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NO SUCH THINGS (nosuchthings) wrote in nosuchtimes,
@ 2009-02-01 15:37:00

Entry tags:

sascha connolly

Lucinda & Sascha: Protective Momma
Who: Lucinda and Sascha
When: Thursday, November 8, 2007. Early Afternoon.
Where: The Library
What: Parents can be scary, especially protective mothers.

Kelsey attempted to talk her out of it for days, but Lucinda wasn't hearing any of it. She made it known to her husband that she would come looking for Sascha at his place of work, which happened to be the library. Kelsey also worked there, and he tried as best as he could to ask Lucinda to step down and leave it alone. He said that Zach could take care of himself, and Lucinda agreed their son was more than capable of taking care of himself. What bothered her most of all would be an adult posing as Zach's friend, trying to get close to her son for ulterior motives. She didn't want an adult lying to her son like that and pulling wool over his eyes.

She came to the library after lunch and made her way to the front desk. The mother had no idea what Sascha looked like as she had never met him before, and so she knew she wouldn't recognize him. The best thing for her to do was to remain polite until she found him. Her hand rang the small bell on the desk, tapping it a few times, as her eyes looked for someone to appear. Finally, a man did show up. Lucinda took a deep breath and told herself to remain calm.

"Hello," she called out. "I'm looking for a Sascha Connolly. Would you be able to tell me if he is here or where I can find him?" Hopefully, it was a good introduction.

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bohemiarhapsody
2009-02-01 06:05 pm UTC (link)

Things at the library had been pretty slow over the last few days, especially since the workers were still cleaning up some of the minor messes left in the wake of the harpy attack. The major structural damage (and there hadn't really been much to start with) had been taken care of earlier in the week; now all that remained was salvaging and reorganizing all the books. Sascha didn't really mind that sort of work, to be honest- at least it kept him away from the circulation desk. He preferred the stacks, anyway, and he was perfectly content to stay right where he was in the aisle, surrounded by piles of books with barely legible titles and microscopic call numbers, until he heard the sharp, telltale DING! from the front of the library.

Sascha blinked and poked his head around the corner of the bookcase. "Now, for whom exactly doth that bell toll, Rowan?" The Elven aide, whose nose was currently buried in a copy of some trashy romance novel while he pretended to work, didn't even bother to look up as he immediately pointed in Sascha's direction. With a sigh, Sascha dusted off his pants and sauntered toward the desk, but not before hissing good-naturedly at his companion, "You. Book returns. ALL WEEK." That's right, how 'bout them apples?

The woman waiting at the front desk looked...familiar, but not quite, although something in the back of Sascha's mind wouldn't stop nagging that he ought to know who she was. Then she asked for him by name, and he almost stopped short. She obviously knew of him even though she didn't recognize him, and the thought made him curious as to exactly what kind of business she might have with him. "Actually, ma'am, I can do one better than that." He held out a hand across the counter in greeting, smiling in as friendly a manner as possible. "If it's Sascha Connolly you're looking for, then your search is over. What can I do for you today?"

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nosuchthings
2009-02-03 03:23 pm UTC (link)

The man approaching her seemed like a good enough man, and Lucinda smiled warmly in his direction as he came over to talk with her. She was more than happy when he said he could help, but then he extended his hand over the counter and Lucinda glanced down at it curiously, confused by the sudden introduction amidst her asking him for help. However, her confusion didn't last very long as he immediately made it known that he was Sascha Connolly, and Lucinda looked back up at his face, a heated glare taking over her features.

"You," she said venomously, and it was clear she meant business. He was good-looking man, that much she would give him, and so it did not surprise her that he was the flirty type. He might have even been more than that, and Lucinda had certainly pegged him as such. Being a very protective mother, it was hard for her not to do such a thing. She looked down at his hand with an expression resembling a holier-than-thou thought process going through her head, refusing to extend her own hand to his.

"As if I would shake your hand, considering the ground you currently stand on with me," she said calmly, and her eyes locked with Sascha's across the counter. She held her chin up slightly and introduced herself. "Lucinda Kitano," she said. "Zach's mother."

Well, if that didn't answer it right there.

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bohemiarhapsody
2009-02-10 03:15 pm UTC (link)

At first Sascha was very confused, then completely taken aback at the expressions flitting across the woman's face. She looked positively disgusted by the thought of touching him (well, first time for everything, he supposed) and vaguely resembled a cobra hissing and rearing her head before the strike. Now wait, what the hell had he done to deserve that kind of a greeting? Fuck this, now he knew he hated the circulation desk- it was like an instant karma killer.

His eyes widened in surprise and a bit of recognition when she finally introduced herself, though- damn, speaking of karma... Now that she'd directly linked herself to Zach, Sascha could easily recall having seen her during some of his more discrete "observations" of the younger man. He'd also seen her around the library on more than one occasion, and she'd almost always been with Kelsey.

Ah, Kelsey...that conniving little bastard, had he put her up to this? That was wonderful, just turn the whole fucking family against him. Sascha felt a little pang of fear grip him at that thought; what exactly did Zach think of him right now? Had Kelsey managed to poison the boy against him somehow? He'd never thought of the other librarian as a vindictive sort of person, and he had only seen Zach a couple of weeks prior during the full moon with relatively little incident...but if that was the case, why was Lucinda confronting him about this now?

Sascha cautiously withdrew his hand as he watched the woman (thankfully) across the counter fume visibly. Taking a heavy-handed approach to this situation wouldn't serve him very well, but neither would trying to brush off her obvious dislike with his usual cheerful demeanor. "Ah, Ms. Lucinda...so we finally meet," he began carefully, trying to keep his tone and facial expression as neutral as possible so as not to further incite her anger. "You're the only Kitano here I don't already know, so I'm not sure I follow you...would you mind explaining what grounds we're standing on, again?"

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nosuchthings
2009-02-15 10:39 pm UTC (link)

“It’s not ‘miss,’ it’s ‘missus,’” Lucinda instructed. “Or have you already forgotten that I am married?” Despite her initial attitude, she simply sounded as if she was asking a question this time and not ready to bite his head off. The calm way in which he answered her reminded Lucinda she could be civil about this and get to the bottom of what was going on between Sascha and her son. Zach had been fine so far, and it was a while ago when she found out about Sascha. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been a miss.”

Kelsey had nothing to do with Lucinda coming here. In fact, he had constantly tried to prevent her from seeking out Sascha and succeeded once before. When she couldn’t find him the first time and had that unpleasant encounter with a blonde woman, Kelsey told her it wasn’t worth it and that Zach could take care of himself. Lucinda had fumed for a few days, but given up her overall search for him. It wasn’t until recently it was reignited by a simple misfortune. She had heard Sascha caught Zach and Adrienne having intercourse in the library, and her mind went south due to her previous knowledge of Sascha. It didn’t make a very happy mother.

“You and my son,” Lucinda said calmly, looking him dead in the eyes. “I want to know exactly why you are friends with him, and why you insist on being a part of his life. From what I’ve heard, you haven’t been completely honest towards him when it comes to your intentions — and I don’t like that.” Surprisingly, Lucinda hadn’t once raised her voice. “It’s one thing to be open about them. I wouldn’t hold that against you. My son is plenty capable on his own.” Lucinda chewed on her bottom lip. “What bothers me, Mr. Connolly, is deception. And I want to know why.”

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bohemiarhapsody
2009-02-18 10:34 pm UTC (link)

Well, she definitely got straight to the point, Sascha had to give her that...but considering he was right in the line of fire, her questioning was that much more unnerving. Where had all this come from? Had he really been that transparent?

Sascha had tucked a pencil behind one ear a little earlier in the day to help him keep track of the book inventory, and he distractedly tapped the eraser end against the countertop as he tried to come up with some kind of satisfactory answer for the woman. "How often are people really honest about all of their intentions upfront, Missus Kitano?" he said with a hint of a smile, making sure to emphasize the courtesy title. "I get the feeling I'm being accused of something more specific, but you haven't really told me what that something might be. What exactly have you heard? Did Zach say something to you?"

Sascha didn't bear any ill will toward Lucinda, although he did recall hearing about her confrontation with Emily and hadn't been terribly thrilled to learn how upsetting it had been for his friend. Still, being overly evasive with his answers wouldn't help his case much, and he sighed a little resignedly. "Zach's an interesting kid, but I'll be the first to admit how little I really know about him- and vice versa." He returned her look evenly, still tapping the pencil against the wood in a mindless staccato rhythm. "He reminds me of someone I knew when I was a kid."

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nosuchthings
2009-02-24 02:09 pm UTC (link)

Lucinda looked at him steadily from across the desk, resting her hands on its surface and folding them together. She had plenty of capability to be polite when it was called for, and she wasn't keen on making a scene in public. The last one hadn't made her happy, and she wasn't looking to make one here. "You'd be surprised," she answered calmly. "Most people can't wait to cut to the chase." There might have been a ghost of a smile on her face at that moment since she was clearly one of them. "A lot of people like to be upfront, especially when it comes to flirting. You can only be so coy without defeating your purpose, after all."

She glanced down at the counter for a few seconds, but her gaze met his once more. "Zach hasn't said anything to me. Zach doesn't know." She looked pointedly at Sascha. "You see, teenage boys tend to be very dense and it takes a while for things to get through to them, if they even get through at all. But I'm sure you know all about that, being a teacher." She was referring to Sascha's experience working with teenagers in his classrooms. Teenagers weren't the smartest breed out there.

"And you aren't being accused of anything," she announced. "I'm a mother looking out for my son, and I have a right to know about those he chooses to hang out with. Are you really going to begrudge me that?" He admitted to knowing very little about Zach, though, and he said Zach knew very little about him as well. Lucinda wasn't sure just how close they were or weren't; it had sounded as if they spent quite some time together, but she could have been wrong. "Is that why you spend time with him?"

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bohemiarhapsody
2009-03-01 10:48 pm UTC (link)

Sascha's eyebrows arched amusedly at Lucinda's words, and he had to duck his face out of view for a moment to keep from chuckling. When he looked back up at the woman across from him, he made sure to shield the lip-splitting grin behind his hand. All this talk of straightforwardness, and they were only now getting to the issue at hand. "Ah, so we are talking about something specific. I wish you'd have said as much from the beginning."

It figured, everyone else in the family seemed to have picked up on his initial interest in Zach except for the boy himself. Of course, he couldn't exactly agree with everything Lucinda had said about teenage boys; that description didn't really jive with his own experience, but he'd never been the most typical of kids, anyway. "Well, I don't expect any life-changing profoundness from most teenagers, but I try to give them a little credit. They just haven't lived long enough to have the experience." He paused for a moment as he considered his own words, then added thoughtfully, "most of them."

Sascha was still stuck on what she'd said about Zach, though, and he wasn't quite willing to let it slide because it made all the difference in the conversation- at least, it did to him. "You still haven't told me, though- what doesn't Zach know? What about me is enough to keep such an otherwise reasonable woman from even shaking my hand? And what could I have done that's horrible enough to warrant your insulting a very dear friend of mine in a public place just because she knows me? What is it that you're not telling me, Mrs. Kitano?"

If she thought he was going to admit something he hadn’t even fully explained to Irei, then she was dead wrong. And why should he? Zach obviously didn’t know, and nothing had ever come of the strange little obsession and probably never would. No, Sascha was content to let the entire matter stay buried...although the same obviously couldn’t be said for Lucinda.

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nosuchthings
2009-03-04 02:23 pm UTC (link)

Lucinda’s eyes took on a fiery quality as Sascha continued to pretend as if he didn’t know what she was talking about, and then he proceeded to ask her questions. Lucinda was a very reasonable person; in fact, it was a quality of hers that tended to shine through in just about every situation. Whenever Kelsey became ruled by his emotions, it was often Lucinda who served as the voice of reason in their household. The only subject that overwhelmed Lucinda with too much emotion tended to be the subject of her children. She was capable of keeping her cool in many situations, but when it seemed as if her children were on the line, she was anything but calm and cool. Lucinda went straight into predatory mode.

His tone of voice certainly wasn’t going to get him any brownie points from her. “Your interest in my son,” Lucinda said, since she apparently had to spell it out for him. “And you know exactly what I mean by that, so please stop acting as if you haven’t a clue. Kelsey told me all about your lifestyle and how you seem to hover around our son just about everywhere he goes.” Lucinda’s information only went as far as Kelsey’s information, but as a mother, she would certainly make it seem as if she knew more than she really did.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Lucinda continued, leaning slightly against the counter, “but when I hear about an older professor whom my son looks up to and he just happens to whore himself around in the background and dally around with other younger men, it draws a mother’s attention.” She was looking him dead in the face as she spoke since Sascha apparently needed to hear this flat out and no other way was going to appeal to him. “So, what have you not told your friend who so valiantly defended you, as I’m sure even she wasn’t aware of your full background.” Lucinda’s eyes looked up and down Sascha’s frame, though not in a positive appraisal. It was more like she was measuring his character with her eyes, and she didn’t like what she saw standing before her.

“Or, tell me, have I somehow got it all wrong?” Lucinda inquired, though she sounded mocking as she said it.

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bohemiarhapsody
2009-04-17 07:47 pm UTC (link)

The rhythmic tapping of the eraser against the countertop stopped abruptly at Lucinda's accusations, and Sascha blinked a few times as his mind processed exactly what the woman had said. He could (and probably should) have been offended by the words, but somehow...somehow he just couldn't muster up the energy to respond with any kind of emotion. It wasn't as though she was completely wrong in her assessment, either, although there was no way for her to say what she had with any real certainty.

"I wouldn't say 'wrong', exactly," he finally answered with a lazy drawl, "at least not about all of it. Misinformed, maybe, although I hardly expect Kelsey to know anything about the kind of lifestyle I apparently have." He caught the critical gleam in Lucinda's eyes and levelled his gaze back at her, reaching up to carefully remove his dark-rimmed glasses as he spoke. "But you could care less about that, I'm sure."

Sascha slapped the pencil in his other hand flat against the countertop, the sound sharp against the otherwise quiet stillness of the library. He wouldn't dignify that barb about Emily with a response, and he didn't need to; he was going to tell this woman exactly what she wanted to hear, even if it wasn't the whole truth.

"I understand your concern, Mrs. Kitano, probably more than you know," he said, his voice surprisingly calm and even. The faintest of smiles graced his lips for a fleeting moment before disappearing almost as quickly as it had appeared. "I had a family of my own once, and I know I'd have felt the same as you do in a situation like this. I think Zach's a good kid, an interesting kid, and that's all. Like I said before, he reminds me of someone I knew when I was younger. That person was a close friend of mine, and I see a lot of the same qualities in Zach that I did in him. Good qualities."

It didn't matter that Zach might have looked just the slightest bit like the boy Sascha remembered, or that the boy had been the first person he'd ever remembered feeling attracted to in a physical kind of way, or even that the boy had been his best friend for years and never known about Sascha's feelings. It didn't matter that the first reaction Sascha'd had to Zach that day on the beach were pangs of lust, or that he'd followed and fantasized about the boy on numerous occasions since then, or occasionally indulged in some voyeuristic activities centering on the young alchemist. And it didn't matter that Zach had never figured any of it out, or that the other boy hadn't, either, because Sascha had long ago become accustomed to burying those sorts of emotions away and out of view. They'd resurfaced when he met Annie, and then again when he'd met Irei, but none of that mattered now. He didn't look at Zach that way now, and as far as Lucinda was concerned, he never had. What reason was there to worry the poor woman?

"For the record, though," he added, a hint of humor in his voice, "I don't hover. Your son just has a knack for getting himself into sticky situations, and I've just got bad timing. Or good timing, depending on how you look at it."

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Fin.

nosuchthings
2009-05-04 05:03 pm UTC (link)

Lucinda noticed how Sascha didn’t take kindly to Kelsey’s measurement of his lifestyle, and for that she couldn’t really blame him. Kelsey got under a lot of people’s skin with his critical assessment of their choices and way of life, and it was something Lucinda was used to by now. Of course, it was an entirely new disturbance in Sascha’s life for the past few months. She could tell he definitely wasn’t used to it like her, and it actually brought a little bit of a smile to her face to see how her husband still had the ability to get into another person’s comfort zone and cause significant damage to the foundations.

However, she felt a pang of regret for her choices today when he mentioned he once had a family of his own. She assumed him a bachelor, wondering now what had happened to his family in the first place. The way he spoke of Zach did not even have the slightest suspicious undertone; he spoke of him like teacher would talk of a student, and Lucinda had to wonder if it was all just in Kelsey’s head. Maybe Sascha had a secret life, but maybe none of that unwanted attention was ever directed at Zach. If it was, Sascha would show a whole lot more nervousness than he did at this moment. His calmness sold the lie to her rather effectively.

Lucinda’s eyes actually glanced down at the table for a moment. She was re-thinking why she came here today; then again, she had gotten an answer by coming here. She couldn’t regret tearing Sascha a new one if it alleviated her fears. “Well, he does have a tendency to do that,” she said softly, a flicker of smile coming to her face, and she looked back up at Sascha. Lucinda opened her mouth, only to close it after a few seconds. She chewed on her lower lip as she mulled over her thoughts.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you, then,” Lucinda said, “and I’m sorry for any wrong assumptions I might’ve made about you, but I’m not sorry for coming here and saying them. If I didn’t, then I wouldn’t really know anything about you.” She gave him a knowing look, patting her hand on the counter. “Maybe another time we can have a less . . . violent conversation.”

With that, she titled her head in his direction and walked off toward the exit. She wasn’t sure just what to make of Sascha Connolly yet, but he had definitely mystified her.

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