Chapter Text
Squall Leonhart was furious. He had been waiting for hours in line at the grocery store, and he was running out of patience. He had been told that the line would be long because of the Memorial Day holiday, but he thought that his patience would be rewarded. He was wrong. The line was even longer than he thought, and it was moving slowly. He had been in line for hours, and it was already close to noon. He was starting to get angry.
He was starting to curse himself for being a morning person.
Everyone and their brother seemed to be in the same store, as he couldn't imagine that there were enough people in Balamb to warrant this size of crowd being in each store. Yet here he was, trapped between an exhausted-looking soccer mom and a man who was already way too drunk for the morning. Squall wished he was that drunk.
The unspoken agreement of grocery stores was that you let people with fewer items go first. Nobody here seemed to be following that agreement, though. It was every man for himself. It showed in the sheer number of fights he'd seen over things as stupid as a goddamn picnic umbrella - over which there had been three separate instances of fisticuffs - or a wheeled cooler, the last of which had been used in an assault attempt that resulted in neither party getting it when the police took it as evidence.
There were only five people left in front of him, then four, then three. Finally, it was his turn.
"Will this be all?" asked the bored-looking cashier, and Squall sighed in exasperation as he nodded his assent.
Finally, he was free.
Finally, he had his four-pound jar of Red Vines and his no-family-size box of Magnums.