driving lesson, rated pg-13. touga/saionji (garbage challenge). post-series. 410 words.

(i can make you clean if you want me to)

Neither one is quite aware whose idea it was. It probably doesn't matter, at least not now as they stand in the park and survey the bike. It is shiny and new, for Touga – being Touga – had insisted on buying the bike precisely for this reason, for this experiment.

Saionji doesn't blame him. In fact, if Touga hadn't got to it before him, he's well aware he probably would have bought the bike himself. It seems appropriate, this new bike, this clean slate.

"Well, get on," Touga says as he holds the bike upright by one handle. "Can't ride it alone, now can I?"

"Touga, you know I can't get on it until you do."

"No," says Touga, rather patiently, "I get on after you. You're driving."

Saionji blinks as he pushes his now short hair away from his face – Touga's is still impossibly red, still impossibly long – and frowns. "What?"

"You're driving," Touga repeats, still with that odd indulgent patience he never really had as a child, a teenager. "I know it's like a trip down memory lane, Saionji, but I want you to drive."

Saionji looks at the shiny new bicycle, and finds that he can't help but start smiling. "I don't know how."

"You've always known how," Touga disagrees with a half-hidden smile of his own, "and can probably do it better than me anyway. But I'll show you how, if you insist."

And so Saionji takes the front of the bike, strong hands unsure as they grip the handle. Touga's hands are much more confident as they grasp about his waist; Saionji can nearly feel his smile as he says "Go!"

And so they whiz through the park, picking up speed as they dodge children and ducks and fountains and trees – two grown men on a grown-up bicycle, riding it like two demented children as they whoop and take corners at silly speeds. Saionji can't help but call back to his companion as they round another: "Why did we never do this when we were kids?"

Touga's shout back is barely audible over the wind pushing against them both, even as they continue to go forward. "Because we were kids, Saionji!"

"Kyouichi," he corrects without even thinking.

"Kyouichi," Touga repeats obediently, and laughs. At least Saionji thinks that he is laughing – it might just be the wind in his ears, blowing them forward and away from all the dust that covers their  childhood so long past.