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It’s an ungodly hour, Chilchuck knows this. Despite his best efforts, the registrar refused his petition to change his class time to something later this semester, so he’s stuck with getting up at the crack of dawn to teach his Intro to Engineering course.
Some would say it’s a ploy to weed out the eager freshman. Chilchuck would say it’s a personal slight against him. In either scenario, no one wins.
Refusing to yawn, Chilchuck drags his sorry ass to the campus’ coffee house. It wasn’t the classiest of joints, filled with slightly sticky tables and overstuffed couches, but it was the only place that sold a decent cup of coffee within a 5-mile radius. It would have to do.
A bell jingles overhead as he pushes into the coffee house, the trill mingling with the smooth instrumental music playing over the speakers. He expects to see the manager, Senshi, behind the counter like usual, and almost comes up short to see someone new fiddling with the register.
He’s young, mid-twenties at best, with cropped blonde hair, piercing golden eyes, and an imposing physique. He looks like the type of guy who either frequents the gym or the kind who doesn’t need it to look that good, Chilchuck can’t decide which one. The guy presses a couple buttons until the cash drawer pops out and hits him in the stomach.
Chilchuck fails to hold back his laugh.
The guy looks up, startled for a moment, before he pulls on a warm smile. “Good morning,” he greets.
“Morning,” he replies, stepping up to the counter. He jerks his finger at the register as he jokes, “You gonna be okay there? It looks like that thing has a vendetta against you.”
The guy’s eyes search his face before flitting down to the register and back up again. “Oh. Well, it’s a machine, so I don’t think it can have a vendetta? But if it was alive, I could take it. It’s smaller than me.”
Chilchuck blinks. If he has to explain his joke, it wouldn’t be funny anymore, right? He clears his throat and decides to drop it.
“Right,” he says, giving the guy a terse nod. “Anyways, I’ll have a large black coffee.”
“Okay!”
Chilchuck moves to pull out his wallet, looking away for just a moment, and when he looks back up the guy is already pouring his cup, affixing the lid and sleeve on the cup carefully. Chilchuck pulls out his card the moment the guy shoves the cup towards him over the counter.
“Here you go! Have a nice day!”
To be completely honest, Chilchuck thought this kind of thing only existed in sappy rom-com dramas. The ‘nice barista handing over a free drink in an attempt to flirt’ was a cliche at best and a poor business practice at worst. The fact that it’s happening to him, right now, the first day of the semester at dumb-fuck o’clock in the morning, with a decently attractive man on the other side of the gesture, has him completely struck.
“Thanks,” he says, hoping his hesitation isn’t clear in his voice. He takes the cup, the warmth of it comfortable in his hand.
Another jingle sounds over the easygoing music. They weren’t alone anymore. Chilchuck nods his goodbye, letting his eyes flick to the guy’s chest in search of a nametag. It was upside down, but he could still read the name: Laios.
As he steps outside, he takes a sip of his coffee. It’s the best cup he’s had in a while.
It’s a week before he brings himself to go back to the coffee house.
He tries to justify not stopping by in the mornings by blaming his workload. He’s meeting with students almost constantly, the more eager ones already planning out their bigger assignments and talking extra credit. He does his best to memorize names and faces every semester, getting to know every student and seeing how he can help each one. Though, he assumes that’s why his classes were some of the most coveted among the students: his personalized approach got the college kids talking, and his pass rate wasn’t anything to sneeze at.
Doing all of this uncaffeinated, however, simply wasn’t working.
The coffee house is busier now that the semester has kicked off, even at this early hour. Some people dot the couches and tables, heads in their books of fingers furiously typing away. Chilchuck doesn’t get how their brains could work this early in the morning.
Unsurprisingly, Laios is behind the counter. He feels a lump rise in his throat and swallows harshly to try and clear it.
“Good morning!” Laios greets, just like last time. His eyes are bright, but it’s obvious he’s less chipper than before. Maybe the early shifts are getting to him. “What can I get ya?”
“A large black coffee, please,” Chilchuck says. Laios fidgets with the register’s screen in front of him, and the card reader lights up in front of Chilchuck. He wasn’t expecting to get another free coffee, but the smoothness of the transaction is so different from the last time he was here, Chilchuck is taken aback. Sheepish, he fishes for his wallet.
Laios gets him his coffee. Chilchuck hums his thanks. He takes his leave with a nod, taking an appreciative sip as he goes.
It’s only when he gets to his lecture hall, preparing his lecture notes and booting his laptop up, that he notices it. His cup has a smudge of ink on it, just under the protective sleeve. Blinking, he removes it, and finds a cartoonish drawing of a bear hidden underneath. Its mouth is a toothy smile, and what looks like an anatomically correct paw is drawn lifted up in a wave. Scrawled next to it, wreathed in a speech bubble, are the words “Have a BEAR-Y great day!”
He can’t tell, but the exclamation mark might have a heart instead of a dot.
Several of his students ask if he has a fever when lecture starts. Silently, he curses the ground Laios walks on.
Chilchuck keeps going to the coffee house every morning. The coffee’s good, it’s close to the lecture hall, and Laios’ drawings actually make him smile. The blonde seems to recognize him now, too, his features brightening whenever he walks in, hands fidgeting with a multi-colored button on his apron whenever they make small-talk. It makes Chilchuck burn, but it’s not like he can say anything, right? The man’s working.
Did he want to say something? Sure, Laios gave him free coffee once and has been doodling and writing puns on his coffee cups for the better part of a month now, but was that really grounds for a crush? Chilchuck wants to kick something. He’s been out of the dating game too long. It doesn’t help that he thinks he’s at least ten years Laios’ senior. Who would even be into an old guy like him?
Depreciating himself into dust, he scans into the campus library. He’s determined to snag an empty study room and start grading the problem sets he assigned last week. It wasn’t like they were going to grade themselves.
He turns a corner and swears. A head of familiar ash blond hair disappears in between some bookshelves.
Chilchuck doesn’t know why he follows. Call it delusion or wild hope, but it was the first time he was seeing Laios outside of the coffee house, without a counter in between them and their roles as employee and customer. Maybe he could actually talk to him, or make him laugh, or ask what that free coffee and those doodles mean after all…
As he gets closer, he notices the clothes he’s wearing are different from what he normally wears and his hair is longer than he remembered it. Maybe he was just crazy.
“Laios?” he asks, just as he raises his hand to pluck a book from the shelves. The movement makes him turn and… that’s not a him at all.
“Hmm?” she hums, and it's obvious. Her slightly plump figure, her more feminine clothing, her shoulder-length hair. She has the same golden eyes though, her lids hooded with a sleepiness that seemed eternal, but the pleasant smile on her face was practically identical.
“Oh, uhm, sorry,” Chilchuck is quick to say, mentally kicking himself for getting his hopes up. “I thought you were someone else.”
“We get that a lot,” she says with an airy sort of laugh. She must notice Chilchuck’s eyes skittering around for anything that would get him out of the situation, because she smiles warmly and holds out her hand. “I’m Falin, Laios’ sister.”
“Chilchuck Tims,” he introduces, rushing to shake her hand. “I’m a professor here. Laios makes a mean cup of coffee.”
“Oh!” she says, delighted, before she leans in close to him and says, in a mock-whisper, “Don’t tell him I told you, but he actually hates coffee.”
“Really?” Chilchuck asks, kind of taken aback. “I would’ve never guessed.”
“Senshi taught him a lot of the basics, but he did a lot of research himself, too,” Falin hums. “He’s really dedicated to things like that. It’s kind of funny, because you wouldn’t think something as simple as coffee would be so complex, but it is!”
“Most things are,” Chilchuck hums. Deceptively simple yet intrinsically complex is what secures his job security, after all. Belatedly, Chilchuck’s eyes flash downwards and sees the stack of books already in her hands. “Oh, did you need help with those?”
“No, I’m okay,” she says. She adjusts her fold, shifting all the weight to one hand before she reaches back out to the shelves and plucking the book she was looking for earlier. “I need to get these back to the check-out counter, anyways. Someone requested them and they’re waiting for me.”
It takes a second for Chilchuck to realize that she means she works for the library.
“Oh,” Chilchuck says, moving half a step back. He doesn’t voice the apology on his lips. Something tells him she would just wave it off, anyways. “It was nice meeting you,” he says.
“I’ll let Laios know you say hi,” she hums. She gives him a nice little nod before she bows out, disappearing back into the shelves and out of sight.
Chilchuck stands there for a moment longer, thinking about his life choices and everything that led him here, to this moment. He grits his teeth and forces himself back out of the bookshelves. Those problem sets weren’t going to grade themselves, childish crush be damned.
“Oh, hey!” is the greeting he gets when he walks into the coffee shop the next morning. He’s a little later than usual, sleep evading him the night before and making him sleep through two of his alarms. Laios is brighter than usual, excitement practically exuding from his pores, as Chilchuck gets to the counter. “Professor Tims, right? My sister told me she ran into you yesterday!”
Hearing Laios address him so formally has heat rising to his face. “Just Chilchuck is fine,” he murmurs.
“Chilchuck,” Laios repeats, like testing the name out on his tongue, before he hums. “Same as usual, then?”
Chilchuck nods. Laios rings him up. Chilchuck pays. Same old song and dance.
“You know,” Laios says, twirling a pen in his hand before he sets it to the surface of the cup he’s holding, “I didn’t realize you knew my name.”
Chilchuck can’t hide his mirth. “You are wearing a name tag, you know that, right?”
“Well, yeah,” Laios says, finishing whatever he was drawing and turning to pour his drink, “I just didn’t think you’d read it!” When he turns back and hands the cup to him, he has the kind of smile that would’ve made Chilchuck swoon. Hell, it’s nearly making him swoon now.
“Of course I read your nametag, I’m not an asshole,” Chilchuck huffs, taking the cup from him. He doesn’t even pretend to not notice the drawings on his cup anymore. He deliberately moves the sleeve down to check what it was today. A semi-realistic bee is drawn haphazardly with a speech bubble that says, “BEE amazing today!”
“I wasn’t saying you were!” Laios defends, panic in his voice and etched into the way his eyebrows pinch together. Chilchuck smiles, rolling his eyes a bit as he takes the first comforting sip from his cup, and hopes that the gesture eases some of Laios’ nerves. It seems to do the trick, because when he opens his eyes again, Laios is looking at him expectantly. “So, what department do you teach for?”
“Engineering,” Chilchuck says simply. “Mechanical engineering is more my specialty, but they have me teaching more general classes this semester.”
“Oh, cool!” Laios says. His energy was pretty much infectious. It was that, or the coffee was hitting him more effectively this morning. “I might have to take one of your classes next semester. That would be fun.”
“You’re a student here?” Crap. Crap, crap, crap!
“I’m taking night classes right now,” Laois says. “I joined the army right after high school, so I’m getting my degree while I can now. Falin got accepted into her graduate’s program this year, though, so it’s nice to not be completely alone here.”
“It’s good that you’re not alone,” Chilchuck says. No wonder he looks the way he looks , he thinks to himself, he was in the army. “You have an idea of what your major’s gonna be?”
Laios’ eyes strays away with the question. “I’m between ecology and ancient civilizations.”
The answer is so different from what Chilchuck is expecting that he barks a laugh.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Chilchuck gasps, waving a hand in the air like he was trying to clear laughing gas from his face. He can see Laios reddening indefinitely from behind the counter and it makes his gut twist. “It’s just… those two are so different , but it makes sense for you.”
“You think so?” Laios asks, voice small.
“Yeah,” Chilchuck says, finally getting himself under control with a final deep breath. “If I find you in one of my classes, I’m kicking you out, though.”
“Aw… why?”
“Because you don’t need an engineering course for an ecology or ancient civilizations major!” He’s laughing again, but this time Laios is laughing too, the sound bright and clear like the chime of the shop’s bells by the front door.
More customers file in. Chilchuck reluctantly bids Laios farewell.
For a moment, he thinks about setting his stuff down at one of the overstuffed couches and pretending to work, just to be able to sneak glances at Laios every now and then. He pushes himself out of the coffee house anyways, gripping his cup tightly, pretending the warmth of the coffee was from Laios’ hands instead. He was too old for this, for memorizing the sound of someone else’s laughter or lying in bed thinking over every one of their interactions.
He was lovesick. He’s not about to scream it from the rooftops, but he could at least admit it to himself. Laios somehow took hold of his shriveled-up heart and made it beat again.
Chilchuck’s a ghost of himself as he drains his coffee cup. There’s a trash can right outside the lecture hall, and he hesitates to throw it away. He chooses to carry it with him, slipping the protective sleeve off and staring at the bee drawn on the cup’s surface.
A free drink has an obvious interpretation, right? And little doodles and cutesy messages even moreso? From the outside looking in, anyone would deduce Laios was flirting with him. It’s no wonder Chilchuck fell and fell hard.
The next morning, Chilchuck arrives at the coffee house, determined
“Morning, Chil!” Laios calls from over the counter, all smiles and bright eyes. The nickname has him feeling weak in the knees.
“Morning, Laios,” he answers, hoping his voice doesn’t waver.
“You’re here early,” Laios notes, already picking up a cup and setting his pen to it. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” he finds himself saying. “Don’t you ever get tired of being here early?”
“I got used to it,” Laios says with a shrug. His tongue pokes out from between his lips, his focus on his drawing and thankfully not on the way Chilchuck’s staring at him. “Besides,” Laios says, adding a final detail with a flourish of his pen, “working the opening shift means I get to see you.”
If he was a saint, that would be the final temptation needed for him to dive headfirst into a sea of sin. Heat radiates from his face. He has to slap a shaky hand to his mouthy to hide his dopey smile from Laios.
“Woah,” Laios says, finally looking up and seeing his expression. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look…”
“I’m fine,” Chilchuck repeats, trying his best to school his expression. He takes a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself, but he can practically feel Laios’ gold eyes locked onto him and it makes him shudder. “Actually…” he says, gulping, “can I get your number?”
“My number?” Laios repeats slowly, his head cocking to the side like a confused dog. After a moment, his expression blooms. “Oh! Yes, of course!” He nearly drops the cup in his hands as he hurries to write on it some more. When he’s done, he turns around to start filling it with coffee. “You can text me whenever!” he says over his shoulder. “We can have lunch sometime, or we can go to a museum, or the movies! Do you like movies?” He’s back at the counter, about to hand over the cup, before he abruptly snatches the cup back, nearly cradling it to his chest. “Wait. You are asking me out, right? On a date?”
The enthusiasm is infectious. Chilchuck finds himself laughing, forcing himself to nod so Laios doesn’t think he’s laughing at him. Hiccuping a sobering breath, he gets just enough of himself under control to say, “Yes, Laios, I’m asking you out.”
“Oh, good,” Laios says, almost relieved as he holds out the cup of coffee to Chilchuck. “I would’ve had to give you a different cup, otherwise.”
An incredibly detailed dragon is drawn on the cup, a miniature spurt of fire blasting from its mouth. Next to it, scratched out, are the words, “Have a ROARing day!” replaced with what could only be Laios’ number and the message: “You set my heart on FIRE!”
Chilchuck knows he’s not going to be able to throw this cup away, not this time.
“I like this one just fine,” Chilchuck says, holding it gingerly. He lets out a little sound, though, when he realizes he forgot to pay. He starts to grab his wallet when Laios’ hands start waving.
“No, no, it’s on me this time,” he says, smiling wide. “My treat.”
“Just like when we first met, huh?” Chilchuck jokes. “Maybe I should’ve asked for your number back then.”
“When we first met?” Laios repeats. The obvious question in his voice pulls Chilchuck up short. The cup in his hands feels scalding, now.
“The first day of the semester?” Chilchuck says slowly. “You gave me free coffee then, too. I thought you… that wasn’t on purpose?”
Laios’ eyes drift upwards, remembering, before he snaps his fingers. “Oh, right! That was my first day working here! Senshi got mad at me for forgetting to ring people up. It was scary.”
Chilchuck wants to crawl into a hole and die.
“So… you weren’t flirting with me?” he says, feeling himself wither.
“Not that time,” Laios says, guilt evident in his tone. “B-but, all the other times, I was! I usually doodle something simple on people’s cups, but for you I make sure it’s special! I wasn’t sure if you noticed them, though, so I thought I’d wear this, too…” His fingers come up to his apron, fiddling with the multi-colored button pinned there like he normally does. Only now, Chilchuck realizes it's a pride flag.
“Well, I feel stupid,” Chilchuck huffs, ready to laugh all over again.
“Don’t,” Laios pleads. His eyes flash over to the door, checking, before he leans over the counter, grabs Chilchuck’s collar, and pulls. Like lightning, Laios presses his lips to Chilchuck’s cheek. “I really do like you,” he says, moving just enough away so that their noses brush. “Please be my boyfriend?”
“You don’t have to ask,” Chilchuck says, nudging at Laios’ nose before making himself pull away. He was working, after all. Laios pouts at him, all wide eyes and quivering bottom lip. He fights the urge to roll his eyes. “I’ll pick you up for lunch, okay? Is 12:30 good?”
The smile that spreads across Laios’ face puts the sun to shame. “Yeah!”
A couple months later, Laios saunters sleepily from Chilchuck’s bedroom. A pair of Chilchuck’s old sweatpants rides low on his hips as the blond finds him in the kitchen, making them both breakfast. Chilchuck takes a second to appreciate his boyfriend, eyes trailing down Laios’ frame. He freezes when he sees what Laios is holding.
“You really kept this?” he teases. He shakes the old coffee cup with the dragon drawing for emphasis.
Chilchuck nearly burns his apartment down trying to get the cup back. He gets called a sap for his troubles. Laios’ delighted laughter and the kisses he presses to Chilchuck’s face are worth it, though.