illicit affairs | Charlie Barber x Reader

chapter three: first impressions

Happy 'IA' day everyone!! I know the slow burn is a little too slow for some right now but hang in there... You know I never disappoint you guys! ;) 

I love you guys so much, thank you for reading, thank you for being here, and let's jump in, shall we? 

-Dal
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You were shocked by how fast the first week of school was flying by. It was already Thursday morning with the early rising sun shining through your curtains. You sat on your bed, enjoying the natural light as you flipped the pages on your textbook.

Unsurprisingly, you were using your day off from school cramming like you had exams coming up.

Your bed was completely covered with schoolwork, with your hand aching from how many notes you jotted down. Your pens and highlighters were overworked as you distinguished between what you knew and what you needed expansion on.

Every so often, you rolled your shoulders back, trying your best to have good posture while you locked yourself away. It didn't really work out in your shitty one bed, one bath apartment.

Not having a proper workspace here, you were stuck using your bed as your desk. Finding a comfortable position was hard. You tried switching between laying on your tummy and sitting at the edge of the bed. Anything to relieve the tension in your body. You needed to ignore your aching muscles and focus on whatever you were studying.

You switched between your textbooks too, mumbling the content out loud in an attempt to drown out the neighbors' loud conversation you heard through the walls. You didn't need to know the details of their personal lives, especially if you were hearing it through the thin wallpaper.

Studying until the late afternoon, you didn't even notice how much time had passed until the alarm on your phone went off. That only meant one thing. It was time for work.

Huffing a breath out, you looked around at all the notes you managed to take. It seemed like time fly by since you woke up...

Funny... You always heard the expression 'time flies by while you're having fun.'... Unfortunately, you didn't think this was the case.

Another sigh was pushed past your lips as you rolled your shoulders back. Knowing you would go back to studying the moment you came home, you didn't bother putting anything up. You decided to leave everything the way it was, freezing this moment in time until you got back.

Although the idea of working wasn't pleasing to you, a hot shower before to soothe your tight muscles was.

When you stood from the bed, you stretched out your arms as you walked over to the bathroom. Shaking off the stiffness, you rolled your head in between your shoulders. Wrapping your fingers around the handle, you tugged it until water poured out of the faucet.

After pulling the curtain shut, you waited a few minutes for the water to warm up as you walked over to the mirror. It seemed like it was the first time in a while that you looked at yourself.

Over the last three years, the dark circles present under your eyes grew. Your color was slipping away, which was a clear tell that your time was mostly spent with your nose stuck in a book. You couldn't even remember the last time you put any effort into your appearance. You were always on the go between work and school.

The longer you looked at yourself, the more you felt your life was wasting away.

It was obvious that you would stop at nothing to reach your goals, knowing you had to work hard to get where you wanted. You signed up knowing there would be sacrifices along the way, but there was a part of you that thought you were sacrificing too much. You wanted... more.