Summary: "There's something about seeing her sitting in a half empty coffee shop reading away all alone that's intriguing him." He sees her alone in a coffee shop and tries to work up the courage to talk to her. AU. Two-Shot.
A/N: Coffee shop AU's are one of my favourite fanfics, and somehow I came up with mine from the line "I've been watching you for days, sitting in the same corner table at the same café," from the song "Lovestruck" by The Vamps. I originally wanted it to be a one-shot, but I've been working on it for some time now and haven't gotten anywhere close to finishing it yet, so I'm hoping uploading part of it might motivate me to complete it. Either way, I like what I've written so far.
Disclaimer: I don't own Austin & Ally or "Lovestruck" by The Vamps.
"Just coffee today," he says at the counter. He pays for his order and waits patently as they make his drink.
Turning around, he scans the coffee shop, skimming over the customers present. There isn't many, but there never is; this place isn't nearly as popular as the Starbucks down the street, but he prefers it that way. He likes the quiet.
Then he spots her. She's sitting in the far corner of the shop, an empty mug next to her and a book sitting in front of her. This is the third time this week he's seen her here, and every time she's been sitting in that same spot, away from everyone else.
He gets his coffee and walks over to a random booth near her, but not close enough that she might notice. He hasn't been coming here for long, but it seems to him that none of the regular customers here ever venture into any of the seats around her. Either they don't like it in that corner, or they're giving her space. Either way, he has a feeling she'd notice if someone did anything differently.
He's not sure why he's taken a sudden interest in this girl. It's not like he knows her from anywhere. He's never seen her before, and she doesn't look like anyone he actually does know. But there's something about seeing her sitting in a half empty coffee shop reading away all alone that's intriguing him. Maybe he should say hi. Then again, it seems that nobody in this place ever talks to anyone, except when they order. Maybe it's some sort of silent agreement. This is place is quieter than a library, and it's supposed to stay that way.
He just sighs, then goes to drinking his coffee, quietly observing the girl in the corner.
He's been coming to this coffee shop for two weeks now, and nothing's changed.
One thing he's picked up on is that she's not the only one who sits in the same spot every day. There's an elder man that likes to sit by the window, reading the newspaper; a young man in a suit is always on his laptop at the table closest to the door; there's a young woman who looks like she might be a high school teacher who sits on one of the stools at the counter every day; every once in a while a new face will walk through the doors and order something, then either sit down at a random table in the middle or walk out. There's a sense of tradition here, and he's afraid to break it.
But the girl in the booth in the corner is still here, and she's still reading, and he still wants to talk to her. He's been sitting in the same spot, too. Three tables down on the opposite wall. Away from her, but not too far.
He's been picking up on a few things about her. The first being is the way she looks. Not in a superficial way, though; he's not that shallow as to think someone's looks are the most important thing about them. But he doesn't have much else to go on at the moment.
She's very pretty, he won't doubt that. Her brown hair is long and curly, the ends lighter than the top. She has fair skin, and a small mouth. She's always looking down, so he hasn't had much of a chance to see her eyes, and he's surprisingly anxious to know what they look like. She looks to be about his age, late teens/early twenties maybe. A college student, like him. He tried looking at some of the faces of the brunette girls at his school the other day, but none stood out to him like she does. Either she's in a different section than him or she goes to a different school altogether. By how often she seems to read, it's probably the latter.
Besides looks, he's been picking up on some of her habits as well. She almost never looks up, except when to take a sip of her drink, and even then her eyes never leave the page of her book. She's always here when he comes, and he always leaves before she does. Sometimes she has headphones on, and her music will be just loud enough that he can hear it, but it's still faint enough that he doesn't know what it is. On those days she'll sometimes mouth the words to the songs she's listening to, but since he can't read lips it doesn't help him much. She's also a lip-biter, and he's not sure if that's because she's trying to concentrate on her reading or if she's at a suspenseful part in the book. He's thought about going over to her and asking her about it, but he's never been a big reader, so he's not sure he'd want to start a conversation he can't really join.
He looks at the time, realizes that he's going to be late for work, and gets up. The girl still doesn't look up (it's a headphones day, so she probably can't hear him), and he silently walks out of the coffee shop. But what he wouldn't do to just talk to her.
Ally. Her name is Ally. Part of him wonders why he never really thought about wanting to learn this, but he was so focused on trying to just talk to her that it never occurred to him that he didn't even know her name.
He didn't ask about it; he's still keeping this...interest to himself. He heard her say it after three weeks of visiting the café when her phone rang and she said, "Hello?" and then, "Yes, this is Ally," and then proceeded to have a respectfully quiet conversation with whomever was on the other end of the call. He wished it was him. He wished he could just find the courage to get out of his chair, walk the few feet to her table, and say hi. But it's so much easier said than done.
The day after the phone call, he's sitting in his regular seat and she's sitting in hers when something finally happens. He's gotten so used to looking in her general direction without anyone saying anything that it catches him off guard. She glances up - just a quick glance - from her book, but she met his gaze for that split second, and then she looks up again, and realizes that he's looking at her, and so she does the polite thing and smiles at him.
He sort of jumps at this, surprised, and she must notice because she giggles at it. So he smiles back, but quickly looks down at his coffee after. When he looks up again, she's back to reading her book, but her cheeks are fading red, and he realizes that he must've made her blush. Was it from how she laughed at him? Or was she not used to looking up only to find someone looking back at her? He finds that surprising, with how she looks. Why wouldn't someone want to look at her? But it could also be the location; it's not everyday you go to a quiet coffee shop and find one of the customers staring at you.
He suddenly feels a new-found sense of courage to talk to her, to Ally. Her voice is still ringing in his head from her phone call yesterday, and he'd like to hear her speak some more, but to him. He smiles to himself, thinking he's ready for this, he can talk to this complete stranger he's been observing for three weeks, and actually starts to stand up to walk over to her, but when he looks up she's gathering her things into her bag and her headphones are in her ears and then she's walking past him and out of the café, not even giving him a second glance.
He sits back down, then starts gathering his things, too. So much for talking to her. And his new-found sense of confidence? Completely gone again, without a single trace left.
Four weeks. He goes a full four weeks of just observing this girl - Ally, he now knows - before he decides to try to talk to her. He knows last week she walked out before he had the chance, so this week he's decided to try a new approach. This week he's decided to sit one seat closer to her.
Immediately he realizes how lame this sounds. One seat closer is not going to make much difference, other than that there's less distance between them. One seat closer is not going to have a major effect. But he does it anyway, because his confidence has not returned and he's not sure how to gain it back.
He tries observing her out of the corner of his eye this time, as opposed to full on staring at her. He's not sure she'd appreciate finding him looking at her more than once, and he doesn't want to take the chance of having her think he's some sort of creep.
She's not reading today, and instead has a bunch of papers sitting in front of her. Homework, most likely. This immediately puts a dent in any chances of him gaining his confidence back; she's busy, he doesn't want to be rude and bother her about it. So he stays silent, watching her as she mutters words under her breath as she works, her music just a little louder today.
Later that week he's surprised when he shows up to the coffee shop to find her seat vacant. He looks around the shop to see if maybe she moved places, but she's nowhere to be seen. He sighs, but continues to approach the counter and order like usual.
He sits at his table, quiet, and quickly finds himself bored. All this time, he's been occupying himself with observing Ally, thinking about Ally, and nothing else that it never really occurred to him to bring any sort of entertainment. He doesn't read, so he doesn't really feel like picking up one of the newspapers off the counter. He thinks maybe she's just running late, and she'll show up soon, so he decides to pull out his phone and play a couple games on it until she does.
But 15 minutes later he's growing bored of his game and she still hasn't shown up. His coffee mug is empty and he's not in the mood for another one, so he puts his phone away and stands, turning to leave.
The first thing he feels when he turns around is something solid bumping into him, and then something hot is on his shirt and he looks up to see the girl standing in front of him in shock. Then he quickly connects the dots and realizes that the something solid he ran into was her, and the something hot on his shirt was her spilled coffee.
She gapes at him for a second before finally speaking. "Sorry, I'm so sorry! I didn't even see you get up!" she rambles, setting her bag down and taking the napkins in her hand to place them on his shirt, trying to remove the stain. The minute her hand connects with his chest he feels the heat, though he's not sure if it's from the coffee or her.
Suddenly it hits him that he's been standing here like an idiot as she rambles apologies while trying to fix the stain and he hasn't said a word. Reality finally catches up with him and moves his hands to grab her wrists, stopping her in her actions.
"Hey, hey, hey," he says, causing her to look up at him. "It's okay. Really."
She shakes her head frantically, looking back at his shirt. "No, no, it's really not, I've ruined your shirt and there's coffee everywhere and oh my gosh, I just feel really bad like you probably hate me right now and -"
"Ally!" he calls to shut her up, then quickly regrets it. How is he supposed to explain to her how he knows her name when this is the first time they've ever talked?
Her expression changes from worry to confusion, and she slowly pulls her hands away from him. "How do you know my name?" she slowly asks.
"Uh..." he starts. "I, uh, heard you say it once? You were on the phone and you said your name and since it's kind of quiet in here it wasn't hard to miss."
"Oh," she replies, then nods in understanding. "Okay." She pauses. "But while we're on the topic of names, I feel like I should know yours, since I kinda ruined your shirt and everything."
He glances at his shirt, then shrugs. "It's okay. I didn't really care for this shirt, anyway." It's actually one of his favourites, but he's not going to tell her that. "I'm Austin."
"Oh. Well, it's nice to meet you, Austin, even if it wasn't in the nicest way."
He smiles. "It's nice to meet you, too, Ally."
The next day at the coffee shop he walks straight past his usual seat and his recently new usual seat and goes to the same corner table as Ally, sliding into the seat across from her.
She glances up when she sees him, and smiles. "Hey," she says.
"Hey," he replies.
She slides the second mug of coffee across the table towards him. "Here's your coffee," she says.
He smiles, taking it from her. "Thanks," he replies. "You really didn't have to buy this for me, you know. If anything, I'm probably the one who owes you a coffee."
"Yeah, but that would just make me feel even worse. So it is I who is buying you a coffee," she explains.
He just chuckles. "Whatever makes you feel better," he mutters. She doesn't reply to this, and just looks down at her book again, quiet. Part of him wishes he could tell her just how much he actually appreciated her spilling her coffee on him. Without that, he's pretty sure he would've never gained the courage to talk to her. But here he is, sitting across from her in the same booth, able to talk to her whenever he wishes.
Except right now he wishes to talk to her, but he has no idea what to say. She's not listening to music, but she's reading, so he knows that even though he could talk to her, he still feels like he'd be interrupting something important. So he sits quietly like usual, just watching her read.
She continues this for about 5 minutes, the only movement she makes to flip a page, until she abruptly closes her book and pushes it to the side. Then she says, "I kind of feel rude now. Here you are, sitting quietly across from me, probably wanting to talk, and instead I'm choosing to read my book."
He chuckles nervously. "That's alright. I'd probably choose reading over talking to me, too. I mean, if I read," he adds.
She laughs at this. "Okay," she mutters. Then she sits up straight and says, "So, what's your life like?"
He shrugs. "Oh, you know, kinda boring, honestly. I go to the college in town every day, work at my parents' store until night, then go home only to wake up to the same routine. Not very exciting."
She nods. "Yeah, I know how you feel. I go to the university in town -" So he was right in thinking she went to a different school - "and during the afternoon I spent my time at my dad's store. Not a lot of free time, except when I come here. This coffee shop is the only place where I can get something for myself done."
"Yeah. I just started coming here to get away from the noise. The Starbucks up the street is crazy busy all the time. I needed some place to just collect my thoughts, you know?" Though that quickly changed when he saw her.
"Exactly. Some time to ourselves is all we want." She pauses. "But I guess now that time will be spent together, huh?"
"What?" he asks, confused. Was she really offering to spend more time with him?
She leans back a little. "I mean, if you wanted to, we could always just meet up here. Spend our alone time not so alone. Company is something I've never had a problem with."
"Oh." So she did just offer to spend more time with him. He nods. "Sure. I like that."
She smiles. "Awesome," she replies.
"...and somehow she managed to bump into it and flip the whole thing over!" he tells Ally, causing her to erupt in laughter. Some of the customers look over at the loud teens, but they don't care. They haven't since they started talking a week ago.
During that week, Austin learned a lot about this girl, Ally. For starters, she's the same age as him (19), she goes to the university in town, she hates drinking coffee but loves the smell of it, so she compromises this by drinking tea in a coffee shop, she enjoys reading in her free time, and she is obsessed with music.
A part of Austin wanted to learn everything he could about this girl, whether it was something as basic as her favourite colour (red) or something as random as her childhood dream (like most girls, she did go through a phase where she wanted to be a princess, but it was more like the dragon-slaying, sword-wielding kind that she encountered in her books than the gown-wearing, meeting-Prince-Charming kind), but it always wound back to music. It was the one - and only, he quickly realized - thing they had in common that they could talk to each other about for hours if they wanted to, even if they didn't have the time. But the next day they'd pick up right where they left off, as if the conversation had never stopped.
Today they found their way to talking about crazy events in their life, and he was just finishing telling her about something he remembered happening in elementary school to one of his friends. She burst out laughing, something he's found that is very easy to do, but he enjoys it nonetheless. He loves being able to put a smile on her face more than he's willing to admit.
She's just about to jump into a story concerning her best friend at her family's barbeque when her phone's alarm goes off. She glances at the time, then groans.
"Ugh, I have to be back at work," she mutters. She looks back up at him. "Same time tomorrow?" she asks. She says this everyday, and his answer is always yes, but for some reason she feels the need to keep asking.
He nods. "Yep," he says, getting up himself. He has work soon, too, something he's starting to become late for ever since talking to her. His parents don't say anything about it, but he can tell they're getting worried.
He follows her outside the coffee shop, and with a final goodbye, walks in the opposite direction to work. Just as he starts walking, though, a thought occurs to him, and he quickly turns around to walk back toward Ally to ask her. But when he turns around, she's already standing behind him.
"Oh. Hi," he says.
She smiles, then says, "So, I know this is kinda random, but we've been talking to each other for like a week now and it never once occurred to me to ask you for your number," she says.
He laughs. It seems she was thinking the same thing. "Yeah, me too," he replies.
"So, do you think I could get that number now?" she asks.
"Oh, yeah," he says, proceeding to pull out his phone, trading it for hers so he can add it in. He quickly does, then trades it back for his again when she's finished.
She smiles. "Thanks," she replies as she takes it. "Guess we're like real friends now, huh?"
He never really thought about what they were before - just coffee shop buddies or something of the sort - but hearing this out loud makes him glad. He wants to be her friend.
He nods. "Yeah, I guess so," he agrees.
She chuckles. "Well. Guess I'll see you tomorrow, friend," she says, emphasizing on the word 'friend'.
He laughs. "Yep. See you then, friend," he replies, mocking her. Then she turns back around and walks away.
That's it for part one! Feel free to bug me about the second half if I don't put it up in like a month and you're really anxious to read it. I've been trying to write a lot of different stories at once lately, so there's a chance I might forget about this one every once in a while. But I promise I will get this done. Eventually. But anyways. Thank you for reading! Reviews are always appreciated. :)
