Berrybog Boys (BxB)

Chapter VI: The Scarf

"Yeah." Ciaran looked at Nils like he was the stupid one. "Didn't you know that?"

"No!" Nils exclaimed. Now that he looked at Ciaran, he could see the similarities between him and Sinead - the same slightly crooked nose, same green eyes, same shade of brown hair that seemed almost red in the sun... "How the hell are you her son?"

Ciaran snorted. "When two people love each other very much, they do a special hug--"

"That's not what I meant!" Nils shouted, his face growing red. If Ciaran was the son he heard about, that would mean... "Do you have any siblings?" he asked, with the last spark of hope. Maybe Sinead had multiple children and he wouldn't have to deal with the idea of Ciaran being gay.

"No." Ciaran sighted. "Do you have any other personal questions I can answer?"

"I..." He did, actually. He had multiple questions. He just didn't want to say any of them out loud. "Just let me finish with your hand and get out of my house." He finished, trying to hide the awkwardness, and gestured in Ciaran's general direction.

In a move that surprised both of them, the other man did actually give him his hand back. The atmosphere was much more heavy than when they began the impromptu medical procedure, but Nils managed to pull the remaining few splinters out.

"We should probably... uh, clean it out? Wait here." He said and left the bathroom in a hurry, his lack of confidence doing nothing to soothe Ciaran's nerves.

"Where else would I wait?" Ciaran shouted after him, spreading his hands, "You don't have any furniture!"

Annoyance still bubbling, he waited for Nils to return. He regretted not making a run for it, as soon as he saw what the other man brought back with him.

"Vodka? You seriously don't have anything better?" Ciaran said as he considered making a run for the door.

"Oh, I'm sorry, would you prefer a twenty-year-old whiskey?" Nils rolled his eyes, putting down the bottle and a long piece of cloth he brought from his bedroom. "Relax, I've seen them do it in movies."

"In movies! Great! Now, that's making me trust you!" Ciaran said through gritted teeth, but, nonetheless, tried to hold his hand still over the sink.

Seeing that, Nils generously poured vodka all over Ciaran's wound, feeling more sorry for the lost alcohol than the other man's hand. Even though he really did mean well, he couldn't stop the small pang of satisfaction when the other man hissed in pain.

"Don't be a baby, I'm almost done." Nils said, unrolling the piece of blue cloth.

Ciaran sent both the item and the man holding it a judging look. "You don't have any bandages?"

Nils sighted deeply. If he didn't already get this far, he would revisit the idea of pushing Ciaran out the window. "Hey, I've been here less than two weeks. I didn't need it, because I wasn't stupid enough to make myself bleed like a slaughtered pig." He grabbed Ciaran's hand again. "It's either the scarf or like ten band-aids. And I don't have that many band-aids."

"What do you even have in this house?"

"An ungrateful bastard." Nils answered, fighting an inner battle between tying the scarf too tight and being a decent human being. Luckily for Ciaran's hand, the latter was winning, even as Nils mourned his only scarf. The lower layers of the light blue material were already stained with blood, which he doubted would be easy to wash off.

"Okay, done." Nils said, finishing his wrapping with a small knot. "Although you should probably still have a doctor take a look at it, I'm not a licensed anything."

"Aren't you being a little overdramatic?" Ciaran asked, inspecting the makeshift dressing.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Please, feel free to get titanus, that's the manly thing to do." Nils snapped at him. "Just get the hell out of my house."

He didn't have to repeat himself - Ciaran chuckled at his words, jumped down from his place at the edge of the bathtub and left the room without as much as a goodbye, leaving the other man alone to clean up the mess. Nils only started to relax when he heard the car engine starting and the delivery van driving away. Looking at the spots of drying blood like it personally offended him - which, it kind of did - he decided to deal with it later. Or just never use that bathroom again.

***

During the next two weeks, Nils eventually did clean it up. He had enough to explain to Alexander even without the upstairs bathroom looking like a Tarantino film set.

The explanation was another problem. Nils still couldn't get himself to fix the mistake regarding their relationship, either by telling everything it to his best friend or to the locals - because of course everybody heard about it, to the point where it became old news.

Somehow, the fact that people became more casual regarding him and his relationship, made all of it even more difficult. Nils realised that he has long past the moment when explaining the situation would be socially acceptable and now he just dug himself deeper any time the others asked about his boyfriend. And they did bring it up a lot. Usually in a friendly, casual way, which made it even worse.

"How's the boyfriend?" Fionn asked, while pouring Nils a beer. Nils said that the boyfriend is working on a new project, which was true.

"What's Alexander like?" Bernadette asked, when they visited Sinead for tea. Nils said that he is nice and even-tempered, which was also true.

"Jesus, are you this rough with your 'partner'?" Ciaran asked, after Nils shoulder checked him that one time. Nils said that he will push Ciaran in front of a moving car, and if there are no cars, he will get into a car and run him over himself. Which was a slight exaggeration.

Nils wasn't doing much better when it came to the house either. He had no woodworking experience and Youtube turned out to be a less proficient teacher than expected. Finally, after a few complete failures, he managed to make a decent square table, which got him so excited that he made two more of them.

As Nils was pondering the idea of making a wooden stool, because he could just make the same table but smaller, his phone rang.

"Yeah?" He asked, picking it up.

"Hi." Alexander answered. "My flight just landed."

"What?"