A/N:
Long time no post, and with something to show. Almost two hours ago, The Queen of Double Standards asked me to compete with her in a Drabble War and, needless to say, my fingers need a break. ; u ; I tried to do as much as I could within an hour. X'3
The prompt she had given me was "Every day, without fail, she'd come to that cafe and order a peppermint tea."
I'm not sure I really went along with what she probably expected, because some of the sentences sound scattered because I tried to make it seem like thoughts and all because we don't really think in neat little phrases, but I don't know. Totes need to get back into writing. X'D
Kiyoteru always buys coffee in the mornings: black, five sugars, dark as night, sweet as sin, just like how his sister used to make it. Except she's not here anymore and he has to buy his coffee because he can never get the flavor right. This place doesn't make coffee like his sister used to, but it's good enough. At least it's better than the industrial crap churned out by the buckets that's served in Starbucks.
He knows most of the people in the place, knows them by sight because they always come and no one ever speaks to anyone because morning rituals are supposed to be quiet, private little affairs, some brief respite before the tiring, ennui filled day. So one morning he's pleasantly surprised when she walks in, an unfamiliar face, because only regulars and faux hipsters who come in through the faded green door and that is just plain boring.
The girl comes in just after him, around eight thirty when people are already rushing to get their orders in so they could rush off to work, same boring old cycle, same damned routine. The morning glow embraces her, envelops her in gold, like how they do in those cheesy movies when she walks in. She saunters in, long and loose limbed; graceful. Short, bobbed hair; a light brown; mousey, he can't really tell what color exactly, and she has a really pretty face, though he wouldn't call her pretty. She's too good looking to be pretty, and yet not enough to be called beautiful, although she reminds him of old movie stars on monochrome posters. And Frank Sinatra.
He kind of watches her out of the corner of his eye and - what the hell, he could stare - he could plainly see that she had one hell of a body. Nice legs, the works - large breasts, though - , and he's really not that type of guy to be into that sort of stuff. More like the cute-girl kind, small and adorable; too cute for words, innocence haloed around their heads, but are god damned impressive in bed.
"The usual: five sugars, black."
The woman at the counter whose name he doesn't know because he really can't be bothered to ask, smiles at him and nods, muttering something about regulars. He can feel the girl behind him raise an eyebrow in shock because, five sugars, really? Did he want diabetes or something? And she's now probably texting some random girlfriend of hers saying, 'Oh my God, the guy in front of me just had coffee with five sugars, like WTH?' So he takes a slight peek back in her direction and there she is, looking blandly at the board, her mouse-brown hair framing her lower jaw just right. His grin drops a nano-inch; he kind of wants her to pay attention.
He watches her from his regular booth, right next to the window so he can see the town clock. It's a nice day, Dreamwork blue skies, white clouds and all that jazz. Kiyoteru watches her get her coffee, pardon, tea, it seems. Peppermint. So she's a peppermint girl; spicy and exotic. He could see it in her face, the way she moves - fluid -, sometimes hesitant. He thinks she's some kind of enigma, a mystery wrapped around another which buries another. He looks at her and thinks, 'She's not going to be easy.'
But of course, he's not going to ask her out. After all, he doesn't know her and he doesn't do the spontaneous, "Hey I just met you and this is crazy", kind of pizazz. He's more of an old-fashioned, roses and chocolates guy. And he knows that if he does that sort of shit and she doesn't say yes, because she looks like the type, he'll have to get a new coffee place because all the pitying stares and whispers and all that would screw up his mornings and make him feel like an even bigger loser.
But, then again, this is all hypothetical, so what if she says 'yes', what if she says 'no', what if she's not the kind of person he thinks she is. Hypothesis, guesses strung from one forlorn glance at her from his lonely little booth. For all he knows, she could be another bimbo, another stuck up faux hipster, she could be anything and everything all at once and he likes that.
"Is this seat taken?"
It doesn't take weeks for him to walk up to her, just minutes in fact, because he had learnt from some cheesy self-help book he read ages ago, "opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you knock down the door." So here he stands, in front of this almost beautiful girl, going to try to flirt and be spontaneous and fun, despite the fact that a lot of girls had the heeby geebies just by looking at him (damned glasses). Well too damn bad, he decides, here goes nothing.
"There are plenty of other seats here." The girl gestures, waving her hand aimlessly to the rest of the place. Damn, she's right, he thinks as he desperately tries to scrape up some other cool, smarmy excuse that would charm her off her feet.
"That's uh. . . because you're not there." He tries, thinking that that will be something some cool, slick guy would say and falters as he watches her frown deepen. She probably heard that one before.
He tries again. "That's because. . . from a distance, you look like my friend even though we are at war, from a distance I just cannot comprehend."
She raises an eyebrow and Kiyoteru silently thanks his sister for listening to Bette Midler.
"Comprehend what?" She asks cautiously, she's been down this road before, he can see it. She looks like a cat, he realizes. The coloring of her hair, the pointed face, the large, brown eyes. She looks like a cornered cat about to scratch back with some biting words, a witty remark which he probably can't follow because girls are this special breed of things which he doesn't understand. They're not amused by jokes, they don't respond to romantic gestures and they always go with the douche bags, the certain sort of guy which has this magnetism for female attention. He immediately thinks of Gakupo and Rin, and forlorn little Oliver who keeps telling him that if she's happy, then he's happy. Rather pathetic, if someone asked him.
" 'Beauty too rich for use for earth too dear, so shows a snowy dove trooping among crows, as yonder lady o'er her fellow shows.' "
Shakespeare. Shakespeare always wins the ladies over, he hopes. After all, Romeo and Juliet is the world's favorite love story. She shouldn't be able to resist.
"Romeo and Juliet?" she asks, a smile quirks at her lips. "That's a first for me."
She motions for him to sit and Kiyoteru sits gratefully. He can feel the eyes of every single person in the coffee shop rest upon his being, but hey, at least he's the one sitting beside this girl who really is not his type, but whom he had just used Shakespeare as a pickup line on. This is a first, he realizes.
"So who are you?" She bluntly asks, and he's taken back because none of the sweet, cute, innocent girls he's dated before would have been so blunt. How refreshing, he thinks, his smile rising and stretching taut over his face.
"Hiyama Kiyoteru, pleased to meet you."
"Haigo Meiko, amused to meet you."
Sassy, too. He never has gone so far with outright flirting and really is too clueless to carry on because roses and chocolates don't and won't seem to work on a girl like her, who is too experienced and knows what those roses and chocolates really mean. He waits for her to continue.
"So why did you come over?"
He's pensive for a minute. Why did he come over? He couldn't possibly say, "Well I saw you from across the room and I thought to myself, well you're not my type but like hey, you seem really damn interesting so here I am, using Shakespeare and Bette Midler as pickup lines on you."
"Well," he thinks for a bit, "You seemed like an interesting kind of gal."
She snorts over her tea and it's the most interesting and different thing he has heard for a long time, so he takes a sip of his coffee and hopes this will not end.
. . .
"Kiyoteru, why the hell do you smile so much?"
They've been having breakfast, coffee/tea whatever you call it for a couple of weeks and she's become comfortable with him. She now swears freely in front him and he has seen her pour liquor, probably sake, into her tea. He thinks it's disgusting but she does seem to enjoy it. And while he likes people asking him questions because it shows how interested they are in him and what a fascinating character he seemed to be, he really doesn't want to answer her and he knows that she will not pursue this one. Because she has her secrets and she knows the importance of secrecy, he can see it in her, a hypothesis, a prediction but he knows it will be an accurate one. He gives her an answer anyway.
"Smiling makes the world happier."
Absolute bullshit. He knows it, she knows it. She chugs down on her sake-laced tea and rolls her eyes. "Bull freaking shit, so what do you do? I've never asked you that before." She adds, smiling. She has a nice smile, perfectly straight teeth. He remembers telling her once that she should have been a model or an actress. She told him to fuck off.
"Lit student at SI and I spend my time mooning and pondering the meaning of life here." He chuckles at his new job description and she laughs too.
"Well that explains the Romeo and Juliet quote. Bette Midler?" She raises an eyebrow; her mouth rises into a smirk.
"My sister used to listen to her."
"Sis Con, much?" She teases and pours more sake into her tea and he tells her once again that it looks plain disgusting and that she needed a proper set of taste buds. She rolls her eyes at him and all is right with the world.
. . .
Two months later, they have gained a pattern.
Kiyoteru comes in first and buys his coffee; dark and sweet, he also gets hers, clear and aromatic. She'll come in later, moaning and nursing a hangover from some drunken escapade last night that she'll soon tell him about and no matter the number of aspirins she pops into her mouth or the constant grumbling about her splitting headache. She still laces her peppermint tea with the acerbic taste of sake. They always talk 'til ten and then they separate: Kiyoteru for his lectures and Meiko for hers. When she finally tells him that she's a med student, he laughs and asks her why she's still drinking if alcohol turns one's liver to mush. She never answers, her face turns pale and he never asks again.
However, she loves to talk about her work, dissecting corpses and rats and all that jazz. She speaks animatedly about it , moving her hand into wild gestures, while he drinks his coffee. He knows she does it just to watch him turn green and sometimes push the mug away, his smile waning. She's a spiteful little bitch, but he loves her for that.
When she doesn't talk about her work, she asks him questions. She prods and pulls on the most insignificant of details. He feels appreciated, interesting, it's as if above all the layers of secrets and fears, there is a regular normal person. He likes watching her as he talks, those warm brown eyes shimmering with glee, she looks rather interesting that way. Captivating, he should say.
"So Teru, what sort of girls do you like?"
"Why do you ask?" He counters lazily, taking a small sip of his coffee. It's rather cold today.
"Curious." She mutters, nudging him for a reply.
Without pausing, he answers sounding bored and amused. "Cute little girls."
Meiko almost spits out her peppermint tea - nay - she chokes on it. "What?!" She coughs, wiping her mouth with as much grace as a drunk sailor.
"Cute girls. Like, y'know, Kaito's sister, Miku, the music major. Yup, I like my girls cute and small."
She cringes. "But she's so innocent, that's almost perverted."
He laughs at her reaction. Her face is really too beautiful for words. "Almost isn't perverted. Besides cute girls are the best screamers."
"You're a pervert."
"Why thank you Mademoiselle, now let's continue to where you left off about castrating one of your corpses."
She harrumphs and crosses her hands over her ample bosom, muttering something about the knife accidentally slipping. He doesn't believe it's an accident but he humors her anyway, telling her that she could be a subconscious sadist.
. . .
He realizes something is wrong one day when she comes and doesn't touch her peppermint tea. She just sits opposite of him and twirls the spoon through the mixture, watching him cautiously with those brown eyes. He averts his gaze - her eyes disturb him - they were not their usual iridescent pools of shimmering maroon. They were not sad, not happy, but flat. He feels that she has to tell him something today but she says nothing, so he talks for her and tells her about those literature lectures, of Euripides and Dramatism and literary techniques and of the guy with the bald spot who sits in front of him and how that particular spot shines under the bare fluorescent light.
She doesn't laugh and when she smiles, it's wane, it's sapped of energy, it's tired. It's dead.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
He knows that repetition numbs the mind into submission, so he continues talking, repeating happy insignificant things so that his cheerful and happy Meiko can return.
Smiling makes his cheeks ache, his eyes squint and strain under the tug of his muscles but he knows that this prevents her from seeing that he knows of the purplish blue puncture marks on her arms and that he can see how she has started to wear long sleeve shirts.
She pulls down one sleeve over a wrist entwined by silver vines which snake across the purple-blue of her veins whenever he comes to close.
. . .
She doesn't come one day and he worries. He knows what the silver scars are, what purple blue puncture marks mean and he knows what happens to people with these things. His little brother, Yukito, had been one of them, and he had wasted away into a thin, emancipated skeleton who saw his brother as a monster and screamed, screamed like a child on fire every time he saw his face.
There is nothing he can do, so he waits. He sits at the table, smiling his absolutely tiring smile, straining until his jaws hurt. He sips his coffee until it's ten. He doesn't leave.
He misses the lecture on irony that day.
It had been a lovely day with a Dreamwork sky.
. . .
Three months, she hasn't returned once.
Kiyoteru still sits at their regular table, he never returns to his original booth. He still sits 'til it's ten but he always leaves for his lectures because he has to.
Leaving, he tells himself is a common, natural process. He's had his fair share of people leaving: his father with another woman, his brother with acid, his sister with a thick rope and pills after she saw her youngest son, his friends with time.
He too, makes himself leave. However, he comes back during his lunch breaks, sometimes he orders a peppermint tea, most times he gets coffee; black as night, sweet as sin, and a tea with extra honey, just the way she liked it, and he leaves it at her seat and tells the old lady who asks that he's waiting for someone special.
He always brings his laptop, tells himself that he comes here to do his work and projects because of the quiet ambiance. Most of the time, he writes poems and stories about a girl with chocolate brown hair who looked like an old movie star but is really just an enigma.
He doesn't miss her, he just misses the company. The two are starkly different. Because every day, without fail, she'd come to that cafe and order a peppermint tea.