Leach (SalxFem!Reader)

Chapter 2: The Early Bird Gets Burnout

Maybe going to school the week you got your schedule wasn't the greatest idea. Signing up late put you three weeks behind everyone else in your classes, meaning you had to catch up fast if you wanted to at least do half decent on the tests you already have coming up. Between school and struggling to find a well-paying job with flexible hours, you're becoming more and more stressed as the days pass. At the moment, you're in the library with one headphone in, writing notes and making study guides for yourself.

You're getting to the point to where the words on your laptop screen are starting to blur together. You rest your chin in the palm of your non-dominant hand and blinked quickly to try to get the words in front of you to go back to their natural state, but it was no use. You groan to yourself and slide your hand through your hair as your forehead dropped down onto the table you're sat at with a soft thud. You considered banging your head against the hard wood until a hand grabs your shoulder from behind. You flinch at the touch, slowly lifting your head and glancing behind you.

Ash was standing there, her hand still holding onto your slouched shoulder as she gave you a concerned look. "Dude... in the most respectful way possible... you look like shit."

You scoff through your nose, giving her a light smile as a start to your response. You know the dark circles under your eyes showed that you haven't been sleeping a lot due to the fact that you can't fall asleep with the pile of make-up assignments on your mind. "Respectfully, I feel worse than I look."

She sat next to you at the table, moving her hand across your back and rubbed firm but gentle circles around with her palm. "You doing okay?" she asked. The touches and the caring words made you want to break down and cry right then and there, but you held your composure.

"I'm fine." You give her a half-hearted smile. "Just waiting on the weekend to show up so I can just let loose and relax."

"Tell me about it." She sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Do you need any help with anything?"

Accepting help was always a big struggle of yours, especially when someone else thought you need it instead of yourself. You shook your head. "No, I'm not really sure how you could help anyway."

"I could just do it for you."

"Absolutely not! I need to do it, so I actually learn the material and do well on the tests." You laugh, thinking it to be quite out of character for Ash to suggest something like that.

"Please, these assignments are pointless! Plus, you could study them after."

"You're probably right, but I feel like I would actually remember something if I did it myself."

"That's fair." She starts and looks at the scattered papers on the space in front of you, multiple tabs open on your laptop screen, a jumbled mess of highlighters and pencils everywhere. She sighs out. "Why don't we take a break?"

"I can't I really need to finish this assignment first."

"Y/N."

"It's due tomorrow and my professor didn't push it for me, which I don't blame him."

"Y/N!"

"But I need to learn the material before I even start-"

"Y/N!!"

With Ash's yell, everyone in the library with you started looking in the direction of you and Ash along with one of the staff members with a scary glare. You sigh, "Well, I feel like we're about to get kicked out so I guess that a break wouldn't be too bad."

"That's the spirit." Ash smiles, as if nothing had just happened and got up from her seat. "Let's have some girl time."

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