Max Main ≡ Lois Lane (bylined) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-11-24 13:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, lois lane |
Who: Max and Thomas
What: This conversation goes all over the place. Let's just say "planning."
Where: Bathos, 404
When: The day before Thanksgiving
Warnings: None
He wasn’t in armor when he showed up, but he was unrecognizable in deep grays and a mask he didn’t pull off until he was under the cover of her windowsill. If anybody saw him, it wouldn’t be the Bat getting in at all, but some masked assailant that was otherwise unidentifiable. Worst case scenario someone called the police. Not a problem.
He was annoyed that she had gone out to search for Rorschach when he had tried to talk her into avoiding danger, and regardless of what she said, Rorschach brought danger with him wherever he went. She wasn’t there when he arrived, which made him worry, and for a brief flicker of a moment, he wished for the days when all he had to worry about were other people’s problems.
He put the mask into a pocket and, moving on silent feet, listened at the door for voices. He heard none there, either, so he sat down and went over all the cases he was working on in his mind, something he did in generally pointless attempts to break them.
She had given up using her front door around the same time she had given up trusting Mason, and the sound of her shoes on the fire escape was audible from the lowest rung. The meeting with Corbinian hadn’t gone as anticipated, and she was distracted and pissed, both in equal measure. She could kill him for not telling her someone was going to be there, someone who had been exceptionally vocal about their dislike of the things she wrote as Cipher. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he had introduced her as Cipher with no disguise in place whatsoever. It was unbelievably stupid and risky and a million other things, and it very clearly placed her (publicly) somewhere she wouldn’t have intentionally put herself.
As she climbed the fire escape, she could hear her father in her head, bitching at her about every mistake she’d made since leaving Musings, and she couldn’t discount a damn thing, not even one. She was thinking about that as she lifted the window, and she reached over and pushed the alarm buttons, realizing as she did that she’d hadn’t come back the previous night, and hadn’t armed it before she went. It made her cautious, and she reached for the gun tucked in the back of her gray, slim skirt as she turned, reaching for the light with her hand still at her back.
“It’s me,” he said into the darkness, eyes thoroughly adjusted and view clear from where he sat on the edge of her bed. He didn’t stand up, thinking to be less threatening, and he sounded a thousand times better than when she had last heard his voice. Serious, competent, the mid-range voice of someone difficult to reach. He didn’t add the gravel he sometimes adopted to disguise his voice.
She wasn’t expecting him there, but as soon as she heard the very first sound from his mouth she relaxed, and the pulled out the gun and put it on the nightstand, leaving the lights off. She kicked off her heels as she walked to the door, and she put her ear to it and then opened it, verifying Mason was not present. She locked the door behind her, and she slipped off her coat and scarf, and she let those drape at the foot of the bed before going to sit beside him. “Corbinian brought someone, and he didn’t fucking warn me,” she said, and she sounded worried. “He introduced me as Cipher.”
Thomas closed his eyes. That was all they needed, someone painting Max’s name up as Cipher and making her even more of a target than she already was. “I think it might be time to take steps for your safety,” he said, slowly, taking a far more wise approach now that he wasn’t dead on his feet and incoherent with other people’s worst memories.
He sounded better, which made her relax more. Or it did, until she realized where the conversation was going. “I had no way of knowing he was going to do that,” she said, because she hadn’t. “And I’m going to kick his ass for it. I promise you.” She sounded utterly determined about that fact, too. She reached out a hand in the dark, and she touched uncertain fingers to his cheek. “You sound better.” A smile. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere helping Luke get fitted for a tux?”
Thomas, who had forgotten all about dinner plans, vacations, and holidays in general, took this to be a general tease about the heir thing, and brushed it off with his usual “life is serious” expression. “I told you I just needed to catch up on rest, is all.” Then without pausing in the hopes that she’d stop talking about him and talk about herself, “I mean your safety in general. This business with Cipher. Things that happen on the communicators. Associating with me.” The gray eyes were pale and unblinking.
That ‘life is serious’ expression was something she was familiar with, and she grinned and started to tease him about Luke possibly showing up for dinner in jeans, when he spoke again, and then she was completely quiet until he had finished. The back of her fingers slid to his jaw, and then down to her lap, and she gave him a look that was intentionally calm. “I’m not going to stop being me, Thomas,” she said, an unflappable certainty in her words. “I’m not going to stop writing, and I’m not going to stop talking on the communicators, and I’m not going to stop associating with you.” Yeah, no room for argument there.
Thomas tightened his jaw and endeavored to be rational. “If you write, you need to do a better job of concealing who you are. If you’re on the communicators you need to be able to hear someone in distress and not go to them. If you’re going to associate with me, you can't do it in public.”
“Until tonight, I did a fine job of concealing who I was. I had no way of knowing he was going to pull that. I was meeting him, not some girl. Tonight was not my fault,” she insisted. “I’m not going to walk into a fight. We discussed that. Thomas, I’m pregnant. I’m not an invalid. I’m not going to spend six months knitting. I’m going to be careful, and you’re going to find it in you to realize that I spent the past six years of my life undercover without getting myself fucking killed, and doing things that are were whole lot more dangerous than I’m doing here.” She crossed her arms then. “And the last time I checked, you had a perfectly safe public persona, and there is nothing wrong with associating with you in public. Luke does it, and he’s fine.”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” Thomas said, enforcing the detachment in his voice regardless of how much he might like to take his frustration with the situation out on Corbinian, “the persona isn’t going to stay safe for long. Luke is in place to...” The briefest of pauses as he considered how to explain it. “...To check that eventuality.”
“If the persona doesn’t stay safe, we worry about it then,” she insisted, and then she stood and started pacing as a thought, a realization hit her. “I’m not asking you for public acknowledgment,” she said, carefully not looking at him as she paced and talked, an effort to keep her voice modulated and with a fake sort of calm that threatened to break with every word. “I never expected that from you. Hell, you don’t even have to tell me that. I realized it when Luke told me about the adoption. I get it. I do.” There was definite overstating there, as if she was convincing herself as she spoke. “But that sure as hell doesn’t mean I’m just going to-” she waved her hand, cut herself off and didn’t finish the sentence.
“Max, even if I don’t make a statement about it, we’ve been together publicly far too often to prevent anyone from connecting the dots. From what you’ve just told me, the chances that one or the other of us is publicly revealed are just going to keep going up. Something like this will make you, and eventually, the child, a target. You see that.” Thomas had his shoulders down over his knees and his fingers were folded in front of his mouth as he spoke, guarded.
She walked over to the window, and she leaned against the sill, arms going around her waist protectively. “What are you suggesting, Thomas?” she asked, and it was a tightly restrained question, one that said she could already imagine what he was going to say. Her body language spoke to hurt, rather than anger, and she didn’t turn to look at him as she waited for his response.
“I’m saying that the two of us together publicly redouble the danger. Unless we can come up with some way to explain your condition and convince people I didn’t have anything to do with it.” Everyone he spoke to seemed to think it was inevitable that the mask came off in one way or another. Thomas knew that was now as much of a problem for her as it was for him.
She did look at him then, and there was a hint of dampness in her brown eyes that was visible in the moonlight from the window. “You want me to run around and have everyone think it could be someone else’s? Multiple someone else’s? Is that what you want?” she asked, and there was a world of hurt there that came on the heels of her arguments with Johnny and Sentinel over the past few days. “You really want that? Because that isn’t going to go away once the baby’s born. It’s going to stick around, and you’re talking about a lifetime full of fucking doubt for someone who isn’t us.” Her voice was cracking by the end, sharp shards of badly concealed pain.
Thomas reacted almost like he’d been struck, but he recovered quickly and spread his hands. “I’m trying to do what’s best for you both,” he said, frustration making it past the words now. “Do you disagree with me? Do you have some better idea? Because I can’t wait to hear it, Max.”
She hugged herself tighter, and she looked back outside, and she cursed herself for a fool, for being lulled by his acceptance and insistence she move in. “I’ll take care of it,” she said, and she tried to go for neutral, but she just ended up sounding numb instead. “I’ll take care of it, and everything can go back to how it was before.”
“That isn’t what I said,” he said, sharply. “I said if it’s publicly known, it’s dangerous. I didn’t say I was leaving you alone to ‘take care of it.’” There was no sound, but if she turned, she would find him standing, upright in the exact center of the room, watching her.
She did turn, and she looked at him for a long moment, silent, and there was no doubt that this had hurt her; it was written all over her face, her posture, everything. Walls that had chipped away were back in force, and she tried for a carefree smile before looking back out, but failed spectacularly. “I meant take care of diverting the public. I’m the press, remember. I can make them think whatever the hell I want.” She canted her head, pressed her cheek against the pane. “I always said, right from the beginning, that I wasn’t going to force this on you. If you don’t want people thinking it’s yours, fine, I won’t force that on you.” She looked back at him, not even bothering to hide the tears now. “But, for the record, I hate this plan.”
“I just don’t want anyone to get hurt because of who I am. It happens... enough, already.” In an abrupt sign of strain, he rubbed the end of one eyebrow and then dropped back on the edge of the bed. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. The opposite, in fact. That was always how it was, in the end. Copeland was right; he was a disaster.
It was the strain that moved her, that small movement, almost nothing but telling, telling, so telling. She was beside the bed by the time he sat down, and she sat down beside him and took a shaky breath. “Look at me, dammit,” she said, and she reached for his hands, her own fingers shaking with the effort to keep it together in this conversation.
He looked up, grateful she wasn’t going to stay over there and be hurt when he couldn’t do anything about it. His cool fingers wound familiarly in hers, and he gave her a twitch of a smile.
The twitch of a smile made her melt, and she pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth and pressed her cheek to his, taking a deep, steadying breath. “This isn’t just about who you are,” she said. “I’m a part of this movement too, remember? We both take risks, and we do it because we’re dedicated, obsessed, whatever you want to call it. I’m still going to be me once the baby’s born, Thomas. This is the life this kid is being born into. Yes, I am going to do everything I fucking can to stay safe, and maybe I’ve done a shit job right now, but I’ll get better once I’m showing. And maybe your persona will slip, and if it does, we’ll deal with it. You aren’t getting us hurt. I believe in what we fucking do. That matters to me. Not losing this matters to me.”
He put both arms around her and, without possession or restraint, gave her a quick squeeze around the shoulders. “I’m trying to lessen the risk,” he said, honestly, leaning back so he could see her face. “This life isn’t a good one to be born into. I tried to talk Luke out of it, remember?” Another slight smile. “I just can’t help but think it would be easier, less dangerous, if... it wasn’t me.” Worry creased the corners of his eyes as he put his shoulder against hers.
“It would be safer if we lived in suburbia, but we don’t. And if we did, we wouldn’t be us.” She sighed then, a resigned sound. “You realize if we do this your way, it means-” She had to stop and calm her breath, which was threatening to do more than hitch, “limited involvement for you.” And that bothered her; it was plain and obvious in her voice and on her face.
Heavily. “I don’t like it either. It might be possible to--maybe--” Nothing. He shut his eyes. “Is there a better way?” He was really asking, then and now. Hoping. He didn’t think it was necessary to tell her that he knew about her first time at the hospital, and he felt somehow that the private memory of their child’s heartbeat was as much his as hers, and he kept silent so he could hear it in his mind. He’d do anything necessary to make sure it kept beating.
When he closed his eyes, she moved back enough to look at him, and she thought of that scared, angry little boy in the memory, and she ran the back of her knuckles over his cheekbone gently. “Tell me what would be easiest for you,” she said in the end, because despite his worry for her, she felt pretty fucking sure that he was having more trouble keeping it together than she was. “I can write some articles, spread the potential candidates around.” She gave him a tight smile. “Unless you had someone in mind?” she asked quietly, the thought finally dawning on her that he might. She gave him a look that was sad, then. “I am a woman, you know, at the end of the day. I’d like to have you around for things, and I’d like to do Thanksgiving dinners, but if it’s that important to you, I can manage.”
“I want to be around for those things,” he said, smiling a little. “Especially the cooking.” Thomas didn’t count cooking as one of his skills. He could survive on toast and protein shakes, so he never bothered to learn. “Copeland thinks I should learn to be more...” Thomas searched around for a word. “Sociable.”
“I meant Luke’s dinner, and... wait, Copeland?” she asked, sounding more than a little surprised. “Since when do you pal around with him?” And, oh, there was something there that said she was hurt and pissed off and everything in between.
He leaned back again to give her a look of faint surprise. He thought that she and Johnny were close, “pal-ing around” like she just said. “I don’t. He saw one of my memories, though, enough to know who I am.” His mouth twisted a little. “Inconvenient.” He realized a bit late that he wasn’t supposed to connect Copeland with Sentinel for Max. She would kill him if she found out he was keeping it from her, he could tell already.
“Wait. What does he know?” Oh, now she sounded fucking panicked.
“The Bat. Me.” He looked worried now, in the way of Thomas when he wasn’t showing anything at all.
She was on her feet and pacing again, quicker than before, a hand sliding into her hair. “This is bad. Thomas, he hates the vigilantes. He thinks they’re psychopaths. He writes exposes on them. He lectures me about the fact that they’re insane all the damn time. We can’t trust him. You just don’t get it, the things he says. Oh, fuck. And he trusts Mason. He doesn’t realize Mason is a slimy little expose writing insect.” More pacing. “There is no one, and I mean no one I would trust less. Dammit.” She stopped, looked at him. “He got one of my memories too, about us, but he didn’t mention you specifically. He was too busy getting all fucking moral about casual sex and why I-” She shook her head, trying to get herself back on track and failing miserably.
Thomas’ eyes rounded slightly as he watched her stalk around like a cat, but he didn’t attempt to stop her. Instead he listened with growing alarm. Clearly he had been mistaken about how close Copeland and Max were; he had been under the impression they were... well. Friends. “I’ve had one of his, too,” he said, treading carefully. “I don’t know about this Mason, but I don’t think that Copeland himself would intentionally reveal either of us.” His brows tilted very slightly. “What’s this about casual sex?” He sounded like a textbook; he got that way when he was keeping control.
She was so worried about Johnny knowing who Thomas was that she didn’t measure her words at all, didn’t even have it in her to do so. “We went out once or twice, and apparently he got some sex memory, and apparently the fact that you and I had sex when you weren’t in love with me makes me a moral pariah. That isn’t important. Sentinel trusts him, and I don’t have the slightest idea why, not anymore.” She looked worried. Really, really worried, and there was a touch of hurt there too, behind it. “I asked him to help me cover up the alley story, not let Mason write it, Copeland. Things have been strained since then. He thinks telling the truth is the most important thing in the fucking world, even if it means writing slanderous columns about his friends. My morality was just-” she waved a hand, and she dropped down beside him on the bed. “If he does anything with this, I’ll kill him. I swear.”
Thomas decided to have a further conversation with Copeland about this “telling the truth” that was apparently so important. He wasn’t that thrilled about “some sex memory” either (obvious by his expression, which resembled someone who had just eaten a lemon). Slowly, he said, “It doesn’t sound like this is about your morality, Max. He never mentioned any of that to me when we spoke this morning.”
“I don’t trust him,” she reiterated, and she didn’t, not anymore. “He wouldn’t do anything to me. It’s not that kind of thing, but-” she stopped then, and she looked at him, really looked at him. Her gaze went sharp, and she turned to face him on the end of the bed. “When you talked to him this morning, was it for a reason?” she asked, and she sounded like she might have been putting two and two together in her mind. “The last time I saw you, you were telling me I was moving in with you, and we’d let the tabloids say whatever the hell they wanted. Now you’re saying just the opposite. Did talking to Johnny fucking Copeland have anything to do with that?” Her arms were wound tight around herself now, and she looked as raw as she felt. Between the memories and Johnny and the situation with Corbinian and Sam, she was about to crack, and it was extremely evident.
“Max,” Thomas said, just as slowly. He reached forward for her wrists and gently but firmly disentangled her arms and pulled her hands toward him. She didn’t need to protect herself from him. “We talked about the memories, mine and his. In his he appeared to care about you a great deal, and I took it for granted that you were at least friends. Before I was worried about your physical safety, and I think you’ll grant me that I wasn’t at my best at the time. If it’s safer for you to be away from me, then it is. If it’s not, then it’s not, and you come back. That’s why I came to talk to you about it. Relax.”
“He does care,” she admitted, letting him take her hands. “It isn’t that he doesn’t care. It’s that his morals are more important than caring,” she said, because that was it, at the end of the day. “I don’t trust him with what we do. I don’t think he’d do anything to me. I talked to Sentinel about it. They’re friends, him and Sentinel, and Sentinel spent an entire comm conversation explaining why Johnny didn’t understand what I had done.” She sighed, and she looked up at him. When he said he had asked her because of physical safety alone, she nodded jerkily, and then she slipped her hands free of his. “I told you yesterday,” she started, but she didn’t bother finishing. “I’m due to write a column anyway. I’ll take the pressure off you with it,” she finally said, and then she nodded toward the window. “Go on. Luke probably does need help with a tux for Thursday, and I’m perfectly safe.”
“I’ll talk to Copeland,” he reassured, watching her hands pull away from his and then lifting his eyes back up to her face, resigned. “Don’t worry about it.” His hands nearly came together again, as they did when he wasn’t watching what he was doing with them, but he prevented it and let them back down over his knees. “I’m not under pressure. I’m just worried about you. Do you understand that? I’m worried, and I’m not very good at worrying about people in general. I find I tend to overreact.” There, see. An attempt at humor.
“I understand,” she said, and she looked down at his hands. She took one, just one, in both of hers, but she didn’t look at his face when she spoke. “I just wasn’t expecting this today. Not after last night,” she told him. “It’s kind of a 180, Brandon,” she told him, managing a bit of a teasing grin as she looked back up at him. “A woman likes to think she isn’t going to get kicked out the night after fighting with a man about moving in.” She let go of his hand, and she nudged his shoulder lightly with her fingers. “I’ll write the article, and we’ll do it your way. Don’t worry about Copeland. Talk to Sentinel. If anyone can keep Copeland in line, it’s him.” She touched his cheek. “And you worry about people too much, dammit. So don’t give me that shit.”
Flickers of emotion that moved too fast for identification met this speech, but in the end all he actually said was, “You didn’t come back. You came here--after you went out after Rorschach.” Thomas knew, somehow, that Rorschach would be alright. He was resilient in the worst way. Hopefully he would be sane when he showed up again. He didn’t think it likely she would return, hence his presence and the abrupt turn toward precautions. In possession of the hand nearest her now, he brought an arm over her head and pulled her hair back behind the shoulder opposite, fingers brushing the base of her neck. “I think it is now my job to worry about you.” He smiled. “Though I recall doing it some time ago before I even knew how much you ignore me when I caution against things.”
“I needed clothes, Thomas,” she said logically, and her eyes closed when his fingers brushed the base of her neck. “If it was up to you, I’d only go out to do groceries, and even that would be with supervision. I’m perfectly capable of keeping myself alive, and anyone else that happens to be along for the ride. I wasn’t kidding when I said I managed to get out of that cage sane and in one piece. No one rescued me. I got out. Nothing is going to take me down.” She smiled. “And I think you need taking care of more than I do, for the record.” She opened her eyes, and she stared into his grey ones earnestly. “And I fucking promise that nothing is going to hurt this child.” She stared at him a moment longer, stared and memorized. “Promise me something, if we do this your way?” she asked, voice dropping to a hesitant almost-whisper.
Thomas’ hand froze in her hair and his opposite hand curled next to his hip. “You didn’t say you were the one--” That was the worst possible memory to associate with her, and all he could do was look at her and wonder why it had to be ‘his’ way.
Max didn’t understand how disassociation worked, she didn’t understand the concept of watching something as if it was happening to someone else, and so she didn’t understand his confusion about the memory. “I told you there was only me there,” she said, and the confusion that showed on her face was bare for a moment, and then she shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. It was a long fucking time ago, and it it just goes to show there’s nothing Seattle can do to me that I can’t deal with. Just... promise me something?”
“Max.” It was hard to tell what he meant by the name. He looked away from her, not wanting to show how angry he was, and looked ahead at the carpet a little ways away, working on several sets of numbers to keep himself from thinking about it. “What is it?”
“It’s not any worse than what you went through, Thomas,” she said, softly, quietly. “Different, but not any worse.” In her mind, what had happened to him was worse. She had been trained to get through that sort of situation, he had been so small and so hurt and- Her breath caught on a sob as she thought about it, and she reached for his hand and squeezed it firmly, strength in the grip. She remembered that she’d asked a question, then. “We can lie to all of Seattle, and I can pretend a million things that aren’t true, but I don’t want to lie to this child, when the time comes. I don’t want one of those broken children in those memories,” she finished, fierce and protective.
Thomas didn’t ask whatever it was she’d seen. She’d described enough where he thought he knew exactly what she’d seen, and he didn’t want to think about it in that second. His mouth flattened. “Agreed. What exactly is it that you’re planning on writing?” He frowned. For once, he had wanted to ask her what she wanted, talk about it, and he’d kept himself from making the decision on his own. It sounded like she didn’t have an alternative for him though.
“Something that makes Seattle think you and I would never sleep together, not in a million years,” she said, and it was obvious she wouldn’t have gone that route had the choice been hers to make. “Lots of public noise that says the same,” she added. She didn’t think she needed to tell him she hated this plan; she’d already told him, and it was plainly writ on her face. She looked at him a moment longer, and she made a strangled sort of sound, something lost, and she spread her fingers along his cheek and leaned in. When she kissed him, it wasn’t a chaste sort of nothing kiss, it was anger and desperation and a million pent up emotions rolled into the press of lips, almost claiming, almost possessive, almost an eternity of things.
He put his arms around her again, careful, and after a moment, he broke the kiss enough to take a breath. “Nobody is ever going to believe that.” He kissed her again at the corner of her mouth. “Too much counter-evidence.” Palm warm against her lower back, he settled her a little closer, protective. “I’m not sure that’s going to work.”
She kissed him back, between his arguments, deeper this time, and she shifted so she was pressed against him, edge of her skirted thigh almost over his. “Then we confuse it,” she said. “Same concept.” She mouthed his jaw as she thought about it. “Doesn’t matter, does it, as long as there’s no empirical evidence it’s you?” she asked, strategy between another kiss, this one just beneath his ear. “I fucking hate this, for the record,” she repeated, and it was blunt, but not angry, the closeness diffusing that to a large extent. “But it can work.”
“Worst case scenario, any chance we’re together, and any theory I’m not just here for business, you could end up more of a target than you already are.” His fingers pushed through her hair under her ear and then over the back of her neck. “I could disappear. Bat full time would be easier than either of us actually leaving town.” Though if he thought he could get her to leave town for her safety, he would have tried to talk her into that long ago.
She actually laughed at that one, a husky laugh against the warmth of his neck. “Brandon, you can’t disappear. You’re too fucking big. I never would have focused in on you as a reporter if you weren’t,” she said, without apology. “I don’t write about the Bat. I never write about the Bat.” She didn’t, either, and it was a very intentional choice. “If it weren’t for the hospital, Seattle might think I was sleeping with a billionaire, but not with a mask. So, we confuse them.” She found his mouth with her lips again, but she didn’t kiss this time. It was just a brush and breath against his mouth as she continued. “I’ll write about the vigilantes, including you, and I’ll show preference elsewhere, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I’m already a fucking target. I’m a target every night when I close my eyes. You don’t do that to me. I do.”
“We’re going for less of a target.” But he was smiling against her mouth, and he was threading through her hair again. “It won’t hurt if the billionaire appears to leave town, either. You can set your friend Mason up to write one of those exposes he is so good at. I’m not especially worried about my reputation.” His other hand on the outside of her thigh. “I’m being continually reminded to be more social.” Another kiss.
She had to grin at that. “Are you going to move into Hamartia, Brandon?” she asked. “Leave Luke with the two-story palace?” She ducked her head, kissed beneath his chin and then at the dip at the base of his throat. “You have to wait until after Luke’s dinner, if you’re serious about that. And you still might get outed, even not being here.” There was worry in that statement, but not the panicked kind from earlier when she’d realized Johnny knew who he was. Her fingers tangled in the front of his shirt. “It’s not a bad idea,” she admitted, reluctantly, after a moment. “Stupid, fucking frustrating, but it might work. As long as no one sees you during the day.” She was accustomed to a life undercover.
“I have a lot of places to stay,” he said, sounding slightly offended she could picture him on the streets as if he didn’t prepare for this sort of thing all the time. “Nobody sees me much during the day anyway.” He was relieved that he could still be near while not making the situation more dangerous than it was. “It will give Luke a chance to see the business side of things.” Alfie would probably run him through a suited gauntlet. The idea put Thomas in a much better frame of mind.