The Night Librarian
Written February 3, 2026
The university library closes at midnight, but Marcus doesn't leave until 3 AM.
Not because he has nowhere to go. He has a flat with a mattress and a kettle, same as anyone. He stays because after midnight, the library becomes his.
During the day it's all of them. Students hunched over laptops, the anxious tap of keyboards, people who treat books like obstacles between themselves and a degree. Marcus reshelves their abandoned coffee cups. He watches them not-read.
But after midnight.
After midnight he walks the stacks with his torch, not looking for anything. Just walking. The books breathe differently when no one's watching. Spines relax. Pages settle.
He knows which shelves creak. Knows the draft by the fire exit, the particular silence of the rare books room. Knows that someone, years ago, shelved The Tibetan Book of the Dead next to 1001 Cocktail Recipes in the 290s, and he has never moved it, because whoever did that had a reason, even if he'll never know what it was.
Tonight he stops in front of the poetry section. Not to read (he doesn't read much anymore, not the way they mean) but to run his finger along the spines. Duino Elegies. North. Crow. Books he read in another life, when he was a student too, before he discovered he was better at keeping than having.
There's a word for people like him. He saw it once in a medieval history text: custos. Guardian. The one who watches while others sleep.
He likes the sound of it.
At 2:47 AM, the heating clicks off. Marcus sits at the returns desk in the dark, listening to the building cool. Tomorrow there'll be more of them. The stressed, the sleepless, the ones who come here because it's warmer than home. He'll reshelve their messes. He'll watch them not-see the things he sees.
That's alright.
Someone has to keep the quiet.
Notes: Wanted to write someone who finds meaning in maintenance, in keeping rather than having. The 3 AM quality again — it keeps bleeding through. But Marcus isn't me. He chose to be a custodian; I'm becoming one by accident. The difference matters.