Chapter Text
At first glance, the Redcaster Public Library looked like an old cathedral...or maybe more like a capital building? The architecture was all pale stone with a great dome in the center, all led up to by wide steps that ascended to three sets of heavy looking wooden doors. Angel would have been lying if he said he hadn’t been a little intimidated by the sight of it. At the time, he had already been pretty rattled from the talking to he had been given by Val the night before. The man’s words had sunk in like claws, tearing into him while he could only stand there under the scrutiny of his employer and all the while he could feel the impassive gaze of Vox looking on, ever the silent observer to Val’s acrid words. Follow up that soul shattering conversation with what was most-likely the most ridiculous idea he ever came up with, a tumultuous bus ride to the other side of town and then stand in front of a behemoth of a building he never thought he would want to enter...it all felt like one hell of a stupid idea. Angel remembered standing at the base of the steps, staring up at the structure stretching wide before him like he was looking through the world through a fish-eyed lens. Hell, he even felt judged by the words “Public Library” carved into the stonework above the doors in sharp Roman lettering. Were he a coward, he would have turned around, dismissed the idea and strolled his unhappy ass back to the bus stop. But Angel Dust was not a pussy. He held his head high and strode in there like he owned the damn place and immediately discovered that his first impression of the building’s pious exterior was invalid.
Inside the public library was a large,tan-tiled entryway where an off-brand coffee shop was set up to the immediate left of the doors and themed displays of five current best sellers on the right wall. There were several people in the glass encased coffee shop, scattered around little tables, stylized couches and armchairs with their legal stimulants of choice. To his right, a visitor was sipping at her drink and looking over the best seller displays and some youths were herding themselves towards the exit coming from what must have been the actual part of the building where the books were. They had been walking quickly, their eyes fixed on the doors like they could not wait to get outside.
At the time, Angel just took their unease as being eager to get out of a library. Not to worry though, he would come to understand why they were so desperate to scatter soon enough.
On the other end of the more sheltered entrance, the library immediately opened up into a massive two story chamber exposing the domed center of the building where natural light streamed through the narrow windows up top and illuminated a mural on the ceiling of a starry night sky with delicately outlined constellations. The second story was fenced off with stone balustrades that had to have been about chest high to him but low enough to expose glimpses of the countless wooden bookcases beyond. The first floor was practically a forest of more shelves beyond the initial presence of the front counter that gently bowed outward in a slight arch, closing in two computer monitors where library workers sat. In front of them were two long rows of tables bearing basic but relatively recent model computers meant for public use.
It was at those computers that Angel had pretty much spent all his time since he started going to the library. It wasn’t a weekly trip, he had better things he wanted to do on his time off, but he did come in occasionally and had been doing so for the last three months. An hour here, three there. Unpredictable days at even more spontaneous times, but eventually, there he would be, traipsing through the doors to set up camp at one of the computers or pour himself into a chair and frown over the puzzling language of the self-help books that only seemed to piss him off more than contribute any aid. Today, he ended up back at the computers.
“Please return it to the library in two weeks. With every day the book is late, there will be a 20-cent fee.”
Angel could only vaguely hear the volunteer's words through his ear buds as he flexed his middle finger on the wheel of the mouse, scrolling further down the web page he had been "reading" for the last twenty minutes. When he first clicked on it, he really did intend to read it. Truly. But ever since he caught sight of one of the volunteers rising from their computer and practically jogging out from behind the counter while the other was left staring nervously in the direction of the doors, not a single word on the monitor had registered in his brain. Tilting his head back slightly, he looked past the worker’s head to the darkened window in the door of the head librarian’s office.
Still not here yet.
Sighing, Angel sagged lower into his chair. It squeaked and groaned under his weight; the cushion worn through by the thousands of asses that had sat in it before him. He probably looked like he was slipping out of it more than sitting in it at this point, his chin now tucked against his chest and legs stretched out under the table to the point he was probably nearly in footsie territory with the girls sitting across from him. Angel flicked his finger over the wheel to scroll back up to the top of the page. He scanned over the bold headliner and inched the wheel down just a fraction so that he could only see the smaller font. The large font advertising that he was perusing an article written on how to get out of a job you hate only made him feel ridiculously self-conscious.
A flash of movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention and Angel bolted upright in his chair, cringing a bit at the protesting squeal that accompanied it. He lifted himself up on the armrests, tucking a leg up onto the seat and draping the other over it so that he was propped up further in the chair to peek over the top of his monitor.
Striding towards the curved Information desk with a large mug in one hand and a book that looked about as thick as a brick in the other, was the head librarian. He was older than him, Angel could guess that much, but not in the range of silver fox, yet. There were definite traces of gray threaded through some of that pretty thick-looking dark hair though. He appeared to be relatively average in height but kinda thin, his leanness emphasized by the open dark brown sport coat worn over a soft-looking collared shirt of muted blue-green plaid. He was in jeans today, a little slouchy like they no longer fit him properly but still remarkably in place even though he couldn’t see a belt. It wasn’t the sexiest of outfits when broken down piece by piece but all together? On the librarian? Damn...
The librarian maneuvered the small door leading behind the counter open with a minor kick to its base, sending it swinging out of his way while he stepped through the opening. The volunteer, who had pointedly not been looking in his direction since he appeared, finally lifted his head, nervously eyeing the man as he held his mug and book aloft, appearing to use his foot again to pull the rolling chair back from the other computer at the station. He grumbled something to the volunteer, who gave a more genuine smile as if given some kind of reassurance before turning back to his work. The librarian sat down and scooted in closer to the monitor, taking what must have been one impressive gulp of coffee from the still steaming mug.
Leaning his chin into his palm, Angel could no longer see much of the librarian aside from the red, rectangular frames of his glasses and the deep furrow of his eyebrows while he fiddled with something behind the wall. As soon as he was settled in his chair, Angel lost sight of him completely. He pouted out his lower lip at the loss of his favorite distraction and dropped his eyes down to the neglected article. This time he actually read the words and immediately didn’t like what he was starting to see on the fingerprint-smudged screen.
You see, in spite of what it looked like, Angel had a reason for coming to the library and it wasn’t just to ogle the librarian.
He had been doing it once every couple of weeks now. Taking the bus down to the west side of Redcaster in order to find something to point him in the right direction. Direction to what? Well, he was still trying to figure that out. Job searches, how to get out of toxic work environments, something. Anything. Only problem with the searching was that he didn't even know where to start.
As a kid, Angel remembered career days where his classmates would talk about what they wanted to be when they grew up or parents visited to talk about their line of work. Those days, Angel had shrugged off at the time. Those days he knew what he was in for and could only follow along with the flow of school until the day dad deemed it necessary to call him into his "role". He couldn’t talk about the family business at school, even the fancy private one he and his sister had been enrolled into and he had no ambition to follow up after the common childhood goals of nurse, firefighter or dentist. He simply told them that he was going to work at a t-shirt factory. That got a laugh from the other kids at his noncommittal response, but the teacher always looked concerned. It would have been funny to see the looks on their face now when he told them what he did for a living now. He would have paid good money to watch their eyes widen, the redness creeping up their necks and into their cheeks the moment they heard that little Tony grew up to become an exotic dancer and porn star—among other things.
But for how much longer?
That was the problem. Oh, he was still in his prime and his body was flawless (if he did say so himself.) The clients still asked for him by name, clubs were putting in requests for guest appearances, he brought in the crowds at the Hot Spot where he still regularly danced and he was in high demand at the porn studio thanks to requests by his legion of underground fans. (Not that any of them would ever vouch for him anywhere but from behind the safety of a screen.) Still, it was the numbers, not faces that counted for Vox. The point was that he was as in high demand now as he had been at twenty and there was no denying he could go at it for a few more years without an issue. No one outside of his bosses and close friends knew how old he was and the public was none the wiser…but eventually…things would start to change.
You can play fresh-faced and young as much as you want but what about a decade down the road when the clients begin to question the numbers? When the wear and tear on his body began to take its toll? Or, God forbid, the wrinkles started to show? Then what would happen to him?
Angel clicked out of the article and back to the search engine, staring at his previous query with a displeased press of his lips. He should have just gone shopping with Cherri instead. At least with her he could have been looking at some shit that sits or gone walking along the scenic boardwalk where they could goof off and scandalize some wholesome families who were trying to vacation in the off season. They normally had some pretty good laughs over that and she had offered to do the very thing that morning. He honestly thought about going too. He could have abandoned this ridiculous “self help” bullshit that had been sparked inside of his head and just lived it up like always. Why try to fight it when it clearly worked out so well for him up to this point?
A few months ago, he would have left it at that.
Before he met Charlie, that is.
It had been pure chance that he had even met her in the first place and Charlie probably couldn’t have found him in a worse state. What had begun as a Halloween night out on the town had turned into Angel nearly being hit by her car after he had wandered aimlessly into the street. Luckily, Charlie’s driver had avoided hitting him and, despite her girlfriend’s protests, she was out of the car in seconds to check on their almost victim. What she found was Angel with vomit streaked down the front of his costume and reeling from the worst trip he had ever been on thanks to a bad batch and too many Jell-O shots. It had really fucked him up that night and Charlie had taken him home with her and watched over him while he rode out the rest of the disastrous trip.
Angel wasn’t proud of the wreck he had been that night. He would black out and then wake up again, screaming bloody murder at the ceiling while Charlie and her girlfriend frantically held him down before he hurt himself. The girlfriend, who she called "Vaggie" had insisted that they get him to a hospital but Angel had enough lucidity to practically beg them not to. How they could discern his pleas through his slurs and tears, he'll never know but the girls had listened. They kept him in their bed, wiped him down multiple times with cold cloths when he would sweat through his clothes and their bed sheets and even hauled him to the toilet whenever he yarked out what he felt like had been all of his internal organs. By the time he came back to his senses from it all, he was weak as a fucking kitten and couldn't escape this forced kindness even if he tried.
Charlie came in and sat with him, giving him water and even attempted some crackers or chopped up fruit while Vaggie watched from the corner of the room like his very existence pissed her off. He took everything that she gave him, not caring if it was drugged or not but eventually he recovered enough to talk. While he stayed with them, Charlie asked him about his work and whether or not he lived in the area, innocent enough bits of conversation that he answered in short, non-committal statements. She blushed when he told her what he did for a living—as expected—and he had a good laugh at her embarrassment fueled by her own ignorance of his brand but he had to give her credit for still trying to be nice.
But she kept at it. Kept him talking and by the time they had finished, Angel wondered what the hell had been in the water he drank. He had spilled to her like he had been in a confessional, telling her about the Hot Spot, his “meetings”, hell, he even talked about the porn studio but at least he had been smart enough to omit Val from it all. There was no way in hell he was going to open that can of worms with this innocent blond woman who had caught him at his worst and yet still treated him with respect and kindness. Even Vaggie was somewhat polite, still disapproving of him but hey, she tried. It was something he hadn’t expected from complete strangers.
When he was well enough to go home, Charlie rode along with him in the back of a luxurious car that seemed out of place for a couple that had been living in a small one bedroom apartment. He later found out that Charlie was from money and her parents insisted she use their driver’s services whenever she needed to go anywhere even though she had moved out over three years ago. It was in the back of that fancy car that she asked him if he would be interested in moving into one of the units in her apartment building. She had even offered him a discounted rent that was so low it left his jaw nearly falling through the floor of the car.
“There’s a catch,” she had pointed out while he stared back at her, gobsmacked. “I’ll keep your rent at half the cost, so long as you stay clean and out of trouble. I know that it will take a while for you to adjust but if I find out you have drugs in the apartment, it goes back up.”
So, just don’t use in the apartment? He could do that.
Needless to say, Angel agreed to her conditions and while he was far from clean, he definitely spent more nights sober than he had in over a decade. With the sobriety, however, came awareness and he was starting to hate what it was making him see. The ticking down clock of his career. He wasn’t going to be able to fake youth forever and Val’s little whispered taunts of this that had once been lost in a drug-induced haze were growing clearer, truer…and after he finally said it flat outright to his face, it scared him. It scared him enough to take that bus ride, get his first library card and proceed to spend an entire afternoon pouring over Google, hoping it would solve all his problems. When it didn’t? He just kept coming.
Now, months later, he was only aware of one thing: He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing!
Angel had no high school diploma, no GED, no college, no hobbies or interests that could earn anything that remotely resembled an “honest” living. In society’s eyes he was no better than the useless kid he had been when his dad kicked him out and he fucking hated it! The internet wasn’t giving him the answers he wanted. He got websites pushing jobs that didn’t require skills like dock workers and back office desk jobs, restaurants and retail—boring. That was the price he would have to pay when it was all over? Exchange the excitement and the thrill of being in the spotlight for the security of a safe, predictable job where the paycheck was the only perk and not even a particularly good one? Fuck that. He’d keep looking.
A few snickers managed to catch his attention over the music already pouring into his ears and Angel looked up, grateful for the distraction from his own rapidly downward spiraling thoughts. The two college girls across the table from him, their heads together as they whisper-talked loud enough that even he could hear them over the throbbing bass in his ears. They had been doing that ever since he had first arrived in the library that morning, giggling over whatever it was they were looking at on the computer. Angel mostly tuned them out at first, barely registering whenever the volunteer at the Information desk asked them to be quiet. They even got up and whispered to the girls to be more courteous to the rest of the visitors and they agreed to keep it down but seemed to forget it the moment the volunteer had walked away.
Angel picked up his phone, clicking the side button to turn the music down, realizing just how loud they were actually being now without the volume competition. A smirk started to spread across his lips. Oh, they were just asking for it now.
“How many times do we have to tell you to SHUT THE FUCK UP?!” A voice shouted from across the room, shattering the silence with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball. The girls practically choking on their giggles at the volume of the librarian’s voice accompanied by the slamming of that brick of the book down upon the top of the counter. The volunteer beside him hunched their shoulders, trying to make themselves as small as possible. To be fair, that volunteer had tried to warn them.
The librarian tilted his head down and shot a glare at them over the frames of his glasses.
“This is a library! Not a fucking lounge!” he shouted, pointing a finger at them. “Keep your mouths shut and show some respect for the people around you!”
A few snickers broke the tense quiet that followed as the girls nodded stiffly and ducked their heads back over the monitor. The mirth ceased the moment the librarian cast a warning look about the room. Must have been mostly regulars hanging out here today. They knew better. He sat back down, eyes still fixed on the girls as he picked up his book off the counter, waiting another beat then finally sitting back down. Those girls probably didn’t know it, but they were actually getting off pretty lightly today. The librarian was notorious for shouting at people who didn’t follow the rules, even physically throwing them out of the building on more than one occasion. The man may have looked like any other librarian, but he certainly didn’t act like one.
Angel’s favorite occurrence had to be when some teenager was trying to pull a book out of his friend’s hands down in the YA section. They tugged it back and forth between each other, their argument growing louder and more heated until the front cover of the book ripped right off in the struggle. The librarian, who had already poked his head out of his office door at the first sign of the commotion, was standing over them in seconds. After he had chewed them both out for damaging public property, he hauled out the one who ripped the cover off the book by his ear like an old time school master, ranting at him all the way through one of the sets of doors. Angel and three other visitors had to dart outside onto the library’s outdoor patio in the back just so that they could laugh their collective asses off at the spectacle without fear of suffering a similar fate.
Not every day he visited had been so eventful though. Most of the time things were quiet. It was a sign that this guy’s tactics on keeping the peace actually worked rather than limiting his arsenal to the disapproving glares that librarians were known for. Angel had been coming around long enough to notice that the severity of his reactions to any disturbance sometimes depended on the librarian’s appearance. On good days, he was put together in a simple but tidy suit or a sweater over a crisp dress shirt, pretty vintage in style but man did he make it work. In his lifetime Angel never would have thought of a sweater vest as “sexy”. Not until he saw the librarian wearing one, the charcoal gray wool hugging his lean form like a fucking dream! It got worse in the best way when the man had unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them up just past his elbows to haul stacks of books onto a cart. Right in front of everyone. Angel had swooned like it was the Victorian era on that day!
While there were good days, however, there were also days when the librarian came in looking like a wet cat that had been wrung out and hung up to dry. His dark hair unkempt, looking like fingers had been pulling and tugging at it (and not in the fun way). His eyes would be bloodshot and his posture sagged like his spine had suddenly forgotten its very purpose for existing. On those days, he was particularly nasty, hissing and spitting at anyone who even looked at him funny. Angel had tried to cheer him up on one of those days with a little harmless flirtation. With most men it got him a smile at best but this guy shot him down before he even got past “Hey.” He was promptly told to go fuck himself before the librarian was downing a mug of coffee like it was pure water. Clearly, he had all the signs and symptoms of one bitch of a hangover.
Hangover days were the “don’t fuck with me” days and maybe it was just his opinion, but they seemed pretty frequent.
The two-hour internet warning popped up onto the screen and Angel clicked out of everything. He wasn’t getting anywhere with the web today anyway. He logged out of the computer, dragging his bag out from under the table and slinging it over his head and shoulder, feeling the weight of it settle into his hip as he hauled himself off to check out the nonfiction section upstairs. Picking an aisle, he extended his arms and trailed the tips of his fingers along the shelves, bumping them over the spines while he skipped over the familiar titles from previous visits. Most of the time Angel just found himself rolling his eyes at the pages he read, giving up on one writer to try another. Everything was so damn clinical in most of them. They talked about depression and anxiety being contributing factors to a person’s lack of self-worth and how it affected their professional life but that was not what he was looking for. He knew he had a rough childhood, a stint of homelessness, abusive partners, drug addiction, prostitution, alcoholism, all things that pointed with glaring red arrows to the fact that he had a fucked-up life. There was nothing new there.
What he wanted was something that would show him how to take what he knew and turn it into something better. It didn’t have to be immediate and it certainly didn’t have to be something entirely new either. Angel wasn’t ashamed of his work, he loved to dance and he loved the attention. He just wanted the take his progress beyond the starting point of becoming aware of what he was doing to himself, where he was currently sitting and find out where it could potentially lead. Charlie said that he could be better and through all his bravado, he wanted to believe her. He just wanted to know what “better” was going to look like for him.
He hooked his finger over the ridge of a book’s binding, pulling it forward and then taking it down from the shelf. Checking the cover, there was a drawing of a woman with her head in her hands, thought bubbles filled with pictures of societal expectations: a house, kids, healthcare plans, pets, money, all of them were closing in on her, pressing in to the point that she was nearly collapsing under the pressure. Find Yourself as an Adult was the title, the author, Hillary Keller had a few letters after their name, so they had to be some kind of specialist, right? He shrugged his shoulders and leaned into the shelf while flipping open the book to the first page.
Unlike the previous books he had skimmed through, this one was a bit more palatable. The writing was more focused on the common reader rather than stuffy academics. A good sign. The author was talking about their own personal experience with not knowing what they wanted to be when they had already become a grown up.
By the time Angel finished the first chapter, he had ended up sitting on the marble floor, his back propped against the shelf behind him and his legs stretched out with the soles of his boots pressing into the base of the opposite bookcase. He rubbed his eyes; still seeing the print burned into his vision as he closed the book, resting it on his thigh. So far, she hadn’t helped much. As far as childhoods go, hers was pretty clean, but there was a familiarity in her story that he found some small part of him related to. The desire to please a parent? That was something he understood.
His music had stopped playing ages ago and his ear buds were in stasis without any input to keep them on. He plucked them out of his ears, sticking them in the pocket of his coat while pulling out his phone with the other hand. One click and the screen told him that he had about two hours before he needed to be at the club. It was enough time to take the bus back to the apartment, change and then take another one to work to save him the walk.
Tucking the book under his arm, Angel hauled himself off of his ass. He would check it out today and try to read it some more later. He would have to leave it in his apartment though, rather than risk taking it to work with him in his bag. There was no point in chancing anyone finding out he had a book like this. Val would get suspicious if he saw it and he didn’t need him sniffing around. As far as he was concerned, Angel had a good thing going under his “guidance” and there would be no reason for him to want to get out of it.
The worker was gone when Angel came back downstairs, his eyes flicking to the other seat. He perked up when he realized the head librarian was still sitting there. He had moved since he last saw him, angled in the chair with his ankle crossed over his knee and his arm propped on the top of the seat back while his spine was partially nestled in between the back and the armrest. He was still reading his book with his elbow braced against the armrest, fingers spread wide to hold both the covers open and pages in place with his thumb and pinky. Angel bit his lower lip as he neared; noticing the edges of his open sport coat and that there was a tan strap peeking out from underneath it. Suspenders?
Fuck, that’s hotter than it should be!
When he reached the counter, he set the book down in front of the librarian and slid his arms over one another, leaning forward until his weight was mostly on the sturdy surface and his hips were jutting straight out behind him. Crossing one leg behind the other, he waited for the librarian to notice. Judging by the low whistle somewhere behind him, someone certainly did. The sound was what made the librarian’s eyes flick up from the page, landing right on Angel.
“Are you ready to check out?”
“I’ve been checking out for a while now, babe. I like the view.”
The librarian pointedly closed his book with a snap.
“Just one today?” he had completely ignored Angel's opening line. Unfortunate, yes, but that was normal by now. Flirtation slid off that man like water off a duck’s back. Uncrossing his leg and rolling his chair forward, he set his book aside and jiggled the mouse to wake up the sleeping computer.
“Yeah.” Angel sighed, giving in to the man’s routine as he placed his hand on top of Dr. Keller's book and slid it closer so he could reach it.
“Library card.”
Angel pulled out his wallet. Sliding it free of its slot, he laid it in the waiting palm and resumed leaning on the counter. The librarian flipped the card around in his fingers to hold it upright, Angel cocking an eyebrow at the dexterous gesture. Sniffing, he tapped out the card number with one hand on the keyboard then dragged the book over. He maneuvered the card between two fingers, holding it back out to Angel for him to take. Angel took it from between his digits, eyes lingering on his wide, long fingered hands as they moved through the routine process of scanning the code on the spine and clicking away with the mouse until he was finally dropping the book back onto the counter in front of Angel’s arms.
“You have two weeks until you need to return it to the library. You can either bring it back to the desk or drop it off in the book drop at the front of the building. The fine is 20 cents for every day the book is overdue.” He rattled off the spiel with the expected enthusiasm of a man who had said it a thousand times before.
Angel lingered there in silence, scrutinizing his face for something, anything behind that grumpy exterior. Even after all the times Angel had tried to flirt with him, tried to get a just the slightest rise out of him, there wasn’t even a flicker of interest. The librarian was still looking at the computer screen like he wasn’t even there even though he had just talked to him. Disappointed, Angel dragged the book off the counter and wriggled it into the opening of his bag. He opened his mouth to do the nice thing and thank him but the gratitude died on his lips when he noticed that the librarian was suddenly watching him now, eyes following his hands as he put his library card back into his wallet.
“You still using that ridiculous name?” he asked, nodding towards the wallet just as Angel slipped it back into his coat.
Honestly, he hadn’t expected him to say anything. He hadn’t given him any lip over his name since the day he had first gotten his library card and Angel had even checked out his books with him almost every visit ever since. Did that mean that he had become enough of a regular that this man was starting to recognize him now? A flare of hope ignited in his chest and he braced a hand on his hip, leaning back into the counter one more time.
“Yeah, I do.” He lightly trailed his index finger over the corner of the computer monitor where his hand just barely hung over the lip of the counter top. “You gonna tell me yours?”
“It’s on my fucking door.” The librarian jerked his head in the direction of his office.
Head Librarian
Mr. K. Husker
“Only your last name!” Angel whined. He knew that name. He had committed it to memory ever since the first day he saw him! “What’s the K stand for? Kevin? Kyle?”
“Quit yapping, take your book and get the fuck outta my library!” Husker wasn’t shouting, but his words were clipped with irritation, warning him not to push his luck. He wouldn’t have dared to rile up Val like this if he was in such a mood. With this guy, however, Angel didn’t feel threatened by him. It just made him want to tease him more!
“Fine,” Angel straightened up and stepped back from the counter. Turning away, he started for the exit but added a definite sway to his hips, keeping his eyes on the librarian over his shoulder. “See ya in two weeks then, Mr. Husker.”