The day starts normally, completely following his usual routine.
Since the Café de Verde is still a fairly small place, Draco cannot afford the luxury to miss the opening time today. After all, he currently has only three employees — Theo, Blaise, and Pansy — and since half of them have to cover the closing shift, that means he had to get up in the middle of the night.
These are the moments where he regrets his choice to drop out of college. Though, on the other hand, he's pretty sure that the working times of doctors and nurses are no more humane. And it would have been a crime to withhold the world his glorious coffee.
Anyway. He gets out of bed at about four in the morning, showers, brushes his teeth, grabs a bite to eat and hurries to work at his coffee shop so that they can open on time.
Pansy arrives about forty minutes after him, about ten minutes later than she is supposed to.
"You're late," he points out from behind the main coffee machine
"Time is a construct," she replies, making a bubble with the gum she's been chewing on before she disappears to change into the black blouse that they consider their uniform.
Draco shakes his head and returns to cleaning the machine.
Once Pansy comes back into the main room, she halts a moment to see what Draco has already done before she starts to work on those things he has not.
All as normal. And that continues for a bit longer, too.
The usual workers come in for their daily dose of coffee the minute the doors is open, followed by the students who regret having signed up for 8 am classes and the few school-aged kids who have decided his hot chocolate is worth planning a detour for. As usual.
Not long after that, this day becomes rather… unique.
A redhead clad mostly in black enters the shop, stumbling more than he walks. He clutches his side and after a second Draco realizes that it's because the man is bleeding.
He looks at Draco directly as the latter rushes forward. "You're pretty." Then he faints.
Right on the carpet.
"It's going to be a pain in the ass to get the blood out of there," Pansy announces from behind the counter.
"Are you sure that's our main concern here?" Draco retorts as he kneels down to assess the damage. "Go grab the first aid bag." Once he hears her leave, he addresses his two regulars currently in the shop. "Can one of you help me bring him in the back?"
"Shouldn't you call an ambulance? Get him to a doctor."
"I'm as good as one. I've got all but one necessary semesters under my belt, among the top of the class, always. I just don't have fancy equipment. Call it a hunch, but I have a feeling this guy would prefer not to wake up in a hospital."
Draco's hunch turns out to be right, too, if the fact that the first words out of the man's mouth once he wakes up are "please tell me you didn't call any authorities" is any indication.
"I didn't, don't worry. You're lucky you crashed my place, I'm pretty much a doctor, just didn't take the final exams. Do me a favor and at least call me if you have any problems. Café de Verde is in the phonebooks and we've got a semi-decent social media presence, too."
"Alright," the other man chuckles. "Do I get a name to ask for?"
"Only if I get one in return." Draco looks at him with crossed arms.
The man laughs, before he winches due to the wound. "Seems fair. After all, you've gotta recognize me when I call. You can call me Whiskey."
"That's not a name."
"I never said it was," 'Whiskey' justifies. "I'm a paranoid one, not gonna apologize, but I'm not giving out my name before the fifth date."
"In that case, I guess your not getting mine either," Draco responds. He had never thought about a situation like this when he decided against name tags, but that did not make the fact he had done so any less advantageous.
"Seems fair," 'Whiskey' repeats himself.
'Whiskey' disappears sometime between that conversation and the next time Draco goes to the back to check.
The odd thing is that there's no back door and no one had seen him leave.
He refuses to leave Draco's mind, though.
Draco really hadn't expected 'Whiskey' to return quite so soon after that — or at all if he is completely honest — but a little more than a week later, he enters the Verde again. He's dressed less like he's about to break in somewhere and more like one of those hipsters.
The shop was quite full; Theo was attempting to serve two customers at once to try and minimize the queuing time and somehow it actually worked out, though the ordeal did not seem quite necessary.
"Looks like you're busier this time," 'Whiskey' noted. "Maybe you should hire someone else."
"Way ahead of you," Draco replied. "They start tomorrow. Now can I get you anything or are you simply here to critique my management of this store."
"I wanted to thank you for last time, mostly, but I wouldn't say no to one of those." 'Whiskey points at Draco's favorite creation, something he called snakeffee to go with the theme of the store. "It looks kinda weird, but I think I'd like it. Call it a hunch."
"Gladly," Draco smiles at him. Cleaned up, the man looks quite attractive, he has to admit.
'Whiskey' returns the next morning.
"This was the best coffee I've ever tasted," he declares. "And believe me, I've had a lot of coffee in my life."
"Thank you," Draco responded. He beams a bit because he does take pride in his coffee.
"Do you have any other recommendations?"
Draco grins. "I think you might like this one. Call it a hunch."
A mere day later, Draco gets kidnapped on his way to work. The attacker wants to get revenge for the latest laws his father had passed or to blackmail him not to pass one. They're not very clear about the whole thing.
And yes, his father is no good person and his sense of morals is faulty at best. The way that he had thrown Draco out for not becoming a doctor as planned for him — not by him — made that obvious if nothing else had managed to do that before. But something had. Not anything specific, but once he had been away at college, it had gradually become clearer.
"He threw me out," Draco reminds them, "quite publically, too. I'm really surprised you missed it if you're following him so closely."
"You're still his son," one of the kidnappers — wearing the loosest clothing possible as well as a voice modulator, so at best Draco could tell that they were fairly tall — argues. "He will pay."
Draco snorts. "If you say so. After all, surely you know him better than I do."
Lucius Malfoy claims he does not have a son when they call him.
The kidnappers do not like that.
Draco would prefer not to talk about the things that happened after that call, thanks.
"Hey, hey. Wake up, coffee man." The familiar voice is accompanied by a slap.
Draco blinked a couple of times, trying to get his eyes to focus quicker.
He wasn't quite awake yet, thus slurring her voice a bit. "'hiskey? 's that you." Draco questions upon recognizing the face.
That very same face lights up at that. "Ah, there you are. What did they want from you?"
"Blackmail my father who doesn't claim me anymore."
A beat passes before Whiskey replies. "You know, I'm almost offended it's not because of me."
"What would you have to do with anything?" Draco wonders in confusion. "Why are you here? I don't even know your real name!"
"You're right. And I believe this is the fifth time we've seen each other." He sighs. "My name's Charlie Weasley, and I'm an assassin."
"You're a what?"
"Let's get out of here first before we smoothen the problems in our so far non-existent relationship, alright?"
Draco nods. Whiskey — Charlie — had a point, after all.
The very second they were out of there — accompanied by several other people that had recently started coming to the Verde — Draco takes a deep breath.
"So you're all assassins?"
"Yes," an older man with familiar features answers. He's not familiar like the others, who he'd seen at the Verde, no Draco knows this man from a different place.
"Regulus? Is that you?"
Regulus is his mother's favorite cousin, who hadn't been seen by the family in about a decade and a half.
"It is me. Hello Draco. I really hoped we'd meet each other under nicer circumstances. At least, I thought that after I heard you've been thrown out as well."
"As well? I thought you just left! No one knows where you've been!" Draco states hysterically.
Regulus shrugs. "Sirius — my older brother — got thrown out in large parts due to him being in a gay relationship. So when I figured I was in love with my husband, I figured I'd save myself the embarrassment."
"Speaking of Barty," another man adds with a thick Irish accent. "I figure we should report the mission went well. Plus I wanna call George and Dean."
"You better tell them you're still alive, Seamus," Charlie laughs as he speaks, "I'm not listening to another rant from my brother about how you don't."
"Alright, alright," Seamus chuckles and he and Regulus distance themselves from the group a bit to make the calls.
Draco takes the chance to refocus on Charlie. "Why use Whiskey as your code name out of all things, anyway? Is it like your favorite drink or something?"
"No, it just stands for the letter 'w' — like Weasley — in the phonetic alphabet. You know, the one used by the military," Charlie explains.
"Of course," Draco exclaims, "Silly me. Now please take me back home. I think I've hit my limit for this week."
"It's Monday."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"You're back," Millicent — the newest employee — states calmly when Draco enters the Verde the first time after his kidnapping.
"I love the enthusiasm," he replies, equally flat.
"Did your fancy boyfriend get you out?" Pansy asks. "The policeman or fireman or whatever he is that makes him used to such things."
"Boyfriend? You mean Charlie — Whiskey — the redhead that recently got stabbed?" He's the only one that even remotely fits the description.
"Yeah, obviously," Pansy states, moving towards the back of the shop "I've seen the way you look at each other, you can't fool me. Anyway, since you're here, I'm going to leave early. I've got a date."
"A date?" Draco asks. It feels like a good part to focus on since Pansy is only leaving a quarter of an hour early.
"With my friend Daphne," Millicent explains between serving two customers. "Also she's right about this Charlie dude. He noticed you're missing the moment we did and started looking for you before we ever had the chance to. Plus, he most certainly had heart eyes when he arrived."
It's at that moment that Draco realizes that he most certainly would not mind it if what his employees told him would turn out to be true.
Oh no, he would not mind that at all.
The next time Draco sees Charlie, he asks him if he wants to go on a date with him.
"There's this new movie in the cinema, How To Train Your Dragon, and I have a feeling you'd like that." He smiles. "Call it a hunch."
"I'd really like it," Charlie confirms. "And I'd love to take you to dinner. At Sinclair's?"
"I'd love that," Draco agrees, "haven't been there in ages."
"I had a feeling you'd like it. Call it a hunch."
About a week later, Draco gets a visit from one George Weasley. Not at the Verde, but at his apartment.
"If you ever hurt him — "
"If I'm ever dumb enough to hurt Charlie — a literal assassin — on purpose, I'm not expecting to survive," Draco interrupts.
George nods in approval.
"However, if he hurts me, none of you will be getting any coffee at the Verde ever again."
"Sounds fair," George announces before he disappears back into the night.
"Hey, why did you enter the Verde out of all places. You know, the first time?" Draco wonders one morning a few months later as both of them get ready for two very different types of work.
"Not really sure," Charlie stated. Then he smiles. "Call it a hunch."
Omake
The Verde has closed an hour ago and yet not only it is quite full, but Draco is not complaining.
It's the weekly meeting of the assassination agency his shop has accidentally turned into the headquarters of. To a full new-secret-doors-to-underground-floors extent which Draco had expected to mind a lot more than he actually does.
Charlie is here, of course, snuggling with Draco as per usual. Then there's Seamus in between George and a man called Dean that Draco had never seen before these meetings. Regulus and his husband Barty as the bosses of the agency are also always present. There are many other faces, not all of which he connects a name with. There's Ron, Hermione, and Harry, those are easy to remember as they are almost never not in trouble. There's a woman named Susan that brings her wife's delicious cupcakes with her. And there's Rose Zeller, who had been at the same university as he had been and in vaguely the same circles, only she's a few years younger.
The meetings that Draco has started thinking of as assassin self-help group are never empty. He likes to think his coffee plays a part in it.