Joanne Jefferson was a busy woman, a very busy one.
She had been rang out of bed by six am by a call from her boss, which didn't put her in the sunniest of moods to begin with, but being confronted with the drunken and incoherent mumblings of a man brought down to the police station for vandalism and petty theft could hardly be called an improvement. The clock ticking on the pasty white wall seemed frozen, its hands moving at a snail's pace until an officer in his forties took pity on her and dumped her client's file of criminal records before her by-now cold coffee. On any other day, she would have questioned the breach of protocol, her time at Harvard having drilled a specific sense of order into her, but right now she honestly didn't give a damn and simply shot a tired smile his way before getting back to work.
That affair being over with by noon, which ended in the verdict of a few dozen hours of community service as well as a future trial, she finally found the freedom to stretch her legs, get out of the plastic chair of the office and walk towards the exit of the station. Her gaze on the floor, Joanne ran through her engagements for the day in her head: preparing the defense for the Sondheim case, picking up her laundry, family dinner. She groaned at the thought of the latter. A month had gone by without her having greatly missed the phone calls and houndings of her parents, reminders of how her father was currently undergoing confirmation to become a judge while she herself was still stuck at that same miserable firm she had first gotten employed at straight out of college.
"TEA!"
Despite herself, Joanne stopped in her tracks and turned toward the direction of where the absurd declaration had emerged from to see a bizarre picture.
On one side of the reception desk, there was an agitated man pleading with a clearly sleep-deprived police officer desperate for a lunch break if not a long weekend. On the other, there was a man in a faded sweater, stoic in the face of accusations. A woman was standing behind him, both of her arms draped over his torso to be left buried in the overtly long, striped scarf around his neck. Her chin was resting on his right shoulder, her head lolling from side to side in a show of absentmindedness from the conversation taking place in front of her, while her eyes were firmly fixed on... her.
"Hey!"
Joanne jumped at the loud bellowing, taken aback to watch as the stranger made her way over to where she was standing in great, light-footed steps.
"You look important. Could you maybe help us out for a moment? There has been a frankly stupid misunderstanding about some drinks the other night and-"
She found herself baffled to the degree that she didn't even protest when the woman linked her arm through hers and walked her into the direction of the three men, chatting as she went, giving her the time to properly take in her curly brown hair and bright green eyes. It was just Joanne's luck to come upon a cute, taken straight girl with no concept of personal space when she was working.
The police officer at the desk nodded his greeting as the boyfriend stretched out his hand to her, introducing himself as Mark Cohen and a filmmaker and director as well. He had an air of self-evident friendliness about him, clearly not too comfortable with the entire extent of the situation and its attention it was getting him as it was, his hands ever so slighty twitching as if searching for something to distract themselves with. A camera, maybe.
The accuser snorted, making a show of impatiently checking his watch.
"Hold on for a second! Anyway, hi, I'm Maureen Johnson." Maureen Johnson smiled, effortlessly exerting an extraordinary amount of energy even when standing still.
"Joanne Jefferson, representing Larsson & Larsson." She replied, one eyebrow arched in caution.
"It's just, please hear us out! I thought I overheard you throw some lawyer terms around back there, paragraphs and such, and we have been at this debate for, like, hours, so could you maybe settle this for us? We did nothing bad, you see-"
"You could not pay for your order and ran!"
"It was tea!" Maureen barked with enough edge in her voice to make what she assumed was the restaurant owner flinch for a second before he gathered himself again, brushed some imaginary dust off his coat lapels and huffed,
"That is irrelevant! It was hardly the first ti-"
"To be fair -", Mark interrupted, looking fairly sorry for having done so, "I came back right after fetching my wallet from my apartment. And I gave you a five dollars' tip too."
Maureen looked at her, eyes wide and was she batting her eyelashes at her?
Joanne tried to seek help at the person actually responsible for the foolishness only to find that the police officer had used the opportunity to flee the scene.
Lucky bastard.
She sighed, assuming her lawyer's voice, summoning steel to her spine as she faced the restaurant owner. Less fuss if she just got it over with right then.
"Look, sir, I hate to tell you this seeing how much trouble you have already went through, but there is no solid evidence for a case that I can see."
The expression of utter indignation on his face had Maureen in a fit of giggles left of her shoulder, but Joanne did her best to block out the brunette's fingers interlocked with Mark's and ploughed on,
"Did you suffer a loss?"
"Well-"
"Your customers paid for your service and you made a profit in the end, did you not?"
"Yes, bu-"
"Thank you for your time. I'm afraid you have wasted yours."
Out of the corner of her eye, Joanne saw Mark's grin accompanied by Maureen's gleeful victory jump, fist raised on the air in triumph. Before she could blink, the woman's arms were around her in a hug as the restaurant owner shot them all a look that could kill as he left the building.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you! What a jerk! You showed him!"
Joanne laughed, surprised and careful to disentangle herself from Maureen's limbs until they were an armlength apart, her hands gently on those of the woman, the white tank top leaving little enough material for the warmth of her bare skin to register in Joanne's fingers so she put them once again at her own side before she got caught up in staring at Maureen's exposed midriff.
"Actually, he could possibly get a case out of this if he spun this right, I am just really late to a meeting. Although I doubt he'll bother you again unless given explicit reason to do so."
Maureen was looking at her as if she had just said the funniest thing, meeting her gaze until Joanne looked away, focusing on Mark instead, shuffling her feet.
"Tea?"
He let out an awkward laugh, right hand not in his girlfriend's grip scratching at the back of his neck in embarrassment. "Yeah. It's been... a weird few months. I really am sorry that we held you up here."
"It's no bother."
Mark shrugged. "Still, thanks again. I guess now you can get back to work and we can go home. We owe you one."
He walked a few paces away from the reception desk, zeroing in on the revolving door that would transport them back onto the streets of the city in the glory of rush hour.
Maureen bit her lip. "Hey, you go ahead, I'll just go find a restroom in here and be out in a minute, alright?"
Mark nodded, quickly kissed her cheek and was longout of earshot by the time Joanne explained the directions to the restroom to her.
Maureen grasped her hands instead, her voice taking on the note of a purr. "Thanks, but it's fine. I just wanted to thank you again for getting us out of that mess. How about you come along to a dinner party this evening? I'll cover whatever you want to order, I swear I am good for it. What do you say?"
Joanne blinked. Blinked again. Had she heard her right?
Maureen stepped into her personal bubble again, raising one hand to brush a few stray hairs behind Joanne's ear. "Come on, it will be fun."
Her eyes were so, so green.
Joanne breathed, in, out. The option of her parents' dinner evoked a clear, familiar vision of the same old stuffy suit and Mary Janes, her feet already aching for the well-worn comfort of her Doc Martens boots. A casual outing requiring little formal wear in the face of jeans and a t-shirt sounded like music to her ears.
"Yes, okay."
Maureen smiled, her thumb drawing a distracting circle against Joanne's palm. "Great!"
She skipped towards the reception desk, snagged the nearest pen from its surface and scribbled a row of numbers on the inside of Joanne's wrist before the lawyer had the sense to free it from her grip.
"Call me, I'll give you the details."
Maureen winked and gave a playful wave, pocketing the pen into her pants pocket, before she walked towards the exit backwards, only to turn her back on Joanne with the aura of someone used to people staring at her ass as she went by. Joanne could see why. Maybe not so straight after all.
She laughed under her breath, shaking her head in disbelief. It had been a while since she had been out for a night, but what the hell, wasn't there the wisdom of living every day as if it was the last?