They should maybe do a smooch

Bickering.

For me, it depends on what kind of stories you're hoping to tell with the pair? Ollie and Marie were designed to kick butt and bicker, while a combination like Delkhii and Jesse were meant to be the comedically serious, deadpan types.

Contrasting dynamics work really well, especially if the pair in question deals with a wide range of badfic.

...and now they're best friends! With a little bit of healthy teasing, too, of course.

Eledhwen and Christianne alternate who’s sunshine and who’s grumpy (though most of the time people assume it’s Christianne because she’s the standard veteran snarker kind of agent). It’s incredibly dependent on the context, but it keeps the two balanced, and lets them help each other when the other really needs it — a calming influence when one gets into a homicidal rage, a helpful hand when one of them gets a PTSD flashback, etc.

Liu Siyuan is grumpy. Mostly. He does well with sunshine people, even if most of the time he’s complaining about them.

The Disentangler and the Agent are both varying shades of sunshine, but that’s because they’re Time Lords in the DIC and don’t really do much assassinating; they’re really here to see the Multiverse. Allow your character backstories to inform how they react to HQ and you’ll figure out the dynamic from there.

Enter the boke-tsukkomi dynamic. It's a kind of comedy in which one side of the duo makes silly statements and actions (boke) and the other constantly acting annoyed and making correcting statements, sometimes resorting to mild violence (tsukkomi). It can play out in a PPC setting; say, an agent's life is hard enough exposed to cringe without having to keep shouting at their common sense-deficient partner as well.

You need to remember what Agents do and how to do it. Their job is to make the reader laugh, and the way to do it is to have them contrast just enough to where they bicker hilariously, but not so much that they wouldn't realistically work together.

Examples: Jock and the nerd, rookie and the veteran, by-the-book and devil-may-care operators. The crazy one and the "sane" one.

You need to keep in mind that these should be characters more than just one trait or they'll get tired quickly.

Let's follow an example, my own Agents (who have yet to appear in a Mission yet - but I'm drafting it now so that I can post it immediately once I get permission.)

Noman is the veteran, the jock, the by-the-book one, and whether he's insane or not is a gigantic mystery. He's far more clued into the weirdness of the PPC than his partner and can roll with it easily. He tends to deliver the punchlines of jokes. He introduces Winfrey to the world.

Winfrey is the nerd, the rookie, the devil-may-care unorthodox operator, and whether she's insane or not is utterly baffling. She relentlessly attempts to systemize and understand everything as a scientist. She usually serves as punchline fodder and the audience often experiences the world through her eyes.

Examples my style thus far are in the Hunger Games thread, where Winfrey relentlessly systemizes objects and bores everyone to tears around her (often getting interrupted for the sake of a gag), and Noman blames nebulous forces for things not going his way (oftentimes blaming it for the sake of comedy). Another example is in my Permission slip, where Noman introduces Winfrey to the PPC, and Winfrey's attempts at rationalizing it blow up in her face - sometimes literally.

Remember! They must not be too similar because if they are, their reactions to the badfic will be identical and you'll just repeat the punchline.

1. They work well together. Most comedy, thusly, comes from the badfic/reactions to the badfic.

2. Opposites (not necessarily exact opposites). This pair tends to more rely on the agents bickering with each other as well as badfic reactions.

An example of number 1 is Ix and their partner (who's name I do not trust myself to spell in this half-asleep state). An example of nunber 2 is Derik and Earwig.

Those are the two that most agents pairs fall into, to my knowledge, and tend to work the best. Number 2 is good if you can write arguements funnily, but if you can't, then number 1 is your best choice.

-kA, who is half-asleep and apologies in advance in case typos appear.