notfaking_it | (no subject)

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t.j.

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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."

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"I can't lie, I like getting laid regularly way too much to make the effort for that," she admits with a laugh, then nudges T.J. gently with her elbow. "You seem to be in pretty good spirits and it's really nice to see that." She'd worried about him, not that she's going to come right out and say as much. Though their relationship had begun in a relatively superficial manner, with getting high and dancing and sex, she can't pretend that it's stayed that way for either of them. She loves him, she wants the best for him, and she knows how happy Thomas makes him. She knows he needs to be clean to continue on in a positive way and she can support that.

"Well, you're here," T.J. points out with a grin, as much teasing as not. "How could I not be?" It's not like that's the only factor at hand here, but it also isn't as if he's in good spirits like this all the time, either. Being here, doing the work he has to, it's fucking hard, there's no way around that. But it'll ultimately be for the best. He has to believe that. With all the close calls he's had, he might very well be saving his own life. "Though, I don't know, keep talking about getting laid regularly and I'm not sure we can stay friends. Do you have any idea how much I miss sex?"

"I'm sorry," she says with a laugh, raising both her hands in a defensive gesture. "I won't say another word about it, I promise." Sometimes she does need to talk about it, though, if only because this is the longest in her life she's ever gone sleeping with the same person. It's been a very long time since she's even considered being with one single person exclusively and she thinks T.J. might at least understand why it's strange for her from time to time.

"You know after more than a year, I still haven't called Delta my boyfriend," she admits with a little wince. "How's that for taking your mind off sex? You can deconstruct my weird relationship issues."

"Oh, yeah, much better," T.J. says with a crooked, sympathetic smile, what sounds flippant, though it is pretty true. He might not be the best person to make sense of that shit, if only because the position he's in isn't a dissimilar one, but it sure as hell beats thinking about all the sex he hasn't been getting since he came out here. "What does he call you? Or has he put a word to it at all yet?"

"He doesn't call me anything," she says after thinking about it for a moment. "Maybe this is terrible of me to think, but because he doesn't have a lot of memories of a life before, he doesn't have a lot of expectations either, which has made avoiding naming it a lot easier." And it's not that she still wants to avoid it, but she certainly had at first. Now, though, she's no longer sure what she wants. She thinks of him as her boyfriend and she's said the word to T.J. now, though few others.

"I guess that makes sense," T.J. says, nodding. It's not something he has any experience with, of course, but he imagines that less exposure to that sort of thing would make it easier not to have specific expectations of what to do with this sort of thing. Then again, that seems like it could work for the best, too. It isn't like Lily is taking advantage of it — not, at least, to his read on the situation — but it'll be easier for them to figure shit out together this way. "Do you want to put a name on it, or are you fine with the way things are?"

"I'm never quite sure," she admits, which is a lot for her to say. Lily's been sure of most things her entire life; she's confident and she's self assured and she makes decisions easily, but it's also been a very long time since she's let herself get this deeply involved with a person. And it isn't entirely self-preservation, she hasn't had her heart so badly broken that she's shut herself off, but it had been easier this way for a long time. Much more fun.

"It's been a long time since I've been in an exclusive relationship," she says with a laugh. "The last time was... Jesus, I was probably nineteen and she got pissed after about eight months because dancing took up so much of my time."

Unable to help himself, T.J. lets out a laugh at that, shaking his head. He can't say he's entirely surprised. Though he's never had anything that kept him so busy — if anything, the opposite was the case, which was probably part of his problem — relationships just haven't been his cup of tea, or something he was very good at. Even when he tried, it didn't work out well. It's part of why he's so fucking worried this still isn't going to work out with Thomas. It's also why his smile softens somewhat before he speaks again.

"I ever tell you about the closest thing to a relationship I had before Thomas?" he asks, though he's pretty sure he hasn't. The subject is one he's made a point of steering clear of for a reason. Now he doesn't think he should try to hide it.

"We didn't do a lot of talking about our past or our relationships," she points out with a smile, though she doesn't think she needs to answer his question at all. She cares about T.J. a great deal, more than she cares about most people, but part of what's been so easy about having a relationship with him is that they've never asked any hard questions.

"Are you going to tell me now?" she asks, propping her chin up on her hand. "I told you mine."

"His name was Sean," T.J. says, already a little wry. It's the only way he can really talk about it, short of how it all came out when he was in the hospital, providing Thomas with an explanation for those stupid fucking photographs. "He was a Republican congressman from Ohio, and he was married with two kids. We had an affair for six months." He huffs out a laugh. "Not so coincidentally, those six months were the longest time I've been sober since I was a teenager. And somehow I got it into my head that he was going to leave her and stay with me."

"And he had other plans," Lily says, her head tilted slightly before she reaches over, brushing her fingers gently through T.J.'s hair. She'd been there, too, married men, but she'd never wanted them to leave their wives and the thrill of it had faded once she'd seen one of them at the ballet with his wife and kids.

"Did it end badly?" she asks. Affairs like that usually do, someone is always hurt at the end of it and she hates to think that the person hurt in this case would have been T.J., but she doesn't really see any other way it could have gone.

"It ended with him being blackmailed by the Vice President into changing his vote on a bill so no one would find out about us," T.J. says with a crooked smile that he doesn't quite feel. It is kind of funny, but in a sick sort of way, just for how well it fits with the rest of his life. Of course the one thing resembling a relationship he had would fall apart because of political bullshit. There's never been any escaping it, not for as far back as he can remember. "And then with him back in Ohio with the wife and kids, and me in the hospital."

He can't tell her about what he tried to do, or how a part of him has never stopped wishing that his mother hadn't gotten home when she did and found him there in the garage. Not, at least, given what she's so recently been through. It's not like the story doesn't still make sense without that detail, though. "I relapsed in a big way."

Lily nods her understanding and it doesn't entirely surprise her to hear him say any of this, but it causes something in her chest to tighten all the same. She hates to think of him like that, left alone in a hospital, abandoned by someone who's supposed to love him, by someone who probably did love him and found himself in a bad situation with few choices.

"That's shitty," she says, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "And I'm sorry that happened to you."

Hand curled around Lily's, T.J. gives her a thin smile. A part of him almost wishes he'd had someone like her in his life back home, rather than just his ever-disappointed family and the people he got high with, the guys he fucked once and never saw again. It wouldn't have made any difference, he's sure, having had to at least start accepting that the nature of the disease doesn't work that way, and that he can't foist any of the responsibility off on other people, but it would have helped. It's a hell of a lot better than his mother's lack of sympathy and his father calling it a stunt, anyway.

"I can't say it's why all this happened here, but it was kind of the tipping point," he admits. "It was around that time of year anyway — remember when I said I hated Christmas? — but then I found the pictures they used to blackmail him with. One of those things from home, you know? And I just went off the rails."

Edited 2014-04-11 10:14 (UTC)

She nods, knowing what he's talking about, although she's never had anything from home show up and upset her that badly. There was only the things from the island, Sawyer's things, and it hadn't been such a terrible thing to discover in her bag that day. She wonders if it's because she's moved around so often, danced with so many different companies, refused to stay anywhere long enough or make any real connections. There's nothing this place can send to her to upset her because there's nothing back there she thinks of that much.

She's never sure if that's a good or bad thing.

"It's like this place can't quite leave something alone," she says with a bit of a humourless laugh. "It has to find a weakness and try to exploit the shit out of it."

"Yep," T.J. says with a short nod of his own, letting out a dry laugh. "I mean, don't get me wrong, it would have happened anyway, I'm sure, it just... sped things up a lot." At least this, he thinks, is progress, owning his part in it rather than just blaming some external factor. Back home, he would never have managed this. "At least the pictures had a date on them. I can't imagine what it would have looked like to Thomas otherwise."

"You would have explained and he would have listened," she says, sure of that. She doesn't know Thomas well, but she knows he cares about T.J. and sometimes, no matter how hurt a person is, they want to believe the best of the people they love. She can see how it would have been hard if there hadn't been the date, but she thinks they would have made it through.

"If he stuck around long enough for that," T.J. says, though he knows that's not entirely fair. It's never really that simple, and some people have the capacity to stay far longer than they should. Maybe Thomas would have given him the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe it would have crashed and burned, like everything in his life has a tendency to, one more reason to be grateful to have a friend like Lily around. "But I won't have to find out either way. That's something."

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