"Ma'am, I can give you a variety of books and articles about odds and statistics, and I can provide you lists of information about past winners. We even have several board games here, and if you come in, I can give you some dice to roll, if you so choose. I unfortunately cannot, however, give you the winning lottery numbers for tomorrow. Now, is there some other way I can assist you tonight?" The woman on the other end of the phone squawked unhappily and disconnected, while Castiel closed his eyes and sighed with a mix of relief and disappointment. However irrational the demands, he strongly disliked leaving a patron unsatisfied.
"Long day at the office, dear?"
Well, it just got longer, Castiel resisted responding as he lifted his head to face the man standing on the other side of the desk. "Just a woman thinking I keep a crystal ball in the Ready Reference section. Nothing too unusual there. What do you need, Gabriel? I'd point you toward the picture books, but you got the pages all stuck together with candy last time I did that."
"There's that sparkling customer service that earns you the big bucks," Gabriel said with a grin, unoffended in the least. "Can't I just stop in to say hello to my baby brother? Doesn't look as though I'm interrupting much. Did I just miss the rush?"
"Oh, definitely. I must have helped at least two whole patrons print their resumes in the last hour alone. Quite the flurry of activity for a Monday."
"Then you need a break. Put up your 'away from the desk' sign and let's grab some coffee. Lattés on me." Despite Castiel's accusation of picture book carelessness, Gabriel actually did try to respect his brother's rules concerning food and drinks around his precious collection.
"Sounds wonderful, actually, but…" Castiel hesitated, glancing at his computer. There had been no questions in his email yet tonight, and he was reluctant to risk missing a message's arrival.
Several weeks had passed since he had received the question about racing state birds, during which time he had come to rely on the regular messages as sanity preservers. The sender, whom Castiel had come to think of as "Impala" from the first part of his email address, had established a routine of submitting at least one and as many as three queries each Monday night. They spanned topics from literature ("How many Kansas natives have made it onto the NYT bestseller's list in the last five years?") to science ("Mount Sunflower is the highest mountain in KS, right? I need to know how much shorter it is than NE's tallest (Panorama Point?)") to pop culture ("How many Seinfeld regulars guested on Sesame Street?"). Each question made Castiel think a moment before jumping to the book or database he thought most appropriate, and he often found himself including addendums and clarifications with his answers ("Panorama Point is not technically a mountain; the highest of those in Nebraska is Hogback"). He snickered when answering a query about how many of Mel Blanc's character voices had been mammals, asking, "Are we considering The Demon of Insincerity from 'The Phantom Tollbooth' to be mammalian?" Several of the questions seemed particularly designed to be misleading, but he thought he was doing a good job avoiding any traps.
On several occasions, Impala had reiterated the need for swift answers. Castiel didn't want to disappoint in that regard.
"But what?" Gabriel prompted with a quirked eyebrow. "Reluctant to step away from all this stimulating action? I promise, the books will be just fine without Daddy for a few minutes."
"No, it's not that. It's just that…well, there's this patron who usually needs my help on Monday nights, and I haven't heard from them yet."
Gabriel turned around to examine the room. "Only got about an hour before shutting up shop. If they're not here, maybe they're not coming."
"They don't come in. They email me with their questions."
"Okay, ignoring for the moment that we've just decided to roll with gender-neutral pronouns, which I suppose makes sense if you never actually see this…person," Gabriel said, "I doubt that whatever questions they might have on a regular weekly basis can be all that pressing. They're not some secret agent, needing your consistent help in preventing Monday night Armageddons, are they? Library questions, as a rule, are usually pretty non-life-threatening."
Castiel found himself slightly grouchy, not wanting to explain his compulsion to wait. Maybe he was a little embarrassed about it himself. It wasn't as though he was incapable of entertaining himself, but he was becoming slowly aware that there was another factor influencing his enthusiasm. It was hard to deny that library work was frequently a thankless job. So much of his effort was behind the scenes, exactly like that stale motivational imagery of the duck gliding smoothly over the water, paddling like mad underneath where no one would see. The gratitude he received tended to be sparse, a matter of social conditioning rather than intention. Impala (Castiel was starting to feel silly imagining a cheerful antelope pecking away at a keyboard, but he entertained himself with the thought anyway) always made him feel valued, giving him the sort of approval he hadn't felt in years. He basked in the appreciation, sometimes carrying the glow all night when the compliments were particularly effusive. Fuck it, he admitted. I'm a praise junkie, and I need my hit.
Instead of confessing that admission to his brother, though, he hid behind the shield of Stern Professionalism. The tactic usually inspired fraternal teasing, but it should at least divert him from topics that were more sensitive. "I take my role very seriously, Gabriel. Kuhlthau's research regarding information seeking and the role of mediated assistance –"
"Nope, already heard that one," Gabriel interrupted. "Pretty sure, anyway. I'm onto you, kiddo. You only throw that academic bullshit at me when you don't want me to understand what you're talking about. Since I'm almost positive you're not trying to drag me onto the 'Woo, libraries!' bandwagon this time, that means you're steering me away from something else. So, this Question Girl. Or Guy. Do we know which?"
"No, we don't." It was pointless. Once his brother stopped bantering and got to the point with his prying, there was no chance of stopping him before his curiosity was satisfied. "And it doesn't matter. The questions come, and they're good questions, and I like answering them."
"Like Jeopardy? Are you somebody's 'Phone-a-Friend,' little brother?" Gabriel's smile showed that this, at least, was something he could possibly understand and support.
"I suppose 'Ask-a-Librarian' is similar in concept. More professional, less 'friend,' but yes."
"Not feeling friendly? Are they at least cutting you in on the prize money, then?" Without invitation, Gabriel moved behind the desk, perching on a vacant stool beside Castiel. Professionalism was something designed for other people, he had always demonstrated.
"There's no prize," Castiel said, though an idea crossed his mind. These questions did rather resemble game show questions. Was he helping a contestant cheat? He decided he didn't really care. "I do it because it's my job."
"Your job allows breaks, but you're skipping them. This is more. No money, no personal connection. You're devoted, but I didn't peg you for self-sacrificing."
"It's a cup of coffee, not my soul, Gabriel."
"Whatever. I want to know –"
Ping.
The sound of his email alert immediately distracted Castiel from anything his brother was saying. Opening the message, he read, "Later than usual, sorry. I just need to know what drink recipe Hemingway made up for an old book of cocktails in the 1930s. Need the recipe, too. Can you text me back the answer this time? Working tonight. 237-3022."
"Death in the Afternoon," Gabriel immediately said, reading over Castiel's shoulder. At the raised eyebrow from his younger brother, he shrugged. "What? I know my liquor. It's a good drink, a jigger of absinthe plus iced champagne until it goes milky and swirly. Much better than the one Theodore Dreiser made up, which includes nitroglycerin and ground gunpowder. I mean, not that I've tasted it, but I'd assume."
"You actually own that book, don't you." It wasn't a question.
"I read!"
Castiel snorted, but he quickly verified Gabriel's answer (a youth spent trusting him "just this once" had shaped him into a more cynical adult) and pulled out his phone to send the response and citation. A small thrill went through him as he saved the new phone number under the name "Impala." That was probably inappropriate, but given that the board had allowed for the possibility of patron texting, and that by now Impala had sent him almost as many questions as had all of his other virtual patrons combined, he decided it wasn't so unprofessional, really. Practically dutiful. It might even save response time in the future, which was all part of the job.
Dean stood behind the bar, swiping the counter lazily as he waited for his phone to chime. Mondays were always slow nights at the Roadhouse, with only the dedicated drinkers and the quietly lonely regulars riding the stools. Tips were not worth mentioning, which was another reason why he was glad that he so rarely had to work then. Ash was sick, though (more likely hungover), and Jo was out on a date and couldn't cover for him, so that meant Dean was left to handle the sparse crowd.
Luckily for him, a slow night meant that he didn't need to surrender his now established Monday night trivia habit. He wasn't exactly sure when it had happened, but at some point he had stopped thinking about the "free pie" competition aspect of the game and had begun to simply enjoy the game itself. He was getting better at finding most of the answers on his own, but for reasons he couldn't quite explain, he always left at least one question for his librarian to field.
Yes, his librarian, if only in Dean's head.
There was a weirdly heady anticipation in the minutes after sending off each question, and if he had noticed that he was usually saving the most oddball and potentially entertaining questions for his librarian, he rationalized it as a way to let them have some of the fun, too. Dean was sure by now that his librarian was having fun; the responses were increasingly friendly and gently teasing when they would arrive after an impressively brief wait. There was still professionalism conveyed in the answers (No, don't think about horn-rimmed glasses and a quietly commanding voice; you're at work right now!), but if these had been exchanges with somebody he knew on a personal level…well. Dean Winchester knew flirting when he saw it. And did it.
But this wasn't personal. His librarian was a fantasy, not real. If Dean was pushing the boundaries a bit into the realms of familiarity, he was at least fairly confident that his librarian was only providing good customer service.
So when his phone chimed with an ingredient list for Hemingway's cocktail, he didn't really think too hard about his text back.
"You are amazing. You're like the super-efficient Pepper Potts to my Tony! Okay if I call you Pepper?" A few of their conversations had fed Dean small bits of information that led him to believe that perhaps his librarian was not the octogenarian he had originally thought, or that if she was, she was one tech-savvy, pop-culture-literate old girl. Iron Man trivia was practically low-ball, he thought, copying and pasting the drink recipe into his browser window.
"Pepper? He's calling you Pepper Potts!" Gabriel was practically on the floor with laughter. "This is the best! I've never been so happy to have come to a library in my life!" Other patrons were turning to see what has happening, and Castiel was nearly crimson with embarrassment.
It had been meant as a compliment, he could see if he viewed it objectively. Impala was praising his competence and speed, and that was as pleasant as always. On the other hand, while Castiel now knew that Impala at least identified as male himself, he had also succumbed to the stereotypical assumption that librarians were naturally female, a typecasting that Castiel had always found infuriating. He had put up with raised eyebrows from strangers in the past, regardless of how his classes in library school had almost always been a balanced mix of men and women. On the occasions where he had filled in for youth librarian Linda at story times, the surprise from the parents was even more apparent, even if it was followed by a strange approval, as though he was doing something beyond the call of duty by reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" sans uterus.
His irritation and disappointment in his favorite patron was stoked by the sight of Gabriel wiping away actual tears in his mirth, and he couldn't help himself as he clicked into the dialogue box on his phone. "Although I have never had any problem wearing a skirt, I believe the library board would prefer I maintain my usual waistcoat and pants. Perhaps Jarvis would be a better nickname."
The moment he hit send, he regretted having been goaded into reaction. Oh, my God, I just crossed that line with a patron, talking about cross-dressing. If his cheeks had flamed before, now they were an inferno. What did I do?
Across town, behind the bar, Dean Winchester's brain short-circuited, and he dropped the glass he'd been holding. It fell to the floor with a smash.
