Work Text:
It was Jonghyun’s first day working at his new job, and he was standing behind the counter trying not to stare too hard at the woman sitting in the corner of the shop who was enjoying the latte he had made. He wondered what his drink tasted like, but he had been able to stop himself before he took a quick taste-test prior to giving the customer her drink. He was glad his mind was together enough to keep himself acting normal, because he felt all kinds of strange today.
It didn’t help that he had gotten no sleep last night, but that was normal for him, so he wasn’t too pressed about it. There was a bell on the front door of the shop that chimed sweetly whenever the door opened, and whenever it went off, Jonghyun saw sparks of electric lime green out of the corners of his eyes. It was a distracting phenomenon but he was thankful it kept him alert.
He stood there spacing out at the cash register when the green sparks entered his vision once more, and he perked up. One of Jonghyun’s coworkers, a tall, handsome guy named Minho that Jonghyun hadn’t really been given the chance to talk to yet, came into the kitchen from the back room, but then saw Jonghyun ready to attend to the customer and stopped. He gave Jonghyun a short smile and then went back where he had been earlier.
Jonghyun glanced behind him to look at the only other coworker who was out here with him. Kibum looked like he was sleeping in his chair but Jonghyun knew if he went over to him and tried to bother him, Kibum’s eyes would shoot open and he would start loudly proclaiming that he was awake. Jonghyun knew this because he had watched both Minho and their boss Jinki do it today.
“Welcome to Odd Eye,” Jonghyun told the teenage girl who walked up to the counter. He thought he was awkward with the customers but it was understandable, he’d get better at it the longer he worked there. The teenager was reading the menu up on the wall behind Jonghyun and Jonghyun didn’t know what to do other than stand there waiting for the customer to get his attention.
“I want a mocha frappuccino,” she told him after a moment, and Jonghyun found the blue static that left her mouth easy to ignore.
“What size?”
“Medium.”
Jonghyun picked up a medium cup and started to write on it. “Do you want whipped cream?”
“Sure,” she told him, and Jonghyun nodded, finishing writing on the cup and then moving to ring up the order.
“Is that all you’ll be having today?”
“Yeah.”
“That’ll be...” Jonghyun poked nervously at the computer screen and hoped his anxiousness wasn’t showing on his face. This machine thing was daunting to him and probably his least favorite part of his job so far. The responsiveness of the touchscreen was iffy at best, and Jonghyun wanted to bring it up with Jinki and tell him it needed to be re-calibrated, but he figured that his boss already knew that.
He refused to tell anybody “sorry, I’m new here,” though, and he bit his lip while he waited for the screen to load. The final screen appeared after a moment and when he told her the total, she handed him a credit card. Jonghyun swiped it in the machine, pressed a few more buttons very carefully, and then handed her card back to her.
“I’ll have it right out,” he told her, but the teenager was already walking off to the serving station. Jonghyun sighed and looked at the kitchen stretched out in front of him. Alright. He could do this. He absolutely did not need to rouse Kibum’s attention and ask him where the hell to begin.
Jonghyun went to the fridge and pulled out the coffee and a gallon of milk, poured what he was pretty sure was the appropriate amount of each into the blender, then watched it for a second as if waiting for a chemical reaction. Nothing happened and he moved to add the vanilla, then went back to the fridge to fetch the condensed milk he had forgotten.
“Jonghyun, what are you making?” Jonghyun heard a voice speak to him and he looked up to see Jinki smiling softly at him. Jonghyun had already recognized him by the gentle blue lines that swam across his vision when Jinki began to speak, but he figured he was going to have to match faces to voice colors someday. Jinki’s color was like one found on a deep-sea fish that was known for camouflaging itself in the depths of the ocean, Jonghyun thought, and then laughed at himself. He thought he was a poet.
“It’s a frappuccino, I’m doing this right, right?” Jonghyun stepped back when he added the condensed milk and then looked at the mix of things he had put in the blender.
Jinki looked over his creation for a second and then nodded. “This looks right.”
“Okay, thank you. I have to blend it.” Jonghyun put the top on the blender as Jinki reminded him to put the top on the blender, and Jonghyun laughed as he wondered how many times they had turned the blender on without a top on it. He pressed the button to start blending, and cringed at the loud whirring sound it made.
The blender, and most of the other machines in the kitchen, gave off trembling waves of brown when they were turned on, and Jonghyun thought that color choice was so cliche for a coffee shop that he couldn’t appreciate it. Jonghyun watched the drink spin around and stopped the blender when he was pretty sure it was done.
As he poured the drink into the cup he had written on, blue lines entered his vision from his right, this shade a bit darker than before. Jonghyun listened to Jinki singing along to the slow r&b song that was playing from the shop’s speakers and smiled. Jinki’s voice was nice-sounding and the colors that came with it weren’t distracting at all, instead a nice decoration for the inside of the shop. Jonghyun saw himself getting used to it quickly.
Before he put the top part of the cup on he remembered to put whipped cream on it, and when he grabbed the canister and pressed the nozzle, the fireworks that exploded out of it were so violently red that Jonghyun startled and shook, cursing loudly as he dropped the drink he had just made directly to the floor. He cursed again when he realized there was frappuccino all over the ground and on his shoes, and then immediately looked up to see the girl who had ordered the drink looking at him disapprovingly.
“Are you alright? What happened? Ahh, damn,” Jinki went over to him, then moved over to Kibum, shaking his shoulder to rouse him awake. “Kibum.”
“What?” Kibum barked, causing a dark forest green flash of fuzz to appear before his lips. He opened his eyes as soon as Jinki touched him, and then looked down at the floor. He snorted and stood up. “Do I have to clean that up?”
Jonghyun put his hands on his eyes and rubbed them, worried that his hallucinations were more plentiful than usual. There were so many new sounds that it was frazzling him, and he couldn’t get any work done if he was spacing out to thoughts of tones and colors that danced behind his eyes.
“Do you know where the mop is?” Jinki asked Kibum as KIbum ran his hand through his slightly curly hair.
“I’ll get it.” Kibum pushed himself to his feet with a huff and went to the back room. Jinki turned and tried to smile apologetically at Jonghyun.
“Don’t worry about it, it happens,” Jinki told him. “Sometimes the stuff back here is wet.”
Jonghyun didn’t know how to tell this kind-looking person he had just met a few days ago that he dropped the drink because the color of the sound the whipped cream canister made scared him. “I’m sorry.” His condition wasn’t really something he told people about, at least not within days of meeting them. He thought it was kind of a difficult thing to explain well, so he would rather just keep it to himself.
“Just make another drink quickly,” Jinki said, eyeing the customer, and Jonghyun nodded and got to work on that. As he collected ingredients Kibum came back to the kitchen with a mop bucket, and Jonghyun saw green sparks in his vision again, but registered that Jinki was going over to man the register. Everything was more harmonious than he thought.
Kibum said nothing as he mopped up the spill, but he didn’t look pleased at all. Jonghyun was willing to ignore him until the drink was made, and once he handed it off to the teenager he turned to frown at Kibum. “Sorry for dropping that.”
“Yeah, don’t do it again,” Kibum said as he finished mopping the floor. He tossed the mop back into its bucket with a small splash and rolled it towards the back room, and when Minho appeared through the doorway Kibum pushed the bucket at him. “Hey, put this back for me.”
“Alright,” Minho obliged immediately, taking the bucket into the back room, and Jonghyun smirked a little watching them. Kibum went back to his chair to sit down and Jonghyun went over to him.
“Are you bored out of your mind yet?” Kibum asked Jonghyun, and Jonghyun let himself enjoy the flickering forest green lights that left Kibum’s mouth for a moment.
Jonghyun smiled and shook his head. “No, I’m enjoying myself. I’m kind of tired, though, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“I’m tired, too.” Kibum looked over to see Minho come back into the kitchen after successfully putting the mop away. “Hey, Minho, come over here.”
“What’s this? What do you want me for?” Minho asked, coming over to the two of them with a huge, doofy grin on his face, and Jonghyun registered that this was Minho’s normal expression. Minho had been intimidating looking at first, since he was so tall and rather muscled, but when Jonghyun had spoken to him the first time, ribbons of white appeared when Minho tittered at him, instead of the sparkly red Jonghyun had been expecting. Usually these macho types had their colors figured out for them but Minho was apparently something purer than that. Jonghyun liked it.
“Jonghyun dropped a drink, we should haze him,” Kibum said, and Jonghyun barked out a laugh.
Minho furrowed his brow as he looked at Kibum, then glanced to Jonghyun. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“But we have to make him feel like one of the team.”
“I already feel like one of the team,” Jonghyun lied, trying to avoid being subjected to whatever Kibum would count as hazing. Kibum turned his tired eyes on Jonghyun for a moment, staring at him with a look that gave Jonghyun no indication as to what the man was thinking. Jonghyun was ruffled.
“Good. You seem like you’ll get along with us well,” Kibum said finally, and Jonghyun couldn’t say he had been expecting that response.
The conversation seemed to die there when Jinki roused Minho’s attention to help him make a drink, and Kibum took his phone out once Minho was no longer there. Jonghyun glanced from Kibum on his phone to the green sparks shooting from the bell at the front door, then looked over at Jinki at the register.
Jinki was kind of quiet but Jonghyun could already tell he was a kind boss. He didn’t seem to get angry at anything, or maybe Jonghyun just had yet to do something to make him angry. He was glad for that. When Jinki sang along to the radio, which he did often, the dark blue colors were soothing. Jonghyun saw himself getting used to it.
He leaned against the back wall as he watched his friends work, and as Minho put the finishing touches on something he called out to them. “Hey, Kibummie,” he said, and Kibum didn’t look up from his phone.
“Yeah, what?” He asked.
“Are you still going to that concert next month?”
The mentioning of the concert made Kibum groan out loud, but he still did not look up from his phone. “You know, I don’t even know anymore. I might give my tickets away. It’s not the same since Zayn left.”
Jonghyun snorted loudly at this, and Kibum looked up at him with a disgusted face, the side of his mouth pinched up in a snarl. “Do you look down on me for enjoying the way Zayn Malik presents himself? Because he is a beautiful man.”
“Oh, no, no, of course not.” Jonghyun grinned. He hadn’t been expecting his surly coworker to be a One Direction fan, at least. “No, my best friend is really into One Direction, too. Zayn is his favorite. Was his favorite. He was very upset when Zayn left, I don’t know if he’s still a fan of the band.” Jonghyun thought back to the actual tears Junmyeon had been in on the phone with him and chuckled to himself.
“Yeah, no, I get him,” Kibum said, moving his hands as he spoke. “The good-looking one left, so what’s the point, right?”
“So you’re not going to the concert,” Minho concluded, coming back over now that he was finished making a drink. Kibum shrugged at him.
“I don’t know, I’ll update you when I feel like it. Why do you care?”
“No reason.” Minho looked over to the back door when their coworker Taemin came through it, and gave Taemin a wide smile. “Hey! Are you feeling better?”
“Yes, I’m feeling a lot better. Standing in the freezer actually helps,” Taemin began to speak, coming over to them, and Jonghyun took a step back. He had met Taemin this morning when he came into work - Taemin was young, delicately pretty, with a round, fluffy head of light brown hair that made him look like a cute mushroom. He had a very soft speaking voice. Jonghyun had had to strain to hear him at first, but he noticed when Taemin spoke to Minho, his voice was a bit louder. Maybe Taemin was as nervous about the new guy as Jonghyun himself was.
“Doesn’t the cold help when you’re nauseous?” Kibum asked.
“Yeah, that’s why Jinki told you to go there, I think,” Minho added.
“It did help. I hope the nausea doesn’t come back,” Taemin said, his lips moving slowly, and Jonghyun couldn’t help but stare intently at them. The words that Taemin spoke were a color Jonghyun had never seen before. A mix between orange and yellow, a kind of shiny honey color that made him curious for a taste. The shocks of color that appeared slithered around the air, making themselves known, and for the first time all day Jonghyun felt as if his hallucinations were real.
Usually he had his wits about him, was able to convince himself immediately that no, the hallucinations are in your head and always have been, nobody can ever see them but you, but the honey-colored lines coming from Taemin’s mouth were so thick and deeply colored that it made Jonghyun think twice. One swam about Kibum’s head and Jonghyun couldn’t stop himself from staring, but managed to close his dropped open mouth.
Jinki motioned for someone to come to the counter and help him and Kibum pushed himself out of his chair with a groan. Jonghyun felt as if taking his spot wouldn’t be welcomed, so he stayed standing, and nearly took another step back when Taemin decided to sit down in the chair Kibum vacated.
“The dog I want to get is a miniature poodle,” Taemin told Minho, raising his phone and beginning to skip through photographs on it, and Jonghyun realized he had tuned out of the beginning of a conversation. Sometimes he could get so caught up in his own head that he missed things. He was okay with it, because he didn’t know how much of Taemin’s voice he could handle. The colors were so bright and intoxicating he felt as if he were on acid when the boy spoke.
“A miniature! How big are those? Do they come up to like, here?” Minho motioned to his ankles and Taemin shook his head.
“Bigger than that. Those are toy poodles, the ones that are really small. Miniatures grow up to, oh, I don’t know, maybe as tall as the seat of this chair.” Taemin motioned at the chair he was sitting in and Minho nodded.
“That’s a good size for a dog.”
“I think so too.”
“Doesn’t Kibum have poodles?” Minho turned around and called out to Kibum. “Kibummie! You have poodles, right?”
“I used to live with two of them, but I don’t have them anymore,” Kibum replied.
“Why not?” Taemin asked.
“I don’t live with the guy who owned them anymore,” Kibum told them.
“Ah, okay. Well, they were well-behaved, right?”
“One of them was. The other one was a right asshole,” Kibum scowled, and Jinki shot him a look for cursing while he was at the front counter. Kibum seemed to ignore it. “You have to train them right. It took us forever to house train them, too, they’re smart dogs but they’re willful . If you’re trying to make them do something, you gotta make them want to do it, too.”
“I can do that, I can train some puppies,” Taemin said with a little smile on his face. The honey-colored orbs that floated in the air around his mouth were now radiating heat, Jonghyun thought. He could swear heat was coming off of them. He wanted to reach over and touch one but he knew none of them were actually there, just figments of his imagination.
“I’ll help you, I’ll totally come over and play with your dogs,” Minho told Taemin.
Taemin grinned at him. “Thanks, Minho!” He turned to look up at Jonghyun and Jonghyun somehow stopped himself from startling at the sudden attention. “Do you like dogs, Jonghyun?”
Jonghyun didn’t know how to answer this question, not because it was confusing - he loved dogs, he always wanted to get a dog for himself when he got his own place but then life got in the way - but because the words Taemin had directed at him were shooting honey orbs all around him. Jonghyun panicked without thinking about it.
“Uhm, uhm, I’m sorry,” he started after an awkwardly long pause, and cleared his throat. “Your voice is the prettiest color I’ve ever seen.”
Did he say that out loud? Apparently he had, because now everybody was just staring at him like he had said that out loud. Oh shit. Oh shit. Taemin was looking at him like he was positive Jonghyun was a basket case and Jonghyun wanted to shrivel up and die.
Kibum snorted and broke the silence, which Jonghyun didn’t know if he was thankful for or not. “What? What did you just say?”
Not good. Kibum’s green colored voice was sharper around the edges than it usually was and Jonghyun didn’t like it. He told himself it was all in his head and he was just nervous. “Can I go on break for a second?” Jonghyun directed at Jinki, and Jinki turned away from the drink he was making to give Jonghyun a curious look. Jonghyun didn’t stick around to hear what Jinki’s response was, instead quickly hauling ass to the back room.
Once he was through the doorway he felt better. There weren’t any colors hanging around in the air, and it was calming. He walked towards the walk-in freezer and opened the door, the dark brown zig-zags that popped out of the door not bothering him. He stepped inside of the freezer and immediately was cooled.
That was the entire purpose of the freezer, he thought. He sighed. Of course he had fucked up today, on his first day. He thought he had been doing so well but then that Taemin guy had to go and have a beautiful colored voice. He always turned into such a dunce around people with unique-colored voices. Sometimes it felt like a curse.
He handled his phone carefully, as if he was going to call his best friend Junmyeon and tell him what had just happened, maybe ask him what the hell he should do now, but he couldn’t bring himself to lift his phone to his face. Junmyeon was probably, hopefully in class right now and...Junmyeon had heard his chromesthesia horror stories too often. Jonghyun didn’t want to bother him with any more.
Jonghyun stood around the freezer for a couple minutes, walking around and looking at the labels on things, when the door opened and the brown zig-zags startled him this time. Minho was standing there, looking vaguely concerned with an almost doofy protruding lower lip, and Jonghyun frowned back at him.
“Hey, are you okay, man?” Minho asked, and Jonghyun found solace in the blank white of his voice.
“Yeah, I’m fine, I’m just adjusting, I suppose,” Jonghyun told him, and Minho stepped aside as if he was going to let Jonghyun out.
“You should come back and stand around with us,” Minho insisted, and Jonghyun took a deep breath. Well, the best way to practice socializing was to actually socialize. Maybe he wouldn’t fuck up another time. Jonghyun breathed slowly and told himself that even if people were to not believe his condition was real, that didn’t change the fact he had colors inside of him.
He left the freezer and Minho patted his shoulders once. The feeling was comforting, and Jonghyun found himself liking this Minho guy more and more each moment. Minho led him back to the main room and when they appeared Taemin smiled up at them from his chair.
“We’re all sick today,” Taemin said politely, and Jonghyun laughed a little.
“Maybe, maybe you’re right.”
“There’s something in the water, that’s what I’ve thought for years.”
“Jonghyun!” Kibum called out to Jonghyun, but since he was handling the blender he wasn’t looking at him. He turned the blender on and then turned around, putting one hand on his hip as he pursed his lips and surveyed his coworkers standing around. “What were you talking about?”
“I can’t hear you,” Jonghyun lied, pretending the blender was too loud. Kibum raised his eyebrows and then waited for his drink to be done, then stopped the blender. Jonghyun smiled softly at him.
“What did Taemin say to you that made you freak out?”
Jonghyun chuckled at that interpretation of what had happened. “Ohh, no, he didn’t, uhm, say anything like that.”
Kibum’s perfectly manicured eyebrows scrunched together with a look and Jonghyun found him wonderfully expressive, although a little brusque. “You said his voice had a color.”
Jonghyun laughed nervously. “Yeah, I did. And yeah, it does, to me.”
“What the hell does that mean? What drugs are you on?” Kibum asked, then glanced at Jinki out of the corner of his eye. “And where can I get them?”
“I’m not on drugs, other than the antidepressants,” Jonghyun said casually, since he was always surrounded by medicated people. Kibum scoffed and Jonghyun furrowed his brow. “Seriously, I’m not on drugs.”
“Then why are you seeing colors?”
“I didn’t want to have this conversation today,” Jonghyun sighed, and then continued. He felt his coworkers’ full attention on him - Jinki was even at the kitchen counter making a drink but he kept glancing back at the four of them. Jonghyun felt center stage and was queasy about it. “I have a condition called chromesthesia. It’s in my brain. My brain sets tones as colors and when I hear those tones, the colors appear in my line of sight.” Jonghyun waved his hands in front of him. “Like hallucinations or something. I guess you could call them hallucinations.” He sighed and looked down at Taemin. “That’s why I said what I did do you. The timbre of your voice is like. Your color is very pretty, it was distracting me. And the hallucinations were very vivid.”
“Really? You see things when I talk?” Taemin asked, sounding excited, and Jonghyun noticed the orbs floating about again. Jonghyun nodded.
“I see these little round things that appear when you talk, Taemin, that’s really unique. I don’t usually see...things like that.”
“Wow, like marbles?” Taemin asked, and Jonghyun laughed.
“A little bit bigger.”
“And what color are they?”
“It’s hard to describe. It’s like a cross between orange and yellow. I think honey. It’s a very beautiful color, I haven’t seen anything like it in my life.” Jonghyun told him.
Taemin gave him a soft smile. “I’m honored.”
“What color is my voice?” Minho asked, and Jonghyun grinned at the booming white lines that shocked his vision.
“It’s white, but it’s very noticeable. Your voice is kind of exuberant.”
“Ahh, I like that!” Minho grinned over at Kibum, who had finished making a drink and was standing at the counter watching his coworkers. “What’s Kibum?”
“I’ve gotta be something outrageous,” Kibum said.
“It’s kind of forest green, and it’s not very noticeable,” Jonghyun told him, and Kibum’s face fell.
“You’re kidding?! I have a lame one?” He hollered, and the bursting flashes of green that appeared made Jonghyun laugh and think he had spoken wrong. Kibum’s voice was rather noticeable when it wanted to be. “I won’t accept that, I want something cool!”
Jonghyun laughed again. “You can’t change it, that's just the color of your voice. It doesn’t change. It did get pretty, uhm, explosive when you shouted just now.”
“It doesn’t fit me! I should be pink or purple or at least red, don’t you think so?” Kibum motioned his hand at Minho and Minho nodded eagerly.
“Yeah, I do!” Minho agreed.
“I’m sorry I’ve failed you with my synesthesia,” Jonghyun said sardonically, and Kibum snarled at him.
“You’re a weirdo, man.” Kibum crossed his arms on his chest. “But that’s okay, we’re all kind of weird.”
“I like my condition, it makes everything a little more exciting,” Jonghyun declared, and Minho grinned at him.
“Fireworks have gotta be a trip,” Minho said.
Jonghyun nodded. “You’re totally right, they are.”
“And music must be fantastic,” Taemin said with a twinkle in his eye.
Jonghyun grinned down at him. “Music is the best part. Everything is like listening to a painting.”
“You’re like a damn X-Man!” Kibum stomped his foot on the ground, and Jonghyun laughed at him. He noticed the green sparks of the bell going off and glanced over at Jinki, who glanced back at them at the same time.
“Can you guys get back to work, please?” Jinki asked them, no urgency in his dark blue voice at all, and Jonghyun smiled at him as Kibum and Minho jumped to go to the counter.
“What color is Jinki’s voice?” Taemin asked Jonghyun quietly, and Jonghyun enjoyed the shimmering honey color for an indulgent moment before replying.
“Dark blue, like a deep sea documentary. It’s a very calming color.”
“You are like an X-Man,” Taemin said, his eyes focused on Minho making a frappucino a few feet away from him, and Jonghyun grinned. He had been called such things before but hearing it from his new friends, it was kind of exhilarating. They accepted him, at least. They thought his condition was cool. That was always the best kind if outcome he could think of.
Kibum barked out in a shaky forest green that he needed someone to make a passionfruit tea right fucking now and Jonghyun stepped up to make it. This wasn’t going to be too difficult at all, as long as he could get used to the sounds. He thought he would end up liking working here.