Chapter Text
Ashe didn’t really care that Labor Day had ostensibly given her a long weekend. Her week-start breakfast rendezvous was one of very, very few indulgences she granted herself, and she wasn’t about to skip a week just because they had Monday off. Particularly not after being stuck in close quarters with her mother for the weekend.
She really needed to learn how to lie about existing plans in the future.
Ashe turned the corner at the front of the tiny cafe. Just the shock of scarlet in their usual corner of the otherwise-empty patio was enough for some of the accumulated tension from the weekend to unwind from her shoulders. There were very few people in the world who had ever gotten under her skin either as quickly or as deeply as Sarah Fortune had managed, and she may very well have been the only one for whom Ashe considered that a compliment.
Part of Ashe still wondered at how she’d managed to have enough good luck still lingering on her to have met a best friend in an entirely different field by sheer happenstance at a technological conference for work that neither of them had even wanted to attend. The few times that Ashe had marveled at it to Sarah, she’d only gotten a sly grin and a twinkle of mirth in those pale blue eyes before being reminded that fortune did favor the bold. Pun intended.
Sarah was nothing, Ashe had learned, if not an incorrigible flirt.
Even now, as Ashe drew closer, Sarah finally looked up from the puzzle game on her phone and brightened up immediately, lips curling in that broad, playful grin that she so often had reserved just for her. Well, her and any bar staff Sarah might be trying to get them out of trouble with.
“Hey pretty girl,” Sarah pretended to catcall, whistling sharp between her teeth. “Where you off to so early? Can I buy you a drink?”
Ashe rolled her eyes, but the fond smile tugging at her mouth gave the fake exasperation away. “You are going to get yourself thrown out one of these days for inappropriate behavior, and you will have no one to blame but yourself.” She looped the strap of her purse over the back of the empty chair across from Sarah’s and took a seat. Too late she registered the insulated cup sitting in front of her, and she blinked hard. Looked up just to confirm—and yes, Sarah did indeed have her own usual black coffee in her own hand. “You ordered for me?”
“You get the same thing every week, it’s not like it’s hard,” Sarah teased.
Ashe allowed herself a tiny smirk. “I might have felt adventurous today. You never know. And here you have robbed me of the opportunity.”
Sarah scoffed, smiling. “God, you’re in a mood today,” she pretended to complain. “Aren’t you corporate types supposed to be feeling all fresh and reinvigorated to go back to your capitalist tyrants after a long weekend?”
“Are you no longer qualifying yourself as a ‘corporate type?’”
“Fuck no I’m not. If I was I wouldn’t have gotten an emergency call while I was out dancing because one of our dumbass teams misread an order and botched a whole slew of parts that were supposed to go out today.” She shook her head, visibly still annoyed. “Three in the morning on Labor Day and my ass was in the office in shorts and heels running a mill. Inhumane.”
Ashe made a sympathetic noise in her throat. She didn’t always fully grasp the explanations Sarah gave her about the minutiae of her job, but she knew a work emergency when she heard one. “I hope you at least managed to put the fire out on their behalf,” she offered before taking a slow, gratifying sip from her cup. Chai was rarely her preferred type of tea, but this particular location’s blend had grown on her. And Sarah had, truthfully, correctly recalled the specifics of how she liked it.
Sarah snorted. “Should’ve never been a fire in the first place if they would pay attention for like thirty seconds. At least I made time and a half.” The tiny bell on the cafe’s front door jangled, and Sarah perked up. “Thank god. I needed this.”
“You and me both,” Ashe said dryly. Still, she offered the employee a polite smile and thanks as he carefully arranged a plate before each of them, and a small syrup container for Sarah as well. He said nothing, and disappeared back into the cafe. They exchanged a skeptical look over the table, and promptly dissolved into snickering. “What a charming young man.”
“Yeah, I like the Monday staff better too,” Sarah agreed, picking up the syrup to positively drown the two dense slices of french toast on her plate. “So how was your weekend, then? Hopefully less exciting than mine. Or maybe more exciting depending on definition.”
Ashe only heaved the most world-weary sigh she could muster before turning to her own breakfast. To this day Sarah would swear up and down that she still didn’t see the appeal of serving fish on a bagel, and Ashe would only smirk and assure her that lox was a delicacy, while Sarah’s idea of breakfasts were sugary abominations.
Sarah squinted at her for a second before giving a soundless ah as she recalled what she’d last heard Ashe bemoan about her Labor Day plans. “Family togetherness weekend, right? How’d that go?”
The deadpan look Ashe gave her over the top of her cup made Sarah snicker—then, thinking better of it, schooled her expression into something more sympathetic.
“That bad, huh?” Sarah drawled, cutting into her breakfast with the side of her fork.
“I hope your ears did not burn too badly,” Ashe quipped, though the humor fell a little flat. Sarah lifted a brow in silent question, dragging a bite of french toast through the puddle of syrup on her plate. “I have told you before about my mother’s dedication to meddling.”
Sarah grinned, nose wrinkling playfully. “Yes’m. I take it there was more of that to be had.”
“There is always more of that to be had.” The thread of exasperation in her voice was a little much, even to her. Ashe took a small bite of her bagel to give herself an extra moment to compose herself. “I may have... acted on an impulse, in effort to at least escape the matchmaking part of the meddling.”
“Uh-oh.” Sarah pretended to give her a quick once-over, fork loose in her grip. “Well, you look the same age you did when you left, so I guess you didn’t tell her to shut up or anything.” Ashe’s brow creased. Sarah’s eyes crinkled with mirth. “Otherwise she’d’ve smacked you into next week.”
“Ah.” Ashe smirked without meaning to, and lifted her teacup in effort to mask it. Judging from the genuine delight in Sarah’s laugh, she didn’t quite make it. “No, nothing quite so... adamant.” Frankly that might’ve been less embarrassing than the truth of the impulse. “For some reason I thought it clever to try to side-step the matchmaking by giving my mother the same excuse I give particularly persistent men at bars.”
Sarah blinked once, hard. Then a slow, disbelieving grin began to spread over her face. “...Ashe. Honey. You didn’t.”
Ashe groaned, pressing her free hand to the side of her face. “It was the best I could come up with under pressure,” she grumbled, hating that she could already feel her face warming. “For all my mother has ideas on how my life should be lived, she has never tried actively coming between myself and a partner. It would be extraordinarily uncouth, even for her.”
“More uncouth than giving your own mother the ‘I do too have a boyfriend you just haven’t met him because he goes to another school’ treatment?”
“Girlfriend,” Ashe corrected, a little annoyed to feel the warmth of a blush settling into her face.
“Oh, sure,” Sarah agreed amicably. “Because of woke.”
Ashe lightly kicked her in the shin.
Sarah only laughed. “So, is she cute?” She pretended to twirl her hair, putting on a fake lisp. Normally Ashe would’ve chuckled at least.
“Did you forget that I started the conversation by mentioning your ears burning?”
It took a second for Ashe’s grumbled comment to sink in fully.
Then Sarah’s brows shot up, a broad, positively evil grin spreading over her face.
“Aw, darling, why didn’t you tell me we started dating?” She reached over to cover Ashe’s hand with her own, trying not to laugh when Ashe rolled her eyes and shook her off. “I would’ve made it Facebook official if I’d known.”
“You are hilarious,” Ashe said flatly. Then, shaking her head, Ashe pulled out her cell phone to open her photos application. “Mainly what you are is one of only a handful of friends of mine—”
“Quality over quantity,” Sarah supplied, propping her chin up on her hand.
“—and of that handful, the only one I go out with on anything approaching a regular basis,” Ashe finished, pulling up a folder from their recent weekend hiking trip. “So by default, the only one I had any recent photos with to corroborate the story.”
Sarah took the outstretched phone, smiling fondly as she swiped through the folder—nature shots from Ashe, mostly, interspersed with a handful of shared selfies of the pair of them, flushed and sweaty and grinning, from whenever Sarah had stolen her phone from her on the trail. “Mm, yeah, I can see how this could give that impression.” Her smile went sharp. “If you really wanted to convince her, you should’ve shown her the pics from that Halloween bar crawl—”
Ashe snatched her phone back, a dark flush settling into her fair cheeks. “I am not showing my mother bar crawl photos.”
Sarah laughed. “Suit yourself. At least my hiking fit was cute, even though you were trying to kill me at the time.”
“It was an intermediate trail and you handled it perfectly well, stop being dramatic.”
“I had to cancel my date that Monday, you slavedriver! I couldn’t feel my legs!” Sarah paused to consider for a moment. “I mean. I guess now that I think about it I could’ve worked it so that would be a non-issue. But still—”
“Sarah, gross.” Ashe grimaced over the table. Sarah only laughed. “No pillow talk over breakfast. I would like to try to enjoy some peace before my work week starts.”
Sarah pretended to pout at her, but the mischief in her gaze gave her away. “You don’t even wanna hear about the girl I was out dancing with this past weekend before I got called away on overtime bullshit? And here I thought you were a romantic.”
Ashe squinted at her for a long moment, but the question seemed to be genuine. “Keep it PG-13,” she finally said, allowing a begrudging smile to tug at her mouth.
They didn’t have much time left before they would both have to leave to start their respective days, but Ashe reveled in the warmth and the quiet of their little shared ritual for as long as she could hold it. Sarah giggled as Ashe translated the obnoxiously circuitous corporate-speak reply-all email chain she hadn’t been able to get out of for a week. Ashe made a mental note of the film name Sarah mentioned being excited to finally catch in the theater. Sarah showed her a ridiculous meme she’d seen online, and Ashe showed her a photo of the appallingly fat squirrel she caught red-handed in her bird feeder in return. Ashe paid, for all Sarah complained that it was supposed to be her turn this week until Ashe relented enough to let Sarah handle gratuity.
The bout of playful peace was nearly enough to smooth Ashe’s frayed nerves from the weekend’s irritation until, as Ashe was leaving, Sarah shot her another smug little finger-wave and a shit eating grin, cooing, “Have a good day at work, snookums, text me later!”
The absolutely heinous pet name startled a bark of laughter out of Ashe, and she merely offered a single raised middle finger in reply as she left. Sarah cackled behind her, delighted at the response.
Just one more truly ridiculous inside joke to add among many from over the years. And that was the end of it.