Re: Carriage House: Atticus & Billy
Billy decided that he liked the blush, yep, liked it a lot. Not that he wasn’t being cruel — he was pretty sure that taking such pleasure in a dude who had made it thoroughly evident that he only felt sorry for Billy’s chosen predicament would be twisted and eight different kinds of sadistic. Billy followed Atticus’ gaze and looked down at his own arms, bringing his wrists together to cross over one another between the spread of his knees against the narrow kitchen’s counter. He nodded slowly, wryly, the tuck of his smile dimpled and thoroughly amused as he lined them up together and stared down at the stark length of his forearms.
“You’re allowed to ask,” he laughed softly, leaning back in his perch with the slender fingers of both hands wrapping over the ledge of the counter under his thighs. “I didn’t think you’d want to, though. You’re not going to take this as a come-on, right? I mean, since you asked? It’s not me harassing you, huh?” Billy’s smirk was near-deadly and widened into an unapologetic grin as he leaned back, kicking his socked heels against the cabinet doors. “I’m just saying, you better not freak out.”
A coughing clear of this throat, then, and a wide-eyed introspective sort of glance before Billy shut his own and pictured the tattooed script that cut a swath over the sharp, angled line of his shoulder blade. When he spoke the words, his mouth felt thick with cotton.
“A burnt child dreads the fire. Except, it's in Romanian.”
And when Billy opened his eyes, it was with no small amount of that sinking reluctance: the knowledge that Atticus would have this new information about him, and make judgements accordingly. Because how could he not? They didn’t live in a world where teenaged whores could exist without rules, and corruption, and disgust painted in the eyes of non-clients. A tattoo was a band-aid pasted on reality. Billy was more than preoccupied with dropping a handful of Reese’s Pieces into his mouth one by one — right, appetizers. Sure. Focus.
“I live in hookerville,” he offered as an off-hand, lifting one narrow shoulder into a shrug and steadfastly training his gaze onto the gathering of his hands in his lap. Shame and reluctance, thy name is Kaufman. Like it wasn’t any big deal, like he wasn’t something or someone that needed to be ashamed of his own freaking existence. “I mean, obviously. Whatever.”