Chapter Text
Emil
Emil turns from Lalli and they start to stroll along, walking side by side behind Sigrun.
He puts his hands deep in his pockets to hinder the urge of running his fingers under his chin.
Lalli's fingers has left something that feels like a burning mark on his skin from when the finn's gloved fingers closed his mouth as Emil tried to complement Lalli in his own tongue.
His friend does not touch him often and when he does it always sudden, unexpected, and only once in a while lingering for more than just a moment.
When he does, Emil feels his cheeks starting to redden.
Emil's fingers fumble at the bottom of the pocket with the small, but growing, collection of bits and bobs that Lalli has left there.
His fingers find his favorite and he caresses the first thing the night scout left for him there to find.
After the incident with the soup bowl, the only reason Emil had dared to slowly approach Lalli during several dinners, where Lalli would stray away from the team, was that the mage would still steal his coat to sleep under whenever he saw his chance.
That, and the fact that a small item had found its way into the coat's right front pocket after ones of these “borrowings” a couple of weeks ago.
On the day of the finding, Emil had casually put his hands in his pockets as he waited for Mikkel and Sigrun, and his ring finger had registered this new object.
He had stiffened a mere second by the sensation of something unexpected, grabbed it and pulled it out for at closer inspection, brows burrowed together.
A white dice with red dots on 8 sides, in a completely different shape than he had ever seen, rests there between his thumb and forefinger.
A dice made in some strange material that feels like bone but is not. He knew straight away it was old even back in the old world.
"What? How? Why?", he whispered to himself and instantly decided to hide the little treasure.
He feels a stare observing him from the driver cabins co-chair and lifts his eye just in time to see Lalli's eyes quickly duck away.
The realization hits him just after Lalli lifts his gaze again and meets his.
Oh, Lalli put it there. For him to find...wh..?
Before he could utter the why-question aloud, Lalli had broken their eye contact as Mikkel pulled Emil along to fetch and explore some findings.
Later he is thankful that he did not have the time to get Tuuri involved in translation of his stupid questions before thinking it through.
He understands. Well, he thinks he understands.
The next time a new item, a button made of shiny mother of pearl, has found its way into his pocket, happens during the night that followed the day he and Lalli sat back to back on the rock eating.
Emil had kept quiet a while but decided to just say something. Even thou he knew that his friend doesn't understand him.
"Lalli", He feelt the mage flinch slightly against his back glancing over his shoulder at him when Emil said his name.
“I am sorry. I can't even begin to understand how isolated you must feel and still you manage this burden of responsibility.
I mean.... You are so good at what you do, that we forget how difficult it must be, and just take you for granted.... so thank you.”
Lalli.
Lalli had listened to Emil, while sitting back to back, at his soft apologetic Swedish, trying to catch words that his lessons with Tuuri the past weeks has taught him.
He catches the: I, you, good, we, take and thank you, between all the charming jibberjabber and he sighs because he knows that was not the sentence Emil actually said to him.
That night, after Mikkel's decontamination of him, he leaves the shiny button in the same pocket as the dice and lingers at the fact that he's seen Emil sometimes, when pondering during the days, let his hand slip down his pocket and play with the dice between his fingers.
Lalli carefully watches when Emil puts his coat on the next morning. This time Emil doesn't stiffen and pull his hand out. Instead he looks directly at him. Lalli's heart stops and then starts again with a powerful ba-thumbh, when a small smile plays at the corner of Emils mouth and Lalli sees him blush a little, and all Lalli wants, all he wants, is to see Emil blush again.
Because his heart beats so hard in his chest he can physically hear it and the feeling that rushes through him is intoxicating.
He knows it's no good. He knows he's distracted in his job as a scout by thinking of Emil. Despite this, he continued, whenever he felt it was safe enough, to seek small items to leave for Emil to find
A small feather, a wooden bead and a piece of pale green glass, worn by the elements, and therefor with no sharp corners to it and a matted surface.
When he thinks about how Emil will experience the tactile feeling of running his fingers over it, he gets goosebumps up his arms to the nape of his neck and therefor he decided to leave that one under the Swede's pillow.