Work Text:
It was a slow day for June Egbert, a lonely and slow rainy day.
She was a barista at a small local coffee shop in New York City, but this evening there were almost no customers. Normally she liked when the shop was a bit more quiet, but now she was getting bored sitting around doing nothing.
She thought about her life so far, old friends like Dave, Jade and Rose she hadn’t seen or heard from in years, new friends like Karkat, Vriska and Terezi, lotta trolls she had made friends with somehow, that had helped her when life seemed lost. Now, with a clearer idea of who she was, she had actually started getting her life together, got a job and what else, but still her future remained uncertain.
Her coworkers were all on indefinite break until someone actually stepped into the store, she was just the unlucky one to man the counter and do nothing. She considered whipping out her phone and scrolling twitter to pass the time, but just then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone enter the store.
It was a tall lady with pale skin and medium-long blonde hair, she was wearing a black jacket that jutted out at the bottom, resembling a skirt, with a white shirt underneath, black tights covering her legs all the way down to her black high heels and a purple scarf around her neck. In her right hand was an umbrella and in her left was a laptop with a knitted cozy around it, probably to keep it safe from the rain.
As she sat down at a table near a window, June called out in the back.
“hey! there’s a lady here in need of service!”
“iif 2he a2k2 for anythiing more than a coffee you can bother u2” Sollux, one of her coworkers said back. June rolled her eyes and went over to the table to get the customer's order.
“what can i get for ya’ miss?” She asked with a noteblock and pen in hand.
“One coffee, black as my soul.” The lady said, her eyes focused on her laptop. She seemed to be writing something. June noticed she had very thick black lipstick.
“uh huh, one black coffee coming right up!” June wrote the order down and looked back at the lady. “and your name, miss?”
The blonde looked up from her computer and stared right at June who immediately recognized her lavender purple eyes, even beneath the eyeliner and black eye shadow.
“Rose.” She said in a voice June recognized way too well for someone who hadn’t heard it in years.
“oh, great!” June said nervously. “i’ll be sure to remember it!”
Rose squinted a bit. “Have we… Met before?” She asked the barista.
“n-not to my knowledge! hehe…” June laughed it off, she then immediately went to prepare the coffee.
Making a black coffee usually isn’t hard, she’s already done it over a hundred times in her short time working here, but the arrival of an old friend really made her nervous, eventually though, she managed to finish it. She breathed in and out, just gotta hand it to Rose and take the payment.
She went back over to the table Rose was sitting at, she was back focused on her writing. June breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
“one black coffee for one rose lalonde!” She said jovially, she then stopped in her tracks when she realized what she just said. “fuck.”
“That is my full name but… Just how did you know?” Rose looked up at the black haired girl with an inquisitive look.
“uhh… i… don’t know… i just...” June looked down as she placed the coffee on the table next to the computer.
“Wait a second, those hair clips, those are the colors of the trans flag, isn’t it?”
“uhh, yeah, they uh, are.”
Rose smirked. “I almost can’t believe it, John?”
“hey-HEY! not my name anymore!”
“Sorry, I should have known better.” Rose chuckled. “What is your name then these days?” She asked.
“june.” The barista said, pointing to her name tag on her uniform. “june egbert.”
“Ah.” Rose nodded. “She/her I’m assuming? Please correct me if I am wrong.”
“been considering using ‘they’ as well, but never got around to actually testing it.”
“I see, well what have you been up to in the past many years?”
“oh, y’know, high school, college, figured out i was a girl, moved into an apartment near here with some friends, what about you?”
“Studied to become a psychologist, moved away from my drunken mother, currently a therapist. It’s a nice job and all, pays the bills for one, but my true passion is writing, so I’ve been doing that in my free time.” She grabs the coffee. “How much for this, by the way.”
“for you, old friend? it’s on the house.” She said with a wink.
“Well, if I get exquisite deals like that I might just come again.” She said with a smile, taking a sip. “The atmosphere here is great too.”
“i’d be be more than happy to serve you again in the future!” June couldn’t help but smile as well. “heck, if you stay until the end of my shift, i could take you to a movie if you wanna?”
“Asking me out on a date already?” Rose lifted up an eyebrow.
“well, i’m not the one who’s drop dead gorgeous!”
“Agree to disagree, you wear that uniform well.”
“no way! you got that full goth ensemble and everything!”
“Full goth? Girl, you’ve seen nothing if you think this is ‘full goth.’”
“well excuse me for being a basic bitch!”
Rose chuckled.
“You’re actually really lucky that you decided to transition before asking me out.” She said.
“uhh, why?”
“I’m a lesbian.”
“oh, yeah, damn that is lucky. it’s like, fate or something.”
“Well, consider your little movie date a confirmed part of my schedule.”
“really? gee, thanks!” June nervously smiled.
“Oh, and one last thing.”
“yeah? what is it.”
Rose leaned up to June and carefully placed a kiss right on her lips. June was in shock, it was nice, but also extremely overwhelming.
“Consider that my tip, cutie~” Rose said with a devilish smile.
“hey! no kissing the baristas!” June proclaimed while extremely flustered.
“Is that an actual rule, or did you just come up with it on the spot?”
“if it’s not already a rule, it should be!”
“Well, I’ll hold off on the affection until our date then.”
“yeah, yeah, see you later, i gotta pay for your coffee now!”
She went back to the counter and waited the rest of the day for more customers to come in, a few did and June helped serve them alongside her coworkers.
Rose, meanwhile, had upheld her side of the bargain and stayed until the end of June’s shift.
It was only after the date, when she had made it back home and saw herself in the mirror, that June noticed the black smear on her lips, seems some of Rose’s lipstick had smudged.
She stared at her reflection, it looked good on her, she decided that tomorrow she would buy some black lipstick and wear it, maybe Rose would even help her put it on.