Work Text:
"Excuse me, miss, can you tell me where the sketchbooks are?"
"Let me check for you... Aisle 7, on the right side."
"Thank you."
Marc waved to the sales attendant and started making his way through the store.
A new stationery store had opened in Paris, and there was still a grand opening sale. He thought it would be a good chance to have a look, and maybe pick out something nice to get for Nathaniel.
Well, it was a chance to pick out something nice for Nathaniel before they both came here together. It wasn't unusual for the two of them to have dates to art supply stores and bookshops.
Still, there was a good chance that the two of them would end up having multiple dates here. The store was as big as a supermarket. Maybe bigger. With two floors! Absolutely everything that you could perceive in a stationery store was somewhere in here; from the very basic chunky crayons and markers for children to the fine 0.3mm drafting pencils and fineliner pens used by professionals, pencils in every colour, and those without colour in every grade with a combination of numbers and H or B, gel pens, scented pens, erasable pens, 4 colour pens, 16 colour pens... I could fill out the word count of this fic with a lot more of this if I wanted.
Marc walked past a display of USB drives in various colours and capacities to get to the textbook aisle. As soon as he rounded the corner, it was like stepping into a library, only the books on the shelves didn't have many words in them. You had to add the words yourself; it was a DIY library aisle. Textbooks and sketch books and diaries and schedules and planners lined the shelves in a rainbow of different covers from soft paperback to hard leatherbound boards. He even recognised one of the brands he used all the time for his own writing journals.
Still, he was here for something else. The sketchbooks. Marc stopped in front of the huge display, trying to wrap his head around how it was sorted, and what kind of paper Nathaniel preferred using. His last sketchbook was 120gsm. Maybe he should get the same, although there was also the option of trying something new. 150gsm was only a little extra. And then there was the choice of how many pages to get and whether to get one that was bound or with perforations.
It took a few minutes of bouncing back and forth, but in the end, Marc managed to decide on a fancy little sketchbook with a fabric bound cover and a pen holder on the spine. He flicked through the pages from front to back, already imagining what Nathaniel would draw to fill in all the blanks.
Satisfied that it was the right one, he turned to head back out, but suddenly jolted in place and quickly shoved the item inside his coat pocket.
"N-Nathaniel!"
Nathaniel made a similar sudden jerky motion as he hid something behind his back. Marc couldn't help but realise he was standing in the notebook section.
"Marc! I... I didn't know you were here! You said you had some plans today..."
"Yeah. I had some... shopping... to do."
"Right... me too."
It was silent for a little bit, but then Nathaniel decided they'd moved well beyond the awkward phase of their relationship already.
"How about we both turn around, I'll go have a look at the wrapping paper while you check out, and then you text me when you're outside?"
"Sure. That sounds like a plan."
And thankfully they were able to coordinate leaving the staionery shop without Nathaniel seeing the new sketchbook Marc was getting for him, or Marc seeing the spellbook style journal that Nathaniel was getting him.