It was bewildering enough to hear that yes, there was a Queen, and she owed Declan a favor. Just. What. And Declan’s self-esteem was still as rocky as it was? Mac being obsessed with the prince(?) barely fit in as an afterthought.

Then Declan started going on about weapons. Aoba wouldn’t have been able to say just where exactly Declan fell on a scale of ‘thorough’ to ‘passionate’ about the subject, given how he was able to launch into such a vast description of items as he was, but the one thing he could say for sure was that he himself was totally lost.

“I-I’ve never even held a gun, much less fired one!” he exclaimed at the end, waving his hands in a ‘wait, wait’ gesture. He was still in Declan’s lap, too, being too stunned by the monologue to move in the meanwhile. “I’d probably shoot myself in the foot if I tried—or worse, yours!”