Noah just couldn’t enter into this mental state of make-believe. Regardless of the intention behind it, it was still a hug! How could he view it as something other than what it was?

But this inability to pretend was his own psychological issue… He shouldn’t make Levi suffer due to it. The right thing to do would be to grit his teeth and pull through these remaining couple of days.

Noah let out a long and heavy sigh, but his arms that had been crossed defensively in front of him loosened. He skittishly eyed Levi’s torso, thinking about how to best go about returning the hug.

‘Noah, you can do it!’ He encouraged himself, ‘How come you didn’t feel shy hugging Levi a few days earlier? Why are you suddenly making such a big deal out of it?’ Before he could even finish that thought, Noah answered his own question, ‘How could it be the same?! A few days earlier, I was hugging my good and straight brother-in-law! And now I’m hugging my own not-entirely-straight soon-to-be lawfully-wedded husband!’ Then just as that thought appeared, Noah once again interrupted himself, ‘So you DO remember this is your own soon-to-be husband? What’s wrong with hugging your own husband?’

Blackie, ‘Host! Don’t do this! (っ °Д °;)っIf you learn how to argue with yourself, then I’ll be out of a job!’

Finally, after going in circles for a while, Noah’s lips pressed into a pout, and his arms rather hesitatingly slipped around Levi’s form to timidly return the hug.

Levi’s entire form stiffened, and contrarily, that actually made Noah feel better about what he was doing. ‘Hmph! Wasn’t it you who wanted me to reciprocate? Do you finally feel embarrassed? Do you regret it? Heh, too late!’ Noah’s eyes curved, and he even coyly rested his cheek against Levi’s chest.

Noah thought that he could sometimes be really silly, making a mountain out of a molehill. Why was he hesitating? Wasn’t Levi comfortable to hug? Wasn’t Levi’s chest nice to lean on? And besides, wasn’t this big bully just a paper tiger? He seemed all composed on the outside, saying a lot of nonsense, but wasn’t his heart beating just as fast as his own? (ಡ艸ಡ)

Paper tiger Levi, ‘Yatta!! The spring of my life has come!’ o(≧▽≦)o

Blackie, ‘Wait, wait, wait! Let me get this straight… you did something wrong, and instead of getting punished, you… got a hug? ( •᷄⌓•᷅ )

‘… (。_。) … … … erm… how should I put this…

‘Grandmaster, please take me in as your disciple and teach me your craft!’ ( ✪ ▽ ✪ )ﾉ

***

The touching moment of hugs and fluffs lasted for one whole…!

…minute.

And then, Noah jumped off of Levi as if burned and scuttled out of the room with neon red ears. Ah, ah, that was definitely a lover-hug! The kind with a really intense lover flavor!!! (⁄ ⁄> ﹏

Ah, ah! Screw this whole reciprocating business! QAQ This is good enough for now!

Ahem! Baby steps! Baby steps! (*︶^︶*)

Blackie, ‘…Wow! （　ﾟДﾟ）Host, you change your mind faster than a Magic 8 ball!’

Levi stood shellshocked with his arms still raised, looking at his baby’s fleeing perky bottom, and didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry. He didn’t even get a hardon yet, and his baby still bolted like his little ass was on fire!

Blackie, ‘Yet? You planned on getting a hardon, did you?’ (¬‿¬)

It was like the little one had a built-in danger detection! Levi’s lower half had only just started getting restless, and his baby had already pulled the plug on him!

Levi lowered his arms, and after a second of bemusement, a husky laugh escaped him. His baby was really too cute to bear! (／≧ω＼) ♡

***

As per Fynn’s wishes, the two returned back to the safety of the Cordia manor. After directing the staff to move the bunk bed out of Noah’s room (in spite of Cordia daddy’s black face), the two settled down on the comfy couch in the living room and resumed their briefing with Fynn regarding the investigation results.

“What about that footage of the corridor? Did you identify the owners of the two communicators?”

Fynn faced Noah, who had been the one to ask the question, then he side-glanced at the sour-looking Levi, sitting on the sofa next to the little guy. Huh? The little one was no longer using Levi as a personal armchair? How come? The two didn’t look like they had a fight! Strange. Very strange.

As luck would have it, the answer to this particular enigma lay with Cordia daddy, who was watching the two boys like a hawk. Noah felt that sitting on top of another man’s lap was already embarrassing enough as it was, and the only reason why he went along with it was for the sake of appearances. However, at home, there was no one they needed to put up appearances for! And he certainly didn’t have skin thick enough to act so unbridled in front of his parents.

Knowing exactly what was going through his baby’s head, Levi had wanted to take his darling into one of the many unoccupied rooms inside the manor and call Fynn from there. If the two of them were alone (minus the Fynn on the other side of the screen, who could basically be ignored), then Levi could take liberties with his precious however he wanted. (≖‿≖)

Unfortunately for him, if he could think of this, so could others. And even more unfortunately, the astute person who could think this far happened to be his disagreeable father-in-law. (≖ ‸ ≖)

Levi couldn’t understand why, but this father-in-law seemed to have something against him! Whenever he wanted to eat his baby’s tofu, this father-in-law would pop up to obstruct him! Just like now – Levi wanted privacy with his baby, but this father-in-law would hear none of it! Instead, Cordia daddy very passionately persuaded them to just “feel at home” and use everything in the living room freely.

Levi, naturally, wasn’t convinced, but what could he do when his baby WAS? He could only grind his teeth and note down another X against his father-in-law in his little black book. –Not a real book, of course, but the mental, imaginary kind. The kind that, besides not being a book, was neither black (due to not having a physical form) nor little (due to the pettiness of its owner). In fact, now that Levi thought about it, perhaps he should rename it into the grudge-list?

But that was certainly a matter for another time.

Fynn’s long-distance inspection of the two revealed no explanations; thus, he chose not to dwell on it. Wasn’t this exactly what he had wanted? The two had finally stopped shoving dogfood down his throat! For all he knew, maybe they had reflected on their past behavior and turned over a new leaf. (And by ‘they’ and ‘their’, he obviously meant ‘he’ and ‘his’, because the only one who’d do any kind of self-reflection here would only be Aris…)

With a few taps of his light screen, Fynn brought up the footage of a man walking down the corridor leading to the highly confidential Druxa labs. “By cross-referencing the footage of the corridor with check-in times, we managed to narrow it down. The owner of one of the two unidentified communicators– not the one who hired the Soother, but the other one– is this person.”

The man in the footage had unclear features because he was wearing sunglasses and a mask covering the lower half of his face, but from the little they could see, he seemed to be mature in age. They couldn’t make out any personal accessories or even see what exactly he was wearing because a lab coat covered most of his form. The lab coat in question was one of the standard Druxa lab coats lent to visitors, so there were no clues to be found there either.

“We couldn’t run face recognition on him because his face is covered up,” Fynn explained, “But we did run one of the more experimental recognition algorithms based on height and body proportions.”