(no subject)

Who: Daniel, Peter, Giles and open!
Where: Library
What: The geek squad (and Peter) decide to help sort books into their proper place
When: After Daniel's post
Warnings: None so far.

Daniel sighed, looking at the stack before him. He had gotten most of the 100s done this morning. He had come up with a system. Go through the shelves, take out the books that didn't go there, then put them back in this proper places. Simple, right? Wrong.

Ever since the creepy faceless workers had disappeared, the library was slowly going to shambles. Hence, the large stack of books. Thankfully though, Daniel was going to fix it. And the best part of all was that he had some help. Peter and Giles were coming. He knew nothing at all about Giles, but he liked Peter. They had talked some before, mostly during the quest. It would be nice to have a conversation that didn't involve the fate of an inmate.

Picking up a book, Daniel looked at the spine. It was in the 780s. Sighing, he started to search through the stack, hoping to find another book in the 700s. Considering the size of the library, it was a bit of a walk to the 700s, especially when one was going back and forth and back and forth.

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Peter didn't go to the library that often. Not because he didn't like books or to read, he did. Had been that kid with a book permanently attached to his fingers when he was high school. He just didn't have the time or the focus to do any reading for fun or search the library for something interesting.

So the mess was obviously not his but he doubted it was Daniel's either and the poor guy seemed ready to burst. Peter wanted to relieve some of that stress before it really got unbearable.

"Hey," Peter said softly as he approached Daniel and the large stack of books, his eyebrow popping up just a little bit when he saw it, unaware that it was really this bad.

"Where do you want me to start?"

Giles strode purposefully into the library. He had made attempts at sorting the mess of books before - like he'd told Daniel, it was a habit by now, and besides, leaving them unsorted set his teeth on edge - but it was slow going and he couldn't do it all alone. The Barge's library was a lot bigger than Sunnydale High's. But now? There were people willing to help.

As he walked to where Daniel and the other man were standing, Giles pondered exactly how the library had got into this state. He hadn't thought that many Barge residents actually used it. Or at least, used it often enough to let it get to this. Maybe it was some sort of magic - the mystical nature of the Barge he'd wondered about causing a disruption in any ordered systems, perhaps?

Giles was a little lost in thought as he arrived at the stack of unsorted books. He nodded absently at both men. "Hello," he said, giving the stack a cursory once-over, already thinking about where they needed to go back to. He was pretty familiar with this library, after all.

Daniel placed the book on a nearby cart, smiling as Peter and Giles entered. They came! They really came to help him out. He was really happy about that. Smiling at the two, he picked up another book and looked at the spine. 500s. He handed that book to Peter.

"If you could grab a cart and start putting all the books with Dewey numbers in the 500s on the cart, that would be really great." He smiled at Peter, then turned to Giles. "You used to work as a librarian, so if there's anything that I'm doing wrong or that you want to comment on, just tell me. I'm open to critism or anything like that."

He pointed to the cart with one book on it. "I've started picking out all the 700s. I'll put them in the shelves later."

Peter grinned back at Daniel, simply made happy by the look on the other man's face, like just showing up to help made Daniel's day better. Which was something Peter thrived in, making people happy in any way he could. It'd been hard to do lately with everything that life on the Barge threw at him. Just helping someone put books back in their rightful places, tedious and frustrating as it was bound to be, made him feel kind of like he was doing something right again.

"Sure thing," Peter nodded and took the book from Daniel, holding it on the crook of his arm while he looked around for a cart to start piling books on. Once he found that, he turned his attention back to the stack of books, looking for anything that was in the 500s.

Peter gathered three books and set them on the cart, glancing over at the man he didn't know. "I'm Peter, by the way," he said. "I don't think we've met."

"I don't believe we have. I'm Rupert Giles. Pleased to meet you, Peter," Giles said with a pleasant smile, holding his hand out to shake the other man's. "Reshelving is really the largest part of the job," he continued, turning back to Daniel with a smile. He regarded the big pile of books with a slight sigh. Absently, he took his glasses off and began polishing them on his handkerchief, continuing matter-of-factly, "And with the state of the Barge's library, it looks like it will be a very big job... So, to work."

Pushing the glasses back onto his nose, he set about looking through the pile, prefunctorily sorting out the pile into smaller piles of the different Dewey numbers. Without looking up, he asked, "Are these the misplaced books from all the shelves, or only some?"

Daniel shrugged. "Some I pulled from the book return slot. Well, most I pulled from the book return slot. Still, those need to be put back also." He picked up two books, put one to the left of him and put the other on the cart. This was tedious.

Picking up another book, he looked briefly at Giles and Peter. "How are you two? I mean, it's the Barge so we're not peachy perfect. But still. How are you doing?"