Re: Tory & Jamie: the Apartment
Tory settled in, folding one leg under him while putting his back to the armrest so he could actually face Jamie. "Okay," he said through a bite of pizza, swallowed, swiped at the corner of his mouth with the heel of his hand. Random detail - he wore a few bracelets on each wrist: meaningless things made of cloth or leather or metal. Just things he found and liked. Peeking out of the cuff of his sleeve like false intrigue or the substitute for a topic of conversation. "So, Linnean classification," he said, and it wasn't hard to shift into lecture mode as he'd been a TA for a couple years. "You know genus and species - like, Homo sapiens. Or," he pointed at Cat - "Felis catus. Felis is the genus, catus is the species. But there are other cats, right? Like lions. They're Panthera leo. But, lions and cats, they're in the same family, Felidae. And so there are all these levels that are really broad when you start at the top and get into finer and finer distinctions as you go down the list. A phylum is one of those levels, way near the top - the plural is phyla - and those are really broad things, like animals, plants, and fungi. Also, it's kind of outdated; cladistics are a lot more widely used now, but that's a story for another time and I think audience, because you didn't ask for a bedtime story. So...time for a shot." Which, he took. And like, tequila wasn't his favorite, and most of it tasted like rocket fuel, but it definitely helped with the embarrassment of rambling. "Ah, god," he laughed through a grimace.
"Are you sure the real reason isn't that you might be short a few fingers if you tried picking her up?" Tory suggested. Okay, so she wasn't a sweet cat. Or, maybe she was, the kind that would make sure you were asleep before she crept into bed with you, and would rather sleep on the back of the couch the moment you tried to show any affection. "But I can do without having my lap torn up, even if according to you," he said, tearing off a piece of crust with his teeth because no, he didn't save it all for the end, "it's criminally underused. Clearly not my sexcapades."
And while that might have been all he said for the moment, there was no guarantee Tory wouldn't go back to the subject on the chance Jamie was diverting. Anyway, there were some other interesting topics at hand: "So, what do you do that you were in Tokyo for work?" He wanted to know. "And Paris and London as well, presumably."