Work Text:
Lily cracked her knuckles and furiously tapped her keyboard, eyeing her laptop screen, hoping that one of the sentences she typed would be the epiphany she needed to finish her essay with somewhat of a good argument. She’d been at the library since 10 pm, downed 3 large coffees, a few energy drinks and 10 hours later was beginning to feel like she was developing the ability to sleep with her eyes open.
Eye twitching, she readjusted the mess of her fiery hair on the top of her head. In the 2 years, she’d spent at university she’d be punctual on her essays to a fault. It was just her luck that it was her final year when things in her life went spiralling; her sister was not speaking to her yet still expected her to be present and cheery at her wedding, her best friend Marlene had broken up with her girlfriend again, and her beloved cat Angus had been furiously peeing on every piece of furniture he could find.
The buzzing of her phone reminding her to hand in her ‘History of Magic in Literature’ essay was really the cherry on top of the cake - and was received with many tears and screams, until Lily realised she really didn’t have the time to have a breakdown. Cut to the next morning and an hour until the deadline Lily had all but sold her dignity and mental stability in order to finish the last dregs of her assessment.
In short, she was stressed. The only blessing that the overnighter in the library gave was the deathly quiet that surrounded her. She’d found a corner of the library to make her own and had been unbothered except for the kind security guard who checked up on her every few hours, and the devilish eyes of the Librarian, Madame Pince who would swoop down on anyone who so much as coughed.
The morning birds brought a few tired students into the library but, as if sensing the looming fear pouring off Lily like sweat, they stayed away. At least they did at first.
Lily was so engrossed in hunching over her keyboard she didn’t notice someone sit down on the other side of the table. Didn’t notice them wipe their round, smudged glasses on their knit jumper. Didn’t even feel the set of eyes staring a hole into her head for an unusual amount of time. But hear them she did.
Across from her a loud ‘humph’ broke her concentration. A zipper pulled open, obnoxiously loud in the heavy quiet. A chunky, battered laptop was slapped down on the table. A looming sticker of a stag stared at Lily as she glanced up briefly at her new desk mate.
Shaking away her curiosity she pulled her laptop closer, retyping an especially dodgy, near incoherent sentence. A set of notebooks were brought out opposite her and thudded down once more, along with a stained pencil case and a flask of coffee. All were placed on the table with the type of gumption suitable more for the theatre than 8 am in a quiet library.
Another ‘humph’ and Lily dared to quickly spare a glare at the person before her. Hoping they’d take a hint to shut up. A tall, lanky boy had all but stuck his entire head into his backpack, as if to climb inside it, obscuring her view of his face. All that could be seen was a head of dark, messy hair.
It sounded like he carried half his life in that bag considering the noise that came from his searching; keys clanking, countless amounts of food wrappers and something that sounded suspiciously like a squeaky dog toy. When he brought a mud-clumped football boot out and set it on the table she had to look away in disgust. Some people have no respect for public spaces.
She set to focus back on her task, dispelling any thoughts of the way the man’s large, slender hands had looked gripping the backpack. God, she was a sucker for good hands.
Lily continued her editing of the essay, whilst opposite her, the boy had found what he was searching for, a pumpkin pastry and what looked to be a USB shaped like a lumpy stick.
“Come on ya bastard, unravel.” Across from her, the dark-haired boy was struggling to unwrap his headphone wires. Lily could see just out of her peripheral the nice hands were waving around a pair of white headphones as if flinging them around in the air would convince them to untie from their knot. They smacked the table slightly, clacking together. Her eye twitched again.
The boy quickly gave up untying his headphones and proceeded to sip his coffee in what seemed like the most obnoxious fashion Lily had ever heard. He gurgled and slurped, sighing deeply into the flask and Jesus, how good could coffee be?
The coffee was set down. Finally, he’d get down to do work and let Lily finish her -oh. She thought too soon. He was struggling with fitting his USB correctly in the slot and really, did it need to be so long and spindly? More huffing and scratching went on across the table.
Lily’s eye was no longer twitching irregularly but had moved on to what felt like bongo playing. She was almost finished. This toerag wasn’t going to make her stumble at the last (only) proofread.
Too late. The boy had moved on to his breakfast and was slowly opening his pumpkin pastry. The paper rustled. Rustled a bit more. How long did it take to open a packet for crying out loud? He bit into it and Lily swore she heard him moan slightly. She could even hear his chewing sounds. He wasn’t in an ASMR video for goodness sake, he didn’t need to be so dramatic.
“Would you shut up for one second? Please?” Lily hissed from across the table. The boy’s head snapped up and she was left briefly stunned by the hazel eyes that stared back at her through a pair of lopsided glasses. His mouth dropped open slightly, showing his partially chewed pastry.
“I’m trying to work, and it sounds like you’re feeding a herd of elephants,” Lily said, voice rising slightly as she attempted to remain cool under her aggravators annoyingly handsome face.
The stranger stared back at her for a moment, and then, much to her dismay, his mouth began to twist slightly, his cheek dimpling as he gave her a crooked smirk, hand reaching up to ruffle at his hair. Lily tried not to roll her eyes in disgust.
“Oh sorry,” He said, at least having the decency to sound vaguely abashed,” didn’t realise how much of a faff I was making.”
“Yes well... now you know. So, you can keep it down.” Lily replied trying to sound lofty even though she knew she looked a mess. Hair frizzy and haphazard, blue bruising under her eyes and she’s pretty sure she’s grown at least 3 stress spots on her chin.
He mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key. Eyes far too bright behind his glasses considering the early hour. She rolled her eyes back at him but was appeased for the moment that she would get some silence to finish her work.
It really was a blissful moment.
The windows startup sound blared from the man’s speakers.
In his shock, he jumped back in his chair slightly arms flailing out and knocking into his coffee. Rolling off the table it landed with a thump. He swore softly and upon bending to retrieve it smacked his head on the table, causing more curses to erupt, this time at less of a whisper.
“Shut up, shut up shut up, for one minute. I have 30 minutes to submit this pile of garbage and you seem to think your in a percussion band” Lily furiously cried, standing from her chair.
“Out! Both of you out!” The librarian Madam Pince fulfilled her most important self-given job as she stormed over to where Lily and her desk mate were. Arms outstretched looking like a harpy in her maroon cardigan. “You cannot make such noise in a library, of all places. Your behaviour is despicable.”
Lily felt like crying as she quickly packed all her stuff up, she hadn’t even managed to finish her sentence she was writing.
Madam Pince hovered over the two of them muttering stern words to them about ‘proper behaviour’. Beet red Lily hurried out the library doors as a sea of faces all turned to look at Madam Pince’s victim of the hour.
Her fellow target followed closely behind her, and before she could dash away and cry somewhere he grabbed her arm, pulling her back to stand in front of him. He was a head or so taller than her, and he had to bend his neck to look down at her.
“I am so sorry,” he began. The hand that was still on her arm felt hot. “I really didn’t mean to make such a noise, and then, of course, bat ears Pince had to come over and shame us like that.”
Lily shook her head, “its fine,” It really wasn’t, “if it wasn’t us it would be someone else.” The last of her coffee hyperactivity was wearing off and she felt the weight of her exhaustion press down on her. She forced herself to focus of the man before her and not fall into a puddle of tears.
“No, it's not. Look let me get you a coffee to make up for it –“
“Lily”
“Lily. Nice name. Well, I’m James and I owe you a big one. We can finish our work in that coffee shop near campus, The Three Broomsticks. There’s free Wi-Fi and my mate works there so he can give us unlimited refills.” James smiled at her, the hand on her arm giving a gentle squeeze, and she felt something in her stomach flutter. Maybe it was the all-nighter talking, but he was really cute. Lily felt bad to say no.
“Look, I’d love to but –“Lily said, stepping back slightly. All she really wanted was to eat a pound of chocolate and pass out.
The smile on James' face dropped slightly, “Its not a date! I mean it can be if you want. But I just want to pay you back for getting you kicked out of the library. I can buy you a coffee to go and we don’t ever have to see each other again. It’s just I feel really bad and you look really pretty – I mean shitty, no like you’re in a shitty mood. But you are pretty in a shit mood. Definitely wouldn’t mind taking you on a date. But maybe just a coffee might make you feel better”.
Lily blinked, taken aback by the rush of words that had come out of James' mouth. His hand was frantically running through his hair, making him look like he had stuck a fork into a plug socket.
“That was.. a lot,” she laughed slightly as James smiled abashedly at her, eyes nervously roaming over her face. She wished she didn’t look like microwaved shit right now. “but, what I was going to say is, I actually haven’t slept in about 30 hours, and I really have to submit this essay in the next 5 minutes before I pass out.”
James' eyes widened in understanding, “Oooh you were pulling an all-nighter? That’s why you were so annoyed at me.”
“Well you were making an awful lot of noise,” Lily said.
“Okay, but I was just settling in. If my coffee hadn’t have fallen I bet we would have been best study buddies by now.”
Lily laughed, “I’m not so sure, I was already holding quite a grudge before the coffee part.”
Lily took another step back, making as if to end the conversation, even though she really, really didn’t want to. Despite the exhaustion and quickly looming deadline, the man in front of her was making her feel bubbly and slightly delirious, with his crooked smile and golden eyes. There was a brief silence where Lily weighed up her options.
“I am free tomorrow at lunch If that coffee offer still stands?” She asked, looking up at James from under her eyelashes.
The smile that spread across his face almost blinded her. “Yeah definitely it does”
“Okay, well I’ll see you then James, I have an essay to submit and a bed to fall face first into.”
“Good luck Lily”, James said as she turned to head off to a bench to upload her essay. Lily couldn’t resist one last look back at him and returned the enthusiastic wave he gave her.
God, she was tired and probably going to flop her essay, but that boy might just be worth getting kicked out of the library for.