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“Oh my, does it always take quite this long for the drinks to arrive?”
“Hong Lu, we’ve only been waiting for like, maybe a couple of minutes now?”
Hong Lu gasps, her eyes widening in shock and awe as she straightens up, her mouth agape. “Is that so? It seems that we’ve been here for hours on end…” she muses, placing a hand on her chin before closing her eyes. Heathcliff blinks and wonders for a moment if she should reach out and shake her or say something, but a bright smile breaks out on Hong Lu’s face, and she laughs while clasping her hands together. “Oh, how fun! I’ve never had to wait like this before for anything—it’s quite the situational bonding experience, no?”
Heathcliff chuckles a bit, checking the time on her phone before shaking her head, somewhat in disbelief and somewhat in admiration for the way her girlfriend manages to find the…goodness? In any situation? If you can even call something like this goodness , but hey, if it makes her happy, then who is she to judge? “Y’know, this isn’t the type of crud that I’d usually take my mates out for bonding reasons…” she says, unconsciously reaching down to swirl a nonexistent straw in the drink that she doesn’t have yet. “But, spending time with you is always class, so I’d be chuffed either way.”
Hong Lu just keeps staring at her with that blissful smile, nodding along like she understands. It’s super cute, but it’s sometimes inconvenient to sense if she’s being serious or not. “I like you,” Heathcliff clarifies.
“Oh, I know! I like you too! Very much so,” Hong Lu answers back, quickly reaching across the table to take Heathcliff’s hands in her own. “Very, very much…” she repeats herself, squeezing Heathcliff’s hands between her fingers lightly, meeting Heathcliff’s eyes through the space where her bangs fell out of place.
“Ah—” Heathcliff finds herself stammering, certain that her face is turning an embarrassing shade of red over this, admittedly very lowkey, act of affection, but her face is literally saved by the familiar chime of a bell coming from the counter.
“Got an order up here for a number 777, ‘Healthclown’,” the shop’s employee says as if this is the most normal thing he could have possibly said in the entire world. When no one else stands up to take this, Heathcliff stares down at her ticket and reluctantly stands up, gathering the whole room’s attention as the number 777 stares back at her menacingly.
“Looks like today’s not my lucky day…” she grumbles, her previous mood half-heartedly forgotten in favor of mild annoyance at the world for forsaking her. “Give me a second—I’ll be back after clearing this one up, babe,” she says, before hastily walking over to the counter with some choice words to give the employee.
Hong Lu sighs a bit, making an unreadable expression ( perhaps even to herself ) as she gazes at Heathcliff engaging in heated debate on the logistics of one could possibly get Healthclown from Heathcliff, and if the cashier at that point was just mocking her or something. She’s just so…cool! she thinks, resting her face in her hands and continuing to make that dreamy carefree expression. To watch her strut up so confidently and say whatever’s on her mind—well, it’s not like Hong Lu thinks very much before she speaks either, but there’s a special sort of effortlessness in the way Heathcliff does it. It’s hard to explain, but it’s so cool .
And Hong Lu has always felt this way about Heathcliff, from the moment she met her. Sure, it’s not like they were best buddies right off the bat or anything—two people who tend to say whatever is on their minds are more likely than not to have a…contentious first meeting. But, as Hong Lu is inclined to know, almost anything can be solved with a second meeting, especially if said second meeting involves cake. A third meeting with cake, a fourth meeting with cake, a fifth meeting with something a little more than cake but perhaps equally as sweet, and Hong Lu and Heathcliff both find that they enjoy the other’s company a lot more than they initially thought.
She’s not sure she remembers how exactly they first started dating. As far as she’s concerned, it’s always been this way—even when they spoke ( and fought ) for the first time, there’s always been this sort of spark between the two of them. Hong Lu would probably argue that that’s where the whole thing began, actually, because what’s better than clearing up a misunderstanding by talking, and talking, and kissing, and then talking some more? She can’t think of anything she’d want more.
Even just the thought of spending time together makes her giddy, and luckily enough, this time around, it’s not just a pipe dream—the taste of tea is always better when you’re with someone you love.
Speaking of tea, Heathcliff makes her way back to their seats with a grimace but drinks in hand. “Agh, it’s been one hell of a day,” she grumbles, setting the two of them down on the table and pulling up a chair. “And that whole thing went just about bloody nowhere. But,” she grins, shaking her cup a bit. “At least I get to spend the rest of the day with you to take my mind off of it.” She leans back and takes a sip, reveling in the flavor because hell yeah it’s good, and maybe it’s even good enough to make her forget about anything annoying that just happened.
“Hear, hear!” Hong Lu giggles, poking the straw into her cup and sucking up a copious amount of jellies through it. “Then, are you trying something different? No fruit this time around?” she says, looking at the whipped cream filled up that rests in her girlfriend’s hands.
Heathcliff blinks at her. “…no fruit?” she says under her breath, examining her cup closely, stirring her straw around in it, before looking again at the sticker attached to the side of it. “Oh, there’s no way…” she grits her teeth, glaring at the employee she was speaking to earlier with as much hate as she can hold in her stormy eyes and getting completely ignored in response. “Piss off…what in hell I ever do to deserve something so nasty like this…
“Hm? Is something wrong?” Hong Lu asks, tilting her head to the side in confusion.
“Every time I order this drink, this dodgy place can never get it right—one time they put apple slices in here instead of strawberries, which is fine I guess, but how the hell am I supposed to eat those?” she grumbles, slamming her cup on the table. “Last time it was blueberries, which is closer, but still not what I asked for, proper,” she says, crossing her arms in frustration. “And now, even though I’ve gone the extra mile to pay extra to ask for extra strawberries, the damned bloke just decided to up and give me nothing !” she hisses through her teeth, trying her best to keep her voice low and even, before leaning forward and dropping to a whisper. “Y’know, it’s gotta be targeted. They’re doing this to me specifically, huh?”
“Oh…” Hong Lu says, furrowing her eyebrows and puffing out her cheeks. “That’s just awful—and it even says what you wanted on the side of the cup! The gall…” she whispers, before she leans forward a bit, her eyes sparkling as the idea pops into her head. “Do you want me to go up and say something to them? I can be very convincing!”
Heathcliff closes her eyes for a second, shaking her head. “Nah, it’s good—it’s just a couple of stupid strawberries. I’ll manage, so no need to go and do all that,” she says, sighing because of course she was looking forward to stupid strawberries, but what’s done is done and there’s no use dwelling on the past “Besides, I already went up there and started some dumb shit like five minutes ago—I don’t need to go around doing it for a second time.”
And of course, it’s not like this is the first time this has happened to her. You’d think she’d just stop ordering this drink the third, fourth, or fifth time they messed it up, but she somehow holds out faith time and time again. Because, at least there’s some kind of fruit in there, right, and that’s really all she’s asking for? The oranges, peaches, hell, even one time it was just fruit syrup —she wouldn’t make so much of a fuss, because truth be told it was all just fine to her. Like, you can’t go wrong with ice cream and fruit and coffee. So she’d stopped correcting them at some point, because why waste the energy when she’s still satisfied?
Then again, that’s the sort of attitude that brought them here, she supposes—the store deciding that she was easy enough to just straight up give her nothing. And yeah, coffee and ice cream are good on their own too, but she’d have just gotten that if it was what she wanted. Heathcliff thinks that in any other scenario, this would have been the inciting incident that would end up with her on the news for straight-up murder; but it’s different, because Hong Lu is here, and they’re enjoying their day out, and she’d rather not cause a scene if she can help it because it would be so fucking embarrassing . So, she resolves herself to simply tear them a new one tomorrow.
But when she opens her eyes to express her plan, her girlfriend is simply nowhere to be seen. Just up and disappeared. Heathcliff looks around the coffee shop frantically before her eyes settle on the front counter, where Hong Lu stands talking to the cashier, holding her fruitless drink in hand.
“Excuse me!” she says, smiling brightly. “There appears to have been a mistake! You see, my girlfriend paid extra for extra strawberries, but as you can see, there are actually no strawberries whatsoever to be found!” she giggles, holding up the plastic cup. “How silly, right? So, I’d like to formally request more strawberries for her, please!” she beams.
The cashier simply looks back at her with a bored expression before glancing down to look at the cup in closer detail. “This cup has already been drunk out of, ma’am,” he sighs, picking up the container to read the order plastered onto the side. “Are you sure that your friend didn’t just eat all the strawberries already?”
Hong Lu just blinks, her smile falling to a pout in what seems like record time. “First of all, she’s my girlfriend…” she says, before shaking her head and getting back on topic. “And while I admit, that does seem quite on brand of her to do,” she says, placing a hand against her forehead while completely throwing Heathcliff under the bus without a second thought, “I was with her the whole time, and her drink had no strawberries in it, to begin with!”
Despite her arguing, the employee just shakes his head and slides the cup back across the table towards her, before writing down something on a piece of notepaper nearby. “What d’ya want, lady, a lawyer or something? I can’t do anything for a cup that’s been destroyed like this.”
“Destroyed? I hardly think so—there’s barely any coffee missing from the cup at all…”
“Yeah, and all the strawberries have been eaten, so same thing. Drink is a drink.”
“What? But, I just said—”
“Hey, can you quit it already? You’re holding up the line with your yapping, and I’ve already got all this other crap I have to handle,” he suddenly raises his voice, whipping his head up to look Hong Lu in the eyes. “If you’ve got anything else to say, you can tell it to someone who actually wants to deal with your shit.”
This alone would have gotten Heathcliff jumping to her feet, but Hong Lu blinks, before rubbing her arm. “Oh, sorry. Do you know where I can find that person?”
The employee just stares back at her. “…you’re not all there, are you?”
“Alright,” Heathcliff says, standing up so fast that her chair screeches behind her before falling over. “Let’s get the fuck outta here,” she says, walking over to the counter and holding out her hand for Hong Lu to take. “And who the hell just says that kind of stuff? What a fucking par—don’t talk to her like that,” she says, throwing one last look at said par before being met with indifference again, and rolling her eyes ( while holding back the urge to leap across the counter. do you really think you’re safe back there, mate ). “Should’ve learned my lesson—never coming back to this minging place ever again,” she mutters under her breath, quickly leaving the establishment with Hong Lu in tow.
Once they’re back at the car ( good god, why are these parking spots so damn far away? she came here to get a delicious drink, not to walk fifty million miles ), Heathcliff sighs and runs a hand through her hair. “Hah, I was holding myself back, so why’d you have to go and do it all for me anyways?” she grumbles, looking over at Hong Lu who just stares back at her with this gigantic smile on her face. “…what?” Heathcliff asks, because that damned thing is just so bright and cute and shiny but she can’t quite fathom why it’s there right now.
“I remember, now,” she says, as cryptically as ever, her expression forever unchanging.
“…what d’you remember?”
“When I first asked you out!” she beams, closing her eyes and clasping her hands around her nearly forgotten drink, before hopping up onto the hood of Heathcliff’s pickup truck and smoothing out her skirt, taking another sip.
“Wha—you forgot something like that?!” Heathcliff exclaims, leaning back against the vehicle and swirling her cup, the ice cream in it nearly all melted at this point. She makes a face of disappointment, before turning back towards her girlfriend.
“Well, it’s not like I forgot forgot…” Hong Lu laughs a little bit, lowering her cup. “Just, we’ve been together for so long at this point that there are simply too many good memories to keep front and center~” she smiles, staring into her tea and poking around at the few jellies left in it. “But, this one’s my best memory, I think, because I wouldn’t be able to have so many other ones without it!”
“Ah…well, I remember it well enough,” Heathcliff clears her throat, looking away, because truth be told, she feels the same way—every day with Hong Lu is such a fantastic blur that it all blends together into this happy sort of goop, and she can’t say that she clearly remembers the inciting incident. “But, if it means so much to you, then you should remind me.”
And Heathcliff knows what sort of shit-eating cat-mouthed expression that Hong Lu is making at her right now, but she’s not going to give her the satisfaction of turning around ( because if she did, chances are that she’d look away just as fast, which would become the subject of an even meaner grin ). “Oho~ Heathy?” she says, leaning against Heathcliff’s back as the woman’s face turns a shade of red that she didn’t even know it could turn. “Is it possible that you’ve forgotten as well? I’m so hurt…” she says, snuggling against her.
“Hah, no way!” Heathcliff shouts, a little bit louder and higher than she meant to, before throwing an arm around Hong Lu’s shoulders. “Don’t act like that, you cheeky thing…no, I remember it loud and clear—I just, uh, want to see how it looks from your point of view. How you see it, anyway. It’s only fair,” she rationalizes, miming a confident pose, but still refusing to meet Hong Lu’s eyes.
“Aha~” Hong Lu giggles, and Heathcliff can only imagine what kind of ear-to-ear grin she must be making. “Oh well, it can’t be helped—then, I’ll tell you how I remember it!” she says, before releasing Heathcliff from her teddy bear grip and leaning back. “Well, it’s not the most elaborate story in the world, but it’s lovely all the same~”
“Alright, alright, spill it already!” Heathcliff exclaims, somehow as invested in how her girlfriend feels as she is in the story of her own relationship.
“Remember the first time we went to the farmer’s market?” Hong Lu asks, swinging her legs back and forth as she places her now empty cup on the hood of the car. “Well, you were complaining about how far you had to drive to the grocery store just to pick up some strawberries, so I had to let you know about it~”
“And I still think you should have told me earlier—keeping a secret like that’s just cruel…”
“Well, I thought you knew!” she smiles, patting Heathcliff’s arm. “Anyways, it was close enough from our place back then to walk, you know? And we made a day of it because I just had to show you everything—but then again, it doesn’t take much more than having a fruit stand to become one of your beloved places, no?” She laughs a bit, and Heathcliff cracks a smile. Because it’s true. She will forever be a shill for the farmer’s market. “But then, the usual strawberry man wasn’t there that day, I think his daughter was taking over for the day instead? Ah, she was busy when we were walking up, so I must have startled her when I spoke because she ended up jumping out of her seat so hard that she knocked the whole stand over!”
“Oh shit, I think I remember that,” Heathcliff grits her teeth, taking a tentative sip out of the half-melted ice cream half-fruitless coffee. “Poor lass.”
“Oh yes, I felt just awful then…but before I could even say anything, you ran over and started gathering everything up right away~”
“Ah…don’t remember one bit of that. Doesn’t sound like me at all,” Heathcliff huffs, shaking her head, but feeling it heat up again when Hong Lu begins poking her cheek.
“Wahh, don’t say something like that—no matter how much you try to deny it, your heart is so kind, and you know it too~” Hong Lu smiles, scooting closer. “And I love that about you. And I loved it back then too. I think I asked you to marry me…and we weren’t even a thing, yet! I wish you could have seen the expression on your face; I almost thought you were about to drop all the berries you picked up, too!”
“Hah, but could you blame me if I did? If you say proper shocking things like that out of the blue, then I’m going to be properly shocked.”
“Well, I don’t think you would have, anyways, because saving those berries was your top priority~” she beams, before rapping her knuckles gently against the side of Heathcliff’s cup. “Speaking of which, why don’t we stop by the market on the way home? We can get, like, way more strawberries than they would ever even think of giving you here—you can mix your own drink!”
Heathcliff turns to look at her, before cupping her face in her hands. “Love…has anyone ever told you that you’re a genius?”
“Nope!”
“You’re a genius. Bloody hell. And we have ice cream in the freezer that needs eating, too. I just had the best idea of all time,” Heathcliff says, getting so excited that she nearly crushes the cup in her hands before pushing off of her car and making her way around it. “Well, what are you waiting for? Get in!” she calls out, unlocking the doors and settling down into the front seat. “We’ve got to get a move on to make it there before it closes!”
Hong Lu sits there for a moment, blinking a bit at what just happened, before sighing and shaking her head. “Coming, darling~” she coos because she’s finally managed to think of something better. Talking, and talking, and kissing, and then talking some more—and getting strawberries for her favorite person in the whole world, afterward.