Work Text:
Hercules Mulligan lived for change. Change was a good thing, that was his motto.
So when he saw an ad online for an open position at a new coffeeshop two blocks from his apartment, he was the first one to interview. He was the second person to get hired. He remembered that interview three years prior like it was yesterday, probably because it was the weirdest interview he’d ever had.
(Not that he’d had very many to begin with. He was nineteen. The most serious job he’d ever had before starting his “internship” with Mrs. Ross was bagging groceries for a mom and pop shop a few blocks from his parents’ apartment.)
He reached the interview spot that had been outlined in the e-mail, tried to open the door, and realized that the place he was supposedly interviewing to work at didn’t even exist. At least not yet.
There was a sign picketed into the spot of earth outside the shop. SONS OF LIBERTEA COFFEEHOUSE COMING SOON. And no one else in sight.
Who’s interviewing me? Herc remembered thinking. This tree? The sign? That pigeon--
“You must be Mr. Mulligan!” A tall man, the collar of his gray wool coat perked up against New York’s autumn chill, turned the corner, hand already extended for Herc to shake. He did just that, meeting the steady gaze of the man, who could only be the person who’d responded to his job application. George Washington, owner of Sons Of Libertea.
Or, at least, this old building, squashed between a record shop and a bagel place, that was supposedly going to be turned into a coffeehouse.
Washington stepped back and ushered someone else forward, a grinning someone else, who also grabbed Herc’s hand in an enthusiastic handshake. He had bouncy, cascading hair while Herc kept his cropped close to his head, he smiled with all of his teeth while Herc tended to be more relaxed, and he was wearing a French flag patterned bow tie while Herc had actual fashion sense.
Without even knowing this new guy’s name, Herc vowed to knit him a scarf or something, anything to replace that bow tie. He’d even do it in French flag colors, if that’s what floated this guy’s boat.
“Gilbert du Motier,” the guy introduced himself, shaking Herc’s hand for a little longer than completely necessary. He had a thick French accent, which at least explained the bow tie. “If you want, you can call me Lafayette.”
“Why?” Herc asked, and immediately regretted it. He wanted Washington to hire him, not be immediately put off by his gruff attitude towards bouncy Frenchmen. “I mean, yeah, okay, I’ll call you that if you want me to.”
“This is going to be a brief interview, Mr. Mulligan.” Washington began. “I only have a few questions. Firstly, what are you doing right now, work-wise?”
“You know Betsey Ross?” Herc asked, and Washington nodded. Of course he knew Mrs. Ross, everyone and their mother knew Mrs. Ross. “I kind of intern with her, help her around the shop and stuff. She taught me how to sew and I sell some of my own stuff online.”
“You seem to have a good thing going. Why are you interested in Sons Of Libertea?”
Herc shrugged. “Mrs. Ross’s done teaching me, and there’s not a lot I can do to help her anymore. I gotta make money somehow, and I love tea, so I figured hey, coffee shop, why not?”
Lafayette nodded enthusiastically. Herc hadn’t missed how everything he’d done up to this point had been done enthusiastically.
“You’re a tea man? I bake. Scones, macarons, biscuits.”
Herc raised an eyebrow. “Crème brûlée?”
Lafayette nodded. Again, enthusiastically. Apparently he’d never seen High School Musical.
Washington inserted himself into the conversation again. “Besides being, ah, a tea man, what else do you think you’ll be able to bring to the shop?”
Herc shrugged again. He couldn’t stop himself. “Uh, I’m great with people. Ask Mrs. Ross, she’ll be able to vouch for me. I’m also kind of a mediator, I tend to be an even keel. I stopped a lot of fights in high school.”
“It also helps that you look like you could bench 280,” Washington said, giving Herc a once-over. He shrugged for the third time in the last five minutes.
“350, but, uh, no big deal.”
Washington let out a low whistle and then composed himself. “Another thing we’re looking for is availability. The shop isn’t going to be open for another month, and I need help cleaning it up, making it presentable, tables, chairs, kitchen equipment. Think you could handle it?”
Herc crossed his arms. “I can handle it.”
Washington held out his hand again. Herc shook it.
“Mr. Mulligan, welcome to the team.”
Herc remembered looking at Washington, confident and calm, and then at Lafayette, almost physically vibrating with excitement, and then again at the COMING SOON sign, and thinking--
This is either going to be great, or it’s going to be the worst thing I’ve ever done.
And then he shrugged again, but this time mentally.
It’s change. Change is a good thing.
The next month was spent cleaning up the shop. Herc lugged a lot of heavy kitchen equipment around, met Washington’s wife, Martha, and took a box of her homemade fudge back to his parents’ house (it was the best fudge any of them had ever eaten), and got to know Lafayette more.
He’d moved from France two months prior, basically learned English on the journey over, and met Washington on his first night in New York. He was immediately in love with Washington’s idea for Sons Of Libertea, and offered to work for free.
“Fucking seriously?” Herc remembered asking. He’d been sitting on top of the (seriously dirty) counter of the future Libertea, watching as Lafayette attached blank chalkboard menus to the wall. He nodded, hair kept back by the knitted French flag themed headband Herc had made for him three days prior.
“I have an, ah, how do you call it? When your parents leave you money?”
“Inheritance.”
“Yes, that, inheritance, from my family back in France. I’m the last one of my line left, so I came here. Your country has always fascinated me, and I’m happy to work for Washington when he needs it.”
Herc whistled. “You’re a better man than me, Laf.”
Lafayette had grinned for hours after at the nickname, and it had stuck. A few days later, he used his first paycheck from Washington to put a down-payment on an apartment a few blocks away from the shop, and he and Lafayette moved in. It was four bedrooms, but Lafayette paid most of the rent, and insisted they’d fill it up eventually. Herc had no idea what he meant, but he was just happy to be living on his own for once. His housemate was clean, bought his share of the groceries, and the two of them lived pretty cohesively together.
Libertea opened, and Libertea was almost successful. Except for one thing.
“This coffee tastes like dirt.”
Herc did his best to breathe slowly, but it wasn’t exactly working. He smiled a very forced smile at the bratty law student glaring at him over the failed Americano he’d just tried to make, and handed him his five dollars back.
“On the house.”
The customer blew a disgusted breath out of his nose and left, muttering something about never coming back until the shop got their shit together. Herc spun to face Lafayette, running a hand down his face.
“This coffee stuff sucks. I thought it’d be easy, but honestly, I’m better at tea. I like tea. I understand tea.”
“It doesn’t help that this espresso machine likes to stop working,” Lafayette said, kicking the machine a little bit. It sputtered, and both of them took a step back. “It would take the hands of an angel to make that thing create drinkable coffee.”
And that night Herc took the subway back to his parents’ place, and that night he met John Laurens.
“Yo, man, you smell like a fuckin’ coffee bean and it’s driving me nuts!”
Herc’s head jerked up. He’d been dozing off, trying to erase that day’s coffee-related events from his mind. A kid stared back at him, curly hair wreathing his head like an untamable cloud, freckles splashed across his nose and cheap headphones slung around his neck. He had a backpack hanging off of one shoulder, charcoal dust all over his hands, and ratty Nikes on his feet.
“What?” Herc asked.
“Where’d you get to smell like that? I’ve been looking for a decent coffee place around here. None of the assholes in this city know how to make a cortado to save their fuckin’ lives.”
“You know what that is?”
“A cortado? It’s just espresso and foamy milk, dude.”
“And you can make that?”
“With an espresso machine and some decent beans, yeah, I can make anything.”
Herc pointed at him, thrilled out of his mind at the prospect of never touching the espresso machine ever again. A life of only tea-related duties spread out before him, and all he needed to do was get this kid on board.
“Do you need a job? I can get you a job.”
The curly-haired coffee angel raised an eyebrow. “I just moved up here and I’m kind of riding the subway at night because I have nowhere to go. If you can get me a job I’ll marry you.”
Herc introduced the kid, John Laurens, who was actually only a year and a bit younger than him, to Washington, and he was hired on the spot. The three of them worked as a team, with Lafayette baking, John making the coffee, and Herc taking care of all tea-related things. They slowly but surely made the shop their own.
Mrs. Ross came in, at Washington’s insistence and Herc’s persistent bugging, and painted the colonial flag sign that they hung outside. She also made them all aprons, and insisted that Herc practice embroidery on his at any chance he could get, so he threaded a needle and got to work.
John moved in with Herc and Lafayette after two months of working at the shop and hearing Herc complain about all the space the two of them had, rattling around in their big ol’ apartment. He took the room opposite of Herc, hung up his own Star Wars poster, and always ate the Chips Ahoy cookies Herc bought from the bodega down the road.
John, like Lafayette, came from money, although, unlike Lafayette, he didn’t have any. He told Herc the story one late night at the shop over intermediate shots of Jack Daniels, how he came out to his family the day he turned nineteen, home from college for Thanksgiving break. How his dad, some bigshot mayor of John’s hometown, took it badly, to say the least. How John dropped out of school, because without his family’s money he didn’t see the point of staying. How he used the last of the funds he had and bought a train ticket to New York to start over.
It was like having two little brothers that Herc had never wanted, and never knew he needed until he had them. He showed John how to use the washing machine, he taught Lafayette how to do hospital corners with his bedsheets, he laughed every time he came into the kitchen and John had made a mess trying to cook something.
Not to say that his vaguely incompetent best friends didn’t teach him anything. He had a small folio of John’s drawings in his room; a cocktail napkin with a detailed portrait of a woman’s face, a receipt with a cartoon alien he’d drawn in line at the supermarket, a big piece of cardboard he’d tested his new oil paints on with a picture of Herc himself, done in pinks and oranges and maroons. It was incredible.
Lafayette spoke French all the time around Herc, and he’d picked up a few things, how to say shit, how to take someone’s order, how to say thank you. John could also speak French, and it drove Herc up the wall every time they had a conversation without him, so they did it all the time.
One day, the hottest day of the year, Lafayette added three hundred dollars to their down payment and, subsequently, added another member to their family of three, a tortoiseshell Maine coon kitten that he named Georges, after their boss.
Georges made his and John’s life hell, but Lafayette loved him, so he stayed.
Washington hired another employee that summer who also made their lives hell, a guy named Charles Lee. He told them explicitly that his name was Charles, and he didn’t go by the nickname Chuck, ever. John called him Chuck.
Lee was older than them, the manager of the shop, and oblivious to anything that they did to try and get him fired. He always badmouthed Libertea, always gave them all the hard work to do, and always hid up in Washington’s office when their boss wasn’t there, presumably playing games on his phone, and they all hated him. That was the hardest summer Herc had ever spent at Libertea, and even their regular customers started to notice.
“That guy’s never taken my order.” One of their regulars, that law student from their opening week of business, arched an eyebrow and nodded over at Lee, who had headphones in and was cleaning, supposedly. He was texting. “Does he even work here?”
“Burr, Chuck Lee wouldn’t know the word work if it punched him right in the fucking face.” John slid Burr’s order, a steaming hot double Americano, across the bar. “He sucks. Leave it at that.”
“Fine by me.” Burr took his drink and ducked out of the shop. Sometimes he stayed, camped out at the end of the bar and people-watched, talking shit with John. Herc had even heard a rumor that he’d asked Washington if there were any available positions and had been rejected. He didn’t know why. Burr was an alright guy, a little pretentious, but then again, he was a lawyer.
They didn’t see Burr for a while after that, until one fall morning when John was working the register and Herc was back in the kitchen with Lafayette. He heard the bells on the doorknob jangle, and peered out of the kitchen window to see who was entering the shop.
It was Burr, and he had a shadow. A shorter guy with his hands in his sweatshirt pockets, shoulders still hunched against the autumn winds outside. His dark hair was raked back into a messy ponytail, and the bags under his eyes betrayed the fact that he probably hadn’t slept in a few days.
Herc watched as John reared back, flinging a handful of their least expensive coffee beans at Burr, yelling expletives. The new guy flinched a little, but then started laughing, and John was laughing with him.
His name was Alex Hamilton, he got hired by Washington that same day, he helped them get rid of Lee, he moved into their apartment, and Herc watched as John slowly but surely fell head over heels for him.
They kissed the same day Libertea was snatched right out of George King’s clutches and Herc cheered along with everyone else, cheered for two of his best friends finding their happiness in each other, cheered for Washington opening a new shop, cheered for Burr and his fiancée.
“Herc?” John asked later that night, sleepily leaning in the doorway of Herc’s bedroom, eyes half-open. “Did you know? About Alex?”
“That he liked you?” Herc took two steps across his room and slung his arm around John’s shoulders. “Man, I knew from the moment he stepped into Libertea. He was down for the count the moment he saw you.”
John leaned closer to Herc, and his fluffy ponytail tickled the underside of his chin. “Really?”
“Really.” Herc squeezed his shoulder one last time and gently prodded him towards his own room. “Get out of here, Laurens, we have work in the morning, makeout sessions or not.”
Herc knew John was tired, if only because he didn’t try and argue, but just softly closed his bedroom door behind him. The walls were thin, and Herc heard the muffled thump of his body landing on his two stacked mattresses, and light snoring not two seconds later.
He flipped off his own light after that, laying in the dark and thinking about change.
Things changed when he was hired by Washington. Things changed the day he met John, the day John punched Lee, the day Lee came back and threatened everything they’d built. Things changed that night; they changed with Alex and John, they changed with the new shop that John had dubbed Libertwo, they changed with that new guy, the one with the purple car, who both Washington and Lafayette knew, and who Alex already hated.
Change can be a good thing, Herc mused as sleep slowly overtook him, seven hours before he needed to be back at the shop for a new day of work. Change is a good thing.