#idk if tess has an ashtray but something sure as fuck has become an ashtray if charlie is crashing there

[requitals]

@folie2deux: what twenty-something hasn't fallen for some creepy asshole? ( tess. )

it's nice, with everything else, to meet someone who's basically, well, normal. sure, charlie's sure tess is fucked up, but it's in pretty normal ways. she does normal shit. she doesn't care when charlie kicks back on her couch with the six pack of heineken from the corner store and smokes like a chimney, with just enough decorum to pop open the window. might not help much in gotham, but you can pretend.

they can talk like people. this isn't to say tess is more honest than anyone else. people lie like second nature, even when they don't mean to. usually it's about meaningless shit, things they'd rather swallow down, trying to make their lives sound better or more extraordinary.

she used to sit outside in the laughlin heat, when it was hot but not unbearable yet, and listen to the cicadas. that's what lies start to sound like when you're tuned into them long enough, an endless buzzing.

but tess doesn't seem to lie about the big stuff. she's also not so obsessed with winning a stupid race around a circular track that she committed murder over it, or some jumped-up heir to a casino that couldn't even begin to handle the books. when charlie thinks of it like that, it really starts to crystallize, how insane her life is now.

not that it's ever been any different, except for the more boring laughlin years. back in her twenties, she was—what? sweeping through poker games like it was nothing. she used to watch the faces in smoke-filled rooms. true. lying. lying. true. living with plenty of money, which, as it turned out, didn't make you any happier at the end of the day. took her too many years to figure all that out.

charlie points her nearly finished cigarette towards tess for a moment. "you don't have to tell me twice. i was hopping all over the country in my twenties, and, honestly?" she scoffs. "you would not believe some of the creeps you meet in philadelphia."

a pause as she stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray, leaving it smouldering. then she reaches down to pop open the next can of beer. "worst part is that once you get over falling for assholes, they don't stop falling over themselves for you. i was a cocktail waitress, and let me tell you, there's a lot of men who get very fucking weird about any girl, regardless of age, in a short enough skirt with a big feather arrangement on her head." her free hand hovers at about the appropriate height, six or so inches above the top of her head. "maybe i'm, uh, inoculated against it, but i really do not get the appeal. you look like a malformed bird. but if you want to swap 'shitty ex from your twenties' stories, i've got plenty."