{NINE.i}
{pt.3 of Highschool Lovers}
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Joohyoung swears the warmth spreads through their palms, tightly pressed against each other. Wanders through his own fingertips and straight into his stomach, where it lives on as the soft shine of a candle in...
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They have stuck their words with three-month-old gum to the underside of the bench. Now they've still forgotten how to reach for them. The silence betrays Joohyoung's smile, stretching out the space between them into a wide, barren plane he can't cross. Somewhere along the way, he has swallowed his tongue along with the iced americano they got from Starbucks, the empty cups long tossed aside in the already over-spilling trashcan on the next streetlamp. The orange sunset light reflects off the garbage like it wants to burn holes into the plastic.
On the other side of his trapped voice, he himself is glued to the wood by sweat and a sinking feeling in his stomach that he can't place. It feels a bit like guilt and he knows he's not making any sense.
They've been sitting here for a while. Jungwoo's home is so far away from the busy city center that his bus comes every half an hour, and they've missed the previous one by two minutes. So Joohyoung waits with him, because he is a good...boyfriend? And he pretty much doesn't have anything better to do.
Which is a horrible thought. He shouldn't have to come up with excuses and explanations as to why he is staying with the guy he is on a date with, the guy he asked out five weeks ago in the first place. Thinking back, it was pretty random to strike up a conversation with the tattooed, cool-looking guy browsing through the headphones section in the electronics store, but it's not like he hasn't done worse things before.
He isn't sure, however, if he would do it again.
Joohyoung feels jittery. He needs something to do with his hands, needs to fill this awkward silence. He reaches into the bag on the ground, settled between his worn sneakers, and then begins to unpack the little plastic box Jungwoo bought him in his lap.
"Look! It's adorable." He holds the snorlax mood lamp in his hands. Jungwoo hums and slides his phone back into the pocket of the oversized dark green hoodie he's wearing, the one that Joohyoung wants to steal from him every time, because it looks so comfy and soft. But Jungwoo doesn't really do that, leaving his clothes around in his room, and glares daggers when his friends do as much as take his pencil to doodle on the edge of the paper while he does last minute homework during lunch break, so Joohyoung finds himself holding back a lot.
It's not his place to judge, anyway, even though it's the middle of July and it's getting ridiculous how Jungwoo absolutely refuses to wear a t-shirt in this impossible weather. The later hours of the day carry some cool winds, but Joohyoung could never do that himself; his body is running too hot, all the time, every day.
But hey, at least Jungwoo could find it in himself to push his sleeves up. Joohyoung sneaks glances at the tattoo that runs around his arm, loopy words written in English he can't quite decipher. They're super hot, that's for a fact. But when he had once asked what it meant, Jungwoo had clumsily switched the topic and then ignored every further attempt to get it out of him. It seems to be extremely personal to him, and while Joohyoung is nosy, he's not enough of an asshole to press on these kind of matters, so he hasn't brought it up again after that hazy summer day.
