A Dim Sum Place, Manhattan, New York City, Monday Afternoon/Evening

[suitably_heroic]

He'd been living here full-time for almost two weeks now. It was starting to settle in a little bit, though that general sense of lightness hadn't quite vanished from him yet. Atton wondered if it would by the end of the summer, when he planned to start looking for an apprenticeship and work his way up to a Real Job™, but for now that was a distant prospect.

Anyway, Summer had threatened to come over, and he had threatened to let her, but they hadn't actually set a date and he was vaguely worried they'd just let it slip past them-- one of those (un)comfortable situations where a friendship just petered out on its own due to lack of maintenance. He woke up with vague thoughts on the matter that morning, and decided to just do something about it.

And now he was sitting here in a pleasantly chaotic little Hong Kong-style restaurant at a cheap-ass table, the kind where, he had learned, you tended to find the best possible food. Checking his phone. Waiting.

She probably wouldn't get distracted by anything on the way here, would she?

[[ expecting one. ]]

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

Atton held up his forearm. She'd seen the Stupid Lyric Tattoo before, of course, but it helped make his point. "This guy seemed pretty good," he said, lowering his arm again a moment later. "On the wordy ones, anyway. No Comic Sans or sailor hearts with phrases in them. He's in the neighborhood."

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer gave a wry smile, since she knew her style was going to run a little kitchier than Stupid Lyric Tattoos.

(Although the temptation to see the look on his face if she said she was getting herself branded with And all my friends smell like weed or little babies was strong).

"What about rocket ships and planets and stars?"

[suitably_heroic]

"He could probably do it?" Atton said. "I think Dane got some pretty cool lineart there, too. Just... don't expect him to put Taylor Swift's entire face in high detail on your back or anything."

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer had to smirk at that. "Well, I mean," she said, attention diverting again to the menu for a little more consideration with a sip of her tea, "with this brown hair now, I gotta figure out some way to stand out, right? Maybe you're onto something there."

[suitably_heroic]

"Hey, it's your body, I just retain the right to make fun of you for it for the rest of your life," Atton told her. "... Did you figure out what you want yet? For dinner, I mean. We can save the tattoo decision for when we get there."

Because he was apparently taking her now.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Well, Summer was about 95% on the tattoo decision already; dinner was maybe closer to 65%, but she was working on getting it up to 100, and now with renewed focus.

"Hmmm," she hummed as a bit for time as she looked a bit thoughtful. "Maybe. I mean, if those rice noodle rolls are their whole Thing, there's obviously going to be some of those, but then it's just a matter if I want to actually try to get real authentic with it or just be as basic as my hair right now and get the standard classics."

[suitably_heroic]

"Your call," Atton said. "I left the actual purist at home, and I'm not going to mock you too hard for just getting dumplings or something."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"There's a lot to be said, too," Summer pointed out, "about the classics done well, too. I mean, say what you want about General Tso, but, as someone who knows, it's easily one of the better things to come out of 1970s from a culinary perspective."

[suitably_heroic]

"On the other hand, why go to a place that does Cheung Fun properly and not actually have any?" said Atton, who was absolutely having rice noodle rolls, please.

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Gives me an excuse to come back again soon," Summer countered, looking far too proud of herself for it. "But you're probably right. I feel like anything going off your recommendations too far would be an insult to your newfound nesting tendencies. Plus maybe something to inspire me to whip up something to make everyone acting like frog jello last week was a cry for help feel real stupid."

[suitably_heroic]

"I don't have nesting tendencies," Atton grumbled. "I'm just maybe kind of seeing someone who has really strong opinions about Chinese food, yet is absolutely terrible at cooking any."

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer wasn't smirking fondly at that grumbling, how dare.

"Now don't tell me that!" said Summer. "Because now I kind of want to ask what I could get that would get the best rant out of him, all so's you can go home and tell him and just listen to him go off for...how strong are we talking about? Fifteen? Twenty minutes? An hour? All night and possibly into the first thing the next morning?"

[suitably_heroic]

"On just about any other topic I'd say five minutes, tops," Atton said, "But Lana asked him about food variety in New York the other night and that one lasted at least half an hour."

He sipped his soda. "I don't think they serve the really touristy stuff here," he mused. "If you really wanted to set him off, I should've taken you to Panda Express."