Chapter Text
“I’m not going to waste my Sunday night playing Dungeons and Dragons with fucking Diego .”
“Johnny, we need at least four players! And right now we only have two!” From her place in one of the bookstore’s lounge chairs, Lucy looked over at him, giving him a look that was likely supposed to play to his sympathies. The catch to this trick from her was that it definitely wasn’t as potent as she thought it was.
The simply named Steel’s Books and Comics really could have been renamed to just Steel’s Books, if not for the menial selection of board games and single shelf of manga, and generally didn’t appeal to the crowd that was good for gathering interest in these sorts of things. Not to mention the store was relatively obscure, small, and peaceful, which was just how Johnny liked his workplaces.
“If he’s come around and signed up before me, he probably doesn’t want me to play.” He muttered in response to her, head ducking down to focus on rearranging the coins in the cash register by alphabetical order.
“You’d be surprised.”
Poking their head out of the storage room first, the entirety of Hot Pants came shortly after, carrying a box of new arrivals and planting them at the checkout- heavy textbooks, it looked like, which Johnny always marveled at their ability to carry single handedly.
“What, you think the asshole who comes around here just to bother me signed up for Lucy’s campaign kickstarter to spend some quality time with me? Hang out with us as besties?” He drawled sarcastically in their direction.
“If Steel catches you swearing like that around customers, he’ll kill you.”
“A customer tries to talk to me, I’ll kill them first.”
“If Steel catches you killing a customer, he’ll double kill you.”
Interrupting a brief diversion from the topic, Lucy huffed, walking up to the desk with her clipboard- admittedly, it was cute, hand drawn sign up spaces with a few doodles of fantasy creatures, and Diego and Hot Pants’ names jotted down. “Would you just give it a chance? I promise, if either of you guys have issues, I’ll find backups, but I really know you’re gonna enjoy it!”
The issue with Lucy is that in the end, you couldn’t really ever say no to her. She was too damn persistently convincing.
“Fine, fine. Jot me down. You just have to walk me through like, everything about it, kay?”
Maybe it was worth it in the way her smile went from ear to ear as she started berating him with fundamentals of character creation, before leaving the small shop with a wave and a promise of fun, but Johnny was still awfully hesitant about the whole thing.
Usually, at 5, an hour before the shop closed, HP would get off their shift, leaving Johnny to deal with the last stragglers and closing up. It was quiet as always and there was no real obligation to talk, which was another thing he liked about the job. If it looked like no one was going to buy something, he’d often get out and browse the shelves, or organize them. They were lower on the floor in comparison to a lot of other book shops, and he could easily reach up to almost the top in his chair.
Though, this time, some idiot had decided to re shelve one of the nonfiction volumes- interestingly, a biography on David Bowie, and Johnny had been struggling to inch it off the very top to put back where it belonged for a while.
A while in his book involved a lot of frustration, focus, and a lack of attention to the bells chiming at the door, declaring the arrival of a new customer.
“You know, I could probably get that for you.”
If he had been any more emotive, Johnny would’ve jumped out of his own skin. Instead though, with a mildly wide eyed stare, he turned to the owner of an accented, deeper voice behind him.
… What the shit? There were almost never people in here at this hour who weren’t middle aged people just off work looking to grab a read before closing, and there certainly weren’t young guys dressed like this making planned visits to Steel’s Books and Comics. The man interrupting his shelf struggle was tanned, tall, and would look from a Men’s Warehouse cover if not for ripped jeans, an awful, awful equally ripped hat, and a garishly tacky Hawaiian shirt.
As he was taking in the man dressed like a randomly generated Sim, the stranger apparently took his gawking as a confirmation for help, walking up and easily grabbing the biography. Instead of giving it to Johnny first, he flipped it over and grinned at him. Oh god. Those were definitely grills.
“I love Bowie! Are you gonna buy this?”
Johnny’s mouth hung open a moment, before a response formed itself. “I work here.”
The other man seemed pleasantly surprised, which was noted down as a bit of an odd reaction- usually people were just plain surprised. “Oh, well, I don’t have to worry about it being up for grabs? Do you want to read this?”
“I was, er, I was just trying to put it back where it belongs. Someone misfiled it.”
“More for me!” He waved it around briefly, before tucking it under an arm. “Ah, yes, it is good you’re here! Do you carry any of… err.” With one hand, he reached into the small pocket of that hideous shirt, unfolding a small text-packed paper and reading off- the pep gone from his voice, he suddenly sounded a bit robotic. “...Practical Clinical Pathology 2nd Edition?”
“Excuse me?”
The stranger looked sheepish. “A medical textbook. I need it, it’s the last one and I couldn’t find any copies in other shops around here.”
Johnny looked at the clock. 5:55 meant he could definitely start closing, say they were pretty much done for the day, and leave this guy hanging dry. There had to be an on campus store or a Barnes and Noble thirty minutes away.
“... We just got in a few new textbooks, I haven’t shelved them yet. C’mon.”
After what was certainly more than five minutes of looking through the box, Johnny pulled something out, certainly wordy and big enough to be a pre-med student’s material, and held it up to the grills guy, as he’d mentally dubbed him, in triumph, one that soon spread to the other’s.
“You really have it! Thank you!” He sounded pretty relieved. Johnny could admit, college did a lot to your mental state. Which is why he’d dropped out after year one.
“Ah, no problem. Take it, then, I’ll…” Noticing something about the book, his neutral expression deepened into a frown. “Hm. It’s so new, we haven’t priced it yet.”
“Not a problem!” The stranger, after fishing for a wallet, held out a credit card. “Charge me whatever for it, plus...” He took the Bowie biography from under his arm, putting it on the checkout as well. “This!”
He blinked, before looking at the clock. 6:19. He should have closed almost twenty minutes ago.
“You got it, dude.”
Three hundred fifty bucks went out of the account- he was probably underselling it, considering how much these things cost, and he handed the two books back in a brown paper bag. “Thanks for coming.”
The other, however, was preoccupied with a clipboard at the front.
“I used to hear about this game all the time! I didn’t know it was popular here.”
A bit irate from the hold up, Johnny nodded. “Yeah, we’re almost full.”
He pointed at it, as if it wasn't obvious where his attention lay. “Can I sign up?”
“There’s uh… not anything stopping you.”
A quick scrawl of assumedly, his name, accompanied the ticking of the clock that was holding Johnny’s patience hostage. The stranger holding him up gave a quick flash of his grill-filled grin before putting it down, grabbing his bag, and running out.
“I hope I can see you again there, top shelf!”
That should have annoyed him much more than it did.
Before he headed out, after properly closing everything down and locking the place up, Johnny passed by the sign up sheet. Just out of pure curiosity, he glanced at it.
There was a phone number, and a unique name.
“Huh.”
johnny j (4:28 PM) > unknown number:
is this gyro zeppeli from the book store? we’re planning on doing a test session of that dnd thing you signed up for this sunday. you free?