One
The bell above the door jangled and Thom glanced up to see a certain orange-haired somebody come sauntering in perhaps half an hour later than she was meant to.
“If there’s one thing I do like about you, Adagio, it’s your punctuality,” he said. This she chose to ignore, or at least not comment on. Instead she said:
“And how’s my favourite idiot today?”
“He’s quite alright, thanks for asking. All the better for seeing you, of course.”
“Of course he is,” she said, giving him a pat on the head and a bump with her hip as she sauntered on past into the back. Thom had to chuckle at that.
Something like this or similar to this happened just about every morning and had done for the last month or two. Thom was not wholly sure why he put up with it, but there was just something in Adagio’s delivery that made it surprisingly easy for him to tolerate. She could just pull it off somehow.
Or maybe he just had a soft spot for her. He wasn’t sure yet.
Prior to Adagio it had been Thom and his dad running the shop, Thom being able nowadays to help in a more full-time capacity what with him having finished school and all. Family business! Him getting into it! Learning the ropes! It had always been the plan.
And this had been a perfectly acceptable working arrangement up until dad had had to leave to embark on some extended travelling-around-the-country fishing odyssey with a friend of his. Thom had not delved into the details.
Apparently it was important. Bucket list sort of stuff.
Point was this had left the shop short-handed with Thom on his Tod running the place. Thus Adagio, whom dad had somehow managed to find to fill the temporary vacancy and pick up the slack. The thought process being that, in dad’s absence, she would be able to assist Thom and everything would keep ticking over nicely. So ran the theory.
In practise she didn’t do a whole lot other than show up late and sit around doing things entirely unrelated to what she was meant to do and things kept ticking over nicely anyway because, really, the place wasn’t that complicated. So things were working out perfectly fine more despite her than because of her.
Which was nice?
Most would probably have felt a little annoyed at her appalling laziness but Thom didn’t really, not overmuch. For one he just wasn’t set up that way. Getting cranky about it probably wouldn’t have done much to help it and would only leave him feeling unhappy. For another the shop was, well, it had hardly ever been a nexus of activity and so it wasn’t as though he was caving under the pressure.
For a final one see aforementioned soft spot that he might maybe have had.
Adagio was, in Thom’s estimation, a very cute girl. Not that this influenced him unduly. He merely noted it and it just might have biased him a little in a few key areas, such as extending his patience with her antics. And besides, worse things had happened that having lazy company.
At the least having her around made the time pass faster.
Adagio re-appeared from the back having shucked off her jacket and dumped her bag and now bearing a cup of coffee with her name scribbled on the side.
“What’s this?” She asked, holding it out towards Thom. He squinted at the cup then clucked his tongue. It had slipped his mind.
“Oh, that. That would have been a fresh and nicely hot coffee for you had you arrived to work on time. Instead it is a not-so fresh and unpleasantly tepid coffee. I’d rather forgotten about it, sorry,” he said.
Adagio blinked.
“For me?” She asked.
“Yes.” Thom said.
Apparently this didn’t clear things up enough for Adagio’s liking.
“You got this? For me?” She asked, holding the cup even closer to Thom on the off-chance that having it shoved into his face would somehow jog his memory on the subject and make him reveal some vital detail he was leaving out.
It did not, and he did not.
“Yes,” he said. Adagio frowned at the cup a moment and then frowned harder at him.
“...why?”
“Because I thought it would be nice?”
He really hadn’t given it a whole lot of thought beyond that. It had just been a case of himself getting something from the place on the corner on a whim before opening for the day and feeling that it would have been rude not to have thought of his work colleague at the same time. It made sense to Thom.
It did not make sense to Adagio, but then she came at things from a different angle to Thom. Adagio tended to view things in terms of actual, tangible consequences. You did this so you could get someone to do that for you, for example. The idea that you might just do this with absolutely no expectation or even desire to receive that simply didn’t register.
Checking it, she found that he had managed to perfectly remember her rather exacting and specific coffee order - the one she had explained to him at some length a few weeks back, while going over why her taste in coffee was superior to his.
That he’d remembered it was surprising to say the least.
Further evidence for Adagio that he was plainly up to something here. He wanted something!
She briefly considered throwing the drink in his face to make a statement but for that she’d have to lift the top off again and that seemed an awful lot like too much effort right then and there so instead she just slammed the cup down onto the counter and made him jump. This worked.
“No. I’m not doing it,” she growled.
“Not doing what?”
Playing dumb, eh? Adagio leaned one hand on the counter so she could get a little closer to Thom’s level - him being sat on a stool behind the till like he almost always was - and then wagging a finger under his nose.
“I’m not working late. Or reorganising everything. Or whatever it was you want me to do. I’m not doing it,” she said. Thom spent a moment warily looking at her fingertip before blinking and looking up at Adagio’s face again, flinching at just how serious she looked.
“What?” He asked.
Still playing dumb, eh? Adagio moved in even closer to Thom, at this point getting into a region of space most people would have considered impolite to enter. Those were not concerns that bothered Adagio.
“I know your game. Trying to get on my good side so you can get me to do the stuff you don’t want to. If you were smarter you would have been more subtle about it! But even then I would have seen it coming so really this whole thing was pointless. Idiot!”
Even Thom had limits, and while he could normally take her high-and-mighty attitude and laziness and calls of idiot with good grace this one was confusing enough - and delivered with enough actual venom - for his patience to wear thin. He held up his hands before him, mostly to create some kind of barrier between himself and the girl encroaching on his space.
“Adagio, I can honestly say I have no idea what you’re talking about. If you don’t want me to get you a drink next time I’m getting one, cool, done. Alright?” He said. Adagio straightened.
“What? No, I didn’t say that. Buying me things isn’t bad. You can do that. In fact, you should do that. It’s polite. I’m just saying don’t expect it to work. I’m onto you.”
Thom gave up trying to understand and just raised his hands over his head in surrender.
“You got me. No idea what you’re talking about but you got me. No use trying to outsmart you, should have known better.”
Delighted at having won an argument she’d started and appeared to be sole participant of Adagio beamed, ruffling Thom’s hair.
“Yes you should,” she said, as one might speak to a particularly dim puppy before then saying: “I’m going on break.”
The brass required for her to do this was staggering. Thom was actually, physically stunned.
Watching her disappear once again into the back of the shop with a sway in her step that he couldn’t quite work out as deliberate or not he could only shake his head at his lacklustre and ineffectual handling of the situation. Anyone else would have stood up for themselves better, Thom reckoned.
“Maybe I am an idiot,” he said to himself under his breath.
And then he laughed, shrugged it off and got back to work. Such as it was.
The day in the shop went as just about all days in the shop went: quietly. A handful of customers came in, some knowing what they were looking for and leaving satisfied, others just wandering in and finding themselves utterly bewildered by the place. One or two of the regulars - for the shop had regulars - came in to collect books they had ordered especially. The rare kind. The kind it was difficult to source. Dad knew people.
None of this was taxing and all of this was handled quite capably by Thom on his own. Adagio was elsewhere, her break having stretched on somewhat longer than it was strictly speaking meant to have done. She did that a lot.
When it finally came time to close and lock up Thom found her asleep draped across the mouldering and overstuffed armchair that took up a big chunk of space in the quote-unquote ‘staff room’, having apparently dozed off messing about with her phone.
A typical day in the shop, as said.
“Come on Adagio,” Thom said, giving her shoulder a nudge.
“Huh? Wassat? You need my help?” She asked blearily, trying to sit up but not getting very far because she’d turned sideways on the chair prior to falling asleep. This took her a fer attempts to realise, at which point she yawned and turned so her feet were back on the floor.
“No, not this time, but you can come watch me lock the doors to make sure I do it right,” he said.
“We’re closed?”
“We are closed.”
“Huh. About time! Today dragged,” she said, stretching and yawning again.
Thom smiled, maybe a touch indulgently.
“It did indeed. Come on.”
“Help me up.”
He sighed but stuck an arm out towards her regardless and this she took, hauled to her feet a moment later.
“Not as useless as you look,” she said.
“Apparently not.”
Thom - who was already ready to go - then had to stand around a hot minute while Adagio put her jacket on and got her bag, something that most people would have thought wouldn’t actually take that long. In this instance, most people would have been mistaken. Still, eventually they were outside, Adagio standing nearby deep in thought while Thom wrangled the keys and got everything locked.
Adagio appeared deep in thought because she was, in fact, deep in thought.
The job in the shop she’d taken because she’d overheard it being available and she’d needed the money so she’d jumped on it as soon as possible, delighted at getting it (Thom’s father operating on the highly-professional ‘This fine young lady got here first she’s perfect!’ basis). It was boring and beneath her but it was also an excellent excuse to get out of the house and was somewhere to be during the day, somewhere away from the other two...
Once work was over the sorry state of her life came creeping back again. The reality of having been defeated, robbed of her power, hitting about as close to rock bottom as she could imagine - certainly worse than she’d been before!
At work she could avoid it, put it out of her mind. After work?
Her two options looked to be, as far as she could see right then at that moment, going back to the decidedly depressing and dilapidated building she’d managed to find for her and the others to live in, there to deal with a most-likely moping and useless Aria and an infuriatingly cheerful Sonata who, most likely, had broken something new in the time that Adagio had been at work. Like another window.
The other option being continuing to hang around with the human who inexplicably did nice things for her without her even really having to get him to do them. He just did them! For no clear reason that she could work out yet. A mystery to be sure and one that gnawed at her, but one the results of which she did rather enjoy.
Decisions, decisions...
“You alright there Adagio? You’re just sort of staring into space,” Thom said and she shook her head, coming back to the then-and-there.
“Yes. Thinking,” she said before hitting Thom with one of her more artfully-crafted smiles, the kind she’d spent years perfecting to be able to undermine even the most stalwart of defences. It seemed to hit home well enough, but then again Thom had no defences. “What are you doing right now?” She asked.
He looked down.
“Standing here, talking to you.”
Not what she’d had in mind. The smile went away quickly, replaced by a look conveying just how unimpressed she was with this answer. Very expressive face, Adagio’s. Could say a whole lot without a word passing her lips. Again, that’d likely be the years of practise.
“You know what I mean. I mean what were you planning on doing now?”
“Uh, going home?”
“Oh. So you wouldn’t want to go get a coffee then?” She asked, hands clasped and leaning forward, lashes fluttering. Thom wasn’t sure what this body language meant, and the thought of coffee had not at all crossed his mind. He was confused.
“I thought we weren’t friends?” He asked.
This was something Adagio had made sure was very clear between the two of them. Something she mentioned at least once a day, if not more. Good to see that it had sunk in.
“We’re not. But we don’t have to be to get coffee, do we? And besides, this’ll give you another chance to buy me that coffee from this morning and to do it right this time. Aren’t I nice?”
More eyelash fluttering. Thom thought about what Adagio had said. She wasn’t wrong. Strictly speaking, you really didn’t have to be friends to drink coffee with someone. Her position was ironclad.
The rest of it and in particular the part about her being nice was, well, that was just Adagio.
“Did you have somewhere in mind?” He asked.
The smile came back in force.
“I did. Come on.”
And then she grabbed his hand and dragged him off down the street. Given that the place to which she dragged him was just on the corner this seemed a bit excessive to Thom, but he wasn’t really in a position to do much about it as by the time he’d thought about it they’d arrived. Though she did not immediately let go of his hand, at least not until they were inside.
“I’ll find a place to sit. You know what I like,” Adagio said, giving him a pat on the cheek and sauntering off before Thom could reply. He rolled his eyes but moved up to the counter anyway. He’d kind of seen things going this way.
There followed coffee acquisition, which passed without incident. In short order he was heading over to where he could see Adagio sitting, cups in hand, hers held out to her. She took it and did not say thank you. Thom was not surprised by this and sat down on the chair opposite the larger demi-sofa thingy that Adagio had chosen to occupy.
Conversation did not flow because interactions outside of work were new for them both and neither really had any idea what they were doing. Thom eventually settled on casting his eye out the window at the people passing by and Adagio eventually settled on eyeing Thom.
He was odd. All humans were odd in a pathetic, low-key sort of a way. Simple and easy to manipulate, were you open to doing that sort of thing, which she was. They were an indolent, selfish, grasping bunch plodding around and knowing that she was now trapped among them forever- or for however long she had left... - was enough to make her skin crawl if she thought about it too much.
Thom was really odd though. The time she’d spent with him had not really given her any real insight into him, though admittedly she hadn’t exactly been trying to get any. Normally though what people wanted and how you could nudge them about using this information just leapt out at her. With him though not so much.
And then there was that coffee thing. She still couldn’t work that out. Why would he do that? Without her even hinting it? What did he want? Why was he hiding it so well that she couldn’t work it out?
“Something on my face?” Thom asked, making her jump. Adagio had been so lost in thought she’d utterly failed to notice that he’d stopped staring out the window and looked back to her.
On the spur of the moment - for no reason that she could put her finger on had anyone been in the mood to ask her - she decided to get up and move from her seat, settling herself across Thom’s lap instead. This caught him somewhat off-guard. Adagio told herself that this had been the point. Good to keep people off-guard.
“Okay then,” he said, and he likely would have questioned it further only for one Adagio’s arms to settle around his neck at which point he figured this was just something she did. Much as her wiggling about to get more comfortable was also something she did.
“I don’t understand you,” she said once settled, flicking back that impressive head of hair the better to get a good look at him. Thom couldn’t quite think of what to say to this for a second, but after some consideration managed to come up with:
“The feeling is mutual.”
She nodded and then leaned over to pick up her drink, the arm around his neck anchoring her enough so that she could manage this. Thom found himself acting as a glorified support strut. Worse things had happened.
“Anything in particular you don’t understand?” Thom asked when Adagio made no moves to actually say anything to explain this thing she’d said, being instead focused on her drink.
Adagio considered explaining the situation to him, but didn’t really see the point so just shook her head. He wouldn’t get it anyway. He was kind of dense that way, in her experience. Poor boy.
“We seem to work well, though,” she said after taking another sip.
Thom couldn’t really tell if she was being serious or not but then he never could, so just assumed this was the continuation of some very extended joke.
“Pretty well so far,” he said.
“I’d say you were very lucky I showed up when I did.”
Thom found himself grinning just a little now, just at the edges. He couldn’t help it.
“That so?”
Adagio nodded with full sincerity.
“Otherwise you’d be having to do everything by yourself, and I don’t think you’d do very well with that, do you? All on your own?”
Thinking back on a day of doing just about everything by himself while she hung around and did nothing he had to admit she had a compelling argument. At least from where she was standing.
Or sitting, as the case may be.
“Oh no, now I see what you mean. I’d be helpless, wouldn’t I?” He asked and Adagio nodded again soberly.
“I’m glad you understand. It’s good that someone appreciates me,” she said, setting her cup back down again and tapping him lightly on the forehead with a fingertip. Thom went cross-eyed for a second but shook it off easily enough.
“Kind of implies someone doesn’t,” he said. Adagio gritted her teeth. Hadn’t meant to given away anything. Dumb mistake.
“No. Well, yes. But that’s not important.”
“I’d hate for you to feel unappreciated, Adagio.”
Was he taking the piss? Impossible to tell. He seemed earnest but then people could seem all sorts of things they weren’t. Still, he had asked, which was something. What was his game though?
Would it hurt to talk about it? Maybe. Maybe not. Thom hadn’t shown the slightest hint of having the merest clue about who she was or what she’d done, which was refreshing, so where would the harm be in opening up a little? It might increase trust, which might lead to him finally letting slip a few clues as to his own motivations which could only benefit her down the line.
Looking at that way Adagio could see the sense in being forthright. In a constructive way.
“My...sisters…” she said, picking the words carefully. She then looked at Thom’s stupid, sincere face and: “I don’t think they understand that everything I did I did for us and that everything I’m still doing I did for us. They only ever complain about what goes wrong and never notice everything that goes right. And it’s always my fault! If things are fine they don’t care and when things don’t go the way they should then they turn on me and then expect me to fix it!”
Those words had not been picked carefully and had just rushed out without being vetted. Adagio’s eyes widened once she’d finished speaking and she went very red and very quiet and looked away. Times like this having vast amounts of hair to hide behind was very useful.
What the hell had that been? Where had that come from?
For his part, Thom didn’t really know what he was meant to say here but knew he had to say something so just spun something up on the spot and hoped it would land somewhere near where it needed to:
“Oh well, you know siblings. I mean, I don’t, but, uh. Well, people can often take for granted things that they’ve got used to. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you, Adagio. I’m sure they do appreciate you, they’re probably just a little lax in showing it. Speaking for myself I know I’d miss you if you weren’t around.”
That gave her a jolt. She said that sort of thing to him all the time, yes, but this was the first time she’d actually heard it back from him, and unprompted at that. She wasn’t immediately sure she’d heard him correctly.
“You would?” She asked.
“Of course! You brighten the place up no end. And - more importantly - I know that anything I give you to do you’ll do, no problem. I mean, it’s not hard stuff, but it’s a weight off my mind knowing that it’s you backing me up.”
In all honesty the few times he had actually got Adagio to do some of the things her job was nominally supposed to involve she had actually been actually quite good at them. Certainly, she hadn’t made a hash of anything which was all that Thom asked for, really, given that if she had he’d have been the one to fix it.
It was just that she didn’t do that sort of thing that often, that was all. Thom could probably press her harder, he knew, but, well, soft spot and all...
“It is?” Adagio blinked. Then the smile came back, more heartfelt this time because it came back without her actually noticing. “Yes, yes I suppose it must be.”
“Good help is hard to find,” Thom said.
“It really is.”
Neither of them said anything immediately after this, though it took them both longer than might have been expected to realise that this was one on account of them just staring into one another’s eyes. When this was finally realised both looked away sharply. There was light blushing for both parties and a certain level of awkward throat clearing.
Neither of them said anything about this, and Adagio quickly vacated Thom’s lap.
Again, conversation became difficult, and not long after this they both finished their drinks and mutually, silently decided that their little coffee outing had come to a natural conclusion.
“So...I’ll see you tomorrow?” Thom said once they were both outside, ready to go their separate ways.
“Unless you feel like giving me the day off?” Adagio asked sweetly, rocking on her heels and clasping her hands in front of her. Thom chuckled.
“I’d love nothing more but, you know, without you where would I be?”
She tapped a finger to her lips.
“True, true. I’d be out of a job if I left you on your own too long and I need the money. I might even come in early, now we’re talking about it. You look like the sort who needs the help.”
Chance be a fine thing. Thom decided not to call attention to how unlikely this sounded.
“I look forward to it,” he said instead. Adagio shot him a warning look, lest he get his hopes up.
“Hey, hey, I said I might - ‘might’!”
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So basically, Thom has a pet human-cat.
9808719
Thom has a girl who doesn't respect his personal space.
...so yes, I suppose.
It's really quite simple. The point of her being there wasn't the practical help, not unless an emergency struck. The point was keeping him company and his sanity intact. Boredom kills.
So everything is proceeding exactly as planned.
Haven't started reading the story yet, but I read something that immediately distracted me.
"Never have found a proper use for Adagio,"
Truly, CM? What of 'Beans on Toast and Hot Showers'? I found that story to be wonderful. WONDERFUL! I loved Dagi. Still do, really.
.....Anyway, I'll get to actually reading this one then.
I really like this chapter. It's a different pace from what I usually read. Thank you
God bless him, he has magnitudes more patience than I. Granted I work in an environment where such behavior gets you negative paperwork but still, I would not handle this with such serenity.
That's a really cute chapter.