Canon: Remove if not applicable.The condensation from the paper cup’s lid dripped onto Finral’s fingers when he picked it off. He rubbed his hand against his shirt, and put the lid on the stone beside him.
Finral sat perched on the stone wall right beside Jacob’s Ladder, looking down at Jamestown down in the valley and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. As he took a sip of his coffee, he spotted somebody moving up the stairs. Which wasn’t really weird; the stairs were not only a tourist attraction, the locals used them as well. Finral did too, five days a week, on his way to and from work down in Jamestown.
He had eaten about half of his sandwich when the person coming up the stairs stopped only a few steps below to look up at him with a scrutinizing look. “You’ll catch a cold on a rainy day like this.”
“It stopped raining already so it’s fine. Hungry?” Nozel looked at the half-eaten sandwich that Finral was offering him with an utterly unimpressed expression on his face. He continued up the stairs. Finral was half-surprised when Nozel actually took the sandwich without another word when he passed him. One never knew the exact reaction to certain things, with Nozel. Finral supposed that knowing a guy for half your life through family connections and then dating said guy for half a year didn’t change that. “I guess that’s a yes. I still have some coffee and a cooldrink, if you want some.” Nozel leaned against the wall beside him. He hummed, and accepted the paper coffee cup with his free hand. Finral twisted the cap off the bottle, but it was putting up some resistance. It was probably a bit more difficult because his fingers were a bit stiff in the evening chill.
“Did you grade tests until now?”
“Yes. Didn’t the nursery close a while ago?”
“Mmh, it was cleaning day today.”
“I see. Have you had dinner yet?”
Finral looked between the secondary school teacher’s face and the paper cup in his hand. “Sort of?” Nozel sighed, and Finral continued. “We had cake today, so I’ve already eaten more than I usually do during a day.” So his dinner was the convenience store bought food that Nozel just finished for him.
“Cake?” Nozel looked toward the ocean and the sky for a moment, then back at Finral. “Right. It’s your birthday.” As if he didn’t know that without having to think about it.
“I’ll make you dinner then.” Finral blinked at Nozel, surprised. “I have some crabs at home anyway.”
“....You have crabs at home.. Who just happens to have crabs at home…”
“Solid and Nebra visited during the weekend. It’s just leftovers. Are you coming? Or do you have anything planned with your roommates or friends?”
“I don’t, everyone are busy.”
“What a sad life you lead.”
“I already know that, you don’t need to rub it in.”
Nozel pushed away from the wall, crumpling the sandwich wrapper and dropping it into the empty cup. “I’m not. I’m going home.” He turned and went to drop the cup in the trash bin. “You can sit there all night if that’s what you prefer.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t—Hey, wait—” Finral stumbled when he jumped back down on the ground to follow Nozel. He stuffed the bottle into his bag as he hurried his steps, so he could walk beside him. “You almost never say what you actually want.”
Nozel glanced over at him.
“Why should I do that when it’s you who’s turning a year older?”
“Turning older is something you do over the course of a year, it doesn’t happen suddenly.”
“Don’t try to sound wise. You’re still only 21.”
“22. And you could have called.”
Finral smiled cheerfully at Nozel. Nozel looked away.
“And you could move out of that shared flat.”
“You know I’m not ready to face your siblings’ reactions yet, right? They’re a bit...intense.”
“And your brother isn’t?”
Finral ignored that comment. It was his birthday, he could do that if he wanted to. Thinking about Langris didn’t exactly put him in the best of moods. “Except Noelle, she’s a sweet girl. Speaking of Noelle, you need to work things out with her. It’s not like you want there to be a bad relationship between you, right?”
“That is none of your concern.”
“I’m your boyfriend, so it is. Anyway, she doesn’t want to have a bad relationship with you either.”
“And your relationship with your brother?”
“You know I keep trying. Stop poking me.”
“Only if you stop poking me.”
Don’t poke a sleeping dragon, was it? “...Only because I’m so nice.” Finral reached out to take Nozel’s hand in his, and he saw Nozel pass a glance over at it. “You know you can call even when there isn’t anything particular you want, don’t you?”
“Such commitments is not something I’m ready for yet.”
Finral caught a doubtful look toward him. “But you have no problem asking me to live with you. Isn’t that contradictory?”
“No,” Nozel’s fingers bent around Finral’s hand. “It’s complicated.”
“So complicated that you can’t even call just because?”
“I was not raised to do things simply just because.”
“Neither was I. But you can learn things in other ways than from your upbringing. As a teacher, shouldn’t you know this? I know for a fact that I had to teach you how to use a vacuum cleaner.”
“Practical matters suddenly count?”
Finral grinned. “It counts when you make faces like that.” He pointed at Nozel’s face. He was making a disgruntled, embarrassed expression, that Finral found absolutely priceless.
By foot, it was over three quarters of an hour to Nozel’s home from Jacob’s ladder. Include the time it took to walk up the 699 steps and walking to it from the school that Nozel worked at, Nozel would have to walk for over an hour in one direction. He had a car, but he didn’t use it unless he had to. Finral, who lived along one of the streets attached to Cow Path, only had to walk about half the amount of time to get to or from the stairs; though it took about the same amount of time from his job at the nursery to the bottom of the stairs as it did for Nozel.
Nozel lived in a two bedroom bungalow. The extra bedroom was used as a guest room, and was where his siblings slept when they stayed the night. Which they didn’t actually need to do because their childhood home was located further in on the island and was much bigger.
In Nozel’s bathroom, there was a tub. And in the tub, Finral found out when he went to use the toilet, there was a bucket with several crabs in it. And on the toilet seat there was another crab, Finral discovered.
“Oh, you think it’s funny?” He huffed at Nozel, who indeed was amused once he realized why Finral had made the surprised and somewhat scared and definitely startled noises that he made, when he saw the crab sitting on the pale blue porcelain lid. “Maybe I’ll put one there so when you’re going to the toilet in the middle of the night, you get scared by it— looking at me like that isn’t going to help you.”
“I’m not looking at you in any particular way.” Which was bullshit, sort of. Nozel smiling made Finral weak in the knees and Nozel knew that. (Though Finral knew that Nozel was weak to his smile, too.) “Besides, you look like you don’t even want to go near them.”
Finral backed away and his back hit the door frame, when Nozel picked the crab up from the toilet seat and put it back in the bucket with the others. Another one had crawled into the tub and had fallen onto the floor. “When they’re alive they’re sort of… creepy.”
“They’re not spiders.” Nozel picked up the one that was trying to flee the room. “And they’re not poisonous.”
With a shudder — ugh, spiders — Finral shook his head. “That’s not the point.”
“Mmhm, it’s got nothing to do with it. You can get dry clothes from my closet.” Nozel had already changed, it was what he had just been finishing up when Finral met the toilet-crab, but Finral was still wearing clothes that were partially damp, particularly at the collar and cuffs. Finral took that as a chance to flee the bathroom and hide in Nozel’s bedroom to dig through his clothes for something to wear, for a little while. He would use the toilet when the bathroom was crab-free.
He emerged from the bedroom, in a dry sweater and jeans, and after a quick peek into the bathroom which was blessedly animal-free and a toilet break, he joined Nozel in the kitchen. It never stopped being weird to see the man cook. Nozel still seemed amused by Finral’s continued reluctance to be close to the crabs while they were still alive, but once they were being cooked and Nozel shifted his attention — he was a very good kisser — his amusement was forgiven. Plus, he was cute when he looked like he was suppressing a smirk. (Mr. Yami once said that any expression besides deadpan made Nozel look constipated, but he was definitely wrong on that one.)
“They’re still creepy,” Finral felt like he had to point out while they ate the crabs (Leftovers? There were too many of them to simply be leftovers. How bad could a person be at expressing themselves…) and it was probably Finral’s expression that almost got Nozel to laugh. Finral’s response to that was “Damn, you’re adorable” which seemed to make Nozel a bit embarrassed.
Yup, definitely adorable.
The best birthday present a guy could get was those unforgettable expressions that the person they love make, right? That, and lots of kisses, particularly when one likes kisses as much as Finral happened to do. Particularly today, through Nozel actually liked them too, Nozel was happy to give him lots of them.