Nico liked the time just after the breakfast rush, while the morning pastries were still fresh enough that no more needed to be baked, and the slowing down of customers meant that his morning staff could handle them all. Nico could come out into the dining area and mingle during those couple hours, and he was beginning to collect a few regulars who liked to come and talk to him.
Or who liked to come in and brood. One of those was coming in the door now, and Nico smiled to himself. Ari was here for his black coffee and breakfast sandwich, it seemed.
Ari was a good man to know, but Nico had always found him a hard man to spend time with. He always seemed to have half his mind elsewhere, and acted like a sense of humor offended his honor. He had sharp features and piercing eyes – a skin-deep reflection of his much deeper shifter nature – and golden hair that was always just slightly disheveled.
All in all, it gave him an air of distant tragedy that he probably didn't intend. Nico had watched plenty of people fall for it, which had always seemed to discomfit Ari more than please him. It would have been funny, if he hadn't pitied the man.
But Nico was a good host, if nothing else, and he wanted to get to know his regulars. So when Ari came in and got his order, Nico slid into the chair opposite him as soon as he sat down.
Ari seemed to accept his presence the way another person might accept a dull headache. "Roja."
"Damaronde." Nico had snuck a look at Ari's actual legal name when he'd paid with a credit card, at some point. Aristotle Damaronde. Ari's family was nothing if not traditional.
Nico had been jealous of Ari for having a family with enough sense of place and history to be traditional. He'd stopped being jealous once he learned how estranged from them Ari was.
"How's your day?" Nico asked.
Ari sighed, closed-mouthed. "As ever. You're edgy."
Nico jumped. "I'm always surprised you can do that. You and Cheli." He thought he'd been keeping it under his hat rather well.
Ari tilted his head, studying Nico out of one eye. "You're not as subtle as you think you are," he said. "You're a jaguar in a china shop."
"No china in my shop," Nico said. "Only half the food's fancy enough."
Ari looked flatly at him, utterly unfazed by the joke.
Nico endured the look for as long as he could, then shook his head. He lowered his voice. "I found my mate."
All at once, he found himself the recipient of Ari's full attention. "You what?"
"I found," Nico began, but Ari waved off his repetition.
"Why aren't you with..."
Nico's mouth quirked up. Ari was very diplomatically not saying her or him. Nico wasn't particularly interested in men, but he was also fond of his privacy, and he could see why Ari might not want to assume. "I didn't want to crowd her," he said. "And also, she... she doesn't know."
Ari stared at him. His gaze was knife-sharp and unyielding, his focus never wavering. Some people had mastered the art of drawing words out of people with patient, listening silence. Ari had mastered the art of skewering the truth with his eyes and dragging it out by main force.
"She's human," Nico said. "She thinks shifters are folk tales."
"Easily solved," Ari said. "We are the proof."
Nico waved off his words. "Well, yes, but..."
"You're afraid."
Nico's jaguar snorted with affront. Cautious, Nico thought. I'm cautious. He was more comfortable moving with stealth and consideration, not blundering into things.
"Tell her," Ari said. "She's your mate. You'll be with her forever, or pine for her forever. You have to tell her sometime, and the longer you wait, the more it seems like you're lying."
Nico jerked back like he'd been slapped. "I'm not lying to her!"
"The difference between lying and concealing the truth is academic," Ari said. His voice was flat and distant, like he was reciting something. Some code of honor, maybe. Nico didn't know much about Ari's clan, but he could easily believe that Ari had been brought up with some kind of knightly code. Probably one involving self-flagellation. "What are you afraid of?"
"I'm not afraid of anything," Nico said.
A second later, he realized that he was.
He was afraid that, being human and unaware of the mate-bond, Mandy didn't need him half as much as he needed her. He was afraid that she would never look at him in a way that made him feel like he belonged.
Ari nodded, as though Nico had agreed with him. "What is it you most want, Roja?"
It was easy to answer that question to himself: A home. A family. A place where I feel like I belong. A place where I feel like I know who I am. But he didn't want to say as much to Ari. "I want her to like me."
"Don't be so afraid you'll muck it up that you fuck it up," Ari said. "Fur and feathers, Roja, you sat down with me for advice?"
"I didn't come over for advice," Nico said. "I came over to say hello."
Ari waved his hand, like the difference between those things, as well, was academic. He took a sip of his coffee, and a bite of his breakfast sandwich.
Nico watched him, weighing his movements. When he wasn't taking apart Nico's secret, inner fears, he looked much more human and vulnerable. Nico wondered what it would take for someone to pry his secrets apart.
"The food here is excellent," Ari said. "As usual. Thank you."
There was real warmth in that compliment, Nico thought. Maybe just a little candle's worth of it, and maybe it was buried deep, but there it was.
"Thanks for your two cents," Nico said. Though coming from Ari, the two cents felt more like forty lashes.
But Nico could recognize an opportune time to extract himself, partly because someone else had just walked in the door. Another regular, and an old friend, to boot... and if Nico did need advice, he felt a lot more comfortable getting advice from them.
"I'll tell her," Nico promised, and left Ari to his breakfast.