Requested? ✅️

NSFW? ❎️

Requested by: 🫧🧵

Art by: Kitsuneisi

A/N: We're alive. Kinda. Life is hectic. Requests still on pause while we try and catch up, if we don't do any or miss some we apologise.

Across from Joe, the checkout scanner blinked with patient expectation. A student approached, shoulders hunched beneath the weight of an overfilled backpack. Joe could hear the faint clatter of pens and perhaps a metal water bottle inside. The student placed three books down with careful reverence, as though they were fragile animals rather than bound stacks of paper.

“Card, please,” Joe said softly, his voice low and even, shaped by years of speaking in spaces that demanded quiet without demanding silence.

The student fumbled. The thin plastic rectangle scraped against the desk before being properly aligned with the scanner. A red light flashed, denial. Joe’s gaze lifted, not sharp but steady.

“Try again,” he murmured.

The second scan produced the soft, satisfied beep that signalled compliance. Joe nodded once, fingers already moving. Each book passed beneath the scanner in a practiced arc. Beep. Beep. Beep. The system logged them with mechanical indifference, but Joe felt the weight of each title. He always did. He imagined the path each would take: dorm rooms lit by desk lamps, coffee shops humming with espresso machines, perhaps a lonely corner in someone’s apartment where the world shrank to margins and annotations.

He stamped the due date slips with a firm press. The sound was satisfying: rubber meeting paper, a brief, decisive thud. He slid the books back toward the student with a faint smile that barely lifted one corner of his mouth.

“Don’t forget to bring them back on time,” he said.

He didn't add that he would notice if they didn't. He always noticed.

When the student retreated, Joe leaned back slightly in his chair. The fabric of his shirt, patterned in clashing yet somehow harmonious eccentric shapes shifted against his skin. He dressed comfortably, layers soft and worn, but nothing about him was bland. Rings glinted faintly on his fingers when he moved; a thin chain at his neck disappeared beneath his collar. His socks, unseen by most, were mismatched on purpose.

He scanned the room.

At the long central tables, students were scattered like islands in an archipelago of study materials. Highlighters bled neon streaks across pages. Laptops cast cold light onto tired faces. One pair leaned close together, whispering urgently over a shared notebook, their foreheads nearly touching. Another student sat alone, chewing absently on the end of a pen, eyes unfocused; lost somewhere far from the text in front of him.

Joe catalogued them all without seeming to. He could tell who was here every day and who had wandered in out of desperation. He knew which ones treated the space like a sanctuary and which saw it as merely convenient.

A burst of laughter, too loud, cracked the air from the far corner.

Joe’s head lifted immediately. Not sharply, never sharply, but with unmistakable intent. His gaze traveled across the shelves until it found the source: a cluster of three students, one covering his mouth belatedly as the others shushed him.

Joe rose.

The motion was unhurried but carried weight. His shoes made almost no sound against the carpet as he approached. Up close, the laughter group seemed younger, edges of embarrassment already pinking their faces.

“Gentlemen,” Joe said quietly.

That was all.

No scolding. No raised voice. Just the single word, wrapped in gentle expectation.

They straightened. Apologies tumbled out in hushed fragments. Joe inclined his head, accepting them, and lingered just long enough to ensure compliance before drifting back to his desk like a tide receding.

When he sat again, he exhaled through his nose. The library settled around him once more. The hum returned to equilibrium.

Literally posting this after a power cut, it was destined.