Re: Carriage House: Atticus & Billy
“No, it’s fine,” Billy replied with a dry smile, even as his gaze was cast downwards at the floor for a second or two, turning the question over in his head after he’d already answered. If he was honest about it, he thought that 'sex worker' was just sort of... clinical-sounding, maybe since he'd spent all this time thinking of himself as a whore in that self-deprecating way that made it seem just not real enough that he could smirk and joke about it.
Okay, yeah, Billy was sensitive. Not all the time, but most. But he knew Atticus didn't say anything with bad intentions, and Billy wasn't here to be all squirmy. He was here to have a good time, enjoy a real meal that didn't come out of a dusty package with a sale sticker or a can that was half-off because it was dented. He was admittedly dealing with that nervous flutter at the spread on the coffee table, because it was the most significant amount of food he'd even thought about eating in months and he was sort of reliant on the fact that guys seemed to like him skinny. But one meal wouldn't change that, and Atticus had gone to all this effort, and that wasn’t worth nothing.
He looked up at Atticus and the smile was back, halfway between the beam and the sour twist. “Yeah, college wasn't really an optional thing for me in my family. Doctor parents, remember? They had a whole plan, and it would be pretty messed up if didn’t go along with it when so many people don’t have the opportunities that I did, right? And I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I figured that I could always go back and do something else if I decided that I wanted something different, and my mom and dad would have been totally supportive of it.”
One of his eyebrows arched into a severe angle at the mention of fishing boats and he made a motion with his hands like well, go on, pulling his legs around and tucking them beneath him so that he could sit up on his heels. Already restless, a boy ever in motion. But he interrupted just long enough to hold up two of the utensils he’d scrounged up from the haphazard array present in the drawers of the kitchen, waving them back and forth with a flourish and a teasing light to his eyes. “Okay, see these? Dessert forks? Don't even try to tell me that you can get the meat out of the smallest part of lobster claws without them. Not with those mitts.”
Then he picked up his glass and lifted it with an expectant look at the other, and the corner of his mouth twitching more light-heartedly this time. “You’re the one who has to make the toast, it’s your house and you cooked the food. The only one I know is l’chayim because my family isn’t religious enough to observe Shabbat, so I never learned that one.”