Work Text:
The sunshine is a vast little thing – a tangerine waning through the purple hues, divulging itself into an array of evening with starlight dusted amongst the darkening pinks. The air is thick, heavy with the threat of rain that never comes; the wind a forgotten, non-existent thing that is more promise than anything concrete. The night is beginning to roll, to stake claim, the moon shy, underneath a culmination of clouds trying to be a cluster of nimbuses.
Conversations about days ending, and work finally rolling over lilting through, carried out in differing tunes, and in different crescendos – some laments, some boisterous, some elegies for some eulogy for someone else, whilst some are neutral, quiet like a shrug of one’s shoulders, merely wanting to retire.
Yor watches life as it folds, and unfolds beneath her, before her like a phantom than a woman included. Her hand rests steady against her wrist, her pointer finger scrolling through a playlist. There’s a certain fire in her bones that asks, but not too much that it consumes as the effervescence of the day filters out. She goes through each one – sunny days, lonesome days, days where there’s rain, and just because, and settles with the latter just because.
RAYE is the first to come through her headphones – a desperate ask dressed in niceties, and symphony about a wayward husband that is promised. Yor purses her lip in contemplation, then decides to hit shuffle, then hit the pavement once she is sure that her Strava has been set to an outdoor run.
The ground is kind beneath her feet – an exquisite, hard thing that absorbs all the energy that is left residing within her bones without complaint. Yor focuses on the road ahead as though she isn’t running through a highway, the noises from varying strangers a muffled, little thing that is a lot like the sound of being underwater. Faces upon faces come into, but no faces latch, no faces leave an impression – they are a blur of eyes, noses, and lips, a cacophony she will soon forget as she immerses herself into this high.
The wind clings onto her, though something fleeting, as she speeds through the neon lights and amber incandescence of each lamp post as the sun continues its descent. The moon peers at her through the curtain of clouds, a promise for later as the evening begins its reign. Yor rolls her shoulders as she passes through, misses a wave from a passing gentleman engaged in the same sport, and traverses uphill without breaking pace.
Headlights shine past her as though she is opalescent, each car engine’s whimper drowned out by empty thoughts that seemingly become cyclical. Yor fixates on each musical note, and each lyric, and imagines herself elsewhere, anywhere where the world cannot touch.
There isn’t anything particular she is chasing, anything she is trying to rid herself of, but there is always something about getting lost into the thrill of running whilst overwriting every piece of herself, and the world that asks. The music switches onto something Adele, something new, something shiny, where she pleads for the world and those in it to go easy on her, and Yor thinks, part of her understands it, part of her craves it, even when she has long learned how to adorn herself in resilience.
She lets out a sigh, a sole, little thing that baubles up, and gets lost after the exhale – an echo of an ask that she has long had, never revisited. A wonder where routines are broken, where the same thing over and over and over is broken by an external thing.
“Do you think my life is broken?” She asked her foster father a few days ago, her hands burrowed into the soil, her skin kissed by sunshine and pollen.
He looked at her then, ever with patience, ever with that smile that never seemed to be finite – always for her, always to her. His eyes were kind, always have been, crinkled by an adoration that never waned, by pride that was never, in his opinion, misplaced.
He shook his head, and the wisps of silver hair followed, and so did the sun, as though he was the sun himself, and she its dutiful descendant. “No – do you think so?”
Yor pursed her lips as she took out a weed from the flora, and deposited them in the sack with evergreen. “I think it’s too based in routine – abnormal.”
He quirked up a brow at her, cocked his head quite so, curiosity written in those eyes that never saw her as any less, even when he found her and her brother having less. “I think you are doing perfectly fine, princess.”
She recalls never saying anything more, anything less, just kept quiet as she tended to the garden, contemplative in her cyclical thoughts about where she is supposed to be in life, who she is supposed to be now. Her peers are getting married, some starting families, and their own business, and Yor is here, running, running, running until her lungs would give out.
Yor is here, always here, but where, she doesn’t know. She has decided many things, have gone to different places, tried different routines, but none of them felt quite right. She still felt like a machine who knew how to act, where to go, as though she is eternally set into code, that no matter how different she tries, it all feels the same, tastes the same, is the same.
And she isn’t entirely mad, sad, or anything about it, it just feels empty sometimes, like she is chasing something that never really is there, a rainbow, a light at the end of the tunnel – somewhere, anywhere, even though she feels content, settled. An ask in between her ribs for a different venture, for an adventure that she knows, even when she fulfills, it will all feel the same.
Melinda had told her then that it was because she was just, after all this time of fitting, and fitting, and fitting, she is just finding herself, getting to know herself without a label prefixed to her – a sister and a mother for so long it bled through and consumed everything she knew of herself. And within the knowing came the indecisiveness despite out of all things, she knew exactly when to stop, when to start, where to go, but even with it, it still doesn’t feel right.
She confided in her for that, and they shared the same thing, the same ask for a map, when all they needed, is maybe time to slow, and let them feel through things without needing to catch up or to find something worthwhile.
Yor elicits another exhale for another mile, and she glances over at her watch to check her pace – the same very old thing with the same route, the same time, the same length. Yor had tried to challenge herself then to go beyond her usual ten kilometers, but by then, she is bored, and the streets are less of a masterpiece, and more of a place where she feels misplaced.
She slows down by the roundabout, in the same park where she always stops by, and reaches for her watch to stop the time, and record the same pace, if not a second faster. At the very least there is some good in it, a personal best she can affix to herself, she can try on and wear out her running shoes with during June’s official event for a marathon. A change of pace, she told Melinda when she signed up for it, even though this is her fifth for the same year, and it’s only May.
And Melinda, of course, only indulged her, and told her that she will be by the sidelines, never mind that she has Damian for that day ever since the divorce with Donovan. She told her then that maybe they will meet someone, despite the fact that she has this situation with Jeeves she has not yet named. Yor, of course, appreciates it, even though meeting someone isn’t what she is looking for, but rather a change of pace that does not feel like contentment to the point of lonesomeness.
Or maybe it had not been lonesomeness at all, but simply, just as her therapist had put it, a need for chaos after having to live a life under survival mode. That anything that is not a pile of rubble, and on fire is a life that is empty, unkind. She had been told then to search for answers, to listen in on what her inner child would have wanted if she had not been thrusted into parenthood so early for her brother as they moved from one orphanage over to another, over to another. But her journals have remained empty, even when she tried to chase what she thought she wanted then when she had been playing with her dolls or what, of course, was left of them.
“What is that you want, princess?” She recalls him asking her one day, over a field of magnolias that shone just as brightly as the sunshine, that made him look more of a god than a father, who always had an everlasting patience when it came to her.
Yor placed her chin on her palm, tilted her head quite so, knees propped and supporting the rest of her weight as she rocked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. “I don’t know,” she told him then, just as she reached for a stick, and drew what she thought she wanted, that she eventually lay abandoned.
“You have pretty thoughts,” he told her after a long while, after silence, after a breath of air that wove itself through the flowers, the sunshine he had tended to. “You should write them down.”
“But what if they don’t like my thoughts?” She asked, peering up at him, a glimmer settling within the rubies of her eyes. She heard Yuri yelling after Hemlock somewhere, and her uncle Matthew’s soft scolding.
He shook his head then, a soft, minute thing that was never done in rejection, but always came with reassurance. “Don’t write for them; write for you – always you.”
Yor tried then, still tries now that she has found her voice, but no matter how she fills the abyss with words, it never quite felt enough. It always stared back at her, and asked her, if this is everything she asked for after years of barely getting by, and having to fight for an inch of freedom.
She pushes open the door to the café, always the same café, and the bell jingles, sings to announce the same woman, from the same town. There’s something different in the air – a shift as she glances over at the same chalkboards, and finds herself face to face with a different man behind the counter, wearing the same apron, but with a different smile. Yor furrows her brows in wonder as she approaches, her steps careful, timid, her heart a loud thing in her ribs as though the change is a direct answer to her woes.
She glances over to the menu, then to his smiling face once more, a question pinched at the way her brows have been drawn in the middle, the way her fingers are tapping lightly on the counter top. The same music is playing – some Taylor Swift song she knows she had listened to once on shuffle, but then, even still, things feel different, and her heart skitters as though acknowledging a break in routine, despite this having no direct impact towards herself.
Yor taps her shoe against the carpeted floor, and she studies each carefully written menu item as though to find gold. She takes in today’s specials, and the barista’s favorite, and minutely wonders if it’s his, or someone else’s.
Time slows into a halt, and beneath her veins is a feeling of anxiousness, that this change bears something meaningful, as though the man’s blue eyes is responsible for the turn in the wheel. She lifts her gaze from the menu, then onto him, questioning.
“You’re not Sylvia,” she finds herself saying, when she has exhausted more than two minutes, when anxiety has made her speak in confidence, even when her words are rushed, exhaled.
Yor colors herself a dust of crimson, and she hides it by pressing a palm against her cheek to feign a yawn.
“I’m not,” he answers, swiftly, smoothly, and there’s a small smirk playing at the corners of his lips.
From behind him, Franky emerges, a wide grin playing at his own as he finds his place next to Loid (she reads it off his name tag), and pushes him off center. It gets a grunt out of the blond, and then a shove that is unsuccessful as Franky firmly plants himself in place, in front of the cash register.
“Oh, hey, Yor,” he greets, his smile kind, always friendly. She returns it without much thought – routine. “I guess you’re having your usual?”
“Yes, please,” she tells him just as he is reaching for a cup, and writing her name down in his messy script.
“Sylvia’s handed the place over to this new bloke – I mean, manager,” he says as he jabs a thumb over to Loid, who is looking at him gravely as though he never knew how to smile. “She got promoted to corporate, then decided to hand over this joint to this floozy.”
“Hey – “
“ – Like I said, floozy,” Franky says again with a roll of his eyes. “Any plans tonight?”
“Just my usual latte, then I’m heading home,” she tells him, and he makes that face of his, that expression of his that feigns this is news, even when it isn’t.
And despite seeing through the ruse, frankly, Yor appreciates him for it.
“You have to stop flirting with the guests,” Loid says as he polishes one of the mugs, a frown encompassing his face, as he glances over at Yor, who, now donned in what appears to be business attire for the afternoon, has found her place at the farthest corner of the room.
Franky snickers, then he is shaking his head as he replaces the empty tray of muffins with a fresh batch. He follows Loid’s line of sight for a short while, and then he is shaking his head once again as he assumes his full height. The café is slow – the trickling lunch hour turning patrons to scamper back and behind their cubicles to finish the rest of the day, crouching over paper work and counting the seconds until it turns into minutes. Like chess pieces, the few that remain are strategically here – some students chasing a deadline, artists looking for their muse, writers chasing words and thoughts through people watching, and remote workers trying to find some wedge in the in between of routine.
Franky turns over to Loid, and shoves him without a care for seniority. It breaks the spell he has found himself in, completely entranced with Yor. “You’re one to talk. You’ve been staring at her for a while now.”
Loid rolls his eyes, and then, reluctantly, lifts his gaze off her, as he turns over at Franky. “I wasn’t staring – I was just…”
“I get it; Yor is pretty,” Franky tells him, which he tries to deny, but fails, leaving him red in the face, as he tries to preoccupy himself with the menu. Loid lifts his gaze once more, and finds Yor still seated in her corner, typing quietly on her laptop. “But I have no idea if she’s single or not.”
Loid blanches, and then he is looking over at Franky, who has found amusement in leaving him flustered every time that Yor comes in, and asks for the same thing. “I – how could you have possibly arrived to that conclusion that I was thinking about that.”
“You keep looking at her,” Franky simply points out as he turns to pick up where Loid had left off with the mugs, and the glasses.
“I was just curious – she’s always here,” he supplies, defensive, his tone rising by a crescendo, coupled by the roll of his shoulders. “Does she always get the same thing?”
“She’s a regular, and yes, yes, she does,” Franky turns to hug the mugs back into place, keeping his gaze towards Loid, his smirk flitted. “Sylvia and I had a bet what she does for a living. Yor’s an enigma – you can never really tell. We thought it must be something corporate, and then she’s coming into the shop with scrapes and bruises.”
“She could just be clumsy.”
“Or, she could be in contract killing,” Franky adds, even though Loid thinks it’s absurd.
She looks immaculate, delicate, timid, of course, but she looks as though she wouldn’t dare hurt a fly, but not in the way, he thinks, he is underestimating her. It just… doesn’t make sense. Sure, Yor can be strong, but assassination? Huh.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m just saying, pal – you never know these days. Plus, she has the perfect cover. You wouldn’t expect it,” Franky tells him as he finishes off the mugs, and then he is moving over to the plates.
Loid looks at Yor some more, and then she is lifting her gaze, and narrows her eyes at him. Out of panic, he averts his gaze, and snatches the plate from Franky’s hold, which only plummets him further into an awkward situation, caught red-handed, and trying to cover for it.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it, but you’ve been staring at me for a while now,” Yor says as she settles behind the counter, her palms pressed against the menu.
She’s fast – and right, of course, of course, of course; she’s a runner, he should have known.
Loid holds onto the plate that Franky has now let go of like a shield, and he tries a smile, a soft one at that, that seems askew. “I’m sorry – I, uh, I just think,” he glances over at Franky, who seems to be busy hiding his laughter with whistling. “I just think you’re very pretty.”
“Oh?” She tilts her head to the side, and the scrutiny is gone from the glimmer of her irises, curiosity sitting forth on the way her brows are drawn as though she couldn’t believe it. “You have a positive impression on the way I look?”
Oddly put out, but Loid chokes on his saliva nonetheless as he nods, and then he is crossing the space between the fridge, and the sink to get him something to do. “I – I do, which is why,” – which is what, why? – “I think you deserve a free muffin,” he tells her, face blossoming in a deep shade of crimson.
Behind him, as he sputters like an engine attempting to bring itself back to life, Franky doubles into laughter and subsequently lets go of a plate in a smattering of ceramic.
“I’ll clean that up,” Franky says as he brushes past him to grab a broom. “You clean yourself up,” he whispers to Loid, and then he is gone as though he was never there.
“Sorry – I,” come on, Loid; you’re better than this.
Yor, with trembling hands, takes the muffin from his hands, and offers him the warmest of smiles he has ever seen in a person. It blooms something within his ribcage, and causes his heartbeat to skitter in a careful pitter patter, pitter patter as the rose petals of her eyes take root within him.
“No, it’s okay, thank you,” she tells him, and then she pauses, as though waiting for something, for anything.
Silence passes, a lengthened one at that, as Loid finds words to be elusive and fading, and courage to be a dwindling wit he can barely grasp. When it stretches, stretches forward, Yor just smiles at him once more shyly, but there is something within her eyes akin to disappointment. Before he can figure it out, she’s already retreating, and tucking herself into the farthest corner, burying her nose into her laptop where she types, types, types.
“You didn’t ask for her number, but you gave her a muffin?” Franky tuts as he emerges from the broom closet.
“Shut up,” Loid says, and from then on, he tells himself, he will make it a point to try.
The next time she comes in, she is pelted down by rain, her clothes soaked through, running shoes tarnished, brandished by rain water, mud, and grass blades. She looks absolutely cold, shivering from head to toe, evening hair slackened, and matted to her scalp. She peers through the gap of the door, and then motions over to Franky to come over.
He glances over at Loid, and then he’s shoving him out under the monicker Muffin Man, and tells him to do her bidding. There is a protest there that he wants to try, wants to verbalize, but the look Yor gives him quiets that. He takes off the sweater that he is wearing, and before he can even think, he is putting it on her.
Yor’s red eyes blink up at him once her head is out of the sweater, the rainfall droning out Franky’s incessant laughter and the thoughts running rampant in his head. He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have done that.
“Thank you?” Yor says finally, after the silence, even though it had only been seconds that have past, seconds without words, without explanation, why oh why, had he thought this was alright.
“I – you were cold, and I thought – welcome back, Yor?”
She delights him with her laughter, and then she is shaking her head, the droplets of rain kissing his cheeks, the way he would have wanted her to kiss him. She moves past him, tells him she would have been okay with something to-go as he tells her he will mop the floor anyways, and hands her, her usual latte, warmer than it is.
And then of course, instead of asking for her number, he gives her another muffin instead.
The next few days are the same, though not quite, not entirely quite. She comes in, and tries to study the new menu, verbalizes new specials, and ends up getting the same thing. Sometimes she stays, most of the time, she doesn’t – always out before he can say anything, another muffin under his tab instead of his number. He chastises himself every time for it, tries to remember each time what to say, and how to say it, but every time he sees her, and she looks at him with those red eyes of hers, he forgets – his name, his number, his whole existence. It’s just her, her, her, the way his heart has now beat in time with her name Yor, Yor, Yor even though they have only exchanged a few words.
It's pathetic really, and Franky of all people have pointed out as such, to the point that it’s all he ever hears when he hands her the same damn muffin, under the guise of she looked prettier than she did yesterday.
He had never been this helpless, even though his dating history had been quite quaint for a man who knew his way around women, but there is just something about Yor that knocks the wind off his sails, that begs him to breathe her in as though she is oxygen. A turning point, as it seems, that he knows has nothing to do with the way she looks, but entirely borne out of interest, and what seems to be a red string pull to her.
He doesn’t have the words for it, but every single time the bell jingles, he is looking for her red eyes, and warm smile. Searching, searching, searching, and hoping, if he reaches far enough, he might just reach her.
He is hopeless, helpless, and he has never been a man so alike a sailor in a drunken stupor after hearing a siren through the tides.
The bell jingles once more, surprisingly, five minutes before closing. The patrons have long left, and so had Franky, bidding him good night in a hurry after securing a date with Fiona, no doubt relenting after his incessant asks. It’s just him, and empty tables, blinds drawn for a taste of a good night, then the morrow’s good morning.
He lifts his gaze up from the dishes to meet Yor’s, and his smile is automatic, the way hers is, even though it’s warmer.
“Sorry,” she tells him as she hurries inside, and closes the door behind her. “I know it’s five minutes before closing, and you guys hate that, but I just wanted to see if you guys are still taking orders. If not, I can go – it’s okay, really,” she says in one breath, flushed crimson through to her red sweater, the red in her eyes radiant despite the apology.
Loid waves it off, even when there’s a knot lodged in his throat, even when he feels his heart knocking on his ribcage in a pendulum that is her name. He moves away from the dishrack then over to the espresso machine as he makes quick work of her usual, even though, oddly, it’s late into the evening.
Yor moves from the door, and to the counter, and she peers through, looking in. “If it’s okay, I was actually wondering if I can get a cappuccino instead?” She asks, her voice shy, and despite the fact that Loid has already started making her, her latte, he flashes her a smile instead.
The silence settles for a while, comforting despite the circumstances. Yor pulls up a chair to settle behind the counter, as she busies herself with tapping her nails against the menu. Loid tries to quiet his trembling fingers, and focuses on the task at hand, occasionally scalding himself due to nerves.
“I was actually thinking,” Yor says after a while, just then as he has finished making her, her cappuccino. “Do you really think I’m pretty?”
Loid flusters, and then something shatters – the mug, and the coffee on the tiled floor, a sad, sordid thing that glances back at him. Yor yelps as it does as she stands, and hurries to the broom closet with a mop in hand.
“No, it’s okay – let me,” Loid says just as she’s behind the counter to mop the mess she thinks she is accountable for.
He reaches for the mop in her hand, and accidentally touches her, electrifying the both of them in a spark that renders them still, renders them quiet. For a moment, it’s just the pulse he hears, and then her sharpened breathing as he studies her, looks at her from the warmth in her eyes, to the purse of her lips. Yor subconsciously swipes her tongue across her lower lip in a slow sweep, and the both of them let go of the mop.
“Fuck it,” Loid whispers, and then he is chasing her, the way Yor used to chase something else, something different than contentment, that feels a lot like Loid’s lips hot and clumsy against hers.
She softens against him quick, pliant, the tremor nothing but a livewire of want as she returns the kiss as fervent as his. Her hands easily find the softness of his hair, nails digging into his scalp the way his knee is digging into the heat of her crotch. There is no music, no lament by some artist, no eulogy – just their labored breaths and heartbeats against their chests as they give in, give in, give in to this, into what could be, into this sudden shift.
Loid lifts her from the floor, and onto the counter, just as Yor’s fingers find their purchase on his apron. She unties it quickly, desperately, just as he is mouthing kisses on the slope of her neck, marking and savoring each inch of her until he meets the hem of her sweater. She murmurs something unintelligent just as he frees her breasts from its confines, finding each nipple pebbled, wanting, waiting. He lowers his head and latches his lips around one, sucking, and sucking, sucking until the heels of Yor’s feet is digging into the dimples of his ass, and his hardened crotch is grinding against her weeping, clothed cunt.
She arches her back, sending a few pamphlets down the floor to be catered for later, vegan chips and gift cards Franky had carefully stocked up meeting their end the same way. He barely catches Yor apologize as he moves to pay attention to the other pert bud, waiting for him to give it attention. He circles the tip of his tongue around the areola, once, twice, thrice, enough to feel Yor shiver beneath him as she tries to desperately feel him underneath his shirt. She mutters something, something about wanting to feel him, and then he is detaching from her with a pop as he peels of his shirt.
“Tell me to stop,” he tells her, addressing the suddenness, this boldness that has him abandoning pretense, and taking her.
Yor shakes her head as she pulls him by the belt loops, as she tries to undo the buckle. Loid places a hand on hers to stop her, and then he is moving to pull down the rest of the sweater with him, as he lowers his face in front of her clothed cunt beneath the stockings. He peers at her, blue eyes finding wine as he watches her chest rise and fall, rise and fall, her skin marked, her breasts a valley of crimson, nipples peaked.
“Tell me, Yor,” he says again, and she shakes her head once more, enough for him to lick a long stripe along her core, where it’s already weeping despite the barriers.
“Please,” she tells him, and Loid reaches to tear off the black tights to reveal exactly where she has been wanting, needing for him to touch.
“You’re so beautiful,” Loid says, and then he is kissing her there, flattening his tongue against her cunt before circling around her clit in a motion that drives Yor insane, in a motion that sends their POS system on the floor with the rest of the things.
The crash is barely heard as Yor keens just as Loid thrusts one finger into her slick entrance, pulsing in and out, in and out as he devours her before adding a second, then a third. He curls his fingers, massages her where she clenches around him the most, and sends her freefalling into her climax as he rips it out of her. Yor says something incoherent, unintelligible, her breasts heaving as she flattens her back against the ruined, mahogany counter top. Loid thrusts into her some more to let her ride through her orgasm, and then he is mouthing kisses onto her inner thighs before rising to meet her lips.
Yor tastes herself on him – something sweet, something different than a late night coffee run because she decided to work on today’s article.
“Are you okay?” Loid asks once her breaths have evened out, once her heart had quiet into a quaint pulse.
Yor reaches to cup Loid’s jaw, and then she is nodding, nodding, nodding, her hair a mess, the evening broken down into something she wouldn’t call routine. “More than okay,” she tells him, and then she is reaching to undo his belt, urging him to take off his pants, to take her. “Please.”
Loid nods, and then he is searching her eyes once more, trying to see, trying to figure out any hesitation. When he finds nothing, he takes of his pants, freeing his cock. Yor watches it, watches him spring to attention, her eyes widening at the sight, a certain glee rushing through to her all the way to her cunt. Loid holds himself heavy, using his thumb to gather the pearlescent pre-cum at the tip, then using it to stroke himself. Yor, patiently, watches him, lower lip caught by her teeth.
Through hooded eyes, Loid takes her in, from her red, wanting eyes, swollen lips, breasts, then down to her cunt in between her ruined tights. He takes in a breath then two, and then he is rubbing the tip of his cock from her entrance to her folds, gathering her slick before circling the head around her clit.
Yor moans, a loud, loud, loud thing that debauches the café, her back arching into attention, wanting, needing, waiting for him to take the plunge. Loid continues his ministrations, his breath a train of fuck, fuck, fuck as he fights to regain control. He gives her one last glance, one last nudge, and then the head of his cock is inching itself into her, Loid finally sheathing himself until he is seated to the hilt.
Yor feels full – her head somewhere in between here and there, her lower belly a coil of something warm, as he marks her walls, etches himself into her. Loid stays still for a while as he mutters his own string of profanities, his forehead against hers, his eyes closed as he trembles, trembles, trembles.
“You feel so good,” he murmurs into the slant of her neck, and then she is moving, coaxing him to fuck her, to claim her.
It takes Loid a while to gather his sense, his strength, and when he does, he moves, arduously, slowly, each thrust inch by inch, pulling to the tip, then slamming back into her. Yor presses her breasts against his chest in answer, and Loid swallows her moans in a torrid kiss that feels as though he is stitching himself into her.
They move in rhythm, their calls to one another in sync, and Loid couldn’t quite understand how a simple crush had turned into something fervent, as though he was made to worship, to devote himself into her all along. He tells himself it had been her eyes, so warm, so reassuring, but as he plunges into her, plummets into everything that she is, he knows that there is something more, something he is bound to uncover.
The counter top creaks beneath them, the only sound apart from it the obscene sound of their union coupled by each, individual pant. Yor clings onto him like a vise, her nails digging tattoos behind his back in red, angry lines.
“Look at me,” Loid says as he pulls away from her by just a fraction, just as he feels the pressure behind his back, the high near, close, but not without her.
Yor opens her eyes, the red as soft and as warm as rose petals, as she looks at him as though he has filled something within her, something that she has been longing, wanting, waiting.
“Let go with me,” he tells her as he holds her gaze, as he reaches in between them to work on her bruised clit, pressing, pressing, pressing until her walls clench all around him, until she is arching her back against him. “Where do you want me?”
Yor fastens her legs around his waist, pressing him close, close, closer to her. “Inside, please,” she tells him as she feels the heat, the coil, the pressure at the pit of her stomach.
Loid shudders, and so does Yor as she feels him paint her walls white, as she feels him plant his seed within her. “Yor, Yor, Yor – be mine, be mine, be mine,” he murmurs, and he fights the urge to hide against her hair as he presses his weight against her.
Yor runs her hand through his hair, then over to his back as she kisses him, softly, chastely, wistfully. “Yes, of course,” she tells him, pliant, content in a way where contentment does not feel like a slight, or a silence that waits for the shoe to drop.
A contentment that feels full, earned.
“Franky and I had a bet,” Loid says as they work on keeping the café sanitized, each displaced item placed back into its rightful place after deep cleaning.
“Oh?” Yor turns to look at him as she tries to secure the pair of pants Loid had lent her after tearing her stockings apart.
“We were trying to figure out what work you did – it wasn’t actually a bet, since the both of us couldn’t quite decide where to put our money on,” Loid says sheepishly as he tries to hide the crack on the Epson printer, by putting on a bunch of gift cards surrounding it.
Well, he’ll deal with his sister, he supposes – if she does her oculars. Sylvia wouldn’t be around any time soon, and he wouldn’t think she would ever notice; Franky on the other hand…
Yor flashes him a smile, and then she is reaching out to circle her arms around his waist, her chin resting on his shoulder. “What were your guesses?”
“I said you could be an athlete – I’ve seen your cuts and bruises,” he tells her just as he’s reaching to hold her arm, and roll up her sleeve to reveal a bandage.
“What did Franky think?”
“Franky thinks you’re a contract killer,” Loid says, and Yor delights him with laughter that he feels against his back.
Loid runs the pad of his thumb against the bandage. “I’m not both, though I did want to be an assassin when I was a kid,” she jests, and then she is leaning onto him further, burrowing her face into his warmth. “I’m a writer – an investigative journalist, sometimes I write opinion articles, too. I also have a few things I write just to keep my hands busy.”
“I’ll ask more about the assassin part later,” he replies, which earns him another bout of her laughter that he thinks is as close to angelic music he will ever have. “And the wounds?”
“From gardening, some time, cooking. My dad and I garden a lot – we have this greenhouse and this huge garden he maintains not far from here. He calls it, as generically as possible, the Garden.”
“Your father is the Shopkeeper?”
“The very one,” Yor says as she turns to him, and he envelopes her in an embrace as though parting from her is a slight. “He adopted me and my brother when I was fourteen.”
Loid nods, and they spend the rest of the evening going through each other’s lives, each other’s tales, playing catch up through shared muffins, and a contentment that does not feel akin to lonesomeness, but one that is merited, earned.
The months that surged forwards, surged afterwards is but a ribbon of things coming together. The same bustle, the same routine, the same storylines, yet different. Yor still comes as frequently as she can, and Loid still searches for her in every jingle of the bell. Muffins are still exchanged for free with promises of later in between kisses, numbers still unshared, but have been exchanged, though there had been no necessity to keep it, apart from when they are apart from one another.
Loid mans the till, his expression riddled with boredom, as he watches, counts the seconds to the minutes. The afternoon is quiet, bathed in a tangerine glow that is making way for evening, the typical slow down before the crest of people who have broken free from corporate.
The atmosphere is swelled with some song from Sabrina Carpenter – a tune that is a little bit vulgar, but not quite, something about one of her is cute, but two though. Franky had put it in earlier in an attempt to charm Fiona, who just put in her Airpods and busied herself with something else – even through their various dates, Loid still doesn’t know the score between the two of them, or if there had been anything at all.
Last time he heard, she was crying over some man, who had surprisingly found someone after she was sure he would never get past saying hi. Huh.
The bell jingles, and like clockwork, Loid searches, and finds the red of her eyes as she comes in. Behind her is a man with moonlight for hair, and weathered skin, aged, yet beaming as though he is sunshine personified – her father.
He glances at him, and he returns the smile in kind. Shopkeeper tips his hat, and then, he is finding a corner, no less, for Yor and him to sit in and go about their afternoon.
“Yor!” Franky comes through from the counter as he pushes Loid off, sideways so he is in front of the till instead. “You’re glowing!”
“Thank you,” Yor replies, a blossom of red rose petals on her cheeks.
“So,” Franky begins, and Loid wants to reach out for a muffin to smother his friend. “I was just telling Loid here that if it’s a boy, you can call him Franklin, and if it’s a girl, Frankie or Francine.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” Franky says, colored in offense, as he shoves Loid once again. “I’m the reason you got together.”
“No, you’re not.”
“If I didn’t – “
Loid shoves a muffin into his mouth, effectively shutting him up before Yor’s father even gets the slightest of ideas what Franky is implying. He is still trying to win his favor after they had made the baby first before the vows.
“We’re thinking Anya,” Yor says as she places her hand on top of her rounding stomach, as she smiles towards Franky.
Loid’s chest does this flutter it always does when it’s Yor as he watches her smile fondly, wistfully over a shared future. He reaches out to hold her hand, and lets it rest atop hers, atop their world.
“Franky would have still been a good choice,” Franky says, undeterred as he munches on the muffin, and then serenely, happily, he looks over at Yor. “But Anya sounds nice, too.”
And it does, it does, it does, the way it feels right, fits right in a life that no longer feels like it is lived just for the sake of, but in a contentment that is earned, merited, and warm.