public transportation.

i.

When London bumped into the annoying culprit who had run straight into him, he hadn't expected to find that he was cute.

Of course, if someone who took the bus home regularly had been that cute when London collided with him on his way to catch the bus before it left without him, he would have noticed earlier. Right? Well, no. He had always been in his peripheral, but London didn't really look at people in the bus. He stuck to himself, with his Candy Crush and his sci-fi novels. (Mostly Candy Crush, but he liked to think he was literate.)

"Good morning," London said, blinking down at the short person. The one he had crashed into. He had blond hair, and despite London's shorter-than-the-average-male height of 5'5, this boy probably stood at no more than 5 feet tall and had to look up to make eye contact with London.

"I'm really sorry for bumping into you, er...."

"London," he filled in. "Have you been on this bus before?"

"I'm Carter. And yes." Carter nodded. "I've seen you, too." Carter gave London two awkward pats on his chest, and London took a step back when he realized the close proximity between them.

"Uh, hey," the bus driver called out from his place at the front of the bus. "Are you two going to get on, or...?"

"Uh, yes." Carter was the first to speak, flushing a bright red and rushing onto the bus. London followed awkwardly, getting in just as the doors swung shut and the bus was jerked into motion.

There were no seats left in the bus—only two (actually, more like one and a half—much to London's disdain, some people had no sense of spacial awareness and left their bags all over the seats) in the very back, so London and Carter just barely squeezed in, with Carter on the seat and London holding onto the bar above his head.

Carter's blush was not going away at all, even with the cool A/C in the bus (probably too cool for an autumn day, in his opinion). He spent a lot of his bus rides to and from work staring at London, who always sat down tapping and swiping at his phone or trapped in another world with a different book every time he stepped on.

He had examined the specimen of London very meticulously, tracing his gaze over the curvature of the boy's forehead, then nose, then lips, then jaw, how his eyes flickered over the pages or screen of his phone, and he felt slightly offended that London didn't even know Carter took the same bus as him.

And now he was sitting next to the attractive goddamn boy on the bus, London's figure towering over Carter even though he was leaning backwards onto the railing behind him. Carter was looking at anywhere but London's crotch (which was just about level with his face when Carter slouched, much to his mortification). Of course Carter and his pale-ass cheeks would turn so red the colour could probably be sampled and named "tomato sauce" as a paint chip in the hardware store.

London, however, was tense at first but composed himself rather quickly, nonchalantly pulling out his phone and opening up Candy Crush. Again. Sometimes he wondered if Candy Crush Addiction was a real thing.

He was sneaking glances at Carter every once in a while, and Carter hadn't seemed to notice yet—Carter was also looking at London, observing how he seemed so focused on the game. London was dressed in dark colours with inky black hair to match and didn't look like the type to be playing Candy Crush in the back of a bus, sandwiched between the bus doors and an underweight boy.

London finally caught Carter while he was staring at his face instead of his phone screen, and Carter was sure he was at his limit but he blushed harder anyways. London gave a hesitant smile and turned back to his phone, his cheeks also turning pink.

Carter cleared his throat, desperate to cut the tension. "So, uh, what stop do you get off?"

London paused his game of Candy Crush to look up. "Um, I get off in about two stops, and then it's a 5 to 10 minute walk home."