Chapter Text
I have perhaps the worst job in the world. Upon first look, I work in the kind of coffee shop you might find on the cobbled streets of Oxford; over priced, trying too hard to be eccentric and full of annoying Oxford students who think they are better than anyone else just because their university pumps out Prime Ministers like the production line of your least favourite people. Upon second look (and after just one 12 hour shift that leaves my feet burning), it is worse than the kind of coffee shop that you might find on the cobbled streets of Oxford for no other reason than we have one regular customer who is so arrogant, I’m sure he believes that the sun hangs in the sky only for him.
I can see him now, over the top of the coffee machine that I am cleaning for the hundredth time this week. He picks the same table every time - tucked into a corner, but still visible enough to be the centre of attention - and pulls a face like a child whenever someone else dares sits there. Those are always my favourite days because I am treated to the spectacle of him stomping over to a different table and throwing himself into the chairs like not being the centre of attention is the greatest punishment he could suffer through.
Today, he in his usual seat. One foot is propped against the empty chair opposite and his laptop - the newest model of MacBook - is open in front of him. He has been here an hour, and I have yet to see him work on his laptop. I think he only brings it for show, so that his simpering admirers (both my colleagues and other customers) could fall deep into their imaginations. Perhaps he is a tortured poet, writing about unrequited love. Or perhaps he is a PhD student, on the brink of discovering something world-altering.
I think that he is a prick. I also tend to find tortured poets and PhD students pricks, so it is entirely possible he is either of those things.
Still, even I can look past the general prick-ness of him and marvel at his looks. They set him apart even in Oxford where I find that all of the men blend together into one disappointing blob. I can picture his face in museums; carved into stone and displayed for all to see. The sun would glint off his high cheekbones and angled nose, but no artist would ever be able to capture his true beauty. His eyes seem constantly alight with a fire unique to him, and his hair fell in perfect golden curls across his head. If I were the kind of person to fawn over someone, I think I would spend my days running my fingers through his hair.
Quite suddenly, I snap back into reality. From across the shop, his eye had caught mine and I had unknowingly been staring at him whilst cleaning the same spot on the coffee machine. An embarrassing blush colours my cheeks, and I quickly look away, but not before I saw him smile.
“Don’t you want to ask for my name?”
It is 10.30 AM, I have been at work since 6.30 AM, and my least favourite customer is on the other side of the counter. I do not have the patience for this.
“No,” I tell him, scribbling the most needlessly complicated order on the side of his cup, “I’m not sure how it could have escaped your notice with the amount of times you’ve been here, but we don’t ask for our customers' names.”
He leans across the counter, lips curling into a beautiful smile. I feel myself blush and wonder if it would be too much to ask that the ground swallow me whole. I think I would prefer it in Hell.
“But you would like to know it, wouldn’t you?” he asks.
He leans on his forearms, and I’m enraged that he somehow has attractive forearms. His infuriating personality must be a penance for being so handsome that even his forearms are worth noticing.
“Why would I like to know it?” I ask, and I really don’t know why I’m encouraging this. I tell myself that it’s because the early morning rush is over, and I have nothing better to do than listen to him.
“ Because ,” he says, with the air of a man who thinks he is the most intelligent person in any room he walks into, “you were staring at me for almost twenty minutes on Tuesday. Would you not like to put a name to your fantasies?”
No snarky comeback comes to me, and he laughs like he has won. His laugh is strangely melodic, like the beginnings of a classical masterpiece and I despise myself for even thinking that.
“Achilles,” he says, “I’ll be where I’m usually sat, if you’d like to stare.”
I am dumbfounded. Not because he has outsmarted me or, god forbid, knocked the wind out of me with what is really quite a beautiful smile, but because he is the only other person I ever met with a name from the Greek myths. My mother - god rest her soul - had never studied greek myth or even been to Greece, and yet she had insisted she call me Patroclus. Of course, she may well have been the greatest professor of Classical Study academia had ever seen, I do not expect my father to tell me anything about her. All I have is flashing memories of her that seem less real every time I think of them, so I try not to.
When I look up from where I have crumpled up the five pound note Achilles gave me, he is sitting in his usual seat. Smiling.
“Do I get to know your name?”
I don’t look up from where I am making his usual complicated drink ( double-blended, coffee Frappuccino with sugar-free vanilla and three shots of espresso) and shrug by way of acknowledging I heard him. I have a name tag, but after wearing it non-stop for the three years I have laboured in the worst coffee shop in the world, the letters have worn away and I have never been bothered enough to re-write them.
“Is it a state secret?” he presses, “are you under police protection?”
“Pat,” I tell him, straightening up and sliding his mug over to him.
He beams, and it is like I am staring straight into the burning centre of the sun, but I cannot bring myself to look away.
“Pretty name,” he says, and then he tells me the same thing as he always does, “I’ll be sat where I’m usually sat, if you’d like to stare.”
Sometimes I want to dump his stupid complicated drink all over his beautiful hair. Sometimes I want to leave the confines of the counter and sit with him whilst he drinks said stupid complicated drink and listen as he talks me to death.
I don’t realise that my colleagues have been talking about me until I arrive at work for the early morning shift. As soon as my foot is in the doorway, they fall silent at the counter, guilt clouding their faces. I freeze, quite unsure of what it is that I’m meant to do. I admit that I have never been the most popular co-worker, and am usually the first to say no to a night out after closing, but I am quite sure that I’ve never done anything to warrant being talked about behind my back.
Sandy, someone who I think is an acquaintance at the very least, is the first to speak up when I have put my bag in my locker and taken my place behind the counter. She smiles at me, and I smile back. Conflict is not something that comes easily to me, much to my fathers disappointment. Whenever I was bullied in school - which was often - he would grab me by the shoulders and shake me, like that would make me understand that sitting down and bursting into tears isn’t the way to ward off bullies.
I punched someone, once, and he ended up in hospital. The guilt still curdles in my gut, and I have never been in a rush to repeat my actions.
“We weren’t saying anything bad,” she whispers, “actually, we were talking about -” she breaks into a fit of giggles, “well, we were talking about your friend .”
“My...friend?” The world is alien to my lips. For most of my life, I have been a loner, keeping people at arms length and quietly observing from the outside. It is not how I had planned to spend my twenties, but it is what it is.
She giggles again.
“ Achilles,” she whispers, “He came in yesterday and was quite upset when he realised it was your day off. We think he has a thing for you.”
I blink at her, suddenly quite worried that she is suffering from some severe delusions. Michael, another co-worker, sidles up behind us and snorts.
“I don’t think he has a thing for you at all. I know he has a thing for you. He went and sat in his corner with a right pout.”
Perhaps the entire shop is suffering from some sort of collective hallucination. I tell them as such and they both laugh like we have just shared some inside joke. As they laugh, I feel my guard go up even higher than usual and my disdain for Achilles only deepens. Michael claps me on the shoulder as if we are old friends.
“You’ll see when he comes in.”
I don’t have to suffer through the anxiety of whatever that means for much longer. The doorbell chimes and, when I look over, he is there. The moment we lock eyes, his face splits into the same wide grin that it always does, and the breath catches in my throat. Even as Sandy takes his order, he doesn’t take his eyes off me and I can hear Michael chuckling as he organises the syrup bottles.
“His usual,” Sandy says to me, laughter straining her words as she slides the ticket over to me.
He leans against the counter at the exact moment I turn to grab the tickets. For a moment that contains an eternity, we are nose to nose. His hair falls across his forehead in perfect waves, and I wonder if he has to wake up extra early to get his curls to bounce the way they do. His eyes are unlike anything I have ever seen; they glow as though he has somehow harnessed the light of the sun. It is when those eyes drop down to my lips that I remember I’m at work and there are people staring.
I leap backwards, mindlessly reaching out for a mug as Achilles smirks at me. His smirk is different from his smile. When he smiles, his entire face lights up in a way that even the best of the romantic poets could only dream of describing in metaphors and similes. But when he smirks, it is like someone has lit a fire behind them, and I want to huddle around them for warmth.
And if it wasn't for the fact that I try to uphold some standard of professionalism whilst I’m working, I would have vomited right there and then for thinking something so absurd.
“What do you do when you’re not working, then?” Achilles asks.
I glance over at him, and he is now leaning on his elbows, hands clasped underneath his chin. He sort of has the energy of a golden retriever.
I shrug.
“I don’t know.”
It isn’t a lie, because I really don’t know what I do. I still live at home with my father, so most of my time is spent trying to stay out of his way and make as little noise as possible to not give him a reason to get angry at me. Not that he needs a reason to be angry at me. My existence is enough to send him into a rage worthy of a mad titan. Achilles doesn’t need to know this.
He sighs dramatically.
“You must do something . University?”
When his drink is in the blender, I turn to him again. He’s still leaning against the counter, and another customer is eyeing him. Anger prickles across my skin and I focus my gaze on him.
“No. I just work here.”
“Well, I'm glad you work here.”
“I’m only glad I work here when they pay me.”
He laughs that melodic laugh, and my heart trips over trying to keep up with it’s own frantic beat. I finish the drink quickly and, ignoring how my hands shake, slide it over to him. Our fingers brush together when he takes the drink, and he surely must be able to hear my heart thump against my ribcage.
“I’ll be sat where I’m usually sa t, if you’d like to stare.”
For the first time, he speaks to me on his way out. I am wiping down the countertop when he silently hands me a piece of paper. Before I can ask what it is, he has left with a wink and a burst of laughter. I peer down at the note, heart leaping at what is scrawled in neat writing.
07672641000
call me, i know you wont be busy x
I think that perhaps I should be offended, but I shove the paper into the front of my apron and think about his eyes for the rest of my shift.
My bedroom is in the basement of my fathers house. I know there is a stereotype of men living in their parents' basement, but it is not something I do out of choice or because I don’t want to face the real world. I would happily face the real world, if I could afford it. Rent in Oxford is not affordable for a barista, and I am too much of a coward to move out of the town I have lived in all my life.
My living situation is not ideal, but it does mean that I am afforded some privacy when I sit cross legged in the middle of my bed, fingers hovering above my phone screen. Typing a combination of numbers and pressing a green button shouldn’t be so difficult, but I find it harder than anything I’ve ever done before.
It must be a trick, or some elaborate practical joke. There is no way that someone like him, who’s never more than three feet from someone batting their eyelashes at him, is anyway interested in someone like me. Indeed, no one has ever been interested in me. I am too awkward, too scrawny, too unattractive. I have seen people give double takes when Achilles passes their table. Most of the time, people don’t even give me one look.
And yet, he seems to notice me. He had leaned across the counter like those few metres between us were too much. I think of the fire burning behind his eyes, and call.
He picks up after only three rings, and I let myself imagine that he’s been sitting by his phone all day, waiting. Even as I think this, I know it isn’t true. He does not strike me as the kind of person who waits for anyone. Certainly not me.
“Pat,” he says. In his voice, my name sounds like a song, “I thought you would never call.”
“Some of us have to work,” I say.
I can hear him smiling down the phone, “You’re at home now, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I tell him. I don't know where everyone learns their conversational skills, but it must have been a class that I missed out on.
The line goes dead, and embarrassment sets in. He must think I am boring. Before I can try and scrub him from my memory, my phone begins to ring and I look down.
Achilles would like to FaceTime...
I drop my phone to the bed as though it has burned me. Embarrassingly, I have never FaceTimed anyone before, and the thought of Achilles being the first makes me want to live life as a recluse more than usual. But I think of how my name sounds coming from his mouth, and I cannot resist.
His face takes over my screen, and all I can do is smile awkwardly in greeting. He is lying on what I assume is his bed, hair spread around him like a halo. He is smiling, like he always is, and I have never been more aware of how I look in my life. I don’t look handsome at the best of times, and I certainly don’t when I have just finished work and thrown on the first pair of track suit bottoms that fell out of my wardrobe when I opened it. There is also a stain on the front of my t-shirt, and I hope he doesn’t notice.
“I’ve never seen you without your apron,”
So he probably has noticed the stain.
“You’ve never seen me outside of the shop.”
“I would like to, though.”
I shrug, because that is all my stupid brain can think to do. He laughs, and I feel myself blush. He must notice, because then he smirks and the flames dance behind his eyes.
“Are you working tomorrow?”
“I’m on the closing shift,” my voice is strained, like someone has their hand around my windpipe.
“I’ll see you then.”
I don’t quite realise what I’ve agreed to until I am closing the cash register the next day and he appears in front of me, holding a bouquet of flowers.