[OPEN ] I showed you kindness, a stool, and a tab

[crawfordsands]

Who: Crawford, Open
What: There's a new coffee shop in town! Stop by for a cup, if you dare ask the surly man behind the counter for a drink.
Where: City Grind Coffee, Manhattan
When: Friday evening
Warnings: Crawford. So a lot of wearing. Maybe a fight or two will break out, you never know.
Notes: Typical "party" style log. Pop in as you wish,

Comments

[deadly_ned]

The facts were these.

Young Ned, aged nine years, forty-two weeks, six days, eleven hours and 20 minutes old, is being left by his father at the Longborough School for Boys. Ripped suddenly and without warning from his beloved home, Young Ned was cold, distant, and frightened of what the future might promise to bring. For he had learned, ever since the surprising death of his mother, that not all surprises were welcome, especially when the surprise came in the form of a sudden upheaval of one's home life without one's consent.

It's twenty years, fifteen weeks, four days, eight hours and 16 minutes later, heretofore known as Now, and Young Ned has become the Piemaker. The Piemaker, ripped so suddenly and without warning from his beloved home, his beloved Pie Hole, and his beloved beloved, also known as a girl named Chuck, was lonely. Nautilus, as it seemed, was not the paradise that dreams were made of. While spending weeks in the confusing and oftentimes completely overwhelming city of change, the Piemaker had not grown to like and appreciated his new location. He missed his pies. He missed Chuck. He missed not having his windows broken into by strange Italian-speaking assassins. Most of all, he missed how life, though never normal, had used to be.

Changing locations had become the norm for the Piemaker in a place that did not have norms at all. While at first he had been content to live in the home of one Tony Stark, mechanical engineer with a mechanical heart to match, that illusion of safety had swiftly been shattered. Living in the South was a perilous thing, for the Piemaker had already discovered it had taken less than two weeks for his special gift to come back to him. And when a person can raise dead things back to life, the last place they want to be in is a large forest in the middle of autumn.

Finally, the Piemaker had settled in the city of Manhattan, a city he had never seen, nor ever particularly wanted to see. Even so, he found a building that looked relatively like his own apartment complex, and, of course, chose to live on the same floor in the same numbered room as he always had. That no one else lived on the floor, or even the building, had become an oversight the Piemaker would eventually decide he liked, for it made things, in his eyes, far less complicated.

Still, the comforts of home and lack thereof were beginning to itch their familiar itch in the back of the Piemaker's brain. Too many things, he felt, were different. Sleeping, eating, and all the little things he had previously taken for granted could be taken for granted no longer; where once the Young Ned might have found joy in being served by a company of automated machines, the Piemaker felt no such joy; rather, the distance he felt when confronted with the absence of human comfort. After receiving nearly a year and a half of said comfort, the Piemaker was spoiled on the love showered upon him by his friends. Now that he had no friends, there was no love, and only the quiet comfort that his dog, Digby, could provide by mere presence alone.

As the Piemaker was walking said Digby through the streets of Manhattan, he thought of comfort, and of food. To him, the two were intricately linked through a series of childhood and adulthood traumas, coupled with the wafting aroma of warmth and love. He wanted to eat. He wanted to not be served by cold automated people. He wanted to find warmth, and comfort, and acceptance in a city that terrified him. In the dark streets, he headed for the one shop he knew of that was not on automatic machine pilot, and with Digby on a leash at his side, walked into the store of one Crawford Sands, the man with the foul mouth and the unfoul coffee.

[crawfordsands]

After taking care of the man in the suit and his coffee, Crawford and resumed his seat at the counter with his feet propped up. Only now that he'd been in there a while, he'd lit up a cigarette. Strangely, though the thing was lit and there was a thin trail of smoke rising from the end of the stick, there was no smell. If someone were to get rather close to him and his cigarette, they would be able to smell it. But it didn't leave his immediate vicinity.

That stick clamped in his lips, he looked up from his spiral notebook. He sneered, seeing the dog. None of his interactions with Ned had been of the video sort. And he'd been too drunk to remember them clearly. So he thought nothing of the man who walked toward him. Well, not anything to do with having spoken to him, at least. He made several assumptions, though. He was expecting an order of something complex or precise. Exact number of pumps down to the fraction. Probably soy.

He didn't bother standing up. He did take the cigarette out of his mouth, though.

"Yeah, what do ya want?" He sounded sober, at least.

[deadly_ned]

In his line of work, the Piemaker had been presented with a large number of unpleasant, unfriendly people, not least of which were thieves, murderers, and mimes. He had interacted with people who robbed graves, people who had killed for money or for fame, people who had tried to frame him for murder or run him out of business. In short, the Piemaker was no stranger to a host of many a complex and terrifying individual.

None of which held a candle to the man called Crawford Sands, who smoked as though he had a personal vendetta against the cigarette and held a scowl a mile long.

Lanky compared to bulky, shy compared to sour, the Piemaker felt small and unmatched as he warily approached the counter to address the intimidation young entrepreneur. Digby, who was rarely intimidated by others but who knew when to keep still and quiet, deemed it as good a moment as any and remained still and quiet.

"Yes. Hello," The Piemaker began, simultaneously wishing to be a turle so that he could crawl up into his shell, and stopping his shoulder from doing the crawling.

"I wish to. Um. Purchase coffee from this establishment. Hence...why I am here. Also I am here to tell you your shop is very...nice. It's decidedly lacking in swear words, which is a definite improvement over the sign. Er."

The Piemaker was not particularly good at small talk, especially when the man in front of him was making him feel very small indeed.

[crawfordsands]

He pulled his feet off the counter and tossed down the notebook. Closed, of course. The cover was a mess of scrawled notes and very poorly drawn doodles. The notebook was nearing to be a year old, and it showed. But he didn't pay attention to that. He rested both elbows on the counter, arms loosely crossed, one hand held out to accomidate the cigarette. All the while Ned talked, his features stayed in that more or less blank, semi-scowl he seemed to always have.

Oh, Ned. If you hadn't mentioned the swearing, he probably would have played nice. Not known who you were. But that alone was enough to put a name to nameless notes.

"You don't buy coffee here. There ain't any damn money in this city. Just tell me what the hell you want."

[deadly_ned]

In watching the scowling, orange-haired man, the Piemaker felt a sudden and keen urge to back away, as though he were approaching a bomb about to go off. Instead, he decided to persevere, hoping that if he kept up a friendly appearance, some of that friendliness might fall off of him, float around the room and attach itself to the man sitting across from him.

He smiled, nervously. This did not seem to do very much at all.

"Coffee." The Piemaker replied in a quiet, albeit resolute tone, and stared down at his shoes, which seemed to want to point anywhere but at the unfriendly man sitting opposite. He was beginning to doubt whether or not taking food from a machine was preferable to this uncomfortable situation. "Black...coffee. Please."

[crawfordsands]

Unfortunately for Ned, Crawford and a nice barrier of grump around him that prevented other people's friendliness from stick to him. Usually it had the reverse effect, as it did here. When Ned smiled, Crawford's scowl deepened. But that wasn't entirely because of Ned. Even though he managed to pull himself out of his funk, he was still angry and annoyed. And seeing people happy, or trying to be happy, only pissed him off.

He was about to make a snide remark to Ned's simple "coffee" when the man clarified his order. But that only made Crawford frown. He took a long drag off his cigarette before responding.

"That's it. Just black fuckin' coffee. We got every kinda latte, mocha, americano, steamer, tea, hot chocolate you could fuckin' ask for. And you get just coffee. Figures. What size you want?"

In some ways, he was disappointed. Though he wouldn't admit it to anyone, he was looking forward to mixing up drinks for people.

[deadly_ned]

With the grump barrier in place, the Piemaker felt his smile slowly slipping off his face until it fell off at last, into a pie of well-wishes that never went well and good intentions that failed to do any sort of good. Some people could be cheered with a worried yet thoughtful smile. Crawford was not one of these people and it was now clear to the Piemaker that perhaps he had best speed the transaction along if he were to escape the conversation alive.

"I'm sorry?" he began to apologize, causing a whine from Digby on the floor. "I didn't. Um. I don't want to. Look, if it's too much, I can. Go somewhere else."

[crawfordsands]

That wasn't the response he was expecting. And caused him to look at Ned with a raised eyebrow. An expression that made it seem like Crawford assumed this guy to be crazy. Which he'd assumed during their agressive versus passive argument. And now he could see just how passive Ned was. Not that he remembered much of that conversation and didn't yet realize this was the same person.

Ned at least had the right idea on his futile attempt at cheering up. Because Crawford needed it, badly. He wasn't going to accept it or even admit to needing it. He was going to shuffle his feelings around until he could shove them away into a deep, dark hole he usually found at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Then he would act like everything was okay until he acted for so long it stopped being an act and he just didn't think about what had been bothering him in the first place. It was a process he'd learned over many, many years of being faced with things he didn't like and couldn't deal with. Ned just happened to catch him in the starting phase of the shuffling process.

"What size? You deaf or somethin'? This is a coffee shop. Only one in the whole city. You want coffee, I'll get you some fuckin' coffee. First you pick your size--we got twelve, sixteen and twenty ounce. Then you pick what KIND of coffee. Or is that too much for you?"

[deadly_ned]

The Piemaker knew that look well. It was the look he was given whenever someone did not like him, whenever he was about to be accused of weirdness or insanity or murder, whenever the villagers were readying their torches and pitchforks. He had received the same look many times before once upon a time in the Longborough School for Boys, and the traumatic memory of it all came rushing back. The Piemaker did not want to be weird. He just could not help himself.

But being at war with his own conflicting emotions, the Piemaker decided that in times of trouble, one could do nothing else except press on into the breach, to face one's fears and to swallow one's anxiety. And the red-headed coffee-maker was certainly providing enough anxiety to cause the Piemaker to choke.

"Twelve." he stated, abruptly. "Twelve...ounces. It's not too much. It's just...I don't have a very active imagination and one of the things I have trouble imagining is coffee. I....What would you. Um. Recommend?"

[crawfordsands]

He took one last drag off his cigarette and all of a sudden, the glowing ember at the end grew brighter. In a puff of smoke and fleeting flame, the whole thing vanished. He exhaled the final lungful of smoke as he seemed to think about Ned's question. As he leaned back in his chair, arms now firmly crossed over his chest, he looked as though he might drop another anger-tinted remark. But really, Crawford didn't hate Ned. Didn't even dislike him, at least not on a personal level. It was just that right now Ned fell into that area of unknown people. All of which received a general disliking from the redhead. Initial dislike and distrust were the best choice in his book. It weeded out the people that weren't worth being around.

"Well..." he started, taking a moment longer to think. "Depends on what you like. I don't know you, so fuck if I know what to suggest. If you like it bitter, straight up black's the way to go. Or Americano, if you're lookin' for somethin' different. You want milk, there's a latte or a macchiato. This time of year, people're goin' for flavored sort. Pumpkin lattes and caramel macchiatos. You want to go the chocolate route, there's mochas. People sometimes take it a couple pumps of peppermint, but that's more of a winter thing. If none of that's what you want, you describe what you want and I'll see what I can whip up. Ain't exactly like we're limited here, is it?"

Having worked in the coffee shop since he was sixteen, he'd grown to have something of a small passion for the drink he served. His mother's cousin gave him the job out of pity, not able to do anything else for the kid. He picked it up fast, and his no-nonsense attitude fit quite well for handling annoying customers and suited him for the assistant manager position he came to have. The employees were afraid of him, but the respected him in a way. And he knew his way around that shop and those drinks better than any bleached out teenaged twit working at a Starbucks.

[deadly_ned]

"No," The Piemaker mumbled, as he looked shyly around the store, considering the options opening to him like so many flowers in bloom. "No, one thing we are definitely not is limited." In some ways, the Piemaker was relieved to find that Crawford Sands was not, in fact, the sort of person who reached out and hugged the newcomers to Nautilus. While death did not work the same way as in Nautilus, the Piemaker had decided it was best not to get emotionally attached to anyone while staying in the city of change, and Crawford Sands was about as unemotionally detached as a broken keyring.

"Black. Coffee, I mean. Just black is. Fine." He voiced at last, and held his breath, waiting to be chastised. It was hard, he realized, being the new person anywhere. Even harder was living with the fact that he was the new person in an altogether new dimension.

[crawfordsands]

But Ned wasn't alone in being new here. A year ago, he was sitting at home in his own world, minding his own business, oblivious to the fact that he was living in a dream and in a few weeks, he would answer a call he didn't know he'd even heard to find himself in a place he didn't want to be. Or so he would assume when he got there. And there were others who were even newer than Ned himself. Everyone had been new to this place, it seemed no one was a native, or so Crawford assumed.

"Black it is," he grumbled.

Customer number two and the second black cup of coffee. But that didn't mean it was a waste. He'd mate sure this was the best damn coffee anyone had ever had. But a little experience with Bending combined with a lot of experience with coffee made the perfect combination. So a few minutes later what he slid across the counter to the Piemaker was potentially the best coffee the man had ever consumed. But that may have just been Crawford's ego and pride talking.

[deadly_ned]

As the Piemaker took the coffee in his hands and slowly sipped the steaming hot liquid, his mind was immediately drawn to more comforting thoughts than those he found himself often possessing in and about Nautilus. In that one drop of warm, tasty drink, all of his worries and anxieties vanished from his face. Suddenly it no longer mattered that he was trapped in a city, that there was a brotherhood of look-a-like assassins stalking him, that he had a half mad, half troll goblin glowering in front of him.

Nothing mattered, except that one drop of coffee.

He closed his eyes, and he thought of a great many things that that one drop brought to mind. He thought, first and always, of Chuck. Her hair, her voice, her quirky surprises that he surprisingly did not mind when she surprised him. And of his Pie Hole, and of comfort food in general, and of his mother, and of his dog, and of all the things that he thought of when his stomach clenched up and he choked on the emotional bile he oftentimes held back.

The Piemaker's eyes opened. He set down the cup, and reached across the counter, and locked eyes with Crawford.

"You might never get me to leave this shop. Ever." He said, and quite seriously too.

[crawfordsands]

While Ned swooned over the coffee, Crawford went about cleaning the mess made by the bean grinder. Sure, he could have just used Bending to make the mess go away, but old habits die hard. So he wrung out the rag that had been sitting in a bucket of bleach tinged water. He was in the process of mopping up the grounds when Ned spoke up.

He'd had some odd compliments on the coffee before. But never quite like that. Then again, he'd had more than one person threaten his life over getting an order wrong, so he really shouldn't be surprised. People were crazy. This guy was probably just an end of the spectrum that was sparsely populated.

"It's just a fuckin' cup of coffee."

Compliments were something he received so rarely, he had no idea how to handle them.

[deadly_ned]

The Piemaker wrapped both hands around the cup, holding it like he might have held a treasured newborn kitten, albeit a kitten he could drink and consume without feeling guilt over killing it. His eyes briefly watered and his head dropped down so that his chin touched his chest, as he stared into the cup of brown liquid and thought about how nice it was that someone had provided comfort food. Though he knew his compliments would reach deaf ears and his gratitude would be perceived as strange or unusual or the result of too much weakly coddling, still he uttered,

"It was the best cup of coffee. Thank you."

And left it at that.