Words (TaoXChanyeolXreader fanfic)

Chapter 3: How did you find me?

He didn't see her for the rest of the week but he thought about her. He thought about her during his classes, when he sat alone in his little flat, during his time in the practice rooms with his violin. Especially when he had the instrument in his hands. It was almost as though the violin had more to say about her than he could put into words. He didn't have words. Just oceans of confusion and strings of music notes.

Any time he was alone, she was there in his thoughts. His office hours were going to be hellish. He was required to keep office hours during which the two discussion groups he ran could come and speak to him one on one about their concerns. They were held in a little closet masquerading as an office in the English department shared by approximately half the other teaching assistants in the department. The other half had the closet across the hall. Jem had 1 hour a week in which he sat in the room, almost always alone unless there was a paper due, and read.

She showed up towards the end of his hour. A tentative knock and then she was peaking through the partially open door. Her hair was braided today, falling like a rope over the shoulder of her cream coloured jacket. She was wrapped in a gray scarf which made her eyes look blue. His memory hadn't been able to settle on what colour they actually were though his imagination had called up the other details of her face over and over.

He blinked and looked down at his papers again for a moment before looking back at her with a smile. He was going to be polite and normal. He could be polite and normal. He tried for a joke, "Do you need help with the reading response journal?"

"I think I'll figure it out," she said stepping into the room. She wore a pair of jeans and black boots that cut off at mid calf. Chanyeol had never cared about fashion. He wore what other people wore so he didn't stand out. He chose neutral colours and kept his collection of unusual t-shirts and brightly colour shoes off campus and away from his family. He usually didn't notice anyone else but he noticed her.

"How did you find me?" he asked.

"I'm a detective," she said with a half smile. He raised his eyebrows at her and the smile spread. He tried to tell himself maybe they could be friends and he could keep her at the edges of his life without it being what his parents had. He was going to have to train his heart to keep beating when she smiled if that was going to work. He wasn't sure he trusted himself to be capable of learning that.

She continued, "I went to the bookstore and went through the shelves of course materials until I found the book you'd had that day and then found out when the office hours for EN 1020 were by calling the very unpleasant receptionist out front. I had to apologize twice yesterday and pretend I was looking for my own TA. 1020 is a big course to have five teaching assistants."

"That's the only reason they hired me. I don't do literature," he said.

"And yet you quote Horace on command?" she asked.

He laughed and leaned forward. She watched him like he'd done something far more interesting. He had a moment of self consciousness. What was his hair doing? Did he have lunch on his shirt? Did he look as much like a scarecrow as his grandmother claimed while chiding him to eat more? Maybe it was better that she wasn't available, she wasn't in his league in the slightest.

"I had a friend, a long time ago, who said you needed to plan what you would say when you heard your words and mine were about poets so he tried to teach me poetry," he said, "I froze up when you said that. That conversation from when I was 12 was all I could remember."

"You aren't a poet, are you?" she said again.

"Yours are that quote," he said unable to repeat the exchange verbatim, "Dust and shadows."

"I looked the words up with my aunt when I was little. I was fascinated to have another language. I didn't know what to make of them being a long dead language. I went through a stage where I tried to learn Latin because I thought I might need it to talk to my match when I met them. Some people spend their lives waiting to hear a coffee order or an apology for something mundane like stepping on their toes. I got poetry in another language. I was proud of it," she said.

"You didn't wait," he said and it came out neutral for which he was impossibly grateful. She met his eyes again but didn't answer him immediately. She looked towards the understocked bookshelf and started to talk as though talking to herself.

"It was the first day of high school, no, second day but it was the first day I went into the cafeteria. There was this obnoxious boy, a year ahead of me, running off Shakespeare quotes and bits of famous love poems. He was showing off. It was the type of school where reciting Shakespeare was something you could show off. Arts schools are weird places. I'm not artistic but my brother was studying acting so I applied to the same school because my aunt wanted us to go to the same place. I technically majored in voice, that is, singing. This guy, he was making a show of it," she said.