The next time Levi saw him it was just a few days later in the early afternoon. He came in, setting the bells hung over the entrance jingling. Levi looked up from his table in the corner where he was absentmindedly sipping a cup of coffee milk and procrastinating on mopping up the floors. Levi didn't particularly like looking at the spilt puddle of coffee that was over in the corner by the spices table, but he felt sure the mop in the back of the storeroom was slowly but surely growing the next epidemic. He was sorely tempted to bring a mop from home, or better yet, his Swiffer, but the subway wasn't exactly the cleanest place in which to transport it. Levi suppressed a shudder at the thought of what might be growing beneath the carpeted seats.
That morning had been relatively uneventful: namely, he'd had time to press his shirt, his toast came out perfectly toasty (he'd still burnt his thumb trying to extract it from the toaster's gaping maw, however), and he was wearing the matching shoes. Under other circumstances, Levi should have been perfectly content, but he found himself glaring in irritation at the blonde man's back as he walked up to the counter and contemplated the menu for a few moments before looking around, his blue eyes settling on him in the corner. Levi had half a mind to call for Zöe, who was off in the storeroom probably scraping off samples for her petri dish from the sink in the back, but he figured that that would be a rather immature course of action. And Levi Ackerman was nothing if not mature.
"Hi," the man said, smiling at him as Levi walked over and situated himself behind the register. The bills were sorted just the way he liked them, the crispest, cleanest on the top, and the uglier ones somewhere in the middle and back of the stack. "I see you're wearing matching shoes today."
"Yes," Levi sniffed, "the other day was a hideous aberration, never to be repeated." He tried to ignore the way the stranger was smiling at him, tried to ignore the fact that this particular day the man's choice of outfit was particularly dashing (he'd always been a sucker for polo sweater vests, and the ice blue of the man's polo shirt really did wonders for his eyes), tried to ignore the way the stranger's (new?) black-framed glasses screamed of intelligence. Had Levi been any other person, he might have found himself thinking that the stranger was incredibly handsome. However, since he was Levi, he found himself thinking that the stranger was probably incredibly imbecilic and just happened to have an impeccable appearance and sense of fashion.
He cleared his throat. "What did you say you wanted?"
The stranger shook his head. "I didn't yet," he said. "I was thinking of getting another Caffe Medici, but after last time, I figured I'd save your poor fingers from another burn."
Levi scowled at him. "I'm perfectly capable of making doppios, thank you very much," he told him, a little irritated at the way he had to crane his neck back to look up at the man.
"Oh? Your thumb says otherwise," the man said, pointing to Levi's hand which was resting on top of the counter. Levi frowned and snatched the offending limb back, muttered something about his vicious toaster and its quest for blood that had the stranger laughing.
"You know, you ought to smile more," the man told him, reaching over the counter and flicking Levi's cheek. Levi's vision flashed red and he was seriously contemplating sinking his teeth into the man's hand. "You'll get wrinkles before too long."
"Thanks for the advice, Professor," he said, rolling his eyes. The man looked amused and just the tiniest bit surprised.
"How'd you deduce that one?" he asked, resting his elbows on the counter and looking down at Levi. Levi, against all his principles, started praying to some higher being that another customer would walk in so the stranger would be forced to place an order and sit down.
Levi shrugged, pointed at the stranger's chest. "I don't know many other professions in which one could possibly be coerced into buying and wearing a pocket protector. And the university isn't too far from here."
The man smiled at him, and Levi frowned, trying to ignore the crinkles in the corners of the man's eyes and biting at the inside of his cheek to stop an errant, wayward smile from showing up.
He was about to step way out of line, and ask the man if he too watched Sherlock, but the bells over the door set up clanging again and a gaggle of university students spilled in, clutching bookbags and laptops and textbooks with papers all loose stuffed inside.
"Erwin!" one of the girls called, and the man turned away from Levi to greet her.
The students surrounded him, all chattering away at once, and Levi caught snatches of their conversation, "wanted to talk to you about my paper topic," "wondered if you might be able to change your office hours this week, I've got volleyball practice," "hoped we could go over the answers to the practice exam you posted online."
"What brings you guys here?" the man - Erwin - asked them, and one of the laptop-toting students shot a shy glance at Levi before saying, "The barista here does really good latte art, and it's Mikasa's birthday, but we don't really have much money to treat her to an actual dinner." Attention turned to a dark-haired girl in half-open beige jacket, who had no comment on the whole matter.
"Is that right?" Erwin asked, turning to Mikasa, who just gave him a short nod and a little mumble of confirmation. "Well, in that case, let me get this one. God knows you're paying enough for tuition as it is."
The next twenty minutes or so, Levi hurried from the steam pitcher to the espresso machine and back again, pouring out carefully measured shots of espresso into wide-mouthed cups and whisking whipped cream and foam in separate bowls. He bent over the cups, the pitcher of steamed milk measured precisely at 153 F clutched firmly in his left hand as he shook his wrist gently over the cups, pouring the steamed milk into the rich brown of the espresso and watching with a sort of content pleasure as the deep brown turned milkier and he drew swirls and rosettes and fleur de lis on the surface.
For Mikasa's, he carefully shaped a mound of foam on the surface of the coffee, taking a toothpick and dragging it through chocolate syrup, lightly tracing over the foam to form round eyes and trace little brown whiskers onto the cat's face. At the other half of the cup, he poured a careful little swirl of milk, dragging little horizontal chocolate lines through the white for the cat's striped tail. He stepped back and looked at the finished work in satisfaction before carefully placing the cups onto a tray and carrying the tray over to where Erwin and his students were chatting.
They oohed and aahed over the designs, and Levi busied himself with cleaning up the pitchers and whisks and bowls, humming to himself and listening to the sounds of their conversation. Once the utensils and equipment was pristine and glistening again, Levi busied himself with wiping down the counter, finding his eyes straying of their own accord towards Erwin, who was lounging in his chair, talking to his students and his hands tracing through the air as he made gestures to supplement his sentences. Levi rested his face in his palm, absentmindedly wiping down the granite, and watched the afternoon sun thread through Erwin's hair.
After another half-hour or so and an impromptu song of "Happy Birthday, happy birthday to you!" led by a lean dark-haired boy with the most interesting turquoise eyes Levi had ever seen, Erwin finally stood up and stretched, begging his leave, something about papers to grade and exams to revise. His students stood up as well, leaving their empty cups scattered around the black granite tabletops, and Mikasa caught Levi's eye as she was leaving, gave him a short nod that Levi duly returned.
He went over to stack the cups into a black plastic bin when a small corner of green trapped under a saucer caught his eye. He put the empty cup and saucer into his bin, looked at the $5 bill - the very neat, very uncrumpled, very untorn - $5 bill.
He turned it over, looked at Abe's uncompromising gaze, squinted to read the words written hastily in black scrawl just to the left of the president's face.
"Consider it a replacement for last time."
He smiled to himself, made a mental note to tell Erwin that writing on currency was still technically defacement the next time he came in, and decided that perhaps he wasn't quite as imbecilic as he previously thought.