darker_london | All you beautiful liars

The cafe where Marina waitressed most days wasn't a terrible place. The pay was decent, her workmates were fun and none of them had revealed themselves to be massive bigots of any sort (yet), her boss was fair, and it wasn't too terribly far from her apartment. It wasn't her dream job, but how many people actually got to work their dream jobs? Marina, like most, was working a job to pay her way through life and fine with it meaning little. She didn't need much money anyway; Marina didn't really care about material possessions and she knew how to be thrifty.

She was lonely though. Although her workmates seemed fine, Marina still felt burned over her last close friendship: the one that had turned into a love affair. The one that had ended very very poorly. Marina wasn't sure if she wanted to make new friends after that. She went out drinking with people occasionally, went and did social things, but none of them felt all that real to her. The last few years of her life had been marked with connections stronger than any others: revealing to Giles, her first love, about her past history; the return of Deacon into her life in dramatic and sometimes horrible ways. These were real connections. These were connections written in blood. How did you start that right from the beginning?

Marina hated admitting to herself that sometimes she missed Giles. Was that a first love thing? Would she end up always missing that stupid selfish boy who'd hurt her so badly? If that was the case, then it sucked.

It was one of those evenings leaving work and thinking about Giles when she ran into his brother. It felt like a weird coincidence and for a moment her expression read only shock, but then she smiled. "Percy! It's been ages!"

And it had. She hadn't seen Percy since she quit the show, since he'd told her that Giles was at that moment getting married. It had been less than wonderful news, but Percy had only been the messenger and he'd always been good to her.