Fic: Jon's Bookstore (A Few of My Favorite Things) (1/2)
Jon's Bookstore (A Few of My Favorite Things) (1/2)
Jon/Spencer, Frank/Gerard, Ryan/Brendon, Pete/Patrick | 11,300 words | R
A funeral is really the wrong place to learn you've inherited a business.
Merry Christmas, have some bookstore AU full of fluff and angst and spiked eggnog! TONS of thanks to my awesome betas on this: adellyna, siryn99, sweetrecovery, and shleemeri. You guys rock, seriously.
A funeral is really the wrong place to learn you've inherited a business, but Jon figures it's as good a place as any in the long run.
"She left it all to you," his mom says to him quietly, her hand squeezing his shoulder. "I don't expect you to accept it, but I thought you should know. It's in the will."
Jon sticks his hands in the pockets of his black suit and looks around the room, full of people who came to pay their respects to one Katherine Ann Walker. He suddenly remembers afternoons as a kid spent in his grandmother's lap, listening to her read him James and The Giant Peach while sitting behind a cash register. He remembers the smell of dust and old paper, the sounds of an old calculator grinding out receipts.
"No," Jon replies. "It's mine now. She wanted me to have it, so it's a done deal."
His mom nods. "Then I'll get the paperwork in order."
~
Katherine "Kat" Walker owned Between the Lines Used Books for over forty years. She used to say the store had been a birthday present from Jon's grandfather because she'd always wanted her own bookstore, but his grandfather said he won it in a poker game from a guy desperate to get rid of the empty space.
The store sits on the corner of a calm intersection, tucked between a Kinko's and a music store that deals primarily in microphones and sound equipment. The Kinko's is fairly new, while the music store is almost as old as the bookstore; the brick on the outside wall has been covered in graffiti more than once, and gradually the colors and designs have faded enough to give the place a feel of authenticity (the brick outside of Between the Lines, however, is painted white, because it made it easier for Kat to simply blot out said graffiti, and eventually the vandals got tired of redoing their work).
Jon's childhood consisted of video games played on an ancient color TV with rabbit ears wrapped in duct tape in Kat's musty back office after school. He loved it when his grandmother read to him, but, much to her dismay, he was never a voracious reader. The store was more than reading, though; it was learning genres and authors and what covers would make Kat smile whenever someone dropped off a sack of unwanted paperbacks.
"My goodness," she'd say, holding a yellowed sci-fi novel out to him that looked to be around a million years old. "Twenty-five cents for three hundred pages. How the written word has inflated, hmm, Jonny?"
Jon now has a special affinity now for old paperbacks with the price stamped on the front cover.
When he got old enough to work the register, he had his first part-time job, which lasted until the summer he graduated high school and left for college. By then the store felt a little stifling, like he'd outgrown the walls and the ancient wooden shelves Kat had never bothered to replace. Like a typical teenager, he felt the place cramped his style somewhat, and while he loved his grandmother dearly, he just didn't have the patience to spend his free time in a used bookstore.
He sometimes misses the feel of his hands being dry and cracked from handling old paper, the tips of his fingers slightly blackened from typeface. His Super Nintendo is still sitting in Kat's office, plugged into the television with the sad, droopy rabbit ears.
Jon comes back to the store two days after the funeral, and it's the first time he's been inside in over a year. It still smells exactly the same way it did when he was five; he runs his thumb over the wood of the doorway, over the crude initials craved there: JJW wuz here (he'd been ten, and afterwards Kat had banished him to the back office for the rest of the afternoon. He also wasn't allowed to play with his grandfather's Swiss Army knife any more).
"I wondered when I'd see you around."
He looks up and sees Ryan leaning against the counter by the register, his expression neutral. Ryan has worked at Between the Lines for nearly four years - basically, the entirety of his college career. Kat had hired him after a five minute interview that consisted of Ryan naming all his favorite authors during high school, and then promising to tell her about everything he'd eventually read in his English classes. Jon's pretty sure he's a semester away from a Bachelor's in English Literature - or maybe it's Creative Writing. Either way, Jon likes to half-joke that Ryan's the grandson Kat always wanted.
And now he's sort of the manager, or has been for quite some time, ever since Kat grew too ill to manage the store on her own. Jon doesn't know what's official and what's not in terms of titles; Kat didn't work that way. He's fairly certain Ryan's promotion was nothing more than Kat handing him a spare key and telling him to make sure the electric bill got paid.
Ryan has never expressed an opinion on Jon, for better or worse. Jon knows he's protective of the store, and of Kat's wishes, but whether or not he knows about her will is another story.
He takes a deep breath, smiles tentatively. "Yeah, it's been a while, hasn't it?" He walks slowly around the front of the store, down the narrow aisle that leads past the meticulously categorized shelves that are alphabetized by genre. The store may be old, cramped, and dusty, but it's always, always organized.
"I couldn't make the funeral, but I'm." Ryan pauses, drums his fingers on the counter. "I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you what she meant to this place. To me."
Jon smiles. "No, you don't. And I guess this is where I tell you I'm your new boss?" He laughs, just to make it sound not quite so pretentious.
Ryan doesn't even blink. "It's not like I didn't know." There's no emotion behind it whatsoever, and it makes Jon fidget.
"Well, it was news to me. But, hey, you've still got your job and all, and I don't plan to make any huge - "
"Jon." Ryan's voice is sharp suddenly, and Jon startles a bit. "Do you even know how the inventory works?"
"Um." He used to. Sort of. Kat made him check the stock once, but that was a long time ago... "Um, maybe?"
"Staffing? Paychecks? Special events?"
"Um." Jon drags a hand through his hair, tugs hard.
"Thought so." Ryan smirks and shakes his head, sighing with quiet exasperation. "Of course I'm not going anywhere, I'm the store manager. You need me to keep this place functional."
Jon wants to argue, except everything Ryan's said is one hundred and ten percent true. He has absolutely no fucking clue what he's doing.
"Okay," he replies slowly. "Okay, then." He sighs, spreads his hands. "Teach me everything you know and I'll give you a raise?"
The smirk actually changes into an honest smile. "I accept."
They shake hands on it.
"But don't you graduate in May?" Jon asks before he lets go of Ryan's hand.
"Dude." Ryan rolls his eyes. "Grad school. Duh. I'm stuck with you for at least another three years."
~
Jon learns that Kat had three people on staff, not including Ryan: one is a retired school teacher named Annette who works in the mornings on Tuesdays and Fridays; one is a college freshman named Carl, who Jon thinks is just a tad bit terrified of Ryan; and the third one is Gerard Way.
"Seriously?" Jon asks as he looks over Kats handwritten payroll logs. "She seriously put him on staff?"
Ryan shrugs. "He's in the store all time as it is. She figured he might as well earn some extra cash on the side."
Gerard has lived in the loft upstairs for years, at least since the summer before Jon left for college. An adjunct art professor at the local university, he spends his time off sitting in the back corner of in the ratty old armchair with the paisley print that Kat bought at a thrift store, reading through the pulp magazines she managed to buy off an old guy who was a hoarder of all things The Shadow. He also makes his students buy all their text books here; Kat made it a point to start keeping the heavy, odd-shaped art history coffee table books in stock just for Gerard, and she always gave his students a discount. In the last couple of years, Kat had taken to allowing him to hang his own artwork in the store, even though, as she'd told Jon, "It's a little too Tim Burton-ish for my taste."
Gerard rarely speaks to Jon, but he was at the funeral, and the two of them had nodded their condolences to one another.
"Does he - what does he do?" Not that Jon's going to fire him or anything. He's genuinely curious.
"He...well, he talked Kat into having a comic book section, which has been fairly popular, since she refused to mark anything up regardless of rarity." Ryan clears his throat and adds, "He keeps it in impeccable condition."
Jon gets the feeling Ryan doesn't interfere with Gerard's "job duties," and Jon doesn't really plan to, either, but he at least wants to establish some kind of rapport with him.
He finds Gerard in the usual spot - sitting in the same paisley armchair, the lamp beside it dark and unused, chewing his thumb as he takes notes out of some obscenely large book on Goya, which takes up every square inch of his lap. There's an issue of The Green Goblin lying on the floor beside the chair, open to the back page, along with a half-empty bottle of Pepsi.
Jon walks up to him slowly and says, "Hey." He shoves his hands in his pockets and smiles brightly, even though it takes a good thirty seconds before Gerard looks up. "Ah, making lesson plans?"
Gerard shakes the hair out of his eyes, and while he doesn't exactly smile back, he still nods. "Yeah, this thing just came in the other day and it's massive." He pats the book in his lap. "I've never seen so much shit on Goya in one place in my life, it's awesome."
Jon bobs his head like that makes sense and he actually knows who the hell Goya is. "Cool. Uh." He scrapes the toe of his left flip-flop over the dusty wood floor. "I haven't gotten a chance to come over and say anything to you since - y'know, Kat left - " He winces a little, both at his poor choice of verbs and the small, painful tug in his heart. " - and I just wanted to. Um. Say hi. And to tell you to let me know if you need anything."
An awkward silence follows, but eventually Gerard puts his pen down and smiles tentatively. "Thanks. Kat was a wonderful woman, but you probably already know that." He sighs, suddenly looking sad. "I mean, I know what it's like to lose a grandma you love, so." He nods again. "Just don't fuck the place up, or you and I will have words."
Jon laughs. "You and Ryan both." He gives Gerard a small salute and starts to walk away.
"Ah, hey, one quick question..."
He stops, looks over his shoulder at Gerard. "Yeah?"
If Jon didn't know better, he'd swear Gerard was fidgeting. "Do you, uh, know if Kat had a business account at Kinko's? Y'know, for copies and shit?"
Jon blinks. "I have no idea?" From the state of Kat's office, he'd say Kat never used a copy machine in her life. "You think we should get one?"
Gerard turns kind of pink, which utterly confuses Jon, because what the hell's so embarrassing about copy paper? "I don't know, maybe. You never know. And Kat wasn't too terribly into getting on the technology bus or anything." He shrugs and goes back to taking notes, hiding behind his dark hair. "Just something to think about. I, um, know someone I can probably talk to if you're interested."
"Yeah, I'll consider it." He waits for Gerard to say more, but he just keeps scribbling in his notebook. His cheeks are still really pink, though.
~
Ryan has a best friend named Spencer who manages to be at the store nearly every day Ryan is scheduled to work. Jon doesn't really know anything about him, except that he's in his junior year of college, is majoring in Business, and plays drums once in a while in some band (Jon doesn't eavesdrop, it's just that the store is really quiet sometimes).
Jon doesn't have a problem with him hanging around the store, it's just that he's. Well. Bossy.
"Did you even bother to have the small business license changed over to your name?" Spencer asks him one day while Jon's trying to shelve a new stock of World War II biographies (Ryan swears they're bestsellers and vital to inventory). He slumps against the bookcase and cocks his hips to the side. Jon thinks guys really shouldn't be able to do that with their hips.
"Of course I did," Jon says quickly, even though he really has no idea. But his mom assured him a week or so ago that everything was taken care of, so. He figures "everything" also encompasses business licenses. "Besides, Ryan was basically in charge for months before I took over. I don't think it really matters."
"It matters when the Better Business Bureau comes knocking on your door and demands to see paperwork," Spencer replies, and the tone of his voice definitely implies that he thinks Jon's a moron.
Jon wonders if Spencer talks like this to Ryan, then thinks it wouldn't matter if he did; Ryan would just ignore him.
He gets really tired of the constant nagging about his nonexistent business habits, and he comes very close to saying something snippy to Spencer, until the day Spencer wanders into his office, arms crossed, and says, "You should put in a coffee bar."
Jon's glad he didn't come in ten minutes earlier; at least now he looks busy with his Excel spreadsheet pulled up, not swearing at the TV screen as he plays another round of Grand Theft Auto (he replaced the Super Nintendo with his Playstation). He sighs wearily and spins around in his chair to face Spencer. "A coffee bar?"
"Yes. A coffee bar. I think it would be good for business, and there's not a Starbucks within ten blocks of here. You could totally corner the market."
"Did you tell Ryan about this idea?"
Spencer raises an eyebrow. "No. Does he own the place?"
Jon considers himself a bright guy, but with Spencer, he feels like he's vaguely retarded. "I don't think - we don't have the space."
"Sure you do, just take out the mystery section by the front entryway. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just a counter and a couple of cappuccino machines."
He starts to say something like Wow, you've really thought this out, but he doesn't want to give Spencer more opportunities to be smug. Jon scrubs a hand through his beard and says, "Okay, I'll think about it. I'll have to do some research - "
"Please. Like people don't like coffee with their books. Use your brain, Walker." Spencer holds his hand up and starts ticking points off. "Get a couple Krups cappuccino makers at Bed Bath & Beyond, go to Home Depot and get some lumber and maybe some cheap tile, and then swing by Costco for a shitload of coffee beans." He sweeps his hand out. "Voila, instant coffee bar."
Jon blinks at him. "Um." Damn it, he really has thought this through. "I, uh...don't have a Costco card."
"Then get one, and make sure it's a business account. And did I mention all of this is tax deductible?"
~
Jon rarely sees Ryan get upset about things, but when he mentions taking out the mystery section to make room for the coffee bar, Ryan's face goes white, then immediately purple. Jon quickly suggests they swap out all the Nora Roberts paperbacks instead, and Ryan's color goes back to normal.
He doesn't end up building anything; Jon may not be a businessman, but he's definitely not a fucking carpenter. What he ends up with is a small kitchen island with a wooden top and open shelves underneath; it was expensive as hell, but well worth the money if it keeps Jon from having to saw shit. The island takes up more room than he originally intended, but looks good, especially with the stainless steel cappuccino machines Spencer picked out (Ryan picked out the kitchen island - Jon just paid for it all) and the small set of oversized, Friends-style coffee mugs. They buy a few bottles of flavored syrup at a specialty store and some homemade scones at the local bakery (Jon offers to give them free advertising, which gets him a huge discount and an approving nod from Spencer). Then there's the side trip back to Costco to buy a mini fridge and a few gallons of skim milk.
Everything is set up and nearly ready to go (dishes will have to be done in the tiny bathroom sink until Jon can think up something better), when it occurs to Jon that he has no clue how to make espresso drinks.
Ryan disappears into the stacks and emerges five minutes later with a worn copy of Coffee for Dummies. Jon sits in his office for the next hour and a half, reading each chapter carefully.
Then he smells the distinct aroma of ground coffee, followed by the hiss of the steamer.
Jon comes out of the office to find Gerard behind the counter, handing over a full, steaming, foam-and-all cup to a woman who smiles happily and hands him a five.
Gerard looks up, finds Jon staring at him with his mouth slightly open, and smiles sheepishly. "I, um, charged her three-fifty, is that okay?"
"Uh - yeah." He looks over at the register, where Ryan and Spencer are watching Gerard with mild fascination. "Yeah, that's okay."
"Awesome." He smiles at Jon and holds up the woman's five. "Can I get some change? And dude, not everyone likes scones, you should really consider a variety."
Spencer's already out the door to the bakery as Ryan breaks Gerard's five.
Jon makes over a hundred dollars from the coffee bar alone that day. They run out of mugs and coffee and banana bread (Jon agrees with Gerard - way better than scones), and Jon could not be happier.
Spencer is infinitely smug, but Jon lets it go.
~
A few weeks later, Jon figures out Gerard's weird interest in Kinko's, and it's kind of hilarious.
This guy, this tiny, tiny guy covered in tattoos, with a buzz cut, a lip ring, and wearing a blue Kinko's polo, comes through the front door of the store, takes one look at the coffee bar (and Gerard standing behind it, sketchbook out on the counter) and announces gleefully, "Gee! You weren't lying!" He grins at Gerard, who laughs a little and goes a familiar shade of pink.
Jon leans back in his chair behind the register and tries not to smile.
"Dude, I swear to god, having coffee next door is gonna save my life," Frank says, collapsing melodramatically against the counter. "Can I just tell you how I like it and you'll just have it ready for me every morning?"
Gerard goes from pink to light red, and it's so, so hard for Jon not to snort. He keeps waiting for Gerard to shoot him a Look of Death, but he's very carefully not looking in Jon's general direction. "I, um, have office hours in the morning, usually? I don't get in until around two or three," he replies, fidgeting with his sketchbook until he finally slides it off the counter.
"Hey, wait." Frank lunges and grabs the sketchbook out of his hand. "You did these?"
Jon holds his breath, waits for the inevitable defensive mumbling about side projects and art being a private endeavor until completion.
But Gerard just smiles shyly and says, "Yeah, they're mine."
"Awesome stuff, man, you should totally hang these up here or something."
"Already done," Jon pipes up, and Gerard blinks at him for a second like he completely forgot Jon was in the room. He finally gives him a Look of Death, with an added Please Don't Embarrass Me Here or I Will Make Your Life Miserable glare. Jon makes sure he looks painfully sincere when he adds, gesturing at the walls, "Take a look. My grandmother was a big fan of Gerard's."
This makes Gerard go a darker shade of red, and Jon's not really sure if it's from his comment or Frank's eyes flaring as he says, "I knew I should've come in here more often," before walking up to the closest framed ink drawing on the wall (Jon thinks it's a bat; Ryan swears it's a girl with her hair blowing in the wind).
Frank oohs and aahs over Gerard's art a little more, and then he's leaving as abruptly as he arrived. "Shit, my break's over," he says, glancing at his watch. He points a finger at Gerard as he backs out the door. "I'm gonna be back for that coffee later. No foam, and do you have any cinnamon? If not, forget it, just no foam." Then he truly does beam at Gerard - it's the only way Jon can describe the smile he gives him, something brilliant and filled with puppies and sunshine. Frank disappears around the corner, and when Jon looks over at the counter, Gerard has one hand pressed to his forehead, tugging at his hair.
He opens his mouth, possibly to say something reassuring, like the fact that he so totally does not fault Gerard for turning into a thirteen-year-old girl over a smile like that, when Gerard says, slowly, "One word out of you, Walker, and I swear to Christ, it will be your last."
Jon shuts his mouth and grins.
~
"Ryan says you were going to be a photographer."
Jon sighs. He's sitting on the floor of Kat's office, buried in a mountain of hardcovers Ryan picked up from the public library's book sale yesterday, and he's nearly cross-eyed from having to sort and price for the past two hours. He stretches his legs, rubs a hand over his eyes. "I am a photographer."
Spencer slumps against the doorway. "No, I mean, Ryan told me you majored in, like, Photography in school. You were going maybe open your own studio before Kat died."
It's not exactly true - he'd been considering opening his own studio, but he was getting enough freelance work that the thought of starting his own business seemed like too much of a hassle.
The irony of it all is definitely not lost on Jon. It's really goddamn funny, actually.
"You must've really loved her to give up your dream like that," Spencer continues, softly.
Jon throws the James Patterson novel in his hand over into the "fiction" pile by the couch. It hits the floor with a loud smack.
"Okay, first of all?" He glares at Spencer, feeling his jaw tighten. "I'm pretty sure I never said anything about my dreams, so stop making assumptions about what I did and didn't give up when I took over this place. Second? If you're gonna hang around here so damn much, do some fucking shelving or something." He pitches another book at the pile, hard, and his heart is pounding; his camera has been sitting in its case, untouched, for almost two months now.
Spencer is quiet for several long, awkward moments. Jon doesn't look at him, just keeps sorting books and listening to the way the impact of hard cover on cover echoes through the office.
"I was just curious," Spencer finally says, and if Jon didn't know better, he'd say Spencer sounded hurt. But Spencer Smith doesn't seem like the kind of guy to get his feelings hurt, and certainly not over something Jon would ever say.
Jon snorts at the thought, smirking to himself, and when he glances up a minute later, Spencer's gone.
~
They simply cannot have a coffee bar without music; Jon can't figure out why Kat didn't at least have a CD player of some sort sitting up front. But he wants more than a rinky-dink boom box; he wants something that will give him surround sound (Jon, when it comes right down to it, is a sound system whore).
"Go talk to Patrick next door," Ryan says without looking up from the copy of Anna Karenina he has spread out over the counter by the register. He waves his hand in the direction of the music store next door. "He'll probably give you a good deal if you advertise for them."
It's a really obvious idea, and Jon feels dumb for having not thought of it sooner. (He's also very, very conscious of the fact that Spencer has not been by the store in three days. He keeps waiting for Ryan to mention it, possibly even chew him out, but he never does.)
Patrick co-owns Conceptual Sounds; even though the store itself has been there for years, this incarnation of it has only been in operation for two. Jon hasn't been in since it changed, and he's kind of amazed at how neat and tidy the place is. Sample speakers line the walls, and something that sounds suspiciously like Muse is playing.
Jon loves the place instantly. And of course, Patrick loved Kat.
"Dude, yeah, when Brendon and I first rented the place and started setting up shop, she came over and brought us lunch, like, for a whole week. She was awesome." Patrick frowns in sympathy. "I'm sorry she's gone."
Jon exhales quickly and grins. "Well, then she'd probably love it if you gave me really good deal." He tells Patrick the details of what he wants, and Patrick takes a few notes, nodding along with him.
"That's totally doable, and it won't break you or anything." He gives Jon a rough estimate (Jon breathes a sigh of relief). "I can be over tomorrow sometime for installation?"
Jon thinks of his massive CD collection and the constant silence of the store. "How does ten o'clock sound?"
~
Ryan leaves the store an hour before closing that night. He taps his keys on the door of the office and says, "I'm going home."
"'Kay, I'll be up there in a sec." Jon yawns and pulls up the spreadsheet for the day's totals. He considers, just for a second, crashing on the couch instead of driving home. He's exhausted and hasn't slept well in days.
Then Ryan says, totally calm, "You're a fucking idiot."
Jon blinks. "What?"
"You heard me. 'Night." He waves over his shoulder as he turns to leave.
Jon is still staring at the empty doorway long after the front door closes.
~
Gerard, it seems, has been drumming up business.
He shows up the next day around noon with a fellow professor in tow. Pete is an English professor who teaches what he calls "Neo-Modern Fiction." Jon has absolutely no idea what this even means, but he's pretty sure it involves Chuck Palahniuk novels and papers written in the second person.
"Gee says you give discounts to school faculty?" Pete asks, hopping onto the register counter like he's been in the store a million times. Ryan's been staring kind of wide-eyed at Pete ever since he walked through the door, pointed a finger at him, and said, "I've had you in class - it's Ross, right?" It's the first time Jon has ever seen Ryan stutter.
Jon shrugs. "Yeah, I guess so." He hasn't really thought about a blanket discount, but figures it can't hurt to get a reputation on the campus.
"Awesome, then we're in business." Pete looks over at Ryan. "Wanna direct me to your Neil Gaiman section, Ross?"
Ryan nods - mutely, Jon notices - and points to the far end of the store. Pete winks at him and hops off the counter.
"Let me guess," Jon drawls, folding his arms on the coffee bar and smirking at Ryan. "You totally aced his class and thought it was the best ever."
Ryan bites his lip, cranes his neck to make sure Pete's out of earshot, then whispers, "No, I got a C in his class. But he's - that guy's amazing. He writes the craziest shit sometimes, but it's brilliant."
Jon rolls his eyes just as Gerard says, "Uh, you're having speakers put in?" He motions to the wires running along the floor.
"Yeah, Patrick's installing them right now." He grins and bounces on the balls of his feet. "Music, Gerard, blessed music."
It's Gerard's turn to roll his eyes, but he's smiling. "I want to say Kat would be horrified, but then again, she'd probably dig the whole coffee bar thing, so I'll let it go."
Jon laughs and starts to ask if Gerard wants to take over said coffee bar (Jon's slowly learned how to make a kick-ass cappuccino, and without the help of a damn book, which he's ridiculously proud of), when Patrick wanders up, speaker under one arm and his sheet of the store's specs in hand, squinting at his handwriting.
"Hey, Jon, I just have a quick question about the back half of the store," he says, not looking up from the sheet. "Did you still want to put the - "
"Whoa!"
Everyone pauses at Pete's obnoxiously loud exclamation.
Jon looks up, raises an eyebrow. "What?"
But Pete's pointing at Patrick. "Does he work here?" Like Patrick's not standing ten feet in front of him.
Patrick finally looks up from his notes, looks from Jon to Pete, and replies, slowly, "Um...no?"
It's kind of amazing just how freakishly fast Pete is suddenly at Patrick's side, grinning like he's won the lottery. "No? You don't know? Because I want you to say yes, you do, and yes, you're here every day so that when I come back to pick out my course texts you'll be able to cater to my every used book desire."
Patrick stares at him. "Um?"
Gerard sighs. "Ignore him, he's having a caffeine seizure at the moment."
"Ignore him, he doesn't know love at first sight." Pete scrinches his nose at Gerard and holds his hand out to Patrick. "I'm Pete. Please have an awesome first name that's not something soul-crushing, like Harold."
Patrick opens his mouth, then shuts it, only to open it again in slow motion and say, "It's...Patrick." He looks down at Pete's hand like he's utterly perplexed by it.
"Mmmm, Patrick. Complete opposite of soul-crushing, awesome." Pete folds Patrick's hand in his, seemingly oblivious to Patrick's slight deer-in-the-headlights stare. "Even if you don't really work here, you're here now, which means this is my new favorite place." He suddenly drops his hand and snaps his fingers. "Where do you work? 'Cause they're letting you off early, because you're coming to lunch with me. Right now."
Jon is torn between wanting to break into hysterical laughter and come to Patrick's rescue. Gerard stands just behind Pete, shaking his head in exasperation.
"I...am kind of busy at the mo - "
"No, you're not." Jon leans over the counter, takes the speaker from him. "You need to take a lunch anyway, right?"
"Um." Patrick can't stop blinking.
"Excellent, c'mon, I'm going to introduce you to the best sandwiches on Earth." It's not so much that Pete drags Patrick out of the store as it is Patrick simply being caught in his wake, letting inertia pull him along.
~
The live music idea is totally Frank's.
He's patiently watching Gerard make his no-foam latte with extra cinnamon (it's just after nine in the morning - Jon thinks maybe, maybe Gerard switched his office hours to the afternoons so that he could make Frank's coffee every morning, but he's not about to ask) and says, "You guys don't have live music nights, do you?"
Gerard sort of pauses mid-pour and looks over at Jon. "Um. Not really."
Jon sets the stack of cookbooks in his hands by the register and surveys the floor space. "We don't really have the room," he replies, but the wheels are suddenly turning in his head.
"Dude, seriously, you should consider it, even it's just an open mic night. I know lots of people who bitch about there not being enough live entertainment on this side of town, and this place is cool enough that I think you guys could pull it off easily." He grins at Gerard, who carefully hands him his coffee mug while simultaneously giving Jon a slightly pleading look, like he'll do anything to keep the store cool if it means more Frank time.
Jon considers the amount of space (they'll have to move the "Just In" shelf on performance nights, but it's doable) and the (insanely successful) coffee bar and the newly installed sound system (now currently playing Arctic Monkeys) and thinks We are totally cool enough to pull it off.
"Yeah," he replies, nodding, planning another trip to see Patrick for some microphone stands. "Yeah, that's an awesome idea, wow. Thanks."
"No problem," Frank says into his mug. "And for the record, this has officially become my favorite bookstore ever."
~
part two
Jon/Spencer, Frank/Gerard, Ryan/Brendon, Pete/Patrick | 11,300 words | R
A funeral is really the wrong place to learn you've inherited a business.
Merry Christmas, have some bookstore AU full of fluff and angst and spiked eggnog! TONS of thanks to my awesome betas on this: adellyna, siryn99, sweetrecovery, and shleemeri. You guys rock, seriously.
A funeral is really the wrong place to learn you've inherited a business, but Jon figures it's as good a place as any in the long run.
"She left it all to you," his mom says to him quietly, her hand squeezing his shoulder. "I don't expect you to accept it, but I thought you should know. It's in the will."
Jon sticks his hands in the pockets of his black suit and looks around the room, full of people who came to pay their respects to one Katherine Ann Walker. He suddenly remembers afternoons as a kid spent in his grandmother's lap, listening to her read him James and The Giant Peach while sitting behind a cash register. He remembers the smell of dust and old paper, the sounds of an old calculator grinding out receipts.
"No," Jon replies. "It's mine now. She wanted me to have it, so it's a done deal."
His mom nods. "Then I'll get the paperwork in order."
~
Katherine "Kat" Walker owned Between the Lines Used Books for over forty years. She used to say the store had been a birthday present from Jon's grandfather because she'd always wanted her own bookstore, but his grandfather said he won it in a poker game from a guy desperate to get rid of the empty space.
The store sits on the corner of a calm intersection, tucked between a Kinko's and a music store that deals primarily in microphones and sound equipment. The Kinko's is fairly new, while the music store is almost as old as the bookstore; the brick on the outside wall has been covered in graffiti more than once, and gradually the colors and designs have faded enough to give the place a feel of authenticity (the brick outside of Between the Lines, however, is painted white, because it made it easier for Kat to simply blot out said graffiti, and eventually the vandals got tired of redoing their work).
Jon's childhood consisted of video games played on an ancient color TV with rabbit ears wrapped in duct tape in Kat's musty back office after school. He loved it when his grandmother read to him, but, much to her dismay, he was never a voracious reader. The store was more than reading, though; it was learning genres and authors and what covers would make Kat smile whenever someone dropped off a sack of unwanted paperbacks.
"My goodness," she'd say, holding a yellowed sci-fi novel out to him that looked to be around a million years old. "Twenty-five cents for three hundred pages. How the written word has inflated, hmm, Jonny?"
Jon now has a special affinity now for old paperbacks with the price stamped on the front cover.
When he got old enough to work the register, he had his first part-time job, which lasted until the summer he graduated high school and left for college. By then the store felt a little stifling, like he'd outgrown the walls and the ancient wooden shelves Kat had never bothered to replace. Like a typical teenager, he felt the place cramped his style somewhat, and while he loved his grandmother dearly, he just didn't have the patience to spend his free time in a used bookstore.
He sometimes misses the feel of his hands being dry and cracked from handling old paper, the tips of his fingers slightly blackened from typeface. His Super Nintendo is still sitting in Kat's office, plugged into the television with the sad, droopy rabbit ears.
Jon comes back to the store two days after the funeral, and it's the first time he's been inside in over a year. It still smells exactly the same way it did when he was five; he runs his thumb over the wood of the doorway, over the crude initials craved there: JJW wuz here (he'd been ten, and afterwards Kat had banished him to the back office for the rest of the afternoon. He also wasn't allowed to play with his grandfather's Swiss Army knife any more).
"I wondered when I'd see you around."
He looks up and sees Ryan leaning against the counter by the register, his expression neutral. Ryan has worked at Between the Lines for nearly four years - basically, the entirety of his college career. Kat had hired him after a five minute interview that consisted of Ryan naming all his favorite authors during high school, and then promising to tell her about everything he'd eventually read in his English classes. Jon's pretty sure he's a semester away from a Bachelor's in English Literature - or maybe it's Creative Writing. Either way, Jon likes to half-joke that Ryan's the grandson Kat always wanted.
And now he's sort of the manager, or has been for quite some time, ever since Kat grew too ill to manage the store on her own. Jon doesn't know what's official and what's not in terms of titles; Kat didn't work that way. He's fairly certain Ryan's promotion was nothing more than Kat handing him a spare key and telling him to make sure the electric bill got paid.
Ryan has never expressed an opinion on Jon, for better or worse. Jon knows he's protective of the store, and of Kat's wishes, but whether or not he knows about her will is another story.
He takes a deep breath, smiles tentatively. "Yeah, it's been a while, hasn't it?" He walks slowly around the front of the store, down the narrow aisle that leads past the meticulously categorized shelves that are alphabetized by genre. The store may be old, cramped, and dusty, but it's always, always organized.
"I couldn't make the funeral, but I'm." Ryan pauses, drums his fingers on the counter. "I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you what she meant to this place. To me."
Jon smiles. "No, you don't. And I guess this is where I tell you I'm your new boss?" He laughs, just to make it sound not quite so pretentious.
Ryan doesn't even blink. "It's not like I didn't know." There's no emotion behind it whatsoever, and it makes Jon fidget.
"Well, it was news to me. But, hey, you've still got your job and all, and I don't plan to make any huge - "
"Jon." Ryan's voice is sharp suddenly, and Jon startles a bit. "Do you even know how the inventory works?"
"Um." He used to. Sort of. Kat made him check the stock once, but that was a long time ago... "Um, maybe?"
"Staffing? Paychecks? Special events?"
"Um." Jon drags a hand through his hair, tugs hard.
"Thought so." Ryan smirks and shakes his head, sighing with quiet exasperation. "Of course I'm not going anywhere, I'm the store manager. You need me to keep this place functional."
Jon wants to argue, except everything Ryan's said is one hundred and ten percent true. He has absolutely no fucking clue what he's doing.
"Okay," he replies slowly. "Okay, then." He sighs, spreads his hands. "Teach me everything you know and I'll give you a raise?"
The smirk actually changes into an honest smile. "I accept."
They shake hands on it.
"But don't you graduate in May?" Jon asks before he lets go of Ryan's hand.
"Dude." Ryan rolls his eyes. "Grad school. Duh. I'm stuck with you for at least another three years."
~
Jon learns that Kat had three people on staff, not including Ryan: one is a retired school teacher named Annette who works in the mornings on Tuesdays and Fridays; one is a college freshman named Carl, who Jon thinks is just a tad bit terrified of Ryan; and the third one is Gerard Way.
"Seriously?" Jon asks as he looks over Kats handwritten payroll logs. "She seriously put him on staff?"
Ryan shrugs. "He's in the store all time as it is. She figured he might as well earn some extra cash on the side."
Gerard has lived in the loft upstairs for years, at least since the summer before Jon left for college. An adjunct art professor at the local university, he spends his time off sitting in the back corner of in the ratty old armchair with the paisley print that Kat bought at a thrift store, reading through the pulp magazines she managed to buy off an old guy who was a hoarder of all things The Shadow. He also makes his students buy all their text books here; Kat made it a point to start keeping the heavy, odd-shaped art history coffee table books in stock just for Gerard, and she always gave his students a discount. In the last couple of years, Kat had taken to allowing him to hang his own artwork in the store, even though, as she'd told Jon, "It's a little too Tim Burton-ish for my taste."
Gerard rarely speaks to Jon, but he was at the funeral, and the two of them had nodded their condolences to one another.
"Does he - what does he do?" Not that Jon's going to fire him or anything. He's genuinely curious.
"He...well, he talked Kat into having a comic book section, which has been fairly popular, since she refused to mark anything up regardless of rarity." Ryan clears his throat and adds, "He keeps it in impeccable condition."
Jon gets the feeling Ryan doesn't interfere with Gerard's "job duties," and Jon doesn't really plan to, either, but he at least wants to establish some kind of rapport with him.
He finds Gerard in the usual spot - sitting in the same paisley armchair, the lamp beside it dark and unused, chewing his thumb as he takes notes out of some obscenely large book on Goya, which takes up every square inch of his lap. There's an issue of The Green Goblin lying on the floor beside the chair, open to the back page, along with a half-empty bottle of Pepsi.
Jon walks up to him slowly and says, "Hey." He shoves his hands in his pockets and smiles brightly, even though it takes a good thirty seconds before Gerard looks up. "Ah, making lesson plans?"
Gerard shakes the hair out of his eyes, and while he doesn't exactly smile back, he still nods. "Yeah, this thing just came in the other day and it's massive." He pats the book in his lap. "I've never seen so much shit on Goya in one place in my life, it's awesome."
Jon bobs his head like that makes sense and he actually knows who the hell Goya is. "Cool. Uh." He scrapes the toe of his left flip-flop over the dusty wood floor. "I haven't gotten a chance to come over and say anything to you since - y'know, Kat left - " He winces a little, both at his poor choice of verbs and the small, painful tug in his heart. " - and I just wanted to. Um. Say hi. And to tell you to let me know if you need anything."
An awkward silence follows, but eventually Gerard puts his pen down and smiles tentatively. "Thanks. Kat was a wonderful woman, but you probably already know that." He sighs, suddenly looking sad. "I mean, I know what it's like to lose a grandma you love, so." He nods again. "Just don't fuck the place up, or you and I will have words."
Jon laughs. "You and Ryan both." He gives Gerard a small salute and starts to walk away.
"Ah, hey, one quick question..."
He stops, looks over his shoulder at Gerard. "Yeah?"
If Jon didn't know better, he'd swear Gerard was fidgeting. "Do you, uh, know if Kat had a business account at Kinko's? Y'know, for copies and shit?"
Jon blinks. "I have no idea?" From the state of Kat's office, he'd say Kat never used a copy machine in her life. "You think we should get one?"
Gerard turns kind of pink, which utterly confuses Jon, because what the hell's so embarrassing about copy paper? "I don't know, maybe. You never know. And Kat wasn't too terribly into getting on the technology bus or anything." He shrugs and goes back to taking notes, hiding behind his dark hair. "Just something to think about. I, um, know someone I can probably talk to if you're interested."
"Yeah, I'll consider it." He waits for Gerard to say more, but he just keeps scribbling in his notebook. His cheeks are still really pink, though.
~
Ryan has a best friend named Spencer who manages to be at the store nearly every day Ryan is scheduled to work. Jon doesn't really know anything about him, except that he's in his junior year of college, is majoring in Business, and plays drums once in a while in some band (Jon doesn't eavesdrop, it's just that the store is really quiet sometimes).
Jon doesn't have a problem with him hanging around the store, it's just that he's. Well. Bossy.
"Did you even bother to have the small business license changed over to your name?" Spencer asks him one day while Jon's trying to shelve a new stock of World War II biographies (Ryan swears they're bestsellers and vital to inventory). He slumps against the bookcase and cocks his hips to the side. Jon thinks guys really shouldn't be able to do that with their hips.
"Of course I did," Jon says quickly, even though he really has no idea. But his mom assured him a week or so ago that everything was taken care of, so. He figures "everything" also encompasses business licenses. "Besides, Ryan was basically in charge for months before I took over. I don't think it really matters."
"It matters when the Better Business Bureau comes knocking on your door and demands to see paperwork," Spencer replies, and the tone of his voice definitely implies that he thinks Jon's a moron.
Jon wonders if Spencer talks like this to Ryan, then thinks it wouldn't matter if he did; Ryan would just ignore him.
He gets really tired of the constant nagging about his nonexistent business habits, and he comes very close to saying something snippy to Spencer, until the day Spencer wanders into his office, arms crossed, and says, "You should put in a coffee bar."
Jon's glad he didn't come in ten minutes earlier; at least now he looks busy with his Excel spreadsheet pulled up, not swearing at the TV screen as he plays another round of Grand Theft Auto (he replaced the Super Nintendo with his Playstation). He sighs wearily and spins around in his chair to face Spencer. "A coffee bar?"
"Yes. A coffee bar. I think it would be good for business, and there's not a Starbucks within ten blocks of here. You could totally corner the market."
"Did you tell Ryan about this idea?"
Spencer raises an eyebrow. "No. Does he own the place?"
Jon considers himself a bright guy, but with Spencer, he feels like he's vaguely retarded. "I don't think - we don't have the space."
"Sure you do, just take out the mystery section by the front entryway. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just a counter and a couple of cappuccino machines."
He starts to say something like Wow, you've really thought this out, but he doesn't want to give Spencer more opportunities to be smug. Jon scrubs a hand through his beard and says, "Okay, I'll think about it. I'll have to do some research - "
"Please. Like people don't like coffee with their books. Use your brain, Walker." Spencer holds his hand up and starts ticking points off. "Get a couple Krups cappuccino makers at Bed Bath & Beyond, go to Home Depot and get some lumber and maybe some cheap tile, and then swing by Costco for a shitload of coffee beans." He sweeps his hand out. "Voila, instant coffee bar."
Jon blinks at him. "Um." Damn it, he really has thought this through. "I, uh...don't have a Costco card."
"Then get one, and make sure it's a business account. And did I mention all of this is tax deductible?"
~
Jon rarely sees Ryan get upset about things, but when he mentions taking out the mystery section to make room for the coffee bar, Ryan's face goes white, then immediately purple. Jon quickly suggests they swap out all the Nora Roberts paperbacks instead, and Ryan's color goes back to normal.
He doesn't end up building anything; Jon may not be a businessman, but he's definitely not a fucking carpenter. What he ends up with is a small kitchen island with a wooden top and open shelves underneath; it was expensive as hell, but well worth the money if it keeps Jon from having to saw shit. The island takes up more room than he originally intended, but looks good, especially with the stainless steel cappuccino machines Spencer picked out (Ryan picked out the kitchen island - Jon just paid for it all) and the small set of oversized, Friends-style coffee mugs. They buy a few bottles of flavored syrup at a specialty store and some homemade scones at the local bakery (Jon offers to give them free advertising, which gets him a huge discount and an approving nod from Spencer). Then there's the side trip back to Costco to buy a mini fridge and a few gallons of skim milk.
Everything is set up and nearly ready to go (dishes will have to be done in the tiny bathroom sink until Jon can think up something better), when it occurs to Jon that he has no clue how to make espresso drinks.
Ryan disappears into the stacks and emerges five minutes later with a worn copy of Coffee for Dummies. Jon sits in his office for the next hour and a half, reading each chapter carefully.
Then he smells the distinct aroma of ground coffee, followed by the hiss of the steamer.
Jon comes out of the office to find Gerard behind the counter, handing over a full, steaming, foam-and-all cup to a woman who smiles happily and hands him a five.
Gerard looks up, finds Jon staring at him with his mouth slightly open, and smiles sheepishly. "I, um, charged her three-fifty, is that okay?"
"Uh - yeah." He looks over at the register, where Ryan and Spencer are watching Gerard with mild fascination. "Yeah, that's okay."
"Awesome." He smiles at Jon and holds up the woman's five. "Can I get some change? And dude, not everyone likes scones, you should really consider a variety."
Spencer's already out the door to the bakery as Ryan breaks Gerard's five.
Jon makes over a hundred dollars from the coffee bar alone that day. They run out of mugs and coffee and banana bread (Jon agrees with Gerard - way better than scones), and Jon could not be happier.
Spencer is infinitely smug, but Jon lets it go.
~
A few weeks later, Jon figures out Gerard's weird interest in Kinko's, and it's kind of hilarious.
This guy, this tiny, tiny guy covered in tattoos, with a buzz cut, a lip ring, and wearing a blue Kinko's polo, comes through the front door of the store, takes one look at the coffee bar (and Gerard standing behind it, sketchbook out on the counter) and announces gleefully, "Gee! You weren't lying!" He grins at Gerard, who laughs a little and goes a familiar shade of pink.
Jon leans back in his chair behind the register and tries not to smile.
"Dude, I swear to god, having coffee next door is gonna save my life," Frank says, collapsing melodramatically against the counter. "Can I just tell you how I like it and you'll just have it ready for me every morning?"
Gerard goes from pink to light red, and it's so, so hard for Jon not to snort. He keeps waiting for Gerard to shoot him a Look of Death, but he's very carefully not looking in Jon's general direction. "I, um, have office hours in the morning, usually? I don't get in until around two or three," he replies, fidgeting with his sketchbook until he finally slides it off the counter.
"Hey, wait." Frank lunges and grabs the sketchbook out of his hand. "You did these?"
Jon holds his breath, waits for the inevitable defensive mumbling about side projects and art being a private endeavor until completion.
But Gerard just smiles shyly and says, "Yeah, they're mine."
"Awesome stuff, man, you should totally hang these up here or something."
"Already done," Jon pipes up, and Gerard blinks at him for a second like he completely forgot Jon was in the room. He finally gives him a Look of Death, with an added Please Don't Embarrass Me Here or I Will Make Your Life Miserable glare. Jon makes sure he looks painfully sincere when he adds, gesturing at the walls, "Take a look. My grandmother was a big fan of Gerard's."
This makes Gerard go a darker shade of red, and Jon's not really sure if it's from his comment or Frank's eyes flaring as he says, "I knew I should've come in here more often," before walking up to the closest framed ink drawing on the wall (Jon thinks it's a bat; Ryan swears it's a girl with her hair blowing in the wind).
Frank oohs and aahs over Gerard's art a little more, and then he's leaving as abruptly as he arrived. "Shit, my break's over," he says, glancing at his watch. He points a finger at Gerard as he backs out the door. "I'm gonna be back for that coffee later. No foam, and do you have any cinnamon? If not, forget it, just no foam." Then he truly does beam at Gerard - it's the only way Jon can describe the smile he gives him, something brilliant and filled with puppies and sunshine. Frank disappears around the corner, and when Jon looks over at the counter, Gerard has one hand pressed to his forehead, tugging at his hair.
He opens his mouth, possibly to say something reassuring, like the fact that he so totally does not fault Gerard for turning into a thirteen-year-old girl over a smile like that, when Gerard says, slowly, "One word out of you, Walker, and I swear to Christ, it will be your last."
Jon shuts his mouth and grins.
~
"Ryan says you were going to be a photographer."
Jon sighs. He's sitting on the floor of Kat's office, buried in a mountain of hardcovers Ryan picked up from the public library's book sale yesterday, and he's nearly cross-eyed from having to sort and price for the past two hours. He stretches his legs, rubs a hand over his eyes. "I am a photographer."
Spencer slumps against the doorway. "No, I mean, Ryan told me you majored in, like, Photography in school. You were going maybe open your own studio before Kat died."
It's not exactly true - he'd been considering opening his own studio, but he was getting enough freelance work that the thought of starting his own business seemed like too much of a hassle.
The irony of it all is definitely not lost on Jon. It's really goddamn funny, actually.
"You must've really loved her to give up your dream like that," Spencer continues, softly.
Jon throws the James Patterson novel in his hand over into the "fiction" pile by the couch. It hits the floor with a loud smack.
"Okay, first of all?" He glares at Spencer, feeling his jaw tighten. "I'm pretty sure I never said anything about my dreams, so stop making assumptions about what I did and didn't give up when I took over this place. Second? If you're gonna hang around here so damn much, do some fucking shelving or something." He pitches another book at the pile, hard, and his heart is pounding; his camera has been sitting in its case, untouched, for almost two months now.
Spencer is quiet for several long, awkward moments. Jon doesn't look at him, just keeps sorting books and listening to the way the impact of hard cover on cover echoes through the office.
"I was just curious," Spencer finally says, and if Jon didn't know better, he'd say Spencer sounded hurt. But Spencer Smith doesn't seem like the kind of guy to get his feelings hurt, and certainly not over something Jon would ever say.
Jon snorts at the thought, smirking to himself, and when he glances up a minute later, Spencer's gone.
~
They simply cannot have a coffee bar without music; Jon can't figure out why Kat didn't at least have a CD player of some sort sitting up front. But he wants more than a rinky-dink boom box; he wants something that will give him surround sound (Jon, when it comes right down to it, is a sound system whore).
"Go talk to Patrick next door," Ryan says without looking up from the copy of Anna Karenina he has spread out over the counter by the register. He waves his hand in the direction of the music store next door. "He'll probably give you a good deal if you advertise for them."
It's a really obvious idea, and Jon feels dumb for having not thought of it sooner. (He's also very, very conscious of the fact that Spencer has not been by the store in three days. He keeps waiting for Ryan to mention it, possibly even chew him out, but he never does.)
Patrick co-owns Conceptual Sounds; even though the store itself has been there for years, this incarnation of it has only been in operation for two. Jon hasn't been in since it changed, and he's kind of amazed at how neat and tidy the place is. Sample speakers line the walls, and something that sounds suspiciously like Muse is playing.
Jon loves the place instantly. And of course, Patrick loved Kat.
"Dude, yeah, when Brendon and I first rented the place and started setting up shop, she came over and brought us lunch, like, for a whole week. She was awesome." Patrick frowns in sympathy. "I'm sorry she's gone."
Jon exhales quickly and grins. "Well, then she'd probably love it if you gave me really good deal." He tells Patrick the details of what he wants, and Patrick takes a few notes, nodding along with him.
"That's totally doable, and it won't break you or anything." He gives Jon a rough estimate (Jon breathes a sigh of relief). "I can be over tomorrow sometime for installation?"
Jon thinks of his massive CD collection and the constant silence of the store. "How does ten o'clock sound?"
~
Ryan leaves the store an hour before closing that night. He taps his keys on the door of the office and says, "I'm going home."
"'Kay, I'll be up there in a sec." Jon yawns and pulls up the spreadsheet for the day's totals. He considers, just for a second, crashing on the couch instead of driving home. He's exhausted and hasn't slept well in days.
Then Ryan says, totally calm, "You're a fucking idiot."
Jon blinks. "What?"
"You heard me. 'Night." He waves over his shoulder as he turns to leave.
Jon is still staring at the empty doorway long after the front door closes.
~
Gerard, it seems, has been drumming up business.
He shows up the next day around noon with a fellow professor in tow. Pete is an English professor who teaches what he calls "Neo-Modern Fiction." Jon has absolutely no idea what this even means, but he's pretty sure it involves Chuck Palahniuk novels and papers written in the second person.
"Gee says you give discounts to school faculty?" Pete asks, hopping onto the register counter like he's been in the store a million times. Ryan's been staring kind of wide-eyed at Pete ever since he walked through the door, pointed a finger at him, and said, "I've had you in class - it's Ross, right?" It's the first time Jon has ever seen Ryan stutter.
Jon shrugs. "Yeah, I guess so." He hasn't really thought about a blanket discount, but figures it can't hurt to get a reputation on the campus.
"Awesome, then we're in business." Pete looks over at Ryan. "Wanna direct me to your Neil Gaiman section, Ross?"
Ryan nods - mutely, Jon notices - and points to the far end of the store. Pete winks at him and hops off the counter.
"Let me guess," Jon drawls, folding his arms on the coffee bar and smirking at Ryan. "You totally aced his class and thought it was the best ever."
Ryan bites his lip, cranes his neck to make sure Pete's out of earshot, then whispers, "No, I got a C in his class. But he's - that guy's amazing. He writes the craziest shit sometimes, but it's brilliant."
Jon rolls his eyes just as Gerard says, "Uh, you're having speakers put in?" He motions to the wires running along the floor.
"Yeah, Patrick's installing them right now." He grins and bounces on the balls of his feet. "Music, Gerard, blessed music."
It's Gerard's turn to roll his eyes, but he's smiling. "I want to say Kat would be horrified, but then again, she'd probably dig the whole coffee bar thing, so I'll let it go."
Jon laughs and starts to ask if Gerard wants to take over said coffee bar (Jon's slowly learned how to make a kick-ass cappuccino, and without the help of a damn book, which he's ridiculously proud of), when Patrick wanders up, speaker under one arm and his sheet of the store's specs in hand, squinting at his handwriting.
"Hey, Jon, I just have a quick question about the back half of the store," he says, not looking up from the sheet. "Did you still want to put the - "
"Whoa!"
Everyone pauses at Pete's obnoxiously loud exclamation.
Jon looks up, raises an eyebrow. "What?"
But Pete's pointing at Patrick. "Does he work here?" Like Patrick's not standing ten feet in front of him.
Patrick finally looks up from his notes, looks from Jon to Pete, and replies, slowly, "Um...no?"
It's kind of amazing just how freakishly fast Pete is suddenly at Patrick's side, grinning like he's won the lottery. "No? You don't know? Because I want you to say yes, you do, and yes, you're here every day so that when I come back to pick out my course texts you'll be able to cater to my every used book desire."
Patrick stares at him. "Um?"
Gerard sighs. "Ignore him, he's having a caffeine seizure at the moment."
"Ignore him, he doesn't know love at first sight." Pete scrinches his nose at Gerard and holds his hand out to Patrick. "I'm Pete. Please have an awesome first name that's not something soul-crushing, like Harold."
Patrick opens his mouth, then shuts it, only to open it again in slow motion and say, "It's...Patrick." He looks down at Pete's hand like he's utterly perplexed by it.
"Mmmm, Patrick. Complete opposite of soul-crushing, awesome." Pete folds Patrick's hand in his, seemingly oblivious to Patrick's slight deer-in-the-headlights stare. "Even if you don't really work here, you're here now, which means this is my new favorite place." He suddenly drops his hand and snaps his fingers. "Where do you work? 'Cause they're letting you off early, because you're coming to lunch with me. Right now."
Jon is torn between wanting to break into hysterical laughter and come to Patrick's rescue. Gerard stands just behind Pete, shaking his head in exasperation.
"I...am kind of busy at the mo - "
"No, you're not." Jon leans over the counter, takes the speaker from him. "You need to take a lunch anyway, right?"
"Um." Patrick can't stop blinking.
"Excellent, c'mon, I'm going to introduce you to the best sandwiches on Earth." It's not so much that Pete drags Patrick out of the store as it is Patrick simply being caught in his wake, letting inertia pull him along.
~
The live music idea is totally Frank's.
He's patiently watching Gerard make his no-foam latte with extra cinnamon (it's just after nine in the morning - Jon thinks maybe, maybe Gerard switched his office hours to the afternoons so that he could make Frank's coffee every morning, but he's not about to ask) and says, "You guys don't have live music nights, do you?"
Gerard sort of pauses mid-pour and looks over at Jon. "Um. Not really."
Jon sets the stack of cookbooks in his hands by the register and surveys the floor space. "We don't really have the room," he replies, but the wheels are suddenly turning in his head.
"Dude, seriously, you should consider it, even it's just an open mic night. I know lots of people who bitch about there not being enough live entertainment on this side of town, and this place is cool enough that I think you guys could pull it off easily." He grins at Gerard, who carefully hands him his coffee mug while simultaneously giving Jon a slightly pleading look, like he'll do anything to keep the store cool if it means more Frank time.
Jon considers the amount of space (they'll have to move the "Just In" shelf on performance nights, but it's doable) and the (insanely successful) coffee bar and the newly installed sound system (now currently playing Arctic Monkeys) and thinks We are totally cool enough to pull it off.
"Yeah," he replies, nodding, planning another trip to see Patrick for some microphone stands. "Yeah, that's an awesome idea, wow. Thanks."
"No problem," Frank says into his mug. "And for the record, this has officially become my favorite bookstore ever."
~
part two