Archive of Our Own

This particular Saturday, Damen felt like he was the only person in the world, in the way you only can on grey days with the sky hanging low overhead. It was weather Damen enjoyed, normally: the crisp air, the constant caress of a breeze. He hadn't bothered with an umbrella, as his hair was thick and straight enough that the faint drizzle wasn't enough to make his hair cowlick in the way it did Kastor's. He was said to take after his mother, a woman Damen had never met but had seen plenty of grainy pictures. It was another little way his brother Kastor was ill-favored by genetics -- by destiny, if there was anything to what he always claimed.

Damen still couldn't believe it, what Kastor had said. What he'd done. Their father had died, and Kastor had -

The jingle of a door's bells interrupted his thoughts.

Damen looked up at the sign. Has and Has Beans, it read. How...colorful. He could just see mismatched couches through the window, rustic wood plank tables and what might be a beanbag chair in a far corner. Damen tried to picture the sharp-suited gentleman who'd referred him here as a patron of this coffeeshop and failed.

He'd been walking out of Peet's Headquarters, still reeling from being met by his brother and denied entry, when someone had bumped into him from behind. As he'd helped pick up his assailant's scattered papers, the man said some platitudes about how unhelpful most young people are these days, and that Damen looked like a hardworking lad, and that if he ever needed a job, his nephew was looking for help at this address. Before Damen could open his mouth to politely decline, a card had been thrust into his hand and the man had walked on.

Damen, still in the staring-at-things-uncomprehendingly stage of shock, had shoved the card in his pocket and forgotten about it. Until the next week when his bills came in the mail, and with them the desperate need for an income.

Upon examination, the card just had Regent embossed on one side in elegant script and a handwritten address on the reverse. How odd.

Find his nephew, the man had said. Well, Damen’s father had always stressed the importance of networking and using your connections.

The man had not, however, said that the place was an indie coffee shop. The irony was so thick it was nearly palpable. A voice was laughing at him in his head, and it sounded an awful lot like Jokaste.

Damen cast it from his mind with a grimace and pushed open the door in a jingle of bells.

The guy at the counter looked at him impassively. Damen pulled out the card. "Uh, hi. I'm here to see this guy's nephew." He handed the card over.

The guy behind the counter's face changed from bland politeness to animosity when he saw the card, but promptly disappeared into the back.

When he emerged, it was with a stunningly attractive blond man, presumably the nephew. Jord introduced him, but Damen spaced out after the first name, because wow.

Laurent Somethingorother answered the description of probably every past boyfriend (or girlfriend) of Damen's: golden-haired, sharp eyes and a hint of intelligence and disdain behind his smile. He was probably a few years younger than Damen, but his obvious appraisal of Damen belied a much older outlook.

Maybe working here wouldn't be too terrible, after all.

"And what, pray tell," Laurent said. "Can I do for my uncle today?"

Damen got the impression that Laurent wasn’t on good terms with his uncle.

Damen cleared his throat. "He said you were looking to hire people? He seemed to think I would be a good fit."

"A good fit," Laurent echoed. It was impossible to tell whether he found this fortunate or unfortunate. "And I suppose," he said, "you think I'm going to be grateful for your help."

Damen felt like he was missing something. This didn't seem like such a good idea anymore. "As grateful as you'd be to any employee," he said, hoping it didn't sound like a question. He was seriously considering leaving, but his trust fund only covered his tuition fees, and he would really like to eat. And not be kicked out of his small yet sacred apartment.

The longer the silence stretched, the more Damen regretted coming in today. He wondered if there were any TA positions still available two weeks into the term, or if there were any customer service jobs on campus. He doubted it. Well, except for....

"Peet's is hiring on the other side of campus," Laurent said with a moue of distaste at the name. "Is there a reason you wouldn't be a 'good fit' there?"

Yes, Damen thought hysterically, As of two days ago, I am the last person they would ever hire. "Peet's and I have...ideological differences," he said. Not to mention broken family ties and possibly a small legal fiasco on the horizon. "Indie coffee shops are more my style," he lied.

"Ideological differences," Laurent repeated. "Of course. Welcome to the team."

His voice didn’t communicate any of the warmth the connotation of the word team implied. It seemed to Damen more like Laurent was a captain welcoming a new recruit, a dispensable one he was planning to station on the frontlines. He smiled placidly at Damen. "We needed someone for the morning shift. I'm sure Jord can help you out with all of the paperwork."

After a short, bruising handshake, he disappeared as if he'd never been there at all.

As Jord turned to face Damen again, his expression morphed from worshipful to a glare seamlessly.

When Damen looked down at the paperwork he was left with, he got an inkling of why. Laurent de Vere. it said across the top. Laurent de Vere.

That...was not ideal.

Because not only was the owner of this indie coffee shop, with its threadbare couches and determined lack of cohesive decor, the heir of Starbucks, Damen’s family's rival company (not that he had much family anymore), but Damen would now be working for him.

The long history of lawsuits, corporate espionage and secret seasonal recipes seemed to stretch between him and his new boss as Damen gaped at the door Laurent had just disappeared through. And Damen had also just maligned corporations to him. What was someone like Laurent doing here anyways, he wondered. For the practical experience? But what could a business mogul’s son need indie coffee shop experience for? Damen had been raised questioning and cursing Starbucks’ shady business practices over family dinners, but this was even more illogical than he would have expected from the de Vere clan.

A job was a job, though, so Damen signed on the dotted line. And if he felt an edge of hysteria as he dotted the last i, well he would just have to be particularly silent on the subject of family. And his background. And anything that happened before this moment. Luckily, his father had married into the company, so Damen didn't have a last name recognizably linked to Peet's. It was very unlikely anyone would recognize him.

Just one thing at a time. Damen would get through this term, through his MBA, and then deal with the Kastor situation. If that was even possible. If it wasn't, he could pull an Eduardo Saverin and go be wildly successful in Singapore, or something. Right.

Damen had trouble sleeping that night. What would his father think? His heir, the intended CEO of the family company, reduced to being a slave to the corporation they'd waged war against. Damen didn't even know what he, himself felt about it.

If Kastor could see him now...his brain shied from the thought.

When he came in two days later for his first shift, they put him on bar. This seemed like a great decision. Damen had grown up with a fancy coffee machine at home; an espresso machine couldn't be that different. This was going to be a breeze.

“Hey, New Guy,” Jord said impatiently an hour later. “Go refill the silverware. I’ll do this.” He surveyed the coffee disaster in front of him, waving Damen away with irritation.

It didn't make much sense to Damen, to put the new guy on the part of the job with the most stuff to learn and the highest probability of messing up. It was completely different to making coffee at home; he had the burns and scrapped drinks to prove it. His two coworkers, Jord and Orlant, were ostensibly there to show him the ropes, but all he'd managed to get out of Orlant was a series of growls, and Jord was curt enough that Damen found himself furiously flipping through the recipe binder during downtime rather than asking for their help. He tried to attribute some of their surliness to the early hour (they had all been working since 5AM), but Damen was pretty sure they just didn't like him. The two seemed loath to talk to him directly beyond curt instructions, and he was watched with disconcerting intensity anytime he passed by the cash register or went into the back room.

In sum, he spent a lot of time in the beginning gritting his teeth and trying not to look too murderous.

He took the jar of dirty spoons down from the end of the counter and stomped past the register on the way to the back for the fifth time that hour, having never heard of an upside-down macchiato. It must be some Starbucks thing. He could feel Orlant's suspicious eyes on him the whole way. He grabbed a clean glass jar from a shelf and returned to the bar, where he was fairly sure he shouldn't be, as a newbie. The next drink up was an Americano, one of the few drinks he'd quickly mastered.

It would make a lot more sense for him to be on the register. He thought, as he savagely dumped a fresh espresso shot into the cup. But apparently it wasn’t company policy at Has and Has Beans for newbies to be trusted with money. Damen rolled his eyes. He had been groomed to be a CEO, to make company-wide financial decisions at the drop of a hat and be inspirational in boardrooms. He could handle making change for a $20.

At least the customers were nice enough. None of them were at fault for his reduced circumstances, so he tried his best to smile and be friendly. They were all very accommodating when he messed up a drink, and seemed fine with chatting with him while he fixed his mistake. All of the horror stories he'd heard about customer service were clearly mistaken. It wasn't any of the customers' fault he was having a bad day, after all.

"Medium Americano!" he called out. A bored-looking woman looked up from her phone to take her drink. He gave her a wide smile, because that was what people did in customer service, right? Her eyes widened, and she stood there for a second too long. Was Damen wrong about that?

He leaned against the counter. "Nice weather we've been having, isn't it?" he said, to break the silence. He glanced out the window behind her. It had just started raining.

She let out something that may have been a squeak. "Uh, yeah, yeah it is," she muttered, and, clearly mistaking a newly cleaned spoon return jar for a tip jar, shoved a five dollar bill in the empty spoon jar. Damen didn't have the heart to correct her. The customer was always right, right?

She blushed a deep red, and then rushed away.

Damen shrugged, wrote "spoons" on a second jar, and resumed his battle with the espresso machine.

The jar was pretty full by the end of his shift, so on his way out, he dumped it into the bigger tip jar by the register. It only had a few bills in it, so it must have been recently emptied. Orlant and Jord silently stared at him the whole time. Sheesh, did they think he was going to steal all of the tips or something? You just couldn't trust Starbucks management.

"Well," Damen said awkwardly. This failed to elicit a response. "I'm going to go now. See you on Tuesday."

Damen needed the extra cash flow, due to being cut off from his millions, but did not need the snooty work atmosphere. He had enough to think about to worry about what was going on at work, anyways.

Soon, it was midterm season, and he was buried underneath projects, editing a book for his professor and cooking for himself all of the time because he didn't have the disposable income to regularly eat out any longer.

He didn't have the leftover brainpower to do much more than be pleasant to customers and robotically make drinks.

Damen caught glimpses of Laurent occasionally, impeccably neat and untouchable looking, and usually entering the café just as Damen left it. He idly wondered whether Laurent worked shifts himself. He'd gathered from his coworkers' gossip that Has and Has Beans was under some sort of hiring freeze that must have started after he'd gotten in, so it wasn't too unlikely.

It wasn't until he'd been working at the coffeeshop for a month and Jord was voluntarily exchanging pleasantries with him that Damen interacted with Laurent again. Laurent looked tired and stressed, although his posture was still perfectly straight and apparently effortless. Damen's hands were making a sympathy cappuccino before he realized what he was doing. He looked down at it and thought, maybe we just got off on the wrong foot. Jord had reluctantly thawed to him, after all.

"Hey, Laurent," Damen said, tapping him on the arm as he brushed past on his way to the back room.

Laurent stopped and raised an eyebrow at him. Damen began to feel a little uncertain. "Cappuccino?" He held out the coffee, leaf foam design bobbing a little with inertia.

Laurent's face changed from disdainful neutral to venomous. He took the mug and poured it into the sink without breaking eye contact with Damen. "Oops," he said, and walked into the back room.

All behind the counter was briefly silent. Damen looked over to Jord, who was making a face at him.

"What's his problem?" Damen asked. "What did I do?"

Orlant growled at him, something he hadn't done since the first week. It was testament to the inroads Damen had made with Jord that Jord actually answered.

"Laurent doesn't drink coffee," Jord said in a low voice, glancing nervously back at the back room. The door was thankfully closed.

Damen blinked. That was certainly not the answer he was expecting. Maybe it wasn't his fault, after all. Why did he run a coffee shop, then? "That looked like more than casual dislike."

"Well, his uncle, you know," Jord said. He seemed to think this was an adequate explanation.

Damen said, "No, I really don't."

Jord studied his face and, apparently seeing Damen's cluelessness trustworthy, said, "Laurent is really intolerant to coconut and palm. He gets several day migraines, puking, the works. A few years ago, his uncle started changing all of Starbucks' pastry suppliers, using commercial whipped cream rather than the pure dairy kind and started lacing the sugar with coconut just to fuck with him." This sounded ridiculous. "So Laurent only eats and drinks stuff he's made himself."

Damen tried to reconcile the generous, cheerful man he'd met with the picture Jord was painting and failed. "But why would his uncle do that?" He held up his hands preemptively at any argument. "It’s not that I don’t believe you - I met him for all of one minute, but that sounds pretty extreme."

"He's bitter he's only the interim CEO until Laurent comes of age. His uncle is trying to discredit Laurent by the board of directors before then so he can vote him out. It's why Laurent is stuck running this place rather than interning in Starbucks upper management, and why there's a Starbucks around the corner that has permanent 99 cent coffee."

Well then. Damen experienced a sinking feeling in his gut. That explained a lot. "I don't suppose," he said slowly. "That Has and Has Beans' hiring freeze that began just after I started here has anything to do with Laurent's uncle?"

"The hiring freeze started well before you were hired," Jord said sourly.

Ah. That explained everything, in fact.

Damen walked to class after his shift with a lot on his mind. Laurent was in a situation very similar to his own. When his father had - when the company had been passed down to Damen, Kastor had found some way to lock him out. Damen had never found out what his legal excuse was. Whatever it was, it would probably hold water: it was most likely Jokaste's doing, after all, and she was as intelligent as she was beautiful.

Perhaps Laurent was worthy of his friendship. They must have just gotten off on the wrong foot - some relentless friendliness should change that. Damen, after all, had been told it was difficult to dislike him.

He came upon Laurent in the Law library the next day, trying to reach a book on a high shelf.

Damen stepped heavily as he approached so as not to sneak up on him. "Would you punish me," he asked jokingly, "if I got that down for you?"

Laurent didn't turn around. "Yes," he said.

"Um, that was -"

"You lumber around like a bear. Try to remember we're in a library." He retrieved the book and pointedly opened it, a wordless dismissal.

Laurent was a real piece of work, Damen mused for not the first time. Walking away, Damen wondered briefly why Laurent had even been in the Law library. Wasn't he studying Business? More importantly, weren't only graduates allowed in? Damen had never met such a mysterious person in his life.

The shreds of Damen's sympathy lasted until Sunday, when he got a look at the next week's schedule.

"Five hours?!" Damen raged. Jord took a step back.

"Hey, this kind of stuff isn't up to me. You have a problem, you take it up with Laurent." He frowned at Damen reprovingly. "He has a lot on his plate, don't push him."

Damen didn't care whether he had a lot on his plate, he needed money for rent. And it was just petty, punishing Damen for his ignorance. Laurent somehow thought he was important enough for everyone around him to know his allergies. A cup of coffee was like the laurel branch or ox bones of modern society - you'd think Laurent had never received an honest peace offering before.

He caught Laurent working register on Tuesday afternoon. There was a lull, and there was almost no one else around other then the two of them. Damen went around the counter to talk to him regardless.

"Five hours?" he hissed.

Laurent looked up at him, unruffled, pellucid eyes expressionless, the golden afternoon light catching his hair. Somehow his unearthly attractiveness made him ten times worse.

"I was trying to be nice, okay?" Damen fumed. He was determined not to lose momentum under the cool stare. "I didn't know I was hired under dodgy circumstances -”

"Oh really," Laurent cut in dryly. "You get a lot of jobs by just walking in and not being interviewed?"

Damen flushed but continued on, "-just like I didn't know you apparently don't eat or drink anything actually sold in coffee shops. Which I wouldn't have been able to guess, given that you run a coffee shop!"

Laurent was frowning at him.

"I promise I will never try to be nice to you again, I don't care that you've given me only hellishly early shifts, just please give me more hours. Please."

Damen heard a chortle behind him. Laurent's eyes flicked over Damen's shoulder and his expression turned to ice. Damen turned around slowly.

"It looks like you boys are getting along," said Laurent's uncle. "Make me an iced coffee, would you Damen?" He gave Damen a friendly smile and winked. "Give him more hours if he needs them, Laurent. Some of us work for a living."

"Of course," Laurent said with perfect civility.

Laurent's uncle slipped a $100 in the tip jar on his way out. Damen looked down at it in horror.

"Get out," said Laurent.

Damen did.

Predictably, the next week's schedule did not hold good things for Damen. He was booked solid on the weekend, all of the morning shifts and he also had Wednesday nights. Damen was pretty sure they hadn't been open on Wednesday nights until now.

His assessment turned out to be correct, because no one else worked Wednesdays with him. It was calming, actually. The only customers at night were there to study quietly. Damen was mostly left to his own thoughts and could sometimes sneak in some quiet studying, himself. His fondness for closing was fortunate, given that he wasn't stupid enough to confront Laurent again for a change in schedule.

Laurent's renewed hatred in him didn't extend to the other baristas, at least, and Damen got to meet more of them now that he wasn't only working mornings.

Rochert was a quiet, serious architecture student. Lazar talked a lot of shit but could be professional when it counted; he reminded Damen of some of his fraternity brothers from undergrad. Aimeric, though. He could have done without meeting Aimeric.

Aimeric was peppy and cute, but he was also a spitfire and wholly unsuited to customer service. Within a week of knowing him, Damen had had to fix the espresso machine, clean up a broken plate and give his best placating smile and a free coffee to two different customers.

During the second round of midterms, Damen was particularly grateful for this permanent change in schedule. The coffee shop was much closer to his Thursday morning Management discussion than home was, so he was able to literally read until he passed out. What was the point of working in a place with a comfortable couch if you didn't occasionally use it to sleep?

One such night found Damen stretching out on the couch after a successful study session. He would never get over how this couch was actually big enough to stretch out on. He rolled over, marveled at how the couch was also big enough for this maneuver, and fell asleep.

In an ideal world, this week would have been memorable for its unseasonably hot weather - thanks, global warming - and also as the week Aimeric broke two cups and tried to refuse service to a bro that used "gay" as a pejorative adjective. But, woe, it was not the best of all possible worlds, but rather only the one Damen had inhabited his whole life, and this was not to be.

An undetermined number of hours later, he awoke to a warmth and the smell of baked goods coming from the kitchen. He could hear someone puttering around over the gentle whoosh of the convection ovens.

The only other people with keys, Damen sleepily reasoned, were Laurent and Aimeric, who was opening tomorrow. Damen highly doubted Aimeric used his power for midnight baking, so it was likely Laurent. Laurent, who had not noticed him, else Damen would have been rudely awakened by now.

Content with this reasoning, and knowing he had no power to conceal himself from Laurent if Laurent came looking, Damen decided to drop off to sleep again.

A few seconds later, he had the uncomfortable revelation that it was not Laurent's mysterious baking that had woken him. No, what he had heard was something outside the front door.

He suddenly felt completely alert. He heard it again: a faint scratching sound, like someone searching for a keyhole in the dark. Then he heard a key turning in the lock. The heavy thock of the deadbolt falling open. It could be Aimeric, but he doubted it. Damen felt his skin prickling in alarm. He willed himself to relax, to keep his eyes closed. Keep still, he thought. Stay motionless.

He heard the door open slowly. Soft footsteps walked across the floor. They paused in front of his couch.

Damen struggled to keep his breathing even and innocuous as the unknown person hovered over him for entire seconds of menacing silence. Just as his resolve to stay still was breaking, the footsteps moved on.

Damen risked opening his eyes to slits.

It was a man dressed in all black, from the top of his balaclava to the cuffs of his un-washed jeans. A slightly baggy black hoodie hung around his frame. He looked like he’d looked up what a burglar was supposed to wear, but his shoes gave him away. They were polished Oxfords.The effect should have been comedic, but when combined with the grace and confidence of his movements, it was chilling instead. The man moved like a professional.

Damen blinked stupidly at the scene before him. Surely he was dreaming up this man - who apparently had the key to the cash register, wtf? - and was looking over his shoulder into the kitchen and jerking the register open with an audible zing.

The kitchen door opened and a figure appeared in the doorway. Damen’s mouth dropped. Surely he was dreaming Laurent walking out of the kitchen, looking unsurprised. Surely he was imagining the burglar pulling out a gun-

All vestiges of sleep fled his mind. Laurent was arrogant, vindictive and infuriating, yes, but Damen refused to sit and watch while someone was shot in front of him. He sat up as silently as he could.

"I see I don't even rate a proper murder," Damen could just hear Laurent say. "He had to send one of his dogs rather than come himself."

Damen thought you were supposed to try reasoning with people that held you at gunpoint. Laurent was really bad at this.

Damen eased himself toward the low coffee table in front of him, hardly daring to look away from the scene in front of him.

The man in black murmured something indistinct. Laurent looked furious.

Damen groped forward into the dark, and felt something under his fingers.

The burglar cocked his gun. Laurent said something in a challenging tone of voice. Way to help, Laurent.

In one fluid move, Damen stood up and threw a graphing calculator at the stranger's head. True to form, he didn't miss, and the burglar dropped like a stone.

Laurent whirled toward him, an incredulous look on his face. He stared, and it took him a moment to find his voice. “Damen? What are you doing here!?"

"Saving your life, apparently," Damen said. He could taste bitter adrenaline in the back of his throat, and he was pretty sure his hands were shaking. He shoved them in his sweatpants pockets as he walked forward into the light. "What were you doing here? And why did that guy have a key to the store?"

Laurent had picked up the graphing calculator and was holding it pinched between two fingers distastefully. "If you make a habit of late night study sessions," he said with venom, "he was trying to pin my murder on you, unless I miss my guess."

Damen spluttered. "This was a hit?"

"I assume so. I would know for certain, if someone hadn't knocked him out before I could get more information out of him," Laurent snapped.

Damen didn't dignify that with a response. Instead, he busied himself looking through the cupboards for something useful, like duct tape. He found zip ties instead. He glared up at Laurent. "Are you going to help, or are you going to just stand there? Get his ankles."

They zip tied the unconscious maybe-hitman in silence. Damen observed Laurent out of the corner of his eye. He had his face schooled into an impassive mask, but Damen could see that he was pale even in the weak ambient light.

"Go check on your cookies," Damen said. He coughed to clear his throat and waved at the body on the floor. "I'll deal with this."

He took his time calling the campus police, giving Laurent space to collect himself, and turned on some lights. He was far too keyed up to go back to sleep, so he made himself a cup of tea and sat, cold, at a table, watching it steep.

Laurent joined him a minute later with a plate of oatmeal cookies. "Don't read too much into this."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Damen said, and took a cookie. It was infuriatingly perfect, of course, just like everything else about Laurent. He was too tired to get properly upset about it, though.

They sat in companionable silence for 20 minutes before campus police arrived and took their statements.

Dawn was staining the sky by the time the police were done with them and the zip-tied man in black was taken away. Damen decided the healing properties of a shower were required to face the day. He could make the trek home and then back uphill to class. He wasn’t getting any more sleep this morning, after all.

He turned toward Laurent, who was looking calculating and unruffled once more. "Do you need me to walk you home?" asked Damen, half-serious. He started loading up his computer case for the walk back home. "Or is it unlikely there's another assassin lying in wait?"

The barest of pinks colored Laurent's cheeks. "If you tell anyone about this -" he threatened.

Damen held up his hands defensively. "Hey, who would I have to tell? They wouldn't believe me, anyways." He put the strap of his briefcase over his shoulder and gave a little wave. "Enjoy your Thursday."

As he walked out the door, he caught a glimpse in the glass of Laurent, looking after him with an unreadable expression.

After class, Damen swung by the hardware store on the East side of campus and picked up some locks. It was highly unlikely whoever was trying to assassinate - this was seriously unreal - Laurent would try the same method again, but this was one problem he could easily fix, and it would make Damen feel better. The next intruder would have to take the time to pick the lock, giving anyone inside time to duck under the counter. Or grab a calculator. Whatever.

Has and Has Beans was on the North side of campus, up a gradual hill. The sun was doing its best to make itself known, and Damen had stripped down to a tank top by the time he turned onto Delpha Avenue. The last block was spent wondering for the nth time why on earth there was no bike rack anywhere in the area.

He opened the door to Has and Has Beans its maximum swing, and winced a bit as he sat down on the hot pavement to take a look at the lock. He could feel the teasing wisp of the air conditioning from within, and looked longingly indoors.

What should have been the work of ten or fifteen minutes was stretching into half an hour because people kept stopping to talk to him. He didn't remember meeting some of them, and they all assured him he wasn't blocking the sidewalk too much, so perhaps the North side of campus was just a very friendly neighborhood. He felt a bit guilty for not interacting with the community much. If he ever had free time, maybe he could rectify that. At least they were all going into the coffee shop. It wasn't their fault he was in their way. He hoped he wasn't deterring business, being sweaty and wearing a threadbare pair of jeans that hadn't seen the outside of his home since undergrad. They were his only non-slacks, and seemed the most comfortable option for the day. As soon as he was done assassin-proofing the coffee shop, he was going home and shutting his brain off. This deserved a night off from homework.

Damen had no idea Wednesday afternoons were so busy, although why Jord was the only one working the bar on one of their busiest days was a mystery.

Someone cleared their throat behind him just as he was finishing up. Damen sighed and fixed a smile on his face before he turned around. He squinted upwards, into the sun and Laurent, who was looking down at him incredulously.

"Watch out, your face is going to get stuck like that," Damen's mouth said, without his input. He fought the urge to rub his hand over his face. Today was not his day. He needed to go home and take a nap.

Laurent blinked at him.

Damen got up and stretched. His tank top stuck to his chest in some places. Ugh. He needed to go home and shower, desperately.

Laurent was still standing there, uncharacteristically silent, holding a Law textbook. Damen shoved a screwdriver in his bag and slung the bag over his shoulder. He clasped Laurent on the shoulder as he walked by.

"You should go home," he suggested, and walked away before he got a response, thinking of the cool, dark house awaiting him.

Damen suddenly found himself working day and night shifts. This meant he sometimes worked alongside Laurent himself. They made a very efficient team. Damen wasn't sure whether to be pleased by or put out by this fact.

Damen half wondered whether Laurent was just keeping him close by as a bodyguard.

It took a while to become accustomed to seeing Laurent interact with customers. It was unnerving. The Laurent hewn from ice disappeared and was replaced with the personification of reserved charm. Even now, Damen couldn't believe what he was witnessing half of the time.

Take now, for instance: Laurent was exchanging good natured small talk with a man in a suit. Before Damen's very eyes, comments had been made coquettishly on the weather, on the state of some business or other, and on the prospects of the local baseball team. At some point, Laurent was moved to chuckle. The businessman looked very pleased with himself.

Damen wasn't sure whether he was watching small talk or flirting, but neither would surprise him - he'd realized within a week all of the employees were queer. It didn't surprise him: Starbucks had a reputation for going out of its way to hire gay workers, and Has and Has Beans was technically its subsidiary.

Damen busied himself with making the businessman's drink - a venti skim latte, how original.

"Torveld!" he called out. The name was stuffy and boring - it called to mind a dusty gem left to languish in a drawer.

To Damen's surprise, the man lingered at the counter to write a phone number on a napkin. He slid it over to Damen. "Could you give that to your boss? Tell him he can call if he needs anything."

Little did this guy know, his number was about to be thrown in the trash. Even if Laurent had been the pleasant barista he was pretending to be, Torveld was at least 40.

"Sure thing," Damen said with an insincere smile.

But when Damen gave it to him, Laurent looked at it thoughtfully and pocketed it.

Damen tried not to dwell on it.

Much to his joy, one of Damen's hot regulars that came in the mornings was also there some afternoons to work at a sunny table at the corner of the room. History major, Damen guessed, based on the amount of reading and highlighting he did.

When Damen saw him for the first time during the day, he nearly whistled. Early morning light did not do the gold of his hair justice. Erasmus was characteristically looking down at the floor as he approached. Damen wondered, not for the first time, where he'd learned to be shy.

Damen lounged against the counter as he watched Erasmus study the pastry case. "Your usual?"

Erasmus jumped and looked up. "Damen!" A blush suffused his face as he smiled. Adorable. He ordered his usual and a salad, which Damen assured him would be coming right up.

“Thanks,” said Erasmus, smiling and cheeks pink, and walked to the end of the counter.pink

Damen stared after him, wistful. It was a shame he didn't have any free time these days. Otherwise, he would have respectfully courted and hit that. Jokaste had always encouraged him to seek other bed partners, and Erasmus fit well into the category of people Damen usually went for. Damen always made sure on the way in that he wasn't looking for anything serious, and he always made sure his partners enjoyed themselves.

Jokaste. He tried to think of her without bitterness. He had always known what she was: he was quite accustomed to people using him for his family's prestige. He'd thought erroneously that knowing it was a possibility would protect him. But he'd never imagined a fallout on the scale of what had actually happened. Betrayal.

When he drifted out of his reverie, he noticed Laurent was watching him. Damen raised an eyebrow. Their truce was fragile and unspoken, but surely a bit of spacing out on the job wasn't an insupportable offense. Damen was really hoping the détente would last; he was unused to a life with drama in it, and that was all that he had lived since his - since September.

Laurent let it pass, although Damen kept intercepting assessing looks over the remainder of the shift. After the third such look, he surreptitiously checked his reflection in the shiny side of the frothing pither to see if there was anything on his face. There wasn't. Weird.

"I've been wondering," Damen said one quiet afternoon, "why you haven't fired Aimeric."

Laurent looked surprised. "Aimeric?"

"Yes, Aimeric," Damen said, looking up from the counter he was cleaning to gesticulate. "Small, redheaded, gets in arguments with customers, makes Jord spill half of his drinks, that Aimeric. Why's he still around?"

"Well, aside from how understaffed we are, he happens to be the landlord's son."

"Huh," said Damen after a moment. He turned back to the counter. "Small world. He really stayed close to home for college."

"Actually, he's a senior in high school," Laurent said with amusement, and Damen knocked over the bottle of vanilla syrup. It was a pump, fortunately, and didn't spill everywhere.

"But - I'm fairly sure he's dating Jord. Is that even legal?" Oh god. He was going to break Jord's heart, and Jord, bless his sensitive soul, was going to be even more useless without Aimeric than he was with him hovering around.

"I started working at the family company much younger than that," Laurent said.

Once he started seeing Laurent regularly at work, it was like he was everywhere. He saw him from a distance across the quad, he saw him charming the student checking IDs at the grad law library - which explained how he had got in, that one time - he saw him in crowded cafés on campus, and even stereotypically had to share a table with him once or twice (ah, the evils of working on essays where books were on two hour course reserve). He even thought he saw Laurent boarding a train into the city with suit and briefcase one weekday morning. This last one was highly unlikely, in part because Damen was hungover from a night visiting a friend in the city, and also because Laurent shared an early discussion section with Lazarus on that day. Which Damen knew because he was a people person. He liked getting to know his coworkers.

Finals came and went and winter break began. Damen's schedule varied very little, between work and all of the reading he was doing in advance for the next semester's classes. With Kastor left as his only living family, Damen wasn't sure whether he had a home left to go to, and while school stopped, his rent and food did not.

Erasmus, who was by now Damen's favourite regular, still came for coffee just as often as ever. He had gradually gotten over his obvious and adorable crush and they were becoming not quite friends, but friendly acquaintances. Erasmus wasn't a student, it turned out, but an overworked paralegal at a law firm in the area.

Damen spent the break in a quiet coffeeshop, in getting to know some of his professors a bit better and in quiet, preemptive studying. It wasn't home, but it was peaceful.

Best of all, Damen succeeded in badgering Laurent until he was eventually allowed to put a bike rack in front of the cafe, just in time for the new term to start.

Damen had been right: it did improve business and, more importantly, Damen now didn't have to walk to work. Spring semester was looking up already.

In January, Laurent caught a guy skimming off the till and fired him on the spot. Damen was prepared to tiptoe around Laurent's temper and keep his head down for the next week, but rather than being upset, Laurent seemed relaxed. Cheerful. Smug, even. Well, there was a bit of a loosening around his eyes and his posture was a bit less rigid, which amounted to the same thing.

The thief was a total douche, and had not a few sexual harassment complaints, but Laurent had actually smiled to himself the other day, and Damen had to wonder, "Was that a setup? Did someone frame that guy?"

Jord looked up from where he was steaming milk for a London Fog. "Govart was one of Laurent's uncle's men." Damen studied him, but he seemed completely serious. That Laurent's uncle had 'men.'

What was this, a spy movie? Damen's life had become a spy movie, and it wasn't even the fun kind with action sequences. He recalled Laurent's pale face sculpted in fluorescent light, the cock of a gun in the perfect silence of night, and retracted that thought. "That wasn't an answer."

He received a shrug in reply. "There’s been money missing from the till before, it's just no one's been able to catch him at it. All's well that ends well, hey?"

But it did not end completely well for Damen. The next day, Orlant beckoned him into the back and thrust a clipboard and pile of papers into his hands. Upon examination, Damen saw they were inventory and order forms. He asked Orlant what they were anyways.

"Govart's responsibilities. Laurent wanted me to thank you again for volunteering to fill in as assistant manager." Orlant saw something in his face and misinterpreted it. "Oh, don't worry, he said how much you like working bar, so you'll still be scheduled for plenty of that, as well."

Damen opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say. Too many responses came to mind.

Jord called Orlant back out to the front. Orlant clasped his shoulder on the way by. "I had my doubts about you at first, but you're good people, Damen."

And then Damen was alone in the back room with his mountain of paperwork.

As he sorted through stack after stack of incompetently handled forms, Damen let his mind run in circles as he took on the futile attempt of wondering what was in Laurent's head.

Did he mistake the bike rack thing as Damen taking initiative? Was he used to people doing things for him because he was mindblowingly attractive? Had he figured out that Damen was Type A enough to be incapable of half-assing anything? Or was this just some kind of punishment?

It could be all of these things, or none of these things. Either way, he would see Laurent tomorrow, fix this misunderstanding and hope he didn't get fired. In the meantime, he would sort out affairs for whoever was actually going to fill the position.

"Hello, Damen," Laurent said the next day, coolly, like he hadn't dumped a lot of extra work on Damen out of the blue.

Damen opened his mouth to say this, but what came out instead was a frustrated, "You're being overcharged for pastries. You need to change your supplier. People statistically order more medium sizes to go, so the disposable cup order should be adjusted to reflect that. This store is technically a subsidiary of Starbucks, so Teavana should be giving you a discount, as well. It's the same company, after all." It sounded like he was angry at the inefficiency, when really he was just angry at Laurent. It had been very obvious looking at the books that Govart was sent there by his uncle, but Laurent had done nothing about it, for some reason.

Laurent gave him an odd look. Clearly he had not made the Type A character assessment.

"Govart was very bad at his job." And deliberately so. If Damen had had any doubt as to Govart's alliegances, the negligence and disarray he'd encountered in his paper trail / paperwork he'd left behind put them to rest.

"How good of you to report this in person." The look had left Laurent's face, and he now just seemed bored and a bit impatient. "You do realize you have the authority to do something about it."

"Maybe I don't want that authority! You didn't even ask me if I wanted to be Assistant Manager."

"You're complaining about being promoted."

"Yes!" Damen thought that was obvious.

"You're complaining about a pay raise, the opportunity to have control over your work hours, increased responsibility on your resume, power over your most and least liked team members, reduced interaction with difficult customers, and--aren’t you in graduate school? Did I mention the raise?”

Damen spluttered.

Laurent looked over his shoulder. "Someone's at the register."

When Damen still looked incredulous, Laurent patted him on the chest and said, "Don't worry about the pastry supplier, I have something in mind. Meet me here on Sunday at nine. Don't be late." He looked over at the register pointedly and turned on the espresso machine.

Laurent was impossible. Damen should have known he couldn't be reasoned with.

Erasmus was patiently waiting in front of the counter. At one point, Damen had found his resemblance to Laurent striking, but he was unaffected where Laurent was calculating, cheerful where Laurent was reticent. A conversation with Erasmus was the easiest thing in the world, whereas talking to Laurent was like navigating a minefield. Damen didn't know how anyone could find them similar. "I hear you were promoted," he said good-naturedly. "Congratulations! It must be great to have a boss that likes you so much."

Damen contained his response to raised eyebrows and valiantly said nothing. Erasmus had never said so directly, but Damen gathered the guys he was always fetching coffee for were real dicks. As a paralegal, he should be well past his days as a gopher. Laurent was a good boss, comparatively. He was fair, he didn't yell at his employees and he didn't - well, Laurent couldn't send his employees on coffee trips, actually.

Damen had seen Erasmus mumbling into the phone, looking upset all too often. "Why don't you just quit?" Damen asked. "I'm sure there are other firms in the area. You could always commute to the city."

Erasmus shook his head. "Unfortunately in law, it's more about your connections than your qualifications. It's competitive enough that I won't get a second interview without a referral. I just have to do my time at Varenne and Belloy, that's all." It was a shame someone so intelligent and hardworking was also such a pushover.

Erasmus took his leave and Damen vengefully shined the counter in front of him, picturing Laurent's face on the polished surface. As of yesterday, Erasmus wasn't the only one that was overworked. Although, if Laurent wasn't exaggerating his influence on his schedule, perhaps this could turn out in his favor....

"I'm fairly sure that was already clean," said a voice from behind him.

Damen jumped. How long had Laurent been hovering there?

Damen gestured around at the near empty room. There was always a lull just after lunch.

"Surely there are more important things you could be doing." When Damen remained motionless, he raised an (infuriating) eyebrow and continued blandly, "There was quite the list, I recall. You enumerated it yourself not ten minutes ago."

"Right," Damen said through gritted teeth, and went.

The nerve of him! Laurent had probably never asked for a thing in his life, instead rearranging things to his own liking.

Damen fumed down at the order forms. Well, if that was how Laurent was going to act, Damen could do the same. He would change things to suit himself, starting with the menu. He would cancel the café's order of English Breakfast and replace it with Irish Breakfast, aka something actually potable. Coffee was great, but Damen got heartily sick of it after a while, and neither of the café's two black teas were to his liking. While he was at it, maybe he could switch the Earl Grey with Cream of Earl Grey....

Lost in thought, he turned on the coffee shop computer to log these changes and saw something terrible on the desktop. Surely they weren't using that accounting software? Good god, the inefficiency!

Damen forgot his petty grievances and for the remainder of his shift organized all Govart had left in disarray and disrepair.

That Sunday, Damen arrived as summoned outside Has and Has Beans. It was odd that Laurent wanted him along, but he was hard-pressed to predict Laurent's thoughts on his most transparent days. He would be told why eventually.

Laurent met him at the sidewalk and began to stroll West, away from campus and toward tree-lined, shade dappled neighborhoods. The day was fair, and he looked in fine fettle, which made Damen realize he hadn't seen Laurent looking well-rested since the beginning of term. Being a full time student and business owner at once was probably more than most people would be able to handle. But most people weren't Laurent.

Their destination, it happened, was the local farmer's market. They headed straight for a pastry stall at the end of a row. It was populated with tall, muscular women that had a foreign air about them. The one in the front had a black braid that went down to her waist and looked vaguely familiar. She smiled at him.

Laurent glanced at Damen, and then started speaking to one of the women sitting in the back on a big wooden chair in Vaskian. The other woman didn't acknowledge Damen at all and Damen tried to look purposeful while also peering around curiously. The table at the front of the tent was heaped with soft pastries of an array of shapes and sizes. It all smelled heavenly. Damen's effort not to stare at them longingly was sabotaged by his stomach growling loudly, and the girl in the braid offered him a petit butter croissant. He accepted it gratefully, watching Laurent from the corner of his eye.

As if this were some sort of cue, the Vaskian woman gestured at Damen, not bothering to switch to English. Laurent nodded and opened a flap in the back of the tent. "Make yourself useful, would you?" he said over his shoulder as they exited.

"What," said Damen to the tent.

Black Ponytail snapped her finger. "That's who you are! You're in the business program, right?"

It turned out Black Ponytail was Kashel, an alumni from the program. She sympathized with his grad school woes and gave him some pointers about which professors made good advisors and which vanished as soon as a chapter appeared in inbox, cheerfully adding to the cast array of contradictory opinions he had been given so far.

For a mysterious and sketchy errand of Laurent's, it was pretty productive.

The stall hadn't looked very busy when they'd approached it, but it was soon bustling with teenagers begging samples, mothers with strollers, and many young women of the 18-25 demographic. Damen was heretofore unaware pastries had such specific appeal. Laurent didn't reappear for the next few hours, but Damen wasn't bothered by it once he discovered he was allowed to eat as many pastries as he wanted and could keep a share of the tips. His favorite restaurant, Haurient Habilis, was on the way back home, where he could treat himself to something other than bread.

When Laurent finally collected him, it was with the smug air of one who had brokered a beneficial deal and made someone else work for it. Damen gathered that their pastry supplier problem had been solved with the promise of a pittance and the weekly labor of Damen at the stall.

"That was all? Really? Me, working in the stall for three hours a week?" Those pastries were much better quality than their usual fare, and were certainly not cheap.

"That, and a few things from Tiffany's." Bribes. How straightforward of him. Well, that explained the bag.

"You're paying me for this, I hope you realize."

"Of course, I would never dream of doing otherwise. Although, from what I saw, you ate more than your wages in pastry."

They parted ways at the corner of Walnut and 3rd, and Damen spent the remainder of the lunch hour doing his homework at Haurient Habilis. That was January.

February sucked. The flu was going around, and everyone looked tired and overworked. Damen's global economics professor put him in charge of an undergraduate symposium, two speakers backed out at the last moment, and his business communications professor heard tell of Damen's book editing prowess and solicited his services. Editing a book for a professor whose class you were in, as it happened, was very different from doing it for an old friend of the family who happened to be a professor. On top of that, the professor he was grading for started assigning his undergraduates weekly reflections, and Damen was expected to finish them all within the five hours his department paid him for every week.

It was a small comfort that others were suffering in misery along with him. Orlant was put on academic probation for plagiarism - he'd apparently stolen Aimeric's paper in their History of Renaissance Art class; Damen didn't get the logic of taking a fellow student's paper without being caught for it -, Laurent grimly checked his phone a lot and disappeared in the middle of shifts. Even Torveld was hard pressed to smile at Laurent when he came in for his double espresso. He had apparently lost his assistant, or something. Damen realized that after months of seeing him come in, he had no idea what he did for a living, only that he had to be impeccably dressed for it.

"Mireille left to start a family a few weeks ago, and this time of year is so busy there was no time to find and interview a replacement."

Laurent hmmmed and gave a sympathetic nod the likes of which had probably never been directed at a non-patron. Torveld, of course, took this as his due. O, to be blessed with only knowing Laurent in passing acquaintance.

"So many resumes look identical. You can never tell who is truly dedicated until a few weeks in. I just want someone who really wants to be working here, you know?" He was mostly talking to himself, at that point.

Damen was halfway through making the espresso before he looked at the receipt and saw that Torveld had changed up his order, for once, to a...hot chocolate. Huh. Damen would not have pegged him as the type.

Several minutes later, he was interrupted from his absentminded humming and polishing of the espresso machine by the clearing of a throat. To his surprise, it was Torveld, who had never spoken a word to Damen. He was holding up the hot chocolate, extra whip.

"Excuse me, I think there is some mistake. I certainly didn't order this."

Damen raised his eyebrows. "That's not what it said on the receipt."

Suddenly there was a warmth at his back, and Laurent's voice came over his shoulder, "Oh, Damen, how careless of you." Goosebumps rose on Damen's neck. He could feel Laurent's hair tickling his neck. Damen hadn't realized how cramped the end of the bar was until this moment.

"My apologies, Torveld, it seems Damen mixed your drink up with that paralegal over there." He pointed in Erasmus' direction. The poor guy was sitting with a stack of briefs, highlighter in hand. "How careless of him. Poor Erasmus needs the caffeine though, he is terribly mistreated and overworked at his firm."

"Oh?" said Torveld, looking interested.

"Damen can of course remake your drink immediately."

"No, perhaps I will go over and see if that young man has drunk any yet. It would be much simpler to simply exchange, after all." And he walked over to the other side of the room without a backward glance.

Laurent looked unbearably smug. He also had not moved away from Damen. Across the room, Erasmus blearily looked up through his eyelashes at Torveld, his cornflower eyes vivid over his blue button down shirt. Torveld's mood had visibly lightened. Damen felt vaguely uncomfortable and uncertain about what kind of transaction he was witnessing.

"You know," said Damen. "Most people would just politely say they weren't interested."

"Where's the fun in that?" Laurent shifted and their arms brushed together. "Besides, that would lose me a customer. And a useful resource."

Damen wasn't sure what that narrowing of Laurent's eyes meant, but he hoped to stay out of it. In any case, the short term effects of Laurent's meddling were positive: the next time Erasmus came by on Damen's shift, it was bearing effusive thanks and almost embarrassing gratitude.

"I know you had a hand in it, Damen! Thank you so much, I never thought I was going to be able to leave this last job." He had a happy glow about him Damen hadn't seen in months. Damen couldn't help feeling a bit more cheerful himself from sheer proximity.

"It wasn't me, really," Damen demurred. If he had a dollar for every thing falsely attributed to his good will since he started working at Has and Has Beans, he would...well, he probably wouldn't have enough to buy more than a week's groceries, actually. But between the bike rack, the accidentally saving Laurent's life, the selfish changes to the menu that were doing bafflingly well, it felt like a lot. So much of his life felt like it was out of his control these days, and he was sure it was all somehow Laurent's fault.

"I know you put in a word with Laurent. I told you, you have a nice boss. He's willing to go out of his way even for his coworkers' friends."

Oddly enough, Laurent actually had been kind of nice lately. Even as he seemed to disappear at random -- probably to hang out with that clerk in the law library, Damen thought darkly -- and schedule himself for shifts erratically, he walked to and from the farmer's market with Damen every Sunday. He hadn't randomly promoted, shunned or inconveniently rescheduled Damen for the entire semester so far. He had even taken to accompanying Damen to Haurient Habilis for studying that more often turned into intellectual debate. Weirdest of all was that Damen did not begrudge the company.

"I just don't get it," Damen said to Kashel one Sunday, gesturing with one of the hard ciders the Vaskians had started pressing on him as he worked. It was another mystery: there was no label, and why did they want him to work while buzzed? "Why does he find me, of all people, trustworthy enough to let his guard down around?” Damen had seen Laurent around plenty of other people, but there was always an underlying reserve that had relaxed around Damen in the last few months. Maybe it was just difficult to maintain any sort of formality around someone when your relationship started with open dislike.

Kashel raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Why do you trust him enough to do the same?”

“What?” said Damen.

“You're not exactly forthcoming yourself, you know. I’ve known you for months and I haven’t seen you be anything less than perfectly courteous with anyone aside from Laurent, and I know nothing about you that happened before last semester.”

That answered exactly none of his questions. And Damen still couldn’t explain to himself why he was rearranging his schedule so Laurent didn't have to work nights and mornings and could stop wandering around with dark circles under his eyes, looking like a stupid, sexy raccoon. He didn't even have the courtesy to look ugly when he was exhausted.

At some point when Damen wasn't paying attention, Laurent had become a close friend. Respecting him, esteeming him, finding him attractive, none of these things were hard to do, but actually liking him had come as a surprise.

Damen only had himself to blame for this. Thanks to a lifetime of dogging his stepbrother's footsteps, Damen would never outgrow seeking others' approval. Laurent had never expected anything from him, which felt like a dare Damen couldn't leave unanswered. He would be liked if it killed him.

Somewhere along his passive aggressive campaign of niceness, he'd tricked himself into finding Laurent worthy of his efforts. Or maybe it was that the most attractive feature anyone could have was carelessness of your regard.

At least Damen could comfort himself with the knowledge that the change of heart was mutual. Laurent would never be something as pedestrian as affectionate, but he had stolen Damen's latte out of his hands one morning and taken a sip. Damen opened his mouth to comment, but then Jord violently choked on air and Laurent had disappeared into the back by the time he looked up again.

It happened on a weekday much like any other. Damen could feel the cold at his wrists between his pocket and the sleeves of his coat. Everything was washed in the red glow cast by his umbrella. With his headphones in, he almost completely shut out the world, the sharp taste and smell of clean air the only senses left unmuted. It was a day to feel peaceful, and a day to get absolutely nothing done.

The late afternoon stretched before him. He was going to head home and stick his books under his brightest fluorescent lights, wring out work for an hour, sit back and glance out the window a few too many times, and then give up and retire to his laptop by the fire. Living alone was amazing.

He was coming up on an intersection, and the crosswalk light was counting down, but he couldn't bring himself to rush across. It was difficult not to meander on a day like this

He stopped on the corner and waited for the light to turn again. He idly gazed in the direction of the subway exit, a large concrete block which was disgorging black, blue and striped umbrellas with people under them.

For the most part, that is. A flash of rich gold caught his eye, and he saw that some poor bastard didn't check the weather forecast or, apparently, see any part of the sky that morning. Said bastard turned his head for a moment and it was none other than Laurent, hair color darkened in the rain.

The light turned green and Damen wandered over. He leaned in and waited for Laurent to investigate why it was no longer raining on him.

"My prince." Laurent said it dryly, but there was a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Damen felt more like a knight, fighting for the favor of his liege. Ridiculous.

Laurent took the umbrella and held it over the both of them, even though he was shorter by a head. It meant that Damen had to shuffle closer to stay dry. Damen found himself helplessly fond of this casual imperiousness. "I hope you're not getting any ideas," he managed.

"Oh? And what kind of ideas would those be?" Laurent looked up at Damen through his eyelashes.

"I'm headed home, and so is my umbrella. You are free to join us, but any major detours or umbrella theft will not be tolerated."

Laurent hummed to himself and then, to Damen's surprise, capitulated. "I'm expecting a call later, so I may have to leave suddenly." He looked out at the sky doubtfully.

"Umbrella theft will be tolerated once I'm home and dry," Damen reassured him. "I've got an extra." He thought of something that had been at the back of his mind. "What were you doing in the city without an umbrella anyhow? You must have left really early to not know it was going to rain]"

"Business," was all Laurent would say, with an enigmatic smile.

By the time they reached his place, Damen had a wet shoulder and couldn’t feel his nose. He started a fire, and bade Laurent to sit down as he headed to the kitchen to make hot chocolate.

He decided to skip to the latter part of his plans for the day -- with Laurent here he wouldn't have got any work done anyways.

When Damen peeked back into the front room, Laurent had bypassed the couch to sink down onto the fur rug, huddled in front of the fire. He was still shivering a bit, and Damen slung a blanket from the couch in his direction. When Damen came back with two mugs, Laurent had located the folded up chess set sitting on the side table under a stack of books.

"You play?" he asked, already unfolding it and setting up the pieces.

They sat across from one another, Laurent huddled in a striped blanket, both sipping hot chocolate. Laurent seemed to have a lot on his mind. He was winning, but absent-mindedly so. Damen was content to let the silence be until Laurent broke it.

Neither of them had bothered to turn the light on, painting the room in the fire's soft light and deep shadows.

Laurent studied the board while Damen studied Laurent. His hair was drying into a frizz and curling a bit at the ends. Damen had never seen him look this unkempt before, even when he was held at gunpoint at 3AM. It made him look vulnerable.

He found his gaze being drawn every downward to Laurent's lips like the tip of a weighted lance.

One side of Laurent's collar was rumpled: Damen reached over and watched his thumb brush along Laurent's neck as he traced stiffness into the fold.

As their skin touched (or something), Laurent was looking up at him with dark eyes. Damen removed his hand and tucked his long bangs behind an ear, letting his nervous energy go somewhere, and waited. Being presumptuous with Laurent never ended well.

Laurent reached up and cupped Damen's face with his hand. His eyes softened as he leaned up and kissed him. One kiss quickly turned into two, into three, and Damen found himself leaning back into the foot of the couch, pulling Laurent as close as possible as Laurent's hands traveled from his face, down his arms.

Laurent yielded completely to the press of slow kisses.

Damen's hand found the curve of Laurent's waist and he traced nonsense patterns into his back, up his neck, stroked behind an ear - he got a shudder and a soft moan for his efforts.

Laurent's hands finally made their way to Damen's chest, exploring the curves of his muscles. Laurent broke the kiss, leaning back to look at Damen incredulously yet with evident desire.

"What?" said Damen, shrugging. "I work out."

"There is a difference," Laurent said, tracing his biceps, "between seeing and feeling."

"Yeah, well," Damen smirked and couldn't resist the urge to flex a little. Laurent rolled his eyes and tried to look unimpressed. Damen pulled him in for a heady kiss, feeling giddy. Everything about this afternoon felt too good to be true.

Laurent pulled back eventually with an apologetic stroke to his chest. "I really do have to go."

"See you tomorrow," he said at the door. "Lunch at that Turkish place?" It was a ways from campus, but certainly worth the trek. They could get custard afterwards at the place down the street. Damen had never realized how much he liked sappy, coupley things until this moment.

In retrospect, Damen almost wished Laurent hadn't said yes.

It all started out well enough. Laurent turned out to be a custard-first kind of person, so Damen got his intimate stroll down the boulevard. The weather was obligingly sunny, if crisp, and Laurent looked completely relaxed, an occurrence Damen could count witnessing on one hand.

As he pushed open the door of the Turkish place, he heard a familiar, coquettish laugh and scanned the room. How awkward, to run into Aimeric and Jord on a date while Damen and Laurent were trying to do the same. Damen could picture them all five minutes from now, laughing about it. Sure enough, he saw a red mop of curls in the corner. Aimeric. But not with Jord. With an older man. With....

"Oh," said Laurent, a Laurent Damen hadn't heard in a long time.

Sure enough, Damen turned and saw a supercilious mask. A chilling smile was forming on his mouth, and Damen grabbed his arm and tried to push him bodily out the door.

"No," said Damen. "No. You're about to do something rash, something you'll regret later. Causing a scene will do no one any favors. Let's go."

He jerked at his arm. "Your uncle will try to get you arrested. Do you really want to bring the police into this?"

Laurent went. They walked home in silence.

Damen allowed himself to brood until he realized he needed to rearrange the schedule to exclude Aimeric. He was also going to have to be the one to fire him. The afternoon just kept getting better and better.

Jord was pale and distractable the next day, so news must have spread. Damen gave him intermittent claps on the shoulder, but didn't know what to do beyond that. Aimeric had been sabotaging them all along. That betrayal alone was enough to bear, but he had also looked to be on very friendly terms with Laurent's uncle. Eurgh. Damen couldn't even imagine what Jord was going through at the moment.

Laurent didn't turn up at work that day. It wasn't exactly unusual, but he usually dropped in unscheduled on Wednesdays, and Damen was hoping that, especially after what had happened on Monday...Damen sighed angrily to himself.

Jord said he was going to call Orlant and came back 20 minutes later, looking upset. Damen suspected it had probably been Orlant comforting Jord, not the other way around. What a mess.

How could a week go from being so great to being so terrible? Apparently the fates had been bottling up all of his bad luck for the end of the semester, because three days later -- two weeks and two days before finals -- Jord shoved a phone in his face.

It was a touchscreen, and Damen looked wistfully at the data phone the likes of which he no longer had. On the screen was an artfully shot (staged) "candid" of him chatting with a Peet's employee. He recognized his haircut from three years ago - it had been quite the hassle to straighten those bangs in the morning.

Damen knew where this was going.

Sure enough, Jord spelled it out for him a moment later. "Peets?!"

Damen could feel the beginning of a tension headache forming. Ah, the curse of a migraine-prone family.

"This is why you care so much about our tea selection," Jord hissed.

Damen tried to remember whether he still had Excedrin Migraine at home or whether he'd have to pick some up on the way back.

Jord had progressed to waving his phone around. "This whole time, you've been a snake in our midst. We trusted you."

"To be fair," Damen said, "you never asked. I would have told you."

Jord scoffed.

Damen changed tack. "Look, grad school is soul crushing. If I had some sort of agenda, don't you think I'd carry it out in a way that didn't interfere with my schooling?"

Jord was unimpressed with this line of reasoning. "You're the heir of a corporate empire. Do you seriously think they'd drop you for getting a few Bs?"

"What are you going to do, fire me?"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do."

"With what authority?"

"When he hears about this, Laurent will fire you."

Damen leaned in and said in a low voice, "You're seriously going to oust your assistant manager right at the end of the semester? Our busiest time of year? Where are you going to find anyone to replace me? You're going to put that kind of stress on Laurent right before finals?"

Jord stood there, spluttering. Damen would feel bad for him, but he was incredibly hurt. He and Jord had spent dozens of hours together, had exchanged countless jokes and grimaces. He thought they'd been friends.

"Yeah," said Damen, "that's what I thought," and turned away. He would have liked to have stormed out, but there was someone behind the counter, so he helped them out instead. The high road was exhausting.

Two days later, Damen had to admit to himself that Laurent was officially missing. Laurent hadn't appeared anywhere in a week. He wasn't responding to texts. He wasn't at the market on Sunday. Damen wasn't so self-centered as to think the disappearing act had anything to do with the change in their relationship: according to one of the undergrad Vaskians, Laurent hadn't been in class, either.

Was he crazy? Damen didn't know anyone who worked harder than Laurent, there's no reason he'd be blowing off school like this.

With no small amount of hysteria, he thought back to the armed "robbery," aka the hitman Damen had never really got an explanation for from the winter. Had someone kidnapped him?! But that seemed overly dramatic. A kidnapping, right before finals? An assassin wouldn't have waited just to ruin his semester's grades, of all things.

Damen was at least comforted that he wasn't the only person Laurent had kept in the dark.

"What do you mean, disappeared?" said Jord skeptically. The only conversational gambits Jord responded to nowadays were the ones that had the name 'Laurent' in them, and they featured copious glaring. Jord's skepticism was expressed via glare. "I just saw him two days ago leaving the Law library."

Damen thought of the library aide sourly.

"But yesterday was Sunday and he didn't show up at the farmerls market."

Jord glared his bafflement. "The farmer's market? He always goes to the farmer’s market?”

Damen didn't know whether to feel pleased that he knew Laurent better than Jord or hurt that Laurent was keeping him like a secret, but mostly he was just annoyed at Jord being supremely unhelpful. Damen growled at him and disappeared into the back.

Surprisingly, it was Torveld, in for his habitual afternoon coffee, who turned out to be the most helpful.

"Hello,” he hailed Damen cheerfully. Damen tried and failed not to take his pep as a personal affront. “How's Laurent doing?"

Damen had no idea. Laurent was missing. Missing people did not call to check in.

He frowned down at the cash register and stabbed the "open/cash" button with a bit more furor than it required. Torveld kept yammering on, as if he hadn't ruined Damen's shift already by bringing up the thing Damen had been doing his best not to think about.

"His closing statements have been going very well, I just hope he's not getting behind in his school work."

"Uh," said Damen. "Excuse me? His statements? As in, his statements in court?"

"I was against him representing himself, of course, but he's done a great job of it." Torveld chuckled to himself. "The boy's a natural!"

A lot of things started to make terrible sense. All of those absences; Laurent’s frequently harried, tired look; his appearances in the law library.

Laurent was being sued by his uncle.

Damen had thought Laurent trusted him enough by now that he would at least tell him about stuff like this.

Once Damen's initial selfish and hurt thoughts passed, worry settled in. Laurent was being preyed upon by his uncle and didn't have legal representation, probably because all of the money he did have was going toward his living expenses and education. And he was maybe missing finals week.

Torveld walked off whistling, unaware of the bomb he'd just dropped.

But Damen, it turned out, had bigger things to worry about. He'd been taking care of the business while Laurent had been tied up in court and as he was flipping through the mail he found something that had been misdirected. Judging by the various inked stamps on the front, it was three weeks late: an impressive feat for something originating from the same zip code.

He frowned down at it. It was from the landlord. Who had “accidentally” gotten the address of one of his own properties wrong.

A feeling of foreboding slowly unfurled in Damen's stomach. He opened the letter.

The rent had been doubled. The rent had been doubled and it was due in two days.

Whether this was because Damen had fired his son, Aimeric, or a blow somehow orchestrated by Laurent’s uncle to crush Laurent once and for all didn’t matter. Laurent was absent and being sued. All Damen had was a trust fund he couldn't touch, a couple hundred dollars, and a coworker that hated his guts.

Damen spent the rest of his shift in a haze, and spent an unproductive evening attempting to finish a paper. Eventually he gave in and stared at the wall. It remained blank and unforgiving.

Damen didn't have anyone to turn to. Anyone at Peet's was beyond thought (Kastor would probably try to get his rent upped even more if he caught wind of what Damen had been up to). They would lose the coffee shop. They were going to be evicted, and it was all on his head. Oh god. Could he call Torveld? No; even if he said yes, checks that big took a few days to clear. He could ask Torveld to pass a note to Laurent in court? Laurent had been in court this whole time. Because he was being sued.

Damen smothered his face in his hands and let out a huff of hysterical laughter. He was too sober for today.

He drowned the rest of the evening in baking shows and beer.

He had a vague and threatening voicemail from his brother in the morning. A few months ago, this may have bothered him, but honestly? Peet's wasn't the center of his life anymore, and neither was his brother. So rather than obsessing over it or calling back to retaliate, Damen pressed seven to delete, grumbled and rolled over and went back to sleep. He had more pressing matters than his stepbrother's inexplicable desire to ruin his life.

When Damen got into work the next day (because sadly, the world turned on whether Damen wanted it to or not), there was someone idling in front of the store, frowning down at a business card. It reminded Damen of the first time he'd walked into Has and Has Beans almost eight months ago. A lot had happened since then.

Damen loudly racked his bike and stepped onto the sidewalk. The outline of the guy looked kind of familiar, although he looked like any other businessman in the morning coffee rush. Then the man looked up from the card.

"Nikandros?"

Nikandros looked just as surprised as Damen was feeling. He did an actual double take. "Damen? Have you been hiding here the whole time?"

"Hiding? What are you talking about? I go to grad school here; I'm getting my MBA."

Nikandros' grin faded into a frown. "Kastor told us you stepped down and decided to go on a trip around the world."

"Uh, no, he kicked me out of the company and then got a restraining order. I'm not allowed to set foot in the building."

Nikandros looked perturbed by this, but not nearly as upset as Damen would have liked him to be. It's not like he and Nikandros could go in guns blazing and take back the company by force or anything, but he would have been gratified by a few threats of physical assault to Kastor. "I am very sorry to hear that. It looks like you've been keeping yourself busy, at least. Is this place yours?"

"Sort of," said Damen. "But not for long." If he couldn't keep the weary misery out of his voice, at least it would hopefully make Nikandros feel terrible for not looking for him.

"Oh?"

"The rent was just doubled - I think the landlord was bought off by a competitor - and the actual owner has been...busy, of late."

"Ah yes, Laurent. He said if I came here, I would find his business partner in need of assistance?" He pulled out his checkbook. The little glow Damen had felt at 'business partner' kindled itself into fierce relief at the sight of it. Could it be? Was he about to go back to only worrying about finals like any other miserable student? "A loan, I can do."

Damen got home after his last final, ready to throw himself in front of the fire and drown his sorrows in something chocolate, alcoholic or both. He came in to find his house warm, the fire crackling blah. Laurent. Damen didn't ask how he had got in.

Laurent handed Damen a stapled stack of papers in lieu of saying anything. It was a court opinion.

Damen blinked down at it. He skimmed the first and last page. Laurent had won. Laurent, an undergraduate with a full course load and a coffee shop to run, had represented himself in a court and won. And - his eye caught on a name and he reread the page more carefully - the lawsuit had implications for Peet’s as well, for some reason. Laurent had represented Damen as well. And won.

Damen looked up at Laurent, who said, “You can inherit Peet's now.”

Kastor had been officially deposed. The restraining order he had against Damen was dissolved. Damen could talk to all of the people from his old life again. He would be able to buy a car and eat Turkish food every weekend, if he wanted to.

Damen glanced up at Laurent, who looked impassive. Damen wasn't fooled: he'd studied enough of Laurent's expressions to see the shade of insecurity in his face.

"And you have Starbucks now, right?" Damen said. "What are you going to do with the coffee shop?"

"I'm going to keep it, of course," said Laurent, shuttering his expression.

"Are you going to fire me?"

"Of course not."

"Well then, I'm staying," said Damen, because if he knew anything, it was that they made beautiful coffee together.

He felt mawkish and reckless and like a path had opened up at his feet that stretched out into eternity. The court opinion dropped on the counter, unheeded, as he took one of Laurent's hands and kissed the knuckles.

Damen smiled and looked up at Laurent through his eyelashes, and they went off and had sex somewhere.

Damen named Nikandros the interim president of Peet's while Damen finished his MBA; Laurent decided to graduate a semester early and apply to Law school. The Regent was finally convicted for his rumored pedophilia, and Damen sent Kastor away on an indefinite trip around the world.

Laurent and Damen still took shifts at their independent coffee shop together (it was officially subsidiary of both companies, a tax nightmare they mostly handed over to Jord to deal with) even as they ran their separate corporations.

They argued often and were blissfully happy, forever and ever and ever.