Work Text:
Namjoon doesn't get drunk often, but when he does it's always priceless and he always does something fucking stupid. This time, he left a note in a book in the library:
'If you're reading this you're a nerd.'
And, like, maybe you’re thinking why the fuck was Namjoon drunk in the library? But you have to understand. Namjoon is in college, and he has three dissertations due for the end of the month, and he’s reached a point where honestly he doesn’t give a shit anymore. So, turn up at the library completely shit faced to attempt to write a half-assed lit essay? Sure. Why the fuck not?
And he should be scared of getting kicked out, because drunk people and books really don’t mix well, and the cute, pale student-librarian has been watching him with narrowed eyes since he’s entered the library. But, really, he just doesn’t care. Besides, he thinks, anyone who is willing to put themselves through the grueling read that is Vladimir Nabokov’s The Luzhin Defence really is a nerd.
What he doesn’t expect, however, is to find a note scribbled in reply the next time he visits the library, when it’s time to actually write this fucking lit essay.
In very tiny writing, scribbled just below his message on the small green post it note, Namjoon can make out:
‘You do realize you just called yourself a nerd, right? And anyway, Nabokov is a literary genius, don’t you think?’
And so Namjoon writes back to the mystery person, just a little addition before he starts working. When he leaves, he wonders if the person will reply back by tomorrow:
'Excuse you. I'd never read this willingly'
Namjoon doesn’t expect to receive a message back. He figures it’s a one time thing, just some stupid library dweller to happen across his drunken note. But that doesn’t stop him from checking back in three weeks time. He’s finished his essay on The Luzhin Defence now, is in the midst of taking notes on Nabokov’s more widely recognized work, Lolita. Yet there’s a certain magnetism that pulls him towards the thin, chess-patterned book on the shelf. The new note reads:
‘Oh, so you’re a lit student then? Nabokov is too stylized for your tiny, green-tea-and-romantic-poetry-poisoned-mind to handle?’
And underneath there is a sketch that is, quite unmistakably, of him, beanie smoothing down his hair, flask (appropriately labeled ‘green tea’ by the artist) in hand. The drawing is in the same penmanship as the message, drawn in dark green ink. An art student perhaps, Namjoon ponders, or maybe just one of those people who like to doodle in the margins of their paper. He looks around, half expecting to find someone watching him - a girl with an green pen and sketch paper in hand? A boy with Nabokov’s life’s work piled in front of him?
But there is nobody looking his way.
Except maybe that cute librarian - the pale one with the narrowed eyes.
Namjoon darts his eyes around him, making sure that nobody’s watching him, ensuring that the librarian isn’t going to jump out from behind a bookshelf and catch him vandalizing, before he pulls out a pen and scribbles in the margins of the same page the post-it note (now riddled with scribbles and that terribly accurate drawing) (“A phantom went by, stopped and began to swiftly stow the pieces away in a tiny coffin,” reads Nabokov’s ‘masterpiece’.)
Namjoon’s new note says:
‘The Luzhin Defence isn’t stylized. It’s just bullshit. And, hey, don’t knock green tea until you’ve tried it. Also, I’m offended by your sketch’s lack of dimples. Are you watching me, Little Artist?’
And Namjoon doesn't return for another week, and his hair is freshly dyed that silver color he likes. He doesn't go for Bulgakov, who he is supposed to read by the end of the week. No, he goes to the little book with his artist and opens it to check for a reply. There is one, another drawing of him next to:
'Just because you can't understand it doesn't mean it's bullshit, you just can't recognise style, even when it's hitting you in the face.'
The pale librarian with the narrow eyes isn't there today.
The next note that Namjoon leaves says, rather strongly:
‘Nabokov isn’t being stylistic though. I personally believe he’s just spouting bullshit and seeing how far he can take it without stupid readers like you catching on. He’s catching flies with his sweet, literary honey. And you, my friend, you are one of them. One of the stupid, stupid flies. On the other hand, if you’re looking for something really stylistic to read, I suggest you check out Zamyatin. ‘We’ is like George Orwell’s wet dream. Happy reading.’
And, sure, maybe he’s being a little bit rude. And a little bit basic. Because actually he hated ‘We’. He thought it was silly, and overdone, and really literalist if anything. But any self-acclaimed literary hipster like him would be proud to proclaim ‘We’ the Granddaddy of Dystopia, and so he sticks to his guns and praises it like he would his own half-finished novel - that sits in the ‘unfinished’ folder of his laptop - to a publisher. He debates drawing his own little sketch - a host of fly corpses rotting in a honey-shaped grave - but decides that his art skills are simply just not up to par, and returns the book to it’s shelf, going instead to find A Country Doctor’s Notebook.
(Later in the year, he decides to simply watch the televised adaption of the book with Daniel Radcliffe, in the hopes that he might learn something about a book he never actually got around to reading. He doesn’t. He gets a meager D for his essay on it.)
And this continues for all of the semester. Namjoon goes straight for his least favorite book when he comes into the library, checks for a reply and writes back. There are a lot of insults, but also a lot of literature talk. Then, one week, Namjoon finds a number and the little drawing of a coffee and another mug labeled green tea. A date.
And, actually, Namjoon is totally exited about it, because he’s had his eyes on a pair of tickets for the drive in movies that his university puts on once a month. This month, the movie showing is Hamlet - the one with Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet - which happens to be one of the only literary works that he and his Little Artist can agree upon. Both of them have firmly agreed that Hamlet is by far one of the best plays (if not the best play - although Namjoon can surely name a few almost of equal merit) ever written, despite their disagreeing opinions on the Oedipus theories circulating around The Closet Scene. And so he doesn’t write a note this time, doesn’t even bother texting the the newly acquired number that is now saved on to his phone as ‘Little Artist’ to arrange a coffee date. Instead he leaves a ticket for the movie, this sunday at 7:30, and hopes that his Little Artist will meet him there.
He does. And his Little Artist turns out to be one Min Yoongi, the pale librarian with narrow eyes and the deep voice. And more than anything, Namjoon is suddenly offended because Yoongi could have approached him ages ago??? Why wait so long?
Like, he literally thought that Min Yoongi hated him. All of those days he spent trying to avoid the librarian’s gaze, just so that he could write some stupid note (that, ironically, was for the librarian), when they could have been making behind the bookshelves at the back of the library.
But, he figures, he can just make up for lost time.
Because now Min Yoongi, self proclaimed doodler and quiet literary critic, is his, and they’re holding hands, and Namjoon’s pretty sure that not even the depressing, non-linear ramblings of Vladimir Nabokov’s The Luzhin Defense could bring him down.
(As for the now ruined copy of said novel: it now belongs to the two of them. Shared custody, they like to say. The book was given to them by Yoongi’s boss when he fired him for being so negligent and letting library-goers draw all over the books. Yoongi doesn’t care, as long as he has Namjoon’s hand in his own.)