Mad Hatter | Al

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[attr="class","cbody"]Saturdays were the absolute worst nights to be on the schedule at work. As much as it was possible to avoid it, she did. She did actually think that Fridays were worse, but Saturdays certainly came in as a close second. If she had any say in it at all, she did not work the weekends. But, of course, she did not have a say in it. The schedule was available to all of her siblings, and they were all in the habit of changing it when it suited them. If she started to just request off weekends, they would both have something to say about that. She knew better than to think that either brother would give up their weekends so that she didn’t have to work.
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Not without a good reason, anyway. Apolline thought she might have been able to sweet talk Axton into it if she had a legitimate reason. But more often than not, he would laugh at her for even trying it. He really could be such a prat sometimes. Especially when he was ‘on’ with that girlfriend of his.
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She knew that the whole Saffron situation was her fault. Axton was willing to actually be with her. He didn’t care what people thought about it or if they stared. He had told her so. But she was a little warier of going public. It wasn’t that she necessarily cared about what people thought. Just the average nobody on the street. Their opinions did not mean anything to her. It wasn’t as if most people walking past them would even know that they were brother and sister. Only the people that knew them would know that, but those were the opinions that she did care about. At least a little.
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Apolline did care what Alistair thought. He was their family too. She didn’t know what he would think if he found out about the pair of them. Really, it was a wonder that he didn’t know already. The amount of nights spent shagging in either one of their rooms—or anywhere else in the flat if Alistair wasn’t home. The fact that he hadn’t walked in on them was a miracle in and of itself. A part of her did think that she just needed to rip the bandage off and tell him the truth. If he couldn’t get past it, then that would be sad. He was the brother that she had been raised with, after all. But Axton was the brother that she was in love with. If Alistair couldn’t get past that, then that would be on him.
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She had agreed to go on a date with Axton, somewhere where nobody would recognize them. That had seemed like a good compromise to him. But that had been months ago now. Those month had been filled with them fighting, Axton cursing her, Apolline smacking him because she did not have magic at her disposal anymore, and then usually ended up with them shagging. But there had been no date. She refused to ask about it again. If he was too busy with Saffron or his other witches to follow through with the date, then fine. She would just find someone else to pass her time with. Axton pretended that he did not get jealous—and he didn’t, per say, but he was possessive. She could work with that.
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If he had been working tonight, it might have been a good time for her to see just what she could do. But he wasn’t. Instead, she had been on the clock for most of the night, and eventually Alistair had wandered down to help out when it had gotten busy. For the safety of the entire pub, in all honesty, because she had been tempted to burn it down by that point.
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But last call had come and gone, and the stragglers had stumbled out for the evening. Now it was just a matter of closing up and seeing how much money they’d made this evening. Luckily, with Alistair there, that would take them minutes as opposed to the hour it took her to do it all by hand. There was even time for a drink. “I’m going to open up a bottle of Laphroaig Lore. Want a glass?” She didn’t ask if he cared that she opened one of their top shelf whiskeys. It was what she wanted, so she was opening it. It was just a matter of whether or not she would be drinking it alone.
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