Jay gets hired as the manager of the bakery Jungwon works at. The problem? It was supposed to be Jungwon's spot. Also, there's the fact that Jungwon really fucking despises him.
It's going to be a long couple of months.~
Come Monday, Jungwon is a mess. He sees Jay first thing in the morning, like always, but it’s so much worse now that he’s realized. Jay holds the door open for him like he always does and Jungwon almost walks straight into the door frame. Jay notices that Jungwon’s wearing the bracelet he bought for him and gently grabs his wrist to run his fingers over the gold metal—Jungwon almost dies. He can barely say a full sentence to Jay without it dissolving into incomprehensible stutters halfway through.
Get it together, seriously, he thinks to himself as he finds his mind wandering once again to Park fucking Jay while he’s frosting cookies. You figure out you’d like to make out with a guy and all of a sudden you don’t know how to act.
But this is all whatever, okay? It’s not like Jungwon’s gonna do anything about his feelings. It would make sense if Jay liked him back, given the way he’s been acting around Jungwon, but Jungwon prefers to live in agony rather than actually take a chance like that—he’s a coward, sue him. He feels like one of those village girls from a period movie plucking flowers off of a daisy, muttering “He loves me, he loves me not.” It’s beyond embarrassing, really, but this is what Jungwon’s life has come to and he’s just going to accept it.
“Sunoo,” Jungwon whispers frantically, his phone pressed to ear while he sits with his back to the wall of the breakroom. “You need to help me, oh my god.”
“What’s up? Were you manning the register and got into another argument with a customer? Seriously, you’ve gotta stop making obscure vine references and then getting offended when people just think you’re psychotic ‘cause—”
“Not that,” Jungwon hisses. “Give me three reasons why Jay’s an awful human being. Rapid fire. Go.”
Sunoo pauses. “Um. What the hell?”
Jungwon scowls. “Now’s not the fucking time. I only have two minutes left till my croissants come out of the oven and Jay’s gonna come looking for me ‘cause the timer’s gonna go off and I cannot talk to him again, I swear, because it was so fucking bad last time and I could barely get a sentence out—”
Somehow, Jungwon hears Sunoo’s face twist into a devious smile over the phone. “Oh,” he says in a singsong voice. He sounds like the devil incarnate himself. “I see what this is about. Jungwonie’s having a hard time dealing with his first crush?”
Jungwon won’t even bother denying the crush part. However, “He’s not my first crush, okay—”
Sunoo scoffs. “Oh, please. Heeseung doesn’t count. We all had a Heeseung phase at some point.”
“I don’t think Riki would like hearing about that very much.”
“‘We all’ includes Riki, too, duh.”
Jungwon rolls his eyes. “Okay whatever. He’s my first then. I don’t care. Just, please—three bad things about him?”
“Hm.” Sunoo pauses for a moment. “If you look at him closely, he kinda looks like a roblox character, especially when he does that half-smile thing. You know the one, right?”
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Oh no. Images of Jay’s face plastered onto the cubic roblox bodies flood his mind and it’s not even a fucking turn off. Instead, all Jungwon’s traitorous brain can visualize is a roblox version of Jungwon joining him and the two frolicking through virtual, pixelated fields together. He’s so fucked.
“That just made it worse,” he moans. He hears the muffled sound of his timer go off and bangs his head against the door. “Ugh. Time for the croissants, I guess. Thanks for nothing,” he says and hangs up.
Jungwon opens the breakroom door to Jay’s waiting figure.
“There you are,” he says. “Been looking for you. Your timer went off, and the other bakers weren’t sure if you needed the croissants taken out of the oven or the cupcakes—”
“I’ll handle it, thanks,” Jungwon says curtly, barely looking Jay in the eyes. He didn’t stutter this time, so he’ll count that as a win. He moves to brush past Jay and get to the ovens, but Jay’s fingers curl around his forearm before he can get too far.
“Hey.” He looks Jungwon straight in the eyes. “You’ve been acting off today. Everything good?”
“Y—yeah,” Jungwon sputters, breath catching in his throat at the feeling of Jay’s fingers encasing his wrist. His skin is cold to the touch but the skin on skin contact burns.
“If you say so,” Jay says, except the look on his face is entirely unconvinced. “You can talk to me if there’s something wrong though, y'know?”
Jungwon nods, or at least attempts to—it’s a jerky, awkward movement and he feels paralyzed, his neck stiff and the thumping of his heart echoing in his ears drowning out any other productive thoughts. And then, after a silence that lasts a beat too long, Jay still holding onto Jungwon and the two just staring at each other, Jungwon says in a strangled voice, “I’m gonna…” he gestures vaguely to the kitchens and pulls his arms free from Jay’s grasp, walking away quickly from his standing figure.
