Chapter Text
' I promise that the ending always stays the same
So there's no good reason in make believing that we could ever exist again
I can't be your friend, can't be your lover
Can't be the reason we hold back each other from falling in love '
The café next door to his office smelled like burned milk and cheap syrup and lino flooring that was thirty years past its best.
Baldwin had irritatingly noticed it weeks ago after spending a happy twenty years without it ever making his attention - noticed the line that never quite reached the door, the uneven chalkboard sign, the way the windows fogged in the mornings. He had not gone in. He rarely went anywhere without purpose. He didn’t even like coffee.
Today, he stepped inside anyway for no reason other than pure dark instinct.
The bell over the door rang once. Too loud.
It was late morning and not busy. Not that Baldwin had ever seen it busy. A handful of students sat hunched over laptops, one man in a cheap suit spoke quietly into his phone. Behind the counter stood a girl he had never seen before.
She was young in a way that pulled him back to earth.
Blonde hair pulled back too tightly, a loose strand slipping free near a pale temple. Blue eyes that lifted too quickly when the bell rang, then dropped just as fast as if she’d already decided she’d done something wrong. Her hands were wrapped around a ceramic mug she wasn’t drinking from.
She looked… nervous.
Baldwin stopped walking.
It was subtle. Anyone else would have thought he’d paused to check his phone, or to take in the plastic menu. But something inside him had locked, rigid and unyielding, as though the world had tilted half a degree off its axis.
She looked up again.
Their eyes met.
The girl’s breath caught. Not dramatically. Just enough that Baldwin noticed the faint hitch in her chest, the way her fingers tightened around the mug.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then she swallowed and straightened, shoulders squaring as if she’d remembered herself. “Hi,” she said softly. “What can I get you?”
Her voice was gentle. Careful. Like someone who had learned that taking up too much space was dangerous.
Baldwin took another step forward. Then another. Each one felt deliberate in a way he did not like
“Coffee,” he said. “Black.”
She nodded quickly. Too quickly. Turned to the machine, hands moving with practiced precision. Baldwin watched her without meaning to.
There was nothing remarkable about her. No magic humming beneath her skin. No sharp intelligence blazing in her eyes. She wasn’t beautiful in a way that demanded attention. She was human and boring and basically a child.
Yet something tugged. Low and insistent .
Old.
She glanced over her shoulder as the coffee brewed, as if she could feel his attention. Their eyes met again, briefly this time.
She flushed, rosy ink staining alabaster cheeks.
Baldwin looked away.
When she turned back, she busied herself with a napkin, folding it once, then again. When the coffee finished, she poured it carefully, slid it into a sleeve, and carried it toward him with both hands.
“Um,” she said, setting it on the counter. “That’ll be… three fifty.”
He handed her a note without looking at it. She stared at the bill for half a second too long.
“Oh…thank you. I’ll - I’ll get your change.”
“Keep it.”
She froze.
Then she shook her head, almost apologetically. “I can’t. Sorry. It’s policy.”
Of course it was.
She counted out the change, placing it neatly on the counter between them, careful not to let her fingers brush his. When she finally looked up again, her expression was open but wary, like she was bracing for disappointment.
“Have a good day,” she said.
Baldwin picked up the cup without looking back at her and turned away.
As he did, something inside him surged sharp and protective and disgustingly violent in its suddenness. A need to know where she lived. Who watched her walk home. Whether anyone had ever hurt her.
His jaw tightened and he forced himself to offer a second glance back.
“Thank you,” he said.
She smiled.
It was small and shy and it landed like a blow to the chest.
Baldwin did not look back.
Across the café, Emily watched him go, her fingers curling around the edge of the counter. Her heart was beating too fast. She told herself it was nothing. Just another customer.
Still, long after the door closed, she found herself hoping that he would come back.
He didn’t.
Emily lay on her bed with her shoes still on, the ceiling light switched off but the lamp on her desk burning low and yellow. The room smelled faintly of cloying damp and unwashed socks. Someone in the flat upstairs laughed, loud and careless, and a door slammed.
She hadn’t moved since she got home.
It was ridiculous. She knew that. He was just a man. A customer. Older and intimidating and devastatingly handsome but nothing more than someone who’d ordered coffee and left.
And yet.
Her chest still felt tight, as though she’d been holding her breath for hours without noticing. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him standing at the counter, tall and still, like the rest of the café had rearranged itself around him.
She pressed a hand to her sternum, frowning.
Get a grip.
She rolled onto her side, staring at the chipped paint on the wall. There was a thin crack running from the corner of the window down toward the radiator and if she squinted she could just about make out the lamppost from outside through it. She’d been meaning to tell the landlord for months. She never did. It felt easier not to ask for things.
Her mind drifted back to the moment their eyes had met.
She’d felt it then - something sharp and immediate, like stepping too close to the edge of a drop. Not fear, exactly. Not excitement either. Just… awareness deep in her chest. As if she’d been seen in a way she wasn’t used to.
People looked past her.
At the café, she was polite and quiet and easy to forget. Customers liked that. Men flirted sometimes, but it was sloppy and obvious and easy to brush off.
He hadn’t flirted.
He hadn’t smiled. Hadn’t lingered. Hadn’t tried to fill the silence. He’d looked at her like he was trying very hard not to.
Emily squeezed her eyes shut.
This was another one of her fantasies and she was making the entire encounter into something it wasn’t. That was what insane people did. If she had a therapist, which she didn’t, she was pretty sure they’d tell her this was unhealthy coping mechanics and some undiagnosed daddy issues.
But she could still feel it, the way her pulse had jumped without permission. She’d hated herself for it immediately. Hated the warmth in her cheeks, the stupid flutter low in her stomach.
You don’t do that, she told herself. You don’t want things. This isn’t real. Stop dreaming.
That voice was old.
Wanting led to disappointment. Wanting led to being left. Again..and again..and again.
She sat up abruptly and swung her legs over the side of the bed, pressing her feet into the cold floor to ground herself. The room felt too small and too quiet.
He won’t come back, she thought.
The idea landed heavier than it should have.
She stood and crossed to the mirror above her desk, studying her reflection. Pale hair escaping its tie, faint circles under her eyes, a smudge of milk she’d missed at the corner of her sleeve.
She let out a shaky breath and laughed under it. “You’re being stupid,” she murmured to her reflection. “Now you’re talking to yourself.”
But when she turned away, the feeling didn’t leave. Instead, it settled deeper, low and patient and unsettlingly calm.
Emily climbed back onto the bed and curled onto her side, pulling the thin duvet up around her shoulders. She told herself she was tired. That it had been a long shift. That tomorrow would be the same as always.
Still, as sleep finally crept in, one thought lingered.
She hoped he would come back.