Chapter Text
[00011000]
Jett hadn’t meant for it to happen. One moment she was falling in love with her job and the next, well… a certain new coworker made herself comfortable in the back of her mind. She told herself that it was just proximity. It had to be. She barely knew the woman- learning her last name from the online scheduling portal. Valdez. Tala Valdez.
They barely worked together before Neon moved to warehouse, choosing the endless task of finding online orders over practiced smiles and conversations with customers. And even then, Neon never left Jett’s mind.
“Hopefully we don’t get a rush this morning. The snack room is a mess and we just got a huge pallet…”
Jett took her eyes off her coworker Gekko as Neon walked towards the sales floor. A smile tugged at her lips as she watches the woman disappear into the keyboard isle, probably working on another stack of online orders.
She nodded mindlessly to whatever Gekko said, even making her own grunt of annoyance at the pallet that sat in the room behind them. But she kept her eyes where she last saw blue and yellow hair before it disappeared into the isles.
Yeah. Proximity. That's all it is.
—
Neon was good at her job. Too good. Jett couldn’t tell if she loved it or hated it. In just the few weeks that Neon worked in the front-end, she learned the struggles of running the registers from unorganized orders to chaotic weekends.
“Who are you looking for?”
Jett broke her eyes from the shelves to find Neon watching her look for an online order. Her eyes turned back to the countless boxes, reading the names on every slip of paper.
“Uh, Smith. Tom Smith- said it was a bunch of PC parts.”
Neon immediately rounded the corner and pulled a boxed PC case with at least ten different other products on top of it further into view. Jett took the order slip from Neon’s hands.
“Thanks, I appreciate it-”
“It’s a lot of stuff. I’ll help you bring it out.”
Jett would have froze if it wasn’t for the busy line waiting for them outside. Instead, she nodded her thanks and grabbed as much as she could in her arms, “I’m at register thirteen.”
This happened more than once. And yet, Neon was the only one who ever did it. She was the only one in warehouse who took the time to help the front find the orders and help bring it out no less.
And every time, Jett made sure to thank her, hoping that Neon could feel that her thanks went beyond the help.
—
Later that day, Jett caught Neon having a conversation with one of the managers out of the corner of her eye while she was taking care of a customer. She glanced behind her and saw Neon’s online order sitting on the counter behind them. From the gentle smile from Deadlock and sheepish one from Neon, Jett could only assume that Neon was just learning they couldn’t do a online orders.
Their eyes connected.
“Picking up your web pickup?”
Neon blushed with a nod, “Yeah- I am.”
Jett smiled easily at her, “I’ll take care of you after this customer.”
Her heart pounded in her chest. This was the first time they would be properly interacting with one another since Neon switched departments. And even before that, it was sparse awkward conversations Jett always initiated.
When she bid farewell with her customer, Jett waved Neon over, “I got you over here.”
Neon rounded the register’s counter while Jett grabbed the cooler and order sheet from the counter behind them. As she walked back to her register, she tried her best to not stare too long at the details of the sheet. The phone number- too creepy to memorize and too many numbers anyways. The email looked like a throwaway. The mailing address was insignificant, but it told her Neon lived only half an hour away from the store.
“I guess I should ring this up as a normal transaction, yeah?”
Neon laughed it off, “Yeah. Iselin was telling me how we can’t do online orders. This is an early birthday gift for myself which is this Sunday, and I just wanted to be able to pick it up at the end of my shift today.”
“Oh, well happy early birthday,” Jett commented as she made a mental note of what date that was. She totally wasn’t going to look up the astrology sign and its compatibility with hers when she gets home tonight. Totally not.
Neon continued her rant, “Like I totally get why. Because it’s like we’re ‘reserving’ the products and removing the chance for the customers to get it, but I also don’t want to walk around the store just to get my item, you know?”
Jett nodded along. Personally, she didn’t mind browsing the store after her shift from time to time- it gave her the opportunity to learn her store more. But as Neon works in warehouse, she probably knew the whole space pretty well by now.
Jett pulled up the employee purchase screen, “Are you the only tvaldez?”
Neon nodded, “The one and only.”
And yet, Jett managed to input Neon’s employee ID wrong. Twice.
“What am I doing wrong?” Jett chuckled as she turned her screen towards Neon.
“Oh, you’re missing the L.”
Jett shook her head at herself as she typed the ID in correctly this time. “I guess I just don’t know how to spell today.”
Jett finished the transaction while Neon told her about her plans to rebuild her PC. She wondered if they played the same games.
When Jett handed over Neon’s cooler in a bag, she looked at Neon with a look that she hoped didn’t give away the fact she was trying to memorize her smile, “Again, happy birthday.”
“Thank you!” Neon beamed before turning her attention towards everyone else working the register, “I’ll see y’all tomorrow, whoever’s working.”
—
[00011001]
See ya’ll tomorrow, whoever’s working.
Jett stood in the front-end warehouse with Neon and a couple other coworkers before the store opened. They were chatting and killing time before they had to lock in. While chatting, they somehow got on the topic of Neon’s online order once again. Neon explained how she didn’t know it was against policy.
Jett’s mind drifted back to two days earlier when she had spotted the order. Her first thought was Neon had quit. Why else would she have an online order? She asked the warehouse associate working at the time if he knew anything about it, and he just made the joke of a customer having the same exact first and last name.
“Yeah, I was worried you left us,” Jett added to the conversation. She appeared relaxed, arms crossed over her chest while she leaned against the edge of one shelf. Except she braced as she watched for Neon’s reaction. She waited for Neon to see right through her. Instead, Neon just laughed with everyone else.
“Nah, I’m still here.”
—
Jett thought she was out of the woods. The transaction yesterday was a one time thing, and her and Neon would go back to barely crossing paths as they both did their jobs. But of course, it’s never that simple.
Ten minutes into the store opening, Neon dragged a case beside Jett’s register, “I’m going to buy this from you real quick.”
The store was dead, so this was the perfect time for her to do so.
“I saw this case that I really like when restocking this morning, and I saw it was the last one. And you know with how the deals are right now, I gotta buy it now or else someone else might get it at the end of my shift.”
And just like that, Neon was standing in front of Jett’s register once again. She somehow managed to mess up Neon’s employee ID again.
Once Neon dragged her new case to the back and properly began her work, Jett couldn’t help but let her mind wander. What were the chances that just as she realized a certain warehouse associate remained on her mind longer than she should, that they would have two extended interactions in two days. She figured the first time was just her luck- and she could just push it to the back of her mind. But two times?
Jett found herself in a hole with a shovel in her hands, and she just kept digging.
—
[00011011]
Jett sighed in relief as she walked into work on Sunday. It was Neon’s birthday, which meant she most likely took the day off. Therefore, no distractions. Jett could do her job without catching glances of blue and yellow hair out of the corner of her eyes all day.
The day started out busy, but easy. It was like any Sunday. But out of nowhere, a rush hit. A rush that made the checkout line almost as long as it was on Black Friday. Jett kept glancing to the side where the line bled onto the sales floor with no reprieve in sight. It was so busy that every manager was on a register, and even that didn’t seem to be enough.
Jett worked through it one customer at a time, determined and steady. She thrived in moments like this where it was so busy you didn’t have time to think. All you could do was take the next customer and do the best you could.
She got a customer with a bunch of smaller low-dollar items. Jett took this as a smile reprieve to scan the store between each item. The line still wrapped around the impulse wall, every register had a customer in front of it, and the room was so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think. Jett scanned the main line to take note of where the managers stood and then-
Halfway down the main line. Unmistakable blue and yellow hair. Neon was out of uniform- wearing a tan leather jacket with a black tshirt underneath instead. She paired it with jeans and sneakers, and her hair was down which Jett had never seen before.
She looked good. Really good.
Something tugged at Jett, and suddenly she wanted to see Neon like this more.
And by the looks of it, it seemed Neon was with her parents, probably picking up more PC parts for her birthday.
Jett kept stealing glances towards the register where Neon stood between her customers.
She hoped Neon looked over.
She hoped Neon DIDN’T look over.
She hoped-
Part of Jett wanted to have an excuse to walk by the mainline. To grab a cart or the flatbed. To have the opportunity to walk by the register Neon stood at and “notice” her, wishing her a happy birthday on her actual birthday. Yet Jett knew she wouldn’t take the chance if it ever presented itself. And it never did.
She transferred all of her customer’s items into the cart beside her, and when she looked over again, Neon was gone.
—
Later that night, Jett sat at her desk gaming to decompress after the unexpected busy day and unexpected visitor when something popped in her mind. The holiday party.
Jett had signed up for the company’s holiday party that was set to be in two weeks after being postponed three times due to weather. She already wasn’t a huge fan of parties, but now another problem came to mind.
Would Neon be there? Did she add a plus one? If so, who would be her plus one? A friend or someone more? Even if she signed up for the party, was she still able to go on the rescheduled date?
Jett hadn’t thought to check the RSVP list when it was up, and now she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The answers were eating at her, and so she did the next most logical thing she could do. She texted her closest friend from work.
Jett:are you still planning on going to that party
Iso: yeah as of right now
Iso: you debating??
Jett didn’t answer. She didn’t explain why she asked either. She didn’t want to say anything just yet, because saying something meant there was no room left for denial. So instead, she changed topics.
—
[11010010]
A couple days later, and it seemed the holiday season had truly come to an end. The store was slower than Jett had ever seen it. So much to the fact she could make multiple trips between the snacks closet and the impulse isles to restock.
During one of her trips, she saw Neon standing in front of the register beside hers, getting checked out by Iso. She paused. She could continue restocking, or she could…
Jett casually rounded her register to take a sip of her drink just as Neon went to pay for whatever it was she was getting.
“Hey,” Jett started as casually as possible, “Did you have a good birthday?”
Neon’s eyes lit up as she began to retell her Sunday. Jett was too enamored by Neon lighting up and talking animatedly about her birthday to fully grasp what she said. She heard something about parents and shopping.
“Yeah, I saw that you came in during the middle of the shit show,” Jett laughed.
And in that moment, Jett knew she crossed a line in her mind. The first two interactions were mere coincidence, but this one was deliberate. How many more times could Jett do this before she dug the hole so deep she couldn’t see the top?
And it turned out Neon wasn’t at the end of her shift like she thought. For the next hour, Neon continued to hover around the front, helping with rearranging the front now that the store was entering normal business operations.
Jett would steal glances whenever she could, smiling like an idiot whenever nobody was looking. She hoped Iso didn’t catch on.
They crossed paths a couple times, both going in and out of the snack closet to refill the isles. At one point, Jett’s gaze lingered a moment too long. Neon caught her gaze and before Jett could look away, Neon smiled at her.
Proximity my ass.