Chapter Text
The Little Hangleton Street bus stop was right in front of The Riddle, a fine dining restaurant that caught Sebastian’s eye even from the bus. Its white marble columns, gaudy golden steps and huge glass windows, behind which stood and sat the outlines of its waiters and obscenely rich customers, were elegant and imposing, making it clear that Sebastian would not be welcome – though he had already realized that yesterday, when he looked up their website and found out that their cheapest tasting menu with wine pairings costs 30 galleons.
On the other side of the street was a shabby, tall, dark building, without any sign that there was anything noteworthy to be found there. Anne had warned him about this, but he half-expected her to be pulling his leg.
In front of the only part of the ground level of the building that wasn’t just a windowless wall with the plaster crumbling here and there stood a guy. Sebastian squinted in the bright sunshine, searching for the crosswalk, finding it too far when his goal was right before him, and quickly ran across the street.
The guy was standing in front of the door, wearing an emerald green apron under a black leather jacket, which hid his nametag if he was wearing any. His bright brown eyes looked at Sebastian with cold annoyance as he took a drag on his cigarette.
“I’m assuming here is the Scriptorium?” Sebastian asked. The guy, his expression not changing, took a step to the right, letting Sebastian see the small tarnished plate on the black door, which told him with letters so tiny Sebastian had to take a step forward to be able to read it, that this is indeed the Scriptorium, listing the opening hours and nothing else under it.
“Cool, thanks,” Sebastian grinned. “Though have you considered making it a bit easier to find the entrance for potential customers? Even if you can’t make it look as impressive as that fancy restaurant on the other side, even something like a sidewalk sign could—”
The look of cold annoyance blazed into a murderous glare. “Who the fuck do you think you are, thinking you can give us advice about how to run our place?”
Sebastian tried to not cough as the bitter smoke of the guy’s cigarette enveloped him as he blew it into Sebastian’s face. “Are you Marvolo? My sister just started working here, she complained that you were very rude to her on her first day.”
Marvolo snorted. “I wouldn’t have been rude to her if she wasn’t so shitty at making even an espresso.”
Sebastian gritted his teeth. “She told you both in her CV and during the interview that she has no previous experience working in a café, why did you hire her if you don’t want someone who doesn’t know everything perfectly already? And there is no excuse for being needlessly mean to someone even if they are clumsy, but especially not to someone like Anne, I’m sure she will be able to learn everything in no time, she is a med student, you know. This is her first job in a café, and I’m not going to let you ruin it for her.”
Marvolo took another drag on his cigarette before letting out a little laugh. “How are you going to not let me do anything in my café?”
Sebastian scowled. “You think I wouldn’t kill you if I had to?”
This seemed to take Marvolo genuinely by surprise. “What.”
“I think I was speaking pretty plainly.”
Marvolo glanced at his cigarette, which still had at least half of it left to burn, then dropped it onto the ground and stepped on it with his combat boot, grinding it onto the pavement with a vicious twist of his foot. “I will break your neck beneath my boot like this, you—”
“It would be quite appreciated if you could refrain from threatening our customers.” They both turned towards the delicate voice; there was another guy standing in the now opened door, wearing the same emerald green apron. “You are a customer, right?”
Sebastian opened his mouth to answer, but Marvolo was quicker. “He threatened to kill me first. Don’t forget to mention that too if you are going to snitch on me to aunt again.”
This made the other guy frown, looking at first doubtful, then a look of understanding dawned on his face, which, Sebastian realized, was quite pretty. “Are you perhaps Sebastian?”
Sebastian blinked, trying to look the guy in the eye, but he wasn’t looking at him, his strange-looking eyes staring – or not staring – somewhere to his left. He must be the blind one, Sebastian thought, and his suspicion was proven right as he glanced at the nametag on his chest, remembering Anne telling him about how helpful and kind Ominis was to her.
“I am.”
“Anne thought you might visit us soon. Well, come down then. Marvolo, Aunt Noctua asked you to come back too, she needs help with ordering the new syrups.”
“I’m still on my break, this fuckass interrupted my cig,” Marvolo snarled, as if Sebastian had snatched the cigarette from his fingers and thrown it onto the ground himself. “Can’t she ask Garreth to help?”
“Garreth will just try to convince her to buy every syrup so he can try them all out. Whatever. It’s not that urgent, have your damn cig first. Come, Sebastian.”
Sebastian glanced at the now empty door, then at Marvolo, who was no longer paying him any attention, busy with placing another cigarette between his lips and staring with a look of loathing at the restaurant on the other side of the street. Sebastian decided that any further discussion of his future treatment of Anne could wait for now, too curious to find out what the Scriptorium actually was like.
It’s amazing, was his first thought as he reached the end of the stairs and found himself in a huge room, a few customers sitting at some of the tables. A giant crimson neon sign on one wall said ‘MAY YOUR ENEMIES BEWARE’, though the first ‘a’, the ‘o’ and the second ‘e’ had given out, and on the opposite wall a silver neon serpent was moving as some lines of it lit up while others fell dark, switching every second.
Another part of the rough stone walls was filled with horror movie posters. Sebastian recognized the poster of the live action version of The Peverell Curse, the original The Serpent’s Nest, The Heir and the second remake of The Serpent’s Nest, though there were also two posters he wasn’t familiar with, one of them showing a cracked bathroom sink and a thick line of blood curving like a snake on the tiles, and the other a stone wall with several tortured faces carved into it.
There was also a tall shelf filled with board games right next to the entrance; Sebastian decided to start with quickly taking a closer look at it, though he didn’t recognize any games other than chess and gobstones until he found a familiar huge box under a board game that, based on its cover, was about magical goats.
“You have the Legacy!” he exclaimed with delight, raising the box high into the air before he realized that Ominis was blind, lowering it awkwardly. Ominis, who was now standing behind the counter, turned towards him with a confused frown. “The Legacy of Ancient Magic board game,” he explained, making Ominis let out a small ‘ah!’ of understanding and nod.
“Are you familiar with it?”
“Yeah, I have played a lot of games,” Sebastian beamed, putting the box back onto its place and walking to the counter, resting his forearms on it. “Have you?”
Ominis gave him a bitter smile. “No, though my older siblings played with it a lot when we were children. They always sounded like they had a lot of fun in the other room.”
“Did they think you were too young to play too?”
Ominis snorted. “No, it was because they hated me. I told the teachers whenever I could when they bullied their weaker classmates or younger kids. My parents didn’t give a shit, they thought it was funny and even encouraged it sometimes. But the teachers did care and tried to stop them, so my siblings didn’t treat me much better than those they were bullying.” Ominis turned away from him and went to the cupboard, opening it and taking a ceramic mug shaped like a snake’s head out of it. “What characters do you like to play as?”
Sebastian wanted to tell Ominis something about what he had just told Sebastian, but he wasn’t certain what he could say, and it looked like Ominis didn’t want to discuss it further either.
“I enjoyed playing the Fanatic, the Fugitive, the Torturer, the Dark Wizard, the Necromancer, the Executioner—” He fell silent when Ominis snorted loudly. “What?”
“This list makes you sound like such an edgelord.” Ominis shook his head with a giggle, hiding his mouth behind his hand for a moment before he lowered it. It was quite cute.
“I also played as the Librarian once,” Sebastian added sullenly.
“I’m sorry,” Ominis said, not sounding very apologetic. “I didn’t mean to offend you. So, what do you want to order?”
“Not a coffee,” Sebastian said, taking one of the plastic menus lying next to the tip jar – which was painted to look like it had thick streams of blood running down its sides – into his hand. It had a black background with a border of delicately drawn silver snakes and thick gothic letters, which were a gaudy acid green color. The prices seemed to be more than what the website had said – Sebastian distinctly remembered that a ‘Basilisk venom’ was nine sickles and five knuts there but here it was eleven sickles. “What is a Basilisk venom? That sounds badass.”
“That’s a coffee, I’m afraid,” Ominis said. “Just a small cup without any milk, sugar or syrups, and a lot of chili powder – and it really is a lot. Garreth has somehow managed to convince aunt to put it onto the menu – I think he was successful because Marvolo agreed that we could add it; he thinks it is funny when the costumers struggle with it, though some people, I suppose, do like it when their coffee makes them suffer.”
Sebastian laughed. “Well, I don’t like suffering.”
Ominis smiled. “I don’t like suffering either. If you don’t want a coffee, we also have tea, lemonade and hot chocolate, you can find them on the left side of the menu. We also recently added matcha latte and chai latte, and we have canned craft beers too, though I already took this mug out, so I’d prefer it if you ordered something I can actually make instead of just taking it out of the fridge.”
Sebastian laughed at that, staring down at the pale, elegant fingers curled expectantly around the snake head mug.
“It’s not that I hate coffee…” he began, then his words petered out. Ominis gave him a small, tentatively encouraging smile. “It’s just that my uncle always scolded me during breakfast if I did anything he disapproved of or got into trouble when I was in high school, and now every time I smell coffee it makes me remember all our arguments and his threats of kicking me out of our house. But I suppose if you can make a coffee that isn’t like a coffee—”
“A coffee that isn’t like a coffee,” he suddenly heard behind him a mocking imitation of his own voice. Marvolo walked past him behind the counter, shrugging out of his leather jacket before he began to put the glasses and mugs in the sink into the dishwasher. “If you don’t want a coffee, don’t come to a fucking café.”
Ominis ignored him, giving Sebastian a determinedly bright smile. “How about a mocha? I can add lots of chocolate and milk to your coffee, and if you like salted caramel or chestnut, I can also—”
“Salted caramel,” Marvolo scowled, shoving more mugs into the dishwasher before slamming the door closed. “Salazar Slytherin did not sell fucking salted caramel flavored mocha.”
“I heard you putting things into the dishwasher,” Ominis said. “Salazar Slytherin did not use dishwashers, you should wash them with your hands instead if you—”
“Fuck off,” Marvolo scoffed, then he grabbed one of the syrup bottles from somewhere next to the huge coffee machine – Sebastian couldn’t see them from where he was currently standing on the other side of the counter – and tapped Ominis’s shoulder with it. Ominis took it from him with a suspicious look, opening it and taking a quick sniff.
“It is the salted caramel,” he declared warily.
“You would want to use it after I said that we shouldn’t use it, but if I give it to you, you will be less smug about it than if I told you to use something else and you used it anyway.”
Ominis tilted his head with a confused expression in a way that reminded Sebastian very strongly of that owl gif with the equations floating around its head. “Are you trying to reverse psychology me into not using it?”
“Do you think I am?” Marvolo smirked.
Ominis scowled, slamming the syrup bottle down next to the snake head mug.
Marvolo snorted. “I’ll help aunt before Garreth finds her and convinces her to buy the whole store.”
He left through a door on the other end of the counter, leaving Ominis with a thoughtful expression.
“Do you like salted caramel?” Ominis asked suddenly, looking a little sheepish at the thought occurring to him only now.
“Yeah, sure.” Sebastian smiled. “You can make it taste a little like coffee – but it really should only be a hint of it.”
He watched Ominis make his coffee silently, only telling him that normal milk is okay when asked what kind he wanted. He moved as quietly as he could from the part of the counter where customers should stand to where Ominis wasn’t hidden by the huge coffee machine. There was an occasional slowing down and uncertainty to his movements as he reached towards the coffee machine or adjusted the nozzle so he could steam the milk, but it only lasted for a moment before he found his way again. Sebastian was worried he will pour too much milk and it will overflow, but he stopped just before it could begin to spill out of the mug; he had clearly done this many times before. Sebastian wanted to tell him how impressed he was, but realized as Ominis drizzled salted caramel syrup onto the whipped cream sitting like a little cloud on the top of the ceramic snake head that he couldn’t figure out a way to say ‘You’re really good for someone who is blind’ without sounding rude.
“Thank you,” Sebastian said softly after he quickly stepped back to where he knew he should be standing.
“I hope you will enjoy it,” Ominis told him earnestly. Sebastian felt strangely flustered as he stared at his pretty face – he knew he was being stupid feeling weird, Ominis must have said the exact same thing to all his other customers.
The empty table he found, beneath the glowing warning of MY YUR ENMIES BEWARE, was a bit shabby and the little cactus in the middle of the table was kind of fugly, but the worn forest green armchair was very comfortable. He pulled his laptop out of his bag, deciding to while away the hour he had before he had to leave for his next class continuing working on his homework. A gloomy and melancholic instrumental music was playing now, and he glanced back to the counter as he waited for his laptop to boot. Ominis was standing there alone, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his skin pale against the vivid green fabric, looking aimless and lonely. Sebastian wanted to go back to him, but he didn’t know what he would say, so he turned back to his laptop.
The coffee was really nice. Just as he asked, the bitter taste of coffee wasn’t completely erased, but it was softened by the chocolate and the milk, and the salted caramel worked delightfully with it. Sebastian didn’t think about his uncle. Instead he kept stealing glances at the counter, where Ominis remained for almost the entire hour, sometimes talking with Marvolo or an older woman – the aunt, probably – or another guy – Garreth, perhaps –, and though their words did not reach Sebastian, they were always laughing or scowling or talking together when they weren’t busy talking with and making drinks for the customers. Somehow it made Sebastian feel like now he was the one who was lonely. He watched unblinking as Perhaps Garreth snatched a carton of milk out of the box Marvolo was holding in his arms and raised it high into the air like a trophy, grinning widely, making Probably Aunt Noctua laugh and whisper something into Ominis’s ear, which made him laugh too.
Sebastian turned to the menu lying on the table, wondering how much he will have to pay for his coffee. His eye caught on a part of the menu he had not noticed while trying to find something to order; it informed him that the price of one hour of playing with the board games of the café was four sickles per person, while each additional hour added three more sickles to the final sum.
When it was time for Sebastian to leave, Ominis wasn’t anywhere to be found. He paid to Probably Aunt Noctua, who smiled at him and asked whether he had found his coffee good. Sebastian told her he had, and he wanted to ask her to please tell this to Ominis too when he comes back, but then he realized that Ominis probably didn’t care that much about it.
“My nephew asked me whether you looked like you were enjoying your coffee,” Probably Aunt Noctua told him, making Sebastian’s goodbye die in his throat and his hands fumble a little as he dropped the few knuts she gave him back into his wallet. “But every time I glanced at you, you were typing away on your laptop.”
Sebastian laughed sheepishly. “I did enjoy it very much.”
It was quite a pleasant surprise to find Ominis leaning against the dark wall a few feet from the entrance of the Scriptorium, one hand in the pocket of his pastel green cargo pants and the other holding his white cane. He left the apron down in the café during his break, and his dove grey denim jacket was zipped up to his throat. The light was so bright it seemed to make his slicked back undercut and white sneakers sparkle, or perhaps it was only Sebastian’s eyes seeing things after not seeing the sunshine for a while.
Ominis turned towards the door, frowning like he was trying to figure out who just came out of the café. Sebastian hesitated, but then figured that a quick and simple praise and then saying goodbye to the barista who made him his coffee wasn’t that weird.
“Hey,” Sebastian said. “I liked the coffee you made me, it was really good.”
Ominis beamed. “I’m glad.”
Sebastian wanted to stare at him just for one more minute. “I’m considering asking my friends whether they wouldn’t want to play the next Legacy games here. We went to another board game café before, but compared to this place it is pretty boring, and I’d like to support the café where Anne works too. How can we book a table? Is there a phone number I can call or should I fill out a form?”
Ominis looked mildly baffled. “This is not The Riddle, even during the busiest times there are always a few empty tables. How many are you bringing?”
“It should be six, though we first have to find a new sixth person. Imelda said she doesn’t want to come to more games because she is bored of sitting in a chair for so many hours. Well, I won’t miss her telling me every round that I should have used my actions doing something completely different.” Ominis smiled with amusement; there was also something softly and sadly wistful in it. “Hey, um, do you want to be the sixth player?”
The smile turned into a look of shock, then the corner of Ominis’s mouth twitched, though it did not bloom into another smile. He looked like he was waiting for Sebastian to laugh at him and tell him he was just joking. Sebastian wondered, feeling angry at the thought, if his older siblings had played a similar joke on him when he was a child. When Sebastian didn’t say anything else for long enough, Ominis nodded tentatively.
Sebastian was looking forward to seeing Ominis again until the evening, when Anne got home; one glance at her face was enough to tell Sebastian she was pissed.
“I asked you to not do anything!” she exclaimed after she put her jacket onto the hanger at the door. “I can’t believe you would visit my workplace while you knew I’m in class, did you think I won’t find out? Well, Ominis told me—”
Why would Ominis— that damn snitch, there was no need to tell Anne, Sebastian wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was now regretting asking Ominis to join their next Legacy game. Maybe he won’t suggest to the others to go to the Scriptorium, and it’s not like he couldn’t easily find someone else to play with them and then tell Ominis that oh no, he forgot that he had already promised someone else they could be the sixth player before today… but Ominis would be disappointed, wouldn’t he? Whatever. He would deserve it.
“I just didn’t want you to be humiliated at your job, what is wrong with that—”
Anne freed her hair from her bun with a scowl. “It is much more humiliating that my colleagues think I need my brother to deal with my own problems than to be insulted for adding too much syrup or not knowing the difference between a cortado and a ristretto! I know you thought you were helping me, but you just made it worse— I don’t want to listen to what you have to say now, I had a long day and I just want to finally go to sleep.”
At least their uncle wasn’t there to witness Anne’s outburst, though Sebastian still had to find him in the kitchen, sitting at the table eating a sandwich and watching a crime drama on his phone. The volume was just high enough that Sebastian could catch one of the detectives musing about how someone probably didn’t just die in their sleep before Solomon paused it.
“I don’t understand why she wants to work in that café,” he grumbled as Sebastian opened the fridge to take an energy drink out of it. He wanted to stay up for a few more hours to work on his essay, but he really wasn’t in the mood to try to make himself a coffee. “A med student could do better than that shady place. I looked at the images on their website, they are probably using all that weird gimmicky decoration to distract their customers from the bad quality of their coffee. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were cooking meth in the basement.”
“I think it is a lovely place,” Sebastian said, slamming the fridge closed. “They even gave me a twenty percent discount on the meth.”
Solomon looked at him with narrowed eyes, spending what felt like an entire minute trying to figure out whether Sebastian was serious. Then he sighed with exasperation. “You would like that place.”
Sebastian walked back into his bedroom, and opened the chat to start organizing the first Legacy game night in the Scriptorium. He hesitated, remembering the beaming smile on Ominis’s pretty sunlit face when Sebastian told him he liked his coffee, and began typing that he had also just found a sixth person for their next game.