Work Text:
You always drink your coffee black, even though you hate the way that shit tastes.
You’ve become something of a drifter lately. Lifelessly slinking out of bed in the mornings. Stumbling into your “work clothes” and floating out of your apartment. Managing to sit your ass down in the cold metal chair in that one coffee shop, reading the paper and thoughtfully rubbing your five-o’clock-shadow that pricks and ticks its way towards a caveman’s beard even faster than you can say “shave.” You always ask the girl at the counter for the “Coffee of the Day,” and it’s usually from Colombia or Venezuela or somewhere southern and “exotic,” but you can’t taste the difference between it and the instant shit from the drug store down the street. It all tastes like liquefied dirt.
Burns your tongue and leaves it raw as you plunge into a first sip. Peels back the skin at the top of your mouth and the insides of your cheeks as you clench your eyes shut. Fills your entire mouth with bitterness, leaves your tastebuds scorched, and stains your tongue in sour aftertaste. Claws its way down your throat like no so-called liquid should be allowed to do. All so that you can wake up, be alert, and not want to throw any of your condemnatory co-workers into a dumpster when they tell you, “Nice shoes, Gamzee,” or “Don’t you think it’s time for a haircut?”
You’re sober now. You wish you could forget how many days it’s been. Counting the days is supposed to help, sometimes it does, but often times it just makes your craving for a joint and a drink and a pill (and whatever else it was you were on) even worse. It makes you feel like you’re counting down towards your inevitable re-decline, your great fallback into the life you used to have, instead of counting up towards your greatly improbable healing.
You’re twenty three. You dropped out of college. Being a stoner and a drunk and a hard-drug-enthusiast worked out for you until you were nineteen, but then some bad shit happened in your personal life, and substances were what you used to ignore the problem until it went away.
That never works for anybody. You were too smart to try and trick yourself into believing it did. Regardless, you got too high to function, too poisoned to keep your meals down, and you overdosed a lot, too often. It got so bad and you were so gone that after three years, an intervention was forced.
Now you’re doing better, or so they say. You make money now, legally, by sitting in a grayscale office, making solicitor phone calls from nine to five.
You have two roommates. Karkat and Sollux. You’re pretty sure they hate you since they constantly tell you, “I hate you.” Karkat yells a lot, and Sollux complains a lot, and you remember a day when all three of you were so eager to “get the fuck out of high school,” but now you all secretly wish that you could go back there, to girls and smoking weed and cheating on homework and playing COD instead of studying for finals.
And you don’t talk to each other much. Not like you used to. Sometimes Karkat offers you a beer to take the edge off when you sit down next to him on the couch at night, but then he says, “Shit, sorry man, I forgot,” and you resist the urge to break into the fridge and coat your throat in the entire twenty four pack, just to do it and have a manic laugh.
Now you sit here in the coffee shop with your paper and your cup of straight up black. And you’re still getting used to the hyperawareness of oneself and one’s feelings that comes with sobriety.
You feel pain sometimes. Okay, a lot of the time. You feel isolation. You used to have a lot of friends at some point, but several hospitalizations and blackouts and detoxes later, you don’t know where any of them are and you aren’t even sure they’d want to talk to you, anyway.
You feel like you don’t really give a fuck about “the news.” About “what all’s going on n the world.” About this crime story in the paper about a girl who was abducted, while hiking, and later found bleeding from the cervix and dead in the river. Shit’s motherfucking depressing, man. The people out there are crazy. Humans have this way of doing things to deliberately destroy each other.
They also have this way of doing things to deliberately destroy themselves. You should know.
You miss the sensation of not knowing, though. You miss only caring about when your next trip would be. You miss the convenience of forgetting about responsibility and hardship and confrontation.
So you drift through each day in this cold, repetitive city. Fighting the doubts and the bad memories. Dealing with dark circles under the eyes, and the headaches, and the sore backs and thighs. Trying to lead a “normal” life. Trying to smile even though you’ve forgotten many of the reasons you used to.
And you take another sip of coffee. Close your eyes, feel your brain singe, feel your body tense like the wires of a jumpstarted car. The coffee is good for you. The coffee widens your eyes, makes colors brighter, makes fog dimmer, makes you find the touch with reality that you’re too exhausted to find when you lack the caffeine’s forceful assistance. It’s a temporary push.
The door to the coffee shop opens up ahead. Two bells ring. You glance up over the edge of your wrinkled paper, hand still curled around the hot cardboard cup, on the table.
And there, you see him.
Tavros Nitram. Twenty years old. College student. Warm, brown skin like the good kind of coffee, with the cream and the sugar and the hazelnut and all that. Dark brown hair, overgrown Mohawk. Big round eyes that wander about the room, curious and questioning, careful and perceptive.
He wears a dark blue overcoat today, gray corduroy pants, worker’s boots, and rust colored shirt. He hasn’t changed into his “work apron” yet, and he’s twenty minutes early for his 8 AM shift.
Tavros goes behind the counter and talks to the girl back there, his co-worker. You lower and fold your paper just a little, give yourself a better view. He looks at you across the way.
He smiles. And damn if anyone knows how to smile, its Tavros. You’d think he did it on purpose, the infectious parting of his lips, the spread of warmth to his cheekbones and dimples, the cute little way he’d look down like he was nervous, and the wide, finished product, the enlightened grin. But it just happens like that on its own man, it’s fucking beautiful.
It was the first thing you noticed about him when you met. How could anybody not?
You place your newspaper on the table, shoving it up against the coffee cup. Your hands suddenly feel dry, and so does your throat. You’re far too old to be getting nervous about this kind of shit, but Tavros has this hold over you that you can’t even explain. Tavros says something to the girl again, and then he’s headed your way.
You adjust yourself in the hard, metal chair, uncross your long, sore legs and manage to fit them under the table. You face “forward.” Tavros comes and sits in the chair across from you, scoots himself in.
“Hey,” he says, simple and plain. He looks at you and your morning has started to take a turn.
“What’s up,” you say back. You sigh, and you feel like the tension in your muscles, the one that’s always there, begins to unwind. He’s all smiles, all honesty. He’s like a breath of fresh air to you. Seeing him reminds you that all the good things in the world haven’t been spoiled just yet.
“You look, tired,” Tavros points out. He looks sad. Not so much about himself. About you.
“Yeah, I’m all about to be charged on a motherfuckin’ caffeine high in a minute though,” you tell him. Your voice is a little rough from lack of usage.
Tavros eyes the newspaper you just put down.
“Anything interesting?” he asks, as always.
“Nah,” you say. “Motherfuckers raping women to death and shit. That’s about it.”
Tavros frowns. “Oh. Wow…”
“But let’s talk about you,” you change the subject, clearing your throat a little. And Tavros smiles again. “How’s everything all up and going at school?”
Tavros goes on to tell you about school. He’s studying Biology, Animal Biology to be specific. He’s already looking at graduate programs for Vet school. He has like a 5.0 or some shit. He chuckles and stammers slightly and brightens up as he talks and explains things to you, slow, winding stories out of sequence but in rhyme. You find yourself half listening to the words he’s saying and half wondering how you ever convinced him to talk to you in the first place.
It would seem that the two of you have nothing in common. Besides your mutual interest in rap and east coast hip hop anyway. It was that interest that had caused him to make conversation with you. You were ordering your coffee one morning in the shop, twenty-three days sober, practically sleepwalking. You had on an old Wu Tang shirt, some shitty thing you don’t even remember getting. He rambled off the names of his favorite rap duos and groups from the Wu Tang era because of it, as if you cared to know, until he realized that you still hadn’t said anything back. He promptly became flustered with your unresponsiveness to his attempt at a friendly gesture; he began anxiously punching numbers into the cash register, blushing.
You’d honestly just been too taken aback by his looks and the sound of his voice to answer him at first. That was all. And, you were tired. And, you were sober, and that always slowed you down. But as you handed him your money, you decided to share that at one point, when you were younger, you’d always wanted to be a rapper. (Lame). Hence the shirt. Then sheepishly, pathetically, you rapped a little bit of “Protect Ya Neck” for him. And he smiled at you all wide like he does, handed you your black coffee while saying,
“Gamzee…I’ve never heard a name like before. It’s cool. It uh, sounds like a rapper’s name already.”
You thought he was cool. He somehow found you approachable. Even with your long hair and dark eyes and brooding, lanky stature. Oh, and the fact that when you walked into places sometimes, people looked at you like a clown from their circus nightmares, like they were scared of you.
If he was working, he spoke to you whenever you walked in the shop, always with a little timidity and uncertainty, but still pretty consistently, as you were a daily customer. Gradually, Tavros’ shyness about sitting down with you and talking to you started to fade. Gradually, you somehow made him feel comfortable around you, enough to chat with your for an hour, or several hours even. It was like he’d known you for longer than he actually had, he said. And you two just clicked. Talked on about the weather and the meaning of life and the reasons you tried to hide away from the fear of your own failure. Your resistance to his long, careful sentences and quick, blushing laughter evaporated fast, as if it had even ever fucking existed at all. And it was something you tried not to think about at first, but eventually Tavros started to make you feel things. A lot of things. Things that he wasn’t even trying to make you feel. Things that reminded you of a time when you were younger and your heart was whole and shit wasn’t so bad that you didn’t even wanna really live anymore.
Anyway, this all started a few months ago, and now you consider Tavros—a friend. More than that. You’ve had some of the deepest conversations with him that you can ever remember having with anyone. Outside in the rain in the back lot, lying on your backs on the hood of his beat up car. Seated at your usual table, sitting close, over coffee and a dry croissant.
It’s always early in the morning, six or seven or eight AM. But he never fails to sit with you, and listen, and ask, and rap; to care, and be concerned, and never tell you that he “understands” (because he knows he’s never been to the places that you have), but tell you that he thinks things are going to get better for you. In fact, he knows so.
And he’s never talking about the shitty “fake” better that they try to convince that you are right now. He means the real better. The better when you have something that makes you so happy, you don’t ever wanna feel toxic again, ever wanna go back to those drugs. So happy that you can’t imagine your life without this thing, it excites you and makes you passionate and gives you reason to set your feet on the ground, running. Drugs would just take you away from it, ruin it. You couldn’t imagine numbing yourself to this beautiful, beautiful thing. You’d just want all of it, forever.
You don’t know what that thing is yet. The haze hasn’t cleared so completely from your eyes. The bitter hangover still hasn’t subsided.
But you do know that Tavros, when he reaches across the table and brushes your hand, or wraps his foot around your ankle and brushes your knees—makes you feel a little something close to that kind of happiness.
When he walks you to the street corner a few minutes after you leave, stops, embraces you in the drizzling rain. When you wrap your arms around him and thank him, thank him for just being him and for always being there, even when he doesn’t have to and really probably shouldn’t. Really.When he says that he hopes he’ll see you soon, and that he hopes you find it in you to keep waking up, keep fighting. When you realize that he has his hands wrapped gently around the back of your neck, fingers slightly tangled in your hair, eyelashes flitting inadvertently, and it takes everything in you not to take those sweet lips of his into yours, to scare him away with the darkness that might subside if you’re allowed to just have your way with him. Instead, you simply press your forehead into his. He likes this, and he smiles about it in a way that radiates, heats you up from your core. Lights a dim and flickering fire in you that you wish wasn’t ever going to have to go out.
“How is this not weird for you yet, Tav?” you say, in a low voice. You shake your head, feel a little overwhelmed by him, try not to smile.
Tavros blinks his big eyes. “What would be weird for me?” he asks.
“This—me and you,” you say, uncertain. You fit your hands a little firmer against his waist, and he responds by shifting his hips forward into you. You exhale. You almost tremble ‘cause he feels so good.
“I guess I wanna know why you’re still here,” you admit, like this is all a dream. “Why you’ve even fuckin’ bothered, you know?”
“I really like you, Gamzee,” Tavros tells you, assures you. He breathes out. He comes even closer to you. You wrap your arms around him more like you need him to save you.“I know you think that I’m, just humoring you, and wasting my time with you. But that’s not what I’m doing. I want to be close to you like this. I’ll always want to be.”
You nod, and he runs his fingers along the side of your neck and stares up at you in a way that hypnotizes. You close your eyes.
“You’ve lost a lot of things, in your life,” Tavros says, and coupled with the way that he’s touching you, you’re a goner. “But, if I can help it, I don’t want you to ever lose me.”
“Fuck I don’t wanna lose you either—”
You pull him closer, he touches your noses together, just barely brushes your lips together, and damn it, it’s the very definition of unfair, the things that he does to you. You settle with a gentle hand to caress his jaw, running your thumb along the ridge of his heightened cheekbone, and you tell yourself in your mind that he’s perfect. Even if he hasn’t actually kissed you yet.
“You have to go,” Tavros says, almost in a whisper. “You’re gonna be late.”
He kisses the corner of your mouth. Your eyes open.
“I have school all day once I get off of work, but um, see you tomorrow morning, right?” he says.
You nod. He draws away, creating distance between you, but still leaves his hands slightly pressed against your chest. You smile at him, take his hand in yours, the pad of your thumb racing across his soft knuckles.
“Yeah,” you say. “Tomorrow morning.”
Every morning.
Even if the way that he cares about you is fickle. Even if you really are the coffee-worker-kid’s charity case, waiting around until he “grows tired of you,” or finds out you really aren’t as good as he makes you out to be.
Even if you don’t have a fucking clue as to how he could ever be your boyfriend some day, ‘cause you wouldn’t wanna subject the kid to dealing with that in your (clearly) damaged state.
It doesn’t matter. Tavros doesn’t complicate. Doesn’t ask for too much. Doesn't promise one thing, and then give you another. Doesn’t course through your veins and fuck with your brain, and then leave you stranded like he never really came.
You let go of his hand. You wave at him, sadly. He smiles again and turns, walks away. And as he disappears back into the door of the coffee shop, you stand there longer than you have to.
You don't know why he's still around, but you thank the heavens for it.
You turn, cross the street. You’re awake now. You can feel the cold bits of rain against the skin on your face, feel the puddles soaking your Converse, smell the wet concrete and the morning air. You go to work. You smile, even if you only have one reason to do it. And if it wasn’t for the coffee, you’d be angry, tired, worn out. You’d probably still be in bed.
If it wasn’t for Tavros, you don’t know how you’d ever have faith in the better days to come. How you’d find the strength to keep on.