Balloons pov

My eyes adjust to brightness as I wake up. The first thing I see after the blinding window is... NICKEL? HOW DID THI- oh. I slowly remember the events of last night and smile at the lovely memories. I look back at nickel and his cute sleeping face that I can stare at forever. My hand goes up and touches his face and I lightly stroke his cheek, but before I lean in to kiss his forehead again, I remember about suitcase and baseball.

"Suitcase?" I call out.

"Baseball?"

-no reply-

They might still be sleeping. I slowly move my legs from under nickels and I slightly get up to look around. I push myself up with my arms and look at the room. Empty room. 

Huh. They must've left early. I wonder why? 

I sit up to reach for my phone on the nightstand. But before I can touch it, I get pulled down again.

"AAEH-WHA- '' I see nickels foot hooked around my arm. His eyes aren't open so he's probably still half asleep.

"S...stay" his voice says, raspier and lower than usual. I blush at the sound of it. But before I go simping over his morning voice, I ask him why.

"I want you to stay" he says, moving closer. I feel like my stomach is turning inside out and I heat up. 

H-he wants me to stay? In the same bed? TOGETHER? I blush even harder and feel myself sweating bullets. 

But I don't mind...

I slowly hug him closer and he puts one of his legs over mine. I tuck my head down and pull the blanket onto us even more, so that it's more comfortable. We stay like that for a couple of minutes, before he seems to actually wake up. He suddenly moves back quickly, tensing up and looking at me with a worried expression on his face.

"Wait balloon- did I really just- s-sorry balloon i- don't know what came over me i-"

"Hey, hey calm down" I say, putting a hand around him. He stops stuttering all over the place and looks down, blushing hard out of embarrassment. 

"Nickel, it's ok, I don't mind"

His eyes widen and he looks back into my eyes, still blushing a bit.

"Y-you don't?" He stutters again. How cute.

"No I don't" I reassure him, before pulling him towards me. I catch him off guard with that gesture and he looks down again, but relaxes a little. I look at his lips for two seconds, before catching myself and looking away. He slowly inches closer to me and I hug my arms around him. He snuggles his face into my chest and I feel my heart melt. He puts his foot back over mine and I lean into him a little more, wrapping my arm around his head. 

Are we.... We're LITERALLY CUDDLING RIGHT NOW?

I feel his heartbeat against my chest and it's speeding. So to calm him down a little I caress the back of his head. He pulls me in closer and we stay like that for a long, long time. I never thought I'd ever be this close to him, close to the one who I used to hate with my gut. The one who gained my trust. The one who slowly but surely, stole my heart. If suitcase was here she'd be screaming in happiness.

But before I could overthink this absolute dream of a situation, I fall asleep again.

Nickels pov

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Balloons pov

I wake up around an hour later, frowning at the loss of heat against me. I sit up, looking around for the short coin, when I notice the bathroom light open. I check my phone for the time and surprisingly, we are just in time for breakfast. Nickel comes out of the bathroom while I put my phone away, and I look at him, blushing slightly because of what we just did.

"Surprising that we woke up in time for breakfast, ey?" Nickel says.

"Yeah, I can't believe it" I reply. I check my phone again for any messages as nickel makes his bed. Two messages from the '4lifers' group chat and one from suitcase.

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4lifers

Suitsyy: hey we left early if you're wondering where we are @Notnickle @Itsballoonbish

Bb: yeah dw we're at the competition grounds rn

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Suitsyy

Suitsyy: hope you have fun in that bed 😏

You: SHUT UP WHAT 😭😭

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Well, that was interesting. I see nickel checking his phone. He puts it away and we get out of the room to go downstairs, chatting about last night.

"Too bad suitcase couldn't get a picture of that moon, am I right?" Nickel says.

"Yeah, it was mesmerising" I reply. We reach our seats and sit down on the table, which is bustling with noise. I'm genuinely surprised that paintbrush looks like they actually got sleep, considering all the noise we made last night. Although fan looks like he needs to swim in coffee.

Speaking of coffee, nickel pours some for himself. He must feel tired, but I'm strangely not. I'm not complaining though, because it's a feeling I'm tired of.

Literally.

OJ comes out of the kitchen with poached eggs and blueberry breakfast muffins, while paper follows him with a plate of highly stacked toast and lemonade. I think it's a breakfast scramble today. Just bits of different breakfasts served at once. They put the things to the table and go back to the kitchen for more. I grab a blueberry muffin while nickel sticks with his coffee. I start overhearing conversations on the table.

"Thanks for the sound blocking device test tube, it really helped my sleep last night!" Paintbrush says. 

"No proble-" test tube starts, before glancing at fan.

"Oh golly! Don't tell me you were on your phone all night fan" she continues.

"No.. only till 2, I just couldn't sleep" he says tiredly, his voice lower than usual.

"Till 2! FAN!" Test tube says, in a playfully disappointed voice. I sigh in relief, thinking he would mention the noise.

"Oh and, it was really noisy too. Who was singing 'hearts stereo' at 3am?" 

Celebrated too soon...

"Someone was singing at 3am? Creepy..." paintbrush says. Fan looks at nickel and slight fear comes to me, realising since he rapped half the song, his voice would be the most recognisable out of the four of us. But fan fortunately looks away without saying anything. Paper and OJ finish laying everything out on the table and we all start eating. 

Nickel and I have some conversation when trophy butts in.

"Hey nickel"

"Yeah?" Nickel says, clearly annoyed.

"Too bad your foot didn't break, I was looking forward to that" trophy snickers. Bomb looks up from his food and wonders,

"Y-y-yeah, I thought i-it broke since he p-p-punched you pretty hard. I'm g-g-glad your ok-k though"

Damn, a lot of people must've watched the fight.

"You should actually be thankful it didn't break trophy" nickel shoots back.

"Heh what? Why?"

"One, you'd have to pay for the injuries. Two, I would've gotten you back when it was healed, AND I WASN'T GOING TO GO EASY-" He shouts, slowly standing up on his chair. I put my hand on his shoulder and pull him back down. At this point everyone is listening.

"Oh, what? And have your boyfriend cheering you on?". The entire table gasps and looks at the both of us. Even I get mad at him now.

"HE'S NOT MY BOYFRI-" Nickel and I both shout in sync, but OJ interrupts us, walking out of the pantry.

"WHO. TOOK. HALF OF THE SNACKS" He shouts. All the attention suddenly goes towards OJ and we sigh in relief. 

My relief is short lived though. Since we took the snacks. But we played it cool, since nobody suspects us anyway. Actually, they're all pointing fingers at trophy and yinyang.

"WHAT? WHAT DID I DO?" Yinyang shouts at the people who are blaming him. I kind of feel bad so I jump in.

"Guys, guys. Don't you think we would've known if it was yinyang? They would've been fighting over the food so..."

"Balloons right" pickle says, now facing trophy. Trophy fights back while nickel and I watch, casually eating our food.

This is hella entertaining.

We finish our breakfast earlier than I thought we would, and I go back upstairs with nickel. He goes on his phone and I just lie down bored. I open my poems notebook and hold it above me, staring at an empty page for a while, wondering about what I should write.

Do I have to write? I can draw, but I'm not in the mood. The lack of motivation makes me more desperate to find something to do. My thumb slips and the book almost falls on my face, if it wasn't for my other hand I'd be groaning in pain right now. This catches nickels attention and he laughs at my mistake.

"I kinda wish it fell," he says, giggling.

"Oh shut up" I reply, but then I get an idea, looking at the pages. 

Origami.

"Hey wait," I say, sitting up quickly. Nickel watches me as I open the nightstand drawer and take out some square shaped coloured paper.

"What are you doing?" Nickel asks.

"I'm thinking of doing some origami" I reply, searching up a tutorial on Meeple search. 

"Ooh, can I join?" He says enthusiastically, jumping off his bed and sitting next to me. 

"Yeah, sure" I say, heating up a little to how close he is. I open a website for origami flowers and place my phone against the nightstand as we sit on the floor. Nickel grabs a light pink page while I take a deep red one. I scroll to the first instruction and we begin folding.

"How are you doing this so fast?!" Nickel says, struggling with keeping up. I wait for him to finish the step he is on before scrolling further.

"Maybe because of these?" I say, wiggling my fingers. He rolls his eyes, then points at a box under his bed.

"I have prosthetics man"

"Then use th- wait WHAT? SINCE WHEN?"

Nickels pov

Balloon looks at me shocked. 

"It's a long story" I say laughing, remembering the good ol' bfdi times, and the 'embrace coiny' plan.

"Use them then" he says.

"Nah, I've probably outgrown them" I say.

"Pleasee I wanna see how you'd look" he begs, dropping his origami paper on the floor. I couldn't say no to that.

"Fine" I say, as he punches the air in celebration. I smile at how cute he's being but I try not to show it. He can't find out I like him. 

That is, until I tell him.

I push the thoughts about the confession away as they're making me nervous and I grab the box from under my bed. A cloud of dust unexpectedly shoots into my face and I cough and close my eyes. Balloon takes the box and dusts it off for me, as I recover from the sudden cloud. I sneeze and balloon looks at me worried.

"Wait, do you have a dust allergy?" He asks.

"It's fine, I recover quickly" I say. Another sneeze follows but I ignore it and open the box, praying for no spiders to crawl out. Thankfully, none do. Balloon carefully takes out the sleek black plastic prosthetics, sliding his finger across the dusty exterior.

"These look so high quality!" He says in awe.

"Yeah, I needed them to work perfectly" I say proudly. I put my left prosthetic on and shake it around a little, just to get used to the feeling again. The joints were a bit tough to move, but other than that it feels great.

Balloon moves forward and helps me put on the right prosthetic. He leans over to fiddle with the back of the arm to make sure it's attached, and it kinda looks like he's hugging me. I feel my heartbeat pick up its pace because of how close he is, and I get a little sad when he moves back. His eyes widen and he studies me for a bit.

"Y-you look so... different" he says. I move my right prosthetic around to make sure it works fully, before without thinking, I lunge forward and hug him. I can finally hug him! He's taken aback because of the gesture but he quickly wraps his arms around my body and swings me around.

Balloons pov

I swing nickel around, smiling, as soon as he hugs me. Nickel with arms is something I've gotta get used to. I place him on the ground and he looks up at me happily.

"I can finally hug you!" He says, his voice going higher on the word 'hug'. He puts his prosthetic arms in the air and shuts his eyes smiling brightly. How can he be SO DAMN CUTE. I shut away my thoughts and reply to him.

"Well I'm gonna have to get used to this" I say, circling my finger at him. He looks at the origami paper.

"We should finish those flowers" he says, sitting back down next to his light pink sheet. I sit down next to him and scroll down further, following the instructions. He puts his prosthetics to use and quickly catches up to the step I am on. I rush the next step so that I'll be ahead again, but he notices and speeds his arms up. We start racing each other without anyone saying a word. I furrow my eyebrows in concentration, realising nickel is now a step ahead of me. I stop looking at his origami and focus on my own, and finally reach the last step. 

"DONE" we both say at the same time, dropping our origami on the floor.

"Heh, I finished a second before you did" nickel says.

"What? No, we tied!" I say.

"That's what someone who lost would say" nickel teases.

"How do I even deal with you?" I say jokingly. 

I reach forward with the red flower in my hand. I fix it on the side of his head and stand back, admiring my work. Admiring him.

 He looks at me blushing slightly and I giggle.

"Dark red really suits you" I say, feeling my face heat up. The colour looks amazing on him. He shifts a bit and looks in the mirror, smiling slightly

"T-thanks" he says. He sounds nervous. I wonder why. He picks up his flower and adjusts it on the side of my head. 

"Light pink is literally your colour" he compliments. I look in the mirror, touching the flower slightly and smiling shyly at his compliment. I notice him looking at me from the mirror and I turn to look back at him. He looks away immediately. 

"I-i think I should take these arms off" he says, changing the subject.

"Aw, whyy" I ask, a little disappointed.

"They're making me feel kinda itchy, and that can't be a good sign" he says. 

"Oh ok, but can you give me one more hug?". I quickly look away nervously. I wasn't meant to say that out loud- 

But he smiles and runs towards me. 

"C'mere" he says, before jumping onto me. We laugh and hug each other with the paper flowers still lightly resting on our heads.

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HEY GUYS

I HOPE YALL ENJOYED THIS CHAPTER

I'm really making you guys wait for the confession huh 🤭

2515 words YEAHAHA

I also have a dust allergy and I started sneezing when I wrote that part...

ALSO 6.9 views EHHEHEHEHEHE 

BUT ANYWAY THX FOR READINGG

SEE YALL NEXT CHAPTER

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