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The lunchtime rush was finally over and both Alfred and Michelle were able to take a breather. Although, by breather that actually meant time to clean up and stock the front counter. Most people had taken their food to go but just as many had opted to settle at the tables dotted around the place. A few had even taken the tables outside, smoke billowing from between their fingers as they chatted animatedly.
Once they had completed almost all of their tasks, Michelle heaved a sigh and slumped. “Ah, this time of day always makes me exhausted,” she complained. “And now it'll be ages before anything exciting happens – I'm going to fall asleep.”
“Late night?” Alfred asked, smirking at Michelle's pout.
“Y-” Michelle began before freezing, staring across the café. Alfred glanced in the same direction and saw someone beginning to gather their things. “I'll get it!” Michelle almost shouted, grabbing a tray from Alfred's elbow and rushing off.
Pouting, Alfred turned his attention to the cake display which had been picked clean. He suspected there were more cakes in the kitchen so he would have to go find them to stock up. However, he couldn't leave the counter if there were customers. He glanced at the till and jolted a little when he found a man staring back.
With his messy blond hair and his cardigan, Alfred found the man looked cute, especially since he was fiddling nervously with the sleeves. Freckles crossed his cheeks and Alfred tried not to grin too widely at the man's presence. He failed, of course, and tried not to catch the man's eye. (From what he had glimpsed of them, they were green and Alfred wanted to stare right back despite how awkward that would be.)
“Hi there!” he said instead of voicing his thoughts. “What can I get for ya?”
“Tea, please,” the man said, politely, his accent like a rich chocolate.
“Sure thing. We've got... uh...” Alfred looked around for Michelle who was usually the one who dealt with the tea and found her helping clean up a mess some kid had made. Grimacing, he looked around at the tins which held the teabags. “Let me just check what we have for ya.”
“Of course,” the man replied, watching Alfred leave.
After a quick check (during which Alfred kept peeking at the man and the man kept staring), Alfred returned to the counter. “We have English Breakfast, Chamomile and Green Tea.”
“Ah, the Breakfast Tea is fine, thank you.”
“Coming right up! I can bring it over to you, if you'd-”
“No, it's fine,” interjected the man, glancing over his shoulder. Before Alfred could follow his gaze, the man looked back at him; Alfred hurriedly turned his attention to the till. “I'll wait here for it.”
“Sure! That's two pounds, please.”
They dealt with the transaction and Alfred made his way back to the tins with the teabags. At that point, Michelle bustled over, sent the man a polite smile and wandered along to where Alfred was standing. Alfred grinned at her as she passed him on the way to the sink before remembering he was in the middle of an order. Embarrassed, Alfred chanced a peek at the man – and found him staring back. He was blatantly checking Alfred out, something he was used to, of course, considering. However, he still felt himself blushing and ducked his head, concentrating on his task.
As he worked, every time he looked up, he found the man gazing right back at him. It was getting under his skin, especially since the stranger was attractive. He was just a touch shorter than Alfred, too, and he found himself desperately wanting to wrap his arms around the guy in an encompassing hug.
Stopping his train of thought before he could dreamily sigh, Alfred approached the counter with a large teacup on a saucer. As he set it down, he looked up and found that the man was still staring. Grinning, he said, “If you keep looking at me like that, we won’t make it to a bed.” Alfred winked at the man, grinning wider as his cheeks flooded with red.
“I'm not looking at you!” he snapped.
“Uh, yeah you are,” Alfred said, confused. “And you're looking at me like that .”
“I am not !”
“But-”
“I'm not looking at you at all – I'm blind, you twit!”
Alfred started and really looked into the man's eyes. They were such a lovely shade of green, so pretty that he wished he could stare at them for hours. But then he noticed that he wasn't gazing back. Instead, he was looking at Alfred's jaw.
Turning red, Alfred stepped back as if he could keep the man from figuring out how mortified he was. “Oh...” he breathed, unsure what else to say.
“Thank you for the tea,” snapped the stranger. Looking somewhere in the vicinity of the cakes in the cabinet, the man reached out and carefully ran his fingers around the saucer the teacup sat on. Then he picked it up and spun around. Without any other acknowledgement of Alfred's presence, the man stalked off in a straight line, narrowly avoiding chairs as he did so till he reached the corner table where a man with long, blond hair was watching him, tense and obviously ready to leap up and help him. On the other side of the table was a movement and Alfred spotted the man's guide dog lifting its head as he approached. The blind man put his tea down, almost spilling it, and rounded the table, a hand on his dog's head, before he sat down, staring unseeing at his friend.
Back at the till, Alfred very much wanted to sink into a hole in the ground and never emerge.