can you write something with this quote I found? It’s so fitting for coops !
“I hope the most beautiful thing you ever see if another human”
In honor of final exams, here's some Harvard FinnLo fluff to share in the suffering--or, you're in a library with a beautiful boy...
Character credit goes to @lumosinlove , who shattered me into a thousand pieces with the new art and will be receiving a UPS box containing my entire heart soon. It's just easier that way.
(and to my friends, who do not know this blog exists but have spent their night/ early morning sitting across from me while we work, I love you v much)
“I’m gonna die.”
“Non.”
“I’m going to fail out of Harvard.”
“Non.”
“Yon.”
Logan’s eyes flicked up over the edge of the wooden table divider and narrowed, the green made bright by the black band of his chunky headphones. “You’re not failing out.”
“Might.” Finn slumped further into the palm of his hand. Another half-inch of Logan disappeared on the opposite side of their table. They had been here for hours. His body ached. His mind fizzled softly, like bacon fried so long it crumbled at the first touch.
Huh. Maybe he could use that in his paper. Reformation-era literary techniques had to fit somewhere in there.
A sigh gusted out of Logan; Finn straightened just enough to peek over the mahogany separating them. Blunt fingertips pressed against the inner corners of his eyes and turned the skin white, then dragged along the first hints of exhausted shadows before pulling down until Logan had to blink. He caught Finn watching and the almost of a smile shimmered across his face before he pointedly pulled his headphones back over his ears and bent his head to his notebook.
They had learned their lesson from midterms season—any tables where they could see each other only led to hours upon hours of talking instead of studying. But working alone was not an option (not that Finn had ever suggested it), so. Dividers. They had blinders on the sides, too. Finn sort of felt like he had been put in a filing box when they worked here.
“Lo,” he hissed. The scratch of a mechanical pencil answered. “Logan.”
A girl at the table next to them shot him an unamused look. Finn hoped his smile seemed apologetic, or at least sincere.
“Tremzy.”
The toe of a worn-out sneaker found his ankle. Solid, but gentle.
“Fucker,” Finn whispered, hiding his grin behind their divider.
A puff of air would have rustled his notes if they had been studying at their usual place at the dining room table. He listened to Logan scribble; always stilted when his hands got tired. Their room would smell like Tiger Balm tonight. He’d get to see the funny little wrinkle of Logan’s nose, too. Warm light from the swirling green lamps beside them made his hair glow chestnut and maple. It curled at the ends from his shower after practice, now far enough gone that each thick lock was mostly dry. He hated going to bed damp.
A faint ripping noise made the girl next to them glance over. Something gave a faint plastic rattle. Finn had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep his laugh back when Logan’s hand appeared over the divider and haphazardly taped a torn corner of notebook paper to Finn’s side.
SHUT. WORKING.
Reformation literature could wait.
Finn’s pen smudged blue streaks across the side of his palm. He took Logan’s note and carefully peeled the tape off, then smoothed the curling edge over the section he had torn from his own notes.
On what?????
The sliver of Logan’s back he could see heaved.
Finn waited for a long moment.
The tape came free with a nigh-imperceptible snick.
Econ. Logan’s fingernails were ragged at the edges from biting.
Econ-your-mom-ics.
The crumpled-up note came sailing back over without a response—he caught it half an inch from his forehead and tucked it into the waterbottle pouch of his backpack before carefully sliding his chair back and leaning forward, far enough to rest his chin on top of the divider.
Logan’s work station was a disaster. Hurricane Tremblay has entered the building, he thought as Logan’s marking of a demand curve slowed to a stop. Highlighters of three different sizes were scattered among half a dozen pens and dull pencils. A thin layer of used-eraser confetti littered every page and worksheet.
Logan had switched to a blue pen—one of Finn’s, he realized. Likely borrowed during their last study session. Finn pressed his chin harder to the wooden edge and waited. Always patient. Logan would crack soon.
Ever so slowly, Logan looked up at him from under his lashes. His hands flattened over his notes. He would have looked immensely unimpressed if Finn didn’t know better.
The cold press of a ballpoint to the tip of his nose was…not unwelcome, but not unexpected. Finn scrunched his face up and heard a short, amused exhale. The pen retreated. Logan was really smiling now, tiny and mischievous. “There.” He was always better at whispering than Finn. “Rudolph’s fucked-up cousin.”
Finn had to duck into his sweater at that, shoulders shaking with the force of a contained bark of laughter. The girl next to them made a show of turning up her music in her earbuds. God, he should feel bad, shouldn’t he? They should go home—go to their room and try one more time to be productive without the laws of Harvard’s libraries looming over them. Percy had been trying to convince him to bring one of the library lamps home for ages.
Logan finally looked away from his notebook, grinning wildly as he shook his head and gave Finn’s forehead a light push. The chair creaked when Finn sat again and scooted forward. He didn’t even want to think about how old these things were, or he’d start getting philosophical. It was much more fun to wax poetic about the importance of Harvard history regarding antique chairs when he was drunk and in Will’s care for the evening.
Logan would listen, Finn thought as he woke his computer up and flexed his hands over the keyboard. Some of the letters were worn nearly bare from his fingers. Logan would laugh at him, but he would listen. He could hear it now. Okay, Harz. Uh-huh. Oh, really? Should I leave you and the chairs alone for a while?
No, no, he would say. I gotta show you. You gotta know.
Logan would shake his head again. Finn figured he’d have a fifty-fifty chance of getting Logan to come with him on a late-night library run versus letting him wrangle him back to bed. He’d be happy either way.
For now, Microsoft Word was waiting with a heading, six sources, and an impatient cursor tapping its foot over his bolded [TITLE!!!!] notation.
--
Midnight came and went between paragraphs four and five. The girl next to them packed her things five minutes later, slinging her satchel over her shoulder as if it weighed eight hundred pounds.
Logan dropped a pen—black, this time—just after one o’clock.
The library lights flickered when the clock hit 1:30. They gathered their things, not bothering to pack their bags, and relocated to the first floor’s 24-hour room with the rest of the pitiful souls relinquishing their night to the altar of academia.
Finn’s eyes began to burn at 2:37.
The first soft snore sounded at 2:51.
He had been so good. So good. He hadn’t bothered Logan at all, not counting the friendly slap to the back of his head when he came back from the bathroom. Nine glorious pages of semi-decent analysis were finally in existence.
The next snore was a touch louder, like Logan had breathed away whatever muffled it before. Finn leaned up on his elbows to see over the edge and smiled to himself at the curls pressed flat to spiraled aluminum. Logan’s lips were parted on the paper. His pencil—back to the pencil? Finn would never understand him—hung limp in the valley of his thumb. His other hand rested on the back of his neck, like he had been supporting himself on it before sleep made him slump right over.
“Tremz. Logan. Hey, number ten.”
Logan’s finger twitched.
Finn sat back, stretched his leg out, and landed a light kick on Logan’s shin. He heard a snort before Logan’s jolt reached his foot. “Calice de crisse—”
“Good morning.”
Logan was blinking hard and slow when Finn leaned up again, both hands wrapped around the table edge and maybe, maybe, one foot on earth. “When time?”
“It’s three o’clock.”
“…practice?”
“In the morning.”
Logan nodded, slothlike, eyelids drooping. Graphite stamped the round part of his cheek; he scratched at it, yawned, and stretched both arms out in front of himself in an Oscar-worthy performance of someone who was any kind of awake.
“We should go back,” Finn suggested.
“Non. All-nighter.”
“It’s officially morning.”
Logan exhaled through his nose for several seconds. He was staring into the middle distance again, right along the seam of their barrier. “I have another chapter.”
I ‘ave anuzzer shapter. Soft, and low, and raspy. So close to his morning voice, but not quite. Finn nudged him with his toe. His heart gave a flip at Logan’s light frown. “I’m going to run through my paper one more time,” he offered. “We can head out after that.”
Logan looked up at him, the picture of confusion. “You’re going running?”
“Editing.”
“Oh.” He nodded. “Okay.”
“Finish your chapter.”
“Okay.”
He cracked his knuckles twice before bending over his notes. One hand rubbed through the back of his hair, left long for the end of the season. He’d probably get it cut over winter break. Finn sort of didn’t want him to.
There was a throbbing behind Finn’s eye that had started somewhere around his first attempt at a concluding paragraph. His fingertips were numb and his wrists were sure to hurt as soon as he stopped writing. He wasn’t sure when exactly his mouth had gone so dry, but it had, and he spared a moment’s thought toward the drink station in the lobby. They always had coffee around finals—it was decent, if a little burnt. He wondered if they’d have mint tea.
Logan’s pencil moved audibly slower than before. Loops and swirls and scratches, a language Finn would never understand. Words were his place: endless white pages and safe letters to curl up in. But numbers and statistics, the things with straight answers, were all for Logan’s clever mind.
Those same words echoed in his head and blurred as he scrolled through a halfhearted read-through. It wasn’t long before he shut his dying laptop and finally let it rest, sagging low in his chair. He turned his face to the ceiling and closed his eyes. It would be easy to fall asleep here, with Logan’s foot against his and the gentle sounds of the library wrapping him up.
“Harzy.”
“ ‘m awake.”
“I’m not.” Something tapped the back of Finn’s hand. “Allez, or I’m leaving without you.”
As if. Finn took the proffered hand without opening his eyes and let Logan pull him up, groaning at the pinch in his legs. The crinkle of paper as he shoved it into his bag made him wince, but that was a problem for the morning. It looked like Logan hadn’t bothered to organize, either.
“Zipper,” Logan reminded him, not looking up from his phone. “I don’t want to hear you complain about more lost pens.”
“Thanks.”
“That’s why you have me.”
How Finn wished that was true.
“You know, I read something kind of neat earlier,” he said as they left the study room. At Logan’s hum of mild interest, he turned to walk backward for a few steps. “I hope the most beautiful thing you ever see is another human. Kinda nice to think about, huh?”
“Hmm.”
“I dunno.” Logan tapped them out of the library with his ID. Finn hadn’t bothered to reach for his own in a long time. He smiled to himself as December bit their cheeks, jostling Logan’s shoulder at the first scrape of brick below their feet. “I like it.”
“You would.”
“Shut up.”
“Non.”
“Yon.”
