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“66 percent on Rotten Tomatoes,” Linhardt mumbles, seemingly to himself. “Well, who cares as long as Brad Pitt’s in it…”
Ferdinand clears his throat. “Is he, ahem. Your type?”
“Eh, muscles,” Linhardt says, which isn’t really an answer, because Ferdinand can think of several other people with better muscles than the movie star. Including himself. But then again, that might just be the jealousy talking.
As soon as the movie starts playing on Netflix, Ferdinand sets his laptop down on the bed and settles next to Linhardt, who’s already begun to wreak havoc on the bag of chips Ferdinand had been desperately hoping he’d leave alone until at least twenty minutes in. As it is, Ferdinand simply sighs and gets a few for himself while the beginning portion plays. “Shame Hubert and Caspar aren’t here,” Linhardt says. “They’ll miss out on you screaming at all the jump-scares.”
“Th—I do not scream,” Ferdinand mutters indignantly. “I believe Caspar said he has already watched this, though, so perhaps it’s better he spend tonight with Ashe.”
He doesn’t mention that with only the two of them from their group, it means Ferdinand can very casually suggest using his bed instead of the couch in the living room as usual, and it also means Linhardt, who has no qualms whatsoever about personal space, can sidle up right beside him under the blankets. Because this isn’t important at all, of course. Absolutely not.
Ferdinand’s phone buzzes with a text, and he absently opens it while trying to see exactly what about Brad Pitt is so appealing to Linhardt before actually looking down at the message. having fun? is Hubert’s ominous text.
What do you want.
you should be thanking me right now. all cuddled up yet?
Linhardt takes that as the moment to shift even closer to him, long, unkempt hair swept over one shoulder and tickling Ferdinand’s neck, and Ferdinand shoves his phone back in his sweatshirt pocket. He’s left Hubert on read enough times that this is hardly going to affect the other man. “I’m not too sure about his hair,” Linhardt says, and it takes a long moment for Ferdinand to realize he’s not talking about Hubert. “Do you think it looks better short?”
“You… like short hair?” Ferdinand decides to ask.
“I didn’t say that.” Linhardt frowns up at him. “Hey. Are you even watching? You can at least appreciate Brad Pitt’s… wife. Or… ugh, what is her name?” He brings his phone out again to scroll through the cast list, and makes an appreciative little noise when he sees some other actor Ferdinand has no idea existed until now.
It’s not that Ferdinand doesn’t want to watch the movie—he, Hubert, Linhardt, and Caspar all share the same strange addiction to horror movies, especially zombie ones, usually because many of them are so terrible, they’re somehow good. But Hubert has to work an emergency night shift at his job tonight, and Caspar has a “date” with Ashe that Ferdinand knows means he isn’t going to be heading back home until much, much later. So Ferdinand, thoughts running a mile a minute, had impulsively asked if Linhardt would like to watch it with just him, and Linhardt had actually agreed.
So here is, unable to focus on anything but how warm Linhardt is next to him under the sheets.
“I am watching,” Ferdinand answers, redirecting his attention back to the screen. It looks like the zombies have just started attacking, though it’s not like he’s very sure—he hadn’t exactly paid much attention to the past ten minutes of it. “Hmm. Muscles? And long hair?”
Linhardt’s eyes widen. “Are you finally seeing the appeal? Wait, what do you think about the long hair?”
“I think…” Ferdinand squints at the screen. “I think he looks a little greasy.”
“I knew it.” Linhardt grins, although Ferdinand actually isn’t sure if that’s the right word for it—it’s more of a smug little smirk that reveals teeth, and, well. Ferdinand might be a little endeared by how wicked it makes Linhardt’s usual placid expression look. Just a little, mind you. “I should be a hairstylist or something. Whoever they hired for this movie clearly didn’t know what they were doing.”
Ferdinand tries to imagine Linhardt as a hairstylist, and can only come up with the mental image of him falling asleep on the set and needing someone to pour cold water over his face to wake him up. “I think you should stick to your current job.”
“What… you’re no fun, Ferdinand.”
Like in most movies they watch, Linhardt keeps up a low running commentary (“Oh, hm, this isn’t such a bad way to show how they turn into zombies,” followed not two seconds by, “Aha, I already know where this is going, they aren’t subtle at all”) while Ferdinand gets absorbed into the story, despite himself (“No! Not the Subway Sam!” and then a sigh of relief once Brad Pitt scoops the doll off the street). If Hubert were here, he would be tapping away on his phone and only glancing up every now and then whenever someone is getting killed on screen, while Caspar would shout and cheer at every action scene. In Ferdinand’s humble opinion, those two have no taste whatsoever, but that’s not his business.
The first splatter of blood has Linhardt immediately cringing away, though, and Ferdinand is hardly even thinking when he grips onto Linhardt’s wrist. For all Linhardt gets ridiculously invested in the different explanations various zombie movies come up with to explain the origin of the virus and such, he still shies away from blood, especially if he isn’t expecting it. “Are you… alright?” Ferdinand asks, even though he already knows what Linhardt will say.
And, as he’d expected, Linhardt simply nods. “I’m fine.” He snuggles closer to Ferdinand anyway, and Ferdinand dearly hopes he isn’t close enough to hear the rapid beat of his heart. “This is so bothersome,” Linhardt sighs. “No matter what, I can’t seem to get used to it.”
“It isn’t such a bad thing,” Ferdinand says, very casually and not at all awkwardly slinging his arm behind Linhardt to rest his hand on the other man’s shoulder. Linhardt, for his part, doesn’t so much as blink. “I can’t imagine ever getting used to the sight of blood, myself.”
“Yes, but I am also in the medical field,” Linhardt says, rolling his eyes. “Swooning at the sight of every drop of blood is hardly in the list of requirements for a doctor.”
Ferdinand opens his mouth, intent on saying something to reassure him, but movement on the screen catches Linhardt’s one-track attention. “Oh, look,” he exclaims, leaning in with excitement clear in his sparkling gaze, “this is the side character who’ll spout off a bunch of exposition and then die in five minutes!”
The side character does, indeed, spout off a bunch of exposition and dies in five minutes—not even through a zombie bite or anything, but because he slips and falls. Ferdinand shakes his head. “If we ever find ourselves caught in a zombie apocalypse, please do not slip and fall and die on me, Linhardt.”
“I’ll make sure to die in an appropriately dramatic way, then.”
“No!”
Linhardt laughs behind his palm, and Ferdinand wants nothing more than to pull his wrist away from his face so Ferdinand can see exactly how Linhardt looks happy. “If we were in a zombie apocalypse, what would you do? I think I’d just curl up somewhere and wait to die, really.”
“Don’t say that,” Ferdinand sighs. He contemplates on the question for a little while, then eventually comes up with, “I suppose… I’d want to find somewhere safe to stay? Perhaps we could blockade this apartment building!” He’s always had a bit of an interest in interior design and architecture, though he’d rather not have his first experience with it be during an apocalypse.
Linhardt shakes his head. “Didn’t you learn anything from all these movies? Movement is life,” he says, echoing one of Brad Pitt’s lines from earlier on. Ferdinand is this close to finding a different zombie movie, preferably one without any muscled, long-haired men. “But I do see the appeal in just staying in one spot. We’d have to be very quiet, I suppose, since we’re in the middle of the city… but our upstairs neighbors are so loud all the time, they’d probably bring the zombies right to our doorstep anyway.” He scowls. “I hate them very much, did you know that?”
“I knew that,” Ferdinand assures him. Linhardt’s room happens to be directly below their upstairs neighbor’s living room, where the nightly arguments often take place—Ferdinand is unfortunately guilty of switching rooms with Linhardt to let Linhardt have some peaceful, quiet sleep while Ferdinand stares at the ceiling and silently roots for whichever party is making more sense that night.
“What sort of blockading would work?” Linhardt chews through several potato chips before his face lights up with an idea. “There’s always an abundance of duct tape in one of the buildings in campus. I could race over and bring some home… well, rather, you could race over. You’re the fastest among the four of us.”
Ferdinand huffs. “Do you really think I would steal from your college just because there’s a zombie apocalypse, Linhardt?”
Linhardt blinks up at him, which is so distracting that for a moment Ferdinand forgets what they were even talking about. “Um. Yes?” He leans back against Ferdinand’s shoulder with a cute little yawn, watching as a horde of zombies on screen climb atop one another to scale a city’s walls. “That being said, if we did have to end up traveling or something, like in Zombieland… you wouldn’t leave me behind, would you?”
“What? No!” Ferdinand nearly shouts, so vehemently Linhardt winces and gestures for him to tone down. “Forgive me,” Ferdinand apologizes, “but—Linhardt! What on earth made you even think that?”
Linhardt shrugs listlessly. “I’d be terrible to have along in an apocalypse. I’m already the slowest out of the four of us… the weakest… the laziest… oh, I know,” he remarks, “you’d keep me because I can treat wounds or something.”
“Linhardt.” Ferdinand squeezes his wrist just on this side of hard until Linhardt relents and looks up to meet his eyes. “I wouldn’t leave you behind. None of us would! I would stay by your side not because you have medical knowledge, but because… because you are Linhardt! No matter what! I hardly need a zombie apocalypse to know I would never leave you.”
There’s a long pause, where the quiet is only punctuated by the zombies screeching on screen; then Linhardt averts his gaze, staring down at the blankets instead as he scratches his cheek. “Well. That’s… That’s nice of you.”
Oh, dear. Had that been a bit too obvious? Ferdinand lets go of Linhardt’s wrist, fumbling with his own hands instead. “O-Of course. I have to be firm when you say silly things.”
“Silly things,” Linhardt repeats, sounding amused. He shakes his head. “They’re just thoughts I have sometimes.”
“You… think people don’t like you sometimes?” Ferdinand repeats, slowly, just to make sure he’s hearing this right. “How can people not like you? You… You’re Linhardt.”
“There’s your reason.”
It takes Ferdinand what feels like forever to understand what that means. “But… But you’re Linhardt.”
Linhardt doesn’t look at him, his gaze fixed on the laptop screen; the characters are on an airplane now, and the high-pitched barking of some pet dog—who let a dog on the plane?—is loud in the relative quiet of the room. “Surely you must understand,” he sighs. “You told me before, about how people tell you to keep changing parts of yourself, didn’t you?”
Ferdinand swallows. “I did.” He’s grown past caring what people think about him anymore, or at least that’s what he tells himself to keep his mind from dwelling on particularly harsh words for too long. “But Linhardt, you… shouldn’t let such words get to you. After all, I…”
I love you, I love you, I am so in love with you it hurts.
“I care about you,” Ferdinand decides, lamely. “And so do Hubert and Caspar and Edelgard and—”
“Alright, alright, no need to list the whole building down,” Linhardt says, but he sounds amused and he rests his head atop Ferdinand’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he mumbles, almost too soft for Ferdinand to hear. He opens his mouth and says something again, but the airplane crashes deafeningly loudly at that moment, drowning out whatever Linhardt’s words were.
“What was that?” Ferdinand asks, in the silence that follows.
Linhardt stares at him. “What was… what?”
“You said something just now, but the plane…” Ferdinand’s eyes snap back to the screen. “Did Brad Pitt die?”
Brad Pitt is, unfortunately, alive, albeit with shrapnel stuck in his gut. Ferdinand sighs, trying not to look too disappointed, then turns back to face Linhardt, who’s still sitting and staring blankly up at him. “Linhardt?” Ferdinand calls, a bit concerned now. “You did say something, didn’t you?”
“You didn’t hear it?”
“No?” Ferdinand squeaks.
Linhardt stares at him a little longer, then groans and buries his face in his hands. “Never mind. It was nothing. I just said… this movie is terrible.”
“Do you want to watch something else?” Ferdinand immediately offers. He is getting very tired of Brad Pitt’s face and muscles and long hair.
“No,” Linhardt sullenly mutters. “I want to see how they—wait, when did they get out of the airplane?”
“The airplane crashed.”
“It did?”
Linhardt pays attention for only a few more scenes until he inevitably nods off—Ferdinand had been fully expecting this, had done his best to mentally prepare himself for it, but he still isn’t quite equipped to remain calm with Linhardt dozing off on his shoulder. On screen, Brad Pitt traverses the hallways of some building Ferdinand hadn’t been paying enough attention to know the identity of, but Ferdinand can hardly care—carefully he pulls the blankets higher up to tuck under Linhardt’s chin.
Ferdinand can’t say exactly when he had fallen in love. Perhaps it was when they’d first met, when Linhardt stumbled in Caspar and Ferdinand’s shared dorm room some two years ago drunk off his head, looking like a drowned cat and stinking the place up with alcohol. Or when Linhardt had lost his patience with Ferdinand’s father, delivered some very choice words and phrases, then spat in his drink and walked off. Or when Edelgard had badgered Linhardt enough to change out of his pajamas and dress up for once during some formal event Ferdinand can’t even remember anymore, and Ferdinand couldn’t stop thinking about Linhardt’s bare collarbones and shoulders for the entire next week.
Whenever, however it had started, Ferdinand doesn’t care—all he knows is that he liked Linhardt, and then suddenly the word hadn’t fit quite right, and the only way it would sound correct was if he replaced like with love.
A stray lock of Linhardt’s hair falls over his face, and without thinking Ferdinand reaches over to tuck it behind his ear, soft and tender—only for Linhardt’s nose to scrunch up as his eyes flutter open.
The longest three seconds of Ferdinand’s life pass in complete, utter silence.
Ferdinand rips his hand away as if he’d been burned. “I apologize!” he shouts, loud enough that he’s sure their upstairs neighbors can hear him. “I-I was not taking advantage of you, Linhardt!”
“You… call that taking advantage?” Linhardt asks, voice just slightly scratchy from sleep.
“Eh, ah, well.” Ferdinand coughs. “I… just saw your hair… I mean, if it remained atop your nose, you might have sneezed yourself awake…”
“Right, okay,” Linhardt says, looking amused. It’s that little smile he wears, Ferdinand thinks, the smile that makes his eyes soften at the edges and his usually tired person look a little less burdened. “Well, whatever. If I get to wake up next to you…” A yawn, long enough that Ferdinand can tell he’s just barely awake. “…I guess I don’t really mind.”
Ferdinand’s brain short-circuits. “What?”
“What, what?” Linhardt asks, as if there’s absolutely nothing wrong with what he had just said. “Okay, well, I’m still sleepy, so… goodnight, Ferdinand… goodnight, Brad Pitt…” He snuggles further next to Ferdinand, even throwing one arm over his torso like he’s a body pillow, then falls back to sleep within the next minute. Before them, the credits roll (thank goodness, finally), and the next movie preview begins to play.
Ferdinand sighs, breath ruffling the top of Linhardt’s mussed hair. What should he do now? He can’t exactly move very much, with Linhardt cuddling him like this. Out of lack of any other ideas, Ferdinand reaches over to pluck the laptop off the bed and set it atop his lap instead, opening up one of his half-finished papers. It’s due tomorrow, and if he can just find one more article to cite in the references—
“Ferdinand.”
Ferdinand jolts in surprise, miraculously not jostling Linhardt too much. “L-Linhardt!?” he yelps; Linhardt has a vicegrip around his wrist, and the skin-on-skin contact is making him heat up more than anything that had happened in the past hour and a half.
“What’s Google Docs doing open on that?” Linhardt pouts, looking over at the offending laptop. “Am I not good enough for you now? Don’t you want to sleep with me?”
“I-I-I have to… this paper…”
“Ugh, forget the paper. Aren’t you tired?” Linhardt nudges the laptop closed and nudges it to the foot of the bed, and Ferdinand is too paralyzed to stop him—then he splays himself out atop Ferdinand, practically pinning him to the sheets. “Just for tonight,” Linhardt murmurs, his face far too close to Ferdinand’s for coherent thought. “Besides, I won’t be able to sleep if you type away on that keyboard.”
When Linhardt doesn’t back away, clearly intent on getting an answer out of Ferdinand, Ferdinand swallows thickly and manages to croak out, “A-Alright?”
“Good boy,” Linhardt says, clearly pleased, then shifts back to nuzzle Ferdinand’s neck as he returns to sleep, if he had ever been asleep in the first place. His breath is hot and terribly distracting on Ferdinand’s skin.
Ferdinand’s conscience shakes him by the shoulders and yells at him to grab the laptop and get back to work, but with how Linhardt has sprawled himself out atop most of Ferdinand’s body, it’s going to be impossible to sit up or even move very much at all—and, well, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want this. Linhardt is so unfairly warm beside (well, atop) him, and his drowsiness seems to be contagious, because Ferdinand can feel his eyelids getting heavier with every rise and fall of Linhardt’s chest.
Oh, whatever. The paper can wait, but he’ll never get another chance like this again, will he? Ferdinand very gently rearranges their positions so that Linhardt can bury his face in the crook of Ferdinand’s neck instead. With a little sigh, Ferdinand throws one arm over Linhardt’s shoulders to card slow fingers through soft, forest-green hair he’s wanted to touch for as long as he can remember.
Hubert has just enough energy to dig his key card out, slap it over the card reader, and step inside the apartment unit before slumping against the door. He is exhausted. Night shifts should be illegal.
He’s in the middle of unlacing his boots when the door beeps softly behind him and swings open, revealing Caspar yawning and stretching his arms over his head. Even in the dark, Hubert can see a smatter of dark spots around Caspar’s neck that he’s sure are going to bloom into bruises by tomorrow—or, as it is, in a few hours. “You’re early,” Hubert remarks.
“Ashe has a morning class,” Caspar sighs, looking as put out as he sounds. “Plus his roommate was gonna be back soon, and he doesn’t want me to meet the asshole. Says I might commit a felony or something.”
“That does indeed sound like you.” Hubert hasn’t actually heard a thing about Ashe’s roommate, whoever he may be, but Caspar rarely needs a reason to commit a felony or three.
Caspar perks up. “Hey, you think Lin and Ferdinand are still awake? Or maybe they just woke up? I wanna hear what they gotta say about… uh, what was the movie again, I only remember Brad Pitt…” He kicks his worn sneakers off, then ambles over towards Ferdinand’s room.
Hubert can’t care less about what the two have to say about Brad Pitt or the movie, but he finishes undoing his boots and makes to follow Caspar anyway. His phone buzzes with a text he idly opens while heading down the corridor, only to stop in the middle of his steps. The message is from Linhardt, saying, do NOT come in.
He doesn’t hesitate. Two long strides later and he’s grabbing Caspar by the back of his collar right before Caspar would have twisted the doorknob open. “No.”
“Wah!” Caspar stumbles back. “What the heck? What’s that for?”
“Just…” Hubert closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Don’t.”
First a night shift, and now holding back a wildly-curious Caspar. The things he does for these idiots.