Chapter Text
“Are you following?” Essek snapped behind him. His colleagues thawed from whatever giggle fest stopped them on their tracks to the sports bar they were headed to. Essek opened the door to them with an intent glare and hunched shoulders, and they rushed through without another glance. The bar immediately opened everyone up: shed coats, gloves, hats, unfortunate necessities for a particularly paralyzing D.C. winter. No White Christmas, no magical New Year’s snow, so they begin the calendar year with grey skies and fierce winds, hoping for springtime cherry blossoms, or at least some proper wintry flurries. The senior partners haven’t returned from Telluride yet, in these few days after the holidays where time and accountability felt fake, so the associates left the office for a happy hour at one of the empty bars down the block. The group from across the cubes already had drinks and spread out between a couple tables next to the large windows. They were all earnestly watching the congressional hearing on the flatscreen above the warm wooden bar.
Essek stopped by some guy he rotated with when they first entered the company and dropped his dark wool coat in the high-top seat. “What’s the game for tonight?”
Lythir didn’t move his eyes from the screen, only sipping on his IPA-looking beer for a beat before answering, “Drink every time the client’s mentioned. If they go down, might as well go down with them.”
Immediately Essek flagged down the barkeep for a stout and returned to the table. It was crowded with their corner of the office, those without families to come home to and not enough vacation time to afford staying home for longer during the prolonged holiday season. The usual cliques always form at the happy hour, finally relaxed faces close to each other with attentive eyes and relieved smiles. Some silver tinsel still hung from the corner of the TV. The edge of his sweater caught some leftover confetti from the New Year’s party days before. Essek flipped it out and sipped his obnoxiously cold stout for a warm bar for a cold night and continued to look over the rim. Eventually the boring, balding senator stumbled the client’s name again, and the group yelled out a groan of recognition, facing away from their conversational partners to clink their glasses together at the center of the table, and take a sip of their drinks. With an extraneous shout, Lythir gosled Essek’s grip and some of the stout spilled on his hand as he brought it back down to the table.
As he wiped down the sticky alcohol, Essek noticed that a portion of the table didn’t react to the rest of the group’s huzzah. One of the experienced partners — Yussa? Maybe Essek saw him at a coffee chat once — seems to have finally actually accepted the associates’ perpetual happy hour invitation, his wrinkled face and weary energy betraying his outsider presence. He was speaking to someone who absolutely wasn’t invited to the happy hour. The crowd of tense, alert, performative early professionals broke down next to the much calmer, settled energy around Yussa’s conversational partner. In a sea of professional blacks and greys, the warm maroon of the man’s sweater, the soft blue of his scarf, and the long dull copper hair popped. He wasn’t looking up at the TV, but intensely at Yussa, speaking in a low warm voice, posture loose and shoulders complacent in comfort. Essek felt his own want to relax, seeing his ease, but a bark of laughter next to Lythir tensed his spine again. The quiet presence of this stranger felt like an unnatural stillness on a rippling pond - he’s not trying to prove anything, he’s not trying to perform, he’s just talking? Out of the shoulder-slung messenger bag a pink nose peeked out — is that a cat in the bar—-?
The crosstalk bubbled over again in another loud table-wide groan as the bumbling senator on the screen further nailed their project into a coffin and by the time Essek turned to the center of the table, the last clinks were finishing up. Suddenly the barking laughter, squeals of glee, and theatrics of the professional performatism forced him to take another gulp of the dark beer to hide his expression. Everyone was always trying to crosstalk each other, arms literally taking up space in the conversation, drawing attention to how much more charming, more hilarious, more perfect, more respectable, more admirable they are, all at once. He can usually perform well enough at these things. He learned to play beer pong for things like this. The girl across the table slammed her hand on the table in an over-excited intentional conclusion to her asinine story about her interfering new roommate and remembers to chuckle in time. The frat guy next to her reared his head back in laughter and then promptly checked his phone in the conversational lull that followed.
Essek leaned into Lythir again. “Who’s the guy with Yussa?”
Lythir’s eyes were still on the screen. “His mentee? Must be a recent immigration thing. I dunno.”
Essek took another look over at the newcomer over his drink, knowing Lythir definitely wasn’t looking and everyone was too interested in their own egotistical performance of camaraderie and cool to notice. The down-to-Earth slouch and alertness, along with Lythir, confirmed the newcomer’s European roots. The two girls between them checked their phones, finished their drinks, and went around to get their coats and hug some goodbyes to their coworkers.
A dark-haired one patted the definitely-not-Bain guy on the sweater and drawled, “Good luck with those lasers, hah.” He raised his nearly-finished drink and smiled at them.
“Thank you,” he replied, soft and breathy — and German? — and completely sincere.
On his other side, Yussa also checked his phone and stood up to leave. “Caleb, it’s always a pleasure, but my partner’s asking for me, and traffic just died down.” His gaze hardened as he looked outside. “It just started snowing… You better not bike across the river.” He looked down at German-guy-Caleb.
“The lasers need me alive, I know,” Caleb replied.
“Good lad,” Yussa said, putting on his coat and scarf. Caleb pushed away his drink and started gathering his scruffy scarf around his neck. Essek lived a couple blocks away and only wanted to accompany this man to Virginia and couldn’t think of a single reason to, except to leave this bar. He had already hit his limit of being a social person who gets invited to things, like post-work happy hours.
Caleb was beginning to stand up as Essek felt the beer in his veins jumping at the moment that he might just miss. “What sort of research do you do?” He heard himself asking, and as much of a surprise it was to him, Caleb turned around with a similar surprise in his winter blue eyes. Essek felt his breath hitch, and it wasn’t from the wind blowing through the open door of the girls leaving the bar.
“The intersection of astrophysics and quantum physics,” the man with the soft accent said, looking down to scratch at the cat head obviously asking for affection from the messenger bag.
“Oh, Heisenburg’s uncertainty principle and all that?” Essek replied.
“Yes, and even further.” Caleb responded, looking up under dark lashes.
Yussa waved a goodbye, eyes quickly darting over Essek, and left, leaving an open seat space between them. Essek turned in his seat, away from still-staring Lythir, and, loosening his tie, leaned into this fascinating new addition to the banal happy hour.
“That’s actually very interesting — I consider myself a fan of the field. What does your current hypothesis entail, uh —-“ he asked, waving his hand in a visible question.
“Caleb Widogast.”
“Ah, Essek Thelyss, nice to meet you,” came the rehearsed line and practiced handshake, and Caleb glanced down before accepting the reaching hand.
He took the cat out of the bag onto his lap and started petting it clandestinely under the bar, and explained his academic career of constant questioning, from the commonplace elevator pitch to the more specific and jargon-filled abstract, after Essek’s insistent and confident prodding. From Germany to Georgetown, Caleb arrived, all the while analyzing at how the quantum level interferes with the accepted research on astronomical phenomena. Yussa was a compatriot in nationality, a welcome-to-DC mentor of sorts connected by professors at Georgetown, and the timing of their weekly drink and the happy hour fortunately coincided. The background din of colleague groaning and celebration faded into pleasant white noise as they spoke. Essek felt the beer’s confidence and wakefulness pumping behind his eyes as he watched Caleb, the researcher, the proper academic, squint and state off into the distance, searching for a word, before coming back and staring intently into Essek’s eyes as his hands formed the trajectory of the electrons he dedicated his life’s work to. It was a great feeling, to have those parts of Essek’s brain he forgot about slowly creak off their cobwebs and rust and begin to think like a researcher, an academic, again. Caleb spoke in a well-paced low voice, and Essek leaned in to hear these complex theories better. His degree came in handy for Excel and modeling private sector hypothesis, but he had forgotten how brilliant it was to use those skills not for cash flow projections and profit and loss statements, but for understanding the fundamental building blocks and dramatic theater of the universe inside and around them.
By the time the last few coworkers finished watching the hearing and downing their drinks, Essek had scooted to the closer seat and the russet tabby cat — Frumpkin, a docile darling— openly dozed on the bar under Caleb’s hand, hair perfectly complementing each other. One of the leaving coworkers clapped Essek hard on the shoulder — “See ya tomorrow” — and Essek glanced behind him to see that his fiancée-d group of coworkers all left for their loved ones for the evening by the time the congressional hearing ended, leaving him and Caleb alone at the table. By the time Essek turned back, Caleb had also finished his drink, gulping it down fully and loudly, and sending the glass back to the barkeep with a charismatic flourish of his wide hands. He looked at Essek with those bright and alert eyes, nodded in the direction of the flurries at the door, and scooped up a dazed Frumpkin with a mrow into his brown messenger bag.
“It’s a proper snow out there —“ Essek begins.
“And it’s a lovely ride, compared to back home,” Caleb continued putting on his cozy knitted green hat, and Essek followed him out the door, forgetting his stout and darting on his slick wool coat. “I’d love to continue the conversation, but student’s papers are awaiting some grading.” He walked over to the only bike in the usually full DC bike rack. “May I have your number? I can send you some Vysoren’s paper, it really influenced my perspective.”
Essek fumbled for his phone and quickly handed it over. “I haven’t thought in physics for so long — I’m so rusty.”
Caleb unlocked the bike from the rack and entered his number into Essek’s phone. Essek sent back the text with his name.
“Rusty or not, her theories will blow your mind. They definitely changed my mind on the transformative patterns in star substances.” He settled the messenger bag, cat and all, into the bike basket, and pets the little mrow from the outside.
Essek shivered in the flurry and glanced at the low dark grey sky. “Will you change your mind about the ride back?”
Caleb looked up to smile at him from the bike lock, and Essek shivered again. “I’m committed to the struggle, hah. Thank you for the company, Essek.”
“Nice to meet you as well, Caleb,” Essek nodded as he stepped away on his short walk back home, and waved off Caleb as he hopped onto his bike and began on his long journey home across the Potomac. Essek stood outside the bar, hugging his coat closer to him with his shoulders, the alcohol content of the beer still coursing warm, the recent memory of blue eyes piercing cold, and the realization spreading throughout him that he’s completely fucked for this sweater-swearing, Hozier-looking, cat-cafe, Bavarian-accent new motherfucker in his life.