one (jensen)
Nov. 1st, 2010 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieThere’s a girl locked in the bathroom at the coffeeshop.
That’s the first thing Jensen learns when he shows up for work – that a girl has barricaded herself in the bathroom and this has come to the staff’s attention courtesy of some poor customer who’s had to pee for half an hour.
“Alona’s trying to talk to her,” Justin says, as Jensen tries to squeeze past him behind the counter to get to the little staff room.
“Who is it?” Jensen asks. “Wait, let me put my shit down.” Not that he has that much to put down – just his jacket and a book for when things get slow. He’s here until closing, and sometimes it gets boring. And there’s only so many times you can wipe down the tables and straighten the straws and spoons and sweeteners and make sure you’re not running out of anything.
He drops off his jacket and book in a cubby in the staff room and comes back out to the counter to discover that the guy who apparently alerted Justin and Alona to the state of the locked bathroom is now asking if there’s anywhere near here where he can pee. From the way he’s standing, Jensen can guess the guy would be happy enough to just go back into the alley and unzip.
Justin tries to give the guy directions and Jensen goes back to the bathroom to ask Alona what’s up.
“Zooey,” she’s saying to the door, “someone has to use the bathroom. Will you please come out?”
“No,” says Zooey from the other side of the door. Jensen tries to remember who Zooey is, and if he should know her.
“She won’t come out,” Alona tells Jensen, unnecessarily. “Not until Nicki comes to talk to her. They. Um. Broke up. Badly.”
(Alona doesn’t care that her manager is a lesbian. She just hates bearing bad news, and “They broke up” evidently sounds like bad enough news to her.)
“Zooey, honey,” Alona says to the bathroom, “if Jensen calls her, will you unlock the door?”
“Doesn’t she have her own phone in there?” he asks.
“Nicki won’t answer it.” Alona looks upset, but Jensen guesses that it’s more sympathy for Nicki and Zooey’s drama and less because it’s disrupting business in the coffeeshop.
“Do you need me? Because otherwise I should help Justin out behind the counter.”
“Will you call Nicki first? She’ll probably answer if she sees it’s you.”
“Didn’t you try to call from the store phone?”
“Justin did. She hung up when he told her what happened.”
Jensen wants to roll his eyes. This is high school shit, and they’re all out of high school.
“My phone’s in – “
“So go get it. Jensen’s going to call her, ok?” she tells Zooey.
“I can hear you through the door,” Zooey calls. Jensen kind of doubts that. He’s been in that bathroom, and it’s pretty soundproof once the door is closed, if the people on the other side are talking in low tones. Which he and Alona are.
But he obediently goes back to the break room, gets his phone, and calls Nicki’s number. She doesn’t answer – he wonders if she’s gotten wise to their tricks – so he leaves a message – “Zooey’s still locked in the bathroom and she’s going to stay there until you get down here”. And then he squishes past Justin at the counter again and reports back to Alona.
He whispers “I had to leave a message”, assuming – correctly, it turns out – that if Zooey can’t hear them, Alona might now lie to her to get her out of the bathroom.
“She’s on her way,” Alona calls through the door. Jensen congratulates himself on reading her right.
“So what happens when Nicki doesn’t show?” he whispers.
Alona shrugs. “I think I can fake her voice.” She composes herself and says “Hey, Zooey, what are you doing in the bathroom?” in a pretty good imitation of Nicki’s voice.
“I know that’s not her,” Zooey calls.
“Do you want me to talk to her?” Jensen asks Alona. She shakes her head. “I’ll be out front if you need me.” He heads back to the counter, where a line has formed and Justin is looking a little harried.
Twenty minutes later Alona and Justin have switched places, the guy who had to pee has decamped for a place where he can actually get to the toilet, Nicki still hasn’t shown up, and Zooey is still in the bathroom. Alona goes into the burrito place next door to explain the problem and ask if she can send people in there to use their bathroom, on the off-chance someone in the coffeeshop needs to use it before they get Zooey out. The folks in the burrito place very hesitatingly say ok, sure, which is a good thing because no sooner has Alona finished telling Jensen this story than a girl comes up to the counter to inform them that she has to use the bathroom, and she can’t because whoever’s in it is still there.
Alona sends the girl next door, and she comes back ten minutes later with a burrito wrapped in tinfoil.
“It’s been an hour,” Jensen says. “Should we break in?” Although he’s not sure if you even can break into the bathroom. There’s no lock on the outside that someone could pick, and it’s entirely possible the only way to get in, if Zooey doesn’t want to come out, is to kick down the door. And he’s not wearing his door-kicking boots.
Then the front door opens and Nicki appears, looking pissed. Alona and Jensen both point towards the back of the coffeeshop, where the bathroom is. She stalks past them. Alona leans over the counter to watch her go. Jensen opens a fresh bag of coffee beans without paying attention – he’s listening for Nicki – and opens it with just a little too much force, spilling beans everywhere. He swears. Alona giggles.
“Shut up,” he mutters. She fetches a broom, but as soon as he starts sweeping up the beans she walks out from behind the counter to presumably see whether or not Nicki can get her ex out of the bathroom.
Five minutes later she reappears with Justin, and five minutes after that, Nicki stalks back out of the coffeeshop with a girl who must be Zooey in tow. She doesn’t look remotely familiar and Jensen wonders how long ago she and Nicki broke up, and why Nicki never mentioned her in his hearing.
“When did they break up?” he asks Alona.
“Two months ago,” Justin says. “Why are there coffee beans all over the counter back here?”
“Jensen had an accident,” Alona tells him, grinning at Jensen. He holds up the dustpan. She just grins brighter.
“I’m getting to it,” he says.
Someone walks up to the counter and asks “Hey, can I get a coffee?” and Alona and Justin take care of him while Jensen sweeps the coffee beans off the back counter and into a trash can. Anything that falls on the floor, whatever it is, goes right into the sink or the trash, but sometimes beans can be salvaged if they fall on the counter. But he has no idea when the counter was last wiped, and it seems safer to just dump the beans. At least he didn’t spill the entire bag.
The remaining beans go into the grinder and then into one of the industrial-size coffeemakers. And just in time – a group of college students comes into the coffeeshop as the fresh coffee is brewing, but they don’t mind waiting a couple of minutes if it means a nice hot cup of new coffee.
Justin goes home. Alona stays. Jensen realizes he was supposed to be closing with Genevieve, who’s been here longer than he has and who Nicki trusts to close up, but she hasn’t shown.
“She called in sick this morning,” Alona says. “You got me instead.” She smiles brightly.
“Am I complaining?” He smiles back. It’s not that he doesn’t like Genevieve – he does – but Alona’s also a singer, and if nothing else they can talk shop and commiserate on how commercial the business is and how they might not be cut out for it, at least not here.
And when it’s really slow in the coffeeshop, they’ll turn up the music on the sound system and sing along. Jensen doesn’t love karaoke because he doesn’t love getting up in front of an audience, but singing in the coffeeshop, that’s ok. He can pretend it’s just him and Alona, and there aren’t five or ten or however many people sitting at tables and in armchairs listening to them sing.
Alona’s taking a break and Jensen is singing some Jack Johnson song under his breath, his back to the counter, when he hears “Um, hi, can I get a medium decaf and a muffin?” And he turns around and there’s a tall, broad-shouldered guy at the counter, wearing a University of Texas t-shirt under an old barn jacket.
“Go Longhorns,” Jensen says. “What campus?”
“Huh?”
“Did you go to UT?”
“Oh, no, my brother got me this shirt. He was at UT Dallas.”
Jensen points to himself. “UT Austin. What kind of muffin?” He peers into the bakery case. “All we have left is blueberry.”
“Guess I’ll have a blueberry.” The guy grins. He’s cute.
“Here or to go?”
“Uh, here, I guess.”
Oh good, Jensen thinks. He’s not the most outgoing of people, but when cute guys – especially cute Texan guys – talk to him, he makes a determined effort to be friendly, to keep them talking. And it helps when he knows neither of them will be rushing off any time soon.
Although sometimes that makes it really awkward.
Jensen pours the guy’s coffee, puts a muffin on a plate, takes his money, and then they both just stand there, grinning goofily. Well, the guy is grinning goofily – Jensen doesn’t want to know what his face looks like.
“Where are you from?” he asks, finally hitting on a reasonable and non-creepy question.
“San Antonio,” the guy says. “I’ve been here for four years, though. I’m just taking a class at Vanderbilt.” He waves in what Jensen assumes is the university’s general direction. “What about you?”
“I’m originally from Dallas, but I moved here from Houston. Just eight months ago, though. I still get lost a lot.”
“You have a GPS?”
“I don’t trust them.” Jensen feels stupid saying that, but it’s true. He’s heard enough horror stories that he prefers to rely on his own ability to read a map rather than some little dashboard computer.
Jared nods. “Fair enough. I’ve only been through Houston – my friend Chad and I drove through it on the way to New Orleans once. That interstate’s pretty crazy.” He sips his coffee. He has so far made no move to sit down.
“I hated it,” Jensen says. “Houston. I really needed a change, and a friend of mine is here, so this is where I came. I like it so far. It’s a nice city.”
“Not quite like home, though.”
“Well, there’s no place like – “
“Home.”
“ – home.”
They both laugh.
“I’m Jared,” the guy says, holding out his hand.
“Jensen.” He shakes and realizes belatedly that he has coffee grounds on his hand. Jared doesn’t seem to mind.
They chat aimably for another couple of minutes, until Alona gets back from her break and gently suggests that Jensen maybe clean off some of the tables. Jared’s phone picks that time to ring, and after a really short conversation that from his end is mostly “Uh-huh” and “Ok” and “Right now?” he looks at Jensen ruefully (at least Jensen wants to think it’s a regretful expression) and says “I gotta go. Nice to meet you.”
“It’s always nice to meet a fellow Texan. Maybe I’ll see you in here again.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Jared grins a little and waves a little and heads out.
“He was cute,” Alona observes, after the door has closed behind him. “Tall.” She looks sideways at Jensen. “Were you flirting with him? Was he flirting with you?”
“You sound surprised.” Were they flirting? Jensen doesn’t think he was doing it on purpose, if he was.
“I didn’t think you were the flirting type.” She pulls a plastic tub out from underneath the counter and hands it to him. “Tables.”
“Yes’m.”
As he picks up cups and plates and silverware he wonders what brought Jared to Nashville, and he hopes he didn’t sound too stupid when they were talking. And then he reminds himself that not only did he start a conversation but he kept it going, and it doesn’t matter if he sounded stupid or not.
Chalk one up for the shy boy, he thinks. Not bad.
words: 2161
total words: 3134
(eventually i'll have a jensen icon....)
That’s the first thing Jensen learns when he shows up for work – that a girl has barricaded herself in the bathroom and this has come to the staff’s attention courtesy of some poor customer who’s had to pee for half an hour.
“Alona’s trying to talk to her,” Justin says, as Jensen tries to squeeze past him behind the counter to get to the little staff room.
“Who is it?” Jensen asks. “Wait, let me put my shit down.” Not that he has that much to put down – just his jacket and a book for when things get slow. He’s here until closing, and sometimes it gets boring. And there’s only so many times you can wipe down the tables and straighten the straws and spoons and sweeteners and make sure you’re not running out of anything.
He drops off his jacket and book in a cubby in the staff room and comes back out to the counter to discover that the guy who apparently alerted Justin and Alona to the state of the locked bathroom is now asking if there’s anywhere near here where he can pee. From the way he’s standing, Jensen can guess the guy would be happy enough to just go back into the alley and unzip.
Justin tries to give the guy directions and Jensen goes back to the bathroom to ask Alona what’s up.
“Zooey,” she’s saying to the door, “someone has to use the bathroom. Will you please come out?”
“No,” says Zooey from the other side of the door. Jensen tries to remember who Zooey is, and if he should know her.
“She won’t come out,” Alona tells Jensen, unnecessarily. “Not until Nicki comes to talk to her. They. Um. Broke up. Badly.”
(Alona doesn’t care that her manager is a lesbian. She just hates bearing bad news, and “They broke up” evidently sounds like bad enough news to her.)
“Zooey, honey,” Alona says to the bathroom, “if Jensen calls her, will you unlock the door?”
“Doesn’t she have her own phone in there?” he asks.
“Nicki won’t answer it.” Alona looks upset, but Jensen guesses that it’s more sympathy for Nicki and Zooey’s drama and less because it’s disrupting business in the coffeeshop.
“Do you need me? Because otherwise I should help Justin out behind the counter.”
“Will you call Nicki first? She’ll probably answer if she sees it’s you.”
“Didn’t you try to call from the store phone?”
“Justin did. She hung up when he told her what happened.”
Jensen wants to roll his eyes. This is high school shit, and they’re all out of high school.
“My phone’s in – “
“So go get it. Jensen’s going to call her, ok?” she tells Zooey.
“I can hear you through the door,” Zooey calls. Jensen kind of doubts that. He’s been in that bathroom, and it’s pretty soundproof once the door is closed, if the people on the other side are talking in low tones. Which he and Alona are.
But he obediently goes back to the break room, gets his phone, and calls Nicki’s number. She doesn’t answer – he wonders if she’s gotten wise to their tricks – so he leaves a message – “Zooey’s still locked in the bathroom and she’s going to stay there until you get down here”. And then he squishes past Justin at the counter again and reports back to Alona.
He whispers “I had to leave a message”, assuming – correctly, it turns out – that if Zooey can’t hear them, Alona might now lie to her to get her out of the bathroom.
“She’s on her way,” Alona calls through the door. Jensen congratulates himself on reading her right.
“So what happens when Nicki doesn’t show?” he whispers.
Alona shrugs. “I think I can fake her voice.” She composes herself and says “Hey, Zooey, what are you doing in the bathroom?” in a pretty good imitation of Nicki’s voice.
“I know that’s not her,” Zooey calls.
“Do you want me to talk to her?” Jensen asks Alona. She shakes her head. “I’ll be out front if you need me.” He heads back to the counter, where a line has formed and Justin is looking a little harried.
Twenty minutes later Alona and Justin have switched places, the guy who had to pee has decamped for a place where he can actually get to the toilet, Nicki still hasn’t shown up, and Zooey is still in the bathroom. Alona goes into the burrito place next door to explain the problem and ask if she can send people in there to use their bathroom, on the off-chance someone in the coffeeshop needs to use it before they get Zooey out. The folks in the burrito place very hesitatingly say ok, sure, which is a good thing because no sooner has Alona finished telling Jensen this story than a girl comes up to the counter to inform them that she has to use the bathroom, and she can’t because whoever’s in it is still there.
Alona sends the girl next door, and she comes back ten minutes later with a burrito wrapped in tinfoil.
“It’s been an hour,” Jensen says. “Should we break in?” Although he’s not sure if you even can break into the bathroom. There’s no lock on the outside that someone could pick, and it’s entirely possible the only way to get in, if Zooey doesn’t want to come out, is to kick down the door. And he’s not wearing his door-kicking boots.
Then the front door opens and Nicki appears, looking pissed. Alona and Jensen both point towards the back of the coffeeshop, where the bathroom is. She stalks past them. Alona leans over the counter to watch her go. Jensen opens a fresh bag of coffee beans without paying attention – he’s listening for Nicki – and opens it with just a little too much force, spilling beans everywhere. He swears. Alona giggles.
“Shut up,” he mutters. She fetches a broom, but as soon as he starts sweeping up the beans she walks out from behind the counter to presumably see whether or not Nicki can get her ex out of the bathroom.
Five minutes later she reappears with Justin, and five minutes after that, Nicki stalks back out of the coffeeshop with a girl who must be Zooey in tow. She doesn’t look remotely familiar and Jensen wonders how long ago she and Nicki broke up, and why Nicki never mentioned her in his hearing.
“When did they break up?” he asks Alona.
“Two months ago,” Justin says. “Why are there coffee beans all over the counter back here?”
“Jensen had an accident,” Alona tells him, grinning at Jensen. He holds up the dustpan. She just grins brighter.
“I’m getting to it,” he says.
Someone walks up to the counter and asks “Hey, can I get a coffee?” and Alona and Justin take care of him while Jensen sweeps the coffee beans off the back counter and into a trash can. Anything that falls on the floor, whatever it is, goes right into the sink or the trash, but sometimes beans can be salvaged if they fall on the counter. But he has no idea when the counter was last wiped, and it seems safer to just dump the beans. At least he didn’t spill the entire bag.
The remaining beans go into the grinder and then into one of the industrial-size coffeemakers. And just in time – a group of college students comes into the coffeeshop as the fresh coffee is brewing, but they don’t mind waiting a couple of minutes if it means a nice hot cup of new coffee.
Justin goes home. Alona stays. Jensen realizes he was supposed to be closing with Genevieve, who’s been here longer than he has and who Nicki trusts to close up, but she hasn’t shown.
“She called in sick this morning,” Alona says. “You got me instead.” She smiles brightly.
“Am I complaining?” He smiles back. It’s not that he doesn’t like Genevieve – he does – but Alona’s also a singer, and if nothing else they can talk shop and commiserate on how commercial the business is and how they might not be cut out for it, at least not here.
And when it’s really slow in the coffeeshop, they’ll turn up the music on the sound system and sing along. Jensen doesn’t love karaoke because he doesn’t love getting up in front of an audience, but singing in the coffeeshop, that’s ok. He can pretend it’s just him and Alona, and there aren’t five or ten or however many people sitting at tables and in armchairs listening to them sing.
Alona’s taking a break and Jensen is singing some Jack Johnson song under his breath, his back to the counter, when he hears “Um, hi, can I get a medium decaf and a muffin?” And he turns around and there’s a tall, broad-shouldered guy at the counter, wearing a University of Texas t-shirt under an old barn jacket.
“Go Longhorns,” Jensen says. “What campus?”
“Huh?”
“Did you go to UT?”
“Oh, no, my brother got me this shirt. He was at UT Dallas.”
Jensen points to himself. “UT Austin. What kind of muffin?” He peers into the bakery case. “All we have left is blueberry.”
“Guess I’ll have a blueberry.” The guy grins. He’s cute.
“Here or to go?”
“Uh, here, I guess.”
Oh good, Jensen thinks. He’s not the most outgoing of people, but when cute guys – especially cute Texan guys – talk to him, he makes a determined effort to be friendly, to keep them talking. And it helps when he knows neither of them will be rushing off any time soon.
Although sometimes that makes it really awkward.
Jensen pours the guy’s coffee, puts a muffin on a plate, takes his money, and then they both just stand there, grinning goofily. Well, the guy is grinning goofily – Jensen doesn’t want to know what his face looks like.
“Where are you from?” he asks, finally hitting on a reasonable and non-creepy question.
“San Antonio,” the guy says. “I’ve been here for four years, though. I’m just taking a class at Vanderbilt.” He waves in what Jensen assumes is the university’s general direction. “What about you?”
“I’m originally from Dallas, but I moved here from Houston. Just eight months ago, though. I still get lost a lot.”
“You have a GPS?”
“I don’t trust them.” Jensen feels stupid saying that, but it’s true. He’s heard enough horror stories that he prefers to rely on his own ability to read a map rather than some little dashboard computer.
Jared nods. “Fair enough. I’ve only been through Houston – my friend Chad and I drove through it on the way to New Orleans once. That interstate’s pretty crazy.” He sips his coffee. He has so far made no move to sit down.
“I hated it,” Jensen says. “Houston. I really needed a change, and a friend of mine is here, so this is where I came. I like it so far. It’s a nice city.”
“Not quite like home, though.”
“Well, there’s no place like – “
“Home.”
“ – home.”
They both laugh.
“I’m Jared,” the guy says, holding out his hand.
“Jensen.” He shakes and realizes belatedly that he has coffee grounds on his hand. Jared doesn’t seem to mind.
They chat aimably for another couple of minutes, until Alona gets back from her break and gently suggests that Jensen maybe clean off some of the tables. Jared’s phone picks that time to ring, and after a really short conversation that from his end is mostly “Uh-huh” and “Ok” and “Right now?” he looks at Jensen ruefully (at least Jensen wants to think it’s a regretful expression) and says “I gotta go. Nice to meet you.”
“It’s always nice to meet a fellow Texan. Maybe I’ll see you in here again.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Jared grins a little and waves a little and heads out.
“He was cute,” Alona observes, after the door has closed behind him. “Tall.” She looks sideways at Jensen. “Were you flirting with him? Was he flirting with you?”
“You sound surprised.” Were they flirting? Jensen doesn’t think he was doing it on purpose, if he was.
“I didn’t think you were the flirting type.” She pulls a plastic tub out from underneath the counter and hands it to him. “Tables.”
“Yes’m.”
As he picks up cups and plates and silverware he wonders what brought Jared to Nashville, and he hopes he didn’t sound too stupid when they were talking. And then he reminds himself that not only did he start a conversation but he kept it going, and it doesn’t matter if he sounded stupid or not.
Chalk one up for the shy boy, he thinks. Not bad.
words: 2161
total words: 3134
(eventually i'll have a jensen icon....)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-03 05:06 am (UTC)alona: \o/
jared: ...are people talking about me? o.O
no subject
Date: 2010-11-03 05:06 am (UTC)