You took a drink of tea during an instrumental and he laughed at the mug you were drinking out of, obviously your own, that said, “Adulting is hard.”

You looked up at the sound and your posture stiffened at the way that he was looking at you, misinterpreting his amusement for something more malicious. You turned back to your computer and started writing again, but this time without the dancing and the freedom of movement you’d allowed yourself before. You still had another thirty minutes of writing time to get through, so you couldn’t exactly leave. You weren’t going to break your routine for some asshole who was just rolling through town. The locals that frequented this coffee shop had all been pretty good about ignoring your strange way of writing, and while you were sure some of them looked at your funny behind your back you never stopped, because it was a part of your process.

“Yeah, you’re smooth,” Dean shook his head and took a deep drink from his coffee. Sam glared at Dean and then looked back at you where you were pointedly not looking his direction, your natural movements from before looking almost stilted. He felt really bad for making you uncomfortable, and Dean wasn’t making it any better, so he decided to kill two birds with one stone and go apologize to you.

Meanwhile, you took another sip of your tea and let yourself settle back into the music, forcing yourself to lean back against the chair of your favorite table in the corner, facing the room where the people watching was the best. You forced out a couple hundred words before someone’s shadow loomed over you. You looked up at the same guy who had been laughing at you and you finished writing your sentence before taking your headphones off and raising an eyebrow at the frankly unfairly attractive man in front of you.

“Can I help you?” You felt distinctly like a cornered animal with him blocking your exit, easily able to stop you before you got all the way around the table. 

“Um, yeah, I mean, I- Is this seat taken?” He asked. You looked at the seat that he was pointing at, directly in front of you where all your books and research were spread out. You couldn’t say yes, because you were a terrible liar, but saying no would be an open invitation, and you really didn’t want him to sit with you.

“There’s not that much space,” You said, instead of directly saying no, and he must have taken it as a yes, because he sat down in front of you.

“I don’t need much space. I just, I wanted to apologize, and I didn’t think talking down at you was the best way to do it.”

You leaned away from him unconsciously as he leaned forward. “Apology accepted.” You kind of just wanted him to go away.

“I didn’t apologize yet.” He said, and now he was kind of smiling, which put you on edge again, making you put your arms out on either side of your computer, gripping it like you could pick it up and run at a moment’s notice.

“You expressed intent, that’s good enough.” You kept glancing between him and the door, mentally trying to calculate the best way to get out.

“I just- I wasn’t laughing at you, earlier. I was laughing at your mug.” He pointed to the white porcelein in question and you looked down at it, not understanding what he meant for a second until you remembered you hadn’t grabbed your plain white mug on the way out this morning, because you still hadn’t washed out the coffee stains of your last all nighter. “I agree,” he said, offering an apologetic smile, and you untensed yourself slightly at that.

“Yeah,” you laughed, a little less uncomfortable, but still wary. “I left me usual one at home,” you said, like you owed him some sort of explanation. “Usually I don’t bring mugs that invite discourse when I’m trying to write my thesis paper.”

“Oh,” he said, obviously not knowing what to say to that. “Well, I guess I’ll let you get back to that.” He said, and you nodded, glancing back at your screen. You bit your lip as you watched him starting to get up, looking back at the timer in the corner of your screen. You decided to shoot and hope you didn’t hit yourself.

“I’ll be done in about twenty minutes, if you’d like to discourse.” You twiddled the fingers on your left hand and looked away when he looked back at you. “It doesn’t have to be about the mug.” You looked back up at him through your eyelashes, head still turned away but eyes unwilling to miss his reaction. He smiled and you couldn’t tell quite what color his eyes were, but they were really nice.