time in the attic

who: dean and thia
where: their place
when: evening

Thia was upstairs in the attic. Most of the house was still kinda full of fried-things electricity wise but candles worked(and kept it a little warmer, and gave a nice atmosphere!). Plus, she'd taken windex to the windows up there so it was bright enough to see by. She was only a little tiny bit see-through. That was because most of her concentration was on her target. The attic was big enough to practice her archery, and that was what she'd spent her afternoon doing. She was on one end of the attic, near the stairs, the target was well over in a cleared spot, just so she didn't mess up and put holes through anything important.

Her fingers were hurting again, and she'd put bandaids on them to help, but it was just something you had to deal with. Any kind of repetitive motion like that was going to cause something. For her, she had string cutting into her fingers so she was going to have to build calluses. So far, she hadn't. What she had done was get pretty good. She had much more of a practiced rhythm down. She had her breathing timed right, everything else. Granted, it wasn't in the middle of a crisis or anything, but she'd learn that eventually. She also was in an environment that didn't have factors like wind, but she was content to plug along at things at her own pace. Oz had told her she was doing well when he'd been up to check on her earlier.

She noticed people checked on her lately. It was likely because she knew her normal behavior had altered, even if she hadn't been trying to be obvious about it. The problem was she still didn't have hearing aids. Oz was trying to get her new ones, but it wasn't like she could go in for hearing tests or fittings, so it was slightly trickier than usual. Most of the time she didn't feel like a girl who was disabled. She couldn't hear a lot, but she could hear enough, and she could do things like keep up with a conversation. Without her hearing aids though she was basically deaf. She didn't hear anything unless it was loud, and people raising their voices still didn't quite filter through. It made them uncomfortable even if she knew they were trying not to show it, and she was uncomfortable anyways. She knew she couldn't keep up, she knew other people were trying to compensate, and the worst part--she knew her level of communication went to hell.

Her voice was quiet to begin with. She knew that. But she knew she was loud enough that people could hear her, normally. Without her hearing aids she didn't have a proper gauge, and she was incredibly self-conscious about it. It was probably stupid, if she just spoke normally she'd likely do fine, but the automatic nerves were in place, and it left her worrying about her pronunciation, and volume, and everything. If she was dropping out sounds, where she sounded deaf. One thing she really hated was seeing the looks on people's faces when they didn't quite understand what she'd just said, but didn't want to ask her to repeat herself.

Retreat had been what her response was. She'd started spending most of her time occupied with something solitary. Dean spent his days at school, and normally she'd at least spend some time with Oz and Sophie but she hadn't really since. Which was when they'd started checking on her. She let another arrow fly, something that was helping. At least she could do this, it wasn't at all effected by whether or not she could hear the solid thunk in the red circle on the target.

Dean had been standing watching her for a few minutes. He was behind her, back by the stairs. She hadn't looked round when he came up - he doubted she'd heard him. He naturally walked fairly quietly, and she still didn't have hearing aids. He didn't mean to spy, and he didn't want to make her jump - but he liked to watch her, occasionally. He still had those tendencies, and they weren't going to be going away.

He waited until she was stringing her next shot, before he walked forward and round into her view. He didn't say anything, waiting for her to look up to do that. He didn't want her to miss anything, even if it was just 'hi'.

She saw a shadow change on the floor first, then looked up to see Dean. She hadn't heard him come up, of course, but the recognition that it was him eased the initial split-second of anxiety on her features. She smiled, and lowered the bow back down again, stepping closer. She pushed up on her tiptoes so she could nuzzle at his cheek a little bit for a second, an affectionate gesture she hadn't wanted to resist when it occurred. She brought her hand up and waved.

Dean smirked slightly at the affection, and at the wave. He wondered if she was conscious of the fact that she'd been using gestures more since he broke her hearing aids. He hadn't wanted to ask. Hadn't wanted to bring attention to their loss. It had to be hard enough on her as it was, without him drawing attention to the fact she couldn't hear at the moment. "Hi - how's it going?" he asked her, making sure that, again, he waited until she was looking at him before he spoke.

She was aware she'd been using gestures more. She used sign more too, a habit she was falling back into easily, even if Oz and Sophie could only catch certain signs that were fairly obvious. A lot of signs were, after all. Just not all of them. She gave a thumbs up at the question. "Good. Think I'm getting better." she told him. She had more on the end of the statement, but that was another impact. She edited herself down more.

"So Oz said - you want me to leave you to it? Or can I stay and watch?" he asked her, not wanting to actually interrupt her practice. Well, not really - he was aware that that was just what he'd done, but he didn't want to make her stop entirely or anything. Anyway, the idea of watching her do that... He liked watching her. Especially when she had that certain look of concentration on her face. There was just something compelling about it.

She shook her head. "Don't leave." she said. "You can watch. Might be kinda dull...pretty samey. Pick up an arrow and it goes over there, but if you want to..." she trailed off. "What did Oz say?" she asked, having started to raise the bow again, but figured she should ask that while she could still be looking at him so she could get the answer. She was also telling herself that Dean at the very least could hear her well and knew her well enough that even if he missed a word he could probably figure out what she was meaning to say.

"That you're getting better - and that you've been practicing a lot recently. I think he was kinda impressed," he added, with a small, humorous smile. "I think he wants me to start practicing again as well, but I never could get the hang of it." And anyway, he knew, if the shit hit the fan, he wouldn't be going for a bow and arrow. Even if it meant a drive into town. He knew that in his heart of hearts, even if they were all tiptoeing around ever mentioning the subject of his gun.

She brightened a little at that, smiling. "Impressed? Really?" she asked. That was good to know. It made her feel good, anyways. Then she made a cute face at him. "Yes, I'm getting good--if we're ever indoors with no distractions, wind or other factors, I can totally drop a zombie for us without alerting the rest of the pack." she teased. Then paused in thought. "...now I want to know what a pack of zombies is called. A herd? A pack? A mortuary?"

"A drag?" Dean suggested with a shrug that indicated that he didn't know. "And wind, bah - just a little thing - you'll soon factor that in," he said, encouragingly.

She laughed, though she didn't quite laugh like she did when she had her hearing aids. She was self conscious about that too, so it was a little more muted than usual. "I like that. A drag of zombies. Or an apocalypse of zombies. That sounds neat too." she said. She brought the bow up, looking at him again as she was drawing the string back. "You've got more confidence in me than I've got." she told him, ticking her gaze back to the target. She pushed herself a little, not giving herself the full amount of time she gave for other shots, just wanting to see if she could do it with a quicker prep time. And when the arrow hit, she saw that she hadn't actually done that bad. She was still inside the red. More towards the edge, but not that bad.

Well, that makes two of us then, he thought, though he didn't say it, since she wasn't looking at him anymore. He sat down on a box and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he watched her take the shot - though his eyes stayed on her, not on the arrow as it flew towards the target and landed with a resounding thunk.

She had a few more left, and figured he'd said he wanted to watch, so she would finish it out. Taking up a new one, she lined up her shot, shifting her weight slightly and she exhaled and held her breath just a heartbeat or so before she let the next one fly. It was part of the ritual with it, and she found that the ritual helped. There was definitely a clear rhythm for her and if she wasn't still for those few seconds, her shots weren't as close to her target. They were still close, but not as close as she deemed acceptable.

There was something about watching someone who was concentrating entirely on something else, Dean decided. or possibly just watching her whilst she was concentrating entirely on something else - he wasn't sure. But still, there was really something about it. There was none of that pressure, that worry that you'd be called on staring, because they weren't really aware that thats was what you were doing. And he was. he was paying really, really close attention to her. Just to her in general, appreciating her in a way that he'd feel self-conscious doing if she were looking at him.

She kept her concentration on the target, picking up new arrows when she landed the others, and she was trying to put a little pattern onto the target, which was working for the most part. It wasn't perfect, but there was kind of a silly little smiley face forming. Mostly that was something she liked to try and do just to get her aim gauged correctly. It involved ignoring the lines, and visualising her own specific mark, which was harder to do than one would think, when you started out really heavily focusing on said lines. She just figured right away that if she ever really needed to do this, then only being able to hit something that was painted bright red white and blue just wasn't going to cut it, so she blurred things for herself.

His eyes drifted to where her hair was curling against the collar of her shirt, noting how much it had grown again, definitely making its way to her shoulders now. He liked that - and he greatly appreciated the way that the candlelight caught the glints and shades of colour in her hair, giving it that extra bounce of life.

She sank the last few arrows in faster succession, something that while was partly done because she tended to try and push herself from time to time...was really mostly done for Dean, because even if she was concentrating on what she was doing, it wasn't like she couldn't feel him watching her. And alright, so, she might have wanted to impress him. She didn't get to do that very often, it wasn't like she was a girl who had a multitude of crazy talents that anyone could appreciate. Generally speaking she kept people from slipping too far into depression, which while a valid pursuit, wasn't especially awe worthy, nor anything anyone noticed, so much. Or, that was how she summed up her own contribution most of the time. Tactics and stability. But this was something different, something that could be seen and witnessed, and she was getting better at. So yeah, she took the last three shots in pretty rapid succession, then finally exhaled, kind of looking down, then shyly over at Dean, sort of half viewing him through the hair that fell into her eyes when she ducked her head. She gave a little smile, that was definitely shy in nature, since she noticed then that he'd been looking at her. And she wasn't entirely sure what his expression said, but she kinda sorta knew she liked it.

Right, so - he should probably make like he'd been paying strict attention to what she'd been doing, right, Dean realised. He'd said that he'd wanted to watch her practice and so she was probably expecting the emphasis there to be on the 'practice' part of that request, not on the 'watch her' part. Right. "Wow, you really are getting better," he told her, standing and giving her a smile. He figured that covered it - praise, but not too much in case she'd messed up. he didn't think she had - she didn't look like she had and a glance at the target showed that she'd hit enough. Right, yes - she'd not messed up, the compliment could stand.

She laughed a little. "Thanks." she said. "I made a happy face, see?" she asked, walking closer to him and tugging him closer, turning him towards the target so he could see it without the arrow shafts in the way so much, and the brightly colored fletching on the arrows showed the face more blatantly. Still, she was happy for the praise, and it showed. So much of her life since her death had been being told she wasn't allowed to do things. Whether it was back when Dean had decided she neded to not do anything ever that might even remotely in some fashion be considered dangerous, or if it had to do with her abilities which he pretty much hated all of those, and...yeah. She didn't get told very often that she was doing something well or something, so it was just a very nice, good fuzzy feeling. And coming from him, especially.

He laughed as she pulled him forward and the angle-change revealed the pattern that she'd made. "Okay, so now I'm even more impressed," he told her, turning back to her. And that wasn't him trying to cover for being a creepy stalker staring type, he was actually genuinely impressed with that. It showed a real element of control.

She was happily beaming at him for it. "Yeah? I sort of try to go outside the lines, make my own, to see if I can follow it." she explained. "Since y'know, things don't usually wander around with handy targets." She set the bow aside, keeping her one hand behind her back. It was because even if she'd bandaged her fingers up and the like, that didn't mean she wasn't aware of the fact that they were still lazily bleeding a little. And her blood was a huge no no and she wanted it absolutely as far away from Dean as possible.

"They really don't - but there's usually something you can aim for," Dean agreed. "It's just a case of visualising the shot, knowing where you want your target to land. Then just aim and..." he shrugged. Aiming was the one thing he was really actually good at. His problem with archery had been messy hands - fingers getting in the way. He just couldn't get the coordination going on at all.

She nodded, thinking they should probably back off of the topic, if he was starting to bring up what he did with the gun he was leaving in the orphanage. "I just kind of try and find a quiet place in my head, I guess, and go from there." she said, signing as she did so. "But thanks...I can feel all warm and fuzzy now for a while because I've managed to impress you." she said, giving him a smile and she stepped slightly closer.

"Managed? You make it sound like I'm a hard guy to impress or something. You impress me all the time," he told her, signing back when she started on that - fluffing a few of the gestures. he was getting better with sign, but he was still really at basic level with it.

Squinting one eye shut, she shook her head. "It's less that and more I don't usually do anything that would be considered impressive." she said. "But this is like...something clear that you can look at and go yes sir, that is a smiley face made out of arrows." She glanced towards the target, then back to Dean. "And that's sweet of you to say, but I challenge you to name one thing you've been impressed with me over."

"Your ability to put up with my shit," Dean said, without having to pause for thought on that at all. "The fact that you can come up with plans and strategies. The fact that you're always there. And that little thing you do..." he said, giving her an almost embarassed little grin and hoping she knew what he was talking about just by inflection. "...I like that."

She laughed a little bit, both from what he said there, and for that cute little grin he gave her. God he was stupidly adorable when he got shy. "Putting up with your shit isn't impressive, it's voluntary and done with a smile. Plus I don't consider anything really 'putting up' with you. Plans and strategies...maybe. Existing totally does not count in feats of being impressive!" Then she paused, deliberately waiting a moment before she addressed his last point. "Which little thing?" she asked. "I can think of a couple of things I do that you like, but I'm curious now..."

"You know..." Dean said, starting to colour now. "That... I... You... You know. The other night, I..." He swallowed, knowing that he'd never actually be able to find the words to come out with entire, descriptive sentences here.

God! So cute!! She had to kind of kick back a little squee at him over it. Sometimes, he did that effortlessly hot thing, and sometimes he did this, where she just wanted to grab him and smother him with affection because he was just too damn adorable for his own good. She hummed, making a show of thinking about it. "...you sure I know?" she asked, leaning in closer to him. She brushed a kiss against his neck, then lightly blew across the place she kissed. "I do that, I know that's on your list of things I do that you like." she said helpfully, pulling back enough to look at him, and wishing she could hear even just better enough so she could hear him speaking. Even if it was quiet and she could barely make it out. But alas...no.

Dean gave her a look - which helped him gain back a little of his composure, if only momentarily. "Not that. I mean, yeah - like that, but... I don't think that qualifies as impressive..." he told her, half wondering if she was going to go through all the things that she could do that he liked until she hit upon what he was talking about. Which, well... they could be here for a while if she was.

"I didn't either but a few things on your list I didn't think qualified." she pointed out, enjoying the look he gave her there. She could be a little shit when she wanted to be. And she was feeling good at the moment, which helped her move at least partially past her self-consciousness. "The question is, what would be considered impressive? I think you might have to tell me." she said with a grave nod.

Dean blinked and swallowed, plunging right back into a stuttering, flailing mess again. So much for regaining composure. "I... Erm, that is, I just..." Internally he rolled his eyes at his behaviour. They were dating, seriously dating. He loved her, she loved him, they were about as close as they could get. And yet, when it came to actually talking about issues and things that could be classed as 'intimate', he still acted like a twelve year old. He didn't mean to, he just fell apart every time.

She had to keep herself from giggling. She really didn't want to do that to him. Though occasionally, she was highly amused by the fact that she was the girl here, and he was the one who was so shy about the things they did. He really did just hit this terrible wall and he couldn't spit out full sentences for the life of him. It was endearing. Sometimes it was frustrating too, since talking about it would be nice, but not today. Today it was cute. "You could try signing it." she suggested. Which actually she wondered if that would work. If the not saying it out loud would matter, even if she couldn't hear it right now in the first place. That genuinely peaked her curiosity so she waited to see what he'd do.

He shrugged, self-consciously. "I... dunno - I..." he gestured a little. "Wouldn't know the sign for it. I mean, I just - yeah," he told her, thinking that whilst in some ways it might be easier to sign out something like that, because he didn't know the actual signs, it'd be a choice between spelling it out letter by letter, or doing an embarassing pantomime of gesturing, which he'd most likely fuck up anyway and she'd just laugh.

She looked at him for a long moment. "Should I just tell you you're off the hook, and I can try and be happy in the knowledge that something I do is something you like?" she asked him, though it lacked push. She wasn't really saying it just to get him to spit it out or anything. If he really couldn't bring himself to say it, then she wasn't going to make him. Things weren't fun if someone was dropping farther and farther into being truly uncomfortable. She did want to know...but....

Dean looked down, knowing that he'd fucked up. He should have just kept quiet, not started on something he should know he couldn't follow through with. He'd just hoped she'd know what he meant and they could both just... know. But she didn't and the more he thought about it, the more he felt the pressure build up and the feeling of failure really wasn't helping with that at all. See, now this was the shit she had to put up with from him. And from where he was standing right now it seemed pretty bloody impressive that she hadn't entirely written him off right now. And that, he knew, was him feeling sorry for himself - which was another thing that just wasn't acceptable and he needed to pull the fuck out of it and get over himself and stop being such a wallowing, self-centred bastard. he shook himself and looked back at her. "I really need to stop being like this, don't I?" he told her, giving her an abashed, lopsided smile. "I keep hoping it'll stop, I mean... You'd think really, wouldn't you?" It wasn't like he had any kind of issue with the physical side of their relationship. It was just when they came to discussing it that he got all coy-like.

Thia blinked, surprised at that. She'd sort of figured he'd take the out, and they'd move onto something else. But then he really didn't, and it caught her the slightest bit off guard. She bit her lower lip for a moment as she tried to figure out how to word her feelings on the matter. "I..." she started, not sure at all how this was going to come out. "I know it's just one of those things about you. I know you don't do it on purpose or anything. You're just one of those guys...less words, more action." she hesitated before she went on. "I know I'd feel better if I thought I could talk to you about it all? And kinda...not run into walls. So sometimes I kinda...just don't say things because I know you'll have trouble with it, and I don't want you to. I really don't like the idea of you having trouble with anything to do with that between us. That's not what it should be about." she said. Shifting her weight on her feet a little, she looked down at the bandaids on her fingers, which she restuck more firmly to give herself something to do. "I think...like right now, with the knowing thing. It goes back to stuff we've talked about before. How you kind of expect me to know things even if you've never actually told me." she said, thinking the two were related.

"You don't say things?" Dean asked, sounding immediately worried. She wanted to talk about things? There were things to talk about? God - he thought that sounded bad. Really bad. "Is there... Am I doing things you don't like? God, am I doing it wrong?" he asked, really actually flailing now. He was suddenly certain that he was - why would she want to talk otherwise? Surely if it was all fine and good, there'd be nothing really to talk about. Well, aside from like this and everything, but still he was certain that that worked differently and he was sure that he was doing it all wrong and so she'd never seemed to not enjoy their time together, but she'd just said she was keeping things back and what if she was - what if he was crap and she'd been.. oh god, he didn't even want to think about that.

"Huh?" That left her blinking. "Oh god no. Nooooo. Nonono. And no. NO, You're not doing anything wrong, or anything like that, so just--no, Dean, promise, kay?" she said immediately, wanting to get that out there right the hell now. She went to reach out for him but pulled up short, because it was her dominant hand, which was her bowstring one which meant there were the bandaids on it and while it was probably all safe and everything, she wasn't risking it at all ever so she shoved that hand in her back pocket instead to get rid of it, and reached out to take his hand with her other one. It meant she couldn't sign, but it felt more urgent to have some sort of physical contact with him at the moment. "I'm talking about...just..." she drew in a breath and exhaled slowly. "Pretty much our entire relationship works and has gotten us to where we are because we communicate. And you've got such a hard twitch about talking about any of this that I just kind of don't feel like I can. And I know we've even gone over this before, but you kinda...don't really seem to take it any better any time it comes up. And then I feel bad about even trying to talk about it, because you get so...shy." She hesitated on the word, though. Because sometimes, she felt like he was embarrassed, and that wasn't a connotation that she really liked attaching to anything that involved the two of them together, especially something like that. Embarrassment was for the ashamed, after all.

He took her hand, pulling her in a little bit. "I don't mean to be," he told her. "I... really, I don't know why I am. It's just... I get - all tongue-tied. And worried. And I know it's stupid, I just..." He took a breath, looked down and then made himself look back at her. "It's... I... It's like I have an easier.. I can do it better when we're telling stories, but I guess that doesn't really count, right?" he checked. Stories seemed to take some of the pressure off. It meant that he was pretending to be someone else, that even if he was saying what he thought, what he wanted, he didn't feel that enormous stress of having to give his opinion about something so related to himself, about what the reaction to him giving his opinion would be. He realised that that was a huge part of it, and as he realised that, he knew that he was ashamed that that applied to her - it shouldn't apply to her, but it did. "I... Have never been very good at that kind of thing," he said, trying to take his time over it. "It's... You know how there's some things that I'm okay about, but... See, it's... When it's me. Like, something that... When it's about what I want, or like, or... It's easier when it's someone else, but - I just. I guess I have a hard time thinking that it's important. I mean, I know it's important, but, with me - being important. I'm.... not doing a good job of explaining this," he decided.

She was following along, though it was easier to at least get his wording when he looked back up again. She also made sure he was finished before she said anything, not wanting to interrupt. She wasn't entirely sure what he said made the most sense ever, but she thought she understood what he was getting at. Hopefully she got it, anyways. She looked down at their hands a moment, and she brushed her thumb back and forth over the back of his. "Dean...you've got to stop discounting yourself." she said, voice gentle, if quiet. She was back to speaking a little slower than usual, pronouncing things more precisely. She didn't want to mess any of this up. "And I know that's hard for you. And I know that it's just kind of how you've always done things. I don't agree with it, and I think it...I think it plays back into Andy, and the way he treated you. But it's got to stop. You can't go through your life deciding you don't matter, because you do. And I'm not just talking about this, but honestly this is important too. You're important. What you think and how you feel and everything else that goes along with? All of that's important." she told him, glancing down for a moment before she looked back up. "It's all important to me. You're important to me. And maybe the sort of...of separation that you can get with stories and everything can help, but I'm in love with you. And I want to be able to talk to you and share everything with you, and this is part of that. I like the stories. And I like all of that but I...I want to be able to talk to you about things without that being necessary. Otherwise, I'm just..." She trailed off, holding one bit back. She didn't really know how to say if he discounted himself in something they were in on together, which cut off any communication then he was discounting her too. ...there really wasn't a way to say that that she could accept at the moment.

"I know it needs to stop - I said it needs to stop, I just... Knowing that and it happening? Two different things. I don't do this on purpose, you know," he pointed out with a shrug of his shoulders. He didn't for a moment think she actually thought that, he just wasn't sure that she fully appreciated quite how frustrating he found his habits himself, and that she wasn't the only one that didn't like there being a block between them. A block that was entirely his fault.

She was going to say that she meant on a larger scale than just this, but it felt like arguing, and she didn't want to do that at the moment. "I know you don't do it on purpose." she confirmed. Her trouble was that it just didn't seem to get any better. Any time she thought she'd made progress, when they'd talk about things, like back in England when they'd stopped and talked about things on a park bench, when they'd had the talk over the computer on the night of the full moon...it didn't seem to hold. She recognized she was biting back things even now, and wondered if it would just make things worse if she stopped, or if she should stick with that instinct.

"I don't like it," he said, after a moment or two. "I don't like not being able to say things to you. I should be able to. It's... With people before, I know I got nervous because I always felt that what I had to say wouldn't be right, or whatever. I - it's pathetic, because I know that that's not the case with you. I've never felt like you'd... Like write me off that way. Even if you didn't totally agree or whatever. I've - I've always felt like I can be myself around you, but I just can't - I mean, before, I'd get nervous because, well, I liked you and everything but now, I mean, that's gone and I just - I build things up in my own head, I guess. Make everything this big thing without even realising that I'm doing it and there's no reason to do that, but I don't even notice that I have done until it's too late. And I don't know why," he said, that frustration showing in his face and sounding in his tone.

She didn't really need to hear him to get that whole frustration factor. He'd been putting out black lines since things had sort of hit him there, and so she could read that loud and clear without the benefit of hearing him. She didn't like seeing it, but she did internally for a moment appreciate the ability to see it. It helped compensate for the loss of her hearing aids at least on that level. "Is there anything I can do?" she asked. Again, she had things on her mind, things she could say, but she didn't. She didn't think they'd do much but make him feel worse about it, even though she'd been actively trying to get herself out of the habit of editing her communication with him. She'd been doing better, but right now things seemed...she wasn't sure.

Dean pulled a face. "Put up with my being a total idiot and hope I grow out of it?" he suggested, then shook his head. "Call me on it. Which - okay, not gonna work, if I'm just... I don't realise you don't know, you know? Sometimes, I think things are obvious. Like you can't have missed certain things." He looked at her and swallowed, squeezing her hand a little - more for his benefit that hers. "Like... that things you do. With your tongue. I... I mean, I just... Guess, I kinda - figured you'd worked out that I really, really like that," he said, mostly managing to finally get it out, even if he still wasn't being entirely specific there.

"You're not an idiot." She said first, in that same tone she always told him he wasn't stupid when he put that into play. "Total or otherwise. But...you're...reserved. Not...obviously not in the middle of things or whatever, but most things with you are kind of dialed down. So, if it is obvious to you? It's not always going to be to me." she said. "...and besides which. Even if you do know something, that doesn't mean it's not nice to hear anyways. You know I love you but that doesn't mean I should stop telling you....y'know?"

Dean gave her a look. "I might not be an idiot, but we both know that sometimes I act like one," he told her. "And, okay, reserved - I'll remember that. Try to. And be more obvious about things. Tell you more specifically. Your hair looks good in candlelight," he told her, deciding to go with that straight away.

For a second there, Thia had to wonder if he was saying that to get back into good graces. Like he just picked the first thing off of the top of his head and rolled with it. But, she didn't like thinking Dean was that sort of person, so she pushed that thought away. So, she smiled. "Think so?" she asked. "Thank you." She reached up, a little self consciously, tugging at the ends a bit. Sometimes she still kind of tended to forget that Dean really found her attractive. She knew he did, but it was something that still sometimes surprised her just a little. That was another part of what she'd just been talking about, though. He tended to skip over the details instead of sharing them, and occasionally, that was a pretty big stumbling block to get over.

He nodded. "I was watching, before. You.. When you were shooting. It catches the light - it's nice," he said, feeling self-conscious again, as he always did when he gave compliments. He always felt that little, undeniable twitch asking himself whether he honestly thought anyone cared about his opinion on things. But he pushed it down as best he could, reminding himself that she did. She cared.

Well, that cleared up any lingering insecurities she felt about whether or not he was sincere. She blushed a faint bit, glancing down, then back up. "Thank you." she said again. "....What's it look like around now?" she asked. "Is it all uneven, and needs cutting, or is...is it okay? Or..." Since she didn't really know. That was one of the worst things about not being able to stand your reflection. After a while you forgot what you looked like, and when your appearance changed, like your hair grew out, you just didn't have a concept of that. And really, even if she looked, she knew she'd just see a dead girl looking back, not what everyone else saw. She lacked a self image. The only thing she could do was get the impressions from others.

Dean took the excuse to reach up and wrap the little curl he'd been eyeing earlier on around his finger and let it go again. "It's curling a bit now. And it's..." He reached for the bits of hair around her ears. "Maybe it's looking a little inbetweeny here, but I don't know if there's anything you can do about that but let it grow more," he suggested. An expert on how to grow hair out he was not, though he knew he had to make a decision about his. If he was keeping it short then it really needed cutting.

She reached up to drag her fingers through her hair, and nodded. "Yeah....inbetween is kind of just inbetween and there's not a lot to do with it." she said. Then she reached up with her non-bandaid hand and mussed his hair. "Yours is getting longer too again." she noted. Really, Dean's hair was just cute kind of no matter what in her opinion. She'd liked it when it was longer because she could play with it more, but she liked it short, too. He would have had a pretty difficult time stopping being cute, either way.

Dean shrugged. "Yeah - I can't decide what to do with it," he admitted to her, aware that they were moving away from the topic in hand and not sure whether that was a good thing or not. It took some of the pressure off, but he wasn't convinced they'd finished talking about it, and he didn't like abandoning subjects unfinished between them, even if they were hard. "What do you think? Short or longer?" Though he'd never forget the look on her face when he'd turned up that night. Course, possibly that had just been the outfit, rather than the hair.

She made a cute face at him. "Don't make me decide. I like both. Like when your hair was longer, it was fun to play with, and you liked that, but I can still do that now. And shorter, it just kind of adds an edge to your look, I suppose. But either way, you're hot, so...." she trailed off there. She'd been telling him she thought he was attractive since well back in the day. Before she'd even died. His cute factor was difficult to miss.

"....So I should just shave it all off to test that theory?" Dean teased, making an effort to not totally dismiss the compliment by entirely ignoring it, as he usually did. Making a joke of it was a real step up for him. "I like you with longer hair - it's a good look on you," he told her, giving her a compliment back. he knew they were just little things, and a conversation about hair was, well, not the most vital thing ever, but he was making an effort and it was easier to start small. This kind of thing came so easily to her - she had such depths of confidence to draw from that he just didn't have, or so it seemed to him at times.

She laughed a little and made a show of looking at him and considering, before she stepped in close. Shaking her head, she gave him a light little brush of a kiss. "No testing the theory." she told him. "Besides. You'd freeze. Bald head in the winter? Not the smartest plan...your head would get all cold, and hats would fling right off." she told him. She was aware too that there was kind of unfinished discussion topics drifting, but she didn't want to draw to much attention, or blatantly wrest attention back there.

He pulled a considering and resigned face. "I should just not do that then," he agreed, mock-seriously. "I'll just have to see whether I can be arsed to go down the barbers." Taking hold of her off hand, he reached round to take her other one, wanting to pull her over to sit on some nearby boxes, and wanting to do that holding both of her hands.

She automatically went to go for it but then froze for a moment, and she slid her hand behind her back. "Sorry, I...the bow string cuts into my fingers, and they bleed a little, and..." she trailed off there, because he knew why. He didn't really need it explained to him or anything. And she knew she was being paranoid, but she didn't know another way to be. Her blood happened to be really really effective poison. No way in hell was she letting it come in contact with him. Even if the possibility was remote at best.

It was tempting, for a moment, to show her his hand, to show her how there weren't any cuts on it, to prove that he wasn't afraid of any part of her. But he didn't - he wouldn't do that to her and he wouldn't belittle her fears about this. So, instead, he reached around her back and took hold of her wrist instead, keeping his hand well away from her fingers. "Come on," he said, pulling her over to sit down.

She still looked a little hesitant over it, but didn't fight him on it. She was thinking at the moment, though that she wanted to look into getting some of that liquid stuff people could put on cuts. Something that would seal it right off and didn't so easily just get peeled off or snagged, or anything else. She sat down on one of the boxes, and wished for a moment that they could sit together properly. Kind of snuggled, but they wouldn't be able to communicate properly.

He sat her down and turned to her, sitting sideways on on the boxes so she could see him properly. "So, I have two things," he told her, not sure which one to approach first and deciding to give her the choice there. "I have one thing to tell you and I have one question to ask. Which do you want first?"

She paused, and bit her lower lip, absently shifting her position so she could see him best, and she sat indian style, with her one hand out of the way back behind her. "Are they good things or bad things?" she asked. Maybe it was one of each. Or maybe she was really really paranoid now. Probably that last one. "Tell me something first, then ask me something." she opted for, before he had to answer the question.

"Depends on the way you look at it," Dean replied, not sure that they could be categorised easily either way. For example, she might be pleased at what he'd decided to tell her - or she could hit the roof. or she could do what he was hoping she wasn't going to, but what he figured she would do, because he knew her and there'd been a reason why he hadn't been sure he was going to tell her in the first place. "So - I was talking to Caleb and we were talking about your hearing aids and he suggested that maybe there was a spare set at your mum's place and that maybe we could, like... breakinandsee," he said, rushing through that last bit.

The last bit she really didn't get. It was all jumbled together and while she caught some of the more distinct 'sounds' as he formed them, it was a mess to try and read. Still, she caught the first part, and it left her blinking for a moment. "I...I guess I don't know if there is one or not." she said at first. "Did you say break...in?" she suggested, hoping she was interpreting that right. "As in you and Caleb going to steal them for me?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah. I know - Oz is getting you new ones and all, but... It's taking a really long time. And you're... I know you're not doing so well without them. I know you're not saying a lot about it, but I can see it. I don't know if anyone else does, but I do. You're quieter, you don't join in conversations as much. You're spending more time alone. I just... If there's a spare set at your mum's then - I can go get them and then when the ones Oz gets come through, then great, you'll have a proper spare in case I fuck up again."

"You didn't fuck up. You did the right thing." She said, needing that out there first, because she believed it, and she hated when he said things like that. It lacked just a tiny bit of the usual Tone though, because he had called her on things, and she couldn't actually refute all that. She looked down. "I can't keep up as well, and I know it's making people feel like they have to compensate, and then they wonder if they're managing, or....people get uncomfortable. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable, and I'm really..." she trailed off. Defective like this. "...but you don't have to do something like that, I know you aren't that keen on delinquency." No matter how much they talked about that sort of thing.

"...Too important to go on like that," Dean finished for her, really beleiving that. She needed something and he'd move heaven and earth to get her that. "You don't make me uncomfortable, you know," he said, in case she'd lumped her in with the 'everyone' there.

She gave him a light little half smile that didn't quite last very long at that. "No. I don't make you uncomfortable. And I know that I'm not even...I'm not irritating people or anything. I'm just stressing them out because they're really really aware that I've got this disability now. I mean, before, they could deal because it was kind of little things? I wasn't deaf-deaf. Just a little deaf. I've seen it happen before. I mean...not everyone dealt with it very well in the first place. Some people don't know what to do with themselves around someone like me. So I know it's not that, and I'm sure no one means to get stressed and everything, it just...happens." she explained. "But I know that I don't make you uncomfortable. I...I really appreciate that." she told him, hoping her tone really conveyed how she felt about that. Because she did. It was something that helped her deal with it better in general, even if she knew how things were winding up due to the loss of her hearing aids.

"Well, that's their problem, isn't it? Not yours. It's really not that hard," Dean said, leaping to her defense, even if the people he was defending her against weren't actually in the room. "All it means is being a little more aware of what you're doing than most people are - but that's just because most people are so damn self-involved all the time that they just forget that the world doesn't revolve around them. And it's you who pays for that and that's not fair. It shouldn't be like that, but it is, because people can be crap, so - I'm going to go and get your hearing aids, unless you didn't have a spare pair, which really is what I need to know, because there's no point looking for something that's not there."

"Don't be so hard on them. They're stressed because they want to make sure they're not making things hard on me, not cuz they're being jerks." she said gently, understanding that. She reached out to squeeze his hand with her left hand. "But it's sweet when you get protective." she told him. "...I don't know if there's spares. If there are, they'd be older ones, but I could still use them. But...I mean I don't even know if they kept anything. I know my mom was the type of person who would want to keep things just in case, so...there might be, but...well...now..." There was no just in case. She was pretty dead. And while she tried to keep her voice steady over talking about it, there was a little catch to her voice, and she looked down again for a moment. She couldn't look down long, she didn't want to miss anything he said, but it was a hard subject to think or speak about. She didn't want to think about her parents and what they were doing, or if they'd thrown out all of her things, or held onto them. She didn't know which was worse.

Dean eyed her. "Should I not have said anything?" he asked her, dropping the subject of what other people should or shouldn't be doing entirely when he saw that. "I mean - I..." He'd been thinking of not doing, but that had been because he'd half thought she'd immediately want to come, and he thought that was a bad, and possibly very traumatic, idea. Sure, she'd broken in once, but that was a while ago now, and - yeah - he'd prefer it if she didn't go.

"No. I'm glad you did." she said, that coming straight away without her having to consider it. "I just..." she gave a weak smile. "Just thinking about everything kind of...I mean...I'm sitting here wondering if I feel like it'd be a better thing if they got rid of all of my things, or if they kept it all. And it's..." Not something anyone really should have to sit and consider. It was messed up to say the least.

He didn't know what to say to that - what did you say to that? In the end, he didn't say anything, instead leaning in and putting his arms around her, pulling her into a hug and just holding her.

It had been a while since she'd really let herself feel the loss of everything. So much had happened since that sometimes it was easier to let things drift, to concentrate on the here and now, and not think about all the things she just wasn't part of anymore. Like life. The whole rest of the town, all the people she knew. Her mom, her stepdad, school, walks around town in the daytime, going to get icecream in the middle of winter from the corner store. But every once in a while something reminded her. Like all she really had left over from that life was a stuffed rabbit...and Dean. Hell, she'd even gotten messages from pretty much her two other connections to her old life that they were leaving. Joshua was going back to Ireland. Isaac had a record deal or something. So...yeah. It was Henna and Dean. She shifted closer to him and rested her head in against his shoulder, not saying anything for a few long minutes. She didn't know where to start, though she knew she actually did have to mention the whole people moving thing. Maybe in a minute.

He let her shift, let her rest, let her take as much time as he wanted. it wasn't like he had some magic wand to make things all better, or any idea what to do or say to help, so he did the only thing he could and tried to be there for her. It wasn't much, he knew, but it was all he had.

It was enough for her. Their relationship was rooted in being there for one another, even if nothing could really be 'fixed' per se. So she took a little bit. She didn't cry or anything, something she was proud of herself for, and possibly a little uncertain about. What did it mean that she didn't cry? Did it mean she was over things? Did it mean she was detached? She didn't know. And she wasn't going to miraculously come up with answers right now. "This might not be the time to say, but...Joshua's going back to Ireland." she said. Isaac, Dean hadn't really known, now that she was thinking about it.

Dean considered that without moving. What did that mean? Did he blame her for it? Them? Had he just decided that he was just going to go, because of everything? Did she blame herself for it? And hadn't the guy had another girlfriend anyway? Not that that seemed to matter when he'd asked Dean to leave that day. Eventually, though, Dean pulled back to speak. "He say why?" he asked, carefully, watching Thia's eyes.

"Something about family...I think he's got relatives that aren't doing well. He didn't say a lot. Just pretty much that he was going, and if I wanted to keep in touch, he'd send contact information along later. Text kind of leaves a lot to be desired, explanation wise." she said. "So...that's that, I suppose. Can't decide how I feel about it. I think it's kind of...I'll miss him, but I already missed him and I don't know how well we were really going to do with being friends. Sometimes things like that just don't work."

Dean kept his own opinions to himself on that score and just nodded. "I guess - sorry though." He was aware that she didn't know all that many people, and it wasn't like she could just walk out and make new friends, not living in the same area she'd done before she died. People knew about ghosts, but Dean wasn't convinced that meant they were ready to find out about fades.

She shrugged one shoulder. "It's okay. I mean, thank you, but really...I think after a while you actually talked to him more than I did, and there were trust issues there that I'm not sure I would have got over so easy and...maybe it's just for the best. He can be back with his family and a bunch of guardian angels, and...well. We can stay here and do whatever it is we're doing." she finished. "I just was thinking about it because I kind of...it occurred to me that I've kind of only got two things left from my actual life. Hennabean and you."

Dean shrugged. "Well, after I told him about you, we weren't talking anymore." Dean had made no effort to get in touch with the guy after that, but Joshua had made it quite clear that any such attempts would be unwelcome, of that much he was certain. A fact that was only compounded by the fact that Dean hadn't known about the guy leaving town. Yeah, nothing quite said 'I want nothing more to do with you' than that. "You knew Caleb before," Dean pointed out - though he didn't think they'd actually been friends.

"I knew him, but really only kind of met him once. He was Journey's friend." she said. "I know him better now. As much as it can be said I know him at all, which isn't that well or anything, even if he did put me back together." Which made her wonder if Caleb knew about her blood and what it did. "I'm not...I'm not getting upset about it. It's just something that occurred when I was thinking about everything." she explained.

Dean wondered if this would mean she'd want to leave here - and what that would mean if she decided she wanted to. If she decided, now that her ties were mostly gone, that life would be easier somewhere else. What he'd do. It was all convoluted. Her ties were him. And his tie was Sophie. Sophie's tie was Oz. Oz' tie was Billy and Billy's tie was Maddie. Because, of all of them, Maddie was the only one who truly - and literally - was tied to Marquette. Dean wouldn't consider the witch to be the thing keeping him in Marquette, when all was said and done, but she was.

Thia was paying attention to see if there were lines, but she didn't see any spikes in them or anything. But he also hadn't said anything, which made her wonder what was on his mind. "...what're you thinking about?" she asked him, pulling back a little bit so she could see him better, even if she didn't particularly want to.

"What keeps us here," he told her, after a minute or two. He wasn't sure he actually wanted to come out and suggest that maybe she'd want to move somewhere else. To say that, to put it in her head, well, there was a power to making suggestions and it would intrude reality on his thoughts in that regard, so for now he just left it at that.

"What keeps us here...." she repeated, trying to follow, but it took her a minute of thinking about it before she came up with a line of thought. "...you mean ...like this area?" she suggested, sounding not at all sure that was what he was getting at, but it was the only acceptable reason she could come up with. Unless he'd hopped topics entirely and he was wondering why spirits stuck around.

He nodded. "Yeah - it just... it was just something that occurred. You always said that this was somewhere you wanted to be because this was your home, but with people gone..." Everyone she'd know who was still here thought she was dead, after all. "But, I guess... I dunno. Just thinking." Everyone had thought she was dead when he first found her. So he wasn't sure anything there had actually changed.

She watched his eyes for a few moments, not saying anything immediately. "...it isn't just people that make this home for me." she said. "I grew up here. I know it, I like it, I wasn't ever one of those people who wanted to get out of town the first chance I could. And besides...stuff might be gone from when I was alive and everything, but I have other things now. I think if I was going to consider going anywhere, I'd need to kind of...move you and the rest of the pack with me." she admitted. Then she made a bit of a face. "...I really hope that doesn't sound creepy or anything."

"You sound a bit like Oz," Dean agreed with her, not suggesting that was creepy or anything. "But I get it. Which means that we're staying, because Maddie can't move. And Billy won't go without her. Oz won't go without Billy, Sophie won't go without Oz... Things kinda interlink that way. I just... I know that it would be easier for you somewhere else and I was just wondering, but I get it, really I do."

"I didn't know what else to call them, I guess." Thia admitted. "I could say family because they feel like family but I don't know. I guess all I do know for certain is that I'm considered part of that. So...might as well work for me too." she said. Reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ears, she was relieved that at least he didn't think she sounded creepy. She did stop though, and look at him for a moment. "It wouldn't be easier for me." she said. "I'd just be....alone. Alone, I wouldn't have anyplace to go, or any help if I needed it, I wouldn't have anyone to try and help myself, and I just...I'd be miserable." Absently, she righted the ring on her finger. "Besides, I told you before that I wouldn't want to be anywhere without you...that hasn't changed." she finished quietly.

"Who said I'd be anywhere else?" Dean asked her, but he couldn't quite get his voice to be any louder than a whisper. Not that it really mattered right now. He looked at her for a moment, then wondered if that was one of those things that she didn't get, that she needed spelled out. "Thia. If you left? If you wanted to start over somewhere else? I'd want to be coming with you. I never meant that you'd be on your own," he told her, seriously.

She read it there, not realizing that the volume had dropped for him. She looked back up to his eyes, and just kept her gaze there for a few long moments, searching them. She smiled, after a bit, a light expression, but genuine. "Really? Even with....everything else, and all the problems, and everything, if I wanted to go somewhere else, you'd want to come with?" She didn't plan on going anywhere, but there was something about knowing that that was indescribeable. It was positive, most certainly, but she wouldn't have been able to pinpoint her exact emotion there if she'd had a gun to her head.

Dean nodded, certain of that. Sure, the realistic voice in the back of his head knew it wouldn't be that easy. He had a list of reasons as long as his arm about why it wouldn't be that easy, topping which was the fact that they'd deport him for it, and then where would they be. Of course, he also knew that if anyone ever caught him for what he'd done on the beach that night, he wouldn't so much be deported as land in jail with the key having been thrown away, so it was all relative. Possibly. Anyway, he could be certain when it wasn't going to actually happen. He wanted to be certain. She deserved his certainty.

"I don't want to go anywhere, but it means everything that you'd want to be there anyways." she told him. Then she leaned closer, putting her palm to his cheek, brushing her thumb back and forth against it for a moment, before she kissed him. It was a soft sort of kiss, but one she drew out, wanting to punctuate what she'd said with it, add the emotion in that she wasn't positive she was able to inflect properly with tone.

Okay, so, right, that really had been one of those things he'd figured she'd know and she totally didn't. And now he was getting his reward for telling her, which was nice. he returned the kiss, enjoying the little touches on top of that. All in all, that was a good thing. He felt a little like a puppy getting a treat for doing something right, but he decided he could be okay with that. And in return, he made her happy - yeah, he was good with this.

She drew it out until she kind of wanted to push things in a slightly different direction, and so she pulled back before she gave into the excuse there. So, before she deepened it too much and started distracting herself, she sat back. She just didn't sit back that far. Enough so if he was going to say anything to her, she could read it, She smiled at him, still appreciating things.

He looked at her for a moment, seriously considered abandoning the other subject he'd been wanting to bring up and just go with the kisses and the physical. Hell, he was better at the physical. He didn't have issues and trouble and bizarre, huge spots of nervousness with the physical. He could just lose himself in it and that would be that. And she made such lovely noises... But, he'd had another subject - he'd had his question. And they wouldn't be them if they let things go. "What can't you talk to me about?" he asked her.

It took her a second to switch gears back, but she managed. She sat back properly, and bit her lip, thinking about it. "I just...I know you don't deal well. And so sometimes, it'll occur to me to talk to you about something or say something, but I know that it's just going to hit this stop-point. Like you won't go with it, or you won't be able to reciprocate, so...I just wind up not saying things at all." she explained as gently as possible. "I mean, sometimes it's very cute when you get shy and such, but it's just...most of the time it's not a positive thing. I just...know that even if I do say what's on my mind, it won't go well. Or, otherwise, even if it isn't something kind of directly playful or anything like that, I just...don't know what to do, I just know you aren't going to be able to go back and forth with me on it. Everything's give and take, and in this specific case, just with the talking about things thing...you don't give. So, even if I want to have conversations about things we like or are curious about or anything like that..." she sighed, twisting her ring around her finger again. "It's hard wanting to be open and to talk about things when I know that you don't want to. Or you're not going to get very far with it before everything's all uncomfortable and you're unhappy. I don't want that kind of connotation on anything we do. Especially when it ties in to intimacy...that's..." she shook her head, and for the last part, she looked down. "And sometimes, I just kind of...can't deal with a bout of things where it feels like you're ashamed of it, or us, or what we do together. So I just don't say anything."

"I'm not ashamed of us," Dean told her, jumping on that to reassure her. "And I want to - really, I do, I just... I know you don't like it when I put myself down, and I know you say I shouldn't do it, but here, honestly? I really am crap. I know I'm crap - and you know it too. And you avoiding things because you don't want to make me unhappy is making you unhappy and that's not on, not on at all. I love you - I don't want you to be unhappy. And I know you don't want me to be unhappy, but... Not being able to talk about things? Knowing that I have trouble there? It's not that I don't want to. And I hate it that I can't sometimes. So, i'm unhappy anyway. So I need to... stop it. I need to work at that. Get over it."

She would have liked to have argued with him over the him being crap in this particular fashion at the moment, but she couldn't, not really. He was right, it was just...a Thing, she guessed. And one that he didn't seem to be getting past. "I know fundamentally that you aren't. But that doesn't help how it feels." she told him. Because yes, somewhere in there she understood that he wasn't ashamed, but...yeah. That didn't help when he got like that and when it got especially bad that it felt exactly like he was ashamed. "And it seems like when I try to push forward with the subject and everything, that all it does is make it worse. Like you just get even more...twitchy? I'm going with twitchy. You get worse, and then you know you're getting worse so you just get more unhappy and it seems like a cycle. So...I don't really know what to do." she admitted.

"I always feel like I'm letting you down," Dean told her. "When I... can't. When I hit one of those spots. I - I hit one and I know I've-" failed. No, she wouldn't like that word. "-that I'm doing it again, and I kinda... You know how I get sometimes. I feel like I'm not being the way I should be." Not that that helped at all - he could explain all he wanted, but that didn't help at all. The simple fact was, he knew, that he wasn't perfect and he'd always known he wasn't perfect, that he was about as far from perfect as he could get, but he always tried, always strived for that, but in this, well, he just fell so far short of the mark, didn't he? "I think I do better sometimes," he told her, trying to move off explanations towards tackling the problem. "Like... When I feel more relaxed? I get stressed, so, less stress in the first place makes things easier, maybe?" He knew he really ought to sound more certain about that.

"There isn't a way anyone 'should' be." Thia said first. "It's not like there's some invisible, unspoken standard that you're being held to, that you should or should not adhere to. I don't have an expectation, Dean. It's just something that's kind of hard to deal with sometimes, and I wish either we could figure out a good way to work through it, or I could just kind of...I don't know. Get past feeling like we should talk about everything and how it makes me feel when it happens. Or both, or...I don't really know." She really was at a loss over the whole thing, that was clear. "I thought things were pretty relaxed today...so...what do you mean?"

He realised he knew what he meant, but he hesitated in bringing it up, because he didn't think she'd take it well. Or, even if she did, she'd take it to heart. But, they were talking about things that stopped them talking about things - so feeling like you couldn't talk about things was probably not particularly helpful right now. He shifted, runnning a thumb over the back of her hand - wanting to draw her in, but knowing he couldn't - which was the issue, really. Communication. "...And I know we can't right now, but... It's easier when we're close. When, like, we can... When I can hold you, and we can just be together. Like - like when we're in my closet, and it's just us? And I don't have to even think about the rest of the world. Private, I guess. Totally. Just you and me." And, he knew, it helped if he didn't have to look at her, if he didn't have to roam her face looking for minute reactions, wondering what she was thinking. But there was no way he could explain that with any kind of a positive spin, so that little part was styaing in his head.

As much as she knew he didn't really mean to blame her for it or anything, that that wasn't the case at all, it still felt like it. So, she had a little wave of feeling like it was her fault. She knew that it wasn't, that he was like this even when she'd had her hearing aids, that it wasn't like it was brand new and just popped up now. But still, that was how it hit her, and she looked down, at where he was touching her hand. It took her a second to answer, because she didn't want things in her voice, and didn't know if they made it in right now or not. She opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it, just going for nodding in understanding.

And that was the reaction that he'd feared would come. He didn't need to be a useful-type psychic to read that one. He looked at her for a moment, then moved her - letting go of her hand to take hold of her waist and lift her onto his lap, legs either side of him, so that she was sitting facing him. It was as close as they could get with her still in a position to read him. "Kitten - this isn't your fault. None of this is your fault. I've been like this my whole, entire life. Hell, since I met you, I've actually improved. Yes, I'm still crap at this, but it's a better standard of crap. You've made me better, you've helped me so much." he wondered whether to go on, but in the end decided that he would. "And you know, I think - I think a lot of that is because you have hearing problems. And so do I. And you - because you do, you know how to talk to me. I don't have the problems talking with you that I've always had with everyone else. I think, for us, your hearing problems, my hearing problems - they're both a good thing. And yes, right now, since I broke your hearing aids - I know, I know, doing the right thing but I still broke them - it's been hard, but that's just temporary and we'll fix it, but that doesn't have any bearing on this."

Giving herself a moment to settle, of course having moved when he moved her. She slid her arms around his neck loosely, reading the words on his lips. "I haven't made you better, maybe I just...I don't know." she said, not knowing how to word things. Maybe she just made him feel more comfortable. Or, she just was around long enough that he'd just gotten better at talking to her. A little voice in the back of her mind reminded her that they'd had conversations before about how he'd been able to talk to her easier from the beginning. And when he went on about her hearing issues, and his, and how that might have played a role, and a good one, she could understand what he was saying there. She didn't say anything for a few moments, letting it settle in her mind. "I know that it's always been easy to talk to you because you always look at me when you're speaking." she said. "Most people forget that. They won't think about it, and they're distracted and looking around, and I need things repeated, but you never did that. And I suppose it's because you do the same thing that I do, you're making sure you can read what's being said just in case." She sighed, still not feeling well about everything. And worse than before, considering there was more to it. "I haven't felt this defective in a long time." she admitted. Most of the time she didn't let her hearing issues get in her way, she didn't generally consider herself that disabled, but now?

"I know I always feel like people aren't listening to me if they're not looking at me when I talk," Dean told her. "And I know that's because of the fact I can't always hear them when I do the same thing, rather than it actually being the case, but it always made me feel like that - like what I was saying wasn't important enough for them to actually give it their attention. Personal twitch, but, yeah. And I never got that with you. And I know it wasn't even something you did consciously, but it just... You always made me feel like I was important, even when you didn't know you were doing it. Even when you were just treating me exactly the same as you treated everyone else. And you're not 'defective'," he added, giving her a softened little scowl.

"I know what you mean on how that makes you feel. The important thing. Same thing for you, with me. I felt like I was important enough to have your full attention." So she could understand that. And she could understand how it probably played into how their relationship developed in general. Why they'd gotten as close as they did as quickly as they did, why they seemed to just sort of click, to be cliche about it. She smiled a little when he scowled at her. "I know, I just...most of the time I don't feel like that at all. Most of the time, I feel fine. I know what my limits are, and while there, they aren't so overwhelming. But like now? I don't know how loud I am. I don't know if I'm speaking properly. I don't know if I'm enunciating clearly enough or if I have tones in there I don't even know about, and that's not even counting everything else I've said today. About...well. Everyone and reactions and things." She sighed. "I don't think I've felt quite this disabled since Charlotte didn't want me to go with on the mine trip because of my hearing."

"Yeah, well that was bollocks as well - and her problem. Assuming you couldn't do something just because she and her mates couldn't be arsed to stop thinking about themselves for one moment long enough to be able to see the blindingly bloody obvious. You were more than bloody capable of going that day - and probably more capable than some of the people who were there anyway," he ranted, flipping back onto the defensive again.

There he was being protective again. It was sweet. It made her smile. "My hero." she said, leaning closer to kiss him again. She'd told him that at the time, that he'd been her personal hero that day, but she still felt that way. No one else had stood up for her, including herself. She'd been going to go with it, it had been him that had decided that wasn't going to fly. It was something she was always going to remember, something that was always going to be close to her heart. And after she pulled back, after drawing the kiss out at least a little, she decided to share that. "I'm always going to remember that, it's always going to mean something to me...that you stood up for me. And I know you would have for anyone, and I know that it was a principal thing with you, but it really did mean a lot to me. Still does." Even if he'd defended her in a million other ways since, even in dire circumstances. He'd killed a man, even.

Dean quirked a little smile. "Dunno if I'd've done it for anyone..." he admitted to her. Like that nonce, Herbert - he wouldn't have done it for that guy.

She smirked back at him. "Oh no?" she asked. "Should I amend that to 'almost' anyone?" she added. "Who wouldn't have made the list?" she asked curiously. Dean was just That Guy. He believed in the right thing, practiced it as much as possible, and that was who he was. It was ingrained.

Dean gave her an almost confused look. "Well - lots of people. I can't fight everyone's battles for them, you know. Just you - you're special. You've always been special." Dean would do anything for his friends, but as far as he was concerned, the rest of the world could look after themselves.

She laughed just a little. "Dean, you're a stand up guy. You wouldn't really put up well with that happening to anyone." she said. "But thank you for saying I'm special. And that I always have been. That worked out well for you though..." she said. "Because I think from what you've said, you liked me already at that point. And you were completely my hero for that whole thing." Joshua had been there, and he hadn't done what Dean had. He'd she thought been worried about the same things as Charlotte.

Dean didn't think that he was as much of a stand up guy as she thought he was, but it was nice to hear it said, so he wasn't going to force an argument over it. "It was just a little thing - people just don't think," he shrugged, instead, knowing they'd talked about this many times before. "And yeah, I already liked you by then."

"Little thing to you--big thing to me." she said. "You realize that that secured you a place in my heart for all eternity, right then and there, don't you?" she asked him, starting to relax more, and she absently was drawing her fingers around the edge of his collar, trying to find the chain. "So, as far as impressing the girl you liked goes..." she said, smiling. "You did a damn good job."

Dean smirked a little. "Score. At last I do something right," he joked, liking the feel of her fingers against his skin like that. "Though it wasn't like I was really out to impress you or anything, I just, yeah - people are idiots at times."

She kept doing that, and wanted to take it up with her other hand but didn't, because of the bandaids and such. She was just barely letting herself put her arm around his neck on that side. "You do lots of things right." she assured him. "That was just extra specially right, and I really," she gave him a soft brush of a kiss. "Really," she kissed him again. "Appreciated it. And if you wanted to impress or not, you did. So, there. Good job, Bond." she smiled. "Told you you had a way with the ladies."

"Lady - singular," Dean corrected. He'd never had any luck with any other woman, after all. And he couldn't put all of that down to Andy's influence, since he'd spectacularly failed with every woman since he got here. Well, apart from Janice - but he totally didn't count Janice. But Drea hadn't looked twice at him in that way, hadn't shown the slightest suggestion of interest, and neither had any of the other girls he'd talked to. Or attempted to talk to. He hadn't done so well talking to girls, though now he was very clearly taken, he found it easier.

She laughed a little. "Do I need to bring up the part where apparently many people had been drooling over you in England? Or that when we were out places, I completely would get the evil eye, or sized up like girls were contemplating if they could take me or not if they decided to start hitting on you?" Which she wasn't exaggerating on. It had definitely happened when they were out, particularly one night at a club. She kept noticing that Dean was getting looks, eyed up appreciatively, and when she went to go stand closer, make it clear that he wasn't actually there alone, girls didn't seem to like that much.

He gave her a look. "That doesn't mean I have a 'way' with them," he told her. "That just means I occasionally maybe attract attention. And then, if they come and talk to me, I turn into a babbling idiot and it's all 'okay! nevermind'. Or it was - I seem to have got a bit better at that since we started going out," he told her. "I can string entire sentences together now when I'm talking to someone of the opposite sex - so, se, I can get better at things. Sometimes." Maybe that gave him hope for working on his ability to talk to her about things sometimes.

That doesn't cover people like Katie, or anyone else who knew you and still had the hots for you. she thought, but that was a little too close to the subject of Andy and all of his bullshit and she didn't want to ruin this by really talking about that. So, she let that thought slide away. "Gotten better at talking to girls since we hooked up?" she asked. "Really? How's that work?" she asked. Was he just more comfortable? She didn't quite know what that was about.

Dean shrugged. "Well, I don't have to think about it as much, I guess. I mean, before it was all 'does she like me?', 'do I like her?' 'does she expect me to like her?' 'what if I do and she doesn't?' - that kind of thing. I mean, one of the reasons I could talk to you was that I knew you had a boyfriend, so I didn't have to worry about any of that, because I knew the answers to all of that, but... It's stressful, thinking about it all, worrying about it. And now I don't have to, because I have you, and they can know I have you, so it's all straight forward," he tried to explain.

That looked like it surprised her, and her head tilted to the side as she considered. "Really? You thought that about every girl? You never just...talked to someone and weren't thinking about romantic entanglements?" That seemed very strange to her. Was it a guy-thing? Were they all like that? That...kind of sounded a little close to riding the 'thinking with the downstairs brain' line, which wasn't very like Dean at all. Thus the surprise.

"Well, yes, kind of, I mean - it's a factor, right?" he said, catching the surprised look and wondering if he'd screwed up somehow and trying to get out an explanation to count that as quickly as possible. "I mean, like - better to think about it and work it out straight away than to not think about it and then screw everything up and you know me, I think too much, like all the damn time and trying to cover every angle and... So yeah. To busy wondering if I'm going to screw things up to stop myself screwing things up."

"I guess..." she started, trying to figure out how to word things. "I guess it wouldn't ever occur to me to meet someone and immediately start judging on that." she admitted. "If you like someone, you'll figure it out because you get to know them as a person, which sometimes takes a while. Sure, there are people who just kind of click and you know right away if you want to hang out with them again. But generally...that sort of thing takes time, and things don't need to even have that slant when you're just talking to someone. That seems like a whole lot of pressure to put on things from the get go. And just kind of..." she winced faintly. "I don't know." Even if she did.

"Thia, ever since girls stopped being yucky things to avoid at all costs, if I... There was Andy," he said, finally mentioning the guy's name. "Guy like Andy kinda puts pressure on all the guys around him. Even if he doesn't mean to." Which, Dean was sure, Andy did mean to, but that didn't make any real difference to what he was saying now. "Because if you went with 'watch and wait', Andy would be through every girl who'd give him the time of day before you could blink. Which kinda meant... Well, lots of discussion about who liked who, y'know? And that worked okay for everyone else - I mean, they all had confidence and charm and a million other things. And I was just... me. I... Well, we both know I think too much about stuff. And how it's meant to be done. And maybe it's not meant to be like that, but... I kinda always figured it was."

That at least made it make more sense to her that Dean would even go that route. If it was Andy's sort of influence, and she got what he was saying about him going through every girl--particularly since Dean apparently wouldn't even consider a girl after she'd been with Andy. She bit her lower lip a moment, considering, eyes on his. "...I would kind of just take stock of everything you do that's based off of something Andy-related, and rethink it." she told him, voice gentle. "Because I don't think that's the way it is. That's...that's very thinking not with your upstairs-brain type mentality, and that's really really not you."

Dean gave her a sad little smile. "You make it sound so easy. That I should just take things that I do and just... not do them any more. Just like that. Would be nice if it was that easy, but - it's all... I worry. Then I panic. And then I worry about panicking and panic about worrying and it just ends up with this huge mess in my head and I don't even know where it started, half the time. But, with this - I just don't worry anymore. So I don't panic and it's all okay. I just need to find ways around everything else I do. Something to take that stress away. The worry and the panic. The - the things I do to myself, I guess. I think I'm my own worst enemy at times," he admitted.

"That I agree with. You're harder on yourself than anyone in the world." Thia said, knowing that much was fact. "Even things that you wouldn't hold other people to, you do with yourself. You're very unfair to you, y'know." she told him gently. She found the chain beneath the collar of his shirt and ran her fingertips back and forth along it. "And I don't mean to make it sound easy. I just think..." she drew in a breath, and thought. "Okay. You just explained where the mentality was with panicking over talking to girls. And it's a faulty mentality that the whole thing was based off of. So, it's not necessarily something where you need to change the panicking? If you can alter the way you see that first idea...the panicking reaction might just not be a factor anymore. Like...don't go for changing the result of something, go for changing what puts it there to begin with."

"But..." Dean started, then stopped and came at it from another angle. "Right, but for this? I'm going out with you now, so it doesn't matter." And it would be weird to sit here and talk about what it would be like if they weren't going out. He didn't want to do that. "But - okay, us. I do a similar thing when I can't talk to you about stuff, right? The whole stuttery, I'm a bloody idiot moron who can't string a sentence together thing? but... I do that when I'm stressed. Or worried, or panicking. And... I get all those because, well - I don't like giving my opinion about things. Like being put on the spot? I just... I get all... I mean, what if people don't like what I'm going to say? Or laugh at it or whatever - doesn't matter, just... blanket 'negative reaction' thing. Anyway. I know, with you, I'm doing that - I'm coming at it from a faulty mentality. Because I know you and I know that you wouldn't do that negative stuff to me. if you didn't like what I had to say, we'd talk about it. So... On your score, I just have to change that faulty mentality, right? but - I don't know how to do that. I know it's bollocks and I know that you're not like that. But... it's still there. It's like - it's like it's stopped being about the reason any more. Like that bloke with those dogs. Maybe once it was cause and effect, but now the cause has gone, but I can't get shifted of the effect."

"...a guy with dogs?" Thia asked, not catching what he meant there. The rest of it she got though, and she still thought a lot of Dean's issues really did just come from Andy, and the fucking bastard had done it on purpose. It got her angry, and she felt herself warming a little, like a little flash of heat with the ire. She tried not to show it, but it happened for a moment. "Dean, you're an intelligent person. You're thoughtful, a good person, you're...you're my best friend. And there's a reason you are. There's a reason I'm with you now. Or, alright, tons in both cases, but that's not the point. My point is that you matter. And your opinion matters, and everyone in the world occasionally says things that other people don't like. It's just part of life and dealing with people. That doesn't even mean it should be avoided. Plus, you're smarter than most people I know, your opinion is probably necessary in a lot of cases. You'd think of things other people wouldn't. And maybe they should. Or maybe they should just get to know more of you than you've let them. You've done a whole lot of depriving the world of you." she said. With his kind of default mode of not talking to people or hanging back. His bullshit 'also ran' mentality. "I get what you're saying about the trying to stop the panic reaction thing. I just think it might be easier if the cause was re-thought. Or maybe it all comes down to confidence in yourself, and if you had more of that, everything would work out more smoothly."

Dean didn't agree with some of her points in there, but he didn't disagree enough to bring them up - and anyway, she'd only shoot him down for them. He didn't think he was half as smart as she gave him credit for, for a start, but she thought he was and she wouldn't hear any kind of denial from him. Really, he thought that Thia just automatically nay said any point he made about himself that was negative, so he just left it at that. "So, how do I get more confidence in myself then?" he asked her, still thinking she made it sound a lot easier than it actually was. Maybe it was for her, who knew.

"You didn't explain the guy with the dogs thing." She said first, since she still didn't know what that was. "And...start listening to me?" she suggested. "I've been telling you the same things since we met. I know that you still basically ignore that I've said anything. But I really can't be the only one who's said some of it to you. You're better than you've ever given yourself credit for, and I think..." she sighed. "I think that it just has so much to do with Andy and him convincing you of that. I know it won't happen overnight or anything, and that you said it earlier, that this has been the way it is for you for your whole life...but something's got to give. And I really think it needs to be the inherent idea that you aren't good enough. Because you are. You're more than good enough."

"Yeah, the bloke with the dogs and the food and the bell?" Dean said, not able to remember the name of the guy. "That famous experiment that I can't remember the bloke's name from. Anyway - he took a bunch of dogs, and rang a bell to give them food. And then eventually he just rang the bell and didn't give them food, but they were still hungry, or came, or whatever - but it proved that with dogs you could train them to give a certain reaction, even if the proper cause wasn't there any more. they couldn't help it. So, i think I'm like that. Or something. Not a dog, just... I can't help it. And, okay - I have to listen to you. But you're biased. You think I'm wonderful and I'm not," he pointed out, smirking slightly.

"Pavlov! I think. Okay right gotcha." she said, getting it now. Then she narrowed her eyes at him, and made a face, even if there was a light hint of a smile on her lips. "I am biased, that doesn't mean I'm wrong." she told him. "Plus, I thought you were made of awesome right away, back in the day before I was biased, and you were just a guy with a really great accent I loved to experience." she added. "So there. I've just managed to add on more educated opinions, and they happen to be good ones."

"Nah - I think you were just intrigued by my accent. And then you discovered my Lego. I know you only want me for my Lego," Dean joked - again, going with the jokey route in the face of compliments.

"And all that time I spent between accent-crush and Lego discovery?" she asked, pushing him back a little. She was concentrating on trying to make her tone come through, which made her pronunciation a little more precise than necessary, but she succeeded for the most part. "Because you realize that those two things were pretty damn far apart, right?"

"There was a lot of other stuff going on?" he suggested, leaning back as she pushed him, a smile playing over his lips - it was possible that the joke had turned into just teasing her now.

She nodded. "A few things." she told him, shifting slightly where she was since the angle changed and all. She propped her hands on his chest a little, and looked at him. "Nothing big, of course." she said. "But a few things that one might consider between those two specific events." Her hair came to brush down against her cheek. "There waaaassss...lunches on the side lawn." she said. "Those could very well have played into 'Dean is Awesome' mentality type things." She smiled. "You didn't even yell at me when I borrowed your apple. And even if you'd taken a bite too? I totally would have stolen more, even if it would have been like a little baby apple-kiss."

He looked at her, a glint appearing behind his eyes. "Course I wouldn't have complained. I could have had entire, entirely inappropriate fantasies based around a little baby apple-kiss," he told her, moving from teasing to flirting without really registering it - which was probably a really good thing for him. He was so much better when his mind didn't clue into the things he was doing.

She liked that look in his eye. "Oh really?" she asked. "Inappropriate like what? Just how inappropriate are we talking here?" Humming in thought, she kept her eyes down on his, a little bit of an impish bent in her own smile. "That would have inspired that...did anything else inspire inappropriate fantasies?" she asked, really really hoping that he didn't recognize what they were talking about, and stop the flow of it. Really, she'd like to know what kind of fantasies he'd had about her. It might actually help her a little with the way his mind worked and what he might like without him actually knowing they were discussing it. Or...something like that. It wasn't so direct.

"Oh, very inappropriate - the school definitely wouldn't have like it," he said, his grin widening a little. "Though, really - we probably wouldn't have been there very long. Because of the inappropriateness of it," he advised her, nodding a little. "Things do lead to other things, you know. And apple-kisses probably would have led to proper kisses. And, well - you were there at the field when I proper-kissed you and... I don't do so well with holding back once I get started..." he reminded her, thinking of how close he'd been to just lying her back on the ground that night.

She laughed a bit, still smiling impishly at him. "Yeah?" she asked. "Things do lead to other things. I concur with this assessment." she agreed, nodding for emphasis. "So apple kisses leading to proper kisses. And you know, that's true. I in fact recall that you don't hold back so much after you've started something. I like that about you." she told him. "So where's the fantasy go? I got the apple-kisses...then proper kisses...is there any inbetween there? Or is it just you decide in a fit of passion that kissing me is the absolute top of your list of things to do, and you'd better do it right then and there?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, that - I'd think about kissing you a lot," he admitted to her, a little voice asking in the back of his head if she'd decide that that was thinking too much with his downstairs brain, as she'd put it. Well, if it was, it was still true. He would never have acted on it, but the thoughts and fantasies were there.

She wasn't thinking about where he'd been doing his thinking on that. It was still flattering to be told. "Yeah? You were good at covering that." she told him. What with her total cluelessness on his liking her in the first place. He'd been a little too good at hiding it. "Any other notable fantasies that came up?" she asked. "Or do you want to fill in more blanks of what inappropriate, school-expulsion-worthy activities happened in that one?"

The little voice died and disappeared as she didn't call him on that, before it could even really come to the forefront of his mind. "Well - you know that whole wall thing in Manchester, when we were getting our tattoos? It was... basically like that, only on the school wall and we didn't stop," he told her, still comfortable with keeping it vague, but specific enough to hopefully tell her what he meant.

That was a good memory for her. Really, really good memory. Plus, she recalled when they'd been discussing it another time and it had led to one of the most urgent, passionate experiences they'd had together. That whole thing was definitely something that had an effect on the both of them. "...I liked that wall in Manchester." she said, grinning. "And yeah that would very definitely get us both expelled." she added thoughtfully. "Maybe there's just something with walls. It crossed my mind the day we were tracing each other on my wall." she continued. "...can I just say how hard it was not to do something then? And I wanted you to do something...and....yeah."

"I thought about it," Dean told her. "Like... most of the time. Kinda hard not to." He paused for a moment and swallowed, before pushing onwards, slowly, carefully, becoming more aware of himself. "Especially when I was doing your legs. That is, I mean - well, it's..." he stopped himself before the ramble could really get going, taking a breath and trying to determinedly damp that down. He gave her a smile smile instead.

She noticed he was starting to trip over things again, but hoped that if they kept at it a little, maybe he'd not entirely derail himself. It was worth a shot, right? She absently leaned closer, and brushed her fingertips against his neck. "Good to know I wasn't the only one going a little crazy then." she said. "I think it was worst for me when you were standing up and tracing around my neck, and shoulder and such? The position you were standing in was really one that led to imagining if you just happened to drop the pencil and leaned in against me and all." Since he'd practically been doing that in the first place, and she'd been oh so very intensely aware of it. "What was going through your head when you were doing my legs?" she asked.

Dean wetted his dry-feeling lips with the end of his tongue. "Well, yeah - I... Might just have been having a few problems with getting a bit close," he admitted to her when she told him that. He remembered how he'd traced her skin with his hand, following the pencil line in a way that could be explained, but had been entirely unnecessary. "And, yeah, well - I... I had to remind myself that cos of the style of angels and all, it wasn't really necessary to... I only needed to draw around the outside of your legs," he added, holding her eyes as he spoke very deliberately.

She considered that, thinking back to it and all. "Aaah." she said. "So how often did you have fantasies about me, anyways?" she asked. "And any worth sharing?" she asked. She knew once she'd kind of been hit over the head with 'goodgodmybestfriendishot' she'd had them all the damn time. Most of them involved kissing him them pushing him down someplace, or having him do that to her. Then she was thinking about the stairs at the house out on 550 and how that had really made her have to consider calming down before allowing herself to spend more time with him.

"A lot," he admitted, taking a moment or two before continuing. "I mean - it was hard not to," he told her. "I mean - I had this gorgeous girl who'd hang herself all over me all the time - it gave me lots of things to... think about," he added, his expression turning a little nervous and almost apologetic, in case she got all offended that she'd been just being friends and he'd been using her behaviour to fuel his alonetime fantasies

She didn't seem to take offense. She got it. And, considering they were together, and what had happened to her own brain when she'd started to like him she understood entirely. "Well, hopefully I at least gave you a couple of good dreams out of the deal, and I encouraged imagination. I call that good." she said. "'Course, now things don't just have to be imagined." she pointed out.

He smiled at that - an actual, proper smile. "I don't. And, well - the reality's better than the fantasy. And - I feel a lot less guilty," he added, admitting that. He'd spent a lot of the time feeling like he was doing something wrong, like fantasising about her when he was convinced she wasn't at all interested was some kind of a betrayal of their friendship, of the trust she put in him. Of course, it hadn't stopped anything, but it had been there.

She liked when he smiled like that. She smiled in return, and brushed her fingertips over his cheek. "I know how you feel about that. I would be hit really hard sometimes with feeling guilty too, and I'd kind of...try to tell myself that I was just going to have to live with the whole you not being interested thing and maybe one day I'd get over it. That last bit was always really difficult to buy, though, especially since then I'd just see you again and it would start over." she admitted. "You're better than any fantasy too." she told him because he probably could stand to hear it.

"Yeah, I was always kinda waiting to get over it. Didn't happen. Didn't get any easier either. Actually, it got a lot harder - which, looking back, I'm completely blaming on you," he told her, decisively.

She laughed. "You're blaming me? How's that work?" she asked, starting to reach up and play with his hair a little, but mostly because she wanted to be touching him, so she was letting herself. She also wanted to kiss him, but was holding off on it. It was going to distract her entirely if she did that, so she was just going to kinda sorta maybe not push that right now. They were talking, he had gotten over a little trip point...she was encouraging this.

"Because you stopped... I dunno. I always got that vibe off you - that I could push things too far. Not... No, vibe's the wrong word. I always knew where the lines were. And then they kinda started to shift and I wasn't so certain anymore. I mean, that started when you and Joshua split up. Didn't help that Caleb was all 'ask her out, you dummy' about it, but - come on, you'd just split up with your boyfriend, I wasn't going to do that and anyway... But, yeah - you having a boyfriend had been a really good, firm reason to keep my hands to myself. After that, what I had was the knowledge that you'd never look at me like that. I mean, you'd talk about me to me and everything, but when you'd say nice things about me, or how I was fanciable and stuff, you always kinda put it in a way that I was fanciable to everyone in the world except you. So, big indicator. But, then - that kinda started to change. And it got me wondering. And I really, really wanted to wonder. And, of course, I thought it was all in my head - cos who doesn't want the girl they fancy to suddenly start fancying them back? But, looking back - it wasn't in my head, was it?" Dean rambled, coming to a stop with the question. Completely rhetorical, of course, since they were where they were.

"It wasn't all in your head." She confirmed for him even if she didn't strictly need to. "Sometimes I would wonder, but you confused me so much. So, I'd wonder, then be convinced again that I was making things up in my head, and really I think one of the biggest indicators for me was the fact that if you'd liked me, I was pretty sure you would have made a move already. But you hadn't. Like you'd had opportunities. We crashed out together often enough. There'd been long moments where we would just be looking at each other, half the time when I was already on your lap and everything." she said.

"I was tempted, but... You'd been through so much. And I wasn't going to risk ruining what we already had just because I wanted something more. If I'd been wrong... It's like you said before - you don't have that many people left in your life now. It didn't want to take away anyone more. And, I mean, it wouldn't just have been me. It would have been Oz, and Sophie, and your home. There was a lot more than just me - I couldn't risk that if I wasn't entirely certain. But... I'd been thinking about it. That night. And then - I'd told Caleb that I was going to see how things went in England before we left here, so... yeah. But that had been me, that time round. I was more sure and stuff by then. But with everything else, I needed my best friend. I couldn't risk losing her."

She did kiss him then, feeling the need to with that sentiment. She drew it out, kept it soft, and tried to put how she was feeling behind it. "You wouldn't have lost me. Pretty much no matter what. Even if it hadn't worked out that I wanted you so bad it was driving me just a little crazy...you still wouldn't have. People don't bail on their best friends like that." Even if Journey had bailed on her. God that felt like so long ago. It wasn't, but it felt like it. She wondered when the last time she'd thought about him was. It had been a while. And she still missed him...but she missed him like she missed everything else. As an ache that you got used to because you had to. And she had Dean. He'd come into her life at exactly the right time.

He returned the kiss, dropping the subject in favour of that, drawing back as she did, so she could speak, although he could hear her quite properly. It was just a habit, and something he'd been more careful about lately, knowing she couldn't hear him. "I thought maybe I would make you uncomfortable," Dean explained. "If you knew I liked you like that. Our friendship, well, it was physical - you're a physical-type person. I thought that if you knew I liked you, and you didn't like me like that... I kinda figured that the way it'd go was that I'd tell you, and then you'd let me down really gently. And you'd be all nice about it and everything, and explain that I was a great friend, but you just didn't see me that way. And then it would ruin everything. Because you'd try to be friends, but you'd be really aware of what you were doing, and you wouldn't want to, or feel like you could, or whatever, hug me anymore. And we couldn't curl up together and all those million and one things that you do that require touching. And you'd drift. Because you couldn't relax around me. You wouldn't feel comfortable. And you'd try - but it just wouldn't work. That's how I thought it would go."

Reading all that on his lips had her recognizing that he'd very clearly put a lot of thought into that. That had been on his mind for a while, and while it was irrelevant now, it had to have been something that he'd gone over in his head pretty often. Of course it also said something else about him. That--especially in light of how long he'd been carrying a torch for her--he'd never given in on things. That he was about as trustworthy as they came. He was above and beyond on that score. And he probably didn't at all see that. So, after she gave him another soft little kiss, she watched his eyes. "You know how I always say that you're a better person than you give yourself credit for? That you're a better person that just about everyone else out there? That you're above board on everything?" she asked. "...this is part of why. Because even if you liked me from way back in the beginning, and even with everything else going on, you never did anything that was going to make me uncomfortable or that would jeopordize things. The friendship came first, for you, and that's kind of a rare thing. Especially when you point out that I didn't really make it easy for you, either."

"Of course I didn't. You needed me," Dean said, as though that should be self-evident. He considered that, then shrugged. "Actually, you needed a lot more than me, but I was what you ended up with." Most of the time, going through everything, when he'd thought she'd needed was Joshua, but he hadn't stepped up, had he? He should have done, he really, really should have done.

"I did need you." she said. "And even if I needed a whole lot of other things...like therapy, probably, you know, I think I did just fine with you. Another reason why you're amazing." she told him, tone soft if serious. "But still. A lot of people wouldn't have done the things you did. And still wouldn't have held back on anything, no matter what the reason was." she told him. she still remembered Joshua kind of pushing for intimacy when she was far too messed up to contemplate it. Thinking about that had her glancing away for a second, before she looked back.

"It's not all me being amazing, or whatever you think. It's also completely selfish, really. I didn't want to fuck it up. I'd prefer to just have you as a friend and never push anything than to have tried when I knew I was going to crash and burn and lose you entirely. So don't go thinking it was all about you or anything," he joked.

She laughed a little at that. "Yeah, well, most guys really would have gone the other selfish route of wanting to try so they could get some." she said. "So it's sweet you didn't. That's my story and I'm sticking to it." she told him firmly. "I mean even Joshua was a little too..." she made a vague gesture. "I think a physical relationship was really high up on his list." High enough up that he missed out on signals from her that it wasn't the right time at the very least.

"Hey - a physical relationship's pretty high up on my list as well," Dean told her, pulling her in a little further against him. "I just... Didn't think I'd be ever getting one with you. You don't get to get physical with girls that aren't interested."

Somehow she could never picture Dean doing the same thing. It just didn't compute there. "I think a physical relationship is high up on my own list." she agreed. "Just...there are times and places for things, and okay, maybe we've fudged the line a little bit on the places aspect." she said, blushing a faint bit as she thought about that. There was the aforementioned wall in Manchester. And of course the locker room when she'd been by to visit him at school the night of the ridiculously bad storm. So, alright. Place was definitely something that was on a sliding scale at best with them. Of course, those were also very very good memories, and she really could get behind the passion involved with them...

"Uhhuh," Dean agreed, matching her blush a little. If anyone had ever told him that he'd be okay with getting it on in a public place, then he would have looked at them as though they were crazy. But, sometimes, things became a bit too urgent to worry about a little thing like that. Sometimes, some things were just more important.

She liked the little blush on his cheeks, and she gave him another little kiss. "I guess sometimes, a girl just can't help herself. Especially when she's got someone like you." she told him. Which as far as she was concerned, was true, even if she was in the same boat he was. If anyone had ever suggested that to her before, she would have had a very strong opinion about it being wholly inappropriate and unacceptable. ...oops. That just didn't apply anymore, did it.

"Someone like me? What, you mean someone who just doesn't make a move on you at all forever and convinces you he's not interested in you like that at all?" Dean teased, playing clueless and innocent about what she could possibly mean.

She laughed a little and stuck her tongue out. "No, more to the tune of someone who makes me consider just how bad it might be to get arrested, just so long as I could have you right then and there." she said. "Or who considers just how much trouble you'd get into if people heard and reported it. Not just that we got heard. That they heard and said something to someone in authority."

He caught the wording there an frowned, though he looked more intrigued than anything else. "You... don't mind being heard?" he asked her, wanting to check that. Because she had, at one point in their relationship. She hadn't wanted to be overheard - had that changed now? He knew they had a tendency to be very loud, but... yeah, he was intrigued by the way she'd put things there.

Her cheeks really heated up at that point, and she looked shy. "Well....like that night in the locker room?" she asked. "...I didn't quite so much care if anyone did." Because yes, they were loud, and they'd probably been even louder in that case. With all the acoustics and everything else? It would have been kind of a small miracle if they'd managed to be entirely missed by the entire school. Someone had to have heard. Letting loose on their volume control though had just seemed like the more important thing.

He smiled a little at that, just a little. "You seemed embarrassed when I told you Caleb had heard," he reminded her.

She laughed. "Well yes." she said. "But it's different finding out that someone specific heard than thinking about people who I don't know and who won't see me again sometime..." she trailed off. "I mean, with him, I have to wonder if the next time he sees me if he's going to be thinking about what I sound like when...y'know." she couldn't quite put that into overly pinpointed terminology. "But at the time...I couldn't really be bothered to care whether we were heard." Then she paused. "...and actually I think the night we spent at Billy and Maddie's I wasn't thinking about that at all." Which was surprising, in it's own way. Though that night had been....yeah.

Dean knew he hadn't been thinking about that that night - he hadn't been thinking about anything but her. It had been the most all consuming experience of his life and whilst he knew that they tended to focus very heavily on each other when they were together, that night had still felt way over and above that. he knew exactly what she meant. "That night... I... Yeah... That was something... special." There was no other word for it, none that he could think of anyhow.

Nodding, Thia kept her eyes on his. "Yes, it was." she agreed softly. A little too softly. "I...god, that night, it was..." she didn't really have the words, that was the thing. She'd thought about it a lot. Hell, waking up the next morning had sent her into thinking about it all over again as she curled up in the spot he'd vacated because he'd had to go to school. Still, it had been likely the most intense, fully encompassing things she'd ever experienced. There was nothing like it, no comparison.

Dean's eyes flickered down, then back to her again. "I - I never thought I'd... That house, y'know? For that to happen there," he said, leaving it at that. What he meant was that he never expected to ever experience anything good, let alone that good, at that house. Which wasn't something that he was saying aloud, since they were going to a wedding there tomorrow and it seemed, well, unfair, really. But still, that house had always made him feel like he was wrong, somehow - even more so that he always managed to convince himself that he was just through being him.

She had to agree with him. That the thought of that sort of thing happening there, where they both tended to twitch, where just being present kind of made her skin crawl...but it had happened. "I know what you mean. And we'd both even got there with headaches, and...but it didn't seem to matter. Honestly, it just slid right back, and I wasn't even thinking about it anymore. The only thing that mattered to me was you." Which was true. That night, seriously, absolutely nothing could have intruded on that, she believed that. It was that intense.

Dean had almost forgotten about the headache, the remains of a migraine which he'd had when they'd arrived there that night. Hell, he'd spent time unconscious not so long before that - he'd overdone things completely, but yet, with her, that night, none of that had mattered at all. he had no idea where that experience had come from - he'd not felt anything like it before, or since. "Yeah, I - definitely. Like that. Maybe it was just something we both needed," he suggested, since they had actually got a few things aired, that hadn't entirely been said before. He'd actually surprised himself, because they were things that he hadn't actually thought that he felt, not like that anyhow, but they'd appeared with such undeniable, dramatic urgency that he thougth that he must have already been thinking them, surely.

She was under the same impression. "Must've been." she agreed. She'd had a lot of thoughts and feelings that night that, upon thinking about them after she'd got back home the next day seemed odd. And maybe they had a little at the time as well, it just hadn't mattered then. "...I do have to wonder." she said thoughtfully, coming back to something she'd considered due to the incident. "What would have happened if I'd gone through with grabbing you and kissing you when we were first there. When we'd picked out my room, and it was right before you were going to leave." Because good goddamn had she wanted to. It had been one of the most difficult times she'd ever had keeping her hands to herself.

He remembered her telling him, that night, that she'd considered that. And his instant reaction and agreement to it. He'd had no doubt that if she'd just done what she'd told him the other night that she'd wanted to do all those weeks away, just where that would have led. "I think you would have got kissed back," he told her. "And then... I don't think I would have let you go." And there would have been none of the talking they'd done when they got together, because there would have been no underlying reason to stop, nothing to slow them down.

"I wouldn't have let you go." she said. If she'd been brave enough to go for it, she would have really gone for it. And there, with the way everything seemed to feel there, she kind of thought they would have wound up right back on her bed, and skipping over everything else. Going straight in for the passion they both apparently felt. She couldn't decide if that was a little worrying, or if it said something about them, or what. She didn't regret how things had happened with them. And she knew that they had most certainly skipped over levels anyhow. For instance, the L word had gotten shared that night. Pretty much right away, when it came out, it wasn't in small doses.

He leaned in and brushed a kiss across her lips before leaning back again. "I don't regret how things happened, though," he told her. Though he wouldn't have complained at all if she'd jumped him that night, he didn't mind how things had gone in the end, and figured that it was probably better that things had happened the way they had, though, maybe, if she had jumped him that night, they wouldn't have ended up on the beach following the fancy dress party. They wouldn't have met her father... Dean stopped that train of thought. No, he needed to keep hold of the fact that the guy would have found her sooner or later. That it was inevitable. And that it was actually better that he'd found her when Dean had been with her.

"I don't either." she said, smiling a little. "Might've been nice to just give in right then and there, but I don't regret how it did happen. Though I was about to die if you didn't kiss me by the time you did." she said, smile sliding to one that was a little more playful. I mean seriously. Because you were being a lot more physical with me since we'd gotten to England, and there was that first day on the swing and everything, and yeah. I'm pretty sure if you hadn't then, by the time the trip was over, I might have exploded."

"Really?" Dean asked, tilting his head to one side and looking at her slightly harder - for once actually not having an entirely negative reaction to the mention of her death-or-not. He was much too much involved with what she'd said to twitch at something she clearly didn't mean like that. "I... I might have really been into the whole role of playing your boyfriend," he admitted, though he figured that had been particularly damn obvious, all things considered.

"You did a good job with it." she told him with a little laugh. "And yes, really." she confirmed for him, absently playing with his hair a little bit. "And I was all worried about things." she said. Since there'd been the glitch there. "The tv went wonky, and I knew it was you...thought I'd done something really wrong." she admitted. "Of course, we know now that it doesn't actually have to be a bad thing when something slips like that." What with the exploding lightbulb of it all.

Dean blushed at that, his mind going back to the embarrassing incident in his bed before they'd gotten together that he was never, ever telling anyone about. He swallowed a little. "You... have an effect on me," he agreed with her, giving her a little smile. She made him lose control from time to time, that much was for certain. "But, yeah - I... I was nervous as well, but... I wouldn't have done it if I was just playing. I mean, that is - I wouldn't have done it just because the roles meant I could get away with it. I was fairly sure you'd be okay with it." Fairly sure. Not totally sure, no matter what he was saying to her. He wasn't a total saint, but she didn't need to know that.

She liked the blush. That was the second one of the night. She gave him a little kiss for it, too, and went back to playing with his hair. "I like having an effect on you." she told him. She did. It was kind of flattering in a really strange way. A way she couldn't actually ever tell anyone about, but yeah. It was there. "There were a lot of times there when I thought that you might kiss me and then you didn't. Which was why we were talking possible explosion territory. And I wanted to kiss you so bad, and...I don't know. I just..." she bit her lip and then looked at him again. "I wanted you to do it. I didn't want our first kiss to be something I'd initiated." She hadn't been sure enough of herself, and that had been how she and Joshua had hooked up. She'd kind of done the pursuing there, and she hadn't wanted to do that a second time.

"There were times when I was really tempted," he told her. "Like - at the bus stop, that first day. Even though I'd kinda had that move planned and all, still - it was really hard not to just say to hell with it and go for it. I mean, I was right where I wanted to be - it was dead hard not to go with that." Course, she might not have got to meet his friends that way - but then again, considering what had happened, maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad thing.

She laughed a little. "God...yes." she agreed. "Tempting, and you really did kill me with the frustration sometimes you know." she told him. "And you had that move planned?" she asked, blinking at that. "Really? What else have you had planned?" she had to know.

"...It wasn't meant to frustrate you," Dean told her. "I just... Well, there'd be less questions, wouldn't there, if it'd looked like we were kissing like that. But - yeah, I just... Okay, I kind of wanted to just... It was nice, for once, to be able to do that. I didn't really have anything else planned - mostly I just stopped watching myself so much and just let... go." he hoped that made some kind of sense to her.

She thought about that for a moment. "Like you just let yourself do things you would normally do, and that happened to be really excellent boyfriend behavior?" she asked. "...that's a bit what I did. Stopped curbing impulses, I just figured the kissing thing would be taking it too far and I didn't want you to look at me like I was nuts, then sit me down for the 'Thia, we're just friends...' talk." she told him. "...though I have to tell you you really had me confused on the taxi ride home back to your parent's house."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, just - stopped curbing impulses, exactly. And same on the kissing. Just, yeah - that would have been too much, if you really were only pretending and what confused you?" Dean asked, trying to figure out which night and which taxi ride she was talking about.

She blushed a little. "It wasn't even that big a thing, but we were talking, and kind of...well, sitting nicely comfortably and stuff, and you touched my stomach. But under my shirt. And god. Seriously, just that little bit of a touch?" she shook her head. "You had me. You really did. Because you just...didn't usually do that. In fact you were pretty careful generally speaking not to touch me anything like that, even if I made a habit of it...you I think were much better at holding back than I ever was." She remembered when she'd patched him up after the fight with Gabe. The trip to the mine, when she'd been sitting behind him on the bed, when she'd wanted to touch his scar. Yeah, keeping her hands to herself hadn't been her strong suit.

Oh! That taxi ride! Dean suddenly clued in. "Erm, yeah, well... Yeah, I was really into that whole 'boyfriend' role. And, yeah - I worked at keeping my hands to myself, but... I had an excuse. You were pretending to be a good luck troll - you needed your tummy rubbed," he reminded her. Those times, those little times when he got to be extra close to her, before the days when they were actually dating, were burned in all their detail into his memory.

She laughed. "Well, it was working for you." she told him. "Very well." Which had her pausing a moment. "Does that count too as an instance where I just wanted to say screw it and do something in public? I mean, the cab driver was there but I was distracted." That hadn't even occurred to her at that point, but yeah. Huh. "You do strange things to me." she told him, tone affectionate with that. She wasn't complaining about it.

Dean smirked slightly. "I think that depends what you had in mind," he told her. the other occasions they'd been talking about were ones where either they were both willing to go for it there and then, or where they actually had gone for it. This was something different. "I think... this is more like my thing with you on the school side lawn. Only, y'know, if I'd tried that, it really would have led to that whole 'Dean, I don't like you like that' conversation." Since she'd had a boyfriend at the time.

"So if I'd kissed you we wouldn't have made out in the cab a little?" she asked. Though he was right, it probably was more of the fantasy that was sparking her imagination. Because it had been nice. Nice, unexpected, and it had most certainly had an affect on her. She was choosing to ignore how things went really sideways once they were back.

"I didn't say that," Dean told her. Because he knew they would have done. "I was just wondering if making out qualified. Or whether, y'know... It needed to be something more." Like being that close to dragging her into an alleyway and taking her there and then up against the wall.

"Well, being it would have been the first kiss if I'd given in, I imagine that we could cut a little slack and say it counts. Everything else..." she smirked just a tiny bit. "That's just...special. And not anything I would have considered before in a million billion years, but with you..." Everything just hit this level of intensity that she'd not actually realized existed. She sure as hell did now.

"Me neither, I mean... I never saw the appeal, y'know?" he told her, almost suggesting that. "It just seemed... I didn't see how people could actually... I mean... yeah. Just..." Just how could people concentrate on what they were doing, with that whole 'we could get caught' thing hanging over their heads, was what he'd never understood. Except, now, he realised, it was just that that ceased to matter. It just became that the other person was the single most important thing in the world, bar none. The rest of the world just ceased to be important.

"I didn't either. I mean, I'm a hand holder...as you know well." she said, thinking that it was actually rare for them to go anywhere together without holding hands. Even if it was just...upstairs, or something. It was habit, just how they did things. "But I'd never been all that terribly enamored with the idea of too much public displays of affection or anything. But I don't know...something about you, and things between us..." It didn't feel like PDA. It felt more like a moment between them, and she wasn't paying attention to the fact that other people happened to be around somewhere. "Suddenly I just can't focus on that, I'm just focused on you."

"I... I don't think it's like 'displays'," Dean said, thinking it though and voicing his thoughts in a careful tone and speed. "I... It's not about involving anyone else. There's not - I don't want an audience. It's just, like... Sometimes I stop caring whether there is one or not. And yes, focused on you. Totally. I stop. Like, you know how I overthink things and everything, but like - when I'm with you in those moments, it's like I stop thinking at all. Everything just becomes really, really simple." he had other times that that kind of thing happened, he knew, but he didn't want to bring the conversation down by mentioning them.

She nodded, accepting that answer. "Like that. Yes. I agree, it's not about involving anyone. That...would be creepy. But stopping caring that they're there, that just seems to happen sometimes. Where all I want is you and really that's the only thing that'll do at the moment. I think the thought process just sort of takes a break. Because I know what you mean there, too. Where it's not about thinking about anything, it's all just that drive to be with you."

"It's probably a good job we don't spend a lot of time around other people then, huh?" Dean suggested, though he wondered if that was part of where this had all stemmed from. They were so much in the habit of it just being them, to always having their privacy, that maybe neither of them considered the presence of other people as much as maybe they once would have done.

She laughed a little and gave him a brush of a kiss--though she nipped at his lower lip just a little. "Probably." she agreed. "I know that after a while in England, I really really missed getting you to myself kinda whenever I wanted." she admitted. She'd used to be social, but that was before fear of people kicked in, what with living in a town where anyone who recognized her was going to look at her like Gabe had. With that paralyzing fear. Pushing that awful thought away, she tried to keep her mind on positive things, and her initial point. Which was they were used to spending as much time together as they wanted. Where it was just them, and they could hang out and do whatever. And they'd really been cut off from that in England.

"hey - you don't get me to yourself whenever you want here," Dean pointed out. "I mean, now that Sophie's actually forcing me to go to school and everything..." he teased. he'd been sticking to that and everything - being a good little boy who was bored out of his mind, but he was going. And his grades were showing vague signs of improving as well, or starting to.

"Okay, well not whenever I want." she amended. "But most of the time. And if I do happen to want you around and you're gone, I know you'll be back soon." She also knew that if she texted him and anything was ever actually wrong, he'd be back in a hearbeat. He'd proved that. She just didn't abuse it. And she tried to text him sparingly--though she did actually do that now and then. Most of the time when she was feeling really isolated, and she just wanted a little contact with him. It always made her feel better. "But the time we do have here is more our own. We don't have huge amounts of social obligations to eat up all of our time." In England, they'd had something they'd needed to do pretty much every damn day. Which while fun had been exhausting on some levels, and had left her wanting alone time. Like when they'd gone to the village, and it had been just them.

"I think that's kinda always on the agenda when you go visiting." He paused, then shook his head a little. "Sorry - just occurred to me that it probably should be weird to be thinking about going visiting to your own parents. But yeah, agreed - it did get pretty tiring, there always being people around. I enjoyed our trip though." He'd taken her away over night, out into the countryside of Derbyshire.

She watched him for a few moments, searching his face, and she reached up to tug her fingers through his hair. "That's how it is in your head now? Visiting there, not going home?" She could imagine that it was. He hadn't belonged there, even if he'd wanted to. Here was just...where he fit. Even if sometimes that wasn't the prettiest of comparisons. "I enjoyed our trip too." she said. "The countryside was beautiful, it was educational with learning about the walls and the steps over them. And we learned all about the merits of following dreams." What with her having shared her dream about the table, and how they'd tested the theory.

He laughed at that, smiling widely. "Yes, yes - dream sharing can have it's benefits, definitely," he agreed, his grin turning slightly wicked. "We could... Y'know... Do that again some day." He smirked a little. "American tables might be different..."

In that moment, she was cursing not being able to hear him laugh. He didn't do it all that often, kind of like when he smiled, it was rare if it was a wide one. So, for just a second, internally, she had a sharp pang. She just didn't want to ruin the moment. So she pushed it back as quickly as possible. It wasn't so hard with him looking at her like that. She grinned back. "You know, we really should. American tables could be all different. We'd have to check to be sure." she said with a nod. She was thinking that that was a perfect example of why sharing these things, talking about them was beneficial. Because that had been particularly rewarding. So...if he had anything to input they could test out any of that too. "And if you and anything...dreams, or fantasies, that you wanted to share, we could always start working on trying those out too. Worked really well with the tables." she put in.

And there it was, back again, only this time he was much more aware of it, in a determined-type way. He refused to let himself ruin things here. He didn't say anything for a moment or two, then nodded a little. "I will. I promise," he told her, his voice quiet, he knew, but the shape of the words was clear on his lips and that's what counted. He didn't flail about it. He didn't jump for it right there and then, but he didn't flail. "Because, yeah - it worked really well with the table."

Thia could accept that. It was a start, and she was nothing if not patient. So, she didn't push anything right then either. Instead she smiled. "Then I'll look forward to when you've got something to share." she said. Then she put her hand to his face, turning it more towards her, and she kissed him. She drew it out, letting herself deepen it a little this time, even if she'd been careful not to up til then.

He pulled her towards him as he slipped his arms around her, holding her against him, kissing her back. he was good with stopping the conversation for a little, taking her acceptance of what he'd said, grateful for that. he would have something to share, he knew, and he would - he just needed to wait for the right moment. It seemed that all his life he was waiting for the right moment. And it always came, eventually.