{NINE.i}
{pt.3 of Highschool Lovers}
-
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...
TW: mentions of divorced parents, growing up without a father
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"Can I hold your hand for a second? I just have to make sure you're actually real before I'm breaking into a stranger's home by hallucinating and sleepwalking."
Jiho has barely opened the door and is already freezing up at his words. He's slouching on the other side, peeking through the crack like he could've accidentally invited a criminal in and is ready to hide back inside.
Joohyoung kinda wants to jump back into the elevator and drop to his death. It can't be that hard to try thinking before he talks. But before he can excuse himself out of existence, Jiho lets out a little giggle.
Like under some sort of spell, all the tension in Joohyoung's shoulders melts away.
"What happened to hello and you're not gonna eat that?" Jiho's eyes soften and he properly pushes the door open. He's grinning when he reaches out and wraps his hand around Joohyoung's wrist. His fingers burn into his skin like red-hot iron.
Definitely real.
That, or his imagination is pretty admirable and he should go find a doctor as soon as possible. He should drag Minjun with him while he's already at it, because this idiot always has some knee problems that he pretends don't exist so that Joohyoung can't force him to stay at home and put his feet up instead of going to dance class.
"Was that...proof enough?" Jiho sounds shy all of a sudden. Like he's really actually asking, was that okay?
And of course Joohyoung is handling this in a very normal, totally understandable way by intertwining their fingers.
"When I say handholding, I mean handholding," he says, matter-of-factly, when his entire brain is screaming at him in cringe.
He can't come up with any reason why he let this get out of his throat, other than the simple and scandalous truth that Jiho makes him feel like he is allowed to. He doesn't get the time to take it back, turn it into a joke, because next thing he knows, Jiho is spluttering out a laugh so soft and inviting that Joohyoung imagines himself falling asleep to it, and pulls him into his home.
The apartment feels lived in. Loved in. When Joohyoung kicks off his sneakers, he almost stumbles against the drawer next to the door, a piece of furniture that glows in a rich dark brown and wears all the stains of whatever refuses to get washed out of it like treasured accessories. They tell stories, whisper about many happy lifetimes.
In fact, as Jiho drags him along, most other things in here look that way. Well-used; sometimes a bit battered like the pot of rosemary that sits in the corner between the living room and the kitchen and has a big crack running from top to bottom and is only held together with flower-patterned-tape; cherished, like the piece of the blanket spread out on the couch that Joohyoung spots while they walk by, where the fabric was once a bright yellow and has now faded into the color of same sunlight that touched it and is also currently falling in through the big windows.
