Chapter Text
By 7:42 a.m., the cafe had already settled into its own predictable rhythm.
Warm amber lights glowed against exposed brick walls, the chalkboard menus behind the counter were rewritten daily in Viktor’s precise hand, a string quartet filtered through the overhead speakers, and the violins swelled with the same intensity of the espresso machine hissing.
Viktor preferred the morning shift. He could track time in shots pulled and milk steamed, and every social interaction was brief, transactional, and blessedly limited. The longest conversation he would have to concern himself with would be one of those customers who wanted to customize everything in terms of their order.
The bell above the door clanged with the arrival of their third customer of the day.
“No, that’s not what I said. I said send me the revised schematics before—” The door’s hinges squeaked painfully as Jayce practically tripped inside, the sunlight following him like an entourage. Viktor really ought to oil that. Jayce held his phone between his shoulder and ear, while his coat was half buttoned and his hair in disarray. “Yes, I’m at the cafe. I can multitask.”
He could not.
He ended the call mid stride, flashed an apologetic grin to no one in particular, and reached the counter with an exhale of breath. Viktor didn’t look up immediately, he did warrant that sort of behavior was deserving of it, and instead finished pouring the shot into the current order he was fulfilling.
“What can I get for you?” Viktor asked flatly when he did eventually turn around.
Jayce leaned on the counter as though they were co-conspirators. “Okay. So. I need one large—sorry, venti— single origin Ethiopian pour over, but the naturally processed one? The Yirgacheffe? And can you grind it slightly coarser than usual? Oh! And a splash of oat milk, but not too much. Just the happy medium so I can still taste the notes.”
“It is pronounced Yeer-guh-chef-eh,” Viktor said evenly. “And oat milk would obscure the notes entirely.”
Jayce’s grin widened, downright delighted. “I like it when you’re condescending.”
“I’m not condescending. I’m correct.”
“Even better.”
Viktor held his gaze for a moment longer than necessary, then turned to prepare the order. This was not the first time he had encountered this man, and he knew it would not be the last. For the past four days, Jayce would come precisely at 7:42 in the morning, and order something complex or obscure with that bright smile of his.
It had become habitual at this point.
“You come here every morning?” Jayce had been watching him as if the process were performance art.
“You come here every morning.” Viktor corrected.
Jayce laughed softly, unabashed. “Guess that means we’re part of each other’s routine now.”
Viktor didn’t bother to grant that a response. Instead once the coffee finished blooming, he selected a cup, uncapped a marker, and wrote JAYCE in big block letters that were fully impersonal.
“You have very intense handwriting.”
“It’s legible.”
“I didn’t say that it wasn’t.”
Jayce tapped his card against the reader, and with the same casual recklessness from the previous days, added a tip that made the machine blink in brief confusion. Viktor noticed, because of course he would.
“That’s unnecessary.”
Jayce lifted the cup, the action causing their fingers to almost brush. “Consider it compensation for enduring me before eight a.m.”
“I endure everyone before eight a.m.”
Jayce’s smile softened. “Good. I’d hate to be special,” he stepped back then, already half way to the door where the sunlight reclaimed him in a halo. “See you tomorrow, Viktor.”
Viktor paused. He didn’t remember telling him his name, but before he could question, the bell jingled again as Jayce left. Still carrying with him too much energy for so early an hour.
Mild annoyance still lingered, but beneath it, quieter and less measurable, was something else. Intrigue, he supposed.
He adjusted the grinder once more, although it certainly didn’t need any more adjusting, and he tamped the next shot with slightly more force than required.
︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶
At 7:42 a.m. the next morning, the bell jingled with the same telltale sign of the cafe’s latest regular.
“Good morning to my favorite elitist caffeine gatekeeper.” Jayce announced, already halfway to the counter. He wasn’t on the phone this time, and he seemed brighter for it. More focused and deliberate in his disruption.
“What extravagant monstrosity is it today?”
Jayce leaned on the counter again, his lips once again pulled upwards in that bright grin of his. “Yirgacheffe. Naturally processed. Extra bloom. No oat milk lecture needed today. I learned my lesson.”
“On the contrary, you did not learn. You adapted.”
“See? That. That’s why I come here.”
Viktor prepared the pour over with the same care as the day before. Including the same methodical spiral in which he combined, and the same precise weight. Coffee making was an art, you see, and he did pride himself on the craft.
Even when it was tested in cases such as this.
However, when he reached for the marker, there was a second of hesitancy before he wrote: JAISE.
Like his usual, the letters were immaculate, but the spelling…was not. Yet, he placed the cup on the counter without comment.
Jayce picked it up, glanced down, and froze as though he had been personally betrayed.
“Jai—” he looked up slowly. “Jaise?”
“Yes.” Viktor said, already wiping the counter.
“That’s not my name.”
“It’s close enough.”
Jayce pressed a hand to his chest, deeply wounded. “Close enough? After everyone we’ve been through?”
“You’ve only come here six times.”
“That’s how relationships start, Viktor.”
Viktor didn’t dignify that with a response.
Jayce stared at the cup for a moment longer, then instead of protesting further, he smiled. “Okay. If that’s how it’s going to be. Have a great day, Vik.”
He left with the cup in the hand, left with nothing more than a soft tingle of the bell.
Why Viktor chose to do that was beyond him, but it brought this sort of amusement inside, knowing that he had successfully befuddled the other man. Even if it was only momentarily. So the next morning when Jayce ordered another one of his complex drinks, he wrote another purposeful misspelling.
JAYSS
The morning after that it was JACE. Then JAYC. Then JAYCEH.
“You’ve added a silent letter.”
“Have I?”
“This one implies that I’m medieval.”
“You do speak loud enough at times for a castle.”
Unbeknownst to Viktor, Jayce had begun to collect them after the initial misspelling. However, he noticed the following day when Jayce pulled the newest cup from his bag to compare it to the others. Creating this mini trail that led today’s creation.
“You…kept them.”
“Obviously.”
“There’s no practical reason to do that.”
Jayce shrugged as he stacked them back together, clearly satisfied with whatever it was he had been looking for among the collection. “Maybe I’m sentimental.”
“We haven’t even known each other for a month.”
“As if that means anything.”
By the fourth week, the ritual had been this solidified ordeal. Jayce would arrive at precisely 7:42 a.m., he would order the same overly specific coffee, Viktor would correct something minor such as his posture, pronunciation, or brewing theory, and then he would alter the spelling by a single degree.
And these changes soon grew creative.
GAYCE.
Jayce stared at that one for a long moment before snorting. “Bold of you.”
“It was an accident.” Viktor lied smoothly.
“Sure it was.”
One of the other baristas, Sky, leaned against the pastry case late one morning after Jayce had left with the cup in his hand as always. She had overheard the ordeal from today, and it didn’t take much to clue her in on how long this had been going on.
“You know, you could just spell his name correctly.”
“I’m aware.”
She watched Viktor recalibrate the grinder that once again, did not need it. “So why bother?”
“I must amuse myself somehow.”
Sky raised a brow. “That’s what you’re doing?”
“Yes.”
She hummed, unconvinced, but finished settling today’s pastries into the case. She always outdid herself with each delicate swirl of icing, and flaky crust. So one couldn’t blame him when he slipped a hand past her, and stole one of the rose shaped cupcakes straight from her hand.
“Hey!”
“Thank you for your service, Miss Young.”
He would make her a drink later to compromise.
︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶
By the following week, the rhythm had changed. At least somewhat.
Jayce still arrived at his typical yet strange time, he ordered his Yirgacheffe correctly, and Viktor misspelled his name once again, but this time, Jayce didn’t leave.
Instead, he settled himself at one of the long wooden tables near the window, and began to extract various items from the bag he had strapped to his side. A slim laptop, a phone, a rolled tube of seemingly blueprints, various papers, and a mechanical pencil that soon found itself tucked behind his ear.
From Viktor’s distance it was difficult to determine exactly what was on said papers, but there was no denying that they were some sort of schematics with various annotations, vector lines intersecting angles, and measurements scribbled in the tight margins.
Viktor tried not to let his attention wander, but his gaze kept drifting back between orders. To where Jayce’s brow was furrowed as he adjusted something on screen, and how he tapped his pencil against his lips or temple when deep into thought. To where the initial decently sized contraption design had grown to something that took up a great chunk of the blueprint parchment.
He was mid-stare when Jayce suddenly glanced up, startling Viktor into nearly losing grip on his cane for a moment. He expected to be called out for his creeping, but instead Jayce was asking, “What’s this piece?” he gestured towards the speakers overhead. “It’s dramatic. I feel like I’m inventing something tragic.”
Viktor should’ve offered a brief answer, but perhaps his initial shock startled him more than what met the eye, because he was going further than a simple name of the song and its composer.
“It’s the second movement of String Quartet No. 8 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Composed in 1960, it is widely interpreted as autobiographical. Coded dissent, perhaps. The motif repeats obsessively. It is…structurally anxious.”
Jayce leaned back in his chair, giving Viktor his full attention as he continued.
“The DSCH motif—D, E-flag, C, B natural—is embedded throughout. It’s a musical signature. He wrote it only in three days while visiting Dresden. Officially, it was dedicated to victims of fascism,” he paused, his fingers flexing slightly around the head of his cane. “Unofficially, many believe it was written for himself.”
The espresso machine hissed behind him and someone approached the register, but Sky shooed him away to handle it.
Jayce rested his chin in the palm of his hand. “Structurally anxious,” he repeated softly. “That’s…a very specific way to describe it.”
“It destabilizes resolution,” Viktor explained, already too far into it to retreat. “The tension is not relieved in the manner one expects, it circles back to trap itself.”
Jayce nodded as though this were the most compelling thing he had heard all week, and it was then that Viktor realized that he had been speaking for nearly a full minute, uninterrupted with no injections or teasing, and had been gradually moving closer as he did.
Jayce’s gaze didn’t drift. He didn’t check his phone. He didn’t smile in a way that was patronizing or demeaning. He simply…listened.
“And you like that?”
“Yes,” Viktor said, quieter now. “It’s honest.”
Jayce considered that, then glanced down at the schematics before him. “I think engineering’s like that sometimes. Everyone wants clean solutions, but most systems just compensate for stress until something gives.”
Viktor’s gaze flickered back down to the blueprints. “What is it?”
Jayce’s expression shifted to something pleased and confident, but not smug, as he rotated the page so Viktor could see properly.
“A prototype kinetic stabilizer. Still in the ‘please don’t explode’ phase,” he pointed at a cluster of components. “The problem is heat dispersion. The output’s clean, but the internal load builds faster than predicted.”
Viktor studied the diagram. “You are distributing stress across a single axis,” he said after a moment. “It will accumulate.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No,” Viktor replied evenly. “You said the heat builds, but I’m saying the structure encourages it.”
He reached for the mechanical pencil without asking, and Jayce let him take it. Viktor sketched a quick but subtle adjustment. A secondary venting path for redistribution.
Jayce leaned closer, his shoulder almost brushing Viktor’s arm. “Oh,” he breathed. “Oh that’s—”
“It’s basic load management.” Viktor said, handing the pencil back.
“No, it’s not. I’ve been staring at this for nearly a week.”
Viktor straightened, suddenly aware of their proximity and the warmth that radiated from Jayce. As well as his station that he had left unattended. So he stepped back with a clear of his throat.
“You just needed a fresh perspective.”
Jayce looked up at him. Not full of that dazzle that he clearly put up to earn a rise from Viktor, not something performative, just something steadier. More genuine.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I did.”
The quartet swelled overhead again, and Viktor returned to his spot behind the counter. Although his pulse was slightly misaligned.
Not once had Jayce talked over him. Not once had he dismissed this seemingly silly passion of his with mock questions of curiosity or condensation. Not once did he dismiss it. He seemed genuinely intrigued, which was…new to him.
Across the room Jayce took another thoughtful sip of coffee before bending back over the schematics, and Viktor found himself listening for the music again.
Not for the tension, but for the space between notes.