Ben Esra telefonda seni bosaltmami ister misin?
Telefon Numaram: 00237 8000 92 32
Ingredients list (mild spoilers):
2 cups sapphic romance
1 cup explicit lesbian sex
1 cup muscle mommy gym fetish
1/2 cup icky sticky sensory issues
1 tbsp brief attempted assault
1 pinch awkward texting
“Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred, and therefore beyond critique.”
Fobazi Ettarh, “Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves.” Published in the journal In the Library with the Lead Pipe, 2018
“The women’s bathroom is wrecked again,” the senior librarian working the reference desk called out.
A heavy sigh escaped from Victoria as she wheeled the cart full of book returns past the desk. She left the cart in the sorting room, grabbed a bucket full of cleaning supplies, and headed to the bathroom to survey the damage.
Her body seemed to be generating an awful lot of sighs, lately. Sighs of exhaustion, sighs of frustration, sighs of wistful longing.
It had been a dream come true when Victoria Marlowe was offered a job at Downtown Central, a classical public city library. The kind of vaulted stone cathedral to knowledge built by Gilded Age robber barons to assuage their capitalist guilt, or at least whitewash their image to the press.
“Oh no, ick ick ick…” Victoria muttered to herself as she glanced around the bathroom. The garbage can was overflowing with soaking wet paper towels, spilling out and creating a soggy mass on the tiled floor. Central had one of the only free publicly accessible restrooms downtown, so a lot of unhoused people in the area would come in to use the restrooms, and sometimes take a “sink shower” while they were there.
The facilities team wouldn’t be in to clean until closing time, and she couldn’t just leave it like this. She pulled a hair tie out of her pocket and put her curly blonde hair up in a ponytail. Then she snapped on some nitrile gloves and made a face as she picked up the wet wads of paper.
“Hurck!” The noise welled up from deep in her diaphragm, and she had to stop herself from gagging. Texture was often a sensory issue for Victoria, sticky and wet being among her strongest yucks. Sensory needs weren’t one of her primary reasons for wanting to work with dry paper books, but it was certainly an added bonus.
Her real motivations were to support the local community, to devote herself to public service. To uphold free speech and free information and maybe even democracy itself. When she started her career she had been confident and decisive, idealistic and hopeful.
But in the five years of working at Central, it felt like her biggest professional accomplishments were cleaning bathrooms, re-stocking bookshelves, and shooing pervy old men off the public computers when they tried to watch porn.
Her co-workers weren’t much help either. A couple of older librarians who had one foot out the door and the other foot in the grave, who were constantly criticising her and each other. A director who was too harried and overworked to do much more than keep the lights on. A library board of trustees that didn’t seem to actually like the library very much.
“Hey, excuse me,” a voice from behind interrupted Victoria’s miserable reverie. “Do you work here?”
“What — hurck — gave me away?” Victoria snarked, stooping to pick the last bit of garbage up off the floor, then turning to the sink to wash her hands.
“Well, for one you’re cleaning up a mess that I assume isn’t your fault, even though it’s almost making you throw up. And you’re dressed like the platonic ideal of a librarian, for another. I like your cardigan.”
Victoria finally turned around to face the person speaking to her, and had to crane her neck up and up to make eye contact with a very tall, very large woman.
She had to be well over six feet tall, broad shouldered and muscular. Her face was pretty, dark glossy hair tied in a bun with bangs, olive skin, big brown eyes, a cute broad nose, and a dazzling smile. She was wearing denim overalls that accentuated her wide hips and intimidating bust, and a dark t-shirt that clung to her powerful arms.
“Oh! Th- thank you,” Victoria stuttered. “It’s um, a thrift shop find. But yes, I’m a librarian here! How can I help you?”
“I’m trying to track down some woodworking plans from an old magazine from the 1940s, Practical Mechanics,” The woman said. “The Internet Archive has some scans of old issues, but the content is spotty, a lot of it is incomplete or low resolution or just broken links. So, I figured maybe I would check at the library. The lady at the front desk told me to find you, and pointed me toward the bathroom.”
Victoria nodded thoughtfully, as she struggled to heft the overly full garbage bag out of the can. The big woman reached over and grabbed the bag with one large hand, pulling it out effortlessly.
“Oh, balıkesir escort thank you! Yes, I might be able to help. We’ve got a lot of old periodicals downstairs in the archives.” She hurried to put a fresh liner in the can.
“I’m Victoria. Marlowe,” she said after an awkward pause. “If you’d like to come with me, we’ll see what we can find?”
“Rosa Waitangi,” the other woman said with a grin. “Lead the way, Vic!”
Victoria led Rosa down a flight of stairs into the basement of the library, past a row of bulky microfiche readers and cabinets, to the old periodicals stacks. She found the large muscular woman both intimidating and strangely magnetic, and fumbled to make small talk as they went.
“So, you’re looking for old woodworking articles? Are you trying to build something?”
Rosa nodded. “I do a lot of custom fabrication for my day job. Mostly 3D printing, welding, machining, metals and plastics. I wanted to try something new, just for fun. I don’t have many specialized tools for working with wood, so for now I can only make do with the basics. Those old ‘crafty guys in garages’ magazines have a lot of really great projects in them, stuff you can build with nothing but a hammer and a hand saw. From what I saw online, a bunch of the early issues start from first principles. Building your own mitre box and work bench from scratch, and progressing from there. All the images I found online were pixelated messes, though.”
“Wow, that’s amazing. I’m not very crafty… I tried to take up knitting once, but never progressed beyond the washcloth phase. Well, here we are!”
Victoria helped Rosa find a row of shelves labelled 605: Technology (Applied Sciences) Serial Publications, and then walked down the row until they found a section filled with old faded magazines.
“Here’s what we have… There are cloth gloves over by the reading table, please put those on if you want to page through anything. They’re kind of old and fragile. Feel free to browse, and if you find anything that you’d like copies of, we can make scans for you. Just… please don’t put them back onto the shelves yourself. There’s a cart at the end of the row, put anything you take out there, and we’ll re-file them later. Sorry, it’s a little warm and stuffy down here, not a lot of ventilation.”
“Oh this is perfect, thank you Victoria!”
“Sure, no problem! Take all the time you need, nobody ever goes down here. I’ll come back and check on you later.”
Victoria returned to the main floor to finish re-shelving her cart of books. Something about that woman kept tickling at the back of her brain, though. She was… built like an Olympic shot putter, obviously. But more than that she seemed… Interesting. Curious. Vibrant.
After shelving the books she helped an elderly woman log into Facebook on one of the public computers, then had a brief chat with the woman about phishing scams and how it was unlikely that her grandson was stuck in the Philippines and needed an Amazon gift card in order to get home.
Then she worked the front desk for an hour or so, which mostly consisted of giving people directions to other locations downtown, and fielding the complaints of one angry gentleman with a buzz cut and reflective Pit Viper sunglasses who was concerned that drag queens were giving a strip tease performance for children at the library. (There was no such performance scheduled at Downtown Central Library).
“Attention patrons, the library will be closing in thirty minutes,” the voice of Darlene — the senior librarian — crackled through the PA system in the ceiling.
“Oh fudge, Rosa!” Victoria muttered, realizing she hadn’t checked in downstairs in a while. There was no PA speaker in the basement, so she headed downstairs. Walking down the corridor, she heard Rosa’s rich voice softly humming through the stacks.
Rounding the corner, Victoria paused in mid-stride. Rosa had unbuttoned the top of her overalls, letting the straps and bib dangle down to her waist, and taken off the shirt underneath it. Wearing only a sports bra above the waist, her well defined back and shoulders were bare. Her right arm had a complex black tattoo on it, a geometric design that wrapped around her muscular forearm and wrist.
Rosa had earbuds in, and was singing to herself. “Can we erase our history… is it as easy as this… plausible deniability, I swear I never heard of it…”
Victoria stood silently, watching Rosa from behind, undetected, embarrassed. Maybe she could tiptoe backwards back up the hallway, then make lots of noise outside, announcing her presence, giving Rosa time to put her shirt back on?
She took a single, soundless step back… directly into the corner of the nearest shelf, knocking a heavy box of old Reader’s Digest magazines to the floor, spilling issues out everywhere, making a loud crash that echoed across the concrete room. Rosa bartın escort spun around, taking up what looked like a fighting stance.
“Shit, Victoria? Are you alright?” Rosa asked in surprise. She rushed over to help pick the magazines up off the floor.
“Sorry, I’m so sorry! I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you or anything, I just wanted to see how you were making out — I mean, how you were doing…” Victoria babbled, mortified. She reached for the nearest magazine, brushing her hand against Rosa’s muscled arm, setting off another round of apologetic noises from the petite librarian.
“No worries,” Rosa said with a chuckle. “It was just getting really hot down here, so I took a couple of layers off. I didn’t break any dress code rules or anything, did I? ‘No shirt, no shoes, no service?'”
Rosa’s impressive breasts were obvious, even in a tight sports bra. They were also directly at Victoria’s eye level, making it hard for her to avoid glancing at them. The last of the magazines back in the box, Rosa hefted it back onto the shelf with a satisfied grunt.
“No! No problem at all!” Victoria said quickly, averting her eyes. “I was just surprised… Did you um… find what you were looking for?”
“Sure did,” Rosa said happily, pointing at a pile of magazines stacked neatly on the floor. “So now I need to scan these, right?”
“Right! We’ve got a nice book scanner upstairs. But the library is closing soon, I’m afraid. I can set these aside, if you can come back later in the week?”
“Sounds good, I’ll be back tomorrow in the morning! I promise not to flash you next time,” Rosa said, and gave Victoria a big hug, surrounding the smaller woman with her thick arms, pressing her breasts into Victoria’s body.
“Oof!” Victoria wheezed as a breath was squeezed out of her.
Walking back to her third-floor walkup apartment, Victoria gradually began to notice that other pedestrians were smiling at her, nodding or murmuring little hellos as they passed her. After a moment of reflection, she realized that she was smiling to herself.
She usually landed somewhere on a spectrum between annoyed and numb at the end of the work day, but for some reason she felt… fine. Vaguely energized. Perhaps even happy.
“Rosa Waitangi,” Victoria said out loud to herself, then quickly glanced around to make sure nobody had heard her. Strange, she had only really interacted with the woman for what, ten minutes total? But those ten minutes had left quite an impression.
When she got home, Victoria opened her laptop and looked up the lyrics she had overheard Rosa singing. She tracked it back to a band called The Beths, a catchy power pop band from New Zealand. Putting them on her playlist, she hummed along as she made herself dinner.
After cleaning up, she hopped in the shower. Closing her eyes and letting the hot water run down her body, Victoria’s mind wandered back to Rosa, shirtless and muscular, shining with perspiration, her ample breasts straining at her sports bra.
Victoria savored the memory of briefly touching the other woman’s arm, of feeling her firm muscles under her soft skin. Then she imagined those strong arms pushing her against the library stacks, Rosa leaning her face down to Victoria’s looking into her eyes.
Victoria let her hands wander down her body, one caressing a petite breast and pinching a little pink nipple, one traveling down to her pussy, running her fingers through her intimate curls, just slightly darker than the ash blonde hair on her head.
“Ohhh,” she moaned, imagining Rosa’s hands grabbing and tugging her hair. Imagining Rosa’s hands grasping the back of her neck. Imagining Rosa’s hands wrapped around her waist. Imagining…
“Oh gosh, oh wow,” Victoria gasped as an unexpected orgasm ripped through her, making her knees go weak. She put a hand on the tiled wall of her shower and breathed through it, warm water from the showerhead running down her face and into her mouth.
“What the heck was that all about?” Victoria mumbled, composing herself and turning off the water.
Victoria didn’t particularly consider herself part of the LGBTQ community… She was a two on the Kinsey Scale at most, somewhere between “straight-ish,” and “vaguely bisexual, in theory.” She appreciated the beauty of the feminine form, and occasionally found herself attracted to specific women for one reason or another. But she had never had either a sexual or romantic experience with a woman, nor been motivated to try.
After toweling off and putting on some pajamas, Victoria took her laptop to bed and started watching the latest episode of Murderbot. A moment later she paused the show, got out of bed, and rummaged through the back of her closet.
“Ahha,” she said triumphantly, returning to her bed with a tote bag. Resuming her show, she pulled out a skein of yarn and a pair of needles, and started knitting as she watched.
“Good batman escort morning, Darlene!” Victoria said brightly as she swiped her access fob at the front desk, signing in for the morning.
“Mmhmm,” the older librarian said, not lifting her eyes up from a newspaper open on the desk. She tapped angrily at the article she was reading. “Did you see this? Bob Butington from the library board is threatening budget cuts for the next fiscal year. He says we aren’t providing enough ‘practical benefit’ to the community. He’s written a damn op-ed about it.”
“‘Practical benefit?'” Victoria repeated incredulously. “Ugh, why is Bob even on the board? The last time I talked to him, he asked me about adding some ‘Flat Earth Science’ books to the collection. I tried to give him the purchase suggestion form, and he called me a ‘little lady’ and said he’d just talk to the director.”
Darlene snorted. “What a pig. His seat on the board is up for election this year, but the only people that vote in the municipal races are weirdos with an axe to grind. I’m glad I won’t have to deal with him much longer.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I just turned in my Intent to Separate. I’ll be retiring in three months.”
“Oh. Oh! Oh gosh, congratulations!” Victoria said, her voice betraying some trepidation. “Have you… talked to Marianne about this?”
“No. Not yet… I’m waiting for the right time, so please keep this to yourself,” Darlene said quietly.
Marianne was the other senior librarian at Downtown Central. She and Darlene seemed to have a complex, fraught relationship that started long before Victoria’s time at the library, that she had never completely figured out. They ate lunch together in the break room nearly every day, and carpooled together religiously.
“Right, of course,” Victoria answered quickly. “So… What made you take the leap? To finally retire. I mean, not ‘finally!’ Just… why now?”
Darlene rolled her eyes at Victoria’s conversational awkwardness, but smiled gently. “The job’s not what it used to be, kiddo. People used to come here to read. To conduct research. To learn something, to improve their lives, to better themselves.
“Now the library feels mostly like free babysitting for overworked parents, free video games for bored seniors, and free toilets for the unhoused. People aren’t reading like they used to, and why should they when AI will do the reading and the research and the thinking for them? It’s not what I went to school for, not what I devoted my life to. So I’m bowing out gracefully while I still can.”
Victoria stared at the older woman, at a loss for what to say. She disliked Darlene’s cynicism, but it was hard to refute her words. They mirrored her own growing disappointment at the work, to be honest.
“I believed in the library. Still do,” Darlene continued. “But you have to have boundaries. You have to know when to say no. You have to know when to walk away. The library isn’t a temple, and we’re not priests.”
Victoria struggled to find something to say in response. Fortunately, she was rescued by a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to find Rosa Waitangi standing behind her.
“Morning Vic! Is now a good time to help me with some scanning?”
“Rosa, hi! Good morning! Y-yes, now is perfect,” Victoria said, a little too enthusiastically. She nodded to Darlene and then motioned for Rosa to follow her.
“You’re looking cute today,” Rosa said as they walked through the main floor of the library, stopping by the sorting room to retrieve the stack of magazines from yesterday, then continuing to the computer area and the scanner.
“Oh, gosh, this old thing? Thanks,” Victoria said in what she hoped was a nonchalant way. In fact, she had agonized over what to wear, before settling on a polka-dotted yellow summer dress that showed off her short but shapely legs, and a green knit cardigan. She had also put on a little more makeup than usual, including a bit of subtle pink eye shadow that she hoped would accent her bright blue eyes and compensate for her less-than-noteworthy boobs and butt.
Although she hadn’t fully admitted her goal to herself when she was getting ready, she was now deeply pleased that Rosa had noticed.
Rosa, for her part, was again dressed for practical comfort. But instead of leggings and a long-sleeved jacket, she wore red cargo capris that showed off her powerful calves, and a snug grey t-shirt that clung to her impressive chest and biceps.
After they had finished scanning all of the pages of Practical Mechanics that Rosa wanted, she insisted on buying Victoria lunch as thanks and by way of apology for partially undressing in the basement. Darlene wagged her eyebrows at Victoria as she watched them leave together.
Victoria suggested Arroz Aroy, a Thai-Mexican fusion cafe within walking distance. They made small talk, chatting about hobbies.
When she wasn’t spending time at the gym, Rosa did custom fabrication for local manufacturing companies, making or repairing specialized parts that they couldn’t get elsewhere without paying a fortune or buying in bulk. But she also designed and created elaborate costumes for the local cosplay community. She dabbled in art and music. Now she was picking up traditional carpentry.
Ben Esra telefonda seni bosaltmami ister misin?
Telefon Numaram: 00237 8000 92 32