Title: Cake Expectations
Author: Musical_Junkie/Tally/Live2TiVo
Fandom: Dollhouse
Pairing: None, Adelle!Centric. Adelle/Dominic, if you squint.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: For events in season one of Dollhouse, but not Epithet One
Summary: When Dominic was sent to the attic, canceling his cake was not high on her list of priorities.
Word Count: 559
It was one of the nicer sides of Adelle's personality, allowing her employees to indulge on their birthdays—Topher was given a day for diagnostics, dolls were given a day off on their handler's birthday (a policy that was strictly enforced, despite demand.) In addition to vacation time, having a birthday entitled every dollhouse employee to a cake. Adelle had a standing order at a local bakery for every employee's birthday. When Dominic was sent to the attic, cancelling his cake was not high on her list of priorities.
Her heart had sunken when she saw the delivery boy whose face had become familiar over the years and cakes. He smiled as he held out the box, "We meet again, huh, Miss DeWitt?"
Adelle plastered on a fake smile, "That we do. You can just put it on the corner of the desk."
He did so, and she tipped him generously, as per usual. Adelle was an excellent tipper for professional rather than personal reasons. A happy delivery person was a delivery person less inclined to ask questions. The delivery boy thanked her profusely, before leaving her alone with the box.
The box, which contained a chocolate cake with white icing and green letters spelling "Happy Birthday, Laurence" had been sitting on the corner of Adelle's desk for more than a day, unopened. It was taunting her, and she felt like she ought to be wearing a wedding dress and only one shoe.
There were a good number of things Adelle DeWitt did not like. It was a long list, one she had never made, but one she suspected some of her colleagues had constructed over the years. Here, now, staring at the box brought to her office by an unsuspecting delivery boy, Adelle wished she had a list, so she could add "Feeling Like Miss Havisham" to the top of it in large block letters.
Ironically, Adelle had never particularly liked Great Expectations. She'd read it so many times in school that it had lost its appeal. Now, she couldn't explain the plot of the novel if she tried, but the mental image of Miss Havisham in her wedding dress in front of a long table covered in moldy food still disgusted her. And, here she was, one step away from recreating the scene. Adelle imagined someone setting her on fire in a misguided attempt to continue the charade.
It was a battle between the cake and her sanity, and, in this round, the cake was winning. Luckily for her sanity, "losing" was another item on her dislikes list. Taking a few calming breaths, Adelle stood up, walked over to the box, and dropped it into the dustbin, upside down.
She pictured the cake inside the box—it would have lost its shape in the fall, the white icing would be covering the sides of the box instead of the cake, and the green letters would be smudged to a point of illegibility. Fordq Elcfbaut Jquoshmac it would read. And no one, except her, would ever know that it was Laurence's birthday…or anybody's birthday, for that matter.
Adelle straightened her already ironed skirt and confirmed that both of her shoes were firmly on her feet. She wasn't Miss Havisham. She was Miss DeWitt, and Miss DeWitt had more important things to do than take out her own trash.