2,270 words

For his sister’s tenth birthday, Baekhyun is issued a weird set of instructions by his parents. 

“Your sister wants a kitten. How about you go and pick one out for her this weekend, and we can surprise her? She likes fluffy things and the color blue.”

Baekhyun can’t contain his bewildered stare. “You want me to go and buy a blue, fluffy kitten?”

“No, not a blue kitten. Just get something fluffy and maybe a blue bow to go with it?”

Baekhyun is sixteen and doesn’t exactly love bows, but when it comes to predicting the future, he’s got a pretty good guess that if he doesn’t obey mom’s instructions, his baby sister is going to know about it, and she’s not going to let him off the hook.

That’s why he’s standing outside the pet store on a rainy Saturday morning five hours before his sister’s birthday party, although it doesn’t explain why he’d rather stand under the awning facing the nearly empty parking lot twirling his umbrella, rather than going in.

That explanation requires another set of details, and his name is Jongin. 

Baekhyun breaks down his umbrella and sets his mind to the task. He pushes open the door and a tinkling entryway bell rings over his head. The store smells like pets. Cats and dogs, and fish tanks, and sawdust and live crickets. Baekhyun doesn’t really want to think about what the live crickets are here for, but when he halfway-avoids a side of the store where the reptiles are kept, he kind of has an idea. 

Baekhyun’s family have never had pets. They had a bird once when he was a toddler, a relic of the time his dad got adventurous and purchased a cockatoo, and it lasted all of a month before his mother ‘accidentally’ left a window open. 

His sister is a brat though, and she usually gets what she wants. She’s wanted a kitten for years, and Baekhyun honestly doesn't know how his parents lasted so long. Maybe if they’d caved a few years earlier they would have had this whole thing over with already, and back then Baekhyun wouldn’t be the one stealing into a pet shop where that guy… works. 

“Can I help you?” that guy, Jongin, asks.

Baekhyun waits for the recognition to set in. “Uhm, do you have any kittens?” At least he thinks that’s how people buy cats. He wouldn’t know. His friend Minseok just seems to find kittens around the neighborhood and adopts strays all the time. How come there weren’t any rogue litters wandering around Baekhyun’s neighborhood? That would have made things easier.

“We do actually,” Jongin says. “Three left so you’re in time to pick out a cute one, if that’s what you want.”

“Sure…”

“Hey, don’t you go to school with me?”

“Yep,” Baekhyun replies casual as he can. 

“Thought so. I’m Jongin.” Jongin puts out a hand to shake, but Baekhyun doesn’t want to touch it. It’s browned far darker than skin should be, and when Baekhyun doesn’t reciprocate, Jongin looks down at his hand like he already knows what’s offensive about it. “Oh, shoot! Sorry! I forgot I was petting the dogs earlier, and one of them hasn’t been bathed since he got into the dirt pile. Uhm, what’s your name again? I can’t remember.”

This certainly bodes well. “Baekhyun… We have home room together?”

“That’s right!” Jongin wipes his dirty hands on his jeans. “You… uhh, you’re the guy who came in with bright red hair last week!”

“Yeah, that was me…” The product of a bet he lost with Chen. He’d been so sure Minseok would laugh in the face of that stupid looking Luhan when the guy tried to ask him out. To his detriment, Minseok had betrayed him. Him, Baekhyun, his best friend. Life wasn’t fair, and Chen lucked out. Chen’s dare would have been green hair. Indeed, life isn't fair at all. 

“It was super red,” Jongin says now.

“It was a bit…”

“Like fire engine red.”

“Yep. It was.”

“Everyone made fun of you for it.”

Chen had especially. It was a nightmare for Baekhyun. “Yeah… it was fun…”

“It’s black now though.”

Baekhyun sure as hell is glad Jongin isn’t color blind. Not that it really matters to him whether Jongin can tell the difference between red, black, green or blue. Speaking of blue… He takes a few more steps into the store looking around.

“So, kittens?” 

“It’s really nice now.”

Baekhyun stops in his tracks. “What?”

“Your hair. It looks nice now. Natural. Not that weird shade of brown you had before.”

Okay, so maybe Baekhyun does kind of care what colors of the rainbow Jongin can see. “It… I… huh?”

He thinks he sees Jongin blushing. No, scratch that. Jongin is blushing. And it’s totally cute.

“Kittens!” Jongin yells suddenly. “You wanted a kitten. They’re in the back. Follow me. So how come you want a kitten? I mean, I don’t want to detract you from buying one. I’m supposed to be selling kittens this week, and I’ll really be happy when they go. I’m not allowed to bring my own dogs here when we’ve got kittens in the store.”

Baekhyun follows him down a few aisles in the store, trying to keep up with Jongin’s chatter and failing miserably. He’d always thought Jongin was kind of hot in an aloof sort of way. It lent well to Baekhyun's months-long crush, because obviously a kid like Jongin was a million miles out of his league and would never notice him back. Baekhyun likes crushes like that. Safe, and without any possibility of it going wrong. If that meant he had to never act upon them, that’s kind of fine with him. Baekhyun gets all the privilege of looking, all the dream material he needs, all the fantasy and the romance with zero chance of rejection - because he never had anyone to reject him - but especially, none of that icky relationship drama that Baekhyun has to watch his friends dealing with on a daily basis. 

Jongin actually working in a freaking pet store though, and turning into a chatter box, and dressed a bit like an idiot (it was that pet store apron that did it) with dirt and pet dander on his hands ruins all of Baekhyun’s fantasies. It’s like Jongin turned into a real guy, and Baekhyun doesn’t know how to deal with guys in the real world. He kind of liked the Jongin of his dreams better. That one didn’t talk to him and compliment his hair and mess up his thoughts so badly. He just came in for a kitten, for Christ’s sake. Baekhyun didn't sign up for this crap.

“So, here they are.” Jongin finishes his monologue, obviously pleased now that he can show Baekhyun what he wants and doesn’t have to talk to him anymore. 

The cage they have set up isn’t all that fancy, but it is enough apparently to house three little kittens and keep them properly sleepy. Two little gray kittens snooze up against each other in the corner, tails and legs intertwined and they look kind of precious but Baekhyun doesn’t want to admit it.

“I’m a dog person, myself,” Jongin volunteers out of the blue.

“Are you?” Baekhyun asks, because apparently that’s how small-talk works.

“Yeah. I have dogs. Poodles actually.”

“Oh, yeah?” Baekhyun would never in a million years thought the guy he went to school with was a poodle sort of a guy. “I uhh… just came for a cat.”

“Oh.” Jongin looks sad. “So… you’re a cat person then?”

“It’s for my sister, actually. She’s turning ten today.”

Jongin brightens up. As in, his mood literally brightens and sparkles shoot out of his eyes. Or maybe Baekhyun just imagined that last bit. “Okay. So… how about these then?”

Baekhyun stares regretfully at the gray pair of kittens. They were cute, but definitely not fluffy. The other one though - it’s pure white except for a black dot on its forehead and he almost can’t see its eyes for all the fur. 

“Fluffy…” Baekhyun says quietly, forgetting he’s got a very eager audience in Jongin.

“Fluffy? Actually I named that one Wiggy but—“

“No, my sister wants a fluffy kitten. That one will do. I’ll take it. How much is he. She? He?”

Jongin deliberates for two seconds. “For you… I can sell her for $30.”

Baekhyun blinks, surprised. “That cheap? I thought cats were usually more expensive when you buy them in pet stores.”

“Yeah, some,” Jongin agrees. “But these don’t have their shots yet, so… $30, and I’ll throw in a sample bag of kitten chow. How’s that?”

“Do you have bows?”

Now it’s Jongin’s turn to blink. “Uhhh, bows for what?” He looks almost afraid, as if Baekhyun had asked him, ‘Hey, Jongin do you like wearing bows?’ instead of if the store kept any in stock.

“For the cat?” Baekhyun prompts him. “I’ll need a collar or something.”

“Oh, right!” 

He directs Baekhyun to another aisle while Jongin sets up a box for the kitten which mewls helplessly when he picks it up, annoyed that its nap time is being disturbed. Five minutes later Baekhyun stands at the check-out with Jongin back behind the register, the kitten box on the counter next to a plastic bag containing a new blue collar and the bag of food. He passes over his parent’s credit card and Jongin rings him up. 

“Hey, so do you like dogs?” Jongin asks.

“I’ve never had one.”

“Oh.” 

He looks sad again, so Baekhyun just has to say something else to cheer him up. “My neighbor had a dog, but it got run over…”

Jongin practically gulps and dies in front of his eyes. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say. 

“They got another one pretty quick though!”

Still not the answer Jongin was looking for. The boy pales before his eyes like Baekhyun said something sacrilegious. He probably should have known better. His dad had been pretty torn up about the lost cockatoo and absolutely refused to buy another one (to his mother’s secret glee) because he couldn’t bear to just replace the animal like a person changes a pair of socks. His words, not Baekhyun’s. 

“I guess… I’ll see you in school?” Baekhyun tries a different topic entirely.

“Yeah…” Jongin looks too melancholy and it almost breaks Baekhyun’s heart.

He slides the plastic bag around his wrist and picks up the kitten box, ignoring the yelping sounds coming from within. 

Jongin looks at him expectantly. “Should I… Do you need any help getting to the car?” he asks.

“Sure,” Baekhyun agrees, because Jongin looks like he needs something to do.

Jongin darts around the counter and holds the door open for him, and then like any good, observant person, he stares incredulously at the parking lot, as if second-guessing that the only car parked there might not be Baekhyun’s vehicle.
“Where…. is that your car there?” 

“Yep, that’s the one.”

“Ahhh. Okay.” 

It takes fifteen seconds for them to walk there, and the kitten is squawking away. Baekhyun walks to the passenger side of the vehicle and then stands there awkwardly. “Oh. Uhm. Keys.”

“What about keys?” Jongin asks. “Did you lose them?”

“No… they’re in my pocket.”

There are three ways Baekhyun can go about this. He can ask Jongin to hold the box; he can put the box on the ground while he gets his keys, or…

“Want me to…” Jongin bites his bottom lip and stretches out his hand partway towards Baekhyun’s back pocket.

“Sure,” Baekhyun agrees all too soon. 

To his credit, Jongin removes his fingers — with Baekhyun’s keys — promptly from Baekhyun’s pocket and opens the door. Baekhyun almost wishes they’d been harder to extract, but before he knows it, the door is open and the kitten is safely deposited in the passenger seat, and then he’s closing the door and Jongin says, “Do you like guys?”

Baekhyun almost loses the keys right out of his hands. “What?!”

“Oh,” Jongin apologizes. “I… didn’t mean. Oh my God, uhm… I’m sorry. I was just talking out loud and… forget I asked. Or, no I didn’t ask. I mean, forget I said anything. Hey, I hope you like the cat and…”

“Yeah, I do,” Baekhyun says.

There’s a really awkward silence when both he and Jongin freeze and stare awkwardly at — but mostly not at — each other.

“You mean, you like the cat?” Jongin asks.

“No…” Baekhyun inhales importantly. “I mean, yeah I do… like guys.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah…” 

“So….”

“Yeah….”

“Guess I’ll see you in school,” Jongin declares.

Baekhyun smiles. It’s rather pathetic how his crush has turned into this hilarious idiot, but then again maybe it’s not all that bad either, in a new-and-exciting kind of way. “You’ll have to show me your dogs sometime,” he says.

“Really?” Jongin asks, incredulous. “I mean… that—that would be fun.”

“Yeah, it would be.” 

The kitten still cries from its box in the now closed-off, un-air-conditioned vehicle. “I should… get this thing home,” Baekhyun says.

“You should do that. Uhm, see you Monday. And… tell me how the cat likes her new home?”

“I definitely will.”

He smiles and Jongin smiles, halfway between embarrassed and cocky and it’s possibly the most adorable thing Baekhyun’s ever seen.

“See you Monday.”

Maybe a little drama in life isn’t such a bad thing? Baekhyun is pretty much ready to find out. After he gets this kitten home of course.

Baekhyun loves little sisters.

So this happened about an hour and a half ago. Here, have a little bit of Kaibaek on me.

<3 Rosie