fandomhigh | Library; Wednesday [ 10/17 ]

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Library; Wednesday [ 10/17 ]

Knowing full well that there was a break this week and she didn't necessarily have to come in, Adah did, anyway, figuring she had nothing better to do and deciding that she might be a little more comfortable with people finding her again. She went about her usual rounds of shelving books and then unshelving more, and, as she wandered, she wondered. About pain, which wasn't as bad as she thought it would be today, probably because her hardworking left side was just grateful that the surface it stepped on was flat and not increasing up and up and up like the stairs from yesterday. About several things involving water, which she was still uncomfortable with because she didn't even know how to swim. About Africa, and how strange it was that when she thought of that word today, she thought also of the word 'home,' and she also thought about how people there understood the territorial, how they avoided people like her, things unusual, or strange, or useless. It would be different if, instead of a lacking right side, she was lacking legs, but could still balance a basket of manioc on her head.

On her way back to the desk, she placed a book on her head. She didn't even step forward before she realized it was a pointless endeavor.

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Adah quietly dropped her eyes from the Eel at his mention of him liking to know that she was concerned. Well. There was her big severed line right there, now, wasn't it A pit grew in her stomach Unsevered lines, after all, as much as she hated them, gave her neat little excuses.

But, he continued, and he smiled, and she lightly smiled back as she wrote, "Sometimes?"

"I'm not stupid all the time," he protested lightly, making a face. "I have my moments of intelligence."

He ran a hand through his hair, double checking for any bumps before resting his chin in his hand.

"I do!"

Adah maintained a skeptical expression before sliding the notebook with a bit of test for Mister Intelligent Model over there.

"What, then, is the square root of 164?"

"You're quizzing me when I'm all battered and bruised?"

He tried to look woeful.

"I could have a head injury or memory loss or a really bad headache," he said and shook his head. "And none of these are the excuses I'm making because I don't know the answer or anything. I do know the answer. I'm just keeping it a secret."

Wow. That had to quite possibly be some of the worst bullshit Adah had ever seen. And she had spent seventeen years of her life with Rachel Price, so that was quite a commendment for the Eel.

"Is it really a secret," she offered, "if I also know the answer?"

"No, it just means you're smarter than me," he said with a grin. "Which you probably already knew."

He reached down into his bag, pulled out a pen and just under her writing, wrote: "The answer to your question is..."

And then he drew a smiley face.

No amount of effort could really keep Adah from laughing. She'd actually tried, too, only to discover that she was only making it worse. Even replying was difficult because she couldn't look at his supposed square root without feeling the urge to let out yet another of those unwelcome, seemingly too loud sounds. Not even a hand covering her face seemed to help, but at least that way the Eel couldn't see her cheeks turning red from the amusement as well and finally, when she thought that maybe she had a bit more control over the infectiousness of his dorkiness, Adah lowered the hand to uncover her eyes and now cover her smirk, looking up over at him with dancing, accusing eyes, and then slowly lowered her hand a little more, so that her very quiet voice wouldn't be muffled. Her hand curled slightly under her chin as she announced, contritely and seriously despite the mirth still across her face, "It's 12 point 8 0 6 2 4 8 4 7 4 8 6 5 6, so on until infinity."

"Of course," she added, just as quietly, dropped her eyes with a new smirk, "you already knew that, right?"

"Oh, I knew that," he said and dropped his hand from his chin so he could lean a little more fully against the desk, catch her eyes a little more. "And then some."

The attempt at solemn failed when he couldn't get that last sentence out without laughing himself. "But you saying the answer does prove one thing."

He paused, letting the anticipation level grow.

And then he said, "I really wanna learn more about math now."

Knowing fully well that actually saying something, for her, was no small thing and that Adah expected the Eel to understand this principle, she had leaned in, eyes on his face intently, hoping to catch whatever it was he was going to say before the words actually went past his lips. And, once they did, going from his lips and into her ears, she was thinking that she could really just throw something at him for that, if she wouldn't have felt bad about beating up on an already battered man with a book or a pen, those being the only weapons at her disposal at the moment.

She tried to maintain her surprised, amused disappointment by splitting her face with a grin and very notably taking up her notebook again.

"Lucky you," she wrote, "as there are books here in this very library on that exact subject."

"Lucky me," he agreed, sounding amused. "Wait. I've got something."

He turned around, back to her and hunched over just a bit, hiding whatever he was doing from her for the moment.

With a slight sigh at the already encroaching exhaustion over games, particularly ones she had no control over, Adah leaned forward onto her left hand, palm in cheek, watching the movements in his back carefully as the waited to see what the Eel was up to now.

And, in what she would vigorously argue with herself later was just a result of her climbing tiredness from the day wearing on, her thoughts quickly started to drift from merely looking at his back because it was there, to more carefully watching, perusing, soaking in a few other things the change of view allowed her to take in with an arched, reluctantly intrigued eyebrow.

If Lee blushed for some unknown reason, he'd attribute it to a sudden increase in the temperature in the library. It took him a few moments to finish was he was doing before turning back around, both hands behind his back.

He pulled out one hand, laid it palm flat on the desk in front of her and showed her that he'd written The square root of 164 is 12 point 8 0 6 2 4 8 4 7 4 8 6 5 6 so on until infinity across the top. And then he waited a moment before turning his hand over and showing her the smiley face on his palm.

"So I won't forget again," he said quietly.

And now it was Adah's face that was distinctly pink, as her eyes went from studying the numbers across the back of the Eel's hand with amusement before it flipped over and she was encountered with another accursed smiley face, making her grin and blush more, the first thirteen decimal points of the square root of 164 repeating in her head, waltzing around with feelings of amusement, of embarrassment, of dull anger at his ability to make her feel all these spikes of adoration and pleasantness so damn easily. She looked at his hand a moment longer, before her eyes drifted up to his face to get a quick reading of his expression before the attention returned. She lifted her own hand, pressing two fingers against his palm, sliding them across slowly. To test the perminance of the ink, to see if it would smear. Certainly not simply to touch his hand and move her skin against his.

"And when you wash?" she asked, because she certainly wasn't moving her hand to do something like writing now. "And it comes off? or do you intend to have it tattooed on?"

"I could," he said thoughtfully, not all seriously, curling his thumb inward to brush against her fingers for a brief moment. "But, here, I've got this one too."

He pulled his other hand out, fist closed for the moment before opening it and turning it palm up. There was more writing on his other palm, a little sloppier because he'd written with his non writing hand.

It read: You've got a way with words, written or spoken. I don't think I'll ever tired of listening.

And that one was a little bit more personal but he'd wanted to say something like that for awhile.

Adah's eyes had been distinctly placed on her fingers poised over the Eel's palm, the slight shifting of his thumb, and her own thumb, moving lightly under her own fingers to brush lightly as well, when he announced the other message. She drew in a soft breath, with a small smile; what a novel concept, the use of two hands; she didn't even think of it, but she couldn't hold it against him, that was for sure, especially once he peeled away his fingers and she carefully worked through the terrible penmanship to process the meaning in the symbols of an alphabet.

The blush flared up again, her smile past the point of being controlled that she had to duck her head, jerk it slightly to get her hair to properly tumble down for a better curtain. Her quiet, drawling voice came out from behind that curtain a moment later, once she'd connected thoughts to words to tongue and lips to create their sound, "I do not speak as well as I write, and I don't write as well as I think," she admitted, "but that's true of most people, as nearly as I can tell."

She drew her hand away from his just so she could tuck the hair back from her face as she lifted her head again, brushing it behind her ear as she blinked at him with slightly clouded eyes. Her hand brushed back into the Eel, fingers lightly pushing to interlace with his. "It isn't fair, you know," she said. "How often I'm left having to speak to you for want of doing this." She nodded toward their hands.

"I like the way you speak and the way you write," he said, vocalizing the gist of his message. "I like to listen and I like to learn."

He looked down at their hands, smile on his face.

"You can blame me for that, for it not being fair" he said and squeezed her hand lightly, brushing a thumb across her skin for a moment while he watched her. "Blame for a lot things, I think. I don't mind. I think this might be a case where I keep making it not fair though."

Adah's eyebrow lifted for a moment, mimicking a brief smirk. Well, so long as she had permission now, she could stop feeling badly for continuing to do what she had been doing anyway. The smirk drifted, though, into a smile, and she started to lean, slump, toward her dead right side until she was resting her cheek against a low pile of books on the desk, an awkward angle but comfortable for her, where she could see their hands from a different angle and didn't have to worry about keeping upright while that warm, malaria-like feeling of contentment settled in over her. She could focus on the light movement of their fingers and on not trying to feel another leaning toward guilt for enjoying this so much and on trying to dispel doubt. Doubt lurking inside of her, as stubborn as her; it annoyed her a little. How many times would it have to be proven that none of this was as impossible as it seemed to think before it started to let off?

Lee watched her shift, change positions and when she settled, he offered a small, quiet smile before dropping his own head down, resting his chin on his forearm so they were almost at level heights again.

Another smile, another brush of his thumb but he remained quiet. He could talk without actually talking when he wanted to, after all.

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