Tandy Bowen doesn't have to pick between (cloakndagger) wrote in repose,
Re: quicklog: tandy & travis @ the diner
[In Tandy's estimation, the week had a high probability of greater success than last week. Last week had been garbage, as he had come to the end of girl!Tandy's layaway of stuff: groceries that could sustain significant periods of life, cash and finally the access to wifi from the neighboring place who were naive enough to leave a generic pre-set password on their router until their grandkids took up residence for the spring and brought with them the novelty of secured devices. He was deliberately ignorant of what Tandy's mom was up to. Tandy's mom was verboten and he had no familial insurance policy in the form of residential places to crash. Which was why a job had become super necessary while he worked whatever he could work in the Capital, but that took confidence and the ability to walk away. When you couldn't eat, you couldn't walk away.
But Tandy also knew the value in looking like you weren't down to your last dollar. He was scrubbed clean from the rec center showers, hair damply gold and his sweater thick and navy wool and fresh from the Goodwill no one had picked over sufficiently enough to identify all possible items with tags still attached. He looked like he belonged on the good side of town and he smiled at the waitress who had asked Holly myriad questions with the kind of charm that was earnest and deliberate and entirely lacking in genuine sentiment. There were two things, broadly that troubled Tandy: firstly was the role he played (literally) in Tandy's life, the pre-determined pre-established (female) Tandy that had people in common with his people, albeit simulacrums of his own actual people. Secondly, what Travis might want to do.
Because he got the general wavelength of life for Holly W in Repose (version: this one) and for Travis as per the latter. One was on the up, one sucked and Tandy was still in balancing-act between the two. Fewer people had a vested interest in his existence, but conversely, the people who caused the most trouble did not actually know he existed in this universe. Tandy wasn't sure which was preferable.
So he walked toward the Travis who looked a lot more unkempt than his own, personal Travis and he sat, and when he sat, the waitress hovered, with the implacable expression of someone confronted with the very wrong, a vortex of post-high school opposites at the same table.]
Salutations. [Tandy's voice was low and he was a tall guy. He fished his hat from his head, and he looked at the waitress. He had a lead on a couple of jobs and he had made some finite cashable benefits out of sketching in the street at the Capital. Spring would be way more financially beneficial, but it was enough to pay for a Coke.]