literally one of my favorite romance tropes of all time is character a is a really notorious gang leader/well known feared ruler of some kind etc and no one dares cross them or talk back to them etc because they won’t make it out alive but character b can literally get away with saying whatever they want and everyone knows it’s because they have character a wrapped around their finger and character a is gentle with character b and everyone wouldn’t dare laying a finger on character b because then character a would literally chop their head off
bonus points if character a is normally extremely serious (aka no sense of humor) but when character b makes a joke or a witty comeback they will actually smile and even laugh sometimes and all the other characters are just like ???????