Hailstorm
The Days of Caffeine and Candy Kisses
The days passed with surprising speed for Doojoon. Constantly in the company of Yoseob and the others, he soon found that his frustrations were shared. On a bad day, Yoseob’s usually hyper demeanor would sag. He seemed to be the mood maker of the four, so they all wound up working hard to encourage and cheer him up on those days, because it was hard to be happy with a very unhappy Yoseob.
Kikwang soon gave up his attempts to make his friend give up sugar. It was a huge relief to him when Doojoon managed to strike up a deal with Yoseob, limiting the number of sodas or coffees and the amount of sugary treats he consumed each day. Instead of keeping a er in his pocket all the time, he was only allowed one a day, and shockingly enough had agreed that Doojoon would be the one to dole them out.
Junhyung was secretly of the opinion that Doojoon enjoyed that part more than he let on. After all, if he decided Yoseob was too worked up already, he’d tell him no. That resulted in a rather comical display of pouting and pleading. Doojoon always gave in, unable to withstand the smaller teen’s childish antics. Junhyung wondered if he realized just how attached he was to Yoseob. When Kikwang and Yoseob were having what the other trainees often called a lover’s spat, Doojoon would watch with a smile until they started getting out of hand, then separated the two and distracted Yoseob until he’d forgotten all about it.
Because it was in Junhyung’s nature to observe, he’d noticed quite a bit about the two and as a result didn’t worry at all when their vocal lesson was canceled one day. He and Kikwang had watched Yoseob dragging the taller boy out the front entrance, chattering away the entire time. Doojoon hadn’t looked the least bit bothered when he waved at Kikwang and Junhyung, but seemed intent upon acting as if he was when Yoseob looked back at him.
“You think Seobie’ll get him to hand over another er today?” Kikwang asked, watching the two until they were out of sight.
Junhyung shrugged, smirking. “With Yoseob, anything is possible. Especially when it pertains to Doojoon.” He checked his watch. “It’s supposed to storm in about an hour, though… We should head home.”
“What about them?”
“Them?” Frowning, Junhyung thought a moment. “They’ll be fine. I think it’s Doojoon’s turn to go to Seobie’s anyway.”
---
“That one!”
Doojoon sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, but he was already removing his wallet from a pocket. “Remind me how we ended up here again?”
“You promised I could have coffee.”
“I knew that,” Doojoon grumbled as he handed over the money to pay for the hot drink. He looked down at the shorter boy beside him and couldn’t seem to stop the corners of his mouth from twitching upwards.
Yoseob looked twitchy, clearly just itching to get his hands on his caffeinated beverage. “Um… We walked here?”
Doojoon flicked the back of his head and snorted. “I knew that too, dummy,” He stated, then nodded his head toward the coffee as it was set on the counter. “Get your drink so we can go.”
“What’s the rush?” Yoseob asked, but he took the cup carefully in his hands just the same.
“I don’t like the look of those clouds,” Doojoon murmured as they approached the front of the café. After a moment of thought, he reached around to unhook the umbrella from where it had been hanging on his backpack. “We’d better hurry.”
“It’s supposed to storm tonight, you know,” Yoseob said matter-of-factly as he blew on his coffee a little. Everyone knew, really. It had been mentioned on the news for nearly a week now, and the storm was supposed to dump buckets of rain over most of Korea for several days at least. People had been stocking up on supplies because once the rain started, travel was going to be dangerous and citizens were being advised to stay in their homes. Some were even being evacuated to higher areas if they lived in a flooding prone neighborhood.
Doojoon frowned as they got outside, looking up at the clouds uneasily. They were dark and rolling in slowly, but there was a strange churning in the darkest parts that really had him anxious. He hooked an arm loosely around the smaller teen’s shoulders to keep him close. “Let’s just get going. Don’t go running off today, either.”
“Okay, okay,” Yoseob replied mildly, sipping his coffee while they started toward home. “Are you gonna stay for dinner tonight?”
“I think I might have to.. We’re too far from my house for me to get there before it starts storming…” Doojoon muttered. He kept a wary eye on the approaching clouds as they walked, turning his head to look properly at them every few minutes. If Yoseob thought it was odd that Doojoon sped up their walking pace, he didn’t mention it, but tension was starting to build in the shorter boy, too.
They were ten minutes from Yoseob’s house when the wind started to pick up. By that point the coffee was long gone and they were walking as quickly as possible. Another five minutes, and they started getting pelted with rain, but Doojoon didn’t open the umbrella for fear that the wind would break it. They were almost there… He was starting to get hopeful that they might make it before the storm really hit. Then he heard it.
“Hail!”
Yoseob grabbed his hand and took off like a bullet down the street, and for once Doojoon didn’t have to be dragged along. The noise was terrible and only got louder as the front line of the storm got closer to them, the hail right on their heels.
Doojoon felt a sizable chunk smack him in the cheek just as Yoseob yanked open the door to his building, and the two boys scurried inside. By the time they got to the door of his family’s home, both boys were still panting. Yoseob let them inside and immediately shucked his shoes off. “Isn’t the rain supposed to come before the hail?”
“Probably,” Doojoon muttered, taking off his own shoes.
“Yoseob!”
Both of them turned in time to see Yoseob’s parents bear down on him, helping take off his coat and rubbing his hair with a towel simultaneously. Doojoon blinked and removed his own coat, trying to ignore the water droplets dripping from the tips of his hair.
It wasn’t until Yoseob’s hair was mostly dried that Doojoon’s presence was noticed. He smiled gratefully and grabbed the towel from Yoseob’s mother before she could attack his hair with it, bowing politely. “Thank you. We tried to beat it, but..”
“I called your mother using the number you gave me,” Yoseob’s father said quietly. He looked, if possible, even more relieved than his wife that the boys had made it home. “She said for you to stay put for the duration and don’t try to go home until it ends in a few days. If the phones stay active she’ll try to call before you go to bed tonight.”
Doojoon murmured his thanks and toweled his hair dry, looking a little startled when it was whisked from his hands as soon as he finished.
“Go change into dry clothes!” Yoseob’s mother insisted, and the boys were left to head into Yoseob’s room.
Once the door was closed, Yoseob pulled clean clothes out for both of them. Holding a tank top and pair of gym shorts out to Doojoon, he grimaced apologetically. “I haven’t grown into them yet, so they might actually fit you… If they don’t, I’m sorry, but I know my dad’s clothes won’t fit you.”
Doojoon shrugged and took them. “It’s fine. Thanks.”
Yoseob left the room while Doojoon changed despite his insistences that it was fine and they were both guys so it didn’t matter if they changed in the same room. Nothing he said seemed to matter though, and Yoseob left with his change of clothing.
That left Doojoon alone to look around, which in spite of his determination not to, he wound up doing. When Yoseob came back into the bedroom several minutes later, Doojoon had folded his wet clothes and put them in an empty plastic bag, but hadn’t managed to dress completely. He had his back to the door, and surprisingly enough the shorts seemed to fit pretty well.
Yoseob froze just inside the room as his eyes honed in on the expanse of bared back. Why hadn’t Doojoon gotten dressed yet?! He’d given him plenty of time! It wasn’t like it was that hard; the clothes weren’t exactly complicated. A tank top and shorts! Pull them on and it’s done! Why was he shirtless?!
The door clicked closed quietly behind him, but Doojoon still heard it and turned his head, looking over his shoulder at the figure standing near the door. He held up a soccer ball. “You play?”
Yoseob just stood there, dumbly staring at his vocal partner.
“Yoseob?” Both brows lofted, Doojoon turned around to face him fully and used his other hand to wave at him a bit. “Yoseob.”
Eyes widening, Yoseob swallowed before he managed to forcibly avert his gaze to the floor. “Uh… Y-Yeah. I used to play a bit. I don’t have much time for it now.”
Doojoon nodded and tossed the ball up in the air a couple of times, then set it back down and pulled the tank on. “So, I guess I have to stay here for a few days, huh?”
Yoseob nodded and looked around his room. It was clean, thankfully. He’d always been a bit of a neat freak. “I guess..”
Great. Just great. Yoon Doojoon is going to be in my house, eating with my family, sleeping in my room, wearing my clothes for the foreseeable future. What could possibly go wrong with that?
One more look at the good looking guy looking through his stuff, and Yoseob was positive. He was screwed.
Caffeine & Candy Kisses is essentially the prequel to WIB, but about Dooseob instead of Junseung. I've gotten a lot of questions about that..
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