Characters: Ji Shi, Hunter Collins Setting: Corner Coffee Shop, late night Content: Safe for Work Summary: Past midnight, Hunter is getting coffee.
This particuluar coffee shop was a fair distance from the apartment building, but unlike the machine in the apartment lobby, this place had real milk, and music and food. True, it was artsy, fiddly and expensive, but it was also filling, and the toasted cheese and pastrami ciabatta offered a diversion away from his normal $1 cheeseburgers.
He had enough change for the tallest coffee they had as well as a panini. And, considering he had spent all day in the subterranean, damp, dark world of the basement, covered in grime and dust and unmentionable things, flat on his belly, and occasionally flat on his back for variety, once more taking apart the internal workings of the furnace.
He enjoyed it, more than he should, and perhaps, Hunter reasoned, he felt guilty about it. He should have damp-proofed the roof, or sorted out that leaking tap in the empty apartment, but the work didn't appeal to him. Not when the furnace called to him.
He'd taken it apart, laid all the bits out, and put them back together again. Aside from the handful of pieces that now banged and clattered about in his pocket, their grease staining the inside of his jeans the same colour as the outside. He had to dig through them in order to get the change for his meal, but the barista seemed used to the dirty coins and scrunched up dollar bills, although the college-aged girl did look a bit startled when he gave her a rusty cog by accident.
Once upon a time, of course, he would never had ventured into such a place. The corporate hell-hole, the bain of society. The chain coffee shop of doom. But in those years between then and now, things had changed. Corporate hell had changed it's tune and started recognising it's moral responsibilities. That, he could get behind. And besides, you could hardly expect a business to change if you weren't a customer and providing it with incentives.
Besides, there wasn't much else open, and here at least he wouldn't be bothered by those who believed his scruffy appearance meant his was a criminal, or an addict, homeless or all three. For the time being, away from the apartment and it's never ending list of repairs, he could have a moment to think.