Chapter Text
Tom ran a hand through his hair, glaring at the half-filled computer page before him. He hated writing for deadlines, but deadlines paid the bills and since the Powers frowned on the creation of money from nothing, he got to dedicate more time than he wanted to answering letters to the editor for the local newspaper. It was bone-crushingly tiresome, but the pay kept body and soul together and every once in awhile he was surprised to find himself enjoying the work. Besides, answering letters politely instead of biting people’s heads off–as the actual editor of the paper was wont to do–seemed to him a reasonable way to combat entropy. Now, though, he was tempted to ignore the local entropy increase and throttle his boss, if it meant getting out of writing this letter.
The author was a middle-aged housewife who believed it was her solemn duty to tell the editor just what she thought about anything and everything published in the paper. This week the topic was high school sports: her little Johnny was a star football player, why hadn’t they run an article on him yet? Tom was having trouble finding a polite way to tell her that Johnny’s team wasn’t featured because frankly, Johnny’s team wasn’t winning. The editor had decided people only wanted to read about successful teams; as a result, half the teams in the district were rather under-represented. He formulated what seemed to him an unnecessarily polite reply and hit send. HIs politeness judgement was severely impaired at the moment by lack of sleep, so overly polite to him will translate as sufficiently courteous to his boss. With luck.
He covered a yawn and stretched in his seat, wincing as his spine popped. He was seriously low on energy–exams coupled with an unexpectedly complicated errantry assignment tended to take chunks out of his personal energy store–but he really didn’t have time for a quick nap before class. Too bad those alertness spells cost more than they gave. He took a long pull of his coffee and made a face: it had gone cold. Sighing again, he dug through his pockets for change and went to order a new one.
“Long night, huh?” asked the cashier with a sympathetic smile.
“You don’t know the half of it,” agreed Tom wearily. “And another to come, it’s looking like.”
“Y'know, I could just pop your coffee in the microwave. That and a dash of cinnamon will liven it right up.”
“Oh, it’s–”
“Don’t worry about it,” laughed the young man. “I know change is a pain to come by. Here, let me have that mug. You know what goes great with this blend? A fresh scone. Look, we’ve got a batch just here!”
Tom chuckled in spite of himself. “You’re quite the salesman,” he observed as he handed over his change, but the cashier waved it away.
“No charge for such a charming crammer,” he responded with a wink. “As long as you don’t mind if I join you–I was going to take advantage of the lull for a break myself.”
Tom was a little overwhelmed. “I–uh–all right, be my guest.” Then training took over and he stuck a hand across the counter. “I’m Tom, by the way, Tom Swale.”
The hand that gripped his was warm, and dark eyes twinkled when the other man grinned. “Nice to meet you, Tom. Carl Romeo.”
Tom wasn’t sure exactly how it happened, but somehow their coincidental meetings at the coffee shop became a Thursday morning habit. If it was busy, Carl would flash him an apologetic smile from the cash register and Tom would take his drink to a corner table that afforded him a choice view of the proceedings. He liked watching Carl handle customers–he was in his element, mixing drinks, flirting with anyone and everyone, asking after jobs and classes and family and that new rock album.
What Tom liked best, though, was when he managed to hit a lull in business. Car would make drinks for the both of them and sit across from him at his table, and they would talk. Carl would tell him about his customers, or his coworkers, or his classes, doing impersonations until Tom couldn’t breathe for laughing. Tom would talk about his boss, or his writing (or lack thereof), or his classes, and Carl would listen attentively with a twinkle in his eyes that made Tom warm in a way that had nothing to do with the coffee he was drinking. Eventually a customer would wander in and put an end to their conversation, and Carl would clear away their drinks with a good-natured sigh for him and a wink for the customer. (Tom was always glad that wink wasn’t turned on him often; he was never quite sure how to respond.) Tom would smile to himself and go back to answering emails, which somehow always seemed less of a chore after a laugh with Carl.
***
He didn’t realize how much he’d come to depend on their casual chats until one frosty morning after a hell of an assignment the night before. Somehow one of the worldgates in the transit center had malfunctioned, dumping a squad of alien tourists downtown during rush hour and transporting a rather unfortunate troupe of nonwizards to the Crossings. Tom had been up nearly all night dealing with the cleanup, and had barely resisted the urge to roll over and go back to sleep instead of dragging himself to the coffee shop in the frigid weather. But he was in no mood to deal with email complaints on his own, so he bundled himself and his laptop off to [INSERT CLEVER COFFEESHOP NAME HERE] in a less-than-cheerful mood.