Re: Comic Book Heroes: Alex/Holly/Billy
The chair came forward with a soft thump on the worn carpet behind the registers, and Alex came up out of it in the same movement, unfolding himself from the cracked pleather and scratched metal, launched like a slow-motion, slouchy, teenaged catapult. He wasn't tall to begin with, and little things like borderline malnutrition and coffee addiction had pretty much set his adult height at the 5-foot-7 he now claimed in his decidedly worse-for-wear and almost certainly-at-least-thirdhand Vans. Sure, his socks and feet got wet when it rained, but it was better than going around barefoot. It would probably be something he'd want to address before it started snowing, but that was Future Alex's problem, and he wasn't a dude that Present Alex usually gave a lot of thought to.
He leaned forward almost carelessly on the counter, still all part of the same motion of coming up out of the chair, palms flat and fingers just poking out of the tops of his sleeves. Thrift shop refugees clung to his hips, cinched there by a tattered cloth belt with a pull-through buckle: the type that had probably been popular around the time he'd been born. The pants themselves were not made to be baggy and yet somehow still were, on him, but when you only had so much money to spend on things, keeping a roof over your head sometimes meant a little less to eat. It had been better though, recently, and he'd graduated from frighteningly gaunt to just painfully skinny in the couple months he'd been in Repose. Progress.
Alex considered the guy with the loud pants for a brief moment. His own probably weren't any better, he reflected in that moment, though muted, which was more his style (as far as things like a personal style went. It was usually like, if it mostly fit and was mostly free, sign him up). the wide green and tan plaid on blue pattern twisted around his legs in a way that probably wasn't pleasing to every eye. "'s goin' on?" He asked, really getting better about looking people in the eye and not mumbling as he talked. He'd worked hard at kicking his small-redneck-mountain-town accent to the curb in the past few years, but it still made itself known in his soft consonants, dropped word endings, and the way he seemed to join multiple words together like they were Lego bricks. Not that he'd ever had those.
When the second person approached the counter, he tilted his head, a little curious, but didn't think too much of it, assuming the guys were together. Probably a couple of the people he'd been messaging with on the forums, especially when he asked Alex if, well, he was Alex. He looked over to this guy and froze, just slightly, almost imperceptibly even to himself, when he saw the dog tags. Look, he'd never had any proof that the government people who had taken him were military. But like, that seemed right, right? Except for that slight hesitation, the slight widening of blue eyes, his generally passive, indifferent, and vaguely friendly expression didn't waver. Too much. "Yeh, 'm Alex. You guys got holds, or...?" It was the closest you'd probably ever get to a cheery, hello, can I help you? anyone got from a guy like Alex. Shit, maybe he should've done the small talk thing. He was comfortable enough chatting with plenty of people online, but this was different. They could see him. He wasn't sure how he felt about being seen, even if it was universally unavoidable.