Chapter Text
Akaashi prides himself in being a very attentive person. He doesn't stress over details, per say, but rather he just notices the little things. For example, he notices the fact that a different milk was used in his usual latte order. He also notices when more pumpkin spice is thrown into his pumpkin spice latte. Those things don’t make a monumental impact on his life. He doesn't die when he drinks 2% milk for once instead of whole milk. Excess pumpkin spice never ruins his day. But it's just little things he can't help but appreciate when it happens.
So it's no surprise that Akaashi notices when a new barista arrives at his favorite café. But it's really not hard to miss. A messy bedhead and a sleazy looking grin isn't hard to miss among neat hair and brighter, friendlier smiles. His voice is different, too; baristas here have this chipper and higher pitched voice. His was deeper and richer, smoother, too. But, like the other things he notices, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't make a big impact on him, especially a negative one.
At least, that’s what Akaashi thought.
It's a cozily chilly autumn day when Akaashi first sees the new barista. With an absence of classes, he decided that a little studying at the café would, in no way, harm him, if anything. His book bag is hung on his shoulder, slightly heavy with the weight of his laptop and some folders with notes. Today's mission was typing out his notes for better understanding and use later, as Akaashi's formatting while writing notes is a goddamn mess. It's at least legible, but disorganized as fuck.
Akaashi takes his place in line, eyes flicking around to various things in the café. The deep orange bean bag chairs, the high metal tables matching with high metal chairs, the array of pastries on display, and underneath are rows of various drinks. It's all things he's seen probably hundreds of times now, but its something to keep himself busy as he waits.
Suddenly, something he hasn't seen a single time slips quickly into his point of view.
A messy mass of black hair.
The owner of the messy hair goes from the cash register to the station to the right of it, where blenders and espresso makers stand, waiting to be used. While to the new eye it seems this person has their life in control doing their job, to Akaashi, he can see that he's messing up a little. He adds too much ice to a frappuccino mix, and curses under his breath but blends it all together in the blender anyways. Briefly, Akaashi wonders if the customer will notice the colder and icier taste to their drink due to this guy's mistake. After a few more seconds of blatant staring, Akaashi snaps out of it, sternly telling himself that that's fucking rude. He turns his head away, and occupies himself with looking at the designs for this month's gift card stock. Cute little trees with smiley faces and bright red birds are on most of the cards for the autumn season.
Only a few minutes later and Akaashi is at front of the queue, and messy hair is at the cash register. They meet eyes, and the lopsided grin immediately spreads upon his face. Akaashi's face doesn't even shift, however. Even though he might find this guy perhaps a bit attractive.
"Pumpkin spice latte, please." Akaashi requests, shaking his head when asked if there's more he'd like to order. After handing money over to pay for the simple order, and receiving his change back, the barista heads off. Akaashi feels it deep in his soul that he'll taste something a little different in his latte today.
His latte tastes sweeter, he notices, as he takes his second sip of the drink. He doesn't pay too much mind to it, because it doesn't matter, and his fingers go back to quickly typing away, his eyes flickering from his notes to his laptop screen. He plays around with fonts, colors of text, text sizes and general layout such as bullet points and borders. Anything really, to make it look so much nicer and easier to find specific information. As he does so, he gets the chance to repeat back important information, as he types out only relevant and necessary details onto the digital piece of paper.
As Akaashi goes for his third sip of his latte, he notices another thing about the latte. This time, its not really a taste thing. On the side of the cup facing him, there's something written in a messy scrawl. Akaashi picks up the latte, warmth seeping into his fingers as he tries to decipher the text.
"This latte's hot, but you're hotter."
His eyes narrow and he looks towards the counter, where, unsurprisingly, the new barista is, leaning against the counter. His head rests in the palm of his hand, his lopsided grin somehow more smug than before. He winks at Akaashi. He snaps his head back to his laptop.
The next time Akaashi sees the flirty, messy haired barista is right before a class of his. His shoulder bag is digging into his shoulder, almost painfully so. With haste he takes a place in line, checking the time at intervals of 10 seconds each. Akaashi got a shitty headstart to his day, beginning with his dumb ass sleeping through his alarm. And because he pretty much never does that, he has no backup alarms set and the snooze option on his phone is disabled. He was lucky to wake up with any extra time to even shove his ass into a pair of pants. Luckily, the line is short. He comes face to face with the new barista, Kuroo, pretty quickly.
"Pumpkin spice latte," Akaashi requests. "… and that's it," He adds, not wanting to waste time. Kuroo raises an eyebrow at his rush.
"Got somewhere to be, pretty face?" He asks. Akaashi gives him no answer as he hands over the money, telling him to keep the change as well.
Kuroo watches as Akaashi then walks over to the pickup counter, his head tilted down to look at his phone screen as he waits. He can't stare for long, as there's more customers to serve. He makes sure, however, that he's the one who slides the drink to Akaashi.
"Pumpkin spice for Akaashi," Kuroo calls out, though not too loud. His hand is curled around the cup as he pushes it forward. Akaashi looks up and grabs the cup, and for the faintest moment their hands touch.
Kuroo thinks of it as an improvement, and Akaashi doesn't even notice that it happens.
"Next time, I'm writing my number on his cup." Kuroo hums to Kenma, his coworker. The blonde looks at him with blank eyes, unimpressed.
"I don't think he'll notice it," Kenma comments, eyes drifting away as he ties his apron on. Kuroo leans back on the counter where blenders and espresso makers stand.
"He noticed my pickup line," He counters, and despite not seeing Kenma's face, he knows he rolls his eyes.
"Then he probably won't call the number." Kenma retorts, not missing a single beat. He wipes down the cashier counter. Kuroo takes it as a hint to start cleaning the other counters, too. He does a shit job, though, but the table tops aren't too dirty to begin with.
"You wound me so, Kenma," Kuroo wines like a kicked puppy, and Kenma doesn't bother replying after that. After a bit more cleaning up is done, chairs taken off table tops and napkins and such refilled, the doors are open and the official business day begins. People slowly trickle in as time drags on, though because it's a Saturday, there is a lack of early morning customers keeping the place much more busy. Instead, it's just one or two people every half hour, occasionally more.
Scattered around at random times, regulars come in. A black haired boy with intimidating and narrow dark blue eyes comes in and gets iced coffee and sits at his usual spot near the bathrooms. Later, a fiery orange haired-boy comes, gets 2 muffins and sits with the guy at the bathrooms. Swoopy chocolate brown hair and flirty eyes is next, who seems more interested in talking to anyone cute or attractive than for a drink of caffeine.
Next in line for regulars is pretty eyed Akaashi. Though, this time, he doesn't come alone; he's not a regular, but Kuroo knows exactly who he is. White and black hair in streaks like a zebra and bright yellow eyes is in tow with Akaashi, brightly and animatedly talking to him. After a few steps into the café, yellow eyes meet Kuroo's.
The reaction is immediate.
"BRO!!!!"
"DUDE!!!!!"
"HEY HEY HEY!!!!!"
The normal bustle around the café pauses, due to the loud hooting coming from the barista and customer. All eyes stare at the two, who seem unfased and don't even notice the attention now placed upon them. Akaashi sighs heavily, now deciding to trail a bit behind his loud-ass friend to try and look as if he wasn't associated with him in any way, shape or form.
He makes it to the counter, and he and Kuroo start loudly talking. At this point, everyone else goes back to their previous conversations. The two of them have quieted down enough to warrant no more attention. Akaashi stands a little closer to Bokuto now.
"Hey hey hey! Didn't know you worked here bro!!" Bokuto hoots once more. "Whoops, sorry, forgot to tell you," Kuroo replies, his shit-eating grin on his face. Akaashi stares at a package of mints, awkwardly. "It's no bro-blem." Bokuto replies.
"What do you want to bro-rder, bro?" Akaashi feels his soul wishing to tear apart in a thousand pieces and eject from his ass. Why the fuck is this happening. The excessive use of the word bro in every sentence now is absurd and astonishing."Is broffee on the menu?" Bokuto retorts.
"Sorry, bro, no longer available," Kuroo says in mock disappointment. This is true hell, Akaashi thinks.
"One hot brocolate, then. Extra brocolate." Bokuto requests instead. Akaashi then feels Kuroo's eyes on him, and he looks up from the mints.
"Oh, pretty eyes, didn't know you were here," Kuroo all but purrs. Somehow, this asshole went from disgusting bro to some weird and smooth cat. It was ridiculous.
"Pumpkin spice latte, please." Akaashi says, and for a brief moment it looks like Kuroo's heart's broken.
"Shit, bro, you know each other?" Bokuto interrupts, and Kuroo nods. Akaashi shrugs.
"He's the cutie I told you about," Kuroo answers. "Didn't know you knew him, too."
"He's my study buddy!" Bokuto's face, although already pretty bright with a smile, gets somehow brighter. There's a pause in the conversation as Bokuto realizes something.
"Dude. Bro. Y'know how you needed help studying?" Bokuto starts, and Kuroo nods.
"Why don't we all study together?"
Akaashi feels his soul ejecting from his ass in that moment.
Whilst Akaashi didn't agree to being the tutor of two bro-centric assholes, he still did it anyways. It would be too much work to reject Bokuto and then deal with the subsequent emotional swings that came with the rejection. So he accepted. He thought that if he could handle Bokuto alone, he could probably handle both Kuroo and Bokuto at once. Not easily, but he'd be able to.
Currently Akaashi sat at his dorm room, which he shared with Kenma from the café. Akaashi knew full well that Kenma worked with Kuroo, and was glad the two of them shared a weird bond where Kenma knew not to bring up that he was friends with Akaashi around Kuroo. Plus, the two of them gladly were able to keep to themselves without the worry of keeping conversation or constantly trying to bond. Quietly playing games together or studying in the same room together was more comfortable than trying to force conversation anyways.
Kenma was out, currently. Akaashi didn't bother to ask where, because it didn't really matter, but he assumed it was to the local Game Stop or somewhere similar. It was the season when new games were being released like no damn tomorrow, anyways.
Akaashi had a calculus book open in his lap, currently studying for an upcoming test in the class. He was glad he was able to understand the material pretty well, as the math involved was stupidly complex. Many of his classmates were struggling, and he was one of the only few who at least had some sort of idea what the fuck was happening. From nearby, on his pillow, his phone vibrated with a soft little chime as a notification lit up the screen. He considered just taking a break to fiddle around with his phone for a bit, or to just retire studying entirely. He turned his head to look at his alarm clock. The blinking numbers read that it was 6pm.
He realized that he had been studying for at least an hour, and had accidentally got ahead in the material, so he closed the book with a soft thud and put the book away on his desk. He flopped down onto his bed, and picked up his phone. The notification was from a text message. He opened his phone and looked at the messages. With a frown it seemed he was placed in a group chat, with Bokuto and some unknown number.
Group Chat: Bokuto and Unknown Number
From: Bokuto
hey hey hey!!! welcome to the official study group chat!!
He also notices that he got a text from the unknown number alone, too.
From: Unknown Number
hey angel eyes B) its kuroo from the café
Wonderful, now Kuroo has his number. It could be worse, Akaashi tells himself with a sigh.
It could be so much worse.