Come morning, Dean woke feeling still sore but…not as overwhelmed. She rifled through Cairn’s clothing until she found a shirt she could get away with wearing without it being too obvious that it wasn’t hers, helping herself without asking. When she moved, still yawning, toward the kitchen, she did take the time to slap Cairn’s foot where he was on the couch. “Hey. You got work?” she asked, only half-awake really.
He came awake with a jolt, halfway sitting up, and after taking in the fact that it was Dean who’d done the waking, he slumped back down again and rubbed at his face. He was dressed in the trousers he’d worn the day before and nothing else save that necklace, a blanket strewn and twisted around him as if he’d had trouble sleeping.
Dean awoke sometime in the dead of night with a start, immediately yelping in pain and then cursing as her muscles, still sore from the seizures induced by a multi-Kin touch high, protested extensively. For a moment, she was terribly disoriented. After so many years of waking up in strange places after getting jumped by exiled Kin, she always thought she’d get used to it and stop being so freaked every time. But it just never happened.
“Pops?” she whispered immediately, so accustomed to her father’s presence that when he wasn’t right there upon waking it would send a brief jet of chest-clenching doubt through her.
“Shhh,” the ghost murmured soothingly, settling on the bed next to her, and she felt the moment of confused panic subside. “How do you feel?”
The pure, comforting silence of the library was barely disturbed by gentle tapping on a keyboard as Cairn typed in the name of a book wanted by a student. The book was already checked out, and he was making the reservation as said student left the building. When he was done he took a moment to stretch, closing his eyes to roll his neck, breathing deeply and flexing muscles hidden beneath his casual shirt. When he opened his eyes and turned back to the counter he was surprised to see a familiar girl there, she watching him rather intently with a smile in blue eyes.
“Hi.”
“Hello,” she replied, watching him before asking, “I was wondering if you could help me…”
Five minutes later Cairn had descended off the rolling ladder which had helped him reach the book the girl had wanted, noting inwardly that it didn’t seem related to her studies at all, as she had requested books from him before and this one was a little out of place. She thanked him, however, hand brushing his own as he handed it over. Instead of turning and leaving, she waited to walk side by side with him on the way out of the aisle, smiling at him once more—he of course smiled back—before making her way back to the table where her three friends were studying. They were watching him too for some reason.
He simply smiled at them before making his way to his own desk, practically feeling their eyes boring into the back of him until he was at his post again.