[prp] life's work (alg & taym)

[iloveyouDIE]

Bibliophile had not changed much since the world shifted around them. Still in the same location, it now shared an entry vestibule with Eve's teashop Equinox but other than that and some new sections on 'Magic' it retained the same quiet and simple charm (and free wifi) as before.

It was currently dead, one of those cold days where most people didn't want to come out including the employees. Algie was alone in the shop during this dead period, with the exception of his cat, and had taken over one of the front study tables with his own things.

He was, curiously enough, reading one of his own novels while simultaneously comparing it to a leather bound notebook that he flipped back and forth through. He was in full view of the front door, the passing foot traffic, and if anyone entered he'd be happy to jump up and assist.

Violetta lounged beside him, the long cat stretched nearly across the entire width of the table as she slept and her tail slowly waved back and forth.

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iloveyouDIE

The air that blew in with his customer was cold enough to confirm why he wasn't getting much business, but the customer in question had clearly arrived on foot anyway. He may have had a car now but it was the sort of car that looked like it might fall apart if you gave it a side-eye hard enough and so he preferred not to cause it undue stress--and in a way the metaphor applied to him, as well. Free time was a dangerous thing for Obadiah Thompson, and with years of walking everywhere theoretically behind himself he'd found himself still walking everywhere as much as possible.

They are passing familiar, if faces are included--he is a regular at the bar, where until the temperatures dropped he was generally accompanied by a shaggy liver-spotted mutt by the door and where America can be seen swinging by his barstool on a break, occasionally to solemnly check the progress of his burgeoning beard--and he's been into this very bookstore before, although never for long. And he knows Algernon, mostly through watching America's Instagram over her shoulder and from the stories she tells; knows Jeremiah. He has no idea if the stories run two ways. Up close he looks more frail and feral even than he does from far away, with scrawny hands and a skinny tattooed neck as he pulls off his scarf, clinging to the strap of his messenger bag like he'd tear the throat out of anyone who tried to touch it, but he smells better than he looks like he ought to, despite the overlay of cigarette smoke.

He is an extraordinarily soft-spoken person, far more than his looks would suggest, and so when he holds up a tattooed hand and says "just browsing" it might very well be the first time he's been audible. His attention, in any case, seems to be mostly on the cat, leaning to give her shaking fingers for inspection before he tries to pet her, with the lack of hesitation of an inveterate cat lover. But his eyes slide from the cat to the proprietor's work; the name on the cover to the notebook and extremely briefly to Algernon's face.

A couple of months ago he'd have been filled with questions he didn't ask, but the questions are different now, and they sit in his mouth like they're going to fall out whether he wants them to or not; he thinks about the notebooks in the bag around his shoulder and how the unfinished work in them had shifted and moved. "Planning another? I guess continuity is important when you've got that many, especially given--everything." He imbues that last word with just enough strangeness. It's like offering some kind of secret handshake. You too, huh?  

[iloveyouDIE]

Algie lifted his head when the door dinged with the accompaniment of cold air. He was half rising on instinct before the hand indicated it was unnecessary. Alg nodded a greeting instead.

He recognized the younger man of course, knew him so much as he'd seen him around and knew he was in some sort of entanglement with America. It was really only to his benefit because if not for her interest Alg would think he was just some addict or lowlife. It was absolutely judgmental of him, unfair to the extreme, but he was someone who put a lot of value in visual presentation and manner.

Alg knew that America was no dummy, that she wouldn't waste her time with someone who wasn't at least interesting and since he read books he at least got some points for that. Visually of course he was hardly Algie's type but heroine chic had been in at some point in time and he imagined there was a bit of a stray-sphynx-cat-in-clothes feel to the man who quietly slunk into the store.

Violetta was always popular and it was as if she expected to be approached, cracking her blue eyes to blink at Taym and sniff the air before yawning. She purred quietly.

"Well, I'm actually just reading-" he paused catching the insinuation, "re-reading them," Alg made an odd face, unsure how to explain the strangeness of learning your own books, having to reference his own journals - that he didn't write - and track his thoughts as he wrote the books - that he also didn't really write.

He gestured a finger to the cat, "Her name's Violetta."

Because he knew you wanted to know Taym.

"And I'm not sure we've actually been introduced," Alg smiled, lifting from his chair to offer a hand, "Algernon. Alg is fine. Or Professor if you're more comfortable.." Just please not Mr. Mercer.

There was a signet on his pinky, cufflinks in his sleeves, a pocket square in his pocket.. Everything about Algie was simply put together.

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iloveyouDIE

Taym, despite his constant and best efforts, was only rarely going to avoid being one of those people who constantly looked a little rough around the edges. He was a man with texture as America might have put it; of wind-chafed sunspotted skin and jittery tension and hair that never really wanted to behave, even when there was so little of it. The tattoos did not help, which may have been, in the perverse self-punishing way of the man, part of the point. The hand that closes around Algernon's is surprisingly strong, a businessman's handshake that feels practiced and incongruous, and it's sporting the image of a dead bird resting in a pool of its own blood.

"Obadiah," he says. "I've heard of you from America. Nice things, I promise. This town attracts odd names," he adds drily. "I've got a roommate named Alacoque."

He doesn't seem to notice that he stretches his own fingers when the handshake concludes, moves like he's just finished some sort of painful difficult task before immediately returning his attention to the cat, giving her her full due. "Had a cat named Violet once," he says. A pause, and his glance wanders back to the books. "I always thought it would be surreal beyond belief to see your name on a bookshelf in a store somewhere but I guess if I was right then that sort of experience has been trumped very effectively by--" and here, again, a thing unsaid, simply an expansive gesture that takes in the entire ******** world, because he'd realized belatedly that by seeing your name on a book you don't remember writing might have hit too close to home.  

[iloveyouDIE]

A strong handshake was a good thing and if Taym were here for a job interview he'd be doing well so far.

"Yes of course," Alg winked quickly, so natural and quick it was like a blink, and laughed softly, "My ex-fiance."

He settled back once the shake broke apart, adjusting his trousers for comfort before he settled and scratched a broad hand through his hair, "Alacoque is one I haven't heard before. Not as a first name anyway." Somewhere in the back of his mind his grandfather was teaching him about the saints and he was sure there was an Alacoque in there somewhere.

Alg closed the book in front of him after tucking something in to keep his place, "It's always surreal and worse when you own a bookshop and you're selling your own face." His brows rose, "This is all.." A wave of his hand said everything. Beyond that. Way beyond.

"The surprise that anyone ever wants to read anything you write never goes away I don't think."

Violetta seemed to have woken up a bit, possibly because a new visitor hadn't immediately leapt to pet her. She rose in a lazy arch and yawned before leaning to sniff at Taym, toes teetering on the edge of the table top. Silently, moss appeared and curled under her paws and gave her better purchase on the wood.

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iloveyouDIE

Gingerly, tentatively, he reaches to touch his fingertips to Violette's unexpected flora, without a hint of surprise but with a childish curiosity. He's visibly uncomfortable with the alluded-to changes in reality, tossing his head as if he's flicking hair off his face that isn't there, an old nervous habit that has never really died.

Taym is not one for small talk, or volunteering information. Nor is he one for--well, a lot of the things that Algernon is; he has a jealous streak a mile wide. But he's also--it couldn't have been dragged out of him with a crowbar--lonely, and it's taken him this long to start feeling his way around the idea that he's someone people might talk to, instead of pretending he isn't there because he's uncomfortable to look at. That isn't true any more. He's re-entered the realm of humanity after an agonizingly long time on the fringes of society whispering sleepily to himself under stairwells or in doorways, and so after a moment of stroking Violetta's forehead he permits himself a sudden little ramble.

"I used to have this friend, Alex, who was pretty sure everyone wanted to read what he had to write. He'd plan his book tours and interviews during his--downtime. I think he'd be more surprised that anyone was capable of actually finishing writing one book, let alone a shelf full," he says drily. "Not the most productive person I ever met. Takes a lot of discipline, I guess, not just to write it but to--to put it out there for people to see. Although I guess at this point that part must be easier for you--dealing with the inevitable detractors."  

[iloveyouDIE]

"I'm not overly outgoing on my own," Alg chuckled, "It was a bit difficult when I was younger to share. Even to say I want to write for a living is difficult.. because immediately people assume failure." Everyone wanted to be an artist right? People thought to create was simply to not work. Thankfully his family was supportive and he'd gone to school and done well so that he did have something to fall back on. "I had - have - a good support network."

The moss was springy and when it spread too far from her it got dry and flaked away from the table with no lasting damage. There were no flowers in it, not at the moment, but under her it was like a tiny carpet of turf that was all her own. She leaned and head butted his hand with a purr. Violetta was a large cat, and insistent, and used to getting her way.

Alg glanced at her, reaching for her tail which twined around his fingers and was released, "She not as magical as her brother. But makes up for it in size I think."

When Alg touched her she purred louder and behind each ear a single violet bloomed as if from nowhere.

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iloveyouDIE

And there it was: the shoe that was never far off from landing, usually when he was least expecting it and it would make his psyche jump, startled. The idea of a support network. He rolls a shoulder uneasily, considering America's quiet suggestion that he'd benefit from a therapist and the way it had raised his hackles, and the check he'd gotten in the mail with no letter, signed by his father with vehicle in the memo line. A moment where he'd swum out of the cross-current and had, for just an achingly brief instant, touched his feet to the bottom before getting swept back out again.

"Good thing to have," he says neutrally, voice unmoved. "Support network." He smooths Violetta's ear gently aside to look at her strange new head ornaments. "Pretty ******** magical on her own, looks like--pardon my vulgarity--although to be fair I don't know her brother so I don't have a frame of reference for that or her size. I love her," he adds impulsively, again in the way that inveterate cat lovers will, utterly without shame. It's a jarring note in with the rest of him--silly and emotive and vulnerable all of a sudden.

He gives her a final scratch before letting her go to drift to a nearby shelf, although he remains quite intentionally within conversational range. His restless hands, now deprived of cat, gently touched everything that presented itself to them: the edges of shelves and the spines of books, the corners of pinned-up notices. "It's funny," he backtracks as he pulls a random book gently free from its shelf to examine the dust jacket. "The way people assume failure when you try to--to write, or whatever. Over half of all restaurants fail, too, but somehow that's seen as some kind of legitimate enterprise. Maybe people like Alex just give you all a bad name, but I'd be willing to bet there's a ton of assholes--again, sorry--who are on their fourth Chicken Shack, too, but no one looks at them, they look at Ludo Lefebvre flying over from France and setting up a restaurant in a strip mall." A vague wave of his hand as he skims over the table of contents. "They'll look at every writer like an Alex and every restaurateur like a Lefebvre. Double standards." And then, as the awareness of the sheer quantity of what he's said comes over him to say nothing of the content of it, he adds: "Sorry, pretty sure trading the skepticism in for a glib a*****e expecting you to talk shop isn't much of an upgrade."  

[iloveyouDIE]

Alg smiled in appreciation of the publicly offered cat love. Perhaps it was his professorly appearance or his finely curated age lines but there was a fatherly aura to the man, despite his own personal issues with the topic of being a parent. Or perhaps he was just very happy about his cat-child being loved.

"You may see him around. He runs the streets wild like a hooligan," Alg had the phone out, as any good parent would, and was moving to show Obadiah cat pictures, "His name is Hellbine. He's a pint sized terror but pretty good at growing plants and carrying messages and things.."

The scroll of pictures was Violetta both laying on top of, or serving as a nest for her much smaller brother who sported a curled mohawk of vines. There was possibly one of Hellbine sleeping on what had to be Jeremiah's face by the silver stubble but smothered entirely by cat.

"I don't mind talking shop," He chuckled, phone set back down when they were finished, "But honestly I can't say I was so gung-ho on writing that I abandoned my sense. I did pursue school and teaching," Because he got that dreaded English degree. "Possibly too cautious to simply go all in. I needed something to fall back on just in case."

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professorly isn't a word but idgaf

 

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iloveyouDIE

Taym is extremely obliging when it comes to other people's cat pictures. This is something that America already knows well and that Algie now also has the pleasure of learning. He just refrains from whipping out his phone to share a bunch of photos of Ivy in return.

He turns his attention back to the shelf, not a cold shoulder but with the sense that he simply constantly needs something to occupy his hands, somewhere to put his eyes.

People often assume Taym is on drugs. Their mistake is seeing him sober and assuming he's on meth, rather than realizing he's sober and that maybe there's a reason he careened into opiates instead. Even when he's calm, in a quiet bookstore, there is an incessant restless energy that moves him. He talks with his hands. In better days he'd channeled it all into a sort of perpetual sway and toss of his head that had the appeal of, say, a restless horse barely kept to its halter. He can still manage that, when he tries, but otherwise he's just busy hands fidgeting with pen caps or dog-earing the pages of whatever he's reading for no reason, his eyes constantly roaming the middle distance to avoid people's faces. No wonder he took up smoking. No wonder America's pile of Christmas gifts had included a little plastic toy for occupying restless fingers.

Which makes it a little incongruous, what he says next; what he's surprised to find himself saying, that he'd never even told America despite the many openings she'd given him. "I thought I was gonna teach, for a while. High school. That was the plan." He makes a non-committal noise in his throat. "Found out higher education wasn't for me. Didn't figure out a fall-back plan, though. Worked out all right," he lies. "Probably woulda worked out sooner if I'd been even a little cautious." He pauses, gestures at the shop with the book he's holding. "So does that mean--is this just marketing? Selling your own face. Seems like a nice perk."  

[iloveyouDIE]

Alg was hardly offended when Taym turned away. He watched him, not overly critically but more out of curiosity. Mostly because he knew the younger man was something to America, a girl both he and Jeremiah cared some measure about but also trusted to have a good head on her shoulders. Still there was no accounting for tastes and good girls often fell for bad boys.. but sometime bad boys simply dressed bad or talked bad and good girls were nothing more than the sum of their clothing and makeup.

It was easy to tell someone on drugs from someone who simply had had a hard life. Taym wasn't wasted even with the tremors and the fidgeting. The professor himself was a victim of a mind that didn't stop which meant constantly occupying himself and even sitting still often meant a bouncing knee of boredom or mercilessly picking the label off of a bottle of water before he realized he'd even done it.

"This-" Alg looked around, "-is a result of my disgust at the selection of bookstores in the area. College book stores are a joke and don't get me started on chains of coffee table book shilling, dressed up Starbucks." It didn't hurt that he had the means to make it happen, but better books than something indulgent (even if to Algie, books were indulgent).

"You know," He pushed himself up from the table phone slipped into his pocket and hands following. Violetta stretched and put her paws on his chest which meant it was time for a ride and the stretchy cat was draped around his shoulders, "In this shitty time period for education you can take a test for certification and still become a teacher. They are practically begging for them nowadays."

The cat was getting head scritches as her tail curled around his throat, "And there's a distinct lack of community programs for kids. Something like that could be equally as valuable."

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iloveyouDIE

Another little nothing-noise, another little nothing-gesture. "I already have two jobs and one of them's--I mean, I get paid, but it's a pittance. It's volunteer work, part time. And I wouldn't trade it away." He shifts uneasily, wondering just how gossipy Jeremiah is and then chasing the thought away. "Hard enough between that and a graveyard shift to find time to--do anything. Be anywhere. Especially now that America's going to classes." A pang, at that, visible in a sudden tension in his face. Maybe there's a strain there. "And I don't--they wouldn't hire me, anyway." He doesn't elaborate, but he probably doesn't have to beyond a vague gesture at his everything. He doesn't exactly look like the sort of person you'd entrust with a group of children, even if, in truth, there could be few safer places for them. And it keeps him from having to cop to his arrest record. A few trips for possession and public intoxication probably wouldn't win him any points.

A pause, and a little nothing-laugh to go with the rest, little more than an exhale. "I did apply to one of those coffee table book shilling chains. I even applied to the Starbucks. Felt a little Faustian in the most pathetic way possible. Little relieved they never called me back. This one's a little out of my way but worth the trip," he adds, running his fingertips down another row and plucking another title out with a decisiveness that suggests he plans to keep that one in his hands. "So thanks for that, speaking of doing a public service."  

[iloveyouDIE]

Jeremiah and Algie shared everything, especially when it came to the younger people that they surrounded themselves with. Besides that when you spent all your time with your spouse the conversation topics always fell back to what gossip was heard about who, what drama was going on where, and how thankful they were not to be involved. Unless they were involved which could be both entertaining and a pain in the a**.

"Well it's not exactly residential around here," The shop was close to the college and more of a shopping area than anything else, "But I couldn't let the building go." He assumed the version of him who got this place felt the same, even if circumstances were different.

"Applied to all of those places and never applied here?" Alg actually tutted at the other. "Should I be offended?"

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iloveyouDIE

He lifts his eyebrows but doesn't look up from his continued perusing.

"Didn't think you were hiring," he says mildly. "And I didn't have a car at the time either so my options were somewhat limited to the aforementioned residential areas." He wants to make a self-deprecating joke, a little don't look a gift horse in the mouth, but he finds he can't and is in fact pre-emptively and irrationally enraged by the idea that Alg might actually believe him, so instead he falls back on the comforting familiarity of laconic assholery. "Your loss."  

[iloveyouDIE]

"Since-" Everything happened, the world reset - Alg paused, "I'm always hiring.."

He moved to another shelf, entirely out of Taym's way and rearranged several of the books that had been shuffled around.

"I've only got one true full time employee and the rest are college kids," He glanced at the other man a moment, possibly an offer but he didn't overtly give it. "And Rabbit discovered he was employed here when I did .. which is to say just the other day. But he's got kids. It makes sense."

Alg did smirk, brows lifting, "You never know, maybe you did apply here." Not that he would know either. But if someone wanted to be a lackadaisical jerk..

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