notfaking_it | (no subject)

When she's invited to come visit T.J., Lily nearly jumps at the chance. The past few months have been awful, worse than she thinks she's ever had, and although she still has Delta and Eden, she feels like her small circle of friends is quickly disappearing and she isn't sure what to do with that knowledge.

This is why Lily's never really let herself get too close to people. This is why she's always stayed just separate enough for it not to hurt when someone has to move on. She's never blamed people before and she doesn't blame them now, but she also doesn't like how painful it is, how much her chest tightens when she thinks of Nina being gone. Forever. There's really no coming back from death, no matter what she wants to believe. A movie is one thing, but going to the funeral, knowing what had happened, having it happen here in this city, it's all completely different. It's much more real.

But she's invited and so she collects a few newer magazines for T.J. and brings a couple of books along as well, then submits to being gently searched -- they don't call it that, but they go through her bag and ask her to turn out her pockets -- before she's allowed inside to see him. There are no bars on the windows and it's hardly prison, but at the same time she feels weirdly violated. It's for his protection, she knows that, and she's sure there are plenty of enablers who'd encourage him to go back to cocaine, but she knows she can't be one of them.

She might have been, once upon a time, but not anymore.

"Hi," she says when she spots him inside, giving him a bright smile. "Holy shit, you look good."

Threaded | Flat

For the most part, it's been easier than he would have expected. If that's because he's actually taking it seriously this time around or what, T.J. doesn't know, but he'd thought it would be more difficult overall, not being around his friends, the people in Darrow he's come to care about. That isn't to say he likes it, but he gets it, the necessity in having some distance from the rest of his life, and it isn't as if he doesn't have plenty else to be focusing on.

It gets less so when he reads about that dancer, the one whom he's pretty sure he remembers being a friend of Lily's. Not enough to leave him distracted, to keep his mind off the task at hand or anything like that, but it just about kills him that he can't be there for her. It's one more reason why, when he gets the go-ahead to have visitors come, he wants to see her. He would have anyway, but this just makes it even more so.

Less nervous by far waiting for her than he was for Thomas, he grins when he catches sight of her, warm and almost relieved. "Tell me about it," he says, brow raising. "God, you're a sight for sore eyes."