Chapter Text
The Crimson Cup wasn’t the only coffee shop adjacent to campus, nor was it the most popular. Nor did it have the best brew. And it certainly didn’t have the friendliest baristas. The Crimson Cup did have two things going for it, though: a school endorsement (its namesake was the Crimson Bolts™, the university’s mascot), and an alliance with the local Jimmy John’s. Around the corner and half a block down the sidewalk, a representative of the equally mediocre sandwich joint would come immediately after the lunch hour, like clockwork, every Tuesday and Thursday. Under the cover of broad daylight, the transaction took place—two sandwiches for the on-duty baristas in return for three medium drinks and two pastries.
Only that particular day, the last afternoon before the official start of the Fall semester, it was 1:45 pm, and there were no sandwiches to behold.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I’m going to go ahead and whittle down a straw against the side of the counter and make a small abdominal incision so if my stomach wants to cannibalize the rest of my goddamn body I can at least expedite the process a little.”
Karkat Vantas. Fourth year nursing major. Student manager and veteran barista of three years at the Crimson Cup.
“Sure man, that definitely sounds like your prerogative as a rising star in the professional medical field.”
Dave Strider. Second year archaeology major. Second year barista at the Crimson Cup.
Dave Strider, who was also squatting directly in front of the ‘Drink of the Week’ board propped against the counter, and was adding his SoundCloud username in teeny tiny letters at the very bottom. They were too small to even be legible with the thick and clumsy chalk, but it drove Karkat crazy, which was really the entire point of the exercise. He paused and leaned back on his haunches to admire his handiwork, and added a little cloud at the end for the sake of clarity.
“Oh, and before I forget, take down a memo for me, would you? And listen closely, I don’t want my final words to be misconstrued before they find me awash in a puddle of my own gastric acid.”
“M’all ears, boss.” Dave didn’t look up, taking a picture of the board on his phone.
“Tell them to stop skimping out on the goddamn roast beef. I’m asking for thinly sliced cuts from a seasoned cow, not global stocks in Ghanese gold production.”
“Roast beef, global stocks, the precious metal economy of Africa. Got it.” He popped back up to a standing position, balancing the chalk back on the top of the board and wiping his fingers absently against his apron, leaving faint white streaks over the red fabric. “You’ll be hailed as a martyr in the deli meats community, I can already see the back page Times article about this fifteen years down the line. A true grassroots hero in the front lines against the Big Lunch sandwich conglomerate.”
“Do you listen to yourself when you speak? Like, really listen?”
Before Dave could answer, there was a jingle at the door.
“Fucking finally,” Karkat muttered under his breath at the sight of the black polo with the emblazoned double J logo, but neither of them recognized the person wearing it. Whoever it was had thick glasses frames and the slightest hint of a front tooth gap when he smiled and waved over, both sandwiches balanced precariously in one hand. He approached the counter, and upon further inspection, Dave noted his nametag identified him as ‘John’.
“Heya! Sorry the sandwiches are so late, haha.” John was tall and broad shouldered, with the bare remnants of baby fat stubbornly clinging to his face and torso. The gap between his top two teeth was just noticeable enough to be distracting when he talked.
The expression Karkat had was a terrifying hybrid of his normal face and a customer service one, jaw visibly strained with something too toothy to be a placating smile, and his eyes did absolutely nothing to soften it. “You were supposed to be here half an hour ago.”
“I’m the new guy,” John offered, as if that was all the necessary explanation in the world. He seemed completely oblivious to the fact whatever ungodly arrangement of features that Karkat was hosting on his face was supposed to be anything less than welcoming. “I’ve heard a lot of things about this place though! Er, I mean, kind of. I mean, coffee tastes like ass, but I really admire that you stuck to your guns with the dorky name thing.” He peered at the ‘Drink of the Week’ board that Dave had just finished adding his artistic flourish to.
Usually Dave would have gleefully goaded the situation on until he got another row in ‘Karkat Tantrum Bingo’ (which Rose, in typical one-upmanship fashion, turned into an actual fridge magnet for the back room just before Summer break), but he had a more pressing question on hand.
“Hold on. Your name is John, and you work at Jimmy John’s?”
John looked at him. John looked at his own nametag. John looked back up at him. And then John’s face split into a massive grin. “Do you want to know what it’s short for?”
“Hit me.”
“Jimmy John.”
“No the fuck it is not.”
“Yes the fuck it is! I’m sorry—“ John’s eyes visibly flicked down to read Dave’s own tag—“I’m sorry Dave, but the world is just strange and wonderful beyond our comprehension. Yes. It’s me. I’m the Jimmy John.”
“Dave. Dave. He’s clearly just fucking with you, please build a dam over this bubbling brook of asinine bullshit before it starts and get over it.”
Dave made a note on his phone to remind himself to check off the hangry square in Karkat Tantrum Bingo. “Are you saying you’re the heir to the throne of Jimmy John’s?”
“Dave, that is exactly what I’m saying.”
“Oh my God, will you two shut up?” Karkat snatched a sandwich off the counter, unrolling the paper wrap just enough to make sure he grabbed his own order. “What drinks do you even want?”
John rolled up onto the balls of his toes then back on his heels, like he couldn’t quite stay settled, which was at odds with his height—Dave mentally put him at about six two, since he looked about half a foot taller than his own five eight. “Well… Eridan wanted a caramel makchyato—“
“Macchiato.”
“That’s what I said! And Feferi wanted a hot chocolate and a lemon bar.” John paused thoughtfully. “We get three drinks, right?”
Karkat just nodded, already busy carefully dividing his eight-inch sub in half for optimal ease of consumption.
“I want a Razzle Dazzle Frappuccino.”
Half of sandwich was halfway to Karkat’s mouth where it froze, mid-air. “A what?”
“A Razzle Dazzle Frappuccino.”
Karkat all but dropped the sandwich back on the counter with visible disgust. Dave swallowed back a snicker. “Sir.” There was a special kind of emphasis, and an even more special pause after the honorific. The toothy unsmile made a reappearance, and Dave could tell his manager was seconds away from tenting his fingers in front of his face for emphasis. “Firstly, this is not a Starbucks. We do not use the term frappuccino. Secondly—“
“But it was on the secret menu.”
Karkat audibly sucked air between his teeth, and Dave smothered a laugh into the crook of his elbow under the guise of a sudden ugly bout of coughing. “The secret menu of the Crimson Cup,” Dave managed to repeat in a hushed whisper, with no small amount of awe. “Fucking incredible.”
Dave Strider had worked there long enough that the sight of Karkat bringing both hands up in front of his face, fingertips pressed lightly together, filled him with inexplicable excitement. When Karkat assumed the Position, every other word out of the manager’s mouth was punctuated by a quick thirty degree downward jerk of his pressed hands.
“What… possibly gave you the impression that we, a single shop coffee business that has neither the revenue nor the charm to make itself a local staple or tourist attraction, would possibly, for any reason, have an entirely different menu that we conspire to deprive our customers of? We are barely able to roll out a sufficient quantity of steamed milk, semi gelatinous sucrose paste, and occasionally even a bean or two of actual coffee to satisfy our straggling consumer base, and you think that beneath this faux wooden counter I conceal, what, exactly? The Valhalla of caffeine? Vaikuntha of refreshing Summer beverages? The Elysian Fields of hidden confectioneries? The Big Rock Candy Mountain?”
“Hahah, oh my God, Karkat, you’re a riot.”
By then, Dave was shaking with silent laughter, half braced against the counter, sunglasses pushed halfway up his face with his efforts to hide in his arm. “Fuck,” he said, finally breaking his silence, “this is too goddamn much. Okay, Jimmy, so that’s a caramel macchiato, two hot chocolates, and a lemon bar to go. Maybe next week Scrooge McDuck will lighten his white-knuckled death grip on our secret menu, and we can make your Fapple Dapple--”
“—Razzle Dazzle—“
“Frappuccino for you.”
John seemed to consider this for a moment, drumming his fingers against the side of his leg. Karkat looked like he could absolutely strangle Dave for encouraging him. “Okay, okay, I see.” John gave Karkat an exaggerated wink, as if they were all in on some big secret, now. “Maybe by the time I’m a regular here, you’ll remember how to make a Razzle Dazzle Frappuccino. Eh? Eh?”
“Take a fucking seat, wait for your fucking drinks, and then get out of my fucking store.”
Canevazzi Hall for Humanitarian Studies (Can Tower for short) was the catch-all hub for a couple of the smaller majors on campus—namely anthropology, archaeology, and some of the more niche history designations. It also happened to be one of Dave’s favorite buildings, which was… convenient, since that’s where a majority of his major specific classes were once he moved out from the gen-ed swamp of Freshman year.
It was an old, ugly, dingy tower, but Dave found the sloped windows (designed to be riot proof in the 60s) endearing, the fact it smelled perpetually like packaged cheese endearinger, and the way one of his professors let him preserve a dead pigeon from behind the A/C unit for his wet specimens collection to be endearingest. That last one might have been a bit of a health and safety concern, but Dave swore he knew what he was doing when he miraculously produced rubber gloves from the side pocket of his backpack. Never go unprepared.
His Introduction to World Prehistory class was more packed than he’d imagined, a lecture hall wedged in between a couple of the smaller classrooms in the back of the tower’s first floor. From his vantage point on the third row he tried to pick out familiar faces—he quickly spotted Aradia, which was unsurprising, since she was the only friend he’d made in archaeology so far, and a couple of others he’d vaguely remembered seeing around somewhere or another.
It wasn’t until he spotted the mop of black hair and thick framed glasses that Dave very nearly lost his shit.