boundries that should not be crossed
Barty hates hot days with a passion. Rain isn’t much better, but at least he has an excuse to wear long sleeves. Now he just looks out of place among the t-shirts and shorts of the people on the street around him, some doubling back to stare at him.
So what if he wants to wear long sleeves in 20 degrees heat. Sue him. (And it’s not like he wouldn’t be getting worse looks if he was in a t-shirt) After what feels like a lifetime in the fucking sunshine, but in reality can’t be more than 15 minutes Barty gets to the cafe.
Marlene’s leaning against the entrance, blonde mullet now with red streaks that it certainly didn’t have two days ago. She looks up when his shadow blocks out the light previously in her face, face spitting into a grin.
‘Tem! Good to see you’, She stands, waits for him to nod before wrapping her arms around him. He buries his head in her shoulder, breathes in her perfume. He never really let himself miss her when their familys cut ties, the only friend he had gone as suddenly as she had appeared twelve years prior.
‘We saw each other yesterday ‘Lenes’ he mutters, muffled against her bright red t-shirt. Maybe he lets her hold him a little longer than necessary. Since they’ve…’reconected’ she’s made a point of never letting go first. He appreciates it more than ever now, the thoughts looming darkly in the corners of his mind.
‘You ready?’ She asks when he finally pulls away, eyebrows furrowing when she takes in the dark circles under his eyes, the unnatural paleness of his skin. He knows he’s a mess, but since he’s been avoiding mirrors lately, he’s blissfully unknowing as to just how messed up he looks.
How Lene got anyone to even consider hiring him, he'll never know.
He’s not ready, not in the slightest, but if he doesn't go now, he’ll run away, the instinct so deeply buried in him that it seems to be branded on his very bones. He nods, let’s the only trusted person he has left leed him into his first act of ‘adulthood’, also known as, getting a job.
The cafe isn’t big by any means, but cozy. Comforting. Part of Barty’s surprised he still remembers what that feels like. Another knows he’ll never forget, as surely as he’ll never forget the once protective warmth of his mother's arms, that way to easily became a cage.
As much as she’d loved him, she still let his father kick him out. At least he got enough of a warning to be able to grab some of his shit, some cash.
He’d still spent two days under a bridge before Lene found him, covered in mud, blood and soaked to the bone. He’s honestly impressed that she even recognized him. He’s not sure he would have recognized himself.
Lene leads him to a lean woman standing at the till, long hair in cornrows decorated with silver elements. Her white shirt contrasts heavily with her dark skin, silver jewelry complimenting her hair around her neck and ears.
Her stony face glows with warmth the moment Marlene walks over to her, greeting her with a peck on the cheek. Barty’s known Marlene likes girls since they were fourteen, young, as carefree as one can be at the age, considering everything. At least, so the year had startet. The ending is one he’d prefer not to think about.
He’s glad they’re happy.
Dorcas looks over her girlfriend’s shoulder, taking him in. Her eyes are a coffe brown, sharp and striking, like she’s got fucking x-ray vision. He squirms uncomfortably under her gaze, relieved when she looks back at Marlene, the two of them having a silent conversation with their eyes, that Barty doesn't even try to decipher. Instead he counts the ties on the ceiling, plays with the rings on his fingers, anything to distract him from the anxiety steadily kreeping up on him, waiting, watching for the perfect moment to emerge.
‘So you’re Bartem.. Barty, right? Dorcas asks, handing him an apron in a periwinkle blue, matching the one she’s currently wearing. Her’s has a nametag at the top, swirling ink-black letters spelling Dorcas in boldt cursive, the backdrop stripes in pink-orange-white that Barty’s learned to recognise as the lesbian pride flag.
Marlene owns a matching bracelet that she always wears on her right wrist, little D & M charms in gold attached in the middle that always glint in the sunlight when it hits them just right.
It looks nice with her favorite midnight blue nail polish.
He still kinda regrets saying no when she asked if he wanted some too.
Then he imagined what his father would say and had to excuse himself to the loo before promptly vomiting his dinner. He’d splashed his face with water, plastered on a smile and whent back out to the livingroom, but he doesn’t doubt she saw right through him.
She might be the only person that still can, and part of him despises how easily she can lay him bare. A big part of him wants to sob with relief that despite their years appart, she still knows him, or at least a bit of him.
He shakes himself out of his thoughts, nods, tries to smile at Dorcas. He’s pretty sure it looked more like a grimace, but she laughed good-naturedly and started ‘showing him the ropes’. Lene hovers nervously for the first half-hour or so before departing for her uni class with a promise to stop by at the end of Barty’s shift.
He watches the back of her red-blonde hair she she leaves, giving him one last encouraging thumbs up before hopping on the bus outside. He grips the countertop to stop his hands from shaking, only succeeding in making the many scars on his knuckles more visible.
‘You good T?’ Dorcas says from behind him where she’s cleaning a white ceramic mug, lilac rag soaking up the last of the water. He turns around and watches her as she stands across from him, leaning against the cabinets stocked with different sorts of coffee beans and syrups. How the hell anyone remembers all this hit is beyond him. It’s really just a matter of time before he messes up, Dorcas kicks him out and Lene decides he’s more trouble than he’s worth.
Until them, he intends to soak up as much of her presence as he can.
‘As good as I can be’ he shrugs, hopes he comes across as nonchalant. If the crease in Dorcas’s eyebrows is anything to go by, it didn’t quite work. She squints at him, as if trying to figure him out before she shrugs, putting away the mug and starts handling the first few customers of today.
Barty gets into the routine surprisingly quickly. Pour water into the machines, rince the mugs. Steam the milk, pour the sauce on top. Fake smile at customers is something he masters instantly, years of practice looking happy at his father’s stupid political gatherings under his belt makes this a piece of cake.
He only has about an hour left of his shift when someone enters the cafe, grabbing their own perinkle blue apron while talking to Dorcas, followed by a dark haired young man, and a blonde woman with incredibly long hair. The person with the apron is addressed as ‘Ev’ by Dorcas, probably related to the long haired young woman if the white-blonde shade of their hair is anything to go by. If Barty looks closer, he can also see that they have the same nose, same lips with a fuller upper lip that curves up a touch on the right, identical deep-dark blue eyes that seem to hold the secrets of the universe themselves.
Then Bart remembers mass, sitting between his parents at church and listening to the priest, listening to his father describe how easily one can get sentenced to hell. He decides it’s better to keep his attention on the latte he’s currently making.
‘Ev’ takes Dorcas’s place serving customers for a while, giving Dorcas a chance to show Barty where other shit is, extra boxes of ingredience, first aid kit, extra aprons and so on. He learns that the guy with the black hair is Regulus, though ‘Ev’, or Evan as he’s apparently called, along with Dorcas insist on using very nickname they can think of under the sun. Pandora, Evan’s sister watches them fondly, occasionally adding her own quips and remarks.
They all wave when Marlene enters, bookbag slung over her shoulder. Her black trousers are a bit creased, probably from running from class to class across campus, but other than that she seems fine. She waves back eagerly, before skipping over to Barty (and with his permission) pulls him into a hug. He’s probably sweaty from working all day in long sleeves, even with the air conditioning, but she doesn’t really seem to mind.
‘Doing okay Tem?’ She asks, green eyes swimming with concern. Before he so much as opens his mouth to reply, someone (Regulus? Evan?) pipes up.
‘You’re Barty? Like Bartemius Crouch Barty? Like really conservative parents who were weird about Marlene being gay and made the McKinnons move away Barty?’ Bart whips his head around so fast he gets whiplashed, only to find himself staring right at Evan. Marlene glares so hard at him, that Barty’s worried she’ll burn a hole right though his head.
Then the words sink in.
An ice cold feeling spreads from his chest, making him shiver despite the late spring heat. Fear crushes him, then anger. How fucking dare Lene decide she has any right to tell people about him. His family, his business. People he didn’t even know before today, who he’d never heard of before leaving home.
Lene reaches for him, worry, worry for him in the down turned corners of her mouth, the knit in her brows. He wrenches himself out of her grip when she wraps her arm around his, flinches away from the contact.
She fucking knows not to touch him without permission
He moves away from her so fast, he crashes into a wall behind him, back hitting it with a thump. Her eyes widen, realisation at her mistake dawning on her, but by then he’s already thrown his apron over his head, stumbling towards the door before turning to face a pale looking Evan, despite the bronze-glowing tan on his freckled skin.
‘Don’t you fucking call me Bartemius’ he manages to grit out, chest heaving. He must look like a fucking physcopath, hair mussled, rumpled cloathes, eyes wild. He doesn’t give Evan time to reply, running out of the cafe, ignoring the voices calling after him.
He does what he does best. He runs.
He loses track of time after a while, still not quite familiar with the little streets of the town after spending his entire life in the big city, aside from the occasionall trip to Italy every few years. Even then, most of the time was spent in their house there, as opposed to visiting museums and beaches or whatever it is normal people do on vacation.
Hen ends up at a playground, empty, the children long since gone home with their perfect families, in their neat little perfect houses. Barty jogs over to the swing set, two silver-red swings swinging lazily back for forth in the slight wind.
He sits down on one, lets himself process the shit-show of a day. How the hell is he supposed to support himself when he can’t even handle working a single shift at a bloody coffee shop?
It’s fucking hopeless, is what it is.
The money he took will run out at some point and then he’ll be alone. Anger gives way to pure, raw fear at the thought of living alone on the street, or even worse, having to go back. To get down on his knees in front of his father willingly, begging to come back. No way.
No fucking way.
At first he doesn’t even notice he's not alone, until the win on his right rattles, someone coming to settle on it beside him. Barty looks up, only to find himself staring at his reflection in the stranger’s round glasses.
‘Hey’