Meet the plastics (Regina x fem reader)

7 - The hallway

The library seems to have become my sanctuary lately. Between deadlines, lectures and preseason training sessions, I can barely find time to breathe. Thankfully, though, the final days of preseason are rolling round, meaning it'll go back to a few days a week of an hour training followed by every-other-weekly matches on Fridays. Definitely more easy to manage.

Constantly tired and zoning out during lectures, I spend my free time resting in the library, usually now with Janis, who is feeling the same burnt out pain as I am. Occasionally Damian and Cady join us, more so Cady.

We're sat together in a small reading booth in the corner of the library, books, paper and stationary scattered out across the entire table. I twirl a pen between my fingers, clicking the button on it several times in agitation that my mind is too fogged over to think of a concluding line to the essay I was going to submit for extra credit. I glance over at Janis from my notebook propped up as I reread my words, the letters forming one entire mess of ink as I try and decipher what I've written through tired eyes.

Dark hair is sprawled over the table, covering the pages of the art textbook she had been pouring over for the past hour, forehead vastly pressed against her plastic folder like a pillow. I stifle a chuckle at her and earn a muffled noise of disapproval and annoyance in return. Janis tilts her chin up, half of her face still squished against the table. "Is it lunch time yet?" She asks, forehead furrowed, desperation lacing her voice.

"It's only 11.30," I reply, raising an eyebrow at her before I turn back to my essay, scribbling down the final line followed by my name at the top of the several pages and slotting it into my folder to hand to the professor later on.

"Close enough," Janis murmurs, sitting up straighter now. "If I write anything more down I think my fingers will start bleeding." She declares, a wholly serious aura about her. "Between drawing, painting, sewing and these long assignments, I'm surprised my hands aren't wrapped in casts by now. Who knew art would contain this much writing?"

I let an amused expression settle over my face, lips curling up into a smile, ducking my head to hide the forced stifle of my laugher.

Janis' mouth drops open in a look of playful offence, chuckle jumping out of her chest. "I'm being serious." She declares, stacking her books and sheets of paper into a pile, sliding them into a folder and then after, her bag. "Let's go, I'm starving."

Mimicking her actions, I hook my backpack over my shoulders, following her lead as she emerges out of the front of the library and in the direction of the cafeteria. Silence settles over us as Janis paves the way through the empty corridors, weaving around corners and past various classrooms and lecture halls. Our pace is slower than the usual speed-walk, fatigue evident as the taste of the weekend leaves the remains of the exhausting week building up beyond the usual set of exhaustion.

The sun is blinding as we step outside, grabbing the heavy glass door from Janis in passing, the material warm under my touch. We walk the short distance between the buildings, across the pavement slabs slotted between two patches of pristine grass, trimmed neatly and lined with rows of flowers.

Janis hangs back once we reach the indoors of the next building along our route to the cafe, the both of us slowing our pace even more, to a more gentler stroll. My hands find my pockets, the extreme air-con chilling me to the bone. She begins to ramble about the lunch options she's hoping we get today, myself nodding along in agreement at her decisions as my eyes skim the ground beneath me before darting up at her.

That's when I spot her - Regina George - through the large window between the hallway and the outside area. She's stood opposite someone else, a professor I realise, conversing in something light. I recognise her as our History lecturer. I inspect their interaction as well as I can with my complicated circumstance of being far away, but they seem to be in a heated conversation about something. As I move further away, I realise the other two, Gretchen and Karen, are standing near her.