[DBSK] - [FIC] [C] Ask Us About the Soup-of-the-Day (the even supernatural beings need to eat remix)
Disclaimer: clearly i don't own DBSK... not intended for profit, just for fun.
Rating: PG-13? (tough call... lol.)
Genre: Restaurant AU, comedy, supernatural
People: all five boys
Pairings: a little lean on JaeChun
Warnings: none?
Beta: miyun
A/N: remix of verocity's "Kitchen Duty" for Remix Redux No. 9.
Park Yoochun came from an upper middle class family of four. They lived in a two storey, red brick house with a white picket fence. They had a dog named Harang who had his own little red brick house in the backyard. Yoochun was a gifted pianist and attended the School of Music at the prestigious Korean National University of Arts. His adoring younger brother, Yoohwan, was a student at one of the best high schools in Seoul. His parents both had steady jobs, Mr. Park being an accountant at an electronics company and Mrs. Park being a customer service representative for an advertising agency. They shared one, very ordinary, four-door sedan between them, but everyone always got to where they needed to go.
By all accounts, Park Yoochun was living a perfectly mundane, but perfectly perfect life.
Then one day Harang found a ‘girlfriend’ at the local dog-walk… who followed them home late one evening… and bit Yoochun when he tried to give her a flea bath.
He could only be so lucky as to have gotten rabies. If it had just been rabies, he would have gladly taken the needle to the tummy, a million needles to the tummy. Or really, he would have been happy to just die, foaming at the mouth.
But alas, of all the dogs in all of Seoul, Harang had to fall in love with a Were...poodle. And a toy poodle at that.
The girl was very apologetic when she regained her human form the next morning at daybreak, but Yoochun was actually still asleep and so he completely missed the part where she told him, meekly, that he was now cursed to spend three nights of the month as a toy poodle. Forever.
It wasn’t until twenty-eight days later when Yoochun found himself spontaneously ankle-height and extremely fluffy that Yoochun realized something might be very, very wrong with his mundane life.
The good news was that Yoohwan was very accepting of Yoochun’s predicament and cheerfully took his hyung out for walkies before bed. The bad news was that Harang was apparently not gender-specific in his loving and Yoochun was highly disturbed by his dog’s courting… methods.
It was an inconvenience, but Yoochun didn’t think it was so bad, all things considering.
That was until one morning, after a particularly late class, Yoochun woke up with his music theory teacher’s foot in his mouth. Luckily the rest of Professor Lim was attached to the foot, but Yoochun’s secret was out. And while Professor Lim didn’t really mind the Weretoypoodle curse as his family had always wanted a puppy, the school was not so understanding, and because the incident occurred on school property, Yoochun was summarily expelled.
Not wanting to be a burden to his parents or to adversely affect his brother’s reputation in the neighbourhood, Yoochun packed up some clothes and some money and headed out to make his own way in the world.
===
What Yoochun found was that there wasn’t actually a lot of ways for a 21-year-old Weretoypoodle to make his way in the world. His education didn’t allow for him to do much more than teach piano to petulant middle schoolers, and once the parents found out why he couldn’t give lessons after 4pm three nights out of every month they usually relieved him of his duties. His new “special skill” of regularly turning into a small dog didn’t really allow for him to do much more than beg meals and cuddles off cute girls three nights out of twenty-eight, which wasn’t much of a way to make a living either. This left him with the illustrious careers of sanitation engineer, with a sub-specialty in waste disposal, or waiting tables, all paid under the table, no contracts, no benefits, no job security whatsoever.
After being fired for missing his third shift in a row at the local movie theatre (although he would argue that technically he was present, he just couldn’t hold a broom in his toy poodle form), Yoochun found himself wandering aimlessly around town pondering the meaning of life and how he was going to maintain his current level of alive-ness if he couldn’t make enough money to feed himself.
And it wasn’t like toy poodles were particularly known for their hunting prowess. Even the other Weres he came across in his travels seemed to look down on him. Most of them just gave him pitying looks and condescending little pats on the head instead of actually giving real advice or helping him find steady employment. If he was looking particularly starved, Werecows could usually be relied upon to share a bit of whatever it was that they called ‘food’, but they usually booted him from the vicinity immediately after he ate.
As Yoochun contemplated the idea of trying to become a poodle permanently so that he could at least bank on the ‘big puppy eyes’ to get him adopted into a nice home that would keep him warm and well-fed (albeit on dog food), he literally ran into the perfect job opening.
Yoochun had stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk and fallen face-first into a sandwich board that loudly announced: “Restaurant Now Hiring! Part-time busboy wanted. Flexible hours! No experience necessary!”
There was no way Yoochun didn’t fit that bill; he was looking to be hired, he could definitely work as a part-time busboy, he liked flexible hours, and he had absolutely no experience in the restaurant industry.
So he picked himself up, ran a hand through his hair, and dug a suitable ‘interview outfit’ out of his backpack right there on the spot (it was a cardigan to throw over his Motley Crue t-shirt).
===
It actually took a couple of trips around the block to find the restaurant to which the sandwich board belonged, and, if Yoochun were honest with himself, it was indeed a tiny bit suspicious that the entrance to this quaint little establishment was located deep in a cobblestoned alley that he could have sworn wasn’t there before. The blackout drapes over the leaded glass windows were weird too, but he was trying not to think about it because he really, really, needed a job.
An antique bell above the door let out a cheerful ‘ding’ as he entered, and Yoochun was surprised to see that the interior of the restaurant was actually brightly lit with an eclectic modern/cottage feel to the décor. It smelled a little sweet and a little something else, but Yoochun still wasn’t quite used to his Weretoypoodle senses, so he didn’t know what that meant.
“We’re not open for dinner yet!”
The dining room was empty.
“I know, but I’m here about the busboy position?” he called out into the void.
“Ah!”
Yoochun blinked, but there was no further response.
Desperate times called for desperate (and embarrassingly thick-skinned) measures.
“I’m just going to sit here and wait for your manager!”
There was still no reply, but Yoochun resolutely plopped himself down at one of the smaller tables anyway. If nothing else, it would at least show that he was a man of his word.
After about twenty minutes, a tall man, not much older than Yoochun himself, slid smoothly into the seat across from him and flashed him a rather winning smile. Well, it was a bit smarmy, but somehow Yoochun was charmed by it.
“If it’s too early for dinner, I’d say it’s definitely a little too early to cruise…”
The man’s smile turned into a bit of a smirk.
“Oh, I don’t know… some people consider 4 p.m. quite a sexy hour. But my restaurant isn’t really known for casual mid-day hookups. The layout is a little too open, I think.”
Yoochun was pretty sure that his face was turning an interesting shade of tomato-red as his gaze slid down from the man’s handsome face to the shiny ‘manager’ tag pinned over his left breast pocket.
“Jung Yunho, owner and general manager.” The man held out a hand to Yoochun. “Do you have a resume?”
It took Yoochun a full thirty seconds to register what was going on.
“My name is Park Yoochun, um, here for the busboy position.” He shook Yunho’s hand weakly. “I’m really sorry about-“
But Yunho waved off his apology.
“It could happen to anyone,” he said.
“Not usually during a job interview though,” muttered a tall, lanky boy as he strode past them with a huge stack of glassware.
Yoochun felt his blush escalate to fire-engine-red. But before he could stammer out another apology/excuse, a second stranger responded to the snarky comment.
The newcomer said: “You talk like you totally didn’t walk in here on your interview day and accidentally offer to let Jae-”
There was a cacophony of spilling glass, dropped cutlery, and overturned furniture as the tall one dropped everything and hurtled across the dining room with amazing speed toward the smaller boy who’d just emerged from the back room.
“We’ll go get the replacement glasses, hyung!” squeaked the boy as he turned tail and ran, narrowly escaping the clutches of his pursuer with a loud laugh that made Yoochun smile.
Yunho cleared his throat and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
“As you can see, social awkwardness is not a hindrance to maintaining employment at this establishment.”
“Don’t lump me in with you dweebs! My contact list is twice as long as all of yours combined!” came the same disembodied voice from before.
Yunho smiled brightly at Yoochun once again.
“So, let’s just dispense with the formalities, shall we?”
Yoochun grinned happily because he didn’t have a resume and he’d never had to do a real job interview before. But charm he could manage, and, judging from the two employees he’d seen and the one he’d only heard, Yoochun was pretty certain he could work his way into this Jung Yunho’s heart with the judicious application of the extra wide ‘puppy eyes’ (still powerful, even in human form) and the ‘dumb puppy’ grin (also useable in human form).
“We’re basically looking for someone to help out with the grunt work, like clearing tables, mopping floors, doing the bathrooms. We might need you in the kitchen-“
“I don’t need him in my kitchen!” the voice called out again, and Yoochun made a note to himself not to talk smack about the chef anywhere in the restaurant as whoever it was apparently had dementedly good hearing.
“TO DO DISHES OR TO EXPEDITE WHEN THE DINNER RUSH TRIES TO KILL YOU!” Yunho bellowed.
“OH, FINE,” the voice bellowed back. “BUT IF HE GETS IN MY WAY, IMMA GONNA BITE HIM.”
Yoochun blinked.
“I think I can manage all of that. Um, even the kitchen duties… probably. But, I need to tell you that I’ll have to take three nights off out of every month… uh… for personal reasons. It’s nothing bad or illegal but--”
“And although you won’t really be working front-of-house,” Yunho continued as if he hadn’t heard Yoochun at all, “I do feel that it is necessary to ensure that you understand that our patrons are… you might say, people who want to keep certain aspects of their life on the down low, and we need our employees to be very, very discrete.”
Yoochun nodded largely because he didn’t actually understand what Yunho was trying to tell him, but he figured that agreeing was the best course of action to ensure that he got the job.
“I can be discrete?”
Yunho smiled at him, showing off practically all of his perfect, white teeth.
“Great. You’re hired.”
Yoochun stared.
“Are you shitting me?”
Yunho looked startled.
“No, sorry. That’s totally not what I meant. The social awkwardness is kicking in again.”
“It’s a debilitating illness,” said the tall worker on his way back through the dining room with a new stack of glassware. “You should ask Junsu to introduce you to his rehab therapist.”
“Ah ha! So you admit I’m getting less awkward!”
The shorter boy, Junsu apparently, looked triumphant right until Yunho turned around and told him that he’d just admitted to being socially awkward in the first place.
Yoochun couldn’t help but laugh at the sad, put-out expression on Junsu’s face.
“Anyway, the pay isn’t much, but we’ll feed you two meals a day, lunch at 3, and dinner after we close up for the night.”
Yoochun perked up right away at the prospect of being fed regularly.
“I really think I’ll fit in just fine here if you’ll have me.”
“Fabulous. Junsu will show you around. Hopefully he can wrap it up before our first dinner seating,” said Yunho as he motioned for the kid to come over.
Junsu smiled brightly and waved enthusiastically at Yoochun. Yoochun waved back.
“Oh, and by the way.” Yunho paused just before he headed into the kitchen. “If any of the customers start saying anything how tasty you look, or that they’d like a bite of you for dinner, just look for Changmin and he’ll help you out.”
The tall boy smirked at Yoochun and gave him a cocky salute.
Part of Yoochun thought that there was something to be worried about here (particularly the way Changmin’s eyes seemed to be glowing a bit…red?), but then Junsu’s sunny face popped into his line of vision and everything was put aside to learn the entire inner workings of the restaurant in forty minutes.
===
The dinner rush began with just one table. And Yoochun thought that maybe Yunho was being melodramatic about how slammed they were going to be. But then another two-top arrived, and then a four-top, and then another four-top, and soon their little 28-seater dining room was filled to the brim with more parties waiting in the small foyer.
Changmin and Junsu were run ragged, and Yunho had to actually man the cashier station himself. So it wasn’t long before Yoochun found himself spending more time in the front-of-house helping out with customer service tasks like refilling drinks, and getting condiments from the sideboard just outside of the kitchen.
One particular customer of rather advanced age kept asking Yoochun to bring him things. First it was more wine. Then he wanted ketchup. Then it was hot sauce. He dropped his knife, his fork, his napkin... Yoochun tried to keep a straight face as he bent over to pick up the napkin, but he couldn’t stop a little giggle from bubbling out as he returned the napkin to its owner. This was just like a scene from a terrible, third-rate, porn movie from the 1970s.
The customer completely mistook the giggle, of course, and took the opportunity to run his dry, papery fingers along the inside of Yoochun’s wrist as Yoochun withdrew his hand after placing the napkin on the table.
“Such a tasty, young thing. Are you the dinner special tonight, I wonder?” the gentleman inquired coyly, fluttering his sparse lashes at Yoochun.
Red flags waved in Yoochun’s mind as Yunho’s words from earlier that evening floated to the forefront of his brain, but almost before Yoochun had completed the thought to look for Changmin, the tall waiter appeared at his side, swift and silent.
“Now, now, sir. You know that we don’t allow our staff to dillydally with the customers. Yoochun here is our newest hire. He’s a little different from the rest of us, so we’re still teaching him the ropes, but you’ll have to put up with him as is for a little while, okay?”
The words were condescending, but the tone was gentle, and somehow the gentleman was placated, flashing Changmin a wide, toothy grin in response.
“Ah. You guys never serve anything fresh,” he whined playfully. “I was hoping that your Mr. Jung had changed his mind on that policy.”
Yoochun glanced down at the man’s steak, ‘cooked’ blue-rare, and shuddered to think what classified as ‘fresh’ in this guy’s mind if that wasn’t it.
Changmin just made some generic, noncommittal noise and quietly shuffled Yoochun back to condiments station.
===
It wasn’t until the night was over and they were all cleaning up that Yoochun realized he hadn’t even set foot in the kitchen once the entire night and so he hadn’t yet met the owner of the mysterious voice that had been yelling out during his entire job interview. He asked Junsu about the chef, but Junsu was busy scrubbing this mysterious rust-coloured stain out of the wooden tabletop and he couldn’t spare the concentration to respond. Changmin was cleaning the ceiling, as he turned out to be quite the fastidious thing, but he was able to point Yoochun in the direction of the staff changing room.
“Why don’t you grab the other two and help get our dinner on the table?”
So Yoochun trotted off to round up Yunho and the chef.
The change room turned out to be small enough for everything to be seen in one glance. Yunho wasn’t there, but the person who could only be the chef was changing out of their chef’s whites and into street clothes with their back to the door.
Yoochun took a moment to admire the slim silhouette, pale skin, and tiny waist. Straight, white-blonde hair fell softly along an elegant column of a neck.
“I’d bet ten thousand Won that I’ll be speechless when you turn around,” growled Yoochun, low and seductive.
To be fair, Yoochun was indeed struck speechless for the next ten seconds of his life, and by all rights, someone now owed him W10,000.
Unfortunately, Yoochun wasn’t really in the state of mind to collect on that debt. What had robbed Yoochun of all higher mental function was not the stunning vision of female beauty (like he’d expected)... but was instead the horrific sight of a half naked man with what appeared to be, and certainly smelled like, blood smeared across his cheek and chin and dripping slowly down his smooth, well-defined chest towards his--
Yoochun wrenched his gaze back up to the other… man’s… face.
Wide, round eyes, a long, straight nose, and cute, pink lips pursed into a little ‘o’ of shock.
Definitely pretty, stunningly so, really, but still…
“You’re not a girl.”
“Not so much.” The other man grinned, baring a very impressive set of bloodied fangs.
===
“Your chef is a vampire!” Yoochun screamed as he hurtled out of the changing room and barreled straight into Junsu.
He grabbed Junsu’s shoulders and shook him in a panicked frenzy.
“Your chef is a vampire! He’s… he’s… eating some--!” Yoochun stammered, gesturing wildly behind him.
“He’s eating without us? That jerk!” Changmin thrust his way between Yoochun and Junsu as he stormed his way into the changing room. “Yah! Kim Jaejoong! You better not be hoarding food in there.”
“Hey, I’m your hyung-”
“Oh my god!” Changmin’s voice was still crystal clear even though the door had closed behind him. “What the hell are you doing?”
Yoochun turned back to Junsu.
“Do you hear that? We have to save Changmin! Your chef is a blood-sucking fiend!”
But as Yoochun was gathering the gumption to charge in and save his new coworker, said coworker emerged from the changing room, frog-marching the blood-stained ‘Kim Jaejoong’ in front of him.
“No wonder Yoochun-hyung was grossed out. Seriously.” He slapped Jaejoong upside the head. “You can’t even drink a bottle of blood without spilling all over yourself. You’re an embarrassment to the rest of us adult vampires.”
Yoochun’s eyes went impossibly wide.
“What… what do you mean by ‘the rest of us’?”
“We’re all vampires,” said Junsu with his head tilted in such an endearing way that Yoochun almost didn’t register the words that were actually coming out of his mouth.
“Wait…” Yoochun’s head spun as his gaze swiveled from Jaejoong to Changmin to Junsu. “You’re all vampires?”
Yunho looked up from where he was closing the cash register.
“This is a vampire restaurant, run by vampires for vampires. It's a little kitschy, but this is kind of a theme restaurant for those vampires who want to play 'human' for the night and eat human food (although we do serve blood in the wine bottles). I told you from the beginning that this was a dining establishment for a very specific clientele, didn’t I? I asked you to be discrete because some of our patrons still live perfectly normal human lives.”
“I thought you mean that it was like, an underground gay bar for rich snobs or something. I mean, there was that one old guy who kept drooling over me… and asking me to bend over…”
Jaejoong hid a giggle behind Junsu’s shoulder.
“Oh, yeah... well, Mr. Choi is actually gay, but he also has… a sort of fetish for Were-blood,” said Changmin flippantly.
Yoochun blanched and sat down, hard, on the floor right where he was.
“Are you saying… that when he asked if I was on the menu…”
“Yeah… it wasn’t exactly some lame pickup line.” Junsu tried to look apologetic, but his expression didn’t look too terribly different from usual.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Yunho came over to pat Yoochun on the shoulder. “We don’t usually hire non-Vampire employees, as you can probably guess, but we really need the extra help and it’s just so hard to find Vampire kids these days who’re willing to put in a decent night’s work.”
Yoochun could only gaze blankly up at his new boss.
“I can understand if you don’t want to stay… It is an inherently hazardous work environment for an employee of your, uh, shall we say, species?”
Everyone stared at Yoochun, while he continued to stare up at Yunho.
Finally, Yoochun pursed his lips, stood up, and heaved a shrug.
“Oh well. A job’s a job, right? Everything has its risks. I could just as easily lose my fingers from a faulty piano lid. Being accidentally bitten in the neck by a customer is nothing. Besides, Changmin will save me, right?”
There was a moment of silence.
===
The staff meals at the restaurant were usually 80% blood and 20% food, so, having never had non-Vampire staff before, they hadn’t stocked anything outside of the ordinary. Yunho said that as long as they were welcoming Yoochun to the family, they might as well do it up big. So he agreed to take them all out for dinner at another restaurant on their block that served soondae-everything, blood sausage being suitable for everyone’s tastes.
As they walked along the cobblestoned alley, Yoochun suddenly remembered something that had been niggling at the back of his mind for the past twenty minutes.
“So wait, back there, Changmin said that Mr. Choi had a thing for Were-blood?”
Changmin gave him a look that made Yoochun hurry up with what he was trying to say.
“Does that mean you all know that I’m a Were?”
“Yep!” Junsu chirped. “I hate to break it to you, but we could smell you from the end of the block! I’m kind of surprised you didn’t sense us for vampires. You’re not a very good Were.”
Yunho squished Junsu’s face for a second.
“Don’t be rude,” he said before letting Junsu go. “And yes, Yoochun, we all knew. But since it seemed like you didn’t want to say it, we weren’t going to push it. Contrary to appearances, we do know how to be polite.”
Both Changmin and Junsu stuck their tongues out at Yunho.
“Do you… know what kind of Were I am?” Yoochun asked in a small voice, fingers playing with the hem of his shirt.
Junsu hopped a little as he turned back to look at Yoochun.
“Does it matter?” he asked, all wide-eyed innocence.
Yoochun thought about for a second and then he smiled back at Junsu, suddenly lighthearted and happy for the first time since he’d gotten bitten by Harang’s stupid-ass girlfriend.
“No, it doesn’t matter at all,” he said.
And it really didn’t.
… Until Jaejoong leaned in so close that his lips were almost touching Yoochun’s ear and said: “I can sense what kind of Were you are, and I think it's cute, you little curly-haired lapdog.”
Yoochun turned a little to look at Jaejoong. The chef was really very pretty even if he was a blood-sucking fiend… and… y’know, a dude.
In for a penny, in for a pound, Yoochun told himself. If today was going to be a day of new experiences…
Well, then.
He took a breath, and went all in, leaning forward to press his nose against Jaejoong’s cheek, scenting him and marking him as a dog would.
“Arf, arf,” he said, dumb-puppy-grin firmly in place.
==END==
Rating: PG-13? (tough call... lol.)
Genre: Restaurant AU, comedy, supernatural
People: all five boys
Pairings: a little lean on JaeChun
Warnings: none?
Beta: miyun
A/N: remix of verocity's "Kitchen Duty" for Remix Redux No. 9.
Park Yoochun came from an upper middle class family of four. They lived in a two storey, red brick house with a white picket fence. They had a dog named Harang who had his own little red brick house in the backyard. Yoochun was a gifted pianist and attended the School of Music at the prestigious Korean National University of Arts. His adoring younger brother, Yoohwan, was a student at one of the best high schools in Seoul. His parents both had steady jobs, Mr. Park being an accountant at an electronics company and Mrs. Park being a customer service representative for an advertising agency. They shared one, very ordinary, four-door sedan between them, but everyone always got to where they needed to go.
By all accounts, Park Yoochun was living a perfectly mundane, but perfectly perfect life.
Then one day Harang found a ‘girlfriend’ at the local dog-walk… who followed them home late one evening… and bit Yoochun when he tried to give her a flea bath.
He could only be so lucky as to have gotten rabies. If it had just been rabies, he would have gladly taken the needle to the tummy, a million needles to the tummy. Or really, he would have been happy to just die, foaming at the mouth.
But alas, of all the dogs in all of Seoul, Harang had to fall in love with a Were...poodle. And a toy poodle at that.
The girl was very apologetic when she regained her human form the next morning at daybreak, but Yoochun was actually still asleep and so he completely missed the part where she told him, meekly, that he was now cursed to spend three nights of the month as a toy poodle. Forever.
It wasn’t until twenty-eight days later when Yoochun found himself spontaneously ankle-height and extremely fluffy that Yoochun realized something might be very, very wrong with his mundane life.
The good news was that Yoohwan was very accepting of Yoochun’s predicament and cheerfully took his hyung out for walkies before bed. The bad news was that Harang was apparently not gender-specific in his loving and Yoochun was highly disturbed by his dog’s courting… methods.
It was an inconvenience, but Yoochun didn’t think it was so bad, all things considering.
That was until one morning, after a particularly late class, Yoochun woke up with his music theory teacher’s foot in his mouth. Luckily the rest of Professor Lim was attached to the foot, but Yoochun’s secret was out. And while Professor Lim didn’t really mind the Weretoypoodle curse as his family had always wanted a puppy, the school was not so understanding, and because the incident occurred on school property, Yoochun was summarily expelled.
Not wanting to be a burden to his parents or to adversely affect his brother’s reputation in the neighbourhood, Yoochun packed up some clothes and some money and headed out to make his own way in the world.
===
What Yoochun found was that there wasn’t actually a lot of ways for a 21-year-old Weretoypoodle to make his way in the world. His education didn’t allow for him to do much more than teach piano to petulant middle schoolers, and once the parents found out why he couldn’t give lessons after 4pm three nights out of every month they usually relieved him of his duties. His new “special skill” of regularly turning into a small dog didn’t really allow for him to do much more than beg meals and cuddles off cute girls three nights out of twenty-eight, which wasn’t much of a way to make a living either. This left him with the illustrious careers of sanitation engineer, with a sub-specialty in waste disposal, or waiting tables, all paid under the table, no contracts, no benefits, no job security whatsoever.
After being fired for missing his third shift in a row at the local movie theatre (although he would argue that technically he was present, he just couldn’t hold a broom in his toy poodle form), Yoochun found himself wandering aimlessly around town pondering the meaning of life and how he was going to maintain his current level of alive-ness if he couldn’t make enough money to feed himself.
And it wasn’t like toy poodles were particularly known for their hunting prowess. Even the other Weres he came across in his travels seemed to look down on him. Most of them just gave him pitying looks and condescending little pats on the head instead of actually giving real advice or helping him find steady employment. If he was looking particularly starved, Werecows could usually be relied upon to share a bit of whatever it was that they called ‘food’, but they usually booted him from the vicinity immediately after he ate.
As Yoochun contemplated the idea of trying to become a poodle permanently so that he could at least bank on the ‘big puppy eyes’ to get him adopted into a nice home that would keep him warm and well-fed (albeit on dog food), he literally ran into the perfect job opening.
Yoochun had stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk and fallen face-first into a sandwich board that loudly announced: “Restaurant Now Hiring! Part-time busboy wanted. Flexible hours! No experience necessary!”
There was no way Yoochun didn’t fit that bill; he was looking to be hired, he could definitely work as a part-time busboy, he liked flexible hours, and he had absolutely no experience in the restaurant industry.
So he picked himself up, ran a hand through his hair, and dug a suitable ‘interview outfit’ out of his backpack right there on the spot (it was a cardigan to throw over his Motley Crue t-shirt).
===
It actually took a couple of trips around the block to find the restaurant to which the sandwich board belonged, and, if Yoochun were honest with himself, it was indeed a tiny bit suspicious that the entrance to this quaint little establishment was located deep in a cobblestoned alley that he could have sworn wasn’t there before. The blackout drapes over the leaded glass windows were weird too, but he was trying not to think about it because he really, really, needed a job.
An antique bell above the door let out a cheerful ‘ding’ as he entered, and Yoochun was surprised to see that the interior of the restaurant was actually brightly lit with an eclectic modern/cottage feel to the décor. It smelled a little sweet and a little something else, but Yoochun still wasn’t quite used to his Weretoypoodle senses, so he didn’t know what that meant.
“We’re not open for dinner yet!”
The dining room was empty.
“I know, but I’m here about the busboy position?” he called out into the void.
“Ah!”
Yoochun blinked, but there was no further response.
Desperate times called for desperate (and embarrassingly thick-skinned) measures.
“I’m just going to sit here and wait for your manager!”
There was still no reply, but Yoochun resolutely plopped himself down at one of the smaller tables anyway. If nothing else, it would at least show that he was a man of his word.
After about twenty minutes, a tall man, not much older than Yoochun himself, slid smoothly into the seat across from him and flashed him a rather winning smile. Well, it was a bit smarmy, but somehow Yoochun was charmed by it.
“If it’s too early for dinner, I’d say it’s definitely a little too early to cruise…”
The man’s smile turned into a bit of a smirk.
“Oh, I don’t know… some people consider 4 p.m. quite a sexy hour. But my restaurant isn’t really known for casual mid-day hookups. The layout is a little too open, I think.”
Yoochun was pretty sure that his face was turning an interesting shade of tomato-red as his gaze slid down from the man’s handsome face to the shiny ‘manager’ tag pinned over his left breast pocket.
“Jung Yunho, owner and general manager.” The man held out a hand to Yoochun. “Do you have a resume?”
It took Yoochun a full thirty seconds to register what was going on.
“My name is Park Yoochun, um, here for the busboy position.” He shook Yunho’s hand weakly. “I’m really sorry about-“
But Yunho waved off his apology.
“It could happen to anyone,” he said.
“Not usually during a job interview though,” muttered a tall, lanky boy as he strode past them with a huge stack of glassware.
Yoochun felt his blush escalate to fire-engine-red. But before he could stammer out another apology/excuse, a second stranger responded to the snarky comment.
The newcomer said: “You talk like you totally didn’t walk in here on your interview day and accidentally offer to let Jae-”
There was a cacophony of spilling glass, dropped cutlery, and overturned furniture as the tall one dropped everything and hurtled across the dining room with amazing speed toward the smaller boy who’d just emerged from the back room.
“We’ll go get the replacement glasses, hyung!” squeaked the boy as he turned tail and ran, narrowly escaping the clutches of his pursuer with a loud laugh that made Yoochun smile.
Yunho cleared his throat and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
“As you can see, social awkwardness is not a hindrance to maintaining employment at this establishment.”
“Don’t lump me in with you dweebs! My contact list is twice as long as all of yours combined!” came the same disembodied voice from before.
Yunho smiled brightly at Yoochun once again.
“So, let’s just dispense with the formalities, shall we?”
Yoochun grinned happily because he didn’t have a resume and he’d never had to do a real job interview before. But charm he could manage, and, judging from the two employees he’d seen and the one he’d only heard, Yoochun was pretty certain he could work his way into this Jung Yunho’s heart with the judicious application of the extra wide ‘puppy eyes’ (still powerful, even in human form) and the ‘dumb puppy’ grin (also useable in human form).
“We’re basically looking for someone to help out with the grunt work, like clearing tables, mopping floors, doing the bathrooms. We might need you in the kitchen-“
“I don’t need him in my kitchen!” the voice called out again, and Yoochun made a note to himself not to talk smack about the chef anywhere in the restaurant as whoever it was apparently had dementedly good hearing.
“TO DO DISHES OR TO EXPEDITE WHEN THE DINNER RUSH TRIES TO KILL YOU!” Yunho bellowed.
“OH, FINE,” the voice bellowed back. “BUT IF HE GETS IN MY WAY, IMMA GONNA BITE HIM.”
Yoochun blinked.
“I think I can manage all of that. Um, even the kitchen duties… probably. But, I need to tell you that I’ll have to take three nights off out of every month… uh… for personal reasons. It’s nothing bad or illegal but--”
“And although you won’t really be working front-of-house,” Yunho continued as if he hadn’t heard Yoochun at all, “I do feel that it is necessary to ensure that you understand that our patrons are… you might say, people who want to keep certain aspects of their life on the down low, and we need our employees to be very, very discrete.”
Yoochun nodded largely because he didn’t actually understand what Yunho was trying to tell him, but he figured that agreeing was the best course of action to ensure that he got the job.
“I can be discrete?”
Yunho smiled at him, showing off practically all of his perfect, white teeth.
“Great. You’re hired.”
Yoochun stared.
“Are you shitting me?”
Yunho looked startled.
“No, sorry. That’s totally not what I meant. The social awkwardness is kicking in again.”
“It’s a debilitating illness,” said the tall worker on his way back through the dining room with a new stack of glassware. “You should ask Junsu to introduce you to his rehab therapist.”
“Ah ha! So you admit I’m getting less awkward!”
The shorter boy, Junsu apparently, looked triumphant right until Yunho turned around and told him that he’d just admitted to being socially awkward in the first place.
Yoochun couldn’t help but laugh at the sad, put-out expression on Junsu’s face.
“Anyway, the pay isn’t much, but we’ll feed you two meals a day, lunch at 3, and dinner after we close up for the night.”
Yoochun perked up right away at the prospect of being fed regularly.
“I really think I’ll fit in just fine here if you’ll have me.”
“Fabulous. Junsu will show you around. Hopefully he can wrap it up before our first dinner seating,” said Yunho as he motioned for the kid to come over.
Junsu smiled brightly and waved enthusiastically at Yoochun. Yoochun waved back.
“Oh, and by the way.” Yunho paused just before he headed into the kitchen. “If any of the customers start saying anything how tasty you look, or that they’d like a bite of you for dinner, just look for Changmin and he’ll help you out.”
The tall boy smirked at Yoochun and gave him a cocky salute.
Part of Yoochun thought that there was something to be worried about here (particularly the way Changmin’s eyes seemed to be glowing a bit…red?), but then Junsu’s sunny face popped into his line of vision and everything was put aside to learn the entire inner workings of the restaurant in forty minutes.
===
The dinner rush began with just one table. And Yoochun thought that maybe Yunho was being melodramatic about how slammed they were going to be. But then another two-top arrived, and then a four-top, and then another four-top, and soon their little 28-seater dining room was filled to the brim with more parties waiting in the small foyer.
Changmin and Junsu were run ragged, and Yunho had to actually man the cashier station himself. So it wasn’t long before Yoochun found himself spending more time in the front-of-house helping out with customer service tasks like refilling drinks, and getting condiments from the sideboard just outside of the kitchen.
One particular customer of rather advanced age kept asking Yoochun to bring him things. First it was more wine. Then he wanted ketchup. Then it was hot sauce. He dropped his knife, his fork, his napkin... Yoochun tried to keep a straight face as he bent over to pick up the napkin, but he couldn’t stop a little giggle from bubbling out as he returned the napkin to its owner. This was just like a scene from a terrible, third-rate, porn movie from the 1970s.
The customer completely mistook the giggle, of course, and took the opportunity to run his dry, papery fingers along the inside of Yoochun’s wrist as Yoochun withdrew his hand after placing the napkin on the table.
“Such a tasty, young thing. Are you the dinner special tonight, I wonder?” the gentleman inquired coyly, fluttering his sparse lashes at Yoochun.
Red flags waved in Yoochun’s mind as Yunho’s words from earlier that evening floated to the forefront of his brain, but almost before Yoochun had completed the thought to look for Changmin, the tall waiter appeared at his side, swift and silent.
“Now, now, sir. You know that we don’t allow our staff to dillydally with the customers. Yoochun here is our newest hire. He’s a little different from the rest of us, so we’re still teaching him the ropes, but you’ll have to put up with him as is for a little while, okay?”
The words were condescending, but the tone was gentle, and somehow the gentleman was placated, flashing Changmin a wide, toothy grin in response.
“Ah. You guys never serve anything fresh,” he whined playfully. “I was hoping that your Mr. Jung had changed his mind on that policy.”
Yoochun glanced down at the man’s steak, ‘cooked’ blue-rare, and shuddered to think what classified as ‘fresh’ in this guy’s mind if that wasn’t it.
Changmin just made some generic, noncommittal noise and quietly shuffled Yoochun back to condiments station.
===
It wasn’t until the night was over and they were all cleaning up that Yoochun realized he hadn’t even set foot in the kitchen once the entire night and so he hadn’t yet met the owner of the mysterious voice that had been yelling out during his entire job interview. He asked Junsu about the chef, but Junsu was busy scrubbing this mysterious rust-coloured stain out of the wooden tabletop and he couldn’t spare the concentration to respond. Changmin was cleaning the ceiling, as he turned out to be quite the fastidious thing, but he was able to point Yoochun in the direction of the staff changing room.
“Why don’t you grab the other two and help get our dinner on the table?”
So Yoochun trotted off to round up Yunho and the chef.
The change room turned out to be small enough for everything to be seen in one glance. Yunho wasn’t there, but the person who could only be the chef was changing out of their chef’s whites and into street clothes with their back to the door.
Yoochun took a moment to admire the slim silhouette, pale skin, and tiny waist. Straight, white-blonde hair fell softly along an elegant column of a neck.
“I’d bet ten thousand Won that I’ll be speechless when you turn around,” growled Yoochun, low and seductive.
To be fair, Yoochun was indeed struck speechless for the next ten seconds of his life, and by all rights, someone now owed him W10,000.
Unfortunately, Yoochun wasn’t really in the state of mind to collect on that debt. What had robbed Yoochun of all higher mental function was not the stunning vision of female beauty (like he’d expected)... but was instead the horrific sight of a half naked man with what appeared to be, and certainly smelled like, blood smeared across his cheek and chin and dripping slowly down his smooth, well-defined chest towards his--
Yoochun wrenched his gaze back up to the other… man’s… face.
Wide, round eyes, a long, straight nose, and cute, pink lips pursed into a little ‘o’ of shock.
Definitely pretty, stunningly so, really, but still…
“You’re not a girl.”
“Not so much.” The other man grinned, baring a very impressive set of bloodied fangs.
===
“Your chef is a vampire!” Yoochun screamed as he hurtled out of the changing room and barreled straight into Junsu.
He grabbed Junsu’s shoulders and shook him in a panicked frenzy.
“Your chef is a vampire! He’s… he’s… eating some--!” Yoochun stammered, gesturing wildly behind him.
“He’s eating without us? That jerk!” Changmin thrust his way between Yoochun and Junsu as he stormed his way into the changing room. “Yah! Kim Jaejoong! You better not be hoarding food in there.”
“Hey, I’m your hyung-”
“Oh my god!” Changmin’s voice was still crystal clear even though the door had closed behind him. “What the hell are you doing?”
Yoochun turned back to Junsu.
“Do you hear that? We have to save Changmin! Your chef is a blood-sucking fiend!”
But as Yoochun was gathering the gumption to charge in and save his new coworker, said coworker emerged from the changing room, frog-marching the blood-stained ‘Kim Jaejoong’ in front of him.
“No wonder Yoochun-hyung was grossed out. Seriously.” He slapped Jaejoong upside the head. “You can’t even drink a bottle of blood without spilling all over yourself. You’re an embarrassment to the rest of us adult vampires.”
Yoochun’s eyes went impossibly wide.
“What… what do you mean by ‘the rest of us’?”
“We’re all vampires,” said Junsu with his head tilted in such an endearing way that Yoochun almost didn’t register the words that were actually coming out of his mouth.
“Wait…” Yoochun’s head spun as his gaze swiveled from Jaejoong to Changmin to Junsu. “You’re all vampires?”
Yunho looked up from where he was closing the cash register.
“This is a vampire restaurant, run by vampires for vampires. It's a little kitschy, but this is kind of a theme restaurant for those vampires who want to play 'human' for the night and eat human food (although we do serve blood in the wine bottles). I told you from the beginning that this was a dining establishment for a very specific clientele, didn’t I? I asked you to be discrete because some of our patrons still live perfectly normal human lives.”
“I thought you mean that it was like, an underground gay bar for rich snobs or something. I mean, there was that one old guy who kept drooling over me… and asking me to bend over…”
Jaejoong hid a giggle behind Junsu’s shoulder.
“Oh, yeah... well, Mr. Choi is actually gay, but he also has… a sort of fetish for Were-blood,” said Changmin flippantly.
Yoochun blanched and sat down, hard, on the floor right where he was.
“Are you saying… that when he asked if I was on the menu…”
“Yeah… it wasn’t exactly some lame pickup line.” Junsu tried to look apologetic, but his expression didn’t look too terribly different from usual.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Yunho came over to pat Yoochun on the shoulder. “We don’t usually hire non-Vampire employees, as you can probably guess, but we really need the extra help and it’s just so hard to find Vampire kids these days who’re willing to put in a decent night’s work.”
Yoochun could only gaze blankly up at his new boss.
“I can understand if you don’t want to stay… It is an inherently hazardous work environment for an employee of your, uh, shall we say, species?”
Everyone stared at Yoochun, while he continued to stare up at Yunho.
Finally, Yoochun pursed his lips, stood up, and heaved a shrug.
“Oh well. A job’s a job, right? Everything has its risks. I could just as easily lose my fingers from a faulty piano lid. Being accidentally bitten in the neck by a customer is nothing. Besides, Changmin will save me, right?”
There was a moment of silence.
===
The staff meals at the restaurant were usually 80% blood and 20% food, so, having never had non-Vampire staff before, they hadn’t stocked anything outside of the ordinary. Yunho said that as long as they were welcoming Yoochun to the family, they might as well do it up big. So he agreed to take them all out for dinner at another restaurant on their block that served soondae-everything, blood sausage being suitable for everyone’s tastes.
As they walked along the cobblestoned alley, Yoochun suddenly remembered something that had been niggling at the back of his mind for the past twenty minutes.
“So wait, back there, Changmin said that Mr. Choi had a thing for Were-blood?”
Changmin gave him a look that made Yoochun hurry up with what he was trying to say.
“Does that mean you all know that I’m a Were?”
“Yep!” Junsu chirped. “I hate to break it to you, but we could smell you from the end of the block! I’m kind of surprised you didn’t sense us for vampires. You’re not a very good Were.”
Yunho squished Junsu’s face for a second.
“Don’t be rude,” he said before letting Junsu go. “And yes, Yoochun, we all knew. But since it seemed like you didn’t want to say it, we weren’t going to push it. Contrary to appearances, we do know how to be polite.”
Both Changmin and Junsu stuck their tongues out at Yunho.
“Do you… know what kind of Were I am?” Yoochun asked in a small voice, fingers playing with the hem of his shirt.
Junsu hopped a little as he turned back to look at Yoochun.
“Does it matter?” he asked, all wide-eyed innocence.
Yoochun thought about for a second and then he smiled back at Junsu, suddenly lighthearted and happy for the first time since he’d gotten bitten by Harang’s stupid-ass girlfriend.
“No, it doesn’t matter at all,” he said.
And it really didn’t.
… Until Jaejoong leaned in so close that his lips were almost touching Yoochun’s ear and said: “I can sense what kind of Were you are, and I think it's cute, you little curly-haired lapdog.”
Yoochun turned a little to look at Jaejoong. The chef was really very pretty even if he was a blood-sucking fiend… and… y’know, a dude.
In for a penny, in for a pound, Yoochun told himself. If today was going to be a day of new experiences…
Well, then.
He took a breath, and went all in, leaning forward to press his nose against Jaejoong’s cheek, scenting him and marking him as a dog would.
“Arf, arf,” he said, dumb-puppy-grin firmly in place.
==END==