#wait til they take tina's goth away

[yourcomputerr]

not to be discussing glee plot in 2024 but i wish they'd made will schuester stay with holly holiday bc they were like perfect for each other. also its the only relationship will had where he didn't make me think he's a nasty little pervert

[pitviperofdoom]

I really liked your 'Life Preserver' excerpt and I'd love to read more about it. I liked the interaction between Gerry and Georgie, their characterization and Gerry's description of his relationship with Jon, plus this exchange: “He thinks your mum’s a homophobe, you know.”“You know, he’s probably right? Think she might just hate the idea of love in general, though.”“Messy divorce, I take it,”“Rohypnol and garden shears were involved, so yeah, I’d say it was pretty messy.”

Thanks!

Yeah, Gerry and Georgie surprised me as a really interesting dynamic to explore. In spite of Georgie’s caution around the Entities, Gerry just feels like the kind of person Georgie would get along with, given the people she canonically ends up loving.

Anyway here’s another part I’ve written! This one actually has Jon and Gerry in it.

---

When Jon went in for his next shift, things went smoothly enough to be genuinely suspicious. Tina was his desk partner again, and she greeted him with the same cordiality as always. No one official-looking ever came by to speak with him.

The only hint that anything had happened that night was a campus-wide e-mail paying respects to Daniel Lattimer, one of the subject librarians, who was reported as having “passed unexpectedly”. The message held all of the usual official platitudes and nothing else; Jon had read it word for word several times to be sure.

Someone should have known, shouldn’t they? It wasn’t as if he had been careful about covering his tracks, beyond making his tip anonymous. The library had cameras. He was sure he’d left at least a few shoe prints in all the blood.

But nothing came of it. The first hour passed peacefully, with nothing more exciting than a couple of patrons he had to inform of overdue books.

Jon spotted the familiar dark figure out of the corner of his eye, even before Tina hissed a warning at him. He raised his head to watch Gerard Keay’s approach, chest suddenly tight with nervousness.

How on earth was he supposed to explain this?

“Hey.” Gerard was in front of him already, leaning his elbows on the desk as usual. “Any word on that book? I tried to come in yesterday, but you were closed.”

“R-right.” Jon hesitated. There were several ways he could answer this. He could, of course, be utterly truthful and tell him that he’d burned the thing on account of it being made of meat and killing one of the librarians. He almost laughed at the thought. At worst, Gerard would complain to someone about Jon being unhelpful; at best, he’d find it funny, but he’d demand a real answer once he was done laughing about it.

He could lie and stall by saying that the book was still on its way. But that was a temporary fix at best, and it would only lead Gerard to keep coming in and asking.

And would that really be so bad? Jon shook his head to clear away the thought.

“Right,” he said again. “A-about that. Unfortunately—” He slipped his bandaged hand behind the desk, out of sight. “—we were unable to find the book in storage. It seems to have been marked incorrectly. It happens sometimes. Though not very often, I assure you,” he added hastily. “But it’s been marked down as missing, I’m afraid.”

“Oh.” Gerard’s face was the very picture of disappointment. “That’s a shame. Really did need that one.”

“Terribly sorry for the inconvenience.” Jon tried to sound like he meant it.

It was hard to force down the sheer, overwhelming relief. Just last night he’d regretted his own paranoia, but now? If he hadn’t gone back, if he hadn’t checked for the book…

Well, the library might not have been closed yesterday. And he didn’t have the first shift at the circulation desk. And whoever did might have been someone who didn’t know, someone who wasn’t haunted by the name Jurgen Leitner, who might have taken the book from the cart and handed it straight over—

The unwelcome memory of Mr. Lattimer’s body rose up behind his eyes, juxtaposed over the young man standing before him.

As a child, he’d doomed someone else to a gruesome death that should have been his. So maybe this time… maybe he’d actually…

“Well then,” said Gerard, shaking him out of his bubble of thoughts. “Guess that’s—er, guess I’ll look elsewhere…”

“Right,” said Jon. “Unless there was anything else you needed…?” He tried not to sound too hopeful.

“No, thanks, that’s it,” said Gerard, already turning away. “Thanks for all the help.”

“Oh, I hardly—I mean, I didn’t really do much, in the end.”

Gerard regarded him for a moment, head tilted to one side with a thoughtful look. Then, quite without warning, he smiled at him. “Don’t sell yourself short. You were great.”

“O-of course,” Jon stammered as Gerard turned to leave again. “Oh, wait—wait a moment.”

Gerard looked back. “Yeah?”

Jon dug into his pocket, pulling out the lighter. “Is this yours?” he asked, placing it on the desk. “I found it on one of the tables in the reading room, and I remembered you had it the other day…”

Instead of taking it, Gerard simply flashed him one last grin. “Keep it,” he said. “I’ve got loads.”

“It’s really not good to keep ignition sources in a library,” Jon protested, feeling inordinately flustered.

Gerard laughed, a brief, bright thing, and—

“D’you want to get coffee?” Jon blurted out.

The smile froze on Gerard’s face, before giving way to surprise. “What?”

A stab of terror nearly robbed Jon of his words, before he found his voice again and forged ahead. “Do you—I mean. Do you want to get coffee sometime?” he repeated. Shit. Shit, he was doing this, how was he already doing this? “With me?” He wanted to kick himself, of course he’d know he meant it that way. “I—my shift ends at noon today. If you’re free. I-if you want to, I mean.”

Gerard blinked at him, so utterly bewildered that it might have been funny if Jon’s heart weren’t currently climbing into his throat. “You—wait. Is this… are you asking me on a date?”

He said it so incredulously, as if the idea that Jon would ask him on a date were utterly incomprehensible to him. Rapidly, Jon’s heart sank back down.

“Yes,” Tina leapt in helpfully. “He is. Aren’t you, Jon?”

She nudged him none too gently. “Y-yes,” he said, because it wasn’t as if he could dig himself any deeper. “That—that was the intention.”

“Huh.” Gerard shrugged. “Sure.”

The whiplash made Jon dizzy for a moment. “Really?”

“Yeah. Noon, right? See you then.” With that, he turned and walked out of the library.

Once he was out of sight, Jon slumped over onto the surface of the desk like a marionette with its strings cut.

Tina patted his back. “Proud of you. Go get that goth D.”

***

It wasn’t that Gerry didn’t know it was a terrible idea—just that he’d had worse ones before. He was still breathing after years of them, in fact. So what was one more?

Jon the librarian was far from the first scarred survivor he’d ever met. They weren’t common, precisely, but nor were they unheard of. Technically he was one, and Mum had been as well, before she carved herself up.

But Gerry knew he was an outlier, and as rare as surviving one brush with the Fears was, meeting two of the things and escaping uneaten from both was on a level of its own. But against all odds, when he looked at the wispy little librarian who’d spent the past week being so divertingly helpful, Gerry could see two separate, distinct marks on him, where there had previously been only one. And they really were distinct from one another. The Flesh was like a shark sometimes, content to take one good bite before losing interest and wandering off, while the wisps of the Web still clung jealously. A scar like that could have been left years ago or the day before they met. You could never tell with the Web.

That added to the risk, of course. For all he knew, this was some ploy from the Mother of Puppets to catch him and draw him in. A little cliche, maybe, but Gerry couldn’t fault it for its efficacy.

He’d said yes, after all.

In his defense, it wasn’t every day he met someone with a nice face, a taste for burning Leitners, and enough luck or fortitude to walk away from two different Powers. Nor was it every day a person like that asked him to… well…

People didn’t flirt with him, was the thing. Anyone who knew enough to be worth talking to either wised up and ran the other way, or turned around and tried to take a chunk out of him.

So, yeah. Might as well give it a shot. See what it was like, while he had the chance.

He had til noon to brace himself, anyway. Not enough time to go back to Mum’s and freshen up, which was a shame. She’d just faded out a couple of days ago, so he knew he’d have the place to himself.

Ah, well.

In spite of himself, Gerry found himself turning his face upward with a grin and an excited spring in his step. It’d be a bit like traveling abroad, or visiting tourist traps, or all the other things he indulged in when Mum was gone. See as much of the world beyond his own as he could, before she finally fucked up and got him killed.

A date! Who’d have thought he’d get to check that one off the bucket list?