matchsticks and papercuts ( selene / tyler )

i was working for dollars
but they're giving me dimes
and i wanted a rush
but they're giving me time

Tyler Lorena followed exact science by necessity, not by nature.

If it was up to her she would just toss a bunch of chemicals together, throw a match on top, and see what happened. Unfortunately, the last time she had tried such an experiment it had left her short half a finger. Her parents had sworn it was the end of her days playing with fire, but in reality it was simply the beginning of playing with a certain level of caution. After all, she couldn't have her clients blowing their own houses up. She would lose all her business.

As a result, the library had become a regular stop for her. She hated it. Everything had its place, neat and organized and alphabetical, and everything stacked so perfectly in rows made her feel somewhat dizzy. The silence buzzed in her ears as she made her way toward the section she thought she was looking for (how was it possible that everything was so organized and yet still impossible to find?) and began yanking down books impatiently, inspecting titles before dropping them to the floor and picking up the next.

Tommy would say that she was being a pain, but Tyler wasn't in the mood to be polite to inanimate objects on that particular afternoon. She had three clients waiting on three different concoctions and the start of a headache at the base of her skull, just above her neck. Her brow furrowed as she emptied one shelf and her gaze slowly rose upward, toward the next little army of books positioned only just within her reach. Another thing she didn't like about libraries - they seemed designed to frustrate short people.

Standing on her tiptoes, she yanked the first book out only to have five come loose as well. Tyler managed a quiet yelp before they rained down on her and she crashed to the floor along with the volumes she'd discarded. Her forehead stung where an especially heavy hardcover had struck her as she gazed up at the ceiling, slightly dazed. After a moment she tentatively rose up onto her elbows, groaning when her headache spiked.

Libraries, it would seem, hated her almost as much as she hated them.