grabs myself by the collar. nobody wants to hear about your stupid high school CherryJoe headcanons about Joe as that slightly rude but lovable and endearing popular kid who falls in love with the standoffish and quiet Cherry who spends his lunch breaks working on programming an AI for his personal use and his hours after school skating down at the park
and joe learning how to skate specifically to impress cherry so he practices in his backyard and then switches to skating in the park with a few of his friends after he's mastered an ollie and he's kinda trying to show off in front of cherry who's sitting at the side and watching him, but before joe can walk over and talk to him cherry stands up, goes to the half pipe and executes one of the most brilliant jumps that joe has ever seen (and honestly, it's not even his best but joe is just. absolutely fucking whipped)
and cherry who lives in his black hoodies and a staple pink jacket and canvas shoes and these large black board shorts and his hair is bright pink and just long enough to tie back into this little ponytail and he wears it with black hair clips and his board is super sleek and decked out too, the first in a long series of boards equipped with Carla ( who atm is just a simple program but he works on her relentlessly )
and joe grows his hair out too because re: whipped, but his hair grows out into this mullet thing? that he ends up keeping, because he likes how it looks and he roams around in those embarrassingly low-slung baggy sweatpants and tanks, but he also wears a lot of oversized tees and really, joe dressed in typical skater fashion before he even knew what skater fashion was
and past the awkward introductory phase, past joe convincing cherry that he wasn't some popular asshole kid who just wanted to fuck around, and him and cherry grow so fucking close and sometimes they just sit in the park after sundown and joe takes cherry's hair in his surprisingly gentle hands and does them into these pretty little braids and loops and he learns to do all these trick flips and jumps while cherry works on perfecting his skating technique and balance
and they're always bickering and shoving and yelling and laughing and they have the silliest fucking inside jokes and cherry never let's joe drink in front of him because he's protective like that and joe never called cherry weird for the way he held himself together, worryingly uptight and closed off for a high school boy and cherry always keeps a stash of gummies in his pocket because he knows joe loves them and joe always incorporates cherry tomatoes into his dishes because they remind him of a certain someone,,,
