Once upon a long time after The Jump

Chapter 2

Seated by her desk with him opposite at his, she sneak-peaked at him through the curtain of her own silky black hair hanging before her face. She took him in; watched his body language, regularly making small moves, tapping, drumming, stretching, as if he did not like sitting still for long; the mop of dark hair, which she noticed was unruly instead of arranged in neat waves today because of the damp weather; and his focused expression as he wrote on his laptop, sometimes chewing the inside his cheek or his bottom lip, sometimes raising or frowning his brows as if he had an internal dialogue.

When she first saw him a month ago, he had reminded her of someone, but she could not remember who or even if the memory was good or bad and had quickly shrugged it off as that distant memory hardly had anything to do with him anyway. She had thought he seemed like a jerk that first day, when he so reluctantly had received her. Had thought him unkind, unapproachable, brash and full of himself. How wrong she had been.

As if he felt her gaze on him, he looked up, their eyes met, and he flashed her a big smile which reached all the way to those chocolate brown eyes and warmed her insides.

"What?"

She felt her cheeks flush, caught in the act of observing him. Not as discrete as she had intended.

"Nothing... I was just thinking that sometimes first impressions are wrong."

"For better or for worse?"

"In this specific case, for better. Not that I'm talking about you", she smiled.

He smiled again too, that almost shy and therefore all the more irresistible smile. She had noticed that unintentionally it had become a goal of hers to achieve that as many times a day as possible.

"No, I figured you couldn't be, as I'm the dog's bollocks at making a great first impression."

They continued grinning at each other, their eyes engaging in silent conversation even if neither of them was sure exactly what they were saying. Something good, something which induced a fuzzy feeling in the pit of their stomachs.

He was not sure how it had turned into this; from reluctantly accepting that he was forced to share room with her, to thinking the best part of any day was when she was sitting there in front of him. He had in fact been sulking for the whole first week, hardly said a word to her. He knew he was behaving like a petulant child but could not stop himself. He had tried to avoid taking on the role as her tutor and only answered monosyllabic when she asked something, which made her stop attempting to talk to him after a few days but every time he met her green eyes he had felt a sting of bad conscience.

Professor Watson had agreed to have one initial tutoring session with Betsy, to discuss how her research could benefit most from the time spent at the Department of Psychiatry. He had expected her to be desolate when she returned, but instead she had almost skipped into the office until he gave her a stern stare for disturbing him. It seemed like the session with the professor had been rewarding and she was full of inspiration. The two had made up a plan for her on what to focus on and after that she had been impressively self-reliant. He was amazed at how different the professor seemed to act towards her compared to him and wondered if it was because she was a woman (unlikely) or because the professor for some reason had hated his guts from day one (more likely).

In the end he had picked up on the conversation again, as he increasingly felt like an arsehole. Started asking what her research was about, started telling her about his, moving on to asking questions about her as his curiosity was increased. He realised that not only did she provide insightful comments to his work, he very much enjoyed talking about anything with her. She made him laugh, she made him engage his brain in new ways. He had not experienced this with someone in a long time.