Chapter Text
“Come on!” He’s gleeful - like a kid in a candy store, eager to devour everything in his sight. Excitement radiates off of him in waves, swallowing you whole with the overwhelming intensity of it. You’re but a tiny figure lost at sea, completely at the mercy of his unrelenting exuberance that crests and falls, crashing over your head with enough force to knock the laughter from your lungs.
“Wait up!” It’s lost somewhere in the dark, fading into the night sky that stretches impossibly over your heads.
Of course, he doesn’t. He never does.
He hardly slows, still barreling down the side streets like he’s running a marathon and the end’s in sight. On the other hand, your lungs are burning, the same fire stretching the length of your calves and deep in your lungs.
You’ll never understand where he gets his energy from or how it differs so wildly from yours. You suppose that’s why you two work so well together - two halves of the same whole, two sides of the same coin.
“Baby, hurry up!” You have half the mind to tell him to shut up but the ache in your chest has your breathing bordering on wheezing, the sounds squeaking up and out of your throat in little mismatched puffs.
Note to self: start running again.
“Not everyone is approximately 99% leg, JK!”
Despite your grumbling - bits of grit and gravel that kick up and knock your words into themselves - laughter follows. It can’t not when you’re with him.
“You’re just slow,” he drawls, spectacularly out of breath and with the snarkiest, shit-eating grin on his face. It casts over his shoulder with ease, doubling as both infuriating and adorable as it slots into his expression. You’ll really never understand how he manages to do it - drive you crazy in so many different ways all at once.
You huff - perhaps a little exaggerated but altogether very real - and pump your legs just a little harder, footfalls resounding in the otherwise quiet alley like a gunshot.
The further you go, the faster you run - it feels a little easier. Not quite a runner’s high, but something close and brought on by the company you keep, the warm body that’s just within reach and held to yours by knocking, messy knuckles. It’s like an endorphin rush or morphine - a straight shot of adrenaline right into your veins. It fills you like the summer sun, with elation and glee and every other cheesy emotion you equate with being in love.