Benji was cleaning. The concept was ridiculous in and of itself – he had a two year old living with him, for Christ’s sake – and yet he felt compelled to keep tossing the toys into their appropriate bins to make room for the vacuumming he had every intention of getting done before Basil arrived. It had been an ambitious invitation though, thinking back on it, asking his friend to a movie night shouldn’t have made nervous butterflies erupt in his stomach . It definitely shouldn’t have inspired him to go into a cleaning frenzy that a half an hour of Emi free roaming the apartment would undo. The tot in question was currently grumpily serving out her imposed imprisonment in her playpen (one she’d definitely outgrown but Benji hadn’t had the funds to replace nor the energy to do away with completely). He’d scattered some books around her feet in the hopes that she’d stop pouting at him from behind the mesh siding but so far, he hadn’t been forgiven. “Just a few more things to do,” he offered with an apologetic smile as though she could fully understand, “he could be here any minute!”
“Minute,” came Emi’s huffed response and Benji rolled his eyes affectionately. Somehow, his daughter was able to pack a lot of scathing resentment into a single word – he was oddly proud. As it turned out, her prediction had inadvertently come true and not even a minute later, there’s a knock at his apartment door. “F… frock?” what was intended to be a curse was instantly altered given his company. On his way to the door he kicked a few toys under the furniture, plucked Emi out from her pen and made sure everything was as orderly as he could manage. “Hey, hi, sorry!” Benji smiled, opening the door and feeling the breath all but leave his lungs at the sight of his wind bitten, sweater paws wearing crush friend in all his glory stood in Benji’s entryway. “Come in, uh, pardon the mess.” He was being so formal too. Fuck, he was nervous. Why was he nervous?
Basil stood with his back resting on the wall as he waited, killing nervous time pulling at a small piece of thread on end of his sleeve he had pulled close to his fingers. He always found himself fidgeting with something when he was nervous but that brought back up the question, why was he so nervous? But before he could start to questioning it more he heard the door open, his eyes shifting from his hands up to the other boy’s eyes. He could never decide if they were green or blue, but he could already feel himself getting lost in them and as he felt his teeth start to bite into his bottom lip again he yanked his gaze away, focusing on something in the background. Staring was bad habit he had seemed to be picking up and adding to his list the longer he spent around Benji. “Hi.” He said softly as he pulled his lip from between his teeth into a sweet smile, a friendly smile. “And don’t worry I don’t mind. With your little munchkin, it’s understandable.” Basil followed the curly haired boy into the living room, and it was obviously well lived in. He spotted some of Emi’s toys sprawled around, it was nice actually, he could almost feel the warmth of the tot’s youth flowing through the house and hearing her laugh as he walked in definitely helped add to that.
Basil turned toward her and crouched down so he was on her level. “Hey princess, did daddy lock you up?” He cooed, giving her a big smile as he glanced up and Benji and then back at her. “Let’s fix that. A princess should have full reign over he kingdom.” Basil picked her up, freeing her from her confines, which she was obviously not thrilled about, and headed towards the couch. “Let’s get this movie night started.” Basil cheered as he looked back to the boy, the boy he seemed to always want to be looking at lately. That was normal right? For the sake of tonight he would tell himself it was and damn was he easy to look at. But as he continued walked he pulled his attention away from Benji, something that seemed hard than it theoretically should, so he didn’t trip walking through the living room. Which as he walked he could see the hasty cleaning attempt and couldn’t help but wonder if it was because of him, hope it was because of him. He felt his cheeks warm with flattery, before shaking the idea out of his mind. Benji probably did this for all of his guests. Finally he got comfortable on the couch, setting Emi in his lap. “What are we watching tonight Princess?”
vaporwave
yousharknotpass
