Work Text:
Jin-woo is not quite sure how he ended up here. He would blame the butterfly effect for setting off whatever absurd set of choices had to be made by the people around him to cause this, but he didn’t even have one single situation in mind that could’ve caused this. His head is in his hands, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, and a headache building progressively into what he suspects might just become a migraine. Great; because that’s exactly what he needs right now.
Beru sits across from the desk, fiddling with his hands and pointedly avoiding his manager’s gaze, because of course he is. If he was able to hold his gaze at this moment, then Jin-woo would be inclined to question if he was also utterly insane. Actually, scratch that; Beru might as well be insane. He’s not quite sure why he hasn’t been fired yet.
No, he’s entirely aware why. Despite the consistent mess-ups (if it could be called that), Beru is one of the most efficient workers they have. And he’s also the only one who can reliably deal with customers who don’t understand what the very concept of respect is. Jin-woo can– actually, he usually scares them off in ten seconds flat, which is arguably easier than trying to convince them why they’re being a dumbass— but that doesn’t mean he has the time or energy to constantly step out and do it for everybody.
He thinks a bi-weekly sit-in with Beru about his abnormal habits is more sanity-saving than whatever comes with dealing with customers when the other workers can’t do it for him. (At least not in a decent way. He’s fairly certain Iron would punch somebody if Beru or Jin-woo didn’t handle it first. Igris could take over, but he’s also equally exhausted as Jin-woo with this job, all the time. Jin-woo isn’t that cruel.)
For the umpteenth time today, Jin-woo has to wonder why he chose to work here.
“Tell me again why you chose to eat the entire order?” He asks. Beru hangs his head a bit lower (if he really felt that much shame, he wouldn’t be doing this.)
“I made it wrong,” Beru replied. He doesn’t explain the rest, but Jin-woo figures he knows exactly what kind of excuse is running through his mind. It’s been a rush of a day. That, Jin-woo doesn’t blame him for. What he does, however, is the fact that once Beru was told it was wrong, he ate everything.
“Beru.. that’s not an excuse. You do this every time.” Almost. Thankfully Beru wasn’t messing up orders daily. Still, as much as Jin-woo wanted to claim it was just because they could’ve reused the bags and maybe even the burgers if an order for them was placed in time, he was getting increasingly concerned for Beru’s health.
Maybe he should refer him to an eating disorder specialist. He’s fairly convinced Beru should get checked out for pica.
He’s mildly tempted to ban him from the kitchen. Unfortunately, Beru is one of their more efficient workers, and kicking him out means Jin-woo would have to fill in, and he barely got any sleep last night. It’s not a good mix. Instead, he stands up with a sigh and gestures for Beru to follow. Normally it doesn’t happen more than once a day, but he needs to make sure nothing else stupid happens today, and he’s too exhausted to handle it personally.
He’ll just have to get Iron to watch over him. (Igris is not currently on shift; which is good for him, because he definitely needs some sleep. Jin-woo would say he takes his job as assistant manager far too seriously, like it’s his whole life, but that would be hypocritical.)
Just as he’s about to enter the kitchen to find Iron, where he’s sure he is, something else catches his attention. He backtracks, and scowls when he sees the person he, frankly, wants to see least right now.
“Beru, go find Iron. Tell him he’s on watch for you today.” (Unfortunately, this has happened enough that it's not an unfamiliar term.) Beru deflates.
“Yes, my liege.” Jin-woo raises an eyebrow, exhausted and nearly deadpan, if not for the clear agitation from the current visitor in their lobby.
“I’m your manager, not your king.” He reminds him. Beru only gives a mildly apologetic grin before disappearing further into the restaurant. Jin-woo lets out a long sigh, and turns back towards the lobby.
The visitor in question is sitting alone at a booth in the semi-crowded restaurant (seriously, why does McDonalds get this crowded?), grinning. Jin-woo steps up and crosses his arms, and for not the first time today, considers throwing down his hat and resigning. It’d save him from what he is now certain is a to-be migraine, if the bile in his throat and nausea in his gut is anything to go by.
Maybe that’s just caused by looking at this man, though.
“Well, look who’s shown up,” He whistles, grinning. Jin-woo has half a mind to punch the shit out of him here and now, but there’s an audience, and as much as he hates this job, he will not be getting fired today. If he’s leaving, it’ll be by quitting.
“Antares.” His voice is laced with venom, but Antares doesn’t even flinch at it. This is, after all, how they always interacted when Jin-woo had the very displeasure of seeing this man in his restaurant. “What are you doing, sitting around?” Like he’d ever come for his own meal. Jin-woo would probably kick him out and they both know it. (He hides behind sly smirks and saccharine words, but Jin-woo knows it’s fabricated. He doesn’t trust this man around his employees, nor customers.)
“Well, your employees are working like snails, I figured I’d sit for a bit.” Antares shrugs. “You can’t incite them to work a little faster? I have other orders to do.”
“We’re in a rush today.” Jin-woo replies, his voice flat, clearly indicating he doesn’t care to listen to any more complaints. Unfortunately, because nothing ever goes his way, Antares only tilts his head.
“You can’t go work with them, then? Surely that’d speed things up.”
“I have other things to handle.” It was frustratingly difficult to shut a conversation with Antares down, and yet he continues to incite them, like a worm on a string. (It isn’t really his fault; it was better than the sly asshole getting to converse with anybody else.)
“Is that so?” His ‘guest’ muses, tapping his fingers against the table. “Surely one order isn’t that big of a deal? It would make me quite happy.”
Jin-woo scowls. Not just because Antares figured it was acceptable to push a manager he doesn’t even know to do work he isn’t required to do, but because he recalls Beru complaining about the most recent (and the only, for that matter) order today being insanely large. There was no way Antares didn’t know that; he could see what order was placed by customers, could he not?
“Large orders take a longer time. You can be patient for one moment.” Jin-woo snaps, biting the inside of his cheek, the frustration mounting with every passing second. Antares, the fucking snake he is, only smiles wider. He’s clearly enjoying aggravating Jin-woo, but he can see the impatience in the man’s eyes, too. This is just a way to pass time. Does he think he owns this restaurant, or something?
Jin-woo could be nicer, sure; normally he is more patient with Antares. Right now, however, he’s already frustrated, already had to deal with Beru eating an entire order, bag and all, and he’s utterly exhausted.
Like a fucking blessing, at that very moment, he hears Iron calling out an order. Antares stands up smoothly, brushing past Jin-woo like he isn’t even worth his time—the fucking bastard—and reaches the counter to grab the order.
Jin-woo steps up to go behind the counter, barely catching a portion of their polite exchange, before he sees Antares smiling at him. It looks genuine for a moment, and maybe to anybody who wasn’t caring to look for any undertones, it really would— but Jin-woo sees it, teasing, victorious. If he had any true grounds for it, he would’ve banned Antares five times already.
Why did he continue to take orders for this McDonalds specifically, anyway? It was surely just to get under Jinwoo’s skin.
“Well, isn’t he nice, my liege?” He hears from behind him, in Beru’s voice. The words aggravate him more than anything, and he bites his tongue and turns around, not even bothering to correct him on the ‘liege’ thing. His migraine is blasting in full force and he feels like he’s about to keel over and vomit.
Where were those resignation papers, again?
. . .
“My liege!” He hears, high-pitched and worried, like a buzzing in his ear.
His head feels heavy and his head hurts, and he’s tired. He turns over, only to be grabbed and shaken by familiar claws.
“My liege, you must wake up!” He’s most definitely awake now, considering the throbbing headache growing because of the shaking. He brushes Beru off and glares at him, the ant in question shrinking back under his king’s gaze.
“What do you need, Beru?”
“You appeared to be having a nightmare, my liege!” Beru announced. Jin-woo blinked the sleep off his eyes and thought for a moment, a certain anger burning through his veins as he recalled exactly what he had been dreaming about. With a long-suffering sigh, he places his head in his hands.
“You could call it that.”
He’s fairly certain he’s never eating fast food again.