For @avalonlights - thank you SO MUCH for your prompt and your donation to Harringrove for Australia! The prompt was Secret Admirer from the @harringroveweekoflove list. I hope you like it!
@buildyourwalls, you’re the best beta I could ask for, thank you lovely!
“That’s two dollars and thirty cents for the rental, and six dollars for the late return,” Steve says. He kind of likes the way he sounds like he knows what he’s doing, even if it’s just at work. “Sorry, man, but rules are rules.”
The customer, a thin guy in his twenties with glasses too big for his face, scrunches his nose. “You’re really going to give me a hard time about a couple of hours?” he says. “Come on, it’s only a day late. It should be three dollars.”
“You have to get it in before ten,” Steve says, not for the first time. He looks pointedly at the clock on the wall; it’s twenty-five to one. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, sure you are,” the man grouses, fumbling in his pocket for some cash. “Bet you’re just loving this, right? Hold onto your power, man, because—” He puts a couple of fives onto the counter. “How much was it total, again?”
Steve bites his lip, reaching for the calculator. It’s not that he can’t work it out - he knows it’s not a difficult sum - but he gets stressed when he has to think about math in the store, with people around him. “Eight dollars thirty,” he says.
The man looks up at him. “What, you had to look that up?” He doesn’t sound unkind, exactly, just amused. “Brain gone to sleep?”
“Something like that,” Steve replies woodenly. Yeah, something like that - something like the same reason he’s here, working at Family Video, and not at college like everyone else he knows.