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Once Felix and Chan are past the small talk and pages of paperwork in the lobby of the humane society, the quiet of the hallways holds their excitement in.
They don’t exchange any words, having exhausted conversation in the car on the way over. Chan’s eyes follow the colorful painted stripes lining the hallways, Felix tapping each of the laminated papers next to the little rooms as they pass them.
They come to stand at the one they were assigned: three rescued strays. A mother and her two puppies, a boy and girl.
The attendant warned them that the mother is pretty scared of people and might not come out of hiding while they’re in there, and Chan can see that reflected in the picture. But, holding the book he brought to his chest, he pushes open the door with a light of confidence in his chest. The feeling that by being here, they’re making a difference.
He slips through the doorway, Felix carefully doing the same behind him. The high pitched barks of the two puppies meet their ears immediately. The two men settle in relaxed positions on the floor, and the puppies clamber over their laps, short legs struggling with the height but tails wagging happily all the same.
Their excitement is contagious, both Chan and Felix getting sucked into the air of play. It’s hard not to give in to their precious faces. They roughhouse and laugh and mess with the sweet puppies, and the puppies play back in equal measure, happy to have someone match their insatiable puppy energy.
However, after a few minutes Chan pulls out the book he brought. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell is what he picked out for this, and he watches Felix’s eyes light up when he recognizes the cover.
“Black Beauty! That was one of my favorite books when we were kids!”
“I know,” Chan chuckles. “I remember reading it to you.”
“Nuh-uh, you were reading it to Olivia, not me.”
“And yet I seem to remember you paying more attention than her,” Chan says with a cheeky smile, and laughs when Felix looks away.
“Just read it,” Felix says, and even though his face is turned away, Chan can see a smile pulling at his cheeks.
“When I look back, my first memories are of a large rolling meadow with a small pond. Green, shady trees leaned over the pond, and water lilies grew in the deep end,” Chan reads aloud.
The puppies eyes are bright and happy, ears perking at the sound of Chan’s calm voice reading the first two chapters to them. When they try to lick Chan’s arms, stretching their little necks to reach his hands, he gently pushes them away and shushes them.
“It’s not nice to interrupt the narrator,” Chan says with a wide, dimpled smile pulling his scolding apart. “Here, maybe they’ll be better behaved for you.”
The puppies follow the book into Felix’s lap, tripping over each other’s feet in their excitement. Felix’s smile takes up his entire face, eyes curled into half-moons as he lets the puppies sniff the book, pulling it back before they can lick it. “Chapter three?”
“Mhm.”
Felix clears his throat and begins. His tone starts off higher and a little unsure, but the more he reads, the more he settles into the voice of the story. He makes his way into chapter four, beginning to act out the emotions Black Beauty expresses. “But for a young horse full of strength and spirit, who has been used to a large field where he can fling up his head and toss up his tail and gallop away at full speed, it was very hard to get used to standing in a stable day after day,” he expresses to the puppies. “Can you imagine staying still all day? I don’t think you could stay still for a full minute,” he laughs.
Chan laughs too. After finishing chapter four, Felix offers the book to him, but he shakes his head. “That chapter was pretty short, why don’t you read another one?”
So Felix does, and as he recounts Ginger’s past to the puppies, his deep, steady, monotone voice starts to lull them. Their energy wanes. One of them lays down for a moment, only fighting the urge to sleep then and there when the other puppy chews on his ears.
Chan picks up the playful puppy, setting her in his lap and stroking her fur. He starts to feel the effect of Felix’s voice too, closing his eyes in growing contentment. He’s thought many times about asking Felix to do this since his voice matured; read something, anything aloud to him, finding it quite possibly the most calming sound in the world. But despite their many years of friendship, he worried the request would come across weird.
Even when he proposed the idea of doing this with Felix, he worried about his ulterior motive coming across. Thankfully, Felix didn’t seem to think anything of it. Still doesn’t, as he continues reading into chapter six, deciding to finish Ginger’s story rather than stop in the middle of it.
He taps the spine of the book on Chan’s knee to let him know it’s his turn.
“Chapter seven,” he nudges.
Chan puts on a pompous voice for the character Merrylegs. Felix chuckles when Chan tosses his head up as if he has a mane to express Merrylegs’ feelings. At first it’s just an act to be silly and make Felix laugh. But as he moves on into chapter eight, and the horses begin to talk about the cruelty of cropping a horse’s tail or a dog’s ears for fashion, his own indignance comes through in his narration.
He looks at the sleeping puppies between them, and just the thought of anyone cutting their beautiful, silky little ears brings bubbling anger to the surface of his skin.
Since both puppies are asleep, their mother hesitantly crawls out of her hiding place. With her tail tucked between her legs, she leans into each of their laps to sniff her puppies in turn. She retreats once she’s sure they’re safe and sound in the men’s laps.
As she turns, Chan can see that the tip of her tail is missing.
“Chris,” Felix says, his voice dark and cautious. “You alright, mate?”
Chan starts to laugh, and even he’s not entirely sure why.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry for laughing, but all I can think about is how different your voice is now from when we were kids,” Chan chuckles, hoping Felix takes the bait to change topics. “If I didn’t know you wouldn’t hurt a fly, I think your voice would scare me.”
Felix playfully pushes his voice deeper, more growly, and it sends a shiver down Chan’s spine. “How do you know I wouldn’t hurt a fly?”
“Remember that time when you cried after accidentally stepping on a beetle?” Chan retaliates, and the way Felix’s face immediately morphs into a pouty frown makes him laugh again. “You’re only a menace to people. To everything else, I don’t think you can help but be a sweetheart.”
Felix’s frown deepens. “I’m a menace?”
“I’m just wrassling with you,” Chan corrects. “The way you tease and poke fun is something I like about you. I know that you don’t mean those things, so I don’t take it to heart.”
“Even when I call you an old man?” Felix says, a smile creeping into his features.
Chan sighs and rolls his eyes. “Yes, even then.”
Felix runs his hand down the sleeping puppy’s back. “You know, I started calling you an old man because when we were younger, some other kids made me feel weird for having a crush on an older kid. I thought being meaner and pushing you away like that might get rid of my feelings. But it seems so stupid now. We’re both adults; what does three years really matter?”
“You… had a crush on me?”
“Have,” Felix clears his throat. “It never went away.”
“Have,” Chan swallows.
The confession rolls around in his mind. Shyness creeps into his chest and starts to lock up his throat, but if Felix can have the courage to confess out of the blue, then maybe Chan can too.
Felix is picking at a spot on the floor. The tension tightens in the room.
Okay, maybe he can’t do this.
He flips the pages of the book nervously. As he briefly meets Felix’s eyes, Felix gives him a small smile and sucks a breath in. Chan realizes he’s about to get up and leave, and as scared as he is, he can’t let that happen.
He scans the page as fast as he can. “I could not tell him how I felt, but he seemed to know anyway.”
Felix stops.
Chan flips further into the book, searching for another line. “However, that did not spoil the pleasure we had in each other’s company.”
Felix moves the puppy off of his lap.
“He was kind and good, and always stood up for what he believed in,” he flips more pages, “I think she was happy to see me, for she said: ‘You are the only friend I ever had.’”
He keeps searching, the sound of the papers rustling against each other masking the sound of Felix crawling over to him.
“And then laying her hand on my mane,” Chan reads, and stops abruptly when Felix follows the story’s words like instructions, gently placing his hand on the back of Chan’s neck. He looks between the book and Felix’s intense gaze, and decides to go for it; blush seeping into his face and heart pounding in his ears. “she put her face close to my neck and kissed me.”
Felix leans in and time slows to a crawl. Chan’s breath stops. He feels all of his senses lean in, aching to take in every single detail of how Felix kisses him.
Only for Felix to fake him out and kiss his cheek instead.
When he pulls away, he has the same mischievous look on his face as earlier when he called Chan old.
As exasperated as that makes Chan feel, underneath the look, he can see his sweet heart leak through.
“You feel the same?” Felix asks, his voice pulling the yes from Chan’s throat as if he had no choice in saying it.
Felix throws his arms around Chan’s neck then, squeezing him in a tight hug packed with tenderness. Chan freaks out only a little bit, urging Felix to be mindful of the puppy still in his lap. But he puts his own arms around Felix’s waist, carefully, and finds that he feels like their hearts tether together in a new way. Intricate knots tie themselves, made up of their heartstrings.
After finally coming apart, Chan hands the book back to Felix. With a sheepish smile, he says, “Sorry that I lost the place we were at. I think it might’ve been chapter nine?”
Felix laughs and takes the book from his hands, settling instead next to him rather than back in his place against the opposite wall. As he picks back up where they left off in the book, the mother dog comes out of her hiding spot again.
And this time, she lays in front of the two and puts her head in Felix’s lap.
She’s hesitant, her cropped tail still tucked between her legs and eyes shifting around the tiny room, but she puts her trust in their hands anyway.
He supposes petting her is a good excuse to not take the book back from Felix. He smiles to himself, puts his head on Felix’s shoulder and basks in the simple joy of being read to.