author!anon here and thank you so, so much for this lovely response!!! I may have read over it half a dozen times and I am so relieved that the story is working and the elements I've been trying to communicate are coming across. A lot of the fun in this pairing (and this au) for me comes from playing these two's ideological difference off of each other and exploring the questions that the show left unaddressed. They're so incredibly different and it's interesting to throw them together and see what happens. I am just so glad everything seems to be working.

Thank you again for your incredible reply! It really made my day when I saw it.