Steve has been a librarian at Hawkins Library for a few months before he starts seeing the curly-haired metalhead coming in.
It takes him three weeks to learn the guy's name is Eddie, mainly because the head librarian - Beatrice - prefers to tut and shake her head while muttering about 'devil worshippers' under her breath.
He also learns that Eddie is the bane of any librarian's existence.
He leaves the weirdest shit in the books - things that had obviously been close to hand and easy to use as a bookmark, the best had been a folded piece of paper with a dragon drawn on it, the worst had been a suspiciously stained tissue that Steve refused to touch.
He never returns his books on time, in fact, it got to the point where Beatrice's mutters were steering towards banning him so Steve secretly covered all the late fees. He believed in free knowledge... and he kinda liked seeing the guy floating about the library.
When he decides to read books there, he sits with his ridiculous, chunky boots on the damn table like he owns the place and the chains hanging off them always make a horrendous noise against the wooden surfaces.
And that's not even getting Steve started on the Walkman he's always wearing that's blasting loud metal music through the headphones at a volume that is definitely going to give him hearing damage.
So much, in fact, that all of his kids have taken turns visiting him at work so that they could see who exactly was taking up so much of their babysitter's thoughts.
Things continue like this - Eddie being annoying, Steve yearning from a distance and various teenagers hiding between the shelves - until one day when Steve is flicking through Eddie's returns for whatever bullshit bookmark he's left in them this time, only to find a note aimed at him instead.
If you like staring so much, how about you do it over milkshakes tonight? 6pm?
Steve lets out a ridiculous sound that he would never admit to, fumbling with the note and the stack of books that then topple off the desk, drawing Eddie's amused gaze.
He also spills his milkshake that evening, but thankfully Eddie just laughs and helps him mop it up with napkins.
Steve learns three things that night:
Eddie only started using that library so he could also stare at Steve.
His voice was so deep and enticing that Steve wanted to wrap himself up in it.
Eddie didn't know libraries had late fees.
Steve thinks he falls a little in love on that date, mainly because he knows that even with Eddie's new knowledge of the library system, he'll still pay the beautiful boy's late fees if it means he can keep staring.
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