Just like he'd said he would be, Zane was in the library the next afternoon. In fact, Nya was pretty sure he was seated in the exact chair in the exact same nook he'd been in the last time she'd found him in there. Maybe he was a man of habit, she guessed. At least that made him easier to find than she'd thought he would be based on past experiences.

As she approached from behind, Nya brought up a hand to tap him on the shoulder, but before she made contact, she stopped.

A memory popped into her mind: the last time she'd approached him in here, tapping his shoulder from behind. Zane'd had headphones in and freaked out a bit when she had then apologized. At the time, she'd thought he didn't really expect her apology. Looking back now, though? Nya started to wonder if she'd just startled him.

Nya took a brief glance and, yeah, Zane's headphones were in again.

She smirked to herself. At least he didn't appear to be on the phone this time.

Walking around the chair Zane sat in, Nya crouched a little and waved, saying just softly enough to not be scolded by a librarian or another nearby studying student, "Hey. Hi. Zane, hi. Hey. Hi-"

Zane blinked, his eyes refocusing from his book to Nya's waving hand.

"Hey," Nya said again, a little warmer this time, settling onto the chair next to Zane's own chair. "There you are."

"Hello," Zane said. "Thank you for taking the time to meet with me."

"No problem," Nya said. "I mean, thanks to you too."

Zane paused, placing a bookmark in his book and closing it, then he added on to his previous statement. "In addition, thank you for not greeting me with physical contact. That is… It is helpful to me when that is not the first contact someone else makes."

Nya processed that. It was kind of an odd way to put it, but hey, nothing innately wrong with that. "Yeah, I was starting to notice that. Sorry for doing that before, I really should've picked up on it sooner. So much for me being the clever, conscientious one in my friend group, huh?"

"I am certain you are very clever and conscientious," Zane said firmly, far more firmly than Nya was expecting and maybe more firmly than she deserved.

Heat rushed to her face, and Nya gave a rather clueless-sounding noise of "Uh?"

"I have observed you repeatedly looking out for other students in class, especially those who are struggling to keep pace with the material," Zane continued, apparently taking that noise as confusion. "You receive generally high accolades on the occasions that professors share such praises, and you-"

"Yeah," Nya said, cutting him off. "Um, I mean. Thanks? I mean, I wasn't fishing for compliments, more like trying to apologize."

Zane said something under his breath, but it sounded oddly like he was just repeating the phrase "fishing for compliments" in a questioning tone and she really didn't want to take that the wrong way, so she let it go.

"Anyway. Apologizing. I'm sorry, and we're moving on," Nya said briskly, shifting positions in her chair.

Zane nodded, apparently accepting that.

Nya hesitated. She really did mean to move on. They had decided to meet to discuss the ice-rink-saving meetings and making sure Zane was comfortable with them, both "them" as in the meetings and "them" as the friend group having the meetings, after all.

But Zane was so focused on her. His mouth was drawn tight with intent. His eyebrows were lifted, he was clearly concentrating, and was he staring at her lips?

He was even more cute than she'd ever realized when he was giving her all of his attention, Nya found herself thinking, and promptly cursed herself for thinking so. That was definitely not the point of this meeting.

"Anyway!" Nya said again, a little too loudly. Quickly, she repeated it once more before anyone could shush her. "Anyway. The next ice-rink-saving meeting is this Wednesday evening at seven."

Zane's mouth, already drawn tight, tightened further and curved down. "That is unfortunate. I am… I have a prior commitment and will not be able to attend, so I apologize."

"Okay, that's fine. When do you want us to move it to?" Nya asked, pulling out her phone to check her personal calendar as well as the group chat for any previously-stated timing objections from the others.

Zane went quiet for a moment, probably checking his own calendar or thinking through commitments.

Nya scrolled through her phone's calendar for a moment, then asked when Zane stayed quiet. "What's wrong? Is something up?"

"You would be willing to move the meeting?" Zane asked.

"That's… That's what I said, yeah," Nya said slowly, still scrolling.

"You would move the meeting so that I would be able to attend," Zane clarified.

And in that moment, Nya almost overreacted. She almost asked if that was so hard to believe that she could be kind. She almost got offended at the implication that she and her friends, but mostly she herself, would be so stuck-up that they wouldn't change their schedules just a little to accommodate someone else and-

But then she looked up from her phone to take another glance at Zane.

He looked…

Startled.

Not in the way he'd been when she'd touched him when he wasn't expecting it, not in a freaked-out way where he didn't want it.

But in a way where he wasn't expecting kindness and desperately wanted it.

Oh. That expression, with that amount of uncertainty, in the face of someone offering the kind of help that should be common sense? Yeah, that explained a few things.

Deliberately, Nya stopped. She took a deep breath and softened herself. She said slowly, "Well, we're a team in this, aren't we? We need to work together, and that means supporting each other in whatever ways we can. So, what times work for you?"

Slowly, Zane smiled. It was a little crooked, and it was a good bit awkward, but it was a lot of genuine happiness.

And Nya liked it. She liked it a lot.