Tsukishima looked down at the book in his hand, then back up at the customer, then back down at the book.

It was a paperback copy of the Iliad that belonged in the Classical Literature section on the second floor. On the cover, some Renaissance painting showed Thetis with a distinctly perturbed Achilles. According to the card in the sleeve in the back cover, the book had been checked out three weeks ago, and was due tomorrow.

Now, Tsukishima had seen some terrible things happen to books in his semester and a half working at the campus library - coffee spills, vomit, Hinata Shouyou. Yes, books were some of the few things that actually touched his cold, stony heart after a childhood spent using them to escape the general unpleasantness of the rest of the world, but he couldn't afford to get sappy about the sanctity of their pages. Any such sentiment had long been unceremoniously crushed.

But… This guy hadn't even tried.

Tsukishima flipped through the pages one more time, then shut the book and put it down on the library checkout desk. The customer was holding out his ID card, as if this would be a perfectly normal transaction.

Tsukishima glanced at the card - Tendou Satori, a junior - and then up to meet the boy's eyes. Tendou's slicked-back hair was cherry-red, his face and cheeks were round, and his eyes were big and droopy like a basset hound. The overall effect would've been vaguely cherubic, but something about the look on his face was unmistakably conniving.

The ludicrously tight red skinny jeans clinging to his legs didn't help, either.

"Tendou?" Tsukishima said. Tendou nodded in confirmation, and Tsukishima continued. "This book is annotated cover to cover in hot pink pen."

"Yes," said Tendou.

"You're going to have to pay for it."

Tendou started extracting his wallet from the back pocket of the skinny jeans. "I keep the book, right?"

Well, that was just underhanded. Tsukishima frowned up at him as he took the bills. "You could've just gone to the bookstore."

The corners of Tendou's mouth twisted upwards. "But then I wouldn't have had a chance to talk to the hot librarian."

…Oh.

Tsukishima paused midway through putting the bills into the drawer, and studied him. Tendou's smirk curled across his face, and his droopy eyes gleamed with confidence. Arrogance, even.

"Well, I hope you weren't expecting to win me over with vandalism," Tsukishima said after a moment, because Tendou looked like he was expecting him to start blushing and stuttering, and there was no way he would give him that satisfaction.

"Hmm, true, you don't exactly seem like a troublemaker." Tendou, irritatingly, didn't seem put off in the slightest. "No offense or anything. I dig the nerd look."

"I sincerely hope you aren't suffering the delusion that I give a shit what you think is hot."

"You ever think of wearing sweater vests? That would really top off the whole geek thing."

"It couldn't possibly be worse than red skinny jeans," Tsukishima muttered.

"Ha!" Tendou half-choked on a surprised laugh. "Funny. For a nerd."

"You realize I just insulted you, right?"

"True. But I think I like you."

"I definitely dislike you."

Tendou's eyes glinted, and his smile curled up in distinct malice. "Ah, well, that's the whole fun of it, isn't it?"

…Perhaps dislike wouldn't be a strong enough word for it.

While Tsukishima silently pondered the vocabulary of his rapidly growing distaste, Tendou was bending down to pick up his backpack and stuff the desecrated Iliad into the front pocket. Well, at least the end of this encounter would make one nice thing about Tsukishima's morning. "Thanks for the book, nerd."

"That's not my name." And damn it, his voice was too contrary - Tendou was getting a rise out of him, and judging by his smug fucking face, he knew it.

"I know it's not. It says Tsukishima on your nametag." Tendou picked up his backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and turned to go with one last parting smirk thrown over his shoulder. "Later, nerd."

And he and his red skinny jeans swished out the door.

Tsukishima was not a religious man, but in that moment, he prayed with an ardor that that was the last he would see of Tendou Satori.

Atheism proved itself once again when three days later, around ten P.M., Tendou was back. He strode right up to the desk, stood in front of Tsukishima, and waited - probably expecting a "how can I help you today?" or "nice to see you again" or "why the FUCK are you still wearing red skinny jeans".

Instead, Tsukishima just stared at him. Under his cool gaze, Tendou's expectant look wavered, then dissolved into his eyes darting down to the desk and back up to Tsukishima. Before long, he was buzzing with nervous energy, shifting back and forth between his feet, tugging at the fingers of one hand and then the other. Tsukishima still hadn't said a word.

"I hoped you'd be here!" Tendou burst out finally.

Tsukishima raised one eyebrow. "Are you stalking me?"

"Hey, I'm not that creepy."

"So you admit you're creepy?"

"I - no!" And there was something viciously satisfying about the split-second squeak in his voice and the near-imperceptible flush that rose to his cheeks under Tsukishima's sardonic smile. Tendou plowed on anyways. "I need help with some research."

"I'm not a reference librarian," Tsukishima informed him. Thank god, because he'd seen what Yachi went through every time Kageyama and Hinata had a paper due. "You'll have to go to the reference desk on the second floor for that."

"It's a particularly key piece of information - I really think you're the only one who can help me with it." Tendou swiped his tongue across his lips, watching Tsukishima carefully.

Tsukishima didn't say anything to that either. His unfortunately keen intuition told him in no uncertain terms that Tendou would ask anyways.

"Your own personal call number?"

"No," said Tsukishima instantly.

"I mean your phone number," Tendou clarified.

"I understand that. No."

"Your Dewey digits?"

"Absolutely not."

"Uh." Tendou drummed his fingers on the desk. "The location of the High School Musical 2 DVD, so we could watch it together?"

Well, now this was personal. "Why would you even want something like that?"

"Don't you think the second High School Musical was the best?"

"What? No."

"Really?" Tendou seemed genuinely surprised. "Even though it had I Don't Dance?'

"The first High School Musical was the only good product of that entire franchise." It was really incredible - just when he thought Tendou couldn't get any more horrid, there was something new. "Sequels are terrible on principle."

"You're a librarian, you should really be open to all literary concepts."

"I - I'm not getting paid a miserable work-study wage to explain that Kenny Ortega's reuse of tracklist structure and villain were just lazy directing!"

"Maybe it's because you are the exact opposite of fabulous," Tendou suggested, still looking far too amused.

Tsukishima sniffed. "Maybe it's because you can't have a high school musical that doesn't even take place at school."

"Don't you think summer vacation is just as important to the high school experience? Hmm, I suppose you don't seem like the type who had fun in high school…"

This was absolutely the most inane fucking conversation Tsukishima had ever taken part in, including some truly idiotic discussions Hinata had sucked him into in regrettable days gone by. But he couldn't just let someone walk around in human society praising High School Musical 2, even if Tendou was probably part lizard man himself in the first place. And so he found himself drawn into the argument nonetheless, getting more and more animated about his cause, until-

BZZZZZZT!

Tendou startled and fell off the desk onto his ass, which Tsukishima found hilarious. (He himself had taken months to stop jumping out of his skin whenever the buzzer sounded, but Tendou didn't need to know that.)

"Is that an alarm?" Tendou demanded from the floor.

"Well, you do seem pretty alarmed," Tsukishima snickered to himself.

Tendou's face scrunched into a pout. "I hope this place burns down with you in it, you know that?"

Tsukishima smiled down at him, sweet as saccharine. "I hope your tailbone is so bruised you can't sit down for a week."

Tendou hopped up and brushed himself off, eyes glinting with mischief. "I can think of other ways to make my ass-"

"ALRIGHT, IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO LEAVE," Tsukishima interrupted, cutting Tendou off before he could say something even more terrible than usual. "It was time for you to leave two hours ago, actually," he added on second thought. "But the library is actually closing now."

Tendou gnawed on his lower lip, watching him with that lidded gaze that crawled under Tsukishima's skin like an insect infestation. "You could walk me home."

Tsukishima gave him a look he usually reserved for Kageyama's volleyball shorts. "Not a chance."

One corner of Tendou's mouth quirked up. "What if I don't want to walk home alone?"

"I would ask what led you to believe I give a shit."

"What if I'm afraid of the dark?"

There was a surprisingly serious note to Tendou's voice, and Tsukishima hesitated, glanced up at Tendou, and then fixed him with his sharpest gaze.

Fuck. Did he mention that his intuition was unfortunately keen? He wished he weren't perceptive enough to recognize that Tendou was telling the truth.

"...I really hate you, you know that?" he said, instead of acquiescing aloud.

Tendou looked delighted. "You're pretty awful yourself."

Well, Tsukishima mused to himself as Tendou waited for him by the front door and he closed up the library for the night, I can work with that.

To: stendou
From: libraryandtechnologyservices
March 16, 3:18 P.M.
Mr. Tendou,
This is an automated reminder that your loaned book, Brokeback Mountain, was due two days ago, on March 14th. Please return the book to the bin in the foyer of the library as soon as possible. Your fee will be twenty-five yen per day late per book.
Library and Technology Services
College University

To: libraryandtechnologyservices
From: stendou
March 16, 4:02 P.M.
Worried about your precious book, Tsukki? Don't worry, I'll get this one back to you intact, I just need to do some more research. And with what I learn, I might have to check you out next ;)

To: stendou
From: libraryandtechnologyservices
March 16, 4:28 P.M.
Tendou I swear to fucking God if you draw on this one too I'll lock you in the basement with the rats and the past editions of Principles of Economics

To: stendou
From: libraryandtechnologyservices
March 17, 10:03 A.M.
Mr. Tendou,
We apologize for the tone of the previous message. Please return the book at your earliest convenience.
Ittetsu Takeda
Head Librarian
Library and Technology Services
College University

Tsukishima's emotions at any given time could generally be described as "ugh". But there were degrees of "ugh", varying from a passive disgusted "...ugh" with the world at large to CAPS LOCK FLASHING RED UGH. Over the course of life as he knew it, UGH had been relatively rare, and didn't tend to last more than a few minutes at once before his world-weary malaise reasserted itself.

Thanks to Tendou, he was learning firsthand what it felt like to be at UGH for hours on end. It was kind of impressive, honestly. In theory, there was a limit to how long he could spend at UGH, but even when Tendou wasn't showing up at the library checkout desk during his shifts, it was always there, lurking in the back of his mind - a muted, yet ever-present UGH reminding him that, somewhere out there, Tendou Satori existed.

Then again, perhaps he had reached the limit of UGH, several weeks ago. Perhaps a world with Tendou in it was simply an echo chamber of UGH that Tsukishima was doomed to rattle around in forever. Perhaps this was a trial from God.

Then again again, he had never heard of a trial from God that involved a copy of Brokeback Mountain.

On cue, a book thumped down on the desk in front of Tsukishima. He lifted his eyes enough to see the silhouettes of two horseback riders on the cover and the title text reading BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, then a few feet higher to see Tendou's now-familiar smirk.

Incredible. Tendou hadn't even said anything yet, and Tsukishima was already seething with hatred. He couldn't remember the last time he'd met someone who irritated him so easily and quickly.

"I've come to return my book," Tendou announced unnecessarily.

"Bring it to the book drop," Tsukishima instructed him. He jerked his chin towards the bin on the other side of the foyer.

Tendou looked over at the bin, then turned back to Tsukishima and smiled at him. "Mm. No."

"I can't process returns at this desk after five PM."

"Don't I owe you some money?"

"I won't say no if you want to give me cash of your own volition, but the fees are just added to your school bill."

"Well, see," said Tendou, and he leaned down to prop his elbows on the desk and his chin on his hands, grin oozing across his face like a slime mold, "I want to talk to you."

"I could just leave it here on the desk, to accumulate dust and late charges," Tsukishima mused.

"You could," Tendou agreed. "I'd owe all of twelve hundred yen by the end of the year. But I'm guessing that, thanks to that email, you're already on thin ice with your supervisor. Can't imagine how he'd react if you neglected to check in a book that some poor, brain-dead student accidentally left in the wrong place, hmm?"

Tsukishima blinked. Tendou smiled back, all wide-eyed innocence.

I think I might actually hate him?

Additionally, Tendou was wearing the red skinny jeans again. This was really the strawberry on top of the infuriating shortcake, and it occurred to Tsukishima that expressing his ire would neatly change the subject. "Do you ever even wash those jeans?"

Tendou quirked an eyebrow, put a hand on one red-denim-clad hip and cocked it. "Been watching, hmm?"

"Like hell."

"Sure, sure," said Tendou. "I have seven pairs. One for each day of the week."

Tsukishima regarded him with a look that he could only hope expressed his abject disgust with the way Tendou was as a person.

"This is my Wednesday pair," Tendou continued, utterly unaffected.

Tsukishima pointed towards the door. "I really think that a lifestyle like that is grounds for removal from the library."

"Sure." Tendou smirked down at him. "If you want that badly to enjoy the view."

He stood up from the desk and headed towards the door, and, well, with an invitation like that-

Tendou never had to know.

Several hours later, Tsukishima carried the copy of Brokeback Mountain over to the book drop bin and tossed it in, hating Tendou more every step of the way.

"You know," said Tsukishima conversationally, "libraries are generally used for studying. And yet, you've never once used your time here to do anything productive. Which I really hope means that you're failing all your classes."

"Mm. Someone's gotta balance you out." Tendou hoisted himself up onto the desk, putting the Tuesday pair of red skinny jeans far too close to Tsukishima's open textbook. "I'm pretty sure you're studying every time I see you."

"Thinking about how much I hate economics helps me pretend you don't exist." Without looking up from his textbook, Tsukishima reached down to take a ruler out of the top drawer and used it to prod Tendou none too gently in the side. "Get off the desk."

Tendou grinned, swatting the ruler away. "And yet, you're getting used to me being here, aren't you?"

"Rest assured, I still hate you as fervently as ever."

Tendou managed to catch the ruler in his grip and yanked, hard. Tsukishima kept hold for half a beat, just to prove that he could, and then let go, and Tendou nearly toppled off the desk with the force of his pull. It was one of the nicest things Tsukishima had seen all week.

Strangely enough, though, Tendou was right. Working the front desk was unimaginably boring during the empty night hours and mind-numbingly frustrating during the slightly-busier daytime, and the distraction that Tendou provided weren't entirely unwelcome. And his attempts at flirtation never got worse than laughably pathetic; his weird smile was unnerving, but he'd never overstepped his boundaries. He was… Tolerable.

In some ways, at least. Tsukishima hadn't been lying about his fervent hatred.

"Nice to know you have such passionate feelings for me," Tendou singsonged, right on cue.

"It's really not surprising." Tsukishima flipped a page. "Your insistence on embarrassing yourself at every possible opportunity boggles the mind."

Tendou hummed, leaned back against the upper shelf of the desk and watched Tsukishima's pencil scritch down a graph on his notebook. And just as Tsukishima was beginning to muse on the disturbing fact that he did tend to do outlandish things like expressing human emotion when Tendou was around, even if that emotion was abject hatred, Tendou spoke up: "Hey, I'm bored. We should make out in the manga section."

Goddammit.

It was like he ran on some primal instinct in the back of his skull that told him exactly when and how to ruin a moment. Tsukishima would've been impressed by his unerring sense for the absolute worst thing to say at any given time if he hadn't been the one who bore the brunt of it.

"It'd be hot," Tendou added, oblivious.

The look on Tsukishima's face could've curdled milk.

"Is that a yes?"

"I cannot think of a single place I would like to make out less."

Tendou studied him with that now-familiar disquieting gaze. Tsukishima pointedly kept his eyes on his homework. "Classics, then? Or Art History? German Politics could get a little dusty-"

"I still don't know where you got the impression that I want to make out with you in the first place?"

"You still haven't said you don't," he pressed. "And I know I'm not unattractive."

"Unfortunately, your personality ruins it all."

Tendou leered in triumph. "So you admit I'm attractive?"

"Yes," said Tsukishima without missing a beat.

He didn't look up from his textbook, but there was something wonderfully satisfying about the sound of Tendou choking on his own saliva.

"So - so you - you actually - you mean-"

Tsukishima closed his book with a snap of finality, and Tendou shut up. His eyes were bright and a little unfocused, and under Tsukishima's gaze, his tongue darted out to nervously swipe over his lips.

"I mean," said Tsukishima, quietly enough that only Tendou would be able to hear him, "that if I'm going to see what you look like disheveled and wrecked under my lips, it's not going to be up against fucking Naruto."

Tendou's eyes went about the size of dinner plates, and he began to draw in a breath to inevitably shout something noisy and half-baked. Tsukishima raised a single finger, and Tendou cut himself off again, eyes gleaming with excitement.

"Do not yell," Tsukishima ordered him, voice velvety and frigid. He stood up halfway, slid out from behind the check-out desk, and straightened up to his full height next to Tendou.

"You're taller than me," Tendou sighed, unmistakably delighted.

Oh - now that he thought about it, Tendou had never actually seen him standing up. "You're into it?"

"Mm-"

Tsukishima's fingers caught around Tendou's wrist and trailed up the underside of his forearm, and Tendou shuddered head to toe.

"Ancient History, then," Tendou said, voice a little higher than usual.

Too easy.

Too easy to draw Tendou deep into the stacks, too easy to twine their fingers together and press him back against the books. Too easy to slot his leg between Tendou's in those fucking ridiculous red skinny jeans and listen to the breathy noises falling out of his mouth as Tsukishima nibbled along his collarbone and up his neck and then swallowed the sounds with a hard, bruising kiss. Too easy to take him apart into shivery, wide-eyed pieces.

"You're a mess," Tsukishima observed. He bit down on Tendou's lower lip and dragged it through his teeth, watching with detached interest as Tendou arched up under him, then released him to add, "It's kind of pathetic."

Tendou was shivering, but he leaned in closer, eyes glittering - too calculating - and breathed against Tsukishima's mouth, "Who said I minded?"

Tsukishima had meant the too easy rhetorically, but he thought about it for hours after Tendou put himself together and left with a wicked smile in Tsukishima's direction. When he closed up the library at the end of his shift that night, he still wasn't sure which one of them had gotten played.

There was really only one way to find out, and so over the next few weeks, Tsukishima gained a very intimate knowledge of the benefits and detriments of different sections of the library. In the long, dull hours of his Tendou-less shifts, he even started mentally grading them - for instance:

Ancient History: A, there was something perversely erotic about covering Tendou's mouth with one hand to muffle the noises Tsukishima could still feel rumbling against his lips as he sucked dark red marks into the side of Tendou's throat and pressed him back against HOMOSOCIALITY IN HOMERIC GREECE,

Fiction: B, the stacks were relatively private but Tendou wouldn't stop snickering about "pleasure reading",

German Politics: F, Tendou had been right about the dust and Tsukishima went to nibble on Tendou's ears and accidentally sneezed into his ear canal instead and nobody got laid that night,

American Literature: D, the section was dead empty and right next to the vending machines and the Coca-Cola machine was making some strange rhythmic thumping noise and Tendou suggested that they take advantage of the machine's noise to cover their own and Tsukishima suggested that maybe if they did that Tendou would be able to keep a rhythm when he rode him for once, and Tendou took the jab as a challenge so really it didn't turn out half bad but then Tsukishima was obligated to give it a D for the sake of the terrible innuendo,

And so on and so forth, to the point that Tendou got to the library late one night, when one stressed-looking senior toiling at their thesis carrel was the only human life in the building besides the two of them, and didn't even bother greeting Tsukishima before he asked, "When does your shift end?"

"Eleven o'clock."

Tendou glanced at the clock on the wall behind Tsukishima. "So, fifteen minutes. Come meet me."

Tsukishima raised a bored eyebrow. "What if I just go home instead?"

"I won't stop you. But you're not going to do that, are you." It wasn't a question. Tendou smirked down at him, arrogant as ever. "Trust me, I can read you like a book."

"I've seen your books," Tsukishima muttered. "You mark them all up."

He realized what he had said half a beat too late. Tendou was already cackling.

"Would you shut up?" Tsukishima bit out, snippier than usual in his embarrassment. "We're in a library."

"I'll meet you on the fourth floor," Tendou told him, still sounding entirely too smug. "In the section by the armchairs. In fifteen minutes."

Despite Tsukishima's better judgment, eleven o'clock found him in the elevator up to the fourth floor. Once he got to the armchairs, though, a horribly unpleasant realization made itself known to him.

Tsukishima had worked in the library for a semester and a half, and yet, somehow, he had managed to forget exactly what section lay on the fourth floor by the armchairs.

The manga section.

Tsukishima decided, with cold malice, that he would be particularly mean today, just for this.

Not that Tendou would mind. Fucking masochist.

Tendou and the Friday pair of the damn red skinny jeans were standing about two-thirds of the way down the aisle, leaning back against the bookshelf and reading a book that was open to display black-and-white comic book panels. He didn't look up, even at the sound of Tsukishima's curtly annoyed steps as he strode towards him like a peevish blond praying mantis - didn't praying mantises kill their mates after sex? Tsukishima was considering it already-

And then, astonishingly, Tendou raised a finger to stop Tsukishima just as he was about to open his mouth and give Tendou a tongue-lashing in whichever sense of the term caught his fancy first.

"Can you hold on for a moment?" Tendou said. "I want to finish this chapter."

Holy shit.

"You made me to come to the manga section," Tsukishima began, hoping that the calm tone of his voice conveyed his utter fury, "and now you're asking me to wait so you can read One Piece?"

"Yeah, yeah, sorry, I just - I started reading, and now I'm into it, you know?"

"I-" Tsukishima took a deep breath, smoothed down his fiery rage and focused it into cold, hard hatred. "Tendou, I want you to know you are, indisputably, the worst person I have ever met."

Tendou fluttered one distracted hand in his direction. "Okay, yes, but the narrative expectations set up in the first few chapters when Luffy originally gets his straw hat are - wait, Tsukishima - Tsukishima, come back - Tsukki!"

But Tsukishima was already gone, leaving Tendou with only a volume of One Piece for company.

The praying mantis route was looking more appealing by the day.