veloxian:
Jax instinctively held out his hands to catch the coins as Xan dumped her coinpurse, so that they wouldn’t get lost in the couch as she did her counting. He patiently waited for the pokemon to finish counting, shrugging his shoulders as Sylvia commented on her tauros-headedness. “Aw, give her a break. A lady can never have too many scarves.”
A smile tugged at his lips as Xan finished counting her money and snuggled up into his side. He wrapped his arm around her and gently pulled her close. “Castelia is good. I can’t remember the last time I went to the shopping district during the day… for actual shopping.” He didn’t elaborate on exactly what he was doing in the shopping district at night if it wasn’t for shopping, but he was sure that Sylvia could connect the dots. “And you know, shopping is therapeutic. I bet we could both use a nice day of shopping to unwind the nerves a bit.”
His eyes traveled to the piano that they had refurbished together the last time he was at her house. “Have you written anymore music since the last time?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“I buy a lot of my clothes secondhand or at the market when I’m on break. It’ll be nice to get something new for once.” She quirked an eyebrow at his ‘unwind the nerves’ comment; they could certainly both use a therapeutic shopping session after the mildly traumatic past few hours they’d had.
Sylvia followed Jax’s eyes to the piano and coughed into her hand awkwardly. “Well...I did compose something.” She shuffled her feet in place as she debated whether to share it or not. After a moments hesitation she realized she couldn’t just share that and then not play. Sylvia walked to the bench and bent down to shuffle through a pile of papers she’d dropped next to it; she eventually found the sheets she was looking for and set them up on the piano.
She didn’t really need to look at the sheet music she’d written; she’d played this probably a hundred times in the past few weeks, tweaking it until two days ago when she finally decided it was as close to perfect as it was going to get. She glanced at the papers and placed her hands on the keys; a very slow and melancholic song filled the air, gently ringing. It felt like she held her breath for the duration of the song -- it was more depressing than she remembered. When the last note rang out, she turned around on the bench with a sardonic smile.
“It only sounds a little sad. I tried working on a few pieces, but this was the only one I ended up liking enough to stick with it.” She decided to omit that was because the other songs she was working on had a much lighter tone.









