THEN AGAIN • TC ✔️

11. Partly Concealed

On the first week of December, Timmy comes home on Friday night.

(And like, he should have expected this. Should have seen it coming, should have known.)

There's a reason he's been avoiding Friday nights as much as possible, because that's the day that Nick comes over. He always steals Clem away for about four hours (which isn't fair because that's Timmy's time with her) and then she'll kiss Nick at the front door. And Timmy will hear the washing up going on from his room and he'll pretend to be working and then Clem will bring him crumble and then they'll sit there together on his bed.

(They never talk about Nick, for some reason. Timmy would've thought that would have been one of the things Clem might've brought up. Him being a guy, and all. He could help her with that side of things. Give her advice. Only Clem never asks for help or advice, and Timmy can't work out whether to take that as a good thing or not.)

Only this particular Friday evening, Timmy comes home and Clem and Nick are kissing on the couch, on his couch. (Technically it's shared, but he still has to sit on it afterwards, so yeah. His couch.) And not like, little closed mouth pecks. Like, full on kissing, and Timmy coughs awkwardly, shedding his scarf, hanging up his coat, shucking his shoes off of his feet. He makes eye contact with nothing but the floor as he goes to the kitchen, fixes himself a drink. Grabs an apple from the top of the pile. Scuttles to his room.

The apple and glass of juice work for about half an hour. But it's nine o'clock at this point and he hasn't eaten properly since twelve thirty, so Timmy takes a deep breath. Pulls open his door, makes sure he's covered up--

(Not like the time when he'd walked out with no shirt on and fucking Nick had been there. Nick, and he'd had to feign nonchalance the whole time, had to make it seem like there was a purpose to him going to the kitchen, so he'd stood there fucking washing up a single glass and feeling like an idiot for at least a quarter of an hour. He'd felt Clem's eyes on him and known he looked like an absolute imbecile, and yeah. He's never doing that again.)

--and he goes to the kitchen. He can sense the whole atmosphere of the room changing once he steps out. Realises why when he glances over and Clem is on Nick's lap. Timmy wonders momentarily if they're actually doing it--

(And come on. He has to sit there too.)

--but they're not. Just kissing, kissing heavily, breathing heavily. He averts his gaze as swiftly as possible, skirting around the side table that he always trips over. He knows that Clem's realised he's there, because she pulls back from Nick, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. He can see the two seconds of panic as she forgets that she's not wearing lipstick, and Timmy has to stifle a smile into the side of his cheek.

It's not that hard to stifle a smile, though, especially seeing as he actually sits on that couch and uses that couch, and maybe that's not the thing he's most annoyed about but it gives him an excuse to be angry. An excuse that isn't just longing for something he will never have.

There's lasagne in the fridge and Timmy heats it up in the microwave, leaning against the counter awkwardly. Usually he waits until Nick's gone to eat his dinner, but the man seems to be taking his sweet time leaving today and Timmy's fucking hungry.

He needs something to do, something so he isn't just standing there, staring at his plate through the dim screen of the microwave, so Timmy gets himself a glass of water and stands there, sipping on it slowly, his back turned to Clem so he doesn't have to make eye contact with her over Nick's shoulder.

The lasagne isn't ready the first try, so he puts it in for another thirty seconds. Glances over, and Clem's watching him. Half of her face is obscured by Nick's shoulder as he pretends to watch whatever's on TV. The other half is trained on Timmy. It feels like her eyes don't leave him for a second, not even when she blinks. Timmy doesn't know what he's done to deserve all of this attention, so he looks away. Sips shakily on his water, gets out a fork for his dinner. Takes the lasagne out of the microwave, puts it on a tray because he's not a complete slob, and then he carts the whole thing back to his room. Smiles awkwardly at Clem as they make eye contact on his way out, and he keeps his stare on her just long enough to know that she's grinning into Nick's shoulder. He's not sure if he wants to know why.

Timmy opens a window when he gets to his room, so he won't stink out the whole place with lasagne. (Because it smells good before you're eating it but not so much when the plate is long since cleared and your bedding still smells like mince and cheese.)

He eats his dinner over an episode of some show he's never watched. It's boring and fast-paced which shouldn't make sense but it does. Because everything happens so quickly that he doesn't know what's going on, and someone's died in the first episode. He's only ten minutes in. But maybe he just doesn't know what's going on because he's not paying attention. He's thinking about the fact that Clem always makes enough food for him when she cooks and he's thinking about smiles half-buried into shoulders.