#grayson kade.

the first thing he notices when he steps inside the grandiose concrete walls of the municipal library building is the smell.

now he gets it. this intoxicating, exuberant perfume that people talk about when they say they ‘love the smell of books’. when he was a mortal with normal senses, he wondered if that was some sort of sick joke that people were trying to pull on him because he used to think – still does! – that reading was boooooringgg. now, aware of what people liked so much about this smell, he wonders if some people are just built differently. like they have a knack for getting addicted to just anything good that they smell. if they weren’t such nerds, who spent their entire days locked up inside a building, surrounded by this sweet, wooden smell, they would make for great cocaine addicts. such wasted potential as clientele...

speaking of nerds who spent their entire days locked up inside a building surrounded by the sweet, wooden smell of books – almost as if he’d read his mind – grayson materializes behind the counter. grayson isn’t like most bookworm geeks he knows, though. there’s something about him. something edgy. maybe it’s the athletic build. maybe it’s the fact that he’s good-looking. or maybe it’s the fact that he talks like a normal person. he wouldn’t expect either from a librarian. yet, grayson still has the type of smarts he doesn’t and desperately needs – he’s book-smart. especially now, after that psycho celeste no last name kindly (and very sexily, if you asked him!) threatened to kill if he didn’t get a degree and secure the rights to a multimillion-dollar company in six months.

but before he can even greet grayson, he realizes something about him that he had never noticed before. there's a weird scent.

not weird in the sense that it’s bad or anything, but it’s strong and undeniable and it feels like he’s smelling a blanket someone sprayed with men’s cologne. it’s okay, he guesses, but it also feels so out of place that he cannot shake the feeling it’s… magical.

he’s already been staring at grayson in silence for too long. it feels awkward as fuck. he has to say something now. and so, he whispers (because he doesn’t want grayson telling him to shhh! for fuck’s sake), “are you– one of them too?!”