A writer and an alcoholic walk into a coffee shop on Thanksgiving...(Abandoned/never will be finished)
1.8k words, hurt/comfort, Brendon is Unemployed Brendon and Brendan is his brother.
A/N: imma be real with you chat this has been in the works since like before Thanksgiving in 2022 and after writing my Sparkstretch fic I forgot how much fun writing can be and this really feels like a slogfest to try and finish but I hope you enjoy what I have
Summary:
Unemployed Brendon is walking about the shops on Thanksgiving, never feeling truly at home enough to visit his brother. He goes to a coffee shop to write but finds somebody that doesn't expect him to be more than he is right now...
Brendon was walking through the snow one specific day in November as he wondered what to do since no store would be open today. He looked at one of the only places with its lights on, Cracker Barrel. Unsurprising, seeing as though there would be many families having dinner there today. Despite having family, Brendon was never welcomed at any dinner because he was still considered a failure, unemployed, since he was writing a stupid novel, and was still an unpublished author. All those things considered weren’t exactly the most compelling argument to his parents that he should be allowed on the premises, nor to his own brother. His brother, Brendan, was still a kiss-ass to their parents even all these years down the line, and inviting Brendon would ruin that. Or, at least that’s what Brendon told himself.
He continued walking down the streets of Clayhill, desperately trying to get his mind off of his crippling loneliness. He saw a bright yellow hue shine itself on him. It was coming from the local cafe. He smiled, maybe this day wouldn’t be terrible after all, even if he couldn’t spend it with his family, he could at least work on his novel. He clutched his rough draft in one hand and held the other around his waist to keep himself warm. It didn’t help that he didn't have much clothing or body fat to warm him up, but the smell of coffee motivated him to keep going.
He pressed onward through the crunching of snow toward the cafe. The inviting smell and somber music warmed up his heart as he entered through the door with a bell ringing behind him. He went up to order, unsurprisingly he was the only one in line.
Colin was washing a cup with a washrag until he turned around after a few moments and saw the vertically-challenged briefcase. He looked down at him. “Will it be the usual?”
He nodded as Colin got to work making a black coffee with 12 pumps of espresso. Technically, it was too much for anybody to drink at one given time, nonetheless a person of his stature, but Colin compiled because he vaguely knew what was going on with him and his brother.
As Colin got to work, Brendon looked around the cafe to sit precisely where he could just sit and write in peace. Where he usually liked to work was the table nearest to the window. He liked to look at the cars passing in the moonlight as their headlights beamed out, which sparkled up the usually dull evening view. It was a certain ordinary beauty he didn’t notice very often. However, the only real problem with his preference was there was precisely one table next to the window, well directly anyways.
That preference had came back to bite him since there was an unidentifiable object passed out on the table. He huffed a little and thought of some mild swear words in his consciousness, but he could still get some work done anywhere in the cafe, right? Though, as he looked in the direction of his-the table-he soon started to recognize who it was by his lampshade. Despite never really being introduced to any of the teachers-other than Colin, since Brendan didn’t know the fellow, so he had no expectations on what the briefcase family could achieve, so for Brendon it meant that there was no standards to fail to come to, which was comforting-, for Brendan’s fear of embarrassing himself by introducing Brendon as his brother mostly and being seen with him and associating with him, he had seen the lamp on occasion here and there. Usually passed out with a strong smell of alcohol, drugs, or both. Despite this commonplace behavior, there was no scent of that originating from him, not a particularly noticeable one at least.
Brendon kept gazing off into his consciousness before being snapped into reality by the ding of a dinner bell, to alert him he had gotten his coffee. He smiled and held it in one of his hands. It had already brightened his mood and warmed him up a meager amount.
He put his money on the table for Colin to collect, but he pushed it back to him. “It’s on the house.”
“Oh! Thanks, Colin!”
“Don’t mention it.” He continued working in the back for the rest of his shift.
He decided, despite somebody already occupying one of the chairs, it wouldn’t hurt to sit across from him. He could still get his work done and on the rare chance that he does awaken from his slumber, it might be nice to have somebody to talk to, despite how little he talks to anybody other than his brother.
He walked over to the table in question and sat across from the lamp in question. He got out his stapled personal copy of his book and pulled out some lined paper to start on a new chapter. He got out his pen and started to work on his book, The Ultimate Forgiveness. It was a simple book, not that Brendon really cared about that much. After all, it made his heart happy and was the only real hobby he had, and that’s all that mattered, isn’t it?
He smiled as he wrote a specifically touching line of dialogue that introduced some softness to one of his edgier characters. He loved the concept of somebody so hateful and mean was still capable of being soft towards those they had hurt, granted unintentionally, but still. He wondered if he had made them too soft, though. He sighed and put down his pen and carefully took his cup of coffee to his mouth, careful to not let any of it drip onto his novel. Malcolm forbid anybody ruin his book, nonetheless himself, since this was the only copy he had.
He slurped down some coffee and it seemed the small amount of noise he was producing was enough to wake up the seemingly intoxicated lamp, despite there not being a particularly strong odor of alcohol still. For a teacher whose whole shtick is dreams, he wasn’t a very deep sleeper. He sat up slowly, stretching out his arms, and looked at the briefcase in front of him. He wiped his mouth from the eggnog he had consumed the night before-which was only a few hours ago, since it was early in the morning-and gave him a little wave.
Brendon awkwardly waved back as the lamp started to speak, which Brendon dreaded. He didn’t hate to talk to people, but he preferred that people wouldn’t, especially since he was working on his novel. “H-Hey haven’t I seen you around before?”
He shrugged. “You might have seen my brother…”
“The dick?”
Despite that being his brother, it did make him somewhat happy that somebody shared similar sentiments about him. Plus, it was nice for his brother to get the short end of the stick for once instead of him. It surprised him though he had said that, everybody else treated his brother like a saint who did no wrong.
He smiled a little. “Yea, the one and only. I’m ‘unemployed’ Brendon. What do they call you?”
“Larry, usually. Your brother prefers the terms ‘unemployed, lazy, useless, and imbecilic’...whatever that means.”
“Ah, so you’ve had a talk with the devil himself then, huh?”
“Heh…” He chuckled before he hiccuped. “Yea…he came around these parts and started giving me a rant about jobs and blah blah blah.” He noticed the papers scattered around the other side of the table. “Hey…what’s that?”
Brendon jumped like a feral cat and brought the papers toward himself, a meager attempt to try to hide his sacred words from him. It wasn’t nearly done and not perfect yet, why would anybody want to read it? “U-Uhhhh…nothing…” He mumbled out to him.
“C’mon, it can’t be that bad. Is it yer diary or somethin’?”
“Well…no…but…it’s…just a work in progress and all…”
“Y’know I’m a bit of a con…conno…connoisessur?...fan! Yea, fan of reading and junk…I could help you with it…” He hiccuped and that just reminded Brendon on how intoxicated he still seemed but it was an intriguing offer. Still though, why did he even want to in the first place? Nobody ever wanted to read any of Brendon’s work, even when they were trying to show how incompetent and how much of a loser he was.
He handed over the copy over with a shaking hand and a reddening face. Despite the fact that he practically shoved it into his hands, he almost took it back from him as soon as he gave it over, like a cat playing with a mouse toy. He heard the pages turn as Larry read over them, his eyes starting to sparkle with a sudden energy as he glazed through the pages.
Brendon didn’t notice a thing, just sitting there, toying with his fingers like lego pieces. “D…Did you like it?”
“Yeah, I did.” He said, looking sober for the first time tonight, his eyes all wide and a smile that flashed his teeth. “I like that you made the edgelord…soft. It’s like he’s faking being himself or something.” He hiccuped again, it was hard to remember that he was drunk at times like these until he did something like that.
Brendon smiled wide, his cheeks tinting themselves towards the warmer side of the color wheel. “Oh…uh…” He was reminded of the many times where his brother would introduce him as unemployed and how many times Brendon himself had thrown his novel away. Then he looked back at Larry, who was still smiling like an idiot. “Thanks…i-it means a lot to hear that…”
His eyes widened. “You’re actin’ like you’ve never heard that before…” His right hand curled up, like it was holding a bottle, as he brought it to his mouth. Brendon noticed that he had nothing in hand, not that Larry was sober enough to realize in the first place, though.
“I…haven’t.” He strangled out, looking down at his novel. The novel that he had “in place” of a job. That’s what he told himself, anyways. He looked down at the nametag. Unemployed Brendon. He grabbed at his nametag, almost ripping it off…but he moved his hand away, his throat starting to form a lump. God, he really was pathetic wasn’t he? He shouldn’t be acting like this, it would only make Larry pity him more than he already does.
Larry put down his imaginary glass of alcohol and reached over the table for his hand. Brendon was still and stared into the void as he grasped his hand. He said no words as he held his hand. Even if he was sober, he wasn’t exactly the mushy gushy say-the-right-things kind of guy. He just wanted to let Brendon know that he was here with him, in the moment, even if he didn’t have a clue what he was thinking.
