ii.
Y/N doesn't really drink coffee like she used to.
When she was still in school, she would toss it back like it was water; she was almost a hundred percent sure at one point that 92% of her blood was cold brew. However as time progressed and it was less of a thing that keeps her awake and more of something she felt as if she would just keel over without, she decided that it was probably time to start guzzling water. Plus she was finally going into the healthcare field where she would be pushing non-caffeinated drinking like it might just cure all illness and render them immortal, and, well – practice what you preach.
Yet here she was in the family-owned Coffee Parlor where the sheer essence of mocha permeated all of her senses. The drink in front of her was one she had been privy to but the taste of it makes a shiver rattle down her spine, her tongue already recoiled at the memories of it burning her taste buds: a cafe americano with two shots of espresso. It would keep her energized enough to hammer through research papers, studying for three different classes, and prepping for her clinical. The taste of it was bitter, but it was strong, so she treated it like a shot and would chase it with a chocolate croissant.
She doesn't have much time to contemplate how wired she'll be for the rest of the night after drinking this at 7PM, because of the man sitting in front of her. Harry himself had chosen a vanilla latte, simple and sweet, and even him ordering it had made her smile a bit to herself. Though his stoic face told her that he was feeling anything but simple and sweet right now; his whole demeanor had shifted after what she told him in the stairwell about what she experienced – about the man on Apple Avenue who had sought her out for information about Gibson, later found dead.
Her heart was still racing, fear still tinged her being like ash smudged on paper and Harry seems so. . so uncharacteristically serious worries her even more. Was what Niall had been saying true? Were he and Gibson tied up in something mafia-related? Had she unknowingly gotten involved in something much bigger than herself?
"I won't bother with semantics, Babe," Harry had begun and it made her jump, not having expected him to begin speaking – they'd been sitting quietly for only a moment, but she would have expected a few minutes for him to gather his thoughts, "I'm concerned about the other man that you saw with the guy found in the canal today...the whole situation feels very skeevy to me, and it sounds like something – sounds like something they should not be involving you in at all." Y/N nods, encouraging him to continue, and after a small, slurped sip from his mug he continued, "Are you able to tell me anything about the other guy? Like what he might look like?"
Her brows furrow, "I – what will that help? Do you think you might know him?"
"Maybe," he tells her, "If I do, then I can tell him to bugger off and leave you alone. You don't need any more visits."
The reasoning is solid enough for her as she searches through the dredges of her brain, passed the muck of bed baths, ambulating, and passing medicines to sitting outside alone. Feeling goosebumps raised on the back of her neck, not akin to the ones that follow a chilled breeze, but that comes from eyes boring into you. The kind one gets when someone is not far off, staring hard – unreservedly – making you shift uncomfortably from left to right before letting her eyes flicker up. She would keep her head tipped down as to not draw attention but she would try to get a good look at them.
The pinch of her brows is pertinent as she tries to make him out from memory, "Um, he was kind of scrawny – like I might be able to take him in a fight kinda scrawny," he smiles at her, and it soothes her some, "His hair is like a muddy kind of brown? Not like yours – yours is more chestnutty but his was like the kind of mud you scoop up from the bottom of a river, with a little grey? But it's not like he was greying, just like highlights. I promise I'm not a maniac about hair, I just remember staring at it for a minute because it was like floofy. It caught me off guard compared to his friend."
