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Ivy loves her job. It doesn’t pay shit (though neither does any other campus job), and she has to deal with a lot of irritating classmates who pretend they don’t know her as soon as she’s behind a desk, but she spends the rest of her time reading and organizing everything she can get her hands on, so it’s a net positive. Plus, most of the student librarians are bearable. There’s no uniform. She gets to shush people. These are all the things that she reminds herself, over and over again, when she goes to close at two in the morning and realizes that someone’s asleep at a table on the third floor.
This happens from time to time, but Ivy’s closing by herself tonight, and she really doesn’t savor the idea of having to wake up a stranger and kick them out of the library without backup. Well, she does have her euphonium behind the desk, but that just seems cruel.
She waits until 2:10, just in case the person wakes up on their own, before sidling up to them and clearing her throat. “Hey,” she murmurs, hesitant to touch them. “We’re closing.”
Nothing. Under the sprawling curtain of the stranger’s golden hair, Ivy spies an organic chemistry textbook that she’s seen a number of students crying over before. “You should really go to bed,” she says a little louder.
“Hnngmph,” the person grumbles.
Ivy stares up at the ceiling and braces herself to actually have to touch someone. “It’s two in the morning. Come on.” She pokes the person’s shoulder as gingerly as she can, which thankfully works—they jerk upright, disoriented but very awake, and Ivy short-circuits.
Frankly, she’d been expecting a hipster dude with a shitty beard trying too hard to pull off blond Hozier. So when the literal most beautiful woman she’s ever seen blinks up at her like she’s been caught at a murder scene, Ivy forgets how to breathe for a solid minute.
“Wh—oh. Shit. Uh. Wait, what—what time is it?”
Oh fuck her voice is just as incredible as her face. “It’s, um, 2:10. In the morning. We’re—I’m—the library is closing.”
The woman looks down at the textbooks, plural, stacked on the table in front of her. “Oh. Oh! Shit, I’m so sorry, I’ve been here since six, I must’ve passed out.” On top of the chemistry book, a smaller tome lies open, its pages covered in what look like diagrams of robot parts. There’s a book on human anatomy on the woman’s other side, with a field guide to frogs and toads behind it. “I don’t just want to leave all these books here, but—I, um, I don’t think I’m allowed to check anything else out right now.”
“It’s alright,” Ivy answers with a sigh. She doesn’t want to try and shelve them right now, but she also doesn’t want to get a talking to for leaving them strewn about. “You probably need to get to bed.”
As Ivy shuffles from one foot to the other, the woman yawns wide enough to make her jaw pop. And now Ivy can’t tear her eyes away from her softly chiseled chin. She looks like a fucking statue. “No, seriously, I owe you for… this. I’ll help you put them away. Just give me a second to… ugh.” When she stretches her arms, her crop top rides up high enough to reveal a few inches of skin, and Ivy feels like her head is going to explode. Then she stands up and abruptly topples over, hip-checking the desk and sliding to the floor before Ivy can react.
“Are you alright? Fuck, did you—that looked like it hurt—”
“‘M fine. Legs fell asleep.” She stays on the floor, one arm braced on the seat of her chair, and laughs. “My roommate is gonna kill me. She hates going to bed before I get home.”
Ivy frowns. “You can stay down there if you need to. Can I help you pack up your stuff?”
“It’s mostly packed. I was just reading. I think? I dunno, I’ve been asleep for a while.” The woman rubs her eyes and scrunches up her nose in a way that gives Ivy heart palpitations. “I can feel my toes now. Wouldn’t mind a hand up, though.”
As much as it makes her blush, Ivy grasps the woman’s hand and helps her to her feet, steadying her with one hand on her shoulder so she doesn’t fall again. “Take your time,” she reassures. “And don’t worry about the books. I already turned the system off anyway.”
Ivy closes the robotics book and takes the whole stack to the nearest book cart, while the woman pulls her backpack onto her back and yawns again. “What’s your name, kind librarian?” she calls, hands on her hips as she waits for Ivy to return. “I’d like to know the identity of my late-night savior.” This is accompanied by an eyebrow wiggle that does unspeakable things to Ivy’s insides.
“Ivy,” she responds. It’s a genuine miracle that she can actually form words right now. “You?”
“Raphaella.” She cannot be real. She is a lost Michelangelo sculpture come to life. There’s no other explanation.
Shaking off the thought, Ivy turns and ushers her toward the stairs. “Actually—should we take the elevator? You still look a little, uh, wobbly. No offense.”
“I’m fine,” Raphaella dismisses her concern. “Just out of it. Don’t worry about me, I’m already making your life hard enough as is.”
By the time they get to the bottom of the stairs, Ivy regrets not insisting on the elevator. Raphaella’s hand is shaking on the banister, and the shadows under her eyes shine a sickly purple in the shitty light of the lobby. “Can I walk you home?” asks Ivy, fixing Raphaella with a look that says no, seriously, I’m going to make sure you get home safe.
“I… would really like that, actually,” Raphaella replies. She stumbles a bit as she steps off the last stair, but then rights herself. “I’m a bit sick of the fucking frat house gauntlet at the moment.”
Ivy shudders. “I can only imagine the catcalling,” she mutters, mostly to herself.
“What, no one’s ever tried to offer you a beer to sit on their face before?”
As horrified as she is, Ivy is going to have that image stuck in her brain for a long time. “Can’t say I’ve heard that one. Here, just step outside for a second while I lock up and then I’ll walk with you, okay?”
Raphaella just stands in front of the doors and stares up at the moon while she waits, and when Ivy turns around, she genuinely believes that she’s having a small heart attack. The two-in-the-morning moonlight is dulled by the halogen bulbs outside the library, combining to paint Raphaella’s strong profile in diffused orange. Ivy is literally going to dream of kissing her under the moonlight. Then she looks down and smiles at Ivy with lips that look too soft for her marble-hewn face, and Ivy is so fucked. “All done?”
“Yep! Yeah. Uh. Lead the way, I guess.”
They walk in silence, apart from the distant thud of bro country from the nearest frat house, until Ivy’s curiosity gets the better of her. “So… those books you were reading. All for one assignment, or…?”
At the question, Raphaella visibly perks up, which is an improvement over her shaky state a minute before. “It’s just preliminary research! I’m trying to design my own major, actually, and my advisor said I should see how feasible my ideas are. To which I said ‘fuck you, you have no idea what I’m capable of,’ but I still have to write up a proposal, hence… sleeping in the library until two.”
“What kind of major could you possibly be building from frogs and robotics?”
Her grin is toothy and electrifying. “Science! I’m majoring in science. Just, like, all of it. It was supposed to be mad science, but everyone thought I was joking, so I had to lop off the ‘mad’ part so they’d take me seriously. I plan to sneak it back in by the time I graduate.”
“Is there a promising career path in mad science? Because library science isn’t looking so good,” Ivy complains.
Raphaella laughs. “It’s cute that you think my plans will be stifled by mere capitalism! But my roommate’s an engineering major, and she says I should be able to get a job even with the coursework I’m doing now. Y’know, while I get my own lab up and running.” She runs her fingers through the ends of her hair, pointedly looking away from the gaggle of boys drinking on the porch of the Nerd Frat. At least, that’s how they market themselves, but ‘nerd’ usually means ‘Nice Guy™’ and, therefore, the worst. “Oh, fuck, one of them’s coming over here. Act natural.”
Before Ivy can react, Raphaella grabs her hand and swings it between them, feigning playfulness. Ivy forgets how to think. “Raph!” the frat bro exclaims, at which Raphaella’s hand tenses in hers. “Don’t look at me like that, it’s just me.”
Ivy looks up into the eyes of… well, honestly, the man she’d been expecting to find in the library. Off-brand Hozier, but he’s actually making it work. “Good evening, Tim,” Raphaella sighs, stepping a bit closer to Ivy.
“It’s morning! Good morning! Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that, uh, that thing—y’know that project we, uh, failed because I blew up half the lab?”
“I am painfully aware of that project, Tim.”
Undeterred, Tim puts his hands on his hips and stands up as straight as he can manage while shitfaced. He’s wearing a brown leather duster and… goggles? Bright pink kiddie swim goggles. Ivy has no idea what she’s walked into. “I have great news! Turns out that professor hunts in his spare time! Or, he used to, but then his gun got all fucked up. Honestly not sure what the story was there. But I, Gunpowder Tim, hero of the day, offered to fix up the ol’ thing, and now he’s going to un-fail us!”
“That sounds like a wildly unethical grading practice,” Ivy interjects.
Raphaella turns to her, looking deeply betrayed. “I get stuck doing a group project with a man who calls himself Gunpowder, and you question his ethics?!”
“Not questioning. Just commenting.” Raphaella is still holding her hand, so Ivy doesn’t think she can be judged for her ability to think straight at the moment, pun intended.
“Anyway,” Raphaella sighs, “I appreciate that, even if I am still going to kill you horribly in your sleep. I guess I’ll… ugh, I’ll email that prof later. Though we all know this situation was entirely your fault. Thanks, Tim.”
Tim smiles in a way that can only be described as maniacal. “You’re welcome! Have a good night, Raph!” He winks emphatically and stares between her and Ivy as if trying to say something with his eyes, and Ivy stares up at the darkened trees to hide the way she blushes.
“Go drink some water, you drunk buffoon.” With that, Raphaella starts walking again, pulling Ivy by the hand. “Fucking idiot. I hate to admit it, but he is really fun to work with. I can’t say no to a good explosion.”
Ignoring the way her palm is starting to sweat, Ivy jogs a few steps to keep up with Raphaella. “I’m starting to think that I’m missing out on a lot of excitement in the library science department.”
Raphaella snorts. “There’s excitement everywhere, if you know how to find it. Maybe I should take some library science classes and help you out.”
“I wouldn’t complain about that.” Ivy barely manages to keep her voice even.
The rest of the walk takes only a few minutes, but before Ivy can bid Raphaella a good night, the door to her dorm building flies open, and a tall, slender woman wrapped in a giant blue coat bursts out. “There you are!” she exclaims, grabbing Raphaella by the shoulders and looking her up and down. “You fucking worried me! I thought you’d—oh. Oh.”
“Nastya, please don’t—”
“Do you, uh, need the room to yourselves? It’s the middle of the fucking night, but Jonny’s awake anyway, I can go hang out with him.”
It takes Ivy a moment to realize what she’s implying. “N-no, we’re not—I’m just—she fell asleep in the library,” she explains, dropping Raphaella’s hand and struggling to meet Nastya’s intense gaze.
“You’d better go hang out with Jonny, because if you fall asleep in the same room as me, I will kill you,” Raphaella hisses. She threatens murder a lot, apparently. Ivy doesn’t want to think about her reaction to that right now.
Nastya smirks like a self-satisfied cat, but she doesn’t push any further. “No, you won’t. You need my incredible wingwoman skills. Wait, did you say she was asleep in the library?”
“Yes?” Ivy is very confused at this point. She’s not sure if the situation is actually confusing, or if she’s just sleepy and gay.
“What the fuck were you doing in the library?”
That would explain why Ivy had never seen her before. “I told you, I had to work on this stupid proposal! And then I fell asleep, because it’s boring.”
For a long moment, Nastya looks back and forth between her and Ivy, before apparently drawing some conclusion that she doesn’t deign to share. “Fine. Just don’t worry me like that again, okay? I texted Marius trying to find you. Marius! Do you know how desperate I have to be to talk to that man of my own free will?”
“Jesus. I’ll deal with him if he’s too annoying, it’s the least I can do.” Raphaella pats Nastya on the cheek and then shoves her back into the dorm building, then turns to Ivy. “Sorry about that. Nastya likes to keep a pretty strict schedule, I feel bad about fucking it up.”
“She seems like a pretty great roommate, actually,” Ivy admits. She lives alone. She fucking hates it.
Raphaella shrugs. “I, uh, went through a few at the beginning of the year, since not everyone is cut out to live with a mad scientist. She’s got a weird robot-fucking thing going on, so we have an… affectionate stalemate.”
“Not gonna ask,” Ivy laughs. “So, um. Are you… uh…”
“Bi,” Raphaella interrupts. “I’m bi.”
Ivy is certain that she’d look like a tomato if it were light out. “I was—I was gonna ask if you were alright, is all. You still seemed kinda woozy when we left the library.”
“Oh!” The shape of Raphaella’s lips is fucking entrancing. Ivy is going to lose it. “Oh, shit, sorry. I didn’t—um. I’m fine! I’m great. I was just thinking, uh, I feel like I kinda owe you one, for waking me up and walking me home and all that. Can I get you a coffee sometime? Maybe?”
She’s already pulling something out of her bag, which she thrusts at Ivy before she can respond. It’s a small rectangle of cardstock, off-white with loopy gold lettering reading Raphaella la Cognizi, Mad Scientist in Training. There’s a phone number below her name. It’s a business card. She’s a fucking college student with a mad scientist business card. “Absolutely,” Ivy breathes, violently suppressing the thought that she’s already head over heels for this absurd woman.
“Great!” Raphaella beams down at her, then unlocks the door to her dorm and nudges it open with one hip. “Text me? I’m free tomorrow afternoon. Just let me know. I’d love to, y’know, talk some more. Get to know you better. Maybe hold hands again. Okaygoodnightbye.” The door slams behind her, and Ivy takes a very deep breath.
She is far too gay for this.