Author's Note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters do not belong to me at all. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Dedication: To Amanda, my Secret Santa on the MC4A forum, whose prompts lead us to this story.

Warnings: NA

A Happy Place

Jane had, for as long as she could remember, loved the library more than she had loved any place in the world. Someone at school had told her that she must be exaggerating once, but she knew it was true because she'd made a list. She liked the library more than the porch swing, her mother's room full of shiny beads and colourful clothes, the bread aisle of the grocery store that always smelled the best, or even the ice cream stand on the quay that abuela brought her to. The tempting book displays as soon as you walked in, the shelves upon shelves of possibility, the posters and flyers on the community corkboard, the quietness, the stepping stool you needed to reach the top shelves, the colourful reading chairs… even the water from the fountain seemed to taste better than the water anywhere else in the world. All of these things had stayed just as consistently endless and quiet and colourful, and so the library too had stayed Jane's favourite place. No, not just her favourite place, her happy place.

"Alright, Mr Sweetface, here we are," she said picking up Mateo by the waist and swinging him out of his car seat and onto the ground. He ran onto the sidewalk and up to the library shouting about today's book club book, so Jane turned back to Rafael, knowing that a librarian would be there to catch her son.

"Book club goes until 4:30 today," she reminded him, shutting the car door and locking up. "There's no craft today, which I warned him about, but he might be upset—I'll be done by then, so…"

"Don't worry about being done by then," Rafael said. "We'll find something to do, take your time."

Jane chewed her lip.

"I know you two are very different, but he's still your son," Rafael said. "We can spend more than enough time at the library."

Of course, she did end up taking her time wandering the stacks. There was no other way to be in a library, other than lazy and slow and thoughtful and curious and excited. There was a pile of twelve books leaning against Jane's chest and weighing down her arms when she realized that maybe, just maybe, she should come back to reality and go check on her boys.

She wandered over to the children's section and got increasingly alarmed as she walked that there was no crowd of children and parents there, no excited murmurs as someone heard a story twist and turn… She sped up her walk and would have chided herself for getting so lost in the library.

When she got to the children's section, she slowed and lurked by a shelf as she realized that she had no reason to worry. She actually stopped and watched for a while—because the two of them were cute enough to be worth it. They were sitting on a big orange reading chair, or rather Rafael was and he was balancing Mateo on his knee. He was even letting Mateo hold one end of the open book while he held the other, like he liked, and Jane could tell by the way his mouth curved and his eyebrows furrowed that he was making all kinds of voices and sounds.

Jane leaned her head against the library shelf and smiled to herself as she watched.

This really was a happy place.

Stacked with: Hogwarts; Shipping War

Individual Challenge(s): Small Fry; Day Out; Love Language; Seeds; New Fandom Smell; Themes & Things A (Family); Themes & Things B (Joy); Themes & Things D (Sofa/couch/divan); Themes & Things F (Childhood); Ethnic & Present; Neurodivergent; Tiny Terror; Rian-Russo Inversion; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux

Word Count: 570

Shipping Wars

Ship (Team): Jane Vilanueva/Rafael Solano

List (Prompt): Summer Micro 1 (Library)