If you've read love stories, then you will be familiar with the notion of love at first sight. If you are looking for a story that reinforces that notion, with sticky sweet moments and heartbreaks undone, then this is not the story for you to read. In this story there is no love at first sight. Only watching. With a thousand, and a single eye.
He had watched her intently, without a hint of shame or remorse. He had watched her without meaning to. He had watched her when she crinkled her nose as she read to keep her glasses from falling. He had watched her curl her lips into the tiniest smile when she came across a particularly witty line of reading (though he never cared to know which were the lines, what was the book). He had watched her walk from hall to hall, her pony tail bouncing and swishing and swirling from side to side. He had watched her slip notes, and he had watched her hide it by making an innocent by passer trip on her left foot. He'd found all of it charming, but that most of all.
She had watched him too, though not for half as long. She had watched him when he picked his teeth with his bare fingernails after a particularly sticky meal. She had watched him crackle pages just to toss paper balls around (she had never wanted to know what pages had been torn). She had watched him stomp from hall to hall, always clutching scripts filled with scribbles and reciting lines, his arms and hands flicking and swatting about. That she'd found lightly annoying, but more amusing than most.
As fate would have it, they were bound to catch each other on the watch. It happened in the library, as they sat an appropriate number of stools and one table away. There was no great flare to it, no suddenly leaping into each other's arms in love at first sight. Just an instant, a glance that said 'I have been watching you, and I know you have been watching me'. One of the two had been meaning for it, counted the stools and chose the table. But which one?
Despite the meticulous planning on one side and admittedly foolish daydreaming on the other, there wasn't much after the glance. For moments, neither could think of a thing to say. There was no easy or un-awkward way to say how much he'd enjoyed the swish and swoosh of her ponytail, just as there was no pleasant or polite way to say just how disgusting she found his teeth picking.
"Aren't you in my brother's class?" she asked at last, being clever enough to leave the word 'little' out of the sentence. "Which one?" a curled smirk twisted its way up his lips (and as much as it surprised her, it wasn't an unpleasant one). He was clever enough to make it unclear whether he meant which brother or which class (though the answer to both were fairly obvious) in faint hopes to stretch the conversation, much like a rubber band, until it bended or snapped.
"The one you're failing to attend now" she responded sharply, her left eyebrow lifted. "I am?" the left half of his one eyebrow lifted too. "You must be. I'd never seen you around here at this hour" she tilted her head and side eyed him in a most peculiar way, unashamed to admit she knew his hours, but playful enough to hint she didn't really care for them. "Perceptive" he full on grinned then, seemingly stretching himself taller and taller with every word. Confidence works like that. So do cockiness and conceitedness. "Irresponsible" she retorted, smiling a sly smile of her own.
Shush! Came from the librarian's desk, and both returned to their respective nose crinkling and page crackling. "You better not be here tomorrow" she whispered against her best behaviour an interest (there were few places and things she respected as much as a library the peace and quiet).
His whole eyebrow rose instantly as he looked up to, and he gave up paper tearing so suddenly it made a rough noise. "And why's that?".
"You may find out if you go to the right class". "There is only one right class to be at tomorrow" he half huffed half snorted. "Is there?". "You're clearly perceptive enough to know there is".
"Care to give a clue?" she wiggled her eyebrows and twitched her mouth in the most intriguing expression so far invented. "I thought you were the one riddling me" he did the same face, though not half as well. "Maybe our riddles will collide", she thought it best to ignore how incorrectly he'd used the verb riddle. He smirked again, their stares fixed on each other. "The only good class is the one I'm on top of" he said, fairly pleased, leaning back on his stool. "Can't think of one" she said and looked away, hiding an even rarer grim behind her book.