Chapter Text
Friday nights weren't meant to be like this. You carefully balanced your cup of coffee on the stack of exams in your arms, and climbed the rickety staircase to the second floor of the physics library. None of the campus cafes were open this late, but god bless those coffee-dispensing vending machines.
You'd started frequenting this library because it was considerably and consistently less crowded than the two main libraries; even though you had no real business being here, since your only physics training was an introductory course you'd taken as an undergrad. But you'd never been here at night before, and you had to admit that it was sort of… creepy. Shadows collected darkly between the tell shelves of textbooks, and the silence was occasionally interrupted by insidious creaking noises—quiet enough to blame on the building itself, but loud enough to make you feel nervous.
Unconsciously walking a little faster, you rounded the corner to the lounge area and almost shrieked when you saw a skeleton sitting in one of the plushy arm chairs. You managed to contain yourself, however, because you quickly realized that it was a person. Your hand shot out to steady the coffee cup before it toppled over, and your rocketing heart rate started to slow.
The skeleton was slouched low in the chair with a laptop resting against his bent legs. He wore a ratty blue hoodie and dirty sneakers, which he had propped up on the coffee table in front of him. Open books with miniscule print, and loose papers covered in scrawl, were scattered around the table by his feet. In each dark eye socket was a tiny glowing light, clearly serving the purpose of a pupil, and they scanned back and fourth across the screen of his computer.
He didn't look up as you stood there dithering. After a moment of reading he began to type quickly, and the blunt tips of his bony fingers made an especially pronounced and satisfying clicking sound against the keyboard. He thoughtfully tapped one of his fingers against his bared teeth, then continued typing. He would have been eerie-looking, but the points of light in his eyes made him look distinctly alive.
You realized you were staring and tore your eyes away, embarrassed, and headed toward a chair on the other side of the room. You hoped he hadn't noticed how startled you were. And even if he did, coming-across-a-stranger-in-a-dark-library-at-night was a passable excuse. …You told yourself. But it probably just looked like you got scared because he was a monster. Which… was sorta true.
Hope I didn't offend him, you thought guiltily, settling yourself into a chair. You gave a weighty sigh as you plopped the stack of exams down on the table in front of you. Your phone beeped, and you hastily pulled it out of your bag to silence it, looking up to see if the skeleton had noticed. He either hadn't heard or didn't care, gaze still riveted to his computer screen. His chair was faced away from you, so you could see that he was watching some kind of abstract 3D simulation. It was pretty much meaningless to you. This was the physics library, so you only felt as out-of-your-depth as you always felt here.
Looking back at your phone, you saw you had a message from your friend Connie.
Connie | 8:36pm
Dude were going to pats, come get sloshed
You | 8:38pm
I fucking wish, I've got like a billion papers to grade
Connie | 8:39pm
Sucks
Wow, thanks for your sympathy Connie. You set your phone down on the table and turned toward the mountain of undergrad essays. No use stalling. You picked up the first one and immediately uncapped your red pen.
Five essays later and you were already so done with this. The current student was trying to argue that a popular superhero movie was a veiled retelling of Hamlet. You'd seen the movie and you… guessed? It could be interpreted that way? You shook your head. You considered bullshitting to be an indispensible skill for anyone majoring in English, so it didn't really affect how you were going to grade this, but you were just so baffled.
The next student averaged an incredible nine run-on sentences per page. And it was a fourteen-page paper.
You wrote this the night before, didn't you? you thought, giving the paper a squinty-eyed look, and you got a vindictive sort of pleasure out of marking it up. In truth you could sympathize—you'd been an undergrad once, after all—but damn if it wasn't de-motivating from this end of things.
You were distracted by a soft rasping sound, and looked up, toward the skeleton. It was the sound of his fingertips softly scraping against his skull as he scratched the back of his head. Whoa.
Your phone buzzed on the table.
Connie | 9:45pm
Here youll need this:
The next message she sent was a link. You opened it and sucked in a breath. It was an animated gif of a deer nuzzling a dog. The dog grinned happily, tongue lolling out, while the deer pushed its face into the dog's neck.
You did need this.
You | 9:47pm
I love you, when are we getting married
You pulled your laptop out of your bag and copied the link into the browser so the gif could loop in the background while you worked. You'd read a study once that said people performed detail-oriented tasks more carefully after viewing pictures of cute animals. So this was just a strategy to improve job performance. Yep.
Connie | 10:09pm
When you have a stable income
Hows the grading going
You | 10:09pm
I hate my life and myself
God damn, it was already ten o'clock. There was no way you were going to finish all of these tonight. You gave a weighty sigh, picked up the next paper, and wondered what the skeleton was doing here this late. Whatever it was, it looked serious. He'd leaned forward and was furiously scribbling on a piece of paper. Was he an undergrad or a grad student?
Concentrate, you told yourself. But then you stared at the deer gif for a full ninety seconds.
Concentrate!
If he was an undergrad, it was a little sad that he was alone in the library on a Friday night. But at the same time, you found yourself wishing that you'd been that motivated back then. It was a dissonant feeling, like trying to be the student and the teacher at the same time. Maybe you were finally starting to grow up a little.
Ha, you thought, and turned your eyes back to the paper. The truth was that, usually, you didn't even feel qualified enough to be grading these. These kids were barely younger than you, so it was always a surreal experience when they treated you like you had some sort of authority.
You heard the skeleton snicker, and you glanced back up. He was watching… You squinted. It looked like a terribly-rendered CG animation of two men chasing a squirrel.
Definitely an undergrad, you thought wryly, though you knew it was an uncharitable thought considering what you had open on your own computer.
You made your way slowly through the stack of essays, relaxed by the musty smell of old books and the soft clack-clack-clack of the skeleton's fingers. It was like listening to someone type on an especially clicky keyboard. Actually, you were surprised by how comfortable you felt. You would have thought that being with any complete stranger, in an isolated corner of the library, in the middle of the night, would have made you at least a little nervous. But he was so clearly absorbed in his work that it put you at ease. You weren't even sure he knew you were here, which was kind of incredible.
Here was the catch though: You needed to pee. Your laptop was out, and the exams were organized into several haphazard stacks that you really didn't want to dismantle. It seemed ludicrous to pack up all of your stuff, only to come back and reestablish yourself minutes later. On the other hand it was almost eleven o'clock now, and who knew what kinds of weirdoes and bandits were skulking around the library at night. This skeleton was no exception, you told yourself sternly, no matter how disarming (and endearing?) you found his single-minded concentration.
You decided to play the social contract card. You stood up, wincing as your knees popped, and walked over to him.
"Hi," you said, and finally he looked up at you, bright eye-lights trained on your face. "Uh, would you mind watching my stuff for a sec? I'm gonna go use the bathroom."
"sure thing," he said, in a low, pleasant voice. "you worried it's gonna run off when you're not lookin'?"
It took you a full second to realize this was a joke; just in time to laugh awkwardly as you turned into the hallway that led to the bathroom. God, could you have made it any weirder?
When you returned a few minutes later, everything was where you'd left it, skeleton included.
"Thanks," you said, as you headed back for your chair.
He waved his hand lazily in your direction. "it didn't even try to get away."
You glanced back at him. He was smiling, but he hadn't looked up. You weren't sure if that was supposed to be another joke or not.
You wearily returned to grading, wishing you'd thought to get another coffee while you were up. After two more duds, which you annotated generously, you started to read a paper that you genuinely loved. It was clear, thoughtful, and well-structured, and most important of all, fascinating. You hadn't heard of the novelist whose work they were referencing, but you made a point to remember the name. This was the kind of writing that got you into this field in the first place. It made you want to hurry up and finish all of this grading so you could get back to your real work.
"do you know that you're talkin' to yourself?"
This time you did shriek, and jumped in your chair. The skeleton was sitting in the seat across from you; somehow he'd snuck over without your noticing. He was sitting with his elbow resting on his knee cap, and his chin in his hand, hood pulled up over his skull. It was an easy, lazy posture that seemed to emphasize just how absurd it was that you had screeched out loud in the library.
"sorry, sorry," he said, chuckling. "didn't mean to scare ya."
"Jesus christ…" you said, putting a shaking hand over your heart. "I nearly jumped outta my… skin…"
Fuck. You trailed off, realizing what you were saying and how it might sound to someone who had no skin, but he just laughed. He sounded delighted, in fact.
"yeah, you're comin' off as real spineless," he said, grinning. Oh… skeleton jokes? You weren't sure how to react to that. So you just sorta… looked at him.
"jeez, tough crowd," he said, scratching the back of his skull.
"Was I really talking to myself?" you asked. "For how long?"
"since you got here," he said, shrugging. Then he grinned. "you called one of your students a little bastard."
"Oh god," you said, running your hand over your face, embarrassed.
"sounded like you liked that one though," he said, pointing to the paper still in your hand. You looked down at it thoughtfully.
"Yeah…" you mumbled. "You know? TA-ing's kind of a drag but…" Uh oh. You were rambling. "Then you read something like this, and… it kinda makes it worth it."
"really?"
You sighed. "No."
He barked a laugh, smile crinkling up the corners of his eyes. Now that he was talking, you couldn't believe how expressive his face was. He clearly wasn't just a skeleton.
"yeah, i gotta teach again in the fall," he said. Aha! So he was a grad student. "gotta do our, uh, duty to the university I guess."
"Yeah, I guess… What department are you in?"
He looked surprised, then gave you a cheeky smile, and gestured vaguely at the surrounding bookshelves.
"physics."
"Fuck. Duh," you said, putting your hand back over your face. You were laughing a little though. "Physics library. That was obvious."
"i'm guessing you're… not."
"English department," you said, waving your hand in the direction you thought your building was in. You always got turned around when you came in here.
"an interloper," he said. He tapped his finger thoughtfully against his chin, making a soft tk-tk sound as bone met bone. "pretty far from home, kid."
Kid? you thought, bristling slightly. Condescending much? You tried to let it slide.
"Well, it's usually pretty empty in here, so it's easy to get work done." You frowned and scrubbed your hand through your hair. "I can barely concentrate tonight though. It's like too quiet almost."
"really?" he asked, eyes twinkling. "i got a ton of work done tonight." He paused, then winked at you. "a skele-ton."
This time you snorted with laughter.
"Ok," you said, "are you just trying to make up for scaring me, or do you really think those jokes are funny?"
"what, c'mon, you started it."
"I did not!" you said, still laughing. You both had your hands over your mouths, trying to keep from laughing too loudly. You were still in the library.
"welp," he said, once he'd regained some composure. "it's late, so i'm headin' out. good luck with your grading."
"Thanks," you said, as he stood and walked back to his stuff. You tried not to stare at his legs, which were visible from the knee down below his black basketball shorts. You failed. The off-white bones looked just how they were supposed to, fibula and tibia running down from the knobby bones at the knee and disappearing into his shoes. Only that was all there was: Just bones, stark and ghostly against his shorts and the general gloom of the library.
You hastily looked away, busying yourself with another essay, as he turned back around with his bag slung over his shoulder and shuffled toward the exit. But before turning into the hallway, he paused.
"library closes in fifteen minutes, by the way."
"Shit, really?" you said, and you could hear him snickering as he walked off.