Archive of Our Own ^beta

Noelle’s phone buzzes in the middle of class.

Her pine tree pencil pauses on the page, partway through the slide of notes she’d been copying. She rarely gets notifications during class, her phone typically laying silent at the corner of her desk, only there to snap pictures of the board when needed. Not even her mother texts or calls her during class, as she’ll usually just call Miss Alphys herself and have her relay the message for the whole class to hear. She wonders, foolishly, if perhaps her mom has finally gotten the sense of how embarrassing that is and has switched to one-on-one communication.

Checking that Miss Alphys isn’t looking at her (not that it’d matter if she was– Noelle knows she wouldn’t say anything anyway, but it’s the principle of the thing), she subtly tilts her phone screen up from the desk to quickly glimpse her new message.

Of course, she was wrong about it being her mom. Not surprising. But she is surprised to see who it actually is.

Noelle throws all mindfulness out the window as she hurriedly swipes her lock screen away, opening her text history with Susie.

They don't text often, since they can typically see each other in person whenever. So the actual conversations are sparse, mostly plans to meet and one-word confirmations, interspersed with the occasional romantic sap on particularly charged days. She smiles at their last exchange, being of the romantic and sappy nature, before actually looking at what Susie sent.

It's a short, looping gif of a huge lizard gnawing on the leg of an oddly content deer. There's a watermark in the corner lost to the natural quality degradation of shared gifs over time. Susie’s typing bubble pops up, bouncing beneath the gif for a few seconds before another message appears:

suz ♡
[ !;!!! us ]

Noelle stifles a giggle into her collar. She turns back to look at Susie, all the way in the back of class where Miss Alphys won't even think to glance at her (out of ignorance or fear), shamelessly sat hunched over desk with her snout buried in her phone screen. She notes, offhand, that Kris is dead asleep at their desk in front of her, with eraser shavings in their hair and sharpie scribbled on wherever skin is bare, indicative of Susie having gotten bored of their lack of response to her bugging them. That must be why she's texting Noelle. That, or she just loves her and thought of her, which Noelle can allow herself to believe now without calling herself crazy or burning herself out in a fiery flush.

Susie sees her looking, face shifting from a dull stare to a beaming grin, and it still makes Noelle’s heart melt no matter how many times she sees it. She returns a smile, much softer but still adoring, and turns back to her desk to reread the message a few times before putting her phone back down. How cute!

She's about to grab her pencil when her phone goes off again.

She doesn't hesitate this time, picking her phone back up and swiping up to see the message without looking. Susie again, of course, with another to-the-point text:

suz ♡
[ ?????/?us ??)?????? ]

Noelle stares at her screen, a bit confused. The shrill screech of a shifting desk from behind redirects her to Susie, now looking right at her with something like a pout. She's upset? She’s…?

Ah! Noelle turns to her phone again to type out as fast as she can:

You
[ Us :3 ]

She sends a pre-saved cat nodding yes gif, and waits a moment while Susie’s typing bubble dances around again. Shortly, she gets her response:

suz ♡
[ ⟩:∆ ]

The familiar smiley emoticon that she's literally never seen anybody else use makes her chest warm. So cute!!! She thinks again, wondering how she got so lucky to be dating the most adorable girl in the world. She’ll have to tell Susie that later and see how flustered it makes her.

The projector screen at the front of the class clicks into the next slide, and Noelle realizes she forgot to finish writing her notes. Her pencil lays abandoned on her opened page.

Oh, well. She knows all this stuff already.

She opens the gif search bar on her custom Cat Petterz keyboard, opens the animals category, and starts looking.