Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine. Any lines from the books are hers too.
AN: This is a mess, but there were some parts I like and that's why I'm posting it. Sorry.
Convenience Store-y
Madge sighs as she restocks the shelf with peanut butter M&M's. A school bus packed with junior high football players had wiped them clean out earlier.
It's not an ideal job, working the third shift at a convenience store on a lonely stretch of interstate, but the job market isn't exactly great with the start of the school year and the sudden influx of college age kids in the town providing a desperate and often cheap workforce.
She'd hoped being early to campus would give her an advantage. For months she'd applied at every campus store, every 'apply now' sign across town, filled out more applications than she can even remember, but the answer was always the same.
"We're just not hiring until the school year starts." There just wasn't a need to have extra staff during the summer.
The old convenience store was one of the few places a girl right out of high school with a short, and wholly unimpressive, resume could get hired. Probably because of the turnover and overall lowliness of the job.
If she didn't need the money she'd have held out for one of the retail positions, lounged the summer away at the public pool, but that wasn't an option. She needed money, there was no way around that. It was either work and get paid, or not go to school in the fall. Not an option.
Her family was trying to help her, she'd gotten a few checks, twenty-five dollars here and ten there, but she always sent them back. Her dad had been out of work for months and her mother and grandpa didn't make much at their family's old candy store. She couldn't take money from them.
So she'd taken the awful job at the convenience store. It had been her only choice.
Four nights a week she donned her gold colored company shirt with the store logo sewn on the right chest, just above her name, which they'd misspelled.
"Marge?" Madge sighed. She hadn't even cared enough to request a new one.
Most nights were uneventful at least.
There were a few truckers that tried to flirt with her, kids from the surrounding towns who tried to pass off their fake id's as real to buy beer, and the occasional dog that wandered in the automatic doors, but for the most part Madge's was the 'stock the shelves' shift. It might be a good thing come fall. She could use the abundance of hours to work on papers and study she supposes.
She's just finished clipping the snack sized packets of Funyuns to a display when sees a flash of red out the corner of her eye.
Straightening up, she squints into the dim outside and spots a Corvette parked next to the pumps.
It's far from her normal type of customer. Most of the people who come through have rusted out trucks or ancient cars, vehicles that are on their last legs. They're definitely not high priced sports cars.
Inching closer to the dirty windows, her next project, she crawls up on a coke display and waits to see who gets out of the car.
Her first thought is that it's going to be a middle aged man. This looks like a classic midlife crisis vehicle. Probably has a girl Madge's age in the seat beside him.
Instead, a guy, maybe a little older than Madge, steps out.
He's tall, Madge thinks he's too tall for such a small car and his legs must be cramped in there, and he's dressed well. A dark polo and khaki shorts. Only his hair, artfully messy and a little long, seems not to match the crisp look he's sporting.
When he turns to being filling the car, Madge groans.
He's gorgeous. Of course.
She suddenly wishes she'd bothered with drying her hair. It's a greasy mess from blowing out her car window, and she hadn't bothered with makeup. There was no one to impress. Normally anyways.
The only consolation she has is that he'll pay at the pump and never see her gold shirted, greasy self.
Except instead of getting in his car and driving away after he's paid, he starts walking toward the store.
Panicking, Madge slips on the display and ends up sprawled on the floor, surrounded by hissing coke bottles.
Before she can get up, get into a halfway dignified position, she hears the doors slid open and the squeak of shoes on the floor.
Looking up, Madge finds a pair of Sperry shoes just a few inches from her nose, then a hand is in her face.
"Need some help?"
His voice is deep, warm, every bit as pleasant as everything else about him. Just her luck.
Pushing herself up, Madge shakes her head and gets to her feet, trying to right her jumbled clothes and smooth her hair.
"Uh, no, just-I was cleaning the windows." Without any cleaning products. Brilliant.
If he notices he doesn't say anything, just nods before squatting down and picking up some of the bottles that had fallen with her.
Feeling her face burning, Madge gets back down and blindly gropes under the nearest shelf, retrieving a few bottles and hastily shoving them back onto the display.
"Thanks," she mumbles, keeping her head down. It's bad enough he saw her fall flat on her face, he doesn't need to see her impersonation of a strawberry too.
Madge spends a few seconds trying to smooth out the rumpled front of her shirt, expecting him to wander off toward the cooler in the back for a twelve pack, but he stays solidly planted in front of her.
"Your card reader is broken," he tells her, pointing a little unnecessarily out the window at his car. "I need to pay."
"Oh." Madge feels her face warm more. "Right."
Making a tiny gesture toward the register, Madge leads him to it and keys in her employee id to ring him up.
He swipes his card, and to Madge's absolute horror, the reader, which has a habit of being unreliable, dies.
"I'll just, uh, I'm gonna do it over here." She takes his card and gives him a weak smile. "Sorry."
Out the corner of her eye she sees him shrug and look around, taking in the yellow lit store with its ancient shelves of overpriced snacks and souvenirs. Probably wondering what kind of person works in such a dump.
Squinting down at the card, Madge looks at the name 'Gale Hawthorne' and sighs before handing it back.
"Sorry about the inconvenience Mr. Hawthorne," she mumbles, pushing a pen toward him with the receipt to sign.
He shrugs again as he messily signs his name. "No problem."
#######
Gale Hawthorne comes by again and again, always in carelessly fashionable clothing, always around midnight, and always in a flashy car that no one his age could possibly afford, over the next few weeks.
A Ferrari, a Lamborghini, an Aston Martin that Madge only recognizes because of her Dad's love of James Bond.
Cars that could put Madge through college without an hour of work in a crummy roadside station. It's a little frustrating.
She tries to find a pattern to his visits, but there doesn't seem to be one.
Sometimes he picks up beer, other times chips, once he only bought sunflower seeds, not a practical buy. There was a supercenter in the middle of town that had them two for one. That's where Madge buys her cheap, non-nutritious food stuffs. The prices at the convenience store are practically robbery by her standards.
Still, she supposes someone who can drive a Porsche isn't counting their every cent the way she is.
If he talked more it might give her some insight, but other than a grunt of 'thank you' he isn't much of a chatter. She'd think it was him being rude, maybe not seeing her as worthy of his time, but that doesn't quite seem to fit his demeanor.
He's almost...awkward. Madge half wonders if he comes to the convenience store to avoid other people. Maybe he's one of those elusive geniuses that have made millions but can't balance his own checkbook, not that he'd need to, and doesn't do so well with crowds.
It's a thought at least.
Madge creates entire fictional lives for Gale Hawthorne over the summer.
Some days he's the child of old money. Never worked a day in his life. Might've played polo in school and spent his summers in the Bahamas.
Other days he's a brilliant self-made millionaire. He's got a private jet and a helicopter in addition to his car collection, a house in the Hamptons, of course, and a vineyard in Napa Valley. It's a nice life, even if it's imaginary.
Finally, one night when he pulls up in an Iron Man Audi, and walks to her counter with the pitiful purchase of a single king sized Snickers, Madge decides she needs to give the poor guy some pointers.
He might be hot, but he clearly has no clue how to manage his money, regardless of how much he may or may not have.
"You could buy an entire bag of these at the dollar store for this price, you know?"
For a second he just stares at her, probably in shock she can say more than her rote phrases, before glancing down at the Snickers.
"Oh," he finally says, his color darkening. His hand jumps to his neck, massaging it and tugging at his hair. "Thanks."
Reaching in his back pocket, he pulls out his wallet and tries to hand her his card anyways.
Curiosity finally gets the better of Madge and she ignores the card being offered to her.
"Why do you keep coming here?" She frowns at him, nose wrinkling up. "This isn't really the place for a guy who can drive Tony Stark's car."
His eyebrows scrunch together. "Tony Stark?"
"Iron Man," Madge explains, earning a vague look of understanding for.
Madge mentally adds pop culture illiterate to the list of things Gale Hawthorne apparently is.
"The Avenger?" He seems more confused at the connection.
Nodding, Madge points to a chip display with the man himself as a cardboard beacon beside it, encouraging people to vote Team Iron Man.
Nodding, he clears his throat and smiles.
"Yeah, I've seen it."
"So has most of the world," Madge tells him. Except her. She couldn't even get a crappy pirated version she's so broke. "So, why do you keep coming here, buying stuff you could get cheaper literally anywhere else, in the middle of the night?"
Crossing her arms, Madge fixes him with a hopeful look. She wants a good story.
Maybe he's really a spy and this is a drop point. He might've been picking up secret messages all summer. He may have Jason Borne skills too. Madge might be on the cusp of getting dragged into an adventure.
Gale Hawthorne might be a high level operative and doesn't have time for movies.
Or he could be a drug dealer.
Probably a drug dealer.
That makes confronting him on his odd hours and weird shopping habits a bit ill-advised.
Gale Hawthorne finally lets his hand offering his card drop, tapping the counter with it a few times before sighing.
"The car isn't mine," he finally says. "I work at a dealership. They let me take cars home at night."
Madge blinks and sees her fantasies dissolve in front of her.
Not a drug dealer, not a rich kid, not a secret agent, and not a gifted entrepreneurial genius.
"I get hungry on the way home and this is just...convenient."
As a convenient store should be.
"Oh," is all Madge manages to say, feeling deflated.
Shrugging again, Gale gives her a tiny smile.
"Plus, you know, you're kinda hot."
Face burning up, Madge snatches the card from his hand and mumbles 'hardly' to herself as she swipes it.
Gale's smile widens.
"Well, the yellow isn't as nice as the crap they put on me," he gestures to his clothes, which wouldn't stand out on a yacht. "But it's not bad."
Rolling her eyes, Madge snorts. "First of all, it's golden. Second, it's awful."
Plus her hair is a disaster. She'd started fixing it once Gale began making a habit of coming by, but then her AC had gone out in her car, rendering all her efforts useless. Her makeup melted off her before she was even out of the parking lot of her apartment.
She's a hot mess, but not hot.
"Maybe you can wear something else then," he offers.
"This is the official uniform." For better or worse.
"Maybe you can wear something else somewhere else," he clarifies.
Madge holds his card out to him, slowly processing what he's saying.
"Like a date?"
He nods.
Cheeks practically blazing, Madge laughs, suddenly very self-conscious.
"You've said maybe twenty words to me all summer," she points out. "If you thought I was so 'hot' why haven't you talked to me?"
His hand jumps to his neck again.
"I was working on it," he mumbles. Glancing up, he grins. "I'm not too articulate in the middle of the night after ten hours of shuffling cars on a hot lot."
Madge snorts. "Better than eight hours overnight here."
"We can compare." He takes the card back. "You don't work tomorrow, right?"
"You know my schedule?" Madge gives him a skeptical look. "That's a little troubling."
"I'm observant, Marge."
Grimacing, Madge glances at her shirt.
"It's 'Madge' actually," she explains. "They messed up my shirts."
"I still get points for noticing, right?"
"You lose them for being a stalker."
He pulls at the hair at the nape of his neck. "I'm not-okay it's a little-I'm not following you home or anything. I just noticed we work the same schedule...almost."
Clearly he's nervous, a bit like a kid caught listening at a door, and Madge can't help but laugh at it. He isn't quite as intimidating now that he isn't some mysterious special operative or an eccentric millionaire. Just a cute guy with a better job than her, with much better perks.
"I can tell you where I work if it'll make you feel better."
"No," Madge tells him, "but you can take me somewhere really nice."
"Does that make stalking less creepy?"
She doesn't really think he's a creep, but since he has been kind of stalking her, she feels entitled to making him squirm.
"Not really. It's a start though."
He laughs, deep and booming, and Madge can't help but smile at it.
Maybe her summer job isn't ideal, but it might not be so awful after all.
#######
AN pt 2: No, Gale isn't pop culture illiterate, he just was not thinking and didn't expect an Iron Man reference at the moment. It happens to everyone. Also, the story thing is something both my mom and I do, and now this Madge does it too. It's the refuge of the bored I suppose.