"Here you go, friend!" she said cheerily. "Merry Christmas."

Lenny looked up, almost dumbfounded. There was a girl, one he had never seen or met, buying his coffee for him. She was cute, but in a sort of little-house-on-the-prairie kind of way. She definitely wasn't the type to go after a guy like Lenny. So why would she buy him a drink? Lenny ignored the thought, figuring that he shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. He scooped most of his change back into his pocket, and slid the bills and a few quarters over the counter.

"Hey, thanks! Merry Christmas!" He weakly called back, unsure if she had heard him or not. He took his coffee, leaving the change and the bills for the unamused barista, and scooted over to the section of the shop by the trash bins, where milk, sugar, and straws were kept. He poured a handful of sugar packets into his coffee, and then enough milk to bring the concoction to the brim of the cup, before he snapped the plastic lid on.

Covering the hole with his finger, he shook the cup over the trash bin, and finally took a sip. It was almost sickeningly sweet, enough that it no longer tasted like coffee, and instead, like a coffee-flavored candy. [i]Just how Lenny liked it.[/i] Fortunately for him, after making it just sweet enough, his powers allowed him to make it just hot enough as well. He wasn't one to showboat, but absorbing excess heat from a drink was hardly showboating. It was a matter of practicality, and Lenny was a practical guy.

The coffee he held in his hand made him feel something. It was almost close to guilt, but he hadn't done anything. If Lenny had a better vocabulary, he would've called it [i]gratitude[/i], but he wrote it off as guilt to him. He felt like he owed the girl who bought him the coffee something, and it was probably because he technically did. He took a pen out of his pocket, and began scribbling something on his napkin. It took him a few moments, checking to make sure his spelling and penmanship were acceptable, and finally wiping what little remained of his coffee in a stained ring on the paper.

When he was finished, he walked over to the table where the girl was. She wasn't alone. She was there with another girl, and an older man, who he presumed were her sister and father. [i]They don't look related[/i], he thought to himself. And it was true. The girl who had given him the coffee was dressed too differently from the other girl, and to Lenny, all siblings shopped at the same stores. The man, on the other hand, wasn't eyeing him suspiciously, like most parents would.

"Hey, uh, sorry to interrupt. I wanted to give you something to thank you, but I'm broke, so here's this." He placed the napkin in her hands, [url=http://imgur.com/T7PkzTw]writing side-up.[/url] with a sheepish half-smile.

"Merry Christmas, and thanks again." Lenny turned around and quickly made his way to the door with his coffee, practically jogging. He wasn't good at social situations, and this was as much as he could take. After all, it's easy to see if someone is blushing when they're as pale as Lenny.

Normally, he was fairly secretive about his metahuman status. But there was something about the girl that made him lose that edge -- Although it was likely that it was only that she was the only [i]girl[/i] to willingly talk to him, she practically glowed with friendliness. If anyone was going to track him down for being a metahuman in this town, it wouldn't have been her.