Renjun was feeling so brave at that moment. So giddy. So positive and bright and excited and reckless and sure that hell, it’s just going to be words. It won’t be that bad, won’t it?

Tell that to your future self, Renjun. Tell that to him walking with Jeno back to the bus stop down the deserted roads of Jaemin’s housing area. The sky burning in an explosion of reds, pinks, blues, and anything in between, mimicking the colour of his face. The blue came from the bruise on his neck from this week’s physical education class, when Jaemin accidentally, ( accidentally, he said, while trying to hold off his laughter) , threw a softball at the general vicinity of Renjun’s face. His reflexes were so dull he couldn’t do anything more than stare at the incoming hazard head on and let out a pained scream one beat after the ball made contact with his body.

Jeno was talking about this one game he’s been playing, about the story, and the characters, and the gameplay, and Renjun silently walked beside him, nodding his head and letting out occasional laughs when appropriate. Renjun likes games, but never to this extent, of following new releases from your favourite game developer and replaying a game more than twice just so he could get all the possible endings. It seems that the meeting between Jeno and Jaemin has caused for another of the former’s previously hidden passion to be unlocked. His gaming obsession has became a pursuable branch on the conversational tree.

Although he found himself sort of stranded in the middle of a topic he didn’t fully understand, Renjun realised that he didn’t really mind at all. In fact, he loves it. He loves hearing the enthusiasm in Jeno’s voice, the brightness on his face, and how his hands would animate and fly all around the place when he was describing this game of his.

“You can always join us,” it didn’t take long for them to reach the bus stop. Time always fly when your attention was not directed to the road you were walking on. “Help us entertain Jaemin. Donghyuk has nothing on you and I’m basically hopeless.”

The bus stop was empty aside from this one old lady and her shopping cart. It was a bit too late to do some shopping, in Renjun’s opinion, but who was he to judge. Jeno tapped the empty spot on the bench for him to sit, but Renjun was feeling restless, “it’s ok, I’ll stand. It won’t be long anyway.”

“You don’t have to take the bus with me, you know,” Jeno said while crossing his legs and leaning slightly to the glass partitioning of the bus stop. Renjun’s house was only one stop away, and they both knew that walking the distance will result in Renjun reaching his home faster than if he was to wait for the bus. But the setting sun was framing Jeno’s profile perfectly and Renjun was too busy trying his best to not start hyperventilating to care about time and distances.

To that, Renjun took a deep breath. Letting the air circulate around his lungs before it was let out in one harsh exhale,

“I need to tell you something.”

“Another one?” At the promise for knowing another hidden aspect of Renjun’s life, Jeno instantly perked up on his seat, “tell me. I love secrets.”

“Remember the talk we had? The one at the cafeteria?” With his nerves starting to crawl up his shoulders and tickling the back of his neck, Renjun was too nervous to look anywhere near Jeno’s face. So he made the assumption that the boy had nodded to his question before continuing on, “I take it that you’re okay talking about… those kind of topics? Right?”

Another silence, another assumption of a nod.

“How about… the people. Are you okay? With… with…”

“I’m okay.”

Renjun had been watching his fingers fiddling with each other this whole time. The constant sight of his nails clacking against each other served as a calm and familiar grounding tool that when a strange set of hands popped into his field of vision, he was physically jolted out of a stupor he didn’t even realise he’d entered.

Correct that. It wasn’t a strange set. It was Jeno’s. Jeno’s hand over his, gripping and squeezing the tension out of Renjun’s sweaty fingers.

The whole situation was taking a toll on Renjun’s psyche. The burden of coming out, the confusion over what he should feel with Jeno’s sudden hand-holding, the panic, when he heard the rickety sound of plastic against metal as the old lady stood up from her seat and the familiar rumbling sound that got louder with each passing second.

“The bus is here.” Renjun didn’t intend for his voice to come out so tiny, or so choked up. But he sounded like he has swallowed his own tonsils and it made the situation a tad bit worse.

“Let’s just get the next one.” Jeno once again patted the empty seat beside him and this time, Renjun relented and took it. He didn’t think his legs would be a fully supportive party for the rest of this revelation of his anyway.

All the time Jeno didn’t let go. Even if it was only their index fingers linking together when Renjun was twisting and turning to find a comfortable sitting position, he didn’t let go. And although the gesture only amplified the weird, nagging pressure up his sinuses, it also somehow gave Renjun strength to unwrap all his words. He waited until the lady had boarded the bus and the familiar ping that signifies its departure rang through the peaceful streets before continuing on.

“I… like,- no, wait… I am attracted to boys. Yes.” All of a sudden, it felt like the drain to a semi full bathtub was pulled and you know those uncomfortably loud schlucking noise they made when air was trapped between the spiral of water? Renjun felt like his next info-dump sounded that way. Too loud, too quick, too weird and too discomforting. At least for him.

“I don’t even know why I feel like I have to tell you this,” aside from the fact that I’m hopelessly infatuated with you, “but you’re my friend now, not just my biology study buddy and because I can’t seem to live with the burden of… of keeping a secret from a friend, I feel like I have to. I’m sorry.”

“Just a friend?”

The silence that came next felt like forever. But forever came and went in five seconds. Forever was the time it took for Renjun to look up from their still tangled fingers to see the same look of recklessness on Jeno’s face as he had at that afternoon in the cafeteria.

“What?”

“Do you see me just as a friend?” Jeno was blushing, furiously, at the top of his cheek, at the tip of his nose, and his lips, all pinks and reds that were pulled up into an awkward grin due to the way his cheeks were twitching, “I’m a bit offended with that.”

How can Jeno look so beautiful while blushing? He wondered. Renjun’s kind of blushing is red all around the periphery of his face while the center was clean out of blood. His lips would turn a dangerous shade of purple while his ears would shine like two rubies under the dying light of sun. “W… what… what do you mean.”

To the sound of his stuttering, Jeno let out a deliciously free and airy laugh, the kind that take the reins of Renjun’s heart, kicking it on its bum to make it start running even harder that it was before. “Me too,” he mumbled out the words after the laughter sizzled to an end while his fingers creeped higher and higher up Renjun’s hand. He was surprised how Jeno was not in the very least disgusted by how sweaty his palm was getting, not noticing that anything was out of place before he gave Renjun's hands a very tight squeeze, “just like you. Exactly the same.”

There was a beat of quietness before Renjun suddenly snapped, “stop talking in riddles and codes, holy , what do you mean?!”

As said before, nobody has ever seen Renjun as someone with fiery, or to make it milder, unstable temper. But after today, he finally figured out a new facet of his personality. In moments of high stress, he would turn into a ticking time bomb filled with crippling anxiety, chronic impatience, and unrestrained link between his thoughts and his vocal chord.

The sudden outburst caused Jeno to stop in his tracks and to look at Renjun with eyes filled with shock. But when Renjun was about to somehow figure out a way to open a portal straight to hell for ruining an otherwise wonderful moment, Jeno saved the day by letting out a short and snappy laugh. The kind that brought out all the pent up nervousness from within him in four loud exclamations. It seemed as if after seeing Renjun ‘loosening up’, he’d decided to do the same and made both of their lives that little bit easier.

“I like you!” He yelled out. He yelled out. “There. Happy?”

“Not like ‘like’ , like? But like ‘like’, like?”

First a person with a fiery temper. Now a person who cries easily. What does his emotion wants from him, exactly? Renjun’s reaction after he saw the noddings of Jeno’s head to his very oddly worded question (it was no longer an assumption) was for his eyes to suddenly and involuntarily turn the knob on the spigots of his tear ducts and the next thing he knew, Renjun was crying his heart out.

Not a pretty cry, where he could easily wipe the edges of his eyes with a handkerchief or some other similar things. It was the ugly sobbing type, whose execution needed the collaboration of all the muscles of his body.

Renjun was apologising. Jeno was apologising. Their voices were mixed and blended together as Renjun was frantically wiping his tears and Jeno was panicking about what he must’ve thought as the biggest blunder in his life, that they’d lost track of who started it all and whose voice is it still ringing when it ended.

It took him a while (five minutes and one long hug from Jeno, to be exact) to reach there but finally Renjun calmed down enough that he could return to his default position, with only occasional hiccups disturbing the calm atmosphere. Sitting in front of Jeno, fighting his defaulted habit that told him to avoid looking at the boy right on his face because that afternoon, Jeno was exceptionally beautiful. And Renjun will probably bring the regret to his death bed if he ended up associating this special occasion with the sight of his dirty pair of running shoes.

Through it all, their hands were linked. Even if it was only an index finger, hooked around a pinky or a thumb, they were still linked.

“I’m happy,” Renjun finally managed to blurt the simple statement out, after he spent almost a whole fifteen seconds stuttering on saying the word ‘I’. “Don’t know why I cried. Honestly. I’m happy.”

The silence between them was suddenly different. Calm. Refreshing. With random bursts of Jeno’s soft giggles because apparently, he was just as happy as Renjun was at that moment.

Too many happiness collected in one spot, at one moment, should not be a good thing. Renjun theorised that it will only attract all the bad things lurking at the periphery, acting as a beacon of hope or a blaring alarm that screams out ‘prank me! I’m gullible!’

But their hands were squeezed together in between their knees, and he could see the puffs coming out of Jeno’s mouth, what with the drop of temperature in early spring nights. With that, Renjun couldn’t seem care less about his theories. Of coffees, teas, happiness… the deal with Donghyuk. Oh dear, the deal. Renjun has a feeling that Monday is going to be a very fun day.

They didn’t know what they were doing next, or what they were planning to do (maybe they did, maybe they definitely did. But nobody wanted to admit that they did and so they decided to stay silent). But they found themselves slowly leaning in, closer and closer, and it didn’t feel wrong. So Renjun allowed himself to go along with the flow.

Jeno’s eyes fluttered to a close as their foreheads touched, right before a disappointed smile was formed when they heard the familiar rumbling and tires skidding round the corner of the road. “The bus is here.”

Renjun had his eyes open throughout the ordeal, because as said before, he had this goal of imprinting the wonderful image of Jeno sitting on the bus stop framed with the beautiful colour of dusk onto his memory. And so he was at an advantage, because then he had a better chance at quickly eliminating the last tiny distance between them and plant a quick kiss on the corner of Jeno’s lips before they had to pry themselves apart.

It’s a secret. A secret between the two of them that nobody needs to know. Yet. (At least until Monday. Because after that day, then it’s a secret known by four people.)

Renjun couldn’t quell a smile when he saw Jeno taking a few seconds too long trying to open his eyes, blinking them a few times in confusion as if he was thinking ‘what the hell just happened.’

What the hell indeed.

“Can we get on the next one?”

“... yes. Of course we can.”