One Year

“Hello. Did you find everything you were looking for?”

Jeongguk smiled with a false sense of cheer as he picked the items off the counter and scanned them. He learned that not paying too much attention to what he was doing or the customer, for that matter, made time pass much faster.

“Yes, thank you.”

The voice snapped him out of his trance as his eyes flitted up to meet the source of it. The boy on the other side of the counter smiled back at him, his eyes creasing adorably while the corners of his mouth perked up. Soft, fluffy silver-blonde hair spilled over his forehead in wisps. He had a sharp jawline though soft features, and when his eyes opened, he met Jeongguk’s gaze silently with a glimmer of something that he couldn’t quite place.

Goddamn.

He didn’t realize he was staring until the boy had cleared his throat with a small, knowing smile. Jeongguk returned it awkwardly, and then turned over what he held in his hand a couple of times before realizing it didn’t have a price tag.

“The, uh...”

The boy leaned over a bit to see what he was talking about, and Jeongguk could smell his cologne as the fabric of his shirt fell back from his neck. He could see veins under his golden skin, carved out like a marble statue. ‘Pretty’ didn’t even come close to a good word to describe him.

“Oh. But you can let this one slide, can’t you? It’s really important that I have it.”

Jeongguk’s blinked a few times when he realized that he was holding a small wooden cross in his hands, and when he slid his gaze to the bagged objects to his left, he noticed a bag of garlic and silver jewellery nestled inside. He let out a breathy chuckle and looked back up at the boy incredulously.

“You serious?”

“I am.”

The boy winked, and it made Jeongguk weak in the knees.

“Please let it slide?” He urged.

Jeongguk wasn’t stupid—he knew exactly what this guy was doing. He knew damn well that he looked good and he was using it to get what he wanted. Course, Jeongguk still hesitated anyway.

“Well...”

The boy began leaning in further and his scent overtook Jeongguk, making his head swim.

“Pretty please?”

He peered down at the name tag pinned to his work shirt.

"Jeongguk.”

He pronounced the syllables with absolute precision as if he were tasting it, testing the waters, and the name flicked off his tongue like poison. He made his name sound like it was a bad word, and Jeongguk kind of loved it.

He usually wasn’t stupid, but today, he was.

“Alright,” he sighed. “But just this once.”

He forced himself to look away, pointing to the screen that flashed the boy’s total.

“Twenty-two thousand won, huh?”

The other reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, sifting through his money. Jeongguk used the opportunity to glance at him again. Even his fingers were pretty.

“Well, shit,” he muttered, pulling out a single bill. “How about I give you ten-thousand instead?”

Jeongguk gave him a disbelieving stare.

“Are you kidding me? That’s all you carry?”

“Yeah?” The boy replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Jeongguk shook his head.

“No way. My boss will notice something like that. You’re going to have to put one of these things back.”

The boy pouted when Jeongguk began taking the items out of the bag.

“But I need them.”

“Why? To fight vampires?”

He looked offended by the question, though Jeongguk just snorted.

“I can’t buy these things at the same time without the cashier judging me? Making assumptions? Maybe I should complain to your boss about treating customers poorly.”

Jeongguk’s jaw dropped.

“Are you kidding me?” He repeated in shock. “I just offered to let you take something for free! I’m not letting you shave off half your pay too! I think that’s pretty damn fair!”

“Fine, then!

“Fine!”

The boy shoved the bill back into his pocket with a huff and if Jeongguk wasn’t so pissed off, he’d think he was hot as hell angry.

“Your boss will be hearing of this,” he growled.

And if Jeongguk wasn’t so pissed off, he’d think he’d want to hear that voice saying his name in his bedsheets.

He finished the day in a bad mood, the silver-haired boy not leaving his mind for a second. He went from imagining him dying a slow death to kissing him senseless. He had to apologize twice to two different customers that he accidentally snapped at and did end up receiving quite the angry call from his boss. Yoongi was typically pretty laidback, so for him to actually threaten his job made Jeongguk think the boy had maybe exaggerated what really happened a bit. It only served to piss him off more.

He sped his motorcycle back to his cabin, letting it fall lazily to the ground as he slammed his helmet on the porch table. He jiggled the key in the lock rather violently, so it didn’t open until he had to close his eyes and take a deep breath. He made a cup of coffee (at nine thirty at night) and made his way to his desk to pull out a piece of paper.

Once he had finished college, he had moved back to the mountains to be an author. He wasn’t that successful though, with barely a thousand copies of his last book being sold. But he was a horror novelist and a good one at that, so he wrote because he loved it. He wrote about different kinds of mythological creatures by studying lore and religion, straying from the typical horror scene. He preferred to write about kitsunes and wendigoes over vampires and werewolves. A lot of his inspiration came from “V”, an anonymous poet. The best, in his opinion, although he wasn’t very popular.

‘Vampires.’

Jeongguk scoffed at the memory.

He decided to move into a small cabin that originally was one of little comfort and robbed of any chance of being a real home. Once he fixed it up, it became the complete opposite. However, the land was expensive, so he got a second job as a gas station employee just for a little extra spending money. He knew when he signed up for the job that he was going to have regular run-ins with shitty customers, but this guy? He prayed he’d never have to see his pretty dumb face again.

~ ~ ~

There wasn’t a day that went by without Jeongguk thinking of the hot gas station guy. A week passed, and then a month without him showing up, and it was truthfully beginning to upset him. He considered the fact that the boy really might not be from around here and was simply just passing through, but he refused to believe it. Jeongguk was good with people and he knew the kind of person hot gas station guy was: the bold and confident type that would look for any reason to put someone like Jeongguk down. Maybe he was over-exaggerating, maybe he was being a bit too hopeful of the boy’s return, but no one looked at Jeongguk like that without there being a follow-up. He’d be back. He knows he will.

Jeongguk was mindlessly scribbling down stock numbers on his clipboard when he crossed the boy’s path again. The bell at the door rang as he entered, and Jeongguk would be lying if a sense of excitement didn’t wash over him. His eyes travelled down the boy’s lithe frame, and holy shit, what he was wearing was just immoral. His leather pants couldn’t be tighter while the neck on his long-sleeved shirt drooped over his shoulder a bit; a silver necklace hanging to his chest with an earring to match dangling from his right ear. His shirt rode up a bit when he reached for a bottle of beer in the fridge and Jeongguk’s breath caught in his throat. It was pretty late at night and the area they were in was known for its clubs, so that better be where he was going because God help him if this was his usual getup.

The boy moved to the next aisle while Jeongguk tried not to stare out of the corner of his eye. He seemed deeply interested in their unusually large collection of pocket knives, so Jeongguk expected he was going to have another weird round of items to scan.

“Can I help you with anything?” He called over reluctantly, hoping their last meeting didn’t ruin his chances of ever making up with him.

The boy looked over his shoulder with a cute, boxy grin. It made Jeongguk’s heart flutter.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

Jeongguk nodded and backed off when he pulled the most expensive knife from the rack, and he prayed he actually had enough money for it when it was double the price from last time.

He spent another ten minutes writing down the amount of inventory the station had when he realized he never heard the boy leave. Just out of curiosity, he poked his head around the corner of the store and watched as he scooped a handful of snacks off the floor that he had dropped from the pile in his hands. Jeongguk rolled his eyes and returned to the register when he figured the boy had to be close to payment when it was impossible to carry much more. Sure enough, he approached him and dropped the snacks on the counter. He groaned quietly when a few more toppled off, and as he bent over to pick them up once again, Jeongguk swore inwardly when he got a full view of his chest. He tried to ignore his dry mouth as he scanned the snacks along with the pocket knife, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and two lighters.

“Should I ask?”

“No, because it’s none of your business.”

The boy stood up straight and tugged the neck of his shirt up as if it would help him look any less like a stripper.

“Thought we learned that lesson last time,” he added under his breath.

Jeongguk bit his tongue as he finished with the last bag of chips.

“Eighty-thousand,” he mumbled.

The boy already had two fifty-thousand bills in his hand, slapping them on the counter.

“Couldn’t have had this ready last time?” Jeongguk asked mockingly.

He swore these things just fell out of his mouth.

“Look, I don’t need your input on my purchases,” the boy snapped. “It’s fucking rude. I knew I shouldn’t have come back.”

“Then why did you?”

“It’s the closest place to my house. Not that that’s any of your business either.”

“Then why did you say anything at all?”

The boy suddenly slammed his fist on the counter and Jeongguk jumped.

“What’s your fucking problem?” He snarled.

“What’s yours? You come in and ask if you can pay half your total, I turn you down, and you get all pissed with me as if it’s my fault!”

“You should get fired for treating people like this.”

“You should get arrested for trying to steal!”

“How is it stealing if you let me take something for free?”

That’s when Jeongguk kind of messed up. “Fuck you” and “fight me”: he really just couldn’t decide. Both were perfectly good, rational things to say when you were angry, but what came out was something in-between. And with that much fire in one statement, you can’t just take something like that back.

“Fuck me.”

Jeongguk froze. He prayed the boy didn’t take it the wrong way—that it was spoken as nothing but a figurative way of expressing his irritation, but the smile slowly creeping across his face said otherwise. Jeongguk’s face was on fire; heart pounding when the other pulled a full bottom lip between his teeth. He tried keeping his focus on bagging the rest of the items, pulling the boy’s change out and reaching his arm out to place it in his palm, though the other had a different idea. He curled those long pretty fingers around Jeongguk’s hand tightly, rested his darkened eyes on him, and heat shot through Jeongguk like electricity.

“My name is Kim Taehyung, by the way.”

Jeongguk briefly felt as if he had heard the name before, but all his focus was on the vanishing warmth of Taehyung’s skin as he pulled away to drop his change into his pocket. He pulled on the neck of his shirt again so this time it centred around the area between his neck and chest to frame his collarbones.

“I’ll see you around.”

Jeongguk could’ve sworn there was a bit of sway in his hips as the bell rang to signal his leave, and he felt a certain longing in the pit of his stomach that stretched itself in Taehyung’s direction. Begging for him. And that night, he dreamt of the boy’s dumb pretty hair and his dumb pretty fingers, and what kind of sounds he made in the dead of night.