2015: 100% All-natural from Concentrate Booze (Baekhyun/Lu Han)
Pairing: Baekhyun/Lu Han
From: ANONYMOUS until REVEALS
Title: 100% All-natural from Concentrate Booze
Rating: G
Length: 1,913 words
Summary: In which Baekhyun sucks at shopping, and no one actually likes apple juice.
Notes: just this
“Sorry--did you need this?”
Baekhyun’s frustrated hiss gets caught in his throat when the man who beat him to the last bottle of orange juice turns to him with a crooked smile. “I--”
“I’d let you take it instead of me, on a matter of principle since it’s rude to take the last item, but today I really need it because it’s my friend’s birthday and I need orange juice to make the cake glaze, and see? This bottle’s already past it’s expiration date so you wouldn’t want it anyway. You should grab some apple juice instead--way less acidic so it’s better for your stomach.”
The man flaps a shopping list at the bottles of apple juice next to the gap on the shelf. His smile widens to a pained wince before he dashes off, leaving Baekhyun gasping for breath in a daze.
“But Jongdae doesn’t like apple juice,” Baekhyun says aloud to himself, and then he lifts a bottle of 100% apple juice into his cart.
The last item on Baekhyun’s mental grocery list is a tub of cottage cheese, which he snags from an end display before looping around to the front. All of the checkout lanes are empty. The fast talking orange juice snatcher is not in sight. Either the guy paid for his juice and pack of chewing gum in under two minutes and made a run for it or else he’s just a figment of Baekhyun’s frustrated mind, Baekhyun thinks with another heavy sigh.
The tired looking blonde at the only open register eyes Baekhyun and then the contents of his cart. He doesn’t smile, just starts stacking the week’s worth of groceries onto the conveyor belt. He takes excessive care to conserve space on the slow moving counter, nudging the potato chip bag upright between the crunchy peanut butter and the cottage cheese even though there’s no one behind him in line.
“You buying apple juice?” The cashier squints at him through her bifocals when he lifts the half gallon of amber juice onto the conveyor belt. “You always buy orange juice.”
“Yeah,” Baekhyun nods, wishing he knew the lady’s name. She’s nice enough for a cashier, always packs his groceries into paper bags in a neat order even if there’s an impatient customer in line behind him. Baekhyun hates it when cashiers toss his lunch meat in with the dry pasta, or put baby spinach on top of an ice cream tub.
“So why apple?”
“Because…” Baekhyun points at the sliding doors leading out to the parking lot, presumably where the orange juice snatcher exited, but he drops his hand with a sigh. He’s not sure how to explain what just happened back there on the juice aisle, how his fingers were centimeters away from closing over the neck of the orange juice bottle but here he is, paying $3.99 for apple instead of $2.89 for orange. “You should restock your orange juice,” is all he says as he hands over his credit card.
“Okay. That’s $79.57. You want it all on this card?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’d be fine.” Baekhyun loads the paper sacks into his cart and signs the receipt when it prints. “Thank you.”
“You come around tomorrow, and we’ll have more orange juice. I’ll put Ronnie on it.”
“Thank you,” Baekhyun says again. He doesn’t turn around to see if she waves at him. He doesn’t know her name anyway, even though she’s been checking out his grocery cart for two and a half years now.
He doesn’t know the orange juice guy’s name either, Baekhyun thinks as he puts the sacks in his trunk, milk bottle next to the butter brickle so it’ll stay cool on the way home. He’s never seen him before, and it’s not like there are that many Asians running around his college town. He turns the radio up as soon as he turns the engine on and lets Coldplay drown out the noise in his head for a few blocks.
“Hi,” Jongdae waves from the open doorway when Baekhyun makes it home. “You remember to get some Windex?”
“Yeah. It’s in the bag with the paper towels.” Baekhyun grabs the two heaviest bags, the ones with perishables, and leaves the rest for Jongdae to carry in.
“Hey, why’d you buy apple juice? You know I don’t like apples.”
Baekhyun sighs at the same time as the fridge does, the seal around the doorframe peeling open with a huff of complaint. “They were out of orange. And he said apple was healthier, anyway.”
“Who did? And why’d you listen to him? You don’t like juice at all man, who’s gonna drink this stuff?” Jongdae closes the front door with his bare foot and drops his armload on the kitchen table.
“I don’t know. I don’t know his name.”
++++++
Baekhyun stares at the clock, willing the numbers to accelerate their cycle so it will be midnight faster and he can go to bed without feeling guilty about his unfinished homework. His phone is silent and Jongdae is taking his time in the shower so there’s nothing upsetting his working environment that Baekhyun can blame his distraction on.
He takes another sip of apple juice from a coffee mug and spits it back in the cup with a grimace. He should have tried to return the bottle instead of insisting on drinking it, but he was too tired to drive back to the store today. He just feels--done. Baekhyun is so done with today, even though it adds up to be a pretty nice one in terms of traditional reckoning. He wasn’t late to any of his classes, he got out of his last work meeting ten minutes early, and they had almost everything he needed to buy stocked at the grocery store. And Jongdae even washed half the dishes in the sink while he was gone. Really, Baekhyun has no reason to feel dissatisfied
Baekhyun checks the clock again--10:19, not too late for jog, he decides. “Hey!” He bangs on the bathroom door and hopes it doesn’t scare Jongdae too badly. “I’m going out for a bit, don’t wait up.”
He doesn’t wait for Jongdae to stick his head out the door and blink at him with drips of steam rolling down his face. Baekhyun just grabs his keys and runs for the door.
The night air feels cool on the back of the neck. It’s almost like he can feel the texture of the air better now that it’s dark and the sunlight isn’t cluttering up the atmosphere. Baekhyun inhales and speeds up as he jogs around the corner--and falls flat on his ass when a bicycle slams into him..
“Oh my god! Are you hurt!” The biker hops off the seat and drops the frame in the grass. He scurries down the broken sidewalk and drops to his knees beside Baekhyun. “Are you okay, dude?”
“I think I broke my nose,” Baekhyun says, then laughs when the biker’s eyes widen in horror, lamplight flashing on the fringe of his long lashes. “I’m okay. I just ripped my jeans, is all. You should wear a helmet.”
“A helmet…” The guy stares at him with confusion muddying the color of his eyes and Baekhyun wonders if he knows that word in English. Maybe he’s a new student at the university, which would explain why Baekhyun’s never seen him before, but his accent sounds too natural for that.
“Hey, you’re the orange juice guy, aren’t you?” Baekhyun prods his ankle with the toe of his sneaker. “How’d the cake turn out?”
“Cake? Oh, oh! Not bad, not bad. I just...forgot to buy the candles! So I was…” He nods in the direction of his bike across the sidewalk in the grass, and sniffs.
“I shouldn’t keep you from your mission then, your friend must be waiting.” Baekhyun doesn’t try to get up. He wants to sit here in the grass and let the dry trimmings sifted over the live turf prickle his palms a bit longer. He doesn’t want to go back inside yet.
“My friend? Oh, I--who am I kidding. I wasn’t going to buy candles.” The guy flops beside Baekhyun with a tired laugh, facing the sidewalk and the empty street and the gas station across the street. “I was going to buy a drink, but I don’t really feel like drinking beer anymore.”
“Tell me about it,” Baekhyun says, and wonders what color the guy’s eyes would look if the moon wasn’t dark tonight. “So was the cake an excuse too? Or was the orange juice for mixing drinks or something.”
“No, the cake was not a lie. It’s on my counter, and the glaze set perfectly. And I did forget the candles, actually, but I also forgot that my friend had a date with some girl tonight. Or maybe he forgot to tell me he was busy.”
“That’s really sad,” Baekhyun sighs, “I mean for the cake. Wouldn’t you hate to be a cake with no one around who wanted to eat you?”
“Yeah…”
They stare up at the sky for a moment, Baekhyun gazing at the spot where the moon should be if it wasn’t a new moon tonight. He has no idea what the orange juice snatcher is staring at, but he doesn’t ask.
“Well, I should…” The guy heaves himself to his feet and leans down to pick up his bike by the handlebars.
“Going to buy candles?”
“Nah, I’m gonna buy some alcohol. Probably won’t drink it though. Not tonight.”
“From the gas station?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to go back to the grocery store. That lady at the checkout, the blonde with the glasses, she looked too nice when she smiled at me and tonight I don’t feel like…”
“Yeah,” Baekhyun snorts as he dusts the withered grass clippings from his jeans. “I don’t either.”
“You want to come with me? Just to the mart?” The guy looks right at Baekhyun when he asks, the intensity in his eyes wavering like an open flame. It’s not loneliness pulling his smile off center, Baekhyun decides, it’s this desperation to fight back against the black hole feeling. Baekhyun used to feel like that, but he lost most of his willpower sometime last year.
“Yeah, sure. Why not.” Baekhyun doesn’t want to drink tonight, but he doesn’t want to drink the apple juice that’s waiting for him on the counter at home, either.
“Alright. Let’s go then. Here we go…” The guy mutters to himself as he eases the front wheel of his bike over the curb. They cross the street in the middle of the block, right across the road from the gas station even though anyone in the neighborhood could see them jaywalking from their front windows.
The guy leans his bike against the brick wall outside the front of the mart and holds the door open for Baekhyun. Baekhyun still doesn’t know his name, he realizes. But then he doesn’t know the cashier at the grocery store’s name either, and he’s known her for almost three years.
Life is really funny like that, he thinks as he hands over a wad of cash for a bottle of bourbon he never intends to drink, and then holds the door open for his shopping companion to exit. Baekhyun waves goodbye to him at the corner and doesn’t look back once he’s set his sights on the darkened windows of home.
From: ANONYMOUS until REVEALS
Title: 100% All-natural from Concentrate Booze
Rating: G
Length: 1,913 words
Summary: In which Baekhyun sucks at shopping, and no one actually likes apple juice.
Notes: just this
“Sorry--did you need this?”
Baekhyun’s frustrated hiss gets caught in his throat when the man who beat him to the last bottle of orange juice turns to him with a crooked smile. “I--”
“I’d let you take it instead of me, on a matter of principle since it’s rude to take the last item, but today I really need it because it’s my friend’s birthday and I need orange juice to make the cake glaze, and see? This bottle’s already past it’s expiration date so you wouldn’t want it anyway. You should grab some apple juice instead--way less acidic so it’s better for your stomach.”
The man flaps a shopping list at the bottles of apple juice next to the gap on the shelf. His smile widens to a pained wince before he dashes off, leaving Baekhyun gasping for breath in a daze.
“But Jongdae doesn’t like apple juice,” Baekhyun says aloud to himself, and then he lifts a bottle of 100% apple juice into his cart.
The last item on Baekhyun’s mental grocery list is a tub of cottage cheese, which he snags from an end display before looping around to the front. All of the checkout lanes are empty. The fast talking orange juice snatcher is not in sight. Either the guy paid for his juice and pack of chewing gum in under two minutes and made a run for it or else he’s just a figment of Baekhyun’s frustrated mind, Baekhyun thinks with another heavy sigh.
The tired looking blonde at the only open register eyes Baekhyun and then the contents of his cart. He doesn’t smile, just starts stacking the week’s worth of groceries onto the conveyor belt. He takes excessive care to conserve space on the slow moving counter, nudging the potato chip bag upright between the crunchy peanut butter and the cottage cheese even though there’s no one behind him in line.
“You buying apple juice?” The cashier squints at him through her bifocals when he lifts the half gallon of amber juice onto the conveyor belt. “You always buy orange juice.”
“Yeah,” Baekhyun nods, wishing he knew the lady’s name. She’s nice enough for a cashier, always packs his groceries into paper bags in a neat order even if there’s an impatient customer in line behind him. Baekhyun hates it when cashiers toss his lunch meat in with the dry pasta, or put baby spinach on top of an ice cream tub.
“So why apple?”
“Because…” Baekhyun points at the sliding doors leading out to the parking lot, presumably where the orange juice snatcher exited, but he drops his hand with a sigh. He’s not sure how to explain what just happened back there on the juice aisle, how his fingers were centimeters away from closing over the neck of the orange juice bottle but here he is, paying $3.99 for apple instead of $2.89 for orange. “You should restock your orange juice,” is all he says as he hands over his credit card.
“Okay. That’s $79.57. You want it all on this card?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’d be fine.” Baekhyun loads the paper sacks into his cart and signs the receipt when it prints. “Thank you.”
“You come around tomorrow, and we’ll have more orange juice. I’ll put Ronnie on it.”
“Thank you,” Baekhyun says again. He doesn’t turn around to see if she waves at him. He doesn’t know her name anyway, even though she’s been checking out his grocery cart for two and a half years now.
He doesn’t know the orange juice guy’s name either, Baekhyun thinks as he puts the sacks in his trunk, milk bottle next to the butter brickle so it’ll stay cool on the way home. He’s never seen him before, and it’s not like there are that many Asians running around his college town. He turns the radio up as soon as he turns the engine on and lets Coldplay drown out the noise in his head for a few blocks.
“Hi,” Jongdae waves from the open doorway when Baekhyun makes it home. “You remember to get some Windex?”
“Yeah. It’s in the bag with the paper towels.” Baekhyun grabs the two heaviest bags, the ones with perishables, and leaves the rest for Jongdae to carry in.
“Hey, why’d you buy apple juice? You know I don’t like apples.”
Baekhyun sighs at the same time as the fridge does, the seal around the doorframe peeling open with a huff of complaint. “They were out of orange. And he said apple was healthier, anyway.”
“Who did? And why’d you listen to him? You don’t like juice at all man, who’s gonna drink this stuff?” Jongdae closes the front door with his bare foot and drops his armload on the kitchen table.
“I don’t know. I don’t know his name.”
++++++
Baekhyun stares at the clock, willing the numbers to accelerate their cycle so it will be midnight faster and he can go to bed without feeling guilty about his unfinished homework. His phone is silent and Jongdae is taking his time in the shower so there’s nothing upsetting his working environment that Baekhyun can blame his distraction on.
He takes another sip of apple juice from a coffee mug and spits it back in the cup with a grimace. He should have tried to return the bottle instead of insisting on drinking it, but he was too tired to drive back to the store today. He just feels--done. Baekhyun is so done with today, even though it adds up to be a pretty nice one in terms of traditional reckoning. He wasn’t late to any of his classes, he got out of his last work meeting ten minutes early, and they had almost everything he needed to buy stocked at the grocery store. And Jongdae even washed half the dishes in the sink while he was gone. Really, Baekhyun has no reason to feel dissatisfied
Baekhyun checks the clock again--10:19, not too late for jog, he decides. “Hey!” He bangs on the bathroom door and hopes it doesn’t scare Jongdae too badly. “I’m going out for a bit, don’t wait up.”
He doesn’t wait for Jongdae to stick his head out the door and blink at him with drips of steam rolling down his face. Baekhyun just grabs his keys and runs for the door.
The night air feels cool on the back of the neck. It’s almost like he can feel the texture of the air better now that it’s dark and the sunlight isn’t cluttering up the atmosphere. Baekhyun inhales and speeds up as he jogs around the corner--and falls flat on his ass when a bicycle slams into him..
“Oh my god! Are you hurt!” The biker hops off the seat and drops the frame in the grass. He scurries down the broken sidewalk and drops to his knees beside Baekhyun. “Are you okay, dude?”
“I think I broke my nose,” Baekhyun says, then laughs when the biker’s eyes widen in horror, lamplight flashing on the fringe of his long lashes. “I’m okay. I just ripped my jeans, is all. You should wear a helmet.”
“A helmet…” The guy stares at him with confusion muddying the color of his eyes and Baekhyun wonders if he knows that word in English. Maybe he’s a new student at the university, which would explain why Baekhyun’s never seen him before, but his accent sounds too natural for that.
“Hey, you’re the orange juice guy, aren’t you?” Baekhyun prods his ankle with the toe of his sneaker. “How’d the cake turn out?”
“Cake? Oh, oh! Not bad, not bad. I just...forgot to buy the candles! So I was…” He nods in the direction of his bike across the sidewalk in the grass, and sniffs.
“I shouldn’t keep you from your mission then, your friend must be waiting.” Baekhyun doesn’t try to get up. He wants to sit here in the grass and let the dry trimmings sifted over the live turf prickle his palms a bit longer. He doesn’t want to go back inside yet.
“My friend? Oh, I--who am I kidding. I wasn’t going to buy candles.” The guy flops beside Baekhyun with a tired laugh, facing the sidewalk and the empty street and the gas station across the street. “I was going to buy a drink, but I don’t really feel like drinking beer anymore.”
“Tell me about it,” Baekhyun says, and wonders what color the guy’s eyes would look if the moon wasn’t dark tonight. “So was the cake an excuse too? Or was the orange juice for mixing drinks or something.”
“No, the cake was not a lie. It’s on my counter, and the glaze set perfectly. And I did forget the candles, actually, but I also forgot that my friend had a date with some girl tonight. Or maybe he forgot to tell me he was busy.”
“That’s really sad,” Baekhyun sighs, “I mean for the cake. Wouldn’t you hate to be a cake with no one around who wanted to eat you?”
“Yeah…”
They stare up at the sky for a moment, Baekhyun gazing at the spot where the moon should be if it wasn’t a new moon tonight. He has no idea what the orange juice snatcher is staring at, but he doesn’t ask.
“Well, I should…” The guy heaves himself to his feet and leans down to pick up his bike by the handlebars.
“Going to buy candles?”
“Nah, I’m gonna buy some alcohol. Probably won’t drink it though. Not tonight.”
“From the gas station?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to go back to the grocery store. That lady at the checkout, the blonde with the glasses, she looked too nice when she smiled at me and tonight I don’t feel like…”
“Yeah,” Baekhyun snorts as he dusts the withered grass clippings from his jeans. “I don’t either.”
“You want to come with me? Just to the mart?” The guy looks right at Baekhyun when he asks, the intensity in his eyes wavering like an open flame. It’s not loneliness pulling his smile off center, Baekhyun decides, it’s this desperation to fight back against the black hole feeling. Baekhyun used to feel like that, but he lost most of his willpower sometime last year.
“Yeah, sure. Why not.” Baekhyun doesn’t want to drink tonight, but he doesn’t want to drink the apple juice that’s waiting for him on the counter at home, either.
“Alright. Let’s go then. Here we go…” The guy mutters to himself as he eases the front wheel of his bike over the curb. They cross the street in the middle of the block, right across the road from the gas station even though anyone in the neighborhood could see them jaywalking from their front windows.
The guy leans his bike against the brick wall outside the front of the mart and holds the door open for Baekhyun. Baekhyun still doesn’t know his name, he realizes. But then he doesn’t know the cashier at the grocery store’s name either, and he’s known her for almost three years.
Life is really funny like that, he thinks as he hands over a wad of cash for a bottle of bourbon he never intends to drink, and then holds the door open for his shopping companion to exit. Baekhyun waves goodbye to him at the corner and doesn’t look back once he’s set his sights on the darkened windows of home.