After the meal, the four of them started with their usual evening routine: persuading Sakura to go to bed at a sensible time for a nine year old. She'd always taken exception to having a different bedtime to her siblings, especially Takumi, even though he was six damn years older than her.

Hinoka had college work to do, so she shut herself in her room for the evening, and Ryoma was busy sorting out adult things that Takumi had no wish to be lectured about. That, however, meant that he was left alone with Leo until they were both tired enough to sleep.

"Didn't you get up pretty early today?" Takumi asked. "We're getting up early tomorrow so you should probably sleep."

"I'm not tired," Leo said, rooting around in his suitcase for something. From what he knew of Leo, it was probably some vaguely pointy object that he could threaten Takumi with. Or, as it turned out to be, a thick book written in German that looked both old and mind-numbingly dull. Of course Leo would be the type of person to read books like that. He probably read encyclopaedias for fun.

"Chikushō," Takumi said, intentionally not saying it in a language Leo could understand. Leo didn't even look up from his boring German book, so Takumi got the book he was reading off his bedside table. Back to exactly what he'd been doing when waiting for Leo to get here, it seemed.

He managed to read for all of ten minutes before getting bored. "Come on, Leo, isn't there anything else you'd rather do? If I have to have you here for a whole week, you could at least make an effort to talk to me."

"I don't have to," he said. "You don't want to talk to me, I don't want to talk to you." It was true, of course, but that didn't mean that Ryoma would be any less disappointed in him. He'd wanted Takumi to be nice to Leo at all times and he'd even said that he'd hoped they would become friends, seeing as they'd gotten on quite well over email.

"How do you know I don't want to talk to you?" Takumi glanced around, struggling to find something that he could possibly ask about. "Um...what are you reading? It looks...interesting...?"

Leo snorted. "No it doesn't. You don't even know what it is." Takumi looked again at the cover and managed to work it out.

"It's a chess strategy book," he said. Boring. Chess was dull and no one had ever been willing to teach it to him properly as a child. His mother had taught him how to play shogi, but none of his siblings had ever wanted to learn. "I don't know how to play chess, sorry."

Leo looked like he had been personally slighted by those words. "You don't know how to play chess?"

"It isn't a game I've ever been around," Takumi admitted. Judging from Leo's facial expression, Takumi had to wonder if he was going to pull a full-size chess set out of his arse and insist that Takumi learn to play it with him. Hmm. Maybe that was why he was so grumpy- having something like that stuck up there would be enough to put anyone in a bad mood.

Much to his surprise, however, the chess set didn't come from Leo's butt, but it came, in fact, from the depths of his bag. Trust Leo to bring a stupid chess set in his bag. Who even played chess when they went on an exchange trip anyway?

"I'm going to teach you to play." Leo set it down on the mattress in front of him, pointing over at where he wanted Takumi to sit. "And you're going to like it. I promise." His words sounded more like a threat than a promise, but Takumi wisely chose not to comment. "Okay," he said, setting the pieces out in a line along the board. "This is a pawn. From the start, you can move it forwards by one or two, and after that only one. It can take other pieces, but only diagonally." And he went on like that for what must have been hours, in Takumi's perception. Chess wasn't exactly boring, but it was damn complicated. He was half sure that all these rules were going in one ear and out the other, and when Leo finally suggested that they play a proper game, Takumi had to hold back a groan. "I'll let you play with the white pieces," Leo offered, sounding as if he was being incredibly generous. "White moves first, so technically you get a slight advantage."

And so they played chess. Briefly, because Leo beat him within about ten minutes. Probably less, Takumi just decided it was ten because it hurt his pride slightly less. "You're not awful for a beginner," Leo said, and Takumi felt like that was the biggest compliment that had ever left Leo's mouth. Ever.

"You're probably pretty good at it," he said, not wanting to sound like he was too impressed by the level of precision of Leo's setups. Leo might get an even larger head if he gave a direct compliment.

"I am. I play for my school, I've won regional tournaments." Leo gave a smug smile. "I am going to be playing in a national tournament in the summer, so it's important that I practise as much as possible. And even beating a beginner like you counts as practise."

It seemed that Leo didn't need compliments from other people to inflate his ego. Apparently he could just do it with his own compliments. "That's cool," he said, trying not to sound too impressed. "I compete in national archery tournaments."

"Oh? Have you ever won?" Leo propped his head on his hands, looking vaguely interested. "Do you have your bow at home? I'd like to see it- I mean, it would be sort of cool. I guess."

"Yes, I won last year, and this year's is in a couple of months, just before I come to Germany," he said, gently pushing the chess board away so he could get up to get his bow. "You'll have to come outside to see it, it's in the shed in the garden, mum never, um, she never lets, let me have it in the house. Um."

"I haven't seen my mother for five years," Leo said, being incredibly insensitive.

Takumi wanted to comment in return, but he didn't feel like going through all of that this evening. "Hmm," was all he said instead. Then, "Why not? Is she dead?" He figured that Leo would probably be over it if it had been five years. Leo had probably been over it after five minutes.

"She left," he shrugged. "Maybe she's dead, I don't care. She abandoned us when my little sister was four and she never came back." And he was left with a father who Leo never ever talked about, a four year old sister, a brother who 'preserves sensibility over sense', maybe literature was something else they could talk about, and a sister who now runs the household, but at the time she couldn't have been that old.

"Hmm. Okay." Takumi didn't question any further, even though he was insanely curious. He only hoped that Leo didn't ask about Takumi's mother, now. "Um...anyway...do you still want to see my bow?"

"I guess," Leo said, which meant yes, because he'd never admit to actually wanting something that Takumi could provide. It was sort of hard to dislike him when he wasn't being outwardly rude.

"Okay, but we have to be quiet, Sakura is sleeping." Probably, if she wasn't reading about medicine or whatever nerd stuff she did when no one else was looking.

"Alright." Leo stood up, making his way to Takumi's door on surprisingly stealthy feet. Takumi followed, leading the way quietly down the stairs and out through the kitchen towards the back door. Ryoma was still up in the living room, looking half asleep and reading something that seemed important. If he noticed Leo and Takumi, he didn't comment on it.

Takumi opened the shed door with a little more ceremony than was necessary. "This is mine," he said, indicating his bow. He realised now that it probably looked a tiny bit silly, because it had been painted gold and blue. He liked it this way. "It's called the Fujin Yumi, it means holy bow."

"That sounds like a name my friend Odin would come up with," Leo said, smiling again. He was clearly impressed by the bow, though. Most people were. It was large, and beautiful, if Takumi said so himself. He was the one who had customised it to actually look nice, unlike the cheap crappy plastic bows that half the people he knew used. He loved it, it was his single favourite thing that he owned.

"It's very important to me," Takumi said firmly. He walked over to his bow, running a gentle hand along the curve of it. He would never let any harm come to his precious bow. Ever. Leo's chess set was replaceable, he probably had several at home, but this bow was not. "It was really hard to make properly."

"I can see that," Leo said, looking at the bow but not moving to touch it. Takumi was fairly impressed that he knew not to. "My friend Niles is interested in archery, but I think he does it just so he can make corny jokes."

Judging from what Takumi had heard so far of this Niles, he was not going to be allowed within ten metres of his precious bow. Neither was Odin- he seemed the type to pick it up and wave it around whilst spouting rubbish about how good it looked.

"Should we try and go to sleep now?" Takumi asked, putting the bow away carefully. "London is pretty far away and Hinoka wants to leave before ten." Leo nodded, so they both went back inside. Ryoma was gone by this point, probably to the makeshift study in the corner of his bedroom, but they tried to be quiet anyway.

Perhaps Leo wasn't SO bad, Takumi found himself thinking. He was arrogant and could absolutely be obnoxious an awful lot of the time, but he was interesting. And he knew not to touch Takumi's bow, which was pretty important.

And when Takumi woke up at two in the morning, Leo might have been staring at him as he tried to calm down, but no comments were made about it, so maybe he wasn't that bad at all.