Jenlisa Oneshots

i like my women how i like my coffee (inside me)

It starts like this: the owner of Jennie's regular coffee shop is arrested for tax fraud and within three weeks the whole place has been closed down and turned into a mattress store.

There is a rhythm to Jennie's weekends which has now been entirely thrown off balance. Since she moved to London two years ago, she has woken up at six every Saturday, gone to the gym and spent a peaceful few hours in a coffee shop, grading papers or completing a crossword puzzle. Then she goes home, cleans her apartment and, unless Irene or Rosé have invited her to a gathering, she watches a documentary and goes to bed at a sensible time. It is a beautifully calibrated Saturday: both productive and relaxing, one she has worked very hard to perfect.

Without the coffee shop, the entire day lies in ruins. She has to go home immediately after the gym to clean her apartment and that means she has far too much free time in the afternoon. She tries grading papers and doing crossword puzzles in her own living room but the coffee isn't nearly as good, nor does she get to lean back in her chair and people watch as other customers shuffle back and forth in front of her.

No, the coffee shop is entirely necessary for her mental well-being: its closure is a disaster of unprecedented proportions.

"Is there a possibility you're being a little dramatic?" Irene asked when Jennie relayed this thought to her at work during the week.

Jennie gave a long-suffering sigh, "They were so reasonably priced."

"Well, they would be." Rosé snorted, "Since they weren't paying taxes."

All of this is how, on a sunny September Saturday, she finds herself standing outside "The Manoban Linings Café" for the first time. Rosé had given her the recommendation: newly pregnant and with cravings to match, she had confessed to sending her wife out at odd hours of the night to collect pastries by the crate-load from a friend who owns a coffee shop.

"Their cinnamon rolls are better than sex," she claimed over lunch in the breakroom.

"Attack on Jisoo's bedroom skills out of nowhere," Irene retorted.

Rosé waved her off, "We've been together for a decade, I've only known these cinnamon rolls for three months. I'm in the honeymoon phase."

Jennie doesn't need cinnamon rolls though, she just needs a quiet place to drink a cup of coffee, preferably with an owner who isn't squirrelling most of their profits into a bank account in the Cayman Islands.

Her first impressions, at least, are positive: she steps inside to find a line stretching almost to the door in a café that is bigger than it first appeared from the street. There are low walls and bookshelves and plenty of nooks and corners where Jennie can well imagine hiding herself away. Her old coffee shop exclusively played music from the 'sad bearded man with acoustic guitar' genre, but Manoban Linings has a smooth jazz song piped through the speakers, the type Jennie sometimes listens to while she's cleaning her apartment.

Then the line shuffles forward, someone steps slightly to the left, and Jennie sees her for the first time.

The barista is beautiful; there is no other word for it. She has black and grey tattoos winding down her arm - flowers and thorns, a woman with a halo - and there is a line of rings in her ear. When she smiles at the customer she's serving, her whole body seems to smile too: her shoulders wiggle and her eyes crinkle. It makes Jennie's stomach swim.

Jennie is not in the habit of falling in love with beautiful women in coffee shops, but if the last few years have taught her anything, it's that things can always take a turn for the worse.

The line moves slowly. Normally Jennie would be irritated by the inefficiency, but instead, she finds herself watching the barista ensure she remembers the name of every customer, pull faces at a baby in a stroller, direct another staff member to help an elderly woman to a chair. Closer to the front of the line, Jennie can see the name tag on her apron reads "Lisa", and next to it, there's a bi flag pin. Somehow, that makes the whole thing much worse.