Repose

[Posted anonymously.]

I need a medium.

Who: Ragnar and Connor/Athelstan
What: Dinner with an old friend.
Where: Ragnar's house
When: Saturday night.
Warnings: None anticipated

( 1200 years )

Who: Tandy & Holly
Where: The Good Diner
When: Hand-waving. In the days after Tandy arrived / Holly post-terror.
Warnings: Unlikely.

He should have asked Sabrina if the magic trick with the ID extended to cash. There was probably a theoretical science model behind it, perceived transumation probably worked on the basis of weight and similarity - combatting a singular sense rather than trying to hit two at once, but the real truth was there wasn't a lot in Tandy's wallet rn and his back-up plan never articulated either in speech or in that part of his mind that dealt with the adult crap of living, was caput. You couldn't rely on a temporary place to crash if everything went so superlatively wrong that you couldn't survive solo if the woman you were relying on didn't know you were her kid. So whatever. He had managed to figure out how to tap the wifi from the house across from the abandoned one - their password was manufacturer-issued, which was basic beyond belief - and he had purchased a cheap SIM to keep the phone he'd toted across realities functional. He had looked into a gig in the city, where people were still hiring and no one knew his name and associated gender.

Which was so much functional adulting, when what had actually happened post-Sabrina was that he had cried himself sick, the messy, gulping, can't-breathe-nasal-passages-congested ugly sobbing that belonged to little kids whose worlds collapsed over a lollipop or an early bedtime. It had been pretty much an all night kind of deal and Tandy had woken with his eyes sticky and still kind of red and so over the emotive reaction to world-shifting realities that he headed to the Rec center for the kind of shower that was lukewarm and timed out every three minutes but at least was, you know, clean.

He turned up to the diner early. There was no coffee-making facility in the abandoned house and he knew intellectually caffeine-reliance was largely psychosomatic unless you were drinking enough to fundamentally alter your brain chemistry and Tandy did not, but he felt badly in need of coffee and his wallet could stretch to it. He had coffee, white and heavy with sugar because the condiment selection was free and it kept his belly from growling - or the stomach juices instigated by the time of day vaguely suppressed with the consumption of milk - and he had his sketchpad on the table. It wasn't a thing Tandy would have done in his own Repose. It was too statement, and everyone knew who he was there. Here, he was the closest thing to anonymous and it was seriously disconcerting if he thought about it long. He had Imagine Dragons in his earbuds, and he sipped his coffee and he drew the outside of the window because if he drew the waitress, which was what he actually wanted, she would want the sketch.