Work Text:
“If you only went to Starbucks like a sensible person you wouldn’t have this problem,” Napoleon said without looking up from his textbook.
“Unless you have something helpful to say, shut up,” growled Gaby.
Her so-called best friend shrugged. “You could just ask him.”
Gaby shot him a look of disbelief. “Have you seen him?”
Napoleon cut a quick look across the café floor. “Sort of hard to miss that strapping young mountain with legs.”
Gaby slumped in her seat, staring at her laptop with the slow percolation of dread beginning in her stomach. She was in the middle of her mechanical engineering exam and her laptop was on eight percent of battery. And the only available outlet in the whole of her favorite café was at a table currently occupied by a complete stranger.
Well alright, not a complete stranger. She’d seen him around campus a few times; he was a Russian exchange student and incredibly hard to miss, since he literally towered over half the student population. Even Napoleon, who was six feet, had to tilt his head back to look him in the eye.
Rumors, of course, abounded about him. He was a former assassin, his father used to a member of the Soviet Union, he’d put three of the football players in the hospital because they’d knocked over his chess board. Whether or not these were all true made no difference to Gaby; he currently had the only table with an outlet next to it and he wasn’t even using it. He was sketching in a notebook, of all things, the slim pencil absurdly dwarfed in his hand, broad shoulders hunched in concentration.
Gaby looked back at her laptop, the little red x by the battery icon mocking her, and clenched her jaw. She stood up abruptly, picked up her laptop, unplugged her cord and purposefully made her way over to him, Napoleon calling after her sotto voce, “Godspeed.”
He was a lot bigger up close, Gaby realized belatedly, as she approached. Both of her hands could fit comfortably in one of his easily and if the breadth of those shoulders and the length of his legs was any indication, he was probably a foot taller than her on top of that. Without preamble, she set her laptop down on the table across from him, pulling out the free chair. He looked up, blinking, a serious, classically handsome face peering at her. A scar next to his left eye made him look dangerous, a long faded mark. “There are other tables,” he said, his accent thicker than she expected. His voice was a low and quiet rumble, not accustomed to volume.
“Not with an outlet,” Gaby retorted, sitting down without invitation and plugging in her cord and connecting it into the laptop. Her computer made a relieved little beeping sound as the battery icon lit up. “Look I’m sorry to invade your space, but my computer’s about to die and I need to finish this exam. And you have the only outlet. So I need to finish this and I’m not leaving here until I do.”
He blinked at her again, and Gaby glowered in response. Sitting down, their faces might’ve been almost level. She half-expected him to get up and leave, but then he shrugged slightly. “Suit yourself,” he said and went back to sketching.
Feeling weirdly let down at this lack of reaction, Gaby turned her attention back to her computer screen and started typing determinedly. Diagrams and equations unspooled in her mind’s eye. Almost enough to distract her from her tablemate. He held himself so still in stark comparison to his size, the only thing about moving was his fingers as he shaded and sketched in the notebook. She was not about to peer over the screen of her laptop to see what he was drawing. …Not until she was done with the exam anyways.
She twisted her right wrist to work out the kinks, hearing the bones crack slightly and her tablemate looked up at the sound, brow creasing as he looked at her. “Sorry,” she muttered and went back to typing.
There was a bubble of silence that wavered, because she could feel him watching her, and the sensation of eyes on her made it hard to concentrate. “For what class is your exam?” he said finally. He didn’t sound like he was accustomed to making small talk. Did anyone ever talk to him outside classes? Gaby wondered, and then thought: probably not.
She didn’t want to do that.
“Mechanical engineering,” she said without looking up. “Half my grade depends on it.”
He might’ve nodded; she didn’t see it. “I will leave you to it,” he said and the pencil continued to scratch across the paper. Gaby let herself get lost in the exam again, dimly registering that at some point, he got up and left, but he came back, settling something by her elbow, something that smelled of chai and gave off heat.
Finally, she finished the final question and clicked the “submit” button, closing the window. She leaned back in her chair, flexing her fingers with a huge sigh of relief and registered her surroundings. Her tablemate was still there, quietly drawing, and a still faintly warm cup sat next to her. She looked at it and then at him, and he shrugged. “It was no trouble,” he said without glancing up. “Your friend said you liked chai and he’d meet you back at the dorms.”
Gaby glanced over her shoulder to see Napoleon grinning at her, his coat and messenger bag thrown over his shoulder, giving her a swift salute and mouthing You’re welcome and good luck before sauntering out. Gaby supposed that was Napoleon’s way of giving her tacit approval.
“Is he your man?” asked her tablemate, not taking his eyes off the page he was drawing on.
“My man? Who, Napoleon?” Gaby asked and made a face at the notion. “Best friend since high school freshman year.”
He didn’t look any more enlightened, so she clarified, “I’ve known him forever, but we’re not together. Napoleon’s allergic to commitment.”
She picked up her chai and sipped it, her turn to study him. He looked up and back at her, never blinking. His gaze was steady and searching and Gaby had the oddest impression he was marking the way her face was constructed, observing the slope of her nose or the line of her brows.
“Why do you sit here if you don’t even use the outlet?” she asked, deciding she had earned the right to ask him a few questions.
He glanced at her, eyebrows raised slightly. “Here is the best light for drawing.”
“Drawing what?”
“Ideas for buildings. They are not satisfactory,” he said, before adding quickly, “I am an architecture student.”
Gaby looked across at the pages before asking as delicately as she could, “May I see? I might be able to help.” Then realizing she didn’t even know his name, she added, “I’m Gaby Teller, by the way.”
“Illya Kuryakin,” he said quietly. “They are not very good.”
Gaby shrugged. “I know something about engineering.”
He gave her another careful look before turning his notebook around and sliding it across the table to her. “See for yourself.”
She’d expected something solid and blocky, designs purely for functional purposes. These were not. A cathedral sprawled across two pages, flying buttresses and towers whimsical and delicate. A house that seemed to be suspended in midair was depicted after, almost spinning like a wind chime. There was a tower that gleamed dully with bronze and gold shadings, almost constructed like a spiral. A cityscape that appeared to have been built out of trees and metal fused together. A draft for a clock tower that seemed to fall apart with the hours and slowly reconstruct itself. Interspersed between these drawings were sketches of the campus itself, the library, the common grounds, the park where she and Napoleon had picnicked in the fall, because Napoleon insisted they celebrate her birthday.
They made Gaby’s throat go tight with the imagined beauty, and already she was wondering how you could make a clock fall apart and put itself back together, she had some spare gears and wheels, maybe she could ask him if he minded sharing ideas—
“They’re beautiful,” she said finally, giving the notebook back. “I like the clock one especially.”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “They are not very practical.”
“Building things doesn’t always have to practical,” Gaby pointed. “They can be beautiful for beauty’s sake.”
Something relaxed in his features, something taut and careful went loose. “There are beautiful places in Russia,” he said. “Even after everything that has happened.”
“My family’s from Berlin,” she told him frankly. “So I understand that.”
He didn’t smile—not exactly. But his face became not so carefully serious and Gaby wondered if anyone had ever taken the trouble to find this out about him—that he drew beautiful things and bought chai for strangers.
“Thank you for the drink,” she said finally. “I have to get back.” She really didn’t want to, though. She unplugged her laptop and put it in her bag. “See you around, okay?”
“See you,” he called after her softly.
“Well, that went well didn’t it?” Napoleon said cheerfully back in her room that night, idly flipping through one of her car magazines.
“It wasn’t terrible,” Gaby allowed, because it would never to do to let Napoleon assume any kind of credit. “I think he’s really quite shy.”
“Hard to imagine why,” said Napoleon dryly. “What with his charming personality.”
Gaby found herself bristling. “Don’t be cruel. You know perfectly well half the school’s started completely unfounded rumors about him just because he doesn’t talk.”
“And you’re defending him already,” Napoleon murmured. “I wonder why.” With the ease of long practice, he ducked the shoe Gaby chucked at his head.
Gaby didn’t see Illya around until Friday afternoon, once more bent over his sketchbook, in the sunniest corner of the library. Her favorite corner of the library. He didn’t even look up when she sat down beside him and pulled out her tablet. “I think I know a way to make your clock tower work,” she said and now he looked up, startled. “If you don’t mind,” she added, remembering he might like someone presuming to know their way around his designs.
“No,” he said finally. “I do not mind.”
Near the end of the semester, his notebooks included a few more drawings: Gaby with her tied up in a scarf, peering into the hood of Napoleon’s car; Gaby with one leg lifted in an arabesque, and one more of her waking up in a tangle of blankets, hair mussed and a sleepy smile on her lips.