Chapter Text
The bell on the door to Miss Retro’s Throwback Diner sang its cheerful song as Miss Holloway looked up from wiping down the counter. It was a Tuesday evening, characteristically slow, and the only patrons in the diner were a man in a camel-colored trench coat and a lovely-seeming woman sitting across from him, dressed in a long, floral dress that swept her ankles. They seemed to be engaged in some sort of disagreement that Miss Holloway had no desire to know the specifics of. Her attention was now focused on the man that had meandered inside and was taking in the 80s memorabilia that covered every inch of the place.
“Hiya, Duke,” she said, the smile that crept to her face could, she supposed, have been taken for her customer-service charm, and not because the bell marked the entrance of the person she most wanted to see.
“Heya, Darlin’,” he said with that Southern twang of his. He took a seat at the bar counter and she pulled a piece of cherry pie out of the rotating display and set it down in front of him.
“I’ve been saving it just for you,” she said.
“Really?” Duke’s eyebrows shot up.
“No.” Miss Holloway snickered and placed a fork on the plate and pushed it towards him. “I just happened to have one piece left. You’re not that special.”
She had, in fact, been saving it for him, but she didn’t say that aloud. They were friends now. Solid friends. Duke came into the diner almost every day now, and they’d talk for hours and hours, or simply sit in silence and enjoy the jukebox crooning old tunes while they shared a slice of pie. That did a lot to solidify a friendship, Holloway supposed. She didn’t dare let her thoughts stray to anything beyond friendship.
“Well, thank you,” Duke said, sliding into his seat at the counter. He took up the fork and slid the pie into his mouth, making a sound of contentment as it crossed his lips.
“You never fail to impress me with this cherry pie,” he said. “I swear you’ve got some type of magic in that kitchen of yours.”
Miss Holloway stopped. Magic. She hadn’t told him about the magic. Not this time around, anyway. The smile faded from her face as thoughts frantically ran through her head. Did he know ?
Then, she saw the look on his face, and mentally slapped herself. He was teasing. Of course he was teasing. The dimples in his cheeks were prominent when he smiled like that. She didn't mean to notice, and she definitely didn't mean to like looking at them as much as she did.
“No, no. No magic in that pie,” she said quickly. She didn’t know how to explain her powers. She didn’t know what he’d say. Usually, when she had this conversation, she was a lot more prepared than this. She changed the subject. “So, how was your day?”
“Oh, it was alright,” Duke said, studying her face. His head tilted a little, those brown eyes of his holding concern. “You all right? You got all pale and wide-eyed for a second, there. Like you'd seen a ghost.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, just got a little dizzy for a second,” Holloway’s smile returned to her face.
A silence settled between them, but not an uncomfortable one. Holloway hummed softly to herself and began to wipe down the counter as the music played from the jukebox and the sky slowly turned orange, bathing the counter in a soft light.
Duke glanced over at the couple, a forkful of pie halfway to his mouth, forgotten for the moment. That was another little quirk he had. If something caught his attention or concern, he'd forget whatever task was at hand, such as eating or other basic facets of taking care of himself.
The matter that had caught his attention this time was the couple still bent over the table, talking in heated voices. “You know what they’re talking about? They’ve been like that for a while.”
His query was answered before Holloway could even open her mouth.
“Oh, I’m outta here!” The man’s voice echoed through the diner, rattling the toys and records in glass display cases. Something in his voice had changed. The table had two bottles of wine between them. Every time Holloway looked over at the pair, the man in the trench coat had been nursing a glass as they talked. Now, he dramatically slammed his glass on the table, spilling wine all over the table. Some of the liquid splashed into the lovely dress of Mrs. Trench Coat, who let out a noise of disgust at her partner’s behavior.
“Barry, sit down,” she was tense in her seat, looking over at Duke and Holloway by the counter. She could see them watching, and the pair quickly looked away. Holloway could see Duke’s cheeks redden at being caught staring.
“If you’re not gonna support me, Helen, I’m gonna go, I’m in a hurry!” He got up from the table and began to stagger towards the door. His wineglass was still in his hand, and Duke rose from the bar, setting down his pie fork, which he'd been holding all this time. His brow was furrowed in anger.
“Excuse me, you can’t leave with that!” He was across the diner in a few strides, blocking the man’s path. Helen, the wife, it seemed, was sitting there mortified.
“Duke-” Holloway tried to call after him. She could afford to lose a wineglass, but the man had already gotten right in Duke’s face and was gesturing wildly with the liquid, which was sloshing dangerously close to Duke’s favorite jacket, and the way that this man, in his drunken haze, was glaring at Duke made her want to punch him.
“Get outta my way,” he slurred. “I’m in a-”
Before she even thought about what she was doing, Barry was moving the wineglass away from Duke, as far as he could get it. It sloshed on the floor, staining Miss Holloway’s tiles but nothing else, the wineglass falling from his hand.
“I think you’ve had a little too much to drink, Barry.” Her voice echoed through the diner, through the jukebox, through Barry Swift’s mind. “Why don’t you go back over and sit on down. Drink some water, sober up a little.” She lifted her head a little, all her attention focused on Barry.
Barry’s head jerked back toward the table. His eyes were wide with shock and fear as he, in spite of himself, marched back over to the table, standing surprisingly straight for someone so drunk, and plopped heavily into his seat, his wife putting her head in her hands as he sat back down.
Holloway supposed she should probably worry more about the two patrons in her diner, but all she could focus on was the look on Duke’s face as his eyes met hers.
“Holly,” he said, his eyes wide as pie plates. He took her in with his eyes as if he was seeing her for the very first time. “What-”
“Not now, Duke,” Holloway said firmly, shaking her head and watching the couple get up from the table, glaring at each other as the wife steadied her husband by taking his arm. “Not now.”
It wasn’t long until Duke and Holloway were alone in the diner, the crackle of the neon sign the only sound as Miss Holloway grabbed a mop and dragged it around the bar, muttering to herself in her irritation. She was painfully aware of Duke, standing at the kitchen counter, his eyes following her every step.
“I oughta stop serving alcohol at this place,” she said, more to herself than to him. The exasperation came through with a growl. “I swear to God, every time this happens, I swear I say to myself, ‘you gotta stop with the beer and the wine, Holloway, it only ends in disaster,’ and then I never do it! This time, mark my words. No more alcohol at Miss Retro’s Throwback Diner!”
“Holloway,” Duke said after a moment of silence. “Are we gonna talk about this? Because I think we should talk about this.”
“Talk about what, Duke?” she replied shortly. It was rhetorical. She knew what this was about.
“W-what you just did.” Duke's wild gestures were directed vaguely toward the door when Holloway glanced over at him. He tended to talk with his hands when he got flustered.
“What, did you want that wine to wreck your jacket? Those stains are no joke.” Holloway glanced over at him, raising an eyebrow as she mopped up the last of the wine stain, putting the mop back in the bucket and rolling it back towards the counter. “It’d be a shame. I know you like it.”
“Was it magic?” He blurted out, and Holloway looked over at him.
At her look, he lowered his voice as if his volume was the problem, and not simply because she didn’t know how to answer. “What you did...was it... magic ?”
“What’re you gonna do if I say yes?” Holloway said, moving around him to go clear the table of the plates, glasses and bottle of wine left behind by the arguing couple. “Run? Yell for help? Call the cops to save you from the witch?” She was only half-joking. It had happened before, people she thought cared about her. As soon as she shared this part of herself with them, they’d recoil, turn their backs and never think of her again.
But Duke wasn’t like the others. Of course, he wasn’t.
“I’m not going to run,” Duke said. His voice sounded closer than it had been before, and Holloway turned to find him standing a few feet away, somehow isolated from anything else in the restaurant. When Holloway finally met those soft brown eyes, they were full of nothing but earnestness. “I...had wondered before. If you knew something about the town, all the strange things that happen. I guess...that answer’s yes?”
“Yes,” Holloway agreed. She wrung her hands. “Listen, Duke, I know you probably have a million questions. I get it, but-”
“You don’t want to talk about it?” Duke put up his hands. “I won’t ask you.”
Holloway stopped, staring. Prior attempts at this had not gone this way. “You’re not curious? Not even a little?”
Duke snorted, lowering his hands, before holding one out for the plate Holloway was holding. “You kiddin’? I’m dying to know. I’ve got half a million questions I wanna ask you, but if you don’t want to tell me tonight, I’m not gonna push it. I don’t want to be the next person you use your magic on.”
“Careful, or I just might.” A small smile tugged at Holloway’s lips as she handed him the plates, but it quickly faded when she looked away. She was trying to tease him, but she found herself barely able to joke about it without wanting to scream. Never. Ever. I’d never do that. Not to you. Never to you. "Thanks for takin' those."
"'Course," Duke said. "You want 'em here? In the window?" He jutted his elbow towards the window where she'd slide out plates of food from the kitchen. She was pleased he'd remembered the very strict instructions that under no circumstances was he allowed to enter her kitchen.
"Perfect," Holloway said with a nod as she began to clear the wine bottles and silverware from Barry and Helen's table. She carried them back behind the counter, and very pointedly didn't look at the back of him as he set the plates delicately on the windowsill. He was poignantly gentle with his movements for someone so strong. Barely looking, he took the forks and knives from her and set them with the plates. His piece of pie was still half-eaten, sitting in front of his usual chair.
"How else can I help?" Duke asked, turning to look down at her. He was almost a foot taller than her, and while Miss Holloway didn't usually find superficial things like height attractive, it suited Duke quite nicely. That and his eagerness to always help, his kind eyes and smile, his soft-spoken tone with a dash of southern drawl that hinted at his Texas roots. Holloway suddenly became acutely aware that they were maybe three inches apart and cleared her throat.
"You can help me by finishing up that piece of pie you left in order to fight a drunkard," she said, taking a step back. "Go on, eat."
"I wasn't going to fight him, but he was leaving without paying!" Duke protested. Nevertheless, he obeyed her instructions. No magic necessary. "Now, that ain't right! But, ah, you had it under control. Not that I...knew that, at the time-"
"It was very heroic," Holloway said, rolling her eyes and smiling again, if only to show Duke her sarcastic tone was meant as a tease. She tended to smile a lot when he was around. That was a different, pleasant feeling. "Don't know what I would've done without you."
She said it like it was sarcasm, a joke of the same caliber she always threw at him, but the best jokes often had an element of truth to them, didn't they? Jokes and lies.
Holloway started to refill the salt and pepper shakers while Duke ate. If she was moving around the restaurant, he'd get up and help. It would've been a sweet gesture, but Holloway really just wanted the man to eat. And she wanted to watch him eat. She liked the way he did it, not quickly, he wasn't usually a fast eater if you could get him calm enough to actually sit and have a meal. He savored the food, tasting each bite to the fullest even if it was something he'd had a million times before.
"So, you're takin' this magic thing awfully well," she remarked after a few minutes of silence.
"Eh," Duke said with a shrug. A smile flicked across his face when he looked up at her. There were those dimples again. "Hatchetfield's weird. It's all weird. Plus, thinking about it, the way you're able to help all those kids in ways I never could...it just makes sense. You're different than everyone else, you know. Not that it's a bad thing, that's not what I mean-"
"I know what you mean." Miss Holloway hoped that she wasn't as red in the face as she felt. "You help the kids in ways I never could. S'why we make a good team," she replied.
"We do make a good team."
When Holloway looked up, Duke was looking at her, almost drinking her in with his deep brown eyes. Brown met blue, and she could almost hear what he was thinking, what he was asking. She couldn't read minds, not exactly, but Duke wasn't hard to read. Their eyes met for the briefest of moments before she looked away, but it felt like a thousand years. It felt like longer than Holloway had been alive, that she looked into those eyes, and she wondered what he could see in hers. She wondered if it was the silent apology that they could never have what he wanted, no matter how many times their eyes should meet. Better not to think about how she wanted it, too.
“You oughta get home, Duke,” she said, unfreezing the moment and turning away. She hastily made her way around the counter to start collecting silverware.
“You sure you don’t want my help cleaning up? I’m happy to stay.” Duke was doing a poor job hiding the disappointment in his voice, and Holloway almost wanted to apologize, explain to him, beg him to just move on and let her go because no way in hell could they ever be together. That nothing had worked out in the five hundred or so years she’d been alive. But she couldn’t, it was futile.
“No, no, I got it,” Holloway promised. “You go on home. It’s gettin’ late, and I think you’ll have to fear the wrath of that cat of yours more than any spell I could conjure up if she doesn’t get some dinner soon."
Duke chuckled a bit at the mention of his cat. Holloway had never met the thing, but she'd heard plenty of stories about the little menace and the messes she got into. "You're...probably right about that." The tension had ebbed a bit from the air. They were back to their regular light banter, the banter of friends. Just friends, and nothing more.
"I’ll see you soon, I hope?” She tried not to sound too hopeful at that. Even though she was absolutely too hopeful. “I need someone sane around this place.”
“You will,” Duke promised, turning to go. He was headed for the door, fishing his car keys out of his pocket. Then, he stopped, and he turned. A smile was tugging at his lips. “One question.”
“Yes?”
“Was I right?” He glanced back at the pie plate that was still sitting on the counter. “About the pie? Is it magic?”
“Oh, I’ll never tell,” Holloway said, raising her eyebrows at him. “You know it’s rude to ask a chef her secrets.”
“Right,” Duke said, putting his hands up, but he was trying not to laugh, which made her struggle not to laugh. Damn him . “Sorry.” He took two steps backward, pushing the door open while he was still looking at her. “Goodnight, Miss Holloway.”
“Goodnight,” Holloway called after him. She picked up his plate and set it back on the window. She’d clean up in the morning.
She leaned against the counter and studied the fork that Duke had been using for a minute before she turned and went into the back kitchen.
It should’ve been a bad day, a drunken patron that she had to soothe with her magic should’ve soured her mood. She could huff about it, go home and sleep it off. But Duke had to be the hero, stand up for her and make her laugh and take this news about her magic in stride, and now she had some unexplainable, insatiable urge to make another cherry pie.