The Smell of Coffee
Written for the prompt : Losers, any character, waking up to the smell of coffee
Disclaimer : All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is smell of coffee in the morning. Once upon a time it had been a thing of joy, then a thing of dread and now it was something else entirely.
When Clay was still just Franklin, or Frank even depending on how well he'd been behaving, and lived at home with his mother and father in his teenage years, coffee in the morning had been a thing of joy. His mother with years of practise to her name knew exactly how to make the perfect cup; every ingredient effortlessly balanced to rouse the brain and tempt the palate. He had grown up spoilt in his father's opinion and he didn't know any better.
It didn't take him long to learn however. Not once he joined the military.
Waking up in the morning, there was no smell of coffee first of all, instead there was shouting and hurrying and all sorts of other institutional shit that for a career soldier, Clay had never really liked. Maybe that was why he got shuffled off into his own little world of Losers. Anyway the coffee. . .
The coffee in the army is tantamount to industrial grade weapons technology or maybe it's biological warfare, a chemical attack on the internal organs of all the US military. He should check that out next time he's on post, see exactly where the coffee is shipped from and check that it isn't coming from somewhere within the current of Axis of Evil, because in all honesty he finds it difficult to believe that it's for purely financial reasons that the Army serves that crap.
As soon as he could, Clay got out; out of having to eat in the mess all the time and drink the tar thick coffee that he's pretty certain got mixed with soil and asphalt somewhere between the canister and his cup.
He's got the Losers and a house of sorts and the smell of coffee in the morning is . . . a prelude to what exactly he'll find downstairs. Not one of the Losers makes coffee as bad as they do on post, which he counts a win. That isn't to say that he never wakes up to coffee that bad. In fact the occasional woman that has stayed over has made coffee, not that the women were occasional, more that only the occasional one of them bothered with the effort of making him coffee and even fewer of them was able to do it properly, contrary to his earlier belief that women were born with an innate ability to 'make house' and he lumped the making of coffee in with that skill set. Fortunately he had never got around to sharing that clearly redundant thought process with anyone else, thereby saving himself the embarrassing laughter that would accompany it from the rest of his worldly-wise team, amongst whom, at times, even Jensen seemed to have a better understanding of women provided romance wasn't involved. Clay chalked that up to his sister's guidance and not general wisdom or something Jensen had learned from the internet.
Pooch could make passable coffee. Clay wasn't averse to a cup of Pooch's coffee. He had been well-trained by Jolene, so it was at least drinkable without the need for antacids later. Jolene's was marginally better, but Clay had come to the conclusion that Jolene had trained Pooch to make coffee just the way she liked it and then learned to like it that way himself and so he always made 'Jolene coffee'. By contrast his wife was able to subtly shift the balance of grounds and sugar and milk to better accommodate each of her guests.
Roque's coffee was fine. Nothing to write home about exactly but fine and there have been times when Clay had wondered if he and Roque have spent too many years together doing this kind of thing and haven't become like some kind of pseudo-married-couple. That would be a terrifying thought at any time of day, but first thing in the morning, it was almost enough to have him rolling over and going back to sleep until the coffee smell will have gone away again.
Jensen, in what Clay will always declare to be another of his sister's training schemes, can make coffee. Good coffee. Almost, but not quite, as good as Clay's own mother. He had become increasingly confident that if he found a woman who could make coffee that good he would just ask her to get married and be done with everything. Jensen's coffee though, Clay could tell when it was Jensen's coffee even with the bedroom door closed and it was more than enough to get him moving in a morning, purely out of fear that all the good stuff will have gone before he gets there and then he would have to bribe and coerce Jensen into making more and listen to even more of Jensen's rambling which sometimes is hard to balance against the good coffee, particularly if Clay has a hangover or an imminent meeting with the brass, during which he will have to listen to someone he likes a whole lot less than he likes Jensen. He's fond of Jensen, and it isn't just because the kid can make good coffee.
The one thing Clay had learned to dread though was the mornings he woke up to the smell of Cougar's coffee. Clay has never managed to work out what exactly Cougar does to the coffee to make it so bad and he knows he's not alone in thinking that. The good thing about Cougar's coffee? The only good thing is that Cougar makes a passable round of pancakes, something that doesn't come with anyone else's coffee. And if he's really really lucky and times it right, Jensen will get there first, will have teased Cougar mercilessly before pouring away the appalling coffee without making anyone drink it and will be in the process of making a new pot.
In Clay's mind, those are the best mornings with the Losers.