Tandy Bowen doesn't have to pick between (cloakndagger) wrote in repose,
Re: The Woods: Pesha/Tandy
Pride was expensive. He wasn't writing up a sign outside the grocery store any time soon, okay, but there were a bunch of women in town who routinely tried stuff like slipping stuff in their grocery baskets he'd put back on the shelves and it turned up on the doorstep as a kid. He hadn't said no to that, but he'd also kept lists way longer than it was cognitively wise because there was no way he was going to pay them back the balance. That had also been before, when he was underage and people felt sorry for him living with his mom. He had gone to church a bunch of times mostly for the coffee and donuts after, and obviously - he scammed to make enough to pay the bills. But Tandy didn't ask for shit. That was the line.
He had no idea $$ had been on offer for Christmas. He didn't even know there had been a Christmas. Yanked on Christmas night, his Christmas was a bunch of stuff he'd put off until the day after Christmas that he mostly regretted. He wasn't a waif. Tandy was super clear on that, and he didn't spend what he had on getting high or trashed or whatever. He took the orange and broke off a section and burst the rubbery segment with his incisor, sweetness spreading golden over his tongue.
But okay. There were rules - kinda - and Tandy did a lot better when there were rules to work with (around). Okay, they sounded way vague but they were still rules and that held Tandy's attention. The art thing he got, instinctively but he didn't say anything. Art wasn't private - he made serious money in summer drawing on the street in the Capital - but it wasn't something he put out there.
"So you didn't like, learn this shit out of a book." He looked at the bills in his wallet and his eyes snapped back up to Pesha's face. Okay, if the guy wanted to do him a favor, he wanted to do him a favor. Tandy's eyes were blue and steady. "And you're not going to claim the blood of my firstborn for this," he gestured with a handful of orange to the set-up. He was kidding. (Mostly).
"Thanks." He wasn't awkward about it. It was charity, but it was also twenty bucks. And magic.