It seemed that the Shakespearean guild in Stratford and the Shakespearean guild in New York weren't quite as different as they seemed. They had been short on cash in Canada, so Bailey's parents had been forced to take on day jobs. When they moved, his dad had assumed that the bigger productions and bigger audiences would allow him and the three sons he had taken with him to live off of the modest salary. However, after his first few paycheques and the first couple months of rent, it had dawned on him that a day job would be a necessary evil.

So, he had taken a job at some dreary firm in Manhattan. He hated it, complaining about it constantly and skipping whenever he could, but Bailey had come to realize that he was luck to even have the job. With his resume, he had been surprised that they had even given it a second glance.

Somehow, even with his poor attendance and attitude, he had gotten to be on good standing with one of the high-ups. They had become even closer at the company Christmas party, and found out that they had kids around the same age. A few drinks and a large amount of scheming later, Bailey was shuffled off the next day to the nearest mall to see some girl he had never met.

He wasn't entirely sure what to expect. In fact, he wasn't even really sure what she looked like. All he knew was that her name was Emily, and she was supposed to meet him in front of the Jamba Juice in the crowded food court.

Bailey stood idly, playing Candy Crush on his phone and whistling Christmas tunes while he waited for her to show up.

Emily fidgeted a little bit with her scarf as she walked around a corner in the mall. She wasn't really used to American shopping centres yet. Especially in New York, they tended to be so packed with people. She really wished she'd not been lazy and had actually gotten to her Christmas shopping already. Her dad suggested that she goes to do her Christmas shopping with the son of a friend, she didn't really feel like arguing, plus it was her dad and he usually had good intentions.

She had absolutely no idea what to get for her mother yet. But she'd probably get her dad some new CD's or something, or some video games. She'd have to wait and see what caught her eye.

The brunette Brit was clad in dark skinny jeans that were torn in a couple of places, as well as a long dark blue shirt with a band of skulls icon on it, wearing a warm navy coat on top of the rest of it, with a scarf and over-ear headphones. She had a description of the guy she was meeting and she'd received a text from him about where they should meet.

She spotted someone standing right about where she should be meeting the boy. She huffed and moved over towards him, gently pulling down her headphones so they were resting just above her neck on her scarf. "Hello, are you Bailey?"

Bailey had somehow ended up with a Jamba Juice in his hand. He wasn't exactly sure how it had happened, but one second he had been standing near the queue, and the next, he had been handed a drink. He tried to say that it wasn't his, but the worker had already moved on, so he shrugged and sipped the drink, enjoying the sweet drink while he waited.

He looked up from his phone and drink after a minute to see a very, very pretty girl approaching him. He blinked momentarily, realizing that she was not changing her trajectory. She was walking straight toward him. Maybe that was Emily?

"I am indeed," Bailey grinned his trademark grin at the mention of his own name. "I suppose that makes you Emily? I mean, of course it would. What other teenage girl would approach me in the middle of a crowded mall and know my name? Dumb question. Anyway, is that a British accent? That's really cool. My dad didn't say you were British."

He shut off his phone and slipped it away in his back pocket, leaving his round of candy crush uncompleted. With his non-juice-carrying hand, he gestured down from the foodcourt to where the shops began. "We're supposed to be shopping, yeah? Anywhere you want to go first?"

Emily really hadn't made much in the way of friends since she'd come to New York for school full time, and she supposed she could make a conscious effort to get to know the boy that was with her, he was friendly enough. And she supposed that he wasn't hostile to her like some other teenagers she'd met here and there.

At least his smile was friendly, his emotions were too. "Yes, I am indeed Emily." She studied the boy's expression and emotions a little more before smiling lightly at his comment. "Yup, I was born there, lived the first few years of my life there too." She didn't really want to go into her entire backstory with someone who she'd only just met and was still a relative stranger to her, but at least an answer seemed polite.

Emily shrugged. "Well, I need to get something for each of my parents at the very least. You were here first, so do you want to pick where we go first?"

"That's super cool. I've never been to England, but I've seen pictures. Loads of pictures. My mom sometimes talks about moving there to see if there are any better acting opportunities. Did you like it there? Why'd you move? Is it really as rainy as everyone says?" Bailey spouted off a list of comments and questions that only sort of pertained to the topic. He didn't notice that he had just rambled again, so he simply moved on to the next topic.

"Hmm..." he considered the question of where to go next. There were lots of places in the mall, most of which he had never been to before. He had a semi-specific list of things to buy in his head, but he didn't really know where to get most of it.

Bailey spotted a store a little ways down with a poster of his and most of his brothers' favourite superhero: DiedPool. It looked like there would be merch in there. It was perfect.

"Let's start there!" The teen decided excitedly. 

Emily was taken aback by the boy's sudden barrage of interest and questions. If anything, she was mostly used to teasing or flirtatiousness over her accent, not actual genuine interest. It was fairly refreshing. She broke out into a very genuine smile, eye glittering. "Yes, I did like it there. Though I suppose I like it here too. And yes, it did rain for what seemed like all the time." She glanced around the stores in the area contemplating present ideas.

She glanced over to him and answered the other question. "My parents split up, I eventually ended up with my dad." She neglected to mention the part about her powers manifesting after she'd moved and the whole coming to the mansion in New York part of that story. Even though she was still relatively new to the climate here, she was smart enough to know that at the very least not everyone in the city was entirely thrilled with mutants being there.

Another shrug. "Alright then." 

“Perfect,” Bailey trotted forward toward the store, expecting that his companion would follow. The store wasn’t too far away, so he arrived within a few seconds. As soon as he entered, he realized that he had been right. There was an entire wall full of Diedpool merchandise.

“Sick,” the teen grinned. “Do you like Diedpool? My brothers and I love him. I’m going to get a few of them some stuff for Christmas.” He moved over to the wall and began to pick through shirts and trinkets that he thought his siblings might like.

“You know, it’s kinda funny that you ended up here because of your parents splitting. That’s how I ended up here too. For mine it was because of work. Was it like that for yours too?” Immediately after asking the last question, Bailey put a hand to his head. “Sorry, that was rude, wasn’t it? You don’t have to answer that.”

Emily smiled in an almost amused way at the shop. It definitely conveyed 'nerdy' And while she played her share of video games, she wasn't really into wider geek culture all that much. Safe for Star Wars, she really liked her Star Wars. Not quite sure what to think of the store or the character merchandise that was filling basically one side of the room she instead observed Bailey, and let him look around.

"I have absolutely no idea who they are if I'm entirely honest with you." She responded simply.

Moving onto the topic of the reasons she'd come to New York likely meant bringing up the fact that she was a mutant. Especially in a crowded place like this with so many people she didn't entirely fancy doing that. "My dad did get a job over here, Yes." She neglected to mention the extra parts once again.

"Oh man, you need to get into it. He's the best. Basically, he's this crazy immortal dude with a messed up face who gives no ***** about what anyone thinks. There's even a comic where he marries death! Oh, and his movie is awesome." Bailey talked as he browsed through the store. There was so much awesome stuff to look through that he hardly knew where to start!

"Right. 'Cause my dad works for yours. Duh," he hit his head with his palm again, realizing that he hadn't been paying close enough attention to the conversation. That wasn't something that was particularly unusual, though.

He pulled a few trinkets and shirts off the shelf and loaded them into his arms. He would have spent longer looking if he was on his own, but he didn't want to make Emily feel uncomfortable, especially since she clearly wasn't very nerdy. Maybe he would skip the video game store if she wasn't interested in that either.

"Alright, I just need to pay for these things. Anything you want to look at before we move on?"

He was really hyper... Almost like a crazy squirrel or something. She wasn't quite sure how to take Bailey's actions, speech or emotions. He wasn't really that like many of the other people her age she'd come across. As he ranted on about the hero she quirked an eyebrow and let him chat himself out to his hearts content, waiting for him to finish. "Hmmm, maybe I'll look him up at some point." She lied.

Okay, so he was kind of annoying. There was this aura of constant enthusiasm. She couldn't place whether the budding headache was caused by his personality or by the increasing volume of people in the mall. Wow. His mouth really was on rapid fire wasn't it? He wasn't cute. He wasn't. Okay, maybe just a tiny bit. He endeared. Kind of. 

"So... How many siblings do you have, I heard you mention them?" She asked, trying to edge the topic to something a little more... normal. 

"Four brothers," Bailey told her. "They're annoying as anything, but thankfully only two live with me right now. They're so much less awful when they're hundreds of miles away." He had convinced himself that he didn't miss them. The problem was, that wasn't really true.

The teen shrugged off the thoughts of his brothers and turned to the cashier. He handed over his merchandise and then some cash. He took his change and his bags and then turned to his companion. She hadn't actually answered his question from before, so he figured that it was safe to assume that it was time to move on. Besides, she did not seem at enthusiastic about the topic.

"What about you? Any siblings?" He asked, stepping towards the store exit. "Oh, and it's your pick for the next store."

Emily blinked hard. 4 Brothers? 5 of them? She'd thought of having kids in the future before, but she couldn't imagine a world where having 5 kids even remotely made sense, that was like something out of a book. "I..." She thought for a moment and still came up blank. "I can't even imagine, I'm an only child. God, I would go completely mental. I think I like my personal space too much." She admitted.

Of course, she didn't even like being in crowds anymore, they tended to give her headaches before too long.

She hummed. "Maybe I should get the long unpleasant part of finding my mother a Christmas present before I do my dad." She glanced around the store until she saw a perfume store. She grimaced and walked towards it. Giving an audible shudder she added. "Ugh... Here we go."

"It gets kind of crazy sometimes, but it's not all that bad," Bailey shrugged. "I mean, I miss having my own room like I did in Canada, but I don't mind sharing with the brother I'm sharing with. My other brother, well... That's a different story... At least I only have to deal with two here, though!"

He pushed down the sudden pang of saudade that welled up in his chest. He didn't miss his brothers... did he? Whatever. The middle of the mall was not the place to examine his feelings. He would deal with that later. In that moment, he was all for plastering on a smile. 

"Plus, I get to steal their stuff whenever I want to. We have a huge collection of games," he continued on his former topic, trying to add a little light to the subject.

A muffled "uh" sound escaped Bailey's lips as they approached a perfume store, but he promptly shut his mouth. He had dragged Emily into the comic store, so he wasn't going to complain about the perfume store. Even if he would get a headache for at least an hour afterward by going in.

Bailey casually plugged his nose with his pointer finger and thumb as they entered. "Does your mom like perfume, then?" He asked, his voice distorted by his closed nasal passageway. 

Emily listened intently to the boy, trying to imagine what that would be like. She did know what it was like to have slightly intrusive family members hanging around. After all, her mother was always bugging her with this and that whenever she stayed with her. She could barely stand it after very long, but then whenever she actually left to come back to her Dad she started to miss her Mum a little...

She smirked at that last comment. "You should see my dad's, I think he must own every console in existence at this point, he's let me stay up till 4am with him on it probably a few more times than he responsibly should have..." She snorted.

She sighed at his comment and shrugged. "I don't know? I guess so. She's very girly. Always moaning about me, the way I dress, the stuff I do with my time, the people I hang out with blah blah..." She snickered. Gesturing down at her clothes. "I mean, look at the way I dress, do I exactly convey girly girl to you?" She received a dirty look from one of the attendents while she thought Emily wasn't looking.

However, she glanced in that direction as the attendant did. Emily immediately recognised the look and turned back to shoot the person behind the counter a scathing glance, before turning on her heel. "On second thought, lets look somewhere else."

Bailey gave the girl a glance up and down in response to her question. He raised an eyebrow and attempted to formulate a response that didn't make him sound like a complete idiot. "Umm... no? I don't know? What does a girly girl usually look like?" His final response was not at all what he had in mind.

"On second thought, lets look somewhere else."

Bailey cocked his head. He really didn't understand people sometime. "Why? I thought you needed to shop here? Don't you still need something for your mom?" If he was going to suffer through the headache of going into the perfume store anyway, it seemed like a waste not to buy anything. So why did she want to leave?

The teen followed her line of vision over toward the store clerk. She was giving them a dirty look. Bailey didn't really know why, though. Did they not look rich enough to be in there? Were they not dressed nicely enough? Maybe that was the case, but surely that was a poor business approach for the store. If they were going to glare at whoever went in there, then they weren't going to make very many sales. 

Bailey frowned and stepped forward. "Are we doing something wrong?" He asked the clerk bluntly.