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Lucille shoved her hands into her pockets, slouched on the bench, and stared glumly into the pond. The ducks stared back, only reminding her more of the presentation she had to give to class tomorrow. She hated being the centre of attention, all the more so because so often she was the centre of unwanted attention. Of stares, and flinches, and ever-so-polite withdrawings, as if getting too close might contaminate them and turn them ugly too. She grimaced, rubbed the old scar on her cheek, and slumped a bit further down the bench, wishing she could just stay hidden in the background forever.
Someone slid onto the other end of the bench, and she glanced over to see Dr Fell in all his long-limbed, red-haired, glory. The tight black clothes he wore only enhanced his natural good looks, and Lucille felt as if lead weights were dragging her heart to the bottom of the pond. There was no way someone like him would ever understand what she had to deal with. So much of it was tiny things, a touch of coolness here, a slightly too long stare there, that if you didn't deal with them all the time, they got brushed off as nothing.
He said lightly, "End of the world, is it?"
"Presentation," she explained, not daring to turn and look at him for fear of what she might see in his face. She didn't think she could take it right now if even the professor touted to be the kindest, sweetest, man on campus wore a disgusted or pitying look. Or worse, took one look and started spouting platitudes at her. "Tomorrow."
"Not prepared for it, then?"
"I did the work," she mumbled, caught between offence that he'd think her lazy and shock that he hadn't jumped straight to sympathy. "Just hate them."
"Fair enough," he replied. "Last time I had to give a presentation rather than a lecture, it went down like a lead balloon. Everyone just sat there and stared with bored looks on their faces."
Lucille forgot herself enough to turn and stare at him in shock. He looked back with the tiniest of wicked smiles lifting one corner of his mouth below his dark glasses.
"Mind you," he continued, dry amusement hovering in his tone, "the effects caused on the local area by so many motorists grumbling around the M25 isn't the most scintillating of topics, but still. Not so much as a wahoo."
She blinked, because that was a truly odd topic for a Literature professor. None of the rumours she'd heard about Dr Fell mentioned a sense of humour, only his sweetness, softness, and general niceness.
He waved a hand, and his arm crackled quietly. "No matter. Enough about me. You'll get through this. Might not be the most enjoyable of times, but it won't kill you."
Lucille looked away. "They'll stare," she muttered, and then was appalled that she'd actually said it out loud. She hadn't meant to, but there was something about him that tempted the words out of her. Something that told her he could be trusted with them.
"So?" he said now. "Stare back. Make them squirm under your glare until they regret ever staring in the first place. Not like you're Medusa, right? I mean, ngk, she'd end up with a classroom full of statues if she did that, and then the groundskeepers would have to clear the place before we could use it again..."
Lucille giggled at that image, and something that had been wound tight inside her relaxed. That was something she could actually do, and whether it worked out or not, she could keep her head high through it.
His smile widened just for a moment in response as she got to her feet.
As she left, she said, "Thank you, Dr Fell." She didn't look back.
If she had, she would have seen him gape, and then jam a hand into his mouth to muffle his own laughter.