Work Text:
Work sucked. That much, Marty believed would never, ever change.
At first he had found it a pleasant experience to spend his time interacting with customers that came to the checkout. He’d have a few stilted conversations here and there but all in all he could usually find an in that let him entertain the customer for the few moments they would spend in his company.
Eventually, after just a few short months working for the big guy, Marty began to tire of his work. That’s not to say Marty wasn’t fit; he was physically limber enough to withstand a bit of repetitive motions and lifting when necessary. It wasn’t as though anything had changed, and the rest of his co-workers were always a hoot and a half, but one day, without fanfare, his drive had vanished. It was not a physical tiring, but a drain of his soul that sucked away more and more each day. His co-workers seemed to be the only reason he could stand to remain at work some days.
Speaking of his co-workers, Marty had a few favourites.
The first of which had to be the badass Gloria from checkout two, right next door. She had been working for the company not long before Marty joined himself. When they’d first met, Marty had wrongly assumed that someone of her size would be self-conscious, reserved and shy. In fact, she had been the exact opposite. She had even been so outgoing as to intimidate Marty in his first few weeks. As the time they spent together grew, though, so did Marty’s understanding of her. She might have come off a confident goddess of the grocery store, but all of it was just her way of dealing with her own insecurities.
Enter Melman, the tall, lanky man that generally resided at checkout three. He joined just a few weeks after Marty had, and the duo had hit it off from the start due to both being relatively new. It wasn’t long before Marty began to pick up on Melman’s enormous crush on Gloria. Every staff-member at the store knew about it, and perhaps even some of the customers could pick up on the tension. It was adorable. However, in spite of every man and their dog sensing the veritably palpable sexual tension, the duo refused to acknowledge it for months. Weeks of matchmaking on Marty’s behalf, and working a double-shift so the pair had no excuse to postpone their first date was what it took for the pair to finally get their act together and do the deed.
The smile on Melman’s face the following day when he came into work was enough for Marty to grin from ear to ear for a week.
“Excuse me, Marty?” a gentle, purr of a voice cut into his interior recount of all the good things which kept him going.
“What is it, Alex?”
That was another part of work which constantly drained Marty. Alex.
The man was something of an Adonis. His body was sculpted with rigid lines of muscle, his eyes were a deep ocean blue, and his hair was a beautiful mane of speckled brown and gold. His voice was a purr which never ceased in its ability to send a thrill through Marty’s spine, and the words he spoke were always polite and concise so as to never infuriate those around him.
The man had a flair for the dramatic which only someone of his physical stature could pull off as he did. He was never afraid to share touches with those around him to form physical bonds, but they were only ever professional, friendly touches. Much to Marty’s frustration.
Alex was perfect in almost every way. He was funny, beautifully handsome, polite, and he always did his best to cheer everyone up.
The only thing bad about that was that he was so perfect that Marty had been stupid enough to allow himself to fall for the man. And whether Alex was perceptive enough to realise or not, he did not relinquish his ‘friendly’ touches. It was serving to drive Marty mad.
“I couldn’t help but notice you were a bit quick-tempered today with the customers,” Alex observed, and Marty’s frustration only grew with the knowledge that his mood was visible to his co-workers. “Is everything alright?”
Marty looked into Alex’s huge, caring eyes. Within them swirled all the emotions which the human voice could not properly project, ones that an individual had to see for themselves to understand them. He reached a hand out and placed a firm, comforting grip on Marty’s shoulder.
The warmth of the touch was too much, and Marty found that he could take it no longer. “I’m gonna step out back for a while,” Marty declared, shaking off Alex’s touch and bolting from his station.
“Marty!”
In the alley beside the store, Marty collapsed against the cold, hard brick of the alley wall. His life was passable—in-fact his life was probably far beyond anything he could have imagined it being when he was just a tyke—but somehow it felt empty. He had nobody to share it with, and the one person he wanted to share it with would only do so in his daydreams.
Marty felt as though he could weep, could cry his eyes out during work hours in the alleyway and nobody would ever know. Something stopped him, though. The same frustratingly warm hand on his shoulder.
“I didn’t ask you to follow me, Alex,” Marty complained, but some part of him still glistened with the knowledge that the other man had taken the initiative to follow him out after his slight outburst.
“You didn’t have to. I’m worried about you, Marty,” Alex commented, making Marty’s heart soar. It was unfair that someone could say such warm words in a purely platonic sense. It could totally mislead one’s brain.
Alex slipped down so they sat shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall, and the pair sat in relative silence for several minutes. Finally, Marty declared it enough and burst out with the one thought on his mind. “I’m thinking of leaving.”
“What?” Alex’s response was immediate, and almost panicked in its intensity, “You can’t leave!”
“Excuse me?” Marty questioned, both amused and scandalised by the fact that his co-worker had the gall to say such things.
“Where would you go? This job is perfect, the customers are great. Unless it’s not the customers. It’s not me, is it?”
Marty felt as if retorting that yes, in-fact, it was Alex, would be counter-productive. Instead, he took in the sincere, serious look in his friend’s eyes and explored the issue further. “Why do you care so much, Alex? I’m sure whoever they got in to replace me would be just as good. Hell, maybe they’d be better if my customer service today was any indication!”
“But they wouldn’t be you!” the other man roared, standing up in frustration. The words were so raw that Marty had to double-take on what he’d just said to understand that they were about to have a moment.
Marty stood up, shocked numb by the situation and raring himself to return Alex’s sentiment with his own words, whatever they would be.
He was silence, however, when Alex locked his lips over his own. The other man swallowed whatever sound Marty was about to make, then pulled back with something akin to rejection and embarrassment marring his beautiful features.
“Sorry. I-I’ll go—”
It was Marty’s turn now to swallow Alex’s words as he pulled the other man back into the kiss with unbridled passion. The gesture was enough to finally get the bleatingly obvious through to Alex, and the other man’s enthusiasm pumped itself through their connection into Marty’s bones, reinvigorating him. Alex’s passion for the kiss was somehow more intense than Marty was ready for, and the look in the other man’s eyes made him feel like the prey to his predator. Reluctantly, he broke the kiss, chuckling to himself when Alex then occupied himself with nibbling on the side of Marty’s neck.
“Don’t leave,” Alex murmured into his skin, thrills of excitement trailing down his skin where Alex teased him. “You can’t leave.”
“Idiot,” Marty snarked, soothing a hand down the other's back. He felt high on the energy that soared in each of his bones, “No way in hell am I leaving now.”