[infinite] smart bomb (3/7)
smart bomb
infinite, hoya/sungyeol
pg-13; ongoing
ao3 mirror
all dressed up (august 2008)
Hoya’s eyebrows furrow when he opens his door and sees Sungyeol there. “Aren’t you supposed to be in cram school right now?” he says.
“I’m skipping,” Sungyeol replies. “Come on, let’s go.”
He waits as Hoya shouts something to his parents inside and gets on his shoes, then the two of them walk out to the elevator. “You know, you promised you wouldn’t fail the entrance exams,” says Hoya.
“Pah.” Sungyeol lets out a puff of air that blows his bangs upward. “You really think I’m going to fail if I miss one day? Have a little faith in me. Besides, my friend just came back from two weeks on the other side of the country. I think that’s a bit more important.”
Hoya grins as they get into the elevator. “Well, I hope you’re not too sad when you can’t get into Seoul National University like you always dreamed.”
Sungyeol snorts. “I’ll be feeling sad for you, ‘cause you’re gonna fail so hard you can’t get into a 7-Eleven.” Hoya draws his fist back as if to punch him and Sungyeol flinches and leans away. They spend a moment posed like this, then they both relax at the same time, chuckling under their breath.
The elevator doors open and they step out. Sungyeol squints a little in the sunlight coming through the glass doors of the lobby. “So how was Busan, anyway?”
“Changwon,” says Hoya.
“Whatever. Did you have fun? You see your friends?”
“Yeah,” he says, “I did.” He punches the button to open the door, and it slides open with a beep.
When they step outside, the heat immediately presses over Sungyeol’s bare arms like a blanket, melting the goosebumps from the frosty air conditioning in Hoya’s building. He swings his arms as they walk. “Living by the ocean would be sweet,” he says. “I’d just go to the beach all day.”
Hoya chuckles. “Yeah, but you can’t do that forever.” They turn a corner to the street. “Unless you wanna be a bum.”
“Maybe I do,” says Sungyeol. He stretches his arms over his head. “What’s wrong with being a bum? You don’t have to get a good job or kiss ass. You just get drunk and sit in the sun all day. What’s so bad about that?”
“Nope.”
“What do you mean, nope?”
Hoya shakes his head. “I’m not gonna let you become the neighbourhood drunk. Even if you do fail the entrance exams.” Sungyeol pivots on his heel and starts heading in the opposite direction. “Hey,” Hoya calls after him, “where are you going?”
Sungyeol glances over his shoulder and Hoya has stopped in his tracks, watching him walk away. “Well,” he yells, “are you coming or not?”
He turns and keeps walking, but slower this time. He can hear Hoya’s sandals thwacking against the pavement, growing closer until he’s beside Sungyeol again. “The hell are you going?” he says again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. You would be awesome as the neighbourhood drunken old man, fuck acting.”
Sungyeol rolls his eyes and Hoya grins at him. There’s a line of sweat rolling down Hoya’s temple from under the short hairs of his bangs. It’s hot out, Sungyeol thinks, swiping at his own forehead with the back of his hand. Hoya’s wearing a faded purple T-shirt and grey track pants rolled up to the knee, a mismatch for the stark white and dark blue of Sungyeol’s school uniform. He’d abandoned the jacket as soon as summer school started, and he keeps his short-sleeved shirt unbuttoned to just below his collarbone, but his slacks are starting to cling to his thighs from the humidity.
“I bet you haven’t been to the water park before.” The suggestion rushes out of him, and he hesitates a moment, then nods, satisfied. “Eh? Have you?”
“I haven’t,” says Hoya.
“Then that’s where we’re going.” Sungyeol grins and picks up speed in his walk, leaning forward a little.
The water park is a section of a larger park, with a long, shallow wading pool for children and a larger pool for adults that’s fenced off. Sungyeol guides Hoya across the field, his strides long and determined across the grass. When they reach it, no one is there, and the children’s pool is dry. A sign on the gate to the bigger pool reads, The water park is closed until September for maintenance. Sungyeol stops and blinks at it.
“Seriously? I swear it was open yesterday.”
Hoya walks closer to the sign and leans toward it, squinting. “Maybe we just came at the wrong hour,” he says. He straightens. “Or month.” He pushes the sign and the gate rattles, but doesn’t budge.
Sungyeol leans his head back and groans at the sky. “Of course. The one day I decide to come here and it’s all closed.” He sighs and turns in a half-pirouette, his arms dangling limp at his sides. “Well, what are we supposed to do now?”
“We could just do this,” calls Hoya, and Sungyeol looks up. He’s standing against the pool fence, one foot hiked up and stuck into the chain links. His fingers are loosely gripping the fence at chest level, which isn’t high enough if he’s being serious.
Sungyeol strides over to Hoya and peers through the fence, above the sign. The pool is still full, and the greenish water is flat and very clear. The smell of chlorine is strong. He can see the markings for the lanes along the bottom, but all of the floating lane dividers except for one have been taken off the surface. The diving board at one end looks rusty. Sungyeol can’t remember if that’s new or if it’s always looked that way.
“All right, sure.” He wipes his hands on his pants, then reaches up and grabs the fence at the highest point he can. He pulls himself up, hooking his feet into the links, until he’s on the top of the gate, suspended. He looks down and Hoya’s still on the ground, staring up at him. “Well?” Sungyeol says. “Are we doing this or not?”
Hoya nods and adjusts his grip, then starts climbing up to join him. The fence rattles under their weight. Sungyeol hoists his legs up and over the top, one and then the other. A thread from his pants catches on the wire and he curses and unhooks it. Then he lets go and drops down to the concrete below, his knees absorbing the shock from his feet. Hoya joins him a few seconds later.
Sungyeol walks over to the deep end and leans over it, looking down at the white and black tile along the bottom. “Watch out,” says Hoya, and he yanks Sungyeol backwards by his shoulder, making him yelp a little.
“Son of a bitch,” he says with one hand on his chest. Hoya smirks at him. He squats at the edge of the pool and Sungyeol comes over and squats next to him.
“Feel like going swimming?” Hoya says. He leans forward until he’s on his hands and knees and peers into the water.
“What else are we gonna do?” Sungyeol tilts backward, and when his butt meets the concrete he stretches his legs out and begins taking off his shoes. “Do you think the water’s clean?”
Hoya gets to his feet. “Only one way to find out.” He grins. “You first.”
“Me first?” Sungyeol pulls off his socks and sticks them in his shoes, then takes his wallet out of his back pocket and sticks it in his left shoe. “It was your idea.”
“Well, if you disintegrate, then you have an excuse for not being at school. And besides, you brought us here.”
“You’re such a goddamn chicken.” Sungyeol scoots to the edge and rolls up the cuffs of his pants, then sticks his feet in the water. It’s weirdly warm, but his feet are still intact when he kicks them up a few seconds later. “There. You satisfied?”
Hoya nods. “Sure.” Then he shoves at Sungyeol’s back, and Sungyeol hits the water with a big splash.
The pool is warm but it still shocks him, hard against his face and then cold under his armpits. Right away he propels himself back up to the surface, and when he breaks through he sputters to get the wet tendrils of hair away from his mouth before he rakes them backwards. The back of his throat is acid and slimy and water runs out his nose.
“Yah,” he screams, “are you crazy?” Hoya is standing on the concrete with his shoes off, his mouth hanging open in a sustained silent laugh. “Fucking bastard, you’re really...” Sungyeol hacks out some water, then paddles sloppily back to the edge. He holds out his arm. “Come on, you psycho. Help me out of here.”
“All right, calm down. Shit.” Hoya squats down and holds his arm out. As soon as their hands are locked Sungyeol yanks backward, and Hoya’s knees collide into his shoulder as they both fall back into the pool.
They go under together, and Hoya’s body moves against Sungyeol’s for a few moments before he rotates and kicks out towards the surface. When Sungyeol bobs up again Hoya is treading a metre away from him, his hair pushed back from his forehead and water streaming down his chin. His eyebrows are pressed together, but he’s smiling.
“Well played,” he says. He spits out some water, swirls and floats on his back. “It’s not the ocean, but it’s nice.”
“It beats fuckin’ cram school,” replies Sungyeol. He swims closer to Hoya, then stops and treads by him.
Hoya’s looking up at the sky, his mouth straight like he’s thinking about something. Sungyeol’s about to squirt water in his eye when he says, “Have you ever been to Seoul?”
Sungyeol puts his clasped hands back beneath the water. “A couple of times, more when I was a kid. Why, you haven’t?”
“A long time ago.” Hoya keeps floating on his back, drifting a bit towards the wall. Sungyeol swims after him. Then Hoya says, “A couple of my friends in Busan are thinking of moving up there soon. To audition.”
A heavy feeling begins in Sungyeol’s chest. He tells himself it’s the water pressure and bobs up and down a few times to get his sternum in the air, but it persists. “For dance?”
“Yeah.”
Sungyeol dips his chin below the water. “Well, they’ll be closer to you now, right?”
Hoya is silent for a few moments. “They asked me to go with them.”
Sungyeol is silent too. Then he snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Hoya turns his head and looks at him, his face still blank. “What, you’re gonna drop out now? After all that?”
Hoya’s mouth elongates into a smirk, and he turns back to squint up at the sky. “I was hoping you’d be more supportive.”
“I’m supporting you not making a really stupid decision. What about your parents? What about me?”
“What about you?” Hoya raises an eyebrow, rolling his head back to Sungyeol. Sungyeol’s cheeks burn beneath the cooling streams of water from his hair.
“You, you can’t just leave me here in this shithole,” he stammers. “Where’s your sense of loyalty? You promised...”
“Yeah, I know. I know.” Hoya rolls over onto his stomach and paddles toward Sungyeol a bit before he stops, looking him straight in the eye. “What if you come with me?”
For a second, Sungyeol can feel his heartbeat in his throat. He slaps the water in front of him, splashing Hoya in the face. “Aish. Crazy bastard.”
Hoya laughs, shielding his eyes with his forearm. “Think about it. We could live together, you and me. You can cook, right?”
“Yeah, and I look great in a little frilly apron,” says Sungyeol. Hoya snorts. “So you won’t let me be a bum, but you’ll let me be a housewife? What kind of friend are you?”
“I don’t get anything out of you being a bum.”
“Oh, so you’re that kind of friend.”
The novelty wears off after half an hour. They keep waiting for someone to kick them out, to impose a deadline on them, but it never happens. So Sungyeol hoists himself out along the side of the pool, and water streams off of his polyester pants, now even heavier. In one fluid movement, Hoya pulls his T-shirt off over his head and wrings it out. Sungyeol watches the muscles work in his back as he twists his shirt, until Hoya looks back at him and raises his eyebrow. “You’re gonna go out like that?” he says.
Sungyeol looks down. His shirt is see-through where it sticks to his torso, patches of skin visible among the puckered wrinkles. He smooths it down over his body, aware of how flat it is in the wrong places. “You got a problem with my portable aircon?” he says, and Hoya laughs, pulling his shirt back on.
They throw their shoes over the fence and climb up after them. The metal links are hot now, and Sungyeol has to keep wiping his fingers on his pants to keep them from burning. Hoya’s already on the ground with his sandals on by the time Sungyeol leaps down from the top, the grass stinging his heels. His feet are dry, so he quickly pulls on his socks and shoes and puts his wallet in his back pocket. Hoya starts walking away before he’s done and he hops after him, still pulling on his second shoe.
“Are you really gonna do it?” he asks.
Hoya stops and waits for Sungyeol to catch up before he continues walking. “Maybe,” he says. “Either way I’m going to end up doing it, so why delay?”
“But you could say that about your whole life,” says Sungyeol. “It just doesn’t feel like the right time to me.”
“I don’t think you get that much say in this.”
Sungyeol shoves his hands in his pockets. They’re still soggy. “I want ice cream. Let’s go.”
It’s a ten-minute walk to the nearest convenience store, and they don’t talk the whole time. Sungyeol listens to the squishing of Hoya’s feet in his sandals and feels his shirt getting stiffer as it dries in the heat.
When they’re inside, packages of ice cream in hand, Hoya says, “I left my wallet at home.”
“I know,” says Sungyeol, placing his packet on the counter. “Your pants don’t have pockets.” He gestures at the counter. “Well?”
As he’s counting out the bills, Hoya taps his arm. He shrugs him off. “Yah, I’m going as fast as I can.”
“No, look,” says Hoya. Sungyeol turns and looks through the door to see his mother coming out of the shop across the street and heading towards the convenience store.
“Shit!” He throws down a stack of bills and his legs jitter as the cashier counts out his change too slowly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“What do we do?” says Hoya. “Are you going to be in deep shit?”
“What do you think?” Sungyeol takes his change and shoves it in his pocket. “Okay, quickly.”
He pulls Hoya back into a corner with the toilet paper and mops and squats down, motioning for him to do the same. Hoya freezes a moment, staring at the door.
“What are you doing? Get down!” hisses Sungyeol. Hoya drops down next to him. The door chimes as it swings open and Sungyeol swears he can hear the exact squeak of the sneakers his mother wears for shopping.
“What are you gonna do if she needs toilet paper?” Hoya murmurs. He leans in and his nose grazes Sungyeol’s cheek. Sungyeol listens to the squeaky footsteps as they make their way up and down the aisles. He can barely breathe. Hoya moves his head slightly and his hair tickles Sungyeol’s temple. The ice cream is a soft weight in his hands.
Finally, he hears her say goodbye to the cashier, and the door chimes and shuts. Sungyeol exhales heavily and stands, his shoulder clipping Hoya’s chin slightly as he rises. His legs are filled with pins and needles, and he shakes them out. His pants are cold.
“You’re right,” says Hoya, as they walk outside without offering an explanation to the cashier.
“Of course I’m right,” says Sungyeol as they settle into the plastic chairs outside the convenience store. The ice cream is a little melted, and a thin white foam clings to the plastic wrapper when he peels it away and sticks to his hand. “Wait, right about what?”
“I can’t leave,” says Hoya. “What would you do without me?”
“I’d have a better life,” Sungyeol replies, flapping his hand at the table until the wrapper falls away from his fingers. But for a moment, with his hair soft and heavy from the pool and Hoya’s feet up on the chair across from him and vanilla ice cream cold and tasteless on his tongue, he’s satisfied with what he has.
<< >>
infinite, hoya/sungyeol
pg-13; ongoing
ao3 mirror
all dressed up (august 2008)
Hoya’s eyebrows furrow when he opens his door and sees Sungyeol there. “Aren’t you supposed to be in cram school right now?” he says.
“I’m skipping,” Sungyeol replies. “Come on, let’s go.”
He waits as Hoya shouts something to his parents inside and gets on his shoes, then the two of them walk out to the elevator. “You know, you promised you wouldn’t fail the entrance exams,” says Hoya.
“Pah.” Sungyeol lets out a puff of air that blows his bangs upward. “You really think I’m going to fail if I miss one day? Have a little faith in me. Besides, my friend just came back from two weeks on the other side of the country. I think that’s a bit more important.”
Hoya grins as they get into the elevator. “Well, I hope you’re not too sad when you can’t get into Seoul National University like you always dreamed.”
Sungyeol snorts. “I’ll be feeling sad for you, ‘cause you’re gonna fail so hard you can’t get into a 7-Eleven.” Hoya draws his fist back as if to punch him and Sungyeol flinches and leans away. They spend a moment posed like this, then they both relax at the same time, chuckling under their breath.
The elevator doors open and they step out. Sungyeol squints a little in the sunlight coming through the glass doors of the lobby. “So how was Busan, anyway?”
“Changwon,” says Hoya.
“Whatever. Did you have fun? You see your friends?”
“Yeah,” he says, “I did.” He punches the button to open the door, and it slides open with a beep.
When they step outside, the heat immediately presses over Sungyeol’s bare arms like a blanket, melting the goosebumps from the frosty air conditioning in Hoya’s building. He swings his arms as they walk. “Living by the ocean would be sweet,” he says. “I’d just go to the beach all day.”
Hoya chuckles. “Yeah, but you can’t do that forever.” They turn a corner to the street. “Unless you wanna be a bum.”
“Maybe I do,” says Sungyeol. He stretches his arms over his head. “What’s wrong with being a bum? You don’t have to get a good job or kiss ass. You just get drunk and sit in the sun all day. What’s so bad about that?”
“Nope.”
“What do you mean, nope?”
Hoya shakes his head. “I’m not gonna let you become the neighbourhood drunk. Even if you do fail the entrance exams.” Sungyeol pivots on his heel and starts heading in the opposite direction. “Hey,” Hoya calls after him, “where are you going?”
Sungyeol glances over his shoulder and Hoya has stopped in his tracks, watching him walk away. “Well,” he yells, “are you coming or not?”
He turns and keeps walking, but slower this time. He can hear Hoya’s sandals thwacking against the pavement, growing closer until he’s beside Sungyeol again. “The hell are you going?” he says again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. You would be awesome as the neighbourhood drunken old man, fuck acting.”
Sungyeol rolls his eyes and Hoya grins at him. There’s a line of sweat rolling down Hoya’s temple from under the short hairs of his bangs. It’s hot out, Sungyeol thinks, swiping at his own forehead with the back of his hand. Hoya’s wearing a faded purple T-shirt and grey track pants rolled up to the knee, a mismatch for the stark white and dark blue of Sungyeol’s school uniform. He’d abandoned the jacket as soon as summer school started, and he keeps his short-sleeved shirt unbuttoned to just below his collarbone, but his slacks are starting to cling to his thighs from the humidity.
“I bet you haven’t been to the water park before.” The suggestion rushes out of him, and he hesitates a moment, then nods, satisfied. “Eh? Have you?”
“I haven’t,” says Hoya.
“Then that’s where we’re going.” Sungyeol grins and picks up speed in his walk, leaning forward a little.
The water park is a section of a larger park, with a long, shallow wading pool for children and a larger pool for adults that’s fenced off. Sungyeol guides Hoya across the field, his strides long and determined across the grass. When they reach it, no one is there, and the children’s pool is dry. A sign on the gate to the bigger pool reads, The water park is closed until September for maintenance. Sungyeol stops and blinks at it.
“Seriously? I swear it was open yesterday.”
Hoya walks closer to the sign and leans toward it, squinting. “Maybe we just came at the wrong hour,” he says. He straightens. “Or month.” He pushes the sign and the gate rattles, but doesn’t budge.
Sungyeol leans his head back and groans at the sky. “Of course. The one day I decide to come here and it’s all closed.” He sighs and turns in a half-pirouette, his arms dangling limp at his sides. “Well, what are we supposed to do now?”
“We could just do this,” calls Hoya, and Sungyeol looks up. He’s standing against the pool fence, one foot hiked up and stuck into the chain links. His fingers are loosely gripping the fence at chest level, which isn’t high enough if he’s being serious.
Sungyeol strides over to Hoya and peers through the fence, above the sign. The pool is still full, and the greenish water is flat and very clear. The smell of chlorine is strong. He can see the markings for the lanes along the bottom, but all of the floating lane dividers except for one have been taken off the surface. The diving board at one end looks rusty. Sungyeol can’t remember if that’s new or if it’s always looked that way.
“All right, sure.” He wipes his hands on his pants, then reaches up and grabs the fence at the highest point he can. He pulls himself up, hooking his feet into the links, until he’s on the top of the gate, suspended. He looks down and Hoya’s still on the ground, staring up at him. “Well?” Sungyeol says. “Are we doing this or not?”
Hoya nods and adjusts his grip, then starts climbing up to join him. The fence rattles under their weight. Sungyeol hoists his legs up and over the top, one and then the other. A thread from his pants catches on the wire and he curses and unhooks it. Then he lets go and drops down to the concrete below, his knees absorbing the shock from his feet. Hoya joins him a few seconds later.
Sungyeol walks over to the deep end and leans over it, looking down at the white and black tile along the bottom. “Watch out,” says Hoya, and he yanks Sungyeol backwards by his shoulder, making him yelp a little.
“Son of a bitch,” he says with one hand on his chest. Hoya smirks at him. He squats at the edge of the pool and Sungyeol comes over and squats next to him.
“Feel like going swimming?” Hoya says. He leans forward until he’s on his hands and knees and peers into the water.
“What else are we gonna do?” Sungyeol tilts backward, and when his butt meets the concrete he stretches his legs out and begins taking off his shoes. “Do you think the water’s clean?”
Hoya gets to his feet. “Only one way to find out.” He grins. “You first.”
“Me first?” Sungyeol pulls off his socks and sticks them in his shoes, then takes his wallet out of his back pocket and sticks it in his left shoe. “It was your idea.”
“Well, if you disintegrate, then you have an excuse for not being at school. And besides, you brought us here.”
“You’re such a goddamn chicken.” Sungyeol scoots to the edge and rolls up the cuffs of his pants, then sticks his feet in the water. It’s weirdly warm, but his feet are still intact when he kicks them up a few seconds later. “There. You satisfied?”
Hoya nods. “Sure.” Then he shoves at Sungyeol’s back, and Sungyeol hits the water with a big splash.
The pool is warm but it still shocks him, hard against his face and then cold under his armpits. Right away he propels himself back up to the surface, and when he breaks through he sputters to get the wet tendrils of hair away from his mouth before he rakes them backwards. The back of his throat is acid and slimy and water runs out his nose.
“Yah,” he screams, “are you crazy?” Hoya is standing on the concrete with his shoes off, his mouth hanging open in a sustained silent laugh. “Fucking bastard, you’re really...” Sungyeol hacks out some water, then paddles sloppily back to the edge. He holds out his arm. “Come on, you psycho. Help me out of here.”
“All right, calm down. Shit.” Hoya squats down and holds his arm out. As soon as their hands are locked Sungyeol yanks backward, and Hoya’s knees collide into his shoulder as they both fall back into the pool.
They go under together, and Hoya’s body moves against Sungyeol’s for a few moments before he rotates and kicks out towards the surface. When Sungyeol bobs up again Hoya is treading a metre away from him, his hair pushed back from his forehead and water streaming down his chin. His eyebrows are pressed together, but he’s smiling.
“Well played,” he says. He spits out some water, swirls and floats on his back. “It’s not the ocean, but it’s nice.”
“It beats fuckin’ cram school,” replies Sungyeol. He swims closer to Hoya, then stops and treads by him.
Hoya’s looking up at the sky, his mouth straight like he’s thinking about something. Sungyeol’s about to squirt water in his eye when he says, “Have you ever been to Seoul?”
Sungyeol puts his clasped hands back beneath the water. “A couple of times, more when I was a kid. Why, you haven’t?”
“A long time ago.” Hoya keeps floating on his back, drifting a bit towards the wall. Sungyeol swims after him. Then Hoya says, “A couple of my friends in Busan are thinking of moving up there soon. To audition.”
A heavy feeling begins in Sungyeol’s chest. He tells himself it’s the water pressure and bobs up and down a few times to get his sternum in the air, but it persists. “For dance?”
“Yeah.”
Sungyeol dips his chin below the water. “Well, they’ll be closer to you now, right?”
Hoya is silent for a few moments. “They asked me to go with them.”
Sungyeol is silent too. Then he snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Hoya turns his head and looks at him, his face still blank. “What, you’re gonna drop out now? After all that?”
Hoya’s mouth elongates into a smirk, and he turns back to squint up at the sky. “I was hoping you’d be more supportive.”
“I’m supporting you not making a really stupid decision. What about your parents? What about me?”
“What about you?” Hoya raises an eyebrow, rolling his head back to Sungyeol. Sungyeol’s cheeks burn beneath the cooling streams of water from his hair.
“You, you can’t just leave me here in this shithole,” he stammers. “Where’s your sense of loyalty? You promised...”
“Yeah, I know. I know.” Hoya rolls over onto his stomach and paddles toward Sungyeol a bit before he stops, looking him straight in the eye. “What if you come with me?”
For a second, Sungyeol can feel his heartbeat in his throat. He slaps the water in front of him, splashing Hoya in the face. “Aish. Crazy bastard.”
Hoya laughs, shielding his eyes with his forearm. “Think about it. We could live together, you and me. You can cook, right?”
“Yeah, and I look great in a little frilly apron,” says Sungyeol. Hoya snorts. “So you won’t let me be a bum, but you’ll let me be a housewife? What kind of friend are you?”
“I don’t get anything out of you being a bum.”
“Oh, so you’re that kind of friend.”
The novelty wears off after half an hour. They keep waiting for someone to kick them out, to impose a deadline on them, but it never happens. So Sungyeol hoists himself out along the side of the pool, and water streams off of his polyester pants, now even heavier. In one fluid movement, Hoya pulls his T-shirt off over his head and wrings it out. Sungyeol watches the muscles work in his back as he twists his shirt, until Hoya looks back at him and raises his eyebrow. “You’re gonna go out like that?” he says.
Sungyeol looks down. His shirt is see-through where it sticks to his torso, patches of skin visible among the puckered wrinkles. He smooths it down over his body, aware of how flat it is in the wrong places. “You got a problem with my portable aircon?” he says, and Hoya laughs, pulling his shirt back on.
They throw their shoes over the fence and climb up after them. The metal links are hot now, and Sungyeol has to keep wiping his fingers on his pants to keep them from burning. Hoya’s already on the ground with his sandals on by the time Sungyeol leaps down from the top, the grass stinging his heels. His feet are dry, so he quickly pulls on his socks and shoes and puts his wallet in his back pocket. Hoya starts walking away before he’s done and he hops after him, still pulling on his second shoe.
“Are you really gonna do it?” he asks.
Hoya stops and waits for Sungyeol to catch up before he continues walking. “Maybe,” he says. “Either way I’m going to end up doing it, so why delay?”
“But you could say that about your whole life,” says Sungyeol. “It just doesn’t feel like the right time to me.”
“I don’t think you get that much say in this.”
Sungyeol shoves his hands in his pockets. They’re still soggy. “I want ice cream. Let’s go.”
It’s a ten-minute walk to the nearest convenience store, and they don’t talk the whole time. Sungyeol listens to the squishing of Hoya’s feet in his sandals and feels his shirt getting stiffer as it dries in the heat.
When they’re inside, packages of ice cream in hand, Hoya says, “I left my wallet at home.”
“I know,” says Sungyeol, placing his packet on the counter. “Your pants don’t have pockets.” He gestures at the counter. “Well?”
As he’s counting out the bills, Hoya taps his arm. He shrugs him off. “Yah, I’m going as fast as I can.”
“No, look,” says Hoya. Sungyeol turns and looks through the door to see his mother coming out of the shop across the street and heading towards the convenience store.
“Shit!” He throws down a stack of bills and his legs jitter as the cashier counts out his change too slowly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“What do we do?” says Hoya. “Are you going to be in deep shit?”
“What do you think?” Sungyeol takes his change and shoves it in his pocket. “Okay, quickly.”
He pulls Hoya back into a corner with the toilet paper and mops and squats down, motioning for him to do the same. Hoya freezes a moment, staring at the door.
“What are you doing? Get down!” hisses Sungyeol. Hoya drops down next to him. The door chimes as it swings open and Sungyeol swears he can hear the exact squeak of the sneakers his mother wears for shopping.
“What are you gonna do if she needs toilet paper?” Hoya murmurs. He leans in and his nose grazes Sungyeol’s cheek. Sungyeol listens to the squeaky footsteps as they make their way up and down the aisles. He can barely breathe. Hoya moves his head slightly and his hair tickles Sungyeol’s temple. The ice cream is a soft weight in his hands.
Finally, he hears her say goodbye to the cashier, and the door chimes and shuts. Sungyeol exhales heavily and stands, his shoulder clipping Hoya’s chin slightly as he rises. His legs are filled with pins and needles, and he shakes them out. His pants are cold.
“You’re right,” says Hoya, as they walk outside without offering an explanation to the cashier.
“Of course I’m right,” says Sungyeol as they settle into the plastic chairs outside the convenience store. The ice cream is a little melted, and a thin white foam clings to the plastic wrapper when he peels it away and sticks to his hand. “Wait, right about what?”
“I can’t leave,” says Hoya. “What would you do without me?”
“I’d have a better life,” Sungyeol replies, flapping his hand at the table until the wrapper falls away from his fingers. But for a moment, with his hair soft and heavy from the pool and Hoya’s feet up on the chair across from him and vanilla ice cream cold and tasteless on his tongue, he’s satisfied with what he has.
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