Week 6: Feliciano/Matthew

Matthew took one look at the picture and cracked up. And for some unknown reason, noticing a sleepy panda out of the corner of his eye raise its head and lower it again in disinterest only made him laugh more.

“Oh my god, my face,” he said, his voice shaking slightly as he tried to stop his laughter in order to be able to speak. Well, one thing was certain; that picture was definitely a keeper. Matthew looked at Feli to see the other staring at the panda with a worried frown.

“Aw, I guess this little—er…big guy just scared me for a second, they look so easygoing and adorable.” He didn’t know about huggable, but he would bet that the sleepy one over there really wouldn’t care.

Feliciano let out a laugh of relief. For a moment, he had really thought that the panda bit Matthew's hand.

"Well, your face here is something worth seeing, definitely!" he commented, chuckling.
"You normally come up very quiet in pictures, don't you?"
Feliciano normally ended up with very big smiles in every photograph, especially the ones taken with girls. He did have his own collection of funny or weird poses, though, a rather wide one, actually.

"They probably are." Feliciano looked at the sleeping animal closer, and waved his hand towards it, but the panda didn't even bother to look up.

"Should we go on? I see more big cages in that direction, maybe we're getting closer to the bears."

“Yeah, I guess I do,” Matthew said, when he thought of the pictures he’d been in. But now that he thought of it, for every picture where he was clearly seen, there was a couple where he ended up hidden behind a potted plant, or had his face blocked by someone waving or something of that nature. But that probably happened to a lot of people…right?

“Closer? Really, you think? Let’s go on, then,” Matthew said, soon finding out that Feliciano was right, the zoo seemed to have some sort of bear pattern going on. The next two species of bear, being native to North America, were two he was most familiar with: grizzlies and black bears.

He looked at the first of these quickly and from afar before moving to look at their less dangerous cousins.

Feliciano followed Matthew, keeping even more distance than him from the grizzlies cage. He had heard a lot of stories about people being killed by those huge and wild bears, and he didn't have any wish to go too close to look if they were real. He was more accustomed to black bears instead, they were cuter.

"They look like brown bears, don't they? We have a few of them at my place. But people don't seem to be too happy with this, they're scared or bothered." Feliciano shrugged. "I wonder what they would do if we had grizzlies instead of brown bears."
He didn't feel necessary to add that the last time he was wandering around the Alps he had run the whole way back to the mountain hut as fast as he could after having heard what, in his opinion, could have been the cry of a bear. (it was a cow, in the end, but he never cared to discover.)

He stole another look to the grizzlies, one of them was moving around the cage lazily.

“Then they’d probably run into a problem,” Matthew said, finishing with nervous laughter. Those creatures were terrifying; he wouldn’t wish grizzlies on his worst enemy. That is, if he even had one.

“But these aren’t too bad, they’re not nearly as scary and are less known to attack,” Matthew told Feli, before gazing warily over at the grizzly cage again. Most of them had the same level of enthusiasm as that sleepy panda they had passed, so they didn’t look as menacing now.

“I wouldn’t be worried about the ones here, it must be bear nap time,” he remarked at the sight. He looked further on to see more bears; this zoo was pretty set on having a bear section, he figured. “Ah, are those the brown bears you were talking about?”

Feliciano nodded. Bear nap time.. it sounded such a sweet thing. Something that involved him taking a siesta and cuddling a teddy bear. Okay, a toy one, of course, not one of those huge animals sleeping there.

He followed Matthew's gaze to the brown bears cage. "Sì, they are~" he nodded enthusiastically. One of the animals yawned at his face - they could look less scary than the others, but they still had their own good number of teeth.

"I wonder why they sell so many teddybears... kids grow up thinking that the real ones are cute like that and then they get traumatized." he considered, staring at the brown beasts beyond the bars. He yawned too, as a spontaneous reflex and reaction to the animal's yawn. He stretched and turned cautiously the corner of the cage, to see what was going to be next.
He came back to Matthew almost jumping.

"Oh, oh! I think we made it! The polar bears!" he told him, clapping his hands. The yawning bear from before stared at him curiously.

“Hm, yeah, that sounds kind of cruel to little kids when you think of it like that, doesn’t it?” Matthew said, trying to hold back his own yawn, but he eventually gave in to the chain reaction.

He looked over to Feliciano, who was peering over to the next cage. Matthew didn’t know what it was, but he was slightly surprised when the other man practically bounded back with the good news. A few moments later, the Canadian was practically mirroring his enthusiasm.

“They’re next? Really?” he asked as he took the other man’s hand and ran over to see for himself. And there the polar bears were, kept in a space slightly different from the others in the sense that there was an area where they could swim, too, if they wanted.

In his excitement, Matthew had forgotten that he was still holding Feliciano’s hand, and when he calmed a bit, returning to his normal temperament, he let go with an embarrassed laugh.

Feliciano was a bit surprised at the burst of enthusiasm shown by Matthew, as he was dragged along to the cage. He looked at him a bit surprised as the other let go of him with a laugh, but then smiled as he held the blonde's hand again. There was nothing to be embarrassed about while holding hands, was there?

He went closer to the cage, pulling Matt with him. "It's crazy how they are the most dangerous predators on the surface, ve? They seems ready to have a red ribbon tied around their neck and be all pretty and cuddly." he commented. For some reason, he thought that white wasn't the fitting color for dangerous animals.

He looked carefully in the cage to see if he could spot their cub somewhere, but with no luck. Some of them wee laying next to each other, half sleeping just as the other bears were, and he wondered if maybe the little one was resting there with his mother.

Matthew had to admit that when he looked down to see that they were holding hands once again he was a bit confused, but almost immediately changed his tune, returning the other man’s smile. He figured that things were only as embarrassing as he made it out to be, and if Feli found nothing strange about it, it was completely fine.

“Hm, I see what you mean. Most of them don’t look all that menacing. But I guess when it comes to bears, you have to watch out for the cute ones, too,” Matthew said with a shrug. It was for this reason that as much as he loved these creatures, he was thankful for the barriers between the bears and the zoo visitors.

That didn’t stop him from wanting to catch a glimpse of the cubs, however. It was pretty difficult, and it didn’t help that the polar bears practically blended in with one another, but eventually he spotted one nestled next to a larger bear. He pointed it out to Feliciano excitedly.

(Aah, sorry! ;3;/)