Chapter 17 Two Frog Heads
POV: Carly
Professor Swanson let them stay after.
She had looked at them both with that expression again, the one that was doing its best not to show how impressed she was, and told them to lock up when they were done and leave the key with the front desk.
The classroom emptied out around them and then it was just the two of them and the quiet and the late afternoon light coming through the windows in long grey strips the way it always did in Black River Falls this time of day.
Carly stayed at the desk and spread her notes out properly now that she had the space. Niko pulled his chair around so he was beside her instead of across and opened his sketchbook to a clean page for the poster layout.
She watched him do it without commenting.
It was strange being in a room alone with him that wasn't charged with something hostile. The library had been different. The hallway had been different. This was just two people at a desk with a project between them and no particular reason to fight and she kept waiting for one to appear.
It didn't.
He sketched the rough outline of the poster layout with quick confident strokes while she worked on the formula and for a while the only sounds were pencil on paper and pen on paper and the distant noise of students outside on the grounds below.
She glanced over at his sketchbook.
The layout was actually good.
She looked back at her formula before he caught her.
"Two frog heads." He said it without looking up.
She covered her paper with both hands. "Could you not."
"I'm just reading the list." He said innocently.
"Look at your own paper."
"I feel like we're going to need more than amphibians for this to work." He set his pencil down and leaned forward to look at her list properly. "What happened to the other formula you had."
"I scrapped it." She said. "It wasn't working."
"And this is better?"
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"I wasn't finished." She said.
He pressed his lips together and she could tell he was trying not to smile and she was not going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it.
"Walk me through it." He said. "From the beginning. Pretend I know nothing."
"That won't require much pretending." She said.
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
"That was a joke." She said.
"I know." He said. "It was almost funny."
She felt something in her chest loosen slightly and immediately tightened it back up.
She turned her notes toward him and walked him through the formula from the top. He listened without interrupting which was more than she had expected. When she got to the binding agent problem she explained both options and he asked two questions that were actually relevant and she answered them and he nodded and didn't make it weird.
"The after hours option is better." He said when she finished. "The supply room isn't even locked properly, the latch on the east side window is broken. Has been for two years."
She stared at him. "How do you know that."
He gave her a look that said that was genuinely not the most interesting question she could ask him right now.
"Fine." She said. "I'll think about it."
"You keep saying that."
"And I keep meaning it." She said. "Can I ask you something."
He leaned back in his chair. "You're going to regardless."
"Why are you always looking at me." She said it directly. "I've noticed it for a while now. Is that a vampire thing or a you thing."
He didn't answer immediately. His tongue moved slowly across his bottom lip and his eyes stayed on her face in that way that made her feel like he was reading something she hadn't written yet.
"I already told you." He said.
"Right. I intrigue you." She said. "You have to know how that sounds."
"Probably." He said. "It's still true."
She crossed her arms. "Explain it then. Actually explain it."
He considered that for a moment. Not performing consideration. Actually doing it.
"You're a witch and I'm a vampire." He said. "We come from completely different worlds and we've never once actually talked to each other. Not really. So everything I think I know about you I built from watching you from across rooms for four years." He paused. "That's not exactly a complete picture."
She blinked.
She had not expected that to be as honest as it was.
"Most people would just ask." She said.
"Would you have answered." He said.
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Fair point.
"My intentions were never to be a creep." He said. "I was just curious. You're not who I thought you were from across the room."
"What did you think I was." She said before she could stop herself.
He looked at her steadily. "I thought you were exactly what everyone expected you to be." He paused. "I'm starting to think that's the version you put out so nobody looks too closely at the actual one."
The room felt smaller.
She looked down at her notes and straightened a page that didn't need straightening.
"So how long." She said it quietly. "Have you been curious."
Something shifted in his face. A flicker of something unguarded that came and went quickly. He opened his mouth.
His phone went off on the desk between them.
He looked at it. Something moved across his expression that she couldn't read. He picked it up and declined the call and set it back down and whatever he had been about to say was gone.
"Sorry." He said. Not elaborating.
She looked at the phone face down on the desk.
"You don't have to keep ignoring that." She said.
"I'm not ignoring anything." He said. "I'm choosing where to put my attention."
She looked at him.
He looked back.
She cleared her throat and looked at her notes.
"Is she your girlfriend." She said it to the page.
A pause.
"Who." He said.
She gave him a look. "You know who."
His face lit up with something that was half amusement and half something more careful. "Ah." He said. "I wasn't aware you two were familiar."
"We're not." She said. "It's just hard to forget walking in on two people in a compromising position."
"A memory I'll always cherish." He said, hand over his heart.
She gave him her flattest expression.
He dropped the performance. "Aurora is not my girlfriend." He said it simply. "I don't really do that."
"Do what."
"Girlfriends." He said. "I have friends. It's less complicated."
She turned that over.
"She doesn't seem to think it's that simple." Carly said carefully.
Something moved behind his eyes. Quick and complicated and gone before she could follow it.
"That's not your concern." He said. Not unkind. Just closed.
She nodded and looked back at her notes.
"Does it bother you." He said.
She looked up. "Does what bother me."
"That I don't do complicated." He said. His eyes were steady on hers. Waiting.
"Why would it." She said.
He didn't answer. Just looked at her in that way he had that felt like he was reading the answer off her face whether she gave it to him or not.
She looked back at her formula.
"You must make a lot of friends then." She said.
She heard the slight shift in his breath.
"I guess." He said quietly. "Does that bother you." He asked it again, differently this time.
She looked up at him.
His expression was patient and open in a way she had only seen once or twice and only for a second before he covered it back up. He wasn't teasing her. He was actually asking.
"Why would your personal life bother me." She said. "I have a boyfriend."
He nodded slowly. "Right." He said. "Lancaster."
Something in his tone made her look at him more carefully.
"How is that." He said. "Being with a werewolf."
She gave him a look. "That's not your concern either."
He almost smiled. "Fair."
"We're fine." She said anyway. Then immediately wished she hadn't said anyway.
Niko picked his pencil back up. "I'm sure." He said it quietly and went back to his sketch.
She stared at the side of his face for a moment.
Then she went back to her formula.
They worked in silence for a few more minutes and it was a different kind of silence than before. Warmer somehow and she resented that too.
She looked up at his sketch when he turned the page slightly and caught a corner of it.
It was good. Actually genuinely good. The layout was clean and the proportions were right and there was something in the detail of the border design that surprised her.
"You're good at that." She said before she could edit herself.
He glanced up. "At what."
She nodded at the sketchbook.
He looked at her for a second like he was checking if she was setting him up for something.
She wasn't.
"Thank you." He said. Quietly. No performance in it.
She nodded and looked back at her notes and they both kept working and she did not look at the sketch again.
She did think about it though.
Author's Note:
He almost answered. He was RIGHT there and then that phone went off and now I need everyone to scream into a pillow with me. Also Carly saying they're fine and immediately regretting it tells you everything you need to know about where her head actually is. Drop a like and tell me in the comments, what do you think he was going to say?