Sugarspool Diner

A The Missing fanfiction

Gavin Danes still didn't get why the diner he met his sister – presently styling herself Maria DuPre – in for lunch once a week was called the Sugarspool. He'd heard of a sugar spoon, duh, but what a sugar spool was meant to be, he hadn't the slightest idea. It didn't even make sense – sugar didn't come off a spool. A spool was what you used for your sewing thread – a fact he probably wouldn't have thought twice about before his travels through time, but which was ingrained in him now, since Alexei's sisters and mother had taught him all about sewing before he was even big, or well, enough to hold a needle.

Maybe the restaurant owners had meant to name it the Sugarspoon, but they were sent an L instead of an N and decided to just give up and cut their losses while they were still ahead.

Or maybe they just weren't very bright.

Whatever.

He still came here every Wednesday afternoon, without fail, because that was the day high school freshmen – as long as they kept their grades up and participated in at least one sport (in Gavin's case, basketball, which he'd stuck with almost religiously ever since his days at Harris Middle, when his mom finally let him try out for the team) – were allowed to go off campus for lunch (while senior jocks got to leave every day if they wanted, lucky bastards) and the day Maria had off, too.

As he'd approached, Maria had frantically stubbed out the end of a cigarette and lifted a hand to bat the wafting tobacco smoke away. She did this through force of habit. Even though she knew he wouldn't tell on her. Gavin was in on her secret – for over two years now – and had already promised he wouldn't say a word to anybody, not even Daniella, who he told almost everything else to.

In most ways, Maria had adjusted perfectly to modern life – she'd even gotten over her past difficulty with calling Leonid Sednev Leo in the 21st century – but she simply couldn't be made to understand smoking was bad for you; she'd never had the years of conditioning, of warnings, Gavin and Daniella did, growing up in the modern era. Both her parents smoked, and she'd always believed it was normal.

This was one thing, despite her restored memories as Anastasia, Daniella wouldn't have been able to understand; but, oddly enough, Gavin did.

The first time he'd caught her, her blue saucer eyes had gone wide – more dinner-platter than tea saucer – and she'd pleaded, "Don't tell Angela, Baby" – she still called him that, and in spite of himself, Gavin didn't particularly mind the infantile nickname, not when it came from her, so long, of course, as none of his friends from school overheard her using it – "please don't. I'll never hear the end of it if you do."

He hadn't, of course. Just like she hadn't told his adoptive parents when he started drinking coffee.

The waitress – Jonah Skidmore's mousy girlfriend, who worked an afternoon shift on Wednesdays on her way to visit with her grandfather, once John White, at the senior center – was pouring him a cup now, while Maria settled into her seat across from him, trying to keep the back of her legs from sticking to the cracked and splitting polyester material of the booth.

If Gavin had been a very little bit younger, he would have had the urge to pull one of Andrea's pigtails as it dangled so close to him as she leaned over the table to pour the coffee, but nearly fifteen was surely too old for such behavior, and Andrea didn't have much of a sense of humor about that sort of thing anyway.

She'd probably either glare at him reproachfully or cry if he tried it. Either way, she'd eventually rat him out to Jonah, who would be pissy with him for upwards of a week – if he was lucky – for picking on his humorless girlfriend.

Gavin was so preoccupied banging a little packet of sugar on the side of the table before ripping it open to dump it into his small white mug of steaming black coffee, he wasn't really listening to what Maria started saying until a few stray words – words that sounded all wrong – caught his attention and, spilling sugar across the length of the table in his surprise, leaving a gritty trail all the way from the half-empty ketchup bottle to the fingerprint-smudged napkin dispenser, he jerked upright, stunned.

"What?" he blurted, glad he hadn't taken a sip of his coffee yet, because he'd probably be choking on it if he had. "What are you talking about? What Leo and Daniella?"

Bright pink spots formed on Maria's cheeks. "You didn't know?" She stared at him a long time, as if to gauge whether he was teasing her or not. "You didn't know they liked each other?"

Coughing awkwardly and running the side of his hand on the table to scoop up the scattered sugar grains into his opposite palm (which he then just dumped over the coffee – waste not, want not), Gavin's suddenly scrambled mind tried to make sense – any kind of sense – of this.

Leo and Daniella?

What the actual hell?

Leaving aside the whole kitchen boy and princess thing, which – he guessed – technically wasn't a thing any longer, therefore didn't matter, Gavin was still confused.

His sister was only fourteen, and he was fairly certain Leo was hung up over someone from his past – some girl with a funny name he'd failed to rescue.

Clothilde.

That was it.

Sometimes, if Maria looked at him long enough, it was almost as if she could tell what her baby brother was thinking – it happened that way now. "You realize he had to move on sometime." She made a face, though. "Oh. But it spoils the romance of first love a bit, being old enough to know that." She gave a little sigh. "Doesn't it?"

Gavin grimaced. He tried to pretend it was from the lingering bitterness of the coffee, not disgust over talking about his sisters' love lives, but he realized too late he probably should have taken a sip first, if that was his cover.

"Only," she continued sadly, "it happens. First infatuations are rarely the last. Well. I mean, you remember Olga and Pavel."

Gavin's mouth parted. He did – he did remember them, only... "Olga liked Pavel?" He'd thought they were simply good friends. Good friends who were always leaning close to talk to each other but pulling away hastily when he came near... Pavel's face so very red when he saluted... Ugh. Clearly, he was an idiot. She'd cried at his wedding. He could even – if he strained a little – remember the tears running down her face, and his ignorant tugging on her lacy sleeve to ask why she was so sad that day. Of course Olga liked him. He was so stupid. "I thought... I really thought–"

"Poor Baby," tsked Maria. "You can be so very unobservant sometimes. You don't even notice when your silly friend Antonio tries to flirt with me."

"He does what?" demanded Gavin, scowling with a little too much vim. "I'll kill him!"

Maria's ensuing laugh was tinkly. "Oh, don't get so angry. Tony's completely harmless." Tony? "It's never untoward, and I" – her face flushed further – "I rather like the attention. Even if he is only a little high school boy."

He might have argued further, but people at the next table were starting to look at him funny because he'd shouted that he was going to kill someone.

"You mind?" He raised an eyebrow at one nosy lady who kept glancing at him over the side of her seat. Then, "About Leo and Daniella–"

"Aren't you happy for them?" Maria asked. "If they're happy?"

"I guess," Gavin grumbled, crushing his folded knuckles against the side of the table. "I guess I am. But if he hurts her, I'll kick his butt."

"Oh, sweet Baby," she said quietly. "If he hurts her, you won't have to. I will, how did you say it? Kick his butt first. I live with him, remember?"

"Konecho." Of course. He smiled and – finally – brought the cup of coffee, not so steaming as before, to his parted lips.

~Finis~