Re: Tory & Jamie: the Apartment
"Hey," Tory replied, and he had the hint of a sardonic smile on his lips. "Sorry, no fursuit this time," he said with a tilt of his head. He noticed, of course: the up-and-down. It was returned, in Tory's own way, the kind of way he took in everything about the world around him. General, clinical interest, a sort of fascination with everything almost in equal measure: It was a small place but not a tiny place. It was warm, probably too warm for Tory's tastes, but it was still manageable. Jamie looked like he'd started without Tory, and in fact like he maybe hadn't left the place in a couple days. There was something about his body that seemed out-of-proportion to his height; too thin, maybe, his face a little too angular where it might have been softer. The kind of physique that didn't really come from a pizza-and-tequila diet, generally speaking.
There was the couch and the cat and it was the sort of thing that made Tory perk up, because cats. If it hadn't been at the forefront of his mind for the last couple hours, he might not have been reminded of Colin and his strays, four cats meowing and rubbing against Tory's legs while he fed them during one of Colin's prolonged and mysterious absences. He did wave to the cat with a "Hey, cat." Not in the baby voice some people talked to animals with, but like he was greeting a fellow lab tech in the hallways during his grad school days. Start with drinks, grade up to cats, Jamie had advised, so Tory conveyed the pizza in his direction.
But yeah, he'd also noticed the positive returns for the up-and-down. He wasn't blushing, actually wasn't sure what all he was feeling at the moment, because this was a stranger who was also weirdly intimate. Somewhere between meeting your first hookup from high school and meeting yourself, ten years in the past, all rolled into one person. The weirdness tickled his brain stem. Though, it should be said, he was happy with the perceived approval. "I can't do tequila on a empty stomach," he said, finding a place to put the box and opening it. "Peppers, mushrooms, and onions," he offered. "I hope that's enough, but not too many veggies. You were vague," he pointed out. "And yes, mushrooms are fungi, but I think we're allowed to play fast and loose with phyla if we're drinking tequila." Dude, Tory: Shut up. It was the kind of stupid joke that worked best with someone from one of his school programs over the years. Probably less so with Jamie.