Re: Milkshakes: Dietre / Noah
[Right, so. Dietre was sad. And whatever powers one did or didn't need, Noah had them, so he knew. Maybe everyone else did, too. But the 'empathic powers' didn't just tell him how people felt. He felt it sometimes too. Their moods leached into his. He could feel the dude's misery eddying into him, like swirls of dust kicked up on a careless track. You might only inhale a grain, but, it could still make you cough, and do it enough over time, and it could actually do some damage.—Which was why Noah actually felt like an idiot. Obviously, a just-dumped poor SOB was going to feel like a just-dumped poor SOB, which would make him feel like a just-dumped poor SOB. But, maybe he just hadn't expected it to sit there like a raincloud and it did.
He tried to answer the question(s) Dietre A. asked of him, but then Dietre A. just made a sound in the back of his throat, which was very little by way of, like, actually conversing, and Noah just drank his milkshake, trying to pay no attention at all to the wandering of Dietre A.'s heavily, super, totally depressed thoughts about things like having 'actual ties to a place' and 'having a home' and how it was nice. Noah could've told him that his mom was an addict, she'd never kept a job while he was growing up, and that home was a bed she tried to make him share with her, which really wasn't nice at all. But. Well. No, it was probably best to keep that to himself.
Noah was fishing in his shake for the too-red, almost plasticine-looking cherries when Dietre A. asked him if it'd be weird for him if Dietre didn't talk.] Nah, dude. I mean. It'll be quiet, but, that's cool or whatever. [He bit into the cherry and it popped in a squirt of red. He smiled around it.—But, whatever the offer, Dietre A. decided he wanted to talk. Noah was chewing on the cherry. He didn't tell Dietre A. that he'd kinda already heard some scraps of old conversation between him and some man, and that it was probably his ...boyfriend/not-boyfriend, and that he'd gotten the idea a little bit, once he felt the remnant emotion of not wanting to get one's hopes up.
He feigned a little bit of surprise as someone in the diner felt a surge of anger that rushed to his stomach. He took a second to breathe as a snippet of a waitress' argument tried to filter through to him. He tried to look sympathetic.] Dude, that sucks. [For all his, uh, empathy, Noah wasn't always articulate. He tried to offer a little more.] I get it. I'm sort of there with someone maybe and, if they split, I'd be super bummed too, even if I didn't really have a "right" to be. [He shrugged and sucked cherry juice from a fingertip.] How's the shake?