Chapter Text
The queue outside the restaurant is almost as long as regular, despite the cold season. Jeno keeps looking up from his phone and over the shoulder of the person in front of him, doing a quick headcount of how many more customers remain between him and the cozy, candlelit interior, visible through the glass front of the place.
It’s a swanky cafe-style restaurant, Renjun’s favourite since they came here for their second date a year ago. Jeno spies an empty table in the corner of the full room—actually, it appears to be the only table available as he scans the periphery. His worry is momentary though, since there’s only one guy left in front of him and Jeno has a reservation.
It would be difficult not to notice the young man whose back he’s facing, with his attention-grabbing eggshell pink hair, though Jeno hasn’t caught a glimpse of his face yet. For the past thirty minutes he’s been immersed in his phone, though from the back—despite not meaning to pry—Jeno can see he’s been playing candy crush the whole time. He bites back amusement, imagining this stranger is as bored as him by now, probably cold too judging from how his shoulders have gotten increasingly hunched into himself.
Excitement and relief floods him when the waiter comes to the entrance with a smile and asks the other customer: ‘Table for how many, sir?’ to which two fingers are raised. The waitstaff is starting to show the guy in when Jeno catches on to something amiss.
Not thinking, he places a hand on the pink-haired guy’s shoulder because the staff is further away and out of his reach. Both men turn, looking startled and Jeno hastily drops his arm. He sees the other guy’s face for the first time as wide eyes are swung on him, under a slightly furrowed brow.
‘I-I have a reservation,’ Jeno addresses the server. ‘Under Lee Jeno?’
The uniformed man fumbles with his clipboard, appearing inappropriately confused. As he does, despite not looking at his face, Jeno can sense the mild knit of the pinkette’s forehead intensifying into a frown.
‘Oh yes, Mr Lee—‘ His suspicions are confirmed when the waiter’s eyes roam from the single vacant table behind the sparkling glass, to the two of them standing before him. He shuffles his feet nervously.
‘I’m terribly sorry, sir, I made a mistake…’ To his relief, it’s the other customer being addressed in a low voice. Impatient and on edge from the mix up, Jeno pushes past the stranger, their shoulders brushing and starts heading in, eyes honed in on his table.
‘Hey!’
This time around, he’s stunned to feel a hand on his bicep—grip strong and tight. Combined with the obvious annoyance lacing a deep voice, it’s enough to make Jeno halt gingerly.
The guy who’s just been turned away meets his eyes squarely for the first time, their gazes locking. He’s around the same age as Jeno. Good-looking. The rest of the customers in the queue behind them had dissipated as soon as they found out the restaurant was filled for the night—it’s closing in an hour and the sign displayed on the front clearly states they stop accepting new patrons at this time. But this guy seems awfully stubborn.
‘Can I help you?’ Jeno means to sound polite, but it comes out with a somewhat irritated tone due to his shock, and he winces.
The guy’s eyes widen further, his voice lower as he snaps, ‘I’ve been waiting almost an hour. In the cold.’
Jeno just blinks, gaping for a moment, floored by the other’s sheer entitlement.
‘So have I, if you didn’t notice. And I called to reserve that table in advance.’ He jerks his head for emphasis in the direction.
Seeming to be stricken speechless by this rebuttal, the guy runs a hand through his hair and wets his lips, still glaring at Jeno. His apparent fluster brings Jeno out of his defensiveness and back to himself. He’s usually more gentlemanly than this, and of course he can understand the disappointment having waited almost the same amount of time in these temperatures, but the stranger’s pushy reaction had just thrown him.
He’s about to apologise graciously, smoothen things over, when the waiter interrupts at this opportune point, probably worried they’ll escalate into an argument.
‘I’m truly sorry, sir; if I may offer you a reservation first thing tomorrow evening…’
‘Forget it.’ That deep voice rises again in the night air. Jeno huffs out a breath; it’s freezing more the later the hour gets and he just wants to be inside. He feels a pang of unexpected sympathy for the stranger, despite his rudeness, as he squares his shoulders into a slouch and starts turning away.
His phone vibrates in his pocket and he fishes it out reflexively. It’s Renjun, letting him know his taxi is almost there with a cute sticker thanking him for lining up. Jeno smiles without thinking.
When he looks up, he’s on the receiving end of a dirty look. He doesn’t have time to say or do anything before the pink-haired guy is pivoting and stalking away dramatically. Beside Jeno, the waiter is a shade paler as he ushers Jeno finally into the restaurant, bowing incessant apologies, and he can’t bring himself to blame him for his careless, confrontation-causing mess-up.
It’s Wednesday afternoon during his shift and Jaemin looks up to a sight that makes his eyes narrow—a face he dimly recognises pushing open the door of the campus coffee shop.
The guy doesn’t notice him at first, too absorbed in texting somebody on his phone—probably his girlfriend, after enjoying a nice date at the table they disputed over five days ago. Jaemin wipes his hands on his apron, feeling stupidly out of his element as the guy approaches with hapless obliviousness.
He almost flinches when the stranger raises his head, staring up right into Jaemin’s face, but smoothly keeps his cool. The other guy seems to be less adept at hiding his emotions, face falling in a blanch.
Well, that just pisses Jaemin off more. It wasn’t easy for him to put the incident behind after a few days; who is this guy to stride back into his life when he’s finally forgotten how he had to trek home in bitter disappointment, and more importantly lose any chances he had with the girl he was trying to woo, Jisung?
‘Can I help you?’ The words leave his mouth without consideration, and he belatedly realises he could be misconstrued as mocking the words the stranger said the other night. Nearby, his colleague Chenle who’s sweeping the floor glances at them, alerting him that he’s not being as warm as usual.
‘Welcome, may I take your order?’ he rephrases stiffly, and the guy whose saucer eyes haven’t left his face for the past minute snaps his mouth shut.
He appears as discomfited as Jaemin feels, but to his surprise, doesn’t swivel on his heel and make himself scarce. Instead, he orders a drink, not meeting Jaemin’s eyes, then palms his credit card over the reader without a word. Jaemin watches him move to the collection counter without returning his gaze again.
He has plenty of time while waiting for the espresso machine and whipping the foam to regret his instinctive reaction, and realise anew what he already did on Saturday night, walking against the wind with his hands shoved into his pockets to the train station.
He was in the wrong; he’d been rude and unreasonable. He should apologise.
Because this is the sort of person he is, Jaemin has in fact been feeling contrite and guilty about the incident ever since, despite his attempts to push the feelings away. He overreacted, gracelessly, and made a complete stranger feel bad for a mistake that wasn’t his—wasn’t anyone’s really. He’d been sorely disappointed, and cold, but that didn’t justify being selfish.
Come to think of it, it was possible his jerky behaviour had ruined this guy’s night, with his girlfriend or whoever.
He realises it’s a blessing he walked into Jaemin’s workplace today, a golden chance to offer the sincere apology he’d unconsciously been hoping to. He’s been working here for awhile although he doesn’t go to this university, but doesn’t remember seeing this person before. He’s evidently a student. No matter—there’s no guarantee they’ll bump into each other a third time, so this is his only opportunity to say sorry.
Discreetly blocked from view, Jaemin clumsily scrawls on the cardboard sleeve with his marker, hesitating before adding an emoji. Is it too much? Too—god forbid—flirty? But before he has time to ponder further, he glimpses the guy craning his head to check what Jaemin is doing.
He nearly drops the sleeve, all thumbs as he hastens to shove the hot cup into it and hustle to the pick-up counter.
He has his customer-ready smile on, confident of the power of its full wattage to dissolve the unfortunate misunderstanding at long last—but in an instant, it slips as the prior silent and mysterious guy opens his mouth and speaks the first sentence besides his order since he entered the shop.
‘Why’d you take so long? Didn’t poison me in revenge, did you?’
Jaemin blinks, shell-shocked, for longer than he’s willing to admit as the casual quip hits him like a slap in the face. He’s been working here for three months, and it’s the first time a customer has levelled such a malicious accusation at him.
He doesn’t even care if it’s in jest, a sick joke; the only kind of human being who would crack jokes like that anyway would be an—
‘Asshole.’
He mutters it low under his breath, not caring if Chenle heard, if the customer—the asshole—heard. Perverse gratification is immediate balm for his wound as it’s the guy’s turn now to look like he’s been struck by lightning.
This time, he does leave the cafe without a second glance back, jaw set as he shoves the door open and vanishes into the sunlight. Jaemin can only feel a knee-buckling relief as he crumples the cardboard sleeve he managed to swipe off—‘Ow, fuck,’ the guy muttered when he grabbed the burning paper cup from the worktop, but Jaemin didn’t really give a shit—in his fist, then heaves an aggrieved sigh and truly starts to set about trying to forget the whole unsavoury pair of encounters.