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Yuma doesn’t know what to say.
It’s not something he expected would happen, smack bang in the middle of shooting a performance for their comeback. All he’s got to do is give a compliment, for god’s sake. But right now, looking into Jo’s round eyes that look like they contain the entire universe, and yeah, maybe that’s the camera lights—he still looks beautiful, like he always does, charming in that shy, gangly way of his… Yuma can’t do it.
“Jo looks…”
His members shift subtly behind where he and Jo are clutching hands like someone’s about to make them recite their vows. Yuma is all too aware of at least ten cameras pointing his way.
He casts a frantic eye over Jo’s outfit, looking for something to praise, which is a mistake. Yuma’s eyes snag on his slim waist and he admires how the fabric stretches over the other boy’s long limbs, and, oh, Jo just squeezed Yuma’s hand Yuma thinks he’s going to die here and it would be a happy death—
Somebody coughs somewhere in the back. Yuma realizes how stupid he looks, standing in front of the most gorgeous boy on earth and not finding anything to compliment. His silence has now stretched for a bit too long, and he’s seeming ruder and ruder by the second.
“…great with short hair,” Yuma blurts.
It’s by no means untrue. Jo looks really fucking hot with his black hair cropped and spiky above his ears. But Yuma wants to say more, about how sweet he thinks Jo is and how he loves it when he can fluster him (which is often), and that when Jo opens his mouth to speak (not as often) Yuma can’t hear anyone else.
He wants Jo to know that he—
The words die on Yuma’s tongue. He nods awkwardly.
Thankfully(?), his team seems to think it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. “Cut!” yells Maki. Jo blinks sweetly, confused, and Yuma can’t stand the way he’s looking at him right now, so he adds a teasing, “that’s it.”
Jo teeters forwards with a little “eh?” and glances around in that way he has, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. Yuma’s heart almost explodes. He contains it with some more awkward nodding.
Just like that, the baton passes to Jo. The other boy isn’t angry about Yuma’s foot-in-mouth compliment, of course not—Yuma thinks that the day Jo fights back will be the day civilized humanity ceases to exist.
Instead, Jo stares a little unsurely at Yuma and leans back as if to get a better view. Yuma is able to stare into his eyes (beautiful, beautiful) for about three seconds before he overheats again and says some more dumb shit, something about forbidding Jo from complimenting his blonde hair.
“Not the hair?” Jo grins faintly.
“Yeah.”
Jo gives a contemplative hmmm and he’s so fucking cute that Yuma starts to swing their joined hands in little circles. Jo lets him, obviously. He’s always so easy.
Something about this seems to give Jo the confidence to say, “I always love your energetic dancing… and I’m always practicing watching your videos.”
Yuma doesn’t really register what happens next, except that he exclaims approvingly and opens his arms for a hug. It’s what Euijoo and Harua did before them, so it only seems right that they should too.
Jo takes the cue, and maybe it would’ve been fine if Yuma hadn’t had a mini internal freak-out. He hesitates ever so slightly, and Jo being as receptive as he is pauses too, and the result is this slow, awkward pat-on-the-back embrace that leaves his members wheezing.
Yuma pulls away quickly and tries not to overthink the way Jo’s hand trails down his waist. He turns his back on Jo to where the others are still giggling.
A tap on his shoulder. Yuma looks at Jo, but he’s so out of it that he doesn’t even hear what the younger says. He just chuckles, and they settle into the background while Yudai, Fuma and Nicholas take the spotlight with their compliments.
Whether or not Yuma pays any attention to that is nobody’s business but his own. And if he can’t resist bumping shoulders with Jo a few times, so what? It’s just fun to see how well he takes it, that’s all.
…and if, once they wrap up filming, an exhausted Yuma falls asleep with his cheek smooshed onto a certain bony shoulder in the car ride home?
Really, that doesn’t mean anything.