RP Log: Sydney and Rogier Who: Rogier and Sydney When: Present-day Where: Starcourt Mall What: Sydney and Rogier have a low-stakes, Glamor Shots date at the mall. Rogier gets mushy. Sydney counters with a poop emoji. Rating: PG13, some swearing (Sydney)
Syd was just a little too young to have enjoyed the aesthetics of Starcourt Mall when she was a child, but she did remember malls in the early 2000s, and everything that came along with that. Serena had been fond of Abercrombie & Fitch when she was a young teen, and Syd had gotten dragged along on more than one shopping spree due to a lack of supervision at home.
But nothing had been quite like this. The bright neon everywhere they turned. The vintage fashion. The glamor shots.
Sydney dragged him there first. It felt like such a Rogier thing. So they’d sat through twenty minutes of curling irons and three bottles of hairspray and enough blue eyeshadow to paint an entire smurf. She was still laughing as they were sat in place against the black backdrop, and Syd propped herself onto Rogier’s lap as the photographer got ready. “Someday I’m going to tell our hypothetical children that this is a portrait of royalty. Your hair has never been so big before.”
The Glamor Shots aesthetic was unfamiliar to Rogier, but that had never particularly slowed him down; he was wearing a pleather jacket over a blue muscle tee and his hair was in ringlets that crunched when he shifted his weight even slightly. Truly, Starcourt Mall was an adventure, and he was delighted to share that adventure with Sydney.
“Our hypothetical children had better respect; I didn’t even know your bangs would do that,” he marveled, and flashed a grin just in time as the camera flashed and he tried not to stagger in response. That was a bit of technology that took some getting used to. “They’re taller than the tallest spiers of Leyndell. More voluminous than the Headmistress’s nightgown. Godrick the Grafted would want them all for himself.”
The camera person looked as if he was resisting the urge to remark “what the fuck”, but clearly, he’d heard worse. “What’d you want your next theme to be? “Night City” or “Malibu Magic”?”
Syd didn’t bother to smother her laugh at the ridiculous commentary and at the photographer’s expression. “Oh yeah, talk dirty to me.” She reached up to smooth it a little bit, and the hair rebounded from her hand with a loud crunch. “I think it might break off if I move too fast.”
She resituated herself quickly, and placed a dramatic hand on his shoulder. “Night City? Night City. That’ll go well with our leather and dark look we’ve got going on here.” The photographer stifled a sigh and then pulled the background so that they were surrounded by black and lasers. Fake ones, of course, just art on the canvas behind them, but it was dramatic nonetheless. She flashed a smile for the next picture. “These should be our Christmas cards.”
“Your holidays are senseless and confusing,” Rogier observed through his own grin, and took yet another infuriatingly great photo despite his theatrical attire. Indeed, they would have a field day picking the best images. “Let’s add to their sense of magic by inflicting images of us looking like this on our loved ones.” He pulled off another pose - his hands on Sydney’s waist, looking rather serious in a dumb way - before the photographer announced that they’d reached the end of their selected package.
It was a few minutes later - back in their regular clothes, although their hair and face wouldn’t recover anytime soon from the excess of hairspray and eyeliner - that Rogier turned to Sydney with a grin. “I’ll buy you a cinnamon roll if you humor me with a game or two at the arcade.” Was it silly? Yes. But Rogier fucking loved the arcade; it was loud and fun and all the games were deeply addictive, and much easier for him than the more-complex games that would eventually come later. Pac Man was simple stuff. And he button smashed in Mortal Kombat. He pointed at the cinnamon roll stand. “They’re warm….” Warmth was Sydney’s kryptonite, if Rogier knew the pop culture reference (he didn’t).
Rogier wouldn’t have even needed the tempting commentary of warm cinnamon rolls to sell her. Just cinnamon rolls was enough. She was already going to be wearing blue eyeshadow for a month because that shit was strong. Might as well blend in at the arcade with it.
“Only if I get to kick your ass at air hockey.” It was easier than that, even, but she had to give him something to work towards after the last time that he’d beat her in Mortal Kombat, of all things. “You can’t just button smash your way through that one, it takes actual skill.” It didn’t, but she still softened the shit-talking with a kiss, right there in the busy open corridor of the mall. The PDA was strange in itself but he’d worked his way back up through her good graces following the Valentine’s Day fiasco.
Rogier looked mortally offended as he pulled away from the kiss (although the likelihood of him being actually offended was fairly low, considering he kept a hand around her waist). “Actual skill, says the woman who was not above leaning dramatically over the table with a shockingly low-cut top the last time we played that game.” It had been a great ploy; Rogier wished he’d have thought of it. He suspected he’d have looked great lolling on a table - certainly he was better at that than he was air hockey (why oh why was the little place to score a goal so damn small?).
“Although I suppose your ability to wield your breasts as weapons while out-swearing me is a skill in war,” he added graciously. “Consider myself vanquished.”
Sydney smothered a laugh with the same energy as she would use to smother him later with a pillow. Well, for half a second before she gave in and let him go. Or smacked him with it. “You have to partially lean over the table, don’t put that on me just because you’re jealous about my cleavage.”
She pulled him towards the arcade, and let her hand thread through his fingers rather than just wrapping around his wrist. It felt just a little more personal that way. “Alright vanquished guy, maybe you can use your little shocking fingers trick to bounce all the balls in the cups in thirty seconds. That’ll show me.”
“I get the impression you’re trying to egg me on,” Rogier mused as they stepped out of the airy mall and into the dark, loud cave that was the arcade. A few months ago, he might have been intimidated by this place - it was so foreign to anything back home - but it was getting easier all the time lately. Perhaps all it took was time to adapt. But Rogier had a feeling it was the company he kept rather than the passage of time that had granted him curiosity and eagerness.
He was no slouch at these games. Sydney usually had the edge on him - he blamed her little fingers - but he was quick and agile and could follow most of the rules. Rogier lost two games to her and didn’t worry too much on it, and then beat her at Mortal Combat without any strategy whatsoever.
“You know,” he said, giving her the tickets he’d managed to win so she could choose a prize for herself, “I really am glad to have come here. To Vallo. Certain death backhome notwithstanding, I mean.”
Even with their stack of tickets, Syd had no idea if they’d be able to afford more than a pixie stick. She remembered the days when she was younger of following Serena to these types of things, and how you could feasibly walk away with a stuffed animal after only spending ten dollars in coins at the local games.
These days it was a little different, annoying, but it was less about the prizes and more about the shit eating grin either of them got when they beat the other. Or the playful shrug she gave Rogier when he managed a fatality against her in an arcade game she’d played a hundred times. “Fucking cheater.”
There was no heat behind her words, and her face even went warm when he got all sappy. “You world does sound like it sucks. This place might be chaotic but at least it’s beating all of that shit.”
Rogier just smiled serenely at her accusation - if he knew how to cheat at Mortal Kombat, he would have cheated, after all - and leaned back, out of the aisles so they wouldn’t block anyone as they chatted. “My world’s a mess, your world’s a mess, and there’s nothing to be done from here about either of it, is there?” he answered, somewhat rhetorically. “I was good at landing on my feet before I was cursed. If I believed in fate, I’d say my meeting you would be evidence of it. But somehow…”
He pursed his mouth, cast his mind back as he considered how to say what he wanted to say without Syd turning so red she might actually pass out. That’d be counterintuitive. Rogier was more practical than romantic, but he also was a person who was appreciative, and showed it. “But somehow, I think I like it better calling it good fortune,” he concluded with a measured grin, a little sheepish. “Feels more real, that way. Like it took effort.”
She didn’t pass out, but her face did turn red. It flushed heavily and she turned away to avoid scrutiny of any kind. Though she knew he was still looking at her, and that made her flush a little more. “Fucking sap.” It was muttered, but fondly, as she picked out her prize and held it to her where he couldn’t see. She wasn’t very good with words and he knew that, so there was the quiet hope of no expectations that she return his confessions right now. Maybe later, when it was quiet and not-so-public.
Fate was never something she put much stock in. Not since she’d thought it was fate that Victor had been the one to find her on the side of the road, shot and abandoned. Given how badly everything had turned out anyway, who knew what fate meant.
But right now it was the very picture of Sydney walking back up to Rogier, her prize in hand, now purchased with tickets. With a smug grin, she pushed the poop emoji pillow into his arms. “I got you something. I bet you’re really thankful right now.”
Rogier shrugged at the accusation of being a fucking sap - D had groaned much the same complaint more than once. Rogier didn’t mind, not when he got the opportunity to see Sydney’s always-armored expression turn soft, her face pink.
The wizard registered just what she had given him, turning the stuffed poop this way and that to verify that this was, indeed, shit with a face. “Says it all, really,” Rogier concluded, and gave it a demonstrative hug. “C’mon then. Let’s get you that cinnamon roll. Perhaps it’ll sweeten you up.”