gin and toxic | flick

[Anderson Payne]

first week of july, 1974
early afternoon, before opening

"You're late," Big James said in lieu of greeting, his massive arms crossed over his burly chest. His tone was jovial, betraying his words, and his smile was only met by her own as they exchanged their own signature handshake.

"You're just early. How the hell did you beat me here? You'd think I would have been able to hear your footsteps from my flat."

"I'm surprised the breeze didn't send you flying across the channel," he barked back, and they both laughed. Finding her niche in the Snake Pit hadn't taken long. She liked the people who worked in the front, who did the rough, difficult jobs. The bartenders, on the other hand, was a give and take.

Speaking of bartenders...

"Wait, Big James," Anders asked after greeting the doorman. James, or Big James as he was affectionately called, was the mountainous, dark-skinned bloke who worked as security for the Snake Pit. He sat on his stool and could literally cover the entrance to the bar like a boulder might have.

"Who is that woman behind the counter?"

While she'd only worked there a few weeks, she knew everyone that did. This person was new and seeing her scrubbing the counter clean only had Anders narrowing her eyes. She knew the answer before James said it.

"I thought the owners weren't trying to hire anyone new."

"Guess they made an exception," then, in a tone that only made her angrier at the situation, Big James added, "And I don't blame them. Damn."

"Keep it in your pants before you scare someone, James. Unless Big is just something that's meant to compensate." Anders strolled into the bar like she belonged there, swerving through the tables in the same rhythm until she made her way to the bar. She dropped her bag with a thud, announcing her presence.

"You're new," she stated.

[Felicity Walker]

If she didn't have a sort of begrudging respect for the man (but she'd never be caught admitting to it), Jeremiah Smallweed would have been a dead man walking for putting her to work behind the bloody bar three days into her new gig at the Snake Pit.

Three days and a week since leaving Melbourne, and three days and a week of some of the worst time-lag (thanks to needing to Floo across half of the settled world) of her life.

She'd have much preferred to work the door with Big James and direct some of her indignant rage at being reduced to a drinks moneky at some of the underage kids and naive thrillseekers hoping to catch a glimpse of the Snake Pit's insides, but with a couple of bartenders out with illness, Flick's head had reached the chopping block.

Just her bloody luck.

Smallweed was gonna see that bar work was probably better left to someone not inclined to bite customers' heads off. Flick was going to end up poisoning someone, the first victim of which would probably be herself. And she'd do it willingly.

Flick gritted her teeth, scrubbing at a stain on the counter that could've been red wine, but looked suspiciously like blood, as an earsplitting headache pounded at the base of her skull. Nasty things had happened on this counter, Flick just knew it.

A bag thumped on the ground beside her, and her head pounded in response. Flick looked up, and tilted her head at the young-looking girl across from her. She scoffed. 

"And you look like you're way too young to work here." Flick retorted, cocking a hip, "Are you out of nappies yet?"

[Anderson Payne]

"And you look like you're way too young to work here."

Anders crossed her eyes, dejected. Her eyes narrowed in annoyance as her lips pursed, offering her most dismissive of expressions as if her opinion hardly mattered. Whether she looked young or not –she was– Anders wouldn't be there if she didn't belong. It wasn't even worth a response.

"Are you out of nappies yet?"

Oh, so this was now happening.

Her smile turned crooked, stretching the right side of her cheek. It was the sort of smile a cat made when eying a mouse from its perch, comfortable and confident and altogether unbothered. Even at such a young age, Anders was used to this sort of back and forth; a fight for dominance, one side letting the other know that they needed to leave the fuck alone or suffer the consequences.

The seventeen-year-old never thought about those or allowed them to sway her impulses.

"I switched to tampons a while ago," she quipped back, sly in her stance as she dropped her arms on the counter, leaning in to get a better look at the woman.

"You remember those, right? Or was menopause so long ago, you forgot what a period felt like, grandma?" She flashed her teeth in her smile, reaching over the bar to grab a glass. Anders shifted down to the tap further away from the woman, not wanting to give her a chance to stop her as she poured herself a morning beer.

"Or did they even have tampons when you were my age? They are these like absorbent, cotton things you stick–"

[Felicity Walker]

Flick watched her barb land and saw instantly why the girl had gotten the gig. She was pretty in a fulsome way, her cheeks rounded with the cling of youth. They were flushed, now, her eyes crossed and the beginnings of a sneer tugging at her mouth. She had the looks for working in the Snake Pit, and she certainly had the attitude.

Well, two could play at that game.

Heat gathered in the hollows of her palms as she watched the girl grin, a lazy thing that crawled across her mouth. Flick's headache subsided, ebbing for a moment, the prospect of a good, verbal spar like a stretching muscle. She tilted her neck and heard the vertebrae in her spine pop.

Her hands stilled across the counter, bruised knuckles turned upwards towards the fluorescent light. It was early enough in the day. She could add a couple more and she wouldn't even feel bad about it.

"Oh, I know what a tampon is," she interrupted, as the corners of her own mouth curled upwards, her gaze turning sharp, "I got some from your mum. In fact, she asked me to give you something--"

Flick tossed aside her rag and pretended to root around her pockets, before she straightened and flipped her middle finger.

Her gaze snapped to the empty glass, and tap sluggishly spitting beer. 

"What are you, some kind of dropout?"

[Anderson Payne]

Anders rolled her eyes and almost laughed at the older woman flippin' her the bird.

"What are you? Twelve? Not with those wrinkles..."

She continued to shake her head, her gaze moving from the new bartender to the glass she was filling up. Not wasting to wait for it to fill, the red-head pulled it free and lifted bac the tap with her free hand. Then, she held up a finger to pause their back and forth as she took a long, flavorful chug of the ale.

"What are you, some kind of dropout?"

Halfway down, she let out a satisfied gasp. She wiped the wet remnants free with her sleeve, then looked back at this audacious woman.

"First of all, yes. School if for suckers. Or at least I'm not enough of a sucker to think graduating from Hogwarts is going to let me get one of them cushy, Ministry jobs." Anders refused to believe it would have made a difference either way. Why waste time having to conform when she could simply get her rocky like started now?

"Second, this–" She returned back the middle finger, holding it up nonchalantly.

"You can do better than that. I usually prefer two fingers," and Anders tightened the press of two of her fingers coming together, a sly smile stretching her challenging grin. The slight motion she made with them referencing something different altogether.

"Or three if you're trying to actually have a good time." Keeping people off balance. It was the only skill that she'd been graced with. After finishing her beer, she stared tantalizingly at the older woman, her expression demure and mischievous.

"I'll get started on lowering the chairs."

[Felicity Walker]

The ebbing of her headache faded, and rose again, blooming to a dull throb at the sides of her temples. Flick shut her eyes and fought the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. Irritation sparked along the fingers, heat taking shape in an ache that sank beneath her knuckles.

The girl wasn’t wrong about her Hogwarts education— but Flick would’ve preferred to stab out her own eyes with the beer tap than give her new favourite employee of the Snake Pit the win and admitting she was right.

Which left—

Her eyes tracked the girl’s fingers, the way they came together and crooked. Her earlier gasp at her drink, the way she wiped her mouth. Flick’s pulse spiked, the imagery it evoked so vivid, and so brazen, she didn’t know what to do.

And Flick couldn’t help it. She felt herself flush.

She knew this, childish or not, this jostling for dominance; elbows thrown out and scrapping desperately to save face, displace the other, put her off her rhythm. Calliope Amberghast’s face flashed in her face.

As a kid, Flick got heated, got in too deep: threw a punch. This rookie lacked one thing that Flick had in shovelfuls these days— experience. Too bad she couldn’t help herself.

“So that’s why you came and got a job here, is that it?” She sneered, “Didn’t do well at school, didn’t get enough love from Mummy and Daddy— so now you’re working at a bar to get your validation from grubby strangers?”

[Anderson Payne]

“So that’s why you came and got a job here, is that it?”

Anders took that as a victory.

She acted humble in her win, which likely would infuriate the woman more. Not answering immediately, she went about the business of lowering all the stacked chairs, filling the room out. Her attention fell on that, and, for the moment, she acted as if nothing else mattered.

“Didn’t do well at school, didn’t get enough love from Mummy and Daddy— so now you’re working at a bar to get your validation from grubby strangers?”

Anders turned to finally face her, hands grasping the legs of a wobbly, wooden seat. Her expression had, for a flash, lost its mirth. It was only for a moment, the seriousness leaving her like a spilled bucket of water. She started to laugh, shaking her head, and continued dumping the seats.

"You're not that grubby," she answered slyly.

[Felicity Walker]

Flick nearly had the edge. She thought she could taste it, razor-sharp and metallic, on the back of her tongue. She swallowed down the victory and watched the other girl move through the bar to unstack the chairs, a smirk hitching up the corners of her mouth.

A silence fell, punctuated by chair-legs softly knocking against the aged wooden floor, and Flick's furious scrubbing at the definitelyblood stain on the counter. The faster she got this over with, the faster she could leave. Quit whilst she was ahead, and all that.

"You're not that grubby,"

Nevermind.

Flick looked back up from the counter, met the other girl's wry smile. She released an exasperated breath, and scowled, putting her entire body into the breath: "Oh, fuck off."

"Soon you can enjoy the view from far away," she snarked, adding with a grumpy afterthought, "I'm not even supposed to be behind the bar, anyways."

[Anderson Payne]

"You're not?" She asked, confused.

So, they weren't looking to hire any new bartenders. They just didn't have the confidence in her yet. Anders wasn't sure which one was worse. She finished the tables and then looked around, wondering what to do next and not allowing herself to be bossed around by miss wasn't actually a bartender.

That only piqued her curiosity enough to ask, "Then what are you doing here?"

She probably should have asked what the woman was doing there as far as work, but no one had ever accused her of being articulate. Meandering through the tables, she sat herself back down on the counter, watching her continue to try to get that bloodstain that had been there for days now –not that anyone cared or noticed and had simply been transfigured over– futilely.

"Do you even know how to make drinks?"

[Felicity Walker]

The painful reminder that Flick was supposed to be spending the night behind this janky bar with her new best friend was offset, ever so slightly, by the other girl's confusion at her being there. If that was the reception, she wasn't totally off her rocker. Smallweed had just massively fumbled the bag.

"No," Flick snapped, "I'm not. And that's a good thing, trust me."

The other girl-- whose name she still didn't know, nor really cared to-- gave her a look that twisted between relief and abject loss for what to do. Flick's knuckles itched for the door.

She wasn't about to launch into some extended spiel to reassure the other girl that she had absolutely no intention to taking pole position as the Snake Pit's newest barmaid, though in retrospect, that did explain a lot of the elbow-throwing and jostling Flick had just been exposed to.

With the chairs down, and the bar mostly ready for the evening ahead, now was Flick's chance to collect herself before this disaster of an evening unfolded. She'd have gone home, but she needed the money. Rock and a hard place, indeed.

"I'll leave the drink-making to you," Flick said, and abandoned the stain on the counter, "I'm going out for a smoke."

She headed for the door, offering Big James, who'd been watching their interaction silently with a massive grin, a now-two fingered up yours. She turned back in the doorway.

"That's not an open invitation. Oh, and pour me something strong, would you? I'm gonna need it."

fin