Burnout ⊗ Jeongchan

⑥⓪ Ours to Recover

"Holy shit, Jeongin, is it true?"

"What's up Jisung?" He placed his phone down on the shop table, hands folding over themselves as he waiting for the street racer to begin his interrogation that even Noir detectives would tremble in gear when confronted with. Their monochrome hues had nothing on his navy hair. Or, so Jisung would think when in reality, the questioning tended to lean entirely good cop than even pretending to be portional bits of good and bad to exist in the murky gray areas where shadows like them tended to hide. Funny dichotomy; The way that one was presented versus who they truly are. At times he would think he never knew anyone at all.

Jisung slid into the seat adjacent of his friend, elbows thunking methodically against the table top as his eyes narrowed into that questioning look that only cut through minimal layers of surface tension, "I think it's just a rumor. But. Hear me out. Your goody-two shoes friends came to ask me how you were doing and so I was like 'Why don't you ask him?' and they were like 'We do, but we don't think he's totally honest', so I said 'Haha, yeah, Jeongin tends to LIE about his feelings-"

"Get to the point, would you?" Jeongin interrupted, trying to mimic a sweetness to his voice that came out borderline caustic.

Jisung just sighed at the lack of enthusiasm, at least what he thought was the lack of enthusiasm, his lips pursing into a shape of annoyance as his arms folded across this chest to shield from the sharp words. He finally announced, "Did you really drop out?"

"No, that's not a rumor," Jeongin shook his head, shoulders almost relaxing at the fact that it wasn't something worse. Or something crazy like he was the reason Armageddon was pencilled in for next Thursday at noon, or he was the sole person alive who could stop the zombie apocalypse because of the metoclopramide he took when he was seven and bedridden because of a stomach flu. That list grew on and on, how much worse it could have been, and unknowingly letting his shoulder ease because it wasn't that. Jeongin scooped his phone off the table and went back to flipping through his apps, voice coming quiet over the other's intensity, "I dropped out earlier this week."

The street racer shot from his seat, "Does Chan know?!"

"Of course he does," Jeongin barely glanced up from his phone as he copied that silly habit of a low hum, "Why wouldn't he?"

"You got into a habit of keeping things to yourself and it caused problems."

"He knows, and we agreed on it. There's courses I can take at colleges without a diploma, and I can always take the proficiency exam or whatever it's called. My life isn't over because I did, and it was a decision that I made."

"Yeah, no. Sounds like you were forced to research this first."

Jeongin quirked an eyebrow at the other, receiving nothing but a knowing look in return. As he nodded without another word, that knowing look hardened before melting into an empathy that he had only seen the bravest of warriors give their fallen brethren, an unspoken solidarity filling the air between them. A silent conversation of, 'You too?' enforced on them by people who seriously cared about them. Though, he didn't dare ask whether that person to force Jisung was Changbin, Minho, or Chan, but either way Jeongin sent a mental curse to all of them. Damn them trying to be rational.

Of course, he didn't hold any serious intent in that thought. But it was very tempting to.

"If you're not doing anything, can you work on that new map?" Changbin mentioned as he placed a set of gloves and a few parcels no bigger than his hand, contents drizzling like raindrops inside the paper, on the table. The burnt grease on his hands left it's remnants wherever he had dared to touch, bits of it flecking off onto his cheeks and ears when he didn't care enough to keep those blotches of skin clear. With another light scratch at his forearm, the street racer told, "He said he had issues with the engine. I'm worried if we don't fix it he'll end up wrecking that beautiful thing."