"Okay, everyone into pairs for your hotel rooms." Leo looked over at Takumi and Takumi was looking back at him. They took two careful steps away from each other, even though they both knew how this would turn out. Everyone had their agreed partners already, but it paid to be reluctant.
After a few minutes, Leo and Takumi let out a drawn out sigh in unison and pretended to grudgingly agree to share a room 'just this once, don't you dare get any ideas and try to talk to me'. Leo went as far as to call Takumi a pineapple head, not realising that the insult obviously held no malicious intent if he smiled while he said it.
Once the rooms had been agreed and the key cards distributed, so began the great journey up the four floors to where the rooms were. They practically had the floor to themselves, though they'd been told that despite this, they had to be respectful of those who were in the remaining rooms. The younger choir members sprinted up the stairs, dismayed to find that they could not beat the lift to the top when they were carrying their heavy bags. The older and obviously more mature members took the lift and found great delight in shoving each other against the walls when the person supervising them wasn't looking.
At the floor they were staying on, there was a great rush of who could get to their rooms first and lie down on a bed. Everyone was tired from the journey to the hotel and no one wanted anything more than to take their shoes off and do nothing for at least ten minutes before running down the corridor to knock on every door.
At the entrance to his shared room with Takumi, Leo shot a final 'save me' look at Camilla, who gave him a knowing look and a wink in return. Some half sister she was. He then got the delight of teasing Takumi, who, after a good four years of these trips, could still not use a key card to open a door correctly. "Hopeless," he tutted, grinning as Takumi shot him a glare.
"Prick," came the ever intelligent response, and Leo only laughed in retaliation as he opened the door to the room and they went inside.
"Bagsie the bed against the wall!" He said as soon as the door closed, dropping his bag and sprinting towards the bed that was placed so he'd be able to lean his back against the wall while he slept. He jumped on top of it, spreading his arms and legs so there was no way at all that Takumi could think it was his space.
"Frick off," Takumi said, and Leo heard him take his shoes off before he made his way to the bed opposite where he was lying. "You KNOW I move around in my sleep; this way falling off is twice as likely."
"Balls," Leo said, but he knew Takumi was right. Damn it, now he had to find a way to give the bed to Takumi without him feeling bad. "Have it if it means that much to you." This wouldn't work, but it was worth a shot for a start.
"Nah, it doesn't matter." Takumi started idly playing with the fraying material at the base of his rucksack strap. That meant it did matter, and now Leo felt bad. Damn it, it didn't even matter that much to him. It was a comfort thing, not a fall off the bed and get possible brain damage thing.
"Come on, pineapple head," he tried an encouraging smile in Takumi's direction. If he refused, Leo could break out the other bad nicknames. "There's no sense in hurting yourself because I sprinted here first. If you ended up with bruises, people might think we'd been fighting."
Takumi nodded, looking slightly uneasy as he replied, "can't have them thinking I'm a battered wife now, can we?" Leo tried to ignore the connotations of that one, instead standing up to make room for Takumi on the bed.
"It's all yours," he said, moving back over to the door to take his shoes off and get his bag to where it belonged: the window bed. Besides, if he wasn't facing Takumi, the boy wouldn't be able to see his blush.
Mr Mekanikku knocked on the door about half an hour later just to check that everything was okay after the reign of terror (this time the knocking was Kaden, Leo thought, because he'd heard the boy laughing). Leo opened the door warily, very aware that this could be Keaton running around for his turn at being the most annoying.
"Everything alright in here, boys?" He asked, looking around the small room. Leo could see the surprise on his face when he noted how tidy it was. Takumi said that he was pretty much known for not being a very tidy person, but Leo was the opposite and he quite probably tidied any mess Takumi managed to make.
"Yes, Mr Mekanikku," he said. "Are we needed for anything?"
The teacher shook his head. "Just making sure that everyone is in their rooms settling in. We're going to get food a little later and we'll be meeting outside the lifts in forty minutes, but I don't expect you'll be late."
"Okay, thank you for letting us know," he said, nodding as Mr Mekanikku closed the door behind him when he left. It wasn't that he disliked the teacher, but there was something distinctly worrying about being expected to answer the door no matter what if a teacher knocked. It was almost an invasion of privacy.
"Did you know he keeps mechanical puppets in his office?" Takumi asked. "They have glass eyes and they sit on the shelf facing the door."
"So when you talk to him, it's six people judging you instead of one," Leo laughed. "I know, it's terrifying." He'd had the man as a music teacher when he was thirteen and he didn't think he'd ever recovered from the one time he'd forgotten his homework.
"He got them out in a practice once," Takumi said, shuddering at the memory. "I had nightmares for weeks." He suddenly looked away. Leo didn't understand why he was so ashamed of the tiny thing that kept coming up in conversation after conversation. Half the things in the world had given Takumi nightmares.
"They're definitely scary," he agreed, resisting the traitorous thought that came to mind about comforting him or even offering to comfort him after a nightmare if he needed it. That wasn't a cool friend thing to say, it was just weird. So instead he just smiled and hoped he wasn't blushing again.
