"Bane-san," said Davide one day after practice as they took down the nets. "Are you free on Saturday?"

Bane shook out his end of the net and considered his woefully empty schedule. "Yeah, I suppose I am. Why?" Davide walked over to join their halves of the net together, then looked up at Bane.

"Would you go on a date with me?"

Bane stared at his junior, who just looked back at him placidly, waiting for a reply. "I, uh," he stammered intelligently. "Uh, no?"

Davide smiled. "OK." He took Bane's half of the net. "It was hypothetical," he said, and walked off, folding the rest of the net on his own.

Bane blinked, and replayed the scene in his head. Davide had asked him for a date. He had said... no. And Davide was now making bad puns about tennis balls at Ryou, who had been tasked with collecting them. Should he have said yes? Bane mulled this over, and decided that it didn't really matter.

The weather cooled even further, and the leaves started turning colour and fluttering to the ground to join their already-fallen comrades. The team's list of chores around the courts grew to include raking the leaves, because there were enough trees to cover the courts if the leaves were not taken care of. Davide, as the baby of the regulars, was usually pinned to the ground and buried under a shower of previously-collected leaves. Bane often found himself observing how Davide blended in with the autumn colours, and more than often had to go stick his head under the taps to stop himself from thinking about Davide's tan lines.

As the trees slowly lost all their blazing crowns, Bane found himself with something else to deal with: a girl named Hiroko who had somehow become his girlfriend. She was playing Juliet opposite Saeki's Romeo in the annual school play, and Bane had sat in on a rehearsal once. Hiroko had sounded a bit hoarse, so Bane had bought her a drink, and now the whole school was of the opinion that they were dating, or that they at least had a certain interest for each other.

All that, Bane could have smiled and shrugged off. The point was that Hiroko seemed to think so, too.

"Kurobane-senpai!"

"Aa, Hiroko... hello."

Hiroko wasn't the pushy kind of girl who pressed themselves against you and demanded you treat them to a certain dessert or catch them a toy in that machine there, now, don't you love me? Instead, she was cheerful and kind of sweet, and Bane supposed his luck could have been a lot worse. At least his sudden girlfriend was someone he liked well enough.

"Amane-kun asked if I would pass this to you when I saw you during lunch," Hiroko continued, tugging an envelope out of her folder and handing it to Bane, who accepted it with thanks, and passed her a piece of shrimp from his own bento. It seemed like the right thing to do, like a sort of thank you token for constantly playing messenger between him and Davide, who was Hiroko's classmate.

He didn't expect the high-pitched squeals from behind him as his female classmates starting exclaiming that he was so sweet, and how they wished they had a boyfriend like Kurobane-kun, too.

"Aah, wha-- I don't..." But they wouldn't listen. Bane didn't quite understand the fuss; why did everyone make such a big deal about his being a nice guy? He glanced at Hiroko, who was staring at the shrimp on top of her own lunch and blushing.

Hiroko was a great girl, smart and funny and really quite pretty, and Bane got along with her very well, but he really didn't want to date anyone. Plus, her smile didn't make Bane shift in his seat, and she didn't take Bane's words and beat them over the figurative head with a big lame stick, nor did she... Bane paused in his thoughts and realised what the problem was.

Trying to convince his problem that there was a problem, however, was another problem altogether.

"Hello, Bane-san," said Davide mildly as Bane approached. "Where's Hiroko?"

"She's not attached to me, you know," Bane replied crossly. He'd just spent half his history lesson fending off teasing from various classmates.

Davide looked at him through a mess of red hair; he had obviously rushed to school that morning without his usual half hour of styling. "I thought she was, Kurobane-senpai," he murmured around his water bottle. Still, he didn't protest as Bane fell into step with him, even though he knew Bane lived across town from him.

Bane stuck his hands in his pockets. "That's the problem," he found himself saying. "She - and the rest of the school - seems to think I'm her boyfriend, but I don't like her in that way." He paused. "And I have no idea how to tell her that without hurting her."

Davide dragged a hand through his hair. "Well, ain't that a kick in the head, Bane-san," he said at length. "Still, it won't hurt to just give the whole thing a chance, right? You two do look pretty good together."

They walked on with only the rustling of trees in the breeze punctuating their silence. "How's Muu-chan?" Bane asked, knowing how mundane a question it was but asking it anyway. The cat was, in a sense, theirs, and Bane had been told to start off with something more open-ended than the weather. He had, after all, been coached by Saeki and Ryou in the Ways of Conducting A Proper Conversation Involving You and 'Someone Else', Open-Close Inverted Commas. Up to now, he still wasn't sure if their 'Someone Else' had been referring to Hiroko or Davide.

Davide brightened, and swung his bottle from its yellow plastic strap around his wrist. Bane had never asked why the bottle had a yellow strap even though the thing itself was purple. "Muu-chan's doing great," he enthused. "It tends to eat my homework, though."

"It?" Hearing Davide refer to the cat as an 'it' was rather surprising, considering how much he loved the animal. "Isn't Muu-chan male?"

Davide stopped in his tracks. "Cats can be male?"

"...what, you thought they were all female?"

"No." There was a lengthy pause. "I didn't know they came in male OR female."

Bane blinked. Then stared. Then began laughing. "Davide, you've had Muu-chan for more than four months, and you never thought to check him... or her... for his sex?"

Davide shifted from foot to foot, and scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "I honestly had no idea."

As they neared Davide's house, Bane decided to ignore Saeki and Ryou's so-called training, and said, "Davide, about that question you asked."

"I've asked you quite a lot of questions. They aren't always noble, though." Then, "Pfft."

"...I didn't even get that one."

"Noble quest-ion, Bane-san."

Bane grabbed Davide around the neck and gave him a noogie. The redhead's hair was messy anyway, so it was free for all. "That's really bad," he griped, but didn't let go. "I meant the question about the date."

"It's the twelfth."

Bane noogied him again. "I meant the one where you asked me on a date, you idiot."

Davide stopped struggling, and Bane let go in surprise. The second year reached up and patted his hair into place, not looking at Bane. "Please don't ask me about that while you're still with Hiroko, Bane-san. It's not fair to her." He sketched a quick bow. "I'll see you tomorrow at morning practice." Then he disappeared past his front gate.

Bane stood there and stared for a very long time before walking slowly home in total confusion.

-

A week later, Bane arrived late for afternoon practice, wrapped in his jacket and track pants. "Sorry I'm late," he muttered brusquely to Ojii and Saeki, who frowned a little but waved him off to do his warm-ups.

"Why the long face?" Itsuki asked and fell into step as Bane jogged past.

"Broke up with Hiroko," Bane replied shortly, and continued pounding along the courts as Itsuki fell back, surprised.

Word spread throughout the second years, regulars and non-regulars alike. Shudou, a stocky second year with cropped blond hair made the mistake of exclaiming, "Bane did what?!" and soon Saeki was surrounded by curious teammates asking what the matter was.

Davide was drifting along the edges of the group, and caught snatches of the conversation. Before he could grab Ryou to clarify, Bane had finished his warm-up laps and was heading towards the group, face stormy. Everyone dispersed.

After practice, Bane disappeared before Davide could talk to him.

The next day, Hiroko told Davide what had happened. "There aren't any hard feelings," she assured the redhead over lunch. "I guess I always knew he wasn't really interested. After all, he treats everyone as nicely without even meaning to." She smiled, and Davide nodded even as Hiroko's smile wobbled.

Then she added, "He seems to like you especially, Amane-kun. Maybe it's because you're his regular doubles partner, ne?"

Davide choked on his rice.

It took another two weeks before Bane let anyone talk to him about anything other than tennis, and the only reason he played doubles with Davide again was because Saeki beat him over the head with his racket and said that he would only start letting Davide play doubles with someone else when Bane had perfected their coordination.

One Friday evening, they left school together, bundled up and heads bowed against the building sea breeze.

Davide's shoes made squeaking sounds as they scuffed against the sand, and after a long stretch of silence he said, "It's not the end of the world, you know."

"Wha?"

"Hiroko," Davide told him. "She's doing perfectly fine, has been since last week. Stop beating yourself up over it. Those were her words, by the way."

"I'm not--"

Davide just looked at him. Bane shrugged and admitted that perhaps he was blaming himself a little too much.

"So... why did you decide to officially put a stop to it?" Davide asked curiously.

"Got tired of it."

"Bane-san..."

"Really."

"Bane-san..."

"You're really annoying."

"Tell me, then."

"Because I think I like you," Bane snapped.

There was a very long pause, in which Bane stared at the waves coming in and wondered how many clams were under the cold water today. Then he considered the clouds over the horizon, and the sun just above them, and was about to turn back to Davide to say something and try to erase what he had said, when a warm weight was against him and slipping around him in a hug.

Bane shut his mouth in surprise.

The hug was extremely awkward because Bane's arms were still in his pockets and pinned to his sides from Davide's embrace, and Davide's voice was muffled by Bane's shoulder due to their height difference, but Bane could hear every word that his junior murmured.

"I think I like you too, Bane-san."

Bane shifted, and managed to extract his arms to hug Davide back. "This is really weird," he said, and turned his face to the side a little. "Your hair smells nice."

Davide made a small sound of acknowledgement, and buried his face in Bane's shoulder. "Now what?" he asked, and Bane could feel his mouth move through his jacket and shirt.

They stood there for a long while, and Bane was strangely thankful that sane people didn't come to the beach in the evenings in this weather. Two teenage boys standing on the sand, wrapped around each other in a tight hug, wasn't quite family-friendly.

"The ice cream place closes at nine," Bane ventured.

Davide let his arms fall and stepped away, and Bane wondered why the air was suddenly so much colder. "Let's go for ice cream," Davide said brightly before setting off down the shore again. Bane followed him, and didn't say anything, just held on tight as Davide grabbed his hand and towed him to the ice cream shop.

-END-