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Starting Lines

He eyes it like it's something that might bite him, or maybe that's just the way he eyes her hand, as usual, but he takes it, finally.

"I," he says, a little pompous, a little despairing, "am going to teach you how to make an omelet."

Grave

He pauses, trying and failing to parse this before realizing it gives him an excuse to make her talk some more. "In that picking locks is more exciting than peeping?" he asks, and as soon as he says it, he understands, a little, from his own direction. "More doors on the other side," he says.

Kitten Around

There is an intense inward struggle that resolves itself with Taym swiping the screen over.

"You think they're smug, look at this fat b*****d," he says, with such insulting fondness that Ivy instinctively thumps her tail against the bed.

Starting lines

It's a pleasant feedback loop. Attention that would in some circumstances have made him wilt was in this case acceptable, even pleasant, and so he accompanies the demonstration with a small lecture and an aside chastising her about the unacceptability of her butter.

He's a little professorial--a little bossy, a little important, in a way that America, single child, may or may not recognize as having all the hallmarks of oldest brother.

And when he slides her omelet off onto a buttered plate it is, in fact, a thing of beauty. He waits, expectantly, but for once it's not with trepidation.

Grave

"That sounds nice," he says, and maybe in another tone it would have come off as some insincere filler pleasantry, but there's a wistfulness in it--a trace of reality--that turns it, instead, into a truth. He pauses, tentative to ask the question, aware that it's not entirely appropriate, and does anyway: "More real?"

Kitten around

"There's too many, don't play favorites yet," he chides. But her proximity--her proximity that is always careful not to touch him, lest he cringe away, and this he appreciates--feeds a little hunger, and he baits more, a little drunk on the facade dropping for a minute or two.

He's wheedling her into getting it. He refrains from informing her that Snowball is everyone's first. He explains that they bring you presents (one of them brought me a dead bug, he says, sounding genuinely delighted by this). Smoky is his favorite, and Pepper. He likes, he says, black cats.

And every now and then, remembering himself, he waves his hand and defensively reminds them both that it's just some stupid way to kill time between shifts. That it's a thing to do, whatever.

He smokes in the doorway and cannot help passing along the tidbit that Tubbs will sometimes lie on the big cushion, the smug fatass.

Starting Lines

It feels obscene to watch her, and not even vaguely.

"How do you even taste it?" he demands. "Bites like that."

Grave

He pauses before he falls into stride just behind her, his own hands in his pockets, turning the idea of her being unreal over in his head. And while in a way it was easy to grasp--pretty girls who paid attention to him were always in a certain class of unreal and America had come prepared with chemistry and cockiness and a way of laughing at the dog that made things difficult--but in another way--

"You seem incredibly real," he says, sounding tired, like it's a mixed compliment.

But he thinks of all the times he's felt unreal, and he thinks maybe he could tell her other ways, worse ways.

"Solipsist-feeling-the-ground-shifting-under-his-feet real," he says, and then, this time, he thinks of Bird. "But I've never been a great judge of that kind of thing. Closer is good, though." A pause. "Right?"

Grave

"To your continued success," he says. "Unless my dog has been stolen." He offers her, as he frequently does--unthinking every time--his cigarette. "Let's hope there's not a fence between you and the next one--or not," he finishes, remembering who he's talking to.

Starting Lines

He thinks about this, grimly, and what it implies. These are the days when she makes it easier on him--the tenuous line between himself and temptation. "Maybe if you slowed down," he suggests flatly, "the rest would be just as good."

Low Places

And these are the days she makes it harder, when he's intentionally trying to catch her on her way past his seat for a snatch of conversation, a word, two words, anything, even if it's d'you need a refill, hun?

Their conversation has been broken up by her work, and probably, he thinks, she'd appreciate it if he'd just let her go, but he finds himself jealously unwilling to.

"I'm glad you haven't got pearls to clutch, because I used to be good at making friends," he continues. "Long time ago." It might have been ridiculous, the way he almost sounded like Statler and Waldorf over there, except that, again, it seems so sincere.

New Age

He informs her, quite pleasantly and without any overt sarcasm (which is to say nothing of covert sarcasm), that he has discovered one of those witchy bookstores on one of his walks. "Just in case," he says.

Grave

He snorts.

There are times--not many of them since the initial burst of Tinder messages, but times--that he slips dangerously close to flirtatious again, all bark and no bite.

"No offense," he drawls, "but hopefully I'm not that far gone with you yet."

Low Places

"Bullshit you have," he says immediately. And then, much lower: "You really do need to get your eyes checked."

New Age

After a strained moment of silence it is, he supposes, just what he deserves, and he grudgingly agrees.

Grave

"Have to fight to be noticed under that enormous smokescreen your admirers are undoubtedly sending up, anyway," he agrees amicably, reaching to reclaim it. He cannot resist adding, obnoxiously and possibly with the intention to provoke: "Maybe one day I'll be far enough gone to arrange some stained glass or something."

He wants to ask her if she knows anyone buried here. He doesn't. He stuffs his free hand back into his pocket.

New Age

He'd wandered towards a shelf of books, absently gnawing his thumbnail as he pored over a couple of random covers, giving her her space or perhaps reclaiming his.

He has a way of moving with extraordinary silence, but he thinks idly as he ghosts up to her elbow that it wouldn't have mattered this time. She's lost in thought, apparently--zoned out, is the word he'd use--and it's a strange expression on her face that's usually so lively, and there's no one watching him so he lets the concern flicker over his face.

Out of habit, out of muscle memory, out of a deep-seated and long-blanketed desire, he reaches without thinking to touch the small of her back in the way of new couples, in the way of old ones; just before he does he realizes; he jerks his hand back from the longing little movement like he's been burned, shaking his fingers off before shoving them back into his pocket. A whirr of motion outside the window in the corner of his eye breaks his concentration and he forgets what it was he was going to say and his eyes shy away from her face to the crystals.

"There's books," he suggests helpfully, deciding to interpret her vacant look as one of bewilderment. "Encyclopedias of mystic geological ********."

"Fair enough," he says equably. "Temporary lapse of memory. It'll happen to you too, when you're my age," he adds, in an elderly crackle. And he can't help his hands--forever reaching out to touch everything everywhere they go--and so he reaches out to touch the crystal she's just picked up.

"If you need caffeine or something," he suggests, quite without explaining why, "I'd pay. Or maybe they got some rock here that keeps you awake and focused and s**t. I could check the encyclopedia for you."

Grave

"Convenient," he says, "for my stained glass plans, since my singing voice shatters glass. Curls hair, too, if you're ever running late for a fancy party." And then, impulsively: "If you got a camera," he says, "you could catalog your--your successes. But I don't know if that'd be defeating the point, maybe."

New Age

There's a thick pause, and maybe Taym is one of those people who gets offended when he thinks he's offended someone.

"Just checking," he says. "Nothing meant by it."

And he eyes the two she's putting back, but says nothing.

Grave

It's an odd sort of relief, to hear her put into words the thought he was tentatively suggesting and couldn't articulate. "Now times seem nicer," he agrees. And that's another thought, a difficult one--the idea of a nice now, instead of a glorified misremembered then or a feared-for horrible one day.