In his mind, he is the trapezist. He’s teetering, very thinly, strugglingly advertent steps lining the rooftop’s edge. His arms are expanding beside himself therein, stretching like wings, thrice the angel’s native transcendence, trusting his own body as the overarching imminence, the susceptibility of flesh superseding the divine. The city is expanding beneath himself therein, unfurling like a pandemonium, thrice the devil’s iniquity, the decision of sin a very relentless adjudicator, determined by everyone’s unavoidable everything, easier to be dead than to be innocent; stay untouched.
In the corporeal world, he is equally substantial. He’s debatably noticeable, teetering nevertheless, meek and coy. The satchel lugged beside his hip threatens to topple him with its tonnage screamingly, though he perseveres through the ardor, feet strained by the fatigable drag. He spots his harbor clearly, however, recuperating as he casts his anchor at last, the space beside the other occupied almost boldly, unabashedly.
“Hansol!” The second syllable is what stretches his lips into their routine smile, feeling like he’d hitched his ride on the back of a happiness somehow inexplicable, turning to greet him fully like he was revealing he’d been there all along. His expression tinctures itself with a kind of impressionable softness, a kind of allusive apology, sweetness and its sugar like an overcoating, completing the way he looks at him, doe eye. “Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi! Sorry, I’m so late!” There was never a designated arrangement for the time they spent together. It was, instead, something he’d largely founded on his own, perpetuated with the quintessential desire to be with him as his inspiration.
“I went into the bathroom to ask if anyone had seen you, but they all told me to stop talking to them while they were using the bathroom. I wanted to apologize but they were preoccupied, so,” his bottom lip juts in an exaggerated pout, thoughtful. “I’ll do it ... tomorrow? I think. Maybe I’ll make something. Actually, maybe I don’t have to apologize at all. I just feel like it’s annoying. Not annoying in a bad way or anything. Actually, maybe not annoying at all. I think it’s rude, though. The word I’m looking for is rude. I went in there very purposefully, you know? I knew who I wanted to see and I had no interest in anyone else! I didn’t even ask about anyone else! I asked just for you.” Highlighting it as if he were preening.
“I would feel annoyed about that, maybe. I think. In a group setting. Would you consider that a group setting, Hansol? It is the lavatory, after all. I feel like since the boys are the only ones who can go in there, it is kind of a solidarity thing.” A reprieve, finally, paying it his own consideration. “Mm ... Basically, I meant it was very clearly obvious I had no interest in anyone else, which I feel can be interpreted rudely. I feel kind of bad.” His wince is sharp, eyebrows knit in a flash of pain he’d ultimately dismiss with his next shrug. “Oh well!” His bag hurriedly repositioned then, settled into his lap with an audible heave, rummaging through its contents excitedly.
“Today,” he retrieves the online manual he’d found on woodcutting and places it neatly over the other’s lap. “I was thinking we could try bungee jumping. I don’t know, actually. How would we do that?” As if he were talking to himself, head leaned into the question as if it truly retained genuine, inquisitive depth, pulling him curiously. “Oh, you know, sometimes, I’ve read about cases where the rope isn’t properly secured and people just plummet to their deaths, like splat!” Cue the clap of his hands, for emphasis.
“That’d be disgusting. Can you imagine? Especially because I’ve read that sometimes as you’re dying, like when rigor motris is settling in, your muscles all relax, including your bowel movements. That might not be true, though. I feel like I’ve read it’s not true before, too, but I think I’ve heard it too many times for it to not be true, so maybe it’s like, something that can happen but doesn’t always happen, you know?” His palm is outstretched finally, and in its midst, lemon and lime sour candies whose flavors were indicated by the green and yellow coloring of their wrappers.
“Anyway, let’s eat! I brought these today. You liked them, right?” He pauses once more, nostrils flared as he leans in, nose burrowed maybe too closely, breathing in the other’s scent like it were something he could saturate the core essence of his being with. “Aw, no way! Did you smoke already?”
@thbhs / 2014.
