Work Text:
“Daniel?” The barista calls out, holding Daniela’s iced brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso. Daniela almost thinks there’s a man with a little sugar in his tank and a similar name to hers waiting for his drink, but the barista is looking directly at her.
Just to make sure, Daniela points to herself. The barista smiles and nods, tooth gems sparkling in the light.
Daniela is not smiling. Actually, she’s a little offended.
Daniela. Daniela. How do you hear Daniel from that? She missed an entire syllable. It’s not really that serious—Daniela’s had multiple baristas fuck up the spelling of her name, believe it or not. Daniella, usually, but one guy, incredibly, had written her name down as Dannyela. Manon laughed at her so hard that day.
The point is, while Daniela isn’t a difficult name to spell by any means, there will be someone that spells it wrong. She doesn’t even get the worst of it, either. Living in LA, Daniela has come to accept that this—getting your name spelled wrong, even when you enunciate every single letter—is the nature of life. Your name could be, like, James or something similarly basic and easy, and you’d have someone smiling at you, calling out your name, just for your cup to read Games.
So, really, Daniela isn’t mad, just confused. But, she can’t be upset when the barista’s grin shifts into something softer as she hands Daniela her drink.
“Have a nice day,” the girl says. Her name tag reads Lara.
Daniela smiles back. “You too, Laura.”
And, well, she can’t say it isn’t a little funny when the barista blinks twice at her.
It turns into some weird competition after that.
A competition of who can fuck up the other’s name more, each time more absurdly than the last. The second time Daniela goes, ordering her usual, the barista writes her name down as Danny, and Daniela calls her Lana, because she has never been one to back down from a challenge. She tells Manon this once she makes it to their shared film studies lecture, and Manon just kinda looks at her.
“Since when was it a challenge? She’s probably just messing with you.”
“Obviously,” Daniela rolls her eyes. “But I’m not just gonna take that. Two can play at that game.”
So a competition it becomes. There’s only so many ways you can fuck up spelling Daniela, though—she tries not to laugh when she reads her cup one day and it says Damien. Lara’s not even trying anymore.
Daniela is no stranger to competing, to feeling the burning desire to win. Except, there’s nothing really at stake here for her to lose except maybe her ego and pride, which doesn’t sound too bad when her opponent is a pretty girl that makes good coffee. So, for the first time ever, there is no fire to ignite, no irritation when Lara calls her name wrong, grinning like she knows what’s coming.
Somewhere along the way, it becomes a game. And somewhere along the way, Daniela starts to think about red hair and tooth gems before she goes to sleep.
No one has to know that part.
Funny thing is, they haven’t even had, like, an actual conversation yet. Daniela doesn’t know her at all. Their longest exchange has been thank you, you’re welcome have a nice day, you too. They’re strangers weirdly dedicated to this silent contest of who can keep the game going for long enough. And, yes, Daniela is keeping a tally in her notes app. They’re tied right now, thank you. She doesn’t envision herself losing their game anytime soon; Daniela’s made an entire list of wildly-different-but-close-enough-to-count names to call Lara that she has on deck.
It is a little strange the longer Daniela thinks about it. Time goes by faster than she can blink, and yet, with every iced espresso Lara hands her, they aren’t any closer than the first day Lara called out for her. Or, well, Daniel. Lara knows her usual now, and maybe Daniela is becoming more familiar with her schedule, choosing to come on the days she knows Lara works, but she simply chalks that up to how often she orders from there. And Lara can make a mean iced brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso, so, why would she want anyone else to make it for her?
They’ve formed a sort of routine that any other person would probably find weird. They don’t even know each other’s last names.
But, like—so what? It’s weird, and Daniela likes it.
(“You just like Lara,” Manon huffs. Daniela pretends she doesn’t hear that.)
So, maybe Daniela is a little lonely. Manon is the best friend she could ever ask for, truly, bless her heart. Daniela would not know what to do without her. It’s a little ironic, though, considering she’s a part of a sorority, and like, isn’t the whole point of those to develop irreplaceable sisterhood and connection? Maybe she isn’t looking hard enough, but she hasn’t really found that yet.
It doesn’t help that her love life is practically nonexistent—falling apart before it could even really establish itself. In high school, boys fell at her feet for a chance to talk to her. In college, they corner her at frat parties and offer her free drinks. And trust her, she’s tried—she’s had her fair share of boyfriends, but it’s always the same issue with them: they’re not high enough on her priority list for their liking. God forbid a girl has goals and hopes and dreams and isn’t about to put a man before all of that.
Manon, tired of her complaining, tells her to date women, so she does. She dates this girl for two weeks before she realizes that women are, actually, kind of evil, and not everyone can be as sweet and charming and lovely as Manon’s student council president girlfriend. It’s not women, that’s just Sophia. And Manon would absolutely choke her out if she even entertained the thought of dating Sophia, so Daniela crushed that thought immediately.
Essentially, her dilemma is: all her life, she’s kind of just felt like people like her, but not enough to want to know her. Write that on her tombstone.
Daniela walks into Raj’s Bakery, and for the first time since the beginning of fall, Lara is not at the counter. In fact, she is nowhere in sight. Her replacement is a taller, lankier girl, with pink bangs and a paler complexion, who, unlike Lara, absolutely chats Daniela’s ears off.
She doesn’t mind it—the girl is pretty and nice, albeit a little awkward. But when she calls out Daniela, it takes her a second to look up. And her espresso doesn’t taste the same.
“Thank you—”
“Megan!” The girl says brightly, grinning, like her name isn’t written on her name tag in sparkly pink glitter pen.
Daniela bites her tongue before she says something stupid like thanks, Melissa. She blurts, “is Lara working today?”
“Lara’s not coming in for a while,” Megan tells her. She starts scratching her neck, though, so Daniela keeps staring at her. There’s more to it, and it doesn’t take very long for Megan to crack with a hushed whisper. “She’s going through something pretty rough. Family stuff. This is her parents’ bakery, so I’m helping out.”
Daniela doesn’t ask anything else. She thanks Megan politely and leaves. She’s overstepped into Lara’s life enough, considering they’re complete strangers.
(She wonders why she hadn’t really put two and two together—Raj. Now she knows Lara’s last name, but Lara doesn’t know hers.)
The most she can do is mourn that she won’t have her usual for a while, because no one makes it quite like Lara does.
Lara is gone for the rest of the winter. Daniela has started to get caffeine withdrawals (or, what Manon dubs Lara withdrawals—god, she’s so corny) and has also begun to accept that she might not ever see her again until she passes by the bakery on her way to class, snow crunching underneath her feet, and sees a familiar head of red hair. There’s no hesitation in her steps, only haste, as she turns around and walks right in.
“Hi,” Daniela rushes out, like her lungs have only just started to work again, her cheeks numb from the cold.
Lara blinks, almost surprised, before she breaks out into this familiar grin that has the warmth returning to Daniela’s face. Like she was never gone at all. “Hi.”
And she’s not quite sure what else to say, because, well, what exactly are you supposed to say to someone that’s technically nothing more than the barista you saw a few days of the week, yet who made your drink better than anyone else could, who had become a regular in your life the same way you were a regular at her job? Daniela would be lying if she said her mind didn’t drift to Lara every time she passed the bakery and saw Megan working in her place. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t miss her.
Even so, Daniela doesn’t say anything. Not anything that would matter. Not anything that would make Lara more. “Can I—uh—” she takes a deep breath, “just the usual, please.”
Lara nods and hums, like she hasn’t asked this question a million times before. “And what will the name be for that?”
Daniela can’t bite back the exasperated smile that splits her lips. “Daniela.”
She lets herself laugh when Lara writes Dexter this time.
(“When are you gonna ask for her number?” Megan asks as the doorbell chimes and Daniela slips away. Lara, wiping down the counters, shrugs.
“She hasn’t lost the game yet.”
“Dude—you guys are still going—”)
She is so used to only ever seeing Lara in the environment of a softly lit bakery that smells of freshly baked pastries and roasted coffee, clad in her brown apron and name tag, that when Daniela sees her on campus, surrounded by tiny flakes of fluttering snow, she has to do a double take, before resisting the urge to pull out her phone and snap a picture. That’s more of Manon’s thing, anyway.
It had never occurred to Daniela to ask Lara if she went to college, but if she did go here, then wouldn’t Daniela have seen her before? Their campus is, like, moderately big, but not huge and overcrowded like most other universities in California. Whatever huge means in Cali. She’s internally debating whether or not to approach Lara—it’s weird, we barely know each other, I only ever see her at her literal job—when, suddenly, Lara spots her. She waves excitedly with that smile Daniela has gotten so used to seeing, and her shoulders instinctively relax.
“I didn’t know you went here,” Daniela tells her. Lara’s only wearing a leather jacket and a hat, she notices. Not even a scarf. It’s freezing, though. Like, two socks and two pants kind of weather. Aren’t you cold? She wants to ask her. Maybe offer her jacket, or something. She has an extra pair of gloves in her bag.
This isn’t a movie, though, so she doesn’t.
Lara shakes her head. “I don’t go to uni,” she laughs, her laughter holding weight and context Daniela is not privy to. It makes Daniela want to know everything about her. “I’m waiting for my friend so I can drive her home. Yoonchae—do you know her?”
Daniela racks her brain, chewing on her lip. “Oh! The basketball player, right?”
And so, they start talking about basketball, of all things. Something about Yoonchae being a point guard, and really fucking good, like, making it pro kind of good. She’s not really listening, though—she kind of just watches Lara talk. Watches the way her lips move, how she expresses herself with her hands. It’s different, looking at Lara like this, standing so closely, finally not separated by a counter. She’s so animated, so passionate, and—
Daniela feels something fluttering in her gut.
You just like Lara.
Well. Thank god Manon hadn’t made her bet on anything.
Daniela is sure Lara has reused the same stupid names multiple times already. She’s written Daniel on her cup four times so far. She knows this because she tracks it in her notes app.
(Yes, she’s still keeping score. This is very important.)
So, technically, Lara has lost. She has been losing for a while. Technically. For some reason she’s not quite sure of, though, Daniela doesn’t tell her this.
She just doesn’t want their game to end. That’s all.
“Manon, can you buy me coffee? Please? I’m broke, and I’m going to fall asleep if I don’t have some kind of caffeine. Film studies is so boring.”
Daniela all but begs her, hands clasped together, trailing after Manon like a dog. When Manon just huffs, Daniela wraps her arms around Manon’s frame, squishing her. It’s honestly really awkward and difficult to walk like this, but Daniela is determined.
Manon snickers at her, voice muffled by her scarf. “Why’d you even take film studies, Dani? And—what happened to all of your money? Doesn’t your mom, like, give you an allowance?”
Daniela grimaces. Lara and her coffee making skills happened, but she wasn’t about to admit that to the one person who would never let her live it down. “I bought new gym clothes.”
Manon narrows her eyes. “You have enough gym clothes to last you an entire month without having to do laundry. Why did you buy more?”
“Manon, you know I have a shopping addiction.”
“We need to send you to rehab, girl.”
They end up at Raj’s Bakery because Manon, unfortunately, cannot say no to Dani—a vice she is currently working on breaking. Lara greets them both, though her smile is more reserved and polite than usual. She doesn’t give Daniela that warm, friendly smile she knows is reserved only for her. Her eyes are on their interlocked arms.
Maybe that should’ve been the first sign that something was wrong.
“Guess you won,” Lara tells her quietly when she hands Daniela her drink, before drumming her fingers on the counter. And, there it is: her actual name, scrawled in Lara’s handwriting, on the back of her cup. Seeing her own name isn’t at all rewarding like Daniela had imagined it. In fact, she is more confused than the first day Lara got her name wrong.
She doesn’t get it—she won, yeah, obviously, but if they wanted to get all technical about it, she had won ages ago. Is Lara giving up their game, letting her go? Did she do something wrong? Why does Lara say that with an air of finality? Why doesn’t she look at her, or smile, or—
“Have a nice day, Daniela.”
For once, it doesn’t feel good to win.
Daniela wants, and wants, and wants.
That is her problem; her fundamental flaw, etched into her very DNA. If she were a product, in big, bold, red letters, it’d say on her packaging, WARNING: HAS AN INSATIABLE HUNGER FOR MORE.
She has always wanted more than what she has, always reached higher and higher, further and further, even when her arms began to ache. And they have never stopped aching, because Daniela has never stopped reaching.
The thing is—it’s a problem because Daniela reaches even for things she knows she can’t have.
(Daniela_Avanzini has requested to follow you.
Lara doesn’t accept her follow request, but she does do a lot of stalking. She feels something nauseating prickle all over her skin when that stalking leads her to three, painfully obvious conclusions.
One: Daniela isn’t dating that girl she walked into the bakery with. Two: she is single. And, three: Lara absolutely fucked up.
“Fumble of the year,” Megan snickers over her shoulder. Lara, because she is kind and thoughtful and does not feel like sending Megan into a spiraling pit of her own feelings, does not bring up their favorite basketball player.)
It’s early spring when Daniela sees her again.
The snow has just begun to melt, chipped away by the warm rain, and the trees are starting to flourish in shades of green, flowers beginning to bud and bloom. It isn’t in Lara’s parents’ bakery that she sees her—not on campus, either. Daniela finds Lara sitting alone on a bench, headphones over her ears, pencil scratching over paper while she is walking her dog. The exact bench Daniela has to pass to keep going.
She pauses in her tracks before, suddenly, something reckless and stupid and bold makes her feet move on their own accord, until she’s planted herself right next to Lara.
Her dog sniffs at Lara’s feet, bumping his fluffy head into her calves. “Mushi, stop,” Daniela huffs, embarrassed.
“It’s okay.” Lara laughs lightly in surprise, reaching down to pet him. “He’s cute.”
Daniela can’t help but stare, because Lara’s hair is now dark, the faded red long gone. The color makes her look older, brings out her features more, makes her brown eyes pop. Lara has always been pretty—that is an objective fact—but she is just…strikingly gorgeous in this moment. And she feels that want again. That selfish desire for more.
“I like your hair,” Daniela coughs out awkwardly, fingers brushing through the ends of her curls. “You look. Um. Really pretty. It fits you.”
If anyone that knew her was asked to describe Daniela Avanzini’s personality, awkward would probably not make it on the list of words. She can tell you what words would be on the list: social, loud, extroverted. So, she feels incredibly out of her element as she sits next to Lara, knee bouncing, playing with her hair, scouring her brain for anything to talk about.
Lara makes her nervous.
“Thank you,” Lara says softly, always soft. Daniela has not known her to be anything but. She bites her cheek, building up her words. “I just wanted to say—”
“Did I do something?”
Daniela breathes out, feeling out of breath and out of time in Lara’s presence—not for the first time. She looks at her, really looks at her, hoping Lara will tell her the truth. Lara looks at her, too, but she kind of just looks confused, so Daniela explains herself. “Our game.” She sounds silly, cryptic even, but she knows Lara knows what she means. “You stopped playing.”
The confusion quickly morphs into embarrassment, then guilt. Lara purses her lips, looking like she is debating on whether or not she wants to admit something.
“I lost, didn’t I?” Lara shrugs, hand repeatedly smoothing down Mushi’s fur. He preens, tail wagging, and Daniela feels strangely jealous towards a dog. Ignore that thought.
She narrows her eyes. That isn’t it. “You lost weeks before that.” She wants to add, why’d you give up then? But that’s, like, weirdly heavy for something so trivial. Though, she supposes she stopped caring about that the moment she sat down. “I didn’t know you suddenly cared about losing.”
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Lara says, simply, though not unkindly.
Her words hang in the air like stars in the sky. Untouchable, unreachable. Daniela’s arms still ache, anyway. And she wonders, thoughts bouncing around in her brain—Why don’t I? Why don’t I know anything but your last name? You mean much more to me than that. You shouldn’t, but you do.
“So tell me,” Daniela says, looking down at her hands. “I want to know you.”
Lara doesn’t say anything for a while. Daniela’s never really been rejected before, but she braces herself in preparation for it. Then, Lara gently places her notebook in Daniela’s lap. There are doodles of coffee cups, and words, and rhymes—lyrics, she realizes—and a title at the top. Brown sugar and oat milk. It’s just her order, but Daniela feels that thing fluttering in her belly again, a flush creeping up her neck as she carefully brushes her thumb over the graphite.
“You’re the only one that gets that, like, every time.” Lara tells her, sounding sheepish. “So when I think of brown sugar and oat milk, I think of you.”
Daniela’s cheeks hurt from smiling. “You wrote a song about coffee?”
“No,” Lara shakes her head. Their pinkies meet over the page. Her voice drops to a murmur. “About you.”
The lyrics are sweeter than anything Daniela’s ever tasted.
Daniela isn’t really keeping track anymore—she stops tallying their points when Lara hands her a cup with numbers scrawled in the back instead of a name. This is what victory tastes like, she thinks.
“You know, this feels a little late,” Daniela says, sipping her coffee, leisurely leaning over the counter like she doesn’t have class in ten minutes. She stares at the digits like she is trying to commit them to memory, careful not to smudge the ink.
“I was gonna do it sooner, but, like, you never lost, so we just kept going.” When Daniela giggles, Lara continues, incentivized. “You kept calling me the most random shit ever! Like, Lex Luthor? How’d we get there?”
“Okay—you called me Dexter at one point, so I don’t wanna hear it.”
Over her fit of laughter, Daniela doesn’t see the way Lara’s eyes soften as she watches her, fond and endeared. She does feel the gentle brush of Lara’s fingers across her temple as she tucks a curl behind her ear, and the subsequent buzz that zips down her whole body, from her head to her toes. She does feel something like hope bloom in her chest. She does feel like leaning over the counter and marking Lara’s cheek with her lipstick.
She does stop reaching, too, at least for a little while. Because the shape of what she’s wanted for so long is finally tangible in her hands.
(They both don’t see the way Megan rolls her eyes at them.)