Chapter Text
It's a Spanish tour a third day a row.
They pay better for Spanish, so Raven has no reason to complain as she dives into it. The people are her regular bunch, as obnoxious as they’re loaded; rich kids and richer pensioners off to see the world, thrilled to see that their tour guide is young, pretty and feisty. They aren't that bad, certainly better than some, and so it’s not that hard to smile at them and their round-the-mill tourist jokes. And so Raven smiles, smiles and points at the first terrible monument of many as she starts telling her story. James Bute was one of the city's founders, and as she scans the faces of her tourists for the day, she tries to decide whether they're the kind that can handle her going off-script to delve into the more interesting bits of Bute's biography. The middle schoolers look like they could do with some stories of booze and sex, even if in a slightly censored format, but judging by the two pompous old men in the front row, perhaps not. Not this time. Oh well. Their loss.
It's only Tuesday, so she isn't quite pissed off enough to tell them anyway.
As she moves through the city from the center out, pointing out to layers, medieval, industrial, then modern, her knee starts aching in a familiar way, fuck, not a good time for a bad day, but she grits her teeth like a champ, been there, done that. It's not like she can exactly stop, anyway.
The tour inevitably starts getting annoying somewhere around the art gallery, yes, ma'am, this is really van Gogh, as if the lady can't see for herself; as if she isn't bored to death with all this sightseeing, and pathetically bad at hiding her disinterest.
At least the money is good.
When Raven finally rolls into the coffee shop where she usually brings her tours for their lunch break, she falls into a chair with bare minimum of grace required; not quite unprofessional enough to openly grab her aching knee, but definitely getting there. Truth is, she needs a proper brace, and she knows very well that she does, but who the fuck has money for this kind of stuff? So far, she’s been managing with bandages and annoyance, and of course it’s not enough, but, well. It’s not like she can make one herself.
Meanwhile the shop is bustling around her, unaware of her distress. She vaguely knows the barista on shift today, and she knows he doesn't speak Spanish, but if she's being honest, he can go fuck himself for all she cares.
When he brings her an espresso she hasn’t ordered and leaves it in front of her without a comment, she feels slightly guilty about her attitude. Slightly. Just a little…
No, she doesn’t, because whether she translates or not, those assholes she brings tip ridiculously well, and her coffee guy officially has nothing to complain about. But she still catches his gaze in the crowd and thanks him with a smile, like a person who has manners.
“I need to pay for that,” she says approaching the counter when her sandwich-sated group looks ready to leave.
The barista looks her straight in the eye before he shrugs ostensibly.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” he says with a blank face. And then, quietly: “Please, try not to kill any of them.”
By some miracle she manages to bite down on the bark of laughter this brings up, so none of her tourists notices as they gather up to leave, the barista suddenly as invisible to them as the machine he works. The money for her coffee, Raven sticks in the tip jar when she thinks no one at the bar is looking, because. Manners.
***
Just like every day, Raven promises herself that after dinner, she’ll finally look into that scholarship application, but her resolve starts weakening steadily as work hours tick by, and when she gets home, all she has the energy to do is flop on the couch, and stare at the ceiling for full fifteen minutes.
It’s the knee. Of course it is. And anyway, she has another two months before she has to submit the application, so what is she worried about?
Besides, she has shit to do. It’s her turn to clean the bathroom this week, and she doesn’t want to set a bad example. They have a new flatmate this month, and he looks like the decent kind, no dirty dishes in the sink for five days in a row, so Raven wants to be proper, too. Anyway, it’s not like she has much to do after Monty went ballistic on the detergent last week. Monty considers himself above all cleaning rosters on the planet, but when he gets to it once every three months, Raven feels like she’s shitting pine and breathing sea breeze for a week.
So she dusts the bathroom more than actually cleans it, and since it makes her feel slightly guilty, she decides on doing a load of laundry as well, and throws in kitchen towels together with her clothes. Here. She is doing her part for the community, or something.
And then she can’t get to the scholarship essay anyway, because Echo comes home with a work rant ready right on the tip of her tongue, so Raven obviously has to listen. It’s something about an expired coupon and overtime, and a dickhead coworker who needs to start making his fucking coffee in his own fucking mug, because fuck him, and possibly also his family to the seventh or eleventh generation, Raven isn’t quite sure.
Say what you want about her work, at least no one steals her mugs.
“I got coffee for free,” she says when Echo is done spilling bile, and it earns her a grin.
“From some sleazy old tourist who thinks he has a shot?”
“From some hot young barista who saw my tour group and took pity.”
“Ah.” Echo considers her for a moment, then pushes her plate a bit towards Raven, inviting her to take a bite. “Anyway, free stuff. You say he’s hot?”
“Don’t get ideas.”
“Please, what else am I gonna think about at work? Let me live vicariously.”
It suddenly occurs to her that she could actually speak Spanish now, because it’s not like Echo can’t at least handle herself in it, but it feels weird somehow, like they were pretending to be someone else. Raven knows that she’s just being all awkward about it after those three days of Spanish at work, knows that Echo would probably be excited if she just switched out of the blue, but for some reason she doesn’t. Whatever. She’s just being stupid, and hey, she’s guiding in English tomorrow anyway.
***
It takes her all of two hours to start missing Spanish.
Her Wednesday group is some office trip from one district away, all sharp and ready to have the time of their life, and there is something about them that makes Raven step from one foot to the other, bite her lip as she fights for attention. There aren’t any questions from this lot as she hauls them from place to place, and she knows this shouldn’t matter. She gets paid whether they’re bored or thrilled, and anyway, what does she care? Even if they whisper among each other while she speaks, what does she care?
Truth is, those people aren’t worse than the average round of assholes she usually deals with. There always are whispers, and blank stares, and a polite disbelief at being told to care, but for some reason today it rattles Raven more than usual. Her tongue feels stiff in her mouth, slower than it rightfully should be even after the last three days of Spanish, and it doesn’t make any damn sense, not when she learned to switch languages so seamlessly no one is any wiser. Besides, she recited the script so many times so far that there is no way she is tripping up. It must be the weather, or something she ate, or whatever else it is that cool kids these days blame bad days on. She’s cranky. End of story.
It even annoys her that when they reach the art gallery, no one asks about van Gogh.
It’s three hours, two hours, one hour until lunch, and when she catches herself counting down to it, it leaves her even more annoyed than she was, ready to snap at the people she has to smile at whether she likes it or not. Likes them or not. Well, in this case, she does not.
She wants to sit down and take a breath, rest her knee even if it doesn’t hurt today, maybe order a coffee this time because she deserves a treat, it’s not so bad if she gets a treat once in a while. Even if the last one was yesterday. It doesn’t count, somehow. She didn’t ask for it, so it shouldn’t count, and if it doesn’t make any logical sense, then logic can go fuck itself. And anyway, she is an adult with a job, and she can spare three dollars for a coffee if she wants to. Why wouldn’t she?
The tourists, she concludes, leave her with way too much time to think as they walk towards her usual coffee shop, so when one woman notices a coffee chain and raises a rebellion that they want to go there, not anywhere else, Raven is startled out of thought, all arguments forgotten. Just a few blocks further, the place I wanna show you is amazing. You can get Starbucks every day at home, why not try something new when you’re on vacation. It’s coffee. It’s one of the few fucking things you can still get independent, with no copyright dangling off its ass.
Please, I wanna go see the espresso boy so he can be nice to me.
“Yeah, sure,” she says instead. “We can go here if you want.”
When they step in, she decides she’s not getting coffee after all.
***
So of course she lets Monty drag her out for beers after work, because apparently he’s having a good day for some reason, he isn’t telling why. It’s been fifteen minutes since Echo’s last tweet from her retail hell, so they don’t bother waiting for her to finish her shift. Clearly, she is working a late one. As for the new guy, he doesn’t really talk much, and they can’t even be sure if he’s home, what with how quiet he can be for hours at a time. His funeral. He’ll come around eventually if he wants to, or move out somewhere better after three months, hard to tell. It’s only been two weeks.
“You’re too fucking moody,” Monty tells her when they sit down with the first round, and Raven feels her hackles rise, fuck you, Monty, and everything you stand for, except she knows he’s saying it out of kindness.
“Whatever. People were dicks today. I’ll let you know when it stops getting to me.”
“What do you care? You’ll never see them again.”
“Shouldn’t you work customer service if you love people so much?”
“Nice try.”
Because Monty is a well-intentioned office monkey who made not giving a shit into an art form. Apparently putting all his creativity into a tiny, windowless box is working really well for him, which is why he’s randomly having beers with Raven on a weekday. Right. Stay cool, Monty.
“So what did they do?” he asks, clearly judging that she must be ruffled still. “Mocked your favorite Bute statue? Do you even have a favorite Bute statue?”
“Yeah, I’ve got five,” she snaps, then takes a deep breath. This is Monty’s way of showing concerned. Don’t be a little shit, Raven. “I just don’t like talking to myself, okay? Whatever. I need to finish that scholarship application, get to a school, and be out of this job already. Swap it for retail like Echo. You think I’d be good at selling stuff? Part-time?”
“With your winning personality? Dream job.”
“I love you too.”
Which isn’t that far from the truth. Monty is hard not to love, despite his love for pine-smelling detergents and his tendency to complain about how he isn’t having nearly enough sex. Raven has been living with him for almost a year, and she has a hard time imagining how she ever did without him.
So she gives him a light punch on the shoulder, and settles for drinking more beer, lets herself relax in Monty’s company while he talks superhero movies, not that he isn’t completely wrong about them. Whatever. He got her out of the house when she was being broody, so he gets to be horrendously wrong for a night.
Well, half a night.
Alright, she’ll give him an hour.
And since Monty has no time for her two-beer superhero opinions, they decide to switch to some bigger bar with a dance floor, hoping the music will be too loud for them to talk. It doesn’t take them long to find one, and once they do, they dive straight into it, goofing around and strutting as music gets racier and racier. Or maybe it’s not the music. Maybe it’s the people moving, and laughing, and grinding, as if the fact that they can’t be heard was an excuse to do things they wouldn’t normally want seen. Well, it’s not like Raven can judge them. She used to adore this kind of dancing back when her knee allowed her to do whatever the hell she wanted, and now she’s too stubborn to give up even if she should, even if she knows it’ll hurt in the morning. She isn’t trying to be a hero, okay? She’s just really bad at giving up on things.
Monty knows she should be careful with her movements, but he sucks at restraining her, so she flows freely, if with a bit of hissing, lip bitten, I’m fine. I fucking told you I’m fine. She dances alone most of the time, free or as free as she can be, and then she steps on someone’s foot pretty hard, and turns around in horror.
She can’t place his face at first, because it doesn’t compute, wrong shirt and wrong hair, and completely wrong background, but then it clicks, and Raven grins like she just won the lottery. It’s the beers that make her say the first thing that comes to her mind, or maybe it’s the music, so loud it makes the whole world feel eerie and unreal.
“Espresso boy!” she exclaims gleefully, and throws her arms around his shoulders, hoping he’ll give her a spin. That’s how it works. He doesn’t know about the knee, and he’s supposed to give her a spin.
He doesn’t disappoint; almost picks her up, makes her feel even more like she’s floating, walking on two beers and club music, and on some deep, loud laughter she earned with her tactless nickname. Espresso boy? What was she even thinking.
“Sorry,” she yells when he sets her down. “That was rude. I don’t know your name!”
But his answer is drowned in bass, which he seems to be aware of, because he just shakes his head, puts his hand on the small of her back, and starts moving again, looks at her with a bit of a challenge hiding in his warm eyes. Or maybe that’s how she chooses to see it, because seeing him here makes her feel hilariously light, as if things were set back into place. Yes, come here, espresso boy. Be nice to me.
That’s why she kisses him by the end of the song. Because he’s so nice to her.
Because she thinks she can suddenly taste the tension between them right on the tip of her tongue, even if she never thought about it this way before. Because she keeps staring at his mouth, and she’s pretty sure he’s staring at hers as well. Because it’s Wednesday, they’re out dancing, and when you go out like this, obviously you want to get lucky.
She has presence of mind enough to text Monty and tell him she’s heading home so he doesn’t worry, and then she’s pulling her espresso boy by the hand towards the nearest cab, screw the money at this point. Holy shit, she’s bringing him home, she’s bringing someone home, and he smells like coffee and kindness, and he’ll make this day so, so much better.
Well, okay. He smells like sweat and some horrible cigarettes, but it still feels good when he kisses her in her bedroom, and starts pulling her shirt up and over her head.
It’s been a while for Raven in general, and even longer since she last rolled into bed with a stranger, but it’s not like she doesn’t remember how. He’s nice and sweet, just tipsy enough to have a clumsy edge about his movements, and it’s more endearing than it technically should be, but Raven still takes it, oh how she takes it when he rubs slow circles into the small of her back, and takes the time to kiss her neck inch by inch, hide his face and take a few deep breaths as if bracing himself.
He never asks her what her problem is, so she figures she doesn’t have the right to ask him about his, either.
***
She wakes up early and she wakes up warm, espresso boy’s bare chest still pressed against her back, and it feels better than it legally should. She officially doesn’t have the cheap excuse of two beers anymore, not that it really worked even last night, after an hour of dancing and a ride home. So much for a drunk hook-up. Lonely hook-up, more like it.
Espresso boy probably had a bit more booze than she did, but he’s tall like hell, so even if he’d had twice as much, he probably won’t have a hint of a hangover. Raven knows how this goes. Who the hell can afford to get really hammered while being out in a club?
Unless he had some at home before he went out. That gives Raven a stop, makes her squirm uncomfortably against him. Did she just screw someone who was too out of it to tell her yes or no? No, no she didn’t, she remembers. He flirted with her in the cab, made those clever, gentle jokes that had her in giggles, had her leaning against his shoulder and poking his side. He even pulled out his phone in the midst of that conversation, and set an alarm, said he has a shift starting at noon.
And she has one starting at nine. Shit.
He stirs when she tries getting out of his arms, and in some dumb reflex he pulls her closer, lets out a hot breath against the nape of her neck. Yeah, I know, pretty boy. I don’t wanna get out of bed either, but life sucks.
It’s not like she’s late, and she definitely has time for breakfast, but only if she stops stalling, and gets her ass in a gear now. He can stay for all she cares. Echo probably starts late, and she can let him out when he wakes.
Which is why she covers the hand he has on her stomach with hers, and rubs lightly.
“Come on. Rise and shine.”
She hears him groan quietly, and then he comes to, rolls to his back and rubs his face awake. She doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t miss the warmth of him. Get it together, Raven. He’s a one-night stand.
“Shit, I fell asleep,” he mutters, and just like that, there is distance between them, just how it should be, because this isn’t some fake-deep movie about the meaning of life.
“It’s fine. You set an alarm, remember? You aren’t late for work.”
She feels more than sees him nod behind her, and then, to her great surprise, he kisses her bare shoulder before crawling out of bed in search of his clothes.
“Will you be at the shop today?” he asks as he pulls his briefs on. “We missed you yesterday.”
Yeah. I missed you too.
“Not sure. Depends on the group. Some insist on chains.”
“Barbarians.”
“Hey, that’s what I tell them.”
She’s still in bed, covering herself with a sheet, and maybe that’s what makes him hesitate, freeze mid-motion when he was about to come back for a second, steal a touch or a kiss goodbye. He wasn’t so shy last night, but maybe that’s what the morning after will do to a guy. She sure was more forward when she could claim those proud two beers.
“Yeah, well, anyway. I'll see you later.”
And since she doesn’t stop him, of course he leaves.