a little bit of black with a little bit of pink

Contracts

They met, as all normal, sane people did, in the library.

It started out as a typical enough day. Jennie was engrossed in her work, papers fluttering around her head, stacks of texts forming a veritable wall around her, headphones on blast in order to drown out the humdrum of the first-year students who still loved life. It wasn't until she paused her music and marked her place in her notes, needing her coffee/make-sure-the-sun-still-was-in-the-sky break (she'd learned the hard way that the librarians did not take well to stragglers who remained past operation hours), that she realized the day wasn't typical at all.

One second she was smiling and inhaling the smell of her vanilla-syrup drowned coffee, walking back towards her table, and the next, she was face to face with a young woman with narrowed eyes, holding one of the texts Jennie was using for her research in her hand, waving it angrily in Jennie's face.

"So you're the one who absconded with the book I need," the stranger hissed, free hand coming to rest on the table. It was vaguely inappropriate, given the circumstances, but Jennie found herself thinking that the strange woman leaning against the table was, well, hot.

(She'd been in the library too long. She'd lost all her senses.)

"Absconded?" Jennie repeated hazily, wondering if she had one shot too many of espresso, maybe that she'd hit her head harder than she thought when she fell asleep earlier and had woken up when her hand had slipped from her chin and her forehead connected sharply with the wooden table, causing her to hallucinate this whole interaction.

"I've been searching for this for weeks," the woman continued, seemingly unaware that Jennie had spoken. "But it's never in its spot and it's not marked as checked out—do you have any idea what you've put me through?" She shook her head in exasperation, choosing that moment to wave the book again, this time under Jennie's nose. "I'm taking this," she announced primly, and obviously thinking that was sufficient explanation, turned on her heel and began to walk away, Jennie's book firmly in hand.

It took Jennie three solid seconds to catch up, set her coffee down, and chase after the stranger.

"Hey! Hey, you can't just take it like that, I need that book for my research. Professor Song is already telling me I'm behind, I—" But the stranger didn't allow Jennie the opportunity to finish. She stopped suddenly and turned around, eyes narrowed.

"Song is your advisor?" she practically sneered. "I have Yang. Yang."

Jennie's first reaction was to wince in sympathy, but at the sight of the stranger's smug look, she shook her head.

"How do I even know you're telling the truth? This is a small school and I've never seen you before."

"Seriously, Jennie?" the stranger demanded, the smugness giving way to frustration. "We were in the same section. You called me Lexie once because you'd just gotten into Grey's Anatomy."

"I... do not recall that," Jennie lied, hoping her face wasn't as red as it felt. Because she recognized her book thief now—it was Lisa Manoban, the incredibly intelligent, incredibly swoon worthy, terribly unwilling to get to know anyone, crush that Jennie had for nearly all of her first year and had unsuccessfully attempted to stamp out for most of this year.

(She wasn't surprised she didn't recognize Lisa right away. Though she had embarrassingly memorized the shade of Lisa's eyes and the angle of her jawline, when Lisa wore her oversized glasses and kept herself huddled up in a sweater at least two sizes too large, it was astonishingly easy to overlook her. Which, Jennie supposed, was what Lisa was going for—she seemed to thrive when she was underestimated, as if it gave her more to prove. In fact, besides that one conversation that one time Jennie was a little bit tipsy at the end of a long week, a conversation which ended with calling Lisa 'Lexie' and an explanation about how much she loved Grey's Anatomy, Jennie had never even spoken to Lisa before.