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Dite's Decadent Delights | Wednesday

It looked like a unicorn had been sick in here, if you asked Irene. But she knew it would sell -- and, admittedly, part of her really liked Pride, in all its deliberately-tacky glory.

Today she was spending her time up at the counter, researching local boutiques she could tap for promotions and marchandise come the end of the month, though that was certainly deviating into a lot of, "Ooooh, I don't have one of those," and selecting 'Add to Cart,' wasn't it?

[open though I'm gonna go slow on you in the middle of the day, fair warning!]

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Steven was going to watch Watts in shenanigans later, so it was early in the morning when Marc came by the store.

"Hey."

"Morning, Marc," Irene replied, glancing up from her computer with a smile. "And how are we today?"

A fun use of the royal 'we,' or a cheeky little acknowledgement of the Steven of it all? You decide!

(It was both.)

Marc gave a smirk to acknowledge the double meaning.

"Talk of the town if you listen to radio," he said. He leaned up against the counter to make himself comfortable. "Speaking of, got any rum handy?"

For bribing squirrels? For himself even as early in the morning as it was? Open ended sentiment there.

"Always," Irene assured him, intrigued enough to go ahead and just shut her laptop in favor of pulling a flask from a drawer. "I was curious about how often I've caught your name recently."

Irene, of course, always listened to radio, and much more closely than she might have let on -- so she was mostly, privately curious how Marc had found himself apparently at odds with Gladio of all people. Irene quite liked Gladio and found him charming, very much in spite of the fact that he forced her to dirty her hands and carry things through the woods on a weekly basis!

"I was too," Marc said. "Definitely didn't think I was doing anything newsworthy. Been a week of surprises far as that goes."

"From what I was able to gather, it might be what you didn't do that was newsworthy," Irene noted, pouring out a few shots for the squirrels in quick succession. "Maybe?"

"Didn't show up somewhere I never said I'd be," Marc said. Which did lack some context, granted. But with Irene sometimes it was interesting to see how much she'd guess. Or even what questions she felt were worth asking.

"And why do you suppose you were expected at baseball, if you didn't RSVP?" Irene asked, tilting her head with a little frown.

It was mostly a nod to Marc's seemingly-deliberate lack of context that Irene gambled on the event in question. She hadn't quite been sure whether the slight was that he had not attended baseball night, as detailed on the radio, or whether it was that he kept showing up at the gym, and the stickers mentioned might be some sort of adversarial action?

But that little piece had solved that, hadn't it.

"Because I went the first time?" Marc guessed. He shrugged. "Can't complain too much. I didn't go on purpose. The level of pissed on the other hand..."

It was possibly unfair to call it newsworthy since what counted as newsworthy on the island could be incredibly mundane details. But that the news had reported multiple conversations about Marc's absence... that part stood out.

"But you intentionally didn't go?" Irene noted curiously. "Do you think that choice was felt by others?"

It was one thing to have plans blown off -- but another entirely to feel intentionally snubbed.

"Oh I know it was," Marc said. "Already got a few messages out of it. And Lana had some words."

"Not your absence itself, per se," Irene clarified. "I mean -- do the others know you chose not to attend, and aren't under the impression you got all caught up watching a Drag Race marathon and lost the time?"

What? Happened to lots of people, that one.

"At this point yeah," Marc said. "Didn't see a point in being dishonest about it."

Which was actually a big deal for Marc. Normally he lied. Always. If he talked at all.

"Still," Marc said, as though this was the grand conclusion he'd come to. "People are a mistake."

That skipped a lot of steps. Irene was certainly welcome to drag him back along any of them for more information.

"People are messy, and complex, and my favorite," Irene countered gently. "Any particular reason you didn't want to go to baseball?"

She could think of plenty of reasons she would avoid such an event -- not understanding the rules of the sport or caring about them at all, for one thing -- but she was curious what Marc's actually were, since he obviously had them.

"Remember that kid I was keeping an eye on?" Marc asked. Yes, when he'd met Nell she was 18 but Marc had considered her to be a kid at the time and frankly had never revised that opinion even though she was now much older.

Also fuck if Marc could remember if he'd never spoken about Nell to Irene but it was Irene. It wouldn't surprise Marc if Irene's penchant for paying attention meant she knew more information about the whole thing than Marc did and was just now waiting to see which parts Marc confirmed.

"Started to get the vibe she was getting a little too attached," Marc said. "Thought I'd give that night a pass. Try and make some space, you know?"

"You suspected that someone you'd taken under your wing -- a young, likely inexperienced person -- was getting a bit of a crush, so you ghosted her?" Irene summarized in her own words, giving a little bit of a wince as she did so. "Oh, Marc. I don't know that I would have advised much different, but she's got to be hurt."

Possibly spiralling, possibly blaming herself. Irene didn't know the kid (and having never spoken to Nell herself, she actually wasn't inclined to doubt that impression; give her a week) in question, but she wouldn't be shocked if feelings were now just messily strewn all over the place, between radio and how Marc has described it.

"Not on purpose," Marc said. Because hey: Marc could ghost for the fucking Olympics and he had no delusions about being a different kind of person. "I didn't go to the baseball thing to give a little space. Let go of the bike without telling them so they realize they stopped needing the training wheels a while ago, you know?"

Steven had had the bike refresher the other day, which was why the metaphor was to hand. Also Marc didn't know if crush was the accurate word but it encompassed the bigger idea of too attached so he didn't feel it was worth getting into that second.

"The reaction, on the other hand," Marc shook his head. "Yeah. Now I know she's better off."

See? Now he was ghosting her. A world of difference.

"The reaction," Irene hedged carefully, "may be something of a maturity or life experience issue, hmm?"

It was easy for them, old and hardened in their bitter mid-thirties as they were, to see the larger picture. Irene was sympathetic to someone having an outsized reaction to sudden hurt feelings when she was very much under the impression that this might be a new experience for her.

"You've not talked to her about any of this, I take it?" she added, keeping judgement out of her voice. "Just -- Lana and Gladio, by the sounds of it?"

"Lana yeah," Marc said. "Not Gladio. Not besides telling him I wasn't going to Nell's thing that night."

Marc had reason to suspect Gladio was taking a personal stake in what was happening, of course. But the conversation with Lana had reminded him that he shouldn't assume.

"Oh, it's this time again," Octavia rasped, almost immediately upon entering the store, looking around at all the... colors. "I always kind of forget this is a thing."

"Isn't it fun?" Irene asked brightly in greeting. "Loads more of it than there was in my time, too."

Which was one of those unexpected perks of being vaulted to the future.

"I don't know," Octavia said, with one of her tiny lopsided shrugs, eyeing some rainbow-striped thing or other. "Kinda seems almost... sad that it's necessary."

"I suppose I see it as a nice thing because I lived through some of the progress," Irene offered, thinking about it. "Easier to see it as better than it was, you know?"

But still not perfect (though in Fandom, they came awful close, she thought.)

"I get that," Octavia said, finally flicking her gaze over to Irene herself. "It's different when you come from somewhere like I did. Turns out not having this be any kind of a thing was one of the few things my time had gotten right."

"Sounds like priorities might have shifted a tad," Irene offered lightly. Just based off the clues she'd gotten. "Right now we're in an age where we frankly don't have enough to worry about, so people have enough time to invent things to worry about."

Like rainbow dildos leading to damnation, and other idiotic things.

"Didn't you just say it's better now than it was?" Octavia wondered. "I mean, in general I agree. Sometimes it seems like people in this time have way too much time to think up stupid things. Just seems like maybe this is something that's... going forward."

"It's better now than it was ten or twenty years ago, but we're still in the same broad span of history, I mean," Irene clarified, quirking a smile at Octavia. "We've got indoor plumbing and electricity figured out -- people have the idle time to invent problems."

Her smile widened a bit, and she shrugged. "But you're right that it's going forward. And with momentum."

It helped that it had become terribly unstylish to be a bigot.

"And then by my time, it doesn't really matter at all."

If the time she was from could still be called 'her time'. But anyway.

"And I don't think that's just because of..." Oh, her voice went a little dry, here. "The several ends of the world. Because people still find the time and motivation to be horrible to each other for other stupid reasons."

"People are predictable like that. We love to find reasons to us and them it out, don't we?" Irene replied with a wry little smile, giving Octavia a considering look. "Just how many times did the world end, by your day?"

More than the once -- now, that was genuinely surprising.

Probably not a good sign that Octavia had to look off to the side and actually think about it for a second. What really counted as an apocalypse, anyway?

"Three."

Yeah.

"I mean, twice that I was there for, once a few generations before I was born."

"Sounds like we might be a bit overdue in terms of catching up, then," Irene noted, forcing levity into her voice even as her brows knit in concern. "Though -- also seems worth some congratulations, living through the end of the world twice."

"I don't recommend it," Octavia deadpanned. Which was still somehow better than getting into the timeframe of when her Earth had first gone to shit.

(Or the part she'd played in the last time.)

"Surviving tends to have a price."

"Cheers to that," Irene replied, slightly softer than she had been, though she still quirked a half smile at Octavia.

The whole world hadn't ended for her, no. But her world had. She got it, a bit.

"Though, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?" A pause. "And smarter." Tougher. Harder.

"Mostly it scars you for life --" Literally or figuratively? Why not both! "-- and sends you to therapy with medication."

In Octavia's experience.

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Dite's Decadent Delights | Wednesday

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