♣

If Kal wasn't working, he would have grabbed the tip jar and thrown it at the lady's face.

Her eyebrows were arched so sharply that they could be classified as dangerous to her eyeballs, and her hair was starting to fall out of the bun-clip that it was forced into. She had come into the store and was ranting about something for about three minutes, and while Kal had tried to help her, she didn't take a moment to face him completely, so Kal had gotten a total of zero words that she had said.

"I didn't quite catch that. Can you please repeat the issue so I can help you?" he voiced.

The lady continued, throwing her hands up in frustration. He suppressed an eyeroll. "Ma'am, please face me when you're talking-"

She whipped around towards him, more hair falling out of her clip. "Don't correct...manners!" She appeared to have said, but it was difficult for Kal to read her lips while she was talking fifty miles a minute and spit was flying from her mouth.

Kal put his finger up to his ear, doing his best to stabilize it. "Ma'am, I-"

Kal felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around to a six-foot-two man wearing a name-badge reading "Caleb (he/they)" facing him. He had a few mini black bags in his left hand, which he set down once Kal fully rotated towards him.

"I'll take care of this," he signed.

"I can handle this."

"You've been clenching your fist."

Kal looked down at his hands, which indeed had extremely pale knuckles. Kal let out a breath of air. "Thank you." Caleb nodded and took his place in front of the lady. Kal immediately turned his back on the lady. If she didn't want to look at him while she was talking, he wouldn't look at her. Usually, we would take any chance he got to curse someone out and give them a reality check, but as he learned last week when he... well, when he said something to a customer that most workers shouldn't say while on the clock, some things were meant to just be left alone.

He swore, ignorant customers were going to be the death of him.

Kal wasn't sure how long it had been since Caleb took over at front and he moved to inventory, but it was long enough for him to reorganize an entire bookshelf full of old cookbooks. Granted, it wasn't their most numerous genre, but from the copies that had been left on the floor and around the store over the week to their random placement on the shelves, he did have his work cut out for him. Especially since he was not sorting by alphabetical, but by content. So he had to open to the first few pages of each book to see what it entailed and then choose the best placement for it.

As he was going to check to watch, he felt a hand on his back. He jumped slightly, but then turned around to see Caleb. "Finished," Caleb signed with an exasperated expression. He rested his back on the side of a shelf that was full of stuffed animals.

"What did she want?" Kal asked.

"She was upset that her camera she bought from us didn't work, even though she never bought film for it."

Kal rolled his eyes. "Really? That's all?"

"That's all. I said, 'Do you want some film for it? It will capture video with the film,' but she went, 'No! You're scamming me!' and left." Whenever he talked about frustrating customers, his signing grew two times bigger and characterized them in such ways Kal could often tell who he was talking about without even seeing a name.

"Most antique stores around here don't even carry working cameras and film from the twenties. She's lucky we even had that."

"Exactly!"

Caleb's mouth formed into a wide smile, their tense muscles loosening. Their dark skin and deep brown eyes emitted a glow so bright that Kal could almost visibly see it. They looked behind Kal's head. "Did you just organize that?"

"Yeah."

"Thank you. I've been putting it off."

Kal waved in hand in response. He stood up, wiping the dust off of his khakis. "Are there any customers here?"

"I don't think so."

"Then we get a break." He smiled and grabbed Caleb's hand, giving it a quick squeeze. He signed single-handedly, "What do you want to do?"

Caleb's eyes lit up and he let go of Kal's hand. "Yesterday, a guy brought in a new game for the Nintendo. Want to put it in?"

"Absolutely."

Caleb and Kal made their way to a section near the front of the store where they kept their playable Nintendo on display. They passed the TV that was currently playing a VHS copy of Pinocchio, as suggested by Caleb–and with captions enabled, which took them no less than two hours to figure out. Caleb took the game off of the shelf and plugged it into the console. The console only hooked up to one controller, so they had to take turns.

Kal would never admit to Caleb that he had no idea what was going on in the game, and that he usually didn't know what was going on in those kinds of games, but he loved playing them because Caleb loved playing them. They were fun, but his favorite part was getting to see his boyfriend jump up and down in his seat when he got the top score. But of course, he'd never tell him that.

While Caleb was finishing a round–it looked like it, at least–his head whipped behind him and set down the controller as he faced him again. He signed "bell" and Kal let out a breath.

"I can handle this one," he reassured.

"I know you can," Caleb supported with a wink.

Both boys stood up, Caleb cleaning up the game and Kal making his way to the front.

"Thanks for stopping by Hen's Antiques," he called out. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

When Kal stepped through the doorway, his customer service expression dropped. Near the doorway stood five tweens dripping wet onto the wooden floors of the shop. Some of them had soaking bags on their backs, and one of the girls was folding up an umbrella that looked like it could barely keep one person dry under it.

Kal rubbed his eyes with his hands. "You guys couldn't have at least wiped your feet first?"

♣

While the kids were there, Caleb took up the job of babysitter. At first, it was just Quinn, Theodore, Sophie, and a girl by the name of Abigail–at least, Kal believed that was her name, he had met her maybe twice. They were easy enough to entertain–just show Quinn and Theodore the old DVDs and VHS', show Sophie the new books they had just got in, and give Abigail whatever she was interested in that Kal hadn't figured out yet. However, when Daniel rolled in ten minutes late with a video camera, the tour turned into a movie set almost instantly.

Whenever Daniel showed up with a camera, Kal wanted to thank him for donating such an amazing antique and then bring it into the supply closet, but Caleb always jumped the gun and showed Daniel the best places to shoot. It was exhausting, but at that moment, all Kal had to worry about was the sophomore in front of him.

Sawyer threw his soaking wet hoodie onto the paper towels set on the checkout counter. Kal looked from the hoodie to the boy and back.

"It's a hoodie," he signed matter-of-factly.

"Hold on," Sawyer reassured. "I needed to wrap it up." He started to unwrap the hoodie, simultaneously ringing out the water from the sleeves and letting it fall into the trashcan below him.

Sawyer Armstrong and Kal Wei had met during what had been Sawyer's first year at school and Kal's last. Sawyer was looking around the school's various class offerings during orientation and came across Caleb volunteering at the food and refreshments stand. Sawyer was wearing a Tim Drake shirt, which then prompted a two hour conversation between the two. After the orientation, Caleb brought Sawyer to meet Kal. Kal hadn't been sure at the time, or to that day, what it was in him that told him to take care of the kid. Maybe it was how happy he looked to have found Caleb and himself. Maybe he reminded him of a mini Kal.

So, they let him sit with them at lunch until Sawyer found his own group and gave him tips on how best to pass classes. Sawyer had only started learning sign language that year, so for a while conversation wasn't the easiest, but after two years of learning, he was more advanced than most others that Kal had talked to, so as long as he made sure not to go too fast or use unfamiliar signs, they were able to talk without either of them voicing.

After a drawn-out process of slowly adjusting the hoodie, Sawyer took the last sleeve off of the center and presented it to Kal. He stared at what was laid out in front of him and raised an eyebrow.

"Wow," said Kal. "A slug."

"A green and red slug," Sawyer added. Kal nodded his head slowly.

"I can see that."

"The only red and green slug I have seen before is the red triangle slug. And this one doesn't have a triangle."

"Maybe it's blood?" suggested Kal, moving his head closer to it.

Sawyer jumped back as if offended. "If it was blood don't you think I would've washed it off by now?"

Kal put up his hands in defense. "Damn. Okay."

"You want to know the weirdest part?" Kal shrugged. Didn't matter what he said, he would tell him anyway.

Sawyer took the tip jar from the edge of the counter and adjusted his fingers firmly around it. He raised it up, and without hesitation, slammed the glass cup down on top of the creature.

The vibration shot through Kal's veins like an electric shock, the counter still ringing from the impact. "What the fuck?" Kal exclaimed. "You killed it!"

"No. I didn't."

Kal noticed Caleb out of his peripheral vision, along with Theodore, Quinn, and Daniel, who was zooming in on his camera directly onto Kal's face. "Everything okay here?" Caleb voiced and signed simultaneously.

"Yes," Sawyer called back to him. Kal put his hands on his head. Maybe ignorant customers weren't going to be the death of him. Caleb clearly wasn't convinced, but they all went back to what they were doing nonetheless.

"You are lucky that it didn't break," Kal told Sawyer. "Because I wouldn't clean it up."

"I'm sorry, but look." Sawyer took the cup in his hands and pulled it up off of the smashed slug carcass.

Except, there wasn't a carcass in front of them. Instead, it was a slug that was very much alive, sliding across the blue fabric.

"What..." Kal started, but couldn't find the words to continue.

"I know! I stepped on him but he didn't bleed!" Sawyer started to wrap the slug up into the hoodie again, but Kal took his hand to stop him. He grabbed the tip jar and emptied it onto the counter. He picked up the hoodie and, doing everything to avoid touching the thing, poured it into the jar. He took a dollar bill off the counter and a rubber band and fastened it to the top of the jar as a makeshift cap.

"The dollar was a counterfeit," Kal explained. "Even when you work at an antique shop, you'd be surprised with how much fake money people give you. Especially for tips."

Sawyer nodded with fake understanding. "Do you have any books on slugs?"

Kal bit his lip in thought. "Google?"

"Nothing. I thought if anyone would find out what it was, you could."

"Cute," Kal said dryly, eyes fixated on the slug. It was seemingly trying to crawl through the glass, but instead kept running into it over and over again. How could something so stupid be so strong? "I'll look tonight."

Sawyer grinned widely. He didn't have to say thank you. They didn't have that type of relationship. In fact, if Sawyer had said thank you, Kal would be concerned that the slug had done something to his brain. But for now, all he was concerned about was finding out what the fuck he was holding.

♣

"And... cut!"

As Daniel lowered his camera and strapped it around his neck, Caleb gave him a high five that transformed into a bro-hug.

"Half done!" Caleb exclaimed.

"Half done!" Daniel took a moment to look over the footage. As he did so, he asked Caleb, "So, do you guys have any fake blood here?"

After learning that the meaning of the word "antique" wasn't as thrilling a concept for a project as he had originally thought, Daniel went with his second choice: an 80s style slasher. If he bullshitted enough, he could convince his teacher that he wasn't simply making a horror movie, but commenting on the tropes and audience influence the horror genre evoked that certain time.

Since the film only had to be about five minutes, Daniel didn't find any need to write a script or any sort of plan for the plot. But what he did need were actors. More specifically, a final girl protagonist.

Abigail had said no, which was no surprise considering her stage-fright, and Sophie had politely declined, but offered to work as wardrobe manager as long as she didn't have to touch any fake blood. That was a win for Daniel, anyways, since he couldn't explain the difference between a hoodie and a jacket.

But the polite declines left them with a total of zero girls to choose from.

"I'll be in your movie!" Quinn exclaimed, excitedly raising their hand.

Caleb's lips parted and curled upwards. "Quinn can be the final girl!"

"What? No. I don't want to be the final girl."

"What do you want to be then?" asked Daniel.

"The killer," they said with a grin.

Daniel pondered it for a moment, tilting his head and stroking an invisible beard. "Innovative. I like it."

"Yes!" They raised an index finger as ideas flowed through their head. "I can go home and get my old leg and make it into a sword-leg if you want!"

Daniel held up a hand. "It's alright. We do still need a final girl, though."

As he said so, all three of their eyes moved towards the kid looking straight up at the ceiling fan. It took a moment for them to notice that they were being stared at, but when they did, they jumped slightly.

"What?"

Sophie had found the section of the store housing the 80s girls fashion and brought Theodore to try on some of the skirts and tops. She had to explain to them what a cardigan was and how it would feel on their skin, and that they would need to get a skirt long enough to cover their boxer shorts. "Plus, you need to look innocent," Daniel added.

The two decided on a light gray cardigan with a soft green sweater underneath. The skirt they selected went past Theodore's knees, and was decorated with flowers that may be seen on their grandmother's curtains. To top it all off, they added a black headband to keep any stray hairs from falling into their face.

They stared at themself in the mirror and spun around to get a better look at the outfit. "You know, it's not my usual fashion, but I'm not complaining," they said with a slight smile.

Once they had their cast and their costumes, they started to film. They got a lot more shots than originally anticipated, including shots with Quinn walking down the aisles ominously in their raincoat three sizes too big. They were originally upset that they had no lines, but eventually came to use non-verbal actions for character growth, like shoving a bunch of Barbies from the shelf onto the ground. They also got shots with Theodore reading, and one shot of a random customer Daniel managed to sneak in while Caleb was ringing her up. After getting pre-kill shots, the team ran into a road-block.

"We need a love interest," said Daniel. "These movies always had a love interest."

"How about Sawyer?" Sophie suggested. "We could steal him from Kal?"

"No offense, but Sawyer is a worse actor than my dog."

"I can do it!" Quinn exclaimed.

"You're the killer."

"I can double up!"

"How about you?" Caleb chimed in.

That made Daniel turn around towards him in panicked confusion. "I'm a director," argued Daniel.

"And an actor," suggested Caleb.

"You're the most dramatic person I know," added Quinn. "And that's coming from me."

"No, I'm not doing it."

Theodore pouted. "Aw, come on, Dan Dan. Don't you want authentic chemistry for your movie?"

Daniel glared at them, cheeks turning pink. "I hate you all," he muttered.

Sophie offered to give Daniel something to change into, but he refused to wear anything else besides a different style hoodie. Caleb took over as videographer, and they filmed the scene between the two.

Daniel had forced himself to a greater posture, though it was clear that he could never match, much less exceed the height of Theodore. "I'll be right back, darling," said Daniel in a forcibly lower-pitched voice. He blew Theodore a kiss, who nervously tucked a strand of hair behind their ear.

"You know, Bryan, some day you're going to get us all in deep trouble," they said, voice in a higher octave and head shaking for dramatic effect.

Daniel's eyebrows furrowed, taking a step back from Theodore. "Isn't that from Halloween?"

Theodore raised their head in pride. "Any excuse to be Jamie Lee-Curtis is one I will take."

Behind them, the lights flashed on-and-off. Kal and Sawyer were standing in the doorway connected to the front of the store. "Hey, sorry to interrupt, but it's closing," said Kal.

Daniel threw his head back. "I didn't even get to die yet!"

Sawyer's eyebrow raised in concern. "Excuse me?"

"You guys can come back tomorrow if you'd like?" Caleb offered. "It's Friday, so hours go later."

"And I'll bring my sword-leg!" Quinn squealed.

"And I'll bring fake blood!" Daniel exclaimed.

"Okay, children, nice to see you, but me and Caleb have to close up." Kal turned to Sawyer.

The six filed out of the shop, Caleb turning the sign on the door to say "closed" after they did so. Kal grabbed a broom from the supply closet and started to sweep, but before he could get anything done, Caleb waved his hand to get his attention.

"So what was it that Sawyer showed you?" he asked.

Kal chuckled. "You wouldn't believe me."

---

after chapter note -

3.1k words, baby. 

the antique store boyfriends have made their entrance, and the gang has started their movie. oh and the slug is in the store. what could go wrong?

also, 1-800-cherry_slushee made a super cool book full of incorrect quotes and memes and stuff for this book so go check it out!!

now that all characters have been officially introduced, let's get into this, shall we?

sincerely, nicholas