Chapter 262: 263: Awkward

“Sure is,” replies Basil, without skipping a beat. “What would you like?” she asks, acting entirely unphased by the question.

The young soldier lowers his head, his tan-brown hair lowering over his face as he looks at the ice-cream that Basil is gesturing towards. “Oh uh…” he turns his head, looking off to the side. Fresh follows his gaze, seeing that the ‘milkshake dark-elf’ is sitting there on the beach, making a gesture with his hands to signify something large. “Can I get a large bottle of milk with a scoop of coconut mixed into it, please?” he asks, sighing as if he were relenting on something that he didn’t want to do.

“Sure thing!” replies Basil, not having lost any of her cool at all. “Isn’t it hot here in all of that?” she asks, pointing to his armor, making smalltalk as she works.

The soldier sighs. “Like you wouldn’t believe. Look.” He looks around, checking that nobody is behind him. “I’m just here because my brother likes your store,” explains the soldier, leaning in over the counter. “You might want to change your business’ name. It’s a little… unfortunate,” he suggests.

Basil stares at him, as if perplexed, while she shakes the bottle in her hands. “What do you mean?”

The soldier lowers his voice. “Didn’t you hear about the north?”

“The north?” asks Basil, playing completely dumb. She shakes her head. “No, we moved here from the west. It was too cold for us, you know?”

The man looks around again. “I’m not supposed to talk about this. But there was a business in the north, with the same name as yours. Run by the witch herself.” He turns his head, looking at the dungeon. “I get that it’s the obvious thing to go with, considering the location, but maybe consider changing your name for a while?”

Basil laughs. “You’re very sweet. Here,” she hands him the bottle. “I don’t think anyone will get us mixed up,” explains Basil. “I doubt anyone would be so foolish as to think that we're associated with something like that. And especially that we'd use the same, exact name.” The man takes the bottle, rubbing the back of his head uncertainly. Basil places her hands on her hips. “Anyways,” she leans in over the counter. “Are you calling me a ‘w’-word?” she asks, very sternly. “Am I going to have to talk to your commander?”

The young man, clearly in over his head, quickly lifts his hands. “No! No, miss, I’m sorry,” he says, clearly taken aback by Basil’s direct confrontation. “Like I said, my brother likes you guys and I’m just trying to be helpful. You know what people are like these days,” he explains. “You seem like a nice person.”

Basil frowns, staring at him for a while. She sighs, her posture loosening. “They don’t pay you guys much, right?” she asks. “Thank you for your advice,” says the priestess. “That one is on the house,” she says, pointing at the bottle in his hands. “But next time, if you say the ‘w’-word again, it’s going to cost double,” she warns sternly.

The young man looks at the bottle and then at her, nodding. “Thank you, uh…” He looks around, awkwardly, clearly not knowing what to do now. “Thanks,” he says again, instead of ‘goodbye’ and nervously shuffles away.

Fresh waits for a moment and then wants to praise Basil for her fantastic acting, but then she realizes that she shouldn’t open her mouth about that down here to begin with. Basil turns her head around and nods to her and Fresh nods back.

Crisis averted.

She supposes that there is something to be said for hiding in plain sight. Sure, their name was conspicuous, much like literally half of their group. But in a sense, that made it too obvious.

…Right?

Fresh blinks. She has no idea, but it’s been working well so far. She supposes that if the fountain didn’t want them to keep the same name, then it would have made them change it. So it’s probably fine, right?

Yeah. Fresh nods to herself. That makes sense in her mind.

She thinks…

The rest of the day comes and goes without much more than that. Eventually, she pushes the last shopping cart back into the row and then closes the door, falling with her back against it and sliding down to the ground. Despite everything having been more or less calm, she was still fairly on edge for the rest of the workday.

“What should we do now, guys?” asks Fresh, looking up at the others.

Jubilee turns their head from behind the counter, staring at her. “Well. You should clean the floor, first of all.”

Fresh frowns. “Jubilee!” she protests. “It was really scary, you should have seen Basil!” says Fresh. “She was such a great actor, she even had me fooled!”

Her friend raises an eyebrow. “I bet,” they reply and Fresh isn’t sure which part of her statement they were referencing.

“Hey!” argues Fresh out of principle.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Basil.

Jubilee stacks a pile of coins onto the counter. “It means you sweep the floors,” says Jubilee, pointing at Fresh. “You clean up that sticky mess you made by the window,” they say to the priestess. “And you.” Jubilee points at Shamrock. “You restock the shelves without eating any of the damn merchandise!”

Fresh gets up onto her feet, happy to see her friend being as rude as ever. That means everything is okay. It would be scary if Jubilee wasn’t being pretend-mean. “So you think it’s fine, Jubilee?” she asks, walking over to the counter.

Jubilee stares at her, the tension in their shoulders falling slack as they let out a tired sigh. “I don’t.” They look around at the others. “But this is what we’re doing now. We’ve dealt with more stressful bullshit than this.”

“There’s truth to that,” sighs Basil. “I’m looking forward to going to bed tonight.”

Fresh turns her head to Shamrock. But the man has nothing to add and simply starts stocking the shelves without so much as a shrug or a nod. Scratching her cheek, she decides that it’s time to finish up for the night too and grabs her damp broom, sets to work on cleaning the floors, which are particularly sandy today.

Later that night, after all of the work downstairs is done and the four of them had a light tea, none of them being up for dinner except Shamrock who found some extra sandwiches from that afternoon, they sit around the kitchen table and look at Shamrock’s creations.

Jubilee sits there, their elbow on the table and their head resting on their fist as they stare at the little totems. “And…” they raise an eyebrow. “You think people are going to… buy these? For money?”

Shamrock shrugs, but not to signify that he doesn’t know the answer to that question. But rather that he doesn’t care about it.

“I’d buy them, Shamrock!” says Fresh, grabbing his arm and holding her head against the cold metal of his body.

“No refunds,” says the man, turning his head towards her.

Basil snorts, setting her tea-cup back down before she makes a mess.

“Did he just make a joke?” asks Jubilee, sounding almost skeptical.

“Shamrock makes jokes all the time!” says Fresh, defending him. “Anyways. I wouldn’t bring them back for a refund!”

Jubilee nods, still not having lifted their head from their fist. “Yeah, you’d be too scared to go up to the counter and make a fuss,” says Jubilee. They turn to Basil. “You should have seen her, back when I caught up with her in the adventurer’s guild, back in the north,” says Jubilee. “The ways her knees were shaking looking at the shot, you’d think she had a ghost in her ass.”

Basil sighs. “Do you have to use language like that at the dinner table?”

Jubilee stares at the priestess. “Way I see it, we aren’t having dinner. So it’s just a table.”

“Anyway,” says Basil. “I’m sure it was a very frightening ordeal.”

“Mm!” agrees Fresh. “It was! But Jubilee came to save me and then… uh…” she thinks for a second. “Actually. Jubilee scared me a lot after that too, so it was still really scary for a while.”

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“Uh, yeah?” says Jubilee. “Someone had to scare you straight, you goon. You’re lucky you didn’t vanish into the fucking shadows,” explains Jubilee, tapping against the table with a finger. “You’re welcome, by the way,” they say. “And what did I fucking get out of it?” they ask, gesturing around themselves as if there was nothing there.

“I can still offer you that massage?” asks Basil.

“Fuck off, Basil,” replies Jubilee and Basil shrugs, continuing to sip her tea.

Fresh crosses her arms, looking at Basil. “No fair. I want to give Jubilee a massage!” she argues. Shamrock raises his hand, signifying his willingness as well.

“How about this?” asks Jubilee. “How about you three get bent and we all play the ‘don’t touch Jubilee’ game!” they exclaim. “It’s really fun. The only rule is -” Jubilee taps their finger against the table. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Fresh frowns. “You have the worst games, Jubilee. How is that fun?”

“It’s fun for me,” replies Jubilee.

“So lavender oil or rosehip oil?” asks Basil, scooting her chair back and getting up.

“Lavender,” says Shamrock, getting up too.

Fresh turns her head. “Ooh! Can I smell them first and then decide?”

“Sure thing,” says Basil.

“I will literally cut your hands off if you try,” says Jubilee.

“It’d do you some good,” explains Basil, setting her empty cup down in the kitchen. “You seem very tense.”

“You’re one to talk,” replies Jubilee, getting up as well. “Anyways. I’m going to bed and if I smell a single thing that is even close to a flower, I will set this house and all of you on fire,” they threaten.

Fresh lifts a finger. “But Jubilee, your hair already smells like flowers because of the soap.” Jubilee’s eye twitches. “It’s really nice!”

Jubilee stares at her and then sighs, defeated. “You know what?” they ask. “I’m too tired to argue anymore,” they say. “Let’s just go to bed without any weird fuckery, okay?”

“So, no massage?” asks Fresh to be sure.

“With your icy witch-fingers?” asks Jubilee and Fresh looks down at her fingers, wiggling them. She honestly hasn’t even realized anymore that she is just constantly clammy and cool these days on her skin, despite how warm she might feel sometimes.

Fresh looks to the side, grabbing Shamrock’s hand. She gasps. “Shamrock! Your fingers are cold too!” she says, looking at his metal hand.

Basil and Jubilee stare at the two of them for a moment before looking back at each other.

“Mine are warm,” says Basil, holding up a hand.

“You’re trying too hard,” replies Jubilee. “Denied,” they say, planting their hands on their hips.

Basil shrugs. “If I try anyway, are you going to bite me again?”

“No, because you’d probably like that.”

Basil gasps, covering her mouth.

Fresh blinks looking at the two of them, not entirely sure she is able follow the context of their ensuing spat. She shrugs, looking at Shamrock. “Wanna put our mattresses together to make a giant mattress cave?” she asks.

“Yes,” is all the man says and the two of them set off to do exactly that, leaving Basil and Jubilee to sort out their argument in peace.

Razmatazz

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