(Un)Delightful Treats for springmaid
Title: (Un)Delightful Treats
Recipient: springmaid
Pairing: Ken/Hyuk
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,356 words
Summary: Working at an ice cream shop is anything but normal.
Notes: This probably doesn’t go with the prompt you asked for, but I tried. It was kind of tough, but it was the best I could do. Hopefully you enjoy it anyways.
Jaehwan hated work.
He hated how annoying it was, how many people there were calling for him, and how sweaty it would get him. He hated bustling through tables, customer after customer, and serving ice cream for some people that didn’t give a tip.
It was why he decided to stop going to work for a week. He stayed in his room for the first two days playing video games with his closest friend, Seokjin via Skype, or playing by himself. It was the only thing he could do, really. He wasn't too big on people. And the outside world.
It was Wednesday, marking the third day Jaehwan went without work and he was feeling pretty good about himself. Jaehwan squinted, jabbing his finger over the buttons of his console as he struggled beating the boss. He was just about to take a healing potion when his mother came barging in; the slam made him jump and the monster killed him in an instant.
“Could’ve knocked,” Jaehwan said, staring at the TV screen regretfully.
His mother folded her arms. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work, Jaehwan?”
Jaehwan groaned, closing his eyes. “Mom, please. I have better things to do.”
"Jaehwan! Look what you’re doing!” His mother pointed at the TV screen. “What does this have to do with work? Soon enough it’ll get old and you’ll be bored so you should at least do something to keep you on your feet. You want to get used to the idea of a job so it can help you in ten years. It won’t be so much of a burden later on. Honey, take it from someone who’s been in those shoes."
"Well.”
“Can you please try and go to work today? It’ll be good for you and you can find a lot of experiences to reminisce about when you’re 60 and graying.”
"You just want me out of the house.”
"Jaehwan, you're almost twenty.”
Jaehwan frowned. “Isn’t that a bit young to work? Oh, I got a higher score than Seokjin, yes.”
"Get out.”
--
"It's so fucking hot."
Jaehwan’s mother finally decided to get Jaehwan out the house, dropping him off at a local shopping district after practically forcing him to get out of the room and he’d almost left without pants on. Surrounding him were an assortment of vegetable and fruit stands and vintage clothing stores, and in the middle of all those reds and blacks was a small pastel square with a dainty sign painted with the title Frozen Delights.
Jaehwan shook his hair away from his face - this was so ridiculous. Working at some lame ice cream shop his mother forced him to work at, which was so pointless when Jaehwan didn't even want to work. He didn't think he even had a chance getting a job anywhere, not with his lack of experience and motivation. But there was nothing else he could do, since his mother had confiscated his phone before she kicked him out of the car to get working.
It wasn’t that it was a bad job - rather it was tiresome and people like Jaehwan, lazy and tired, didn’t enjoy jobs that required doing such intensive work like handling ice cream.
After walking around for a while, Jaehwan took a seat down in the shade on a street bench nearby. He folded his legs on the seat and fanned himself, finding that it was barely doing anything to help his dying condition, the heat was nauseating - how did his mother expect him to work in unbearable weather?
Still, there was no point in whining now, so he might as well walk the rest of the way there.
--
"No one’s opened the shop yet?" Jaehwan asked, following Hakyeon into the store.
Hakyeon worked for Frozen Delights for three summers already, giving him enough time to be familiar with every inch of the store. People were always friendly with Hakyeon, as he always had this aura that attracted so many customers to this little quirky place. At times Jaehwan appreciated it but Hakyeon sometimes could be a bit much (which, coming from Jaehwan, said a lot.)
"It opens up at eleven now. You would know if you came at all last week," Hakyeon said, giving him a look. "We still have thirty minutes left so that'll give you enough time to help us clean the place."
Jaehwan used to love hanging out at the shop before he had to start working here. He'd been here with Seokjin via Skype before after school eating Cookie Nut Crunch and arguing about characters from The Last of Us.
Jaehwan bumped his leg into a table and cursed under his breath, rubbing the sore spot.
"Careful, don't get any blood on the floor. I just mopped."
Jaehwan turned his head and found an unfamiliar face looking back at him, a face with a soft nose and brown hair and cheeks that seemed to fill up on its own.
Taking a better look at him, he can see that the guy was an absolute giant in his form. He had strands of hair sticking out of his cap he threw on backwards, and his uniform looked out of place, as if he woke up in it. He looked like he just woke up, if Jaehwan was being honest, but somehow he made it work. Jaehwan wasn’t as a pretty sight when he was a mess. He liked that.
Jaehwan was probably staring for too long (too busy taking in the guy's beauty), looking over at him -- who had that common weirded-out look people usually had when they first met Jaehwan.
"Well," Hakyeon started off, clapping once loud enough to get Jaehwan’s attention, "Sanghyuk could man the tables today, Jaehwan, and I'll call in Taekwoon and Hongbin so they can help Sanghyuk out, and, oh, Sanghyuk, you could finish mopping up the floors."
Sanghyuk, his name was, scratched his head. "Oh, okay."
"Good." He turned back to glare at Jaehwan. "You just came in after an entire week of not being here so I’m expecting you to not to fool around. You need to wear the uniform." He made a grab for Jaehwan’s arm, dragging him to the back of the store to where the storage closet was and muttering clearly not loud enough for Jaehwan to hear words such as “lazy little bum”, and watched Sanghyuk stare at them with mild interest before the doors swung shut.
--
“Waiter! Waiter!”
Jaehwan groaned, refraining himself from slapping his forehead. Frozen Delights had been especially crowded today, much to Jaehwan's dismay. In just a week’s amount of time the customers doubled in size. In just a few hours, he ran back and forth at least six times, given out three Giant Sundaes, and if Hakyeon had to yell out another order directly in his ear to say that it was ready, Jaehwan might just explode right on the spot.
“Fifteen people,” Jaehwan gasped in disbelief, dabbing his head with a wet piece of cloth. “I may never come back alive from this point forward.”
Taekwoon eyed him before going back to counting the money they made so far while Jaehwan let his shoulders hunch forward as he thought about the lack of food in his stomach.
Taekwoon looked up from counting and frowned at him. “Get back to work.”
He went to the back leaving Jaehwan to make a face at his back.
After taking care of that, Jaehwan went over to the nearest table to take the next order.
“Welcome to Frozen Delights, how may I help you?” Jaehwan said as he took the pencil out of his ear.
The woman of the family, supposedly the mother, smiled warmly. “You must be new here, I've never seen you before!”
Jaehwan mentally scoffed, but smiled back. “Not really."
The father the family shrugged good-naturedly. “Well I guess we can go easy on you. Just for today, though.”
"What did I just say --"
A small girl whose hand was trying to catch Jaehwan attention by waving it frantically in the air, made a few noises behind her throat. “I want a strawberry popsicle!"
The mother laughed, ruffling the girl's hair. “Make that three, Mr…um,” she squinted at the nametag. “Jaehwan. Oh, to think the mother would've given a better name.”
Jaehwan gave the lady a tight smile. These were reasons why he wanted to stay home.
Opening the door, he saw the back of none other than Sanghyuk himself, playing with a bottle of chocolate sauce all over a vanilla cone he must've made. Jaehwan sighed at the sight - it wasn't everyday you got to see a cute guy being very wasteful toward a delicious treat.
He walked over to Sanghyuk, who was busy putting chocolate syrup on one of the orders.
“What are you doing?” Jaehwan asked. “We didn’t have any orders for chocolate syrup.”
His voice must've startled Sanghyuk, who suddenly jumped and chocolate sauce fell all over the floor.
Sanghyuk's eyes widened as he kneeled down to look at the mess Jaehwan certainly didn't help cause to make.
"God, Hakyeon is going to bust my balls. That was the last bottle of chocolate sauce we had."
"Mind telling me why you were playing with chocolate sauce?” Jaehwan asked, mildly curious of what the cute new guy had to say about playing with chocolate sauce of all things.
Sanghyuk chuckled nervously (and it was a really cute chuckle.) "To practice my skills. I like to draw sometimes.”
Jaehwan felt the stars aligning perfectly for this moment, a wonderful, bonding moment. "You like to draw?" Jaehwan smiled. “So do I.”
Sanghyuk flashed him a half-smile, before frowning once again. "What am I going to do if a customer asks for chocolate sauce?"
Jaehwan thought for a moment. The local supermarket was only five minutes away by walking. He could just get there and get a couple bottles of chocolate sauce and pretend it's their own brand in no time. Then maybe Sanghyuk would notice him more. But Hakyeon would know the difference between Frozen Delights original chocolate sauce and regular brand one.
"Why don't we just head to the supermarket? Taekwoon and Hongbin can take over the rest of our shifts."
"But won't they be mad --”
Jaehwan gave him a toothy grin. "I have my ways."
Sanghyuk smiled, a bright, wide one. Jaehwan felt himself sighing in his head.
"Thanks, Jaehwan.”
Yes, thank you, Jaehwan. For taking the blame if Hakyeon found out not only did he and Sanghyuk skip out on both of their shifts, but also bought a cheap, generic brand of chocolate sauce to mask it as Frozen Delight’s original chocolate sauce. But Jaehwan supposed this was worth Hakyeon’s screams.
Sanghyuk let out a breath after seeing that Jaehwan had opted for gazing at him instead of speaking. “Okay. Um. Well, let's finish this last order.” He handed over the piece of paper. Sanghyuk took a hold of it and scanned through the contents, walking over to the mini freezer. He took out three strawberry ice cream bars and handed them to Jaehwan. “There. You can take it to your last customers and I'll clean this mess up.”
--
The two were by the condiments aisle, looking over the shelves to find the best brand (if they were going to try not to get caught they were going to do it with a bit of effort) of chocolate sauce they could find. The supermarket was surprisingly empty. Jaehwan would've thought people would be hanging around just for the free air conditioning and the famous freezer aisle, most commonly used for the summer.
Jaehwan felt like they were the only two shopping at the supermarket, but sometimes they passed the occasional parents and their kids.
"Did you find anything similar to the original chocolate sauce?" Sanghyuk asked, looking at the shelf.
Jaehwan sighed, putting back a container. "Does it need to be exact?"
"Hakyeon might kill us --"
“He probably will but we’ll just get something similar to it so we have some chance of staying alive.” He grabbed for the best-tasting chocolate sauce. "We could just use this and make sure Hakyeon doesn't get near it for the rest of the day. The next restock is tonight anyway. It shouldn’t be a problem."
Sanghyuk looked thankful and almost, if Jaehwan dared to say it, impressed. “Okay. That’s good. Okay.”
An audible sigh flew out Jaehwan mouth, something Sanghyuk paid no attention to as they walked over the check out station.
As the guy check out the last bottle, Jaehwan gave him his card, the card he used just to buy video games that his mother still put money into. The air outside after they left the supermarket was undeniably hot and humid.
"Fuck, it’s hot," Jaehwan said, wiping away the perspiration that started to accumulate on his forehead.
Sanghyuk made something akin to a noise, of what noise, Jaehwan couldn’t tell, and aired out his shirt. “Maybe it’s just you.”
Jaehwan’s eyes clearly didn’t enough away that he was shocked because did Sanghyuk just - ? He gave Jaehwan a friendly grin, walking ahead to get going. “We shouldn’t be late for Hakyeon’s eventual scolding.”
--
“Working here been okay so far?” Hakyeon asked, slightly curious as him and Sanghyuk were cleaning the tables.
Sanghyuk paused, the dirty rag midway between the air and the counter. “I mean, I guess the weeks haven’t been that bad.” Sanghyuk paused for another second. “Except that old creep who asked me for my number once. Yeah, that was bad.”
“Oh, that happens."
“Huh. That's not right,” Sanghyuk replied, eyeing Jaehwan, who was too busy reading a teen fashion magazine. Upside down.
Hakyeon shrugged. “Yeah, it's not.”
Sanghyuk nodded, getting back into cleaning, and looked back at Jaehwan, who began humming a tune.
Hakyeon leaned over to Sanghyuk, whispering lowly enough in to say, “He won’t believe it if you don’t tell him straightforwardly, you know. He’s dense but he’s denser in places below that.”
Sanghyuk choked on something of shock and laughter while Jaehwan looked up to give them a questioning look that neither Hakyeon nor Sanghyuk answered.
Recipient: springmaid
Pairing: Ken/Hyuk
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,356 words
Summary: Working at an ice cream shop is anything but normal.
Notes: This probably doesn’t go with the prompt you asked for, but I tried. It was kind of tough, but it was the best I could do. Hopefully you enjoy it anyways.
Jaehwan hated work.
He hated how annoying it was, how many people there were calling for him, and how sweaty it would get him. He hated bustling through tables, customer after customer, and serving ice cream for some people that didn’t give a tip.
It was why he decided to stop going to work for a week. He stayed in his room for the first two days playing video games with his closest friend, Seokjin via Skype, or playing by himself. It was the only thing he could do, really. He wasn't too big on people. And the outside world.
It was Wednesday, marking the third day Jaehwan went without work and he was feeling pretty good about himself. Jaehwan squinted, jabbing his finger over the buttons of his console as he struggled beating the boss. He was just about to take a healing potion when his mother came barging in; the slam made him jump and the monster killed him in an instant.
“Could’ve knocked,” Jaehwan said, staring at the TV screen regretfully.
His mother folded her arms. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work, Jaehwan?”
Jaehwan groaned, closing his eyes. “Mom, please. I have better things to do.”
"Jaehwan! Look what you’re doing!” His mother pointed at the TV screen. “What does this have to do with work? Soon enough it’ll get old and you’ll be bored so you should at least do something to keep you on your feet. You want to get used to the idea of a job so it can help you in ten years. It won’t be so much of a burden later on. Honey, take it from someone who’s been in those shoes."
"Well.”
“Can you please try and go to work today? It’ll be good for you and you can find a lot of experiences to reminisce about when you’re 60 and graying.”
"You just want me out of the house.”
"Jaehwan, you're almost twenty.”
Jaehwan frowned. “Isn’t that a bit young to work? Oh, I got a higher score than Seokjin, yes.”
"Get out.”
--
"It's so fucking hot."
Jaehwan’s mother finally decided to get Jaehwan out the house, dropping him off at a local shopping district after practically forcing him to get out of the room and he’d almost left without pants on. Surrounding him were an assortment of vegetable and fruit stands and vintage clothing stores, and in the middle of all those reds and blacks was a small pastel square with a dainty sign painted with the title Frozen Delights.
Jaehwan shook his hair away from his face - this was so ridiculous. Working at some lame ice cream shop his mother forced him to work at, which was so pointless when Jaehwan didn't even want to work. He didn't think he even had a chance getting a job anywhere, not with his lack of experience and motivation. But there was nothing else he could do, since his mother had confiscated his phone before she kicked him out of the car to get working.
It wasn’t that it was a bad job - rather it was tiresome and people like Jaehwan, lazy and tired, didn’t enjoy jobs that required doing such intensive work like handling ice cream.
After walking around for a while, Jaehwan took a seat down in the shade on a street bench nearby. He folded his legs on the seat and fanned himself, finding that it was barely doing anything to help his dying condition, the heat was nauseating - how did his mother expect him to work in unbearable weather?
Still, there was no point in whining now, so he might as well walk the rest of the way there.
--
"No one’s opened the shop yet?" Jaehwan asked, following Hakyeon into the store.
Hakyeon worked for Frozen Delights for three summers already, giving him enough time to be familiar with every inch of the store. People were always friendly with Hakyeon, as he always had this aura that attracted so many customers to this little quirky place. At times Jaehwan appreciated it but Hakyeon sometimes could be a bit much (which, coming from Jaehwan, said a lot.)
"It opens up at eleven now. You would know if you came at all last week," Hakyeon said, giving him a look. "We still have thirty minutes left so that'll give you enough time to help us clean the place."
Jaehwan used to love hanging out at the shop before he had to start working here. He'd been here with Seokjin via Skype before after school eating Cookie Nut Crunch and arguing about characters from The Last of Us.
Jaehwan bumped his leg into a table and cursed under his breath, rubbing the sore spot.
"Careful, don't get any blood on the floor. I just mopped."
Jaehwan turned his head and found an unfamiliar face looking back at him, a face with a soft nose and brown hair and cheeks that seemed to fill up on its own.
Taking a better look at him, he can see that the guy was an absolute giant in his form. He had strands of hair sticking out of his cap he threw on backwards, and his uniform looked out of place, as if he woke up in it. He looked like he just woke up, if Jaehwan was being honest, but somehow he made it work. Jaehwan wasn’t as a pretty sight when he was a mess. He liked that.
Jaehwan was probably staring for too long (too busy taking in the guy's beauty), looking over at him -- who had that common weirded-out look people usually had when they first met Jaehwan.
"Well," Hakyeon started off, clapping once loud enough to get Jaehwan’s attention, "Sanghyuk could man the tables today, Jaehwan, and I'll call in Taekwoon and Hongbin so they can help Sanghyuk out, and, oh, Sanghyuk, you could finish mopping up the floors."
Sanghyuk, his name was, scratched his head. "Oh, okay."
"Good." He turned back to glare at Jaehwan. "You just came in after an entire week of not being here so I’m expecting you to not to fool around. You need to wear the uniform." He made a grab for Jaehwan’s arm, dragging him to the back of the store to where the storage closet was and muttering clearly not loud enough for Jaehwan to hear words such as “lazy little bum”, and watched Sanghyuk stare at them with mild interest before the doors swung shut.
--
“Waiter! Waiter!”
Jaehwan groaned, refraining himself from slapping his forehead. Frozen Delights had been especially crowded today, much to Jaehwan's dismay. In just a week’s amount of time the customers doubled in size. In just a few hours, he ran back and forth at least six times, given out three Giant Sundaes, and if Hakyeon had to yell out another order directly in his ear to say that it was ready, Jaehwan might just explode right on the spot.
“Fifteen people,” Jaehwan gasped in disbelief, dabbing his head with a wet piece of cloth. “I may never come back alive from this point forward.”
Taekwoon eyed him before going back to counting the money they made so far while Jaehwan let his shoulders hunch forward as he thought about the lack of food in his stomach.
Taekwoon looked up from counting and frowned at him. “Get back to work.”
He went to the back leaving Jaehwan to make a face at his back.
After taking care of that, Jaehwan went over to the nearest table to take the next order.
“Welcome to Frozen Delights, how may I help you?” Jaehwan said as he took the pencil out of his ear.
The woman of the family, supposedly the mother, smiled warmly. “You must be new here, I've never seen you before!”
Jaehwan mentally scoffed, but smiled back. “Not really."
The father the family shrugged good-naturedly. “Well I guess we can go easy on you. Just for today, though.”
"What did I just say --"
A small girl whose hand was trying to catch Jaehwan attention by waving it frantically in the air, made a few noises behind her throat. “I want a strawberry popsicle!"
The mother laughed, ruffling the girl's hair. “Make that three, Mr…um,” she squinted at the nametag. “Jaehwan. Oh, to think the mother would've given a better name.”
Jaehwan gave the lady a tight smile. These were reasons why he wanted to stay home.
Opening the door, he saw the back of none other than Sanghyuk himself, playing with a bottle of chocolate sauce all over a vanilla cone he must've made. Jaehwan sighed at the sight - it wasn't everyday you got to see a cute guy being very wasteful toward a delicious treat.
He walked over to Sanghyuk, who was busy putting chocolate syrup on one of the orders.
“What are you doing?” Jaehwan asked. “We didn’t have any orders for chocolate syrup.”
His voice must've startled Sanghyuk, who suddenly jumped and chocolate sauce fell all over the floor.
Sanghyuk's eyes widened as he kneeled down to look at the mess Jaehwan certainly didn't help cause to make.
"God, Hakyeon is going to bust my balls. That was the last bottle of chocolate sauce we had."
"Mind telling me why you were playing with chocolate sauce?” Jaehwan asked, mildly curious of what the cute new guy had to say about playing with chocolate sauce of all things.
Sanghyuk chuckled nervously (and it was a really cute chuckle.) "To practice my skills. I like to draw sometimes.”
Jaehwan felt the stars aligning perfectly for this moment, a wonderful, bonding moment. "You like to draw?" Jaehwan smiled. “So do I.”
Sanghyuk flashed him a half-smile, before frowning once again. "What am I going to do if a customer asks for chocolate sauce?"
Jaehwan thought for a moment. The local supermarket was only five minutes away by walking. He could just get there and get a couple bottles of chocolate sauce and pretend it's their own brand in no time. Then maybe Sanghyuk would notice him more. But Hakyeon would know the difference between Frozen Delights original chocolate sauce and regular brand one.
"Why don't we just head to the supermarket? Taekwoon and Hongbin can take over the rest of our shifts."
"But won't they be mad --”
Jaehwan gave him a toothy grin. "I have my ways."
Sanghyuk smiled, a bright, wide one. Jaehwan felt himself sighing in his head.
"Thanks, Jaehwan.”
Yes, thank you, Jaehwan. For taking the blame if Hakyeon found out not only did he and Sanghyuk skip out on both of their shifts, but also bought a cheap, generic brand of chocolate sauce to mask it as Frozen Delight’s original chocolate sauce. But Jaehwan supposed this was worth Hakyeon’s screams.
Sanghyuk let out a breath after seeing that Jaehwan had opted for gazing at him instead of speaking. “Okay. Um. Well, let's finish this last order.” He handed over the piece of paper. Sanghyuk took a hold of it and scanned through the contents, walking over to the mini freezer. He took out three strawberry ice cream bars and handed them to Jaehwan. “There. You can take it to your last customers and I'll clean this mess up.”
--
The two were by the condiments aisle, looking over the shelves to find the best brand (if they were going to try not to get caught they were going to do it with a bit of effort) of chocolate sauce they could find. The supermarket was surprisingly empty. Jaehwan would've thought people would be hanging around just for the free air conditioning and the famous freezer aisle, most commonly used for the summer.
Jaehwan felt like they were the only two shopping at the supermarket, but sometimes they passed the occasional parents and their kids.
"Did you find anything similar to the original chocolate sauce?" Sanghyuk asked, looking at the shelf.
Jaehwan sighed, putting back a container. "Does it need to be exact?"
"Hakyeon might kill us --"
“He probably will but we’ll just get something similar to it so we have some chance of staying alive.” He grabbed for the best-tasting chocolate sauce. "We could just use this and make sure Hakyeon doesn't get near it for the rest of the day. The next restock is tonight anyway. It shouldn’t be a problem."
Sanghyuk looked thankful and almost, if Jaehwan dared to say it, impressed. “Okay. That’s good. Okay.”
An audible sigh flew out Jaehwan mouth, something Sanghyuk paid no attention to as they walked over the check out station.
As the guy check out the last bottle, Jaehwan gave him his card, the card he used just to buy video games that his mother still put money into. The air outside after they left the supermarket was undeniably hot and humid.
"Fuck, it’s hot," Jaehwan said, wiping away the perspiration that started to accumulate on his forehead.
Sanghyuk made something akin to a noise, of what noise, Jaehwan couldn’t tell, and aired out his shirt. “Maybe it’s just you.”
Jaehwan’s eyes clearly didn’t enough away that he was shocked because did Sanghyuk just - ? He gave Jaehwan a friendly grin, walking ahead to get going. “We shouldn’t be late for Hakyeon’s eventual scolding.”
--
“Working here been okay so far?” Hakyeon asked, slightly curious as him and Sanghyuk were cleaning the tables.
Sanghyuk paused, the dirty rag midway between the air and the counter. “I mean, I guess the weeks haven’t been that bad.” Sanghyuk paused for another second. “Except that old creep who asked me for my number once. Yeah, that was bad.”
“Oh, that happens."
“Huh. That's not right,” Sanghyuk replied, eyeing Jaehwan, who was too busy reading a teen fashion magazine. Upside down.
Hakyeon shrugged. “Yeah, it's not.”
Sanghyuk nodded, getting back into cleaning, and looked back at Jaehwan, who began humming a tune.
Hakyeon leaned over to Sanghyuk, whispering lowly enough in to say, “He won’t believe it if you don’t tell him straightforwardly, you know. He’s dense but he’s denser in places below that.”
Sanghyuk choked on something of shock and laughter while Jaehwan looked up to give them a questioning look that neither Hakyeon nor Sanghyuk answered.