So this is over a month and a half belated, but Happy Belated Birthday to @snow-into-ash! It’s become a part of my daily schedule to talk to you, friend and I couldn’t be happier.
Also including this in Day Seven of CS AU WEEK. Writer!Emma and Librarian!Killian(Soft M toward the end and roughly 9700 words)
“Excuse me, where can I find books written by Chuck Palahniuk?” Emma looks up from her laptop screen to see the two new main characters in her story. If she were writing in script format there’d be some stage notes like ‘Enters the beautiful heroine, long dark locks and a thin physic. Evidently beautiful, but just doesn’t know it yet.’ There’d be a spotlight on her, a bright white light casting a shadow behind her that vaguely resembles angel wings or a halo. Something that says ‘this girl is it.’
And off to the left, the gorgeous, brooding librarian who hates his job as a shelver. He would be described as ‘tall, dark and handsome’ despite being close to the same height as the heroine who is also brunette. His spotlight would have some cool gel to it, creating the ambiance that he’s so blue and melancholy. Once the two meet in center stage, the whole scene illuminates, a row of library shelves behind them.
“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever; the goal is to create something that will.” The hero is British. Big plus, these accents are doing insane things to YA sales, as if the kids could actually hear them.
“What?” The heroine misses the obvious quote. Emma rethinks putting that in her notes. She doesn’t particularly want another ditzy novel where the male protagonist is so smart and the female is just hot. Sure, she wants it to sell, but she wants to also inspire a nation. A book that will, to quote the male protagonist(and Chuck Palahniuk by extension), ‘Live forever.’
“It was a…ah, it’s all fiction and organized by Author’s last name, so row 8 should be PAA-PAW. I would say mid row, the third shelf, but I may be off a book or two.”
“Oh, you were quoting him. Great, I’m gonna use that in my report.” Annnnnd the heroine is still in high school. Time to count her out.
Emma goes back to the story at hand. She’s in the middle of writing some post-apocalyptic thriller about a group of gifted kids, similar to the x-men only everyone is human-passing, who divide up what’s left of a nation and decide to rule. It came to her after a three-day cleanse her roommate forced her to go on. You think up the craziest shit when you’re starving.
“Oh, is this book taken?” an older guy, early thirties, takes a seat instead of the book. “I love this author, have you read Catcher in the Rye?” There’s a copy of ‘Nine Stories by J.D Salinger’ on the table but she’s not reading it.
“Did I read Catcher in the Rye?” Emma gets hit on from time to time by older men. They prowl the library for women reading books they can comment on. She’s not one of those women. She doesn’t come to the library to read, she comes to write, and more importantly, to people watch.
Love is Fiction
Published
It All Starts With a Dance 