Romance short. An arcade cashier flirts with a librarian.
Just a short one! Rated T, sweet M/M, 1.5k. The head librarian regularly heads into the arcade, and takes home a few prizes. Adapted from a TweetFic.
Bruno prays for rainy days.
On rainy days, the head librarian from the fancy library with the glass walls across the street will hang about in the arcade for an hour before he catches his train instead of sitting on the bench outside with his book.
He’s extremely tall, at least six feet and six, and very square — he’s not especially chiselled or muscular, and Bruno doesn’t think he spends a good deal of time at the gym. He’s just square, naturally, as though all his time in the library has made his body resemble the books.
His name is Nachikamdi, and he’s got a very quiet voice and long, square fingers.
Bruno sees him smile when he plays the machines, when he triggers a big clatter of coins and sweets from the penny falls or a sudden rush of tickets from the milk jug toss — his tiny little laughs, modest and almost private, seem even tinier for coming from such a large man.
Nachikamdi saves his tickets month by month, and whenever he trades them in for something — one of the remote control robots or one of the fancy electric hockey table toys, he says, “Oh, I won’t be taking it home. We’ll wrap it and give it away to one of the kids at Santa’s grotto.”
(Because Santa’s grotto is always in the library, and Nachikamdi always dresses up as Santa Claus, and Bruno has to admit, when he’s in the red and gold suit and the thick wig and the thick beard, it’s like he’s a different person entirely. Instead of six and a half feet, he seems larger than life, closer to seven, and it’s no surprise the kids never recognise him.)
He knows it’s silly, he sometimes murmurs when he trades in tickets, to spend so much of his money here (although honestly, Bruno notices he’s very good at every game he plays from sheer practice, and he doesn’t spend all that much in the scheme of things), so he might as well invest it back into spreading some joy.
It’s a rainy August Thursday the day he comes up to the ticket desk, a sheaf of receipts in hand, for the hundredth time. Bruno’s been watching him knock down bottles on one of the new machines, already having replaced the default high score.
“Something for Santa Claus already?” asks Bruno, and Nachikamdi laughs his modest laugh, shakes his head.
“Yes, and no,” he says softly. He puts on a deeper, more booming voice as Santa Claus — his natural timbre is lighter and not nearly as deep. “For me, this time,” he says. “Not for the grotto.”
“10,000 tickets? 8000?”
“7500.”
“7500…” Bruno turns around, scanning the top shelf. “The 3D jigsaw? The big marble run?”
The librarian clears his throat and tilts his head toward the window, where the newest prizes are on display.
The teddy bear is almost as tall as he is and just as big, a bright, golden-furred thing that doesn’t fit in the fold-out chair they’d nicked from the bingo hall next door to put it in.
“For you?” asks Bruno, beaming.
Nachikamdi looks away almost demurely. “Mm.”
Bruno takes the ticket receipts and logs them against his account. “Want to hear your entire point count? All the tickets you’ve ever spent?”
“Since 2007?” asks Nachikamdi, and laughs. It’s a louder laugh than usual, his cheeks shifting as he glances down. He nervously shakes his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Nearly fifteen years and it’s the first time you’ve picked something out for yourself,” Bruno says. “Not saying the kids don’t deserve nice things from the grotto, but Santa needs a treat himself, now and then.”
“Mm,” says the head librarian.
He isn’t shy, not really. Bruno knows this because when he was doing his part-time degree a few years back — and much good it did him, increased employment opportunities his arse — he spent as much time in Nachikamdi’s domain as Nachikamdi spent in his. In the library he’s quick, authoritative, knowledgeable on every subject, a natural negotiator, educator, leader.
He’s still those things everywhere else, Bruno thinks. He just turns down the volume, turns down the intensity. He’s the sort of man some people will accuse of taking up too much space no matter how gentle he is about things.
“Going to add a third, keep him between you and the boyfriend?” asks Bruno, smiling. Nachikamdi falters, and Bruno’s chest gives a pang. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you two had…”
“He’s gone back to Marseille.”
“He know he’s being replaced with a more ursine model?”
It earns Bruno a laugh, albeit a small one. Nachikamdi murmurs, “His father is sick. He always knew he’d go back home, when his father couldn’t help run the business with his sisters anymore — we knew that, always, that there was a timer running.”
“You were together what, seven years?”
“Not… together together,” Nachikamdi says with an air of delicacy. “We gave up on that a while ago — we slept in the same bed, lived in the same house. We loved each other, just never… I don’t know, it was never a big romance, not really. Companionable, affectionate, but there was an always an element of convenience and necessity, and an absence of passion. We knew this would come, in the end — perhaps that’s what stopped us from ever falling in love truly and deeply.”
Bruno smiles at him, reaching out and squeezing the side of Nachikamdi’s arm. He likes the idea that they should be friendly with each other, that the other man should trust him with that — they’ve complimented each other on pride badges or chatted about bits and pieces, about Bruno’s cat’s antics, about Nachikamdi’s unsuccessful attempt at a windsurfing course, about politics, about the council, about life.
“The bear will help,” he says confidently.
Nachikamdi’s smile is soft and warm and grateful, and his eyes shine.
“You’re not going to drag this boy to the train station in the rain?”
“Just this once,” says Nachikamdi quietly, with a secretive smile, “I think I might spring for a taxi.”
“It’s what he deserves,” says Bruno. “You need a hand getting him home?”
Nachikamdi opens his mouth, flusters — and then, for all that Bruno has apparently caught him off guard, he looks him up and down in a way that makes him feel wonderfully hot under his shitty uniform polo shirt and his shorts.
“I,” he says, “I — ”
“I just meant into the taxi,” murmurs Bruno.
Nachikamdi ducks his head right down and says, “Oh, I’m, it was — Fuck, I’m sorry — ” Bruno bets if he touched his cheek right now it’d be glowing hot.
“No, no, I’d not be opposed,” says Bruno, quickly ringing up the last of the receipts, and then he unlocks the glass door and comes through. “Just that I’m on shift ’til 10.”
“It was wrong of me to assume.”
“I think you’d get more out of life if you assumed a bit more,” says Bruno, leaning and grabbing the bear around the middle and lifting him up. “Be more entitled. You deserve more out of life than you take — it’s not selfish to have a bit for you here and there.”
“I try not to take.”
“Taking isn’t bad,” says Bruno. “No more than giving is.”
Nachikamdi’s hand touches his as he takes the bear. He meets Bruno’s gaze and says, his voice soft but his gaze intent, “I take sometimes.”
“Mm,” says Bruno, lips curving into a smile that makes the other man fluster again and glance away. “I bet.”
* * *
The next day Nachikamdi comes in, the following Monday, Bruno is just finishing the morning shift. It’s a dry day, blue skies, not even a breeze.
“I thought,” says Nachikamdi on his lunch break, “that we could go for a walk together. Maybe get an early dinner.”
“Oh,” says Bruno. “I’d like that.”
“I need to get something first,” says Nachikamdi, and Bruno nods — he’d just been on his way to change and clock out, so he walks him back to the ticket desk.
It’s a 700-ticket prize — a little brown bear.
“Your big bear needs a friend, huh?” asks Bruno after Andy’s handed over the prize and Nachikamdi has thanked him. Nachikamdi adjusts the bear’s little polka dot bowtie.
“This one is for you,” says the head librarian, pressing it into his hands. “It’s size appropriate, like mine is.”
“Rude!” says Bruno, but he holds the bear against his chest as he laughs, feeling how soft it is. “You sure you want me to come on this date later? You’re not acting like it.”
“No, no,” murmurs Nachikamdi. His smile is sparkling. “I do.”
“I suppose I’ll just have to take it, then,” says Bruno, and he takes the other man’s hand.
FIN.
Want a bit more librarian romance? Try:
https://johannestevans.medium.com/books-to-return-b9c93d8c7687
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