Re: quicklog: Steph &Tim
Young love was different than the others. First loves? They were different. Tim gathered this information from film and conversations in philosophy courses in Paris. He didn't have multiple experiences in love. Quite honestly, all he'd known of the subject aside from a junior high girlfriend or two, was Stephanie. Through her, he'd learned what it felt like to love somebody so much that it could be physically painful and conflicting to one's own moral mindset. He cared about his family of course and his friends, but it wasn't until her that he'd actually wanted to just kill someone for hurting a person that he cared about. It wasn't the way Bruce had raised him, which was means for shame, but it also wasn't the man he'd wanted to be.
Stephanie here and now, with her cry-puffy eyes and clenching hugs reminded him too much of that darkness that he'd shelved away as a child. Anybody who went out at night to do the sort of things they all had done? They had some dark issues, Tim knew this. He knew his own potential and also his own potential destruction. He wanted to help people, but when emotion like this came flooding into him, it burned like hate in his heart. Maybe he didn't know the difference between emotions anymore, because fear and guilt and shame could all feel like fiery anger. The kind of anger that he'd escaped from an wasn't eager to return to. It might come for him anyway, but he didn't want it too… and he held Stephanie tighter for just a second more. There was the past and the present, and there was also this place that they'd managed to carve out for themselves somewhere in between. Somehow, he managed to keep from telling her how much he'd missed her, missed this… the whole thing, the sound of her voice and her humor and --
His phone started ringing from his back pocket. It was late enough that any call from this hour wasn't going to be a friendly one. Even so, he held onto Stephanie for just a second longer… a part of him knew, or at least suspected that it might be the last time he'd ever touch her. In Tim's experience, people vanished on a whim and good for them -- where do you think he got the idea from in the first place? He knew that she wasn't serious about running away or about an animal farm. She had her gig just like he had his. She also, he was pretty sure, had a lot of relationship stuff to contend with in this town. Unfortunately, considering Julia's arrival, he did too.
Tim eased out of the hug with reluctance, but he needed to answer his phone. "One sec.." He answered, "Detective Drake…" He listened, mumbled something affirmative, and hung up before looking at Stephanie with reluctance. "I've got to go." He didn't want to, maybe that was obvious by the way he looked at her, but Tim aimed for something apologetic and not self-hating. "Work," he explained while showing the cell phone like a prop before he stuffed it back into his pocket. "Some kind of shooting, they want me to review the security footage, I…" He was always doing this, wasn't he? Leaving.
Tim reached out to touch Steph's face, he thumbed her cheekbone before making for the door. "I… I'll talk to you, Steph.." Then with his shoes on and his jacket zipped and his race down the stairs to hail another Uber, he should have been contemplating the upcoming crime scene but his mind was still more than a decade in the past. Rooftops and slurpees and her brilliant purple.