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Taekey - Fragments of Imagination

In which Taemin uses baths to relieve the stress of uni life and Kibum is a thought-invading regular at the coffee shop he works at.

Taekey, 2Min bromance + Jongyu if you squint
Taemin + Minho 20, Jonghyun 22, Kibum 25 (turns 26), Jinki 26.

Wordcount: 24K

Taking baths is the only remedy for Taemin to keep sane these days. Ever since he moved out of his parents' house, he has had his share of the stressful student life; not only the piles of homework and classes he has to attend but the social aspect as well. It has managed to become a full-time job. Speaking of jobs; he works weekends at a coffee shop with a boss that breathes down his neck all day in case he stops smiling for more than half a second. At only 20 years old it is a very drastic change from a perfectly paced life full of friends, time and homework that was never as overwhelming as it is now.

So, he sits there in the water that is scalding his worries away for the night. His skin turns a burning pink but he enjoys the prickling feeling of it. It burns everything stress-inducing off him and numbs him so his mind is clear just until tomorrow comes. He turns his mind to the only thing that makes him remotely happy outside the walls of his bathroom these days.

They have a lot of regulars at the coffee shop but his manager says they usually come in before ten to grab a cup on their way to work. That, of course, does not include the weekends when Taemin is working. Either way, there is one bloke who shows up every weekend around six pm when Taemin starts allowing himself to get excited for closing up at eight. At this point, his boss is about to leave and a feeling of freedom eagerly overrules the uncomfortable eying his boss puts him through all day. So, in many ways, this is the best time on the job. A new gust of energy hits him and he even allows himself a cup of coffee because it's by far not the busiest hour of the day.

"Americano, iced," the guy will say. Taemin will politely take the order and make sure to prepare it as quickly and flawlessly as possible because he has a feeling that this guy is short-fused. As if he constantly looks mildly annoyed, his eyes tend to glare instead of simply look. The smile he leaves Taemin with when he puts his coffee down in front of him never matches everything else about their short, repeated interaction. Even without his boss on his back, it makes him smile voluntarily so the customers coming in after the iced americano guy are always guaranteed killer service.

Besides the small smile that affects Taemin enough to become unfathomably curious about the guy, he also has other qualities that Taemin enjoys subtly staring at while he works. The young man, possibly in his early to mid-twenties, will sit like he is unconsciously modelling the whole time he is there. Every head tilt or crossing and uncrossing of legs looks like it belongs on the front of a magazine and not in that tiny café for Taemin's peasant eyes to be glancing over at every few minutes. Using the word peasant about himself seems over the top even to Taemin himself, but something about his aura makes Taemin feel like just that: Below everything that the regular is. Everything from his slender fingers to his fashion sense, and more than anything, his face. From the times Taemin has served the regular, he has been able to subtly gawk over his features enough to have them memorised in his young adult mind. Taemin can most certainly catch himself spacing out at the counter over the round face and features that somehow still come off as sharp and even sassy. Maybe the scar on his thick eyebrow is what makes all the difference. That and the catty eyes that Taemin knows can glare like no other pair of eyes ever could.

He slides further into the water in the small tub until his toes break the surface on the other end and he wiggles them with a goofy grin. There are bubbles on his half-submerged face that he blows off with childlike joy. When the front door goes, he knows his flatmate has made it home. How the man gets any work done is beyond Taemin when he is never home and all his school stuff always sits by the front door where he swings by to drop it off before going somewhere. Taemin never asks where to, though, because their relationship has gone no further than small talk in the mornings and in the rare evenings when he is actually home. In fact, all Taemin knows about him at this point is that he is two years above Taemin, he studies music, his name is Kim Jonghyun and he suffers from insomnia, which explains the shuffling from the next room when Taemin's whirlwind of a mind wakes him up several times during the night. Sometimes he swears he can hear him talking to someone and wonders who it is that makes themselves available for him to call at shit 'o'clock at night.