hey it's Giuls

Iguanas aren't supposed to be touched, least of all ones this young in the recovery area, but technically they're the ones touching him. And he's used to it. Reptiles have always shown a particular interest in him. Maybe that's why, a few years back, he stopped following his father into the military and took this job at the zoo despite his threats.

"Still here, Drake?" his colleague from the amphibian section calls out from outside. He knows Drake doesn't like too many people crowding the reptile enclosure.

"Still here," Drake mutters.

"You've been skipping lunch a lot lately. You want us to wait? We ordered pizza."

"No, go ahead." He sets the two hatchlings down on a rock and gets to his feet. "I still need to check the heat gradient. Last time the temperature difference between the warm and cool sides was fluctuating too much."

His colleague shakes his head at a lost cause, knowing full well Drake won't be coming by for a slice, but he doesn't push it and heads off alone toward the break room where the others are waiting. It's not that he is not worried about him, but Drake is no better at showing sadness than he is at showing joy.

Past closing off a little more than usual and eating at odd hours and worse than normal, there's not much visible on the surface of what's happening underneath. That's why his coworkers didn't notice anything different about him, or at least nothing beyond the extra hours he'd been putting in despite being told repeatedly it won't be compensated. He kept turning up anyway, insisting that the iguana hatchlings' survival depended on special conditions that required extra care.

His friends, however, had been worried since Friday.

Drake resisted talking at first, but by Saturday they'd managed to get something out of him. Not much, just enough for him to insist it was nothing and tell them to leave him alone. But the fact that his most played list had become an unbroken stretch of the most depressing songs, with a worrying number of repeats of Moby's Slipping Away (the downside of sharing a premium family account with your friends and forgetting to turn on the private session), proved he was lying. And then, on Monday, he nearly put his fist through the car radio the moment I should have known better than to let you go alone came on. That made Hibari the first one to start looking for a solution.

"It could work," she'd said, showing everyone the dating app she'd installed on her phone. She even personally sacrificed herself to create an account just to test it.

"It won't work." Kujaku shook her head.

"But... now that Drake's into girls-"

"He's not into girls. He's into that girl. And you know what he's like... they weren't even dating, but in his head they already had a mortgage together, two kids and a shared car."

"So what do we do?"

Kujaku just sighed. For the first time, she didn't have a plan beyond all of them showing up at his place, uninvited and spreading out across a couch that, without you, Drake found colder than the wind-swept plains on the surface of Uranus. He made a half-hearted attempt to shove them all out the door, of course, insisting none of this was necessary. But the truth was he was relieved to have something pulling him out of his own head. Because he knew he had to call you.

It was already Wednesday.

The right thing, the polite, socially functional thing would had been to reach out days ago, especially since you kept up your end as usual, sending him memes and gifs you find funny before bed every night. He sometimes wondered how it was that you, presumably in a relationship, thought of him at 23:18, when you were probably already in bed with your lover (his blood boiled at the thought), and sent him that National Geographic article about the latests archaeological discoveries. That particular night, reading something like that so late gave him one of the strangest nightmares, in which he turned into an Allosaurus and tore your boyfriend's head off, then went to hug you, but his arms were too small to reach. And you laughed.

He had to call you.... But what would he even say? That he'd completely gone for you even though you're taken? Pathetic. Or call like nothing happened and have a perfectly normal conversation like hey, do you like lasagna? Impossible.

The easiest thing, the most practical, cowardly option, would be to wait for a chance run-in at work. Say hello, and if a conversation develops, read your face and body language carefully to know which direction things should go. Like the undercover spy in the pirate novels he lately tended to read. But his excursions to the coffee machine - neutral territory where reptile, amphibian and bird keepers all converge equally - proved fruitless.

He forced himslef to order coffees he didn't want, admitting something he hadn't stopped to consider before: he never drank coffee at work before. He only started going when you began your contract at the zoo. Either way, you were never there when he was.

Drake told himself it was probably just the schedules. Reptiles and birds run on different rhythms, after all. But you were never at reception either. Not at the birds of prey enclosures. Not at the parrot house. Not even the veterinary treatment room. How was that possible? He must be extraordinarily unlucky. Or there was something he was missing.

"Drake, the guy who does the overnight shift called in sick and the iguanas are still very young. We need someone to cover the whole night. Do you think you could do it?"

It's Friday. He still hasn't run into you at work, but based on the last time you exchanged anything beyond memes and articles, the plan is to see each other tonight, or at least he's choosing to assume so.

"Impossible. Any night but tonight."

He's spent the whole day going back and forth whether to go to your office in the bird section. Just to say hello and see you for a moment, using some excuse like needing a piece of equipment. But every time he's spotted the albatross sign on your closed door, he's lost his nerve. The reptile keeper wandering into the bird area feels as out of place as a man walking into the ladies' bathroom. So he has no real confirmation that tonight is still on... but he'd rather leave the possibility open.

His colleague looks at him with concern in his eyes.

"But we have no one… there's not enough time to find a backup, and you know the smallest one has been losing its appetite. The color's off too."

Drake knows he's right. He's already started it on medication and left the dosage instructions for the colleague who was supposed to cover the night shift. Leaving them alone is unthinkable.

"There's really no one else?"

His colleague shakes his head.

Drake runs a hand down his face and huffs long and heavy through his hooked nose. Maybe none of this is going anywhere anyway. He doesn't think he'd be capable of telling you how he feels tonight. And sitting next to you, alone on his couch, having the thoughts and feelings he has about you while you have no idea - and have a boyfriend besides - feels like lying to you.

"Alright. I'll stay," he says, already pulling out his phone to find your contact, and without giving it a second thought, types:

Sorry, but we can't make it tonight either.

The message is curt, but as much as it hurts, this is for the best. Or that is what he forces himself to think.

The night passes without anything worth noting. Drake chooses to sleep directly in the reptile enclosure rather than the small cabin reserved for overnight shifts. Since he's staying, he'd rather stay with the hatchlings, who are more than happy to have him there and pay no mind to his grumbling as they settle in, curled up on his chest, entertained by the rise and fall of his breathing. From there, he can also see the stars. Small and bright. As beautiful and unreachable as you.

Drake releases a sigh as he checks his phone to see if you've replied. There's nothing except a thumbs up on his own message, a reaction that took you an hour and a half to send. He exhales so heavily that one of the hatchlings wakes up and looks at him in annoyance with his tiny, round eyes.

"I'm sorry," Drake says, and the baby seems to accept his apology, because he stretches once and goes back to sleep.

Drake ends up falling asleep too, sometime later, still turning over how strange it is that he hasn't run into you at work even once.

Morning comes in with the noise of parrots, parakeets and macaws waking up and demanding breakfast. Drake pushes himself upright, back wrecked, a baby iguana nestled in the hollow of his neck while another sleeps soundly on top of a fern somewhere across the enclosure. How it ended up there is a mystery Drake is too tired to resolve.

The pain between his shoulder blades reminds him that this is the second Friday he hasn't slept in his own bed. The one before he'd spent on his couch, half-lost in the thought of seeing you in the morning wearing the t-shirt he'd left out for you.

He tsks to himself and focus on work: tidying up the reptile enclosure, going through the terrariums to remove any leftover food before it has a chance to rot, and dusting the insects with calcium powder for the geckos as the note left on his desk that morning specified. Once the thermostats, heat mats and UVB lamps are all checked and he estimates his morning colleague should be arriving shortly, he makes his way to the front desk to sign out on the attendance sheet.

He grabs the pen hanging from the panel on a short cord and is just signing his name in the checkout column when a thought he hasn't considered before hits him with full force. His blue eyes start moving, fast, scanning the sheet for your name. It's odd not to have crossed paths with you even once. Very odd. His pupils track left to right with the restless energy of someone searching for their grade on a university results page. But he can't find you anywhere.

Adrenaline takes hold. Where are you? Are you sick? Did something happen? Did you quit?

His back has stopped hurting entirely, every sense on high alert as instinct drives him forward, straight to the bird section office, where this time he doesn't hesitate before pushing open the door with the albatross poster on it.

"Where is she?" He asks a girl who startles at his abrupt entrance. She's new, sitting at your desk, and assumes he means you.

"I - I don't know, I'm an intern. Last time I saw her was last week..."

Drake clenches and unclenches his fists at his sides, every muscle tight, his mind unable to make the connection between having a boyfriend and not coming into work for a week.

"Oh, the reptile expert finally graces the bird office with his presence?" another colleague says as she walks in with a smile. "What's the matter? Are the storks moulting into the caiman pool again?"

Drake turns toward her, shoulders squared.

"Whoa, relax, okay?" The woman's smile fades, caught off guard by his reaction. "If you need her, you're gonna have to wait until Monday. She took the week off after her brother showed up to surprise her."

Drake's tightened lips part as his expression shifts.

"Her… her brother?"

"Yes, her brother," she picks up a bucket full of fish he didn't even notice was there. "He showed up on Friday, right at the end of her shift. They're really close, you know? But he lives ovserseas, so they don't see each other much. We were happy to give her the week off."

She stops. Drake's frown is deepening, his blue eyes darting back and forth, processing what is by any measure a very simple piece of information.

"Drake, you okay? Is something wrong with the birds or not?"

"No…" he says as if coming from somewhere far away.

"Good." She nods. "In that case I'm off to feed the gulls."

With that, she walks away, leaving him standing awkwardly in the middle of the room while the intern watches, having no idea what to say.

Your brother. So he is your brother.

Drake's head turns the thoght over and over.

You should have seen the way she was smiling at him, her whole face just lit up...

"She does things like that sometimes, she's a bit of an oddball," the intern says, a little puzzled by the way Drake can't take his eyes off the simple toy. "Says it reminds her of someone who works here."

But he is not your boyfriend. He is your brother! He knows you have one. You told him once. How could he have been so dense?! And if he is your brother, that means that you… His heart beats so hard he has to steady himself against the edge of your desk. And that's when he sees it. A small plastic figure next to your screen, no bigger than the palm of his hand. Drake picks up the little toy allosaurus by its back, and realizes it's wearing a tiny sailor's hat, like the old bicornes the navy used to wear, folded from paper and coloured navy blue.

Drake chuckles, turning the dinosaur over his palm to inspect the small rubber band around its waist, and hanging from it, the cap of the biro you probably used to colour the hat.

"I asked her what that was, but she wouldn't tell me," the intern watches as he runs his finger along the pen cap with the same tenderness he might use to trace the wrist of a lover.

"A sword," he whispers, too lost in thought to register that the intern is staring at him. He then closes his eyes behind his glasses in need of a moment to come to terms with himself, and exhales as he puts the dinosaur back in its place.

"I have to go."

The girl opens her mouth to say something but his lenghty legs have carried him out in just three strides.

_*_

"Fucker"

Your hand slams against the wardrobe with a screwdriver snapped clean in half.

You knew you should have bought an electric one before attempting this. The thing must have two hundred million screws. And your brother had already left by the time the delivery company dropped it off, so there's no one to help. You need a break, you decide, reaching for your glass of water but don't get to drink it, because to your surprise the doorbell rings. You weren't expecting anyone.

When you open the door, wiping the sweat from your forehead with the hem of a t-shirt you only wear for DIY, there's Drake. The man you've spent a week convinced was ignoring you, slightly out of breath as if he's been running, those blue eyes of his trained on you with urgency. He's holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a VHS of the latest Mysteries of the Solar System tucked under the other arm, held so tightly against him it's wrinkling the light green shirt you recognise from the office New Year's party. You remember it because he looked really good in it. So handsome it had made you blush.

"Do you like lasagna?" he clumsily says.

You frown, arms crossed, letting your weight fall against one side of the doorframe, trying to ignore how his shirt collar looks like he put on a tie and then changed his mind.

"What are you doing here?"

Drake straightens his back and meets your eyes head-on, brave, like he's expecting a well-deserved punch to his prominent chin.

"I'm sorry about yesterday. The iguanas were sick and I had to stay-"

"I know about the iguanas," you cut him off, "Suzy told me. And I'm glad you stayed with them, I really am. But that's not what I'm mad about, Drake. You just... disappeared for a week. You never called me back. Never texted me back. Nothing." You give him a chance to defend himself, but the second he opens his mouth, you hold up a hand. "And no, one t-rex emoji doesn't count as a response. You couldn't even tell me what was wrong with the last National Geographic article I sent you."

"It said Early Cretaceous, but Mosasaurus lived during the Late," he reacts quickly at this.

"So you did read it!" You throw your hands up.

"Yes…. I-" he looks more overwhelmed by the second, "please. Just... let me explain."

You cross your arms again. "I am listening."

"I ran into a couple of coworkers. They told me they'd seen you hugging a guy, holding his hand. I thought he was your boyfriend."

You let out a short laugh, one eyebrow shooting up.

"That was my brother. We hadn't seen each other in ages, and I called to tell you."

"I know. I know that now." The flowers take the brunt of his grip. "But I didn't know that then, and it... it hit me hard. Really hard. For the whole damn week, actually. I didn't know what to say. Didn't know how to act. I figured I'd run into you at work, but..."

"Wait." You push yourself off the doorframe. "What exactly messed you up?"

He swallows in an attempt to push past his shyness.

"The thought that you were... well," he clears his throat, "in love with someone who..."

You frown, eyes darting between his.

"Who what?"

"... who wasn't me," he sweats.

Your heart hammers away so hard you want to scream. Thankfully, he keeps talking, because right now you can't get a single coherent word out.

"And I was scared, because it would mean you'd stop coming over to do.." he gestures vaguely at the VHS, "what we always do. And I want to keep doing that. Not just Fridays, Saturdays too, a-and whenever you want. I was actually trying to- I mean, I have no idea how any of this works, but I would have liked to ask you out," he can barely hold your gaze, and his cheeks are burning all the way up to his sideburns. "On a proper date. An actual one. Even though Kujaku says what we've been doing already counts as dates, and maybe it has and I'm just so hopeless I had no idea. But either way I didn't know if you... if you were interested in me beyond..."

You don't know who Kujaku is, but you don't ask.

"Beyond the documentaries and the dinners?"

He nods.

You fight the urge to drag a hand down your face. How is it possible that you've fallen for the densest man in the universe?

"But, Drake…" You take a step closer. "How could I not…? I mean, how did you not notice? I literally doll myself up every time I come over to your place so you'd think I'm pretty. How could you not know I was interested?"

"I don't know. I just... " He drops his gaze. "You always look beautiful to me," he manages to say, voice too strained to risk speaking any louder.

You bite your lower lip. No one has said something that sweet to you since elementary school. Knowing that if you don't make the move yourself you'll never get anywhere, you close the small distance between you and carefully take the flowers from his hand.

"How beautiful?"

Drake makes an effort to look at you again. His Adam's apple bobs, and the blush on his face deepens to a fiery crimson. You giggle playfully at his physical response, and slide the back of your free hand up across his chest toward his neck, where you curl it around the back of it.

"That much?" You smile in a way that makes his knees go weak, "And in these dates you'd like to have with me, what would you want to do?"

He sheepishly chuckles, back instinctively leaning down toward you.

"Go to the planetarium. And the movies. And the natural history museum." His answer comes so quickly and naturally that you wonder if he's had it planned all along.

You nod, pleased, fingers raking through his auburn hair. "There's a new restaurant I'd like to try too."

"I'll take you. There and wherever else you desire." He lets himself be guided by your touch. "And if they don't have what you want, I'll make it for you at mine."

"And after dinner," you whisper as you coax him down a little further "when you walked me home, what would you want to do?"

His eyes drop to your lips. He may be hopelessly shy but he's looking at you like he wants to devour you.

"Kiss you," he exhales.

"Well," you tilt your chin up toward him, "would you mind if we changed the order a little?"

And your lips meet his in a kiss he gladly returns, clumsy on his part, yet more tender and sweet than anything anyone has ever given you.

You want more, and the way his fingers brush softly at your sides tells you he ks begging for it too. So you rise onto your tiptoes, guiding him through his inexperience in more kisses that follow. A sound he's embarrassed by but that you absolutely want to hear again escapes his mouth and is swallowed by yours. In his pocket, his phone buzzes once. Must be the notification for the little albatross figurine he ordered in a hurry on his way here. His hands land on your waist, and the VHS slips from his grip. It would have fallen if you hadn't caught it between muffled laughter. It doesn't matter, you won't be watching Mysteries of the Solar System tonight. And the fact that you don't own a VHS player isn't the main reason.

As his mouth hungrily finds yours again, your mind is already working out the logistics. The way his shirt crumples as you pull at it. The obstacles in the hallway and how to navigate a man whose shoulders span the entire doorframe to your bedroom without detaching your lips once from his. What you'll do with them when you finally pull away, to show him exactly how much you've missed him.

Drake, however, can barely think. This warmth must mean that you are kissing him, truly kissing him, and he anchors himself in the honeyed taste to make sure it's real.

_*_

That night, he won't be sleeping in his own bed either. And by the end of it, he'll proudly state that the score stands at Steve 1 | Drake 3...

...4 after breakfast. 😉

@fantasia1919 and @clumsyfleatherbird for u 💕!!

Iguanas aren't supposed to be touched, least of all ones this young in the recovery area, but technically they're the ones touching him. And he's used to it. Reptiles have always shown a particular interest in him. Maybe that's why, a few years back, he stopped following his father into the military and took this job at the zoo despite his threats.

"Still here, Drake?" his colleague from the amphibian section calls out from outside. He knows Drake doesn't like too many people crowding the reptile enclosure.

"Still here," Drake mutters.

"You've been skipping lunch a lot lately. You want us to wait? We ordered pizza."

"No, go ahead." He sets the two hatchlings down on a rock and gets to his feet. "I still need to check the heat gradient. Last time the temperature difference between the warm and cool sides was fluctuating too much."

His colleague shakes his head at a lost cause, knowing full well Drake won't be coming by for a slice, but he doesn't push it and heads off alone toward the break room where the others are waiting. It's not that he is not worried about him, but Drake is no better at showing sadness than he is at showing joy.

Past closing off a little more than usual and eating at odd hours and worse than normal, there's not much visible on the surface of what's happening underneath. That's why his coworkers didn't notice anything different about him, or at least nothing beyond the extra hours he'd been putting in despite being told repeatedly it won't be compensated. He kept turning up anyway, insisting that the iguana hatchlings' survival depended on special conditions that required extra care.

His friends, however, had been worried since Friday.

Drake resisted talking at first, but by Saturday they'd managed to get something out of him. Not much, just enough for him to insist it was nothing and tell them to leave him alone. But the fact that his most played list had become an unbroken stretch of the most depressing songs, with a worrying number of repeats of Moby's Slipping Away (the downside of sharing a premium family account with your friends and forgetting to turn on the private session), proved he was lying. And then, on Monday, he nearly put his fist through the car radio the moment I should have known better than to let you go alone came on. That made Hibari the first one to start looking for a solution.

"It could work," she'd said, showing everyone the dating app she'd installed on her phone. She even personally sacrificed herself to create an account just to test it.

"It won't work." Kujaku shook her head.

"But... now that Drake's into girls-"

"He's not into girls. He's into that girl. And you know what he's like... they weren't even dating, but in his head they already had a mortgage together, two kids and a shared car."

"So what do we do?"

Kujaku just sighed. For the first time, she didn't have a plan beyond all of them showing up at his place, uninvited and spreading out across a couch that, without you, Drake found colder than the wind-swept plains on the surface of Uranus. He made a half-hearted attempt to shove them all out the door, of course, insisting none of this was necessary. But the truth was he was relieved to have something pulling him out of his own head. Because he knew he had to call you.

It was already Wednesday.

The right thing, the polite, socially functional thing would had been to reach out days ago, especially since you kept up your end as usual, sending him memes and gifs you find funny before bed every night. He sometimes wondered how it was that you, presumably in a relationship, thought of him at 23:18, when you were probably already in bed with your lover (his blood boiled at the thought), and sent him that National Geographic article about the latests archaeological discoveries. That particular night, reading something like that so late gave him one of the strangest nightmares, in which he turned into an Allosaurus and tore your boyfriend's head off, then went to hug you, but his arms were too small to reach. And you laughed.

He had to call you.... But what would he even say? That he'd completely gone for you even though you're taken? Pathetic. Or call like nothing happened and have a perfectly normal conversation like hey, do you like lasagna? Impossible.

The easiest thing, the most practical, cowardly option, would be to wait for a chance run-in at work. Say hello, and if a conversation develops, read your face and body language carefully to know which direction things should go. Like the undercover spy in the pirate novels he lately tended to read. But his excursions to the coffee machine - neutral territory where reptile, amphibian and bird keepers all converge equally - proved fruitless.

He forced himslef to order coffees he didn't want, admitting something he hadn't stopped to consider before: he never drank coffee at work before. He only started going when you began your contract at the zoo. Either way, you were never there when he was.

Drake told himself it was probably just the schedules. Reptiles and birds run on different rhythms, after all. But you were never at reception either. Not at the birds of prey enclosures. Not at the parrot house. Not even the veterinary treatment room. How was that possible? He must be extraordinarily unlucky. Or there was something he was missing.

"Drake, the guy who does the overnight shift called in sick and the iguanas are still very young. We need someone to cover the whole night. Do you think you could do it?"

It's Friday. He still hasn't run into you at work, but based on the last time you exchanged anything beyond memes and articles, the plan is to see each other tonight, or at least he's choosing to assume so.

"Impossible. Any night but tonight."

He's spent the whole day going back and forth whether to go to your office in the bird section. Just to say hello and see you for a moment, using some excuse like needing a piece of equipment. But every time he's spotted the albatross sign on your closed door, he's lost his nerve. The reptile keeper wandering into the bird area feels as out of place as a man walking into the ladies' bathroom. So he has no real confirmation that tonight is still on... but he'd rather leave the possibility open.

His colleague looks at him with concern in his eyes.

"But we have no one… there's not enough time to find a backup, and you know the smallest one has been losing its appetite. The color's off too."

Drake knows he's right. He's already started it on medication and left the dosage instructions for the colleague who was supposed to cover the night shift. Leaving them alone is unthinkable.

"There's really no one else?"

His colleague shakes his head.

Drake runs a hand down his face and huffs long and heavy through his hooked nose. Maybe none of this is going anywhere anyway. He doesn't think he'd be capable of telling you how he feels tonight. And sitting next to you, alone on his couch, having the thoughts and feelings he has about you while you have no idea - and have a boyfriend besides - feels like lying to you.

"Alright. I'll stay," he says, already pulling out his phone to find your contact, and without giving it a second thought, types:

Sorry, but we can't make it tonight either.

The message is curt, but as much as it hurts, this is for the best. Or that is what he forces himself to think.

The night passes without anything worth noting. Drake chooses to sleep directly in the reptile enclosure rather than the small cabin reserved for overnight shifts. Since he's staying, he'd rather stay with the hatchlings, who are more than happy to have him there and pay no mind to his grumbling as they settle in, curled up on his chest, entertained by the rise and fall of his breathing. From there, he can also see the stars. Small and bright. As beautiful and unreachable as you.

Drake releases a sigh as he checks his phone to see if you've replied. There's nothing except a thumbs up on his own message, a reaction that took you an hour and a half to send. He exhales so heavily that one of the hatchlings wakes up and looks at him in annoyance with his tiny, round eyes.

"I'm sorry," Drake says, and the baby seems to accept his apology, because he stretches once and goes back to sleep.

Drake ends up falling asleep too, sometime later, still turning over how strange it is that he hasn't run into you at work even once.

Morning comes in with the noise of parrots, parakeets and macaws waking up and demanding breakfast. Drake pushes himself upright, back wrecked, a baby iguana nestled in the hollow of his neck while another sleeps soundly on top of a fern somewhere across the enclosure. How it ended up there is a mystery Drake is too tired to resolve.

The pain between his shoulder blades reminds him that this is the second Friday he hasn't slept in his own bed. The one before he'd spent on his couch, half-lost in the thought of seeing you in the morning wearing the t-shirt he'd left out for you.

He tsks to himself and focus on work: tidying up the reptile enclosure, going through the terrariums to remove any leftover food before it has a chance to rot, and dusting the insects with calcium powder for the geckos as the note left on his desk that morning specified. Once the thermostats, heat mats and UVB lamps are all checked and he estimates his morning colleague should be arriving shortly, he makes his way to the front desk to sign out on the attendance sheet.

He grabs the pen hanging from the panel on a short cord and is just signing his name in the checkout column when a thought he hasn't considered before hits him with full force. His blue eyes start moving, fast, scanning the sheet for your name. It's odd not to have crossed paths with you even once. Very odd. His pupils track left to right with the restless energy of someone searching for their grade on a university results page. But he can't find you anywhere.

Adrenaline takes hold. Where are you? Are you sick? Did something happen? Did you quit?

His back has stopped hurting entirely, every sense on high alert as instinct drives him forward, straight to the bird section office, where this time he doesn't hesitate before pushing open the door with the albatross poster on it.

"Where is she?" He asks a girl who startles at his abrupt entrance. She's new, sitting at your desk, and assumes he means you.

"I - I don't know, I'm an intern. Last time I saw her was last week..."

Drake clenches and unclenches his fists at his sides, every muscle tight, his mind unable to make the connection between having a boyfriend and not coming into work for a week.

"Oh, the reptile expert finally graces the bird office with his presence?" another colleague says as she walks in with a smile. "What's the matter? Are the storks moulting into the caiman pool again?"

Drake turns toward her, shoulders squared.

"Whoa, relax, okay?" The woman's smile fades, caught off guard by his reaction. "If you need her, you're gonna have to wait until Monday. She took the week off after her brother showed up to surprise her."

Drake's tightened lips part as his expression shifts.

"Her… her brother?"

"Yes, her brother," she picks up a bucket full of fish he didn't even notice was there. "He showed up on Friday, right at the end of her shift. They're really close, you know? But he lives ovserseas, so they don't see each other much. We were happy to give her the week off."

She stops. Drake's frown is deepening, his blue eyes darting back and forth, processing what is by any measure a very simple piece of information.

"Drake, you okay? Is something wrong with the birds or not?"

"No…" he says as if coming from somewhere far away.

"Good." She nods. "In that case I'm off to feed the gulls."

With that, she walks away, leaving him standing awkwardly in the middle of the room while the intern watches, having no idea what to say.

Your brother. So he is your brother.

Drake's head turns the thoght over and over.

You should have seen the way she was smiling at him, her whole face just lit up...

"She does things like that sometimes, she's a bit of an oddball," the intern says, a little puzzled by the way Drake can't take his eyes off the simple toy. "Says it reminds her of someone who works here."

But he is not your boyfriend. He is your brother! He knows you have one. You told him once. How could he have been so dense?! And if he is your brother, that means that you… His heart beats so hard he has to steady himself against the edge of your desk. And that's when he sees it. A small plastic figure next to your screen, no bigger than the palm of his hand. Drake picks up the little toy allosaurus by its back, and realizes it's wearing a tiny sailor's hat, like the old bicornes the navy used to wear, folded from paper and coloured navy blue.

Drake chuckles, turning the dinosaur over his palm to inspect the small rubber band around its waist, and hanging from it, the cap of the biro you probably used to colour the hat.

"I asked her what that was, but she wouldn't tell me," the intern watches as he runs his finger along the pen cap with the same tenderness he might use to trace the wrist of a lover.

"A sword," he whispers, too lost in thought to register that the intern is staring at him. He then closes his eyes behind his glasses in need of a moment to come to terms with himself, and exhales as he puts the dinosaur back in its place.

"I have to go."

The girl opens her mouth to say something but his lenghty legs have carried him out in just three strides.

_*_

"Fucker"

Your hand slams against the wardrobe with a screwdriver snapped clean in half.

You knew you should have bought an electric one before attempting this. The thing must have two hundred million screws. And your brother had already left by the time the delivery company dropped it off, so there's no one to help. You need a break, you decide, reaching for your glass of water but don't get to drink it, because to your surprise the doorbell rings. You weren't expecting anyone.

When you open the door, wiping the sweat from your forehead with the hem of a t-shirt you only wear for DIY, there's Drake. The man you've spent a week convinced was ignoring you, slightly out of breath as if he's been running, those blue eyes of his trained on you with urgency. He's holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a VHS of the latest Mysteries of the Solar System tucked under the other arm, held so tightly against him it's wrinkling the light green shirt you recognise from the office New Year's party. You remember it because he looked really good in it. So handsome it had made you blush.

"Do you like lasagna?" he clumsily says.

You frown, arms crossed, letting your weight fall against one side of the doorframe, trying to ignore how his shirt collar looks like he put on a tie and then changed his mind.

"What are you doing here?"

Drake straightens his back and meets your eyes head-on, brave, like he's expecting a well-deserved punch to his prominent chin.

"I'm sorry about yesterday. The iguanas were sick and I had to stay-"

"I know about the iguanas," you cut him off, "Suzy told me. And I'm glad you stayed with them, I really am. But that's not what I'm mad about, Drake. You just... disappeared for a week. You never called me back. Never texted me back. Nothing." You give him a chance to defend himself, but the second he opens his mouth, you hold up a hand. "And no, one t-rex emoji doesn't count as a response. You couldn't even tell me what was wrong with the last National Geographic article I sent you."

"It said Early Cretaceous, but Mosasaurus lived during the Late," he reacts quickly at this.

"So you did read it!" You throw your hands up.

"Yes…. I-" he looks more overwhelmed by the second, "please. Just... let me explain."

You cross your arms again. "I am listening."

"I ran into a couple of coworkers. They told me they'd seen you hugging a guy, holding his hand. I thought he was your boyfriend."

You let out a short laugh, one eyebrow shooting up.

"That was my brother. We hadn't seen each other in ages, and I called to tell you."

"I know. I know that now." The flowers take the brunt of his grip. "But I didn't know that then, and it... it hit me hard. Really hard. For the whole damn week, actually. I didn't know what to say. Didn't know how to act. I figured I'd run into you at work, but..."

"Wait." You push yourself off the doorframe. "What exactly messed you up?"

He swallows in an attempt to push past his shyness.

"The thought that you were... well," he clears his throat, "in love with someone who..."

You frown, eyes darting between his.

"Who what?"

"... who wasn't me," he sweats.

Your heart hammers away so hard you want to scream. Thankfully, he keeps talking, because right now you can't get a single coherent word out.

"And I was scared, because it would mean you'd stop coming over to do.." he gestures vaguely at the VHS, "what we always do. And I want to keep doing that. Not just Fridays, Saturdays too, a-and whenever you want. I was actually trying to- I mean, I have no idea how any of this works, but I would have liked to ask you out," he can barely hold your gaze, and his cheeks are burning all the way up to his sideburns. "On a proper date. An actual one. Even though Kujaku says what we've been doing already counts as dates, and maybe it has and I'm just so hopeless I had no idea. But either way I didn't know if you... if you were interested in me beyond..."

You don't know who Kujaku is, but you don't ask.

"Beyond the documentaries and the dinners?"

He nods.

You fight the urge to drag a hand down your face. How is it possible that you've fallen for the densest man in the universe?

"But, Drake…" You take a step closer. "How could I not…? I mean, how did you not notice? I literally doll myself up every time I come over to your place so you'd think I'm pretty. How could you not know I was interested?"

"I don't know. I just... " He drops his gaze. "You always look beautiful to me," he manages to say, voice too strained to risk speaking any louder.

You bite your lower lip. No one has said something that sweet to you since elementary school. Knowing that if you don't make the move yourself you'll never get anywhere, you close the small distance between you and carefully take the flowers from his hand.

"How beautiful?"

Drake makes an effort to look at you again. His Adam's apple bobs, and the blush on his face deepens to a fiery crimson. You giggle playfully at his physical response, and slide the back of your free hand up across his chest toward his neck, where you curl it around the back of it.

"That much?" You smile in a way that makes his knees go weak, "And in these dates you'd like to have with me, what would you want to do?"

He sheepishly chuckles, back instinctively leaning down toward you.

"Go to the planetarium. And the movies. And the natural history museum." His answer comes so quickly and naturally that you wonder if he's had it planned all along.

You nod, pleased, fingers raking through his auburn hair. "There's a new restaurant I'd like to try too."

"I'll take you. There and wherever else you desire." He lets himself be guided by your touch. "And if they don't have what you want, I'll make it for you at mine."

"And after dinner," you whisper as you coax him down a little further "when you walked me home, what would you want to do?"

His eyes drop to your lips. He may be hopelessly shy but he's looking at you like he wants to devour you.

"Kiss you," he exhales.

"Well," you tilt your chin up toward him, "would you mind if we changed the order a little?"

And your lips meet his in a kiss he gladly returns, clumsy on his part, yet more tender and sweet than anything anyone has ever given you.

You want more, and the way his fingers brush softly at your sides tells you he ks begging for it too. So you rise onto your tiptoes, guiding him through his inexperience in more kisses that follow. A sound he's embarrassed by but that you absolutely want to hear again escapes his mouth and is swallowed by yours. In his pocket, his phone buzzes once. Must be the notification for the little albatross figurine he ordered in a hurry on his way here. His hands land on your waist, and the VHS slips from his grip. It would have fallen if you hadn't caught it between muffled laughter. It doesn't matter, you won't be watching Mysteries of the Solar System tonight. And the fact that you don't own a VHS player isn't the main reason.

As his mouth hungrily finds yours again, your mind is already working out the logistics. The way his shirt crumples as you pull at it. The obstacles in the hallway and how to navigate a man whose shoulders span the entire doorframe to your bedroom without detaching your lips once from his. What you'll do with them when you finally pull away, to show him exactly how much you've missed him.

Drake, however, can barely think. This warmth must mean that you are kissing him, truly kissing him, and he anchors himself in the honeyed taste to make sure it's real.

_*_

That night, he won't be sleeping in his own bed either. And by the end of it, he'll proudly state that the score stands at Steve 1 | Drake 3...

...4 after breakfast. 😉

@fantasia1919 and @clumsyfleatherbird for u 💕!!