Where Are You Going? - Part Three
Jul. 6th, 2018 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
churbooseanon
Where Are You Going? - Part Three
“So, you look ready to fall over and it isn’t even noon,” Vanessa observes as they make their way up the spiraling staircase toward the cafeteria.
“Yeah, well not everyone gets a job that partially involves sitting in an office, hoping kids will show up to ask for help,” Marcus says, regretting it immediately because he knows there is a lot more to her work than that. “Sorry, Nessa, I…”
“Haven’t had nearly enough sleep. No surprise,” she supplies. They finally reach the woman handling the register for entering the cafeteria and Vanessa immediately waves Marcus’s hand from his bag. Her treat then, and he has no reason to argue against that. In the end she has greater cause to spot him on a meal than he does for her. With Nessa he flashes his employee badge for their discount, and then they are through. His is so heading straight for the sandwich station, because he needs a good Reuben right now and is going to bask in that mound of meat and ‘kraut as well as a huge mound of fries.
“What this time?” she asks as she leads Marcus toward the station. “Did Sarge keep you late yesterday or…”
“Daniel’s sick,” he sighs, and the reminder of that has him fishing out his phone. No new texts since the one a couple of hours ago, which means Daniel is still asleep. Which is good because if there is any luck in this world, which Marcus rarely finds to be true, he will make it back before Daniel wakes so he can make sure there is food ready for him first thing. “Came on sorta suddenly last night. He woke me at three when he woke up feeling really bad, and I have been running around since. We didn’t have chicken noodle soup, can you believe it? So late night run to the Wal-Mart and then helping him get to sleep took a while.”
“And you didn’t take the day off?” Vanessa ask in horror. “Marcus!”
“You know D, do you really think he would have let me stay home with him?”
All it takes is a raised hand and a nod to Bitters behind the counter and his sandwich is being processed. Bless Bitters, Marcus thinks to himself not for the first time. Guy remembers just about every order that comes to him, which means Marcus can have his bi-weekly meal with Vanessa and not have to break the flow of her latest ranting at him. Breaking up the flow of these lectures usually means that they get to go on longer. Too much longer for most people to handle. Sometimes Marcus can handle that. More often than not, though, he will jump in there, just to see her work to get herself back up to steam. After how little sleep he got the night before, though, he has no intention of extended lecture.
“You’re the adult, Marcus,” Vanessa hisses at him, turning to glare at him while Bitters works on their meals. “If Daniel is sick then you make the choice to stay home, not him. Who is going to help him if a fever gets too high?”
“Mrs. Chalmers has a key to the apartment and checks in every few hours. D has both me and her on speed dial. He also has Sarge’s number if there is an emergency and he can’t reach me directly. There is a whole plethora of drinks at his bedside table for him to drink if he’s thirsty and even if he’s not because he knows to hydrate. There is also a pack each of pudding, jello and applesauce, and a sleeve of saltines. Geez, Nessa, you act like I haven’t been dealing with colds for years now. If it was a flu or stomach thing I would be home. Instead I am making money as any good single father should. Keeping me in the funds to keep putting new ridiculous stick figure family decals on the car when we’re bored.”
“Which now?” she asks, knowing that the argument is done. She won’t win unless she’s willing to take the day off herself to take care of Daniel. And when it comes to it the thirteen-year-old is probably better suited to it than she will ever be.
“My dinosaur thinks your stick figure family is tasty,” Marcus smiles. Daniel had found it online and as the kid likes dinosaurs and paleontology as much as he does computers, he was eager for it.
At least Vanessa laughs at that. She turns her attention back to Bitters who cuts her wrap in half, arranges it on a plate, and puts a bag of chips next to it. For half a second Marcus holds out hope that she’ll drop the subject of Daniel entirely now that she has food, or at least walk over to the salad bar to get herself some fruit. Instead she lingers, her very presence inviting more, intended to bait Marcus into talking. Which he isn’t going to do.
“It’s not weak to ask for help,” she says, her voice a whisper. Marcus hears it anyway.
Normally she says that as an offer. Normally Marcus York has no issue politely declining and then inviting her to dinner with him and D later in the week, with her cooking enough for three people to eat for days. Longer as it’s usually only the two of them.
Normally he’s had more sleep.
“Help? You’re totally right. Why didn’t I think about that? Maybe I should ask for help, like just tell children’s protective services that I can’t handle him, please take Daniel away. Sounds great. Oh, wait, was that not what you meant? Okay then, ask for help, what does that mean? Why should I do, get a job? Wait, I’ve already got a job. Get a better job? Hard to do without a degree. Which I don’t have enough hours in a day to take classes to achieve. Not with work and taking care of Daniel. Or o you mean something else? Because right now the help I can use is to have a pen because I think I dropped mine in Professor Halliday’s lecture hall earlier.”
Normally he has more patience because he has more sleep.
“I’ll be by tonight with pizza,” Vanessa says after a moment, just as Bitters is passing the reuben over.
“Hawaiian?”
“Of course, I know you like it best.”
And rarely got it as Daniel finds something morally repugnant about pineapple on pizza. Daniel’s words of course, not Marcus’s. The kid has an insane vocabulary. These days Marcus only gets his favorite when Daniel is spending a night with friends and Vanessa was feeling generous at the same time. If it was a Thursday there might even be a roast instead of pizza because she would have a lighter class load, but as for today Marcus doesn’t mind. His friend has to teach, and he’s got so much to do to get through the day.
“Oh, and here. Some other help.”
Vanessa smiles as she pulls a pen from her pocket, another one of those wonderful pens the faculty seems to be able to produce at a whim. A perfect replacement for the one he lost this morning. A pen to match every other one she’s given him these last two weeks.
“I should just give you the whole box of them,” she chuckles.
“And I would just lose them faster. Oh well, some student or janitor is going to have this nice pen too when I lose it. Provided Daniel doesn’t take it first.”
“Seriously, I’m going to have to tie a pen to your wrist so you stop losing them, aren’t I?”
Marcus laughs, because she always says that and she never does. Not that either of them case. Losing a pen doesn’t really amount to anything other than needing a new pen after all.
