strangetrip | [Locked to Yasmeen] shopping?

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[Locked to Yasmeen] shopping?

On the currency and action scales, following Yasmeen - Captain Corsair - had been as satisfactory as Ignis had hoped. Sufficient action for sufficient reward, and now all that was left was working out what to do with said reward. Hoarding it would serve little purpose, as money was of little use in the Inn... and, truly, it wasn't difficult to think of a good way to spend at least some of his share.

But to do so properly, he would need help. In short order, Ignis had narrowed down the best options to help him down to either Miss Fisher or Captain Corsair. Which was a far less difficult decision than he'd thought, given Miss Fisher's occasional tendency towards opacity of dialogue. Besides, he had a shrewd idea of where the good Captain would be found.

Returned to the Inn and her Raleigh, but she would be in the Cafe so as not to seem like she'd done anything as emotional as miss someone. And, indeed, she was in what was fast becoming her usual corner. "Captain, what a pleasure to find you. Do you have a moment?"

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In truth, Yasmeen's first stop upon returning to the Inn had been to find Raleigh and drag him to bed where telling him she missed him could be woven in between the sex and the tale-telling without being soppy and soft. And then, yes, despite her love of her freedom and adventure, she'd installed herself in the cafe for a time so she would be nearby.

When Ignis approached, something of knowing on his face despite the scars and lenses, Yasmeen lifted an eyebrow in instinctive response. That he could see it caught up with her almost immediately and she added a wry, "Very few people who call me 'Captain' experience pleasure on finding me. You may as well call me Yasmeen, Ignis, and do, sit if you will."

He took the offered seat, out of politeness only. "I'm actually here to ask a favor, Yasmeen, and as such might not sit for long." Asking for favors and help rankled, as always - it seemed like a weakness. Yasmeen would understand, since she prickled in a similar way... if for different reasons. "I need- would like, rather, to go into Songrun and buy some books. For obvious reasons, I can't do that entirely on my own. Therefore, I ask for your assistance."

He was always so formal. In polite company, anyway. The idea of herself as polite company made her chuckle quietly. "You know, you could just have said, 'Will you go book-shopping with me?' I would've said yes, just as easily."

She stood, stretched and looked around for Raleigh. He hadn't come in in the last few minutes, so she shrugged. This wouldn't take that long, but she asked Kitty (who had no feline DNA) to let him know where she'd gone if he made an appearance.

"Are you ready to go now?"

The shifting noise was Ignis's cue to stand back up as well. "I felt it was better not to presume." The casual question was a little too casual, even though he was more than fond enough of Yasmeen to relax somewhat. "And yes, I am. Thank you."

"I did notice a bookstore," she said as she moved out of the cafe and then waited for Ignis to join her. "Unless you had somewhere in particular in mind."

"I did not." Ignis started walking, retracing the route back to the door to Songrun. Fortunately, he'd made the trip itself enough times to know the way easily, and he trusted Yasmeen to keep up and put him right if he happened to step wrong. "That is in fact part of why I need the help. First to find books, second to ensure that I make appropriate selections."

"If anyone who knew me at home saw me acting as a shopping assistant, they would believe I had finally knocked my brain loose," came Yasmeen's amused reply. "Fortunately, reading is a favorite pastime."

Not that she wouldn't have agreed to help under other circumstances. Ignis had rapidly become a fixed part of her crew in her mind. If she found a way out, she would aim to take him with her.

"It was for me as well, in the rare event of free time." Exceedingly rare, but even if he had more free time now, reading was... not going to happen. "These books, however, will be a gift."

"I insist my crew take at least one shift in three off. It's far too easy to lose a limb to exhaustion aboard an airship," Yasmeen explained, since they rarely talked of her past but it seemed a decent time. "Since I never asked them to do anything I wouldn't, that applied to me as well."

That said, she gave a verbal nod to the idea they were a gift. "I have a yen for adventure novels. Do you know what your friend likes?" She wouldn't press on who the friend was, not at the moment, although she felt sure she knew.

"My companions often relaxed while I drove, and of course Noctis insisted on stopping at good fishing spots periodically." Restful enough, even if there were still dozens of little chores and details to attend to.

The question of books was less fraught, and Ignis considered it before shaking his head. "I do not. I think... poetry, perhaps. Histories, philosophy, fables." Fantastical stories? It was difficult to know for certain. Except on one point of which Ignis could be certain. "Anything will do, I expect, provided it's not 'Twilight'."

Yasmeen let the heavy topic of the past go. It profited neither of them to dwell there. Instead, she considered the probable recipient of the gift. The pretty blond boy she'd met briefly in passing.

"The Songrans have an intriguing calligraphic style. Perhaps your friend would appreciate an instruction text, ink and a brush, in addition to reading matter." Yasmeen glanced aside to see if Ignis had a reaction to that, but added, "This is Alcuin, we're speaking of, yes?"

"Perhaps." Did Alcuin enjoy writing like that? Visual artistry might well be something dear to him, but if so he had been careful enough of Ignis's disability not to dwell on it. "I don't know that, either. And yes, Alcuin. I hadn't realized you were acquainted."

"Acquainted is a stretch. We've met and I've seen him with you." Often enough to see the ridiculous glances the boy aimed at Ignis, and often enough to know Ignis behaved unusually solicitously toward him.

"I suspect you could give him a soap bubble and he'd be ecstatic."

Ignis had to chuckle at the mental picture of trying to present a bubble to anyone without it popping. But if anyone could accept such a ludicrous gift.... "I'm not sure even his politeness would extend quite that far, Yasmeen."

"Politeness?" Yasmeen's eyebrow hitched skyward. "Hardly. The boy is absolutely smitten with you." Even Yasmeen who had less than no interest with such things could see that much. So what if she'd missed that Raleigh felt that way about her for years. It was less missing than strategically not-seeing.

"What? No." Ridiculous. Wasn't it? It always had been, 'smitten' was something that happened to other people. "We are friends, and he has an affectionate personality, that's all."

"An affectionate personality, an interest in if not a preference for men, and sufficient sense to know a good man when he sees one," Yasmeen retorted. She glanced aside at Ignis again to see if he really believed -- for Prophet's sake, he did. She snorted.

"Sufficient sense, as well, to look elsewhere. I admit that I..." Ignis shrugged slightly, a little nettled at the distinct sound of being exasperated at. "But I've learned over time that it's best I keep these things to myself. I make friends well enough, but among the things I am not is anyone's idea of a lover."

Yasmeen snarled openly at that assertion, though fortunately they'd arrived at the noisy market entrance to Songrun or else she might have punched him as well. "Did you have an interest in women, I'd have taken you to my bed two months ago."

True, but also not. Her willingness to bed Ignis dated to the same day she'd informed Raleigh she wanted no one else. Under the circumstances, she regarded it more than true enough.

Ignis laughed. "Thank you, but I don't need reassurance." However neatly unprovable said reassurance was. He knew well enough that Yasmeen didn't want anyone but her Raleigh, after all, and willingness wasn't desire by any means. "How did you get the idea, anyway?"

"The idea to take you to bed?" Yasmeen decided to ignore his idiotic assertion for the moment, since he clearly did need reassurance. It wasn't her habit to give it, yet he was near enough crew and definitely a friend, such that she would bend her own habits to do so. "I looked at you and spoke to you. Also kissed you, but as you weren't engaged, that was less suggestive."

Had it been a noticeable or useful gesture, Ignis would have rolled his eyes. "Not that idea. I'd already determined as much." Magic forcing a kiss, and had he been interested she wouldn't have minded. "Alcuin. That idea."

"I've seen you together." Yasmeen shrugged, even though he wouldn't see it. She trusted they walked closely enough that he could feel it. "He yearns when he looks at you." Put him in guyliner and give him a sword and he'd be Hook, pining over his princess even when he had her.

Yasmeen wasn't the kind of person to lie for her own entertainment, at least in the sense of finding said entertainment in the embarrassment of friends. On the balance, then, she was either mistaken or... right. And he had no way of telling, at present, which it was.

Likewise, at present neither Alcuin (assuming for the moment that Yasmeen was correct in her observation) had made any particular move past friendship. He, almost certainly, had been rather obvious... but he could be annoyed at himself over that later. "I... see. In any case, I'd prefer to choose books carefully rather than rely on tolerance granted by some level of 'smitten'."

"No soap bubbles, then." Blind literally and metaphorically this one. Yasmeen shrugged mentally and added, "But perhaps a volume of romantic poetry wouldn't go amiss. That is unless you mean to continue tormenting yourself and him with unresolved sexual tension."

Romance was emphatically not in Yasmeen's wheelhouse, but even she could see chemistry about to explode when she saw it.

"I'm quite used to it, honestly." That didn't make the torment less, but it did mean Ignis was better at it. "But if there's something decent, I'm... not opposed. I do think it could be rather fraught." Given his Anafiel's poetic skills, if nothing else. "We shall see."

"Very well." She said nothing more of it for the moment. If he chose not to go soft for the boy, she couldn't precisely blame him. She'd avoided it herself as long as possible, and still fought it off with Raleigh as much as she did love him. "We shall see."

Practice (and proximity to Yasmeen, who tended to keep a significant bubble of personal space) made navigating people in the marketplace easier than Ignis had thought it would be on his first forays into actual populated areas. But he still stayed a stutter step behind Yasmeen, as she was the one who knew where they were going.

"Part of me hopes you're wrong," he admitted abruptly. "I dislike not knowing what I'm doing. Specifically, I dislike the errors that result."

"You hope I'm wrong about Alcuin?" Yasmeen's brow furrowed in bemusement. "But you fancy him. You've said as much." Why deny himself the pleasure of the young man's body in his bed if they both wanted it. "I dislike being wrong or caught flat-footed, but what harm here?"

"I don't know. Which is the point." Ignis shook his head slightly and shoved his shades further up on his nose, unnecessarily. "I don't have any idea, I don't have a plan, I don't have an attack or escape strategy. I am, historically, rather poor at improvising. I do want him, and I don't entirely want you to be wrong, but I also think my life will continue tidier if you are."

"Last I checked, sex needed no more of plan than offer and acceptance. It's not as though you're attacking Siege Perilous," she replied. "You make it seem as though a kiss that missed connections might be the beginning of the end of the world."

"It might be. How would I know?" It was, he was aware, a thoroughly irrational worry. "I need plans. I'm terrible at improvisation."

"...wait." Yasmeen actually stopped in her tracks and put a hand on his arm. "Do you mean to tell me you've never been with anyone? Please, please tell me that I wasn't the first time you'd been kissed." She'd actually feel bad about that, but on the other hand, at least she'd not been offended when he definitely didn't have any interest.

"Never fear, you're off that particular hook." Even if there hadn't been random idiot games he'd been more or less pressured into at various parties he'd been forced to attend as a youth, Vax's incident with whatever had been going on that day had been before hers.

"Even so." Yasmeen shook her head and touched his elbow to indicate she meant to move forward again through the crowd. "Wanting a plan and refusing to act in the absence of one are two separate things. Either plan, or take a leap of faith and trust your skills and your friends to lift you if you fall."

And neither of those options seemed possible, really. How could one plan for a possibility that had been impossible hours before? Or rely on skills that didn't exist and....

He'd make himself crazy, or crazier, trying to chase any of that down. Certainly he'd wear further at Yasmeen's non-infinite patience. "At the very least the books are because he is my friend. It is best, perhaps, if I don't make anyone including myself more insane than that." It wasn't a 'no' or 'never', but more 'we'll irritate each other if we keep on'.

Yasmeen snorted quietly, rolled her eyes, and pressed forward along the avenue to the bookshop. The saying about horses and water apparently applied to companions and sex, too.

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[Locked to Yasmeen] shopping?

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