singillatim | August catch-all

"Why not?" Lalo asks, when Billy says she shouldn't involve with herself with Lestat. "I would! Have you seen those teeth?" Lalo wolf-whistles. Too bad Lestat isn't around to appreciate it, though. Or maybe that's a good thing. Lalo might not be so forthcoming if he was.

Lalo seems delighted by Chloe's list, though. The "fuck you two" really makes him lose his shit laughing. He almost doubles over laughing, except... "Sixth! Hey! You should've ranked me higher. Who knows what I might ask you to tell Billy now."

He does pull her into a light, one-armed hug, though. To show her it's all fun and games. "Okay, okay. I got another one. His eyes twinkle. "Where would I be if I shaved?"

“Thanks, Louis.” Chloe makes a face at Billy, even though she knows he can't help worrying. “He hasn't done anything to me yet that I haven't invited.” Getting bitten by a vampire is definitely not the worst thing she's done for food, anyway.

Then, to Lalo: “Oh, lower. March’s makes him look like one of those grown-up weed dealers who hangs around college campuses. Not the same.”

Ugh. Christ in heaven, of course he should have known that his warning would fall badly with these two of all people. Lalo seems like some sort of weirdo who would laugh even if someone waved a gun in his face, and Chloe just thinks danger is sexy, or whatever. Who cares that Lestat is a psychopath who gave him a scar, and who probably would have done more if Billy hadn't quickly left.

So he doesn't push his point. Billy knows when there's no victory to be had, when to stop wasting his breath. There's some hurt in the fact that his concern was so easily dismissed - mostly because of Chloe - but as always, he doesn't speak up about it.

He doesn't stop walking after the two of them, but Billy does go quiet, not commenting anything on their assessment of Lalo's spot on the list.

Not so fast, Billy!

Lalo stops when Billy starts to fall behind, and reaches out to rope Billy in. Sometimes what somebody doesn't say is more important than what they do. "Hey," he says. "Don't worry about it! If Lestat does anything to her, me and you, we'll take care of it." He winks, and pats Billy on the back.

Up to Billy whether or not he finds that reassuring.

In truth, Lalo has his own scar, given to him by Louis and not Lestat, not visible under the turtleneck he's currently wearing. How could he hope to speak openly about it? How the power he'd always taken for granted had been ripped from him by something he had no idea existed until that moment. How it had felt good, much to Lalo's shame. No. It's easier to joke about it.

Speaking of... the Community Hall is in view, but Lalo isn't quite done with Chloe yet. He shoots Billy a conspiratorial glance, as if he somehow thinks they will be on the same team here for some reason. "Miss Chloe," he says. "Are you ticklish?" His eyes glint.

Chloe, unfortunately, doesn't know what happened to Billy and mostly assumes that Louis has been running his mouth at the store after he’d had that big meltdown catching Lestat leaving her place back in June.

She's about to ask him what’s up - she’d definitely been expecting more banter - when Lalo asks her if she's ticklish.

“Nnn-” Wow, okay, she really can't lie, huh? “Oh, fuck you.”

Oh god, no. Not reassuring. So not reassuring! All Lalo is doing is touching him - and touching him in an incredibly casual way, on top of it - but Billy looks as if the other just hit him in the face. Not in the sense that he looks offended, but more that he looks totally flabbergasted on how to deal with this. You'd imagine Billy would be more desensitized to modern ways of interacting with other people, but.. nope, apparently not.

He doesn't even have the time to say anything about it, not with how his brain is busy processing this for a moment - and yes, he would burn someone down for Chloe, and even more so if it's Lestat, so it's not like Lalo's words are necessarily false even if Billy isn't sure how much he can count on Lalo in this regard - and then there's that question already.

Now that question is what does finally make Billy look offended. Not excessively so, but there's some definite Side Eye going on here that he doesn't bother to hide.

"Please do not touch each other in my presence," he says, his tone a touch dry. He's serious about this one though! Lalo, don't think about it! Don't make this some weird exhibitionist kink thing!! "At least bother to ask Miss Frazer interesting things if you insist on asking her anything at all."

He's fully aware Chloe has totally caught on to what Lalo is doing here, so he's not even really exposing the other as much as he's just being far more blunt about it than Lalo is.

"For example-- If both Mr. Eduardo and I were in a dangerous situation and you could only save one of us, who would it be?"

Chloe rolls her eyes again. “If you guys are asking these kinds of questions you're not allowed to get mad at me! I can't be nice!”

Normally she’d be able to soften it a little.

“Besides, you know it's you, don't you? Lalo is pretty tough and can also turn into a wolf, he stands a better chance than you going it alone.”

She laughs. “Or maybe I’d break the game like my friend did when it was me in danger. Refuse to play by those rules. I don't know.”

August catch-all

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