Brütal • Mötley Crüe •

One • Jimmy's

Warnings: Language, Light Mentions of Smut & Violence

February 10th, 1982

Halston White hated her job for one reason.

It wasn't that the small grocery store was nestled on the busiest corner of the busiest street in Los Angeles. In fact, she didn't mind the hookers and the homeless that claimed the sidewalk right outside the main double doors as theirs. She had some of the best conversations of her life with those the world had rejected.

It wasn't that the store always smelled profusely of apples, which she had hated from the moment she first tried one when she was only two years old. She hated the memory it brought up of the childhood she was so desperately trying to forget, sure, but she didn't hate the smell itself.

It wasn't the ugly puke green tile floors that she was entrusted to mop at the end of all her shifts. Although, she wasn't a big fan of the stifling lemon scented mop fluid. It didn't mesh well with the apple.

It wasn't the fact that she always got stuck with the latest shift, four to midnight. She actually enjoyed walking home in the neon-tinted darkness of the night. The Sunset Strip always started to buzz in the early hours of the morning and she wholeheartedly enjoyed its liveliness.

It wasn't her grimy boss, Jackson. Well, maybe it was a little bit. Halston hated the way he looked at her, and she could always tell when he was staring. She could feel his eyes travel over the curves of her thighs when she had to bend over to restock the beer coolers, which he asked her to do more than any other employee in the store.

It wasn't the fifties style pale blue dress she had to wear, either. She liked to think she pulled it off pretty well. The color was subtle against her naturally tan skin, and it made the icy, nearly translucent, blue of her eyes pop out even more than the darkness of her dyed jet black hair did.

But what she hated more than anything, what really got under her skin and made her stomach bubble with rage, was the endless amount of shoplifters.

She didn't hate shoplifters because of the confrontation they brought, Halston had no problem with confrontation. Her whole childhood was based on confrontation. Confrontation had been the goal for her family.

She was no stranger to the violence she would inflict on the unknowing stragglers, slamming them into the ground or into a nearby brick wall to get back whatever they had decided to take that day. Violence was one of the only things she excelled at.

What she hated about it was that Jackson expected her to run after the naive criminals in her uniform white sneakers that were too tight around her ankles and rubbed blisters into her skin.

She spent too many nights running down the Sunset Strip after something as petty as a loaf of bread, her ankles bleeding by the time she made it back to the store, bread always in hand.

But Jackson made her do it, because she always delivered. She could always run faster than the perpetrator, always retrieve whatever low-cost item they tried to take from him. Halston may have been a petite woman, but she was a beast and he knew it, and he used it to his advantage.

Even though he could never quite figure out what had made her that way.

"Fucking really? I'm right fucking here, dude!" The grittiness of Halston's voice cut through the air more than the vulgarity of her words, her arms flailing out in front of her body threateningly as she watched a young boy stick a piece of candy into his pocket. "Put it back! Now!"