Chapter Text
“Table four is ready!” Minho rings the little bell on the counter and rushes back to the stove to tend to the next order.
Felix swings by and grabs the plates with a quick “got’em” as he takes the food to the correct table.
Minho keeps pushing plate after plate out for the next hour or so until the lunch rush finally dies down.
Once the restaurant quiets down for hopefully at least long enough for them to catch their breaths, Felix comes into the kitchen to help Minho with the dishes.
“Why does everyone have to eat at the exact same time? Can’t they space it out a little more?” He gasps like he just ran a marathon. “It’s like they have no consideration for us in the food industry!”
Minho huffs out a laugh and throws a towel over his shoulder after washing his hands for the thousandth time that day. “But when would you eat if we always had a group in here from open to close?”
Felix considers this before throwing himself on a stool and downing a bottle of water. “Fair.” He swings his legs carelessly, hitting his heels on the legs of the stool until Minho gives him a pointed look, making him still immediately. “I just wish I didn’t have to run around like a chicken with my head cut off for two hours, just to sit and stare out the window for the following hour or so after that. It’s giving me whiplash!” He dramatically throws his head around to make his point.
“Well, you won’t have to sit still for long. The produce guy should be coming by in the next 30 minutes or so. Can you help him bring everything in? I need to try to get some admin stuff done while it’s quiet around here.” Felix nods and Minho starts to take off his apron and walk towards his office. He is always behind on admin work.
When he opened The Dragonfly, he didn’t realize he’d spend just as much time (if not more) behind a desk, as he did cooking in the kitchen. As much as he loves coming to work everyday and getting to see all his loyal customers leave with smiles on their faces and full stomachs, sometimes he wonders if it’s worth the pile of papers he’s always being crushed under.
He spends the next half hour sorting through receipts and plugging in all his expenses for the week before he’s called back to the kitchen. As he’s walking through to start prepping the new customer's meal, he sees the crates of produce stacked up against the wall where the produce guy always leaves them. He scans over the vegetables and his eyes stop on the fruits. “What is this??” He picks up a plum from the top crate and turns to Felix who is standing on the other side of the counter.
Felix grimaces before responding. “Oh yeah, Jisung-ssi said the peaches weren’t quite ready yet, so he sent those instead.” He willed someone new to walk in the restaurant so he wouldn’t have to subject himself to the tantrum he knew was coming.
Unfortunately, he never was the luckiest person.
“Plums instead of peaches?!” Minho holds the plum out towards Felix as if he’s threatening him with it. “What kind of trade is that?! I asked for peaches! I’m supposed to make a peach cobbler!” He whips around and drops the plum back in the crate before making his way to the refrigerator to grab the supplies he needs to make the wraps for the customers waiting in the dining room. “What am I supposed to do now? Make plum cobbler?! That’s not even a thing!” Minho continues to rant, mostly turning into him mumbling to himself while Felix nervously looks around making sure no one can hear his boss.
“I’m sure you can find something delicious to make with them hyung. You always make the best desserts!” Felix tries to sweet talk the older to calm him down. He’s grown accustomed to hearing his boss complain about everything that goes slightly against his plans. He is a very particular person with everything planned out down to the leafy garnish that goes on each plate. He even has fresh flowers delivered every few days to put on all of the tables in the dining room. They have to be white cosmos flowers, not pink or purple, they must be white. He accepts nothing less than perfection. Unfortunately, Jisung, the produce guy, does not seem to understand this and is frequently replacing items for somewhat similar items if he doesn’t deem the originals good enough for use. It drives Minho crazy.
“I just don’t know how he expects me to just accept a completely different fruit! I’ll have to completely rewrite the menu.” Minho starts pacing around the island holding the knife he used to cut the wraps a moment earlier. “A plum dessert won’t go with the entree I had planned as the special and then I’ll have to find a new wine recommendation to go with the new entree…” He continues spiraling as Seungmin walks in the back door and elbows Felix to get his attention. He’s holding a coffee cup out towards him.
“What’s wrong with him this time?”
Felix exhales and gratefully takes the cup before inhaling the smell of vanilla and caffeine. “Plums.” He looks straight into Seungmin’s eyes with as much seriousness as he could muster, then walks to the back to gather his things to get ready to leave for the day.
Seungmin just sighs, knowing better than to question his boss, unless he wants to listen to a 30 minute rant about plums. He walks around the counter and into the kitchen, stopping Minho and carefully taking the knife out of his hands.
“You’re going to trip and impale yourself if you keep pacing around like a serial killer.” Seungmin deadpans as he puts the knife in the sink to be washed.
Seungmin managed to get Minho’s mind off the plums long enough until the restaurant picked up again and they didn’t have time to think about anything but the next order.
—
It’s been a week since the plum incident, in which Minho flawlessly pulled off a new special and dessert, as he does every time he’s thrown off his routine. Jisung is coming back for this week’s delivery today and this time Minho is going to receive the order, just to make sure he’s not trying to sneak scallions instead of yellow onions this time. He almost never is the one to receive the produce deliveries, since he likes to spend that time in his office. He’s only really spoken to Jisung two or three times since he hired him a couple of months ago. He’s always a little on the scatterbrained side and it spikes Minho’s anxiety to be around him for too long. He couldn’t imagine living life so carelessly, like he never knows what he’ll be doing in the next hour. He shivers just thinking about it.
He makes it to the restaurant from his short walk from home and starts opening up for the day. Seungmin always opens with him on Tuesday’s, so he’s not surprised when the light brunette pops up right behind him while he’s flipping chairs off the tables.
“Boo!” Seungmin taunts as Minho just slowly turns around with a quirked eyebrow.
“You know, you’d think you’d learn after the hundredth time that you can’t scare me. I’m always aware of my surroundings.” He dramatically glances all around the store. “Like how I am aware that you didn’t bring me a coffee this morning.” Minho shakes his head like he’s disappointed.
Seungmin drops his head and smiles a small bashful smile. “Sorry hyung, I overslept and didn’t have time to stop at the coffee shop on my way here.” Minho shrugs and they both settle in for another busy day.
—
Jisung wakes up at 4:30 in the morning to go check on his cabbage. It got colder than he thought it would last night, and now he’s worried he’s going to lose some of his crop.
He splashes some water on his face and brushes his teeth before throwing on a pair of overalls and pushing through the back door. It’s still dark out and the breeze makes him shiver. What happened to spring coming early this year? It’s still freezing out here! He rubs up and down his arms as he makes his way back to the farm that is connected to his backyard.
He built his house right next to all his crops so he could always be next to them. He loved his farm more than his family at times. He couldn’t bear to live further than a 5 minute walk from all his babies.
“Hello my children! Are you cold?” He whispers out to the empty field. He ducked down once he made it to the cabbage and felt the leaves to see if they had frozen. Luckily, they seem to be okay.
“Oh thank god! I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had lost you guys!” He tenderly pets the leaves of the cabbage plant before standing up and checking on the rest of the field. He’s got several deliveries today, so he starts prepping his truck for the long day. He does his best to do all his deliveries on just two days of the week, so he’s not running around town everyday. Today he has four deliveries to different restaurants and grocery stores around their little town.
His workers don’t come around until 6, so he has the quiet early morning to himself. He spends it chatting with the fruits and vegetables as he gathers everything he needs for the day.
Once the sun starts rising, he heads back to his house for a cup of coffee and some breakfast. He’s never been great at feeding himself, he’s always too busy thinking about the next thing he needs to be doing. But he tries to at least grab a protein bar in the mornings so he doesn’t feel sick by mid morning.
While he’s leaning against his kitchen counter, he hears the back door swing open and peeks his head around the corner. His workers Changbin and Jeongin both walk in together and sleepily nod at Jisung.
“Morning hyung.” Jeongin walks straight to the coffee pot with his eyes half closed.
Changbin pulls up a chair and watches the two slowly sip their drinks. “Morning boss. Jeez, did you sleep at all last night?” He points to his own under eyes while looking right into Jisungs’.
“I was worried about my babies! I woke up at 2 and looked at the temperature, then I couldn’t fall back to sleep.” He explains like it’s a completely normal thing to lose sleep over. “I ended up going out there before 5 to check on them.” He takes his empty mug over to the sink to rinse it out.
“Ah, okay, and I was worried you’d lost sleep over nothing.” Changbin rolls his eyes, knowing how his friend was about his crops.
“Don’t disrespect my kids! They deserve to live comfortable lives!” Jisung motions to the back door as the three of them head out to the farm for their morning tasks.
“Innie, you’ll come with me today on deliveries. Bin, you can stay back and clear out the north field for our next crop.” Jisung leans against the truck, mentally preparing himself for another long day.
—
By the time he makes it to his last delivery of the day, it’s 2 in the afternoon. He always tries to reach The Dragonfly after the lunch rush so as to not distract Minho and his team while they are busy.
He walks in the front door and catches sight of Felix and waves. The small blond boy smiles and makes his way over to him. “Jisung-ssi! Is it already that time?” Felix looks at his bare wrist to ‘check the time’, looking back up at Jisung with a chuckle.
“Actually, I just remembered, Minho hyung wanted to receive this delivery today, let me go grab him.” Felix turned around to run to the back before Jisung could respond.
Jisung’s only interacted with Minho a few times. He almost always did his deliveries with Seungmin or Felix. It threw him off a little that Minho had specifically wanted to receive the delivery this week. Was something wrong? Was he going to fire him? He willed himself to not expect the worst.
Minho was an intimidating man. Even with the lavender hair, it didn’t make him easier to approach. The first time he met Minho, he figured he had no chance in securing his restaurant as a client. He thought Minho hated him. He was shocked when Seungmin called him a day later to set up a contract. Ever since then, Minho has seemed to keep his distance. Jisung couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or if he was really just that busy.
By the time Jisung pulled himself out of his spiral, Minho was walking out of the kitchen and towards him. Jisung wiped his sweaty palms on his overalls and put on his best smile.
“Minho-ssi! It’s great to see you again!” Minho gave him a tight lipped smile and followed Jisung out to the truck to look over the produce.
“It has been a while, hasn’t it?” Minho looks at him carefully, not letting his smile reach his eyes. “How are the crops doing?”
Jisung wonders how much Minho really cares about his crops, but if there’s one thing about Jisung, it’s that he loves to talk about his children. He goes on to explain in explicit detail how each and every one of his crops are doing even when he notices Minho’s lack of interest as he starts picking up the different fruits sitting in the truck. He notices Minho lingering on one particular crate and he lets his current sentence about the cabbage trail off.
“What are these?” Minho holds what is clearly a lemon up and looks over his shoulder at Jisung.
Jisung stutters, not knowing if this is a trick question or not. “T-those are lemons… Is there something wrong with them?” When he looks back up at Minho, he freezes under the intense gaze of the older man.
“These are the size of a mandarin orange. Why are they so tiny?” He picks up more of the lemons to prove his point.
Jisung is a bit taken aback by the slander to his beautiful lemons. “That is just the size they wanted to be… I promise they are amazing quality, I picked them right at their peak! Sometimes they just don’t grow as large.” He walks over to the crate to look over the lemons, almost reaching in to soothe the lemons from the harsh words.
Minho looks at Jisung like he grew a second head as he exhales. “Fine, forget about the lemons. I wanted to talk about the plum incident last week.” He grabs the crate of lemons and starts to walk them inside. Jeongin grabs the next crate and trails behind the other two.
“Plum incident?” Jisung questions, unsure what Minho is referring to.
“I specifically requested peaches last week, and when I came out to look at the delivery, there were no peaches. Only plums.” Minho taps his foot on the ground like it should be obvious why he’s frustrated. “I didn’t ask for plums.”
“Oh!” Jisung exclaims, “The peaches weren’t quite ready, and I didn’t want to bring you hard peaches, so I brought the plums instead! The plums were at their absolute peak that day! I remember how happy they were when I plucked them in the morning.” Jisung smiles at the memory of finding that his plums did so well. He only started growing plums in the last year or so and has been excited to see how much they’ve been thriving.
“The plums were happy?” Minho raises one eyebrow before shaking his head. “Regardless of what mood the fruit was in, I didn’t ask for plums. I had to completely rewrite my menu to accommodate them!” He throws his arms into the air. “All I’m asking is, if you can’t bring me the produce I requested, at least call me in advance to determine a solution.”
Jisung doesn’t really understand how supplementing plums for peaches could really derail his restaurant operations that much, but he understands how it could be frustrating to not receive exactly what you ask for. “Sure thing, Minho-ssi. I apologize for the trouble it caused you.” He bows deeply.
Jeongin finished bringing in the rest of the crates while Jisung pulled out the forms for Minho to sign, declaring the delivery complete. While Minho looked over the forms for what seemed like an unnecessarily long time, like he was reading every word on each page, Jisung let himself glance over the man's side profile. He doesn’t mean to stare, but he’s never really gotten the chance to really take in how beautiful Minho is. His face reminds him of a Greek god. His tan skin accented by his faded purple hair. At some point he realizes that Minho is now staring at him straight in the eye. Jisung coughs and quickly looks at the now signed forms. He grabs them and gives Minho a tight handshake. “It’s great doing business with you Minho-ssi! I hope to see you again soon!” Before Minho has a chance to respond, Jisung is spinning on his heels, making his way to the exit.
Once he makes it back to the truck, he leans his head all the way back on the head rest and lets out a groan.
“What the hell did I just witness?” Jeongin hops in on the passenger side and fastens his seat belt. “That was some K-Drama shit.” He looks over at his boss who has his hands covering his face.
“Shut up.” is all Jisung says before pulling out of the parking lot and heading back to the farm.
—
After watching Jisung walk, or maybe run is a better description of what he just witnessed, out of his restaurant, Minho glanced up at Felix with a questioning look. “Is he always that odd?” was the question he went with, although his first thought was more along the lines of, Is he always that cute?
Felix slowly shakes his head while staring at the front door. “No, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so flustered… He does always talk about the produce like they’re humans though.” The waiter turns back to the table where he is refilling the salt and pepper shakers. “I can’t ever decide if he’s crazy, or if he’s just really good at his job.”
Minho decides to go back to his office to work on more paperwork. However, he spends the next several minutes just sitting at his desk replaying the way Jisung was staring at him in his head.