"Oh my God, the kit."
"Ellie."
"That's a full basket. That's fourteen shirts on a floor."
"Sit down. You've been on that tile five minutes."
"I'm the cleaner," she said, already getting her leggings on with her hair in her face. "It's the one thing in this building I'm any good at."
So he sat and watched her do it, and it was the first time all night she had looked comfortable.
She had the trolley out of the corner in about eight seconds. Rrrr-rrrr. She went round the floor with a blue roll and a spray bottle in a crouching shuffle, Spritz. Spritz. Wipe. Wipe.
She hit the wet patch, hit the second one she also could not account for, did the legs of the bench, and lifted all fourteen shirts back into the basket by the shoulders so they went in flat. Rustle.
"There's a stain on that tile," she said, "and there is nothing on God's earth I can do about it tonight."
"Right."
"It'll come out Monday with the proper stuff."
Rrrr-rrrr. She pushed the trolley back into the corner with the wonky wheel going the whole way.
"The bibs are still soaking. I told Denise I'd do them Monday."
"Ellie."
"What."
"You're doing the bibs."
"I'm doing the bibs," she agreed, and then stopped, because she had heard herself.
She looked at her watch.
"Quarter to."
"Is that bad?"
"It's fine." She put the spray bottle down on the trolley. Clink. "I should go."
She did not go.
Fweee. The dryer behind the wall, cooling down.
Angell waited.
She was stood in the middle of the floor with her coat six feet away on a hook and her hands doing nothing in particular, and she was looking at the wall above his head.
Fair skin still flushed from the neck down, blue eyes fixed on nothing, blonde hair falling out of its band. He had walked past her in corridors for eight months and managed not to see any of it.
"Do you want your coat?"
"No."
"Right."
"I want something else first."
He waited.
And this time she did not take ten minutes over it. She came over and stood in front of him with her chin up and her face going red, and said it in her work voice, the flat one she used for telling people where the bibs went.
"I want to suck your cock."
Ping.
[QUEST: LET HER ASK YOU FOR THE SECOND THING (1/1)]
The counter moved in the corner of his eye, and he ignored it completely, because she was already going down onto her knees on the wet tile in front of the bench.
"Ellie."
"I've wanted to do it for weeks." She said it to his knee. "I've thought about it more than I thought about the other thing."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know I don't have to."
She looked up. Her hair had come out of the band again, and she pushed it back with her wrist.
"Do I just do it, or do you tell me?"
"Whatever you want."
"That is a rubbish answer, and you keep giving it to me."
"Then do it, and I'll tell you if you're wrong."
"Right."
She got her hand round his dick, and he was already most of the way there from watching her cross the floor, and she made a small noise at how it felt in her fist.
"Oh. It's getting hard again already."
"You're on your knees in front of me. Of course it is."
She looked at it for a second, close up, her fist moving once, slow, from the root to the head.
A bead of him came up at the tip, and she put her thumb in it and spread it round the head, and he had to put a hand flat on the bench.
Then she put her mouth on it.
Hnh. His head went back against the locker. Thunk.
She had no idea what she was doing, and she went at it anyway. Too much teeth for about five seconds, then none at all.
Her tongue went flat and dragged up the underside of him from the base to the head and back down again.
Then the head was in her mouth, her lips stretched round him, her tongue working it in small circles while she figured out the rest.
She kept her fist on the bottom half of him, because she had worked out inside three seconds that she could not get anywhere near all of it in.
Every time she came back up, her cheeks hollowed, and every time she went back down she took a little more.
"Mmph."
"That. Do that again."
She did that again.
"Slower coming up."
She went slower coming up, Gluck, and he swore at the ceiling, and she made a sound around him that went straight up his spine.
She came off him with a thin string of spit still joining her lip to the head of his dick, and it broke and landed on her chin, and she did not wipe it.
"Was that a good noise?"
"That was a good noise."
"Right."
She went back down, and after that she stopped asking, because she had started watching his face instead.
Blue eyes up over the top of his cock, checking, adjusting, going back and repeating anything that produced a sound, and by two minutes in she had got good at it, faster than made any sense.
Gluck. Gluck. Schlk.
He took a handful of her hair, that beautiful blonde hair, and held it loose, so she could pull away whenever she wanted.
She moaned round him, and her free hand went straight down the front of her leggings and found her clit.
"Mm. Mmm."
"Are you doing what I think you're doing?"
She nodded, twice, around him, and did not stop. Schlk. Schlk. Her fingers working in fast circles under the wet fabric.
He looked down at her.
Blonde head going, her lips stretched round his cock, one small fist working the rest of him, the other hand shoved down her leggings and moving fast, her shoulders working, and the wet sound of her mouth coming up off the floor of an away changing room at Meadow Lane.
"Ellie. Off. I'm going to finish."
She did not come off.
She looked up at him and shook her head about half an inch, and kept going, and six seconds later he came in her mouth with his hand flat on the wall and his teeth together.
She stayed exactly where she was through all four pulses of it with her eyes shut and her fist still going.
She swallowed. Gulp. Coughed once. Swallowed again. Some of it came out at the corner of her mouth, and she caught it on a finger and put it back in.
Then she sat back on her heels and wiped her chin with the back of her wrist, and her hand was still down the front of her leggings.
"I'm nearly there," she said. "Don't say anything."
He did not say anything.
Schlk. Schlk. Schlk.
He watched her do it.
Her head went forward onto his knee and her shoulders started to shake, and he could see her hand moving in the front of her leggings, fast, and her boobs rising and falling, and two of her fingers had gone from her clit down into her pussy and back, wet, and then all of her locked at once, her cunt clenching round her own fingers, and she made almost no noise at all, and afterwards she stayed exactly where she was for a while.
"Right," she said, into his knee.
"Don't."
"No. I'm having that one."
She was dressed and out of the door six minutes later with her coat on, Zip, and her hair up and her bag over her shoulder, and she stopped in the doorway.
"Monday."
"Monday."
"I'll be in at half twelve."
"I'll be in at eight."
"I know you will." She had the door open with her shoulder, and she did not look back at him. "Do the far pitch on Monday."
"I do it every Monday."
"I know," Ellie said. "I'm telling you I'll be looking."
And she went.
Thunk. The door. Then her shoes going away up the corridor, Tap-tap-tap, and a shutter, Rattle-clang, and a car starting out on Meadow Lane and pulling off. Vroom.
Reece Angell sat on a bench in an away changing room with a ruined towel and a wet floor and put both hands over his face.
Ping-ping.
[ALL CONDITIONS HAVE BEEN MET]
[YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE QUEST: "GET THE KIT GIRL TO STOP PRETENDING IT'S ABOUT THE LAUNDRY!"]
[REWARD HAS BEEN PAID]
[CHECK THE REWARD THROUGH "STATUS"]
He took his hands down.
"No," he said.
The panel waited.
He got up and walked the length of the room, and it came with him, the same distance in front of his face the whole way. He put his hand out and went through it and felt nothing at all, and it did not so much as flicker. Swish.
You are ill. That is what this is. There is a thing in your head, and it has waited until the single worst possible moment to show itself.
"Status," he said.
Nothing happened.
He said it again. He said it with his eyes shut, which was worse. He said it in German, and at the ceiling, and mouthed it with no sound at all, and the four lines stayed exactly where they were, hanging over the wet patch on the tile.
Then his phone went off in his bag, and he nearly went through the roof.
Bzzz. Bzzz.
Dessie Quinn: monday. 8. dont be late
Dessie Quinn: and think about what i said