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The godsdamned iPhone was doing That Thing again where it didn’t want to unlock for him even though he was holding it up exactly how Dalyria had showed him when she picked it out for him last week. Astarion grumbled and held the infuriating thing a bit higher, scowling down at the reflective black screen and willing it to corporate.
“Ah! Is that one of those newfangled Facial Identification cellphones?”
Astarion startled and nearly dropped the offending bit of tech. He willed his scowl into a halfway-pleasant smile and looked up at the apparent source of the overly-chipper question. A human man, silvered and sagging, likely somewhere in the same relative age bracket as Astarion but looking much worse for wear because of it, was beaming up at him from the seat of the motorized shopping cart he had at some point driven up to be next to the greeter podium.
“Yes,” he sighed, tucking the phone back into the pocket of his chinos, “My well-meaning neighbor selected it for me when my old cellphone finally stopped working. I told her I wanted exactly what I had before but apparently they don’t make that model anymore. So then with the supposed infinite wisdom she has accumulated in all thirty years of her young life she suggested this infernal thing instead.”
The man tipped his head knowingly. “I had much the same issue last year. I wanted a good old fashioned ‘dumb phone,’ as I like to call it, but the only ones available were all smart.” He quietly huffed a laugh at his own joke. Astarion hummed politely in acknowledgement. The man continued on with a smile, gesticulating between them with a liver-spotted hand to emphasize his point. “Everyone wants a million apps these days!” he continued, “What happened to a simple brick? Or even a flipphone! With those you don’t have to worry about unlocking them. Why does my cellphone need to be locked, anyway? No one is interested in what’s on there!”
“Or they shouldn’t be, if they are,” Astarion replied, a genuine smile leaking through the carefully crafted mask of customer service. The man nodded enthusiastically.
Suddenly there was a commotion of noise from the front doors as a group of teenagers poured in. Astarion attempted to wave to them as they entered but not a single one looked his way. With a sigh he turned back to the man and gestured toward the interior of the store. As nice as it was to have a customer actually acknowledge his existence, he wasn’t supposed to sit and chat like this. If Wulbren caught him socializing he would be at risk of being written up. Again.
“Well, welcome to Walmart, sir. Anything I can help direct you toward, today?” he asked, trying his best to infuse a tone of ‘I am gently ending this conversation’ into his words. The man looked slightly crestfallen at that, which made Astarion’s chest do a strange little flip, but then a strangled whirring noise filled the air as the motorized cart was sent forward past the podium.
“No, no, I’m alright,” the stranger said, “I know exactly where I’m going.”
Astarion waited until he was out of the man’s line of sight before trying (and failing) again to unlock his screen, rules be damned. Wulbren would be angry with him for being on his cellphone, too, but at least he wouldn’t have to deal with being admonished in front of a customer.
The next day, the man was back.
This time, Astarion had been too distracted explaining to a frazzled looking half-orc woman where the baby formula was located to notice his approach, so he once again startled when the too-cheery voice filled the void of silence left by the woman hurrying off in the direction of the infant supply section.
“Hello, once again! I’m Gale, by the way,” the man—Gale, apparently—anounced. Astarion grimaced and turned to watch as the motorized cart nudged just a bit closer.
“Hello,” he replied, “Did you forget something yesterday? Anything I could direct you toward this time?”
Gale smiled warmly and shook his head. “Just wanted to get out of the house again,” he said, “Gods know I spend far too much time cooped up in there with only Tara for company.”
Astarion didn’t much feel like asking who ‘Tara’ was, but Gale continued on regardless, answering the unasked question.
“Tara is my cat!” he laughed. Astarion wasn’t sure if there had been anything funny said, but here the man was, laughing anyway. He nodded politely.
“Do you need anything for her?” he asked, pointing toward one of the back corners of the store, “The pet department is—”
“Oh! No thank you,” Gale cut in, “As I said, I didn’t really need to purchase anything today. Just thought I would get a bit of exercise in.”
Astarion resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow at the cart. Gale followed his eyes and smiled sheepishly. “The walk from my home to my car and then from the car into the store entrance is quite a bit for me, I’m afraid.” He tipped his chin toward the walking cane tucked against his side. “So it’s the cart for me as soon as I’m inside. Although it’s not all bad, I suppose. I like to think of it as taking little joy rides.”
He had been talking with this one man for too long, again. Several people had passed by since Gale had started chatting away and Astarion hadn’t managed to greet any of them. A few dozen feet away, along the front wall of the store, a plainly-marked “employees only” door opened and Wulbren emerged, all four feet of him dripping with self-important middle-tier authority. Astarion looked back at Gale and gave a quick half-smile.
“Well if you don’t need any help, sir, then I’d best be moving on to help other customers.”
“Oh!” Gale replied, eyes wide, “Yes! Of course, I do apologize.”
Much like he had the day before, the man looked saddened by the abrupt end to the conversation. Astarion tapped his well-worn loafer against the waxed tile floor impatiently, the motion hidden behind his little podium. Gale inched forward, waving goodbye. Astarion waved back half-heartedly and turned to greet the next customer.
From then on, it became a pattern. Every day that Astarion worked, Gale would inevitably turn up and start talking his ears off. He assumed the man also came in on days Astarion wasn’t working, but then again he couldn’t know that for sure. It wasn't like he kept in touch with the other greeters (or any other employee, really). Talking with anyone outside of his incredibly limited social circle was not something Astarion enjoyed doing.
Which had made him quite reluctant, at first, to accept the greeter position. But then again, despite involving talking to people all day, the job was not meant to be all that social, really.
Generally speaking, his interactions with customers were largely benign. Most people barely paid him any mind as they entered or left the store. Angry shoppers rarely interacted with him at all, choosing to skip right over him to take their ire out on a hapless cashier or someone at the customer service desk. As boring as being a greeter could be sometimes, Astarion was grateful for the easy position and bare-bones interaction with the public. His shifts typically passed by calmly and uneventfully.
But then, inevitably, Astarion would hear the grinding squeak of an ill-kept motorized shopping cart and he would feel his hackles start to rise.
Gale was sweet, sure. Certainly more interactive than a hundred other Walmart shoppers combined. But with every brief conversation, every friendly comment about the weather or question about Astarion’s orthopedic shoe preference or overshared detail about Gale’s painfully messy divorce twenty five years prior.
Until one day, the threat of consequences became a reality.
“Astarion!”
He turned, looking away from the smile currently deepening the creases around Gale’s eyes as the man discussed his favorite crock-pot pot roast recipes to see his least favorite floor manager stalking towards him with an air of what could only be described as gleeful irritation.
“Yes?” he replied smoothly. Gale turned his head as well, brows raising in concern.
“I trust you are aware of the store’s policies on entertaining social visits while on the clock?” Wulbren asked, his nasal voice as tiresome as ever, “If your friend wishes to speak with you, he will need to do so after your shift.”
“He’s not—”
“Oh! I didn’t—”
Astarion froze, words caught in his throat. Gale looked between the two other men frantically, his head moving on a diagonal to accommodate the impressive height difference between the elf and the deep gnome.
“Astarion,” Wulbren repeated, tone increasingly infuriating.
Astarion smiled tightly and gestured for Gale to move past. “If that’s all?” he said. Gale blinked up at him from the faded plastic seat, a small frown forming on his age-thinned lips.
“That’s all,” he echoed, then with a final worried glance between them he drove away and down the nearest aisle. Astarion watched him go with his own small frown, a strange pang of sadness tightening his chest. He took a deep breath to assure himself he wasn’t having a cardiac emergency and then turned back to look down at his current least favorite person.
“I’ve seen you talking with him every day this week,” Wulbren said, “I thought I would give you a chance to correct your own behavior, but it seems my leniency was ill-adviced.”
Astarion opened his mouth to reply then closed it again. Nothing he could say in that moment would change anything. Wulbren was far too stubborn and mad with mid-managerial power.
“That will be a write up, I’m afraid,” he continued, sounding not at all like he was afraid. “One more of those and you’ll be let go.”
Astarion nodded solemnly. “I know.”
Wulbren adjusted his uniform vest and turned on his tiny heel. “Well, then, I guess you’d best get back to it then, huh?”
Astarion glared at the deep gnome’s retreating back, willing the man to trip over his own self-importance. Unsurprisingly, he did not.
“I guess so,” he sighed. A glance back toward the aisle Gale had retreated down yielded no further sign of the man. Astarion furrowed his brow, attempting to parse the mix of emotions that seemed to suddenly be warring in his head. He should be angry at Gale for, essentially, getting him in trouble. He should be happy that the man had been scared off and likely wouldn’t bother Astarion again.
And yet…he wasn’t.
Odd.
“Godsdamn it all! Of course this had to happen today!”
Astarion huffed in annoyance, his words echoing down the first-floor hallway of his apartment building. In front of him, the hastily-written ‘Out of Order’ sign hung crookedly on the elevator doors, the tape holding it up half-peeling off already where it struggled to stick to the too-shiny ecru paint.
“Mr. Ancunín? Everything okay?”
He turned to see Dalyria walking down the hallway, an overfull paper bag of groceries propped against one hip.
“Elevator is out again,” he groused. She sighed and looked toward the nearby stairwell door meaningfully.
“C’mon, then,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact, “I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer this time.”
Astarion smirked despite himself and walked to her side. “I wouldn't dream of it.”
“Uh huh.”
The first time Dalyria had helped him up the stairs to their neighboring third-floor apartments, Astarion had been mortified. He was adept enough on flat surfaces, hips only mildly expressing their discontent at being used as intended. Steps were harder, though, and despite his best efforts to stay balanced he often stumbled when ascending more than a few at a time. Dalyria had caught him halfway to the second floor sometime last year during the first of many elevator outages and had insisted on helping him up the remaining flight and a half, eventually overriding his clearly baseless attestation that he was fine and that he could do it on his own.
Now, her offering him a steadying elbow was an unfortunately frequent occurrence.
“They really need to replace the whole damned thing,” Astarion grumbled as they began the delicate climb. “But you know they won’t, the greedy bastards. You’d think our rent money gets buried in a hole, somewhere, with the sheer number of things around here that need to be fixed.”
“I know, it’s ridiculous,” Dalyria agreed, “Honestly I would have moved to a different complex ages ago if not for—”
She cut herself off abruptly. Astarion turned his head to shoot her a glare.
“Young lady, do not tell me you were about to say what I think you were about to say,” he said.
Dalyria shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Dal,” he shot back, unfazed. She sighed.
“Okay, okay, yes. I worry about you,” she admitted. “Is that so bad?”
They reached the top of the first staircase and turned to begin ascending the second. The bag of groceries was still propped on her side opposite to where Astarion clung to her arm. He frowned at it and then at her.
“Look at you!” he huffed, “Here you are, lugging not one but two burdens up the staircase with you when you could be out there living in some shiny new building with a working elevator and—”
“Astarion!” she gasped. Their pace came to a halt and she shifted to look him in the eyes, her expression thoroughly exasperated.
“Oh, you’re using my given name, now!” he laughed, “I must really be in trouble now, huh?”
She rolled her eyes and briefly disentangled her arm so she could poke him gently in the center of his chest.
“You are not a burden,” she said, voice heated from both affectionate warmth and longsuffering irritation, “And I will not have my favorite old geezer say such mean things about himself.”
Astarion laughed and re-took her arm to begin hobbling up the stairs again. “Fine, I’ll be nicer to myself,” he snickered. Then, after a beat of silence, added, “But really, Dalyria. Thank you for worrying about my wellbeing, but trust me, I’m fine on my own. You really should get out there and live your life while you can.”
They took another few steps before she responded.
“Yes, well…yes.”
She was silent, then, and memories flashed through Astarion’s mind of prior conversations they had had, some over tea in his living room or a freshly cooked meal in her kitchen. Conversations about her family—or lack thereof, really—and of years spent pouring herself into her career at the detriment of everything else. His expression softened and, as they finally alighted onto the third floor, he patted her arm just above where his other hand clung to it.
“That being said,” he continued, gently, “I could certainly use you for something else other than structural support, today.”
She perked up at that and shot him a smile.
“Oh?”
He nodded. As they reached their neighboring apartment doors, he gestured towards hers. “Mind if I follow you in while you put away your groceries? I could use some…advice. On, well. On something regarding a recent change in my social life. Or, rather, a change I am hoping to make.”
She finally let him go and unlocked her door, eyebrows raising at the question. He ignored her growing grin and allowed her to open the door for him.
“Do go on, then. As you like to say, Mr. Ancunín, I’m all pointy ears!”
When Gale showed up the next day, Astarion was prepared.
“Gale,” he said, addressing the man before he had even finished rolling up to the podium, “I can’t greet you here anymore.”
The ever-present mechanical whir came to a sudden halt.
“Oh.”
Astarion opened his mouth to continue his pre-written speech but Gale cut him off, eyes growing suspiciously wet.
“I understand, of course,” he said, pain leeching through what was clearly meant to be an airy tone. He turned his cart around and began to creep back towards the front doors. “I am deeply sorry I was the cause of your admonishment, yesterday.”
Astarion frowned. “That’s not—”
“And I heard, of course, what you had started to say to your manager when he approached us,” Gale continued, moving steadily away, “That I’m ‘not your friend,’ or whatever similar sentiment you were undoubtedly halfway to stating.”
Astarion took a step forward, torn between chasing after the retreating cart or staying at his podium where he was supposed to be stationed.
“It was foolish of me to assume that this was ever anything other than an employee speaking to a customer,” Gale sighed. He was far enough away that Astarion was having trouble hearing him, recently calibrated hearing aids be damned, “But not to worry, I shan’t be bothering you anymore!”
Astarion looked around, scanning the horizon for deep gnomes. Halfway across the front of the store, speaking to an irate-looking tiefling, Wulbren stood with his arms crossed. He was facing Astarion. There was no doubt that he would notice if Astarion left his podium.
“I certainly have learned to know when I am not welcome,” Gale concluded as he brought the cart to a stop alongside the others lined up along a nearby wall. A passing human woman shot him a look somewhere between concern and confusion. Astarion glanced frantically between Gale and Wulbren in a would-be-ironically-funny-if-he-wasn’t-so-stressed kind of way reminiscent of the day before.
“Gale!”
Gale ignored him, choosing instead to hoist himself up from the seat and steady himself with his cane. Astarion cleared his throat and took another step away from the podium.
“Wait, please, listen!” he called out, but the plea fell on (likely actually partially) deaf ears.
He gave one last glance across the store. Wulbren was looking at him, now, and raising an eyebrow at Astarion being now so far away from the podium for no apparent reason. Astarion closed his eyes for a moment, thought back to his enlightening conversation with Dalyria the prior evening, and made a decision.
His hips protested as he jogged across the entranceway. Gale was out the door, now, hobbling toward the crosswalk. By the time Astarion caught up to him, he had made it to the disabled parking spots.
“Gale!” he gasped, finally coming to a stop beside the garish purple Buick the other man was currently manually unlocking, “I want to take you out on a date!”
Gale froze, key half-turned in the lock.
“I don’t care about this insufferable job,” he continued, wheezing, “I don’t care about much, really. But I find that, despite finding you alarmingly irritating at first—”
And here, Gale deflated a bit, nodding as if he knew exactly what Astarion was talking about.
“—I have come to realize that your little visits to my podium are the best part of my days,” he continued. He took a few steps forward until he was right beside Gale, meeting the other man’s eyes and doing his best to infuse his sincerity into his tone, “Not just my work days, Gale. But my days in general.”
Gale’s eyes went round and soft. Astarion continued on fervently.
“And I want you to continue to be part of my days. But I think I’ve been fired, at this point, so I hope I can see you again outside of Walmart,” he said. “Gods do I want to see you outside of this damned Walmart.”
Gale hummed a noise of agreement.
“I want to take you to see a movie,” Astarion continued, voice going soft, “I want to have dinner with you. I want to watch the sunrise together. I…I want to meet your cat. And I want you to meet my neighbor.”
That last one raised Gale’s eyebrow. Astarion laughed.
“Long story,” he said, “But trust me, that means a lot.”
There was a moment of quiet as Gale considered. Then, he nodded.
“Well then,” he sighed, a smile tugging at the wrinkled corners of his mouth, “I hope you’ve figured out how to work that cellphone of yours.”