Sorry about the super-long delay. I had a really firm idea about my other fic that I wanted to wrap up. I'm going to be doing a sort of rotating schedule if I can for this one, and my new ideas. :)
Jack walked into the library a few minutes after Fallon selected a spot near the front of the room, where she thought he could easily spot her. Moreover, anybody else who came in would see them together, which would be ideal. Jeff's reaction to her behavior aside, she wasn't backing down. And maybe, if she was careful about it, she could somehow manage to keep Jack as an actual friend.
Or she'd find herself with nobody, except maybe Steven. Maybe.
She looked up as he approached, already prepped with her notebook, pencil and completed assignment. Fallon couldn't read the look on his face, and that frustrated her deeply. She'd expected some casually friendly smile, but that isn't what she got. Perhaps he'd told his girlfriend where he was headed and she hadn't taken it well? Fallon didn't want to believe that he'd noticed her little fight at dinner, because that would mean that the look in his eyes was one of pity or, even worse, disappointment.
She felt quite certain, once the thought came to her, that it was an 'all of the above' sort of situation. But at least he'd shown up.
Jack sank into the seat next to her, quiet as he pulled out his things. Fallon couldn't stand it.
"Wow, if I thought you'd be so annoyed to be here, I would've said no when you asked."
He looked over at her in surprise. "I'm not," he claimed. "Otherwise I wouldn't have asked."
Fallon lifted an eyebrow at him. "Then what's with that face?"
"Nothing," Jack told her firmly.
She narrowed her eyes slightly, unable to place the emotion that lingered on his face. Rather than question it again and make things that much more uncomfortable, she just waited as he organized everything in front of him. The front of his binder had what Fallon thought was some kind of acronym: JLRL. But that didn't sound like anything she'd ever heard before.
He looked over and caught her frowning at it. "My initials."
"What?"
Jack pointed at the letters. "They're my initials?"
She let out a soft hmm, but didn't ask. She didn't want to seem to interested, after all, since she wasn't actually. And if he told her, she'd have to remember it, and that would just be a whole other thing to worry about. So instead, Fallon turned towards him and got down to business.
"Okay. Do the next question," she told him.
He looked a little surprised by the way she jumped into it, but he did as she asked, looking back and forth between his notes and the question. After a few moments of watching him do that, she reached over and stole his notes, hiding them beneath her notebook.
"Hey!"
"What?" She asked, feigning innocence.
Jack stared at her for a brief moment, confused, before he pointed at the notebook. "Give them back."
"You won't have them on the test," Fallon pointed out, shrugging.
He almost laughed at that, shaking his head at her. "Yeah, that's what the homework is for. Learning them. I don't have them memorized yet."
"Are you bad at History, too?" She asked, genuinely teasing. "Memorizing this is just like memorizing dates and names."
Judging by the look on his face, she determined that he didn't like that comment too much. Rather than fighting him and ruining her plan, Fallon rolled her eyes and passed him his notes back.
"Thanks," he muttered, sarcasm sneaking in.
Fallon kept quiet after that, waiting for him to finish. But when he did, he looked even more confused than before. She leaned over to look it over, trying very hard not to show any reaction on her face that time. Which, frankly, was odd. Usually, she wouldn't care if someone was offended by her. Fallon reminded herself that she was doing this to mess with his girlfriend. That was the only reason. Obviously.
"You seem to just pick whichever conjecture you see first," she mused after a moment. And as soon as she said it, she recognized the irony that she could have pointed out if she wanted to bother him: Maybe that girl of his was just selected by proximity. Not that Fallon had proof, of course. "You have to go through and make sure you pick the right ones at the right time, otherwise they'll cancel each other out and your work is all for nothing."
Fallon would've smirked at her own words if he weren't looking at her. The way she handled numbers was the same way she handled every aspect of her life.
"That makes sense," he agreed after a moment, looking through his list.
"It would take some time, but you could also organize them by what they don't pair well with, or what they do. I find it easier to just have it in my head, but maybe seeing it would help." She let her elbow rest atop the table, her chin dropping into her palm as she looked over at him. "You strike me as someone who's sort of hands-on. In terms of learning but also just, in life. You could've shied away when I was talking to your girlfriend yesterday. Or just pulled her aside."
Jack shrugged, leaning back in his chair to return her gaze. "I don't see a point in letter arguments like that fester."
Fallon cracked a smile, unwilling to be the first to break their eye contact. Still, "Maybe I'm just used to ones like that. Otherwise I might not find them so... simple. Normal."
"I'm kind of amazed you're telling me any of this," he said.
Fallon sat up straight again, immediately looking away. "Yeah, well... Nobody's here to overhear me, and even if you said anything, nobody would believe you. Besides, I've only admitted that I get into fights a lot, right? I'm pretty sure most people here already expect it of me."
She turned back to their assignment, quickly copying over her work to a spare piece of paper so he wouldn't be able to sneak a look at her answer for the one after that.
"It didn't sound like you meant that you were the one involved in those."
Fallon looked up at him again, her expression now completely closed off and cold. "I'm not sure it matters how I meant it. I clearly shouldn't have said it." She passed him the paper, effectively shutting down the discussion about it.
He focused in on the assignment again, making some sort of notation throughout his conjecture list that Fallon didn't actually understand. But it seemed like he did, because when he did the next question, he still took a while but got it right, which Fallon decided she was going to take at least partial credit for. And an hour later, he'd finished the assignment and was packing up his things to leave.
When Fallon didn't do the same, he gave her a strange look.
"You have other stuff due tomorrow?" Jack questioned. It would be strange, she could admit, considering it was only their first day of class.
"No." She said it simply, as if she thought he would leave it alone. Of course he wouldn't. He opened his mouth so she explained before he could make her feel more awkward about it. "What? You said it was a twenty-four hour library. Maybe I just don't want to go back to my room, yet."
He seemed to consider saying something but stopped himself. Instead, he grabbed his backpack, which she noticed also had those initials on them. Perhaps if he hadn't irked her so much she would've asked what they meant.
Fallon finally found her way back to her and Monica's room a couple hours later, having gotten in a bit of time on her laptop, which she'd left in her bag until Jack left. She didn't want him to see what she was doing a search for on her internet browser.
She needed to know what her parents were up to. Nothing had hit the news, yet, it seemed. Nothing except a deal her father had made with an Atlanta business. After she packed up and started walking back, she stared out at the snow-covered paths of their grounds, and she decided upon seeing it that she hated New York. She'd been there before, but this wasn't Manhattan, or even Astoria. This was the middle of nowhere, and it certainly wasn't Atlanta.
She missed home already, and hated the cold now, when she hadn't before. It made her put on fluffier pajamas than she perhaps needed, and it was lucky, she thought, that Monica was already asleep when she made it back to the room. Or she was at least pretending to be, anyway. And she bundled herself up in her blankets after getting ready for bed, burrowing into her pillow.
Although she had never been the sort of girl to want her parents to tuck her in, suddenly Fallon wished for that. Or at least for the idea of it, as it seemed unlikely that it would ever happen for her, now. Much to her own surprise, she sniffled back the tears that attempted to escape, and just dug further into the bed to try and force herself to fall asleep.
Fallon's alarm was set to wake her even earlier than usual, and she was grateful for it because it gave her extra time to hide the puffiness around her eyes. She still left before Monica was up and about, and used that time to go outside just enough to get some fresh air. She didn't want to go very far or have to tromp through the snow, but it almost felt like she was somewhere else for a moment.
She didn't like avoiding Monica, but Fallon had to admit that she was pretty good at it.
When it came time to head to the cafeteria for breakfast, Fallon wanted to just groan and skip it completely. But then she'd be hungry during Math, and undoubtedly more snarky than usual. And she didn't really want to be that way around Jack. Things were already awkward enough, because even if he'd dropped the subject, her slip up had already been registered.
Giving in, she walked back inside and made her way to the cafeteria. She didn't expect to find Steven waiting for her, but it made sense once she saw him there. It brought a small smile to her face, allowing Fallon to put on a properly confident expression like she normally did. He draped an arm around her shoulder, hugging her to his side for a moment, before they headed over to select their breakfast.
When they looked around for a table, Steven pointed over at an empty one. "C'mon. Jeff woke up late, said he wanted to grab a shower before coming down. We can save seats for him and Monica." He looked to her in confusion. "Where is she, anyway?"
"Not sure," Fallon replied quickly, shrugging. "I left before her."
So the Carrington siblings sat down, and a little while later, Jeff did indeed come over to sit with them. But he didn't know where Monica was, either. It wasn't until nearly the end of breakfast that Fallon caught sight of her.
"You've gotta be kidding me," she muttered, drawing the boys' attention away from their discussion of the school's sports clubs.
"What?" Jeff asked, his mood and tone that morning suggesting that he was trying not to start another fight.
"Monica. She's sitting with that girl."
"Ashley?" Steven asked, turning around to look at her.
Fallon frowned at him. "Excuse me?"
Steven looked a little guilty, but shrugged. "Ashley Cunningham. She's in my year. You meant her, right? Jack's girlfriend?"
A dark scowl twisted Fallon's face for a moment, but she faked a nonchalant shrug when Jeff looked at her again. Of course she didn't want him to know how betrayed she felt. Not when it meant that she was already scheming.
