Work Text:
Viewers are dressing up Jerma!
Jerma stood in front of his floor-length mirror and gave a small wave. The mirror was tilted, pressed up against the wall but not quite flush to it, giving his body a small amount of distortion and making him look just a little more compact than usual. His jeans and socks blended into the low-quality Boston apartment complex carpeting, but his white tank top – despite how dingy it was – stood out against the mottled beige of his walls. There was a floor lamp on, but no overhead lighting, meaning shadows bounced across the room in weird ways as he held up one shirt? A small lopsided smile, showing his tooth gap and tilting his head or– Another shirt? A bit more of a goofy grin, but not quite reaching his eyes, he didn’t like this one as much but it was chat’s favorite for some reason or another. His arms were shaking, not due to the effort of holding the shirts he’d definitely not scrounged from the bins at goodwill (no, really, they were from the outlet portion – he was cheap but not that cheap, the bins icked him out –) but rather due to the effort of the gentle left, right, turn, smile, tilt your head routine he had perfected looking at himself – through himself – in the mirror.
“Oh, you guys!” Jerma grinned, swatted playfully at the mirror, eyes just a little out of focus as he let the numbers tick up in his head until ding! “We’re going with this one, huh?” He held out a shirt he’d had for years, some old number with a diagram of the Millenium Falcon on it and he smiled. “You know me so well.” He gently laid the second shirt over the top of the mirror and slipped the one in his hands on, over his tank top.
Tucked in, or out, rang through his head, and Jerma’s eyelashes fluttered. Right. He forgot about that part! Silly me. The bar went up quicker this time, some supernatural force of reasoning or maybe he was just speeding things along because he was about to be late for work or maybe he just hated tucking regular shirts into regular pants or maybe something else, because he was tying his apron on around his decidedly un-tucked shirt, rolling the midsection up once because his legs were a little too short and his waist was a little too small for the apron to look right otherwise. Sue him. And all of a sudden he was out the door, shoes and cap on in a blink and he was walking downstairs. His shitty one-bedroom apartment (he deserved nicer than a studio, come on, it had taken at least a couple in-game days to work up to this level of luxury) sat directly on top of his place of work, luckily enough. Some similarly shitty too-overpriced moderately-gentrified place of work that earned him just enough money to scrape by, plus the added bonus of free drinks whenever he was working.
“Hey, Jeremy,” his coworker called, voice flat as the bell dinged and he walked through the door. Jerma smiled, did a little “who, me?” turn around and point at himself bit but their eyes were cast down towards the notebook they were scratch scratch scratching in. Hm. Fine, that’s fine.
Work the register! ◼◼◼◻◻
Flirt with Emilia! ◼◼◼◻◻
Do dishes in the back! ◼◻◻◻◻
Huh. Looks like a tie. Jerma saddles up to the register, picks up the Sharpie and starts clumsily twirling it in his hands as he looks out across the paltry coffee shop front-of-house. Jerma doesn’t know why he picked the marker up. There’s nobody in line and there likely won’t be anybody in line until the rush that comes around 5pm. Curse the life of a closer.
“So, E. Emilia.” Jerma’s voice does a horrific crack and he winces. Canned laughter plays through his ears and his cheeks flush red. “Has it been… busy at all today?”
“I got here…” They look up from their manager’s notebook, past the swoop of hair that falls in front of their eyes and Jerma thinks maybe if chat got them dressed too they would remember that not having a head covering is against dress code. Do they know it’s against dress code? Maybe chat and I should tell them they’re breaking dress code– “Yup,” they pop the P in their word, “About an hour ago. I don’t know why I needed to check the clock. You ask me this every day and every day I tell you that I come in an hour before you to cover the last bit of the mid shift. You do know that, Jeremy?” But Jeremy’s head is a mix of Work the register! Flirt with Emilia! Do dishes in the back! Tucked or untucked? So he just opens his mouth and closes it and opens it again and says “Huh.”
“Excuse me?”
There’s a small voice that pipes up in front of the register and Jerma’s head snaps into position like he’s a low-quality Gundam. There’s a young girl and her mother. Jerma goes to bend down to get on eye level with her and remembers there’s a counter in the way and he straightens his knees again and chat goes Too old, you’re too old to be doing that and there’s the canned laughter again. He forces a smile.
“Well hello there! What can I get for you?” His eyes nervously flit between the girl, her mother, and Emilia, but Emilia looks bored and is blowing a bubble with their gum and every instinct in Jerma’s body is screaming Tell them that’s against company policy and they’re your manager, they know what the policy is and take the fucking customer’s order, idiot, you can’t even do one thing right and the girl smiles and goes “Cookie?” so he smiles back.
Ask the girl her name!◼◻◻◻◻
Ask the mother her order! ◼◼◻◻◻
Ask how she’s going to pay! ◼◼◼◼◻
“And h- how are you going to pay?” Jerma looks down at the little girl and his smile is wavering and his eyes are watery and the mother shoots him a strange look and goes “Uh… I’ll take a medium hot decaf cappuccino with extra cinnamon powder, please don’t forget to make it decaf, last time you forgot-” and Jerma feels tears prick at the corners of his eyes as he sees Emilia roll their own just within eyeshot and he goes “Of course, I’m so sorry about that. I’ll circle it on the cup, just so we can’t forget!” Jerma gives a nervous laugh, finishes punching medium hot decaf cappuccino with extra cinnamon powder into the POS and sets the cup down for Emilia to get to whenever they feel like it, because they don’t do anything unless they feel like it. Which Jerma thinks must be a nice way to live life, except he doesn’t really know how that would feel, because he has chat and he has so many thoughts and words and tin-can phrases and stock responses and he realizes he’s forgetting to breathe and he’s already taken the mother’s money and they’re waiting at the end of the bar. Oh. Huh.
Time to do dishes in the back, his head provides, so he sets the marker down in a dramatic, showy fashion, Emilia looking at him strangely, scratching the choker on their neck and he walks into the back with his hands wringing in front of his waist and a bead of sweat dripping down his rapidly reddening face and he goes huh. Looks like there aren’t any dishes to do. But he doesn’t want to seem stupid, oh no, so he stands back there for a second and his eyes flash up to the corner of the screen so he pulls on his collar comically and goes “Thanks for getting me out of there, huh?” to the empty room. The room isn’t empty to him, of course, but he has the fleeting thought that maybe that’s a problem, that disconnect between his perception of reality and reality itself, if such a thing exists – and he goes “How’s the stream going, chat? Having fun? Make sure to vote on what you want me to do next!” and there’s a–
“Jerm?”
Huh. There’s a concerned voice, is what there is, so Jerma turns around from where he’s been blankly gazing at the place where the walls meet in the corner and gesticulating wildly to face where Emilia is standing and they go “Are you okay?” in that voice of theirs and Jerma’s smile cracks a little.
“Y-yeah, you know how it is!” He gives a light, forced laugh, and Emilia neglects to say that no, they actually have no idea how it is or what the fuck he’s doing so instead they give a small concerned “Mm,” of affirmation and say “There’s a bit of a line up front. Do you mind helping me?” And chat goes: Time to do dishes in the back! ◼◼◼◼◼◼ ◼◼◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ so he’s having a really hard time, actually, listening to what they’re saying and there are tears of frustration beading at the corners of his eyes and Emilia looks VERY concerned, now, not their normal I'm-pretending-not-to-like-you-because-I'm-too-cool-for-you schtick and Jerma feels like sobbing but he’s at work, so it’s Time to do Dishes in the Back but there aren’t any dishes, not really, and he can hear the customers up front and Emilia is reaching out a hand to wave in front of his face because Jeremy is frozen like a deer in the headlights and he feels a tug back to reality with a RIP of pain as they SNAP in his face and–
“-er? Jeeeeeremy, Jerma, Jer, Jerrrrma,” and Emilia’s voice is rife with concern and he gasps and it feels like he just woke up from a nightmare, so his eyes flick up and to the left.
“Y-yeah, I’m here,” Jerma says weakly. The lights are a little dimmer than he remembers. “I’ll help you up front.”