I saw a post about a Star Trek coffee shop AU on my dash a couple of days ago, and the idea just wouldn't leave my mind since, so I wrote it. It ended up being a lot more Chekov-focused than I thought, so. sorry. Probably it happened because a) he's my favorite b) it was easy to set up a situation where he was the new kid at the cafe and c) he's a computer science major here which means his perspective is the one I feel most confident writing! (since I am also a CS major.)

For now, this is a one-shot. However, there are more ideas I had that I couldn't fit well into this, so there might be more one-shots/drabbles in this universe later.

Title: The Enterprise Cafe
Author: datadoesntlie / jktsanjou (Tumblr)
Original Idea: tardisfleet
Characters / Pairing: the usual bridge crew, but mostly Chekov and Kirk / gen
Word count: 3084
Rating: PG-13 for language?
Warnings/Notes: I really want to say "warning for Stems", because Chekov's intro to engineering class is based off of the awful core engineering class at my school, but probably no one will get that. Oh, I should probably say that I've never actually worked at a coffee shop, so there's probably stuff in here that's inaccurate...
Summary: Pavel Chekov wanders into a small coffee shop owned by Jim Kirk, and finds himself welcomed rather quickly into an interesting group of regulars.

It's only a month into Pavel Chekov's freshman year at university in the US when the on-campus Starbucks closes for renovation. He stares at the sign, and wonders where to go now. It's not that he doesn't like his roommate, but when the older boy isn't teasing him about his young age, he's playing music, video chatting, or inviting friends over. He can't focus enough to study, and with his schedule - twenty-one credits, the hard limit to how many classes he can take as a freshman - he really needs to study.

When he asks around, most of his classmates give him directions to Starbucks locations off campus. But he's been to those, and they're too crowded and noisy for his taste. He's about to give up and sit at the library when he sees a forgotten flyer for a cafe, only a few weeks old but already half-postered over on the bulletin board near the student center.

The Enterprise Cafe is out of the way, hidden on a back street, close enough to be convenient but far enough to be quiet. There's no fancy sign, so he almost misses it, but his excellent navigational skills pull through, and he arrives only a few minutes later than he had originally planned. The cafe is pretty quiet, and he can hear the sounds of the coffee machines in the back over soft music. There are six or seven others sitting down on couches or at tables; some with textbooks and highlighters, some with laptops, some just relaxing with their coffee. He recognizes Professor Scott from his engineering lecture in an animated discussion with a grad student. Something about using the department head's pet beagle in an experiment - he decides he doesn't want to know the details, and moves on.

There's a young man, in his mid-20's, leaning against the counter. His nametag identifies him as Jim. Jim grins and stands up as Chekov approaches. "What can I do for you?"

"Umm..." Jim's bright blue eyes are distracting. Chekov stares for a second before snapping out of it and looking up at the menu. "Medium iced white chocolate mocha, with whipped cream, please."

"And your name?"

"Pavel."

Jim writes his name on the cup in a gold marker. "Okay, Pavel, anything else?" Chekov shakes his head, and pays for the drink. He turns around, and surveys the room again to find a seat. Instead, he gets distracted by the huge world map on one wall. There are stickers and names attached to various places. Jim Kirk in Iowa. Leonard McCoy in Georgia. Nyota Uhura in Africa. Hikaru Sulu in southern California. Others, too, mostly in America but a few spread out in foreign countries. He's wondering what they represent when he hears his name called.

"Pavel?" A blonde girl - Janice, according to her nametag - places his drink on the counter. The cup is white, which he doesn't think anything of until he notices that all of the other customers sitting down have colored cups. He sees red, yellow, and blue, but he has the only white one. He thinks maybe they're out, but when he looks back at the counter, there are stacks of colored cups right there. Huh.

He takes a sip, and winces. Despite the white chocolate syrup and whipped cream, it's still just a little too bitter for him. Maybe it's childish, but he really can't stand the taste of coffee unless it's drowned out by cream and sugar. So he grabs two sugar packets, empties them into his drink, stirs, and tries it again.

Much better. He sits down at an unoccupied table, opens up his laptop, and gets to work.

On his second visit to the cafe, Jim asks him if he wants extra sugar in his mocha. Pavel blinks, confused. "Sorry?"

"Last time you added two sugar packets. We can do that up here if you'd like." Jim says nonchalantly, like it's no big deal he not only noticed Pavel adding sugar but remembered it days later.

"Oh, um, yes, thank you."

"Whipped cream and extra sugar?" A voice tinged with a southern accent comes from the table closest to the counter. It belongs to a man in his early 30s, holding a blue cup half-full with black coffee. "That right there's a recipe for disaster. You see the calories on that thing, kid? Not to mention you're gonna rot your teeth."

"Bones, be nice." Jim scolds the man. He leans closer to Chekov, and his voice drops to a fake whisper. "Sorry about that. He's just in a bad mood today. Well, he's always in a bad mood, but we love him anyway."

Before he can respond, Janice calls his name from the other end of the counter. Which is weird, because Chekov didn't give Jim his name this time. He shrugs, takes the white cup, and takes a sip from his iced white chocolate mocha with whipped cream and extra sugar. It's perfect.

As he sits down, he notices a young man wearing a collared shirt and tie standing at the counter. The man looks familiar; he had been at the cafe last time, too. Jim's grinning as he writes the man's name and order on a blue cup, and Chekov can't hear their conversation very well but he's pretty sure Jim's flirting. A lot. As the man moves away from the counter, his uncertain smile turns into a look of confusion. Chekov can barely make out a quiet "that sentence did not make any sense, Jim is quite illogical". The Southern man Jim called Bones smirks from his seat.

His third visit is later in the evening than the first two, after a meeting with some other students to work on their engineering group project. Now that that's over (for now) it's time to get started on his computer science homework for the week. He sits down at a table in the corner, puts on headphones, and opens up a new text editor window.

It's easy to lose track of time when coding. Between writing the first draft of the code, fixing compiler errors, rewriting code, and attempting to locate the source of the constant segfaults, hours pass. He doesn't even realize how late it is until someone pulls his headphones off his head.

"Hey, Pavel. We're closing up." Chekov looks up at Jim, then back down to his computer's clock. 11:30pm. The rest of the cafe is empty, chairs on the tables - of course, considering the cafe closes at 11. Shit.

"Oh! Sorry, I was concentrating wery hard, and did not mean to-"

"It's okay, don't worry about it. You seemed so wrapped up in your work, I figured I'd let you keep going while I cleaned up." Jim pats him on the shoulder, and Chekov turns bright red. Was he really that cut off from his surroundings? He packs his backpack, and gets up.

"Thank you for letting me stay late."

"No problem. Hey, let me give you a ride back to your dorm. It can get kind of dangerous out here this late."

Chekov blushes even redder. "Please, do not worry about it, I am fine." Well, actually, the idea of walking through the city by himself this late does make him nervous, but just a little, and-

"No, seriously, it's no big deal. It's only a few minutes out of the way. I drive Bones home all the time, and that's like a half-hour in the wrong direction. I'll take you back." He already has his coat on and keys in hand, and Chekov thinks he's probably fighting a losing battle.

"Thank you, sir."

"Call me Jim." Jim flashes a grin at him before leading the way to his bike.

On his fourth visit, he makes sure to throw an extra few dollars into the tip jar as payment for the ride. Jim laughs and says it really isn't necessary. He runs the cafe for the company, not the money.

"If you keep saying that, no one will ever tip you." The African woman on one of the couches smiles without looking up, her gaze focused completely on her linguistics textbook.

"Aww, come on, Uhura. You don't think my natural charm does the trick?"

"Natural charm? Yeah, right." She rolls her eyes, taking a sip from her red mug. Jim pretends to be offended, but as soon as he's sure she's not looking, Chekov sees him smiling at her fondly.

He's partway through his engineering problem set when a thickly accented voice makes him jump. "That's pretty good, laddie, but you've mixed up the spring constants."

Chekov turns around in his seat to see Professor Scott peering at his homework over his shoulder. "Professor Scott!"

"Call me Scotty. Knew you looked familiar the first time you came in. You're one o' mine, right? Morning section?"

"Yes!" Chekov's face lights up. He's surprised Scott remembers him - it's a large class, and the professor himself only lectures once a week. Then again, the number of people that actually show up to the 8am lectures is unsurprisingly small, and he's pretty sure he gets brownie points just for being there every day. "Your lecture last week, about the applications of the Fourier transform, was wery interesting." Well, what he could understand of it, anyway. He's not used to hearing English in a Scottish accent, and some of what he hears means nothing to him. But he reads the textbook to fill in the blanks, and understands the material pretty well.

"Really?" Now the professor's face breaks into a grin. "You know, you might be the first lad to say that. Ever since something I designed went wrong - which, really, it wasn't wrong, just a little unexpected - and scared off Archer's pet beagle, they've stuck me with the intro class as punishment. Even the engineers don't like the intro class! I do what I can, but they've given me a strict syllabus and a TA and everything. And look at the book, it's filled with typos and mistakes! Just when I was thinking, I cannae take any more of this...you really like it?" He looks hopefully at Chekov, who nods enthusiastically. "That's my boy! There's hope for the freshmen yet!" He claps Chekov on the back, and sits down next to him.

They spend a half-hour going over the problem set. Professor Scott seems very pleased the only mistakes Chekov's made have been typos and mixing up numbers - he understands the concepts perfectly, which is apparently rare for the course. When the two part ways, Scott tells him, "If you ever need help - don't go to Keenser's TA hours, they're packed and he's no good - come see me here. I spend a lot of my free time here. It's easier to get work done when I don't have the higher-ups looking over my shoulder, and kids knocking on my door every five minutes thinking I'll give 'em the answers. Nice and quiet, too - no one ever calls me while I'm here." He looks around, then leans in and conspiratorially whispers, "The Enterprise has bloody awful cellphone service. It's really good for avoiding people."

Chekov checks his phone, and sure enough, no service. Not that it really matters; no one calls him anyway, and there's free wifi inside. Out of curiosity (he's somewhat of a scientist, after all, and feels compelled to try out every possibility) he waves his phone around, holding it as high as he can reach. Still no signal, but as he brings the phone up directly above his head he notices the design on the ceiling for the first time.

There's a star map, carefully designed such that the overhead lights take the place of particularly bright stars. They aren't labeled, but some of the constellations are connected with lines. His arms fall to his sides as he just stares up at the ceiling, entranced.

"Like what you see?" Jim calls from behind the counter. Chekov nods, eyes never leaving the ceiling.

"It's beautiful." When he was a child, he loved looking up at the stars at night. It's one of the things he's missed in college, in a city where the ever-present city lights and smog obscure the night sky. And yet, here it is, as brilliant as he remembers it.

"There's a whole world out there beyond this city, you know. Adventures bigger than any of us could even imagine." Jim grins, and Chekov suddenly can't tell if he's talking to him or the entire room. "It's not for everyone - hell, Bones would kill me if I tried to send him off to the unknown. But if you ever get sick of what you're doing, don't forget that there's so much more out there. Don't get yourself stuck here."

"What about you?"

"Me?" Jim laughs. "This is my adventure."

It's his fifth visit when Jim asks if Chekov wants 'the usual'. Chekov bounces up and down, grinning. "With-"

"-whipped cream and extra sugar." Jim recites for him. "I know."

Chekov's a little excited. Well, more than a little. A lot excited. He spent a month regularly going to the Starbucks on campus, and the baristas never even bothered to remember his name, let alone his favorite drink. Yet after only five visits, he feels very welcome in the Enterprise Cafe. The atmosphere is inviting and comfortable, and the people - both the workers and the customers - are friendly. He could get used to this. In fact, he thinks he already has.

He waits at the counter for his usual white cup, but Janice hands him a yellow one. His eyes widen, and she smiles knowingly. "Enjoy."

He wants to ask Jim about the color, but he's busy with another customer already. So instead, he looks around the room. There's a young Asian man, only a few years older than him, sitting at a table with a physics textbook and a yellow cup, just like his. The seat across from him is empty.

"Excuse me, can I sit here?"

"Uh, yeah, sure." The other man shifts his stuff around, making sure the other half of the table is clear. "I'm Hikaru Sulu."

"Pavel Chekov. Actually, I was wondering - what do the colors mean? On the cups?"

"Oh, these?" Sulu lifted up his cup, and looked over at the counter. "Honestly, who knows? Jim won't tell us, and Janice says she knows nothing. He's gotta have a system. I don't think it's random, at least, since he always remembers what colors he gives everyone."

"Wanna know my theory?" The Southern man Chekov's seen a few times leans in from the next table over. "You two are undergrads, right? That's yellow. Red's for the grad school, like Nyota and that engineering professor. Then there's blue. I've got blue. So does Spock over there." He indicates the man in business attire hunched over a laptop with a blue coffee cup next to it. Chekov recognizes him as the man Jim had flirted with during his second visit. "I'm a doctor, he works at a tech startup. Neither of us are with the university at all, so blue cups."

"Sorry, no." Jim grins at them from the counter, and indicates the young blonde woman at the other end picking up a blue coffee cup. "Christine's pre-med. Keep guessing though, that theory makes a lot more sense than your last one."

Bones groans. "Dammit Jim."

"What was your last theory?" Chekov can't help but ask. He's a curious kid by nature.

"He thought Jim was ranking us based on attractiveness." The African woman - Uhura, he remembers from last time - informs him.

"See, the problem with that theory is that I'd be putting Bones in the same tier as Spock, who is clearly head and shoulders above all of you."

Bones frowns. "Hey!"

"Love you, Bonesy!" Jim calls out as he disappears into the back room.

Spock looks up from his laptop, eyebrow raised in confusion. "I apologize if I'm misinterpreting, but did Jim just imply he finds me attractive?" There's a hint of a blush on his face.

"Unfortunately, yes." The doctor finishes his coffee and stands up. "Anyway, I'm heading back to the hospital. The name's Leonard McCoy, by the way." He nods at Chekov. "Nice to meet ya, kid."

Chekov spends the rest of his afternoon talking with Sulu. Turns out he's a sophomore physics major, turning 20 at the end of the school year. He's shocked when Chekov tells him he's double majoring in engineering and computer science; even more so when Chekov tells him he's only 16. Chekov manages to help Sulu with a particularly tough quantum problem. In return, Sulu listens to Chekov talk through his plans for his CS assignment, and despite having never taken a CS class, Sulu points out a design flaw Chekov hadn't considered. Spock even contributes his thoughts, and within two hours he has a fully working program, above and beyond the requirements of the assignment.

By the time he packs up to leave for the night, he's feeling the happiest he's been in ages. But before he can leave, Jim comes around the counter and hands him a gold sticker and a marker.

"What is this?"

Jim points to the world map. "Payment for the colored cup. All I ask is that you put your name on the map." Chekov looks a little confused, and Jim grins. "I like to keep track of where everyone's from. Just makes it look that much more impressive that people from places all over the world ended up here, in a small little cafe. Oh, but you have to promise: when you leave the city, or stop coming, or whatever, you have to keep in touch and tell me where you go. I want to mark those too. Like I said the other day, there's a whole world out there. But wherever you go, just remember you were here, in the Enterprise, and we'll always welcome you back."

Pavel Chekov nods, and writes his name on the sticker. In English, and in Russian for good measure. He has to stand on a chair to reach, but he finally sticks it on his hometown. When he turns around, beaming, the rest of the cafe is smiling back at him, and he feels like he's with family.

He feels like he's home.