If Robin wasn't totally broke, she'd probably go to Starbucks and get an expensive drink every day. Her daily fix of caffeine was important to her, and the better it tasted, the better her day would be.
Maybe her current mood was due to the dishwater-tasting coffee she was forced to endure from the closest coffee shop to her apartment, a cafe (whose name she'd never even bothered to learn) that was mostly run by students from the university she attended.
Of course, the option of buying a coffee machine was always available, but that also meant buying filters, and coffee, and making sure she always had milk and sugar on hand.
So, overall, dishwater coffee seemed a better option to her.
And so she found herself in a similar position that she found herself in before every hellish 8 am class she had; in line in the coffee shop, waiting to place her order.
The place felt different this morning, however. The small shop was busier than it usually was, and despite the cold, grey November morning outside, the atmosphere felt sunny and bright.
When Robin reached the front of the line, she realized why: a new barista.
He was a tallish boy, with a dimpled smile and lightly freckled cheeks, hazel eyes and messy brown hair, wearing a black turtleneck, which, in Robin's opinion, was the ugliest style of shirt in the world.
The boy, however, was undeniably cute, and the turtleneck didn't look particularly bad on him.
He gave her his best customer-pleasing smile and spoke.
"Good morning! What can I get you?"
Robin blinked sleep out of her eyes and stared at him.
He kept smiling at her and she kept staring.
"Miss?"
Robin blinked again.
"Oh. Sorry. You're new aren't you?" Robin asked.
"Mmhm. I'm Stahl. Nice to meet you!" he said with a smile. His smile took over his whole face, his eyes crinkling and teeth showing.
"Yes. Nice. I'm Robin. I'll have a large coffee with two milk and three sugars please."
Stahl nodded.
Robin fumbled with her wallet while Stahl made her coffee. She felt awkward at the front of the line, as she always did. The two-minute wait always somehow managed to give her anxiety.
"Here, miss."
The new barista handed her a coffee and a small bag.
"Um, I only ordered a coffee," Robin said. This wasn't helping her front-of-the-line anxiety.
"I know, but you seem like you could use a pick-me-up," Stahl said with a grin. He pushed the bag closer towards her.
"Thank you," Robin mumbled, hastily grabbing the bag and making her way out the door.
It was a cold Ylissean November, alright, nothing like the chilly-at-best Plegian winters Robin had known her whole life. It was a cold that always seeped its way deep through Robin's thick coat and into her bones. A cold that a good coffee would help make better.
Robin tugged her scarf away from her face and sipped at the coffee. She found herself surprised at it. Instead of recoiling from the taste, like she usually did on the first sip, she ended up taking a larger sip than she often took. The coffee still wasn't good. It bordered on tasty milky dishwater, but it was somehow better that morning. The sunny barista had worked his magic into the cup, and the memory of him into Robin's sleep-dulled mind.
Robin couldn't stop thinking about the coffee shop that day. Usual her thoughts were along the lines of 'this coffee is shit. Gods, I wish I had more money. I would kill for a frap', but on this day, her thoughts tended to drift more to the new barista. His coffee was definitely... superior, at the very least, to anything she'd ever had from the cheap shop before. She wasn't exactly a coffee connoisseur, but it topped the nasty, watery coffee she'd been dealing with for almost two months now.
She began to wonder if she was going crazy. If maybe her thoughts kept drifting because she'd grown accustomed to the bad coffee. That maybe she secretly liked it, with its lukewarm temperature, the weird, thick coating it seemed to leave on her tongue, the burnt aftertaste, the grainy, undissolved sugar that floated to the bottom of the cup.
Robin was almost mad at the new boy. The one day her focus should have been better due to the caffeine, and instead her mind was completely elsewhere.
"Robin? Robin?" Chrom said, waving a hand in front of his friend's face.
The sunny barista vanished from her mind, and the halls of her university came back into view.
Chrom was Robin's best friend, a friendly boy in the political science department at her school. They'd met last year, after she'd fallen asleep in the library and he'd accidentally stumbled into her chair and knocked her out of it. A weird meeting, sure enough, but they'd been nearly inseparable since.
She blinked at him. "What? Sorry, I'm pretty distracted today."
"Yeah, I noticed," he said, grinning and shaking his head. "I was just asking about lunch."
"Lunch?"
"Yeah. You know that midday meal, where you eat somewhat lightly but enough to carry you until dinner?"
"Thank you, Chrom, for letting me know what lunch is."
"I was just wondering if you'd be okay going to the cafe you hate."
Robin raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
"No real reason," Chrom said, dodging her eyes.
"You could not sound more suspicious if you tried. But sure, whatever. Let's go."
Robin sat at one of the small tables near the window, preferring to feel like she was somewhere open rather than small and cramped. The atmosphere in the cafe wasn't bad, but it was too small to feel anything other than uncomfortably cozy.
Chrom went up to the counter to order while Robin checked her phone.
"Oh! It's you! Robin, isn't it?"
Robin looked up from her phone to see the boy from earlier wiping down the table next to her.
She gave him a blank stare.
"I guess you don't remember me, haha, you did look pretty tired."
"No... Stahl, isn't it?"
He beamed. "Yeah! I was just wondering if your coffee was okay. This place hasn't exactly gotten rave reviews in the past."
Robin nodded. "Yeah, it was good. A lot better than anything I've gotten here before."
Stahl grinned again. "Oh, man, I'm so glad. I've never worked anywhere like this before and coffee machines are more complicated than they look."
Robin gave him a small smile. "Believe me, you're doing okay. I haven't seen this place so busy in ages."
Stahl took the compliment with another smile. "Thanks! It means a lot. Really. I'll see you around, Robin," he said, as Chrom placed a tray full of food in front of her.
Chrom raised an eyebrow, his face holding the weight of an unasked question. "Who's he?"
"Stahl. He works here."
Chrom sat down and put a hand on his chin.
"Hm. He's cute, isn't he?"
"Oh, my gods, shut up. I swear I'm gonna tell Em you've been spending your tuition on weed."
Chrom laughed. "You wanted the soup right? Cause I got you one. There's a weird ginger guy who looked like he'd kill me if I asked for anything that took more than twenty seconds to make."
Robin tore a packet of crackers open with her teeth and crumbled them over her soup.
"He must be new, too."
Chrom paused mid-bite. "Hm?"
"The evil ginger? He's probably new. This place has had a hiring sign for months. I guess they finally filled the positions they needed."
"Oh, yeah. There's a girl with pink hair I saw the other day. Never seen her before."
Chrom focused on his soup, and Robin suddenly understood why he'd chosen to come here for lunch.
"You wanted to see her, didn't you?"
Chrom went beet red. "What? No. What are you talking about?"
He ran a hand through his blue-black hair and straightened his collar, his eyes avoiding Robin's the whole time.
Robin laughed. "Calm down before you break a bowl or something. Man, I can't believe you. One cute girl and you're making me come to a place I hate."
Chrom let out a sigh. "You don't seem to hate it. Not today at least. And you almost switched majors so that you'd have more classes with Cherche."
"A fair point. And we don't talk about her. She broke my heart."
"She was straight, Robin," Chrom said, blowing on a spoonful of soup.
"And she broke my heart," Robin said, dramatically putting a hand over her heart.
She'd had a pretty intense infatuation with the girl last year, and upon finding out she was straight, her hopes came crumbling down.
Chrom laughed. "Alright. Better than Thar-"
"Don't finish that sentence," Robin warned. Her tone had darkened significantly, and whatever joy to her mood had just gone sour.
Chrom grimaced.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to-"
"It's fine, just... don't bring her up again. Please."
Chrom nodded solemnly, before focusing on his soup again.
Robin's past experiences with relationships hadn't exactly been positive, and she was a bit pissed at Chrom for almost bringing one of them up.
Chrom cleared his throat.
"Anyways, I was wondering if you're busy on Friday night."
"Friday? Hm. I think I might be. I'm at war with the Ottoman Empire."
Chrom frowned.
"In, the game. You know. Civilization. Sorry."
"Gods, shut up, you nerd," Chrom said, laughing. "You can't spend every weekend holed up playing strategy games.
"I can try," Robin mumbled.
"Well, anyways, Vaike's throwing a party, and you need to get out more. And I need someone to come with me. For damage control."
"Still hasn't forgiven you for breaking his weight bench, huh?"
"Listen, I didn't even know you could break a weight bench. But disaster seems to find me less when you're with me. So come along. Please?"
Robin sighed. "I don't feel like I have much of a choice in the matter. But if I get hungover you're buying me all the coffee I can drink. Even if it's shitty."
Chrom's face lit up. "Deal."
author's note:
i would die for stahl and there's not enough Content, so here we are. this'll prob cap at about 15 chapters max, so please stick around if you like it! apologies in advance for anyone ooc, and as well for formatting. my computer is ugly. also apologies seeing as updates might be a bit sporadic for a while, but hopefully they'll become regular quickly. this is also a crosspost from ao3.
special thanks to my pal melissa IWillScreamIntoTheAbyss for being proofreader n headcanon provider, for introducing me to fe:a in the first place a few years ago, and for dealing with 8 am classes.
thank you!