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___
Damon had struggled his entire life with showing gratitude to people.
He never understood how—he always thought that when he thanked someone for a gift or kept cards from special occasions, he was sufficient. He appreciated the thought put into gifts, of course, but they never sent him over the moon with happiness or anything.
A good example of this was when he turned 15 years old. His mom had insisted on him inviting a few classmates to celebrate his birthday despite his informing her that this was ridiculous because he didn't find himself wanting to associate with any of his classmates, felt he was superior to them, and all of their bodily function-based sense of humor. But, his mother had insisted, and so, he had invited a few people.
Their names elude him now, but he distinctly remembers their faces when it was time to open presents.
“Damon! Open mine first, yeah?” One of the kids demanded like it wasn't Damon's birthday.
He is proud to say he did not pick that kid's present first. He was not going to bend to someone else's demands on his birthday! Not that turning 15 was a big deal, but it was still his party and his rules.
The first present was a gift card for 25 dollars. Generic, inexpensive, inoffensive. He had no issues with the gift, so he offered a simple “Thank you for the gift card.” and moved on.
The next was some sort of art set, the kind with chalky crayons and shittily pigmented colored pencils. Damon would be the first to admit he was not a very creatively oriented person and felt no true calling from any of those fields. But he was especially not an artist– he wasn't sure where that idea for a gift came from. But a gift was a gift, so he said his thanks and once again moved along.
The third and final gift piqued his interest. It was in a big bag, practically bursting with tissue paper. He had tilted his head at the person who had brought it in, confused by the effort put into the gift. It wasn't as if they were particularly close to one another, so it was a little weird to him.
Regardless, to avoid wasting a gift, Damon went to unearth whatever was under the mountain of tissue paper set before him. He was not disappointed by what he found inside, either.
It was a rather large weighted plushie in the shape of a cat. It was soft to the touch and even came with a name tag.
“...Why would someone name a plushie Serendipity…?” He murmured, more to himself than to his party guests. It was a peculiar name for a plush toy, especially a cat. He could see it more if it was a unicorn or something more mystical– but even that was a bit on the nose.
The girl who got the gift for him, who he had spoken to briefly in passing, turned pink and averted her eyes at his reaction for some reason. His response confused him, because what was so embarrassing about giving him a plushie? Had she forgotten what she had put in the giant bag she lugged to the party? That would be ridiculous.
“Thank you for the effort you put into getting me this, it was thoughtful of you.” He says, putting it back into the bag it was originally in.
And with that, the party went on.
____
After the party ended, she ended up being the last to be picked up, funnily enough.
“So… Damon.” She starts, sitting on the pavement with him, arms wrapped around her knees. He hadn't wanted to mess up the pants his parents had gotten tailored specially for occasions such as this, so he chose to stay standing to accompany her.
“So...?” He prompts her, raising an eyebrow.
“Sorry, I just- um- wanted to ask you something.” She nervously fidgets with a bow on her dress as she attempts to conjure up the confidence to finish her sentence. Or that's what Damon assumes– he doesn't live in her head.
There's a beat of silence before she continues.
“Did you… not like my gift?”
He pauses. Had he not thanked her for the plushie? It was the main gift he paid any sort of attention to, even taking the time to read through the information on the name card attached to the tag.
Taking his silence as an answer, she continues to ramble on. “Because if you don't like it, I can always take it back. It's just that I like you a lot! And I wanted to show you that I cared with something that reminded me of you like a cat, 'cause you're kind of cat-like in a way, and–”
“Um.” He interrupts her. “I did like your gift. I thanked you for the effort you put into it.”
“Exactly! You thanked me for the effort I put into the gift. That's not the same as liking it, that's like, the polite way of saying ‘Oh thanks I hate it but thanks for trying!’ or something like that!”
Damon runs a hand through his hair, growing a little annoyed with her. Who cares about the semantics of wording like that?
Sighing, he represses the urge to roll his eyes at her to not set her off further. “It's what I meant though. I read through the whole tag and took note of the details of the name of the cat, and that was that. I appreciated the gift, but we don't know each other that well, so the reaction I gave was warranted. No fanfare was necessary.”
“Fanfare? Seriously?” She seems to be getting annoyed with him as well. “I didn't need any fanfare, just saying thank you would've been enough, you pretentious bastard!?”
“Pretentious? You're the one nitpicking something as small as my word choice despite my actions. Get real.”
She stands up, hands balled up into fists by her sides as her expression clouds further. “You're such a dick! I don't know what I even saw in you!”
No longer able to repress the urge, Damon rolls his eyes at her, crossing his arms. “Whatever. Good for you, I guess. Thanks for the damn present.”
And with that, he leaves her out on his porch, slamming the door in her face as she stamps her foot like a petulant toddler outside. Like it was his fault she had a crush on him and put in all of the effort to try and impress him– it wasn't even his problem!
He still kept the stupid cat though, despite whispers around the school corridors of how he was ‘such a pretentious little bitch’ and ‘had a stick so far up his ass it was a miracle his organs had enough room to function properly.’
He hadn't had an interest in being a socialite anyway, so it did not create much of an issue for him, minus the whole smear campaign thing over a birthday gift.
At least the cat was cute.
____
In college, Damon had been forced to get two jobs to keep himself afloat. The burden of wanting to have a future was being in crippling student debt! The path to the future was to be drowned in finances until you win the lottery and join the top 1%. Go fucking figure.
So, to combat this, he worked shifts at the local department store folding clothes in the back and worked as a bartender a few nights a week at the shitty bar right off campus, where most self-loathing college students could be found chasing away their feelings of inadequacy with a drink.
Damon, despite being a bartender, could not hold his alcohol for shit, so he could not relate to those people unless he was having an extremely rough time and needed to forget everything.
He liked to think he had a good handle on himself though. His grades were stable, he was making enough money to cover the essentials (barely) and he was working. So, he was fine.
He thought he looked the part too, until one night, one of his regulars came up to him as he was cleaning glasses.
To his dismay, it was not one of his tamer regulars– it was one of the more irritating ones. Namely, hurricanes with fried pink hair and far too many accessories named Kai Monteago.
Kai was a strange regular, one of the more interesting ones. He didn't usually order anything, coming into the bar at random times just to ask for a Shirley Temple like a 12-year-old and talk Damon’s ear off until he got tired. It was as if no matter how hard he resisted, Kai managed to reel him into some sort of absurdly nonsensical conversation.
(He would never admit it to his face, but the distraction was appreciated, especially on slower nights when he didn't have all that much to do with his time, other than polish the same few glasses and sweep behind the bar.)
“Slow night tonight, amirite?” Kai asks, leaning forward on his arms, smiling at Damon with eyes filled with mischief that never failed to set him on edge.
“It's 3 am on a Tuesday, Kai. Normal people are asleep by this time.” Damon tries not to take the conversation bait and finishes drying his current glass, knowing full damn well that if he gets sucked into bantering with Kai for the night, he is not going to get much more done.
As someone who was pretty prideful of their work ethic, he wasn't exactly thrilled at the thought of being caught slacking off.
Despite this, Kai seems unbothered by his attitude and continues to draw circles into the wooden surface of the bar table.
“So then why are you up working? There's like, nobody around for at least another hour.”
He has a good point. Damon, even with his determination to keep busy, can't help admitting that polishing the same glasses until the bar starts to get more populated.
“I like to keep myself from slacking, unlike some people who have the freedom to relax several times a week at shitty bars.”
Likely knowing how much it ticks Damon off; Kai’s eyes start to well up with those ever-loathsome crocodile tears. “Seriously? Just 'cause I’m a comms major doesn't mean you've gotta pick on me for having free time!”
“You don't usually order much anyways.” He replies, putting down the glass with a bit more force than strictly necessary. He turns his back to Kai, ignoring his antics.
“Hey! Don't ignore me, man, what if I wanted to order? What happened to your ‘preserving of work ethic’ or whatever you call it?”
Damon's eye twitches. Kai’s lucky he has a tiny bit of a soft spot for him, or he would have had the guy thrown out several weeks ago.
“Well, are you gonna take my order then?” There's a smugness in his tone that only adds to Damon’s growing irritation.
“Fine. What do you want? Your usual?” He relents.
Kai makes a show out of considering what he wants, tapping his chin, and mocking someone deep in thought.
“Actually, no. Give me an espresso martini. Decaf.”
Damon makes a face. “An espresso martini? Seriously? It's 3 in the damn morning.”
Kai waves him off. “Pshh. I’ll be fine, it's decaf. Plus, you shouldn't be judging the tastes of your customers. If I've learned anything from live streams, which are basically like diet customer service, people don't take too kindly when you bash them. I could totally report you to your manager.”
Damon raises an eyebrow. “If you knew how to contact my manager, you would've done it the first time I called you a flashy overdressed asshole for coming into a run-down bar at ass-o-clock wearing that abomination of a rain jacket you came in with once.
The influencer clutches his chest in mock offense. “Hey! It was ironic– hello? Have you never seen Coraline? It was a nod to her outfit in the movie!”
Sliding the freshly made martini (read: abomination, who even drinks espresso martinis?) across the bar, he gives Kai a blank look.
Kai doesn't even grab his drink, apparently shocked at Damon’s lack of recognition. “Don't tell me you've never seen Coraline.”
At the lack of a response, his eyes widened. “Dude– no way! You haven't seen Coraline? Do you like, live under a rock or something?”
Damon takes slight offense to that– he knows the plot of the book Coraline. It was one of his favorites. He just didn't know there was a movie, that's all.
He decides to tell Kai as much. “I know the book, for your information.” He huffs. “I've just never been much of a movie person, is all.”
It wasn't a total lie. Movies just weren't something he ever took much of an interest in, especially when the movie remakes of books he liked were usually much worse adaptations.
Kai just rolls his eyes, taking a sip of his drink.
And immediately spits it back into the glass unattractively. Gross.
Not that he found Kai spitting into a glass attractive to begin with. That would be kind of weird.
“Eugh– what kind of asshole drinks this stuff for real? It's so bitter!” Kai complains, wiping his mouth with his sleeve as Damon pours out the drink.
He really should have asked if Kai wanted to open a tab to pay for it, but if he just so happened to ‘forget’ to log it, it shouldn't be much of an issue…
Instead of bringing that up, however, he just smirks at his obnoxious regular. “Need something to wash that down?”
_____
To be fair to Kai, he wasn't at the bar every single day.
Damon had asked one of his coworkers, Diana, if she had ever seen him. She worked pretty regularly, much more than he did, yet she had seemed confused at the question.
“Kai? I mean, I know him, we’re good friends, but he's not much of a bar person. He’s more of a campus party socialite than a bar-dwelling drunk.” She had said, pulling her long pink hair up into a bun. Her hair never failed to confuse him, with the short bob layered over a waist-length waterfall of dark pink hair.
It was weird. It suited her though, as Diana was anything but a normal person. Her being in cahoots with Kai seemed to prove that– but because they were friends, her comment struck him as odd.
If Kai was the type of person to hang around bars, (Which, he had gathered from his regular order of a children's sugar-infested excuse of a drink, in all honesty.) Then what exactly was he doing meandering around this particular bar at odd hours in the morning?
He decided to ask, the next time Kai came in.
Before the pink-haired influencer could open his mouth, Damon beat him to the punch.
“So, I heard from Diana that you don't hang around bars all that often.” It was straight to the point, but Damon wasn't exactly a fan of beating around the bush. It simply wasn't his style, it wasted time better spent on the topic of conversation at hand.
Kai paused, mouth left hanging open momentarily. He thought he saw something akin to slight panic crossing his features, but it was gone within the blink of an eye. It was probably his imagination.
After his odd pause, Kai seemed to regain his composure and laughed. It was a weird sort of laugh though, as if he wasn't laughing at anything funny. Weird.
“Well uh- yeah they're not my stomping grounds of choice, you might say.” Scratching the back of his head, Kai’s usually exuberant demeanor was slightly dimmed, exchanged for something more nervous and fidgety. It was slightly concerning, as it wasn't a side of him Damon had gotten used to seeing.
“So, then why do you come around here so often?” He pushes, curiosity getting the better of him.
Kai mumbles something to himself, too rushed for Damon to pick up. He raises an eyebrow at the odd behavior.
(He couldn't help the pride swelling within him at the sight of Kai being caught off guard, though.)
“What did you just say?” He prods further.
“Okay, okay nosy! I said, I just like the atmosphere. That's all.” Damon takes some offense to that because he wasn't even being that nosy. It was Kai’s fault for muttering in front of him! Of course, he was going to ask questions.
He huffs. “I am not nosy. And you can't tell me the vibe of some dingy bar that mostly attracts drunkards and college kids down on their luck is an attractive sort of atmosphere to any normal person.”
“Well, maybe I’m not normal!” Kai counters.
“Trust me, I’m aware you aren't.”
He seems to take offense to that. “Wh- Hey! What's that supposed to mean?”
Damon rolls his eyes, turning to take an order from a different customer at the bar. When he gets back to Kai, the other is still pouting.
It's not dissimilar to a look on a kicked puppy. It's cute, in an endearing sort of way.
“Don't tell me you're still mad about being labeled as abnormal.” Damon sighs, leaning on the bar top The cool surface feels nice on his bare forearms since he had rolled up his black button-up sleeves to his elbows. “You have to be aware that normal people don't spend time around here unless they are forced to or their lives are going to shit.”
Kai’s expression flips in an instant, a cheeky grin replacing the pout on his face. “Why? Am I too put-together looking to have my life going to shit?”
And Damon- he can't argue with that. Kai, despite his grown-out roots, looked like he had his shit figured out. If he had the free time to appear at random when Damon was working, he couldn't be doing terribly for himself.
The cheeky grin turns to a downright mischievous one. “C'mon Damon, tell me I’m too pretty to have too much shit on my plate.”
The comment makes Damon’s cheeks burn– a familiar feeling when Kai Monteago was involved. “Whatever. You don't look run down and decrepit.”
Kai doesn't seem satisfied with that, pushing further. “Seriously? That's all you got?”
“Uh.” He struggles for words, a foreign concept for someone who loves to argue as much as he does. “You look…nice.”
And his compliment is sincere, despite the circumstances. As much as he pretends it was forced out of him, Damon would gladly compliment Kai’s presentation of himself a million times over. If he was capable of such a thing at least– the thought of spontaneous combustion is much more appealing than spilling his guts, though.
It catches Kai off guard though, likely expecting a blatant refusal from the usually stoic bartender. His lips make a little ‘o’ in shock.
“Um. Thanks.”
The awkwardness is all-consuming. It almost has Damon taking back the compliment, backtracking, and returning to a boundary he was more familiar with, more comfortable in. Things weren't ever awkward with Kai.
Yet, somehow, he managed to make it so. He mentally kicks himself.
“So, I was wondering–”
“Fuck, that was my bad–”
They both pause, cutting each other off. Damon rubs the back of his neck, which he would gamble in a bright red by now.
Kai decides to try again. “I didn't mean to cut you off, but I've uh, been meaning to ask you…”
“Would you ever be interested in going out? With me, of course.”
Damon's thoughts come to a screeching halt.
“Sorry, what?” Maybe he misheard him.
“Seriously? You’re going to make me repeat myself?” Kai asks, seemingly annoyed.
“No– I just. What? You want to go out with me?”
Kai practically slams his head onto the countertop. “Seriously? Damon, I’ve been coming here specifically when you're on shift, been low-key flirting with you for literal weeks, and you're asking me if I'm serious about wanting to go out with you?”
He doesn't want to admit he thought the flirting was just a projection of his desires. That would be embarrassing, and he’d already had enough embarrassment for one night.
Damon takes a breath and clears his throat.
“So, you meant to tell me, that you've been coming to this bar at insane hours of night and morning, just to flirt with me and try to ask me out?”
Kai at least has the courtesy to look sheepish. “Well, when you put it like that, I guess I sound kind of desperate…”
Damon snorts. “Kind of?”
“Shut up! Just give me a straight yes or no answer already!”
Damon glances at the time. It's nearing 5 am, and the bar is desolate minus him and Kai. He can afford to close up early, work ethic be damned.
“I’ll do you one better. Do you have anywhere to be anytime soon?”
The grin he gets in response practically lights up the room.
____
A date at a coffee shop at 5 in the morning was not in Damon’s plans, but he couldn't find it in him to care all that much.
Not when Kai holds his hand under the table, linking their pinkies mid-conversation.
Not when Kai walks him to his apartment a few blocks away, sounds of their shared laughter sounding through the empty streets.
And especially not after they share a lingering kiss, and Damon musters up the courage to ask “Do you want to come up?”
It ended with him having a cute boy in his bed, both of their faces flush with overexertion. It was worth it in the end, even if he was going to hate himself for staying up so long later on.
Kai was worth it. He was worth so much more.
___
Several months later, a fluffy puppy plushie joins the weighted cat propped up on his headboard.
No screaming matches are needed to accept the plushie this time around. Kai didn't need much more than a ‘thank you’ and a sweet kiss.
It fits perfectly next to the grumpy-looking cat, in Damon's opinion.
Just like how Kai fits perfectly with him.