Re: Travis/Thomas
Oh right. For a minute, TJ had almost bought into the whole 'no strings attached' bullshit. But, he'd known there would be a catch if even Travis honestly didn't see it. Travis might say he wanted to be friends. And, maybe the man beleived his own words. But, at the core of it all, he'd only started talking to TJ in the first place because he was supposed to keep him clean and sober. Travis was his new sober partner, just on somebody else's payroll than his mother's.
And trusting a Narcotics Officer, even former, was about the stupidest thing TJ could do if he had any hope of surviving this mess with his sanity intact. How wrong could he be when even Dougie, the 'good son', needed that escape now?
"You haven't actually spent much time conversing with my parents since we arrived, have you?" Of course the man hadn't. If he had, he couldn't possibly not understand the hold TJ's parents had on him, even if he didn't want to admit it some days. Even though there was little point by now in looking for approval they were never going to give, he couldn't help himself or stop himself from trying no matter how much he knew he would only fail at it...again.
"Tell me something," he went on, utterly ignoring the question because he wasn't going to get into that part of his life any further now that he'd remembered exactly who Travis was and why he was there. "How many people are actually afraid when threatened with being shot? Between the people who won't believe you'll go through with it, the people who think they can stop you before you get the shot off, and the people who just don't care if you do or don't, there can't really be many left to make that an effective threat, can there?"