with every small disaster; hoya/sungjong; pg; 1.8k+ words
i wrote this in like an hour last night instead of doing my homework or posting the other hojong fic ive been working on for months and just why
also i named this "lettuce fuckboy" when i saved it sorry
also barely edited so all mistakes are mine
this is just a complete mess
it starts off in the cereal aisle.
howon’s restocking the cocoa puffs, making sure that they’re as perfect as can be-with the labels turned out and with the same amount of space between each box. he’s doing it all mechanically with his eyes heavy and knees aching from practice last night, faintly listening to woohyun sing a ballad while mopping up in aisle six.
he steps to his right and is face to face with a head of lettuce.
he blinks blearily at it, because it’s six in the morning godammit, but then woohyun abruptly hits a high note and he snaps out of his daze.
he thinks nothing of it, because people leave items they don’t want all the time wherever they want. he drags his feet to the produce section to throw it at sungyeol and then goes back to the cocoa puffs.
but then it keeps happening. he’s always the one finding it in the pasta section or the laundry detergent section, as if it was waiting for him.
he had asked the others about it-woohyun had laughed, eyes turned up at the corners, and called him paranoid. sungyeol had told him to go the fuck away, but then again, they were the ones left to close one night and it had been past three am when they left.
now, here he is, slowly stocking the apples after having stolen the cart from a doe-eyed dongwoo, and staring down anyone who walks into the store and hovers near the lettuce.
after having worked at the cash register closest to the entrance all last week, he had a few suspects.
there was this suspicious-looking guy that had came in when it was almost closing time and had loitered near the cauliflower and stared at them with a hand scratching his chin. he stood there for nearly ten minutes and howon started suspecting that he had fallen asleep on his feet. howon had to look away to ring someone up, a sweet looking boy with a polite smile, and when he turns around, the guy is gone.
but sure enough, when he’s mopping the kitchen appliances section, the head of lettuce is there.
his next suspect is this soccer mom who had been screaming at her phone when she walked in while smacking her watermelon-flavored gum that howon could smell from the register. it had looked as if she had been throwing in random produce into her cart that he couldn’t see be incorporated into food; radishes, cilantro, ten bags of spinach, three heads of lettuce, and one single kiwi.
he had completely forgotten about her when she disappeared from view and didn’t notice when she left, but the lettuce had showed up in the yogurt section. right between the key lime pie and vanilla flavors.
the last person was a little old lady that walks negative miles per hour, resulting in the aisles clogging up and giving howon a rush at the register, and who had talked his ear off about her granddaughter and her puppy. when he had told sungyeol that she was probably trying to distract him from how much of a criminal she was, sungyeol had rolled his eyes and told him to just mop up the spilled milk.
it’s barely afternoon so they haven’t had many customers, and howon starts daydreaming about what he’s going to have for dinner while his gaze is fixed on the beets.
he senses someone behind him a few feet away and he jumps and goes back to pretending like he’s rotating the apples around to put the new ones in the back.
“excuse me,” says a soft voice on his left before a hand reaches up to the apple he had just placed at the very top. there’s a warm presence at his arm and he looks back instinctively.
it’s the sweet looking kid from last week, with the polite smile and a nice ass. he’s almost on his tippy toes when he finally gets the apple, a satisfied smile on his pretty mouth, and howon watches his eyelashes when the kid sets the apple in a plastic bag.
howon steps aside ten years later, already missing the warmth at his arm and blames it on the fact that he hasn’t dated in months and he’s just lonely.
the boy hums before reaching up to grab another apple that’s nearly on the other side of the section. he’s basically right in front of howon’s face, and he can’t exactly figure out if he’s uncomfortable or kind of turned on by the sight of his long fingers.
before he could even think of the nerve to ask him out, or maybe if he wants to make out behind the store, he’s not picky, he walks away.
howon goes back to stocking the apples and staring at the sliding doors.
a few minutes later, sunggyu’s calling him to the back, something about breaking down boxes when he’s obviously capable of doing it himself, but he’s turning his giant cart of apples around and pushing it towards the back room.
thankfully, there aren’t any kids around because of school starting, so it’s easy to push through the beef and pork section and not having to stop every ten seconds because a little boy wants a free apple and who even does that?
he’s about to pass the paper towels aisle when the sight of the pretty kid from before stops him in his tracks. he probably stares at how nice his legs look in his shorts for maybe five seconds when he notices the boy staring straight at him and putting a head of lettuce right there on the shelf.
he should be embarrassed that he had been caught staring, but he just points at him instead and splutters broken sentences.
the boy suddenly smiles, dangerously, and very much not like the soft one he wore when he had told him that he could keep the change.
his walkie talkie blares again with sunggyu’s nagging voice, telling him to hurry up, and the kid just keeps smiling that smile, turns on his heel, and walks away.
howon feels like he’s betraying himself when he still stares at his butt as he’s walking away.
-
the kid doesn’t show up the rest of the week, and howon is blessedly lettuce-free when he’s restocking shelves and sweeping the crumbs at the free sample station.
woohyun laughs right in his face, again, when howon tells him what happened, and just walks away and why is he even friends with these people.
-
he shows up again when they’ve only been open for an hour on a friday. howon is too busy trying to remember the dance routine they had started to teach him last night, legs sore and back aching, to notice.
he spins around, trying to get the exact movement of his hips right, when he looks up and meets the eyes of that kid who’s holding a head of lettuce and wearing a smile that almost looks fond.
howon instantly straightens and marches straight over to him, abandoning the boxes of broccoli that need to be unpacked. his fingers are jittery and he’s angry and the kid is just standing there with that same smile.
“you,” howon says, nearly hisses, and has to resist pointing a finger at him like he’s done something incredibly wrong-which, he thinks, he has. “you’re the one leaving lettuce around, aren’t you?”
the corners of his smile twitch and he hasn’t even put the one he has in his hand down yet. “yeah.”
“why would you even do that?” howon says, trying to sound as angry as he feels, but he can’t help but notice the beauty mark on the side of his nose. “i’m always the person that has to put it back!”
his smile grows wider, almost reluctantly. “i always take out the lettuce first because all my other stuff squishes it, and then i would forget it.”
howon blinks because what the hell. “and you kept doing it.”
his eyes glint coyly. “you looked kind of cute when you got worked up over a head of lettuce. “
he stares at him, because this kid thinks he’s cute when this guy actually looks ten years old, but he can see the slight definition in his arms and there’s that mischievous glint in his eyes. there’s something in the way that he holds himself and howon is suddenly struck with the urge to wonder what makes this boy tick and what will it take for him to fall apart in his bed.
the boy simple stares back. “so, when do you get off?”
howon bites back the inappropriate response that pops in his head, because he’s actually five years old and he hangs out with sungyeol. instead he says, “two. in the morning.”
his face falls, only slightly, and howon slightly panics because what if he thinks i’m lying to him, but then he perks up and suddenly starts rocking on his heels. howon wants to stare at him for forever.
“so, can i come back tomorrow?” he asks, chin raised and looking as if he knows that howon’s going to say yes, which he probably does, even when there’s a hint of insecurity in his eyes and he’s wringing his hands around.
“yeah. sure,” howon says, distantly hearing sunggyu yell at him from across the produce section to stop flirting and get back to work.
his eyes drop to watch as the kid bites at his bottom lip in an effort to smother a wide grin, staring at the chapped skin and the sweep of his eyelashes when he ducks his head.
then, he looks back up with his face smooth and composed, but the way he’s looking at howon makes his chest feel tight. “i’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“okay,” he replies back, because he’s a fucking idiot, and watches the boy disappear towards the red meat section. he’s unconsciously staring at the sway of his hips when he remembers that he doesn’t even know his name.
-
there aren’t any misplaced heads of lettuce in the store when they’re getting ready to close, which howon thinks is suspicious, so he wanders over to the produce section while ignoring sunggyu’s nagging.
there’s something on the back of one of the heads at the top of the pile. he can barely reach it, even on his toes, and wonders how in the hell did that kid do this.
he’s almost tempted to call for sungyeol in his walkie-talkie, but he’s not going to stoop that low, so ten minutes later, he finally grabs part of the plastic and pulls it towards him, and nearly hits himself in the face.
there’s a bright blue sticky note on the back with a “lee sungjong ,” a lopsided smiley face, and a phone number.
sungyeol walks by two minutes later, telling him to stop smiling because he forgot to check the bakery and that there’s a head of lettuce that he had missed that was sitting on top of a birthday cake.