Work Text:
It’s not Raven’s fault that her neighborhood coffee shop has the best coffee in town.
So maybe she is particular about this, but in her defense, it’s really not that difficult to please her. All she needs is decent beans, a barista who knows what they’re doing, a comfortable armchair, a desk at the right height, and when it comes to pastries…
Okay, fine. It is difficult and she is being a goddamned princess about her coffee time, but she worked long and hard to achieve the kind of job where she can both work independently and afford a coffee shop trip a few days a week, so she is going to fucking cherish it. Down to the last crumb.
Once upon a time, Raven used to dream about an academic career, and she even clawed her way as far as a Master’s degree, only to have a brutal clash with reality: PhD students are overworked and underpaid, and even if she had been lucky enough to land a lucrative job quickly, she definitely wasn’t good enough at controlling her temper around assholes to make her luck last. Especially in the land of the dudebros that is computer science.
So when Sinclair offered her an opportunity, she took it on the spot, and never looked back.
This is the fourth video game they are creating together, and while they’re not in the business of blockbusting titles that require months of merciless crunch, they’ve made quite a name for themselves on the indie market, and Raven can count on a comfortable income that comes with heaps of precious independence. She might be coding, but she’s still part of the design team, and they have a good rhythm going. Mornings are for meetings, brainstorms, and comparing notes, then comes a lunchtime walk, after which they either come back to work in their office, or go home to get their heads down and focus. Raven tries to be flexible, especially when one of the other programmers needs help, but if there are no emergencies, she likes to stick to her little ritual. On Tuesdays and Fridays, she takes her lunch break at one, uses it to walk towards home, settles in that fantastic coffee shop round to corner from where she lives, sits at her favorite table, orders her favorite sandwich, and gets to work on a list of problems no one else from the team could crack. Sometimes it takes her all the way until closing time, and she definitely doesn’t always solve everything, but she always makes at least some progress. It’s the cheese in the sandwich that makes the miracle happen. She just knows it.
***
This week is particularly beastly, thanks to some bug that’s way too hard to spot despite generating a multitude of errors. Raven’s entire team is up to their ears in it from Monday morning, and she doesn’t exactly regret having to miss her Coffee Shop Tuesday to sit down with Monty in the office and try to crack the problem, but it does make her grumpy. Add an unrelated publicity fuck-up that makes everyone tense, and then internet in the office goes down halfway through Thursday… By eleven on Friday, Sinclair is kicking her out of the office, laptop in tow.
“You’re scaring other children,” he says in a gruff tone. Raven rolls her eyes.
“I am absolutely not,” she hisses back, even as she stuffs her laptop into her backpack.
“You are, and so am I. Pack up, you brainstormed enough. We’re not going to solve this by staring at it and hoping that code rearranges itself. Go on. Take a long walk, do that weird Friday lunch hermit ritual you do, catch up on boring admin in the afternoon. We’ll all get some sleep, and then try again on Monday with fresh heads. Go on.”
She hates that she’s right, but ten minutes into her walk, she is ready to admit that he is. She tried too hard to fix everything immediately, and things don’t always work like that. You’d think she’d have learned it by now, after a good few years in the field.
She arrives at her coffee shop good two hours earlier than usual, but the barista still beams at her when she shows up, and it makes Raven feel all warm and tingly. This whole neighborhood feels like home, and the fact that people who work in her favorite places recognize her just make it all so much better. Comforted, she orders her usual coffee, deciding to wait with the cheese sandwich until actual lunch time, and floats towards her favorite armchair, flopping on it without as much as a glance around.
Only to find herself staring right in the eyes of a young man sitting on the other side of her table.
“Excuse me?” he blurts out, clearly shocked by her imposition, given how the shop is empty and every other table is free. Raven can feel heat rising in her cheeks.
“Fuck… I mean, sorry. I didn’t notice you, I was distracted. I… This is my table. But I’m early.”
The guy blinks slowly, probably to show off those ridiculously long eyelashes, and Raven bites her lip, mortified. Fuck, she is making no sense. He’ll think she is trying to seduce him, or something. She shouldn’t have read that romance novel yesterday to make herself feel better. Now all she can think of is a meet-cute with suspected seduction, while the lucid part of her brain is busy screaming that there is nothing seductive about this, and she is acting like a creep.
She is ready to spin even further down the rabbit hole of embarrassment and nonsensical tangents, but she is interrupted by the guy letting out an undignified snort.
“They should just buy more of those armchairs already, everyone is fighting over them,” he offers, still grinning. Raven wants to hiss at him for laughing at her, but then, she’d have to stop being so mortified, and her emotions don’t work as quickly as her mind. For once, it’s probably a good thing, because it gives the guy a chance to keep talking. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply… You’re that girl who always comes here to work, aren’t you? Gina mentioned you.” The pretty barista waves at them, clearly having heard her name. “I usually come later in the afternoon. She always tells me if I made it before you to snatched the table, and I almost never do.”
Now is Raven’s turn to blink, confused. He comes here later in the afternoon? Often enough to have noticed her and discussed her with the barista? God, Sinclair is right, and she needs a vacation. She was so deeply engrossed in work that she never even noticed.
“I didn’t know there was a table competition,” she lets out, croaky. “Sorry. I’ll just… Go.”
“It’s okay,” says the guy easily. He, too, has a laptop in front of him, and a few books are piled up by his side. “Those are the best armchairs. I don’t mind the company if you don’t?”
It’s fucking awkward, that’s what it is, but… there is nothing sleazy about the guy. Once Raven gets over her first discomfort, aided by a hot beverage, she has to admit that he’s not trying to flirt, hasn’t used a single pick-up line, and is just ignoring her as if they were at separate tables. All the tension is coming from her, and yes, she could try to dissolve it by moving tables, but she’ll be here doing admin for a few hours, and this armchair is the only one that doesn’t aggravate her back problem. And she absolutely can’t ask the guy to move, since he was here first, and he’s being a perfect gentleman who pretended not to notice that she acted like an overcaffeinated toddler.
Predictably, no work gets done – for the first hour. But once first coffee is consumed, together with a pre-lunch snack, Raven lets the noises of the espresso machine, blender, clinking cups and passing customers lull her into their familiarity. This is fine. The guy is here to work, the space is comfortable, and they’re sharing it. No need to make a big deal out of it.
Once she settles, and orders her cheese sandwich, she finally lets her mind wander in a pleasant way, as opposed to a hamster wheel tailspin, and then she’s doing admin, except she gets distracted by a pattern on one of the guy’s books, because it reminds her of something, and then suddenly it’s an hour later, and she’s found and fixed that goddamned bug that has haunted her week.
“Breakthrough?” asks the guy casually, clearly picking up on her excitement from how fast her fingers are moving as she texts Sinclair to tell him to praise her.
“I made the code my bitch,” she informs him with a grin, and toasts him with her second coffee.
To his credit, he lifts his mug too and drinks with her.
***
Raven has her table to herself on Tuesday, because clearly that’s not her Table Guy’s day, and that’s fine – but when she shows up the next Friday to find her table empty, she is surprised by a pang of disappointment she suddenly feels. She settles in the good armchair, inexplicably grouchy, then proceeds to work on her problem, morose, until he dashes in half an hour later, breathless as if he’d ran here.
“You missed your table,” announces Gina as he takes off his steamed up glasses, and clearly this is some sort of a ritual, but the difference is that this time, Raven is paying attention.
“It’s fine,” she calls out, before he can put the glasses back on and take too good a look at her. “I saved you a seat.”
“I have a call in…” He checks his phone. “Three minutes. You sure it won’t bother you?”
In response, Raven pulls her laptop closer to the chest, to make more space at the table.
He manages to plug his headset into his laptop just in time, and thank God, because the call sounds important. He is trying to keep it fairly quiet, but he is so close Raven can still hear every word. He has a nice, soothing voice, deep and rumbly, and so much calmer than the stressed nerds she is used to at work. Honestly, this guy should read audiobooks. She could listen to him for hours.
He is clearly making some kind of a business arrangement, which would mean that he comes here for work as well. Explains why he was so easy to be around last week. He was just too busy to be a bother.
“Yeah, okay,” he says after maybe twenty minutes, and suddenly there is an energy in his voice, something that makes Raven look up from over her code. “Yeah, we’ve got a deal. Yes, agreed on the rate. I’m available to speak to the editor on Wednesday. Fantastic, yes. Thank you so much… yes. I look forward to working with you as well.”
Then he is pulling the headphones off, and leaning back in his chair like he just got offered a starring role in Lord of the Rings reboot. Raven can’t help noticing that his hands are shaking a little.
“They bought it?” asks Gina from behind the bar, unable to contain her excitement.
“They bought it!” he responds, and finally bursts out laughing, releasing the built-up tension so rapidly and powerfully that even Raven can feel her shoulders drop as well. “Oh fuck me. I didn’t think…” Then he suddenly realizes that he is talking to Gina over Raven’s head, and redirects his attention to her.
“I’m sorry,” he says, still laughing a little, like his joy is too big to be contained. “I was supposed to do this at home, but my neighbor started drilling two hours ago, and… Yeah. Sorry for the disruption.”
“No, it’s okay,” she insists, now curious. “What did you sell? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“A book.” He rubs his face, like he can’t believe how lucky he got. “Sorry. I’m going to be ridiculously disruptive today. I need to… I don’t know. Do stuff. Can I get you a coffee in apology? No, wait, you already have a coffee, a cookie? Do you eat cookies?”
“Bell, you’re rambling,” cuts in Gina, but she is shaking her head with fondness. “Stop scaring away my customers.”
“Oh please, I was worse when we started selling our first game,” says Raven, even as she files away that tidbit of information. Bell. The guy’s name, or maybe nickname, is Bell. It weirdly suits him. “I eat cookies. But you don’t have to… It’s fine. Congratulations. You should get yourself a cookie. Celebrate your book.”
“Don’t encourage it, or he won’t shut up about it for weeks,” teases Gina, and that’s when Raven realizes that those two definitely know each other, even outside the shop. He might even be her boyfriend, given the exasperated fondness she clearly has for him.
Or maybe not.
“I take offence,” he says sternly, only to get a shrug in response.
“So you don’t want a hot chocolate on the house? I’m not giving you caffeine, you’re already vibrating.”
“I always want hot chocolate on the house.”
He calms down somewhat after that exchange, and busies himself with some furious typing on his laptop, maybe sending around emails or bragging on social media. By the time Raven’s work is done, he is still there, grinning at the screen, and there is something so endearing about his unbridled joy that she does a stupid. Comes up to the bar, pulls out her wallet, and asks Gina to pack up one of her kickass pear muffins, and give it to Bell on his way out. From Raven. Congratulations on selling your book.
***
“Bellamy told me to say, thank you for the muffin,” says Gina as soon as she sees Raven next Tuesday. “You made his day. He loves those muffins.”
“Why doesn’t he get them himself?”
“Because they are twenty pence more expensive than the blueberry ones, and that feels too indulgent, because he also likes the blueberry, and also most days he decides he didn’t do enough writing to deserve a muffin. Welcome to the wonders of that man’s brain. Anyway, it was nice of you. He worked really hard on that book.”
Clearly, Gina is feeling chatty today, because it doesn’t really take much effort for Raven to find out more about the guy she’s been sharing a table with for the last two weeks. Apparently he used to work here, ages and ages ago, back when there was a different owner, who did his damnest to drive the place to the ground with a mix of negligence and bad business decisions. Bellamy quit after a year to go working in a museum, which he is actually qualified to do, then the coffee shop almost folded, only to be taken over by a cooperative of former employees, Gina among them, armed with heaps of ideas and one substantial business loan.
“I keep telling him, if he just gets this book thing done and turns out to be the next Stephen King, or something, I will put a plaque right there to say he wrote most of it here. He works Monday to Thursday, then gets most Fridays off, and works one day during the weekend. We said from the start that he could come here to write, and we wouldn’t hound him for not ordering often enough and stuff. He is nice enough to still do a shift for us from time to time if we’re really short. Oh no, hold on, I’m not charging you today. Bellamy paid your lunch forward.”
It surprises her enough to spontaneously get him a coffee and a pear muffin for next time he comes over – and thus commences a pay forward game of chicken.
***
Bellamy doesn’t show up every Friday, probably because his work schedule gets in the way, but he clearly lives nearby, or maybe he just has Gina’s paypal, because he never fails to buy a coffee and a sandwich for Raven for next Tuesday. Not to be outdone, Raven pays for a coffee and a pear muffin on her way out each Tuesday, to Gina’s growing amusement, because neither Bellamy nor Raven acknowledge this sudden violent reciprocity, apart from a sheepish “thank you” here and there because they might be stubborn, but they’re not barbarians. Four weeks in, Raven has a horrific realization that her sandwich is double the price of a pear muffin, and decides to up her game by trying to add a slice of quiche, then panicking because she doesn’t know if he likes quiche. Gina makes a sassy comment about how this is great for business, then takes pity and suggests a chicken sandwich instead, still laughing under her breath. Predictably, next Tuesday Raven finds that her lunch now contains not only a coffee and a cheese sandwich, but also a cinnamon bun, which sends her into a panic, because she now owes him for four weeks of unequal food gifts, so she acts like an adult and purchases a coffee, a chicken sandwich, and two pear muffins. That will show him.
What she should have predicted: she will always be at a disadvantage here, because Gina, the troll, is probably texting him.
Or maybe he can read minds. Or something. Because on Friday, he is there before her, for the first time since they started sharing a table, and he is looking at her sternly from behind those stupidly pretty glasses. When Raven manages to look down from his face, she can’t help but notice two pear muffins on the table between them.
“This is ridiculous,” he says, sounding like he is barely holding back a sneeze. Or a laugh. “Why are we dick-measuring with pastries, excuse my language? Do you wanna just eat this with me?”
“No,” says Raven, irrationally stubborn. “They’re yours. You got me…”
“You started it.”
“Because you sold your book!”
“And I wanted to be nice.”
Raven rolls her eyes.
“Fine. We’re idiots. Both of us.”
“Will you sit down and eat the muffin?”
“No.”
“Raven.”
“Fine. Yes.”
She lasts about two minutes picking at the muffin in begrudging silence, before she swallows and looks at him properly.
“Sorry,” she says. “I don’t even know what your book is about.”
“It’s a romance novel about ancient Rome. It’s with the editor now, and I’m working on the second one in the series. What’s your game about? You said something about selling a game.”
“About gay people getting into shenanigans,” she says without thinking, only this time it turns out that her no filter is the exactly right thing to say, because he lets out that booming laugh she likes so much, and it makes her realize just how often he takes it really well when she says the first stupid thing that comes to her mind.
Later, she has to text Sinclair like a guilty, sheepish thing to tell him that she’s taking the afternoon off as vacation, because two hours into the conversation, she realizes that she’s not even opened her laptop. The response comes in seconds, reminding her that she has thirteen days of unused leave from last year, and that’s on top of this year’s allowance, which she hasn’t touched, and telling her to not bother showing her face until Tuesday. Has she considered taking all Fridays off this month?
“I think my boss is trying to tell me I work too much,” she mutters, after sending him a moderately rude emoji. They have that kind of a rapport. “Anyway. I now have the afternoon off.”
“Time flies when you’re in charge of the gays doing the crimes,” jokes Bellamy, smiling a little too brightly, maybe relieved that he didn’t get her into trouble at work.
“Tell me about it. Is anyone gay in your book?”
“Not in the first one.”
“Your second book needs more lesbians.”
“I’ve been told that.”
They leave together after a few hours, ostensibly to make sure neither of them slips back into paying forward, and besides, it’s really nice and sunny outside, and days are getting longer, so there is nothing stopping them from taking a walk in the park nearby.
They have some plot to discuss.