Re: Tory & Jamie: the Apartment
Jamie knew obsession. Fuck, he was still living the ripple-effect of obsession, he saw it in the bathroom mirror that he didn't wipe down after the steam from the shower choked off reality-check, or the prickling of guilt that crystalized against the inside of his throat when he thought about his sisters. He knew single-mindedness, and he knew the way it felt to want something so bad it knotted you up until you had nothing of you left except thick twists of rope where your hope had kinda hung out and lived, and he knew the guy sat proximate, his knee swung toward the coffee-table and who had a likeminded affinity for colored shoes, knew obsession well enough to like, say hi in passing to.
But yeah, for a guy who wasn't interested in casual? Tory talked about his dick a lot. 'Fiefdom?" He lost it, laughter tangled up in surprise, as the guy just kept going making it, like, a million times worse. "Yeah. Yeah, you made it weird. I don't know what a fiefdom-sized dick is, I figure that's like, between you and your junk." But Wichita. Kansas, and running water, and church jokes, and Jamie had lived in a place that was like, PROUD about being redder than hell too long to like, get way worked up over Kansas. "I guess. There's a lot of water polo and old people, in Florida," he observed, watching Tory sip tequila, which would probably have been better if the tequila, wasn't, you know, liquor-store cheap. The last time Jamie had gotten wasted on tequila it hadn't ended all that well, and he was buzzed, his gut warm and the mellow, kinda zen feeling of switching the fuck off from watching Seven fuck three different people in succession and focusing on the immediate.
"Yeah, they did this whole thing where they took us around, like, the Vaganova Academy, and everything. They train so hard. Like, I used to think as a kid, my teacher was really fucking strict. He'd smack our asses if we didn't jump high enough, hit our legs until the line was better, you know? But they have nothing on the Russians," enthused, and okay, maybe this was his like, nerd territory, but Jamie was kinda easy about talking about ballet until like - yep, that question.
"I gave it up because my knee got fucked," he said, matter-of-fact, and kinda like it didn't hurt, like there wasn't a prickle of whatever loss, long-lost, felt like. "I didn't give it up, really. It kinda shit-kicked me. I did like, eight months of rehab, figuring it out again but the company was kinda done with me, and there are enough people making it through schools, getting into companies, that they didn't need me." He finished his shot in one, slammed it and he put London down, against Paris. "I never had nerves of steel. I used to get sick, when I started. Like, we'd get to the overture, and I'd chuck my guts up in the bathroom backstage." He grinned. "It gets less scary. Like, most things, you know? The more you do it, the better it gets, until you stop getting scared so much."
Cat hunched, on her arm of the couch, and curled herself, nose to tail, blinking watchfully in the direction of the interloper, and Jamie shrugged expansively. "I dance still? I teach. At the rec center, and I take classes. I keep thinking maybe I can build up the strength in my knee to go back, but I'm kinda getting old," which, you didn't age out of science. Better call, Tory, and he glanced at the other guy.