Octopuses

The octopi are her favorites.
She works at the local aquarium, ostensibly as a marine biologist and leading expert on all things octopi, but in reality she feeds fish, checks salt levels, and plays veterinarian to her special tentacled friends when they're feeling peaky. It's not hard work, but she loves it. She feels as if she learns something new about her sea critters every day, and not even losing not one, but four pairs of glasses to various fish tanks has dimmed her enthusiasm.
But Anne particularly loves the guided tours. Sure, she has a masters in marine biology with a specialization in gastropods, and yes, maybe she's considering adding on even more debt so she can go back for a PhD, but teaching this stuff is so much more fun than she ever thought it would be. Especially to the kids. School field trips are her favorites, and whenever Anne's mouth stretches into a smile because of a middle school kid's question, she wonders why she didn't become a teacher.
“Yeah, why didn't you become a teacher?” Eva asks her one night, and Anne just shrugs.
“Do you have any idea how long I've wanted to be a marine biologist?”
'Since you were like four, I get it. You're still damn good at teaching though,” Eva tells her, and tosses back the last of her beer. “Besides, you actually like kids.”
Anne grins at that. “They ask the best questions. And they haven't lost their wonder, have you noticed?”
“I try not to notice kids,” Eva says dryly. “They give me a headache.”
“But good headaches, right?”
“You're so weird.”
-
“Hey.” Anne looks up from her papers to see a waiter with a steaming pitcher in his hands. He nods towards her empty coffee cup. “Refill?”
“Please.” She pushes it over and he tips the pitcher. A stream of coffee pours into her cup, steam spiraling off the top of the drink in delicious spirals. “Why is your hair green?” she asks suddenly, frowning at the unusual color. It's not tidy hair either – it looks like Diner Boy's just rolled out of bed and come to work today.
Diner Boy shrugs. “Felt like it. You good on your coffee?”
“Yeah -”
Before she can locate his name tag, Diner Boy shuffles off to another table. “Need a refill?” she hears him ask another customer.
By the time Anne turns her attention back to her paperwork and her coffee, it's gone cold.
-
She'd gone to the diner in a flash of 'oh god it's six am and I have to be at work in an hour and my coffee maker is broken and Starbucks is disgusting' initially, but she finds herself coming back after that. It's just until she gets a new coffee maker, obviously. And Wastelanders Anonymous is close to the aquarium and the coffee's not hideously overpriced or disgusting so she doesn't mind spending seventy nine cents each morning in a diner with ugly red-and-white linoleum and hard plastic chairs.
Since she's there so early in the morning, Anne gets the same waiter every time. Diner Boy's name is Benny, she learns on her fourth visit; his nametag is either missing or twisted around each time she sees him so she finally resorts to asking just so that she has a name to call him in her head other than Diner Boy. Certainly not for any other reason.
-
Benny, as it turns out, has never been to the aquarium. She learns this after she becomes a regular (“And what's your definition of regular?” she asks him, grinning, because it's been two weeks and they've started talking a little here and there. Just being friendly, she tells herself. But the point is they talk sometimes and he's a little bit of an odd duck and who knows, maybe regular means something different here because she's only been coming here two weeks and how is that regular anything?
Benny gives her a deadpan look. “Three cups of coffee, first one black and strong enough to kill a camel, second creamed and sugared, third decaf, probably to keep you from having a caffeinated heart attack,” he rattles off. She whistles, impressed. “Face it, Anne. You're definitely a regular.”)
“You have to come,” she says, pulling her cup away before he can tip coffee in it and scurry out of the conversation. “Promise me you'll show up to the next tour.”
“Uh – I don't really -”
“Benny! Promise!”
“All right, all right,” he mutters, and she relinquishes her grip on the cup so he can give her her coffee. “I'll be there.”
“You have the money for it, right?”
“I'll be there, geez!”
-
She sees a head of green hair the next tour she gives and her smile's bigger than she remembers it being. He doesn't ask any questions, but she sees his interest in the octopi and her smile grows just a little bit wider.
-
“So how's training the new recruit?”
“The kid needs a leash, I swear.”
“Really? He seems sweet to me.”
“He's half blind, hyperactive, he never shuts up -”
“Sounds like best friend material to me.”
“He's huggy.”
“You should invite him over to the aquarium someday.”
“Ugh.”
-
Anne meets Jeff properly outside the diner three days later. He's completely blind in his right eye and there's a nasty scar on his left cheek, but he's easily the friendliest guy she's ever met in her life. It's easily to overlook the scarring – an accident, he says, and refuses to say more about it – in favor of talking about animal rights and summer jobs to pay for college so he can go to vet school and he's a puppy, he really is.
She gives him a hug because Benny's right, he's huggy, and if Benny scuffs his shoes on the ground with a scrunchy look on his face, she pretends very carefully not to notice.
-
“So...”
“So...”
“...You have... keys, right?”
“...To...?”
“The fish place?”
“Aquarium.”
"So?"
"Ugh, yes, I have keys. Why?"
“Wanna... I dunno... sneak in?”
“I'd love to.”
-
They walk down the halls after closing time, lights dimmed everywhere but in the tanks themselves. Light splashes across his face, hollowing weird places under his cheekbones and making him look ghoulish with his green hair, but she doesn't mind. They walk next to each other, him slouching, their knuckles brushing against each other every other step or so.
She's glad the light's not good enough so he can see her blush. Not that he's looking. Diner Boy's eyes are pretty much everywhere but her face.
She'd be disappointed, but she's not really looking at him either, so she's not allowed to be disappointed.
They stop in front of the octopus tank and he slumps onto the bench. She doesn't, not until a calloused and dry hand slips against her palm and tentatively tugs her back. Face on fire, she stumbles back until her legs nudge the bench and she obediently sits down. She expects Benny to let go.
He doesn't.
He doesn't tighten his grip or run his thumb over her knuckles or anything either, but his hand is large and warm and his skin is starting to get that crocodile texture that means he desperately needs hand cream and it's the nicest thing she's ever felt in her life.
“So, uh,” he says, and clears his throat. “Octopuses, huh?”
“Octopi,” she corrects. “What are you, five?”
“...Right.” And she hears the smile when he says, “They're your favorites, aren't they?”
“Yeah.”
Silence falls. It's more comfortable than she expects, and Anne relaxes into the bench, not quite daring to lean against Benny. “So,” she starts after a while of staring into a tank that's doing a very good impression of being empty. “This is... what, exactly?”
“Uh.” She hears Benny swallow. “Um. I. I dunno. Did you want it to be something?”
Her heart jumps into her throat. Something? With Diner Boy? A guy who refused to go to college and is making his living pouring coffee at a cheap diner? Something with him, and her, a highly educated scientist? Something with the guy who always has something startlingly brilliant to say, some weird insight into her psyche or the human mind that makes her wonder out loud why the hell he isn't a psychologist?
Yes. She absolutely wants it to be something.
But she can't seem to get her voice to work – probably because her heart's strangling her vocal cords – so she just nods instead.
“Yeah,” Benny mutters, and then exhales. “Okay. Something. It can – it can be something. If you want.”
“Something -” Anne swallows, because her voice isn't working quite right. And her chest is all fluttery, and that's probably the sign of a heart attack. All that caffeine she's been drinking. “Something would be – nice. Really nice.”
“Okay.”
Another crocodile-skin hand touches her cheek, and Anne turns her head before Benny can do it for her. She stares at him for a few seconds, heart in her mouth, hoping that she knows exactly what's going to happen next (because if he doesn't do what she thinks he's going to do she's going to strangle him, she swears she will) and then Benny gets a little closer and he blinks twice and hair falls in his eyes and -
And -
And then he's kissing her, and it's soft and sweet and tentative and oh god he tastes just like diner coffee and chapped lips and it's clumsy and slow and perfect -
“Is that your definition of something?” she breathes when they draw apart – because this isn't the kind of kiss that breaks, just parts, and they're still millimeters away from each other and she really, really wants another kiss because if one kiss sent her to heaven, what would two kisses do?
And Benny smiles and when he answers, she feels his breath on her lips. “Could be.”
“Wanna do something again?”
“Sure the octopuses won't mind?”
“It's octopi -” and then he's kissing her again and Anne decides she can educate him more on the subject later.
Right now, she's got a diner boy to kiss.