The Bouncer And The Librarian

1

First Meeting

Dalia yawned as she sat on the train, her tiny body exhausted and worn out from her crazy schedule. She wanted so badly to be a teacher, so she studied hard and worked hard-night classes online, working as a teacher's aid at the local school, all while working part time at the library to keep her lights on. 

As the train pulled to a stop, it jerked slightly, sending the aspiring teacher off balance. Her binders fell from her overflowing bag and scattered papers everywhere. The woman squeaked and rushed to scoop them up before the train left with her still on it. She quickly jumped out just before the doors closed, but her arms were full of a haphazard mess. 

Dalia glanced at her watch carefully. "Oh no!" With no time to sort her armful of papers and binders due to the train running late, the woman ran from the subway up the stairs. She dropped a paper, yelped, and bent to pick it up. Her hair fell out of it's messy bun, but she didn't have time to stop and fix it. The young woman tried to jerk her head to sway her thick wavy hair aside as she ran up the steps two at a time. 

Dalia cleared the entrance and turned, running down the sidewalk now in an attempt to make it on time to the school. A rush of wind sent her hair in to her face, blocking her view. She stumbled, but tried to flop her hair out of her face as she ran, refusing to slow her speed.

********

Balroy was on his way back home from his job. The club had been rough the night before, but the only trace of that was a smudge of someone else's blood on his sleeve. The man stood six and a half feet tall and with only a glance, one might swear his muscle mass made him just as wide. His skin was the color of a light bronze. His long hair, tied low in a messy bun, shone as black as the stubble across his jaw. The single small silver hoop earring in his right earlobe gleamed as bright as his lazily glaring eyes.
The man trod on with a wide yawn. In his ears were headphones playing the song, The Other Side of Paradise by Glass Animals, which might have accounted for the accident that happened next. The woman striking his chest full on barely rocked him, though it caught him by surprise. His body tensed out of habit as his hands began to raise-but his eyes lit on what appeared to be a woman surrounded by a small explosion of paper. After a second, he exhaled. The giant grazed a hand over his wallet to check on its status, then bent to pick up the errant pages.

Dalia was suddenly on her butt. She blinked in surprise, then looked up at the musk ox of a man bending towards her. She gasped and reached out a hand. "I'm sorry!" She quickly moved to her knees and rubbed her scraped palms on her pencil skirt before grabbing up papers. She gave a small, nervous laugh. "Oh gosh, what a wreck. I'm so sorry." 

Her eyes lifted to meet his face for the first time, drawing a moment of stunned silence from the woman. Her mouth was slightly ajar, but it quickly shut when she realized herself. "O-oh gosh, I'm so-" When he handed her the papers, the woman let out a stressed breath and smiled. She took the papers with both hands and spoke at a more normal pace. "Thank you. You're so kind." Her words weren't the customary obligatory compliment people in a rush gave when helped. They were sincere and truly thankful. 

She pushed her mess of raven curls from her face and wobbled to her feet. "Uh, thank you, I-" she looked at her watch and gasped. "Oh no I'm late!" The woman scooped up her papers and binders against her chest once more and raced past the man with a hurried shout of, "Thankyouyou'reamazing!!"

The man blinked after her. The woman was a cross between a fairy and a train wreck. He started to adjust his earphone back into place properly. "Kind..." he muttered. Balroy started to head towards a bench to wait for his train. Flailing around like that, she'll fall onto the tracks. ".........." Balroy looked back over his shoulder again, but the woman was nowhere to be seen. He snorted and settled in to wait.