There was a spring in S.T.'s step that hadn't been there when he woke up this morning. He loped through the Sun Room, pausing only to scrawl a note on the board, and then into the library. It wasn't much of a library -- a few sets of shelves, some tables and chairs. All of the seats he could see were occupied. Most of them by people with varying shades of glum on their faces. Little pockets of doom and gloom -- charming bunch. Bad moods were more contagious than tuberculosis (and there wasn't a vaccine) so he wandered back into the stacks.
Voices echoed through the room, though no-one was shouting. Talking in a library. Didn't that qualify as a mortal sin? But the nurses hovering by the end of the row were shooting sickening little approving smiles at the chatters. And he'd caught at least one little pleading glance directed at him. Whatever. They'd brought him to a library, and now they wanted him to ignore the books? Fuck that. He scanned along the shelf. Most of it wouldn't be out of place at a cookie-cutter chain bookstore. A well-thumbed paperback with an unfamiliar title caught his eye, and he pulled it down. The Da Vinci Code -- the blurb on the back was generic conspiracy-theory action bullshit, but he opened it to the title page anyways. It'd kill some of the time before night fell.
Copyright 2003. No wonder he didn't recognize it. Seeing it in print was different. Fifteen years in the future. He squirmed, unsettled, and then turned the motion into a semi-covert adjustment of his boxers to disguise the feeling.
no subject
Voices echoed through the room, though no-one was shouting. Talking in a library. Didn't that qualify as a mortal sin? But the nurses hovering by the end of the row were shooting sickening little approving smiles at the chatters. And he'd caught at least one little pleading glance directed at him. Whatever. They'd brought him to a library, and now they wanted him to ignore the books? Fuck that. He scanned along the shelf. Most of it wouldn't be out of place at a cookie-cutter chain bookstore. A well-thumbed paperback with an unfamiliar title caught his eye, and he pulled it down. The Da Vinci Code -- the blurb on the back was generic conspiracy-theory action bullshit, but he opened it to the title page anyways. It'd kill some of the time before night fell.
Copyright 2003. No wonder he didn't recognize it. Seeing it in print was different. Fifteen years in the future. He squirmed, unsettled, and then turned the motion into a semi-covert adjustment of his boxers to disguise the feeling.
[Free!]