Namjoon stepped swiftly to the side, almost dropping the tray full of drinks as he tried to avoid a toppling customer. He shook his head softly as he set the order down at a table filled to the brim with similarly intoxicated twenty-somethings, their whoops and cheers echoing throughout the cramped tavern at the prospect of more alcohol. Namjoon ducked back behind the bar, careful to step over the man from earlier, who was still sprawled out on the floor.

“Pick yourself up, buddy,” mumbled Namjoon in a voice so quiet the man probably didn’t even realize the other was speaking to him. “Someone’s gonna break their neck.”

It was interesting enough work being a bartender, and Namjoon certainly couldn’t call it at all uneventful. However, the young man was still undecided as to whether or not the job was what he would actually consider “fun.” Sure; it was entertaining to watch his peers get so drunk that when it came time to leave they couldn’t walk in a straight line to the swinging double doors - if, that is, they could even walk at all. But the job also came with some slightly less glamorous aspects, such as cleaning up after the disgusting patrons, breaking up the occasional fist-fight, and getting yelled at by an extraordinarily crabby boss whenever Namjoon broke something. Which, unfortunately, was often.

The young man sighed as he swept back his platinum blonde hair, sure that his locks would be droopy and sweaty before the end of what was bound to be a very long night. It was barely 1:00AM, and if Namjoon had learned anything from his two short months on the job, it was that these people knew how to drink, and they had no problem doing so until after the sun was up. The bar was supposed to be home to a somewhat classy atmosphere - more dim lamps and soft pianos than flashing lights and loud techno music - but that didn’t stop people from getting rowdy regardless.

Namjoon wiped down the counter with a rag as he scanned the bar. Usually the customers sitting there were a bit more reserved than those out on the floor. The barstools were more likely to be filled by middle aged men come to sip soju and grumble about how young people were ruining the once-quiet joint, and although he himself was technically one of those troublesome youths, Namjoon couldn’t help but find himself agreeing with his older customers the majority of the time.

❧

Namjoon’s eyes landed on a man he didn’t recognize. The stranger was lean and attractive, and he sat with his head bowed and his hands folded patiently on top of the bar. Namjoon hadn’t even noticed the man come in, and the former was slightly embarrassed by this fact as he slank his way over to where the newcomer sat. The young bartender prided himself on nothing if not his observationalistic nature, and missing the arrival of such an obviously novel customer was something he wasn’t used to.

“Evening, Sir,” Namjoon sang with a smile. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

The stranger looked up at him for the first time, revealing a long, slender nose that complimented his high cheek bones.

“Yes,” the young man said smoothly, returning the bartender’s grin.

The customer’s voice was light and airy, yet somehow deep at the same time - and Namjoon was surprised to see that the handsome stranger didn’t seem to be much older than himself. The man across the bar unfolded his hands as he reached under the table for his wallet, from which he pulled a large bill to hand over to a very stunned Namjoon.

“Whisky, please,” the stranger ordered.

Namjoon’s mouth was hanging open as he accepted the money. The stranger must have noticed the shocked look on the young man’s face, because he laughed loudly, drawing the attention of several other men sitting at the bar as the noise snapped Namjoon back to reality.

“I- Sir, this is… It’s just that… I don’t know if we have enough money in the register to make change for this,” Namjoon stuttered, still in awe.

“Oh, please. Keep it, Namjoon,” giggled the other man. “I have no need for such things anyway. The money is yours. All yours.”

Namjoon was about to ask how the stranger knew his name when he remembered that he was, of course, wearing a nametag as part of his work uniform. He fiddled with the little silver plate as he tried to decide whether or not to accept the money. The payment itself was more than he made in close to a week, and something inside him didn’t sit well with receiving such a superfluous tip.

❧

The stranger chuckled again, and he clicked his sharp tongue, causing Namjoon to look back up at the other man’s strikingly pink lips as he spoke.

“I can see you’re apprehensive about taking so much money,” the stranger teased, a twinkle in his dark brown eyes. “But I assure you it’s really no trouble to me. In fact, you’d practically be doing me a favor.”

Namjoon was speechless. He wanted to ask the mysterious man about so many different things. The latter’s effortless style of speech was so formal that it almost sounded practiced. His sense of ease as he handed over more money than Namjoon had ever seen - let alone held - contained in a single piece of paper was so relaxed that it was intimidating. But most of all, everything the strange man said was tinted with just the slightest hint of something impossible to describe, but deeply unsettling. The entire situation was so bizarre that absolutely no part of it quite made any sense. What exactly did the strange man mean that Namjoon would be doing him a favor?

Before the bartender could form any of his racing thoughts into words, however, the stranger laughed again, and took the bill back from Namjoon’s frozen hands. For a moment, the young man was relieved; believing that the man had come to his senses and was about to exchange the currency for a much smaller, more manageable bill. Namjoon soon discovered that he was naïve to believe that he would be able to get out of making his decision quite so easily, though, as the man did nothing more than lay the money flat on the table between them.

“How about this,” proposed the stranger. “You get me that drink, and then just talk with me for a little while. We’ll see if I can’t convince you to accept your payment then, hm?”

Namjoon replied that that sounded reasonable enough to him, although not even he himself was sure if it did at this point. He was so flustered that he didn’t realize until his next words were already out of his mouth that he had never managed to ask for the stranger’s name.

“Thank you very much, Mr. - uh…”

“Hoseok,” the man across the bar introduced himself. “Please call me Hoseok.”

❧

Namjoon thanked the man again as he knelt behind the bar to pull out a large bottle of amber-colored liquid. He poured some in a short glass, added a few ice cubes, and slid it over the polished bar to Hoseok, who sipped at the cold drink gratefully.

“Ahhh,” sighed Hoseok, the roughness of the whisky seeping into his musical throat. “That hit the spot.”

Namjoon wiped the rim of a spare glass, completely unaware that he was shaking so forcefully until the crystal slipped out of his hands and smashed to the floor.

“,” he swore. Then, realizing that he had just cursed in front of a customer, he quickly added a hasty, “Excuse me.”

Hoseok just laughed, his airy voice reaching behind the counter as Namjoon swept up the shards that carpeted the parquet floor. That was the third one Namjoon had destroyed that week, and his boss would be sure to chew him out upon learning about the incident.

“You’re someone who is drawn to chaos, aren’t you, Namjoon?” asked Hoseok as the other young man stood up behind the bar.

“I-I’m sorry?”

Namjoon didn’t understand the question at all, and he wondered if he had heard the other man correctly.

“Think about it,” continued Hoseok. “You work in a bar surrounded by reckless drunks; you’re constantly dropping trays full of drinks and food - and I’d be willing to bet that that’s not even the first glass you’ve broken this week.”

Hoseok held up the money with a smirk before placing it back down on the table in front of him.

“If those aren’t the characteristics of a man who loves chaos, then by God, I don’t know what are,” he finished.

Namjoon pondered this for a moment before answering.

“Well… I still wouldn’t say that I’m a person who’s… drawn to chaos.”

His words were slow and labored, and Namjoon was indeed choosing the phrases carefully. He still didn’t know what it was about Hoseok that made him feel so uneasy, but certainly there had to be a reason if the result of the emotion was strong enough to make him lose his grip on a perfectly dry glass.

“Oh? But how could you not be?” hummed Hoseok. There were no other people around them, but the strange man spoke in a voice so low that Namjoon practically had to lean over the bar to hear him. “You came over and talked to me, Namjoon; didn’t you?”

“What, uh… what do you mean by that?” Namjoon stammered.

“Oh, nevermind, nevermind.” Hoseok waved the large, flimsy bill in front of his face like a fan as he spoke, his eyes narrow and twinkling. “The point is that a little bit of mayhem and disorder can be fun, am I right?”

Namjoon thought about what Hoseok had asked for another long, uncomfortable moment. The young men and women he served drinks to at the tavern certainly all seemed to agree with that statement. Their entire weekends appeared to be one long stream of disordered mayhem.

But Namjoon had always seen himself as separate from that.

He supposed he could be considered an enabler of sorts, as he was certainly the one providing the rogue partiers with the alcohol to fuel their endeavors. But, somehow, the young man couldn’t think of himself as someone who enjoyed the chaos of the atmosphere.

❧

Namjoon wondered if perhaps it was the chaos that found itself attracted to him, and he asked Hoseok if this was plausible.

“Hm. It’s a possibility, I suppose,” agreed Hoseok. “Maybe that’s why you’re so prone to accidents and breaking things.”

Namjoon was about to ask how the stranger had come to such a confident - and admittedly accurate - conclusion, but before he could open his mouth, Hoseok was speaking again.

“But you never answered my question, Namjoon. Do you or do you not think that a life with a little chaos is fun?”

“I… don’t know,” admitted Namjoon truthfully. “I suppose it might be. Yes.”

“Well, then,” smirked Hoseok. “Why not find out?”

Namjoon looked at the other man blankly, so the latter continued.

“What if I told you that I had a way to make your life exciting?” Now it was Hoseok who leaned over the counter of the bar, his neat white dress shirt wrinkling at the elbows as he pressed closer to Namjoon’s face. “If I said that just by accepting this money, I could offer you things beyond your wildest imagination and dreams?”

Namjoon was now entirely confused. If he had ever had any idea what Hoseok had been saying for the past seven minutes, it was more than gone now, and he barely registered through his confusion that the other man had grabbed his hand and shoved the money into it.

“Just say you’ll take it and I can make all of that come true,” promised Hoseok. His voice was still quiet, but it was almost more of a growl at this point. “All I need you to do is say that you’ll take it, Namjoon. Just tell me you’ll take it!”

Namjoon’s thoughts were whirling, and he couldn’t keep track of anything as Hoseok smiled at him broadly. He didn’t know what to think anymore, and all he could focus on was the fact that nobody seemed to be questioning why he had been standing there with Hoseok for the better part of ten minutes instead of waiting tables and making drinks at the bar. He looked at the stranger in front of him, terrified by the wide grin he saw plastered on Hoseok’s gently tanned face.

“Will you, Namjoon?” he asked eagerly. “Will you let me?”

Namjoon swallowed as he smelled the whisky on Hoseok’s breath, almost suffocating from the heat of the fumes.

“No,” he replied quickly.

Namjoon looked down at the bill in his open palm before slamming it down on the table and sliding it over to the very disappointed man. He felt a twinge of regret at not accepting the money, but in the back of his mind, Namjoon thought that it really was for the best that he didn’t take it. He hadn’t understood Hoseok’s final question at all, but for some reason that had been the tipping point that convinced Namjoon that he didn’t want anything to do with the absurd amount of money.

❧

Hoseok sighed heavily.

“I see,” he muttered. “Stupid ing humans; you’re all getting so damn hard to trick. Nobody likes being selfish or fun anymore - and all the ones that do are the people I’ve already gotten to.”

He stuffed the bill into his back pants pocket, and glared up at Namjoon before pushing his stool away from the bar. Namjoon thought he saw a glimmer of red cross over the man’s otherwise dark brown eyes, but it was gone so quickly that he couldn’t be certain he wasn’t just seeing things.

“Don’t worry, though, Joonie,” cooed Hoseok in his deep, purring voice. “I think I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

With that, the stranger his heel, marched across the tavern, and slipped out the doors. Namjoon stood, frozen in shock, as he tried to remind his own lungs how to breathe. He sank down below the shiny bar, curling up to sit among the taps that brought craft beer to the wooden counter. His duties as bartender were just about the farthest thing from his mind as he sat, numb, and thought about how certain he felt that it was high time for yet another career change.

Aah! The second installment of the Devil series. I like the idea that the Devil kind of has to “convince” you to let him corrupt you; almost as if he’s not allowed to do it without some kind of express permission. I came up with the idea that he would have to give his victim a physical object - and if the person were to accept it, then then and only then can Devil Hoseok do whatever evil it is that he does.

Money seemed like a good choice for this, because loving it is, of course, the root of all evil. And, well, you do have to pay for your drinks! But poor Devil Hobi gets downright rejected, and he can’t corrupt morally-superior bartender Namjoon. Oh well…

Also, as far as posting the stories in the Devil series goes, I’m thinking I’ll do one every three one-shots. So, like: Devil-related story, regular story, regular story, Devil-related story. That way I’ll have time to write and edit them ‘n’ stuff, but it also won’t stretch on forever, ya know? Just wanted to give you guys a heads-up about that so y’all know what to expect! Thanks for reading <3