Notes: Inspired by elenlith's cafe AU prompt on tumblr: "Rey is the owner of a dainty little café. One day Ben stumbles in, almost by accident, all leather jacket and bad boy attitude. In the pastel-coloured café he stands out like a sore thumb, but he discovers the coffee is excellent…and the blinding smile from the pretty girl behind the counter leaves him speechless. Since then he's been returning every day… he's awkward as hell and stares at Rey when he thinks she's not looking."
At first, he doesn't pay her any attention at all. She's all smiles and warmth as she greets him at the counter, but he couldn't be bothered to even show a semblance of her enthusiasm. He unceremoniously places his order of just regular coffee and heads to a booth at a corner where he knows he wouldn't be disturbed for the rest of his stay. There are other people in the small café he randomly chose to walk into this morning, but their faces are all hazed in his current state of lethargy from working a late shift and barely getting any rest.
Then, she arrives with his order, spills it all over his table, and then – something clicks.
"I'm so sorry!" she exclaims as she reaches for the mug to set it back upright. Within seconds, she has a rag in her hand and she's wiping at the mess. When she finishes cleaning up, she offers him an apologetic smile, though he could see that she's cringing at her own clumsiness. "I'm sorry. I'll replace that. Did any of it get on you?"
He couldn't even form the word no, not when he's still distracted by her, by the sudden familiarity of her. Though, he's sure that they've never met or crossed paths before. How could they have? He's only been stationed in this city for a month. His eyes wander to the tag over her apron that says her name is Rey; he racks his mind for memories of anyone he might have known before, but he comes up empty with excuses for why he feels like he knows her. That he should.
"Hey," she calls out, and he looks back up to meet her eyes. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," he answers mindlessly, maintaining their gaze until he could no longer handle the curiosity of her identity. He snaps his head to the side and looks at the small tray of condiments set on the table, at the edges of the window, at the car parked on the other end of the street – at anything but her face. "It's fine."
She wakes up drenched in sweat, even when she's sure that the air conditioning unit is set to a temperature low enough to give her chills. She's breathless and her heart is racing from a dream she vaguely remembers. There were trees around her, snow piling on the branches above and falling to the ground at her feet. It was a landscape she knows she's never seen for herself, a forest that she isn't sure of its existence. In her dreams, she's running from a wraith of sorts; she doesn't know who or what it is exactly as it's always a dark shadow that doesn't take on any particular face.
The first time it happens, she doesn't think much of it. She's dreamed of places she's never been to before, of oceans and islands outside the desert city she's lived in her entire life. But then it happens again. And again. And with each night that passes, the dreams become more vivid, more real. She knows what snow feels like in her hands and on her face, knows how it feels to be running for her life from being hunted. It terrifies her every time she rouses from sleep, but the wild pounding of her heart in her chest tells her that in her dreams, that's the most alive she's ever felt.
In between her average university load and her part-time gig as a waitress, she already doesn't have enough time for sleep, and these haunting dreams only add to her restlessness. She tries to recall exactly when her visions began, but it's all a blur to her now. It's been weeks; she doesn't even remember how it feels to dream of other things anymore. Now, all she knows in her sleep is a world full of green and white and a sense of danger looming over her.
After working in the small café for a few months, it become instinctive for her to look up every time she hears the chime of the bell when the door opens. When she sees who's come in, a small smile settles on her lips. From the counter, her eyes follow his figure as he walks to the booth he frequents. He only ever orders just regular coffee, so on his third visit, she had told him to just go ahead and take a seat; she would bring him his drink – with a promise of not spilling anything like the first fiasco.
When she approaches him, he flinches in place, accepts the mug graciously, takes his time to finish his drink, and then pays the tab and leaves. It becomes routine for them, and she always looks forward to his visits as they increased in frequency. A few times, she's caught him throwing glances at her direction, only for him to quickly turn away and pretend that he was never looking at her. It makes her chuckle to herself; she finds it endearing, just how awkward he acts.
Except – she doesn't even know his name. On the day that she finally builds up the nerve, he cuts her right as she's about to ask.
"Rey," he says her name with an inflection of familiarity that sends shivers down her spine. "Have you been sleeping well?"
The question catches her off-guard, and her cheeks flush in embarrassment. The shadows beneath her eyes are telling, she knows, but no one's been crass enough to point it out. Before she can form a proper response to his question, he shakes his head and reforms the faraway look on his face again.
"I'm sorry," he says softly, sounding haunted. Rey nods and scurries back to her station, but his words echo in her mind even hours after he's left.
His nightmares only get worse with each passing night. The colors of the forest are more vibrant than before – the contrasting green and white of the dreamscape. There's dread in the pit of his stomach, as though he's just done something terrible and unforgiveable, and he feels pain on the side of his torso. In his sleep, he's always bleeding out, and his blood leaves a trail in the snow-covered ground. In spite of his injuries, he's not so much running as he is chasing. He knows he's not the one being hunted as he traverses the forest. Instead, he's the hunter in pursuit of his prey: a grey little thing that blurs with the swiftness of its movements, from getting as far away from him.
He's breathless when he wakes, and there's a searing ache in many places over his body. His leg, his shoulder; the most painful part he feels is on his face. He expects to see that he's been mauled somehow when he looks at the mirror in the mornings, but his face remains spotless, save for the freckles over his pallor.
One night, however, it becomes unbearable to dream. In the same forest he's always seen in his sleep, Rey is there, and her expression only mirrors the confusion he feels at the sight of her. He has no control over his hands, over his actions; his feet move forward, he raises his weapon to strike at her – and the him that is aware of it all being not reality can only pray that he isn't going to kill her, but in the end, she's the one that strikes him down, that leaves scars and burns all over his body. When the earth shatters and separates the two of them, he wakes with a gasp.
He doesn't know how, but he can feel that she had just woken to the very same dream.
After that night, he never comes back to the café. If he had the same dream –nightmare – that she had, she would understand completely why he wouldn't show his face around her anymore. There's a terror in her gut that tells her it's for the best that she doesn't see him anymore, but her mind tells her that it doesn't make sense. That it is unreasonable for them not to make each other's acquaintance. They may have been enemies of sorts in another life, in another universe – but here, here she is just a girl and he is just a boy. There is nothing to divide them between the lightand the dark. It all sounds like nonsense.
She uses up all her connections to track him down, to know at least which building he works at. She's there at the ground floor, right outside the elevators, waiting for him to come out at the end of his shift. There is a crowd in front of her, each one of them eager to come home to their families or to their favorite pastime, but she doesn't care much for any of them. Not now. Not when he's standing right across her, looking both stunned and eager to leave.
"We're not them," she blurts out. There are other people watching, most likely his co-workers wanting to get a spectacle out of her presence, but she pays them no mind as well. "Whoever they are, whoever we were before – they're not us. Not here. Not right now."
And she closes her eyes to the world as the fear of watching him leave sinks in. She's no stranger to seeing his retreating figure move beyond doors, but this time there is something more at stake – what it is, she isn't sure yet, but she is willing to find out.
"Rey."
She opens her eyes and sees him grinning, looking down at her fondly, almost endearingly; like she's just charmed him by spilling his drink all over his table.
And now, she knows his name, too.
"Ben."