Pairing: Shop Owner!Reader x Barista!Jungkook (Final Version: Reader x Switch!Jungkook/ Baby Boy!Koo | Reader x Dom!Yoongi)
Genre: Smut/Fluff/Mild Angst, Slow Burn | Barista AU
Word Count: 2.3K (Final version: 15K+)
Rating: M (18+)
Summary: You and your business partner/best friend Jin have struggled to find good help to run your coffee shop. Employee after employee, it just never worked out. However, Jungkook is determined to impress and deliver. He wants this more than ever, and it always feels good to want something. To need, well, that’s even better.
Warnings: Not much to warn about in this snippet, but in the final version...stay tuned.
A/N: Woo--we’re almost to the finish line! I’ve been chipping away at this fic for what feels like two months, maybe more. With the end in sight, I wanted to share a couple thousand words to kick things off. The final version comes out Friday, Valentine’s Day, because JJK wrecks me and I’m super soft. Stay tuned, and enjoy this teaser!
Preview:
“Good morning. How can I…help?”
“Yes, good. Help…”
“How can I help you?
“Perfect. Just like that.”
You roll your eyes as you listen to the conversation between your business partner and the new hire.
“Now pay close attention, okay? I’m going to give you a complicated order.”
“Comp- complicated? Oh, I get it. Okay.”
“I would like a small soy iced latte with one pump of caramel.” Your partner motions with his finger to emphasize the number one.
“Mhm. Okay.” His eyes skim the POS for a minute, then he carefully taps the screen a few times and looks up for assurance. “That’s four dollars, please.”
“You almost got it, but it should have soy milk.” Your partner leans over to correct the order. “…and now that changes the price. Read it back?”
“That’s four dollars and…uh. Four dollars and fifty cents, please.”
“Great!” Your partner looks over his shoulder at you. “Y/n, he’s improving, huh?”
“Bit by bit, Jin,” you say sarcastically. You lean forward and flash the new guy a cheeky smile and a thumbs up.
“Okay, okay Y/n.” Jin shoots you a warning glare. He taps the screen to clear the order and start anew. “Maybe just stock the backroom until we’re done.” Jin turns his attention back to his student. “Jungkook, let’s try another.”
You trudge to the backroom and cut open boxes of cups, pulling them free to start stacking them on a steel shelf. Such a waste of time.
Seokjin was not only your business partner. He is your housemate and best friend from college. You know him like the back of your hand.
The two of you met at your university’s Young Entrepreneur’s workshop and immediately clicked after a lengthy conversation about your shared dream to run a coffee shop. After graduation, the two of you you worked hard at odd jobs and pulled your money together (plus a generous investment from Jin’s parents) and started your dream as business owners.
Running your own shop was gratifying in many ways but restricting in many others. While the two of you loved the freedom of self-employment, you were constantly struggling to find good help. The kids in your town were either too self-assured to do hard work, or too inexperienced, causing more work for both of you in the long-run.
Exhibit A: Jungkook. Your best friend hired the kid after a rocky interview. He understands English well enough but struggles to speak it. Jin claimed that he saw promise in him—A “glimmer of potential,” as he put it. Honestly, you believed Jin saw a bit of himself in Jungkook, relating to him on a personal level since he also struggled to learn English at one point. “Just give him a chance,” Jin pleaded. You begrudgingly agreed and have regretted it ever since.
“I just don’t get it.”
“I know, Y/n. It’s just…he’s so eager to learn. He really likes working for us,” Jin whispers, pulling you into the back alley to speak privately.
“He’s a really good barista, I’ll give him that. But Jin, we need someone who can speak with the customers—“
“—and he will. Let’s just give him a little longer to pick it up,” Jin clasps his hands together. He knows how this little gesture gets you every time; his full bottom lip protruding out, eyes wide and begging. “He’s a good kid. Come onnnn.”
You sigh, nodding your approval for the third time this month.
“Fine, but I get to hire the next one.”
Jin beams. “Sounds good to me. But there won’t be a ‘next one’.”
Humph. “We’ll see.”
As far as you could remember, Jin has had a habit of taking in strays, as you so lovingly referred to them. Stray employees, stray friends, stray lovers. He made quick relationships with everyone he met because he only saw the good in them. He had a big puppy heart and you loved him for it, but he could be so incredibly naive.
Once, he fell in love with this girl in college. She was drop-dead gorgeous, lost in life and brand new on campus. You noticed her as she sat alone, timidly crossing her delicate ankles and smoking Virginia Slims like a posh 50’s housewife. “Check out this lamb,” you commented, jabbing Jin in the ribs. That was the first and last thing you said to him before he fell under her spell. Her eyes hooked into his and beckoned him closer with the siren song of daddy issues, helplessness and the hallowed pit of despair that could only be filled with the cocks of strangers.
At this point in life, to say “I told you so” would be painstakingly redundant. This is why you held your tongue when Jin hired Jungkook. Let him figure this out on his own, you thought. There had been countless times when you bailed Jin out of uncomfortable situations that his big dumb heart got himself into. This time, you loosened the reigns.
When he poured his soul into Miss Virginia Slims—mended her heart and made her whole again; you sugar-coated the cracks in his breaking heart after she left. “She’s new to the area. Probably just needs time to find herself,” you lied. But it wasn’t a blatant lie. You knew she was finding herself, but with the help of her young and attentive therapist tucked neatly between her milky smooth thighs.
Days marched on as they always do; slow and rhythmic, with an occasional hiccup that demands emergency triage.
“I specifically asked for OAT milk. I’m allergic to almonds!” A berry-faced woman spouts hysterically at Jungkook. He shrinks from the espresso machine and allows Jin to step in his place.
“Take five, Kook. I’ve got this.”
Jungkook bows his head apologetically at the woman and steps into the back room. He paces nervously around boxes of paper cups and decides to shakily wash dishes in the stainless steel sink.
The rabid woman can be heard clearly from the back room, calling Jungkook all sorts of names he doesn’t understand. You join him in the back and sit on a nearby stool, tucking your feet on the footrest.
“She lies.” Jungkook greets you sullenly.
“Yeah?”
“She is not allergic.” He responds in Korean. “Sorry. Uh…she’s…not allergic.” His face crinkles in a slight scowl, clearly shaken by the shouting. “I can tell.”
You rock lightly on the stool and try not to smile. In moments like this, you can really see his age. He takes his anger out on the dishes, splashing water onto his apron as he scrubs bright red lipstick smudges off of a coffee mug.
“I hate when women cake on that junk. Who wears hooker-red lipstick at 6am anyway?” You snort and try to lift the mood.
Jungkook looks at you with a quirked eyebrow. “H-hooker?”
“Sex worker. It’s a derogatory term.” You shake your head and wave him off. “Never mind.”
He scrubs at the stain roughly until the ceramic gleams.
“How can you tell she’s lying?”
“I used soy.” He looks down at the dishes and scrubs steadily, then tilts his almond eyes to see you shake away an amused grin.
“Kook, you can’t do that.”
The balls on this kid. And here you were thinking he was a complete dunce. It’s hard to stay mad when he made your least favorite customer look like a hysterical fool in front of her friends, but this is your reputation on the line. If people start thinking you can’t get a simple latte order right, they’ll easily move their business to one of the many chain establishments within a five-mile radius.
He plops a scrubbed mug into the sanitizing machine and flicks it on.
“She was mean to you.”
He’s not wrong. You were working the register when miss berry and her pack of yes-women came into the shop, commenting on how the decor didn’t match the “vibe.” She annoyed the shit out of you, but who doesn’t? However, she really worked your last nerve when she complained about the lack of chestnut praline syrup, toying with the idea of mentioning it in her Yelp review.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s a paying customer.”
Jungkook sits on the sanitizing machine and faces you, still rocking on your stool. He crosses his arms across his chest. “You looked…frustrated.”
“I’m always frustrated.”
He quirks an eyebrow and straightens his hunched posture on the sanitizer. He either doesn’t believe you or he’s trying to process what you just said.
“Sorry. I’ll do better,” he says solemnly.
He tilts back his head to shake his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. It’s not too long, but it sweeps across his forehead and peeks just past his eyebrows to tickle his lashes. When he first started working for you and Jin, he had a mop of fluffy hair that hung over his face and often covered his eyes completely. You thought it suited his shy personality, but the way he wears it now shows off his youthful freckles, chiseled jawline, and a thin scar, high on his left cheek.
“Thank you, but don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“Beat…myself?”
“Don’t worry.” You flash him a thumbs-up, a universal sign that everything is okay.
“Okay.” He returns your gesture with his big thumb.
“Oh, and Kook?”
“Yes?”
You point to his upturned thumb, which has a prominent smudge of red lipstick just at the back. “You missed a spot.”
He shivers in disgust and wipes it on his apron. His hand rubs roughly, only smearing the lipstick further. You both share a laugh, loud enough that Jin pokes his head from behind the doorway.
“I heard Y/n laughing. Something must be wrong.”
You pick up a washrag and toss it at him, but you’re such a bad throw that it pathetically falls to the floor two feet away. Jin dodges dramatically like you’re about to hit him with something powerful, which only makes Jungkook laugh harder until he almost slips off the sanitizer.
“Get out of here, Kim. We’re having a moment.”
Jin puts his hands up and retreats back behind the doorway. Jungkook’s dabs the corner of his eye with his sleeve as his laughter dies down.
Your eyes keep skimming the scar on his cheek when he smiles. How haven’t you noticed it? Suppose it’s not noticeable unless you’re close enough, which you haven’t been before.
“How did this happen?” You motion to the placement of his scar on your own cheek. He mimics the motion and grazes the thin line gently.
“This? Oh—hah.” He rolls his eyes. “Stupid.”
Now you’re really curious. “How stupid?”
“Very.”
You raise your eyebrow and smile at him. He sighs and walks over to the computer behind you.
“You know computer games?”
It’s hard not to be amused by his question. You have to admit, this is not where you saw the conversation going. “Heard of them.”
Jungkook sighs again. “I was, hm, what’s the word?” He jabs at the air in front of him with boxing jabs.
“Boxing?”
“No—oh, fighting!”
“Fighting? You were you fighting?”
His story is becoming animated suddenly. A dopy smile curls across his lips, exposing his large bunny teeth. It’s a trait you’ve always found a little endearing even when he annoys the living shit out of you sometimes.
“My hyung.”
You quirk your head, a little confused. You recall Jin using the word before, referring to his family.
“Brother?”
He nods. “Older brother.”
“So you fought your older brother…over computer games?”
He nods proudly and laughs at the memory. “See? Stupid.”
“Who won? You?”
He flexes his bicep and rests his arm on the computer monitor triumphantly. “Duh.”
You can’t suppress your laughter at his blatant confidence. It’s nice to see this side of him.
“I didn’t know you have a brother. I haven’t seen your parents either. Do they live here in town?”
Jungkook shakes his head. “In Korea.”
“You’re by yourself then?”
“I live with…a…hm. Friend? Family friend.” He finishes the sentence in his native language, which you actually do understand a bit of, at least enough to know he’s not completely alone.
“If your family is all the way in Korea then why did you leave?”
He holds one hand out like a piece of paper and uses the other to illustrate a painting motion. “Study art.”
You can’t help but drop open your mouth, just a bit. “You’re an artist?” He’s college-aged, but for some naive reason, you just assumed he was working to pay the bills. It didn’t occur to you that he was pursuing something outside these walls.
He nods proudly and walks over to his shoulder bag, slung on the back of the back room door. You’re absolutely lost for words when he pulls out a stack of watercolors, some still-life and others painted beautifully from memory. You wordlessly palm through portraits of familiar faces like Old Lady Faye who usually sits by the bay window and sips chamomile tea. There’s even a pencil sketch of the espresso machine, so real it could pop off the paper and make lattes.
“Kook, these are outstanding.” You look up at his expectant face; lips closed in a concentrated line, wide eyes trained to meet your gaze. “You’re very talented. I had no idea.”
“You like it?”
“A lot. Does Jin know about this?”
He nods his head slowly.
Jin and his big dumb heart. Of course he knows. This glimmer of potential he saw in Jungkook makes so much sense now and you feel a little dumb not catching on earlier.
Jungkook lifts the watercolors from your lap and neatly files them back into his shoulder bag, careful not to bend the corners. He holds a painting aside, scribbles something at the bottom corner and hands it to you with a smile.
“For you, Noona.”
It’s the pencil sketch of the espresso machine, now etched with his signature and a little note:
