Work Text:
Flins is just getting into drawing the specific pixels of the plants hanging from the wall of the bedroom when the rusty, half-broken bell contraption by the door clangs with the arrival of a new person.
“Morning, Ineffa,” he says, without even glancing up from his laptop behind the counter. She’s not supposed to get in until four in the morning, but bakers wake up really early, right? “Getting an early start on the bagels?”
“Morning?” says the person in front of the counter.
Flins blinks. When did Ineffa’s voice get so… varied? And more masculine? She’s always kind of monotone. And she’s also five-foot-two. She shouldn’t be casting this much of a shadow over him…
Oh. This isn’t Ineffa at all. This is a two-meter man with a giant blue jacket and a headphone dent in the middle of his fluffy blond hair. This is—Flins can hardly believe it—a customer.
“It’s just past two,” the customer continues, leaning his elbow onto the counter. His smile is slanted. “What reasonable person would call that morning? The night is still young, isn’t it?”
Flins is ordinarily quite the gentleman. It’s why Aino keeps him around: his customer service is unparalleled. He can soothe anxious aunties planning birthday surprises. He can help broke college students find something less expensive and just as satisfactory as a full-size cake. He can calm screaming children down when the shop has run out of their favorite flavor of cupcake. Of course he can be polite to a man in the shop at—
“Why the hell are you in a bakery at two in the morning?” Flins says incredulously.
“You were open.”
Flins sighs and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the man is still there. “Look,” he says, as patiently as he can. “The bakery won’t have fresh baked goods until about five in the morning. The head baker, Ineffa, gets in at four. I can have her make something for you when she gets in.”
The man taps something out on his phone, then turns it around to show him. “Sunsettia Maps says you’re open twenty-four hours on the weekend. All of Friday and Saturday night.”
Flins grimaces. It’s technically true; every Friday and Saturday, he keeps shop all night until Ineffa gets in. “That’s for rush orders,” he tries to argue. “We stay open for people to place last-minute requests for the weekend.”
The man’s grin widens. “Okay,” he says, taking his phone back. “Then I have a rush order. One of whatever you’ve got. Or maybe two.”
Flins stares at him.
“I’m not picky,” he says. “Just kinda hungry.”
He can’t be serious. It’s a Friday night—or a Saturday morning, depending how one looks at it—and he’s in Aino’s only-open-on-paper bakery, asking for a pastry. He can believe the nine p.m. rush for another pie at a party, or the midnight phone-calls to place a cupcake order. But this? This makes no sense.
“Please?” the man asks sweetly.
Flins types something into his browser aggressively. He swivels his laptop around. “This,” he says drily, “is a map of all the pubs in the area. Known for being open late, and serving actual food.”
“This place was closer.”
Flins carefully does not point out that whatever time he saved by not walking the extra block to the nearest pub has since been wasted on this conversation.
“And,” the man says, leaning against the counter, “I got to meet you.”
Flins blinks. “Excuse me?”
The man just smiles wider.
Flins suddenly feels a little too warm. Maybe Ineffa turned the heat up too high when she was leaving the bread to rise. He looks at the man, intending to turn him away again. Instead he opens his mouth and says, “We have some cheese scones from this afternoon that should still be pretty fresh.”
His eyes light up with surprise, then mellow out again. “Great! Two of those, maybe?”
Flins has gotten himself too far into this hole to dig his way back out. He takes one of the paper pastry bags and goes into the back to find the cheese scones.
When he comes back out, the man already has his wallet out. He hands over a two-thousand-mora bill immediately.
“It’s eight hundred,” Flins says, raising his eyebrows. He reaches for the cash register.
“I don’t want change.”
Flins frowns and closes the register. “Okay,” he says slowly. “Would you like to add something else? You can place an order for eight mini cupcakes and pick them up later this afternoon. That would be twelve hundred, leaving you even.”
“I don’t need cupcakes.”
Flins looks at him, perplexed. “You can pre-pay for croissants,” he offers. “Ineffa’s almond croissants are very popular.”
He shakes his head. “Just keep it.”
Flins raises his eyebrows. But he’s not rejecting extra cash, so he takes it.
“By the way, what were you working on before I got here? You looked pretty into it.”
Oh. That. Flins turns his laptop back around and closes the tab with the map of pubs. Behind it lies the new pixel art for the background of his ongoing video game, Graveyard Shift. “Nothing much,” he says. “I was just drawing a new background for my indie game.”
“A game, huh,” he says, looking oddly focused. “What platform? What style? What’s it called?”
Too many questions. Flins slams his laptop closed. “If you don’t want to purchase anything else, we thank you for your patronage.”
“Not even a little hint?” he says, grinning widely.
“Good night.”
“I thought it was morning.”
Flins closes his eyes. He does not dignify that with a response.
“Oh,” he says brightly. “By the way, the name’s Varka.”
“Okay,” says Flins, a little lost. “We don’t need a name for the order. It’s not being placed in advance.”
Varka laughs. “Just thought you might want to know,” he says, still smiling. “And yours?”
“What?”
“Your name,” says Varka. “Or should I keep calling you ‘pretty cashier’ in my head?”
Flins blinks rapidly. His face is warm again. “You’re—huh?”
Varka just watches him, amused.
“…Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins,” he says, not breaking eye contact. “Or—just Flins is fine.”
He doesn’t usually stumble over that. He’s introduced himself politely so many times that it should be second nature, and yet here he is, acting like it’s his first time offering a shorter version of his name to someone.
“Flins,” he repeats, looking satisfied. “In that case, good morning.”
Then he walks out of the bakery door.
Aino’s weird bell contraption makes its odd clanging sound as the door falls shut. Flins stands there, baffled, and stares out the door for a long while. He stares until he’s certain that Varka is long gone, and then a little longer for good measure.
Then he opens his laptop to the pixelated plants and gets back to work.
***
When he was younger, Flins dreamed of being part of an enormous video game company. He wanted to write a character so popular that they had hordes of online fans defending their every move. But he hated his time at FATUI GAMES, and after finishing his design work on Damselette: Moon Maiden, he quit the company entirely and swore off game design forever.
Then he got the idea for Graveyard Shift.
It’s smaller, and quieter, and nowhere near as popular as Moon Maiden still is, even three years later. But Graveyard Shift is special to him, because it combines his love of darkness and comedy into a sweet package. The player gets a text message from the Grim Reaper, and then has to evade his various attempts to reap their soul while charming him into becoming their friend on a one-week time limit.
Well. That’s the plan, at least. Flins is pretty sure the Grim Reaper is nowhere close to being the player’s friend yet. But he’ll get there. Maybe once Flins has written a few more updates.
Anyway, the game is his passion project, and it’s alright that it isn’t very popular. He isn’t making it for anyone else.
So when, on the following Friday night, the game receives almost five thousand more downloads, he stares at his laptop screen in shock.
He frantically searches up his own game. The first five results are all variations of the video game platform’s listing for it, but the sixth is new. It’s a link to a streamer he’s never heard of: Grandmaster. Kind of a stupid name, he thinks, smiling wryly. Nevertheless, he opens the stream.
Sure enough, it’s his own game. The streamer is only on the first day, and he’s barely into the plot at all. He’s decorating his room with the plants Flins was drawing only last week. Flins smiles when he looks at them. He knew they’d be popular! Everyone loves plants, right? A couple good succulents are the key to anyone’s heart…
Then he looks at the webcam in the corner.
“The bookshelf?” Grandmaster is saying, his eyebrows raised. “Dandelion, I’m not putting the bookshelf in my room. What if they fall onto the bed? Plants are the superior choice. Besides, don’t you want to move onto the plot? We’ve already spent an hour on character creation.”
Flins nearly falls off his wooden stool.
Because this man—Grandmaster, who’s playing Flins’s game live in front of twenty thousand people—is Varka.
Flins watches, captivated, as Varka places the plants throughout his room. He likes the succulents, Flins notices. Good—he spent a lot of time drawing all of those last week in the—
Oh. In the bakery… Where Varka had seen him…
Had Varka somehow seen them on his screen? But there was no way he’d found Flins’s game just from seeing a few pixelated succulents.
Above him, Aino’s weird doorbell contraption rings again. A customer. It’s a young man, holding a sheet of yellow paper and looking down at it nervously.
It must be a coincidence, Flins decides, as he gives the customer his most welcoming smile. A crazy coincidence.
***
Grandmaster’s stream goes on for hours. He makes it through almost all of Flins’s published content—there’s only three days released of the seven that the Grim Reaper promised in the player’s deal.
Theoretically, Flins shouldn’t find this interesting to watch. He wrote the game, after all; he knows what happens with each dialogue choice. He knows how everything goes. But Varka is clearly an entertainer, joking around and enthusiastically reading his own dialogue choices and throwing his head back when he laughs. He’s got a strangely rich laugh, Flins notices vaguely. A passionate laugh. The laugh of a man who cares.
The stream ends at one in the morning. Flins watches the chat for a while after the stream ends. When he tabs back over to the number of downloads on Graveyard Shift, there’s another three thousand. He stares at the number. The blood drains from his face.
Aino’s bell clangs.
Flins jolts himself out of his stupor. “Hello,” he says automatically. “How may I… help…”
He trails off. Standing in the doorway is Varka, fresh off the stream. The headphones have still left their imprint in his hair, just like last time.
“Hey,” Varka says, sweeping a hand through his hair. It does nothing to dampen the chaotic mess. “Got anything for me today?”
“You’re back,” Flins says, a little stupidly.
“Yep,” says Varka, his mouth quirking up. “Did you think you’d scared me off? Takes a lot more than that.”
“…Ineffa made peanut butter cookies,” Flins says, instead of actually responding. “Does that sound alright?”
Varka beams. He reaches for his wallet. “That sounds perfect. Two of them? Maybe three?”
Flins looks at him judgmentally from the display case, where he’s picking up the cookies with tongs. “Three cookies,” he says flatly. “For dinner.”
“It’s not dinner,” Varka says, grinning down at him through the glass. “I had dinner before work. But since I work late, I always want something to eat afterwards. I’m new here—moved from Mondstadt. Used to always hit up the Cat’s Tail, but—” He gestures vaguely out toward the Nasha Town streets. “No Cat’s Tail here, as you can see. So I gotta find a new place to become a regular.”
Flins raises his eyebrows. “A regular?”
Varka nods.
“So you’ll be back,” Flins says, not quite a question.
“Every week,” Varka says, smiling with his shining teeth. “If that’s alright with you.”
Flins bites down a smile. Instead of answering, he hands over the cookies. “Nine hundred mora.”
Varka places another two-thousand note on the counter.
“I’ll take it out of last time,” Flins says, pushing it back towards him. “You’ve already covered it.”
Varka shrugs and takes the cookies. “Well,” he says, “thank you, Flins.”
Flins blinks. “I didn’t think you’d remember.”
“Not your whole name,” Varka says, a little bashful. “But that one’s easy enough. Besides, if I’m gonna see you every week, I ought to know who you are, right? Flins, game designer.”
“Not really,” Flins confesses, glancing at his laptop. He hasn’t worked on his game at all tonight; he’s just been watching the stream. His poor, unfinished dialogue draft sits in the background of his desktop, waiting for him to actually write it. “I used to be a dev with FATUI, but that didn’t work out.”
Varka’s eyes widen. “Which games did you work on? Any that I’d know? I’m a gamer on occasion.”
Flins raises his eyebrows. Before he can stop himself, he says, “I’m pretty sure streaming to twenty thousand people isn’t an occasional commitment.”
Varka stares at him. Then he throws his head back and laughs.
“I’m not a fan,” Flins says quickly, defending himself before the accusations can even start. “I just happened to see your stream and thought you looked familiar.”
“I wasn’t going to say you were,” Varka says, still grinning eagerly. “But now that you’ve brought it up…”
Flins hurriedly slams his laptop, still boasting Grandmaster’s offline tab, closed. “Take your damn peanut butter cookies,” he says sharply, shoving them across the counter towards him. “Next week I’ll have Ineffa make you something else.”
Varka’s hand freezes on the wax paper. “You will?”
“You can’t eat sweets every time you’re hungry. And it seems like you don’t want to go somewhere else. Naturally, I’ll have something for you next time.”
Varka doesn’t take the cookies. Instead, he looks at Flins, an odd intensity to his eyes. “You never told me which FATUI games you worked on.”
“Game,” Flins corrects. “Just one. Damselette: Moon Maiden. I quit right after it was finished.”
Varka stares at him, his eyes wide. He looks genuinely caught off guard for the first time. “You designed Moon Maiden?”
Flins pushes the cookies toward him again. “It’s not that impressive,” he says, looking away. “I just did character design for the townspeople. And it’s not even the studio’s biggest game. I mean, Crimson Witch of Flame and Balladeer: Wandering Chronicles are way more popular than—”
Varka is still looking at him with that strange, intense expression on his face.
Flins falters. “—than Moon Maiden,” he finishes, quieter. “But I suppose it was still impressive.”
Varka slowly takes the bag from the counter. Then he says, “That was the game I got famous for playing.”
Flins didn’t know people streamed that game at all. He blocked all the tags for it once he quit production, and vowed never to think about it again. “I’m glad, then.”
Varka’s mouth twists into a slanted smile. “I was going to be a realtor,” he says, like it’s a joke. “Can you imagine? Me, in a suit every day, with my hair gelled up. Talking to rich people about houses I can’t afford. It sounds terrible.” He laughs without much humor at all. “Now I get paid to play video games and make jokes about them. Life finds a way, I guess.”
Flins looks at him appraisingly. He hadn’t taken much notice of Varka’s clothes before; he’s wearing a pair of jeans with bright yellow patches, and a teal shirt with the same blue oversized jacket as last week. And his hair is atrociously messy. “Hm,” he says, smiling a little. “You’re right. I don’t think I can see you as a realtor. Imagine that ensemble on billboards, telling you to sell your house…”
“I wouldn’t wear this, obviously,” Varka says, sighing through his nose. “I clean up pretty well, you know? And I’ve got a great smile.” Here he flashes his most charming, shimmering smile, as if to prove his own point.
Flins stares at him. His smile is, as much as he hates to admit it, unfairly charming, even under the late-night bakery lights and the glow of the pastry case.
“Anyway,” says Varka, like he hadn’t just outshone any of the streetlights outside the window. “I’ll see you next week?”
Flins watches him go, a little bewitched. “Yeah,” he says vaguely. He’s not sure if Varka hears him or not. He’s not sure if it matters.
Only once Varka is long gone does he notice the two-thousand-mora note still left on the counter.
***
“Good morning,” says Ineffa, at precisely four on the dot.
Flins practically jumps. Upon seeing Ineffa waiting for him, he relaxes again. “Oh,” he says, sighing in relief. “Morning, Ineffa. I didn’t hear you come in—did the doorbell break?”
“It rang,” says Ineffa. “Aino made it. It cannot fail in its task.”
Flins raises his eyebrows. He’s pretty sure that Aino’s contraptions fail constantly. Like her… innovative cooking techniques. There’s a reason Ineffa’s the head baker, rather than Aino herself.
“It appears you did not notice my arrival. Were you doing something very engaging?”
Flins takes one guilty look at Varka’s frozen face on his screen and slams his laptop shut. “Nothing in particular,” he says. “Just watching someone stream Moon Maiden. The video’s a few years old.”
Ineffa tilts her head, though her expression remains precisely the same. “I was under the impression you blocked all news about that game.”
“There’s a first time for everything, I suppose,” Flins says truthfully. There’s a first time for watching videos of your own game. There’s a first time for thinking this much about a customer, too. That’s the thing: Flins is cordial, and gentlemanly, but he isn’t warm. He doesn’t remember people’s names. He barely even remembers familiar faces. And yet here is Varka, ruining all of that. Here is Varka with whom he isn’t polite at all, and yet this is the person who has left the deepest impression upon him.
“Hm,” says Ineffa. “Today I am making bagels. Would you like one?”
Flins smiles, just a little. Ineffa and Aino are both kind in a way that many people aren’t in Nasha Town. “The usual, please.”
Ineffa nods. “Poppy seed bagel with vegetable cream cheese, coming right up.”
Then she vanishes into the back, already whipping out her impressive and perplexing collection of baking implements.
“Wait,” Flins calls, remembering abruptly.
Ineffa pokes her head around the corner. Her hair, somehow, already has a faint dusting of flour along one strand. “Yes?”
“…Can you leave something for me to bake at night?” he asks, feeling a little silly. “Just something I can put in the oven for a while. Maybe savory, with some protein.”
“Oh,” says Ineffa. She looks faintly curious.
Flins grits his teeth, cooks up about twelve equally shitty lies in his mind, and waits for her to ask.
“Okay,” says Ineffa, evidently unbothered. “Next Friday.”
She goes back into the kitchen. Flins watches her and thanks his lucky stars that Ineffa isn’t prone to asking questions. If only everyone was like that, he thinks. If only everyone minded their own business so well.
***
Varka, naturally, has all of Moon Maiden uploaded on his channel. He holds the second-place record for the one hundred percent completion speedrun. Flins watches his record-setting speedrun, then a few of his practice runs. He leaves the old streams playing in the background while he works on writing dialogue.
The Grim Reaper’s dialogue is easy to write. He’s sarcastic and stubborn and, although polite at times, can also be remarkably ungentlemanly. Flins knows exactly what the Grim Reaper would say, because it’s also what he would say.
The anomaly, however, is the player.
The players get several dialogue choices in most interactions. Flins has a few different archetypes he draws from: sarcastic, easygoing, suspicious… But it’s the fifth day of the player’s bet with the Grim Reaper, and he should branch out a little. He knows that objectively, but it’s much harder in practice. Especially considering that he only talks to about five people. Ineffa, Aino, Nefer, Nefer’s cat, and—
“You think we need the cold potion? Don’t be silly, Dandelion. Obviously Spindrift’s right—a little cold never hurt anyone. We’ll just go for it…”
Flins whirls around to his laptop.
Of course. Of course. He has a player right here, doesn’t he? He can base the player off of this dialogue. Varka even reads all of his lines aloud, like he’s expressing them as himself. It’s perfect.
Flins closes his eyes. He imagines the lines.
“Another failed attempt to claim my soul? This is getting a little embarrassing for you. Isn’t this supposed to be your job?”
“I’m usually not the one claiming the souls,” Flins mutters aloud as he types into the Grim Reaper’s dialogue. “I just direct them to their rightful place.”
The Varka in his mind leans back in his chair, his grin widening. “Yeah? You’re used to having souls handed to you on a silver platter?”
‘You make it sound like I’m spoiled,’ Flins types, silent this time. ‘It’s a noble profession, and one which requires a great deal of finesse.’
The Varka in his mind raises his eyebrows. “Sounds more like you’re a professional princess.”
Flins blinks. He wouldn’t have ever written that. But he leaves it anyway, and for the sake of the argument, he continues typing. ‘You could at least act scared. I’m trying to end your life.’
“Trying,” Varka repeats, his eyes glinting. “Some ‘Grim Reaper,’ huh? You’re not terrifying at all.”
‘Give me two more days,’ Flins types. ‘That was our deal. I have two more days to win your soul.’
“And I,” says Varka in his mind, looking right into his eyes, “have two more days to win your heart.”
Flins jolts.
The words are already typed into the dialogue options like they were always there. Like that was always where he intended for the game to go.
It isn’t a dating sim, he reasons to himself, hovering over the delete key. He’s always intended for the Grim Reaper to soften a little, to open himself up to the player, but he’d never thought of—of making a romance option. It didn’t even seem like it was on the cards.
He’d fashioned the Grim Reaper, maybe subconsciously, after himself. He’d imagined the player to be someone who wanted to befriend him. Someone who cared about what he had to say. They had always been faceless in his mind. Just an anonymous listener. But now that he has the image of Varka in his mind, he can’t get it out.
He looks at the text string one more time. Then he moves on to the next dialogue tree.
Later. He’ll change it later.
***
“Oh! We finally get to flirt with him!”
Flins coughs loudly to the empty bakery. He turns down his laptop volume, although there’s no one else around to hear it, and it’s already quite low.
“Oh, this is great,” says Varka—or rather, Grandmaster—from his laptop. “You guys spent the whole last stream thirsting over the Grim Reaper and now it’s going to pay off! I knew there was going to be a romance path!”
Flins stares at the screen, baffled. The stream chat races by, all agreeing with him.
He hadn’t even intended for the Grim Reaper to be… thirstable. He’d just given him a large black cloak and strange eyes and faded blue hair. A little like his own hair, before he’d let it start going black again at the roots. He didn’t look exactly like Flins, but he didn’t look unlike Flins either.
“We obviously have to pick them all,” Varka says, like it’s not even worth thinking about. “If there’s any chance of a romance ending, we have to get it, right? I know you all want to get it.”
Flins doesn’t look at the chat. He quickly closes the stream tab. His head is spinning.
He’s never thought about the ending. He’d always imagined that the player won their bet and received something from the Grim Reaper in exchange. Maybe one of the endings was to ask for his friendship. But—here he glances at his history, half-debating reopening the stream—maybe there should be a romance ending too. Perhaps when the player evades death for the seventh time, they should demand their reward. Should grab him by the collar of his cloak and take it for themselves.
The idea makes something twist in his stomach. No. He can’t do that. He won’t do that. It would never work.
Flins is, despite it all, skittish. He shies away from unfamiliar things on instinct. He shied away from working on a second game at FATUI; he shied away from leaving Nod-Krai to find a different game studio to work at; he shied away from anyone unfamiliar until he ended up at Aino’s. If someone asked him on a date, he’d run.
Flins opens his draft of the day six dialogue. He stares at the empty page. He doesn’t know what to do about it. The flirty dialogue is one thing; following through on it is another thing entirely. But if this is where the game has been going, and if this is where he wants it to go, then…
He sets his fingers on the keyboard.
The instant his hands make contact, an unholy cacophony of mechanical sounds echoes through the shop. Flins jumps and slams his laptop shut again. Aino’s screeching attempt at a doorbell has gotten worse.
“Hey,” he says, without checking who’s at the door. There’s only one person who comes into the shop this late. He stands up from the stool, already turning toward the back. “Ineffa made spinach and cheese pastries. I’ll put them in the…”
“Wait,” says Varka’s voice from in front of the counter.
Flins raises his eyebrows at him. He turns around. “What—”
And then the words die in his throat.
Because Varka isn’t wearing that same blue jacket again. Instead, he’s wearing gray dress pants and a black button-up with the sleeves rolled up. And his hair is smoothed down, kept tame with gel and messed up just the correct amount to look sweet and careless. His face is smooth-shaven for the first time, his skin shimmering. There’s no trace of the headphone dent or the shadows beneath his eyes.
Flins stares at him. He can’t quite remember what he was doing.
“You didn’t believe me,” Varka says, smiling slightly. “When I said I cleaned up nice. So I’m proving it.”
“It’s two in the morning,” Flins says weakly. “And you were streaming an hour ago. How did you have time to—?”
Varka nods and leans against the counter. “Ended early. I wanted to catch you off guard. Did it work?”
Flins tries to look away and notices that not only has he dressed up, he’s also added a thin gold necklace and three gold rings. His eyes catch on the gleam of the metal in the light. He swallows. “Yes,” he says, a little lost. Then, “You look nice.”
Varka’s confident smile falters slightly. He shifts on his feet. “Thanks.”
They stare at each other for another moment. It should be awkward. It should make Flins break into a cold sweat. But instead he just feels warm. The latent desire to smile rises in his face.
Flins clears his throat. “I’m going to heat up the—”
“—Yeah,” Varka says. His face is a little pink. “Sounds great.”
Flins disappears into the back. He grabs Ineffa’s spoils: three spinach and cheese pastries. She’d given them to him with a look that made Flins certain she saw through him, though her expression stayed exactly the same. Flins likes her, but sometimes he feels like there’s no keeping a secret from her. Maybe that’s why she never minds his business. She just knows it all without asking.
He puts them in the pastry-warming oven and sets a five-minute timer. Then he takes a steadying breath and returns to the front of the shop.
Varka is looking idly at the items still left in the display case. When Flins comes back, he looks up through the glass and says, “Do you bake any of the things here?”
Flins blinks. He hadn’t been expecting that question. “Not really.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“I don’t make any of the recipes. But I’m Ineffa’s assistant during the weekdays.”
“Huh,” Varka says, standing back up again. He must be wearing heeled shoes; he’s the same height as Flins now, when usually he’s a tiny bit shorter. “So you’re not just on the graveyard shift?”
Flins freezes.
There’s no way he knows. He can’t have associated the game with him. He had nothing to go off of. Even if he had seen the designs—
“You know,” Varka says, unbothered. “Graveyard shift. Like, the night shift. I thought you only worked odd hours.”
Flins snaps himself out of it. Maybe he’s just got the phrase on his mind after playing the game. “No,” he says, forcing his voice to stabilize again. “During the week, I help Aino at the counter, or Ineffa in the back. The graveyard shift is only on the weekends. Just for rush orders. And cleaning up after Aino.”
Varka tilts his head, still smiling that disorienting, shimmering smile. “Does the infamous owner need cleaning up after?”
“You have no idea,” Flins mutters, staring accusatorily at the doorbell contraption. “She’s… a mechanic. An inventor, maybe. Neither profession is known for their cleanliness and organization.”
“And that’s where you come in,” Varka guesses. “Making everything pretty?”
“It might be more accurate to say ‘tidy.’”
“Really?” Varka says, propping his chin in his hand. He leans his elbow on the counter. “But you make this whole place prettier just by being here.”
Flins blinks several times rapidly. He opens his mouth to reply.
The pastry oven beeps very aggressively.
“…I have to get that,” Flins says hurriedly, and then he flees into the other room.
He takes out the properly-warmed pastries, toasted golden on top, and tries to will the heat away from his face. It’s not even that strange. People have complimented him before. Shop customers call him a lovely young man all the time. Or a sweet person. A whole variety of niceties.
But, he reasons, none of their words have particular significance to him. If a kind stranger compliments him, he has no reason to take it seriously. But Varka? Who he remembers, and who remembers him? Who got dressed up for him and did his hair nicely and paid him too much for something he could easily get anywhere else?
Flins closes his eyes and takes a clearing breath. He piles the pastries onto a plate and goes back out.
Varka looks delighted at the selection. “Are these the special things you said you’d have the baker make? They smell great.”
Flins sets the plate down on the counter between them. “Spinach and cheese puff pastry. Ineffa’s testing out a new recipe, so they’re free as long as you give some feedback.”
“You know, anything tastes great at two in the morning, and I’m not picky. I don’t think I’ll be too helpful. Maybe someone with a talent for baking should try them…”
“It’s fine. Just say what you think.”
Varka sighs out a laugh. “Flins,” he says, looking directly at him. “I’m saying that you should try them with me.”
“Ineffa can make me more,” he says, a little confused.
“Let me rephrase,” Varka says. “I would like it if you sat with me at the table by the window. I don’t mind if you eat the pastries or not. You can keep me company, and we can talk.”
Flins stares at him. Slowly, without thinking too hard about it, he lifts the counter up and steps out from behind it.
Varka’s smile widens. He takes the plate and sits down at the little round table by the window. It’s not a big table; it’s only got two chairs next to it, and they have to be seated close together to work well. But Varka doesn’t seem to mind, so Flins pulls out the other chair and carefully sits down with him.
“Beautiful night,” Varka says, looking out the window at the Nasha Town streets. There’s a thin blanket of snow on a few of the awnings, a remnant of last night that refused to melt. “Looks cold out there.”
“Aino keeps our heaters working,” Flins says, looking out the window too. It’s easier than looking at him, even when he’s so close. Especially when he’s so close. “Bread needs a warm place to rise. Ineffa complains if the heat’s ever too low.”
Across from him, he hears the sound of Varka’s laugh, not the full-bodied one but the lighter one, the easier one.
Flins keeps staring out the window. He inhales sharply.
“Is the scenery that much more captivating than I am?” Varka says, sounding amused.
“No,” Flins says, a little louder than he means to. He clears his throat and looks at the plate of pastries instead. “I’ve just—never done this before.”
“Eaten pastries?”
“With someone else,” Flins clarifies. “Well, I’ve eaten with Ineffa and Aino and Nefer, but that isn’t the same. Never with someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
“Never mind,” Flins says quickly. He reaches out for the pastries.
“Wait,” says Varka, placing a hand on top of his to stop him.
Flins is so surprised by the touch that he actually looks at Varka across from him. “Yes?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. His pulse thunders in his wrists. “Did you change your mind? Do you want all of them?”
“No,” says Varka. “The opposite, actually.”
He carefully unfolds a napkin and places one of the pastries onto it, right in front of himself. Then he slides the plate across the table to sit in front of Flins.
Flins glances across the table at him, his eyes wide. “Don’t you want the plate?”
“It’s alright,” Varka says, already picking up his pastry, unbothered. “Next time, you can give us two plates.”
Flins looks at him, a little baffled. His face feels warm, and not just from the heaters. “Yeah,” he says, not looking at the plate at all. “Next time.”
***
“How were they?” Ineffa asks as she puts on her apron that morning.
“Good,” Flins says unthinkingly, packing up his laptop. “He thought they were a little salty, but I liked the flaked salt on top. It added some nice sharpness.”
Ineffa’s eyebrow actually moves slightly up. “He?”
Flins blinks.
“You mentioned a man,” she says. “I assume you don’t refer to yourself in the third person, and then also contradict your own opinions.”
“He’s no one,” Flins says, as casually as he can manage. “Just a customer.”
“Hm,” says Ineffa, tying her apron neatly behind her back. Then, “You’re a terrible liar.”
Flins sighs. But Ineffa doesn’t ask, because she never asks, so he packs up his bag and returns home, the taste of spinach puff pastry in his mouth and the faint echo of Varka’s laugh in his ears.
***
“Hey,” says a familiar voice over the top of his laptop screen.
Flins actually jumps. “Fuck,” he says, slamming the laptop—still boasting the nearly-finished Grandmaster stream—shut. “Didn’t anyone teach you to knock? Or at least to let the doorbell ring?”
Nefer leans down across the counter, smiling with her wide eyes but without her mouth. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be looking for customers.”
Flins looks at her skeptically. “You’re only a customer if you’re here to buy something. Coming here to annoy me doesn’t count.”
Nefer dramatically lowers her horned golden glasses to give him an offended look. “Of course I’m here to buy something! I’m commissioning a cake for next weekend! Don’t be so insensitive.”
Flins blinks. “You are?”
“Yes,” Nefer says, turning up her nose. “My precious baby darling is turning twenty-nine, and I must get something profoundly special for the big celebration we’re holding.”
“She’s twenty-nine?” Flins asks, baffled. Nefer only got the cat about two and a half years ago. Is it really possible that it was that ancient to begin with? Sure, her cat is strange and slightly ethereal and maybe a little creepy, but there’s no way it’s actually—
“In cat years,” Nefer says, waving her scarily long acrylics too close to his face. “Anyway, I can’t skip a single one of my darling’s birthdays, can I? I must celebrate on her accord, not my own.”
“…Right,” Flins says. “How many cat years are in a human year, again?”
“Fifteen.”
“You get fifteen birthday cakes each year?”
Nefer scoffs. “No. I get sixteen. One for my own birthday, remember?”
Flins stares at her. Slowly, he picks up the order notepad.
“Good,” Nefer says. She clicks her nails against the counter. “Now, please make me an eight-inch round cake. A carrot cake with pineapple in it. Add some chopped walnuts to the frosting layer, you know, the way Ineffa usually does. Decorate the top with liquorice flowers—she’s very fond of eating liquorice root, so I must pay homage to her. If you could also add yellow nasturtiums with the leaves on, that would be great. But no orange nasturtiums! The color would clash horribly with her fur. Oh, and give it a natural side, if you would. And if you could find me an antique floral cake base to serve it on, and perhaps a serving slicer, that would be perfect.”
Flins looks at her flatly. “You want us to go to an antique store?”
Wordlessly, Nefer reaches into her bra and drops her metal credit card against the counter.
Flins stares at it. It clangs quite loudly, then falls flat on the counter.
“Oops,” says Nefer, entirely deadpan. “I dropped my no-spending-limit double-platinum supercharged borderless emerald-status extra-durable stainless steel Bank of Teyvat universal credit card.”
Flins sighs heavily through his nose. He picks up the pen. “Which color of nasturtium leaves, again?”
Nefer smiles pleasantly and puts her credit card back into her bra. “Yellow. And nasturtium is a flower, not a leaf. They’re an edible flower variety that my dearest darling baby is quite fond of.”
There aren’t too many flowers in Nasha Town, so Flins has no idea what to picture. He opens his laptop to search for images of them.
Grandmaster’s stream page stares back at him.
Flins stares at it. The stream is already over. Which means Varka is done working, which means—
“Shit,” Flins mutters, gathering the order notepad in his hands and shoving it back onto the shelf leading to the back room. “Sorry, Nefer, I’ll look it up later. I need to get ready for something.” He turns around, already untying his shop-branded apron, reaching for the door to the staff quarters.
Only to be stopped by one of his apron strings.
“Hold it,” Nefer says, reeling him back in with the apron string. Flins is tangled up in the knots; he has no choice but to retreat back towards her. “You? Getting ready for a date?”
Flins blinks. “I never said—”
“You didn’t need to,” Nefer says, smiling with her eyes again. “I’ve told enough romance stories to know what I’m dealing with. Who was that man on the screen? Is he the one?”
Guiltily, Flins looks back down at his apron knots.
Nefer sighs and releases him. “At least let me see the outfit.”
Flins obediently goes into the staff room. There are ways to get out of making a cake, and there are ways to appease difficult customers, but there’s no way to stop Nefer once she gets going.
He reemerges two minutes later sans apron. It’s nothing too unusual: plain black pants and a long wool peacoat lined with silver fabric. But instead of his regular t-shirt and sweater, he’s swapped to a navy blue dress shirt under the coat. His hair is probably doing something terrible because of the quick change, but he can’t bring himself to care. Instead he just offers himself to Nefer like a sacrifice and waits.
Nefer examines him closely, her mouth unchanging. Then, completely straight-faced, she says, “Wow.”
Flins stares at her. He might be sweating a little.
“Didn’t know you owned anything nice,” she says, nodding approvingly. “I thought it was all loser hoodies and emo jeans.”
“I haven’t worn emo jeans in almost eight years,” Flins protests, crossing his arms. “I’ve got a perfectly good sense of style, thanks for asking. And he’ll be here any minute, so you should get out.”
“Wait,” Nefer says hastily. She reaches back into her bra.
“You don’t need to pre-pay. Just bring the card in when you pick up the cake. Next week, Friday morning, right?”
“Well, yes, but—where did it go? I swear it was right—AHA!”
And then, right before Flins’s eyes, Nefer pulls three tubes of lip gloss and a liquid eyeliner out of her bra.
Flins stares at her, baffled.
Nefer clicks her tongue. “Didn’t anyone teach you it’s rude to look at a lady’s bosom?”
“I think it’s justified this time,” Flins says faintly. Besides, he has remarkably little interest in her bosom, or any woman’s really, and they both know it. “What’s this for?”
Nefer looks at him and shakes her head slowly. Then she leaps up onto the counter and grabs him by the face, dragging him within seeing distance.
Flins nearly chokes. “What—”
“Shh,” Nefer says, leaning in closer. “Hold still.”
Flins watches her in terror. She draws alarmingly closer.
Aino’s clattering excuse for a doorbell comes to life again, clanking and whistling and screeching to announce the arrival of a new visitor.
“Oh,” says Varka, still standing in the doorway. The cold air rushes in. He moves toward the outside again. “I can just—”
“No!” Flins and Nefer yell at the same time.
Varka falters and steps inside. The door falls shut behind him.
“Just a minute,” Nefer says, smiling sweetly at him. Then she turns back to Flins with a vengeance and uncaps the pen like an executioner would unsheathe their axe.
Flins squeezes his eyes shut.
“No, no, don’t do that,” Nefer chides, tilting his head again. “Just look up for three… two… one… one half… one quarter… zero point one two five…”
“Can we please be done,” Flins says, still staring at the ceiling. His eyes are starting to water.
“Zero point zero six two five… and done!” Nefer announces, recapping the pen. She hops off the counter and waves to Varka as she stuffs the eyeliner and the three lip glosses back into her bra. “Good day,” she says eloquently, and then she walks right out.
Varka watches her go. He looks mildly bemused.
“She’s just like that,” Flins says, shaking his head. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s—” says Varka, and then he looks over at Flins and the easy expression instantly slips off his face.
Flins stares back at him, puzzled. “Did she mess up the eyeliner? I can fix it myself.” He pulls up his phone, swiping to the camera. He holds up the screen, staring at his own eyes. The eyeliner looks fine. Good, in fact. It follows the shape of his eye nicely without overshadowing his eyelashes too much.
“It—looks fine,” Varka says, less confident than usual. He clears his throat oddly and walks up to the counter. “Are you planning on going out? Is that why…?”
Flins puts away his phone. It sounds kind of idiotic now that he thinks about it, but… “You dressed up last time.”
Slowly, the smile returns to Varka’s face, then spreads with a vengeance. “So you dressed up nice for me?”
“Not really,” Flins mutters, his face a little warm. He busies himself in the pastry case. “Anyway, Ineffa made pumpkin and cheese scones for the season, and she said you could try them with the chive spread.”
“Do you want to go out?” Varka asks, out of nowhere.
Flins looks up from the pastry case.
Varka looks back at him. Slowly, his face flushes. “I meant—we could go somewhere. Tonight. Now. Do you like breweries? No, you’re probably too fancy for that. Wine? I don’t know what they make here, but there’s a place run by a Mondstadter with some imported stuff. Do you drink? We can do something else. Maybe there’s a—”
“I do,” Flins blurts. “Like wine. We can do that.”
Varka looks at him. He shuts his mouth.
“That would be nice,” Flins says, a little embarrassed. “Let me close up shop while you eat these. Then we can go.”
“Yeah,” Varka says, looking at him with a strange, starry quality in his eyes. “Perfect.”
***
“And Dandelion is my friend Jean—I know her family, good people. Oh, and Spindrift is Eula Lawrence. I thought she was an odd one at first, but she really grew on me, ha! And Frostbite—his brother used to be on my staff too, but he quit to go into winemaking. I wonder how his vintages are.”
Flins hides his smile into the wine glass. “It sounds like they mean a lot to you.”
Varka looks down at the table, smiling with his tired eyes. “Yeah,” he says, quieter than usual. “It’s hard to stay in contact with old friends, you know? Streaming is how we keep up with each other.”
Flins looks out into the cold, lightless night. “I wouldn’t know,” he says softly. “Never really had friends, let alone old ones.”
“What about that woman from earlier?”
Flins scoffs. “Nefer? She annoys the shit out of me.” He takes another sip of his drink, still scowling a little.
To his surprise, Varka just laughs. “Yeah. That’s how you know you’re friends.”
Flins rolls his eyes. It’s not very polite of him, but he’s off-shift, so there’s no one he needs to put on appearances for. He gets the impression that Varka doesn’t care too much about how well-mannered or gentlemanly he acts.
“You should make an account too,” Varka says, leaning in over the table. “That way you can talk to me while I’m streaming.”
Actually, Flins already has an account. He made it nine years ago. That awful username couldn't be waterboarded out of him. He clears his throat. “Can’t I just give you my number instead?”
Varka’s eyes go wide. He stares at him, baffled.
“…You get texts while you’re streaming, right?”
“You want to give me your number?” Varka asks, still looking incredulous. “I thought that’d take another few weeks.”
Flins looks at him skeptically. “If you don’t want me to text you, you can just say so.”
“No,” Varka says instantly, reaching for his phone so fast that the table nearly lurches. “No, I’d be fine with that! More than fine! Here—put your number in. I’ll text you.”
Flins watches him, a little amused, and enters his contact. His own phone dings in his pocket. He takes it out and checks. It’s a single emoji—a horse. “Really?”
Varka shrugs.
Flins can’t help smiling a little. “It’s too late for this,” he mutters, half-fondly.
“Too early,” Varka corrects. “Make sure you get the horse emoji in my contact name. It’s important.”
“Why?”
“Because I took the cavalry,” Varka says, like this means anything. “That’s why Kaeya doesn’t have it anymore.”
Flins has no clue what that means. He adds the horse emoji to the contact anyway.
His glass is almost empty, but he wants to make it last, so he swirls the wine around and looks out the window for a while. It’s not snowing, but the ground gleams with ice and the air is so frigid outside that it appears to stand still. Almost like time itself has come to a halt along with the wind.
By the time they both finish their wine, the faintest hints of sunlight are beginning to peek over the horizon. The sun probably won’t rise for another hour, but the faintest green hint has started in the sky, and outside, Nasha Town is about to start waking up.
Varka walks him back to the bakery. Flins reaches for the bakery keys, but Varka places his hand on his wrist.
Flins turns back, looking at him. His heart is thundering in his wrists. “Yes?”
“Text me,” Varka says. His eyes glimmer under the bakery’s dim front light. “Next time I’m streaming.”
Flins just smiles. “Of course.”
“Next week I’ll be finishing Graveyard Shift,” Varka says, releasing his wrist. “And I’d love to know what the creator himself thinks.”
Flins, his hand halfway to his keys, freezes.
“So text me,” Varka calls, grinning. He waves as he sets off back down the street. “And I’ll tell you how much I’ve been enjoying your game.”
“Wait,” Flins blurts, rushing down the street after him. “Wait—how did you know? I never told you I was—”
Varka tips his head back and laughs.
Flins cuts himself off. He stares at Varka, at his crinkled eyes and his shimmering hair and his easy smile.
“Of course I knew,” Varka says, still smiling. “You made my love interest look exactly like yourself.”
“Love interest?” Flins asks blankly. Then his face flares with heat. “The Grim Reaper?”
Varka’s smile widens. “Yeah,” he says. “I didn’t say the love interest. I said my love interest.”
Then he turns around and walks away again, leaving Flins with the keys to the bakery hanging limply in his hand, and the faintest sunlight falling onto his face, like he’s been waiting for it to rise all his life.
***
“As my reward for winning the bet,” Varka reads aloud off the Graveyard Shift dialogue screen, “I want something in exchange.”
From the other side of the stream, Flins reads the Grim Reaper’s dialogue in sync with the text: “I suppose,” he says quietly, “a deal is a deal. Then, mortal, what do you want?”
Varka looks at the three options. His smile widens. He’s beaming as he reads out his choice. “I want to know your name.”
The Grim Reaper looks at him, baffled. Flins smiles behind the screen. He knows where this is going. Along with him, he reads, “What?”
“Your name,” Varka repeats. Then, with his smile even wider, “Or should I keep calling you ‘pretty reaver’ in my head?”
The Grim Reaper looks at him. Then he sighs and closes his eyes. “As you wish.”
Varka leans in closer. The stream chat races by, eager.
“My name,” says the Grim Reaper, in perfect unison with Flins, “is—”
And then the screen goes black.
Slowly, in the center of the screen, the credits fade in. And right where the Grim Reaper’s textbox had been, a new name comes into view:
Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins.
“Well,” says Varka to his stream, his smile even wider. “Guess we’ll never know what his name really was!”
It’s clearly a bluff. He’s too cheerful, too knowing. He must know exactly what it means. He must know what Flins wanted him to see—his name, right where the character’s name would have been. His name, representing the person on screen. His name, the real one.
Flins smiles, just a little. Then he reaches for the bakery’s dishes and gets out two plates, one for each of them. And he waits.