Sam and the Librarian
Chapter 1
Introduction
This takes place during season three, just before Supernatural Christmas. I've taken license with this timing to give our boys the knowledge they have by the end of the season. Somewhere around season 12 I got fed up and decided to take a break for a while. It seemed like our highly intelligent brothers could never see the big picture. What if someone they went to for help could do that for them. Then I thought, if Henry Winchester left behind a family, all the other MoL would have done the same...
I tried to write a reader insert, not an original character, but she kept asserting herself, so rather than put y/n, I call her B. You can still self-insert, it's up to you. Once you read it, it's yours, not mine.
All the reference books are from my imagination, although the council of Nicaea was real.
If you want a ton of action, this is not the fic for you. This is me challenging myself to write in first person present (without overwhelming you with 'I said', or 'I give'; it's surprisingly difficult.)
Chapter 1
He starts coming in on Monday around two in the afternoon. At first, I notice him because of his height. Even though it isn't necessary, he ducks, just a little, every time he goes through a door. He could make it, standing up straight, but I think it would be a near thing. He wears second-hand clothes and carries a leather messenger bag that is so battered it is almost cool again. The way his hair curls up around the edges I want to ask him what he's done with his baseball hat, because all the boys in my high school had that same look.
He never makes a sound, never asks for help, never bothers anyone, so I ignore the coffee he starts sneaking in after a few days. He doesn't come in the first two days of the second week, so I'm surprised when I see him on Wednesday. He's wearing a different jacket and sports a couple of scrapes and a faint but visible black eye. I don't say anything to him.
"Your boyfriend's back." Tionne grins and winks at me.
I look at her like she's insane. "One, I've never exchanged so much as a glance with him, and two, he's young enough to be my son."
She rolls her eyes. "One, you knew exactly who I was talking about, and two maybe if you were six when you gave birth." When I feel the warmth of a blush creep up my traitor face, she bites her lip and then lets a little giggle slip out; I am her primary source of amusement.
"I can't help it. He's so…furtive." I glance over my shoulder and watch as he types on his laptop, looks in the book he's got open beside him, glances around, and then takes the most super-casual drink of his coffee I've seen to date. When he looks up again while hiding the coffee between his legs, I whip my head around, so he won't catch me staring while Tionne dashes between the nearest stacks to hide her laughter. I wonder if I should kill her or myself. Of course, that's when a throat clears behind me.
Before I turn, I put on my game face. Under Tionne's influence I've managed to irritate Mrs. Scarapinski, the head librarian, on an almost weekly basis, so I'm ready with a professional smile when I turn around.
It's not the head librarian. It is him. How did he get to the desk so fast without making a sound? Jesus he is huge.
While I've kept an eye on him, I've only walked close to him when necessary. Now he's standing right on the other side of the desk. He's got his bag over his shoulder and his notebook and pen out on the counter between us. He flashes me a smile, so I get to see his nice, even teeth, and his HOLY CRAP dimples.
"Hi, I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm trying to find a reference book. Your catalog says you have it on hand, but it's not where it's supposed to be in the stacks." He pushes the notebook towards me and taps the title with one long finger. I wrest control of my brain away from my libido and try to focus enough to read the book title. The sight of the bruised knuckles on his immense hands surprises me enough to bring me back to full awareness.
"Oh, sure. I pulled that title for repair a couple of weeks ago. It's in the office. Do you really need it?" It might kill me if I have to be alone with him in the office for any amount of time.
He gives me an adorable grimace. "Yeah, the reference I found online paraphrases the quote in the book. I, uh, need the exact wording for that section of my thesis."
"Your master's thesis?" I'm stunned. How is this kid, who looks like he got beat up on the high school playground, a grad student? "You're not old enough to be working on your master's yet, are you?"
"I should hope so, I'm 24." He's both indignant and amused. I fight the urge to scoff in his face, because even his thin-lipped, 'screw you lady' expression, makes me weak in the knees.
He widens his eyes expectantly, and I realize I've been silent again for too long. "I'm sorry. You're right, you're a student, of course you can see the book." I shrug and give him my best apologetic smile, "You do look young, but it's more that I'm a lazy ass and don't want to go hunting through the books pulled for repair." He rewards me for admitting my error with an amused smile that makes my toes curl up tight.
I step out from behind the information desk, and Tionne smoothly takes my place. Her slow wink makes me want to strangle her. The behemoth follows me back to the office.
"Hey Dan." I greet the student librarian who's sorting books to be shelved.
"Hey B." He smiles and then his mouth falls open at the sight of the giant following me. I have to sympathize since Dan, classically handsome, dressed in a crisp oxford, and sporting a perfect haircut, is three inches shorter than my own five foot eight.
Before I can say anything, the battered homeless giant with permanent hat hair smiles at the GQ munchkin and extends a hand, "Hey, I'm Sam." He must need to disarm a wide variety of people on a frequent basis because his polite gesture and open expression makes Dan's stiff shoulders relax.
Dan shakes hands and smiles back at Sam. "Nice to meet you." He turns to me, "I've got these sorted by floor, do you want me to start at the top or with the most popular?"
"There's two schools of thought on that. On the one hand, starting on the top floor is standard procedure, but on the other hand, the most popular are also the most needed." I pretend to think about my answer, as I tap my chin, "Of course that's all academic because my answer is the one that will keep us both off Polish radar, so start on the top floor."
Dan, ever the joker, salutes me with two fingers and maneuvers one of the heavily laden carts past us and out the door.
Sam raises an eyebrow, "Polish radar?"
"Yes, not only am I lazy, but I make comments behind my boss's back. She's very protective of this library." I glance at the clock on the wall. "She should be at lunch right about now, but it never hurts to be cautious."
He nods and claps his hands once, then rubs them together. "Alone at last, what will we do with ourselves?" He gives me a smile that says, 'yeah I know that was stupid, but I couldn't help myself'. "I'm sorry, I opened my mouth, and my big brother came out, I apologize."
"Your brother's a bit of a flirt, is he?"
He gives me the mother of all eyerolls, "You have no idea."
"Well, I would tell your brother that while the idea has merit, we are standing in a box made of windows set in a large room full of people, into which my boss could walk at any time." I cannot go down that road with this guy. Sleep with him one time and he would OWN me.
Instead, I turn away from him and reach up to get the book he requested down from the shelf. He stops me with a hand on my elbow.
"Are you restoring that book?" He gestures to the one on the desk currently being protected by a plexiglass cover.
"Yeah. The poor thing. The binding is in self-destruct mode." I point to the bits of thread in one of the plastic cups I use to contain the bits of everything that fall off old books. "They used a decent thread to sew the binding, but everything decomposes eventually. In a paperback the pages usually start falling out first, but in a traditional book like this, it's actually the binding that's breaking down. The pages still fall out, but it's because the binding is letting them go."
"So when you're not out directing people to the Russian poetry…"
My shoulders slump and my arms flop, "Oh my God the Russian poetry…how is something wonderful and depressing at the same time?"
His face lights up with an enormous open-mouthed smile and his eyes go huge. He even laughs. "Right!? I took a poetry course Sophomore year and had to find a Russian to explain it to me."
"Did it help?"
"Not really. You either get it or you don't, I guess." He scratches absently at the back of his neck. "I think some people don't get it because they're not smart enough, but some people don't get it because they're too damn happy."
"So true. I wish I were one of the second group."
"My brother is definitely in that group."
I fail to hide my surprise. "No shit? Wow, I want to meet your brother." I can't begin to interpret the emotions that ripple across his face at that statement. His eyebrows lower, his mouth thins, and his nostrils flare, but then he smiles and looks at the ceiling. Irritation, fondness, resignation, and dare I hope, a dash of jealousy war on his face for dominance. Then he erases it all and covers it with amusement.
"Yeah, you should. You two could probably spend an hour on the sarcastic meet and greet alone."
"Oh yeah? You and your brother don't get along so well huh?"
"We do, it's just…he's prince charming."
He laughs, and I feel just a little faint, "Oh, so he really is a flirt?"
"Flirt is too mild a term for Dean. He really is a charmer, and it isn't just pretty girls. I've seen him melt chubby fifty-something waitresses into puddles of goo with just a smile. If he wants extra cheese or a larger size fries, he just dials it up a notch."
"That seems a bit dishonest, does he do that a lot?"
"Oh no!" Sam holds up his dish-plate hands in defense, and his eyes go wide, "Only if we're really hungry and low on funds. Sometimes he does it if the waitress looks sad or tired too." He looks up at the ceiling for a moment, then back down at me, "This one time we were in this diner in the ass-end of nowhere Oklahoma really late at night and you could tell that the waitress was not only tired but had had one of those horrific days only waitresses have. She still mustered up a smile for us though. I apologized for coming in so late, and she looked a little relieved, but then she goes to take Dean's order and he concentrated all that charm on her – and he'd been driving for like 9 hours before that – she perked up like she was 16 and Dean was the senior quarterback of the football team who'd just asked her to prom."
"Damn, if you have to have a mutant superpower, that's a handy one to have."
Sam chuckles, "Mutant superpower? He'll love that, I'll have to tell him." He looks around the office, eyeing the shelves with all my other injured friends. "Wow, that's quite the collection."
I decide to allow his change of subject. I even drop the question I was going to ask about pretty girls. "I used to refer to it as my ER ward, but now it's more like a hospice."
"What, why?"
"When I started here, I was fifty percent on the floor, fifty percent doing repair work, but with budget cuts, I'm lucky to get twenty percent time conservatorship these days."
"Let me guess, this isn't a job you can spend twenty minutes on, then go back to the floor, then back to repairs."
"That's not the greatest intuitive leap I've ever heard, but you're the first grad student I've met who could step back from his own work enough to make that connection."
"You must be dealing with some pretty self-centered students then." He shrugs, "Given the fact that the bottom shelf is starting to buckle, and after nearly a week of study I've only noticed three full-time librarians, it didn't take much to figure it out." He scrunches up his face and wrinkles his turned-up nose while talking in a funny voice and I hope my traitor face isn't spelling out all the things I want to do to him.
I shove my sex drive into the box labeled 'Do not open without tequila' and give him a nice professional smile. "I'm glad to see that you're so observant. Let's get your book down." I dig in my desk drawer until I locate the XL size gloves. "These probably won't fit you, but they'll go on far enough to protect the book from your skin oils. It's the black one, fifth from the right, with the broken spine." He slips the gloves on as far as they will go and lifts the book down with the same care he'd use to lift a baby out of its crib. I slip my own gloves on while he lays the book on the plexiglass cover and opens it to about mid-way.
He takes the stylus I hand him and flips through the pages with care. When he gets to the page with his quote he crows in triumph. "Cool! That didn't take long. Can I copy this page?"
"Yeah, but we'll have to work together so it doesn't get damaged further." I get the scanner set up and turn back to him. "Since we've got the book down, and I've got your extra set of hands to hold the book, let's copy the entire chapter."
"We're not too far in, let's copy the whole beginning." He opens his eyes wide and gives me a winning smile.
And he says it's his brother who's the flirt.
"Works for me. If I could take more time away from the floor, we'd copy the whole thing so I could run the copy through the pc scanner and get it digitized." We lift and tilt the book as gently as possible before placing it on the copier. It only takes a few pages to develop a rhythm of lift/flip/turn/flip/place, and we grin at each other, delighting in our mutual coordination.
In ten minutes, we're done. "Well fuck it, if it goes that fast, let's do the whole book."
"Seriously?"
"Won't it be more helpful for your thesis to have the entire book?"
"Um…"
"Plus, there's going to be parts that are illegible in the copy that will still be legible in the original. If you go through it in the next couple of days and find those parts, I can make those corrections to my copy, and note where to restore the original."
He gives me a thin smile and narrowed eyes in an expression I've yet to see on his face.
"You're trying to get me to spend more time here…why?"
My stomach drops. It's a challenge to be clever when he smiles. But it's way too soon to tell him I want to have his babies. "Ok, you got me. I'm starting to get a little nervous about my job. We can all say that due to budget cuts I'm stuck working the floor, but sooner rather than later another student is going to want one of those books." I point to the shelves, "And another and another. Next it will be a professor, and he or she won't accept the excuse of budget cuts. I have more than enough vacation time to take the entire two week break off, but I'm only taking the one, because I'm using next week to catch up." As I'm saying it, I realize it's not just an excuse to see more of him. "This goes a thousand times faster with a spare pair of hands, and your hands are extra, so it's even better!"
"For real? You're trying to bribe me with a copy of the full book because you want the use of my oversize hands?" He rolls his eyes with dramatic flair, while I fight the urge to tell him all the uses I have for those hands of his.
"No, Sam, it's much more than that. You actually care about how these books are treated! I tried to get a student volunteer to help me, more than one in fact, and I got bent pages and pages out of order, skipped pages, and once a torn page. That isn't help, that just-"
"Makes more work for you." He raises his hands in a placating gesture. "Okay, I'm convinced. What's in it for me? I'll need something more to persuade Dean to stay an extra couple of days."
"Dean?"
"My big brother, the flirt? We travel together. He works as a mechanic."
"While you go from library to library gathering thesis materials? You know you can just stay at one school and have them sent?"
He holds out the book we've been copying, "And how long would I have had to wait to get this? Six months?"
"Exactly why I need a bit of your time. Fine. A copy of this book, and any one on the shelf there, plus once I get them digitized, I'll give you access."
He lights up like a lamp with a new bulb. "Deal! I'm sure I can sell that to Dean."
Dear God, I think, if Dean is the charming one, I won't be able to function with them both in the same room.