Work Text:
Carlos is already behind the counter ten minutes before his shift is meant to start. He checks the clock on the opposite wall as he ties his apron around his waist with a tight knot. Michelle laughs at him when she enters through the doors and sees Carlos perched on the countertop, fingers tapping on the surface impatiently.
“Eager, are we?” she greets him as she saunters across the coffee shop and crosses the space between them to punch him lightly on the shoulder. “I have never seen anyone more willing to start a work shift than you.”
“Shut up,” he mumbles, eyes trained to the door the moment the bell rings, signalling the entrance of a customer. There’s defeat etched in his features when a woman he doesn’t recognize steps into the room. “You know I just love working here.”
“Or you love ogling a certain customer who tends to show up around,” Michelle looks at the clock and then at the door that's already opening, “this exact time every day.”
Carlos blushes furiously at his friendʼs words but he canʼt help following the customer who has now entered with a longing gaze. There’s something magical in the way the man moves around the space as though he owns it, green eyes — almost translucent — taking everything in until they land on Carlos. He gulps, forcing his heart to slow its frantic beating, steering himself for what’s to come.
Carlos has been crushing hard on this particular customer — muscular arms and strong hands and bottomless eyes and a smile to die for — ever since the first moment he set foot into Celery and Bubble, the vegan-friendly coffee shop just around the corner from campus where Carlos has found both a job and a family away from home.
And apparently a reason to enjoy his job.
“Welcome to Celery and Bubble,” he greets the man as he approaches the counter. “How can I help you?”
“One mango bobba, large, please,” the man says with a soft smile, one finger poking the glass of the food display next to the collection box. “And one vegan chocolate chip cookie,” he adds. Then, as an afterthought, “Carlos, right?”
Carlos ignores the way his heart seems to want to escape his chest at the way his name sounds in the manʼs voice, the two syllables rolling off his tongue like velvet. “Yes,” he says, stupidly pointing at the tag clasped over the string of his apron. “That’s what the nametag says.”
Michelle snickers behind him, already working on cleaning up a part of the worktop that Carlos has made sure was pristine while he waited for his shift to start.
“I, uh, I need a name,” Carlos stammers as he jots down the price into the machine. “For, ehm, for your order.”
The other man grins widely. There’s a cockiness in his voice as he says smoothly, “I thought you wouldʼve known it by now, with all the time I spend around here.”
And Carlos really should — the man always comes in at the same time and crowds a table by the corner nearest to the counter, facing it instead of the door, and he orders at least three different bobba teas during the four hours and fifteen minutes he tends to spend inside the café.
It isn’t as though Carlos stalks him or anything —the man just happens to enjoy spending his free time and his money in the place where Carlos works, that's all.
And that's exactly Carlosʼ problem. This man usually comes alone and he gives Carlos a name — Ty — but whenever he comes with some friends it automatically changes to TK, or even Strand, which Carlos thinks might be his last name. So, as much as Carlos would love to know the manʼs name, it’s nearly impossible for him to recognize whatʼs the true name and whatʼs a nickname.
He doesn’t know what possesses him to retaliate in what he hopes it's a seductive tone, “I would love to remember your name since you’ve been in here everyday for the past three months.” The man arches an eyebrow at him, but he doesn’t seem bothered by Carlosʼ boldness, so he keeps on. “It’s the end of the semester, holidays are coming up, and I think you’ve given me a different name every time youʼve ordered.”
The man lulls his head back and lets out a hearty laugh. “I guess you're right, Carlos,” he smiles. Carlos feels his insides melting at the way his name sounds in the manʼs voice. “I have a really weird combination of names, so I usually go by my nickname. I don't want my friends to find out and make fun of me.”
Carlos has almost forgotten about the manʼs order, so lost in those green eyes that are searching his soul. Michelle makes a loud noise to catch their attention and drops two recycled plastic cups next to Carlosʼ elbow. “Your order,” she gestures toward the pale yellow beverage. “And this is yours, Carlos. I thought you may want to take your break now.” It sounds so much like an order that Carlos bites his lip to stop himself from retaliating that heʼs just started his shift.
Carlos stands awkwardly across the counter, the man staring at him with something akin to hope in his green, green eyes. “Would you, uhm, mind coming over?” he finally settles to say, after a few attempts at speaking that come out strangled. “I bet it's nice to sit down for a while, and I could use the company.”
He doesn’t wait for Carlos to reply; he turns around and ambles to his usual table, leaving Carlos agape in his wake. He chances a look at Michelle, who shoos him with a clear movement of her hand so that he follows the man whose name he has yet to learn.
So he does.
Carlos sits on a chair in front of the man, letting out a small sigh. He hasnʼt been working for long today, but he's been putting up decorations at his motherʼs house earlier — heʼs even carried the tree those four flights of stairs on his own. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until heʼs sitting at that table with a hot almond coffee warming his fingers.
“My friends know me as TK,” the man starts, not even looking up from his bobba tea. “That’s the name I usually give when we all come together.”
“You also gave me Ty once,” Carlos remembers, trying to sound casual and not at all like heʼs been relishing in that name ever since he first heard it.
“That’s part of my real name,” TK informs him. “I don’t give it fully to anyone. I really don't like it.”
“It’s fine.” Carlos takes a sip of his coffee, eyes still trained to TK. “I don’t know what's gotten into me. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Well, it felt a little bit like I was stalking you, knowing your name and staying here for hours trying to muster up the courage to ask you out,” TK says almost without breathing. Carlos stares at him, mouth hanging as the words sink in.
“You—” He needs to stop, catch his breath because suddenly there’s no oxygen left in the room. “You wanted to ask me out?”
“Why else would I walk all the way here when my dorm is on the other side of campus?” TK tries to laugh it off, but there’s red creeping up his neck, betraying his external appearance of being secure. His left hand rests on top of the table, fingers spread.
Carlos thinks he could jump TKʼs bones right here and right now — he hasnʼt seen anyone as sexy as TK is in this moment, blushing as he opens his heart, which happens to want the same as Carlosʼ.
“I didn't know you lived far from here.” Carlos could kick himself in the shins. Heʼs certainly not helping his case.
“Do you live in the campus?” TK tries for small chitchat, fidgeting nervously in his chair. “I haven't seen you around.”
“I live off campus with Michelleʼs sister Iris,” Carlos explains. “And her boyfriend of the week,” he rushes to add when he sees how TKʼs face falls.
TK visibly relaxes, and he dares to inch a finger closer to the center of the table.
“How about we start over?” Carlos offers. “My name is Carlos Reyes. Iʼm majoring in Literature, with a minor in Hispanic Languages.”
He stretches one hand, stopping his movement right over TKʼs left hand on the table. Carlos feels jittery as he waits, and waits — and waits.
TK bites down his lower lip, a grin already blooming there, before he lifts his own hand and grabs Carlosʼ in a shake that's both firm and gentle — a promise of whatʼs to come.
“TK Strand,” he introduces himself. “Real nameʼs Tyler Kennedy, but I will kill you if you tell anyone. Iʼm on my way to become a lawyer, but all I have ever wanted was to be a firefighter like my father.”
Carlos wants to tell TK that heʼs honored to be trusted with the knowledge of his full name, that he thinks Law Studies are hard and tedious, that he's always wanted to be a cop like his own father but that his mother convinced him it was better to go to college before making any life-altering decision.
He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he remains clutching TKʼs hand, fingers itching to get intertwined, lost in a sea of green.
It's not a surprise when, twenty minutes later and a whole coffee cup gone cold — such is the interest he has in what TK has to tell, and that is TKʼs level of focus on Carlos as well that he keeps pointing out small details heʼs picked up from his visits to the coffee shop — Michelle shows up with a tray to take off the used cups and startles them both.
“Hate to be the Grinch, but you should come back to work, Carlos. It’s beginning to get busy,” she announces almost apologetically.
Carlos shakes his head. He already has TKʼs number saved in his phone, and heʼs actually on the clock. He starts standing up, TK following suit, when Michelle giggles. “What,” he deadpans.
“Mistletoe,” she says between laughs, pointing at the ceiling. Sure enough, when Carlos looks up, there’s a bit of mistletoe hanging off the lamp.
“How on Earth have you managed to get it so high?”
“I don’t think that matters,” TK whispers. He’s taken a spot next to Carlos, both on their feet, arms touching slightly. “It’s fate.”
Carlos is drowning, heʼs suffocating in green, and he doesn’t have any desire to be rescued. He wishes he could burn forever in that fire.
“If it's fate…” he mutters, turning to TK at the same time as TK is tugging at his sleeve.
When they meet in the middle for their first kiss, it isn’t the fireworks Carlos would have expected, but it's even better — it's like coming home.
Carlos hopes to keep feeling like this for a long, long time.
Maybe it's the mistletoe, or maybe it's the season — his wish is granted.