"Hi, uh, so." Wooyoung desperately tries to shake off the blankness that washed over him as soon as the pretty receptionist looked up from his laptop and smiled at him. "Do you have a phone?"
A moment passes. Wooyoung wants to facepalm.
~~~
Growing...
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The ping of the elevator arriving in the lobby makes San lift his head attentively, quickly pausing the Tetris game on his work laptop. Reception work, of all the jobs at the hotel, is definitely not his favourite one, but it is nice that he can just sit and watch people entering and leaving the lobby. It's relaxed work, too: he already managed to beat his own Tetrishigh score twice today.
San schools his expression into a friendly, polite smile, just as the doors of the elevator open and a guy dressed in mechanics' clothes steps out.
They were born in the same year, so they're technically the same age, but the guy's air of relaxed confidence makes him seem at least a year older than San. San allows himself to watch quietly for a moment, revelling in the guy's assured posture, his height, the way his brown hair peeks from underneath his cap. A few strands of hair fall into his face, just shy of falling into his eyes.
As the guy pauses in front of the elevator and casts a look around, San unconsciously holds his breath before he becomes aware of it and chastises himself not to be stupid. When the guy's gaze pauses on San, though, San can't do anything against the sudden warmth flooding through him; a warmth that has nothing to do with the floor heating turned up to 30 degrees beneath his feet but everything with Song Mingi.
Mingi. If there was one thing relevant to his island-work and -stay, San would, without any hesitation, choose Mingi. Mingi who arrived at the hotel a week after he did, when New Year's celebrations were around the corner and San had no one to spend it with. Mingi whose deep voice first left San frustrated that his own voice wasn't as sexy before it left him enchanted. And when he learned that Mingi writes his own raps and uploads them on SoundCloud, San scrambled to listen to every single one of them via the work laptop and within his first two days of working at the reception. He knows most of the lyrics by heart now.
Mingi made San feel less lonely in the days leading up to New Year. And when San called his grandparents on the last day of the year, where his grandma joked about kissing his grandpa to 'follow that young-people tradition for good luck'... Mingi was the first one who came to San's mind to kiss for New Year. After that phone call with his grandparents, San thought about kissing Mingi for hours and then some - only to chicken out hours before midnight.
Because as soon as San realized that he liked Mingi, he felt himself clamp up, be it about the thought of kissing Mingi, or even the mere idea of spending time with him. It all had San's pulse accelerating, adrenaline spiking along with his self-consciousness. He started feeling awkward in situations he had been comfortable in before: sitting next to Mingi slurping soup of their meagre employee supper with their knees almost touching; doing hotel work together of cleaning guest rooms or serving meals; helping Mingi tie his neck-tie because he never got it right; walking up to Mingi while Mingi was looking at him; having Mingi walk up to him.
Walking up to the counter, Mingi lifts a hand to wave in his direction, and San can feel his smile widening so much it almost hurts. "Hi," he calls softly, glad that he manages to keep his voice even.
