Re: Billy/Tandy: the neighborhood
The smell of rosemary lingered on his skin, in the air after he’d raked his fingers through his hair and coiled one wayward strand around his finger. The herbaceous notes still reminded him more of cocktails than potions, but he was in heavy flux of adjustment periods on all sides. The vrăjitoare spent more time in the forefront of Billy’s conscious mind now, instead of lurking around the vignette edges, wavering and blurred.
“Constellations, very cool,” he offered with a smile and a nod, unconsciously echoing Tandy’s summation and thinking about his own brief flirtations with the night sky as a focus of awe and wonder. “My freshman year I joined the astronomy club because I had a huge crush on the senior who was running it. I don’t think I retained, like, one single thing I learned except for how good he smelled when he adjusted the telescope for me.”
Billy nodded again. “And because I doubted the safety of advertising those services under my real name. Had to make sure you weren’t going to freak out and start a petition to burn me at the stake.” He rolled his eyes then, though without any real annoyance and still with a smile fixed in place. “I’m gonna say that’s highly unlikely, but sure. I’ll text you in the event that happens.” He tapped the toe of his shoe once more against Tandy’s shin, just below his knee. Sealing the promise, or whatever.
“Joe,” he said with a very flat sincerity that he held for a few seconds, before it cracked around a snicker. “Kidding. How ridiculous would that be, though? And I don’t go around giving out my clients’ names, but it was a pretty normal one.”