Shopping & Chat Chitting [CLOSED] Backdated Aug 13th

[redcinemareel]

Characters: Grell & Ace, then Grell & Thatch
Location: A clothes shop out in town, then Thatch's office.
Rating: PG13 just to be safe. Other warnings will be inside.
Open/Closed/Finished: Closed
Summary: The captain can't do everything and be everywhere all the time. Backdated to before the virus was sent out.

Two separate threads within!

Comments

Shopping!!

[redcinemareel]

Shopping should really be a sport, because if it were, Balamb Garden would not have any financial problems with Grell as their champion. Sponsors would be lining up at the doors, and all Grell had to do was buy up the entire store!

As they were using Thatch's account, she'd behave and just make sure Ace had what he needed.

Sitting with her laptop while Ace tried on clothing, behind a curtain, Grell waited for him to show her an outfit she picked out. Maybe he could get some new shoes as well...

[mera_mera_ace]

The basic necessities were chosen first. Pants and shorts as well as boxers. He did pick out some generic button down shirts at Grell's insistence, mostly because if it was required...it was better to have something so he didn't wind up getting kicked out or worse.

Finished with the clothes he picked out he turned to the stack she had given him. The first couple items were some dressier clothes. A nice pair of black slacks and a red satin button up shirt. He had to admit, it looked pretty damn good. He decided to show her. Stepping out from behind the curtain he smiled and did a spin. "Well? Look okay?"

[redcinemareel]

Grell looked and closed her laptop, placing it back into her bag. She stood and made her way over to him, admiring how new clothing worked wonders.

"Now who looks fetching~?" The size seemed just right for him, as well. "This would be perfect for a ball!" She adjusted his collar a bit but otherwise, she thought it was perfect. "Ah~! Try the next one! The jean shorts with...whatever shirt!" Although she found jeans to be uncomfortable, they may be alright for him.

She was also having fun! Don't mind her trying to shove him back inside!

[mera_mera_ace]

Ace chuckled and did as she asked, moving back into the changing room to try on the jean shorts with a blue button down shirt. It was alright. He preferred cloth to denim but it wasn't too bad at all. "Well?" He asked, stepping out with the shirt unbuttoned looking all devilishly handsome.

[redcinemareel]

This time, Grell stood outside the curtain and waited. When he emerged, she didn't his an amused eyeroll.

"Is Marco that much of an influence on you?" These pirates and their shirts.

[mera_mera_ace]

"I was walking around with shirts like this long before I met Marco. When I got my tattoo I stopped wearing them all together. So no, Marco is not that much of an influence on me. If anything I made him jealous by being this ruggedly handsome so he felt he had to compete with me." He smiled and winked at her. He closed the curtain and headed back to change and try on something else.

"Hey um Grell...There's a dress in here.....why is there a dress in here?"

[redcinemareel]

Grell had no reason to not believe that, but she looked affronted by this information. "He never told me that!" She crossed her arms, looking thoughtful. "It would be a shame to cover it up...but most backless shirts are made for women..."

When he retreated to the dressing room again and found the dress, Grell smirked and bit her lip. "Ah~, that is a personal request!" It was really for her, but she must have forgotten to take it out of the pile. But she did owe Thatch and Ace for earlier...

[mera_mera_ace]

It wasn't entirely accurate really, but why bother correcting it, he liked teasing Marco. Ace stared at the dress and gulped. "You mean you wanted it or you wanted to see me in it?" He asked. If she asked him to put it on...he would but there was no way in hell he was stepping out in it. She would have to come in.

[redcinemareel]

"No~! Although I would like to, this isn't my personal request!" She walked over to the curtain and stuck her head inside, grinning brightly. "Can you guess who~?"

Visiting Thatchy~!

[redcinemareel]

After a successful shopping trip, Grell went in search for Thatch. She had been meaning to have a sit down with the other for a while, and now seemed like a good time to do so. Her laptop was dropped off in her room so she was empty handed. To anyone really foolish enough to believe that, anyway.

She knocked on the door, waiting for a voice on the other side. It was just to be polite, since Grell knew he was there.

[thatched]

Thatch glanced up at the knock, shifting one foot over the other that rested on the desk and absently drinking rum. He was half tempted to tel anyone who was on the other side to pull up and shove off....but it could be a student and it was possible he had "work" to do.

"Come in," Thatch said, putting his feet on the floor and buttoning the first two buttons on his shirt again. He also tabbed off the research he'd been doing into time compression, just in case.

[redcinemareel]

Grel entered the office, sticking her head inside with a grin before showing the rest of her body and sliding in and closing the door behind her.

"I've returned from a rather successful mission~!" She walked in further and spotted the flag just behind him, her eyes wide in excitement. "Where did you get that?!" Her quick steps brought her to stand just in front of it so she could really see the detail. It was simply...

"Brilliant..."

[thatched]

He relaxed a little when he saw it was Grell, about to lapse into some ridiculous flowery poetry about her beauty or how pleasant it was to see her when her eyes widened at something behind him. He watched her move, as if awed, to stand in front of the flag. It was the tone of her voice when she said 'brilliant' that Thatch realized one of the reasons Marco loved her. Hell he half did himself already, just because of that.

"I made it a little after Namur arrived. Bit outdated now... but it's one thing I'll never change." He would follow Marco into the fire if he had to but he would never forget where he came from. What made him who he was.

[redcinemareel]

Grell was surprised to hear he made it, and looked to him anew. "You did?" Her eyes went back to the flag, letting a couple of her fingers feel the stitches and material of the fabric. "Truly a wonderful talent to have. It could come in handy." She stepped back and sat upon the desk. From that viewpoint, she could see how everything came together.

"Had I known this was in your office, I would have come ages ago!" Idly, her feet dangled and swung from her perch, hopefully not sitting on any papers.

[thatched]

"I don't know if you'd call it talent. Took me almost half a year to get right." It had kept him busy. Kept him focused. He'd torn up four false starts before this one for various reasons. This one Namur had made him keep and so he had. He sipped his rum again.

He didn't mind if she was sitting on papers because they'd be all the better for it.

"You met Pops once, aye?" he said, offering her the bottle of rum. "What did you think of him?"

[redcinemareel]

"Better you than I." Grell had little patience for making things. She knew she was better at destruction.

At the question, Grell hummed in thought, thinking back on when she first met him. "When I look back on that time, I admit to being quite...flustered. I've never actually had any father figure in my life, or afterlife." A smile crept up on her face at Whitebeard's reaction to hearing Marco was getting married. "I wish all fathers were like that. Warm, kind, protective, and...well, there for their children."

Green eyes look to Thatch.

"I think he's a wonderful man." She kind of missed him, even after just that one encounter.

[thatched]

It was good to hear someone speak about Pops again. Especially in tones like that. She didn't know him as well as Thatch did. She couldn't. But she knew him well enough to matter and that was the only thing that was important.


"Aye, he is-- was--" He winced a little, taking a sip of rum. "Ace was his favorite, you know. Other than Marco." But Ace was everyone's favorite. Everyone loved him. Even Marshall had liked him enough to give his position over and that was saying something since he'd been a pretty shrewd guy.

"Some days I wish I could have been a better son..." But that was neither here nor there. "But can't change the past. Can only go forward into the future, right?" Painful as that was at times.

Later that night.

[mera_mera_ace]

Ace put all of his clothes into the room he had been assigned by Garden. He was officially signed up for classes and had been given a dorm room. Of course, just because he had been given a dorm didn't mean he planned on spending much time in it. It was close to bed time and feeling kind of adventurous, he put on the item Grell had talked him in to purchasing and slipped a bathrobe over it, heading through the halls to Thatch's room.

"Thatch?" He called knocking on the door.

[thatched]

Thatch was working, clocking in some overtime to try and get more gil in the bank. He might even have to pick up a side mission or two, but that wasn't a big problem. He chewed absently on the cigar he'd started and put down earlier in the morning and looked up at the sound of Ace's voice.

"Come in," he said, blowing out a ring of smoke absently.

[mera_mera_ace]

Ace stepped into the room and shut the door behind him, locking it. He smiled at Thatch, "Grell and I had fun shopping today, not inclined to do it again soon but we still had fun. Wanna see something I got today?" He asked as he sauntered forward. He didn't even wait for Thatch's answer as he undid the robe and let it fall to the floor, revealing this sexy number, all for the man before him.

"Grell said you asked for something like this."

[thatched]

He had a sinking feeling as soon as he saw that grin and the bathrobe to boot. This was not going to end well. He was about to say something but stopped as the bathrobe fell to the floor. That was--

Well--

Thatch coughed, partly because he half choked on the damn cigar and put it out. How the hell was he supposed to react to that. Well he was pretty sure what Ace wanted... and what he was trying to do-- but not even Izou could pull off that thing.

"Grell said that?" What the hell had Grell even been smoking? Or had he said something? What the hell had he been smoking? "Listen, Sparks, I love you but that doesn't suit you." At all.

[mera_mera_ace]

"But..." Ace was confused...wasn't this what Thatch wanted? Ace stood before Thatch for a long moment before he seemingly deflated a little. "Well...I guess I'll just take it off then." He said as he started pulling it over his head leaving him just in a pair of black silk boxers.

"Guess Grell lied to me..."

[thatched]

"She was probably just teasing you," Thatch said gently. "Families do that, right? We've pulled more than our fair share of pranks." He crossed over to Ace, wrapping a warm arm around his shoulders.

"So the solution here is to get her back twice as hard. I suggest stealing all her underwear and putting it in the freezer." He'd done that to Kingdew once. Ah, glory days.

"But before that, talk to me, baby. What is it you want? What is it you really want? And don't just say that it's me, because that doesn't count and you already have me. So tell me."

[mera_mera_ace]

Ace was already plotting his revenge against Grell, but at the moment he wasn't complaining, he was standing there with Thatch's warm body beside his. It was comforting, if nothing else.

"Company?" Ace said with a soft voice. "I'm still expecting to wake up back in that damn cell alone and cold. Everyone else is busy and I didn't want to impose...besides I've missed you so damn much." He turned, hugging Thatch tightly.

[thatched]

Was that really the full answer? Thatch couldn't be sure. It was like he didn't know how to read him anymore. On the other hand, he'd always been kind of a wild card, impossible to predict completely.

"You're welcome any time, Acelet. I've missed you, too." And he held him close. Because he had. Even if he didn't know with him right now or how to feel or be. Everything was happening so damn fast. "Anything in particular you want to do?" As long as it wasn't that, Thatch would be happy to oblige him.