#bioquakefic

And not just any somebody else either. A girl. A beautiful girl, about Daisy’s own age by the look of her – so, a young woman really, not that Daisy was used to thinking of herself as such. Either way, she was apparently a massive nerd, with stacks of books and photocopied pages piled like a nest around her. She had music in her ears, humming along under her breath as she read and highlighted and took notes. As Daisy watched, the girl swept a lock of hair behind her ear, revealing hazel eyes and a whorl of freckles across her face. Her eyes lit up and she giggled to herself at something one of the theorists had written. From what Daisy could tell, these were biology textbooks, and so she found herself thinking how this woman must have a bizarre, adorable, terrible sense of humour, and then she found herself thinking, what a nerd, I love her, and very shortly after that, there was no more time to think. The magic of the moment erupted into chaos when Daisy’s distracted, slackened, love-struck hand upset the careful balance of her lunch tray, and sent her pink lemonade flying.

Daisy screeched, helplessly embarrassed and desperately trying to stop the rest of her tray from jumping ship in the opposite direction, and her phone from flying into the mess.

The girl screeched, jumping in her seat and scrambling to save as much as she could of her work from the sugary sweet, irreparably sticky assault.

Time, space, and every long-forgotten, mildly embarrassing moment in Daisy’s entire life flashed before her eyes, and then, even after the longest split-second she had experienced in some time, she still hadn’t worked through it far enough to remember that she should probably be helping. By the time her bodily awareness had returned to the present, the other woman had already shunted all her books away from the puddle of lemonade, had stripped off her sugar-spattered cardigan, and was forlornly dabbing at her shoulder-bag with her scarf, as lemonade dripped on down to the seat of the booth and over everything she owned.

“Oh, Jesus,” Daisy groaned. “I’m so sorry. Here. Take my napkins. Uh. I’ll go… get more napkins.”

After a moment of back and forth, she put her tray as daintily as possible down on the end of the table, right in the middle of the lemonade pool – it’s not like there was anywhere else she could put it, anyway, and what was she going to do? Take it with her? It was already full of lemonade anyway – and then she jogged over to the table full of condiments and cutlery, and grabbed napkin napkin napkin napkin… She kept guilt-pulling napkins until she started to wonder if she was stalling the return to the table, and then she decided that she was, and gritted her teeth, and slunk back to the beautiful woman she’d just made a complete ass of herself in front of and ruined forever.

She held the napkins out as an offer of peace, with an appropriately chagrinned expression.

“Oh, thank you,” said the other woman, removing her sopping scarf and sighing in defeat. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”

“No, no, it’s my fault,” Daisy insisted. “You don’t have to think of anything. I just- I didn’t see you and I thought –“

You’re beautiful.

She cleared her throat instead. “The point is, I’m… uh… I’m really sorry. I’ll wash your scarf. Does it wash? I don’t know. And your jacket. And your bag, oh god-”

“Oh, no, it’s alright. It was an accident. And it’s just the outside, no drowned electronics or anything. All will be well, with a little elbow grease, I’m sure. Come sit down, please, mi booth es su booth.” The woman waved a distracted hand, inviting Daisy in, and then blushed and looked up at her. “Oh, dear, how rude. I’m Jemma, by the way. Jemma Simmons. I’m on exchange from England, busy recontextualising, so sorry about the mess. Pleasure.”

She held her hand out and, helpless, Daisy shook it. She was still far too mortified to pull off Hi Jemma by the way Jemma Simmons, I’m Daisy, with any degree of swagger, and she couldn’t think of anything else even remotely clever. She kind of just wanted to say You’re English because that voice – but of course, Jemma already knew that. So Daisy just laughed. A really, really uncomfortable laugh, so painful it made even her wince, so she quickly steered herself out of it and cleared her throat instead.

“Uh, Daisy,” she returned. “And I would love to take a seat but I don’t think there’s an inch left down there that’s not swimming in lemonade. I’m just gonna go. But uh, if you like, I could show you the other places I go around here? If you liked this spot, maybe you’ll like those. And I’ve run out of lemonade, so, you’re good there. I mean, assuming you don’t want to rip my throat out. Which would be fair.”

Jemma narrowed her eyes and tilted her head, studying Daisy as if to work out what angle she might be trying to come from. There was no doubt, theirs had been odd as far as introductions went, but Daisy’s bounce back was remarkable, and Jemma was rather determined to extricate herself from this sticky pink nightmare as soon as possible without making Daisy feel too bad about the whole thing. Convenient for both of them, then, that it seemed she had happily presented the perfect opportunity.

“I’ll tell you what,” Jemma proposed. “Forget the scarf and the bag and all of it. You can buy me a cup of tea on the way to these other wonderful places and we’ll forget the whole thing. Oh and – if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate some help with these books?”

“Sure.” Another uncomfortable laugh, but this one more breathless than scarred for life. Beaming ear to ear, Daisy felt suddenly aware of her heart thundering in her chest, and she gathered Jemma’s books toward herself as if she was picking armfuls of flowers. Carrying books for the pretty, quiet, nerdy girl. Wasn’t that the dream?

All but floating on air, Daisy led Jemma through the campus, past a coffee shop where she picked up a tea, coffee, and an everything bagel – a girl had to eat, after all – and on to an old brick amphitheatre. They talked the usual university fare; who they were, what they were studying, what they liked and did not like about various aspects of their courses. It seemed that much, at least, was international. By the time they reached Daisy’s second-favourite place to eat on campus, the lemonade incident was rapidly becoming a humourous memory.

“I don’t usually come here when it’s cold out,” Daisy explained. “It’s miles away from the computer labs and basically all my classes, and the wifi is crap, but I figured, you’re English, you can handle it.”

The amphitheatre was nothing special: a small installation for a class to practice projection, or perhaps for an intimate poetry reading. It was a concrete stage and red brick everywhere else. Fairly ordinary in and of itself. Yet Jemma found something wondrously unique about it. Perhaps it was simply the thrill of being let in on somebody’s secret, of being invited to belong, but there was a little piece of magic here that the cafeteria, and even the library where she usually felt at home, had lacked. Of course, there were also trees and sun above them, which Jemma had always loved.

“Oh, primrose!” she exclaimed, catching sight of some and running to admire it without a second thought. “This used to grow back at home, I do love them so. They’re marvelous flowers, you know.”

“What’s so special about them?” Daisy wondered. For a moment, Jemma scowled, feeling defensive of her favourite flowers. Then she realised that, though in somebody else’s mouth those words may have been dismissive, Daisy was watching her attentively, and when she did not answer immediately, began to approach as if to see them for herself. She knelt beside Jemma, and for a moment the words of explanation caught in Jemma’s throat. From the get-go it had been clear that Daisy was a fun person, a bit of a character, and judging by the rock band t-shirt and the jeans and boots and dozen or so political cause pins dotted over her computer bag, a rather passionate one too. But in their brief time together Jemma had noticed a streak of understated intelligence that she had to admire, and it shone through now as Daisy studied the flowers with a sense of inspiration about her.

“You really want to know?” Jemma wondered, hopeful.

“Yeah,” Daisy snorted, but was beaming back when she looked up. Her expression said that if she had not wanted to know, she would not have asked, and Jemma found herself feeling rather bashful all of a sudden.

“I- it’s just, well, I tend to ramble about these sorts of things. A lot of people lose interest fairly quickly. I wouldn’t blame you.”

“No, please, explain away.”

But alas, they had whiled away their seemingly endless time together. Jemma’s phone vibrated, again and again and again, and chimes began to ring out the alarm she had set. She pulled it out of her pocket, and checked it, and gaped in affronted surprise.

“Bloody hell!” she cried. “It’s three o’clock! I’ve got to get back to class!”

“Okay. Okay. Uh. Biology’s this way. Quick!”

They sprinted down the amphitheatre steps so fast that Daisy had to catch Jemma’s hand to stop her falling. They barely noticed the contact, frantic as they both were, and it was gone in a moment anyway as they scrambled to scoop up the books, climb the other side of the amphitheatre, and sprinted across campus with the wolves of poor time management at their heels. When they reached Jemma’s class, she paused a moment to catch her breath, adjust her hair and the lay of her bag and her shirt and all, and then she turned to Daisy.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“Perfect. Great. Good,” Daisy assured her, nodding emphatically. In truth her hair was a little windblown and there was a tiny smear of dirt on her knee where she’d knelt to look at the flowers, but just because Daisy had catalogued every inch of her, didn’t mean anyone else would. And didn’t mean it wasn’t good, great, perfect. “How- how are you feeling?”

“Nervous,” Jemma confessed. “Blimey, what a terrible first impression.”

Daisy huffed, and smirked at the irony as she helped Jemma arrange her copious books into a manageable pile in her arms.

“Personally,” she said, “I think first impressions are overrated.”

Jemma’s eyes sparkled as she smiled back. “Perhaps you’re right. Either way, I should go. No need to make things worse.”

She turned on her heel and spun, and the book that Daisy hadn’t finished passing back fell to the floor with a light thud. Daisy’s eyes followed it for a brief moment, and she yelped-

“Wait, you forgot-“

But when she looked up again, Jemma had already disappeared inside. Her heart beginning to fall, Daisy bent to pick up the book. It was thin, and it looked old, with a rough-textured, mint-green cover and a broken spine. On the front, there was an embossed illustration of a daisy and below it, the words: Flowers of the English Countryside. Daisy smiled down at it, and flicked through its pages. She had some time to kill after all; perhaps she could take a look before returning this to the library. She really was curious about primroses now, after all.

Not as curious, though, as she was about the slip of paper that fell out from between the covers and into her hand. It had been torn from a photocopy, by the looks of things, of a book called An Introduction to Conservation Politics in the United States. It had been, unmistakably, dipped in pink lemonade. And it had been scribbled on – no doubt, Daisy knew, by the hand of a woman running across campus like her life depended on it. This was Jemma’s number, and it was meant for her.

Daisy smiled. She smiled so widely that she had to bite her tongue to stop her grin consuming her entire face. She pumped a fist and let out a skittering jump of delight, before turning and walking back the way she had come with as much decorum as she could bother to muster. She had to play it cool, after all.

(But not so cool that she didn’t spent the rest of the afternoon wondering if that was a 4 or a 9, a 1 or a 7, or if it would be weird for her to just go back to Jemma’s classroom and meet her when they wrapped up for the day.