Work Text:
there’s a customer who has a very specific routine at the cafe ike serves as a barista.
(it’s a family owned business, so ike spends his afternoons in the cafe taking orders and serving customers before doing his homework in the evening.)
back to this customer, though, ike has noticed a few things about him. he comes in every tuesday and thursday, orders the same thing (a coffee and one of the cakes ike hand-makes whenever he has a spare moment), and sits in this little hidden corner of the cafe, in a seat where the window expands to fill the entire length of the wall from top to bottom. it’s the sunniest spot in the cafe, but since it’s seated behind some of the busier 4-people booths, it’s a relatively untouched spot.
(when they were making renovations to the cafe, ike had lobbied for that window to be put in with a ferocious stubbornness that eventually had his parents backing off in defeat. mostly so he could have somewhere to sit and look outside when business was slow and he wasn’t particularly keen on doing homework.)
it takes only a few bi-daily trips for ike to recognise and, to an extent, memorise the routine of this stranger. he’s probably ike’s age, having just started college, and if the messy, unkempt hair and laptop running on low power isn’t obvious, the university hoodie he sometimes wears is.
but it’s not like he’s particularly interested in doing work in ike’s corner either (subconsciously, the corner has been labelled ‘ike’s’ because no one really goes back there other than him. at least, not until now.). he just sits there and stares at the world outside. sometimes, it’ll be sunny, and ike will watch one yellow eye lazily blink at the people outside, watching them cross the street that’s opposite their cafe. sometimes it’ll be rainy, and his hair will drip rainwater onto the floor. ike has had to lend him his towels several times, and they’re always taken with the same embarrassed smile and muttered apologies. he wonders why mystery patron never has an umbrella with him. there’s a convenience store just across the road, after all.
whatever the weather, though, he’ll always be humming this soft little song under his breath, fingers of one hand tapping against the table while the other plays with his - admittedly really pretty- hair. and ike, too will stare, quite unabashedly, at the stranger in his corner. he’s a little surprised as to how the other has never felt ike’s gaze burning him up like the sunshine outside. his best friend, a boy just a little bit older than him with a three for a smile and a shock of dyed-yellow hair, will snicker under his breath and hope ike doesn’t hear him when he catches ike staring.
(his name is shu yamino; they’re in the same year in university. he studies a double degree in mathematics and computer science. ike is an english literature major.)
yeah, maybe it’s weird - the staring. but it’s always been ike’s way of noticing things about the world. and he notices a lot more than his friends and family do. to the point of it being a little creepy, almost? or, at least, more than they give him credit for. while it does have its uses - he’s never had a close brush with death while crossing the road, for example - it also tends to keep him up until all hours of the night, watching through narrowed, sleepy eyes out the window at the regular bustlings and activities of the street below him. it’s why he has dark circles underneath his eyes; he’s a responsible university student, thank you very much.
it also tends to get him in trouble during these shifts, or during school though. mostly little things like not noticing a customer in front of him until they cough and give him that side-eye glance that means “are you normal or is there something wrong with you?” ike has learned to ignore people like that. but at the current moment, the person annoyed at him isn’t a customer - it’s a slow day - nor is it his parents. instead, it’s shu, and he’s sporting that tic in his eye that ike knows means he’s either trying not to laugh or yell at him. he’ll put his money on the former. mostly because he knows why shu’s eye is twitching.
“you’ve been staring at him for the past ten minutes,” he says, through a barely straight face. oh, he’s definitely trying not to laugh. ike, dismayed, feels his face fall.
“i did it again, didn’t i?”
the whole people-watching and staring thing is something he’s been trying to change for a while - forcing himself to close his eyes, to keep his attention on himself rather than the people around him. to keep his head above the water rather than just submerging it and looking through blurry lenses at the world around him. it’s not quite as easy as shu claims it is, though. mostly because it sort of just happens. he can’t really help the way his mind wanders and carries his gaze with it.
at least some of the things he finds are interesting. there’s this mother daughter couple that always comes in during wednesday and orders a coffee and a hot chocolate. an old man whom ike recognises as one of his neighbours will come down into the cafe every day at around 3pm and order tea and read his newspaper at one of the bar stools. this boy ike knows as mysta comes in fifteen minutes to closing to order a cold coffee with a double shot of espresso - probably to get him through the night.
(mysta is in the same year as ike and shu, and he is a psychology major with hopes to someday become a private investigator. he has sharp eyes and an even sharper tongue. ike has no doubt that he’ll definitely make it.)
and of course, there’s the mystery patron sitting in ike’s corner currently. something is definitely off, though. ike sneaks a glance at the laptop shu has propped open on the counter - he can hear his mother’s disapproving tutting noises - and nearly drops the coffee he’s holding.
it’s wednesday.
it’s wednesday.
he nearly shakes the living daylights out of shu when he realises this, rattling the blenders in the back and causing a rare cuss word to slip from his best friend’s lips.
“way to-“
“shu!”
“do a complete”
“shu!!”
“180, ike-“ shu grabs him by the shoulders and halts him where he stands - or rather, shakes - with just too much of a raise of his eyebrows and just a little too much firmness in his grip. “stop making a scene, dude.” his tone is light and conversational, but the annoyance is clear to see on his face.
anyone else would have missed it, but ike can’t help but see it in every line of shu’s face.
“listen, listen.”
shu looks extremely unimpressed. ike can barely hold his surprise.
“it’s wednesday!”
“and?”
shu’s eyebrow creeps further and further towards his hairline. at this rate, it’ll disappear into the banana. ike has to stifle a giggle at that notion. he lets go of his friend and redirects his gaze at the mystery patron in his corner, keeping himself busy by staring at the way his mouth would curve into this smile that he could only describe as foxlike - sly, charismatic, kind of sexy. the kind the girls on campus would go crazy for. he’s got something in his mouth today, which is something else that’s new, and from this far back, ike can’t tell if its’s the end of a lollipop (hilariously endearing) or a cigarette.
(in which case, ike will have to kindly ask him to leave, because their cafe has a no smoking policy.)
the bell rings and a cheerful grin and a mop of yellow hair greets the two of them.
“late as always, luca,” shu says dryly. luca hangs his coat up in the back and returns with an apron that reads, lovingly, ‘kiss the chef’.
(he is in the same year as ike, shu, and mysta. he is a politics major. which ike thinks is really funny, because he keeps making jokes about being a ‘mean and evil mafia boss’. talk about irony, why don’t you, luca?)
“you’re not the chef, though,” ike says. luca shoots him a large smile that borders on unhinged, and he wonders how many soft drinks the yellow lion-like boy has had today.
“yeah, yeah. so did a panda punch you in the face and pass on the dark circles? or are they new too?” he waves a hand in ike’s direction, looking at him with humour sparkling in his eyes. ike snorts as a response.
(luca works on wednesdays in the cafe for some extra money. things are tight at his house right now, despite what he says about being a ‘mean and evil mafia boss’. his words, not ike’s.)
“your jokes are not funny, no matter how much you think they are.” sarcasm drips off ike’s tone as shu turns to help a customer who’s just come inside. they usually have quite a bit of activity on wednesdays, but someone must have passed a memo around, or maybe fate is just screwing with ike, because there is only the three of them, the old man sitting on one of the bar stools, and a few people ike doesn’t recognise in one of the booths.
oh, wait, no, there’s elira.
(elira pendora, a year older than ike, a music major who participated in the talent show this year and pretty much blew the competition out of the water. ike would love to sing with her one day, but they’ve had like, maybe one conversation.)
“so… did something happen to make our dear ike so excited today?” luca asks as shu returns with the customer’s order. he passes it to ike, who begins frothing the milk for the cappuccino.
“i am not excited,” he hisses, slightly scandalised. he’s not excited at all. shu gives him this deadpan stare that ike knows means ‘please get your head out of the gutter’. he flushes as a response.
luca hoists himself onto one of the empty counters they’re not using at the current moment, legs kicking gently at the wooden cabinets. ike watches the porcelain plates in the display fridge shake gently at his friend’s motions, a little disappointed, but not at all surprised. luca has always been extremely active, even when he’s not trying to be. he pours the milk into the coffee cup and hands it to the customer, who thanks them and leaves. that person’s new, too. lots of things today are new.
“you’re literally bouncing off the ceiling,” luca points out. “you don’t usually shift your weight this much.”
damn it, luca. sometimes ike wonders if luca also spends an obscene amount of time looking at other people the way he does, but usually he just chalks it up to the australian boy being a little too attentive to his friends. the same reason he likes to drown them in hugs and (sometimes) overly loud expressions of affection. oh, and ‘pog’.
“any new regulars on the block? i’d love to know whether you found a serial killer lurking around.” shu adds onto the teasing, narrowed purple eyes staring at ike with amusement creating a lilt in his voice.
(the block in question is the one that ike spends the early hours of the morning poring over the way someone else would pore over their studies. he lives above the cafe with his parents, bordering a main road. there’s always lots to see.)
he casts his eyes to the ceiling, trying to remember if anything new over the past few days had caught his attention. unbeknownst to him, his legs stop bouncing up and down when he does. shu and luca wait with baited breath, because as much as they like to tease him, ike knows they relish these updates as much as he does finding them.
“yeah.” a small smile spreads over his face as he watches mystery patron tilt his head, staring out the window. his fingers are tying his hair back into a loose bun - some of the strands are stuck in his mouth.
“oh?” luca’s voice is teasing, knowing. ike blushes as he returns to reality. “do you mean someone new on the block? or that cute guy you keep staring at?” ike’s blush turns into a bleaching of his melanin, turning white with embarrassment. he glares at shu out of the corner of his eye, but the compsci major just puts a finger to his lips in a proverbial ‘i won’t tell’ gesture. sometimes he gets the feeling that shu and luca are ganging up against him.
but luca had noticed, too? awfully weird, as his gentle coworker is usually as dense as a rock. in fact, so oblivious that he doubts luca realises that shu has a massive, massive crush on him. it’s a little funny to see shu agonising behind the cafeteria about whether or not to tell luca about his feelings. more than once, ike has considered just telling luca, because he’d probably think it was a declaration of intent to be best friends or something. it’d be easy enough to do it, too. push shu in through the glass doors he thought he was so good at hiding from, let shu scare the absolute hell out of luca. oh, what ike wouldn’t give to see that.
and he’ll be helping two of his best friends - that’s clearly the primary motive.
“i meant the block,” he replies snappily. “there’s someone new occupying the 4-5am slot.”
luca hops off the bar, interested, before turning to take the order of the customer who’d just come in. “gimme a second, ike. i want to hear this,” he says.
“are we talking creepy stalker or demon clown?” shu teases, reminding ike of the time he’d thought the man pacing up and down the street at 3am was a demon because of the lighting and the moon casting a ghostly pale glow over his skin.
having taken the order, luca bends down between the two of them to open the fridge, returning with a slice of apple pie that ike had baked this morning before heading to school and inserting it into a takeaway box. “the demon clown was really something, dude.”
ike doesn’t think his face has ever been this red - his friends laying bare every single embarrassing thing he’s ever done will do that to a person, he supposes. but he settles for slapping luca on the back and ruffling shu’s hair until it hangs downwards and it looks like the banana had exploded or something. he giggles.
“so who was it? what archetype did he fit this time?” shu asks, fixing his hair.
“we’re talking tortured artist.” and tortured he had been. ike distinctly remembers the sounds of an almost in-tune guitar haunting the main street at the weirdly quiet hour of 4-5am. not a busker, maybe just a phantom? or maybe it’s all something he made up in his head and this guy doesn’t actually exist. having imparted his information, ike elects to ignore his friends. having to listen to them recount all his failures is definitely not something he wants to spend the rest of his afternoon.
he’d much rather spend it people watching and allowing the other two take orders.
ike angles his eyes back at the boy in the corner just in time for him to turn away to look at the window, instead. he groans unhappily, putting his head in his hands. shu’s feline-like smile follows him into the back of his mind, seared onto the backs of his eyelids. it’s horribly teasing.
“so, wednesday, huh? what does that have to do with anything?” one hand under his chin, shu glances at ike through half-lidded eyes, still smiling that infuriating grin.
“you already know,” he grumbles in response. “no use trying to hide anything from you.”
(the first time he tries to hide something from shu yamino is when he realises that he is bisexual, and that the object of his affection is none other than his best friend. obviously, shu finds out in around three seconds flat. and that leaves ike stammering and a little bit heartbroken when he’s turned down. again, obviously, they’re fine now. so ike is a little glad that shu finds out.)
shu pats ike on the head, ruffling his hair gently. “why haven’t you tried to get to know him? do you even know his name? what about him is so special, huh?”
ike watches mystery patron run a hand through his already messy hair, and a few more strands fall from the bun to land in front of his face. his gaze has fixed itself back on the window, and his head is tilted the same way shu’s is when he’s confused. there is something so catlike about the expression that ike can almost imagine ears pricked up at the top of the other’s head. and then he sits up straight and turns around, having seemingly noticed someone’s gaze on his.
their eyes meet for a split second, blue and yellow, and his turn into little crescents as he smiles at ike. damn, he really does have a nice smile. if he wants it to, it can probably light up the dark side of the moon. ike finds himself hiding behind the counter with his head in between his hands and his ears positively burning.
his smile is so nice.
ike fails to keep his heart from jumping into his throat, and he manages a single strangled sentence. “no… i don’t know his name. and there’s nothing special about him, shu.”
(during renovations, ike had also asked for a little crawl space underneath the counter. under the pretence of ‘leg room’, but really, it’s a space for him to bury his head into the sand like an ostrich when things are.a little too much, and his fiery red face and oh-so-fast pulse are the exact definitions of ‘too much’.)
there is a borderline mocking laugh from shu’s throat. luca is also unabashedly staring at mystery patron, but he seems to not notice. then again, luca stares at everyone the same way, so maybe the extreme attention is just normal.
“that’s a lie if i’ve ever heard one, ike,” shu comments. luca has come to kneel down next to him with a comforting hand on his back. ike melts into the warmth. “and if you don’t do something, i will.”
panic flares across ike’s system, and he hits his head against the top of the counter before crawling out in haste.
“you can’t do that!” he gasps. “he-“ ike’s gaze flashes towards the table, where they make eye contact again, sunshine yellow and raincloud blue, and another gentle smile graces his face. his hair has all but fallen out of its bun, and ike can see the end of what’s in his mouth now - it’s definitely a lollipop.
and he is definitely also hiding back underneath the counter because oh god here he comes, here he comes??
“oh, shit, he’s coming-!” ike freaks out. fingers gripping onto shu like his life depends on it, he buries his head into his friend’s uniform.
oh, god, ike won’t know how to talk to him. he’s spent so long idealising mystery patron that he realises a little too late that he’s a bit afraid, actually. he’s a bit afraid that the version that he’s built up in his head will be different to the one that is coming towards the counter. it’s a little bit of a late realisation, and it’s also maybe a little bit horrible to admit that he’d rather talk to the idealised version, the fantasy version, but ike’s head has always been a little bit in the clouds.
“nah,” luca says all of a sudden. there is a wicked gleam in his eyes that is matched with a similar one in shu’s. “you’re dealing with this one by yourself.” he says this, and there is a hint of laughter in shu’s smile as ike stares at the two of them through his bangs. and just like that, shu reaches over and pries his fingers off his uniform with a scarily toothy smile.
“have fun!” he says, and ike watches as they retreat into the storeroom. not for the first time, he curses his lack of actual friends, because shu and luca are just troublemakers ready to happen. it’s in the mischief in shu’s eyes and the genuine yet misplaced wellbeing of luca’s grins. oh, he is so ready to throttle the two of them once they come out of-
“is this a bad time…?” a deep voice asks.
(his voice is actually exactly the way ike expects it to sound, low and a little bit rumbly, resonating in ike’s chest like the purr of his cat ivy when she sits on him and waits for him to give her food. it sounds sonorous, like the ocean waves, and rich like… like chocolate.)
and ike turns around, ever-so-gracefully almost knocking a stack of cups over, only to be met with those beautiful sunshine eyes. oh, there’s some pink at the tops of them. almost like a sunset. something inside of him is burning and writhing uncomfortably, and he can feel his already red cheeks flaming up even more.
“wow. you’re gorgeous,” he manages to choke out, and watches a pale blush rise onto mystery patron’s face before he realises what he’s just said and groans, burying his hands into the sleeves of the sweater he wears above his uniform.
a strand of his hair is falling down to curl cutely at the nape of his neck, and ike chooses to put his focus there instead, after his monumental failure. oh god, what did he say? god, luca is never going to let him live this down. he’ll be hearing about this 20 years into the future. which is probably deserved, at this point, because ike is sure nothing he can still do can be as bad of a screw up. he can almost hear shu’s laughter in his ears.
“thanks, i guess,” mystery patron says. “anyway, i noticed you, well, not-so-subtly staring at me from halfway across the cafe.” he snaps his fingers. “actually, it’s been a few weeks now, since you started doing that. and i just wanted to ask if we, well, know each other.”
there’s a beat, a pause for ike’s heart to catch up.
“please don’t tell me you’re that one guy who gave me his homework and watched me drop it down the toilet. please.”
the only reply ike can give is a noise of disbelief, a high squeak. god he’s even cuter up close.
“n-no. i don’t think we have met.” ike is stuttering over his words. “i’m… ike. and you are?”
(in reality, he is the top champion in the country’s speech festival, and he has always been good at public speaking. his primary school teacher gives him the largest roles in the class plays. in middle school he writes a five minute speech about pride and prejudice that shocks his teacher, and his valedictorian speech is met with roaring applause after he has finished talking about the ship of theseus and how they have all changed.)
he doesn’t really expect a response. actually, he fully expects the other not to reply at all. after all, who gives their name to a creepy stranger who has only ever stared at him without instigating conversations? someone who, in different words, could be considered a stalker? ike shivers despite the heating in the cafe and the sweater he’s in. ‘stalker’ sounds a bit less weird in his subconscious than when he uses it as a term to define himself.
“my name? oh. it’s vox. and you are the barista here, aren’t you?” the awkward silence between the two of them stretches on and on as vox rubs the back of his neck, unable to meet ike’s eyes, with ike too busy glaring and wishing death on his best friends as he stares at the window with a gaze so fixated, he worries he might break the glass with his eyes alone.
vox’s hand waves in front of his face, black nail-polish and equally black beads on a bracelet. he has such nice fingers, it’s not fair. they’re thin and elegant - piano fingers - and ike would love to see how they fit around his.
“yeah. yeah, i am. and i wasn’t. staring at you.” he says this last part all at once, words spilling out like a waterfall. he glances down at his hands, suddenly far too interested in the way they are interlacing. “you just happened to look at me when i was looking at you.”
he can hear shu snickering, and luca’s muffled shriek of laughter. an annoyed grin spreads across his face. he will definitely be strangling someone later.
“anyways, are you just here to embarrass me to death? or are you actually going to order something?”
to his credit, vox has the decency to look a little bit guilty, as if part of his reason for walking up to the counter was to embarrass ike - just a little. he runs a hand through his hair, simultaneously taking it out of its hair tie and letting it spill freely down his back. it reaches almost to his waist, actually, and it’s shot through with red streaks that remind ike of rubies and scarlet. part of it obscures his right eye, but ike can tell it’s just a normal eye. nothing fancy. they stare at each other in silence, one embarrassed, one too embarrassed to care anymore. ike’s blank stare slowly drifts towards the full-length window, and he catches a glimpse of mysta making his way across the road with his laptop in hand, coat hung over his shoulders in the way that made girls squeal. effortlessly cool, but also effortlessly stupid.
he watches mysta nearly stumble and trip into the store with a lopsided smile on his face. “just give me a second,” he says to vox, turning his attention instead to mysta.
the boy with the fox’s eyes orders the same thing as he always has - coffee with two shots of espresso, and ike tries to ignore the shakiness of his hands when he does.
“any specific reason why you’re here so early? we don’t close for another… oh, i’d say six hours.”
(it is currently 3pm in the afternoon. ike’s family closes up at 9pm so they can have dinner together and give them some time to catch up when his father returns from his job. mysta usually pops in between 8:45 ad 8:55. ike usually keeps his order freshly made because of how regular that schedule is. even his mom knows mysta at this point.)
“not really, just felt like coffee earlier today. trying to fix the fucked up sleep schedule, you know.” he salutes ike and winks, grabbing his drink and taking off across the street - a clean getaway until he’s accosted by two girls asking presumably for his number.
ah, the problems of the good-looking. ike has never really had to worry about them, just the occasional confession that he gently turns down. brushing his hands on his apron, he turns back to vox.
“decided what you want to order yet? or do you want me to give you a little bit more time?” he raises an unimpressed eyebrow.
“yeah, i was going to order something,” he says quickly. and he rattles off his order to ike, who takes it down and begins preparing it like any other order. good job avoiding the question, vox, he thinks.
one caramel macchiato and a freshly made brownie later, ike throws his apron at luca, who catches it and throws him a thumbs up. shu’s face still bears that same feline expression of ‘i know everything and you don’t’ that is mildly infuriating. yet ike has to admit that this plan is, admittedly, not one of the worst ones that shu has come up with.
(the worst plan that shu has ever come up with was the one he used to set millie and enna up. it included fireworks, karaoke, and flares. the result was loud and not very effective. or at least, it wouldn’t have been, if it wasn’t for enna and millie.)
“you owe me one for this!” shu hollers after him. ike turns around, makes sure his fingers aren’t in vox’s immediate line of sight, and flips off his friends. luca makes a faux faint onto the floor, and shu’s fingers splay over his chest like he’s been shot.
his friends are so dramatic. always have had a flare for the dramatic.
like an unspoken thread has been tied around him and vox’s pinky fingers, he follows the other back to the corner with the full length window, and they sit down almost simultaneously. the only sound they make is the sloshing of ice in vox’s cup as he drinks.
“so, why are you always here, on-“ ike stops himself for a second. “well, usually you’re here on tuesdays and thursdays, around 2 to 6pm, but not today. its 3pm on a wednesday. why are you here, vox?” he asks this absentmindedly, too focused on the way vox’s lips curve into a small smile around the edge of the straw and at the end of the strawberry lollipop held between two fingers like a joint. so, it’s a lollipop. not a cigarette. though, to be fair, ike wouldn’t have complained if it had been the latter.
vox’s smile is the same as shu’s. distinctly like a fox’s. “why, can’t i sit here and enjoy the view?” he replies, meeting ike’s barrage of questions with his own, slowly drawled one. he raises his eyes to ike’s, and they are wide and flat, yellows like a lion’s, nearly glowing amber in the light of the sun. his eyes are half-lidded, and his eyelashes are unfairly long. it’s like bits of gold flecks. god, that view is doing something to ike. his heart jumps into his throat, breath constricting.
“no, no, it’s fine. but just… why those time?”
(for future use, ike really only works the afternoon shifts during tuesdays, thursdays, and fridays. he’s here from the evening until closing time on mondays, wednesdays, and the weekends. family owned, but ike, of course, isn’t the only one working here.)
ike chides himself to stop thinking too much into it. calm down, ike, he thinks to himself.
people watching brings one more thing with it that is not extremely welcome. it’s the tendency to be more egocentric. he learns this term from mysta one day, and learns that it means an inability to see things from another’s perspective. now, while that may not be the perfect term to describe him - it’s really the closest he can get.
besides, he and vox don’t know each other. unless they do. but unless they do, they don’t. so vox can’t be here for him. maybe he just has no classes during these very awkward, very specific times. ah, ike should get back to the counter. really, what was he thinking? if his mother comes out and sees this, she’ll be very disappointed in him.
“oh. that’s a simple question,” vox says, surprise bleeding into his voice. he takes a long, long sip of his drink before responding, and ike thinks that maybe he’s forgotten what he wanted to say, or is making fun of him, or- “i came here for you,” he says.
and ike feels the saliva in his own mouth dry up and his cheeks flare red again. vox mumbles this under his breath, so it’s barely audible, but ike feels his heart stop, catch up, stop, catch up, playing hide and seek with his pulse, jumpstarting and stopping, chest compressions over his own ribcage by his own heart, banging so hard he thinks it can’t get any harder. his breath hitches.
wow. so that’s what interest and infatuation do to a person. do to him. do to vox. the way the corners of his ears redden, and he brushes the back of his neck with one hand, playing with his hair, avoiding eye contact. ike is much the same, blushing, stammering, a mess.
it’s then that luca wanders over oh so inconspicuously and slams his tray onto the table to collect vox’s abandoned plate. ike jumps. vox jumps. luca beams. “did you now?” he questions vox. vox nods slowly. luca’s grin grows even wider as he turns to look at ike. there’s the same knowledgable gleam in his eyes as matches’s shu’s smiles. god, they really are two peas in a pod. ike needs to introduce them to each other, soon.
“yeah, yeah i did.” vox sounds a little more confident. luca turns to him and laughs.
the plate goes clack onto the plate as he makes conversational small talk. “that’s interesting, honestly, because it sounds exactly like what i told ike!” ike can feel his blush deepening.
“shut it, luca,” he hisses.
a laugh, bright and clear, breaks through ike’s annoyance. and if possible, vox’s laugh is even cuter than his smile, the corners turning into a D and eyes squeezing themselves shut. he looks like the living representation of a kaomoji. luca takes this opportunity to stick his tongue out at ike, who nearly shoves his fingers up his friend’s nostrils.
real mature, luca. real mature.
“i’m going to leave you two lovebirds to it,” shu says.
there’s wingman number 2. ike was wondering where he’d went.
“oh my god, shu. fuck you.” he can’t keep the expletive from his vocabulary, and he apologises right away to no avail. vox refuses to accept his apology, saying he does much worse.
from the storage room, shu’s voice leaks into ike’s ears. “nah, you owe me!” he says, rather loudly. the cafe turns to look at him strangely.
(the first time shu and luca try to wingman ike, they set the chemistry lab on fire. needless to say, ike does not get a date, and what he gets instead is time. a day of in-school suspension. compared to their week of out-school suspension, he supposes it’s not that bad, but when he finds out what they’ve been doing is just lazing around everyday, he gets just the tiniest bit jealous.)
but it’s not like shu doesn’t have a point. he does owe his best friend a favour. he was the one who pushed ike towards vox, after all. fuck the methods, though. honestly, ike has half a mind to let luca loose into shu’s house, scaring the hell out of shu.
on second thought, maybe that’d end up with a relationship so cute it rots. luca certainly seems like the type.
“i don’t owe you anything!” he yells back, before turning his attention back on vox. his eyes have also drifted back to the windows, and the little song he sings is back, fingers tapping to its beat while he sucks on the lollipop. he seems to have not noticed ike. there is a smile on his face, and god, it’s so cute.
“want something from me?” vox asks, like he can see ike’s gaze on him.
ike fidgets with the hem of his shirt. “so, uh, hey…” he starts, feeling a flush climb back onto his face. why is he so bad at this again?
“hmm?” vox hums, not turning to look at him. what exactly has caught his attention. ike, too, gazes outside the window, trying to see what vox does. nothing in particular, really.
across the street, a busker plays the guitar and blows into a harmonica at the same time to earn some money. a young boy and his mother walk past him, and she deposits two dollars into the case of his guitar. further down the street, a man stands outside a restaurant, trying to get people to come in. the convenience store’s doors ding dong as someone walks inside. all in all, quite a normal day.
it’s a sultry wednesday afternoon, the sun lazily dripping its golden rays on the the two of them. they shoot through the window to frame vox’s hair, creating a halo around his black hair stained red. red looks so good as an accent colour on him, ike muses. the plants outside rustle gently in the wind, and he watches one man bundle up tighter in his coats. ike just stares, content to be with vox.
“well, my shift ended twenty minutes ago,” ike broaches the topic hesitantly.
(it’s 4pm now, ike usually takes a break here to do some homework, just to break some of the monotony of standing at a counter for two hours taking orders for three different types of coffee over and over again. he likes some of the monotony. just a bit.)
“yeah,” comes the gentle reply.
ike laces his fingers together. “do you want to… i don’t know, go somewhere? get dinner?” he murmurs this quietly under his breath, immediately regretting it. what if vox thinks he’s a weirdo? what if shu finds out? oh, ike won’t see an end to that conversation if his best friend finds them.
“just you and me?” vox asks, the same stupid smile fixed on his face, still refusing to look at ike.
“yes…?” ike is beginning to regret having asked at all, really. “i mean, listen. if you don’t want to, that’s fine as well- you don’t have to-“ he rambles on and on, trying to fix things. trying to start over.
he’s stopped by a pair of lips over his. they taste vaguely like sweet caramel and chocolate, and they are slightly chapped. he needs to wear some lip balm or something before they dry out completely. ike finds himself shutting up and melting like the chocolate inside his brownies. he hears a phone click - it’s probably shu - but he doesn’t really care.
vox’s hands steady the two of them before they break apart. “shut up, ike,” he says, breathlessly. “shut up.” ike really wants to kiss him again. really, really badly.
“vox…”
“listen. i’d love to go out with you, alright?”
ike really, really, really wants to kiss him again.
so he does.