I'm Looking Forward To This Life I Live [Tofu/O]

[Jaiden Fletcher]

Jaiden, to put it mildly, was bored. As much as he loved voodoo, the shop was empty, as it had been since he’d opened up that morning, and Ms Nym was away anyway, so it wasn’t like he could actually practice any voodoo. Not without incurring her wrath, at any rate, and incurring the wrath of a voodoo priestess was never a good idea. Jay had learnt that the hard way. Sure, he could read one of the many heavy tomes sat on the shelves around the shop, but he didn’t understand half of it yet, and really, voodoo was something you had to do rather than read about.

Still, he thought idly, kicking his feet against the counter he’d been sat on for the last half hour, he could have a look over the plan Kayla had given him for the weekend - there wasn’t much else he could do, he’d already tidied the shelves three times, and he was damned if he was going to do it again. He pushed himself off the counter and wandered behind it, pulling out a thin but heavily bound book that could well have been full of spells, had it not the words “Academic Diary” scrawled across it in cursive letters. It didn’t take him long to flick to the right page, even if the charms the book was infused with were want to change the dates around a bit.

And that was where he found the shopping list. Well, not so much a shopping list as a list of things he’d need for their lesson. The trouble was, Kayla was so immersed in her work, and after having spent so much time using voodoo, things in the real world tended to, well, blur, for want of a better word. She might be able to tell you exactly what you are about to say, or answer questions that wouldn’t come into your mind for days to come, but it would slip her mind to make sure they had enough boomslang skin so that her apprentice might be able to practice.

Jaiden managed to stop himself rolling his eyes. He knew they had most of the things on the list, but the boomslang skin was definitely going to be an issue - they didn’t stock it, seeing as most apothecaries had a decent supply, even if most wizards didn’t know half it’s magical powers, and Nym was funny about other people using her own personal stock. Jay sincerely hoped that when he was fully adept in the ways of voodoo, he wouldn’t turn out like her. Not that she wasn’t fantastic at what she did, but there was always something a little disconcerting about her. Jay had had enough of people being prejudiced against him, he didn’t want to actually give them a reason.

It wasn’t too cold a day, not for January, and Jay didn’t even bother to pull his jacket on as he left the shop, locking the door behind him and flipping the sign to closed. Then again, he did spend half his time taking his clothes of for money, perhaps he wasn’t the best judge of temperature. He was glad it wasn’t raining, at least, he’d spent half the morning painting tribal patterns on his arms, and he didn’t want the ink to run.

Entmyre’s was closed, which wasn’t really a surprise - they seemed to be closed most of the time these days - but even though he was fairly certain it was coming he couldn’t quote stop the sinking feeling in his stomach. This meant he had to go to Slug and Jiggers, round the corner in Diagon Alley. For most people, this wouldn’t be a problem, for most people, Slug and Jiggers was far preferable to Entmyre’s, given how it was a reputable establishment, and generally kept the Knockturn riff-raff out. Only, most people weren’t Knockturn riff-raff, and as far as Ozwald Jiggers was concerned, Jaiden Fletcher most definitely fell into the category of riff-raff, even if he hadn’t worked in a shop in Knockturn Alley.

The bell tinkled over the apothecary door as Jay pushed it open, and he offered the stern-faced man behind the counter his brightest smile, which seemed to have no effect, except perhaps make his face a little sterner. There were only three other people in the shop, but he could almost hear their eyebrows shoot into their hairlines as they turned to see who’d just walked in. All the other people in the room were in robes, some of them very finely tailored. Jaiden was in a vest top and cargo pants, with red-brown tattoos painted on his arms. The sinking feeling was coming back, but Jay did his best to ignore it. He wasn’t one for paying undue attention to what other people thought of him, and he had boomslang skin to by. Trying not to draw too much unwanted attention to himself, he headed over to where he seemed to remember the petrified animal hide was kept.

[Christopher Sterling]

Topher woke with a start, suffering from that horrible feeling you get when you jerk suddenly from peaceful slumber convinced that you’re terribly late for some important appointment. He sat up, looking around bewildered with his blonde hair horribly mussed and sticking up every which way. As usual his bed linen looked only marginally less messy than a whirlwind in a fabric shop, but there was no time to worry about something as inconsequential as bedding, he was late! Like really, really late for... something...

Eventually his brain kicked in and reminded him that he didn’t have work or any other important appointment so he was perfectly entitled to a lie in. Topher fumbled for what (according to his father) were the two most important things a wizard owned, his watch and his wand, tucked away on his bedside table. He peered blearily at the watch face, looking for all the world like the numbers were written in some undecipherable alien code and seemed to finally come to the conclusion that ten minutes past midday was a perfectly acceptable time to finally be hauling his ass out of bed.

Despite the initial panicked flurry of activity that had started his day, Topher still managed to seem half asleep, groggily fumbling his way into his clothes (his jeans of questionable cleanliness as they’d been retrieved from his floor) and flicking his wand over one shoulder as he left the room so that the sheets straightened themselves into some semblance of tidiness. His robe was draped over the back of his armchair and he picked it up on his way past, heading for the fireplace.

A pinch of glittery powder, a roar of green flames and a yawn muffled address later and Topher emerged into Slug & Jiggers, the apothecary owned by his Uncle. He looked a bit unkempt, hair still not combed and his robe inside out and only over one arm as he’d been in the process of putting it on as he stepped into the fire. Still, it wasn’t like he needed to look all that presentable to help Ozwald take stock and there was no chance he’d be put on the till, not after the last time when he’d accidentally poured pickled slugs over some woman.

He wandered onto the shop floor, trailing the sooty hem of his robe across the floor and gathering up the fabric as he went to try and pull it over his head. What might have been a relatively simple process had he stood still for a minute to finish dressing himself became needlessly complicated as he tried to navigate his way across the shop. Topher’s progress was stopped as he managed to walk into one of the patrons. At least he was fairly sure it was a patron from the little he could tell by reaching blindly in front of him with his robe half way over his head.

”Wank! Sorry man!” He apologised, voice muffled by the fabric still covering his face. Topher gave the material a particularly vicious tug, finally pulling it into place and offered the guy a grin as he slipped past him to get to the back of the shop. It wouldn’t do to hang around long enough to give Uncle Ozwald the chance to notice the commotion and give Topher one of those sour-faced looks that he was pretty sure the man practiced in his spare time. He hadn’t gotten more than two steps, though; when he turned on his heal to face the guy he’d bumped into. ”Hey! You’re that naked dude!”

[Jaiden Fletcher]

Jaiden was beginning to get prickles up his spine. He was used to having other peoples eyes on him, but this just wasn’t the same. There was contempt in these gazes, and mistrust, but the worst thing was it wasn’t at all warranted. When he was taking his clothes of, it made sense for people to look lustfully at him. It was a simple matter of cause and effect. Wearing clothing not quite of the same standard as the people around him should not elicit this amount of disgust.

It did upset Jay, not any more, more caused a kind of malicious sense of karma. Usually if this happened he’d go out of his way to be kind and cordial to the people doing it - nothing hurts more than realising how wrong one is. Jaiden would sometimes hope that one day, he’d be able to fit into society normally, that voodoo would just be accepted as part of the magic canon, and that all this would stop. There’d be no funny looks or sidelong glances, and he could just get on with buying boomslang skin.

Jaiden mentally shook himself. That was exactly the point. He couldn’t let what these people though get to him, and the best way of doing that was getting on with what he’d actually come there to do. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was feeling so sensitive that day - maybe he should have put a jacket on afternoon, perhaps the cold was affecting his brain. Or maybe he was worrying over this upcoming lesson with Nym. Now he was actually buying the ingredients it was becoming all the more real. It wasn’t like he was normally nervous about voodoo - it came naturally to him, and ordinarily, by himself, he was fine with it. But there was something about doing it around Nym, who apart from being completely freaky, was an absolute expert in the field. It was enough to make anyone nervous, knowing their every move was being carefully scrutinised

However, Jaiden didn’t really have time to delve any further into his apparent new found phobia of having other people look at him, as the next moment he was barged into a stand of jellied snake skin by a flailing mass of black fabric. “Woah!” Jay exclaimed inadvertently, grabbing onto the stand to stop it toppling over, a feat that was made a lot more difficult by the fact the fabric creature - which seemed to be a wizard with a robe over his head - was still groping at him, brushing a cloth covered had over his shoulder before apparently realising he was a person and not an inanimate object and apologising.

Jaiden raised an eyebrow at the seemingly entirely out of place expletive, not entirely understanding what the cloth covered wizard meant by using it in that context. Not that his disdainful facial expression would have any effect, given that the wizard probably couldn’t see anything through the robe that was currently covering his head. How had he not noticed this guy come in? How he managed to get all the way over to where Jay was standing without having caused havoc already was entirely beyond him.

“Don’t worry about it” Jay replied as the other wizard finally managed to pull his robe over his head. He was younger than Jaiden expected, and might even have still been a school student, if he wasn’t so freakishly tall. Jaiden had assumed he had a hat on under there, and had made the fatal error of putting on his hat before his robe, but no, apparently this guy was a just clumsy as well as being a giant.

A giant who frequented strip clubs, if his next comment was anything to go by.

Jaiden was momentarily stunned, only just managing to stop short of his mouth dropping open. That certainly would have given the game away. However, as things stood, the blush that was rising on his cheeks was likely to do that for him, despite his best efforts with his jaw. Damn, what was wrong with him today? “I think you must have me confused with someone else” He said quickly, turning away and pretending to be incredibly concerned with the contents of the jellies snake skin rack. Hopefully this guy would take the hint and drop the subject, or at least lower his voice. Jay was sure everyone else in the store had heard that little revelation, and he really, really didn’t want to end up arguing out his varying states of undress in a room full of people who were already looking down on him. In future, he was going to tell Nym to keep boomslang skin in stock.

[Christopher Sterling]

”Thanks dude!” Topher grinned, sounding way too pleased for a guy who’d just been let off the hook for bumping into somebody. The potential glare from Uncle Ozwald was all but forgotten as he got distracted by talking to the stranger. Although Topher wasn’t really sure he could class the guy as a stranger, as far as he was concerned nudity bumped things up into at least the realm of acquaintance. Besides Ozzie couldn’t tell him off for talking to the patrons, so long as he remembered to try and sell him something too. It didn’t occur to him that perhaps having a fairly loud conversation about a guy’s job as a stripper might not be the polite store chit-chat his uncle had had in mind. But then he’d always had all the tact of a Hungarian Horntail on the rampage.

As for the man in question he just looked kind of stunned. Topher was unfazed, his mother always told him he was stunning when he was being mopey about not having a girlfriend, normally followed by patting him on the head and giving him a cookie. His mum was awesome. Still smiling, partly at the thought of sugar saturated cookie, Topher slipped past Jaiden again in the narrow aisle and leaned against the stand of jellied snake skins, the jars of product rattling together precariously as the rickety old shelves clearly weren’t designed to take the weight of somebody over six feet tall. He didn’t get why Jaiden was denying it... Unless...

Maybe he wasn’t the stripper Topher had seen at all. That would be kind of awkward and a little disappointing. He was supposed to be an Auror now and he prized himself on recognising faces. Topher squinted at Jaiden, tilting his head first to the left and then to the right, his foot tapping out a rhythm nobody else could hear as he tried to compare his memory of the stripper to the man standing before him. ”No, man, it was definitely you.” He concluded with even more conviction than before.

”Don’t you remember? You were doing this dance.” Topher wiggled his hips in a poor imitation of the dance Jaiden had been doing the night he’d visited scores, his side bumping into the stand and causing another chime of rattling jars. ”And you were totally in the buff, like your cock was flapping about and everything.” This time he twirled his finger in a circle a couple of times to demonstrate, as if Jaiden might need a visual representation. ”It was like a mini windmill... well not that mini.” He quirked his eyebrows, they might be acquaintances but Topher didn’t think they were close enough yet to start insulting each other’s penis size without causing offence. ”But smaller than the average windmill.

”I’d recommend these.” He added suddenly, tapping the top of one of the jars of jellied snake skins and his extended tangent on windmills coming to an abrupt halt as he remembered Uncle Ozwald’s warning that he was only allowed to talk to the customers if he was selling them something.