Work Text:
"But wondering how long it can last.
We are all china barely mended,
clumsily glued together
just waiting
for the hot water and lemon
to seep through our seams.
She takes a sip, running through the questions.
What next?"
- Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow
It is two in the morning, a Monday night. Tokyo sleeps, unlike its sister cities around the world, and it is resting like the dead in the neighborhood around Cafe LycoReco. Mika's gone to bed. Mizuki has gone home (alone, and complaining about it). Kurumi is asleep in her closet-turned-bed, snoring breathy little snores, bathed in the everblue of her computer screen lights.
Takina's not asleep, though. She's sure she'll never sleep again. The singular light on in the cafe is lonely as it glows above the espresso machine behind the counter. The light catches against the curved chrome sides of the sleekly monstrous thing, and in it Takina's reflection is warped and a little ugly. Her eyes are too big, her forehead squished. An Italian name written in cursive mocks her from the back of the machine. In caffeine-induced anxiety she believes she's been poisoned by coffee, and thinks she can note the exact flow of it in her veins. Surely anyone would die from drinking so many shots of espresso one after the other, trained child-soldier or no.
Another dirty espresso cup is added to the pile of cups strewn out in a non-pattern beside the machine as haphazard as chickenpox. Usually white, they are stained in rich brown or the golden froth of crema, half lip moon patterns on the rim. The porcelain clinks when she puts it down. This time her shaking hand slammed it a bit hard, and she hears within the plunk the sharp sound of a crack forming. She'd look, but Takina's keeping her eyes away from the section of the counter where she's placing the cups. If she counts them, the knowledge itself of just how many shots of espresso she's had will kill her before the caffeine does.
But she hasn't pulled a good shot yet, and she won't stop until she does. How many months has she been here now, at the cafe? Four? Five? Chisato said it best - she was here when sakura bloomed in the pale-pink of baby cheeks and now it's cold, those same blossoms falling to the ground in Autumn's color swatch. Making coffee's not part of her regular duties even when she's working - she and Chisato are essentially waitresses when they're not taking on Lycoris-tier jobs - but damn it she wants to learn. She's good at most things she puts her mind to: shooting, training, apprehending, guarding. Running, jumping, evasive maneuvers, target analysis. Killing. Why is a simple drink so difficult?
Takina's phone dings with a message when she's scrolling through multiple online guides to coffee-making and she reluctantly pulls her eyes away from an explanation of crema to see the sender: Chisato. A small moan escapes her lips; from her stomachache (an uncomfortable empty-full, pretty much all coffee at this point and vaguely nauseating) or the sender she's not sure. In her hand her forehead is clammy like she'd taken a shower on a humid day. By now the amount of coffee she's had has fried her nerves. The tingling of the static in the air can be felt on each individual strand of hair and it's driving her a bit crazy. Maybe more than a bit. Her heart is rivaling a hummingbird's, her brain overclocked and overheating.
Pragmatic as she is, and realistic, she knows that the hummingbird beat isn't only from the coffee. Chisato's...something. She's been doing something to Takina ever since Takina was forced out here from the DA. Like a contagious disease, or some mushroom spores, the more she's around Chisato the more she feels the need to keep being near Chisato. It's a tingling in her fingers begging to grab a hold of some part of the girl: a hand, an elbow, that throat. It's a bite of her own lips to keep from trying to bite Chisato's. It's a yearning for less space and more time.
And, pragmatic and realistic as she is, Takina knows what this all means. She's a child soldier, yes, but also still a young girl, whether or not her blooming heart is protected by Kevlar. The reality is only that she never expected to feel these suspiciously warm feelings, to know that love wasn't just a fairytale thing whispered between bunks in the DA dorms. Giving these emotions priority was even less probable, if you asked Takina six months before.
Now suppressing an espresso-laden giggle at some dumb meme Chisato sent (it's not even funny!) Takina's distracted from her coffee-caused spiral. It's not even funny, but it lightens a tightness deep inside that she never even noticed before, like running a hand through hair and easily pulling it through unknown knots. Dryly, she hopes Chisato can't sleep either. The other option, that the girl woke up in the middle of the night from some fevered dream just to send a meme is less than flattering. For Chisato, anyway.
A funny coincidence, that Chisato would text her. In a way, this whole espresso-pulling problem is Chisato's fault. Kind of. Takina has felt herself beginning to revolve around the other girl. Planets revolve less than she does. Chisato's pulled shots for them during their downtime and knows her stuff, even if she can't cook all that well in general. So Takina wants to learn to make espresso, for another point of connection. For another similarity, like strings tied to map pins between cities where your friends live. Pride yells at her to surpass Chisato. Humility tells her it'll never happen (surpassing). Fear tells her it will never happen (requited love).
Chisato's her senpai as much as her partner.
Really, Takina wants her admiration. Her admiration in turn, because she already admires Chisato: her skills, her smile, her selfless artificial heart.
Chisato answers on the third ring (Takina doesn't even remember making the conscious decision to call).
"Takina! This is surprising. What's with the late call? I figured you'd just respond to my text in the morning. Funny meme, right? Right?"
Takina's tongue is stinging with acidity, slickly muddy in a forever-coating of coffee. Some of those shots had too much body. "No, it really wasn't." A pause. "I'm still at LycoRyco."
"Ehhhhh!? What are you there for? It's like, 2:30 in the morning! Forget your key to your place? You can come here if you need. Or did you lose something?"
"My mind, maybe." Takina grumbles to herself. "No, I'm..." it's embarrassing to admit. Admittance in general (her failure, maybe, or her confession) is embarassing. She doesn't really have the words. "Espresso. I'm pulling espresso. Can you...do you want to come here?"
"Oh hoo hoo! A late night rendezvous? I'll be right over!"
In the ten minutes from the phone call to Chisato's arrival Takina refrains from making another shot. It's the longest pause of the night (she'd started at 12, which now feels like an eon ago). Her hands are shaking, her spit's thick as she swallows. Her heart hasn't settled yet, and at this rate she fears it never will. The soldier in her head tells her that this is a bad idea - at the very least, she will not be at the top of her game tomorrow, in the event of a mission or some other kind of danger. Could she even shoot in this state, when her fingers are vibrating and her eyes can barely focus?
She's seated at the bar, lost in the dark roast murk of her thoughts, and jumps when Chisato wanders in. Definitely not fit for a mission.
Her heart nearly jerks itself out of her chest, and she has to pinch herself to settle down when she turns to look at Chisato. Wearing a big hoodie over a pair of soffe shorts, sandals on her feet, her senpai is far more relaxed than Takina's ever been. In her whole life, maybe. Those copper-red eyes of hers seem to shine when they land on Takina, or maybe it's just another trick of the caffeine. In her Lycoris seifuku Takina feels overdressed, but she hadn't planned this - hadn't planned any of it before the night began.
"Wew..." Chisato whistles when she looks over the rubble of cups cluttering the counter. "How long've you been at this?"
Chisato picks up a cup, examining the dried stains, and then glances around the mostly dark cafe with the tainted recollection of a place you know only in the light. Takina isn't sure if she's scanning the place for enemies - a soldier's instinct - or trying to make out if there are still more cups hidden somewhere in the dark.
"Too long."
Chisato's smile is understanding, and maybe a bit pitying. She slides onto the seat beside Takina, angled to the girl and holding her own cheek in her hand as she looks Takina over. Takina squares her shoulders to fight off her feelings of exposure. She shouldn't be nervous: this is just Chisato (she should be nervous, this is Chisato). Behind glowing smiles and hard-won joy, she knows that those eyes of Chisato's never miss anything. She knows there's a depth there that's barely ever plumbed. The cafe is quiet. If she listens closely, Takina can hear the water roiling in the espresso machine's boiler. She can hear Kurumi mumble in her sleep unintelligibly, more a child while dreaming than when she's awake and hacking government AI.
"How do you do it?" Takina asks, eventually. "I know all of the steps but together," she waves her hands at the empty cups, at the grounds she'd spilled on the floor about an hour ago and hadn't cleaned up yet. In the air her hand continues to shake, and she hides it, crossing her arms defensively. "It's not coming together. Every cup has been disgusting."
"It took me a lot of practice too. Mika was a pretty good teacher, but I'm sure he suffered while trying all of my mess-ups." Slapping a friendly hand on Takina's shoulder, she brings the girl close. Chisato smells of new shampoo and lavender lotion and worn-in clothing. "I'll pass it forward; want me to test yours?"
First, Chisato lays out the process again, and Takina listens with a suck-up student's attention. She explains the importance of the temperature of the water, of properly preparing the puck (stirring with the distribution tool, tamping with the tamper), how extraction is dependent on the size of the grind and the time of the pull and how the spectrum of roasts changes each and every variable. She talks of time, of pressure (in bars). Of blooming and gentle release, something like love. Chisato's been here long enough that all of this seems steeped into her now, but Takina can imagine a younger girl, shipped here to live with Mika, doing her best to learn all of this with the same vigor she gives everything else in her life.
Her ever-shortening life.
"Think you've got the process down?" Chisato asks. When Takina nods, she slips back into one of the seats around the bar, across from Takina. Ever a film-buff, Chisato appears to be channeling every cliche bar scene she's ever seen, from the way she's leaning over the counter and presenting her (covered up) cleavage, to her dainty hand (calloused, forever stained with gunpowder and red rubber) swirling a shot of espresso like a whiskey on the rocks. Takina hasn't watched nearly as many movies, but she wishes more than anything that she could capture the scene before her on film.
Chisato downs her first shot in two gulps.
"A bit acidic, and kinda flat. Try a finer grind."
Her second: even after giving it a more measured sip she coughs, her face scrunched up from the acrid coffee. Takina still finds her cute.
"A little too fine!"
The third, then, the accepting hand just that much more reluctant.
"Uneven extraction. Did it channel through the puck in a weird way?"
...And so on. Its three am and Chisato's on her sixth shot. It's hard to tell if she's affected: her hands aren't shaking, but maybe she's just better with caffeine, or better at controlling her body (from the way she dodges bullets, that's probably the case, Takina thinks). Maybe it came with the territory of working in a cafe, and eventually Takina herself would gain the same resistance to coffee.
Takina still feels the liquid energy in her veins. She's taken smaller sips of each trial too, swishing it around her tongue to see if she can taste what Chisato does, to diagnose the way Chisato does. They drink from the same cup, and if Takina were any less tired - exhausted, in that energetic late-night way one gets on long road trips - she might be a bit more concerned about indirect kisses.
Or maybe not. She already wants to kiss Chisato. Directly.
it seems impossible for her heart to beat any faster, but somehow it does when she asks the only real thought going through her mind, espresso be damned.
"Chisato...your heart. After all of this, is it still...still?"
Chisato places the latest cup down on the counter top softly. Her eyes are mirthful, if not a little tired, but still there's that same small pity there as well. Now Takina's not sure if it's aimed at her, or at Chisato herself. Maybe the girl expected the question. Maybe she didn't want it. "Still nothing," she says as she pats her chest softly, smiling without worry the way she did when she first mentioned her artificial organ to Takina. "No tick, no tock."
There's a small moment of silence; Takina's not sure she hasn't upset the girl, even with Chisato's devil-may-care attitude about the whole heart thing. But she wants to show the girl, somehow, what a heart should feel like after six shots of espresso.
Just like the first time, Takina doesn't ask. She comes round the counter, closing the distance between them and lays a hand, and then her head, against Chisato's chest. There's the soft swell of her breasts, but beneath that -
"Still nothing," she whispers to herself. Chisato, presumably, hears the mumble against her chest. Her face is red in embarrassment, but nonetheless she holds Takina's head against her body with the gentleness of a new lover. This isn't in public, after all. That was her main complaint the first time.
"Told ya. I still feel the caffeine though. I'm kind of itching from it, hahaha! I probably won't fall asleep at all tonight."
Their time is ticking, unlike that artificial organ. Takina doesn't want to go to sleep. Not tonight. Not for as long as she has left with Chisato. It's a realization she'd been fighting herself from uncovering, but it's there before her now, bright as a spotlight billboard on a dark highway. She wants to grab these moments from the present, from the past, and spread them out as unfurled film reels. She wants to copy every negative, double every frame, extend their time together like an avant-garde film: life stretched to breaking, no end in sight. No conclusion, no third act.
Instead of saying it she pulls away from Chisato, and then, still without asking - from the incident that got her kicked from DA until now, Takina is not one for asking - pulls the other's girl's head to her own chest. The movement seems to catch Chisato off guard, and she freezes for a moment. "Listen to mine," Takina says. The speed of her heartbeat might be from the coffee, but it's erratic tempo is definitively from this, this closeness. Her heart drums against her chest as if it's trying to rip itself from her ribcage and break into Chisato's. She feels it beat against Chisato's skin. Feels the girl's arms circle around her waist. She ignores the sniffle, though, the bit of wetness on her stomach.
Takina lifts the girl's head up to kiss her lips, soft and succinct. It's their first. They don't linger. Tonight is not for coffee-stained kisses, crema sweet. Instead she guides Chisato's head back to her breast to listen to her twittering heart. It's beating quickly still, an engine of vitality. Maybe this one heart can beat enough for the both of them.