If there was one thing Kalyan Lakhani had learned (since his divorce) since his move to Seattle, it was that taking care of a child was as demanding as, or probably more demanding than, any full-time job. Especially if said child happened to be an inquisitive five-year-old, and especially if the caretaker happened to be a graduate student already buried up to his neck in work. Unfortunately for his case, both conditions applied.
It was tough, really tough, being a year into his MBA program and raising a tiny human at the same time while staying mentally healthy (and also sparing a little bit of time for Battlefield Hardline because that shit was brilliant, thank you very much). Kalyan considered himself a chill, happy-go-lucky kind of guy, but he still remembered the moment of sheer terror and panic seizing his body when he nearly missed the deadline for his financial aid application. But like, seriously, he had a son to feed. Wasn’t that simple fact more than enough for whatever higher-ups in the office to send him thirty grand in cash stat?
Sadly, there were no such magical incidents in the life of a poor grad student, and that meant Kalyan had to scrounge for every opportunity to earn more money, including working as a TA for one of his advisor’s classes. Posting notices online, answering e-mails of confused undergrads, grading papers before they were sent to the professor, the usual deal—which was exactly what he was doing, sitting in the corner of a coffee shop with a backwards snapback on top of his head and looking very much out of place compared to the rest of vaguely hipster patrons. Not to mention the kid sitting across from him in a matching hat.
“—and look at this, Jesus, this is a trainwreck. Danny, I swear, you could freaking smash your head on a laptop keyboard and still come up with a better-outlined paper. Hell, you could probably write better, too! What’cha think about Apple’s human resource management strategy?”
“I don’t know what that means.” The boy solemnly sucked on his straw. “And you gotta put money in the swear jar when we go home.”
Kalyan made a funny face at his son in reply, who dissolved into a fit of giggles so hard that he squeezed the box of orange juice—enough to squirt it over an unsuspecting customer’s clothes.
He stood up. “Oh! Oh, sh—sugar,” he caught himself, glancing at Daniel, but the wide-eyed child seemed too mortified to care. “Sorry, dude. That wasn’t supposed to happen, uhm, here—” Kalyan grabbed a wad of napkins. “—oh, well, that’s not much help. I’m real sorry, I mean, I’d be happy to pay for dry cleaning. Do they do that? Do they dry clean orange juice stains? Is it a thing? I hope it is a thing.“
Seraph didn’t frequent coffee shops. They felt too quaint, too unimaginative for her. Every single one was the same, even small, local shops. A counter where you placed your order, a few small tables, and a patio with umbrellas. All of it was the same. And, honestly, Seraph wasn’t interested in the same. They were interested in adventure, in new things, in ideas no one had thought of before. And those just didn’t exist in coffee shops.
This said, there was obviously no way that they could justify finding themselves in one, then. Convenience was the most obvious answer: they had run downtown to pick up some herbs (for food or for magic, they weren’t quite sure yet) and found themselves craving a chocolate croissant. Maybe a few minutes to ponder a novel and take in the boring clichéd atmosphere would relieve them of some of the omnipresent stress that plagued them endlessly.
Speaking of stress, Seraph hadn’t noticed the obnoxious child sitting near them until after they had sat down and buried their nose in the book. It was a new edition of Nocturnal Witchcraft, covered in a book sleeve claiming the book to be a copy of Wicked. The irony was not lost on Seraph. They had been trying to pick up on some more contemporary magic practices-- while their parents had done a good job of preparing them for any occasion that they might run into a fundamentalist coven of witches, the unfortunate truth was that most of magic practitioners had moved on beyond the tired traditions that they had pushed onto Seraph.
Now, there were two reactions when Seraph found herself doused in orange juice. The first was to glare at the obnoxious child that she’d just known would be trouble, and the second was to close her book and angrily take off her jacket, which had once been grey, but was beginning to resemble the color of a rainy sunrise. An ugly rainy sunrise, that is. They wanted to punch the baby, but since that obviously wasn’t an option, they settled for averting their glare to the man with the child.
“You ought to watch what your child does.” They said, words coming out a bit stiff, “That jacket was worth eighty dollars--” In an attempt to calm down, they examined the stain on the jacket. It wasn’t too big, and they guessed it might come out after one wash, but the anger about the entire circumstance did not escape them. Then, they stopped themselves from saying the worst thing imaginable:
Children are to be seen, not heard.
The same mantra that had been hammered into their own mind as a child. A sudden softness came over Seraph. “You know what? Never mind. Just-- teach your child to not squeeze their drinks.” While they were still angered, Seraph felt overwhelmed by an unwelcome nostalgia, one that filled them with a sudden nausea.
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