#49 [B1A4, Gongchan/Jinyoung]
Fandom: B1A4
Title: Aisle Nine
Rating: PG
Pairing(s)/Focus: Gongchan/Jinyoung
Length: 1,323 words
Summary: Gongchan works at a grocery store, and Jinyoung comes to shop.
Warnings: Age gap, light teacher/student relationship (Jinyoung is not Gongchan’s teacher, but he is a teacher and Gongchan is a student).
Remixee author: the-resolver
Title of work you remixed: Le Coeur
Link to work you remixed: http://the-resolver.livejournal.com/3449.html
“Hello, did you find everything you were looking for today?” Gongchan says with a smile to the customer on the other side of the register. He’s unpacking his basket, hair falling on his eyes. He looks like he’s trying desperately to remember or make sure of something, but once the basket’s empty he looks up and grins at Gongchan.
“Yeah, I think so,” he replies, still smiling.
Gongchan takes the first item on the conveyor belt, a bag of rice, and scans it, unable to resist smiling back at him. It’s not often Gongchan gets attractive customers--the area the grocery store is in is full of families and older people, so the number of twenty-somethings he sees daily is negligible, at most, and the number of truly good-looking ones is even lower. He continues scanning the rest of the man’s goods, trying hard not to look at him too much in between. He sneaks peaks, notices the slight wrinkling of his shirt, the creases under his eyes, the make of his backpack, his nametag.
He pauses on the nametag longer than he should. It’s an ID, exactly like the ones his teachers clip to their belts. Gongchan scans the water bottles he’s holding and then glances at it again, hoping he doesn’t look like he’s staring at his crotch. It is, in fact, an ID card, for the high school in the district neighboring his. It reads “Jung Jinyoung, Teacher.” He looks, Gongchan thinks, sort of young to be a teacher, and he’s briefly jealous that there’s no one as attractive as he is who works at his school. It would certainly make his early morning classes a lot more enjoyable.
“Do you have a discount card?” Gongchan asks. The man nods, reaching into his pocket to pull out a black leather wallet. He hands it over and Gongchan scans it, then returns it and continues with the rest of his groceries.
“That’ll be ₩24,300,” Gongchan tells him. He hands over cash--₩30,000--and Gongchan punches the amount into the register, which pops open so he can get change. The man leaves with a smile, his two bags of groceries clutched in one hand. Gongchan watches him go, eyes tracing the outline of his shoulders.
The man--Mr. Jung, as Gongchan thinks of him--comes in the next time he’s working, too. He doesn’t go into his line because he’s serving a customer with an overflowing cartload of goods, but he does smile at Gongchan, and Gongchan returns it. After that, he sees Mr. Jung once a week, usually when he works on Thursday afternoons. He comes into his line whenever he’s not busy with a particularly time-consuming customer, and they chat briefly every time.
Gongchan’s not sure what to make of their interactions. He swears, sometimes, that Mr. Jung is flirting with him, especially the first time he grins and tells Gongchan to call him Jinyoung, but he has a hard time believing it. He’s certainly less than ten years older than Gongchan, maybe 25 or so, a few years out of college and in, it seems from what little information he gives, his second year of teaching. Normally he asks Gongchan questions, about working at the grocery store and where he wants to go to university. He carefully avoids, it seems, anything about the fact that he’s a high school teacher and Gongchan is a high schooler, but Gongchan also suspects he might be reading too much into their conversations, which usually span less than five minutes at a time. Jinyoung--Gongchan’s still sort of uncomfortable calling him by his first name, but he bristles at being called Mr. Jung so he tries his best to think of him just as Jinyoung, get into that habit instead--is terribly friendly to him, though. The few times he visits a different register, Gongchan pays attention to how he interacts with the cashiers there. He’s much more normal. He still smiles, but he always glances past the person serving him, at Gongchan, and never makes as much conversation.
“When do you get off work?” Jinyoung asks out of the blue one Saturday afternoon. He’s holding his bags, would be making his way to his car already, any other day.
Gongchan swallows, rubs his hand into the scratchy fabric of his work polo, glances at the clock on the register. “Six. That’s like two hours from now.”
Jinyoung nods. He’s not looking at Gongchan anymore, gaze trained instead on the shiny metal counter separating them. “Do you want to grab dinner?”
“Sure,” Gongchan replies after a hesitation.
“Cool. I’ll pick you up here when you get off your shift.”
The next two hours are unnerving. Gongchan feels like he’s going to jump out of his own body, every sound amplified in his ears, every minute passing impossibly slower than the last. It’s nerves, in part, a hint of adrenaline mixed with a dash of uncertainty, but there’s something deeper to it, too. Jinyoung is older than him. A lot older. Gongchan is by no means young for his year in school, turned 18 back in December, has nothing legal to worry about, but there’s something just a little unsettling about an older man being interested in him. It’s also, he thinks, sort of exciting, as if he’s worth something more than the other kids in his grade who can’t even get a date with someone their own age. The apprehension pushes through more strongly than his excitement, though, and by the time his shift ends his palms are sweaty and his stomach is burning, an unpleasant combination of hunger and nervousness.
After logging out of his register, Gongchan makes his way back to the breakroom and signs out, then strips off his polo to replace it with the black printed shirt he was wearing earlier in the day. He exits the building through the employee door, and the first thing he sees waiting for him in the parking lot is Jinyoung, standing outside of an older black car, fiddling with his phone. He smiles at Gongchan when he sees him, and, as always, it’s infectious, a grin immediately spreading across his face, too.
“How was the rest of your shift?” Jinyoung asks when Gongchan’s within earshot.
He shrugs. “Boring. The usual.”
Jinyoung laughs. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”
“It wasn’t bad, just boring.”
Jinyoung stands up straight and stretches, then moves back to the driver’s side of the car, sliding inside. Gongchan follows suit, buckling in as Jinyoung starts the engine.
“Where are we going?”
“A Japanese place not too far from here?”
Gongchan nods, eyes fixed ahead of him, nerves settling but still strong, still obvious in the tight clench of his fists into his jeans. Jinyoung’s smiles make him feel better, but they’re not enough to immediately dissolve the tension that’s been building in his body for the last couple of hours. “Sounds good.”
Jinyoung drives him home after their dinner, which goes well. Conversations longer than five minutes flow easily between them, and Gongchan learns a little more about Jinyoung’s job. He still seems a little apprehensive, but it had certainly faded over the course of the night.
Jinyoung pulls up outside Gongchan’s house, the porch light glowing bright on the otherwise dark street.
“Can I get your number?” Jinyoung asks, and he nods, taking the phone Jinyoung offers him and typing in his contact info.
Jinyoung shoots him a quick text when he’s finished--Hi! It’s Jinyoung :), and then Gongchan makes to get out of the car, but Jinyoung grabs his wrist instead. He leans across the space between the seats and kisses Gongchan at the edge of his mouth, lips soft and warm across his skin. It barely lasts a second, but the heat of it sears into his skin, with him as he walks up the walkway to his house, smile plastered across his face.
Title: Aisle Nine
Rating: PG
Pairing(s)/Focus: Gongchan/Jinyoung
Length: 1,323 words
Summary: Gongchan works at a grocery store, and Jinyoung comes to shop.
Warnings: Age gap, light teacher/student relationship (Jinyoung is not Gongchan’s teacher, but he is a teacher and Gongchan is a student).
Remixee author: the-resolver
Title of work you remixed: Le Coeur
Link to work you remixed: http://the-resolver.livejournal.com/3449.html
“Hello, did you find everything you were looking for today?” Gongchan says with a smile to the customer on the other side of the register. He’s unpacking his basket, hair falling on his eyes. He looks like he’s trying desperately to remember or make sure of something, but once the basket’s empty he looks up and grins at Gongchan.
“Yeah, I think so,” he replies, still smiling.
Gongchan takes the first item on the conveyor belt, a bag of rice, and scans it, unable to resist smiling back at him. It’s not often Gongchan gets attractive customers--the area the grocery store is in is full of families and older people, so the number of twenty-somethings he sees daily is negligible, at most, and the number of truly good-looking ones is even lower. He continues scanning the rest of the man’s goods, trying hard not to look at him too much in between. He sneaks peaks, notices the slight wrinkling of his shirt, the creases under his eyes, the make of his backpack, his nametag.
He pauses on the nametag longer than he should. It’s an ID, exactly like the ones his teachers clip to their belts. Gongchan scans the water bottles he’s holding and then glances at it again, hoping he doesn’t look like he’s staring at his crotch. It is, in fact, an ID card, for the high school in the district neighboring his. It reads “Jung Jinyoung, Teacher.” He looks, Gongchan thinks, sort of young to be a teacher, and he’s briefly jealous that there’s no one as attractive as he is who works at his school. It would certainly make his early morning classes a lot more enjoyable.
“Do you have a discount card?” Gongchan asks. The man nods, reaching into his pocket to pull out a black leather wallet. He hands it over and Gongchan scans it, then returns it and continues with the rest of his groceries.
“That’ll be ₩24,300,” Gongchan tells him. He hands over cash--₩30,000--and Gongchan punches the amount into the register, which pops open so he can get change. The man leaves with a smile, his two bags of groceries clutched in one hand. Gongchan watches him go, eyes tracing the outline of his shoulders.
The man--Mr. Jung, as Gongchan thinks of him--comes in the next time he’s working, too. He doesn’t go into his line because he’s serving a customer with an overflowing cartload of goods, but he does smile at Gongchan, and Gongchan returns it. After that, he sees Mr. Jung once a week, usually when he works on Thursday afternoons. He comes into his line whenever he’s not busy with a particularly time-consuming customer, and they chat briefly every time.
Gongchan’s not sure what to make of their interactions. He swears, sometimes, that Mr. Jung is flirting with him, especially the first time he grins and tells Gongchan to call him Jinyoung, but he has a hard time believing it. He’s certainly less than ten years older than Gongchan, maybe 25 or so, a few years out of college and in, it seems from what little information he gives, his second year of teaching. Normally he asks Gongchan questions, about working at the grocery store and where he wants to go to university. He carefully avoids, it seems, anything about the fact that he’s a high school teacher and Gongchan is a high schooler, but Gongchan also suspects he might be reading too much into their conversations, which usually span less than five minutes at a time. Jinyoung--Gongchan’s still sort of uncomfortable calling him by his first name, but he bristles at being called Mr. Jung so he tries his best to think of him just as Jinyoung, get into that habit instead--is terribly friendly to him, though. The few times he visits a different register, Gongchan pays attention to how he interacts with the cashiers there. He’s much more normal. He still smiles, but he always glances past the person serving him, at Gongchan, and never makes as much conversation.
“When do you get off work?” Jinyoung asks out of the blue one Saturday afternoon. He’s holding his bags, would be making his way to his car already, any other day.
Gongchan swallows, rubs his hand into the scratchy fabric of his work polo, glances at the clock on the register. “Six. That’s like two hours from now.”
Jinyoung nods. He’s not looking at Gongchan anymore, gaze trained instead on the shiny metal counter separating them. “Do you want to grab dinner?”
“Sure,” Gongchan replies after a hesitation.
“Cool. I’ll pick you up here when you get off your shift.”
The next two hours are unnerving. Gongchan feels like he’s going to jump out of his own body, every sound amplified in his ears, every minute passing impossibly slower than the last. It’s nerves, in part, a hint of adrenaline mixed with a dash of uncertainty, but there’s something deeper to it, too. Jinyoung is older than him. A lot older. Gongchan is by no means young for his year in school, turned 18 back in December, has nothing legal to worry about, but there’s something just a little unsettling about an older man being interested in him. It’s also, he thinks, sort of exciting, as if he’s worth something more than the other kids in his grade who can’t even get a date with someone their own age. The apprehension pushes through more strongly than his excitement, though, and by the time his shift ends his palms are sweaty and his stomach is burning, an unpleasant combination of hunger and nervousness.
After logging out of his register, Gongchan makes his way back to the breakroom and signs out, then strips off his polo to replace it with the black printed shirt he was wearing earlier in the day. He exits the building through the employee door, and the first thing he sees waiting for him in the parking lot is Jinyoung, standing outside of an older black car, fiddling with his phone. He smiles at Gongchan when he sees him, and, as always, it’s infectious, a grin immediately spreading across his face, too.
“How was the rest of your shift?” Jinyoung asks when Gongchan’s within earshot.
He shrugs. “Boring. The usual.”
Jinyoung laughs. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”
“It wasn’t bad, just boring.”
Jinyoung stands up straight and stretches, then moves back to the driver’s side of the car, sliding inside. Gongchan follows suit, buckling in as Jinyoung starts the engine.
“Where are we going?”
“A Japanese place not too far from here?”
Gongchan nods, eyes fixed ahead of him, nerves settling but still strong, still obvious in the tight clench of his fists into his jeans. Jinyoung’s smiles make him feel better, but they’re not enough to immediately dissolve the tension that’s been building in his body for the last couple of hours. “Sounds good.”
Jinyoung drives him home after their dinner, which goes well. Conversations longer than five minutes flow easily between them, and Gongchan learns a little more about Jinyoung’s job. He still seems a little apprehensive, but it had certainly faded over the course of the night.
Jinyoung pulls up outside Gongchan’s house, the porch light glowing bright on the otherwise dark street.
“Can I get your number?” Jinyoung asks, and he nods, taking the phone Jinyoung offers him and typing in his contact info.
Jinyoung shoots him a quick text when he’s finished--Hi! It’s Jinyoung :), and then Gongchan makes to get out of the car, but Jinyoung grabs his wrist instead. He leans across the space between the seats and kisses Gongchan at the edge of his mouth, lips soft and warm across his skin. It barely lasts a second, but the heat of it sears into his skin, with him as he walks up the walkway to his house, smile plastered across his face.