The Fic Where Stephen Realizes He's Gay From a Picnic

Day 15 Part 2

After a boring car ride they reach the zoo, which to no surprise had barely anywhere to park. Meeting up with Ann and Joe after entering was a long interaction. Jay and Joe started conversing, probably about Pokémon, and Ann messed up Hosuh's bun so Stephen found himself staring when Hosuh redid it. Daniel nudged him playfully, so he took it as a sign that he was staring too long and pulled his eyes away. Ann then takes it upon herself to initiate this zoo adventure, "I have an idea! Why don't we try to find animals that look like us?" Daniel gets excited by the idea of course, "Ohoho! Well Stephen is definitely a giraffe," Stephen scoffs, "I don't look like a giraffe at all!" He hears Hosuh chuckle quietly next to him, "I don't know, I can kind of see it," Stephen feels his face heating up from merely Hosuh's attention being on him, "Oh yeah?! Well, Daniel looks like a gorilla!" Daniel fakes an offended gasp, "How dare you," Joe laughs at their antics, "Well, I think we're on the right path with finding out what our fursonas would be," Everyone bursts out either laughing or yelling at Joe.

They disperse, Jay, Joe and Dan as one team and Hosuh, Ann, and himself as another. Stephen has a hard time keeping his eyes on the map guide when there's so many animals to look at, almost forgetting that they have a task at hand. Ann then jumps excitedly when she turns the corner, making Stephen and Hosuh power-walk to see what she saw: Flamingos. "They're literally me!" She doesn't hesitate to take her phone out to take a bunch of pictures of her and the flamingos in frame, along with pictures of the flamingos on their lonesome.

The silver-haired to Stephen's left then speaks while she's distracted on getting a good photo, "Stephen, why haven't you said anything about my hair yet?" Stephen doesn't exactly know what to say in response to that, and just ends up unable to say anything when he tries to open his mouth. "It's just that Dan has pointed it out, Jay has pointed it out, Ann doesn't hesitate to point it out, but you haven't said anything!" Hosuh's tone is mildly whiny when he says this, staring at Stephen head on like he's trying to prove some sort of point. It's cute, but Stephen can't think about that right now. Still a confused mess, he says "Well, what do you want me to say? That it's cute?" Stephen regrets adding on the last part, and his face just heats up instead. Hosuh just groans and looks away, "No, that's what Ann always says! It's not even cute, I just wanted to see if you noticed or if you just didn't care," Stephen desperately wants to question him on that, but doesn't so that his chances of his blushing being noticed is lower. Hosuh's tone made him worry a little about if he should've thought more before saying something instead of being a total flustered mess over his sudden confrontation.

Moving onward, they come across the giraffes. To which Ann only says "It does look like you! You're both tall, you both have lanky legs, you both have a dumb face..." Stephen is embarrassed about his perfectly good legs being called out like this. This calls for narcissism mode. "Wow, look, I'll go through with this, but Stephen is his own species and a very attractive one at that, so I refuse to give in—" Ann playfully slaps his arm "Just take your dang pictures already and let's find Hosuh's animal equivalent!" Stephen obliges and forces himself to take cute pictures with the giraffes in the back, making sure the giraffes take up most of the frame. Stephen takes a lot less time than Ann did. They take a second to look at the map, trying to figure out what animal Hosuh would be. Ann points at an image on the map, "I think Hosuh looks like a hippo," Stephen gets offended on Hosuh's behalf and defends him, "No he doesn't, he looks like a panda," Ann agrees, so they drag a confused Hosuh through a building to get to the panda bears.

This building was the aquarium part which made Stephen slow down, wanting to look at every container of fish, mesmerized by the dim lights from the tanks lighting up the darkness. What Stephen didn't know is that this aquarium had one of those tunnels where you can see the fish all around you, making him too excited to even voice it. Stephen unconsciously wrapped his left arm around Hosuh's right arm, securing the hold by putting his right hand on Hosuh's bicep. He snapped out of it when he heard Hosuh mumble something, and tried to casually put his arms back to his sides, only for Hosuh to grab a hold of his wrist and continue like that wasn't something that happened.