Re: Tory & Jamie: the Apartment
Ah, if there was something Tory could relate to, it was feeling simultaneously old and young. A perpetually fast learner, he'd always been the youngest in any and all of his classes. He'd blurred through a doctorate in six years. He constantly had to endure the judgment of the elders in his field who looked at him as 'just a kid.' And yet, there was the praise that came with it, too, the adulation and adoration that he was some kind of genius kid, a wunderkind, some bright shining star for the future of climate science. Greta Thunberg without the braid or the presidential feud or, really, the spark for activism. So, he could be intellectually mature, but was definitely emotionally stunted. If he bothered to take the time to really dig into it - and he'd need about five seconds - he'd know it was why he stumbled through the relationships he did manage on occasion, why they seemed so transitory.
"Oh," he laughed. "This is the stretching. Right. My muscles say, um, 'fuck you, Tory, we're not moving an inch and in fact, we're going on strike," he giggled, then took a deep breath, frozen in the position he'd somehow managed without toppling over. But then, that was probably the easy part. He hadn't tried to actually move yet.
"Right, tuck in my ass and bend and the toes and--" he was biting his lip in concentration, because it seemed like a lot to try to remember when you were pretty much drunk, but he could see all of Jamie's instructions, the words in his head and the pictures went with them like his own personal mental Wikihow, could see himself doing it, pulling it off flawlessly, even. "Bend. Plie. Bend, Tory," he commanded his body. He started, hitched, stopped, tried to start again and started flailing his arm a bit...and then tipped backward and thumped down on his ass, legs splayed and palms pressed into the floor behind his back to keep his head from striking the ground.
And Tory started laughing, a lot. Way more than was probably necessary for a relatively safe fall of about 3 feet, but certainly the appropriate level for someone whose head was swimming with an alcoholic buzz. Because: "What...haha...you know that thing? One tequila, two tequila, three...tequila...floor? I did it!" Tuck that in your dance belt, ballet.