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Not even the independent bookstore is immune to shitty corporate Christmas radio.
For eighty-five percent of the calendar year, Vio and his coworkers are allowed to play their own music at a reasonable volume. The store manager is surprisingly flexible in the music she allows in the store—while Green’s lo-fi video game soundtracks and Vio’s classical music fit the whole bookshop vibe well enough, Blue’s fixation with 2000’s pop-punk isn’t nearly as appropriate. But still, Zelda lets him play it, and when it’s really dead she’ll even give Red the aux, even though his preferred tracks rarely come without an explicit content warning.
That exact kind of freedom is easily the best part of Vio’s job, really distinguishing the Bookseller Experience™ from other retail positions he’s held in the past. Here he’s encouraged to offer personal recommendations to customers, and write shelf talkers for his favorite books, and curate perfect playlists for long seven-hour shifts. He’s still working, and it’s still retail, but sharing his oldest and deepest passion with every stranger who happens to walk through the doorway never fails to feel special.
Except, apparently, during the months of November and December. Can he put up a uniquely themed display of underappreciated novels? Nope, every surface is reserved for bestsellers and regional gift guide selections. Can he play his own music? Not when customers can be so easily lulled into purchasing special hardcover editions by the crooning voice of Bing Crosby.
This entire holiday season, there have been two Grinches in the bookstore—one on the designated Seuss shelf, and the other behind the counter. Vio stands there now, absolutely miserable in a purple sweater and his well-worn scrunchie, counting down the seconds until he finally can close up shop.
“Got any fun plans?” asks Red, his only other coworker at the moment. Zelda and Green are off visiting Green’s dad a few towns away, and Blue took the day off to do some last-minute shopping. Vio, meanwhile, hadn’t even considered taking off Christmas Eve. It’s not like he’s getting holiday pay or anything, but it’s better than sitting around alone in his apartment. This is the first time in his life that he won’t be able to make it home for the holidays—thanks, retail—and he’s putting on a brave face about it, but…
“I’m fine,” Vio says, tearing apart a post-it note in his chapped hands. He watches the snow fall through the show window, equally charmed and inconvenienced in anticipation of his walk home.
“I didn’t ask if you were fine,” Red said, completely genuine and even a bit concerned. “I’d ask if you’re okay based on that answer, but, well, y’know.”
“Sorry,” Vio says, shoving the shreds of paper into his pocket. He regrets wasting it with his idle fidgeting, too ashamed to relinquish it to the recycling bin.
Red stares at him with a placating smile. “Actually, can you do me a favor?”
Vio raises an eyebrow, the yes implied.
“Wrap my gift for Blue, please,” Red says, grabbing a softcover book from the staff hold shelf. He’s been obscuring it for a week with a poster for the newest Louise Penny mystery, out of his fiancee’s sight and mind.
Jesus Christ. Red is only a year older than Vio, and he already has a fiancee.
“Special order?” Vio asks, admittedly pleased by Red’s request. Vio is, hands-down, the best gift-wrapper among the bookstore’s staff. He takes every opportunity to go to his little corner and do his little process and curl his pretty little bow and incidentally avoid actually interacting with the customers themselves. Very few things can fully get Vio in the holiday spirit, but give him a stack of six hardcovers and a fresh roll of non-denominational colored ribbon and he’s Mariah fucking Carey.
“Yeah, and it got here just in time!” He hands the book to Vio, who takes a second to examine. It’s a manga—no surprise there, Blue’s the go-to guy for that section—with some vaguely gay shit on the cover that they’d probably display in June.
“It was on backorder for so long,” Red explains as Vio begins his meticulous wrapping process. “He still thinks it is, with the supply chain, so I know this’ll totally blow his mind.”
“Do you think he got you a book too?” Vio creases the white-and-gold wrapping paper and reaches for the tape dispenser labeled ‘FOR GIFT WRAPPING DO NOT MOVE.’
“Maybe! Probably! We do get a 30% discount, so it’d be silly not to do gift shopping here.”
Vio knows all about that. He had shipped his parents’ gifts last week, hand-wrapped of course, with a little note that he tried not to make too melancholy. Otherwise, he wasn’t really on the hook for gift-giving or receiving. All of his college friends had left town after graduation, and most of them are working retail as well.
“Thanks,” Vio says, his voice softer than he’s allowed it to be all day. He’s been stuck for hours in this mental place between ‘Christmas Eve means nothing to me because I’m alone,’ and ‘oh my god it’s Christmas Eve and I’m alone.’
“Thanks for what?” Red asks, passing Vio the blue spool. Vio measures it with expert concentration and begins the exhilarating process of ribbonification (not a technical term).
“For asking me to do this,” Vio says as he uses a pair of scissors to curl a little bow. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a bummer all day, I know you probably don’t want to be here either.”
Red shrugs. “I really don’t mind, but I appreciate your saying so. I know it’s your first Christmas alone. I’d invite you to join me and Blue, but you don’t seem like the third wheel type.”
“No, I am not. And besides, you guys deserve a cozy romantic night together.”
“And you act like you’re so above Christmas stuff,” Red teases as Vio hands him the wrapped gift. “I bet you’d love to be all cuddled up with some cute guy by a fire.”
“Shut up,” Vio says, hiding his face behind his hand. Really? Is that all it takes to make him blush? Apparently so, and he hates it.
“I mean,” Red says, suddenly serious, “there is that guy. You know, the one who’s been coming in specifically to antagonize you for over two months.”
“He’s a customer,” Vio says, although of course he knows exactly what Red is suggesting. “He’s here for books, and I think he works down the street so it makes sense that he’d stop by often.”
“He must have been working a lot these past few weeks, then, and only on the exact days that you happen to have shifts.”
Vio didn’t know that part of it, and he’s sure his expression tells Red just as much. He still won’t take the bait, though, because the situation Red is suggesting simply isn’t something that would happen in real life. In a contemporary romance novel, sure, or a fanfic—but not in the real world, with an annoyingly handsome purple-haired enigma who can’t possibly be younger than twenty or older than twenty-five.
Not that Vio’s speculated about his age or anything, because that would be super weird. Even weirder would be for a service employee to hit on a customer, or vice-versa, so the age thing doesn’t even matter in the first place. There are just too many power imbalances at play between them, and so many unknowns, like the guy’s name and job and if he even likes men, or Vio specifically, because what a weird assumption to make based on vague flirtation—
“Okay, so you’re freaking out,” Red says, shaking Vio out of his… whatever that was. “And you’re shredding the wrapping paper.”
Vio looks down at his hands and groans. Dammit, again?
“Hey,” Red tries to calm Vio as he steps back from the counter. “Just try to relax. I’m sorry for teasing, I promise I don’t know anything more than you do. We’ve all just noticed, over the holiday season, that this guy seems particularly interested in your mystery book display, and, well, you. It’s sweet. We like when he comes in. We like seeing you happy.”
“That asshole doesn’t make me happy,” Vio argues, glancing over at the shop’s single current creative display. He’d adapted the idea from a popular Valentine’s Day tradition—blind date with a book—and the mystery titles, only described with a few selling points, have been selling surprisingly well. Customers seem to enjoy Vio’s bullet-point lists, giving them a clue right on the wrapping paper as to which books would be best suited for their loved ones. And Vio enjoys writing the short descriptions, especially for lesser-known books with particularly unfortunate cover designs. It’s a great little project, and in a lot of ways has gotten him through the sales season—except, there’s been one hitch.
Back in November, right around the time Vio had launched his new display concept, this random guy just started showing up to the store a few times a week. This isn’t abnormal customer behavior—every store has its regulars, after all—but this person in particular had uniquely annoyed Vio from the start. He’d just wander around the shop for like twenty minutes at a time, browsing every section in his stupid jacket with the stupid pins and stomping his stupid Docs on the carpet Vio had just vacuumed the night before, and forget the fifty-something customers who walked on the carpet before him, it’s always this person specifically who Vio resents for the mess.
And then the guy started talking to Vio.
It began with strictly customer-employee interactions—Mystery Guy asked Vio if he knew any good books about dragons, and Vio asked if he was looking for something more Middle Earth or middle grade (the answer was both). The first actual purchase the guy made was a TJ Klune book—Vio forgets which one—accompanied by an experimental and exceedingly gory graphic novel. It was around the two-week mark that Vio noticed he never asked Green, or Blue, or even Red for recommendations or small talk. This idiot identified the most antisocial employee of the bunch and decided yeah, this is the one I’ll tell all about my middle school Warrior Cats phase.
Once the display went out for the real holiday season, Mystery Guy had immediately gravitated towards it. He began to spend his entire visit poring over Vio’s descriptions, using what Vio assumes is prior knowledge and only sometimes the internet to make an educated guess. And every single time he’s visited since, he’s been able to clock at least three of Vio’s newly-added titles without fail.
Of course this nerdy game of cat-and-mouse has escalated over the past month, with Vio writing increasingly vague descriptions of the most obscure titles he can find. But Mystery Guy is apparently a fucking psychic, because he still manages to pin Vio down more often than not. He seems to enjoy messing with Vio, sometimes pretending to be clueless before pulling the title out of nowhere at the last second. Vio wonders how many tabs he has open in Safari, exclusively to search up niche books based on Vio’s descriptions. He kind of hopes it’s enough to crash the phone.
Vio has tried every genre on the shelf to stump this scourge of a customer—poetry, history, cookbooks, and most recently even romance, which is like his least favorite literary genre ever! He had to resort to fucking Goodreads to distinguish between these generic-ass books, each with a cover so uninspired it looks like it was designed using Canva in under eight minutes. It’s like every romance novel published after 2020 is a variation of one or more of exactly three premises—fake-dating, enemies to lovers but not really enemies, like they’re owners of rival bakeries or something, and/or Capital-H Horny. And because of the literal creature of darkness haunting his display, Vio has been forced to immerse himself in the world of trendy romantic fiction just to get ahead. The next time Mystery Guy visits the store, Vio will either finally outsmart him or literally tear him limb from limb.
He’ll have to wait for the new year for his victory, though. Undoubtedly Mystery Guy has better things to do on Christmas Eve than harass Vio. He probably has a partner, just like everyone else Vio knows, because cuffing season is real and people are desperate. Meanwhile, it’s like any potential suitor of Vio’s has to pass an entire emotional obstacle course to even be allowed to hold his hand, and there’s nothing Vio can tell his brain or body to make that less of a fucking problem. Him, cuddling someone in front of a fire like he’s in some lonely gay idiot’s cottagecore AU? Would admittedly be lovely, but not going to happen any time soon.
The sound of the store bell startles Vio to attention, and for just a second his heart lifts. But it’s just Blue out there, all bundled up in a parka and badly hiding a bouquet of roses behind his back.
“Oh, he didn’t,” Red says, already running to the door. He lets Blue in and envelopes him a hug, only groaning slightly when he makes contact with the thorns.
“Hi,” Blue says, passing Red the flowers and giving him a quick kiss. He cranes his head towards Vio, who just stands behind the counter like a moron. “Hey, Vio. Merry Christmas Eve.”
“You too.”
“What time is it?” Blue asks Red, although Vio’s the one in front of the computer.
“6:55,” Vio says. “If you want to take off, I can handle closing on my own.”
“Are you sure?” Red asks, his eyes sparkling as he already begins to pack up his things.
Vio nods. “I’m sure. It’s my gift to you.”
“Thanks, Vio,” Red says, clearly wanting to give him a hug but also aware of Vio’s prickly reactions in the past.
“Don’t forget the book,” Vio reminds him, nodding to the wrapped manga.
“What book?” Blue calls from the entryway as Red shoves it in his large reusable tote bag.
“You’ll find out later!”
It takes Red no time l to vacate the store, arm-in-arm with Blue, leaving Vio behind to wait out the last four minutes he’s required to keep the door unlocked. There’s no way a customer would come in this close to 7, not on Christmas Eve, not—
“Hey, Vio,” says a gut-wrenchingly familiar voice, somehow reaching his ears before the bell above the door. Mystery Guy leans in the doorframe, arriving with a freezing gust of air as he shoots Vio a grin. “Looks like you’re about to close, my bad.”
Vio rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re letting in the snow. You’ve got three minutes.”
Mystery Guy raises his eyebrows in genuine surprise, as if he hadn’t expected to get this far. He wears the same heavy black jacket as usual, with the pins Vio has never been close enough to make out, and wouldn’t you know it, his Docs are caked with snow and dirty rock salt. He steps fully inside and shuts the door behind him, matching Vio’s semi-defensive pose.
“Can I help you?” Vio asks, picking up a post-it note and immediately putting it back down.
“Maybe,” says Mystery Guy, walking over to Vio’s mystery book display. “Looking for a last-minute gift for someone. Wasn’t sure if I was gonna have the guts to make a move until like ten minutes ago.”
“Girlfriend?” Vio asks, putting a hand on his hip. Mystery Guy shakes his head. “Boyfriend?”
“Not sure yet.”
It has to be the stupid romance books giving Vio brainrot, making him think what he thinks must be happening.
“Well, what does this… person… like to read about?”
Mystery Guy considers. “It seems like a little bit of everything. He has pretty varied interests. They can get kinda niche, honestly.”
“How niche.”
Mystery Guy picks up one of Vio's newly-added books, weighs it in his hands, and scans the description Vio wrote. “Looks like… a combination gluten-free and keto cookbook themed around 90’s sitcoms.”
“80’s. That’s not his thing, though, he probably just thought it was too obscure for annoying customers to guess.”
He examines a paperback from all angles, as if trying to see through the wrapping, and then reads the description again. “A graphic novel—no, manga—based on a popular Nintendo franchise that he describes as, and I quote, ‘significantly gayer than anyone would ever expect it to be.’”
“Well, whatever Bowser and Luigi get up to in their free time is their business.”
This makes Mystery Guy smile, like really smile, and Vio feels like he’s winning and losing at the same time.
“And let’s see,” Mystery Guy says, reaching for a mass-market paperback with a disproportionate-looking bow, “romance novels, apparently. He appears to be a big fan, based on the not-at-all snide or derisive commentary on the tin.”
Vio wants to protest Mystery Guy’s accurate interpretation of his writings, but he’s too busy being impressed that the guy knows how to use ‘derisive’ in a sentence.
“Would you, uh,” the guy begins to ask, stopping himself halfway through the sentence. Gone is the confidence, at least during this pause, and he proceeds with obvious caution. “Would he not be interested in… romance? As a genre?”
Vio shakes his head. “No! I mean, yes! I mean, what?”
“Because I—fuck, it’s gotta be past 7:00 at this point, and I had this whole plan to be all charming and suave but then I ran late in the storm and it’s like I’m standing here now and regretting every decision I’ve ever made up until this point, because you’re basically a stranger and in a position where you can’t turn me away and sure, in a movie this would be perfect, but in real life I’m just acting like a total creep—”
“What’s your name?” Vio asks, crossing over the room to join Mystery Guy at the display. Closer to him, Vio can see that his gloved hand is shaking. “It’s not very fair that you’ve been able to see mine this whole time, while I’ve had no choice but to call you unkind things in my head.”
“Shadow,” Mystery Guy says, and it’s not like it doesn’t make sense.
“Okay, Shadow, I’d be happy to help you find the perfect book for your desired recipient.”
They avoid eye contact, both staring at the wrapped volumes on the display as if they’re the most interesting things in the world. Vio selects one and slides it into Shadow’s hand, hoping that a solid object to hold will help keep him steady.
“He might not be a fan of the contemporary romance genre,” Vio says, genuinely surprised by the levelness of his voice. Maybe talking to dozens of strangers a day about books has made him immune to social anxiety, just as long as the topic of discussion is literary. “But romance can be found in nearly any story, in one way or another. He… it sounds like he…”
Shadow clears his throat. “It’s you, Vio, you can give up the bit.”
Vio shakes his head. “Nope, I committed already, I’m seeing this through.”
“Fair enough,” Shadow says with a grin. ”Now tell me more about this guy, he seems cool.”
Vio wants so badly to continue the banter, but knows for the sake of his own comfort he has to press pause. He turns to Shadow with a serious expression. “Honestly, before I really start talking about him… he’d probably want you to know that he has a few minor concerns. He’d like to maybe learn what you do during the day, like for work, when you’re not busy antagonizing your local bookseller. What brought you to this town, what your ulterior motives were for becoming a regular at the shop, if you had any at all. He… he just wants to make sure you’re safe, and he apologizes if that’s an offensive thing to question.”
Shadow nods, seeming to understand Vio’s hesitation. “I work at a gallery downtown, just a few minutes away from the shop. I moved here after graduating art school because this happened to be where I got offered a job. It’s lonely being in your early twenties in a college town, so sometimes it’s nice to just sit in a cafe or browse my local independent bookstore and feel like I’m a part of something. It’s pure coincidence that, on my first visit to this bookstore, I read several shelf-talkers written by some nerd named Vio who seemed to have similar tastes to mine. So I took out a few of his recommendations from the library—sorry, I don’t have the space to own books right now—and thoroughly enjoyed them. I wanted to talk to him more about books, maybe even ask for his number, but I am not a master manipulator so I settled for being a pest instead. From there it just escalated, because it’s cute when he gets all pissed off, and I enjoyed the challenge he created for me with the wrapped books.”
Vio exhales shortly. “So, uh… if you were to ask for his number now… would it be just as a friend?”
“If that’s all he’s interested in, sure.”
“It’s not,” Vio says firmly. “He, uh, told me so.”
“Glad to hear it. Does he happen to have any favorite foods, or beverages, over which we could hypothetically discuss our tastes in literature on this snowy Christmas Eve?”
“Pumpkin soup and evil root beer.”
“What the hell is evil root beer?”
“Normal root beer,” Vio explains, “served in a fancy glass so he can gesticulate during his pretentious literary diatribes.”
“The fanciest glass I have is a Garfield mug.”
“Works for me.”
Both Vio and Shadow smile, and finally they come face-to-face. They’re not going to kiss or anything—not yet, anyway—but they both can feel the potential. They gaze into each other’s eyes like they’re romantic leads in a novel Vio would give one generous star, and it’d be tacky if it was anyone else, but not when it’s them. And while kissing doesn’t feel quite right in this particular moment, leaning forward to gently touch foreheads just does .
“I live like five minutes away,” Shadow mutters, unable and unwilling to move. “I usually feed Pinecone—my cat—around 7, so maybe I’ll head out now, grab pumpkin soup ingredients at the market on my way, and you can come over once the store’s all closed up.”
Vio nods, slightly disrupting the forehead touch that feels so inexplicably cosmically correct. It’s like, in any conceivable universe where Vio and Shadow both exist, they will inevitably end up just like this.
“What’s your address?” Vio asks, allowing himself to close his eyes. God, it’s been a long day.
“I’ve got a shitty one-bedroom apartment above the Tower of Spirits liquor store. I stole half of my furniture off the street after the mass exodus of college students in June.”
“You’ve really been here since June?” Vio asks, disregarding the furniture part because for some reason it also feels cosmically correct. “You must have been so lonely.”
Shadow nods. “Lonely, I’m good at,” he says, finally pulling away. “Believe me when I say, I’ve had lots of practice.”
Vio nods. “Yeah. Me too.”
“It’s the not being lonely that really freaks me out,” Shadow admits, and it’s like wow, that’s some deep shit to say when Vio just learned his name ten minutes ago, but haven’t they technically known each other for months? Shadow has already read some of Vio’s favorite books, and for Vio that’s about as intimate as passing second base—hell, even third, depending on the book.
And it could have been a truly beautiful moment between them—one for the books, pun intended—if only the goddamn Chipmunks hadn’t started singing about Christmastime.
“Oh, fuck this store radio,” Vio says, retreating behind the counter and pulling the plug. “I’ll see you in like twenty minutes, I can Venmo you for the soup ingredients later.”
Shadow looks like he wants to argue with the Venmo thing, but just shakes his head instead. “Sounds good.”
“Oh, and wait,” Vio says, grabbing a pen and a post-it note, “what’s your number?”
Shadow gives it, and Vio knows this is one piece of paper he will never absentmindedly shred. At least, not until he has a second to enter it into his phone, and then it’s totally fair game.
Vio hears the ring of the bell and goes to lock the door behind Shadow. Through the glass he watches flurries of snow punctuate the pitch-black sky—and in it, he sees his own dark reflection. It’s just him, of course, a blonde guy in a purple sweater and scrunchie, still visibly tired but noticeably less miserable than he had been an hour ago. He sees a guy who isn’t alone on Christmas Eve, who probably won’t find himself anywhere near a fireplace but will most likely end up cuddling his months-long crush by the night’s end.
He gives himself a smile and decides he can skip the vacuuming tonight. Call it a gift to himself, although several closing tasks still stand between him and Shadow’s apartment.
Vio turns his back on the darkness and gets to work.