we've been doing all this (late night talkin') || Jake x Johnnie

we've been doing all this (late night talkin')

The air was hot and heavy, creating a layer of thickness around L.A. that gave the city a feeling of sluggishness he couldn't escape. Anything as simple as even moving felt like trodding water, like gravity was weighing him down. Jake had hot summers before, having grown up in Kansas and everything, but the heat in Los Angeles lingered; it wrapped itself up around you and stuck.

Jake lazily opened one eye, looking at the moonlight creeping in from his open window. It illuminated his room, bathing the open space in a silver, metallic glow. The light shined on unopened boxes of old items that Jake was procrastinating to unpack. Moving had been a process, still was a process, and Jake just wanted to be settled already.

A car sped down a road, the sound of its burnout echoing through the night. If he concentrated, he could hear a dog barking, the whirl of his fan, and Johnnie puttering around in his room down the hall.

His sheets felt hot against his bare skin, and his hair was roasting on the nape of his neck. He blowed a breath upward, feeling the cool air push through his bangs momentarily. Their new a/c unit had broken down earlier in the morning, leaving the two boys stranded in their heatbox of a house.

With the warmth creeping into unbearable territory, he and Johnnie went out to buy fans until the unit could be fixed. He remembers wading through the aisles to look for them, Johnnie slugging along two steps behind. Jake jokingly picked out a tiny handheld, battery-powered fan and gave it to Johnnie. "Because you're small," he had joked, laughing as his friend flipped him off. "You're lame," Johnnie said back, but he put the little fan in their cart anyway.

Jake smiled at the memory, at Johnnie's Johnnieness. He had never been as close to someone before as close as he was to Johnnie, besides Tara of course.

Since moving in together, they had barely spent any time apart. Jake liked it. He liked the fact that he almost had this other half that brought out different sides of him. He didn't want to say that Johnnie completed him; he had always been his own fully formed person, but it felt like another part of him had clicked into place. Like, oh, that's what he was missing.

The dog outside whined. Jake wondered what crime it committed to be given the cruel fate of being locked outside. He would be too soft if he had a dog; it could rip up the whole entire house, and Jake would still let it sleep on his bed if it wanted to.

It must have be passing midnight, and Jake started to drift off. The fan was set on osculate, and Jake could hear the monotheistic whirl of the fan and the breeze that soon followed.

He fall asleep that way, with the whirl and the wait: whirl, wait, whirl, wait.

In his dreams, he buys Johnnie a dog.

whumpf

Both of Jake's eyes opened, the low surge pulling him out of his sleep.

Consciousness slowly filtered back into his body and back into his head. Jake sat up, tried to grab his bearings, but couldn't hear anything in the total silence wrapped around him. He waited for the whirl of the fan, the chutter, and the click, but heard nothing. Oh no.

Jake struggled slightly up from his bed, sluggishly stumbling over boxes until he reached the fan, pressing it on and off. It doesn't turn back on. He hit it to no avail. Jake cursed.

He ran his hand against the wall until he reached the light switch, coming to the same conclusion as the fan. A power outage, of course.

Jake flopped back onto his bed and maybe it was his imagination, but he could already feel the hotness cling to him, that infamous L.A heat.