Re: Billy/Tandy: the neighborhood
“I’ve only ever seen him at the shop, so…” Billy cast out with a shrug of one shoulder, raising his hand palm-up. “Coming home in fatigues and clomping upstairs? He always looks exhausted, so like, it’s whatever.” Whatever meaning no big deal, Billy got the reduction to monosyllabic or non-verbal with layers of ache and a day’s (or night’s) metaphorical grime coating your skin. He wasn’t nearly close enough to narcissist that he felt entitled to the time or attention of someone he didn’t know beyond helping him, Billy, out with gainful employment. There was just that underlay, a pathological need to people-please and be liked that Billy could intellectualize as unhealthy and unrealistic even as it still twinged at him. “I’m not going to tackle all of that to ask him to be my personal Spotify curator. Be my guest.”
Which would have made Billy smile, the Disney reference and also picturing Tandy cosplaying as an inordinately tall Belle and looking thoroughly disgruntled by elaborate song and dance numbers, except that he was still the picture of crossed-arms indignant. “Yeah, I did. And it wasn’t a big deal. Because it wasn’t about charity-” The air quotes were all based on intonation, but they were definitely present, and look, Billy did get it. He’d been crazy sensitive about the perception of being a charity case, right up until he’d been able to start thinking beyond the next half-dozen meals at a time. He wasn’t looking to make anyone feel pitied, or patronized.
“And it wasn’t about reciprocity, either. Look, Tandy,” he spread both his hands now, elbows level with his hips, and his expression wasn’t quite beseeching but it was still a big step away from neutral: eyebrows up, a little furrow of frustration and even a little flicker of hurt. Crestfallen at the idea that he’d tried to do a nice thing and possibly fucked up to the point of making his friend feel less-than. “This is not a birthday, or a holiday. I didn’t expect you to get me anything. Why would I? It’s my house, you’re my tenant. If we were both moving into an apartment together or something, okay, sure, that would be different.” He paused long enough to exhale, short and sharp through his nose as one hand came up to shove through his hair and rake it away from his forehead, which really only served to leave it standing up absurdly on one side because the other half fell back into his eyes almost immediately. “So if I insulted you, I’m sorry, and I’ll take the comics myself. If you think I was trying to - to flaunt having money, or do something shitty instead of just wanting to do a nice thing, then I guess I fucked up.”
His hands found their way to his hips now and he was looking down at the pizza on the counter, not at his new roommate. His mouth was a thinned line. “I can guarantee you that it’s not, Tandy.” Bogus. Billy knew body language, he could read fluster and attraction from across a room with his eyes closed. “That kid’s crushing hard.”