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intheorangebedroom · 2 months

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The corner deli

Summary: You take a night trip to the corner deli and meet this handsome guy, but shit turns out weird.

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!reader

A/N: This is what happens when I can't sleep. Happy Frankie Friday, Orange besties 🧡

Word count: 1.8k

The corner deli

And here you are, another Friday night on your own, reading a book you can barely focus on, scrolling mindlessly in between chapters, slouched in your couch and feeling sorry for yourself. Those stupid, evil thoughts starting to whisper some nasty shit in the back of your mind, and you’re letting it happen.

It’s on you, though, because some of your coworkers, the younger ones, offered you to go out with them but you said no. You’re too much of an introvert, but not enough that you don’t feel miserable now, sitting here alone while the city’s buoyant life unfolds without you behind your closed windows. What difference does it make, anyway. It goes on, whether you decide to join or not. No one misses you, so there.

Fuck it. Tonight, you’re gonna eat your feelings. You slip on your jeans and your shoes and go out to the deli on the corner, it’s open all night. You’ll get some Pringles or ice cream, whatever comes first.

You’re walking down an aisle, hesitating between two flavors of Chex Mix, when you catch sight of THE most handsome man you’ve ever seen in your entire life.

He’s tall. And so fucking broad. His denim shirt is working hard containing the breadth of his solid shoulders, his jeans are tight on his thighs. He’s got a scruffy, patchy beard and strands of brown hair curling at his ears underneath his trucker hat. He’s all sharp profile, solid features, plush lips, oh! his lips are just… generous, and his eyes… god his eyes are dark, deep and soulful. Wait, did you just use the word soulful? Well, he’s that fucking handsome. There’s a stern crease splitting his brow, but it’s tempered by the small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the kind you get from laughing often.

You look down at yourself and… fuck. Your mascara has run off because yeah, maybe you cried a little, earlier. Your hair is dirty, pulled together in a messy bun that looks nothing like those supposedly effortless hairdos thrown at you in Instagram reels. The ones that make you feel unworthy of the air you’re breathing. You're wearing a dirty pair of 501 with your pajama shirt tucked in, there’s no way you're getting anywhere near him, even if you had any self-confidence to boot.

You walk over to the back of the store. Not that it’s a good hiding spot, it’s just where the fridges are. And of course, they’re out of the one ice cream flavor you like. Wow. It really ain’t your day, is it? Craning your neck to scan the empty top shelf, you spot the very last Netflix and Chill’d all the way to the back. Opening the door, you stand on tiptoes, fingers scrambling over the icy shelf to grab it, but you can’t reach that high.

That’s when you feel him. His chest barely brushing at your back. You get a whiff of his scent and you swallow a gasp. He smells like leather and warm skin and laundry and you can’t even move anymore, you just stand there like a Roman statue in a museum, with one arm up. Your gaze follows his arm as it extends toward the shelf, reaching it with ease. As his large hand grabs the last tub, the whole sequence of movements completely effortless and well, graceful.

He takes a step away from you, and your body’s responding again. Your heels meet the ground, and you turn to face him. There’s the promise of a smile curling his lips, fuck he is stupidly handsome, Jesus fucking Christ, are you still breathing? He hands you the tub and all you can think of is how thick his fingers look around it, and how they would feel buried inside you, or wrapped around your throat, and… oh wow. That escalated quickly.

You swallow hard, blinking the filthy thoughts away. There’s something in the way he looks at you, a glimmer in his eyes. You feel… warm. He flexes his jaw to the side, he’s smiling at you, still holding that goddamn ice cream, you gotta say or do something, but your body has bailed on you, yet again.

Eventually, you take the cold tub, careful not to touch his fingers. But he’s not letting go. Your breathing turns shallow, you can barely hold his gaze. Why does he keep looking at you with those soft brown eyes, why is he smiling like that? He can’t possibly be… what? Interested in you? No one can. No one ever is. That’s why you’re in this deli, alone, in the middle of the night, wearing last week's dirty laundry.

Oh. Of course. He’s waiting for you to thank him. Jesus you’re stupid.

“Thanks. You. I mean, thank you.” Oh, great, that went well.

There’s a beat before he releases his grip and lets go of the tub.

“You’re welcome,” he says, and of course, his voice is velvet. Round and husky and low.

There’s an easy confidence about him, like quiet assertiveness, is that a thing? Like he knows his worth, but he doesn’t need to step all over people’s toes to show it.

You’re raking your brain for some smart quip you know will come to you tomorrow morning in the shower, when you hear a commotion at the cashier. Somebody’s shouting orders, a dude holding up something in his hand, pointing it at the employee behind the plexiglass. Holding a fucking handgun, Jesus fuck the place is getting robbed.

Your mouth drops open, but no sound comes out. There’s pressure around your elbow and you’re yanked down onto the dirty tiles.

The man in the trucker hat is crouching next to you. He holds his index finger pressed to his lips. His face looks different, his jaw tensed, a deep frown darkening his face. His eyes are pitch black, is it even the same man? A minute ago, he looked like the friendly next-door neighbor you’re daydreaming about fucking in the basement laundry room, and now he looks like someone who’s about to shoot you in the face.

“Be quiet,” he mouthes under the noises coming from the front of the store, “stay here, everything’s gonna be ok.”

You don’t want him to leave you here on your own, no matter how threatening he looks, but he’s already moving toward the front and anyway, it’s not like you can move.

Shouldn’t you call 911? He told you to be quiet, what the hell are you supposed to do?

It all happens so fast, and you’re so scared. You’ve never been this scared in your entire life. You hear a thud, followed by a gunshot. You clasp your hand to your mouth, you’re sure you’re gonna die. You hear the sounds of a struggle, a loud, piercing yelp, and another, louder thud. There are a few more noises, fabrics rustling, muffled groans and nothing. Deafening silence.

You can’t feel your legs and your heart is beating in your throat when you finally hear him, the guy in the trucker hat. His voice is firm and his tone commanding as he addresses the deli employee.

“Hey, hey look at me, you’re ok. Can you call 911? Hey! Call 911. You’re ok.”

Your legs won’t carry you. You have to crawl to the front of the store on your hands and knees, and your eyes grow wide at the scene you find there. A tall, young man with a shaved head is lying on the floor, wrists in a zip tie, he’s passed out, or dead, you’re not sure and you don’t wanna know. And anyway, you don’t have time to see more. He’s here, in front of you, the guy in the trucker hat, blocking the view with his massive silhouette, helping you get up and walking you outside.

“You ok?” he asks you.

He’s got one hand in the small of your back, the other one is gripping your arm. They’re warm, and that’s how you register how cold you are. In fact, you’re shivering in the warm city night, teeth chattering and all.

“It’s over, I got you,” he says, cupping your face and you look up at him, nodding, mumbling, “I’m ok, yeah, I’m ok,” trying to focus on his warmth radiating through your cheeks.

When they arrive, the cops instruct you to stay to make a deposition. Uncomfortable doesn’t cut it to describe your state of mind throughout the entire process, but he stands near you the whole time, his shoulder against yours, and you don’t think you could stand straight without it.

Eventually, the place clears up. The perp came to, they handcuffed him and took him away. As he passed near you, you saw a purple bruise blooming on his neck.

You’re told you’re free to go, and there’s really no reason for you to stay.

Except there is.

“So um… you’re a cop, or something?” you ask, looking intently at the fascinating tip of your Van’s, bumping against the curb.

He shakes his head.

“No. US Air Force. I’m a pilot.”

Your head shoots up, mouth falling open into a silent oh.

His smile is so fucking soft you want to kick the curb and break all your toes.

“Well, thank you, anyway. That was really scary. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Now, there really isn’t any reason for you to linger. But he’s not moving, standing tall and broad and solid before you, hands propped on his hips, with that easy confidence about him. And that thing happens again, that thing where he looks at you with those gentle brown eyes and that promise of a smile, and you feel like you’re the center of the goddamn universe.

“I’m Frankie, by the way,” he says, offering you his hand.

From all the scary shits that went down tonight, this one has got to be the scariest, by far, because you know that if you take his hand, you’re not gonna let go.

You hear your name coming out of your mouth, and it’s too late. You’re done for. Your small hand slides into his larger one, and he gives it a strong squeeze. Not enough to hurt you, but enough to tell you everything you need to know.

And he’s not letting go. And you’re not letting go. You expect fucking fireworks, at this point, but it’s just… right. Like you don’t have to be scared. Like you don’t have to torture yourself anymore with mean-ass questions about how to behave or what to say next. Like you can simply be you, and it’ll be enough.

“So,” he starts, and he’s downright grinning now, a dimpled smile that lights up his entire face, “d’you think we can consider this as our first date?”

****

#happy frankie friday #the pilot™️#let me know if anyone's interested in a second date?#also just so you know chapter 5 of tybtm is coming along #I'm at 8k but i needed a break from the angst #and yes i am fully aware I said this chapter would be angst-free thank you very much #frankie morales #frankie morales / fem!reader #francisco catfish morales #frankie morales x fem!reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales / you

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ghost-proofbaby · 1 year

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS (a barista!eddie x barista!reader au)

summary: eddie faces the perils of being a coffee shop opener, and meets you. you, who's so damn optimistic it should be annoying. you, who makes the job that has given him trouble seem like a cake walk. you, who seemingly bleeds sunshine. god, he should really hate you.

warnings: TWO uses of "y/n", fem!reader (use of she/her pronouns), PHYSICAL descriptors used for reader (she has a nose ring and a septum piercing! that's all), eddie is just a bitter and grumpy idiot.

wc: 5.2k

a/n: i apologize in advance for all the technical 'barista' talk in reference to positions. i tried to elaborate on a few of them, haha. also... yes. i gave reader two nose piercings. it's definitely not even more self-projection psh. (because i have three)

the full menu

Eddie Munson is not a morning person.

So, why, for the life of him, he ended up as an opener, he couldn’t tell you.

It had been a snowball effect. He got tired of working odd jobs here and there to produce enough cash to slip Wayne for bills, decided the quick change made off of fixing up neighbors’ cars or mowing lawns just wasn’t cutting it for his desired spending habits. He was tired of being so restricted by his misfortune; he was tired of watching Wayne pull long shifts only to continue living paycheck to paycheck. He was tired of his friends like Harrington and Buckley having money from their part time gig at the movie store to freely agree to impromptu late nights at Benny’s or seeing the latest slasher films in the theater as they premiered while he had to deliberate over counting change to see if he even had the funds to join in. He was tired of eyeing that guitar in the mall and constantly telling himself one day.

Eddie Munson had been tired. But now, as he forced himself awake most mornings before the sun even rose, he was exhausted.

Originally, he’d wanted to be a closer. He didn’t mind being the clean up crew, having to spend late nights in a coffee shop sweeping up grounds and scrubbing away the stickiness of the day. But then the hiring manager that interviewed him had hinted towards the fact that their store already had enough closers when he’d spotted Eddie’s availability, made a few off comments about how what they really needed was a couple brave souls to take over opening shift, and that tiresome cycle rang in Eddie’s ears. Before he even had the chance to think it through, in his desperation, he’d insisted that oh, actually, my availability is completely open. I don’t mind working earlier than that.

What bullshit. Eddie definitely minded working earlier than that. He more than minded it — he loathed it.

Long story short, it had been a series of unfortunate events that led Eddie to where he was now. In his van, fifteen minutes early, staring out at a parking lot bathed in the lingering night as he fought to keep his eyes open.

The clock on his dash read 4:46 in a taunting blink, flickering against his bleary eyesight and making him question every decision in his life that had led him here. Adjusting to the new job had been easy enough — his trainer was nice enough, learning how to make drinks and what routines were required in the morning had been meticulous but rewarding — except for the time. It wasn’t just his start time that tortured him vehemently; shifts seem to pass miserably slow, the seconds dragging their feet in no hurry to get anywhere in particular. The clock didn’t care if Eddie yearned for his bed and a few extra hours of sleep gifted by a nap. Traffic didn’t either, when he’d hit the highways and catch just the beginnings or the tail end of the morning rush.

You’d think he’d complain more about the commute. But the gas spent on the twenty minute drive to the town over was the least of his concerns.

“Fuckin’ John,” Eddie mutters when a large truck pulls up to the drive thru, a notable regular he’d begun to recognize after not even a month of working there. They had just recently changed their opening time (they used to open an hour earlier, his manager had informed him. Eddie had nearly burst into grateful tears that he’d never experienced that crime of humanity.)

None of his coworkers had arrived yet. Most lived closer, able to garner extra snoozes on their alarms and shorter drives of contemplation. Eddie only ever envied them on mornings like today.

“We don’t open for, like, another forty minutes, asshole,” Eddie curses out loud to himself, counting down the time until John gives up and drives away. The man would just circle the store like a vulture anyways. He always did; he always had to be the first customer, grabbing his ridiculous coffee order before scurrying off to play cards at the casino, “How do you come here every fuckin’ day and not know that?”

It took the older man a full four minutes before he finally roughly shifted his truck back into drive, being the farthest thing from gentle as he hit his gas and jerked his vehicle out of the drive thru line. Eddie couldn’t see him clearly through the stubborn darkness, but he could easily imagine that look of irritation at not receiving the caramel frappucino with a quad shot that he seemed to feel entitled to.

God, that man was a dick.

Eddie nearly misses another coworker pulling up to park beside him during the spectacle.

By this point, he’s learned what cars all his coworkers drive.

Carmen, the fellow barista who had trained him but he now rarely worked with due to her availability being a bit later in the day, drove a bright red 2012 Kia Soul that had certainly seen better days. Nicole, one of the shift leads he worked with often during his opens, drove a small and silver Nissan Versa. The year is lost on him, but he’s willing to bet it was a few years old at this point. James, another shift lead who went by Jamie and never had much to say, drove a Volkswagen that looked to be straight out of the 70s. And that was just the beginning, the ones he could think of off the top of his head while he was still waking up inside his van.

The car parked beside him wasn’t any of these. He didn’t recognize it at first glance, and found himself doing a double take as his face scrunched up.

A Jeep. A two-door Jeep Wrangler with vibrant, chipped yellow paint now sat idle beside him.

Who the fuck drove a yellow Jeep?

He can’t even bother to be annoyed or fatigued anymore with the mystery presently before him. He can’t see through the tint of the windows, can’t make out the silhouette of who it was. He was well aware that he hadn’t been acquainted with all of his coworkers quite yet – there was a plethora of baristas in the store he’d only heard spoken of in passing rather than properly meeting – but it had seemed like the people who opened always came from the same rotation of sorry suckers.

Nicole’s car pulls up. So whoever drove the Jeep was not one of the shift leads.

Five minutes to 5:00 AM, Nicole’s car door opens first and Eddie can hear the Jeep’s engine kill. He’s quick to fumble with his own keys, pulling them from the ignition in a haste and throwing a hand out to blindly grab his apron from his passenger seat.

A deep shade of green. Everyone had one or two of them laying around, and they were the root of the nickname for all new hires: green beans. He had just finally gotten the one embroidered with his name a little over a week ago, and his manager had apologized profusely as she swore it usually didn’t take that long.

Eddie really didn’t care. The moment he started wearing the apron with his name on it, customers had taken to randomly addressing him by it, and it made him fucking uncomfortable.

“Rise and shine, campers!” Nicole’s voice echoes through the parking lot the moment all three openers are out of their cars.

Eddie doesn’t answer at first (which isn’t unusual; Nicole was used to his ever-present sleep-deprivation induced silence). He’s too busy nearly tripping over himself as his eyes stay glued on that Jeep, on the door that swings wide open roughly from two parking spaces away as he waits with bated breath.

Would this new coworker he was about to meet even like him?

“God, Nicky,” a new voice groans – a girl’s voice.

Ah, fuck.

Eddie had noticed the mysterious phenomenon of the way everyone who worked here seemed to be attractive to some extent. Nice on the eyes, always smiling and always flirting in a friendly manner to garner more tips. He’d had plenty of bisexual panics in the bathroom anytime one of his coworkers extended that friendly flirtation his way. All the fellow guys (as few as there were) and all the confident girls he’d been in the trenches with – it didn’t matter, they all affected him.

Hawkins didn’t have nearly as many pretty people. Eddie sort of felt cheated for having lived a mere twenty minutes from a goldmine of such people for so long, completely unaware. But he also felt sort of relieved, knowing that if he were still a teenager barely scraping by in high school, this coffee shop would have been his downfall with awkward stumbles and feelings caught from all those faux smiles and joking winks that his now coworkers laid on heavy with their regulars.

With this in mind, he doesn’t know why he wasn’t prepared for when you stepped out of the Jeep. Slamming the door shut behind you, your arms were full with an apron that was definitely not green, along with an oversized water bottle and what he thinks is either a cardigan or jacket. A tote bag slung over your shoulder looked to be stuffed full as well. You were a walking cliche for the type of person that people would expect to work at a coffee shop. The type of person that embodied all those jokes of if an alternative person isn’t making my coffee, it’s not going to taste good.

Eddie should know; he’d been the butt of many of those style of jokes given that he also fit into that category. With his long hair, with his sparse tattoos, with his new nose ring – he knew he was as much of a cliche as you were.

Didn’t stop him from staring at you, suddenly wide awake.

“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?” Nicole jokes as she rounds the front of your Jeep, stopping and looking between you and Eddie before she says to you, “You’d think after a month’s vacation you’d be happier to see me.”

You take two steps forward, lining up right between Eddie and Nicole, and suddenly contort your face to be such an over-exaggerated smile that it’s nearly a grimace. Eddie is so caught up in the scrunch of your nose, he nearly misses the way you grit out a sarcastic “Better?” from between your teeth.

“Oh, that’s the winner,” Nicole cackles, keys jangling as she shakes them and leads the two of you towards the front of the store. Over her shoulder, she continues to joke, “Keep on smiling like that, and I sense a twenty dollar tip in our future.”

Eddie still hasn’t said a word. What is he supposed to say? All he can do is trail slightly behind you, doing everything in his power to not let his eyes roam over your legs or backside. You were just wearing black jeans, in line with the same dress-code everyone else followed, but they were doing you favors.

“Y’know, I think I already saw John’s truck this morning,” your voice was surprisingly pleasant despite the insinuation Nicole had made that your first impression should be grumpy. Far less gritty than Eddie’s would have been had he spoken up, “Think I can sweet talk that out of him? Maybe I’ll ask about his wife. Or- Oh!” you exclaim, bursting with sudden energy that should give Eddie a headache this early, “Put me on bar! I’ll douse his drink in caramel how he likes, that’s sure to tug on his wallet- Sorry, I mean heart-strings.”

Nicole continues to laugh as she fumbles with unlocking the door, and it’s not lost on Eddie that he has never made any of the fellow baristas laugh like that. Although, to be fair, he has never been quite as enthusiastic as you. He didn’t seemingly bleed sunshine like you. Here the three of you were, outside in the dusky beginnings of a morning, and he could have sworn that the sun had already risen from the light that seemed to emit from you.

It should have made him nauseated. It kind of did, actually.

You turn suddenly, just as Nicole finally turns the lock, and face him. Your smile is subtle, eyes so wide he wouldn’t notice the bags even if you had any. “I’m Y/N, by the way.”

You stick your hand out and he can see you sticky with it – with hopefulness, with friendliness, with kindness. His stomach churns.

Nope. Not a chance.

The moment Nicole opens the door, he’s barely muttering his name back to you, and is rushing past you to enter the store. His shoulder brushes against yours, and he has to tell himself repeatedly he did not just shoulder-check you. He has to tell himself that it’s okay he didn’t meet your level of enthusiasm. He has to tell himself that you’re just another barista, someone else who makes coffee for a living and that this new energy you bring is just due to that vacation that Nicole mentioned.

It’ll fade. He’ll be fine. At some point, his stomach has to stop churning.

—

It doesn’t.

Your energy doesn’t falter, to his surprise. Not only are you sunshine personified, but you’re also damn good at your job. Eddie can only imagine how sluggish he’d be if he had a month off from anything, especially a job, but it doesn’t even seem as though you have to dust any of your skills off for the day.

You offer to take over opening up the ‘drive thru’ aspect of the store, brewing all the coffees and teas without complaint as Eddie lingers in his misery of shuffling through the tasks of opening up the food portion of the store. As he’s sorting the croissants to be replenished, implementing the technique of FIFO (first in, first out), he can hear Nicole still cackling at whatever you’re saying in the back of the house as you clean the syrup pumps. When he’s labeling all the new breakfast sandwiches for the day with their best-by dates, he can hear you humming a few feet away from him over the clicking of the sticker gun in his hand. And when the clock finally reads 5:30 to signify the time of opening, you’re putting on your apron, tying it around yourself more securely than Eddie always lazily did. Even your black apron seemed to fit on you better than his did, as if you were more made for this job than he was. As if you had years of experience to carry on your shoulders, and God, were you carrying them with grace. Constantly smiling, constantly joking. He’d once thought Nicole incapable of even breaking a grin, but he’d hardly gone longer than a minute without hearing her laugh during the time of your opening together.

God, he sort of hated you.

You never even mentioned how rudely he’d shrugged off your introduction. Occasionally, he’d even caught you looking his way during the conversation, a soft expression on your face as if you were ready to include him in all the inside jokes at a moment’s notice.

He made sure to consistently stare straight ahead, never once seeming to glance your way when you wore that expression.

You were just too nice. You were putting all the other openers to shame right before his eyes, himself included, and he hated you for it.

Once the store is open, John is the first customer in drive, as always. Eddie wears the headset (the one you’d grabbed for him, sanitizing it and slotting a freshly charged battery in without him even asking. God, he hated you.) and listens in to you greeting the awful bastard, and his stomach does another flip.

“Good morning, John,” you chirp happily. He couldn’t see your face from around the corner, but he could only imagine that you were wearing a smile. Maybe you even had that damn camera on so that the customers could see you just as you could see them.

He waits. Anxious to hear John’s grumpy reply, be reassured when someone else also didn’t match your energy. The man had never been pleasant a single day that Eddie had worked thus far. Simply barking out his order, acting offended when someone didn’t recognize him.

If anyone was going to be cruel to you, Eddie would bet all five dollars in his pocket that it would be John.

But even John wasn’t fucking mean to you.

He had replied in the most cheerful tone Eddie had ever heard leave the man’s throat.

“And who am I speaking to?” he almost sounds teasing. It fans at Eddie’s irrational irritability.

“I’ll give you three guesses.”

He hates the way your customer service voice was so similar to just your normal voice. A bit squeakier, a bit more polite, but still bottled sunshine. He hates how nicely it caressed his eardrum as compared to the grate of some of the other barista’s tones while on drive thru. He hates that some deep part of him secretly hoped that Nicole stationed you there your entire shift, and that if she did, he would fight tooth and nail to keep this damn headset on. Just to hear your voice. Just to hear your light.

“Only three?” John’s gruff voice scoffs, “There’s only one person who works here who is this damn cheery before eight in the morning.”

Nicole laughs from where she’s bent over to put down a few of the sanitizer buckets by the bars, shaking her head as she also listens in over her headset.

“I’m making it easy on you, then,” you say as you suddenly come into view for Eddie. He’s trying to replenish the sandwiches and protein boxes that the store keeps on display for the customer by the register, still working through his morning tasks as he realizes you’ve completed yours.

Man, he fucking hated you.

You don’t miss a beat as you begin to tap one of the espresso machines awake, punching all the right buttons to pull John’s espresso shot before you turn to make your way towards the cold beverage station. “You still drinking the same thing, old man?”

“I’m not old.”

“Right, and I’m not already over-caffeinated,” that’s a lie. He hasn’t seen you touch a drop of coffee this entire time, “Just pull on up. It’s a billion dollars, or whatever your total normally is.”

John’s cackle is cut off by him pulling away from the speaker box, effectively disconnecting the two way mic. Even Eddie finds himself nearly grinning at your reply, but he stops himself. Because you’re annoying. Because no one should be this witty this early. Because the ability to make others laugh this often should be a cardinal sin.

He stops the grin because he hates you… right?

You do manage to get a tip out of John. Eddie sees it with his own two eyes. It’s a quick deposit of whatever spare change the stingiest man Eddie had ever had the displeasure of meeting has lying around his car, and it happens so quickly while you’re leant out the window to pass the man his receipt that he always requests that Eddie almost convinces himself it didn’t happen. But it did. He saw it with his own two eyes, as he tripped over his two left feet, effectively nearly knocking Nicole over with him.

The look she gives him makes his stomach twist this time as his heart lurches. It’s a knowing look. It’s despicable.

She doesn’t say a word until later into the shift, once more baristas are scattered across the floor and peak is in full swing. Eddie isn’t kept on food, and you aren’t kept to manage taking orders or run the window – he’s the one reassigned to the window position as you are moved to the cafe bar. He’s tasked with quick connections before handing out drinks to bored business people, as you fly through making drinks for both mobile orders and any customers that choose to physically walk into the store.

Nicole puts herself on the position of ‘DTO’ – she greets the drive thru customers over the headset and takes their orders, her tone not nearly as honey-sweet as yours had been. She’s lacking in jokes, she sticks to a script that must have taken her years to make sound even remotely natural.

Eddie’s just grateful he doesn’t have to wear a headset and listen to her directly in his ear.

Rush has died down when she turns to him and cocks a brow with her hip. He has the window shut, fiddling with his thumbs as he anxiously awaits for the partner on drive bar to finish making the iced white mocha for the customer currently sitting on their phone. He’s sure the look she shoots his way is in regards to the fact that he isn’t ‘connecting with the customer’ or putting himself through insufferable small talk.

It isn’t.

“Do you not like her?”

His head shoots up, fully meeting her curious gaze, “Excuse me?”

“Y/N,” she clarifies, “Do you… not like her?”

“I don’t know her,” he weakly defends himself.

He had been a dick to you this morning, hadn’t he? What a weak defense for being a bad person to someone who makes this entire store glow simply by being here.

“You should give her a chance,” Nicole speaks softly as she leans back on the counter that holds the order screens, “I… She can be a lot, but she’s one of our best. Think of her as the people’s princess, so to speak.”

He knows you’re one of the best here, just in the short few hours he’s caught glimpses of you. He has no idea how you’re so quick with making drinks, or how you manage to hold such genuine sounding conversations with all of the customers who stand right at the hand off plane. He just gets irritable when they stare at him with prying eyes as he tries (and fails) to keep up his pace.

“I… I can see it,” he nods, bringing a hand up to pinch his bottom lip, “I mean, John clearly loves her.”

Nicole gives a pointed look, “He does. She doesn’t take his shit – him and his wife bring her gifts for every holiday. They know her damn birthday and bring her cards. It’s insufferable.”

He cracks a shy smile at that, “They bring her birthday cards?”

“They bring her birthday cards,” she echoes back to him. Eddie finally receives the drink he was waiting on and turns, quick to hand it out with a soft mutterance of ‘have a good day’. Once he’s finished and the drive thru is officially empty, he faces her once more, “You don’t have to like her as much as everyone else. I know you’re still new and adjusting but… she’s one of the best for a reason.”

“Because she can turn out drinks like it’s no one’s business?” Eddie questions, side stepping and lifting his chin in your direction as you finish yet another drink, as if to prove his point.

“That,” Nicole shrugs her shoulders and pushes off the counter, “And because she actually gives a damn.” Eddie’s brows shoot up as he waits for her to continue, “She knows these customers, man. Learns about their lives, hears them out. Remembers the small things. She’s the same way with all of us, too. She once got turned down from being a shift lead because she’s too nice. Have you ever heard of someone being shot down from a job for that?” Nicole pauses, and Eddie can only shake his head, feeling the ends of his ponytail brush the back of his neck, “She has the management experience – she knows how to run this place. Sometimes, I see it. The way she steps up and takes responsibility. She chooses to be that kind even if it makes her seem like a nut job. She chooses to let people hear walk all over her, because she cares. She cares more about treating us as humans or whatever than she does an upgrade in pay.”

“Makes sense they wouldn’t make her a shift, then,” Eddie dares to say, which earns him a sharp look, “I mean, management positions aren’t for the weak of heart. You have to make tough decision-”

“Once, a man was harassing one of our baristas. This dude who was married. Came in like clockwork and picked up a mobile order under his wife’s name, wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept flirting with one of our poor girls. I’ve never really been afraid of her, but I was every time that man stepped foot in here,” Nicole grabs a rag and starts to wipe down the counters with a low whistle, as if she isn’t spilling serious store lore right now to Eddie. As if she isn’t bringing on more questions than answers, “She’s not weak of heart. She’s good of heart. And if she hadn’t been on vacation, she would have been your trainer. You don’t have to like her, like I said, but it would do you well to give her a chance.”

Trainer?

Carmen had mentioned something about another barista being the usual trainer. She had even tried to joke around with Eddie that he would have liked the other girl better, something about how she was funnier and easier to get along with.

You. You were the girl she’d been talking about. The people’s princess, as Nicole had put it.

Eddie opens his mouth to say something in reply, although he isn’t quite sure what he can say.

God, he had been a fucking dick. And Nicole was matching sure he felt all seven levels of Hell, of guilt, for it.

It ate him alive for the rest of his shift. His stomach churned with it. All that guilt gnawed on him from the inside out, using his bones for toothpicks, and he already knew what he needed to do without Nicole saying it.

—

“Did that hurt?”

The two of you got off your shifts at the same time, as most openers do. At ten o’clock precisely, Nicole was shooing the two of you off the floor, two fresh baristas taking both your places as you scurried to the back.

He’d overheard the joke made ten minutes prior, Nicole speaking to a fellow shift lead about who would be replacing you, already mourning your absence. She didn’t make such a joke about Eddie.

“Huh?” you look up quickly from where you had been carefully rolling and folding your apron into a bundle.

Eddie gestures vaguely to his nose again, repeating himself, “Did it hurt?”

It was the best he could do – pathetic small talk about the nose piercings of yours that had caught his eye.

You grin radiantly, and he tries to swallow down that instinctive voice that whisper hate, hate, hate. “Which one?”

Right. You had multiple nose piercings. A hoop that matches Eddie’s own, only on the left nostril rather than the right like his, and that septum piercing. He’d probably look dumb to ask about the nostril considering he had his done, and should already know that it definitely doesn’t feel nice.

“The septum,” he clarifies, “That combination, though, um… It looks sick.”

Oh, he sounds so fucking stupid right now. He wishes the sticky floors beneath the two of you would split and swallow him whole.

“Eh,” you shrug, finally glancing away from him to finish wrapping the strings of your apron snugly around the bundle you’d made of it, “My nostril honestly hurt worse. If you’re thinking of getting one,” you pause, and look up, offering him a look of pure mischief. Heart, stomach, mind. They all lurch with that look as you whisper, as if letting him in on a secret, “Do it.”

“I don’t think I could pull it off,” he’s quick to blurt out, eyes widening, resisting the urge to take several steps back and put distance between you two.

Fuck, he didn’t hate you. It hits him like a truck – this shift had managed to slip through his fingers so quickly. The fastest one to date. Between all of your jokes, all of the laughter you managed to pull out of others and that he had to fight down, the day had flown past as easily as a shift really could.

He regrets spending the shift moping. He regrets ignoring your introduction. He regrets not giving you a chance.

“I think you could,” your tote bag now hangs from your shoulder, and you have your keys prepared in one hand as you hold your water bottle in the other, “Everyone says that, but if you can already pull off the nostril, adding a little septum to the mix never hurt nobody.”

Is your face stuck like that? Stuck with a subtle and shy smile pulling at the lips, making the corners of your eyes crinkle in the slightest?

He hopes not. If it is, he’ll never be able to have a normal conversation with you. He’ll always be too distracted, too infuriated, too overwhelmed.

“You’re a very optimistic person,” he almost lets it slip out as a scoff, but refrains, Nicole’s words echoing in his mind. It would do you well to give her a chance.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” you casually say to him.

“Did you just quote Star Wars to me?”

Eddie is aghast, staring at you with even more awe than before. And you – oh, you look so goddamn proud of yourself and the way you’ve left him shellshocked, smugly lifting your chin and smiling more intentionally. You’re smiling so widely that your eyes pinch nearly fully shut and even more of that sunshine is now flooding the backroom up to Eddie’s knees.

“I don’t know,” you start to step around Eddie, carrying an air of arrogance that would only be so endearing from someone who had been proven to be as kind as you were, “Did I?”

You never give him the chance to answer. You leave him there, standing in the middle of the back of house and not even clocked out yet as you walk away with a bounce in your step and a quick have a good day, Eddie! over your shoulder.

When he’s finally off the clock and having given a half-ass goodbye to everyone on the floor (which no one replied to as enthusiastically as they had yours, by the way), you’re still sitting in your damn yellow Jeep. You give him a slight wave through the windshield as he makes a beeline for his van, and he doesn’t even bother to return it. Pretends he doesn’t see it. Looks straight ahead. If Nicole is watching from the drive thru window that serves as a front row seat to the entire interaction, she’s going to rip him a new one next shift they work together.

God, Eddie wishes he hated you.

Instead, he’s left hoping that next time he opens, you’re there to make the time fly. Maybe he’ll be the one quoting Star Wars to you. If he can ever get the stick out of his ass, that is.

taglist: @josephquinnsfreckles

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#my writing #coffee shop blues #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfic #barista!eddie munson #this is what i do with my free time before and after work #and on my breaks lol #makes the grind more bearable #we needed some fluff #can i come out of jail now?

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