Hidden and Silent (SpyxFamily)

Chapter Six

The morning was grey, but not dark. The clouds split open in scarce cracks of filtered light, dressing the fresh morning air in contrasted colours. It was pleasantly warm and brisk at the same time. The weather warmed one's skin and the air woke them up.

Damian soaked it in, rarely off campus grounds so early on a school day, and it was giddily unnerving.

"Here. Breakfast." The waffle cone Demetrius handed to Damian was perched with chocolate ice cream, Damian's favourite. Demetrius got vanilla and the vendor repeated the odd look he'd given them earlier.

"Shouldn't you boys be in school?"

"Nope." Demetrius immediately turned away, guiding Damian's head as he ate his ice cream.

The boys meandered through the moderately busy streets, and those the Desmonds passed, paid them no mind. They walked, and turned, and wove, and before long, they were strolling through a large, leafy, fenced-in garden maintained by the city. A piece of nature amidst busy streets and buildings. It was mostly empty and the boys ate in silence. Damian was pretty sure they'd come upon it accidentally. Demetrius hadn't mentioned where they were going and seemed to take rather spur-of-the-moment turns to get here. It had looked like he'd just been wandering around, turning towards whatever caught his attention.

"What are we doing here?" Damian eventually asked when they sat at a bench by a pond and watched the local birds go about their business. Damian was weirdly okay with skipping school with Demetrius, but he didn't seem to have any kind of plan.

His brother finished off his cone. "It's a park. Kids like parks."

Damian didn't even bother to look at him and watched the ducks swimming in the pond. "Were lost, aren't we?"

"One hundred percent."

"What do we do?"

"I dunno. Walk around?" Demetrius said unhelpfully.

"No, how do we get back?"

"We'll figure it out. Can't be too hard."

"You are very unprepared." Damian said, and it said a lot. Damian might not know Demetrius very well, but this was strange for him, going about without a plan. It was slightly thrilling. It was silly to get excited over such a small thing, but Damian understood when his brother smiled like it was the best thing in the world.

"Yeah." Demetrius said.

Damian finished the last of his ice cream cone and brushed the crumbs off his pants. "How come you took me out of school?" Said Damian, though it was rather obvious.

Demetrius kicked the pebble at his shoe into the water. "You didn't want to go, did you?"

"Not really." Damian mumbled, torn by his good sense of following the rules, and glad he hadn't.

"Well, there ya go."

"But I shouldn't be skipping."

"Why? Because other people say so? You should have had more time off, anyway."

"I should have said something to Ewen and Emile before I left." Damian commented, glossing over Demetrius' assessment, and wondered if his friends were worried he had disappeared. Probably not, he amended. They saw him with Demetrius, they would've figured it out.

"I told them you'd catch up with them later." Demetrius said and he was surprisingly sincere, like Damian had forgotten his earlier statement. Damian snorted.

His brother suddenly sprung up off the bench. "I'm still hungry. You want a sausage or something?" Demetrius asked but he was already heading back the way they came.