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"We're fighting a war now, people," Bellamy says, in his low, serious voice. He places a hand each on his two trusted lieutenants, pulling them in for what could be the most important strategy meeting of their lives. "Starting today, we cannot show weakness. We cannot falter. We --"
"-- should stop being a fucking drama queen, Bellamy, seriously." Octavia rolls her eyes at him.
"I don't know." Monty chews on his bottom lip, thoughtful. He respects Bellamy more than Octavia does. Everyone respects Bellamy more than Octavia does. "They're Goliath. We're David. They exist to crush little guys like us."
"God, Monty, don't catch Bellamy's stupid," Octavia says. "You know that David beats Goliath, right? And Goliath probably had, like, gigantism and a heart condition anyway, so David's really an asshole. Pick a better metaphor."
"Okay, it's not like they're Goliath and we're David," Monty says. "It's like they're Starbucks and we're an independent family-owned coffee shop right across the street from them that's going to be driven out of business by their corporate assembly line approach to caffeinated beverages."
At least this makes Octavia turn her scorn away from Bellamy. It's a nice reprieve. "That's not a metaphor, that's what's literally happening. Literal is the opposite of metaphor."
Monty shrugs. "I'm not a word guy. I'm a coffee guy."
"You losers stay out here panicking about the big bad franchise," Octavia says. "I gotta pull some cookies out of the oven before they burn and/or I slap you both."
They watch her head back to the kitchen.
"Maybe we are overreacting," Monty offers.
"No, she's freaking out too," Bellamy says. "She just won't admit it because she's stubborn. It runs in the family."
"I didn't think you were that self-aware."
"Look, I'm serious," Bellamy says, and the bell over the door jingles. A cute blonde woman enters, but doesn't approach the counter right away. She hovers by the entrance, taking in their chalkboard menu, vintage furniture, dark wood and wallpaper aesthetic.
Since he figures they have a minute before she orders, Bellamy keeps talking strategy with Monty. "We can't afford to underestimate them. They're the enemy. It's not a death sentence having them right across the street, but we've got to stay sharp."
Monty shoots him a thumbs up. "Can do, general. I've got a new blend I'm tinkering with, I think I've got it almost right. I'll know it's there when I can make the hipster boys cry."
"Yours is a noble quest," Bellamy tells him. He feels a little like an idiot whenever he breaks out the nerd speak, but Monty grins as he heads to the back.
The blonde woman has moved over to the corner of the shop, intently studying their little community library, so Bellamy grabs a rag and wipes the counter down while he waits for her order.
He has a pretty good operation going, all things considered. A lot better than he expected to have when his mom passed away and left him the shop. Octavia bakes, Monty brews, Lincoln the improbably muscled accountant comes in once a week to go over their books, and Bellamy lives upstairs and works the counter with the help of some part-timers.
He likes his life. And damned if he's going to let anyone destroy it without a fight.
"So, you take your coffee pretty seriously, 'general'," the woman drawls. She's looking down at a book she's pulled off the shelf, and Bellamy cranes his neck to see it's I, Claudius.
"Well, I'd rather be a Roman emperor, but apparently I'm 1500 years too late," Bellamy says. "So I settled for being a coffee general."
"Yeah, those seem equal." She looks unimpressed, but she keeps the book and drifts closer to the counter. "Don't look now, but the barbarian hordes are at the gate." She jerks her head back to the Starbucks logo right across the street.
Bellamy shrugs, like he wasn't just panicking about that very fact. "Our customers know our coffee's better. I'm not scared."
"That's just what the emperors said, too. Oh, we have the best bread and circuses, we'll be fine."
"Well, Blake and Brother Coffee Shop is a decadent and corrupt society," Bellamy says, deadpan. "But as long as the Starbucks baristas doesn't come charging down the street on elephants, I think we'll be okay."
"Should you really be giving out your military weaknesses like that?"
"I won't tell if you don't."
"No promises," she warns him.
"Let me buy your silence with caffeine, then," he says. "What're you drinking today?"
"Mocha?"
He keeps her in the corner of his eye while he makes her drink. She's looking at him like she's sizing him up, and he preens a little.
"Haven't seen you around before," he says, casually stretching for a lid so that his shirt happens to ride up.
"I just moved to the area, actually," she tells him, looking up at him through her eyelashes. She's got this sparkle in her eyes, like she's fighting a smile. "I'm starting a new job this week."
He's got this.
"So I'll be seeing you around, then," Bellamy says.
"Depends if I like my drink."
He hands her the mocha. "Then I'll definitely be seeing you around."
"Modesty is a virtue," she tells him, taking a sip.
"So's honesty. How is it?"
"You'll know if I come back or not," she says, and saunters out.
-
She doesn't come back, and Bellamy tries not to let it get to him, but coming on top of the looming specter of the Starbucks grand opening at the end of the week, it's a bit much to take.
It's not like she promised or anything, but. He makes a damn good mocha.
And she still has I, Claudius.
So he's scrubbing the chalkboard a little more vigorously than is really required in the morning on Friday when Monty pitches him the idea to organize a protest in front of Starbucks. It sounds, to his violent mood, like a good idea.
Well, throwing a brick through their window sounds like a good idea. This sounds like a doable idea.
They've gotten as far as dragging Jasper and Maya to the shop to grill them about which of their quasi-socialist anti-corporate bohemian-artist friends can be relied on to make picket signs when Octavia comes out of the kitchen and puts a stop to the whole thing.
"For the last time, this is not You've Got Mail, Fox Books is not going to drive us out of business, and you all sound like nut jobs. Nobody buys coffee from nut jobs!"
"Actually -- " Monty starts. Bellamy is proud of him for finding the courage to interrupt Octavia mid-rant. But he's more proud of Octavia for shutting him down with a single look. Bellamy raised that girl right.
So the whole thing is a bit of a waste (for everyone except Jasper and Maya; Octavia gives them turnovers fresh out of the oven to apologize for "my dumbass brother dragging you out here to play grassroots crusader at fuck o'clock in the morning") and Bellamy's bloodthirst goes unquenched as he watches the enemy open their doors for the first time.
It's really a remarkable bit of restraint that he makes it until the afternoon before he charges over.
-
"What exactly is this going to accomplish?" Octavia asks when he tells her to cover the counter.
"Reconnaissance."
"You've been in a Starbucks. They all look the same. That's why they're Starbucks."
"What if our regulars are going over there? I can scare them back on to the straight and narrow."
"Please do not threaten bodily harm on any of our patrons."
"I'll just glare at them."
"You glaring is a threat of bodily harm. You smiling is a threat of bodily harm. You're one angry bastard, Bell."
"Love you too, little sister."
"Just, don't do anything that you'd yell at me for doing, okay?"
"I promise not to make out with their accountant," he tells her as he's leaving, and she sticks her tongue out at him.
He really doesn't know what he's expecting to accomplish, except that he has to see the battleground for himself. He is the coffee general, after all.
He definitely wasn't expecting to see Monday morning's cute blonde customer standing behind the counter in a green apron.
"Hi, welcome to Starbucks." She even sounds the same as she had on Monday, calm and disinterested, not the manufactured cheer that he expects from customer service workers.
"New job in the area, huh?"
The smile drops off her face, but she doesn't back down. In any other circumstance, Bellamy would find that kind of hot, the way she stands straight, looks him dead in the eyes, and says, "I just started today."
"Pretty crucial detail to leave out, don't you think?"
"I'm an employee, I'm not an indentured servant. My loyalty to Starbucks does not come before my personhood."
"They're a giant corporation," Bellamy says. "You're just a number."
The blonde barista gives him a cool look, like she knows he's getting angry enough to say something dumb. "Are you on a crusade? You're an evangelist of some kind? Because we have a community corkboard for whatever weird little fringe group you're recruiting for."
"Not at all," Bellamy says. "I just came here for a mocha."
She squints at him. "Is this a corporate espionage thing? You're here to figure out how a real mocha is made?"
"Blake and Brother makes a way better mocha than anything you could brew here."
She shrugs. "It's passable."
"It was the best mocha you ever had and you know it."
"Look, the Starbucks wasn't open yet, so I had to make do. It was a decent substitute."
"Decent."
"Yeah, for a competitor."
"We are not competitors, we are not equals. I am a coffee artist. You're one step above a vending machine."
That sounded a lot better in his head, and she knows it. She doesn't let him off the hook, either; she raises an eyebrow at him and lets the silence linger, so his poor word choice can really fill the moment.
Bellamy thinks he should have listened to Octavia. 'Should have listened to Octavia' is the thesis statement of his life.
"Sooo," the barista draws out, finally reaching for a cup. "Mocha?"
He scowls. "Small."
Her hands hover over the medium cups. "I'm sorry, what size?"
Bellamy grinds his teeth. He won't say it. "Small."
Her fingers curl around the large size. "What?"
"Tall," he snaps.
She smirks, but she does finally grab a small cup. "Name?"
Usually with customer service, he gives the name 'Blake', because then there's a chance they'll get the spelling right.
But right now, he really wants to see her screw up.
"Bellamy."
She raises her eyebrow again. He decides to make a crack about her name, only to realize that she isn't wearing a nametag. Isn't that part of the whole soul-sucking corporate experience, being labeled and put on display?
She rings him up and he waits impatiently for his change, because he's definitely not tipping for 'tries to steal my customers' and 'mocks me as a person and a businessman'.
It has nothing to do with the way her fingers brush against his palm when she drops his change into his hand. Right.
Bellamy steps away from the counter as she makes him his drink.
He might have a problem.
A tiny little problem.
But hey, he's never had a problem too big for him to live in denial of.
"Bee-lame-y, your drink's up," a second barista calls out.
Bellamy gets a weird surge of victory at hearing his name mangled, because his win conditions in this scenario are fucked. But when he picks up his drink, his name is fine.
He looks up from his cup to see this new barista is smirking at him. She'd read his name wrong on purpose.
"Interesting tactic for a big franchise store," Bellamy says to her, offhanded. "Hiring all assholes."
She flips him off. He's not surprised to see she isn't wearing a nametag, either. This seems like a calculated rebellion, so no one can report her to her manager by name. Though if he described her as 'the violently attractive barista who looks like she hates me personally', the manager would undoubtedly know who he meant. "See you around, Lame-y."
Bellamy would have just left -- probably should have just left, and thrown the mocha away outside -- except he takes one last look at the blonde barista, and she's smiling at him, just like she had on Monday, when he'd thought she was into him.
No, not smiling.
Smirking.
She'd just been laughing at him since the moment she walked into his shop.
He takes a sip, not breaking eye contact with her, even though his drink is too sweet and way too gritty, and steps back to the main counter.
"Are you going to keep your promise?" he asks her.
"What?"
"Your very solemn barista promise." Bellamy nods at the sign by the pick up counter. "If I don't love my drink, you'll make it right?"
She bristles. "What."
"Well, I don't love it."
She looks like she'd murder him if she had anything in her hands deadlier than a sharpie. "Your drink is perfect, I made it myself."
"Yeah, no, I'm just not feeling the love."
He should really just go. There's no real way for him to save face here, and now he's just making himself an asshole customer. He hates asshole customers.
But damn it, these Starbucks jerks moved into his neighborhood. They started it. This Starbucks jerk in particular.
Her eyes narrow, almost comically so, and she snatches his drink out of his hand.
He hears her muttering under her breath as she makes him a second mocha. He can't tell what he's saying, but he feels pretty good about turning the 'making stupid bravado statements' tables on her. He's always been more comfortable getting under people's skin and pissing them off then letting them see him get mad.
She shoves the drink at him like it's on fire, bypassing the evil ponytail barista entirely.
This time, Bellamy's prepared to accept the drink gracefully. He's in his element now, for values of 'in his element' that equal 'ruining someone else's day'.
He sniffs it carefully, like he's a goddamn Starbucks connoisseur, then takes a tiny sip, though he doesn't really want to. He doesn't need to. He'd made up his mind with a quick glance around the shop to make sure that there were no other customers waiting.
He really should leave now.
But. She started it. And he is one angry bastard.
"No," he sighs, pensive, "it's just not there. I think you could do better."
She snatches it out of his hands.
The lip pops off and what feels like half the drink spills on him, which he seriously doubts was an accident.
Bellamy smiles serenely back at her, and she glares at him the entire time she's steaming the milk and brewing the espresso. He'd be a little bit worried about her burning one of her hands, if he weren't such an angry bastard.
She adds a squirt of mocha syrup like she's thinking about stabbing him, and just as he's expecting her to escalate the violence -- throw scalding hot milk in his face, maybe, or try to murder him with that sharpie after all -- she freezes for a split second and then smiles.
That is a terrifying smile. That is a smile that has, unquestionably, made lesser men weep and rend their garments.
That is a smile that is warning Bellamy to run, now, while he has a chance.
He raises an eyebrow at her.
She adds another shot of syrup.
And then another.
And another.
And another.
It's a game of chicken, and Bellamy's never been one to blink first.
When she hands him the drink, it has eleven shots of mocha syrup in it, he's pretty sure it's lethal, and the two of them are smiling painfully at each other like skulls.
His insides -- his soul -- rebel. But it's way too late to back down.
"Thanks." He raises the cup to her, like he's toasting her health.
He can't pause. He can't flinch. He breathes once and lifts it to his mouth to take a sip.
"Mmmm," he manages to say, even as he's fighting his gag reflex. "Perfect." He takes a second sip, shutting his eyes and imagining that he's drinking bleach -- sewage -- anything but this.
"So glad that Starbucks could make your drink right," she chirps.
In a movie, this would be when the gladiator match started, or the gunmen drew their pistols, or the race flag dropped. Bellamy can feel something starting, something that won't end until one of them is dead at the hands of the other. Or, you know, she admits that he makes better coffee, whichever.
Of course, this being life, all that happens is a new customer enters the store and Bellamy figures he can't justify wasting the barista's time anymore.
He does notice that the customer is a weedy-looking guy who comes into Blake and Brother two or three times a week, and he scowls at the guy as he's leaving, promises to Octavia be damned. These are extraordinary circumstances.
"How goes the invasion?" Octavia asks when he returns.
"Shut it."
He wonders if you can make a Molotov cocktail out of a latte.
-
Of course, after a week of hoping to see the cute blonde again with no payoff, she comes back to Blake and Brother after Bellamy has decided that she's the absolute worst.
"Are you lost?" he demands when she enters, the bell over the door ringing out in the silence of the late afternoon non-rush.
Monty gives Bellamy a scandalized look. Whatever; Bellamy would feel more ashamed of his crappy attitude if Monty didn't have half a scone hanging out of his mouth. Monty's lucky that Octavia isn't here to see him eating behind the counter.
"I'm looking for a decent cup of coffee," the blonde answers. "So, yeah, I guess I am lost."
He can actually hear Monty thinking 'Oh no she didn't'.
"Well," Bellamy drawls. "Let's see what we can do for you."
She raises an eyebrow. He raises an eyebrow. Monty, damn him, still has that half-scone hanging out of his mouth. Bellamy tries to forgive him for this. Few people are born with Bellamy's impeccable sense of dramatic timing, so instead of getting upset, Bellamy just scrawls the letters JSB on a cup and hands it to Monty.
Monty ogles the cup, then shoots Bellamy a look like hey, not to question your orders, general, because I wouldn't do that, except I am, I'm totally questioning your orders. It's a very complicated look.
Bellamy gives him the tiniest hint of a nod, and Monty scurries off to get the blonde Starbucks demon a cup of Jasper's Special Brew.
Jasper's Special Brew, the product of some ungodly expensive beans and some super-secret roasting process of Monty's that Bellamy is not allowed to know, even though it happens in the back of his shop, is, to put it lightly, a strong brew. It is not for the steamed-milk-ten-sugars-extra-shot-of-syrup crowd.
There's either two ways this will end: the blonde barista will have one sip of her coffee and weep openly with joy, if she is actually a coffee person; or she will weep openly with various other emotions, and possibly spitting and vomiting, if she is not actually a coffee person.
Either way, Bellamy figures it's a win.
It feels like hours of staring her in the eye, uncompromising and unflinching, before Monty comes back, though it's probably just a minute. Monty has perfected the ability to brew Jasper's Special Brew at the drop of a hat, which he claims is necessary for emergencies of -- whatever the hell kind of emergency that kid has. Jasper's kind of a train wreck. Bellamy doesn't get his life.
Monty finally hands Bellamy the cup, slow and not breathing like he's Indiana Jones trying to swap out the idol.
Bellamy hands it off to his nemesis like he isn't totally gloating on the inside, and then he watches. Waits. He's prepared for anything. He's ready for her to declare defeat, to scream and curse his name, for her to throw it back in his face and give him first degree burns, for her --
To take a sip, shrug, say "I guess this isn't totally disgusting," and saunter back to the exit.
The bell rings.
He wasn't prepared for that.
There's a good thirty seconds or so of staring after her before he hears Monty say, "Damn. We might be in over our heads."
Bellamy looks back at him, disgusted. "There's no such thing, Monty. If you're in over your head it just means you need to paddle harder."
"Are we swimming, in your metaphor, or are we in a boat?" Monty asks, like he genuinely wants to know. He probably does, because he's Monty, though he's also reaching for his abandoned scone, because he's Monty.
Bellamy snatches the scone away first. Right now, he deserves a consolation prize -- no. Consolation implies failure, and Bellamy does not fail. This is a plotting-for-success scone. A delayed-gratification scone. A revenge-is-a-dish-best-served-cold-and-with-a-scone scone.
He's on his way to the back and halfway through the scone when Monty sighs. "I guess I deserved that."
-
It turns into a war of attrition, after that.
On Saturday, his caramel macchiato is burnt; on Sunday, his iced Americano is poured over carbonated water, what the hell; on Monday, his tiramisu latte is salted -- not "flavored with sea salt" like an expensive candy bar, but like she was trying to stop it from freezing over in winter.
To be fair, that last one is probably Bellamy's fault for thinking that there was nothing that could make a "tiramisu latte" more horrifying than the sheer fact of its existence. He'd been wrong.
"Okay," Octavia says, watching him throw away yet another Starbucks cup. (In the trash can behind the counter; there was no reason to give the customers ideas.) "I know I said you were overreacting about having a Starbucks across the street, but I didn't mean you should give them all your money, either."
"I'm not," Bellamy says, but Octavia just raises her eyebrows at him. Damn it, he taught her that look. She isn't supposed to use it against him. "It was on the house."
Which actually irritates Bellamy more than anything else, although he's not going to tell Octavia that. He knows there's something wrong with him, that a complementary drink is like a glove to the face. Or maybe it was the smirk that annoyed him, when she'd said to him, the day after the mocha incident, "Oh, for a loyal, discerning Starbucks customer like you, no charge."
But now he doesn't just have to give the enemy real, good coffee, he has to give it to her for free.
It occurs to him on Monday, when she leaves sipping a Viennese that she'd said was 'not bad' that this might have been her plan all along. He's not sure if that makes him paranoid, for thinking she has some grand scheme, or dumb, for not figuring it out sooner.
He's definitely not impressed with her, at all.
Yeah.
-
"So, you go to Starbucks," Monty starts.
"Yes."
"You order something you don't like, and provoke the barista into making it even more disgusting than usual."
"Uh-huh."
"And then you give her my delicious wonderful coffee in exchange."
"It's our coffee, Monty," Bellamy corrects him.
"If you want to take credit for my genius, I want my name on the window," Monty tells him. "Blake, Blake, and Green."
"That sounds like a law firm."
Monty ignores him. "Sometimes I feel like a ghostwriter, but of coffee. A ghost brewer. The store's named after you, you don't need any more credit."
"Technically, the store is named after Octavia," Bellamy points out.
Monty is not impressed.
"Fine, congratulations, you are the greatest coffee genius of all time. Happy?" Bellamy starts for the back, but Monty grabs his apron. The damn strings are too long in the back.
"Not so fast. I was just getting to the point."
"You had a point?" Bellamy says, innocently. He kind of misses the days when Monty could be completely derailed by a tray of brownies, even if they did have to write off a lot of baked goods. They'd had a damage code for the munchies.
"This little exchange program you have going, what exactly is the end goal?"
"The complete destruction of Starbucks as a corporation. Obviously."
Monty blinks at him. "You have a lot of faith in my coffee."
Bellamy claps him on the shoulder. "Like I said. You are the greatest coffee genius of all time."
The kitchen doors are swinging shut behind Bellamy by the time Monty calls out, "That's going to be my job title from now on!"
-
Tuesday, the only person behind the counter at Starbucks is a surly-looking guy wearing a beanie, which is less than ideal. But at least it isn't the sadistic girl with the ponytail.
"Hey, I was looking for -- " fuck, he still doesn't know her name. The sadistic girl with the ponytail is Raven, or so Bellamy has guessed from context clues (i.e. a customer begging her to take him back two days ago; she'd chased him out of the store with the sheer force of her glare). For the blonde barista, there'd been no such clues (i.e. anyone expressing a romantic interest in her, not that Bellamy would have noticed or cared about such a thing). She still doesn't wear a nametag, and of course, it's not like he can ask her what her name is now.
So he just sighs, knowing how bad this is about to sound. "Blonde girl."
The dude in the beanie just stares him down. He's not wearing a nametag either, and what the hell is wrong with these people, they won't wear nametags but they'll wear hats indoors in the middle of summer?
"Yea high?" Bellamy holds a hand up to his shoulder.
The beanie keeps staring.
"Has a lot of terrible opinions about coffee?"
Still. Staring.
"She was working here yesterday? Okay, you know what, fuck it. I have no idea why I was worried that you guys would steal my business, you have the shittiest, least welcoming customer service I've ever seen."
-
Wednesday, Bellamy makes it through the noon rush, such as it is, before he gives in to being totally pathetic.
"Hey, Monty. Go to the Starbucks and tell me if that blonde girl is working."
Monty gives him a sorrowful look. Monty's sorrowful looks are like Old Yeller and Dead Poet's Society and that episode of Futurama with Fry's dog all combined.
"You don't even know her name, do you."
"Just go."
"I want you to know that when I tell you you have a problem, it's because you're my friend and I'm worried about you. Also because if you die in some kind of Montague/Capulet thing with Starbucks then I'd be unemployed, so."
"Just. Go."
It's a nervous half-hour of wiping and re-wiping the counter, and trying not to scowl at the giggling teenage girls who ask him for frappuccinos, before Monty returns, looking -- honestly, a little like he got slapped in the face with a fish.
"What the hell, where were you?"
"Oh, sorry." Monty does not look sorry. "I got talking with the barista, I sort of lost track of time."
Bellamy wants to tell Monty off for wasting time across the street when he's on the clock, but there's no way that would go well for him, and he'd like to forestall any embarrassing, mutinous conversations for as long as possible. "Okay. Was the blonde girl there?"
"Oh, no, she's not working today? But Nate said she'll be in tomorrow for the closing shift."
Bellamy shrugs, like he isn't committing this to memory. "Nate said so, huh?" Monty grins, sheepish. "I guess they managed to find one non-terrifying employee. Too bad. I was hoping the girl with the ponytail and the guy with the beanie would scare all their customers over to us."
Monty looks confused. "Nate has a beanie."
Bellamy tries to picture any scenario in which his floppy-haired moppet of a coffee genius could spend half an hour talking to the barista from yesterday.
Bellamy's a smart guy. Pretty strong imaginative streak. He can't picture it.
-
He doesn't go over to Starbucks on Thursday, because he wakes up sweating in the morning with a hideous, wracking cough.
"O," he croaks into his phone. He doesn't really need to see or think clearly in order to dial her number, which is just as well, because he can't do either. "O, I was right."
"Bell? Are you okay? You sound like death."
"They got me."
"What?"
"Starbucks. Biological weapon. Told you it was...a war." He coughs for a long time, and somehow ends up on the floor next to his bed. "I'm dying, O."
"You are a baby," she tells him. "A giant, hallucinating baby. I'm coming over, but you have to SWEAR TO GOD you won't go down to the shop, you'll scare everyone into Starbucks's waiting arms."
"Never," Bellamy croaks. "Never. Death before dishonor."
He wakes up a second time to the sound of his door opening and his phone beeping at him that the call just ended. He would think it was sweet of Octavia to stay on the line with him, except he doesn't remember the last fifteen minutes, so she was probably listening to his fever-ramblings to mock him about later.
"Bell?" Octavia looks like an angel from some cool, well-hydrated, not-sweaty heaven. "Ah, jeez, you're a mess," and before he can object she's helping him into his living room and onto the couch, because "your bedroom is fucking stuffy, I can't breathe and I'm not even congested."
"I don't," Bellamy coughs. "I don't need you to smother me. Just promise -- promise -- if I die, you and Monty will burn down the Starbucks."
"Yeah, no, I'm not promising that," Octavia tells him, which is probably smart of her.
" 's probably smart," Bellamy mutters. She lowers him onto the couch, and his mouth smushes up against the cushions. "You're smart. Good kid. Raised you right."
"Are you taking credit for my personal accomplishments?" She shakes her head. "You are the creepiest right now."
"Take it back," Bellamy tells the couch cushions. "Not a good kid. No loyalty. Awful."
"You know why I wouldn't burn down Starbucks as your death bed wish? Because they'd just get the insurance money and reopen anyway. Make a less dumb death bed wish if you want me to be more loyal."
Bellamy tries to think of what he wants as his last request, if not for her to burn down the den of liars and corporate pigs that is Starbucks. It's hard to come up with anything.
Honestly it's hard even to remember what's so bad about Starbucks, at the moment. He just knows that there's something.
Eventually, he settles for, "Soup?" It comes out more pitiful than he'd like.
"That, I can do," Octavia tells him, and runs a hand through his hair. He shuts his eyes and drifts in and out as she stalks around his apartment. He can't tell what she's doing, exactly, until he hears the television come on and cracks an eye to see her putting on an episode of Mythbusters. The coffee table in front of him has been stocked up with tissues, glasses of water, Gatorade, and crackers.
"Back to sleep," Octavia tells him, spreading a blanket over him. "Death bed soup is coming right up."
He dozes on and off through the morning; sometimes Octavia's there, sometimes she's not. One time Monty is there, talking back to Adam and Jamie under his breath, which is surreal enough that Bellamy sits up to try to wake himself up.
There's soup, at some point, delicious with huge chunks of chicken meat, and if he had the energy for emotions he'd be impressed with Octavia for producing it and deeply suspicious of her for dodging questions about where she produced it from. Instead, he inhales it, and the slice of quickbread she brings him, still warm from the oven and smelling like a hundred childhood memories in the kitchen with his mom.
At some unknown point in the afternoon, Bellamy wakes up to Octavia's singsong, "Bonus gift for you." It's not really a good sign, her sounding that cheerful, but he's too weak to defend himself, too weak even to hit the 'yes Netflix I'm still watching Mythbusters' button on the remote.
"Just shoot me now."
"You're so whiny when you're sick." Octavia puts the back of one hand against his forehead, in true Blake style: mocking and mothering simultaneously. "You're not going to die."
"I'm going to wish I'm dead whenever you," he waves expressively to buy himself some time while he coughs. Octavia pulls her hand out of the germ radius with speedy reflexes and a look of disgust. "Do whatever it is you sound evil about."
"Me? I didn't do anything." She has the rehearsed innocence of someone who is only technically telling the truth. "Your Starbucks girlfriend, on the other hand..."
After a pause, where Bellamy wonders if maybe he fell asleep in the middle of the conversation and missed whatever Octavia was saying, he snaps, "What?"
"I was waiting for you to be all, 'What, O, I don't have a Starbucks girlfriend'," Octavia explains. "I had, like, eight different come-backs all loaded up and I was trying to figure out which one I would say and then you didn't give me an opening for any of them, you're the worst."
"I'm sick," Bellamy reminds her. "What happened with Starbucks?"
Octavia sighs and produces a travel mug from -- Bellamy has no idea. Possibly she had it all along and he was hallucinating that she didn't. Possibly he's hallucinating it now. "She brought you tea."
Bellamy's a bit distracted, trying to figure out if Octavia could have smuggled in a travel mug under her shirt without him noticing or her spilling the contents. He's sort of thrown when the thing she says actually makes less sense than his feverish imagination. "Tea?" he croaks.
"Apparently, our tea is crap," Octavia says. "Those are her words. She says this is from her private stash, not corporate dishwater tea. Those are my words. Also my suggestive connotation on the words 'private' and 'stash'."
"I got that, thanks."
Octavia puts the mug in easy reach of the couch, then leans over to kiss Bellamy lightly on the forehead and -- he takes back every uncharitable thought he's ever had about her, or at least all the ones from the last couple of hours -- she hits the play button on the remote.
"Go back to sleep, Bell."
He'd think that he dreamed the whole thing, except the tea is still there when he wakes up again, halfway through the next episode. It's gone room temperature, but it's still delicious, something spicy and sweet that soothes the insides of his sinuses.
It might just be the best drink he's ever had in his life, but he figures that can be his little secret.
-
Friday is a significant improvement on Thursday, though Bellamy is still confined to his rooms and forbidden upon pain of sister-rage from entering the coffee shop. He doesn't put up as much of an argument as he could have. He feels run down and the chance to catch up on sleeping through television shows is appealing, though he starts feeling antsy in the afternoon, and tries not to think about what he's worried about missing.
Octavia didn't forbid him from going to Starbucks. He could totally go over to Starbucks. Just -- so he could cough on their customers and scare people away, of course. No other reason.
He decides that he should wait to go to Starbucks until he's back on his A game, or at least, like, a passing grade game.
-
On Saturday Bellamy comes back work, though he's still feeling kind of crappy and run down. Apparently it shows: Octavia tells him to stop being surly at the customers and even Monty suggests nicely that maybe he should find things to do in the back of the shop. Where there's no one whose feelings he could hurt. Or whose faces he could punch.
So he's already in a less than great state of mind when he nudges open the door of the supply room, arms full of boxes of napkins to restock the counter, and hears Monty talking to someone.
"I mean, it was kind of funny at first, the whole 'tragic little barista boy with a crush' thing."
Bellamy freezes, door only open a crack, because he knows that voice, and it's one thing if his Starbucks nemesis wants to talk to him like she thinks he's slow, or insult his livelihood or whatever. But it's another thing entirely for her to come to his shop and talk so dismissively about him when he's not even around, as far as she knows.
And she's still talking, never mind that he's flushed head to toe like his fever's coming back. " -- mooning about but pretending he's all 'tough' and 'stoic'. At this point it's just pathetic."
"I don't know," Monty says, because he is a good friend and at least making an attempt to stand up for Bellamy, though really, he could try a bit harder. "It's kind of sweet?"
"It's pathetic and it needs to stop."
Bellamy ducks back into the storage room and put the napkins back down. They can wait until she's gone, until he's not so, so -- he crosses his arms, his troubled hero pose, until he thinks about pretending to be tough and stoic.
He sits on the floor of the storage room, kicking at a box of lids, and admits to himself that he's embarrassed. Bad enough to have a stupid crush; worse to have her make fun of him behind his back to his friends. Fuck, what are they, thirteen?
But underneath the embarrassment, he's angry.
"You brought me tea, what the hell," he mutters to himself. "I didn't think I was that far off base."
He kills some time in the back (takes stock of every last one of Octavia's weird spices and virtually-indistinguishable flours that she claims are all essential; steals some cake batter; gets hit on the ear with a spatula for stealing said cake batter) until he's sure that she won't still be talking to Monty when he goes out front.
She's still talking to Monty when he goes out front.
"There you are," she says, smirking at him. "I thought I was going to have to settle for actual competent service."
He's really kind of stupid, when he thinks about it. She had never not been making fun of him. Maybe this is what he gets for not taking a woman's words at face value.
"What do you want?" There, he managed to make that sound like a normal customer interaction. Mostly.
She doesn't answer right away, like he caught her by surprise. He hasn't asked her for her order since that first mocha. She would just come in and insult him and he'd give her something he thought she'd enjoy, as though that were in any way an appropriate response to repeated belittlement.
"Cappuccino," she answers, finally but decisively.
He grabs a cup off the stack and sets it on the counter, but rather than getting her coffee, he punches a button on his register.
"That'll be $2.95," he tells her.
Her face drops.
It's been a week of coffee-based warfare, and this is the closest he's come to winning.
It really ought to feel more like a victory.
She says, "I didn't bring my wallet."
"Too bad, Princess," Bellamy says, nasty as he can on the nickname. "You can't go through life just expecting people to give you things. Sometimes you actually have to work for them."
Her nostrils flare, just a touch, but her voice stays level. "You didn't charge me before."
"So now I owe you?" He aims for his most condescending tone of voice, the one that had Octavia sneaking out of a lot of windows when she was a teenager. From the flash in her eyes, he's still got the gift for inspiring rage. "You've got one hell of an out of control sense of entitlement."
Her jaw works for a second in a way that Bellamy is particularly familiar with. He knows what it's like to be angry enough that you have to physically bite down on a word. He knows what it's like to not be able to bite down, too.
"I thought we had an arrangement," is all she says, so she's doing a better job than Bellamy is of not fuming right now. Which is not a thought that does wonders for his mood.
"Can't imagine why," Bellamy says, breezy. "Whatever was going on, I figure it's time that it stopped, don't you?"
She squares her shoulders, like she's bracing herself to mount a counter attack.
But all she says in the end is: "I gave you tea."
And she finally breaks there, on the word tea. She sounds confused. Bellamy is confused about the tea, and that's his right. She doesn't get to be confused about it when it's her damn psychological warfare in the first place, and it pisses him off all over again that she'd bring it up.
"Well, maybe you shouldn't have."
"Then maybe I should leave." She crosses her arms, glaring at him like she's daring him to throw her out.
He's not going to give her the satisfaction.
"Maybe you should."
"Fine, I will."
"Fine."
"Great." She turns around to leave, but after a step turns back halfway and snaps, "Bye, Monty," like she thought he'd be offended if she left without a farewell. Since she still sounds pissed off when she says it, Bellamy doesn't think she quite gets the Miss Manners seal of approval.
He thinks he sees Monty give her a little half wave out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn't want to turn away and expose any weak points until she's safely out of the building. And after the door's shut behind her, Octavia's stupid bell jingling like it doesn't know how inappropriate it is, he's still not sure he wants to turn away.
In all fairness to Monty, he does hold out for a good ten seconds of awkward silence before he says, "Um."
Bellamy glances over. Monty looks shocked, but not so shocked that he won't try to meddle, and Bellamy cannot handle that right now.
"What." It's not a question. It's an invitation to fuck off.
Monty bites his lip and busies himself with the pastry display.
-
Bellamy would like to be an asshole to Monty, because Monty witnessed his embarrassment, but he just can't. It's physically impossible to be mean to Monty. If Bellamy tried to hold a grudge against him he would probably spontaneously combust, and Octavia would give a eulogy at his funeral about how he totally deserved it.
So Bellamy settles for ignoring Monty's attempts at conversation and ducking out of his way for the whole afternoon to do vital things like "rearrange the coffee stirrers" and "alphabetize the lending library" and "hose down the sidewalk".
Bellamy doesn't make mistakes, but that last thing might have been not the best idea. He keeps finding himself shooting glances at Starbucks, which is stupid. What's the best-case scenario? That she's looking at him, or that she isn't? Hell, he doesn't even know what the worst-case scenario is. That she's looking at him, or that she isn't.
Or that he's too distracted to notice what he's doing and sprays himself with tepid hose water. That might not be the absolute worst thing that could happen, but it's the thing that does happen, and it's more than enough to piss him off.
So he's in a great mood, grumbling and disgusted with life and trying to pat himself dry, when Octavia finds him in the back.
"What the hell is wrong with you today?" she demands, like the sweet baby sister she is.
"Sprayed with a hose."
She glares at him. "You're ignoring Monty," she snaps. "You hurt his feelings. That's practically illegal."
"I didn't do anything!" Bellamy protests. She crosses her arms. "I didn't do anything to Monty."
Octavia ignores this. "I can't look at his sad little puppy dog eyes anymore. Pretend you're not an emotionally stunted sad sack for five seconds and go apologize." Then she whirls around and storms out.
Where did she learn to be so dramatic all the time?
-
"O says I need to apologize."
Monty blinks at him. "You know, some people would say that it undercuts an apology, if you say it like you're being coerced into it and also don't actually say the words 'I'm sorry'."
"Yeah?" Bellamy shrugs. "What do you say?"
"I say we're fine." Monty smiles at him. "I can't hold a grudge right now, anyway. I'm too happy."
Bellamy's pretty sure Monty couldn't hold a grudge on his worst day, but he's not going to quibble. "Oh?" he asks, partly out of curiosity and partly because he thinks indulging Monty's good mood makes his apology more sincere. Since he didn't technically make the apology, it needs the help it can get. "Why's that?"
Monty smiles at him, cheerful and just a little bit guilty, like he's about to confess to eating the last of the chocolate chips or something. "I have a date. With Nate."
"Also you're a poet, and you didn't even know it," Bellamy observes drily. "This is the angry dude in the beanie, right? Are angry dudes your thing? Because if I should admit that I'm secretly in love with you so we can ride off into the sunset together, let me know."
"Yeah, I'll get right on that." He rolls his eyes, though it barely registers as sarcastic. Monty has Earnest Resting Face.
Bellamy nudges him with his elbow. That's probably close enough to "not emotionally stunted" to count, right? Monty knows him. If he used his words and said "I'm happy for you even though my own love life is shitty and disappointing right now", it would just freak Monty out.
"Cool." There. Bellamy has been A Good And Supportive Friend. He can cross that off his to-do list.
"Thanks." Monty smiles again, like he knows what Bellamy is trying to say and gives him partial credit for the effort. "Really, though, he's not scary at all, I don't know what you and -- um."
Bellamy winces, internally.
"Sorry," Monty says. "About, um, the whole thing earlier today."
"It's fine," Bellamy says, automatic, before he reconsiders. "I mean, it's not fine at all, why are you on first name terms with the enemy, treason, all of that still applies. But I'm not actually mad at you."
"Oh. Okay." Monty relaxes a whole eighth of a centimeter.
Bellamy decides it's time for some humor to lighten the mood. "I mean, if my nemesis and I both agree that Nate is scary, you can at least concede that he's a scary dude. It's the one thing we agree on."
"I'm not convinced she's really afraid of him," Monty says. "Or not after the way she was talking about him today. Unless 'it's so funny that he's pathetically into you' means something completely different in your weird 'over-invested in coffee rivalries' language."
Bellamy freezes.
It can't be. It can't possibly be.
It probably is.
"She said that? About Nate?"
Monty gives him a weird look, which means Bellamy has 100% lost any semblance of nonchalance he ever had. "Yeah? She came over here to play matchmaker. Not to brag or anything," and Monty scratches the back of his head, self-conscious, like he's ever been in danger of being accused of bragging. "But apparently he has kind of an obvious crush, so she got tired of watching and decided to intervene."
"Oh fuck," Bellamy says, and smacks his head down on the counter.
-
It takes a bit to get the conversation straightened out after that, mostly because Bellamy is hugely embarrassed about everything he's done in the last twenty-four hours and doesn't want to cop to any of it, and partly because when he hit his head on the counter he knocked over a jug of milk and made a big mess.
"So, um, when she said that the tragic little barista boy was pretending to be stoic -- "
"You heard that?" Monty frowns. "How -- why -- no."
Bellamy points a warning finger at him. "This needs to be a safe space for embarrassing personal mistakes. Or else I'm going to keep knocking over milk jugs and that is going to come out of your paycheck."
"So, when she said that she was sick of Nate's moping and I should ask him out so she didn't have to deal with it anymore -- "
Bellamy sighs. "I just heard the part about her being sick of pathetic boys with crushes."
Monty stares at him for a long second. "I'm trying to think of literally a single thing to say that is both true to my feelings and appropriate to say to my employer."
"How about, 'Sorry you shot yourself in the foot, can I buy you five drinks?'"
Monty shakes his head. "Yeah, no, that's not going to cut it."
"What was I supposed to think?" Bellamy demanded. "That the death glare in the beanie needs someone to ask people out for him?"
"He's shy," Monty says automatically. "It's sweet. And you have exactly zero right to make fun of anyone's courtship rituals, ever."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Bellamy mutters.
Monty raises his eyebrows. "Tiramisu latte?"
Bellamy sighs. When even Monty thinks he's being a dumbass, he knows it's bad. "Yeah, yeah."
Monty pats him on the shoulder, but lightly and from a distance, like some of Bellamy's pathetic life might get on him.
-
"Tall dark roast," Bellamy says.
She grabs a cup, avoiding eye contact. "Sure you don't want a bucket of syrup and whipped cream?"
"God, no." Bellamy clears his throat. "And the name is 'Jackass.'" That does, at least, make her look up at him. "As in, 'I'm a jackass, sorry I was rude, I'm probably always going to be a jackass but if you don't mind that then I'd like to take you out to dinner sometime?'"
"Long fucking name, bro," Raven calls out from behind the pastry counter.
The blonde just looks at him for a minute before she writes something on his cup -- way too long to be "Bellamy" or "Jackass", and wow, is she actually writing down everything he said? That would be a painfully literal way to blow him off.
Then she sets the cup down on the counter and walks away.
In his head, that played out so much smoother.
Raven swoops in, smirking at him. He's starting to think that maybe her face is stuck like that, the way teachers used to warn him would happen when he rolled his eyes. She pours him his coffee, and even though he's standing right in front of her, walks it over to the pick up counter.
"I've got a coffee here for 'Jackass'."
"Yeah, great, thanks." He turns away, pride still smarting, and wonders if he shouldn't just trash the cup now and avoid all things Starbucks until the end of his days.
"Hey, Lame-y." He was planning on ignoring Raven, but she actually snaps her fingers at him and whistles like she's the fucking Barista Whisperer, what the hell. "Read the damn name."
Bellamy grits his teeth. Apparently he's going to do this right in the middle of the Starbucks, deep in the heart of enemy territory.
He should have known it would end like this. There are always casualties in war.
Except -- he has to read the message a few times before it sinks in.
My name is Clarke. If you ever call me Princess again, you die.
He looks up and sees her -- sees Clarke -- re-emerging from the back of the shop, pulling that hated green apron off over her head.
It's a hell of a sight.
"Truce?" Clarke asks him.
"Never," Bellamy says. She raises an eyebrow at him, and he clarifies, "I'm going to give you shit about working for Starbucks, forever."
"Oh, good, because I'm still going to give you shit about being an asshole. Forever."
Bellamy shrugs. "At least forever won't be boring."
And it isn't.