The last of her laughter rushed from her one final, icy sigh - her head tipping to better survey the available seating. The assembled students were, as per usual, consistently loud in their late-night concentration - the nearby alcove of computers buzzing with a nervous tension (a ten-page assignment due at [ 8:00 am ] sharp, and not nearly halfway finished) and the table to her right was clogged with a bevy of papers so many equations that she had to blink away the numbers (the curve of errant sixes, the gradual slide of diminishing values) threatening to catch on her eyelashes.
It was the trouble of college libraries, really. All too much rush, too much scrambling and hastiness, in a place built largely on quiet.
Audrey bounced in place for a moment - up and onto her toes, though the resultant difference in altitude was hardly substantial enough to make any great deal of difference - and her eyes sought out unoccupied corners, the few spaces remaining that lacked the frantic clicking of keys or ineffectively covered-up snickers of disallowed telephone conversations. She scrubbed a hand across a cold-flushed cheek and her feet - steps light, an unconsciously (en pointe) rising on tiptoe - took her toward the back of the room, stopping between two bookshelves and behind one of the worn-in couches. The lightbulbs seemed dimmer here, shelves leaving the in between spaces comfortably shadowed and - and already occupied.
"Oh," she said. Then, with a raised finger and the lilting curiosity of the reluctantly interrupting: "Um?" Which was proceeded a few moments later by the slightest raising of volume ("Would you mind if -") and pitching herself forward just enough to cut off the trailing end of her question when her gaze caught itself on the obscured drape of headphone wires.
Well.
She blinked at the back of the young man's head, lost in a brief internal debate. After all: Did one simply w a i t ? Reach forward to tap the other person on the shoulder? (And what if the other person didn't appreciate being tapped?) Talk louder? (And in a library. Not the best manners.) Wrinkling her nose before she nodded to herself and rounded the arm of the sofa, seating herself (properly, Audrey - feet on the floor) on the far end. She swung her bag from her shoulder and grinned down at her knees, fingers reaching up to flutter out a silent apology that probably wouldn't be understood.