OFF OF THE DEEP END | CHANGLIX ✔️

9. departures

moonlight sunrise: twice

Felix didn't show up at the bookstore the next day.

Or the day after that.

Perhaps Changbin had been naïve to assume Felix would seize the last moments of his break to visit him. Of course, their friendship was just a flower bud, devoid of beautiful blossoming petals and still new. Still, they'd sparked a friendship faster than any other one Changbin had experienced. Though, the few shards of optimism reasonably argued that Felix could be extremely busy.

"Stop being a mopey apathetic bitch."

Changbin jolted his head up from where it rested in a comfortable position on the pillows of his forearms, and stared blearily at the man who had entered the bookstore.

"I was thinking," Changbin argued back.

"Thinking, my ass. You're languishing desolately and desperately," Seungmin replied, his advanced words clashing with the blunt way he threw out profanities. He'd always spoken eloquently as if he ate dictionaries for all three meals for as long as Changbin had known him. Paired with the fluid way he slid curses between elaborate words and the occasional quote from a long dead scholar recited fluently in the exact language they'd said it some thousands of years ago, Seungmin was a force to be reckoned with. It was quite a shock paired with his looks: fluffy brunette hair that swooped over the edges of glasses and pink lips that once a century exposed braces from a rare smile.

With freakishly long legs, Seungmin walked the few feet between him and Changbin and stopped at the counter. His tall frame towered unfairly over Changbin as he sneered.

"Who broke up with you? Oh wait, you're perilously, irrevocably single."

"Fuck off."

"When the wondrous day when you've procured a boyfriend arrives, please awaken me from my eternal rest six feet under."

"I'll be in ashes before you manage to grow an ass."

"Actually, Seungmin," Jisung countered, emerging from the storage rooms he often frequented, as he'd turned the place into his own personal office for college work, "There is a candidate in Changbin's dating pool."

"No way," Seungmin breathed.

"Yup! There's this one sexy customer he's friends with."

"They're just a friend," Changbin argued, "No romantic interest whatsoever."

"Describe him," Seungmin ordered.

"Let's see: dark hair in that fuck-boy cut, brown eyes," At each characteristic, Jisung put down another one of his fingers as if reciting a checklist, "Insanely deep voice, tan skin, short but taller than Changbin, probably around my height."

"I sense a minuscule problem," Seungmin started, "Our mystery-customer sounds ravishing, but his description fits Jisung's type: the emo bad boys. Changbin prefers more cutesy boys."

"How the fuck do you know that?" Changbin asked, bewildered.

"You're not that subtle. Everyone who Jisung has developed in infatuation for sounds vaguely like that description. Everyone you've claimed is attractive looks like that idol Jisung likes... what's his name?"

"Felix," Jisung supplied.

"Yeah, all sugary and bottom-y."

Slightly horrified and suppressing the urge to laugh at the hypocrisy of Seungmin comparing Felix to hisself, Changbin stayed in silence and watched the conversation change to Jisung's never ending saga of trying to obtain a boyfriend.