This contains minor non-consent in the form of a kiss and is addressed in-story. Please enjoy.
Geneviah is coming to the coffee shop on the corner of 4th Street and Frontal Avenue for legitimate reasons.
You see, Neddy keeps running her ragged. Ever since she had been hired at his firm, he decided to "give her the bad jobs" to "show he's not being favorable to his little sister".
He's just sore about being blackmailed into getting her a job there.
The "bad jobs" entail exactly one overarching responsibility: she needs to serve various defendants that the firm is suing. As much as she would like to just ding-dong-ditch the poor suckers who are getting into a fight with one of the biggest law firms in Sankhurst, she needs to verify that they've received it and receive a signed acknowledgement.
This is a simple process, involving minimal visits to the firm's medical kit.
Her job description (and the attached waiver, because of course there was one) put it this way:
Process serving can sometimes result in being the target of violent reactions. It is not your job to fight a defendant, so if this happens, use your Sanderson & Co. Legal pepper spray to get out of the situation.
Shockingly, middle aged embezzlers and landlords don't react super well to being named the defendant in a suit by a woman who looks like she should still be in junior high.
She shakes her head, grounding herself in the countless murmurs of the passerby and the spinning of tires on asphalt. The coffee shop. The owner of it hadn't been paying his employees on time or for overtime, and the city got an anonymous tip about it.
She had personally hand-delivered the notice saying that George DeMarcile is being sued by Sanderson & Co. Legal, and personally dodged his stapler, coffee cup (and coffee), and keyboard.
On her way out past the counter, she caught the eye of the girl with half-buzzed black hair. She had looked towards the shut door to the manager's office. The tantrum had begun, and she swung her gaze back to Geneviah.
She winked, and raised the cup of coffee she held in assumed solidarity.
That was all Geneviah saw before she sharply turned on the sidewalk, her ponytail slapping her face as she wheeled around, and booked it to her next assignment.
That had been three weeks, eleven slammed doors, and one paycheck ago.
Geneviah had been unable to get that image out of her head: the new-age service-worker edition of Rosie the Riveter, wielding a coffee cup instead of a muscular arm.
So she pitched it to her brother: an employee of the Clandestine Coffee Café is bound to be a good witness, right? She de-finite-ly has a great reason to go back to the coffee shop and chat her up, right? And even get her number, so she could organize a meeting place and get more details about the case.
Neddrick had listened to her spiel, sat behind his shiny, solid desk with his hands steepled under his chin. His expression had migrated from annoyed to a pure, platonic ideal of frustration, a finger tapping an unsteady rhythm onto his chin.
"Gennie, I have a meeting with Roland Motors in five minutes. Every minute I spend not doing my job costs this company three dollars and thirty-two cents." He met her eyes, and she quailed, blood fleeing her face. "I do not have the time, nor the space in my calendar to listen to you make justifications for badgering a potential witness. The justice system does not accept 'lesbian' as a plea. Get out."
She got out.
-
It was a cold day when the blonde-haired process server leaned across her counter, conspiracy in her eyes, and told her "I have an under-the-table proposition for you."
Sae had checked her email the previous night to see an official-looking item from Sanderson & Co. Legal. It was mostly legal jargon - you may have been impacted by the payments withheld by Mr. DeMarcile - but the end of it had an additional note, separate from the boilerplate.
It read:
Ms. Thorne, you may be approached by an employee of Sanderson & Co. Legal asking you to provide information on the plaintiff in DeMarcile v. Employees of Clandestine LLC, Mr. DeMarcile. If you are approached by any employee, please contact me immediately.
Below was the personal phone number of one Neddrick Callix, a senior partner for the Sanderson & Co. Legal firm.
Sae was no fool, and signed it up for several bookmarked spam sites before falling asleep. She's now reconsidering.
The girl's hands were tapping on the table, a rhythm that jolted her out of her recollections. "A proposition?" She raised an eyebrow. "We have a lot of tables in here, and I would prefer not to get under them. Teenagers leave gum stuck to them."
The probable-employee of the legal firm that she had pranked (god, she had never gotten a number off of those sites. Was it even possible?) blinked, and then smiled. It bled through her panic like the swing of a lighthouse beam. "A metaphorical table..." a pause. Her eyes glanced to her nametag. "Sae. I'm Geneviah Callix, a process server for Sanderson Legal. Can I tempt you to step outside with me?"
Two parts of Sae's brain warred. The first pulled the alarms in her brain, telling blood to flow to her cheeks and nethers as an eminently attractive woman her age used the words proposition and tempt in conjunction with her. She stamped on this part hard, fighting against the flush threatening her composure.
The second part of her tried to react as a sane, rational person should when presented with someone (she was related to the man she had signed up for calls and texts from that site) saying these untrustworthy things.
“No. I can’t. In fact, I really shouldn’t. I need to text a number from last night. I have some apologies to make. Some happenings to report.”
Before this could be said, she focused on the brown eyes of this girl, and the first part of her won.
"I can. My boss won't mind, he hasn't left the office since he got here. I'll meet you out back?" came out in a rush that left her out of breath, and she coughed. The flush finally won against her, and her face reddened.
The process server (untrustworthy, untrustworthy!) nodded very seriously, winked, and said entirely too loudly "I'll see you there!". She turned on her heel and walked swiftly straight out the door.
Sae breathed, and fled into the bathroom to fix her appearance. God, she smelled of burnt roast and her apron was covered in stains. She examined her face and breathed into her hand to check her breath. Not great on both counts, but survivable. She had done better with much worse.
She scrubbed her face with a scratchy paper towel, and straightened up. Sae met her eyes, and ran her hand along the buzzed half, the short follicles tickling. She could do this.
-
Geneviah paced out behind the store, the dirty alley not what she had hoped. She hadn't thought she would need to prep the space to ask the coffee girl - Sae, she had a name to the eyes - for her number, nor had she planned on Sae agreeing so easily. Especially given that she was here, technically, not on work.
It's the pretense of work flew in her mind as she paced. It's not like it's impossible, Jeffrey isn't even a lawyer and he went along and provided a good A and B situation to make them go with our representation for the Geoffries v. Residents of Townhoa case, so this isn't completely out of left field!
The back door to the Clandestine Coffee Shop was flung open, and Geneviah turned and leaned against a dirty, disused plastic table. Sae walked down the steps directly towards Geneviah, determination in her eyes. "Glad you came--" was all she got out before another mouth was on hers.
Sae's mouth. Oh god, her brain had completely frozen. There was a hand sliding up her side, and she couldn't get her body to respond. Every nerve misfired, her skin going cold as her face burned. Her fingers jerked as she tried to assert some control that could not happen, her body was someone else's now.
The hand and mouth both froze as Sae leaned away from her, her eyes stone. Then it shattered, and tears formed. "Oh god, you didn't ask me out here for this, did you?" she choked.
Geneviah's body finally accepted her as the rightful owner of it, and she got out "Uh-- I mean--".
"... didn't even think before pushing you up against the table! God, I did this to a legal aide, I'm going to jail for life for sexual assault because I got propositioned--" Sae muttered, then spoke, then near shouted as Geneviah could only watch. She managed another response.
"I came to get your testimony for the case!"
Sae's gaze snapped to her, sudden venom in her response and eyes. "Are you sure you still want it? Pretty sure perverts aren't trustworthy witnesses."
"I won't tell if you don't. Bit of harmless fun, that's all it was."
What are you doing?!
Sae looked at her as if she had grown a second head. "Are you serious? I shoved your back onto a table and myself onto your mouth in an alley, that's not 'harmless fun'!"
Geneviah spread her hands. "I can see where I went wrong here--" a fucking understatement "--and I don't think you're likely to go pushing other women up against shitty tables where you work, right? I don't want to sue you, and you sure as anything don't want to be sued."
Sae's breathing evened, and she studied Geneviah with a critical eye. "I don't really want to be sued. You won't mention it and I won't?"
"All I need's your testimony." She got out. She could not screw this up, she had to go slow. "I wanted your contact information so we could set up a time and place to get it."
"I... okay." Sae's hand ran through the buzzed half of her head, and Geneviah felt envy burn in every part of her. "I'll give you the testimony. As long as you don't talk about this."
"Deal."
-
She got a sideways look as she walked into the lobby, then more as she rode the elevator up to her floor. Then Don, the saint he is, discretely pointed out she looked like she had walked into a doorknob at mouth level.
A look in the mirror confirmed it.
Her hair was mussed, her blouse rumpled, and her face. She was still so flushed, and her lips looked like they had gone through a lot more than about five seconds of an ill-advised make-out.
She didn't regret a thing.