Chapter Text
Coby stared up at the clock, willing the second hand to move faster. His shift ended at eight, then he’d need to clean up and lock up. Technically, that meant another hour and twenty minutes stuck here hoping someone would step through the front door and break the boredom by ordering a coffee. But practically, he figured he could clean up now, lock up when he was done, and not miss a single customer.
This job had never been a show-stopper, but it used to keep him busy enough, and he loved meeting new people, so it had been a great fit for a while. And then they’d torn up the old park two blocks down and turned it into a shopping center with a parking garage and three stories of retailers and restaurants, including two new coffee places. Adding insult to injury, the new construction had closed off that end of this street, making getting back here to Coffee Cravings a chore in and of itself.
The foot traffic dwindled from a healthy flow to a meager stream, to a trickle, and now, hours would pass with Coby stuck alone in this maddening emptiness. Just him, the jazz music from the speakers, and the seven chipped and fading tables with their battered but repainted chairs.
He sat on the stool behind the counter, folded his arms on the countertop, and dropped his head forward into them. The heavy scent of coffee fought with the acrid smell of the exhaust from an idling delivery truck picking up something from the warehouse across the street.
The warehouse was perhaps the only thing on this block or the next two doing “well.” A furniture shop in the new plaza rented space in there for extra inventory, and trucks were forever going back and forth full of sofas and recliners and tables.
Aside from them and this coffee shop, a few businesses clung to life. A dry cleaner down on the corner looked the same as ever, but Coby thought they owned that whole building and made most of their money renting the upper four floors. There was a butcher shop that seemed worse off than Coffee Cravings -- Coby only ever saw the owner (and lately, the owner’s son) working in there, and it was only open from six in the morning to about three in the afternoon. A new-agey yoga studio right next to the new “end” of the road had benefited somewhat from being close enough to be considered part of the pseudo-mall instead of the old shopping district.
But more or less everything else had atrophied and eventually died.
Coby just wanted to go home. It wasn’t just the boredom, though that certainly didn’t help. It was more that he knew this coffee house had turned into a money pit for Garp. The man laughed about it, but between supplies, rent, energy and paying Coby and Bogard for a full day’s work every day, the cost had to be incredible. Coby felt guilty sitting here doing nothing.
Guilty enough that he wished something would change. He could almost imagine the sound of the bell at the front door chiming, the sound of footsteps crossing the tile floor, the voice of a new customer asking…
“Uh … are you OK?”
Coby jolted upright, shocked to find a tall man with reddish hair and a concerned expression peering down at him. Scrambling off the stool, Coby said, “Hi! Sorry. Welcome to Coffee Cravings! What can I get you?”
The customer did not look entirely convinced that Coby was OK, but stepped back and surveyed the menu. “Let me have … a large dark-roast coffee and a pumpkin spice muffin.”
“Oh, those are great,” Coby said as he hurried to fill the order. “The person on early shift makes them fresh every morning, and I don’t know what his secret is, but they come out perfect.”
The customer glanced at Coby and gave an awkward little nod of acknowledgement for this story, then began digging through his wallet. Coby felt the silence like a reprimand and rushed to get the coffee ready. This guy just wanted to run in and grab a cup of coffee, why would he want to know the muffin’s life story?
He snapped the lid on the coffee cup and expertly slipped a muffin into a paper bag with the tongs, then hurried back to the register.
“Here’s your order …. Uh …” Coby flushed, realizing he’d entirely neglected to ask the man’s name. Sure, the point was to have a name to attach to the order when things were busy, and that didn’t matter if there was only one person in the store, but still.
“Drake,” the guy said, taking the coffee cup and pastry bag from him and handing a handful of one-dollar bills over. “Keep the change, Coby.”
Luckily, he turned away too quickly to see Coby stare at him, mouth agape. It took a couple seconds for him to make sense of the moment.
You’re wearing a nametag, idiot. Drake just read it. Have you been alone in this store so long you don’t even remember something that basic?
To Coby’s surprise and embarrassment, Drake didn’t head out. Instead he took a seat at the table in the front corner furthest from the door and started to eat. Coby brushed away the few crumbs from bagging the muffin and then wiped down the coffee machine, even though not a drop had spilled. After that, he began sweeping behind the counter. But as he worked, he kept glancing over at the customer.
Hadn’t he just been wishing for a customer? And now that he got one, he let one little mix-up throw him entirely off his game?
So in twenty minutes, when the man had finished his food and headed for the door, Coby forced himself to call over, “Have a nice day, Drake! And I hope to see you again.”
The uncomfortable look Drake shot back at him made Coby feel embarrassed once more.
“Sure,” Drake said before leaving.
Coby felt certain, as the guy walked away down the street, that he’d never see that customer again.
Imagine his surprise when the next day, about an hour before closing, the door chimed again, and the same reddish-haired man stepped through the door.
Today had been more exciting, which was a kind way of saying a whopping twelve people had stopped in for coffee and/or baked goods. So Coby was in less of a fog this time, and looked up as soon as the door chimed.
“Hello again,” Coby said. Drake raised a hand in greeting and surveyed the menu for a while before ordering the same thing as the day before. Trying to erase some of the awkwardness from the day before, Coby chatted as he worked. “We don’t get a lot of traffic down this way anymore. What brought you here?”
“Just moved in,” Drake said. He had his phone out, checking something on the small screen. “I like the quiet.”
“It’s definitely a quiet neighborhood,” Coby agreed. “I’ve been here for two years now, and it definitely doesn’t feel like the parts of the city I used to live in. People are pretty friendly too.”
“Really.” Drake didn’t sound like he believed that at all.
Fighting down the urge to defend his neighborhood against the apathy of this near-stranger, Coby brought the order over and handed it to Drake. “What led you to move here?” he asked as the man paid for his purchase.
"Had some friends in the area,” he said. “Some of the stuff I heard about it made me want to check it out.”
“But not the neighborliness?” Coby asked, curious.
Drake took a moment to slip his wallet back into the butt pocket of his jeans. One hand closed around the coffee cup, two fingers capturing the top of the pastry bag deftly. But he stood there another couple seconds, apparently lost in thought.
Coby was just about to ask him something else just to break the silence when Drake finally answered, “Not the neighborliness, no.”
Then, as though realizing just how rude that might sound, he looked up anxiously at Coby and said, “Well, it’s a bit friendlier than I expected. This place, at least.”
Drake’s sudden realization that he might have given offense was so relatable (and he had to admit, so cute) that Coby grinned in return. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. I hope I keep seeing you around.”
“Yeah,” Drake replied, seeming a little more enthusiastic about it than he had yesterday.
He went to the same table to eat, Coby worked on the cleaning, and things went on.
Over the next few weeks, Drake stopped in almost every day, at about the same time. Slowly they went from making small talk at the counter when Drake purchased to actual conversations the whole time Drake was in the store.
He turned out to be a fascinating guy. He’d apparently been in the police academy, until something made him decide it wasn’t for him (“Bureaucracy is a knife,” he’d said cryptically when Coby asked him about it) and moved on to what he called “a sampler of employment opportunities.” He was living in one of the run-down buildings two blocks down. Coby hadn’t realized any of them had apartments, but based on the way Drake talked about it, maybe it didn’t.
Coby, for his part, shared a bit about his life as well -- he talked about the store’s owner, who’d helped him out when he was younger (“You owe him?” Drake asked. “It’s more like… I want to prove myself to him,” Coby replied) and his roommate, who he barely saw anymore. (“He starts work around when I get out of here. We’re best friends, but it feels like I only see him long enough to say hello anymore.”)
Drake had mentioned the names of a couple of the friends who recommended he move here, but Coby unfortunately didn’t recognize two of them. The third had come into the coffee shop now and again, and Coby remembered him as an angry, quick-tempered person.
“He still around here?” Coby asked.
“No, not anymore,” Drake said.
Coby found himself thinking about the new stranger from time to time after the first week. His initial impression of the man had been as one of those aloof guys who fully separates their social life from every business transaction. But the more Coby got to know him, the less that fit. He could see the way Drake came alive in their discussions much the way Coby himself did. He clearly liked being social -- was even adorably awkward at it sometimes.
Then he’d thought for a while Drake might be a gym rat, since he looked positively jacked under the tight t-shirts he wore under his fall jacket. But in Coby’s experience, those folks loved the gym almost like a person, and it would come up in conversation pretty quickly. Drake never really talked about fitness. Maybe he was one of those guys who’s friends with a gym rat, and goes a lot because of their friend but wasn’t into it. But then he decided, it didn’t really matter, unless Coby decided to start hitting the gym formally and wanted pointers.
Whatever the case, Drake didn’t talk in too much detail about what he was doing with his time, nor what he did for work, and would clam up notably fast if Coby asked, so he learned to steer clear of those danger zones. They talked about the local baseball team (both men were casual fans) and the soullessness of the new shopping center (“feels like they took the face off an old Main Street and are wearing it as a disguise,” Drake said, which Coby couldn’t agree with more).
Overall, it was nice to have someone to talk to. The other people who came into the shop tended to pick up their food and leave again, heading to work or back from lunch or home to see the family. Having someone to talk to almost felt foreign, but Coby welcomed the feeling. He hadn’t really realized just how much he missed somewhat extended human conversation until the last couple months had almost wholly deprived him of it.
Plus, Drake was just a good guy. He tried to put on a gruff act, but there were so many things that you could get him talking about and his eyes would light up like a child seeing an everyday miracle for the first time. He loved to talk sailing, or paleontology, or a limited sort of politics. Not specific laws or people, but the generalities. What was a government supposed to do for its people? What were those people supposed to do in return?
Coby hadn’t really thought about these things in a concrete way before, but in talking to Drake he found his own opinions being drawn to the forefront as well. And better yet, he never felt like Drake would judge him if they disagreed on some of these things. Because they agreed on the big things.
All in all, Coby thought, he might not mind making friends with this customer, if things worked out.
Heck, he might need that.
Nearly a month after their first meeting, Drake came into the shop later than usual -- well after seven, nearly at closing time. He ordered the usual, but he kept glancing out the plate glass front window.
“Got a busy day?” Coby asked as he handed the usual coffee over.
Drake shook his head as he took the drink. “No. No, it’s nothing, it … no.”
Coby quirked an eyebrow, but when Drake didn’t say anything more, he let it go. It wasn’t any of his business, after all. Still, he kept one eye on the man at the corner table while he began the nightly cleanup ritual. Instead of messing around on his phone like usual, Drake pulled a couple well-worn papers out of his coat pocket and smoothed them out on the table.
Coby wasn’t trying to peek. He wasn’t. But it would have been hard to miss the paper closer to him. Specifically, how it was covered in cut out letters like an old-school ransom note. Drake frowned down at it, smoothing it out between his hands, then looking more closely at the other paper, which looked a bit more like a regular letter.
Without consciously thinking about it, Coby kept wiping down the counter. His eyes and attention were on those papers. What kind of weird friends did Drake have that they’d send a weird letter like that?
As he watched, Drake looked at the other letter, then turned it by quarters, checking the two papers against each other with each partial rotation. Whatever that was meant to accomplish, it apparently failed.
As Coby finished up cleaning behind the counter, he kept one eye on the scene. He was used to seeing a calm, even cold and distant Drake -- one who always seemed in control of the scene and himself. To watch him stare down these two papers with an increasingly frustrated expression and posture felt weird.
Weird enough that even as the clock crept past closing time, Coby kept going over the same chores, trying to give the man just a little more time. It might be weird -- they weren’t close. But if Drake was struggling with whatever that was, Coby wanted to give him the space to work it out here.
But still … when you only made a few dozen meals on a good day, there wasn’t all that much to clean up. So after a while, Coby had finished up everything behind the counter and in the back twice, and gingerly stepped out into the dining area with his broom.
At first, the rhythmic sweeping sound didn’t seem to even register with the other man. Coby tried to concentrate on his work, meticulously going over every inch of the tile everywhere else. But eventually, he needed to get closer and closer to the lone occupied table.
He was practically right next to Drake before the other man looked up, seeming startled to see Coby there. “Oh!” he said, eyes scanning the room for a nonexistent clock before checking his phone. “Ah! Sorry, I didn’t realize it got so late.” One hand hurriedly grabbed both of the papers he’d been looking at, wadding them both into his grasp and out of Coby’s sight. He stood up a little too fast, knocking the chair back across the floor with a clatter.
Coby shook his head. “No trouble, I have plenty of cleaning up to do. If you need to stay…”
The offer caught Drake off guard. He met Coby’s eyes for maybe the first time since they’d met -- most of the time, either he was looking at his phone when they talked or Coby was concentrating on his work. They were lighter than Coby had thought before.
“It’s nothing,” he said, his fingers tightening further around the papers. “Just some stuff I found and was trying to figure out.”
It hadn’t looked like he was figuring it out so much as stressing himself out. “Can I help?” Coby asked, giving the man a hopeful smile. He just didn’t like seeing the guy look so anxious over something so minor. If figuring those papers out would help him cheer up again, he wanted to do it.
Still, he felt sure Drake was going to say no. Coby knew the hesitation that led to someone who strove to be self-sufficient denying they needed any help. And maybe he didn’t. Coby knew how sometimes, something simple and solvable could still get you down until you were ready to face it.
But to his surprise, Drake searched his expression for … something. Then he sighed and sat heavily back down in the chair. “Yeah, OK.”
Coby leaned the broom against the front window and took the chair across the table as Drake slowly uncurled his fingers and smoothed out the papers. “It’s a puzzle sorta thing,” he said, turning the two pages to face Coby.
The barista scanned both pages. His eyes were drawn almost magnetically to the ransom-note-style one first.
Before we move on
To the next act have
A moment to hold your
Memories of friends closer
Even as their broken
Eyes follow you now
And until you join them.
Coby blinked at it. That was … unsettling. The words were bad enough, but the jagged, uneven letters, each not cut but torn raggedly from their source material, added an extra air of malevolence. Coby read it over twice, then looked up at Drake.
He was staring pensively down at the papers, expression drawn and somehow vulnerable. There was a world of pent-up emotion in that stare, and Coby wondered how long he had been struggling with this “puzzle.”
Then Drake looked up, caught Coby looking, and the pensive look disappeared in a frown. “It’s just a game,” he said, looking away. “I’m just having trouble figuring it out.”
Coby didn’t question that -- at least not out loud -- but that hadn’t been the look of someone who was just struggling with a puzzle. “Whoever made this for you sure spent some time,” Coby said, looking at the other paper.
Drake’s rough treatment of the other paper made reading it a bit difficult. The entire page was covered top to bottom with tiny, cramped handwriting. The writer didn’t have great penmanship and had chosen to write the whole thing in pencil, which smudged and made the entire thing muddy. Most of the letters were fairly uniform, though sometimes, here and there, one letter would grow much larger than the others, as if the writer could barely restrain themself from letting some rage out through the pencil lead.
The content was barely more intelligible than the letters themselves -- a long, rambling screed about expectations and betrayals and the duty of honor. Every once in a while, it veered off into random non sequiturs that almost but not quite felt like clues -- “When the forgotten grow restless, your eyes shall be opened” or “The giants lead the way to the truth” or “guard the treasure of your heart to keep the devil at bay.”
It could have been nap-inducing if it weren’t so horrifying.
“Weird, huh?” Drake asked as Coby finished squinting at the letter and pushed both pages back to the middle of the table.
“Weird’s one word,” Coby said, chancing another look at Drake. Whatever that stress was from before, he’d masterd it, and Drake looked like his normal, fairly relaxed self. “What is this for? Is it from one of those mail-order mystery boxes or something?”
“Something like that.” Drake idly flipped the two pages to face him again. “But I’m not good at things like this. There’s some sort of hint in this -- a message between the two. I just don’t know how to get at it.”
Coby frowned at the papers. “I’d be creeped out with something like this in the house with me,” Coby said.
“Most people would,” Drake agreed. “But I chose this. And it’s pretty important to me to work them out. Even if I’m not really good at this sort of thing.”
Coby considered the two letters again. His eyes kept being drawn to those oversized letters. It was weird that only a few of them were like that. In fact … he counted… twenty.
The giants shall lead the way to truth…
Coby hopped up, startling Drake. “Be right back!” he called over his shoulder before Drake could ask anything. He went into the paper, grabbed a sheet of paper out of the printer, a pen and one of the box cutters they used to use for opening shipments, back when they needed entire cases of things to stock the store.
Returning to the front, he handed the three tools to Drake, who looked at them blankly for a moment before looking back to Coby for some hint of what he was supposed to do.
“The giants!” Coby said, excitedly, pointing at the handwritten page. It took a moment for Drake to grasp what he was saying, so he added, “On that paper. Put circles where the really big letters are…”
“Ah!” Drake dragged the letter over, fit the printer paper over it, then lifted both up to the light. It was a little awkward to get the circles in the right place, since it was hard to see through the printer paper when it was on the table. But eventually, he got them all circled, then used the box cutter to slice out the holes. When they fitted this new paper over the ransom-looking note, it clearly showed a few of the letters. Coby’s eyes skimmed over them. B…E…N…
“Beneath the fires below,” Drake said, leaning back in his chair. “Huh. That worked. Thanks!”
“Will this get you to the next clue?” Coby asked, grabbing the broom again.
Drake stood up as well. “Yeah, I think so,” he said, smiling at Coby for what might have been the first time. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Coby said. “If you get stuck on another one, I’d be happy to help again.”
“I may take you up on that,” Drake said, heading for the door. “Have a good night, Coby!”
“Night,” Coby replied, waving and trying not to dwell on how nice it was to finally see Drake smile.