Disclaimer: I do not own Descendants.
He needed caffeine. He needed caffeine desperately enough that he was not particularly particular about from whence it might be coming - which was a good thing as the only option at this hour seemed to be the dreaded chain store that was taunting him with its glowing open sign in the window. He usually refused to enter such establishments on principle. Why would he waste his hard earned money on over flavored swill when he could literally make the same thing for pennies on the dollar in his own kitchen? He could make it better even because it would not be contaminated with all the attempts at flavoring that they were always adding - if you did not like the taste of coffee you should just not drink it not try to cover it over with syrups and sprinkles and who knew what else! It was a racket. There were things in this life that were worth paying for - the ones that for whatever reason you could not do for yourself or the ones that the time and effort involved made it more efficient to pay for the service for example. Then, there were the things that were just flat out ridiculous and paying someone upwards of eight dollars to make you a cup of coffee was one of those things.
Sadly, he could not go home where his perfectly functional coffee maker resided right now. There was simply not time before he had to be at his meeting (and curse Mal for being out of the country and needing him to be at headquarters to manage the call at midnight local anyway) to make it home and back, and there was no way that he was going to be awake enough to not screw something up if he did not get some sort of stimulant chemical in his bloodstream. He had been awake for thirty six hours straight already putting out fires here, there, and everywhere for a series of issues that were all outside of his area of expertise. He still had not figured out why, exactly, he got tapped for covering any of this in the first place when it was supposed to be Carlos's job to manage all things tech related at the firm - stupid honeymoon excuse! He was going to make it very clear to everyone that he was never to be left in charge again. He was also going to make it very clear to Evie that no one cared if the color scheme of the office coffee maker clashed with the accent wall of the break room - the next time one broke they were not ordering a custom replacement that took four to six weeks to deliver.
But first, he had to get through this meeting without costing them their third largest client. So, he swallowed all of his complaints and allowed himself to open the door of the establishment because he was desperate and desperate times called for desperate measures. When he took in the over sugared scent of the place and all of the signs celebrating the return of pumpkin spice season, he nearly turned back around to see if he couldn't just find an all-night pharmacy somewhere that might have energy drink shots instead. Nearly.
He stood his ground though because he figured that it would be a wimpy move to turn tail and run at this point (besides, the last time he had downed some of those energy shot things he had felt like his heart was going to explode out of his chest and panicked Evie enough that she had dragged him down to the emergency room where they had requested that he please refrain from downing three of them at once ever again - like he hadn't already figured that out for himself).
The place was pretty empty; he wasn't even sure why they would be open at this time of night - most people didn't need to be functionally productive at this time of day and downing that much caffeine and sugar right before bed didn't seem like the best of plans. He barely even registered the woman behind the counter as anything other than an obstacle to get through to get his pick me up. She was rattling off a series of something or other - probably the specials of the day, but he didn't let her finish. The way that he cut her off was probably a little on the rude side, but what was the point in wasting both of their time? He already knew what he wanted - and it didn't involve anything that required as many syllables to say as she was listing.
"Just please tell me that you sell regular black coffee in really large cups," he demanded.
The woman blinked once before firing back. "Sure," she snarked at him, "we call it the grumpy rude guy special."
There was something about the way she was standing behind that counter with an eyebrow raised and her shoulders squared that told him that he would appreciate going through a round of verbal sparring in other circumstances. Unfortunately, these were not other circumstances. He was short on both time and patience (and was so tired that he was a little short on comebacks to toss out as well).
"That was fair," he conceded with a slight nod of his head. "Could I get one of those specials to go?"
She looked as if she was about to say something else before seeming to change her mind and ringing him up without further comment. He got his coffee and offered his best polite "thank you" before getting on his way.
He might . . . just might . . . have to make a trip back sometime when he was a lot less rushed and in a lot better mood to see if the verbal sparring might prove to be as good as it looked like it could be. After all, there were some things that you just could not do for yourself - and engaging in an entertaining back and forth tempered with snark was one of them.