COFFEE HOUSE TALES
a/n: yes, rewrite! Getting back into fics after a loooong original work hiatus. On the bright side, I got an A in language~ yay yay yay.
Also, summer whooo!
The plot's changed a tiny bit and there are some character modifications. Also, the writing is totes better.
CHAPTER ONE
BLUE AND HER CONSPIRACY TO RUIN RED'S LIFE (and maybe take over the world too)
The scariest thing about being Blue's business partner was that she had the tendency to stick her nose where it wasn't wanted, particularly in Red's life.
Particularly in Red's love life, but that bit came a bit later.
Red was a quiet sort of person. He liked minding his own business and emoting on the inside (to confuse people) and, mainly, making/selling/drinking coffee. Therefore, it was only natural for him to work in a coffee-house-slash-café (Color Cups was his coffee house/café's name). It was not, however, natural for him to choose Blue as his evil overlord business partner.
It had seemed to make sense at the time. Blue had an information network. Blue had money. Blue knew how to advertise and market.
Blue did not, however, know how to pick employees. Or how to keep her nose out of Red's business. Or how to make coffee (she did, however, make an excellent variety of cakes, and that was why it was a café and not a coffee house, but Red liked the sound of 'coffee house' better).
The first employee she hired was her absurdly tall, redheaded, silver-eyed, PMS-ridden, insufferably smart adopted brother, Silver. Silver, being an insufferable prick rude, was not cut out to be a waiter (strike one). He couldn't cook (strike two). And there was the fact that he had never worked a day in his life (strike three).
But he was Blue's brother, and so he had to stay. Silver became a dishwasher, and he did learn to brew coffee after the first two weeks, so it wasn't that bad. However, he was still lacking in the people skills department, and so he stayed a dishwasher who occasionally made coffee (whenever Gold was out).
The second employee Blue hired was Silver's sort-of-friend, Gold. Gold was shorter than Silver, a little nicer than Silver, funny, black-haired, gold-eyed, and dumb in some instances and smart in others. He made up for these good points by being a lady-killing, sexual-joke-telling, moronic jock.
Despite this, Gold could cook, and Red wasn't about to turn down somebody who could make more than coffee and little cakes. And he did stop being such a lady-killer, but that was only because he discovered that he liked guys too after two months of hitting on any customer in a skirt or being in possession of 'huge boobs, dude!' and slept with only ten people of both genders a week due to work (and Silver, but Red didn't know why).
(He had his suspicions.)
Afterwards, Blue hired Ruby, who, thank God, was halfway competent at what he did. He was an excellent waiter, knew French, Spanish, and Italian ('the languages of fashion and romance!') and looked fairly normal. He was red-eyed, like Red, and constantly wore his hat, like Red (except Red took his off about fifty percent of the time, but whatever). Red found him to be a sort of kindred spirit, in that sense. In all other senses, though, Red and Ruby couldn't be more different.
Ruby was fashion-crazed, and OCD about neatness, and a huge prissy diva. Blue claimed that Red was all of these things secretly, and okay, Red liked Vogue and Cosmo, but he wasn't as bad as Ruby. Thankfully, Ruby kept his eccentricities and his work separate.
The third-to-last employee that Blue hired was Black, who, strangely contrary to his name, had grey eyes. Black was also an excellent waiter. He did have the tendency to attract otaku girls, strange men, and just about everyone, and for some reason, they all asked him to crossdress. Black, being shy, didn't really complain. The customers, being perverts, didn't really complain either.
Black was smart and good with numbers. All in all, he was a great employee. But what the strange (greenish?!) shadow always following him really was was a mystery for the ages.
The penultimate employee Blue hired was Nate, whose hair liked to eat things. Nate was hyperactive and superhero obsessed, but he did his job. Nate came as a package deal with Hugh and Rosa, his childhood friends, who were both also strange. The three of them made a fantastic trio of waiters.
However, Rosa was famously mood-swingy, Nate was ridiculously happy, and Hugh was extremely angry. Like, all the time.
Hugh had anger management classes every day, from five till seven. Rosa had ballet on Mondays, jazz on Tuesdays, tap on Wednesdays, judo on Thursdays, tae kwon do on Fridays, and kung fu on Saturdays (Sundays were days off). Nate had drama classes on weekdays and graphic design classes on alternate Wednesdays and Saturdays.
So, all in all, they were only all available on weekdays till 5 PM and on Sundays. And when they weren't all there, one of them would inevitably cause some sort of chaotic disaster. So they were part-timers on every day except Sunday.
Because of their eccentric staff, Blue got it into her head to hire someone normal as their last employee. She promised he would be their last employee.
(Red had a binding contract, signed in bubbly Blue handwriting and everything.)
Someone normal apparently entailed some hipster kid with big glasses and gravity-defying black hair and brown eyes.
Said hipster kid liked to boss people around and laughed at everyone like they were dirt and had a superior attitude and stupid shoes and the same name as Red's old best friend/boyfriend.
Yeah, Red knew he was going to hate Green.
But Green was an excellent waiter. Green was a people person. Green was available almost every day from 8 AM to 11 PM. And so Green had to stay.
"It's Monday again," sighed Gold. "We had Monday last week! Why can't it just not exist anymore?"
"That's kind of the thing about Mondays," Green sneered. "They're sort of a weekly thing."
This comment provoked a glare from Silver. Apparently, nobody else was allowed to make snarky comments at Gold within a fifty-foot radius of him. Also, Red was pretty sure Silver just enjoyed glaring at helpless people.
Green, though, was far from helpless, and smirked victoriously at him. Red could feel the condescension and superiority in that smirk from halfway across the room.
"Ah, boys," Blue said, like she was so much older than them. "I feel like they're going to be great friends someday. Bonding over their tsundere-ness and their general assholishness."
Red frowned, thinking that Blue, having drunk lots and lots of (probably spiked) coffee, was not entirely sane or rational. Blue was not sane or rational without alcohol, and alcohol would presumably make that issue worse.
The tension in the atmosphere was palpalble, and neither party looked up from their glaring competition, which was growing more and more heated by the second.
Except Ruby, who was apparently completely shit at reading an atmosphere. "We need Mondays," Ruby insisted. "On Mondays we wear sneakers."
"I wear sneakers every day," said Green, who had gotten sick of his ocular war with Silver. Said sneakers were heavily doodled and written on in varying shades of Sharpie and probably in varying states of sobriety. The red Chuck Taylors were held together with duct tape, the plain silver kind, on the soles to the point where the soles were basically all duct tape. Red only knew this because Gold had wanted to read one of the scribbles up close and had ended up with a face full of shoe.
"Those hipster pieces of canvas? Those are not sneakers. They stopped being sneakers the moment they were acquainted with the first Sharpie marker." Ruby made a face and put his own chunky black-and-white sneakers (he owned about six of the same pair in different colors) on the table. "These are sneakers."
Green scowled as the wind chimes… well, chimed. "CUSTOMER," Gold yelled, waking up the previously sleeping Black, who squeaked in a very unmanly fashion before pulling a face.
"Welcome to Color Cups, how may I help you?" Both Green and Black smiled charismatically (in Green's case) and embarrassedly (in Black's case) at the crowd of young teenage girls. Upon seeing their stunned silence, Black blushed and played with his horizontally striped armsock (chosen, of course, by Blue and Ruby; Black had no fashion sense at all) and Green smirked while playing with the straps of leather on his wrists.
"Oh God," Blue stated after a few moments. "I've just realized that this has turned into a host club. Shoot me now, Red, I've created an impure establishment for young girls!"
"Gladly," said Red, and went to sulk in the kitchen, all while his internal monologue bemoaned Blue's desire to ruin his life and eat all of Green and Gold's cherry-filled cupcakes.
The day, however, was not done with Red, because when he came out of the kitchen, Nate, Rosa, and Hugh had shown up (it was Sunday and they had some kind of three-way date earlier).
This would not have been a bad thing, except for the fact that Nate and Rosa had locked Hugh's cell phone into playing the Lucky Star theme song for all of eternity, or at least until its battery died. Seeing as it was a smartphone and the charge was at about three-quarters from what Red could see, this was unlikely to occur in the next two and a half hours.
"Here I thought I would have a noble death," snarked Silver, not looking up from his complicated-looking novel, "and it turns out my downfall is going to be singing high-school aged anime girls." He sighed and leaned back even further in his chair. Silver was basically slumped on the ground at this point, but Red decided to refrain from pointing that out.
"At least they're cute," remarked Gold absently. He seemed to be contemplating the world's greatest mystery- the ceiling. His feet, which, to Ruby's abject horror, were constantly clad in alarmingly colored sneakers, rested on the table.
"It could be worse," Blue whispered, looking up from her manga. "You could be Subaru."
Black was apparently dead under the enormous pile of tables, chairs, and silverware Hugh had been throwing. Nate had at least thought to remove the knives from his general vicinity, so there wasn't blood on the nice, new(ish) tiles. Red liked those tiles, and cleaners that removed blood stains were probably worth more than the tiles themselves.
Green was drawing what looked like Blue and a unicorn on the title page of a book with a pretentious-looking cover with a neon orange Sharpie. He noticed Red looking, and said "Ruby confiscated my neon yellow one."
"Out of the million or so questions he looked like he was going to ask," Blue said, not bothering to look up from her manga, "that was definitely not one of them."
"Joke's on you," said Green victoriously. "What I said was a response, not a question." He didn't bother to look up from his drawing, and Red decided that yes, Silver and Green were scarily alike.
"I know where you live," said Blue nastily. "And I know ALL ABOUT freshman year." Blue was probably the only person in the history of ever to make death threats while reading very gay and depressing manga. Nevertheless, it worked. Green paled and muttered something about 'ducking evil witches' while Blue smirked down at Subaru.
Two hours later, Hugh's phone died. Nate and Rosa were sentenced to cleaning up all of his mess, and, since he had missed his anger-management classes, calling his administrator.
"Who is it?" asked Blue. "I probably have their number anyway."
"Girl called White Sakurai," said Nate. "She's got great boobs and really big hair."
"DON'T OBJECTIFY WOMEN!" Blue yelled at the same time as Black said, "Hey, she's my sister!" rather vindictively. Black had recovered from his apparent death and had been tying one of his armsocks into knots for the past half an hour, leaving everything of his arm other than what his short sleeve covered bare.
"What?" Gold actually fell out of his chair in a tangle of just-barely-not-gawky arms and legs. "Why didn't we know about this?!"
"It never really came up," said Black, tugging his unknotted armsock back on. "I mean, having a twin isn't really something to slip into everyday conversation."
"All right," said Rosa, crossing her arms over her chest. "Who else has some strange other family we didn't know abou- Nate, put your hand down, I can feel it rising."
Nate pouted until Rosa looked over, at which point he tried to look innocent. In his haste to escape Rosa's Silver-taught death glares, he bumped into Hugh, who had been told to sit tight and wait for someone to take him to his classes. Copious amounts of blushing commenced, and Rosa's expression turned fond.
Blue nudged Rosa and said, "The fact that I'm a girl doesn't stop me from thinking that my balls are bigger than theirs," and held out her hand. Rosa returned her high five
No one ever returned Red's high fives. But that was likely because he never asked for them (he wasn't Gold, after all).
Gold himself was currently trying (and failing) to hit on Green, Silver, and Black at the same time.
"So, movie?" he asked Black, turning up the charm. Black blushed and said, "That wouldn't be wise," under his breath. He then tugged at his armsock while looking behind him nervously, like he was waiting for someone to pop out.
Suddenly, a voice from nowhere proclaimed, "No, it wouldn't!" and a green-haired man was trying to strangle Gold.
"N, why do you always do this?!" Black appeared to be trying to pry N off Gold. Trying being the operative word.
"I'm protecting your virtue, Black!" shouted N. "If you're not a virgin, that's one less thing we have in common!"
Green snickered and Silver tried to glare at everyone simultaneously, but N was on the receiving end of the worst of it.
Red decided to go sit in the kitchen before Silver could have a say.
When it appeared that most of the crazyass staff had left, Red walked back out of the kitchen, clutching Blue's triple shot espresso. It was free movie night at the Cineplex starting 11:30 PM, and Blue was absolute shit at staying up without coffee.
"I'm just saying, dude," said Green. "There are better ways of showing affection than just trying to murder all of his potential suitors." He was sitting in the chair opposite Silver, his glasses resting on the table. When Red shot him a quizzical look, he mouthed I'm Blue's ride.
"Who asked you?!" Silver shot back, looking flushed. "It's not like your romantic endeavors are going anywhere either!"
Green chuckled awkwardly and attempted to cover it up by saying "See, that's why I like you. Normal people can't use words like that in conversation." Upon saying this, he started chewing on one of his fingernails.
Red sat down in a chair about two tables away from them and attempted to look like he wasn't eavesdropping.
Silver glared and mumbled "hipster" under his breath. Green smirked victoriously until Silver threw a napkin holder at him.
"Ow, dude!" Green said, and swore under his breath. He was using his left hand to cover his eye. "You're just lucky I didn't have my glasses on!" He uncovered his eye for roughly three seconds before slapping a hand over it again.
Red moved to help him, but Green motioned him to sit back down. Then Red remembered they weren't friends and did.
He mumbled something Red didn't quite catch before grabbing his glasses and yelling, "Blue, I'm in the car!" and practically scrambling out the door (not without crashing into lots of things and swearing, though).
Silver muttered something Red didn't catch. "What?" Red asked, sitting down in the chair previously occupied by Green.
"I could've sworn he said something about a contact lens," said Silver. "And his eyes…"
"What about them?"
"His eyes were green," said Silver, looking thoughtful. "Bright green." He got up and grabbed Blue's espresso from Red.
"I'm gonna check something," he said. "Tell Blue I'll be in Green's car." He started to walk to the door before he turned back and said, "Oh, and one more thing. Tell Blue I'm riding shotgun."
"No you're not!" shouted Blue, magically appearing out of nowhere. "Shotgun is MINE!"
Before she left, she flashed Red a knowing smirk.
But the one thing that kept replaying in Red's mind was Silver's words: "His eyes were green," Silver had said. "Bright green."
Red decided not to dwell on it and grabbed his keys.