Re: Carriage House: Atticus & Billy
In went the Reese’s, popped into Billy’s mouth to melt on the back of his tongue entirely without ceremony, and he was half-watching Atticus’ puttering around the kitchen and the gentle variations of his smile, but so too was he watching the raw expanse of Atticus’ arms. Billy considered himself a pretty perceptive person, always had, and yeah - he would have had to be blind to miss the raised pink slashes of scar tissue that cut across the olive-tan skin of Atticus’ forearms at weird angles. And they were old enough that Atticus seemed pretty okay with observant company, with his secrets exposed. Billy wasn’t one to judge; he was the kid with a barcode of uniformly white lines bisecting the fleshy meat of his very inner thigh, unseen by any other than tricks, and disregarded even then.
“Half,” was the clipped clarification that came out of his mouth. “I mean, I am. Half. Romanian. If I wanted to keep it a secret, I probably wouldn’t have told you.” Billy’s slender fingers tented against the edge of the counter between his spread knees, with his thumbs tapping out a staccato drumbeat. “My birth dad, turned out he’s Romanian. So my bunica found me and told me what was what, which was sort of cool. And it’s actually an old proverb? Um, it’s basically their version of ‘once bitten, twice shy’, except that in direct translation it’s actually talking about soup versus yogurt and how hot it is in your mouth unless you blow on it.”
This admission made him grin, white teeth flashing and cheeks dimpled and the corners of his dark eyes crinkling with the force behind it. When Billy smiled, he beamed, as a general rule. Perpetually delighted by life, which was a thing that read in every angle of his limbs, truly genuine for someone so felt so ineffectual in most other parts of his life.
“Um. It’s nice enough, I guess? I have a nice trailer, got it for pretty cheap. I’m right next to my half-sister, so that’s cool. Our boss is really nice.” Billy’s teeth scraped over the fleshy meat of his bottom lip, pink stressed to white as he licked at his fingers where some of the chocolate coating had melted against his skin. “Really, it’s fine. You don’t have to feel sorry for me. Promise.”