[FIN] Relaxing Day Trips

[BlackFireKitsune]

After their trip to visit his family for Christmas, Abel hadn't really spent much time with Taavi. He still lived with him, sure, and he still saw him before or after their shifts and the like, but they hadn't really hung out together just the two of them. He'd been spending far more time with Zevran than with Taavi - not without good reason, of course, especially given Zev's unexpected insecurities - so in an effort to spend time with Taavi he'd suggested a trip to Tarragon Island - just the two of them - for a day of hiking, exploring, hot spring relaxing, whatever they felt like doing. Taavi didn't seem to mind the idea.

Early in the morning on the day of their trip - so, so early - Abel carefully extricated himself from his boyfriend's arms, murmured soft assurances to ensure he remained or at least fell back asleep quickly, then hastened to get ready for the day. It didn't take him long to do so, which left him with plenty of time to make coffee for the three of them - all into thermoses, with Zevran's made how he liked it and quietly left with a brief note on the nightstand so he could have it whenever he woke up later - help Taavi with breakfast, eat, then help prepare an assortment of sandwiches and snacks to bring for the trip along with a few bottles of water. Once they packed a bag with the snacks and water, along with a few other important things - like wallets and pokeballs among other things - the pair headed to the docks, and they didn't need to wait too long before they were able to board the boat that would take them to Tarragon Island for the day.  

[TawnyAngel]

Breakfast was oatmeal, it was easy and a good set up for a busy day! Taavi very much did not mind the trip, and nearly found himself putting his whole uniform on because really it was practical stuff. In the end though he ditched the distinctive brown leather jacket and grabbed and alternative; he loved his job but he was not on duty today!

Rather later they were at the docks and heading for the ship that would drop them off at Tarragon. Now that driving was done and caffeine had had a chance to take effect Taavi grinned at Abel. "Time for some good fresh air! I promise not to make you do any circuit training though." Abel was so much better than he had been but he could still use proper regular exercise in Taavi's opinion! Still, the joke was really meant as a joke and nothing more today.

"Shall we get another coffee or something on board? I could go for a tea maybe."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

While part of him still wished he were back in his warm, cozy bed all snuggled up with his boyfriend, this was an important day and he was glad to spend time with Taavi doing something they would both enjoy, even if it was more up Taavi's alley than his own. That may or may not have played a large role in why he'd suggested it in the first place.

Abel shot his best friend a bright grin, more awake now that the coffee had kicked in and a hot, filling breakfast left him feeling warm and content, and he couldn't help but chuckle at the joke. "I wouldn't get very far if you did!" All kidding aside though, even if his lung hadn't fully healed just yet he'd still recovered a great deal; he was in better shape now than he had been for probably two years and he was quite sure the trend would only continue now that he had good food and an amazing boyfriend both to ensure he had said good food and to gently nudge him towards healthier habits. With that thought in mind he pulled his vape pen from his coat pocket and took a hit from it. The puff of vapor he blew out a few moments later rolled lazily through the air before disappearing, leaving behind it the faint aroma of coffee. "Mmh, I could definitely go for another coffee; I'm not that big on tea," he admitted as they headed across the dock and up onto the small ship.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Ehh, I have to be in the mood for tea. Hot leaf water isn't always what you want right? But my Dad always used to take it along when we went camping, so I guess it's like... a nostalgic 'going somewhere fun' thing?" Taavi shrugged expressively and grinned. "Just so long as it's not instant tea, I tried it once and it was like hell opened up inside my mouth. Ahhh, and did you have an idea of where you wanted to go on Tarragon? I went up on the ridge last time but I didn't really spend as much time as I could have appreciating the scenery." Taavi crinkled his nose in distaste at the memory and added; "That's like the mental equivalent of instant tea, remembering that that is." He still wondered what he'd done wrong sometimes and still missed Sasha more often than he thought probably he should but the more time passed the more faults he saw in the relationship they'd had. It definitely hadn't been an equal partnership.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Thankfully he wasn't drinking anything at the moment because if he was, he probably would've choked on it from laughing. "Hot leaf water? I don't think I've ever heard of that but that's great, and you're not wrong," he said after a moment once his laughter died to chuckling, grinning brightly at his friend, but it faded to a warmer smile after another moment or two. "I can understand that; kind of like a tradition almost. I've never had instant tea but I expect it's about as good as instant coffee," the blond said as he wrinkled his nose in distaste. He was so done with instant coffee. Done forever.

Once they were on the boat Abel stopped a moment to look around in case coffee was anywhere immediately visible - a guy could hope, at any rate - before he hooked his thumbs into his pockets and hummed thoughtfully. Where did he want to go...? This was more a trip to spend time with Taavi than a trip for himself, so quite honestly he wasn't particular about where exactly on the island they went. So he shrugged and replied simply, "Wherever's fine with me. I walked through the... valley area I think? Whatever it was, and then spent the rest of the day at the hot springs, but really I'm fine wherever you want to go. We could probably go all over the whole island, or at least most of it, if you wanted to," he added with another shrug.  

[TawnyAngel]

Taavi laughed and shook his head emphatically "Oh no, instant coffee is okay - though I never want to drink it again to be honest - but instant tea tastes like it was- I don't know, like it was cursed by a Ninetails or something! It's baaad," he concluded, drawing the last word out to comedic effect.

"And um, yeah though that'd be great! If it's okay by you? I'd like to take more of it in, heh, and you were pretty occupied by the springs when you went hu?" Taavi smirked. "I can't think why that was!" Nothing to do with the company surely! Though had that been before they'd hooked up? Well even if he had been he had no doubt Zev's company in the springs had been a good reason to Abel to linger there other than just hot springs being awesome.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Instant tea is worse than instant coffee, duly noted," Abel said in an official-sounding voice and nodded his head once, then dropped the act with a grin. "It sounds awful though, damn. Remind me never to try it!"

And then he adopted his best wounded expression. "How could you? We behaved completely innocently! ...mostly. Flirting was involved," he added with a helpless shrug once he'd dropped the act, "but he makes it hard as hell not to flirt." Extremely difficult not to flirt. Practically impossible, almost.  

[TawnyAngel]

"It tastes like sadness," Taavi confirmed with mock seriousness, which was soon shattered by a broad grin. "None of that today though!" Coffee, nice coffee! "Um, I think there's a kiosk type place over there?" he gestured in the direction he meant, hesitated as he waited for Abel to take the lead, and then gave himself a mental kick and started off of his own accord. Not a doormat!

"And suuure, totally innocent," he continued, still grinning. "Innocent flirting, absolutely and totally! Um, but, I'm glad things are working out so well for you guys." Taavi nudged Abel with his elbow, and if anything he grinned wider. "You liiike him. Sorry. I know that's very grade school but it's great! Um. I mean after all that crap that went on," which would not be discussed here in public, "it's good to see you happy."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Soooo," he drew out the word, a thoughtful expression furrowing his brow and pulling his lips into a small frown, "like instant coffee?" But they wouldn't be having that today - neither of them - so the frown dissipated almost immediately. Hmm, what type of coffee would they be having? It seemed they had a means of finding out quickly, so with a nod and a smile Abel followed after his friend.

Ha! "It was -- at the time," he countered with a chuckle and a sly grin as he returned the nudge. "That was in summer; we didn't hook up 'til fall. But grade school or no, that sort of teasing doesn't really work as well anymore since we're kind of, y'know, already dating," the blond went on with a chuckle, though his grin shifted to a warm, happy smile - the sort of smile that never once crossed his face in the whole two years Alyssa - a smile tinged with deep fondness and perhaps traces of shyness. "And... I'm really glad too -- for both of us. He deserves to be happy too."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Like epic sadness," Taavi amended with much emphasis on the epic.

"But, um, teasing totally still works! Sorta. Well I'm going to do it anyway! Because it's nice to see you smile like that when you talk about dating." He'd never thought that he would think of Abel as adorable but that smile definitely was. "Have you told much of your family yet?" Taavi added as the thought popped into his mind. "I mean, I know you Mom knows!" Not that they'd texted about it, at all, even a little.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Heh, alright, suit yourself," Abel said with a shrug as he stepped up to the kiosk alongside Taavi. "And I don't smile like that when I talk about dating -- only when I talk about him," he clarified, and then promptly hid that selfsame smile behind a cup of coffee.

After taking a sip and letting the smile shift to a more common, contented one, he shrugged again. "I told Mom of course, yeah - though I'm sure you haven't been talking to her about it at all or anything, right? - and I told Alex, but not Aaron yet, and Mom said she'd talk to Dad about it."  

[TawnyAngel]

Once he'd got his own coffee, a latte for a change, Taavi stepped away from the kiosk and nodded along while Abel spoke. "Right, that makes sense," he said, he'd spent two weeks with the family and while that wasn't a huge amount of time get to know people, he could imagine some members of Abel's family being more... err... surprised than others. He was sure it'd all work out in the end, just hopefully without too much stress for anyone.

A pleasant journey and a pleasant coffee later Taavi walked down the gangplank and took a deep breath of the fresh crisp air. "Man, it's different here in winter. I like it!" he said cheerfully to Abel as he fished in his pocket for the map he'd received on his last trip here. Taavi never threw away a map if he could help it. "Soooo, shall we start off with the valley maybe? We could loop up, go past the springs, and then back along the ridge?"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Once they'd docked at Tarragon, Abel followed after his friend and peered over his shoulder at the map. Had he ever even gotten one of these when they were here last? If he had, he'd lost it somewhere, almost definitely shortly after they got back home. Quite possibly to Elizabeth's fiery jaws. "It is different in winter; not nearly as warm," he noted with a brief chuckle, his colorful gaze wandering over the map. Taavi's suggestion sounded good though, so he nodded and smiled. "That sounds like a plan to me. We can take our time looking at stuff, too," the blond added as he make an 'after you' gesture for Taavi to take the lead. While he was excited for this trip, it was mostly a trip for his friend, so he wanted to make sure he enjoyed it as much as possible.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Great, let's go then!"

Before they set off Taavi let Swift, Aurelia, Dawn, and Valour out of their pokeballs. While the latter took to the skies - after a quick nose/beak boop - the other three fell into step just a bit behind Taavi and Abel.

"Um, so Tarragon is pretty interesting," Taavi began. "Because it's really small the terrestrial pokemon have quite a limited gene pool right? So, over the last few years this one person has been tracking the appearance of aberrant coloured pokemon, like Aurelia!" Taavi smiled encouragingly back at the golden Vulpix. "Um, and she's also taken a census of the locals' pokemon? So, she's been able to point out where certain traits have made their way in from aberrant pokemon brought in from Kodo. For places like this, and Kodo, I think really it's only a matter of time before what we think of as 'normal' coloured pokemon becoming rare because if even one parent is an unusual colour all of the offspring will be in one way or another. Unusual colours and patterns were around before of course through breeding as you well know! But the scale of this is totally different to that, I mean you must know how long it takes to establish lines like that normall right? So with what's happening on Kodo and spilling over to nearby islands though pokeballed-pokemon breeding with wild pokemon I wouldn't be surprised if normal coloured pokemon became prized bloodlines in a couple of decades, or if we'd see a lot of imports from other regions, and quarantines and stuff? Or like, if you bring unusually coloured pokemon into a region they'd have to have a certificate of having a contraceptive implant or something. People are weird though right? Can you imagine you having to show a certificate like that to prove you weren't going to spread shiny-eye genes around?" Taavi frowned a little and shook his head. "Even the league treats pokemon like they're just animals sometimes. Sub-human."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

After pulling his pokeballs from his bag, Abel loosed Isaac, Sonia, Caleb, Elizabeth, and Tania; the first two stuck close to their friend while the latter two immediately headbutted each other and started to spar along the trail, whereas the Arcanine huffed and grumped his way to the middle between both other pairs of pokemon, though he was careful not to step on any of Taavi's.

An amused smile lit up Abel's face as his friend's ramble-mode engaged while they walked along. He certainly could talk a lot, couldn't he? But it was good to see him feeling so comfortable and happy - he was happy, right? - in his preferred setting. Plus it helped that he made a few good points, too. "Yeah, that all makes sense - and the census is interesting, I didn't know people did stuff like that - but that sounds kind of like where Zev is from. It sounds like they only ever consider pokemon as animals - useful, powerful animals at times, but still just animals," he said with an airy shrug.

Somewhere in the vicinity of his thighs Isaac huffed at the ridiculous thought.

There were a lot of things he could say about Thedas despite never having been there, but he didn't see the need to. He could also say a lot of things about how he felt about pokemon - opinions Taavi almost assuredly shared - but they both already knew how each other felt about pokemon, so the conversation would only be repeating what they already were well aware of. Instead he simply shrugged. "I think if the normal populations were more rare it'd probably take a long time to do, yeah? At least a few generations, I'd think."