"En ymmärrä", he said, in his usual, monotone voice.
"Berwald! Learning "I don't understand" doesn't count as learning any Finnish!", I stated, pretty annoyed at him for once.
"En ymmärrä", he repeated, again in a flat, yet quite harsh tone.
I didn't know if it was intended to be funny. However, I wasn't laughing.
"I'm serious!", I said, trying my best to sound as serious as I could when I said it.
"I've tried to learn your language! Can't you at least do that? Give Finnish a try? You know how much it'd mean to me." Pleading with him almost never worked, since he was stubborn as few, yet I still did it, convincing myself that it was worth at least a try.
He stared at me with narrow eyes, looking rather annoyed by my suggestion.
"Please, Berwald. I'm begging you." I clasped my hands and looked up at him with my puppy-dog eyes. It almost looked as if I was praying to god.
"For my sake, at least learn some basic words. A simple "Hello" is enough for me, really."
I thought that now was a good time to start lowering my demands, as he was awfully quiet. Quiet was never a good thing with Berwald, especially not if he looked as though he was trying to set you on fire just by his stare.
"Snälla, älskling."
As wise men said: "Desperate times calls for desperate measures", and Swedish was one of his weak-points, so to speak. His hard exterior always seemed to melt, little by little, whenever I spoke in his native language, and this was no exception.
He looked as if he was thoroughly thinking through what to do next, so I let him have a moment.
Fiddling a little with his glasses and rolling his eyes rather quickly, as if to look unaffected, he replied:
"Yrittää... Vaikea". It might not have been the most impressive thing in the world, but it was impressive enough for me, by far.
Throwing myself into his arms was never really appreciated by him, but I just couldn't help myself. However, he didn't push me away, still, it was quite reluctantly that he hugged me back.
"Thank you, Berwald" It was kind of muffled since he was so much taller than me that I had my head buried in his chest whenever we hugged, yet I was convinced that he had heard me.
He shrugged his shoulders, again in an attempt to withhold his image of being as cold as a glacier, but then he slowly bent his legs, coming down to my level. Brushing his cheek across my own, he whispered warmly into my ear:
"Rakastan sinua, liksom."
