Sterek Library (a03 Edition)

Déja-Brew

By: monkeyhihji

Summary; Stiles Stilinski works at a coffee shop Derek Hale visits regularly and he cannot stand the guy. That is, until one night at a masquerade, they meet and fall for each other, but Stiles can't help but think he's met the man behind the wolf mask before.

Work Text;

Despite popular belief, Stiles Stilinski didn’t hate his job. Yeah, sure, he hated mornings and working at a coffee shop meant some pretty early ass days, but he still didn’t mind. He got to watch the sunrise almost every morning, so that was pretty cool. He also had some pretty legit coworkers that were never too annoyed by his goofing off. He genuinely liked working at Jumpin’ Java, the only issue with working there were the customers. The shitty thing about being a barista was the array of customers you could get in just five minutes alone. There could be a perky blonde high schooler trying to slide you her phone number followed by a middle aged man who smells heavily of cigarette smoke. 

His favorite customers were the ones who obviously had worked in customer service jobs before. They were kind and usually tried brightening his day someway or another--and honestly, they succeeded. It was nice to feel appreciated. It was with these customers that his customer service voice dropped; he felt more at ease around them and thought they deserved a more real version of him.

Stiles’ least customers, though, were the unbearable “Karens”--dubbed graciously by one of his coworkers Erica. Karens were the type of customers that came in and thought they owned the place. They demanded special treatment as if they owned the place and they always found something wrong no matter what. Generally, Karens were older women or gray haired old men that thought the world revolved around them. Occasionally, he had a few younger Karens which--in his opinion--were worse. Out of all these horrible customers, there was one in particular that Stiles only referred to as Hot Karen.

It was sad, really, because the Hot Karen was an unreasonably attractive man. The guy had been coming in for months and every time he came in, he had something new to complain about. The first time Stiles had seen Hot Karen he was pretty sure that his jaw dropped to the floor. Hot Karen had walked in around almost eight in the morning--which eventually became a habit--in a tight purple dress shirt and pants that made his ass look heavenly. Stiles, who had been confidently out since high school, had no qualms with the idea of shamelessly flirting with the Adonis as he had walked up to the counter. Of course, that was all before Hot Karen spoke. The dude had looked down at his phone the entire time while ordering and when Stiles made the order and gave it back, Hot Karen had taken one drink, made a face, and walked out the door without another word.

That was the beginning of a long list of grievances between the two. At first, Stiles had given Hot Karen the benefit of the doubt which turned out to be the wrong thing to do. No matter how Stiles greeted the guy or how nice he tried to be, Hot Karen would always find something to complain about. Some days, it was how bad it smelt in the shop. Other days, it was the fact that Stiles didn’t make his coffee right, which was wrong, by the way. Stiles, sadly, had memorized the stupid order of a black coffee with two sugars. Eventually, after all the complaining, Stiles decided to give the customer to complain about. 

Look, Stiles was a very good employee, okay? He showed up on time, for the most part. He made the coffee with a smile. And he even made small talk with the customers! Hell, he had customers who specifically requested him to make their drinks; a lot of people loved him and it showed in the tips he received. But for some godforsaken reason, Hot Karen did not. So, Stiles figured that he might as well be doing things on purpose to deserve the piss-poor attitude of the customer. Some days, he’d add too much sugar to the drink, or other days he would forget the sugar entirely. He would confuse orders up on a regular basis. His absolute favorite thing to do though was to move deliberately slow just to fuck with the guy’s schedule. Was it mean? Yeah, okay, a little bit. Did Stiles feel bad? Only some times, but the guy deserved it.