Chapter Text
Satori Tendou loved chocolate.
He loved the taste of it, the smell of it, and how it could be a topping on any dessert.
But he especially liked that chocolate was always good. It never faltered. Chocolate was consistent, unchanging. Chocolate was a constant, and while everything else in the world seemed to be evolving, chocolate was always as it used to be.
Maybe that was a bit too philosophical for a dessert.
Satori shook his head vigorously to rid himself of his weird philosophical reflection on chocolate and focused on making his coffee. Dark roast with a sweet vanilla creamer, steaming hot. He poured the creamer in and watched as the black coffee turned to the color of milk chocolate. Fuck, Satori. Shut up about chocolate. He chuckled to himself and walked through his little apartment to the window that stretched across almost his entire wall.
He cracked it open, feeling a warm breeze from below. The streets were packed with the Olympics starting up, and the bakery was no exception. The hours were long, and he was set to work almost every day for the next two weeks.
He breathed in through his nose as he sipped his coffee, catching the wonderful bitter smell and the faint scent of cigarettes, which was easily explained by the busy streets of Paris below. It was only seven in the morning, yet his usually quiet street was bustling. He huffed out a sigh and smiled to himself. Today was a good day to make chocolate.
He danced to his dresser, an 80’s song still stuck in his head from yesterday. He couldn’t quite figure out the name to it, so he’d stopped trying. He bopped his head to the beat and picked out a good outfit to work in, choosing a bright purple shirt and a pair of black pants. He got dressed swiftly and was out the door in minutes, not bothering to do his hair. It was growing out from the last time he’d shaved it, so the short hairs sticking out in all directions was unavoidable.
When he walked out the door of his apartment building, the crowd of people almost swept him up before he registered how busy it really was outside. He maneuvered through the crowd like an acrobat and made it to the other side of the road in no time, making a turn onto the street the bakery was on, this sidewalk even more packed with people. He wasn’t so used to there being this many tourists out, and he heard a cacophony of languages around him instead of just the usual french and occasional english.
This part of town wasn’t very close to the regular tourist spots like the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, so it was definitely odd to see so many people here. He swiftly entered the bakery after an arduous walk and made his way to the back of the store, a few minutes early.
Satori hadn’t been keeping very close tabs on the Olympics. He knew they were happening this summer in Paris, but he had no idea where in Paris it was actually happening, what sports were playing, or what famous people were here.
Pursing his lips in thought and deeply furrowing his eyebrows, He pulled out his phone and searched up the Paris Olympic Village. It popped up that it was only a couple of miles from where this bakery was. Right. Of course it was close to the bakery. No wonder it was busier than all hell out there. Satori put his phone away and walked through the dark break room into the kitchen, where he put on the uniform apron and his nametag, which read: Salut! Je suis Satori, courtesy of Julia, the head pastry chef who happened to be a lover of cute name tags and a mother to two little blonde French kids who played tennis on the weekends and danced ballet on the weekdays. Very idyllic.
“What’s up Satori?” He looked up and saw his coworker Hugo walk in the door. “So many people out there!” He exclaimed, running a hand over his freshly buzzed hair.
Satori stretched his arms up to the sky and said, “The Olympics will do that to ya.” he shrugged.
Hugo set his bag down and pulled on his apron. “Who else is working today? Do you know?” He asked. Hugo was a few years younger than Satori, and was still in university. He was hourly, much like the other young people who worked at Le Gâteau Château; Satori was one of three full time workers.
“Pretty sure it’s just you, Julia, Lucille, and me.” He responded, crossing one leg over the other and looking out at the crowd outside. “Get ready for hell.” He smiled devilishly, standing up and turning on the lights. Hugo stood and followed, turning on the computers and heading into the kitchen to get out the chocolates they made yesterday. Until Julia arrived, they would only have day-old pastries.
Hugo sighed dramatically and put on his nametag. He dragged a hand over his face. “Today is not my day.” he braced his hands on the counter and looked at the ceiling.
“What’s making you so sad? Hungover?” Satori wiggled his eyebrows and opened up the fridge.
“I wish.” He groaned. “My neighborhood is full of Olympic athletes and it’s making it so hard to sleep!” He shook his head. “They’re all out at the restaurants and shopping centers that I live right next to, making so much noise. It’s ruining my sleep schedule.”
Satori wasn’t expecting that. “Interesting.” He paused, “Any idea what countries?”
Hugo sighed. “Not sure. Some seemed European, maybe some americans. I think I walked past a group of Japanese guys last night too.” He tapped his stubbled chin with a pointer finger, clearly deep in thought. “Why do you ask?”
Satori shrugged and spun around. “I’m just nosy.” He chuckled, taking out the day old pastries and putting them on top of the glass display case. “Who knows, maybe I know some people who are visiting.”
“Did you do sports in high school?” Hugo asked over the sound of him typing aggressively into the laptop.
Satori paused, feeling an inexplicable wave of melancholy. “Volleyball.” His mouth twitched with a smile, but for some reason he felt sad. It had been a long time since he’d felt happy-sad like that.
“Were you any good?” Hugo asked.
“We made it to nationals twice.” He let his face settle in a smile, turning around to face his coworker again. Just as he opened his mouth to say more, the doorbell rang and another coworker, Lucille, waltzed in.
“Have you guys seen the crowd out there? We are in for it!” She gaped, and Hugo waved at her, Satori nodding. “Is Julia here?” She asked. She was working under Julia, so she also had to wait until her boss was there if she wanted to make any pastries.
“Not yet. She’s running late.” Hugo said.
“You’re quiet today, Satori.” Lucille raised an eyebrow, and Satori pushed out his lips.
“Maybe I was concentrating.” He raised an eyebrow right back. “Doing my job.” He put his hands on his hips animatedly. “Y’know, what you should be doing.” He pointed at her.
“I would do my job if my boss was here!” She groaned melodramatically, sinking to the ground in dismay. If there was one thing Satori had learned since moving to France, it was that French people were always dramatic.
“Did I hear something about your boss?” Julia burst through the door, scaring all three of them. “Bonjour tout le monde!” She laughed. “How are you all doing today?” She dropped her huge tote bag on the counter, taking out a large cup of coffee and a croissant. “It’s insane out there! Could barely get Jaques and Charlotte to their summer school!” She huffed out a sigh.
“Well at least you’re here now! When should we open the doors?” Lucille immediately code-switched, and Julia looked pensive for a moment before pointing to Satori.
“Make some samples today. I need lots for the customers today.” She said sternly.
Satori nodded, saluting her. “Aye aye captain.”
“You.” She pointed to Hugo. “Get mentally prepared.” She smirked, and Hugo looked like he’d lost a bet. He frowned, looking at the POS on the laptop as if it was taking his first born. “And you.” She finally pointed to Lucille. “Get out that croissant dough. We need to get to work.” She clapped her hands together, and like a well oiled machine, the group divided up into their respective sections of the pastry shop. Satori assumed his regular post by the chocolate.
Samples, samples, samples. It had been a long time since he’d made samples. He pulled out his smallest silicone mold and took a red chocolate drizzle, putting some of that in the mold as decoration first, then moving onto the regular milk chocolate.
Once he was done with those, he threw them in the refrigerator to set and made almost identical versions of that but with different chocolate flavors and colors, ending up with red white and blue, the French flag. Some days, he felt like he’d lived here all his life.
Satori then started on the actual chocolates that people paid for. Thankfully, they had plenty left over from the day before, so he didn’t really need to rush for these. He took his time, making sure each chocolate was perfectly decorated, flavored, and poured. Dark, white, and milk chocolate seemed simple, but the flavor profiles of each were so astronomically different, it was like comparing watching a baseball game to watching a football game. Or watching a basketball game versus a volleyball game. They were both on courts, but were such different experiences.
Satori shook his head to stop thinking about chocolate analogies and focused on making cherry dark chocolate cubes. These were his favorites. They were sweet, but the bitterness of the dark chocolate was so rich that the cherry flavor was almost swallowed up, but not entirely. They also tasted nostalgic, like a Gâteau Forêt-Noire, an iconic French cake and the first thing he’d tasted from this patisserie.
While he was just a chocolatier, the owner, Esmé, was a cake maker, and only came into the shop when she was commissioned to make a cake for someone. They were high quality and expensive, but there were about three a week. Satori internally wondered if the reason she didn’t come into the shop today was because of the traffic. At that, he couldn’t really argue.
The doors had long been opened, and Satori eavesdropped on Hugo’s domain, as people bombarded him in accented French and broken English. He looked over, and Hugo was visibly sweating. He picked the wrong day to work here. Satori chuckled to himself and zeroed back in on his chocolates, using the buzz of the customers as white noise for his work.
By the time he’d run out of prepared chocolate, it was almost lunchtime. He supposed he should make more before taking his break. He walked back to the kitchen where Lucille and Julia were hard at work, waving at them briefly before scurrying around the kitchen himself to find the ingredients for a good salted caramel chocolate. Those always sold fastest, so he decided that he should make more of those if anything.
Satori huddled over his ingredients as he walked to keep them in place, and when he got back to his work area he dropped them all on the counter with a sigh. He wiped sweat off of his forehead with his forearm and wiggled his arms around to get loose before starting on a whole new tray of chocolates. He made just one tray, being particular about where the sea salt was, and where the caramel was, and how thick the chocolate base was, before deciding it was good and throwing it in the fridge with all of the other chocolates that weren’t ready yet.
“Satori, are you good to take lunch soon? I’ll go after you so you can take the register.” Hugo called from a few feet away, the line dying down slightly.
“Don’t worry about it Hugo I got you!” Satori took his apron off and patted Hugo on the shoulder. “Good luck with the lunch rush. Sending prayers.” He smirked, grabbing his bag and heading out.
Once Satori was back in the sweltering heat outside, he made a beeline for the sandwich shop next door, which served italian-style sandwiches on the most delicious bread.
He waved at the cashier, who recognized him as the chocolatier from next door, and she pulled a brown paper bag out from under the counter. Satori speed walked next to the long line of customers and grabbed it from her, thanking her with a smile before leaving, ignoring the judgemental glances he got from the people waiting in line.
Then, he walked out of that store and strolled across the street and sat himself in the little park that lined the street. There were a few tourists here, but mostly people he recognized. He took a big bite of his sandwich, and relaxed into the metal bench. Lunchtime was prime time for people watching. Satori watched as a woman walking her dog almost tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, which left him trying not to laugh so hard that he had to stop chewing and focus on not choking for a second.
He then watched as a man clearly tried to take a woman’s wallet out of her bag, at which she turned around and gave him a harsh talking-to. Putain. Pickpocketing was more common than one would assume.
Satori blew out a deep breath and crossed one leg over the other. He was feeling weird today. What was worse was that he knew why. Each time he looked around he wondered if he might see one of his high school classmates, nemeses, or worse. He just didn’t know how he could face them after being gone so long.
But then again, there was a reason he left Japan.
Something about spending your entire childhood and adolescence feeling like an alien leaves a mark, and for Satori, he wanted a fresh start, where he could do something he loved and work with people who respected him. Satori had his coworkers, who doubled as friends, but he also had plenty of people who he knew in college and pastry school. He had a network of support, which was almost completely different to how it felt back then, where his only support was someone who-
Satori slapped his palms to both of his cheeks, ridding himself of this terrible train of thought. He hadn’t been like this in years, so why start now?
He checked his watch, and he still had fifteen minutes left in his lunch break. He pulled out his phone and opened it to see a new message from Julia.
From Julia: All hands on deck here when you get back.
Well that surely couldn’t be any good.
To Julia: aye aye
Satori continued his relaxed break, though his brain wasn’t so relaxed anymore. Curiosity overtook the impulse control part of his brain and he opened his search engine, searching up what the Japan National Volleyball Men’s team lineup was. What were the odds that he knew any of them?
When the first person that came up was Tobio Kageyama and Shoyo Hinata, Satori had to do a double take.
“No fucking way.” He said out loud to himself, scrolling slowly through the lineup. Bokuto Kotaro, Miya Atsumu, Sakusa Kiyoomi, and-
Satori shut off his phone, deciding that he’d had enough of this. He pushed himself to his feet and shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth before walking briskly back to Château Gâteau. He pushed through the crowd outside the pastry shop and the moment he got inside he wondered if he’d just stumbled into hell instead of his workplace.
“Satori! Start working on the display cases!” Julia called over the people, and Satori hurried to the back of the shop, putting his apron on and washing his hands before putting the freshly baked pastries into the cases. People started telling their orders to him, but he redirected them to Hugo before anyone could get too far. Lunch rush was usually busy, but this was rather unprecedented.
Satori filled the shelves with their fresh selections and took his chocolates out of their molds, also stocking those display cases. Once that was done, he looked at Julia for directions and she pointed to Hugo and said, “Either frost stuff or ring them up.”
Satori hated using the POS system, so he grabbed a plate of unglazed eclairs and got to work on those instead. Hugo was taking orders left and right, the customers themselves speaking to him in rushed voices, like they were the ones who were exhausted by the amount of people in the line. Satori rolled his eyes as he eavesdropped.
He started frosting another, and kept listening to the orders.
“L'éclair, s’il vous plaît.”
“Trois biscuits!”
“Moi, je veux le chocolat blanc..”
“Uh, je voudrais le pain au choco- uh chocolat.” Said a deep voice from the long line of customers. Satori was turned away, working on a few rushed eclairs to keep the line moving. But suddenly, time slowed down and maybe even went back ten years.
It couldn’t be.
He turned his head slightly, discreetly, as he scanned the customers. He wouldn’t mistake that deadpan for anyone else. His eyes landed on familiar olive green hair and subsequently those deep green eyes he remembered too well.
Ushijima Wakatoshi stood in Satori’s place of work, ordering a pain au chocolat in the worst french Satori had ever heard in his life, and he didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry.
Hugo, his coworker who did not understand the French underneath the Japanese accent, looked ruffled and turned to Satori.
Before Hugo could start begging for help, Satori swallowed his inner turmoil and said, “I can take this one.”
He walked three steps to the ordering counter, and Ushijima finally made eye contact with him. He was twenty eight but for a moment he felt eighteen again. Ushijima’s normal straight face broke almost completely, but only Satori would’ve been able to tell. His lips quivered slightly, his brows furrowed for just a moment, and he blinked a few more times than was natural. Ushijima was shocked.
Satori started in Japanese instead of French. “What would you like?” He asked politely, gesturing to the glass display case of their fresh pastries.
Ushijima looked like a paused video. He didn’t move for at least three whole seconds before pointing to the pain au chocolat. “This one.” He deadpanned, his mouth only barely moving. Satori fished one of those pastries out of the case and put it in a small bag. Ushijima’s eyes locked on the bag and didn’t move.
“Anything else?” He tapped his finger on the glass as he waited for him to say something.
“Um, also the red chocolate one. Could I get three of those squares?” He pointed to the dark chocolate cherry squares, the ones Satori loved the most.
“Of course, Wakatoshi!” The name slipped out, and as Satori ducked to get the dark chocolates out of the display case, he blinked so hard he saw stars. Jesus, Satori. Get a grip. “Here’s your order. Hugo can help you pay over there.” He handed the two items to Ushijima, and his hand just barely grazed Ushijima’s calloused fingers as he took the bags. Satori turned around and kept working on the eclairs, much slower this time.
He waited until he heard Ushijima walk away before he reached his hands into his short hair and waved his head around a few times. Ten years, and it suddenly felt like it had been a day. Ushijima was there, right in front of him. Satori bent down in a deep squat and just pushed his hands into his skull for a second. He needed to just forget that even happened.
Satori huffed out a loud sigh and rolled back his shoulders, standing up and trying to focus again. The moment had passed, there was nothing he could do about it now. So he just restarted on frosting the desserts and tried to forget about it.
~~
Satori’s shift was finally over. He zipped up his backpack, and took a few much needed gulps of water before joining his coworkers outside. Julia had already lit up a cigarette, and regarded Satori by offering one out of her pack. “Smoke?”
Satori politely declined, “Not today.”
The conversation went flat for a second, Hugo staring off into space and Lucille smoking her own cigarette quietly. She blew out a breath of smoke and nudged Satori in the side. “So what happened with that guy earlier?” She asked, and Satori reached a hand to the back of his head.
“Uhm, I think you’re seeing things again.” He quipped, but internally was unimpressed at his own attempts to be discreet. He knew he was anything but nonchalant, but he tried so hard to hide it today.
Hugo chimed in. “I can’t lie, that guy looked pretty unimpressed. He was so monotone. Maybe it was the language barrier.” He rubbed his stubble thoughtfully.
Satori couldn’t help but chuckle. “He’s always been like that. I think his face today was the most emotional I’ve ever seen.” He said before even thinking about it. Everyone looked at him curiously, and he sighed. “Long story.”
Hugo gestured for him to tell more. “We have all night.”
“I don’t have all night. Spit it out.” Lucille poked Satori in the side, her usually smiley face serious.
Julia blew out a cloud of smoke. “I can’t say I’m not invested too.”
Satori sighed greatly, looking at the sky for guidance. “Well, I guess the quick and dirty is that I left Japan when I was just a kid to come here, and I didn’t resolve everything with everyone I knew before coming here.” He treaded lightly. “I guess that I just fell out with most of my friends, and I can’t believe they’re here for the olympics.” he explained, earning a hum of understanding from Julia.
“I understand.”
“Friends?” Lucille raised an eyebrow. “I think that your reaction felt like something that wasn’t just friends, Satori. Unless I’m seeing things again.” She raised an eyebrow, and Satori stopped her with a hand.
“Maybe you should get your eyes checked.” He gave her a side glance. “Anyways, I’m off to go home! Have a nice night everybody!” He skipped off down the road and once he’d crossed onto another block he slowed down, and allowed himself to think.
Only for a moment, because he got a call from none other than his high school classmate, Semi Eita. It had been a few weeks since they’d last called, so He answered. “Semi Semi?” He raised an eyebrow.
Semi started talking immediately. “Did you see that Wakatoshi made it to the olympics? He’s in Paris right now!” Always tactful, Semi was.
“Don’t I know it.” Satori sounded unenthused. “He actually stumbled upon my place of work.” He explained. “Haven’t seen him in ten years, so it was pretty weird.” Satori explained.
Semi hummed in thought. “Have you kept in touch?”
What Semi didn’t know was that the only person from his high school life that Satori still talked to was him, and only once in a blue moon.. Everyone else was completely cut off, for better or for worse. “Nope. I only talk to you, Semi Semi. You’re just so amazing! How could I talk to anyone else?” He joked. “You’re the most amazing musician and rockstar and civil servant.”
“Are you being sarcastic or serious?” Semi deadpanned.
Satori sighed. “I’m being serious. I actually only talk to you.”
Semi paused. “I’m surprised. I really thought you’d kept in touch with him at least.”
“Well things happen, ya know.” He said. “Life.”
“So how do you feel after him showing up at your place of work?” Semi asked.
Satori opened the door to his apartment complex. “Confused.”