#pep tea does help though. but i cut up some strawberries and put them in my warter and i think

[hurglewurm]

every evening my tummy hurts and i'm running out of peppermint tea

[piperemerald]

An Hour To Midnight

Fandom: Promised Neverland

Pairing: Norray

Coffee Shop / College AU

Summary: In which Ray works the closing shift at the Starbucks on his college campus and does not understand why Norman continues to walk through the doors at 11pm, order a tea, and sit at the counter until the cafe is closed.

AO3

“He’s back again.” Emma didn’t even meet Ray’s eyes as she stage whispered and subtly gestured to the doorway. Ray resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her. Apparently his usual amount of sarcasm was bad for business. Not that he thought their only customers in the past hour would care.

“Of course he’s back,” Ray replied instead. He made a point of keeping his tone as dry as possible, even though he was well aware any attempts to mask his emotions were rendered useless on the girl who had known him since they were both five.

It was his turn to man the cash wrap while Emma made the drinks and warmed up the food. They divided their shift, even though there was really no point. There was no point in the Starbucks being open two hours later than the dining hall and campus store. The 11pm rush that the university seemed positive they would receive was nonexistent.

At best, it was empty and Ray could spend the last two hours of work balancing a book on the register and testing Emma on psychology terms. At worst, they had one customer.

“Grande green tea and a strawberry scone?” Ray asked the closing shift’s only regular.

“Am I that predictable?” The boy chuckled. “Yes, thanks.”

Ray rang him up, knowing that Emma had already started the drink when he walked through the doors. This was the third night this week that he’d wandered in, each time he would end up sitting at the counter until closing. The last two instances, he’d made conversation with them. Ray had several theories as to why anyone would want to spend their night sitting in a cafe instead of sleeping, or studying, or doing anything else with their time.

The wildest one was that he was a vampire, the most likely one was Emma.

This would not have been the first time he’d watched some poor idiot fall for her, only to later realize that she was that friendly and bubbly to everyone. They weren’t special. A majority of the time, Emma was oblivious to this. In the case of the boy with the blond hair so light it was practically white and a seeming lack of a sleep schedule, Emma was completely convinced Ray was over exaggerating.

She was, however, fully in support of the vampire theory—which was apparently far more feasible than a handsome man being attracted to her.

She thought Ray was teasing her, when really he was being serious. He was also counting the days it took this kid to summon the courage to ask for her number. It seemed tonight wouldn’t be the night.

When Emma placed his drink and pastry in front of him, he only gave her a quick smile before his eyes went back to the phone in his hand. Ray was a little bit disappointed. As much as he knew it would be at this boy’s expense, he really wanted to have his ‘I told you so’ moment. Knowing that they likely wouldn’t get any more customers for the next hour, Ray turned his attention back to the book that he’d tucked into his apron when the door opened.

He was behind on the assigned reading, something that had never happened to him before in his life. It wasn’t even that Ray didn’t enjoy his classes, he did, but he often felt like there wasn’t enough hours in the day to do everything that was expected of him. He thought he’d known what he was getting himself into, after all back when he was signing up for classes the idea of finishing a book every week hadn’t seemed so insane.

It was different when he had time to take in each detail, to let his imagination enjoy the story. It was also different when he wasn’t trying to make excuses for the dyslexia that he knew slowed his reading pace to about half of all of his classmates, making it feel like there was no point that his comprehension was far higher and his analysis leagues better than any of them.

In high school he would buy the audiobooks to listen along with, because hearing someone else’s voice usually stopped the words on the page from swimming. But right now he couldn’t afford to shell out thirty bucks for every assignment.

“Could I get another one?” A smooth voice cut through Ray’s thoughts. He glances up to see the boy gesturing to the plate when the scone had once been. “It’s $3.75, right?”

Ray nodded. Emma was in the backroom, probably checking her phone but it wasn’t like he cared enough to chide her for that. They were both only working here because they had to—because they couldn’t afford their cramped dorm room without it. So he let the fact that she had left her post slide and warmed up the scone instead, placing it on the table and accepting the boy’s exact change.

“Thanks,” the boy was smiling again. There was something behind that smile—something incredibly exhausted, and drained, and all too familiar.

“No problem,” Ray said back.

Maybe if he’d just called Emma, maybe if he hadn’t spent a moment longer than needed looking into those soft blue eyes, nothing would have happened. But he did. And from there he was doomed.

“He’s kinda cute,” Ray said once the cafe was closed and the boy was gone.

Emma lifted her gaze from the deposit she was supposed to be counting to give him an odd look.

“What?” Ray felt like she was analyzing him. “I’m allowed to think stuff like that.”

“I never said you weren’t,” she laughed now. “You just usually don’t say it when you do.”

She had a point. Ray had come out to her back when they were eleven, he’d known he was gay since he was ten, but they rarely actually talked about boys. He blamed that on the fact that their lives were too busy to stop and have a romantic interest in anyone. He’d never really felt like he was missing out on much, anyway. Having a crazy best friend that he knew him better than he knew himself had always felt like more than he thought he deserved.

“You should ask him out,” Emma decided.

Ray snorted.

“I don’t even know his name,” he reminded her. There had never been any reason to ask it, since he was always the only one in the Starbucks Ray had never felt the need to write a name on the cup.

“Then ask him,” Emma pushed.

“I just said he’d kinda cute,” Ray gave her a deadpan expression. “Not that I’m head over heels after handing him a scone.”

“Whatever,” Emma rolled her eyes. “He is kinda cute.”

“Yeah,” Ray mumbled. “He is.”

The next night Emma wasn’t feeling well, but since none of their coworkers volunteered to cover for her she ended up staying for the first hour of the shift. It took that long for Ray to convince her to just go back to the room and that he could handle everything alone. Begrudgingly, she agreed and he was left alone with the book he still hadn’t finished.

Part of him almost regretted making her leave, since it was so much easier to keep himself together when she was with him and joking around. When he was alone, all of his fears felt a little bit bigger and the stress that might have been solved with a bit of sleep and a pep talk seemed impossible to defeat. It was while Ray was wallowing in this state of self pity that the door open.

He honestly wasn’t in the mood for this.

“Emma’s not here today,” he stated as the boy walked up to the register.

“I can see that,” the boy raised an eyebrow. “Can I get the usual?”

Ray mutely wrote on the cup and left the register to put the scone in the oven. He could feel the boy’s eyes on him as he did so, it made him feel like he wanted to crawl out of his skin.

“For here or to go?” He asked.

“For here,” the boy smiled at him again.

Ray didn’t say anything else. He took the money, gave him the change, and put the scone on a plate. It would probably take a few minutes at best for the awkward Emma-less silence to make this guy leave. Then Ray could finally focus.

“You were reading that last time too,” the boy spoke up. Ray only turned his head to give him a withering glare in response. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

“You’ve read it?” Ray asked back.

“Last year,” the boy nodded. “Intro to English, yeah? It was the first book they assigned.”

“It’s still the first book,” Ray said dryly. He let the blond boy connect the dots.

“It’s kinda dull,” he tried to sympathize.

“That’s not true,” Ray said back. “I’m just a slow reader and have a million other things people are expecting me to do, okay? It’s not because I don’t like it, or because I’m lazy, or because I don’t care. I’m so fucking tired of all of this!”

His voice rang out in the tiny cafe. He was dead. There was no way in hell this kid wasn’t going to tell the manager about Ray screaming at him. Then there went the job that was supposed to help him support himself. There went being able to afford his dorm and the lunches his meal plan didn’t cover. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe he was in over his head and should just—

“Give it to me,” the boy held out his hand.

“What—”

“Give me the book,” his voice was sterner now but his expression was neutral. It was funny that, even though he was the one who had filled the small place with shouting, Ray was the one who was doing everything he could not to flinch. He handed the used paperback over.

Calmly—and far too composed for someone who had just had a mental breakdown that he’d done nothing to influence directed at him—the boy opened to the page Ray had dog tailed. He started reading out loud.

“You don’t—”

“It’s faster this way,” the boy stated. “That solves the problem, right?”

Ray didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t know how to react to the knowing, almost arrogant, eyes looking back at him, or the cool collected smile. He didn’t know why this stranger wanted to help him.

“Right,” he uttered.

“Good,” the boy directed his eyes back to the page. He started reading again.

It took until the end of the shift for them to finish the book that Ray had been assigned a week ago. He already knew what he would write his essay on. He already had a list of messages and conclusions he could pull out of the story that had just been read to him.

“Thank you,” Ray knew the words couldn’t fully encompass how unbelievably grateful he felt.

“I didn’t have anything else to do,” the boy shrugged.

Ray knew what he had to ask now was going to make him sound like a complete ass: “What’s your name?”

Instead of seeming offended, the boy let out a chuckle. His laugh sounded like water—flowing gently, but with a sort of up-and-down rhythm to it. Ray wasn’t sure he’d heard anything more beautiful in his life.

“Norman,” the boy stated. “And I already know you’re Ray.”

“Name tags are fun like that,” Ray said dryly.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” Norman smiled at him one last time before leaving.

Ray found himself standing there, rooted to the spot and staring, long after Norman was gone.