#thinking about types of coffee and it's so funny that a doppio is just two shots of espresso like damn that really is just espresso squared

[chewyjellycable]

Put two Espresso Cookies in a room and call that a Doppio

[thepointoftheneedle]

BUGHEAD APPRECIATION WEEK: day three - favourite trope

I am a very simple creature so my favourite trope is the coffee shop AU.  I’ve written the little thing below the cut to celebrate it and as a thank you to the kind folks who have mentioned one of my stories this week. It honestly means such a lot! 

Betty tied the apron and stood attentively behind her shift manager, Kevin, as he showed her the idiosyncrasies and foibles of the huge Fracino espresso machine.  She was pleased to have got the job and wanted to present herself as an uncomplicatedly good hire.  The coffee shop was a five minute walk from her apartment and she liked the ambiance.  She’d been a regular since she began her research degree, stopping in often on her way to class in the morning.  It would give her a break from the solitude and intensity of her thesis and it would force her to interact with people, she needed the human contact.   After her initiation into the sacred rites of the machine Kevin gave her a laminated recipe card, took a seat on the other side of the counter and called out orders to her as she practiced. 

“Tall latte, three shots,” presented no problem and she even managed the leaf design in the foam with a reasonable degree of skill.  Kevin had clearly given his own order as a first trial because he took the drink from her hand and sipped it as he continued to put her through her paces.

“Medium cap, extra wet, rice,” was next, followed by “Flat white with legs.”  She turned out the orders competently although the difference between them was negligible. He tested her listening skills and her ability not to laugh at an order with the "Grande, bone dry, five-shot ristretto, extra-whip, two-raw-sugars cappuccino” and the "Trenti iced coffee, 12 pumps vanilla, 12 pumps hazelnut, 12 pumps caramel, 5 pumps skinny mocha, a splash of soy, ice, double-blended.” When he asked what she would suggest to up sell that customer she suggested a shot of insulin, which made the only client in the place bark out a laugh.  Kevin raised an eyebrow and she pointed at the millionaire shortcake instead and he nodded his approval.

“Ok, now for the real caffeine heads you need to get the serious drinks just right every time.” He had her draw a straight doppio, a ristretto, a lungo, a red eye and a black eye and lined them up along the counter.  As she served the last Kevin looked over his shoulder at the lone customer.  “You want any of these before they go down the drain, Hemingway?”

The guy looked up from his laptop and nodded, shuffling over and gathering up all of them in two journeys and returning them to his booth like a squirrel gathering acorns to tide him through winter.  “Thanks Kevin,” he muttered as he secured the last of his spoils.

“Don’t thank me, Betty here made them. I only worry that all that caffeine will stop your heart. An ambulance outside will do nothing for our reputation,” Kevin replied.

“I have a high tolerance.  For caffeine if nothing else.  And thanks Betty.  Nice to meet you.” He looked at her as he spoke and she was surprised by his eyes.  They were a striking blue green, not the brown she would have expected with his dark hair.  His eyelashes were unexpectedly long too, sweeping almost up to his brow line.  Now that he wasn’t hunched over the keyboard she saw that he was handsome in a poetic, sensitive, romantic kind of way.  He looked out of his time somehow, more suited to doublet and hose and rhyming couplets or drinking absinthe with Rimbaud.  But here he was, drinking free, cold coffee in Greenwich Village.  

“He’s a fixture and fitting, aren’t you Jones?”

“You’re my Café de Flore Kevin.  I’ll dedicate the book to your hospitality,” he smiled.  Betty liked the smile.

Over the next few weeks she exchanged a nod of greeting with Jones almost every day.  He was generally in his booth when she arrived at four and left around seven, gathering up his laptop and a tall Americano to go, as if he hadn’t already risked his sanity with the amount of caffeine he’d consumed.  “That’s quite a coffee habit,” she observed as he ordered another cup of drip coffee one afternoon.  

“I’m a machine for turning coffee into prose, got to fuel the engine,” he quipped with a smirk. It was clearly a line he used a lot.

The next day as he collected his to-go brew she asked him if it stopped him from sleeping and he explained that he worked nights.  “This’ll keep me going til four tomorrow morning.  It’s good to be able to hate your job with the required degree of enthusiasm.” He was funny in a dry, self deprecating way that she enjoyed.

She started to try to sneak him extras with his coffee, offering cookies and chocolate stirrers. He turned them down.  “I just like coffee with my coffee.”

“If you drink anymore you’ll start twitching.”

“No, I know my limit.  I stop when I start being able to see noises and hear smells.”

She began to tease him about the consistency of his ordering.  “Hey Jones, give me a challenge.  Order something milky with complicated syrups and whipped cream.”

“Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death and sweet as love,” he replied.  “That’s not mine by the way.  It’s a proverb from Turkey or somewhere.”

“But you don’t use sugar.”

“No, I replace the love with bitterness,” he laughed, returning to his seat with his usual drip coffee.

The next day she suggested a cortado.  “Come on Jones, let a little light into that darkness.”  He grinned and accepted a macchiato.  “Today a dab of foamed milk, tomorrow a vanilla latte with whipped cream.  You’ll find you can live without pure intravenous caffeine.”

“I can live without it but all the folks who remain unharmed because I am well caffeinated really don’t want me to skimp.  Anyway if you wean me off caffeine you’ll slash the profit margin of this place,” he smiled. “Not that I’m here solely for the coffee.”

She began to look forward to the jokes, to his familiar presence, to looking over at his long fingers dancing over the keys as he typed.  There were moments when she found herself imagining them moving over her skin that way, flushing and tightening her ponytail in confusion as if he’d be able to read her thoughts.

One afternoon she found him slumped in the booth, his head against the seat back, snoring softly.  She let him sleep until ten to seven before holding his Americano under his nose.  He blinked his magnificent eyes as he awakened and then shook his head to disperse the sleep.  She’d like to see that a lot more often, preferably from the adjacent pillow. “Thanks Betty, not enough coffee today and Jones without coffee is like… something without something…sorry, too sleepy for bon mots.”

 Betty learned that he was doing his MFA at the New School, supporting himself by working nights as a porter at Bellevue.  “Takes too long to travel all the way back to Yonkers between class and work so I hide out here and write.  Besides I live with a singer/songwriter so it gets sort of noisy at home.” Betty hid her disappointment.  Of course he had a girlfriend.  

“A musician.�� Would I know her work?” she asked, twisting the knife masochistically.

“Him.  No, I doubt it.” He paused and then looked at her a little shyly through his untidy, dark curls.   “He’s playing downtown at the weekend and I’ve got a night off. You should come.” Betty reproached herself for her heteronormativity and smiled weakly.  She really didn’t want to see Jones and his boyfriend together.

“Oh I’ve got … stuff this weekend.  But thanks though.  I’m sure he’ll be great.”  

Jones flushed and looked at his feet. “I’m sorry if that was inappropriate.  You don’t come to work to get hit on.  Sorry,”

“Oh, no I didn’t think you were asking me on a date.  To your boyfriend’s gig?  That’d be weird.  Oh unless…Oh, I mean, weird was rude.  It’s totally your business but I’m not…like, I’m pretty strait-laced I guess.  But you do you…or whoever.  Sorry.”  Jones was actually laughing now.

“Archie’s my roommate not my boyfriend.  I wasn’t inviting you to a threesome.  I was asking you on a date.  If you’re busy or you’d rather I got lost just say so.”

The gig was the most fun she’d had since she moved to the city.  When he leaned in for a kiss her heart thumped like she’d just drunk ten shots of espresso. After the encore she put her hand on Jughead’s arm and looked into his eyes.  “Would you like to come to my place… for coffee?”