34B. |raylijah

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Rayan's apparent funk seemed to linger for longer than Elijah expected—he decided to lighten the mood by forcing the man out of the house. He thought a simple errand such as grocery shopping would feel like a breath of fresh air for his probably stressed boyfriend. "Ray," The man snapped. He was starting to regret the decision to do such a thing.

Whilst on the cereal aisle, the couple ran into Jacob, Chresanto and Josh—while Elijah seemed to make friendly conversation with the couple, Rayan argued with Jacob's sibling. "God, can you crawl back into your dad's ballsack?" He grimaced. Josh shrugged off the man's anger, rolling his eyes.

"Why don't you come join me?" Joshua replied.

"Stop arguing please." Jacob frowned, earning a nod from both Chres and Elijah.

"He's right." Elijah turned around, examining the grocery list in his hand and sighing at the sound of baskets clinking together—Rayan, along with Josh, were ramming their baskets into one another. Chres simply shook his head, glancing down at his list the same as Elijah had. He figured Josh wasn't going to listen to him; so why bother?

"Ray, stop acting like a goddamn child. He's seventeen for crying out loud." Elijah tried to reason; his reminder fell upon deaf ears as Rayan continued his bickering. The two were too much alike so it was only right that they clashed.

"I'm sorry, Eli." Jacob sighed. The teen put a few boxes of cereal in his basket before turning back to Elijah. "We planned to make pasta for Chressy for dinner; I didn't think Josh was going to be so dang mean to everyone."

"It's fine, Jacob," Elijah noticed Chres put the boxes away while Jacob wasn't looking. He chuckled at the action before grabbing a box for himself.

"I think he's a little shit." Rayan finally averted his attention to his boyfriend, earning a nudge.

"Are you guys busy after this?" Jacob beamed, focusing on Elijah again. He was snuggled against Chres as the main searched for something amongst the shelves—Elijah knew he wanted to escape Jacob's clinginess but the man simply decided against telling the teen to go elsewhere. He still thought their dynamic was cute.

"Not really, why?" Chres turned to him before speaking.

"The boys, mainly Jacob, want to go skating and he wants you two to come." Jacob nodded at this before pecking Chresanto's cheek—his eyes pleaded for Elijah to agree. The man turned to Rayan and Josh who's eyes were both pleading for him to say no.

"We'd love to join you guys." He smiled before they parted ways, leaving Elijah and Rayan to direct their attention to the frozen food section. "I just don't understand why you had to argue with him the whole time." He scolded as he searched the freezers for bags of fruit—he'd been a smoothie fanatic lately.

"Something about that kid just grinds my damn gears. I admire the sarcasm but what's with that goddamn attitude?" Rayan ranted.

"He sounds like someone I know," Elijah joked, his eyes setting on a bag of frozen dragon fruit.

"I'm not entertaining the shade."

"Elijah?" He turned around at this, a confused expression growing on his face. Rayan joined him, turning around to spot who'd called the man's name. Elijah's eyes widened as he set eyes on the familiar face, smiling in response.