Work Text:
The coffee shop by the florist’s, where the willow trees meet to form an arch over the door.
8.35 AM
The messages app opened by itself, it flicked open and scrolled down to his name without the sporadic grazes of James’s fingers, I swear. He couldn’t be stopped, his nails covered in chipped black nail polish brought to his mouth, chewing on hangnails that had caught some of the varnish. Eyes worrying around the shop, watching to see if someone would melt out of the walls to judge him, despite only just flipping the sign that welcomed in hurried travellers and ungrateful teenagers. His contact in James’s phone had been changed back to his government name, the flower emojis no longer a bond of petals around their wrists. It felt even worse somehow, having it so cold. It would have almost made more sense to name him as:
‘Disgusting cheater’
or
‘The boy who had eyes like the pockmarked moon and lips like its lunar halo’
The message tapped out itself, James blind to the swirling of his hands over the keyboard. It was like therapy, a coping mechanism, and there was a sort of satisfaction to know that James was putting him through hell. He never said anything dripping with spiteful words or bathed in resentment, just honesty. But for people like the one on the other side of James’s cracked screen, honesty was never part of the deal, never warped around the syllables leaved their mouths.
And besides, spiteful words never pulled remorse from his throat, a fishing line bloodying his oesophagus on the way up.
It didn’t make too much sense, the message. They never did though, their rambled musings going unanswered, left on read, the timestamp below its blue box a mockery for what it stood for.
I saw a girl’s body hanging from the church rafters / cyanide ran from her mouth in bloodied foam / She had a half finished tattoo snaking down her thigh / unfinished shading / stencil wrapping around her calf. / I don’t know if she planned to finish it / before she swung over the rotting wood. / Maybe she ran out of money / or maybe she stopped caring / holding her inhibitions like a medical condition. / I’m sorry, I don’t know why I am subjecting you to this, to me. / I walk down to the river sometimes / and I see your face staring back at me in the water / you ask why I trapped you beneath the murky blue / and I say;/ ‘you were scaring me’ / Divorce me from your intentions / let me crumble to the dirt, my shins rife with woodworm. / Maybe that’s what we were / an unfinished tattoo on a corpse’s leg. / Swinging from the ceiling - prayed to in an open casket / Tragically beautiful, you said / I would argue that we were the chewed and spat gum from the pavement / but whatever / You are the rough sketch on my right leg / and I spend malicious days - forgiving nights / scratching you from my skin. / But all I’m left with / are wounds spilling ink / and your eyes beneath my nails.
Read 8.42 AM
James held the phone until his hand went numb. He didn’t even know what he wanted anymore; an apology, a meteor strike, anything but the crippling silence.He stared at the two ticks, morphing into twin bruises beneath his eyes. In the silence of the shop, the hum of the fridge buzzed louder, vibrating up his arms like a trapped wasp against thick glass. Somewhere outside, a jackdaw screamed out into the bright morning, its call sounding so ragged and human it made James’s throat ache.
It was control you see, and James enjoyed holding the knife over the wooden figure he was painstakingly whittling.
The door slammed open, the bell ringing a couple of seconds after, its weak alloy of metal needing time to adjust to the force. James instinctively flung his phone over the counter, as if he was an insecure teenager terrified for people to find out that he had a life quiet to those who wanted it loud. Will, a co-worker who had hair that fluffed up in puffs of blonde and brown, and a too wide smile for eyes that simply did not match in their demeanour. He was wearing cargo trousers in a light chocolate beige, and a white graphic tee of cherries, the red of the fruit fading and the printed lettering above peeling off.
Will’s absent smile faltered from his face for a fraction of a second as he caught James’s startled look. He didn’t say anything, just offered a low, reassuring nod- like he’d seen James scared before and would pretend not to notice if that’s what James needed.
He nodded to James, slightly out of breath from running up the uneven cobbles, late - as he always was. The sun had kissed his face, allowing freckles to appear on his pale face in a blissful two week period, the sun would steal them back soon from his face of mellowed stars. Clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, he disappeared out back, the door that fell slow before slamming against the air barely missing his heels as it crashed behind him.
9.30 AM
”It is not going to work, it’s like a million years old.”
”No- why do you have no faith in me? I am like.. the third most trustworthy person you know.”
”Will, there’s a customer who goes across the street instead of here now because you gave him a latte with full fat milk instead of oat milk. Four times. In a row.”
”Fair.”
Will slammed the side of the TV again, and it sputtered a little light of static electricity in a feeble response. A few customers looked up in curiosity, dragging their eyes up from what tended to be school work, or detailed PowerPoints, or -one memorable customer- a hardcore BDSM porn fanfiction. James was clinging to the fraying ends of his rope on that day, and he had to remove himself from the customer to absolutely lose his shit from hysterical laughter in the kitchen.
James fiddled with the Spotify music player behind the counter, turning up the volume on a generic Taylor swift song which was a tad mind numbing but he already knew was going to rot his brain as it circulated his head all day. He ran a cloth over the counter, sweeping away receipts and spare change from mad dashes to the Sainsbury’s next door. James called over to Will, who stood with his head cocked and his hands on his hips, staring at the TV which was now no longer black, but flashing from nothingness to blinding white at a speed that was probably a health hazard.
”Any music requests, Will?”
”I feel like you are losing interest in me getting this TV working.”
”I never had any interest, you’re the one who brought the CD!”
James reached under the counter, moving aside the unnecessarily big mason jars for iced lattes, and retrieved the CD from where Will had stashed it as soon as he got in, a smile that was a tad too gleeful for half eight on a lazy Sunday morning.
”I mean, Brokeback Mountain? Seriously?”
”Hey- It is a masterpiece and you know that.”
”You are a literal straight man.”
Will went a little red at that, and turned his head back to the TV, all retaliation seeming to have died in his throat. James shrugged his shoulders, using metal tongs that were beginning to rust at the hinges to retrieve a panini from the toaster, cheese sizzling down the side of the white bread. He plated it up carefully, salad decorated with quarters of cucumber and tomato, a drizzle of a non-descript sauce simply labelled as ‘magic salad sauce’.
Will cleared his throat, before flushing deeper, as if finally making up his mind on what words to form his shaking tongue around. Scratching the back of his head, he offered a feeble, “Yeah, well. It doesn’t mean I don’t.. get it.”
James opened his mouth to poke more fun, but something about the way Will’s voice dipped, to an embarrassed quiet, made him let it go.
The customer barely looked up from her newspaper as the plate was laid in front of her, a muttered ‘thank you’ clearly not an effort worth underpaid baristas. Will hit the TV one more time as James passed, and turned around in a silent celebration as it finally flickered on to display a screen of apps underneath his relentless beatings. He grinned wide, clearly looking for approval in a way that made James’s stomach twist in an irritatingly warm way for a moment.
James looked up from a small sheet of paper where he had been writing down ingredients they had run out of in a scrawl of near illegible black ink, and exclaimed a deadpan;
“Wow. You beat it into submission, good job.”
Will laughed a little too loudly, the sound cracked like a record with warped edges, worn thin at the grooves. For a second, James wondered what it would be like to hold that laughter in his hands, gentle and ridiculous, before he forced himself to drop the thought like a scalding cup.
”Oh shut the fuck up, pass the CD.”
”Are we even allowed to play this?” James asked, chucking it over to Will. It spun through the air gracefully into his hands, a true sporting feat from James. Will didn’t respond, clutching the remote that had its batteries taped into the springs, its plastic degrading and buttons discolouring. He tapped through the menu, clicking the play button like he had never seen a working piece of technology before.
”This is the weirdest fucking job ever.” James murmured, to no one in particular.
11.46 AM
After making the seventh iced cinnamon-vanilla-salted caramel-gingerbread-strawberry Frappuccino, James was starting to feel himself go a tad insane, teenagers clad in Nike pros and dipped in what seemed like a bucket of fake tan not quite the conversationalists of the century. He dared a look down to his watch, only deflating further as he realised that time did seem to double in length as soon as he stepped through the double doors of the cafe.
Will pushed the cap down on a black coffee to go, sliding it over the counter in a way that made James overly paranoid that it would spill over the floor, and yet another angry customer would try and get Will fired. It was almost as if Will would welcome it at this point, yearning for a final cheque and then just disappearing into a melancholic spirit of light, living off of nuts and berries in the forest. There was something intangible keeping him here, but James had never been able to grasp what it was.
Like the pulse of the sea, the rush of customers soon cooled back to the cafe being near dead, a ghost town inhabited by ghosts that envied the living. An old woman sat in the corner, wearing peach sandals that exposed curling yellow toenails. James averted his eyes, focusing on the TV instead. Will was equally engrossed, watching the shitty quality like they were in a five star cinema with HD sound quality in a 4D experience.
Will drifted closer to James, their arms brushing whenever one reached for the sugar jars or the crumpled receipts, Will’s eyes still stubbornly fixed to the screen. Neither of them moved away, fixed by invisible strings.
Will poked James’s shoulder, and whispered: “This is the best bit.” There was a tremor of something unspoken in Will’s voice- not the typical film obsessive appreciation, but a kind of sadness James recognised too well to call out.
Was it the best bit? James was queer, he had seen brokeback mountain, it was a right of passage really. But it was all bone crushingly sad, there didn’t seem to be a ‘best bit’. Just gut punches mixed with weaker slaps to the face.
Will’s lips twitched, as if he was tempted to mouth along with Jack on the screen.
”Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together! Fuckin real good life! Had us a place of our own. But you didn’t want it, Ennis! So what we got now is brokeback mountain!”
James took an order, and thanked the stars silently that it was just a latte. Whatever cruel god that seemed to enjoy making his existence a joke took pity on him, and he was finally free from the Frappuccinos. Well that was a tad dramatic, but that seemed to be the trademark seal on every thought that went around James’s head.
“I wish I knew how to quit you.”
2.15 PM
“How long have we been working together, do you think?”
”A long time, Will.”
“And isn’t it weird that we never meet up outside of work?”
”Yeah, I guess.”
”You’ve always been busy, with-“
”I don’t want to talk about him.”
James frequently cringed at the idea that his ex was someone perceived by other people, and he didn’t just fade into an absence of what was when James stepped down from his porch with shaking legs. His existence felt like this big secret, an embarrassment to James. He wanted desperately to move on from his embrace, but it was as if the general public had their hands pressed over his arms, sealing them together in a congealed mess that James no longer wanted any part in.
He was a mistake, nothing more. So why was everyone so fucking obsessed with it?
Stacked cups teetered precariously beside the cake display, the tower of eco-friendly card watching the lemon drizzle slices with a curious interest. The cafe was a system of ever changing items that still managed to slot perfectly together, disregarding their form, to create the stereotypical ‘cafe’ feel. The first few months James had worked there, he had marvelled at the greased wheels of the machine, fascinated by the fact that even smashed porcelain mugs over the floor only added intrigue to the customers, only gave the extra challenge of hop-scotching over the shards of coffee and what could be.
After a little while though, it all began to feel so painfully average to him. Even the swirl of Saturn must get tired of perpetually staring at its rings, I suppose.
Will placed a hand over the cup tower, pressing his palm into the ‘please recycle me!!’ Demand printed up the sides. It stopped shaking, and averted its wandering eyes from the lemon squares. James watched Will for a second, tracking his gaze along with the singular bead of sweat that ran down his neck, interweaving beneath hairs at the tip of his spine. The AC had broken during a particularly scorching July a few years back, and the cafe owner seemed a lot more bothered by seeing how many cigarettes she could smoke in a row without keeling over and dying, rather than fixing its persistent whir of distress from beneath the counter.
There was something about the curve of Will’s neck, the way his spine pressed into his skin like the bejewelled beetles from the dirt, that made James’s chest feel too tight for a breath to possibly be allowed. It felt blasphemed to notice these things, as if a biblically accurate angel would bust out of the milk fridge and accuse him of heresy.
Will kicked at a raising of the tiled floor, scraping flakes of paint onto the woven net of his adidas trainers. If there was something that Will seemed to eternally be, it was frustrated. Frustrated by the weather, the dodgy electronics, the coffee machine that boiled the water too hot and too fast. Frustrated by the fact that he still wasn’t out of this tiny fucking town, frustrated with himself for not putting in any effort to leave.
”Why do you still work here, Will?”
Will replied instantly, as if he had already been having the conversation internally so he could prepare.
”The apple tree out back.” He smiled- not his usual lopsided grin, but something smaller, almost private.
James bit on the soft flesh of the inside of his cheek, looking out the stained glass window at the tree. It didn’t have any of the delicate pink blossoms on it, they were discarded like chocolate bar wrappers by its roots. And it was yet to produce fruit, so it was a normal tree really. Its trunk slightly warped, but perfect for little kids to climb and the right width for Christmas lights to be strangled around its branches when the colder months came. Even when it did produce fruit, not enough to fill the woven basket Will would hopefully take out, the apples were usually riddled with patches of brown and soft to the touch.
“Why the apple tree?”
”I feel sorry for it. I worry that if I left, no one would like it anymore. The bitch upstairs would chop it down as soon as she had the chance.”
Will paused again, fiddling with the silver ring engraved with a cornflower motif on the index finger of his right hand, before continuing.
”I wouldn’t want it to be lonely, I guess.”
He placed his head in his hands, laughing quietly.
“Oh my god I sound completely fucking mental.”
“No, I think it’s sweet.”
‘Sweet’ sounded a little clunky to James, as if he was complimenting a toddler on they’re superb spelling ability, despite flipping the d’s for the b’s and somehow mixing a number in there. But even still, Will peeked at him through the net of his interwoven fingers, a flicker of something almost like hope crossing his face, so quickly James almost missed it.
5.20 PM
James lifted the last of the chairs onto a table, covering its stains of coffee with the mahogany wood. The sun still hadn’t set yet, the late summer months beckoning you to conjure up friends and go sit by the sea, think about the future or something similar to blow your brains out with a rusting gun over. A lazy song played over the speakers, a mash of too loud instruments and a singer who seemed to be afraid of the microphone with its threatening metal and permanence of recording.
The sun started slanting low against the windows, baking the floor in a sickly orange light. The café had emptied again, just the hum of the fridge and the ragged sweep of a cloth over the counter.
Will flicked a paper straw wrapper at James’s head, missing by a good six inches.
James barely looked up. “You’re tragic, man.”
Will grinned crookedly, a little too wide. He was bouncing a spoon off the back of his knuckles, metal flashing with every flick.
He said, like it wasn’t a big deal:
“I had this dream about you last week.”
James blinked. “That’s a weird way to start a conversation.”
Will laughed, but it cracked somewhere, in the cavity where his lungs were supposed to be, presumably. He choked on air- as you do when you lack the fleshed surface area of your respiratory system- before continuing.
“I dunno, it wasn’t even that weird. You were just… standing in the ocean. I was shouting at you to come out, but you wouldn’t. You just kept looking at me like I was something you forgot a long time ago.”
Silence slipped into the space between them, thick and uncomfortable. James picked at a scab on his knuckle, head bent low. He didn’t know how to respond, if at all. In that moment, it made a lot more sense to just leave the statement in the air floating between them, a secret third party to their interactions.
Will cleared his throat and tried to smother it all with a shrug, a forced pillow over the face of the confession. “Anyway. Dreams are stupid.”
James didn’t answer right away.
He couldn’t claw the words from his mind to tell Will that last night, he had dreamed of drowning too. He had choked on the salt of the tide and spat the brine from his gums, but it kept rushing back into his mouth as the water rose past his neck.
He didn’t say that maybe he had been standing in that murky blue with his ex’s hands on his shoulders, forcing his feet further into the soft sand of the water’s bed. Never entailed that he had been waving a hand to Will, stood alone on the beach, ankles planted in a mix of soggy seaweed and shiny shrapnel rocks.
Instead, he scrubbed the counter harder than necessary, muttering:
“You’re right. Stupid.”
Will nodded. Smiled in that twitchy, awful way people do when they think they’ve just said too much. Like a baby bird that refused its mother’s second helpings, and was now being dropped from the nest, gripping onto its home of tangled twigs and leaves.
5.32 PM
The apple tree leaned toward them, its branches snapping shadows across the ground. Some of the blossoms had rotted brown, clinging to the bark like forgotten promises. A wind stirred the brittle flowers on the tree, scattering them across the cracked pavement like letters to a love one torn up and thrown into the sea. James felt the strange urge to gather them all up, slot their poetic musings back together.
James stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets, watching the sleeves covered in patches morph around his frame, places he’d been, bands he had long lost interest in. But nostalgia is a bitch, I suppose. Will kicked at a loose stone, his mouth twisted like he wanted to say something and couldn’t quite force his lips to comply.
“You ever think about leaving?” Will asked, voice casual.
James shrugged. “Every day.”
Will was silent for a second too long. Then he said, almost too soft to hear:
“I think if you asked me to stay, I would.”
James looked at him, really looked at him, and realised he had never once in his life asked anyone to stay. He had never believed he deserved the privilege of someone staying for him, when there were so many other people worth planting roots into the unforgiving soil for. The idea of asking - just saying the words out loud - was like standing at the edge of a skyscraper and daring himself to lean forward, far enough for the sky to grab his jacket and pull him into the sky.
The tint of the setting sun made Will’s hair look white at the tips, like it was already fading away, smudging at the corners like a rushed oil painting.
Will swallowed hard. His voice cracked when he said:
“You don’t have to be lonely just because you think you’re supposed to be.”
James smiled like it hurt, but he didn’t look away.