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Asa cleared his throat slightly, not wanting to disturb the person in front of him too much, but wanting them to listen.
"Ehm, excuse me." When the redhead didn't answer, he decided on a light prod to their shoulder. That's when they turned around. The first thing Asa noticed about them, as all the clichés say and what they're extremely right about, was their eyes. A beautiful unnatural yellow, though that might've been because of the windows reflecting on the glasses, the Sun shining in them. That can't have been too comfortable, honestly.
After a few seconds looking at the person without speaking, Asa gets a jump start on the conversation, flustered for being caught staring so blatantly, cheeks tinting a slight rosy. "You're in my seat." He coughed, rather awkwardly.
"I am?" They looked around, then at the table. "Can't you go somewhere else? What's special about this seat? Would I want to keep it?"
Asa soured the slightest bit, as he always did, when people didn't really understand him. "Yes, you are, no I'd not like to move, nothing's special, and you wouldn't want to keep it. It's a habit. I need to be in the same spot when I'm studying." He let out an exhale through his nose, rather tired. Not of the conversation, or of this lovely to look at person, but simply from the whole day. Too many classes, too much homework, too little time. The library, believe it or not, was his rest - even if he was there to study.
The yellow-eyed person just grinned. "Fine. But I'm doing this out of the niceness of my heart." There was a slight irony to his voice, one that Asa didn't quite understand, at least not yet.
"Mhm." He didn't pay much mind and smiled, a bit too fake for his liking (though he couldn't do any better with the tiredness that was weighing on him), doing a slight gesture with his hand to shoo them away, and then realising that wasn't the nicest thing he could've done. His face changed as naturally as it could. "Ah- That was quite rude of me, I'm sorry."
They rolled their eyes (lovely eyes, gorgeous colour - were they natural or contacts? Would it be too rude of Asa to ask?) and dismissed whatever anxious thoughts were popping up in his head. " 'ts fine, angel, not a bother to move one spot away from the window."
Angel?
The confusion at the nickname must've been evident on his face, because they laughed out loud, sort of like the quacking ducks did, only much more endearing, and earning them a glare from pretty much everyone in the library.
"Don't know your name, you're nicer than a lot of people, since you asked instead of simply shoving me out of your seat-" "Well, obviously, that would've been incredibly rude." "-and you quite look like one." They moved one spot away, as they said they would, positioning themselves to be at Asa's right.
Asa stared at the seat for a few seconds before sitting down, taking his things out from his bag. With his keen observational powers (and the fact that the notebook with his name in big bold letters was conveniently positioned to his right), he deduced that the person's name was Anthony. The blonde let out a breath, quite full from what he had just eaten - he'd taken a friend, Muriel, out to eat to celebrate a passing grade (at that point, it was something to celebrate - she was in her first year and was so nervous of mucking things up, that she'd fail most exams even though she knew how to pass them). They'd had sushi, her choice, though it might've not seemed like it with how happy Asa had come out of the restaurant.
He'd been given an assignment to write an essay, with a few themes to choose from, of which he had selected "LGBTQIA+ themes in modern British writing". The book before him was How to be Both, by Ali Smith. From 2014, but still modern enough, he reckoned. He would've liked choosing The Portrait of Dorian Gray, but he thought that people would already think of that one, it'd be too unoriginal, and maybe too old? He wasn't sure what constituted and modern and what didn't, always spending more time with his grandparents than with his parents, both pairs incredibly old-fashioned.
After a half hour or so, Anthony spoke, something that Asa had found himself unknowingly waiting for.
"D'you have a pen?"
"A pen? Of course I do, what kind?" To Anthony's delight, Asa took out a small box of pens, both the fancy kind (lake pens or reservoir pens or something, he could never remember), and the normal ones. He grabbed one of the normal ones just in case he didn't know how to use the other ones and made a fool of himself in front of Asa. Not that it really mattered. Why would it matter?
He just nodded as a thanks whilst Asa busily put them away, humming a quiet tune that felt so familiar to Anthony, though he couldn't put his finger on it.
They kept studying for a few hours, and, though Asa seemed to be incredibly concentrated, annotating his book, the redhead was not. Anthony tried to see what book it was, but he couldn't ever see the cover. The blonde was alternating reading the book with annotating and taking notes on the little notebook he had to his right, something that felt pointless to Anthony, because why would you annotate a book if you're going to write notes outside of the book?
English Major, he supposed. No one could really tell what they were doing, not even themselves.
His train of thought, again, was derailed. The whole trajectory had been thwarted by a certain person sitting to his left, looking quite intensely at an unknown book, as if that would solve all his problems, a person that seemed to be missing angel wings and a little halo. Anthony was, of course, not thinking of the essay he had to be writing, nor the studying he had to do, because who'd want to study for Introductory to Quantum Physics when they had an adorable English Major next to them? No one, that's who.
After a long pause in which Anthony hadn't done anything, simply stared at the man he'd learnt was named Asa, trying to figure him out and figure out if he'd like the proposition he was about to make him. Christ, that sounded a bit like he was trying to pick him up for something other than a cuppa. He shook the thought out of his head, physically, earning himself a strange look from Asa, both amused and confused.
He cleared his throat in preparation.
"Would you like to go out for a coffee sometime?" Anthony asked, quite nervous (it showed in his movements, hand tangling with its twin, picking at his nails and not daring to look into Asa's eyes).
"..I think I'd like that, yes."
Asa took delight in seeing how Anthony's eyes - and entire face - lit up at the answer. They would probably have more dates, he reckoned, with how much he was enjoying his company, how much he liked him, and how much he seemed to like him back.