Ambiguous

Chapter 1: Part 2

Its a few minutes past midnight. Marcel uses the last roll of tissue to wipe down the 3rd to last table.

As he goes into the back to get a new roll, he passes Damien hunched over on a steel table in a dimly lit kitchen now, note taking. He looks up.

"You still here?"

As if Damien himself didn't cook half of the plates they're still cleaning up.

"If you can't believe it you can come clear up as well" Marcel says.

"Nooo thank you" Dami n returned to his task. "Don't you have uhhhhh"

"Michael"

"Yeah Michael! Isn't he there with you?"

"Let him go. I was on my own before him and the last bus would have missed him"

Damien smirks. "Cute".

Michael reminded Marcel of younger him, in the same place at a different time in brand new shoes.

Back then, he didn't have bags under his eyes and he didn't have worries clouding his head.
He was just a naive little boy who just wanted to earn a bit of pocket money to treat himself.

Times have changed, losses have gained and Marcel now fills a larger piggy bank.

As nostalgia slowly wraps him by the throat, he leaves Damien to complete his pending task. When he returns to the dining area he finds Ace tearing pieces of tissue at a clean table.

"You're going to clean that up". It's like Ace's presence alone irritates him.

Ace removes his jacket, throwing it on a table, and jogs to the cutlery drawer and pulls out a replacement tissue.

"You basically work here"

"I really do. I passed Bill and he told me I either walk around here with uniform or disappear"

"And your still here?"

"And HES in the office with Rosalina. So I have a look longer visiting time"

Marcel cracks a laugh.

Ace can barely see Marcel's face in this light but can make out his grey-dyed locks roughly held in a pony tail by an aged black scrunchie.

He remember giving him that scrunchie a year ago, after seeing him use a thousand hair clips to get his messy hair out of the way while trying to study quietly in the early break of the morning, which he failed at completely, because Ace was wide awake and annoyed.

He asked him why he can't just use a hair band.

"I do but they always end up snapping after a week so it's just a waste of money" Marcel answered without looking up from his page.

A few hours later, Ace was halfway through his morning jog on Roman Road and passed a stall that was just setting up.

It had various colourful hair accessories and bracelets and necklaces for sale. Memories of a struggling Marcel at his desk fIashed though his mind; he jogged back a bit to take a proper look at them.

They looked in good quality; and the designs weren't bad or tacky.

"How much boss?" he asked the middle aged man behind the stall.

He was hunched over, struggling to pick up a crate. Ace jogged to his side. Looking into the crate, it was a stack of Glass jars, bowls and vases with different patterns and shapes.

The kind of things he would see in his mum's cabinet.

Ace helped him unload.

The man thanked him for his help; surprise was flooded in his expression maybe, because judging from the piercings embedded in his nose and ears, Ace doesnt really look like the charitable type.

He asked Ace what he can do for him. Ace looked at the hairbands on the table.

The thin rubber hairbands were out of question, and the heavily decorated ties would just get caught in Marcel's curls and it'll just be an annoyance.

Then he saw it; a black velvet scrunchie on the corner of the table. It was black so Marcel couldn't bother about it getting dirty, and it was soft so it wouldn't bother him. Picking it up, he asked the man how much it was.

"It's £2 but for you it can be £1.50" he offered.

Ace smiled and reached into his pocket and handed the man a plastic £5 note. "Keep the change".

Ace jogged away so that the old man couldn't refuse it.

Smiling he pushed on at faster speed to reach back to the house, just in case Marcel was already heading to class.

Marcel gleemed when Ace put his gift on Marcel's study guide. A sweaty Ace in a grey tracksuit gloomed over him.

"This looks nice" he commented while picking it up tugging at its strength.

"Yeah, I was just on my run and saw it at stall. Now stop using up all of Mikayla's hair clips, youll piss her off more when she finds out", Ace took off his gear and dumped it in the laundry basket.

"And before you ask, it was on sale for 50p, so it's okay you can use it till its band has snapped and the fabrics loose".

Marcel didn't like Ace spending money on him. Ace didn't really know why, he has money to burn and Ace is one of the very few people he'll spend money on.

Must be a pride thing.

Marcel collected all his black tosses and put it in a messy bun; returning back to his page.

Now a year later, both Marcel and the scrunch have worn out, but still manage to get the job done.

"You look like you haven't sat down all night" Ace says helping Marcel with the last chair.

"Tell me exactly when during service I could have sat down and taken orders?"

"Someone's annoyed. I'm gonna go catch up with Damien, it's been a while" Ace escapes, already across the room and halfway through the kitchen door. Marcel groans.

There's a bit of silence and then theres the disturbance of deep, heavy laughter and greetings from behind Marcel. He doesn't hear what they're saying as he drifts off into slow, but blissful darkness...

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"Marcel...Marcel....wake up...its 3am man" Ace whispers trying for the 5th time to wake up Marcel but this brother's knocked OUT.

Damien's already gone. The other waiter is probably already knocked out at home as well.

Ace looks at Marcel. He looks so peaceful sleeping.

With Marcel on his back, Ace is already outside and locking the entrance door with keys he found in his back pocket.

He arranges Marcel on the front of his motorbike, Ace directly behind him. Laughing at their current positions, Ace starts the engine.

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A search for keys and 80kg of meat on your back is not an easy multitask, but it was done.

Upon entering the complex, he isn't surprised to see all the lights out and pure silence.

Climbing the stairs, almost by instinct he moves for the stairs on the right instead of the living room on the left.

He enters their room.

It's still in the mess he left it in when he was rushing to pick up Marcel after realizing that he was late.

Dodging past the clothes scattered on the floor, he finds Marcel's bed across from his and lays him down.

Taking off his shoes and jacket, Marcel simply groans as he wraps himself around the layers of blanket on top of him.

Ace simply takes off his shirt, throws it across the room, and collapses onto bed.