Work Text:
“No, Sylvain, we are not going to spend forty dollars on balloons,” Ingrid grumbled. She was leaning her head against the steering wheel of the car to avoid looking at her roommate.
“Oh, but come on! Can you imagine the look on his face when he sees all those balloons?”
She lifted her head and stared at him, feeling both annoyed and just in total disbelief. “Sylvain. Where are we going to keep forty dollars worth of helium balloons before Felix gets home?”
He laughed. “Oh, ye of little faith! I promise this will be one hundred percent worth it.”
Ingrid sighed again. “Sylvain, Dimitri asked us to buy reasonable party decorations. What part of reasonable do you not understand?”
Sylvain winked and opened the car door, climbing out. Ingrid huffed and undid her seatbelt, climbing out after him. They stared at each other over the roof of Ingrid’s car and Ingrid narrowed her eyes.
Sylvain batted his eyelashes at her like she was one of his stupid one-off girls. “Come on Ingrid, Ashe is like a big kid anyway. He’d love the balloons.”
She smacked her forehead. “Sylvain, why does it have to be forty dollars worth of balloons?”
“Because Ashe’s name has four letters and they’re ten bucks apiece for the big ones,” he replied immediately.
Ingrid spun on her heel and walked away from her car, lifting up her hand to lock it behind her. The car beeped, confirming that it had locked and Ingrid shoved her keys back in her pocket. She kicked her toe through a pile of leaves on the ground and shoved her hands in her pockets. It was only October, but that didn’t mean that the fall chills weren’t already starting to sink in.
“Ingrid!” Sylvain called.
She didn’t turn around, but she heard his footsteps approach as he jogged after her, pursuing her to the edge of the parking lot where they stood in front of the party goods store. Before they walked inside, Ingrid poked his shoulder with her finger, hard.
“Serious decorations first, okay? We can argue about the balloons later.”
Sylvain braced his hands behind his head, grinning slyly at her. “Alright, alright.”
The doors to the party goods store opened and they walked inside only to come to an immediate halt in front of a massive display of fake gravestones. Ingrid blinked at the display dumbly and then immediately jumped when an automated witch cackled.
“Oh my god,” she muttered. “It’s October and we’re at a party store. There isn’t going to be anything here but Halloween stuff, is there?”
Sylvain looked just as struck as she felt. “You know what? I agree with you on that one. I think we’re going to be hard-pressed to find decorations that aren’t orange and black.”
Ingrid took a deep breath and grabbed Sylvain’s arm, dragging him into the store. “If I’m going to suffer through cheap plastic masks and displays that laugh at me in horrible robot voices, you’re coming with me.”
He chuckled and let her drag him towards the first aisle, one that was labelled “Tablewear and Serving”. Sylvain scooped up a basket from the entrance to the aisle and they walked down it. Thankfully, once they left the very front of the store, the Halloween insanity of the store lessened a bit. There was still an abnormally large number of orange and black and white plastic and paper plates, but at least there were some blue ones and normal patterned things.
Ingrid had never been so relieved to see “Birthday Princess” branded cups.
She grabbed two sleeves of blue solo cups and one of yellow ones and dumped them into the basket Sylvain was holding. She moved on to grab a package of cocktail napkins and a stack of blue and white polka-dotted paper plates. She hesitated before placing the plates down, but Sylvain just rolled his eyes and grabbed them, adding them to the basket.
“It’s fine, Ingrid. Dimitri and I are covering the costs and a few paper plates aren’t going to hurt the environment that much.”
She rolled her eyes. “I just hate buying stuff like this when we have perfectly good dishes back at the apartment.”
He shrugged and walked past her towards the end of the aisle. “If you wanna break out the breakable stuff while we’re all drunk, be my guest, but you’ll be cleaning the shards out of the carpet and also possibly people’s hands as a result.”
Ingrid frowned but walked after him. “And this is why we are buying the plates, even if I don’t particularly want to.”
“Oh, hey, look at this!” Sylvain said suddenly, turning left at the end of the aisle and pointing at the wall of the store.
Ingrid rounded the corner and immediately slapped a hand against her face.
“No,” she said immediately. “You are absolutely not allowed to be ghost-decorated anything. Ashe is terrified of ghosts and since it’s his birthday, we are going to respect that, okay?”
Sylvain laughed and held his hands up defensively. “Just relax, Ing, it was a joke. I would never do that to him.”
She turned and walked the other way towards the sign that said “Birthday Essentials”. Sylvain followed her, his shoes squeaking on the linoleum floors. They turned into the birthday aisle and Ingrid groaned.
It was almost entirely taken over by Halloween decorations.
“Seriously, don’t these places understand that people still have birthdays in October?” she complained.
“Note to self,” Sylvain said, “buy supplies for Ashe’s last-minute surprise party in September or even August before the entire country decides that it’s already Halloween.”
Ingrid sighed again. “Let’s see what we can find.”
They picked their way down the aisle, finding two rolls of blue streamers and a package of green and yellow crepe paper that could be used for decorating. Ingrid quickly added all of them to the basket. At the end of the aisle, she stopped in front of the last shelf and stared at all the options in front of her.
“Will you shut up and stop complaining if I buy a pack of regular balloons?” Ingrid asked. “These are only a few dollars.”
Sylvain flashed her a thumbs up and Ingrid grabbed a party pack of balloons and tossed them to Sylvain. He caught them and added them to the basket. She strode over and looked into it, checking on their collected supplies. She looked up at Sylvain to ask him something and almost bashed her head against his since he had also been looking down.
Ingrid was suddenly flustered at how close she was to Sylvain, so she stepped back hastily and bit the inside of her cheek, hoping that the spark of pain would prevent her from blushing over the encounter. Sylvain didn’t seem to notice her awkwardness and she quickly collected herself.
“Do we need snacks or candy or anything?” she asked.
Sylvain shook his head. “Not that I can remember. Mercedes is doing the cake and Dedue is handling the food. Annette and Felix are distracting Ashe until,” he paused, checking his watch, “eight, so we have three hours.”
Ingrid mentally ran over her list in her head again. “Well, I think we got everything we need here, so should we check out?”
Sylvain nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
The check out was busy, as expected, and filled almost entirely with people buying last-minute Halloween decorations or costumes. The young boy in front of them in the line-up actually gave them a funny look when he noticed that they weren’t buying any Halloween decor. Ingrid just crossed her arms and stared right back at him, daring him to say anything.
Sylvain nudged her as they stood in line and pointed up at the wall of helium balloons above the check-out counters. “I still think that would be amazing.”
She elbowed him. “We’re buying the regular balloons. That’s more than enough. We’re already going to have a chaotic night ahead of us. Annette and Ashe are both sentimental drunks so I hope you’re ready for a lot of hugging.”
Sylvain laughed. “Well, Dimitri will just fall asleep half-way through and we all know that Dedue and Mercedes are the most responsible of all of us so they’ll make sure that nobody dies.”
Ingrid scoffed to hold back a laugh. “Well, just try to make it back to your bed this time, okay?”
“If I recall,” he replied, “you were the one who fell asleep on top of me.”
“Neither of us remembers anything from Die Hard night, don’t even pretend like you do,” she rebuffed immediately.
Sylvain just smirked in reply and followed the blinking lights through the check out lane to a cashier. They unloaded their basket onto the counter and asked for bags as the cashier started scanning all of their items. In total, they were probably over-priced, but at least they had managed to get everything in one place.
As they left the store Ingrid took one bag and left the other for Sylvain. The mechatronic witch by the door cackled and they both jumped, even though they totally should have seen it coming. Sylvain shoved Ingrid out the door on reflex and they speed-walked about halfway to the car before they both burst out laughing.
Ingrid shoved his shoulder, but she couldn’t help the smile on her face. “Why are we like this?” she asked.
“Maybe shopping for Ashe’s birthday rubbed off on us and we’re now just as scared of everything as he is,” Sylvain suggested jokingly.
Ingrid laughed. “I can do without his fear of ghosts honestly.”
Sylvain adjusted the bag he was carrying and held out his hand to take the one she was holding. Ingrid tilted her head confused and Sylvain just wagged his fingers, gesturing for her to hand over the bag.
“To get your keys out,” he explained.
“Oh, right,” she said.
She handed over the bag as they continued their walk to Ingrid’s car. She unlocked the car and pushed the button to pop the trunk. Sylvain dumped both bags in the trunk and closed it, but he hesitated as Ingrid walked to the driver’s seat. She stopped, hand on the door handle, and stared at him.
“I just remembered one more thing that Dimitri asked me to grab. I’ll just run back in and get it,” Sylvain said.
He was turning and jogging back towards the store before she could stop him and Ingrid just sighed to herself, shaking her head. She opened the car and got inside. She put her seatbelt on and started the car, connecting her phone to the Bluetooth before Sylvain would get the chance to do something ridiculous like playing the High School Musical Soundtrack again.
She had just turned on her new favourite Indie album when the trunk opened and Sylvain dumped something heavy in the back with a grunt. Ingrid twisted in her seat, trying to see what he had grabbed, but her view was blocked by the seats in the back. Sylvain closed the trunk and quickly moved around, getting into the passenger seat. He grinned at her and Ingrid was immediately suspicious.
She turned and looked back at the trunk before looking back at Sylvain. “What did you just buy?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Ingrid shut the car off. “Sylvain. As far as I’m concerned, we’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you just bought.”
His grin widened. “So you know how you said we weren’t going to buy forty dollars worth of helium balloons for Ashe’s birthday?”
“Oh no,” she said reflexively. “What did you do?”
“I did not buy the giant foil balloons,” he defended. “I just bought a small helium tank so we can fill up all the balloons we did buy with helium and have many, many, smaller helium balloons.”
Ingrid groaned loudly and dropped her head onto the steering wheel. Her horn blared loudly and the mother and daughter getting out of the car next to them both jumped and stared at Ingrid’s car. Ingrid lifted her head up and glared at Sylvain.
“You suck.”
“The tank was only twenty-six dollars. It’s fine.”