"A straight black." He looked to the right, hoping to be inconspicuous in his gazing. "Thank you." He tacked on as an afterthought.

It was just another morning, only that life was surprisingly not crumbling to pieces like the café.

The culture of the café seemed like it was fit for quieter customers, or maybe it was just the morning slag that is dragging behind everyone. He found it weird that there were vines hanging from the air, even though it was an indoor establishment.

However, beggars couldn't be choosers. He was here to meet someone, or rather court a young lad, who seemed a little too engrossed in stapled stacks of paper, highlighter ink and pen chewing.

"Black coffee for Romero." The barista alerted quietly enough. He was thankful, although the glamour of being a soccer star had already run its course in his life, Romero still wanted as little attention on himself as possible. Especially when he was here to offer himself to a beautiful young man.

Despite the natural beauty of him, his target was looking less than stellar this morning. A slight stubble stretching the sharp expanse of his jaw and down his neck, ending right above his Adam's apple, bags under the eyes, the whole nine-yards of sleep deprivation and then some.

Romero smiled to himself, finally gathering his confidence to speak to the young man. The goal here was to appear sexy but not overly confident. He felt that he had the smouldering smirk nailed right on the head. So, this couldn't be that difficult, could it?

With a few steps, he was already in front of the boy. Empty mug... Romero remarked, it would be a good starting point for a conversation, and an even better entryway to what the real interest was here.

"Rough morning?" Romero asked, hoping for some sort of response but received none. He twisted his body and looked around. Surely the symphony of traffic in the background couldn't be covering over his voice enough for him to remain unheard.

Romero awkwardly pressed his lips together, praying that he wouldn't have to ambitiously invite himself to sit down before the boy would give him the time of day. Then a genius idea struck Romero, since no one really saw him, and those who did, didn't seem to be pointing it out to the other customers. He would just redo his introduction.

Turning around, Romero found himself adjusting the hot cup in his hands, hoping not to scald himself before he can secure a nice morning conversation with the young man. He did feel slightly embarrassed, not being recognized for his obvious efforts the first time around -

"Can I help you?" Romero heard from behind him. It wasn't quite as frail of a voice as he had expected, but then again, the young man was indeed a post-pubescent male, and the prominent Adam's apple was more than sufficient evidence.

Quickly whipping around again, Romero found himself coughing into a lightly closed fist. Even though the intended purpose was to break up the silence and clear the awkwardness, it only served to heighten his obvious discomfort.

That's when Romero saw the headphones hanging out the front of the young man's denim jacket. Right, of course... music... Needless to say, he felt like he had insulted his own intelligence in the moment.

"Rough morning?" Romero tried again, pulling up close to the round table. The boy took the other earpiece out and dropped the pen he was holding gently.

"Not particularly, but mornings set the bar pretty low." Romero chuckled slightly, happy that there was humour to be had. "You?" The boy continued. Frankly, it shocked Romero that it was this easy to get his way in, but no one was complaining so he wasn't either.

Romero gracefully pulled out the chair and slid in across from the boy, taking this as an invitation. "More or less slow, but it could definitely have been worse." He extended his right hand, swapping the cup he was holding to the other side. "Romero."

"Troye." A shy smile accompanied. Although his stubble and voice begged to differ, up close, the boy seemed to have a gentler, less rough quality to him. Romero noticed the long and slender fingers as Troye gathered what seemed like text books and shoved them out of the way for Romero's forearms to rest on the table. "Sorry I didn't see you the first time."

An uncomfortable heat crept up the sides of Romero's neck, making him clear his throat yet again. There wasn't really much to be said apart from the obvious 'that's alright', but that would be the easy way out. "And here I was hoping to suppress the embarrassment for eternity."

Troye looked up from piling his loose pieces of paper, chuckling, "At least there isn't anyone else around to witness it. I'm good at keeping secrets." Troye smiled, making Romero's perspiration kick into overdrive.

Romero was quite honestly only here to get a phone number and maybe secure a first date with benefits on the side if he was lucky, but it seemed like his heart was collateral damage to his sexual needs. He did feel a little self-conscious about the obvious age gap between them though, his wrinkles had already started their own New York subway map.

"Can I get you another cup of coffee?" Romero interjected his own thoughts, not wanting to lose the confidence streak he was tricking himself into. These courting situations always began a little strangely for him, outside the setting of the club he frequents, he was every bit a normal guy with normal insecurities.

"Thank you, but I think I will pass on that." Troye offered a polite smile, not really giving away any of the details that Romero was hoping for. Even though Romero's gaydar was often quite accurate, it would only be respectful to gauge the boundaries and which team Troye was batting for before opening the hatch and dropping the big bombs.

"What a shame." Romero sighed dramatically, "I was actually just looking for some company, but I guess I will have to look for someone else in this absolutely bustling café."

Seeing as Troye chuckled at his humour, albeit slightly rigidly, Romero decided that he won this battle. "She sounds like she needs some coffee over there." Troye pointed at one of the baristas cleaning up the table with a yawn loud enough to knock the leaves off the suspended plants.

"She looks like she needs a mattress. Poor thing, probably sick of this busy hour of the day." Tapping at his Cartier watch, a small symbol of wealth.

Troye took a look at the clock on his phone, cursing under his breath just a touch before gathering the piles of books and notes into his backpack. "Sorry to cut you off here, but I have to run, like right now."

"Do you need a lift?" Romero quickly asks, standing up to match Troye's stance. It was an uncalled-for request since the had just met. However, from the sparse stalking Romero has done, he felt a little more than responsible for holding the boy up for too long.

"That won't be necessary, it's just across the street, but I'm already late." Troye pulled on the straps of his backpack, shuffling out between the two tables in frantic haste.

"I'm sorr-"

"It's definitely not your fault, I was late before you came by. Thanks for reminding me though." Troye walked backwards while flashing a toothy grin. Almost bumping into the dosing waitress. "I'll see you around, Romero."

With that, the door opened, and a gust of wind rushed in. Romero took notice of a plastic mug on Troye's side of the table, empty and lonely. Romero didn't exactly know when the next time seeing Troye would be, but he couldn't imagine it to be too long.

Especially now that he had his golden ticket for a round two.

~

"You know, it doesn't hurt to lose these once in a while and just listen to what other people have to say." A dark blond man said in front of Troye, leaning forward to tug on the headphones hanging out the front of Troye's shirt.

Looking at his friend's chair standing at an angle on two wobbly legs made Troye quite anxious. "Logan, this is the library, I theoretically shouldn't need to put these on, but people like you exist." Troye said very quietly while scribbling in his notebook.

"Yes, and it's exactly people like me that will save you from living a life of boredom." Logan ruffled Troye's hair after slamming his chair back onto four legs, making a loud thud. "Come on, we are getting out of here."

Their several months of friendship wasn't anything spectacular or extraordinary. Only week after meeting Logan, Troye realised that it was practically futile to try and change Logan's habits of hair ruffling, bro-hugging, hollering and walking with an arm over his shoulder. Though annoying, it was all in good spirits, Troye supposed.

They met under very simple conditions, but somehow that was enough to make them bond as friends. Since they had gotten to speak more, Logan would show up in his periphery at least once a day just to make a nuisance out of nothing. Or perhaps it was Troye's ungodly luck that allowed him to bump into Logan frequently.

Sighing, Troye pulled out the other side of his headphones, "Let me finish this, I need some food anyway."

"Good boy!" Logan cheered, a little too loud for the 0-decibel rule inside the library. It made Troye a little more than embarrassed about Logan's mere existence.

Of course, Troye knew that Logan had good intentions, and if it weren't for him, Troye would likely never leave the library until somewhere around dusk, where he would be forced to leave because food was requisite to being alive.

"Where's your mug?" Logan asked, leaning over with his head hanging over Troye's textbook and notes just to see what he was working on. Not that Logan would understand any of it, but he nosiness was part of his core.

Troye sat up straight, reaching for the side of his backpack where his plastic coffee mug was usually secured. When he felt that it wasn't there, Troye panicked. It wasn't as if it held any more significance to him than his Staedtler pencil would, but Troye just didn't like losing things. Especially when he was struggling to meet ends as it was.

"I must have left it somewhere..." Troye ran his fingers through his hair, already messy from Logan's ruffling and the lack of maintenance.

"Damn I was hoping for a hit of caffeine." Logan stroked his square chin, feeling the coarse stubble. While Troye's facial hair added no value to his masculinity due to his mild disposition, Logan's made him look a lot older than he actually was.

Troye glared at Logan, genuinely upset to have lost something of his. Logan shut his running mouth immediately and pulled his index finger and thumb in a zipping motion. "It's not my fault you lost it..." Logan tacked on under his breath.

For the next 10 minutes, Troye spent sulking a little, but mostly invested in finishing off his note set before heading off to whatever adventure Logan had planned. Meanwhile, Logan scrolled here and there on social media, swiped right on a few people on his dating apps but ultimately grew sick and tired of Troye's silence. "Where did you go for coffee this morning?"

"'Round the corner, right before I had work." Logan made a face that Troye didn't see. In Logan's opinion, the cafe was in very poor condition and had even more tragic employees. He knew from experience that the chairs were no better than a plank of wood straight off the chainsaw. They just tried too hard to jump on the hole-in-the-wall bandwagon.

Logan didn't like Troye's job either. He knew how smart Troye was, and yet he was working as a typewriter for a nearby real estate agency. The job required no skill apart from being able to read English and it certainly paid less than dirt for the time it took. The only good thing about it was that Troye could work from home if he wanted, he just needed to pick up the scripts from the firm and off he goes. Troye always stressed that it was the only job around here that was available, had flexible schedule and actually paid anything at all.

Logan still thought it was absolute garbage. Considering Logan's extensive connections outside of college, he could easily get Troye a job at the radio station, maybe as someone who handled busywork. However, just the mere thought of Troye working around other people was enough to set Logan into a sputtering giggle.

"Shut up." Troye growled under his breath, irritated at the lack of public consideration Logan was displaying. It only served to make Logan a little giddier though, he always thought that Troye's growling was less of a menace and more of a joke.

Of course, Logan would never voice his opinion. Despite his taller and better built stature, crossing Troye would only net him a period of silent treatment, of which, Logan could not stand for anything more than two days. His conscience wouldn't allow it.

"Alright," Logan snatched the pen from Troye's hand, putting it in his pencil case before starting to pile the pieces of paper inside Troye's open textbook. "We are going out to have ice cream and you can finish this tonight."

Troye's tolerance was inconceivably high for such irritating behaviour, and so, he didn't do much but glare and finally sigh. He knew he needed a break, apart from his little chat with the nice stranger that morning, he had virtually been embedded between the lines of his academic work.

Stacking loose pieces of paper between the pages of a textbook was definitely not something Troye would do at all, since it crumpled the edges and made a mess of his organisation, but seeing as it had already been done and Logan was already brute forcing the thick pile into his backpack, Troye just looked on.

Sincerely, he had no clue why Logan enjoyed attaching himself to Troye. There was no real reason for the two to be interacting this closely, in fact, they shouldn't be interacting at all given their completely mismatched schedule. Regardless, Troye was at least a little relieved to find someone who would be willing to indirectly take care of his health. Reminders to have regular meals were good, but social interaction benefits his mental wellbeing immensely too.

Thinking of the man Troye had met that morning, it was just an awkward experience to say the least, even more so now that he had forgotten the man's name.

Unfortunately - in Troye's mind - he was not completely unused to strangers trying to speak to him. There had been more than several occasions where girls would come up to him to ask for trivial requests such as stationary or tissues, of course, some of them would end in nothing at all, but the better part of those conversations resulted in girls asking for his phone number.

He had never had a man speak to him in that way though, and if interaction with girls was not foreign enough, speaking to a man probably a decade older than him definitely elicited some unintelligible responses from him.

Troye was glad that he had genuinely been running late, because he was never a good actor and trying to get out of that situation would have been a million times more challenging had he not have to pick up scripts from the agency.

"We are on a bro-date, stop thinking yourself into a coma." Logan held his cone of ice cream up, "Eat yourself into one, it's a way better way to pass out in my honest opinion." He raises one eyebrow while mocking a British accent to sound more sophisticated.

Troye didn't pay Logan's display any mind, in fact he didn't even register the mention of 'bro-date', being too occupied with the thoughts of the older coffee guy. The pastel colours of the ice cream shop didn't do much to calm Troye's thinking either, it only gave him a sensory overload.

"I could probably take cattle on a date to the butcher's and that would be a more interesting time than you here, trying to prove the theory of evolution." Logan rolled his eyes, throwing a napkin folded into a sagging aeroplane at Troye.

Again, Troye merely looked at Logan and took a bite out of his sweet, cooling treat. He jumped a little when Logan's finger came in to swipe at his chin. "You should pay me to babysit you. Honestly." Logan sucks his thumb clean casually and starts counting with his fingers, "You never remember to have lunch, you avoid people like the plague, you don't drive, you don't have a car to drive in and you make me look like an absolute moron trying to get you to speak."

Troye tilted his head. He didn't quite understand the point of Logan's rant. It wasn't as if Logan was binded to Troye, and would suffer legal consequences if Logan hadn't shown up once a day to pester him. Of course, Troye was appreciative, but if Troye were really that uninteresting, surely Logan would have had better things to do.

"Don't tell me you are actually offended by that..." Logan gapes his mouth a little, "I'm just running my mouth, man, don't take it to heart. Most the shit that comes out of my mouth doesn't actually mean anything intelligent anyway." Logan waved his cone around, trying to demonstrate his point.

"It's not that..." Troye spoke, deciding to just tell his friend about the strange occurrence from that morning. "There was an older guy that came up to me at the coffee shop and spoke to me."

Logan stopped mid-bite into the vanilla cone, looking at Troye to urge him to keep speaking, when nothing came from him, Logan prompted, "And...?"

"And he spoke to me..." Troye reiterated, it made him think again about the difference in understanding between the two of them. Sometimes it felt as if Troye was pronouncing hieroglyphics when speaking to Logan. "Like, he spoke to me."

"So, a grandpa asked you for directions to the denture clinic? I'm confused..." Logan took Troye's ice cream out of his hand and took a generous bite before returning it. Troye couldn't care less though, Logan was being dense.

"He's not a grandpa! He sort of... flirted, I guess."

"He sort of... flirted, you guess." Logan copied Troye's intonation and pausing. "It's not the first time you've been flirted with, big boy. Get used to it, some people can't even dream of being flirted with."

"Yeah... but he was like... and then... he asked me..." Troye didn't know how to elaborate on his point any more than he had already done.

"Do you have a problem with him being a guy?" Logan raised a scrutinising eyebrow, he would be genuinely disappointed in Troye if he had an issue with such a non-issue.

"No! God no! But kind of yes..." Troye's face was flushed pink, embarrassed that Logan would think that he was that conservative. Logan's eyebrow was still defying gravity so Troye made an effort to sigh and explain, "He was a guy... and there aren't many guys that speak to me..."

Logan shrugged, understanding the conflict in the situation now. "I speak to you, but that doesn't mean we are fucking or dating."

"Don't be so vulgar... Besides, you aren't offering to buy me coffee and dressing up nicely or anything..."

Logan held up his last bite of the ice cream cone, then gestured to his relatively dressy outfit, "I bought you ice cream and wore clean clothes. That's pretty damn impressive, I would say."

Troye was lost for words, only staring at Logan as his friend took the last bite. Was this Logan's way of telling Troye that he was interested and all these dinner, lunch and snack 'bro-dates' were actually just regular dates?

"Relax, I really am not looking for a friend with benefits." Logan rolled his eyes, he had thought that point was fairly obvious in these past few months. "I don't have many regular friends that I hadn't fucked, and it's nice to have a casual chat once in a while."

Troye breathed out loud. Feeling so relieved that he wasn't being a douchebag for taking advantage of Logan's charity. "Now, let's go so you can keep scribbling or whatever you were doing before."

Logan stood up, probably a little over half a head taller than Troye. He slung his arm around Troye's shoulder, then gave his hair a solid ruffle before guiding them back towards his car, where he would take Troye home and probably not leave until the morning.

Troye's couch was far more comfortable than his own bed.

Published 18/3/2018

This was just a teaser and introduction to all three central characters. The story is not fully written or planned (obviously), but I think I will put up a chapter once in a while to keep myself from veering too far off the cliff and disappear into oblivion.

Part of the point of this story is to give a different perspective on Romero. He may be a villain, but every villain has a past. Of course, Troye and Logan are different here from who they are nowadays, that transformation will be portrayed in the story as well.

Please keep an open mind on the issues that Romero, Troye and Logan have personality wise, I believe I have constructed enough perfect characters that it is now time for fatally flawed ones. Not to mention, Troye and I are very similar in personality, so please be kind to homeboy. XD

Nevertheless, thank you for taking your time to read and I hope this chapter has given you insight into how I write, and what expectations to not have because I most likely won't reach them. Also, thank you to Fhanth for allowing me the opportunity to steal these precious characters.