phanlight:

ok so I had this prompt sent to me a while ago and I found out it came from a prompt for a fic blog but as far as I know no-one wrote it (???? I hope im right in assuming that) so Why Not

also to my knowledge none of the books I mentioned actually exist I made em up

fun fact it’s loosely based on a real bookshop I once found somewhere in greenwich idk exactly where it is but if ever find urself around the area look out for it its v cute and v tiny

Also this is my first oneshot in literally over 4 months WTF. Guess Who Back x

summary: Phil works at a bookshop. Dan buys a book one day, and, in a ploy to see Phil, keeps returning with more and more obscure requests so Phil has to spend more time searching. After Dan leaves with ‘cactus maintenance: a memoir’, Phil starts to suspect something’s up.

words: 7.3k

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“Look,” Phil sighs when he catches sight of the book Dan’s clutching today. “I know there’s a very good chance you keep cacti and you just wanna maintain them and it’s probably wrong of me to assume otherwise, but-…can I ask you something?”

Dan gulps, putting the book titled “Cactus Maintenance: A Memoir” down on the counter.

“Do you actually need half of the books you come in here for?” he asks softly. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s a good chance you might actually ride motorcycles, study bricklaying, want to know more about frogspawn or- you know, wanna look after your cacti, but…” he shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just- um, you’re the first person I’ve met that, you know, buys one book every single day. When do you get time to read them all?”

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i.

Graveland’s Books is the kind of place you’d only come across if you were either very bored, very desperate, or very lost.

It hides on the tail end of an alleyway just behind the village market, and the gnarled wooden beams, the glass oil lanterns lining either side of the aged brickwork and the rusty bronze bell hanging above the door would fool anyone into thinking they’d just stepped out of 2016 and into the 18^th century. If it wasn’t for the mobile phone shop sitting directly opposite, of course.

It’s not big in size, with a staff room and an office the size of a postage stamp upstairs and just about enough room to fit two free standing bookshelves in the middle of the shop, but books spill into every single crack. Stacks and stacks of fiction and history and travel and biographies narrow the aisles between the shelves, and it’s all too easy to trip over a random pile of books in the middle of the floor when you’re not concentrating properly.

But, for a job running along the sidelines of university, Phil enjoys it. He’d certainly rather spend his time flicking through a story about a cursed mushroom than stack supermarket shelves and deal with obnoxious co-workers, anyway.

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