Re: The Woods: Pesha/Tandy
Billy was accustomed to sulk. He got sulk. Sulk was his landlord, drinking himself into a stupor until he was a snoring shell of Billy’s friend who liked to deny that they were friends at all, and got all snarly when Billy made that difficult. Sulk was Destiny going weeks without talking to him because she was pissed at him for making bad life choices or just not wanting to worry her about them in the first place and keeping them quiet. So he got it, and he recognized the flicker of Tandy’s face shutting down under Billy’s hand so he dropped it back down to his side and hopped off the trailer’s steps, striding past the monolith that was the other kid and heading back to where he’d left the bowl and the bottle in the cool grass.
“Sure. You can say that again, Jolly Green,” he breezed over his shoulder, no venom present in the neutral humour to betray his thoughts. Because really, he was starting to get tired of running headfirst into the invisible walls of the emotionally stunted, and he couldn’t help but wonder if there was something he was doing to attract that into his life. He didn’t want to, like, judge this guy for the shit that he’d been through, because Billy got the pain and helplessness of displacement at that was without having left his own plane of reality. He couldn't even begin to image the rest of it. So Billy didn’t hold it against him or anything, but he figured that the sooner he got the ritual done, the less risk he had of Tandy storming off when Billy was just trying to help. “Come, sit. Please?"
He added the last bit as an afterthought, because at least he was the self-aware sort of bossy. He sunk into a cross-legged position on the grass, angled so that the moon’s glow fell across his face, and motioned to the space across from him. While he waited to see if Tandy would listen or not, he unstoppered the rosewater and swirled the contents in the moonlight as well. The smell of woodsmoke was stronger now, curling out from under the sleeves of his oversized sweatshirt against Billy’s narrow wrists. "This won't take long, okay? Promise."