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Bane looked for a moment as if he thought he had been waiting at the wrong house entirely. His mouth gaped slightly, his brow was furrowed, he moved his head from side to side. Davide cast a quick glance down at his own outfit, then looked back at Bane. So you’ve cottoned on. But Bane just said, “You ready?” and grinned at him. He nodded.
The air felt thick and heavy with the heat, and it seemed to pad out the silence between them. Davide raised his eyes to take in the brilliant, darkening blue of the sky - the tip of his ponytail tickled his neck when he moved his head - and as he did, he could half-see Bane turn to look at him. On the verge of saying something, thinking it’s going to be random, out of the blue. Davide checked by looking at Bane; he said nothing after all, and they continued to walk towards the bright orange lights ahead of them.
It wasn’t hard to find everyone. Davide felt people stirring as he passed, and wherever that happened, he knew his presence couldn’t be missed. They caught sight of Kentaroh, jumping around and yelling to them, and he seemed to bounce even higher when they reached him. He gasped loudly and whizzed about like a balloon deflating, “Davide you look so cool! Is that new!?”
"That couldn’t be father from the truth. That is to say, it used to be my dad’s."
"It really suits you!" Kentaroh screwed his eyes shut and gave a puppy whine. "I bet you’ll have a date by the end of the night…"
"You think that. But dates are your raisin d’etre." Davide chuckled, but then he added quietly, "…like the dried fruits…" As his words trailed off, everyone turned to look at Bane. He had been watching the conversation, but sensing that the focus had shifted to him, he frowned and smiled with polite confusion.
"Woah, Bane, you sick or something?"
"He’s probably just tired," Icchan reassured Shudoh. "I’m getting sleepy already," he said, yawning.
"Then, let’s decide what to do!!" Kentaroh said. Icchan and Shudoh wanted to try the food before the stalls ran out of the good stuff. The twins wanted to try the games, and Kentaroh was adamant that he should stay with Saeki no matter what, because he would be sure to meet a girl like that.
Bane gave Davide a keen look and said, “What should we do?” And Davide bit down on his lip because right then, he could think of a few things they could do together. Alone. “We’ll just be wandering around,” Bane said, and everyone nodded and went off in their different directions.
With the crowds around them, Davide was aware of how closely they had to walk together. If he watched his own footsteps, out of the corner of his eye he could see Bane looking at him. There was something on Bane’s mind, Davide was sure of it, and he felt a knot in his stomach when he let himself consider what that something might be. Even though what ever it was, it was knot that, and getting tangled up in his own fantasies would just serve to string himself along. Bane led them up to a few stalls, but he only glanced over the heads of the people surrounding them, barely making any effort to be interested. He was going to have to say what he was thinking; it was pretty obvious he was only stalling. Bane sighed, and gently grabbed Davide’s wrist, pulling him down the side of a stall.
"Hey, um… Listen," Bane said, but he seemed to have lost what he was going to say, and he searched about for it with his eyes. Behind them, there was the distinctive sound of a familiar, familial soft laughter.
"Oh! It’s Bane!" Atsushi said, and the twins looked at each other. "Thank goodness!" they said, in unison.
"Come on, Bane, we need your powers," Ryoh said. Bane let his shoulders droop, and gave Davide an exasperated look while the twins weren’t watching.
"Come on, it’s a game where you throw a baseball at stuff," Atsushi said, as he circled around to Bane’s left arm, and with Ryoh taking the right, they ushered him out to the stall. "It’s perfect for you!" they said, at once.
Davide trailed behind them, keeping a standoffish distance away. The twins pushed and pulled at Bane, and the three of them chatted and laughed together at the counter of the stall. Davide felt like his stomach-knot was corroding rapidly in a pool of venom that seethed through him. He grit his teeth and kicked a stone on the ground, and cursed himself for giving into his silly thoughts for even a moment. There was a crash, and some cheering, and then Bane said, “Gimme the bunny.” Davide’s curiosity got the better of him. He looked up, and got a face full of stuffed toy. “This is that bunny you like, right? Here,” Davide took the toy into his arms, and squeezed it tight as Bane stomped back over to the twins.
He’d forgotten himself for a moment. He forgot that the people who turned their heads when they passed him were seeing this lanky teenage boy cuddling a stuffed animal. It was a brotherly thing, probably just a thing Bane would do for his brother, too, probably not at all significant, but Davide couldn’t stop the thoughts from fizzing and popping in his mind like soda bubbles. This was textbook festival date. He looked down into the eyes of the toy, and through his excitement, the little bead eyes seemed to say calmly, ‘Don’t be too hop-ful. Don’t jump to conclusions.’ But all the little bunny’s reasoning faded when Bane returned.
"You like it?" He said, nodding at the doll and grinning. Davide nodded his own head quite mechanically. "Good! You looked pretty bummed out before, so…" by now, they were walking a little way from the crowds, towards a sheltered seating area. Davide pushed a loose curl of hair behind his ear, knowing that Bane would be watching him. He hadn’t missed a second of Davide’s jealous tantrum; Bane looked out for him, Bane understood all his little signs and gestures. He felt butterflies, he felt excited and weak, and he felt that maybe Bane knew all this as well.
"What were you going to say? …Before?" His words always sounded clumsy, but they were easy enough to say when nothing needed to be hidden.
"Oh, just…" Bane held his sentence until they passed a table of festival-goers, and crossed out of the seating area altogether. "Y’know, just what Ken said, really." He sounded casual, but he moved his head in all directions, looking for people. Deciding where to go. Davide kept quiet, following Bane down a deserted path. The sound of the waves got louder as the festival hubbub subsided.
Bane halted at a lonely place on the cliff-side. He leant his palms against the cliff wall, and peered down at the sea below. Davide could see from the sloping paths leading down to the sand, that a group of people were working by the glow of festival lanterns, a small distance away along the beach. Bane tensed his shoulders, and then let them drop; with a sudden energy, he turned on his heel and faced Davide, swinging his arms restlessly.
"I uh. I remembered seeing your dad wearing that, y’know," no matter where Bane looked, he didn’t manage to look at Davide’s face, "but hey, it really looks good on you." Davide felt like his limbs had stopped working, but the fire in the pit of his stomach burned vigorously. Bane scratched at his hair, and said, casually, "Well, you look like a model or somethin’, so, yeah…"
He remembered it then, of all times. Back in the spring, shutting himself in the toilet stall and Bane barging in on him. It connected up in Davide’s mind, that image of Bane yelling, “It’s because you’re attractive!” and this moment, right now. Fireworks shot up from the beach, and the explosions made them jump. Davide looked up to see the bursts of red and white glimmering and fading in the night, a lock of his hair falling out of place and over his face as he did. It was Bane’s hand that brushed it away for him, tidying it away behind his ear, and when they looked at each other then it was as if some rule had been broken.
Bane looked surprised, himself, but he didn’t draw his hand away. He stepped closer. They got closer to each other. Davide could feel it, his defence was broken, now. He peeked out under his eyelashes, his eyelids barely open, and that was Bane’s breath on his face…
"Bane-san!! Ah!" Bane retreated quickly and turned towards the voice. "Oh phew! It’s just Davide! I thought for a minute you’d hooked up with someone too, and I was intruding!" Kentaroh began an animated retelling of how Saeki had been dragged off by someone-or-other, how he just knew it, how he was jealous, and how he came to find them instead, and wow, aren’t the fireworks pretty from up here. Davide remembered bitterly that this was the reality he lived in, and re-tied his ponytail. "It’s kinda romantic, isn’t it," Kentaroh said in a wistful voice.
"I guess so," Bane said hollowly.
When they got to the crossroad between their houses on the way home, Bane had hesitated, but in the end he said his normal, cheerful goodbye. With the door to his room shut behind him, Davide let his frustration explode. He’d given himself up. The one thing he was never going to do, the one thing he would never show, and he had, in an instant. He should’ve listened to the bunny. Despite himself, his heart leapt when he saw the bunny sitting on his bed, so he hugged it to his chest and flopped over onto his mattress. He wasn’t going to take any of it back. Right there in that moment there had most definitely been… fireworks. He hid his smirk in the bunny’s fur. And if it’s a fight you want, Bane-san, it’s a fight you’ll get.