trans_9 | I Said, Hey, I Put Some New Shoes On And Everybody's Smiling, It's So Inviting [Open!]

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I Said, Hey, I Put Some New Shoes On And Everybody's Smiling, It's So Inviting [Open!]

Something about this whole experience feels familiar to the short, pink-haired woman padding down a side-street, arms dangling limply at her sides as she peers into shop windows, into the faces of passersby, into vehicles and restaurants, and it takes her almost four hours to figure out that it reminds her of movies from the twentieth century, of TV shows depicting happy (or miserable) men and women going about their daily, robot-free business, walking to work, eating with friends, buying a new pair of pants. She almost cries when she realizes that she, for once, is actually living that moment of normal humanity, and she takes this as a cue to sidle into the next clothing boutique she runs across and buy herself a few articles of dearly yearned for clothing: jeans, a T-shirt, a sweater (not that she needs it in this climate), and shoes.

Thus adorned, she continues her wandering, hands now hidden in her pockets, and only now does it occur to her that she has greatly missed pockets--they really do aid in her natural slump, as having her arms positioned thusly helps her spine to bend just so...

Somehow, she manages to wish Dustin--or, better yet, Chief, because cats can't hurt your feelings while they're having emotional crises--was here very rarely. The few times he flickers across her mind, she blinks and winces and sighs, and pretty soon, she finds herself sitting on a bench, a carry-out plate of Zokez II's interpretation of sushi on her lap.

How she has managed to be on-ship for... well, who knows how long (long) and not have gone on a single shore leave escapes her.

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How fitting it was, then, that they should meet whilst both doing their hardest to avoid one another? It was only to be expected, after all—chances of running into a person do tend to increase when both parties really do not want to have another encounter—and in a way, it was what Dustin needed. For…security reasons.

He didn’t have his backpack. His pockets were disturbingly light. And that greatcoat that he stole from Possessions was entirely too warm for this environment. It also picked up an annoying amount of sand around the bottom edge, so finally he tossed it into some giveaway bin and, reluctantly, went aimlessly shopping for something slightly more adaptable.

Now, coming upon the beach and just within range of where Yoshimi could see him (and he her, as it would seem), Dustin had indeed acquired the garment that he sought. The cool gray overcoat was, unlike his original one, neatly pressed and loose, a bit heavier with a propped frock collar that might have looked better with a scarf (or at least broader shoulders), but it sufficed and at least fit properly, which was always a bonus. This, predictably, had made Dustin a very happy man up until he went to the beach, which was where he was currently, and he realized that he needed to talk to Yoshimi.

Well, damn. Dustin’s shoulders slumped and, hands in spacious side pockets, he walked slowly over and attempted a smile. It came out kind of funny—but perhaps she would appreciate the effort.

How fitting it is, then, that Yoshimi's eyes fall on him while her mouth is full of sushi, because there is no worse situation than having your... whatever-the-hell-Dustin-is walk towards you quite voluntarily and try to smile and generally look ready to tell you that no, he doesn't hate you, and no, he probably won't run off with some other chick because he's bored, while your mouth is full of sushi. Because it's pretty hard to say "Hi" with your mouth full of sushi.

Several awkward-as-hell moments later, she manages to swallow her mouthful, eyes having fixed on the lapel of his shiny new coat as soon as she realized that she was kind of humilliating herself here, face gone pink almost immediately. She winces slightly, sipping at a bottle of water cautiously, eyes flickering up to his face once or twice before she looks away, finding her shoes quite fascinating.

"Nice coat," she says to her shoes, hoping that Dustin is enough of a brain-genius to figure out that she's talking to him, and not her shoes, because it'd be pretty silly if her shoes had a coat.

Perhaps Dustin would’ve laughed at her, if he wasn’t already afraid that the delicate equilibrium of—yes, whatever the hell kind of relationship they had—was in danger of rapidly deteriorating in the wake of any further grievances. Although, maybe a gentle chuckle of just the right tone might help to break the ice, elicit some sort of good vibe that would help to patch this…

…Damn. See, this was why he didn’t get involved in these sorts of long-term relationships. Speaking of which, why the hell was he so concerned with rebuilding communications with Yoshimi at all? It wasn’t like he’d seen some other fairly attractive women on this resort giving him the once-over, especially after he dawned that new coat of his. Dustin might not have been extremely handsome himself, but he found that he was able to pull off the ‘dark and mysterious’ look with considerable aplomb and with little effort on his part, which reeled in a large enough sample of the female population that he was rarely without want for their company. Admittedly this worked better in areas where his reputation did not precede him—or rather, his personality. There had been more than one occasion where the ‘Assassin’ came across a group of fawning fangirls who looked hard enough for his picture, or could otherwise recognize him by word association and verbal descriptions.

Then again, perhaps that was why he liked Yoshimi so much—all of those women were vacuous idiots that were only capable of handling him for a single night. Yoshimi somehow managed to put up with him for several months. She was worth keeping around.

“Thanks,” Dustin murmured, standing awkwardly a foot or so to her side, glancing down out of the corner of his eye. As an afterthought he decided that this would work better if he were sitting.

“…Is the sushi good?”

She blinks at her shoes, chewing at her lower lip as she considers the fact that he has sat down and made an attempt at conversation. Good signs, she supposes, but then again, one can never be sure with Scruffy McJackass. For all she knows, it's be a clever ploy to get her off her guard so he can sufficiently tell her she sucks and should go die in a hole in as unexpected a manner as possible, so as to exacerbate the desire to kill herself she will inevitably feel when he does just that.

Damn but she's paranoid.

Refusing to look at him again, she tucks her hair behind her ear, unconsciously slumping forward as her leg starts jiggling with nerves and the very unfun kind of anticipation. She stares at the half-empty plate of sushi on her lap, weighing the pros and cons of responding to his question versus running away now before he can do anything horrible. Her mouth decides for her.

"It's okay. What I can't work out is the lack of chopsticks. I mean, I know we're on a foreign planet and that the cultures probably evolved differently than the ones on Earth, but if they developed sushi, you'd think they'd develop chopsticks, because it's kind of gross to eat sushi with your hands when you don't have hand sanitizer at your immediate disposal, you know what I mean? And they have forks! Why are forks so much better than chopsticks that they'd be universal, while chopsticks get dumped in the Utensils of the Universe Archive and forgotten? Chopsticks are prettier than forks, and it actually takes skill to use them, which makes them better, because things that take skill are always better. Like karate. You can't be good at karate and not be able to use chopsticks, which is just like, okay, so that means this planet doesn't have karate, too? God, this planet sucks." Aaand she falls silent, glaring at her chopstick-less plate, leg still jiggling, hair falling out from behind her ear to hide her face from the world.

At least she's not worried about Dustin stabbing her in the back anymore!

Dustin was, at the moment, preoccupied with staring at his feet, content with letting Yoshimi ramble about the ills of sushi without chopsticks and hand sanitizer. Part of him wanted to interject and say that hand sanitizer wasn’t the most helpful product in the world to have, actually, because it weakens your immune system and doesn’t protect against viruses, and by the way it’s messy and smells funny so you might as well just lick off your fingers or use the utensils you’re given, or, hell, I’m sure there’s a gift shop somewhere in town that sells the cheap plastic sets, if you’re really that set on having the damn things then I’m sure you can deal—

His eyes snapped to her leg and he completely lost his train of thought. Several moments of this and he was unable to restrain himself; with an odd, involuntary shudder, Dustin brought his hand down on Yoshimi’s knee. God, anything to get it to stop moving around! If there was a more distracting thing in the world then he had yet to see it.

Secondary meanings of this gesture came only after the fact, and by this point he was content with keeping his hand right where it was.

“So does this mean you’re enjoying yourself?”

Eyes sliding to his hand on her knee, her thoughts about chopsticks are quite abated because he's touching her! Voluntarily! If the situation were any different, she would be currently involved in telling herself that she's pathetic and should just go jump off a cliff or something, but she acknowledges that, awkward as they are right now, it's perfectly acceptable to be overjoyed that he still wants to touch her, let alone come within eighteen meters of her.

Instead of freaking out or doing a happy dance or something equally embarrassing, Yoshimi leans back against the bench, turning her head to peer at him through mussed bangs. She looks a bit disconcerted, but with the quirk of an eyebrow, the look turns into a typical expression of irony.

"That depends on your definition of "enjoyment", but sure. There's a beach." Her tone is dry as she points at the sand and the water and the weird people in minimal clothing frolicking and gallivanting and being weird, and it's pretty obvious that she has no intentions of joining in the weirdness, except that the water looks nice, but oh well. "And birds are pretty cool," she adds, following the path of an alien seagull hopping by them, cawing at another alien seagull to get the &*$% away from my bread crust!.

She's not going to mention her joy at being among a normally bustling society, because she has figured out by now that it's entirely peculiar for her to be as excited as she is about people going shopping.

The real question is, why wouldn’t he return to her? After all the things he’s told her, what she’s seen of him, what she knows of him and what they’ve shared—how could he turn his back on that? How could he possibly let her get away with that sort of knowledge without his constant supervision? It would be—unspeakable. Completely and utterly unspeakable. I mean it was his own fault that she knew all of this, sure, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now, not much other than what he’d already done with the very few individuals that came so close—what he’d done with the volumes of information stored within his brain—that is, protect it, them, until he was no longer in need of keeping his facts to himself.

Almost spontaneously Yoshimi became something much more than a romantic companion. For whatever reason, Dustin had never really brought her up to this level, but now…

The dryness and meaning of her voice went unnoticed as his mind switched into a significantly different form of thinking, eyes locking on the side of her face until she turned around to face him. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, and yet there was that odd sort of sparkle blinking about, as if daring Yoshimi to look back into them and guess what was going on behind them.

“…Back on the ship…You said that the others had hope for…something. Anything. You know, that—maybe their universes weren’t really destroyed, that there was some fantastic device that would magically restore everything to normal and wipe out all their problems and other such ridiculousness.” Dustin turned away for a moment as he spoke, free hand gesticulating absently as a good ramble began to establish itself. Somehow he managed to pull himself back. “And I was…honestly afraid. The blindly optimistic don’t make much sense to me, they’re always coming up with ways to explain how an obviously horrible situation could suddenly turn in their favor. Quite frankly such behavior borders on delusional, and the idea of mass hallucination scares me. I was trying to convince myself that I was still sane, and…and then I realized that I didn’t need to believe that I could save my universe or even accomplish all of my old goals. I could still avoid the illusion, because…well, I’ve found something else to fight for.”

Extra explanation was not required—not with that smile growing on Dustin’s face. What he was implying should’ve been obvious.

She looks rather grim while he talks, lips twisted oddly. The condescension in his voice back then still gets under her skin, and she's half-hoping he turns this into an apology.

As it turns out, he turns it into something much better than an apology.

And dammit all, Dustin, now she's wiggling her toes in her shoes to keep from dancing and the corners of her lips are so twitching with one of those big, dumb grins that people in corny, rainbow-puking romance movies put on when corny, rainbow-puking, romantic things happen. Fortunately, she finds something to get her mind away from the fact that she really has nothing to say to that, other than maybe begging on her knees to let her go home with him if they ever get their planets back, because her face has heated with his words, because she's Yoshimi, and blushing is one of the only three things she does on a regular basis.

Making a face and wishing she could glare at her cuttle-fish reflexes, she shakes the hair out of her face.

"It's times like these I think that I really should dye my hair brown again," she half-mutters. And then she blinks and raises her eyebrows at him with a grin, because the irony of his just-verbalized fear of diehard optimism struck home several seconds late.

"I hope you realize that the only reason I'm still alive is an insane level of existential optimism." And paranoia, but that's beside the point.

Yes, Dustin caught all of that, the grin pulling at the side of his mouth growing by several times at her blush, risking to move the hand on her knee to her chin, giving her several casual caresses as he basked in her smile. Unlike Yoshimi, who wanted to curse her ‘cuttlefish reflexes’, Dustin could happily say that he was quite enjoying them.

For the most part he ignored the bit about dying her hair, his only recognition that of helping to move the rebellious strands from her face to behind her ear, as if to say, ”It doesn’t really matter in the end, I’m not focusing on that regardless,”; the gentle brush that followed seemed to add, ”…Although the pink’s nice.” Fascination with her hair soon subsided in favor of more direct, spoken methods of compliments. Dustin was in one of those moods now. Yoshimi should know that look.

“I never said that being around the insane was a bad thing,” he chided with a gruff, Dustin-esque chuckle, “It’s like having music playing in the background…makes one confident in one’s own mind, increases clarity and calms the senses when everything goes to hell and you’re the only one left…”

…Perhaps that wasn’t the best analogy, but there were far worse ones that he managed to avoid. Besides, Dustin was about to change the subject anyways. There was something he’d encountered earlier that he wanted to bring up, given the circumstances.

“…Say. There’s a nice lodge on the far side of the island, they, ah, have some open rooms, soft beds…”

She keeps smiling pretty solidly after that, distracted from whatever it was they'd been talking about--had they been talking about anything?--by the feel of his hand in her hair. She's almost disappointed when he starts talking again, because she so would have preferred that he keep up with the petting. Then again, the odd note of teasing in his tone has her rolling her eyes and shaking her head slightly. She hears the drop at the end of his words, and steps around that quite gracefully as she pulls his hand from her hair and twines their fingers.

"You're a jackass," she says, shaking her head once again. Still, she grins.

At the topic change, she snorts into a fit of light laughter, peering at him with a highly amused lift of eyebrows.

"You're just in this for the sex, aren't you?"

The ‘I know’ response was on the tip of Dustin’s tongue, but he let it pass as understood. Besides, his mouth could be doing much more productive things right now instead of unnecessary replies—like, you know, kissing. He bent in to give her one on the cheek and stayed for a nuzzle and a whisper:

“…I like to think of it as a bonus.”

Very smooth, Dustin. Very smooth.

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I Said, Hey, I Put Some New Shoes On And Everybody's Smiling, It's So Inviting [Open!]

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Icon keywords. I mean really.

;EEEEEEEEE [also, pretend the icon has pink hair]

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