Faking It (Minibit x [ M e l a p p y ])

Minibit

Returned from the Void
Original poster
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Posting Speed
  1. One post per day
  2. 1-3 posts per week
  3. One post per week
Writing Levels
  1. Intermediate
  2. Adept
  3. Advanced
Preferred Character Gender
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Genres
Urban Fantasy, High Fantasy, Epic Quest, Sci-Fi, Time Travel and World Hopping, Steampunk, Action/Adventure, Modern Drama, Mystery, Slice of Life, Romance, and many more.
The library was nearly empty, the yellow lights compensating for the lack of sun through the large windows, and Alice was grinding her teeth behind a large paperback book on the Role of Radio in the 19th Century.

Usually, the West Library was a great place to study at night. It was the only one of the three on-campus libraries (counting the Law Library) that was open after eight. The librarians went home at nine, but Alice had usually preferred to ask her questions to the computer consoles anyway. Best of all, very few students populated the library's stacks and study rooms in the evening.

Tonight, Alice could only see one other person, but one was quite enough. All the copies of 'the Role of Radio in the 19th Century' in all the libraries in all the world stacked together would not have been thick enough to block the leering gaze of the hulking student two study tables away. She held the book high, to block her face, but could feel his gaze sliding over her fingers, arms, shoulders, and even the top of her auburn head like the slick swipes of an oily rag.

She tried to focus on the text, but even if it hadn't been dry as toast, her mind kept leaping away from the first attempts at transatlantic radio transmissions and into her throat any time she heard him shift or move his chair. She kept wondering when Security would make their rounds. If they would notice that he didn't seem to be reading any books or even using a computer.

When she'd first walked in, she'd noticed the only thing on his table was the mobile phone that seemed to have most of his attention. She'd figured he was waiting for someone, or else just procrastinating, and then walked by him to an empty table. Her chair had squeaked when she pulled it out, and that had drawn his glance up. It had barely left her since, she felt it behind her when she retrieved the volumes she needed, oozed over her when she sat down, and assaulted her face when she had to put the text down in order to write down her notes.

Another scuffing sound from his direction made her grip her pencil until her knuckles were white. She tried to rationalize; he was probably just moving around a little, making himself comfortable, and anyway he was just looking. She'd been looked at before; Alice had never coped particularly well with focused attention like staring, but she'd always been able to get away from it relatively quickly. Right now, the library was the only quiet place open where she could get her notes down; the roommate was throwing a party, and the computer labs were closed for maintenance until Saturday.

"What're you reading?"

She nearly jumped out of her skin, dropping her pencil. He was standing over her, leaning one ramrod-straight arm on her table; he had a barbed-wire tattoo spiraling over his forearm. Real original, she thought, but bit her tongue. She felt her heart hammering in her throat; she wondered if the sweat prickling under her arms could be smelled, and then hoped it could. Maybe if she was gross he'd leave. He smelled like salami.

She looked back and forth between the book and his leering face.

"Uh, textbook," she managed, "It's boring."

As if he was actually over because of interest in her book.

"You should take a break," he said, standing up straight again. He stretched out his arms in front of himself and nearly under her nose. Was he trying to flex? He didn't have as many muscles as he seemed to think he did, but as he rolled his shoulders, Alice thought to herself that it didn't matter. He was still head-and-shoulders taller than her, and definitely heavier.

"Wanna come to a party with me?"

Alice gulped, looking at her notes and re-opening the textbook. What page had she been on again?

"Um, no thanks"

"Come on, it'll be fun, I thought girls like you liked to party."

She frowned.

"What do you mean, girls like me?" she asked, hearing the word 'bait' ping into her mind way too late.

"You know," he grinned, adjusting his trucker hat, "hot ones."

Her face burned, she buried her nose in the book, deciding the page didn't matter.

"It's really not my scene."

"Sure it is."

The book pulled away from her as he pressed it down to the table, holding his other hand in what might have been a beckoning gesture if she hadn't been so certain he could fling her toothpick of a figure across the room with it if he wanted.

She tried to move the book, it felt like it was fixed to the table with superglue. If she pulled harder, the pages would tear.

"Please let go." she said, not feeling much hope that he would.

"What, you don't think you're hot enough to go to a party with me?"

"No, that's not-" she tried to move back in her chair, but the library's carpet was uncooperative.

"Cause you are, you've got tits to die for, y'know?"

She wasn't wearing anything with a low neckline or anything, and knew for a fact that she was rather a flat-chested woman, but she still couldn't stop her arms from crossing over her red flannel. She wondered when the next security rotation was.

"Th-that's kind of rude" she managed, not knowing where to look and hoping that a more direct refusal would dissuade him instead of exacerbating the situation.

"What?" His face twisted, and her personal space decreased further, "I gave you a compliment,"

"Please-"

Alice cut herself off when the sound of footsteps drew her eyes like a whip.

Instead of security, another student. A female student.

Alice had been told before that her train of thought was not so much a runaway as a locomotive that derailed and exploded as soon as it left the station. In this case, the debris landed on a Tumblr text post suggesting a rule that if a girl is being made uncomfortable by a man, a passing woman should come over and pretend to be either a lover or a long-lost friend in order to extract her from the situation.

"Sweetie!" she called, raising her hand for attention and trying to sound relieved "Over here!"

Trucker Hat had straightened somewhat, and was looking between them. Alice tried to scream 'play along, please!' using only her face
 
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Green eyes followed the dimly lit path to the doors of the West Library. Anna was in a hurry to make some last minute adjustments to a paper she was working on that covered the Pavlov's Dogs experiment. It would be due in the morning, and she was now regretting getting so involved in her other work that she'd almost completely neglected finishing it.

Luckily it was just a matter of looking up a few more sources and typing up a conclusion and bibliography. The library would be empty — even the librarians were gone by this hour. Finding what she was looking for might prove to be a difficult task without their help, but she could manage it.

While not the best student in the world, she was determined, and one who tried her best. Her professors admired that about her, even if it didn't always reflect in her grades.

Making her way through the many winding shelves of books, the brown haired girl finally spotted what she was looking for. Laptop carrying bag in hand, she grabbed the book and looked for a seat.

Her search was stopped by someone calling out to her.

"Sweetie! Over here!" The voice belonged to a girl about Anna's age with auburn hair. Leaning over her was a taller male, easily thrice her frame.

Anna was confused initially. She'd only ever caught a few glances of this girl in one of her classes, but they'd never talked. That man looked familiar too. Was he...?

No, that couldn't be right. The way she called out to her said otherwise. That must be it then.

"Ah! There you are!" Playing along to save her from the creep's unwanted advances, Anna approached her from behind and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. Hopefully this wasn't laying it on too heavily.

Looking at the male, Anna offered a teasing smile of sorts. "Was there something you wanted from my girlfriend?"
 
Trucker Hat looked back and forth between them, and for a moment, Alice thought she could actually see the gears in his head slowly clicking into place.

"you're a dyke?" he asked incredulously.

Alice flushed at the term, and decided to neither confirm nor deny, staring levelling at him whole her heart pounded beneath the stranger's crossed wrists.

"push, fine, whatever, call me if you ever wanna know what you're missing."

The sneer that accompanied his last line as he turned away set Alice's teeth on edge even without the vulgar and immature hand gestures.

He disappeared into the stacks in the direction of the front door a moment later, and Alice sank backward in her seat, every muscle in her body limp.

"thank you," she said, tilting her head to look up at her rescuer, "he was really creeping me out"

Her benefactor seemed to be around Alice's age, maybe a year or two older or younger. Her hair was brown, and looked soft in the yellow light. Alice shifted to turn around in her seat, thoroughly recanting her previous desire to be smelly.
 
Witnessing her sudden embrace of his target, the Trucker Hat was quick to retreat, but not before making sure to toss an insult in leaving. Anna let out a sigh, glad it was all over.

“It was no problem. There aren't many ways to get rid of someone of his type.”

The two were quiet for a good minute, and Anna's face quickly turned red in realizing she had yet to let go of the girl she'd just rescued.

“S-Sorry about that. I sometimes get a little distracted when things go a little haywire.” Was that situation that haywire?

The girl of auburn hair turned in her seat, and Anna held out her hand in proper greeting. “The name's Anna," she offered. Hopefully the male was gone now. If he were to return and see this display of formality, her rescue would've been for naught.

“You look familiar, by the way. We wouldn't happen to share a class together, would we?”
 
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Alice paused, thinking carefully about the question.

"I'm not sure," she said. It was entirely possible that she had a class, potentially even multiple classes, with this girl, but unless she sat directly on top of Alice's notes, it was unlikely she'd noticed. She didn't, however, think it prudent to mention any of this; Alice was at least socially apt enough to realize her social ineptitude.

"I'm Alice, by the way," she blurted instead, shooting out her hand for a shake without realizing it still had a pencil in it. She flushed, fumbling to put it down on the table, where it promptly began to roll and needed to be stopped again. Alice wondered if it were possible for a person's cheeks to literally combust.
 
Ah. I suppose I don't really stick out that much.

Though still convinced the two shared a class, Anna pushed the thought to the back of her mind. The auburn girl extended her hand, pencil still in hand, and soon fumbled it in her attempts to set it down.

Reaching out, Anna stopped the pencil with her pointer finger, to find that Alice had the same intention. Quickly withdrawing her hand, the swift motion of hand jerks sent the pencil off the table. This is like the start of some bad romance movie. Shaking her head to regain her focus, she apologized for losing the girl's pencil, and knelt down to retrieve it. A mental sigh of relief came from knowing that they weren't both diving for the pencil again. Bumping heads under the table would be the icing on the cake.

Wishing to detract from the increasingly awkward situation, she decided to bring attention to something other than The Series of Cliched Events that just unfolded. "What are you reading about?"
 
From Anna, the question was benign.

"Research," Alice fumbled, answering the 'why' rather than the 'what,' "about the role of radio in western culture and stuff, it goes from like, the invention and how it was used in the war and then it gets more modern, so..."

she trailed off, unsure why she was explaining the bland text in such detail.

"It's for a paper," she added lamely, "Communications 3100."
 
"Communications, huh?" Though it was something that'd always interested her, the various means through which humans communicate and the ways in which those means had developed, it wasn't a class she'd taken this year. Now that she'd actually thought about it, maybe it was something to look into next semester. "This might sound weird, but I actually think that's pretty interesting."

Pulling out one of the chairs, Anna sat herself down beside Alice and looked over the screen, completely forgetting her manners. It came with the clumsiness. "What other classes are you taking this year?" Maybe hearing them would make it clearer which classes, if any, she shared with this girl. It wasn't until after she'd seated herself and went on asking more questions that she realized her rudeness. "Oh, I'm sorry!" she said, quickly rising. "Is it alright if I sit here?"

That's definitely not the same person that just wrapped her arms around the girl before her to scare off a scoundrel.
 
"Not weird," Alice assured as the girl seated herself. She nudged her chair over a little bit to make room, listening as Anna elaborated on her interest and beset her with a volley of questions.

"Yeah, of course," she said to the last inquiry, before backtracking to the first.

"I'm taking a bunch of different classes right now," she prefaced, conscious that her eclectic schedule often seemed strange in its thematic inconsistency, "I'm actually doing a double minor, so my required courses are all over the map. This semester I'm taking the Communications thirty-one-hundred which is like, an upper-level history of human communication, I'm also taking a Film Noir class - Film forty-...eight hundred? - Computer Science twenty-one-fifty and -twenty-six-hundred, oh, and Digital Art Theory, which is Visual Arts twelve-hundred."

She paused, partly for breath, partly because of the sudden realization of the length of her list.

"My schedule's uh, pretty tight," she said, blushing. "What're you taking?"