"So.... like this Mr. Fairmont?" The long limbed brunette swung her tennis racket in a backhand attempt and then looked coyly back over her shoulder at him for approval. "Wait, show me again?"

Marcus stepped up to guide the girl's swing once more and then watched as she executed a series of perfect backhands, returning the balls from the automatic machine flawlessly.

"Oh, I get it now." A catlike smile.

These girls will be the death of me! Marcus cursed under his breath as Emmy Harrison loped away across the court, hips swinging proudly, and was welcomed back to the fold by a coven of giggling teenaged girls. He deliberately dropped his gaze. The girl was seventeen but could pass for twenty three in a heartbeat. He figured she probably did on her weekend's out, deluding nightclub bouncers from London to Liverpool.

"Now me, Mr. Fairmont?" Tara French stepped up, blue eyes wide.

"Yep. You next, Miss French."

Emmy was probably the worst of the lot. One of the many international students, the American girl was simply bursting with self confidence and pride in her new womanly figure. Her example this semester had only egged on the other giggling girls - gym skirts were getting shorter by the week and the number of students dropping by his office to request private tutoring for their backhand was pretty much insane.

He keenly felt the effect of being the only male teacher at a private girls boarding school. Well, pretty much the only male teacher. Mr. Danier, the flamboyant drawing master who was overweight, sweated when he ate and listened to Lady Gaga when alone in his studio hardly counted. What did the headmistress expect when she cooped up three hundred teenage girls in a big house? Jesus. Luckily, he had zero interest in the girls - and a rather large interest in keeping his job, thanks very much - but he was only a man and the lot of them were little sirens in training. Plus, he was constantly on edge about a girl taking some sort of teaching gesture the wrong way and complaining about inappropriateness. On the other hand, many of the girls seemed dead set on coaxing him into just such a thing...

Forty five minutes later the morning's ordeal was over, the fifth form girls hit the showers and Marcus collapsed in his office chair, kicking his feet up onto the desk and narrowly missing the neglected computer keyboard. Why the school figured its gym instructor would need a computer was beyond him. Resting on the shelf above the computer monitor was a parade of shiny trophies. The Kensington Crest School For Girls' lacrosse team were national champions three years running- and his pride and joy. The soccer team was nothing to sneer at either, and the netball girls were shaping up to steal the crown away from Hydebank this year, thanks to Emmy Harrison and her deadeye shooting skills.

Whilst debating the relative merits of a jog or a swim in his free time before a lunchtime staff meeting, he was startled by a knock on his door. Not many people on campus made the trek down to the gym complex during class hours and he was rarely in his office anyway, not being a fan of either solitude or the indoors.

"Come on in!"

OOC: Random, I know. Open to any and all who have free time and feel like writing :) Students/teachers whatever. I have no idea where this should go.

OOC: Ahahahahahahahahahahaha ALEX! I totally forgot that we talked about this. And of course I had to throw Charlotte in immediately. I miss these two!

Charlotte Tolson was seated comfortably behind her desk in the library, sifting through the mound of books that had accumulated there recently. This was her first year of doing research for her doctoral dissertation - and already she felt overwhelmed. It became perfectly clear quite quickly that her job as a host a restaurant in town wasn't going to support her. So she had decided to take a post as an underpaid, overworked librarian's assistant at Kensington Crest. It'll be fine, she told herself. You're working in a library - tons of time to do research! All the information will be at your fingertips.

Turns out a person didn't have much time for writing a dissertation when they worked at the library.

Wham!

Startled, Charlotte glanced up in time to see a postal worker slam a number of envelopes on the check out desk. "No, I'm sorry sir, you have to take those to the..." she started, but the man was already half way out of the library. Sighing, she made her way to the pile, and started sifting through them. How the school administrative mail ended up at the library on a daily basis, she would never know. Noting that only two pieces out of the large pile of mail were actually for Maria, the head librarian, Charlotte grabbed the rest of the mail and nodded to her fellow co-worker. "I'm just going to take these to the administrative office," she told him, before leaving the library.

On her way to the office, she noticed that there were a few letters for a teacher in the Physical Education department. Sighing, she stopped in her tracks. She had heard about him, the only other male teacher besides Mr. Danier. She had often overheard girls giggling in groups about Mr. Fairmont whilst supposedly studying. She could just deliver his mail to the office...or she could take it to him directly. The office did have a reputation of losing mail, though....

Abruptly changing direction, Charlotte headed towards the Physical Education wing of the school. The stench of sweat hit her like a brick wall as she entered into the locker room. She wrinkled her nose, and noticed how incredibly out of place she looked - a grey, sleeveless, cowl neck blouse, black pencil skirt and extremely uncomfortable black heels weren't exactly the type of thing you'd see the girls wearing in this wing.

Peeking around a wall of lockers, she found what she assumed to be Mr. Fairmont's office. She made her way to the door, and knocked, surprised to hear a voice within welcoming her. Charlotte pushed the door open with some trepidation, and finally came face to face with the famous Mr. Fairmont. Maybe those girls were on to something... was her first thought, before she quickly shushed it.

"Um...hi. I work at the library...they delivered your mail to us by mistake..." she said, glancing down at the envelopes she held in her hands. "So I thought I'd bring them to you. The administrative office is notorious for losing things," she shrugged, moving to his desk to drop the envelopes in front of him.

"Than-" His gaze traveled up from dressy black kitten heels, over a pair of promising ankles, shapely calves...Wow. Suddenly he didn't give a damn about jogging or little Emmy Harrison or staff meetings. "-nks...." Hurriedly he dropped his dirty sneakers from the desk to the floor and stood up to take the letters from her whilst attempting to discreetly kick a sweaty tee-shirt behind a couple of field hockey sticks. One clattered to the floor.

"Err, yeah. Great." He dropped the letters and stuck out his hand. "Marcus Fairmont." Catching sight of the addressed letters on the desk again he added with a lazy grin, "But I'm going to guess you already knew that..."

If she worked in the library it was little wonder they hadn't met. She didn't have to attend the dreaded weekly staff meetings and he had pretty much no cause to set foot on her terrain. He'd be lost in that labyrinth of books. As lost, in fact, as this girl looked here.

One of Charlotte's eyebrows arched upward, and an amused smirk flickered across her face as Mr. Fairmont hastily tried to make himself presentable. She looked down at her feet for a moment, letting her long black hair cover her face for a moment, before flicking her gaze back up to see that Mr. Fairmont had collected himself.

She took his proffered hand, shaking firmly with her own. "Charlotte Tolson," she replied, introducing herself in turn. "I did gather that you would be Mr. Fairmont," she said, a small smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. "The mail did tip me off. Though the fact that you are only one of two male members of staff did help," she continued, before realizing that she was still shaking his hand. Flustered, she dropped her hand back down to her side.

Standing face to face felt kind of awkward... and, oddly enough, Marcus was not keen for this rather gorgeous creature to make her exit just yet. Gorgeous and legal! Smart too, he'd guess, given that she worked in the library. He lounged back against his desk and crossed his arms across his chest, rather wishing that he wasn't in tennis shorts and a Nike tee that had seen better days and was crying out for a tumble in the washing machine.

"Yeah, I'm a regular cat among the pigeons here," he joked, the tennis class again in the forefront of his mind. "Though sometimes I feel like more a mouse among the cats," he added with a shrug. If Miss Tolson worked here then she'd know all about the ilk of girls he was referring to.

Charlotte laughed quietly at his description of his role at the school. "I think the latter would be the correct description, Mr. Fairmont," she assured him, hoping that her opinion was correct. Fairmont didn't seem the type to be chasing after teenage girls, whom he was employed to teach.

"Though I can tell you that they will settle down...eventually," she said, flashing a grin. "I myself attended an all-girl's school, so I can understand where the girls are coming from," she explained. "Though the girls at my school weren't quite so persistent in flirting with our male staff. Mind you, most of them were all rather rotund and balding, so that might have had something to do with it..."

"Just in time for a fresh wave of hormonal teens to roll in to giggle behind their hands at me," Marcus said with a groan and an exaggerated sigh. "Though..." He grinned and locked his eyes boldly on hers. "You sort of seem to suggesting that I'm not bald or rotund or, at least, not both ...so thanks for the compliment." It felt good to be the flirt instead of the unwilling victim of such attentions. He'd learnt his lesson about dating school staff (no pun intended) when that Thing with Grace had gone so very wrong. Memories of that still caused an unpleasant twist in his stomach.

"You laugh like a librarian," he observed a second later, not pausing to give thought as to whether this might give offence.

"No problem," Charlotte said, with a small smile. She had only spoken the truth - for it was quite clear that he was neither balding, nor rotund, and somehow this had turned into an exercise in flirting. Oh get a hold of yourself, she told herself. She had come to deliver the man's mail, and see what all the fuss was about regarding him. Now that she had done just that, she should probably leave.

"I'm not a librarian," she corrected him quickly, smiling apologetically. "Though with the amount of hours I put in at the library, a promotion is probably in order," she added, somewhat darkly. "I'm actually a grad student - I just took the position at the library to make some extra money," she explained, self-consciously running her hand through her hair. "I suppose the amount of time I spend hiding in a quiet, enclosed space is starting to effect my personality traits," she said, laughing quietly again.

The fairly vivid mental image of Miss Tolson as a librarian he had sketched for himself (glasses, seamed stockings, pen holding up her long dark hair) should have erased itself then and there. It didn't. it really didn't. He forcefully pushed it out. Jesus, this school was messing with his head something chronic!

"A live in position?" he enquired without thinking. That sounded bloody forward and he'd only meant to ask out of innocent curiosity- he'd seen nothing of the female staff quartes, naturally enough. He and Grace had kept their relationship off school grounds for the most part. "Arh, didn't mean to ask something quite so personal," he admitted quickly, running a hand through his ill-groomed tangle of hair rather awkwardly before raising his eyes to look at her again. "How about you tell me what you're studying instead?"

Charlotte's eyes widened for a moment as he asked if she lived on campus or not - something she hadn't really been expecting. None of the girls ever said he was so forward, she thought to herself. She was then quickly reminded herself that Mr. Fairmont more than likely had no intention of hooking up with any of his students.

She ignored the part where this implied that he wanted to hook up with her.

"It's okay," she assured him, smiling slightly. "I'm working on a dissertation about English Colonial families who lived in India during the 19th and 20th centuries," she told him. "I know, it doesn't sound very interesting," she admitted. "Even my research seems to have stopped believing in itself," she said with a dark sort of laugh. "I can't seem to find enough time in the day to research and work," she explained, shaking her head. "It's not a good situation."

Charlotte glanced down at her watch for a moment, realizing that she was supposed to be back at the library by now - the administrative office wasn't all that far away from the library, and she was sure her co-worker was wondering where she had gone to.

"I'm sorry, but I should probably go....books don't shelve themselves, unfortunately," she said with a small smile. "It was nice to meet you, Mr. Fairmont," she concluded with a nod of her head in his direction, before taking her leave from his office.

Once outside, she exhaled deeply. Those girls were not kidding about him, she thought. Though you have no business in getting involved with a staff member, she tried to remind herself sternly. Smoothing down her skirt, she picked her way out of the locker room - definitely not her favourite place in the world, she concluded - and back towards the library.

It was two weeks later before Marcus found himself thinking much about the librarian again.

School reports had been due, there had been an open day: an assortment of indifferent and overbearing parents descending upon his gym and asking awkward questions- bloody horror. "Do you think Verity's hips are too wide, Mr. Fairmont? We were thinking she ought to play more squash to help narrow them..." "When is Kensington Crest going to get a polo team? I hear polo is all the rage these days..." Jesus. He had been flat out.

Anyhow, when he did think of her it was because he was passing the library on the way back from a scavenging mission from the staff room. It had been someone's birthday and there was talk of excellent sausage rolls and lemon tart.

He stopped outside and wondered if he might go in and say hey. Probably a pretty dumb thing to do. He stared down the door as if it could advise him. It didn't. Fine. Stuff it. He'd go in. If it was awkward he could think of an excuse for being there when he saw her. He opened the door and walked into the deathly hush of the cool library.

The staff desks were right down the other end of the library facility and he wandered in their general direction, running a hand along a line of shelves: Legal studies, Atlases, cook books, romantic fiction: 'The Devilish Duchess? Mr. & Mrs. Darcy?' 'The Lonesome Lady Viola' What sort nonsense did these girls read?