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The burnout is inevitable when you’re old money in the middle of Los Angeles. Rich kid in his rich house with his rich parents and his rich people problems. Problems that Ricky knows, objectively, anyone would kill to have. It doesn’t comfort him much.
He’d thought that the move to Korea would make things better, give him something more to do with his time at least. Instead, he’s still playing Terraria in class while his teachers continue yapping on about how he’s not applying himself properly and a very generous donation to every school he goes to each year ensures he gets to walk the stage at graduation. Ricky tries, he swears. It’s just—different. Not in a good way. He can do different until it’s unfamiliar, because he’s fluent in Mandarin and at least halfway decent in English but the other kids still make fun of his laboured Korean. Not too much, of course, because he’s rich, and it’s an unspoken rule that you don’t piss off the rich kids. Ricky doesn’t have enough energy to be pissed off nowadays.
He feels that fatigue in his bones like a second skin now, as he huddles at the sorely underprotected bus stop in nothing but his designer jacket and jeans—great for keeping his spot as his university’s latest fashion icon, but not so great for actual practical reasons. In Ricky’s defense, he hadn’t planned on being abandoned to the elements today. Usually, his driver picks him up in the well-heated limousine and drops him off at his even more heated doorstep.
Today’s different, though. Mr Kim said the limo broke down on the way back so it’s in the shop now, Ricky’s mother croons over the line when she calls him approximately fifteen minutes after he’d gotten to campus, and he can hear the wet smack where her lips meet each other, probably coated in that garish red lipstick she seems to love so much. Ricky stole it once and tried it on, just to see what the fuss was all about. He supposes it would make more sense if he happened to be actually straight. Do you mind taking the bus back today, honey? and because Ricky’s parents are very busy people who need the other two cars for work and various charity gala events and Ricky has never driven in his life, he has no choice but to agree.
One day. Smoke puffs out in front of his face in tiny white clouds, fuelled by his shallow exhales—as if the bittersweet sharpness of the winter air will tunnel down his throat and seep into his lungs and shred his organs into confetti if he breathes too hard. He can feel his fingers shaking up a storm because all Los Angeles gets in December is rain and Ricky hasn’t quite had the time to sit through a full Korean winter yet. His palms burn red in the biting climate, little patches of dry skin already starting to spiderweb across his hands, and Ricky is already beginning to regret not investing in a good pair of gloves. He thinks of the various shelves of hand creams and lotions lining his bedroom with no little longing, bouncing up and down on his toes as he peers out for a bus that’s nowhere to be seen, desperate to get back to the comfort of his centrally-heated home and his favourite skincare products and the espresso machine that he uses exclusively to make matcha lattes because Ricky hates coffee with every fiber of his being. It’s just one day. I can handle one day.
The thing about Ricky is that he’s never done well with change, with the four seasons and the three-hundred-sixty-five days and the revolving axis of the entire world. Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he feels the ground under his feet spinning out of control, dissolving into the sunset and leaving him behind in the dust.
He shivers.
The snow’s settled down by now, a small mercy. Ricky briefly wonders if he should have taken up Seungeon’s offer of basketball after school, but quickly dismisses the thought—he likes basketball and he likes Seungeon (maybe in the way that you’d stare a beat too long at an objectively attractive person and fantasise about what it might be like if they walked up to you and asked for your number), but he doesn’t like either of the above enough to considering struggling through basketball in the dead of winter. Maybe it’ll help take off some of the cold. Ricky’s not particularly desperate to test that theory out.
His eyes are already starting to water from trying to spot a bus that doesn’t seem to want to come—the bus schedule he’d borrowed from Yunseo had said 17:00, and it’s already 17:10, so Ricky busies himself with searching for any other signs of life in the white white white landscape spread out in front of him, just to say that he did. It takes him a while to spot anything other than snow and the occasional stray squirrel, but when he finds it—him—his eyes lock on immediately. Like a moth to a flame.
The other boy’s brown hair and black puffer jacket are stark against the rest of the world, buffered by the fact that he’s at least three-quarters the height of most of the trees and broad to match. The faint beginnings of a curse drift to Ricky’s pricked ears as the boy stumbles over a pile of slush, catches himself before he can go tumbling down into the snow. For a moment, he glances up. Meets Ricky’s horrified gaze, mortified at being caught staring. Ricky tries to glance away before he can silently play it off as anything but accidental zoning out-induced eye contact, but it’s too late. The boy beams from ear to ear, his smile ever so slightly awkward at the edges but bright all the same, before starting to jog over.
Shit, Ricky thinks. He’s so going to get beaten up today. He hasn’t been caught slacking like this ever since he’d stared at the curve of his first and last high school crush’s mouth a little too long and he’d ended up pulled up by his collar after school, nothing but the money lining his deep pockets saving him from a good punching. It doesn’t help that the boy is attractive, conventionally handsome in the way most people around Ricky seem to be but unique-looking enough to stand out all the same. Before Ricky’s fight or flight instincts can kick in properly, the boy’s standing in front of him.
“Finally! I thought I missed it!” the boy exclaims. At the probably extremely perplexed stare Ricky shoots him, he straightens up a little and quickly clarifies, “The bus, I mean. I was so sure I was going to be late. I mean, it would kind of be my own fault if I did, but Gunwook wouldn’t stop talking, and okay, maybe I should have mentioned having a bus to catch, but still—”
Ricky’s too busy being relieved over the fact that he isn’t actually going to get beaten up today to bother asking who the heck Gunwook is, or why this random guy is talking to him like they’re best friends or long-lost twins or secret lovers. Or something like that. “You’re fine. The bus is just…” He winces, thinking of how long he’s been waiting here, the cold lashing at his extremities until he swears his fingers are two seconds away from falling off. “Preoccupied, I guess.” He speaks slowly, carefully, rolling each syllable around in his mouth until he’s sure they’re right. Unlike some of the other kids at school, the guy doesn’t make fun of him for it. Ricky appreciates that more than he’d ever say.
Since this seems to be his life for the foreseeable future (or at least the next ten minutes), Ricky takes the opportunity to sneak a quick peek at the boy’s face. He wonders how old he is—tries to remember when the CSATs ended, if the boy is one of the outflows finally free from the grasping clutches of high school. Quickly dismisses the thought—the boy looks young, but not that young. College at least. Maybe he’s a first-year in university like Ricky himself. He seems to be around his age, anyway.
The boy’s nice to look at in the way that most things are—conventional and familiar and splendidly-crafted. Messy brown hair and shoulders that Ricky can tell are broad even through his bulky jacket. Solid jaw. Somewhere around his height, give or take a few centimeters. The kind of smile that’s ever so slightly dorky but brilliant all the same. Eyes like liquid amber, tugging Ricky into the embrace of the undertow as they fixate themselves on his trembling form.
“Oh! You’re shaking!” The boy says it like Ricky doesn’t know it himself, with the kind of childlike wonder Ricky rarely sees anymore, innocent enthusiasm long having given way to tiredness steeped much deeper. His lips, flushed pink with the cold, parts around the words—smooth and round and clear. It makes Ricky suddenly hyper-conscious of his own mouth, lips already feeling the bitter freezer-burn of the icy air like a brand despite the generous coating of cocoa shea butter balm he’d applied barely fifteen minutes ago. The wind easily nips through his clothes and stings at his skin, raising goosebumps over his flesh.
It’s the kind of careless observation people make when they notice something and need to point it out immediately. Ricky expects that. What he doesn’t expect is the way the boy immediately starts to shrug off his puffer jacket, revealing lean arms wrapped in a mint green sweater underneath. “Here, take this, it should help—”
“Wait, what are you doing?” Ricky yelps dumbly, even though it’s fairly obvious exactly what the boy is doing. He’s sure his shock must show all over his face—there has to be a clause in the invisible book of social etiquette somewhere that bans you from offering your jacket to a total stranger, even if said total stranger is freezing his balls off—probably in the fine print or something—
The boy blinks owlishly at him, those large eyes drawing him in and pulling him under. He’s got warm eyes—chestnuts roasting on an open fire, hot chocolate in the dead of winter, the first snowdrop of spring. And when he stares at Ricky like that, soft and kind and questioning all at the same time, it makes Ricky’s skin blaze despite the cold, makes him want to pull out his hand mirror and make sure his eyeliner is picture-perfect as always, makes him want to let his own gaze linger for just a second longer. “Lending you my jacket?” He slides it off his shoulders, holding it out to Ricky with two large palms.
“Wait, I can’t, you don’t even know me—” Ricky protests.
The boy grins—wide-mouthed and open-faced, so bright Ricky swears some of the snow around his feet melts on the spot. “Sure you can! After all, we’re in the same uni, so it should be fine!”
Oh. Now that Ricky takes a closer look, he sort of recognises the boy. He’s seen that moppy brown hair and dorky grin around campus before, brief glimpses in crowded corridors, flanked by two other guys that seem around Ricky’s age too. He almost feels guilty for not remembering his face earlier, especially when the boy starts to drape his jacket around Ricky’s shoulders. Ricky lets out a few soft noises of protest, hardly able to accept it, but the boy’s persistent in a concerned type of way that Ricky hasn’t experienced in a very long time, so he gives in eventually.
The jacket is just as warm as it looks, wrapping Ricky’s frozen arms in a heated embrace that instantly quells some of the chill sneaking across his skin, keeping the wind out in a way that his own designer piece doesn’t. Almost as warm as the boy’s eyes are.
“Better?” the boy asks, grinning at Ricky in a way that can only spell pride as he tugs both sides of the jacket taut around Ricky’s chest.
Ricky runs one finger around the edge of the sleek material, feels the way it ripples beneath his perfectly-manicured nail. “Better. Thank you. Really.”
“Ah, don’t mention it!” The boy chuckles, a dizzying little exhale of a thing, more of a huffed snigger that would sound obnoxious on anyone else, but somehow, Ricky can’t find it in him to associate anything this kind almost-stranger and his tendency for lending random human popsicles his clothes does with the word obnoxious. “You’re looking warmer already, which is the important part—”
A cheerful ping! rings out from the pocket of the boy’s jeans, and he quickly starts fumbling for it with gloved fingers that keep slipping off the device. When he finally manages to fish it out, he glances at the screen with wide, slightly panicked eyes. “Oh, shit! I forgot I promised Hanbin-hyung I’d meet him at E-Mart today!”
“Wait, your jacket—” Ricky starts, already beginning to shrug it off his shoulders.
“You can just give it back to me when you see me next at school!” the boy chirps, with the kind of confidence that Ricky almost envies even though it borders naivety at this point. Then, with a little lopsided grin stretching halfway up the side of his face, a grin that makes Ricky’s heart stop in his chest for a split second, “It looks good on you, by the way.” And just like that, he’s off, sprinting through the snow, nothing but a rapid-fire, “Bye! It was really nice meeting you!” trailing in his wake.
The boy’s long gone before Ricky realises that he never got his name.