Chapter Text
"Spoke? Hurry up, bro. We are not going to let the guy wait for another ten more minutes," Parrot called out, his voice sharp as his knuckles thudded against the wooden door. The sound echoed through their cramped apartment, mixing with the faint hum of the outside world and the creak of floorboards beneath his shifting sneakers.
He tapped his foot in a restless rhythm, heel drumming against the floor as if he could summon his friend with sheer irritation. Every few seconds, he flicked his phone screen on and off, eyes darting to the glowing numbers. The minutes bled together, but somehow they still felt like hours. It was his little futile attempt to comfort himself knowing damn well they're already late.
Inside, Spoke’s voice floated back, annoyingly calm, as if no one was already impatienly waiting for him outside his room. "I’m trying! Patience is a virtue, you know, and clearly your new friend doesn’t have it!"
Parrot’s forehead thunked against the door with a muffled groan. "Bro, I am not about to let the guy wait. We’re already late as it is!" He cried out, already dreading the day.
"Let him wait, bruh!" came the lazy reply, Spoke unabashedly slowed his movements even more, accompanying them by a faint squeak of a hanger sliding across the wardrobe rod.
Parrot’s patience snapped another thread. He pulled back from the door, rolled his eyes so hard they nearly got stuck in the back of his head, and paced. Back and forth. Step, turn, step, turn. Each pass across the hall made the floor creak in protest. He could feel his pulse thumping in his temples, irritation growing like a buzzing mosquito he couldn’t swat.
And Spoke?
Oh, the guy definitely knows what he himself was doing. In all honesty, he doesn’t even care about meeting Parrot's new friend all that much. What he did care about though, was the fact that the said friend was apparently Parrot's new best friend.
Who wouldn't get offended by that?
It'd only been a few weeks since his last prank that inevitably caused him his closet friendship with Parrot. And he honestly did deserve the consequences of his own actions.
But still.
It had only been about two weeks.
And someone had already replaced him. Who wouldn't get offended by that? Let Parrot wait. Spoke doesn't care. He'd already internally decided to be as infuriating and unforgettable as possible.
After a good ten minutes, Parrot knocked again, harder this time, each rap on the door sharper than the last. When his knuckles grew sore, he resorted to drumming on the door with the side of his fist, and when that got old, he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, muttering curses under his breath.
"Spokeeee" He dragged out, already exasperated.
He glanced at his reflection in the narrow hallway mirror. His outfit was as basic as it came, an oversized hoodie with a cartoonish parrot print splashed across the chest, a pair of jogging pants that had seen better days, and his trusty sneakers. Nothing fancy, but it was comfortable. Practical. Exactly what one would wear during casual meet ups or just for the sake of wearing something comfortable to the skin. Aside from the sneakers, of course.
Spoke, though? Spoke didn’t know the meaning of the word casual.
When the door finally swung open, Parrot had half a mind to internally cheer, until his eyes landed on his roommate. His relief instantly soured into disbelief.
Spoke stepped out with the smug confidence of someone walking a runway, adjusting the cuffs of a jet-black suit jacket like he’d been born in it. A crisp tie knotted perfectly at his throat, pressed slacks falling neatly over leather shoes that gleamed like they’d just been stolen from a store display.
Parrot blinked. Then blinked again. "You’ve gotta be kidding me," he muttered.
"Like it?" Spoke smirked, striking a mock pose. He faked a hair flip using his imaginary long hair, raising one eye brow to add salt in the wound.
"What. The. Actual. Fuck. What the hell are you wearing, bro?" He breathed a deep sigh, trying to calm his nerves as they continued to silently explode.
Patience is a virtue.
The contrast between them was painful. Parrot looked like he was about to hit the gym, or crash on the couch for a Netflix marathon. Spoke, on the other hand, looked like he was on his way to sign business contracts, crash a wedding, or audition for a role as Mr. Pretentious.
It was a painful stark contrast, one that people would almost definitely notice once they both started walking outside together.
"Bro, we’re meeting a dude for coffee. Coffee!" Parrot threw his hands up. "Not attending the Oscars. Not getting married. Coffee!"
Spoke shrugged, clearly unfazed. "Gotta dress to impress, man. First impressions last forever."
Parrot pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling slowly. "First impressions don’t require leather shoes that probably belong to our neighbor." He narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously.
"Borrowed," Spoke corrected with zero shame.
"Stolen," Parrot shot back immediately.
Spoke’s grin only widened, and Parrot had the sudden urge to strangle him with his perfectly knotted tie. But of course, he would prefer not to get arrested for accidentally killing a man while unprecedentedly walking on their shared apartment. So instead, he groaned, grabbed his hoodie pocket strings, and muttered under his breath. If this was how the day was starting, he could only imagine how bad it was going to get.
Wifies stared at the once-hot cup of coffee in front of him, glaring at it as though it had personally conspired against him and betrayed his whole entire existence. The drink had lost all its steam ages ago, the surface flat and lifeless. It sat there in mocking silence, daring him to take another sip. And, fine, he did, but not without wrinkling his nose first. Lukewarm. Betrayal in liquid form. Just pure sad betrayal.
Thirty minutes. That was how long he’d been stuck in this café, abandoned to his fate, all lonely and alone. In that time, the same waiter had come by three times to deliver the same exact order of coffee. Wifies hadn’t asked for refills, hadn’t even finished the first one, but apparently, he radiated the kind of aura that screamed yes, I would like another round of bitterness in a cup, thank you very much.
And that would have been very nice and kind if not for his predicament. He was stuck sitting alone in the back corner of the place, stuck at being well-aware of the painfully pitying looks he'd been getting from the staffs and other costumers that clearly had the intention to stay for a period of time.
And it did not help the fact that by the third delivery, he was convinced the waiter was in on it, smirking behind that polite little smile. Look at this guy, the waiter was probably thinking, left to rot in the corner like a forgotten houseplant. Though in a much more playful pity yet annoyingly embarrassing way.
He leaned back in his chair, elbow propped on the table, chin resting lazily in his palm. His expression was half boredom, half disbelief, like a dog staring down a puddle it refused to step in. Outside, sunlight poured in through the café’s tall windows, turning the world gold and cheerful in a way that felt personally offensive, like it was honestly just provoking him even more.
People bustled past, wrapped up in their important little lives, students juggling textbooks, office workers glued to their phones, couples sharing ice cream cones like they were straight out of a cheesy commercial. Like, ew?
Meanwhile, here he was, stuck collecting increasingly colder cups of coffee like they were Pokémon cards. And Wifies did not like that thought.
Because how dare the world be all sunshine and happy when he's stuck in the back corner of the place looking all alone and lonely?
He thumbed his phone awake. Again. No new messages. No little “seen” notification either. Just that gray dot glaring back at him: offline. And he wished he could just teleport himself into wherever Parrot was. If only he knew the guy's address.
Wifies sighed dramatically, leaning his head against his hand. "So, not even the courtesy of leaving me on read, huh?" he muttered, voice dripping with mock offense. "Wow. Ghosted by my own friend. How very 21st century of him."
If he'd known he would be waiting for more than half an hour, Wifies would've just chose to take a detour inside their campus instead of having to spend his time receiving looks from strangers he could not even give a proper fuck about.
He flicked through his texts for the tenth time, as if rereading them would magically summon a reply. You guys close? Still waiting. Should I order food or nah? Hello? Alive? Nothing. Nada. Radio silence. Just pure agonising silence.
At this point, he wasn’t sure whether to be worried or to stand up and leave, though that clearly wouldn't help his case. If he die here of secondhand embarrassment, the medics would take one look at the three neglected cups of coffee and know the cause of death.
Loneliness.
He set his phone down with a gentle clack and tapped it once with his finger, like a student anxiously waiting for their exam results to be put up. "You’re useless," he told the device, then gave his cup of coffee the same judgmental look. "And you’re no better."
The woman at the table next to his glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Wifies, unfazed, raised his mug and gulped down the remaining liquid with the confidence of a man pretending the coffee wasn’t disgusting. If anyone asked, this was performance art.
A performance art that involves a guy wearing a yin and yang banda and hoodie, muttering only to himself like a weirdo. Not to mention his act of talking to inanimate objects like they were personally close to him.
The plan had been painfully simple. Parrot wanted to introduce Wifies to one of his friends. They agreed to meet at this café, a cozy little spot downtown just a few blocks from their university. Easy. Foolproof. Which, of course, meant fate immediately penciled in disaster on its calendar. Like fate personally found it funny to mess with such a simple meet up and make it tragic instead.
He tilted his head toward the door for what felt like the hundredth time. Probably just an exaggerated number, but who cares, really?
Every time it opened, his hopes perked, only to crash when some stranger walked in instead. A woman with a stroller. A teenager with headphones too big for his head. A guy lugging a guitar case like he was auditioning for a talent show. There was even some elderly people that was probably there to enjoy some tastes as the black surge of death continues to tail them continously.
But still. The people he was supposed to meet were no where to be seen.
Not Parrot. Not Parrot's friend, even though he wouldn't even know their face. Not even anyone he knew. Just strangers.
Wifies groaned, draping himself dramatically across the table like some writer who'd spent countless nights on their work only to ultimately suffer through the agonizing pain of experiencing an author's block. "If he doesn’t show up soon," he whispered to his cup, "I’m charging him late fees. With interest as high as my patience."
The coffee, as expected, offered no comment. And somehow, that just made Wifies' mood even more foul.
"You are just so..."
Hearing a familiar voice, Wifies perked up, only for his excitement to fizzle into a groan the moment he realized who it belonged to. He turned his head slowly, like a man bracing for disaster, and found the waiter standing a respectful distance from his table.
"So what..?" Wifies asked, narrowing his eyes. "Sad? Pathetic? Embarrassing?" He wrinkled his nose, rolling his eyes as though he’d already written the ending to this conversation.
The waiter didn’t miss a beat. "Pathetic," he said flatly, sliding yet another steaming cup of coffee onto the table. With practiced ease, he scooped up the three abandoned mugs stacked like trophies of Wifies’ misery and balanced them on his tray. Somewhere in the back, a dishwasher was probably already plotting revenge on the establishment.
Wifies glared at him, suspicious. "What is this? Some wordless deal with the devil? You insult me, I keep drinking your cursed coffee until I drop dead from caffeine overdose?" He reluctantly mumbled out.
The waiter’s expression remained infuriatingly neutral. "Relax, man. It’s on the house. Our manager said you probably need it."
"Did he now?" Wifies muttered, eyeing the fresh cup like it might sprout fangs and bite him. He leaned forward, voice dropping into a dramatic whisper. "And what exactly does your manager think I need? Comfort? Pity? A slow, jittery death?"
The waiter shrugged, unfazed. "Or maybe just people who actually show up on time."
Wifies gasped, hand pressed to his chest as if struck by a dagger. "Betrayed by caffeine and customer service in the same hour. Incredible."