Title: Reading Material
Author: Allie
Rating: Everyone
Word count: 434
Notes: written for the Tea and Swiss Rolls Obbo challenge 110(B) (prompt: photo of bookshelves)
tweaked with beta help from ILWB
Doyle selected a book off the crowded shelves and added it to his pile of paperbacks.
Bodie was dogging his footsteps and checking out the books more casually, as if to get an overview of the shelves his partner was looking at, along with the rest of the shop and the other customers.
Bodie grabbed the top copy from Doyle's growing pile. "Here, I thought you had that book?" He held it up and grinned. "Lost it, did you? Messy lad!"
"Wore out my copy, didn't I?" Doyle frowned at him and snatched it back, returning it to the pile he carried in one hand cradled against his side.
"Throwing it around, you mean?" Bodie smirked. He was well acquainted with his partner's reading habits when frustrated and how hard he was on books.
Doyle cast him a glare, but didn't answer. He selected and added another book to the pile. Bodie peered past Doyle's shoulder and selected a slim pink volume off the shelf. He slipped it into Doyle's pile, second from the top while Doyle was scanning the shelves, brows furrowed. Bodie's mouth broadened in an impish grin. He bounced a little on the back of his feet and sucked in his bottom lip.
Doyle cast him a suspicious glance as he added a volume of sea stories to his collection. "What's got into you?"
"All this literature, I suppose." Bodie waved his hands at the crowded shelves.
The shop was packed: shelves crowded close together, books filling every square inch of available space. When you removed a book, it seemed the others crowded to fill the space and breathed a small, old book smelling sigh of relief to have just a little bit more room.
"Oi, I have this volume of poetry!" said Bodie, picking a Selected Poems paperback off the shelf.
"Wore it out yet?" asked Doyle. He headed towards the checkout. Smirking, Bodie followed, his steps lively and his walk cheerful.
The bookstore's owner, an older man with a great deal of gray and white hair and a beard, unstacked the books one by one, adding up the total. When he got to the third one down, his eyebrows rose.
With an exclamation, Doyle leaped forward and snatched the volume. "I didn't pick that!" He frowned at his partner. "Bo-die…!"
"Ho ho!" Bodie grabbed the pink volume and held it up. "Bodice rippers! Doyle, I never knew!"
Doyle grabbed the volume and threw it across the bookstore.
"You're still paying for that," said the bookstore owner.
"He's paying for that," said Doyle, pointing a thumb at Bodie.
Bodie smirked.
2011