Heartfelt Memories, (Formerly the Infinite Consortium), Saturday

[doesdoctorstuff]

Navaan looked out the window and sighed at the pouring rain that didn't actually exist yet, but would be added in post. This was the perfect weather to go outside and dance in, showing off what a quirky individual she was, but no. She couldn't go outside and play yet. She had to stay in here and keep working in her as-yet-undetermined family member's consignment shop. Either a dead grandmother or an elderly aunt, they had to see which one played better with viewers. Either way, she was stuck here behind the counter, both because the audience needed to see how much not acting on every wacky, whimsical impulse hurt her soul (in case they ended up doing a scene where she has to try to act normal for somebody's staid and proper family) and because there was nobody currently present who could learn some important life lessons from her adorable playfulness.

Instead, she guessed she'd just have to keep working on this art project she was creating from random things from the shop. It looked kind of ugly and disjointed so far, but she knew that if she just kept working at it, it would turn into something beautiful.

Because it was a metaphor.

[Open!]

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[intheeyeofthebeholding]

As the awkward and timid town librarian, Jon didn’t get out much, but he somehow was friends with Navaan anyway, and secretly admired how unafraid she was.

So he seemed to hang out with her almost as much as if he had no job at all. Which left him visiting now.

“Hi, Navaan.” He smiled awkwardly. “What are you doing?”

[doesdoctorstuff]

"Jon!" Navaan said, smiling brightly. Jon was her best friend in the whole world, because opposites attracted, but not like that. More in a way that she was going to need reassurance that she could be both a free spirit and also in love, or maybe that she was a free spirit and anyone who loved her would love that part of her, too. It really depended on which script they were using.

"I'm working on some art, see?" She held up her ugly, incomplete artistic project. "It's not done yet, I think it's missing something. Something to give it heart. Something I won't be able to figure out until either my love interest suggests something off-hand or I have to leave it for them as a symbol of our relationship when we have the short-term breakup in the last act. Or maybe both!"

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

"Oh, that's lovely!" Jon smiled at her. "You're such a great artist." He sighed. "You're good at everything you do, no matter how tangentially hinted at. Don't worry; your love will definitely come!"

He would be fine left here alone when she went off to be in love. It wasn't like his story actually mattered; he might as well be an NPC.

[doesdoctorstuff]

If you wanted to matter, Jon, your focus would be on finding love not, like, books and friendship or whatever you did when the camera was following Navaan somewhere else.

"Do you really think so?" Navaan asked. "I hope so, but I'm worried my free spirit might scare them off." She checked a nearby cuckoo clock. "Do you think they'll get here soon? I really wanna go dance barefoot in the rain and I'm not sure how long that's going to last."

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

"I know so," Jon said, even though he didn't this weekend. "And I'm sure they'll love to watch you dancing barefoot in any weather." In case the budget ran out.

[doesdoctorstuff]

"I'm looking for someone to dance with me," Navaan said wistfully. "You know, dancing through life, but not in a way that the musical Wicked could bring a lawsuit over."

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

Jon didn't mind waiting; he would never be anyone's special someone.

"Then I'm sure they'll do that, too. Whatever you want." He smiled again. "How could they not, when they'll have you?"

[doesdoctorstuff]

"Oh, Jon, you say the sweetest things and if this were a slightly different movie, we'd make such a sweet slowburn friends to lovers trope," Navaan sighed. Dreamily, of course. "Not that you dance in the rain with me, since you're always worried about your other trait, books. That and your support of me are your only two personality settings you have."

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

"I'd probably look rather good if I took my glasses off, too," Jon added. "Maybe they'll write fanfic about us later. But you're right; the books can't get wet, and I always carry books so nobody forgets I'm a librarian. Which is something I just fell into because I have no ambition, and not at all a calling that requires years of college and specialized training."

[doesdoctorstuff]

"Well, for one thing, if you went to college, you'd have to go away to the Big City and they don't have libraries there," Navaan pointed out. "And who knows, maybe you'll be lucky and a family member will die, leaving you in charge of your precocious niece, Anthology, in an interesting subversion of the session that actually inspired this event!"

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

"That would be so meta! But I'm already an orphan, because nobody ever has both parents living. But I would hate to have to go to the Big City; everything there is so soulless."

[doesdoctorstuff]

"I have no idea anything about my parents, but I'm also going to assume their dead, because I had to get this shop from someone. God knows I'm too quirky and too much a free spirit to own property," Navaan said.

"And don't worry, if you end up adopting a precocious child, you'd never be allowed to move to the Big City anyway. That's no place to raise a sensitive child."

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

Jon nodded seriously. "And any children around here would definitely be sensitive. And they would love you like the quirky aunt! That way you don't have to be responsible and I don't need to get married!"

[two_idiots_one_body]

Arthur, the dashing yet penniless scion of a noble house fallen on hard times, was trying to make his living as a composer, which meant he mostly spent time playing piano at weddings and increasingly becoming more and more cynical about love. He was pretty sure it didn't exist.

He was just here to see if they had a stylish hat for his next gig, because even struggling composers had to keep up the "dashing" part.

[doesdoctorstuff]

Navaan looked up to spy - why it was a customer! And a stranger! And definitely someone who looked like they needed to loosen up via dancing around in the rain!

"Hi, welcome to Heartfelt Memories, the consignment shop that belongs to either a dead or ailing relative. How can I help you, both in a commercial but also metaphorical sense?"

[two_idiots_one_body]

Arthur eyed her in a way that could be seen as either cynical or hopefully romantic, depending on how many times you watched this. "I just need a hat. I'm not here for anything heartfelt."

[doesdoctorstuff]

Navaan was going to respond to this ping first, because Jon was just the friend to Arthur's potential love interest, and therefore her could wait.

"Everything's heartfelt if you look at it right," came Navaan's quirky yet somehow surprisingly deep comment. "Even a hat. What kind of hat do you need, Mr...?"

[two_idiots_one_body]

"Lester. I try never to look at anything heartfelt. It gives me hives. Metaphorically." Also literally, because he was allergic to the makeup they'd tried to use for that.

[doesdoctorstuff]

Yeah, that had been a terrible day on set.

"Well, hello, Mr. Lester, I'm Navaan," she said. "And I can tell we're going to be great friends, so I can't wait to learn your first name so I can call you that regardless of how uncomfortable it makes you. Because I'm so quirky and whimsical, I can dance all over your boundaries so long as my heart is in the right place. So, Mr. Lester, what do you need this hat for? We have plenty, so long as you want the one hat that the costuming department picked out for you."

[two_idiots_one_body]

"I want one that makes me look rakish rather than jaded, so you can become convinced I'm not really a cynic, I've just been hurt too many times, and you're precisely the person to fix that. Also the one I have icons for."

[doesdoctorstuff]

"What a great choice!" Navaan said, coming out from behind the counter to show off her quirky and vibrant attire, all of which was made to look like it was thrifted. "I know just the thing! It's a special hat for the soulful types who just secretly want to be loved, but fear pushes them away!"

She bustled by him. "Feel free to realize that I'm actually very beautiful, even though I'm entirely unsuitable!" she called back over her shoulder.

[two_idiots_one_body]

"That's perfect! And the unsuitability is obviously part of the attraction. The suitable girls are all stuck up and very British. My accent is part of my quirkiness, but I'm otherwise as American as anything; they're all monarchists who look down on everyone."

[doesdoctorstuff]

Navaan came back with the only hat in the store, handing it over to them in such a way that their fingers brushed. "...Oh," she said softly. "Our first touch."

[two_idiots_one_body]

"I'll fumble the hat awkwardly because of that," Arthur said as he did so. "You might have to put it on me in a way that's not at all contrived."

[doesdoctorstuff]

"Here," Navaan said, carefully taking the hat and putting it on him at a rakish angle. "Oh no, now I'm noticing how attractive you are, even though I can tell immediately that you're not a free spirit. This has just reaffirmed that I need to fix you with my spirited quirkiness."

She stepped back to let him see himself in the mirror, in a way the coincidentally meant he was looking at both of them together. This surely wouldn't be a leitmotif or anything.

...Mostly because this movie didn't have anybody that skilled on staff.