"Huh?" the petite girl singsonged, releasing Emil and the other boy's hands. "Who's this, Emil?"

It took him a minute to answer, looking me over and sending his bright companion a slight glare for her loudness. I, on the other hand, was grateful for her easy, light way of speaking and breaking the ice.

"Oh, this is my—This is Lukas," he explained. What had he been so hesitant to say? Brother? Friend? I nodded to the girl in hello.

"I didn't know you had friends," I said, a weak smile playing at my lips.

He ignored my jab, motioning to the peppy girl, then the silent boy. "This is Arielle—" She grinned widely, long eyelashes brushing the top of her cheek and her hand rising to give me a little wave. "—and Kaoru." Kaoru locked eyes with me for a moment, then glanced away, heavy brows hiding his eyes.

"Nice to meet you guys," I said, smiling with fake politeness. "It's always nice to see people looking out for Emil." He sent me a sharp look, like a child might give to an embarrassing parent. My lips turned up into a more genuine smile as he squirmed in the awkward air.

"Guys, why don't you go on ahead?" he suggested to Kaoru and Arielle, breath hanging in the air, a white puff in the dense coldness. "See you at the café? I haven't talked to Luke in a while." He sent me an understanding look laced with something unsaid.

"Okay, take your time!" Arielle bubbled, grabbing onto Kaoru's arm and pulling him away.

"At the café, huh?" I prodded once the duo was out of earshot.

"Shut up. I miss the coffee, and I figured we should talk sometime."

"Today's my day off." Wednesdays had been for the past three years.

"Oh, yeah," he muttered, obviously not having forgotten that fact. He moved right on, ignoring his mistake. "Should we sit down? It's so damn awkward standing here in the middle of the sidewalk."

"Yeah. Sure," I agreed, leading the way over to a roofed-in bench for people waiting for a bus. At least it kept the snow off of our heads, and it felt instantly warmer as we ducked underneath. Emil sat noticeably far away from me, so that we were taking up the whole bench with just the two of us. He stared at his feet. "I'm sorry," I blurted, my words forced. "I didn't mean to push you away. I still want to see you."

"Did Tino tell you to say that?" He was staring at me, eyes not widened in the slightest by my sudden confession.

"What—? No," I lied.

"Oh, come on." Emil laughed humorlessly, turning his head to watch a taxi chug through the slushy mess of a road. "Even if you mean that, you'd never say it."

"Well, I do mean it." My cheeks were turning pink—damn this stupid conversation.

He sighed. "Well, it's not like I want to avoid you forever either. You damn near broke my heart, Luke, but that doesn't mean I hate you." My chest suddenly felt lighter, and the snow falling at our feet looked like pieces of soft fluff instead of crystallized tears.

"'Damn near'? Were your feelings for me not as strong as I thought?" I smiled diabolically, leaning closer to Emil. He whipped his eyes towards me, shocked, and opened his mouth to speak. I interrupted him before he could begin. "Is there someone else you love, little brother? It's that Kaoru, isn't it?" I let out a soft chuckle at his blatant discomfort.

"What the hell, Luke?" he sputtered, pushing me away roughly, to the other side of the bench. "Of course not!"

"So it's the pretty, black one?" I pondered that, my smile not yet dimmed. "I always imagined you going for a boy, really."

"It's not! Shut up!"

As I started to laugh, and our banter faded, I felt as if nearly every worry in my mind had gone, leaving behind a white, snowy canvas splattered with only one problem.

One lean, messy-haired, blissful problem.

Mathias had one of those charming doorbells that gave you a little melody when you pressed your forefinger to the button, the sound muffled by the door. I heard some muted yelling, that might've been a "Berwald?" or a "Come in," I couldn't really tell.

When he opened the door, he was looking exhausted, his hair sticking up in every direction—more of a bedhead than I was used to seeing him with. His neon green pajamas were baggy and downright strange, the pants a light green with patches of sudden brightness that matched the sleep shirt. A pink scarf was wrapped around his neck, speckled with various other colours, to keep him warm despite the heat that was blowing onto me even as I stood outside. Also tied around his neck was a blanket, a rather ugly blue one with neutral tones swirled and patched in. It hung from his sculpted frame, flowing down his back to stop abruptly and dangle at his ankles, either tied there to keep it from shifting in his sleep, or to look like a "totally cool" cape.

I frowned deeply, raising an eyebrow. "What the hell have you been doing?"

An impossibly wide grin gripped Mathias's face, saying more than any greeting could.

I invited myself in, stepping over the threshold while secretly surprised. The sound of his fist hitting the counter snapped through my mind: sudden, angry, full of pain. The low, brutal growl of his voice last night didn't match up with the idiotic expression now contorting his features. I wandered into his living room, plopping down on the couch and making myself right at home. My shoes and parka hit the floor lazily.

He had chased after me, and was now standing in the doorway looking dumbfounded and thrilled. "Luke? What the hell?" he practically squealed.

"Thought we needed to talk a little," I murmured, covering my mouth with a hand to stifle my words a little. Although, judging by that Danish grin, maybe he was over it and there was nothing to be discussed.

The look on his face grew serious, fading down to an expression I didn't like seeing plastered on his features. "Maybe that's a good idea."

He sat in one of his puffy leather chairs, drawing his knees up close to his chest. Mathias plucked a little, black stuffed bear off of the arm of the chair, gripping it against his stomach. I tried not to stare or roll my eyes or call him an idiot.

"What do you think we should talk about?" he huffed into his knees. I refused to meet his eyes, because I might have exploded at just that.

"Seriously? Let's start with why you were so pissed off last night." I was already running low on patience.

"You..." Mathias's word trailed off as he thought of the right thing to say. "You aren't thinking of me at all, okay?" His tone was loud, but desperate and abrupt at the same time.

I scowled into my palm. "What do you mean?"

"The hell you think?" he nearly snarled, voice suddenly darkening and gaining tints of rage. "I can never know what to expect from you, Luke! You kiss me out of nowhere, reject me, then make a move and run away afterwards? What the hell?"

"You're really a mess today, aren't you?" I noted, looking him up and down. It's not like I was avoiding his questions.

"What?"

"It's two-thirty and you're still in your pajamas, Mathias. Take better care of yourself." He wrinkled his nose in confusion, unsure of why I was getting so suddenly off-topic. I was glad he hadn't caught on to my reason. "Go take a shower, and talk to me when you're done."

"No way! I'm talking to you now." He sounded like a whiny child, and resembled one too as he squeezed his bear more tightly.

"I can't take you seriously when you look like this, honestly." The roll of my eyes seemed to convince him that I was actually being serious. He addressed his bed-rumpled state, then stood up defeatedly.

"Don't leave," he muttered. As he passed, Mathias dropped the teddy bear into my lap, and I stared at it dumbly for a moment before looking back up to find him gone, sprinting up the stairs probably to shower as quickly as possible. Sure enough, it hadn't been a minute before the water started running. I couldn't stifle my grin at his predictability, so instead I gripped the stuffed bear and pulled it up past my chin, burying my face into the soft artificial fur. It smelled strongly of that generic perfume all stuffed toys seemed to wear, but also held a deeper, homier scent that warmed my insides until I was inhaling to the point where my nose got used to it.

It was a long moment of nostalgia, my mind frantically trying to remember where I'd witnessed such a scent before, before the memories came rushing back to me. Warmth and subtlety mixed with ale as my skin flushed unpleasantly, a strong scent as inescapable as the hand on my stomach, mixed into golden locks of hair that my fingers ran through and tangled in...

Mathias's cologne.

I tossed the bear to the floor mercilessly, letting it land face-first into the unyielding carpet with hardly a sound. I stretched out on the sofa, but my legs quickly became restless and I ended up flipping over onto my stomach, burrowing my cheeks into one of Mathias's pillows, but dammit, it smelled like him too.

Standing to relieve the stress in my knees, I wandered around the room for a few moments, pretending to be interested in the various knick-knacks and tasteless pieces of art on his walls. I was drawn to a shelf full of photographs, and it took me a long ten seconds to realize that they were all of either him, Berwald, Tino, Peter, Emil, or I. A pattern could be found instantly: Berwald always with the ever-cheerful Tino and Peter, Emil looking peaceful on his own or with my arm slung over his shoulders, and Mathias in the background of almost every single one, making a ridiculous face or giving one of us bunny-ears behind our heads. Several featured him and I, his grin annoying the hell out of me, or my hands pushing him away because he was too damn close. Those made me frown, because there wasn't one in which I was smiling.

No—I was wrong, there was one more picture, hidden on a shelf above my eye level, but probably right at Mathias's. I reached up, snatching the frame off of the finished wood to inspect it more closely.

I was staring past the camera, as if unaware I was being photographed, with my eyes alight and the corners of my mouth pulled up into a smile that gave my pale cheeks a bit of colour.

I briefly considered flinging it to the floor to join the bear. "Mean," a softly accusing voice huffed from behind me, starling me enough to whip around to look. An already showered and fully clothed Mathias was bending down to pick up his bear, then he held it gingerly in his hands, sending a harsh glance my way.

I skipped the apology. "When did you take this?" I asked him, making my voice as flat as possible as I held the frame up and wiggled it in the air for emphasis. He walked over and plucked it from my hands, his eyes sparkling as they saw the look on my photographed face.

A wide grin made him look like an idiot. "I love this picture," he said, and I scowled deeply. "This was from that day we all went sailing together, remember? You were kinda dreamy the whole time, but you looked so happy out on the water." The memory came back to me, fond and sweet with the scent of the ocean and the way Emil's hair had gotten wet with mist from leaning over the edge of the boat.

"Oh, yeah..." I breathed, my words lighter than the air.

"Anyways! Back to the matter at hand!" he called out as he set the picture back on its shelf, making my stomach twist. If he couldn't tell by all of my stalling, I really didn't want to talk to him, despite the need for it. I struggled for words, subconsciously taking a step back towards the wall. "Why the hell did you throw Anders on the floor?"

I swear I felt all of the blood drain from my body. "Anders?"

Mathias waved the bear in the air as an explanation. "Obviously the bear," he grumbled. "He's such a fragile thing, you can't just throw him."

"Shut up."

"I'm being serious—" he began. I rolled my eyes at him and he paused, looking me over. "Tell him you're sorry."

"Fuck no, I'm not talking to a stuffed animal."

Mathias moved suddenly, closing the few steps between us and leading me backwards with a soft hand on my hip, until my back touched the wall. His hands pushed against the wall on either side of my waist, pinning me in place without actually touching me. He pushed the bear—Anders —into my arms. His eyes bore into my own, intense and fearless.

"Tell him you're sorry for being a jerk, and acting like you guys had something special, and for throwing him away like he was nothing." The pain in his voice was evident, but he cleared his throat to try to hide it.

"Mathias..."

"He doesn't know what to think, Luke, he's confused and he really just wants to know what's going on in your head..."

"I'm sorry," I said to him, staring into blue eyes that shook slightly at my words, but began to shine with utter happiness and blinked a few times to make sure I was still there. "I'm sorry that I'm a jerk full of mood swings. And, well, the truth is, I really do think there might be something between us, okay?"

Mathias leaned foreward, planting a light kiss on my nose and making heat crawl underneath my skin.

I shoved the teddy bear into his face, pushing it away from mine in a rush of black fur and softness. It fell back into my arms after he fumbled with it for a minute. "But you'll just have to deal with me as I am."

"I think I might be able to do that," he replied, smiling too widely and in the goofiest way possible. He paused before continuing, his eyes skimming across my hairline, down to my blonde bangs, my eyes, the curve of my jaw. "Because I lo—"

"You're annoying, Anko." In the passion of our sudden kiss, my hands became preoccupied with balling into fists and gripping Mathias's shirt. Anders fell to the floor.