Toris, Never The Confrontational Type

Despite what had happened, Toris had made dinner. He had said he was going to after all, and what had happened did not really have anything to do with that. Plus, the preparation and planning of what he was going to make busied him. Toris was no longer in the mood to write.

He needed to think about Feliks. More in particular, what he was going to tell the other man when he returned from the rehearsal. The obvious action was to tell him the truth. To Toris, there was no question whether or not he was going to do this. It was how to break it to Feliks that was what was worrying him. Because this was not so much about Feliks thinking he liked him like this now as much as it was about the fact Feliks did not hesitate to 'reciprocate' those feelings.

It would be cruel not to say anything. They could talk about this. Toris might be a better listener than speaker (he usually placed writing between those two somewhere, depending on the day), but he would try. Right as he came to this conclusion, Feliks came in.

"Oh Toris! Today was totally awful!"

Toris felt any and all of his conviction fly out a theoretical window. "The rehearsal went badly?"

"You, like, have no idea," Feliks sniffed, dropping his things and coming over to cling to him. Which Toris usually would not have minded (too much), but now he was slightly uncomfortable by it. "My stuff was already messed up when I got there and then it was, like, going downhill from there! I just wanted to go like, whatever! But I couldn't just give up! That would be less awesome than Gilbert!"

Trying not to sigh or squirm, Toris tried to think of something to say.

"Ooh! Pierogi!" Feliks' attention was caught. Toris had to stop his hand from reaching to take one.

"Would you finish setting up the table?" he asked, feeling defeated though he had not even tried. Feliks gave him a smile.

"Of course, Toris-baby."

He watched Feliks do so while finishing up the dinner. He could not say it now, he would wait for the 'horrors' of today to have slipped from Feliks' mind. Maybe after dinner. Feliks would be feeling better by then. I'll tell him later.

Dinner was practically the same as it had been for the last few weeks, with Toris being subjected to everything that had to do with the wedding. Today's particular flavour in the conversation was despair, stemming from the closeness of the wedding and Feliks' feelings that everything was not done yet, that if he had more time he could do so much more.

Toris tried to be supportive. Actually, no. He did not try. It was a natural reaction to be supportive, interjecting his own words when Feliks paused to take a breath or was actually eating.

By the end of dinner Feliks did not seem to be better off from having gotten it off his chest. "Toris, will you paint my toenails?" Feliks whimpered, looking up at him through those eyelashes which Toris was still surprised to know that they were not false.

"Really?" he asked, exasperated.

Five minutes later found them on the couch and Toris painting Feliks' toenails. This would be a bad time to tell him, Toris realized, deciding that depending on how shocking Feliks decided it was would decide whether or not Toris accidentally got a foot of wet nail polish in his face.

I'll tell him later.

It would take several days of thinking that way before Toris would realize he had taken too long. It would really be too late to mention it casually.


Notes:

Feliks is not very fond of Gilbert, as well as not being fond of Ludwig. If Gilbert (a witness) had said what actually happened when Ludwig, Ivan, Natalia, and Raivis had an accident which ended with the accidental burning down of his house , then he would not have had to pay for it. But he did not, so he did, and there you have it.