Ugh.
It's everything I can do not to spit it back out. It tastes like hours of stomach aches, things exiting my throat in the wrong direction, and blinding headaches.
Also, a bit of raspberry.
"Colin!" Dav yelps. "You stupid man, what are you—"
I swallow.
Dav frets and fetches a glass of water for me. Hadi throws away the packaging. I lean against the fridge, wrap my arms around my stomach, squeeze my eyes shut, and wait. And wait. And wait. After about five minutes, Dav puts his hand on my shoulder, thumb sweeping over my jugular sweetly.
"Colin?"
"I... I'm fine," I admit slowly. I relax from my anticipatory clench. "I've actually never felt better. Never mind the chocolate, I haven't had a middle-of-the-night anxiety attack in..." I check the tracking app Dr. Chen recommended. "Uh," is the only noise I can make when I figure out the day.
"Uh, what?" Hadi prompts.
"Uh, since Dav started roasting."
"No," Dav says, panic crawling across his face. "That can't be happening."
"Just because a dragon is handling the beans does not make my coffee magic," Hadi says. "What... the fuck... is going on?"
"This can't happen," Dav says desperately.
"But it is," I say gently. "Did you know?"
"Of course not!" Dav protests, wringing his hands. "No one has ever... how could I possibly...?"
"Tell me the truth," Hadi says. "Because I'm starting to think Pedra's not full of shit."
"No." Dav's fingers go to his hair, clenching. He looks like a trapped wildcat, eyes darting as he turns in panicked circles, with nothing to lash out at and nowhere to run.
But Hadi is relentless. "My insomnia is gone. I haven't had heartburn once since you started, and I used to go through a pack of Pepcid a week. Colin had chocolate and didn't get sick. Twice."
Dav looks at me, helpless and pleading.
"I think we should 'fess up. If you want to. It's your secret."
"Explain!" Hadi roars.
"It was meant as a joke, you see," Dav says, wild. "I was only going to do one batch."
"Yeah, but then it was good," I cut in.
"What have you been doing to my beans?"
Dav checks both the doors are closed before picking up the cauldron of beans he had been preparing before Pedra's shouting pulled him to the front. Hadi opens the chute cap on the manual roaster, but Dav shakes his head, and backs into the corner, as far away from us as he can get.
"What's he doing—" Hadi says, but I interrupt her with a murmured: "Just watch."
My hands are shaky. My heart is kicking hard. I can't seem to get a deep breath. One stupid joke, and suddenly Dav—my Dav, my dragon—is cowering in a corner. What have I done?
Dav inhales, purses his lips, and blows. Hadi gasps as Dav swirls the cauldron, making sure each bean is well-coated with flame. After a few minutes, he stops, and holds it out for Hadi to see. The room smells deliciously of fresh roast and warm smoke. Hadi takes a cautious step forward, eyes massive, and peers into the cauldron. One bean cracks loudly in the tense quiet, and she jumps back with a yelp.
"That's the only difference," I whisper. "And you can't tell anyone."
"Why not?" Hadi asks, eyes darting between the two of us. I've accidentally trapped her in the middle, forcing her to turn her head fully to speak to one of us, unable to keep us both in her sights. She looks uncomfortable, like she's remembering, maybe, that Dav isn't homo sapien. Dav moves slowly, lets Hadi back away as he circles around her to put the hot cauldron on the metal worktable.
"Because it's, uh, kinda against some big dragon taboo," I answer.
"So you roasted beans for a joke, but it was good, and now you've been doing them all this way?" Hadi asks, starting to put the pieces together. "Why?"
Dav draws himself up like a soldier preparing for reprimand. "Because I like feeling useful. No, because I wanted to," Dav corrects, rueful and cowed. "I truly did not anticipate there would be any side effects. I'll stop immediately."
I shoot him a sharp glance, but he isn't looking at me.
Because he wanted to?
More like, because I asked.
Shit.
"Wait, hold up, I never said I was mad about it," Hadi says. She sucks in a deep breath, shakes out her shoulders, rolls her head back and forth. "I'm confused."
"I'm happy to sit down and explain it more thoroughly," Dav says, which surprises me. "But for now, you must send that young lady away empty handed."
He looks pained as he says it, and I inch around Hadi to snag his pinkie finger with mine. The touch of skin-on-skin has an immediate effect on him. He lets out a deep breath and leans into me. I'm happy to be there to hold him up.
Anytime, I think, and then swallow hard when that thought is followed by a fervent, All the time. For the rest of time.
Dammit. I am in much deeper than I thought. But the honest truth of it is: I wasn't lying when I said that whatever shit Dav is in, I would rather help him wade through it, than to leave him to drown alone. Dav squeezes my finger, pulling my whole arm against his, and it's a staggeringly intimate thing for Dav to do in public.
"You can stop looking like I'm about to shoot you." Hadi's back to being the kind, no-bullshit-allowed Hadi again. "I'm not greedy enough to demand that you keep roasting our beans when it's clearly gonna get you in shit."
Next to me, Dav shudders in a breath, and lets it go slowly.
"You wouldn't be disappointed?" he asks slowly. "Your business has never been better."
Hadi shrugs. "Roasts change. We tell everyone we were experimenting with a technique that was ultimately unsustainable, and we move on."
"Or maybe we find a way to replicate the dragonsfire in the machine," I suggest.
"It will melt it," Dav says. "Again."
"We can hash this out later." Hadi gestures at the cauldron. "Finish that one, we'll use it for taste testing. Then I'm kicking you out for the day. Starting tomorrow, you use the machine. Got it?"
Dav nods, relief washing off him in waves so palpable that I can practically feel them.
"Thank you," Dav says.
"For what? You're not my employee."
"For not being angry," Dav says softly.
Hadi scoffs. "Listen, I don't know how dragons see it, but right now, you're the one doing me a favor. And while you didn't do it the way I expected, and the results are not what I was banking on, you've done my business good and I can't be pissed about that. Thank you for even being here."
"It's the least I could do, considering," Dav says, some of his teasing humor coming back.
"Yeah, yeah," Hadi says, and heads out to the front.
Before the door has swung closed, Dav and I are already reaching, mouths magnetized. When I let him up for air, Dav ducks down and kisses my shirt over the five round scars on my arm.
"That went better than I thought it might," I say. Dav buries his face in my neck and wraps his arms around me so tight my ribs creak. "Okay, ow a little. Ease up. What's eating you?"
"I don't know," Dav confesses, voice muffled and breath hot. "I thought I would have to leave, or you would hate me or—"
"Why would I hate you?" I cup his face, meet his sunflower eyes. He looks away instead of answering, and I let him get away with it for now. "C'mon—let's get a cup of the good stuff before it's gone. It's limited edition now."
Dav lets me take him by the hand and lead him out into the café. We slide over to the espresso machine just as Hadi shouts: "You what?"
Min-soo flinches. "I told her the name of our bean supplier and gave her a take-away cup of the whole roasted beans. Isn't that what you asked me to do?"
"No, I—" Hadi stops, and then scrubs at her face. "Yeah, okay, I could have phrased that better. Shit."
That's when I register it: Pedra's gone.
Dav presses himself back against the wall, hands over his mouth, every part of him trembling. "They'll never forgive me," Dav whimpers, as he blinks hard, over and over. "I've done it again."
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