Prompt 8: "Take my seat." (C/7, University AU)

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When Amal Kotay had called the I.T. office for help this morning, he'd been expecting the usual kind of technician: scruffy, mole-like, and ever so slightly condescending to anyone less fluent in binary than they were. When a woman who looked like a goddess incarnate walked into his office instead, he found himself unexpectedly at a loss for words.

"Professor Kotay?"

"Uh … yes, that's me."

"You said there was a problem with your computer."

Her hair, pulled back in a short ponytail, shone like Inca gold. She had an hourglass figure that even her uniform, with its shapeless gray polo shirt and chinos, did not disguise. Her eyes behind the thick pair of reading glasses were the color of the sky over the Cordillera, that pure, limitless blue he'd never found anywhere else.

She was also, he realized, frowning impatiently; no doubt waiting for him to explain what the problem was so she could get to work.

"Right. So … I'm locked out." He waved her over to his desk, where his monitor was stuck on a login screen with an ominous red FAILED message. "It's not accepting my password. That's why I called."

"Did you try rebooting?"

"Yeah. Didn't work."

"Are you sure it's the right password?"

"I'm sure."

"And you spelled it correctly?"

"Believe me, I did." His awe of her was cut through by a flash of annoyance. She might not look like the other I.T. workers, but she had the condescension part down.

"You'd be surprised how often that's the problem. Try again."

He sat down and retyped his password. She watched over his shoulder as he did so, which made it surprisingly difficult to concentrate on spelling. Her hair smelled like strawberries. Focus, you idiot.

LOGIN FAILED.

"See?" He pushed his chair back and held up his hands. "Every damn time."

He shot her a look of challenge, daring her to smirk or roll her eyes or otherwise convey that she found him as fossilized as his research specimens. Instead, though, she was looking at his hands.

"Have you been travelling where it's sunny?"

The non sequitur was so startling that he paused again before answering, "Yes. I've been on an expedition in Peru for the past three months. How did you know?"

"You have tan lines."

"Ah." He looked down at his broad, square-tipped hands resting on the keyboard, which were indeed darker than his wrists, but not by much. She was a sharp observer. She was also very pale, even for a blonde, as if she could do with some of the sunlight he had soaked up.

"You know we've upgraded our security policy, right? Your password must have expired while you were away. You're going to have to renew them every sixty days. Didn't you get the e-mail?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Don't they have Wi-Fi in Peru?"

He knew she was right, and this was his fault for not paying enough attention to his inbox, but … wow. Was she racist, sarcastic, or just completely socially tone-deaf? "Of course they do, I just didn't stop to check it every five minutes. It's healthy to unplug once in a while. You should try it sometime."

"You sound like my aunt."

"Well, your aunt sounds like a sensible person."

They locked eyes, brown to blue, their faces closer together than was strictly necessary in front of the bright screen. This, Amal realized, was turning into a very strange and most unprofessional conversation. How had aunts gotten into it?

He smiled. To his considerable relief, she smiled back.

"Okay," she said. "Now all we need is to reset your password. If you'll let me log in as an administrator, we can do it from my account. I can just … "

She made an awkward attempt at typing from where she stood, trying to reach the keyboard without bumping into him. His sense of chivalry kicked in, and he shot out of his chair. "Here, take my seat."

"Thank you."

Her hands flew over the keyboard with astonishing speed. In less than a minute, she was silently offering him his chair back so he could enter his new password. He chose the first word that popped into his head – Freya, Norse goddess of love – and prayed that the golden-haired I.T. worker wasn't watching, or at least would not understand the reference if she was.

The chair, he couldn't help but notice, felt a good deal warmer when he sat back down.

"I'm sorry to be so cranky … " He glanced at the ID on a lanyard around her neck. "Ms. Hansen. It's just that when I was your age, I still had a typewriter. This thing … sometimes it feels like it's got a mind of its own."

"It does, actually," said Ms. Hansen, with a quiet little sigh. "Easier to understand than most people … at least for me."

He followed her gaze out the window of his office. They were on the ground floor and it was September, the fall semester just beginning. Undergraduates were everywhere: tossing a Hacky Sack, blowing soap bubbles (and the occasional joint), sitting under trees and lying on blankets in the grass, all of them in laughing, chattering groups. The I.T. worker couldn't have been much older than they were, thirty at the most, but she watched them wistfully, as if she didn't understand how it felt to be that young.

"Fair enough," said Amal. "We are a mysterious species, I'll give you that. Here, take a look."

The new password had finally kicked in, and he could see the old familiar desktop background he'd been using for the last ten years. It was an aerial view of one of the Nazca Lines, a walking trail shaped like a hummingbird, undiscovered by archeologists for centuries before the invention of the airplane. It was intricate and beautiful, and every time he looked at it, it reminded him why he loved his work so much.

"That's more than two thousand years old and a kilometer across. Can you believe it?"

"People made that? How?"

"By walking it. Over and over again."

"What was it for?"

"Worship, we assume, but we don't know for certain."

"They couldn't have seen it from the air. The calculations it would take … "

He could almost see her spirit leave the room as she lost herself in abstract thought. He had never understood the modern way of keeping science and spirituality apart. The way he saw it, her mind couldn't be that different from his after all, if the sight of the geoglyph affected her like this. If he had thought she was lovely before, that was nothing to how she looked with honest admiration shining in her eyes.

It was along shot, he knew. A woman like this was very probably seeing someone already; if not, the men around her needed their heads checked as well as their eyes. She might think he was being creepy and never darken his office door again. But on the other hand, a real archeologist didn't stop surveying just because the results were uncertain.

"Ms. Hansen? Uh … Annika?"

"Yes?" She shook her head a little, as if to clear it, before turning from the screen to look back at him.

"What time does your shift end?"

"Five-thirty."

"Would you like to meet at the Nebula?" Referring to the campus coffee shop. "We could talk some more."

She looked dumbfounded, and for a moment he feared he'd made a ridiculous mistake. He was forty-seven, for goodness' sake. He couldn't blame her if she decided to run for the hills.

But she wasn't running.

She tucked a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, turned pink as a sunrise, and said, "Okay."

"And if your boss asks what took you so long, say it was my fault. That Kotay, you'll say, he's hopeless with technology. You had your work cut out for you."

She laughed.

Then she did run, scurrying out the door with what he could only imagine was a guilty conscience for getting personal in the workplace.

Amal, however, didn't feel guilty in the least.