Author's Note: I'm trying something new here; I've never written a flashback-type fic before! Needless to say, we're starting in the past, with something that might not make too much sense yet, but hopefully will do when I get a bit farther on!
It's the little things things you do that make me fall...
Sam Carter was not, repeat, not, staring. Staring was something done by people who had a crush on the other person, which is most definitely not what applied to her. She was a strong minded, independant twenty-one year old, and strong minded, independant twenty-one year olds do not get crushes. And they certainly don't get them on their teachers.
It wasn't her fault if her new seminar tutor for Applied Dynamics was rather good looking. And intelligent. And interesting. And possibly but not definitely a little bit interested in her.
That wasn't the point. Sam Carter was not the kind of girl to go crushing on authority figures. Much.
This was the third lesson of the fourth year of her stretch at the academy. Not long now before she reached that fabled PhD that would allow her to go and get the heck off this rock, not to mention out of this town, and finally do something... worthwhile with her life.
The thought galvanised her, and she returned her eyes to the paper in front of her.
"No." she announced, confidently. It gave her satisfaction to see him turn around and raise his eyebrow at her, as if daring her to explain herself.
"No?" he said back, his voice level.
"No." She barely managed to keep the amused smile off her face, directly meeting his look. His eyes twinkled back at her, and try as she might she couldn't quite keep the rest of the room from falling away and just leaving the two of them there. Words like 'wrong', 'not allowed' and 'against regulations' were floating around her head, but damn them; she really didn't want to hear them right now. It wasn't like flirting was against the rules. Well, not very much against them anyway.
"I think you need to read that text again, Cadet." The connection broken, he looked up, beyond her, to the clock on the wall. "And you'll have plenty of time to do so, before our next meeting. Same time, same place. Be there or be square."
Sam exhaled a breath she didn't realise she'd been holding. As the other students started moving around her, she snapped her book shut on a doodle that was beginning to look suspiciously like a heart with the words "Sam" and "Jon" in it, and stuffed her books into her bag in a hurry. She jogged to the front of the class where he was just collecting together his papers.
"You know I was right." The words might have sounded confrontational, but her face remained playful, her eyes dancing and a smile twitching at her lips.
"Maybe." He shrugged a shoulder at her, and picked up the pile from the desk. "But debate is so much more... stimulating than answers, don't you think?"
He breezed past her, out of the door. She followed him out, then forced herself to go left down the corridor, to her next class, rather than right, the direction he had taken. Stopping at the last moment, she turned around, just in time to see him turn a corner.
She sighed. No, Sam Carter didn't have crushes. When she fell, she fell much harder than that.