Re: Tandy/Billy/Atticus: the lake
Billy needed a firewall. All puns and red-hot fingertips that itched with the tingle of magic aside, he lacked the fundamental ability to shut himself down to outside forces. He could compartmentalize, sure, like they’d talked about in Billy’s bedroom on the day that Tandy moved into the house. Who he fucked for money went in one neat little slot, his friends that he cared about went in another, his family stuff was filed away at the very back of the cabinet in a box with do not open scrawled along the top in Magic Marker and ignored for the rest of eternity, duh.
Billy’s proclivity to smile was tempered by the roil in his guts, the bone-deep sensation of being carved hollow and left to dry in the sun that’d had so many months to fester. So he was neither inclined nor eager to smile, but he still did. He could feel the counter-arguments welling up, even though he lacked the energy or motivation to say them.
“Cars, too,” he supplied instead, motioning with the mouth of his drink in hand towards Atticus’s position behind the wheel. “And he’s definitely put a shitload of points into the Stubborn skill tree. We have that in common.”