Week 6: Feliciano/Matthew

They had agreed on meeting just in front of the zoo's gate at eleven o'clock in the morning, but when Feliciano arrived, exactly fifteen minutes later, he couldn't spot Matthew anywhere. There was a small crowd in front of the entrance, mostly children with their parents or grandparents, but his friend should have been tall enough to be spotted over them.
Could he possibly be even more late than Feliciano?

He stopped, rubbing the back of his head, puzzled. Matthew was usually on time. He went on, glancing around in search of the blond guy.

The sun was shining bright that sunday, so maybe he was somewhere under a tree, taking advantage of the shadow while waiting for him.
Still, Feliciano couldn't spot the other anywhere.

“Oh! Feliciano, there you are!” Matthew said, waving to his friend in the hopes that the other would see him. He walked over to Feliciano feeling bad that he kept him waiting for so long. What was he, now, twenty minutes late? Twenty-five? “Sorry I’m late, I got lost.”

He had set out with plenty of time to spare, but apparently Matthew had woken up that day with a worse sense of direction than usual, since it took about fifteen minutes to even figure out where he was, let alone find the zoo. And when the time it took to find his way was added (as well as the five minutes he spent waiting for ducks to cross at one point), the trip ate up much more time than he expected.

“Were you waiting here the whole time?” Matthew asked before apologizing a second time. Now that he thought about it, he really needed to work on that…

(*is done with getting distracted by things orz* >>; )

He turned as he heard his friend calling him.

"Ah, there you are~" he smiled and walked towards Matthew to give him a small hug for greeting.
"I'm sorry you got lost, I was just late instead. So don't worry, I've haven't been here waiting for long." he replied, patting him lightly on the shoulder.

He stretched a bit and then pointed at the entrance.
"Should we go inside? The line for the tickets is quite long." he should have known that the place would be crowded on a sunday. Still, for the very same reason -being it a sunday- there was no point in waking up too early to go somewhere.

“So you were late too? That’s good,” Matthew said, relieved that he hadn’t left Feliciano waiting for too long. “I mean, not that you were late but that—“ he laughed at his inability to get his point across. “You know what I mean.”

He let his gaze follow where Feliciano was pointing, noticing the line right away. It was pretty long, and though the number of people waiting wasn’t ridiculous, it would probably be best if they got on the line as soon as possible.

“So,” Matthew said as they walked towards the ticket line, “How’ve you been?”

He smiled back at Matthew "Sì sì, don't worry." His standard fifteen minutes delay was a guarantee for others that they didn't need to worry, although not everyone was of the same opinion.

They stood in line, waiting patiently for the queue to move forward and to buy their tickets.

"I've been fine~ Not up to much, this week." he replied. Not that he minded having free time - or rather, more free time than usual; Feliciano was way too good at finding free time even when he was supposed to be working hard.
"What about you?"

“I’ve been busy this week, but it’s pretty much my own fault,” Matthew told him as the line slowly inched forward, “I sort of let things pile up, so it was a little crazy. But it should be fine now.”

That was a total lie, and Matthew got a far-away look just by thinking of the pile of paperwork and list of tasks he never got to do, mocking them with their existence. But putting aside his plans in favor of his job would be unfair to Feliciano, who had always been nothing but nice to him. And besides, he needed a break.

Matthew decided for himself right then and there that he’d avoid even thinking about it the entire time. He smiled at Feliciano, just as they moved up a little bit more.

Feliciano nodded "Well, it's always nice when you manage to get all your work done by the weekend so you can enjoy your free time!" he commented. Again, it was more something the others told and he was just repeating for Matthew's sake, since Feliciano knew how enjoy "free time" all the time.

The queue suddenly moved forward as a huge group comprehending an undetermined number of yelling children and a couple of desperate adults finally had they tickets as well.
Feliciano leant forward to the counter and picked up a leaflet with a big picture of the white bears of the zoo.

"Ah, look!" he pointed at the back of the flyer "They have a newborn, a bear puppy~ How cute!" he said with sparkling eyes.

He nodded in agreement with what Feliciano said about getting work done on time, laughing weakly as he tried not to think about how much more of it he’d have to do later on. Thankfully, the line suddenly moving forward proved to be a big enough distraction.

Matthew reached into his pocket to pay a ticket just as Feliciano grabbed a pamphlet and had begun to look through it. When he heard his friend mention polar bears, he grinned eagerly. They were, without a doubt, his favorite animals and if there was a baby one, he couldn’t wait to see it.

“A bear cub? Really?! Oh my god, that’s so—“ he was interrupted by an impatient cough from behind him. He turned around and was reminded that there was still a long line of people waiting. “Oh! I’m sorry…” Matthew said sheepishly, hastily buying both his and Feliciano’s tickets before hurrying away form the counter, a little embarrassed.

Feliciano was still looking through the pamphlet, oblivious that Matthew had paid for the tickets and that the people behind him were getting annoyed by his presence in front of the counter.

"Ah, but the bears' cage is on the other side so we'll have to wa-" he looked up to where he was expecting to see Matt, meeting the sceptic gaze of the person behind the counter instead.
He quickly glanced around, spotted Matthew and smiling trotted to his side, still not aware of the fact that the people behind him were still eyeing him without much sympathy.

"Oh, you bought the tickets~ How much do I owe you?"



((late reply is late, but yeah, busy times. :<))

It was impossible for him to hide his smile, watching as Feliciano realized that he had moved off of the line. Normally, he’d be uneasy by the disgruntled people who were still waiting on line, but for some reason or another, he didn’t give it much thought. Maybe easygoingness was contagious. Who knew?

`He waved away Feliciano’s offer. “You don’t need to owe me anything, it’s fine. It’ll be on me today,” he told his friend, smiling. Alright, maybe there was one good thing about his job, at least it paid well.

“Sorry, so what were you saying about the bears?”

(No prob, it's fine~)

Feliciano looked puzzled at his friend, then smiled.
"Really? Well, this is really kind, thank you~" he hoped he could return the kindness soon.

"Oh, right, the bears." he nodded "I was saying that their cage is on the other side of the zoo... no wait. Uh?" he had re-opened the pamphlet and was looking at map inside. "Did it just change place?" Feliciano shrugged. It happened that places just changed their location on the map, sometimes. Especially when you held it twisted.

"Anyway, it must be somewhere inside. So let's go~" he said, all happy and energetic.

Still smiling, Matthew raised an eyebrow when Feliciano mentioned the spots on the map changing places. He looked over the other man’s shoulder only to see him holding the map sideways. Now that he thought of it, it probably would have been beneficial for him to get his own map. By this time, though, they were already in the main part of the zoo, and he figured that they should probably be fine.

“Hm, Feli, without looking at the sign would you guess that that one over there is a llama or an alpaca? They look pretty much the same,” Matthew said, pointing at the first group of animals they encountered. He surprised himself when he realized that he had used a nickname, which was pretty rare for him unless he was told it was okay. He hoped Feliciano wouldn’t mind.

(….omg, I seriously thought I replied. Like...I had a reply written out and everything D:
Five days late, this is bad *retreats to the corner of failure*)

Feliciano was a bit surprised as he heard the nickname as well. Not that it bothered him at all, quite the opposite, instead: if someone called you by a nickname, it meant that they considered you a friend, or that they liked you anyway, no?
The Italian smiled at the blonde, only to remember that he had just asked him something. He looked back at the animals.

"Weeeell..." Alpaca and llamas. Sure. "Those here seem quite fluffy and plushie-like, don't they? I'm not sure of what it means, though. But. Aren't alpacas the ones you get the wool from?" The animals there looked like sheep with long legs, long neck, and bigger eyes. "So maybe if they're so hairy... they're alpacas?"

He took the other man’s smile to mean that he welcomed the nickname, and Matthew was glad. It wasn’t because ‘Feliciano’ was a little long and he was thankful to be able to say something shorter. Okay, maybe it was a little bit, but it was mostly due to how nicknames and the like had a way of making him feel closer to people.

Matthew stepped forward enough to read the sign. “You’re right, they’re alpacas,” he told his friend. He would have guessed llama, but he was no expert on South American mammals so he shrugged it off.

“Which way do you suppose we go now, eh?” he said, as there were plenty of paths that they could take.

"Yay~" Feliciano clapped his hands when Matthew confirmed that his guess was right. "Let's go on with this game, it's funny!"

Then, he looked around to see where they could go, but all the paths looked quite the same, and the map had already proved itself to be of no use.

"Weeeell... what about...." he covered his eyes with one hand and then turned round for a few seconds, until he felt a bit dizzy. Swaying a bit, he pointed to the path he found in front of himself when he re-opened his eyes.
"...going that way?"

Still swaying slightly, he headed in that direction.

At seeing the joy Feliciano displayed at being correct, Matthew agreed; they should continue the game, this was cute.

And he found, a couple moments later, that Feliciano’s method of choosing where to go was even more adorable. He probably wouldn’t tell Feli this, though; like (a long list of) other things, this was the sort of observation Matthew normally kept to himself.

He followed the slightly dizzy man, watching carefully in case he tipped over, and ready to catch him if he did. They eventually came across a cage of a group of small animals.

“So, do you think those are—actually I have no idea what those things could be,” Matthew said, looking at the creatures curiously.

Feliciano leant on the fence to look down at the animals - and to recover from the dizziness brought by his very intelligent method of choosing their path.

"Well..." he stared at the animals, trying to think hard but without any idea. "I don't know. But they look like they're edible, ve? Not that I would want to eat them, they're so cute~"
They looked a bit like wild boars, just not as ruffled and scary as boars were.

He lazily wandered to the sign to read the name of the species.
"Pecari tajacu" he read slowly. "Pecari~ it's such a cute name. It bounces on your tongue." He turned back to Matthew and reached his side. "You know, I just realized I forgot my camera at home."

“Edible?” Matthew chuckled softly. He didn’t normally think of animals in terms of whether or not he could eat them, but at the same time, he saw what Feliciano meant.

“Oh, so that’s what they are,” he said when Feliciano read off the name, “Pecari.” He grimaced slightly; it didn’t sound half as nice when he said it.

Matthew checked his own pocket to see whether he’d forgotten his own camera, and luckily he hadn’t. “I have mine, so how about we both use it and I can send you the pictures after?”

"Indeed we can~"
Feliciano beamed, taking Matt's arm. The blonde was always very kind with him, and he liked the soft way he had to approach things.

"Let's take pictures of all the strangest animals we find~ and of us, of course!"
He dragged Matthew along the path for a few meters, until he saw a line of big cages edging the path. Each of the cages was filled with branches and leaves, and they could spot some white shapes of animals flash around in the foliage.

"Look at those! Are they monkeys of some sort?!" Feliciano ran to the first cage, squeezing his nose through the net to look at them as close as possible.

Matthew smiled and allowed himself to be led around by Feliciano until they reached a set of cages along the path. He laughed quietly when the other man ran up to one of them, full of contagious energy as always. Or at least when his friend didn’t want to take a nap.

“Yeah, I think they’re monkeys,” Matthew said, joining Feliciano as he read the name off just to be sure. “It says that they’re ‘Black-faced Langurs’ and...” He skimmed the mini-paragraph about them before nodding. “Yup, they’re a kind of monkey.”

“Is there anything around here you want to take a picture of?” Matthew asked, offering over his camera.

The name didn't tell him much - a part from the fact that they had black faces, but he could see that by himself, couldn't he?

"I don't know... but aren't they pretty? They look so clever..." he replied, staring at one of them. The monkey sat on one of the lowest branches of the thin tree in the cage, and was staring at Feliciano with its head tilted on one side.
"And they have eyebrows, just like Arthur. Whiter, though." he commented. "And I don't know, Matt - he figured that he was allowed as well to call the other with a nickname - are there other cute animals here?"

The langur stared at him with a grumpy face.
"Smiiiile for the camera~" Feliciano said, while he was trying to put the camera's objective between the meshes of the net, so that they won't come in the picture.

The monkey wasn't really persuaded, and instead came closer to Feliciano, sniffing curiously the camera.
"This is a pretty portrait~" he said just before pressing the button, but the flash scared the animal, which jumped and run promptly back to its tree.

“Hm, eyebrows?” Matthew looked closely at the faces of one of the creatures and the resemblance was so easy to see that he began to laugh. “Oh my god, I see it, you’re right!”

The flash of the camera took more than just the monkey by surprise, and Matthew blinked for a few seconds, trying to rid himself of those dots that always appeared after looking at something bright. Why did that happen? He could’ve sworn that he set the camera so that it wouldn’t flash.

“Ooh, sorry Feliciano, that was my fault.” He quickly changed the setting on the camera to its ideal while Feliciano was still holding it. “There. It should be okay, now.”

He smiled then, and spotted the animal once again in the tree. “Sorry to you, too, Mr. Langur,” he said, though it wasn’t as if the animal could understand him.

Figuring that those monkeys had probably had enough of them for the day, Matthew looked at the other animals around them until his eyes fell on one group in particular. “Pandas!” Though it wasn’t exactly the polar bear he was hoping to see, Matthew had a soft spot for bears in general, too. Well, besides grizzlies, but that was a long story.

Feliciano looked sad at the pic he had taken of the langur. The poor animal had the most scared face he had ever seen a monkey have.

"Yeah, I'm sorry!" he apologized, but the langur was safe on his tree and with no intention of coming back for a second scary-lightning thing.

Anyway, Matthew's discovery made him forget the monkey very quickly.
"Pandas~"
Pandas were round. Pandas were fluffy. Pandas were in black and white. Pandas were stylish. He loved pandas~

"Go next to the cage and try to get one coming close with some grass or something, I'll take a pic of you!" he suggested, jumping from on foot to the other.

“Okay,” he said, looking around at the pandas. Most of them seemed happily lazy at the moment; it was going to be pretty tricky to convince one to come closer to them. Matthew noticed some bamboo plants off to the side and he shook one gently, just enough to maybe get one of the panda’s attention.

One of them to the left raised its head in curiosity, and Matthew looked hopeful. However, the panda must have decided that dancing plants weren’t out of the ordinary and placed its head down again.

“Aw, come on,” Matthew muttered to himself. He turned to Feliciano and shrugged. “I guess they d—augh!” Startled by a loud crunching noise, he quickly turned around to see a large panda munching away on a stick of bamboo.

“F-found one…”

(Gaah, this is late, I’m a lazy bum. OTL)

Feliciano was too busy in trying to focus the camera on Matthew and the panda behind him to warn his friend of the danger. Instead, he took a couple of pictures.

"Did it hurt you, Matt?!" he run to his side. "Man, in those pictures it really looks like it's eating your hand!" he promptly showed the picture to Matthew. With the panda half hidden behind the man, and Matt caught in the moment of turning with a wtf expression depicted on his face, the image looked something between hilarious and dramatic.

Feliciano looked worried at the panda, that was now chewing slowly and happily its bamboo. "I thought they were almost as huggable as koalas are."