Work Text:
That's Not My Name
“Cortado with oatmilk for Agnes,” the barista called, placing the brown cardboard cup on the serving bar.
“For whom?” Agatha asked, frowning at the cup. That was her order, but that certainly wasn’t her name.
“Agnes,” the teen behind the bar repeated. “Cortado with oatmilk?”
“My name is Agatha,” she huffed, picking up the cup to see that the dimwitted barista with the stupid gap between her otherwise perfectly straight teeth had put the wrong name. She glared over at the woman, who was smiling brightly as she served another customer, writing down their order and name (probably the wrong one) on their cup. She huffed through her nose and took a sip.
Then she nearly moaned at the taste of the espresso shots on her tongue.
Fuck, that was good. What the hell did they put in this coffee? Crack?
It should not have been so good when the person serving it was such a brainless idiot.
How hard was it to write a name down on a coffee cup?
Agatha didn’t spare the birdbrained barista another glance as she made her way toward the exit. She was already fifteen minutes late for her meeting, anyway.
“Cortado with oatmilk for…Augustina?” The barista placed the cup down on the serving bar.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Agatha huffed, picking up the cup. The wrong name was written, once again, in swoopy handwriting. The same barista was at the register last time. “Can you tell your dipshit co-worker that my name is Agatha? A-guh-tha!”
“Okay,” the teen said. “Have a nice day.” He walked away before Agatha could say anything else.
Disrespectful twerp.
She took a sip of the coffee and let out the most sinful moan. Several people turned to look at her, but Agatha couldn’t give less of a shit.
She hated that the coffee was so good, though, dammit. That meant she had to keep coming back for more.
“Cortado with oatmilk for Ag…Ag…Agamem…non?”
The teen shrugged as he placed the cup down on the bar.
Okay, this wasn’t funny. Agatha grabbed the cup, nearly crushing it in her fist as she glared at the cashier, who was laughing again, like she was the funniest fucking person in existence.
What the fuck?!
Agatha stormed over to the register, cutting the woman right at the front of the line.
“What is your problem?” she huffed, glaring at the cashier, who was grinning at her with that infuriatingly charming smirk, that stupid little gap between her front teeth making Agatha seethe.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” the woman – who had to be, like, thirty – asked, giving Agatha that stupid, lopsided grin.
“Why can’t you get my name right?” Agatha demanded, holding up her cup. “Is this a joke to you?”
“Of course not, ma’am,” the cashier said, giving Agatha what appeared to be a sincere frown. “I take my job very seriously.”
“Okay,” Agatha huffed, “then what do you call this?” She practically shoved the coffee cup in the cashier’s face.
“A cortado,” the barista answered, smartly, “with oatmilk.”
“The name,” Agatha growled. “On the cup. What is it?”
“Agamemnon,” the cashier said. “Nice name.”
“My name is Agatha,” Agatha hissed.
“Then why did you take Agamemnon’s cup? That wasn’t very nice.”
Agatha’s eye twitched.
“I am going to shatter you like glass,” she ground out.
The barista grinned. “Promise?”
Agatha growled again, a deep throaty sound, then turned on her heel and walked out while the barista let out a chuckle. She looked at the next customer with an easy smile.
“So sorry about the interruption, Ma’am,” she said. “What can I get for you?”
The next morning, Agatha stood in line at the same coffee shop (The Witches’ Brew) and glared at the cashier – the same damn cashier – who had served her the last three times.
This time, however, she’d brought her own tumbler. Now she’d at least get fifty cents off her own drink.
That wasn’t even a tenth the cost of what she paid for the tumbler, of course, but it would be worth it in the long run. Now the barista would be forced to type out her name and order, print it on a sticker, and stick it to the cup.
And Agatha would be watching her the entire time.
“Next!” the barista said, already reaching for a cup as Agatha stepped up to the counter. She grinned at Agatha. “Good morning, ma’am,” she said. “What can I get for you on this fine morning?”
“Same thing as always,” Agatha huffed, placing her tumbler down on the counter: “A cortado with oatmilk.”
The barista looked down at her cup, then she reached for something under the counter and slapped it on the deep violet surface, picking it up and writing on the white sticker. Agatha’s eyes widened at that, her mouth gaping slightly. The barista just grinned at her, triumphantly.
“Name?” she asked.
“Same as before,” Agatha sighed. “Agatha. A-G-A-T-H-A.”
The barista wrote something down that was definitely longer than that and handed it off to her co-worker before Agatha could check it.
“That will be $6.27, ma’am,” the cashier said, smiling politely at her.
Agatha narrowed her eyes, hatefully, as she tapped her card on the reader.
“Receipt?” the cashier asked.
“Yes, please,” Agatha murmured.
The name at the top of the receipt said ‘Rio’ so that must have been the barista’s name. Either that or she was using another co-worker’s login because Rio didn’t seem like much of a feminine name to her.
But what did she know? Apparently, her name was Agamemnon.
She only waited about four minutes for her drink.
“Cortado with oatmilk for…Agoraphobia?” the teen boy announced, placing her drink on the bar with a furrow of his bushy brows. He glanced over to his co-worker. “Rio, what?”
She ignored him.
Agatha angrily picked up her tumbler and stomped out of the cafe for the fourth morning in a row.
Argon. Agnostic. Angola.
Never her name. Never Agatha.
The names got more and more ridiculous as the days went on.
Astoria. Agrabah. Fucking Arachnophobia.
Every single time, Agatha felt her fuse getting shorter and shorter.
She tried everything to get it to stop. She placed online orders, but she’d show up to pick up her drink and one of those stupid stickers would be on top of the mobile order one with the wrong name written on it.
With a heart.
She tried coming at different times during the day. She’d arrive at lunch, four hours after her usual time, hoping and praying that somebody else would be at register, but it was always her, grinning over the top of Agatha’s cup as she wrote down the wrong goddamn name!
She tried to go to a different coffee shop, one closer to where she worked a few blocks over, but they couldn’t brew coffee for shit. It was always either burnt or watered down or tasted like sewage. Agatha had gotten too spoiled with the espresso they served at this godforsaken place with the dumbass who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – get her name right.
But she was in too deep now to give up. She was addicted, not only to the coffee but also to the need to finally get this asshole to just write the correct goddamn name on her cup.
Why was she like this? Who had hurt her? Had Agatha hurt her?
“Cortado for…Aggressive?” the teen boy said with a sigh, offering Agatha a sympathetic smile as he handed the cup directly to her. He, too, had grown accustomed to this ridiculous game.
There had been times in the past couple of weeks when it was him at the register, taking people’s orders and writing down the (presumably correct) names on the cups. Agatha had rejoiced when she saw him, praying that he’d still be there when–
“Billy, time for your fifteen,” Rio, the other barista, said every single time.
“I literally just got here ten minutes ago,” Billy had huffed the first time.
“Don’t care,” Rio had said, hip-checking him out of the way and signing herself into the register, smiling at the next guest, two people in front of Agatha.
That boy needed to eat more protein. He was like a twig: way too easy to be flicked out of the way.
Agatha had dealt with names like “Agni Kai” and “Aged Cheddar” and “Anastasia” on days like that. Every single time, the barista gave her that gap-toothed grin that made fire burn in her chest.
Most days, Agatha flipped her off or threatened her life.
That infuriating smile never left the barista’s stupid face.
Finally, in desperate need of a change to her routine, Agatha rolled out of bed on a Sunday, a day when she’d spend most of the day in bed, asleep or scrolling through TikTok, snorting quietly to funny bunny videos or car accidents.
It was the best way to destress, in her opinion.
But she wanted to see if the accursed barista ever took a day off.
When she entered the cafe, there was practically nobody inside. It was quiet, with only a few tables occupied in the decently-sized space. To be fair, it was also eight AM on a Sunday. Agatha was surprised that she was even conscious at that time.
The bright side was that there was no line.
The not-so-bright side was that Rio was there, leaning against the back counter, sipping from her own cardboard cup, her hair up in a messy bun and her eyes drooping as if she’d been up for most of the night.
When she saw Agatha, though, she visibly inflated.
“Hey,” she said. “Cortado with oatmilk.”
“Agatha,” Agatha said with a sigh. “My name is Agatha.”
“Right,” Rio said. “I knew that.”
“Did you?” Agatha huffed. “Because I have about fifty cups and stickers that say otherwise.”
“And yet,” Rio said, grabbing another cup, “you keep coming back.”
“Not my fault you put crack in the espresso,” Agatha grumbled. “Seriously, where are you getting it from? Who’s your dealer? I wanna go straight to the source.”
“I could tell you,” Rio said, “but there’s no way you’d believe me.”
Agatha narrowed her eyes. “Try me,” she said, through practically gritted teeth.
Rio leaned in across the counter, encouraging Agatha to do the same with the wave of her hand. Agatha mirrored her until their noses were almost touching, they were so close.
“I grow the beans myself,” she whispered, her breath tickling Agatha’s lips.
Agatha pulled back with a scoff, ignoring how her lips tingled. “Bullshit,” she said. “You do not.”
“I do so,” Rio insisted. “I have a greenhouse in my backyard. I grow the beans and process them myself. It’s a really fascinating process; I’d love to show you sometime.” She wrote down Agatha’s order on the cup, along with something else that was definitely longer than ‘Agatha’.
Agatha tried not to sigh at that.
“Why would you be providing all the coffee beans to a coffee shop when you’re just a barista?” Agatha asked, tapping her card at the terminal.
“Who said I was just a barista?” Rio snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “I own this place.”
“What?” Agatha snorted. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do,” Rio said. “You heard of the Vidal Brewing Company?”
“Yeah,” Agatha snorted. “Who hasn’t? They own, like, ten million coffee shops all over the country.”
Rio offered her hand. “Rio Vidal,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Agatha.”
Agatha’s eyes widened at that. She stared at Rio’s hand, then looked up to Rio’s face, at that infuriating grin, the way she stuck her tongue into her left cheek, then back to that hand.
“You’re fucking with me,” she said. “There’s no way you’re a Vidal. Like a Vidal Vidal.”
“I can show you my ID if that makes a difference,” Rio said. “And I can show you pictures of me with my grandpa, our CEO. I hear he’s quite the looker, if you’re into that kind of thing.”
“I’m really not,” Agatha said, wrinkling her nose.
Rio let out a laugh that sounded warm and genuine. It made Agatha’s insides flutter in a confusing way.
“If you’re the owner of this place,” she said, “then why are you working as a barista?”
Rio shrugged. “I did it all throughout high school,” she said, “in my dad’s shop across town. It’s kind of how I earned the money to buy this place.” She smiled at the coffee shop around them. “Sort of,” she said, shrugging. “My dad loaned me most of the down payment, which I’ll probably be paying off for the foreseeable future, but it’s my name on the deed. And I got to pick the name.”
“Why ‘Witches’ Brew’?” Agatha asked.
“Because my dad vetoed the original name,” Rio said, frowning.
“What was the original name?”
“Let’s just say it rhymes with the current name and it’s much more alliterative,” Rio answered with a grin.
“Cortado with oatmilk for…Agatha!” Billy held up Agatha’s drink, triumphantly. He waved at her then pointed at the cup with a big grin.
Agatha waved back then turned back to Rio. “Why’d you write Agatha this time?” she asked.
Rio shrugged. “It’s my day off,” she said. “But don’t you worry: Agamemnon will be back tomorrow.”
Agatha rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t fight the smile nor the flush that spread across her face.
“I’ll be looking forward to it,” she sighed as she moved down the counter to the serving bar.
“See you later, Agnes,” Rio called after her, teasingly.
Agatha tried very hard to hide her smile as she took her cup from Billy.
As she walked out, she looked down at her name – finally the correct one – in Rio’s swoopy script with the black heart right next to it. Then she turned it a bit and saw something else that made her heart beat a frantic pattern against her ribcage:
“Call me if you want to see some plants ;)”
Beneath her message was what Agatha could only presume was her phone number.
Agatha called it less than an hour later.