Chapter Text
The bell on the door to the coffee shop is getting on Dina’s nerves. It’s helpful to have during the slow moments, but during peak periods the constant ringing noise is just irritating. Part of the frustration may be the cold weather and how each opening and closing of the door brings in a blast of cold air that Dina never truly recovers from.
Another monotonous day, countless coffee cups, too many people not knowing their order when they come up to the counter, and the standard handful of people who gaze off into the abyss and ignore their name being called until their coffee has gone tepid.
Jesse is making the coffee today, and Dina is managing the till. Her mind is half working through her computing assignment, lines of code distantly floating through her head as she seems to endlessly take payments, scribble an order and a name half-heartedly on a cup and smile shallowly at customers.
A balding man in a suit, a rumpled woman with a fussing baby, a literal child in a school uniform, and then a very tired, very pretty girl in a big coat.
Her eyes are puffy and tired, her cheeks pink from the cold outside, and she’s wearing the biggest puffer jacket that Dina has ever seen. She’s a solid two inches taller than Dina, with bright green eyes, and freckles scattered over her cheeks. She’s wearing a thick grey beanie, her hair falling loosely past her shoulders, and Dina is enamoured.
“Can I just get a medium mocha to go, please?” she asks, her hand shaking slightly as she holds out a five dollar note.
“Sure thing,” Dina smiles, more genuinely this time. Their hands brush when Dina takes the note and again when she hands her change. Her hands are like ice, and Dina can see the tiniest hint of a tattoo peeking out from under her sleeve. “Name?”
“Ellie,” the girl replies. Dina dutifully writes it on the cup and by the time she looks back up she hears a soft thank you and Ellie has moved to other side of the room joining the many waiting for their coffees.
It takes Dina a moment to focus on their next customer and by the time she finishes taking orders from those in the queue, Ellie has disappeared.
--
Ellie returns a week later, and this time Dina is making the drinks. Jesse and Dina normally take turns on either duty, but she had been working almost solidly on drinks for the better part of the week. She tells him it’s because she now prefers it, but it’s really because she doesn’t feel the wind from outside as much on this side of the café.
She doesn’t notice it at first, halfway through preparing the drink when she fully reads Jesse’s chicken scratch writing on the cup; ‘Ellie’. She looks up immediately, almost burning herself in her carelessness, and she can see the girl waiting patiently. Her hair is up today, in a bun, her cheeks still flushed, her nose slightly pink, and she’s wrapped her arms around herself like she’s trying to keep the warmth in. She’s in the same thick black puffer jacket and she’s gained a scarf, now half-tucked under the coat collar. She looks tired and for a moment Dina feels an intense urge to hug her.
Dina tries desperately to think of something clever to say to her as she finishes making the drink. Her mind is exceedingly blank and everything she can think of is about the cold outside and how Ellie somehow looks both overwhelmingly prepared and yet frozen. I can’t make small talk about the weather, that’s stupid. She presses the lid on carefully and turns to hold the cup out. “Mocha for Ellie?”
Ellie smiles, her hand trembling slightly as she comes forward and takes the cup from Dina’s hand. Dina sees it properly this time; her sleeve is slightly higher now and Dina can tell that the dark lines peeking out are leaves. I wonder what the whole design is.
Dina’s about to ask when Ellie grabs blindly at the tray of sugar packets, taking potentially upwards of five sachets, and leaves abruptly.
Why didn’t she just ask for her drink with sugar?
--
It’s a week later when Ellie returns. Fridays, huh?
Dina is on the coffee machine again, and is slightly more prepared this time when she sees Ellie’s name on the cup. It’s busy again and Ellie is slightly too far away from the counter for Dina to speak easily to her when there’s a handful of other customers waiting for their drinks.
Ellie’s in a different jacket this time; it’s light brown and made of a thick canvas, and it’s a bit too big for her. Dina can tell she’s wearing a grey hoodie underneath as the hood sits awkwardly half outside the collar of the outer jacket. Ellie’s hair is in a messy ponytail, a forgotten pen tucked behind her ear, and her lips look a little chapped.
Dina mixes in an extra sugar this time. She thinks about how many packets Ellie grabbed but doesn’t want to be presumptuous. It’s a mocha, it’s already sweet.
“Mocha for Ellie?” Dina calls, holding it out for Ellie to take. She waits until Ellie’s hand is firmly around the cup before adding. “With one sugar.”
“O-oh, thank you,” Ellie says, smiling shyly, blushing slightly. She falters, hugging the cup carefully closer to her and pressing both hands to it carefully, like she’s trying to warm them up.
Dina doesn’t know her at all, but she can read the embarrassment clearly on her face. “You can still add more sugar, it’s alright,” she says softly.
Ellie nods jerkily, reaching out blindly again to take several sachets of sugar, and leaves with a blush so hot that Dina can see the red on the back of her neck as she turns.
--
The next week Dina adds three sugars to the mocha. She has to fight back a wince as she does so. This is undrinkable.
“Mocha for Ellie,” she says with a smile. She lets Ellie come forward again and take the cup before adding, “Three sugars.”
Ellie grins at her, and with slightly more confidence than the previous week she plucks two extra sugar packets out of the tray in front of her. She pauses this time, opening the lid of the cup carefully and pouring in the extra sugar, using one of the small stirring sticks to mix it in.
That is disgusting.
Dina knows faintly that there’s a small crowd in the café, that she has a line of cups waiting for her to work through, but she just watches with narrowed eyes. “Got a sweet tooth?” she asks with a playful smirk, noting the paint stains on the cuffs of Ellie’s canvas jacket.
Ellie looks up at her, grinning bashfully now, and her lips move as though to speak but she’s interrupted but some harried impatient man.
“Are you going to make my drink, or what?” he presses, rudely.
Dina levels an unimpressed look at him, but dutifully responds, “yes, sir.”
Ellie slips out quietly, flashing a small apologetic smile when she looks back over her shoulder at Dina.
This time Dina does burn herself.
--
The next week the shop is almost empty when Ellie arrives. Dina makes the drink with five sugars, flashing a smile to Ellie on the other side of the counter.
Ellie approaches the counter before she calls her name, a blush prominent on her cheeks.
“Five sugars,” Dina smirks.
Ellie squints at her, sipping the drink cautiously, conscious of how hot it is. “Perfect,” she murmurs.
Dina chuckles, leaning over the counter, “How could you possibly drink that?”
Ellie shrugs.
“You must have the biggest sweet tooth in the world,” Dina continues. “Do you even need the caffeine with that much sugar?”
Ellie laughs, “I need whatever I can get to get through the day.”
“You working nearby?” Dina asks, resting her elbows on the counter and grinning up at Ellie.
“Yeah, across the road actually,” Ellie smiles. “It’s an internship, so just Fridays at the moment.”
Dina nods, watching at Ellie takes another sip of the drink and smiles, clutching the cup close to her chest. “What’s the internship for?”
“Graphic design,” Ellie replies, scuffing her boots on the floor, and for a moment Dina feels like she’s bothering her.
“Sorry, I know you probably need to get back to work.”
“No, no,” Ellie rushes to say, stepping closer and placing the cup absently on the table. “I just know you’re always so busy here, I don’t want to take up too much of your time.” Her cheeks are blushing now, ears red, and her hands are nervously fidgeting with the lid of her cup.
“You’re good,” Dina smiles, placing a hand on Ellie’s to still the movement. Fuck, her hands are cold.
“What, uh, what do you do?” Ellie asks, and after a moment of Dina looking at her fondly, her blush deepens to a cherry red. “Fuck, I mean, like, outside of here?” she asks, wincing. “Not that- not that you’d need to do anything outside of this-”
“Freckles, you need to breathe,” Dina laughs, her thumb rubbing Ellie’s hand absently. “I’m studying at the moment, doing a Bachelors of Engineering but my major is electrical engineering, so I do a lot of stuff on digital logic and programming.”
Ellie nods along, eyes wide, and her gaze makes Dina feel slightly nervous.
“I’m in my honours year now so I get to look at really fun stuff like model based software engineering, and digital signal processing,” Dina shrugs, standing up properly and rubbing the back of her neck, she knows she’s babbling and cannot seem to stop. “Oh, and like, I’ve picked up a bioelectronics class which talks about the application of electronics in physiological monitoring, and biosensors, and electrical stimulation, and medical imaging…” Dina’s voice trails off, suddenly very conscious of how much she’s said.
“That’s,” Ellie laughs, slightly breathless. “That’s really cool. You sound like you really enjoy it, that’s nice.”
“Yeah,” Dina says lamely, and she can almost viscerally feel the blush making its way up her neck.
“You sound really fucking smart,” Ellie says. And like a total fucking loser, Dina thinks.
“Dina?” Jesse calls from behind her. When Dina doesn’t reply, he adds, “Dude, there’s orders to make, can you help me or what?”
“S-sorry, I should get to that,” Dina says awkwardly.
Ellie nods, thanking her again quietly for the coffee, and leaves. Why couldn’t you have interrupted me earlier? Fuck.
--
Jesse doesn’t bring it up again until later that day, but when he does Dina wants the ground to swallow her up.
“So that girl, huh?” He asks, nudging her as she cleans the coffee machine.
“What girl?”
“Oh, okay, that’s how you wanna play it, huh?” Jesse laughs, leaning back against the counter, and tossing a handtowel absently as he watches her.
“She’s cute, okay?” Dina huffs. “Can you fault me?”
“Nah, you gotta shoot your shot, right?”
“She said more words to me today than she has in the month she’s been coming in,” Dina grumbles. “And I fucking talked her ear off about uni, fuck.”
“Don’t stress about it,” Jesse says, patting her shoulder reassuring. “Who doesn’t love a smart girl?”
“Ugh.”