coffee and mimosas

Wherein demitasse cups are too small for coffee and a friendship begins.

OXFORD COLLEGE, 2054

As far as John can tell, it's not a question that ever gets asked of any of his brothers.

"Are you making friends?"

Maybe because there's no question that wherever Virgil is, there's going to be someone who's warmed up to him, been charmed by his bluff, cheerful practicality and easy straightforwardness. Anywhere Scott goes, he comes home with phone numbers and email addresses. Scott has the whole spectrum of friendships, running the gamut of "pals" and "chums" and "buddies" and can't go anywhere without having somebody to call up to go out for drinks. Gordon does whatever he has to in order to attract a crowd, and then just latches on to whoever pays him the most attention. Alan—well, John does understand about Alan, because it's impossible not to like Alan. His report cards have been coming back with notes about how he's "everyone's friend" ever since he was in kindergarten.

John's always just said, "Oh, yeah, I've met a few people" and then left it at that.

It seems a little less abrasive than the truth, which is, bluntly stated, "No, of course not, why on earth would I do something like that?"

This, apparently, comes across as a little misanthropic. John's always considered this to be everyone else's problem, rather than his.

There'd been a point at which everyone else's worrying about it had spilled over, a little. Maybe it was an overheard conversation between his parents, or something snide that one of his brothers had said, but he'd felt the need to do some digging on the subject. Careful, methodical, accounting for his own bias.

Or so he'd thought, anyway. But then, the query hadn't been "why don't I have friends". It had been "why don't I want friends?" He hadn't turned up anything worth worrying about, in any case.

If the catalyst for the beginning of a friendship can be considered to have a formula, most sociological studies seem to narrow it down to the following three criteria:

Physical proximity

Repeated and unplanned interactions

A setting that encourages vulnerability

Well. After the embarrassing incident of the migraine in the library, he's at least filled the last requirement. So maybe he's stumbled into it, through no particular fault of his own.

Apparently friends have brunch together.

John's can't remember offhand the last time he had brunch, so maybe there's something in that. He's not quite ready to stretch the notion that "brunch → friend", so for now he's settled on the quantifiable title of "temporary dining companion to whom I owe a favour", as a social descriptor for the very blonde, very blue-eyed, and objectively very pretty young woman, who's leisurely making her way through a spinach and goat cheese souffle and chattering blithely about nothing he's really had the slightest interest in. Mostly who she is, what she's doing at Oxford, who her father is.

She stops for a moment to have a sip from the grapefruit mimosa she'd ordered (her second), the delicate champagne flute in stark contrast to his own annoyingly small demitasse of black coffee. The waiter can't seem to be persuaded to leave the carafe on the table, and so keeps turning up at John's elbow, pouring a ribbon of hot, black Arabica into his entirely-too-small cup and asking if everything's quite to their liking. Penelope has fielded this question each and every time it's been asked, with an airy wave and an easy smile.

Once the waiter's departed for the seventh time since their meal arrived, Penleope puts her chin in her hands and tilts her head, coquettish. "My, but you're just dreadfully shy, aren't you?"

This is also the first question she's asked of him directly, even if it's technically just her, asking him to confirm an incorrect assumption. John shrugs, answers, "No."

"No?"

"No."

"One word answers make you seem shy."

"There's not really room for 'shy', in my family."

She brightens at this, though she also seems surprised to have gotten to expand on his answer at all. Considering his half of the conversation has mostly been polite "mmm"ing, this isn't exactly unreasonable. "Your family, oh do tell me about your family. Our fathers are friends, you know."

"I knew that."

"And you have brothers."

"Four."

He's not sure if she knows this already, but she acts as though it's new information, leans in as though it's the most surprising and fascinating thing she's ever heard. "Good heavens. Tell me about them?"

"Scott, Virgil, Gordon and Alan."

"Eldest to youngest, I assume. And where do you fall?"

"Sorry?"

"Eldest, youngest?"

"Second eldest."

"Mm. Only child, myself."

"Uh huh. You mentioned."

She laughs, light and soft. "Oh, so you were listening. I was beginning to think you were just an utterly self-absorbed bastard and that my rather charitable attempt to engage with you socially had been completely in vain."

"I'm not sure that's not true."

Somehow this makes her laugh again, louder this time, with a little giggling trail off the end. "I have decided that we're going to be friends, John Tracy. You can be as much of a bastard as you want, I like you anyway."

That's a little personal. John's halfway through a mushroom omelet, and even if they're tiny, he's still had seven cups of coffee, and he's starting to get fidgety. "I'm not a bastard."

The things that Penelope finds delightful are apparently not the things he would have thought. "Standoffish, sat alone in every class, haven't made a single friend in the whole time you've been here, and perhaps most tellingly, meet a perfectly adorable and charming lady—and it's capital-L-Lady—of my calibre and aren't doing everything humanly possible to insinuate yourself into my good graces." Her eyes narrow slightly, appraising, "Actually, John darling, it may make you rather less of a bastard than a lot of people I know."

"Is this supposed to be some sort of position of privilege? Being your friend?"

"Yes. It's like winning the lottery." She sits forward in her chair, reaches across the table and swaps his coffee for the latter half of her mimosa. "Come on. Finish up, we'll go for a walk in the park. Let me at least make a reasonable case before you decide I'm not worth having."

Penelope probably doesn't go for as many walks as she should, puffing slightly as they take a path that runs along the river. That's as good an excuse as any for why she can't seem to keep up with him.

And anyway, his damned legs are too long and she has to walk just a little bit more quickly than usual. It's no wonder she's out of breath, she's halfway jogging just to keep pace. She's worn flats to breakfast and regrets it, because next to John she feels absolutely tiny. It's going to have to be platform heels from here on out, at least four inches of additional height—ideally five—and that's only if she manages to convince him to be friends.

This isn't supposed to be so challenging.

"I just feel like you must be lonely," she starts, managing to catch up as he comes to a bend in the path and a bench at the apex of the curve. He stops and stands beside it for a moment, and she takes the excuse to sit down.

"Why?" he asks, though he remains standing, doesn't take the seat next to her. He kicks scattered gravel from the grass back onto the pathway, stone by tiny stone.

Penelope pauses, still getting her breath back. "Well. I would be lonely, I suppose, if I were in a strange country, far from my family and everything I'd grown up with and doing such ridiculous things as passing out in the languages library at five in the morning. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that happens to someone whose got a friend to have an eye on them."

John chuckles dryly. "I'm a lot less pathetic when I'm in my element, really. I appreciate your help. No pity necessary."

"Not pity," Penelope disagrees, carefully, not so quickly as to reveal it for a lie. "I don't mean for it to sound like pity. Concern, I suppose. Sympathy, maybe. I don't know, half a semester in Oxford and you haven't made any friends. It's just that I can't imagine—you simply haven't wanted anyone? It just seems so strange to me."

He's turned away and he shifts slightly, shrugs his shoulders. He really is too tall—can't be too much older than her age, and this makes him probably not more than twenty-three. There's still a slight coltishness about his limbs, a way he seems a bit too aware of a lack of anything to do with his hands. "I guess—I mean, I don't know. Four brothers always seemed like plenty. I never really went out of my way looking for extra people."

She can't help it and laughs at the term, "Extra people. Good heavens, were you grown in a vat? John Tracy, if it's really so very distasteful to you that I might want to be the single solitary person in your social circle as extends beyond the limits of your family, then please, do tell me to stop trying."

"I don't want to be rude."

She laughs at him again, but gets to her feet, goes to the edge of the path to kick fragments of gravel back off it. "I'm not entirely certain you're able to help it. But…well, if that's it, then—"

For the first time he catches her gaze, gives her the same sort of evaluating once over that he's been on the receiving end of, before now. "I mean—I never know how these things are supposed to start. Friends. Or where that's supposed to go. And anyway, just what is that that supposed to entail, though, in this context?" There's a reticence about him, something sort of hesitant as he continues, "Because, look, I'm not—if this is just…if…I mean, if you want this to…to go anywhere—like to go anywhere-go anywhere—I have to tell you; it won't. I don't mean to be unkind and it's not because—it's not that—like, it's not that I'm not sure you're not…"

Usually she's got a far tighter rein on her expression, but Penelope gets the sense from the way he looks up and blushes that she must be looking at him as though he's grown a second head.

John pauses, backtracks, and then decides the best course of action is simply breaking up with her. "Look. It's not you. It's me."

Penelope's not heard this many negatives stacked up in a single train of thought since the time she'd attempted to dip dye her hair a pretty dusty rose colour and gotten hell from her father. "…well. Very clearly it's you, whatever it is. But if I'm following that muddled up mess of a sentiment, I'm certainly not making any designs on anything more than being just friends, John. If this is the long way around to telling me you're gay—"

"I'm not."

"Or that I'm just not your type—"

"I don't have a type."

"—then that's perfectly fine," Penelope concludes and ducks her head slightly, leans into his field of view to interrupt the very intense survey he's taking of the ground, the line between the grass and the gravel. She's starting to tease out at least a glimmer of suspicion as to what the problem might be. "Really. Just friends, John."

He straightens up and she straightens up along with him, gives him a winsome, winning smile. He still seems wary, appraising, but goes on to cautious agreement, "…mmm. Yeah. I mean, okay. Maybe. I still don't really know what that's supposed to mean, though—"

"Nothing terribly taxing," Penelope tells him, cutting in. "Sit with me in class, give me someone to talk to. Brunch, sometimes. Dinner, if that context doesn't spook you too badly. Maybe a movie night now and again. Agree with me about things that are ultimately trivial and upon which you have no actual opinion. Come shopping and talk me out of buying frivolous things. Or into buying frivolous things, either way."

This gets a faint grin, shy, but promising. "Oh, there's a list. I didn't know there'd be a list, I do better with lists. Anything else?"

Penelope tosses her hair, loops her arm through his and pats his hand. "We'll start off fairly simply. Item one: walks in the park." She raps his knuckles lightly with her own. "But slow down, for heaven's sake. Really, you're entirely too tall to be one of my friends, John Tracy. You're very lucky I'm willing to make an exception."