Aug 14, 2010 10:36
On the morning of June 22nd, in a small house in the outskirts of Seattle, a boy shot up from his bed and screamed.
“FUCK!”
Though his language was quite vulgar, this was really only to be expected. You see, the boy had forgotten about his best friends’ birthday. This was indeed a troubling matter for someone who prided himself on the fact that he was a damn good friend. It was one of the only things he truly felt entitled to brag about.
Well, until that moment.
Jay Park kicked off his covers violently, sprinted into the bathroom, sprinted out of the bathroom, yanked off his sweatpants and boxers, replaced them with clean (or, relatively clean) ones, grabbed a white tee, finger-combed his hair, snatched his wallet off of his dresser, and jogged out of his bedroom.
Two hours later found him walking from the bus stop in the direction of the biggest mall in Seattle. It was right smack in the middle of downtown, and it had everything anyone could ever need. From golf clubs to fake troll clubs (always useful, especially around Halloween-time), it was a Mecca of merchandise.
Jay ran frantically through the maze of stores, trying to find his favorite clothing store before his guilt could catch up with him.
He made it just in time, and not two minutes later he was walking out of the store armed with a shiny new package full of the best quality Egyptian cotton white t-shirts. Feeling rather impressed with his own innovative gift-buying skill (who else, after all, would think to buy Junior something so glorious and useful? Besides, white t-shirts matched with everything, so there would be no awkward trips back to the mall with a return receipt for a hideous neon yellow and fluorescent pink shirt. Jay was quite sure of his superior gift-buying ability with this purchase.), he decided to splurge on his friend a bit.
But what else, he mused, could a 23 year old man possibly want? Jay pondered this for a while, his brow scrunched in deep concentration.
That was it! He would buy Junior chocolates! Junior was rather effeminate, especially for a bboy, so he took great enjoyment from such frivolous (in Jay’s opinion) and girly things. And this was his straight friend. It was quite sad (but also hilarious) to Jay that he was far more masculine than his cootie-chasing friend.
But where would he find good chocolates? After all, Jay had his reputation as an awesome friend to maintain, and one did not become an awesome friend by skimping on the chocolates! No, he was going to have to find a really awesome candy store that would live up to his reputation.
Jay decided to walk around and see what there was. He passed a Sees, but there was no way he was getting his best friend that cheap shit. He walked by a Ghirardelli and almost walked in, but then he saw an overweight 40-something woman in a hot pink miniskirt that didn’t cover nearly enough of her “goods”, and decided that he was not going to buy anything from a store that catered to people like that.
That left him with very few options, especially since practice for his bboy group was that afternoon, and he had to make sure everything was perfect for Junior (which meant buying him a cake, decorating said cake, playing at least two pranks on Junior before practice started, and getting lunch, since all of that preparing was bound to make him exhausted).
Just as he was about to give up and head back for the Ghirardelli, he happened to glance at the Audrey Hepburn of all candy stores. His feet moved themselves toward the bright shining light, and before he was consciously aware of it, he found himself standing in front of the holy land, mouth open in awe. He could hear the Hallelujah Chorus ringing in his ears and everything.
Before his drool could drip onto the sidewalk, Jay picked up his jaw and walked inside. He found himself in a gold tinsel paradise, where neat boxes wrapped in shiny paper and artfully decorated with tiny colorful bows abounded. He started to think that this was what heaven looked like.
He wandered around the store some more, looking for the perfect gift, but it only took him two seconds to realize that in every single one of the boxes, he found the same assortment of odd ingredients: chocolate covered pretzels, these odd disk-shaped chocolates covered in tiny sprinkles, and pears.
Pears.
Jay held up one of the pears for inspection, wondering what in the hell had possessed a pear to invade what would have otherwise been a perfectly passable box of sugary confections.
Jay was staring intently at the fruit when he heard someone clear his throat next to him. He whipped around, caught in the act of what had to be the most embarrassing social faux pas imaginable: pear-gazing. He looked up, only to find the most attractive man he’d ever seen.
If he hadn’t already come to terms with his sexual orientation ages ago, this boy might’ve done it for him. Bright, sparkly eyes, pouty pink lips, and casually mussed hair were only a few of the incredibly attractive attributes that Jay noted at first glance. Jay stared awkwardly for a few minutes, breaking his dumbfounded stare only to blink occasionally (and breathe, but that happened less frequently than the blinking).
“H-hello, I’m Ni-Nichkhun,” the man stammered. “I see you found the pear. We have one in every box.”
Jay blushed (remembering that Nichkhun had caught him staring at a pear), and said, “I don’t get it. Why have a pear in a box of chocolates? Are they trying to make us feel less guilty about pigging out or something? Or are they just trying to remind us that we’re fatasses and that we need to eat more fruits and vegetables? Oh, I’m Jay by the way.”
Nichkhun laughed loudly, then cleared his throat and pulled back into silence, seemingly embarrassed. “It’s sort of our signature, actually. We have one in every box.”
Jay nodded, not at all satisfied with his answer. He wanted to make Nichkhun laugh again. He found that he liked the boys’ laugh (probably more than he should have). “I think that should be your marketing slogan.”
Nichkhun grinned. “You know, I think it is, actually.”
Jay found himself cracking up a bit louder than necessary, but he figured that it didn’t really matter so much when he’d managed to find the most beautiful smile in the world.
Jay walked out of the chocolate store feeling mighty pleased with himself, a bag of chocolates in one hand and a hastily scrawled phone number in the other.
He figured some lunch was in order, since all of that hardcore flirting looking at chocolates had his stomach growling. He decided on a sushi restaurant, since he’d gotten into the habit of using chopsticks on his visit to Korea and he didn’t want to lose the skill.
He slid into the cheap vinyl booth and took a stained, shiny menu. The waiter came around pretty quickly, and it only took about fifteen minutes before Jay was staring into the face of a fresh, delicious Shiro Roll. Jay opened his chopstick packet with relish, preparing to dive in to the raw, fishy goodness that awaited him, when he suddenly paused.
Jay had felt the eerie prickling of eyes on his back, watching him. He set down his chopsticks slowly, carefully surveying the dingy restaurant for the source of his discomfort, rather like a puma tracking its prey.
He carefully surveyed his fellow sushi-eaters, finding nothing out of the ordinary, except that one man was reading yesterday’s paper upside-down. The man’s shoes looked somewhat familiar, but Jay figured that a lot of people wore electric blue Reeboks (that seemed to be the newest style these days), so he figured the guy was probably trying to find the answers to the crossword or something and warily went back to his sushi.
Of course, because he’d been distracted at the most essential part of sushi-eating (the anticipation before the first bite), it now tasted bland and felt too chewy. Jay managed to swallow the last bite of it and tried to drown out the taste with some soda, but it didn’t help much.
He paid the check, grumbling under his breath the whole time, and slid out of the booth. Just as he was about to walk out of the door, he noticed a wicker basket sitting on the hostesses’ desk filled with mints. Eureka! It was just what he needed to make his poor taste buds forget the awful memory of slimy, gag-worthy seafood! He popped one into his mouth and headed for the bus stop.
But it didn’t take more than five steps for him to curse the malls’ advertising, because right as he was about to sprint over to the waiting bus, the corner of his eye caught on an advertisement for a big sale Volcom was having.
If it had been anything else that was on sale, Jay would’ve just filed it in his memory and come back the next day, but this sale was exclusively a hat sale. Every hat in the store was 50% off, which was not something Jay was about to pass up on. His love for hats paralleled his love for white t-shirts, which was rather impressive, if he said so himself (and he did).
But even his secret hat fetish couldn’t distract him from his goal, which was to make Junior’s birthday the best ever, so he decided to limit himself to only five two hats. Besides, he reasoned with himself, any more than that was just plain excessive.
Jay strode into the store determinedly; he was a man with a purpose. He made a beeline for the hat racks in the back of the store, but on his way a flash of brown caught his eye. He stopped and backtracked, only to find himself gazing at a pair of electric blue Reeboks, thin legs, and the most hideous fur coat he’d ever seen. It was obviously made for a woman, emblazoned with the Volcom diamond, and pulled haphazardly over the man’s face, but it wasn’t enough to hide brown, casually-mussed hair.
Jay smirked, his carefully schooled features not showing a trace of the excitement that was bubbling up inside his chest.
He slowly made his way over to the hat rack, feeling a heavy gaze following his footsteps. He made a show of carefully examining every hat, trying them all on. He could sense the other mans’ impatience. Finally, he decided on two hats (it wasn’t difficult-he’d already picked them out the second he walked into the store). But instead of going to the register, he decided to wander down the aisles a bit.
Of course, when that wandering just happened to send him sprawling into fur-coat guy, Jay blamed it on the blue Reeboks. Those things were a traffic violation in the making. Honestly, he felt himself being distracted by them from all the way across the store. Of course, that also could’ve been the owner of the shoes doing the distracting, but Jay wasn’t about to admit that.
The man pulled down the coat and looked sheepishly down at Jay, a bright red flush coloring his cheekbones. “Fancy seeing you here,” he said, a smile on his face but a look in his eyes that clearly said ‘I might bolt for the door at any moment’. He looked a bit like a frightened rodent, Jay mused, the kind that tensed up at any sign of danger, ready to flee.
Jay decided to speed this process up a bit (and perhaps lose a bit of the awkwardness), and so he merely grabbed Nichkhun by the arm and dragged him to the register. Nichkhun, who was quite obviously in a state of shock, didn’t respond. Jay quickly paid for his hats, thanked the cashier, and pulled Nichkhun out of the store.
By this time, the bus stop was already occupied by another bus, Jay’s bus, to be precise. Jay didn’t have much time, so he gave an inward shrug and pulled Nichkhun’s face down to his.
Nichkhun finally decided to respond, and did so by yanking Jay’s hand off of his jacket angrily.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?!”
Jay looked at him up and down, hip jutting ever-so-slightly to the side. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
Nichkhun glared. “I just met you.”
Jay snorted. “Yeah, and you followed me around the mall for an hour and a half, too. I think that time ought to be added to our total. And two hours of knowing someone is more than enough time to kiss them, I think.”
Nichkhun opened his mouth in shock, and then closed it again. He repeated the process for a few seconds, looking very much like a goldfish gasping for air, before he mustered up the sense of mind to shoot Jay an indignant look. “I was not stalking you! I was only in that store for the hat sale, you prick!”
He accentuated that statement with a sharp slap to Jay’s chest. Jay merely glared at him and said, “Really? Then why weren’t you in the hat section?”
Nichkhun glared back defiantly. “I was already done looking. I couldn’t find one that I wanted, so I went to go look at that jacket!”
Jay rolled his eyes. “You mean the hideous piece of furry crap that was made for a woman?”
Nichkhun sniffed. “I thought it was a very well-made piece of furry crap, thank you very much!”
Jay tried to keep the smirk from coming, he really did, but if a tiny bit of it tugged at the corner of his lips, well, it really wasn’t his fault. It was just that Nichkhun was so damn stubborn.
“Oh yeah, well explain your shoes then!” Jay grinned in triumph, waiting for Nichkhun’s stuttering reply.
Instead, though, Nichkhun just glanced at him stupidly, looking thoroughly confused (and maybe a little frightened by the crazy guy standing next to him). “What the hell do my shoes have to do with it?”
Jay’s face fell and he felt a sharp prickling in his forehead that was indicative of a coming migraine. “Your shoes. They’re bright blue. I could see those things from a mile away, and I did in the restaurant! That’s how I recognized you in the store!” Jay leaned back, a satisfied smile on his face. There was no way Nichkhun could possibly find fault with his logic now, and he would be forced to admit to stalking Jay across the mall.
Something flickered in Nichkhun’s eyes, but he shook it off quickly and said, “So you think I’m the only person in the world with blue sneakers?” He looked at Jay disbelievingly and gestured to an identical pair of blue sneakers attached to a man who was certainly not Nichkhun.
“See?”
Jay felt his face fall. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he was really hoping that it had been Nichkhun following him. He’d been so sure, only to fall short.
Jay nodded, acting as though this was all normal and fine, though he certainly didn’t feel fine, and turned to walk away.
He made it about four steps when a hand snaked around his own and yanked him backwards. His indignant yell was quickly muffled by a pair of lips on his own. He tasted the distinct taste of peppermint on his tongue, which definitely hadn’t been there before, and then the warmth was gone. He only had time to think, is that a mint wrapper stuck to his jacket? before Nichkhun had already walked away with only a shout (“I hope you know that kiss was only to stop you from looking so pathetic!” called from over his shoulder).
It wasn’t until Jay had gotten home that he realized two things. One, that he’d just managed to wipe the foolish grin off of his face, and two, that the wrapper stuck to Nichkhun’s jacket was the same one printed on the mints from the sushi restaurant.
comments are appreciated very, very much♥
pairing: jay/nichkhun,
rating: pg-13