Author's Note:

This is pure fluff (with a side of angst because, dammit, I can't help myself). I'm dedicating this one to all the librarians out there because y'all make the world go round. Updates will be once a week though things will be dicey in August and I cannot promise I'll have internet access each week while I'm traveling. So don't be worried if you don't get an update – they're coming! I think this will end up being a series I'll return to after I get done with bigger stories. As always, I love to hear your thoughts on the story/characters/favorite foods/world peace – whatever you want to share. Enjoy!


Whatever Leonard McCoy was expecting, this is not it. When he decided to hunt down Ariadne Demopoulos, he expected to find….well, not this. Everything about it throws him off – the warm, eclectic office is decorated with a mix of art from around the world, a Moroccan rug on the floor with a beat-up yet comfy-looking overstuffed chair and ottoman in the corner and a bright yellow cart behind the desk, overflowing with books. Next to the cart is an equally bold yellow footstool – like the ones found in libraries everywhere but Leonard is pretty sure he's never seen a yellow one before. On top of the stool is a potted plant – there are plants all over the place, actually. The whole office feels more like a room in someone's house. He looks at the various images she has tacked up on her bulletin board – the frame is lined with postcards of various works of art but the center of the board includes ACLU bumper stickers, Shepard Fairey's "We the People" prints, and handwritten quotes from various works of fiction. She watches his eyes rove over the bulletin board.

"Normally, I go to the professor's office if we're gonna meet," Aerie tells him and when he looks at her quizzically, she sighs and adds, gesturing to her bulletin board, "Wouldn't want anyone thinking the librarians have opinions." She rolls her eyes.

"You aren't serious, are you?" he asks gruffly. "Librarians are faculty, after all." McCoy has never sat through a faculty meeting that's been any less than at least 75% opinions being spoken loudly.

"Were," she corrects him. "We were faculty until last year. Now we're academic administrative professionals."

"And that somehow means y'all don't get to have opinions?" he rumbles.

"We're expected to answer all research requests and no one should know what side we're on when they ask a question. It's best if we appear to have the trappings of neutrality," she answers, her lips a tight line.

"That's a bunch of bullshit," he scoffs. "Surely you can take stands on the things that matter." He points, lamely, at her bulletin board.

"Doctor McCoy, what can I help you with?" she asks, abruptly changing the subject.

Of all the jarring elements to this sudden romp across campus and into the library, none is more disconcerting than the woman raising her eyebrow at him. She is tall – at least his height, maybe taller. Huge, brown eyes, olive skin…and a cascade of brilliant blue hair. So much hair. It's long and thick and hangs straight down her back. He has no idea how she's managed to dye it a sky blue but before he can speculate, McCoy realizes she is still waiting on his answer.

"I came by because I wasn't sure you got the project I emailed you about yesterday," he replies, feeling defensive for some unknown reason.

"You mean the one I just emailed back to you, with all the articles you requested?" she shoots back with a raised eyebrow.

McCoy looks down at his phone, tapping on the email app. Sure enough, there's her response. She'd sent it while he was getting lost in the library, trying to find her god-forsaken office.

"You know, normally you're pretty prompt about emailing me when I send you a request," he starts, his voice a touch more stern than he'd meant it.

"I had a last-minute…thing…to take care of yesterday," she hedges, looking away from him. "But you have what you need, in the time allotted, just as you asked," she continues defiantly. She'll be damned if she's gonna tell him that despite getting pulled out of work mid-way through the day yesterday to attend her father's death in a hospice, she's still managed to finish his damn project because she came back, at 3am, and did the research straight through until she'd sent it all off to him moments before he barged into her office.

"If that's all…" she trails off, looking pointedly from McCoy to the door.

But McCoy isn't leaving that easily. He isn't sure why he feels so reluctant to leave – while the office is cozy and inviting, the woman standing across the desk from him has been anything but. He supposes some of that is his fault – he'd startled her, just showing up and knocking on the open door. She'd been listening to something with her headphones, her eyes glued to the computer monitors in front of her and when she'd finally seen him, she'd jumped out of her chair and remained standing since.

"May I?" He gestures to the seat next to him.

"Of course," she replies and he's damn sure it took a great deal of effort and patience for her to get the words out of her mouth.

Aerie is normally a pretty friendly librarian, especially with her faculty liaisons. But she has two simple rules and both are being broken by the man in front of her: first, no meetings before 9am; it's barely 8am. Second, no unexpected office visits. She would never show up announced at a faculty member's office so why shouldn't she expect the same courtesy from them? It's bad enough getting students to respect boundaries but this is too much, especially after a sleepless night.

"I'm sorry I surprised you," he says as she sinks uneasily back into her own chair. She closes her eyes for a moment, knowing they must be red from lack of sleep because they sting and closing them only does so much to alleviate the burn. When he finally leaves, she can put some drops in them.

"You know, we have these things called phones," Aerie responds, opening her eyes and nodding to her own office phone. "They save us from having to trek across campus for no good reason."

"Well, I hate phones," McCoy grumbles. "And who said this visit was for nothing? All this time you've been doing research for me and I shoulda set up a meeting at some point along the way."

"But you waited till you thought I'd forgotten something you needed," she says coolly.

He looks back at her bulletin board and a tiny cross-stitch hoop catches his eye. 'Nevertheless, She Persisted' is embroidered in it, with delicate flowers surrounding the words. He wonders if she dislikes all men or if it's just him in particular. Not that it's hard to understand if she hates all of them right now. Men aren't exactly making a good name for themselves these days.

"You're not really what I expected," he tells her, shifting his eyes over from the bulletin board to her face.

"Oh? Tell me, what did you expect?" There's just a hint of a smile and McCoy can't tell if it's because she's looking forward to eviscerating him once he confesses what he thought he was going to find or if she might just be letting some of that impenetrable guard down.

"Honestly?" he asks, rubbing the back of his neck. Maybe this has been a huge mistake, taking a seat in her office. Her dark eyes shine and he can't help but think of a cobra, ready to strike. But her nod prompts him to keep going.

"Well, I thought you'd be a nice, little, old lady," he finally admits. She says nothing for a moment, looking at him in surprise. Finally a laugh pours out of her – the kind that starts in the belly and works its way up.

"Why?" she asks between peals of laughter.

"I don't know. Maybe 'cause your name sounds like something from my grandmother's generation…"

She snorts at that – not a delicate sound but a full-on snort. "You're one to talk, Leonard Horatio McCoy."

He turns red and if not for the smile on her lips, and the sparkle in her eyes, he'd be tempted to huff his way out of her office. He guesses she's read enough of his work to know his full name. Still…

"Point taken," he grumbles. "But also, you're a librarian. I thought all librarians were old ladies with cats," he argues.

She laughs again and he decides he likes how robust the sound is. He imagines she's someone who lives life fully when she isn't stuck in the library.

"We have plenty of old ladies around here," she assures him. "But some of us are young ladies with cats. There are even a couple of men with cats, and then a handful of librarians without any pets – they haven't gotten the memo yet."

She sits back and looks at him, a long gaze that she doesn't bother hiding. He wonders what's going on in that head of hers.

"You think Aerie is an old lady's name?" she asks him, with a shake of her head.

"Well, no – I thought you went by Aerie as some sort of nod to your hippy youth," he admits with a shrug and she giggles.

"Not a hippy, obviously," she replies. "Just the daughter of Greek immigrants. Ariadne is a ridiculous name so I shortened it to something only slightly less ludicrous."

To be honest, McCoy hasn't really paid attention to how she signs her emails. He's always thought of her as Ariadne because that's the name that auto-fills when he types in her email address. All this time, she's been assisting him and he's been missing out on getting to know this blue-haired amazon.

"Look, I shoulda called or emailed before stormin' in on ya," he says to her, his accent getting thicker because he's embarrassed. "I'm sorry I haven't been more hospitable to ya. I shoulda invited you over to my office a long time ago."

"Don't worry," she answers with a wave of her hand. His accent is music to her ears and even while she feels a little bad for giving him a hard time, she enjoys listening to him. "You think I actually meet even half of the faculty I act as library liaison for?"

"So we're all equally rude to you?" he asks with a raised eyebrow and Aerie is a little jealous because she's pretty sure her eyebrow doesn't look nearly as impressive when she raises it.

"Depends," she muses. "If I get a project to a faculty member in a timely manner, maybe I'll get a thank you. If it's a last-minute project and they have the sense to realize what kind of Herculean effort they're asking of me, maybe they'll be extra nice. But I didn't become a librarian for the warm relationships with my patrons."

"Why did you then?" he asks, legitimately curious as to how this woman, who seems to vibrate with energy, ended up working in a building where conversations are regularly shushed.

She pauses before answering and he sees a flicker of something in her eyes.

"At the time, I was young and naïve and believed I would actually make a difference," she finally mutters.

"And you're not young now?" he asks with a mix of grumpiness and…is it flirtatiousness? Aerie isn't sure. Frankly, she can't understand why he's still in her office after she'd practically taken his head off for scaring the shit out of her.

"Younger. I was younger. It's not like I'm a student," she says with narrowed eyes, studying his reaction.

She's caught him. He had absolutely been sure, when he found her sitting there, that she was a student research assistant and the actual Ariadne was elsewhere.

"I knew it!" she crows. "You thought I was a student! Was it the hair? No one expects a woman in her 30s to have smurf hair."

"Maybe it was the hair. Or maybe the lack of cat fur on you," he responds, unable to keep from smiling when she beams at him like that. "You're in your 30s then?" he asks casually, noticing she doesn't have anything that looks like a wedding ring on either hand.

"Yes, Doctor. I'm not that much younger than you," she says slyly. So, she knows how old he is. And come to think of it, she had known immediately who he was. Granted, he'd startled her, but the first thing out of her mouth had been something along the lines of, "What the hell are you doing, Doctor McCoy? Go around scaring people like that and you'll wind up with a black eye."

"How did you know who I was?" he interrogates her, his eyebrow arched so high, she wonders if it might make a break for it and leave his forehead altogether.

"Unlike you and the rest of the faculty, I make it my priority to put names with faces. I know where your office is, who your student assistants are, and what your phone extension is. And before you think I'm a wizard, all that info is housed on the same webpage, complete with a picture of you."

After typing briefly, she spins one of her monitors around to show him his faculty page.

"Alright, alright. I get it. Faculty suck and you librarians are the only things keeping this place afloat."

"Well, thank you, Doctor. That wasn't so hard to admit, was it?" She smiles at him and then looks at her watch. "This has been fun, getting the crap scared out of me first thing in the morning, but I have a class to teach soon so if you wouldn't mind giving me time to prep…"

"You teach?" he asks, standing and making his way to the door. She gets up and moves with him.

"Yes. Just a class on research for entering freshmen. But it keeps me busy."

He furrows his brow. "You must be pretty good at it," he comments. "Not a lot of librarians get to teach."

"I'm not bad," she admits, and it's an understatement, as the numerous glowing student evaluations can attest to. Aerie has missed her true calling in life – being a teacher. But she's managed to find a way to teaching, even if her method is a bit unorthodox. "It's something I enjoy doing and it's part of why I was hired to begin with – to create a teaching program for the reference librarians to participate in."

He wrinkles his brow at her and it dawns on him as he looks at the nameplate on her desk. "You're the assistant director of the library. Why am I one of your faculty members?" He's surprised to realize someone so high up on the chain is dealing with research requests.

She smiles as he steps out of her way and, consequently, out of the office.

"Because no one else wanted to deal with you, ya old grump," she says with no small amount of affection before shutting the door on him.

McCoy stands there for a moment. He can't think of the last time a woman, besides his ex-wife, shut a door in his face. And even stranger, he doesn't mind it at all. In the back of his mind, he knows this isn't the last he'll see of Ariadne Demopoulos.