Go With The Flow (Milo Grant)

[Matthew Reid]

The flow of the customers in the mall had, thankfully, led Matthew to a place he actually wanted to go. The Starbucks was well placed, near the middle of the mall between two shops that Matthew never paid much attention to. In Gotham, if they weren't books shops, coffee shops or just interesting to look at, the chances were that Matthew wouldn't really note anything about them aside from the fact that they were there, which was probably a good thing, really, otherwise most of Gotham would be empty spaces according to Matthew' head. As it was, his mental map of Gotham had every shop labelled. This was probably the most organised thing in Matthew's entire mind, truth be told, though given his trouble sleeping recently then it was hardly a surprise that his mind wasn't the most organised thing in the world.

Slipping through a break in the customers, and wondering momentarily why there were so many, the rather tall doctor pushed his glasses up his nose some and moved forward quickly in order to not get in the way of anyone. This was rendered a useless move a moment later as he waited behind four other people, five if you included the loud child with the woman in front of the man. The child, a boy about the age of eight, seemed to like staring at people then shouting something obvious. For Matthew, this seemed to be the fact that he was wearing glasses...

With a hand resting on the strap of his bag softly, Matthew found himself ignoring the child and looking around with slight interest in his surroundings. It wasn't the shop that he was interested in so much as the people inside. People tended to interest Matthew - as was probably obvious by his job - and the things people did also tended to give a fair bit away. Matthew wasn't a professional when it came to reading body language but he knew the basics. It was always quite interesting to him, to look around a group of people and just see the different ways everyone was acting or doing things... Though, the people in the shop were mostly business men and women. This didn't surprise Matthew in the slightest considering it was about 2 in the afternoon, and a fair few of them were on phones - probably business.

Finally getting to the counter, Matthew ordered politely with a small, somewhat nervous smile and soon went off to find a table. Managing to find an empty table, Matthew began making his way towards it and smiled to himself softly as he walked quickly to it and sat down, mentally congratulating himself on the rather spectacular, though slightly childish, action and not noticing if anyone was around him as he took a sip of the hot drink then cursed himself silently when it almost burnt his tongue. Placing the cup on the table, his gaze shifted to the window next to him and the people beyond the window, though he could feel himself getting close to falling asleep right there and then despite the coffee...

((Notes: Sorry this took so long! I hope this is okay, though.))