A piece in media res from a larger work that I am (slowly, oh goodness so slowly) working on. I am seriously in love with the show The Librarians, and Eve-Flynn just MAKES ME HAPPY. So does Ezekiel/Cassandra/Jacob... Hmm. that might have to be next. Also, snarky Jenkins.

In any case, have some angst and a teaser for a multi-fic.

Thirty-Five Hundred Years

Flynn's sneakers squeaked across the polished floor as he dashed toward her retreating form. He was not going to let her sneak out on him, not this time! Her own gait picked up speed accordingly, until she was running from him into the labyrinthine stacks of the Library.

He gave chase.

He caught up with her deep in the heart of the Library, farther in than he was sure anyone else had been in a long time. It seemed that either she was lost, or maybe the Library was helping him out a bit by changing its layout because she was boxed in on three sides by tall book cases and on the fourth side—

On the fourth side she was boxed in by him.

He slowed his steps as he neared her, from mad dash to slow walk until eventually he stopped, forty feet away from her. Her back was to him, and as he panted for breath (Bloody hell but the woman could run! Sheesh, when did I get this out of shape?), he let his eyes skip over every detail:

Her hair was still as brightly blonde as ever, still coiled in a tight, no-nonsense bun at the base of her skull. She still carried herself like the warrior—like the Guardian—that she was. Then he started to pick out other, smaller details, like the end of a scar on the back of her neck. It looked almost like a rope burn—his eyes darted down her heaving shoulders, absently noticing the way she seemed to be hunching in on herself, still refusing to turn and face him—he noticed her hands, opening and closing, fluttering by her sides like small, terrified baby birds. There were new scars on her hands.

Were there new scars in other places, too? He supposed they'd technically be old scars, now, at least to her. But they'd be new to him, and he hoped she'd share them with him.

He began to walk toward her, his movements slow and clearly telegraphed and his hands held lightly out at his sides, the way someone might approach a dangerously spooked animal.

…well she is probably the most dangerous person in the Library, even with her back turned to me. So it's still a correct metaphor but maybe I shouldn't mention that to her until later, he thought to himself. He focused on slowing his breathing, too, from the harsh pants of exertion to something a little calmer.

Her shoulders twitched and jumped with every step he made, and he would swear she would have climbed right over the bookcases if the Library would have let her. He opened his mouth, but she spoke before he could say a word.

"You should let me go." Her voice was a low rasp, harsh with what sounded like anger—except that she still had her back to him, except that she was still hunching her shoulders in on herself as if expecting him to attack her.

"Why, Eve?"

She flinched at her name, rocking forward on the toes of her boots before saying, "I—"

"I think this conversation would work much better face to face, don't you?" he asked lightly, still moving slowly toward her. "More visual cues, and—"

She spun around to face him, with an expression somewhere between desperate affection, apprehension, and aggression. Her hands had stopped fluttering in panic, and were clenched into tight fists which she propped on her hips.

"Just stop, Librarian," she said, almost sounding like she used to when barking out commands at him. So he stopped, now ten feet away from her, so close he could probably reach her before she could do anything to get away…

"Okay, I stopped," he said, spreading his hands and arms further apart from his body, trying to look as harmless as possible.

"Happy now?" she snapped. "Face to face. Now move out of the way and let me go and we'll never speak of this again."

"But I don't want to."

She made an aggravated sound. "I know you babble, Librarian, but even you probably don't want anyone else to hear about this particular adventure. So please—"

"No, Eve, I mean I don't want to let you go."

She froze. "Don't say that," she said hoarsely, squeezing her eyes shut. "Don't—you can't say that."

"Why not?" With her eyes closed, Flynn started moving forward again. He froze and put on his most innocent and unassuming facial expression when her eyes snapped open and she glared at him, taking her hands off her hips to cross her arms over her chest. He hoped she would believe that expression, because he was done acting like the Librarian she was used to dealing with. The Librarian that Eve Baird was used to dealing with was more than a bit of a scatterbrain, if he was honest enough to admit that to himself. But Eve Baird had never seen Flynn truly focus on an artifact, and she had no idea that he was now focused on her.

"Because," she told him. "Just—just because."

"Well that's not an answer," he told her blithely, keeping his face as earnest and open as possible. "You should know that by now, Eve. Why can't I say that I don't want to let you go?"

"Stop it," she gritted out through clenched teeth, digging her fingers into her own upper arms, trying to focus on that mild pain instead of the nauseating whirlwind in her stomach that come from being here, in this place, with him. "Stop saying that."

"Saying what?"

"You know exactly what, Librarian!" she snapped heatedly.

"What happened to just calling me Flynn? It's my name, you know. You only call me Librarian when you're miffed at me. Or sometimes when flirting, I think, but I don't flirt with anyone other than you, and—"

Eve flinched, again, this time at the sound of his name. "I know your name, Librarian," she said with less heat in her voice. Flynn stole another step closer as she continued with, "And who says I'm not mad at you?"

"Probably the fact that you won't look at me." This whole time, even though she was facing him, her eyes had avoided looking at him as much as possible. He'd watched her eyes bounce from his sneakers to his bag to his shoulders to the flower on his jacket lapel, and to the book shelves around them and the various books and items held there and then back to his shoulders.

Now, though, her eyes flew to meet his even as her mouth opened in indignation. He took another step closer, and she immediately took one step backward, bumping her shoulders against the bookcase. He took another step closer.

"Now, Librarian—"

"Flynn, Eve." He continued to take slow, measured steps toward her. She had nowhere to go; her back was literally against the wall in the case (and was it just him or did the bookcases on either side suddenly seem much closer together than when they first ran down this dead end? Flynn would swear the Library was almost helping him out right now by guaranteeing she couldn't run past him). The remaining ten feet between them disappeared quickly, regardless of his slow speed.

"What? Librar—"

"Flynn. Say it, Eve." By now he was right in front of her, the tips of his sneakers pressed right up against the toes of her boots. She was leaning backwards, away from him, letting her weight rest on the bookcase behind her as if she might somehow gain the ability to phase through it like Kitty Pryde from the X-Men comics. So Flynn leaned forward, just slightly, and said again, "Say it, Eve. Say my name. Stop calling me 'Librarian' and say my name."

She stared up at him, shaking her head minutely as her eyes widened almost impossibly. Her lungs began to heave; Flynn absently noted the rapid rise-and-fall of her chest and the raspy wheeze of air that she gulped into her lungs.

"Eve—" he began, almost ready to growl.

"I waited thirty-five hundred years for you."

That sentence stopped him cold.

"What?" The one word barely managed to force itself out past the the sudden thousand whirling thoughts in his brain, each one cluttering up his throat and trying to be said even as he discarded half of them and then half again of what remained. "What?"

"Thirty-five hundred years, Librarian," Eve gasped out, her hands having fallen from their position of crossed over her chest to now clutch at the bookshelf behind her. "Thirty-five hundred years have passed since I shoved you through that portal, and you know history almost better than Jenkins." Her breath was ragged.

"But—you were supposed to follow me through," Flynn stammered out. "That was the plan! You fend them off while I opened the portal, and then you were supposed to be right behind me. You promised!"

"I lied," Eve said, closing her eyes again.

"Why? And how are you not, I mean—thirty-five hundred years?" Flynn asked, bewildered. Eve opened her eyes and this time stared directly into his own.

"Because otherwise you would have stayed behind and died with me." She smiled crookedly at his rapid blinking of disbelief. "Remember the priest, the one who headed the faction trying to bring Apep back into the daylight?" Flynn nodded, dumbly, and Eve continued: "He was planning to follow us through and try again here. We—you—had destroyed his power too thoroughly for that time. And you still had the statue. He needed that, as his focus." Here her eyes slid closed once again. "And he also just wanted to kill you." She swallowed, hard, before opening her eyes and whispering, "I couldn't let him do that. So I lied to you, shoved you through, and closed it behind you."

Flynn's own throat worked convulsively, his mouth opening and closing without saying anything. "Eve—"

She shook her head just once, sharply. "Don't," she ordered. "Don't you dare, Librarian. That's what Guardians are for."

"You know you're not just a Guardian to me!" Flynn burst out, his hands flying from where they'd hung lax at his sides to grab onto the edge of the book shelf behind Eve's shoulders. "You've never been just that!"

"I—I know, Librarian," Eve said shakily, licking her lips as a nervous tic and Flynn just about lost his mind.

"Say my name, Eve," he begged her, leaning his body toward hers, resting more of his weight on the bookshelf he was holding onto. "For the love of anything, Eve, just say my name."

"I can't." She was shaking her head almost violently. "I can't, Librarian, please."

"Why?" Flynn demanded, and her eyes rose to meet his squarely once more.

"Thirty-five hundred years, Librarian," Eve repeated slowly. "I closed that portal after shoving you through it, and then I killed that priest. We fought, and I knocked him dizzy, and I took his own sword and ripped open his belly with it. Then I went and killed every single one of his acolytes in that temple, and if they weren't dead when I walked out then they were definitely dead when I burned it to the ground. I'm pretty sure their last words were a curse on me, and I guess it worked since I'm still around." Her voice became shakier with every word, until she was biting them out in sounds somewhere between a sob and a scream. "Thirty-five hundred years, Librarian! I survived thirty-five hundred years of human history, and not by keeping my hands clean. I'm one of the monsters, now, although I'm not sure I was ever really decent enough to begin with. After all, NATO has its own skeletons in the closet, and usually from counter-terrorism!" She laughed, a rusty, hysterical sound. "So I can't say your name, Librarian. I spent thirty-five hundred years without you, and I'm still not sure this isn't part of that curse from that fucking cult!" Her laughter grew ever more ragged and hysterical.

The next thing Eve knew, she was being crushed against Flynn; his chest was pressed close to hers and his arms were wrapped tight around her with one hand clutching her lower back and the other cradling the back of her skull. Still laughing and crying, and shaking with the whiplash energy of hysteria, Eve's hands instinctively curled in the fabric of Flynn's jacket, her fingers locking tight around this bit of tactile evidence of reality, until she realized what she was doing and tried to break away.

"I'm real, Eve," Flynn told her, over and over and over. She twisted and bucked and tried to get loose, but Flynn held her firm to him. "I'm real, and you're real, and you're home, Guardian. Eve. Eve. I promise. You're real, and I'm here, and you are not a monster. You're Eve Baird, my Guardian. You're here, and I'm here, and you are not a monster. No more thirty-five hundred years alone. Your next thirty-five hundred years are mine."

The sound that Eve made then was unrecognizable as anything other than: "Flynn." She stopped fighting him, and clung ever closer instead, repeating his name over and over again. "Flynn. Flynn. Flynn. Flynn."

Flynn began to press small kisses over any part of Eve's skin that he could reach without letting go of her. So he mostly ended up kissing her hairline and forehead and cheek and ears and jawline, over and over and over as her fingers dug small crescents into the skin of his back and shoulders even through his clothing. He went to kiss her cheek one more time and she turned her head, meetings his lips with her own.

She practically consumed him. Not that Flynn minded, of course, but he was pretty sure this would count as a PTSD reaction and if anyone qualified for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder then it would probably be the woman in his arms who had lived through most of the recorded annals of human history. So maybe he shouldn't be kissing her? Or, well, she was kissing him, but should he stop her? Or should he—

"I can hear you thinking," she growled at him against his lips, and his eyes popped open.

When did my eyes close? Flynn wondered, almost dopily, to himself.

"Stop thinking," Eve ordered. She was still shaky—she knew it, he knew it; she knew that he knew it, and she also knew that he knew that she knew he knew (and she needed to stop right there before she started sounding like him, too)—but there was more of herself in that voice, too. "Stop thinking and kiss me."

"Um," Flynn replied eloquently. Eve wormed her hands under his arms and fisted her hands in the lapels of his jacket to pull him closer, if possible.

"I have been waiting thirty-five hundred years for you. For this. So help me God, Flynn, if you do not kiss me, and kiss me properly, right now—" She was cut off by Flynn's mouth slanting over hers, and he pressed her backward into the bookcase as he kissed her. They broke apart minutes later to gasp for air, and then Flynn was kissing her again. And again. And again and again and again—until the two of them had slid down to sit on the floor, this time with Flynn against the bookcase and with Eve in his lap, his arms wrapped close around her as their foreheads rested against the other's.

Neither of them was keeping very good track of time at this point, but when Eve stirred in Flynn's lap what felt like hours later, his arms tightened around her to hold her in place. As if to prevent her from leaving.

"I'm still not letting you go," Flynn muttered into the curve of Eve's neck, where his head had fallen to after a while. "I'm not. I meant it—the next thirty-five hundred years of yours are mine."

"I'd kind of like to get off the floor," Eve said simply. "As comfortable as you are, I would kill for a real bed. And food. And a shower."

Flynn looked up questioningly at that set of comments. If Eve had lived through the last three and a half millenia consecutively and chronologically, then wouldn't she already have a bed and a shower and food of her own? Why would she want anoth—oh.

"Oh."

…he may have said that last one aloud. Flynn was pretty sure he'd said it aloud, because Eve's eyes were crinkling at him, the way she always used to laugh at him.

"Yes," she said. "Oh."

So Flynn loosened his hold on her (only slightly) so she could stand, and then Eve helped him to his feet after which he promptly wrapped an arm around her again.

"Let's go home, Guardian," he said.

"For you, Librarian," Eve said, looking straight ahead, "I'll go anywhere."

Flynn's arm tightened around Eve's shoulders. "I love you, too, Eve," he whispered huskily.

Eve's response was to wrap one her arms around his waist and hold tight.