Chapter Text
“Yeah, well fuck you too,” says Clint, and he somehow manages to not raise his voice too loudly even though he does slam down the phone awfully hard.
“He started it?” asks Steve lowly with a raised brow in Clint’s direction.
“Of course he started it,” breathes Clint before using his mouse to nudge his computer back to life to make a note on the system. “I’m not a moron, I don’t immediately disrespect people.” And his eyes seem to drift past Steve and his voice raises just enough as he adds, “Unlike some people!”
“Shut up, you lousy fuck, you’re in a library,” comes Bucky’s gruff voice from Steve’s right, which suddenly explains one of the few reasons Clint would get as loud as he would considering they were supposed to be the damn gatekeepers of the noise level around here. He drops a pizza box on the counter. “Also, here’s dinner, asshole.”
“Language,” Steve reminds gently as he watches a couple of small bodies bolt through the front doors of the library and head towards the stacks of children’s books. “There are kids around.”
Bucky rolls his eyes and cracks open the pizza box. “Today’s ruined order: green peppers got mixed with the anchovies and a single pepperoni accidentally ended up on top.” He shakes his head and shuts the box again to keep it warm. “Rumlow is the worst set of hands over there.”
“You’re probably the worst set of one hand,” remarks Clint as he continues to smugly type.
Subtly, Bucky flips him the bird.
Clint scoffs after a quick glance at him. “You can’t even throw a pizza.”
“No, but I’m great on the phone compared to you.” When Clint scoffs at Bucky, Bucky continues, “Oh yeah, I heard you on the phone. You ain’t exactly eloquent, Barton.”
Steve groans. He doesn’t get paid enough to deal with these two. “Thanks for lunch, Buck,” he says softly and takes the pizza behind the desk, knowing full-well they definitely aren’t supposed to have lunch at the front counter; greasy hands and books aren’t exactly a great combination. “You gonna need a ride home tonight?”
“Nah, I picked up the backend of Pierce’s shift so I’m workin’ late.” He rolls his eyes and runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll just bus it.”
“I can give you a ride,” suggests Clint, abusing the power of his spinning chair so that Steve feels Clint kick him so he’ll stop spinning because it’s a normal occurrence at this point, Steve’s actually used to being kicked. “I don’t mind.”
There’s only a second of hesitation before Bucky says, “Nah, I got a bus pass, might as well use it.”
“Suit yourself.” Again, Steve is kicked as Clint spins himself back to face his desk to grab the library phone to go about making another call about late fees. Surprisingly enough, he may be the only one with the civility to not totally pick a fight with people over the phone.
Steve watches Bucky shake his head and roll his eyes in his usual fashion. Really, he has no idea how those two get along as well as they do. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Stevie,” he says as he raps his knuckles on the desk twice before backing away. “An’ make sure you leave some pizza for Wilson.”
“Will do,” sighs Steve as he goes back to sitting in his chair, watching Bucky leave. Behind him, he can hear Clint’s calm telephone voice in its usual mantra: “Hi, this is Clint from the Bed-Stuy Public Library…”
But that’s normal and fades to background noise while Steve goes back to pulling books from the drop-off box and sorting them onto his cart, knowing which one will come after which because he knows these shelves the same way he knows his mother’s smile. Putting the last one onto his cart, he listens to Clint patiently say, “Yes, I believe that you returned the book, but we don’t have it, so you have to pay the fine…”
His voice drifts as Steve makes his way out from behind the desk, pushing his cart along. Soon enough, he’ll get back to the pizza. But he has to put away the books before he can get his hands greasy. Clint’ll have to manage the desk in the meantime.
The stacks are quiet except for the constant gentle murmur of people congregating to work on group projects. There are always groups here: some from the local colleges, some from the local high schools, some for therapy sessions, some for craft circles. It’s incredible to see the sheer diversity of people that come through the doors on a regular day.
Then again, maybe that’s just New York.
The cart’s wheels click and squeal as they rolls along the dirty carpet. Luckily, none of the wheels hitch; when they do that, usually at least five books fall off. It’s painful to watch them fall and to see pages crinkle, especially when Steve tries to smooth them out and put them back like nothing happened, but he knows. He always knows.
The first couples of stacks go by quickly, everything falling in place, and Steve’s satisfied that he doesn’t have to do a book shuffle of moving different titles around different shelves so that they all stay in order. The better fact of that means that lots of books have been checked out recently. Nothing is better than a good book.
He gets to the fourth row, back in the nonfiction section, by that one stack where someone dumped what looked like an entire pot worth of coffee on the ground a few weeks back, the kind of spill that was like a hit-and-run because neither Clint nor Steve could figure out who’d done it or where the coffee pot criminal went. It’s here in this stack that Steve finds a guy sprawled out with five different books around him, intermittently flipping pages and scrawling in a mangled notebook that’s settled on his knee. He looks scraggly and revved up at the same time, a bit like a mad man minus the crazy hair and minus the elaborate lab. And probably smaller.
Steve tries very hard not to look at him because he tries not to bother the patrons, but this guy is taking up half the aisle and there’s no way Steve is getting the cart past him, and he doesn’t want to have to go back, it’ll ruin his carefully charted route around the stacks to put the books back where they belong. It’s the same route he goes every time he has to reshelve, and it’s a routine he doesn’t want to break. His fingers twitch on the cart’s handle at the thought.
This guy looks up as Steve’s cart rolls closer with its noisy wheels, and he watches the cart before looking up to Steve, and Steve’s trying really hard not to be awkward as he starts to ask, “Hey, could you just-“
But at the same time, the other guy is saying, “Let me move all this outta-“
There’s a half second pause, and there’s an awkward laugh from the guy on the floor as he tucks his knees to his chest so that his notebook’s pages crumple; Steve cringes at the sound. Proceeding to pull his books in closer and stack them out of the way, the guy smiles sheepishly up at Steve and scratches his beard. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologizes with a laugh.
There’s a pause, and Steve shakes his head before saying, “You know you can check those out, right?”
“Yeah,” breathes the guy on the ground as he watches Steve’s cart roll on past, eyes analyzing the wheels. “I just thought I could find the stuff I wanted fast enough…” He rakes a hand through his hair. “I didn’t realize it’d turn into this big of a mess.”
Steve blinks at the guy and keeps going with his cart. “Good luck with your… whatever it is,” he says, shaking his head as he heads down to the far end of the aisle.
“Research,” mumbles the guy as his notebook crumples again, and Steve can hear the sound of more books being shuffled around as he stops his cart a little ways away. “Lots and lots of research.”
Steve tiptoes up to reach the top shelf and tucks a book back in its spot, snug between two more books on astrophysics by the same author. He hardly ever sees anyone back here, but he doesn’t want to ask—the guy seems too busy. So Steve slips a second book onto the next rack over and onto an eye-level shelf before carrying on, his cart rolling along with its hitching and squeaking wheels.
Half a pizza in his stomach and just a half hour of basic shit left to do, Steve circles through the stacks in a way where he feels like he should be yelling “Bring out your dead!” to the townspeople. It’s basically a somber march through an empty library with the occasional nudge to the college student who’s so engrossed in studying that they don’t realize that it is well past closing time.
He’s making his way through the stacks and pauses at the start of new shelves: that guy is still sitting there. But instead of being sprawled out and scrawling, he’s slumped over like a corpse, neck hanging at an odd angle, loose hand holding a precariously dangling pencil.
For a second, Steve’s heart slams to a stop because he’s pretty sure this guy is dead. So if this is the start of an episode of CSI, he’s pretty sure it’d be dull: librarian finds a dead body, where would the story even go from there?
Still, he’s got to do his job and get everyone out of the library, even if they leave in body bags. Steve heads down the stacks with a sigh and really hopes that there aren’t red and blue lights flashing outside the window in a couple minutes.
He crouches next to the guy and, luckily, determines that he is, in fact, sleeping and not dead. That’s a relief. So Steve reaches out and touches the guy’s shoulder lightly. “Hey,” Steve murmurs, hoping to gently wake up Captain Scraggly here. “Wake up.”
There’s a stark difference between the man slowly rousing from slumber compared to the man who was the human embodiment of a studious squirrel earlier. This new guy is groggy and slow and seems almost drunk. “Whaaa?” he asks, looking up to Steve with a bleary, blinking look.
“The library’s closed.” He keeps his voice low and gentle, aware that this guy clearly isn’t the kind to wake up quickly. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Those dark eyes squeeze shut real tight before reopening, and the guy goes, “Yeah, okay, okay, one sec.” And he begins to pile up his books and rise to his feet. After a quick stretch, he shoves all the books onto one shelf, which makes Steve cringe as he stands up because they’re not in order, no one ever puts them back in order—
“Sorry for being in the way. Twice, now.” He laughs half-heartedly before heading down the aisle. “I’ll escort myself out if that’s cool?”
“Get home safely,” encourages Steve as he begins to put the books back on their proper shelves, hardly looking at the guy except to watch him ruffle his hair as he walks away towards the front door where he’s silhouetted in the only lights that are still left on.
It’s almost poetic. But Steve’s feathers are still ruffled because he didn’t put the books back right.
Clint has the front desk covered—it’s his favorite spot in the whole library because it has the best sightlines of all the college students as they milled around and caused general chaos; he enjoys the show, really.
Except the whole library has been dead today. Like a graveyard, really. Steve opts to take advantage of the quiet and of the fact that Clint’s got eyes on everything from the front desk. He slips his headphones on while he meanders around the library to put back the book returns from the night before. For whatever reason, people think that the middle of the night was the best time to return books. Steve, being the one to show up bright and sunshiny early each day, is the first to always find the bin chock full of returns, fuller than the one at their desk would get on any of their busy days. Apparently, more people return books at the ungodly hours of the night than they do during the basic library operating hours.
So, with his cart stacked with the books that Clint had sorted earlier while on the phone with yet another numbskull who didn’t think that late return fees were a thing anymore when they very much so were, he heads into the stacks. But the benefit of Clint having already organized them is that he can move through the aisles with ease and reshelve the books quickly enough so that maybe, just maybe, no one would notice that he has his headphones in? He’s going fast, almost has a third of his cart finished, and the library is quiet anyways. Where’s the harm?
Then again.
Maybe no one would notice if he just started to bob his head a little bit. Then maybe he sways his hips side to side while squatting down to slip a book on a lower shelf. After a couple minutes, he’s tapping his feet, but he justifies it by standing on his tiptoes to reach the tiptop of a different shelf. Clapping at drumbeats, that’s entirely inadvertent, unplanned, but he has absolutely lost all sense of the outside silence when contrasted with the noise that booms in his ears at levels that would be unhealthy for most but aren’t that bad for a guy who’s a little deaf in one ear.
But now, as he shoves the cart down further down the aisle to give himself more space for a quick, tight spin move, he notices: “Oh shit.”
That guy. That stupid guy with his stupid facial hair and his stupid textbooks and his stupid pencil shoved behind his stupid ear.
Steve tugs out his headphones (a bit painfully) and tucks them away into his jacket pocket; one earbud still hangs out of the pocket, but he ignores it and gives a polite “Uh…” to the library patron.
“You were clapping, dude.”
Immediately, Steve wishes his jacket were big enough to bury his face in because his cheeks are burning red right now. “Oh god, please don’t tell anyone.”
Clint would tease him for two months straight. Mercilessly. And Sam would have a field day with dancing in front of the kids to taunt the hell out of Steve.
Fuck this entire situation.
The guy just licks his lips and grins in a way that’s not quite malicious but is definitely something beyond amused. “Your secret’s safe with me,” he laughs lowly, not looking at Steve anymore; instead, he’s watching the ground between them like he’s trying to hide his smile.
Steve groans and is plenty annoyed with himself. He tucks the second earbud into his pocket and pushes his cart down the aisle past this guy, who presses himself up against the shelf.
“You got moves like Jagger,” comments the guy with a half-laugh after Steve’s slid on past him down the aisle.
Blushing fiercely red all the way up to his ears, Steve doesn’t look back. Instead, he walks faster.
“Can you two convince Barnes to bring back a pizza for dinner?” Tasha asks over the phone while guns go off in the background of the call.
Steve winces as each one fires, really wishing she wouldn’t call him from work. “Yeah, I’ll ask. He’s getting out at the same time as us tonight, so he should have a couple ruined ones for us.”
More gunshots. “Hopefully there’s something normal for once. Like pepperoni.”
“Don’t you wish.”
“I just said ‘hopefully’, it’s the same damn thing, Steve.”
He rolls his eyes. “Natasha, don’t be a dick.”
“I won’t,” she says slowly and deliberately, “because that’s Clint’s job.”
“Fair enough.” And he looks up from scanning books because there’s a shadow across his desk, but he’s greeted with the sight of the scruffy guy standing there, looking as perky as a goddamn sunflower. “Tasha, I gotta go.”
“Behave, you book nerd.”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
“Tell Clint to shove a dildo up his ass.”
Steve hangs up quickly after that, really hoping this guy didn’t hear her say that.
The scruffy guy’s wearing a smirk as he now realizes he’s got Steve’s full attention, and he leans forward with his elbows on the counter and his hands laced together. “I need some help.”
“That’s what the front desk is for,” Steve says brightly, knocking on the desk twice and firing his usual charming smile to the patron before leaning in a little bit. “What can I do for you today?”
He pauses with a smile before saying, “There’s a textbook I’m looking for—“
Steve hovers his fingers over the keyboard, waiting for a title.
“—and it’s got a bike on the cover, it’s about nuclear physics. Textbooks are lame like that.” He laughs, and it’s some cross between a snort and a sigh. “But I think it’s a girl riding the bike and there are some other numbers on the cover—“
Steve’s about to choke out of sheer horror. “Do- Do you know what the title is?” he asks hopefully, his fingers still barely over the keyboard like they’re hanging in the balance.
“No idea.” Now his laugh is full-blown, and maybe he’s realizing how dumb this request sounds, or at least Steve really hopes he realizes how fucking dumb he sounds right here. “But it should be something about nuclear physics.”
That doesn’t solve anything though, Steve knows. He lets the pads of his fingers rest on the home keys of the keyboard, and he has to steel himself with a deep breath. “Sir, I can’t help you if you don’t have a book title.”
Something between a groan and a whine comes from the scruffy guy’s mouth. “But I need it.” He sounds like a pouting five-year-old but with a twinge of that familiar college kid desperation. “I have to make sure I get the reference right for my professor, he wants to double check my work because he doesn’t believe that—“
This is not Steve’s job. But at the same time, it is Steve’s job. “Alright, alright, it should be somewhere in the physics section because I don’t think we have a specific nuclear physics section, but I can help you look.”
His eyes, those nice brown eyes, light up like starbursts. “That would be fantastic.”
The only reason Steve can pull this off is because he knows Bucky is going to be on his break and walking through those doors any second— and there he is, right on time, pushing the front door open with his back while his one arm braces two pizzas. He even holds the door open with his back for a little old lady, who thanks him softly and passes through to the outside. And then, in a few long strides, Bucky is standing at the front desk and saying, “Hey, you dirty fucks.”
“I need you to help Clint watch the desk,” says Steve nicely as he sees Clint come back from making sure the kids didn’t tie Sam up over in the kiddie area. “I gotta help this guy out. And since you’re on break—“
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” agrees Bucky wholeheartedly without a moment of hesitation. He plops down into the third chair they keep at the front desk and rolls over towards where Clint usually sits, still holding the pizzas. “But I’m gettin’ a couple of your slices.”
“That’s fine,” says Steve as he watches Clint crash into his own chair beside Bucky, the two of them like two peas in a pod. “Just leave a couple for me, at least.”
“Fine,” he groans dramatically while handing one box to Clint, which he’ll probably finish on his own and leave nothing for Sam because Riley packs Sam’s lunches most days, which is cute as hell because they’ve been together for five years and are finally getting married in a few months—
“So you get this guy and I get Barnes?” asks Clint with a cocked brow. At Steve’s nodded response, a grin grows on his face as he looks to Bucky. “Nice.”
“Just hold down the fort,” sighs Steve before heading off into the stacks with the scruffy guy following at his heels like a lost dog.
“Is this it?” asks Steve, holding out yet another book for this guy— whose name is Tony, apparently —to look at from halfway down the aisle.
From that distance, he squints and muses for a moment, actually stroking his beard scruff like some kind of ancient philosopher even though he’s just a quirky college guy with messy habits and probably an even messier head. “Nah, not that one,” he says like he’s just decreed that the earth revolves around the sun.
With a sigh, Steve sticks the book right back where he pulled it out of and keeps going, looking for this elusive textbook.
“Y’kno, you don’t have to help me, I can figure it out on my own.” He keeps pulling books off the shelf and pushing them carefully back into their slot after a quick peak at the cover.
“This is my job,” Steve reminds while also rifling through the books. He pulls out one with a blue spine, but the cover is red, so he slides it back in and moves on. “I help people.”
“Yeah, but we’ve been at this for twenty minutes and I’m sure your friend has to get back to wherever he works and-“
Steve interrupts him without hesitation, saying, “It’s not a problem, honestly. It’s good to get out from behind the desk and talk to people that aren’t my coworkers. Besides, that guy hates his job, so he’s thrilled to be here, honestly.”
At the other end of the aisle, Steve can see Tony raising an eyebrow and pausing. “I don’t know a single person who would ever be thrilled to be in a library.”
“Then you don’t know the right people,” says Steve coolly, trying not to get frustrated with Tony because he’s the STEM studies kind of guy, the guy who should have slicked back hair and a leather jacket and should be rubbing his superior intellect in everyone else’s faces. Steve can’t get all that frustrated because, despite how much he does fit into a certain stereotype that Steve’s familiar with, he’s not that kind of guy. He’s softer spoken and has respect for other human beings. He seems confused by concepts that aren’t within his basic reach, but he shows signs of curiosity that aren’t an outright rejection.
All in all, Steve doesn’t mind him. He’s annoyed because this dude doesn’t know basic library etiquette, but aside from that, he’s not terrible.
The ancient intercom crackles to life after a few seconds of static. “Steve Rogers, please report to the front desk,” comes Clint’s voice like something out of an old movie. “Steve Rogers, please report to the front desk.” The repetition is something that sounds so sickeningly middle school that Steve actually rolls his eyes.
“Is that you?” asks Tony with a raised brow.
“Yeah,” groans Steve, figuring that Clint is trying to egg him on somehow; to what end is still unclear. He slides the last book onto the shelf, takes note of where he is on the shelf so he can come back to this spot, and starts to head towards the front desk where he abandoned Barton and Barnes. “He probably needs something. Maybe Bucky fucked up a computer or something.”
“Such a dirty mouth for a librarian,” comments Tony with a laugh and a quick jog to catch up to Steve.
Steve shakes his head and says, “The guys I work with are worse.”
A couple minutes of maze-like shelves later, they’re in the library lobby and heading towards the front where both Clint and Bucky have their feet up on the desk. Clint’s wearing a smug smirk while Bucky is taking a too big bite of pizza.
“Found your book,” says Clint, holding up a book. Its blue, has an actual title, and there’s a girl riding a bike on the front. “Apparently, you put it in the drop box after you finished with it yesterday. When I scanned it in, your library card number came up with your face on it.” Clint laughs. “You should really remember what you do with the books when you’re done with them.”
Tony groans and drops his head onto the desk in defeat.
Steve is doing all he can not to get frustrated right now; he bites his lip and bates his breath because he just spent almost a half hour looking for that book when he had plenty of other shit to do. Not to mention he’ll probably get all the shitty pieces of pizza—
“My bad,” he says, trying to make it sound casual, but it doesn’t sound casual, it sounds like he feels like a goddamn burden.
“Don’t worry about it,” Steve says, knowing he doesn’t want to make the guy feel guilty any more than he already does at this point. Clearly he isn’t made of self-confidence like he wants everyone to think. He takes the book from Clint and passes it casually to Tony, hoping he can pass it off as not a big deal. “I’m just glad we found your book.”
“Yeah, now you can get back to readin’ ‘bout nuclear physics, even though e’ryone knows that H.G. Wells is where it’s at.” Bucky holds up a badly beaten up copy of The War of the Worlds that he’s read at least two dozen times.
“I think you’re forgetting how good Sedaris is,” remarks Clint with a snort of a laugh.
For a second, Bucky shakes his copy of the worn book before tossing it down and relenting: “Yeah, Sedaris is good.”
Clint grins and points towards at Steve with a cocky grin smattered across his face. “Told you. Everyone loves Sedaris.”
“Fuck off.”
Clint rolls his chair back from the desk, away from Bucky, and towards the computer he’s usually working at. “Y’know, a ‘thank you’ wouldn’t be uncalled for after finding that book for you,” he says while reaching out to turn the monitor back on so he can log on; the background is a picture of Lucky, of course.
“Thank you,” says Tony just at the same time that Steve mutters, “Thank you.”
Bucky chooses this point to pull his feet off the desk and stand up, shoving his book into his back pocket and using his one hand to brush the crumbs off his jacket. “A’ight, well, I’m out then. Got a register to run and pizzas to deliver.”
Steve just wants to get back in his seat and eat whatever pizza is left over that Bucky didn’t snag. So he moves around the back of the desk and skirts around Bucky, who pulls on his Imposturous Pizza hat. And Steve thinks it’s the dumbest name ever for a pizzeria, but Bucky’s already heading for the door and waving and sticking yet another piece of pizza into his mouth like the piggish food whore he is.
“And I should go actually read this now,” laughs Tony sheepishly like he’s trying to find a reason to get out of there; he’s shuffling back a few paces. “Thanks again for helping me find it.” He gestures with the book in hand as a reminder, as if Steve would forget, and then smiles before ducking away like he can get out with half the embarrassment that he went into it with.
“Can’t believe he put it in the drop box,” says Clint casually while clicking absent-mindedly around on Facebook. “That’s a pretty big fuck up.”
With a shrug, Steve screws off the top of his water bottle. “Just glad we could help him out.”
“Yeah, sure,” Clint says as he posts yet another picture of his dog online.
Steve tips back some water before screwing the cap back on. He nudges open the pizza box with one finger to find that they’d left him at least a couple decent pieces that weren’t all crust. And, picking one up, he checks his phone to see a message from Natasha: Some guy accidentally shot himself in the foot. I fucking hate my job.