Chapter Text
Jisung grumbles as he pulls on his jacket, his brother snickering from his position of safety, leisurely sprawled out on the sofa, gaming console in hand. Their grandmother is knitting away in her armchair, pausing only to throw a still-bound ball of yarn at him for making fun of Jisung, continuing to coo at the younger all the while.
“Jisungie, thank you so much for doing this for me. I’m so sorry that I’m taking away your free time, I hope I’m not messing with your packing.”
Jisung sighs, turning around and trying his best not to huff when he faces her. “Eunnie, really, I never mind picking up a shift, even once I fully move. I just wish Seojin took up more every once in a while.”
Eunhee shakes her head and gives the mentioned older boy a disappointed look over her knitting needles.
“You know that boy doesn’t have a proper head on his shoulders. He’s looking for work somewhere else, while family business should be what matters.” She tsks, and this time it’s Jisung that’s smirking while his older brother sputters.
“I can do both, y’know!”
“But you aren’t, are you?” She rebuts.
Jisung turns to look at the time and realizes that he’s already ten minutes late, and his heart picks up. He took his anxiety meds, right? He starts toward the kitchen to check his pill container, but Eunhee cuts him off.
“You took them, Sungie.” If Jisung didn’t have his grandmother, he likely wouldn’t have his head. He rushes back to the door after muttering something unintelligible that he hopes she interprets as a thank you. He pauses there for a split second, turning and making for his room to sling his guitar case over his shoulder, and then turns and goes back to the front.
“Love you, Eunnie,” he calls as a goodbye, and then he steps out the door.
The cold hits him like a solid wall, making him stop for the slightest second in a grimace. It’s sharp, and he’s thankful for the coat on his shoulders.
He’s always distinctly relieved that their townhome is right next to the bookstore they own, because this city makes traveling miserable in the winter, and waiting for public transport sounds like a trial from one of the circles of hell right about now.
He walks the familiar path to the oldest building right on the corner of the block, and fumbles with the keys for a moment, his glasses foggy from his breath. There’s no way he has more than three keys but he swears he’s tried four before he finally gets the right one in with shaky hands. It’s tepid when he opens it, stepping into the stagnant air, the sounds of the outside world muffling when it clicks shut. It’s still chilly, a shiver running down his spine in the anticipation of warmth.
He flips around the ‘Open’ sign to face the glass, puts his stuff at the desk, and then sets off to find the fireplace. It’s in the corner next to said desk, far enough away to have its own privacy but not enough to where he can’t keep an eye on it from sitting and talking to customers (not that they have many). It has an iron guard and they’ve kept a good eight feet between it and any bookshelves, but Jisung still gets terribly paranoid. There’s an armchair next to it that looks terribly flammable, but once he lights it, he heads for the desk anyway, keeping an eye on the crackle of wood.
He settles into his own chair, the wooden desk before him slightly dusty despite its regular use, and he brings out a worn notebook, eyes running over the etched HJ on the leather cover. Then, he digs around in his bag for a pencil or some writing utensil, and exclaims to himself with excitement when he finds a ballpoint pen, tongue peeking from between his lips.
That’s how he spends his time, writing lyrics to songs nobody else will know and doodling, only pausing to talk to a couple of customers that wander in, putting on his best customer-service smile and ignoring the shaking in his hands. His meds only do so much.
When it gets warm enough, he slides his jacket from his shoulders and leans over the desk, humming whatever notes decide to come to mind and trying not to drive himself up the wall. He stares at the last, unfinished verse sitting on the page, and wills everything poetic that exists to power him through these hard times.
Very few people come in. This is only his second time working a shift that wasn’t an emergency, so he’s yet to learn their regulars, but he thinks they act differently. A group of teenagers come in at one point and Jisung has to school his facial expression the entire encounter. A couple of foreigners come in, probably seeking respite from the cold, and he talks to them with English that could be better, but isn’t too broken either. And then he settles back in, pulling his guitar out to help him actually feel the chords he’s imagining.
The bell rings and he looks up, an older couple that he hasn’t seen before walking in. Two men, holding hands. One is teasing the other over some inside joke while the other makes dry remarks back at him, and it’s so endearing to watch that Jisung forgets that it’s rude to stare until his nose starts to sting.
They buy more books than Jisung’s seen any group buy yet, and one man pays while the other seems to have already started to read one. The man paying watches him with such a fondness that Jisung feels the affection just from being in their vicinity.
It makes Jisung long for something, but he doesn’t let himself name it.
After that, Jisung eats his lunch with unnecessary haste, adrenaline tugging him along so that it doesn’t cause any awkward encounters where he’s mid-bite and someone walks in to immediately ask him questions. You never know. Jisung simply won’t take that chance.
Of course, nobody does come in, despite his worries. So when he’s done eating his incident-free lunch, he pulls out his notebook again to continue writing, fixing some of the lyrics that he spit out before that genuinely made no sense in the wake of writing them.
The bell rings again.
He pauses to finish writing the correction he had to make, scribbling out the old lyric because you can’t erase this ink, however precious it is to him. This time, when Jisung looks up, his breath is physically knocked from him.
In walks two guys that look his age, and his eyes can’t help but snap to the one that looks about his height—the blond hair that hangs just over his brow, his sharp features and dark eyes. He’s beautiful, ethereal even, and Jisung gets that nameless feeling again. That longing.
However, the boy immediately scowls at him, and Jisung’s instincts curl in on themselves. His nerves spike, and his heart squeezes. He couldn’t have possibly already messed this one up, could he? He didn’t even get the chance to smile at him…
His eyes fall to the guy on his arm, noting his taller stature, dark curls framing a face so pretty he’s sure the two are coming in here to hide from paparazzi or something. They have to be models, celebrities, something. Maybe that’s why the gorgeous man that Jisung’s eyes keep flicking back to can’t stand him or something.
The taller one raises his hand in a polite wave, and Jisung startles out of his ogling. He tries to smile and wave back, but the scowling one immediately turns and drags the other away.
Jisung stares at the vacant spot that they had occupied. He’s not the best with customers, but he swears this time it wasn’t his fault. It simultaneously flares his anxiety and makes him feel warm…flustered? Is he flustered? Odd.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, the pretty boy’s disgruntled behavior only makes Jisung more nosy, watching the pair through the gaps above the books on their shelves. His paranoia usually made him watch the customers regularly, but this time he really can’t pry his eyes away.
It doesn’t help that the stranger is so nice to look at even with a scowl on his face. Is it weird if he says especially with the scowl?
They seem to argue over something, and the shorter one hits the taller on the arm that his is wrapped around, and Jisung winces. They’re probably together and here he is, spying because a pretty boy wouldn’t say hi to him. He probably looks insane, or worse, homophobic. He just needs to keep to himself.
He puts in earphones and turns back to his work, glancing up at them every once in a while, seeing that they don’t leave each other’s side once. There’s something sour twisting in his gut, but he knows that the feeling is not his to feel, so he crushes it. If he starts writing lyrics to something new that feels more bitter than the last one, nobody will know except for him. And maybe Felix.
There’s a point where he doesn’t see them, and he looks around the store, confusion etched between his brows. Maybe he didn’t hear them leave. His heart sinks, and he turns his music off so that he can hear better again.
He keeps working and ignores the guilt brewing in his chest. He sighs when his thoughts don’t bring any lyrics up and instead circle back to the interaction, fixating on if he should’ve said something instead. Maybe it was the way he looked?
He turns around and picks up a small stack of books that had been organized but not set out, and he sets off to start shelving them. He goes by genre, getting about halfway through. He turns into the fiction section, and promptly freezes when his brain catches up to his eyes.
The two customers are on the floor.
The tall one kneels, legs folded beneath him, while the pretty one lies with his head on his lap, turned over on his side. Jisung looks at the pair with thinly-veiled confusion, and the taller one smiles up at him, though a little crooked, like he knows that it’s an odd sight. “Oh look, it’s register boy.”
“Uh. I’m… sorry? Do—Is he okay? Do you need anything?” Jisung stutters, looking around. The he in question flutters his eyes as he stares straight ahead, not glancing at him or moving to reply.
“He’s okay! Actually, do you think you could ring these up for us?” He’s handed a stack of three books, and he nods dumbly, just turning and doing as he was told.
His brain simply just sits on a buffer, and he stands there staring at the books for a solid two minutes before he’s startled by movement in front of him.
He looks up, and the tall one is there, smiling at him in a way that makes him think he should be put at ease, but his anxiety is ramped up enough to offset it. Is the other person okay? Did he hurt himself? Did—oh god, did Jisung just interrupt something? What’s happening?
“Sorry about that, what do I owe you?”
Jisung is almost startled, and then he chastises himself for it internally; there is a human in front of him, why would he not be spoken to?
“Oh—right, it’s uhm…” he trails off, looking down at the total he had to write. Jesus, snap out of it. “Ah, for these three, it’s 40,000 won.”
He gives a tight smile at him, and receives a more genuine one in return. Maybe all of his smiles look genuine, or maybe these just are. Jisung can’t imagine being that open to a stranger, but it looks good on this one. It does what it’s intended, he supposes, a bit of tension melting from him.
“We’re okay, Min is—he’s okay, promise. You’re gonna see me half-carrying him out of here, but he’s okay.” Min. That must be the pretty—the other one’s name, then… he hopes he’s right. He supposes he isn’t one to make the judgement. The tall stranger gives him a thumbs up, and it feels out of place enough for Jisung to let out a nervous chuckle in response.
It’s enough of a reassurance for Jisung to not try to pry more, but really, who wouldn’t be concerned? Confused?
When they leave, the tall stranger really is supporting the other—Min. Min almost walks past the door before the other turns him back towards the door with a little, “Well, certainly not that direction.”
Min tries mildly successfully to hit his arm, but subsequently has to grab onto it to be led out the doors, three new books in tow. It might be endearing to Jisung if he knew the two any better, alas, it looks like he just speedran getting drunk on the floor of a random bookstore, so he can’t really be anything but intrigued.
He sincerely hopes they didn’t do anything… weird. On his floor.
Thoroughly distracted for the rest of the day, Jisung doesn’t get much more writing done. In the moments he doesn’t have customers, he stares into the distance and bounces his leg, mindlessly humming the tune to something already defined rather than trying to define it.
When he closes, it’s dark outside. He’s allowed to close early when he covers, but it’s dark anyways—winter does that to the day. It always does something for his thoughts, walking through the snowy street led by lamplight and that of the moon.
It’s gentle as the snow falls, and his earphones block out the noise of the streets, his eyes scanning where snow has started to pick up along the edge.
His mind keeps replaying the two strangers that came in, too beautiful for him to forget, but also too strange. Not that he’d want to forget—he just wants to know. Who they are, what he witnessed. How they perceived him, if he offended them. God, he feels so stupid, just staring at them, not being able to do anything more.
A flash of purple catches his eye, and he does a double take at the flower partially hidden beneath fluffy white. His eyes widen—it’s iris.
They bloom in the summer, so to see it alive strikes him as odd, kneeling and letting his eyes run over its imperfections, how beautiful the dual tone is. He has the fleeting thought to pick it for his Eunnie, but it’s gone just as soon. It’s lasted this long, he wouldn’t kill it for its beauty.
The thought alone makes him jump up and pause the music in his headphones. He’ll never complain about inspiration striking, however deep he finds himself in his thoughts.
He rushes back home and only relishes in the warmth for long enough to take his shoes off and greet his Eunnie. He beelines for his room, getting his guitar out of its case. He ignores the face that keeps popping into his thoughts, and lets his own chords envelop him instead.
ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ
Minho has had a shit week.
To be fair, most of his weeks are shit.
But every time he has a flare up, he’s confined to this painful cycle of his bed, trying to move, the cold, hard floor, and then bed again. His roommates Chan and Hyunjin were Heaven-sent to be able to make sure when he went down, his skull didn’t hit the floor, and that he was eating enough to try and power through the flare up, but it didn’t change the fact that it, put simply, sucked.
It had slowed down enough to where today he’s only had one seizure, and he intended to take advantage of this fact. Either that, or he had a death wish, trying to cause another flare up by going out so fast afterwards. But he was pissed. He missed his usual routine trip to the bookstore last Thursday, and so he had to go this one, even if it killed him.
Not that Hyunjin would let that happen, a staple by his side as he walks to the bookstore that’s conveniently down the street from their apartment complex. Minho wouldn't leave alone whether or not he was flared, but he thinks Hyunjin is paranoid by the way he has him holding onto his arm, hand nestled in the crook of his elbow.
“And I’m just not sure whether to tell her mother or not, because they’re just at that age, y’know? And you never really know how it is at home, but…” Hyunjin trails off, and Minho nods along to his rant about the kids he teaches.
Some of the tension he’s still harboring melts away at the sight of his familiar bookstore, all warm and dark, just on the corner of the street. When he approaches, he realizes that the friendly older woman that usually runs the shop isn’t at the desk, but instead, someone around his age.
His already dampened mood sours immediately.
The boy at the desk is hunched over, writing in some sort of book, a red fluffy jacket draped over the side of his chair, the sleeves of his black turtleneck pushed slightly up his forearms. He looks up over his circle-rimmed glasses at the chime of the bell, and his eyes widen, like he didn’t know the door did that. Minho immediately avoids his gaze and tries to wipe the scowl off of his own face, but he doesn’t think he succeeds. Especially when Hyunjin smiles and gives a polite wave—Minho pulls him to a corner out of view of the desk.
“Minho-yah, snap out of it,” Hyunjin chides, and only then does Minho realize his grip had tightened on his arm. He lets go, shaking his head, trying to pretend he isn’t as irked by the change in his routine as he actually is.
“I miss one day, and Eunhee-nim is gone, now I must perish a drawn-out and painful death like my body has been attempting to succumb to all week,” Minho grumbles.
Hyunjin squawks indignantly, and immediately protests, “No, Minho-Hyung, no death for you. You are going to get your weekly stock of a book or two from this place, and you’re going to make it home to eat and watch something sad with me.”
“I’m going to die, I fear.”
“You are going to make it home, I fear.” Hyunjin stares dead at him, and Minho rolls his eyes with a sigh. He’s right, the more pessimistic he is about this, the more likely the universe is to bring his words to fruition.
“Maybe if you come with me to the fiction section, it’ll fuel me.” He smiles at Hyunjin flatly, and Hyunjin visibly brightens, straightening up and pulling him, being the anchor to reality that he and his body need.
“You say that like there’s a world where I left you to look for yourself.”
Minho grumbles a bit, “There is a world where you left me to look for myself. Maybe one where I’m able-bodied.”
Hyunjin smacks his shoulder and he sways precariously to the side, letting out a bark of a laugh when Hyunjin immediately panics and catches him with an arm around his shoulder.
“The consequences of your own actions!” He whisper-shouts.
“Don’t pull that shit, hyung, or I’ll let you fall to the ground for real,” Hyunjin whisper-shouts back. When it’s clear Minho can stand on his own, he leads them to the fiction section. Minho grabs one to look through as Hyunjin starts to look around. “Are we looking for something today?”
Minho tilts his head, starting to scan the shelves himself, ignoring the off-kilter feeling that makes everything fuzzy. He’s fine. Just feels like shit, which is normal. “Kinda. I want something, like… sad. I found a recommendation for Lightning Bolt online and I want the paperback—which, now that I’m thinking about it, it’s like only a year old so they probably won’t have it.”
He steps back to look at the shelf more clearly, and realizes that his legs are unsteady, but they just do that, so maybe he shouldn’t have joked.
“Oh wait, can you grab that one for me?” He points out a book as he pulls out his phone, recognizing the name. Hyunjin hums in acknowledgment and starts to look at the shelves for him, quiet in concentration as he grabs it. Minho goes to his notes app and looks at all of the books he has on a checklist, mouthing the names to himself. He notices one that he spelled wrong, so he deletes it and starts rewriting it. Or, well, he tries to.
But then, well, he can’t.
Dread settles in his stomach, and his vision locks onto his keyboard. Everything else slowly fades to a blur, tunneling in on his own stuck hands that only manage to twitch as he tries to move them.
Oh, okay.
He could be standing there for hours as he tries to find it within himself to speak, reality slipping from him dangerously quick. Or slow, he wouldn’t know.
“Hyune—“ A convulsion cuts him off, tightening in his chest and throat, and he exhales something just short of a laugh. He’s going to fall. God. He’ll never be allowed in this bookstore again. He’s going to make a fool of himself and he’s been so careful so far. Not even Eunhee-nim has seen one, and—
“Let me take this from you, you don’t need that.” Hyunjin does something, not that he can tell what, but there’s a pressure that’s removed from his hands. “Can you sit down? Is that a thing you can do?”
Minho laughs for real this time, because his throat is tight and he doesn’t know if he can move his legs. He can—oh okay, he can, because his knees are bringing him closer to the floor, and Hyunjin is making noise, and, well that is definitely the floor.
Okay.
He feels one of his thighs spasm, the muscles tensing, and his arms hit the floor. His head doesn’t, there’s something soft there, as his neck tenses and his eyes flutter. That’s good.
Good.
…
Good?
…
It’s blurry.
He cannot breathe, and he cannot move, and things are blurry.
“It’s okay to breathe, y’know.”
There’s a voice? That must be good. It’s a good voice, he thinks. He doesn’t know how long it takes before something in him releases, and his body goes lax. Oh, he’s on his side. Air comes back to him, though he cannot move yet, although now it’s a little different.
“There, that’s good. It’s just me, you were out for 4 minutes.” Hyunjin is the one that’s speaking, okay.
He stares ahead into the distance. Time passes, and he couldn’t answer any questions if asked, but he can breathe now, so he refuses to compromise that by moving too early.
Hyunjin murmurs to him that he caught his head, sliding his phone within reach even though Minho won’t move yet. He’s quiet. He stares.
“Oh look, it’s register boy,” Hyunjin announces to him and the empty aisle.
“…sorry? Do—Is he okay? Do you need anything?” Oh, not-empty aisle. Right, ‘register boy.’
His eyelids flutter in a failed attempt to move his head, so he just accepts his fate and keeps staring. It’s nice here. His entire body hurts, but it is nice, here in this molten sense of reality where he cannot do anything but blink into the void.
“He’s okay! Actually, do you think you could ring these up for us?”
Ring up… books. He is in a bookstore. Oh… register boy, aisle, books, it’s thursday. That makes sense then.
“He looked like he was about to drop to the floor right here next to you, I don’t know what I would’ve done then, I’m not that qualified,” Hyunjin whisper-shouts. It gets a huff of laughter from Minho, and then he’s trying to propel himself upwards with his skull. He only gets a few inches off of Hyunjin’s lap before he’s falling back down, but it was worth a try. “Min—oh my god, just ask for help—”
He snorts, and Hyunjin pushes him up to something like a sitting position. He hangs his head and tries to get the world to stop spinning by sheer force of will.
“Take your time, Min, I’m gonna go pay okay? If you feel another one coming can you like… throw a book into the open? I will be watching you.”
Minho glares at him fondly before Hyunjin is leaving him in the aisle to swallow down the taste of metal and stomach acid. He makes little chomping movements with his teeth to remember how to move his jaw, and clicks his tongue a few times. He feels sick.
Well.
He moves and tenses all of his limbs to remember how they’re connected, and is relieved to find that one, it is possible, and two, it didn’t jumpstart another seizure. Small wins and all that.
“Let’s blow this popsicle joint. Stand. Let’s blow… this place? Nevermind—can you stand?” Hyunjin appears with three familiar books, and an even more familiar smile. His glasses have fallen askew, and Minho urges to fix them, but he can’t. “You don’t need to, we can sit here until you feel like it.”
No, he can stand. He shakes his head in response, and tucks his feet under his body, then looks around for leverage. Hyunjin’s hand finds him, and Minho slow blinks at him in thanks.
“Ready?” He nods, and then he’s being propelled up, widening his stance to support him, leaning heavily on Hyunjin. “If only you had some sort of mobility device that you could lean on… that unfolds… with a handle on it for you to support yourself with…”
Minho snorts again, looking at Hyunjin and scrunching his nose. He doesn’t usually bring his cane to the bookstore because it’s so close. He’s so used to his routine that bringing it this time, after a flare, didn’t even cross his mind. Maybe it should’ve.
“...do you—” his voice is rough, scratchy, and talking makes his heart jump in his throat, his entire body feeling a little weaker with the effort. “Do you not enjoy being my support?”
Hyunjin gasps dramatically and brings a hand to his chest, scandalized. “Why would you even insinuate such lies! This is my true calling in life, I wish I could be your mobility support all the time, in fact, you should rely on me more.”
Minho rolls his eyes, letting him lead him from the aisle, not trying to talk again. When they get to the open, he purposefully doesn’t look at register boy,tries to aim for the doors, but his legs just keep carrying him straight instead of processing the turn he has to make.
“Well, certainly not that direction,” Hyunjin chastises like one might a cat trying to escape. Minho swats at his arm, playing into the bit despite Hyunjin’s immediate helping Minho. He almost falls from the momentum, and he has to rectify this by grabbing ahold of said arm, so he just focuses on staying upright instead of retaliating.
When they get outside, his thoughts slow down a little, and nausea is all he knows.
“Y’know I seriously would not rather be anywhere else, right Minho-hyung?” Hyunjin asks, bravado gone. Minho doesn’t let himself think too long about it, or he’ll remember exactly why Hyunjin feels the need to check. Exactly why there’s a sour feeling every time Minho needs their help, every time Minho is dependent.
He nods in response, and keeps walking. Hyunjin hums, and doesn’t question him any further.
When they thankfully make it back to their apartment incident-free (which is nothing short of a miracle), Chan is at the bar, laptop out and coffee in hand. He physically lights up at the sight of them.
“Hey Min, Jinnie! How was the bookstore?” He looks between the two of them, and all Minho can make is a grunt in response, beelining for the sofa and collapsing.
“Only one seizure!” Hyunjin answers for him with sarcastic cheerfulness.
“Oh. Only, huh?” Comes Chan’s response. A chair croaks, so he must be getting up. “How many books did we gain this week?”
“Three,” Minho croaks. Something is placed in front of him, and when he smells coffee, he sits up fully, eyes shooting to the offered mug, and then to Chan, who looks at him with a fond smile. Minho hates how much they care, and how fond it’s made him over the years. They make him soft, and they make it look easy.
“Decaf, I’m not getting you into another flare up,” Chan says as explanation, and Minho takes it without much more convincing.
When the first drop lands on his tongue, he relaxes into the sofa, not budging when Hyunjin settles down next to him, bringing along a blanket and draping it across both of them. Hyunjin has his own hot chocolate by the looks of it when he speaks over his mug, “There was someone new working today.”
Chan hums with curiosity as he settles in the armchair across from them—laptop in hand—at the same time Minho groans in annoyance. “It’s bad enough I missed last week, but then that had to change too.”
Chan laughs in the warm way he does, and Minho glares at him. “It’s probably just a one-time thing, Min. But if it isn’t, your routine doesn’t really have to change, right?”
“I guess,” Minho sighs, glancing at Hyunjin who is starting to look for something to watch.
They have their respective sides of the sofa, it’s warm—safe—and he’s sitting here trying not to feel like shit over something so small as the new worker at his local bookstore. Well, it’s not small to him, but it should be, so agonizing over it is only going to do harm. He got his books, he’s out of a flare, he’s back on his routine. Next week will be better.
He really hopes it was just a one-time thing.