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“Do people buy these?” Sungchan asked. He tossed a cigarette lighter at Anton who caught it with only a slight fumble.
Anton turned it over in his hand. It was sky blue with a pattern of snowflakes on it. “Yeah. Smokers like to be festive too, y’know.” Anton tossed it back and Sungchan didn’t catch it at all.
Anton plucked a stray string from his uniform vest and watched as Sungchan got eye level with the underside of a shelving unit. Anton didn’t think cozying up to a gas station floor was worth it. That close to the slushie machine? It was probably sticky. Things were probably growing under there. The lighter didn’t even cost that much. Definitely not worth it.
Sungchan fished it out anyway, triumphantly brandishing it before placing it back in the plastic stand. He rested his head in his hands (gross—he just touched the floor with those). The fluorescent overhead lights (somehow both too bright and too dim) reflected in Sungchan’s eyes, and the sight was just nice enough for Anton to forget that those were the same lights which housed a dozen or so dead houseflies and other crawling critters that had somehow become trapped between the bulbs and glass covers. Every now and then they flickered.
There hadn’t been a customer in the store for forty-five minutes. Anton’s shift ended in fifteen. Anyone who had stopped for gas this late had opted to pay at the pump, and Sungchan had been trying to convince Anton to lock the doors early since the moment he arrived. He had successfully convinced Anton to turn off the music after another bad cover of Last Christmas started playing. It had been worse than the first bad cover which had been playing when Sungchan arrived.
Sungchan didn’t have to get there so early. Really, he didn’t have to get there at all. He never offered to drive Anton home after his closing shifts. Rather, he just showed up and did it. The buses stopped running shortly before the store closed, and the walk home was long. And dark. And, at this time of the year, cold. Anton didn’t get many closing shifts, which was good, because then he’d feel bad and have to start giving Sungchan gas money.
Later, after Anton had locked up and Sungchan’s key had gotten stuck in the driver’s side lock, they piled into Sungchan’s car and took the long way home. Sungchan liked to look at all the lights strung up on the apartment balconies, and Anton indulged his critiques of them for about five minutes before zoning out and counting all of the Christmas trees he could see in the windows.
“Do you wanna come over?” Sungchan asked after getting bored with his own commentary. “I bought those Pillsbury cookies. The ones you just slice and bake.”
“Snowman, tree, or reindeer?”
“Couldn’t decide, so I got them all.”
“I could be in,” said Anton. Sungchan was already turning down his street.
Sungchan’s apartment was a humble one-bedroom with a cramped bathroom and millennial grey floors, and it was decorated just enough to keep it from looking like a poor specimen from r/malelivingspace. He was one of those weird people who didn’t care if someone dropped by unannounced, and he would always insist on taking the lumpy couch if one of his friends had to crash there overnight. And that couch was seriously lumpy. He’d be sure to loudly remind everyone of his great personal sacrifice. Anton always tried to make Sungchan stay in his own bed; he was never successful unless he agreed to sleep there too, but Anton had stopped dissecting that a long time ago.
The lightbulb in the overhead light in Sungchan’s kitchen had blown two weeks ago and he hadn’t gotten around to replacing it, so the room was lit by the stove light, which flickered every now and then, so Anton was sure it would cease working before the night ended. The glow from the string lights Sungchan had put up around his living room window helped minutely, but the best lighting they had was from the $40 four-foot artificial tree he’d purchased from Walmart the previous year. He set it up on the kitchen table because he didn’t have a much better use for it, aside from it being a hub for junk mail and sweatshirts and plastic packaging he tossed to the side and forgot to put into the garbage can.
Sungchan had a lot of pent-up energy. He was like a shaky chihuahua, if the chihuahua was a six-foot tall man. He flitted around his kitchen, haphazardly tidying up around Anton. The cookies didn’t take long to bake, so that was all there was to do. Anton watched him inefficiently move stacks of nonsense from one surface to another, and for a moment thought this was something he wouldn’t mind getting used to: coming home from work, making a meal (if cookies constituted a meal), cleaning up. With someone.
He made a face. That’s what the most wonderful time of the year did to him. It made him all sappy and had him craving affection and romance and the like. It was uncomfortable to have those feelings in Sungchan’s kitchen. But then the timer on Anton’s phone went off, and Sungchan donned a pair of reindeer-themed mitts to take them out of the oven.
Sungchan would try to eat a cookie before they were adequately cooled, inevitably burning his tongue or the roof of his mouth, and Anton didn’t feel like hearing him whine about it for the rest of the night, so Anton forced him into the living room. The string lights made everything look pinkish, and Sungchan didn’t bother turning on the lamp.
Sungchan only had the couch and no other seating, save for a few thrift store cushions which lived under the coffee table and only came out when he remembered to be a good host, or when Eunseok complained about his ass falling asleep. Anton took up a spot at one end of the couch and Sungchan took the other, but it was on the smaller side and they both had long legs, so their knees knocked together a little bit. Sungchan’s knee was warm where it nestled between Anton’s, and he had half a mind to reposition, but he liked the way it made the inside of himself simmer. And anyway, they’d been wrapped up more than this before.
“I should have put mistletoe up in the kitchen,” Sungchan said to himself. His hand was busy picking at a frayed part of the couch, and he was almost quiet enough that Anton would have had to strain to hear him, but it was dead silent save for a stray car driving by.
“Why would you want mistletoe up in your kitchen?”
“Well, if there was mistletoe hanging from the ceiling right now, I’d kiss you.”
Lines like this used to work really well on Anton. They used to make his brain go fuzzy and his heart skip a beat. Sungchan used them so often that now they were just a source of amusement. They both knew it wasn’t necessary, but it was fun to do it regardless. “One, we’re not even in the kitchen. Two, since when have you ever needed to make up an excuse to kiss me?”
Sungchan had the decency to look sheepish. “I’m trying to get immersed in the holiday spirit.”
Anton pretended to think about it. “If I let you kiss me, can we watch A Charlie Brown Christmas?”
“Is it on Netflix?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“That’s terrible leverage, Anton,” Sungchan laughed.
Anton let Sungchan kiss him anyway. They were awkwardly positioned but they figured it out, and Sungchan sighed a hum into Anton’s mouth. Sungchan had big, guyish hands that liked to run all over Anton’s body and lips that liked to cover every inch of skin available. Eventually Anton had no choice but to swat Sungchan away, because the simmer in his chest had migrated to his gut.
“Am I staying the night?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Sungchan said. “You are.” He was trying and failing to regulate his breathing. He was always so easily worked up. Anton’s eyes had adjusted to how dark the living room was what felt like ages ago, and he could see how Sungchan was looking at him. Sungchan’s eyes always did this thing where, under their watchful gaze, Anton felt totally naked even though he was still in the same shit he’d worn to work.
Sungchan leaned in. “You can borrow my clothes again,” he said. He pulled on the front of Anton’s shirt until Anton gave in and let himself be kissed once more.
“Sungchan,” Anton started. He grabbed onto Sungchan’s face with his own hands. “The cookies.”
“Right, yeah.” Sungchan’s tongue darted out and wet his bottom lip. “What about them?”
“You forgot about them, didn’t you?” Sungchan scoffed and Anton rolled his eyes. “They can’t sit out all night long. They’ll go stale.”
Sungchan sulked but ultimately pulled himself off of the couch to throw the cookies in a plastic container. Anton followed, yawning as the day caught up to him. Sungchan dragged Anton to his room and gave him a well-loved pair of pajama pants before falling into bed and fighting with the comforter. When Anton crawled in beside him, Sungchan slung his arm around Anton’s middle. They’d stay like that for a while, and then they’d part for sleep only to wake up attached to each other like usual.
“Cookies for breakfast?” Sungchan whispered. His breath tickled the back of Anton’s neck.
“Cookies for breakfast,” Anton agreed.
Sungchan smiled and pressed a kiss between Anton’s shoulder blades.
Tomorrow they could go find that mistletoe.