Chapter Text
1.
The job interview for the Common Grounds Coffee Shop was everything Matt had been told not to expect. He showed up in a polo shirt and jeans, freshly washed and pressed, his hair combed back with gel, with a copy of his resume in hand. A--man? woman? person in a bright orange Hawaiian shirt was behind the counter, leaning on their elbows and scrolling through their phone. Their hair was bleach-blond and very long with colorful ribbons in it, and their face was so flawless that Matt was beginning to get nervous just looking at it.
He cleared his throat and the person looked up. "Oh, hi! I didn't see you there! I'm TIm, but my friends call me Sundog." They set down their phone. "What can I get for ya?"
Matt shifted on his feet. "I, uh, applied online? I'm here for the interview."
Sundog blinked. "Oh! Matteo, right? I forgot that was today!"
"Yeah. But Matt's good."
"Matt. Got it." They stood up. "Come sit down back here and I'll grab you something to drink. Coffee or tea?"
"Uh... tea." Matt slid awkwardly onto a barstool. He wasn't sure what to do with his resume, so he put it off to the side on the counter and looked around.
He'd noticed one rainbow flag in the window when he came in, but that had in no way prepared him for how many rainbows there were inside the shop. Mini flags in mason jars on each table, variations on the rainbow flag pinned to the walls and draped over chairs, worn rainbow stickers plastered to the tables, and not just the rainbow flag--Matt spotted a few flags of various stripes he didn't even recognize. One of the walls was covered with a chalkboard, where dozens of messages and doodles had been drawn and erased and drawn again.
Sundog swung back into the room with two steaming mugs and set them on the counter. "So, Matt, you ever made coffee before?"
"Um, yeah. A few times."
"How are you with customer service?"
"...Good, I guess?"
"You available Wednesday afternoons?"
"Yes?" Matt wasn't sure what he was supposed to say--maybe pretend he was busy?--but he hadn't signed up for any evening classes this semester.
"Great! That's when my new D&D group meets." Sundog pulled a crumpled piece of paper and a golf pencil out of their back pocket. "You're hired. What's the rest of your schedule look like?"
Matt blinked. "That... that's it?"
"Yup! I like your vibes, and you look like a nice young person." Sundog cocked their head. "I can ask you some harder questions if it makes you feel better."
"Uh, nope. No. I'm good." Matt shrugged.
"Wonderful!" Sundog slid the paper to him. "Y'know what, I need to go clean some stuff in the back. Could you write down what times you can come in? We can figure out a schedule when I'm done."
"Sure?" Sundog disappeared into the back before Matt had time to be any more baffled.
It didn't take him long to scribble down his schedule, so he took the extra time to sip the tea (which was fruity and tasted like an artifical sweetener he'd never had before) and look around at the room some more. There was no menu to be seen, but there was a table by the door with a bucket of stickers and pens and a sign that said "Pronouns" in a fancy script.
The door swung open with a bang, and a scrawny androgynous kid carrying a laptop came into the shop and settled themself into an armchair in the corner. "Sup," they said to Matt. "Are you the new guy?"
"I guess so," said Matt, noticing the very large print on their t-shirt that said MY PRONOUNS ARE THEY/THEM.
"Cool. I'm Morgan. Is Sun here?"
"In the back."
They craned their neck to look behind the counter, and although there was no way they could see into the back room from where they were they seemed satisfied with what they saw. They opened their laptop, appeared to do something on it for about a minute, and then looked up at the blackboard wall. "Oh hey, my drawing's still up." They wandered over to one of the tables, picked up a piece of chalk, and started sketching on the upper corner of the chalkboard, stretching to reach the top of their drawing.
Matt watched Morgan draw, simply because he had nothing better to do, until Sundog came back. "Finished?" they asked him.
Matt nodded. Sundog glanced over what he had written, nodding. "Cool. Wanna start now? There are aprons in the back. I can give you a tour of the kitchen."
"Sure, I guess," said Matt, thinking that nothing else that happened today could be much weirder than this whole experience. Sundog, the interview, the gay paraphernalia...
"Great!" Sundog clapped once and stood up. "Come on back. Watch out for the bird, she bites if she's not getting enough attention."
"The what?" Matt asked, following them back. Maybe he'd been wrong about how weird this job was going to get.