Who: Thea Wells & Lin Alesi What: The log that went forever. Mostly fuzz, Footloose and Talking. Where: Lin's place When: Reeelatively recently Warnings: Mentions of self-harm in passing
It had been like, way too long since Lin had watched Footloose. Like, maybe two weeks. - No, that was a joke. It had been a good couple of years at least, and he was ready for it again. (Oh yeah, he’d been one of those kids who watched the same movies on repeat until the tapes wore out, so a couple years did nothing to the songs branded into his brain tissue.) It helped that Thea was joining him, though. He liked the girl. She was bratty and in-your-face, and, lawd, if Lin didn’t love himself for those same qualities, and, you know, he was feeling kind of shitty recently and when he was feeling kind of shitty, he either liked to be alone or to be around someone who didn’t know him well enough to try and talk some sense into him. Thea fit the latter bill perfectly.
Her feetie jimjams were ready. Lin actually did have two sets, fuck the haters. One was bunny-themed, pink, purple, light green, and yellow, all overlapping in a mash of marshmallow colors, and the other was basically a Tron outfit in comfortable, breathable cotton that had a hood (that was the one he’d chosen and donned for the night). With Rose gone for the night, the bunny jammies were Thea’s. They were laid out of the back of the couch, upon which Lin was currently reclining with his phone, one computery foot a jigglin’. He was scrolling through the comm of crazies idly as he waited for his guest.
The DVD was queued up and there was indeed popcorn (sans horse semen (sadface)). All that was needed now was a bullheaded, skinny, blond white girl.
She’d waited for the bus for twenty minutes, the cool of a Vegas night creeping past her jacket, arms wrapped around her chest like she was fucking uncomfortable, because waiting for a bus, in Thea’s experience, came either with cat-calls or problems and she didn’t like either. Her calculus book weighted down the bag slung over one shoulder, army-green canvas fraying at the corners, and by the time the bus halted at the curb, a hoarse gasp of air from its breaks, Thea stumbled-half-fell down the steps and the bus moved off without her, like it didn’t want to be in the neighborhood. It was better than her aunt’s, Thea decided, critically, all examination of streetlamps and the half-light, dirty paint on the buildings and the shoving of trash-cans out of the way into the space between houses. You could tell a lot from trash-cans, Thea knew, as she hauled the bag further up her shoulder in a movement both practiced and irritated as it skated down. People who didn’t care about where they left them didn’t care about most things - her aunt’s place was the kind of area people called ‘sketchy’ which in Las Vegas was basically the projects, and no one cared about trash-cans at all, which was kind of like a sign.
Lin didn’t live in a skeevy area which she’d sort of predicted. Lin was cotton-candy, all sharp-verve and fluff in the middle (she’d made her assessment, pointed elbows on a just-wiped coffee table top and she’d watched him instead of listening to him as she sipped at chocolate covered in cream, because watching was way more helpful in thinking people out) and he didn’t seem like the type to walk down his own street with his keys between his fingers, ready to jab someone. (Thea did not think Lin was any good at fighting anyone, and she didn’t think he’d know how anyway). It was the kind of area that maybe families wouldn’t live, but skinny, tiny hipster types with a taste for comic-book shirts would, and Thea stood on the sidewalk, a skinny outline against gun-gray sky as she thought this over carefully, before stepping up to pound on the door.
She was elbows and a too-big leather jacket, slung on over a thin gray shirt, long sleeves pulled out from under the jacket and wound around her hands, pale hair a streak like a spill of milk down her back and impatience in blue-gray eyes and she rocked back on worn pink sneakers when he didn’t answer immediately, like maybe she’d walk off down the street and catch the bus right back to an empty apartment and cold pizza.
The life of cotton candy wasn’t as easy as it perhaps looked when it was coiffed into delicious sugary clouds on waxy white cardboard cones. For example, what happened when it got wet? It disintegrated. That was an apt a metaphor as any for the boy who answered the door, his smile wide and eyes bright underneath the blue-and-black hood of CLU. (He never did understand the whole knocking thing. It was a strange ritual. But, he would criticize Thea for allowing society to dictate her politeness later.)
The girl was always in long-sleeves, the kind that were worn and wrapped around knuckles in a decidedly defensive way, and with that thinness that came with years of wear. Today was no exception. Her jacket sat heavily on her skinny shoulders, too big and too heavy for the mild heat of a Nevada night. Her hair, silvery in the yellow glare of the porch light, looked almost liquid as it poured down and over her shoulders. She was bouncing on her feet, like a rabbit with eyes out for a fox, ready to take off into the safety of the brush. And though Lin’s smile never faltered, he made note of that.
“Sunday shoes off first,” was the first thing he said with an undefined gesture toward a heap of sneakers in a rainbow of colors as he took a step back from the doorway to allow her inside the long, brown hallway. It was dark inside - but in that comfy, warm sort of way of small spaces filled with low-sitting lamps from the 80s. Framed scientific drawings hanging on the walls, which opened into something wider and redder near the kitchen, led the way to the living room and “dining area” (which, really, was just a clutter of bookshelves too full, butterflies pinned to velvet, and one low mustard chair). The living room was boxed in by a tall shelf on the left wall, brimming with books and action figures and posters papering the wall opposite, while the couch’s back was to the pair of them as they approached.
With ease and obvious practice, Lin hopped over the back of the soft orange sofa, slid and settled onto one of the cushions nearer the bookshelf. The TV in the corner was large and surrounded by all manner of other machines, game systems and everything else. The boy peered over his shoulder at Thea. He picked at the sleeve of the bunny feeties and his hood slid off.
“And these are yours.”
She hovered on the doorstep for a long minute, a composition of the thin, grayed light of Vegas itself and the warmth of the light from the passageway within. Lin’s place was the dim, rich orange of within, like a lamp left in the window at Christmas; an obvious, wistful sort of warm that Thea hesitated at. It looked, she thought (and her head turned to examine the walls, sniffed at the faint smell of must and of paper that meant books) like she’d imagined it might. Lin, in the faint light of the hall, bobbed ahead of her, his hair seal-dark and his outline distinct like a photographic negative. She stopped only to pry off her sneakers - without unfastening the laces -- and her bag slid to the floor with a heavy, soft thump that was calculus wrapped in her own pyjamas. Maybe she’d bail and maybe she’d do homework but she abandoned the bag and the textbook at the door carefully, next to her shoes, not on top of them, like maybe she’d have to leave quickly.
Lin clambered over the sofa’s back with nimbleness that looked like ease. His couch looked soft, generous in width the way her aunt’s wasn’t. Thea slid in beside him, the cool of her hair felt like damp in the warmth of the room as it slid across her neck, dangled across her hand. Thea reached for it, gathered up a handful like seaweed and shook it behind her, her fingers raking through and pushing it away. She was bony, surprisingly long feet in thin, white cotton socks and her jeans sagged at the knees; she curled feet beneath thighs, sat very straight on the couch itself and she glanced at the pyjamas with the brevity of dismissiveness.
“I’m not wearing those.” She wound the heels of her palms further into the slubby gray material of her sleeves, pressed both hands to her nose, inhaling. It looked comfortably thoughtless, like an animal curling around on itself to settle in. “You can. I do pyjamas without feet, since I got done with diapers.” Thea’s voice was clipped and clear, the diction very precise -- she looked at Lin, down her thin nose and she grinned. It was a short, nervous sort of smile, it fluttered into her cheek and then it went. “If you want Footloose, you need free feet.”
Thea was young, Lin knew, but he also knew that her strange hesitance - the quiet lack of confidence that had been better hidden behind the stacks and shadows in the library - had nothing to do with that fact. It was the sort of folding in on oneself that he could empathize with, the kind that came with wanting to protect something - be it one’s own feelings or fears or whatever. He softened a little around the edges at that. Here he wouldn’t be quite so irksome and boisterous as he’d been that day he’d basically broken his ankle. Scaring people away was not something he got any enjoyment out of, unlike some people.
“We’re watching Footloose here, not becoming it. Let’s not confuse realities, Thea. The fucking hotel does that enough for us,” quipped Lin in response, returning the smile, though his didn’t flee. He too shifted into a more comfortable position, though his involved bringing his knees up to his chest. The dull glow of the TV shined off both their faces and gave the girl a distinctly 20th century tint of blue along the curve of her cheek. “Now put on the pajamas.”
There was no question couched in the boy’s words, though they didn’t come out demanding either. It was a sort of nebulous in-between Lin had mastered a long time ago that tended to get him what he wanted without him having to seem rude about it.
“My reality is perfectly clear, thank you,” it was rapid fire staccato, clickety-click rattled off like the timing to a joke. My, mine. Thea’s smile curled upward, superior at its edges; he was demanding, but that didn’t matter. She knew enough about demanding, the vague suggestion of self-importance with that wry, mocking note that implied it had no weight at all. The hotel was something else. Cass was a pleasant, mostly quiet presence in back of mind, piping up only really when it mattered (and when she hit comic-books in bookstores; Thea skirted them, swerved beyond the aisle of their existence like a child avoiding nightmares and boogey-men) -- she doubted Cass could fuck up her life, even if they switched places. Not much more, anyhow.
“No,” she said, with the elongated stretch of settling in, admiring her own pointed toes in thin white socks; her hair collapsed across her face, the look Thea sent Lin was sharp, testing, through silvered strands of blond. “I’m good, thanks. Pyjama free, even. My feet have emancipated themselves.” He looked comfortable, all fuzzy-fluff and curled tight around himself; Thea studied him, seriousness of a textbook. “You can put on the DVD now, I do not intend to have this argument about clothes.” She’d re-curled by now, sharp-shy grin and elbows on knees; she made a plinth for her chin with her fists and the faint silvering of skin beneath the heels of her palms was visible before her hair fell forward, curtained her off until she put up a hand to push it back.
“I’m stubborn. I can totally wait you out.” She blinked, blue eyes and angelic innocence.
Quickness in a conversation, the back and forth of banter, was Lin’s proverbial bread and butter, and Thea’s swift response did nothing but draw a grin from the boy with his arms around his knees. He rolled his eyes like that was some of the bullshittiest bullshit he had ever heard. It wasn’t that Lin had any issue with Wash. Wash was chill as fuck. It was the fucking hotel and the things it did, like, oh, I don’t know, swapping out planes of existence for weeks at a time for kicks. Thea hadn’t been around then, Lin didn’t think, but still. That was the shit he meant. Regardless, he scrunched up his nose at her - at her reality and at her refusal to cooperate.
“Stick around long enough and you’ll eat those words, baby,” he laughed, only slightly unaware of the presence of Sam in his words. His smile continued to grow. Then he snatched the pajamas off the back of the couch and held them tight in his fist as he scooched closer on the cushion to his stubborn guest. She thought she could outlast him, did she? Well, then she didn’t know Lin very well, nor his determination. He was impatient, but he was just as bullheaded. And if she wouldn’t do it herself, he would help her. Her challenging look received a quirked eyebrow in response. He pressed the bunnies into her hands, splayed as they were under her chin. “You don’t want to try to wait me out. And if you don’t want me to start talking about horse semen again, you’ll put them on. Then we can get to it.”
His eyes shone in the half-light just as innocently as hers.
Up close, he smelled like soap and he smelled like clean, warm boy -- Thea wriggled further away, she was clove cigarettes and the faint scent of laundry detergent and something sweet, like vanilla, underneath. The fuzzy material was soft, and it was warm but bunny pyjamas were so not her. Thea cocked a pale eyebrow, tilted up her chin and stared him down, pjs or no pjs because she wasn’t sure if it was a joke and she wasn’t sure if it was just Lin, Lin who stomped Irish history and who laughed like maybe life existed to be laughed at and who could slide in and out of languages without a ripple to say there’d been a difference between them. She liked him but she folded her shoulders in, her spine curling over like something used to becoming very small and she leaned her head against the back of the couch and she studied that quirked eyebrow and all the determination behind it.
“I can totally leave, you know,” she said. There would be a bus, eventually and it wouldn’t be a chore waiting in the dusk around Lin’s because his area wasn’t skeevy. And it would suck, maybe, to go back to math and cold pizza but it was better than shucking her pants and pulling on a bunny suit just to watch a movie. Thin determination wrung itself clear. “I can walk out of here and you can keep your horse semen to yourself.”
“Were you under the impression I was going to share? lol, no, girl. That shit is mine.” Yes, Lin said ‘lol’ (like it was a word, ‘lohl’) out loud. Without an ounce of shame or irony. His smile never left, even as he shook his head at Thea, her eyebrow, and the stone-edged sound of her voice. It was really only the fact that she shrunk that made him hesitate - just briefly. It was true that he got his life’s joy out of pushing people and making them uncomfortable and poking them and all that until eventually they liked him (somehow it worked), but the girl on his couch, with her cornsilk hair shining down her back and her body hugging itself in a way that bespoke some kind of fear, be it of being out-stubborned or of other people or whatever, she was maybe a little more fragile than that, as much as her punchy words said otherwise.
There was a pause then, and Lin appeared to be thinking quite hard about something. He didn’t want her to go, and he didn’t doubt her when she said she would. So, he would just have to compromise. Lin took back the pajamas with a haughty sort of snort, like he couldn’t believe he was doing this, and then he proceeded to tuck the feetie jimjams around Thea, tucking sleeves behind her back and legs under her feet, until the bunnies were stretched over her like a tent or a very small, taut, pajama-shaped blanket.
“Good enough for me,” said the boy, seemingly to himself, before he shifted on the couch. Lin was now sitting next to Thea, not quite close enough to touch, but close. He scooted the controller closer from the cushion he’d left, then hit play. “Now you can’t move or you’ll ruin all my hard work, so just - keep those feet from getting loose.”
lol, God. That was never going to get old.
She gave him a bemused look - a little haughty, a little of the I can’t believe this typically thrown across dinner tables, daughters to parents who didn’t understand - but the corner of her mouth curved upward; Thea dropped her chin, tried to hide it. Okay so his obsession with feetie pyjamas was bordering on evangelist with a fetish, but it was cute and it was kind of nice - it was warm, under all that fuzzy fabric and she curled one hand out from underneath it, and then the other, experimentally and she settled back against the couch head pillowed to the right, close to Lin but not too close. Enough for the smell of mint soap and clean cotton, and feetie pyjamas or not it was better than a late night apartment, the wail of traffic below and cold pizza. Even if he totally hadn’t broken out the popcorn yet.
“You’re so weird,” Thea told him loftily and she rubbed her shoulder in against the couch like maybe she could get settled deeper in against the cushions. “My feet will totally revolt. It’ll get all 1789 up in here and you’ll be sorry.” But maybe she’d keep her feet tucked away long enough to keep Lin happy, and she let the medley of the opening music roll over her like water.
“I can’t even believe you like this movie.” The television colors rippled over Lin’s skin; he looked happy, she thought, happy and comfortable like pjs and movie-parties were what he did every night. Maybe he did, maybe that was what happened when you grew up.
Hey, if there was one thing to be evangelistic about it was fucking feetie pajamas. They were warm, they were soft, they cradled your feet, they had zippers which were fun, you only had to put one thing on (and take one thing off), and shit, they were fucking adorable. If that feetie peejes were going to be Lin’s legacy when it came to Thea, so be it. The dark-hair boy grinned and glanced over at his guest, all tucked in and snug on the sofa, and he pushed himself to his feet.
She wasn’t wrong. Lin was weird, but so was everyone else, except for those few, poor souls who like, grew up in a basket of Wonderbread and got married and went to church and let that be that, and then died and were made into mulch just like all the freaks. And even they were weird, if only for their excessive mundanity. It was a circle. Grass, antelope, etc. Lin said nothing to that quip and just rounded the sofa to head to the kitchen area.
He opened the cupboard next to the fridge. There wasn’t much counter space, but there was enough for a blender (for milkshakes, lol) and a - yes - hot air popcorn popper. Because that was how Lin rolled. He got everything set up and turned the little machine on, a stainless steel bowl underneath the spout to catch the popped kernels.
Over the sound of corn exploding, he called over his shoulder to Thea: “No revolutions in the living room, please. We only use Madame La Guillotine in the bathroom. It’s cleaner that way. Less head bits on the wood and all.” There was a pause as he resituated the bowl. “Uh, and, I can’t believe you can’t believe that, after everything you know about me.”
The rattle pop-pop of corn was familiar, calmly productive and not in need of translation. You hit up half a dozen boarding schools in three years, you learned the language and popcorn was low on calories (not like she cared, but it was a girls’ dorm usually, so) and did not require a foray into daring feats of consumption. Thea tucked her hands beneath her thighs comfortably, and she waited, fuzzy-warm and the static roll of the pause of the movie. “Don’t you mean toe bits? Given that it’s a foot revolution, I think that’s far more logical,” she greeted him on return and she held out her arms for the bowl in a demanding little gesture all at ease and at home.
“Gimme. I gave up cold pizza for this.” With a mouthful to crunch on, she snuck a sideways look at Lin, dark hair and comfortable good humor. “I don’t know everything about you.” Just that he liked memes, Irish history, and had the maladapted good nature that encompassed Footloose and drinking nights with friends over twenty-one. “Just your appalling taste in gifs.” She pronounced it hard, like a word she’d read rather than over-familiarity with images online. Another crunch; Thea nudged the pyjamas off, curled deeper into her corner.
"I do not mean toe bits, thank you. Toes are to the foot as the head is to the body, they're analogous. Everyone knows that. My statement stands," replied Lin with the careless confidence of a man who knows he's right (there was really no counter-argument that could be offered), as he passed the silver bowl over the back of the sofa to Thea as her grabby hands came out. The boy quickly hopped over to join her as he'd done before, careful this time to land on a cushion far enough away as not to tip the popcorn or the girl. His Tron hood fell back down to his shoulders (he'd pulled it up in the kitchen). Oh, well. - It wasn't long before Lin was settled back into the spot he'd left, one hand reaching to take a handful of popcorn. He hit the play button on the remote.
The previews played. Lin never skipped them. He pressed deeper into the cushions too, pulling his knees up again to his chest and encircling them with one arm, but keeping his right one free to continue to feed him popcorn.
"I didn't say you knew everything, girl. I said 'given everything you know about me,' which is to say, what you do know, which we both know isn't everything." He prattled happily, not bothering to quiet his voice just because there was something flashing on the TV. A smile crossed his face and he rolled his head on his shoulder to look at Thea. She bit off the word 'gif' and spat it out like it was foreign and unwanted in her mouth. He laughed and helpfully re-tucked a foot of the pajamas back under the girl. "And you're only saying my taste is appalling, because you think any proclivity for gifs is appalling. I know." There was a beat as he finished his handful of popcorn, which, was perfectly salty and warm, if he did say so himself. "Trust me when I say you don't want to know everything about me. I know I'm a cute little package and all, but, shit's fucked up, man. Just like with everyone else."
Lin was still smiling, but his eyes turned back to the TV then.
The bowl slid sideways and it settled in between them when Lin leaned over to fuss more with the silly pyjamas. Thea rolled her eyes and she gave him a look a little less friendly and a little more ‘oh my god why do you bother’, but without bite to it, because Lin, for all his weird fuckery, was one of exactly two people in Vegas that Thea actually liked. That in itself was unusual because when you were given a set schedule, you sort of iterated between liking everyone because you could walk away from them and their bullshit or you liked no one -- she didn’t have a date to leave Vegas, and she didn’t have a reason to get involved. She reached over, scabby purple nail-polish and thin fingers and she grabbed a handful of popcorn, a familarity amidst the ode to geekery that was Lin’s home.
“Really?” Thea didn’t think Lin had ‘fucked up’ in there; he had cutsey little shit and he had that air of self-confidence she thought maybe he’d spent time learning, and she knew he was liked even if he did post gifs all over the journals. She was arch disbelieving, one pale eyebrow arced upward and a twist to the mouth that was skepticism, all jaded female. “You probably think fucked up is like, smoking pot.”
The look didn't bother Lin in the least. In fact, he offered a wide smile in return, all sweetness and innocence, which is to say, most everything he was not. Impish smirks and curling Cheshire grins tended to be more at home on his bright face, but he could pull of honey-sweet with the best of them. Lin was a good faker, but sincerity, while it could be emulated, could never truly be faked, and there were no tinges of it in the smile. The boy pooled more popcorn in his hands and ate it, piece by piece, without using a hand to guide it to his mouth, and instead eating it in a way that made him feel like a lizard - that is, with his tongue, because it was fun.
Big dark eyes swivelled sideways at the disbelief in Thea's voice. Lin stopped mid-tongue-grab. He would have argued the claim that he was liked, personally, had he known the girl thought that. Whatever. The statement that he would have found smoking pot to be the epitome of 'fucked up' had him laughing, in any case. He saw the cool curb of cynicism in Thea's eyes and he wondered vaguely what had made her that way. But then he snapped to action. He dumped the few pieces of popcorn still cradled in his palms back into the bowl and flattened his hands over his ears.
"How dare you say that word in my house! Marijuana is the devil's drug." He tried to look appropriately outraged, but within half a second, he was laughing again. Lin hugged his knees and scrunched his nose. Why did no one ever believe him? When he turned back to Thea, his eyebrows were high and his words measured. "No, fuck you, dude." He had a feeling the answer to his next question would be in the affirmative, so he spoke carefully, lightly, with a rare bit of seriousness. "Have you ever tried to kill yourself?"
She was laughing, eyes bright and the kind of giggles that made your breath catch in your throat because you couldn’t breathe around the laughing itself - the almost-silent kind because Thea was used to laughing in places she wasn’t meant to be, and she’d been mostly about to comment on the disgusting way he was eating -- like he was five and the kind of kid no one had actually parented because being childlike was God-given or something like that -- “Fuck you too,” she said companionably, her words sliding over his like the back and forth had lost its timing, until Lin spoke. Thea stopped laughing. The hiccuping sound of gasping for breath slowed and it ceased and her ears were ringing, silent buzzing drowning out all the rest of the sound.
“You’re talking booze and cigarettes or the hard stuff, Kurt Cobain?” she said, but the timing jarred, it wasn’t rapid-pace funny. “Everyone’s trying to kill themselves. Everyone who drinks a glass of wine, or smokes something, if you listen to doctors.” She gave a tense little shrug, all thin shoulders jerking, and she shifted beneath the footie pyjama blanket; the popcorn bowl canted to one, drunken side as the weight redistributed, Thea wedged into the very corner of the couch. “Are you saying smoking pot is like killing yourself?”
That stopped her hard, didn’t it? Lin smiled, a spindly sort of thing that wasn’t happy, but was, he felt, necessary. He rested his head on his own shoulder then, eyes half-lidded, and watched the TV as Thea continued to talk. He looked down when the bowl tipped and he righted it, only then returning dark eyes to the girl’s light ones.
“Well, if we want to get technical, we kill ourselves every day by just existing and continuing toward our own graves, but nah, that’s some evasive bullshit. Protip: I am never not talking about Kurt Cobain.” The curve of his lips was more genuine this time. He felt the way Thea was physically retreating into the sofa, sinking deeper and deeper into the folds of orange, and he took that as confirmation of his earlier assumption. He leaned forward and pulled one of two or three blankets from where they pooled on the floor in front of the couch. It was a starscape. He tugged it over his own knees, over the popcorn, and over Thea, before sitting back again. “You don’t actually have to answer me. I just mean, if you have, then maybe you’ll understand that there are levels of being fucked up that aren’t always so obvious, you know?”
He shrugged.
She could hear her own breathing, fast and shallow - thin, the way you breathed when you were crammed in the back of a closet and you were hiding and you felt like even that was too audible, too obvious and at the same time there wasn’t enough air to breathe. If she could hear it it felt like Lin probably could too; the seawater rush of her own heartbeat in her ears. Thea blinked, sandy sweep of eyelashes, and she turned her head away from Lin and looked back at the screen, at candy-colored middle America with regulations over dancing, and she deliberately didn’t look at him at all.
“And you think that’s you?” She sounded very deliberately thoughtful, like an academic question and like she had no interest in it at all. “You’re fucked up enough to want to die or just that you felt like being shocking in illustrating just how very far along the not normal bell curve you were, Lin?” Thea’s voice slid on over into scornful; it wasn’t disinterested any more, it was sharp, it was cold. “Well congrats, shocking achieved, along with the fucking pyjamas and everything else you’re trying to achieve, I believe you, you’re fucked up. Do you need a certificate to go with or are you just going to hint ominously at just how badly you’re screwed up over popcorn and basically assume leading with that is going to be enough? Because no, actually, if you’re fucked up it’s obvious to anyone who knows how to look and I don’t think you’re in any immediate risk of pulling the plug and checking out.”
Her breathing had slowed, she was calm, even if the words had come quick, quick as anything. She reached for a handful of popcorn, sleeves twined with her fingers and she sat picking each kernel out of her cupped palm, with her fingertips, delicately and she didn’t look at him once.
Lin let her talk without interruption. There had been a nerve, and it had been more than touched. It was almost as if he’d carved the thing right out. Silently, he moved so he could place his chin between his knees, arms around them as they were, but even as he shifted and the bowl tipped dangerously, he didn’t take his eyes off Thea. They were bright in the moving colors that reflected from the television and they didn’t budge. The vitriolic, but very rhetorical questions rolled off his pajama’d back and he waited the storm out. He didn’t exactly, you know, want to, nor did he appreciate the shit she was saying, but, well, it was her turn, he guessed.
Whatever assumption she was operating on - that he was trying to get a rise out of her? That he was insinuating something? - was wildly unfounded, and while he had no idea what he’d done, specifically, to set the girl off, Lin felt he had to give her time to express whatever the fuck it was that was apparently just below the surface of her carefully crafted jaded teenager facade. Even if she was basically implying, to his mind, that she knew his mind and its pitfalls, and the stability of his emotional state, better than he did. lol. ok.
Once she’d finished and the only sounds were those of music (and happy music at that) tinkling out from the surround sound, he raised his eyebrows in a sort of non-verbal ‘well, alright’. She wasn’t going to look at him. He got that. Okay, then.
“Are there certificates?” His eyebrows fell and his bottom lip protruded as he mumbled an awed, “Huh.” But then he was unwinding an arm from his knees to take up some popcorn himself. There was more music from the TV. He frowned, another uncommon bit of sincerity. “Sooo. Sorry. Um, I don’t know if I need to say it, but actually, no, that wasn’t what I was going for at all. If there’s one thing I don’t do, it’s hint. My b.”
“Construction paper,” Thea said it and she didn’t turn her head and it sounded sort of sulky, and maybe a little like she was being reluctant but now her cheeks felt like they were burning, and she didn’t want to look at him even a little. She folded herself up into the smallest ball possible, and she inched even further into the arm of the couch and she watched the kid who wanted to dance so badly he was breaking rules to do it, “And not even the cool colors. Purple.” She didn’t say anything about his apology and she didn’t say anything about what prompted it, she sat and she fished out more popcorn after a couple minutes, and she ate that slowly and carefully too. Because maybe, just maybe, Lin was a douche on accident rather than purpose and her head ached from clenching her teeth too hard, and she tipped her head back on the edge of the couch and looked at the ceiling, blank white plaster, for a little bit.
“You say far too much stupid shit.” And that was it, that was the entirety of it. She wasn’t going to talk it through. “So what the hell do you think is wrong with you, anyway? Apart from basically being a douchebag.” But it sounded like she was trying to smile, even if she was still looking at the TV and not Lin at all.
Lin focused on the popcorn in his hands. Thea, he thought, needed a moment of semi-privacy, and so he wouldn’t stare at her. He would eat popcorn. And he would imagine each burst kernel as alive and just pretend to be able to hear them screaming as they were gnashed between the hard planes of his teeth. lol. Best game. - He blinked when she spoke, taking half a second to catch up, but then he was smiling, only a little indignant at the assertion that purple wasn’t a ‘cool color.’ That was some ludicrous bullshit and his half-laugh, half-scoff made sure she was aware of that fact.
“Well, duh. Of course I do. And yet, I’m still smarter than everyone else,” the boy lolled his head against the back of the sofa comfortably, sounding quite pleased with himself, and very much like he hadn’t just witnessed a teenage meltdown. Lin dared a glance at Thea. Her eyes were on the ceiling and he could almost hear a smile in her voice. That was his cue. Easily, he lifted the popcorn bowl and settled it precariously in Thea’s lap. He then closed the inch or two of space that remained between them, and brushed up against her, until, ultimately, he laid his head on the bony jut of her shoulder, as he’d managed - after releasing his knees - to sink to a low enough position to be able to do so. She smelled like cloves. Very seriously, Lin then admitted: “I think I’m just too funny.”
He laughed.
She could count on one hand the handful of times she’d been hugged, since Vegas. Her aunt was busy and they didn’t know each other really well, just sort of circled past one another like the kind of roommates who’d answered a random ad in the back of the paper. Lin’s head was heavy across her collarbone and he was warm, hip to hip and the smell of mint soap and of salt popcorn was stronger, right up this close. The backs of her eyes prickled, and they stung, but Thea held still and she gripped the bowl with one hand to keep it steady and she picked out kernels with the other and she let him sit there because it was almost a hug, and maybe - if she kept breathing steadily and she kept it even - it wouldn’t be a Thing.
“You’re not funny,” she said and her words came out on a breath, all running together, and she crunched a kernel for emphasis. “You’ve got a sick sense of humor and you know too much internet shit and you have abhorrent taste in pictures but you’re not funny. So what’s wrong with you really, reject? Do I have to take you back and claim a refund?”
“Thanks, man. It is pa-retty gnarly,” replied Lin, pretending that her ‘sick’ had been a throwback to the 90’s and like she hadn’t just totally insulted everything he, you know, based his self-worth on - well, next to intelligence and being beautiful. He wiggled a little closer under the blanket, because, despite the music, he had heard the small hiccup in her breathing and he knew well enough what that meant. He really hadn’t intended to invite the poor girl over to reduce her to tears, so. He’d comfort her as best he could - that meant there’d be a lot of stupid jokes, but, hey, he only had the tools he’d been given.
Still, he chose not to respond to the last few peppered insults and instead, had his eyes glued to the TV like he was actually interested and was paying attention. In reality, he was thinking. The sucking on the bottom lip was a telltale sign to those that knew him well enough. Lin wondered if he really ought say anything more. He didn’t want to fuck things up any more than he already had. He pulled the blanket up higher.
“I’m just a dumbass.” That much was definitely true. He shrugged his shoulder against hers. Her hair tickled his cheek and it almost glowed, light as it was, from the blue and oranges of the movie. “And I have a bad habit of making terrible decisions.”
That wasn’t a lie either, even if it wasn’t particularly revealing.
Thea played with the edges of the blanket and her weight shifted, she leaned against the warmth and the weight until Lin’s head was more comfortably pillowed and she listened, even as she watched the movie drift on, in a world where music and dancing and the lack of it was the biggest problem around. Lin didn’t sound like this was a full on brush-off though, it wasn’t flippant, quick-fire shrugging off whatever problem had lined up. “What kind of bad decisions?” It came out challenging, all enough already. Maybe Lin wasn’t baby Einstein but he was certainly smart. He had a nice place and he had awful taste in gifs but he had excellent taste in movies and Thea figured maybe he had a boyfriend or a girlfriend or someone who occasionally came over to the nice place and they had one of those ordinary, uneventful kind of relationships where people were happy.
“What counts as a bad decision? Scale of one to ten.”
Why it was so often assumed that he was in a relationship, Lin didn’t fucking know. He didn’t really think he came off as that kind of person, but - apparently, he did. Daniel had been convinced that he and Aubrey were still together. And everyone else just sort of assumed he lived this fluffy ass life in the most Hollywood Happy kind of way, which, by the way, never included sleeping with strangers or, more messily, with friends. It must have been the same quality that had so many accusing him of being ‘cute’ or ‘adorable’ or ‘innocent,’ when, frankly, he was none of those things. Not really.
But, whatever. He closed his eyes.
“Eh. Five? I don’t know. I’m not doing any hard drugs, so I’m doing okay, but, you know, things like fucking the wrong fucking people all the time, or getting emotionally involved in ways I shouldn’t be or meddling in everyone’s lives until --” Lin stopped himself. He didn’t want to finish that thought. Reverse three-point turn. “It’s whatever, but everyone tells me it’s an issue. idk, man.”
This was fine. This was someone else’s problems, not hers and Thea relaxed, the tension sinking out of bony shoulders and her foot uncurled from beneath her thigh, swinging free. Her white cotton socks bathed in the flickering light, and she scrunched her toes, watching them kaleidoscope from blue, to pink, to green. “Fucking the wrong people how? Like, fucking people you don’t want to but do anyway, or fucking people really old or really young?” She listed options off as matter of fact as reading an ingredients list; fucking the wrong people was a totally ordinary mistake. It wasn’t even, Thea thought as she looked consideringly at Lin, fully a mistake.
“I’m not sure how you fuck the wrong people, anyway. It’s not like you’re not fully present and correct at the time. Sort of have to be, if there’s fucking involved.” She swiped at the hair drooping across Lin’s cheek, and she pushed it back, a wriggle of shoulder blades. “Unless you aren’t. And then that’s a totally different problem.” Meltdown fully a thing of the past. Never happened. Ever.
It was actually surprisingly easy to fuck the wrong people in Lin’s experience. Or maybe he was the wrong person. (Too deep, man. Too deep.) He found that ever since he’d accidentally vommed his love at Aubrey, things had just been going downhill. Sex and emotions, often, had little to do with each other when it came to the boy. He had no qualms with fucking. An expression of mutual attraction - whether it was fleeting or lasting - was cool by him. It was this bullshit recently that had him with his head in his hands more often than ever before. Like, there was Aubrey, who he cared about - a lot - and who cared about him, and who was generally just a good guy, despite his, you know, alcoholism, but there was all this... past shit caught up in the middle of everything and it complicated it all immensely. And then there was Daniel, which was a can of beautiful, blue-eyed worms Lin did not want to get into, and then, there was Sam and there was Winnie, and they were both pushing at him and he just couldn’t win.
“Right in the moment, wrong afterward, perhaps,” he corrected. Lin licked his lips. “My problem is -... well, I tend to like a lot of people at the same time, and for some reason, that’s an issue with everyone else. And you know, I came to terms with it a long while back, because, hey, some people like multiple people and that’s cool. But, I guess no one else got that memo, and now it’s all devolved into this confusing soup of bullshit.”
There had been people at schools in the past, who fucked everyone. It was a point of pride like being able to drive or to drink first, or being the kid with the best grades every time. It was just a thing, something they did and at parties you brushed by them and you knew that they were going to hook up by the end of it, because that was how they worked. No one took it seriously, but maybe because at boarding school, no one ever slept with the same people for long. It was just part of being bored and locked up and wanting things you couldn’t have. And Lin - Lin was sort of like the kids at school who everyone laughed with, who was center of everything, it made a kind of sense that he liked everyone, all the time, equally. Enough to make sex part of it.
“You can stop saying ‘like’ like I’m five,” Thea was dry, she’d abandoned the popcorn, and she was half-lidded gaze on the television screen, the sway of her body angled towards Lin’s own until they were a weird sided kind of geometric shape, hip to hip. “You mean you’re fucking them, right? So say fucking them.” It sounded scathing, like a kid who has learned to spell getting irritated with sounded out words to exclude them. “Who made the soup?”
The scorn caught Lin off-guard and he blinked in the blur of lights. He needed to stop forgetting Thea was 18 and angry or she was going to dump the popcorn out, rip the bowl apart with bare hands, and fucking slice his throat with a jagged, but pleasantly salty, shard of the thing. He made an annoyed kind of face and shot her a look.
“Uh, I mean ‘like,’ but, if you want to keep assuming you know better what I’m talking about than I do when you ask me a question, go ahead, asshole.” He cocked an eyebrow at her, giving her all of two seconds to say, yes, that was what she wanted, before he continued. “Sometimes, Thea, you like people. And sometimes you fuck people. And sometimes both. I don’t know if you know that, since you’re like, what? 12. Anyway, I definitely did.”
Lin smiled sweetly.
The outrage - amused but outrage - was something in the scrunch around blue eyes and the way she neatly leaned over and smacked the back of her hand against his shoulder; he was being deliberate, and the smile made it even more so and she shifted her knee so it bumped his thigh deliberately back, all angular repositioning so he was shoved off her shoulder. “Fuck you too, you look younger than I do.” Which was, all things considered, mostly true; the clubs didn’t give a damn about how old she was, so long as a piece of plastic said she was old enough, and she was wearing something short enough.
“I object,” she said clearly, with the precise diction of someone terse with being understood (and spoiled just a little by the smile) “To the language. ‘Like’ is generic, ‘like’, implies you’re just wanting to hang out, to more than tolerate them. What you mean, if I am to interpret your imprecision which seems to be a running trend,” a look slid down her nose, “You can feel romantic attachment to more than one person at a time. To which I say ‘duh’. And what does this soup actually consist of.”
Ow. Lin was rebuffed, pushed by a sharp hand, and though it made him laugh, he also forced Thea to let him put his head back on her shoulder two seconds later. Because, lol, no. He wasn’t going to sit up on his own. That was some bullshit. His fists curled in the swirling stars and galaxies of the blanket and drew it up even farther, until it was covering him from the nose down. Lin’s eyes peeped over the universe and they pinched at the sides as he smiled, making no comment about looking younger than she did (he didn’t).
“Like like. Is that better, Helga Pataki?” His voice was a little muffled, but it was loud enough to be understood. “I don’t necessarily mean romantic attachment, though. That’s the fucking thing. I know the English language, bro, trust. - The soup. The soup consists of a whole lotta confusion, bewilderment, fear - of rejection and just general fear, a distinct dislike for people who try to tell me what to do or think they know what’s best, even if they are my friends, a good dose of self-pity, uh - what else? Residual feelings for one person, the undefined feelings, that are not romantic necessarily, for another recently returned, and then something different altogether that I don’t really feel like talking about.”
That about covered it.
“Yeah, you totally made the soup,” Thea said, voice accurately conveying disgust because he wasn’t just confusing, with his feelings, he was convoluted and the metaphor slid off the table and made no sense at all. The weight of his head was comforting, and the blanket looked dumb, but it was very Lin, all stars and planets and fuzzy comfort. “The soup is of your making. Soup is on the menu, homemade by Lin.”
She considered his dilemma, and she thought about people who said they knew best, even if they knew nothing at all; Thea was used to people telling her that they knew better, that if she did this or she did that, everything would be so much better from the way she, Thea was doing it. “Why are you talking about it, if you don’t want to talk about it?” She gave him a half-hearted shove, fingers and palm and the bump of shoulder to shoulder.
“I mentioned it once, hater.” Lin spoke quickly, divisively, almost irritatedly, as if he’d anticipated that question and thought it thoroughly pointless, and a waste of breath. He never had been particularly fond of insinuations that he was attempting to grapple with something he was not. And saying 'why are you talking about it, if you don't want to talk about it?' was some invalidating bullshit. How the fuck else do you mention not wanting to talk about something? You had to say fucking something. The boy's brow furrowed, but he let himself be pushed. "Hey, I’ve never been a good cook. And I'm not sharing the ingredients with you others have contributed because I am just not into discussing the poor metaphor any longer, so you can just shut the fuck up."
Rarely did Lin end conversations, but he was growing tired of trying to put into words something he didn't even know how to think about. Everyone said he was making things too complicated, but that was how his mind worked. It pinged possibilities without thought and that meant he fucking considered them. It wasn't his fault that no one else could parse the same information. The boy sighed and settled against Thea a little more comfortably because now it was his turn to be grumpy.
He got snappy, fast and if she hadn’t done the same thing, hadn’t gone zero to fifty like a thread had snapped, Thea would have said something, elbowed him where pointy was going to hurt and he resettled like the entire thing was something breakable, something distinct and defined and a line drawn that had warning signs up, ‘do not cross’. Thea had never been good with rules.
“You’re being a dick,” Thea said, and she said it lightly and she said it with the warm, fond tone of someone who thinks they are right, but affectionate all the same and she reached across and patted his cheek, cotton-twined-round-fingers and the smell of salt-covered popcorn. “You’re being a dick and okay, so you don’t want to talk about the shit you don’t want to talk about but that doesn’t mean I can’t totally point out that if you hadn’t said it in the first place, I wouldn’t have known it was a thing.” Because that was true, and Thea said it knowledgeably, all acquired wisdom and solemnity. “So don’t let people tell you what you want.” It seemed simple to her; like popcorn and star-covered blankets.
“They never get it right, anyway. Maybe you’re just meant to feel things for people.” She shrugged, a jerky, bony little movement that made Lin’s pillow downright uncomfortable. “Sucks to be you, I guess. All that feeling.” She grinned at him, sharp, impish.
Lin glanced over at the cold, salty fingers on his cheek and smiled, swatting her away like a fly. He used the shifting wheels of stars to brush off the crumbs she left behind, then snuggled in deeper, disappearing inch by inch, minute by minute. The universe was ever-expanding. It only made sense that this one should too. His head still lay against the hard bone of Thea’s shoulder, but even from such a position, he at least attempted to look at her as she chattered and insulted him all in one breath.
“If I’m a dick, you’re an asshole, so, really, we make a great gay sex team,” he said as he frowned because she was shifting beneath him, bumping his head. Resettling, he sniffed. “And you are free to point out what you’d like, but I’m also free to say things and not elaborate on them, so stuff it, sister.”
He didn’t find her words to be particularly solemn or wise. Really, they were just what everyone else said. Reductive. Which made them generally useless and not at all helpful - not that Thea had been invited over to act as a personal coach, so it didn’t matter if her advice was sound or not. Regardless, Lin wouldn’t have listened. If it had been as simple as that, he wouldn’t be in a pickle in the first place. He was all convoluted emotions, yeah, but he was far from stupid.
“It doesn’t suck. It’s wonderful. Look at me.” He flashed her another grin. “I feel great. - Then again, I also feel terrible. And mildly hungry. And like there is a wishbone - not the dog - stabbing me in the temple, but it’s actually just your bony ass collarbone. Curse this wonderful, yet terrible burden of mine.”
He was the skeletal stab of humor, all bare bones and nothing wrapped around it to make it more than hurt; it skipped like a blurred track, a scratched CD, Thea reached with absent hand and cool fingers and ruffled all that black hair - soft, like drake’s tails - that was warm against her shoulder, heavy. Real; Lin was the bleed of heat through her shirt and his stupid jammies, the skippety-catch of his too-quick answer and retort. Thea’s smile was slow, it was quiet and it was small. She shoved his shoulder, a small push all feigned aggravation and nothing true about it. “If it’s so bony, go lie somewhere else,” with the cool exasperation of not caring, because Lin was comfortable, like a weighted blanket, like standing behind a wall that would insult and berate and mock whatever the onslaught was until you were good, you were clear.
“You’re so weird,” an outward breath, all escaped air and the tiny shake of head, eyes turned upward to invisible audience - a plea. Save me from this madman. Thea was dramatics on small scale, free hand fishing busily in the bowl whilst all the drama was on-stage. “You totally ruined the movie you know. Denouement is happening and I wasn’t paying attention because you like-like too many people.”
Lin was small in stature, but besides maybe maturity or a feeble ability to remain serious when he wasn’t in a life-threatening situation, that was all that was small about him. He spoke loudly and he laughed louder, and his smiles were not wee things that pursed on his lips and fled. They were sprawling and mischievous, and very much like he knew something you didn’t. So Thea’s light push, the slight turn of her lips, and the mini-theatrics were all in sharp contrast to his own flash-bang, silly-string-for-all reaction to life and all its silly bullshit.
One minute his head was resting on the sharp bones of the girl’s shoulder, then his arms were around her as she fluffed his hair. He hugged her tightly, but briefly (he didn’t want to terrify and/or suffocate her), just to add a little oomph! to his next words.
“Oh, but Thea, I like-like you. I invited you to watch Footloose so I could ask for your foot in marriage.” Lin appeared hurt and surprised for all of five seconds, then he was laughing and sinking back beneath the blankets.
“You’re completely mad,” Thea said, with the dry, perturbed sound of someone very unshocked at the notion at all and a comfortable sort of sinking back into blankets and couch cushions. She was neither cross nor considered Lin to be much in the way of annoyed any longer, and she stabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, because (she decided) he deserved it. “I don’t like-like you, fucker. I want to watch Footloose and I want to eat popcorn and then you’re going to do my calculus for me.”