fandomhigh | Library [Sunday, January 6]

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Library [Sunday, January 6]

After a week off, Lee's back in the library and propped up lazily behind the desk. He wasn't going so far as to put his feet up on the desk but he was doing some lounging and leaning and occasionally spinning in the chair. There were books to be checked in and shelved but he had all day to do that.

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Now, he's actually checking in and shelving books. He's mostly behind the desk but you might find him in the aisles as well.

Adah was met with a bit of surprise when she limped into the library to find not only a distinct lack of chair spinning, but also a distinct lack of a library aide sitting behind the desk. Her head tilted slightly; was he doing actual work? What a novel concept. She decided to investigate with slow and careful limps, peeking around the shelves before going down any of them, so that if she did find him working on putting the books away, she could hopefully managed to move down the aisle without him knowing it until, finally, she could lean forward slightly and comment, "That doesn't go there."

Even though it most likely did.

"Does so," Lee said after startling slightly and then breaking into a slow smile. "It goes here because I told it too."

He glanced over at her and slid the book into the spot. "See. A nice, easy fit."

"Told it to?" Adah asked, crossing an arm across the front of her to cradle the elbow of the arm that wasn't much good and leaning lightly against a bookshelf. "Have you talked so much that you ran out of things that would listen so now you have to talk to inanimate objects?"

Well. Completely inanimate objects.

"I talk to anyone or anything that'll listen," Lee said, turning towards her and leaning a hip against the shelves. "Books are good listeners. I don't kiss them though."

"That would just put a whole new angle on the concept of bibliophile, now, wouldn't it?" Adah expressed lightly, with both quirked eyebrow and grin. "Besides, not a good idea. Imagine the papercuts."

Lee stuck out his tongue and made a face. "Ow. Ow ow ow ow ow. That might be the worst pain ever. Ever ever. How are you doing?"

"Oh, yeah," Adah said, unable to keep from grinning at a face like that. "The worst ever. I can't imagine a single pain ever that could be worse than that."

Except that she could. In fact, her brain had already listed and tabulated at least twenty in that brief mockery. Give her ten more seconds and she could have a hundred.

"I'm doing well. I had someone who used to have half a brain mistake me for a princess yesterday. How are you doing, besides having your hard work being so rudely interrupted?"

"Someone thought you were a princess?" Lee repeated, frowning before looking amused. "Oh, person knew someone who looked like you, huh? Happened to me too a few months ago. And I'm good. Visited my fake big brother yesterday and talked with him for awhile."

"It was...interesting," Adah said, after carefully considering the words to use to describe. "One of the last things I would have probably ever expected someone to mistake me for. I've been mistaken for a dead bushback, but I think princess takes the cake..."

She trailed off a little before adding, "Who's your fake big brother, and is he worth any time to bother with?"

"I could call you princess if you'd like," he teased, waggling one eyebrow very exaggeratedly. "John Sheppard's my fake big brother and I kinda like him. He's cool. We're a lot alike."

"I would kill you," Adah told him, giving his waggling eyebrow a cool expression. "Very slowly, in your sleep, by the way of a particularly terrible and disgusting virus. And I don't think I know him. But I don't really know many people in general."

Her reaction made him laugh because he'd expected something like that. "Aww, you'd kill me? But I thought you liked me. I'd miss you if you killed me."

He paused to laugh again before saying, "He kinda knows you now, I think. I told him about you."

"You'd be dead," Adah stated. "You can't miss people when you're dead because you're too busy rotting and being eaten by maggots."

But that wasn't important right now. What was important was that the Eel had been talking to someone about her. Adah blinked, as if a little started. "...What did you say?"

He snorted again, still grinning. "I love your way with words," he said and meant it. "And I told him I liked you and why I liked you and that I liked kissing you and stuff like that. You know, guy talk."

Adah's smile was a quietly happy one, glad that her talk of decomposition could be appreciated by someone other than a girl who gave dead skeletons as presents. "Is that what guys talk about? I grew up with four females and a preacher. Even the dog we had for a little while was female, and my biggest male influence was a drunken pedophile of a 19th century poet. There is a strange and mysterious veil draped over the male psyche in my world."

"Well, we talk about girls and fighting and flying and other secret guy stuff," he said with a raise of his eyebrow. "Sometimes we talk about nothing at all."

"You?" Adah asked, tilting her head with the ghost of a shocked expression on her face. "Talk to talk? Talking to hear the sound of your own voice? About nothing at all? I just don't believe it."

"Don't make me use the 'p' word," Lee mock threatened, shaking a finger at her. "I will, I'll do it. And you wouldn't kill me in the midst of all these books, I know it."

"Of course I wouldn't," Adah said. "You'd expect it, then. It would have to occur when you didn't expect it, as you were sitting there, feeling like you'd just gotten away with it. In fact, it might not happen for days. And, just as you realized that you hadn't gotten away with it nearly as much as you'd thought, you'd drop dead, most likely among the books again, a week later."

She really did read too much Poe.

"Would you miss me?" Lee asked, taking a few steps forward. "A little?"

Adah looked, coolly, at the Eel's face for a moment, dropped her eyes toward the general arm region when he started to move closer, and then returned her steady gaze at his eyes. "Probably more than a little," she allowed herself to say, hoping, but not expecting, that he'd realize that it took a lot for her to say something like that.

"Yeah, me too," he said quietly, reaching out to touch her cheek with his fingers. "I missed you a lot more than a little."

The flesh of Adah's cheek was pink before the Eel even touched it, and she closed her eyes, lowering her head slightly at the light touch. She was doing a poor job of hiding a smile, but that didn't stop her from stubbornly attempting. "Well, good," she stated, with a faltering strength in her voice.

"Good," Lee repeated, curling his fingers around her ear and brushing hair back. "But, let's not miss each other. I like it more when we can see each other."

Library [Sunday, January 6]

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