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The first thing he knows, ever sees, too sharp to be a dream, too clear, too raw. Heaviness when he opens his eyes, wetness on his cheeks. He’s only able to remember her last words.
“See you later, Eren.”
He gets one hour once a day.
That’s it, just a measly one hour in the middle of his shift to rest. It’s the most precious time of his day—he looks forward to it, counts down to it, actually prays to a god he does not believe in for the moment his watch hits 1:00 pm, when he can clock out, grab a cheap meal from the convenience store and fall asleep in his car. Yet somehow, someway, he is getting dragged to a coffee shop.
He doesn’t even like coffee.
The guys had insisted. The girl that works there is really pretty, Jean had said, just wait till you see her you’ll never wanna leave.
Eren doesn’t think that’s a good enough reason to interrupt his scheduled nap time. Women are everywhere. Now he has to pay—his actual hard earned money—just to look at one make him a coffee? Worse, he has to stand in a ridiculously long line to do it.
How pretty can this girl be?
“This better be worth it, Jean.” Eren says flatly from behind him, checking his watch. He has half a mind to leave the line, but they’re getting to the middle now.
“It is, it is. I promise.” Jean laughs, practically jumping in his spot. “She is. And the coffee is good, too.”
“You’re just kissing up.”
Jean laughs and moves up one spot, Eren follows. He’d leave now if he could, but they’ve already wasted twenty minutes in the cafe and by the time he gets to the convenience store and back to his car, his break would probably be over. Eren looks at Jean, who is still bouncing on the balls of his feet and curses him. Hopes he trips right in front of her. Spits and stutters when he orders. Eren smiles a little at the image and it keeps impatience at bay for the ten minutes it takes to get to the front of the line.
She is pretty. Classically so—dark, chin length hair, and matching dark eyes. Lips painted a red so deep, it’s striking against her pale skin. He has a feeling he’s seen her somewhere before but he’s not sure where. The feeling irritates him more than it should and he struggles to remember her name.
“What are you having?” She asks blankly when he doesn’t speak, her stare matching her tone.
“Uh, medium coffee. Extra cream—no, black. And a bagel.”
“Name?”
“Eren.”
“Four fifty-seven.”
She rings him up, staring at him the whole time, and Eren, not one to back down, stares back, despite the awkwardness of it all. He’s uncomfortable under her gaze—somehow both blank and intense, too much in its emptiness, directed completely at him. He doesn’t like it and he frowns at her but does not look away. When she hands him his order and looks past his shoulder to the customer behind him, he lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. There are fifteen minutes left in his break. Exactly the time it takes to walk back to the site. Jean is smiling like an idiot.
“I hate you.”
“Isn’t she so pretty?” Jean ignores him.
“Guess so. Horrible service. Stared at me the whole time.”
Jean huffs. “Lucky. Never looks at me twice.”
He’s back in the coffee shop again despite deciding that he never wanted to go back there again. The line is too long, the girl is too creepy, the coffee is awful. And yet, here he is, in line, behind Jean once more. He had driven today, though, figured he’d cut out a decent chunk of his travel time, get his coffee—which had been disgusting—and his bagel, drive back to the site, and then fall asleep.
There is no real reason why he came, not one that he knows anyway, Jean had just suggested they go get some coffee, and Eren had quietly walked them to his car and, before he remembered to protest against it, they were already there. The line is shorter than yesterday, there is still almost an hour left in his break, so it isn't too bad. Impatience has not caught him yet.
Jean twists to face him. “How'd you get her to look at you last time?”
“I ordered.”
“No I mean—what’d you say?”
“My order.”
“Y-you—it’s not fair.”
Eren shrugs and looks around the shop from his point in the queue. From what he’s heard, it’s a fairly new cafe, opened up about a month or two ago. They had started construction on the site just last week, so while the town is in the process of getting used to this alleged beauty, his coworkers had barely just discovered her.
Makes sense why all of them are always here on their breaks. Makes sense why he’s gotten roped into it. Although, he’s not really sure what the hype is about—she’s pretty, that’s true, he wouldn’t even try to deny it, but he's seen it before, it’s not as rare as everyone is making it out to be. He guesses that doesn’t matter, pretty is pretty. Oddly enough, he thinks he could find some comfort if he could just remember where he’s seen it.
Above that all, though, is her personality. She’s as blank as an empty sheet of paper—emotionless, expressionless. A robot. A phantom. A ghost. When the guys gather to talk about her, he’s not sure if they’ve met the same person as him. People see what they want to, he figures.
“Four fifty-seven.” She says, barely louder than the chatter of the cafe. He has to lean forward, chest over the counter. It’s the same order as last time, he remembers the price, but speak up, he wants to tell her, you’re so damn quiet.
“What?”
She repeats the cost, no louder than she had said it the first time. Eren does not pretend he cannot hear anymore. He stands back and reaches into his pocket for his wallet. He’s not sure why he’s so irritated, what exactly it is that's pissing him off. She hasn’t done anything, not really, but she’s burrowed under his skin, without announcement, without even a word.
Even though he’s focused on finding a five-dollar bill, he knows she’s watching him intently. His frown deepens. If there’s anywhere to leave a review, he’ll leave a bad one. When he lifts his head to give her the cash, he meets her eyes immediately. Where has he seen her before? She deposits his change in his open hand, the metal is cold against his skin but her fingers graze his palm and it begins to burn, lit from a small point and spreading up his arm, to his chest, and then the rest of his body. Today, like yesterday, he realizes he’s not breathing.
“What the fuck was that?” Jean asks when they’re back in Eren’s car. He’s moved the passenger seat all the way down and has his boot on the dashboard.
“What was what?” Eren says weakly. His hand is still on fire and he holds on to the steering wheel tightly. If he loosens his hold, he’s afraid he’ll spiral.
“Don’t play dumb. That little staring contest you two were having. Do you know her?”
“Get your feet of my dash. And pull your seat up.”
Jean complies but does not drop it, speaking through the slow mechanical rise of the passenger seat, his voice getting closer to Eren’s ear. His boots have left a mark by the AC vent. Eren frowns. His hand still burns.
“Set me up with her.”
“Shut up. I don’t know her. And if I did, I wouldn’t.”
“Why? Are you into her?”
“Because fuck you, that’s why.” Eren purposefully doesn’t answer the second question, opting instead to reverse out of parking. If he is being honest, his answer is no: she’s too inscrutable, too weird, too familiar in the most discomforting way. He thinks he might actually hate her, but he doesn’t know her well enough to. Jean is still staring, waiting for an answer even though it’s been a few minutes. Does he like her that much? What would he say if Eren says yes? What could he even do? Eren coughs and his hold on the steering wheel tightens further.
“She’s creepy.”
A slow smile spreads across Jean’s face as he faces forward, relaxing into the seat, arms folded behind his head.
“Didn’t know you had cooties, man. My bad.”
Eren slams the break hard and Jean flies forward, hitting his forehead right on the mark he had left with his boot.
“What the hell was that for?”
They go back during every break.
Eren has given up on fighting it, although he never really put up one in the first place. He’s starting to like the bitter taste of black coffee, it keeps him awake through the rest of his shift, he reasons, and the bagel is soft and warm.
The line gets shorter with each day. He thinks that maybe people are realizing just how bad the customer service is. If she isn't so pretty, he’s sure no one would come to the cafe. It doesn’t have any warmth or welcome. She doesn’t smile, only stares. The only positive is how quickly she works.
He and Jean sometimes stay longer than they have to so the latter can work up his courage to talk to her. When he finally does, she only looks at him with complete disinterest, before glancing at Eren, who is standing back at one of the high tables that line the floor-to-ceiling windows. He was only passively watching but when she looks at him, she takes all of his attention. He stands up straight and feels heat rise to his neck. She nods once then turns to fill the espresso machine with coffee beans.
Jean walks back, red in the face, and Eren has to hold in his laugh.
Jean couldn’t take the rejection, the little weakling, and Eren begins to go by himself. He doesn’t want to upset the routine he’s built for the past week and a half. The coffee isn’t as bad as it was, the bagel is still just as good as the first time he had it, the shop isn’t far from the site, and the prices are affordable. He wants to know where he's seen her before.
He sips his drink at the high table closest to the entrance and watches her from the corner of his eye. She’s taking orders and making drinks, putting pastries in the toaster oven. The line that was almost to the door dwindles down and aside from a few stragglers, they are the only ones left in the shop. He only has about twenty minutes left on his break, and this is the first time he’s stayed through the whole thing when he doesn’t have to. She wipes down the counters and sweeps the floor, and even though he’s watching, he doesn’t realize she’s walking towards him until she’s right in front of him.
Eren finds himself at a loss for words. She is even prettier up close, without the counter to divide them. He wants to ask her for her name. Or where she’s from. He lives downtown, a little over an hour away. He’s must’ve run into her before this, must’ve had a benign yet meaningful enough interaction for her to stick. She’s too familiar, too recognizable. He should know who she is—it’s hard to forget a face like hers. He swallows when she begins to speak.
“I’m sweeping.” Her voice is blank and she doesn’t blink.
“Okay.” He stares back, eyes wide, heart rate jumping.
“You’re in the way.”
He looks down at his feet. The floor is spotless but he moves to the side, anyway, letting her pull invisible dirt towards the pan in her other hand. She’s looking at the floor now and his eyes roam over the few patrons left in the store, still in their seats, or standing in their spots. He doesn’t remember seeing any of them stand up or move to let her sweep the spot they occupied. He feels that irritation creep up on him, curling his fists and brows furrowing. “Did you ask everyone else to move?”
She finishes sweeping and gives him another one of those impassive looks. His hands curl at his sides and he decides that, yeah, he really does hate her. Her face, her voice—her. He looks away, angry that he’s still here. Angry that he wasted almost his entire break just watching her, angry that he's still waiting, with his coffee already finished, bagel already eaten, for her to speak. After a few minutes, he turns to find that the spot in front of him is empty. He looks back to the counter and she’s there, looking at him from afar. A new line begins to form and she turns to face the customer in front of her.
Eren leaves, still just as angry, and gets back to work at exactly the time he should have clocked in.
The next time he returns to the cafe, about a couple days later, she’s not there. The barista is now a short man with a permanent frown etched into his face. He’s not expressionless, rather just one expression—contempt. It's still just as rude and the line is noticeably shorter than it has ever been.
He doesn’t speak when Eren gets to the counter, but regards him with disgust. Eren would take it personally, if he didn't just watch the man look at the customer before him with the same expression. Still, his hands shake slightly as he reaches into his wallet.
“What happened to the girl?” As soon as it is out of his mouth, he regrets it. Instantly, he feels stupid—it’s not his business and he doesn’t even care. Eren swallows but waits for a reply that does not come.
He shakes his head and clears his throat, sliding his money across the counter top. “Uh—a medium black coffee and a toasted bagel.”
The man wordlessly takes the bill with a gloved hand and turns to fill up a cup.
When he leaves with his order, Eren decides that he will leave the worst review possible when he gets the chance.
The next day, she’s back behind the counter. The line is even longer than the first day he had come and he waits patiently the whole time. When he gets to the front, she regards him as blank as ever and it's worlds better than the repulsed stare the other guy gave him.
“You’re back.” It comes out breathier than he intended and he’s surprised to hear immense relief in his voice. He frowns and her eyes widen only slightly.
She nods once. Then, after looking down at the counter, “I was sick.”
He’s heard her voice enough times in the weeks he’s been coming to the cafe, and her tone isn’t all that different from the other times she's spoke, but it feels like the wind has been knocked out of him. She could have said anything right now, he thinks, and it would still have the same effect.
He nods once, then again, before realizing he has nothing else to say. She’s already handing him his usual order, before he’s even paid. When he’s back at the work site, with only minutes to spare, he realizes that it was nothing she had said. She didn’t have to say anything. She could’ve just stood there, in that stone faced way that she does, and he still would have been left reeling.
It’s quite a shock, a sharp slap to the face or the sound of a heavy book dropped suddenly on a metal table—the realization that he had actually missed her.
He’s leaning back against a high table, the one closest to the entrance, watching her. He doesn’t know when he started doing it so openly, doesn't know when he dropped all pretense, but he watches as she works, only catching her eyes between customers or during her down time.
Whatever, she started it. But, he thinks, a small smile on his lips when she scrubs a spot on the counter extra hard, maybe he was always the one watching her, maybe he was the first to stare and she couldn’t look away. Maybe he’s just as familiar to her as she is to him.
Before he leaves, he heads back to the front of the store, watching her watch him, her neck craning as he gets closer. Without breaking eye contact, he places a couple bills in the tip jar.
“Thank you.” She says quietly, barely above a whisper.
His right hand comes up to rub the back of his neck. “It’s no big deal.”
They stand like that, staring at each other, with the line growing behind him and he rushes to ask what he’s been wondering.
“Are you from around here?”
“My family and I moved here a little over two months ago.”
“Ever been downtown?”
She shakes her head. It’s disappointing to say the least. Mystery solved—he’s never seen her before, only imagined that he did. It feels anticlimactic, too simple to be true and he doesn't trust it. How could he have forgotten her when he feels like he’s known her for his entire life? Before he could even realize what he is saying, the words are already tumbling out of his mouth.
“I’ll take you one day.”
She blinks once. Then nods stiffly without speaking. His face is hot and he looks down. When he faces her again, he thinks that she might be smiling, only a little bit, the corners of her mouth pulled up slightly. It’s a microscopic slant of her lips and if he wasn’t always looking, always watching, he may have not noticed it. It’s the smallest smile he’s ever seen, the only one he’s seen from her. Still, it’s beautiful.
They talk more, between customers and stares. He’s long forgotten that he's supposed to be napping during this time, but he still looks forward to it, still counts down to the moment the clock hits one, so he can drive to the cafe, order a black coffee and a bagel, and watch her work for an hour, give or take. He’s moved from his position at the table closest to the entrance and now stands off to the side at the front counter, leaning over it's edge, picking at his food and taking small sips of his drink.
Her stare isn’t so lifeless anymore, there’s some emotion there, some feeling, some warmth. She even smiles, sometimes, when she looks to her right and finds that he's still there. It stuns him every time, but he always smiles back.
One day, when he’s just walked into the coffee shop, she’s stepping around the counter with a coat in her hands. The man from weeks ago is there, glaring at the now decreasing line.
“I’m taking my break.” She says, walking towards the door he’s entered through.
Eren knows that if he follows her out of the door, he’d be admitting to himself that he doesn't come here just for the coffee and bagel, not at all, that he’s always counting down, and looking forward to her. That he reserves the most precious time of his day entirely for her.
She reaches the door and pauses, looking back at him. He looks between her and the coffee machine, the door and the toaster oven. She’s still waiting, holding the door slightly open, letting all the air out. Without a word, he follows her out of the building and down the street.
It’s awkward at first—the proximity, the quiet. He looks at her and she’s facing forward, back straight, head high. Her shoulder is so close to his that if he moved a few inches to his right, they’d be touching. He steps to the left.
They walk to a nearby shopping center and sit on a bench overlooking a man-made pond. This is worse, Eren decides. At least when they were walking, he could pretend he was focused on the walk, looking around to make sure he doesn’t bump into people, checking for oncoming traffic, too focused to speak. Now, sitting on this bench, her presence is suffocating, clouding his brain so he can’t think of what to say. Her hands are pressed flat against her jeans, like she might explode, burying him in rubble. An electrical fire waiting to happen.
He wants to reach out and touch her, his fingers to the rise of her knuckles, along the dips of skin stretched over bone. He thinks her hands are softer than they look, even though she's always working, just like him. He’s never seen them so still like this, they’re usually by her sides somewhere below the counter top, or always moving, doing something. They’re just hands, but he’s never been so captivated by them. He thinks that if he touched her, the consequences would be dire. They may very well actually explode. He follows suit and keeps his fists curled in his pockets.
“The weather is nice today.” She says suddenly, all thoughts of hand holding pushed out of his mind.
He looks up and the sky is a bright blue, warmed by the sun, sparse clouds doing little to dull the shine.
He nods, swallowing his nerves, and they talk about the weather and his work. She tells him that the cafe is family-owned and the man in the store right now is her cousin and Eren laughs because he should have known, they’re too similar—quiet and rude.
“I’m rude?” She quirks her head, eyebrows pulling together.
“Devastatingly.”
She purses her lips. “But our rating is so high. Maybe our coffee is really good then.” She sits back against the bench. Eren laughs again.
“Your coffee is crap. You’re just pretty.”
She blushes and it’s just as pretty as the rest of her. “How should I be more…polite?”
Eren tries to imagine it—her smiling at every customer the way she smiles at him, welcoming them in when they enter, bidding them farewell when they leave. He imagines the line would double—maybe even triple—in size and he'd never be able to sit with her like this. He frowns and shakes his head.
“You’re fine.”
She nods and leans back against the bench before sitting up suddenly and facing him fully, her knee hitting his. She moves it back just as quickly and Eren learns for the first time that you can feel the absence of something, an emptiness of matter, air where there shouldn’t be.
"That time. When I was cleaning the floor.” She says. “Was I rude then?”
He nods.
She swallows, turning her neck to look out over the pond. “Sorry. I just wanted—it was an excuse to talk to you.”
He smiles, slow at first then a grin up into the sky, into the warm sun. “Looks like it worked.”
They sit it in silence for the remainder of her break. When Eren returns to work, he’s late by ten minutes.
The next day they walk together again. And then the day after that.
The feeling that he’s known her before goes away, thinning and flattening out until it’s barely a thought. He likes this—the steadiness of it all and doesn't care to satisfy his curiosity anymore. Besides, she had recently just moved to this town, she’s never been to the city, he’s never left, there was no way their paths could’ve crossed and that is good enough.
The guys tease him about always being at the coffee shop—they had stopped going once the shininess of the new wore off—and getting a girlfriend right under their nose. She’s not his girlfriend, he tells them, not yet at least, he thinks. It's fine like this, spending an hour each day, no real expectation from the other other than brief companionship.
He still keeps his distance, never reaching out, stepping to the left when they're standing too close, leaving enough space for at least another person on the bench. He doesn't attempt to cross that distance, to breech either her personal space or his. But he thinks about it, more often than he should, what it would be like to touch her.
It would be strange, like realizing your childhood friend is actually kind of cute, but not really knowing how to go about changing the platonic dynamic. In a way, it'd be completely natural—something he's sure they could do easily. He's comfortable around her, now, thinks she is too. But sometimes, when his hand is itching to reach out, he thinks that touching her might actually be catastrophic and shoves the hand back in his pocket.
He’s fine like this, anyway, he thinks once they’ve come inside from their walk. The man at the counter immediately goes to the backroom and she takes her place behind the cash register. He doesn’t want to upset the balance they had only recently found, it had been difficult to get it right—one wrong move and they’d topple over.
He has to be back at work soon, but he gets in the line to order his usual. When he’s at the front, his drink and bagel are already out in front of him. He pays and drops his change in the tip jar before grabbing his items.
"See you later, Eren.” She smiles and he freezes.
It’s just one sentence, it shouldn’t have the impact that it does but he’s stuck at the counter, feeling like the rug has been ripped out from under him. He’s heard it from her before, those exact same words, and he still can’t place it.
The feeling that he’s met her before comes back, in full force, an explosion that knocks him to the wooden floor. He can’t move, can’t even see, because he knows he’s heard that before, remembers the exact sound, the intonation, the lilt to the words. It makes him sad, so sad that he chokes on a laugh or cry or scream because the last time he heard those words, he never saw her again.
The person behind him taps him on the shoulder and Eren grips his coffee cup so tight the top pops up and falls to the floor, scalding coffee flows over the rim and burns his hand. He can barely feel it but she’s right there, taking the cup from him and handing him a paper towel. The towel is replaced with a new cup of coffee. She’s looking at him—he knows she is because she always does—but he can’t look at her. He’s somehow able to move aside, turn, and take a step. And then another. And another. Until he’s out of the cafe, in his car, and back at the work site.
She’s his dream, Eren realizes that night in bed, he’s always known her because he has dreamt of her, without fail, almost every night.
He doesn’t return to the cafe the next day. It’s his fault—he wanted to know and now he did. She had no way of knowing—how could she? How could he explain, even, that he can't ever see her again because he's dreamt of her too many times to count? That his first memory—before any of his childhood, before either of his parent's faces—is of her, her smile, her voice? It's too abstract, too bizarre, and it doesn’t even make sense to him.
He knows he can't look at her anymore, not after learning this, because there’s a sadness he doesn’t understand. A promise of despair and unfulfilled longing. Tears when he wakes up, a crushing weight in his chest. He’s angry at her, angry at himself, because if he just remembered, he would have stayed away from the coffee shop.
He stays away from it now, and the days pile on.
The time of completion sneaks up on him, although he's always known that construction would eventually end—the exact date is marked on the calendar pinned to the wall of his living room—he just never thought about it, never focused on it.
It’s here now, and the guys go to a bar to celebrate the end of their last shift at this site. He’s nursing a beer, his only drink for the night, aware that he might have to drive some of them home tonight. Jean is two drinks in, grinning stupidly.
“You gonna miss your girlfriend, Eren?” He teases. It’s childish and more than likely coming from a place of jealousy than anything else and Eren rolls his eyes.
“She’s not my girlfriend.” He says sharply. Then, quietly, because he’s only just realizing, he adds, “I don’t even know her name.”
Then he’s quiet for the rest of the celebration. He’s quiet as he hauls Jean into his car and drops him off at home. He’s quiet as he drives back to his own apartment, as he enters the elevator. He’s quiet when he’s in the shower, and then in bed, as he thinks back to all of their interactions and realizes once more that he had forgotten to ask her the simplest question in the world, the most important thing he should know.
He doesn’t know her name and today had been their last day at the site, in this town, and he will not be seeing her tomorrow or the day after that until it all blends together and she’s just a memory or a dream once more.
He can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying, but he supposes it doesn't matter in the darkness of his room.
He knew this—that ‘later’ wasn't set in stone, a flimsy approximation, an empty promise that only brings the disappointment of anticipation. He did this himself, he was the one who decided that he couldn’t go back.
Still, he thought he'd at least have more time.
The days turn into months, and then the months into a year, and then two years have passed and not once did they return to that small town.
They move from site to site, and he works himself to the bone and it feels good to have a distraction, to forget the weeks he spent elsewhere. He thinks that this is okay—that he made the right decision, the right call—it was the smartest thing to do, for him, for her.
Eren spends his hours working and his breaks napping and the feeling of absence, the feeling of missing something, wanes until it’s a faint whisper, until he can't hear it anymore, until it disappears—gradually and then nothing at all.
The later comes without ceremony after a grand total of three years when he walks into his usual coffee shop with Jean.
It’s in a different city, he’s long since moved, a new job taking him elsewhere. He’s a site manager now—he has an office, his apartment is bigger, he dresses better, he has a new car, and he enjoys the taste of coffee.
The customer service is great, there is more than one barista and the drinks are delicious, the pastries sweeter and he frequents this establishment twice a day because he gets two one-hour breaks. These times are not precious, he doesn't take afternoon naps when he can, he doesn't waste the hours away standing at high tables and staring at pretty baristas. He gets his order and leaves immediately, back to the office, or the site, where he continues to work because that’s really all he does now.
Today, out of nowhere, lacking any sort of foreshadowing, she is there, standing next to a new employee with a clipboard in her hand. She looks mostly the same, her dark hair a little longer, her lips still painted a red so deep it’s like a cut against her skin.
When she finally notices him, the board drops from her hands and onto the counter, the loud slap from wood hitting wood not enough to make either of them flinch.
Jean stares between them before rolling his eyes, placing a hand on Eren's shoulder, and turning back towards the entrance.
The employee, no older than a high school student, smiles excitedly, “Welcome to Ackerman’s Cafe, what can I get for you today?”
Eren can't respond, and the student fidgets, but he watches her turn to fill up a medium cup, grab a bagel, and walk around the counter.
“W-what about paying?” The student says and she’s shaking her head.
“He's a friend.”
He had thought he had forgotten her voice, one of the first things to go through the years, but hearing it now, the memory has him holding his breath. It’s just like he remembers, and just like the last time, where he had felt her absence in the face of a frowning man, he realizes, numbingly, that he has missed her all this time.
She’s walking towards the door and the kid is whining about how it’s his first day and she just can’t leave him here. She pauses at the entrance, shouldering it open, letting all the air out not even looking at the employee who is now cowering at the line. Eren looks only at her as he joins her at the door, exiting the building and stepping out onto the street.
He takes the coffee and bagel from her, careful not to touch her.
“What are you doing here?” He asks, he can't remember the name of the old coffee shop. He thinks they had to have changed it—it was something he would have remembered and he would have steered clear of it here. Maybe he wasn’t paying attention.
“We expanded. I manage a few of the stores. You?”
“I moved here two years ago ago for work. Do you live here now?” They're at least a three day journey by car away from his previous home.
She shakes her head. “I travel between them. It’s not my first time here.” She answers his unasked question.
He has been visiting that cafe almost every day and he's never seen her, not once. It's weird how their lines have not intersected until now, when he finally has his bearings. He flexes his fingers.
“Was it always called Ackerman’s Cafe?”
She shakes her head. "We were originally just called, Coffee.” She laughs. The sound is enough to bring Eren to his knees. “We’re not a very creative family. There was a cease and desist. We had to change the name.”
The irritation is creeping up on him and his hold on his cup tightens. They changed the name, disguised themselves with good service and better drinks and wormed their way back into his life. A false sense of security, closure, the thought that everything was okay when it wasn’t—it was just dormant.
“It’s still not creative.” He says, walking ahead of her.
He can hear the click of her boots as she speeds up to fall beside him. “Things don’t change so easily.”
They skirt around topics like relationships, talking only about work, relocation, the things either of them have been up to for the last three years as they walk through the city. He realizes this is the most they’ve ever talked as the sun dips past the high rises and below the horizon. This is the most he's ever heard her speak, in all their conversations combined, and he’s too angry to enjoy it, to listen to the inflections of it, to really relish it.
She’s walking confidently, turning corners before he does and discussing current expansion plans. He remembers that he never took her into the city like he said he would. But it doesn’t matter—she must’ve found her way there.
She looks like the perfect resident, like she’s lived here for the past two years and he’s the one just visiting. Her cafe is probably closed by now, has to be, and he’s been out way passed his break, way over his shift. He hopes Jean covered for him.
The current topic exhausts itself, puttering out and leaving the mess of it all right in front of them. They’re going to crash right into it, and the irritation he felt is now full blown anger, starting at a low intensity before exploding with each step he takes and he stops suddenly, hands tense at his sides. She walks two steps ahead before realizing he's not beside her.
“Why are you here?”
She stays where she is, two feet in front of him, and quirks her head, confused, like he’s just called her rude on a bench and she's missed a joke he didn't make. He hates the effect it has on him.
“I told you—work.”
“No—” His voice jumps in volume and he has to stop himself to take a breath. “Why have you come?”
Now, he means. Why is she here now. It's been so long. He’d forgotten her face, her voice, the staring, the walks, the dream. He had been promoted, moved to a new city. It had been three whole years, compared the few weeks they had together, and he was fine with it. Fine with forever, the absoluteness of it.
“Eren.”
He wishes she wouldn’t say his name. Wishes that it didn't fill him with so much relief and longing to hear it over and over and over. He closes his eyes, takes another breath and prepares to speak.
She interrupts him, voice quiet, carried only by the breeze, red lips bleeding sorrow onto the pavement. “You left me.”
He scoffs, short and harsh. He had nothing to leave. “You weren't supposed to follow.”
She shakes her head. “I thought you'd come back. I waited. This is work.”
“You shouldn’t have come.”
They stand in front of each other, without saying a word and Eren is still so mad at her. He really does hate her—the sound of her voice, the way she looks, even prettier than the last time he saw her. Hates the way she's looking at him, still, eyes not wavering once.
“I—” He starts, then swallows. What did he even want to say? Everything is out there on the sidewalk between them. Every word left unsaid, every chance he had to reach out and touch her but didn’t, every stare, every smile, every day he didn’t return to the old cafe. Every time he's missed her since.
She must see it, must feel it, because she says, quietly, eyes softening, “You knew where to find me.”
It hits him hard, piercing through his chest and sending him spinning off his axis. He laughs, a little bit, because it’s true. He did know where to find her and he could have very well driven to the shop—he remembered the roads he’d taken, even the shortcuts, the landmarks, the street signs. He has always known but he didn’t have an excuse to drive an hour and a half out of his way for shitty coffee and bad customer service. When he didn't even know her name, didn’t even know who he should ask for.
He feels so stupid and so small that he has to clear his throat and swallow down another laugh that threatens to escape his lips. It was all so simple and he went and complicated it because of a stupid dream that he couldn't even remember fully. Just one sentence, that he’s heard from a million other people, that his mind had probably tricked him into thinking it was her who said it.
So he ran, because he was scared, and didn’t give her so much as a warning. Because even though he didn't remember the dream in its entirety, he always wakes up with the feeling that it was a very bad dream. A prophecy that ends with their parting—or maybe something even more tragic—telling him to go as far away as possible and never look back.
But here is the ‘later’ and he should have known, from the moment he laid eyes on her, that he was in love with her, fully, completely, wholly. It was that simple—a push from his coworkers, a wait in a long line, and a four-dollar-and-fifty-seven-cents order—and it was never for the crappy coffee or the bagel.
He feels so stupid for letting three years of his life go by, for not getting in his car and driving an hour and a half out of his way, a three day journey now. For being too scared to know her identity and hearing what was, undoubtedly, a call to fate and answering it with the decision to flee.
“What’s your name?” He asks finally, a lifetime too late. His voice shakes and he thinks that the answer is obvious.
“Mikasa.” She gives immediately, never wavering. Her voice is so clear, much louder than he's ever heard her speak. “Ackerman. Mikasa Ackerman.”
“Mikasa.” He murmurs. And like everything else about her, he should have known this, too. It’s been at the forefront of his mind for years, a headache with no origin, laying in wait, prickling. The pressure lifts and he thinks he may have been born with this knowledge and if he had shut up and listened, it would have offered itself readily, happy to be remembered, both familiar and new.
He closes the distance between them, like he had envisioned all those years ago, reaching out over the memories and regrets and sorrow, and cups her face in his hands, palms to cheeks. They don’t explode and it doesn't set them on fire. He’s sure he's done this his whole life.
“Mikasa.” He says again.
Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa.
He says her name like a prayer, holds onto it like it’ll bring him salvation, holds onto her like his religion. She pulls him closer and he thinks this is heaven.
Touching her is better than he could have ever imagined, more explosive this time, but it’s not catastrophic, it doesn't burn them to ash. And if it does, he's born again.
He's never known himself to be so poetic, or religious, but, when he presses his lips to hers, for the thousandth time tonight, the final time in this moment, he is sure that this time, he's actually brought to the shores of heaven.
They lie in bed, only the sounds of their breathing filling the room. It's dark inside and outside of his apartment—the only a source of light a beam reflected onto the covers by the moon through the gap in his blinds.
Mikasa isn't facing him. She's turned over and he thinks she might be asleep—he can see the steady rise and fall of the blanket, the top her shoulder peeking out from the edge before disappearing under it completely.
He’s about to fall asleep himself when she rolls over and looks at him. He could get used to this, this closeness, and a smile is tugging at his lips.
“I’ve dreamt of you.” She whispers. “Before I even met you, I’ve dreamt of you.”
The hilarity of it hits him with increasing momentum, like a train—far away at first, then instant—and he's laughing before the sound even reaches his ears. He curls into her, shaking the bed and he can hear the confusion in her voice.
“What?” She’s saying but he’s still laughing, stomach tight and eyes closed, then she’s laughing, too, forehead pressing against his.
It'd be too hard to explain, even though he knows she'd understand, that the both of them could have the same dream before knowing one another and meet in an unassuming coffee shop in that way, and then again three years later, at yet another coffee shop. It's absurd and his laughter is fading out and maybe there has to be some kind of a god, some kind of divine power, to put them on this earth, only hours from each other without ever meeting, with the memory of another person before either of them was even born.
He’s not very romantic, too brusque and guarded, and mostly inexperienced, but he finds her hand under the covers and brings it to him, over his ribs, and over his heart, then to his lips.
She smiles and it’s devastating and beautiful and he’s so happy that he will see it tomorrow, and the day after that, and the one after that.
“When you walked into the store, that first time. I had loved you then.”
He had been hit with so much deja vu back then, so much so that it upset him. Now he remembers the dream in its entirety—the smile she had, just like now, just like three years ago when she spoke into the future, the same words she tells him every night. It wasn’t a very bad dream at all.
He’s not sure how fate works, he’s never believed in that kind of thing—things happen or they don’t, nothing is meant to be or set in stone, things can change, easily, with a simple decision and you don’t always find your way back.
But Mikasa is sleeping now, and Eren, teetering on the edge of it, closes his eyes to the image of her right next to him.
He falls asleep with a singular thought:
If Mikasa is a prophet, he’d gladly be her sole disciple.