“Do you know what you sound like when you put your foot in your mouth?” Astryd unabashedly interrogates, head canting curiously as she nurses a mug of coffee gone lukewarm. “Do you ever hear yourself, Jans Joakim?”
He takes a strung-out draw from his cigarette, indulging her with a silence that invites her to continue. His other hand guards the rims of a scotch glass as a goalkeeper would the perimeters of his net. Defeated, she settles back against her seat, reading clear indifference in his body language. Jans caring for once would have been a real sight to behold — and now doesn’t seem to be that pivotal moment in history.
“Among everyone I know, nobody speaks their mind the way you do. But when they do,” she clicks a well-manicured nail against the wooden table to push her point. “They expect consequences, afraid they’ll give themselves away.”
Clearing his throat as though to center her attention on him, he dangles his smoke above a ceramic ashtray, tapping out the ashes. “Not exactly everyone you know.”
“Clearly,” she murmurs in return, before gathering herself and reclining against her chair coolly, catching a thumbnail between her teeth. Something about the gesture tells Jans she doesn’t entirely appreciate the prompt, lopsided smirk that accompanies his quiet chuckle to follow.
“Why? Afraid you’ll give yourself away just from being kissed up to a little?” He returns purely, shrouding himself in a thick puff of smoke. “You’re easy on the eyes. Not exactly the first time you’ve taken it from me. Look, you’re acting meek, like you don’t hear that from everyone all the time. Can’t fool my memory, even if we weren’t on the best of terms as kids.”
“This, coming from the one who claims he isn’t ‘everyone I know’?” She fights back, perhaps a little too hastily to defend her own position. “Easy, boy. Getting a little tipsy, aren’t we? See here. You’re extremely lucky it’s me sitting before you, and not some starstruck admirer of yours. But you’ve got another thing coming, if you assume I’ll take responsibility for your impaired thinking.”
“Touché,” Jans surrenders victoriously. “There’s my girl.”
1. A doll that may or may not be possessed by an evil entity.
He certainly isn’t the type who so much as blinks when he receives gratuities of any form. Receiving something from Mortimer, nonetheless, felt like venturing uncharted territory. That man could pique his curiosity pretty well just by pitching his opinion during times no one should have anticipated for him to speak. Between an enigma and a casual fixation, the clairvoyant fell somewhere in between, and most likely wasn’t well aware of the fact himself.
That, or too much so.
“Thank...”
He wears out the rest of the show of gratitude, a little too sidetracked by the stuffed Gengar which had emerged from within tissue paper wrapping into his possession. Seemingly mystified, Jans gives its tummy an inconsequential squeeze. He could have sworn he’d felt something wet on the back of his hand, and caught a glimpse of a bright red tongue flicking about before he’d freed it from the paper.
“Is there something you’re trying to tell me, Morty?”
