It was my first week working there. I had never worked as a barista before, but Mr. Mico, the tamarin monkey who ran the Golden Mug cafe, hired me based on my lengthy resume alone. What can I say, I've been in the part time gig for a long time, and it's more fun to never stay at the same place for too long. Maybe that comes with having the attention span of a pigeon…?

Originally, I had planned on only working at the Golden Mug for a few months. It was close to my dad's house and had more accommodating hours for my crazy sophomore schedule. Noah's Arc is too far from the city for me to make the commute during the week, so it was a comfortable weekend activity with decent pay.

I was restocking the seaweed muffins, our most popular item, and feeling pretty jittery because my mentor, a very bored-looking gharial named Zeke, had just clocked out, leaving me to man the reception alone. I'm not very good with machinery, and the monstrous coffee maker with its thousand of buttons and modes for all the different lattes or expressos or whatever taunted me from behind with its malicious aura. Zeke had given me a rundown of how it works, but I'd have to be a poodle to remember all of that at once. I prayed no one would order coffee for the rest of my shift. At a cafe.

Unsurprisingly, the very next order was coffee. A Humboldt penguin, who I was told was a regular, asked for a refill for his cafe au lait. Thankfully, he was the only customer in the entire store at the time. God bless slow days. I must have been visibly tense because the penguin eyed me curiously as I was ringing up his order, though he was polite enough to not say anything.

I stiffly let him know his order would be coming right up, already digging my brain for the instructions on how to make a cafe au lait. Looking at the rows and rows of small metallic buttons didn't give me any clues. What kind of machine doesn't label its buttons anyways?

I pressed one I vaguely recalled being for the type of milk he wanted. The cafe was pretty uppity, so the orders are specific right down to the type of coffee beans used (which really didn't help with my memory issues). But upon pressing it, and seeing caramel ooze out of the nozzle and into the mug, I realized that I truly didn't have a clue on how to work the darn thing. I had never been fired before, much less on the very first week, but I didn't think Mr. Mico would be too pleased with me fumbling over his prized machine and wasting all the caramel. It had already filled half of the mug.

"Is everything okay back there?" The penguin asked, peeking over the counter. Fight or flight began to take over me.

"Y-y-yes, don't worry about it!" I squawked. "I'll have your order ready in a jiffy!"

The caramel wouldn't stop pouring out, nearly reaching the top of the medium-sized mug. When is this thing gonna stop?! I quickly grabbed another mug to replace the caramel-filled one and deepened into my spiral of panic. Did I break the machine after pressing only one button?

"Um," The voice behind me spoke up again in a calm voice. "You're new here, right?"

"I-I'm s-sorry!" I sputtered. "I p-promise I'll figure this out! A-and I'll refund you for waiting so long! Let me just call my coworker—"

"Hey, it's okay, calm down." The customer assured. "If you want, I can come over there and help you out."

"H-huh? You know how?"

"I come here pretty often," He chuckled. "So I've seen which buttons they press. I really only know how to make my order, though."

Most baristas would know better than to let a customer behind the counter and mess around with company equipment, but I was far too panic-ridden to refuse help. I swiftly pushed the swing door open and allowed him entry into the work zone. He grabbed a new mug and confronted the groaning coffee maker, still spewing out caramel into the second cup. With a single press of a button, the penguin silenced the vibrating machine, which let out a last quavering drop of caramel before returning to normal. He set the caramel-filled mug aside next to its brother and beckoned me over.

"Thank you so much!" I cried, nearly toppling over from bowing so deeply. "You singlehandedly saved this place from becoming a caramel swimming pool!"

The penguin laughed. It was a contagious kind of laugh, the kind that makes you want to laugh right along with it, even if you have no idea what's so funny.

"I pressed this button over here, see," He pointed to a button on the third row, completely indistinguishable from the other dozen. "This one is for caramel. You press it to start and stop it."

"Oh, okay," I nodded, already forgetting what button he was talking about. "Thanks."

"Now for a cafe au lait…" He scanned the endless sea of silver buttons. "You don't need to press the button for milk and then coffee. There should be a button that prepares the cafe au lait in one go." He tapped at the bottom of his beak in a peculiar rhythm, almost hypnotic in its catchiness. It looked to me like he himself wasn't too confident in what he was doing, but I was in no position to point that out. Eventually, he decided on a button near the left end and pressed it.

What came out was a rich stream of chocolate. We looked at each other in silence.

"Well, it's definitely not that button." He chuckled nervously. "Okay, then it's gotta be this one."

The stream of chocolate stopped and after a bit, a frothy foam began to pour out. Definitely not cafe au lait.

"Hm." He murmured. "Maybe you should call your coworker."

One humiliating phone call and fifteen minutes later, Zeke stomps back in the cafe. After seeing the three disastrous failed attempts and giving both of us a harsh scolding, he prepared the elusive cafe au lait with the singular push of a button (a button I never forgot about since that day). The Humboldt paid for all four mugs that ended up being used during the disaster despite my insistence he should be refunded completely.

We gave him one million more apoplogies and thank-you's, and finally bid farewell to Zeke, who was still mumbling something or other about rookies (but with more expletives). Since the penguin remained the only customer after all of that hubbub, I sat down at his table to properly apologize while he drank his long-awaited order.

"I really am sorry…" I sighed, burying my face in my arms on the table top. "That probably couldn't have gone worse if I tried. I even got a customer involved…"

"I should be the one apologizing!" The penguin insisted. "I wanted to look cool, but I just made it all worse. It looks like I won't be working as a barista anytime soon."

"Same here. I am so getting fired."

I look at him. He looks at me. And we both burst into a fit of laughter.

"I thought ridiculous situations like this only happened in sitcoms." I said in between snickers.

"It's definitely a first for me," the Humboldt chortled. "But hey, as long as this place isn't a caramel swimming pool, I think you'll do just fine here."

"You really think I won't get fired?"

"I know Mr. Mico. He has a good sense of humor about these things."

"Oh, that's right!" I chirped. "You're a regular here! You must be pretty fanatic to have met the owner."

"I actually know him from somewhere else." The penguin smiled. "We've performed together before."

I raised a brow. "Performed?"

"He's killer with a trumpet. We played some jazz shows before."

My beak nearly hit the floor. "Wow! You're a musician? That's incredible! You look my age! What do you play?"

"Heh heh, I just play the drums as a hobby. They'll let anyone play jazz clubs nowadays. Even high school students." He winks.

A sudden rush of heat washed over me, causing my stomach to flip over. It was a bizarre sensation, and one I had only felt before during drop tower rides at amusement parks. Hesitantly, I studied his face a bit better. Like most penguins, his face was the definition of charm. The rosy pink spots on his beak and eyelids complimented the black and white pattern of his feathers. But his best feature was definitely his dark grey eyes, which were beady much like a pigeon's, but shone with a glint of boyish mischievousness that was all his own. At that moment, I could only admire how handsome he was. As I tried to subtly smooth my feathers back down, the penguin took another sip of his drink.

"I don't know if you're into jazz, Brian…" He continued.

I choked. " How do you know my name?"

"Im psychic!" He looked at me expectantly before sheepishly lowering his head into his mug. "Lame joke. I read your name tag."

I glanced down at the name tag pinned to my chest before bursting into another fit of laughter. He also couldn't help from snorting.

"But wow!" I exclaimed suddenly. "You're a regular and all, and I didn't even catch your name!"

"Me?" He asked, growing flustered yet again. "My name's Humbert. Yes, Humbert the Humboldt, my parents are just as funny as I am."

I beamed. "That's a really cute name! Now I know what to write down on your cup! If I'm not fired that is."

"Thanks." He smiled. "And if you do get fired, or if you don't, there's an upcoming show nearby I'll be in. If you'd want to check that out, say hi… No coffee making required."

I'd never actually been to a jazz show before. In fact, I'd never been interested in jazz music at all. But all of a sudden, I really wanted to know more about it.

"I'll be there!"

Desmond looks up at the wooden sign. "The Golden Mug Cafe" is written in cursive, gold font, nestled inside an illustration of a steaming cup of joe. This must be the place, then.

As per Brian's demands, one of Desmond's first summertime activity is to visit the pigeon during his part time job. He had texted the sheep all of the necessary info in very emoticon-heavy detail: the address, his shift hours, even the entire menu so Desmond could plan what to order. At this point, he expected nothing less from the bird.

Unfortunately, finding the place had proven more of a challenge than he originally anticipated. As typical of obnoxious indie cafes, it's wedged in some obscure corner right outside the city center. His GPS app was not precise enough to find the damn street without glitching out and flinging the "you are here" indicator from alley to alley, never settling down on the proper location. As a result of this extended quest, Desmond arrives a bit late, five minutes after the bird's shift allegedly ends.

He pushes the door open to the fanfare of the clacking wooden chimes set up above the entrance. The cafe has a very distinct hipster-like ambience to it much to the ram's chagrin; it's entirely too pretentious. The strong scent of coffee assaults his nostrils as he scans the store. Handfuls of animals are seated on the padded chairs and booths, preoccupied in unambitious chitchat or mooching off the cafe's free wifi with their laptops. Behind reception is not the pigeon Desmond expected, but rather a gharial with a disposition quite similar to the sheep's. Brian is nowhere to be seen, so he decides it's easiest to ask the only barista there.

"Excuse me," Desmond starts. "Is Pigeon Brian working now?"

"You just missed him." The gharial, whose name tag labels him as Zeke, croaks. "He clocked out a minute ago. You must be his friend."

"Did he mention me?"

"Only fifty times," Zeke deadpans. Desmond likes Zeke. "Anyways, check the staff exit, he may still be around."

The ram thanks the apathetic croc and exits the cafe (again setting off those damn wooden chimes), thankful to be rid of the grating marimba music that echoes the establishment.

The staff exit… That must be in the even narrower alley to the cafe's left. Areas like this have a propensity to devolve into rat mazes, no offense to rat mazing sport. Desmond enters the claustrophobic passage, eventually spotting a path to the right at the very end of the corridor. Just then, he hears a voice round the corner. It's not Brian's, and speaks in a somewhat hushed tone. Desmond wishes he had Hafsa's hearing right now but settles on quietly inching closer to the source.

"…didn't stop by today?"

"Nope." Desmond recognizes this voice as his pigeon friend. "I told him to not tell me when he's coming anyways. I wanna be surprised."

The other voice exhales, amused. "I guess you'll have to settle for seeing me, then. No surprises."

Brian giggles. "I never settle when I'm with you. I told you before you're the best part of my job."

"Bri…"

Then, both voices go silent. Did they go back inside the cafe? Perplexed, Desmond enters the lane.

There he sees Brian kissing a male penguin.

AN: Thanks for reading! Gratuitous cliffhanger because fanfic. Last time, I said this chapter would be Desmond centered. So, that was a lie. Originally, this chapter was supposed to be a lot longer, but I decided to split it in two after hitting 2k words. Stay tuned for Desmond POV.

In any case, yay for Brian for being the only person in student council with a significant other! I hope his bf didn't come as too much of a shock. There's a reason Brian gets embarrassed at girlfriend talk...

Take it easy and stay safe.