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They’re in the library. He thinks it’s stupid, can’t see why they need to revise here instead of his comfortable, empty flat, but Rae says she feels smarter surrounded by the books, so here they are. He highly suspects that it’s less about the books and more about the lack of beds, but he doesn’t say anything. He could fight it a bit, but he knows by this point that Rae pretty much gets whatever she wants anyways. It has to do with her eyelashes, she’s got magical eyelashes.
At least they’ve got their own study room, tiny though it may be. He’s got his walkman turned all the way up on the desk between them, music filtering up faintly into the closet of a room. He revises better with music. Every once in a while, Rae hums along with the song playing as she taps her pen on her cheek. He keeps his eyes on the books, but really he listens to her.
She’s got her shit spread out everywhere, there’s barely even space for his solitary notebook. Rae opens all her textbooks in front of her, pulls out sections of notes and stacks them in piles, litters every non-moving surface with colorful highlighters and pens. He’s thinking that seeing all this makes him understand her a little better, helps him get how she’s always able to shift gears so rapidly. Her brain is all open books with things circled in pink ink, scatterings of post-it notes and print outs everywhere, important thoughts all right there for the thinking.
He wonders what his brain desk would look like. Obviously the revising isn’t going too well for him.
He can’t focus for as long as she can. He needs breaks, distractions, a few minutes of clear space to let stuff sink in. But she’d insisted on the library, on this gratingly small, blank room, and there aren’t many distractions to be had. Except Rae. The ultimate distraction. When she’ll participate. Which isn’t now.
He watches her. He likes the way she twists her mouth to the side when she thinks. Sometimes she squishes up her nose and frowns as she highlights. She murmurs things under her breath. She kept impatiently shoving her hair over her shoulder for a while until she hit her limit and piled it all on top of her head. He likes the way a few strands have escaped and float around her face like they’re her thoughts escaping.
But now she’s really focused and she’s not really moving and he’s bored. He pulls the pen from his mouth and uses it to scoot one of her notebooks around on the desk, stirring the pile of papers. He hopes that it’ll irritate her enough that she’ll look up and scowl at him, and then they can squabble a bit until her cheeks get all pink and he’s not so bored anymore. Rae doesn’t even notice. He shoves at the metal spiral a little harder, and one of her highlighters rolls off the desk and clomps onto the floor. She still doesn’t look up.
He’s probably too old to whine ‘pay attention to meeeee’ at her until she desists her endless studying. He huffs and pulls his bag out from under the table. He rummages around in there, opens a bag of crisps and chomps them loudly. He leans back in his chair and clunks his boot onto the tabletop, legs crossed all casually. He’s trying to annoy her, but he doesn’t want it to seem like he’s trying to annoy her. It’s a very fine distinction, a game he’s still trying to perfect after six months with her. He waggles his foot and the whole desk shakes slightly. Finally, she glances up to frown at him, but it’s only an instant and she’s back in her book again. So he pulls out his keys and clicks the clip keychain, twirls them around on the ring to hear them jangle.
“Finn,” Rae frowns at her book without looking at him, so he lets himself grin. “I love you very much, but if you don’t knock it off, I will be forced to murder you in some creative fashion that I’m too preoccupied to think of right now.”
“Knock what off?” He’s smug, swaying his foot, chomping on his crisp, twirling his keys. She looks up then, and her expression is so flat and unamused that a shiver of fear runs through him. She glares at his boots, and then he notices her eyes roam slowly up his legs and can’t help his grin. She shoots him her very best disdainful look when she sees that he’s noticed, lips pursed and head cocked. Then she goes back to her book. He sighs.
He drops his feet off the table and uncaps his pen, starts doodling an elaborate nonsensical design on one of the loose sheets of her notes on the table. He knows he should revise, knows that finals won’t be easy to get through if he doesn’t at least skim through his textbooks, but he’s preoccupied. Finn is thinking of the thing he’s not supposed to be thinking about.
They don’t talk about it. It’s not like they don’t have chance, not like the topic never comes up. It’s there.
It’s there on Sunday nights when he doesn’t have to work and they lie side by side in his bed and do the reading for classes. It’s there on Tuesdays, in the twilight hour between afternoon and evening, when they’ve snuck away from the station for a bit and are sitting across from each other at the open air kabob stall. It’s there on Thursday mornings, and on Saturdays, when they’ve nothing much to do and the morning is lost to lingering touches and full looks and easy silence. It’s here amongst the papers and pens and books in this humid library.
It’s there all the time, the-thing-they’re-not-saying.
And abruptly, he’s done. This thing with Rae, it’s big, so big that there’s not enough space for unsaid things. He loves her so much that it edges out uncertainty. And not knowing this makes it all too much, fills up all the extra air in this stupidly tiny room and all the remaining bits of his head that aren’t crammed full of words and equations and the teeth of new world primates. His head is full to bursting, and they’re trapped in this white box and something’s got to give.
“Rae.” He starts, because before they can talk about it, he’s got to draw her attention out of her book.
“What?” She doesn’t look up.
“It’s awful in here. I’m going crazy.” She huffs a sigh and lifts weary eyes to his. “The walls are so blank, Rae. The walls are completely blank and I can’t take it. Can we go?”
“No.” She drops her eyes back down, like that’s the end of the conversation, like he should just go back to cramming more useless garbage in his bloated head.
“Rae.”
“Finn.” She draws it out, makes his name a warning. He doesn’t much care.
“Rae. What’re you going to do when the term’s over?”
“Ugh. Sleep for a week straight.” Rae groans, rubbing her eyes and stretching her neck. She puts an elbow on the table and rests her head on her hand, eyes trained once more on the book. She’s stopped highlighting, though.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What are you on about?” She’s still not looking at him, still acting like this conversation isn’t finally happening. And it’s clear he’s succeeded in hismission to annoy her.
“Okay, so you’re gonna sleep for a week. What bed are you going to be sleeping in?”
Then, finally, he’s got her attention. She sighs, but she’s straightening up in her chair, putting her pen down heavily. Her eyes are tired, and he almost feels bad, but he’s tired too and he’s got to release this pressure in his head.
“You really want to talk about this now?” She asks, grimacing.
“Why not?”
“Because we need to revise!” She huffs, tossing a hand in the air. “I need to revise. YOU need to revise. Archie said that economics final was killer.”
He scowls. She’s right, of course. Rae is almost always right. But it doesn’t matter. “What does Archie know?”
“Quite a lot, actually. He’s a really good student. He’s definitely the Hermione of our little gang.”
He takes a deep breath, buys himself some time to come up with a proper reply. When he can’t think of one, he just says “Rae.” He’s got this way of saying her name, he’s figured out, that’s stern and intentional and somehow stops her from whatever runaway path of conversation that they’re about to embark on.
It doesn’t work this time.
“Revise, Finn!” She nearly shouts, and he jumps a little. “Quit moving things around and crunching bloody crisps and staring and REVISE.”
“I can’t concentrate!” He yells back. If she can shout, so can he.
“You’re not even trying! Here, use a highlighter.” And she picks one up and throws it at him. It hits him in the face, smacks flat right across his cheek. He gives her an open-mouthed, disbelieving glare, but she doesn’t back down. Doesn’t even smile, just cocks her head in satisfaction and crosses her arms over her chest.
“I don’t need a stupid highlighter, Rae. I can’t concentrate when I don’t know what’s going to happen with us.” He tries to say it calmly, but he knows he’s still glaring.
“What’s going to happen with us, Finn,” she hisses, unfolding her arms and leaning over the table to pick up his notebook and shake it under his face, “is that I’m going to cram all your unhighlighted notes down your throat until you SHUT UP.”
He bats the notebook back down to the desktop, then grabs both her arms and forcibly holds them down between them. “You’ve got, what, two weeks left in the dorms? What’re you going to do then? Are you going back to your Mums for the summer?”
Rae’s glare melts into something else, something wide-eyed and unnamable. She slumps back in her seat, and he lets her pull her arms away. She crosses them over her chest again, but loosely this time. “I don’t know.”
“Shouldn’t you know?” He shakes his head. “It’s exams this week, and then Chop’s big party, and then you’ll be out. What’re you gonna do?”
“Chop’s big party?”
“He always has a big end of term party.” He shrugs.
“Why do you say that like it’s normal?” She says, mocking him with a confused face and a shrug of her own. “He’s not even at school.”
“Because it’s Chop.” He lifts his shoulders and rubs the back of his neck. Rae shakes her head with a sigh, rubbing the fingers of one hand into both of her eyes. Finn puts his elbows on the table, ruffling papers, and leans forward. “What’re you gonna do?”
“I don’t know.”
He huffs and shoves off the table to stand. He starts pacing, though he can only go five steps before he has to turn around. It’s frustrating. He’d figured that when they finally talked about it, finally worked up to discussing what her plans were, she’d have an answer. Rae’s always got her mind made up about things, he was certain she’d have her mind made up about this too. He’d been prepared to cajole her, talk her into his way of thinking, but he hadn’t been prepared for this complete non-answer bullshit. Just once, it’d be nice if she did what he expected.
“You know, I don’t know what your deal is. I don’t know why you’re being so difficult about this.” He can feel himself gesturing too much, tossing his hands everywhere, but he’s all worked up and can’t seem to stop. “We love each other, we’ve been together pretty much every day for the last six months, we’ve said we’re long term. I don’t understand why you won’t even consider moving in with me.”
“I won’t?”
“What?”
“You said I won’t consider moving in with you.”
“Yeah, and I don’t understand why not.” He crosses his arms belligerently as he stops to face her full on.
Rae shakes her head, rolls her eyes. “When did I ever say I wouldn’t consider moving in with you?”
“Wait, what?”
“I never said I wouldn’t consider moving in with you.” She’s gotten quiet, dropped her arms at her sides, and for as much as he loves her, he wants to reach over this stupid desk and shake her until her teeth rattle.
“Then why the fuck are you saying you don’t know what you’re going to do?” He bellows, expansively tossing his arms in the air.
Rae’s voice is small and slow when she replies. “You never asked me.”
All of a sudden, his heart seems to be pounding twice as hard. He can practically feel the outline of it against his t-shirt like in those cartoons Chop’s brother used to make them watch. “What?”
“You’ve never asked me to consider moving in with you. This is the first conversation we’ve had about what I’m gonna do over the summer.” Her eyes are huge and full of emotion and he has to turn around for a second before he can think again. Everything stills, and he feels winded from losing his irritation so swiftly.
“No it’s not. We’ve talked about it.” He tells the floor. It’s complete bullshit, he knows they’ve never talked about it. He’s just had the conversation so many times with her in his head that it feels like they had. He takes a deep breath before he turns back to her. “You know you can move in with me.”
She crosses her arms again, grinds her teeth. “How would I know that?”
“I…” He scratches his head, slinks back into his chair. He blows out a huge, heavy gust of air and the loose hairs around her face move in the current. “Are you sure we’ve never talked about it?”
“I think I’d remember you asking me to move in with you.” She says, noticeably cool. He just looks at her, waits for her to break. But Rae’s much better at this than he is (and after seeing her with her Mum, he’s got suspicions as to why), and she just tilts her head to the side and stares at the ceiling. She starts tapping her pen on a notebook, swinging it back and forth so that it seems like it could fly out of her hand at any moment.
“Rae.” He reaches over and presses her hand down until she looks at him again. He offers her a weak smile. “Do you want to move in with me?”
Rae stares at him for a long time, bites at her thumbnail. It’s hard to bear her scrutiny this time, because he knows he’s just yelled at her for something he did wrong. He squirms in his seat.
“Why are you asking?” She asks after what has to be ten minutes. He can’t help but groan. Never, she can never do what he thinks she will.
“What do you mean? Is this some kind of bit we’re doing here?”
“I mean,” she makes a face like he’s an idiot, and he supposes he kind of is, especially around her, “are you asking me because you want me to stay in the city? If I had another flat lined up, would you still be asking?”
“Do you have another flat lined up?”
“If I did, would you still want me to move in with you?” Her head is cocked and her eyes are shining, and he can’t keep up with the shifts in this conversation.
“Yes, yeah, I would. Are you staying in the city for the summer, then?” It’s not what he was hoping for, but at least it won’t be three months without seeing her every day.
“Are you asking me permanently, or just until next term starts?” She counters, still not answering any of his questions.
This time, it’s him who stares. He hunkers over the cluttered desk, eyes tight on her face, trying to figure out what’s going on in that head of hers. He loves that she’s complicated, loves that he’s got to work at it with her, but fuck’s sake, she can be such a pain in the arse.
“Would you quit yanking me around? Of course I want to you to move in with me. Permanently. I’ve been telling you this for months!” He hisses.
Her eyes widen in exasperation. “You’ve never said anything about it before today.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking it! At you!”
“Oh, great! That’s really helpful, thank you so much Finn. I’m glad I’ve been worried about it all this time for no reason, when clearly I should have heard you thinking it at me!” She’s not quite shouting, but it’s close. He can’t hear the music anymore.
“God, revising makes you cranky.”
Rae rolls her eyes, and he takes several slow breaths, trying to regain control of the conversation.
“Rae, I would really like it if you would move in with me. For the summer, forever, whatever you want. I know my flat is small and kinda shitty, but we can look for a new place when my lease is up in September. But whatever you want. What I want, all I want, is for you to move in with me.”
She doesn’t look at him after that speech, just sits there scribbling in the margin of her notebook. It’s angry black scratches, and he’s worried for a minute before she says, “Okay.”
“Okay?” He repeats, a bit stunned. It can’t just be that easy, can it?
“Yeah, okay, I’ll move in with you.”
“Seriously?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” She’s trying to stay annoyed, but he can see the smile creeping around the corners of her mouth. He grins widely at her until she rolls her eyes and looks away, the smile slipping over her lips.
Finn lets out a long slow exhale. “Thank fuck. Can we get out of here now?”
“Oh my God, Finn Nelson!” Rae screeches, half laughing. “I take it back! I don’t want to move in, I want to break up!” She tosses her pen at him again, and adds a sheaf of papers when she hears him laughing.
Finn tries to duck, but doesn’t make it before the papers swirl around his head. Rae laughs and tosses her notebook at him too, so he grabs his own handful of papers and tosses them at her, then a series of highlighters take flight from his fingers as he stands to dodge more books. A heavier one lands on his side, and he widens his eyes at her.
“Oh, you’re in for it now, Earl.”
He darts around the table, but Rae’s already up and moving, a gale of laughter trailing behind her. It’s less than a minute before all the detritus on the table is strewn about the room and they have to bend to collect more ammo from the floor. Rae’s laughter is ringing and reverberating around the tiny room, and he’s grinning madly as he gets a flash of a hundred moments like this across the span of their life together. It’s gone as he catches her, she’s bending to pick up a book and he bumps behind her, wrapping his hands around her waist, holding her put with a firm hand on her hip and then tickling her ribs with the other.
Rae’s giggling turns pained and breathless, and she begs for mercy. “Stop! Stop! Please!”
“Never!” He crows, but she says his name and something about it makes the moment turn. Suddenly, he’s very aware of her panting breaths and her butt pressed up against him and the way her shirt has lifted up to show a sliver of her pale, soft stomach.
“Finn.” She says again, turning in his arms, and he can see that he’s not the only one affected. Her face is flushed, sweat curling the hairs at her temple. He looks at her lips, watches as she bites them, draws the moment out to enjoy breathing her in, to enjoy the way her eyes glint and get darker, the way her breasts move against his chest.
He could stay this way forever, he thinks. There’s nothing more important than the way Rae looks in this exact second.
But then she’s pressing her hands on his neck, tugging him down to meet her fevered mouth. And then she’s writhing against him, moving those luscious hips against his. And then he’s got her caught up against the edge of the now-empty table, and he’s lifting her up and pawing at her ass, and pressing her down and going in for more and more and more. Rae tugs roughly at his shirt, pulling a long scratch up his back as she struggles to get it off. He shivers, bites her lip, moves away for the shortest possible amount of time it could take to remove it. He starts in on her buttons, thankful for his nimble fingers when they release quickly and he can press his chest against her bare skin. She moans, and he thrusts against her skirt to hear her do it again.
He’s just gotten his fingers slipped under the waistband of her leggings when the door flies open, and they both look to see a harassed, wide-eyed man standing in the doorway.
“What in the bloody hell do you two think you’re doing?” He shrieks, and Finn turns to shoot Rae an amused look. She’s all red, but he can’t tell what’s from embarrassment and what’s from arousal. “The revision rooms are for revising, not for… licentious behavior!”
“Sorry sir!” Rae squeaks, and Finn hides his laughter by ducking his head to her shoulder.
“Out! Take this… affrontery somewhere else! This is a library! A place of books!” The man shouts, and Finn can’t look up because he’s laughing so hard. Rae pokes him, hard, in the side.
“Yes sir. Sorry sir. We’ll just… get our things and go.” He knows she’s trying to sound contrite, but Finn can hear the laughter in her voice. “We didn’t mean to despoil the books. Poor innocent books.”
The librarian makes a strangled sound, and Finn’s laughing so hard now that the whole desk is shaking. “I’ll be back here in five minutes, and I expect the two of you to be gone.” He huffs. “And you will never be allowed to rent another revision room for as long as I am here!”
The door slams shut, and Rae giggles and shoves at Finn. He climbs off the table and helps pull her to her feet. They stand at the foot of the table and hold hands and look at each other and laugh. Finn thinks about Nan’s ring, and Rae’s bra, and how it’s got to be unfair for him to be this happy.
Then Rae’s buttoning her shirt, and he’s stacking papers on the floor and she’s picking up all her pens. It takes only a couple of minutes to collect everything, so Finn puts his shirt back on and they half-jog out of the library, still laughing, earning dirty looks from harried students.
Outside, they stop in the shade of a tree to catch their breath, and Rae shoots him a questioning look that he understands implicitly.
“Yours is closer.” He says, and she nods. Her flush, her easy acceptance sends a thrill through him, and then they’re back to half-jogging across campus, holding hands. They’re breathless, not laughing now, and Finn’s blood is on fire.
She fumbles with the key when they get to her residence hall, and he takes it from her gently and turns it in the lock. He’s not sure how, but he’s the steadier one in moments like this now. She gets clumsier and more trembly the pinker her skin gets, but he gets calmer. The haze of lust focuses him somehow.
They get lost in each other on the lift, miss her floor and have to go back down. He thinks someone gets on with them at one point, but he can’t be sure. The whole world is just him and Rae. The second time they reach her floor, they tumble out, struggling but determined to make it the few meters to the door without detangling from one another, without ceasing the connections forged by greedy mouths and grabbing hands. They bump up against the doorframe, and Rae giggles just a little as Finn pulls the keys from his pocket.
A throat clears beside them, and Finn glances down the hall in both directions before leaning around Rae and seeing a lanky, spectacled kid sitting on the floor beside Rae’s door.
“Oh, George.” Rae says, and disappointment is heavy in her tone. Finn tries to keep his sigh as quiet as possible. He presses his erection against her. “Is everything okay?”
George’s eyes are wide and bright as he rises to his feet. He nods, a blush rising on his neck. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. I wanted to talk to you about something, but it can wait. I’ll come back in an hour.” Finn clears his throat loudly. “Or two. No big deal.”
“Are you sure?” Rae asks, and Finn can’t help but smile into her skin. She’s so caring, his girl.
“Yeah, it’s fine. You, uh, have fun.” George says, chuckling, walking backwards down the hall. Finn mouths at him, THANK YOU.George shrugs and waves.
Finn presses his forehead against Rae’s shoulder for a second, then comes to his senses and unlocks the door. Rae shakes her head as they enter, crossing the room to drop her bag onto her desk chair. Finn carefully locks the door behind him.
“He’s definitely wanking in his room right now, thanks to us.” She says, and he barks a laugh.
“Well, who wouldn’t? Look at you, all hot and bothered.” He cocks his head, does that dangerous, sexy stride that he knows she likes.
“Ha!” She grins, wrinkling her nose. He puts his hands on her hips and tugs her sharply against him. “It’s definitely not me all hot and bothered he’d be wanking to. You are one delectable man, Finn Nelson.”
“Rae.” He warns, bending as she wraps her arms around him again. “Shut up.”