coffeeshop: ren solitaire & newt penhaligon
This time, the bell chiming was Newt. Dressed appropriately Muggle as he attempted to transition back into both life in Repose and life mundane. Newt'd never cared too much about appearance. His hair, even now, was a mussed tangle of red curls fringing low enough to catch in lashes now and again. There was some dirt on an inner forearm, revealed by sleeves pushed to elbows, and other traces of his day-to-day life evident, if not conspicuously. Which was all to say, he'd never minded much as to how he looked, but he had to pay it a bit more mind these days, since coming back from Patrick's Arborlon. It reminded him of summer holiday, back in school, and how he'd found the choices of his wardrobe at home overwhelming—enough that he eschewed them completely and began to wear the suit he'd then go on to wear until he was thirty. He was venturing from it now, a bit, and there was no bow-tie to be seen.
For all his apparent uncertainty at being in a confined space with one of few species he found utterly confusion (humans), Newt's approach to the count was neither slow nor shuffling. He'd long legs, and he took long strides, trousers pulling up to reveal they perhaps weren't precisely sized, but Newt paid those details no notice. Instead, his roaming gaze was pinging occasionally on the barista. Ren. On Ren, his outline, his hair, then, for a moment, his face. All in small swoops of a glance that didn't seem likely to settle. Newt tucked his chin and smiled, the act of it a little stiff, but not wholly unearnest. "Ren," was Newt's greeting, offered in his strangely soft, but rasping voice, and showing with it another hint of a smile. "Hello." Newt'd never done well with social expectations. There were questions to ask, part of a script, but they weren't something he remembered often and even when he did, they felt uncomfortable and invasive. So, he didn't ask what he ought've—how're you and so on. Instead, he played fingertips through a spilling curl briefly and said, knowing he really didn't need to: "It's Newt."