Archive of Our Own

Adam doesn’t want to say that Blue being excited about something or other is a rare thing, because sarcastic little shit that she is, she is also rather excitable. It’s just rare that those things excite her so much she squeals and bounces up and down in her place behind the counter. Literally. Actually squeals. Actually bounces.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” she chirps, looking up from her phone to beam at Adam like he should know what it is that has her in this unusual state of excitement.

Adam just widens his eyes at her. In case she’s forgotten, he’s not just ending his shift. He just got here. He’s the one who has to deal with the post afternoon classes student rush they always get. College students stuck somewhere between relieved their day is over, and stressed by how long their evening of homework is going to be make some of the worst customers.

“Gansey’s coming to visit,” Blue says, before Adam can decide to ask what’s got her in this state.

“Oh,” Adam says, mind whirring immediately, even as he’s trying to drown the thoughts out with the vanilla latte order he’s preparing.

Blue and Adam met through work, and bonded over finding out they’d both escaped the same small town. In Blue’s case for college, in Adam’s case just to escape. Adam had grown up on what might be poetically referred to as “the wrong side of the tracks”, but was really just a shit trailer park and a shitter home. Blue was definitely from the right side of the tracks, but Adam still never quite understood how her mother’s and aunts’ psychic business could have ever indebted people as super rich as the Ganseys to her.

Nevertheless, Richard Campbell Gansey III is Blue’s favourite childhood friend, in all his boat shoe wearing, money-oozing glory. Everyone calls him by his last name, but in the privacy of his own mind, Adam calls him ‘Dick’. He’s the exact type Blue would never bother with now, but because Gansey’s Gansey, he gets a pass. For some reason, the patience Blue has for his fumbling through the world, as well as said fumbling, pisses Adam off. The fact that he’s super hot only adds to that. Adam definitely doesn’t hate stalk his instagram.

Before Adam’s forced to pretend he’s at all excited about meeting him, Blue’s phone rings, successfully pulling her focus.

“Hiiii!” she trills into the phone excitedly – Adam guesses it’s the Dick himself.

With a last wave Blue shoulders her bag and then makes her way to the exit. Adam can hear her giggle like a stereotypical school girl just before the door falls shut behind her.

Christ. Adam is not looking forward to this.

Only a short week later, on a rare shift that they share again now that their manager finally believes them that they’re not the kind of ex-couple who can’t stand each other, Blue won’t stop fidgeting.

“He’ll be here whether you’re annoyingly excited or not,” Adam says, rolling his eyes while he’s wiping down the espresso machine.

“You’re a buzzkill,” Blue says, but the tone of her voice lets him know that her buzz has definitely not been killed.

Adam himself spent an embarrassing ten minutes this morning trying to work out whether he cared what he wore underneath his dark blue uniform apron when he met Dick for the first time or not, before grabbing a jumper he convinces himself isn’t that dressy, and rushing out so he wouldn’t be late. Blue obviously hasn’t bothered dressing up for the occasion either, but every time the door swings open, she glances up with a big grin.

Finally, just after four, she’s rewarded with her best friend, and Adam’s nerves are rewarded with the impending end of their shift.

“Gansey!” she yells, attracting far too much attention.

“Blue!” he yells back, laugh audible in his voice as he bypasses the whole line, somehow managing to make everyone step aside for him. He doesn’t even earn a single glare for it. Rude.

“I missed you, blue girl,” he says, rounding the counter to wrap her up in a hug. He’s going to get them in trouble.

“Missed you too.”

When they separate again, Gansey pulls an expensive looking necklace with an intricate pendant out of his coat pocket, dangling it from his fingers carelessly. He looks a bit like he stepped out of a glossy magazine, with his windswept hair, and his expensive pea coat, scarf draped around his neck. There’s nothing fair about his cheekbones either.

“Marry me?” he asks, making the two girls at the front of the queue gasp.

Blue laughs. “Not fucking likely,” she says, but turns around and lifts up her hair for Gansey to put the necklace on her.

It’s some sort of inside joke between them, Adam knows, but it’s still weird to see, the way he just… asks her that. In the middle of a crowded coffee shop.

“Hi, you must be Adam,” Gansey says then, smiling a pearly white smile and holding out a hand for Adam to shake. “It’s so good to meet you.”

Adam wishes he could say he didn’t feel his cheeks heat with Gansey’s firm grip on his hand, and that he could think of anything other than that one video Gansey’s sister had uploaded to his instagram for their vacation on some Caribbean island. Adam could really do with not knowing what Gansey looks like underneath all his preppy layers right about now.

“I’ll let you two get back to it,” he says and ruffles Blue’s hair fondly before smiling apologetically at the people waiting to be served coffee. They all seem a bit besotted with him, and though he’ll deny it for as long as he can, Adam sort of gets it. If there’s such a thing as a Prince Charming in real life, Richard Gansey is it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Adam catches Blue smirking at him as he steps back up to the counter.

Fuck.