The Onsen Episode

[heiresy]

Aymeric laid himself out on his Futon, kimono askew, with the solitary bottle of drinkable sake he had found in all the market. He remembered and scorned the thought of heating it up, as the seller had suggested. There was a lot to get used to here, most of all the days off. No one, save for cases of extreme emergencies, ever wanted to work the weekends. So... That left him with entirely more time than he was used to having. He tried to spend some time cooking, making approximations of food he was used to with cousins of the ingredients he grew up with.

Even the bread was weird. He couldn't put his finger on it, though. Too sweet? Too many eggs?

Aymeric pushed his papered window open, leaning on the windowsill to at least try to enjoy the pleasant weather. They had furnished him with a nice little apartment, upstairs from an aging auri woman who tended to the premises. She had been extraordinarily kind to him, yet he still felt like he was barely adjusting.

He took a swig of the sake, letting it rest in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. He looked utterly boneless.

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[steppechild]

Aza, of course, chose that exact moment of bonelessness to boldly barge in.

He did so with his usual boisterousness, the door rattling as he threw it open and the heavy 'clomp' as his boots being roughly kicked off to knock against the shoe rack. He always felt a bit restless when he came here, his shoulders tense and skin itching all the way from the Aetheryte Plaza to Aymeric's apartment, which sat just over the bridge and behind the main market street. Too short a distance to teleport, too far for him to completely fight off the discomfort of being in the open streets of Kugane.

But it was fine. He was in Aymeric's apartment, he told himself, gently balancing his blade next to the front door. He double checked the lock of the door, did a small sweep of his immediate area, and, sensing only his partner's aether in the apartment, finally relaxed. Not as much as he would've done in Ishgard, but it was a work in progress. He'll get there eventually.

"Handsome, I'm home~" he called, ducking out of the tiny entrance way and into the apartment proper. He almost did a double take at seeing Aymeric slouched over his windowsill, bottle in sake in hand and looking like, well, like him after a depression fuelled bender, "Uh, Aym? You okay there, babe?"