253;

[flair]

Title: graceless coward
Characters: Luca Milda, Spada Belforma
Rating: G

for 15_minute_ficlets' prompt grace.

There's a certain grace to how Spada moves, and it doesn't matter whether he's in battle or if he's just walking through the streets, relaxed though his hands stay close to his swords and he stays even closer to Luca. It's such a stark contrast to Luca, even; Luca's graceless and fumbling, tense and stumbling in both society and battle, and he keeps his hands close and stark by his side, ever the nervous one.

And Luca envies him for it.

He envies the way he can talk to anyone, striking up a conversation with ease; he envies how he can stand, tall and proud, with his decisions; he envies how he can take responsibility, despite how he acts; he envies Spada, and in his heart of hearts it's an envy that touches its toes into a pool of dislike. Hatred is far too strong and awful a word for it (he could never hate Spada, no matter how much he tried) and the envy never swims in it, because there's a certain charm to all of it - all of Spada.

(Luca envies that, too.)

That envy of grace - of charm, of wit, of everything Luca isn't - is what fuels the twisting knot in his stomach when he sees the smiles Spada's able to put on faces. It's what fuels his desire to just hide amongst his books and be able to turn a blind eye to it again, and it's what fuels his desire to step away from those books and step it up a little, though he never dares to and returns to losing himself in the dime novels he picks up from every town they've visited. It's difficult, truly difficult, to pull himself away from wild tales of gunslingers and bandits when he hears the calls of his friends (friends is still such a foreign word, even after all this time) and to set aside a world he can lose himself in for a few hours to answer them with a nervous smile (a force of habit) and joining them in whatever they were doing at the moment.

It always distracts him for a few good minutes before he starts to notice the little things again - the little things that make his gut twist and knot into a ball, the little things that make his envy want to slip more than just a toe into the water of dislike, the little things that make him purse his lips (just for a moment) and fade into the shadows without a word. At times, he's content to let Spada lead; Luca's never been a leader, and Spada's always had the upper hand (louder, fuller, better), but sometimes--

sometimes, he wishes he could just speak up instead of resigning himself to watching.