(A/N: After a very long hiatus, The List is officially being continued. I will try to have consistent updates from here on out, perhaps weekly or bi-weekly. Thank you to everyone who waited out for this update, your loyalty means very much to me and is key to my inspiration as a writer. I hope you enjoy.)

Eduard left the hotel two days ago.

Life had resumed with a fair degree of normalcy. I didn't have a friend lurking around as I did my work anymore, but it didn't get me down too much. I still was having a much better time here than I ever had with my parents. Which was quite the statement considering most my time here was spent doing mindless chores.

Due to my proactive nature, I had all my work done by afternoon and was spending my time scouring a book I had found left behind by a guest. It was a boring looking book in all honesty, being thick and yellowed. Despite being a good student I was not a fan of reading outside of school, so this certainly wasn't normal for me. I was only interested because the book was in Swedish and I was trying to enhance my Swedish skills so I could more easily speak to Ms. Oxenstierna and Berwald.

After a large chunk of reading time, the book began to bore me. Translating so much in my head made my brain hurt... I had nothing else better to do though. Not until he walked in.

"Hey." His burly voice echoed across the room, as it always did. It was such a dramatic voice... I adored it.

I immediately perked up, a smile prevailing over my previous unamused expression. My eyes fell on him and I greeted him with a wave. "Hey, Berwald!"

The blonde didn't seem to notice my enthusiasm to see him. Or if he did, he didn't comment on it. "What are ya doin'?"

"Just some reading," I shrug, "Someone left this book behind."

"Ya like readin'?" He inquired, raising an eyebrow. He seemed genuinely curious.

I closed the book so I could focus more attention on our conversation. After all the time here, I still found myself clinging to his words. "Not really. I'm just trying to get better at Swedish so I can talk to you and your mom better."

He nodded. The room was silent for a few moments. I didn't know what to say... Normally I was the one driving the conversation between us, but before I could formulate anything Berwald stepped in.

"Are ya... Busy today?"

I blinked a few times. No, I wasn't. And even if I was busy, I would clear my schedule in order to get to know him better. "No, not at all!" I insist, heart beating quick. Was he gonna try to hang out with me? I would love that so much. I crossed my fingers under the table, hoping that was what he intended to do.

He nodded at me. "Wanna go out?"

"Of course!" I responded almost before he got the words out of his mouth. I didn't even know where he wanted to go. He could take me into a shady alleyway for all I cared, I needed to know more about him. My encounter with Eduard the last night he was here made me realize that I really needed to know more about Berwald... Especially considering how I responded to Eduard's question that night.

I shake my head, I didn't wanna think about how that went. My life was depressing enough as a runaway. Ruminating on bad things would only make it worse.

"I was thinkin' we could go to that cafe. The one down the street." He suggested. I tried to read his expression, but as always he was poker faced. Berwald was such an enigma!

My smile broadened as I took a stand from my chair. "That sounds wonderful."

The cafe was very close to the hotel, so the walk was short. Being that Berwald's speech was famously laconic, our small talk between the hotel and the cafe was nothing of note. When we arrived at the cute corner cafe, we both ordered our preferred black coffee and sat down at a seat next to the window.

I stared out up at the sky for a few minutes, the coffee warming my cupped hands. It looked like it was going to rain outside, but I liked the grey sky. Grey skies were a happy thing to me, which was strange considering many people found the sight of a grey sky ominous. I chalked it up to how I was raised backwards and thus had a backwards view of the world now.

We silently sipped our bitter coffee for a few moments. It was peaceful. I did want him to talk to me, but I understood his nature was quite silent so I didn't pry anything out of him. When he finally spoke, I was shocked.

"What's wrong?"

He snapped me out of my gaze, and I met his eyes. What did he mean? Nervously I pulled my sight away from him and instead focused on his coffee cup. "N-nothing." I insisted.

He didn't believe me. I could see him lean closer to me across the table, trying to get me to look him in the eyes. "Ya can tell me. I know yer lyin'." Berwald insisted.

Suddenly, I was a little bit angry. I had been pinned as this fragile, perfect little crybaby back when I lived in Helsinki with my family. I didn't like it when I was treated like a child, with the accusation that I was lying on the table now. His good looks didn't excuse him from my disgust with such treatment, and my tone turned sour in an instant. "What do you think you know about me? Spit it out, you clearly are reading into something wrong." My sudden disgust gave me the confidence to look him in the eyes, and with that I shot him an equally disgusted look.

He didn't seem phased. His expression continued to be indifferent. "Doesn't take a genius ta figure it out. Ed left. I heard ya cryin' in yer room last night. Wanted to be sure ya were okay."

Silence, and then I took a large inhale. Yeah, he was right about both those things. Eduard left, and I cried. But he had it all wrong.

I didn't cry implicitly because he left. I always knew he was going to be leaving. It was that last conversation we had, and the fact that it was really the last one. We decided to not write each other because what had been said that night. Eduard had been my friend, as annoying as he could be. I cried because I had lost him so quickly and felt like a fuck up for it. I could have avoided losing him so easily but I had to go and say what I said. And I wasn't even sure what I said was true yet!

"Yeah." I huffed, not knowing how to explain it. Explaining the whole situation to Berwald would be... Embarrassing. Especially since I had been dumb and dragged him into this whole mess by saying I liked him when I wasn't even sure I did. I couldn't exactly tell the Swede I said that though, so I gave a chopped version. "Eduard and I... We aren't friends anymore. He asked me something and I didn't give him the answer he wanted."

"Was it a serious question?" He inquired.

It shouldn't have been a serious question. But to Eduard it was. "Yeah, it was. I don't wanna talk about what he asked but the gist of it is I really hurt him with my answer."

Really hurt was an understatement. Silence prevailed over Berwald and I again, and I had time to recall the exact events that occurred two nights ago in Eduard's room.

The million dollar question. "Do you like anyone?"

I remembered being startled, and the immediate person who came to my mind was Berwald. It was purely a sexual attraction then (and to be honest, it still was as of this moment) but it was the only attraction I really had to anyone at the time. Eduard had me in a corner, and I felt like I had to answer right away. I didn't ask for time to think about it like I should have, there wasn't even a long silence between his question and my rushed answer. "I like Berwald."

From there it was a downhill fight I didn't care to remember the details of. He was hurt though, asking me if I would give him a chance if he was more like him, turning to ruthless attacks on Berwald after his advances did not work. It was a pitiful thing to remember, but for some reason Eduard was clinging to me and said some awful things that night. But I said awful things in return to defend Berwald, and it all ended with him screaming at me to get out of his room and to never talk to him ever again. These past two days, I had stayed true to that promise and didn't utter a word to him as he left the hotel. But I was never truly mad at him like he was me.

And that's why Berwald heard me crying in my room. Last night it really hit me that I had betrayed one of the only true friends I had with what I had said. The words I spoke weren't even entirely true. Yeah, I'd love to get it on with Berwald as much as the next guy, but I didn't love his personality. He didn't talk enough for me to even understand his personality! On the other hand I wasn't a fan of how Eduard looked, but I did know a lot more about him than I did about Berwald. He didn't deserve to lose me just because I thought the guy I lived with was fuckable. I still had Eduard's address, so I wanted to apologize to him. But the problem was that I didn't think I was even worthy of forgiveness from Eduard. I betrayed him on a whim, who was to say I wouldn't hurt him that bad again? The whole time he was staying at the hotel I blew him off for Berwald every time. Historically, I was an ass to him and I was finally feeling guilty for it.

Moments later I came back to reality, and began to explain a little further. "I don't think he'll forgive me, and he was really the only friend I had..." I stop, realizing how I worded that probably wasn't kind to Berwald. "N-not that we aren't friends, it's just-"

"I'm too quiet, I know." His tone didn't seem offended, but then again, his tone almost never changed.

Another sigh escaped my lips. "It's not that you're too quiet. I'm just not good at taking to people." That wasn't true at all. What WAS true was that I wasn't good at talking to dangerously attractive people such as Berwald. I always said the wrong thing... Though apparently I couldn't handle normal people anymore either, seeing as I wrecked my friendship with Eduard so quickly.

Something strange happened then. His face changed ever so slightly, and his lips looked like... They looked stressed, but I think that was a smile! "Well... I'm not good at talkin' ta people either, so I think we can be good friends."

I wanted to laugh at his smile, but I just grinned wide at it instead. There was a small twinkle in his eye that I almost missed, but he looked happy to be proposing a friendship with me. I broke eye contact with him and returned to sip my coffee, but not before the final words we spoke that day in the cafe.

"Yeah, I think we could be good friends, too."