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That was the same day Bane noticed the ugly-ass lamp in the living room. He sat beside it, diagonally from it, walked past it every single day, but he'd never seen it until then. When he asked his mom about it, she said they'd had it in the apartment they lived in after he was born, and they'd just brought it with them to the house. That shitty lamp was as old as he was, and it had always been there -- somehow, he always knew that it was there -- and yet that one day arrived where he said aloud to himself, "Fuck me, since when was there a lamp there?"
He hated history class. All those boring dates and dead people went right over his head, so when the textbooks came around, he flicked through to look at the pictures. Some pictures catch your eye, and it turns out that once you've looked, you regret it immediately. There he was, crawling with the graffiti of so many boys who felt uncomfortable to be drawn in by him; body so casual and aloof, and asking to be looked at. Bane leant forward, elbows over his desk. He swept his hand over his forehead, pushing his thumb back into his fringe. He let the pressure, the I-must-not-get-caught-looking, swim into him, and looked.
Then Shudoh turned around from the desk ahead and whispered, "Dude, what page are we? I wasn't listening." Bane straightened, releasing the book so the cover slapped the pages down, away from sight. "Aw shit, don't tell me you weren't listening either? I'm screwed…"
"Renaissance is a French word," Hikaru said, as they walked the long way home down the beach. "Not that I know what it means." His voice squeaked suddenly as he finished his sentence, and he coughed and turned his face away. The sun was bright and the sea glittered for the first time that year. Hikaru's frame, half-turned towards the sun, seemed so defiant and strong. The words crackled and hissed, and were quiet beneath the sound of the waves, but he said, "I'm going. Going in the water. Sea you later."
"If you weren't such a dumbass, you'd catch a cold!" But Hikaru had dropped his bag and gakuran into the sand. He rolled back his trouser legs over his knees, and pulled the opening of his shirt backwards over his shoulders. That first flash of marble white skin, the muscular arms so newly sculpted, the proud chest and the somewhat slender waist, curving in toward the ridges of his spine… Bane felt the blood rush, and thought about the statue. Hikaru dashed towards the water and the tide jumped to meet him. He let out a panicked wail as the water hit his shins, hunched his shoulders and clasped his arms about his chest, shivering. Must not get caught looking, but Bane stared at him, mouth agape.
A loud squeak of female classmates passing by along the road up the cliff steps made Hikaru turn back towards Bane. Slowly, Hikaru's confident frame contracted inwards, he tucked in his arms, bent his neck downwards and clenched his fists above his elbows. Bane looked back at the road, then at Hikaru again. Hikaru kicked his feet beneath the water as it lapped further up the beach, eyes fixed at the ground. Had he seen Bane, or had those girls been squealing at him? Bane drew in a breath. Then he threw down his bag and his shirt, and ran over to tackle Hikaru.
Bane had to unlock the door when he got home. He took off his shoes, dumped his bag in the hall, got a drink from the fridge, and when he entered the living room, it was right there. "Fuck me, since when was there a lamp there?" he said, bending over to peer at the patterns on the shade. Hikaru hadn't seen him coming, or didn't realise Bane's intentions in time, and when they collided he lost his footing completely and fell into the sea. Bane cackled in triumph, but Hikaru just looked up at him. Drenched, water rushing over his thighs and wrists, droplets falling from his messy hair onto his shoulders that glistened now where the sun hit. "Wait, what was I doing?" Bane said, and then he realised he was saying it to a lamp. He grunted and smacked the shade so that the stand wobbled on the spot for a few seconds.
He sat in front of the TV, ate dinner, tidied his room, showered, but all the while his mind wound back to the beach, and to Hikaru, wet and panting, catching his breath after being chased along the shore. Bane moved on impulse, taking Hikaru in a headlock and holding him there, grunting and gasping. Hikaru prised at Bane's arm, and in exerting himself, broke the hold and pulled Bane's arm behind his back with a triumphant laugh. What the hell, since when did Hikaru become strong enough to beat him, and Bane felt pride or was it admiration, bursting to life in his chest and burning in his cheeks. But lying awake in bed, his blood itching with that same feeling, he was on the verge of calling it something else altogether. No. No, he was just impressed, that's all. Hikaru held firm, so close behind that Bane could feel the heat of his body when he breathed close to Bane's neck. Too hot, the night was too hot, and Bane couldn't sleep like this. He tore off his shirt and kicked the blanket down to the foot of his bed. He swept his fingers idly over his skin and pictured that statue.
In the computer lab, Bane hovered over the printer and snapped up the paper when it was released. He stowed it between two sheets of work and took it back to his terminal. Hikaru pulled his vest over his head in the changing room, arching his arms high over his head, puffing out his chest -- and the pull of fabric not leaving a single hair out of place -- and Bane peered at him between garments, pretending never to have mistaken the sleeves and collar of his regular uniform. And when Hikaru headed outside, Bane said to the guys just next to him, "You seen his muscles? Like what happened. He's like that David statue or something." His audience eyed each other, and Bane sensed what they were thinking and added, "I heard someone in the club say it yesterday! Look it up!"
"Nah, I know what the David statue looks like," one said, "It's just a bit…"
"It's true though," Bane said, with a shrug, and they nodded along with him. Outside, when Hikaru turned to see him approaching, he said, "Hey there, Davide!" and the club members around them snickered.
Davide didn't talk at all on the way home. Bane flicked on his bedside lamp when he was sure his parents would be sleeping. He took the paper from his bag - the statue of David - and… and held it in front of his face. He couldn't ignore how goddamn conscious this was, how deliberate. But the smooth lines of muscles in the marble looked so soft, so lifelike, he was into it, and his body tingled as the blood rushed downwards. His body thundered on, but his mind got lost along the way… Hikaru… Davide… the brightness of his hair, and his lips, and his nipples, blooming redness out of the pale… and for a last explosive moment, he saw himself looking down at Davide from above. Bane pushed his head back in his pillow and let the rush recede again. It was good. Davide, and that statue, it felt good. So that's it. In the silence, Bane's heartbeat sounded so loud, and so calm.
A murmur started around the clubroom as Bane pushed open the door and Davide followed him inside. Bane knew from the smirks and the jeers what this was about. "Mornin'! I brought Mr. Popular with me," he said, grinning over his shoulder at Davide. Davide shrugged his bag higher onto his shoulder, glancing at his feet. That afternoon, the clubroom was buzzing with jokes about the David statue, but Davide wasn't there. And at night, when Bane's house was quiet and dark, he imagined Davide was with him, and strained that nickname against his clenched teeth.
"He's already gone," Cherie said, tilting her head until it leaned against the door frame, "Oh, Haru-chan, I thought that he had gone to you. And he has not?" She hummed to herself with concern. "Are you having a fight?"
"I didn't think so," Bane said, "I mean, we walked to school like normal yesterday, so…"
"I thought my sweet boy seemed upset," she said, placing her hand softly to her cheek, "I should have had a talk to him." The next door down opened, and the neighbour rushed out to his car, waving briefly at Cherie as he went. "You will be late!" she said, ushering Bane out the gate with a gentle push. "Don't fight with Hikaru, okay? Have a good day!"
After practise, Davide disappeared somewhere. The cubbyhole he used was empty. Bane peered over at it and frowned. "Is that Davide's? It was empty this morning, too," Icchan said, over Bane's shoulder. Bane turned to him and saw that Icchan was offering him a glass of water from the kitchen space. Icchan caught his look and said, "Oh, I thought it's been getting a bit warm for tea. Here," The outside of the glass was wet from condensation. "Yeah, it was weird, I saw Davide running in to stuff his uniform in it before we got on the courts. Did he wear his jersey to school today?"
Bane took a hard gulp on the cold water - which his lungs immediately regretted - in order to answer. He coughed to clear his throat and said, "Well, I dunno. We didn't walk together today..."
"Oh," Icchan said, puffing out a deep breath through his nose as he considered. "Maybe he jogged to school today! Maybe he's training extra hard to beat Goliath!" Bane spluttered on his water again, and Icchan thumped his back for him. "You okay? But, wow, that nickname really is great for him, isn't it!"
The morning's classes were a distant droning of English phrases and chemical elements. Bane doodled cocks on his paper and pretended to listen. He used to do this all the time, and no wonder. He bit the inside of his lip and sighed. Class was dismissed for lunch, and Shudoh pulled his chair over, nodding at Bane's notebook. "That a to-scale drawing?"
"Of yours, maybe," Bane said, punching Shudoh on the shoulder. Shudoh helped himself to one of Bane's pens and pulled the notebook closer. Over his head, Bane just caught sight of Davide watching them from the classroom door. "Oi! Get over here!" Bane called, as Davide had turned to leave. He flinched, and reluctantly made his way through the desks.
"There, NOW it's a to-scale drawing of my dick!" Shudoh said, proudly revealing a tiny dot he'd drawn, with an arrow leading off it towards the words 'blue whale'. Davide brought a nearby chair up to the desk.
Bane laughed. "You labelled it wrong, dude," and he scribbled it out to write 'Sato's dick' just above. He gave Shudoh time to recover by flashing Davide a welcoming smile, but Davide glanced away quickly.
"You wanna go right here, man? You wanna take this to the men's room?" Shudoh slapped his pen onto the desk with the palm of his hand and made to stand up, "Or the little boy's room, in your case. Emphasis on little."
"Yo, chill out, Davide just got here," as he said it, Bane heard Davide click his tongue and he shuddered with displeasure.
"Ah, well he can wait here!" Shudoh drew himself up to his full height, pulling at his belt with both his thumbs. He smirked down at Davide, "I mean, I know HE's no competition. If the David statue's anything to go by!" The chair scraped the floor as Davide stood up and turned away from them, "Hey, I'm only kidding!" Shudoh said, and Bane jumped to his feet and caught Davide's wrist.
"Where are you going?" Bane said, in a surprisingly ordinary way. The room was silent, and awkward, and Bane let go of Davide. Davide didn't move, except to rub his wrist. "Sorry," Bane said, hoping his classmates who were gossiping across the room weren't gossiping about him.
"Lunch, I'm getting--" and Davide cut himself off to cough, but still his voice scratched as he finished, "I'm getting some food." That explanation was satisfactory, too satisfactory for Bane to contradict him, or force him to stay. Bane let his shoulders drop, and Davide moved back towards the door.
"Hey! Come to mine tonight?" Bane called after him. Davide turned to him, considered, and then nodded, and it was only then that Bane realised what he had said. He grit his teeth and screwed his eyes shut, rubbing at his temples with one hand. Davide spending the night with him. In his room. The way he had every other night since they were five, and yet Bane felt his body anticipating--
"What was that about? You look like you got kicked in the nuts, dude," Shudoh said. Bane looked up at him, toying with the idea of asking for a solid kick, save him from any embarrassing bodily functions. Then he remembered that it was Sato he was dealing with. Poor thing doesn't need a broken foot.
Davide was not in the clubroom. Bane had poked his head around the door of class 2B on his way out, and Davide certainly wasn't sitting around there to count the chimes. His cubbyhole was still empty, and beside it, Saeki kept up a lively chat about great renaissance artists to a captive, and snickering, audience. Bane waited for Saeki to catch his breath, before interrupting, "You seen 'im?"
Saeki took a moment to register the question, then his eyes lit up. He glanced around at the members of his gathering, and then back at Bane. "Good timing, Bane! Thing is, we're waiting to see him, too. We just came up with a joke that he's going to love--"
"So you haven't seen him?"
Saeki withdrew slightly, "Well, no… Nobody's seen him in the clubroom since yesterday." Bane frowned at him, so Saeki added, "Ah, well obviously he's still showing up for practise, so really we'll just tell him outside. Just taking shelter from the sun in here…" A nervous laugh went around the group as Bane made a sharp turn for the door.
One stall in the men's room was closed, and the shuffles from within it stopped as soon as Bane entered. Bane nodded to himself, weighing up the pros and cons, and then he slammed his fist against the stall door. "Davide, open up, I know that's you." Silence. "I'm not above peeking over there, dammit, open up," his words began to trail off into silence again, so he added, "Hikaru. Please, Hikaru." There was reluctance in the sound of the door unlatching and pulling inwards. Davide was there, in his shorts and with his gakuran and trousers crumpled in a pile on top of his bag. He'd managed two buttons on his shirt before the interruption and now stared down at them almost wistfully.
Bane closed himself into the stall and locked it. Crammed together like that, Bane felt Davide's self-consciousness was catching, and he scratched at the base of his neck while he gathered his thoughts. Davide crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the floor.
"Why are you getting changed in the toilet? Something happen?" The way Davide breathed told Bane he was listening, but wasn't going to answer any time soon. "'Cause like. If someone's giving you trouble, you know I'll kick the shit outta them?"
"It's not like that," Davide said after a pause, without offering to explain what it was like.
"Is it the Davide thing?" Bane said, as if he knew the answer, and Davide shuffled his feet. "You don't like it? What's wrong with it?" Davide looked up at him, raising his hands to help him articulate… but after a second his fingers curled into his palms and the energy faded from his gesture. "Nobody's saying it to pick on you!" Bane said, throwing him a line.
"They're making fun of me," Davide said weakly, eyes back on the floor. "I know why they say it. It's because my body's all--" and his voice crackled into a cough, cutting off his sentence. "And now," he continued, hoarsely, "everyone keeps staring at me, and it's embarrassing."
Davide couldn't bring himself to look Bane in the face. Bane reached out to pat Davide's shoulder. "So you got your growth spurt, so what? I did," somehow this inspired Davide to raise his eyes from the floor. Bane smirked. Yep, the hormones have been working overtime recently, that's for sure. "Nobody thinks you look weird, man."
"I do. I think I look weird," Davide was going to look down at the floor again, Bane could just feel it, so he grabbed Davide's shoulders tightly and shook him.
"You don't! You wanna know why they call you 'Davide'? It's because you're attractive!"
Davide's eyes widened, and the change in the air made Bane retract his hands and turn away. Bane scratched at the back of his head, trying to be casual, and when he looked at Davide again, Davide was smoothing the hair behind his ear and fiddling with the tips. They looked at each other. Then, almost like their consciousness of each other weighed them down, they each made a show of removing their hands from their hair. A full, slow minute passed before Davide managed to say, "I see," and then, for a lack of anything else, he added, "thanks."
I see, thanks.
Bane's head pounded like it longed to meet a brick wall. Repeatedly. He said, "You know what I mean," but Davide was holding his chin, thinking, and didn't feel the need to respond. "It's fine, I won't call you 'Davide' if you don't like it," Bane's face felt hot and it made his words sound angrier than he would've liked.
"It's okay!" Davide said, suddenly eager, "if that's why, you can call me that." He fiddled with his fingers and looked at the stall's wall. Bane followed the line of his gaze. Graffiti. And tomorrow would Bane find his name there, too? But Davide packed away his clothes and got ready to move, actually humming to himself. "Shall we go? To club?" He said. A puppy would wag its tail less enthusiastically than the way Davide opened the door and rushed out of it. And after practise, Davide stood in the centre of the club room, mimicking the famous statue pose for all who would ask, with pride in his chest.
His bedroom door was still open a crack, and a rectangle of light from inside spilled out onto the dark of the landing. Bane pushed it wider with his hip, careful not to spill the full glasses of milk he was carrying. Davide looked up at him from the magazine he was reading, and took one of the glasses from him. Bane sat on his bed and settled into the corner between his headboard and the wall. Without thinking, he'd turned on that tacky lamp to light his way to the kitchen, and when he passed back through with the drinks, something about it made him notice it.
"Davi," he said, and for a moment he felt the last syllable hang awkwardly in the air, but Davide made a sound to show he was listening, "did you ever notice how ugly that lamp is in our living room?" A few seconds passed before Davide raised his eyes from what he was reading.
"The blue one?" Bane nodded. Davide stared dead ahead, blankly. "I like it. It really… brightens my day. Pfft!"
Bane swung his foot to kick at Davide's magazine; Davide lost his grip on it and it fell to the floor, half beneath Bane's bed. "I bet you don't even remember seeing it! You just said it to make a pun." Davide placed his glass on Bane's nightstand, and then reached beneath Bane's bed for the magazine.
"Alright, Bane-san. Please don't lamp me." He laughed and ducked his head low to the ground to dodge Bane's foot. When he recovered himself and sat up, magazine in hand, he said, "Ah!" suddenly, and before Bane had time to ask, he said, "It's nothing."
Bane's mom knocked on the door - bed time - and they made themselves comfortable. Bane punched his pillow to plump it out, and Davide drew his blanket up to his shoulders. Bane waited with his hand on the light switch, looking down over the side of his bed at Davide for a cue to flick the switch. The stillness after the lights went out made Bane self-conscious. He rolled over onto his side, facing the wall away from Davide.
"Bane-san?" Davide said in a whisper. Bane moved onto his back again to show he was still awake. "Bane-san, did you come up with the Davide thing?"
"No," Bane said, relieved that Davide couldn't see his face. Davide always spotted his lies a mile off. "I told you, I just heard someone in the club saying it." Davide didn't respond, or correct him. "Why?" he said, peeking over the edge of his bed.
In the darkness, he made out Davide's shape in fuzzy grey. Davide pulled up a flat sheet from beside his futon and looked at it. "I found this under your bed," he said. He raised the paper above his head, offering it to Bane. Bane gulped. He didn't need to turn the lamp on to see what was on the page.