Re: Capital: Jamie & Seven Friday night
Jamie didn't care about money a lot. He hadn't counted it as a kid other than in like, birthday checks from distant relatives and apart from like, the occasional gripe about the cost of classes, he hadn't really had the real world reality-check of how much shit cost. He'd thought about money semi-frequently the last week: how much the teaching gig made versus how much rent he paid on the place w/Mars versus how to lay down enough that if his sister skipped town because she was terrified of her ex-brother-in-law and his brother had to go after her, they didn't need some rich as fuck ex of Amy's to pay the room bill. He thought about money pretty solidly after Si got off the phone, about the cost of like, rehab.
But he didn't need to care about money to know the price-tag on the car that purred alongside the curb was 'astronomical'. It was wealthy af, right? Tinted windows and glossy paint and Jamie was pretty sure the guy was curb-crawling, looking for a blow-job or a fix. The neighborhood wasn't like, nice but Jamie had kind of figured out by the however many browser window that neighborhoods, money, whatever, they didn't say whether someone was going to pick up a habit or not. Jamie was ambling, mostly because to peg it any faster he started to favor the left leg, a little. But he picked up the pace, all of a sudden back-of-the-neck conscious that the lights weren't like, way bright and the street wasn't way populated and in his denim jacket and ABT shirt, he wasn't like, conspicuously a threat or whatever.
His heartbeat had climbed a little. The sweat that beaded under his hairline, cold, prickled when the car's engine rolled over and idled and Jamie's step clipped clear of the curb, like proper as the window rolled down. The backwash of cold relief slapped underneath the certainty of the cocksure cant of the guy's smile, and Jamie swore like, American and then in French because the French made like, the spitty kind for this kind of fucking scenario.
"Nah. Wrong turn," he said, deliberately. "This neighborhood is way hetero." He could feel his heart stutter on his tongue, and Jamie was like, smiling somewhere between relief and recognition, the lilt of his mouth automatic for the tenor of Seven's voice from the rich-fucker car interior. "You scared the shit out of me."