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"Haru! Hikaru's here!"
Bane jumped up, stuffing the magazine back down the gap between his mattress and the wall. The door clicked open behind him, and he wheeled round and planted his back firmly over the place where the corner of the pages were sticking out. Davide blinked at him, and he found himself giving a lame hand signal and saying,
"Yo, what's up?" It didn't seem to make him any less suspicious.
Davide closed the door softly behind him, and then stood still just inside the doorway, swinging his arms awkwardly. And then he said, "I came to hang out."
"Sure," Bane said, wriggling a little, hoping he could push the magazine down with his tailbone.
"What were you doing?" Davide said, after a pause.
"Nothing really! Reading…"
"What were you re-"
"So you wanna go somewhere or what?" Bane leaned forward emphatically.
Davide looked down at the carpet - all that dog hair - and then he raised his eyes and glanced out of the window on the far wall. He shuffled, folding his right thumb into his palm, and then he looked up with decision. And sat himself on the edge of the bed, next to Bane.
"You wanna stay here?" Bane said, the pressure of hiding the magazine making the final word heavy. Davide tilted his head. "Nah, I mean, sure we can…"
From the side, and with the sunlight coming in from the window ahead of them, Davide's face looked so strong and charming. His eyelashes were pretty long, and in this light Bane could just see that they were slightly red. In fact, all the curls of hair that fell beside his face seemed so much brighter, and his skin was clear and white… Davide peeked at Bane from the corner of his eyes, and even this was handsome. When Davide turned his body towards Bane, he shifted and their legs brushed up against each other. Seriously that was a completely accidental and completely platonic kind of touching and Bane would be damned if he was gonna think too hard about it.
"Um," Davide said, unable to make eye contact while he spoke, "That festival, that was fun." THAT festival. "…Wasn't it?" he added.
Really, Bane had been spending the last two weeks trying not to remember the damned festival. Seeing Davide on that night was like being hit by a truck. He went into cruise control or something, and like a total dweeb he'd lacked the balls to say something Kentaroh had just blurted out within a second of seeing Davi. And then those goddamn fireworks…
He was frowning, and Davide had seen him frowning and was now looking totally dejected. "I guess," Bane said quickly, "I dunno, I just feel like I didn't get to do anything…" Davide looked at the floor and ran his fingers through the hair just behind his ear.
"I liked… the fireworks."
Bane felt his cheeks burn up. It was a coincidence, he was probably bringing it up to make a pun or something, but Bane was back on autopilot. He'd been thrown a line, and he couldn't stop himself. "Yeah, but then Ken showed up and we didn't get to do anything after that…" Davide's hair was falling a little way over his eyes as he looked down, and Bane couldn't read his reaction. Damn it suddenly got hard to breathe! Bane tried to ease himself backwards with a casual sigh, but he felt the corner of the magazine tickle his back and stopped still.
"Um," Davide said, suddenly thinking nothing of the eye contact thing, "Before Ke--"
The door swung open. "Hey kids!" She smiled at them. Davide nodded at her briefly, before looking away.
"Mom," Bane said. He had noticed the something folded under her arm, but wasn't in the mood for it, whatever it was.
"Gosh, you can be such a teenager some days, Haru!" He grunted at her, so she laughed and pushed what she'd brought into his hands. "Guess what I just found."
However you looked at it, it was a photo album. Bane wiped the dust off the cover and it came away in huge clumps on his fingertips. "What is it?" he said, as he opened the first page. The photos were sticky, maybe even a little bit mouldy at the corners, and every single one featured two chubby-faced kids in a variety of outdated clothing.
"Don't you remember! This one's your photo album - Hikaru as well," she added, and Davide looked up nervously and tried to peer over Bane's shoulder at the album. "We used to take pictures all the time! Makes me think, we should take some more pictures of Aki, or he'll feel left out when he's older."
"Trust me, he'll be grateful you didn't," Bane said, but he didn't look up from the photographs.
"When you're done looking at it, put it in the kitchen for me? I've gotta show your dad when he gets home." She clapped her hands as she left.
"Fat chance, I'm burning this!" Bane called after her, but once she had gone, he let his shoulders relax, and held the album open between himself and Davide.
"These are awful," he said, fondly. He brushed some lint off the page, and let his fingertip linger on one of the pictures. Haru was at the front, grinning away, with his neck stretched up and on tip-toe, trying to make himself look as big as possible, and Hikaru was there, behind him. Barely visible, looking like he was gonna cry, almost exactly like a cartoon picture of a cherub. "You used to be so afraid of my mom, do you remember that?" Bane laughed a little, recalling it. His mom would come out with the camera, asking them to give a big, big smile, but Hikaru would skittle away and hide behind him. He would every time a grown-up got near them, even though he was lively enough most of the time.
On another page, they found a photograph that had been doodled on, for some reason. It was a picture of the two of them sleeping on the floor of Davide's living room, carefully covered up with a blanket. Bane squinted at the letters: "They turn into angels when they fall asleep!" and another, "They finally wore each other out!"
"I think mama wrote that," Davide said.
"Must've traded pictures with my mom," Bane said, shuddering a bit, "man I didn't even know they took this picture." Of course there was nothing weird about them taking a nap together, but Bane felt embarrassed anyway. "Can you imagine doing that now," he said, without fishing for an answer.
"Yes," Davide said. Bane turned to look at him, but Davide didn't seem flustered at all. Damn it! Because Bane WAS flustered, he realised as he scratched the back of his neck, and he could imagine doing that now, too. In fact, he was, but he didn't imagine sleeping. They finally wore each other out. He snorted, and Davide probably caught him grinning. Davide fidgeted, seeming pleased, and then he said, "Looking at photographs has left me feeling EXPOSED, so I'm going to dive for covers," Bane elbowed him in the ribs, so he corrected himself, "…I'll take a nap in your bed."
It was clear where this was going, so Bane stood up and let Davide flop over onto his pillow. "Gonna put this downstairs," he said, waving the album in the air. When he'd climbed the stairs and pushed open the door to his room again, Davide jumped, apparently startled. And that was when Bane remembered the damn magazine.