Capítulo 23: A mean glint in the eyes

Ivo didn't feel like dancing after Davi's warning.

"Where can I get some tattoos like yours?" he asked, his tone flat.

Davi gave him a confused look until understanding dawned on him. "Listen, it's not just that you don't have ink or mods, there's just something about you," he clicked his tongue, searching for the right word, "that screams 'new'."

He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck where his hair was shorter. "Actually, you remind me of me when I first got to São Paulo."

"You didn't always live here?"

"No." For a moment his eyes got distant, glazed over with some film from the past. "Anyway, I was a kid then, all alone for the first time in my life, but you have that same soft look."

Ivo lowered his eyes, vexed by the comparison. He didn't think he was as bad as a kid. He might not have any memories, but he had good instincts.

They had moved out of the dancefloor in their stillness, jostled together until the crowd hat spit them out, unwilling to hold two unmoving bodies in the middle of its celebration. Ivo took a sharp breath, realising the air was much cooler without the crowd to stifle it.

All around them the blanket of darkness covered the city. This high up, Ivo felt like they were floating, like their crumbling tower of concrete skin and steel bones was rooted up in the clouds instead of the ground.

He looked out into the darkness. "How do I look, less 'soft'...I guess?"

Beside him, a lighter clicked. It seemed Davi had found it after all and retrieved his pack from the other side of the rooftop. "That might take a while. It's the city that makes you hard, gives you a mean glint in the eyes," he gave Ivo a sideways look and smirked. "Like that."

Ivo returned his smirk with a grin. "Like a 'I'll fuck you up' kind of look?"

Davi took a deep drag of his cigarette, smiling around the filter. "Exactly. You have to look like whatever someone's planning to do with you, you're capable of much worse."

Ivo reached over for the cigarette. Davi gave him an amused look but after a moment passed it to him.

"I'll learn. You'll see," he said, and took a deep drag of his own. This time he exhaled a clean, steady stream of smoke.

He was a quick learner.

Davi met his eyes and a charged current passed between the two of them. Ivo had a feeling they were about to reach an understanding of some sort. As if by holding each other's gazes they could transpose the distance between them and really, maybe for the first time, truly see each other.

For someone like Ivo who had only the faintest impression of what he looked like -- of what he was like -- it was a thrilling thought.

Another second, and the reflection in Davi's eyes might show Ivo a picture of his true self.

But before he could see anything at all, a familiar voice cut through the moment like a knife. "There you are! I've been looking for the two of you everywhere."

Alina arrived holding hands with the curly-haired girl. Their skin glowed with sweat, but they seemed energised, grins wide with an ebullient vigour.

"You can sleep in my bed tonight, I won't be going home," Alina told Ivo. The girl with the bouncy curls smiled impishly over her shoulder.

"We have the gig tomorrow night," Davi said, meeting Alina's eyes with purpose.

Alina wrapped one arm around the other girl's shoulder, who wrapped hers around her waist. "I'll be back by breakfast."

Her companion made a disappointed sound and bumped her hip against Alina's, who shot her an indulgent grin. "Maybe lunch."

Davi didn't look thrilled with the arrangement, but he had the look of someone who wasn't about to tell anyone how to live their life.

"Take your gun," he said turning around with a wave.

"Which one?" Alina asked, as she and the curly-haired girl dissolved into giggles.

Ivo watched as the two of them left together, stopping near the access door to kiss eagerly.

"Alina must really like her," Ivo said, thinking out loud to himself. But the truth was that he had no idea.

Davi took another cigarette out of the pack and lit it; Ivo's was already long gone, without noticing he had smoked it down to the filter.

"Depending on how the night goes we might see that girl every day for the next month," Davi said gesturing towards the door the two had left through, "Or never again."

"Which outcome are you hoping for?" Ivo asked leaning over the railing and looking out into the neon night.

Davi sighed and rubbed his forehead with his thumb. "Whichever gives me less of a headache."

The consternation in his tone spoke to years of experience. The idea that they were gossiping about Alina amused Ivo. Part of him had expected Davi to tell him it was none of his business and shoo him away.

Maybe it was that sense of camaraderie that made him bold enough to ask, "And what would Alina say about Vice?"

He could tell right away that it was the wrong thing to say. Davi's face shuttered like the sky before a storm, all the warmth gone from his pale eyes.

"It's getting late, we should get back," he said putting out his cigarette on the railing. "You can shower first, and you should take Alina up on her offer and sleep in her bed tonight."

Ivo nodded, schooling his expression into neutrality. Davi wasn't his friend, he had made that clear plenty of times, and now he was reminding him. Putting him in his place.

They were on the elevator down when Davi next spoke to him. "Actually, this reminds me of something we should have told you. Never bring anyone back to the safe house. If you want to fuck do it at their place." He looked at Ivo until he nodded. "Just be careful not to fall into some kind of trap."

They rode the rest of the way in silence, but Ivo couldn't stop wondering if that rule had always been in place or if something, or someone, had made it necessary.

REFLEXIONES DE LOS CREADORES
ThirtyTyrants

ahh "recognition of the self through the other", my beloved uwu "there is no you if there isn't a connected us through which you can see and understand yourself", my darling *-*

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