Work Text:
⋆˙⟡
Shota’s brain has been muddled up ever since this whole black cat ploy has taken shape –the tasks filling the slots in his organised calendar, multiplying itself into a large being currently following him around the premise of P1H’s gardens.
The requests should’ve just been a checklist. A simple, non-dangerous side hustle with his scholarship-partner. But in reality, it’s really muddled with his brain these past few weeks.
It’s not the tasks. It’s the feeling that comes with it. A new chord that becomes a permanent thought at the back of his mind –making a home for itself in the margins of his notebooks and standing in the always-open window of his dorm.
Funnily enough, Shota has never felt more alive.
The thrill that’s come with him and Jongseob completing risky tasks has felt like a fresh scratch to his knee after playing on a tan-barked playground, or like pressing an ice cold drink to your face after a whole day walking in humid weather.
A revelation, he guesses you could call it. Never knowing the true warmth of the sun until you fly too close and realise just how nice the apricity feels against your skin.
Then you begin to wonder if that’s what it’s felt like all this time. Something not to be afraid of, but welcomed.
Whatever that feeling is, it’s settled deep in his chest and has sat there since –blatant and unignorable for the past month or so.
Because it’s starting to become difficult ignoring how Jongseob manages to make him feel.
How the most recent of his nights have been spent staring at the ceiling, round sleepless eyes blinking away the image of Jongseob’s blonde hair. Or desperately trying to forget the pretty form of his nose and how his glasses sit on the bridge of it. How the sharp right corner of his mouth curves up whenever he’s thinking of a snarky response to Shota’s words. How he’s never noticed the mole just under his eye until now.
His eyes always search for Jongseob as soon as he enters a room, usually finding him in a secluded corner on his phone, or nursing a sad-looking red solo cup.
Shota always leaves his pencil deliberately blunt because he knows Jongseob will get pissed off and sharpen it for him anyways –the slim shape of his pale hands twisting in such a fascinatingly pretty way.
Shota always wonders about him, but he’d be dead before he could muster up the courage to ask him any of the questions he’s thought about.
He doesn’t know how to be casual. To drop the tone of formality that’s been instilled in him since he was a kid sitting in a high chair watching his dad’s business meetings, or to relax his posture in the same boyish way Jongseob does.
But if he did have the casual nature others so easily possess, he’d ask where Jongseob bought the impressive collection of perfume bottles he’s seen lined up at his dorm’s window sill: were some of them gifts? And if so, what’s the next one on his wish list so he can pick it up next time he goes to the department store?
Perhaps he’d ask how he ties his hair so effortlessly without even needing to glance at a mirror. Or how and when he met Keeho. What about what grade his glasses prescription is?
He remembers how Jongseob looks around P1H’s campus like it’ll disappear the second he steps off of it. Maybe he’ll ask if he’s running out of time.
If it’s the last time he’ll ever see the pristine buildings and over-maintained garden hedges ever again. Because they still have one more year left at this school, so why is he mourning already?
But if he was to be granted only one question, he’d ask where Jongseob’s hatred for him came from. If he thinks Shota hasn’t caught on to how his eyebrows furrow every time the elder gets a higher grade than him; as well as the self-deprecating silence that follows the rest of the class.
Shota nears Plus Hall, his own dorm window visible now.
The journey walking Jongseob back to his dorm room after completing their second ever mission as the Black Cat scheme™ was basically just the two of them trying not to stumble over from laughter; the buzz of adrenaline left over from merely escaping Shota’s history teacher still dancing under their skin. Jongseob kept asking Shota if his head was okay, pestering him to keep the frozen convenience store ice cream pressed to the bump on his forehead. Shota kept saying he was okay, and that it looked worse than it felt.
But his thoughts are still lingering on how Jongseob’s laugh sounded. Real and genuine. The melody simmering in the cool evening air and dissolving into a brain-malfunctioning mush around him.
Shota wishes Jongseob held his hand, or even thought to do so in the first place.
His own attempts to make contact included subtle steps closer and awkward hand twitches outward. Moves that clearly weren’t enough for Jongseob to get the hint.
Or maybe it wasn’t as big of a hint Shota made it out to be.
Not even the nudging into him “accidentally”, which Shota chalked down to side effects of his fall, seems as drastic anymore.
Shota also wishes Jongseob kissed him.
He imagines him lifting himself slightly off the ground by his boots in order to meet his height –Jongseob’s pretty cupid's bow making contact with his own lips. A sly smile spreading across his face seconds after, before wishing Shota a goodnight and shutting the dorm’s door in his face.
But despite all these cheesy scenarios, he knows logically that if that actually happened, he’d probably pass out right in front of his door.
Drop dead, even.
His lack of past experience has severely damaged his perception of flirting…
The romantic feeling blooms further in his chest, its petals prying themselves from the bud.
Now that it’s staring him straight in the face, Shota wishes he could yell out his feelings for Jongseob.
To be able to finally voice the growing admiration that’s been gradually becoming unbearable –lungs burning and voice hoarse. Because on top of a skyscraper, his feelings for Jongseob would become real, spoken into the air where everybody and nobody at once could hear him.
Jongseob has made Shota feel alive. Unfrozen.
Like a robot given a glimpse of what humanity is like, he’s been constantly chasing the sensation only Jongseob gives him. That reminder that the two of them are only teenagers, trying their best to survive in such a gruelling world.
Nearing the door to Plus Hall, he kicks at a stray rock with his shoe.
Goddammit, he’s so in love.