Work Text:
“You know what I've been wondering about for a long time?”
Zelos glanced over his shoulder, watched Lloyd approach slowly before taking a seat close by him on the steps outside the inn. They were a bit snowy, and it would probably soak through his clothes, but if he minded, he didn't show it. There was a certain look on his face that immediately made Zelos worry. He never made that face unless he had something really serious to say.
Needless to say, Zelos didn't like it. He prefered it when Lloyd was laughing, hated it whenever they slipped into one of these uncomfortably tense moments out of the blue. Despite that, he was curious. The swirling feelings he had stored in his chest made him apprehensive to hear whatever it was Lloyd had to say, but his dangerous curiosity won out.
“What is it, hunny?” he asked, leaning in to close the space between them, nudging his shoulder against Lloyd's.
He brought up his gaze, the serious expression persistent on his face. Zelos felt himself instinctively take a breath under the intensity of it and hoped that he was able to maintain his smile. Lloyd was good at seeing through him, and he didn't want him to realize how nervous his sudden attitude was making him.
“Do you remember the last time we were here in Flanoir?” he asked.
Zelos felt his eyes scanning his face, as if they were searching for traces of the memories they shared from that time. A nervous sweat broke out beneath his headband as he remembered how it felt to finally tell someone about his childhood. That time, when Lloyd listened to him and told him how much he was needed, he felt himself falling deeper into a thing he knew he would have difficulty escaping.
Lloyd was always an oblivious idiot, just like himself. Still, after everything, they'd spent an awful amount of time together, and he was shocked that Lloyd hadn't noticed the way he felt.
He nodded, pulling his eyes away from Lloyd's. “Yeah. That was kind of a weird time for me. That was right before I...”
Those memories brought back all kinds of feelings. Lloyd made him feel so accepted, but then he turned around and did such a horrible thing to everyone, handing Colette over to Yggdrasil like that. If Lloyd still felt a need to tell him off for the things he did back then, he couldn't blame him. He deserved a little more reprimanding.
“Forget about that,” Lloyd said, leaning dangerously close, trying to force him to look at him again. He succeeded. “That's not what I was going to ask you about. I mean... I think I figured it out on my own some time later, but when we first stopped to look at the ice sculptures together- You remember now, right? When we were here, there was something you wanted to say.”
Zelos stared, aware that his smile had vanished, aware that there was probably a visible layer of nervous sweat covering his face as Lloyd came closer, saying things like that. His mind became a pure white blank as his head spun, trying to puzzle out what it was that Lloyd thought he'd figured out. He couldn't tell which one of them was misinterpreting the atmosphere.
Right when he was ready to stop trying... There was no way that Lloyd had finally noticed.
“I, uh...” He paused and gave himself an internal kick for sounding so uncool. “O-of course I remember!”
Lloyd's eyebrows twisted skeptically. “You sure? I don't want to go drudging up unpleasant memories from the past if you don't want to talk about it, though...”
“Unpleasant?”
“You know. When we looked at the sculptures together, I realized later that you were probably going to tell me about what happened with your mother. But if that was all it was, then 'someday' came a lot quicker than I had expected. I'd been really curious about what you were going to say. It's probably stupid to ask now, but I always thought there might have been something else you were going to tell me.”
If he were being completely honest, Zelos really couldn't remember everything he wanted to tell him back then. There were a lot of things he had been feeling, and there were a lot of things he had been hiding from them that he wanted to get out. There was something he was still hiding from him, but he couldn't rightly remember if that had already been on his mind at that point.
It could have been. And maybe Lloyd had been more perceptive than he'd realized.
“What if it was just something stupid and unimportant?” he asked, trying to get him to believe him.
Lloyd looked predictably unconvinced. “Don't tell me you forgot,” he said, sounding disappointed.
It wouldn't have been a lie to say that he hadn't forgotten. He'd just misplaced the memory a little. If he tried to make up something to avoid the truth, he knew that Lloyd would have been able to tell that he was lying, so he had to find something to tell him that would satisfy his curiosity.
“I don't remember what it was, exactly,” he answered honestly.
For some reason, Lloyd looked surprised. “So it... wasn't something about your mother?”
At once, Zelos felt both relieved and a little disappointed to realize that Lloyd really hadn't had anything else in mind. Maybe he was just as stubbornly oblivious as he'd always been, after all. He was perceptive enough to come up with that kind of conclusion, but he somehow managed to miss the feelings that Zelos's heart was all but screaming out loud.
“I might have been thinking about that. Just being here, watching the snow falling... I don't like it. It all makes me think about what happened that day, but I don't think I would have mentioned it then. We still hardly knew each other at that point. It would have been weird if I brought up something super personal like that out of nowhere, right?” he said, forcing a laugh.
When he looked at Lloyd, he was giving him that look again. Zelos dropped his gaze back to his gloved hands folded over his lap.
“If that wasn't it, then what was it?” he asked, his brows coming to a point. “We've come all this way together, but I feel like there's still something you're hiding from me.”
A cold wind picked up, blowing Zelos's hair off his shoulders, and he instinctively brought his knees up a little closer to his chest to keep himself warm. It might be happening again, he thought. He didn't want to have any more sore memories associated with the snow. It was supposed to be something beautiful, but the only thing he could feel was a cold, heavy weight settling over his heart as his lips struggled to find the right words.
Lloyd knew. He might not have known exactly what it was he was hiding, but Lloyd knew that there was still something that separated them. If Zelos opened his mouth and finally told him now, though...
Maybe it was better to tell him, to know whether Lloyd could accept him, even if he knew about the way he really felt. That would probably be preferable to harbouring something hopeless.
He looked up suddenly when he felt Lloyd's warm palm grip his shoulder. That face... The warmth that radiated from his gentle smile reached untouched places within him. If only he knew the kind of power that he wielded with a single smile.
It was enough to convince him to say something, at least.
“How about I tell you something else I haven't told you yet, then? Might that help satisfy your curiosity?”
He was really doing this. He already had one foot down this path. There was no turning back now unless he tried to convince Lloyd, once again, that he would tell him 'someday', but that wasn't going to happen. Lloyd's full attention was on him, looking at him with that faint, almost fond smile. A moment later, after saying what he had to say, Zelos hoped that that smile would still be there.
Zelos tried not to look away from him now. “Are you really sure you wanna know? What if it's something you don't wanna know?”
“I want to know everything there is to know about you,” Lloyd said confidently, making Zelos's heart leap to his throat. “I don't want you to feel like you have to hide anything from me. I want to be the person you can tell anything to.”
The smile on Lloyd's face and the hand resting on his shoulder made him feel like Lloyd was trying to tell him something himself. But this was Zelos's turn.
Suddenly able to forget about what might be if his words reached Lloyd the wrong way, he was finally able to say it. Looking at that face, trusting his belief in Lloyd, it came as easily from his lips as anything else he'd ever told him.
“I love you, Lloyd.”
Lloyd closed his eyes and the hand slipped from Zelos's shoulder, but the smile remained on his face. Zelos was sure he was pulling away from him, but the hand that had been gripping his shoulder found his hand and brought them down to rest between them on the snowy step.
“I thought so,” he replied simply; too simply for Zelos's liking. He wanted to know what else he was thinking. After a reveal like that, he knew that Lloyd must have had a lot of things on his mind.
“W-what do you mean?” he asked hesitantly. “If you knew, then why did you make me say it?”
He shook his head with a small laugh. “Hey, I didn't make you say anything,” he said, the playful sound of his voice easing Zelos's panic. “I didn't know what you were going to tell me, but I was being serious when I said that I want to know everything there is to know about you. I feel worried when I feel like there's something you're hiding. I don't want... I don't want to see you suffering by yourself again.”
“Lloyd...”
He looked so serious, his feelings very clear. Zelos instantly felt silly for ever having worried, realizing that Lloyd would have continued to trust and accept him even if he knew about the way he felt. Lloyd was just like that. That quality was what made him fall in love with him in the first place.
Throwing his arms around Lloyd's shoulders, he caught him off guard and sent them tumbling back against the steps together. Lloyd floundered, but Zelos held him tight and rubbed their cheeks together, cooing happily. “Oh, hunny! Only you could get away with saying such sappy, cliché things!”
“I-I'm trying to be serious, though!” Lloyd wailed, trying to pull him off far enough to fix him with a look.
When Zelos finally relaxed and leaned back far enough to look at him, he watched the color in Lloyd's face steadily turn a brighter shade of red until he looked as red as the tomatoes he hated so much. There was more he wanted to say, but it seemed that he was still struggling to get it out. No matter; Zelos knew. He didn't need to hear the words to understand that his feelings were reciprocated.
“It's alright,” he said, leaning in to rest his forehead against Lloyd's, closing his eyes. “You don't have to say it yet. You've already said more than enough to make me happy.”
Lloyd gave a relieved-sounding sigh and wrapped his arms around Zelos's middle, returning his embrace. There was something about the snow that made Zelos feel unsettled, but he had to admit that there was something beautiful about the way the fluffy flakes looked as they pillowed Lloyd's head.
He felt one of the cold flakes touch his cheek, but it vanished a moment later, snatched away by the warmth of Lloyd's lips.
“Sorry,” Lloyd mumbled embarrassedly. “I don't know the first thing about how to be romantic.”
“Funny you say that,” Zelos laughed, sitting up, helping Lloyd up along with him. “That's something we're going to have to learn together. That's another secret you've probably already figured out. I'm not nearly as good at this kind of thing as I pretend to be.”
Grabbing Zelos by the hand, Lloyd stood and pulled him onto his feet. Even when he was up, Lloyd kept their hands firmly linked. He watched as a shiver visibly worked its way up Lloyd's body, leaving him in a white, condensed breath. “I'm freezing!” he whined. He sounded like his regular self again, but when he looked up at Zelos, he could tell that there was something different there. Now Zelos felt certain that he was responsible for the fondness he saw in Lloyd's eyes.
“I know what we need,” Zelos said, squeezing Lloyd's hand as he led him away from the front of the inn. “I don't know about you, but this kind of serious talk always makes me hungry. What would you say to some hot food? My treat, of course!”
Lloyd turned to him with a genuine look of interest. “Do you really think I'd turn that down?”
“Of course not,” he cackled. “You're with me, after all! It's an honor to be chosen by the Chosen. Consider yourself blessed to have a date with me!”
“D-don't call dinner a date! We were going to have to eat soon anyway!”
With all of the butterflies he had fluttering around in his stomach, Zelos doubted he would actually be able to eat anything, but he also felt more relieved than he'd ever felt in his life. As long as Lloyd continued to tightly hold his hand, he had a place and a purpose in their mixed up, beautiful, united world.