Work Text:
Jean went to the library often—because who didn’t?, but she hadn’t known about the new book supervision club that had been put in place because the old librarian had retired. So when she gently pushed open the oak doors to the place, Amber talking her ear off behind her, her eyes flitted around before settling on the person behind the checkout desk, who was most definitely not the wispy, cranky old lady that had been there a couple of days before. Instead, a young woman of maybe Jean’s age or perhaps a little bit older stood sorting through a stack of haphazardly arranged books, with her honey colored curls tucked behind her ear and a purple rose just above it. She looked up at the creak of the door--which had Jean internally wincing every time she heard it--and saw Jean and Amber approaching, putting a hand on her chest, like a pledge; “Hello! I take it you haven’t seen me before. I’m Lisa Minci, the new student librarian.”
Amber giggled a little and nudged Jean. “I’m Amber, and this is Jean.” She leaned in a little bit. “Wake up, sleepy head.”
Scowling lightly at the overexcited girl, Jean nodded politely to Lisa, like her mother had taught her; and offered the book that she had been holding: History of Mondstadt Extended Version Vol. V. Lisa tilted her head at it and took it, paging through briefly and then looking back up at Jean. She smiled. “The condition is immaculate, thank you. You don’t know how many books have been returned to me looking like they’d been run through a meat processor.” She shook her head, resuming taking out bookmarks and un dog-earing pages of other books. “Anyway, are you only here for that?”
“Nope!” Amber produced her own book, A Complete Guide to Wind Gliding Vol. II ; “I’ve been using it to teach the new students, but they’ve nailed it, so I don’t really need it anymore.”
“Oh, Aether and Lumine? They're real cuties, but a little wild,” Lisa said with a light laugh as Amber handed over the book. Jean noticed Lisa was wearing black gloves, but the rest of her arms were bare, and wondered why. She snapped back to reality as Lisa removed Amber’s dog-ears and placed the book in the return cart. “If that’s all, you can browse, and there are tables at the back for homework, but I think you know that already. It was great meeting you, Amber, Jean.”
“Likewise,” Jean said immediately, offering a genial smile.
Lisa’s eyes lingered on Jean’s for a second; they were a beautiful shade of green, set like emerald and burning like fire. The corners of her mouth tipped up into a smile, and she inclined her head, “Happy reading.”
---
“Soooooo,” Amber said, drawing out the word, once she and Jean had reached the table that they always used, Diluc and Kaeya already there under the guise of homework but actually just bickering, “What’d you think about Lisa?”
“Hm?” asked Jean, raising her eyes to meet Amber’s, because that’s polite, and no daughter of mine should ever be uncordial , her mother’s voice whispered in her head, even though Jean really just wanted to read the book she’d picked up while strolling through the shelves. “Oh. She’s very nice.” Amber raised her eyebrows and didn’t say anything.
“You mean the new librarian?” Kaeya asked. Jean nodded. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to talk to them at all, she just didn’t like talking about people behind their backs, even if it was nice words. Diluc made a noncommittal noise. “She’s hot,” continued Kaeya, “But I’m gay, so nah.”
Jean mirrored Amber and raised her eyebrows but started on her homework. It wasn’t long before someone tapped the table in front of her. “How many holes does a straw have?” asked Kaeya when she turned to look. His ice blue eye gave away that he was asking the question in earnest, which had Jean thinking, not for the first time, what went on in his brain. She turned to Diluc, who had a book open but had his eyes fixed on a spot right above it, evidently also listening to her. “Diluc says one, because it’s just one big tunnel, but that’s a fucking tunnel , Diluc, not a hole, and I say two because of the two holes at the top or bottom.”
“It’s one, it’s one large hole, not a tunnel; your ‘holes’ are just openings,” Diluc shot back. Amber had her hand over her mouth to muffle her laughs at the overuse of the word “holes”.
Jean heaved an internal sigh and wondered where they got questions like this. They were quite endearing, of course, but sometimes a little bit too much. The sigh was internal, of course, because sighing out loud was quite rude. “There are three, because your explanations are both valid.”
Diluc and Kaeya looked at each other for a moment before Diluc shrugged and continued his book and Kaeya flipped his pencil, bored. “Amber, do you have the answer to number five on the Math homework? The ones with the polynomials?”
Amber put her pencil in her mouth, flipped open her binder, and scanned the worksheet. “Nwo,” she said through the pencil. “Ask Jean.”
“No,” said Jean patiently, “Please do your homework yourself.”
“I don’t understand it, though.”
Jean pushed away her book. If she were to read it without any interruptions, she could probably finish it in a day, but others had to come first so they could be okay, and work too, before she could indulge herself. She would just have to cram it to return it on time, and exhaled at the thought, which was what she’d had to do for every single book she checked out.
She shouldn’t complain, though; because don’t get her wrong, she loved helping other people. She loved seeing the smiles that were brought to their faces, she loved seeing their eyes light up at something when they finally understood, and she loved making others happy. But sometimes she got tired.
Her mother would be disappointed at these thoughts, though—and to think of it, Jean was too.
So she pushed them away and started to explain the quadratic formula to Kaeya-- “Negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four a c over two a…”
---
When the library closed, Jean was the only one left at the table, and still not done with her homework, but she snapped her book shut and rubbed at the sleep threatening her eyelids, putting her mess of binders and folders back in her backpack. She slung the pack over her shoulder and headed towards the doors of the library. Right when she was passing the desk, though, a soft noise alerted her to the presence of Lisa, who, when she turned to look, had the side of her face against the table and was fast asleep, her breathing even and her mouth slightly open. Her chestnut curls were falling over her shoulder and the purple rose had almost fallen off. Unaware of the smile slipping onto her face, Jean went over and brushed some hair out of Lisa’s face, shaking the other girl slightly. “Lisa? Hello? The library’s closing.”
Lisa did not answer.
“Lisa?” Jean shook the girl in question again, a little harder this time. Lisa jerked back into the waking world by flopping a hand over her eyes. She fumbled for words for a bit before saying,
“What time is it?”
“It’s,” Jean checked her watch, “7:03 P.M.”
Lisa dragged her knuckles across her eyes and stood up, fixing her rose. “Damn. Okay.” She sighed. Then sighed again and made no move to leave.
“Uh,” Jean said after a few seconds.
“Oh,” Lisa said, coming back to earth from where she had been staring off into space and gathering a bag that Jean hadn’t seen from behind the counter, “Thanks for waking me, I’ll be going home now.” She offered another smile, albeit a tired one, shoved some books into her bag, and walked out from behind the counter. Jean followed and held open the door for her, to which the other girl nodded gratefully and headed across the parking lot, which was empty save for Jean’s car.
Wait. Only Jean’s car?
Jean’s suspicions were confirmed when she saw Lisa starting to walk across the sidewalk, the nighttime crickets buzzing and the only light from the feeble street lamps that cast eerie, pale yellow glows across the pavement. It was creepily quiet, even though the air was alive with insects, and before she could change her mind, Jean was dashing across the parking lot towards Lisa--in a very dignified way, of course, who mercifully hadn’t gotten far. Lisa, who had obviously heard, had stopped in her tracks and was waiting with a small smile on her face. Odd; but Jean was already opening her mouth. “Would you...would you like to stay at mine for a little bit? I see you don’t have a car.”
Brushing some hair out of her face, Lisa turned to face Jean, that smile still dancing across her lips. It was almost...flirtatious, thought Jean, she’s very peculiar, as Lisa said, very quietly, “I’d love to.”