lunch club + friends one shots

just like a movie (joko/cooper)

a/n: i get the sense cooper and joko go way back. so here's like a high-school cheesy romance thing about gay yearning love bullshit or whatever because im gay people? :flushed: ALSO cause i type like this doesnt mean that's how i write 

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It was close to the end of junior year.

Joko and friends were at some party. He was a plus-one, an add-on, he didn't know whose house it was or half the people there.

He leant against a counter. He's holding a brownish liquid, a cheap bear he can barely tolerate, the burning sensation down his throat only a fleeting buzz with each sip. He sees a couple making out on the couch, a beer pong game, and drunk girls dancing to a song he could barely make out over the noise of his peers immersed in the odd experience of a drunken expectation, cause parties like this just had to be expected. You see it in all the movies anyway.

Even if he's been to a party like this before, even if he couldn't care anymore less, even if Joko wanted to be anywhere else, he was here.

And, he probably wouldn't be here if it weren't for one person.

He sees them in the corner, talking nervously, cutely, Joking thinks, to other jock-like characters similar to him, who skate, or play football, are track stars, have already been scouted at top sport universities in the state. He hesitantly accepts a drink from them once again. Joko knows him well. Seeing him give in makes Joko slightly quiver, gripping the red-solo cup a bit harder, staring down at his reflection in the cheap booze with an unreadable emotion, a numb one.

Joko had to push his thoughts about the person in the corner away.

Their name was Cooper, and he was perfect. Slightly shorter than Joko, golden skin, a "boop"-able nose, a not-too-slim-but-not-too-thick physique, wavy honey hair, and a laugh that he thinks about everyday.

+++

He remembers when they first met. Cooper was a new kid in the third grade. Joko sat alone at the swings at recess, silently reflecting on whatever third grade Joko was worried about at the time.

Despite Cooper having everything going for him, everyone wanted to play "infection" with him, he was cool, he was collected, and he was athletic and perfect. Despite all this, he decided to sit next to him on the shitty swings of the run-down school's blacktop.

"What's your favorite color?" Cooper excitedly asked. At the time, one's favorite color was the perfect judgement of character.

"Blue," Joko answered.

+++

He remembers a day during spring break in sixth grade. Cooper had come over to visit Joko while his mother and father were at work. They were sitting, just inches apart, listening to a new album by one of Cooper's favorite artists, fanning themselves and drinking cups and cups of water because the southern California heat was a bit too much to bear.

By the time the closing song had ended, Cooper looked overjoyed.

Joko thinks this is the first time he ever felt his flutter so lightly, so sickeningly.

"That was so good," the boy said, his eyes bright, like he had never heard anything better. He looks around a bit, before coming to the conclusion and saying, "let's go outside!" Cooper grabs his skateboard and they go out to the front yard.

Cooper attempts to teach Joko to skate.

The board is loose and the slightest move swipes Joko off his feet, and he's a bit scared. If he got hurt, what would they do? Would his parents not let Cooper ever come over again?