Chapter Text
Lexa sighed and pressed the back of her wrist against her forehead, mopping up some of the sweat that had accumulated there. She leaned up against the counter top, trying to ease some of the ache that had built up in her feet after six hours of standing on them. Only two more hours to go until her shift was over and she could go home – home, where she’d have to clean up the huge mess that would no doubt be awaiting her before she could even think about doing homework or eat or even just sit.
“Hey Lex, look alive, Indra’s coming!” Lexa’s best friend, Anya poked the girl in the shoulder as she walked by. Lexa sighed again as she watched the girl tug open the walk-in fridge and disappear again. She would kill to stand in the cool air in there, even if only for a moment. However, the sound of her hard-ass boss Indra’s footsteps jolted her into action, turning on the break slicer and bag-puffing machine in one swift motion. While the bread worked its way down the ramp-like structure and into the blades, Lexa watched as the bag-puffer sent a stream of air up, forcing the plastic bag, held by two pegs on one side, open. Grabbing the sliced loaf of bread, Lexa shoved it into the bag, tearing the plastic from the pegs, and squeezed the some of the air out of the bag, before twist-tying it shut, all performed in one swift motion while she watched the jet of air force the next bag open as the next loaf of bread made its way through the blades.
“Lexa! Good, you’re almost done,” Lexa turned and smiled at Indra.
“Yup,” She said, “Only five loaves left. It’ll take me two minutes. What’s up?”
“Gustus is getting antsy – needs a smoke. You can take over the front of the bakery when he goes?” Lexa nodded in response to her boss, who offered a curt nod in return. “Good. Well, now that that’s settled, I’m off for the weekend.” Indra patted her bag absentmindedly. “Don’t forget I won’t be in tomorrow or Saturday, because –”
“-You and Erik are going to the lake for the long weekend, I know! Don’t worry, Gustus, Anya, and I will take great care of the bakery.” Lexa smiled reassuringly to her boss who nodded with a rare small smile in response. “Have a good weekend!” She called out as her boss walked away.
“Bye, Indra!” Lexa heard Anya shout from the walk-in.
“Bye, sweetie!” Indra called back and Lexa smirked. Yeah, her boss liked to play the part of hard-ass, but she was really just a big softie inside, with a particular soft spot for her three most senior employees, whom she treated like her own children.
Once Lexa bagged the last of the bread, she walked out into the front of the store, which looked more like a corner store than a bakery, what with the display fridges full of drinks and frozen food (all homemade by Indra and Anya, of course) and the shelves with chips, produce, coffee, and various other goods. She walked to the rack next to the glass-topped cooler containing the in-store cakes and stacked the loaves of whole wheat and white bread neatly on top.
“Hey, Lex,” Gustus said with a nod as he finished ringing a customer in on the 90’s style cash register, with yellowed, worn off buttons that only the veterans of Grounder’s Bakery knew how to navigate.
“Hey, Gus,” She replied, finishing with her stack and moving over to be behind the counter. She used her hand to sweep up some of the crumbs that had fallen from the racks mounted on the wall that were filled with the bread that they didn’t display on the floor with the sliced white and whole wheat – everything from baguette to rye to challah (Lexa’s personal favourite). The crumbs from the rack tended to fall on the counter that capped several cupboards and drawers used for storage by the employees, and given that Indra liked the place to be spotless, the counter had to be wiped several times a day.
“Excuse me,” a loud voice drew Lexa out of her reverie and she whipped around to face the girl standing on the other side of the display case, which stood opposite to the counter. Lexa forced a smile as she took the girl in. Clad in a blue plaid kilt, dress shirt, blazer and black oxfords, complete with navy knee socks and a blue tie which matched the skirt, there was no doubt that this girl attended the sky school – which is what the people in Lexa’s neighbourhood called the elite “Skylar Henson Academy” – also known as the rich kid school. Lexa hated them – everyone from Tondc – basically a slum in the massive city of Polis – hated the sky school kids. They were snooty and arrogant, and they always acted like they were better than the kids at Tondc High School, which was the massive high school Lexa attended. It was a total dump, made of cement walls and complete with metal detectors at the entrance and bars on the windows. Lexa tilted her head slightly at the pale, dark-haired girl. Why had she decided to leave the comforts of the Ark (the gated community which housed most of the sky school kids) to come to the slums? Wasn’t she afraid of getting shot by one of the gangs (all of whom were united only by their mutual hatred for rich kids)? Besides, shouldn’t she be in school? Lexa knew for a fact that THS was the only high school to in the city to have gotten Thursday and Friday off for the long weekend – besides, the girl’s uniform was a dead giveaway.
Lexa didn’t ask that, though. Instead, she put on her biggest smile and said, “Hi there! How can I help you today?” The dark haired girl rolled her eyes slightly at Lexa’s cheerfulness.
“I want two of those, and one of those. Box them separately, and I’ll be back in a minute to pay. I’m getting a sandwich.” She said, and flounced to the back of the store to look at the glassed-in display of sandwiches, where Anya was standing with a pair of tongs, ready to pass the girl whatever she chose. Lexa could see the strain it was taking for Anya just to keep her face neutral at the girl’s rudeness, let alone smile. As she bent to open the display cases and deposit the desserts into the boxes, Lexa felt a nudge on her shoulder.
“’Scuse me, Lex,” Gustus said quietly.
“Smoke?” Lexa asked, and he nodded.
“You and Anya will be okay with me out back?” He asked, shooting her a concerned look. Lexa knew he didn’t like to leave just the two girls to man the store, especially in a neighbourhood as rough as theirs.
“Come on, Gus,” Lexa said. “Even if you don’t think I can take anyone, do you really think Anya couldn’t?” She gestured to Lexa, who was clearly trying very hard to not kill the pretentious girl in front of her. Gustus sighed and smiled slightly.
“Alright, commander,” He said, offering a mock solute to Lexa as he squeezed past her in the small space that was between the counter and the display cases. Lexa rolled her eyes at him, but smiled slightly at the affectionate nickname given by her friends – a direct result of her no-nonsense, take charge attitude. Sighing for the umpteenth time that shift, she quickly boxed up the pastries that the sky school girl had ordered, bringing them up to the till and waiting patiently as the girl sauntered up there with two sandwiches in hand.
Quickly ringing everything in, Lexa put on her cheery work voice once again to ask, “Is this everything today?”
“No, I’ll also get a pack of Pall Mall Blue, Kings,” The girl said, looking Lexa in the eyes with a challenging expression.
“Can I see your ID, please?” Lexa asked, almost sarcastically – there was no way this girl was old enough to buy cigarettes. She didn’t even look like she was as old as Lexa, who wasn’t even quite seventeen yet. The girl rolled her eyes.
“Whatever,” She said, “Just that stuff, then.”
Lexa smirked slightly at the girl’s failure to trick her. “Total comes to 21.13, please,” She said, typing the numbers into the small interac machine as the girl wordlessly held out a Visa Platinum credit card. Looks like mommy and daddy will be covering this lunch, Lexa thought somewhat bitterly. The machine dinged cheerily and Lexa wordlessly tore off the receipts it spat out, sticking the first in the register and passing the second to the dark-haired girl.
She was about to put the items into a plastic bag and send the girl on her way when she heard the door ding as it was opened, followed shortly by Anya calling out, “Link! I didn’t know you were coming in today!”
“What can I say? I like to keep you guys guessing,” the ridiculously tall, muscular, and handsome guy said with a shrug. The girl who Lexa was helping whipped around at the sound of his voice.
“Lincoln!” She all but squealed. “I didn’t know you knew about this place!” Gone was her sullen, snobby attitude. Now she was all warmth and joy – Lexa saw Anya glaring at her. Lincoln looked surprised.
“Octavia!” He said. “Hey! Uh, yeah, I actually work here. What are you doing here?” Lexa watched in fascination as the sky girl completely changed her tune from being rude to chipper. It was amazing what some girls would do when they liked a guy – and there was no doubt Octavia liked Lincoln. Lexa couldn’t really understand it. Sure, Lincoln was attractive, but he was such a… friend. Like a brother. Lexa shook her head slightly. She didn’t think she would ever find a guy that made her act like this Octavia girl was acting now – overly excited, like a puppy. Maybe I’m just not meant to find love, Lexa thought to herself. After all, she’d never had any crushes on the boys she’d met – a lot of them had turned out to be great friends, but none were able to broach that border of friendship and something more in her mind. They were all like brothers to her. In fact, Lexa had more male friends than female friends – really, the only girls she liked to hang out with were Anya and Echo (she didn’t think working with Indra counted as ‘hanging out’). Sure, there were lots of girls whom she had been interested in getting to know better – lots of pretty girls who seemed nice and like they would make for a good friend – but Lexa never got the nerve up to talk to them. It was weird, she was completely comfortable around guys, but as soon as she got around girls, she was strangely nervous. Maybe it’s a female competition thing, she thought.
“Lexa, don’t think too hard there or you’ll wear out your brain before cash out tonight, and you know we need you to do the math for us!” Gustus, who must have just returned from his smoke break, ruffled Lexa’s hair affectionately, smiling down at her. She made a face at him and turned back to Lincoln and the mystery girl Octavia.
“Okay, awesome. I’ll see you Saturday!” Octavia said, all too brightly before flouncing out of the store, her bag of treats in hand. Lincoln turned to look sheepishly at his coworkers.
“Please, please, tell me you didn’t just make a date with some pretentious sky kid,” Anya said, shaking her head in slight disgust.
“Come on, An,” Lincoln said, looking at Anya who raised an eyebrow unresponsively. He looked to Lexa and Gustus for support, but they just looked at him with disbelieving eyes. He sighed and shook his head. “Look, you guys know me – normally I’d never even dream of speaking to a sky kid, let alone date one, but Octavia… There’s just something about her that draws me in. She’s intense and passionate, and we just connect on such a fundamental level… I don’t know how to explain it. It just feels so right when I’m around her.” Lincoln shrugged and looked somewhat sheepishly at the ground. Lexa had never heard him talk like that about anyone, let alone some sky kid – she figured this Octavia girl must have been something pretty special to break through to Link.
“How’d you meet, anyway?” Anya asked, her voice significantly nicer than it had been before Lincoln’s explanation.
“We were at the same party two weeks ago. Some drunk guys broke out into a fight, and she jumped right into the middle of it, yelling at them to stop while trying to physically restrain them, even though they had at least 70 pounds each on her. It was pretty hot, actually. So I got in there and broke it up, and we started talking, and she’s actually really cool,” Lincoln looked around for support.
“Well, I’m glad you’re finding love, or whatever,” Anya said. “I mean, I guess you could have picked a worse sky girl to date. At least she’s hot, right Lex?” Anya looked at her best friend with a grin. Lexa felt her face heat up enormously.
“I, um, I mean, I don’t know, I don’t really look at girls like that I guess,” Lexa stammered, blushing. She didn’t know why she couldn’t just answer Anya’s question – yes, Octavia was hot. Why didn’t it feel so wrong for her to say that – to think that? All girls looked at other girls, it was normal. Anya rolled her eyes at Lexa’s non-answer and resumed restocking the cookies in the glass display.
“Whatever you say, Lex. You sleeping over tonight?” Anya asked glancing over to her. Some nights, when Lexa just couldn’t deal with going home to face her mother, she stayed at Anya’s place because she had her own apartment. It was tiny, but Anya didn’t mind sharing a bed with Lexa, given that she understood the younger girl’s home troubles.
“Nah,” Lexa said, kneeling to take out an almost-empty tray of cookies from the bottom shelf of the display so she could restock them. “Gotta go home sometime, or my mum might think I’ve died. Or not. She might not notice.” Lexa laughed in an I’m-joking-but-also-I’m-not sort of way, which she knew Anya understood. The older girl offered her comfort by patting her shoulder a couple of times before moving to put her now-full tray of cookies back in the display case.
“Alright,” Anya said, loudly enough for Gustus and Lincoln, who appeared to be having an in-depth conversation about hand-to-hand combat, to hear. “I’m heading out. I trust you guys can close without me?”
“Please, Anya, we’ve got the commander here,” Gustus said. “We won’t be allowed to leave until everything is perfect and you know that.” Anya laughed and Lexa made a face at him.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course you are in good hands!” Anya said as she pulled her sweater from the employee cupboard. Lexa stuck her tongue out at the girl.
“It’s not my fault I know how Indra likes things!”
“See you tomorrow – bright and early!” Was the sarcastically cheerful response she got from Anya.
“See ya, An,” She said back.
The rest of Lexa’s shift went by with the blink of an eye. Only a couple of customers trickled in after 2:30, when Anya left. The main rush of customers always came at around noon when people came from nearby offices for the sandwiches made fresh every morning by Anya and Indra on the fresh-baked bread. The sandwiches were practically famous in Tondc, and as a result, every day approximately 150-200 sandwiches would be sold. Whatever was left over, one or two of the employees would take down to the main shopping area of the district to distribute to the homeless people sitting on the sidewalk with hats out for the shoppers passing by. It was a small gesture, but it was one of the many small things that made Grounder’s a well-known and widely loved shop in Tondc.
At the end of Lexa’s shift that day, there were ten sandwiches left over, which she and Gustus took to the small strip of clothing stores, banks, and restaurants a couple of blocks away. As they handed sandwiches to each of the homeless people they passed, Lexa and Gustus caught up on each other’s life. They talked about school (Gustus had almost saved enough to attend the local university in Polis next year, and Lexa was worried about not having enough extracurriculars to get scholarships next year when she would be in grade 12), work (including Lincoln and his new… whatever they were, as well as the boy Anya had been seeing – he got the Gustus Stamp of Approval), and finally, love. Gustus and his girlfriend had recently broken up because she had gone to university this year in a different city, and she didn’t want to do long distance, but that didn’t stop him from feeling guilty about his interest in the barista from the coffee shop two blocks away from Grounder’s.
“Gus, it’s really shitty that Jules wasn’t willing to do long distance, and for that I’m really sorry, but it’s October. You guys broke up almost two months ago, and I think that is a perfectly respectful amount of time to wait before getting yourself out there and meeting someone new. Like this barista girl, for instance,” Lexa looked at him pointedly. Gustus sighed.
“Maybe you’re right, Lex. Maybe I should give it a shot. But anyway, enough about my problems… What about you? Any… people… in your life? Come on, you know I have to meet them before you’re allowed to date anyone!” Lexa laughed, but upon hearing the hesitation before the ‘anyone’, a small voice in her head whispered, he knows. Knows what? Lexa didn’t know.
“Ah, no, no one special. Trust me Gus, you’d be the first one I tell!”
“Good,” Gustus said smiling, “I know you and Anya have the whole best friend thing going on, but don’t forget who your brother is!” He said gesturing to himself, and Lexa laughed. She bumped his arm with her shoulder, thinking back to the pact they’d made when they she was five and he was ten, that he would always be her brother and take care of her and she would always be his sister, and that they would always tell each other everything, even if they thought the other one might be upset by it. Those were back in the days when Gustus’s mom would look after Lexa after preschool, then school as she got older. Those were the days before either of them would realize how important their bond would be. Lexa watched as Gustus approached an elderly looking homeless women, offering her a choice between the three sandwiches they had left. She had shared so much of her life with him – everything, really, from her life at home to boys to friends to anxiety and depression… And yet, she still felt like she was hiding something from him. The only problem with that was that she didn’t know what it was, exactly.
After they finished handing out the sandwiches, Gustus insisted upon taking the bus with Lexa and walking her back to her house, which was no surprise for Lexa. He always dropped her off after a closing shift, even though the latest she would be heading home would be around 9 if she were distributing the left over sandwiches. Lexa appreciated it, because the one time that she had worked a closing shift without Gustus, she had taken the bus home by herself, and even though it was only a 20 minute ride, she had been tense and uncomfortable the whole time, clinging onto the Swiss army knife Gus had given her ‘for protection’. With Gus, though, she felt safe. No one wanted to mess with the 6 foot 3, 230 pound weightlifter-looking guy.
Gustus waited at the base of the walkway from Lexa’s tiny house, as was their tradition. He hadn’t actually stepped foot inside the house Lexa shared with her mother in two years, because Lexa had said that she didn’t want him to see it, and he had respected and accepted that instantly/ Now when they hung out, they went to his house, the park or playground, or they just wandered along the short stretch of shops, maybe grabbing some homemade soup.
As Lexa opened the door, she turned and waved to Gustus, who nodded and held a hand up signaling his goodbye. Lexa closed the door quietly and sighed, turning around to look at the mess that was her house. Normally it wasn’t so bad as it was today, but she had worked closing shifts after school every day this past week, and hadn’t had any time to tidy up. It was dark and dank and smelled like stale air and booze. Lexa rubbed her eyes tiredly, but knew that she couldn’t leave this mess for another day. She opened the blinds and the windows in the small living room and kitchen to brighten up and air out the house a bit and, assuming (correctly) that her mother would be passed out in her bedroom as per usual, Lexa began to gather up the scattered mess of liquor bottles surrounding the couch. She picked up the trash, vacuumed up the crumbs from chips and pretzels and whatever else her mother had snacked on in the middle of one of her binges that week. She even went so far as to dust before going into the kitchen and grabbing a huge glass of water and two advil tablets to take to her mother’s room. She paused outside the door of her mother’s room, taking a deep breath before venturing inside. It was dark and messy, with clothes strewn about the floor. There were more empty bottles of alcohol in there, as well as half-eaten foods, some of which had started to mold. Lexa sighed and placed the glass of water and advil on the nightstand next to her passed out mother. She gathered up all the bottles and dishes and took them to the kitchen to dispose of them properly. By the time she had finished all that, it was 11:30 – Lexa had to be awake in 5 and a half hours if she was going to make it to the bakery on time for the 6:30 am opening shift she was scheduled for. Lexa sighed, and instead of putting on her pyjamas and going to sleep like she knew she should, she pulled out her Pre-Calculus textbook – she wouldn’t be getting any scholarships for university if she didn’t get top grades, and if she didn’t get scholarships, she’d have to stay in the same shitty town living her same shitty life. The only thing keeping Lexa going half the time was the knowledge that in two years, she’d be in some other city away from her old life – away from her mother.