Work Text:
Brooklynn was hard at work at her minimum wage job at Target. Sure, she could have kept making videos, but her dads decided this would be “good for her resume” and “help her adjust to the real world.” She sighed as she shoved another box of crummy off brand cereal onto the shelf. Working at Target was normally tolerable, but she had been having a really bad day. She had already been yelled at by some middle aged woman twice, and people kept recognizing her as being one of the members of the Nublar Six. She had finally put the last box on the shelf when she heard a couple familiar voices from the other side.
“Im telling you I could totally take a black bear in a fight”
“And I'm telling you that you are severely underestimating how bad one of them could mess you up”
Brooklyn stood up and crept around the side of the shelf, slowly peeking into the other aisle. There she saw Ben and Darius, locked in their heated debate about fighting a bear or whatever.
“Black bears are total coward Darius. I could hit it once and it would go running for the hills”
Brooklynn rolled her eyes, and fully walked around the shelves towards the duo.
“Guys what are you doing here don't you have jobs?” Brooklynn groaned.
“It's my day off today and I need groceries, is that a crime or something?” Darius crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at her.
“You needed groceries,” she raised her eyebrow and crossed her arms back at him. “So you went completely out of your way to shop at the target you know I work at?”
“We just happened to already be in the area, total coincidence.” Ben stated, very matter of factly.
“Oh yeah I'm sure you guys just happened to go on your little date right near where I work and it TOTALLY slipped your mind that I work here.”
“Did all the hair dye fumes fry your brain so hard you can't imagine a scenario like that?” Ben rolled his eyes.
“You’re one to talk about brain damage Ben.”
“HEY my brain is totally functional, in fact I-”
“ANYWAY,” Brooklynn interjected, “How about you FINISH “shopping” and STOP bothering me AT WORK.”
“Alright alright jeez,” Ben and Darius turned to go somewhere else in the store, leaving Brooklynn to her shelf stocking.
Around half an hour later, Brooklynn was now onto reshelving the kids toy section. She had to resist the urge to grab the first kid she saw and throw them the way these kids love throwing toys they don't own. She was about to grab another ugly cocomelon doll when she heard some guy yell from behind her. Brooklynn immediately sprinted to the back of the store, and skidded to a stop in front of an absolutely crazy scene. Ben was in a physical fight with a huge guy. He had his teeth sunk into the man's bicep and the guy was violently trying to yank Ben off of him. She turned to Darius, who was standing horrified on the sidelines.
“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED???”
“I DON'T KNOW! We were just looking at the dinosaur toys and joking and this guy bumped into Ben and Ben tried to ignore it but the guy got all mad at him and started yelling about respect or something? And then he tried to grab Ben and Ben freaked out and bit him and now this.” Darius rambled off the story as quickly as possible before gesturing vaguely at the fight.
“Ok well security is probably on their way and if you don't want your stupid ass boyfriend to get ARRESTED then you better do something.”
“Wh- he's not-”
“Literally could not care less go get him.”
Darius sighed and looked back at the escalating fight. Ben was still locked on, and the other guy had opted to try and roll around on the floor to get this feral child off him. Darius inched closer to the fight, and plotted out his move. His eyes darted around for a few moments before he reached out his arms and grabbed the tails of Ben's bandana.
“BEN LET GO,” he yelled, yanking back Ben's head.
His teeth lost grip with the man's arm and he was thrown backwards as the man pushed him away and ran off. Ben was left sitting on the ground with his bandana tails still gripped in Darius’s hand. He looked like an indignant kitten being held by its scruff.
“Alright, alright, I’m calm,” Ben stood up and brushed himself off like nothing happened. “Are we gonna finish shopping or what?”
Darius looked incredulously at him as Brooklynn interjected, “You are going to LEAVE RIGHT NOW before you get ARRESTED.
“Kay” Ben walked off towards the exit, trailed by a still bamboozled Darius.
Brooklynn breathed out a sigh of relief. Finally she could get back to her shitty minimum wage job without being bothered by dumb and dumber. Right before she got back to the aisle she was cleaning, the intercom of the Target sprung to life.
“Brooklynn to the manager's office. Brooklynn to the manager's office.”
“Are you fucking kidding me.”
Brooklyn sat across from her manager with her arms crossed, bathing in awkward silence.
“So am I getting fired? or-”
Her manager cut her off “Don't worry you aren't in trouble, there was just an incident in the store, apparently some teenager jumped a guy in the back of the store and bit him.”
Brooklynn averted her gaze and forced out a laugh “Wow haha that's crazy who would do that.”
“Yeah, anyway, per corporate policy we have to call all our employees back and give them a spiel about banned customers.”
“Alright lay it on me.”
“So technically all our employees have to be up to date on all customers banned from this location in the last 6 months because they’re the most likely to trespass and blah blah blah y’know.”
Her manager whipped her computer screen around, “I’ll just let you rapid fire through these profiles and get back to work.”
Brooklynn grabbed the mouse and started clicking through all the pictures and descriptions. There were way more of them than she had expected. She finally got to the last page and her jaw dropped.
“Yeah that's the one from today, I just filled it out a few minutes ago” her manager said as she flipped the screen back around.
“No. Way.”
The picture was Ben and Darius walking into the store, with a small description of both of them next to it. Now, she had expected Ben to be banned, obviously, because he literally got in a fight in the middle of the store, but Darius?
She was never going to let him live this one down.