Chapter Text
Now, I'm running late and I'm not a coffee drinker
But I lost sleep just thinking of you
So pour me a cup, I need to wake up
I need me some love, now give it to me
— Helplessly, Tatiana Manaois
“Three large, skinny cappuccinos, an oat milk mocha, a caramel latte, a normal latte with an extra shot, and a large, black americano, extra hot, but with cold milk on the side.”
Charlie tries and fails to hold back a withering look. His customer, a young woman with immaculate hair and alarmingly white teeth, smiles apologetically and Charlie sighs. It’s not her fault. She works at the salon round the corner, and the nonsensical request isn’t from her, it’s from her boss, and despite the fact that Charlie has explained to both the assistant and the senior stylist she works for on several occasions that he physically cannot make the temperature of boiled water any hotter than it already is, they continue to play this fun little game every single day.
“Sure,” Charlie says, making his mouth into a tight, thin line before turning around and starting the order. He can’t have the discussion with her again. It won’t help anyway.
He makes all the drinks she’s requested, leaving the americano until last so that it will be as hot as possible, and they complete the transaction cordially. They both know that there’s about a 75% chance she will be sent back within half an hour to complain that it’s too cold, but that will be even more annoying for her than it is for Charlie, so he can’t be too cross with her about it. She leaves with another apologetic look and he turns to take his next order.
“Usual, Frank?” The old man at the front of the queue grunts affirmatively without even glancing up from his phone, and Charlie feels another tiny piece of his humanity being chipped away as he gets started on the flat white, crafting it perfectly and serving it up to the miserable old bastard with a strained, polite smile, before moving onto the next one.
When the coffee shop’s usual mid morning rush has died down and there are no more customers waiting, Charlie does a quick walk through, collecting empty cups, wiping down tables and tidying up the food displays before returning to the bar. “I’m gonna take my break,” he announces to Joanna, his colleague, who is putting away a load of clean cups from the dishwasher. He should let her go for hers first really, but he can’t find it in himself to actually make that offer. She nods absently at him as she stacks up the cups. “Are you using that?” Charlie nods to a stray shot of espresso sitting on the coffee machine.
Joanna pulls a face. “It’s old,” she warns him. It looks like it, too. The layer of crema on top has turned a weird, dark, rusty colour instead of the light golden shade it should be. It will taste oxidised and bitter.
“Don’t care,” Charlie says wearily as he dumps it into his half-empty cup from earlier in the morning, adding a blast of hot water on top to try and at least bring the overall temperature of the drink up to lukewarm. “See you in twenty.” He drags himself up the stairs, punching the code into the little keypad on the door marked ‘staff only’ at the top, letting himself into the staff room-cum-office-cum-stock room, and collapsing into the single chair inside. The room is cramped, and sweltering despite the fact it’s January, but this is the first time that Charlie has had a second to breathe, let alone sit down, in almost five hours. He’s got twenty minutes, and this is the only place he can go where no one will bother him, so he’s going to try and make the most of them. He downs his rancid, tepid coffee, and pushes the various papers on the desk to the side, making space to fold his arms on it. He lets out a deep, slow breath as he settles his forehead into the crook of his elbow. Twenty minutes.
He’s roused by a voice calling his name up the stairs. “Charlie!” It’s Joanna’s distinct Polish accent. He groans as he lifts his head, checks his phone. It’s been seven minutes. He looks up at the CCTV monitor, an ancient, boxy, grainy television mounted on the wall above the desk. It’s a split screen, showing four views. There are multiple blind spots throughout the shop but it does allow him to see the bar, and the queue. There are four customers waiting, which should be easily handleable for Joanna by herself, for fuck’s sake. He sighs heavily as he hauls himself to standing, opens the office door, and peers down the stairs. “Dry stock delivery is here,” Joanna explains from the bottom. “Can you come and deal with it? Sorry,” she adds, before disappearing back towards the bar to serve the waiting customers. Fuck. He had forgotten it’s Wednesday.
Charlie hurries down the stairs to meet the delivery driver. He runs through the order, checking off each item. Take away cups, plastic forks, napkins, blueroll. Check, check, check, check. He signs for the delivery and the driver disappears, leaving him with a stack of huge boxes right in the middle of the shop floor. He glances at Joanna, she’s still busy. So Charlie puts away the delivery, slotting various items into various spots behind the bar, the little room with the dishwasher at the back, the stock room upstairs, and breaks down the boxes for recycling. He’s just flattening the final one, when Joanna finishes up with the last customer in the queue.
“Thanks,” she says, as she comes to stand at the end of the bar, leaning against the marble worktop.
“S’fine.”
“Do you want to go and finish your break?”
Charlie cranes his neck to look past her, checking the time on the screen of the till. It’s half past eleven now. “No,” he sighs. “You need to take yours.”
“Are you sure?” She frowns. Joanna is sweet. Charlie supposes that he probably shouldn’t have a favourite, but he totally does and it’s Jo. He knows that she really wouldn't mind if he went back upstairs for another ten minutes. But he also knows the lunchtime rush will start soon and if she doesn’t go for her break now they’ll get behind and it’ll make everything harder later on. He didn’t get to eat anything, but he’ll get another break in the middle of the afternoon shift, so it will have to wait until then.
“Yeah,” he smiles at her even though his heart is sinking inside his chest. “Can you just do a quick whiz round the floor, please? Then you can go.” That will give him a couple of minutes for another coffee. Joanna dutifully heads off, armed with a cloth and a spray bottle of D10, and Charlie silently prays that no customers appear in the next two minutes as he pulls himself four shots of espresso. He needs to get this caffeine into his system to make it through the next bit of his shift. He adds a few inches of hot water from the coffee machine into the bottom of a paper cap, tips the four shots in on top, and adds enough oat milk to bring it down to a drinkable temperature, leaning against the worktop and letting his eyes close briefly as he takes a long sip. Six and a half hours until close. Seven and a half until he can go home. He takes a deep breath in and exhales slowly and deliberately through his mouth.
“Americano. With milk. Take away.” A shrill voice cuts through Charlie’s little moment of quiet and he snaps his eyes open to find a middle aged lady, who bares a striking resemblance to his mother, standing on the other side of the counter and blinking at him expectantly, brow furrowed. He sighs internally, but bites it back and forces a smile instead. Coming right up.
The lunch rush passes in a bit of a blur. Charlie is grateful to his past self for scheduling Joanna for this shift with him because she’s fast and efficient. They get into a good rhythm together, working the queue in tandem, and navigate the busy period without any major disasters. By the time the queue has died down again Charlie’s feet are sore and his lower back is aching, not to mention the fact that he’s starving, but this little lull is a key moment in the day. He does a cursory sweep of the shop floor, clearing tables, loading used crockery into a big plastic tray that he balances against his hip as he makes his way round, writing a mental list of all the tasks that need doing as he goes. The washing up, for starters. The sandwiches and cold drinks need restocking, as do the biscuits and other snacks at the counter. Some devil-child has crumbled up what looks like a whole muffin and dropped it all on the floor under one of the tables, so he’ll need to come back to sweep that up in a minute, before somebody else sits there. He needs to refill the sugar station, bring some milk down from the stockroom, and empty the knockout drawer. The toilets probably need going over as well.
When Charlie makes it back from his walkthrough of the shop floor, the bus tray is almost too heavy to carry anymore. He carefully balances it on the edge of the bar for a moment, as Joanna looks up from where she is busy cleaning out the knockout drawer. That’s the other good thing about working with her, she gets on with things without needing to be asked, which makes Charlie’s life marginally easier. It’s nice. Charlie reels off the list to her and they make a quick gameplan, deciding what the priorities are and who will do which jobs. He glances at the time on the till screen. There’s about forty minutes until shift change but that should be enough to get most of it done, providing it doesn’t get too busy again.
“Who’s in this afternoon?” Jo asks, as she rifles through the shelves under the bar, searching for wooden drink stirrers and sweetener packets to restock them.
“Elliot,” Charlie answers. She looks at him expectantly, waiting for a second name. “And me, I’m on a double.”
‘Ugh.” She makes a commiserative grimace. “Well, you’ve only got like, five and a half more hours?”
“Yeah” Charlie emits a hollow laugh as he hoists the bus tray back off the counter. “Thanks.”
Washing up isn’t exactly his favourite job, but at least it gets him off the shop floor, which is thoroughly welcome by this point in the day. A few minutes where he can let his customer service face drop. He rinses off the cups and dishes and cutlery in the sink before loading them strategically into the industrial dishwasher in a less fun and slightly gross version of tetris. The hot water stings his hands, which are perpetually cracked and dry from all the cleaning chemicals, and from being washed eight thousand times every day. He keeps a tube of hand cream in the office and tries to remember to use it a couple of times throughout each shift. It doesn’t really help though. Standing in front of the sink, he shifts his weight around on his feet, trying to find a position that eases the pain a bit. Five and a half hours.
Jo takes care of most of the restocking, much to Charlie’s relief. He’s already lost count of how many trips he’s made up and down the stairs to the stockroom/office today, and he doesn’t think he can take many more before his legs give out. He focuses on the jobs he can get done behind the bar between serving customers: wiping down and refreshing the work stations, topping up the grinders, changing bins. By the time Joanna’s shift is ending and Elliot is arriving to relieve her, everything is pretty much under control, and Charlie can breathe.
“Thanks Jojo,” Charlie calls after her as she’s heading towards the door, pulling her jacket on over her uniform. He aims for genuine enthusiasm, pushing down the ache he feels at the fact that she’s finished for the day, and he’s got a whole second shift to get through. “Good work today!”
She beams back at him. “Thanks!” Waving cheerfully before she disappears. He sighs and turns to Elliot, who’s standing gormlessly at the end of the bar. Charlie looks at him expectantly, eyebrows raised, and Elliot blinks back blankly.
“Apron?” Charlie asks, like they haven’t gone through this at the start of every single shift Elliot has worked for the last six months.
“Oh, shit. I forgot it. Sorry.”
Charlie rolls his eyes. He crouches down, despite the protesting of his knees and ankles and back, and rummages around the shelves behind the bar, fishing out a spare one and chucking it at Elliot, who reluctantly loops the ties around his waist and knots them behind his back. Why are the kids always so weird about wearing the fucking aprons?
Elliot is young, barely eighteen, which has its pros and cons but overall Charlie quite likes him. He’s not as good as Jo, not as fast and he doesn’t have the same initiative, but he can make a decent cappuccino and takes direction without much attitude, usually. This shift shouldn’t be too bad. It could definitely be worse. The afternoon foot traffic is enough to keep them busy, but manageably so, a steady trickle of two or three customers at a time, lots of their afternoon regulars, lots of easy orders. They chat in between too. They have similar music tastes, watch some of the same TV shows, and having stuff to talk about passes the time a tiny bit faster at least. Four hours left.
They trade off taking their breaks. Charlie desperately wants to put his head down on the desk again and close his eyes but he has ordering to do, and he also needs to go over next week’s rota. At least he gets to sit down. He puts in the order, scarfs down a packet of crisps and before he knows it, his time is up. By half past three he’s back on the shop floor, clearing tables and trying and failing not to whip his head up like a meerkat every time the door opens. He spends half an hour finding excuses to hover around and being thoroughly disappointed by each new customer who enters the shop, before giving up and trudging back to the bar with a full bus tray. He plonks it down on the end of the counter, the cups and plates inside clinking together in protest at the rough handling.
“What’s up with you?” The question comes from Chloe, another one of the shop’s baristas, who is inexplicably hanging around on her day off. Well, Charlie knows the reason: free coffee. Fair enough, really.
“Nothing?” He answers defensively, as if he doesn’t understand why she’s asking, shrugging and scrunching his nose up.
“Mr Chai Latte hasn’t been in yet today,” Elliot explains with a little smirk on his face.
“Ah, I see.” Chloe gives a knowing nod and her own smirk to match Elliot’s. “Shame.”
“Oh fuck off,” Charlie snaps at them. He only half means it, but they exchange sideways glances, like a pair of kids who have been caught misbehaving, and Elliot slinks away to continue cleaning out the cake fridge.
Chloe clears her throat awkwardly. “Well, I’d better be going,” she declares, without making eye contact with Charlie. “See you tomorrow!” She picks up the disgusting cinnamon-banana-mocha concoction that she always drinks and scuttles off. Charlie silently watches her go and then lugs the bus tray to the back to put another load of washing up on, pulling the sliding door closed behind him and sighing as he leans back against it for a minute. He probably shouldn’t talk to his employees like that, even if they are being little shits, and he needs to collect himself so that he can get through the rest of his shift without falling out with Elliot, or pissing off any customers either. Less than three hours now. He sorts out the washing up and heads back out to try and smooth things over.
“Do you want to do the bar or the floor tonight?” The usual division of labour for a closing shift.
“Up to you,” Elliot answers quickly, clearly keen to get back on Charlie’s good side.
“You can choose, I don’t mind,” Charlie offers again, trying to be nice.
“No, no. You pick,” Elliot insists. “You’re on a double.” To be fair, that is the usual etiquette; the person on the longer shift gets their choice of closing duties. Charlie considers. If he does the floor, that means basically continuous loads of washing up for the next several hours, multiple trips up and down the stairs for restocking, sweeping and mopping the whole shop floor as well as wiping down all the tables, and cleaning the toilets too. It will be exhausting, but at least he can get his head down and get on with it, mostly in silence. If he chooses the bar, he’ll be doing the coffee machine and both work stations, the fridges, the sink, the blenders, the bins. It’s a lot of cleaning, but everything is more or less contained within a six foot radius so it will be significantly less physically taxing. He will have to serve customers though, pretty much everyone who comes in between now and when the shop closes at six, while Elliot gets on with everything else.
“Uhmmm…” Charlie scrubs his hands over his face as he tries to decide. He’s so tired he can barely even think about it. “I’ll do the bar, if you don’t mind. Thanks.” It’s a wednesday evening in mid January, coming up to half past four and already pitch black outside, not to mention freezing cold. It’s not going to be busy. The minimal customer interaction seems worth the trade off for the slightly easier jobs. If he’s lucky he’ll be able to get most of it done by the time they close, then he can help Elliot and maybe they’ll get out early. Plus, he hasn’t completely given up the hope that a certain tall, blonde, chai latte drinking regular will make an appearance, even if it is well past his usual time.
Unfortunately for Charlie, the afternoon is not quite as quiet as he had anticipated. There appears to be some kind of after school event happening at the posh primary a few streets away, a dance recital or a concert or something, leading to an influx of stressed out, frazzled looking parents looking for a later than usual caffeine fix. A steady stream of them traipse in with their over excited and impatient offspring in tow, attempting to placate them with promises of babyccinos and pastries, and keeping Charlie busy enough that there’s no way he’s going to be getting home early. At this rate, he’ll be lucky if they make it out on time. Charlie doesn’t mind children necessarily, it’s the parents who are often worse behaved anyway, but the requirement to make endless amounts of babyccinos is incredibly annoying. Yes, they’re just steamed milk with some chocolate sprinkled on top, but they do still take time to make, and the fact that he has to give them away for free means they slow him down without contributing anything to his sales figures. At least the Yummy Mummy Brigade can usually be relied upon to spend extra for the fancy snacks: organic dried mango chunks, mixed fruit and nut packets, dark chocolate covered rice cakes.
By half past five most of the parents and kids have cleared out, allowing Charlie to finally get on with his list of closing tasks but the handful of evening regulars and general stragglers who drop in on their way home from work are filtering through and Charlie can feel himself getting more and more irritated every time someone comes in and interrupts him. He’s on his knees, head buried deep inside one of the back bar fridges as he tries to scrub off some sticky, congealed substance that has leaked at the back of it, when he hears the telltale sound of the door opening and feels the rush of cold air that accompanies it. A tight little ball of irrational anger burns in his chest. Obviously, he should be immediately springing up to serve the customer but once he makes it up onto his feet there’s no way in hell that he’s getting back on the floor again to finish cleaning whatever the fuck this mystery slime is, so they’re just going to have to wait a minute. Charlie huffs to himself as he scrubs even more furiously at the stubborn grime, anticipating the inevitable impatient indignance he’s going to be met with.
“Hi.”
The single soft syllable meets Charlie’s ear and melts into him, like cream poured into a freshly brewed dark roast. He sits back on his heels, pulling his head out of the fridge to look up at the deep brown eyes and soft smile he has been waiting for all day.
“Hi,” Charlie breathes as he drops his scrubby sponge and spray bottle of disinfectant and scrambles to his feet. He glances up shyly as he logs into the till, it’s all he can do to hold back an embarrassingly big grin from taking over his face. “Chai latte?”
“Yes please,” the man across the counter beams back.
Charlie takes his cup from him, because of course he brings his own reusable cup, and starts on the drink, filling the milk jug and sending a quick blast of steam through the steam wand to purge it before adjusting the angle and lowering the tip into the surface of the milk, turning the steam back up and tilting the jug slightly to create the vortex. Once he’s got it going, he twists his body, leaning his hip against the worktop so he can watch the swirling milk and talk to his customer at the same time. “You’re late today. I thought you weren’t coming.”
“I’ve just been having one of those days today,” he sighs. “Everything’s been going wrong. I’ve been running late for everything all afternoon.” His somewhat shy but nonetheless dazzling smile doesn’t really match the words he’s saying. He doesn’t seem like someone who’s having a bad day. He’s not being rude or short or abrasive, not taking it out on Charlie. Then again, Mr Chai Latte would never.
“Sorry to hear that,” Charlie says with a sympathetic little head tilt.
“Ahh, it’s okay.” He waves a hand dismissively in the air before using it to push a few stray strands of sandy blonde hair back from his forehead. “At least I made it before you close. Although, only just,” he says while checking his watch. “I better be getting out of your way soon.”
“You’ve got some time,” Charlie replies, hoping the ‘please stay and talk to me longer’ is implied. The milk is done now, the jug is hot to the touch. He turns off the steam, lowers the jug, wipes the wand and flushes it through again, releasing a burst of steam into the air.
“So, how’s your day been?”
“Oh, you know,” Charlie says vaguely as he scoops the premixed chai powder into the bottom of the cup, a little more than he’s supposed to use so that it will taste extra good. “Long,” he adds with a dry chuckle.
“Yeah? What time did you start?”
“Half six.”
“In the morning?” The customer asks incredulously, checking his watch again.
Charlie adds a dash of hot water to the cup, stirs it until the powder dissolves. “Yeah.”
“Jesus Christ. What time will you finish?”
Almost ready now. Charlie picks up the milk jug again, taps it firmly on the worktop a couple of times to help the foam settle, and then swirls it rhythmically until the milk has become the perfect, silky smooth texture. “Seven, hopefully.” He pours it into the cup, starting from a bit of a height to encourage it to mix thoroughly with the chai and then coming lower as the cup fills, giving a slight wiggle with his wrist right near the end to encourage the foam to finish it off.
“Seven? God, that’s a long day.” It’s his turn to look at Charlie sympathetically now, as Charlie dusts the drink with a sprinkle of cinnamon. “Aren’t you tired?”
Charlie laughs at that as he places the drink on the counter. He raises one eyebrow quizzically. “Don’t I look tired?”
The man’s eyes go wide. “No, you look– Err– I mean– No, you–” Throughout his frantic stammering he has turned the most beautiful shade of pink. He takes a breath, and the smile creeps back onto his face. “You don’t look tired.”
“Well,” Charlie says bashfully. “Thank you.” He rings up the order and the man taps his phone on the card reader to pay for it.
“I should get going,” he sighs, looking towards the door. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Uhm, I’m on an early shift.” Charlie makes a face, pulling his mouth into a straight, apologetic line. “So probably not.”
He makes a face back, scrunching up his nose and eyebrows in cartoonish displeasure, and Charlie can almost let himself believe that there’s a flicker of something deeper there. Genuine disappointment, maybe. “I’ll just have to bother someone else tomorrow then.” He grins, before picking up his drink and gesturing with it slightly. “Well, thank you for this.”
“You’re welcome.” God, he’s so fucking polite. That alone is enough to make Charlie want to launch himself over the counter at him, never mind how cute he is. And tall. “Bye. Have a nice evening.”
“Bye, Charlie. You too.”
Charlie watches as the broad figure of his favourite customer slips through the door and disappears into the darkness of the bleak winter evening. He’s eternally grateful for the fact that the shop has pretty much emptied out now, and Elliot is occupied with washing up in the back room, giving him a moment alone to sigh dreamily to himself as he stares after him and lets the residual fluttering in his stomach settle back down to normal. It’s all pointless, though. He probably has a girlfriend waiting for him at home. Girlfriend? Partner? He looks straight. The endless rotation of trackies and hoodies screams ginormous heterosexual, but there’s a definite vibe there. Either way, he’s far too attractive, and far too nice, to be single. Charlie isn’t that lucky.
Elliot reappears from the back with a load of clean cups for Charlie to put away, snapping him out of his haze. He glances down at the time on the till screen and watches the display tick over from 17:59 to 18:00. That’s it. Closed. No more customers today. A tidal wave of relief rolls through Charlie’s body. He tries to shake the lingering fog from his brain and refocus on what he still needs to do: finish cleaning that fridge, close down the espresso machine, mop behind the bar, cash up the tills, finish the paperwork. He can do that. One more hour to go.