In a modern day, human au Aed would work at Starbucks
HELL YES
I actually have an AU where Áed works at a Starbucks in a library, and Lasair goes there often to study and chill, but she gotta Cinderella her way back in a rush everytime because she doesn’t see time passing and subways stop running early around here, and if her fellow insomniac Sellin isn’t up, she has nowhere else to crash in case she misses the last subway.
It’s always the same barista who takes care of her drink, but she has never given him her real name. Always nicknames. Or sometimes she just forgets to give him her name but since there aren’t many people it’s okay, and he writes a random name on her cup. He ends up calling her “Lasair” and she rolls with it because it’s better than “little one” - she’s small, she knows it, THANK YOU.
He’s hella cute. Dimples when he smiles, a crooked grin, charming laugh, freckles like specks of gold on his mahogany skin, curls the color of the forest in fall. His voice is smooth and velvety, and he winks at her whenever she enters the place because he recognizes her and oh boy the first time he did that she wasn’t ready.
He knows what she takes. It’s been four months since she has started coming here, now he just goes “the usual?” and winks at her while she nods speechlessly - because she’s bad, horrifyingly bad, at talking with people (goddamn social anxiety).
It took her a few months to learn his name, accidentally, called by another barista (the tall, intimidating and scary but quiet one, who hums to himself when he prepares drinks, with the sharpest teeth she has ever seen on anyone). She hasn’t found it in her to try calling him Áed. It feels… too intimate. What are they, after all, they’re not even friends.
(Anemar once asked why Áed hadn’t written his number on her cup yet - because that’s what people do in movies right? - but Anemar, like her, is bad with social cues and that kind of stuff, so they both just don’t know.)
Except one day, she forgets her notebook there.
And Áed, who has seen her doodling on it for so long, picks it up and finds her coordinates on it.