Black Coffee, Bad Light

Roleplay
1

The door sighed open and shut behind Aren, sealing her into Reveries’ recycled warmth and low neon thrum. The place smelled like old circuits and cheap liquor — familiar enough to settle into her bones without asking permission.

She paused just inside the threshold, long enough for her eyes to adjust and the room to decide whether it cared she was there.

Not many did.

Reveries wasn’t busy tonight. A few regulars hugged their drinks like old grievances. The bartender moved with muscle memory more than intent. The sign outside bled magenta through the windows in uneven pulses, like the station itself had developed a weak heart.

Aren scanned the room out of habit.

That was when she noticed him.

Red hair, stark against the light. Face paint — deliberate, not decorative. Augments that caught the flicker of neon like they were listening to it, arguing back in tiny, impatient ways. He didn’t sit like someone waiting to be left alone. He sat like someone tuned half a degree off from the room.

Interesting.

Aren crossed the floor without hurry and took a stool a seat away — close enough to acknowledge him, far enough to respect his space. Only then did she signal the bartender.

“Coffee,” she said. “Black.”

She rested her forearms on the bar while it was poured, gaze angled just slightly toward him. Not staring. Observing.

“This place plays hell with optics,” she said quietly, voice pitched low enough not to carry. “Bad wiring. Worse maintenance.”

Her eyes flicked to the flickering reflection in the chrome along his jaw.

“Looks like yours are fighting it.”

The bartender set the mug down. Steam curled between her hands as she wrapped her fingers around it, grounding herself in the heat.

“I’m Aren,” she added after a beat. “If you’re new, don’t trust the lights. Or the walls. Both lie.”

A pause. The faintest softening at the edge of her mouth — not quite a smile.

“And if you’re here to fix things…” she murmured, nodding faintly toward the visible tech. “…this place could use the help.”

She stayed there, unhurried, letting the room breathe again around them — offering conversation without demanding it.

@Duke

2

“Oh hi … nice to meet you”, Duke replied. “I am Duke”. He rubbed his eyes and looked down on his own arms and his stomach. She was right, the light bouncing off the bare plating and sinewy tubes and wires created a play of optics; he was not sure at all if it was meant to be a compliment; or if “hellish” referenced the disturbance to the eye created by the artificial formed to be organic. The uncanny valley was a real place nowadays and he should count himself as a resident.
He smiled at the woman-- this day was a haze. It begun with a buzzing of energy that he wanted to transform into results; but sometimes a buzzing was just that.

All day he felt inexplicably dizzy.
“Yea I am new … I wish I was here to fix things but I needed a place to sit and have a drink, is all; first timer. I’m trying not to fix things all the time, when no one asked me to- It’s annoying, right?”
He tapped his fingers on his leg and took a closer look at the purple haired woman.
She had a nice soft presence. Shimmering.

“So are you a regular here?”, he asked.

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3

Aren did not answer him right away.

She had learned, over time, that people often said more in the spaces between their words than in the words themselves. Duke’s voice carried fatigue that went deeper than lack of sleep. His fingers tapping against his leg were not impatience. They were an attempt to burn off energy that had nowhere useful to go. The faint shimmer she caught in her peripheral vision was not just reflected light. It was the subtle distortion of augmented systems working harder than they should.

She shifted slightly on her stool, angling her body toward him without crowding his space. Her coffee steamed faintly between her hands. The warmth bled into her palms, grounding her in a way she had come to rely on.

“It is annoying,” Aren said at last, her voice quiet but steady. “Trying to solve problems no one asked you to touch. Especially when fixing things is the only way you know how to feel useful.”

She glanced briefly at the plating along his arms, not with curiosity or discomfort, but with the same matter-of-fact attention she gave anything mechanical. Something built. Something maintained.

“The lights are cruel to chrome in here,” she added softly. “They make everything look harsher than it really is.”

For a moment, she watched the slow pulse of neon reflect in the curve of his metal. Then her eyes returned to his face.

“As for being a regular,” she continued, “I come when I need somewhere quiet enough to think and loud enough to drown out everything else. That usually means here.”

A faint hint of a smile touched the corner of her mouth. Not playful. Not guarded. Just honest.

“So yes. Often enough that the bartender stops asking what I want.”

She lifted her mug and took a small sip, then set it down carefully.

“You look like you have been running on fumes all day,” Aren said, gently. “Dizzy. Wired. Trying to turn noise into purpose.”

Her gaze softened, not pitying, simply attentive.

“Sometimes it is okay to sit somewhere broken and not fix it. Just for a night.”

She let the words settle between them, neither pushing nor retreating.

“And for what it is worth,” she added quietly, “you do not come across as annoying. You come across as tired.”