Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Oh god," he whispered, in that particular, slightly-insane whisper of someone who's laughed themselves to a point of pain. Possibly it was only because he was as distracted as last time, but this was definitely the hardest he'd ever laughed in front of her. Another ripple of silent laughter, rapidly suppressed. "You're right. I've learned a grave ******** lesson today. I'm turning over a new ********' leaf. I am on the wagon. With my seatbelt buckled. Shoulda screened this for Joy," he added vaguely, with a hiccup.

Taym held his liquor extraordinarily well. She knew this, so she could know that any flush in Taym's face was 100% the result of his strenuous laughter, which had petered out into a few rough little coughs by the time she returned.

His good humor was manifesting, as it often did, in recklessness, and he reached out to grab playfully at her ankle as he examined the contents of the box, giving it an absent shake as he read aloud through the titles: "The Snob. The Gossip. The Things People Want. How Do You Know It's Love?" A sour face, a drink, another distracted pinch for her leg. "When did this role reversal happen, anyway? What happened to the Mr. Thompsons? Is is the beard?" He asked, as he sat in her living room floor shirtless and still slightly damp with a bottle in one hand. "I've lost all my authority. Let's watch the love one," he suggested. "They're funnier when they're all hitting on each other instead of dying in car wrecks." Which directly contradicted the stony silence with which he'd reacted to the former and the hilarity with which he'd met the latter.

Within a few minutes Taym had apparently plotted the inevitable trajectory of this particular onscreen relationship.

"This bodes ********' ill for Jack," he said darkly. The ticklish jump had been a guilty reminder; he'd withdrawn his hand and put it out of temptation's way by wrapping his arm around himself. This only served to make him look more sullen and withdrawn than he normally did, and also more awkward, given that the other arm, drink-occupied, couldn't properly cross. "And why is everyone's older brother like thirty-five in these things?"

"I," he said, with the characteristic gravity of self-deprecation, "did not have to play anything."

"That has ******** all to do with love," Taym announced. "That's ******** compatibility. That's not the same ******** thing at all."

"How ********' worldly and wise of you," he drawled, not unfondly. "How matoor. I--oh no. This is probably not gonna go well," he said, as the double date took their seats in the restaurant. "I hope there's a big blow up. I am betting money on something hilariously racist happening by the end of the scene, too."

Taym self-admittedly did not watch television. It was probably a good thing that as a consequence he'd only ever caught a few episodes of any trashy reality TV.