Chapter Text
Red son works in a coffee shop.
If it was up to him, he wouldn’t have even stepped foot in one. He hates the rush hours, the long, boring hours of absolute boredom when they end, and the people who think that if they yell just loud enough then they’ll be able to get absolutely everything they want, which Red son cannot allow, but he can’t tell them that so he’s stuck in a stalemate between them. Sometimes he gives in, but if he can help it, he’d rather just chuck the coffee machine at them and tell them that if they want better service then they should go somewhere else. But he doesn’t, despite how many times he’s wished too.
His parents own the shop. After his father’s exhilarating boxing career, he’d decided that he’d had enough of that lifestyle and wanted to spend time with his family. At the time, Red Son was just a baby, and his father had just rediscovered a cooking show he was obsessed with when he was in his younger years. And despite the fact that the hostess has made every single pastry in existence, the show is somehow still on the air, and every Wednesday night, right after closing, they squeeze together on their beaten up couch and watch it together as a family. His mother had been a baker that worked in a small pastry shop for a family business, which is where she happened to meet his father, just by chance. She later left to pursue other dreams that didn’t end up working out too well, and re-met his father on the playing field. Later, she would marry him, and they would begin their lives anew. She doesn’t speak to her parents anymore.
Red son doesn’t quite understand why his father would leave such an exciting life behind for something as measly as a coffee shop. The Demon Bull King, they used to call him. He used to be regarded as a king in his former years and now he’s fond of watching croissants rise in the oven, and it makes him wonder how could someone let all of this fame and power go away, just like that? Whenever he would ask his father as a child, he would simply tell him that he didn’t enjoy that lifestyle. That it was bleak and depressing, and he felt that he didn’t have much of a purpose in life at all. How he got this purpose in a coffee shop, Red son did not know, but he never told his father this. His mother is fond of this idea too and whenever Red son asks her why she decided to open the shop, she says it was because of her father. That she liked the simplicity of it all, liked working long hours and waking up in the early morning.
There are times in which Red son doesn’t believe her, but she has no reason to lie to him. And if she really hated this lifestyle then she wouldn’t have joined his father and so persistently supported him through everything he wanted to accomplish.
He doesn’t know. But he knows for a fact that he doesn’t want to follow in their footsteps, or live with them for the rest of his life.
Red son was an inventor. He spent long hours in the evening building contraptions and designing plans and models for robots that would be able to do his bidding if he so wished them too. He hadn’t been to his school in his life and was homeschooled by his mother and some other tutors who came on certain days but never really taught him anything of value. He sort of picked up everything himself. With nothing to do most days, he just began to read and read and read, until he had learned of scientific theorums and mathematical equations that would shock his tutors. He’d like to think himself as smart, at least, if what they had been telling his mother and father over the years was anything to go off of.
Speaking of which, his mother and father had seen this inventing hobby of his quite useful. He had become the family handyman; Whenever something was broken, they would call his name and he would come and fix it. Broken fridge? Fixed in a moment or two. Broken coffee machine? Problems gone in the blink of an eye. They had gotten so used to asking him to fix absolutely everything that it became stupid sometimes, but he supposed they only did it to see if he was any good. His mother had once come up to him and asked him if there was any way to increase the speed of the oven so the pastries could bake faster, and in a few seconds, Red son had an idea in his head and reinvented the oven so it could fit the criteria fitted for his mother, all in the span of an afternoon. And then when word of his miracles came out, everyone began asking him to fix something or another (it was his parents that spread the word, to usual customers and friends, who told friends of friends.)
It is when Red son started a bit of a workshop. Someone would ask him to fix something, he would pick up his fingerless gloves, his coat, and his box of tools, and go and solve the problem. And then he would charge them. Nothing unreasonable, of-course. Infact, when his father had first heard of this he demanded that Red son charge more money for his efforts. he did. It served to be quite fruitful.
He disliked this job too (hated the annoying questions, the customers, the ‘what are you doings’ and the long, tedious explanations that are useless because the customers never end up understanding it anyways, so why did he have to speak in the first place?) however when he received the money for it, he felt relieved. It wasn’t as if the work was hard or anything and he got good money from it regardless.
And it was all that consumed him when he lay in his bed, in the solitude of the night with the moon perched so high in the sky that it illuminated his room and turned his face white. Thoughts passed through his head then. He didn’t want to live in the comfort of his parents home his entire life but he had never lived by himself before. Would he even be able to find somewhere for himself? Could he even manage living alone? Would the workshop business hold up, or would he have to find something else?
He hadn’t ever had a proper job after all.
Gods, he didn’t even know anyone.
He has never, in all his years of life, had a single friend. And this fact doesn’t seem to hinder him when he works, but when he watches students frequent the cafe with friends linked in their arms, chatting excitedly with one another, there is a hollow feeling in his chest that he cannot avoid. And this, this he doesn’t know how to fix.
One day, a girl comes up to the counter.
The day has only begun but Red Son is mentally preparing himself for the long, boring day he has to push through when the door chimes open and in comes the girl. She’s blasting music on her headphones, bopping her head to the beat, unaware of the stares she’s attracting. She’s interesting to look at; Her jacket is a bright green and matches the highlights in her hair, and she’s got a bag slung over her shoulder with all sorts of keychains and nicknacks and pins.
When she comes up to the counter, Red Son can hear the music blaring through her headphones. She taps on her phone and pulls down her headphones, and takes a look at him before she opens her mouth to order.
“Just a cappuccino please. Oh! And peppermint tea.” Her voice is loud and bright and it rings in his ears when she speaks, which is not what he needs in the early morning.
He mumbles something about getting her order and goes and starts making her coffee, forgetting to take her name with it too. But she’s the only one in the line and she’s earlier than the storm of college students in the university nearby that stumble into the shop before classes are set to start. He brews the tea and sets her order on the other side of the counter, where she’s patiently waiting for him with a smile on her face.
“Hey. I think I’ve seen you before.”
He doubts she has. He’s never seen her before.
“You’re mistaken.” He mumbles. Why is she even talking to him?
“I have. You go to Megapolis University?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Oh,” She draws out her ‘oh’. “Shame. I could’ve sworn I’ve seen you.”
The girl drops the cash on the counter. She pulls her headphones back to her ears and taps on her phone, before taking the coffee, the tea and flashing him a grin all the while she leaves with another jingle of the door. He stays there for a moment, startled by her upfrontness. He’s had people try to talk to him, people who have even gone as far as to hit on him (Which is something he can never understand. Have they seen his face? What attracts them to him?) so it really isn’t much of a difference. She didn’t even wait for him to take give her change back to her. He brushes it off and collects the money regardless of it all, and hears his name being called from the staff room.
“Coming.” He leaves the front alone, hoping nobody comes just yet.
She’s back again tomorrow, almost at the same time.
She’s in a hassle today. She’s wearing a black tanktop and her green jacket wrapped around her waist, her hair held together in a messy bun above her head. Her bag is slumped over her, with only one strap hanging from her shoulder. And yet when she sees him, she seems to light up and she grins at him as she walks over to the counter.
“Hey! Love the sweater.” She speaks as if they’ve known each other their whole lives, and her shrill voice grazes his ears a little bit.
He looks down. He’s wearing a red sweater his mother knitted for him when he was younger, after she complained that she never sees him wearing it anymore.
“Thanks. Do you want the same?”
“You remember the order?”
“A cappuccino and a peppermint tea, if I’m not mistaken?”
“Ooh, you’ve got a good memory son!” Her grin grows wider and Red son can feel the heat crawl into his cheeks, though he doesn’t know why. “But yeah, I’ll just have that.”
He leaves in a hurry to make it and when he turns back to the girl she’s staring at him with sparkling green eyes. He hasn’t noticed how piercing they seem, how alluring. He shakes these thoughts from his mind and sets the drinks down in front of her.
“Hey, wait, dude,” She starts. “Gods, I need someone to take me back to campus because I’ve gotten so lost in your eyes.
He’s startled. His heart lurches, but he holds onto himself and just stares at her until her words have computed in his mind, “Are you … flirting with me?”
“Is it working?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Oh c’mon! That was a good one!” She sighs and hangs her head in some mock form of shame. She pulls up her headphones and taps on her phone before swiping up the drinks and dropping the money on the counter. “Well, guess I just gotta try again tomorrow. Keep the change.”
She flashes him a grin and she’s gone with the chime of a door, and then the world seems silent, despite the mutterings of nearby customers.
---
“Do you believe in soulmates? Because I believe our souls were baked to be together.”
She comes in the next day without a sound. Or maybe she had, but Red son was so busy stocking the pastries, wallowing in the fact that he had little to no sleep the last night due to his brain thinking and thinking and thinking until the sun reached above the clouds and his body couldn’t take itself anymore. So he’s running on one hour of sleep and he has to spend the entire day dealing with needy customers.
If the girl notices his eye-bags, she doesn’t say anything.
She’s grinning back at him, waiting for his reaction.
“Were you even trying with that one?”
“Yeah. Looked ‘em up and everything. Did it woo you?”
“Of-course. I’m down on my knees.”
“Get back up then, ‘cause I gotta hit you with another one!” Her voice is even more annoying today, somehow. “I must be a coffee bean because I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“What are these brainless idiots writing on those articles?” He finds himself asking, annoyed out of his mind at this girls idiotic excuses to talk to him. He turns around and begins to make her coffee, all the while he boils the water for her tea. “Please. You’re giving me a headache.”
“Alright, wait. Last one, It’s the best one I promise.” She’s leaning on the counter, her hand rested safely under her chin, and she’s looking up at Red son with such a delicacy in her eyes that the world seems to stop spinning for a moment.
“This must be a museum, because you’re a work of art.”
He blinks. Her efforts of wooing are rather infuriating, and it breaks the image nestled into his head. But her eyes become only brighter still, and if he searches through them, he’s sure to find a landmine full of the greenest emeralds waiting for him.
“You’re masterpiece is a touch too plain, I’m afraid.” Red son really wishes she’d just leave him alone. He places the drinks on the counter.
“Don’t tell me my amazing pick-up lines aren’t working?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Bummer. Guess I’ll just have to come by again.”
She fishes in her pocket for the money and drops it onto the counter.
“Keep the change!” She grins, as she always does, and she is gone again without another word.