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“Oh, the nerve of that—! Ough!”
“Something bothering you today?”
Eclair sighs, crumpling his head into the stack of papers cluttering his desk. He smells mustier than usual, and for the first time in months he doesn’t care about his makeup smearing.
“Latte,” he says blowing some dust off his desk. “You’ve caught me at a bad time.”
“Seems like it,” she says crossing her arms with a motherly pout. Against the door with her hat she nearly touches the top of it, and yet despite everything she couldn’t put on an intimidating aura to save her life.
“Did you need anything?” he asks quickly before she can even think to say something in response. “Quite unlike you to come checking in on me.”
“...No it’s not,” she replies even more flatly. “You and I are esteemed colleagues. Is it so wrong of one to come concerned for another?”
He shakes his head, sighing watching her frown.
“No, I suppose not,” he says quietly. “My dearest apologies if I snapped at you—I’ve been...so preoccupied as of late.”
And after what he said to me...well, hard to believe anyone takes me seriously.
Latte smiles again, pulling her spoon back up close to her.
“That’s the spirit!” she says heartily, almost with a laugh and a tap of her foot. “And you bet I’m concerned for you. You haven’t come out of your office in seven hours, and the staff lunch ended thirty minutes ago. You missed the beignets!”
Eclair gasps. Ah, that was today?
Crap...
He mumbles and groans, sighing and shaking his head as he wants to retort but slumps down into his desk.
“...Did...Did you bring me any...?”
With another full laugh she just taps her spoon on the ground, covering her mouth with a gloved hand. Eclair rolls his eyes, clicking his tongue yet not at all surprised—she either helped herself to his share, forgot to bring him some, or maybe even did a little bit of both. He watched her eat a lunch she prepared for Espresso and his boyfriend once because they took too long and she was hungry.
Sometimes he wondered how she was even a teacher...
Actually he does know. And he shouldn’t be so hard on her. Augh, this week was going to kill him if he wasn’t let out soon.
He lets her eyes wander around his desk and his office, normally so tidy now falling into a state of semi-disrepair. It was practically unheard of for him to let a single paper touch the floor, but the scent of old papyrus wafts up anyway, strewn in with notes of dried up ink and spoiled pigment.
“...I was busy,” he coughs out flatly, as if responding to a question. He knows she’ll ask one and once she gets one in she won’t stop. Sitting up slowly, he blows his bangs out of his face and takes a deep breath at them still being a day away from a wash.
“And I haven’t slept. It’s almost finals time for the kids and the Institute is on my behind dearly about making sure they know their history...”
“Whaaaa?!” she says eyes wide. “You need to sleep!”
She opens her mouth to say something, probably offer something until he shakes his head and points to a stack of tests in the corner.
“Oh goodness,” she says clutching her chest. “There’s no way you’re teaching that many kids without an assistant.”
“My last two were injured in that freak explosion, remember?”
“The one a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah, that one. Caused by that blonde...knight? Maybe, ah, I can’t remember what his name was but yes, that one.”
“Jeez,” Latte says looking down at the floor and back outside his office. Her own is on the other side of the building.
“They didn’t get you replacements?”
“There’s none available on such a short notice,” he replies with a frown, yawning. “I’m definitely not teaching a general class next semester...”
Yawning again he covers his mouth, wiping his face and scoffing when he realizes that he’s gotten ink on his sleeves,. Blue stains his cheeks and black stains his chin, more faded marks dripping down his neck that halfway resemble the color of the bags under his eyes.
“Haha, well,” Latte says with a sort-of shrugged grimace. “You did say you wanted to teach as many kids as possible about what you loved, right...?”
“I didn’t sign up to be a workhorse!” he cries, fake throwing something and slamming his head back on the desk. When he gets back up remembering that ink is a menace to get out of fine linen hw shoots up straight before his back cracks.
“AUGH—! Crap, my–!”
Now Latte can’t contain herself.
“Haha! You still wear that silly thing?” she says, watching him stumble back into his seat.
With a drawn-out groan he gets back up, stretching his legs and arms, sneering halfway at her who just tilts her hat back easily.
“...It’s good for the posture,” he says trying not to let his head force him back down again.
“Just get a better chair then!” she says with that beaming grin still etched across her face. “No need to be so old fashioned all the time—we all have modern office ones for a reason! Also, that metal corset you’re wearing is totally going to give you scoliosis...”
“It is not! And even if it was, I’d rather die than get one of those office chairs, they’re so horrifically—!”
His back cracks one more time and he hisses through his teeth. Plopping back down in seat as he bites his lip, Latte motions at him to ask if he needs a wheelchair but he just shakes his head.
“Ah, not right now,” he says, face going red. “But thank you, maybe later...”
Latte just nods and sighs again, tapping her spoon against the floor as she watches a few student pass on by. Eclair clutches his arm as the pain subsides from a burning sensation to a dull throbbing, from what actively hurt to what he had learned to live with.
“...I quite like my current chair anyway,” he says as soon as the students are out of earshot. “Just because it’s not made of leather doesn’t mean it’s not comfortable.”
“Leather can be modeled into shapes better for your back though,” she replies. “Velvet and wool stuffing isn’t going to cut it forever.”
“Do you know how hot and sticky leather is when it’s summer time around here? Peeling myself off that after a busy day of work would kill me!”
Latte just giggles again. Her big hat pushes up against the frame of his door, framing perfectly his own partially slumped on his head.
It’s in need of a bit of refinement, because the feathers and seams seems to be fraying. But everything he owned was like that to some degree, despite his own foppish tendencies that lead many to assume otherwise.
“It’s only like that in here because you’re holing up next to the hottest commodity at the Institute,” she says pushing the door just a little wider. Cool air rushes in without a second thought. “You can always change that.”
“I’d rather not,” he replies sitting back down and looking over the papers scattered around his desk. He takes a pen quickly and starts getting back to grading. “Believe me, I find Espresso’s company rather worth the unfortunate side effects unlike so many others here.”
“Is that so...?” she says solemnly, looking down towards the floor. Her hat nearly falls off as she tries to ponder something he couldn’t possibly fathom, something he waves off to himself until he pulls her arms in and forgets about her spoon.
It crashes to the ground with a thump, and they both jump.
Papers go flying everywhere and books tumble off their shelves, something which she tries to rectify immediately by casting a small glyph. Eclair nearly jumps again to yell at her to stop until it’s all over, everything’s okay, and everything’s put back into place.
...He forgot latte magic wasn’t as volatile as its constituents.
Clicking his tongue he scoffs at her as she wordlessly grimaces, laughing nervously as she pushes a book back in. There’s a snag in his throat to chastise her, but it’s hard to be mad when she can barely remember what day of the week it is sometimes.
So he just readjusts his knee brace quietly and restacks the graded papers on his desk into neat little piles, all as she takes the situation as an initiative to come over to his desk.
As if she needed an invitation into anyone’s business.
“...I’m surprised you care for him,” she says, her eyes wandering over old books crowding even older oak shelves. “I didn’t even know you two knew each other.”
“I can say the same about you,” he quips back, pulling out a fresh quill.
“Haha, well, I’m his cousin,,” she says tapping on a lamp at his desk. “So it’s a given I would know him as compared to you.”
“Not exactly...” he says pushing her hand off. “Don’t touch that.”
“Can I touch this?” She puts her hand on a couple of charms hanging off his desk.
“No,” he says.
“Haha, am I gonna be cursed?” she says batting their little metal bodies back and forth. They glimmer dimly in the uneven lighting of his office.
“No, they were just given to me by someone precious to me so—!”
He lobs a glowing book at her arm before she grabs it and tries to force it down against the floor.
“Hey!”
“Haha, what? I could probably neutralize this with a magic circle, but I can just—!”
“My precious book!”
Latte giggles again, just as Eclair shoots up, and she pumps it in the air, showing its unharmed. The dull black spine and cover seem want to congeal in her hand, and he grabs it out of hers with a motion faster than she thought possible for someone of his physique.
“Aw,” she says with a pout.
“You could have damaged it,” he says returning to his desk.
“You were the one using a magic book against me in the first place...you know that’s Institute policy for teachers, right?”
“That only applies for combat magic, of which mine is not classified as such,” he says blowing the cover off. A dark coffee bean shimmers despairingly on the cover, having been fading since the moment it was put into print over thirty years ago.
“...Hmph,” she says with a click of her tongue and a thump of her giant spoon.
Eclair forgot that was there until that moment, and now he can’t pull his eyes away from it.
There’s so many ways she could fall with that and crash something in his office...
An eyebrow twitch later and she clicks his lamp off.
“Anyways, you need to get out of here bookworm,” she says with that signature frown most of the faculty dreaded so much. “C’mon. My cousin is one thing, but no way am I gonna let someone else rot in their office!”
“It’s finals week!” he cries, as she grabs her spoon about to draw a magic circle.
“Don’t worry! This is only going to help file your papers for y—!”
...A knock at the door.
The two of them freeze.
They weren’t even aware it closed.
“...Hello?” a light voice calls out. Almost trembling, as if supposed to resemble sophisticated piety but unable to keep the facade up.
Silence.
Latte nervously clutches her spoon, looking back to Eclair with wide eyes.
He perks up instead.
“...Espresso?” he shouts. “Is that you?!”
“Who else would it be. Open the door Eclair.”
“Ah, yes!” he says quietly to himself, shaking his head and pushing aside Latte for the door. He almost trips on a couple of stray tomes but he gets himself upright by the time he flings the door wide open.
“Hello Espresso,” he says without thinking, “I’m so glad you’re here, would you mind dealing with Latte because I am really busy right now and cannot afford to waste a single second more with—oh.“
Eclair stares.
“Um, Espresso...what happened to you?”
Espresso clicks his tongue, rolling his eyes. Slicking back his hair as best he can quickly, he has to turn his head so that he can’t fully gawk. Black eyeliners runs down his cheeks in faded, patchy lines, complemented by a foundation wearing thin in every which way, exposing those eternal suitcases hanging beneath his eyes almost nearly as dark as his clothes.
He opens the door just a bit wider to get a better peek.
Espresso kicks his door and Eclair yelps. Latte stands to attention as soon as the scent of charred grounds fills the air.
“You look terrible,”
With a dusting of his cape he shakes his head and glares at the both of them,
“You look terrible.”
“Thank you Eclair,” he says with a sneer.
“How long have you been awake?”
“...Five days.”
“Five days?!” Latte yells.