Work Text:
A low whistle. “Who’s the lucky lady, Grey?”
Grey starts, pulls her shirt down, but it’s too late. The other off-duty first shifters have noticed.
“Well, well, surprise, surprise!”
“I thought you’d been less uptight lately. C’mon, who is she?”
“Nobody,” Grey says, shutting the locker.
“Bet you it’s Larkin. Is it Larkin?”
“Whoever she is, she’s feisty! Damn, man, have you seen your back?”
Normally, she’s more careful how she dresses and changes at work. But she’s so tired of being careful. As her coworkers rib her, congratulate her even, she wishes she could joke back.
“Meow! Kitty’s got claws!”
“Watch out, Grey, she’ll break out the whip!”
“Man, and here I thought you spent your off hours doing crosswords…”
They’re laughing now, imagining maybe a pretty girl in rubber. Grey just shrugs and lets them think it, which makes them rib her harder. When she leaves the locker room, Hernandez follows and finds Bob waiting for his ride home.
“Doshi, you didn’t tell us Grey had a life,” Hernandez complains.
Bob smirks. “Really? News to me.”
Hernandez doesn’t catch the undertone. “I tell you, Doshi, it’s not fair. I’m young, handsome, I can carry a conversation, but no, Agent Ironass here is the one who looks like a rose bush jumped on his back!”
Bob’s expression freezes.
“Where did he even find this girl?” Hernandez continues, oblivious.
Somehow they get away, but the drive home is tense. Bob is silent, lost in thought, and Grey’s shame chokes her throat. Stupid, stupid. He has far more to fear than her, she knows better, and without being told she turns to take him back to his place, not hers.
They’re almost there when Bob says, “I need to quit doing that.”
The fear ebbs a little. He means the marking, not her. Still…
“No.” It comes out forcefully enough that he looks up. “My fault. Sloppy. Don’t stop. Please? I like it. Makes it—me—real.” Her throat locks.
Grey can’t tell her coworkers about Bob. She can’t tell them how he tastes like good coffee in the morning and sounds like velvet in bed, how he makes her feel small and precious. She can’t tell them who she is. She could only show them.
Bob’s expression is torn. He loves doing this, she knows; he kisses the marks he leaves and plays with them for days afterward. But when he kisses her and gets out, he says, “The new management’s already sniffing around us; they find out I’m fucking you and we’ll both be burnt and washed.”
Grey can’t argue that. Things at work are still off. The storm may have passed them for now, but it rages elsewhere. The new hires are getting whiter and whiter as the old guard gets weeded, more women leaving than coming in. It makes Grey uneasy, and Bob’s position is far shakier than her own.
So she says nothing and Bob stops marking her, even though they miss it.