Aya (missbegotten) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2020-12-07 03:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | #may 2018, aidan, aidan x aya, aya |
Who: Aidan and Aya
Where: Maine, then Québec
When: Night, Late May
Aidan’s mood had improved significantly since Max’s return. It wasn’t that they were spending a ton of time together, but the world finally felt right again. After months of trying to move on and accept that Max was gone, he no longer had to. Instead, they were trying to help Max put his life back together, a task that would have been frustrating if it wasn’t so joyous. It helped that they’d never really moved on, which meant that his room was how he’d left it, all his stuff right where it belonged. But one thing stood out to Aidan, an object that he’d disappeared with and now needed to be replaced. Aidan flopped down on the bed beside Aya, a mischievous smile on his face. “We need to go shopping,” he told her. “I wanna replace Max’s leather jacket for him. You game?”
Things were definitely less boring at the O'Reilly house with Max back, sad people were so dull and now none of them was sad at all. Aya came and went as she pleased as usual but it wasn't as much of a drag to return so she often spent a little more time at 'home' than she did during his disappearance. She was painting her nails black when Aidan joined her, careful with the brush while he got settled and then continued with a growing little grin. He knew by now that 'shopping' was her favorite past time, one she hadn't gotten bored of yet so he probably knew she'd say yes already. "You're thinking so small," she murmured. "We should get him a new bike while we're at it." She was half joking, only half, Max had whined about his bike when he first got back so that was probably still something that would make him happy and Aya had learned that making each other happy made people happy in general and she weirdly liked it when Aidan was at least okay.
“Yeah, I’ve thought about that,” Aidan grinned, not at all surprised that Aya would want to go bigger. He thought she’d attempt the crown jewels in England if she knew about them. Aidan fancied himself a pretty good thief, but some things weren’t worth the risk. “Stealing a bike would be easy. Making it legal would be a challenge. There’s registration numbers and license plates—we could steal one off the lot that didn’t have plates, but then I’m not sure how to get some. I don’t want to do anything that might land him back in jail.” He imagined that Aya could get Max back out relatively easy, unless doors being steel was a problem. Prison didn’t usually have wooden doors. Aidan held his hand out, letting her paint one of his nails as well. “So a jacket might be small, but I think we’re less likely to get caught. Might grab one for myself in the process.”
Registration and number plates. Of course Aya hadn't thought of that, it was such a human problem. They loved organizing stuff, putting it in boxes, numbering and filing away. She groaned at the thought and put a little black paint on his pinky, pleased with his willingness to let him play with him like that. Then she closed the little vial of nail polish, wiggling her fingers at him while she waited for it to dry. "I want to get some wigs," she told him. "I think it could be fun to look different all the time." She sometimes wore a mask when she went 'shopping', mostly because she couldn't always tell if there were cameras around or not and humans were - as previously noted - suckers for categorizing and making databases. They might find her if they saw her face, even if it was a few states away.
Aidan blew on the wet nail, then laid back again, waiting for it to dry. He could probably use magic, but if he fucked it up, then he'd have a mess to clean up. "If I was any good at glamour, I could change it for you, but that's really not my thing," he said, looking over at her. "I could change the color maybe. What would you do differently?" It had never occurred to Aidan to mess with his appearance, though he did pay attention to security cameras when he was breaking in somewhere. Magic could easily manipulate them though, turning them other directions or frying them entirely. He had to be careful though. If he killed the system, someone sometimes came to see what had happened. It all depended on how it was monitored.
Maybe it should have appealed to her but it didn't, she didn't much like the idea of her appearance being in somebody else's hands, even if that someone had proven time and again that he wasn't out to mess with her. "I used to be able to look like anything," she said with a wistful smile. "A bird, a cat, a tree. That was a long time ago but I remember how good it felt, to just be anything. To be nothing." There were limitations to this body though it definitely had its perks. "Your familiar can still change into things. I wonder why." He was probably not the same as her, that was the answer, but they were born from something similar, she could feel it.
“I think you’re different somehow,” Aidan said. Just because Aya had called herself his familiar didn’t mean it was actually true. “I don’t know. You’re both magical beyond my understanding. Maybe it has something to do with you being bound to me? I dunno.” There was so much about the ties between them that he didn’t understand and if Aya had the answers, she wasn’t sharing them. “Why would you want to be a tree? Or nothing? What was your favorite thing to be?” It seemed weird to him that she could potentially be nothing and still be herself. So much of them as humans had to do with their physical being that losing that completely seemed like it would be a complete trip. Aidan wasn’t sure he would like it.
"Silly human boy," Aya chirped at him rather than try to explain how it felt to become something else. Maybe she hadn't even become anything, maybe she'd always just been a spirit inhabiting other things before she had a solid body of her own. She leaned over and tapped his nose with one finger, grinning at him. "I like being this," she told him, getting up on her knees and spreading her arms dramatically. "I just want wigs to go with it." She flashed him a smile and gestured back at the door way. "Do you want to go shopping now? Any particular city catching your fancy? Do they have good leather jackets in Canada?"
Aidan preferred her human form as well, but that was more for her benefit than his. She was nice to look at and easier to talk to. He thought he’d have felt a little bit silly talking to her as a bird, even if she understood him just as clearly. “I’m sure they do,” Aidan laughed, rolling to a sitting position so he could start pulling on his shoes. “Even out of season, we should be able to find a leather jacket in Canada, or anywhere farther north. Do we need to find a place that has both jackets and wigs? Or can those be two separate stops?” Finding a place that carried quality jackets seemed easy compared to the wigs, which he knew nothing about.
"Any place that has both is gonna have crap," Aya tittered and scooted off the bed to slip her boots on, careful not to smudge her nail polish as she zipped them up. "We've got a few stops to make." There were things she wanted even if she didn't necessarily need them, 'shopping' wasn't only for necessity, it sustained her in a way and kept her happy. "And then we can go dancing if you want. Do you know your brother's size?" She thought she could suss it out, she was pretty good at that, but of course it was always better to let people try things on. There was really nothing stopping them from taking a few sizes though so she wasn't exactly worried about it.
“Yep!” Aidan grinned. “And I might pick one up for myself in the process.” He hadn’t always enjoyed shopping, but it was a little different when he didn’t have to pay for anything. It felt a lot more like a game, where he had to find the things he wanted while the store was dark, before they set off any alarms. Aya’s abilities took some of the risk away, providing them with a way in that didn’t usually set off alarms and getaway that beat everything else. Dancing afterwards sounded like fun, though they might want to pop back by the house first to drop off their steals. “Where do you wanna go first?” he asked as he popped to his feet.
"You would look good in leather," Aya murmured, giving him an appreciative look. "I like the way it smells." She wasn't picky about things being natural, she happened to like synthetics and just how crazy they could be, but leather was one of those somewhat hedonistic things she enjoyed that wasn't new to her. She stepped closer to him, sizing him up and nodding to herself. Yes, he should definitely have a leather jacket. "Let me look," she replied then and turned to his bedroom door, feeling for other doorways and what was behind them. "Here," she said. "Wigs for me." Might as well start with something that was fun for her since she was in charge!
Aidan raised a brow at Aya, never entirely sure what she was getting at. Maybe she was flirting, but in the time that she'd been there he'd learned she was a tease, something he didn't like to call anyone, but honestly fit when it came to her. Maybe he would look good in leather, and maybe she'd enjoy peeling it off him, but there was just as good a chance she'd get bored halfway through and leave him frustrated. He tried not to read anything into it, since he wanted a jacket for himself regardless of her opinion. "Of course," he smiled, not at all surprised she wanted a wig first. "I'm curious how you'll look as a blonde. Or maybe with pink hair," he said, ready to follow her through the door.
"You'll get to see me with all sorts of hair now," Aya said with a delighted laugh because she'd had those very same colors in mind. Maybe their bond was stronger than she realized, or maybe those were the obvious choices to try out for a girl with pitch black hair. "Maybe we'll get you a wig or two," she added with a quirked brow before opening the door into a large storage room. It was dark save for the exit light humming above the door but Aya found the light switch in no time. "There are no people here," she said as she walked up to the next door, a metal one, and slowly pushed it open. "But there might be alarms." She hated those things, they were so loud and obnoxious. She preferred the quiet ones where she didn't even know they were going off until someone showed up to investigate. Handling that was so much easier.
Aidan cringed at the idea of himself in a wig, certain that he’d look horrible in anything other than his own hair, but he knew he’d probably try a few on just to appease Aya. It would get a laugh if nothing else. He followed her thought the door, keeping quiet as they both took in their surroundings. Normally if he was breaking into a place, there’d be a bunch of lead up to it—scoping it out, picking the lock, then quietly creeping inside. The process with Aya was completely different and they were in before he could even blink. “I’m aware of how alarms work,” he said with an upturn to his lips. “If you’d slow down, I could scope it out.” But she’d already opened the door. Aidan ran a hand over the frame anyways, sending a jolt of electricity through it. It felt solid, with no extra electronics to trip in the process. “I think we’re good though.”
"Slowing down is boring," Aya chimed back at him. They made for a good team there, Aya could sense other living things in the building, Aidan could scout for electronics and it probably would go better if she had the patience to wait for him but she was lacking a key component there, she just wasn't afraid of getting caught. She shot him a grin over her shoulder and headed for the main part of the small store. "Cameras?" she asked because while she couldn't see any, she knew there might be some hidden around.
In the early days of Aya’s arrival, Aidan had been hesitant to go with her, but these days he knew what to expect. Patience was not one of her virtues and she was more likely to trip the alarm than wait for him to disarm it. He’d learned to work with it as best he could, letting his magic run through the walls of the building before answering her with a smile. “Cameras are outside,” he said with a little smirk. “They expect people to break in through the front or back door, not through the supply closet.” Which was fair. With both doors locked, a camera at the exits would work, unless you had the ability to appear out of thin air.
They should have more security, Aya thought as she looked at the price tags of the more expensive wigs in the shop, real human hair or high quality synthetics. Most of them were in natural colors, styled to look like a person's real hair so that wasn't terribly exciting but she found a couple of cheaper wigs that were more fun and grabbed a couple in natural colors just for the hell of it. There wasn't a lot there for guys, most of them seemed to be for men who were losing their hair and Aidan did not have that problem. "Here," she said as she grabbed a long, black wig. "Try this on, we can be twinsies!" That was more for a laugh since she wasn't really seeing anything in there that would make him look cool, unless he wanted to try to go blond and that... probably wouldn't look good on him, at least not as a wig.
Aidan caught the wig and turned it around in his hand. He’d always thought if he was going to alter his appearance, he’d do it with magic, but this was far simpler. He could just take it off if it looked horrible, which he was sure it would. He decided to humor Aya anyways. “I’d have to change a lot more than just my hair to be your twin,” he snickered as he attempted to put the wig on over his own hair. There was no way he was doing it right and a glance in a mirror confirmed that. “I look ridiculous,” he told her with a grin. “Definitely not my color.” Or style, but that wasn’t the point. They weren’t there for him. “Try that one,” he said, nodding towards the one in her hand. “I wanna see what blonde looks like on you.”
Aya pulled her hair back and tied it in the back in a makeshift braid to get it to keep it out of her face. It wasn't as good as using a proper net but it wasn't like she was trying to pass as blonde, she was just trying it on. She stepped up to a mirror and whipped the wig on, fixing it a little before turning to Aidan. "Now I can find out if blondes have more fun," she all but purred and it would be fun, traipsing around in different colors without having to rely on her witch to change her hair for her. "What do you think?" It softened her face, that was for sure, gave her an air of innocence she was sure she could use to her advantage.
Aidan pulled the black wig off himself as Aya adjusted her blonde wig. She clearly had a better idea of what she was doing than he did, managing to keep her dark hair hidden under the wig in a way that he hadn’t. He rolled his eyes at the idea that blondes had more fun, but smiled when she turned towards him. It definitely changed her look and might even assist her in getting into more trouble, but nothing could hide the mischief in her eyes. “I like it,” he said. “I like the black better, mind you, but this is fun. Makes you seem a little more… innocent,” he said, struggling for a better word. In all the time he’d known her, it was not one he’d ever associated with Aya.
That just made Aya grin in a way that was definitely not innocent at all. "Good to know," she said and pulled the blond wig off. She didn't need to try on that many wigs from there, she knew what she wanted when she saw it and once she had gathered everything she needed she helped herself to the register to wrap it all up nicely and get it ready to dump in Aidan's room. "See anything else in here you want?" she asked. "They've got some jewelry." It was mostly for women, if not exclusively, but she didn't much care about those sorts of restrictions. Gold was gold.
As Aya wrapped up her wigs to go, Aidan sauntered up to the jewelry case, curious about what they might have on display. “It’s probably all costume,” he told her. “If it was real, there’d be more cameras for sure.” But it was pretty and shiny and he knew some girls didn’t care about the actual value of the jewelry if it looked good. Aya certainly didn’t seem to care about a price tag, but that was also because she didn’t pay for anything. “I think I’m good here,” he told her, not really seeing anything in particular that caught his eye. “But take your time. I don’t mind waiting, so long as we get the jacket before we’re done.”
"Jackets," Aya corrected him with an emphasis on the plural so strong she ended up sounding like a snake as she drew out the S. "You're getting one too." She wondered if she might like a leather jacket and maybe she'd try some on. She snagged a couple of necklaces as she sauntered over to Aidan and slipped her arm around his. "Let's drop this off in your room," she told him. "Then we can carry more in the next place." At least that was easy, all she had to do was open the door to his room, dump her bag inside before closing it and then re-opening it elsewhere. She honestly didn't know how people had the patience to travel any other way. "This one will have alarms," she murmured, peering into the dark changing room on the other side of the doorway. "Do your magic, witch boy."
“I haven’t forgotten,” Aidan smiled over at Aya. “The priority is Max though.” He could look for them both at the same time, of course. The key would be finding something different for Max, keeping his own sense of style in mind. Aidan wasn’t the best at these things, but he felt like he’d know what was better for his brother than himself. He chuckled softly as she dumped her stuff back in his room, making this one of the quickest and easiest shopping trips he’d ever been on. Shopping was virtually painless with Aya, which he highly appreciated. When they stepped through the door a second time, Aidan could almost feel the electricity running through the walls. He put his hand on one as he peered down at her, feeling the wires within it and mentally tracing them throughout the room. “Cameras and alarms,” he agreed quietly, then closed his eyes to concentrate. “There’s motion sensors, but no one onsite. And they won’t come unless we trip something. Give me a second.” He was better at these things when he could see them, faster for sure, but he liked the challenge of doing it from afar. Aidan’s heart began to race as he gave the main security system a jolt, and waited for an alarm to sound. When nothing came, he began to grin, since zapping the cameras was easy without an alarm attached. It all took maybe two minutes tops. “We’re all clear,” he told her, then led the way out into the store, confident that the only way they’d get caught was if someone was there waiting for them.
Aya liked electricity. She didn't really understand it but it was neat. It brought her music and indoors wind and all sorts of fun things so watching Aidan manipulate it was fascinating. She could feel it too, even if she couldn't do anything with it herself she could still sense the magic and the buzz in the air just like she could sense living creatures nearby. There was nobody there waiting for them so she grinned at Aidan when he was done and tiptoed to press a little kiss on his cheek. "Very cool," she purred, then opened the door to head into the store. It smelled like leather products and it had far more items than she'd been expecting, not just jackets but pants and vests and all sorts of little accessories. She picked up a heavy bracelet and slipped it on, stretching her arm out to admire it. Definitely a keeper. "Do you want to find a jacket that looks like his old one?" she asked then and while she wasn't always eager to help out, this was something she actually enjoyed doing.
There was nothing about Aidan’s particular brand of magic that was flashy and it mostly went unappreciated, but for the trouble Aya liked to get into he felt like it worked out perfectly. He got to show off a little and she got to do the shopping she wanted, though in this case it was his turn to shop. “I think so,” Aidan said as he began to wander the store. The selection of jackets was a little bit daunting, but he felt like he could find one Max would like if he stuck to what he’d liked in the past. That style, at least. “It doesn’t have to be exactly the same, but if it can be the same color and cut, then I think he’ll like it.” Finding one for himself might actually be harder because he didn’t know what he wanted, but at least he could make an easy decision on it once he tried it on. He didn’t have Max there with him to gain that input.
"Have you ever been here before?" Aya asked as they browsed the long line of leather jackets. "Québec, I think." Which apparently explained all the french labels. It just felt like a smart idea to cross the border to go shopping for expensive things, that wig store didn't have nearly as much security as this one did and they were about to take a lot of stuff. She pulled a long leather coat from one of the racks and laughed as she put it against her body. It was clearly meant for someone far taller than her so no, that wasn't going to work.
At first Aidan thought she meant the store itself, but then she clarified and he shook his head. “No, never been outside the country. Haven’t really seen much of the US either. Never really had the bug to travel much.” It was expensive to travel and he hadn’t had the money, or the desire. Maybe if he’d had the desire he could have come up with the money, but Aidan was mostly satisfied with his life at home, odd as it was. He knew most people didn’t continue to live with their family once they were adults, but it seemed to work for them for the time being. “You?” he asked, wondering if she even remembered where she’d been prior to joining him.
"Yeah," Aya replied. "But it's annoying because everyone speaks french and you don't speak french so I don't either. You should know more languages!" She stuck her tongue out at him and while yes, it was true she wished he knew more things so that she could know more things through their strange bond, the language ability wasn't exactly a priority to her. "I've been to a lot of cities lately, everything is so big now, so different and busy. I love it. You can get lost in a crowd so much more easily." She had to admit it was nice to have a place to return to though and she enjoyed hanging out in Aidan's room from time to time.
“If I knew French, you’d know French?” Aidan asked, curious how that worked. He knew that some of her knowledge about the here and now was taken from him, but it hadn’t occurred to him that that included the language that she spoke. If that was the case, if her knowledge about the world and how it worked was all based on his own, then… that could be limiting. Aidan didn’t know what he didn’t know, but he knew he was a small town witch that didn’t give a shit about much outside his bubble. “I wouldn’t mind getting lost if I knew I always had an escape route,” he said, picking up a jacket and trying it out. “Crowds are fun though. Lots of different kinds of people. Lots of pockets.”
"I'd understand it," Aya clarified and she didn't really know what this little bond of theirs worked like either, only that she was caught up on modern times because he was, that she understood basic math because he did, that she knew roughly how cars worked and yes, that he liked to pick pockets because he did. She didn't know his intimate thoughts or feelings, but it was like he had provided her with enough of a database to get by in a world that was otherwise alien to her. "Crowds are fun," she agreed. "And I would always get you out, you know that. The world is full of doors and trees." Fewer trees now though, people really liked to cut them down to make space for their concrete.
Aidan had more confidence in Aya than he had when she’d arrived, but he still wasn’t sure that getting lost in a crowd of people was a good idea. He felt better when he could lay eyes on her and what she thought was all fun and games might easily land him in jail or far from home, alone in a city he didn’t know. He was pretty sure she needed him alive due to their weird bond, and that she needed to stay somewhat close, but it was difficult to say beyond that. She might be fine with him rotting away in a cell a few miles away. “I don’t have the magic you have,” he said simply, slipping off the jacket and picking up another. “I like risks, but… have you ever tried to escape and found a door locked?”
Aya slowed down, glancing over at him with a wry smile. "Yes," she said simply, some bitterness seeping into her voice. There were memories there, faded and jumbled, confusing and not eager to be shared. She remembered the screaming, the chanting, the smoke in the air and... her sister. She huffed, pulled another leather jacket off the shelf to check the size before pulling it on. "Locked doors only happen when they know what I am and that I'm coming. The world is full of doors and trees." But rooms weren't and she felt an old hatred blooming in her chest. The people who had bound her were long dead so she could take some comfort in that.
Aidan had been caught up in his own concerns, yet the tone of her voice gave him pause and he glanced her way. There was so much he didn’t know about her, some of which she didn’t even know herself, but he knew now she was speaking from a past memory. He couldn’t imagine her sharing what she was with everyone, which led him to believe that someone had betrayed her. Aidan watched her for a moment, his lips turned down in thought. “Can you make a door?” he asked. “I mean, can you escape through anything that looks like a door, even if it wasn’t one? If I drew a door on a wall, would that work?” He wasn’t sure why it mattered, but it felt important. Like him, she should always have a plan of escape.
"That would be cool," Aya said wistfully. "But no. I need-" she looked around but there was nothing there for her to really show him what she needed so she had to use her words. "Two trees aligned, a cave or a doorway. A hole." A lot of things could be doorways but she felt no connection to metal and things that weren't easy to walk or crawl through were hard to open. "I can take you to the middle of the woods without a house in sight," she added. "But I can't create something that isn't there." Why did he deserve to know? He probably didn't, but there was something about the way he asked that made her want to tell him. Like it was urgent.
“So if I… blew a hole in a wall. It’s not a door exactly, but it’s an exit. So long as it’s not made of metal, would that work?” Aidan asked. Aya had never been forthcoming about how her magic worked, but little by little he felt like he was starting to understand. She was a creature of the earth. Manmade structures could be used for her purposes, so long as they were made of natural materials. She’d never said so, but he doubted a glass doorway would work for her either. Not that they came across lots of glass doorways. He didn’t really need answers to his questions, but if they were ever in a bind, it could come in handy. He would hate to have them trapped just because he didn’t understand the basic mechanics of how her magic worked. She had the benefit of knowing all about his because of their weird mindshare.
Aya laughed, she just couldn't help it. It was more of a delightful thing than an amused one but the two mixed together a bit. "I don't know," she admitted cheerfully. "Nobody's ever done that for me. Would you do that for me?" Even as a hypothetical it was an amazing idea and one she actually wanted to try. She could see it easily working with a wooden wall but most walls these days were made of some sorts of dumb plaster. Thankfully a lot of people still liked their doorframes to be made out of wood though she had no idea if it was for practical or aesthetic reasons.
Aidan smirked a little, envisioning a bolt of lightning striking the side of a building out of nowhere—or even more bizarre, from inside the room itself. It wasn’t the kind of thing he did often, but he’d experimented a little in the woods around their house. If he could blow up a tree, or a bunch of rocks, he was sure he could handle a wall. “If you needed me to, yes,” he smiled. “It could be messy though.” He could control the bolt of lightning, but not the way the wall itself reacted. Fire often came with that kind of use of electricity. But now that he’d thought about it, he wanted to try it. Not here, but somewhere, sometime when they could just use a door to escape if it didn’t work as he wanted it to.
"Messy is fun," Aya told him excitedly and if he wanted to do this right here and now, she was all for it. Property damages were other people's problems, much like bills, taxes and other such boring human things. "All these walls feel really weird though," she added as she scoped the place. "Like they're natural but not." She had lost interest in the jacket she was holding so she dropped it and headed toward the nearest wall, pressing her hand against it. "There's sand? Clay? It's all jumbled." Humans really had a way with taking natural things and making them feel like they were from another planet, in some cases it was fun but in others, like this one, it could feel a little frustrating.
“Let me find the jacket first,” Aidan chuckled, picking up another jacket and putting it on to feel it out. This one he liked for himself, but it wasn’t a good replacement for Max’s. And now that Aya was looking at the wall he had a sense that he needed to hurry, otherwise he might not find what he’d come for before she decided it was time to leave. Luckily he didn’t think she could blow up the wall herself, but there were plenty of doors for her to use. “Most buildings these days are built with wood or steel frames. Wood for a place like this, or a house, but steel for the sky scrapers you’d see in a big city. The walls usually have wood in them, then plaster or brick on the exterior. It can be deceiving, especially since natural materials are mixed in with the artificial ones.”
"It's all mixed," Aya complained and frowned at the wall like it had personally offended her, which it kind of had. "I know for sure I could do it if you blasted a hole in a wooden wall. Rocks are trickier, so many types and sometimes there's too much stuff in them, I'll know if when I touch it." And maybe she could adapt and learn. She hadn't always been good with doors, there had been nails and other stuff there that frustrated her and threw her off balance in the beginning, now walking through them was second nature. She abandoned the wall theories for now, heading back to where Aidan was looking at jackets and flipping through a few to see if any of them looked like Max's old one. She had a good eye for clothes so it wasn't hard to conjure up that memory, even if it had been a while since she saw it in good shape. It had been a wreck when he returned and it had smelled so bad, but the shape had been the same. "Here's one," she told Aidan, handing him a jacket that looked like it might fit but she wasn't done, stalking over to the next rack to look further.
Though finding a new jacket for Max was Aidan’s objective, shopping for clothes was not at all his thing and he appreciated Aya’s help in finding a suitable replacement. He knew what the original one looked like, but without a reference picture it was still hard to find the right one. He held up the one Aya had selected and was pleased at how close she’d come to a match. It didn’t have to be exactly the same and he doubted they’d find one much closer. “This one’s really good,” he said, taking off his jacket to try it on. It was a little big on him, but he and Max were built differently. “We might have our match. You find something else?” he asked, taking it back off. There were other things in the store and maybe she wanted something for herself—a jacket or maybe even pants. She’d definitely look good in leather pants.
Aya ignored him for now, save for a disgruntled hum that meant she was concentrating as she went through the racks with purpose, wrinkling her nose at some of the jackets because lord, some of the 'fashionable' ones were plain ugly. "Here," she finally said. "This one is better." She brought it over to Aidan and held it up against him, narrowing her eyes. She hadn't paid too much attention to Max but she had seen the brothers standing side by side - even hugging - so it wasn't too hard to suss it out. "This is the one. Would you like that gift wrapped?" She gave him a cheeky grin before shoving the jacket into his arms and heading back to the racks.
“Huh,” Aidan said, impressed when she held the new jacket up against him. It was better than the other, though he wasn’t sure he’d have ever spotted it himself. “Perfect,” he chuckled when she tossed the jacket at him. “Let me just find a bag.” The thought of wrapping the gift amused him, since the only time he only wrapped gifts was at Christmas and a good half of those had been stolen too. Maybe he’d just find a big red bow to stick on it. Aidan kept on the jacket he liked for himself, then rolled up Max’s new jacket and stuck it in a shopping bag before heading over to see what Aya was looking at. “Would the lady like anything for herself?”
"Maybe," Aya drawled in a near sing song as she went through the racks again and with a gasp, pulled out a dress. "Yes," she hissed and then added a more enthusiastic, "Yes!" It came off more as a question aimed at Aidan but one where she was sure he'd approve. How could he not? It was a tight little number with buckles and straps and Aya figured if she was going to wear leather more often in the first place, this was a fantastic start. "I'm going to try it on," she announced and started peeling off the clothes she was already wearing.
Aidan grinned in approval as she held up the dress and began to casually stroll towards her as she began to strip. “I’m going to watch,” he said, enjoying the show as her clothes came off and she wiggled into the leather dress. It looked complicated with all the buckles and straps, but it was possibly the sexiest thing he’d ever seen Aya in. Aidan knew better than to assume it meant anything between them. Occasionally she was interested in fooling around with him. And occasionally she followed through. But she was fickle and he wasn’t always certain she was worth the effort. That dress though… it definitely made him want to try.
Aya didn't mind him watching, she enjoyed his eyes on her if anything. His reaction to the way she looked in that dress sealed her love for it and she slowly turned in a few circles to let him enjoy the view. "Oh we're going dancing after this," she murmured and stepped closer to him, leaning in and stepping up on her toes. "Maybe I'll fuck you in some public bathroom." She grinned and grabbed his hand, pulling it toward her sleeve where the anti theft tag was sitting like a complete eyesore. "I need this off." Sure, she could run to the counter and do it herself but he could do it so easily.
Aidan hadn’t been into dancing before he met Aya, but now it was something he did on a semi-regular basis. If she was feeling it and she wanted his company, he went. He didn’t always get laid, but he was guaranteed to get drunk and have a good time. Maybe this was one of those times where he’d get lucky. “Tease,” he grinned back at her, then took hold of the anti-theft tag she so desperately needed off. “What do I get for it?” he asked with a little smirk, sending a little jolt of electricity through the device. It clattered to the floor, completely useless against his magic. It was a nice skill for a thief to have, though her breaking and entering skills were far superior.
"Well, nothing now!" Aya said with amused exasperation. "It's already off. You're a terrible negotiator." A slow grin curled her lips and she tiptoed again to press a kiss on his lips. "Thank you," she murmured, tapping his nose with her finger. "All done here? Or are you ready to drop the loot off at home and go party?"
“Silly me,” Aidan smiled and rolled his eyes. He could have held her hostage, but he never knew what that might backfire. Next time, he thought, I’ll take my chances. Maybe then he’d get more than a kiss. “Ready to party,” he said, picking her clothes off the floor and stuffing them in the bag with the jacket for Max. Maybe she didn’t need them, she could literally walk into anyone’s closet and shop for herself, but he wasn’t used to leaving such things behind. Anything could be traced. “Let’s go.”