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I was reminded of this AU I had started working on when @wrathofthestag posted her new Zimbits butcher shop AU. Are butcher shop AUs the new coffee shop AUs? Who knows!
This was inspired by a conversation I overheard at my neighborhood butcher shop and I came home and wrote it down, thinking it could somehow be a fic.
Jack catches Bitty biting back a smile as he walked away. “Told you!” he calls sweetly as he disappears into the prep kitchen.
When Bitty's of earshot Shitty leans over the counter, so close that Jack instinctively takes a step back. “I know it’s not my business, but are you and Bitty—“ he raises an eyebrow suggestively.
“Are Bitty and I …”
“You’re a thing now, right?”
“Shits, why would you think that?” Jack all but hisses, hoping Bitty has put his headphones on and can’t hear this conversation.
“You just seem very comfortable together. And he makes dinner for you? Like every night? If you aren’t a thing, he sure as hell is sending some signals..”
“And those would be?”
“Think about it. He sends you home with dinner every night because he knows you eat alone. Have you ever thought of asking him to join you?”
“We spend eight hours a day together. He doesn’t want to spend any more time with me.”
“I reject that hypothesis. He’s clearly into you, dude. Like, really into you. And by the way, I think you hurt his feelings when you said you were starting Whole30.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“You basically insulted the guy’s cooking. What does Bitty care about more than anything else?”
“Beyoncé.”
“Cooking. And you, probably, but if you keep insulting his cooking you might fall to the bottom of the list.”
“I didn’t insult it! It’s good. It’s too good. I had abs when I started this job eight months ago.”
“Abs are overrated. I’m just saying,” Shitty says, and he has the audacity to actually wink, “think about it.”
Jack thinks about it. He thinks about it a lot, and he also starts noticing things. Like the way Bitty will come to him with something to taste and patiently wait for Jack’s feedback. Or the way Bitty packages his dinner each night, carefully labeling the bag with its contents and Jack’s name and folding the top down neatly. Or the way Bitty hands it to him on their way out the door, and their fingers sometimes brush.
He tells himself he needs to get a grip. He’s one hand brush away from turning into a touch-starved Jane Austen heroine.
Shitty, never known for his subtlety, is more blunt: “You need to get laid.”
I think there is a subplot in here about Jack reading Jane Austen on his breaks and explaining the plots to Bitty. But ultimately I’m not really sure what the plot here is, so I put it on hold to work on other things.
