JUST A TASTE - part two: sour
miya atsumu/bartender!reader (haikyuu!)
ao3 link
word count: 3.3k
tags: see series masterlist for more tags, enemies to customer service providers, f!reader, frequent mentions of alcohol, thinly-veiled miya twin jealousy.
japanese lemon sour:
1oz fresh lemon juice, 2oz shochu, club soda, ice.
add lemon juice and sochu to ice. stir to combine. top with club soda.
Lunch, somewhat controversially, is your favourite meal of the day.
It’s just an underrated meal, in your opinion. Skipped often by those in the workforce, or relegated to a feed of a meagre collection of snacks or a small portion of whatever lacklustre leftovers remain from the evening meal from the night before. The midday meal is not bestowed with the same importance as the first of the day—the aptly named breaking of the overnight fast—nor is it anticipated or handled with the same extravagance of a dinner.
No one has lunch parties, after all—though you personally think they should.
Oftentimes, lunch is your first proper meal of the day. You’re not unfamiliar with sleeping through what would conventionally be considered breakfast hours thanks to working at a bar and not getting home until most people have long gone to bed. Most days you don’t even rise from your slumber until the rest of the city is already awake with their days well underway, and by the time noon comes around you’re lucky if you even have anything more than a few cups of coffee in your system.
Most days, you arrive to the bar in the early afternoon. It gives you a good couple of hours to ahead of opening; leaving you time to take care of any menu planning for the coming weeks, contact suppliers, check inventory, and handle any prep behind the bar that needs to be done.
It also means that you have time to stop and grab something to eat on your way to work.
The good thing about your bar’s downtown location is that there’s a multitude of fantastic spots to grab food all within a few blocks. From cafes to ramen places, you’re never left hungry, and you make a point to try as many of the local restaurants as you can. Like a hobby, if feeding yourself can be considered that.
This very hobby is how you find yourself wandering into a little onigiri joint—tucked down a narrow side street a few blocks away from the bar—in the early afternoon one Wednesday on your way to work. It’s unassuming on the outside, humble and understated compared to some of the restaurants in the downtown core, and you must have walked past it 100 times before— but something about it makes you stop that day, and you find yourself stepping through the door without a second thought.
Your stomach is grumbling as you enter, only one black coffee (you’d been out of milk that morning) in your belly since you’d tumbled out of bed an hour prior. You have a meeting with Shoji in 25 minutes to go over the updates being made to the wine list next week, and Onigiri is a quick, easy choice since you can take it to go and munch on as the two of you go through your usual paperwork and planning. The little shop is busy but not excessively so, and you quickly make your way through the line up towards the counter to place your order.
You tap a message to Shoji asking if he wants you to pick him up a bite to eat while you wait.
“Next!”
You step forward, looking up from your cellphone, and find yourself blinking into the face of one Miya Atsumu.
Why the hell is he working at an onigiri shop?
Was he moonlighting to make ends meet, having perhaps accumulated significant debt from spending so much money bleaching his hair? Was this a passion project he took on during his free time to keep him humble? Court imposed community service? You even wonder if maybe you’ve missed some catastrophic fall from grace—you haven't checked twitter in a few days; did the great wide world finally catch wind of some skeleton in his closet and cancel him? Was an exposé published by one of his (countless) jilted lovers?
The man peers back at you as you stare at him blankly, the list of hypotheticals still ticking through your mind, looking mildly exasperated.
“Brother,” the young man before you says gruffly, as though he somehow already knows what you’re thinking as you regard him. The furrow in your brow eases slightly, morphing into an expression of more categorical confusion. He doesn't sound outrightly annoyed as he says it, but clearly it’s a question he has to field more than once a day, and has for all his life. “Twin brother.”
The pieces click into place.
“Oh. My condolences,” you mutter before you can stop yourself.
The ball-cap clad man’s eyes widen, and he barks out a laugh in the wake of your words—warm and sincere.
“Oh, you really know ‘Tsumu, dontcha?” he asks, dark grey eyes twinkling with a mischievous sort of delight that only makes him look even more like his bleached blonde brethren. He leans forward, hands braced against the counter, to get a closer look at you on the other side.
“Unfortunately yes,” you say with a nod, clearing your throat and making a point of actually putting in your order after having wasted so much of the poor guy’s time mistaking him for his unpleasant sibling.
He quickly sets to work packing up the onigiri you’ve pick out from the display, though you notice him slip one more into the box than you’d requested as he goes.
“The extra one’s on me. An apology fer whatever my dumbass brother's put ya through,” the man says, holding the takeout bag with your purchase across the counter as you tuck your credit card back into your purse after paying. “Name’s Osamu, by the way.”
You find he’s surprisingly tolerable considering the boy he shares such an alarming amount of his DNA with.
You relay your own name back to him as you pluck the bag from his outstretched hand.
“Come back any time—if ya don’t mind havin’ to look at me, that is. Wouldn’t wantcha to think bad of the Miya name.”
“Yeah, I suppose that would be pretty bad for business.” You laugh, internally kicking yourself for not putting two and two together considering the shop is quite literally called Onigiri Miya if the logo printed on the bag is anything to go by.
Osamu sighs heavily, though you surmise that most of it is feigned. “Yeah, he’s a real PR nightmare, and costin’ me a fortune in free onigiri with all the hearts he breaks.”
You blink for a moment, the distant screech of dialup internet ringing in your ears as you process what he’s said, and then you laugh.
Loudly.
Osamu stares at you as you struggle to pull yourself together, an eyebrow raised in response to your unexpected outburst.
“Your stupid brother didn’t break my heart—he just makes my job harder,” you say through your laughter, a hand resting propped on your hip. “I’m just a bartender at his favourite Friday night date spot.”
“Nah, not that swanky bar downtown he’s always goin’ on about?” Osamu asks with a brow still quirked.
You nod. “Have you ever been?”
Osamu clicks his tongue, smiling as he shakes his head. “Bit…ah, elevated fer my tastes. This is more my speed.” He gestures demonstratively around his quaint but happily bustling restaurant with a half-hearted sweep of his hand.
Your interaction has been brief, but Osamu seems down to earth and easy to get along with. He blends perfectly into the space he’s built for himself, so it isn’t very hard to see what he means. There’s something familiar and warm about him, even though you’ve only just met him—a far cry from the flashy, ostentatious nature of his twin.
“Well, if you ever do decide to stop by, you should come come to the bar to see me. I’ll pay you back for the free onigiri.” You raise your bagged lunch and wiggle it slightly.
The young man grins, tipping his head forward in a little nod, his branded baseball cap bobbing. “I might have to take ya up on that.”
You return his smile and say your goodbyes, heading back out into the afternoon sun with your bag of onigiri clutched tightly in-hand.
You aren’t surprised in the slightest that the onigiri are every bit as tasty as you’d hoped they’d be.
“I met your brother the other day,” you say a few nights later, straining the cocktail you’re preparing into a sparkling, perfectly polished highball glass.
It’s Friday night, the bar is bustling, and there’s a familiar figure draping himself across the counter in front of you as you work.
Eyebrows too dark for the peroxide blonde tone of the hair that accompanies them shoot up in surprise.
“Where’d ya meet that scrub?”
“At his shop,” you say, tipping a small bottle of aromatic bergamot bitters over the surface of the first drink on your workstation with a gentle, measured hand. “He was nice.”
“He’s a scrub.”
“So you’ve said.” You shoot him a huffy little look, setting to work on the second cocktail in the same way you had the first. “I happened to like him. Makes a good onigiri, too; I might have to go back again.”
“Don’t tell him that or it’ll go right to his fat head,” Atsumu grumbles, scrunching up his unfairly dainty nose.
You roll your eyes, biting back the comment that he ought to look in a mirror some time.
You keep working, mulling quietly over your next question for a moment, wiping your hands on the apron tied around your waist after returning the little bottle of bitters to its place on the counter.
“So, is he seeing anyone?” you voice the query nonchalantly, reaching for your bar spoon to twirl it through the highball glass, tinkling gently against the edges. “Your brother, I mean.”
The resulting beat of silence is prolonged, and you look up to see Atsumu staring at you blankly.
“What?” you ask, slightly worried you may have crossed a line. He’s still a customer, after all, in spite of the strange relationship you’ve cultivated with him in the past few months. You’re about to try and smooth things over when Atsumu finally speaks again.
“Yer hot for ‘Samu?”
“He was nice,” you reply, fighting the heat that threatens to creep up your neck and the sudden pressure in your throat, “and I think he was flirting with me.”
“He flirts with anything with a pulse,” the man in front of you offers flatly in response.
“You really are twins then, aren’t you?” you mutter dryly, garnishing the two waiting cocktails with thin slices of dried blood orange. The delicately desiccated rounds of citrus float prettily on the surface, the red-streaked flesh of the fruit bobbing atop the beverage.
“Do ya think he’s good lookin’?”
“He’s handsome enough.” You feel a little bit of the prickling heat you’ve been trying to ignore crawl further up your neck at his unexpected question—what’s it to him, anyway?
You tell him as much.
“Ya know we’re twins, right?”
“With very different personalities—that’s what counts.”
The ice shifts in the glasses in front of you, an audible little clink as the thick cubes settle further in the liquid, melting as they rest untouched.
“Your date is shooting a lot of weird looks this way, you probably shouldn’t keep her waiting,” you point out to Atsumu airily, having caught the girl he’d turned up with that evening shooting more than a few furtive glances in the direction of the bar the longer he lingers there with you.
Atsumu sets his jaw, picking up the two drinks you slide across the counter towards him and stepping away. You watch the broad lines of his shoulders as he turns his back to you.
“Samu snores y’know,”—he spins around on his heel again, a little frown on his lips—“real loud too. And he chews with his mouth open.”
You tilt your head curiously.
“And he only drinks cheap beer,” Atsumu says, sniffing indignantly. He lifts the two glasses in his hands. “He’d hate these.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” you quip dryly, your hands settling on your hips.
He turns around again, the sharp line of his jaw set, and starts making his way back to his table.
“Tell her this one comes from Italy. The man who made it named it after a woman who broke his heart—that’s why it finishes on a sour note.”
He grunts out some sort of affirmative, but doesn’t spare you another glance.
You watch from the corner of your peripheral as his date sips the drink he presents to her once he’s reclaimed his seat. Her eyes widen in delight at the taste, and he shifts a little closer— leaning in and whispering something to her as one of his fingers circles the rim of her glass. His other hand has disappeared under the table out of sight to rest somewhere you decide you’d rather not picture.
The woman softens slightly, eyes glued to Atsumu’s handsome face with a look that can be described as nothing short of enamoured.
He’s clearly relayed your trivial information to her.
You sigh, tapping the screen of your POS system and puling up the next drink order in the queue waiting for your attention.
You at least hope that he's gentle with this one when he doesn’t call her back next week.
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