Every rule I had you breaking
College AU. Tyler/Shelby. It was strange; Shelby didn't remember asking him out
Inspired by: You forgot to remove your snarky sticky note comments in this textbook and since I got kicked out of the library for laughing too loudly, I'm going to reply to each and every one.
The laughter was so annoying that she'd been two seconds away from getting up from her comfy couch to tell the guy off. She never did that unless she was ready to leave as the scavengers were everywhere, waiting for the moment to pounce on the best seat in the library: Shelby's.
She was saved from having to do battle with the sludgy looking dude eyeing her seat when the librarian appeared around the corner with the laughter culprit in tow. Shelby recognized him in that distant way she remembered all guys with brilliant smiles, floppy dark hair, and skin shaded in beautiful browns highlighted by even prettier brown eyes.
So, maybe she recognized him a little better than most guys. It only made sense when he was probably the loudest person in her super boring World History lecture, after Chase and his iPod, respectively. He made the class tolerable and that was a feat worthy of remembering.
As was the fact that he had her history book clutched beneath his arm.
"Hey, that's mine!"
Grimacing, she stood up from her seat. Sludgy dude tried to move in but she stepped on his foot – hard – and hissed, "Back off."
Turning back to the laughing menace, who was oh-so unsurprisingly laughing again, Shelby thrust her hand out.
"Hello, Shelby Watkins. I'm Tyler Navarro."
He said her name like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. It made his mouth shape into a half-moon as bright as the sun. Shelby was so offended that she considered stepping on his foot, too. Coincidentally, Sludgy dude was still rolling around on the floor while his girlfriend attempted, unsuccessfully, to help him.
What a loser, she thought. Her thoughts for her smiling classmate were a little kinder, but not by much.
"Can I have my book?"
He handed it to her with that same smile, stretched impossibly wider, and this time an added wink. She didn't get it until he said, "Your notes were super helpful. I think I'm gonna ace this exam."
As the librarian, who'd left his side to deal with Shelby's attempted couch usurpers, returned, he added with another even dumber wink, "I agree. Everything in history would be better with dinosaurs."
Shelby's face burned, but before she could give her super cool one-liner that would have torn him down to size, the librarian grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him away.
He twisted his head to look at her as he left. Shrugging his shoulders in a 'what can you do' motion, he gave her another wink and disappeared around the bookshelves.
Shelby threw herself back into her couch. She squished down into the soft pink covering and considered her textbook. The library was semi-silent again save for the occasional study induced mutters from Riley, her sometimes study partner. It would be the perfect time to study the history she had defaced with the sticky notes he had made so very clear that he'd read.
She sighed. A little embarrassment never scared her off. If it had, she would've hidden under her bed at age six and never come out again. Opening her stickered and beat-up textbook, she turned to her first post-it for chapter six and peered curiously at the messy scrawl of writing beneath hers.
"Boooooooooooring," she'd written.
"Agreed" was his one word response.
"Damn it."
She flipped from sticky note to sticky note and under each one, he'd chosen to add a completely unnecessary response that had her in turns rolling her eyes, grinning at the curly blue writing, and stifling giggles beneath her hand.
The studying never happened, but she reached the end of her sticky notes with enough time to get to her robotics meeting and grab a coffee from the Cafe.
Her last note was especially brilliant: "Wake me up when something interesting actually happens."
Underneath he'd written, "It's a date." It was strange; Shelby didn't remember asking him out. To her growing pleasure however, the post-it was bent back and barely hanging on to the page and when she flipped it, he'd written his phone number down and "Call me?"
Next to it was a badly drawn puppy that he'd taken the time to change pens to color in black and brown. It had the biggest, most plaintive puppy eyes Shelby had ever seen this side of a cartoon.
She burst out laughing and couldn't stop even when Riley patted her on the back and Koda, his roommate, asked her if she was dying. Shelby would've replied that she was too overwhelmed for that, but the librarian came and glared at her like she'd do more than just step on her foot if Shelby didn't move.
Shelby packed her things and left her seat in the good hands of Koda. The librarian, instead of leading her out of the library, led her to the back office where the source of Shelby's smile sat in one of the hard backed wooden chairs that Shelby always managed to avoid with her highly-developed sneaking skills and her ability to be in the library when it opened.
"Hi!" he said brightly, half tumbling out his chair in his speed to wave at her. It was graceful in the way that Shelby's stumbles would not be.
It was cute.
"Tyler Navarro," she said, a mimic of the tone he'd used when he'd said her name. It seemed to catch him by surprise.
"And here I thought you'd be mad that you were stuck on library duty with me."
Shelby twisted her head to look at the librarian who pushed her glasses straighter on her nose and said in response to Shelby's yet to be asked question, "Yes. Library duty. It will teach you respect for the quiet rules of the library and hopefully keep you from making the same mistake again."
"But- I have things to do."
The librarian – Kendall, her side badge read – gave a thin smile. "Oh, we can work around your schedule. I've already pulled it up."
She really had. Shelby could see it on the screen of her Kindle.
"Hey," Tyler said. Shelby twisted back to look at him and narrowed her eyes at the still smiling aider and abettor who'd dragged her into his crime. "At least the library has a pretty decent selection of dinosaur anthologies and research catalogs."
Her annoyance became feigned as she looked into his eyes, remarkably like the terrible drawing he'd made on her notes.
"As far as first dates go, you're going to have to do better than that."
Shelby didn't know you could get kicked out of the library twice in one period of time, but she and Tyler managed it when their laughter filled Kendall's office to the point of breaking through her carefully controlled silence. Outside the library with their newly printed work schedules that never managed to coincide, Shelby stood with her hands on her waist and stared up at Tyler.
"Just to be clear, campus food is a no-go."
"What? You don't like burgers?" he teased.
She grabbed him by the shoulder and leaned in to him, "I love burgers, but not ones I have to make myself."
It was a mistake, telling him that, but one she'd gladly make again when less than a week later, he suddenly had kitchen duty with her.
Shelby didn't know it was possible for any human being to flip three burgers at the same time, but Tyler taught her better, and she learned it as well as she learned the indents of his smile and the way his hands felt smoothing over her waist.
They never managed to learn world history that well, but it worked out alright in the end when her textbook - filled to the brim with notes passed back and forth, covered in scrawls impossible for anyone but them to understand – fell to her bedroom floor, forgotten, while they learned the feeling of each other's fingers over bare skin and mapped out a world on each other's lips.