2019-11-25 - You Think They Aren't Watching?

Today is one of those days. One of those days where the stocking staff got bored and decided to switch everything on its head. Sections that were over there are now over here.

A young looking man in a black hoodie, black leather jacket, charcoal colored jeans, all black chucks, a Joy Division shirt, and a simple scarf that hangs uselessly around his neck, unwound and slack against his chest. Blake stands with a basket in his hand, intense blue eyes staring at an aisle sign while his expression matches that of someone whose stomach is in distress. He presses his lips together slightly and squints.

Jacob turns down the aisle, walking casually from elsewhere in the store. He's in a white collared shirt, black tie, black trousers and decent-ish shoes, himself. Oh, and one of those little baskets that they have at the front of the store. He heads to a particular spot in the aisle, sticks his hand out as if by reflex, and then pauses, blinking underneath his short ginger hair. "..you are not Maker's Mark." It is, in fact, now the mixer section.

The doctor, not that he's visible as one at this particular moment, is seemingly on autopilot. He's fairly new in town, maybe a month or two after arriving, but seems to have this particular routine down pat. He either doesn't notice Blake, or disregards his presence entirely.

Blake starts walking down the same aisle as Jacob. Maybe he's just following the leader he's made the stranger into. Maybe he's expecting something else. He begins to mumble about, "I can't believe I'm doing this..." Lost in his own thoughts and /actually/ mumbling something sour about goblins, he walks right into the much taller man who doesn't look like a doctor right now. "Uhhh..." he stares at Jacob for some time before, "Where'd the liquor go?"

The ginger man blinks, and turns slightly to regard the source of his recent, if brief, discomfort. "Not sure, k--" The hoodie makes him want to call the man kid, but eyeing his face makes him think otherwise, so he just stops speaking mid-sentence. Or at least mid-word.

"It was definitely here yesterday." He straightens up, looking down either side of the aisle, quickly noticing that everything seems to be in a different place. "..did they rearrange the store overnight? I thought they were open 24 hours."

Blake doesn't look Jacob directly in the eye, and when he does, not for prolonged periods. "I don't know. I wish they'd stop fucking with us." He looks up and down the row he just checked, as if that would shed new light on the matter. "Maybe they are open 24 hours so they can do crap like this and still get paid..." He glances up to the other man. "One over maybe?" Aisle, of course. Blake starts to walk toward the break in the aisle to hop over to the next one. He stops though at the end of the aisle, obviously putting two and two together that the other man is also probably looking for it. "Come on. More eyes, less time spent looking."

Jacob gives a soft shrug. "May as well try and find where they've moved it. I imagine it's where everyone else is congregating, given this town." He joins Blake in the search, checking down aisles with glances from the middle break between them. "It'll likely be on either side of the store, somewhere well in view of the security cameras. Lots of open space." He starts heading for the other end of the store, head on a swivel.

The younger man's somewhat pained expression gives the doctor pause, however. "Hey, are you feeling alright? You don't look too hot."

"There are security cameras everywhere," Blake says with with subdued chuckle while pointing a thumb out at a dark dome situated right above his head, even if he knows what Jacob means. The way the guy walks, how he holds himself, slightly hunched, and even the way he talks is like a part of him is going to take up less space. Blake ends up backtracking to join Jacob after clearing his area and coming up empty handed. "I'm fine." A beat. "I-'ve just been meaning to get to the doc..." he offers by way of thinking this should be enough to satiate the man's curiosity. "Eureka," he says dryly after the extensive search. "They probably love watching the security footage." He reaches up to rub the back of his neck a little, eyes flitting over to the other man when he comes back to into sight.

Jacob glances up at the ceiling. "True enough, I suppose." His search continues, eyes glancing down the aisles a bit more. "Oh! I think it's down here. Oh, you already.. right, okay." Not on either end as he'd (incorrectly) predicted, but hey, the booze is here."

During the brief walk down the aisle, he looks to Blake. "I can't really do a whole lot for you here, but.. you know the doctor's office on Maple? Opened up there a little while ago." He offers a business card dug out from a pocket. Basic contact information, mention of 'discrete care' and 'sliding scale payments' probably most of note.

"Mm, watching.. possibly? I can't imagine there's a whole lot of exciting things to watch, unless you get a kick out of watching someone pick through a cooler full of chicken breasts." He kneels down to where he eventually locates the Maker's Mark, and takes three bottles into his basket.

Looking back at Blake, he says softly, "I have a pretty good feeling that know what I mean by not here. Give me a call if you need some help, yeah?" Blake's glimmer is not the most subtle to him. It's a little like staring directly at a shining lighthouse, even though he's similarly equipped, but in a different manner. Blake probably knows what he means, Jacob thinks, but if he doesn't, maybe the business card's details will do the rest.

Blake looks at the offered business card first and then glances up to Jacob as he reaches to take it. He scans it quickly. "Jacob Winters..." He looks back to Jacob as if to commit his face to the name and then slides the card away into his coat pocket.

"Sure," Blake doesn't, know the office that is. By the slightly preoccupied look he has in his eyes nearly all of the time, it's probably not a stretch to think he heard about half of what Jacob said.

"Hmm? What? You think there's not a sixteen year old bag boy laughing his ass off at us hunting down the aisles just because /he's/ the one who switched it?" Blake offers Jacob a skeptical smirk, his brow drawn together gently, the smile faint. Blake grabs some nice gin and two bottles of tequila. Blue eyes flit back toward the taller man as he kneels, then to the man's choice of poison.

when Jacob speaks, Blake's brow lifts slightly and he blinks. "Yeah. Okay. I will...seeya." It's certainly not easy to tell whether Blake gets it or not, but he clearly gets something. Suddenly Blake's eyes jump to something just to the side of Jacob, nearly his shoulder, and then back. "I'm Blake," he offers the man.

Jacob gives a little shrug. "Seems like a lot of effort in moving everything around just to mess with a few people looking for some discount therapy." He gestures towards the booze on the shelves to emphasize his little joke.

"Jacob. Or Dr. Winters. Whatever works. Have a good evening." He gives a soft wave, before turning back in the other direction to fetch a few things for his dinner. His diet's not entirely liquid, at least not yet.

"There are more effective quick fixes, but not as deep a discount," Blake comments vaguely without going into any explanation. At Jacob's self-introduction, Blake gives a soft nod before continuing on to get things obviously for cooking. Either he cooks, he lives with a cook, or he's pretending for no reason.

Eventually, when he leaves the store, he can be seen loading up a rusty red flyer wagon with his groceries.