#yeah no one is more surprised than me considering I forgot I'd written 7000 words of this until today

[lamardeuse]

Like a shining angel at my cabin door

Loki  |    Loki/Mobius M. Mobius   |    Rated  M   |    c. 8100 words

The new guy is a wanker.

“He's not, though, Shaz,” Anna says, because she's so softhearted sometimes Shazia finds it sick-making.

“He is a bit,” Joel adds, which isn't a useful contribution to the conversation considering he spent half of last summer trying to get in Anna's pants. If he weren't the boss's son, Shazia wouldn't even bother talking to him.

“Or maybe he's the one making us look like wankers.” Anna gestures at the quay, where the new bloke is speaking calmly to a gaggle of teenagers down from London, the sort you know are going to go feral the moment they get out on the water. The sort who can't be trusted with a rubber dinghy, let alone anything with a motor. That's why there's an unspoken agreement that the shit clients at Salcombe Ocean Adventures always go to the new hires – toughens them up and weeds out the ones who can't deal with the demands of the job.

And of course it means the rest of them get out of dealing with them.

But this one? Shazia can tell he's got them eating out of the palm of his hand, the way he's been doing for the last few weeks. It's as though he's some kind of pied piper for posh city knobheads.

“How old is he anyway?” Joel asks, wrinkling his nose.

Anna shrugs. “Who can tell with Americans? The point is, he's had loads of experience.”

“Has he, though?” Shazia asks. “We're assuming he does because – well, old – but when I ask him where he came from and what he did before, he's vague as shit.”

“Maybe because your way of asking is like a police interrogation,” Joel mutters. Shazia shoots him a glare, and he purses his lips and quiets.

Anna shakes her head. “No, she's right about that. He doesn't say much about his past.” Glancing down the quay before leaning in, she murmurs, “I think he has a tragic backstory.”

“You what?” Shazia exclaims, which leads to a round of violent shushing from Anna.

“I mean,” Anna whispers, “I think something terrible happened in his past. Like maybe his family died in a car accident or something.”

“Christ,” Joel says. “You think so?”

“Well,” Anna says, biting her lip. “Maybe not. But he's at least a widow? Wait, it's different if it's a man, right?”

Shazia sighs. She doesn't have the faintest idea why Anna has such a hold on her. Swear down, her crush on this girl is the most fucking annoying fact of her existence. “A widower. And what on earth makes you think that?”

Anna watches John head off down the quay with his new charges in tow – and honestly, that's another bloody thing, what kind of name is John August – and says, “I asked him a couple of weeks ago why he decided to come to Devon, of all places. And he paused for the longest time and said, 'The accents remind me of someone I used to know.'”

Shazia raises her brows, waiting for the punch line. Anna raises her brows back.

“That's it?” Joel asks, beating Shazia to it again.

“It was the way he said it,” Anna says, clearly starting to get exasperated. “Like – he had one good thing and now it's gone. And – like he doesn't especially care where he is. Because maybe he doesn't belong anywhere else.”

Shazia sucks in a breath, because – alright, there. That's why.

“Oh, fine,” she huffs, as Joel's mum emerges from the office and starts making the windmilling gestures with her arms that means their break is most definitely over. “Come on, let's get back to it.”

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