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Harrison has walked past this bookshop every day for a month, and he’s never once realised it’s there. He’s outraged with himself for not noticing, though he can’t really blame himself. Despite its place on a well-trodden route through the centre of Stoneybrook, it isn’t a shop that jumps out. The facade is muted compared to the shops that surround it, the paint on the sign is peeling and faded. The glass in the windows is just a touch too dark to easily see what’s within.
He only has to take a step inside to see why the Sidlesmith Gazette had ranked it high on their list of Stoneybrook’s best bookstores. Their cafe does a mean pastry too, apparently, and so here Harrison is, repeating half his commute even though it’s a Saturday, just to find out whether Kaleidotrope Books is worth all this talk.
He only needs that single step to know that it is. The tall shelves bewitch him, the scent of coffee and new books filling his nose, and Harrison’s smiling before the door has even closed behind him. The stress of the week fades into the background as he cranes his neck, taking it all in. He lets his fingers trail across the spines as he moves from shelf to shelf. There are ladders here and there, hand-written warning signs on them, and the contented murmurings of a well-loved coffee shop filter through from the other side of the building.
Harrison’s day gets even better when he sees the guy behind the counter, because damn. He glances up when he notices Harrison, and when he smiles, well. Harrison is pretty sure he falls in love right there and then.
——
He’s not quite sure how it happens, but he becomes a regular after that.
Though maybe it’s not really that much of a surprise.
At first it’s the coffee — the best hazelnut latte he’s had since moving to Stoneybrook. The baristas give him amused looks when he uses obscure literary characters as names to write on his coffee cup, and they never complain that it’s never the same name twice. And if he’s already there, it seems only polite to browse the books too, to support an independent bookshop rather than the chain across town.
It’s a few weeks more after that until he finds out how good a place it is to get some work done: the hush of the bookshop means the cafe never gets too loud, but the hubbub of the cafe means the bookshop never reaches that uncomfortable silence other bookshops sometimes have.
There’s also their Twitter, which he somehow ends up putting on notifications. It’s run by someone called Cal, and he hasn’t spotted anyone with that name tag in there yet, but he’s sure it’s only a matter of time. Cal seems like a delight; never failing to make Harrison snort with laughter, and every so often writing something so quietly romantic that Harrison has to work not to swoon.
And, of course, the man selling the book continues to be the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen. That helps too.
They have to talk, of course, when Harrison buys a book. Drew — as his name tag says — smiles down at the first one Harrison buys, as if he’s saying a fond farewell.
The next time he buys something, Harrison’s surprised to find that Drew remembers him.
“What did you think of Small Angry Planet?” He asks, and Harrison blinks dumbly before parsing the sentence, not expecting anything other than generic customer service.
“Oh!” He says, once his brain reboots. “I loved it.” He gushes about it for a moment then decides to be honest and add, “I’m not sure about the rest of it though. I loved the characters, but the whole plot felt very episodic, and there didn’t seem like there was much tying it together. Like the author just skipped out the difficult bits.”
Drew hums thoughtfully. “Yeah, I see what you mean.” He picks out a specific plot point, and just like that, they’ve had a whole conversation, and Harrison has a recommendation for some new books.
A couple more conversations happen just like that; a chat by the till so long as it isn’t busy. Harrison finds himself looking forward to them — a bright point of human connection in between too many hours of working, even if it does mean his bookshelves are getting even more overstacked. Drew always listens to his thoughts, even when he vehemently disagrees, even when he doesn’t bother to hide how dubious he is. But he hears him out, and he’s thoughtful about it, and the book recommendations Harrison receives as a result of it all quickly become some of his favourites. It’s... nice. It’s really nice.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the Day: The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells. Space? Found family? Robots? Netflix over real life drama? This is your book. Also they’re short so why not buy all of them. No really. Please. Buy all of them.
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——
The thing is, Harrison knows he’s lonely. It’s nothing new — it had been some time in middle school that he’d become too weird for the popular kids, and too much of a target for the other outcasts to risk befriending. And then at the start of high school he’d found out about the Sidlesmith Magic, and about Stoneybrook, and he’d known that if he went there, he wouldn’t have to worry about the now. It had all been ahead of him, and that was okay. So maybe it hadn’t quite turned out like that; maybe he hadn’t made it to Sidlesmith for undergrad or even for grad school, but that doesn’t matter now. He’s not fourteen any more, and maybe he hasn’t had the fairy tale romance he’s always hoped for, but there’s more to his life than that. He has his family, has a ridiculously active group chat with a ridiculous amount of cousins, has weekly calls all worked out so he doesn’t go too long without seeing them. He’s friendly with everyone at work, and even if they haven’t necessarily made that leap from friendly to friends yet, his colleagues like him well enough, the grad students in his department come to him with questions, and he knows the students he teaches adore him. So maybe he doesn’t have anyone he can go out with just to hang out, but he has people to eat lunch with, and people he recognises at seminars, people who’ll ask after him and his work.
If he tries very hard not to think about it, he can let himself believe it’s enough.
It doesn’t surprise him too much, given all that, when he latches onto the bookshop. A new place to work was always going to be a hit, and especially one with such friendly people around. The books add a whole new layer to it. But he’s been here before. He’s careful, in his head, to separate out ‘friendly’ from ‘friend’, to remember how that customer service smile goes a long way even to the nicer customers. He’s not going to pretend things are there when in reality he’s just projecting onto his loneliness again. He likes Kaleidotrope, likes the people, but he’s not going to be so arrogant as to assume they like him back as anything other than a paying customer.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Our booksellers may try to hide them because they love them so much they don’t want to share, but we do actually sell Graphic Novels too. Book of the Day: Bloom, by Kevin Panetta and Savanna Ganucheau.
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——
“Can I help you with anything?” Drew’s voice, unexpectedly close.
“Hmm? Oh— no, thank you though. Just... feeling nostalgic, I guess.”
“For Gossip Girl?”
“Hey, these were a rite of passage,”
“Really?” Drew’s tone is mild enough, but there’s something gently teasing in his tone. Harrison could respond in turn, but he glances back at the books, and his eyes soften and he finds himself talking.
“I read them all before the show came out. I was barely old enough to pick out books on my own, and I gravitated straight to the girly Young Adult books with the girls in lingerie on the cover, because I was fascinated, and I was in that phase where I couldn’t quite understand whether I wanted to fuck girls that gorgeous or to be girls that gorgeous.” He’s not quite sure, suddenly, that he’d meant to say all that. But the only thing to do now is push forward, try and move them on before Drew thinks to question the statement. “Serena and Blair kissed, in the first book.”
“What?” Drew asks, seeming genuinely surprised.
“Well, it was mentioned. And I was blown away because I’d never read anything like that in a book before. It was just a kiss, but it meant so much to me. So I kept reading and reading the series, and then watching the TV show, waiting for it to come up again... and it never did. And I guess in a way, I’m still waiting for them to figure it out.”
“Wow,” Drew says, softly.
“Wow?” Harrison asks, because he’s heard a lot of wows in his life, but most of them have actually meant yikes.
“Yeah. I’m sorry you never got that happy ending.”
And oh Drew really means it, and Harrison feels another sliver of his Paying Customer argument slip away.
“Well, Blair got hers. So.”
That, Drew does make a disparaging noise at.
“You think Blair Waldorf got a happy ending?”
Harrison sniffs. “Yes.”
“With actual rapist Chuck Bass?”
“Okay, look, I reluctantly shipped it because I just wanted Blair to be happy and fulfilled—“
And they’re off, back into banter, and Harrison’s kinda proud of himself for not floundering about how much he’d accidentally revealed. And then Drew says,
“What about you?” And Harrison freezes.
“Me?”
“Did you ever figure out whether you wanted to...”
“Oh! Whether I wanted to make out with girls or be girls?” He laughs, as if it’s no big deal to share. “Mostly boys. All around.”
“Ah.” Harrison is too keyed-up to parse that ah.
“But some days I’m kind-of... in-between. I’m like one of Serena’s Louis Vuitton bags — I pair well with everything.
“Good.”
“Good?” When he takes a sidelong glance at Drew, his face is turning pink.
“I mean, I’m glad you... recognised that and seem happy with yourself.”
“Well, I’m a work-in-progress. But who isn’t? And you watched Gossip Girl.”
“I... yes. Well, I mean. Didn’t everyone watch Gossip Girl?” Oh sweet Drew. Of course not everyone watched Gossip Girl. And the subset of men Harrison knows who would willingly admit to watching it, well.
“Hmm.” He says, instead of all that.
“What’s that for?” Drew’s smiling, reminding Harrison yet again of his gorgeousness.
“Nothing.”
“No, no. That was a thoughtful hmm.”
“It was. I’m just thinking things.”
“What… sort of things?” Harrison doesn’t think he’s imagining the drop in Drew’s voice.
And then the bell above the shop door rings, and Drew has to go.
“Sorry,” he mutters, and looks genuinely disappointed. Harrison smiles, and waves him away.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
We’ve recently been reminded of our love for the original Gossip Girl series. Serena and Blair always were better together, I’ll give them that.
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——
It’s not long before he’s greeting the baristas by name, either. There’s Wendy, always kind, always asking about his day and then remembering what he’d said the next time he comes in. And Freya, forever with a hint of mischief in her eyes, always ready with a look of amusement and a raised eyebrow if she catches Harrison looking at Drew for too long. It’s not unusual for Drew himself to man the coffee shop on slow days, a handwritten note left on the till in the bookshop to direct anyone round. It’s easy to lose track of time on those days, easy to fall into the good-natured bickering that’s come to define their interactions.
He still hasn’t met Cal, the person who writes the tweets, or Hal who’s also named in their bio. Hal supposedly handles the coffee, but Harrison has only ever seen Wendy and Freya around. Maybe they work in the kitchen or something, doing the baking. From everything he reads on Twitter, Harrison hopes he gets to meet them both one day. The tweets featuring quotes from Hal are always dry and hilarious, and Cal… Well, Cal’s are something else entirely. They write book recommendations, for the most part, but it’s not unusual to hear tales of interesting (and often, ‘interesting’) customers or requests. Hal and Freya and Wendy all get mentions occasionally — Harrison has noticed that Drew’s name never shows up, but maybe he’s just shy about social media. But the rarest tweets, the ones Harrison will never admit he’s bookmarked, are the more personal tweets. They’re tied to the book recs, for the most part, except they often say more about Cal than they do about the books. Enough people like each tweet that Harrison doesn’t worry that he’s the first to like half of them. If he ever meets Cal, he’ll rethink, but for now he just enjoys it.
He buys the books Cal talks about on a personal level more often than not. Drew always smiles down at them before handing them back to Harrison, and he always has lots of questions for Harrison when he gets back. Drew and Cal must be good friends, Harrison thinks, if their taste in books is this similar.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Feeling introspective today. Book of the Day: Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloane
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——
“You’re grumpy today. You should have a samoa.”
“I should — what? I’m not grumpy.” Drew says, grumpily, as if he hasn’t been barely hiding a scowl each time a customer turns away. Not that Harrison has been watching. It’s hardly his fault, though. Work is quiet now it’s the middle of summer, grading switched out for research with a side of lesson planning. Drew just happens to be a lot more interesting than that today, is all. It’s surely nothing to do with the heat outside, or how Drew’s in a plain black t-shirt today, short sleeves drawing attention to his corded forearms.
“You’re a little grumpy,” Harrison says. “And that’s okay! But you should have a samoa, it might help.” He digs into his satchel, pulling out his latest, (mostly) unopened pack.
“My neighbour is a Girl Scout,” he explains, as Drew begrudgingly takes one. “I’m trying to help her win a badge.”
“Well, thanks, I guess,”
“Hope the rest of your day goes better,” he says softly, and he feels Drew’s eyes on him all the way out the shop.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Hal is trying to make our Book of the Day be Dr Seuss but joke’s on her I don’t even like green eggs and ham
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KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
We’re blocking any of you who reply to this with something Onceler related. Do not cite the old magic at us etc
11 
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——
There’s a kid been in a few times this week, Harrison has noticed. He must be fifteen or sixteen, and he carries an air of furtive secrecy that hits Harrison somewhere between curious and concerned. He’s trying to be subtle about his attention, but today it’s hard when the kid’s phone beeps loudly, immediately followed by a panicked rush to hide the book he was holding, shoving it back on the shelf and pulling out another at random. He gets another text a few minutes later, and heads out the shop. Harrison waits to hear the front door close before he goes to find the book the kid had shoved back, and — oh.
Drew finds him there, not much later, still holding the book in his hand.
“Did you work out what he’s been reading?” He asks, because of course Drew has noticed the boy too.
Harrison just holds the book up wordlessly in response. “Ah.” Says Drew, looking down at the copy of Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets of the Universe.
“I wish this had existed when I was a kid,” Harrison says, not daring to look at Drew.
“Me too,” Drew replies in an undertone. “It might have made things a lot easier.”
They both stand, lost in thought, until Drew takes a deep breath.
“Can I?” He asks, reaching for the book, and Harrison cedes it to him, pretending he doesn’t notice how their fingers brush.
“Sorry,” Drew whispers, and Harrison looks at him, but Drew is only looking at the book, as if he were whispering to the book itself.
And then he tears the back cover in half.
“Drew!”
Drew looks back at him, face calm, with just a hint of amusement in his eyes. “Oops.” He says. “Guess I can’t sell it now. Might as well give it away to someone.”
“You’re a terrible business owner,” Harrison tells him, but he doesn’t bother hiding his smile, or the affection in his tone. “Take the Stonewall sticker off the front too, it’ll be safer for him. If he can take it at all.”
“I’ll keep it at the desk for him if not.”
Drew meets his eyes again, and it feels important, this look, feels like understanding. Harrison nods, just slightly, and Drew nods back, just as minutely. They don’t say anything else. Drew looks back down at the book, tears a bit more of the cover, and Harrison leaves him to it.
He does his best to get some work done, but he’s struggling to get the whole thing out of his mind. He gives up after a while, ripping a spare page out of his notebook instead. He writes down a set of book recommendations, and hands it to Drew on his way out. If Drew looks into them, he’ll notice some themes, could easily get some strong insights into Harrison. But Harrison acts casual, pretends it’s all for the kid.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Author of the day: Benjamin Alire Sáenz. I am not picking a favourite you can’t make me. Anyway who needs therapy bills when you could just read these books
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——
He happens to be around the next time the kid comes in. It’s just a coincidence, of course, it’s not like he spends all of his free time here now. Well — this time isn’t even free, he’s sat in the cafe working, trying to get some peace from the students who seem particularly rowdy today. He sees Drew get the ripped book out from under the counter, and then watches him deliberate. He looks up, catches Harrison watching him.
“Do it,” Harrison mouths, and Drew rolls his eyes and takes the book away.
It’s around the corner, so Harrison can’t see or hear the conversation that goes on. But ten minutes or so later, he sees the kid leaving, a smile on his face.
He decides it’s time for a break (which has nothing to do with the fact that Drew hasn’t yet returned), and wanders over, not worrying about moving all his stuff. Wendy knows he’ll be back.
He heads in the direction he’d last seen Drew, but is surprised when he’s nowhere to be found. There’s a stockroom in the back, he knows vaguely, so Drew must be in there. He’s about to give up and go back to his work when he hears a door open, and he doesn’t have the presence of mind to move away from the corner. Trope, Harrison’s brain supplies, as Drew crashes into him, but Drew’s arms immediately come up to steady him, and Harrison can think of little else.
“Sorry—!” Drew starts, then relaxes a little when he realises it’s Harrison. He starts to say something more, but Harrison, looking up at him, interrupts him, saying his name with concern.
“Are you okay?” He asks, because Drew’s obviously been trying to hide the fact he’s been crying. Tears spring back to his eyes at Harrison’s question.
“That kid,” he says, shaking his head a little.
“You did a good thing,” Harrison tells him. “You should have seen the smile on his face when he left.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They gaze at each other, and every inch of Harrison’s shoulder that Drew is touching sings.
Harrison would be swaying forward, if Drew’s hands weren’t holding him in place. He can barely hold back as it is, and he knows his hands are trembling where he’s trying not to reach up and cup Drew’s face.
And then the bell over the front door rings, and Drew comes back to himself, suddenly and violently, hands dropping from Harrison’s shoulders and backing up so quickly he hits the shelf behind. He’s blushing a furious red, and stammers something about checking on the new customer before high-tailing off. Harrison watches him go, giving a tiny huff of laughter as soon as he’s out of earshot. He stays for a few moments longer, willing his own blush to fade, before he heads back.
He sits back down at his table, opening the papers in front of him again. He stares at them blankly, mind replaying the feeling of Drew’s arms over and over. He manages a few minutes before sneaking a glance over at Drew, who’s hiding behind the counter, trying to pretend he isn’t sneaking glances back.
Harrison makes it about half an hour before he gives up. He wants to stay, always wants to talk more to Drew, but there’s something skittish in the air around him now, and he doesn’t want to push it any farther today.
Well. Not much farther. He does let himself wink at Drew on his way out, just to see how quickly he can make that blush bloom again. (The answer is very, very quickly. He files that away for future reference.)
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
presented without comment: https://herosmellslike.com
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——
Future reference turns out to be that evening, when he sits trying to work out how many boundaries he’s crossed. It’s so easy to tell himself it’s all mutual, but… loneliness, projecting, he knows the drill. He’ll give the bookshop a wide berth for a little while, he decides.
He doesn’t count on his caffeine-deprived brain walking him in by default the next morning. But he’s on his best behaviour, coffee bought and drunk without any awkwardness. Friendliness is still allowed, he’s decided, but he’s careful. No more flirting. He doesn’t mention it, and Drew doesn’t mention it, and it’s fine. It’s not a whole thing.
(Within a month, Drew is stocking each and every one of the books on the list he’d given him. Harrison smiles, and they don’t mention that, either.)
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Books of the day: Release and The Rest of Us Just Live Here, both by Patrick Ness. You’ll cry. Just read them.
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——
Fall semester starts tumultuously, as it always does, with Harrison trying to finish up revisions to a paper as well as prep everything he needs for the incoming undergrads. He isn’t even supposed to teach, technically speaking, but the department are short-staffed, and Harrison’s one of the few of them who genuinely enjoys it. Well, mostly — late afternoons in the bookshop become his norm, bemoaning how noisy freshmen are.
It means he gets a front row seat to the training of Kaleidotrope’s new barista. Or— attempted training might be a better way to put it. Vivan is… trying? Probably? He’s very slowly improving at making coffee, with thanks to Wendy’s endless patience and with little thanks to Drew’s frustration, which steadily turns to disdain. Harrison gives him pointed looks when he’s being too mean, and to Drew’s credit he’s clearly trying. It’s about as successful as Vivan’s coffee, but… It’s yet another thing Harrison finds unreasonably adorable.
That is, until Vivan gets left alone to make Harrison’s drink, and back at his table Harrison spits his first sip back out. After that, he doesn’t try as hard to intercede.
(Drew stops him before he leaves, angling their bodies away from the coffee counter before covertly handing him a take out cup.
“This one’s safe to drink, I promise,” he mutters, then steers Harrison to the door. Harrison’s smile only widens when he looks at the cup and reads the words Drink me on the side.)
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the day: Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire. Here’s hoping it’s not too late to find our door. Also hoping that the door is somewhere in the bookshop because otherwise that’s going to be an issue
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——
“Oh thank fuck, it’s just you.” Drew rasps. “I thought I was going to have to pretend to be human.”
“Bad day?” Harrison asks, but Drew starts coughing before he even finishes speaking, turning away and hiding his face in his elbow.
“Oh, honey—“ Harrison says, but the man’s at work, he can’t say anything more.
It seems like Drew hears him through the coughs though, because he looks up once he’s done, tiny smile on his face.
“Sorry about that. What can I get for you today?”
“You can get better, is what.”
He doesn’t get a full patented Drew blush in response, but there’s definitely a scattering of pink.
“But no, I’m just going to wander today, I think.”
“Well, let me know if you need anything.” Harrison gives him his sweetest smile before turning away,
It’s Vivan working the coffee shop, so he does actually wander. He stays a good long while, and even when there’s no other customers, Drew doesn’t show up to do his customary ‘shelving’ nearby. Harrison is surprised by the fondness that fills him with — and the fact that it isn’t disappointment surprises him even more. He finds a book — all by himself — and checks out the first few pages, which inevitably leads to him being thoroughly engrossed.
He tunes most of the other customers who come in out, but he finally resurfaces when he hears Drew laugh.
Now, it’s not that Harrison has been dedicating time to analysing and categorising Drew’s laughter, but this is very clearly a fake laugh.
Interesting, Harrison thinks, because that means there’s a chance Drew’s laughter with him is real. Not that Harrison is paying attention to that sort of thing.
Now he’s tuned in, he hears the banal questions this customer is asking Drew, seeming to pay no mind to how hoarse Drew sounds, how painful it must be for him to keep speaking.
He tries to get back into his book, but after the woman has been speaking to him for five minutes, he gives up, and wanders up to the front of the shop. He’s right — Drew looks miserable (as much as he’s trying to hide it), and — yep, the woman is hitting on him.
Drew notices him at that point, and Harrison tries his best to convey “do you need me to rescue you?” in a look. Drew nods at him, incorporating the movement into his speech. It’s not hot, Harrison reminds himself, he’s not attracted to this man who’s probably only being nice to him because he’s a customer. Nope. Even if it is impressive that he can do that when he’s so clearly ill.
Harrison moves over to the counter purposefully, even clearing his throat a little to make his presence clear. Drew makes a show of noticing him, and looks at the woman expectantly. She notices, and moves to the side, gesturing for Drew to go ahead. She doesn’t look like she’s leaving though, so Harrison does some quick thinking, asking Drew a question about a book he knows they have somewhere in stock. Naturally, Drew offers to show him, and they fall into easy conversation as Drew ‘shows him to the right shelf’. He makes sure to ask intelligent questions, and he may have had his doubts whilst he did it, but he knows it’s the right thing when Drew slumps as soon as they’re out of the woman’s eye-line.
It takes a little while, but eventually they hear the main door close, and Drew sighs with relief.
“Thanks,” He says, leaning against a shelf and tipping his head back.
“Any time,” Harrison replies, and they share a smile.
“I’m a terrible business owner,” Drew says, though he doesn’t seem all that bothered about it.
“Ah, she seemed like she was four questions away from asking about 50 Shades of Grey, and then you’d have had to kick her out anyway.”
Drew laughs.
Harrison has literally fantasized about pushing him against one of the shelves like this.
He holds up his book, instead.
“This is good,” He says, and Drew asks him about it, and it isn’t until Harrison notices it’s dark outside that he realises he was supposed to be home an hour ago.
(He buys Drew a cup of tea before he goes, though, chickening out and letting Freya take it over to him. He knows the blush well enough by now to imagine it, anyway.)
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Yes we are a bookshop yes we are ignoring our reading to watch You’ve Got Mail on repeat. What of it.
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——
“Do you have 50 Shades of Grey, though?” He asks a few days later once Drew’s recovered, just to see what he’ll do.
“Get out of my shop,” he tells him flatly, and Harrison bursts into giggles. Drew manages a straight face for just a moment more, before he joins in Harrison’s laughter.
“We don’t,” he tells him, once their laughter has died down. “But if you want some books that explore BDSM in a healthy manner, they’re round the corner, near the window.”
Harrison feels his face heating up, and has to swallow before he replies.
“Good to know,” he manages, and proceeds to be too embarrassed to even look at a book for the rest of his visit.
(Drew clearly tells Cal about the interaction, because later that night there’s a thread on the bookshop twitter, highlighting some books readers might want to look into if they were “interested in some exploration”. Harrison can’t bring himself to reply to these ones — surely that’s too far across some kind of line — but he likes the thread, and makes a mental note of some of the books.)
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Strap on in folks, today’s book(s) of the day are going to take us for a ride (1/?)
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——
Harrison walks in one day in late October to find much more of a queue for coffee than usual. He’s got time, so he doesn’t join the back of the line — Drew looks stressed already. He hops into the bookshop instead, mostly to check if Wendy or Freya (or god forbid, even Vivan) are around to send to help out. But the counter is quiet, the usual note there redirecting people to the other till. No wonder the queue is big; no wonder Drew looks stressed. This must be the end of the lunch rush, just dragged out longer. Poor Drew.
The line is shorter when Harrison rejoins it, and then someone else walks in and he lets them go ahead of him under the guise of still choosing his drink. It means he’s last, and it’s telling how the morning has been that Drew’s eyes don’t even focus on him as he turns to him.
“What can I get you?” He asks, and Harrison smiles.
“Drew.” He says. “Have a samoa.”
“Oh,” Drew says, but it’s a good oh. “Sorry, I—“
“Short staffed today, huh?” Drew nods, and helps himself to one of the samoas Harrison offers him without complaint.
“Vivan quit.” He explains, expression showing exactly what he thinks of that. He shoves the cookie in his mouth, so Harrison can’t exactly ask for more details.
“Ah,” he says instead, and offers Drew another samoa. “I mean… I guess that’s not the biggest surprise.”
Drew snorts through his mouthful.
“You can say that again,” he says when he’s swallowed. “A little warning would have been nice though.”
Harrison winces. Drew just shakes his head, possibly at himself.
“Hal’s coming back in to cover soon. It’ll be better now lunch is done.” Harrison wishes he wasn’t teaching later, he’s somehow still not met Hal.
“Maybe you should make yourself a coffee, before you make me one,” is what he says instead.
“I’m taking you up on that,” Drew says, and turns to the coffee machine.
“If anyone else comes in, I’ll pretend to be really indecisive and buy you some time. Can’t promise you wouldn’t want to murder me yourself, but, y’know. It might make a nice change for you from wanting to murder Vivan.”
Drew laughs at that.
“He wasn’t that bad.” He tries to claim, and bites his lip to hold in another laugh when Harrison just raises an eyebrow.
“His lattes were… improving.” He allows. “But you don’t seem too cut up about it.”
“Wellllll…” Drew says, clearly trying not to say anything incriminating. “I’ll be glad when Hal gets here, that’s all I’ll say.”
“Understandable. D’you want the rest of the samoas? The sleeve’s almost gone.”
Drew looks mildly like he’s warring with himself, but he says a grateful thanks when Harrison pushes the box over the counter.
“What name are you going with today?” He asks, and Harrison hums. He’d been planning on Laurie, but now he wonders if there’s a better option.
“Pantoufle.” He says, and when he gets his amused eye roll from Drew he knows it’s safe to leave him to the rest of his shift. The samoas are a worthy trade in the name of cheering him up.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the Day: Chocolat, Joanne Harris
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——
The end of the semester sneaks up as it always seems to do, and Harrison is buried under his workload. He’s miserable at missing out on Thanksgiving with his family, but the flights just wouldn’t have gotten him back when he needed to be back. They skype him in, of course, but it’s not the same. With only a few weeks of the year left, he starts forgoing his regular lattes for black coffee, waving away Freya’s concern. He locks himself in his office, trying to slug away at all the marking he has, but maybe it’s the miserable weather they’re having or maybe his students are just exceptionally stupid this year. Half of them barely seem to have read the questions. Half of them barely even seem to have tried.
The next answer he reads is so bad he drops his head onto his desk, muffling a scream into his arms. He can’t do this, not today.
If he quits his job, he’d probably have to move out of Stoneybrook, he reminds himself. And where else is he going to find coffee this good?
Coffee, it turns out, might be a good idea. He packs everything up into his rucksack, stuffing a plastic bag over the top so nothing gets wet even if the waterproofing fails, and heads out. The rain is icy, sharp where it hits the hand holding his umbrella, wind pushing him forwards. That is, until he’s a few streets away from campus, and the narrow roads create a wind tunnel, whipping the umbrella inside out. He tries without success to force it back around, and when he finally fixes it it’s only moments before it’s flipped again. Seething, he gives up on it, shoving it into the nearest rubbish bin. He’ll regret it later, but for now the only thought driving him is the idea of coffee and Drew’s smile.
He stands in the entrance of Kaleidotrope dripping for a moment, before pushing his hair out of his face and making his way through to the cafe. Wendy’s eyes widen when she sees him.
“Oh Harrison,” It’s possible he plays up the sadness in his expression. “You look like you need a hug.”
He really does.
“I’d settle for a latte,” he says weakly.
“You poor thing. Go sit down, I’ll bring it over to you. Take the middle booth, it’s closest to the heating vent, you’ll warm up quicker.”
Maybe it’s not the Drew interaction he’d been hoping for, but it’s lovely all the same, and feels as warmed by her comfort as he does by the heat of being inside. He takes the seat she’d suggested, stripping off his sodden coat and shaking the water off his bag. Wendy brings him his coffee along with a cupcake.
“You look like you need it.”
“Undergrads are the worst,” he tells her. “Your coffee was the only way I could think to make marking bearable.” She smiles at that, and it’s the one bright thing in Harrison’s day so far.
She has to disappear to handle another customer, and Harrison sighs. The only way out is through. He eats his cupcake, then pulls out his laptop and his grading. It helps, being here, in that he can’t groan out loud whenever he reads something he knows is copied directly from Wikipedia.
He’s forty minutes in, finally reading the work of someone who’s actually thought about it, when the clink of a mug being set down on the table. He’s already scowling again as he looks up, ready to fight if it means he won’t have to share the table.
“You know, I normally get a better reaction to giving people hot chocolate on the house,” Drew says.
Harrison’s whole demeanour changes so fast that Drew has to hide a laugh.
“Gimme,” Harrison says, making grabby hands at the mug, and Drew slides it his way.
“Bad day?” He asks, sympathetic.
“The worst. What’s even the point of teaching if your students don’t give a shit?”
“You teach?”
“Not really. I’m a post-doc, mainly, but I got roped into this one course and now it’s apparently mine forever.”
“What do you research?” Drew asks, and then second-guesses himself. “If you don’t mind me asking. I guess that’s the least thing you want to talk about right now.”
“No, it’s fine. I work in social psychology. You know that whole ‘romantic happy ending for everyone’ Sidlesmith had going on for a while? I’m researching that.”
“Ah, yes, the Sidlesmith Magic,” Drew says with a laugh that puts Harrison right back on the defensive.
“It’s nice,” he says, stubbornly, and Drew’s amused smile shifts into something softer, part apologetic, part something inscrutable that looks almost like indulgence. Harrison doesn’t know how to take that, so he takes a sip of the hot chocolate instead. There’s no other word for it, it’s blissful. He can’t be held responsible for the noise he makes in response.
“What’s in this? Oh my god.”
“Cinnamon,” Drew tells him, as if that alone could make such a difference. Harrison takes another drink, then looks curiously at Drew.
“Sunny Baudelaire?” is all he ends up asking, and Drew looks mildly abashed.
“Who better?”
Harrison grins, and pushes his essays over to the other side of the table.
“Tell me if you need to go back to the shop, but: what’s your theory on the Sugar Bowl?”
They argue about A Series of Unfortunate Events for the next half hour, and Harrison’s probably going to be annoyed at himself for it later when he has to go back to the essays, but for now he ignores it. Grades can wait; teasing Drew about his crush on Lemony Snicket can’t.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them” — Lemony Snicket
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KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
I’m being told this is questionable stance from a bookshop bear with
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KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
Need to buy a book so you seem trustworthy? We’re open til 8 tonight
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(Saved it)
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——
When the semester is finally, finally over, Harrison makes a run to the shop one morning, short on both time and presents, and hoping Drew will be able to help him out. His flight back out to Rochester is the next morning, and the streets look how he feels, filled with last minute shoppers, their panic not quite absorbed by all the street decorations Stoneybrook have strewn around. Kaleidotrope, when he enters, is a haven of peace. No Christmas carols blare through the speakers, just the soft jazz music that Drew likes to play when it’s quiet. And it is quiet, remarkably so given all the bustle outside. He doesn’t find Drew at the till, and it’s not until he wanders into the coffee shop that he sees him. He’s sat on the counter, book in hand, and his smile when he notices Harrison makes his heart flutter.
“It’s quiet today,” Harrison remarks, and Drew doesn’t look concerned in the slightest.
“And that is why we’ve never repainted the sign.”
“Aren’t you supposed to want customers?”
Drew shrugs. “Terrible business owner, remember? And anyway, you’re here, aren’t you?”
“Well. That’s true. And I do need your help.”
If Harrison speaks about his family for longer than strictly necessary, well, it’s just that Drew makes it so easy, and asks all the right questions.
He ends up with a stack of books that will more than cover Christmas presents, and a few just for himself, too.
“See?” Drew says, “This is why we don’t need the hoards of stressed customers. You want a coffee to go with that, too?”
“God, please.”
“What name’ll it be today?”
“There’s no one else here, Drew,”
“Wendy and Freya have a group chat dedicated to working out where your names are from, I can’t let them down this close to Christmas.”
“I’m... honoured, I think.” He thinks for a moment. “Dashiell.”
“One hazelnut latte for Dashiell.” Drew hands it to him, and Harrison takes it carefully, but he can’t stop their fingers from brushing.
“Have a good Christmas, Drew,” he says, already replaying the feel of Drew’s hand on his.
“You too, Harrison.” There’s a gentle smile on his face, and Harrison wants to stay, wants to forget all the reasons he’s supposed to be in a rush and just stay here talking to Drew.
But he has a flight to catch tomorrow, and a dozen things left on his to do list before then. He drags himself away, letting himself look back through the dark glass. Drew meets his gaze, and gives him another smile and a half wave. Harrison swallows, and pulls himself together enough to nod in return, narrowly avoiding crashing into someone else on the street.
It’s not until he’s halfway home that he realises that the name on the cup reads Lily. Dammit, Drew.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the Day: Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares — if anyone wants to start a quest in our bookshop, they’re more than welcome to.
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——
Harrison prides himself on knowing his cousins well enough to get them good presents each year. With Drew’s recommendations, he’s doing excellently.
He checks his phone for tweets from Cal what he thinks is a normal amount, right up until Javi, who is twelve, calls him out on it. He manages to save that interaction, but subtle enough for a twelve year old isn’t subtle enough for Adán, who’s the nearest cousin to Harrison in age. They weren’t like this as kids, but the two of them are the best at keeping in touch when Harrison’s away so they’ve grown a whole lot closer these last few years.
“Something to hide? He’s right, you have been checking your phone a lot.”
“Nothing to hide,” Harrison says, rolling his eyes.
“You are absolutely lying to me, but I accept that.”
“… What’s the catch?”
“We’re getting drunk once the kids have gone to bed. Then you’re going to spill.”
“There’s nothing to spill,” Harrison laughs. “No, really.”
“Oooh, what’s Harrison spilling?” His aunt asks, suddenly appearing at their shoulders.
“He claims nothing. So there’s clearly a man involved.”
“Oh my god,” Harrison says.
(It doesn’t take that much alcohol for him to tell them everything. Turns out, he really likes talking about Drew. And the bookshop. And about Drew in the bookshop. And— yeah, okay. So maybe he was trying to hide something.)
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the Day: His Quiet Agent, Ada Maria Soto. For if you need some peace this holiday season.
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——
Leaving home is always hard. Sure, his family can be a lot sometimes, but video calls can’t come close to the chaos that are their family gatherings. Coming back to Stoneybrook is better than going back to college was, but he’s still set himself aside a few days to mope.
This year, though, he only spends a couple of hours being sad before he decides to be sad with good coffee. He heads over to the bookshop, then spends twenty minutes catching up with Wendy until another customer comes in. But once they’re served, Wendy comes back over to his table, and they exchange tales of family and holiday mayhem until the sky is beginning to look dark again.
“You should go talk to Drew before you leave,” she tells him when he really should be getting home. “I think he had a book for you.”
“Well, in that case…”
He’s a little nervous to go talk to Drew, after all the talking about Drew he’s done over the holiday. It’s silly, he knows that. He’s done a lot of talking to himself about workplace boundaries and acceptable behaviour, too. But Drew smiles when he sees him, the type of smile that carries through to his voice, and Harrison relaxes.
“Thought I heard your voice,” he says. “Good Christmas?”
“Yeah,” Harrison says. “But it’s nice to be back.”
Drew’s smile gets softer at that.
“Well, I’m glad, because it occurred to me that we’ve never spoken about this.” He pulls a book from behind the counter, and Harrison moves closer to look.
“Guess that’s what I’m reading until work starts back up, huh?”
“Well, I mean— you don’t have to. But I think you’d like it.
“Sounds good,” he says, and accidentally holds eye contact a little too long. Drew isn’t looking away either, though.
“Did your cousins like their books?” Drew breaks it with, and Harrison blinks, then tries not to blush at what his cousins will think of this interaction.
“They really did. Oh, I’m supposed to be ringing Adán later actually.” He looks at his watch, and curses. “I’m supposed to be ringing Adán ten minutes ago.”
“Didn’t you just leave them?”
“Well yeah, but now we’re home there’s no one to hear the proper debrief.”
Drew laughs.
“Want me to ring this up for you now, then? Or another day.”
“No, let’s do it now. If it’s as good as you say it is, maybe it’ll distract me from the semester starting again.”
“It’ll definitely do that.” Drew promises, and hands him the book. “See you soon, Harrison,” he says, and that sounds a little like a promise, too.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the Day: The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune. Family is family. Sometimes a family is a handsome [redacted] and a gnome and a wyvern and werepuppy and two sprites and the literal antichrist. Actually, that’s the best family. Anyone know how to get to Marsyas?
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——
“How dare you?”
Drew looks up, apprehensive, and then smiles when he sees it’s just Harrison.
“Can I help you?” He asks, and Harrison narrows his eyes at his customer service voice.
“I finished this,” He says, holding up the book he’d bought from Drew yesterday morning, which happens to be the book he’d stayed up half the night reading. “Tell me you have the sequel.”
Drew’s face cracks into a grin, and Harrison isn’t distracted by it, he isn’t, he just happens to almost miss Drew’s next question.
“Harrison?” Drew prompts, when he doesn’t reply right away.
“Did I like it? Oh my god.” He checks around, that there are no more customers waiting on Drew, and lets himself gush.
“— and the ending! Wait. You didn’t answer when I asked if you had the sequel.”
Drew’s face turns guilty.
“Uh. We did yesterday...”
“And today?”
“I’m pretty sure the last copy went last thing. I’ve ordered more?” He offers.
Harrison sighs, as dramatic as he knows how.
“I guess I could wait and come back another day.”
“I’m so sorry to inconvenience you.”
Harrison smiles at him, instead of playing along, and Drew smiles back, and the moment holds.
“Unless...” Drew tilts his head to the side. “How long can you stay today?”
Harrison shrugs, curiosity piqued.
“Well, I was going to get the book and run, but I have my laptop, I could stay a while.”
Drew looks at his watch. “Can you give me fifteen minutes?”
“Okay?” He thinks about asking why, but Drew’s cheeks are already slightly pink, and he thinks he’ll find out why soon enough.
He chats with Wendy as she makes his coffee, trying to hide how often he’s looking over at Drew. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything unusual, though he does come over and say something to Wendy once Harrison has settled at a table.
He’s trying not to be nosy, but it’s hard not to notice Wendy’s bright laughter, and how Drew’s face goes bright red in response to it.
He does manage to draft a few emails in the fifteen minutes, but mostly he’s distracted trying to work out what’s going on, hands fidgeting. It isn’t until about ten minutes have passed that Drew even leaves his line of sight, eyes accidentally meeting Harrison’s before he goes, then flicking away again immediately when he’s caught out.
Harrison stares at his laptop screen, appearing utterly intent to anyone watching, and not seeing a single word on the screen.
Five minutes later, a book drops down onto the table next to him, as Drew drops down into the seat opposite.
“I thought you didn’t have any in stock.”
“We don’t. This is, uh, my personal copy. I thought — well. I mean. You can borrow it, if you want.”
“Drew!” He exclaims. “That’s so sweet of you!”
“I mean, it’s covered in my scribbles, so you might not—”
Harrison snatches the book off the table, holds it to his chest.
“If you try to take this back from me now, I’ll cry,” he tells Drew solemnly.
Drew laughs, relieved, and Harrison expects him to go back to the desk. Instead, he leans back, relaxing, and asks Harrison another question about the book. The hubbub of the cafe seems to fade into the background as they talk, and Harrison is quite impressed that he can hold up his end of the conversation whilst mentally cataloguing the exact shade of Drew’s eyes.
Eventually, Drew’s break finishes, and he has to go back. Harrison pretends to do some more work for a while, pretends he’s not replaying the whole interaction on a loop.
“Wendy?” He asks, on his way out. “Does Drew normally lend his own books out to customers?”
Wendy, because she’s an angel, doesn’t look at him like he’s an idiot.
Freya, on the other hand, who’s just arrived to take over her shift, doesn’t spare him.
“We’re a bookshop, Harrison. It would kind of go against our business plan.”
“So uh. Just to me, then?”
“Just to you,” Wendy confirms, and Harrison’s grin grows wider and wider as he walks out of the shop. He even finds himself whistling on the way to his office.
Today has been a good day.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Heard a rumour today we’re trying out becoming a lending library. We’re not.
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——
After that, it’s pretty difficult to deny that they’re flirting. That they’ve been flirting. Whether it means anything to Drew is a different question, and Harrison spends half his evenings fixating on it. He tries to distract himself by reading the book — Drew’s book — instead, but as it turns out, that just makes it worse. Drew had mentioned that he’d written in it, but Harrison had expected the odd word here and there, a couple of underlined phrases. It’s clear, though, that Drew loves this book: almost every page has a comment, some of the notes have notes themselves, clearly added at a later date. Some about the plot, about the characters, whilst others dissect the writing techniques.
And then there’s the quotes that are underlined. Harrison has always got the impression that Drew wasn’t one for romance — not that he’s ever felt judged for buying them, but their conversations have always leant more towards fantasy books. Maybe it’s Harrison’s own predilection to keep quiet about them that’s caused that, though, rather than it having anything to do with Drew.
Because if Harrison thought Drew wasn’t one for romance, he’s clearly been making too many assumptions. The pencil in this book tells him otherwise almost immediately. These ones don’t have comments most of the time, the underlining and the phrases speaking only for themselves. There’s a few different themes, Harrison begins to realise. Some of them are keys to the characters, sentences that give away their very essence. Longing, too, seems to come up a lot. And then there’s the scene so romantic it had almost stopped Harrison’s heart. Drew has underlined the whole thing.
He keeps the book a few days longer than strictly necessary, flicking through the pages most nights, always returning back to that specific page.
When he finally returns it to the bookshop, Drew has fresh copies of the third and fourth book waiting for him behind the desk. The sweetness of the gesture tangles up inside of Harrison with disappointment that he won’t be able to see Drew’s comments for these two, but he buys them with a grin all the same.
There’s pretty much no way he’s not going to ask Drew out after this.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Sometimes people ask us what we think of writing in books. Once you’ve bought it you can do whatever you want. If you write too much and cover up the words you can always buy another copy. That’s fine too. For the record.
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——
And so he comes up with a plan. It’s dumb, and Harrison knows it. Giving a book to a guy who runs a bookshop. But he’s never seen it in-store, and he really thinks Drew will like it. He really wants Drew to like it.
It takes him a while, even after he’s decided. He has to get the dedication right, first — that takes hours. There’s still a part of him that’s not sure, so he doesn’t want to be too overt about it — as if there’s anything covert about giving a man his favourite book. He buys a new copy — from a different store, of course — and then goes through, underlining words (just a few, the last one on the last pages of the book). Then he goes through again, underlining parts of the page numbers until they spell out his cell phone if anyone were to put them all together.
And finally, he turns to the last page. Underlines The End. And adds, in the lightest of pencil, a question mark.
For Drew, it says at the start, and, Call me when you reach The End? It reads once he’s done. Satisfied, he closes the book.
The next problem is the matter of actually giving it to Drew. There’s so many variables to account for that he spends an entire week running through it in his head, thinking of different scenarios and trying to work through them. Mostly he practices how to be gracious if Drew turns him down. On the worst days, he tries to work out how to turn it into a friendly gesture, just in case Drew is disgusted, or… but he won’t be. It’s Drew. Harrison wouldn’t be doing this if he thought that was a possibility. Rejection, sure, but he’s survived that before. Not horror, though. They’re too good friends for that.
So he’s pretty prepared, when he finally decides he’s going to do it. He has the book in a paper bag, easy to remove, possibly even with a flourish if things are going well.
It’s pretty quiet today — probably a good thing, he’d hate to get interrupted, or to have to rush through it. Ideally he wouldn’t have an audience at all, but that’s somewhat harder to orchestrate if he wants to keep things subtle. There’s a woman talking excitedly somewhere, and he waves to some of the regulars over in the coffee shop, the two older men who seem as fond of the bookshop as he is himself, but other than that there aren’t many customers about. He winds his way round to the till, taking his time, trying to keep his nerve. He rounds the corner, and —
And Drew is with someone.
It’s the excited woman he’d heard earlier, and her arms are wrapped around Drew’s neck. He’s grinning down at her, wearing that smile Harrison thought he was special for getting.
He doesn’t parse what she’s saying, but when Drew pulls her even closer, kisses her forehead — well. He can parse that well enough.
He’s not sure, in retrospect, where he leaves the book. He could have put it down, he might have dropped it. He’s in such a rush to get out of there, to get away from his stupidity and his arrogance and his desperation that he doesn’t remember. He just knows that when he gets home, it’s no longer in his shaking hands.
——
He doesn’t plan on going back.
——
The missing book haunts him, the thought of Drew finding it by accident and laughing, he and his beautiful girlfriend laughing at him together. More than that, though, he’s embarrassed by himself, his arrogance. How many times had he told himself not to go down this route? And yet he’d made up a story in his head again, projected his own emotions outwards, and now he’s too much of a coward to go back and see them for what they really were.
So no, he doesn’t plan on going back.
It’s just— well. He forgets to preorder the sequel to one of the books he and Drew had talked about a lot, and then the Borders doesn’t have it, and he’s not going to support Amazon now, is he?
He thinks maybe he knows Drew’s working pattern enough to avoid his shift, and in any case, it’s just. Buying a book.
——
And then he reads the book, and it’s Terrible and he has capital O Opinions and really, who else has ever understood it his thoughts on those books but Drew.
(He’s too busy having those Opinions to notice Drew’s face journey, or even to realise Freya and Wendy have put a hold on orders to watch from the sidelines.)
——
And so commences what Harrison will come to call the ‘movie montage of his life’. He goes back to the shop, not anytime soon, but not nearly so long as he’d taken to return the first time. The coffee is still the best he can get, and if he and Drew stick to talking about books, they can keep most of the awkwardness at bay. So that’s what they do, and they argue and banter and have blindsiding moments of complete agreement, and then suddenly it’s March, and Harrison is a regular again as if he’d never disappeared.
He’d turned the Twitter notifications off in a petty fit of pique, annoyed at the world but mostly at himself, but he finally allows himself to go back to it. It takes less time than he’d expected to scroll back through the feed to the last thing he’d liked, as if Cal had gone to ground along with Harrison. There’s a whole thread on books about unexpected disappearances which makes Harrison wince. But that’s the mindset that had got him into this mess at the beginning. It’s probably just a coincidence.
——
“Hey,”
Harrison’s been so absorbed in his book that he hadn’t noticed Drew appear at the table in front of him. He takes a moment to look around, and realises all the other customers have left into the last dregs of twilight. Wendy has disappeared too, but he thinks she must just be in the kitchen.
“Sorry—” He starts, wondering how long ago the shop was supposed to close.
“It’s fine,” Drew says. “Must be a good book?”
It is, and Harrison holds it up so Drew can read the cover.
Drew’s eyes scan it as he sits down in the seat opposite Harrison, and Harrison takes the rare opportunity to look at him directly. He shouldn’t, probably, but if he’s going to he might as well do it when Drew can’t catch him. He lets himself have one full glance at his gorgeous lips, and rakes his eyes over the beginnings of stubble. His eyes settle on his forehead, the little divot of a frown. That’s not the right reaction to this blurb he’s reading.
Drew looks away from the book, catches him staring. He looks away, caught out, but when he looks back Drew is still watching him, and this time when their gazes meet they hold.
“I wanted you to know,” Drew begins, and Harrison feels everything inside him go tense.
“We, uh — well, Hal, actually, Hal found the book you left.”
Harrison manages a very faint, “oh.”
“If you wanted it back, or—” Drew has reached the end of what he’d planned to say; it’s as if he hadn’t expected to make it this far and he’s stumbling, trying to understand what Harrison’s expression means.
“No, you can— you should keep it.” Harrison says. “I brought it for you, after all. What did you think about it?”
“I only got a few pages in, actually. I wanted to ask you about it, so I was waiting until you came back, but you— didn’t.” He sounds like he’s trying to keep the hurt out of his voice, but Harrison can hear the emotion there anyway. It’s one of the things he’s always liked about Drew; how he can hear so much in his voice.
Harrison shrugs a little, the image of Drew and that woman fresh in his mind.
“We missed you, when you were gone. I— I missed you.” Drew says, all in a rush, and then doesn’t seem to know where to look, half watching Harrison’s reaction, half blushing and looking out the window as if he’s the one who needs to be embarrassed here.
“But...” Harrison says, barely a whisper, then takes a deep breath and commits to it.
“You were with someone. That day I left the book. I thought... I misread the situation. I didn’t mean to leave the book, after that.” He gives a self deprecating laugh. “Sorry, that must have been awkward.”
“No, Harrison, I—” But Harrison is getting up, saying something about how the shop is already closed.
“Harrison,” Drew tries again, and Harrison turns back to him, smile sad but true.
“Don’t worry about it, Drew.”
And he leaves.
He tries to go without turning back, but once he’s outside he can’t help but let himself, just once. It’s easier to see inside in these dark evenings, the cafe light still looking welcoming as ever. Drew is where he’d left him, head in his hands.
Harrison keeps walking.
——
The next time he goes in, he doesn’t see Drew, and he doesn’t know if he’s disappointed or relieved. He’d had to build himself up to coming, battling the nerves, trying to pretend there was nothing awkward about it.
Wendy seems delighted to see him though, a note of surprise in her voice when she greets him that makes him think she knows what happened. He takes his coffee to go, and puts it out of his mind. He likes the books, likes the coffee, and having more people to talk to is always good, even if it’s just that. It’s fine. It is.
(It takes him a while, but after a time it actually is fine again. They push through the awkward pauses, the conversation fracturing where before it would have turned flirtatious. But each conversation is slightly easier, a new boundary learnt, a new normal beginning.)
——
Even in this new normal, it’s hard not to tease Drew, even if all the flirtation is gone from it now.
“I think the cover was red?” Drew fixes him with his most unimpressed look, and Harrison cackles.
“I will make your coffee decaf,” Drew threatens, and Harrison’s laughter cuts off abruptly.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.” Harrison is confident in his ability to win a stare down, but Drew only lets it go on a few moments before he calls out Freya’s name.
“You monster,” Harrison gasps, clutching his heart, and Drew finally smiles, smug.
Freya appears, and looks between them bemusedly.
“Don’t listen to a word he says,” Harrison tells her, and she rolls her eyes at them before heading back into the coffee shop.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Presented without context:
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——
“Do you have any travel books about Atlantis?”
Drew narrows his eyes.
“Did you google annoying questions to ask booksellers?”
Harrison quits whilst he’s ahead, but he’s still snickering as he walks out the door.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the day: Murder In The Bookshop — Carolyn Wells
(But make it gay and less sexist and also probably not at all what it’s actually about. We uh, may not have read this one. That’s not the point)
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——
Harrison has roughly three thousand interviews to conduct today, and his advisor’s been on at him about ‘looking professional’, whatever the fuck that means, so he has to do said three thousand interviews in this horrible suit, and now he’s standing by the counter at Kaleidotrope looking at the sign on their coffee machine that says Out Of Order.
“What do you mean, it’s broken?”
Freya bites her lip. “It’s not your fault and I don’t blame you in the slightest,” he reassures her, “but what do you mean broken.”
“Coffee machines aren’t supposed to make the noises it was making,” she says, and Harrison lets himself wail a bit. It’s maybe a tad dramatic; he gets some side-eyes from other customers.
“Today of all days,” he laments.
“Big day? Nice suit, by the way.”
Harrison huffs.
“It’s supposed to make me look like someone half the Sidlesmith board will tell the truth to. Someone has to know something about how the Sidlesmith Magic got broken.”
“It never existed to break.” It’s Drew, popping around the counter, and Harrison moves his glare from the coffee machine to him. Drew blinks at his expression, but then looks him up and down in a way that makes Harrison just the tiniest bit unsure if it’s his expression or the suit. “Nice suit.” Drew adds. If Harrison tries to say anything right now, it will not be polite. “You can stop looking like you’re going to murder me, I have a temporary fix for your caffeine addiction.” He puts a jar of instant coffee on the counter.
“I can make you a decent mocha out of that,” Freya offers.
“Please. Also, I am very, very sorry for being grumpy at you, please make me coffee.”
Drew snorts at him.
“You sticking around today?” Drew asks whilst Freya starts putting his drink together.
“Can’t. The Board of Directors await.”
A strange, apprehensive look passes over Drew’s face.
“Is… everything alright?” He asks, which, Harrison thinks he should be the one asking him that, given that expression.
“Yeah, it’s just for my research. But I’m normally interviewing undergrads who know they’ll get course credit for taking part, so. Higher stakes today.”
“Finish your coffee before you go talk to them,” Drew tells him, which is— odd. “Good luck.” He disappears without an explanation, and Harrison follows him with his eyes as far as he can. Freya’s got his to-go cup ready when he looks up.
“Probably so you don’t risk spilling it on yourself,” she says, but the explanation rings somewhat untrue. He doesn’t have the time or mental space to think about it, though. He takes the coffee, thanks her again, and goes.
(He bins the cup once he gets to campus, though. No point ignoring cryptic remarks.)
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the Day: The Secret History, Donna Tartt
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KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
Stop asking us if we’ve killed someone obviously we haven’t killed someone
12 2 26
KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
No we haven’t summoned anything or anyone either. Not that we’d tweet about it if we had.
8 0 12
KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
Kaleidotrope Books: no mysteries here
6 4 33
KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
Also if anyone manages to read this book without saying What The Fuck multiple times. a) we don’t believe you b) tell us your secrets
5 3 16
KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
We didn’t mean literally. Please learn about plausible deniability, thanks.
4 3 45
——
His interviews go well, relatively speaking, though they’d been effusive on the topics Harrison cares about less and tight-lipped on the relevant ones. If Harrison was a cynical person, he’d wonder if they’d pre-prepared themselves. But that would be ridiculous. It’s been a couple of years since the whole magic thing, it’s not like anyone but Harrison cares. Well, no one but Harrison and the guy who cared enough to fund the project. Life at Sidlesmith had carried on; hell, even tropes at Sidlesmith had carried on. The gift shop still has their line of greetings cards for every meet cute — the more Harrison researches, the more he’s finding that very, very little changed after whatever big reveal had forced Sidlesmith’s hand in denying the magic and rapidly changing their marketing so as not to get sued on false advertising. It should have collapsed, Harrison is convinced. With nothing at its centre, the whole thing Happy Ending thing should have collapsed. He doesn’t understand why it didn’t, doesn’t get how people could just carry on as if nothing had changed. Harrison’s been dreaming about that magic for half his life now, it can’t just— peter out.
Anyway. Everyone else will care more once Harrison gets a paper published on it — he’ll make sure of that.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
By popular request, best romance novel titles with puns (a thread).
1. Earls Just Want to Have Fun
2. Say Yes to the Marquess (1/?)
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——
Transcribing the conversations keeps him confined to his office for a few days, and when he’s finally free to go back to Kaleidotrope again he sees something like relief flash over Drew’s face. He’s probably just imagining it though, or if not, imagining that it’s about something other than the money he brings in buying all this coffee and all these books.
It’s not like he has time to dwell on it today — he’d known it was going to be hectic, but he thought he’d at least have time to sit down and drink a cup of coffee. Drew’s got customers around him, so Harrison just gives him a tired wave, joining the queue in the cafe instead of going over to talk. Freya has already made his usual by the time he gets to the front, and he feels bad asking her to change it into a takeaway cup. He doesn’t need to, though: she looks him up and down, then pulls the drink away.
“You need this to be stronger,” she tells him, and starts remaking it with an added shot of espresso. He’s the last in the queue, so she chats to him whilst she goes, and he ends up telling her about the talk he’s giving at the college tonight.
“Can we come?” She asks, and he blinks, surprised.
“I mean, if you want to hear me waffle on about my research for an hour, sure, I guess?”
He writes down the time and place for her, not really expecting too much — she’s probably just being polite.
He looks out later that evening at the crowd filling the lecture theatre and whistles to himself. One of the student societies is running this event, and the chair grins at him. “This is the most people we’ve got since the first week.”
Harrison recognises a lot of his students in the crowd, both new and old, and then— there’s Drew, looking back at him. Their eyes lock, and Drew smiles back at him.
“—Harrison?” The society chair says, and Harrison snaps his attention back.
“Sorry, sorry, yes, that’ll be fine.” He allows himself one more glance, and this time sees that Freya and Wendy have both come with Drew. Then he puts all that in a box in his brain, and shoves it down to deal with later. This talk is more important right now.
It goes well — he is a professional, after all — and in the questions after he only gets one ‘more of a comment than a question’, amongst a sea of actually intelligent questions from his students. He’s proud of them, and not entirely surprised by the amount of people who linger after they’re done, all wanting to ask him more.
He’s trying not to look around for Drew (and Wendy and Freya, of course), and he thinks he’s doing a reasonable job, at least until the point one of his colleagues casually asks who he’s waiting for. He shakes himself, pushing his disappointment back to deal with later, and keeps talking. The conversation is lively, and they’re there for a while before security eventually kicks them out to lock up the building.
Outside, he pauses to wrap his scarf more tightly around his neck, and it’s then that he sees them. Wendy and Freya are laughing, clearly at Drew, and Drew is reluctantly laughing too, the beginnings of a blush scattered over his cheekbones. Harrison takes a deep breath, pushes down the flutterings in his stomach, and heads over.
“Harrison!” Freya calls as she spots him, and Harrison grins, letting them shower him in compliments.
They talk for long enough that Harrison’s ears are freezing, and Wendy starts shivering. Freya and Drew exchange a glance, and Freya says casually,
“There’s a bar not far from here, shall we move this into the warmth?”
And it’s not like Harrison could ever say no to that.
Freya wraps an arm around Wendy and leads the way, Drew falling back with Harrison.
“Can I ask you more about your work? Or would you rather be done with that now?” He asks him, and Drew’s eyes when they meet his own are so warm that he’s not sure it’s even cold out anymore.
“You can absolutely ask me more,” Harrison tells him, trying to convey that warmth back. He isn’t expecting the kind of questions Drew asks. It’s more than entry level stuff, and though Drew doesn’t know the terminology, it’s clear he understands what Harrison is looking at. It’s fun, to be able to go so in depth, especially with someone outside the subject, if somewhat surprising. He pauses at something Drew says, frowns.
“That’s good,” He says. “Can I write that down?”
“By all means,” Drew tells him, and Harrison spends the first five minutes in the bar scribbling away into his notebook. When he looks up, there’s a drink in front of him.
“I didn’t want to presume,” Drew tells him, “so we can swap if you want.”
“But we think we can make a few assumptions based on your coffee order,” Wendy tells him, and Harrison spends the next few minutes overwhelming her with praise about her coffee making skills.
The conversation moves away from Harrison’s work to more normal things, and Harrison is surprised by how easily the conversation flows. It’s been a long time since he’s had this much fun, he realises. It’s not like he doesn’t have other friends, but, well. There’s a reason he has so much free time to spend frequenting the bookshop. So he’s enjoying himself, and Drew is not-quite flirting with him in that way he has, the thing that had stopped when Harrison had disappeared.
Drew’s phone pings, and he ducks out of the conversation to answer it.
He returns with the woman Harrison had seen him with before, and Harrison feels it like a punch to the gut.
“Hal!” Freya shouts, excited over the noise of the bar, and hmm, Harrison knows that name.
It doesn’t take him long to place it as the other name he’s seen on Twitter, and if he wasn’t so busy trying not to think about so many things he’d probably have remembered faster. He’s good at hiding his emotions, but he hates it, and tamping down all this disappointment is going to cost him. He’d really thought Drew was— well. The moment he sees her, he knows he was wrong. Still, though, it’s nice to have friends, so he shuts down the jealousy and picks out his brightest smile. Another woman follows after her, and Harrison forces a positive spin in his head — more friends, more people to talk to, maybe one who doesn’t even work at Kaleidotrope.
“You’ve met Harrison, right?” Drew asks Hal. She frowns a little, and Harrison might be sad but seeing her gorgeous face frown makes it even worse.
“I don’t think so,” she tells him, “but I’ve heard so much about you.” She directs this at Harrison, a bare hint of a smirk passing her lips.
“And this is Sam, my fiancée,” she adds, gesturing to the woman with her, and Harrison’s heart skips a beat.
Harrison does the rest of the interaction on autopilot. Fiancée, she’d said. Fiancée.
Huh.
The night doesn’t stop getting better after that.
When he finally stumbles home, it’s far far later than he’d meant to stay out. But he catches himself grinning at his reflection, the happiest he’s felt in months, and can’t bring himself to regret it.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the Day: Social Psychology for Dummies
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——
He doesn’t say anything about it to Drew, but it’s clear he worked it out. On cynical days, Harrison wonders if the whole thing was orchestrated. Most of the time, he remembers that it was Freya who had first brought up going to the bar, and that Drew had had nothing to do with it. It’s getting pretty damn hard to find any reason to think Drew isn’t interested.
Except, of course, that he’s still a paying customer, and Drew is still working.
And yet, most days it doesn’t really feel like that’s a problem. Harrison keeps an eye on it, tries to take himself out of the picture and see it as an outsider sometimes. But Drew with other customers is different. Even with the other regulars — who are mostly just there for the coffee, not for the books as well — he’s kind, and funny, but he’s not what he is with Harrison.
Now they’ve met up outside all of their workplace, Harrison tentatively allows himself to call them his friends.
Some more months pass, and the ‘tentatively’ part of that drops. He and Drew have a bitter argument about The Time Traveller’s Wife, Drew saying things that definitely couldn’t be called Customer Service. They manage to wind it back, though, eventually finding something to agree on — it’s almost accidental, and stops both of them in their tracks. But complaining about Steven Moffat brings them back into alignment, and it isn’t long before they’re back to laughing, talking about lighter things. There’s no point where Harrison thinks he can’t come back tomorrow.
Things, he thinks to himself, are good.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Apparently we need to tweet about what the people want, and what the people want is werewolf reverse harem romances. You don’t have to buy these as a sandwich book but also we won’t discourage you from buying three books
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——
Sometimes, the conversations are just plain ridiculous.
“I mean, Sam’s the only character in the entire trilogy who isn’t dummy thicc,” he finds himself saying one afternoon, to a Drew whose head is already in his hands.
“Did you really just say that?”
“Well yeah, come on, Saruman was obviously evil, and Galadriel and Elrond should have been able to see that, not to mention Gandalf.”
Drew makes a muffled noise of discontent.
“Not that Sam isn’t also dummy thicc,” Harrison muses, mostly because he can see Drew watching him through his fingers, “but his heart surely cancels it out, right?”
“Why do I even let you in here?” Drew asks, mostly rhetorical, and Harrison’s peals of laughter ring out across the shop.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the Day: we don’t know, but it certainly isn’t Lord of the Rings today
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KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
No this isn’t an attack on Tolkien you don’t have to come for us
6 2 18
KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
If you keep this up we’ll make it a CS Lewis book to spite you.
6 2 26
——
He finally works up the courage to tell Drew to finish the book he’d given him.
“You’ll enjoy it, I think. Just ignore anything I wrote, and it’ll be fine.”
“I’m not going to ignore you, Harrison,” Drew says, and Harrison sees the ambiguity and tries desperately not to cling to it.
By the next day, Drew is halfway through, and he pushes down the vague twinge of anxiety knowing what he wrote on the last page. But listening to Drew gush, he turns calm. Drew will understand.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the Day: This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
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——
The next week is another busy one, both for Harrison and at the bookshop. He finds himself having to actually queue for his latte in the mornings before work, and although it’s already made by the time he gets to the front, he still doesn’t get much time to chat. He ends up having work still to do on the Saturday, and he wants to stay off campus. He’s told the grad students in his department not to work out of hours far too often to be caught doing it himself. So he drags himself out of bed, throwing on jeans and a t-shirt with a dumb slogan, too far from awake to think about things like buttons. The sky outside is blue, but too light a blue to be warm, so he throws on his biggest hoody as well and grabs his bag.
He’s timed it well. It’s a bit after nine, so all the people in office jobs have taken their coffee and left, and the rest of the world is still making its way there. It’s what he’d wanted: now he can slip into the booth in the corner, its wide view of the store enough of a distraction when he needs one. He gets a pastry with his coffee, and lets Wendy know he’s planning to stay most of the morning. She sympathises, tells him she’ll come over and distract him if she gets chance.
He gives himself ten minutes for his body to absorb the caffeine before he opens his laptop and gets to work. He manages almost an hour, the buzz of the shop a comforting background noise, soft conversations weaving in and out behind the whirr of the coffee machine.
A table nearby bursts into laughter, and it’s enough to nudge Harrison out of his working daze. He stretches his wrists out, then takes another sip of coffee only to find it long gone cold. He pulls a face, but drinks the rest of it anyway. He thinks about starting back up, but he’s not quite sure what to do next, so he gives himself a longer break. He checks his phone idly, then switches to people-watching. There are a lot of groups of friends out for brunch; varying ages from students to the two elderly men in the opposite corner, other regulars. They smile when they see him looking, and he waves back. He sees them more often than he gets to chat to them, but he hears Wendy sweet-talking them often, and they seem lovely. Hal swings by to check something behind the counter, and waves at him too. She looks somewhat fraught, but her smile still reaches her eyes, and Wendy catches her arm and says something that makes her laugh as she goes back into the bookshop proper.
He decides with a sigh that he needs to get back to work, and the noise level has increased enough that he gets his headphones out this time. He doesn’t play any music, happy with the noise that’s already there just to be muffled a bit. It takes him a while to settle back into it, but he manages to find his flow.
Harrison knows he gets tunnel vision in his work sometimes, and today is one of those days, everything else blending into the background as he focuses. So it startles him, when he finally looks back up and finds Drew sitting opposite him.
“Hi,” He says, and the surprise is so obvious in his voice that Drew laughs.
“Hi,” He says, and Harrison thinks nonsensically that he’d like to make a chart of all the times Drew has ever smiled at him, ranked by how warm each of them have made his voice sound.
“Sorry,” he manages to say. “I was concentrating, I have no idea how long you’ve been there.”
“Not too long,” Drew tells him.
“I thought it was your day off?”
“It is, I’m just here for the— coffee.” There’s a pause before the last word, and Harrison wonders what he’d really been planning on saying. “And I figured I should finally finish that book of yours,” he continues, and Harrison takes a moment to process that. And then another moment, to wonder how his life has come to this. He’d made his peace with Drew seeing what he’d written all that time ago, but he wasn’t expecting Drew to be reading in front of him.
“How far in are you?” He asks, trying to cover his discomfort. Drew tells him, and, like they always do, they get off-topic. Harrison thinks about all the work he has left to do, and he thinks about how Drew is going to finish the book to find that Harrison had tried to ask him out months ago, and Harrison thinks, well, if we’re talking, he can’t finish the book.
They don’t notice what time it is, until someone asks to borrow the spare chair from their table, and they both look up to see it’s the middle of the lunchtime rush.
“Oh shit,” Harrison says. “I need to go.”
Drew is immediately apologetic, but Harrison waves him away.
“This was fun,” he tells him, then looks at the table and frowns. “And didn’t you only come for the coffee?” He asks, because the only mugs are from his own drinks. Drew stammers something out, and Harrison notes the blush on his cheeks. He really does have to go, though, so he saves him from more embarrassment.
He does wink at him on his way out, seeing as he hasn’t in a while. That sends the blush up to the tip of his ears, and Harrison commits that to memory as well.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
If you haven’t discovered Dr Chuck Tingle yet then you are one of today’s lucky 10000, allow us to introduce you… (1/?)
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——
Harrison genuinely does have a lot to do that week, a set of alumni interviews aligning with his undergrad grading, so the time he has to contemplate how close Drew is getting to the end of the book is limited. Not that it doesn’t cross his mind often. He swings between awkward and accepting — he doesn’t think it will change anything, not any more, but he’s still not sure. It’s been a long time since he’s given anyone his number, let alone someone he’s been kinda-sorta-probably flirting with for months. Perhaps if he’d had chance to talk to Drew things would be different, but the week passes with them just missing each other; fleeting glances the most interaction they get. Not that those themselves aren’t another thing vying for space in Harrison’s brain — the warm smile that’s a grounded point in a harried day; the carefully crafted blank look directed towards him when a customer turns away, letting Harrison know just how stupid Drew had found that question.
Despite all that, Harrison’s work somehow manages to get done, and before he knows it it’s Friday night, and he’s collapsing on his bed with no intention of leaving the apartment for the rest of the weekend. He’s too exhausted even to scroll social media, though he does check the Kaleidotrope twitter to see another Cal tweet. This one is accompanied by a photo: one of their takeaway cups, a heart poured into the foam.
If a latte heart is poured into a takeaway cup whose lid is never removed, did it really even ever exist?, it reads, and Harrison — Harrison has a degree in psychology, he knows, he knows that it’s purposefully open enough that anyone can project onto it. It’s a classic staple of social media, there are studies. But still. It feels like it’s just for him.
It’s been a long week, so for once he lets himself indulge in the fantasy. In his daydream, Cal isn’t just a faceless intern in an office somewhere, creating generic tweets for generic coffee shops. Instead, Cal is secretly Drew, and secretly is writing just for Harrison. There’s a dramatic reveal one day, when the bookshop is conveniently empty, and Drew stares deep into his eyes before leaning in and—
Harrison’s phone buzzes, and the daydream shatters.
He blinks himself back into reality only to see it’s a text from an unknown number. It’s probably spam, and he’s tempted to just ignore it and return to his head. It’ll bug him if he doesn’t know, though, so he shakes himself and unlocks his phone.
It’s not spam. It’s a wall of text, and Harrison picks out character names within it as his eyes glance over it. Before he can even begin to read it, another message adds itself to the thread.
Oh, it’s Drew from the bookshop by the way.
Drew from the bookshop, as if he’d needed to specify that.
Hi, Harrison writes. This is why you’re wrong.
Drew takes a while to respond, but when he does it’s another wall of text, and Harrison realises he’s spent that entire time typing. Grin even wider, he sends a string of responses, jumping around Drew’s argument with each one. They go back and forth a few more times each, and then Drew’s response doesn’t appear. Harrison finds himself rereading the whole thread, partially giddy, partially looking for something that might have upset Drew, to make him take this long to reply. He doesn’t find anything, but he does find another point he wants to make, and once fifteen minutes have passed he decides Drew has probably had to go do something else, and so it’s fair game to send it for when he gets back.
He’s not expecting a quick response.
He’s especially not expecting an immediate response that says, can I call?
Harrison panics for a second, and then Drew follows up with, writing all this out is so much effort, and Harrison breathes again.
Sure he writes back, and then Drew decides to torture him by not immediately ringing.
Counting the seconds Drew keeps him waiting would be rude, probably. Harrison counts them nonetheless.
And then Drew does call, and he has to muffle a squeal into his pillow before he can let himself pick up. Drew doesn’t even bother with a hello, he just goes right into it, washing Harrison’s nervousness away with the sound of his voice.
They stay on the phone for hours, and he doesn’t even mind the loss of his night off.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
If a latte heart is poured into a takeaway cup whose lid is never removed, did it really even ever exist?
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KaleidotropeBooks
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This was a rhetorical question no we do not need to set up a poll to decide the answer. But yes we have been practicing, thank you for appreciating our efforts.
5 0 14
——
Harrison isn’t really sure what the protocol is after that. He wakes the next morning, and lets himself grin into the pillow for a while, toes curling with happiness. He thinks about texting Drew again, then pauses. Would it be weird? Maybe Drew just wanted to talk about that one book. (As if they hadn’t covered so many last night.)
He makes himself breakfast instead of fixating on it, then sits down with his bullet journal to set up for the week ahead. Soft music plays through his phone speakers, and he hums along. For a while, it’s easy to keep his focus on drawing boxes and writing in dates and tasks. He doesn’t always devote this much time to it, but he’s looking for a distraction today, so he gets his pens out and starts adding colour. He allows himself thinking time during the repetition of decorating, as long as he stops when he’s done. Probably waiting to see if Drew texts first is the polite thing, as much as he doesn’t want it to be. Unless that never happens but he reads something Drew needs to know about immediately, that seems fair.
Half an hour later, his phone dings with a new message. Harrison almost drops it in his coffee in his haste to see who it is. It’s Drew. Obviously it’s Drew.
Just had a customer ask me about the Netflix Persuasion movie. He says. Please talk to me about literally anything else so I don’t have to think about it.
Well obviously they fucked the casting he replies.
??
Look I don’t want to ship Anne and Mr Elliot but Henry Golding made that a very difficult thing
You’re dead to me
I repeat, *Henry Golding*
But yes obviously it was a disaster. I can see what they were trying to do with it, but, no.
You can see even that?? I don’t think they even read the book
They leaned too hard into Fleabag, but I think they could have achieved … something, at least, if they’d gone more down The Office route. Like, the shared experience of social interactions going terribly. Idk. Anne’s so quiet and I feel like they could have given us a really cool way to get more inside her head. And instead it was… that.
Drew replies with a Dwight meme. After that, Harrison stops worrying about it, and just texts.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Someone asked about the Persuasion film today.
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KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
Okay no I’m not done can you imagine what we could have had?
6 2 17
KaleidotropeBooks
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I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago.
8 12 29
KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved
4 10 26
KaleidotropeBooks
Replying to @KaleidotropeBooks
Hal says I should stop before I quote the whole book 😔
3 1 25
——
Drew tells him every day that Hal makes his favourite bakes, now. It’s the best.
(“Do you suddenly have cinnamon bun senses or something?” Freya asks him the fourth time he shows up to get one for breakfast. Harrison’s eyes flick to Drew, who’s pouring coffee and pretending not to be listening, but whose cheeks are also flushing slightly.
“Yes,” Harrison says. “I got bitten by a radioactive cinnamon bun, now I can tell whenever I’m within fifty feet of one.”
Drew snorts, and almost spills the coffee he’s holding. Freya looks suspicious, but she lets it go.)
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Book of the Day: Bisexually Sandwiched By My Sentient Peanut Butter Husband And Our New Living Jelly Girlfriend, by Chuck Tingle
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——
“Cal agrees with me!” Harrison throws into an argument one day.
“Oh, Cal?” Drew says, something approaching derision on his face.
“What’s wrong with Cal?” Harrison asks, annoyed on the behalf of someone he’s never even seen.
“Wrong with—?” Drew rubs at his forehead, looking as annoyed as Harrison feels. Harrison’s face stays stony, and after a second Drew relents a little.
“There’s nothing wrong with Cal. He’s just — social media.”
“And what’s wrong with social media?” Harrison inquires haughtily, and Drew quirks an eyebrow at him, and suddenly the argument feels back in safer territory, as they cover all the pros and cons of various social medias.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Freya says I should make the Book of the Day be Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which just goes to show she hasn’t actually read it. We’re working on that.
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——
“How’d you end up opening this place, anyway?” Harrison asks idly one day, mid-conversation.
“My Grandmother left me the place,” Drew says, and Harrison doesn’t pick up on the strangeness in his voice until he’s said,
“Damn, wish I had a grandmother who’d leave me real estate,”
“I’d rather I still had her, actually.”
Drew looks away, and Harrison can see the hurt splayed out across his face.
“Oh, Drew, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—“
“No, I know you didn’t,” He says, recovering himself a little. “Sorry.”
Harrison holds his gaze steady, and Drew grimaces a bit. “Sorry,” He says again. “It’s. Whatever. It was a long time ago.”
“Well, it’s not whatever. But we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
Drew tilts his head.
“Did you just quote To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before at me?”
Harrison looks startled, caught out, but then his face turns sly.
“Did you just recognise me quoting To All The Boys I’ve Loved before at you?”
Drew makes a noise that could be laughter, could just be abject embarrassment.
“You know what? I think I have some shelving to do.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, somewhere far away from this conversation,” but he’s definitely laughing as he turns away, and Harrison is too.
Hal drops by his table, a little bit later that afternoon. He looks up at her, still a little apprehensive in her company.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen him laugh all week,” she says to him, and she doesn’t give any context, but there’s a heaviness in her eyes. “Thank you,” she says, fiercely, and turns and walks away before he can think of a response.
When he goes up to the counter to pay, he finds Wendy under strict instructions that his drink is already covered.
He thinks about it a lot throughout the rest of the day, and the days ahead. He thinks about the edge in Drew’s voice, that look of hurting flashing by his face. How quick he’d been, to wipe it away. Harrison’s surprised he let him see even that much. Drew’s the type of person to hide emotions completely, he thinks. It means something, that he’d felt comfortable letting him see. Harrison isn’t going to ignore it this time.
And so he goes back to the shop every day that week, hanging around until he’s coaxed at least one huff of laughter out of Drew.
He thinks Wendy and Freya might have spotted what he’s doing, in the way his drinks always seem to have more cream each time he manages it, or how there’s so often ‘leftover cookies that he really should have because otherwise they’ll need to be binned’. They don’t say anything though, so neither does he, but it makes him smile every time. It’s not that he was looking for Drew’s friend’s approval, not exactly. But it’s nice to know he has it all the same.
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Book of the Day: A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness. Sometimes, you just need to say it out loud
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Runner Up Book of the Day: To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, Jenny Han. Do not @ me.
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——
They never do end up going for drinks again like they’d planned that night after Harrison’s talk, but he does find more and more of his time at the shop is spent talking to them all, rather than working or browsing. He won’t pretend that most of it isn’t with Drew, but often it’s with Freya, gossiping over the customers, trying to work out whether the two girls in here so often are fake-dating or real dating. Or it’s with Wendy, whose gentle curiosity means she truly knows most of her regulars. He learns from her as she greets the old guys in the corner by name, asks after their grandkids. Drew and Freya and Wendy talk to him whilst they’re closing up sometimes, letting him stay until they leave themselves, and Harrison always feels bad, feels like he should have left earlier, but they make him feel so welcome.
He finds out that Hal does most of the baking, that she tends to work those days he’s teaching — which finally explains how it had taken him so long to meet her. He learns about her fiancée, Samira, and that she’s a quarterback, which Harrison has to try very hard to be normal about. That Hal had met Drew in college, and neither of them had looked back. That, although she’d never say it out loud, Drew is her best friend, and she’s highly protective of him. He learns, slowly, her dry sense of wit, and every so often she’ll leave him wheezing with laughter from a single comment.
He learns other things, too. Like how mentioning the coffee shop on campus makes Wendy look sad, and makes Freya and Drew annoyed. Like how Drew is incredibly protective of his employees, and won’t stand for rudeness towards them. Like how the regulars won’t stand for rudeness towards any of them either, Harrison included. He hears Freya complaining about film school, and Wendy mention how much she’d hated her subject by the time she’d graduated. Drew doesn’t talk about school much, but on the rare occasions he sees Hal, he discovers that she can be convinced to tell tales of her and Drew’s college adventures with surprisingly little arm-twisting, and from there he finds out about Drew’s love of music, and how he’d wanted to be a journalist. Even when Drew shies from the topic, they still talk about anything and everything else. Harrison listens to him talk about the authors he can’t stand but has to stock anyway, and about the authors whose books he never really wants to part with, but also about tv shows and the local theatre’s productions, and once, unexpectedly, an impassioned rant about the squirrels in Stoneybrook.
He’s still not solved the mystery of Cal, not entirely. None of the others ever mention him, so Harrison’s pretty sure by now that he’s not some secretive separate employee. Some of the tweets must come from the four of them, there’ve been too many coincidences for that not to be the case. But whether there’s a generic social media manager somewhere behind the scenes too, some corporate account manager in an office far away, he still isn’t sure. He’s tried to dig, subtly, a few times, but they seem to delight in him getting nowhere. In his heart, he still wants it to be Drew, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking. He’ll get them one day, he knows it.
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Book of the Day: Tweet Cute, by Emma Lord. Don’t go getting any ideas about it though
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——
On a quiet day in late May, Harrison unapologetically sets himself up in an entire booth, covering the whole table in papers. His bullet journal sits in the middle of it all, open to a page headed The Sidlesmith Magic.
There’s nothing else on the page.
Yet.
He has a progress report coming up, and he needs to start tying everything together. He’s getting somewhere, he knows he is. He’s talked to enough alumni, enough staff — even the Board of Directors had managed to give him some stuff that wasn’t direct contradictions.
Drew brings him another coffee mid-afternoon, waiting patiently to set it down whilst Harrison clears a space big enough to set a mug in. He doesn’t disappear again straight away, instead standing next to Harrison and looking down at everything he has gathered.
“You talked to the librarians too, right?” He asks.
“Hm? No, I haven’t. You think I should?”
“If anyone knows about campus events, wouldn’t it be them?”
“Well, yeah…”
“But?”
“But what?”
“No, there’s something you aren’t telling me here.”
“I don’t think so,” Harrison tries, but Drew just looks at him with that stupidly handsome face of his until he gives in.
“Ugh, fine. The library’s too goddamn quiet and it scares me. I went to see the Romance Reading Room once—“
“Obviously,” Drew interjects under his breath.
“—and it was gorgeous, of course, but then the librarians got annoyed and… anyway. No, I haven’t spoken to them. You’re right though. I just feel like I’m missing something at the centre of all this.”
“Yeah,” Drew says, but he sounds distracted. “You staying all day?”
“That’s the plan! Unless… that’s okay, right?”
“What? Yeah, of course it’s okay.” There’s warmth in his voice again, though his thoughts still seem to be elsewhere. Someone clears their throat by the counter, and Drew rolls his eyes at Harrison then goes back to the counter.
By the time 3pm comes around, Freya’s back, and refusing to give Harrison any more coffee despite his most pleading face.
“But I’m getting nowhere,”
“And you think more coffee will help with that? Not a chance. Take a break, Harrison.”
“Ugh. Fine. But I see what you’re doing here. Anyway. You had your seminar this morning, right? Tell me what the art bros said this time.”
“That may raise your heart rate even more than another coffee would.”
“Worse than last time?”
“So much worse.”
Annoyingly, Harrison does feel better when he goes back to it after a break, and the mind map he’s slowly been adding to begins to sprawl out across the paper. He gets a little distracted thinking about Drew, but while replaying their conversation earlier back he starts thinking about missing pieces again.
He grabs a fresh sheet of paper, going back to the interviews from the Board. He’d assumed they were businessmen fluent only in business speak, talking round in tangents because that’s all they knew. But what if… what if they were talking around something that they didn’t want Harrison to know. He keeps going, feeling out the edges of it, tying things together. He’d dismissed the rumours of a student being kicked out as the usual dramatisation of any campus event, but it fits together with a couple of the Board’s more cryptic statements. But if— if a student had discounted the magic somehow, and then been expelled for it, but there never was any magic so the grounds for expelling them wouldn’t stand up to reason… There’s something in that. It doesn’t, of course, explain anything at all about why the students had chosen to just keep going with the illusion; to ignore the magic and just keep the tropes. That part is technically his real focus, but still. The whole thing is a mystery that Harrison has been pondering for far longer than he’s even lived here. It’s funny — if he’d been here as an undergrad, he’d have watched it happen in real-time. But ugh, he doesn’t want to think about that right now.
He’s saved from his thoughts by Freya, who slides into the bench opposite him. It’s only when she says hey that he realises how late it’s gotten.
“Need me out so you can close up?” He asks.
“No, actually. You don’t have anywhere to be, right?”
“No, but—“
“Good. Stick around, Drew wants to talk to you.”
“What? Freya— come back, you can’t just say that then walk off—“
She turns back to him, snickering.
“It’s fine, I promise. I think he just wants to ask about your research. The whole thing was a massive mystery in his, what, junior year? I think he’s still curious about what actually happened.”
“… wait. Drew went to Sidlesmith?”
Freya blinks at him.
“Yes?” She says slowly, as if this was obvious knowledge.
“Drew went to Sidlesmith. Drew.”
“Yes.” Freya doesn’t have Wendy’s infinite patience, and it’s very obvious right now.
“Our Drew? Grumpy cynical ‘terrible business owner’ Drew? He went to the most romantic school in the country? He doesn’t even like romcoms!”
“Romcoms are unrealistic,” Drew says, appearing through the door to the kitchen.
“They aren’t supposed to be—“ Harrison sputters, and Drew just smirks at him.
“Freya, do you mind finishing off in there? It should be almost there, I just want to be sure everything’s prepped for Hal in the morning.” She looks between them, then makes herself scarce without complaint. It’s strange, to suddenly be alone with Drew, even if she’s not exactly far away.
“She said you wanted to talk to me?” Harrison tries to keep the apprehension out of his voice, but he mustn’t suppress all of it.
“Did she tell you that in the most cryptic way possible?” Drew asks, and his cheeks work again when Harrison waves a hand. “It’s not, I promise. I’m just nosy. About your work.” He clarifies.
“Freya said… you were there?”
“I mean, yeah.”
“And you’re only mentioning this now? You were at my talk!”
“Should I be apologising?”
Harrison stops, takes a deep breath, lowers his arms back to his sides.
“I have a deadline coming up,” he explains, and sees Drew understand. He comes and sits where Freya had, looking at the chart still on the table.
“I didn’t say anything because I thought you were focusing on what happened after, and I… didn’t exactly see much of that.”
“No?” There’s something reticent in Drew’s voice.
“No,” he sounds distracted again. “Can I—?” he gestures to Harrison’s notebook, and Harrison turns it to face him, watching him read through it. He’s considering it carefully; he looks like he’s deliberating something.
“Would it be a problem,” he asks eventually, “if you had answers but couldn’t disclose your source?”
Harrison does him the service of considering it before answering.
“My study is technically into what happened after the magic was disproved. Everything before that is more just… context gathering. If you want to say something about what happened after, I could only use that if I had an interview recording, even if it was anonymous. If it’s about the rest of it, it’s not technically within the bounds of my study, so, probably not.”
Drew points to the question mark in the middle of the page.
“What if I can answer that question?”
“Then my research doesn’t matter, I’ve been trying to solve that mystery since undergrad. Tell me everything.”
Drew smiles at his enthusiasm, but it’s fleeting. He looks back down at the table.
“I probably should have made us coffee before we started,” he defers. Harrison gets the impression he needs to tread lightly here.
“Freya cut me off for the day,” he admits, instead of telling him to get on with it.
“Well, in that case…” Harrison can see him biting his tongue.
“Why Sidlesmith, of all places?” He asks gently, hoping starting at the beginning might make Drew more comfortable. He wants answers, but not at Drew’s expense.
“They have a highly rated communications course,” Drew tells him, like he’s said the words many times.
“And?” Drew isn’t the only one who can tell when he’s holding information back.
“And… they offered me a good scholarship.” Harrison doesn’t say anything, and gets rewarded for it. “And it was far away from home, and I was seventeen. I was— seventeen.” He’s not sure what Drew is really saying, when he repeats that, but it’s okay. That’s not the point.
“I wanted to be a journalist, so I joined the school paper. It was… half of it was a bunch of crap, honestly. Well.” He huffs a laugh. “You’d enjoy some of it, if it was still published.” Harrison makes a half-offended noise, just to see the hint of a smile on Drew’s face again.
“One of the librarians brought a story to us,” he continues. “She’d found something in the library renovations, and thought it had big implications for the whole school. The whole town, really. She wanted to know if we’d print it.”
“And you did.”
Drew shakes his head. “We didn’t. Not then. She wouldn’t show it to us, said she’d hidden it because she was being followed. I… honestly, I think I was more worried for her health than I actually believed her. But she was clearly distressed, so I agreed to meet up with her again if she could give me something concrete.
She met me at the Student Union the next day, but before she could say anything, campus security showed up and just… took her away.”
“Like… kidnapping?”
“I don’t know, honestly. Maybe she was having problems with paranoia, I don’t know. Her name was Dorothea. You might have already known this if you’d talked to the librarians,” he adds, knocking Harrison’s knee under the table. Harrison pulls a face.
“So Dorothea never gave you anything?”
“No. But… I mean, I wanted to be a journalist. So I tried to find out the truth.”
Harrison has to hold back a comment at that. It’s just— book-selling, terrible-business-owner Drew is unfairly hot already. The idea of him sneaking around trying to uncover the truth, it’s. Well. Unimportant, right now.
“She didn’t exactly make it easy for me, I’ll give her that. I’ll tell you that whole story another time, if you want.” Harrison nods, and Drew continues. “But I found the Valentine, and the Valentine turned out to be not a weird magical creature that granted happy endings and forced people into trope, but instead, a contract.”
“Between Sidlewood and Coopersmith, right?” This much, at least, he’s been able to find out. That Drew was involved, was pivotal no less, is a full revelation in itself, but he’s trying to keep the questions encouraging.
“Exactly. Saying their marriage was a sham, they didn’t want to spend time with each other, et cetera, et cetera.”
“What did you do?”
Drew stares down at the table again, then lifts his chin and meets Harrison’s eyes.
“I published it. The idea that people were just, forced into a relationship by a set of stupid circumstances, and felt like that was it for them? I hated it. I just. I hated it. I didn’t want anyone to be living a lie.”
Harrison lets that sit, for a while.
“You can judge me, if you want.” There’s a foundation of steel in Drew’s tone, like he’s been bracing for this judgement for a long, long time.
“Why would I judge you?” He tries to keep his tone neutral.
“What, you haven’t looked at the statistics on how many Sidlesmith couples broke up after the news broke?”
“I haven’t,” Harrison admits. “But people still come to Sidlesmith to find their trope.” Drew groans. “Oh, don’t give me that. Look, people might not believe in the magic anymore, but there’s a lot to be said for the openness to experience on this campus compared to others. People are willing to try here, Drew. That’s what the difference is. It’s not magic, you’re right. And maybe you’re right that some people felt pushed into it. But if people broke up because that was gone, then it wasn’t much of a relationship at all. It’s probably even a good thing, in the long run. So I’m not going to judge you. You did what you thought was best.”
Drew looks at him for a long time.
“The Board of Directors didn’t see it like that.” He says eventually. “And someone needed to take the fall.”
“You were the student who got expelled.”
“Yep. Kicked out, and student visas are a nightmare, so I got kicked out the country, too.”
“Drew, that’s…”
“Dramatic?”
“Awful. That’s awful. That they can just do that. Wasn’t there anything—?”
“I could have sued, if that’s what you’re thinking. Probably would have won, too. But…” His hands go still on the table. “My Gran was in hospital by that point. She needed me there.” He looks so, breathtakingly sad, that Harrison can’t speak. Drew clears his throat, uncomfortable. “Turned out she’d had plans involving this place.” Harrison remembers seeing a fraction of this sadness on Drew’s face before, that day he’d told Harrison he’d inherited the bookshop. He wants to reach out and take his hand, but he doesn’t know if Drew will spook.
“How was it, coming back?”
“Better than being there,” Drew says instantly, bitterly. “But that’s another story for another day.”
“What I don’t get,” Harrison says, instead of pulling any more on that thread, “is why the Board did anything at all. Couldn’t they have just discredited the story? How many people would have read it, really? Sorry,” He adds.
“No, you’re right. That would have been the sensible approach. But there were idiots scared they were going to lose millions in court cases over false advertising; I think they just panicked.”
“And proved the truth because of it,” Harrison muses. They lapse into silence once again, both thinking hard.
“Can I ask you something?” Drew says eventually. Harrison’s mouth goes dry.
“Of course you can.” Drew’s offered up so much of himself tonight, it’s only fair Harrison answers too.
“Did you know about Sidlesmith before the whole,” he gestures to himself, Harrison’s notebook, “thing?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just… what you said about wanting to know the truth.”
“I did,” Harrison admits. He wasn’t expecting this to be the truth shared, but he takes a steadying breath. “I—I’ve wanted to be here since I was fourteen.”
“But you didn’t do undergrad here?”
“No.”
“Couldn’t?”
“No, I could’ve.” Drew looks at him curiously. “I… wanted it. I wanted it so badly, and it was fucking terrifying. I couldn’t face not getting in. So I tanked my application. On purpose.” He’s never admitted this out loud before, not even to his cousins.
“But you’re here now,” Drew says, a statement. His words are reassuring.
“Well, someone gave me a good mystery to solve.” He smiles at Drew, searching for solid ground beneath them. “Do you think we’d have been friends? If we met back then?”
Drew snorts, and Harrison affects outrage.
“You think I’m grumpy now,” Drew says.
“You think I’m overly optimistic now.”
They laugh, and Drew shifts.
“I should probably go help Freya finish up,” he says. Harrison blinks; he’d forgotten there weren’t alone. “Thanks, though. For hearing me out.”
“Are you kidding? Thank you for telling me.”
“All in the name of science.”
“Psychology thanks you,” Harrison says formally, and Drew shakes his head fondly. “I’ll get out of your hair.” He gazes at the question mark in the centre of his notebook for a moment more, then snaps it closed and starts packing up his bag. Drew walks him to the door so he can lock it again after him, and he hesitates just inside. Harrison is having to work very hard not to look at his lips.
“Goodnight, Drew,” he says nonsensically when Drew doesn’t speak first. It’s barely even evening, the sun still up even if the clouds are low.
“Goodnight, Harrison,” Drew replies, without question. He opens the door, and they take one last long look at each other before Harrison nods, and makes himself walk away.
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Book the Day: Contract Law for American Mages and Sorcerers, 1745–1861
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——
Harrison’s week gets busier, given all the new information. There’s a lot he can’t use, but tracking down a copy of the school newspaper should give him a lot, even if he does have to venture into the library for it.
He remembers Drew saying he’d like it, so he spends one late evening reading through it. Drew is as correct about his reading taste as he ever is: Harrison’s utterly delighted by the tales of tropes going to plan. He’s about to call it a night, too slowed down by cooing, when a column catches his eye. He doesn’t understand why, at first, but the column is lovely, a down to earth reaction to the magic revelation, and a call to arms for the student body to keep their hearts open. It’s so lovely, in fact, that he reads it through twice before he notices the name at the end.
Cal.
Calamum Nomen, to be precise, but it’s signed off by Cal. Harrison’s already overlooked too many coincidences when it comes to Drew and this puzzle. He pulls Twitter up on his phone, scrolling back through the Kaleidotrope account until he reaches some good threads to compare. There are similarities in the writing, but nothing feels definitive — the subjects are just too different. Grabbing his laptop back from his bedside table, he logs onto the library site, searching the archives for any digital copies of the paper.
There are a couple of post-docs in the linguistics department who he vaguely knows from awkward icebreakers, and he wonders if they’d help him, if he asked. He thinks they probably would. He’s halfway to emailing Kruti when he stops to wonder what exactly it is that he’s doing here. Is this newspaper article relevant to his research? Yes, almost certainly. Is the link to Kaleidotrope Books relevant? No, almost certainly not. If both Cals do turn out to be the same person, (and if, just maybe, that person isn’t a stranger at all) could this be considered an invasion of privacy?
Maybe. And anyway: is there someone who could clear up this confusion categorically and irrefutably? If there is, it isn’t going to be a linguist.
He doesn’t send the email. He does spend more time in the library over the next day, getting copies of all Cal’s columns. His argument, when his advisor asks, is that these articles bring into question how much the Sidlesmith students had actually fallen for the myth of the magic, and instead imply that it wasn’t much of a shift for them to continue as usual even with the Valentine story put to rest. His advisor doesn’t seem sure, but she’s happy enough with the rest of his work that she doesn’t explicitly tell him to drop it. She asks more questions about the alumni experiences instead, and Harrison winces because he knows he’s neglected that data more than he should have. He should have a couple of years before he needs to start worrying about grants applications and funding, but still. He leaves the meeting with a better sense of direction, and tacit approval to keep exploring this whole Fluff Report thing. It’s a weight off his shoulders to be done with the review, no matter how informal the department had tried to pretend it was.
He also has a lot of questions he doesn’t know to ask Drew. He thinks about it often, especially in the days right after their conversation. But Harrison thinks almost as often about the sadness on Drew’s face, and about how awful the whole thing must have been, and he doesn’t manage to bring it up. Freya’s off for finals, too, so he’s busier than usual trying to make all the coffees for half the other students in town. By the time it quietens down, it’s been just a little too long, and Harrison doesn’t know how to broach it. He tells himself he’ll wait for Drew to bring it up first, and tries to ignore the part of his brain telling him he’s being a coward
Instead, he reads more of Cal’s columns, and more of Cal’s tweets, and feels his uncertainty slowly settle into something solid.
Instead, he thinks about what he’d said to Drew, when Drew had expected judgement for sharing the truth about the Valentine. About how Harrison had told him it was a good thing that the truth had come out. He’s always assumed that the loss of the magic must have been devastating, and it’s not like he hasn’t found the evidence from people who share that belief. But maybe it’s time he takes another look at any confirmation biases he’s bringing to this, because he truly hadn’t known he’d thought that until that moment.
He tries to look at it objectively, analytically, as if he’s coding just another interview. It’s more difficult, when it’s his life. But that devastation he’s looking for, that loss… Maybe some of it’s coming from him.
He’d been fourteen years old when he’d first found out about the Magic. Fourteen years old, searching for colleges not because he was a model student, but because it was already becoming clear back then that there was no place for him in his hometown. Fourteen-year-old Harrison, just beginning to understand what it meant to be different and lonely and alone, reading about the magic and thinking, maybe it’s this town. Maybe I’m not in the right place yet. Maybe it’s not me.
By seventeen it had been a mantra, a quiet underpinning to his desperation to get out. The idea that his fate existed elsewhere, that he wasn’t missing out was something to cling to in the face of everything else. And then in a moment it had all dissolved, and the thought that had ruined it was this: what if I go and I’m still this alone? What if I am the problem?
It wasn’t many words, but they’d eaten through his dreams and left him flat, stolen the hope right out of him. Adán had pulled him through it, kicking and screaming as it was, and he’d ended up at college just far enough away. By nineteen, he was rarely ever alone. It hadn’t stopped the loneliness, but at least he tried. Whenever anyone got close, though, there was always something in the back of his mind saying this isn’t my Sidlesmith trope. I’m not where I’m supposed to be.
At twenty-one the charm of constant company had worn off, and he’d thrown himself into his workload instead. Sure he was alone again, but that was okay: this time, he’d chosen it. And when he’d finally worked out how to study, he’d realised that he liked his subject, like, a lot. Like, enough to pursue it, enough to want to keep at it. He’d opened a lot of webpages for masters programs before he’d finally given in and opened the Sidlesmith website. He didn’t know if the magic had an age limit; if grad students were just as susceptible. It could suit him better now, he’d thought. He didn’t need it anymore.
And then he’d accidentally clicked a link, and it’d been right there staring him in the face: the Sidlesmith Magic wasn’t real. It had never been real.
He’d sat staring at the article the whole day, the room growing dark around him, trying to work out if the last eight years of his life had all been a waste. Trying to work out how much he might have lost out on by always thinking it could come later, always thinking he’d have more time. How many of his friends were already in stable, happy relationships? Hell, how many people from his high school were getting engaged? That could have been you, he thinks to himself, if you hadn’t been such a coward.
Except— the sociologist in him had slowly perked up, thinking about how something had clearly been happening at Sidlesmith, even if it wasn’t the magic they’d all been led to believe. And how, given all that, could they say for sure that it wasn’t real? He’d stared down the barrel of his graduation, and he’d thought: if there’s still a mystery to be solved, maybe this doesn’t have to be over yet.
And so he’d suddenly had a plan, and putting that plan into action meant applications and forms and research and planning, and all in all so many things to do that it didn’t matter how his friends were all finding jobs and moving on. He was going to get back to Sidlesmith, and he was going to solve the mystery, and then maybe the magic would grant him one last wish before it settled into whatever dust he’d found.
It had taken him another two and a half years to get to Sidlesmith, but he doesn’t regret it. He has more freedom in his research now, and no stupid classes to distract him and force him to take his eye off the real study, his real focus.
And now he’s here. All those years of wanting, of needing the magic. And yet, he can’t remember when he’d last thought to look for his trope. He could tell himself that those are for undergrads, that the staff had always been safely removed from the chaos. He could tell himself that everything he’s researched so far points to a lack of magic all along.
Or, he could admit to himself that the reason he’s not been thinking about his loneliness isn’t that he’s ignoring it any more, but because it’s not been demanding his attention. He hasn’t needed it, lately. How much of it, if he’s truly honest with himself, has it always been a choice? Not always, he knows, but maybe one day it had gone from something forced on him to a cloak he’d worn like armour. How much has he been relying on the spectre of the Sidlesmith Magic to protect himself? How much has he missed out on? How long has he spent being scared of something he’s never let himself try?
And how long has he been holding himself at a distance from something that’s already there? How long has he been keeping the word friend from himself, when it’s been so freely given? If he lets himself dig through the fear, are the other words he’s looking for, words other than ‘friend’?
Maybe. Maybe he’s never needed the Sidlesmith Magic after all. Maybe he’s found what he needed, even when the campus had nothing to do with it.
Maybe it was never magic he needed to fall in love.
Maybe he’s managed it all by himself.
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Book of the Day: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman
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——
It’s hard to carry on as normal when the quiet revelation fuzzes through his veins with even the smallest of prompts. It’s a lot, though, and he keeps it to himself, letting himself feel around the edges of it, parsing it out until it sits right in his stomach. Once he’s comfortable with the shape of it, he lets it sit for a while, basking in everything he’s never let himself have. He doesn’t try to metre the time he spends in the bookshop. It’s where he wants to be.
He gets there early one afternoon in June to find the glorious smell of gingerbread. He follows his nose without a second thought, and finds gingerbread men are today’s biscuit. And what’s more, all of them bear an uncanny resemblance to Drew.
“You’ll be wanting one of them, I take it?” Freya asks him. “Or two,” she continues, waggling her eyebrows, and Harrison does his best to hold back a blush.
“Yes, actually,” He says, not explaining how hungry he is. But she narrows her eyes, working it out for herself.
“Is this your lunch? Harrison.”
“I was busy!”
She humphs at him, and deliberately picks out the two largest pieces of gingerbread. She hands them to him whilst she gets started on his coffee, and Drew, finally finished with a customer, wanders over.
“Hey,” He says, casually, as he snaps off one of the legs from Harrison’s gingerbread and stuffs it in his mouth.
Harrison squawks in outrage, and Drew pulls an innocent face as he chews, leaning across to bump his shoulder with Harrison’s. When Harrison’s mock-glare doesn’t abate, he feigns surprise.
“Oh, sorry. Would you like to speak to the manager?” He turns his head to the side. “Yeah, no, the manager said it’s fine, he’s hungry.”
“I’m hungry,” Harrison tells him, bumping his shoulder right back. Drew snaps the other leg off, then begins to walk away.
“Good job you still have one and a half gingerbread men left to eat then,” he calls over his shoulder, and Harrison huffs, still stuck between outrage and delight.
When he checks Twitter that night, there's a tweet waiting from Cal.
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
Manager’s special: gingerbread men, 1.5 for the price of 2. Definitely worth a try
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And Harrison’s tried to ignore a lot of things in his life, and most of them he’s been wrong to ignore. So maybe it’s time he stopped all that, and just let himself, for once, believe.
——
All of a sudden, the weather trips its way into full summer, the evenings long and the sun finally, blessedly warm.
“Harrison! We’re going for a picnic, you coming?” Freya calls over to him, one afternoon when the weather’s beautiful.
He should probably decline, not bother them, but the invitation was so warm, and when he looks across, he can see the hope written plain on Drew’s face.
“Sure,” He says, and Drew doesn’t turn away quite fast enough to hide the delight on his face.
He’d felt the cheer in the atmosphere when he’d come in, and they catch him up in it as they close up for the day. Their laughter rings out across the shop, and Harrison is in love with this feeling of belonging.
They head to the corner shop for the things they couldn’t source from the bakery, and they make a raucous group, giddy with finishing work early and the brightness of the sun. There’s a park not far away, and they climb to the top of the hill before settling.
They eat, and laugh, and talk, and laugh some more. Hal and Sam show up with a frisbee, and they play catch for a while. It doesn’t take many terrible, terrible attempted throws from Drew before they ban him from the game, and he retreats back to the picnic blanket to watch instead, full of mock outrage at their teasing.
Harrison bows out not much later, and goes to join him, flopping into his back next to him.
“Too much?” Drew asks.
“I thought I’d better stop before they realised every successful throw was a fluke,”
Drew laughs. “Thanks for coming out here,” He says.
“Thanks for letting me crash your picnic,” he replies. Drew smiles, and Harrison smiles back, and they spend a full moment sat there, just smiling.
Then there’s a shout from the frisbee group, and the moment breaks. Drew clears his throat and moves back a bit, looking away to try and hide the scattered blush in his cheeks.
They go back to talking, and if they’re shifting ever so slightly closer to each other at every opportunity, neither of them are going to be the one to bring it up. It doesn’t take long before they’re in an intense discussion, arguing magic systems back and forth across various books.
“Come back to the shop with me.” Drew says all of a sudden.
Harrison, caught up in righteousness about his opinions, doesn’t question it, assuming they’re going back to find the source material. Drew seems a touch distracted on the way back down the hill, but it isn’t until Harrison notices his hands shaking slightly as he unlocks the door, turns the alarm off, that Harrison thinks oh. And then he’s the distracted one; this sudden realisation that this is the first time they’ve truly been alone together.
Drew locks the door again after them, and leads Harrison through, back to the Fantasy section. But instead of reaching for the book, he turns to Harrison instead. The shelves are narrow back here, but he’s definitely closer than he needs to be.
“Harrison,” he murmurs, and Harrison can’t look away from him. “I…”
“Drew,” Harrison prompts breathlessly when he trails off, and then—
“I’d really like to kiss you right now.”
“What? I— you— you want that?”
“I want to kiss you desperately.” The words tumble out of Drew like he can’t hold them back any longer, and surely this has to be a dream.
“What?” He hears himself say again helplessly, and Drew laughs a little.
“Is it really that much of a surprise? I have done for months.” He looks at Harrison carefully, and slowly moves to cup his face, oh so gentle.
“Can I?” He asks, stroking his thumb across Harrison’s cheekbone.
“Yes,” Harrison breathes, and Drew leans down to kiss him.
Kissing Drew is better than every fantasy, better than any of the romances Harrison has read. He never wants it to end, he wants the world to pause so he can stay still and memorise every single second, every tiny movement. Drew’s hands are as gentle as his lips, holding Harrison like he’s precious, and Harrison twines an arm round his neck to pull them both in closer.
“Did you start that argument just because you wanted to bring me back here?” Harrison breathes when they finally pull away for air.
“Not entirely,”
Harrison grins up at him, and he hears Drew’s breath catch.
“I’ve had some ideas of what we could do here myself.” He tells him, and proceeds to push him back against the shelf behind.
——
Kaleidotrope Books
@KaleidotropeBooks
No Book of the Day, today. Sometimes, reality is so good you just have to stay there.
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——
Epilogue
Two Years Later
The sign above the shop is still faded, and the windows are still murkier than they need to be. But now Harrison knows every chip in the paintwork, every brick, every stone paving the alley beside the shop that leads to Harrison’s favourite door. Inside the door is a staircase, one that leads to the apartment Drew lives in above the store. Harrison still loves the shop, but now it has competition in being his favourite place. Namely, Drew’s bed.
The bell above the door dings as he enters the bookshop, and Drew is out from behind the counter before the door even closes behind Harrison.
“How’d it go?” He asks, and Harrison’s face breaks from a smile to a grin.
“I got the funding!”
“That’s amazing!” Drew laughs in delight, picking Harrison up and spinning him around. One of Harrison’s feet connects with a bookshelf, but he doesn’t care, and when Drew puts him down he stays right in his arms. “I’m so proud of you,” Drew whispers in his ear, and Harrison doesn’t know if he can hug him any harder.
That’s when Freya and Wendy reach them, jumping on them to turn it into a group hug, and the volume in the shop must go up tenfold but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, because Harrison gets to stay. This grant application has taken months of work, and he’s been trying not to think about how few projects get funded, about what would happen if he didn’t get it and Sidlesmith decided they could get by with one less post-doc. But it doesn’t matter now. Freya and Wendy relinquish their hold on him, and he turns back properly to Drew, winding his arms round his neck.
“Three more years,” he says, all his raucous joy turning soft at the look in Drew’s eyes. “Any idea what I could do with them?”
“I have some suggestions,” Drew murmurs. “This, for example.”
And he kisses him, sweet and slow, hands gentle at Harrison’s waist, no care for anyone else in the bookshop, no care for anyone except Harrison himself.
“I love you,” he mumbles against his lips when they finally pull away for air, and Drew says it back without hesitation. The air smells of coffee and books and cinnamon buns, the shelves still tower above him. And it’s all Harrison has ever wanted, right here in a bookshop.