Emails!

To: Thom
From: Leija
Date: Aug 12, 2007 9:26PM
Subject: <3

Just thinking about you.
If you're not up, hope you're sleeping well.

-L.
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To: Thom
From: Leija
Date: Aug 12, 2007 9:26PM
Subject: Re: <3

Sleep? What's sleep? Anyway - it's early yet.

How you feeling?

Thom
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To: Thom
From: Leija
Date: Aug 12, 2007 9:29PM
Subject: Re: <3

Definitely early for me. I dunno how the rest of the world works. :-p

I'm okay. Better. Clean and fed now, which is an improvement. You?

-L.
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To: Thom
From: Leija
Date: Aug 12, 2007 9:31PM
Subject: Re: <3

Sitting in front of my computer - obviously ;). I'm not too bad.

Thom
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To: Thom
From: Leija
Date: Aug 12, 2007 9:36PM
Subject: Re: <3

I'm glad you were. My mad super-psychic Catch Thom In Front Of The Computer skillz worked, then. Victory is mine.

How's your day been? Tell me to shut up if I'm interrupting anything, too. Or generally annoying or what-have-you. :-p

-L.
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To: Thom
From: Leija
Date: Aug 12, 2007 9:52PM
Subject: Re: <3

Obviously they did.

Quiet mostly.

Thom
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To: Thom
From: Leija
Date: Aug 12, 2007 9:55PM
Subject: Re: <3

... okay, possible rampant paranoia, but is anything wrong? That was five words. After sixteen minutes. I -will- shut up if you're busy, promise.

-L.
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To: Leija
From: Thom
Date: Aug 12, 2007 10:11PM
Subject: Re: <3

I've just had a bit of a bad day, that's all. It's nothing. So - you gonna be up and about again now?

Thom
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To: Thom
From: Leija
Date: Aug 12, 2007 10:14PM
Subject: Re: <3

Slow-moving, but I should be.

It doesn't sound like nothing. What happened? Can I help?

-L.
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To: Leija
From: Thom
Date: Aug 12, 2007 10:26PM
Subject: Re: <3

Good - you know I'm sure I have more of the town to show you...

I just had a bit of an argument with my mom, that's all - left me kinda down. It'll pass.

Thom
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To: Thom
From: Leija
Date: Aug 12, 2007 10:29PM
Subject: Re: <3

I'd like that. Of course. :-)

Sorry to hear, though. Anything you feel like talking about? I could call, if that's easier. Or you call me, if it's too late to call over there.

-L.
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To: Leija
From: Thom
Date: Aug 12, 2007 10:53PM
Subject: Re: <3

Then it'll have to be done.

This isn't really something I CAN talk about. I'm sorry.

You could call anyway, if you wanted. I warn you I may be depressing at you...

Thom
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Leija sat up a bit straighter in front of her laptop and nibbled on her bottom lip. Yes, it made her unbelievably nervous to find that he was in a bad (slash-depressed-slash-angsty-slash-quiet) mood the day after ... yeah. The day after they'd just gotten a bit closer. But she could handle nervous. And he'd given her a vague reason -- a reason he can't talk about ... which really, Leija, could be a terribly convenient excuse for things he doesn't want to tell you ... y'know, in the future and stuff, part of her mind cynically provided -- that didn't indicate it had anything to do with her. So. She tucked all that neatly to the side, reached for the phone, and dialed him up.

Thom was lying on his bed, fairly sure that she was going to ring. And so he picked up after the first ring. "Hiya," he said, sounding down.

"Hey," she answered, not sounding overly enthused either. Because the tone in his voice made her immediately wanted to hug him. Leija paused, realizing she hadn't really thought out a conversation topic any farther than 'hey'. Brilliant. " ... anything I can do?"

"Distract me?" Thom suggested, shifting onto his side, the phone cradled against his cheek. "What've you been up to today?" he asked her.

"Well, let's see. I got up, took a shower -- which was awesome by the way -- played around on the computer a little bit," she started, deciding to leave out the bit about her own parental encounter. That might just depress him further. She wrangled some upbeat into her voice. "Had lunch, played the piano a little, 'cause it's easier on my shoulders, aaand ... I think I fell asleep in front of a movie for an hour, I dunno. I've been completely useless today."

"You're playing again?" he asked her, latching on to that with interest. "So I'm gonna hear you soon then, right?" He quirked a small smile at the phone, wondering if he'd get shot down for that. But witness him smiling! Even if it was just a little bit.

Leija's teeth scraped over her bottom lip as she was struck with an idea. Maybe not a big deal to him, but it was really probably the best she could offer over the phone. "I could play for you now," she said almost shyly. That, and it would make it easier to pretend he wasn't there if ... he wasn't actually there.

He paused at that. He really really hadn't expected her to offer that. He'd always expected that he'd basically have to twist her arm for it, but - But he wasn't going to argue. "Sure," he said at long last, sitting up on his elbow. "I'd... that'd be great."

"Okay. Lemme get downstairs," she said, uncrossing her legs and sliding off of the bed. "This is only 'cause you had a shit day," she warned with a bit of teasing thrown in there. "In the future you'll have to work for it. And it won't sound as good over the phone, but ... yeah. I won't be as nervous if you're not looking at me." She padded down the steps and ghosted toward the den.

He laughed a little at that. "Yeah, yeah - I know. Course, I also know how to get stuff out of you now. I just have to have a shitty day," he teased back, his tone betraying the fact that he didn't really believe that anything would be worth it. "Anyway - first time you heard me play was over the phone..."

It made her feel warmer to hear him laugh, even a little. Good. Score. "True, true, and fair's fair. I'm a bleeding heart sucker for pouting, it's my dirty secret," she said with her own smile. God, she had butterflies already. She shut the door behind her and turned a lamp on, moving to the piano. "Any requests?" she asked, looking at the keys a little helplessly before she sat down.

"I'm pouting?"Thom asked her, shaking his hair back from his face a little. "Who said anything about pouting? I don't think that's my thing at all - pouting's something girls do..." he protested lightly. "And I don't mind - surprise me."

"Oh hell no, I've seen some male master pouters. It's just done differently, is all." She grinned and pulled a chair over closer to the piano. "Okay, I'm putting you down now. Don't say anything, and ... pretend you're not listening," she said, making a face and propping the phone up on the chair.

He'd been about to ask what the differences were when she announced she was putting down the phone and he heard the clunk as it hit the side. He stopped, almost holding his breath as he waited to hear her play - as if he might miss something over the sound of his own breathing, nervously excited butterflies appearing in his stomach and banishing a good deal of his frustration and irritation of earlier. Music had always had the ability to do this to him - calm him and distract his attention away from whatever was bothering him. And this, this was something else, because he cared about the performer as much as the performance. And so he waited.

Leija sat down at the piano, settled in, and told herself she didn't have an audience who's opinion she cared massively about. Newp, not at all. It was just like any other late night playing session. ... right. She brushed her fingertips over the keys as she tried to decide what to play, 'cause that was just about as important as how she played. Classical was always good, she guessed. So, trying to ignore the way she kinda felt like throwing up and hoping that her hands didn't shake too bad, Leija started to play. It was a quasi-simplified piece from a Russian composer that started out soft and built in intensity the longer it went on. But she knew it well and after a couple of minutes? She miraculously forgot about the phone.

Thom clicked the phone onto speaker and put it down on the bed, rolling over onto his front and laying his head down onto his crossed arms as he listened. She played beautifully. He didn't recognise the piece, but it didn't matter to him as he closed his eyes and just let the music fill his existence for however long it lasted.

It was a good six or seven minutes before she came to where she usually stopped. Which was really only halfway through the whole thing, but it was a good break. Leija finished and held still while the last deep note hung in the air. She glanced over at the phone and her nerves redoubled. The part of her mind that was good at stuff like that started to review what she had just played and pick out flaws and mistakes. Leija picked up the phone and put it to her ear, not daring to say anything yet. Had he hung up? Did he now thing she was a retarded amateur? No talent made one less attractive, didn't it? Ugh, there was a reason she didn't do this ...

Thom lay there for a minute after the music died away, before his brain kicked in and he realised that he should be saying something now. "That was great," he said, quietly - before he remembered that the phone was still on speaker and picked it up, clicking it back to normal. "That was great," he repeated with a smile she couldn't see, but could probably hear.

Well that was ... good. He'd said great, that was better than 'you suck and I'm totally breaking up with you'. She still felt fairly sick to her stomach, though, and she sat down on the floor and leaned against the piano bench to take a couple of quiet deep breaths. It was to make him feel better in the first place and it sounded like it had, so ... mission accomplished, she didn't have to faint. "I don't think I could've done that with you actually in the room," she murmured. "But thank you."

"No?" Thom asked, sounding surprised, but at the same time wondering why he was surprised. He decided it was the conflict between knowing she was performance-shy and actually having heard her. In his opinion, she had no reason to be worried about playing in front of people.

"No," she answered definitively. Though she wasn't going to tell him that it put her on the verge of panic attacks. That was too lame for Thom to know. He'd find out eventually anyway. Leija took a breath and smiled. It was over, after all. "So that's your piano freebie," she said, relaxing a touch.

He raised an eyebrow at her tone. "Pity," he said, mildly. "We could have played together. Your piano and my guitar..." He left the suggestion hanging for a moment, to see if it caught, then moved on. "But no matter. You're really good though. thank you."

Oh that wasn't fair. It was true, of course, and would probably be terribly awesome, but still. Not fair. "We'll see," she said, going for neutral. Since 'no' wasn't something she wanted to say, but 'yes' made her feel queasy all over again. "Thanks. Comes from having a music teacher as a father, you kinda ... get good. ... how do you feel now?" she asked. Whee, re-direction.

"You definitely do," Thom agreed, humour in his tone at the 'we'll see' - that he could work with. Given enough time anyhow. "I'm feeling a little better," he admitted, realising that he was. Less totally depressed and feeling like the world was unfair and out to get him at least.

"Good," she said with a smile in her voice. Whee, go her! She'd done a little something for him, that felt like a nice accomplishment. Stomach cramps were worth the sacrifice, dammit. She fell silent for a moment, her eyes settling again on the framed picture of her parents in the early eighties that was sitting on the bookshelf to her left. "I missed seeing you today," she said quietly. "Is that too Clingy Girlfriend of me?"

Thom chuckled slightly, a soft, almost inaudible sound. "No, that's not too clingy girlfriend of you," he told her, shifting so that he was looking down over the edge of his bed, his arms resting on the edge. "Missed you too." He paused. "My mom would like to meet you," he said, after a moment.

It was a perfectly normal thing to say. Of course his mom would like to meet her, they were going out and he'd come to visit her in the hospital and everything. But that's pretty much where the normality ended, didn't it? His mom knew about her. Apparently didn't like him with her, because she was dangerous. And he'd never made the suggestion before, oh, the night he has a fight with her. Hello, sudden terror. "... oh?" she said finally, sounding hella-unsure about that one.

Thom caught the tone. "You... You don't have to if you don't want to," he told her, hurriedly. He was coming down from being furious with his mother right now - he could never stay mad at her for long. He never had been able to. And whilst he couldn't agree with her that dating Leija was an inevitably bad idea, he knew enough to be able to acknowledge that her argument wasn't completely unfounded. He just refused to have such a knee-jerk reaction. It was a totally disproportionate response and he figured it was born out of the fact that she didn't want to see anything bad happen to her 'baby boy'. In Thom's own opinion, that baby boy was more than capable of looking after himself and making his own decisions, so whilst he'd listen to what she had to say, at the end of the day he'd make his own decisions and she'd have to deal with that.

"No, I ... that -- that'd just make her not like me even more," she said a little plaintively. Because she was already positive that the woman hated her. She had to, now. Go meet and be polite and keep her back straight. She could do it. She'd faced worse, right? Right? Nevermind that Thom and his mom were really close and Mrs. Harkin could probably break them up if she tried hard enough. "Was that what you guys fought about? Was it me?" she blurted out without really meaning to.

Silence greeted her blurted question as Thom winced. How the hell did he answer that? And not make it sound like a straight 'yes' - which it wasn't. "It's not that she has anything against you..." Thom started after a moment, already sounding apologetic. He should just never have told her in the first plcae - all his noble ideas about not lying to her any more than he strictly had to - it would ahve just been kinder to her to lie and have done with it. Surely this way was just hurting her more. Yet it was too late now. He sighed. "We weren't fighting about you. not exactly. We were fighting about my life. My future. It's... complicated."

It didn't sound terribly complicated. It sounded pretty damn simple. His mom didn't like the idea of her -- which, no matter what she said, translated to Leija as having something against her -- being involved in her son's future. For whatever reason. And when it came down to it? She was right. Her very nature made her ... difficult. A problem relationship from the get-go. And he didn't even know the part where she wouldn't ever look any older than 30, tops. So much for growing old together -- but they were seventeen, for fuck's sake! It shouldn't be so complicated already. She rubbed at one eye, face distinctly unhappy. She didn't have an answer that wouldn't sound stupid, so she didn't give him one.

No answer. That? Was not good. Thom might not know a whole lot about women, but it didn't take a genius to know that that was never a good sign. "Leija?" he asked, softly. Yeah, he really should ahve lied - should never have told her about his mom, or what she'd said, or any of it. He should have just pretended that everything was fine, but she'd see right through him if he started lying now.

She was quiet for another minute. Then sighed softly. "It's not fair that some teenagers only have to worry about getting their licenses, and what to wear to prom, and passing the SATs, y'know?" she said in a murmur. She picked idly at the hem of her t-shirt, giving the picture of her parents another glance. They hadn't made it either, had they? And they'd started out adults. "I don't want to complicate your life, Thom. Stuff like this is ... just supposed to make things better."

"Leija, you're not making my life any more complicated than it already is," he told her - which was the truth in his opinion. He was born to devote his life to protecting one person. And that person couldn't be the person he was involved in - the bottom line of which meant that any relationship he was in would horrifically complicate his life. And since he didn't intend to ever become a monk, he just had to learn to make that complication a normal part of his life. "And it will make things better. At the moment - mom's see you as what you are, not who you are. Call it prejudice if you will. She just needs to learn, that's all..."

Maybe a little irrationally, Leija had a wave of fierce dislike for the woman. It made her wonder how Thom turned out like he did, with a woman who made those kinds of judgements and fought with him about stuff and made him depressed and crap. ... though what did she know about mothers. Maybe all of them did that. In any case, she'd show her that she could be good for him. He wanted to be with her, and he was a big boy. "Okay," she said, feeling some Stubborn creep back in. "Just let me know when and where and all that, when you've got it figured."

Thom smiled a little. "Cool - I'll check with mom's schedule. But it'll probably be dinner - midweek sometime?" he sugegsted. He wasn't ready for her to come to a Sunday yet. They were special, after all. But he was glad that she'd agreed to come at all. Hopefully it would help, both them and his mom. She could see how lovely Leija was and how not going to bring all hell raining down on them she was as well.

"Fine with me," she said. "Not like I've got much of anything going on anyway." She smiled faintly herself. Yes. She could do that. Back straight, manners, answering questions. It would be wicked-uncomfortable, but sometimes you just had to bite the bullet and get over it. Thom was more than worth it.

"Not much on other than getting better," Thom reminded her in an almost lecturing tone, but there was an edge of humour there as well. "Which reminds me - you should be getting rest. I'm keeping you up..."

Leija made a dismissive noise, but grinned through it. "I'm so bored with rest. And I emailed you first, remember? I think I'm keeping you up. And am totally unremorseful about it, by the way." She did stand up, however, and very gently close the case over the piano keys. Getting back in bed did seem like a good idea.

"Ahh, but that was hours ago," Thom reminded her right back. "And it's getting late now." He checked his watch. "No, wait, scratch that - it's already gotten late. So you should get to bed. And maybe I could see you tomorrow?" he suggested lightly.

"Yes, mom, I'm on my way back," she said teasingly, voice getting softer as she walked through the darkened house. Leija started up the stairs. "I'd love to see you tomorrow," she said, the deep part of her chest feeling warm that he wanted to.

Thom made a 'pheh' noise at the 'mom' comment, but lightly so. He stood and started getting undressed, carefully peeling his shirt away from his back and off. "Well, give me a call in the morning when you get up and tell me what you feel up to," he suggested as he examined the back, pleased to see there were no visible bloodspots on it today, which was a first. Must be healing okay. "In the meantime, sleep well sweet."

She walked on the balls of her feet to her room and slipped inside. "Okay," she said, sounding happy even with just that one word. The little pet name gave her a thrill. "You too, okay? Have sweet dreams, I'll talk to you in the morning." Which was also made out of Yay. It was stupid and silly, maybe, but she felt better.