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The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (6/30)

Last day of June, and that meant it was time for the Pride decorations to come down.

Most of them, anyway: the signs and posters from past Pride events, the lesbian flag that spent most of the year hanging over Steph's drums, and about half of the minis in rainbow colors that made up her shelf-top display got packed away into the well-worn box that had come with her all the way from Arcadia Bay. But the flag up in the front window was staying there, the other half of the minis were just going to be a permanent installation, and the Queer Games display was staying right where it was.

Look, it was her store. It wasn't just going to be seasonally queer if she had anything to say about it.

Hell if Steph knew what she was going to do about the pine cones though. Maybe they'd go back to being normal brown pine cones, abnormally accumulating all over the store, by tomorrow? Guess she'd find out.

[OOC: Open!]

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With the completion of Sad Sexy Beards, Isabela found herself at a bit of a loss for what to do with herself. Unfortunately for Steph.

"Well, hello, sweet thing, what a charming little place I've stumbled into." Like she hadn't bribed a squirrel to tell her exactly where Steph's shop was.

Steph had been loosely wrapping all of the minis in tissue paper to pack them away, but she looked up when Isabela came in.

"Hey, Isabela," she said, wondering vaguely why she had this sudden feeling of impending doom. "Welcome to my store. How's it going?"

That was because Steph had good instincts.

"Oh, marvellous," Isabela replied, grinning from ear to ear. "In a bit of a creative rut, but I think I'm about to turn a corner on that "

"It's a good feeling, isn't it?" asked Steph. "Finally getting the creative juices going again."

Word choice could have been better there, Stephanie.

"Hell of a, uh, performance you gave there a couple of weeks ago, by the way."

It was a perfect word choice as far as Isabela was concerned. "It's certainly a juicy project that's caught my eye."

She waved off the comment. "Far less impressive than pulling off that whole weekend. All I had to do was share my thoughts with the world."

It was Steph's turn to shrug. "I'm just glad people had a good time. So..."

Little Bot rolled by, waving at her with the latest stray pine cone, as she leaned against the counter.

"Can I help you find anything?" Should I worry?

"Oh, isn't that darling?" Isabela remarked temporarily distracted by Little Bot. "Well, I was wondering if you care for a bit of brain picking, creative to creative."

Yes, yes you should, Steph.

"He's pretty great," Steph agreed, watching Little Bot roll off to stack the pine cone with about a dozen others in a corner behind the counter.

She shrugged and hoisted herself up to sit cross-legged on the counter, earning a glare from Saffron who might have wanted to sit there at some point today and was offended by this audacity.

"I mean... not sure how I can help you, but I can try." Steph. Steph, no. "What did you need?"

Steph. No.

Isabela, no.

"In my current piece, on of the characters has quite vivid purple hair - " Yes, Isabela thought she was being subtle here. "- in your opinion should the carpet match the drapes as it were?"

You have got to be fucking kidding me right now.

Steph just stared at her for several seconds, hoping her cheeks weren't going as red as it felt like they were. (They were, yes. Because no, Isabela, that wasn't subtle at all.)

Finally she managed in a strained voice, "Why are you making me think about this right now."

It wasn't really a question. You could tell from the flat, somewhat plaintive tone.

Because Isabela had a deeply skewed sense of appropriate ways to 'help' people who clearly needed it.

"I'm a big believer in verisimilitude."

Congratulations on managing to shake Steph out of her confident demeanor more visibly and completely than anyone here had yet, Isabela.

Steph spluttered a little bit. "I mean, that entirely depends on --"

Remembering her ex from Denver, who had (dyed) green hair and happened to be named Vi, was not helping right now.

"How dedicated someone is to the aesthetic, I guess?"

Hey, she wasn't divulging certain personal information without Vi's permission (the one from Piltover who wasn't her ex, god, why was her life a mess), no matter how much she wished she didn't know it.

Well, it was an answer, and if not specific enough for Isabela's stated purposes, for more than one question.

"Right, right," she said, nodding and pulling a notebook out of somewhere to take that down. "And how do you feel about tattoos?"

What, she could just be referring to the one on Steph's chest.

The one Steph gestured at, briefly, before saying "Obviously, I like them?"

Not that this answer did anything to evade the one she could tell Isabela was trying to get out of her. Or the questions it was bringing to mind for her, even if she'd deny that was the case.

Isabela just kept smiling and taking notes. Well, after taking a few moments to admire the tattoo that was totally the only one talking about. "Would you say you liked them extensively?"

The amount of psychic damage Steph was taking per round here...

Which was completely the only reason she seemed to zone out for a couple of seconds before answer. Not because she was trying to picture any specific tattoos that might be considered extensive.

"Depends on the tattoo," she mumbled, because the DC on her wisdom saves was ticking up every round here and she was failing them already. "And who they're on."

Her attempts to be nonspecific here were not working, were they?

Not at all, but Isabela was dedicated to the fiction they weren't talking about a real person here, paper-thin though it was.

"I suppose it's all a matter of taste," she said, off-hand and totally not to see what kind of reaction that phrasing got her.

Even if Steph was perfectly aware that it was a fiction and an extremely tenuous one at that, it was... the closest she could come to wanting to talk about something that had her all fucked up. Which was probably not the wisest or healthiest idea that had ever popped into her head, but it was something.

Anyway, if Isabela wanted to know what kind of reaction she'd get for that particular turn of phrase, Steph's face was noticeably more flushed. (And conflicted, but anyway.)

"On the right people," she said, slowly, not at all sounding wistful, "they're fucking amazing."

Isabela was not usually the person people came to for wise or healthy ideas, no.

"If you're lucky enough to find the right person." Somehow Isabela managed to sound both sympathetic and gleeful. It was a gift.

"The right person" was such a loaded phrase, Steph felt. Still, a fond little grin crept across her face for a moment before she managed to smother it.

"If you're lucky enough," she said with a huff of laughter. "And if shit's not too fucking complicated."

Well, Isabela tended to actively flee from any kind of commitment, so she got that vibe, but she was aware that tended to be a her problem.

"I do try to avoid complications like a blight," she said. "But I find people tend to also overcomplicate things they don't have to."

Steph snorted. "Yeah, I used to get the hell out the second I thought shit had a chance of getting complicated."

Which, she realized, was exactly what she'd thought when the other Vi had called her out on what the status of their relationship was. And here she was, not even remotely getting the hell out now.

She shot a sidelong glance at Isabela. "Maybe you and... other people have different definitions of complicated."

Isabela was still a long way off finding someone it was worth sticking around through complications for.

"Maybe," she agreed. "Sometimes it is truly complicated, sometimes it's just two or more people circling around the fact they like each other and that's scary."

And wow, the 'oops, half the city is on fire' level complications that person would be worth sticking around for.

Steph was definitely giving her a weird look now, if only to vaguely maintain the talking-about-fictional-people pretense.

"Or maybe that is the complication."

To be fair, one of those complications future Isabela maaaaaay end up bearing some responsibility for.

"In which case, those feelings are valid, but the character- " because they were still talking about totally fictional people." -may end up doing themselves out of some happiness."

By doing things like literally fleeing in the middle of the night in some cases.

Yes, but also to be fair, just about everyone else in that circle was going to bear some responsibility for at least one complication because they were all a goddamn mess.

"Maybe. But maybe it wouldn't be a good idea --" Steph, look who you were talking to here -- "and they just don't want to fuck things up for the other person? Whatever that means in your story, I don't know your characters' lives."

Fleeing in the middle of the night? Steph and the string of people she'd ghosted in the past wouldn't know anything about that.

Kirkwall in general was a terrible mess and no one should ever live there.

"I'd ask why they're so certain they'd fuck things up," Isabela said, and also because this was getting a bit too sincere. "Also their opinions on piercings."

Tell that to the Blight.

"Let's just say they're not the right person for the other one. Whatever that means, you can figure something out," Steph said, as carelessly as she could, which made it easier to segue into a more enthusiastic and totally impersonal answer to the second question.

"Piercings? Super hot," she said, grinning easily now; she'd dated several girls with piercings before, if she needed plausible deniability. "Especially facial ones, those are my favorites."

Not that she was thinking about what she'd do to certain piercings if she could.

Even the Blight didn't want to be anywhere near Kirkwall.

Isabela suspected the other (still fictional) person might disagree, but since she had Steph on a roll. "Can't say I disagree," she said, flicking at her lip stud. "But what about the ones, let's just say, further south?"

Steph was concentrating very hard on not speculating about whether certain fictional people actually had any... southern piercings.

"That could be... interesting," she said slowly, staring at Little Bot as he cleaned up some stray dice that Saffron must have been chasing around the floor.

Certain fictional people didn't share ~~Steph's~~ other fictional people's concerns about being too old for them, so of course they'd disagree.

"As someone with a couple, they are." Luckily a rare case of Isabela's better judgement showing up made her realise it would be counterproductive to offer to show Steph.

Isabela would've been happy to point out a few examples of worse age gaps, but that would've required revealing more about herself than she felt doing.

"I've considered one or two, actually," admitted Steph, so have a little fodder for your story there for free, Isabela.

It was probably for the best that Isabela wasn't volunteering that information; Steph would have cut off the conversation pretty harshly if she felt like she was being encouraged to act on her feelings.

For the best in terms of Isabela's story 'research,' anyway.

Judging from the grin on Isabela's face, she approved greatly ~~(+25 friendship)~~. "They certainly get a reaction from the girls." Boys too, but she didn't think she cared as much about that.

Don't worry, Steph, Isabela had some sense of discretion. The encouragement was likely to come later.

"Yeah?" Steph managed a small grin, and let herself indulge in two or three quick seconds of imagining Vi's reaction to that discovery.

Purely hypothetically, of course.

"I think that might just have to happen, then."

Well, someone could appreciate it eventually, at least.

Yes, someone. No one in particular of course.

"I look forward to hearing how that goes."

Certainly not anyone specific, who probably both Steph and Isabela had in mind!

"Who says," asked Steph, good naturedly, "I was going to update you on the details? If that ever happens."

Definitely not.

Isabela laughed. "Oh, you are a cruel woman. I like it."

Steph realized, absently, that she would have had a lot of fun with Isabela if she'd been inclined to flirt with her, and wondered at what point exactly she'd lost that inclination.

"I have no idea if I should be flattered or not," she said wryly.

Isabela would also like to know that, purely out of curiosity and with no ulterior motive, of course.

"You definitely should, sweet thing."

It was probably not long after Isabela had arrived at the beginning of the summer that Steph had, for some reason, stopped being willing to flirt with sundry attractive women. Sorry, Isabela.

"I'll take it as a compliment from you," she decided, with a contemplative expression that was not at all due to her wondering if certain other people would hypothetically appreciate it the same way.

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The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (6/30)

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