honey

two

WARNING(S): talks about sexual assault. if you're not okay with reading that, please skip to the second line break!

the weekend came and left far too fast for your liking. once again, you were back at the diner, wiping tables with cheap cleaner that smelled like oranges and despair. "hey Kitty, order to table 12!" the cook, Micah hollered, setting a hot breakfast platter in the window.

"call me kitty again and your bones will be broken in several places, Mike." the words slide past your lips like butter and you don't even have to glance over to see Adam, Melissa's husband, giving you the death stare.
every time you 'threatened' another employee, he always gave you the disappointed dad look, like you'd just broken his heart or the angry boss glare that actually made your spine crawl at times.

you hesitate to turn around as the old rusted bell over the entrance rings out across the restaurant, one ring closer to its demise. you hear mumbling about a table for 6 behind you before your curiosity overwhelms you and you glance back at the unnaturally large Monday evening group. "oh fuck." you curse underneath your breath and Shawn's shit-eating grin tells you this was far from coincidental.

"so now we're showing up at each other's jobs?" your question comes out a little more forceful than anticipated as you get them situated.
"there was never a rule in place saying we couldn't."

there's at the most thousands of other restaurants in the city, hundreds more diners. this much you do know. so why come here just to embarrass you? "hi, I'm y/n, I'll be your w—for fuck's sake you guys know me. what the hell do you want to drink?" you hands fiddle around in your apron pocket for a pen.

"not a very customer-friendly attitude!" Geoff tsked from beside Shawn. It takes your paycheck and squeaky clean criminal record to stop you from choking everyone at the table, even your sweet little Matty.
you knew what everyone wanted from the million and one celebratory dinners you've attended. you couldn't even comprehend why you were wasting time asking them. "I'll be back with your drinks." you announced, placing the pad and pen back in your apron.
"you don't even know what we want!"
"of course I do." you spoke more to yourself as you entered behind the counter. Aaron gives you a sly smile as you walk behind him, making your way to the soda machine.

"how you doin' today, babe?" his voice sends your lunch coming back up your throat in an instant. he always rubbed you the wrong way no matter how hard you tried to come around to him.
"again? when will you accept the fact that I'm not interested?" you grumble, filling the fourth glass. as much as you wanted to leave, you still had 40 minutes left to your shift.

you dealt with Aaron's endless advances everyday, him claiming "you're playing hard to get." does it just not occur to him that you aren't interested? "that's cute, the whole "I-don't-want-you" act." he chuckles in your ear and it takes everything in you not to bash him over the head with a glass. your body goes cold when he pushes you flush against his hips, his hands burn like hell itself has pulled you in.

your elbows meet his abdomen, attempting to knock him back a step or two, but it doesn't work. his fingers soon have a sickly grip around either of your wrists and fear actually kicks in. mom always taught you to fight, fight until your bones feel like slime. so you keep hitting and shoving and stomping until he's knocked from behind you and towered over by an angry Shawn.

you didn't know he'd stopped mid-conversation once he couldn't see you anymore. You didn't even know he was watching you, but he always was. even though he'd never been here before, there's one thing he knew lingered in diners like cigarette smoke in the air:crazies. they lurked in places like this for prey.

he knew y/n wasn't any angel, but he'd protect her like she was the holiest thing he'd ever laid eyes on and the last thing she deserved was some grimy old deadbeat trying to taint her. The minute he spotted a squirming elder blocking what was the view of his y/n, he lost it. He didn't know how he'd gotten across the restaurant that fast, but once he saw the guy on the floor, he stopped seething.