Big Book Of Smornby One Shots

The Bookworm (S)

TW: High School!AU

He had seen him. Ross could tell, from the peculiar, none too subtle way he continued to glance over at him from where he was hidden, behind a bookcase in the school's library; to the way he hardly seemed to be reading his book anymore; to the shadow of a smile that crept onto his lips with every glance that he cast in his direction. Ross knew why he was smiling: this whole ordeal was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. He had probably assumed that he had unfortunately acquired a ridiculously unattractive stalker. Here he had found himself, hiding behind the historical fiction section, peering wistfully, pathetically, over at some guy he didn't even know, had never even talked to, never exchanged names or even mere glances with, some guy who would no doubt think of him as a freak if he knew him, knew what he was like, knew that the only reason he came to this library was to see his blue eyes and pale face and wave of auburn hair, all hunched over a book held between two large, calloused hands. God, Ross really was a freak.

He was glancing over again, his blue eyes, much darker than Ross's own pale blue, meeting his for just a second, and he tried so hard to hold his gaze, he really did... But he was too shy, too closeted about his emotions. His head snapped back down, eyes fixing on a blurry page of the book in his trembling hands, his cheeks glowing a furious shade of scarlet. Why did this guy keep looking at him? Maybe he was wondering if people could really look quite so awful, quite so ridiculous. Maybe he had something in his hair? Or maybe he was just too polite to ask him aloud to go away. Couldn't he just put Ross out of his misery? Dammit, why did attraction have to be such a stupidly complicated ordeal? Why couldn't it be so simple, so effortless, like all of those shitty novels and movies always conveyed it? It was hardly fair. He would have preferred a quicker, cleaner ending to this whole affair, would have simply preferred for the boy to even approach him, ask him kindly to move on and stop coming to this library to stand in this very same spot day after day after school instead of going home.

"Why do you keep looking at me?" He heard somebody ask, the voice quiet, rather high-pitched for a male's voice. It wasn't a voice he recognised, and he absently glanced up from him book, before realising his error. But it was too late to look back down now, because there he was, those deep blue eyes staring down at him through the tiniest gap in the bookshelf, his eyes not very far above him. They were almost the same height, Ross observed. Much taller than he had looked when he was hunched over a book in the corner of the busy library. It was a height that surprised him, as there weren't many in his high school that were quite as tall as Ross was, never mind taller.

His eyes were still fixed on him. Waiting for an answer. Was there an adjective for such a shade of blue? To say they were "piercing" blue would be too harsh for such a deep shade, would hardly do such a colour any justice. What were his eyes doing? Glaring? No, that sounded too angry, as though he were enraged at his presence so nearby to where he had been sitting rather contentedly just moments before. Was he enraged? Ross hoped to hell he wasn't; he hated confrontation.

He whipped his gaze back down to stare at his book, the words jumbling, blurring, messing together in a muddle of useless adverbs and an almost obscene over-usage of punctuation that his English teacher would have had a fit over.

"I'm not." He lied. Well, it was half a lie, at least. He had been looking over at him before, sure, but now he wasn't, right?

Wrong. His hands were resting a shelf below his eyes, and Ross was studying them instead, unable to concentrate entirely on the book in front of his eyes. How could he ever concentrate on any book, when he was right there, so close to where he was stood? He had never been this close to him before, had always avoided being too nearby in case he recognised him in the library at the end of their school day. It frightened him, to say the least. He concentrated back on the matter at hand, his hands: large, calloused, pale, hands made for playing an instrument, but not one as delicate as the piano. He had heard the boy could play guitar, had heard he could play beautifully. Was his playing as beautiful as his eyes? It was such a shame he hadn't the courage to look at them.