{ The Silent Letters in Coffee }
Title: The Silent Letters in Coffee
Fandom: Persona 3
Pairing: Shinjiro/FMC a little
Word Count: 857
Comm & Prompt: 78_tarot : Eight of Pentacles
Rating: PG13
She's asking him how he got to be so good at making coffee. Hell, like he knows.
The two of them are sitting at a table in the middle of Chagall Cafe, the steely greens and warm atmosphere clashing against his own maroon coat and street punk chic. He'd come here because he'd needed to get some more coffee beans and since the dorm didn't have its own press, he'd have to get them ground at the counter rather than just picking up a bag and making a hasty retreat.
"It's just something that you do enough times that you eventually get better at it." He shrugs, using a sip of his cup of cafe coffee as cover. It's not bad. For all the hype this place got as one of the Gekkoukan's most popular after-school hang-outs, you'd never think that the coffee would actually be as good as they said. "You don't have to be a genius to be able to learn to make a good pot of coffee. You just need the right ingredients and a halfway-decent coffeemaker."
Castor had given him enough time to learn.
He'd been woken up in the middle of the night enough times by a Persona threatening to overwhelm the borders of his consciousness, wanting to break out, that Shinjiro had had to learn how to make coffee. It started a few days after the incident, the night sweats, the memories haunting him from every corner of the room, the sleeplessness. Eventually he would drag himself down to the lounge and stare vacantly at the walls, but as it soon became apparent that this bombardment wasn't going to stop, Shinjiro took action, rescuing a coffeemaker from obscurity in the back of the kitchen and slowly experimenting with it.
The first few days were a mess. Even now, looking back on them, he remembers that he was desperate enough to drink what sludge he'd been able to produce, but little else. Maybe he was too tired to commit the rest to memory. The human body learns by doing, after all, and that was what had scared him most about Castor. His Persona had killed someone and knew how to do it now. It couldn't unlearn, and there would always be the chance that it would happen again.
But, gradually, things got better. He was no stranger to the culinary arts and within a week, his coffee had improved. It was around that time that he'd started to realize that there was no way that he could keep living in the dorm, not as he was now, already beginning to investigate ways to keep Castor under wraps and with no intention for working for SEES again.
Weird, then, that he's sitting here with this brown-haired girl, the SEES leader, her head cocked to the side as though to say that she finds it funny and kind of quaint that he's so well-versed on coffee-making. Yeah, definitely pretty weird.
"It's not like I come in here often, anyway." He puts the cup down, wondering why in hell it's taking them so long to grind a damn one-pound bag of coffee. "So don't act like it's a usual thing."
After his flight from the dorm, he'd set himself up in a place in Port Island, but it was bare essentials only. He took odd jobs at restaurants, and despite his punk appearance, when his letters of referral from employers checked out, places were glad to have him. The money he earned covered the rent, food, and pills. Coffee became a remnant of his past, a less efficient way of banishing Castor.
Still, he has to admit that he's kinda missed it. He's heard that taste and smell are the two senses that you never really forget, and when the smell of the coffee lifts up to him from the mug, he can recall the last time he'd drunk it, watching the sun come up on the day he'd left Aki and Mitsuru and SEES for good.
Or so he thought. He smiles to himself. Maybe it wasn't so bad moving back into the dorm after all, if only for a little while. Castor still wakes him up, his supply of suppressants is running low, thanks to giving some to Chidori and Strega's cutting him off once they found out he was back on SEES. Already, he's starting to feel tired when he wakes up, starting to appreciate the old standby of caffeine as the anniversary of that woman's death draws closer and he knows that he'll have to confront her son, both of them well aware of how that'll play out.
Days are coming when he won't be able to sleep, he knows. Finally, after two years, events are carefully building themselves toward a climax, one that he knows he'll have to meet head-on. But it's not like he doesn't dread it all the same.
"Having coffee around just helps to get through the mornings, okay?"
Fandom: Persona 3
Pairing: Shinjiro/FMC a little
Word Count: 857
Comm & Prompt: 78_tarot : Eight of Pentacles
Rating: PG13
She's asking him how he got to be so good at making coffee. Hell, like he knows.
The two of them are sitting at a table in the middle of Chagall Cafe, the steely greens and warm atmosphere clashing against his own maroon coat and street punk chic. He'd come here because he'd needed to get some more coffee beans and since the dorm didn't have its own press, he'd have to get them ground at the counter rather than just picking up a bag and making a hasty retreat.
"It's just something that you do enough times that you eventually get better at it." He shrugs, using a sip of his cup of cafe coffee as cover. It's not bad. For all the hype this place got as one of the Gekkoukan's most popular after-school hang-outs, you'd never think that the coffee would actually be as good as they said. "You don't have to be a genius to be able to learn to make a good pot of coffee. You just need the right ingredients and a halfway-decent coffeemaker."
Castor had given him enough time to learn.
He'd been woken up in the middle of the night enough times by a Persona threatening to overwhelm the borders of his consciousness, wanting to break out, that Shinjiro had had to learn how to make coffee. It started a few days after the incident, the night sweats, the memories haunting him from every corner of the room, the sleeplessness. Eventually he would drag himself down to the lounge and stare vacantly at the walls, but as it soon became apparent that this bombardment wasn't going to stop, Shinjiro took action, rescuing a coffeemaker from obscurity in the back of the kitchen and slowly experimenting with it.
The first few days were a mess. Even now, looking back on them, he remembers that he was desperate enough to drink what sludge he'd been able to produce, but little else. Maybe he was too tired to commit the rest to memory. The human body learns by doing, after all, and that was what had scared him most about Castor. His Persona had killed someone and knew how to do it now. It couldn't unlearn, and there would always be the chance that it would happen again.
But, gradually, things got better. He was no stranger to the culinary arts and within a week, his coffee had improved. It was around that time that he'd started to realize that there was no way that he could keep living in the dorm, not as he was now, already beginning to investigate ways to keep Castor under wraps and with no intention for working for SEES again.
Weird, then, that he's sitting here with this brown-haired girl, the SEES leader, her head cocked to the side as though to say that she finds it funny and kind of quaint that he's so well-versed on coffee-making. Yeah, definitely pretty weird.
"It's not like I come in here often, anyway." He puts the cup down, wondering why in hell it's taking them so long to grind a damn one-pound bag of coffee. "So don't act like it's a usual thing."
After his flight from the dorm, he'd set himself up in a place in Port Island, but it was bare essentials only. He took odd jobs at restaurants, and despite his punk appearance, when his letters of referral from employers checked out, places were glad to have him. The money he earned covered the rent, food, and pills. Coffee became a remnant of his past, a less efficient way of banishing Castor.
Still, he has to admit that he's kinda missed it. He's heard that taste and smell are the two senses that you never really forget, and when the smell of the coffee lifts up to him from the mug, he can recall the last time he'd drunk it, watching the sun come up on the day he'd left Aki and Mitsuru and SEES for good.
Or so he thought. He smiles to himself. Maybe it wasn't so bad moving back into the dorm after all, if only for a little while. Castor still wakes him up, his supply of suppressants is running low, thanks to giving some to Chidori and Strega's cutting him off once they found out he was back on SEES. Already, he's starting to feel tired when he wakes up, starting to appreciate the old standby of caffeine as the anniversary of that woman's death draws closer and he knows that he'll have to confront her son, both of them well aware of how that'll play out.
Days are coming when he won't be able to sleep, he knows. Finally, after two years, events are carefully building themselves toward a climax, one that he knows he'll have to meet head-on. But it's not like he doesn't dread it all the same.
"Having coffee around just helps to get through the mornings, okay?"