Work Text:
Chris doesn’t like Tim Hortons. She hasn’t for a while—not since the turnover to an American parent company and the food settled permanently into the realm of technically edible but rarely pleasing. To be fair, nothing has ever tasted remarkable here, and nothing ever will. She comes anyway, because it’s cheap enough, close enough, and warm enough to carry her through a two-hour seminar she has already decided will drain her of everything she has.
This location is indistinguishable from any other. The floor is slick with grey slush tracked in from the street, a thin film of winter grime constantly refreshed by the steady churn of boots and ill prepared sneakers. Chris is focused almost entirely on not eating shit as she sidesteps a poorly placed wet floor sign, so she’s already caught a little off guard when she reaches the counter. The girl across from her is beautiful.
“Do you want something?”
“Oh—” Chris realizes she’s been staring.
She hadn’t meant to. It’s a bit of a known problem. But the eyes on the other side of the counter—intensely direct and assessing—are distracting even for someone less prone to zoning out than Chris when she's overtired. Surely. “Yes. I. Um.”
The girl behind the till looks at her for a beat longer, then says, calmly, “Farmer’s wrap and a double double.”
It takes Chris a second to parse this. Her brain, already running at reduced capacity, stumbles over the expected beats of the interaction. The girl isn’t asking if that’s her order. She’s not offering suggestions. She’s just saying it. Declaring it.
“Uh. Yes,” Chris says, relieved just to be able to latch onto something definite.
The girl nods and drops her gaze, eyes disappearing beneath the red visor as her fingers move across the screen. Chris watches the total climb—numbers clicking upward to something modest but still more than it should be for how little pleasure it’ll bring her.
The girl looks up again. Her features are so sharp. Genuinely stunning. Chris needs another second to remember what happens next.
“You can pay now.”
“Oh—right. Sorry.” Chris smiles, sheepish, probably too wide. She realizes, with mild horror, that she hadn’t been smiling at all until now—just blinking dumbly at a girl who’s almost certainly being paid criminal wages to survive a morning shift like this. She taps her phone against the pin pad. Nothing happens.
She’s already forming an apology when she lifts the phone and sees the tip screen instead. She abandons the apology and presses a shaky thumb to the bright green button. Accidentally hits the cash icon instead of a percentage. When calculating twenty percent proves to be too much mental math, she just punches in the total amount and hits OK.
Tap. Beep.
The girl blinks once at her screen. Then looks back up. “You can get your order over there.” She gestures to her left, where the counter opens into a cramped waiting area anchored by a creaky napkin dispenser. No thank you. No that’s too generous.
Chris nods. Smiles again. It comes easier this time. "Thank you."
There’s no receipt, no number. Chris doesn’t ask. She moves to the wall and tucks herself beside the fire extinguisher, careful to stay out of the way as more people crowd in behind her.
She watches the girl disappear. Another employee slides into place to take the orders of two construction workers. A minute later, the same girl returns to her till to help a businesswoman who’s half-consulting someone on the phone while curating a box of Timbits. Chris watches her hand dip in and out of the display case, hovering briefly over a honey cruller—
She thinks their eyes meet. Or maybe she imagines it. Either way, it’s enough to distract her from her order being called.
“—Miss? Miss? Farmer’s wrap and medium double double?”
Chris shakes her head automatically, then jolts back into herself when she catches sight of the employee leaning over the pickup counter, already turning away.
“Yes—yep. That’s me. Thank you.” She steps forward, apologetic smile locked in place, and accepts the crinkled brown bag and red cup. Heat bleeds through the cardboard sleeve and stings her fingertips.
Of course the girl that took her order isn’t the one handing it to her. That would be ridiculous. There are several workers behind the partition, rotating in and out of tasks. The line is even longer than when Chris first got here, visibly swelling as a city bus exhales a swarm of high schoolers onto the sidewalk just outside.
Still, Chris flips open the little spout on the lid and looks back as she takes a sip.
The girl is watching.
Chris hopes her wince doesn’t show. She hates coffee. Always has. But she lifts the cup in a small, private salute anyway, licks the bitter, lingering warmth from her lips, and pulls her hood up as she heads for the door—still drinking as she steps back out into the blustering cold.
Chris goes back to the same Tim’s on a different day, a different time, with no particular intention beyond getting something warm for the commute home. It’s Thursday, just past six, the sky long since committed to its inky darkness. She wants a tea—nothing fancy, just something to keep her hands warm while she's on the bus home.
Chris didn’t let herself expect the girl from last time to be there, but she is. Chris spots her from behind as she's only halfway through the door.
She’s wrapping up an order. Chris knows it's her from the chin-length, chestnut hair, tucked behind her ears in the same way Chris remembers without meaning to. Several piercings in her lobes and cartilage glinting in the light. Chris watches her call out the order she’s just finished prepares and set the bag down at the pickup counter, peering around the corner for its owner.
There’s one cashier open with someone already paying, and another lane dark but unattended. Chris drifts toward the empty one without really deciding to. By the time she gets there, the girl has slipped into place across from her.
“Hi,” Chris says, surprised by how easily it comes out.
She almost adds me again but she stops herself. This girl probably sees hundreds of commuters in a week. Chris is just one girl among hundreds of commuters, hundreds of orders. Chris barely qualifies as a pattern.
The girl nods in greeting, looks at her for a second, then says, “Everything bagel with cream cheese.”
Chris lets out a short laugh before she can stop herself. Face heating. “Ah, I was—”
“And a tea,” The girl adds, already tapping the screen.
Chris blinks. “Yeah,” she says. “That. Exactly.”
“It’s cold out,” the girl says, shrugging like this is self-evident, like it explains everything.
Chris nods, because why wouldn't it. Or because nodding feels like the correct move.
She pays—no fumbling this time, no panic-tipping—putting in a twenty percent tip is a fully informed move this time. Chris wonders if the girl saw her hands, knuckles red and dry from the cold, and was simply able to deduce the fact that she'd forgotten her gloves. The total disappears from the screen along with Chris' fantasy, but then the girl doesn’t immediately move on to the next person in line behind her. Instead, she turns and starts to make Chris’ order herself.
It’s a small thing. A luxury afforded by a slower hour, fewer bodies pressing in behind Chris in the lull between the after-work rush and whatever comes next. Not special. Chris can only just barely peer over the partition to watch her move down the assembly line, only catching glimpses of the lines of the girl’s forearms, covered by the black long sleeve she wears under her work shirt. Small hands, short nails. She might feel Chris watching but she doesn’t turn to face her once.
Eventually, the girl walks the tea and bagel down to the pickup counter and sets them there for Chris to take.
“Enjoy.” she says, voice flat.
“Thanks,” Chris says, and means more than the transaction requires.
She takes the cup and bag. There’s a flicker of disappointment when she catches the tag on the string—chamomile. No caffeine to cut through the evening. But she doesn’t complain.
It’s thoughtful. Probably better for her, too.
“Have a good night,” Chris says, but it's to the girl's back as she's already turning back toward the till.
Chris watches her go for half a second too long, then gathers herself and heads for the door.
Outside, the cold hits immediately. Evening wind biting at her cheeks. She takes a sip as she walks. Eats her bagel only once she's on the bus because if she waits to eat it when she's home she'll just throw it away. It's pretty shit, scorched on one side and not toasted enough on the other. Too much cream cheese. But all things considered, Chris finds herself inhaling it, suddenly ravenous. Washes it down with the rest of her tea once it's gone.
It becomes routine.
Chris starts going in with what she convinces herself is intentionless regularity. Same Tim Hortons, same subconscious calculation of timing—early enough that the after-class rush has thinned, late enough that the place hasn’t gone hollow yet. She tells herself it’s convenience and proximity and habit. She doesn’t tell herself it’s because there’s a chance Minho will be there.
Minho is always there.
She guesses—tells—Chris a different order every time, and Chris never corrects her. Not once. She finds herself paying for increasingly strange combinations without blinking: out-of-season summer drinks paired with elaborate, limited-time foods clearly designed to move inventory rather than satisfy anyone’s cravings. Orange tangerine quencher biting into her bare hands in the frigid first few days of the new year. A stack of all seven Smile Cookies that are available in the display when Chris walks in, dough thick with butter and icing so sweet it coats the back of her throat. Racking up Tims points on disgusting pairings of cream of broccoli soup and toasted marshmallow cold brew.
Its mostly (always) things Chris would never order for herself. Things that don’t fit into her nutrition plan, that promise puffiness and regret and a low-grade stomach ache an hour later. She eats everything Minho gives her anyway.
They don’t talk much. There’s no real conversation to speak of—no questions, no backstory exchanged. Chris knows nothing about Minho beyond the efficient way she moves behind the counter, the faint edge of a tattoo that creeps up the nape of her neck beneath the collar of her work uniform, and the way her mouth quirks when Chris accepts something particularly unhinged without comment.
Minho, in turn, knows nothing concrete about Chris. But Chris is fairly certain she’s been categorized as a student, probably. The schedule gives her away. A strange dietary habit surely, considering how she comes here both before and after the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The way her appearances orbit predictable windows otherwise—before seminar, after class, during that narrow stretch of time that only exists for people who don’t quite belong to the nine-to-five. Chris realizes, with a quiet startle, that Minho probably knows her timetable better than she does.
The only personal thing she knows about Minho—her name—she finds out entirely by coincidence. It happens one weekday when Minho is in the middle of telling Chris she’s going to order a flatbread pepperoni pizza and a small hot chocolate with whipped cream. At 8:35 in the morning. Chris hadn't had time for breakfast before leaving the house (or dinner the night before) but still has only just opened her mouth to protest—politely, maybe just a drink—when one of Minho’s coworkers taps her shoulder.
“Minho—I need to take a call. Can you move back for a bit after this one?”
Minho nods. Her coworker gives her shoulder a grateful squeeze and disappears. Chris can’t contain her smile.
“Minho,” she says, testing it out. “That’s pretty.”
It’s the first time Minho looks at her like that. Eyes narrowing just slightly. Chris thinks she might be afraid, if it weren’t for the strange safety of the bond they’ve built out of dry, transactional micro-interactions. Thousands of seconds of nothing, stacked carefully on top of each other.
“I’m Chris,” she adds, because it feels necessary to even the scales and also because she wants Minho to know.
“Okay,” Minho says.
That’s it.
Minho leaves to make the goddamn flatbread pizza—Chris shifts her weight from foot to foot, boots squishing into the permanently saturated black carpet as the delayed realization hits her: Oh. Maybe that was too much. She waits through several long, humiliating minutes, rehearsing apologies that aren't too embarrassing but clear and appropriate enough to deliver in public, convinced she’s crossed some invisible line.
But then she's called over. Not by Minho, but by another coworker, leaning over the pickup counter.
“Chris?”
Chris nearly beams.
No one takes your name at fucking Tim’s. And yet there it is—written on the lid of her cup, next to a strange, ghostly doodle of a face. Round head. Alien-like slits for eyes. A few squiggles—wrinkles, maybe?
They don't talk about it. And Minho never writes her name again after that. But the face appears whenever there’s time.
Chris feels bad throwing the cups away. She keeps one sleeve, then immediately feels creepy about it and shoves it into a drawer she never opens but thinks about constantly. Curls her fingers around the handle and thinks about how Minho rarely orders her anything she would ever genuinely choose for herself—but for some reason she keeps choosing to let Minho choose for her.
It still feels good, somehow, to walk with one side of her body weighed down by a box of twenty-five timbits. All plain. To swallow them down, one by one, with only an iced capp to wash it down in late-February—brain freeze sharp and immediate, matching the breath-stealing eighteen-below cold outside—just because Minho made it. Chose it for her. Sugary and cloying and guaranteed to make Chris’s stomach hurt later.
It's probably because the more Chris visibly doesn’t enjoy what she’s ordered—the flinch, the forced swallow of a tepid first bite—the wider Minho’s small, secretive smile becomes.
Spring begins the way it always does in the city, indecisive, very wet. Icy mornings give way to much more forgiving afternoons that dare you to take your jacket off and invite the cold to nibble at your skin before it's ready, saved by the grace of a hotter sun. The floor is still stupidly wet, but in a new way now. Not grainy with salt-gray misery. Just water. Melt. People are slower to yank the door shut behind themselves, lingering half a second longer because the heating isn’t cranked to hell anymore.
Chris comes in still a little flushed from her workout, gym bag cutting into her shoulder, one headphone still hooked over her ear where her playlist croons insistently. Her hair is pulled back tight, skin warm, lungs still catching up too. She doesn’t plan on getting much—but then again she never plans on getting anything. Only ever knows that she'll be standing somewhere warm and familiar and close to Minho for a moment before going home.
Minho's hair has grown out over the months. She’s got it twisted up in a clip today, the ends spiking out in soft, uneven bursts that make Chris’s chest squeeze with affection.
“Hi,” Chris says, eyeing the criss-crossed bobby pins on the side of her head that hold back a piece of fringe. Cute.
Minho just looks back at her, expectant.
“Beautiful outside,” Chris adds, after a beat.
Sometimes Minho lets her ramble when it isn’t busy. Chris never remembers what she says during those moments—only the tilt of Minho’s head, the subtle cues she watches for. The barely-there flare of her nostrils. The way amusement announces itself microscopically before Minho ever does anything close to a smile.
Minho does it now, then says, “What can I get you?”
Chris freezes.
Minho has literally never asked her that. Not once.
Her regular order—if it can be called that—before Minho used to be a chicken wrap and something grabbed blindly from the fridge. She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want anything she can name. She opens her mouth and nothing comes out except for a low, traitorous growl from her stomach. Minho doesn't offer anything.
Is she tired of the game? Tired of her?
“I,” Chris starts, then stops. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” Minho repeats, neutral.
Chris can feel her ears burning as Minho turns her attention to the screen, humming softly as she taps around. She isn’t selecting anything. Chris can’t tell what she’s doing—only tries to read Minho’s expression, tries not to stare at the way she bites her lower lip when she’s thinking.
“Well,” Minho says suddenly, “I know what I would ask for.”
Oh. Shit.
Chris laughs, thin and nervous, shifts her gym bag higher on her shoulder. “Um. What would you… recommend?”
Minho looks at her then.
“If I were you,” she says slowly, “I would ask for my number.”
Chris blinks.
Minho blinks back.
Is this a trap?
“Then—ah,” Chris says, squeezing the strap of her bag until her knuckles go white. Here goes nothing. “Could I get… a croissant?”
Minho stills. Not just a simple pause—but a stillness that deepens into something absolute, held until the door chimes behind Chris as someone else enters. Her lashes flutter once.
“A croissant,” Minho says.
“Yes,” Chris nods quickly. “Plain. Please.”
She bites the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood and doesn’t let up until Minho’s lips part and she laughs—a small, airy sound, but real. She punches the order in without looking up. Chris tips 150%.
Beep.
Chris steps aside while Minho takes the next customer, waits while she makes his drink and breakfast sandwich. She turns just in time to watch him leave, chasing after his daughter who makes a break across the parking lot with her chocolate chip muffin already smeared across her face, and when she looks back Minho is already at the pickup counter.
The bag containing Chris’s croissant looks like it’s been strangled to death. She takes it, turns it over, then looks up.
Minho is still watching her.
“You forgot him,” Chris says.
“Who?”
“The face. The little guy you always draw.”
Minho doesn't miss a beat. “You want him?”
Chris shrugs, casual, but when she answers she sounds breathless. “If you want me to.”
Minho taps a nail against the counter once, then holds out her hand. Chris gives her the bag knowing she probably looks too giddy about it but can't make herself care. Minho disappears behind the partition for a second and comes back with a new one. She sets the empty bag down, holding Chris’s gaze, then looks away to draw the face on it in clean, practiced strokes of her sharpie.
Chris steps closer, leaning in. She never gets to see this part, Minho's always doing it where she can't see. A lock of her hair spills from her up do and Chris wishes desperately to push it back. Laughing softly when, halfway through, Minho switches hands to draw the details on the other half of his face. Of course she’s ambidextrous. Of course the natural pout of her mouth deepens like this when she's concentrated.
Minho nearly clips Chris’s chin when she straightens, says nothing about how close they are. She takes the ruined croissant and dumps it—bag and all—into the new one. Holds it out.
Chris takes it.
“And your number?” she blurts without thinking, but she doesn’t regret it. Says it with unrestrained hope. Tilts her head too, imploring.
Minho nods at the bag. “You asked for Jureumi. Now you have him.”
Chris nods. Fair enough. She lifts the bag in her regular small salute, and barely turns toward the door when Minho speaks again.
“Ask for it tomorrow.”
Chris grins, tongue pressing against the coppery taste inside her cheek. “And you’ll give it to me?”
Minho shrugs, stretches her arms overhead like she’s already bored of the conversation. The move bares just the smallest sliver of her stomach, the thick waistband of her underwear over the hem of her jeans—but Chris catches the curve of her mouth. The challenge in her eyes.
“If you want it.”
She knows she does.
By the time her bus comes, the croissant is gone, crumbs licked from her fingers, and Jureumi is folded carefully in her pocket. She boards still warm, still smiling, spring pressing faintly at the edges of everything. A sweet, flowery thing. Chris intends to savour every bite.