Chapter Text
[--should have enough for rent this week, one chocolate bar won’t hurt!] says the thoughts of the young person of indeterminate gender in front of Nathan as he pushes through their purchases, the conveyor belt still slightly sticky from whatever that lady from an hour ago with the superiority complex and hair that just begged Nate to mockingly say ‘shall I get the manager for you?’ had spilled on it. He guessed some kind of skincare product. He hadn’t been on this register an hour ago, though, so he’d only heard the fringes of it from his seat in the break room, and seen her through the eyes of the poor cashier that had been at the register at the time.
Telepathy sure did make this job fun, he thought, even as, out loud, he asks, putting on his usual mildly bemused customer service tone, “Will that be all today?”
The customer shakes themself, as if they had barely noticed he was there, and shoot him a lopsided little smile, even as they toss a Snickers bar onto the conveyor belt. “Just this, thanks, then I’m good.”
He nods, informs them wryly that he thinks it’s a fine choice, scans it through, and offers them a smile. “That’ll be eighty four dollars, seventy nine cents, thank you, will you be paying with cash or card?” The customer brandishes their credit card, he pushes the payment through to the little pin-pad scanner thing he never really bothered to remember the name of, though he was sure it was impressive enough and vaguely tech-ish, and when the payment goes through, he wishes them a good day, already reaching out with his mind for the next customer, not particularly wanting to listen to their new thoughts of: [Wow, he’s kinda cute, if you go for the rugged type, wonder if he--].
Imagine his surprise when his mind meets little more than static. Disjointed, kind of crazy static. Clearly this was no ordinary person.
His suspicions of this are confirmed not by the customer’s appearance, no, he hasn’t even looked at them yet. No, what has confirmed his suspicions is the assortment of items that seem to have just been dropped onto the conveyor belt, entirely thoughtlessly, and uncaring of that unknown stickiness.
Six cucumbers; relatively average in size, one a little curved. A seemingly jumbo box of unflavored gelatin powder. He didn’t even know they sold those here. Finally, a similarly sized box, which he also didn’t know they sold here, of condoms, the bright purple packaging proclaiming proudly in a blocky silver font, ‘Extra Small!’ as if that was a point of pride in their sales tactic.
When he looks up, for a half second, he kind of wishes he hadn’t. But the moment hardly lasts, because the man, and he’s pretty sure it is a man under all the thick, ropy scarring that covers his face, spreading down his neck and down past the collar of his shirt, is staring right at him with big brown eyes, so uncomfortably earnest, at odds with the kaleidoscopic insanity of his unreadable mind, and his voice is rumbling, hollow, and surprisingly pleasant when he says steadily, “This is
exactly
what it looks like.”