A new hire has turned up at the Crow's Nest Bookshop, and he looks utterly terrified to be here. A new customer has turned up at the Crow's Nest Bookshop, and she's profoundly distracting. A new Barrel boss has turned up at the Crow's Nest Bookshop, and he's about to raze it all to the ground.
Words: 3.4k
When Kaz entered the bookshop to see an entirely unfamiliar face peering back at him from behind the counter, he knew today was going to be a long one.
Save for the yellowy glow of the hanging lamp over the register, the building was still dark. Weak morning sunlight spilled inside through the little glass panes in the door behind him, fighting its way through the smoggy clouds that always settled themselves over Ketterdam this time of year. Whoever watched Kaz approach from the other end of the shop was certainly dressed for the weather; he wore a thick jumper in coppery autumnal oranges, his hands half-hidden in its sleeves.
“Morning,” said the mystery boy, giving a halfhearted wave. He attempted (rather poorly) to play it off like he was scratching at the back of his head of golden curls when Kaz didn’t return the gesture, only kept stalking his way toward the coat hooks that were tucked behind the fiction shelves.
The thunk of Kaz’s cane along the warped old wood seemingly alerted Per Haskell to his presence (never mind that Kaz arrived at precisely nine and a half bells each morning — on the days Haskell actually bothered to turn up around opening, he tended to be far too busy with his morning glass of whiskey to notice the goings-on out on the floor). The old man emerged from the back office with a little wooden dowel in his right hand, and he clapped his left against this new boy’s shoulder hard enough to make him wince.
“Ah,” said Haskell, gesturing toward Kaz with what must have been the mast of his newest model ship. (The thing took up a frankly embarrassing amount of space in the already-too-small back office; Kaz dreamed of the day he could bash his cane into its half-finished hull.) He sounded about as thrilled to see Kaz as he did any day when he got bored enough to set foot on the floor. “Here he is. The lad himself.”
Kaz arched a brow at him. “It seems I’m not the only lad on the premises this morning.”
“Indeed you’re not,” Haskell agreed. “This” — he gave the boy’s shoulder a little jostle — “is Wylan. He’ll be taking up a part-time position here as of fifteen minutes ago.”
Those fifteen minutes had clearly taken their toll; this kid looked like a newborn deer on an open field, and he eyed each bookshelf like their contents were going to try and eat him. “Hi,” he said, doing his very best to covertly wiggle out of Haskell’s grasp. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Kaz didn’t bother to acknowledge him. He bit down on the comment he longed to make about a new hire being made without so much as consulting him and swallowed it hard. “Has he had any training?”
Haskell let out a bark of a laugh. “That’s your job, Brekker, not mine.”
“Of course, sir.” So much for alphabetizing poetry before opening.
“Sir,” Haskell repeated with an inelegant chuckle. He relinquished his grip on the boy and gave the register in front of him a smack. “Look at you, putting on a show for the new hire. You should take after Brekker’s theatrics, son,” he added to Wylan. “It just might get you a raise.”
Kaz knew for a fact that it wouldn’t. Wylan, though, clearly eager to please, nodded and gave a small-but-determined “Yes, sir.”
“A quick learner, eh?” A proper, hearty laugh boomed across the shop; the type Haskell reserved for new business partners and people he wanted to impress. The shine would wear off soon enough, but Kaz made a mental note to keep up the honorifics for the next couple of days.
“A valuable skill,” Kaz said flatly. “One among many, I hope.”
There seemed to be something particularly interesting taking place on the ground between Wylan’s shoes, if the kid’s unblinking stare toward the floor was anything to go by.
“I suppose I’ll leave you boys to it,” said Haskell. (Kaz fought not to bristle — twenty-two, surely, was old enough for him to have graduated from boy.) “Got some important paperwork to get squared away.”
That one nearly received an eye roll. Kaz had been doing this shop’s bookkeeping for just over four years now; any paperwork Haskell planned to work on likely involved a single signature at the bottom of a document Kaz had prepared and printed, or a glance over a spreadsheet Kaz had drafted up that would sit idle on the office’s computer monitor while the old man took a nap in his desk chair.
“Show him the ropes, Brekker,” Haskell said as he ambled off. “Quick crash course, then get him out on the floor.”
Right, of course, because he could absolutely teach this kid all there was to know about the register and the system and the shelving and everything else in — he checked the clock that hung over the creaky green front door — twenty-three minutes.
“Thank you, Mr. Haskell,” Wylan called after him, fiddling with a loose thread at the sleeve of his jumper. He didn’t turn his back on the office door until the old man pulled it closed.
Kaz heaved a sigh and limped around the books that separated the coat hooks from the rest of the shop. He shook his coat from his shoulders, granting himself precisely five seconds to hang it up and scrub a hand through his hair before making his way behind the counter, where Wylan waited quietly with an air of anxiety hanging over him like fog on the harbor.
From a single glance, it’d been clear that this new hire was almost sickeningly polite. Kaz had begun bracing himself for a handshake the moment he laid eyes on the kid; it was more than clear he’d be the sort to introduce himself formally, most likely out of some learned sense of obligation. There was a certain reluctance about him — a need to make a good impression. His wide blue eyes darted repeatedly from Kaz to the office door and back again, and his reddish brows had a permanent, apologetic crease between them, almost as though he were asking forgiveness for occupying space in the shop. Whatever stone he’d been hewn from, it wasn’t the same sort that cobbled the Barrel’s streets.
“Hi,” he said, holding out a hand. “I’m Wylan.”
Kaz shook it shortly, grasp and release. “So I’ve heard.” He elected to ignore the way Wylan’s attention lingered for just a moment too long on his glove.
“And… sorry, what was your name?”
“Kaz Brekker.” Wylan would know that if he’d ever once set foot in this establishment before; Kaz’s name was scattered all about the place on the little shelf talkers that recommended certain books. (Haskell had been terribly opposed to them, but he stopped complaining once titles that had lived on the shelves long enough for their pages to go yellow were suddenly getting restocked weekly.)
“You’re the manager, then?” Wylan asked.
According to Per Haskell? No. He was a bookseller at best and a nuisance at worst. According to the bills, the payroll, the deliveries, the decor, and the time last winter when Kaz had come into the shop at four bells in the morning to call in an emergency repair for a burst heating pipe? Yes. Very much so. For Wylan’s sake, Kaz elected to abbreviate. “More or less.”
“Cool,” Wylan said, and with that, he seemed to have expended his bank of small talk. Kaz would’ve been happy with the silence, but he figured he should at least try to make conversation. Jesper was always on his hide about how curt Kaz was with the customers.
“So,” he said, propping his cane against its corner beside the register as he booted up the dusty old computer, “Haskell’s been hiring?”
“I guess.” The thread on Wylan’s cuff was growing ever longer; he’d have the whole sleeve unraveled by lunch if he kept this up. “He said you’d been talking about bringing someone new on board for a while now.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah, something about… new blood, I think he said? Being good for morale?”
Kaz leaned down to turn on the receipt printer, chewing that over. “Per Haskell,” he said, “hasn’t listened to a word of advice I’ve given him since the day he took me on. I’ve been one bad customer away from putting out my own damn help wanted listing for the better part of two years. And yet” — Kaz peered over his shoulder — “he took your application in a heartbeat.”
“Sounds like I got lucky.” Wylan’s poker face was in desperate need of work, but Kaz wouldn’t put him through the wringer just yet. He turned back toward the monitor.
“Do you have a preferred genre?” he asked, straightening up. “Any particular wheelhouse?” Kaz had dropped a hundred hints about taking on someone more versed in the science and maths section for months, but to no avail. Maybe, for once in his life, the old man had taken note.
“Oh, ehm. I like… I like fiction?”
Naturally. “Fiction,” Kaz repeated.
“Yep.”
Everyone and their mothers liked fiction. That wasn’t much to go on. “Adult? Children’s? Literary? Historical?”
“I sort of read all over.”
Kaz actually had to take a moment to close his eyes and breathe. Why in Ghezen’s name had Haskell hired this kid? The way he paled at each question made Kaz wonder if he even read at all. Kaz put his back to the computer as it finished sputtering to life, and the moment Wylan realized Kaz’s eyes were on him again, he snapped to attention.
“But if you need someone to, um, cover a certain section, or something,” he said in a rush, “I can be wherever you need me.”
It was difficult to place exactly what energy Wylan was giving off. Anxious, maybe, but not just about starting a new job. Eager to please, but that seemed more innate than conditional. Reading people was a skill Kaz had carefully honed over the years; no matter how closely he scrutinized Wylan’s tone and expression and posture, though, he just couldn’t parse out why this boy looked as though he’d walked into an ambush unarmed.
“Noted,” Kaz said. He retrieved his cane and stepped out onto the floor; as expected, Wylan followed close behind. “Get those switches flipped on,” he said, nodding toward the six wooden pillars wrapped in string lights that stood sentry around the center of the shop. “I’ll get the door.”
It admittedly wasn’t unpleasant to have someone around to assist with the more menial morning duties. Jesper rarely turned up to open — he wasn’t the most punctual of employees, and mornings were never terribly busy, anyway — but with Wylan around, all Kaz really needed to worry about was turning the open sign and unlocking the door. By the time he was done, Wylan had finished with the lights and had taken to standing entirely still with a lost sort of look on his face. Kaz just brushed past him, heading toward the back half of the shop to get that section squared away, too.
“Jesper mans middle readers’,” Kaz said as he walked, “but you’re welcome to assist in that department. He’s got a habit of stacking enough recommendations into customers’ arms to tip them over. It gets a bit overwhelming.”
“Jesper?” Wylan repeated. “Not Jesper Fahey?”
Kaz paused in the act of pulling the chain on a hanging lantern. “You know him?”
“Not really,” said Wylan. He was prodding at a handful of children’s fantasy books, trying to make them all sit evenly in a row. “I just — we have class together. Or had class together, I suppose. At the university? I haven’t seen him in a month or two.”
“Interesting.” Kaz would file that away for later.
“Speaking of the university,” Wylan said, tugging on a paperback to line up its spine with the edge of the shelf, “do you go? I would’ve thought I’d’ve seen you around.”
I’m too old for school, came an unwanted echo from the back of Kaz’s head. Too smart, too. Maybe little pigeon Kaz had taken that to heart. “No,” he said, and he set back off for the register.
“Mr. Haskell mentioned training,” Wylan said, still dogging Kaz’s every step. At least he knew when to drop a topic of conversation.
“That he did.” Kaz nodded toward the computer screen. “Have you ever worked a point-of-sale system?”
“No.”
Kaz considered him. “Ever worked at all?”
“Um. Also no.”
It took a concerted effort for Kaz to refrain from pinching the bridge of his nose. Though he longed for the simplicity of a morning spent doing anything other than training some doe-eyed university boy, it seemed fate wouldn’t be granting him that luxury today. “Alright,” he said. “Then we’ll start from square one.”
The following hours were blessedly quiet — they usually were this early in the day, but Kaz had learned to take small victories where he could find them. He gave Wylan a short tour of the shop, which Wylan spent scratching away at a small notepad, diligently scribbling down… something. He held it too close to his chest for Kaz to see, even when he didn’t think Kaz was looking. (Kaz would have to find a time to pickpocket it off him some time soon.)
Wylan was a quick enough learner; he could count back change in his head, which Kaz respected more than he’d ever admit aloud, and he picked up processing returns without trouble. His seemingly subconscious seeking of approval meant that he was dedicated and determined; by all counts, he was shaping up to be a pretty decent employee.
Issues began to arise, however, when Kaz showed him the inventory and the distributor sites. Wylan grew flustered when Kaz suggested he search up a book he was familiar with in order to learn how the system categorized the sections, and more flustered still when Kaz proffered a specific title for him to type in. What little tension had seeped from his body over the past handful of hours returned to it tenfold as his hands hovered motionless over the keyboard.
“Sorry,” Wylan kept saying, “sorry, sorry, I’m just a bit nervous.”
Kaz saw no point in causing the new hire psychological distress on his first day, and frankly, it was too early in the day to try and puzzle out why the kid was wound so tight. He cut his losses and dug a duster out of the back room, then extended it to Wylan handle side out. He’d been trying to get Jesper to clean up the lower shelves for longer than he cared to quantify; maybe having an extra set of hands on deck, no matter how suspicious their arrival had been, wasn’t the worst thing.
As it turned out, Wylan was incredibly diligent. He kept to himself as Kaz did his usual paperwork and order-placing, only drifting back toward the counter when the odd customer showed up to watch Kaz make sales over his shoulder. Wylan was somewhere in the far back of the shop when Jesper finally took it upon himself to waltz inside, wearing absurdly patterned trousers and an even more absurd jacket to guard against the early autumn chill.
“Morning!” he called out far louder than he needed to.
“It’s half past twelve bells,” Kaz noted.
“And I just rolled out of bed. Hence: morning.” Jesper sauntered up to the counter and dropped a brown paper bag atop it. Kaz lifted a brow.
“What’s this?”
“Breakfast,” Jesper replied, reaching inside and digging out a croissant frosted with chocolate. “You know. That thing people eat in the morning. I got you some, too. Chocolate-free, just for you, Dirtyhands.”
Kaz made no move to reach for the bag. “If you make a mess of a single book cover —”
“I won’t!” Jesper insisted. A drop of chocolate chose that moment to land on his knuckle. “I solemnly swear to thoroughly wash my hands,” he said, crossing his heart with his croissant-free index finger.
“Ghezen help you if you don’t,” said Kaz.
There was a creak from behind him as Wylan passed through the little swinging door between the children’s section and the counter, presenting Kaz with what looked like a recently deceased rabbit. “Are there more of these dust-y things?” Wylan asked, sliding the once-yellow (now gray) disposable cover from the duster’s handle.
“Supply closet.” Kaz had busied himself with cracking open a new roll of coins, but he could feel Wylan’s questioning eyes on him from where he stood. “The door tucked between the coat hooks. The handle has a habit of sticking.”
Wylan nodded. He nearly made it four steps away from the counter before Jesper intercepted him, arms folded, chin up, seeming intrigued by the way Wylan froze on the spot like a small animal caught digging through the bin.
“Morning,” Jesper said again, his gray eyes glittering with interest. “Who might you be, O stranger behind the register?”
“Oh, um, hi. We’ve actually — Hi. I’m Wylan.” His arm jerked slightly, like he had been planning to shake hands but decided against it once he noticed that Jesper was holding what must have been the world’s messiest croissant.
“Wylan?” said Jesper. “Wylan who?”
“Van Eck,” Kaz said without looking up.
“Wh — I never told you that.” Wylan whipped his head around to face him; there was a mildly distressed expression on his face (which Kaz, of course, didn’t see).
Kaz shrugged, shaking the coins into the till. “Didn’t need to.”
“Van Eck?” said Jesper. “As in high-and-mighty merch Van Eck?”
“Yep,” Wylan said to his shoes.
“The Van Eck whose smarmy face is plastered all around Ketterdam? The one who’s gunning for a spot at the head of the Merchant Council?”
“That’d be the one.” The tips of Wylan’s ears had gone noticeably pink.
“Huh.” Jesper ripped a hunk off his croissant and took a thoughtful bite. “What’s a merchling like you doing in retail?”
“Working,” Wylan said shortly.
Jesper snorted. “Well, paint me red and call me Mister Crimson,” he said, nudging Wylan in the side with his elbow. “Welcome to the world of the working man.”
“Thank you.” Wylan cleared his throat and rocked back on his heels. “I’m, um. I’m going to go get that duster.” He vanished behind the fiction shelves without another word.
“Bit twitchy, that one, isn’t he?” Jesper said, hopping up to sit on the counter. “I’d love to know how he landed here.”
“So would I,” said Kaz, sliding the drawer shut with a clatter.
Jesper spun around to face him, legs crossed, pointedly ignoring the way Kaz glared at him for putting his shoes up on the counter. “What, did you not hire him yourself?”
“No. Haskell sprung him on me first thing this morning.”
“A classic Haskell move,” Jesper said sagely. “D’you think he’ll be a good fit, at least?”
“That’s to be determined.”
“Whatever you say.” Jesper crammed the rest of his croissant into his mouth and dropped back down to the floor, nudging the pastry bag back in Kaz’s direction. “Give this to the newbie if you’re just gonna let it go stale.”
Kaz snatched up the bag and set it behind the counter. “Wash your hands, Jesper.”
He was met with a wink and a dazzling smile as Jesper saluted him with a chocolate-frosted hand. “Will do.”
Next chapter
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A/N:
uh oh! it's the beginning of my lowercase titles era. i very much lifted this title (and the names of all the chapters) from the new fall out boy album. please be supportive of my brave and groundbreaking choice.
this fic has been spinning in circles at the back of my brain since i read pyrrhlc's "latte art," and it's already like 14k words long as of when i'm posting the first chapter. i'm going a little bit crazy. i work in a bookstore and i love bookstores and i also love kaz brekker, so of course i'm going to make him work in one, too. of course i am. welcome to retail, motherfucker.
man, it sure is weird that wylan van eck is working at a bookshop. what's all that about?
