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If only Louis knew what he was supposed to be doing… He’s been aimlessly wandering through this gigantic library without a clue where he’s going or what he’s looking for. The fact that he’s here at all is a miracle. He’s decided to attempt to put his life together for once and start this paper early. It’s for his nuclear chemistry class – which sounds impossible, but it’s really a joke – one of those GenEd classes that’s only purpose is to fulfil a requirement. As a drama major, he picked the one with the highest “Easiness” rating on Rate My Professor. The paper is just a biography of anyone who had any influence in the field at all. He would have just thrown together the minimum five pages from Wikipedia, but the professor is requiring a book. Who still has those kinds of requirements in college?
The problem came when he realized he has no idea how to navigate the six floors of books. When you’re a junior, people just expect you to know these things, but no one actually does. So instead of asking anyone for the help he desperately needs, he started on the bottom and is working his way up. By the time he got to the third row of the first floor, he was already so done. How do you navigate this kind of place? There has to be a computer somewhere that can tell him what he’s doing, right? Ugh, if only he’d gone on one of those library tours when he was a freshman and it was expected you wouldn’t know anything.
He grabs the corner of the bookshelf to dramatically swing to the next row (finally, after fifteen fucking minutes), and plants his face directly into another man’s chin.
“Oh, fuck!” He says, a little too loudly for the silence of the big, fancy library, and grabs his nose to hopefully stop the throbbing.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” Louis feels a hand on his shoulder and looks up through his involuntarily wet eyes. Damn, this guy is pretty. But he can’t really pay attention to that when his nose might be broken. Well, it probably isn’t, but he did move with surprising speed, so it hurts a hell of a lot.
“Uhh, yeah, I think so. I will be. If I can just leave this goddamn library. Fifteen minutes is already too long.”
“Excuse me!” He pulls his hand off of Louis’ shoulder and clutches his chest with a mock-scandalized look, causing his curls to bounce a little. “This ‘goddamn library’ happens to be my favorite place in the world.”
Louis snorts and rolls his eyes. “Sure it is, curly.” He moves to pass the man and continue on his search – he doesn’t have time for this: he has to eat at some point in the next 24 hours – but the other guy moves to block him.
“Wait, what are you looking for? You look a little lost.”
“Well that look might be the pain in my entire face right now, but yeah, I actually have no fucking clue what I’m doing. Do you happen to know where the nuclear chemistry section is?” Louis meets his eyes with absolutely no hope of any result.
“No, of course not! Who would know that?” He says, barely above a whisper, with a rather quizzical expression. Louis shakes his head, a little too exasperated at the moment for this kind of thing, and takes a step past him. “Oh, wait, sorry! I’m being a dick. I really don’t know where that is, but I do know how to find out.”
The smile in his voice is audible. Louis sighs and turns around to face him. “Lead the way.” The stranger throws him an adorable grin and starts walking, not waiting to see if Louis actually follows him. He stands still for a second and tries to memorize where he’s standing. He really doesn’t have much faith in this guy at all.
Harry sits down in front of a computer and waits for it to load. He looks up at Louis when he catches up. “So what specifically are you looking for?”
Louis takes out the assignment he’d been handed in class an hour ago and places it in front of his face, then quotes, “A biography of an influential person in the nuclear chemistry field.”
“Well that’s a little bit broad… Did you have anyone in mind?” His hands are hovering over the keyboard.
“Uhh…” Truthfully, Louis hasn’t shown up to class more than a few times. It’s lucky he was there today to get the assignment. So the only name he can think of is, “Oppenheimer?” No clue where that one came from, though.
The boy quirks his smile up in a half-smirk before typing in the search bar and mumbling, “Good choice.”
The computer is as slow as anyone would expect for a giant desktop like this one, so they sit in silence for a split second before Louis gets uncomfortable. “So what were you doing wandering around the library?”
“Oh, you know. Looking at every single book here trying to find just the right one.” And damn, if his eyes don’t literally sparkle with the snide comment. Well apparently Louis hadn’t been as cool as he thought. Maybe he should have asked for a librarian’s help in the first place. Then he wouldn’t have to be sitting with this dork in the first place. Then again, maybe it’s okay.
Louis tilts his head and rolls his eyes. “C’mon, really.”
“I have an English paper. And I happened to not be wandering at all, because I know how to look things up, unlike some people.”
“Well I apologize for interrupting your search, and for not attending the very informative and necessary tour of this place freshman year.” He says, oozing sarcasm.
“That was beautiful – really heartfelt. I accept. It’s hard to admit when you’ve screwed up.” They both squint their eyes, trying to intimidate the other with too much eye contact. Apparently neither is too bothered by it.
After a solid 30 seconds of an impromptu staring contest, Louis makes a sudden noise and announces that the page loaded without moving his eyes away from his. The man, who Louis is slowly growing fond of, turns his head toward the computer and blinks. “Aha! You blinked! I win!”
His jaw drops and he looks very offended. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize anyone had stated any rules to anything. There are no winners or losers in a nonexistent game.”
“Oh you knew we were having a staring contest. No one ever says they’re having a staring contest. It just happens.” His voice starts to rise to a normal speaking volume and a girl sitting at the computer beside them gives them a piercing glare. Louis puts his hands up and mouths “sorry” before sticking his tongue out at the back of her head.
The other man tries to cover up his laughter. Oh God, he has dimples. “Well then, it looks like we have some options!” He points to the computer screen and the seven results for ‘Oppenheimer,’ still trying to hide his smile. “Only two of them are in, though. And that one looks really technical. So I guess we have our book!” He quickly jots down the location and title and exits out of the tab before hopping out of his seat. “Let’s go!”
Well this is easy. If only Louis’d known that all he had to do was get the attention of a cute guy and he’d find the book for him. That’s, like, a tenth of the work for the paper right there. They get to the elevator doors and the overly cheerful man hits the up arrow.
“It’s on the fifth floor, so you would have been here for a long time without me. Admit it, I’m your savior. You’re so lucky I was here today.” Louis rolls his eyes and steps into the now open elevator and races to beat him to press the ‘5’ button. They glare at each other again, but when the doors close, the stranger’s face splits into the biggest grin imaginable, causing Louis to start laughing.
“What is that for? You’re freaking me out.”
“I’m just in a good mood, is all.”
“Okay, fine, crazy.” Louis looks at him for a second longer, and the other man hadn’t looked away. He opens his mouth to ask his name, but hesitates. Does he really want to know? Or does he want to keep this whole thing a strange experience for his memories: that one time he bumped into a cute guy with long bouncy curls that helped him find a book. It’s not even that interesting of a story when he thinks about it.
The elevator dings and Louis gestures toward the open door. “You first!” They walk through the center of the room, trying to keep their footsteps as quiet as possible. The people on the upper floors are always so irritable. Suddenly, the other guy makes a sharp turn into one of the rows of books and starts scanning the shelves. The phone he’d been holding lights up and he frowns and hands Louis the paper he’d scribbled on.
“Looks like my roommate locked himself out again, so I have to go rescue yet another damsel in distress today. I think you can handle it from here though.” He walks away without a glance back with the same grin he’d been wearing for their entire 8 minutes together. Louis watches him leave, which would be a little weird, if not for the fact that he’s actually skipping away. Who does this guy think he is? And why does Louis even care?
---
It’s been two weeks since Louis met his mystery man, and he keeps silently hoping to run into him again (hopefully not literally this time), but has had no such luck. Over the days he’s convinced himself it was one of those adorable meet cutes that he’ll tell his grandchildren about one day. But with not even a first name or major to go on, he can’t track the guy down either. He tried flipping through his roommate, Liam’s, Facebook friends, since he seems to know everyone, but not even that worked. So with two successful weeks of hopeless pining under his belt (over a man he doesn’t know at all), he’s pretty much given up.
His book report is due tomorrow and he’s procrastinated long enough. As much as he’d hoped to start on it early, he’s not really surprised at himself for waiting to do it. After 20 years, he knows what not to expect from himself. After dragging out dinner with Zayn for two hours, he plopped himself down in the Student Union for a long night. He hasn’t even cracked the book. To be honest, it’s a miracle he hasn’t lost it in his disaster of a room. But he managed to remember to stick it in his book bag this morning. Little victories! That alone should earn him a nap or a cookie or something.
He waits for his shitty university laptop to turn on and searches for a nearby plug to charge his phone, postponing the inevitable by another two minutes. He sits without doing anything for a moment to just try to convince himself to start work. With a deep breath, he opens the book to a random page to find something – anything – to write.
---
One page written, four to go. Not bad at all for a subject he knows nothing about, and for the fact that he can’t stop getting distracted by the people around him. Definitely good progress. Louis’d decided to get a cup of coffee and chocolate muffin to inspire the rest of it, and when he sits back down, the book had closed by itself, with his place marked by the pen he’d stuck there before he left. The hard cover is sticking up, with the pages inside falling back down, leaving the inside cover easily visible. There’s a phone number written in smudged pencil at the top of the page. It’s probably really old, and most likely out of service, but on a sudden whim he decides to text it.
Ha. Ha. You think you’re pretty slick don’t you Expecting no response, he puts his phone to the side, and starts working again. But just as he’s woken up his computer, his phone lights up.
I am ice. Louis smirks. And then a second reply, Who is this?
Well this will be fun. Louis types back a response and doesn’t put his phone back down this time. Someone who didn’t advertise their number for the world to see
As he’d hoped, the response is immediate yet again. I have no memory of this
You put your phone number in a library book probably a thousand years ago
Oh. Well that wasn’t me…
Louis squints, trying to figure out what this person could even be thinking. Um, I reached you didn’t I? im pretty sure its you
No I mean I wasn’t the one who wrote it. It was my roommate on a dare. I told him to write his number in the book but he wrote my number instead. Hes a pretty shit roommate
Im sorry but wtf kind of dare is that there are no consequences
Well apparently there are bc here we are…
A second response comes only a few seconds after. Whyd you text a strange number anyway. I could be some creepy guy that lures people into a trap by putting his number in boring books, convincing them to text it with the boredom acquired by the book
As Louis tries to think of an appropriate response, a third text pops up a second later. That was really detailed whoops sorry im not actually that guy
Louis chuckles and types out his reply. Ha well I guess ill have to just trust you on that one but I texted you because I really don’t like writing this paper and wanted to delay my misery a bit
Ooh! What paper? I like writing I can help
Youre mighty eager there aren’t you? Are you sure youre not that creep? Bc im def not He presses send and then decides to do one more. It’s just a summary of this book pretty much – on oppenheimer
I wrote that paper last semester!
Wait really?
Well why else would someone read that book its not exactly light reading
I kind of thought youd be some 40 year old person I didn’t expect you to be my age. Wait this means youre probably within like a mile of me right now this is weird
Yep
Trippy
What did you expect? Someone a thousand miles away randomly decided to check out a book on some scientist
No I just told you I thought youd be an 80 year old man
No you didn’t just tell me that youre changing your story I just doubled my age
SO YOU ARE 40
What? No of course not im still in undergrad. Anyway when is your paper due? What prof do you have?
Still not convinced… at my 10am tomorrow – with jenkins
EXCUSE ME [insert your name here bc we never properly introduced ourselves and I didn’t realize until just now but I am SCOLDING YOU LOUDLY] YOU NEED TO GET TO WORK! (also no way me too! He sucks)
Im louis
EXCUSE ME ‘IM LOUIS’ BUT YOU NEED TO GET BACK TO WORK
I got the point with the first one you didn’t need to send that again
Well I wanted to so deal with it and then a second later im harry
Louis immediately saves the number as “Im Harry” followed by the old man emoji. Very intimidating ‘im harry’
You cant steal my joke I said it first
Well it wasn’t a very original joke so I dont think I was stealing it from you exactly
ANYWAY im going to march over to where you are right now and take your phone away so you can write this paper
Right because that’s much easier than just not responding Right after he hit send, Louis cringed a little. That probably came off a tad aggressive, and with an entirely different effect than he’d wanted, and he really doesn’t want to stop talking to Harry. Their very intelligent conversation has made him smile more than he has in a while to be honest. He’s hit a bit of a rough patch, and this little interaction has brightened his day dramatically – actually probably his whole week. So he sends one more.
BABY COME BACK YOU CAN BLAME IT ALL ON ME
Luckily, it seems Harry hadn’t totally ditched him, and his phone lights up pretty quickly after he put it down. Youre a meanie you deserve to be slapped where are you
Im in the union. Why did he send that?
Omw
WAIT NO HARRY WTF Send.
DON’T SHOW UP Send.
THIS IS WEIRD Send.
OH GOD YOU ARE THAT CREEP Send.
PLEASE DON’T COME FOR ME Send.
I LOOK LIKE SHIT Send.
I HAVENT SHOWERED IN DAYS Send.
ok that’s a partial lie Send.
BUT THIS IS STILL WEIRD Send.
HARRY NO Send.
Harry yes :) and a split second later, ooh I think I see you! The guy in the sweats looking frantically at his phone right?
Fuck this is creepy. Louis, get out of here. Oh wait – he’s not wearing sweats. ur a liar harry
Ya but I freaked you for a minute there didn’t i
Fuck you ur a piece of shit
You love it
You don’t know me at all. You cant know that
But what if I do know you
Then ur a creep which we already established im pretty sure
Actually I think we decided im not
Louis looks at the clock. How is it already almost midnight? He’s done nothing at all. Tell me to write this paper
But then youll leave me and I don’t want that
But if I fail this class then my parents will disown me and ill have to live on the streets and well never have our happily ever after
Yikes ok! GO WORK
But I don’t wanna
LOUIS [INSERT LAST NAME HERE THAT I WOULD BE SCREAMING BUT WERE NOT THAT CLOSE YET SO IDK YOUR LAST NAME] TYPE THAT PAPER OR IM LEAVING YOU AND OUR BABY IS COMING WITH ME
Wow weve moved so fast
What can I say, when you know you know. Is he still joking? And when you know you have lots of babies but not with me because im taking our 15 children with me because you failed a class Okay, he’s joking.
I cant believe I missed the birth of my 14 new children in the past 2 mins because im writing a damn paper
Don’t lie youre not writing youre talking to me
Then convince me to write it
I already tried. If our children didn’t convince you then idk what will
Ok then distract me enough that I don’t feel guilty for not writing it
Hmmm ok knock knock
Whos there
King tut
King tut who
King tut-key fried chicken :)))
Louis takes his eyes off of his phone and looks around himself. Wow that was truly a horrible joke. Why can’t he stop smiling? That was the worst joke ive heard in my life
I don’t see you doing any better
Excuse me youre supposed to be distracting me remember?
What better way is there to distract yourself than to distract someone else though
Youre making no sense
Tell me something excitingggg! Are you dating anyone? Howd you meet them?
Louis starts laughing. How obvious can this guy be? Well if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Im not. You?
Nope. Met a cool guy a couple weeks ago though and am hoping to see him again.
Tell me more tell me more Little tip: It’s always good to throw a Grease reference in a conversation to see if there’s any hope of getting along with the other person.
Do you believe in fate?
Really? That’s what he’s going for? That’s completely off topic. What a dork. But Louis can’t really make fun of him too much. He knows he’s just as much of a dork. As a Christmas Eve baby, he’s always believed in that kind of thing. Once it started snowing when his favorite song started and he almost cried. So yes, he definitely believes in fate. I guess
Well louis…
what…? What the fuck is Harry doing? This is getting weird. If it wasn’t already.
Oh nvm… do you have a crush on anyone then?
Well I happened to have met someone a few weeks ago too
Tell me more tell me more like does he have a car?! So he did get the reference. Perfect.
It’s not even an exciting story i bumped into him and he helped me find this book actually
AHA! I KNEW IT!
What? Uhhhhhhh?????
Ok im coming to the union now see you in a min
What is happening? This is mildly concerning. Harry wtf
Louis stares at his phone and gets no response. Well he can’t very well work on his paper now that some stranger is coming to meet him. This whole thing is strange. Watch Harry not show up though just like before. And why doesn’t he care that a stranger is basically stalking him? He should definitely be more concerned. He starts fixing his hair subconsciously and lifts his head to take in his surroundings. He really has been here for a while. There are a lot fewer people than when he got here… three hours ago. Has it really been that long? There is exactly one paragraph written on the second page of his paper. Maybe he should try to write a little more.
Just as he finishes his next sentence, a pair of hands slap dramatically on his table in front of him, causing Louis to jump in his seat. “AHA!” Louis looks up at the man, and recognizes him as his mystery man from the library two weeks ago.
Louis quirks a smile and furrows his eyebrows. “Hi again…?” His curls are just as lovely as he’d remembered. It’s always worrying to think that you can build someone up in your head, and then be completely disappointed. But nope: just as lovely.
“I’ll wait for you to connect the dots.” The stranger stands up straight, crosses his arms, and looks at him expectantly.
Louis looks at him confusedly, but then gasps as he really does connect the dots very suddenly in his head. “Oh my God! It’s you – wait, did you know it was me the whole time? We’ve been talking for hours! Why’d you do that?”
“There’s a possibility that I led you to the book that I knew my roommate had written my number in.”
“So you’re telling me it wasn’t fate at all, but just you being sneaky.”
“Well I wasn’t sure that you’d pick the right book, since I had to leave. I fibbed a little bit about that being the only one. And I didn’t know that you were the kind of person to text random numbers. So I definitely got a little help from fate.” He smirks and pulls out the chair beside Louis to sit.
Louis opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out immediately. Instead, Harry puts a finger to Louis’ mouth.
“Shh, it’s ok. You don’t need to speak. I know I’m overwhelming.”
Louis grabs Harry’s hand and moves it away from his face, but doesn’t let go. “Well I was going to yell at you for not letting me work on my paper.”
“I can fix that. I wasn’t lying when I said I had to write this paper before, and I came prepared! I actually brought my notes on this guy from last semester.” He swings his book bag into his lap and yanks it open, pulling out an old notebook and handing it to him. “I jotted down some basic notes and page numbers, so you have a lot less work to do.”
“You’re a life saver! Are you kidding me? This is so nice. Thank you!” Louis looks at him with gratitude filling his expression as he takes the notebook from Harry.
“This is the second time I’ve saved you, so I think you might owe me a cup of coffee.”
“That is a very manipulative move there, babe. I owe you nothing. You did this out of the goodness of your heart.” Louis wiggles the pointer finger on his free hand at him, but his face breaks into a smile after only holding a firm expression for a split second. “Okay, fine. How do you take your coffee? I’ll get you some right now.”
“Oh, hell no! Not right now! It’s late. I’m going to bed. But tomorrow? I think we’re both going to need it after tonight.” He flashes a brilliant smile as he zips up his book bag and puts it back on, standing up.
“Sounds like a plan.” Louis watches him leave. He’s skipping again. Literally skipping. Louis can’t hide his fondness, and the crinkles around his eyes get deeper. Yep, this will definitely be fun.