Chapter Text
“Grande caramel machiatto for… Shelly? Sally?”
For God’s sake. It’s no wonder the whole world takes the piss out of the penmanship and spelling abilities of baristas. He squints his eyes in concentration but he just can’t fully decipher the name scribbled out hastily in black sharpie on the side of the cup. Luckily the afternoon rush is coming to an end and the store’s not that busy anymore.
“Sherry,” a middle-aged woman says humourlessly as she claims her coffee.
“Right,” he says cheerfully, smiling. Trying to anyway. Hopefully it looks something like a smile. “Have a great day--or night, I guess. Evening.”
All he gets in response is a vaguely annoyed glare. He’ll take it. It’s better than the open disgust he’s been to known to receive on occasion. His painted on grin drops from his face the moment she turns to leave the shop.
“Smooth, Phil.”
He looks down the bar to see the assistant manager, Rory, smirking at him.
“It’s not my fault you’re writing these names out in Greek. What’s the point in annoying customers by asking for their names if you make them impossible to read by scribbling them like a toddler?”
“As if yours look any better.”
He smiles, and this time it’s genuine. “Fair enough.”
“Do a bus and then take your break, Lester.”
He grabs a cloth from the little tray of milk-murky sanitizer water underneath the espresso machine, rings it out and walks around the bar to wipe down the sticky tables that furnish the small lobby. He picks up a few empty cups off the floor and brings them to the garbage can. He’ll never understand how people can have so little consideration for people like him, people who work shit jobs with shit hours for shit pay. Is it really that hard to just throw your rubbish in the bin?
“Ror, will you make me a drink, please?” Phil asks as he refills the drink lids on the condiment stand. He’s meant to stand in the queue and use his partner card to get his free drink, but there’s no one else in the store at the moment and he can’t be arsed. He knows Rory doesn’t care. She lets him get away with a lot. He tries to avoid thinking about why that is.
“What do you want?”
He shrugs. “Surprise me.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “You sure, white boy?”
His stomach tightens a little. He hates when she flirts. He wouldn’t know how to reciprocate even if he wanted to. “Of course. I trust you.”
She makes him something strong and sweet because they’ve worked together a long time and she knows what he likes. It’s iced so he can get it all drunk in the fifteen minutes he has to sit in the dingy office chair in the cramped back room. The noise from the industrial sized fridges is loud in the small space and the steam from the sanitizer makes it feel hotter than it should for an evening in mid October.
“Is it good?” Rory asks, leaned up against the doorframe, arms crossed loosely over the green apron that clings to the curves of her chest. The contrast of her dark skin against the bright white of her polo shirt makes it hard for Phil to avert his eyes from the cleavage revealed by the low cut. It’s not strictly dress code to show that much skin, he thinks.
He hopes she hasn’t noticed him staring. It doesn’t mean what she’d probably assume it means.
“Course. Thanks.”
It really is turning out to be a slow night. It’s just the two of them and they’ve already checked off half the items on the closing to do list. She doesn’t usually have time to chat with him on his break.
“Did you hear Dylan quit?” she asks.
“Really?” Phil takes a long sip of his drink, mostly disinterested. It’s the nature of retail work, really. People come and go all the time. Not Phil, of course. Some days he wonders if he’ll end up a Starbucks lifer. The thought makes his gut clench. “Why?”
She sighs. “Who knows. He’s a teenager. He probably only applied because his mum was mad at him that day and insisted he get a job.”
“He was kind of a wanker.”
“Yeah, but now I have to replace him,” she says, sounding defeated.
“Isn’t that Laura’s job?”
“Yeah, which means she’ll bugger off and make me do it.”
“You’ll do a better job anyway,” Phil says, pushing his glasses up his nose. He’s trying to make her feel better but he’s also telling the truth. Their manager really is shit. “The last person she hired was Kyle.”
Rory scrunches her face up in disgust. “God, you’re right.” She turns around when she hears the door to the cafe open. “Ugh, who do these people think they are, coming in here and making me do work?”
Phil chugs the rest of his coffee and throws his apron on around the back of his neck. He’s still tying it up at the back when he steps out onto the floor to help her.
“That wasn’t fifteen minutes, Phil.”
He shrugs. “Looks like you need me.”
“I don’t,” she says, smiling, “but thanks.”
He takes the cups she’s marked and sets about making the drinks. Maybe, he thinks, maybe it’s stuff like this that keeps her looking at him just a little too long sometimes. Maybe she’s mistaking flirtation for what is genuinely just his personality. It’s the only thing that makes sense really. He’s awkward and she’s gorgeous.
He can see that, clearly, even if it doesn’t translate into the feelings he knows he should probably feel. The colour of her skin is deep and rich like the quad espresso misto he hands off to… Liza? Lisa? Lise? Phil shakes his head. She may have a glowing complexion and amazing short, dark curly hair, but Rory can’t write for shit. He doesn’t even bother trying to read out the name.
“You’re just trolling me now, aren’t you?”
She giggles. “Maybe a little.”
They get a little busier after that. They spend the next few hours trading off the cash and bar positions and getting the store ready for closing.
“Will you train whatever poor soul I end up hiring?” she asks later, once all the customers have left and she’s locked the doors behind them.
He nods. He’s up for pretty much anything that means he doesn’t have to plaster on a fake smile and force awkward small talk upon customers who just want their caffeine fix as quickly as possible. “If you do it I’ll have twice as many illegible scribbles to try to decode.”
“Don’t you have a degree in linguistics? Isn’t that like, your thing?”
Phil laughs. It’s a bitter sound, almost completely devoid of warmth. “Right.” Truth be told, his credentials had begun collecting dust the moment he’d graduated. Now it’s four years later and the only remotely brave or cool thing he’d done since was move to London. He’d been hoping to find a job, and technically he had. He’d figured Starbucks could pay the bills until something better came along. Now he’s twenty six years old and he’s still waiting.
He thinks she picks up on the chill in his tone and they both grow quiet, focusing on getting everything sanitized and set up for the next day. They’ve both been working here long enough that when they want to, they can get it done with impressive speed. It’s almost midnight by now and Rory still has to take the tube to get home. Fortunately, Phil doesn’t. He lives just a few blocks away--part of the reason he’d taken a job here in the first place.
He leans against the counter as she locks up the safe. “So are there any prospects yet?”
She punches in the alarm code and they make their way to the exit. “I’ll probably look through resumes and call some people tomorrow. You gonna be here?”
Phil nods.
“Ace,” she says with a grin, putting on a thick, exaggerated Northern accent. There are few things she loves more than making fun of Phil’s accent. Not that he really even has one anymore.
“Oh, shut up.” He smiles. He really does like her. She’s fun. She’s nice to him, which sounds simple but means a lot, especially given some of the other people they work with. He wishes his smiles for her carried the same weight as the ones she gives him, but he thinks it’s been long enough now that she must know. Really, after almost four years of working together, of ignoring the soft touches against his arm and warm cadence of her voice when she talks to him, he hopes she’s accepted that all they’ll ever be is friends.
They give each other a wave and go their separate ways. Phil shivers and zips his jacket up under his chin, hurrying his long legs against the dirty pavement, anxious to get back to the safety and warmth of his flat.
He gets home quickly, huffing a little harder as he climbs the many flights of stairs up to the the fourth floor. The lift’s been broken for a month and still there’s been no indication that the landlord plans to take any steps towards getting it sorted. He shouldn’t complain--it’s the only exercise he gets apart from hauling bags of milk from the back room and mopping the floors in the lobby. Which is precisely why he hates it so much, why he’s so thoroughly winded by the time he slides his key into the lock on his front door.
It’s actually quite a nice building--nicer than he should be able to afford, anyway. Luckily Jimmy has something akin to a proper job and likes Phil so much that he’s willing to pick up some--a lot--of the slack.
The flat is dark when he steps inside, which makes sense. Jimmy has to be at the station at 9am, a perfectly respectable time for an adult to be starting their work day. Meanwhile, Phil sleeps in til noon most days, then plays Mario Kart or Final Fantasy or just trolls the internet mindlessly until 3pm when it’s time to drag himself back to his little coffee-scented prison cell. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. He does have friends and he does go out, but he’s long since stopped actively trying to better his situation.
He kicks his mocha streaked shoes off, leaving them next to Jimmy’s perfectly clean ones. Tom’s are there too, Phil notices. Not an uncommon occurrence these days, but one that always leaves Phil feeling slightly disappointed. He can’t crawl into Jimmy’s bed and snuggle up next to him when that space is already being taken up by his boyfriend.
He goes to the kitchen and opens the fridge to find Jimmy’s left him a chicken bake from Gregg’s. He smiles and shakes his head. The man has a problem, Phil thinks, but at least he can always be counted on for a tasty, horrendously unhealthy snack at the end of a long day. He’s even careful to make sure the pasties he buys for Phil don’t have cheese. Phil grabs it and eats it cold in four monstrous bites. Apparently he’d been hungrier than he thought.
He can’t sit in the lounge and watch telly or play games like he wants to because he’s a good friend and a good flatmate. The walls in this place are almost literally paper thin and Jimmy’s not a heavy sleeper. Phil has a day shift tomorrow anyway, so he goes to the bathroom and brushes his teeth. Once in his room he strips off his clothes, tossing them on the floor and climbing into bed in nothing but his Sonic pants.
He turns on his phone and scrolls through twitter for a little while, and then tumblr. After the fifth unexpected video of graphic porn appears on his dash between the Marceline and Bubblegum fan art and cute gifs of corgis, he clicks his phone off and tosses it onto his bedside table. He doesn’t follow any porn blogs, so he doesn’t understand why that shit keeps popping up. Sometimes it feels like it’s all anyone really cares about--all the ways people’s parts can be combined, the myriad ways people can use each other’s bodies to get to the cumshot. He wishes he could understand. He thinks it would make life a lot easier.
He pulls his duvet up over his naked shoulder and snuggles his head deeper into his pillow. It’s cold. He should’ve put pjs on. He could get up of course, but that would mean expending energy and he’s not cold enough to eclipse his laziness. He wishes Tom had stayed at his own flat. He misses the warmth of Jimmy’s slender yet solid body next to him. Perhaps it’d been unwise to grow so accustomed to it. It had always been inevitable that Jimmy would find someone to share his bed with, someone who was capable of more than just snuggling.
He’d definitely felt a little twinge of something all those years ago, when they were young and fresh and sharing a cramped dorm room in York. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d felt that twinge before meeting Jimmy and they’d always been for girls. They’d been fleeting, brief hints of the feelings and sensations he’d heard described in seemingly every show, every movie, every song he’d ever heard. He’d been young and unsure, so scared of ruining those friendships that he’d swallowed those feelings down, pushed them aside until those girls found other boys who weren’t awkward and afraid.
And then there was Jimmy. They’d become very close very quickly, sharing a wide variety of interests, similar senses of humour and and a lack of personal space. In truth, the twinge had been stronger, more defined and less easy to ignore the more they got to know each other.
But he’d pushed it away again, that time for a different reason. Jimmy was a boy. A man. He was tall, long-legged, with dark hair and striking eyes and a jawline that Phil found harder and harder to ignore the more time went on. But he did--he ignored it. He couldn’t handle those feelings in the first place, let alone process the fact that he was feeling them for a man. Nothing--absolutely nothing in his life up until that point had prepared him for the possibility that he could be queer.
He’d made a lot of bad decisions in the following years, spurred on by fear and doubt and denial. He’d shared his bed and his body with people he truly felt no connection to, no desire for--first women and then, bewildered by those astounding failures, confusion eclipsed by desperation, men. It was always tense, uncomfortable, embarrassing, always followed by a shame so deep he’d swear that was the last time. And eventually, with Jimmy’s help, it was.
“Maybe it’s just who you are, Phil,” he’d said one night, cradling Phil’s head in his lap, gently swiping the tears from his cheek with his thumb. “Maybe you’re asexual or something.”
Phil wasn’t sure that was it, but it was enough. Enough to cling to for the time being, to explain why he couldn’t relate to most people, why he couldn’t get it up at the thought of a pretty girl. Maybe that twinge was something else, something he just didn’t have a name for yet.
He still feels it sometimes, when he looks into Jimmy’s bright, sea green eyes or hears him laugh. He feels it, but it’s dulled, like a headache that’s just about gone. He’s used to it now and he doesn’t regret anything. He wouldn’t trade their friendship for the world, and it warms him to see how happy Jimmy is with Tom.
He just wishes that happiness didn’t have to mean slowly giving up cuddles with his best friend.