s-terlingsilva:
location: the coffee shop date: 28 January time: late afternoon ( @julescortes )
She’d never walked into the campus coffee shop when it was busy after classes ended and wanted for a table, no matter how many people were milling around for a place to kill time, because Silva could walk into the coffee shop and recognize at least four faces at any given time. It was a benefit, she thought, of not just being a senior, but of being a senior who made a point of knowing people, who had spent enough time at enough kinds of parties with enough kinds of people to have a little bit of influence anywhere she wanted.
Finding a Gravemaker in the coffee shop, though, that was just sheer luck, a little ray of sunshine on an otherwise cloudy day. She shoved Julian’s bag off the empty chair across from him at the table he was taking up with the toe of her boot, waited a moment for it to hit the floor, and then set her iced coffee down on the table once she was sure she had his attention, putting her own bag in the place of his.
“This seat free?” she asked, once she was sure he knew she was there, and then she took it anyway, without waiting for an answer. She was running on maybe two hours of sleep – having Beaux sharing the twin sized bed in her room wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was distracting, and a few days of it had started to catch up with her.
Julian had (almost) mastered selective anonymity on campus. He endeavored to be unmistakable from any other nameless body when he didn’t want to be seen. He was billboard sign when he wanted to be, sauntering through the squares, typically accompanied by the usual band of upstarts (even Silva herself, occasionally), turning heads and inciting whispers. These were the days he had energy enough to challenge the unworthy masses that dared to poke at him. Other days, he felt too dreary, underestimated.
Those days he had to blend in. Tie his hair back, wear other than all black, cover his tattoos. He’d usually kept up a solid system. And usually it meant he steered clear of campus buildings if he could help it. In and out of classes, head never too far down nor up, definitely not sitting in any one place for longer than a moment, maybe a cup of coffee if the day was nearing over. Confident he’d slipped through the whole day unnoticed.
Silva would, of course, be the one to upend that routine. Especially today, of all days, when his professors were too far up their own asses to give him anything but aggravating busy work. Julian watched her enter, and with grave silence he watched her see him, then begin to saunter over here, confident and unbothered.
Silent, he watched her claim the seat before asking, then ask, and if his mood wasn’t so sour he would’ve chuckled amused. Instead, a moment, then a sigh as he sipped his black coffee (oh, yeah. Never anything but.) “Looks like it.” He watched her move back her silver hair, wondered which direction she’d send his day towards. “You done for the day?”














