Nathan was busy squinting across the the table at whatever it was Tristan was sketching on it's surface. The drawing was upside down, but from Nathan's perspective it looked like... um.. lightning bolts, scary looking bird things and lots of.. er... skulls? Man... if that was some sort of symbolism as to what was going on in the fella's head right now, Nathan thought it wise to avoid his colleague for the rest of the day.

The next thing he heard was his name and he realised he hadn't been listening to anything since Ian's parfait comment (heh), when all the staff started talking at once. It was too much like being at home during the school holidays when all the kids were there for him to cope with. The defence mechanism was to switch off. “Um...” He scratched the back of his gelled up hair not really wanting to ask Rico to repeat the question. “C-coffee?” he blurted out like a sneeze he couldn't hold back. “Um.. What I mean is.. we use some better coffee in the breakroom. It could be good for staff morale.” He looked at Rico with a mixture of sheepishness and childlike expectancy, hoping that was an appropriate answer to his question.