Young Writers Society

James nodded, unable to stop himself from smiling slightly himself - though he found himself trying to suppress it. He didn't really know why. It felt... odd.

He followed the flow of foot traffic in the town, looking around at others. Without thinking, he had already noted all of the possible escape routes. He noted any suspicious or possibly suspicious behavior. He noted any lingering gazes, any smiles too ingenuine. He analyzed everything. But for the time, it seemed like they were in the clear.

James attentively watched for buildings and signs, and eventually let them into a strip of stores that stood together on the street. Outside the shops, there were also several carts and vendors selling various items and foods. The smell of food did not escape him, but he zeroed in his attention on a tailor's shop on the left. He veered through the crowd, grabbing Maahes's hand without much thought as the crowds grew more dense.

He was surprised by the sudden, unannounced contact, but it wasn't hard to tell that James was on edge. It was probably because he had been so recently caught. He would have been on edge, too, if their situation had been reversed. So, though he was startled, he let James lead him towards the tailor's shop. Getting clothes for Cameron was their main priority. Once they returned to his teammate and gave him a new wardrobe, then they could return to the town and do some actual shopping. They were certainly going to need, considering that he had two humans to worry about.

They stepped into the clothing store, and all of the hustle and bustle from outside faded into white noise as the door closed behind them with a little ring of a bell on the door. The store was two times as deep as it was wide, and several clothes were hung up on hangers on the walls and different basic displays - some in the front windows. There were also shelves on the wall with clothes folded in piles. It was an impressive amount of merchandise for a store its size. It was obvious they had sewing machines, presumably in the back half of the store that was hidden by a wall.

As soon as the bell rang, a female assistant dressed in a well-fitting pair of trousers and a clean, sharp button-up emerged from a ring of clothes hanging up to greet them. She gave Maahes a cheerful smile, but her smile faltered slightly when she looked James up and down.

"Looking for some new clothes, I see?" she asked, bringing the smile back in full - though it was clearly a smile used for marketing purposes only.

James forced a smile that looked sincere in return for the woman and chose to ignore the blow to his pride she gave with one quick, judgemental glance.

"Yes." Cam was a little larger than his slim frame, but he figured it'd make more sense to just... saw he was buying clothes for himself than for a friend, especially with his appearance being as it was. He didn't need more judgemental glances. "Mind if I look around?"

"No, not at all! Do you need help finding anything?"

James shook his head. "Not at the moment, but thank you."

And with that, the assistant nodded and returned back to work.

Maahes looked over at James after the woman left. The assistant had certainly been ruder than expected, but people could be cruel for a variety of unexpected reasons. "If it makes you feel any better," he whispered, giving his friend a smile, "I think your clothing looks perfectly fine. But, uh, if you want, we could get you some new clothes while we're here! Not that yours look terrible. They don't. But you've been out in the wilderness for awhile, and I'm guessing you probably haven't been able to change them in awhile, either-"

He sighed.

"Sorry," he apologized, "I'm rambling."

Normally, when offered assistance or favors, James was prone to refuse. But somehow he found Maahes's delivery and rambling amusing, and he looked at Maahes out of the side of his eye and grinned.

"No worries," he said softly, going over to a rack of clothes and looking at some pants, lifting some up, trying to eyeball Cam's size. "I really ought to wear something different anyway. Something... clean, at least." He also needed a bath of some sort, after not having one for a week. His smell was probably unpleasant for the assistant as well. He couldn't lie. He did smell like he'd been dragged around in dirt.

Maahes eagerly joined him in looking through the rack of clothes for something that would fit Cameron. He was happy that James had been so eager to agree; he had been expecting to stubbornly protest his offer. "Let's look for things for Cameron, then, and then see if we find anything you want while we're looking. If we don't find anything then, we could look again after we've figured out what we're getting him."

He turned and gave a smile in James' direction.

"Sounds good to me," he said, returning the smile with a slightly happier form of his previous grin.

He stayed within a few steps of Maahes as he began to browse, pulling some things off of the shelves and ones on hangers. Eventually, he settled on a simple outfit he thought would work for Cam. He turned around to Maahes, holding it up. It was a soft green plaid shirt with sleeves that he'd rolled up to the elbows, and pair of black pants. He'd grabbed a structured black jacket to go with it. He felt like Cam would look good in black with a splash of color.

"What do you think of this for Cam?" he asked.

He stared at the outfit for a moment, then peeked around it to get a better look at his friend. "I think it would look great on him," he managed to get out, still staring at James with eyes that were on the verge of widening. He wasn't lying; it really did look good. He just hadn't expected James to pick something out, and then ask if it looked alright. He had expected him just to pick the first thing he saw that fit Cameron's size that looked relatively decent - that was what he had been planning to do.

Besides that, the outfit he had chosen involved more than just a shirt and a pair of pants - it involved jacket, which was something that wasn't entirely necessary, and he had seen James rolling up the sleeves of plaid shirt out of the corner of his eye.

"I didn't know that you were so good at picking out outfits," Maahes finally said. He didn't know a lot of things about James, now that he thought about it.

James stared at Maahes, nodding agreeably at the first comment, but the second thing Maahes said caused his gaze to drop to the outfit in his hands. He... wasn't sure how to reply. He began to second-guess himself. Should he have chosen something simpler? He knew in the past, Maahes had never really seen him in this kind of setting. There was no reason for petty, temporal things like fashion to come up. It didn't mean he didn't have taste though. But looking at his current getup, he could understand that no one would logically made the assumption that he did.

"I just-" he started, cutting off as he folded the clothes under his arm. "Uh - I mean - I don't want him to look... totally fashionably incompetent is all," he muttered. "Is it too much? Should I go for something simpler?"

"No!" he hurriedly said. He hadn't expected James to have a reaction like that to what he said. He had seen James sheepish before, and had seen him embarrassed, but he was rarely the reason for it. "It's perfect."

He gave him what he hoped was a very good reassuring smile. He didn't want his friend to feel uncomfortable, and he didn't want him to feel like he had to hide part of who he was, either. James, apparently, liked fashion. It wasn't what he would have guessed, but, now that he knew it, it just seemed to fit.

"I just-I just haven't gotten to see you in a place like this before," Maahes added. He shifted uncomfortably and sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. "We're always out in the wilderness, or in some place that's far from normal. I guess I've always just associated you with that, so your fashion skills took me by surprise and I promise that I'm okay with it I just really didn't see that coming and-"

He took a deep breath, then let it out in one big sigh.

"Let's just go shopping for you now," he awkwardly said.

James desperately wanted to relieve them both collectively of their awkwardness but failed to do so. He stared at Maahes for a second, finding his face grow hot even though he didn't want it to. Maahes was right. Comparatively, all of the other times they'd run into each other, it was in the midst of some trouble or adventure or some crisis. But this - shopping for clothes - was very mundane. Maahes only knew what he was like when he was... stressed, really. Which was most of the time, but still.

That, and he hadn't expected anyone to tell him in his life that he had fashion skills. It was... flattering.

"Uh, sure," he said with a small nod, grinning a little. "It's been uh, a while since I've gotten brand new clothes."

He looked around the shop for a good minute, before turning back to James. He honestly had no idea what James wanted to buy, and even less of an idea of what suited James' style. He could figure out his own, but even that was a bit of a stretch - part of the reason why he looked so intimidating as Leonardo Cartwright back before he killed Kek was because he hadn't realized how scary a cool, long black jacket could look.

"Is there an area you want to check out first?" Maahes asked when he realized his searching was getting him nowhere.

James was debating on that himself as he wandered around the shop. He had to pick a new identity, which meant a new style... he'd always considered going for more of a desert cowboy sort of look, so his eyes were gravitating towards the jeans and the leather jackets in the store. When Maahes finally came over to ask the question, he'd made a wonderful find.

He pulled a brown leather jacket off the rack that caught his eyes and looked over to Maahes with a small grin. "I think I found something already."

"That'll look great on you," he confidently said, a smile beginning to spread across his face.

James grinned up at Maahes, then looked at the jacket. He really did like it. He almost wanted to hug it, but instead just tried it on. He was thrilled at how it fit, and found himself beaming a kind of smile he rarely ever wore. Now he just had to find the rest of the outfit.

He looked again up at Maahes, feeling a little more secure in the jacket. "Thank you Maahes," he said with a genuine, warm gratefulness.