Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Noelle is doing homework when her phone vibrates next to her. Normally she keeps it on her bed while she’s working, lest it distract her, but Miss Alphys assigned this really annoying worksheet that she wanted to complete immediately after getting home from school so it wouldn’t drown out the rest of her thoughts that afternoon. Because of the panic she was in to get it done, she had just kind of thrown her phone next to her.

Oh, and it's a really annoying worksheet. Once in a blue moon type of annoying. She figures one peek couldn’t hurt. Or maybe, like, a tiny break to keep her brain from melting out of her skull. She puts her pencil down, sighs, and…

Text message from Berdly. Well, it’s become a series, there are three in a row.

A year ago, she would’ve deliberated before carefully sliding her phone away. Most conversations with Berdly could feel patronizing back then. Recently, however, he’s become… much more pleasant. Now it’s mostly asking for advice on Visual Novels and asking her incessantly if they could hang out. (Which she always agrees to, for the record!)

The texts read:

Berdly !!

Noelle, could I ask for advice? Or, I suppose it’s a proposition of sorts… get back to me as soon as possible.

Berdly !!

Unless you’re busy, in which case we could put this off.

Berdly !!

I’ve changed my mind. Ignore these past few messages.

That’s… interesting. Now she HAS to know what the proposition / advice was. Especially considering her affinity for friendly advice.

Noelle ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

What is it, Berdly? You can tell me anything!

A classic ploy. Berdly’s kind of weak to unfiltered, welcoming kindness like that. She giggles to herself, imagining the way he’s probably shivering in indecision.

Berdly’s text bubble goes in and out a few times before, to her surprise, her phone starts ringing. She accepts the call hesitantly. Berdly usually NEVER calls. This must be serious.

“Berdly?”

“ Thank you for getting back to me, ” Berdly says, like he’s in an interview. “ I appreciate the concern. It’s just. Um. Well.”

Noelle waits patiently, but after a solid five seconds of silence, she says “…yes?”

“ Well, uh, you see… you’re… friends with Kris, right? ”

Noelle nods, eyebrows furrowed, before realizing Berdly can’t see her. “Yeah? Why?”

“ It’s just that… I recently came to the, uh, sordid realization that. Uh. I’m… dedicating a lot more time to them, than I probably should be. ”

Noelle blinks. That… is not entirely unexpected? She still wants to confirm the nature of this without coming on too strong, so after a moment of silence, she gently encourages him. “When did you come to this.. realization? Like, what prompted it?”

Berdly coughs off camera. It’s an unusually strangled noise. “ Oh, you know. ”

“…Do I?”

“Well, just in the middle of editing my.. forty minute long documentary about the true nature of their Super Smashing Fighters streams. Exposing the fact that they splice their speedruns.”

Noelle is silent.

“ Well, I kind of sat there, and I thought to myself, this is more work and dedication I’m putting into this than I bet any of my classmates have put into schoolwork in their lives! And then I thought, but that’s kind of strange, isn’t it? This is probably why people think I’m so, uh, off-putting, because I do things such as this. Then I thought, why AM I doing this again? Then I kind of revised the documentary as a whole and realized it was a little… um…”

Ignoring the rest of that paragraph, Noelle goes, “…a little…?”

Berdly audibly sweats. “ Insane? Because who makes a forty minute long documentary about their rival? My god, Noelle, who’s even going to watch this thing? Who will be there to bear witness to the fruit of my labor? ”

There are a lot of things she could say to this, but then a thought comes to mind- “Kris will definitely be there. Don’t they watch your streams?”

There’s silence on the other end for a strange amount of time. Noelle doesn’t have anything else to say, so she listens intently, until…

“ Noelle. Noelle. YOU’RE RIGHT. How could I have been so stupid? Of course! This is the true reason I’m doing all of this! For Kris! For Kris and Kris only- for them to know I KNOW of their true nature as a wavedashing, seedy little worm! The very one I dedicated this documentary to- should they not be the target audience? The reason I do what I do???

“Yeah!” She’s kind of getting in his groove now. “Yeah, Berdly! Show them who’s boss!”

“ Noelle, you’re a lifesaver! This will put an end to their treachery once and for all! Ha! Ha ha! I can't wait to see the look on their face! Thank you for your help, but I have to go now, Noelle- there are transitions to be coined, and memes to be rotated as the transitions are coining!”

The call hangs up so abruptly, Noelle has her mouth open before she can respond.

She did not know about the documentary. That’s… insane.

She then realized the beginning to that conversation was not at all where they ended up. Because… Berdly is thinking about Kris an uncanny amount, apparently, and also is in the middle of editing a forty minute long documentary about them as we speak.

It hits her all at once that there is DEFINITELY some shit afoot. And they didn’t even get to talk about it! How did the topic shift so drastically to Berdly’s documentary??? Or, actually, now that she thinks about it, the tonal shift was probably a deliberate misdirection on Berdly’s part. Rewinding the interaction in her mind, she pinpoints the moment- ah. It was when he started talking about the documentary being insane. Yeah, and then he was worried no one would watch it…

Wow. Subtle job he did there. Or maybe the topic DID just accidentally redirect itself in his mind, because he was definitely going down a different path at the beginning of that conversation.

Ah, oh well. She has to get that worksheet done. And Berdly’s busy- who’s to say this can’t be put off for tomorrow?

—-

Noelle is munching down happily on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, listening to Berdly drone on about why wavedashing is, by all technicalities, cheating. They’re seated out in the field under a recently blossomed tree. It’s nice and sunny out.

Yeah, she thinks, this is nice, as Berdly gestures wildly with his hands. He finished his lunch so quickly in the middle of his tirade it’s a wonder he didn’t choke. Berdly always seems to be moving. If there’s one thing Noelle believes he hates more than anything in the world, it’s inefficiency, because who else would’ve finished their lunch in five minutes WHILE talking through it?

“…so, to summarize, it’s not something the developers intended to be common knowledge. And besides that, you need a special type of controller AND a certain type of dexterity to even pull the move off! It’s inherently discriminatory to anyone with larger hands!” He flexes his wing-fingers to demonstrate.

Noelle wipes her hands off on her napkin, nodding. “Yeah, that makes sense.” She’s never been much of a Super Smashing Fighters girl, but she does play the occasional game when she hangs out with Berdly and Kris.

“It does!” He crosses his arms, angry over an imaginary audience. 

Giggling, Noelle dabs her mouth with her napkin. Peanut butter and jelly always somehow made it onto the bridge of her nose. And it was a horrible pain to clean off her fur. Too bad it tastes really good. “Do you have a section about that in your Kris documentary? Or is it only about the splicing? Because I know you’ve complained about them wavedashing before.”

Berdly turns to her, momentarily shocked, like he didn’t think she would remember that conversation. “Uh… yeah. I talk about it for a few minutes at the end.” He rubs the back of his neck, almost bashful.

Oh. Right. There’s something fishy afoot, isn’t there?

Looking out across the field, Noelle spots Kris and Susie in cahoots, giggling over something in their lunchbox. She admires the curve of Susie’s jaw for a second before distractedly refocusing on Berdly.

“Hey, uh, Berdly?”

“Yes, Noelle, dearest?” His head is turned almost 270 degrees and is twitching wildly in an attempt to reach a spot on the back of his neck. 

She almost flinches, but restrains from doing so, because dammit if she hasn’t gotten used to his weird bird shit after years of being by his side. “Uh, you don’t have to call me dearest anymore, remember?”

Berdly looks back up, feather in his beak. He spits it out comically. “Right! Force of habit. Yes, Noelle, my platonic friend?”

“What… DO you think of Kris? Because you two seem like friends when you’re not.. annoying the shit out of each other.”

This blanks Berdly out for a second. Squinting, he puts a hand up to his chin like he’s seriously thinking about it. “Well… it’s hard to say. I like hanging out with them.”

Berdly blinks and goes a little red, seeing as he’s probably never admitted that out loud before. “B-But in a strictly, um, business-like fashion!” He squawks. “They’re a terrifying adversary when they want to be! A worthy rival in all realms of video game except that of racing, w-which of course, you take the crown in.”

Noelle nods slowly. To anyone else, it would appear like a supremely sarcastic nod, which it is. To Berdly- Berdly has stopped looking at her and is now going on another rant.

“I-I mean, they’re probably my second greatest friend, after you, of course. Our Minecrap sessions are something to behold, Noelle, this I tell you. We’re a formidable duo. When they’re not shoving me into lava. But that only elevates the experience, dare I say, because when someone of MY skill level dives headfirst into a world he’s so familiar with, it can get a little boring without someone there to challenge you! Kris is the Link to my Revali, the Fox to my Falco! In fact, sometimes hanging out with them is rather easy, seeing as they don’t say much. It’s a remarkably unique tactic when it comes to socializing. They’re also- of course- umm-“ he’s starting to sweat a little bit. “Well, I find myself thinking, sometimes, having them on the team would be nice, given their prowess in- in all areas except, logical-“

“Okay, Berdly,” Noelle says, because she thinks she’s starting to smell a bigger picture here. Berdly goes on rants about a lot of things. However. He will NOT talk for that long about something he isn’t immensely passionate about. Just how much of that has he been waiting with bated breath to spill? “Berdly, just know I say this with only kindness in my heart, but is it possible you have… some kind of a crush? On Kris?”

There is silence for a moment. Berdly looks at her so blankly it’s terrifying. A solid number of supremely uncomfortable seconds pass.

…Then he begins laughing. “Ha. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

 Recalling the dark world, Noelle remembers watching Berdly hound Kris for a solid ten minutes straight about joining Queen’s side, insist about their unbidden potential, get angry about them hanging out with Susie like three times in a row, advertise himself as a brave and just warrior to them, and eagerly jump at a truce with them like two separate times. Pieces begin falling into place.

He’s cackling now, wiping a tear from his eye in a performative fashion.

“Berd-“

“HA! HAHAHAHAHA!” His laughter is reaching a manic state, being torn somewhere from inside his soul. Seriously, it’s almost painful to watch, it’s like all of his cells have the shared goal of trying to convince her of how hilarious the very idea is.

“Berdly,” she says, a strange urge to poke his hunched over body getting to her. Berdly sits up abruptly.

“Noelle.” His eyes betray nothing. Noelle breaks out into a cold sweat. “Utter buffoonery. Me? A crush? On Kris? I shudder to even think of it. You clearly don’t know much about how-“ something cuts him off mid sentence. “I mean, uh, my feelings for Kris…” that phrase makes him go red, which his laughing fit miraculously did not do. “Are strictly business. Platonic business. As I aforementioned.”

“…Right.”

“Well!” He stands, abruptly, every muscle in his face contorted and strained. “I better be going now!”

Noelle watches him run off mechanically, nodding slowly to herself, in utter awe of this discovery. Wow. He’s almost as terrible at lying as she is, which is saying something, because the entire schoolyard and a half is painfully aware of how bad she has it for Susie.

This is… a monumental discovery. This can’t slip by her. Noelle is keenly aware of the fact that Berdly is probably dealing with an unsavory amount of repressed emotions at the moment. She already knew that, because, well, have you SEEN Berdly? But this? This is new territory! She’s seen him “crush” on many a girl- INCLUDING her- and every time it was performative. It became his entire personality around them. He would brag about it, quip about it, have fun with it, and be completely and utterly aware and open about it. Nothing ever happened, obviously, because he would always chicken out before actually acting on it or just have his feelings painfully unrequited.

Noelle had never seen anything like this. Where Kris and Berdly were just friends, and interested in the same stuff, and had a cute little rivalry going, and Berdly quite obviously admired them WAY more than he let on and suddenly wanted to impress them even more than his other classmates. And maybe it just kind of… morphed from there? In a way Berdly couldn’t see with any startling clarity? Noelle’s pretty sure he’s never had a crush on anyone who wasn’t a girl before.

Ah, who cares about gender, anyway? Point is- she has to help him! He wanted to help her when she revealed her crush on Susie to him, so why not return the favor? Albeit in a much subtler manner. Berdly wouldn’t know subtlety if it ran him over at eighty miles an hour. And maybe she wouldn’t be DIRECTLY involved, but God knows her best friend needs some guidance in these dark times.

And everyone knows the first stage is acceptance.

Chapter Text

Noelle walks into class that morning, worried she created some kind of weird chasm between her and Berdly. She doesn’t think he’ll be angry or anything, but what if her coming on too strong yesterday was a setback in and of itself?

When she checks beside her for the first time since coming in, Berdly is fidgeting beneath his desk, eyebrows furrowed. When she looks back up at him a second time, ten minutes later, he’s trying to sneak glances back at Kris with all the subtle grace of a bull in a china shop. The period continues in a similar fashion until the lunch bell rings, where she’s treated to the sight of Berdly dashing away so quickly it leaves a metaphorical cloud of Berdly-shaped smoke behind him.

It’s… telling, to say the least. He usually stays behind if anything to talk to Alphys about upcoming assignments or sources or extra credit or whatnot. Feeling a strange sense of guilt, Noelle hurries after him out into the field after retrieving her lunchbox from her locker.

“Berdly!” She calls, running a steady pace. All that cross country doesn’t go to waste. Berdly is huffing and puffing under their usual tree, hands raised to his face. “Berdly? Are you okay? You seem, uh, stressed?”

She wants to reach out for him, but ultimately lets him decide the first move here, because he’s still panting like he hasn’t exerted himself in years. As his heavy breathing slowly tapers off, Noelle starts to calm down.

Her shoulders are grabbed. She’s spun around wildly and privy to the sight of Berdly’s face, more flushed than she thinks she’s ever seen it before. “Noelle. I changed my mind. I need your help.”

Berdly’s hands cover his face again as he mumbles into them, sliding down the trunk of the tree. Noelle can’t help but chuckle despite his turmoil. This must be serious if he’s asking for help- outside of the Dark World, at that. She lowers herself down next to his hunched over figure gently.

“Help with what?” She asks, though she already has an idea.

Berdly sighs, pulling his knees up to his chest. He looks.. pretty sincerely conflicted. “You… you mentioned that thing. About me liking Kris the other day.”

Ah. So that’s what this is about. She had already suspected, of course, but confirmation was nice. To show him she’s listening, Noelle nods. “Yeah?”

“And, and initially I thought… you were misunderstanding. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about it!” He squawks, throwing his arms out. “And I went to sleep last night thinking about it, and I had breakfast this morning thinking about it, and I spent all class wondering… thinking about just how much I… I mean, just a few days ago I was about to tell you I thought about them way too much before I got distracted!”

“Yeah, that did happen,” Noelle mutters.

Berdly drags his wings down his face in a despair-inducing display of deep and utter shame. “What do I do with this information, Noelle?”

Hm. That’s.. a good question. Initially Noelle was just going to make sure he understood his own feelings enough to not be plagued by the unknowns, but it seems like he’s already done that himself. Not entirely unexpected, given that he was already on the path to realizing he thought about Kris in a much different way than he did anyone else when he called her in distress over his documentary.

She puts a hand on his shoulder, quiet for a moment. Where DOES he go from here?

“I-I mean, Berdly, it’s just a crush. It can mean whatever you want it to mean. You can literally do anything you want about it.”

Berdly sniffs, shaking his head. “No I can’t! How will I ever face them again?”

“Hey guys,” Kris says, having appeared out of nowhere. Noelle and Berdly both yelp. Kris gives the two a warranted cursory glance.

“Kris!” Noelle takes the reins here, almost subconsciously shielding the inept Berdly. “What’s up?”

They narrow their eyes at her. She hopes to god it’s out of confusion and that they didn’t hear enough of the exchange to catch wind of what’s going on. “We were talking about you guys,” they gesture loosely to Susie, who’s scarfing food down her throat on a bench, “and want to know if you two feel like hanging out.”

“…What?” Noelle asks, still a little high strung.

“Susie wanted to hang out at my house, then started asking about you, Noelle-“ Noelle almost chokes on her own esophagus- “so I suggested we just all hang out together to make things easier. I figured Berdly could come if you were coming. I was just gonna.. play video games anyway.”

Berdly? Berdly! How’s he holding up?

She sneaks a glance at Berdly who has seemed to regain his composure beside her. Minus the unnatural wide of his eyes, predictably. “Y-Yes, Kris, um, I would gladly! I didn’t have any plans for, after school today, anyway.”

Kris opens their mouth, probably to point out that Berdly never has plans, but ultimately decides against it because their mouth just draws a thin amused line across their face instead. “Alright. You guys can come over whenever. If you feel like it.”

“Why’d you come over here instead of Susie?” Noelle asks. “You usually hate getting up while you’re eating.”

“She forced me,” they offer by way of explanation, seeming particularly uninterested. “Said she was too nervous.”

Noelle blinks, heart leaping to her throat. “Huh? Really?”

“No, I was lying, but she might as well have. Bye.”

They turn mechanically and make a stiff beeline for Susie. 

Noelle hates Kris sometimes because she’s pretty sure they knew damn well what they were insinuating there. Sighing, she turns to a rattled Berdly, whose cheeks have gone progressively more red since the beginning of that interaction.

“You okay?” Berdly nods.

“Noelle,” he says with a strange conviction, “you’re right.”

She can’t recall any declaration she’s made to him recently. “Uh? About what?”

“This is my crush-“

“- don’t say that so loudly- “

“-and I decide what to do about it. And I’ve decided to get rid of it.”

Noelle blinks. Right. Berdly was still under the impression crushes were… voluntary? This, of course, would beg the question of why he ‘decided’ to crush on Kris in the first place, but Noelle stays silent for the sake of letting him figure things out himself.

“Okay, Berdly,” she says, patient as ever. The nervous half grin on her face could do with a bit more workshopping though. “You.. tell me how that works out for you.”

“I will , as a matter of fact. Just you watch. We’ll laugh about this tragic misstep later. Now.” He opens his lunchbox. Noelle almost completely forgot about hers. And what a terrible thing, too, because she had just made chocolate mousse pie the other day and packed herself a slice!

She and Berdly end up scarfing down their lunches together in tandem, not really enjoying them to their full potential with the six minutes they had left in the period to eat. She did offer him some chocolate mousse, though, which he was immensely grateful for.

—-

She trots the walk to Kris’s house quicker than she normally would that evening, courtesy of a light drizzle that made itself known halfway there. She had originally held her arms over her head, not wanting her face to get wet, but by now she’s kind of conceded. And besides, she can see Kris’s house just down the street.

She knocks just frantically enough to get the hey please help me I’m being rained on let me in message across without being rude. The lock clicks, and she’s treated to the sight of a shocked looking Toriel, warm and fuzzy as ever. She quickly and expertly schools her face into simple delight.

“Oh, Noelle! Come in, come in!”

Noelle smiles gratefully as the door is shut behind her. The house has a beautiful warmth to it- Kris is playing Super Smashing Fighters against three CPUs seated on the floor. They don’t look up at her entry. She wants to dry herself off, but before she can even say anything, a towel is being shoved into her hands.

“Oh- thank you!” She says, patting down her head and dress. “Hi, hi! Sorry, I was eager to get out of the rain.”

“Oh, no problem at all,” Toriel placates her, sitting back down in Chariel. “I’m sorry, I would’ve left the door unlocked but SOMEONE didn’t tell me you were coming!” She says, looking directly at a hyper-focused Kris.

They don’t respond, but there’s a minuscule smile on their face that makes Noelle laugh. She hadn’t been here in.. a while, come to think of it. Maybe a few years. Being invited over casually was not how she would’ve expected this reunion to go. Regardless, even if she should’ve felt nervous, there was something so nostalgic about the place. The Dark World was messed up in a lot of ways, but she’s glad it lets her have this again.

She breathes in the air, which smells a lot like cinnamon. “It’s no trouble at all, Toriel. Are Susie and Berdly here?”

“Why- no, they’re not!” She’s playfully annoyed, a grin on her face. “Apparently Kris hasn’t told me a lot of things!” Kris sticks their tongue out.

Noelle giggles politely. “Would it be alright if I unlocked the door for them? Just so they can get in.”

She’s interrupted by frantic very soft knocking that she can only hear because she’s standing right next to the door. 

Blinking, she opens it, and is greeted to the sight of a sopping wet Berdly. And that’s difficult to pull off- normally water just slides right off his feathers. For him to be soaking- oh, yeah, she glances behind him and it’s pouring out there.

“Ah! Berdly!” She says a bit too loudly. She’s panicking, though, so she ushers him in. “Do you-“

“WAIT!!” A familiar roar sounds from down the driveway. Noelle and Berdly turn to the source and are greeted to the sight of Susie, angry as all hell. “HOLD ON!” Even Kris has paused Super Smashing Fighters and is peeking over their shoulders from their limited vantage point.

“Dear Lord Arceus,” Berdly mutters. “Was she behind me the whole time?”

She’s fast approaching, though, and he has to move out of the way with a loud squawk of distress before her soaking wet hulking form barrels into him. 

“I’M HERE,” she screams, panting in the doorway.

“My goodness!” Toriel gasps, running to fetch more towels. “Oh, don’t worry about the carpet, everyone, get out of the rain!”

Susie scrambles in after Berdly (she apparently was trying her best to not let her muddy shoes touch the floor), to which Noelle pushes the door shut. There’s a collective air of relief. Susie tries to hold all of her limbs away from herself in an attempt to salvage whatever she can air out. Kris snickers at her openly.

“My- wow. Damn. What the hell??? ” Susie growls, looking at herself with open disgust. “Rain wasn’t even on the forecast!”

Toriel dashes in with more towels from the kitchen.

“Here you go-“ the towels are snatched from her hands by Berdly and Susie- but gently, like they still want to make a good impression. Gratuitous words float around as they rub their towels on themselves as incessantly as possible. Toriel sits back down in Chairiel, looking relieved.

“You kids just do whatever you want and I’ll be right here,” she says kindly. As soon as Berdly’s done with his towel, he stalks towards the kitchen, motioning for Noelle to join him with a flick of his finger. His expression is unwavering and a bit… is that anger? Uh. Okay.

She goes after Berdly and receives a questioning glance from Kris and especially Susie, but can only give an apologetic smile. Toriel blinks at her a little, but ultimately is too concerned with her book to question it.

Berdly keeps going, however, and is now traveling up the stairs? Well, alright, that’s okay. Sure. “Berdly- where are you going???”

He doesn’t answer her, though, until he’s halfway down the hall. Abruptly turning to her, he breathes in deeply. “Noelle.”

“Berdly, what is it?”

“It’s not working,” he honest-to-god whispers to her like they’re on a covert operation. He even glances around himself like someone is listening in on them.

She blinks, exasperated. “What’s not working?”

“It won’t go away .”

He still isn’t using specific terms, probably out of fear, but Noelle’s caught his drift by now. “Your crush?”

“Shshshshshshhh hhhhhuuuuh !!” He scrambles to throw his wings over her mouth, looking fearful for his life. “ Noelle! ”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” she says, gently removing the feathers from her face. “Sorry! I’ll whisper.”

“Good,” he mutters. “Noelle. I’m at a stalemate with my own mindddd . I can’t stop thinking .”

“That’s okay!” She says, as encouragingly quiet as possible. “You can think. You’re allowed to think. You’re allowed to do all those things. Just.. hang out. The same way you always do. No one will notice anything is off and you can still have fun, just with some extra thoughts.”

Berdly looks at her despairingly, nodding. “Right. Of course.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He nods, steeling himself up. He slaps himself ineffectively because his hands don’t have much sturdy foundation. He swings his head around to maintain the illusion of power anyway. “Alright. Let’s do this. It’ll be just like the old times.”

“It is the old times, Berdly,” Noelle giggles. “Nothing has changed.”

“Noelle, you’re too wise for even me to compute sometimes-“ she’s shocked at this admittance and almost misses what he says next- “-so I will accept, here and now, that you’re completely right. In fact, this is all in my head. So what if suddenly it’s known to me?” He clenches a fist in a great show of willpower. She can’t help but feel proud of him. “I will simply… ignore these proceedings.”

Oh. Well, it’s better than straight up denial, she supposes, but ignoring his own feelings still isn’t really the best he could be doing? Noelle nods anyway, because Berdly follows his own train of thought most of the time and doesn’t even begin to consider borrowing ideas from other people. Except for on his good days. He’s started doing it more often since the Dark World.

“Alright, Berdly, that’s fine. How about we go back to Kris and Susie? I saw Kris was only just playing against CPUs when I came in.”

“Preposterous! And to think they knew I’d be here soon-“ the sentence trails off as Berdly makes a dash for the stairs, shuffling down them quick as his talons allow him to.

Noelle is left standing in the hallway, amused against her will at the sheer unreality of the situation.

Chapter Text

“…So then I popped him with all the grace of a Halo veteran, refraining from entertaining his rage all the while!”

“Seriously?” Noelle sips her strawberry QC’s milkshake. QC’s makes really, really good milkshakes. “You’re a stronger man than I am, Berdly. I would’ve at least cried.”

Berdly laughs, which makes Noelle smile in a miniscule way. “Noelle… you poor, sweet thing. You aren’t a man.”

Noelle genuinely cannot tell if that was a joke or if Berdly was actually trying to explain to her that she is a girl, but she accepts it either way.

“Anyway,” Berdly wipes his hands off, getting mustard on his napkin. He might actually be the neatest gamer she’s ever met. When he’s not preening or dusting himself off or anything like that, he’s OBSESSED with napkins whenever he eats, which goes against perhaps every stereotypical trait about hygiene you’d expect of him. Granted, she has no idea how often he showers, considering he smells like cheap Axe. “Noelle. Guess what.”

“Yeah?”

“I have a surprise for you. Brace yourself… you may not be able to handle the sheer majesty of it all.”

Oh, Noelle braces herself, alright. “Oh, really? Like… a gift?”

“Uh,” he pulls at his turtleneck, eye contact escaping him about five seconds into this conversation about his gift. Generally not a good sign when it comes to everyone, but especially Berdly. “Well. Yes?”

“I don’t like the question mark in that answer, Berdly.”

“It is a gift… indirectly.”

Noelle is positively sweaty by now, a frantic smile pulling at her lips. She really just wanted a milkshake. Who knows what terrible things Berdly considers “indirect gifts”?

“Okay??? Uh? What is it?”

“You have to guess!” He holds his wings up cheekily.

“I’m not guessing!”

“Fair enough! Noelle…” he beats the table with his wings, drum rolling. “Congratulations! You’re going on a date with Susie in-“

“-WHAT?”

“about five minutes!” 

“HUH?”

“I was thinking about what you said yesterday,” Berdly begins his long winded explanation, like Noelle’s entire world was not just upheaved, “so while absolutely destroying Kris at Super Smashing Fighters, I..” he hesitates here, like he isn’t sure he wants to continue. “…Was datamining them more than usual. To which I eventually found out they are completely and utterly aware of your affections for Susie too! So, we concocted a plan! We agreed that I would bring you here today, and they would bring Susie, then we would let you two sort things out!”

Noelle considers which part of that spiel she wants to reply to first, but she’s still stuck on the fact that she’s supposed to be one-on-one hanging out with Susie in the next five minutes. “SUSIE WILL BE HERE IN LIKE FIVE MINUTES?”

“Three, actually.”

“Oh, God, WHAT?”

“Worry not, Noelle!” Berdly crosses his arms, looking self righteous as ever. “Kris and I will be just across the diner to make sure nothing goes horribly wrong! Look!” He fishes around in his shirt pocket for a second before pulling out a deck of cards. “We can all play War if it gets awkward!”

Noelle pats down her face, acutely aware of the fact that it’s burning to the touch. “Um. Uh, okay,” she says, still despondent. Susie is invading her brain as she speaks. “But you guys promise to… to come and hang out with us if, um, I get overwhelmed?”

“Noelle,” Berdly says as sincerely as a guy like him possibly can, setting a wing over her hand. It’s about as romantic in nature as receiving a hug from your grandma. “I would never leave you on a date with the girl of your dreams without your consent!” 

It has a rehearsed quality, like he’s repeating the words from somebody else.

Yes, you absolutely would, Noelle thinks. She loves Berdly, but something tells her he initially saw nothing wrong with the prospect of leaving to fend for herself with Susie without giving her any time or space to prepare and completely without her consent. This was probably Kris’s doing. She silently thanks God for Kris.

“Right,” she says, because she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to explain all of that to Berdly concisely. “Um. Thank you?”

“No trouble at all, de- Noelle, da- uh,”

“Noelle.”

“Noelle. Why do so many terms of endearment start with D?”

“Nevermind that, um.” Noelle blinks, dots connecting in her mind. “If Susie and I will be alone over here on a ‘date’, won’t you and Kris also be on a date by that logic? Won’t this literally just be a separate double date?”

“Wh- that’s completely different!” Berdly looks scandalized.

“There is no romantic context to either of these situations, Berdly. You and Kris will be on as much of a date as Susie and I.”

“ No! ” Berdly honest-to-god yells. Not loud enough to attract the attention of the other patrons, but loud enough to fill the entire space of their booth. “I mean, no! We’re just gonna be watching you two! That’s the entire reason for our outing.”

“Riiight.” Noelle nods slowly, making it VERY clear she doesn’t understand him.

“I’m glad you understand,” he says completely unironically. “It’ll be great. Just watch.”

“Okay. Um.” Noelle brushes her fingers through her hair, suddenly feeling like she’s about to throw up all over her cold fries. “When are they gonna be here, do you think?”

“Hey, guys,” Kris says, having appeared at their table. Noelle and Berdly both yelp.

“Kris!” Berdly beats her to it this time. “Is this going to become a recurring gag?”

“It has already been set in motion,” Kris murmurs, “the gag of it all.”

“ Where’s Susie? ” Noelle stage whispers. She realizes she’s doing the exact same thing Berdly was doing yesterday when she mentioned his crush on Kris. This is somehow the most horrifying thought she’s had in the past decade, and some fucked up shit has happened to her in said past decade.

“I’m making her wait outside, just to check if you’re alright with all of this.”

“Oh…” a sudden surge of affection rises in her. Her friends are absolutely insane, and she kind of loves them for this whole operation they’ve come up with. Confidence eats her alive, suddenly, and she takes a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re fine. I can do this.”

Kris just smiles. “Alright. Berdly, come on.”

Berdly suddenly looks very nervous. Noelle can’t imagine why. “R-right! Of course! We..” he scoots awkwardly out of the booth, spinning around a few times. “..will be right over here,” he says, gesturing to a booth on the opposite end of the diner.

“No,” Kris says. “I already ordered over there.” They gesture to the booth all the way in the corner of the diner, next to the large window.

Berdly laughs very loudly even though Kris didn’t say anything funny. “Ha! Ha ha ha! Of course! Well, I’ll leave you.. ladies to it!”

As Berdly stalks away to the booth looking constipated, Kris gives Noelle a large thumbs up. “Have fun. Don’t worry. I’ll go get her.”

They head for the door. Noelle’s heart makes an obvious effort to climb up and out of her esophagus, but she metaphorically shoves it back down and places her hands in her lap. She can have fun, hanging out, with Susie. She’s cool. Based, even. How hard could it be?

—-

Berdly scoots into the window booth, suddenly feeling very sweaty. When was the last time he showered again? Like, two days ago? 

… it’s fine, he put on a ton of Axe this morning. Not specifically with Kris in mind, but, he did come to the conclusion that today was rather important (Noelle and Susie’s first date!!!) and he should probably smell good for it. So, basically, he’s set.

…So why does he feel so terribly out of place?

He watches Susie come through the door, looking bored and unkempt as ever. Her eyes land on Noelle, Kris says a few words to her, she looks immensely confused, and then she shrugs and stalks her way over to her designated booth. Kris watches her go silently, expression unreadable. And then they’re walking over to join him.

Berdly wipes his wings on his cargo shorts just as Kris slides in across from him. He’s literally insane. What is he even nervous about?

“Ah, young love!” He sonnets, looking everywhere but at their face. “This should be good. How do you think things will go between them?”

“I think they’ll be alright,” Kris says thoughtfully, resting their elbows on the table.

“Surely. I mean, they’re perfect for each other. So much so that, it’s a marvel I didn’t see it coming sooner. Susie, the secretly kind ruffian, and the picture perfect Noelle- one crushing on the other beyond all reason, the other sure to find it in her heart to reciprocate. What possibly couldn’t work between them?”

“Yeah. I think they could really improve each other. And they’re just cute.”

Berdly wonders about this for a second. He finds that he really IS rooting for them. Like, harder than he ever expected to. “…they are. Tell me, Kris,” he murmurs, feeling genuinely concerned for Noelle. “Do you think… Susie feels the same way about her? You didn’t tell me yesterday. Anything about her perspective is really just speculation on my part.”

Kris is silent for a moment, twiddling their thumbs. Berdly can never tell if they’re looking at him or not and he kind of loves it. 

“…the SAME way? Maybe not,” they say honestly, not sounding too peeved about it.

“Then… Noelle is doomed to life in this loveless stasis?” Berdly says, sounding way too close to tears.

Kris snorts. “I didn’t say that. Just not the SAME way. I think Susie is definitely more romantically into her than anyone else we know and admires a lot of her qualities. The capacity for “love” is there. I think we just have to encourage them.”

Berdly nods emphatically. “Of course! Then, how are they doing now?”

They simultaneously sneak a glance at Susie and Noelle. Susie is gesturing wildly about something and Noelle is laughing at (with?) her.

“…Good,” Kris says happily. Berdly’s heart stutters a bit at the noise.

“Wait… Kris! We didn’t establish any sort of signal with Noelle! What if she needs us to go over and play War with them and we don’t know it?”

“…Why War specifically?”

Berdly sputters. “It’s easy! Simple! Not because I need card games to be simple and easy to be enjoyable, but because simpletons like you and Susie would find it less challenging to wrap your heads around!”

Kris stares at him blankly.

“Uh, well, I mean, I just like War more than a majority of other card games.”

“Because it’s simple?” Kris grins at him.

“ No! ” Berdly is feeling very attacked today. “Because it’s fun!”

“I think it’s probably the least fun card game I know of. It’s all luck based. There’s barely any cognitive thought that goes into it.”

“That’s what makes it so great, though!” Berdly says, folding his wings across the table. “Luck based games like this are easy enough to form a charming rapport with someone over because they tell you the baseline components to one’s personality, such as how they react to winning or losing, who they blame, what infuriates them…”

Berdly can’t see Kris’s eyebrows, but something tells him one is raised beneath their fringe. “We’ve all known each other since preschool. Well, except Susie.”

“That’s besides the point. War is a classic. You’re just being pretentious.”

“There’s absolutely no way on God’s green earth YOU just called ME pretentious.”

“What’s that supposed to imply?” Berdly’s eyes narrow, but before he can give Kris a whole feature length presentation as to why he isn’t pretentious, an exhausted Catti appears from the shadows and sets a bowl of pale eggshells in front of him. Berdly gasps.

“Sweet Lord Arceus!”

He immediately dives for them, savoring them for all they’re worth. Yup, just as crunchy and sweet as he remembers them being. Kris looks satisfied, taking a sip from their own mug of coffee.

“I’m expecting a tip,” Catti says, looking pointedly at both of them before leaving to attend to a family in the next booth over.

“I’m not tipping her,” Kris says. “I take it you’re grateful for the eggshells?”

“ Am I !” Berdly all but shouts through his mouthful. “Oh, Kris, you ordered, didn’t you? How did you know how much I love eggshells?”

“You inhaled them every day for lunch in elementary school, dude. Every day. For six years straight. I always thought you’d get sick of them one day but you just kept being so excited about it every time you saw them.” They take a sip of their coffee, probably peeved about being forced to talk for so long. Berdly doesn’t blame them. How could he? He hasn’t had eggshells in years . When middle school started, his parents stopped packing lunch for him and therefore stopped buying eggs because that was the only thing they used them for. 

A nostalgic quality is rising in him, which he doesn’t particularly want right now. So he just keeps swallowing the eggshells.

“You.. uh, remembered that? About me?”

Kris just nods, like it’s no big deal. But Berdly knows better, he thinks, color high in his cheeks. Crushes are usually pretty stress inducing, but he forgot how nice it felt to have a smile erupt out of you against your will.

“I guess you’ve earned calling me pretentious. One time!”

Kris giggles. It kind of eats him alive.

—-

Susie spreads her entire being across the booth like she doesn’t have a care in the world. Noelle can say with confidence that she is about to die.

“Susie!” Her useless, useless mouth says. “Hi! Um, what did Kris, uh, tell you?”

“Oh, uh, they just said to sit over here. Hell if I know why.” She scratches her head.

“Ha ha, yeah, um, well,” she desperately scrambles for an explanation. Damn you, Kris, for not giving me better material to work with! “I-I don’t really know what’s going on either. They just came in here, said hi to me, then mentioned you being outside… you should probably ask about it later.” Blame successfully shifted. For now.

“That kid is weird as fuck,” Susie murmurs, poking at Berdly’s cold and almost completely obliterated Italian sub. “Uh??? Who’s is this??? Did Kris, uh, order a sandwich too, while they were at it?” She grins.

Susie’s teeth in her face are kind of too much for Noelle at the moment, but she makes an enormous effort to form a coherent response anyway. She did not come this far to be this much of a bumbling idiot, so she giggles intelligently. “That’s right. We had a nice chat and everything. Sandwich is free territory, though, if you want it.”

“That’s obviously a lie,” Susie says, “but I’m not gonna question it because of the free sandwich.” She scarfs it down, licking her fingers all the while. 

She squints, looking pleasantly surprised. “Oh, shit, spicy mustard? Kris’s palette seems so… bland.”

“First of all, be nice to them-“

“Yeah, yeah.”

“-second of all, it wasn’t ACTUALLY Kris, but that’s not important.” She’s remembering now that birds don’t actually taste spice.

Susie’s quiet for a moment, looking at her. Noelle can feel herself begin to get nervous again. And she was just warming up, too. “…Whatever you say. Hey, I’m starving.”

“What can I get for you?” Catti appears next to their table, almost startling Noelle. Susie barely even flinches. Admirable in the face of one of the town occultists. It seems to be a recurring thing with them, making virtually no notice of their presence as they approach you.

Susie orders about five million things, and then after her tirade Noelle has to awkwardly explain that she doesn’t want anything. Most waitresses she know would say something along the lines of “are you sure” to make her second guess herself and spend money, but Catti accepts her request for nothing first try in the face of the stress Susie’s order has evidently caused her.

Almost two seconds after Catti walks away, Susie’s entire expression drops. “Oh, wait, shit! I can’t pay for any of this!”

“Uh-“ Noelle scrambles in her skirt pockets, feeling around for her personal debit card. “I’ve got it paid for! Don’t worry!”

“Uh, what? No? That was like five hundred dollars worth of stuff,” Susie growls, like Noelle’s offer personally offended her. Okay. Intimidating, but a little exciting at the same time.

“I-I was looking at the menu. It was only, like, uh, forty. Don’t worry, Susie, I’m rich. I’ve got it covered.”

Susie snorts, crossing her arms with a lazy smile on her face. “Way to rub it in.”

“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to-“

“I’m kidding, Noelle. But seriously, I would feel bad making you pay. I’ll just get, like, one thing or something.”

Noelle considers just taking up Susie’s offer here, but she looks so.. sad. Like she was really looking forward to eating all of that. And not in a performative way either, just kind of subdued.

…Ugh, who is she kidding? She’s a far, far gone loser. She would gladly pay for thousands of Susie’s meals if it meant Susie looked at her like she was a step above everyone else.

“I insist.” She offers an easy smile. “I mean, I have a LOT of money. And I know how much you like food.”

“Rude,” Susie grins.

Noelle almost tells her to shut up, but that’s probably.. too comfortable of her. Okay. Step back. “You know what I meant,” she giggles.

Susie groans loudly and dramatically, like Noelle isn’t offering to pay for all of her food. “Fine. But if you go broke because of me, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t. Promise.” She can tell she’s smiling like some kind of smitten idiot, but she can’t find it in her to care.

It’s silent for a second, where Susie’s easy posture suddenly stiffens. She looks away for half a second, lips parted slightly, hair covering her face. She then coughs into her fist to release the tension, though it doesn’t seem to work. Noelle panics.

“Uh, what’s this?” She points to a menu item with a stupid name that she can vaguely remember Susie ordering through a scoff.

Susie blinks. “What, Bason Brimley’s Boof Breakfast?”

“Yeah. Why’d you order it? I wouldn’t touch a meal named after a Bason Brimley with a ten foot pole.”

“You kidding?” Susie’s lazy grin returns to her face, and so does the light to Noelle’s heart. “Those are the best ones, with the stupid names. It’s got white chocolate AND anchovies.”

“If you throw up on me, I’m suing.”

“Hell yeah. Then I can at least pay you back.”

Chapter Text

“She’s basically just Zelda in a different font.”

“I know, right? Uh..” Berdly scrambles to remember the name of that one girl from the second grade again. “Beatrice Brown! In the second grade! We played Smash together once or twice and both times I can recall she was a major Paulina advocate. It’s no wonder I keep forgetting her name. Z tier opinions, that girl had.”

Kris tilts their head a little, which almost makes Berdly laugh. Not because he thinks it’s funny, but because he feels so much joy at the motion that he almost can’t contain it. “Beatrice liked Smash?”

Berdly nods. “Right? She hadn’t seemed like the type!”

“How did you find out about that?”

Once again, Berdly is frankly shocked and appalled at how well their, erm.

Well.

Their hang out sesh , as the kids say, was going. It was going very well. Kris hadn’t looked weirded out, annoyed, plain disgusted or even put off by anything he’s said thus far, which is a feeling quite foreign to him when talking to anyone other than Noelle. Admittedly, he doesn’t do it that often unless they talk to him first, but people who strike up conversations with him almost always end up leaving after about five seconds, so, well.

Let’s just say he doesn’t have much experience in the field.

Of course, he’s amazing. So it’s their fault if they don’t want to talk to him. But, it’s a little nice, he reasons, to have someone so readily talk to him back.

He’s pondering this, staring at Kris like some kind of drunken idiot, when he realizes he completely forgot their question. “Huh? What did you say?”

“I said,” they say, amusement in their tone, “how did you find out Beatrice liked Smash in the first place?”

He can’t remember. In fact, he would really rather talk about anything other than Beatrice at this point. “Oh, you know. Just my… natural charming rapport. I have with everyone. It eventually came up. More importantly, though…”

Berdly has never been a shy guy. It’s quite literally nowhere in his nature. When he wants something, he makes no secret of it. And right now? He wants to go home and beat Kris’s ass at Smash. Preferably, in a way that highlights all of his appealing masculine qualities such that Kris falls head over heels in love with him.

…Maybe that’s too much to ask for their first unofficial (official in Berdly’s mind) Smash date after their first unofficial QC’s date. So not head over heels in love, let’s say.

Okay, maybe it won’t even be a date! This isn’t even a date! He’s getting too hasty! His mind is running away with him. In fact, he has nothing more than a fleeting fancy on Kris. The realization came to him a few nights ago, as he lie awake in bed, thinking about the documentary on them he was making that sort of sparked this whole situation.

And as he was thinking about how cool it would be to just hang out with Kris his entire life, like, walk into class and be able to say hi to them and sit next to them the entire period and talk and laugh at each other all the way through and watch Kris watch him talk about all of the things he wants to talk about and tell him how cool of a guy he is and how smart he is and what a joy he is to have in their everyday life until suddenly they seem much closer and he’s sweating but his joy is so palpable underneath the stressful tension of having a really, really, really good friend like Kris, it hit him.

That oh, that's weird. Isn’t it?

And that’s fine! The line between platonic and romantic, for him, wasn’t a big deal at all. Kris has suddenly and unexpectedly crossed into the other realm? Cool! Awesome! He could deal with that! He happens to be a bit of a hopeless romantic, actually. 

So he’s decided to take it in stride! Berdly takes a lot of things in stride, actually. It’s one of his best qualities.

Adjusting his collar and straightening out as harshly as he can to pop the question, he opens his mouth. “I was actually wondering if you’d like, to.”

Oh god, he can’t finish the sentence. He’s going to start saying “uhhhh” until something else happens.

“Uhhhhhhh. So, Kris. Tell me about yourself?”

Okay, now- and pardon his French- why the fuck would he ask that? That’s basically what they’ve been doing back and forth for the past twenty minutes, without needing to explicitly state it.

Kris blinks at him. “That’s a very broad question to ask. I suggest narrowing it down a little.”

“Fine! Fine. I can do that. What’s your favorite season?”

“Autumn.”

“Favorite chocolate type?”

“Milk.”

“Best pie flavor?”

“Butterscotch-cinnamon.”

“In an average twelve hour period between 8am and 8pm, how many separate times would you say you fall asleep?”

“Two on a good day.”

“Now that’s something I can’t relate to!”

“What HAVE you related to thus far?”

Berdly doesn’t want to build tension where there is none, but he’s pretty sure Kris is batting their eyelashes at him right now. (Obligatory note from the author: they are not. Kris is frog blinking because the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.)

“Oh, you know,” Berdly squawks, because he wasn’t prepared for the mental image of Kris blinking slowly at him like that. “You know,” he tries again, “I’m something of a milk chocolate guy myself.”

“You like chocolate milk?”

“Bit of a plebeian drink,” he says, tapping his chin like he’s considering it.

“Whaaaat?” Kris grins. “Sugar is at such a high expense nowadays. No one from the general population drinks chocolate milk. It’s reserved for nobles, and kings, and stuff. The upper middle class.”

Berdly scoffs. “You’ve convinced me. Now, o noble one, order me a chocolate milk to prove that you can afford it and be worthy of my affections.”

“What?”

“What?”

“Do you actually want a chocolate milk? Because I’ll pay for it,” Kris says, like Berdly didn’t just Freudian trip, fall, and die.

He maintains a sweaty grip on his cargo shorts like they’re a lifeline. “No, no, I was meandering about in speech, didn't mean a word of it.”

There’s a loaded silence for approximately two nanoseconds. Berdly panics.

“Would you like to come to my house?”

“What?”

“Or we could go to yours! No rush! I’m,” he slicks the feathers on his head back. “In no rush at all.”

Kris looks at him, expression vaguely resembling that of a high person’s. “…Right now?”

“Or, whenever. Yknow, right now or whenever you want.”

“Why not right now, then?” Kris sniffs.

Berdly nods harshly. “Yes! Wonderful idea, my esteemed comrade. I mean, uh, which house? That wasn’t established.”

“Yours is fine. You wanna play Smash?”

“Exactly! See, I was expanding on our previous conversation topic.”

“You were. I completely understand.” Kris stands, prompting Berdly to do the same like some kind of lost puppy.

“Let’s go, then!”

Berdly tries to pull the push door open for a solid five seconds straight. He has literally been coming here his entire life. With a nervous laugh in the face of Kris’s great apathy, he finally manages to get it open.

They both completely forget about Susie and Noelle’s date. Which, if it went on any longer, may start containing grievous attempts at milkshake sharing at this rate.

—-

“Welcome to my humble abode!” Berdly holds the door to his house open for a bored-looking Kris. Actually, thinking about it, that’s not good, is it? 

Of course, Kris looks bored all the time, but this is different! Well, they’ll be having fun eventually, it’s fine. Or maybe it’s because they’re not particularly intrigued considering they’ve been here before. Only once or twice, back when things were less complicated between them.

Or. Well. Complicated with Berdly, mostly. Pre spelling bee.

Berdly’s eyes anxiously dart around the living room. His house is actually, deliberating on it, pretty drab. It’s not like the walls are warm colors like they are in Kris’s house. Everything is a meek shade of beige. Of course, except for the carpet and the trinkets on their coffee table and fireplace, but he doesn’t really have a very impressive living area, does he? At least the kitchen is tidier than usual. From what he could remember before he left for QC’s this morning.

Luckily, his room is WAY cooler. “Take it all in. No rush.”

Kris evidently does this. They take a few slow, deliberate steps to his fireplace and peer at a framed photo of him and his parents. “I don’t think I’ve ever met your parents. Well, I’ve seen them pick you up once or twice.”

“Not the same thing as meeting them, though, I see where you’re coming from.” Berdly joins Kris at their side, looking at the framed photo like it’s the most fascinating thing he has seen in his life despite the fact that he has ample time to stare at it while playing video games in the living room or cooking dinner.

Kris looks at him.

Berdly looks at them. “What?”

“Are they here?”

“Oh! Oh, no, they’re at work. In the city.”

“Both of them?”

Berdly nods vigorously. “Well, yeah. How do you think we could afford this place? Lots of hard work and dedication!”

“I guess that makes sense.” Kris seems strangely… disappointed? At this notion? Or, well, Berdly can’t be making any guesses.

“Don’t worry!” He assures them regardless. “I’ll introduce you to them one day!”

Hmm. That sounds vaguely couple-y. Good! Better to pile it on thick. Berdly winks for good measure.

Kris is already making their way up the stairs. (Berdly scribbles a quick mental note to himself: wink faster next time!)

Berdly holds the door to his room open for them again (despite the fact that it’s unnecessary- chivalrous of him!) and rushes to set up his switch. He’s slipping more than usual, a disgraceful product of his nervousness. He does this every day! It shouldn’t really be difficult!

“I’ve actually been working on something,” he rambles as Kris sits down at the foot of his bed, “you’re going to be blown away by. Just you watch, Kris.”

“I’m watching,” they say with the cadence of a babysitter. Berdly would know, he’s gone through a lot of babysitters!

He stuffs controller one into their hands, which they seem relatively startled by given the power and responsibility that comes with the position of player one, and Berdly settles next to them at a respectable distance.

Berdly squints. “You’re turning items off?” 

“Yeah. Why? Do you want them on?”

“No, no, whatever you’d prefer!” He fidgets in place a little. 

“You seem uncomfy,” they say conversationally. Berdly turns to give them a piece of his mind and holy shit their face is very close to his face.

After getting over this initial shock which leaves him stuttering for a second (though that could easily be passed off as indignation), he squawks. “I am not! I’m just used to playing with items, but I adapt very quickly to change, you’ll soon find.”

“Mmmkay,” they say, nonplussed and turning back to the screen. Berdly squares himself up. He will admit, he has a… not winning streak when it comes to Kris. They are, in the most obvious terms, a… formidable adversary. Ugh, whatever. Whatever! He has actually been working on a new combo he’s been waiting with bated breath to show them, so. Fingers and toes crossed.

It ends up not being much of a competition.

Berdly is seething by the end of the third round, grabbing Kris’s controller and turning it around in his hands like on his fourth spin he’ll find a note on the back telling him “this controller is rigged and completely unfair to play against”. Kris is grinning at his antics.

“Actually, KRIS,” he spits, slamming it back into their waiting palms, “I’m feeling hungry. Be right back.”

“We were just at QC’s,” Kris’s soft matter-of-fact tone floats out from behind him. Berdly slams the door.

Stupid Kris. Kicking his ass at Smash. He has a streak, goddammit. Well, against various CPUs cranked up to 9, but a streak nonetheless. Humiliating, he says, humiliating!

He wasn’t actually lying about being hungry, now that he thinks about it. He only had half an Italian sub to eat today, and that was like an hour ago by now. So, to clear his mind like he’s a Shaolin monk or something, he resolves to make food. Making food is a great way to clear one’s mind, he reasons, without any of the meditative process involved. But now as he comes up on his frankly very large and appealing pantry, he’s struck with a dilemma: it’s 4pm. The LEAST optimal time to make food. Any snack you have now would inhibit dinner, and if you eat dinner this early you’re practically forbidden from eating the rest of the day! Which is like the entire second half of daylight hours. By law of the stomach.

So, grumbling, he reluctantly makes his way back up to Kris with a family sized bag of spicy jalapeño sun chips. He can just make dinner late today.

He catches Kris at his desk, in the corner of his room, in the act of HOLDING HIS SWEET CRUSADERS FIGURINES.

“Hey-hey-HEY-HEY-HEY!!” He screams, flinging the sun chips to the ground as he scrambles to push them away from his desk. “KRIS!”

They hold their hands up in surrender, looking genuinely startled. “Uh!”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” He practically tears Gallavander and Reedus from their hands. They don’t answer, eyes unusually wide.

Berdly kneels until he’s eye level with his desk, prodding them back into place for a solid ten, silent seconds. Focusing all of his divine energy into the reconnaissance, he shifts Gallavander a near imperceptible amount to the left, making sure he and Reedus are facing each other correctly.

He sighs, wipes invisible sweat from his forehead. “That was a close one, Kris. You could’ve permanently damaged them, moron! Lowlife!”

They seem confused at this turn of events, fidgeting with their sleeves in complete and utter silence.

Berdly’s shoulders instinctively hunch at this sight. “Well! I suppose I can’t fault you for not knowing to not touch them, given the wide and vast array of common sense you evidently LACK!”

There we go! Kris has been successfully comforted, and the situation alleviated. He gives himself a mental pat on the back for his deescalation skills.

“Now, come on! I can’t have you ruining any more of my belongings.” He stalks back to his seat at the foot of his bed, sitting down a little harshly. Still in a high strung mood from the shock, of course.

Kris slowly sits down next to him, noticeably stiff. Berdly grabs the jalapeño sun chips from their cast away spot on the floor and tears them open in the same way one might expect a rabid coyote to, stuffing a few into his mouth at once and then neatly patting his surrounding beak with a napkin. He holds the bag out to Kris. “Want some?”

They take a few. But… slowly. Like if they move too fast they’ll break something. They don’t even lift the chips to their mouth after they’ve grabbed a handful, they just slowly lower their hands back to their lap. 

Berdly is silently munching on his chips for a few seconds, peering at them with all the subtle grace of a freight train.

“Pardon my word, but you’re being quiet,” Berdly says. “You okay?”

They don’t look at him. Berdly uses his epic sixth sense of emotional intelligence to deduce that they are not, in fact, okay. Well. Alright. That’s not good. How to deal with situation at hand, he tries to look up in his mind, but the results unfortunately come up blank.

Esteemed guest is no longer having a good time!!! The alarms in his head blare. Oh god. He panics. “Despondent because you know your chances of beating me next round cap at a lowly ZERO PERCENT?”

There’s another agonizing five second long silence.

“…Berdly?”

He gulps. “Yeah?”

“Uh.” They swallow, like this is physically hard for them. “You kind of made me feel bad. About myself.”

Berdly stays silent.

“When you’re, um, mean like that. Nobody takes it seriously most of the time. But I already felt bad for touching your stuff. Then you yelled at me and basically called me stupid, and, I wasn’t feeling it.”

“Oh,” Berdly chokes, like an idiot. Somehow Kris has made him feel like scum at the bottom of a flea’s shoe.

“So, yeah.”

“Yeah.” Berdly coughs into a fist, face burning red. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this embarrassed in his life. “Um. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” they say. “I knew you probably weren't… THAT mad.”

Berdly isn’t sure himself if he was THAT mad or not, but he feels like shit regardless. “No, no, I mean, erm. I’m very sorry, Kris. That was.. wholly uncool of me, to yell at you like that.”

They snort. “I’M sorry for touching your stuff, man.”

“That was a bit weird.”

“It was. In my defense, there’s nothing I own that I wouldn’t be okay putting in a total stranger’s hands, so I didn’t really make the connection.”

Another loaded silence for a second or two.

“You gonna eat your chips?” Berdly asks, gesturing loosely to their chips still clutched in their lap.

“Yeah.” They stuff them all into their mouth at once, then look pleasantly surprised. “Are these jalapeño flavored?”

Berdly nods. “Indeed they are! I like spicy food, because, well, it’s not really painful spicy for me. It’s kind of a whole different thing.”

“My mom likes making me spicy stuff,” they say. “I’m into it.”

Berdly laughs too loudly. “Good! Good.”

He fidgets with the bag for a second. Eats another chip. Kris takes one too. Their hands are going to brush at this rate. “Kris?” He says through munches.

“Mm?”

“I’m…” he’s, miraculously, applying the same ‘I made Kris upset’ logic to almost every interaction he’s had in the past decade. “Kind of a jerk, aren't I?”

Kris snorts. “Uh, yeah. You tried to kill me like twice in the Dark World. Jerk is an understatement.”

“Hey!” Berdly squawks. “I wasn’t trying to kill you ! I was, uhhh, merely attacking you because, Queen told me to. And I wanted Noelle out of your slimy grasp!”

They look at him for a second. “…What is it with you and her?”

He… doesn’t know how to answer that question. They just are. No rhyme or reason. She’s literally been a staple of his life as long as he can remember. 

“…She’s my best friend,” he answers almost without thinking. He then registers that that’s kind of an embarrassing thing to say to someone. Kris is looking at him questioningly, like there’s more to it. “That’s it. I don’t know.”

They nod, like they’re confirming something in their own mind, but don’t say anything.

“…For the record, I AM sorry for attacking you. I was sorely mistaken on that front. Queen-“ he was going to say some corny shit like “was super cool” but that doesn’t feel like a big enough excuse. “Uh. I don’t actually know why I was following her so intently.”

“You don’t know a lot of these things.”

“Shut up!” He hisses good naturedly in the face of Kris’s laughs. He’s feeling much lighter now, under the illusion that they could be friends. Here, under his neon blue LED lights in broad daylight. “Things were complicated in there! Out here! One cannot simply define such feelings!”

“I think that’s just you,” Kris snickers. “I think you’re just bad at putting words to feelings.”

Berdly thinks about this for a second. “Interesting theory. I, however, don’t agree!”

“I guess that effectively nullifies all of my opinions and observations then.”

“Correct!” He crosses his arms triumphantly. “Discussion over!”

Kris is quiet where they would normally reply, so Berdly goes and eats more chips. Smash has been long forgotten about; now their bodies are angled more towards one another. The absolutely banging muffled menu music floats around them. “I think,” they say, “you’re pretty cool, Berdly.”

Berdly probably nearly goes into cardiac arrest, given the way he immediately feels his heart jump sporadically and his face erupt into a smile. He tries to say something coherent like “I’m glad you’ve finally noticed”, but instead it comes out more as a “Whuhhuh?”

He clears his throat. Tries again. “WhAm I?” Tries again. “I am? I mean, am I? I mean, glad you’ve finally-” he coughs into his fist, “noticed.” He then giggles, which was decidedly NOT a part of the plan. “Ahem.”

Kris smiles at him. He coughs again. At this rate, it may just be allergies. “Uh, what makes you say that? All of a sudden?”

They shrug. “Yeah, you’re a jerk, and you tried to kill me-”

“-I did not- ”

“-but you’re also just.. Cool. Like, you care about people. And you have all your own.. Stuff. Here. You’re funny.” They look away. “I think that’s it. Like, you just care a lot. About everything. It’s admirable.”

Now, Berdly isn’t one to be sentimental, ever. He mostly runs on a constant stream of bullshit playing on loop in his mind, feeding him all of these dramatic things to say and keeping him thinking at the barest level, and he’s totally fine with that. He’s a cool guy. And if Noelle is the only one who thinks so outwardly, and if everyone else would rather bash their head against the wall at five hundred Newtons than converse with him for more than two straight minutes (which is what he’s been told on multiple occasions), then who cares? If they actually knew him, they’d be sure to figure out how cool of a guy he is.

But hearing this, to his horror, he feels tears welling up at the back of his throat. Like, honest to god actual alligator tears. Directly following this realization he first asks himself in big, bold, capital letters: WHY? Almost immediately after this, it comes to him: nobody has ever told him anything like that. Like, maybe except for vaguely Noelle, but she wasn’t even that straightforward about it.

He turns away, rubbing at his face incessantly like he has a contagious disease. “Thanks,” he manages from behind his hands. He should really, really stop wearing glasses, they’re incredibly annoying in situations like this.

“No problem,” Kris says, sounding apparently utterly uninterested in knowing why Berdly just full-body pivoted away from them and is trying to dig his fingers into his eyesockets. “Wanna play Smash again? Another round?”

“Uh, uh, yeah, just give me a second,” he says, trying to tear the tape off the side of his head. He needs to pull his glasses off so he can clean them. 

(Unbeknownst to him, Kris watches this entire ordeal with the same type of amused intrigue one might expect from them in this situation.)

Chapter Text

Noelle chews slowly on her peanut butter sandwich, eyes narrowed, watching Berdly get down on one knee and offer Kris a bag of spicy jalapeño flavored sun chips.

She’s sitting up by their usual tree for lunch. Kris and Susie are on the bench together, where they usually are, decently far away from them. Berdly had proudly pulled the bag out from behind him and spewed some flowery nonsense about how the “seeds of love have been planted” and how he only needed to “follow through with the court by this point”. He then left to go proclaim wildly to Kris, who looks to be sweating bullets by this point.

This is… not good, Noelle thinks. Berdly is in what she likes to call his honeymoon phase, except it’s pre-relationship and almost completely born from delusion on his part. It happened with her at one point, then Queen, then Susie for a short time before he knew Noelle liked her. They all had one prerequisite in common; they were kind, or caring, or encouraging to him a grand total of one time. This effectively obsessed Berdly and caused him to attach to them all like a leech, which then effectively caused them all to back a respectable distance away.

Well, except Noelle, although she was very put off by him for a long time when he entered his honeymoon phase with her.

And now, against all odds, it’s happening with Kris. Noelle wonders, not for the first time, what the hell happened on that date of theirs to make Berdly so smitten. Little hearts may as well be floating up and around him whenever Kris is so much as in his vicinity. It’s kind of nice to see Berdly enter a honeymoon phase for the first time since realizing being a condescending asshole is Bad- he really is just being… incredibly nice to Kris. What Noelle is worried about is Kris immediately realizing what Berdly is doing and trying to get rid of him for it. He kind of deserved being backed away from during all of his other honeymoon phases, because, well.. he was a jerk. But now this is just very sad for her to watch.

Kris hesitantly takes the chips, says something to Berdly (Susie is watching this interaction silently with an increasingly baffled expression), Berdly bows to them, and then he begins jogging back to Noelle with a big grin on his face.

“I did it!” He proclaims joyously, plopping down next to her.

“Did what?”

Berdly raises an eyebrow at her, like it’s supposed to be obvious. This is quickly drowned out by his jovial tone. “I gave them the token of my affections!”

“The… sun chips?”

He nods. “Y’see, Noelle- oh, by the way, how did your date with Susie go?”

Noelle almost wants nothing more than to start rambling about it at length, but she kind of wants to hear about Berdly’s date more. “It was nice. F-forget about that, though, why sun chips?”

He folds his wings under his chin, looking off into the distance with smug eyes. “Oh, Noelle, you should’ve been there!” Then, under his breath. “ Maybe not, you might’ve killed the atmosphere… to put it simply, Kris and I shared that very same bag of sun chips over a passionate exchange of feelings yesterday!”

“Wait, WHAT?” Noelle yells. Kris and Berdly are either dating now or Berdly has WILDLY misinterpreted the situation. Both options are equally horrifying.

Berdly, impossibly, catches on to what she’s insinuating. He holds his hands up in defense. “N-not like that! Not feelings! Goodness, Noelle, you wouldn’t catch Kris confessing on the first date! They’re a tough nut to crack!”

She breathes a sigh of relief. “Okay, thank god, uh, that’s what I thought. What kinds of feelings?”

“Oh, you know, just.. a lot of things I’m good at.” He adjusts his glasses in the same way an anime character might. “Emotionally honest ones. I’m a guru of emotional honesty. Just ask Kris.”

Her eyebrows furrow. “I thought we established you were stupid now?” 

“Uh.” He blinks. “Oh, right. Right.” He looks genuinely pensive about this for a second before the goofy expression returns to his face. “In any case, erm, stupidity taken into account or not- I do believe my emotionally honest abilities were admirable last night! Kris was practically head over heels for me by the end of our date, I can tell!”

Either a miracle has transpired, or they most certainly were not. Noelle refrains from voicing this. “I’m.. glad. You two are, like, definitely friends now?” She takes a bite of her sandwich.

Berdly turns wistfully towards Kris, who’s predictably enjoying the sun chips gifted to them. Granted, Susie is too, but at least Berdly’s two gifts in the last two days have only had positive impacts thus far. “Oh, I suppose,” he sighs. “Though I assure you, Noelle… these platonic proceedings are only temporary. Soon, we’ll be frolicking through the fields… of love.”

Noelle can hardly believe this is Kris they’re talking about.

“Between gamers,” he clarifies.

“Mm. Well then, Berdly, I have to say, I’m rooting for you,” she says sincerely. She actually DOES mean it. Does she think they’ll actually start dating? Probably not. Does she want this to end in the least painful way possible for all parties involved? Absolutely! And that’s basically rooting for them, as far as she sees it.

Lunch is soon over and they have to inevitably return to Alphys’s class. They have art this semester for their electives, but it’s not really as freeform as Noelle would like it- it’s more like whichever subject Alphys needs to advance their curriculum on with an art element added to it. So when she announces that today’s assignment is to create an artistic, creative poster showcasing the process of meiosis, nobody is really surprised. They are, however, exasperated. The one saving grace Alphys offers is that one poster can be created between two people. The minute Alphys sends them off to do their thing, Noelle turns to ask Berdly to work with her as she’s resigned herself to doing almost every day for the past decade, but something miraculous happens before she can get a word out. Berdly is turned around in his desk, facing the back of the classroom.

“KRIS!” Berdly yells over the relative silence of their classmates. Kris startles, looking up from their paper. “Work with me?” He offers his most charming grin.

Everyone else is evidently just as surprised by this turn of events as she and Kris are, so they all give Berdly a questioning glance before turning to work with whoever they want to work with. A friendly chatter rises around the classroom. Susie blinks.

“The hell?” She mutters. “I already had dibs on Kris.”

“UM,” Noelle says involuntarily. “If, if Berdly and Kris are working together, I could work with you, Susie! If you want!” God, just kill her already. Why does she do this to herself?

Susie seems mildly surprised at this turn of events. “Uh. Well. Shit, alright?”

Noelle has to keep her fist from pumping. Kris, looking completely apathetic, sends a thumbs up in Berdly’s direction. Berdly presumably also has to keep a fist from pumping. 

We’re such losers, Noelle thinks, gathering all of her stuff to make her way over to Susie. Their quote unquote “date” from last night is still fresh in her mind, so. She’s hoping she doesn’t make TOO much of a fool of herself.

—-

Berdly hops on over to Kris with pep in his step. “Kris! My dear friend! How are you doing today, perchance?”

Kris looks at him for a moment. “…Good.”

“Wonderful!” He sets all of his stuff down on the desk next to them and moves it over noisily. “I don’t know why, Kris, but I have the distinct feeling our poster will be for the centuries. Alphys will probably laminate it and everything!” He pushes the desk up and against Kris’s and sits down with his hands in his lap.

“I don’t know about that,” Kris mutters. “Um… how should we start?” They turn completely towards him, which has no business making Berdly feel as important as it does. This scenario is basically all of his dreams coming true, except for the part where Kris puts a hand on their cheek and tells him they’ve never met a guy as strong and charming as he is, but that’s okay! They aren’t there yet!

“Ha ha! Well!” He clears his throat, straightens out his collar. “Well, I was thinking we should start with establishing diploid and haploid cells.”

“…Okay.” Kris looks at the poster blankly, sharpie in hand.

“Uh… Kris, I regret to inform you of this, but my artistic abilities are… limited. And from what I can remember, yours aren’t? In fact, they’re wonderfully potent and full. So I was thinking you would take care of the creative aspect of things!”

Kris already looks to be halfway asleep. “I’m, uh, not that good at drawing.”

“Nonsense!” Berdly waves a hand. “I’ve seen a couple of your drawings before. Pieces of art, I say! Expertly crafted, down to a tee! Every last detail, perfectly-“

“Okay, Berdly,” they say, turned away. “Um.”

“Here.” Berdly grabs his own pencil, lightly taps the paper. “I’ll direct you. I’ll be your own personal artistic director. It’ll be great.”

Kris nods. “Alright.”

“Awesome! So, saying we start here, the diploid and haploid cells should be color coded…”

Kris draws the two accordingly. Berdly nods. “Then establish what the chromosomes look like and how many each have. Then, starting on the actual process of meiosis, we draw a line to separate the two concepts…”

By the time they’re done, WAY more is on the poster than Berdly thinks was originally required. He may have gotten overzealous.

“…Have we even learned about recombination yet?” Kris says. Berdly laughs.

“Admittedly, no! I did some studying up on meiosis in my free time, however. This will most definitely ensure extra credit.”

“Why do you need extra credit?”

Berdly is confused at this question. “Why wouldn’t I need extra credit, Kris? If you mean to imply my grades are anything lower than average, you’d be wrong! I just like to keep things neat!”

Kris sets their sharpie down hesitantly. “Berdly… in the dark world, weren’t you saying you were stupid now? Or something?”

There’s that again. Berdly… of course, he understands that Kris and their friends are, um, out of the circle. And by now he understands that he doesn’t really need to be smart to grab their attention. And that was a fun freedom to live by in the dark world, embracing some of the moments where he DIDN’T know something, but in the light world… it’s all so much more vivid. He can’t imagine himself like that here. He just looks to the right, pensive about this again.

“Noelle told me the same thing earlier,” he says honestly after a moment of silence. “I know! You guys would accept me if I wasn’t smart! It’s just, uh, well. Everyone else is here too.”

Kris tilts their head at him. He’s noticed that this is becoming a trend. “I guess. But…” they look back down at the poster. “I’m the only one here right now. So, if you’re ever feeling stupid, just…” they shrug. “It’s alright.”

Berdly clasps his hands in front of him, heart bubbly. “Thank you, Kris, for the kind words!” He expresses cheerfully. “I can always count on you and Susie to make me feel like an idiot without reservations!” Then, under his breath, “ Noelle too sometimes… that’s besides the point. I'm going to get you this extra credit. We’ll share the fruits of our labor, Kris, just you watch! We’ll be the smartest gamers on the block!”

Kris raises an eyebrow.

“Even if, of course, we don’t HAVE to be,” he says sheepishly.

“Well. Thank you,” they say, a miniscule smile on their face. “I don’t think I would’ve actually done this if I was working with Susie.”

“Of course, Kris! And if you ever need another creative director,” he tips an imaginary hat towards them, “just look to me for guidance. I’ll go turn this in now!”

Kris watches him head off with their frankly very well done poster. (They wonder, not for the first time, when Berdly became so pleasant to be around.)

Berdly returns to his seat and swivels around with a smug look on his face. “So, Kris… I have a proposition for you.”

They look at him. “Mm?”

“My house!” He throws his wings up. “Come back with me to my house, Kris, for the second time in a row and I guarantee satisfaction with your evening,” he winks, “or your money back.”

Kris drags a finger down their desk, looking despondent. “I don’t know, Berdly. I’m kind of tired of talking today.”

“Not a problem!” He immediately says, not really knowing what it means. “You don’t have to say a word, dear! Unless, of course, you really want to. I’ll take care of everything.” He winks again for good measure. Kris looks to be considering this offer. “But, uh, if you don’t want to, that’s fine too, of course.”

After a moment, Kris nods at him. “Okay.”

“Wonderful!” He claps his hands together. “Just, uh, after school then.”

He receives a thumbs up.

—-

On the walk to Berdly’s house after school, Kris is mostly completely silent. Mostly is said because they do ask the occasional question, but only when they sound genuinely confused or intrigued about something Berdly says. He’s cryptic like that.

Berdly, of course, doesn’t mind at all. He fills the silence dutifully when he has something to say (which is almost the entire time) and lets a comfortable silence envelop them when he doesn’t. Before long, they come up on the turn to his driveway, and-

“Oh!” Berdly exclaims. His mom’s car is in the driveway! Perfect! “That’s my mom’s car! That’s weird, she usually isn’t home until much later.”

Kris straightens up at this. “Oh. Uhh.”

“Worry not, Kris!” He assures them. “I’ll do the talking. You can just sit back and relax.”

They nod, looking blank as usual. Though their shoulders are still relatively stiff. Berdly can’t imagine why, his mom is a nice woman!

He proudly pushes the door open, announcing “I’m home!” for anyone who might hear. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Kris walks in and stands behind him stiffly as though his mom might appear out of thin air and catch them unawares. Berdly scoffs. “Seriously, Kris, you’ll love her! Though, uh, I might just… check. She’s likely in her room right about now.”

They nod. “Okay. You do that. I’ll stay here.”

He gives them a radiant thumbs up and a wink. Both of which are wholly unreciprocated. He waits there for a moment before eventually making his way up the stairs.

“Mom?” He calls. There’s a long moment of pause.

“What?” A voice eventually answers from down the hall. Berdly breathes an irrational sigh of relief, like he was worried she wouldn’t answer or something.

He knocks on her door. “Can I come in?”

Another pause. “Sure.”

He pushes it open hesitantly and is greeted to the sight of her on her bed, typing away on her laptop. The gray of her feathers almost blends in completely with the bed, so he has trouble seeing her for a second. She has her reading glasses on, which he admittedly wasn’t expecting. So much so that he almost laughs at the sight. “Hey, mom! What are you doing back so early?”

She stops typing for a moment and looks up at him with a tired smile on her face. “Today’s my day off. Or, well, one of them. Kind of. I wasn’t given any work today. You didn’t notice my car was in the driveway this morning?”

Berdly can’t stop himself from grinning. It’s a rare opportunity, all things considered, to talk to his mom for so long. “I suppose I was distracted.”

“Mm.” She goes back to typing.

“If today’s your day off, what are you doing on the laptop?”

She reached up to rub her temples. “Ughhh, I don’t know, Berd. I got home and I was bored, so now I keep updating my page on the company website.”

“Live a little, mom,” he mutters. But lowly and with caution, because he doesn’t know how she reacts to friendly quips. Luckily, she scoffs playfully.

“Yeah, yeah. Go do your homework. I’m busy.”

“About that…” he says. The typing stops for a second. “I have a friend over. Just so you know.”

She looks up from her laptop, brows furrowed. “Who? Is it that Holiday girl?”

“No, no, uh…” he’s hesitating to say Kris’s name for a second, though he doesn’t know why. “Kris Dreemurr.”

She’s quiet for a second. “The Dreemurr kid? They’re in our house right now? Since when were you two friends again?”

“Recently, we had an understanding,” he says. Which really technically isn’t a lie. “It’s not important. Just wanted to let you know they’re here!”

“Okay, well, I’m glad you’re spending time with your friends, then,” she says, going back to typing. “Bother me if you need anything.”

Berdly idles in the doorway for a second longer, trying to figure out how to prolong the conversation. He can’t come up with anything, so he waits for her to notice he’s still there and pay him some mind, but she just keeps typing.

“Uh,” he says. She looks up. “All of my grades are still above 95, as per usual!”

Her face brightens. Berdly perks up at this, grinning with pride. “Really?”

He nods emphatically. “Really!”

“How’d I get stuck with such a smart son?” She smiles, almost gratefully, at him. “Great job. Keep it up.”

To Berdly’s chagrin, she looks back down at her laptop. At least give me something to work with, mom! “Okay, I will! Um, do you have anything planned for dinner?”

“You can take care of it, right?” She doesn’t look up. Berdly stays quiet to imply he doesn’t have it taken care of, but she doesn’t seem to take notice. He… doesn’t really know what he wants from this. He wants to cook dinner with her or something, but he doesn’t know how. He knows how to cook dinner, he doesn’t know how to… ask. Or talk to his mom. Or do mundane tasks with her. So he just stands there, deflating over time like a wet bag of noodles.

“Yeah, I can take care of it. Bye, mom,” he says, closing her door.

“Bye.” He has the distinct feeling that’s the last he’ll hear from her until the weekend.

Chapter Text

Berdly hesitantly turns away from his mom’s door after it’s shut, eyes cast down. He looks up and-

Kris.

Berdly screams.

“Woah,” Kris says. They make no move to explain themself.

Berdly subtly tries to calm himself down by feeling his heartbeat. “Kris?? How long have you been standing there?” 

They shrug.

“Didn’t you say you were going to stay downstairs?”

They shrug again.

“Are you going to answer any of my questions pertaining to your frankly shameless eavesdropping?”

They appear to think about this for a second. They then grin.

“Yes, yes, well.” Berdly clears his throat, feeling embarrassed. “I don’t care one way or another.”

“Did she call you Berd?”

“OKAY,” Berdly stalks past them. “Interrogations are over. Follow me, my featherless friend!” He calls over his shoulder. He doesn’t look to see if they’re behind him, but he assumes they are if the soft footsteps down his carpeted stairs are any indication.

“Where are we going?” They ask softly. Berdly realizes he doesn’t know and immediately panics.

“Patience, my dear!”

“Why did you start calling me your dear? That’s Noelle,” they joke. Berdly makes a pit stop at his kitchen counter where he appears to have led them and pivots around to face Kris, hands bracing himself on the marble behind him.

“Kris…” he begins, suave. “Is it so wrong, to call someone dear to me, my dear? Also, that pun was terrible. I’m telling Noelle.”

Kris is quiet for a few seconds. “It has layers,” they finally say. “Not only is she a deer, but you call her your dear.”

“No I don’t!” Berdly is scandalized. “I’ve stopped doing that!”

Kris tilts their head, questions emanating off of them. Berdly sweats, now suddenly feeling pressured to explain his and Noelle’s relationship, which is a topic he only really put a name to like a month ago.

“Well,” he starts, coughing into his fist. “Well, y’see, Noelle- uh- we recently had a conversation.”

Kris’s head remains tilted, implying they want to hear more.

“Well we established in the dark world that I didn’t have feelings for her,”

“What?”

Berdly nods emphatically. “It’s true! And nothing against Noelle, by the way, 10/10 girl, but I had just never seen her in that light! I was really only calling her such sickly terms of endearment to ensure she wasn’t discouraged in her pursuit of me.”

Kris looks immensely confused at this. Berdly can’t blame them.

“Aha, yes,” he says, sweating bullets, “I am aware now. That Noelle identifies as a lesbian. It’s just that I had ASSUMED, beforehand, uh-“

“Hold on.” Kris holds their hand up. “You thought Noelle had a crush on you, so you ACTED like you had a crush on her, to give her false hope so she would stay with you?”

Berdly blinks. That’s the most Kris has said to him at once all day. They must be invested in his harrowing tale of romance and bloodshed and various other misunderstandings. “Well, when you put it like that-“

“Then Noelle explained to you that she’s a lesbian with a crush on Susie, so you stopped pretending to like her?”

“Yes!” He throws his wings up in indignation. “It was simply a tragic tale of misconception! We’ve reached a new understanding!”

Kris nods very, very slowly. “Okay.”

“I'm glad you understand,” he huffs, crossing his arms. “Point being, we’re good now.”

Kris is quiet. Berdly tries to think of what to do now. He’s about to suggest they go browse his vast catalog of video games and find something they both want to contribute to, when-

“Wait.”

“Yeah?” He looks up.

“Uh.” Kris looks away, grinning. “Nevermind.”

Berdly stares at them for a moment, like they’ll reveal what’s on their mind if he waits patiently enough, but to no avail. “Very well then. Want to go play video games?”

Kris nods vigorously.

—-

A few hours later, Kris is scrolling through the Sea of Burglars wiki next to him. “It says if you cook the meat it’ll give you more money and reputation.”

“I don’t even have a stove,” Berdly grumbles. He then squawks, “wait, no, nevermind! It’s here! Why isn’t it in the basement?”

“Is this your first time using a Galleon?”

“Actually, Kris,” Berdly eats a banana in-game, “I HAVE used a Galleon before. I just didn’t have any need for the stove.“

“…Did you survive on the bananas?”

Berdly’s eyes narrow, like he’s considering this, as he begins the long and arduous process of raising the anchor without any crewmates. “Yes, I believe that’s what I did.”

“It says the Hunter’s Call trading company gives the most reputation for meat. You have megalodon meat, right?”

After he finishes the anchor, Berdly scoffs with pride. “Naturally. Took it down myself.”

Kris raises an eyebrow at him. He shrinks, breaking eye contact.

“…Well, with one online crewmate. I didn’t communicate with him at all, in my defense.”

“Mm. Right.”

“I didn’t!”

“Were stoves even a thing for pirates?” Kris asks, seeming way too pensive about it. Berdly sniffs.

“Actually, Kris,” he begins, leaning back in his chair, “this is implied to be a fantasy world, so it shouldn’t matter.”

“I assumed, given the previously mentioned megalodon.”

“Megalodons,” Berdly makes a break for the nearest seapost with the Hunter’s Call trading company, “were actually a real thing. In the-“ he digs deep into the recesses of his brain, he isn’t an absolute GOD at Trivia Crack for nothing- “Cretazoic period.”

Kris goes silent, tapping away on their phone for a second. Berdly knows they’re probably fact checking him. He sweats, itching to rip it out of their hands, but he doesn’t.

“…No. Miocene period. The Cretazoic period was like two whole eras before that.”

“I knew that. I was, uh, mixing it up with another large prehistoric shark.”

“…Which one?”

“The name escapes me at the moment,” he says, arm around the back of his neck. “Nothing a few minutes of thought- that I don’t have the time to dedicate, by the way- wouldn’t fix.”

“Mm.” They look back down at their phone, then to the screen of his PC where Berdly is trying to make sense of the map. “Do you even know where you’re going?”

“Well how am I supposed to know which seaports have people from the Hunter’s Call trading company?”

“Were… were trading companies a real thing?”

Berdly squints, leaning back in his chair and abandoning the frankly very confusing endeavor of trying to navigate the seven virtual seas. “Most likely, although they were probably presented much differently.”

Kris closes their phone and pockets it before leaning into his space. Berdly is concerned for a second before- oh, wait, no, they’re just leaning over his keyboard to close the game.

…Wait! Why are they closing the game? “Hey! Why are you closing it?”

“I want to play something else,” they declare, still leaning over him. Frankly, being in such close proximity to Kris is enough cause for concern without the added stress of having to choose a new game to entertain them. “You have Hades?”

Berdly coughs into a fist. “W-Well, any respectable gamer would-“

“You have Human Prom? AND CAMP? AND ROAD- “

“GIVE ME THAT,” Berdly yells, pushing them out of his personal space. “Arceus, the gamer pad is NOT a public domain!”

They’re giggling at him, hand up to their mouth. Presumably at his taste in entertainment, which is really quite an absurd thing for them to be snickering at. He squawks. “You- what’s so ashamed about it! You know I like Visual Novels!”

“No, it’s just cute,” they manage through their fingers. “It’s just such a cute game, I didn’t think you of all people would have it.”

“Cute?” He echoes faintly. “I-I mean, uh- wait, what’s that supposed to mean? Are you saying I’m not cute?” This comes out much sadder than he meant it to.

They’ve stopped giggling now, but it’s clear that they just were if the wobbly smile on their face is anything to gawk at. (Which, Berdly thinks, it is.) “I would never dream of implying it. I mean you always act so high and mighty, it’s funny to imagine you playing shit like this in your free time.”

Still stuck on the fact that they didn’t deny his being ‘cute’, all things considered, Berdly bashfully looks back at his computer screen. There’s an urge quickly rising in him to cover it all up out of embarrassment, but he doesn’t. “There’s nothing shameful about it.”

“I didn’t say there was. I’m into it too, moron.”

“Hey!” He points a shaky finger at them. “If anything, you’re the moron here!”

“So who’s your favorite?” 

“Huh?” Berdly sweats.

“Who’d you court?”

“Uh.” He’s rapidly trying to find a way out of this situation, but unfortunately, he’s coming up blank. “We really don’t have to-“

“Wait.” Kris holds a hand up, shit eating grin on their face. “I think I can guess.”

“ONE guess.” Berdly crosses his arms, smug. “If you don’t get it, you have to stop prodding me. If you do get it, promise I’ll let you know. Understood?”

Kris’s grin doesn’t falter. “Deal.” They put a hand up to their chin, making a big show of it, studying him for a few seconds. Berdly tries to appear as inconspicuous as possible as this analysis is going on, but it’s very difficult. He fidgets in his chair.

“…It’s Lester, isn’t it?”

“HOW DID YOU KNOW?”

“Dude, everyone romances Lester,” they wave a hand. “ I romanced Lester. You’re just unoriginal.”

“Preposterous!” He hisses, crossing his arms angrily. “You wouldn’t understand. Lester is constantly misunderstood by both his fans-“

Kris snorts.

“And those who claim to be devoted to him. I have sacrificed time, energy and effort finding every possible-“

“I believe you. What about Hades? Did you romance Thanatos or Megaera?”

Berdly’s silence apparently speaks volumes, because Kris is cackling after about four seconds of him not saying anything. “WHAT?”

“You-“ they’re clutching their stomach now. Berdly hates the fun being made out of him and all, but…. He can’t stop a miniscule grin from forming in the face of Kris’s pure joy. “You went for the polycule, didn’t you?”

“SHUT UP!” It comes out almost joyfully as he stands up, arms out in defiance. “Stop-“ he can’t stop himself from snickering weakly in the middle of the sentence, so he tries again after a second. “Stop psychoanalyzing me! You’re unqualified!”

Kris is still hunched over, giggling. At this rate, they’re going to start wiping tears from their eyes. Berdly pushes them, causing them to almost topple over. This, thankfully, stops the incessant laughter, even if Kris is still grinning wildly.

“Hey!”

“I will fight you, Kris. Right here, right now,” he challenges them, unable to stop smiling. “You won’t ever return here with your honor!”

Their eyes turn up at the corners. The smile seems less composed of joy or amusement now, they just seem happy. Neutrally. “I’m not fighting you. One fist and you’d crumple like a wet piece of paper. Bird bones are hollow.”

“Would you like to bet on that?” He takes a threatening step forward.

Kris takes a threatening step forward. There’s only like a few feet of room between his gaming desk and his bed, so they’ve already met in the middle. Berdly takes a threatening step back.

“No conviction,” they taunt him. “You’ve already backed up.”

“I did not back up, ” he hisses, despite the fact that that’s clearly what he just did. “We were about to run into each other.”

“Contact is kind of required for a physical fight.”

“I’m about to punch you. This is your last warning!” He holds up a defiant fist… not planning on actually doing anything, obviously. Kris seems to know this too, because they don’t waver at all, and instead take another step forward. “Seriously! I’m about to do it!” He pretends to reel back his arm.

“I’d tell my mom. She’d expel you.” They finally make it into his personal space again, effectively proving him a liar. Although that’s kind of last on his list of priorities, given that Kris is like two inches in front of him. He tries to manually tell the blood around his face to circulate more towards other, more important places, but it doesn’t listen. So he’s left standing there awkwardly with no further defense.

“Alas,” he tries, backed into a corner, “you have an unfair advantage. So I suppose, uh, we’re going to have to…”

Wow, Kris is really staring at him hard. Like, an uncomfortably large amount. In very close proximity. “…cancel the fight,” he finishes lamely.

“I win, then.” They step back, pivoting around. Berdly tries to not let his knees give out. “What about Minecrap? Pocket Edition, so we can play together.”

Berdly stands at the edge of his desk, eyes wide. It takes him a few seconds to recombobulate his brain enough to give them a straight answer. “Are you going to the Sadie Hawkman’s Dance on Saturday?”

Damn it, Berdly, that wasn’t a straight answer! He laments to himself. Kris blinks, probably relatively caught off guard by the sudden swivel in topic.

“Uh.” They play with the sleeves of their sweater, considering it. “Probably not.”

“What?” Berdly is scandalized, standing up straighter at this terrible news. “Kris! I implore you! Everyone will be there!”

They shrug. “Not a lot of formal clothes.”

“You can borrow something!” He holds his arms out, grinning. “Just try it out. Besides, you can always leave if you don’t like the crowds, it’s not like it costs money!”

Kris looks up at him, lips pursed. They appear to be thinking.

“No rush, of course,” he says, pulling on the collar of his button-up. “I just ask that you think about it.”

After a second of drawn out gazing, they nod. “Alright.”

“Wonderful!” He trots to the end of his bed, sitting down and patting the spot next to him flirtatiously. Don’t ask how this is done flirtatiously, it’s all based on vibes. Kris sits at his side. “Now, Minecrap. I have to say, Kris, I’m not the biggest fan of Pocket Edition, but I’ll have to make do with it for your sake. It’s not Minecrap if we’re not playing together!”

Kris is still staring at him like he has something on his face.

“…What’s wrong?” He asks, folding his hands in his lap. Anxiety suddenly overtakes him at the thought that Kris is upset again. And because of something he did, no less.

After a second, Kris shakes their head, a smile blooming on their lips. “Nothing.”

“…Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” They nod. “I’m sure. Let’s play Minecrap.”

Chapter Text

Berdly’s shoddy little cabin has effectively been burnt down to rubble. He is NOT having a good time, he thinks to himself, as Kris snickers next to him. He’s pushed them in indignant rage probably about fifteen times since they began playing.

“Scoundrel! Thief! I put thought and effort into it!”

“It’s been, like, ten minutes. Noob.”

Berdly huffs, leaning over his phone in intense concentration. He’s decided to move onto greener pastures- he’s just that mature- and build a chicken farm. Kris nudges his shoulder with theirs, sending a pleasant shockwave through his nervous system.

“Don’t be so upset about it,” they say, smugness in their tone. “I’ll recreate it for you if you were really that attached.”

“Hmph.” He turns away petulantly. “As much as I’d love to take you up on your offer, Kris, I don’t commune with arsonists.”

“Come on, I’m just a virtual arsonist!” They poke his shoulder playfully. Berdly tries to work the wobbly smile on his face into something more smug.

He scoffs. “Yes, yes, Kris, whatever you say.”

“Berdly?”

He straightens out. “Hm?”

“I’m kind of hungry. So… I guess I’ve gotta go back home for dinner.”

Berdly looks at the clock on his nightstand and- 6:30????

“My goodness!” He squawks. “When did it get so late?”

Kris shrugs, looking somewhat downtrodden. “Beats me. So, uh, I’ll just-“

“Wait!” He holds his wings in front of them as they begin to stand, forcing them back down. “Wait. Uh.”

Kris stares at him for a second or two. “…What?”

“Youcouldstayfordinner.”

“Huh?”

“Dinner. Here.” He grins his most charming grin, slicks the feathers on his head back. “With me. Tempting, isn’t it?”

Kris blinks. Their mouth works a bit, likely a product of them trying to scope the situation. Berdly’s a bit apprehensive all of a sudden, because, well. That was a very spur of the moment offer. He has absolutely no food prepared and doesn’t even know where he would begin in terms of what Kris likes, but-

“Sure,” they finally say, a smile settling on their lips and effectively washing all of Berdly’s nervousness away. He feels more like yelling in triumph now. “I just have to call my mom.”

“What? Oh, yes, go ahead, I’ll just..” he sticks a thumb behind him to gesture to his door. “Be downstairs, then.”

He makes a break for it, shutting the door behind him quickly. Crap. Crap. The entire reason Kris was going to go home in the first place was because they’re hungry! For dinner! He doesn’t have dinner! His mom doesn’t have dinner! He’s going to have to break it to them, that they’re staying for nothing, that they actually DO have to leave him alone again-

Wait. Wait, what’s he talking about? He makes his way down the stairs, almost tripping twice in the process. This is a chance to show off his culinary skills! To woo Kris with his sophistication in the fine arts of food! This is an opportunity! He’s just.. going to have to be quick, given that they’re already hungry.

He rolls up his sleeves (metaphorically, he almost never wears long sleeves) and faces his refrigerator. Ah, yes. This is his element. Everything will be alright.

What… the hell is Kris’s taste in food?

Crap, he thinks, eyes widening in the face of all of the options presented to him. Should he go for something casual to ensure Kris will enjoy it? Something fancy, for memorabilia? A middle ground, he reasons to himself, is always a good start. Fish? No, not enough people are guaranteed to like it. Steak? Maybe too fancy. And he hasn’t exactly mastered the art of cooking it correctly, the steak is solely for practice.

A jar of garlic catches his eye. Garlic… pasta! Aha! It’s perfect!

He nods to himself in triumph, rubbing his hands together conivingly-

“Berdly?”

“YES?” He shuts his fridge harder than necessary, wincing at the noise. Kris’s eyebrows furrow, but they don’t comment.

“So… uh… you said ‘stay for dinner’.”

He nods. “Indeed I did!”

“What’s for dinner?”

“Well,” he puts a finger to his cheek coyly. “I was thinking, Kris, that I could consult you on that. But I was planning a pasta dish. Do you like pasta?”

Kris breaks into a grin at the very mention of pasta. Berdly mentally fist bumps himself and his gorgeous, gorgeous mind. “Yes.”

“Wonderful! What kind, pray tell, would you like?”

Kris’s smile drops at this. They lean against the counter pensively, arms crossed. Well, fair enough, Berdly reasons. If he were asked to immediately choose from all of the pasta dishes available to him, he would need a few minutes himself.

“What, uh, do you have?” They finally ask, eyes meeting his. Berdly chuckles at nothing.

“Um, all kinds. I have a wide variety of ingredients at my disposal.” He gestures to the fridge. “You can get creative with it.”

They’re silent again, refusing to break eye contact- wow, they’re really staring at him a lot lately, huh? “You can choose.”

Berdly points at himself. “Me?”

“Yeah.”

“I hate to refute your kind offer, Kris, but I’m not sure what kind of things you like and don’t like in… pasta?”

They shrug. “I can guarantee you I’ll like any pasta you make me.”

Berdly’s not sure if he’s hearing things or not, but there had appeared to be a slight emphasis on the word you in that sentence. A laugh forces its way out of him.

“Is that so?”

They nod, mouth turned up slightly at the corners.

“Well, uh,” he blinks, trying to center his train of thought again. “Well that’s good to hear, then! Just, if you don’t like it, don’t come crying to me!”

“Just no mushrooms. Or pickles. Or feta cheese.”

Berdly’s eyebrow instinctively raises at this list. “That’s oddly specific.”

“I have specific tastes.”

“That doesn’t make me feel much better about choosing,” Berdly mutters, putting a hand up to his chin. Kris sighs.

“Idea,” they say, pushing themself off of the counter to stand next to him. “I’ll help out. And if anything gross is used, I’ll get rid of it. Okay?”

Berdly’s focused enough on their profile to not really process the sentence, but he nods anyway, parroting them. “Okay.”

“Awesome. Go ahead.” They gesture to the fridge.

“Uh. Right.” Berdly opens it again, scoping out his options. Well, first he needs to figure out what he’s actually making, then he can alter the ingredients as he goes along. His first thought, naturally, is carbonara, because he really likes carbonara. He’s an egg guy. And he actually has the ingredients for it now- he made a quick trip to the grocery store after his and Kris’s date yesterday out of nostalgia for the eggshells. To his dismay, however, as soon as he goes for the eggs-

“No,” Kris says.

Berdly squawks, scandalized. “You didn’t think to mention eggs in your initial list?”

“I didn’t even know there WERE pasta dishes with eggs in them.” Kris shudders.

Berdly rolls his eyes, only half exasperated. Fine. He could do with something a little more complicated, then. He reaches for the ground beef-

“No.”

The chicken-

“No.”

Spinach?

“Absolutely not.”

“What about peas?”

“No.”

“Shrimp?”

“Rubbery.”

“How about the cherry tomatoes?”

“Too sweet.”

“The normal tomatoes???”

“Grainy.”

Finally, Berdly makes a big show of reaching for the butter, wherein he gets absolutely no reaction from Kris. He would hope not. He dumps it on the counter harshly. “Okay. Butter. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Mm.”

Berdly slowly goes for the grated Parmesan, staring at Kris with big eyes. They do nothing. Finally, the last hurdle- garlic. Kris makes no indication they dislike garlic. Which is good, because Berdly was starting to suspect they’re a vampire. He sighs, placing them both next to the butter.

“Butter, garlic, and Parmesan.” He stares at the lineup of ingredients he’s allowed access to mournfully.

“I guess, uh…” Kris rubs the back of their neck, at least having the decency to look SOMEWHAT ashamed. “I guess I didn’t realize how picky I am.”

“I thought you liked pasta!” Berdly cries.

“I do, I’ve just never had it with anything other than butter and cheese!”

“WHAT?”

Kris sticks their tongue out at him, evidently done with being criticized for their choices. Berdly scoffs in offense. “I can’t believe you like spicy food but can’t handle chicken . What kinds of spicy things do you even eat, besides sun chips?”

“…I dump red pepper flakes on all of my food.”

“ Why??? ”

They shrug. “I’ve just been doing it. Forever. Dunno why.”

“Then do I have permission to douse this frankly barren meal with red pepper flakes?”

Kris nods emphatically. 

Berdly heaves a sigh of relief. “Thank Lord Arceus. I’m actually going to get to it, then.”

As Kris makes their way around the counter to sit down at a barstool, Berdly makes his way to the pantry to find the actual pasta box. Once inside, he calls out to them, “what pasta shape do you want?”

There’s a moment of silence. Then, faintly: “do you have the little bows?”

“…Farfalle?”

“…I guess?”

“I believe we do,” Berdly calls back, grabbing the farfalle from its spot on the cupboard. He hasn’t been on board with a lot of Kris’s choices tonight, but they can both agree on one thing: farfalle solos.

He makes his way back out to the kitchen, digging through the cupboard. A thought then occurs to him. He stands up slowly, his retrieved apron in hand. “Kris?”

“Yeah?” They’re watching him intently, resting their head on their hands.

“You said shrimp is too rubbery?”

Kris’s nose scrunches up. “Yeah. Taste is fine, but it’s too chewy.”

Berdly’s mind lights up in epiphany. “Where have you had shrimp before?”

“Uh, once. Out in the city. Some cheap place.”

“Aha!” He points a smug finger in the air. “You, my friend, are a bona fide VICTIM of overcooked shrimp!”

“…Am I?”

Berdly nods excitedly at this breakthrough. “Shrimp only has a rubbery texture if it’s overcooked!”

“Oh, really?” Kris looks genuinely surprised at this. “Then, uh, I guess you can put it in.”

Berdly turns around to fist pump. Yes! He’s allowed one meat! The one extra element he’d been craving! Curse that cheap city diner for not introducing Kris to the delicacies of perfectly cooked shrimp, a feat he’s mastered over the years! Tying his apron around his waist, he immediately gets to work, finding a pot in the cupboard to boil water with. As he’s setting everything up, he hears snickering from behind him.

“Do you find something funny, Kris?” He calls behind him as he begins heating up the pan.

“Does… does your apron say ‘Good Lookin is Cookin’?”

“Why?” He swivels around with a smug aura and leans his elbows on the counter. “Do you have any objections?”

Kris has a large smile on their face. “Uh.. no.”

Berdly didn’t plan the conversation this far ahead. He huffs. “That’s, what I thought.” He then turns back around to melt the butter, trying not to let his thoughts stray to Kris’s blatant admittance of their deep and uncontrollable severe attraction to him. 

“So what are you doing?” Kris says, suddenly right beside him. Berdly yelps.

“Stop doing that!”

“Doing what?” They appear innocent, but Berdly knows just how harrowing their mischievous nature can be. “What am I doing?”

“Stop sneaking up on me! It’s demeaning!”

“I don’t mean it,” they grin. “Honest.”

“Whatever you say. And for your information, I’m literally just melting butter right now.”

“Can I help?”

Berdly is about to say yes, of course, absolutely, let me show you how to hold a knife in the LEAST intimate way possible, but then proceeds to realize this dish requires absolutely no knife usage and no parallel steps Kris could possibly take up. He stares blankly at them. “Kris, I regret to inform you of this, but this dish you have me making is so barren of complexity that I’m sure an inanimate object could pull it off.”

“Oh.” They sink.

“BUT,” Berdly scrambles to find something for them to do, “uh, you could always keep me company.”

DAMMIT, that was incredibly flirtatious of him! Wait, no, being smooth is a good thing! Everything is still going according to plan! Kris is looking at him like he just grew two heads! 

After a staring competition, a switch appears to flip in Kris’s head, because the largest shit eating grin he thinks he’s ever seen them take up grows on their lips. “Alright.”

This isn’t good. That’s the look Kris gets when they know they have a one up on you. Fight back! Show them who’s boss! He begs himself as he stirs the garlic in the pan to keep it from burning. He has to turn back to it eventually to ensure it isn’t browning too much, losing sight of the enemy in the process. “Yes, Kris, you could, uh- just your presence is enough to keep me-“

They plop their head down on his shoulder. FUCK, his entire being echoes around his brain.

Like, they aren’t touching him anywhere else, they’re still just standing next to him, but apparently… more comfortably now. He can’t make out their expression, but if he knows Kris, they’re probably enjoying the blatant distress they’re causing him at this moment. Berdly struggles to make noises. 

“What- what are you doing?” He eventually chokes out, adding the farfalle to the now boiling water. He’s careful to not jostle his shoulder too much, for fear of them moving.

“Keeping you company.”

Jesus, their voice is loud, considering their mouth is RIGHT next to his auricular. Despite the unromantic framing of it, though, the words still manage to fluster him. “That, uh, you are. And quite, obnoxiously, too.”

“Want me to get off?” The question doesn’t even sound like a tease, it’s like they’re genuinely asking if they’re being annoying or something, which only serves to pump more joy into Berdly’s psyche like it’s ketamine.

He swallows. “Uh, no, you’re, okay,” he says, much quieter than it was meant to come out.

“Alright,” they murmur.

Berdly tries to keep himself from short circuiting. How long has he been looking at this pan again? It has the, uh.. there’s no shrimp in it, where there’s supposed to be?

…Right, he left the shrimp in the sink to defrost. Kris DOES smell like apples. It’s much more prominent from this vantage point. Then, uh, he has to move.

…He really doesn’t want to move. But alas. They’re both hungry.

He shuffles over to the sink, careful not to shrug Kris off. They take his movement in stride, swinging lazily along with him, head never taking its weight off of his shoulder. He begins the arduous process of deshelling all of the shrimp, trying to focus on a clean break.

“So,” they say, “Berdly.” Their jaw is initially moving on his shoulder, but they shift their head ever-so-slightly so that their cheek is on him now, making it easier to talk. Berdly screams. Mentally, obviously, it would be weird if he just started screaming bloody murder in this scenario.

“Yeah?” He plops a de-shelled shrimp into the bowl.

“What’s up?”

“You know exactly ‘what’s up’, Kris, you’re right here,” he hisses.

They shift. “Guess so.”

Alright, that’s enough, Berdly reasons. They’re the one who engaged this terrible situation. They have the upper hand and they know it. But not for long! He is going to turn this around- pin the blame on them for being so strange. Berdly may be a flustered mess, but dammit, if he plays his cards right, Kris could be too!

He’ll have them both backed into a corner! Oops, pulled some meat off with that tail. The one challenge, however, is to do it in a way that effectively accuses them of wanting to put their head on his shoulder without offending them too much or too little that they take it off with little fanfare.

…Because he’s a simple man at heart, and the contact is giving him pleasant butterflies.

“Kris,” he begins, struggling with a particularly tiny shrimp. “I know I said to keep me company, but this is an awfully interesting way of doing it, don’t you think?”

“You want me to get off, then?” They say, trying to sound innocent. But Berdly can see through it now. They’re trying to frame this so that calling them out in any way will result in them getting off, which they KNOW Berdly doesn’t want. He’ll have to choose his words with caution. Their cheek moves against his shoulder.

The key is confidence, he reasons. Show no weakness. “I never said you were bothering me.” He implores his voice not to wobble. “Only that, it’s funny you thought THIS was the ideal way to ‘keep me company’.”

They’re quiet for a moment, likely trying to figure out how to approach this allegation. “My head was tired,” they eventually stutter out. “And your shoulder looked comfortable.”

Aha! An opening! He tears this last shell off of the last shrimp with vigor. “MY shoulder looked comfortable? Kris, seeing as you admitted to my dashing looks earlier, indirectly called me cute, implied that you would enjoy any pasta I cook, AND rested your head on my shoulder without prompting- I’m inclined to believe you are-“

Here it is, the finishing blow- “ flirting with me!” He puts his wing up to his chest in shock.

“What if I am?”

AH! AHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHH!

Berdly is about to start screaming out loud. He might actually die from the shock. How- what- how could they turn this on him like that? Or, uh… wait, they were flirting with him this whole time? HE WAS JUST SAYING THAT TO BACK THEM INTO A CORNER? Or wait, maybe they’re lying??? To fluster him, effectively titling THEM the level headed one again? Not today, Kris! Not today! No, he’ll be the one to win this fight! He’s going to show them exactly who’s boss!

“KRIS,” he screams- nope, gotta tune it down. Unfortunately, the full body flinch resulting from this metaphorical heart attack throws Kris off of his shoulder violently. He picks up the bowl of de-shelled shrimp and thrusts it in front of him in defense. “PUT THIS NEXT TO THE STOVE.”

They blink at him like he’s insane, which he clearly is not, but okay. “…Okay,” they say, taking it out of his wings slowly. He pulls his fingers back harshly when they touch Kris’s.

Kris places the bowl next to the stove. …They’re looking at him again. Oh, right, because he’s supposed to go over there and cook the shrimp. Dammit, Kris, you conniving mastermind!

“Kris,” he tries again, significantly quieter this time. He stalks over to the stove and throws the shrimp in the pan. “Uh, bold of you to admit such a thing. To someone as… to a man of my caliber.”

Ugh, no! His entire plan falls apart if he’s not saying these things with confidence! He stirs the shrimp around the pan angrily. One flies out.

Kris is quiet for a few seconds. In that time, Berdly tries to calm himself down, because… what is he even angry about? That Kris has the upper hand? … Didn’t Kris just admit to flirting with him? If anything, that gives him the upper hand, right? And also, uh, makes him feel very good about himself.

Wait. Yeah. He lets the feeling swell in his chest the longer Kris’s silence draws out. If he plays his cards right here, this could be the catalyst he needs to evolve their relationship! He’s got this in the bag!

“I was just joking, dude,” they eventually say.

Or not! Wow! Amazing how just five words could ruin him and stomp on his growing confidence so effectively! He laughs an unnaturally large amount.

“Were you?” He forces out. Another shrimp flies out the pan in the face of his passionate stirring. “Of course. That makes sense. My fault, entirely, for assuming. Uh.”

He keeps stirring the shrimp. They’re curled up and pink now, but he can’t really bring himself to move without… SOMETHING to motivate him, at this point. Kris remains entirely silent. Berdly attempts spontaneous combustion, but to no avail.

“So when’s it gonna be done?” Kris mutters. The change in subject is about as graceful as a cow on steroids. Berdly latches onto it greedily despite this.

Berdly sighs. “Apparently, because you can’t tell, I have to spell out for you that the farfalle is almost entirely done, and so is the ‘sauce’ you’ve forced me to conceive. Try patience, Kris. Shoo! You’re disrupting my artistic flow!” He waves them away quickly, not looking up from the pan. He keeps pushing the shrimp around. With a barely audible sound of acknowledgement, Kris leaves to go sit at the counter.

Berdly pieces it all together without another word, almost burning himself trying to drain the pasta. A primitive failure on his part, he must say. On the bright side, however, his yelp of fear draws a laugh from Kris, which sucks most of the tension out of the room. Eventually, he manages to combine the butter sauce, the farfalle, and the shrimp all together into one meal for the ages. He then sprinkles on a shit ton of red pepper flakes after working the pasta onto two plates. He turns around with a big smile on his face, because even if Kris WAS just messing with him this entire time, cooking is fun, dammit.

"I present to you.." he sets a plate in front of them, coupled with a fork and a knife. "The best pasta dish you'll have in a long, long time. Enough to sustain your cravings for the next decade!"

"If that's not true, I'm suing."

"I'd like to see you try," he says smugly, setting up his own spot on the counter. He hops up onto the barstool next to Kris, who has waited patiently for him to join them. They clink their forks together, proceed to take the first bite in tandem, anddd-

…The shrimp is rubbery.

He hasn’t made rubbery shrimp in years. Kris immediately turns to him, confused, after their first bite, which does well in making him feel like the scum of the earth.

“Just, uh… avoid the shrimp,” he suggests meekly.

They nod. “Don’t worry about it. The rest is really good.”

Despite the lackluster conclusion to their evening, Berdly’s chest warms at the praise. “...Thanks.”

Chapter Text

The next day, Noelle watches Berdly pick at his lunch. He, impossibly, seems… lost in thought? Like, he’s thinking? Which technically isn’t unheard of, but sheesh, what kind of friend would she be if she let this monumental occasion slip by her?

“You okay?” She finally asks, five minutes into eating without either of them saying anything. Berdly squawks.

“Of course I am, Noelle!” He suddenly shoves an entire hard boiled egg into his mouth. “Why wouldn’t I be? What gave off that impression?”

“Nothing, you’re just, um, quiet today.”

Berdly scoffs. “Maybe I’m not. Maybe everyone else is just too loud.”

“I’m saying YOU’RE usually loud, Berdly. Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

He slowly places a ritz cracker into his mouth, looking conflicted. “Um. No. But… say, hypothetically, something WAS wrong…”

Noelle mentally fist pumps. Who knew it was so easy to bend Berdly to her will, as long as she was just a little more assertive?

“…For someone else. A friend of mine.”

Nice try, Berdly. I’m your only friend. …Besides Kris? Apparently? But I really, really doubt Kris is the one with problems.

“And say this friend of mine is totally fine, save for the fact that he… has come under the impression that, his other friend, whom he is interested in romantically has been flirting with him recently so he thought things were going pretty well-“

“Kris has been FLIRTING WITH YOU?” Noelle can’t stop herself from shouting. Berdly yelps, covering her mouth angrily.

“Noelle!”

She’s muffled under his wings. “I’m sorry!”

“This isn’t about me and Kris!”

“Right! I know!”

“It’s about my friend! And his friend!”

“Yes, yes,” she removes his wings from her mouth gently. “I got it.”

“Do you?” He hisses. 

Noelle tries for an apologetic smile. Might as well just… try to get him to talk about it like a normal person, she reasons. “Um… Berdly… I’m pretty sure it’s about you and Kris. Do I even know this friend of yours?”

Berdly’s silence speaks volumes. “…He goes to a different school?”

“This is the only school within, like, a five hundred mile radius.”

“Untrue!” Berdly squawks. “It’s- it's-“

“Berdly,” she puts her hands over his. “It’s okay if it’s about you and Kris. Seriously. I’m here to help.”

He looks at her… well, like he’s always looked at her. Like she hung the stars in the skies or something. With a flamboyant sigh, he finally hunches over, defeated. “Fine. It MAY be… regarding me. And Kris.”

“Right.” She nods. “That’s okay. So, what’s going on between you two?”

He turns away bashfully. “So… um… let’s say I had ASSUMED Kris has been flirting with me lately, yes?”

Noelle can barely stop herself from shooting this notion down, because, well. Berdly thought SHE was flirting with him for a very, very long time, and that was just basic kindness. Then again, Kris isn’t one for basic kindness. So who knows how much credibility this claim has? Before she can deliberate on that, however, she nods, signaling Berdly to keep going.

“So, I may have called them out on it-“

Noelle’s quiet gasp makes him stop abruptly. In the face of his glare, she gestures for him to go on.

“I called them out on it, and they told me they were just joking. So, assuming, um, they WERE just joking about all of it to mess with me, I feel…” he searches for a term here for a good few seconds, but doesn’t seem to come up with anything, because he ends up just looking at her like she has the answer.

“Berdly…” Noelle murmurs with genuine sympathy. That really would suck, in her humble opinion. And the worst part is she can’t really comfort him about it without lying out of her teeth or making false promises, because flirting with Berdly solely to mess with him is absolutely something Kris would do. Maybe not in a malicious way, to give him false hope or anything, but… it’s definitely a possibility that Kris really doesn’t see him in the same way he sees Kris. And that’s just sad. That’s a sad thing for everyone to deal with. But dammit, if she won’t die trying.

…Then again, nothing BAD has to come of this. Kris and Berdly could still be good friends. So she starts there.

“Are you two still on good terms then?”

Berdly nods. “Indeed we are! Never better! It’s just, uh, I feel my chances have since… plummeted?”

She makes a quiet noise of acknowledgment. “So, Berdly. I want you to tell me exactly what happened.”

“…In how much detail?”

“Just.. exactly what both of you said.”

Berdly blinks. “Okay. I can do that. Um…” he puts his hand to his chin, deliberating. “Well, I accused Kris of flirting with me, and they said…” he sweats a bit even recounting this, which is kind of adorable. “They said ‘what if I am?’. So I sort of panicked and shoved them away with the shrimp bowl-“

“The shrimp bowl?”

“We were cooking. And I…” his mouth draws a thin line over his beak, like it pains him to recount this. “I regret to admit that my attempts to be suave after that point were… lackluster. I said something about how it was bold of them to admit it to a man of my caliber, and I trailed off too far, and we were quiet for a few seconds, and then they eventually said, ‘I was just joking, dude’,” he says, emphasizing the word ‘dude’ in quotation marks. “And then it was weird and the subject got changed.”

“Wow,” Noelle says. “That’s…”

“Horrible? I know . Horrible of them, if anything, claiming their bold flirting attempts were all jokes.”

Noelle winces. “Um, Berdly, I hate to tell you this, but that seems… entirely in character for Kris.”

Berdly looks at her for a second, expression slowly dropping at this revelation.

“BUT,” Noelle continues, desperate to wipe that look off his face, “um… maybe they just panicked and lied or something. You said you.. panicked too, right? Maybe they took that as a sign you weren’t interested?”

Berdly folds his hands over his mouth, considering this with narrow eyes. There was a chance, actually, that this was the case. There was a chance for a lot of things to be the case in this scenario. Honestly, Noelle thinks the best move here is for them to just talk to each other about their intentions, because neither of them are subtle people whatsoever. In any case, she sighs and puts her hand on Berdly’s shoulder.

“I really hope things work out for you, Berdly. My advice is to talk to them. No strings attached. Alright? You’ve courted them enough, you might as well just ask if it’s worked by this point.”

Berdly’s nods increase in strength as her sentence goes on, ending in one climactic huff. “You’re right, Noelle.” He turns to her with a grateful smile on his face. “Thank you. And, um…” his voice goes wobbly. “If… if things don’t work out, then could you just…”

Her eyes soften at the corners. “I’ll be right here. Good luck.”

—-

Later, Berdly’s huffing and puffing through warmups in gym class. He’s never been a guru of athletic prowess, to be completely honest. Luckily, today he brought a water bottle! A miraculous feat, seeing as he always forgets. As he plops down on the bench and chugs it all down in one go during their five minute break, the sound of approaching footsteps makes itself known to him. His eyes land on a pair of rugged boots, prompting him to look up.

“Who- ooh.”

Susie glares at him, gym clothes and all. “Nugget boy.”

“Susan!” He throws his arms out in a welcoming manner. “How lovely to see you!”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t hate you as much lately either. Although that could change in a few minutes, depending on how you handle this talk.”

Berdly gulps, drawing back just the slightest amount. What could Susie possibly want with him? He hasn’t talked to her… like, at ALL since he last hounded her about where the entrance to the Dark World is. And he’s since given up on that quest, considering all the trouble unwarranted snooping gets him in. Despite the fear, however, Berdly feels his pulse speed up.

…Or that could be because of the fear, who knows? Case in point: Susie, despite the newfound respect (and, reluctantly, admiration) he harbors for her, is incredibly intimidating.

“What did you, um,” he coughs into his fist. “Want to talk to me about?”

Susie’s narrowed eyes search his for a second, like she wants a confession out of him. Eventually, however, she sighs and slumps down next to him on the bench.

“Listen, man,” she says. “I’m gonna be honest. I have NO idea what this is about. But apparently you and Kris are all buddy-buddy now.”

Berdly opens his mouth and is immediately shushed.

“Let me finish. Goddamn.” He nods vigorously. “So Kris…” she twiddles her thumbs for a moment, deliberating. “Kris likes you. I think. Just, as a person, right?”

Berdly feels the insatiable urge to reply to this, but holds back for the sake of his own well being.

“And I want you to know that whatever happens between you two, I hope both parties are satisfied. And I’m blaming you if it goes wrong. Alright? So, I guess what I’m trying to say is..”

She knocks him on the back. Hard. The air flies out of his lungs. “You two better figure your shit out. And when you do, I don’t care how it has to happen. As long as Kris is happy. Step it up for them, Berdly.” She glares down at him. “I’m serious.”

Gulping, Berdly swiftly places his hands in his lap. “I wouldn’t dream of disappointing either of you!” He chokes out.

“Okay, but did you actually think about any of the shit I said?”

Berdly blinks at her, taking an extra second to digest it. So… that whole spiel was basically her giving them her blessing, right? And asking Berdly to step it up and make Kris happy? Easy! That’s what he’s BEEN doing!

…And what he planned on doing anyway. He gives her his most satisfactory-guaranteed smile. “Of course I did. Kris is in good hands, don’t even think of worrying about us.”

Susie apparently decides this is good enough, because she shrugs lazily and stands up after a moment. “Whatever you say, man. Good luck.” Then she’s running off before their break is even over. Insanity.

Berdly realizes he’s been wished good luck twice today. By his two favorite girls in the world! That’s gotta be a blessing in disguise, right?

…Wait, what the FUCK??? What was that??? Why did Susie just show up out of nowhere and deliver that whole monologue to him??? What could’ve prompted her to do something like that? WHAT DOES SHE KNOW?

Berdly squints at her, like watching her do sit-ups with Kris standing on her feet will give him the answer, but alas. All he catches are glimpses of her rippling muscles, and not much else. His eyes instinctively travel to an apathetic looking Kris. Did they have something to do with this? Crap, were they WATCHING Susie talk to him earlier?

Noelle plops down next to him on the bench, but he barely notices due to his intense concentration. “Phew!” She takes a swig of her own water bottle. “Catti isn’t the most enthusiastic partner, but I kind of had to improvise since you abandoned me.”

“Huh?” Berdly looks up at her, sweating a bit at her playfully annoyed expression. “Oh. Yes. My apologies, Noelle, it’s just, uh-“

She raises an eyebrow at him. He falters.

“…I dislike physical activity immensely .”

She crosses her arms. “That’s no excuse to abandon your gym partner like that!” 

“There are plenty of other candidates more than willing to do-“ he sneaks a quick glance at Kris, who does one singular push-up before slamming unceremoniously to the ground. “-push-ups with you.”

Noelle huffs from next to him, but he can’t see it. Mostly because he’s back to deliberating about the forever mysterious and elusive Kris and Susie. 

“…Wow,” she eventually sighs.

Berdly doesn’t look up. “What?”

“U-um, nothing, it’s just, uh… aha.”

“Is your deep, vicious attraction to Susie interrupting your capacity for cognitive thought? I still can’t believe it! How did I not see it before?”

Noelle pushes him playfully, but it’s kind of half-assed, which makes Berdly think she didn’t take her eyes off of Susie to do it. Honestly, he completely understands the appeal. Muscles and all.

“Is your ‘deep, vicious’ attraction to KRIS interrupting your capacity for eye contact?”

Berdly squawks, finally managing to look at her. “No! For your information, I wasn’t looking at Kris specifically, I was looking at both of them!” This isn’t even a lie. “In fact, Susie just came over to talk to me. I was… wondering what prompted her to do that.”

“WHAT?” Noelle screams. Luckily, it’s not too loud over the buzz of the gym, but it was still right in his auricular. Berdly winces. “Susie came over HERE? To talk to YOU?”

“Yes, yes! Strange, right?”

“Crazy! What was she talking about?”

“She gave me this whole spiel about Kris, believe it or not!” He crosses his arms. “Somehow, she managed to be even MORE cryptic than usual."

Noelle has gone silent beside him. When she speaks again, her voice has a strange cadence to it. “…About Kris?”

Berdly nods.

“Um… what about them?”

“Oh, just something about how I should ‘step it up for them’ since ‘apparently we’re buddy-buddy now’. Then she wished me luck regarding our relationship.” He says these in quotes. Noelle is gaping at him, but he doesn’t know what that could mean. “Why do you think sh-“

“OBVIOUSLY,” Noelle grabs him by the shoulders, “Kris talked to her about you, Berdly!”

“…Huh?”

“She talked to you because Kris talked to her ABOUT you first! Enough to inspire her to give you a PEP TALK!”

Berdly does whatever the opposite of wilting is. Then he gasps. “…Noelle! You’re right!”

Her head is inexplicably in her hands now.

“I DO have a chance! Haha! Their crush on me is more obvious than-“ he falters. “-than I thought yours was. Erm. Maybe I need a second opinion. Noelle, do you think-“

“Yes I think Kris likes you.” Then, under her breath, “or.. something.”

“WOOHOO!” He stands, raising both fists in the air in triumph. “This is it, Noelle! The fruit of my labors! Finally, all of my hard work will amount to something LARGER THAN LIFE! A love will bloom- forever in season- destined to entwine on and on and on until our eventual collapse in olden age-”

“Okay, Berdly.” Noelle puts a hand on his shoulder and sort of drags him back down to the bench. “Yes. This is good. Kris is… agonizing over you, hopefully. But. Um. I’m sort of begging you to…” she twirls a hand around for a second, searching for a word here. “Cómo se dice… think? About how you’re going to deal with this? I mean, my advice from earlier isn’t just nullified now.”

Berdly reruns this in his mind. Yes, Kris feels a deep uncontrollable love for him, and him for them, but where to go from here? He puts a hand up to his chin in the face of Noelle’s kind patience. 

First question: should he smooch Kris when the time comes for them to admit their passionate feelings for one another? He can answer that immediately, actually, heck yeah. Does he want to smooch Kris? Thinking about it for a second… absolutely! Sounds interesting! His beak, contrary to popular belief, has the ability to pucker up! ...And he's never been that close to another person before, much less KRIS. His fated rival. The Fox to his Falco. The Link to his Revali. The- ah, well. He'd.. like to kiss them.

Second question: are they going to be dating afterwards? Well, hopefully. What does dating consist of? Hanging out! Kicking their ass at various fighter games! He SOLOS as Mileena on Mortal Kombat! Just wait until they- wait, that’s a bit off track, then. Case in point, they’re going to be a certified dynamic gaming duo. No other couple will ever beat them as long as they live. Officially.

Third question: is he planning on marrying Kris and spending the rest of his life with them? He can figure that one out later!

Berdly officially has it all sussed out then. Now, according to Noelle, apparently he just has to… make this all known to them and hope they feel the same way. This thought causes him to let out the tiniest embarrassing squawk.

“What’s wrong?” Noelle asks.

“I do have to.. Confess, then?”

She looks like she swallowed a lemon drop whole. “Uh. Yes, Berdly. You have to ‘confess’. I don’t think anybody in the West says that.”

“Very well.” He stands, raising a fist in the air. “Then I will… with help enlisted from my comrades.”

“...So, me?”

“Noelle…” he turns, love on his mind. “Who else?”

“...Alright.”

“Ready to present to Kris the BEST love confession they will EVER receive?”

Resigned to her fate, Noelle sighs. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Chapter Text

So here is the plan, as Berdly sees it: the confession happens on Friday, which gives him ample time to be Kris’s date for the Sadie Hawkman’s dance on Saturday. Well, they wouldn’t be able to do many datelike things under the watchful eyes of their teachers, but they could always step out or something.

…But that’s not a very fully realized plan, is it? This issue approaches as he and Noelle are hanging out in the library one fateful Wednesday afternoon. He had stepped in, notebook blazing and full of ideas, only for every single last one of them to be vehemently opposed by his best- well. By the girl whom he THOUGHT was his best friend.

“What’s wrong with a light show???”

“Berdly,” Noelle is pinching the bridge of her nose (which probably looks as strange on a deer as you imagine it does), “we can’t afford that.”

“I have LED lights! They’re in my bedroom right now!”

“You can’t conduct an entire light show with one bedroom’s worth of LED lights!”

Berdly waves her off. “Fine, fine.” Crosses out the light show idea on his notebook. He taps his chin with his pencil once before lighting up in epiphany. “Now, hear me out.”

Noelle gestures for him to go on, looking like she’s aged a decade since they began this whole operation.

“What if… I show up at their house early Friday morning.”

“Already not liking this one.”

“Without their knowledge, I sneak a ring inside their lunch food-“

“Okay, Berdly.” She grabs his notebook, ignoring his protesting squawks. “I think you may have some… mixed ideas about what a confession looks like.”

“I do not! ” He says, crossing his arms. “It should be important. It should strike awe and wonder into their heart. So much awe and wonder, in fact, that they can’t deny me.”

“I think that’s called ‘pressure’.”

Finally, she understands! “Exactly!”

“No, Berdly, it’s bad to pressure them into saying yes with something extravagant.”

Berdly blinks. “…And why, pray tell?”

“Because-“ she hesitates for a moment here, probably second-guessing herself. “Because if they feel pressured to say yes, then they may not actually mean it. It won’t come from the heart, it’ll come from.. the head.”

A lightbulb metaphorically goes off above Berdly. But of course! What an expertly crafted analogy! Delivered to him by his dear friend Noelle! Yes, yes, if they feel scared to say no, then their acceptance of his confession wouldn’t be too genuine, would it? He takes a deep breath and nods.

“I understand completely, Noelle! Then, something more personal, perhaps?”

A relieved smile crosses her face. “Yeah, you’ve got it.”

He drags his notebook and pencil back from her, which isn’t met with much protest. For a moment, he’s thinking- then it crashes over him. An idea for the ages. “Hear me out.”

“…Yes?” She looks cautiously optimistic this time around, which is an improvement!

“You lock the two of us in a broom closet together-“

“Alright, Berdly. How about… you take some of my suggestions, then?”

He hesitates to say yes, because, well… It's important that HE comes up with his own ideas. But, then, Noelle may surprise him with a concept never before sought. So he reluctantly (but with an open mind!) folds his wings over his beak. “Go on.”

“Alright. Ummm.” She taps her cheek for a second, deliberating. “Why not slip a note into their locker?”

“Noelle, while that one’s a classic, it’s MUCH too boring for an event of this caliber!”

She laughs weakly. It makes Berdly smile. “Fine, fine, I get it. I can’t say I wouldn’t want my ‘confession’ to Susie to be a little more dramatic. Ummmm…”

After a second of her making intense eye contact with the table, Berdly sticks a finger in the air. “I’ve got it.”

“Hm?”

Eyes sparkling, he paints an invisible picture with his spanning wings. “Minecrap confession sequence. In Minecrap.”

When he makes eye contact with her, Noelle is doing some kind of weird slow half nod. “That’s… inspired.”

“Right?!”

“It’s not too extravagant, but it’s also not.. personal enough, y’know? Because you want to say everything out loud, face to face.”

“Ah, yes.” He nods solemnly. “I see where you’re coming from. ‘Twas a good idea, however.”

“‘Twas.”

They stew in silence for another contemplative few seconds. In this time, Berdly sees fit to trace the scuff marks in the table with his finger like it’ll help him think better. It doesn’t, but the occupation is nice.

Noelle straightens out next to him. “Maybe… we do something in between.”

“You’re proposing a middle ground?”

“Yeah.” She folds her hands together. “So it has to be in person- personal, right? But also not boring. Like you put effort into it, but it’s not FLASHY.”

“Right, right.” Berdly scribbles all of these points down as notes. “Those are the terms, yes.”

“So here’s my idea.” Holding her hands out to convey a sense of imagery, she begins her explanation. “You set up… a few nice things. But in a remote place. So maybe in your house or something. Just make sure they’re led through it. They make it to you, you give them a rose, you explain everything to them- bam. Perfect.”

“Aha!” He points at her knowingly. “Like a trail of rose petals!”

“I-I have no idea where you’d find the supplies for that on such short notice, but sure!”

“Doesn’t Kris’s dad run a flower shop?”

Noelle blinks. “Oh. Right. Is that… weird? To buy and mutilate flowers from their dad?”

“Uh.” Berdly would assume it would be weird to different people and he has absolutely no idea where Kris stands on the scale of ‘yeah that’s normal’ to ‘no that’s weird’. Especially since their family’s been such a tense subject lately. And by lately, he means for the past few years. “Maybe we should stay away from the rose petals for now.”

“Yeah,” Noelle sighs. “Gosh, this is tough, huh?”

“I’ll say!” He folds his wings petulantly. “They make it seem so easy in the media…”

Noelle shoots him a confused look. “What kinds of media are you watching with ‘love confessions’ in them?” She then huffs out a laugh. “Maybe we could steal an idea or two from them.”

Deliberating on this, he would really love to do something similar to the season three finale of Love is War, but he doesn’t have thousands of heart shaped balloons, a clock tower, and a bonfire at his disposal. He could do the wedding practice in a darkly lit room thing, but that seems a little presumptuous so early in the relationship. He could recreate Rem’s speech to Subaru word-for-word, but that was a little specific to his plight. Unfortunately, grandiose things such as these don’t happen in his reality, he fears.

“Ah- erm- I don’t think that would work out, to be blunt.”

“Why?”

He sighs sadly. “Most anime confessions are very plot specific.”

At this, Noelle looks positively shocked. “You watch anime?”

“Yes!” Berdly throws his wings up. “Why is everybody in such disbelief at this?! My prowess in visual novels is common knowledge, anime is practically the animated equivalent!”

“I don’t know, I just have ‘gamers’ and ‘anime watchers’ in my head as two different kinds of people,” she shrugs.

“If anything, they’re the opposite of mutually exclusive.”

“Okay, well, we’re getting off track.” She grabs his precious, precious notebook for the second time that afternoon, to his chagrin. “We really need to think about this. It’s important.”

He nods emphatically. Of course it’s important. “What if we do our OWN plot specific confession?”

“Uh,” she writes something (presumably his idea) down. “Getting somewhere. Has to be low budget, though.”

“Right…”

They sit on their ideas for another few seconds. Berdly revisits the broom closet idea. It’s up close, personal… you’re unable to escape from it. Practically the perfect setting for a confession of love in every possible way. And the lighting is low, too, meaning it gives off a sense of anonymity, which he once read somewhere makes it easier to do terrible or embarrassing things. He’s about to convince Noelle to reconsider or at least ask her why she doesn’t like the idea, when-

“Ooh, I know! You bake them a pie!”

Genius! “Genius! What flavor? Chocolate?”

“I don’t think chocolate pies are a thing. Chocolate mousse.”

He slams the table with his fists. “Perfect! One problem!”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never made a pie before in my life!”

“Well then,” she crosses her arms boldly. “You’re in luck, because I have!”

Gasp! “Noelle… you… you would make the pie for me?” Once again, he thanks God for Noelle. Truly the perfect girl.

“No, silly, I’ll HELP you make it. It’s your confession, it should be your pie.”

“Oh. Well, thank you nevertheless! Unfortunately, that doesn’t answer the question of how I’m presenting it to them?”

Noelle squints. “You should give it to them somewhere atmospheric… yet private.”

Their eyes both widen.

They turn to each other.

“The lake!”

How did they not see it before?? That’s where everyone goes to have the important philosophical conversations! There are even SITTING spots there!

“It’s perfect!” Berdly expresses, practically vibrating with anticipation. “So I give them pie at the lake. What else?”

“Hmm… Maybe give them a few other things? A token of your relationship or something?”

And, oh, with these words… Noelle has created a monster. She has absolutely NO idea what she’s done. Berdly rubs his hands together smugly. “Yes, yes, I hear you loud and clear, Noelle. The ideas are already forming… in my mind palace.”

Noelle looks vaguely threatened by this. “Good! Uh! You can figure that out on your own time, then.”

“Oh, I will. Just you watch.”

“And…” she taps her chin. “The presentation should be super cool too. Like, you should be on a pedestal or something.”

“Aha! Noelle!” He grabs her by the shoulders, perhaps a little TOO hyped up, involuntarily shaking her in his excitement. “It’s all going to be so perfect! You’re a genius, Noelle!”

She laughs unevenly. “Haha, am I?”

“I’m so lucky…” he wipes a fake tear from his eye after reluctantly letting go of her. Well, the tear is fake, but the emotions are real. Actually, the tear might not be fake? “To have a wonderful friend like you, Noelle. We should share a fist bump.”

An eyebrow raises, but her lips are pulled up into an amused smile. “A fist bump?”

“It’s a token of real friendship!” He squawks with pride. Holding his fist up, he wiggles his eyebrows at her.

“...Sure, Berdly.” She fist bumps him. “Real friendship. Tomorrow we’re making that pie, alright?”

“You bet we are! I also have another idea presentation wise.”

“Oh?” Noelle looks intrigued. “What is it?”

“I’ll tell you about it Friday morning. You only have a small role in how it’ll work out.”

Despite looking mildly exasperated at her apparent unimportance, Noelle nods. “…Sure, Berdly. Now, uh, if that’s all… we should probably work on some actual studying.”

By gods, she’s right! He hasn’t studied much these past few days as a disgraceful side effect to his newfound courting rituals for Kris. “You’re right, Noelle. What should we study for first? I’m partial to the upcoming history test.”

Then after all of that’s done and Berdly takes the long walk home, he sees fit to just sit on his bed and think for a moment.

Something important to his relationship with Kris. Super Smashing Fighters? How would that translate into an actual, physical gift though? He could always buy them a DLC pack or something, but that seems inexpensive and frankly unimportant in the grand scheme of Smash. A cardboard cutout of Link? They are vehemently a Link main. Then again, he doesn’t know where he would find any cardboard, and to be quite frank, he doesn’t trust the printer. Home printers were the worst invention since bottled water. They might even not like Link that much as a character and just see his skillset as easily utilized. Something else important to them… well, pie is off the table, and so is chocolate. He’s already combining those into two. Maybe, like, a Hershey kiss or something? To go along with the pie?

…Yes, it’s perfect. Some EXTRA chocolate. They can’t say no to extra chocolate! What else?!? What’s something beautiful, bountiful- something they know and cherish? Something that relates back to him as well?

It hits him. He gasps.

“MOM-“ oh, wait, she’s not home yet. Dammit, he doesn’t know where any of their art supplies are! Uh, uh- screw it!

He leaps off of his bed, tripping over his nightstand in the process and falling flat on his face before scrambling up. He needs to find the clay and paint. Is he an artist? Absolutely not, but how hard could sculpting be?

—-

That Friday, Kris reflects on the fact that they have been having a strange week. A strange couple of weeks, actually. But the weeks have all been strange in much different ways. For example: Berdly has a crush on them now.

He’s really not being all that subtle about it. What else were they supposed to think when all of a sudden, after telling him they think he’s a pretty cool guy, he starts calling them his dear and tripping all over himself whenever they dare make eye contact with him for longer than a nanosecond? Granted, they’ve been told on many occasions that eye contact from them is scary, but they know the difference between a terrified Berdly and a flustered Berdly.

…Wait, do they? There was a reason he liked Susie for exactly five minutes in the Dark World (which they caught onto as well). Kris is starting to suspect he just has a thing for people who terrify him and are also gamers. Anyway, case in point: Berdly has a crush on them and they know this because they’re not stupid. Well, they ARE. They have a winning C+ streak going in school. But they’re not Berdly stupid.

Kris first figured this out loosely when Berdly explained to them that ‘dear’ is a term he reserves only for crushes. He didn’t use that exact wording, but he might as well have. Kris doesn’t even think he knows the implications that follow explaining to them that he calls people ‘his dear’ when he likes them and then proceeding to call them his dear. Stupid bird.

Uh, then they conducted further investigation by flirting with him. At least, as flirty as they could get. Their flirting style is mostly just entirely impulse based, but it seemed to work out, because Berdly was kind of being a mess around them.

And, surprisingly, they… kind of liked it? Like, they liked spending time with him? And thought he was enjoyable and funny? And all of that warm fluffy bullshit?

They didn’t HATE Berdly before, but they certainly mildly disliked him. Fun was derived from making him angry, because even before all of this, they found it admirable just how thoroughly he cared about every little single thing they did to him. But then he ‘turned over a new leaf’ and all of a sudden he was their friend? And he was nice to them? And it was totally awesome?

They sigh, resting their head on their hands, because Jesus. Life is weird. Your condescending Smash rival is Isekai’d with you ONE time and all of a sudden they fall in love with you.

…And you kind of like them back?

Okay, they may actually be going insane. Before the Dark World, if you told them they’d be nursing a small crush on Berdly after hanging out with him regularly for a few days, they would’ve waterboarded you or something. They don’t really do crushes. It’s not a common thing for them. Yet, somehow, the stupid fucking idiot bird’s courting rituals worked on them. What??? How did they get here???

Eh, actually, they don’t care. This entire situation is hilarious. Let the smash rivals kiss each other on the lips, why not? Or, well… beak.

Unfortunately, they kind of totally bombed a few things last night when they told Berdly their flirting was a joke. It wasn’t even a lie, that’s the worst part. They were doing it to fluster him because they thought it was funny (and, reluctantly, cute). Then the ‘what if I am’ happened and they started panicking because where the hell were they supposed to go from there? Did they actually, like, want to start dating him? Hence the way they backed off immediately afterwards and made things awkward.

They cringe remembering it, sending a subliminal apology to Berdly. Who’s scribbling something down in his notebook at his desk. But, uh, thinking about it now… why the hell WOULDN’T they want to date him?

He’s an awesome smash rival, he makes them laugh, he forcefully injects passion into their everyday life and is really pretty caring where it counts, they REALLY want to know what it’s like to kiss feathers. Birds are adorable when they preen. They would know, their mom recently took up birdwatching.

Ah, what the hell? Y’know, if Berdly made a big show of his feelings to them now, they’d say yes. Smooch him right on the beak. Give him a hug. Har, har. Life is just one big cesspool of stupidity, they might as well just have fun living that truth. They just hope he doesn’t present them a flower from their dad’s shop. Boy, would that kill the mood.

They trace the wooden patterns in their desk, thinking over all of this, when-

“Kris?” Berdly’s unmistakable, nasally, unattractive voice. Kris is starting to love it. A terrifying thought.

They jump a bit, looking up. “Mm?”

Berdly is shifting back and forth on his feet. “I was wondering, if you would do me the pleasure…” he does a weird little bow thing. “Of eating lunch with me.”

Woah there, buster. Harsh request. They haven’t had lunch with anyone but either themself or Susie in like an entire decade. “Yeah, sure.”

Why did they say that?? Oh, actually, who even cares?

Berdly lights up. “Wonderful! You’ll see I have something in store for you!”

“Do you?” Kris raises an eyebrow, full of joyful anticipation. “I’m looking forward to it, then.”

“Are-are you?”

How was there ever a time where they DIDN’T know Berdly had a crush on them? They just agreed to eat lunch with him once and Berdly looks like Christmas came early. It reluctantly makes them very happy. They try hard to be less happy about his excitement, but it doesn’t work. “Mhm. Sure am. I’ll tell Susie.”

“Got it! Gotcha.” He nods quickly before making an awkward break for his desk. Alphys isn’t in yet, so he doesn’t really have to sit at his desk and wait, but. Y’know. Berdly. Kris sighs. They then get up and approach Susie, who’s stabbing holes into her eraser.

“Susie.”

“Ah!” She startles, looking playfully mad about their intervention. “What the hell, dude? Don’t scare me like that.”

“Haha. Sorry,” they say with no conviction. Better just get to the point. “I’m eating lunch with Berdly today.”

“What the fuck?”

“I know, right?”

“No, no,” she puts her eraser away harshly in the pocket of her jacket. “You don’t get to agree with me. Why did you agree to eat lunch with Berdly?”

They shrug. “He’s funny. I know you don’t like him all that much-“

“-in my defense, he’s gotten better since the Dark World.”

“Yeah, yeah, but he’s still not your favorite.”

“…Granted.”

“My point is, he’s kind of just fun to hang out with. Also, we totally might start dating soon?”

Susie looks at them like they grew three heads. “Actually?”

“I know, right? I’m serious. I’m just as shocked about this as you are.”

“I seriously doubt it, man. Just, uh.” She puts an exasperated claw on her head. “Know that I wish you guys luck, even if I think it’s incredibly weird. Who the hell am I supposed to eat lunch with, then?”

“Noelle,” they say like it’s obvious. Which it is. 

“No! Are you crazy?!?”

“I would hypothetically date Berdly, so yes.”

Susie isn’t listening anymore. “I can’t eat lunch with Noelle! She’s- she’s-“

“You’ll be fine.” Kris pats her shoulder in what they hope is in an encouraging manner. “If I’ll be fine, you’ll be fine.”

“Whatever.” She looks away, blushing. “Go back to your desk.”

“Alright. Keep Noelle company while Berdly’s gone or so help me.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Her tail lashes angrily under her jacket. “I will.”

Alphys enters the classroom just as they sit down and delivers a lesson as painful and unsure as usual. Well, Alphys is a good teacher, but she’s not a very confident one. Kris, as usual, kind of falls asleep. By the time lunch arrives, they’re shaken awake by Susie.

“Hey. Kris. Get up.”

“Whahuh?” They wipe drool from their mouth.

“I checked outside and Berdly was around the corner looking like a kicked puppy. Probably waiting for you to show up.”

Kris, in their half delirious state, laughs. “Hah. Berdly.” 

“You’re pathetic.”

“I know.” They reluctantly push themself up. “Hope he has something good for me.”

Susie looks vaguely horrified at these words. “What?”

“He told me he has a surprise for me.”

“That’s never a good thing,” she shudders. Kris falls into step with her out of the classroom. They make a quick pit stop at their respective lockers to grab their lunches before catching a glance at Berdly around the corridor. True to Susie’s word, he’s wringing his hands together anxiously over his lunch box. What a dork. 

“Alright, Kris. Good luck with nugget boy.”

“I’m gonna need it.” Berdly catches sight of them. About fifteen years worth of stress evaporates from his body language in an instant and he gives them an enthusiastic wave. Susie, after a reassuring shoulder pat, walks past him.

“Hey,” Kris says.

“Kris! My good friend! Are you ready for the lunch of the millennia?!?”

Wow, he must have something positively riveting in store for a confident description like that. “Yup. Lead the way.”

Berdly pushes open the doors leading to outside boldly. His eyes immediately travel to the unoccupied tree he and Noelle usually sit at. Kris reasons that this means Noelle and Susie are on the bench, and- oh, yup. God, those two are almost as stupid as Berdly and Kris.

They both climb the hill in the same way a hermit who hasn’t exercised in twenty years might before stopping at the base of the tree. The dirt around it is compact and obviously molded into a spot to sit at, given the way Berdly slumps down in such a carefree way. He pats the spot next to him. Kris is reluctant to get their pants dirty, but. Well. They’ve come this far. Besides, the tree has a ton of white flowers blooming all over it. It’s a beautiful tree besides the inconvenience of getting your ass dirty.

“What’s the surprise?” They ask, opening their lunchbox. Usual slice of cinnamon butterscotch pie, plus fruits and veggies and whatnot. They silently thank god for their mom.

“Patience, my dear!” He opens his own lunchbox, going to town on the celery inside of it. Gross. “I’ll reveal it to you at the end of the lunch period.”

There’s that ‘my dear’ again. Can Kris seriously just keel over and die already? How are Berdly’s pet names drawing rare and elusive smiles out of them?

“You’re gonna keep me in suspense?”

“Precisely.” He waggles his eyebrows. “The surprise has more value that way.”

“Mkay. Can you at least give me a hint?”

Berdly startles at this, slowly placing another peanut butter smeared celery in his mouth. “Uhhh… yes, but give me a moment.”

He places his hand up to his chin to think. Kris admires the sight. Never before in their life have they met anyone as cartoonishly expressive as him. Sometimes they wish they could be that… full of life. But alas. They’ve sort of resigned themself to the fate of being unable to emote unless they’re making fun of someone.

Berdly opens his mouth. Closes it. Finally, “the surprise.. IS a hint. A series of hints.”

“You set up a scavenger hunt?”

Berdly… Kris doesn’t actually know what Berdly does, it’s a very loud and scandalized sounding bird noise. “HOW DID YOU KNOW?”

Kris shrugs. “Basic deduction skills.”

“Well- well-“ Berdly crosses his arms, apparently at a loss for words. Kris suddenly feels kind of bad for ruining his surprise. They probably should’ve just shut up.

“Sorry,” they say, surprising both of them. “Nothing’s ruined. I’m still excited. And besides, the actual scavenger hunt still leads to a surprise, right?”

“Uh- correct. Yes!” Berdly nods vehemently, looking marginally better. “Just you wait, Kris. It’ll knock every last one of your socks off!”

“I’m sure it will.” They eat an apple slice.

“Would you like any peanut butter with that?”

Kris blinks, pleasantly surprised at the suggestion. “Yeah, actually.”

Berdly holds out one of the peanut butter covered celery sticks, gesturing for Kris to just… scoop some off. Interesting. They mentally shrug, however, and go for it. Accidentally go for it too hard and knock Berdly’s celery to the dirty ground.

“…Oops.”

Berdly looks heartbroken at this misstep. “My celery.”

“Sorry.”

“Alas, Kris. It just wasn’t meant to be.” He sniffles. Kris can’t tell if he’s exaggerating, which makes them panic. “I was simply never destined to eat it. And all because of your sheer, brute strength, no less.”

Kris holds out their peanut butterless apple slice. “Here. Trade. Since I nerfed your celery.”

Berdly’s melodrama melts away at the blink of an eye. He gasps. “Kris! You’d… you’d give me your apple slice? To alleviate the harshness of my pain?”

“Yeah.”

“Heh. Well.” He takes the apple slice slowly, like he’s afraid he’ll drop this one too. “I suppose I can’t fault you. Thank you kindly, Kris! You’re effortlessly kind and charming, as always.”

They can’t really process this line on such short notice, so they just nod.

“In other news, however…” he procures a handheld switch from behind his back. Wait, what the hell? Kris literally followed behind him the entire way up the hill. He wasn’t carrying any switch??? “Would you do me the pleasure of overseeing my next few attempts at Smash?” His eyes go half lidded for this next bit, like he’s trying to be seductive: “I’ve gotten MUCH better at wavedashing since we last faced each other.”

…Uh? What is this? Why has he suddenly gained the overconfidence of a forty year old chain smoker? Well, Kris isn’t complaining, but it’s pretty goddamn abrupt. He must have something monumental planned for that scavenger hunt.

Belatedly, they realize he asked them a question. “Uh. Okay. Sure.”

He nods resolutely. “Wonderful! Now, who shall I show off against this time around, Kris?”

…Might as well just go along with it, they reason. “Start with the CPUs. I’ll give you my feedback.”

“Bold of you to assume your feedback will be needed.”

The rest of the lunch period goes off without a hitch. Predictably, Berdly’s incompetent ass DOES end up needing some of their feedback, but it goes much more pleasantly than it would’ve, say… before the Dark World. When the bell rings, Berdly looks up in slight shock. Kris immediately starts packing in the face of the chaos, but Berdly holds out a wing, signaling for them to stop.

“Wait.” He suddenly looks almost nervous? Which is more in line with how he’d been behaving recently. “Uhh… before you go home today, tell Noelle the code word ‘Revali’. She’ll know what to do.”

Ah, what the hell. There is no way this bird could possibly surprise them anymore. “…Alright.”

“It’s important that you do!”

“I will,” they stress. “Don’t worry.”

He nods. “Good. And, uh, Kris?”

They’ve given up on trying to pack their lunch up before he’s done. “Yeah?”

“Thank you. For your recent companionship. I must say, I’ve been…” he rubs the back of his head sheepishly, obviously making an effort to get this out. Kris waits for his next words with bated breath, like the entire world is hanging on them. They cannot for the life of them pinpoint when Berdly’s words started carrying so much weight. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, just being friends with you, but. You’ve exceeded my already high expectations!”

“…You’ve been imagining being my friend?”

“HAHA, well!” Berdly is looking everywhere but at them. A huge, wobbly smile flickers on and off his beak. “Um! In the barest of terms! I had always considered it! What it might be like.”

Kris stares. Then they laugh. They can’t help it.

“What?!” He squawks. “What’s so funny??”

“Nothing,” they say, going back to packing up their lunch trash with an uncontrollable smile on their face. “You. But in a good way.”

They stand, prompting Berdly to stand as well. He’s at a rare loss for words, staring at them intently. “…A good way?”

“I like being your friend too, Berdly.”

Actually, now that Kris thinks about it, it would be a wonderful time to kiss his stupid shocked face. Backlit by the white blossoms of the tree. Thank god for Spring despite the allergies. But not yet, they reason. He’s got something planned. So they walk past him, an unreasonable amount of anticipation in their heart.

Chapter Text

Kris is biting their nails waiting for the day to be over. As soon as that last blessed bell rings, Berdly practically BOLTS out of class before Kris can even get a word in. Which really only leaves them one thing to do.

Noelle is packing all of her stuff up slowly and deliberately, sneaking glances at them when she thinks they aren’t looking. Nice try, Noelle. They’re always looking. More or less. She perks up as they begin to approach her.

“K-Kris! Hey! What’s up?”

“Revali.”

She laughs. Well, at least she was anticipating this. “Yeah, Berdly told me to…” she feels around her skirt’s pockets and procures a tiny slip of paper from one of them. “He told me to give this to you. I don’t even know what’s on it.”

Kris takes it from her and unfolds it right then and there, definitively NOT smiling. Revali. That’s so stupid. On the paper, the following words are written in flowery cursive that Kris almost can’t read:

Kris! My highly esteemed and respected comrade! If you’re reading this, you’ve already made it past the first step of my scavenger hunt! Congradulations! For your first task, I implore you to travel to the location where you first gifted me a treat from my childhood! I’d like to return the favor.

-B

Lots to unpack here. First of all, what the hell? Berdly’s making them walk all around town for the scavenger hunt? They thought it would be, like, at his house or at least around the school or something. Of course, they never told Berdly how much they hate walking, so they can’t fault him for it.

Whatever. It’s a mild inconvenience. They can walk a little for his sake. Second of all, why would he sign it B? Why not Berdly? Or, like, not sign it with his name at all? Absolutely no logic went into the creative choice to sign it with only the first letter of his name, and Kris thinks that’s hilarious. Also, he spelled ‘congratulations’ wrong.

Third of all, what kind of ‘treat from their childhood’ could Berdly possibly get them? Or even know about? And where?

Well, actually, they’ve already figured that third one out. QC’s. With the eggshells. They nod resolutely, planning on making their way there.

“What’s it say?” Noelle makes a lackluster attempt to read the paper upside down at her vantage point in front of them. It doesn’t work out.

“I have to go to QC’s.”

“…Interesting! Well, um, good luck, Kris!”

“Thanks.” They stuff the paper in their pocket and make a break for it. 

Today’s a beautiful day- fitting for the occasion- and they enjoy the walk way more than they had originally expected to. They don’t know what the hell they’re expecting from this but if they had to guess it’s probably going to end in some big confession of feelings for them. The thought is, impossibly, a little nerve wracking. If anything, they hope the treats Berdly has sprinkled around for them are enough to calm them down to reasonable levels before they actually have to face him. Pushing open the door, they scan the layout of the diner for any clues as to what they need to do. Maybe their table from the other day?

They turn, and yup, sure enough- on the window booth is another slip of paper. And a yellow milkshake?

They decide to read the paper before drinking the milkshake because the dull yellow brown of it is incredibly off putting. Also, they kind of just want to read Berdly’s note. In that same loopy cursive:

Here you are, Kris! A butterscotch-cinnamon milkshake I had ready made for you! This is actually the end of the scavenger hunt, I just wanted to give this to you but didn’t want it to melt while I waited at (this next small bit is scribbled out entirely) the next place because it’s hotter outside. The next place is the end. Translate this hexadecimal code, and it’ll tell you where to go! 746865206c616b65203b29

P.S., don’t worry about paying for the milkshake! I had it covered!

-B

Again with that stupid ass signature. Not only that, but he put the PS note before it! PS literally means Post Script, it can’t be IN the actual script. In other news, though, hell yeah. Cinnamon butterscotch milkshake? They take back everything terrible they’ve ever said about Berdly, which really isn’t much. Shit talking isn’t exactly a thing they do. Nevertheless, they grab the milkshake like a dying man and sip it carefully.

What do you know, it tastes like a cinnamon butterscotch pie. But ice creamy. And melted. How did Berdly have this custom made?

…Well, actually, now that they think about it, that doesn’t sound too hard. They just never asked for it custom made themself because the idea didn’t come to them. And they’re not really a milkshake kinda person, funnily enough. This is good though. It does taste like home. Just… more summer-like.

Before they can translate the hexadecimal (nice of Berdly to tell them what kind of code it is), they sit down and finish their milkshake. They’re well aware it would probably only distract them for the rest of their journey. And they DO need to return the glass at some point.

One final climactic sip later, they whip their phone out and look up ‘hexadecimal translator’ on Google. Then they have to manually input all the numbers and letters Berdly manually wrote down. Berdly’s great and all, but there could’ve really been a better way for him to go about this. Or, actually, who are they kidding? Berdly has never thought ahead a day in his life.

The final code translates to: The lake ;)

Despite themself, they grin at the winky face. God, who let this happen? Because it certainly wasn’t them.

They slide the empty glass across the table and stuff the next paper in their pocket. That was the lamest scavenger hunt they’ve ever been on for the best prize they’ve ever gotten. Which, now that they think about it, is kind of in perfect Berdly fashion. As they pull open the door, however, it hits them that they actually have to face him now. Like, in a romantic context. Their cheeks burn SOLELY out of fear and not much else as they stand stock still outside the entrance like an idiot.

…Ah, who are they kidding? They’re so excited to see his face it’s physically hurting them. Hey, for the record, that milkshake was REALLY good. It kind of single-handedly pumped more love in their heart for Berdly than anything else he’s done thus far. Wasn’t there some kind of idiom about food being the way to someone’s heart or something? It’s true. That’s Kris.

They sigh. Steel themself up. They may be a coward, but they’re not an asshole. They wouldn’t drink Berdly’s milkshake then not even bother to meet him for the last part of the scavenger hunt.

The entire walk to the lake, they’re wringing their hands together like some kind of anxious schoolgirl. This is not what they represent, they lament to themself, but alas. Situations such as these are vulnerable, important ones no matter how they work out. It would be a little weird if they weren’t nervous. They sort of breathe in their nervousness, there. Accept it wholeheartedly as they come up on the clearing of trees leading to the lookout. Before they turn the next corner and face Berdly, they try to manually compose themself. It doesn’t work.

Sure enough, he’s there. Sitting on the ledge. From their vantage point, they catch wind of him kicking his feet a little bit. …Is that a stool next to him?

The noise of their footsteps eventually alerts him of their presence, because he turns around with wide eyes as they get closer. “Kris!”

“Hi.”

He scrambles up. He’s holding something, but he rushes to shove it behind his back as he turns to face them. To their disappointment, they can’t catch a glimpse of what it is. “Kris! There you are!”

“Thanks for the milkshake,” they say, because it’s the blatantly correct thing to say first.

“Yes, well.” Berdly sheepishly shifts back and forth on his feet, unable to make eye contact with them. “I hope you enjoyed it.”

“I did.”

He smiles. “Good! Good. It wasn’t too impressive, though. A mere bonus to the true gift- which you are about to bear witness to.”

“Oh?” They watch as he climbs on the stool (wings still behind his back!), which is quite obviously not made for his talons because they’re kind of slipping off. As soon as he rights himself, he takes a deep breath.

“Kris?”

They feel the strange urge to kick the stool out from under him. Obviously they don’t, because that would be horrible. “Yeah?”

He presents his gift from behind his back. “Please accept this token… of my affections.”

Oh. My god.

It’s the fucking Berdly statue. 

Kris’s jaw instinctually drops. Every single cell in their body is caught off guard given the fact they assumed they would never see it again after the Dark World. It’s made from clay and covered head to toe in faux gold paint. Obviously, Sweet Cap’n Cakes did a better job with the artistic aspects of the original, but this Berdly statue still vaguely resembles the real thing. The muscles, the sports mode crocs-

Kris is so stunned they forget to respond, take it from him, or give any indication that they care at all besides their open mouth. That’s not even the worst part- instead of Queen hanging off his arm, KRIS IS THERE NOW. BOTCHED UGLY KRIS. Clinging onto the Berdly statue’s bicep like it’s a lifeline.

So much indescribable joy begins rising in them at this moment. They cannot with words describe how fucking funny this is.

“Berdly,” they say.

He looks nervous. “Y-Yes?”

Injecting as much sincerity as they possibly can into their voice- “I love it.”

They take it from him carefully, like a gift meant to be treasured, BECAUSE IT IS. They’re going to put this stupid thing on their nightstand and stare at it every night falling asleep. Too much? Too much. Most nights.

Turning it around in their hands, they almost miss the grin arising on Berdly’s face at their response. “Haha! I KNEW you’d love it!” He steps down from his stool with a smug look on his face, prompting Kris to take a step back and give him room. “If my memory serves correctly, I recall you admiring it at my suggestion in the Dark World.”

This isn’t actually an entirely false accusation. Kris was… enamored, alright. They literally could not stop staring at it. “More or less,” they say.

Berdly sucks in a breath, fists clenching at his sides. “Also!” He steps around the stool and picks up- a pie tin? Kris’s jaw slacks again. “Kris! Behold, ANOTHER token of my affections!”

He holds out the pie. It’s filled with a dark, chocolate looking substance. Presumably mousse. Kris gasps despite the lack of any kind of shocked emotion on their face.

“Wow.” They take it from him, careful to balance the Berdly statue in their other hand. “Is… is that a Hershey kiss stuffed in the middle?”

“Sure is! I know how much you like chocolate!”

“How? You also knew about the cinnamon butterscotch milkshake.”

Berdly chuckles, breaking eye contact again. “Well, um, Kris. I have a very good memory, you see. I had asked you once, I think in the third grade, what kind of pie it was that you kept bringing to school because I wanted a piece.” He crosses his arms. “Unfortunately, you hoarded it. But! You did tell me what kind it was! And then, eating lunch with you today, I was reminded of the very fact! A perfectly concocted plan to win your heart, isn’t it? Also, everyone knows how much you like chocolate.”

Yeah, that makes sense. Kris has brought chocolate bars to class and to lunch many a time. Besides, Berdly is in cahoots with Noelle. If anything, SHE could’ve told him. “How did you get the pie?”

“Noelle helped me make it!”

Ah. So that explains why it’s not a disaster… despite it being off color. “Well, thank you, Berdly. I kind of want to eat this right now.”

This suggestion appears to be considered for a second by Berdly. “Um. Why not?” He digs a plastic fork out of his pocket triumphantly. “Ta-da!”

“…You brought a fork?”

“Kris…” he gently drags them to the ledge by their wrist and gestures for them to sit. They do, but not before carefully setting down their gifts. “One must always be prepared. In situations such as these.” He sits down next to them, swinging his legs over the water.

Might as well get on with it, then. “What kind of situation is this?” They ask, opening up the pie tin. Berdly makes a strangled noise next to them.

“Well, I’d, I- I thought it would be obvious by now.”

“Thought what would be obvious?” Even now, they still derive enjoyment from watching him squirm. To be fair, they’re not trying to pretend that they’re not enjoying it anymore. They gesture for him to hand over the fork, which he does, although not without a nervous laugh. 

“Kris, you’re so very forward, it- tends to catch most people off guard, y’know?” He sighs deeply before straightening out. “I, however, am not most people.”

“Yeah?” They scoot closer to him. Take a bite of the pie. It is, miraculously, good. They think they’re going to remember this moment for the rest of their life. Mostly because of the delicious pie.

He nods. “Yes. And, uh, Kris… the situation at hand, is…” he wrings his fingers together, stiff as a board. “It’s a c-confession of my, affections… for you.”

The breeze slows down appropriately at his words.

Kris is pretty sure he already said something like that when he gave them the gifts. Still… it’s nice to hear it without distraction. They smile into their pie, cheeks blazing, completely and utterly done with trying to hide it.

“And I was wondering,” he continues shakily, “if you, feel any similar affections, for me.”

“What kind of affections?” Kris swallows some pie. Turns to a very red Berdly, who is pointedly staring at them back. Somehow, they’re more interested in him than the pie by now. “Platonic ones?”

“You-“ Berdly sputters. “You’re doing this on purpose!”

Their grin only gets wider. “No I’m not. I just want to confirm.”

“You know exactly what kinds of affections I’m talking about!”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes y-“

Kris kisses him.

On the cheek. To start. He’s actually softer than they were expecting him to be. Berdly sucks in a sharp little breath.

“Ha,” they say, eating another bite of pie. “You have a crush on me.”

There’s only silence beside them as they make sharp eye contact with the pie, which is a complete mess by now. They’re a fast eater. Okay, who are they kidding, they’re FREAKING OUT. They’ve never kissed anyone in their entire life besides their mom before. Oh, god, that was so- nice? Or something??? They kind of want to do it again, just to make sure.

“Berdly?” They say to the pie. “Still alive?”

“Affirmative,” comes Berdly’s strangled voice. “I-I take it, uh, this means…” he makes some kind of cute bird noise mid sentence. “You feel the same way?”

They’re glad he didn’t make them say it. “Yeah. I do.”

“Wonderful. Could you, um, look away from the pie for a moment?”

“Fiiine,” they say, turning as lazily as they can. Unfortunately, the wide smile still sitting on their face breaks the illusion a bit.

Berdly’s feathers are all poofy. The sight is too much for Kris’s already weak and probably diseased heart to handle. Besides that he looks like he just won the lottery or something.

“What’s going on with your feathers?” They say.

Berdly squawks. “Uhh, uhh, these?” He picks at one on his other wing. “Don’t worry about them, they have a sort of- a mind of their own. It’s irrelevant. In other news, though, you said you feel the same?”

“Mhm.”

“You have a crush on me too?” He grins, somehow still managing to make it smug. Dammit. They knew that line would be turned around on them. “You feel deep, passionate, blazing love for me in equal amounts?”

“Woah nelly,” they say, “back up. But also, yes.” Maybe burning love isn’t the term they would use to describe how they feel about Berdly, but who cares?

Berdly cackles in triumph. “Yes! Yes! Success!”

“It sure was.”

“This’ll go down in the history books!”

“I doubt it, but that’s a nice thought.”

“Kris!” He grabs their face, which catches them horribly off guard. “We’re dating now, I’ve decided!”

“I’ve- decided the same thing!”

“We’re going to kick so much ass!”

Kris’s eyes widen an imperceptible inch. They don’t think they’ve ever heard Berdly curse before. “Uh… yeah.”

“In Super Smashing Fighters!”

“Definitely.” His enthusiasm is surprisingly infectious. Kris is so pumped up right now. The unfortunate side effect is that they want to kiss him again. “Can I kiss you again?”

Crap, they weren’t gonna say that out loud, but whatever. Berdly looks like a freight train just hit him at three hundred miles per hour. “Yeah.”

“Awesome.” They slide even closer to him, grab his cheeks, and kiss him directly on the beak. 

It kind of feels like kissing the tip of a traffic cone… which they would know nothing about. Despite the weird sensation, though, everything else is pretty damn cool. Namely the amount of endorphins washing them away mentally.

When they pull back, Berdly doesn’t look like he’s faring too well either, which makes them feel better about themself. They’re both chronically inexperienced, they can be so together. Kris doesn’t feel like letting go of his frankly very soft feathers.

Berdly, in his daze, giggles. “Aha! Kris! You fell for my indirect trap!”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes!” He crosses his arms, which there’s barely any room for considering how close they are. “Now you CAN’T steal all of my stuff in Minecrap anymore because there are STAKES to consider!”

“What are those stakes?”

“I’m breaking up with you. Next time you commit virtual arson.”

“Okay.” They peck him on the beak again, which, to their surprise, directly correlates to the amount the feathers are poofing! It’s actually pretty cool. “Then if you ever say anything rude to me ever again, I’m breaking up with you.”

Berdly is evidently still recovering from the kisses. “Wh- uhhh, uhh, that’s not fair!”

“Getting dangerously close to rude territory there.”

“Okay! I’m sorry!” He holds up his wings. “For you, Kris, I’ll be silent! Is this what you want? For me to be silent for the rest of my days?”

“No, I would rather you be loud and nice.”

Berdly blinks at them. “…I’m considering it. But only to you.”

“Why not everyone else?”

“That’s too much effort to expend on the general population! Only you, because you’re the only worthy Smash rival out there!”

Kris finally lets go of his cheeks, albeit reluctantly. Despite this, however, Berdly stays in place like he’s still being grabbed. 

“Alright, it can be a process, then.”

“It doesn’t NEED to be a process,” he says with a smug cadence. “You’ll soon find, dating me, that I’m already relatively perfect.”

“Whatever you say, Berdly. Also, thanks for the pie, it’s pretty good.”

“Why, you’re very welcome, Kris!”

They stew in silence for a few seconds. In that time, Kris sees fit to continue their controlled assault on the pie. They’re going to feel so sick later.

“Wow. Now we have to break the news to Susie and Noelle that we’re dating.”

Kris nods. Then, through some pie: “I’m sure they’ll be fine with it.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about!” Berdly squawks. “What about lunch?! I want to sit with you now!”

Kris blinks at him, flustered. He startles. 

“I mean, uh, Noelle too, of course, but isn’t it more appropriate that-“

“Why don’t we all just sit together?”

Berdly pauses mid sentence. “Why… were we not doing that before?”

A lot of reasons, probably. Routine. “Good question. Wanna be my date for Sadie Hawkman’s tomorrow?”

Berdly gasps in delight. “I thought you said you weren’t going!”

“That was before you begged me to go.”

“I did not beg- I just-“

“I’m kidding.” They place their hand on his wing in between them. “That was before we started dating, dingus.”

He looks at their touching ‘hands’, face twitching with presumed glee. “Oh. Yes. Of course. I’m- not a dingus.”

“You are.”

“No I’m not.”

“You are.”

“No I’m-“

Kris smooches him again. It’s quick, but it’s fortunately enough to derail his train of thought.

Chapter Text

“My esteemed sovereign, royalty, ruler, monarch, just ‘royal’ without the ty, my liege (that’s a good one), lairde, deity (that one has more religious connotations, so that’s kind of weird), prin, caln, quing. Relationship titles include partner, datefriend, datemate, birlfriend, beloved, imzadi from Star Trek-“

“Maybe you should be discussing this with Kris,” Noelle suggests, looking a bit out of her depth. Berdly scoffs, waving around his blue solo cup. Even this dance’s solo cups are off brand.

“The reason I’m asking for your advice in the first place is to SURPRISE them,” he says. “When they get here.”

Noelle chuckles lightly. “Ummm… I like ‘my liege’ the most. And datemate is cute? But again, that’s just me. You should probably take it up with Kris.”

“Of course I will! When I surprise them with my terms of endearment. They can tell me if they have a problem with any of it.” With this concluding statement, Berdly makes a long grasp for the pretzel bowl. 

Most other patrons of the dance are… well, dancing. That or they’re standing around the corners in their friend groups. Kris and Susie are, unfortunately, quite late at present. So Berdly’s been resigned to chatting with Noelle while they wait for their respective dance partners to arrive. He kind of feels like a loser. Of course, he isn’t one, but. Hanging out next to the snack table with his platonic girl buddy isn’t doing his image many favors. At the very least, the music is surprisingly not terrible! It’s mostly been groovy tracks thus far. The downside to this is that Berdly has been lamenting on not getting to jam out to any of them with Kris, but oh well. They can always jam out on their own time.

Noelle sighs next to him, crossing her arms self consciously. “What if Susie doesn’t show up and I just… came here for nothing?”

“Cheer up, Noelle!” He takes a sip of fruit punch while he deliberates on how to comfort her. “Listen. If Susie doesn’t come, Kris probably won’t come either. And in that case we’ll both be lonely. And saying that scenario does occur- which it definitely won’t-“ he places a wing on her shoulder. “I’d be happy to dance with you.”

She looks at him fondly (he hopes), so cheers to him not screwing up the pep talk completely. “Ah, I’d be happy to dance with you too, Berdly.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” He gestures to himself. And truly, he means it. He’d been saving his custom made Tetris suit for this very occasion.

“I hope Kris gets here soon. They’d probably love to dance with you.”

The thought makes his heart palpitate. Metaphorically. He laughs, kind of embarrassed. “Yes, um, and I with them. Have they responded to your text yet?”

Noelle pulls out her phone. She gasps softly. Berdly’s hopes skyrocket, and- “Nope, but Susie has! She says she’ll be here in a minute!”

“Oh.” Berdly first deflates, then inflates. He has to be happy for his friend on second thought. “At least Susie’s coming! Are you going to ask her to dance?”

Noelle sucks in a deep breath, still transfixed by the light of her phone. It’s kind of harsh in the dim gymnasium. “Uhh. I would like to, but… if we’re being realistic.” She chuckles. “Probably not.”

“Well then I, as your literal and metaphorical wingman, will have to encourage you relentlessly.”

“OKAY, Berdly. I’ll try.” She pushes his shoulder lightly, smile on her face. “If I chicken out you can ask her for me.”

He gasps in delight. “I would love nothing more!”

“I, uh, didn’t actually mean that. Please don’t.”

“Noelle!” Susie appears in front of them. Noelle yelps.

“Susie! Hi!” She quickly pockets her phone, slipping all the while. “How, how are you?”

“Hey, yeah, I’m good. Sorry I’m late. Couldn’t find anything to wear.” She rubs the back of her head sheepishly- which, Berdly notices, is now in a rough ponytail. At this mention of her wardrobe, his gaze travels to her slacks and white button down. “Man, this place is darker than I thought it’d be. I can’t see shit.”

“Me neither, b-but I think that’s kind of the point.”

Susie leans up against the wall with them. “Yeah?”

“It’s all in support of the vibes,” Berdly supplies helpfully. Noelle nods along.

Susie’s eyes narrow in a vaguely disapproving glare. “Well, the ‘vibes’ of this place are sweaty. And loud.”

“Well, that’s highschool,” Noelle mutters weakly. A quick glance at her glowing nose confirms that she’s still hung up on Susie’s formal wear. “Uhh. Would you want, to, uh.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, y’know, I was just thinking we could…”

Berdly promptly makes his leave at this departure from the topic. Noelle should have her own moment to shine with Susie under the dark lights, free of his entirely mood killing presence. Not that he kills moods. It’s just- Noelle and Susie deserve some alone time, is what he means. He wanders vaguely to the other end of the snack bar and realizes he has nothing to do now. Not until Kris gets here.

Yup. He can’t do anything but watch until Kris gets here. He leans against the wall, crosses his arms, and tries to focus blankly on the few happy couples in front of him (that aren’t touching each other for fear of the Hawkteachers). He chuckles to himself, imagining a snarky Kris comment about the situation.

Ah, Kris. Ever so elusive.

…Are they even going to show up?

Berdly would like to believe they are, but now that the thought has made its rounds in his head, he isn’t so sure. Kris doesn’t seem flakey, but… they DID say they originally didn’t want to go. What if they just figure he’s not worth the trouble?

What if they forgot?

He sucks in a sharp breath. No, they wouldn’t forget about him. Or, well, telling him that they’d be here. Even if Kris is notoriously… forgetful. Falling asleep in class. Faltering in the middle of conversations. Unable to remember most of the topics of study they go over, if their grades are any indication. They wouldn’t agree to start dating him and completely flush it out of their mind the next day, would they?

Ah, they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t, he repeats to himself. Though, the thought that they would… 

Ugh, he needs air. Space. Something out of the noise. His eyes lock directly onto the door next to him. It leads outside, and he’s pretty sure he’s not allowed to use it, but… all the teachers ARE preoccupied. He’s just going to be a second. Until Kris gets here.

He pushes it open slowly and carefully. It’s dark and warm outside as well, so no lighting change alerts anyone of his escape. It clicks shut behind him.

He breathes in the cooler night air. Looks around. Kris. On the steps. He looks back- KRIS?!

“KRIS?!”

They flinch violently, swiveling around.

“Kris? Whaaa-“ his train of thought is promptly interrupted as he realizes they’re wearing a dress.

Wow. Ay carumba. Lots of things happen in his brain, but the most prominent thought is forearms. Wait, no, the most prominent thought is seriously, what are they doing out here? 

Kris is looking at him blankly with their mouth slightly hanging open. He clears his throat. Tries again, flustered. “Why are you out, uh, out here?”

The silence persists, broken only by a few stray crickets. Kris evidently doesn’t feel like explaining their escapade because they’re still just staring at him blankly.

Alright. Well. Might as well get comfortable.

He steps toward them slowly and sits down next to them on the cold concrete. It makes him shiver subtly. “You were here the whole time? Hiding in plain sight? Away from me?!?”

“Uh,” they finally make a noise. Berdly could cry from happiness. “Yeah. I was here. Sorry.”

“Sorry just isn’t going to cut it, Kris!” He crosses his arms defiantly. “I’m owed an explanation!”

They break eye contact with him and look back down at their knees. Which are slightly uncovered, by the way. Berdly doesn’t think he’s ever seen Kris’s knees. “I… opened the door at one point. And it kind of scared me. So I figured I’d wait out here until I was less scared.”

“…What scared you?” Berdly tries to scoot closer to them. It doesn’t work TOO well given the texture of the concrete, but now at least their arms are touching.

“The gym. It was loud. And intense.”

Speaking of loud intensity, the noise from inside the gym is still audible, just incredibly muffled under the door. Which… now that he thinks about it, was very nerve wracking for the first few seconds he was in there, so he definitely doesn’t blame Kris on that front. “But why did you ignore Noelle’s text?”

Kris winces. “Noelle texted me?”

“Yes!”

“I left my phone at home because this dress doesn’t have pockets,” they murmur, seeming kind of embarrassed. “I’ll apologize next time I see her.”

Ah. Well. That’s fair enough. Berdly sighs, lets all of the stress dispel from his body. They didn’t forget. They were just gathering themself for much too long. And now that any negative feelings towards the situation are mostly gone on his part, he can begin the process of making intense eye contact with their aforementioned dress. It’s solid color and sleeveless, reaching their knees. They’re, uhm, cómo se dice.. they look beautiful? Gorgeous? Ethereal? All of the other words he can think of that describe a person whose appearance captivates you thoroughly. And makes your heart feel like it’s about to beat out of its chest.

He makes an embarrassing noise. “Um. That’s okay. I’m sure she’ll forgive you. I know I have.” At their chuckle, he lets himself grin. 

“Thank you. Sorry I didn’t come in sooner. I was going to, I just… needed air.”

“Funnily enough, I needed air too. Though that’s mostly because…” ah. How to put it delicately that their absence was what sent him into a panic? “…of you.”

They turn towards him again, looking genuinely concerned. “Me?”

“Well, I just,” he wrings his fingers together. “I just thought that maybe you forgot, and… I needed to leave for a moment.”

“Oh.” Their voice is small. He can’t see them because- well, he’s the one preoccupied with his knees now.

“But, don’t worry!” He tries what he hopes is a reassuring smile, looking back up at them. “I’m fine now. I completely understand your plight. It is… rather intense in there.”

He can’t parse the expression on their face, but it does seem distinctly sorrowful. “I’m sorry. I’m not a very good, uh…” they squint. “Partner? So far?”

“…Datemate?”

At the suggestion, the smile slowly returns to their face. “Datemate?”

“Thought of it myself,” he lies. He looked it up.

“No you didn’t.”

“No I didn’t.”

They chuckle, reminding Berdly that he is, in fact, kind of infatuated with them. He nearly melts at the sound.

“Still,” they say. “I’m sorry about worrying you. I should’ve, like, at least went in and found you and told you I was overwhelmed.”

He waves them off with flamboyance. “Nonsense! You weren’t thinking clearly! Not a crime punishable by any means!”

“It’s a little punishable.”

“I don’t think so.” He smiles warmly at them, hoping it evaporates some of their worries. The music blaring under the door makes itself known to him again, which reminds him that they are, in fact, still at a dance. And catching sight of their hands, he realizes he really kind of wants them in his. Well. In his wings. He clears his throat. Better to pop the question after he tells them how stunning they look tonight.

“So,” they say.

“So,” he says. “Um.. about your dress.”

He watches them blush with startling clarity. “Oh, yeah, uh. I saw you were looking at it before.”

Wow! How embarrassing. Of course, though, he keeps his cool impressively by laughing at a completely normal volume. “Ha! Ha! That I was!”

“You like it?”

The simple question manages to derail him mentally completely. “Of, of course I do. It’s, uh…” he blinks at their patient eyes. “It’s beautiful. Or, very, uh, pretty.”

A smile envelops their entire face, which has progressively gotten darker the more he’s talked. “Aha. Um. Beautiful? Just the dress?”

He sees what they’re doing. It’s the same thing they were doing yesterday! They’re trying to pry more descriptive terms about his feelings from him in an attempt to back him into an emotionally ridden corner! Not today, Kris. He gives them a smug grin, just to let them know he’s not afraid. Moves closer. “No, not just the dress, actually.”

They blink, the color not dispelling. “Uh. Yeah?”

“Kris, dare I say, you’re even more beautiful than the dress. Stunning, even. I’m nearly sent into a coma every time I look at you. You’re like a deity, ethereal, an otherworldly being, beauty unparalleled-“

“Okay,” they say, although it sounds more like a noise than an actual word. Ha! Bet they weren’t expecting that! Granted, he does feel like he’s about to catch fire, but at least he was prepared! They, evidently, were not, if the fact that they appear to have blown a fuse is any indication. They then chuckle weakly at his compliments, but don’t say another word.

His cheeks hurt. “Kris? Still alive?” 

“You-“ they push him harshly, still grinning. “Shut up. God.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just shut up.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to log onto our Minecrap server when I get home and I’m going to blow up your chicken farm.”

Oh, god. A real threat. Okay, it was fun while it lasted, but now he has to back down. “Okay! No need to go there! I’m sorry!”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” they say, cheeks returning slowly to their old color. “I can ransack your chests any time I want. I won’t give anything back.”

“Right, right! Unfortunately,” he pushes their hand away, “I’m able to ransack your chests back.”

“Then I guess it’s just a matter of whoever logs on first.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

After a moment, they begin giggling into each other’s space. Kris’s head lands on his shoulder. Which he wasn’t expecting! But. It’s kind of like a blur for him. This moment is just one all encompassing feeling of happiness, and by now the simple action only dumps another bucket into the ocean of joy in his heart. He didn’t know that hanging out with another person could feel this good. He grabs their shoulders back anyway in his total blindness.

After they’re done giggling and are just kind of on each other, he says, “Kris?”

“Yeah?” Their voice is muffled into his shoulder. He pushes them back slightly to face them. Here it is. The final whammy.

“Could I have the immeasurable pleasure,” he holds a wing out for them to take, “of this dance?”

They grab it almost immediately, tiny smile still sitting on their face. “Obviously.”

Pulling them up dutifully, he grabs their other hand and drags them onto the wet grass. God, he hopes neither of them slip. That would really ruin the mood. The music from the under the door is a swinging sort of old pop rhythm that the noise of the crickets almost overpowers. He doesn’t know how to dance to old swing pop.

“How are we dancing?” Kris beats him to it.

“I was hoping, uh, you’d know?”

They sigh with exaggeration, although the smile doesn’t drop from their face. “Man, how did I get stuck with such a lame datemate?”

Blasphemous! Berdly scoffs, leaning over their joined hands. “LAME?!”

“The lamest.”

“Fine! If you so insist that I lead you in your BLINDNESS,” he straightens out, placing a wing on their waist. “This is a ballroom pose! To start!”

“This isn’t really a ballroom song-“

Berdly opens his mouth to object-

“-but sure. What do I do?”

“Just- ugh- just.. um…” he realizes he has a wing on their waist. “Uhhh. You put your arm on my shoulder.”

“Okay.” They do so accordingly, completely unphased. How dare they. Going back into business mode for this occasion. Probably another scheme to make fun of him, he fumes, trying his damndest to pay attention to anything other than the contact. “What do our other arms do?”

“Oh, we just, uh,” he quiets. “Hold hands.”

“We’re already doing that,” they say, smile returning in all of its muted glory. “Now what?”

“Well, I didn’t, umm.” Damn it, train of thought, stop derailing! Get back on the tracks! Go!

“You didn’t think ahead this far?”

“No!”

They nod, looking unimpressed. “You’ve never thought ahead a day in your life.”

“No!”

“Then how about we just…” at this, a switch appears to flick in their mind, because they take control of the entire operation. And by that, Berdly means they start leading the two back and forth in a playful swinging motion to go with the beat of the music. It’s nothing complicated, really, and they’re only kind of stepping back and forth, but it’s their own thing. And it makes his heart swim happily in his chest as he nods along.

Berdly realizes something horrible. Dancing with someone else is, impossibly, one of the best things that’s ever happened to him. It’s like dancing on your own but with the love of your life clinging onto your shoulder and dragging you around with them. Two of the greatest sensations in the world, combined!

Wait, love of his life? Would he go so far as to say Kris is- actually, scratch that. After tonight he’s willing to believe anything hypothetically wonderful about them. If you told him right now that Kris was actually the Angel incarnate, he’d believe you.

He tries to concentrate more heavily on his footwork, but Kris interrupts the whole operation. “Why are you looking down?”

“Because- my talons are way bigger than your feet, I don’t want to step on you.”

“I think because your talons are so big your weight is spread across them more. So if you step on me I’ll barely notice.”

He looks up. “Oh. Really?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it.”

He gulps. “Okay.” Unfortunately, now that he’s not worried about where his talons are going, he’s more worried about Kris. Or the look in Kris’s eyes. Or the smile on their lips. Or their hair bouncing along to their swing rhythm. God, he’s so- uh- nothing is happening. It’s just Kris invading his entire brain with their stupid smile and the stupid laughs they’re laughing and look at that now he’s laughing too.

Now they’re laughing at each other and dancing. It’s objectively great, probably the greatest moment of his life thus far before he can get to unboxing his hypothetical future PS5, but subjectively it sucks. Because it’s kind of terrifying.

“Kris, I must say, you’re the best dance partner I’ve known in a long time,” he says after a moment.

They shrug. “I keep in practice. Who else have you danced with?”

“You practice dancing?”

“No, dweeb, I’m just winging it right now.” They squeeze his wing as they say that. What a dork. He’s so much cooler than they are, actually. “But seriously, who have your other dance partners been?”

Berdly scoffs, looking intensely to the right. “Y’know. Lots of people.”

“Mhm.”

He faces them. “It’s true! Also, I’m not a dweeb.”

“You are.”

“No I’m not.”

“Do you want a repeat of yesterday?” They grin widely at him. “I’ve figured out how to get you to agree to anything I say. Don’t test me.”

“Wait, what?!” Berdly squawks, looking down quickly to get a grip on the pattern they’ve fallen into. “What are you talking about?”

“You stop arguing with me the minute I kiss you.”

Berdly makes a strangled noise. Almost trips. “That doesn’t mean- that doesn’t mean I AGREE with you afterwards.”

“No, but you stop arguing. It’s a subconscious thing.” They’re drawing their words out playfully now, like they have the upper hand or something. Blatantly not true.

“Blasphemy. You won’t ever convince me I’m more of a dweeb than you are, Kris.”

“You are.”

Okay, well. If they’re the one starting the whole thing! Berdly grins. “No I’m not.”

They lean closer. “You are.”

“No I’m-“

Right on cue, they peck his stupid bird beak with their stupid human lips.

Well, he was going to make a point about not being too flustered to continue the argument afterwards, but he’s kind of blanking out right now. It’s such a feather (pun not intended) light touch. Once again, he would readily describe Kris as ethereal by now.

“…not,” he finishes lamely.

“Loser.”

“Shut up!!! God!”

They laugh shamelessly. “Is this relationship just going to be a continuous cycle of us tormenting the other?”

Berdly deliberates on this for a moment. God, he hopes so. “That is what it has always been, Kris, and what it always will be.”

The song changes, prompting them to dance in silence for another few seconds. Kris’s brow is furrowed, though, which means they’re about to say something presumably harrowing. Berdly sucks in a deep breath in preparation.

“Kris?” He begins. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“Hey, Berdly, I never told you, did I?”

He gulps. “Tell me what, pray tell?”

They huff a small laugh. “Well. Uhh. Just want you to know, no reservations, that… I do watch all of your streams.”

Berdly’s jaw drops.

“I just watched them under anon because I didn’t want to inflate your ego any more than it was already inflated.”

“WHAT?!”

“Yeah.”

He’s so happy right now. He could cry. Berdly has laid awake at night, so many times, wondering if Kris had seen his streams, some parts of which he designed specifically for them to see. Truly, this was the real victory all along.

…Which reminds him!

“Kris, I’m so happy to hear you say that,” he says truthfully, bringing their hands in closer to him. “But! Speaking of streams! I have something to show you. If you’ll come back to my house after this.”

“A stream?”

“Uhhh, it’s more of a documentary.”

They smile. “A documentary on what?”

“That, my friend, my dear romantic partner and datemate,” he winks, “is for you to find out.”

Still grinning widely, Kris sighs. “Wow. I can’t believe I’m excited to watch a documentary of yours. Berdly, why didn’t you ever tell me how cool you are?”

Berdly guffaws, offended. “I did! Many times! You wouldn’t believe me!”

“Yeah, because you were a jerk.”

He will give them this. Recently, given the newfound information he has about the kindness of Kris and their friends, something tells him they didn’t exactly deserve the negative attention he gave them before the Dark World. He chuckles weakly. “Um. Yes. I am… sorry about that.”

They shrug with nonchalance. “Eh, I’ve already forgiven you. A lot of people are jerks sometimes. Besides, you could’ve been a lot worse.”

“Why, thank you kindly, Kris, for the pardon!”

“Yeah, whatever.” They stop dancing suddenly, despite the song inside still going on strong. Berdly stumbles to halt with them. “I think I’m tired of dancing.”

“Oh?” Without the distraction of movement, their hands become a lot more apparent in his. He sweats. Only slightly. “What, uh, do you want to do now?”

They heave a sigh. “Oh, I dunno.”

“Did you not think ahead?”

“Har har. No, I didn’t.”

Berdly smiles widely at them. Wow. He’s actually scored a- read- a datemate. And they’re a certified gamer, who likes talking to him, who wears beautiful dresses. And they’re going to burn each other’s houses to the ground when they next log onto their Minecrap server. What are the odds?

Kris, apparently, is thinking something similar. Because after a long moment of deliberation, they let go of his wings to give him a quick hug around the shoulders. He doesn’t really have time to process, but their arms are warm around him for a second at least.

When they pull back and take his wings in their hands again, he’s kind of despondent. “Thanks for.. uh… I don’t know. Being fun to hang out with. Actually giving me a chance to care about shit like this for once.”

He blinks at their sincerity, lighting up internally. “Um. You’re welcome. Thanks for giving me stuff to think about.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re stupid. And can’t do it without me.”

“If you call me anything pertaining to stupid again I’m breaking up with you. This is your final warning.”

“Berdly,” they say. “I think it’s time we admit we’re not actually breaking up with each other.”

He scoffs, crossing his arms. “Maybe YOU’RE not breaking up with ME.”

“Not over this bullshit.”

“Yeah, well, ‘this bullshit’ can make or break a relationship, Kris. Read up on it!”

Kris blinks widely at him, mouth hanging open slightly. His playful tone kind of falters at their expression.

“You just keep cursing more the more I hang out with you. Is this, like.. a secret Berdly thing?”

…Oh. He hadn’t even realized! Kris is tearing down his guard as they speak! Well, actually, he was just quoting them so it doesn’t really even count.

“Well, obviously I curse,” he stumbles out, looking everywhere but at them. To be called out for it is absurd. “Just… uh… I have an image to uphold in Hometown! I mean, what if a teacher heard me?!”

Kris lets go of his wings. He’s momentarily sad, but is distracted by them using the opportunity to hold their hands out. “No teachers here right now. Curse.”

“Pfft. I’m not at your beck and call, Kris.” Like he’ll curse on command. What are they, twelve years old?

“If you don’t do it I’m breaking up with you.”

“Fine! Fuck you!”

Kris’s entire face splits in a grin, which then quickly morphs into a slow cackle.

“It’s not that funny! It’s Webster’s plain English!” He squawks, face fiery. “ I’m breaking up with you if you keep laughing! This is bullying!”

Through their incessant giggling, Kris says, “only getting back at you.”

Berdly stomps away, back up the concrete stairs. He’s not actually that mad. Kris doesn’t know that, however! He can terrify them on a whim!

“Noooo,” Kris whines from behind him. “Come back!”

“I’m leaving!”

“Please?”

He tries the door. It’s locked. Then, peeking into the window and around the corner to make sure nobody’s around but Kris, he goes, “shit.”

Kris’s laughter only grows behind him. To his dismay, he starts laughing as well.