Chapter Text
Neptune was working his shift more than a little hungover from last night. Plastic cups kept toppling out of his hands and coffee streams began shifting just to the right of the mugs. Thank god for dim aesthetic lighting and the constant smell of coffee beans pumping through his senses.
It had happened again. As soon as Neptune finally got a straight dude to realize how not straight he really was, the dude thanked him for this realization and left. Leaving Neptune with a bottle of wine to mull over alone.
How many times had this happened? Five? More? Numbers were a little fuzzy at the moment. Neptune silently thanked god that he wasn’t working the cash register.
“Excuse me?” a bored voice called, followed by a harsh tapping on his shoulder.
Neptune blinked and jerked his head upright. Oh god, his head. Dull pain pounded against his skull, black spots popped up in his vision. How much did he actually drink last night? This was not at all healthy.
“Huh?” Neptune asked.
“Your turn to work register.” God dammit. He should have known it was too good to last.
“Fine,” he managed after a pause.
“Dude, you’re drunk as hell.”
“Just very hungover.”
“Why are you here?”
“Do I look like I can afford college?”
“I mean, a little. You’ve got some fancy ass hair.”
Neptune groaned out a sigh. “Thank you, I try.”
“Good luck.”
His coworker clapped him on the back and the spotty vision returned. This was going to be an extremely long shift.
After a moment, Neptune registered a blurred moving object passing in front of his face. A second later, there was a snap by his ear that his headache did not appreciate, and then someone said. “Hello? Dude, can you take our order?”
More blinking. More time to register. There was a lot of blue, but maybe it was a face.
“Welcome to the Daily Grind. What can I get for you today?”
“Um, buddy, my eyes are up here.”
Neptune was a tall guy. Like, annoyingly tall. Sometimes he hit his head on door frames tall. But Neptune actually had to tilt his head up to look this guy square in the eye. Guy was a basketball player. He had to be. What else could he be doing with all that height.
In a moment of horror, Neptune realized he had been talking directly into this customer’s chest.
“You’ve got quite a pair of pecs,” Neptune heard himself say. The hangover was doing bad stuff to his brain. For some reason he was combining his well refined casanova talk with his already terrible mocking talk, and it was turning out awful. The embarrassment didn’t register.
As soon as the words left his mouth, the guy’s face registered. Very high cheekbones, very spiky hair, and a very surprised expression on his face.
“What?” the customer asked, eyebrows trying to escape into his hairline.
There was a light giggle beside the customer and Neptune felt his eyes drag a foot and a half down to where a pretty brunette was covering her mouth and giggling. Neptune tried to push away the judgement. It wasn’t like he was any better after all. And he had practically just catcalled this paying customer’s chest. Oh god, what was he doing?
“Oh Lord. Sorry, sir. I’m a little out of it,” Neptune admitted. It kind of felt like the entire coffee shop was suspended in honey and his mind was trying to keep him afloat.
A hearty laugh burst from the customer’s mouth. Hearty? Was hearty the right word? It started a ship captain’s bellow and dissolved into woodland pixie giggling by the end. “I can tell. Who says that? Kind of ridiculous thing to say right off the bat.”
Well. Even though Neptune was in the wrong, he still had pride in himself.
“I’m guessing a black coffee and a unicorn frappuccino? I’m not sure whose is whose though,” Neptune commented, shooting a sideways glance at the pair of them.
The customer prickled. His date laughed again.
“Hey, dude, what the fuck?” the guy said. He said “fuck” loud enough for some heads to turn. “I’m on a date right now.”
“I see that, and honestly, she seems to be enjoying the company of a horribly hungover guy more than a douche in a wifebeater.” Neptune should probably stop. The leftover alcohol was making his tongue and his brain disconnect.
The girl laughed again. It felt good that he could seduce someone through a pounding headache, but also awful because it was her date she was laughing at.
Her date was a douche, though. It was a moral grey area.
The customer pointed at Neptune. Pointed at him! This was a coffee shop! The fury in his eyes said murder, the finger said the time was now. His nails said he hadn’t ever seen a nail clipper other than his own teeth.
After an intense stare down, the finger was lowered, and the customer spat out a “Grande white mocha and a plain cappuccino.”
“What’s the name?”
“Sun.”
Neptune smiled. “Just a few minutes until that’s ready, Sun.”
His smile was returned with a glare and snarl. Again, this was a coffee shop. Not a wrestling match. Neptune wouldn’t be surprised if he was called out onto the street to throw down after the order was made.
He could feel himself punch in a few numbers while making deliberate eye contact with the guy, Sun. As soon as his receipt printed out, Sun reached across the counter and snatched it out of Neptune’s printer before moving down the line to wait at pick up, staring and squinting all the while.
As soon as they were out of each other’s sight, Neptune caught somebody else’s glance: Sun’s date. She wore a tiny smile on her face as she slid by, pupils following Neptune until they couldn’t. She was cute, though not really Neptune’s type.
“What just happened there?” Neptune’s coworker, Jaune, appeared beside him. It would’ve made him jump had his brain not been moving so slow.
“Asshat in flip flops talked back to me.”
“He’s a paying customer, Neptune!”
“And an asshat, Jaune!” Neptune slumped onto the counter. Lucky for him the coffee shop was so tiny and crummy. It was always slow, giving him some well-earned time between customers to mull over his life choices. “He pointed at me!”
“Pointed at you?”
“With his finger! Right in my face! Who does that?!”
“Who started the argument?”
“It was…” Neptune thought for a moment. “Technically me. But he said ‘my eyes are up here’ when I was staring at his chest.”
“Why were you staring at his chest.”
“I’m very hungover.”
“Why are you hungover.”
“I got dumped last night.”
Jaune paused, sighed, and opened his arms for a hug. Neptune raised an eyebrow. He did not hug. He did not show the urge to display physical affection.
“Neptune, give me a hug.”
“No.”
“Neptune.”
“I don’t want a hug.”
“You got dumped. You’re hungover. You need a hug.”
Neptune gave into the hug. Jaune was a very soft person, emotionally if not physically. So even though their similar heights made it awkward, all his hugs were very comforting. The perks of having like a million siblings. And Neptune kind of needed it, though he would never admit it.
The wine had been swung back between fits of crying, but the more wine he drank the more he would cry and by the time the sun started to peek through his curtains, there was a bottle gone and Neptune had to deal with the fact that he’d been practically inhaling a bottle as he fell asleep.
He didn’t even like the guy that much. But five times is a few times too many to get denied just when you realize you like someone. It hurt. And the hurt had been building up for a while.
“I just can’t keep a guy,” Neptune said into Jaune’s shoulder. His curling blonde hair smelled like dish soap.
“Maybe you have bad taste in guys?” he asked.
“I do not have bad taste in guys.”
“You obviously do if they keep dumping you!”
“Hug over.” Neptune tried to pull away but Jaune resisted. That oversized sweatshirt he always wore hid the strength of a mammoth.
“Hug not over. Stop bottling everything inside! It’s annoying.”
“I can’t not bottle, Jaune! I’m not a feelings guy!”
“You could be if you tried!”
“Let go!”
“Ahem.”
There was a customer waiting.
“Shit,” Neptune said. Jaune finally released his grip and pushed Neptune out of the way and into the syrups.
“Sorry about that, ma’am! What will you be having today?” Jaune said in his brightest customer service voice. He caught his eye for a second, giving him a look that said, ‘You’re really out of it. I’ll take care of the cash register. Go do something useful.’
Neptune silently thanked god for Jaune Arc.
Only two more customers came in during the thirty minutes Neptune was on syrup duty, leaving Jaune and Neptune to make idle chatter. The whole time, Neptune kept glancing back to the dude from before. Sun. He kept laughing with his date, pounding on the table and overall being very loud.
Everything about him was loud. His sandals, his shorts, his shirt, his hair spikes that defied gravity and Neptune could verify just how weird they were because he saw them with his own two eyes. Why the hell would this dickhead dudebro come into a tiny local coffee shop with crummy staff and crappy food? On a date?
Sun’s date would still softly giggle when it looked like Sun had cracked a joke, but Neptune caught her writing something on her straw wrapper when Sun turned around.
And then they were leaving.
No fight, no duel, no screaming match. They were just leaving. The only suggestion of bad blood was the glare Sun shot Neptune as he opened the door for his date. Other than that, nothing.
Nothing except Sun’s date passing something to Neptune without looking as they passed by the bar.
Neptune unfurled the crumpled straw wrapper in his hands and stared at the telephone number written there.
“What’s that?” Jaune asked, leaning on a broom.
“A number.”
“Oooo. Is he cute?”
“She. And I guess.”
“You gonna call her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“She was the date of that douchebag.”
“Oh, wow.” A pause. “Oh wow! I guess the date didn’t go well, then?”
“Who could've guessed?”
“And you’re not gonna call her.”
“Why would I?”
Jaune smiled. “I’m proud of you, Neptune! And here I thought you were gonna call her in an act of revenge against the shorts and sandals guy you initiated the fight with! I guess people can-”
“I’m gonna call her.”
“There it is.”