bambi eyes || tradley

5. singing stomachs

"What?"

"Here," Bambi said, pointing down before jabbing his finger in Tristan's chest. "For you."

"I know what you said, but I would rather you not do that," Tristan told him, annoyed already with the boy. "Will you let me go, please?"

He pulled away from him and sat up into a sitting position, his eyebrows furrowed. "You are so unhappy, because you do not want to be happy."

"Who says I'm unhappy?"

"Your eyebrows," Bambi replied, jabbing a finger in his forehead, "your angry sky eyes, and the wind you create with your dirty mouth. They tell me you're unhappy, and you do not want to be loved and you do not want people to be here for you; that tells me you're unhappy, too!"

"We've only known each other for three days," the blond reminded him.

"I know that. Why are you giving me irrelevant information?"

"It is not irrelevant. I'm reminding you that you can't learn anything about a person in three days."

His face angrily reddened at his words before the brown-eyed boy gasped and shook his head, pulling himself out of the bed. "No, no! Something bad is happening to me!"

Tristan instantly jumped up from his sitting position, furrowing his brows out of concern at the panicking boy. "What's wrong, Bambi?"

"Something bad is happening to me!" he repeated, fear visible in his brown eyes as his breathing picked up. He fell to the floor, fearfully pulling his legs to his chest. "My face is burning, like fire, and my heart"-he placed his small hands over his chest-"it's beating so fast!"

Tristan chuckled.

"You're laughing," he observed, frowning at the older boy. "Why are you laughing?"

"You're experiencing anger," Tristan informed him, sitting on the hardwood floor beside him.

Bambi furrowed his brows out of confusion. "Anger?"

"Sometimes when something you don't agree with happens or is said, you get angry."

"Why does it feel so terrible?"

"Because you felt strongly about my statement." Tristan sympathetically placed a hand on the confused boy's shoulder. "Apparently what I said had an impact on you."

"I just"-Bambi stretched his legs in front of his body-"don't appreciate you being so complicated. You are rather cyncial, Tris. You are different from the person you are in my mind."

"Cynical?" he repeated, cocking an eyebrow. "Never heard that one before."

"Let me help you," Bambi pleaded, taking Tristan's hands in his, like he was preparing to read his palms. "Talk to me of the bad dream."

"Okay," Tristan slowly said, nodding his head. "There was a man that had a deep voice and a strange smile. It was kind of mischevious when I think about it like..."

"... like the Cheshire cat?" the younger boy questioned.

Furrowing his brows, Tristan slowly said: "Yeah... Exactly like that, actually. How did you know?"

"Because a man like that was in my mind before, too!" He chuckled excitedly. "Tris, in some ways our minds are connected!"

Tristan just shook his head before something caught the curly-haired boy's attention. He pulled his hands away from the older boy's before crawling over to Tristan's nightstand and poking at the flash drive he placed there last night.