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The Andromeda-Milky Way collision is a galactic collision between the two largest galaxies in the Local Group. It’s predicted to occur in 4.5 billion years, far too long from now for anyone to witness it.
Tonight, Yuma can feel the wind.
He has his project open in front of him, but he can’t bring himself to put his hands over the keys. He’s interested in the Andromeda-Milky Way collision, more than almost anything else, but the thought of trying to put it into words is enough to make him close his laptop.
It’s an assignment for a year-long class, a project meant to span over the few months packed into his sophomore year, and the final product will determine if they pass at all. Even with that pressure, Yuma doesn’t believe he needs that long to finish an essay with such an abstract prompt. It’s only August, he doesn’t even need to worry about it now, but he is anyway.
What would the Andromeda-Milky Way collision feel like? It’s not the most mind turning prompt, and not everyone received the same one. Yuma’s professor had wanted each project to be unique, so she let the students pick the topic before she picked a prompt. The collision is exactly that, an intense and sudden event in which two objects collide, more than often resulting in the destruction of those objects. But the prompt is so vague, so up to interpretation, Yuma can’t help but want the collision to feel like more than that.
Yuma first really sees Jo at one of Kei’s marathons. It’s the first one of fall, on the last sunny day of the season before the rain and wind take over. Kei’s running solo today, his legs moving faster than Yuma can keep up with as he pushes his way to the front. He’s late, parking was a nightmare. He mumbles as much to Fuma when he finally squeezes beside him, met with a kind smile and a point to where Kei is.
He can tell the run is exhilarating, even though he’ll never quite understand like Kei does. He runs from enough already, he doesn’t need to run for anything, even a prize.
He sees Jo when he glances toward the finish line, his eyes first catching on the colorful sign decorated with pictures of Kei he’s holding with one hand. His other hand is latched tightly around Byun Euijoo’s arm, someone Yuma only knows through Fuma. He’s not unfamiliar with Jo, not when he’s so commonly tossed into conversations between their mutual friends, so he recognizes him without a second thought.
His smile is so bright, so big, Yuma almost loses his balance, holding on to Fuma’s arm and hoping he blames it on the excitement. Maybe if Yuma was a little different, if he was a little more poetic, he would write stories about seeing Jo’s smile for the first time, a glow among everything else. In the moment, and deep into the future, Yuma can only compare it to the pictures in his textbook, the collections of billions upon billions of stars. Yuma feels like a kid again, looking through his telescope at the star systems he’ll never be able to touch, even though he’s sure they’d feel like the blankets his mom ran through the dryer before tucking him into bed.
He feels his heartbeat in his ears, hears it like gunshots. Belatedly, he figures it’s just the sound of sneakers slapping the concrete and tries to drag his focus back onto Kei.
Yuma’s heard about time slowing when two people are tugged together by fate or coincidence or whatever else there is to believe. Kei talks about Fuma that way, just as Maki does Harua. Time slows and the world blurs and no one matters but you.
The world isn’t slowing for Yuma, it’s hurtling through space, spinning faster than before. It’s a burning hot sensation that makes the clothes touching his skin hurt. Just as Kei shoots through the finish line, confetti exploding into the air and falling like stars, Yuma’s galaxy is thrown just a little closer to Jo’s.
⭒✮⭒
Just like most things Yuma tries to ignore, the universe insists on Jo becoming a part of Yuma’s routine. He didn’t mean for it to happen, he’d honestly rather not let Jo get closer than he already is, but he’d made the mistake of asking Fuma about him.
So he’s here, at Fuma’s apartment with eight other guys when he should really be working on his project. Fuma had promised him it wouldn’t be long, just dinner and drinks and six hours of talking into the night like it’s a competition to see who can run out of things to say first (Yuma wins, by the way, he clocks out of the conversation when Fuma mentions the newest additions to his pokemon collection an hour in).
He debates sneaking away, his laptop is in his bag, his project already pulled up, when someone sits beside him.
“Hey,”
Yuma looks up so quickly his neck cracks in the quiet between them. He must look surprised, eyes wildly searching Jo’s face and landing on his amused smile.
“Hi.”
“What’s in the bag?” Jo nods toward Yuma’s book bag by the door. He pulls his knees up to his chest, resting his chin on them. His gaze is too strong, following the way Yuma swallows down his nerves and wipes his sweaty hands on his jeans.
Yuma’s voice is high pitched and awkward when he speaks, such a drastic comparison to Jo’s it makes him physically recoil, “That’s my school bag. I just — I keep thinking about this stupid project.”
It must sound as lame as Yuma thinks, because Jo’s amused smile finds a spot on his face again, this time paired with a laugh that makes Yuma want to throw up. Just being next to Jo is more overwhelming than it should be, like lava is solidifying in Yuma’s chest, right over his heart.
“I doubt Fuma would mind if you snuck away,” Jo suggests with a shrug. “I need some air anyway. The balcony is empty,”
He gets up before Yuma can decline the open invitation, stepping between Euijoo and Nicholas with a soft apology. It takes a moment for Yuma to work up the courage to follow him, only finally standing when Jo slides the balcony door open.
“I’ll be right back,” bag on his shoulder, Yuma only stops when Fuma reaches for his hand. He flinches away, avoiding Fuma’s eyes. “It won’t be long.”
Kei steals Fuma’s attention again before he can question Yuma anymore, and he’s never been more grateful. He misses the questioning look Euijoo shoots in his direction, distracted by the way Jo keeps the door open for him.
Yuma’s bookbag is set on the small chair by the door, unknowingly going to be ignored until Yuma finally brings himself to leave Jo. He can’t focus on his project now, so why try?
“You’re close with Kei, right?” Jo asks, not looking at Yuma. He’s looking up at the dark sky, but there’s not much to look at. Yuma learned long ago that Fuma's place has the worst view of the sky. To make him resent it even more, it took nearly three weeks to get his telescope out of Fuma’s living room after their schedules got too busy.
“I guess so,” Yuma isn’t sure who he’s really close with anymore. In high school, sure, but starting college was enough to keep him from his friends long enough to start missing events and forgetting things about them. He hadn’t even known Harua and Maki stopped skirting around each other until he’d seen pictures of them celebrating their four or five month anniversary.
He knows he’s not contributing much to the conversation, but he isn’t sure what to say. It’s not everyday he meets new people, let alone new people who want to know things about him.
“So,” Jo turns to face Yuma, leaning against the balcony. “What’s the project about?”
Yuma ignores the familiar excitement that comes with being asked about it. He’s come to recognize no one really wants to know. They just want to hear the vague overview and even then most get bored before he can finish. He doesn’t want to bore Jo, god, that’s the last thing he wants to do, so he just shrugs.
“It’s kind of complicated.” He’s expecting Jo to nod and change the subject, to look away and find an interest in something else. Maybe he’ll ask a different question, one easier to pretend to actually care about.
Jo doesn’t look away. He keeps his eyes on Yuma, tilting his head just barely to the side. “We’ve got time.”
So Yuma explains. He explains the collision and what exactly will happen when the two galaxies do finally collide. He explains the prompt, the reason for the essay.
Jo nods, looking so genuinely interested it makes Yuma sweaty, like he needs to take a deep breath but his body won’t let him. “What do you think the collision will feel like?”
“Like fireworks.” Yuma answers without hesitance, messing with a loose string on his sock. The ones with planets on them, a pair he’s had since middle school. Saturn is slowly unraveling, but he can’t bring himself to throw them away. “The ones that light up the whole sky all at once.”
Jo faces the sky then, closing his eyes against the moon. Yuma wishes he could take a picture. He wishes he could burn the image into the back of his eyes, to see Jo every time he blinks, but then Jo looks down at him and it’s gone, something only Yuma will remember later.
“What’s your major?”
“Astronomy,” Yuma answers, avoiding Jo’s eyes again. “But the project is for my cosmology class, the professor is weird about getting poetic about the universe, I guess.”
Jo shrugs. “I think it’s nice. Some things you can just only describe with art like that.”
“You think so?” Yuma looks up at Jo finally. The balcony light shines above his head, illuminating him like a halo. Jo smiles, almost as bright as the light.
“I’m an art major for a reason,” He says. “I think everything is beautiful enough to put on a canvas, especially the universe. I think it’s cool that you’re into that.”
Yuma decides then that he wants to talk to Jo forever, a never ending stream of conversation, topics bouncing between them until Yuma loses his voice. If this was a competition to see who could run out of things to say first, Yuma’s content to be a loser.
Back inside, when Yuma and Jo eventually find the air too cold to be in any longer, their friends have just barely begun to wind down. Harua has his head on Maki’s shoulder, his eyes fluttering closed every few minutes until Maki whispers something and they both stand up, bidding farewell to the group.
Jo rejoins the group, fitting in with all of them perfectly, despite his quiet input and his even quieter reactions. Yuma stays by the door, watching with quick eyes. It’s nice to be around them.
He packs up just past midnight, slipping out of the apartment with hushed goodbyes. The hallway of the building is dark, just barely illuminated by the flickering lights above him. But the narrow hallways are big enough to give Yuma room to breathe, the air coming easy now that Jo isn’t stifling him. When he goes home he finally gets his heart to slow down, trying to forget about Jo even temporarily, just so his nerves will let him sleep. He dreams of Jo anyway.
⭒✮⭒
The Andromeda galaxy contains over a trillion stars, speckled throughout the vastness of it. The Milky Way has significantly less, although enough to make Yuma feel out of breath when he remembers just how many are surrounding him, 300 billion celestial bodies, burning hot and glowing bright enough to cast light onto Earth, into Yuma’s backyard.
Despite the immense amount of stars between the two galaxies, in the event of the collision the likeliness of even two of these stars actually striking one another is so insignificant scientists barely consider it.
On Yuma’s eleventh birthday, the old man that lived across from him gifted him a telescope. It was outdated, nowhere near as high tech as the ones he would receive in later years, but it was enough to see the moon. He remembers the first night he brought it out like it’s a movie he’s seen a hundred times, the green of the grass under the lights strung up in their backyard, the slight chill of the air. Yuma set up the telescope, in quiet shock as he dragged his eyes over every individual star he could see. Just as his mom was calling him in for bed, Yuma remembers seeing the shooting star that would change the way he saw the sky.
There was never another moment where he felt quite like that, that childhood wonder of what’s beyond the Earth. Not until Yuma met Jo.
“You think he’s an alien?” Maki asks, not looking at Yuma. He’s focused on clasping a necklace around Harua’s neck, the dimple on his cheek like the lunar craters Yuma had been tested on earlier that day.
Yuma rolls his eyes, scoffing. He doesn’t think Jo’s an alien. He’s something bigger than that, probably. Aliens live in space, in the stars and on their planets. It’s more likely that Jo lives with them, slotting between the constellations.
“Do you?” Harua asks, now turned to look at Yuma. He’s sitting on the floor in front of the couch, his expression entirely too amused for someone who just doesn’t get it.
Yuma chooses not to answer. Fuma sends him enough weird looks when they’re all together, he doesn’t need Maki and Harua whispering about it too. He doesn’t even like Jo, he’s just… weirdly fascinated.
“Like you are with the stars?” Fuma had asked when Yuma told him the same thing, making his face flush, hot and uncomfortable. “Don’t you want to know Jo like you know the planets?”
“Finals are soon,” Yuma mumbles, staring past Harua and at his bag by the door. He hasn’t thought about his project much, which is more than surprising to him. He’d been letting it consume him so wholly for the first couple months of the semester, the second he got a second away from it he just stopped thinking about it at all.
He’ll pass his finals, he knows he will. Sometimes he feels like he’s the only one in his major who’s taking it because he actually wants to be there. He’s not learning all this because he wants to find life out there or discover new planets or change the world, he just wants to understand it.
The only thing he’s worried about is his professor checking in on their year-long assignments, on the big project that will define Yuma’s sophomore year and maybe even his future. If the project is good enough, it could land him a multitude of opportunities. He’s never been fond of the idea of being stuck in a lab all day and he’s never been the best with words, but out of everything he could do with his degree, he thinks journaling sounds most fit. He already likes to ramble, why not put it on paper or in a magazine and get paid for it?
When Yuma starts seeing his professors after class, before class, and sometimes during his lunch, all to make sure he’s on the track to pass, he’s quickly reassured he has nothing to worry about. When she checks his progress on the project, Yuma’s cosmology professor reads the three paragraphs he has typed out and returns his laptop with a smile.
“It’ll come to you,” She says confidently, nodding more to herself than to Yuma. “Space isn’t always about the facts you know, sometimes it’s about the feelings you have. You feel more than you think.”
The next time Yuma sees Jo, it’s an accident. He’s walking steadily through campus, cutting through the courtyard so he doesn’t have to pass Fuma’s class. He’s a TA for one of the professors on this side of campus and likes to spend his free time on the benches surrounding his classroom. It’s not that he doesn’t want to see his friend, he just doesn’t want to be distracted. He has an idea for his project, one he has to get out right now, before he forgets. It’s almost dinner time, Fuma will undoubtedly invite him out to eat and he can’t risk losing this.
He’s not paying attention. But to be fair, neither is Jo. He has his head down, digging in the bag slung across his body with headphones secure over his ears. Yuma doesn’t even know it's him until they’re knocking into each other, Yuma’s essay idea falling into the grass beside Jo’s headphones.
“Gosh, sorry— Oh. Hey,” Jo, slightly out of breath, greets Yuma with a smile. “What are you doing?”
Yuma crouches down to retrieve Jo’s headphones, returning them with sweaty hands. Jo takes them gratefully, smile never leaving his face. Yuma stumbles over his words, wanting to curse himself for being so useless around someone he barely knows. “I was, uh, just heading home. You?”
“Me and Euijoo were supposed to hang out, but he canceled at the last minute,” Jo explains, frowning. “I was going to the art studio to waste some time.”
Yuma nods, trying to give a polite smile without exposing his nerves. They’re bare for Jo to see anyway, who smiles back. “Well, I’ll leave you to it then,”
He’s going to leave, he really is. His feet are moving, his hands balled into timid fists at his sides.
“Ah, Yuma, wait,” Jo calls and Yuma stops, his searing nerves freezing over the moment the two syllables of his name leave Jo’s mouth. He wants to ask him to say it again, to never say anything else, but he settles for trying to memorize it. He turns to Jo, tilting his head questioningly. Jo continues, and if Yuma was a little less stubborn, he might admit Jo looks bashful. “Do you want to come with me? Maybe we can study together.”
Yuma smiles genuinely then. “How would we study together? Our majors are completely different.”
Jo seems to remember as much, the red tinting his ears spreading to his cheeks like ink in water. He considers it for a moment, resting his headphones around his neck and adjusting his bag. “How about… you tell me about what you’re studying. The planets or stars and all that, and I can draw them.”
“Okay,” Yuma hears himself agree before it registers in his head, but he doesn’t mind so much when Jo smiles brighter than the first time he saw him at the finish line.
So, Yuma follows Jo into the art building, watches him softly greet people he doesn’t recognize. Jo unlocks the door with a key so well used it reminds Yuma of the frayed edges of his favorite textbooks, wondering if it's the same to Jo.
Yuma isn’t much of a talker, at least not these days. Not with his friends who are busy with each other or with his classmates who are busy impressing their parents with a major that doesn’t mean anything to them. It’s different with space. It doesn’t feel like talking, really. It’s only second nature to rattle off facts and thoughts, it’s not easy to stop once he’s started. Jo doesn’t seem to mind much though, which isn’t surprising. Yuma’s only seen him with their friends twice now, but it’s enough to recognize his voice doesn’t travel far. He doesn’t mind listening, Yuma assumes, prefers it even. It’s a fatal blend, Yuma spilling information out and Jo drinking it up with a straw.
Yuma finds he likes the way Jo looks when he’s drawing. His eyebrows crease in the middle, the tip of his pencil finding its way between his teeth when he thinks hard about his next line. The sunset comes in through the window behind him, sketchbook facing away from Yuma. He makes a passing comment about seeing the progress of Jo’s drawing, to which he’s met with a nervous laugh and a quick shake of his head. He doesn’t mind, content to keep rambling.
They stay in the studio until the lights in the hallway shut off. Yuma only notices when Jo does, the younger glancing past Yuma with a surprised look. He smiles, nodding toward the door. “We should go before they lock the gate.”
“Okay.” Yuma hates that he doesn’t want to leave. He’d rather get locked in here with Jo than go back home to his cold bed and the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling above it. They’ve never listened quite this well.
But he tosses his book bag on anyway. He only partially sees Jo’s drawing before he’s snapping the cover closed. Jo had his colored pencils out, to capture the color of the planets, Yuma assumes, but the drawing looks entirely graphite. He doesn’t question it — he doesn’t want to question it, not when Jo is wrapping his fingers around his wrist and tugging him toward the door. He has bigger things to worry about.
They make it out just before the gate is locked up, the sun long set now and the moon replacing the warm light. Yuma’s skin is cold when Jo lets go, but he feels like it might melt off the bone. He misses it, but shoves the thought from his head and focuses on saying goodbye to Jo.
“I’ll see you though, right? Around?” Jo asks and Yuma nods without considering the real possibility of him seeing Jo again. Realistically, it’s almost inevitable, with their clearly overlapping paths and friends, but a small part of him hopes he doesn’t see Jo again.
It isn’t that he doesn’t want to, it's that he isn’t sure if he should. With how much of his mind Jo occupied, Yuma’s best bet is to stay away from him until it goes away, until he can actually function normally around Jo. Yuma’s never listened well though, and he knows the next time Jo finds his way back to Yuma, he’ll let it happen.
⭒✮⭒
Jo had dragged Yuma to a late lunch, failing to inform him of the other people that would be occupying the seats of their usual bench in the park on campus.
Yuma stamps his heels against the grass, body jolting when Jo tugs his arms but doesn’t succeed in moving him.
“What?” Jo asks softly, eyebrows furrowed. Yuma isn’t looking at him, he’s looking at the picnic table. It’s not that he doesn’t want to eat with them, or be around them at all, he just doesn’t feel ready to be left alone with Jo’s friends. He still doesn’t know them, not like he knows Fuma or Maki who he can fall back on if things get overwhelming. “It’s just Euijoo and Nicholas. I didn’t want to third wheel today.”
“Are you sure it’s okay if I join?” Yuma asks at the same time Euijoo raises a hand to wave, alerting Nicholas of their presence.
Jo nods, looking in between his friends and Yuma. “I wouldn’t have invited you if it wasn’t okay.”
Despite the anxiety blooming in his chest, warm like Jo’s hand in his, he follows Jo to the picnic table. He settles into the seat beside Nicholas, keeping his eyes on Jo instead of anything else. The anxiety dissipates when Jo nudges his foot under the table, their sneakers clicking together with a dull noise.
“Yuma, right?” Nicholas asks, startling Yuma. He turns away from Jo, mustering up a polite smile and nodding.
“What happened?” Yuma hears Euijoo ask Jo from across the table, gesturing toward Jo’s arm. Jo’s ears color red like the cartoon Mars printed onto the band-aid on his arm.
“Oh,” Jo mumbles, looking down at the band-aid. He doesn’t look at Yuma, but their shoes touch again. “Mint got me.”
To Yuma’s dismay, Jo’s cat didn’t seem to like him as much as Jo did, and the younger one suffered the outcome. He’d offered Jo one of the themed band-aids he had in his bag, strays that fell out of the box months ago.
“You and Jo hang out a lot, huh?” Nicolas asks and Yuma shrugs, scratching at the wood of the picnic table. He isn’t sure that they hang out a lot , maybe often, but — “We rarely see him anymore.”
Yuma looks at Nicholas then, eyebrows pinched together. “Really?”
“He’s either with you or at the art studio,” Nicholas says, but he doesn’t seem too upset. He’s smiling when he claps a hand on Yuma’s shoulder. “Don’t feel bad or anything. I’m glad he has someone like you, Yuma. You guys suit each other.”
Yuma glances at Jo, his unabashed smile as he opens a container of the food Euijoo’s passing out making him feel a little out of breath. He’s laughing about something, lightly shoving at Euijoo’s shoulder, but everything is muffled to Yuma.
He thinks Jo looks prettiest like this, rather than when he poses for Yuma’s sudden selfies or for the digital camera Fuma carries around. He’s not paying attention to anything except what Euijoo’s joking about, and then Yuma when they catch eyes.
“You’re hungry, right? I made sure Euijoo brought enough for all of us.”
Towards the end of lunch, Yuma is tugged aside by Euijoo, who insists on getting his phone number. He seems a little too eager to want it only for future plans, and a little too nervous when Jo gets closer to stealing Yuma away again.
“We should hang out soon, okay? I’m doing this meteorology thing for one of my classes and I thought you could help me out.”
His smile is so earnest Yuma can’t help but agree with a quick nod, only having enough time to jot his number down onto a little notepad before Jo is by his side again.
“Me and Yuma are heading out, he didn’t want to be home too late,” Jo says, hand around Yuma’s arm. Euijoo’s understanding, him and Nicholas parting with them just as the park starts to crowd.
Yuma’s room isn’t far from the park, so Jo insists on going there instead of his own dorm on the other side of campus. The air chills the later it gets, the weather slowly freezing into January around them.
Sometimes it's weird, how Yuma only saw Jo a few months ago, when the leaves were still brown. Now Jo sits on his bed, staring down at his socked feet against the carpet.
Yuma hasn’t made friends since high school. Not since he met Harua freshman year, who invited him to one outing that led to a group of friends that hadn’t changed in years. He hadn’t planned on making friends either. Keeping the ones he had in between school was hard enough, why would he make things difficult by latching on to someone else?
But Jo isn’t difficult. He’s easy to be around, it doesn’t feel like a chore to make plans with him, mostly because they don’t ever make plans. It’s always a text thirty minutes before arrival time, or sometimes no text at all, sometimes Jo just shows up and Yuma opens the door wide.
Now there’s nine of them, a big group that likes to watch movies on Saturdays and study on Wednesday nights. Yuma hasn’t joined them in a while, not when he can hole up with Jo instead, but he still appreciated the invites.
At first, Yuma wasn’t sure if Jo really liked being around their friends. He’s more reserved, more reluctant than Yuma, who thought it couldn’t get any worse than that. The more he saw him in a group setting, the more he took note of his red ears and soft smile when another person would hug him or lean against him as they laughed. He knew Jo liked receiving that affection, that physical reminder of how close you are with someone, but he still doesn’t quite understand how Jo returns that affection.
He mumbles as much as he looks down at his hands, picking at his fingernails. He’s sitting on the floor beside the bed, leaning on the frame and supposed to be doing his project. With his knees pulled up, the laptop on his lap is at such an odd angle he couldn’t even pretend to be working.
Jo hums and Yuma twists his head to look up at him. He’s laying down now, his eyes are trained on one of Yuma’s freshman year textbooks.
“Sometimes I can’t tell if you actually want to hang out with me or if a part of you feels obligated to,” Yuma admits. Jo doesn’t reply, so he continues. “Like, maybe you’re in too deep now. It’s too late to ghost me or something.”
“I like hanging out with you.” Jo sets the text book in his lap, looking over at Yuma. “I like being around people. I like people. I’m just a little quieter about it.”
Yuma looks back down at his hands, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Do you like me?”
He asks it with a surge of bravery, his chest buzzing and fingers tingling. Maybe it's the energy of the setting sun fueling it, the rays shining in through his bedroom window and coating everything in a thick orange. Or maybe it's the way Jo’s hand found its way into Yuma’s hair when he’d first inquired about their friends, a comforting weight combing through the strands.
Yuma looks up at Jo to find him already staring. He’s smiling, but not with his teeth. He looks warm in the sun and Yuma wishes he could climb into the bed beside him, soak up the heat and fuse together like two stars. Jo blinks and the red on his ears spreads to his cheeks. “I like you the most, Yuma.”
Yuma’s heartbeat sounds like ticking in his ears, like the hands on a clock. He turns away from Jo and closes his eyes, imagining it’s a countdown to the collision.
⭒✮⭒
Campus gets its color back in the middle of April. It’s three months into their new semester, two weeks away from their spring break, and over half an entire year since Yuma met Jo.
Jo’s new apartment became the place to be only a little while after he moved in. There’s a comfortable couch, a big TV, and enough counter space for Yuma to keep his toothbrush.
With spring break falling right at Taki and Harua’s birthdays, Jo offers to celebrate at his place. As humble as he pretends to be, or as often as he tells Yuma to shut up about it, Yuma can tell he wants to show it off.
“What kind of chips does Taki like?” Yuma asks, reversing the shopping cart to go down the aisle he missed. Jo follows him mindlessly, eyes trained on the list in his hand.
“I don’t remember, I didn’t write it down. I’ll have to call Kei and see if he knows,” Jo scratches something out, then pockets it. “I think this is it for now, we’ll get the other stuff before they all come over.”
Later, Yuma strings the happy birthday sign over the kitchen table while Jo ices the cake, his laptop playing something soft he’s pulled up. It isn’t even an hour later the apartment is full, eight of them scattered around the kitchen while Yuma stands by the living room entrance, eyes flitting over everyone.
“I saved this one for you,” Jo says. Among all the chatter, Yuma’s brain singles Jo’s voice out somehow, hearing the quiet of it despite all the noise. He turns to Jo, only for a rubber band to be snapped under his chin. It secures a party hat to his head, one of the cardboard triangles with the silly designs.
Yuma didn’t catch the cartoon on it, but by Jo’s grin it must be good. “The pack I bought was random, I guess. Like, Taki’s has fish on it but Nicholas picked one with fruit. I don’t really know the theme. There was one with a bunch of planets on it though, so I saved it for you before anyone else could get to it.”
Before Jo, Yuma had never felt so thought of. He loves his friends, but if Jo hadn’t given it to him, someone else would have the party hat strapped to their own head. Not that it really matters — Yuma wasn’t planning on wearing one either way, but he thinks it’s nice Jo saw it and the first thing that crossed his mind was Yuma.
Jo joins the rest of the group, but Yuma keeps the hat on his head, even after he’s long walked away.
Eventually, or, inevitably, someone else finds the spot next to Yuma. He doesn’t have to look to know it’s Euijoo. The older one has a weird air around him, like he isn’t sure how to talk to Yuma but feels like he should, or he has to.
Yuma takes a drink of his fruit punch and wishes it had alcohol before greeting Euijoo.
“Are you moving in with Jo?” It’s far from what Yuma’s expecting Euijoo to say, and it shocks him into looking up at him.
“What?”
“The year is ending soon, I figured as a junior you’d want to move out from the dorms.”
Yuma understands, but he isn’t following. “Well… yeah. But with Jo?”
Euijoo blinks at him and takes a drink from his own cup, shrugging. “I keep asking Jo what he’s gonna do with his spare room and he keeps saying he’s saving it. Won’t tell me what for though. I just assumed it was for you.”
It’s quiet between them, with Yuma staring Jo down. He’s laughing, Yuma’s favorite sight, at the icing smeared on Harua’s cheek. It takes half a second before Jo has a matching vanilla streak under his eye, Maki licking his finger to hide the evidence.
“It’s different with him, right?” Euijoo asks, directing Yuma’s attention back to right here in the doorway.
“What do you mean?” Yuma knows already. Jo makes him stupid anyway, so maybe he can play it up and Euijoo won’t want to talk about it anymore.
But he definitely knows, even if he ignores it. He knows being around Jo feels different than being around Harua or even Fuma. He knows he hasn’t felt this warm since high school. He knows talking to Jo feels like looking at the stars, seeing him smile is like finally singling out the constellation it took ages to find in the sky. In the instance that Jo did want him to move in, if he did ask, Yuma knows he wouldn’t hesitate to say yes. Hell, they’re halfway there already. Yuma doesn’t have most of his closet at anyone else’s house.
“Kei told me he hasn’t seen you this happy in a really long time,” Euijoo’s voice is quieter now, like he’s telling a secret. Maybe he is, maybe Kei’s discussions about Yuma and the joy he seems to feel around his friends is something to be well kept, tied up and put away, but here it is. “You’re not the only one who looks at the stars, Yuma. Jo just doesn’t look at the ones in the sky, he looks at you.”
Yuma feels like putty, like he’s going to lose feeling in his legs and liquify against Jo’s hardwood floor. He can only hope that Jo will come over and collect him.
⭒✮⭒
Yuma submits his project the day he empties his dorm. Euijoo, who Yuma assumed was just an odd guy, is apparently an omniscient odd guy. Jo had asked Yuma if he wanted to move into the apartment not even a week after Taki and Harua’s party. Yuma doesn’t remember feeling shocked, only being able to remember his conversation with Euijoo.
He forfeits his glow in the dark ceiling stars for a poster labeling Neptune’s moons. It’s a little more mature, he thinks, even if he’s going to miss the dull plastic staring at him from above when it’s too cold to prop his telescope up on the window sill.
Living with Jo, Yuma gets a little more than a taste of just how much he likes people. They see each other after class, before class, in between when one of them has forgotten a text book or a laptop charger, so it leaves a lot more room for Jo to crave being out with their other friends. Yuma doesn’t mind, because Jo always comes home with more than he left with. Maybe it’s something sweet, something he’s heard Yuma mention he’s been wanting in passing. Other times it’s a weird something from a second hand shop Yuma can fill his empty shelves with, or a page from Jo’s sketchbook, one he drew in the park and figured Yuma would enjoy more than the darkness of the closed front cover.
No matter the gift, scattered across Yuma’s room is a capsule of all the ways Jo thinks about him. His affection is quiet, yeah, but the colored pencils on the newest drawing for Yuma are loud.
With summer approaching and all of his friends making plans, Yuma gets increasingly anxious about what he’ll do. Both Maki and Harua made the decision to stay with Maki’s parents for the few months, as well as Taki with his own. The older couples are either traveling or have jobs lined up.
Yuma knows he won’t go back home, not when he’s splitting rent with Jo. This is his home, there isn’t a need to go anywhere else. He’s only worried about just how much of Jo he’ll have to himself with everyone busy or gone.
“Yuma,” Fuma closes his eyes, his frown making Yuma’s hands sweat. “I don’t see the problem here.”
“Well, what if he gets tired of me?” Yuma asks quietly, making himself even smaller on Fuma’s couch. The conversation derailed horribly, he only wanted to talk about their plans, not about how he feels about being alone with Jo.
He can tell Fuma wants to sigh, but he doesn’t. “What if he does?”
“Am I boring?” Yuma questions, sitting up. It’s a stupid question, Fuma would never say yes, but he presses anyway. “Am I repetitive? Predictable?”
Fuma shrugs, leaning back in his chair. He closes his laptop, turning his full attention to Yuma.
“If you think so, do something unpredictable.”
Yuma frowns now, thinking about his mornings with Jo. Before class, they have breakfast together. It’s almost always at eight on the dot when Jo sits down, then eight-fifteen when he leaves. The same goes for dinner, a set schedule that was never officially put in place but just kind of happens that way. With classes ending, he’s scared of their routine going with it.
“Our entire friendship is based on repetitiveness.” Yuma says blankly. Fuma doesn’t necessarily know, but he nods like he does anyway. “I can’t just interrupt a routine.”
“Maybe,” Fuma starts, raising an eyebrow at Yuma, “you should build a new routine with him. One based on your relationship.”
Yuma’s eyebrows meet in the middle, frown deepening. “Meaning…?”
“Ask him out, Yuma,” It’s almost exasperated, the way Fuma says it. Yuma hates when he talks like this, like Yuma’s just a kid who needs advice rather than a friend looking for support. He’s not asking for the obvious. Of course he could ask Jo out, he could ask anyone out if he was brave enough, but he’s not. He knows he isn’t brave enough and he’s come to terms with that.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Yuma mumbles, twisting away from Fuma and staring at the TV instead. He tries to focus on whatever nature documentary is pulled up, arms crossed over his chest, but he can’t stop thinking about it. He hasn’t even told Fuma how he feels about Jo. Does Euijoo have a big mouth or is he just that obvious?
Getting home, the sun has long set behind Yuma. The apartment is dim, but not dark, as he slides his jacket off and hangs it on the coat rack.
He smells food in the kitchen, the warm glow of the oven light spilling out into the living room. In his room, he tosses his bag onto his desk chair, distracted by the light emitting from above his bed.
Oh.
The once empty spot on the ceiling is now occupied by the glow in the dark stars he’d had up before. They’re meticulously placed, yet scattered about like the real sky. Yuma stares at them in the dark, blinking at the blue and yellow glow.
He doesn’t ask Jo about it, he just shuffles into the kitchen. The younger one is at the table, eyes trained on whatever he’s drawing.
His sketchbook closes with what’s almost a slam, startling Yuma. Jo looks up with wide eyes, his pencil twirling in his hand. “You’re home early. I figured you’d stay over at Fuma’s.”
“You didn’t hear me come in?” Yuma asks. Jo’s headphones aren’t over his ears, but on the counter, out of reach. “I’ve been home for a few minutes.”
Jo blinks at him, features morphing into confusion for only a second before he’s nodding. “Oh.”
“What are you drawing?” Yuma asks, moving toward the stove to see what’s in the pot atop it. It must be something Jo reheated. He turns back to the kitchen table, only to furrow his eyebrows at Jo’s red ears and harsh grip around his pencil. “Are you okay?”
Jo nods. “I’m fine. I’m not really drawing anything, it’s just a sketch.”
“Can I see?” Yuma asks, standing across from where Jo’s sitting. He reaches for it, but Jo tugs it closer to himself.
It’s not like Yuma hasn’t ever seen Jo’s art. He’s seen a lot of it, almost all of it, so he isn’t sure why Jo seems so reluctant now.
“I don’t want to show you.” Jo says, voice soft despite his obvious agitation. He’s frowning, not looking at Yuma.
It kind of puts a pit in his stomach, something dark and cloudy, to entertain the idea of Jo not trusting him. He trusts Jo with everything, and until now he thought that was reciprocated.
He knows he’s being pushy, but this is so unlike Jo he just has to know why. What’s so important about this sketchbook it has to be kept a secret?
“You can trust me.” Yuma says quietly, pulling his hands back into his own space. Jo keeps his hands clutched tightly around the book, knuckles white. “You do, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” Jo’s answer is instant. He still isn’t looking at Yuma, but his shoulders seem less tense. “This is different,” He finally looks across the table, cheeks tinged with a nervous pink. “I’m scared, Yuma,”
Yuma feels his heart beat faster than he can focus on, his hands sweating. He always feels like this around Jo, so why does it feel so different now? Like a hole is going to open beneath him, like Earth’s gravity is off balance.
“You don’t have to be scared.” Yuma decides to say. It feels right at least. Jo doesn’t have to be scared, but if he is, it’s okay. Hell, Yuma’s scared of what’s between the pages of that book.
Before he can say anything else, Jo slides the sketchbook across the counter. He doesn’t speak, but he stares at Yuma with such an intense gaze Yuma feels a sweat break out onto his forehead.
Flipping the first page feels like lifting a hundred pound weight. He tries not to gasp when he’s met with a mirror image of himself, soft graphite lines sketching out his features. Then he turns to the next page, and another. Consistently, page after page, he fills up nearly half the sketchbook. Yuma looks up at Jo, who looks only a second from crumpling in on himself.
“I read your essay.” Jo says quietly.
The shock is cold, drenching Yuma where he sits. The kitchen table is the only thing separating them, yet it feels like they’re miles apart. His essay, the one space related thing he kept quiet about. He’d even changed his computer’s password, just so Jo wouldn’t accidentally catch a glimpse.
It was barely even an essay. Yuma’s teacher described it as more of a love letter, a confession. Almost a thousand words of rambling, of Yuma describing the galactic collision as seeing Jo at Kei’s marathon. Every time they touch, every time they meet eyes, every time they’re even in the same room, Yuma feels himself drag through space, desperate to let his stars cling to Jo’s.
His teacher praised it more than Yuma expected, even wanting to send it to a publishing agency rather than a scientific research company. Yuma declined, the thought of physical evidence of his feelings for Jo being put in the world sending waves of nausea over him.
“It was about me, right?” Jo asks, bringing Yuma back to the present, back to Jo’s little kitchen with only the kitchen table between them.
Yuma doesn’t respond, guilt and embarrassment eating at him from the inside out. He’s humiliated, staring down at the sketchbook and wondering if he’s really this pretty from Jo’s perspective. Yeah, Jo really does love quieter than most. It sounds less like ‘I love you’ and more like the sound of pencil dragging across paper.
Maybe this is what he’s been building up towards, the inevitable explosion. He wonders if they’ll collide or explode into a million pieces, scattered like the stars above Yuma’s bed. He wonders if Euijoo knew, if he could tell their future in the doorway to Jo’s living room. Only a few weeks ago Yuma felt like he had everything under control, like his feelings would never leave his bubble. But now, without the party of nine in Jo’s kitchen, the room feels so much bigger, yet Yuma’s feelings are taking up so much more space.
“What are we doing, Yuma?” Jo asks, sounding similar to Fuma when he’d told Yuma to be unpredictable.
“I’m scared.” It’s Yuma’s turn to mumble the words. He is scared, more than he’s ever been. He feels sick with fear, his hands clammy and his head hot. But more than confessing, he’s scared of losing Jo, of not being honest with him.
“I like you a lot, Jo,” Yuma breathes out, squeezing his eyes shut. The silence that comes after hurts his ears. “I think you know that, if you read my project. But it feels nice to say it out loud.”
He thinks Fuma would be proud of him, for pushing through and giving himself a chance to be brave. He’d only come to terms with his timidity because that’s all he was allowing himself to be.
“It’s nice to hear it.” Jo says. Yuma opens his eyes just to close the sketchbook, keeping his eyes trained to the front cover. “I was hoping you’d say it first.”
He can hear the smile in Jo’s voice, but he’s too scared to look at him. He’s nervous now, embarrassed even, but if this goes right, he’ll have all the time in the world to look at Jo.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to say it at all.” Yuma admits, shoulders slumping. He keeps a hand on the sketchbook, as if someone is going to take it from him, take Jo’s love from him.
But it's here. Right here on these pages and glowing above Yuma’s bed.
Love is greater than fear, Yuma figures. And he and Jo are greater than a collision, greater than any galaxy.