Too Much Like Fate
This is my very late present for @fiveandahalfhours for the @dwsecretsanta I am so sorry it took this long :) I hope you had a very merry Christmas, and had the best day ever! You asked (among other things) for something involving Ian and Barbara and something that wasn´t online already. I hope this meets that criteria.
The first semester at the college had been kind of hectic for Ian, too hectic actually. He didn´t know how the first semester of freshman year could feel like this much. It was probably because he had coasted through school until that point, coasted very much. Ian had even wanted to be a teacher until a few months ago, he still did, but he was pretty sure, it would be a lot harder now, than he had previously thought.
Yet it had still been a very long road, before he had finally found this coffee house. It was one of his friends, who had told him about it. Ian didn´t even like coffee, but he had gone here today, but he had just had tea. As british, as he could possibly be. Unsurprisingly. He seemed to live a british stereotype most days.
"That is my table." Ian looked up from the book, he had been reading to see a woman staring at him, with a thunderstorm in her eyes. She had dark hair that cut off just above her shoulders, and if she had been less angry, the first thing he would have noticed, would probably have been how gorgeous she was.
Technically, he had never been to this particular coffeebar on campus, so it wasn´t like he knew, if there was anything that counted as patron tables, or reserved. He had just moved to this town for school, college, and how should he possibly know? The look, she was giving him was practically murderous by now. "What do you mean?" Ian blurted out.
"It´s my table," she said pretty sternly, although some of it seemed to be faltering away. Ian bit his lip, but kept looking at her. Then suddenly some of the determination, seemed to be making a reapperance. Ian had definitely missed his chance to keep the table in general. At least, for now. "I always sit here."
They could have probably had a staring contest, a long one at that, Ian Chesterton could be very very stubborn, when he wanted to be. But to be honest, she was kind of scary, so instead he scrambled to get out of his chair, and pulled up his bag from the floor, and shut the laptop down. "Alright then," he said quietly, and ruffled his hair, as he hurried away.
...
It isn´t the last time, scrambly table hogger guy shows up at the coffee bar. Barbara is aware, she was being a little unreasonable, the other day. She is already aware of that, when she saw him again a couple of days after the whole incident. She should apologize really, it would be the nice thing to do.
He looked a couple of years younger than her, he was probably just a freshman. Not that that mattered - at least she didn´t really think it mattered. Barbara couldn´t really explain why she had been so mean to him, so she should apologize for it, right?
But she liked the table - as silly and ridiculous as she was aware it was. Barbara had used that table, since the freshman year. She was the only one of her small friend group, who ever went to this coffee place, she came here to think, to be by herself for a little bit. The table was a principle, even if it might be a little weird, and she was probably being overdramatic about it. So she was going to apologize to him right now.
Barbara crossed the space between them with hurried steps, otherwise, she was probably going to turn around and run in the opposite direction. She still might, she wouldn´t rule it out. But before she could do the running, she was standing next to him. He wasn´t sitting at her table today, it was another table. And maybe part of her was kind of happy about that, as petty and childish as it was. Then she noticed, what he was drinking.
"Are you drinking tea in a coffee shop?" Barbara asked, making him look up, his reading glasses, almost slipping down his nose. His eyes had a nice colour, Barbara wasn´t entirely sure, why she noticed.
"Is this your table too?" he asked, almost looking worried that she was going to start sending him death glares again. Although in her defense, Barbara wasn´t planning on doing that today. Still - there was really no way to know how this was going to go.
"No, no, don´t worry," Barbara hurried to reassure him, before he ran away screaming and crying. Or maybe something a little bit less dramatic. Her eyes fell to the tea cup again. "But why are you drinking tea in a coffee shop- sorry, that wasn´t even what I meant to say. I came over here to apologize, for being a jerk the other day. That was unfair."
"Little bit," he conceded, his nice eyes twinkling. He took a long sip of the tea, and picked his bag up. Barbara gave him a confused look.
"I told you, this wasn´t my table," Barbara tried, and his smile turned a little bit wider. Which was annoying, because Barbara didn´t want him to think, she was funny or being ridiculous.
"No, I got that," he retorted, still grinning. It wasn´t just his eyes, which were nice. His smile was too. Barbara quickly decided not to think any more about that. "But- but believe it or not, I actually have other things to do, than getting kicked out of coffee shops for sitting at the wrong table, or drinking the wrong drink."
"I said, I was sorry," Barbara interjected. He smiled, and kind of ruffled his hair. He hoisted up in his bag, and kind of turned.
"Yeah I know," he retorted.
...
The next time, Ian runs into the very angry girl from the coffee shop, is surprise surprise, not actually at the coffee shop. And not because, Ian hasn´t been there, since incident 1 and incident 2. He has, but she has not. He didn´t mean to notice, that she hadn´t, but he did. You kind of notice, when gorgeous girls get weirdly passionate about things, no one should get that angry about.
The next time, he runs into her is actually at the library. It´s another place, he goes quite often, mainly to study - he is not that much of an old man, he is not - when he practically crashes into her. "Sorry," he immediately burst out, just managing to catch a book before it hit the ground.
"Good job," the girl said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. She didn´t sound as sarcastic, as Ian might have expected her to do. She looked kind of a mess, but then again most people, who hung out Sunday morning in a library, were probably mid a giant paper that was slowly killing them.
"Thanks - I think," Ian replied without meeting her eyes. He suddenly felt like he was standing too close to her, and shifted away. "It seems like we kind of keep running into each other."
"Seems like we do," the girl said. "I am Barbara by the way."
"Ian," he mumbled, and then she smiled. It was a nice smile, a very nice smile, definitely a lot nicer than the death glare, comparatively. "So what brings you here, on this fine Sunday morning?"
"A horrendous English paper," she - Barbara, because her name was Barbara - replied. She let out a deep sigh, clearly letting go of a lot of pent up emotion. "I don´t know how my English teacher made it look so easy."
"I think you just echoed every single student on campus," Ian retorted, and she laughed at that. Something weird was in his chest, he decidedly decided to ignore it, right now, immediately. That would be a lot easier, than facing what it might actually mean. "It´s Physics for me though, so not exactly the same thing."
"No, not entirely," Barbara agreed.
Both of them stood awkwardly for a moment without moving. They should probably move, it was weird and awkward, so they should be moving. And if Barbara wasn´t going to do it, he should. He tugged the book a little closer to his chest. Then he said something, he hadn´t expected himself to say. "Maybe we should help each other out. It might get our work finished a bit faster."
"We work in two different fields," Barbara reminded him. He just shrugged at that, and she seemed to be considering it for a moment, as if weighing the good and the bad about it. "But sure, maybe two minds are better than one. Who would know until we tried right?"
...
The library is mostly quiet that Sunday, even with this many students trying to desperately finish their papers and assignments. Barbara herself is currently huddled against a bookcase with a giant copy of Hamlet in her lap, because of course it was Hamlet.
Directly opposite was Ian, deeply engrossed in some kind of book about magnetism. He was a surprisingly nice study partner, quiet, asking questions every now and again, and answering her questions, if she had any. Or at least trying to answer. Science mayor and all that. Barbara had asked him what he wanted to use his fancy degree for. He´d said teaching, Barbara had lied and said she didn´t know yet. Because it felt too much like fate or something out of a romance novel, and Barbara didn´t believe in those kind of things, she just read about them.
