My first Z Nation fic, based on the following prompt from this list:
“you give me a different fake name every time you come into starbucks and I just want to know your real name bc ur cute but here I am scrawling “batman” onto your stupid cappuccino”
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Read it on FF.Net and AO3
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Saturdays can be crazy busy working in a coffee shop. Morning rush is the worst, taking orders and making change at a pace that you almost need to be superhuman to keep up with. My boss, Roberta Warren, calls the weekend horde of customers “puppies and kittens,” because they’re just so sweet and adorable to deal with, tapping their feet with impatience, and making snide remarks about your basic arithmetic skills if you’re not fast enough counting out their change.
That’s how I first notice him–the quiet one among the mewling, barking crowd of strangers in my queue. Dressed in black from his spiky head of hair to his fingerless gloves and his lace-up combat boots, he looks like the illicit love child of Aphrodite and the Grim Reaper. I watch him study the beverage menu with silent intensity out of the corner of one eye, while scribbling names on coffee cups and making change. What’s your story? I wonder in the back of my mind.
“What can I get you?” I ask solicitously when he finally moves to the front of my queue. I try not to notice the lean muscles his sleeveless black tee displays, but it’s a lost cause, and I barely catch his order in time to shout it back to Doc, who’s working the shift with Addy and me.
“Ten thousand,” he says in an even tone, peering at me with a slight frown.
Great, one of those, I think to myself as I take his money and make change.
“That is not a name, that’s a number!” protests Doc, overhearing our conversation as he fills orders behind me.
“Nevertheless, that’s my name,” he insists. “Made it up myself.”
Rolling my eyes, I scrawl the number on a coffee cup and hand it back to Doc. Not my problem, I tell myself.
“I suppose you’d have to,” Doc says with a shake of his head, putting lids on two coffees before handing them to am impatiently waiting customer. “Well hey, I get it kid. I prefer a nickname myself. Does it mean anything?”
“How many zombies I’m going to kill,” he says matter-of-factly as Doc fills his order. “In my game,” he emphasizes, patting the laptop bag slung across his torso.
“So now we know who to call during the zombie apocalypse,” I tease, grinning over at Doc.
“Already at 1,187,” he says, while Doc prepares his order. “You might do worse.”
I have no clever reply for that, and it irritates me a little as the machines whir and spit behind me. When Doc finishes his order, I hand it to the handsome, gothic, would-be zombie sniper a little resentfully. Raising his eyebrows at me in silent farewell, he makes his way to a secluded corner of the shop where he can put on headphones and kill Zs without distraction.
I don’t quite manage to forget his presence for the rest of my shift.
His visits are all the same. Insisting on his absurd nickname, ordering a large, heavily caffeinated beverage, and remaining largely tight-lipped except for his Z count. Doc in particular seems to look forward to the mysterious 10k’s Saturday visits. 10k seems to have awoken a long-denied fatherly instinct in him, for all that he’s in his fifties, along with a surprising mutual interest in zombies.
“Hey, it’s 10k!” Doc greets him one Saturday, long after his visits have become routine. “How ya doin’ kid? What’s the count?”
“2, 322,” he replies laconically as I prepare his cup.
I do the math, based on his last kill count. “206?” I comment skeptically, capping my marker. “In one week?”
“Slow week,” he shrugs.
I laugh shortly. “If that’s your idea of slow, I don’t even want to know what your regular count is. Don’t you do anything else?”
“Sure, I do other things,” he nods without elaborating. “Your name tag is missing,” he notes after a few moments, studying the selection of pastries on display.
“So it is,” I agree, surprised that he’d noticed. “I lost it somewhere. Warren wasn’t happy, but I figured I’d just make up a new name until I get a replacement,” I smile with a sarcastic lift of my eyebrows.
His eyes narrow a fraction. “So what’s your name?”
“Red,” I tell him with a glance down at my apron, suddenly seized with the unholy urge to fuck with him the way he kept fucking with me every time he ordered a coffee, “My name is Red.”
“That’s a color, that’s not a name,” he teases with the ghost of a smile as Doc hands him his coffee.
“You asked for my name, that’s my name,” I retort with satisfaction. “Ten thousand isn’t a name, either. It’s a number.”
He grins at me—the first genuine smile I’ve managed to extract from him—and it’s like the sun peeping through the clouds. “Batman, then,” he says before taking a sip of his coffee. “You can never go wrong with Batman, right?” he says, departing for his usual corner to snuff out zombies on his laptop.
“Batman has a real name!” I call after him in annoyance.
“Yeah, but almost nobody knows it,” Addy laughs from the register beside mine. “Face it, he beat you at your own twisted game. Better luck next time.”
“Games,” I mutter to myself as Warren shouts from the back room that it’s time for me to take my break. “Fracking men and zombies and games!”
The next few Saturdays, I do my best to ignore him beyond taking his order and making change. It works pretty well, except 10k has taken to lingering by the counter after receiving his coffee, talking to Doc and Addy whenever there’s a lull in the rush of customers. No matter how little I say, it’s impossible not to notice him. Nor can I help but hear his quiet, mellow voice making casual conversation with Doc and Addy about this or that zombie game or movie.
It’s all I can do to keep my mouth shut. They aren’t the only ones with a growing interest in zombies, thanks to 10k, but I’m not about to let on about that, or about anything else that might hint strongly at my attraction to him.
“So I guess you don’t go out a lot for coffee,” 10k says suddenly on one Saturday morning. Doc and Addy are preoccupied with servicing one of the machines, and the shop is blessedly still for late morning.
“Excuse me?” I blink, taken by surprise. I look up and find him studying me over his coffee cup, his expression neutral.
“I said I bet you don’t go out for coffee much,” he repeated with a shrug.  “A girl like you, working at a place like this…I bet you don’t get asked out for it, am I right?”
“No,” I admit slowly, seeing the logic of his thought process, “uh, I don’t.”
“Too bad,” he muses, gazing around the small little shop as if seeing it with brand new eyes. “This would be a nice place to go.” His eyes glitter at me over his coffee cup. “If you didn’t work here.” Raising his cup in a salute of farewell, he saunters off to increase his Z count at last.
“I can’t believe you,” Addy says to me exasperation after he retreats to his usual remote corner of the shop. She and Doc may still be struggling to fix the espresso machine, but their ears, apparently, aren’t broken in the least. “That boy clearly wanted to ask you out, and you just stood there and didn’t say anything!”
“Yeah?” I sniff defensively. “So why didn’t he, then?”
“Oh, come on. He’s so painfully shy, he’s probably still a virgin,” Addy says in a low tone, with a careful glance in 10k’s direction to make certain he couldn’t overhear. Mercifully, his headphones are already on and he’s too absorbed in loading his game to take notice of anything. “I don’t think he has any clue how to ask a girl out for a date. Give him a break and go make his day by flirting with him or something. Anyone with eyes and ears can tell you’re into him, too.”
“I am not.” But the protest sounds feeble, even to my ears.
“Liar,” Addy retorts cheerfully. “If you don’t like him, why do you watch the door so obsessively on Saturday mornings until he walks in?”
“Don’t you all have that machine working yet?” Warren interrupts, emerging from the break room to check on Doc and Addy’s progress. “Here, let me help.” She hops over one end of the counter to lend a hand, and I glance instinctively toward the corner where 10k sits.
“Warren, I’m taking a break,” I say suddenly, untying my apron strings.
“What?” she looks up in surprise. “But you already took your lunch.”
“Half of my lunch,” I remind her, watching 10k, who’s too intent on killing Zs to notice. “We got slammed, remember? Consider this my other half. This place is practically empty anyway.”
“All right,” she says following my gaze. She smiles in mild amusement. “But be back before the next rush.”
Nodding, I fold the apron over one arm and cross the length of the shop to where 10k sits. I hover for a moment, hesitating, and then slide into the booth next to him. The movement catches his attention, and it’s his turn to look up in surprise. “Red,” he says, pulling down his headphones. He quickly pauses his game, mid-zombie attack. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone pointed out to me that I don’t get asked out for a lot of coffee,” I say. He looks away in embarrassment, and I could swear he is blushing. “The truth is, I don’t drink much coffee, anyway.”
“Oh.” He tries to keep his expression neutral, but I catch the brief flash of disappointment on his face just the same. “So then why do you work in a coffee shop?” he wonders.
“I have a little foster brother that I help take care of,” I offer truthfully. “I don’t have to work to help out, but I like to, and it means I can take him places for fun that he wouldn’t be able to experience otherwise.” I pause, watching him as he considers this information. His expression is puzzled, as if he doesn’t know why in the world I’m telling him any of this.
“But,” I continue carefully, “just because I don’t drink coffee doesn’t mean I don’t like to go out and do other things. There’s a zombie run downtown next weekend, and I’m taking my little brother. Maybe you’d like to come with us?”
He stares at me for a moment, uncomprehending, and then slowly smiles as my meaning dawns on him.  “Oh,” he replies, in an entirely different tone this time. “Yeah, I could do that. If you want.”
“I do.” I smile back at him, and then hesitate for a moment before saying, “But would you please tell me your real name now? You already know mine from my name tag, and fair is fair.”
“It’s Thomas,” he says with a little embarrassment. “Tommy, for short. But I’d rather people just called me 10k.”
“All right, Ten,” I say with another smile, “I can do that. If you call me Red…”
