{ᴡᴇ ᴛᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ɴɪɢʜᴛ}–

keybums:

The ride was soft and steady save for the occasional road bump here and there. The taxi’s hum could have came off as relaxing if only Key had lowered the volume of his music player. He truly did need to relax because  he was wearing his signature complaining face- the one that consisted of contorted, scrunched up heart shaped lips, furrowed brows and nose raised. Though, it wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t control his face. He just couldn’t get over how high the fare was and to make matters worse they charged for waiting time, too. This was horrible, horrible news considering mid-way he expected- or half expected, to pick up the most unreliable man-cub in the world who had so blatantly ignored Key’s texts. He should have been use to Jaejin’s random instances of snubbing by now, but he wasn’t and never would be. Being ignored was just so aggravating.

As if he’d only realized how stuffy it was there in the backseat he began tugging  his coat’s zipper south in an attempt to ease his  discomfort, but in the end he was met with only minimum relief. He sighed furiously through his nose, looking all irritable and he knew the driver heard, because the older man issued a scoff and Key childishly scoffed back. If any one was going to get the last scoff, it had to be him. 

Just a little farther. But it was so much farther so he began to tapping away on his phone to kill time. After thirty minutes or so  the taxi finally pulled up to the corner, and Key had to squint to make out the figure behind the tinted glass( that he then rolled down despite the driver’s distaste).

He saw Jaejin there, he looked uncharacteristically bland in the face and severely underdressed. Key suspected something was off, he was an expert at reading people- but  Lee Jaejin wasn’t  just any person. Despite how close the two were and how long they had known each other, Key could never quite decipher his emotions at face value.

 “Just stay there,” he gave a shrug, popping out one of his ear buds. “We have alllll night. No need to rush, it’s not like this time is being added into the fare or anything.” He said then, allowing silence between them. He was stupid to think Jaejin wouldn’t ‘just stay there’.  So Key vigorously  waved him closer, popping open the door. “Yah! Hurry up already, it’s illegal to drive up on the side walk to come get you.” 

He snorts derisively, pulling his sleeves to stretch against his palms as if this somehow exposed him less; they’d previously been scrunched up to his elbows for the heat of the indoors, and in retrospect, he’d barely registered the weather as anything but refreshing from the sweat-worthy warmth from before. He could almost literally slurp up the contents of an entire river (fish, pebbles, and all), he was that parched.  

And Key was right, because honestly, he would have stood there in heed of the other’s words if it weren’t for the touch of cold in the air. It wasn’t exactly a welcome feeling right then, especially when he was just on the verge of an impromptu excuse for his departure. On the verge, because he was too self-conscious at the moment to say anything close to it without maybe regretting it later. So he sidled closer, pawed at the door because it was a little too dark to see the handle (or maybe he just wasn’t looking for it).

Upon opening it, he fixed a look of disgust at the sight of the other, hunched over his phone like a starving animal over the last morsel. It was embarrassing. He offered the driver (who looked especially red-faced) a greeting, one blatantly ignored, but he trucked on, clambering into the back;

“It’s warm in here. Is there air conditioning? Can you roll down the window? Do these windows roll?” Buckling himself in and fidgeting around with his phone, he paused before speaking again, settling slowly into his Japanese, then all at once setting off on a tangent. “I think… don’t you think what you’re doing right now might be very much illegal too? Can you even tell me where we’re going? You can’t pull up on people like you’re the leader of some weird underground syndicate."