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Fixer-Uppers, Sunday

Oh, man, was Jim ever in a good mood today at the Fiver-Uppers. The island had moved again, and for all the creepiness in the world, nothing was ever going to change the fact that for the first time in ages, the weather was good enough for him to ride his solar surfer to work. Between the chill of the ice age and London's rain, he'd been having withdrawls. Just a bit.

A lot.

He was sitting up on the counter with his surfer propped up against it just in case he decided that he wanted to grab it and go for another ride during his lunch break or something. For the time being, he was toying here and there with smaller bits and pieces, trying to come up with some combination of Earth materials that would be able to score him a working miniature.

A bit unconsciously, he'd taken to whistling as he worked. It hadn't taken very much for the silence of this new place to start to get to him, surfer-related happiness aside.

[Open, OCD-free!]

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"And straight into some garbage cans, huh?" Definitely the sort of story she'd enjoy! "Did that hurt a lot? And how did that lead to getting a job?"

"One garbage can, actually. One of those really, really big square ones that you can put a bunch of bags in at once."

A dumpster, Jim.

"See, the thing that distracted me was the sign for the store, here." It had a lens flare! "And I was mostly okay, but that's because my surfer took most of the damage. I needed to weld it back together, and here was the only place that had the equipment. But I couldn't afford rental of it all, so..."

"Oh!" Ariel's face lit up. "You can find some of the best stuff in those really big square ones! And so you got a job there so you could afford to fix the surfer! Actually, I think that's how I started working at Pixie Dust, only instead of fixing things, it was for clothes and shoes."

Lots and lots of shoes.

"Oh, yeah? I haven't really gone in there yet," Jim shared. "It seems like a great place for... mostly fancy clothes, at least from the window."

And girly ones, going by the name.

And, oddly enough, Ariel spent maybe two seconds considering trying to foist That Pink Shirt on Jim and had to stop so she didn't wind up hurting herself laughing.

"It's all fancy clothes," she assured him. "And shoes and accessories and all sorts of things that definitely seem right up your alley, Jim, I'm surprised you haven't been there yet."

Jim raised an eyebrow, looking down at his clompy boots, his simple trousers, his belt that was entirely too big, and his scruffy jacket. The eyebrow stayed raised as he looked back at Ariel.

"I can not seriously scream 'trendy dresser' to you," he protested.

"I study all the magazines," Ariel informed Jim, as loftily as one who was trying not to giggle could manage. "You'd be really surprised by what comes down those runways!"

No, seriously. There've been times when she wondered if her sail dress from her first day on the island hadn't really been as far off as Jono had suggested it was.

"I think in order to be surprised, I would have to know what people around here think is stylish in the first place," Jim pointed out. "I mean, most of this kind of just screams 'Mom sewed it for me,' doesn't it?"

It really did. And she'd done so out of the clothing that Jim's father had left behind when he'd taken off on them years ago, too.

Ariel shrugged a little. "Compared to what we have at the store?" she said. "Sure. But, I mean, it suits you, and everyone's a little different, especially being from so many different places. I mean, heck, we don't even really wear clothes where I'm from, unless you count seashells and special occasions."

Thank you, Ariel, for that mental image. It now had Jim's mouth hanging open just a little.

Cue squeaking.

"Really?"

And, really, Ariel never really thought of it much, but, with an expression like that, it was kind of hard not to turn a little red.

"It's...a lot warmer there," she offered, wondering how they'd gotten on the topic of clothes from flying things anyway.

Just face it Ariel. The space kid now thought that you grew up in some kind of tropical nudist colony.

"I guess it would have to be." Because if it wasn't, there would be all sorts of problems with shrin-- HIS BRAIN WAS NOT ALLOWED TO GO THERE.

And the prospect of explaining to Jim why mermen didn't have to worry about that didn't even cross her mind.

"I don't suppose," she bit her lip, some of the embarrassment slipping into amusement, "you'd be interested in having your own set of traditional Atlantican seashells, would you, Jim?"

Jim was now terrified of Ariel's traditional cultural garb, thank you.

"What would I do with seashells, exactly?"

He had ideas. He was not sharing them.

"You wear them, Jim," Ariel explained. "Like a shirt, kind of, so that it covers, you know..."

Thank you, Ariel, for that very helpful gesture there. And for not laughing. She was sort of wishing she'd worn her own today.

"I don't have those," Jim intoned, looking somewhere between stunned and totally gobsmacked. "Unless you have seashells that I can wear a little lower."

And not like a shirt!

And what about his butt!?

And that snort to keep from laughing actually hurt a little bit. And it didn't even really work, either!

"That's definitely not traditional Atlantican," Ariel chuckled, "but if you were interested, I can see what I can do."

"Do the guys not wear anything?" Jim was flailing his arms about now, thank you. "I think I'll stick with my pants, thanks!"

Yes, the ones his mommy made for him.

Once flailing came into the picture, Ariel started to feel a little bad, even if she was still pretty amused. "Well," she allowed. "I can't blame you there, but the guys where I'm from have something else that the guys here don't."

She felt it was owed to him for the flailing, and the flying lessons, really.

Jim's fragile little brain was going to just shatter into a million pieces and trickle out of his head through his ears, now.

"... They what?"

WHAT DID ATLANTICANS DO TO THEIR MEN?

And that made Ariel wonder if she was making a big mistake by trying this whole let's not be too secretive thing. But it was too late to back out of it now; she couldn't think of any other answer quickly enough...

Boy, did she swim into a corner with this one! She took in a breath and tried to pretend that it was no big deal. Because it wasn't, right? It hadn't been with anyone so far...

She waved her hand as coolly as she could. "They have fins," she said. "So they don't need pants. Or low-slung seashells."

... Oh. Well, that was decidedly less terrifying an explanation than Jim had been expecting.

"Oh. So, your people are amphibious," he ventured, looking down at her feet again and trying to play it cool. He had a lot of flailing to make up for, after all. "That is totally not where my mind had been going."

This was probably for the best.

Ariel was pretty sure she was going to bite straight through her lip at this point, and as she saw Jim's drifting eyes, her toes almost unconsciously wiggled in her shoes.

"Amphibious," she repeated, wondering why in the world she never thought of just going with that as way to explain it, and then she giggled. She had to. Any flailing going on here today was not going to have anything to do with her amphibious nature, especially since she could move straight on through with, "Boy, Jim, what were you thinking?"

In a voice that made it clear that she already knew.

"Nothing like that," Jim laughed, blushing pretty fiercely as he ran one hand through his hair. Playing it cool wasn't working so well for him. "I think I'm getting way too used to the dominant race around here being human. Back on Montressor, my mom and I were pretty much it, so I should have known."

Luckily for Jim, Ariel was pretty easily distracted, especially when different worlds and humans came into the mix. "Really?" she asked. "Did you wonder if there were more humans out there, or maybe that you were more like...whoever else was on Montressor?"

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answer2bheard.livejournal.com - 2011-07-31 22:30 (UTC) - Expand

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