littletonoidea | IC Inbox

Well, yeah, but.

[ Angelo does a sigh. A big sigh, not a regular sigh. A heavy sigh, laden with frustration. ]

I mean, I've had normal jobs before. But, like. I'll be real with you, man, I don't fuckin' do anything in any of them.

Hah. God, I know right? Who wants a job, they're so much freakin' work. I made such a goddamn art out of avoiding as much work as I could back home you could call me Leonardo Doug-Vinci.

I'm not gonna call you that.

Ahh, you're no fun.

[Said with zero venom. If anything he's amused.]

Alright, so. What are you into, man? What makes your little heart flutter when you get really in the zone?

[ He's about to give a half-assed answer about finding his passion in the family business, but... Okay, fine, he's gonna take it seriously. This is what everybody wants, right? ]

I – don't know. I never went to college, I sucked at school. I do my job. It's... a job.

Preaching to the choir, brother.

Alright then, uh. Top three dream jobs, go.

I don't fuckin' know, asshole!

[ It sort of explodes out of him, but it's more embarrassment than anger. He really hasn't thought about this at all, or maybe not seriously since he was a kid. He screws up his nose, scowling at nothing. ]

Jesus Christ. What is this, twenty questions? Fuck. The last time I talked about dream jobs I was like, ten.

Hey, easy, Danny Torrance. It's not a goddamn inquisition, alright? Just- give it some thought. If you can think of something you like doing, we can get you a job that sits better. Something with blackjack and hookers, I dunno.

Who the fuck is—

[ Forget it. One day soon he's gonna learn to stop asking Eiffel that type of thing. ]

It's just, like, when I was a kid I wanted to be, I dunno, a fuckin' train conductor, but then I grew up.

Wait, for real?

[There's no judgement, just fascination.]

What makes a kid wanna be king of the trains?

[ It sounds a little like judgement to Angelo, whose favourite hobby is having the most bad-faith interpretations possible of every single thing anyone says to him. ]

I dunno. I like trains. I get travel sick unless I'm the one driving, but – trains never fucked me up. I always liked that. And I used to...

[ Big sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose. If Eiffel actually isn't judging, then it's clear Angelo is judging himself enough for the both of them. ]

I used to collect model trains. Like, when I was a kid.

[There's a moment of silence on Eiffel's end, the ongoing surprise at the situation he's ended up in.

When he speaks, he actually sounds genuinely interested.]

Well, hot damn. Those are like, crazy expensive, right? And supposed to be super accurate and junk.

I mean...

[ Angelo still sounds a little reluctant to engage with this on a wholly earnest level, but it's been for-fucking-ever since he's even talked about this, and it's a private conversation, and... Fuck it. ]

Some of them are. I definitely had a leg up on the collecting thing since – y'know, my family's rich as fuck. I don't remember being super into the stats or whatever, I just used to pick them based on colours and shit. But I had tracks. I used to lay them all out in the living room, I had stacks of books to get them up to the coffee table and back down again. Laid 'em around my grandpa's dog. She was a good sport about it, she never moved until my mom told me to pick all my stuff up again.

This wasn't a family activity? Kinda figured it's the kinda thing you'd do with your brother or something, make all those big dramatic stories about train heists and crap.

[He has no idea what kid stories are like, but Anne had had some wild tea parties.]

[ Angelo's quiet for a few seconds. He briefly considers hanging up on Eiffel, who is such an unbelievable asshole that he's making Angelo seem like an angel by comparison. He sighs. ]

No, it was my thing. My brother was into – fucking, I dunno, Pokeman cards. He was five years younger than me, we didn't play together. I had trains. One year, I guess I was getting kind of old for trains anyway, but I really wanted this one specific train for my twelfth birthday. It was a Hornby Princess Elizabeth. I used to get these magazines with trains in them, and I really wanted that one, I wanted it so fucking bad it was stupid. It was the only thing I asked for. So it came around to my birthday and I got up out of bed and there was one present, y'know, gift-wrapped and all. And I opened it, and it was this shitty plastic Thomas the Tank Engine thing. And my dad's like, y'know, since I'm so obsessed with toy trains then he got me a toy train. But then my brother's birthday comes around, and he opens his presents, and one of them's a Hornby fuckin' Princess fuckin' Elizabeth. He asked for it. And then he comes to my fuckin' bedroom and he's like, 'Hey, do you want this?' Little shit.

[Okay, maybe it's a sibling thing to take that in the worst way possible, but the way Eiffel sees it...]

So, uh. Your dad, who knew exactly what you wanted, made a joke out of your whole birthday and made you really freaking embarrassed to care about it.

But your brother... got the thing you wanted, at like- probably the cost of not getting any actual presents he wanted for himself, and then offered to give it to you because he knew how much it meant to you?

[A brief pause.] And you're mad at your brother for gaming your dad's shitty system to do something nice for you?

[ Another long pause. Angelo's actually thought about this a lot, mostly in terms of how irritating it was to have Ludo graciously come knocking on his door to share a stupid train with him and act as if it was a nice thing. It wasn't a nice thing. It's like when pricks on the internet give homeless people pizzas, but they just have to film it and put it on fucking Facebook or whatever. It's exactly the same as that.

He's not going to waste time splitting hairs over the details, though, so he very firmly puts all of that aside. ]

Do you know how irritating it is to have to fucking grind for something your whole life, and then someone else comes along and just gets to have it?

[That gets a slightly more pointed pause from Eiffel, and his tone is a bit... not cold, but harder.]

Yeah, actually. Because I grew up with a few toes real damn close to the food stamps line in Texas.

[ If Angelo feels at all guilty hearing that, then it doesn't sound in his voice. ]

So you get it. There you go. What're you all twisted up about?

I think we're working on different scales here. Little baby Dougster had to choose whether he got Christmas or birthday presents, 'cos no-one in his extended family could afford both, or wanted to give them to him.

But also? You were twelve. Your life flashing before your eyes is just Rich Kid's Sesame Street, and the grind is scamming your neighbours on twenty dollar lemonade stands. Yeah, it sucks that your dad screwed you over because he thought he was teaching you a lesson, and all it did was make you angry. But that's not your fault. And it's not Ludo's either.

Nothing's ever his fucking fault.

[ It's a bitter mumble, thin and weary. It's not the first time he's said that so resentfully, nor will it be the last. The thing is, he's not stupid. He knows his brother isn't responsible for every single remotely shitty thing that's ever happened to him. It's complicated. But he doesn't blame Ludo for existing, just for not doing enough to make it clear that his existence shouldn't be an obstacle to Angelo. ]

Anyway, I don't know why you're going full Commie on me. I'm not an asshole, alright? It's not my fault that my family's got money. And I'm not saying I fuckin'... volunteer at soup kitchens and tithe my income to charity, I like to spend what I've got, but I did actually earn it. Yeah, my dad gave me a job, I guess that makes me a nepo baby. But then I actually, y'know, went to the fuckin' job.

[ A pause, where he's clearly weighing up whether or not he should bother telling Eiffel this at all. ]

My first real job – so, at a business, not the business – I was twenty. My dad fit me in as the manger at one of our restaurants, L'Ultima Cena. Means The Last Supper in Italian, by the way. That's not relevant. So, I was the manager, and there was this guy, Nathan. He was like, an actual career restaurant guy, the expert. So I guess he was actually doing the work, and I was just... you know, supposed to be learning from him. But he was a fuckin' asshole. I can't spell for shit, my handwriting's awful, I know all that, but even I know you're supposed to just point that out to someone politely if it's a problem, you're not supposed to go up to them in public and say, "Hey, can you read out this note, because you write like a first-grader and I can't fuckin' read it." He was a real cunt. Pardon my French. But – so, anyway, we didn't get along, but we also... were intimate. It was like a hatefuck thing. And one time he got a little too handsy with me for my liking — [ He blusters right over that last part. Moving quickly on: ] So I fired him, and then I had to start doing everything myself. And I did. And we got a Michelin star.

[ It's clear he's actually genuinely proud of that, the tone audible in his voice. ]

So my point is, I'm not some useless rich kid with a thumb up my ass. And it sucks that your family didn't have any money, but that's not my fault either.

[Eiffel does retain it all - he is genuinely listening to everything Angelo tells him, and quietly resolving to see if he can't get the guy to cook for him one day - but it's a lot. So he's going to focus on just a small part of it at a time.]

Sooo... does that mean you might wanna work in the kitchen instead?

[ ...Huh.

Angelo opens his mouth and then shuts it again, brow furrowed. Not because he hates the idea, but because it actually makes so much fucking sense that he’s mad he didn’t think of it first. And if he’s honest with himself, he’s actually quite relieved Eiffel isn’t blabbing on about his traumadump back there. Sometimes Eiffel sucks a little less than usual. ]

Can I just do that?

Yeah, man. I'll pop in a word to the big guy and get your shift moved over. I dunno if they'll let you go full Michelin on their asses there, but an actual chef there is pretty much always welcome.

[He flicks through briefly.] I think they've got like, breakfast, lunch, dinner and the all-rounders. Any preference?

[ Time to not look a gift-horse in the mouth, hard. ]

... Dinner.

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