Makorra Coffee Shop AU for "3 Sentence AU" Prompts
Words Count: 227 words
Rating: K+
The heavy aroma of roasting beans and baking cinnamon sweetbreads escapes into the small break room when Mako clocks into work and sees a new name (thick characters, scrawled sloppily in blue ink) penned in next to his on the schedule.
He doesn't like the idea of having a new coworker: "new" means training someone who will inevitably hold up the morning line with her little to no knowledge of how to work the espresso machine; "new" means remaking orders the trainee will inevitably mix up or mess up; "new" means inevitably answering pointless, "small talk" questions about his life and feigning interest when he asks a few in response out of courtesy—he'd rather just deal with the stress of being short-handed, he mentally gripes, as he pushes through the swinging door to the counter.
But the blue-eyed girl already knows how to work the espresso machine and keeps the drink orders straight even during the late afternoon rush with a smirk on her face and clever quip in her mouth when he hovers, and (as creepy as it sounds) he kind of likes the way she smells like the outdoors in the midst of coffee beans and baked goods, and, inevitably, the new name scrawled in blue ink next to his becomes familiar on his tongue and warms his skin like his favorite coffee blend.