“You’re the new hire…?” Frankie asked.

“Yes,” Ezra said.

Ezra walked in after Finley left. There were about three customers between them but Frankie couldn’t remember much about them. He’d looked at the selection for a quite while, to the displeasure of the customers behind him, settling on a chocolate croissant and a straight black coffee. For a whole hour, he sat at a table not too far away from Frankie, staring outside of the window or scrolling through his phone.

Ezra finished his croissant in the first five minutes of him sitting down.

He touched his black coffee once in the hour and recoiled in disgust when he did.

At this time of night there were less customers and it was strange to see someone just sit by themselves for a whole hour at 7pm, that was the only reason Frankie took frequent glances at him.

When he walked up to the counter struggling to say something Frankie finally out two and two togetherThen he walked up to Frankie struggling to say something before Frankie put two and two together aksing, “Are you the new hire?” Ezra blinked for a moment, before nodding.

“You can come to the back,” Frankie said before pausing. “...It’s a bit late to get your apron on.” They didn’t have much of a uniform, just casual clothes with an apron on top of them. Lora, the girl working she 9-4 before him, wore the same set of clothes every time- she said it was easier. Frankie would be coming from school more often than not so he just wore whatever he wore to school instead of changing in the staffroom.

There was only about 30 minutes till official closing time and after that they’d have to clean and Frankie had already done half of that. It was slower today so he ended up cleaning while the cafe was still open.

“Stella’s trained you at the register, right?”

Ezra nodded.

He didn’t seem very trained in Frankie’s opinion. The boy looked at the cash register like he was looking at an alien.

“I’m gonna get started on bringing in the chairs, you stay at the register and greet the people who come in,” Frankie said, he started walking away before pausing. “Wait, you need to put on your apron actually,”

Stella required them to have their aprons on at all times when in the presence of customers. You could take them off after closing, but before that was a no- even if it looked like no one would be coming till closing.

Frankie went to the staffroom and closed the door.

He wanted to scream.

What is he doing here? Frankie thought. He was just making some small talk, awkward yes, why did he end up being right?

Be careful what you wish for, Frankie thought. Now that he was infornt of the guy, he didn’t know what to say nor did he know how to act. He’d been a bit disappointed when Ezra didn’t come into English earlier in the day but now he’d have to see him for three or four days outside of school as well as their normal english classes.

Frankie thought back to their interaction, kicking himself. Stella’s trained you right? Of course Stella trained him, she told Frankie that she did, why did he ask him something so stupid?

The knocking at the door snapped him out of his thoughts.

“What’s the matter?” He asked.

“I don’t know how to use this…” Ezra spoke from the other side of the door.

“One sec,” Frankie said as he sprinted to the coat apron rack.

Frankie found the new apron and frowned. The aprons were ordered in height and width, custom to everyone who worked in the cafe and they all had the cafe logo on them— a coffee bean surrounded by croissants and other desserts— but when Frankie held Ezra’s apron up to the lightbulb-

It looked too small.

It looked like something that would fit Frankie not Ezra.

He shrugged, looks could be deceiving.

Ezra was sitting on the counter when Frankie opened the door, his feet almost touching the ground. Behind him were the croissants, held in a clear display case, while infront of him were the blenders and the ingredients for drinks.

“No sitting on the counters.” Frankie immediately said. He hadn’t meant for it to leave his mouth- it was supposed to be a thought- especially not so harshly. Stella told him this so often when he started working here that the words just jumped from his mouth on instinct.

“Oh,” Ezra said slipping off the counter.

I made things even more awkward, Frankie thought.

“So…here’s your apron,” he said as he handed it to Ezra.

Ezra took it from him, stared at it for a moment, and started wrapping the apron around his waist. He tied a knot at the back.

“…Why are you putting your apron on like that?”

“Like what?” Ezra said, knitting his brows.

It didn’t look bad, didn’t fall too low down his legs, but the whole point of the apron was to show the logo.

“You’re supposed to wear it like mine,” Frankie said.

Ezra's eyebrows raised and then he tried to untie the knot. Judging by his knitted brows and tugging at the knot, it didn’t seem like it was budging.

Ezra’s eyes narrowed in frustration.

Frankie drew closer to him, asking, “Do you mind?”

He shook his head.

He wrapped his arms around Ezra’s waist, then stopped. “You should probably turn around,” Frankie’s face was too close to Ezra’s chest.

When he turned, it took seconds for him to untie the knot. They were always easier to untie when you had some patience.

He turned Ezra around, getting him to lower his neck. While on his toes he put the neckhole over his head. There were better ways to do it— Ezra probably could’ve put it on himself, he wasn’t stupid, but, it felt nice doing something for someone else.

Frankie moved back when he was done and Ezra stood limply infront of him

Ezra’s eyes narrowed.

“...it looked too small,” he started.

“...What?” Frankie asked lo

“The apron looked too small…that’s why I wore it like that,” Ezra said as he turned around to face him.

Frankie’s arm hovered over his mouth as he bit back laughter. It wasn’t that funny, he told himself.

The apron was tiny, just as Frankie had suspected. It ended at his hip and wasn’t wide enough. It was supposed to cover his whole chest but didn’t at all.

“Way too small.”

This had happened before with Lora, the girl who worked the shift before him. She’d gotten an apron that she was swimming in, Lora texted stella the wrong measurments so Stella got a friend to resize the thing. He doubted that Ezra’s could be resized though.

“Why do you cover your mouth when you laugh?”

Frankie hovered a hand over his mouth as he spoke, “...What?”

“You’re doing it right now.”

Frankie moved backwards, “What? You wanna see the inside of my mouth?”

“Yeah.” Ezra said, “I’ve never seen anyone do that before.”

“It’s just a habit, I don’t want people looking in my mouth.” Frankie said as he grabbed a rag from the cupboard under the counter.

Ezra blinked.

“My teeth aren’t that nice to look at,” Frankie said, shrugging.

“Let me see,” Ezra asked.

“No,” Frankie said, furrowing his brows.

They looked horrible. He could get away with it if someone wasn’t staring right at his teeth but if they were they’d see everything. Especially Ezra, who was behaved as if he wanted to put a microscope to his mouth.

Frankie grabbed the antibacterial spray in one hand while a rag was still in the other. He sprayed the counters and then wiped them down with a rag.

“Foster told me to tell you that he’s picking you up after your shift,” Ezra said.

“Why?” asked Frankie as he turned to Ezra. He’d told Foster that he’d walk home by himself, if he wasn’t deaf and dumb—

“You…” Frankie started after realising Ezra was staring right at his mouth “Liar.”

How gullible of him. Frankie didn’t even stop to think. He sighed inwardly, embarrassing.

“Your teeth are fine,” Ezra said, putting both hands in his pockets. Looking as if he’d done nothing wrong.

“Were you lying about Foster?” Frankie asked. “ And they are that bad,”

“They aren’t bad, they’re clean and they’re quite straight. They look normal.”

“They are clean, but they’re not white, and definitely are crooked- they aren't even the same size.”

Frankie took care of his teeth well, he brushed them three times a day and flossed as well, all of that and they still weren’t white. He’d even tried whitening strips, which worked in middle school but he couldn’t use them after they started making his teeth way too sensitive.

Some of them were too forwards and some of them were too backwards. There was nothing he could do to fix the structure unless he got braces. One dentist told him that his teeth weren’t bad enough for braces, the other dentist he went to gave him a price which wasn’t cheap. Nothing he’d be able to pay for even if he saved for a year and nothing he wanted Cedricc to pay for.

“They’re not crooked,” He said.

“No, not when you’re looking straight at me, if you look at the front two from this direction you can really tell,” He said as he pushed Ezra down to the point where he was crouching, turned his head to the side, and tilted him over.

Ezra looked at him with knitted brows. “Why would I be looking at you like this?”

“You’re too tall, of course you wouldn’t be looking up at me,” Frankie started.

When Ezra got on his feet he groaned and twisted his neck. “My neck…”

“Sorry…I just…You can see it right? They’re crooked.”

“There aren’t that many people who are gonna be looking up at you.”

Frankie rolled his eyes. “Very funny.”

“I’m not Joking.”

Frankie almost sighed. Of course Ezra couldn’t see it, Frankie couldn’t see it either until Highschool came around- he just thought his teeth were a bit yellow.

“Who told you your teeth were crooked?” Ezra asked.

“Why do you think someone told me?”

“You didn’t find that out yourself,” Ezra stated.

“No one,” Frankie told him. Everyone told him that, he could only remember some faces but in his head it definitely felt like there’d been more people that just Jenner and his friends.

Ezra pried his mouth open and Frankie let him.

“Your teeth are normal,” Ezra said. “Everyone has teeth like yours,”

“You don’t,” Frankie said before realising how odd this was. “Get out of my mouth.”

Frankie used to think that a lot of people had teeth like his, that it didn’t make sense that he was the only one out of how many people. But they had to be worse.

He didn’t get bullied for no reason, there had to be something that was wrong with him.

“I like your smile, Frankie,” Ezra said. “It’s nice.”

There was nothing special about what Ezra said. Nothing soft about his words and nothing warm, but they set Frankie’s heart on fire. Once again, he was thankful he couldn’t blush.

“You never even see it.”

He kept his mouth covered or closed most of the time and they hadn’t known each other for long.

“The day before yesterday. You smiled in your sleep.”

Frankie paused. “Did you stare at me while I was sleeping?”

Ezra shrugged. “It’s rude to wake sleeping people.”

“But you don’t think it’s rude to stare at sleeping people?”

“I wasn’t staring,” he explained. “I was looking.”

“Very different,” Frankie said, rolling eyes.

Frankie looked past Ezra to see the droplets on the window, and then the light drizzle outside that would soon intensify. “Shit,” Frankie cursed, pulling Ezra along, “We need to put the chairs inside now.”