2020-06-29 - Rain Dance

Summer has finally arrived, and overall, it's really arrived. The last week or so's been hot and muggy and not particularly pleasant, but that's meant a certain allure of the seaside, and Aidan's been doing a pretty good number of shows down at the Boardwalk and doing substantially better than winter crowds. So that's nice.

All the same, the thing that's making today's heat and humidity more pleasant is the fact that they're mid-thunderstorm right now, which is not ideal tourist weather, and as a result Aidan is not out working, but rather has taken all the cushions off the couch and arranged them under a couple blankets under the bay window, where he's flopped down on his back to watch the storm through it. He's barefoot right now and kinda looks like he tripped and fell out of 1982, in a pair of white-piped navy running shorts and a pale yellow palm-tree-laden t-shirt from a Beach Boys' tour, both of which probably did.

It's been something of a difficult few months: he didn't take things particularly well when the flames suddenly stopped dancing for him anymore, still arriving when he asked them to but not listening once they had, and Easton's been Lost for a month now. (Aidan's spent a handful of nights over there keeping Bennie company in the meantime; it may be Baylee's done a few as well.) He looks to be in a good mood right now, though; the fast, noisy wind and bright loud cracks of lightning out there have him watching them with a faintly manic grin. Possibly he's entirely forgotten what happened with one of these storms almost exactly a year ago... though more likely he's just forgotten it was almost exactly a year ago.

A year.

So very, very much has happened in that time. Baylee has stuck around, and more than just sticking around, she's stuck around with Aidan. There's been a few times she's had to go visit family, but the majority of the time she's just been here. Spending money, helping their friends, doing whatever struck her fancy.

Tonight she out to get cigarettes, no matter that the storm has begun rolling through. One habit she can't break is nicotine. But she returns, so that is a good sign as she lets herself in through the front door.

A year. It's weird to think about, and would be weirder if Aidan were better with time and actually thinking about it. There has been an awful lot of year in this year.

He lifts his head at the sound of the door, and turns that grin on her, reaching out his arms in pure grabby-hands in greeting. "Come watch the storm!" he invites/insists, looking even more thrilled than usual to see her return. And year or not, he usually looks quite pleased about it to begin with. "Although I guess you probably saw it pretty well from out there. But in here you don't need a coat for it. AND I have snacks." He has pop-tarts and gummy bears. They qualify.

"Snacks? You won my heart at snacks." Baylee points out, pushing her shoes off with her toes as she sheds the coat, hanging it up somewhere instead of dumping it on the floor. Then she digs out the pack of cigarettes that had sent her on the quest in the first place before she moves over to where he's set up the little nest beneath the window. The cigarettes are placed in his hands so that she can shed her jeans before joining him.

It's not for any romantic reasons, it's because they look like she's been running through a sprinkler system somewhere. But that doesn't stop her from scooting over, giving him a quick kiss before patting him down for those snacks.

"I will provide for you ALL the snacks!" Aidan declares grandiosely, with an expansive arm gesture out to either side, as if to encompass every potential snack within the world despite managing to technically encompass none.

His hands are wholly at her disposal for cigarette placement, and he turns the pack over a couple of times while he holds it, but doesn't open it up to steal one just yet. Instead, his head cocks a touch as his attention's drawn from the package back to Baylee and her shedding of rain-spattered denim. Just because there's only practical reasons right now doesn't mean it's not an appreciated view.

The kiss is returned, along with another grin to follow it, and he lets her settle in and pat him down (surely the detective can tell this is not an outfit conducive to concealing much of any contraband, and may not even include pockets) before he leaves the cigarette pack resting on his abdomen and reached over his head to where the snacks are hiding in the small space created by the angle of a cushion against the wall. A silvery packet of pop-tarts and a half-full plastic bag of gummy bears are produced with a bright "Ta da!" worthy of one of his proper magic tricks. "See anything interesting while you were out? I mean, aside from the storm."

"You're my hero." Baylee gasps when he pulls the snacks out, clapping like he did some actual bit of magic instead of just picking them up. "I didn't actually see much beyond the storm."

The gummy bears are taken, and she rolls over onto her back so that she can use his shoulder as a pillow, drawing her knees up, "People are acting bloody mad out there, though. I saw two wrecks and three people arguing over the last loaf of bread, like they were expecting this to be some storm where all the bread and food vanished."

Aidan beams and attempts to bow, which doesn't work well at all the way he's sprawled out right now. He lets her have the bears and drops the tarts back into the box, sacrificing an arm beneath her to make the shoulder-pillowing easier, and okay, possibly because he likes wrapping his arm around her. "Think they know something we don't know? I mean it's not like I've been watching the weather reports. Maybe the storm's gonna turn into some sort of hurricane." A brief pause. "Maybe we should go dance in it." Sure, that follows. Somehow. "I think we've still got bread anyway."

"Do we eat anything with bread?" Which is a bit of a curious question that she should actually know the answer to. Then she fishes out a few of the gummy bears before she tosses the first one into her mouth, chewing on it thoughtfully.

"I don't think there is anything about this storm that we don't already know about." Baylee replies after a moment, then she reaches up to offer him one of the gummys that she fished out, "We can go dance in the rain. But I should put on pants for it, first."

"Sandwiches!" Aidan replies immediately, "...also toast sometimes? Like with soup. And I made that pudding once." Only once. It didn't go that well. "Oh! And grilled cheese. Which I guess is a sandwich though and I already said that. So... mostly sandwiches. But grilled cheese sounds really good. We should have that for dinner."

He leans in to nip the proffered gummy from her fingers, and chews it thoughtfully. "If you put pants on for it, they'll get wet, though," he points out, with a tip of his head toward the discarded jeans. "Maybe that's why people usually do it naked. We could just do that." Several neighbours probably have sudden senses of foreboding and no idea why.

"I've seen them dancing in the rain in clothes....and you end up soaked straight through by the end of it." Baylee points out, glancing in the direction of her jeans with a bit of an amused smile, then she twists around towards him to press a quick kiss against his cheek. "But we can dance naked in the rain, too."

Theoretically she can afford to bail them out when they get arrested for indecent exposure.

Aidan gives this not nearly enough consideration before observing, "Peeling off soaked clothes is way less pleasant than drying off with fluffy towels." And they have access to at least passably fluffy (if, in his trailer, thoroughly mismatched) towels. QED. Things like 'neighbours having problems with this plan' and 'explaining to cops why this was a really good idea' don't seem to be on his radar tonight, maybe even a bit less so than usual. Maybe he's just really excited about the storm; he turns his head to return the kiss by trying to steal it quickly from her lips, leans lower to try to snag one of the gummy bears with his teeth, and then gets to work on wriggling out of his t-shirt, which would work better if he retrieved his arm but that bit can just happen last. Apparently.

It's not like theft of kisses or gummy bears aren't allowed, our even given up willingly.

It's the clothes thing that mashes her laugh, but not more for a while So that she can watch the struggle. Then she takes pity on him and hoists herself back to her feet with a groan so that she can deal with the rest of the clothes she has on. "Music or not?"

Aidan never does get to really exercise his larcenous skills these days. ...that's probably for the best though, isn't it, really? Living the reformed and honest life, a pillar of the community!

He looks pretty happy (and, okay, pretty silly) munching on the gummy bear and fighting his shirt to the death or at least the disrobement, which reaches an impressive and satisfactory denouement not coincidentally shortly after Baylee frees his arm. "Ha!" he exclaims triumphantly, flinging the shirt across to where it flumps against the back of the also half-denuded sofa, and sits up as well, then rolls to his feet. "Always music. Except we need to be able to hear the rain and I guess all that water wouldn't be good for whatever's playing it so... music from in here." Problem solved! He is in problem-solving mode today. Next problem is 'I am still wearing shorts', which as things on the list go is one of the quicker ones to fix.

"Music from here!"

A problem that Baylee can attend to, since her own disrobement wouldn't take as long since she's already down a pair of pants. But so that she keeps pace with everything she removes her socks as she digs her phone out, and starts to scroll through her Spotify. After a moment she comes up with something, hits play, casts to a speaker and then tosses her phone onto the couch to be forever lost to this world when it gets stuck between cushions.

Then she turns around to check on his state of dress. Or undress.

Pretty much undress. Well, no. Entirely undress. Aidan only started out with a mere three pieces of clothing in two layers, and once the battle of the t-shirt is won, he's triumphant enough to take on the shorts and underwear at the same time! Plus, his levels of energy and immediacy seem particularly high today, and it urges him on to victory.

It is a short and decisive battle, and ends up with more fabric landing haphazardly over bits of the furniture and, about the time Baylee turns around, Aidan ending up right behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. Well, in front of her, by the time she's turned, but his arms are in place by then! She gets a squeeze and a stolen kiss before he brings the crusade against clothing to her shirt's very doorstep. He's listening to hear what she's chosen, but absently; the immediate focus is on defeating the fabricy foe and getting them out into that rain, as though he's worried the storm might clear up any moment and they'll miss it.

It won't.

"OH, I should've gone and stocked up on fireworks," he declares out of nowhere particular, "I bet, like, rockets would look really cool against the clouds and lightning. As long as the rain didn't put them out, but that's pretty unlikely. And I could stop it anyway. We should go get some." Presumably 'soon' and not 'right now'? Even most fireworks stands have a no pants, no service policy.