Murphy and Me III

Really the only thing I wanted to do with the rest of my night was sit and veg. Be it with Supernatural or regular TV, I just wanted to veg. If someone could tell that to my malfunctioning cable that would be fabulous. Because I live on the fourth floor, there's no traditional lounge with uncomfortable couches and not-quite-new chairs. Also means there's no wall-mounted TV. So, grabbing my blanket, I traipsed downstairs and, seeing no one in the lounge, dumped the blanket on one of the couches and turned on the tube. I couldn't remember the channels exactly, and after some searching and surfing re-discovered the Discovery channel.

Curling up on the couch and chilling with the boys and girl of MythBusters seemed perfect.

I'd left my phone upstairs, knowing I'd be tempted to text Sasha. From the look on her face earlier she had some connecting to do with Cara and I was not getting in the way of that. They needed some good alone time together before pre-season got completely crazy.

The sound of a door closing drew my attention away from the television. There was a room across from the lounge - we called it the Fishbowl because of the windows facing the little table and chairs by the microwave - and someone had either just gone in or just come out. I turned my attention back to the TV - Tori was building...something. Least they weren't yelling at plants in this episode.

"Hi."

Naturally I was startled, so, naturally, I jumped. It was him again. Aviator-guy.

"Hey." I fiddled with the tassels on my blanket. It was one of those DIY ones where the edges were tied together. My teammates had made it for me, as a Senior gift. I wasn't sure how I felt about having it in his presence but it was making me feel safe. "My TV's not working and I don't have a lounge." Tried not to sound apologetic. Or hopeful.

"Cool." He put his hands in his pockets. "I, uh, I live over there." He jerked his head to the Fishbowl. "Devan said there was a girl with a shiner on our couch."

Girl with a shiner. Yup. Definitely made a great first impression on everyone in the parking lot. And then some.

He chewed his bottom lip. Nervously? There was nothing to be nervous about. I didn't bite. Actually, compared to some things, I was relatively harmless, if a bit clumsy at times.

"Do you watch MythBusters?" I asked, grasping at almost anything to talk about, to make the awkward silence disappear.

"It's cool." He sat gingerly in one of the chairs. "But I like Doing DaVinci better. Have you seen it?"

Where a group of guy's built DaVinci's inventions from the same materials he'd have access to? Hell. Yes. Part history, part building, part testing and experimenting with the potential to blow things up? It was pure engineering gold.

I grinned. "Love it."

Which prompted a discussion about which was cooler, Doing DaVinci or MythBusters, which led to 'Favorite TV show' and I was a bit stunned to discover he had a thing for CSI:NY. Which kind of clashed with my love of Supernatural and, by association, Dean Winchester. He supported Gary Sinise and I agree he's a good actor (though from the episodes I've seen, Danny's pretty gorgeous himself) and that somehow led to what are you studying/what do you want to be?

"I think I want to be a teacher," he said. "A history teacher."

Considering I was using teaching as a back up plan in case everything else failed epically, I could see the stability of it. And when he talked about it, and about his love for history, I could see that he meant it. He wanted the same thing I wanted in a job - to wake up in the morning and want to go to work. To be excited about a job, a career. I could identify with that. Completely.

"What about you? What do you want to do?"

Honestly, I wanted to do a lot of things. I wanted to travel all over the place; get my book published; love whatever job I got; and wanted to not be in so much debt in four years.

And I wanted to know if a body that big put out heat like a furnance and was really good for snuggling.

Huh. No idea where that came from.

"I just...I don't know," I answered honestly. "I like to write and I'm in the teaching program, but I don't know what I want to do. Really." And I felt like my time was running out to figure out what exactly I was supposed to "be."

"That's cool, too," he said. There was no condescending tone, no mocking, nothing to hint that he was just humoring me. He was not only genuinely curious, but genuinely serious.

Which bumped him up a couple of pegs in my book.

I rubbed my tired eyes and bit back a curse. I'd forgotten about my literal run-in with a parked truck.

"You okay?" Genuinely concerned.

He was rapidly approaching absolute gentleman status.

"Yeah," I said, cursing my own general stupidity and the attractiveness of the boy in front of me. "Forgot about my eye." Which announced that no only was I a dumbass, but I was a dumbass with a staring problem. Staring at him, that is.

Wait a minute.

We'd been talking for almost an hour and I didn't know the schmuck's name. And he didn't know mine.

"I'm Olivia." It was rather abrupt and probably awkward. Then again, that was me in a nutshell.

He smiled. Held out his hand. "I'm Murphy."

I leaned over, my upper body hanging off the side of the couch, hand protruding from under the blanket. We shook; I then fell gracelessly off the couch, tangled in the blanket and silently cursing my lack of balance and luck.

The irony of his name was not lost on me as he helped me off the floor.