for his pain than his pretenses.

“But seriously, the bean guy?”

“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet,” Mirabel repeated, “why?”

“Oh, because he’s downstairs with a gift for you.”

“What? Isa,” Mirabel hissed, hurriedly standing, “and you just left him waiting down there?”

“Oh he’s fine, I left him with Tío Bruno. They’re both kinda weird, I figured they’d have a lot to talk about.”

Mirabel rolled her eyes and rushed out her door.

In the courtyard below, Tío Bruno was struggling his way through a polite conversation with Juan, “What about plays? Do you uh, do you enjoy the theatre?”

“Um, one time I took a trip into the city to watch my favorite physicist give a lecture on his latest theorem,” Juan replied, “that’s sort of like a play, no?”

“No. B-but I mean! Uh. It um it sounds interesting?”

“Oh it was! How much do you know about light physics?”

“Um. Oh! Mirabel! Hola, you have a guest,” Tío Bruno stood abruptly, ignoring the loud crack of his bad knee, “he uh, he brought you math.”

“Math?”

“Adelaide said you might wish to see it,” Juan also stood, shrugging a little sheepishly.

“You’re friends with Adelaide?” Bruno asked, more like gasped. As if Juan had just revealed he had a third arm under his shirt.

“Sí, she has me do all her astronomy calculations for her.”

“Oh, ok. So that makes sense,” Tío Bruno said, putting a lot more emphasis on the word “that” than he probably realized. He looked between Mirabel and Juan a few times, then asked Juan, “What about fiction? Do you like fiction?”

“Not really.”

“And you don’t sew? Paint? Origami?”

“No, no, and no.”

“Hm, alright?” Tío Bruno glanced between them a few more times before abruptly walking away, “Bye.”

They watched him go.

“Adelaide said he wasn’t scary,” Juan huffed, “the liar.”

“He’s not scary,” Mirabel immediately jumped to defend her uncle.

“Oh sure, maybe not in the way everybody says he is, but I don’t think he likes me,” Juan shook his head, pouting just a little bit.

“Oh! No, that uh, that’s not what dislike looks like on him,” Mirabel shook her head, chuckling a little, “if he disliked you, he would have sat in the corner over there and stared at you, silently, until you got uncomfortable and left.”

“Like a grumpy cat?”

“Sí, but don’t tell him that, he prefers rats.”

“Wait, the rat thing is true?”

“Yeah, the rat thing is true.”

“I can see why Adelaide looks up to him.”

“Does she like rats?”

“No, she likes people who are nice to rats though,” he shrugged, “and spiders. And anything else people usually call vermin.”

“Ah, yeah, that’s Tío Bruno,” Mirabel chuckled, “anyway, you uh, you brought me math?”

“Oh, uh, sí,” he twisted and picked up a notebook he’d left behind on the couch, “it’s-, I uh, I calculated how much thread you’ve likely used in the past year.”

“What?” Mirabel gasped, surprised to find herself genuinely excited by that, “No way. How?”

“So you uh, told Adelaide how many spools of thread you used on her quilt, right? And she told me, and I wrote it down, and recently I measured the length of each stitch-.”

“Why?”

“Adelaide wasn’t giving me any numbers to play with,” he shrugged.

Mirabel giggled, “What?”

“She brings the quilt with her whenever we do astronomy club, right? Well, the other day we went out and she got really fixated on Saturn for some reason, but wasn’t giving me any data, so I got bored and started measuring your stitches.”

“Alright?”

“So, each of your stitches is about a fifth of an inch, and they max out at 2,000 stitches per square inch when you’re doing a full picture with shading,” Juan said, handing her the little notebook, “assuming you do the same amount of embroidery on each quilt, mind you, these are only preliminary calculations, for accurate numbers I would need to look at all of your projects in the last year, but! Using Adelaide’s quilt to calculate the amount of thread you use per square foot of cloth, factoring in that most of your embroidery is done on your own shirts and skirts, and keeping in mind that you sometimes do line art, or three dimensional things like your butterflies… about 1.5 thousand yards of thread.”

Mirabel gaped down at the notebook, slowly looking over the numbers, “I had no idea it was that much.”

“That’s honestly a very modest estimate,” he said, “I would need to go digging through your closet to get you a better number. Which would be a weird thing for me to do.”

She chuckled and nodded, but didn’t take her eyes off the little booklet of numbers, “Wow.”

“Yeah, so uh, that’s what I got,” Juan said, and when she looked up at him he was rubbing at the mole on his ear, “sorry to uh interrupt your Saturday afternoon with this, but Adelaide thought you might find it interesting.”

“I do! I absolutely do,” Mirabel answered, putting a hand on his bicep to reassure him, “thank you for this.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

She watched, almost contemplatively, as the color rose in his cheeks the longer her hand was on his arm. Lately, Mirabel found herself growing fond of his face, even if it was a bit nondescript. She enjoyed talking to him, and made time to stop and chat with him whenever she was in town. Mirabel had gotten in the habit of checking in with her feelings since Casita fell, and lately whenever she checked her feelings, there was a new affection for “the bean guy”.

“I’m working on your sister’s shirt,” she said, slowly pulling her arm back, “would you uh like to come up and sit with me?”

“I would,” he nodded, “if you don’t mind?”

“I wouldn’t ask you if I did.”

“Sí. Right. That makes sense,” he chuckled following her as she led the way to her room. When they got there he stared at the shirt and new embroidery, eyes practically glowing with admiration, then he nibbled on his lip and slowly reached for her measuring tape. After checking her face for permission, he measured a few of her stitches.

Mirabel withheld a laugh, and waited until he was done, then sat on her couch and continued to sew. He sat a respectful distance away from her, scribbling in his notebook.

She liked this. She liked the quiet companionship of working on their hobbies next to each other. She liked that she felt relaxed with him, calm, at ease, like she didn’t have to be Señorita Madrigal.

Mirabel’s parents had told her their love story a few times, as parents tended to do. When she was a little girl, she’d thought it was the most romantic thing ever. Her father had fallen for her Má first, his constant need of her arepas giving him plenty of reason to think about her. Her mother had fallen for her Pá slowly, starting when her Pá commented on a new recipe her Má was trying. It wasn’t even that he’d complimented it, it was just that he had noticed when nobody else did, that he had paid attention to the work she put in, not just the magic he got out of it. Eventually, they started dating. Then they decided to get married, only for Abuela to initially disapprove of the match. Abuela had since said it was the grace and maturity with which Pá handled the rejection that changed her mind. Abuela’s approval earned, they got married, and the rest was history.

As a child, on the very rare occasions that Mirabel had contemplated falling in love, she’d of course hoped to follow the template of her parent’s story. However, now that she was an adult, she knew that any man her mother disapproved of likely wasn’t a good man.

Now that she was an adult, she had very different thoughts about what she wanted. Not just out of love, but life in general.

Mirabel wanted kids, she wanted free time for her hobbies, she wanted a busy schedule, she wanted noisy family dinners, she wanted quiet Saturday afternoons. Mirabel wanted to help her community like her Má and Abuela, but she had long since discovered she didn’t actually enjoy being treated as a Sainted Madrigal.

Whereas Mirabel had once wanted somebody to see the parts of her that were special, now she found herself hoping for somebody that saw the parts of her that weren’t.

Was she being realistic? Ungrateful? When she was younger, she had done everything she could to feel like A True Madrigal. Now she was considered the quintessential Madrigal and she wanted to feel like Just Mirabel. Was it possible to achieve a balance of the two?

“You’ve sighed twenty-one times in two minutes,” Juan suddenly said.

“Oh, sorry,” she felt her cheeks warm up, “just thinking.”

“Anything that you wouldn’t mind sharing?”

“Um, I don’t know if-,” she cut herself off, she wasn’t sure that he would understand, but she knew people didn’t like being told that. Actually, most of the villagers didn’t like being reminded that the magic family they’d placed up on a pedestal was full of real people.

“Does it have to do with the new town government?”

“Heh, not this time. And I’m told that if I’m thinking too hard about all that, I start growling,” she said, a bit sheepishly.

“Hm, is it a family matter?”

“No, no, the family is fine.”

“Is it a people thing?”

“A people thing?”

“Yeah, you know, how most people all kind of suck a little,” Juan said, shrugging, “you work so hard to not suck, I’m guessing dealing with people who don’t bother trying to be decent is extra tiring for you.”

Mirabel let her embroidery fall into her lap, and stared at him, letting that sentence revolve around her brain until she had picked out the part that had made her feel a little warmer, she repeated it back to him, “I work hard to not suck?”

“Don’t you?” he asked, and it sounded like an honest question more than he was defending his statement, “I suppose you could have been born as decent as you are, the human brain is such a mysterious machine. It is possible you could be, for lack of a better word, hard wired to be kind.”

“I do work hard at it. I just-,” she paused, trying to figure out how to phrase what she wanted to say. Was it weird to thank him for assuming she wasn’t born a perfect paragon and had to actually try to be a good person.

He waited.

Mirabel watched him wait for her, watched him for any signs of impatience. There were none.

Finally, she said, “I was thinking about the pedestal my family is put on by some of the other villagers.”

“Ah, sí, that,” he nodded, “I apologize for that.”

“Why? You don’t seem to-.”

“I think I do though,” he shook his head, “I’ve been thinking about your response to my theory that people like you because of science. The way you very cruelly laughed at me, that is to say. On reflection, it’s more likely I have you on a pedestal because you’re so kind and talented.”

“Or because you have a crush on me,” Mirabel pointed out without thinking. She immediately grimaced.

Juan froze, then he got very red, “What? No I don’t.”

“Right, yep, sorry, don’t know why I said that,” she immediately said.

He didn’t respond at first. She watched him as his eyes zipped back and forth beneath lowered brows.

Juan suddenly stood and started pacing.

“I do not have a crush on you.”

“Mm-hm.”

“That’s-. No. No I do not.”

“Of course, we can forget I said that,” she said, but Juan was still pacing, scowling at the ground. Every once in a while, he shook his head.

Suddenly he stopped, “I don’t have a crush on you, you’re just especially pretty.”

“Um.”

“No, I know how that sounds, but hear me out,” he held up a finger as if asking for one moment, “You are an especially pretty girl, I am a young man. It is only natural that I would spend this much time thinking about you.”

“Right,” Mirabel said slowly, not wanting to argue with him.

He scowled again, paced a few more laps, then said, “And the reason I think about you more than any of the other pretty girls is probably just because you’re a more interesting person.”

“Juan,” Mirabel said, gently.

“I know how this sounds,” he said, again, “but that’s just-, that’s just a fact. You are one of the most interesting people in the village! You’re creative and witty and highly intelligent. That-. Those are all traits that make a person interesting. It’s not a crush, you’re just pretty and interesting.”

“Ok, ok,” she nodded, slowly standing. She hadn’t meant to give Juan some sort of crisis.

“It’s not a crush,” he insisted.

“No, of course not,” she approached him carefully.

He watched her, once again reddening, “This isn’t a crush, i-it’s just biology.”

“Uh-huh, biology,” she nodded, putting a hand on his shoulder, “would you like to sit back down?”

Juan stared at her for a few beats, then glared at his shoes and grumbled, “I bet every guy my age wants to kiss you. It’s normal.”

Mirabel couldn’t help it. She giggled. His eyes snapped up to her, brimming with betrayal.

“Sorry, sorry, I-. That’s just-. It was a nervous giggle,” she was only mostly lying.

“I’m making you nervous,” he gasped, horrified.

“No, this conversation is,” she clarified, “I don’t know how to respond to uh this.”

“To me not having a crush on you?”

“To you insisting that I’m pretty and interesting and you want to kiss me, but you don’t have a crush on me.”

“I know how it sounds-.”

“Do you?”

He frowned, then sighed deeply, “I have a crush on you, don’t I?”

“I think you might.”

“I am so sorry.”

“I wouldn’t have invited you up here if I minded.”

“Right.”

They stared at each other for a few beats.

“You touch me more than you touch other people who aren’t a part of your family,” he gestured at the hand that was still on his shoulder. With a small spark of surprise, Mirabel realized she liked how blunt he was, it made things easier.

“I know,” Mirabel said, then decided she would be just as blunt back, “I’ve been trying to decide whether or not I should date you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I would like it if you did.”

“I noticed.”

“Right, of course you have,” he sighed again and returned to the couch sinking onto it and putting his head in his hands, “how long have I had a crush on you?”

“I don’t know,” Mirabel shrugged, “at least since the fabric store.”

He groaned, but didn’t say anything. After waiting a while, Mirabel returned to the couch and picked up her embroidery. She worked on it while he sat beside her, apparently grieving.

“Right,” he slapped his knees and stood, “guess I better get to work.”

“Work?” she asked.

“On flirting with you,” he paused to pick up his notebook, “I have a crush on you, and apparently I have an actual chance of being with you, so it would be stupid of me to just sit here panicking.”

“Oh,” Mirabel blinked up at him, “I kind of like being able to sit with you while we do our own thing, though.”

“Oh, then I’ll work on it here,” he sat back down and flipped to a new page in his notebook, “just don’t peek.”

Mirabel blinked at him a few more times, then she giggled again, only this time it wasn’t a single giggle that managed to sneak past her defenses, but a whole army of them.

“Is that a good sign?” he asked, blushing.

“Sí,” she nodded through her laughter.

“Hm,” he nodded thoughtfully and scribbled something in his notebook.

When he did eventually leave, he first ripped out a page with some calculations on it and gave it to her. Circled at the bottom was an estimation of how much string she would use on the blouse by the time she was done with it.

—

The next time she stopped in the market to chat with him, Juan greeted her by saying, “I talked to my sister, she says I’ve had a crush on you since your quinceñeara. And also that I’m not allowed to grow out my sideburns until after her wedding. I will be disowned, and possibly dismembered, if I ruin the wedding pictures.”

“Oh,” Mirabel quietly filed away the fact that his crush apparently started back when she was still The Giftless One, then asked, “You’ve had a crush on me for over nine years and didn’t notice?”

“Mirabel, I can not emphasize to you enough that my entire personality is math,” he told her, very seriously, “I spend all day sitting around, thinking about two things, you and math. Usually a combination of the two, actually. If you do decide to date me, at the end of every date I will graph how much you laughed, or blushed, or calculate the odds that you enjoyed the main course more than the dessert. There is nothing else in here but numbers. Like a cup full of dice.”

Mirabel felt a grin slowly stretch across her face.

“I’m serious,” he said, “I mean, I’ll try to be romantic, but unless you think me making a spreadsheet about your favorite coffee mix-ins is romantic, I can’t make any promises.”

“Is this you trying to convince me to date you?”

“This is me trying not to disappoint the woman I’ve apparently had a crush on for a decade,” he said, then he huffed as if frustrated, “Can you believe I’ve had a crush on you for a decade and my sister never told me?”

“I mean, she probably assumed you knew,” Mirabel pointed out.

He shook his head, “No, she said she thought it was funny that I didn’t.”

“Ah, that-. Yeah, that’s the sorta thing Isabela or Camilo would do,” Mirabel reached over the counter of the bean stall to put her hand on his shoulder, “at least you know now.”

“It was a little easier to look at you when I didn’t,” he said, eyes skittering away from her as a grumpy pout pushed out his lower lip.

Mirabel found herself giggling a little.

“You promise that’s a good sign,” he double checked, sounding equal parts weary and wary.

“Sí, you’re-,” she stopped herself before she called him adorable, Camilo had made it very clear that most men did not like that, “charming.”

Juan considered this, then slowly nodded, “I can deal with that.”

“Señorita Madrigal,” a voice interrupted them, Mirabel turned to find Señor Rivierra waving her down, “do you have a moment to discuss the elections for city council?”

Mirabel bit her lip and glanced at Juan. She didn’t actually want to leave, but she did want to talk about the elections with Señor Rivierra.

“Go ahead,” Juan quietly said, “I’ll be here whenever you got a free moment.”

“I’m going to work on your sister’s gift at Lucia’s after the market closes, I know Jo and Adelaide will be there today, you should come spend time with us,” Mirabel invited him, “help me get to know Adelaide.”

“I would love that,” he smiled quietly, “I honestly can’t think of a better way to spend an evening.”

“Great, I’ll see you there,” she squeezed his arm, then drew back. As she walked away with Señor Rivierra, she kept finding herself looking back at him over her shoulder. He waved at her every time she did.

—

“Hey Má,” Mirabel walked into the backyard two days later, “you got a minute to share some motherly wisdom?”

Her Má glanced up from her herb garden with a bright smile, “Oh, I have all the time in the world for my brilliant daughter.”

Mirabel fondly rolled her eyes, although now that she had two nephews, Mirabel was beginning to understand the urge to gush over the kids in your life. Still, she good-naturedly groaned, “Má.”

“What? It’s true,” Julieta shrugged, clipping off a few more sprigs of cilantro, “come into the kitchen with me. Tell me what you need.”

Mirabel followed her mother and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. For a few minutes she watched her Má bustle around the kitchen, getting a soup started, it would seem.

“How did you know Pá loves you for you, and not for the whole Madrigal thing?” Mirabel asked.

“Oh, is this about Juan,” her mother threw her a somewhat sly smile, a teasing glint in her eye.

Mirabel bypassed the teasing however, “I’m surprised you know his name. It kinda seems like nobody does.”

Even Jo called him “the bean guy” half the time.

“He got tutored by your father when he was, oh gosh, ten years old perhaps. Your Pá was very impressed by his head for numbers,” Julieta grinned a little conspiratorially, “and he is dying to know if you two are dating.”

“I’m thinking about it,” Mirabel said slowly, “but I-. I want to be with somebody who likes Mirabel, not y’know, Mirabel Madrigal.”

“Hm, sí. You, as usual, are wise beyond your years,” Julieta shrugged a little rueful grin on her face, “I didn’t notice the difference between being loved for who I am and being admired for my gift until I had been dating your father for six months. I suppose I didn’t realize going into it that he saw me for me, it was only when we had our first fight and he was still just as in love with me afterwards that it clicked.”

“Your first fight, huh?”

“Sí, I have done my best to shield you from how petty I can be,” Julieta gave her a sheepish smile, “but you can ask your Tía about that. There was this one Christmas-, you know how hard it is to shop for your Tío Bruno, sí? Well, there was this one Christmas I had come up with the perfect idea for him, I told Pepa, and your lovely Tía stole it before I could get to the market. Oh, I was furious. And I did not handle it with grace.”

“What’d you do?”

“Well, first of all she stole the idea at the end of October, and I gave her the silent treatment until I had found a new gift,” her mother paused for dramatic effect, “half way through December.”

“No. Má, a whole month?”

“Sí, a whole month. And a half. Plus I cooked her least favorite foods for dinner every night, that entire time.”

“Má!”

“Like I said, I have a petty streak,” she shrugged, “and your Pá saw it but loved me all the same. He didn’t lay down and take it, mind you. He told me flat out if I treated our kids that way he would never trust me alone with them, but he didn’t love me any less once he saw my imperfections.”

Mirabel contemplated this. Weirdly, it reminded her of her recent conversation with Juan in the market, of the way he had tried to warn her flat out what he thought she might not like. She doubted the math thing would ever actually bother her, she was way more bothered about the way he still occasionally put himself down, but none of that was a deal breaker for her.

She tried to think about what parts of her might be a deal breaker for him, it was hard though, so far he had been so easy going she couldn’t imagine him getting truly annoyed by much of anything.

Her Má paused what she was doing to face Mirabel, “I know you’re not anywhere near being there yet, but when your Pá and I started thinking about marriage, I kept thinking about that conversation. About his conviction that he would protect you guys from me if I ever slipped up. At the end of the day, that was what I wanted most out of a husband. Not just somebody who loved me warts and all, but somebody who I could count on to hold me accountable when it came to our kids. Parenting is hard, nobody gets it exactly right, and having somebody who’ll carry the load with you is important.”

Julieta didn’t say it, but they were both thinking of how Abuela had been forced to raise her own children alone, and all the problems that had caused. More than ever, it was clear that Abuela loved her familia, however; nobody was perfect. She had had nobody around to make up for what she lacked, she had gone decades without anyone who could call her out on mistakes she hadn’t noticed herself making. And the triplets had suffered for it.

But, Mirabel realized, all of the work Abuela had put into making things up to the familia had demonstrated better than any hug how much Abuela cared.

So she didn’t need to be perfect, she didn’t even need to find somebody with whom she could be a perfect parenting duo. She just needed somebody who saw her imperfections, loved her despite them, and was honest with her when she made mistakes.

She hugged her mother, thanked her for her time and wisdom, then went up to her room and gathered some paper and pencils. Mirabel made it to the market just before close, and spent some time milling about, checking in with a few of the villagers. When the market closed and people started packing up, she approached Juan’s stall and waited patiently while he transferred all the beans into the storage shed.

“Hola, what can I do for you?” he asked, traces of his customer service voice lingering after a long day of work.

“I want you to teach me how to do your favorite formula, the quantum one,” she said.

Juan blinked at her a few times, then in a very calm voice said, “Marry me.”

Mirabel snorted and giggled, “I’m serious.”

“I kind of am too,” Juan said, shaking his head and laughing a little, “what’s brought this on?”

“I’ll explain after,” she shrugged.

“Alright,” he said slowly, then gestured for her to follow him, “uh, how much math do you know? Did you ever learn any calculus?”

“Um, no, I learned some geometry in school, some accounting from my Pá, and I’ve been learning some statistics for the whole town government thing,” she said.

“Statistics? How about we do that instead,” he held his front door open for her, “so you can actually use whatever you learn.”

“I didn’t bring my statistics book,” she pointed out, she’d thought she’d be learning some theoretical physics.

“I have a few, I’m guessing you’re trying to learn how to best interpret polls and stuff?”

“Sí, and to figure out when we need to add another school, where to put it, how to divide up the students,” Mirabel rattled off, “oh, and where to put the different polling locations to make voting as easy as possible for everybody.”

“Let’s do the polling location thing, I helped with the census you guys did a few months back, so I should have all the data we need,” he said, leading her down the hall to his room.

“Works for me,” she followed him into his room, pausing in the door to take it in.

She was not surprised to see the two floor to ceiling bookshelves either side his desk, each filled with titles like “Differential Calculus”, “All about Angles”, and “The Math of Divinity”. She was surprised to realize she recognized something in a picture frame by his bed. It was a little card she had made, one of dozens to be honest, she had passed them out at the end of her quinceñeara to thank guests for coming. Each one had been shaped like a butterfly, and she’d used yarn leftover from other projects to “embroider” the patterns on the butterfly’s wings. He had it displayed so that the card was open, the butterfly’s wings were spread. Quietly, she picked it up.

“Looking back, knowing what I do now, I think that butterfly is what got my attention,” Juan said, coming up behind her. She could feel his warmth at her back.

“Really? This?”

“Sí, it’s so simple, but so creative,” he said, “and you went through the trouble of making at least one for every family that came. It’s-. You’ve always been so good at striking that balance between being absolutely brilliant, and genuinely warm. At the time I… I would have given anything to do the same.”

“This was-. Back then I really wanted people to see me as being just as special as the rest of my family,” she admitted, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks. Even nine years after the fact she didn’t like telling people how much she’d hungered for approval.

“It worked,” Juan said, then paused, when she glanced at him over her shoulder he looked thoughtful, “at least, it worked on me. Although I think I’ve always assumed there was some reason you didn’t get a gift, some factor in the equation that hadn’t been revealed yet. It makes no logical sense otherwise.”

Mirabel sighed, nodding. Ever since the miracle had been reborn, an assumption had bubbled up among the villagers. She’d overheard two people discussing it shortly after the miracle came back.

“-with the way she’s stepped up, just like a mini Alma, it would make sense,” the woman who sold tea on Saturdays said, sitting in her stall at just the wrong angle to see Mirabel.

“I don’t get why the magic couldn’t just stay in the candle, though,” the man who was leaning against the side of the stall replied, not looking over his shoulders to see Mirabel right behind him.

“I don’t either, but what’s more likely? That the grandkid who takes after Dona Alma the most didn’t get a gift, but just so happened to have magic to repair the miracle as a complete coincidence; or, that she’s the miracle’s chosen successor,” the woman said, “I just hope we don’t have to build a new house every time the magic passes on.”

It wasn’t that Mirabel hadn’t considered it. It wasn’t exactly a huge leap. It was more a perfectly normal sized step. And she knew other people, including her Abuela, had reached the same conclusion. But her Abuela, her entire familia, approached it differently than the villagers did.

“I never should have gotten so caught up in the miracle,” Alma had said the morning after Mirabel’s twentieth, shaking her head, “if I had just taken a step back I would have seen it so much sooner. You have always been-.”

“You’re b-basically all the best parts of this family concentrated into a little ball of crafts and attitude,” Bruno had jumped in, holding his fingers together and squinting at them as if he was trying to read something on a tiny piece of paper, “it was such a shock that you didn’t get a gift, I-I think we just-. I dunno.”

Alma had given her son a fond smile as he shrugged and waved away the sentence he’d abandoned, they had been standing in the kitchen waiting for the coffee to brew, she eyed it as she spoke, “We couldn’t see the forest for all the trees. If I hadn’t allowed the miracle to define us so, I may have noticed sooner what an incredible young woman you were becoming.”

“There were a lot of things we shouldn’t and should have done,” Tío Bruno said, eyeing the walls that no longer held a secret corridor to his secret room, “but uh I guess if one of us had stepped up and done all that communicating stuff, we would have been the ones to bring the magic back.”

It was a small difference between “turns out Mirabel was special because she was chosen by the miracle all along” and “Mirabel was chosen by the miracle because it turns out she was special all along”. But it was a small difference that made a big impact.

Lately, Mirabel had been feeling closer and closer to her family, but just a little farther from the rest of the village. Lately, she had been put up on the same pedestal as the rest of her family, and she sort of missed being among the crowds.

But even worse than that, “It stings a little, that none of this worked. That all the hard work and passion I put into being creative and helpful never earned me any real respect. But that putting a doorknob in a door did.”

“What do you mean? This is impressive,” Juan reached around her to gently hold the part of the frame she wasn’t, “and people have always loved you. How-? I am honestly asking, respect must have been, I don’t know, how could they not respect you?”

Mirabel smiled, turning fully to look at him, “It isn’t that people didn’t like me, or that they looked down on me. They pitied me. I used to get things for free, not because I helped watch everybody’s kids, or because I played the accordion at so and so’s wedding, but because I was the only Madrigal without a gift. The good ol’ not special, special. Pity isn’t respect.”

“If they only respect you for the doorknob, is that actually respect?”

“I don’t know,” Mirabel shrugged, “this is-, all of this, the way people look at me now that they assume I have magic, the pedestal my family’s on, all of that, it’s been bothering me lately.”

“Only lately?”

“It’s slowly built up over the past nine years,” she admitted, “at first it was really nice to finally feel like ‘a real Madrigal’, and it took a few years for that to fade. When I turned twenty people suddenly started talking about me getting married and it made me think about what the rest of my life is going to look like. And over the past four years, well… it’s slowly sinking in that all this stuff is just going to be a part of my life forever now. I’ve spent so much of the past nine years solving problems, realizing these ones are out of my control is driving me a little crazy.”

“That makes sense,” he nodded, “that sounds pretty frustrating.”

Mirabel looked up at him, he wasn’t that much taller than her, it was entirely possible he was the exact height you’d get if you took an average of everybody in town. She examined him openly, and he stood quietly, letting her.

“It’ll be a part of my spouse’s life, and my kids’,” she warned him quietly, “the village does genuinely love us, b-but they love us as leaders, not as neighbors. Being with me means being seen as something a little bit other.”

Juan cocked his head, “I hadn’t considered that.”

Mirabel gulped, waiting to see what he’d say next.

“I will have to think about it,” he eventually declared, “but I suppose that’s the point of dating, isn’t it? To test out what a life together would look like.”

Mirabel shrugged, while shaking her head minutely, “I’m pretty sure the point of going on dates is to spend quality time together. At least, that’s why my parents do it.”

“Ah, I will keep that in mind,” he nodded, then he seemed to settle back on his heels, as if waiting for something. After a few beats, she realized he was waiting to see if she would talk about her thoughts and worries some more.

Mirabel really kind of hoped she was right about him. That this would work out and she’d end up with this quiet, kind of strange man who listened to her and admired her hard earned skills and bluntly spoke his mind.

“You uh wanna get started on this math lesson?” she prompted.

“I would absolutely love to,” he said, “here, sit, I’ll grab another chair and all the census data we need.”

The rest of the afternoon and evening was fairly frustrating for both of them. Juan never once raised his voice, grew snide, or implied she lacked intelligence, but she quickly learned that when he was annoyed he’d clench his jaw and sigh through his nose. On the other side, Mirabel struggled to grasp some of the more esoteric equations, but absolutely refused to just let him do the math for her, or even to let him move on to the next concept until she’d correctly explained what he’d just taught her back to him.

When they were informed dinner was on the table (and Mirabel was given a last minute invitation to said dinner), they packed up their calculations in tense silence.

Once everything was cleaned up, Mirabel put a hand on Juan’s arm to keep him from leaving the room. She took a few deep breaths and reminded herself why she put the two of them through this.

“Do you still have a crush on me?” she asked.

“Oh, after seeing how hard you’ll work to understand things, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you,” he said, but he was scowling, “however I never want to do that again.”

Mirabel chuckled, “To be honest, neither do I. But I kinda have to do stuff like this if I want to help our village.”

“Fuck our village,” Juan sighed, rubbing at his temple, “I don’t mean that, but also I do feel it. Deeply.”

“Yeah, I do too sometimes,” she also sighed.

“You are incredible, that sucked though,” he said, “I deeply admire how dedicated you are, that you didn’t try to cut a single corner, but I am dreading the next time we do this.”

“Well, at least this miserable experience has brought us closer together,” she laughed a little.

“Has it?”

After a split second’s hesitation, she stepped into his space and kissed him on the cheek, “It has.”

Face burning, she fled down the hall as calmly as she could manage. He caught up with her a few seconds later.

“On second thought, I am happy to do this again tomorrow if it means you’ll kiss me,” he informed her, voice light but matter of fact.

When they reached the dining room Mirabel was giggling.

—

Mirabel had just put the last stitch on the last flower on the blouse for Juan’s sister, when somebody knocked at her door. She put the blouse down and stood, walking over to the door and trying her best not to get her hopes up. When she opened the door it was just Camilo.

“Oh, it’s you,” she sighed, accidentally letting her disappointment leak into her voice. She hadn’t really seen Juan all week. He’d sought her out a few times after the math lesson, then suddenly stopped, but continued to light up whenever she stopped to chat with him at the market. Unfortunately, people were starting up their campaigns for city council, and she only had seconds to spare throughout her day.

Camilo, strangely enough, didn’t tease her for her obvious disappointment. He didn’t say anything. He just crossed his arms, leaned on the door frame, and stared at her, eyes narrowed.

“Did you need something?” she asked.

“The bean guy?”

“He has a name, y’know.”

“Sure, sure, sure. I’m sure he does. And you know? He seems real nice. But… why?”

“He’s a good listener, I like his sense of humor, we can relax togeth-,” Mirabel paused, then sighed, “he’s downstairs waiting for me, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but I left him with Tío Bruno, so they’re probably happy to talk about weird stuff together.”

“They are two different genres of weird,” Mirabel grumbled, pushing past her cousin. Sure enough, when she got downstairs, Tío Bruno was once again staring at Juan like he was a Swedish book of riddles.

“How about basket weaving?”

“Nope, just math.”

“Flower arranging?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Finger puppets?”

“Afraid not.”

“Interpretive dance?”

“Mm no, just math.”

“3D printing?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Right, yeah, I think it’s from the future. Sorry. Uuuh? How about making hedgehogs out of your handprint?”

“Like in school?”

“Sí.”

“Uh no, not since I was nine.”

Mirabel cleared her throat before Bruno could continue the interrogation. Juan was visibly relieved, while Tío Bruno turned to look at her, mouth screwed up in confusion. She tried to signal with her eyes that she wanted him to leave, but he either ignored or didn’t notice the nonverbal request. Mirabel sighed.

“Juan, just in time, I just finished your sister’s blouse,” she said, “would you like to come up and see it?”

“I-, sí, very much so,” he nodded, looking two parts eager and one part uncomfortable as Tío Bruno continued to examine the both of them.

“Great, let’s go,” she took his hand and pulled him towards the stairs as soon as he’d taken it.

Behind them, Tío Bruno muttered, “Weird.” in a voice that wasn’t nearly as quiet as he probably thought it was.

Mirabel rolled her eyes and was about to apologize to Juan, when she noticed Camilo was “casually” leaning on the rail between the stairs and her room. She glared at him while they passed, but he pretended not to notice. Mirabel pushed through her door and closed it, narrowing her eyes at Camilo as he strolled closer as if he just sort of happened to be wandering on over. The last thing she saw as the door closed was the Oh So Innocent look on his face.

“Are you sure your family doesn’t hate me?” Juan asked, as soon as the door was closed.

“No, Tío Bruno talks to you, that means he likes you,” she said, then turned to her door and shouted, “and Camilo is just a nosey asshole!”

“Yeah Bean Guy, don’t let it get to you,” Camilo called back, and if Juan wasn’t already looking so nervous she would have gone out and smacked the smarmy grin Camilo was definitely wearing off his stupid face. She glared at the door, then dragged Juan further into her room where Camilo wouldn’t be able to hear them.

“Anyway! Hola, how’ve you been,” she said, once she thought they were far enough from the door.

“Uh frustrated, to be honest.”

“Oh. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he shook his head, “but I’ve been working on something that I am not good at.”

That said, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a knit flower on a choker. It was Mirabel’s favorite shade of teal, with a yellow center and a green leaf. On the blue ribbon of the choker there were tiny maroon butterflies lining the top and bottom of the ribbon.

Mirabel gasped, “You made this?”

“Sí, it took me all week and Josephine had to stop by my place once a day to show me how to fix my mistakes. I had to redo the ribbon four times, but I’ve done it. I have made you a necklace,” he held it out to her, looking genuinely proud of himself, “I chose the yarn for the flower based on the fact you wear that shade of teal sixty percent more than any other color. Then I had Josephine and my sister help with colors to match it.”

Mirabel bypassed the choker to hug him. Well, technically she pounced on him, but she couldn’t think of any other way to express how she felt.

“Well, that’s a good sign,” Juan said, wrapping his arms around her, “right?”

“Sí.”

“Great! Would you like to be my date for my sister’s wedding?”

“Sí.”

“Even better,” he said, still holding her. He was warm, and delightfully sturdy. A part of her just wanted to stand there and rest against him for the rest of the day. She had a meeting with the city council candidates tomorrow to discuss campaigning rules and it would be nice to spend the day relaxing against him. However, she was pretty sure they should actually go on a few dates before she asked him to spend thirteen hours holding her.

Slowly, Mirabel released him, he took his cue from her and let her go. When they were far enough apart that she could see his face, he was grinning ear to ear. She smiled fondly up at him.

“Will you put it on me?”

“Oh, sí, of course,” he held the necklace up as she turned around and carefully put it around her neck, buttoning it in the back while she held her hair up out of the way. When she turned back to him he saw his hard work on her neck, and his grin got just a little wider.

Mirabel chuckled a little, “Feels really good seeing somebody wearing something you worked hard on, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, incredible, but uh, this is probably something I’m not doing again,” he chuckled a little sheepishly, “at least, not without your help. Josephine kept smacking me.”

Mirabel giggled at the mental image, “She can be very outspoken about her opinions.”

“Outspoken is one thing, but why’d she hit me?” he grumbled, shaking his head, then he perked up, “Anyway! You said you finished my sister’s blouse?”

“I did, come on,” she took his hand again and led him to the couch where she’d been working on the blouse. After double checking that the last stitch was secure, she took it out of the embroidery hoop and handed it to him. He held it up, eyes meticulously roving over every detail.

“Maybe I’ll just keep it, frame it in my room like the butterfly you made,” he said, not taking his eyes off the flower chain on the collar.

“Oh no you don’t, this is some of the best work I’ve ever done, I want to see her wearing it,” she put her hands on her hips, “now, what about her husband?”

“Her husband?”

“Sí, it’s a wedding gift, no? You’re generally supposed to give things for both the bride and groom,” Mirabel pointed out.

“Oh, uh, right. That guy.”

“That guy?” she snorted, shaking her head, “Do you not like him or something?”

“No, I do. But you know how it is, she’s my only sister, I guess I imagined a prince would swoop in and make her a princess,” Juan shrugged, sitting on the couch, “I like him, and I like seeing her happy, but I guess it just feels weird to see her marry a real person.”

“You have a brother, don’t you?” Mirabel asked, sitting next to him, “Isn’t he married?”

“Ah, sí, but he was married and helping his wife care for his in-laws at their place, by the time I was born, so he’s more like an uncle. Honestly, I’m closer to my sister in law than I am to my brother,” he shrugged, “but my sister. She was my first friend. It’s kinda sad, you know, seeing her move onto the next step of life. A step that involves her leaving our home.”

Mirabel smiled sympathetically but couldn’t offer anything more than a hand in his. Madrigals did not move out of Casita, people who married Madrigals moved in. She’s never had to worry about her siblings and cousins dispersing to the wind.

Juan sighed, and flashed her a bittersweet smile, “But you’re right, I should get him something too.”

“I can embroider something for him that matches,” she said, “what does he usually wear?”

“Hats,” Juan said, “he is always wearing a hat. He’s balding.”

“Hats, ok, I’ll make him a hat with a matching pattern on the brim,” she said, “do you know what his head size is?”

“No, but I know where he gets his hats, I’m sure if we tell the hatter that we’re making a wedding gift, he’ll give us any information you need,” he started to stand, “oh, if you don’t mind going right now.”

“No, not at all,” she also stood, “we should do this quickly.”

They left hand in hand and strolled their way down to the hatter’s shop, talking about their families and gifts and weddings. The hatter loved the idea of giving the couple matching clothes, and gave them a hat for free, so long as they agreed to put his name on the card. On their way back, they stopped for some coffee and a couple pastries. Then they spent the rest of their day sitting together on her couch. Her embroidering the hat, him calculating how much string she’d ended up using on the blouse.

In a year, they would have a small spat over whether that counted as their first date, or whether their first date was a week later when they got lunch together. The spat wasn’t serious, but Mirabel had been working on Juan’s gift with the later deadline in mind and was embarrassed it wasn’t finished. Meanwhile, Juan had gotten what he considered to be their anniversary engraved on the ring he’d gotten her, and he wasn’t sure how to explain that without giving away the surprise.

Ultimately, Mirabel let him win when he got down on one knee. She had found somebody who wanted to marry her even when she was being stubborn and sarcastic. That made her the real winner in the long run.

#encanto #mirabel madrigal #mirabel encanto #Mirabel Madrigal x OC #Mirabel x OC #not in the Love and Fury verse #Juan Madrigal #Almost called this one The Bean Guy

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