Chapter Text
1. Intro - Stasis
“Good afternoon, Cornley residents, visitors, and all in between! It is just past three thirty on this lovely New Year’s Eve, if a bit nippy – I don’t know about you all, but I parked nearer to the studio door than usual. This is Danny Kimball from Cornley Cultural Radio Two, and you lot are stuck with me for the next two hours as we go through the best, worst, and hittiest hits from the past forty years. No better day to be nostalgic, am I right? We’ll be walking into the new year with a smile, that’s for sure.
First up, my favourite Beatles classic…”
It’s not that Chris isn’t fond of Fridays. He likes them well enough. They’re a nice nonexistent end to the perpetual week. Maybe it’s that most of the people coming through on Fridays have a lightness about them, or maybe he’s just putting an arbitrary emotion on what’s otherwise just another day. It doesn’t particularly matter.
It’s just that, well, things always seem to happen on Fridays. Things that eventually end up with him working overtime, or going to emergency, or taking someone else to emergency, or trying to defuse a situation in the back alley with one foot genuinely stuck in the door, not just propping it open but really stuck in there, so could you please not attack me on your way to attack him because I assure you I really don’t want to be here.
He got out of that one mostly unscathed. Probably because whoever it was deciding to have a knife fight in that back alley deemed him and his stuck foot too pathetic to care about.
Anyway. Fridays. They’re fine.
For reasons unknown, he’s decided to keep the shop open on New Year’s. Probably because he has nothing better to do. For reasons more unknown, they actually have business. Maybe no one else has anything better to do, either, because Cornley is the kind of town that consists mostly of college students, octogenarians, and weird people. Sometimes weird octogenarian college students.
But he’s here, too, so he can’t really complain.
So it’s him, and it’s Dennis (employee, weird person), and an assorted smattering of customers (four college students, one octogenarian, and several weird people) all together in this little place he co-opted when his father retired. Cornley’s “hidden gem” of a coffee shop, according to some C-list travel blogger. Chris’s own namesake – or is he the namesake of the shop? – Bean’s Beans.
Regrettably, yes, he is the one who came up with the name, but he takes no credit for it because he was six years old at the time. This is what happens when you trust your son with important business decisions, dad.
“Hello!” Dennis says to a customer at the front. “Can I start a think for you?”
Chris pops his head around the back corner to check the counter. Leaning near the register is Max (weird person, college student, Dennis’s best friend), trademark grin as he peruses the menu he ought to have memorized by now. He’s been trying to drink his way through it for nearly a month now. “Almost there, buddy,” he says. “I’m thinking… walnut latte?”
“Annie says that one’s good.” Dennis punches the code into their old machine. “That’s fifteen seven.”
“Five seventeen!” corrects Chris from the back. He picks up the tray he’d gone to collect and swings easily past his co-worker as Dennis heads for the coffee machine. “Don’t forget the oat milk.”
“Can’t have me passing out in your shop,” Max jokes.
Chris scowls at him. “Again.”
“One time, Chris. One time.”
“I will not try to kill you,” Dennis recites dutifully. “Again.”
Chris slots the tray back into their pastry rack and adjusts some lunch buns in their case to make them look nicer. Dennis knows his way around for the most part; the most Chris has to do now is make sure the coffee machine is on brew rather than clean, and occasionally label their flavours with extra-large lettering to make sure no one gets confused between caramel and hazelnut. Apart from the Max Lactose Incident (also on a Friday), they’ve done pretty well in their endeavour to make Bean’s Beans a safe and healthy harbor for all Cornley residents.
Besides, Dennis seems to be a fan favourite barista. Particularly among the college students, weird people, and octogenarians, so. Just about everybody.
The door chime rings. Chris looks out the windows before registering who’s coming in; it looks cold outside, wind bending the trees along the walk to a seventy-degree angle, traces of grey in the otherwise chilly blue sky. Happy new year, he says to himself, here’s to another night drinking tea alone in your flat.
He knows the new patron on a relatively friendly basis. Vanessa (college student) is probably the most normal of his regulars; she’s not quite as wild-eyed and caffeine dependent as Trevor (Max’s boyfriend, college student, octogenarian in spirit), not nearly as postural as Sandra (Max’s girlfriend, weird person in a way Chris can’t quite put his finger on). She’s a law student, which often means she’s at the shop for hours at a time, poring over some large textbook or going through old journals or records from some legal proceeding in Wales. Chris doesn’t even pretend to understand it all.
What he can do is refill her coffees and give her extra lunch buns when she looks like she’s nearing her next stress breakdown. She tries to pay for them, sometimes. Chris usually slips her notes into the tip jar or gives them to Dennis.
“Good afternoon!” she says, dropping her knapsack down on one of the tables off to the side. “Happy almost-next-year.”
“Happy almost-next-year,” Chris replies, trying to quell the yearly feeling of existential inadequacy that’s been welling up in his chest for the past three days. “Medium mocha?”
“As usual,” she confirms. “Alright, Dennis?”
“Dennis is alright,” Dennis says. He hands Max his drink. “Thank you for coming to Beans and have a good day.”
Max takes the drink with a grandiose gesture of thanks. “All the best, little man. Hey, Chris, you mind if I stick around and harangue your best employee for a bit?”
“Lack of permission has never stopped you before,” says Chris drily. In the background, the radio fritzes static. “Dennis, could you check the antenna?” Their radio is just about as old as the shop, but hey, it still works – its fuzzy frequency just adds charm. Really, Chris just can’t be bothered to get a new one, because that requires things like electronics shopping and many things he doesn’t want to do.
He mixes the chocolate for Vanessa’s mocha. “Why is it that you’re here?” he asks her. “Don’t you have something better to be doing today?” She’s already pulling books from her bag, so he continues, “Something a little more… relaxing?”
“Oh, you know me,” she says, a bit of a harried smile on her cheeks. “Never stop. Go, go, go.”
The radio makes a louder fritzing noise, followed by a bang as Dennis slaps it heartily on the side.
“Well,” says Chris, popping a lid onto Vanessa’s drink and handing it to her. “I know you’ll be just fine – Dennis, what is that noise?”
Dennis is frowning, fiddling with the knobs as it beeps loudly at him. “I don’t know, it just did that, and –”
“Sorry for the interruption, listeners, but we’ve got an urgent announcement straight from the local Cornley emergency department.”
“Hold on,” Chris says. “Turn it up.” He holds up a stop hand to someone heading for the door. “Everyone – emergency announcement.”
2. Toxic Air
“We’ve got a punctured chemical tanker just off Juniper and 21st rapidly releasing contents the toxin team is calling ‘unsafe to breathe’. That means an immediate shelter in place order is in effect, I repeat, immediate shelter in place: do not go outside. If you are outside, seek shelter immediately. Turn off your air returns and close your windows. If you’ve got the means, seal them with plastic and duct tape. Your safety is of utmost importance, folks. Stay in and take care.
We’ll be re-broadcasting this message every ten minutes to catch our stragglers. Keep it safe, everyone, this is Cornley Cultural Radio Two, Danny Kimball becoming your local lifeline…”
Everything is still for a moment, and then Max says, “Well, that’s not good.”
After another second’s worth of buffering, the get things done part of Chris’s brain takes over. “Dennis, leave the radio on, shut the back door, and go fetch the duct tape. Everyone inside, listen up: we are not to go anywhere until the radio tells us otherwise. Be prepared to hole up for a while. For God’s sake, do not make this worse for the rest of us. Also, if someone could please check upstairs for anyone who may have missed the announcement.” He strides toward the front door, all business.
Out of the corner of his eye, he catches a quickly-moving Trevor blurring for the stairs. The people outside aren’t hurrying yet – but of course they’re not, they haven’t heard. As he watches, doors along the row swing open to herd in stragglers. He fiddles with the handle and does the same.
The street clears impressively quickly. Chris catches another man who sometimes frequents the shop (Jonathan, college student) and does another preliminary check around before backing in again.
And then a plaid scarf flashes by, and Chris reaches out the door and snags it between three fingers. “Get in.”
“Chris, my door is right there.”
Chris makes sure Robert (not an octogenarian, but as insufferable as one) is fully inside before he slams the door, hits the lock, and stands bodily against it as he searches for Dennis. “The shelter in place was ordered immediately. Or can you not hear?”
Robert crosses his arms. “I can hear just fine, thank you. I would just rather be spending this shelter in place in my own office.”
“Forgive me for wanting to save your lungs,” sniffs Chris. “Dennis! The tape?”
A roll of tape comes hurtling through the air, no doubt thrown by someone other than Dennis. It bounces off Robert’s chest and Chris catches it before the man can steal it from him. “Move,” he says, ripping a strip off the roll.
Robert is the manager and organizer of the Cornley Community Centre, a slightly pathetic building that shares a wall with Bean’s Beans and occasionally hosts programming for children, old folks, and people who need more enrichment in their lives. They share a wall and a thermostat. This has caused many problems.
Robert moves aside with a small grumble. If Chris squints, he can imagine a cartoonish squiggle above his head, the classic symbol of aggrieved discomfort.
When he finishes with the door, he turns back around to survey the collection of people caught inside. Dennis, Max, Vanessa, and Trevor he already knew were here; emergent from the upstairs is Sandra (he should have guessed) and Annie (college student, Trevor’s friend, nearly sensible). Alongside the two men he’s dragged inside and himself – well, it makes for a party of sorts.
A weird isolationist party where he barely knows some guests and no one is allowed to leave, which is genuinely one of Chris’s nightmares. Great. This is fine.
“Right,” he says. “I’m sure we all know this by now. Hazardous air. No one can go outside until the toxin team declares it safe. Settle in, make yourselves comfortable. If someone could help me tape the windows.”
He very pointedly does not examine whatever stilted dynamics have already begun to sprout between the gathered people and turns back to the window with the tape. The resident college techies come to help. The rest of them – he doesn’t really care.
3. Max in the Kitchen / Reconciliation
There is an excruciating air of awkwardness for about an hour.
This is about the same amount of time it takes for Chris to give up and allow them free reign of the back, including food and drink. Max takes the opportunity to create for himself the largest sugary monstrosity he can, piling on a sizeable clump of whipped cream and every single sauce he can find.
“That is,” Sandra says, leaning across the counter like it’s a bar, “a staggering amount of unnecessary sweetness.” She giggles at the mustache the whipped cream gives him once he takes a sip.
“You’ve seen nothing yet,” declares Max. “I am going to make some cookies.”
Max is a fine cook – he made her an excellent dinner when they were still in the courting phase, and she swears she can still taste it at the back of her teeth – but his baking skills occasionally leave something to be desired. It’s about the measurements, she’s sure. Nevertheless, Max is determined to scratch up his baking skills (“so I can make you birthday cakes!”) and this is… certainly one way to do it.
Sandra steals a sip of his drink and winces as the sweetness hits the back of her tongue. “Should I call Chris? Maybe you need supervision.”
“Daarling,” says Max exaggeratedly, “I am perfectly competent in a kitchen, you know this.” He makes I’m going to find this fingers at various cupboards. “What do I need to make cookies?”
“A bowl, presumably.”
Max snaps at her. “Yes. Perfect. A bowl. And also a spoon, presumably. Dennis! Where are the utensils?”
As Dennis joins Max in the back – now they definitely need supervision – Trevor joins Sandra in a casual lean against the glass. “This seems dangerous.”
Sandra bumps their shoulders together. “If this goes wrong, he’s your boyfriend.”
“Is this like a my child, your child situation?” Trevor asks. “That seems cheap.”
“I said I’d share, I never said I’d be civil about it.”
Suddenly there’s flour everywhere. Sandra doesn’t ask. She doesn’t particularly want to know.
She’s ignoring the elephant in the room, she knows; the moment Chris herded him through the door she knew this would have to happen at some point.
The problem is that it’s so easy to play avoidance when she’s been playing avoidance her whole life. When her incredible boyfriend is trying to make cookies with his best friend, it’s just about enough to fill in everything she’s trying not to think about – with Trevor here, too, with people she knows and loves – it’s, well, it’s just so much simpler to never address it.
Chris’s voice echoes in her head. Don’t make this worse for the rest of us. “Trevor,” she says, and takes the man’s quiet hm? as he’s paying attention. “Don’t suppose you happen to know how long this could go for.”
Trevor shrugs. “Could be hours. I’d imagine they’ve got to scrub the air, do some big checks on whatever perimeter they’ve set for this… San, you think I know anything about chemical spills?”
“You know a lot about weird things,” Sandra says in her own defense. “It was worth the question.”
“Well, no, I do not. Sorry to disappoint.”
Sandra blows a deep breath out through her lips. Looks like this might be an imminent facing of fears, then. “Shit. Can you…?” She motions towards the mess of the kitchen. There’s no smoke, yet. There is, however, a large smear of cocoa powder across each of Dennis’s cheeks – it looks like a farce of the grease paint they use in outdoor sports, and she snorts at the image of small-shouldered Dennis, swallowed by a rugby tackle or something equally as overwhelming.
“Yeah, I got ‘em,” Trevor says, creases at the corner of his eyes betraying his smile. “You okay?”
She boosts herself up with both hands, a half-plank position against the glass, and then pushes to her feet and nods. “It’ll be fine. Right?’
“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“That,” she says, knocking him lightly with her foot, “is why I tolerate you.”
She’s ignoring the elephant in the room until she’s upstairs and standing right in front of it, and the elephant is staring right back at her.
“Hello,” says Jonathan.
“Hello,” she says.
Oh, and already the silence is suffocating. This is why she’s so much better at simply avoiding her problems. “May I sit?”
The back of the chair nudges her in the hip. Jonathan is pushing it out with his foot.
She sits.
“How’ve you been?” Seems like an easy start, even if it’s a little pitchy and definitely not performance-worthy, even if it’s not at all what she wants to be saying.
Jonathan shrugs, then nods, then tilts his head, then nods again. “Been doing good,” he says. “You?”
“Also doing good.”
She examines her nails. They’re getting long.
“How’s Max?” Jonathan asks.
Sandra tosses a thumb in the direction of the stairs, where downstairs a clatter of pans and other assorted kitchen tools can be heard. “He’s attempting cookies. Last time he tried cookies, they ended up as bricks. Don’t eat one without a drink on hand.”
Jonathan smiles at her. It’s so close to the regular charm-oozing smile she’s used to – was used to – but there’s still something shaky around the edges. “Appreciate the advice.”
Where has all her bravado gone? Any other situation and she’d feel like a grandmaster, controlling this verbal chessboard with ease. Her worst auditions have gone better than this. It makes her feel a bit like a fraud; emotions aren’t supposed to be this difficult! she wants to scream to the universe. That’s the opposite of the point!
“Look,” she says, after a second horrible silence. “I just – wanted to, uh, talk. About what happened.”
It pleases a little wretched part of her to see that Jonathan looks just as displeased about this as she feels. “I apologized,” he says. “Is that – do you want more?”
“I don’t need more apologies.” She folds her hands on the table. “I just want to hear the story.”
You broke my heart. Now tell me why.
“Now?” There’s a little skittishness around his eyes, now. Sandra can feel herself reaching for control of the chessboard. “Hell, you’re going to do this when we literally can’t run away from each other.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve done enough running over the past year,” she says. “Consider it closure.”
Jonathan laughs a bitter sound, shutting his eyes as he does. “Right. Closure. Of course.” He opens his eyes again and zeroes right in on her. “Look, it’s – it’s not a long story. It’s not even complicated. I just… got scared.”
“You,” Sandra says. “Jonathan Harris, not afraid of anything, you got scared.”
“Yes, well.” He makes a frustrated noise. “It’s all about being the man, isn’t it? Wasn’t it? It always felt like a front. For something. I don’t know what. But you needed a boyfriend. Not a partner. And I could be that, but it wasn’t… sustainable.”
“Yet you sustained it for several years.”
“Like I said. I got scared.”
Sandra softens a little bit, slumping in the chair. “I thought I was going to marry you,” she says.
“Me?” Somehow this surprises him. “We were twenty. That’s not really marrying age.”
“Yeah. Goes to show, I guess.” She examines a chip in the table’s edge. “So. You got scared. That’s a feeling, not an explanation.”
Jonathan scratches at the back of his neck. “Eventually it just… came to a head, I guess. It had all been so static for so long and we were both comfortable in it, but I just – well, you know me. It must have been cabin fever. I’d been just this one guy for such a long time and I – it was the next big thing, you know? Breaking up with my high school girlfriend halfway through college got a gasp from my parents, and it was – not to disparage you, San, because I love you – is that too forward? That’s supposed to be platonic. Anyway – I mean, you weren’t holding me back, because you wanted me to stay and parts of me did too, I just – not enough parts. I guess.”
He’s never been the best with emotional words; honestly, it’s almost impressive she’s gotten this much out of him. This is, after all, the front: Jonathan Harris, not afraid of anything. Oh, how time changes things.
“And I knew as soon as I left that it was – well, not a mistake that I left, just a mistake that I never told you about it all. Ever. I’m sure we could have worked it out if I wasn’t so focused on maintaining that image, you know? But it was too late. And then it was just… always too late.”
“You thought I wanted someone to present,” Sandra says, trying to get it straight. “You thought it was comfortable because that’s the way it was supposed to be, in the eyes of everyone else.”
Jonathan nods, then sighs something deep. “I don’t know if I was ready for a relationship. I thought I wanted one, but I wanted the approval more. I’m sorry that I inadvertently took it out on you.”
This apology is one that Sandra can feel sink into her, one that is far more than just placating. For perhaps the first time since they’d last been alone together – this isn’t gonna work anymore, sorry, I’m gonna move away now and you’re gonna be confused and hurt by this whole thing for years – the last bit of tension in her shoulders unwinds.
“All right,” she says, allowing a bit of levity to seep into her voice. “Apology accepted. You know, it wasn’t just about the presentation. I did like you quite a bit as, you know, a real boyfriend.”
“Well, then I buggered it up good, didn’t I?” Jonathan gives her an awkward grin. Not quite the one he’d tried to win her over with – this one is a little more hesitant, a little quieter, the joke still hanging onto the creases of his cheeks. “We learn as we go. Can we stop talking about my relationship mistakes now?”
“That depends.” Sandra delights once more in the secret horror in his eyes as she leans forward. “Have you made mistakes on any more poor girls since we last saw each other?”
They catch up on life for a while, shedding the last of the guilt and uncertainty like leaves into the past. No matter their history, they spent years at each other’s sides; Sandra’s not afraid to say she missed him to some degree, like old friends. Impressively, they don’t get interrupted until nearly forty minutes later, when there’s a loud cheer from downstairs, followed by something abjectly more despairing.
Trevor appears at the top of the stairs soon after, holding a plate in one hand. “Happy New Year,” he says. “My boyfriend has been making kitchen creations.”
My, not our. Sandra covers her mouth to hide her laughter as the plate nears and she sees two very dark brown circles. “Oh, dear.”
“It would mean ever so much if you took a try,” Trevor says, setting the plate down between her and Jonathan. “C’mon, you wouldn’t let them down like that, would you?” He raps the knuckle of his forefinger against the heel of his other hand. Hard as rocks.
“I think,” Jonathan says, “that I need a glass of water.”
Trevor nods exaggeratedly. “Good choice, mate.”
Jonathan winks at Sandra. She doesn’t try to stop her laughter this time.
(Even as she picks up a cookie and nearly breaks her tooth on it. Oh, she loves Max with all her heart and more, but even the most earnest and best of cooks can have a little trouble with the finer edible arts.)