Chapter Text
You can tell a lot about a person from their coffee order. This may be a statement of the obvious, but it’s something only true baristas of the world can comprehend. You can figure out what basic personality traits a person has in the coffee they choose. For example, if it’s super sweet, they’re nice, a pushover; if it’s practically black, they’re stone cold, closed off, etcetera. It’s almost like a glimpse in an astrology chart, or a brief psychological analysis. Both of those require proper studying and research and even years and years of education, but for a barista, all it requires is a job, intuition, and time.
Remus Lupin stood thinking about this as he washed dishes in the back. It was slow today in the small café he worked at. He was merely washing dishes to pass time; the glass he had been hand washing could have been seen from outer space by how shiny it was, yet he continued to scrub it, deep in thought.
Remus hated this job sometimes. Okay, that was a lie, he hated it a LOT. There were days where he was so bored he could’ve left early and no one would have noticed or cared because of how slow it was. The few times it was busy, though, there would always be THE customers. The ones who practically sucked the life out of you with their glares, their passive aggressive tones, their obvious disappointment. Let’s just call them what they are: Karen’s. The worst of the worst. The demons from hell.
What made his job even worse, though, is that this café wasn’t a standalone café. It was a part of a bookstore, Callisto , because what doesn’t go better with a brand new book than mediocre coffee made by a 19 year old college student who would rather be dead than be here right now?
Okay, that was a bit overdramatic, but he definitely wished he was anywhere else. The customers here were even worse because they were retail customers, too.
Besides, he had other, better things he could do, too; he had plenty of homework, that’s for sure. Majoring in History was pretty much a breeze for him, but that didn’t mean the piles of essays were quick to get done. He also could hang out with friends…
Yeah, that was a pretty funny joke.
Remus and the word “outgoing” didn’t go together at all. He was the type of kid to sit and read rather than socialize with his peers. It’s not that he didn’t want to, of course, just the soothing relaxation of reading a good book outweighed any benefits friends could give a young Remus.
This didn’t mean he had never had friends, though; he just never had a set group of friends that would last very long. As much as Remus didn’t want to admit it, he was pretty approachable, and very kind. This made the extraverted, outgoing kids “take him under their wing,” in a way. This meant getting invited to sit with their friends and constantly being asked to hang out outside of school, to which Remus, if he could, would say no, or find some random excuse not to go.
He never knew why his gut reaction was always no. It’s not that he didn’t like the people, it just felt weird being so… friendly like that, so… affectionate? Remus didn’t know how to describe it. His friends he had were always so open, always telling Remus about really intimate, vulnerable details about their life, which was weird to him, since he never did the same, and made sure of it. He didn’t like people knowing stuff about him. He felt that he would be forced to open up, be poked and prodded and judged by his friends, if he said yes to hanging out. He knew this wasn’t true, deep down, but it was a good excuse as any to shrink away from becoming closer to his friends. Eventually, they would deem his refusal to hang out as a clue to how he “actually felt” about them, and would drift away, and Remus was okay with that. He thought, at least. He would just stick to his books, who wanted nothing more than to be read. They would never ask for his deepest, darkest secret, which he would never-
“Excuse me? Is anyone here? Hello?”
Remus awoke from his deep thoughts to see a middle aged woman standing by the register. Her lips were pursed, her hair cut in a short bob, her expensive, clean white purse sitting on the counter as if she lived there. Great, a Karen , Remus thought.
He proceeded to awaken the inner customer service attitude deep within him, pushing back his slightly-too-long, curly dirty blonde hair away from his face, painting a stupidly fake smile, and fixing his posture from slumped to poised as he walked over to the register.
“Hello, miss, what can I get for you today?” He asked, raising his voice an octave higher in the process. Ah, customer service; brings out the fakest in people.
“Hm… finally. I’ll take a medium caramel latte with half the pumps, soy milk, no foam, extra hot, but not too hot. You people are always trying to burn my tongue off,” Karen said, her voice like nails on a chalkboard.
‘You people’? Fuck you, I’m not a different species, bitch , Remus thought angrily, but on the outside he was still smiling, quickly jotting down her order on the cup.
“Alright, is there anything else you would like?”
“No,” she replied coldly.
“Great, that’ll be $5.60.”
“$5.60? For a damn latte?” She said, raising her voice a bit, yet still having the intimidating, eerie tone of a whisper.
“Yes ma’am, we do charge a bit more for the soy milk, unfortunately.”
“I can’t control my lactose intolerance!” She growled, raising her voice even more. People closest to the café looked over.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s not much I can do about it.” He was really not feeling a Karen meltdown today.
“...Well, I want to speak to the manager, it’s ridiculous that you’re charging people over stuff they can’t contr-”
“My manager isn’t on duty today, unfortunately,” he interrupted, his patience wearing thin, “but you could leave a note or talk to a bookseller, I suppose,” he added quickly, realizing what he did.
“...No, I’ll just pay,” she mumbled, digging through her oversized purse for her wallet.
Not like you can’t afford an extra fifty cents, , he thought, silently eyeing her clean, expensive dress and jewelry.
Once she had paid he handed her a receipt to sign. If anything, could she at least be a tipper?
He got started on her latte as she placed the pen and merchant copy of the receipt back, then moved over way too close to the counter, eyeing Remus’s barista work like a hawk.
That was one of Remus’s pet peeves; he hated when people stood too close to the counter and watched him make their drinks like he was going to spit in theirs or fuck it up or something. He didn’t like being in the spotlight in the first place, so he hated when people watched him.
He made sure he did everything perfectly: he used soy milk, he put half of the pumps of caramel, and he made it “ extra hot but not too hot ,” as the miss princess over there asked for.
“Medium caramel latte with soy,” he called, pretending she wasn’t standing there right in front of him.
She practically snatched her coffee the second it touched the counter and sashayed away. No “thank you,” no “have a nice day.” Bitch.
He rolled his eyes and turned over to clean the steam wand the moment she turned away, immediately dropping his customer service act. He moved over to put the receipt away, peeking a look at the receipt briefly before stuffing it in the register, then did a double take and stopped altogether.
In a loopy, but strict, prestigious cursive, she had written “ Be respectful ” above her signature, with a fat, overly lined “0” on the tip line.
Remus tried to conceal the anger that was quickly seeping up his body. Be respectful? She gives me shitty, bitchy advice as a fucking tip?
He turned away from the register after angrily crumpling up the receipt and throwing it in the trash (he didn’t care if he got in trouble, he doubted he would anyway), and headed to the back towards the dishes. He practically almost broke the mugs and plates as he moved them angrily and carelessly onto the drying rack.
How fucking dare she? He was nothing but nice to her, despite her annoying order and her bitchy attitude, and she still didn’t give him a tip? Not even a single dollar?
And the words “be respectful.” Why did adults love to say that when someone younger than them “talks back” to them? Remus thought about this as he quickly and harshly put dried dishes back in their spots throughout the cafe. Even though he was a quiet kid, he had his fair share of sit downs with adults due to his minor anger issues at times, and whenever he tried to justify his actions they would always say something along the lines of “be respectful.” This bitch wasn’t even respectful to him , a nineteen year old getting paid minimum fucking wage, so why was she telling him to be respectful?
I’ll show her what being fucking respectful-
“Excuse me-”
“WHAT?” Remus yelled a little too loudly before he could stop himself. His patience was running very thin, and the receipt note broke a barrier within his self control. He wisped around to glare at the customer who disrupted his thoughts, and then stopped, practically almost dropping the plate he was holding.
There, standing in front of him, was practically the most beautiful man Remus John Lupin had ever seen.