coquaigne | mountains beyond mountains,

Tom, still utterly oblivious, takes a moment to blink in surprise. This is how you make friends, right, they invite you to places? "R-really?" It sounds like fun, more less...

"Yeah," Sebastian says. He wasn't expecting Tom to take him up on the offer, but--wouldn't be that bad, would it? Put a hat on him, maybe no one'd even notice the shaved head. "You can stay at my place. I've only got the one bed, of course."

Now he might just be tease-flirting. Flirt-teasing? The thing where he tries to see how far he can push his luck.

Tom just beams. He's never been invited over to someone's house before, this all seems very exciting. "Brilliant! Never been to London proper." He wonders if he should invite Sebastian to his place, but there's nothing really of interest to compare.

"Great." The more they talk about it, the better it starts to sound. He'll take Tom around, they'll have a nice night, and then he'll drop him back off in Coquaigne, and no one'll know the difference. Tom's guileless smile is only encouraging him at this point. "You're not bad for a skinhead, you know."

"What? Oh." Tom puts his palms on his head a moment, confused until he remembers what 'skinhead' means. "Oh, right. We just keep it cut short so it don't get snagged on nothing."

Sebastian frowns. So he's not really a skinhead? Well, that explains a lot, but the explanation isn't exactly a coherent one. "Snagged? What would your hair be snagged on?"

Tom shrugs. "Branches and that. Got my trousers caught in a space heater, once." He continues smiling, clearly amused by the story.

"Sounds like me," Sebastian says, laughing a little sheepishly. "I'm always walking into doors and shit like that."

He pauses, and then a thought occurs to him. "You must walk into a lot of trees--how'd you get those scars on your back?"

"Uh-- yeah. Like that." He's lucky to have wormed his way out of that one. "Oh, uh-" He turns back, as if to look at his scars, and fleetingly reaches back to touch one.

"Uh, camping. When I was a kid." Which is more less true. It's not that he wants to lie-- he wouldn't if he had a choice. But he can't really tell someone he was attacked by a werewolf. Not this someone, anyway.

"Really?" Sebastian's had some nasty accidents, but none of them have been on the level of noticeable scarring for years and years. Little scars at best. So he's a little wide-eyed when he asks, "What happened?"

Tom scrambles for an answer. McNair never taught him how to lie. "Accident. A wild animal, it--" He frowns. "Uh, it got me." Which is, again, more less true.

"Fuck. That's awful." You'd be lucky to be alive, scratched up like that. Suddenly almost walking into traffic a few times too many seems like small potatoes. "I guess I shouldn't have asked, sorry."

Tom shrugs, and goes right on back to smiling. "Ah, don't bother about it. No one's ever asked." A pause. "Probably should get my shirt, though." He chuckles, and wanders off to retrieve his things.

Sebastian follows him over to his stuff. If Tom's not going to be annoyed by questions, he's certainly going to keep up with them. "Do a lot of boxing, do you?"

Tom finds he doesn't mind questions, or being the center of attention. Now if only Sebastian would stop asking questions Tom doesn't have a good answer for... Tom puts on his shirt and his jacket over it, and hopes he does so quickly enough that Sebastian doesn't see the stakes packed into the inner pockets. "Naw," he says, because you shouldn't lie when you don't have to. "It's just good for building upper-arm strength, y'know?"

Sebastian doesn't know to look for stakes and thus doesn't see them. It's amazing what you miss when you assume someone's as dully human as everyone else in the world. "Yeah." He wonders just how much upper-arm strength you need to cook. "I mean, I guess. I'm not exactly--uh, not gonna win that many fights, myself."

Tom smiles and laughs, hands in his pockets. He'll let Sebastian lead the way. Ladies first. Not that-- well. Nevermind. "I could teach you, if you like. It ain't hard."

"I know a little," Sebastian tells him, and since it seems like Tom expects him to head off, he does. Back to London it is, he guesses. "My father taught me. But--well, I'd rather make a run for it if I can." Father'd be relieved to hear that, he suspects, even if it's kind of embarrassing to admit to a boy who's clearly gotten cut up more than once in his lifetime.

"That's good," Tom says, following like a loyal dog. "Violence is never the answer." Though considering how often he gets into scrapes... "I mean, unless you're cornered and that. Or if somebody else is. Or if-" He stops himself before he says or if they're vampires.

"Yeah," Sebastian says as Tom goes through his list of exceptions, shrugging, then looks expectantly at him. After a moment, he asks, "Sorry, did I cut you off?"

Tom blinks, and wishes, faintly, that he could feel right-footed again. He'd like more proper friends, and Sebastian is real nice. "Oh, uh, nothing. But, yeah, I can show you some moves if you, uh, if you like."

And Sebastian wouldn't mind keeping Tom around as an acquaintance. He's interesting, to say the least, and it can't hurt to walk around with a bloke who looks like he could beat you into a pulp. Especially when he turns out to be about as likely to hurt someone as a housefly. "Yeah, that'd be ace." He shoots Tom a grin. "Maybe I can teach you how to do your face after."

"My face?" Tom frowns a bit, thinking. "How'd that work?"

"Oh, you know." Sebastian mimes putting on makeup. "Lipstick, rouge, mascara..."

Tom balks. "What? No... I'd look rubbish." Sebastian in makeup is one thing, he can clearly pull it off. Tom would just look funny...

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