Teddy nods. "Oof. I guess it depends on how much you like helping, but. Oof." That's probably true for anyone who has to work at a family-run...business is the wrong word. (Or is it? Kind of the same thing for most churches.) But adding religion has got to stack extra pressure on anyone.
He's abruptly aware of how the light's shifted since they started talking. "-- Hey. I'm sorry, I should've sooner: Do you want to come up?" He lifts his head in a nod toward the apartment above the storefront they're outside. "Y'know. I'd normally move to the liminal space of 'beverages' before asking a boy home." He gives Iggy a little grin. "But. I'm not sure if this place does coffee shop." And even in the most platonic sense, when a conversation gets good it's only polite to have furniture and sustenance involved.
"Hound of the Baskervilles?" At Ivan, Teddy considers -- no, Ignatius sounds better, and Iggy fits better, they think -- but can't resist a joke. "Terrible, even," they deadpan. They can't maintain the innocent look though, and grin. "I can't speak on names. I was the first," they lift one hand to scare quote with two fingers, "'girl' in my generation, so I'm named for my grandmother. Theodora."
Teddy hastens, "Who I love. Theodora Prime is the best. But." She gestures at herself and lifts an eyebrow in do I look like a Theodora?
He nods along in a slow, sort of absorbing way that characterizes the way he listens: it's different from a yes, though it's not not one. "Barbarous words," he echoes back, thoughtfully: he's heard the term but hasn't ever really seen it in use. It -- maybe not unlike Ignatius, but as a phrase -- has a sort of melodic, internally coherent sound. Ironically, since it's clearly describing words someone hears as gibberish. "Do you know where the word barbarian comes from?" he asks, a little pedigogically. It's sort of a real question and sort of a are you interested in my weird interests.
Teddy shrugs, unbothered by the judgement of a church they don't belong to. "Biased, aren't we all." It's a little bit of a ...paraphrase of a reference. To something Iggy's probably too young to get and that they really should be except that their oldest cousins were tweens when they were born. "I don't know if everything's supposed to be useful," he muses, but it's just thinking out loud, not correction.
Teddy snorts. In my experience doesn't escape them -- that's an interesting way of putting it -- but they're still chatting and they end up moving on before they can interrogate it, which is fine. They start to laugh at the angel thing.
Then Iggy's all ums and half smiles again and Teddy frowns. Yep, that's why she'd asked the question. And why she'd asked the question in quite the way she had: if she thought Iggy was, at least knowingly, knocking on tables to cheat grieving people, it might be different, but you don't avoid the subject of messages that you bring up if you're trying to sell something.
That or he's one of the best actors Teddy's met. But the whole everything else about him tells Teddy that Iggy is a goddamn terrible liar and also, doesn't bother with it much. And there'd be no point in doing it here, anyway. No one uses money and the church he's from doesn't exist, in any organized sense.
More than that, though, Teddy just hates the nervous shifting. Right after he's been so kind about one of the worst, most nervewracking things they ever have to talk about? Fuck that. He reaches out -- hugs have already been approved, so probably simple touch is okay -- and captures Iggy's hands in his own where he's fidgeting. "Hey," Teddy repeats, soft. If they were the same height, he'd be tipping his head sideways to try and catch Iggy's eyes. Being a whole foot shorter, though, he just steps in a little more and looks up. "I'm asking because I'm curious. If I was gonna fuck with you about it, I could've done it back at Lily Dale. You know? It's okay."
Spirits, ghosts -- and not the Holy kind -- rank even further toward the things Teddy just believes in part of the spectrum and away from trying to be optimistically open-minded. It's not a struggle to ask if that's a thing that's possible. And okay, sure, why should Iggy trust him? They've known each other for the length of a conversation. But it's a conversation that's included hugs and pronouns and drugs and blowjobs and talking about their ancestry, so Teddy figures they've blown way past overdisclosure.
They step back to give him some space and look back up as he looks down. They haven't, actually, watched the movie, but they do know the plot, and most of the salient quotes. "You see dead people?" they ask, because that seems like where this is going.
And then pauses. "...Please say that is what you mean, and not we are dead people, uh, spoiler, because I went through that possibility already about this place? and I was doing okay with not being dead."
no subject
He's abruptly aware of how the light's shifted since they started talking. "-- Hey. I'm sorry, I should've sooner: Do you want to come up?" He lifts his head in a nod toward the apartment above the storefront they're outside. "Y'know. I'd normally move to the liminal space of 'beverages' before asking a boy home." He gives Iggy a little grin. "But. I'm not sure if this place does coffee shop." And even in the most platonic sense, when a conversation gets good it's only polite to have furniture and sustenance involved.
"Hound of the Baskervilles?" At Ivan, Teddy considers -- no, Ignatius sounds better, and Iggy fits better, they think -- but can't resist a joke. "Terrible, even," they deadpan. They can't maintain the innocent look though, and grin. "I can't speak on names. I was the first," they lift one hand to scare quote with two fingers, "'girl' in my generation, so I'm named for my grandmother. Theodora."
Teddy hastens, "Who I love. Theodora Prime is the best. But." She gestures at herself and lifts an eyebrow in do I look like a Theodora?
He nods along in a slow, sort of absorbing way that characterizes the way he listens: it's different from a yes, though it's not not one. "Barbarous words," he echoes back, thoughtfully: he's heard the term but hasn't ever really seen it in use. It -- maybe not unlike Ignatius, but as a phrase -- has a sort of melodic, internally coherent sound. Ironically, since it's clearly describing words someone hears as gibberish. "Do you know where the word barbarian comes from?" he asks, a little pedigogically. It's sort of a real question and sort of a are you interested in my weird interests.
Teddy shrugs, unbothered by the judgement of a church they don't belong to. "Biased, aren't we all." It's a little bit of a ...paraphrase of a reference. To something Iggy's probably too young to get and that they really should be except that their oldest cousins were tweens when they were born. "I don't know if everything's supposed to be useful," he muses, but it's just thinking out loud, not correction.
Teddy snorts. In my experience doesn't escape them -- that's an interesting way of putting it -- but they're still chatting and they end up moving on before they can interrogate it, which is fine. They start to laugh at the angel thing.
Then Iggy's all ums and half smiles again and Teddy frowns. Yep, that's why she'd asked the question. And why she'd asked the question in quite the way she had: if she thought Iggy was, at least knowingly, knocking on tables to cheat grieving people, it might be different, but you don't avoid the subject of messages that you bring up if you're trying to sell something.
That or he's one of the best actors Teddy's met. But the whole everything else about him tells Teddy that Iggy is a goddamn terrible liar and also, doesn't bother with it much. And there'd be no point in doing it here, anyway. No one uses money and the church he's from doesn't exist, in any organized sense.
More than that, though, Teddy just hates the nervous shifting. Right after he's been so kind about one of the worst, most nervewracking things they ever have to talk about? Fuck that. He reaches out -- hugs have already been approved, so probably simple touch is okay -- and captures Iggy's hands in his own where he's fidgeting. "Hey," Teddy repeats, soft. If they were the same height, he'd be tipping his head sideways to try and catch Iggy's eyes. Being a whole foot shorter, though, he just steps in a little more and looks up. "I'm asking because I'm curious. If I was gonna fuck with you about it, I could've done it back at Lily Dale. You know? It's okay."
Spirits, ghosts -- and not the Holy kind -- rank even further toward the things Teddy just believes in part of the spectrum and away from trying to be optimistically open-minded. It's not a struggle to ask if that's a thing that's possible. And okay, sure, why should Iggy trust him? They've known each other for the length of a conversation. But it's a conversation that's included hugs and pronouns and drugs and blowjobs and talking about their ancestry, so Teddy figures they've blown way past overdisclosure.
They step back to give him some space and look back up as he looks down. They haven't, actually, watched the movie, but they do know the plot, and most of the salient quotes. "You see dead people?" they ask, because that seems like where this is going.
And then pauses. "...Please say that is what you mean, and not we are dead people, uh, spoiler, because I went through that possibility already about this place? and I was doing okay with not being dead."