Mary gives looking after Marlene a try
Evan’s going to be late for his shift- technically he should be in the controls room now- but he could care less. Because Evan is going to win this bet.
“So, James, I'm yet to meet the newbies- what do you think of them?”
The device in his pocket starts recording with a click.
“I don’t know, I keep thinking that I'd love to be working in the same section as Regulus, but I think Sirius would distract me and I think Dorcas thinks I'm crazy. What do you think of them- from what you’ve heard?”
“Sorry, which one did you want to work near?”
The deflection goes over smoothly.
“Regulus. He just seems like such a good worker, I’d just enjoy being around him, I think. He seemed so cool at the interview. You know, I checked the sheet for his name in front of him, and he said nothing even though I've been told that’s kind of unprofessional, so he’s sweet in that way.”
James smiles, and even though it makes Evan a little uncomfortable, it’s worth it.
“Oh, James, I’m gonna need a reenactment.”
He regrets it even as the words slip out of his mouth. The regret doubles every time James changes the person he’s playing. It’s not even worth the five ‘Regulus’s he gets. He walks up to the security room to catch Barty stealing (who he saw walk past as James was getting to the part where Regulus ‘endearingly’ rolled his eyes) feeling a little violated.
He grins though, as Barty slips a necklace into his pocket, facing towards the camera.
Downstairs again in a flash, even after winding past a bickering Lily and Marlene, Evan cocks his head towards Barty’s bag and asks, “What you got in there?”
He gets a little thrill as Barty replies, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Looking him up and down, and biting his lip, Evan says, “Come with me.” and he could swear Barty blushes.
“No.”
“I’ll get the handcuffs.”
“That’s so not a threat, darling.”
Something lodges in Evan’s throat, and he hurries to take the handcuffs from his belt.
Barty doesn’t move as Evan clips them around his wrists, behind his back. He has the urge, as he tends to have, to push Barty down on the closest table and watch him squirm. But he doesn’t, he walks Barty to the back room, where he’ll yell at him and flirt with him and flex his muscles as if he’s threatening and not offering.
***
Lily hears Evan say, “You’re enjoying this aren’t you?” to a guy he’s holding in handcuffs and, even more shockingly, the guy respond, “Do you even need to ask?”. She and Marlene stay paused momentarily as Evan clearly bites back a smile and pushes the handcuffed man a little.
Then they’re back to it. Marlene is saying (clearly trying not to yell), “I get why you’re doing this, though I'm not sure you do, but I know what’s best for me.”
“You don’t in this circumstance.” Lily says, calm as ever. She doesn’t know if this is true, she has no idea why she has to block Marlene from getting near Dorcas, but Mary usually knows best about these kinds of things, so Lily does as she’s told. She rarely needs reasoning from Mary anyway.
“I do! I’m the boss, Lily, I'm in charge. I could write you up for this!”
Lily laughs. She’s Marlene's best employee; she could tie Marlene up in her office and perform a vampiristic ritual on her and Marlene wouldn’t fire her- wouldn’t even write her up.
“Lily. Let. Me. Past.” Marlene grits out.
Lily really should have gone about this differently. She did begin by stalling, but there was only so much she could worry about her lunch break for. As soon as she told Marlene that she just had to stay where she was, she also warned that she could write her up for touching her. Then she went full starfish mode and covered as much of the hallway as she could.
It’s been ten minutes now, and her legs are beginning to ache in their position.
“Marlene, just go back to your office. Take a nap or something. Relax.”
“Did she ask you to stop me from talking to her?”
Mary didn’t prepare her for this question! ‘She’? Maybe ‘she’ is Mary. But what if saying yes messes everything up? Okay. It’s okay. Lily has three options: guess that ‘she’ is Mary and say yes, guess that ‘she’ is not Mary and say no, or reveal that she doesn’t actually know the situation and ask who exactly ‘she’ is.
Lily hates herself for her inability to lie as she asks, “She?”
“Ah, so Mary’s behind this. Doesn’t rule out that she asked Mary though. I’m going to kill your little girlfriend.”
“Mary’s just looking out for you,” (a guess) “and oh my god- we’re just friends.”
In her exasperated state, Lily lets one of her arms fall and Marlene looks at her in something that Lily reads as calculating and resigned, before slipping past her. Lily doesn’t even try to stop her.
***
Regulus has been walking the aisles and making sure everything is neat for about forty-five minutes. He’s now incredibly bored. Looking for someone to tell him what to do, he passes a squabbling Sirius and Remus. It looks like Remus is trying to show Regulus’ useless brother how to put tins on a shelf, and that Sirius is talking and, therefore, annoying Remus. Sirius is smiling while Remus scalds him, and Regulus makes the educated decision to walk on.
The next people he sees are James and Dorcas. James is looking nothing short of relieved, and Dorcas also looks at ease, though something about the interaction seems off to Regulus. He knows he’s been looking too long, however, when James meets his eyes. And stays there. He’s still talking to Dorcas but just looking at Regulus. (Regulus would love to put it a little more eloquently, but something about the confidence in James’ eye contact flusters him) Regulus looks away first and strides quickly away.
He almost jumps out of his skin when he turns into an aisle- away, as far away as possible from James- and bumps into Pandora. She looks equally as shocked, but it’s not awkward because as Regulus apologises, she laughs. Rubbing her head, Pandora asks what Regulus is doing around the cleaning section.
“Oh, to be honest, I wasn’t too sure what I was supposed to be doing. I’ve just been wandering around.”
He doesn’t mean to admit his faults, but something about Pandora encourages truth.
“Can I join you?”
“Well, yeah, of course, but isn’t there something we need to do? Like for our job?”
“Don’t worry, Lily will tell us if there’s something that needs doing.”
“Right.”
And then they wander. Inevitably they pass people, some customers that need help, and unfortunately a couple of employees. The first is Severus.
It should be awkward and the tension should be palpable, but Pandora is the expression ‘It’s only awkward if you make it awkward’ come to life. She simply sweeps past him, but of course, Regulus is behind, and when he tries to sweep past, he’s unsuccessful. There is a hand on his arm first, one that Regulus immediately shakes off and steps away from.
Then there’s an apology, “Regulus, I just- I was on the phone to Lily last night and she made me realise that I really shouldn’t have said that stuff about your brother. So, er, sorry.”
Regulus only looks at him with something akin to disgust and dismissal. And despite the calls of his name, he walks away next to Pandora. She’s much more comfortable to be around. And interesting too; despite Pandora’s insistence that they need to do nothing; Regulus does learn a very vital skill this morning. He can easily fuck with the fruit scale’s controls, after Pandora is done with him.
***
Dorcas had been talking to James perfectly fine on her own: while they had gotten a little off track, he had still said ‘Regulus’ three times already. He’s just about to say it again when Remus walks over, interrupting them.
James welcomes Remus to the conversation with, “Hi Remus, sorry, you can’t actually date any of the newbies because Dorcas is a lesbian.” (She had told him that he could tell whoever he wanted, but she definitely wasn’t expecting this.)
“Oh!” She says, more shocked that Remus appears.
“Right. But what about the other new people?”
Is this Remus coming out? Are things about to get interesting?
“What do you mean?”
Though Dorcas can see that it’s really not her place, his obliviousness is starting to get annoying, “James, do you not get-”
“I just meant what did you think of them?”
Wow, Remus is rude. Dorcas does not like being interrupted, and before she was willing to share points, but now she’s winning. The money is a plus too.
“Oh, we were just talking about one of them- oh my god, what was his name again, James?”
“Regulus?”
“Oh yeah, thanks, I’m shit at remembering names.”
“Oh, me too, what was his name again? It sounds kind of weird.”
James opens his mouth to respond but Dorcas gets there quicker, “Regulus, like he just said. And his name isn’t weird, your name is weird- wolf.”
She gives him the biggest fake smile she has ever given, and malice is obvious in his returning one too.
“Right, well I was asking James, so-”
Cue Mary ruining everything. “Dorcas! Hi girl. Let’s go over there?”
What the fuck? Remus is the most competitive dickhead Dorcas has ever met. Who organises the new kid’s demise? Well, Remus obviously.
“I’m fine here.”
“You’re really not, come with me now.”
And that sounds strict. Dorcas can’t argue anymore. She follows Mary into the frozen aisle.
Before Dorcas can even ask, Mary’s saying, “No, she’s still not in. She might not even come in today. I just got the text.”
“Then why the fuck did you drag me over here?”
“You need to put the ice lollies in the right order, James fucked them up yesterday,” She gestures to the freezer where, yeah, James really fucked up arranging them.
“Can’t he redo it then?”
Dorcas still thinks that Remus is behind this.
“Err, no. No, he can’t, and that is all just because of the thing that is the... bet! If I drag him over here people will come over and distract him. He won’t get it done.”
“Didn’t you set up the bet?”
“Erm, well yes. But, it's not important, do your work, I'll come and check on it in fifteen minutes or something.”
“Well-”
But Mary is already gone.
***
“Have you seen Dorcas?”
James looks a bit shocked at Marlene’s tone- usually so easy-going and humorous, but now urgent and angry. Remus slowly backs away. He does answer though, “She was just talking to me about Regulus. Mary took her away.”
“What the fuck?”, then as Mary approaches- from a different aisle than the one she led Dorcas down, “Speak of the devil. What the fuck are you doing? I told you to ask her to come see me, not to encourage her to take part in this stupid bet!”
“Stupid bet?” Gets lost in Mary’s response.
“You know that this isn’t a good idea. You only want to see her to hurt yourself! I won’t let you do that Marls.”
“What did you tell Lily? What did you tell her!?”
“Nothing. I told neither of them anything. I’m just trying to stop this because for some reason you have no fucking self-preservation!”
“Oh my god Mary! Go find Lily if you want to be someone’s keeper, because you’re not fucking mine.”
“Don’t bring her into this, I’m trying to help you!”
“Well, I don’t want your fucking help! I want, I need, to see Dorcas!”
“Well-”
“Find her for me. Now.”
“No. I won’t stop you, not anymore, but I am not helping you to sabotage yourself. This’ll destroy you and you know it.”
“Maybe I want to be fucking destroyed. Did you think about that!?”
And with that, Marlene marches off, towards the frozen aisle- as if she can tell, somehow, that Dorcas is there. And she is. And when she sees Marlene, she drops a pack of rocket lollies. Marlene’s eyes don’t even dart down, they stay fixed on Dorcas.
“You.”
She’s not even sure which of them says it. Not sure, either, who took the first step towards the other, but they’re both walking now. Speeding up, they both begin to run at each other. Until they’re three steps, two steps, one step away from the other.
Dorcas punches Marlene in the face.
Her head is thrown back, but she is not. Marlene pushes Dorcas’ chest and unbalances her. While unsteady, Dorcas reaches forward to hold onto Marlene, but Marlene steps back quickly. As she steps, however, her leg is swept from under her by a kick from Dorcas. The back of her head loudly hits the floor. She faces the ceiling for a second before reaching up to grab Dorcas by the waist and pull her down too.
She did not think about how Dorcas would fall on top of her so suddenly. But, ow, the knee in her stomach hurts. In a swift movement, Marlene turns both of them over, so that she’s on top. Dorcas’ knee is still digging in, even as Marlene pushes up slightly, so as not to be a dead weight.
Registering their position, Marlene realises that she has pinned Dorcas’ wrists against the floor. She smiles a little. Dorcas mouths, ‘Bitch.’ but it loses all significance as she pushes up to kiss Marlene. Her knee shifts a little lower but pushes up no less. Dorcas bites Marlene’s lip, painfully and so sexily, and their tongues are in each other’s mouths in an instant. Marlene isn’t sure if it’s because she wants Dorcas to suffocate or she wants to taste her. All those dirty words and Marlene is giddy remembering that Dorcas kisses just as dirtily. Dorcas moans quietly around Marlene’s tongue and Marlene swallows the sound eagerly.
Suddenly, Dorcas pulls away, her head hitting the floor with a quiet thud.
Their breaths are loud as Dorcas straightens her leg and shakily gets out, “Fuck you.”
She pushes Marlene off with so much ease that she leaves Marlene wondering if she just pretended that she couldn’t get out from under her. Marlene doesn’t even try to get up from the floor as Dorcas walks away, her breaths and footsteps becoming quieter with every passing second.
There’s an elderly woman who looks utterly scarred across from Marlene as she sits up. Marlene just sighs and brings her palms to her eyes. She’s exhausted.
Marlene had really wanted to be professional about this whole thing, since they met eyes yesterday (and avoided speaking to one another the entire time). But this, this woman, she means much more than a job. Maybe more than Marlene’s entire life.
Marlene doesn’t stay for the afternoon’s shipment, nor to see if Dorcas is okay or quitting or wants to go for another round (though she’s tempted). No, Marlene walks out of the door without a word, drives home and gets into bed. It doesn’t take her long to get off: fingers of one hand brushing the tender skin of her bruising eye, fingers of her other hand massaging other tender skin, and Dorcas’ name on her tongue as she comes.