Theodoric of York | Friday Evening

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie had had kind of A Week. She'd been a child over the weekend (which hadn't actually been that hard on her, until she'd had to deal with the sprinkle situation on Monday), and then there had been the whole thing with her boyfriend getting shot (calling it a bullet graze surprisingly did not make it better!), and she'd also had to teach class today and now her neck kind of hurt from holding an encyclopedia on her head for awhile. (And whose dumb idea had that been, Annie?)

Anyway. Annie was a girl who got her nails done regularly anyway, but it had felt even more necessary than normal today. And in her unending quest to get Rey to enjoy the girlier, dumber things in life, she'd invited her along.

And now Annie was sitting with her feet under a little UV lamp, letting the paint on her toes dry as she flipped through a magazine and admired her newly-shellacked fingers. "It's not too much, is it?" Her nails were a slightly darker shade of pink this time, so...no, they were not too much. (She'd gone for a much more bold fuchsia on her toes, though! Daring.)

[for she who is narratively mentioned but it's an open spa for all your spa needs, too!]

Comments

[thatwaslucky]

"I'm really not the person to ask," Rey pointed out, amused. She looked down at her toes, wiggling them a little and deciding, "This is a little weird."

She'd try most things (that didn't involve calling attention to herself) but she also recognized when yes, they were a little weird.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Only kind of," Annie decided. "There's so many weirder things than painting your fingers and toes."

Though she could admit that if you didn't already do this regularly, it might be kind of a weird practice. But also so pretty!

[thatwaslucky]

"If I ask what, am I setting myself up to have to do it?" Rey checked.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I mean, there's the acrylics," Annie noted, gesturing to an array of available options in many colors. Some of them had rhinestones. "That's a start, as far as weirder goes."

[thatwaslucky]

"...I would never get anything done," Rey said after a moment of looking at the acrylics.

She couldn't climb with those. And they definitely ended in an injury to Silver somehow.

[defenderofdesmoines]

They were absolutely not get-things-done-friendly. Nor were they, largely, boyfriend-friendly.

"I got French tips once," Annie admitted, pointing to what she meant. "And I could barely use my phone." There had been a lot of very, very careful typing.

[thatwaslucky]

"Do you get that kind of thing on your toes, too?"

That was the part Rey really found weird. Her feet were under a lamp. She had to put sunscreen on her toenails.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"...I'm sure someone has," Annie said, thinking about it. "But like it might make shoes kind of hard? Though I'd totally get like, those little rhinestones on my toes." Never on her fingers, but her toes that maybe one other person might see? Sure.

[thatwaslucky]

"You would?" Rey asked. "Why?"

Maybe she was missing something!

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Because they're pretty," Annie decided. "I'm easy to please. Sometimes just having something pretty like that is enough. And no one ever sees my toes except, like, Diego, anyway." Unless she went swimming or something and it was way, way too cold to even consider that right now.

[thatwaslucky]

"That's kind of why this part's new to me," Rey admitted. "I don't even think John's looking at my feet."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Yeah, I'd have to point it out to Diego," Annie was pretty sure. He was typically distracted by everything north of her feet. "But at least nail-painting would probably be normal to him." Probably. She'd also taken it for granted that his universe had cell phones! Maybe they didn't have fingernail polish, either! "John's gonna be all like, 'What did you do to your feet???' if he notices 'cause I don't think they did this in the eighteenth century."

[thatwaslucky]

"Maybe. He's pretty good about rolling with things that are new to him here," Rey said. "And Summer got me to paint my nails once so maybe he's seen that."

Maybe. That had lasted about two days without chipping.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"It's probably less weird than, like, a microwave or techno music or Tik Tok," Annie decided thoughtfully. "How are things going, anyway? With John."

She didn't draw out the O like Summer did, mostly because she actually didn't know that his first name was a whole thing. She just called him that because Rey called him that. But her tone was kind of conspiratorial, because talking about boys was fun that way.

[thatwaslucky]

"Good," she said, smiling, because she played it cool but there was definitely a heart eyes thing happening when she got asked that question. "Really good. I never actually know what to say when someone asks that."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"'Good' is a good answer," Annie told her, grinning because she knew that look. (Possibly because it was a face she herself made a lot these days.) "How long's it been, now? Couple months?"

[thatwaslucky]

"Two and a half, officially." The months of heavy flirting probably didn't count. "Feels like longer, though."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Well, and you guys were friends first, right?" Annie checked. "That probably helps it feel like longer." The emphasis on friends there was one hundred percent Halloween-related, yes.

[thatwaslucky]

"Actual friends, yes," Rey said with a laugh, because she knew what that meant. "Honestly nothing was happening."

But, it'd been enough time and she was comfortable enough in all of this by now to say, "Even if it should have been."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Ha." Annie actually pointed a finger at her. "I knew it. Ugh, that's so cute. Were you guys, like, worried about it getting weird? I dated a guy I was friend with first, once, and that was my big thing - I didn't want to ruin what we had."

Diego, on the other hand, had basically never been her friend. He had gone from being a hot guy at the gym to being a hot guy she made out with, with a little stop at 'hot guy she beat up' in the middle.

[thatwaslucky]

"We've never actually talked about that," Rey realized, and shrugged. "It was a little bit of that for me. I didn't want to rush into anything. I've never been in a relationship before this, my life is a lot for someone else to deal with, he hadn't come here voluntarily..." Plus she'd had to figure out how cool she was with the whole pirate thing, honestly. "I just needed to be sure before taking a chance, especially someone I was friends with."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Wait, John's your first boyfriend?" Annie had to backtrack and melt all anew at that. "Aww, Rey, I didn't know that." A pause, as she considered how she wanted to phrase it, and, "He is a lot better looking than most people's first boyfriends, just eff-why-eye."

Like, far, far cry from Sean Jakowski and Drummer Boy, Rey, damn.

[thatwaslucky]

"What are most people's first boyfriends like?" Rey wondered.

First boyfriends were usually not in their thirties, which had a lot to do with it.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Mine was a guy I knew from church events and who I was on a superhero team with, and we were both inexperienced teenagers," Annie offered, 'cause yeah, the age thing was totally a factor, not to mention the experience thing. "And he did not have John's abs, let me tell you that much."

[thatwaslucky]

"Very few people have those abs." She had however seen Eric in a speedo in a fire drill once, though. "It also sounds like you started earlier than me."