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As pathetic as it is, Lia first takes note of the man because of his accent. American, not recognizably any particular area—maybe more east coast than west, though—and so blessedly familiar that her shoulders relax instinctively when he starts talking. As much as Lia’s enjoyed her first few weeks as an exchange student, London is drastically different from the tiny town she grew up in in the burning sandbox that was the American midwest, and the accents in particular have been giving her trouble—there’s so many British accents, each seemingly thicker than the last, so to have an order given in a clear, crisp American one is a frickin’ blessing.
So yes, it might be pathetic, but Lia first notices the man because he speaks like her. Sue her, she’s eighteen and an ocean, plains, mountains and half a desert away from everything she’s ever known, and pulling the frickin’ graveyard shift in a café.
However, she ends up remembering the man for a few different reasons. One of these is the fact that he’s ordering a massive coffee at two in the morning, while looking like he could really use a solid eight hours. Another is the way his expression twists in what is recognizably exasperation when the lights flicker, eyes darting to the corner of the room for a moment before his face smooths out.
The third is the blood under his nails. After dropping one too many drinks before customers had actually grabbed them while handing them to them, Lia had made a habit of watching the customer’s hands close around the cup. This man’s hands are calloused and clean, with a redness that indicates that they’re freshly scrubbed—but there’s still blood under the nails on his right hand, still bright with freshness.
Lia doesn’t let on that she notices, holding her customer smile as ‘Marc with a c’ takes his coffee with a little, exhausted smile of thanks that honestly looks more like a grimace. It seems genuine, though, even with the shadows behind Marc’s eyes.
Marc gets halfway to the door before he pauses and downs at least half his coffee in one go, then shoulders back out the door and into the night as the lights flicker again.
Marc’s not the weirdest customer Lia has served—not by a long shot—but he’s definitely memorable, if in a quieter way than most memorable customers.
That’s why she recognizes him easily when he returns about a week later. She’s pulling the graveyard shift again, but it’s five in the morning instead of two in the morning, so there’s actually already a decent amount of foot traffic from those whose days start early. Marc is about four people back when he gets in line, and when Lia gets the chance to glance at him he seems like he’s zoned out, eyes staring at nothing and exhaustion lining his features.
“Marc with a c, right?” Lia asks when he reaches the front, and is rewarded with a startled blink.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Marc answers after a moment. He blinks again. “You’re American.” He immediately looks like he wants to facepalm at himself, but he’s obviously running on fumes, so Lia simply snorts.
“What gave it away?”
It’s Marc’s turn to chuckle, as short and exhausted as it comes out.
“It’s nice to hear our accent again, though,” Lia comments.
“Not that many tourists in this part of London?”
“Nope.” Lia switches to the order screen on the console. “Do you want the same order as last time?”
Marc sighs. “To be completely honest, I don’t remember what I got last time.”
“A large black,” Lia informs him with a touch of dryness.
“Oh. That’s fine again, I guess.” Exhaustion seems to be claiming more of Marc’s posture even though his back and shoulders remain straight, so Lia decides to get on with it.
“Alrighty then.” Lia inputs the order, and Marc pays—cash for the second time, she notices—and then she’s stepping down the counter to make his drink, moving quickly. She adds a bit of sweetener and a shot of vanilla just for fun, because Marc seems like he could use something at least a little special. She finishes off by scrawling Marc along the cup in dark marker, and makes sure that her hands are steady as she passes it over.
“Thanks, kid,” Marc says with another of those little, polite smiles, although this one is less of a grimace, which Lia takes as a win.
“Anytime,” Lia smiles back.
Then Marc is stepping out of the line and Lia has to deal with the next customer, and the next time Lia looks for him, he’s already gone.
The next time Lia sees Marc, it’s not actually Marc. The man looks similar enough that he could easily be a twin, though, but the fact of the matter is that this man is very, very British. And also kind of adorable, Lia discovers.
“What are your vegan options?” The man who looks like Marc asks with an earnestness that reminds Lia of a puppy. It’s a little after six in the evening, halfway through the evening shift that Lia had picked up for a cash boost, and most of the customers are here for the food instead of the coffee.
Lia starts running through the vegan options—none of which sound very appetizing, in her opinion, but to each their own—but is interrupted only a few items in by the man exclaiming, “Oh, you’re American!” And then his eyes widen and he blurts, “Oh, wait—sorry, that was incredibly rude, wasn’t it? I didn’t mean any offense, I promise, I just wasn’t expecting someone so young to be American—wait, that was also rude, so sorry—”
“It’s fine,” Lia cuts him off with a smile.
“So sorry,” the man says again anyways, with a smile that’s somewhere between apologetic and sheepish. “I tend to ramble.”
Lia’s smile becomes a tad more genuine. “Honestly, me too sometimes.”
The man tilts his head a little. “Oh?”
Lia laughs. “Get me started on something I’m interested in, and I can ramble for hours. My brother’s a saint for being the one who usually indulges me.”
“Did he come here, too?”
“Nah. He’s still back in the States, but we call a bunch.” The customer behind the man who looks like Marc shifts in obvious impatience, so Lia changes tack. “So, what would you like?”
“Oh, bollocks—I interrupted you, didn’t I? Could you run through that list again for me?”
“Yeah, of course.”
The man eventually ends up ordering some lentil soup thing—which Lia never wants to try—to go.
“And what’s the name for that?” Lia asks.
“Ah, Steven. Steven with a v. I’m Steven Grant, see.”
Lia smiles, entertained. “Right, Steven with a v. Got it.”
Steven grins and shifts the strap of his backpack as Lia scrawls Steven on the lid of the plastic container of soup.
“Thanks so much,” Steven says brightly when Lia hands it to him. “Cheers.”
Lia grins. “See ya.”
Steven knocks into no less than three people as he makes his way out, apologizing profusely to each one before moving on. It’s a stark contrast to the smooth, almost spy-like exit that Marc had made on his second visit.
Actually, pretty much everything about Steven seems to be in stark contrast to Marc. Where Marc has exhaustion and shadows behind his eyes, Steven has energy and an excited light. Marc is concise with his words and Steven rambles; Steven is particular about his order while Marc couldn’t seem to care less. Marc’s also American while Steven is very British. They’re both polite, though, in their own ways.
Would it be funnier if the identical-looking but otherwise very different men knew each other or not?
Lia sees both men a handful of times over the next few weeks. Marc always comes in at some unholy hour in the morning, usually for a coffee, sometimes for a bite to eat as well. He’s always exhausted, and he doesn’t say much beyond his order and the occasional compliment for Lia’s most recent coffee mix for him, as he’s taken to letting her choose what he drank if she’s the one serving him. The shadows behind his eyes don’t lesson, but he starts to slow down just a little bit, sliding into a booth to eat if he has the time.
Steven stops by for lunch or dinner every once and a while, the meal depending on whether it’s a weekday or not. He seems to delight in the fact that Lia is willing to chat with him, especially once they discover that they have a shared love of mythology—mind, Lia’s mythos of choice is Greek while Steven’s is Egyptian, but they have a fun time swapping myths and historical facts over the counter as Steven eats and Lia fills orders. It’s fun, and while Lia never thought that she’d think of a grown man who’s close to twice her age as adorable, Steven very much is in a way that reminds her of a young child or an excitable puppy, for all that the man is clearly mentally an adult. He’s a tad socially awkward but is so British about it that Lia ends up laughing at the stories of his misfortunes more than she should. It’s a shame, really, that he can only make it to the café—which is a good twenty minutes out of his way—once or twice a week. The fact that he plans his visits to align with Lia’s shifts isn’t lost on her, nor is it lost on her coworkers—there was one very awkward meal in which Lia’s slightly-overprotective manager questioned Steven’s “intentions”, which led to a stuttering, somewhat horrified Steven. “Just friendly,” Steven had yelped, although Lia hadn’t needed him to say it to know that’s all it was. The man was obviously just very lonely, not a creep. “If even that—I mean, she’s kind of paid to listen to me, it’s her job—”
Lia’s heart had broken a little for him then, and she’d convinced her manager to give him his meal on the house.
It’s maybe two and a half months after Marc had first come in with blood under his nails that Lia realizes that there might be more connecting the two men than just looks. It starts innocuously enough—Marc shows up wearing a shirt under his jacket that Lia has seen Steven wear twice, a colorfully patterned button-down. She withholds a snort at the coincidence—the odds of identical men wearing identical shirts can’t be high—and only lets her eyebrows raise a little when she realizes that Marc’s version has a good chunk of the bottom hem torn off. Other than that, it’s a typical coffee-run night for Marc, the man slipping out with his drink as soon as she’s finished it.
It’s later that week that Lia mentions to Steven that she saw someone else wearing that same shirt—she doesn’t mention that the ‘someone else’ looks identical to him; she’s never mentioned Steven or Marc to each other, something in her gut telling her that it’d create more of a mess than she’d expect—and Steven responds with the grumpy fact that, apparently, he wanted to wear that shirt yesterday but wasn’t able to find it anywhere.
Lia bluescreens for a moment, her memories flashing back to the way Marc’s shirt was torn—torn badly enough that it would’ve probably ended up in the trash.
It could be a coincidence. It’s probably a coincidence.
Maybe.
It becomes a lot easier to believe in the uncommon and weird after superheroes, alien invasions and half the world disappearing for five years, alright? And it’s not like she’s going to get involved or anything if there is something, she’s just curious.
She pays closer attention after that, cataloguing details that she hadn’t paid attention to before. It quickly becomes obvious that Marc and Steven are definitely completely different people, but there are . . . hints. Certain motions and expressions that could belong to either man. There’s some more shared clothing items, too, although they’re typically nondescript enough that Lia could technically only be mistaking them as the same.
The next big hint that Lia gets comes in a similar manner. Marc shows up at almost eight in the morning—which is very late, for him, right at the end of the graveyard shift—and looks like he hasn’t slept in a solid week. He doesn’t even speak to give his order, simply giving Lia an exhausted look that’s effectively pleading for her to read his mind. Lia isn’t actually a mind-reader, but Marc’s been coming around for almost three months now, so she simply whips him up a drink and sends him on his way.
Lia has the evening shift that night as well, which she’s not exactly excited about, but her manager is paying her overtime bonus for it. It’s around five that Steven shows up—looking like he hasn’t slept in a week.
Lia blinks. The clothes are different, the stance is different, the person is different—but for a moment she still can’t tell if she’s looking at Steven or Marc.
“You look awful,” Lia says as Steven drops into his usual seat at the counter.
“Thanks a lot.” He sounds almost as exhausted as he looks, but he still has that lightness in his voice that is so characteristically Steven.
“Is everything okay?” Lia asks, making sure that she sounds concerned and not interrogative. Which she is—she is concerned. Steven’s a friend. But at the same time, her mind’s spinning as it tries to connect what she’s seeing right now with what she saw this morning.
“Yeah, yeah, all good,” Steven says, stifling a yawn. “I, um, have a sleeping disorder.”
Huh. “In the insomnia way or the narcoleptic way?” Lia’s familiar with both—her dad’s an insomniac while her mom’s close to narcoleptic. She’s still not entirely sure how their sleeping schedule works.
“Neither, actually. Well, maybe insomnia? Except—well, you don’t really want to know ‘bout all that—”
Lia shrugs. “Eh, I don’t mind.” Steven’s posture is tensed somewhere between ‘I really want to ramble about this’ and ‘I really don’t want to talk about this’. “You can rant if you need to.”
Steven perks up a bit. “. . . Really?”
Lia nods. “Shoot.”
Steven still hesitates for a moment, but then he launches in. “Well, basically, I seem to sleepwalk a lot. Like, my body doesn’t like to stay put—see, I keep waking up in random places with no idea how I got there.”
“Like the middle of the street?”
“Like bloody Cardiff.”
Oh, gosh. “That’s . . . pretty far.”
“I know, right?! So I put an ankle restraint on my bed—which sounds really weird, I know, but I’ve got to stop my body from wandering somehow. But now I’ll go to bed, wake up ten hours later with the ankle restraint still on and still feel like I just swam the bloody Thames.”
Lia finished the drink she was making, and darted down to pass it to the cashier before coming back. “And that’s what happened last night?”
“Yeah.” Steven droops, his expression dejected. “I ended up sleeping until about two ‘cause when my alarm went off at half-past eight I felt like I hadn’t slept at all. Thank heavens it’s a Saturday, I suppose.”
Lia freezes, her mind racing. “Steven, it’s Sunday.”
Steven looks up at her, confusion filling his expression. “What?”
Lia forces herself to start moving again. “It’s Sunday.”
“But . . . Saturday comes after Friday, yeah? Yesterday was Friday.”
Lia shakes her head. “Yesterday was Saturday.”
Steven blinks at her, then slumps. “Oh, bollocks.”
“Maybe you slept through it?” Lia suggests.
“I . . . maybe. Probably, yeah.”
Lia hates seeing Steven look so dejected—Steven is bright and bubbly and smart—so she changes the topic, drawing him into a debate about the origins of Mediterranean pantheons.
Later, after Steven’s left, Lia finally lets herself examine the puzzle she’s been putting together. It’s not complete, not yet, but there is no way that the timing of this was a coincidence.
It’s later the next day, after almost an hour of research—as tempting as it’d been to jump straight to supernatural conclusions, Lia isn’t an idiot—that Lia finally gets the answer to her puzzle—at least, what she’s pretty certain is the answer.
DID. Dissociative Identity Disorder. Multiple people in one body, effectively. It’s developed as a response to trauma, often childhood abuse. And while Lia may not know much beyond her research, she can see it pretty easily—Marc’s shadows against Steven’s innocence.
It’s also blatantly obvious that Steven isn’t aware that he’s sharing a body. Marc, though . . . she’s not certain, but Lia would place money on Marc being fully aware of Steven’s existence.
However, she’s not going to, because it’s none of her business. If she’s right, then Steven and Marc are still their own people, regardless of the fact that they share a body. There’s no reason to treat them differently, so she’s not gonna.
And she doesn’t. Another month passes of the same old—midnight coffees for Marc, afternoon or evening vegan meals for Steven. She notices a pattern, after a little bit—Steven will always be more tired on the days he comes in right after Marc’s made an appearance, which makes sense.
She’s the only one who’s figured it out, which she thinks is a good thing. Lia’s coworkers have been referring to Marc and Steven as ‘Lia’s twins’ for a while now, but they still think what she had—that they just happen to resemble each other, nothing more, nothing less. It’s just a coincidence that Lia’s managed to build a rapport with each of them—which is actually true, as far as Lia’s aware. Marc may or may not be aware of Steven, but Lia doesn’t think that he’s aware that Steven’s been coming to the same café, much less talking to the same barista. It’s called Dissociative Identity Disorder for a reason.
And life goes on.
At least, until something changes.
Lia doesn’t know what made things change. She doesn’t even actually know if something did change, or if the whole situation was a one-off. But what happened was this: Marc came in like he usually did—read: looking like crap—and got his usual coffee and meal combo. He took his usual booth, staring out into the darkened streets of London as he waited for his food to be prepared.
They actually did have a surprising amount of midnight customers that night, so it took longer than normal for Lia to get Marc’s food ready. By the time she’s bringing it over to his booth, the man has fallen asleep, chin against his chest.
Lia sighs. She has the option to let the man sleep. He obviously needs it, having just finished whatever-it-was that he did when he was the one fronting, but at the same time, Marc’s always been meticulous about making his stops quick, and he’d likely appreciate being woken up.
Setting the food on the table, Lia taps on Marc’s shoulder. “Hey, you should probably wake up.”
Marc startles, head snapping up and Lia jerks back in surprise—
“Lia?”
Lia freezes, staring down at wide eyes.
That is not Marc.
“What . . .” Steven says, taking in his surroundings. His British accent is an even sharper contrast against Marc’s American after hearing the latter only a handful of minutes ago. “Where—how—”
Lia silently swears, stringing together every curse word she knows. What does she do?
Improvise, apparently.
“You fell asleep,” are the first words out of her mouth, and she immediately resists the urge to facepalm.
“Well, yeah, I know that—but I was in my flat—” His gaze lands on the window and he gapes. “It’s the middle of the night!”
Please wake up, Marc, Lia silently begs. She doesn’t want to interfere and mess things up somehow, she doesn’t know enough!
“Is that bacon?” Steven sounds so utterly revolted that Lia almost laughs, but that’s Marc’s food. Except apparently not anymore.
“It’s for the table in the corner,” Lia fibs, nodding at the only customers that haven’t been served yet. “I was just stopping by to wake you up.”
Steven blinks at her, his mouth opening then closing. “Right.”
Lia shoots him what she hopes is a convincing smile, picks up the food, and speed walks to the table in the corner, setting down the food with a bright, “On the house!” The customers give her some weird looks, but she ignores them, glancing back at Steven.
The booth is empty, and Marc—it’s definitely Marc, thank the heavens—is slipping out the front door.
Lia doesn’t see Marc again after that. She sees Steven, though, who’s started mentioning some weirdly vivid dreams—“One of which had you in it, Lia! I was here in the middle of the night, imagine that!”
And then Steven disappears too, although missing two of his usual meals in a row doesn’t quite constitute as missing. Lia knows in her gut, however, that the two of them have gotten caught up in something.
A week after Steven fails to show up, the sky goes nuts. Something’s going on in Cairo, apparently, something that leaves a lot of bodies, and all Lia can think about are Steven’s endless rambles about the Ennead and the blood under Marc’s fingernails.
And then another month goes by.
Lia’s gone past worrying, past grieving, and into solemn acceptance that she’s never going to see Marc or Steven again when she looks up during one of her rare afternoon shifts and they’re right there. Sixth back in the line, next to a gorgeous woman who Lia thinks is Egyptian, although she’s not entirely sure. Based on the motions of the hands and the lit-up expression on his face as he talks it’s Steven who’s fronting, likely talking about some aspect of Egyptian mythology again.
Lia rings up the current customers, hands them their food-to-go, and takes the next orders. She’s barely paying attention to her job as she does, her focus on following the cadence of Steven’s voice, even if she can’t actually make the words out. Her friend(s?) is alive, and that makes her giddy.
When Steven’s voice changes to Marc’s American accent when they’re about third in the line, though, Lia almost drops the coffee she’s holding—because the transition was smooth, and the woman he’s talking to is responding with a laugh. But after a few more sentences it switches back to Steven’s British, just in time for them to step forward to be the second customers in line.
It’s Steven who greets her when he and the woman he’s with finally step up to the register, chirping a bright, “Hullo, Lia! This is Layla!” He turns to the woman—Layla, apparently—and introduces, “This is Lia, the best barista on this side of London.”
Lia can’t hold back a snort. “I’m definitely not, but thank you for the compliment.”
“You’re American,” Layla says with mild surprise, and oh, Lia loves that accent.
“Yes ma’am. I’m an exchange student, although admittedly I’ve been working a lot more than studying recently.”
Layla mouths ‘ma’am’, looking at Steven with an expression Lia hopes is approval. Steven beams, so Lia thinks she did okay. “So what can I get you today?”
Steven then gives Layla a comprehensive ramble of the menu—wrinkling his nose at the options with meat in the process—and the two of them order. Lia inputs their choices to the register, but hesitates over the check-out button, gaze sweeping back across the selections. There’s Layla’s order and Steven’s order, but not—she’d heard him earlier. She’d even heard Layla say his name. So she might as well take a chance—
She looks back up at the pair. “Does Marc want anything?”
Both of them freeze, eyes going wide. Then Marc fronts, and Lia can see the switch happen because his stance and expression change all at once, and the bark of laughter that comes out is distinctly American. “Man, you’re a smart one, aren’t you?”
Lia raises an eyebrow. “You two have been coming in here individually for literally six months. I’d have to be dumb not to notice.”
Steven fronts, the posture changing again—“Wait, Marc’s been coming here?”
“Yep,” Lia confirmed, popping the p. “He came here first, actually. Keeps showing up at unholy hours in the morning looking like he hasn’t slept in days. I thought you two were just look alikes at first, but I put it together eventually.”
“That dream,” Steven says with a dawning realization. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”
“Nope.”
Marc fronts again. “But you never said anything.” It was half a question and half an accusation.
Lia shrugs. “It wasn’t my place to. Same body or not, you’re two different people, and I didn’t want to throw a wrench in the works.”
“What’s going on?” Layla asks, expression in between amused and confused.
“We’ll explain in a bit, love,” Steven answers, shooting Layla a smile.
“So, does Marc want anything?” Lia asks again. She is on the clock.
“You got a drink in mind for me, kid?” Marc asks, his voice playful.
Lia grins. “Yessir.”
“Well, add that in then.”
A handful of minutes later, Lia has a marker in hand. She writes Layla’s name in a fancy cursive, proud that it didn’t turn out too sloppy, then pauses when she turns to Steven and Marc’s stuff.
Half a minute later, she’s handing over the labeled items.
“What’s this?” Marc asks, eyebrows raised as he examines what he’s holding.
Lia smirks. “Different as you are, that’s how you two idiots introduced yourself to me.”
It’s Steven’s laugh that comes out, and once Layla gets a look hers joins in.
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