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All things considered, having his body pressed up against the display case with Jungsu's tongue in his mouth probably wasn't the worst outcome Jiseok could have imagined.

There were certainly more heinous ways to spend his Saturday night than shirking his closing responsibilities to make out with his favorite new customer, though he couldn't seem to think of one at the moment. All he knew right now was how much he loved having Jungsu's fingers tangled in his hair, his body flush and warm against Jiseok's, and how he tasted faintly of the blueberry scone from the bakery across the street.

But Jiseok should probably back up a few paces.

Or maybe a hundred.

Actually, just a few weeks would suffice, he thought, as he felt Jungsu's hand grip his waist and pressed him harder against the glass.

When Jungsu first walked into the shop on a slow Sunday afternoon, Jiseok didn't think much of him. He was just another customer strolling in and meandering over to the display case to peruse the collection of card singles for sale. Jiseok let him be for a moment, merely offering his standard, saccharine, please don't yell at me over things I have no control over, signature Customer Service Voice™ in the form of a simple, "Let me know if I can help you find anything!"

A few minutes later, after Jiseok had finished restocking the bins behind the counter with some of the latest randomized card packs, Jungsu was still browsing through the selection of singles. He was crouched in front of the display case, a thoughtful expression on his face, his finger tapping rhythmically against his lips.

"If you're looking for The Incinerator, we don't have him," Jiseok announced, leaning his elbows against the counter. Dark eyes flicked up to meet his, almost amused, though he didn't bother to stand. Instead, Jungsu hummed his amusement, a quiet, but surprisingly pleasant sound.

"Popular card?"

Jiseok wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, I guess some streamer popularized an extremely broken, stomp the table and lose all your friends by turn three deck that's built around him, so now everyone wants to do the same."

Jungsu huffed out a laugh. "You seem to have a lot of feelings about that."

"I have a lot of feelings about red decks in general," Jiseok sighed, resting his chin in his palm. "We host open play every Saturday, and I overheard three separate tables ban that card because it's just so unfun to play against." Grimacing, Jiseok shook his head. "One table was all Incinerator, and that ended about as well as expected."

Jungsu's eyes crinkled with a smile. "How's that?"

"I believe the exact words were 'Fuck this shit, I'm out.'"

Another soft, quiet chuckle, and finally Jungsu stood. "What do you play, then? If you hate red so much?"

"Blue, mostly."

"Oh, so you like to be the fun police."

"Yeah yeah, make your jokes," Jiseok muttered with a roll of his eyes, though his smile betrayed his true thoughts on the matter. "Everyone loves to hate blue until it's the only color that can shut down bullshit shenanigans like Incinerator. Then suddenly it's all, 'oh hey, blue's cool, I guess. Now that red's dead, blue is back to being public enemy number one.'"

"Hey, somebody's got to take that title away from black decks," Jungsu shrugged. "We get too much of a bad rap."

Jiseok raised an eyebrow. "You play black?"

“I can feel your judgment," Jungsu smirked, a hint of mirth dancing in his eyes.

"No no, I'm not judging," Jiseok said airily, raising his hands defensively. "It just says a lot about a person who enjoys cannibalizing their own deck and making everyone else throw away their cards so you can steal them. That's all."

Jungsu leaned against the counter and cocked his head. "I'll make you a deal. I'll show you my deck if you show me yours."

Jiseok snorted. "Flirting with me won't get you a discount."

"Will it at least get me your number?"

"Excuse me sir, this is a game store, not a hookup bar," Jiseok sniffed, though inwardly, he was preening. Then, with a sweet, syrupy smile, he batted his eyelashes in a theatrical display of faux innocence. "But if you buy something, maybe I'll consider it."

"Extortion," Jungsu laughed, pushing away from the counter and returning to his perusal of the singles. "What would your boss say about such unprofessional behavior?"

"Well, I am the boss, so he'd probably say something along the lines of 'Finally! You haven't gotten laid in so long, I was beginning to think you were celibate." At Jungsu's curious, strangely confuddled glance, Jiseok winced and backtracked, hands flailing back and forth. "Not that I'm so sad and desperate for company that I pick up guys in my own shop, but also, I'm kind of a shut in when I'm not here, so my options are limited to the men that come in here, or the little old lady who lives next door to me that sits on her balcony and shouts at me to water my plants more. For the record, they're fake plants, but sometimes I go out there with a watering can anyway just to make her stop."

Jungsu stared at him, and Jiseok couldn't decide if the bewildered look on his face showcased horror or endearment. Probably horror, Jiseok mused as he kept babbling and lost what little remained of his mind to mouth filter.

"That's not to say you're slim pickings or anything," Jiseok blurted out, cheeks flushing. "In fact, you're the opposite of slim pickings. You're like a buffet. A buffet of nothing but fine dining, twelve course meals and—" Jiseok paused and briefly closed his eyes, wincing. "Actually, can we go back to the part where you were hitting on me before I opened my big fat mouth?"

"Do I have to buy something first?" Jungsu asked, a playful lilt to his voice.

"The good news is I'm a cheap date," Jiseok joked, a sheepish chuckle escaping his lips as he offered a halfhearted shrug.

"I'll keep that in mind," Jungsu murmured, before he glanced back at the display case and pointed at a few cards in quick succession. "Anyway, I'm going to have a look around, but in the meantime, I'd like these three."

As Jungsu stepped away from the counter to browse the shelves full of various colored dice, card sleeves, and other tabletop supplies, Jiseok pulled the cards out of the case and sleeved them. He'd made some... interesting choices, to say the least, though Jiseok couldn't help but be intrigued at the, how should he say, less than meta decisions that would certainly raise a few eyebrows at anyone's table.

"You should come by on Saturday," Jiseok said once Jungsu finished looking around and returned to the counter. "Pick a table, and see how many red decks you can make cry with your—" Jiseok looked at one card in particular, his amusement fading as he found himself genuinely fascinated by the game plan. "Okay, actually, this guy has the potential to be real mean. As long as a blue deck doesn't come shut him down and you can keep him in play, you can bully the whole table."

Jungsu visibly perked up. "That's the idea. Will you be here then?"

"I'm here almost every single day," Jiseok replied, smiling as he handed Jungsu his cards and a receipt that he'd discreetly scribbled his number across. "So you'll always know where to find me."

"Good to know," Jungsu said, his fingertips brushing over Jiseok's hand and lingering for a brief, but definitely not unwanted moment. "My name's Jungsu."

"Jiseok," he smiled, his heartbeat stuttering half a beat as Jungsu's hand briefly squeezed his own.

"It's nice to meet you, Jiseok."

"You too, Jungsu."

Jungsu didn't call or message, but he did in fact come back on Saturday.

Jiseok had just shoved a gargantuan mouthful of a blueberry scone into his mouth when the bell over the front door chimed. He glanced up from his perch on the stool behind the register, a bright smile spreading across his face as Jungsu strode in and approached the counter.

"Hi," Jiseok said, the word garbled and muffled around a mouthful of scone. He swallowed it down and smiled, hoping he didn't leave crumbs all over his mouth. "Nice to see you again."

"Hi," Jungsu echoed, his own smile soft, though no less genuine. Reaching into his bag, he pulled out a deck box and set it on the counter. "I believe we had a deal."

Jiseok blinked, and then broke into a grin as he spun his stool around to reach into his backpack. "Technically, open play doesn't start for another couple hours, but I've got some time right now if you want to pregame. Scone?"

He held up the last scone and waved it invitingly in front of Jungsu's face. He expected Jungsu to simply pluck it from his hand, or perhaps decline the offer altogether, but when he leaned forward instead and took a bite straight from Jiseok's hand, the unexpected action sent a shock coursing through his veins. Jungsu's eyes stayed on him as he chewed and swallowed, and Jiseok couldn't decide what he found more captivating: the way the reflection of the sunlight danced across those sharp, dark eyes, or the faint, mischievous upturn of his lips as he licked the remnants of the filling from his lips.

"Not exactly what I meant, but that works too," Jiseok managed weakly, before setting the rest of the scone aside and cracking open his deck box.

Before long, the cards were shuffled and spread across a table near the counter. They spent a good hour playing back and forth, with Jiseok occasionally pausing to help a customer find a particular set of cards or specific game. By the time more and more people started filtering in and settling down at the tables closer to the back, they'd gathered a little bit of an audience—including the Wonder Twins, aka Hyeongjun and Seungmin—but frankly, Jiseok was too busy getting his ass handed to him nine different ways to Sunday to pay them any mind.

Because he was getting completely shut down by a black horrors deck that, even as a blue player, Jiseok was having the damnedest time countering.

"Are you going to join any of the other tables today?" Jungsu asked at the start of one of his turns, idly rifling through the cards in his hand as he contemplated his next move.

Jiseok shook his head. "No, I need to man the register and keep an eye on things up here. Besides, even if I wanted to, I'm not allowed."

Jungsu glanced up at him and quirked an eyebrow. "I thought you were the boss?"

"Yes, but I have a tendency to piss people off when I play. And that's not really good for business, so it's best I stay out of it. For the sake of everyone's sanity."

Jungsu's brow wrinkled in confusion. "What do you mean you piss people off?"

"My decks are very annoying," Jiseok shrugged, warily eyeing the cards Jungsu put down. "For everyone else, I mean. It's a great time for me, because most of the time I'm throwing a wrench in everyone's strategies in the sense that I'm the only one who gets to play my cards."

Jungsu laughed. "Spoken like a true blue player."

"Seungmin and Hyeongjun there," he smiled wryly and gestured at his two friends, who were both hovering over Jungsu's shoulders like a couple of vultures. "Like to tell me I'm playing solitaire."

"Because depending on the decks you're using, you are," Hyeongjun piped up.

"Especially when you have to break out the calculator," Seungmin added. "Seriously, the amount of math you do sometimes is ludicrous. There's so many numbers involved, I can't keep up half the time."

Jiseok smiled at him. "Maybe you'd have an easier time understanding what I'm doing if you ever made it past remedial math."

Seungmin's mouth dropped open. "I told you that in confidence!"

"No, you told me that after getting trashed on cheap beer and crying all over me about all the reasons Hyeongjun should dump your sorry ass when you two got into that huge fight," Jiseok retorted, watching as Seungmin flailed a hand around helplessly.

"Okay, I definitely told you that in confidence," Seungmin hissed, his cheeks flushing.

"You should know by now that anything you say can and will be held against you at every opportunity," Jiseok quipped, flashing a cheeky grin at the face Seungmin made at him. "Anyway, you guys worked it out, and he did not, in fact, dump your sorry ass, because he loves your sorry ass. Now we can all laugh about it like the big, happy family we are."

Seungmin smiled sarcastically. "I hope you know you're adopted."

As the banter dwindled and Hyeongjun and Seungmin moved on to start their own game in the back, Jiseok returned his focus to the one in front of him, wondering how big of a rabbit he'd need to pull out of his hat to turn this around. At the rate Jungsu was stomping him, Jiseok figured he had two, maybe three turns left alive at the most. Eyeing the stack of cards Jungsu had forced Jiseok to toss out of play, he nearly laughed at the size of it.

Yeah, people hated the ever living shit out of blue decks, but sometimes black decks were a special kind of cruel. Especially when they gave Jiseok a taste of his own medicine and shut him down so he couldn't play any of the cards he wanted.

Holding his breath, Jiseok grabbed a card from his dwindling library and begged the universe for a miracle. He knew he had a card in this deck that could potentially turn this around, if only fate was on his side just this once and—

Jiseok looked down and nearly wept with joy.

Oh, thank sweet fuck, Jungsu was about to get a taste of his own medicine.

"You and your friends tease each other a lot," Jungsu noted, drawing Jiseok's attention back to him.

Jiseok shrugged. "It's how we show affection."

"How'd you all meet?"

"I opened a game shop."

Jungsu blinked, and then tilted his head. "Is this how you find all your friends? They just wandered in one day?"

"Most of them, yes," Jiseok said, wrinkling his nose at the amused smile tugging at Jungsu's lips. "What? Did you already forget the conversation about me essentially being a shut in? I wasn't kidding, Jungsu. When I'm not home, I'm in one of three places: here, the grocery store, or the bakery across the street. That's it."

"How do you date, then?"

"Uh, well," Jiseok trailed off, clearing his throat as he tapped his fingers nervously against the table. "The short answer is I don't. Not for a while, at least."

"And the long answer?"

Jiseok looked up to find Jungsu's eyes focused on him, his gaze soft, curious. Not prodding, exactly, but... patient, somehow. Understanding.

"It's not for a lack of trying," Jiseok sighed, before he winced a split second later. "At least not at first. I tried the online thing, because Hyeongjun and Seungmin met online and they worked out great, but the only matches I ever got were either married, asking for feet pics, or," he grimaced. "That one guy who communicated only through interpretive dance."

Jungsu stared at him, and then a laugh erupted out of him. "You're joking."

"He'd send me videos, Jungsu," Jiseok whined, horrified. "Dozens of them. When I watched them, I couldn't tell if they were meant to be sexy or if he had a chronic itch in his crotch that he desperately needed to get checked out by a doctor."

Jungsu smothered another laugh with the back of his hand, then tried to hide it with an awkward clear of his throat. "Online dating's not for you, then."

"Definitely not," Jiseok snorted, shaking his head. "Anyway, I've had a few old fashioned relationships here and there that began through mutual friends. I'm still friends with most of them, but we don't really hang out anymore."

Jungsu regarded him calmly. "So, you're not dating at all?"

"I wouldn't say that," Jiseok shrugged, shifting in his seat under Jungsu's blatant stare. "It's not like I gave up on it, I just... haven't exactly been looking for it either."

In fact, for the last year or so, it had become such a non-priority for him that he hadn't given it much thought beyond the occasional passing curiosity of a particularly handsome man passing by on the sidewalk or browsing the shop.

But now—

Well, with Jungsu sitting in front of him like this, Jiseok would be lying if he said he wasn't curious again.

"What if it came to you instead?" Jungsu asked quietly.

"Nowadays, that's probably the only way to get my attention," Jiseok admitted, laughing. "I'm too busy with this place to be chasing tail into bars and clubs, and I'm definitely not about to start prowling around the frozen section at the supermarket contemplating a potential bachelor's eligibility based on their choice of ice cream."

"How in the world do those two things correlate?" Jungsu asked, bewildered.

"Look, you can't go wrong with chocolate or vanilla, right? They're simple. Reliable. Safe. Nothing wrong with that, but if you're reaching for the sherbet instead," Jiseok grinned over his cards. "That tells me you like a little tang with your sweet. Grab the orange sherbet, and I'm one bad pickup line away from asking if you want to rendezvous in the next aisle over between the frozen lasagnas and bags of peas."

Jungsu blinked, seemingly lost for words.

Jiseok cleared his throat. "And now that I'm hearing that out loud, I realize that's a really unhinged and probably inappropriate thing to say to someone who isn't Seungmin or Hyeongjun. Sorry," Jiseok winced, rubbing the back of his neck. "I've got a chronic condition that makes my mouth blurt out nonsense before my brain hears what it's saying."

"No, it's—" Jungsu began, then shook his head and broke into a laugh. "It's fine. It's refreshing, actually."

Jiseok grimaced. "That's not the word people usually choose."

"I don't like guessing games," Jungsu continued softly, leaning forward a little. His fingers gently brushed over the back of Jiseok's hand, stoking a flurry of dizzying butterflies in the pit of his stomach. "I like how direct you are. You're just so—"

"Insane?" Jiseok helpfully supplied again, smiling wryly.

"—You."

Jiseok swallowed around the sudden dryness in his throat, his blood burning hot under his skin.

"Anyway," Jiseok breathed out, the word catching in the back of his throat. He tore his gaze away from Jungsu's face and placed his secret weapon on the table, a triumphant grin spreading across his face as he sat back in his seat and crossed his arms. "Throw out half your library and cry."

Jungsu shrugged, though Jiseok didn't miss the newfound twinkle in his eye. "Okay."

Jiseok eyed him warily. "Wait, why are you smiling like that? What do you have in there?"

Jungsu didn't say anything until it was his turn again. Wordlessly, he pulled a card from the ones he'd tossed, a card that could specifically be played from out of commission, and Jiseok's smile faded.

The Final Days

Create two tapped 2/2 black Horror creature tokens. If this spell was cast from the graveyard, instead create X of these tokens, where X is the number of creature cards in your graveyard.

"I just handed you the game," Jiseok breathed out, partially to kick himself, but mostly in awe as he spread the rest of his cards from his hand across the table. "I don't have a board clear. Black beats blue. I'm dead."

"We could play again?" Jungsu offered.

"I've gotta watch over things from up here," Jiseok declined with a wistful sigh. "Next time, though," he smiled, "I'm stomping you."

"I'm very much looking forward to that," Jungsu murmured, drawing the words out in a sultry drawl that had Jiseok's blood running red hot in his veins. As Jungsu scooped his cards up off the table and shuffled them neatly back into his deck box, his fingers long and unnecessarily pretty, Jiseok chased away the intrusive thought about what else he might be able to do with those fingers. Something that might even have the frozen bags of peas recoiling in horror.

"Thank you for inviting me," Jungsu said, drawing Jiseok out of his downward spiral of impure thoughts of the frozen section. A soft smile graced Jungsu's lips. "This is the most fun I've had in a while."

"You're welcome to stop by anytime," Jiseok offered, perhaps a little too eagerly. "I'm closed on Mondays, but otherwise, come by as much as you want. Seriously, that was… genuinely diabolical. Well done."

"I might take you up on that offer," Jungsu chuckled, before he turned and made his way to the door. Pausing, he glanced back and added, "See you later, Jiseok."

"Bye, Jungsu," Jiseok called out, his eyes following Jungsu's form out the door before he let out a shaky breath. Shaking his head, he allowed himself a small smile before returning to work. In the back of his mind, however, the ghost of Jungsu's touch lingered far longer than Jiseok wanted to admit.

The following Saturday, Jungsu was back.

This time, Jiseok came prepared, not only with a specialized deck he'd spent the last week agonizing over just so he could stomp Jungsu's horror-infested, card throwing deck into the dust, but also a paper bag with a blueberry scone specifically for him. He offered it to Jungsu with a smile as soon as the man strode up to the counter, and received a bright, toothy smile in return.

"Thank you," Jungsu said, his voice soft.

"Don't thank me yet," Jiseok grinned, pulling his own deck out of his bag and setting it on the counter. "I'm stacked for revenge."

"Oh?" Jungsu arched a brow. "Well, you can certainly try."

Jiseok playfully rolled his eyes and began shuffling his deck. "You win one game, and suddenly you turn into this smug, overconfident little—" He stopped short when he glanced up to find Jungsu holding out the scone in offering in front of Jiseok's lips, a perfect mirror of the way Jiseok had done the week prior.

Jiseok stared at him, a little bewildered.

Jungsu blinked, a hint of uncertainty crossing his features as he lowered the sweet treat. "Sorry. Too much?"

"No," Jiseok breathed. "Not at all."

As if on autopilot, Jiseok ignored the fact they were in the middle of his shop where everyone could see them, and leaned forward. He took a bite of the scone, his eyes locking with Jungsu's before he pulled away and chewed. The sweet filling flooded his senses the addictive way it always did, but it was the way Jungsu's cheeks tinged pink as his eyes lingered on Jiseok's mouth that Jiseok found much more enticing.

Soon enough, the cards were spread out, and a new game began.

And soon enough, Jiseok lost—again.

"Vampires," Jiseok muttered, staring down at one of Jungsu's cards on the counter. "Why'd it have to be vampires?"

"Did you really think I'd bring the same deck two weeks in a row?" Jungsu smirked, to which Jiseok responded with another playful roll of his eyes and halfhearted nudge at his shoulder.

The rest of the day passed by in fairly normal fashion. Jiseok oversaw the open play, helped a couple newbies figure out the rules and draft strategies for their decks, and when Seungmin and Hyeongjun showed up for their weekly ritual, Jungsu settled at their table as easily as if they'd all been playing together their whole lives.

Every once in a while, Jiseok found his eyes drawn to the back where everyone was playing. And every single time, as though he felt Jiseok's eyes upon him, Jungsu looked up, their gazes met, and then he'd flash Jiseok this brilliant, blinding smile that never failed to send his pulse racing.

Eventually, people filtered out, the evening wound down, until Jungsu was the only one lingering in the store. Jiseok had already locked the door, and he was in the middle of shutting down the register, with Jungsu perched on the counter nearby.

"So, what do you do anyway?" Jiseok asked. "For work, I mean."

"I work a very boring job at a very boring call center."

Jiseok side-eyed him. "Sounds exciting."

"It's a job," Jungsu sighed. "Pays the bills. Gives me weekends. When it's slow, I get to write, so I can't really complain."

"Write?" Jiseok asked. "Like, books? Movies? Poetry?"

"Music," Jungsu murmured, his smile soft, shy almost.

Jiseok paused and glanced at him. "A musician? I knew I liked you."

"Hardly," Jungsu scoffed. "My buddy does most of the actual songwriting. It's more of a hobby for me, but he's got a lot of ambitions. More than I can handle sometimes." Shaking his head, Jungsu grimaced. "He's going to get himself in trouble one day, I just know it."

"What kind of trouble?"

"The kind that comes from being a stubborn bull that won't listen to reason."

Jiseok laughed. "You get along well, then."

"As long as we're spending a lot of time apart, we get along fine. I'm telling you, limiting our exposure to each other has done wonders for our friendship."

Jiseok looked at him, frowning. "Do you have to do that with a lot of people?"

"No. Just Jooyeon."

"Maybe you should bring him by sometime."

"Yeah," Jungsu agreed softly. "Maybe I will."

The next few Saturdays followed a similar routine. Jungsu would show up at the shop a couple hours before open play, Jiseok would offer him a blueberry scone and then break out a different deck in the hopes of finally besting him, to which Jungsu would inevitably destroy him every single time. They'd chat for a bit, exchange a few flirtatious touches and remarks, and then Jungsu would settle down at a table to play with other people—usually Hyeongjun and Seungmin, but sometimes with a handful of the regulars who were in the shop that day.

Then, at the end of the evening, Jungsu would linger in the shop while Jiseok closed up. He probably should have kicked him out more often than he did, especially if he was going to sit on the counter and distract him while Jiseok closed out the register, but frankly he didn't mind the company. He craved it, really, and the thought of chasing him out meant ending the night before Jiseok was ready to.

"How'd you end up opening this place anyway?" Jungsu asked one such Saturday night, as Jiseok finished counting the day's till. "I mean, why a game shop?"

"Honestly?" Jiseok blew a puff of air through his lips. "To spread my addiction to trading cards and tabletop games onto the impressionable youth."

"A noble cause," Jungsu said dryly, which had Jiseok laughing.

"Okay, so it's a little more selfish than that," Jiseok admitted, chuckling. "When I was a kid, my friends and I were obsessed with card games. You name it, we played it. We used to meet up and play a lot in a shop like this, actually."

Jungsu eyed him thoughtfully. "I'm sensing a but."

"It's not the tragic backstory you're thinking, no," Jiseok snorted. "It's just, as we got older, most of us found different interests. We drifted apart, moved away, did other things. On top of that, shops like this were disappearing, either moving online or going out of business altogether, so it was getting harder to find people to play with in person. Even now, I'm the only shop in the area with space set up for people to just... play. So, I opened one up, and it turns out people enjoy having somewhere to talk to other people with similar interests. Who knew?"

Jungsu cocked his head curiously. "That's surprisingly wholesome."

"Like I said, it's not all that tragic," Jiseok shrugged, taking the cash drawer out of the register and locking it in the safe in the back. "Who knows how long I'll stay in business, but right now things are good. It pays all the bills, it's brought me friends that I'll have long after this place is gone." He stepped out of the storage room, pausing just in front of Jungsu behind the counter. Placing a hand on his knee, Jiseok flashed him a soft, fond smile. "It lured you in too, so even if I got shut down tomorrow, I can't really complain, now can I?"

Jungsu slid off the counter, his hands coming to rest on Jiseok's waist. He pulled him close and set his entire body alight with a warm, pleasant thrill as Jungsu tilted his head and leaned in.

"Well, I certainly can't complain," Jungsu said softly, the words ghosting across Jiseok's lips and sending a flurry of goosebumps skittering across the back of his neck. A brief nudge of Jungsu's nose against Jiseok's, the faintest notion of a kiss as those dark eyes bored into his own with a striking intensity—a question, Jiseok realized, which he answered by closing his eyes and meeting Jungsu halfway.

His lips were as soft as they looked, warm, pliant and yielding to Jiseok's own. At first, it was slow, tentative, gentle even, but then Jiseok's arms wrapped around Jungsu's neck. He pulled him closer, kissed him harder, and soon Jungsu spun them around and pressed him against the display case. Jiseok's lips parted for him, his skin burning under the way Jungsu's hands roamed his torso, his sides, the curve of his waist, anywhere he could reach. When his tongue slipped past Jiseok's lips, a breathless moan escaped him, and Jungsu swallowed it down hungrily. Jiseok ran a hand down Jungsu's chest, feeling the rapid drum of his heartbeat and taking pleasure in the staggered rise and fall of his chest.

Jungsu tasted faintly of blueberry scones, and the thought of this being a new part of their ritual—disregarding his closing duties to make out with his new favorite customer against the display case—sent a delicious shiver through him. There were certainly much worse ways to spend his Saturday night than with Jungsu's tongue in his mouth, Jiseok thought, as he finally pulled away just enough to rest his forehead against Jungsu's.

"I should—" Jiseok swallowed, his heart racing, and his chest heaving for air. "I should finish closing up. And then we can, uh—"

"Finish?" Jungsu suggested, lips brushing against his again.

Jiseok blinked before another laugh bubbled out of him, feeling a little delirious as he halfheartedly swatted at Jungsu's chest. "I was going to say go home, but yes. I assumed that part was implied."

Jungsu gently brushed a few strands of hair from Jiseok's eyes. "You're not going to make me buy something first again, right?"

"I already closed the register, so no."

Jungsu smiled and leaned in again.

Jiseok didn't finish closing down for another hour.