so desperately obvious - Jake Webber x Johnnie Guilbert

you can make it up to me later..

The following week, they head out to the bustling LA streets in broad daylight (finally, a video concept that Johnnie can get behind), hopping from store to store and running through traffic in between 'scenes'.

Nothing has really caught either of their eyes and as they pass through another lane of cars, Johnnie kind of feels on top of the world running next to his best friend despite the looming ache in his bones from days passed.

Concentrated light refractions blind them in what almost feels like a 'buzz' off of the majorly red, black and white cars. Some fucker honks at the shorter man and he turns to flip the man sitting behind a wheel off then promptly trips over a fire hydrant straight into a sign.

He curses aggressively while Jake laughs - the fucker.. He flips off his friend,

"I hope you're getting blinded by the lights, fucker." He grumbles at the other man - addressing the taller's concussion - while holding his head and leaning against the offending sign.

"Awwhh is that your way of telling me I'm a star?" Jake coos as his eyes absentmindedly trace the other's body for signs of actual pain while patting Johnnies shoulder apologetically.

"How did you get that idea from that?!" the smaller gripes while gesturing aggressively for the camera and regretfully pushing away the comforting hand.

"The Weeknd, duh." Johnnie just rolls his eyes and laughs and the stupid pun.

"That really was an accident though, fuck why was there a sign there." He mutters loud enough to he heard as he kicks the fire hydrant and passes the other offending obsticle in favor of walking towards a jewelry store.

"Dunno man, the world works in mysterious ways." Comes a reply that devolves into that stupid southern accent from over his shoulder.

Johnnie grumbles some more about spending away the pain via Jake's credit card and they both know that he isn't all that into material possessions but plan to save that whole spiel for later.

The camera might pick up on a faint dusting of blush across Jake's cheeks and shoulders when Johnnie circles back and grabs his wrist to drag him through the store entrance but he'll edit that out anyway in the final cut. No one needs to know.

-

Johnnie is standing under those strangely sterile looking jewelry store lights in front of an oval mirror placed atop one of the massive jewelry display cases. His face is illuminated by the light, making him look almost hypoxemic.

When he turns around, Jake is vaguely reminded of those old animes where the main character gets a nose bleed whenever they crush on some pretty girl..

Johnnie's wearing a choker and it shouldn't affect him so much but fuck, it really does.

Technically it's choker adjacent - massive sterling silver flat chain links perfectly fit to rest high on the neck with deep red spinel pseudo spikes and fuck - that's gotta cost a pretty penny.

Neither of them know anything about jewelry and when the dude at the front desk reads off the price, Johnnie immediately puts the thing down (gently) on the table with jarring clinking noises that make them both wince.

To be perfectly honest - Jake.. Jake really wants to see that on the other man again. He sees Johnnie eyeing the piece of jewelry and immediately resigns himself to how much of a simp he truly is - he buys the damn thing.

For four hundred dollars.

Now, later on he'd think about the fact that he could have just gotten his friend an average choker and it would've had the same nosebleed effect. Well.. okay, maybe he's just stupid. Or maybe it was partially because he just wanted to see his friend happy.