"We've done toilet paper, paper towels, paper plates..." Calum ticks off the items on his clipboard as he walks the aisles, talking to himself before realising he's alone, "Anna? Anna?!"
"I'm here!"
"Where?"
"I'm over here checking on feminine hygiene. Counting panty liners. Light days and heavy days."
"And? How are we doing?" He flips efficiently to the relevant page on his clip board.
"We're light on heavy days and heavy on light days," Anna smiles from the top of her ladder, seeing her boss finally coming around the corner of the aisle she's on.
"Gotcha. Let's move on."
"It's always work with you. Don't you ever have fun?"
"Yeah. I have fun. I have lots of fun." Calum's a little indignant at her implication; just because he's in a suit at work doesn't mean he's all uptight.
"Really? Because you never want to go out with us after work..." Leaning on the ladder, making no attempt to move on as Calum put it, she watches him trying to avoid her questions.
"I've gone out with you guys!" Calum objects, looks up at her towering above him. How on earth could she have forgotten the buttplug incident?
"Once! Marlene says no-one knows what you're really like. That you probably lead this double life."
"She's right." The temptation to build a completely different persona for himself is too tempting for a comic book geek like Calum to pass up. He puts down the clip board, climbing up the other side of the step ladder, "I'm not who I appear to be..."
Watching him intently, Anna waits. What is he about to reveal?
"But you have to promise not to tell anyone," Calum instructs her when he reaches the top of the ladder, standing opposite her only a few inches away. She really is pretty to look at, and she seems like a nice person too, and he may be able to tell her the truth about himself eventually but not yet.
"Truth is, when I was a boy I was exposed to a laser light show at a Kiss concert. After that I developed a strange power to see into people's minds, to see their most private thoughts. Things like 'I'm going to rob a bank' and 'I'm going to blow up a bridge' and since then I set out to prevent crimes before they happened..." Calum pauses dramatically for effect.
"And my real name is Laser Man!" he proclaims to the empty shop. Even Corey would have been proud of that performance.
Anna finds him endearing and puts her hands on top of his, "So, Laser Man, what am I thinking?" she flirts with him, making Calum instantly panic.
"Erm. We should probably get to work... whoah!"
"Calum!" Anna calls down in alarm seeing him lying flat on his face on the shop floor, having forgotten he was all the way up a ladder when he attempted to walk away.
~~~
"If you take your shirt off you get a free drink..." Luke's sultry voice sounds in Michael's ear just before his very attractive face appears over his shoulder, he'd been hoping for ages that Michael would come down to the Fox tonight and here he is.
"I don't show my tits for watered down beer."
Michael takes in Luke's naked torso, the slope of his shoulders, the smoothness of his skin, before raising his eyebrows at him, challenging him, is that really the best he can come up with?
"Get me a beer?"
"Get your own." Michael takes a slurp of his Jack Daniels.
"I'm too young!" Luke brags.
YOU ARE READING
Queer as Muke
Fanfiction"The thing you need to know is, it's all about sex. It's true. In fact they say men think about sex every twenty-eight seconds. Of course that's straight men. With gay men it's every nine." Twenty nine year old advertising executive Michael Cliffor...
