(no subject)
Who: Byrons Watts and Hale (SWINDLERS 1 & 2)
Where: The apartment
When: Backdated -- late Thursday evening
Summary: The Byrons chat about other Tales over a late dinner of takeout Indian food, but Watts is most interested in a postcard invitation to an underground bare-knuckle boxing match. Hale disapproves, but acquiesces.
Rating: PG-13
Hale: He came home later than expected, but despite the delay Hale's journey indoors could only be called masterful. He had his laptop bag slung over his shoulder, a scarf come loose about his neck, a paper bag full of warm aluminum curry containers, and an entire slew of colorful mail pinned between his upper arm and his ribs. It was a lot to carry, even though the load was made lighter without a chip on his shoulder. The grip had grown even more precarious after a near run-in with their downstairs neighbor, and just as he was pressing the glossy magazine packet against an odd surface of inner arm, so had he only very carefully pinned a string of expletives under his tongue. Telling himself the collision would've been an accident and it was avoided anyway, and mindful that the energy it took seething was just as likely to lose his parcels, he was relieved so note that his spirits lifted the moment he set foot in the apartment. At least his voice did. He yelled, "Food!" instead of a more traditional greeting, then closed the door with his elbow and locked it with his thumb, careful not to let anything slip from the jungle of his arms and bag.
"The ice queen sends her regards," he narrated grandly as he veered into the kitchen, avoiding an eager (and homicidally meddlesome) little dog who'd been summoned by the smell of chicken, "And three paintings. One's really good. I mean, I don't think we'll have trouble selling any of them, but this portrait, it has this sort of... Lord Leighton thing going..."
Watts: At the scented Siren song of curry, and the more audible of Hale, Watts appeared quite suddenly in the kitchen doorway. Like a wraith, in his own humble estimation. Or The Shadow, but without the ridiculous hat casting a pall on the gravity of his skill. The past hour had been spent hunched over a graphed accounting ledger like an uncommonly gangly bird of prey, as he chortled in an increasingly evil manner at his own spiked, tidy handwriting. The ledger had been summarily stuffed behind a sofa cushion at the clunk of the deadbolt turning, as the sofa was quite uncomfortable enough that an extra lump would hardly be of notice. A distinctly ominous air of glee clung to the corners of his mouth as he sidled over the threshold with Fauntleroy in hot pursuit. The dog was engaging in a thrilling game of Chase The Feet, and wound up dragged half way across the kitchen whilst clinging resolutely the tattered hem of his left pant leg. That Watts was able to continue an almost flawless sidle in spite of this was testament to the frequency of the game.
"Lady Bronlow, or Bath of Psyche?" he inquired, purloining the bright sheaf of mail, and leaning over Hale's shoulder to try to peer into the paper bag. The question really broke down to: bright and clothed, or muted and naked? Admittedly, one was more intriguing than the other. Tossing the stack of mail on the counter, he momentarily tucked his chin against the shoulder of Hale's coat. An extremely icy ear pressed frigidly against his temple, and his eye prickled at the sudden onset of cold. As the dog gnawed harmlessly at his Achilles tendon, he lifted his head to ask, with marked suspicion, "Is that green curry?"
Hale: "It's no Bath of Psyche, I'll tell you that. Clothes," Hale explained with a laugh, peeling off the paper bag and spreading the containers on a thick bed of periodicals and posted correspondence. "It's like... the one with the red scarf. The woman, she's walking, pastoral field, somebody's daughter..." clearly, he was flipping through mental flashcards, but clearly he had not yet defrosted. "I got nothing." He concluded this with a heavy sigh of surrender, staring at the kitchen wall like it would help. It did not really matter. The moment's pause had also allowed him to better appreciate a warm chin on his shoulder and a warm cheek on his ear.
"It's chili sauce," he explained, and then quickly added, "I like it." He was warming up, but he was still starving, and unceremoniously pried away a plastic lid, unwilling to wait before popping a bit of broccoli in his mouth. A quick pull on the cutlery drawer led to a swift, "Damn it. No forks."
Watts: "Miss May...something," Watts offered idly, which he honestly only remembered because he spent so much time with another May, and had an often traumatising habit of, upon first meeting, associating people to their immortal creative likeness. It was akin to the way nearly everyone with the ability to speak English at some point felt the urge to sing Danny Boy to people with the great misfortune to bear a similar title. Ducking away from Hale, he glanced in the sink, official repository of four day's dirty silverware and a lone cereal bowl. The forks rested pitifully askew, exactly six of them, with one hovering at the drain and threatening suicide down the garbage disposal. The notion of waiting for hot water, putting dish soap on a rag, and for god's sake, washing tynes and handles was so very arduous that it actually failed to occur to him as a possible solution.
"Wait," he commanded, though the word drug out for several extra seconds with the dawning of resourcefulness. Primarily, it simply sounded as though he'd been smoking a great deal of pot. Reaching around Hale, he withdrew a bright disc of carrot and bravely tested this alleged chili sauce. Watts fancied himself something of a curry connoisseur, and feared no colour of sauce save for blue, following an unfortunate incident in college that he suspected had close correlations to a friend's fondness for Bridget Jones' Diary. Transferring the questionable affections of his befanged dog to Hale's unsuspecting ankle, he crouched next to the sink and pulled open the cabinet, producing an unseemly brown cardboard box with the Poptarts logo emblazoned on the side. It was a veritable treasure trove of discarded take out items: twisty ties, a rainbow myriad of napkins, one very depressed sweet and sour sauce packet, three seemingly random marbles, and -- "Ah," he announced proudly, withdrawing two plastic wrapped sporks and holding them triumphantly out for Hale.
Hale: "I'm not eating with those," he answered primly, pulling his arms from the dark recesses of a warm wool coat and shaking the feeling back into his palms. There wasn't really anywhere to put his coat now, so he slung it in the window-divider-space separating their kitchen from their living room, and in doing so almost condemned to death the one plant that had survived there for more than a month. These were the desperate actions which Hale undertook when circumstances separated him from curry. There was another important circumstance now; for all he knew that secret trove of napkins and condiments had been there before he moved in. He had no idea if Watts even ate things that weren't martini olives during that period, and that made him even more suspicious of the sad-looking sporks with thin plastic around them.
He held this strict party line for maybe three and a half seconds, but looking up at the array of dishes and down at the sporks, he eventually did what they both knew he would--he took the one closest to him and presently began to eat his weight in basmati rice. It was between two bites that he answered, "May Sartoris."
Watts: There was precious little doubt that Watts was smugly amused over the failed attempt to rise above the use of sporks. More smug than amused, in all honesty. He rose to his feet and smirkingly unwrapped his own precious utensil hybrid. The aluminum containers beckoned, and he surveyed them for a moment as if actually deciding. In truth, his heart was always and would forever be won by the eye-watering, mouth-scorching vindaloo. "Did she use an actual model?" he asked skeptically, propping one hip against the counter as he lifted the container and took that first traumatically burning bite. His squinted from the spices, then from an ensuing grin, because trying to picture their assistant librarian working with any mere mortal model harboring the unfortunate need to breath and periodically move a millimeter was just so... Just so.
After a moment, he shifted the mail to an extremely intelligent new resting place on a stove burner, and boosted himself onto the edge of the counter. He took another bite of curry, then fanned the mail across the stove top. Bills bills bills, a letter from his younger brother undoubtedly containing another colourful pamphlet on sexually transmittable diseases. The rest was obscured, curiously, by a women's clothing catalog. He plucked it up by the corner, sending a smattering of cards and envelopes to the floor in the process, and held it in front of him. Smirk returning, he raised an eyebrow exaggeratedly, and kicked out one lanky leg to catch Hale knee with his socked foot. "Something I ought to know?"
Hale: He snickered down at his dinner, picturing the poor model who was subject to Eva's exacting methods (as though he himself was a laid-back picture of tranquility who never obsessed over details). "I don't know. I'd think she'd want to..." He paused. "I bet they'd get cold, though." His very heart went out to any nudes she might have tried to depict. It was very rarely that he felt anything like sympathy for nude models, but perhaps the Indian spices warming his throat were also warming his chilly heart. When Watts hoisted himself onto the counter and inspected a magazine of women's clothing, claiming his knee from across the space between them, the gesture was sufficient to pull him closer like a shephard's hook. He shuffled closer to the oven with a spork in one hand and a container of chili chicken in another. He hunched downwards so he could get a good impression of the women posed uncomfortably in neutral hallways, then straightened and shrugged.
"Kilts," he retorted, improbably and with no real intent to explain. Another bite of chili chicken, and then Hale slid his fork into the container so he could better pick through the mail. He was looking in the same order as Watts, so the order went: bills, bills, bills, letter-from-other-Watts, a few envelopes he couldn't read and did not care to investigate. And a postcard. Hale chose an envelope.
Watts: It reflected admirable self-restraint that Watts did not flick hot, stinging, blinding vindaloo at Hale's vulnerable eyes. Instead he snorted and tossed the catalog back on the stove. "Kilts my arse," he replied, and like Hale, did not bother elaborating. Another bite of his own chicken, and he propped the fork against the aluminum side in favor of reaching for the brightly coloured postcard Hale had surpassed. It depicted a disembodied mannequin head propped on a kitchen chair, which was frankly a little off-putting, but when he flipped it over he saw why. There were a great many things in the world that could make Byron Watts grin, but very few that could achieve the level of sly satisfaction the four lines on the back of that postcard did.
Hale: He was well into another bite before he even noticed that Watts was grinning, and at that point it was difficult to notice anything else--except for the cause of the grin, which was closer to eye level anyway, now that Watts was perched on the counter. It appeared to be some sort of arresting found-art collage that symbolized... he didn't even know what it meant. For Hale it brought back images of high school art projects he'd tossed together so he could bullshit the counselor instead of going to physics. Hungrier now for answers than chicken or rice, he tried to make sense of this bizarre artistic mail-art composition and Watts' according glee, with less than satisfying results. He tucked a piece of chicken in the corner of his mouth as he queried, "Avery?
Of course, he couldn't imagine any terribly exciting news from Japan, even if the show went well. He doubted that it was within Avery's power to make Watts beam like that--he hoped it wasn't. Besides, Avery had much better taste than trite disembodiments as projected upon traditional domestic space, or whatever the card's snappy keywords would be.
Watts: For a moment, the sly grin was turned on Hale, which admittedly was not entirely novel. However, it was not usually due to not-quite-anonymous information about a bare knuckle boxing match in Brooklyn when it was aimed at Hale. In fact, that sort of information was generally kept as far from Hale as possible. To say they had never been precisely level about Watts' lifelong, unwavering obsession with becoming not just a bookie, but The Bookie would be something of an understatement. When his brain finally caught up with his face, Watts floundered momentarily, trying to determine whether it was far too late to tuck the postcard under his thigh and pretend it wasn't there. It was.
"No," he offered, smile rapidly shifting through several stages, before veering sharply toward innocuous. There was nothing on that postcard, his expression said. Nothing at all, look what lovely weather we're having, how is your sister, would you like to buy this charming painting? Hale was not in the market for a painting, or if he was, it wasn't one Watts would be able to sell him. The unfortunate thing about being part of a swindling duo was that you couldn't really swindle your own duo, not without schemes and planning and any manner of dull things he always let Hale handle. "Avery wouldn't send anything this tacky." He rolled his eyes, casual, innocuous eyerolling, then nudged his foot against Hale's knee again. "How's the chicken? This vindaloo is brilliant. Almost as good as London. You should try it."
Hale: "No vindaloo," he answered matter-of-factly, and tucked in his chin before raising it again. It was like he was warming up that incredulous nod for an explanation that never came. There were just a series of false starts followed by an expert show in distraction, of which Hale had seen plenty and understood much and was not at all distracted by. He could search for months and years for an answer in those shifty eyes, and though he was experienced enough to identify dodginess, he had no pretensions of mind-reading. Instead he reached across and turned Watts' hand at the wrist, tilting it so the text was visible and tilting his head so he could read.
Nothing the postcard read like a confession. It was a date, a location. The only concerning information was its lack of information, and as the tone was both secretive and self-satisfied, it practically radiated with underground energy. He looked up at Watts and then at the postcard again. "Party? Opening?" He prompted, while his eyes scrolled over the text and his mind flipped through--what party?--and then whose? and then--what's the date again? The date was the 18th. It was upon that last question that he continued speaking, and in a tone Watts could not have expected when Hale was faced with the unknown: nonchalant reassurance. The kind of statement-making coolness that obviously aimed to impress. It was all awfully well intentioned, but in the face of such obvious mischief it wasn't much more genuine than Watts' statement that there wasn't anything on the postcard.
Still. He had chicken to stab with a spork, one shoulder to shrug. "I have a huge proposal due the 19th." He worked a grain of rice from the corner of a molar. "It's cool."
Watts: His lips twitched into the amused impression of a smile, caught quickly and subdued to a casual line. That Watts delighted impossibly in being sly prevented the expression from ever achieving Hale's feigned nonchalance, which only seemed to further his mirth. "Oh good," he drawled, dropping the postcard back onto the stove and picking up his fork. The urge to scoff and laugh came in equal measures at the perceived notion of his clandestine meetings, at the implication Hale was not even curious about them in the face of his huge proposal. It was such a gesture of--well, it was a gesture, which was why he valiantly fought both scoff and laugh with the fiery, vocally disabling influence of the curry. It was a futile effort, because no matter how straight his lips were, he stared at Hale with obvious humour as he chewed. "I was deeply afflicted by the prospect of telling you that you're not invited to the enormously secret parties I attend by anonymous instruction."
Hale: He stood, and chewed, and watched him very carefully, as though for signs of fever. It seemed horrible to conclude that anything that made him that happy could not be good--if there was a benefit of the doubt, he probably owed it to Watts--but he could not think of a single harmless attraction the party could possibly possess. Not even one. The images of a dozen highly illegal gambling merriments danced through Hale's head, chased in turn by the fact that he couldn't demand Watts not attend. Asking for clarification would lead to only to bickering (if it was dodged) or neurosis (if it was answered truthfully). Instead he smirked and leaned against the inside of Watts' knee, a casual stance of ownership with no strict prohibition on fun.
"Well, long as your enormously secret parties don't get you deported." This was the rarest possible blessing, nigh impossible to extract, the closest to go forth and misdemeanor.
Watts: "I'm a citizen, they'll just throw me in jail, so I can make shanks out of toothbrushes and the bones of my forgotten imprisoned brethren." There was a bizarre measure of pride in his announcement, not to mention the accompanying smirk. He would not go to jail, not again, anyway. Learning how to make a shank once was quite sufficient, and sitting next to hobos smelling of urine and depression did nothing for his disposition. Fortunately, he'd been to enough of these brutality soirees to realise more than one off-duty cop was loitering on the fringes, bet in hand. Hale did not ask for specifics; Watts did not offer them, merely gave Hale's side a returning nudge with his leg, pressed a heel to the back of his knee, and ate his curry with great relish. Curry was the ambrosia of the gods, shortly after fish and chips, but somewhere before toastable breakfast pastries.
"You're always invited to my parties," Watts generously added, in what sounded like an afterthought, but was clearly nothing of the sort. "I just don't think it's the sort you'd like." He cocked a wry grin and an eyebrow, then cuffed Hale's jaw with his knuckles--a subtle implication, and the only of its kind. "What scandalously riveting turn has the illustrious Monsieur Fragonard taken to provoke a proposal this time?"
Hale: It would be absolute folly telling him that he shouldn't go, since of course he shouldn't, but that wisdom had no real bearing upon whether he would. Hale knew that electric thrill for danger in Watts, had lived with it for years overseas, had lived for it on more than one sketchy long weekend in college. Now he stood the reluctant subject of ankle-pulling and light jaw-cuffing, and he was obviously biting the inside of his lip between bites of chicken, but he had resolved himself not to mention it and was reasonable enough not to sulk. That he responded to the press of knuckles with a reproachful look was just standard operation, and he could be coaxed back into pleasant conversation. It would be fine, he decided--willed it, if nodding could make it so.
"Oh, he's not doing anything new. Not that he has, since 1806. I'm just going to present some new material, a few structural changes, maybe change the... it's totally boring," Hale confessed by smirk, not in the least apologetic that his singular passion in life was drier than most arid climates. "But it's a thing."
Watts: No matter how frequently he feigned otherwise, subtlety was never lost on Watts. It was, in fact, shrewdly accounted for. Call it a trick of the trade, a necessity of the clever, or just a genetic anomaly; whatever the case, when faced with Hale's lip biting acceptance, he hesitated between voicing a reassurance and reissuing the invitation. Either could only cause sparks, and he gracefully and gratefully accepted the topic change with a blithe smile and a bite of chicken. Any residual anxiety dwindled at the reprieve, leaving him once again with insidious plans for a prosperous future heralded by anonymous mail. However, not even with his blithest smile could Watts dismiss Jean-Honore Fragonard and the epic dedication of Hale's dissertation. His mouth loitered on a smirk, then settled into a grave line as he ducked his head forward in a conspiring air. "You," he replied, all contrived seriousness and half-squinting amusement, "are completely besotted with a dead Frenchman."
Hale: It was just a bonus that this teasing came with all the novelty of a height difference. It made the playful condescension much more fun to receive, and he snorted in non-contradictory mirth. There was no point in denying the fixation, for though his choice in artists was desperate and arbitrary, he now knew the factors of Fragonard's life with nearly as much dexterity as he knew his own, and was synthesizing them more diligently than he'd ever record his own in a compendium. Besotted was perhaps not the best word. Begrudgingly indentured. All the senses in which captivated meant he was a captive were also valid. With a final bite of chicken, he slid the container onto the counter and his eyes back to the mail. "You're besotted with a headless torso on a kitchen chair," Hale reminded him sensibly (the smile did indeed sneak through), and with that it was all just something to tease about. It was a less legitimate and more dangerous obsession, but he wouldn't deny Watts' right to have one.
"I'm going to go get a shower," Hale announced, tugging through his tie with a thumb. He looked across Watts' leg at the sink of despair and merrily suggested, "You should do the dishes."
Watts: "I'm very open-minded," Watts retorted haughtily, then glanced at the mail with exaggerated fondness. His own container took a blind drop onto Hale's with an aluminum clink, then slid sideways over the edge of the counter. The muffled crunch of landing drew his attention, and he leaned forward to peer down at the mild mess with dark betrayal. There was curry on the tile, curry on the hem of Hale's pants, curry on the cabinet. His face scrunched in distaste, which did not match his snicker, which in turn did not match the very shallow level of chagrin that followed it. He would clean that up...later, when he wasn't valiantly battling every immediate cliche response and subsequent less-cliche mental image that came to mind with the mention of a shower. Ignoring his killer take out moves, he raised an eyebrow at Hale and gave his tie a slow tug that did nothing to help with loosening the not.
"Oh capital idea," he drawled with a smirk, which was so clearly a lie, because doing the dishes required the proper mindset. Planning. A desire to clean. Motivation. None of which he could muster on a curry-sated week night. "I'll do them as soon as you get in; you can play Russian roulette with the hot water."
Hale: So the vindaloo succumbed to the inexorable pull of gravity on cheap take-out containers. He could see quite well that the floor was covered, and his shoes were covered, and all that; it might have usually bothered him more than it did just then, but it had been a good day. The idea of being scalded still not appealing, and Hale laughed warmly, the depth of it seeming to stretch to his curry-spattered legs. "If I have to play that game, everyone loses," he warned, and mimicked the pantomime knock on the jaw Watts had given him earlier. It was used to much the same wordless end here, because having done so, he took his tie between two fingers and pulled it, slowly and not unpleasantly, through Watts' hand; his expression was accordingly dry, and the kiss on the chin without any loss of fondness, but the overall impression was that he really was going to take a shower and Watts really should do something with the kitchen, and Watts could have his exciting, legally-frowned-upon fun on February 18th, but he'd have to suffer for a lack of it just now.
Granted, the lifespan of such small righteous denials was usually under half an hour, and cleaning the kitchen could easily outlast it.
He dropped his gaze to the wreckage once a step back gave him clearance to do so, and ascertained that there was enough curry on the ground to kill a small dog. "I think we can time the hot water right," Hale suggested with a grin. The satisfaction of one-upping the stupid postcard was bittersweet at best, but suggesting Watts do housekeeping met with no conflicts at all. "You should probably do the floor first, anyway."
Where: The apartment
When: Backdated -- late Thursday evening
Summary: The Byrons chat about other Tales over a late dinner of takeout Indian food, but Watts is most interested in a postcard invitation to an underground bare-knuckle boxing match. Hale disapproves, but acquiesces.
Rating: PG-13
Hale: He came home later than expected, but despite the delay Hale's journey indoors could only be called masterful. He had his laptop bag slung over his shoulder, a scarf come loose about his neck, a paper bag full of warm aluminum curry containers, and an entire slew of colorful mail pinned between his upper arm and his ribs. It was a lot to carry, even though the load was made lighter without a chip on his shoulder. The grip had grown even more precarious after a near run-in with their downstairs neighbor, and just as he was pressing the glossy magazine packet against an odd surface of inner arm, so had he only very carefully pinned a string of expletives under his tongue. Telling himself the collision would've been an accident and it was avoided anyway, and mindful that the energy it took seething was just as likely to lose his parcels, he was relieved so note that his spirits lifted the moment he set foot in the apartment. At least his voice did. He yelled, "Food!" instead of a more traditional greeting, then closed the door with his elbow and locked it with his thumb, careful not to let anything slip from the jungle of his arms and bag.
"The ice queen sends her regards," he narrated grandly as he veered into the kitchen, avoiding an eager (and homicidally meddlesome) little dog who'd been summoned by the smell of chicken, "And three paintings. One's really good. I mean, I don't think we'll have trouble selling any of them, but this portrait, it has this sort of... Lord Leighton thing going..."
Watts: At the scented Siren song of curry, and the more audible of Hale, Watts appeared quite suddenly in the kitchen doorway. Like a wraith, in his own humble estimation. Or The Shadow, but without the ridiculous hat casting a pall on the gravity of his skill. The past hour had been spent hunched over a graphed accounting ledger like an uncommonly gangly bird of prey, as he chortled in an increasingly evil manner at his own spiked, tidy handwriting. The ledger had been summarily stuffed behind a sofa cushion at the clunk of the deadbolt turning, as the sofa was quite uncomfortable enough that an extra lump would hardly be of notice. A distinctly ominous air of glee clung to the corners of his mouth as he sidled over the threshold with Fauntleroy in hot pursuit. The dog was engaging in a thrilling game of Chase The Feet, and wound up dragged half way across the kitchen whilst clinging resolutely the tattered hem of his left pant leg. That Watts was able to continue an almost flawless sidle in spite of this was testament to the frequency of the game.
"Lady Bronlow, or Bath of Psyche?" he inquired, purloining the bright sheaf of mail, and leaning over Hale's shoulder to try to peer into the paper bag. The question really broke down to: bright and clothed, or muted and naked? Admittedly, one was more intriguing than the other. Tossing the stack of mail on the counter, he momentarily tucked his chin against the shoulder of Hale's coat. An extremely icy ear pressed frigidly against his temple, and his eye prickled at the sudden onset of cold. As the dog gnawed harmlessly at his Achilles tendon, he lifted his head to ask, with marked suspicion, "Is that green curry?"
Hale: "It's no Bath of Psyche, I'll tell you that. Clothes," Hale explained with a laugh, peeling off the paper bag and spreading the containers on a thick bed of periodicals and posted correspondence. "It's like... the one with the red scarf. The woman, she's walking, pastoral field, somebody's daughter..." clearly, he was flipping through mental flashcards, but clearly he had not yet defrosted. "I got nothing." He concluded this with a heavy sigh of surrender, staring at the kitchen wall like it would help. It did not really matter. The moment's pause had also allowed him to better appreciate a warm chin on his shoulder and a warm cheek on his ear.
"It's chili sauce," he explained, and then quickly added, "I like it." He was warming up, but he was still starving, and unceremoniously pried away a plastic lid, unwilling to wait before popping a bit of broccoli in his mouth. A quick pull on the cutlery drawer led to a swift, "Damn it. No forks."
Watts: "Miss May...something," Watts offered idly, which he honestly only remembered because he spent so much time with another May, and had an often traumatising habit of, upon first meeting, associating people to their immortal creative likeness. It was akin to the way nearly everyone with the ability to speak English at some point felt the urge to sing Danny Boy to people with the great misfortune to bear a similar title. Ducking away from Hale, he glanced in the sink, official repository of four day's dirty silverware and a lone cereal bowl. The forks rested pitifully askew, exactly six of them, with one hovering at the drain and threatening suicide down the garbage disposal. The notion of waiting for hot water, putting dish soap on a rag, and for god's sake, washing tynes and handles was so very arduous that it actually failed to occur to him as a possible solution.
"Wait," he commanded, though the word drug out for several extra seconds with the dawning of resourcefulness. Primarily, it simply sounded as though he'd been smoking a great deal of pot. Reaching around Hale, he withdrew a bright disc of carrot and bravely tested this alleged chili sauce. Watts fancied himself something of a curry connoisseur, and feared no colour of sauce save for blue, following an unfortunate incident in college that he suspected had close correlations to a friend's fondness for Bridget Jones' Diary. Transferring the questionable affections of his befanged dog to Hale's unsuspecting ankle, he crouched next to the sink and pulled open the cabinet, producing an unseemly brown cardboard box with the Poptarts logo emblazoned on the side. It was a veritable treasure trove of discarded take out items: twisty ties, a rainbow myriad of napkins, one very depressed sweet and sour sauce packet, three seemingly random marbles, and -- "Ah," he announced proudly, withdrawing two plastic wrapped sporks and holding them triumphantly out for Hale.
Hale: "I'm not eating with those," he answered primly, pulling his arms from the dark recesses of a warm wool coat and shaking the feeling back into his palms. There wasn't really anywhere to put his coat now, so he slung it in the window-divider-space separating their kitchen from their living room, and in doing so almost condemned to death the one plant that had survived there for more than a month. These were the desperate actions which Hale undertook when circumstances separated him from curry. There was another important circumstance now; for all he knew that secret trove of napkins and condiments had been there before he moved in. He had no idea if Watts even ate things that weren't martini olives during that period, and that made him even more suspicious of the sad-looking sporks with thin plastic around them.
He held this strict party line for maybe three and a half seconds, but looking up at the array of dishes and down at the sporks, he eventually did what they both knew he would--he took the one closest to him and presently began to eat his weight in basmati rice. It was between two bites that he answered, "May Sartoris."
Watts: There was precious little doubt that Watts was smugly amused over the failed attempt to rise above the use of sporks. More smug than amused, in all honesty. He rose to his feet and smirkingly unwrapped his own precious utensil hybrid. The aluminum containers beckoned, and he surveyed them for a moment as if actually deciding. In truth, his heart was always and would forever be won by the eye-watering, mouth-scorching vindaloo. "Did she use an actual model?" he asked skeptically, propping one hip against the counter as he lifted the container and took that first traumatically burning bite. His squinted from the spices, then from an ensuing grin, because trying to picture their assistant librarian working with any mere mortal model harboring the unfortunate need to breath and periodically move a millimeter was just so... Just so.
After a moment, he shifted the mail to an extremely intelligent new resting place on a stove burner, and boosted himself onto the edge of the counter. He took another bite of curry, then fanned the mail across the stove top. Bills bills bills, a letter from his younger brother undoubtedly containing another colourful pamphlet on sexually transmittable diseases. The rest was obscured, curiously, by a women's clothing catalog. He plucked it up by the corner, sending a smattering of cards and envelopes to the floor in the process, and held it in front of him. Smirk returning, he raised an eyebrow exaggeratedly, and kicked out one lanky leg to catch Hale knee with his socked foot. "Something I ought to know?"
Hale: He snickered down at his dinner, picturing the poor model who was subject to Eva's exacting methods (as though he himself was a laid-back picture of tranquility who never obsessed over details). "I don't know. I'd think she'd want to..." He paused. "I bet they'd get cold, though." His very heart went out to any nudes she might have tried to depict. It was very rarely that he felt anything like sympathy for nude models, but perhaps the Indian spices warming his throat were also warming his chilly heart. When Watts hoisted himself onto the counter and inspected a magazine of women's clothing, claiming his knee from across the space between them, the gesture was sufficient to pull him closer like a shephard's hook. He shuffled closer to the oven with a spork in one hand and a container of chili chicken in another. He hunched downwards so he could get a good impression of the women posed uncomfortably in neutral hallways, then straightened and shrugged.
"Kilts," he retorted, improbably and with no real intent to explain. Another bite of chili chicken, and then Hale slid his fork into the container so he could better pick through the mail. He was looking in the same order as Watts, so the order went: bills, bills, bills, letter-from-other-Watts, a few envelopes he couldn't read and did not care to investigate. And a postcard. Hale chose an envelope.
Watts: It reflected admirable self-restraint that Watts did not flick hot, stinging, blinding vindaloo at Hale's vulnerable eyes. Instead he snorted and tossed the catalog back on the stove. "Kilts my arse," he replied, and like Hale, did not bother elaborating. Another bite of his own chicken, and he propped the fork against the aluminum side in favor of reaching for the brightly coloured postcard Hale had surpassed. It depicted a disembodied mannequin head propped on a kitchen chair, which was frankly a little off-putting, but when he flipped it over he saw why. There were a great many things in the world that could make Byron Watts grin, but very few that could achieve the level of sly satisfaction the four lines on the back of that postcard did.
Hale: He was well into another bite before he even noticed that Watts was grinning, and at that point it was difficult to notice anything else--except for the cause of the grin, which was closer to eye level anyway, now that Watts was perched on the counter. It appeared to be some sort of arresting found-art collage that symbolized... he didn't even know what it meant. For Hale it brought back images of high school art projects he'd tossed together so he could bullshit the counselor instead of going to physics. Hungrier now for answers than chicken or rice, he tried to make sense of this bizarre artistic mail-art composition and Watts' according glee, with less than satisfying results. He tucked a piece of chicken in the corner of his mouth as he queried, "Avery?
Of course, he couldn't imagine any terribly exciting news from Japan, even if the show went well. He doubted that it was within Avery's power to make Watts beam like that--he hoped it wasn't. Besides, Avery had much better taste than trite disembodiments as projected upon traditional domestic space, or whatever the card's snappy keywords would be.
Watts: For a moment, the sly grin was turned on Hale, which admittedly was not entirely novel. However, it was not usually due to not-quite-anonymous information about a bare knuckle boxing match in Brooklyn when it was aimed at Hale. In fact, that sort of information was generally kept as far from Hale as possible. To say they had never been precisely level about Watts' lifelong, unwavering obsession with becoming not just a bookie, but The Bookie would be something of an understatement. When his brain finally caught up with his face, Watts floundered momentarily, trying to determine whether it was far too late to tuck the postcard under his thigh and pretend it wasn't there. It was.
"No," he offered, smile rapidly shifting through several stages, before veering sharply toward innocuous. There was nothing on that postcard, his expression said. Nothing at all, look what lovely weather we're having, how is your sister, would you like to buy this charming painting? Hale was not in the market for a painting, or if he was, it wasn't one Watts would be able to sell him. The unfortunate thing about being part of a swindling duo was that you couldn't really swindle your own duo, not without schemes and planning and any manner of dull things he always let Hale handle. "Avery wouldn't send anything this tacky." He rolled his eyes, casual, innocuous eyerolling, then nudged his foot against Hale's knee again. "How's the chicken? This vindaloo is brilliant. Almost as good as London. You should try it."
Hale: "No vindaloo," he answered matter-of-factly, and tucked in his chin before raising it again. It was like he was warming up that incredulous nod for an explanation that never came. There were just a series of false starts followed by an expert show in distraction, of which Hale had seen plenty and understood much and was not at all distracted by. He could search for months and years for an answer in those shifty eyes, and though he was experienced enough to identify dodginess, he had no pretensions of mind-reading. Instead he reached across and turned Watts' hand at the wrist, tilting it so the text was visible and tilting his head so he could read.
Nothing the postcard read like a confession. It was a date, a location. The only concerning information was its lack of information, and as the tone was both secretive and self-satisfied, it practically radiated with underground energy. He looked up at Watts and then at the postcard again. "Party? Opening?" He prompted, while his eyes scrolled over the text and his mind flipped through--what party?--and then whose? and then--what's the date again? The date was the 18th. It was upon that last question that he continued speaking, and in a tone Watts could not have expected when Hale was faced with the unknown: nonchalant reassurance. The kind of statement-making coolness that obviously aimed to impress. It was all awfully well intentioned, but in the face of such obvious mischief it wasn't much more genuine than Watts' statement that there wasn't anything on the postcard.
Still. He had chicken to stab with a spork, one shoulder to shrug. "I have a huge proposal due the 19th." He worked a grain of rice from the corner of a molar. "It's cool."
Watts: His lips twitched into the amused impression of a smile, caught quickly and subdued to a casual line. That Watts delighted impossibly in being sly prevented the expression from ever achieving Hale's feigned nonchalance, which only seemed to further his mirth. "Oh good," he drawled, dropping the postcard back onto the stove and picking up his fork. The urge to scoff and laugh came in equal measures at the perceived notion of his clandestine meetings, at the implication Hale was not even curious about them in the face of his huge proposal. It was such a gesture of--well, it was a gesture, which was why he valiantly fought both scoff and laugh with the fiery, vocally disabling influence of the curry. It was a futile effort, because no matter how straight his lips were, he stared at Hale with obvious humour as he chewed. "I was deeply afflicted by the prospect of telling you that you're not invited to the enormously secret parties I attend by anonymous instruction."
Hale: He stood, and chewed, and watched him very carefully, as though for signs of fever. It seemed horrible to conclude that anything that made him that happy could not be good--if there was a benefit of the doubt, he probably owed it to Watts--but he could not think of a single harmless attraction the party could possibly possess. Not even one. The images of a dozen highly illegal gambling merriments danced through Hale's head, chased in turn by the fact that he couldn't demand Watts not attend. Asking for clarification would lead to only to bickering (if it was dodged) or neurosis (if it was answered truthfully). Instead he smirked and leaned against the inside of Watts' knee, a casual stance of ownership with no strict prohibition on fun.
"Well, long as your enormously secret parties don't get you deported." This was the rarest possible blessing, nigh impossible to extract, the closest to go forth and misdemeanor.
Watts: "I'm a citizen, they'll just throw me in jail, so I can make shanks out of toothbrushes and the bones of my forgotten imprisoned brethren." There was a bizarre measure of pride in his announcement, not to mention the accompanying smirk. He would not go to jail, not again, anyway. Learning how to make a shank once was quite sufficient, and sitting next to hobos smelling of urine and depression did nothing for his disposition. Fortunately, he'd been to enough of these brutality soirees to realise more than one off-duty cop was loitering on the fringes, bet in hand. Hale did not ask for specifics; Watts did not offer them, merely gave Hale's side a returning nudge with his leg, pressed a heel to the back of his knee, and ate his curry with great relish. Curry was the ambrosia of the gods, shortly after fish and chips, but somewhere before toastable breakfast pastries.
"You're always invited to my parties," Watts generously added, in what sounded like an afterthought, but was clearly nothing of the sort. "I just don't think it's the sort you'd like." He cocked a wry grin and an eyebrow, then cuffed Hale's jaw with his knuckles--a subtle implication, and the only of its kind. "What scandalously riveting turn has the illustrious Monsieur Fragonard taken to provoke a proposal this time?"
Hale: It would be absolute folly telling him that he shouldn't go, since of course he shouldn't, but that wisdom had no real bearing upon whether he would. Hale knew that electric thrill for danger in Watts, had lived with it for years overseas, had lived for it on more than one sketchy long weekend in college. Now he stood the reluctant subject of ankle-pulling and light jaw-cuffing, and he was obviously biting the inside of his lip between bites of chicken, but he had resolved himself not to mention it and was reasonable enough not to sulk. That he responded to the press of knuckles with a reproachful look was just standard operation, and he could be coaxed back into pleasant conversation. It would be fine, he decided--willed it, if nodding could make it so.
"Oh, he's not doing anything new. Not that he has, since 1806. I'm just going to present some new material, a few structural changes, maybe change the... it's totally boring," Hale confessed by smirk, not in the least apologetic that his singular passion in life was drier than most arid climates. "But it's a thing."
Watts: No matter how frequently he feigned otherwise, subtlety was never lost on Watts. It was, in fact, shrewdly accounted for. Call it a trick of the trade, a necessity of the clever, or just a genetic anomaly; whatever the case, when faced with Hale's lip biting acceptance, he hesitated between voicing a reassurance and reissuing the invitation. Either could only cause sparks, and he gracefully and gratefully accepted the topic change with a blithe smile and a bite of chicken. Any residual anxiety dwindled at the reprieve, leaving him once again with insidious plans for a prosperous future heralded by anonymous mail. However, not even with his blithest smile could Watts dismiss Jean-Honore Fragonard and the epic dedication of Hale's dissertation. His mouth loitered on a smirk, then settled into a grave line as he ducked his head forward in a conspiring air. "You," he replied, all contrived seriousness and half-squinting amusement, "are completely besotted with a dead Frenchman."
Hale: It was just a bonus that this teasing came with all the novelty of a height difference. It made the playful condescension much more fun to receive, and he snorted in non-contradictory mirth. There was no point in denying the fixation, for though his choice in artists was desperate and arbitrary, he now knew the factors of Fragonard's life with nearly as much dexterity as he knew his own, and was synthesizing them more diligently than he'd ever record his own in a compendium. Besotted was perhaps not the best word. Begrudgingly indentured. All the senses in which captivated meant he was a captive were also valid. With a final bite of chicken, he slid the container onto the counter and his eyes back to the mail. "You're besotted with a headless torso on a kitchen chair," Hale reminded him sensibly (the smile did indeed sneak through), and with that it was all just something to tease about. It was a less legitimate and more dangerous obsession, but he wouldn't deny Watts' right to have one.
"I'm going to go get a shower," Hale announced, tugging through his tie with a thumb. He looked across Watts' leg at the sink of despair and merrily suggested, "You should do the dishes."
Watts: "I'm very open-minded," Watts retorted haughtily, then glanced at the mail with exaggerated fondness. His own container took a blind drop onto Hale's with an aluminum clink, then slid sideways over the edge of the counter. The muffled crunch of landing drew his attention, and he leaned forward to peer down at the mild mess with dark betrayal. There was curry on the tile, curry on the hem of Hale's pants, curry on the cabinet. His face scrunched in distaste, which did not match his snicker, which in turn did not match the very shallow level of chagrin that followed it. He would clean that up...later, when he wasn't valiantly battling every immediate cliche response and subsequent less-cliche mental image that came to mind with the mention of a shower. Ignoring his killer take out moves, he raised an eyebrow at Hale and gave his tie a slow tug that did nothing to help with loosening the not.
"Oh capital idea," he drawled with a smirk, which was so clearly a lie, because doing the dishes required the proper mindset. Planning. A desire to clean. Motivation. None of which he could muster on a curry-sated week night. "I'll do them as soon as you get in; you can play Russian roulette with the hot water."
Hale: So the vindaloo succumbed to the inexorable pull of gravity on cheap take-out containers. He could see quite well that the floor was covered, and his shoes were covered, and all that; it might have usually bothered him more than it did just then, but it had been a good day. The idea of being scalded still not appealing, and Hale laughed warmly, the depth of it seeming to stretch to his curry-spattered legs. "If I have to play that game, everyone loses," he warned, and mimicked the pantomime knock on the jaw Watts had given him earlier. It was used to much the same wordless end here, because having done so, he took his tie between two fingers and pulled it, slowly and not unpleasantly, through Watts' hand; his expression was accordingly dry, and the kiss on the chin without any loss of fondness, but the overall impression was that he really was going to take a shower and Watts really should do something with the kitchen, and Watts could have his exciting, legally-frowned-upon fun on February 18th, but he'd have to suffer for a lack of it just now.
Granted, the lifespan of such small righteous denials was usually under half an hour, and cleaning the kitchen could easily outlast it.
He dropped his gaze to the wreckage once a step back gave him clearance to do so, and ascertained that there was enough curry on the ground to kill a small dog. "I think we can time the hot water right," Hale suggested with a grin. The satisfaction of one-upping the stupid postcard was bittersweet at best, but suggesting Watts do housekeeping met with no conflicts at all. "You should probably do the floor first, anyway."