Webster's: Holly & Elijah
Holly had closed up, as promised, at 10 pm. It was kind crazy during the holiday, actually. He had a bunch of vintage stuff that neighboring county stores didn't have, and he couldn't even take the credit for that. Whoever had kit this store out? Had stocked it with like a crazy amount of high-$$$ collectibles. He'd pimped the store online in some places, and it meant they had a lot of foot traffic from the Capital. Gramps was making bank that Holly was pretty sure Gramps didn't actually need, and he wasn't even pulling in a paycheck himself. Anyway, he wasn't sullen about it, right? This place had been his mom's life, and then his dad's, and even in another timeline he felt, like, responsible for it. Gramps was just going to let it collect dust and fall into obscurity. So, right, he was counting the till at 10.
A hipster playlist was still going overhead, and he was kinda lost in thought about Christmas, right? Christmas, and how this year would maybe be different than all the useless and crappy ones preceding it. There wouldn't be anyone to drag home from the bar, for starters; there was a reason he wasn't going to meet his mom until after the 25th.
Jeans, a tee, and a sweater that Noah would definitely label as professor-ish, Holly was behind the counter when the guy with the face-obscuring hat knocked on the door. Okay, look, if he hadn't already talked to some guy named Elijah about coming by? He would've called Repose's sluggish PD right then, but he assumed this was the Hathorne guy. The name was familiar from home, but, like, not in a personal way. That family had been way too old for Holly to know them personally or anything, but, right, Holly rounded out from behind the counter, and he unlocked the door and pushed it out to the guy with the extensive facial hair.
"Are we going for hipster, or...?" Holly asked as an opener. Holly was big, thick, 6'2 and taller in the Docs he wore. "You must be Elijah. Come on in." Holly would've been totally unsurprised to learn that the guy thought he was a girl. He expected that more on the forums, to be honest, but it was a small town, and the version of him here had been some sports hero, so he got they all just kinda knew, because they thought he, Holly, this Holly, was him. Anyway, Holly was feeling pretty okay, and even that mind-numbing buzzing wasn't bugging him as much as it usually did, and the pain in his ankle was just a twinge. So, come on in, guy. If Elijah did? Holly locked up after him.