InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "You're a psychotic idiot"

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.

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad here, right now: $0

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

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."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

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?"

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

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.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

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.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

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."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

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.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Read comments) -