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There's a library in town that they both love to go to.
It's full of books, of course - but it's also full of life. The people that run it don't get paid anymore but they do their best to upkeep the building and it's contents, maintaining a check out system through paper now that the computers don't work.
It's only open for four hours a day, a concession to the strained power grid, but when it is open at least once every couple of weeks they'll walk to it. It makes Phil feel more like a child than anything else on the island, like he's been transported back to summer holidays spent with his grandparents. It smells the same, like dust and books and the scents the older ladies behind the counter wear.
The carpet is worn since it can't be cleaned regularly, but the gray color hides a multitude of sins. When Phil looks over to where the children's area has always been, he sees a group of of them huddled around for the daily story time. His grandmother would always leave him and Martyn sitting at the table with coloring sheets or children's books, under strict orders not to rip any of the pages. Phil always handled them so much more delicately than the ones he had at home, unsure of what would happen if anything were to rip.
Phil's favorite part of coming now isn't actually the pile of books he leaves with. It's visiting the library's unofficial mascot, a smushed face puppy with huge brown eyes and droopy ears that looks expectantly at everyone that enters the building, waiting to be petted.
They don't disappoint her. They always stop, dropping to their knees. Dan coos at her in a soft, high little voice, and Phil makes sure to scratch those spots she loves behind her ears. Her tail swishes the ground and they linger doting on her until she decides she's done with them and lies back down.
-
There are no new releases anymore. The tables where they used to sit have a rotating selection of local favorites instead.
Phil always goes to the thriller section, thumbs past the familiar titles of Stephen King and Dean Koontz and Gillian Flynn to some of the lesser known writers. He's been dabbling in older mysteries lately - Agatha Christine and Arthur Conan Doyle. He finds them a bit stodgy but sometimes it's nice to have a reprieve from the more visceral horrors of newer authors.
He still wants to write his own one day. He's stopped and started half a dozen, always losing focus or being frustrated with his own plot holes and the fact that no one can fix them for him. Dan keeps encouraging him and Phil keeps saying he's not giving up, not yet.
His first two choices are a well-aged copy of The Turn of the Screw and Casino Royale because he likes that he can picture a very fit James Bond as he reads it. They're only allowed to take four books out at a time, so he's careful about it. People read with a renewed sense of vigor with their world the way it is. Demand is high and he respects that.
He chooses Jurassic Park solely for the nostalgia. He's making his way back through Michael Crichton one book a month, just to savor them.
His final choice... he debates it for quite a while. He'd like to pick an author he's never heard of before, but there's something so comforting about familiar names and familiar stories set in familiar places. He spends twenty minutes before he settles on one that doesn't look like something he'd ever have chosen before. It's about a teenage girl, a story that's the opposite of the escapism he's picked in the others. It's about hiding and surviving and family. Maybe he'll start reading it and find the nerves rubbed too raw, but he decides it's worth a shot.
-
Dan is sitting at one of the circular tables when Phil emerges from the stacks. The library pup is at his feet and he has one hand dangling to scratch pet her every time she lifts her head.
"I'm finished," Phil says.
Dan's flipping through a book, but he has a stack of four others to the side of him so Phil assumes he just picked one to look at while he waited. Surprisingly, it's always Phil that takes longer. Dan's less indecisive when he knows in a week he can come back and choose more. He also doesn't pick only novels like Phil does; he likes to branch out.
Phil pulls Dan's books toward him, looking at them. There's a travel guide on India and a book on appreciating ordinary life and a table book on art with big glossy pages, probably costing quite a bit of coin in its less dog-eared years. The last one is a novel, something with a pale pink cover that looks too flowery for Phil's tastes but he made the mistake of laughing at Dan's newfound appreciation for romance novels once and he won't do that again.
He looks up to find Dan smiling at him. "Do they pass inspection?"
Dan's hair is a little shaggier and overgrown, longer than he typically lets it get. Phil likes the way it makes curls tumble into his eyes. Phil's heart constricts with fondness and he says, "I suppose so. Pasties now?"
It's their library day tradition; books and then a special little treat. The little bakery down the street reliably has croissants and lunch time pasties for the people that travel to the main streets during the day.
"If they don't have onion and cheese I'm rioting," Dan says.
"I'll ring ahead and let her know," Phil says. It's a stupid joke, since the only phone they have exists only to play Dan's music, but Dan still chuckles.
-
They check out and load their books into the bags they carry with them for shopping or days like this. The dog is asleep again in her cozy bed by the front door, not stirring to offer them a goodbye as they walk out.
Phil looks over his shoulder just once as Dan opens the door ahead of them, one more wistful look into a slice of his past before he follows Dan out.