Work Text:
“Why are these ears so goddamn difficult,” Jisung grumbled, scowling at himself in the bathroom mirror.
One elf ear was hanging haphazardly from his right ear with the other held loosely in his grasp. He had faced this struggle every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday for the past three weeks, and he really thought he’d have gotten the hang of putting on a pair of fake ears by now. But nope, Elf Ear Perfection continued to elude him. It would take a Christmas Miracle to get his ears on at this point.
“Need some help?” Felix peered over at him from his spot in front of the bathroom mirror next to Jisung’s. His ears were perfectly placed, of course.
Felix was a natural-born-elf, Jisung was pretty sure. Actually, now that he thought about it a bit more, Felix probably actually was an elf, and him putting the ears on was just him removing his glamor…
“I can do one ear and Felix can do the other!” Hyunjin piped up from down the row of bathroom sinks. His ears were perfectly affixed, too.
Both Hyunjin and Felix are actually probably elves… Jisung finally gave up on trying to affix his ears by himself, popping the shoddily applied one from his right ear and offering them both out to the others.
“Please?”
Felix took one ear with a grin, Hyunjin grabbing the other, and in no time at all they had Elf-ified Jisung’s ears.
“You really should just ask us for help right off the bat at this point,” Hyunjin remarked, brushing Jisung’s hair behind his ear. Jisung tried his very hardest to not combust.
“I thought I’d have gotten it by this point,” he mumbled.
Felix mirrored Hyunjin’s hair-brushing action on Jisung’s other side, and Jisung maybe ascended a little.
“That’s fine!” Felix said. “We’ll definitely keep helping you out as long as you need us!”
Hyunjin hummed in agreement, and Jisung let out a soft “thanks.”
The bathroom door swung open, and Seungmin’s head poked in. “You guys ready yet?”
His ears, too, were perfectly attached to his head. Seungmin bemoaned the fact that he had to wear the elf ears every shift he worked given that he was the photographer and not a Santa’s Helper, but he was more than proficient at putting them on.
“Just helping Jisung finish up!” Felix said, giving Jisung’s head one more pat before grabbing the elf hat lying in a sad, crumpled heap on the bathroom sink and shaking it out. He offered the hat to Jisung, who accepted with a sigh.
“I guess it’s kiddo time,” he said.
“Kiddo time!” Hyunjin cheered, fixing his own hat on his head.
Seungmin held the door open for the rest, and they followed him out of the employee bathroom and into the winding back hallways of the Miroh Mall. A few minutes later, they emerged beside the food court, just a short walk to the shimmering Santa’s Pavilion located in a prime position in the very middle of the mall.
There was already a line of eager children and their attentive parents snaking through the designated queuing area, and Jisung quickly scanned them over for troublemakers. Three weeks in and he felt confident in spotting the problem children early on so they could be monitored closely.
“No stinkers so far,” Felix murmured at his side, and Seungmin hummed an affirmative.
“Hopefully it stays that way through the rest of the shift.”
“If not, at least we’ll have some fun stories for the Bitching Hour!” Hyunjin said, lowering his voice to a near whisper at the curse just in case one of the parents had been listening in.
“Bitching Hour” had been Jisung’s brainchild, actually. All his shifts were closers, and in some grand blessing from the fates, he shared every shift with Felix, Seungmin, and Hyunjin. A few days in, he had found himself bemoaning the problem customers of the day with the others.
“Just once, I’d like to not get my hair pulled. Just once!” Jisung groaned after one particularly grueling shift, repositioning the fake snowbanks and the little gingerbread men decorations that littered Santa’s Pavilion. “Like, is that too much to ask? Just one shift without some kid deciding that orange is their new favorite color?” Jisung really hadn’t anticipated children being so attracted to his orange hair, but here he was.
“Ugh, right? Also if they could stop reaching for my ears every two seconds, that’d be great too,” Hyunjin added, cracking his back as he stood from his position stooped over from righting a fallen candy cane.
“My kids were all sweet today!” Felix said, disinfecting Santa’s Chair with a wad of Clorox wipes.
“That’s ‘cause you’re a literal angel,” Seungmin replied, neatly packing the camera into its carrying case. “If I have to deal with another parent asking for a free picture cause ‘their kid blinked,’ I’m going to tell them to stick a candy cane up their ass.”
“Guys!” Jisung bolted upright, staring at the other three with wide eyes. “I just had a great idea! What if we had, like, a designated session after work to bitch about customers? Oh! We can call it the Bitching Hour! You know, like the Witching Hour?”
Seungmin had blinked at him, before breaking into a grin. “I love how your mind works.”
“I am very down for this!” Hyunjin said, abandoning his candy canes completely.
“Oh!” Felix exclaimed, eyes shimmering.
Cute, thought Jisung.
Shut up Jisung, thought Jisung.
“We can get pretzels!” Felix continued. “There’s an Auntie Anne’s right outside the food court!”
“Are they even open?” Seungmin asked. “Isn’t the mall closed?”
“Well, yeah, for the customers, but the workers are probably cleaning up like we are now! So maybe we can convince them to spare some of the old pretzels from the day.”
“We can invite them to the Bitching Hour as compensation!” Jisung added.
With agreement from the others, Jisung and the rest finished up the cleaning, dropped the camera off in its designated security locker, and made for the Auntie Anne’s to hopefully scrounge up some day-old pretzels and let loose about the problem children and grungy teens.
Thus the first Bitching Hour was born, featuring Jisung’s Elf Squad along with the Auntie Anne’s clean-up employee, whose name they quickly learned was Minho and who had some absolutely fabulous stories of his own to contribute to the hour.
Over the weeks, the Bitching Hour had grown to include Changbin from Hot Topic (who dressed exactly like how someone who worked at Hot Topic would dress but also had a collection of plushies a mile long), Chan from Champs Sports (who Jisung was fairly certain could fit the Jock stereotype to a T except he was a total sweetheart and knew absolutely nothing about the teams for which he peddled goods), and Jeongin from Build-a-Bear (who was a total angel towards every kid no matter what and a total devil towards every asshole parent).
They were all, Jisung had to say, absolutely, incredibly, very-much-so attractive. Like, unfairly so. It was bad enough that the three other Santa’s Pavilion staff members he worked with looked goddamn deadly in elf ears, but then the universe had decided to throw three more Very Attractive Men at him in such short notice? Especially when he was only working at Miroh Mall over the Christmas holiday? Life was unfair. Homophobic, even.
With a quick shake of his head, Jisung forced himself back into the present moment.
“You guys ready?” he asked the rest.
“Let’s go bring the Christmas Magic!” Felix cheered softly, adding a pair of jazz hands for effect.
Seungmin started to set up his camera, Felix and Hyunjin went to go grab Sungjin, their Santa, and Jisung started to get the kids excited to meet the Big Man himself. A few minutes later, Sungjin – now Santa – was settling into his big red chair, the kids were nearly vibrating in anticipation, and it was time to get Santa’s Pavilion underway.
All in all, the day ran smoothly. There were the handful of inevitable breakdowns from toddlers, a teen trying to sneak onto the set, and one parent who absolutely insisted on having each of her six children have an individual picture with Santa, but overall the shift was one of Jisung’s smoother ones. He was almost a little bit sorry that he wouldn’t have anything of note to bring to the Bitching Hour, but his excitement over seeing the rest of his boys (and, oh, when had he started to think of them like that?) overwrote any disappointment in the milder day.
Once the last of the families had packed up their things and they had all wished Sungjin a good night, Hyunjin turned to the rest of them with a large smile and a soft “It’s Bitching Hour, everyone!”
“Minho promised to save us some cinnamon sugar pretzels!” Felix added.
“Oh shit!” Jisung exclaimed, diving into the end-of-day cleanup with a fervency he hardly ever deployed. “Maybe they’ll still be hot if we hurry!”
“Knowing Minho, I doubt it,” Seungmin said, but he was smirking, and he was packing up his camera equipment faster than usual. Jisung hid his resulting grin behind a clump of fake cotton snow.
“Done!” Felix chorused at the same time Jisung stood up with an exaggerated “Finally done!”
Hyunjin righted one last overturned candy cane before joining Felix and Jisung in eagerly watching Seungmin dismantle the camera stand.
“Y’know, contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t actually go any faster with you guys just standing there, staring at me,” Seungmin grumbled, but Jisung could pick up on the overly-fond notes beneath his gruff exterior.
“You know you love us!” Jisung grinned.
“Unfortunately.” Despite his tone, Seungmin’s eyes were warm as he packed up the last of the camera and turned fully to the other three boys. “Alright, let me stash this and we’ll be good to go!”
“Pretzel time!” Felix cheered.
“Bitching Hour!” Hyunjin responded.
“Leggo!” Jisung linked arms with both of them, allowing himself this small moment to savor.
Ten minutes and one pit stop in the mall security station to drop off the camera later, all four boys were bounding back into the food court, settling at the large, circular table off to the side of the seating space. There were four others already seated there.
“Bitching Hour!” Jeongin shouted as soon as he saw Jisung and the others.
“Bitching Hour!” Hyunjin confirmed, plopping down next to their youngest.
“You guys are late,” Minho said, but he still placed a cinnamon-sugar-coated pretzel down in front of each of them.
“Minho, I owe you my life,” Jisung said, tone entirely solemn as he met Minho’s eyes. Maybe his heart stuttered a bit as they made eye contact, but no one needed to know that except for him.
“Uh, guys…” Chan trailed off, gesturing vaguely to his head.
“What?” Jisung said, mouth full of pretzel.
“Your ears,” Changbin said, pointing at Jisung’s head.
Jisung raised the hand that wasn’t dusted with cinnamon-sugar to his ear and, sure enough, felt the soft silicone of his fake elf ears.
“Ah, shit,” Jisung mumbled around his pretzel, stuffing the rest of it in his face and reaching up with both hands to remove the ears.
Seungmin immediately swatted his hands away. “Don’t you dare touch those with your sticky fingers.”
And then Seungmin was gently removing the Elf ears from his head, setting them neatly down on the table before brushing Jisung’s hair back into place. Jisung, not for the first time that day, did his best to beat down the blush threatening to rise in his cheeks.
“I still can’t believe how much food you can fit in your cheeks,” Minho remarked, shaking his head lightly. Jisung simply blinked at him, continuing to work his way through the absolutely massive bite of pretzel he had shoved into his mouth.
“That’s why his cheeks are so big, they’re full of secrets,” Hyunjin quipped.
“What,” Changbin replied.
Felix gasped in response, laying a hand over his heart. “Changbin, do you mean to tell me you’ve never seen the most influential movie of our time, Mean Girls?”
“I… have not.”
Seungmin shook his head sadly. “And you call yourself an employee of the grand franchise of Hot Topic.”
“Oh!” Chan suddenly exclaimed, sitting up straighter in his seat. “We should do a movie night!”
Jisung finally swallowed down that last bite of pretzel. “Like, outside of work?”
“Yeah!” Chan replied. “Why not? I know Santa Season is wrapping up for you guys soon, but I’m kinda really fond of this little group.” He ducked his head, lightly running a hand through the back of his hair where small curls sprang up beneath his fingers.
Cute, thought Jisung.
Shut up Jisung, thought Jisung.
“This group is the only thing pulling me through Christmas Hell,” Minho added, before smirking. “That, and the faces assholes make when I stuff extra salt into their pretzels.”
“Minho!” Chan looked aghast. Seungmin gave Minho a high-five.
“I’d be down for a movie night!” Jeongin piped up, grinning at them.
“Yes!” Felix chimed in. “First on the agenda: Mean Girls! Changbin needs a Moviecation.”
“Movie…cation?” Changbin parroted.
“A Movie Education, obviously,” Jisung informed him seriously.
“Obviously,” Felix added. “Oh! Minho! Can you sneak out pretzel snacks for us?”
“Sure! What can they do, fire me? I’m their best salesman and they know it. I mean, look at this face.”
Though Jisung rolled his eyes along with the rest of them, he did have to admit, it was a very nice face to look at. And Jisung would very much like to enjoy looking at it, and the other six faces around him, for quite some time to come.
“Can we still keep Bitching Hour alive at our movie nights, though?” Jeongin asked.
“You work with kids all day making cute stuffed bears and things, what needs bitching about that?” Changbin asked.
Jeongin raised a single brow, and Jisung was insanely envious of his facial control. “Have you not heard me the literal dozens of times I’ve bitched about terrible parents and insane kids’ birthday parties?”
“Point taken.”
“We’re actually doing a movie night? Everyone actually wants to?” Jisung hesitantly spoke up, gaze flitting up to meet the others’ eyes before falling back to the speckled tabletop.
“Of course we want to!” Hyunjin exclaimed, Felix adding on an emphatic “yeah!”
“I wouldn’t suggest it if not!” Chan said.
“Oh, no, I mean…” Jisung tried to backpedal, cutting himself off at Chan’s frantic hand-flapping.
“No, no, no, I didn’t mean it like that! I just, I really like talking with you all, and hanging out like this, and would very much like to maybe hang out with you all in a non-mall setting.”
“Felt,” Minho added, smiling one of his rare, soft smiles at the rest of them.
“Then… this Saturday? We can meet post-work, and my house has a pretty big TV, so I can get my Moviecation on Mean Girls,” Changbin offered with a half-smile.
A chorus of assent met his statement, and Jisung felt the bubble of excitement rising in his chest and up into his throat. He would see them all! Outside of work! And hopefully past the Santa Season!
Maybe Christmas Miracles did exist, after all.
Jisung settled back into the conversation with a full heart and a fledgling hope that maybe, just maybe, there would be seven lovely presences surrounding him not just now but into his future as well.