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“Have a good one.”
“You too, get some sleep.”
Race chuckled a bit to himself, nodding as he walked out of the cafe, obviously more amused than the late shift worker he left behind.
Said late shift worker frowned to himself as he pulled out the pad and pen he and Jack had placed underneath the counter. He put another tally next to “Anthony”, which had been scribbled out after five tallies and replaced with “Race”.
Cute nickname? Yes. A worrying amount coffee bought per day? Also yes.
Spot turned and almost bumped directly into Jack, gasping a bit in surprise. “Oh my god, can you please not.”
“Lover boy back again?” Jack asked, pointedly ignoring Spot’s attempt to trip him as he walked toward the back. “Isn’t that like, the third time today?”
It was, and Spot frowned a little bit to himself. “Yeah, guy’s got a real caffeine problem, I guess.”
He felt Jack’s presence buzzing like, four inches behind him and fought back the urge to just turn around and punch him . “Jack, personal space I swear to god-”
Jack grabbed his shoulder and spun Spot around to face him, grinning like a dumbass. “Didn’t correct me on the lover boy part.”
“Really trying my patience here, buddy.” Spot crossed his arms and hated himself for the slightest bit of a blush fighting its way up his neck. Race was cute. Severely hyperactive and caffeine dependent, but really adorable.
Jack snorted. “He likes you Spot, that’s why he’s the lover boy.
“I should trust your opinion on this,” Spot said, shouldering past Jack toward the disgustingly full sink, “because you were just so confident and in tune with Davey, right? When you asked him out after what? Five? Six months?”
An oddly high pitched, affronted sound echoed through the empty cafe, and Jack walked after Spot to lean on the counter next to him. “That was completely different, Davey is an extremely complicated person.”
Spot hummed and nodded, they had to be closed in an hour.
“Race is so obvious , he’s in here everyday, sometimes more than once-”
“I can name about six other people who do the exact same thing.”
Jack rolled his eyes and kicked lightly at Spot’s ankle. “Yeah but the old woman who order chamomile tea doesn’t shamelessly flirt with you while she waits for her drink.”
Dipping a mug into the sanitizer, Spot smirked. “That’s what you think.”
There wasn’t even a chuckle from Jack, who genuinely believed Race was the guy of Spot’s dreamed since the third time he came in, and Spot put his mug on the drying rack and turned to face him.
As a matter of fact, Spot had thought about asking Race out, many a time actually, but talking to Jack about any relationship was like opening a box full of high school gossip and dating advice. Besides, he didn’t want to get Jack’s hopes up for nothing.
“What if I were to ask him out Jack, and he said no. Consider that for a moment.”
There was a beat of silence as Jack furrowed his brow, and Spot had actually never seen him concentrate that hard, ever. Sort of funny sort of not.
In the end though, Jack just shook his head. “He’s not going to say no, trust me.”
Spot wanted to believe him, really he did, but Jack’s advice was right about fifty percent of the time, and he didn’t really want to take a chance at being shot down.
“I don’t know, Jack-”
The little bell over the front door rang, and the two of them whipped their heads toward the door. A pavlovian response, Spot was sure of it.
“Hey, I’m so sorry,” the man himself, Racetrack Higgins said, stumbling through the front door with a shirt soaked with coffee and an oddly apologetic look in his eye, “I was walking, and I um, well I-I ran into a wall actually?”
Spot frowned and Jack must have been gaping a little bit, because now Race did look a little bit embarassed and shifted his gaze away from them as he walked up to the counter.
“Okay yeah, that sounds really weird but I swear I’m not just like, an idiot or something, I’ve just had a lot of coffee today and was shaking, like just a little bit when I was walking-”
“-you were what?”
Race waved off Spot’s concern and leaned forward on his elbows onto the front counter. “It’s fine, it happens sometimes. But anyway, I tripped and fell into a wall and spilled my coffee.”
Spot waited for Jack to make a sarcastic comment, but conveniently, when he turned to look for him, he was gone. Way to involved he swore .
But Race was blinking up at him and Spot cleared his throat. “And you came back here for?”
“Another coffee.”
Barking out a laugh, Spot shook his head and leaned down so he was eye level with Race. He had nice eyes actually, really blue. “No way.”
Race whined low in his throat and shoved at Spots shoulder. “C’mon, I didn’t even drink the last one.”
“You were shaking .”
Race stuttered for a second and Spot smirked at him, nodding. “Yeah, exactly, you need a coffee detox.”
He felt his heart jump a little bit when Race smiled a bit to himself, flicking his eyes away from Spot’s down to the table. Awfully cute, that one.
“Well, what’s to stop me from going to the coffee place down the block?” Race asked innocently, tilting his head and looking at Spot through his eyelashes. “They have a great iced, I hear.”
Spot raised his eyebrows and struggled to bite back a smile. “I mean, not much I guess, I’m stuck here, can’t really stop you-”
“Oh, Spot?” Jack materialized beside the pair and Spot saw Race jump a little bit out the corner of his eye. “Katherine texted me, it was slow so you can leave early if you want.”
Race was smiling like an idiot and Spot was mentally throwing a brick at Jack’s head. Jack was looking at the two of them with a dumb unassuming look that really was a testament to his poor acting skills.
“Wow, thank you for that Jack,” Spot said, very slowly, very monotonously.
Jack nodded and walked over to the sink, humming to himself as he pretended to wash a mug, again, another testament to those acting skills.
Race laughed suddenly, and Spot looked back at him in surprise. “What?”
“God,” Race choked out, “it’s just-he’s been trying to do that for a while, right?”
Spot blushed to his scalp then, rubbing at the back of his neck and letting out a bit of a nervous laugh himself. “Shit, I mean yeah, he has.”
He didn’t say anything else and looked down at the table.
Race snorted and grabbed his hand. “Okay we’re seeing a movie, I’m deciding this, let’s go.”
Spot stuttered for a second and he heard a suspiciously Jack-sounding laugh from behind him as Race dragged him around the counter, talking the entire way.
“I’ve been dying drinking this much coffee, I don’t like tea and decaf tastes weird so I’ve just had to get coffee every time I wanted to see you. It’s been awful …”
He rambled on and Spot was smiling like an idiot and just as Race pulled him out the front door he flipped Jack off for good measure.
Couldn’t give him too much, he didn't want to encourage him or anything.