Who: Francis Radford & Lux Serafini What: Bonding over being the only two left to finish closhing. Where: Here&Gone, Chicago When: Saturday, April 14; very early hours of the morning Warnings: TBD but probably nothing
Whoever said that good help was hard to find was a goddamn prophet and Francis didn't know if he wanted to kiss them or kill them for jinxing everyone else. Everything that could go wrong with closing the club down for the night? Had gone wrong, to borrow another fucking curse and cliché all wrapped up in one. The drawers hadn't counted out even, someone had puked on the floor on their way out and a few other people too drunk to pay attention had tracked through it, someone had come back banging on the door because she'd forgotten to grab her credit card before they left... and that was just the tip of the shitty iceburg that was owning and operating your own club. Not that Francis would trade it for any other job in the world, but that didn't mean that he couldn't complain about that, or about the fact that most of his employees were fucking useless and would have just made things worse if he'd kept them around after their shift was supposed to be over to help him finish up.
Rachel wouldn't have been useless but Rachel was gone. Dead. Just like Francis's brother. That was why Francis didn't get attached to people. That was why he kept what he was doing with Lucien casual and why Jim Moore, who didn't give a fuck about anyone but himself and his zombie boyfriend, was probably the closest thing to a best friend that Francis had right then.
Instead Francis had Lux, the only employee he'd have even considered asking to hang around with him after hours. She was one of the only ones he could stand to spend that much one-on-one time with, anyway, probably because she wasn't completely incompetent and useless. Underworld demigod with a creepy aura or not, Lux was easy to be around and she liked the place enough that she'd dragged her adorably emo little brother there to hang out for a while... not that there weren't plenty of underage reincarnate kids running around considering that Francis took them in like strays and introduced them to the Resistance if he thought that they were going to be a good fit. So far he'd left Lux and her little brother out of that though. That was one that he just couldn't see working out well.
"Barf patrol or balancing the register?" Francis had popped into the storage closet and back out with a mop and bucket—still empty for right then because he hadn't wanted to make an even bigger mess for them to have to clean up but with the bottle of industrial strength floor cleaner fucked inside it. Sure, Francis was the boss. He could have told her which one he wanted her to do and taken his pick of jobs. She was the one who'd agreed to stay late even though he couldn't legally make her, though, and besides. There wasn't one of the two big jobs that was actually better than the other. They were just frustrating in different ways. There really wasn't any picking a favorite between the two of them.
The sooner they got done with this, Francis reminded himself, the sooner he could go and check on Percy, maybe send Lucien a text message about how shitty his night had been and see if he wanted to come on over and make it up to him. It was the weekend now, after all. He could stop studying long enough to get naked and sweaty... not that Lucien naked and sweaty was something that Francis wasn't to think about with Lux around. That could get really awkward really fast, being a guy all alone with a girl who probably wouldn't exactly feel comfortable with him sporting an erection.