Chapter Text
“FUCK!”
Arakita's apron is drenched in hot coffee. He tears it off, kicks it to the back room, and runs his hot-spattered arms under cold water from the sink. Meanwhile, the customer is berating him for his clumsiness and stupidity, yelling “that was my coffee!!” as if his co-worker Mariko isn't currently making him an identical replacement. His skin itches and shrieks with the pain, his face is flushed, his hands shaking.
He takes a deep breath, stomps over to the cash register and asks, “is this credit or debit?” in response to the card that's been shoved in his face.
“Of course it's not a credit card!” snaps the person, an old man with thinning gray hair and an overpriced t-shirt covered in sailboats. “Do you think I'm an idiot? Why on earth would I have a credit card? I don't want to let the government steal all of my money!”
Arakita has no idea how to reply to this, and his first impulse is to jam his fist into the guy's face, but he stuffs that impulse down and says, “okay, so debit?”
“I don't know what that means!” shouts the man, waving the card far too close to Arakita's nose. That he doesn't bite the guy is a miracle. He does snarl, a little, but the man is too busy screaming to notice. Arakita manages to ask him if he has a pin number. “Why would my card have a pin number? It's not a bank card!”
“Well then it's a credit card.” Arakita tries to snatch it out of the air.
“No it ISN'T!” The card zooms past Arakita's ear like an insect, and the man's spit flies from his meaty lips. “If you have a credit card, NHK fee collectors seize your whole paycheck, and then they still come knocking on your door! I don't even have a TV—”
“Do you have to sign your receipt when you use your card?” Arakita says through gritted teeth.
“No, do you really think I'm just going to let the government collect my signature and use it to steal my identity?”
“Okay, do you have cash then?”
“No, I want to pay with my card!”
“If you don't sign it or give me a pin number, how the fu—how I am I supposed to charge your card?”
“Don't charge my card, swipe it!! Don't you know how a cash register works? I want to speak to your manager.” Mariko puts the new coffee down on the counter, rolling her eyes as she does. Arakita's hands are shaking.
“...the manager's on break,” he mumbles, not wanting to raise his voice for fear that he'll start screaming. He grinds his teeth, squeezes his eyes shut. “I am going to swipe your card,” he says, swallowing hard as he speaks.
The customer finally shuts up, hands over his card, and lets Arakita continue with the transaction. Of course, nothing fucking goes right in this hellscape of a coffee shop, so his card is declined. God forbid this imbecile have a fucking clue about his own financial situation before storming in demanding coffee. Arakita's head is throbbing along with his burnt hand. He manages somehow to choke out, “your card has been declined.”
“What does that mean? Why won't you accept my money? This is legal currency, you have to take it!” The man's eyes are bulging and his lips are flecked with spit. “I can't believe this! First you spill my coffee, then you try to make me sign some nonsense I don't even know what it is, and now you won't even let me pay you?! How the hell do you expect to run a business if you won't take people's money?!”
Arakita lunges forward, about the crack the guy in the jaw, but before he can he's pushed back by somebody else at the counter. Who the fuck touched him?? He snarls, balls his hands into fists, and takes a deep breath to calm down and figure out what's happening. He can't just fly in there with violence, he'll get fired, and anyway Fuku-chan would be disappointed in him.
So he looks up, and sees that the person touching him is somebody he knows. He hasn't seen him for months, but he's that huge guy from Sohoku, Tadokoro...what was it, Jin? Anyway he's Kin-chan's friend. Visited him once at Yonan with that green-haired guy Toudou's in love with. Is it okay that he's touching him? Yeah, probably, otherwise he'd have bitten the customer's throat out. Arakita stares at Tadokoro, jerks his shoulder away. “Get off me,” he grumbles.
“Sorry,” he says. “Just trying to help.”
“You can help by stepping aside so I can finish processing this asshole's transaction! Not that I know how the fuck that's going to happen since he won't pay with cash and his card is being declined, which is somehow my fault!”
“How much does he owe?”
“300 yen!!” he shouts, jabbing a finger vaguely in the man's direction. “300 fucking yen! Look at his shirt, look how expensive it is! He definitely has 300 yen, he just won't pay me because he doesn't understand how money works!”
The man gears up to reply with something aghast and dismayed and nonsensical, but before he can say anything Tadokoro says, “I'll pay for it” then drops a small handful of coins into Arakita's shaking outstretched hand. “No big deal.”
The man snatches the coffee off the counter, ranting about how at least
someone
in this coffee shop has manners. Arakita is gripping the counter, white-knuckled and muttering under his breath. It takes a minute, but he pulls his shit together and sticks the money into the register. He doesn't thank Tadokoro, just scowls at him and asks, “what do you want to order?”
Tadokoro glances up at the menu, then says, “I'm picking up two drip coffees, one espresso, two mocha lattes, and a hot chocolate—everything large. Also six chocolate chip cookies. Sorry about the big order, my family's in town on business and I'm on drink duty.” He grins, which makes Arakita want to punch him in the face. He's here with
one
co-worker,
one
, and she's fiddling with her fucking phone. Customers are lining up behind Tadokoro, and he's supposed to just handle
six fucking drinks
like it's no big deal?
He knows Tadokoro, so he doesn't smile like company policy says he has to. “Thanks for making my life a living hell,” he spits. A customer behind Tadokoro yells asking what the hold up is. “I'm taking somebody's order!! Calm the fuck down!!” This earns him an eye roll from his co-worker. “Can you put your goddamn phone down and help me?” he asks.
“I'm asking the boss when she's coming back,” she says, as if that means she shouldn't be prepping Tadokoro's order or handling the other register or
something
. Arakita groans.
Tadokoro says, “I can go somewhere else if the order is too much for you guys right now.”
“No, it's fine, at least you understand how to fucking pay for stuff. Mariko-chan, take the next order while I get started on this one.”
His co-worker looks up from her phone. “I thought you were taking orders and I was making the drinks.”
“I can't deal with fucking speaking to people!! Just do this for me or I'm going to end up headbutting the next customer who opens their goddamn mouth!” Arakita pulls out the cups needed to make the drinks, runs through them as quickly as possible while Mariko is taking the next customer's order. His eyes ache with unshed tears, and it feels like he's grinding his teeth down to the root. Stupid fucking asshole customer, stupid fucking burned hand...he's not paying attention. When he tries to put the cups back, he bangs his head on a low-hanging cabinet. “Fffffuuuckk!!” he hisses, pawing at his forehead. “Who put this cabinet here!”
“Dude, you need to take a break,” says Tadokoro.
“Do you see how many people are lined up here?? You asked for like six drinks, the lady behind you is probably going to want twelve, the guy behind her will probably want 200 and try to rob me!! It's just me and fucking Mariko-chan here, so no breaks for me!!” He's gasping as he speaks, his chest feels tight with rage. He starts putting together the drinks much faster than makes sense, turning on the wrong machines and then turning them off, so blazingly angry with himself for his stupidity that he kicks the door. He desperately wants to go outside and scream.
“I can help,” Tadokoro says. “My parent's bakery has a coffee and tea counter, and I usually run it, so I know how to make most of this stuff.”
Arakita looks helplessly at Mariko, who is trying to count a massive pile of 1-yen coins dumped on the counter by a woman in a business suit. He knows that the manager would probably explode if she knew he let a customer touch all the machines, but Arakita knows him, and things are a lot less likely to be broken if Arakita can calm down enough not to ram his fist into the espresso machine. “Okay,” he says. “Fine. If you want to waste your time working for free, go ahead.”
“It's just to give you a minute to chill,” says Tadokoro.
“Don't you have to bring these stupid drinks back to your stupid family?” He finishes making the lattes, doesn't bother with the foam art he's been trained to make, and slides them over to Mariko for her to ring up.
“Yeah, but it's okay if I take a little extra time. I can just pretend I got lost. Toudou would kill me if I just left you alone losing your shit like this.”
“How the hell do you know Toudou??” he snaps, measuring the milk for the hot chocolate. “Since when the fuck are you friends with him??”
“Since he started dating my best friend. We hang out all the time now—well, most of it's online since we're both still living in our hometowns, and like 60% of it is Toudou pining about Makishima being in England, but we're pals.”
While he was speaking Tadokoro went behind the counter to make the two drip coffees he ordered, and he's begun work on the espresso. “How the fuck can you do that so quickly??” asks Arakita, who is struggling to actually fill a cup with hot water to make hojicha for one-yen-business-lady.
“Like I said, I make this stuff all the time at my own job.” He goes over to Mariko to find out what the next order is, and starts grinding coffee beans.
“Yeah but how do you know where we keep stuff?? I don't even know where half of our shit is most of the time!”
“I just asked Mariko about the beans, and I've been paying attention to where you're grabbing cups and things from.”
This is infuriating. How the fuck is Tadokoro able to do this job so easily? Arakita can't do it without feeling like he needs to bite himself or someone else. Right now all he wants to do is run outside and set the screams trapped in his chest free. Either that or lay on the floor and shut his eyes and let Tadokoro take over completely.
They keep working for about ten minutes. Arakita's heart is slamming against his ribcage, fireworks are blasting in front of his eyes, and cold water is sloshing around in his skull. He leans against the counter, puts his head down and lets Mariko and Tadokoro work around him, bites his lip so he doesn't fucking scream. He feels Tadokoro's hand on his shoulder again. “Dude, go outside and get some air for a minute, okay? We'll take care of things.”
“You literally don't even work here,” says Arakita, voice choked with tears. “Don't you have to get back to your family? The drinks you bought are going to get cold.”
“Yeah, but I'll just microwave them before I go. It's fine, don't worry about it and just go outside.”
So he does. Head held high and fists clenched, Arakita stalks out of the coffee shop, and hurls himself onto the bench outside the sandwich shop two doors down. He throws his arm over his forehead, grinds his teeth and fights a scream. At this point, he's not upset about anything specific, just zapping with toxic energy that he can't get seem to get rid of. He slams his fist against his leg, earns a confused stare from a woman pushing a stroller. He really needs to fucking scream but he gnaws his lip instead because he's still in public, still can't do that. What the fuck is he even upset about at this point? He has dickbag customers all the time, spills hot coffee and bangs his head every goddamn day, this is nothing, nothing, and yet, here he is. Kicking his legs and whimpering like a baby on a sidewalk bench.
As he's curling into himself because it's too cold to just lay out here on the bench with no jacket, he hears footsteps coming toward him, someone sitting down on the bench by his feet. He hasn't memorized what Tadokoro smells like but he's pretty sure it's him. “Your manager came back from break,” he says. “I told her you were sick and had to go home early.”
“What did she say about the fact that you don't work here?” Arakita asks, dragging himself into sitting position.
“Nothing, it was fine. I just told her I was your friend and I was covering for you until she got back from break. She was a little annoyed, but it was better than leaving Mariko on her own, so it wasn't a big deal. She even gave me a free donut as at thank-you.” Tadokoro sits down next to him, nibbling chocolate mochi donut in his hand. “Want some?”
Arakita nods, and Tadokoro rips off a piece. Arakita rolls it around in his mouth, lets the sweetness dissolve onto his tongue. Despite having worked at the coffee shop for a few months now, he's never eaten any of the food there. All day his stomach is in fucking knots and it doesn't occur to him to eat anything. Today's lunch was drip coffee and a can of Bepsi. It occurs to him that the reason he can't handle the onslaught of customers is that the hasn't been feeding himself, but that thought just makes him even angrier.
He finishes the donut scrap in two bites. Tadokoro hands him another piece. “So, you don't have to go back to work today. My apologies if you needed the hours.”
“I don't. My parents have enough money, and they'll give it to me if I ask. They just wanted me to start building a resume during college. I kept telling them bike team stuff would be enough but god forbid they listen to me.”
“Hmm...I wouldn't know. I just got automatically hired to run the bakery with my parents. The more work experience you have, the better off you probably are...” Tadokoro scratches the nape of his neck. “But it seems like this job is pretty rough on you?”
Arakita groans. “That's the understatement of the fucking century. It's not rough, it's impossible. None of the customers understand what money is, what paying for things is, what coffee is, or what any of the other basic components of a transaction are.”
“Well, one thing customer service does is show you how awful and rude people can be. A few days ago I was working the counter at the bakery, and a woman told me she was going to send her son in to beat me up because we ran out of rye bread.” Tadokoro sighs, slumps further onto the bench and leans his head back. “No one ever showed up, but she sounded pretty serious. My mother wanted to call the police.”
“That's fucked up,” groans Arakita, grinding his teeth and flopping on top of Tadokoro. As soon as he does he jerks away from him, realizing right away that he doesn't know this person well enough to use him as a pillow. If this were Fuku-chan he'd be laying with his head in his lap.
After clearing his throat and staring at a nearby tree for thirty difficult seconds, he says, “speaking of your family's bakery, aren't they in Tokyo on business? Weren't you supposed to get them drinks? What happened to the drinks?”
“I told my brother to pick them up from the store. It's a little out of the way but it's not a big deal. I'll have to meet up with my family to help move boxes into the truck in twenty minutes or so, but right now, my priority is making sure you're okay.”
“Why?” snorts Arakita, rolling his eyes. “You barely even know me, what the fuck do you care if I'm okay? And why wouldn't I be? I'm not an infant, I can handle my own shit.”
“You were obviously having a panic attack,” says Tadokoro. Then he corrects himself, says, “or something.” Which is good because who is this bakery-working-at asshole to decide what's going on in Arakita's head? Maybe it was a panic attack, but he doesn't want somebody else making that call.
So he mutters, “you don't know me,” and kicks a shredded candy wrapper away from the bench. This creates a silence that he hates more than speaking, so he says, “anyway I'm fine now. Really. So you can go back and do your job or whatever.”
“You sure? Because I can walk you back home if you want.”
“Sure, walk me home, hold my hand while we cross the street and then feed me mushy peas in a fucking airplane spoon. Like I said, I'm fine.” As he speaks his throat clogs like a sink drain, and he has to gnaw the skin around his lips to stop himself from crying. Yeah, fine. Fine is why he felt apocalyptic because he spilled some coffee on his hands. “Ugh. If you really want to use me as an excuse not to help your parents, I guess you can.”
Tadokoro nods, lifts himself off the bench. “Yeah. I hate helping out with the product. My dad spends the whole time yelling at me about proper lifting technique.”