Every Universe

‣ convenience store AU

pairing ‣ Noah Wisetkaew x Hannah Zhao

prompt ‣ "I caught someone trying to steal a bottle of Coke and they're trying to flirt their way out of this and they're really bad it but boy am I really attracted to them at the moment" convenience store AU

notes ‣ am I actually capable of writing something other than Quinton x Harrison AUs? apparently if it's a convenience store AU about Noah being himself (so basically pansexual!Noah and greyaromantic!Noah and demiboy!Noah) and Hannah being happy in East Asia. thinking back, this is actually such a self-indulgent fic that's now almost nine thousand words, but anyway, I hope you enjoy, and happy Valentine's Day!

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JULY

Noah saw a lot of weird things while working at the convenience store near an all-female high school. He once saw an elementary schooler open three bottles of Sprite just so his older sister would be forced to buy them. He once saw a girl with platinum blonde hair dump a boy between a question about what movie they were going to watch and a question about what flavor of chips they should buy. He even once saw two girls offer to make out in front of one of the girl's boyfriend in order to get him to buy tea for them.

None of that was considered weird compared to this.

Summer vacation just started, and since the majority of the customers, in some way or another, had a relation to the all-female high school less than a block away, summers were less busy. The few people that walked through the front doors wore shorts and a shirt with short sleeves or a tank top, not business suits, not school uniforms, not even casual clothing, because people wanted to be more comfortable in the hot, humid weather. That was just the norm.

The only customer in the store right now begged to differ. The teenager, who probably went to the all-female high school nearby, wore a black hoodie, with the words Welcome to Night Vale in white on the front, and black ripped jeans, which reached all the way down to their ankles. Their Huáwéi phone stuck out of their back pocket, and wire ran from the audio jack to their left ear as they kept one hand in their hoodie pocket and used the other to browse the meager pen collection. Noah watched as they eventually settled on three 0.38 millimeter Chénguāng pens, walked up to the register, and put them on the counter. Noah rang the items up, watching as the teenager wiped their forehead with the sleeve of their hoodie, their sleeves unrolled and almost covering their hands.

It was almost noon. In July. They had to be the weirdest person to step foot into the store.

"That'll be seven yuán," he said, and the teenager's gaze, originally on the ground, shifted up to him, brown eyes wide as though they weren't expecting that, even though it was fairly standard in any store to say the price. Then, eventually, they reached into their hoodie pocket and rummaged for a ten yuán bill. Noah handed them their change, and they stuffed their pens and change into their hoodie pocket and turned to leave, not bothering to say a goodbye or a thanks.

Normally, this would the end of a transaction, and Noah would go back to staring at the clock and calculating how much long until his shift was over, but Noah had noticed something, as a professional. "Excuse me," he said in a partially confident, mostly bored voice, watching as the teenager froze where they stood, eyes widening in horror, "but you need to pay for that bottle of Coke." They had pocketed a cold bottle of Coca Cola earlier before perusing the pen display, and although Noah didn't see them do it, his suspicious grew when they hadn't taken their left hand out of their pocket the entire time after opening the refrigerator, but it hadn't been confirmed until right now when they stopped dead in their tracks. Noah didn't know why they would purchase the pens and not the bottle of Coke, but he wasn't here to judge.