All of a sudden, Gar's gone from a loser adrift in a sea of strangers, with but one friend an angry barista to expend his social energy upon, to part of an actual group. That, like, hangs out on purpose. He's the only freshman, so he gets razzed about that, but otherwise it's kind of great.
They don't have a lot of time as said group before the semester ends and he's back home, but when he comes back to school he's now razzed for being the only sophomore and everything's back to normal.
It's a Saturday night and they're meeting up at the bowling alley, along with one of Richard's high school friends. He hasn't said much about this friend, other than "she's quiet." Which makes sense. Dick himself is a quiet, studious individual, and honestly if Gar hadn't seen his and Kori's relationship in person, he never would have considered the two as compatible.
Gar's lacing up his bowling shoes when he hears her voice, and he whips his head up to confirm it. Raven stands there in front of him, hovering by Richard's side and bobbing her head to something Kori says. Gar doesn't know what they're talking about, entirely too focused on the chain drooping over the black ripped jeans that cover Raven's thigh. Her tank top boasts the word 'NO' in big, white letters. At work, she wears plain, nondescript clothing that probably conforms to a standard dress code, and he had wondered briefly what she wore off the clock.
For some reason, because he'd never reacted much to the goth/punk/scene fashions before–he's unsure which applies to her–he finds the ensemble unbearably attractive. Of course, that may have something to do with the glimpses of leg he's witness to through the slashes of her jeans.
Her dark eyes land on him, one eyebrow climbing in tangible distaste. It's an expression he's used to, but it still makes his heart pound with nerves. If Raven's anything, it's intimidating. He blinks, then, like the absolute literary genius he is, blurts out: "Raven. Hi."
Her chin tips up in acknowledgement. "Gerber."
Their friends are confused, but Gar grins like a moron. And perhaps he is one. Crushing on a girl who goes out of her way to butcher his name isn't a sign of particularly high intelligence. One by one, it clicks with his friends what's happening, and Victor claps Gar hard on the shoulder. "No way, Raven's your barista?"
"Your barista?" she questions in her raspy voice, pinning him with another dark stare.
"The" he draws this word out for a couple beats, cheeks warmer than usual, "barista that I see frequently at the coffee shop that I frequently visit. For coffee. Frequently. With many baristas."
She lifts an eyebrow.
"Many baristas," he repeats.
A second passes in silence, then she shares a glance with Dick. Likely communicating silently that they're too cool to be hanging out with a weirdo like him. "Sure," she mutters, before walking off to get herself a pair of bowling shoes from the rental counter. He stares after her until she's out of earshot, then turns and whacks Vic on the arm.
"What the heck, dude?"
Vic rolls his eyes, rubbing his arm absently. "Oh, get over it. You've been draining your bank account trying to get the girl to warm up to you. Just ask her out."
Which is, well. It's an accusation he could answer in many ways. He could refute the bank account statement, because as absolutely no one knows, he's actually been left a small (moderate… large) fortune. But he hardly touches that, and he's learned his lesson in letting anyone know he's got money. He could also say that, objectively, Raven has warmed up to him. She now knows, without asking, that yes. Almond milk is a suitable substitute when they're out of soy milk.
He could also launch into the statistical probabilities surrounding someone like Raven ever liking, tolerating, or even pity dating someone like him. He's not really a mathematical genius, though, so he'd probably just trip himself up trying to remember any of the important functions.
In the end he just points to Raven, then himself, then splays his hands with a vague noise that's meant to translate to 'duh.'
Kori's eyebrows furrow, gaze darting around to follow his gesticulations. "Are you okay?"
He manages to drop the subject by the time Raven returns, by way of shouting "teams or singles?!" Victor and Dick keep bouncing their eyebrows and snickering at him throughout the night, though, to the point that Raven starts to glare at him suspiciously. But overall, bowling night goes pretty well. He even manages to coax a conversation out of Raven about the pretty red necklace she wears. Apparently, it was her mother's, but she mentions that in a way that he can't tell if she actually likes that about it or not.
The friendly atmosphere of bowling night doesn't do much to affect their interactions at the coffee shop, though. She continues to give him increasingly stupid names, and he continues to chicken out of escalating conversation beyond the weather, or traffic, or the emotional state of her coworkers.
That is, until almost two weeks later when she pauses briefly following his reminder of his actual, given-at-birth name, permanent marker lofted just an inch over the paper cup in her hand. He doesn't think too much of it, until a few minutes later when she calls for him. He wouldn't have known this time that it was for him if he wasn't watching her, because she looks right at him as she says it. "Guildenstern."
He stands there, matching her stare. She doesn't look away, and after a long few moments gently wiggles the cup in his direction. "…are you running out of names?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"My name's-"
"Guildenstern. As you told me. Take your freaking coffee."
He does so, lips curling into a smirky grin that, in turn, makes her black lips purse in annoyance.
Either he's bored, or smitten, or both, but when he gets to his dorm after class that afternoon he looks up quotes from Hamlet, only to realize there's absolutely no way he can casually slip these into conversation. Bummer. That probably would have ticked her off to no end, which, somehow, he thinks is actually the way to her heart.
Two days later he's back in line at the coffee shop, and she says something that makes his heart burst out of his chest. He's just taken a sip, right there at the counter just after she's handed him a coffee for Gabby, and it's a couple degrees hotter than usual. Super smooth, as he is, he squacks and flaps a hand at his closed, still full mouth.
She eyes him warily. "Something wrong with the coffee?"
His eyes pop, pulse already racing from the shock of burning his tongue but shooting higher. He swallows down the scalding liquid, slapping a hand on the counter. For one thing, she actually sounds a little concerned. Which is fantastic. But more importantly, she's given him an opening. "This is the very ecstasy of love!" He just about screams it, drawing the attention of absolutely everyone in the small shop, but all he cares about is the wide-eyed shock splashed across Raven's face.
Her gaze slides slowly towards one of her coworkers, then slowly back towards him, and he realizes he could have executed that better. Her mouth opens, but she doesn't even release a breath. He thinks he may have scared her, actually. She collects herself shortly, however, expression masking into her usual indifference. "I'm sorry?"
Gar points uselessly at his coffee. "From Hamlet? Because I was acting like a weirdo. So, like. Ecstasy of love."
"Are acting like a weirdo, no past tense necessary." Raven crosses her arms. "And I don't like Shakespeare, so Hamlet quotes out of context do nothing but contribute to your freakishness."
Lit. Radical. Fanfreakingtastic. "Oh. I just thought, because of Guildenstern…"
"I would say think less, but I don't think that's possible."
Then, almost to punctuate the statement, she pivots neatly on her heel and disappears behind the employees only door. He's left standing there, holding a cup that says Gabby as the entire population of the coffee shop stares at him.
Lit.
Garfield mopes for an entire week after that, avoiding the coffee shop like the plague. When he sees people that look even remotely like people that were there that day, he ducks behind trees and benches and Victor (he's quite large and actually a fantastic moving barrier). Vic, in fact, notices this strange behavior, but when he asks about it all Gar says is that he's training to be a spy.
Deciding to brave the public one brisk Tuesday afternoon, Gar curls up on a stone bench with the hefty fifteenth edition of a biology textbook that both fascinates and bores the crap out of him. He's halfway through a riveting chapter on pharmacokinetics when he senses someone perch delicately on the bench by his toes. Thankful for the distraction, he looks up, nearly jumping out of his skin when he meets Raven's blank stare.
Involuntarily, he curls in on himself a little, glancing around warily. "Can I help you?"
Her lips press together, and despite the tension hovering between them, he notices her lipstick is grey today, instead of the usual black. She mumbles something as she stares at the ground in front of her.
He doesn't catch a single word of it. "What?"
Raven sighs like he's the problem, turning an impatient stare on him. "I'm sorry."
Gar squints. "You don't really look sorry."
She rolls her eyes, further contributing to her lack of apologetic appearances. "Look, you caught me off guard. I default to being unkind."
"Unkind?" He scoffs, shutting his textbook with a firm slap. That's being generous.
"Yes," she hisses, "unkind. What do you expect me to do when you make a giant scene like that?"
"I don't know, pity laugh?"
Raven's expression turns haughty, telling him exactly how frequently she pity laughs at anything. "I don't enjoy being the center of a scene," she informs him succinctly.
"Okay… well. Then, I'm sorry," he tells her, and unlike her apology, he pairs it with a genuinely apologetic expression.
She eyes him for a long moment. Not for the first time, he gets the impression that she's very protective of herself. Of her friendship, her trust, of the simple state of actually believing a single word that comes out of someone else's mouth. Eventually, she leans back on the bench, arms crossed. "Do you frequently quote Hamlet?"
"Uh, no. I don't think I even used that one correctly."
She smirks, watching people mill about by the stairs some distance away. "The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living."
Gar's eyebrows crumple together. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means no one uses quotes correctly, only how we find them to suit us."
It's just annoyingly vague enough for Garfield to deduce one thing. "Are you a lit major?"
Raven is a lit major, he discovers, along with many random literary facts he never wanted to know. Such as the weird quote about guts of the living being from Auden, that Shakespeare cursed his own grave, and that, supposedly, the raven in Poe's "The Raven" was originally meant to be a parrot. Raven, the one next to him, sounds very opinionated about this last fact.
In turn, he bores her with the knowledge that jellyfish are ninety-eight percent water, predate dinosaurs by a quarter of a trillion years, and by the process of cellular transdifferentiation, some are even immortal. Ish.
He's been quite into jellyfish lately.
They sit there on that stone bench and talk about any odd topic that comes after the last until Gar yawns, and realizes with a start that the sun's beginning to dip. He also realizes that his butt hurts like crazy from sitting stationary on a big slab of rock for the past few hours. The ache is absolutely nothing to him, though, because he's learned a lot about Raven today. And, surprisingly, she seemed interested in everything he had to say. He thinks. It really is hard to read her.
They didn't get into anything too deep, of course. It's all surface level, basic little factoids about each other or what they do. It's a good start, though, and Gar may even venture to say they're almost friends now. She does join 'the friend group' after that day, so technically, yeah. They're friends.