InsaneJournal

The sound of waves was a pleasant enough background noise and soothing to Penny as he stuffed his hands in his pockets and then wondered if he ought to reach for Alice’s hand instead. This using brought an internal curse to the forefront of his mind. He was acting like a fucking teenager and he needed to get his shit together. Maybe he’d been a little off his game since arriving in Tumbleweed and maybe he needed to get himself back on track again.

He glanced over to the woman beside him. A date on Valentines had maybe been more than they either of them had counted on when they’d started whatever it was they had going on several months ago now, but it was a nice way to spend Valentine’s and Julia clearly had moved on. And Penny wondered a little if he had, really, or maybe this whole thing, as rough as he’d been in asking was definitely a sign that he had. Really the first thing he’d thought was ‘should I do something with Alice?’ And it had all spiraled out from there.

He removed his hands from his pockets and looked over at her. “We can just walk for a while. Doubt we’ll see many shells here but it’s still a nice sound.” A beat. “You wanna walk barefoot?”

Alice, for the most part, had been comfortable around Penny since they'd gotten over the initial arrival. She'd been concerned that he would hold a grudge against her for her actions in Castle Blackspire. It would have been deserved if he'd wanted nothing to do with her or hadn't trusted her at all. But that hadn't been the way of things. Penny had been a friend practically since he arrived. He was different from the Penny she'd known intimately back home, Penny 40 as they liked to call him, but he was a comforting presence in his own way. And over the year he'd been here?

She'd found herself becoming rather attached to him.

But she'd stumbled into their -- whatever you wanted to call it -- without any real discussion between the two. They were friends and they were friends who had sex. Frequently. Exclusively? She didn't know, actually, but on her side of things? Exclusively. But she'd adamentally said they weren't dating for months.

So the Valentine's question threw her through a loop. She'd been more tense around him the past day than ever really before. Had anything really changed outside of a question? No. But she still was overanalyzing everything now and she couldn't stand it of herself. She turned her attention to him.

"I like watching the waves," she offered, which was true. Whenever she'd go to the beach with Lance it had been her favorite thing to do. And then his other question settled into her mind. "We could." She'd remove her tights if they did but that wouldn't be difficult.

It didn't take being a psychic for Penny to know that Alice was a little on edge. He'd… sort of figured out how to see that over the months, and if he was being fair to her, he was also a little on edge. They weren't dating, except… he really hadn't dated anyone else either.

And he liked Alice. Maybe to his surprise, a little, but in a weird portal driven universe, he wasn't going to take anything for granted, and she'd agreed to a date.

"Yeah, me too," he told her, and reached for her hand for an instant - long enough to tug her down towards the beach. "Let's do the wave thing yeah. We can go back after maybe." Although he didn't really have any plan of not seeing her for the rest of the evening either. "So. This was nice. I mean, it is nice, yeah?"

Eyes flashed quickly to their hands once he'd taken hers. The gaze only lingered for a moment before she gave a quick, agreeable smile to the motion. And then, just as quickly, the look was washed away and she moved her free hand up to tuck some of her hair back behind her ear in an effort to combat against the wind.

She moved with him further down the beach. The question was simple but she knew it wasn't about whether the day was nice. Most days with Penny were nice.

Instinctively, she squeezed his hand, but looked ahead at the water. "It has been nice." She cautioned a glance at him. "Did you want to go back after?"

"Yeah," Penny looked over, and for a second just watched her, then like looked over to the ocean. "I'd like to if you would?"

He knew there was a question that he was kind of avoiding and they had said they'd talk about it and tonight was the obvious time. He hesitated, then "We could do this again sometime?"

"I wouldn't mind staying out longer, honestly," she mentioned, as her gaze diverted back towards the water. "The sooner we go back, the more likely we'll have to divert our focus and..." she rolled her hand in a gesture.

She caught the hesitation but didn't fault him. She felt a similar pull for one. "Okay." She shifted, turning so her entire focus was towards him. "We could. We could do this again. But..." She wasn't used to being this uncertain about things. She was usually confident to the point of arrogance and she knew this about herself. "...it's one thing if we're doing what we've been doing and my focus gets pulled away. It's something else if we're...more?" She exhaled and there was a sound of frustration when she did so. "Does...does that make sense? What I mean is...if we do this again, and again, and maybe we become something else... are you okay with when I need to pull my focus? Will that be a problem? Because if it is...maybe we shouldn't do this again and it's better to stop while we're ahead..."

He found his attention pulled to her as she continued and he frowned slightly as he tried to follow exactly what she was saying. His brain running through what she was saying, and what he wasn't certain that she was saying.

"Okay." Penny nodded. "I mean, we can stay out and... " he waved at the beach with an empty hand. "We can just walk." There was something nice about being away from everyone else, not having the expectations of what people thought they might be, and just having themselves to talk to and about, and not the Bureau. But also he understood that.

"Look, I uh, don't want to pull you away from doing the smart stuff that you're doing. That's not… what this is about. This is just, I like spending time with you, and I think we should do a little more of it. And it can be planned, and like, I'm not going to be offended if something Portal Catastrophic shows up and keeps you from coming to a date. Now, if it's not an emergency and you start canceling I might take it more personal, but I get that this -" he lifted his empty hand and pointed to his head. "You're gonna focus a lot on what's up here. That's okay. And if it's not working then we'll talk and figure out if we can make it work, or need to do something else, you know?"

"I just need a few more hours away from it." Outside of her internal panic over trying to decode whatever it was that they were, there was the very real frustration of trying to figure out Maleficent. Alice's mood had been incredibly sour the first few days the woman had made herself known. As if her arrival outside of the typical norm had been an insult to Alice specifically. Or rather that unforeseen Portal occurrences as radical as that felt like an insult. But being away was letting her take a break and taking a break would possibly jumpstart other possibilities she'd not thought of.

But that was not the point.

"Okay." She breathed out and her shoulders relaxed somewhat. "Good." She hesitated for a moment before, "I'm...I don't date." She explained, nearly wincing as she said it. "I mean...I just sort of...fell into it with Quentin. And Shiro."

In others words, this was new. "But I would like to spend more time with you. So long as...you understand and...it sounds like you do." The Portal was first. It had to be and that wasn't going to change for her. Not now with everything she knew of home and everything she'd learned since beginning her career.

Penny had not exactly fallen into it with Julia in his timeline, and Julia here, well - he didn't know what sort of relationship they might have at home, but it wasn't going to be anything romantic here - obviously. He glanced over. "We don't have to call it dating, if you want to just, keep doing what we're doing, but I'm not seeing anyone else. I don't have any plans too, and I like this kinda thing with you."

He paused, reaching down to slide his shoes off of his feet so that he could enjoy the sand now that they were down near the water. "I'm good with staying for a while," he told her simply. "Like, obviously, if I get to keep you here," he gave her a quick grin. "I've got your attention on me." Or at least to a point, which was fine.

She didn't move to give a response in the immediate, instead watching as he moved to take off his shoes. There was a moment of hesitation from her before she reached out, using him for balance, kicking off her own shoes. But she brought her leg up so she could grab hold off the foot of her tights, tugging at them until they began to slide down from underneath her dress, coming at a weird angle. And then she moved to pull them off the other leg. They were quickly shoved into one of the soles of her shoes.

"I don't mind calling it dating. I'm just saying...I haven't really been on dates in the past." She moved to pull her hand away from his arm now, but held it out for him. "But...we kind of have gone on some without calling them it, haven't we?" There was a smile of realization as she said this. There'd been plenty of concerts since this had begun.

"Let's stay."

He let her take her shoes off, standing still so she could use him as a prop to hold onto so she wouldn't fall over.

"I mean, technically, yeah," Penny couldn't help a grin at this. They had a tendency to go to concerts, and just generally hang out when either of them had a free moment - or really more when Alice did, since Penny's life wasn't quite as devoted to the portal as Alice's. "We can keep doing this," he told her. "Or this sort of thing. It's not like it's not easy to get to the beach for walks like this. Maybe we should even do this exact sort of thing more frequently."

When things weren't crazy in Tumbleweed, he supposed. Which did happen almost as frequently it seemed as things happened at home.

"We should hit up Awolnation. They are touring," she said as a sidebar, because that was one of the things she loved most about spending time with Penny. While others indulged her desire to expand her concert experiences on occasion, he'd been more than willing from the start and had suggested acts for her that she'd never looked into. "You do make it easier to get to the beach. I used to make Portals to do so."

"Which, speaking of, ice cream in Cuba? Totally a thing you need to try."

Funnily enough, when she stopped thinking about what everything meant, it was back to being completely comfortable. Maybe she needed to keep that in mind and stop herself from over thinking. "We should come more frequently."

"Yeah, we could look into that," Penny agreed. "I'll check on tickets when we get back, we can travel in to wherever makes the most sense date wise and tickets are available for them and all that." It was funny sometimes that he hadn't really thought of himself as a music person before everything that had happened in Timeline 40. Not that he wasn't a music person, but being a DJ in an alternate life had definitely left a whole stock of things in his head that he definitely hadn't had there before.

"Yeah, well, I don't eat ice cream alone," he looked over at her with an arch eyebrow. It was flatly untrue, if she wanted to call him out on it, but it was as good an excuse as any to ask her on another date. "And there are beaches in Cuba, right? I mean, island nation and all that."

"May the Portal grant us time to do so," she said with a hint of cheek in her tone. It was the winter and she mentally knew not to make plans for the winter. But maybe if they got something soon, once Maleficent was no longer a concern, it would work out.

"No one should eat ice cream alone," she pointed out before nodding her head, "Beautiful beaches. You'd like it."

"Oh portal, give us your kind eye, or something," Penny started out as if he were offering a sacrifice and ended with a huff of a laugh. "Maybe if we ask nicely." But the idea of going with Alice to Cuba, or really anywhere, it sounded nice. "Maybe we should start hopping around, figure out where has the best beaches," he suggested. "And ice cream. We could start a book."

This cracked a wide smile from Alice and she couldn't help but laugh in response. "If that's the key to getting what we want, Natasha might have to give you a raise." But then she gave a nod of her head. "Or a blog. The hunt of ice cream and beaches." She wasn't one to sit down and write, having given up a diary habit once out of school, but it was a novel idea.

She glanced off towards the water. "You want to go get closer?"

"Well, if the portal is kind to us, I'm going to ask for one," Penny quipped back. It'd be nice but things were rarely that easy here or at home. "A blog would work. Or like, one of the social media things maybe?"

He glanced at her then back to the water. "Yeah, let's go stick our toes in. It's warm enough."

"I'll put in my recommendation that she follow through," she added but didn't anticipate that was going to happen. She felt like folks asked the Portal for things all the time with it going unanswered. Sans Christmas gifts, of course, and even that was never always a guarantee. "Oh, yes. An instagram?" Alice wasn't as savvy of these things but she could see the allure.

"Let's get going."

Penny snorted a half laugh. Who would have thought there'd be a day when he'd have an Instagram. On the other hand, the idea wasn't entirely without appeal. Pictures of ice cream and beaches and snappy sassy reviews of different places around the world.

He glanced over at Alice and his lips turned up in bit of a smile. "Yeah, an Instagram sounds good."

Then he reached over for her hand, the one that didn't have her shoes, and he turned towards the ocean. Tumbleweed could make do without them for a while longer.