Ben bounces on the balls of his feet. The restless energy is all too familiar, but it’s not exactly helpful right now. It’s great when he’s on the field and has to be ready to move at a moment’s notice, but when he’s standing outside the college library with his bag slung over his shoulder it kind of just makes him look a little crazy. Or nervous.

Which he totally isn’t. At all. Absolutely not.

Liar liar pants on fi- wait, I did remember to put pants on, right?

He’s already checking before he can stop to think how stupid that is. There is no way he’d make it all the way from the locker room to the library with no pants on without anybody kicking up a fuss over it. That would’ve been one hell of a thing to explain to campus security. “Yeah, I was in a rush to go study so I forgot my pants.” He wouldn’t even buy that himself.

His teammates totally would’ve let that happen, though. Would’ve just stood there and watched him march right out onto the quad buck-ass naked if they could, he wouldn’t put it past them. They were already giving him shit for needing a tutor in the first place, and he’s not even the first guy on the team to be required to meet with one this semester alone. It’s like more rule than exception at this point, so why’s he the one they’re taking the piss out of for it?

Okay, he knows why Hays finds it so funny, obviously, that guy just likes to torment him any chance he gets. That comment about them “finally doing something about Ben being too stupid to catch a ball” had earned him a shoulder pad to the face to the tune of uproarious laughter from the rest of the bunch. Meanwhile, Diego just had that knowing little smug smile on his face that Ben always makes a point of ignoring entirely. Damn guy sees too much, Ben swears he’s got some kind of ESP specifically tuned to whatever frequency his overactive brain runs on.

Speaking of which, his overactive brain is now trying to convince him that he’s in the wrong place.

Maybe he’s supposed to meet at the other entrance, or even inside the library, or literally anywhere else on the campus than right here. He’s already checked time and place three times today alone, but he’s still fishing his phone out of his pocket to check again. If anybody could check multiple times and still get it wrong, it would totally be him.

He’s thumbing through his messages when a new one chimes in with an obnoxious ping.

`You fall on your ass yet, loverboy?`

Diego. Of course. Of-fucking-course he’s texting him right now for the sole purpose of freaking him out, as if Ben isn’t nervous enough already.

No - not nervous. Totally not nervous. Why would he be? Just because he happens to have been assigned as a tutor after spending more time staring at him than actually listening to the professor during lectures, that’s no reason to be nervous. At all.

Just because he’s so damn smart that every word out of his mouth is like a foreign language Ben can’t decipher to save his life, or the fact that his eyes are like really pretty, or the fact that Ben can’t stop thinking about that one time he made a joke in class that actually made laugh, or -

Another ping out of his phone pulls Ben’s attention back to the screen and he’s writing before he pauses to read.

`Dude, shut up`

The message flies off into the ether with a whoosh, and it’s greeted with another ping. Only this time it’s not his phone, it’s coming from someone else’s just as they round the corner.

pauses right as he appears, and Ben lights up in his signature boyish grin. He raises his hand in greeting, only to freeze when looks at him with furrowed brows. It takes a second for Ben’s brain to catch up, but the way holds his phone-

Ben’s eyes snap back to his screen only to discover that he texted the wrong person. The second message didn’t come from Diego. It came from .

`At the library now. Are you close?`

`Dude, shut up`

Oh no.