Chapter Text
Eleanor had always loved New York in the summer. The moment she opened the door and her foot hit the street, she felt the warmth of the city air crowding her senses.
On this specific day, Eleanor was finally walking with purpose. The day she hoped would push her thesis paper forward. For weeks, she felt like slamming her head into a wall. Preferably a brick one. But she'd settle for a chipboard one in a pinch. Her research was going absolutely nowhere. Every book she opened, every article she read in every journal just led her further down a spiralling rabbit hole of chaos. She didn't know how much more of it she could take. But none of that mattered today. No. Not this day. Today was going to be a good day. After a somewhat tipsy conversation in a dive bar with her librarian friend, she found out the New York Public Library may have the answers she's been looking for.
So yes, Eleanor had always loved New York in the summer.
As Eleanor walked the few blocks towards the library, she could feel the ethereal electricity of the city buzzing around her. People rushed, pushed and barged their way around. Everybody seemed to think reaching their destination was paramount. Eleanor, on the other hand, was simply enjoying the journey today. It was nothing new, dodging strangers on the street. Actually, now she had been here for two years, she found she got an odd sort of enjoyment out of it. With every block she walks, she hears something new. Feels a different secondhand emotion. She enjoyed that too.
As she saw the New York Public Library in the distance, it felt it was more of a beacon of hope to her in that moment than the Statue of Liberty ever had been. Her pace picked up. She rushed across the road with more reckless abandon than ever before. Never mind the taxis. Up, up, up the stone steps until she was finally inside.
Her friend greeted her with a wave and before she could even blink, she was being guided down the dimly lit staircase towards the archives. In her mind, this basement is what her heaven would look like. Books. Lots and lots of old, broken books. Forgotten books. Popular books lost to time's embrace. An endless reading supply. Yes, that's what heaven looks like.
Eventually, after combing through several rows of books, Eleanor had her arms full of promising leads for her research. Books all on Medieval and Early Modern Literature. Some of the books she hadn't ever heard of which, for her, was uncommon to say the least. The smell of old knowledge seeped from them. With a happy bounce, she settled herself at a table in the centre of the room and began to read.
One thing she noticed, in between reading some fairly inauspicious chapters on Chaucer and his use of physiognomy, was that she was entirely alone down here. Not that she minded. The rest of the world is missing out, she gleefully thought to herself.
A few hours later, however, she found her solitude interrupted as a tall and unmistakably handsome man sat at the far end of the vast wooden desk opposite her. He dumped a heavy load of books onto the table, much like she had. The heavy thud made her jump, but she didn't look up again. If she had, she would've noticed he looked entirely apologetic about that. However, she simply carried on working. This was not a time for tall, handsome distractions.
She was at the pinnacle of her research timeframe, and she had much less to show for it than she would've liked. With the funding she'd been granted, the deadlines were strict. If she went over this timeframe, she'd have to fund it herself and she definitely could not afford that. So, this was definitely not the time for distractions. Especially tall, handsome ones, she thought to herself.
Yet, somehow, she found herself fall into a perfect routine with a complete stranger over the weeks that followed.
She spent every waking hour at the library, except for Tuesdays and Thursdays when she had classes to teach. He seemed to spend as much time there as she did, except when he went dashing off to do, well, whatever it was he seemed so eager to get to. He left far more frequently than she did. But he also came back afterwards far more frequently too.
Over those weeks they spent in total silence on opposite sides of the table, Eleanor learned a number of things about the handsome stranger. Firstly, he liked plaid shirts. He seemed to have a different one for each day of the week and each one was a different colour. Blue, green, red, black and rather bravely, orange.
Secondly, whenever he read something that he liked, he had the sweetest smile on his lips as he read. The kind of heart-stopping smile that reached his handsome eyes. She could see that little thrilled sparkle in them. Though she couldn't tell what colour they were from this distant angle. It was the kind of smile that she hoped would never be aimed at her because it was the kind of smile that she considered to be one hundred per cent dangerous.
Thirdly, he was by far the most handsome man she had ever seen. In her opinion anyway. His brown hair was thick and messy, like some crazed academic who was too busy running around solving the world's greatest issues to even notice what his hair was doing. His tall stature was complimented by a full form, broad shoulders and a little bit of a belly. He had the sweetest lips; full but shapely and had a soft pink hue to them. And his hands. She tried not to dwell on that specific point too much. She worried if she did, it would lead to something truly dangerous. But she certainly had noticed that his hands were very much capable of holding multiple books at once and that when he did the veins of his hands seemed to appear and invite her in welcomingly.
She often had to remind herself that she was there to work, not to gush over total strangers who didn't know she even existed.
A month. Two months. Three months passed by, and hardly anything changed in their little routine during that time. They remained at opposite ends of a table, facing one another by never speaking.
Well, one thing had changed in that time. She had begun to sneak more and more glances at him with an oddly familiar degree of fondness. That familiarity was evident in her azure eyes. And he looked at her with the same kind of fondness, although she didn't see it. He would only look at her when he was certain she was engrossed in her work. They acted like two orbiting moons, passing by one another but never truly meeting.
However, one gloomy Friday, he managed to bring the missing sunshine to her. With one simple, heart-stopping smile. She dared to glance over and he dared to glance back at the exact same moment. When he caught her eye, he smiled softly and after the smile, neither said a word. They simply went back to their work.
Not long after their first smile, he'd glanced at the time and dashed off once more. I wonder where he goes so often, she mused before shrugging off the whole ordeal and snaps her eyes back to the book in front of her. She's here to work, not fawn over handsome men in plaid shirts. Then Eleanor looked at the clock and panicked.
"Oh shit! Oh, I'm so going to be late." I think most academics would agree that it is considered rude and unprofessional to be late for the first lecture you have ever given. Well, most academics would anyway.
Eleanor slammed the books close and dashed out into the heavy New York rain.
One afternoon, two weeks later, when Eleanor was making her notes as usual, she looked up to see him watching her. More boldly than he had before. This time she really noticed it. His head was resting on his knuckles as he gazed at her and he smiled when she finally noticed him doing so. It startled her a little. She even went as far as to look behind her, checking he was actually looking at her like that. And he definitely was. She dropped her head back down to her book quickly, her nerves taking over. For once, Eleanor was grateful for curly, unruly hair as it fell over her face. It hid the embarrassment she felt as her cheeks turned a scathing scarlet colour.
She didn't look up again that day for quite some time, and when she did, he was gone.
He didn't come back for two weeks. Two weeks within which the pang Eleanor began to feel in her stomach from his absence just worsened and worsened. Perhaps I'll never see him again. Perhaps I'll never know his name, she thought ruefully. Once again, she simply shook her head and returned to her notes. It's not like she had the time for all of that anyway.
Then, just as she thought there was no chance he'd return, she walked down the stairs to the archives and froze. He was there, in a polo shirt of all things. He was sat there, sat at his normal table, reading a large book that, as she passed him, she was certain was written in Latin. She couldn't help but wonder what the hell he was reading. And why. Was he an academic like her?
She could feel her heart racing as she walked through the section for Medieval Literature and History, running her hands aimlessly across the titles until she found the one book she was looking for that day. Most of the other titles, she had read and analysed in detail by this point. She pulled the book from the shelf and sheepishly made her way to her usual spot. Just as she always did, she pulled her notebooks and pens from her bag, opening the new book to its content page. But as soon as she had done that, she peeked up to double check he was actually back and not some kind of ghostly apparition.
Not only was he back, but he was already looking directly at her. And he was looking at her every single time she looked up in the following fifteen minutes, as if he always knew she was going to look at him again. And again. And again.
The first looks were fleeting, either one or both of them running out of courage and looking down. The last look, however, lingered.
It seemed like an eternity passed in only a few beats of her heart as their eyes met again. From a distance, she could already tell that his eyes were a deep green, oceanic almost. Eleanor looked back down at her work embarrassed. But she couldn’t concentrate, not when he kept looking at her. Finally, Eleanor manages to open her mouth. With a slight smile, she simply said in hushed tones, “hi.”
He huffed out a silent laugh and simply responded, “hi.”
That word. It dripped like the purest, homemade honey into her ears.