Re: Tory & Jamie: the Apartment
Jamie knew it was the hyper-thing, exaggeration to make a point. Thirty wasn't old anywhere but practice rooms and stages, theaters where people worshipped beauty and pain and the ability of other people to shape themselves into instruments, undamaged even when their bodies felt like they were breaking. "That sounds like a lot of effort in a town like this," Jamie observed, casual and he understood kinda without actually thinking much about it, why Tory was cracking jokes like he was practicing a stand-up routine. It was a way of stepping around shit, and yeah, Jamie had, lazily and without much in the way of like, serious intent, and they weren't even two strangers any more. Not really. But liquor did a lot for muzzling even latent intent, letting it slide into the morass of whatever else felt like a good - albeit, temporary - idea.
So like, living-room ballet. Tory sounded happy, about his stuff. Like, the samples stuff, the requirements, the obligations of a job that had actual intent, actual meaning, Jamie could hear the weight of it in the guy's voice, the tenor of being vaguely, obviously happy about purpose and passion. Even if the guy hated the sun, and to be fair, he was pretty pale, and the freckles, flecks of copper over pale skin, were pretty prolific. But the guy was twisting around like he couldn't figure out which way to turn, and Jamie, gentle given the pressure of Tory's hand on his shoulder, kind of bent? Until he was crouched over his own heels, at Tory's feet as the guy talked about expert, and books, and articles, and he glanced all the way up, affable smile and good-natured amusement. "I don't do up there anymore," Jamie pointed out, unnecessarily. "Definitely the expert in the room."
The socks were definitely weird. Jamie took the guy's instep - the side of his foot - into the palm of his hand, and kinda nudged it until the guy's heels were together, and then, the same way he moved the littles into position in class, the matter-of-fact kind of touch that was designed to have a purpose, patted the outside of the guy's thigh. "You need to turn out from the hip," and yeah, okay, somewhere Jamie acknowledged the vague connotation given the lazy, barely-there implication, but he was kinda like Tory, pretty invested in the specifics. "Think of it as like, showing the inside of your thigh to the front of the room," he suggested, and the guy was getting close to first position. Now, Jamie could actually engage w/the question, and he did.
"No fedoras or bikini briefs. I mean, I used to wear dance belts, but that's kinda a necessary thing, rather than a weird quirk, thing."