Work Text:
Hoseok rarely remembers specific customers.
Morning shifts are a fast-paced blur of yawning, bleary-eyed college students in t-shirts and sweatpants, anxiety-plagued interns asking for java chip frappuccinos and miniature vanilla bean scones and quad-shots of espresso, office workers with too much hair gel, their skinny argyle ties Windsor-knotted and their untailored, slightly crumpled pinstripe grey suits clearly off the sale rack, and the occasional high-school students asking for disgustingly sweet concoctions that Hoseok dreads to have to make.
Night shifts are slower, lazier, an unhurried line of soccer moms clutching Gucci wallets and Nike gym bags, thirty-somethings with a middle management furrow in their brows, packs of giggling, Brandy Melville-wearing middle school girls who order hot chocolate with whipped cream and commandeer the only armchairs in the shop with unfettered access to the electrical outlets to gossip and gush over the latest boy bands.
They’re not all the same, of course, but they do still have a tendency to blend together after a while, interchangeable and unremarkable.
Well.
They used to, at least.
Until ‘Yoongi, yeah, that’s Y-O-O-N-G-I, no, there isn’t a fucking ‘E’ anywhere, god, are you illiterate?’ starts to come in.
“Shit,” Jimin mutters, puffing out his cheeks to blow a chunk of recently-dyed pink hair off his forehead. “He’s back.”
“Language,” Hoseok chastises, automatically, before he hesitates. Blinks. Registers a tightening in his chest and a faint flicker of awareness in his gut. “Wait, who’s back?”
“The gross Backstreet-blond douchebag with the black Honda bike and the pretentious goth-punk leather jacket,” Jimin replies, grimacing at the parking lot. “Ugh.”
“Oh,” Hoseok says, sniffing as he reaches behind him to adjust the strings of his apron. They’re already perfect. “Him.”
“Oh,” Jimin mimics, sardonically. “Him. Like you didn’t know exactly who I meant, hyung, honestly, he threatened to file a complaint against you last week for accidentally touching his fucking hand.”
“Language,” Hoseok hisses. “And — why would I know exactly who you meant, we have tons of — of — unpleasant regulars —”
Jimin snorts. “He’s a dick,” he retorts. “And he’s a dick who only ever shows up when you’re working.”
Heat suffuses the nape of Hoseok’s neck, and he can’t quite tell if it’s entirely from anger. “That’s not — he doesn’t — how preposterous —”
“He knows your name,” Jimin points out, just as the bell above the door chimes cheerfully. Obnoxiously. Ominously. “D’you know what he calls me? Mijin. Mijin . I can’t even tell if he’s trying to be funny or if he genuinely believes I’m a character from fucking ‘All of Us Are Dead’ —”
“Language, Jimin!” Hoseok snaps, voice emerging higher and shriller and louder than he’d technically intended for it to. “And he doesn’t — he doesn’t know my name, okay, he asks me if I’m new every time he’s here.”
Jimin rolls his eyes hard enough to pull a muscle, and then yanks his apron off. “You’re more oblivious than Joonie-hyung was when Taehyungie and Jungkookie tried to tell him it was Bam who knocked over this bonsai tree on the goddamn shelf .”
“What does that have to do with — The two of them did what? Namjoonie would kill them if he —”
“Hello?” a frustratingly familiar voice interrupts, low and rough and impatient. “Are either of you going to take my order? That’s what you’re back there for, isn’t it?”
Jimin levels a pained-looking glare at ‘Yoongi, not fucking Yoonji, do I look like a girl to you?’. “I’m going on break now, hyung,” he announces, flatly. “Have… fun, I guess.”
Hoseok watches him go, feeling oddly helpless. “Right,” he sighs, and then throws his shoulders back, plastering a tired smile on his face. “What can I get you?”
Yoongi returns twenty minutes after initially leaving, posture guarded and expression unreadable.
“Did you… need something else?” Hoseok asks tentatively, arching a brow.
Yoongi stops in front of the bakery display case, remaining quiet for a few moments, and the atmosphere changes. Suddenly it weighs heavy with expectation. Because Yoongi’s gaze, sharp and dark and cat-like, has turned cool and curious and magnetising — and it flits across Hoseok’s face, sweeping along the line of his jaw to the point of his chin, taking in the light freckles dusting his cheeks and the little mole just beside his right eye, pausing to stare, so very deliberately, when Hoseok licks the Chapstick off his lips.
“This drink,” Yoongi finally says, clearing his throat and placing his cup on the edge of the counter. “It’s not hot enough.”
“Oh.” Hoseok grits his teeth. “I mean, it has been almost half an hour, but — sure, let me make you another —”
“No,” Yoongi blurts out, too quickly, and is that a blush staining the tips of his ears pink? “No, don’t bother. I just — I just thought you should know. For future reference.”
“For future reference,” Hoseok repeats, blankly.
Yoongi straightens slowly. “The temperature was inadequate. You should… be aware.”
“Right,” Hoseok says, dragging the word out. “Okay…?”
And yet Yoongi still doesn’t move. “Great.”
“Thanks for… letting me know,” he tries.
“No problem.”
“And you’re — you’re sure you don’t want another one?”
“No, no. I’m — I should really get going.”
“Right.”
He still doesn’t move. “It wasn’t, like, lukewarm,” he explains, unnecessarily. “It was just. Not. Hot enough.”
He swallows. “Okay. That’s — good to know.”
“Excellent.”
“Yeah.”
He finally takes several jerky steps towards the exit, glancing back and forth from his hands — curled into fists at his sides — to the cup he’d left on the counter. “Excellent,” he mumbles, practically under his breath, before fumbling with the door handle. “Jesus fucking — ah — have a — have a nice day, Hoseok!”
Hoseok frowns as he jogs to his car, wondering if Jimin had been right; maybe he did know his name. Shrugging, he picks up Yoongi’s discarded caramel macchiato, noting, with a prickling surge of irritation, that it feels like he’d barely even taken a sip. He’s about to toss it in the trashcan when he sees something strange.
Handwriting, crisp and masculine and elegant, sloping across the cardboard sleeve of the cup, right beneath where he’d already scrawled ‘Yoongi’.
A phone number.
Yoongi’s phone number.
Oh. So Jimin was right after all.