Starbucks
New York City
United States of America
September 2120
“You’re a sweetheart for letting me stay here,” Ansel grinned sheepishly at Elena, who rolled her eyes and nudged him into the cafe. “I mean it, Lena. I really do. Thank you. Are you sure it’s okay, though?”
“Management owes me a favor, I’m sure that letting you in immediately wouldn’t count as a work-related offence.” Ansel shot her a grateful smile and immediately sat in his usual booth, taking his laptop out of its case. Elena ducked behind the counter and immediately went into the staffroom, tying her hair up and soon sliding on the familiar apron the employees wore. Upon stepping back out, she saw that the brunet was already hard at work, drumming his fingers anxiously on the wooden table as he stared at the screen with an intense gaze.
She watched him for a moment then glanced at the glass windows. On mornings like those, business didn’t really perk up until eight in the morning, where the usual students and businesspeople would come in for their coffees. It was close to quarter to seven, and usually she spent the morning testing her coffees and experimenting with blends to pass the time.
Besides, there was nothing wrong with that — if anything, it was a tradition of theirs. Prior to being an employee, there was a time in her college years that she had been invited to taste test some coffees. The branch in her campus was deserted, which was surprising. She then found out from the smiling barista that when the branches were at their ‘dead hours’ (as they fondly called it), the baristas tended to relax a little bit or make new mixes, test around the new batches of coffee brought in.
It was more a tradition and a reasonable way of checking the freshness of the new stock, but it was a fun one all the same. Elena had done the same a couple of times upon working at that branch; sometimes with Rayne and sometimes with Luke. There was an instance wherein a poor, sleep-deprived student stumbled in and worked alone; Luke cheerfully asked the student to taste test while Elena hovered quietly and watched as he did it.
Remembering made an idea pop into her mind. Humming, Elena set up the needed ingredients as she usually did. The water heated, coffee ready to be manipulated. She took a freshly-heated French toast out of the microwave, set the plate on the tray, added syrup and the like. Upon delivering it to Ansel, she saw that the male was still busy typing and clicking away. His table-tapping hadn’t waned at all.
“Hey…” she poked his shoulder. Ansel blinked and turned his head towards her, the look in his eyes brightening upon seeing the plate.
“Miracle worker,” he sighed. Elena smirked and kissed his forehead, taking the seat across and watching as he enthusiastically dug in. He looked like a child; she made the mental note to give him some tissues later. “You weren’t kidding when you said that the place would be empty…I’m almost tempted to spend all my mornings here instead of home, now.” Elena reached over and flicked his nose. Ansel grinned sheepishly.
“Keep wishing that. This might be a one time big time thing for you.” he nodded and continued eating, eventually cutting off a piece and offering it to her. Elena turned it down and eventually brought up her idea, “Are you up to taste testing different coffees? Maybe you’d like it more if caffeine killed you than work,” she joked lightly.
Ansel glanced at his laptop, which was currently loading something. He thought about it for a moment before nodding, looking back at Elena. The smile on her face grew. “I think I’d prefer that, actually. What do you have for me?”
And that was how Ansel ended up with a couple of paper cups in front of him, all of them filled with different kinds of coffee blends. Elena explained while making that the whole thing was a tradition of theirs, and that they tended to do it during dead hours. In the event that a customer came around during those dead hours, they would be offered the chance to join the taste testing.
When she turned with the tray of coffees, Elena saw him with his phone carefully positioning to take a picture. Ansel peeked and saw her, his cheeks flushed red as his phone flashed with a picture of Elena at work. She laughed anyway, not creeped out at all, and pinched his cheek.
Minutes later, she watched as Ansel took a sip from the first cup. He immediately made a face upon drinking and set it down immediately. She snickered. “Too bitter?”
“Definitely. What is that?”
“An extremely dark roast. Which explains why you might not like it,” she told him. Ansel made a face, which in turn made her laugh. He picked up the next cup warily and sent her a look, to which she merely shrugged.
After trying the rest of the cups, he decided that he liked the third one the best and proceeded to drink it down. Elena herself decided to help him finish them off until the dreaded first cup remained, to which both of them refused to touch.
(Okay, maybe they were overreacting. It was just coffee. But Ansel argued that it was even more bitter than his soul, and Elena reasoned that she was more of a tea person, therefore her palette should not be ‘disgraced by the evils of coffee’.)
Eventually they agreed that Ansel down it, and the male did, to which he croaked out that he needed a cup of water after. Elena couldn’t help but laugh harder upon seeing him hastily drink it down, to which the male ‘retaliated’ by tugging at her collar and pressing a kiss tasting of bitter coffee to her lips. On normal circumstances, she would have pulled away and teased him about needing to drink something else to rid of the taste, but in a way, it worked.
So she kissed back just as deeply until they pulled away with flushed faces and goofy smiles on their faces. “More effective than the coffee,” he joked, and Elena rolled her eyes at him while pinching his cheeks.
“Keep saying that, director-boy.” Eventually he returned to the booth after pressing another kiss to her lips, and Elena couldn’t help but watch with an awfully fond look in her eyes. Eventually did other employees file in and she begin her shift, but she couldn’t help but throw Ansel glances here and there from time to time.
His fingers still drummed on the table, but no longer playing out the worried beat they had been doing much earlier. It was much relaxed now, and he looked infinitely better than how he was while working pre-coffee.
Seeing that, Elena made another mental note to invite him to bring her to the cafe much earlier from that point on.
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