THEN AGAIN • TC ✔️

18. Altercation

Clem doesn't usually look at Nick if she can help it. There's something about him, something about his stolidity, something about the fact that he's so handsome and accomplished and so fucking attractive. It makes her kind of wary. So she looks at him, but she doesn't see him. Doesn't make any effort to look beneath the annoyingly hot scruff on his face, the thick eyebrows, the dark eyes.

But she's looking at him now, as he's--

(Well, he's not shouting. Not yelling, really, just talking. Loudly. Kind of angrily.)

--talking and she's realising that whatever he had going for him looks-wise, none of it actually matters when she thinks about how horrible this conversation is.

(Conversation. She hasn't gotten a word in in at least a minute.)

Because really, he might be good-looking and he might be well-off and he might possess a veritable trove of hyphenated attributes, but really, he's just a guy. And he's saying all these things that-

"I'm not just here so we can eat and fuck around and watch TV. I want a serious relationship, Clementine-"

(And Clem has multiple issues with that. Multiple.

Because eating, fucking around, watching TV. That sounds like a serious relationship to her. Sounds like the kind of thing you would do with someone if you wanted them around, sounds like the kind of thing she does with Timmy. Minus the fucking around. But maybe Timmy has just skewed everything. Maybe Timmy is the reason she's okay with cooking and vegging out on the couch. Maybe Timmy has lowered her standards, or maybe he's just met the ones that she already had.

And also. Clementine? (Clementine??!) It's taking everything in her not to slap him, because not once has she even used her full name around him, not once has she even suggested that she might like to be called that. She's not even sure if she's ever even told him what her full name is.)

"I want something serious with someone who's prepared to actually go out in the evenings. Not just sit there, eating. Like, your food's great or whatever, but it's just...boring. I don't even like Fast and Furious and we've watched, like, seven of them."

"I don't like Fast and Furious either!" she retorts. Her mouth quirks into a little smile, but Nick just looks frustrated. Clem wishes he'd try and see the funny side of this, because Timmy would. Timmy would find it funny.

"Well then why didn't you say something?" he asks. His eyes are wide and he looks a bit like a chicken. Clem feels bad for thinking that but his eyes are just so beady and-

"I seriously don't know how you thought this was going to work if you couldn't even tell me what movies you like."

And that.

That's a good point if ever there was one. One nil to him. (Actually, it's more like three nil.)

"I like horror movies. And thrillers," she says simply.

"Yeah, well that's no fucking use to me now, is it?" Nick asks, and Clem resists the urge to shrug. She feels like a student being shouted at by a teacher, and it should be alarming how unbothered she is about this whole ordeal. She should be crying or at least feeling a little sorry for herself, but she just...feels like shrugging.

"Sorry," Clem says. She's still topless--

(Because she was working on the button of her jeans when Nick had told her to wait. Had asked her if she ever planned on doing anything other than eating and then fucking afterwards. And Clem had stopped unbuttoning her trousers. Had told him quite plainly that she hadn't. Hadn't planned on anything really. She's still young, after all. There'll be time for that.)

--so she reaches behind her and fastens one of the hooks on her bra that she managed to get undone before this...intervention? Altercation? She doesn't really know what to call it. Clem shrugs on her shirt again as Nick goes on. She goes to the tiny little mirror on her vanity (because she still hasn't found herself a proper one. Clem still hasn't worked out a time when both she and Timmy are free, so they can go to Ikea and pretend to use all the fake sinks and hide in wardrobes. Test out all the beds like they actually share a bed in the first place.) She flakes away some of the dried hair gel on her temples. Wonders momentarily why she spent time on her edges for him.

"And like...we're not getting any younger," Nick says, almost wistfully. We?

Clem sort of feels bad for him then, because he's what...twenty-nine? Almost thirty. But she's only twenty six, and that's not old, is it? No, it's not, it can't be, she's only just getting started. She's...in adult years, she's just a small child. Preteen, maybe. So the guy has some nerve saying we.

"And you're already out here acting like a retired couple with Timothy-"

(It's Timmy, not Timothy, but Clem doesn't say this.)

"-fucking making him dinner and doing his laundry. He's a grown man, Clem. He can do that himself."

"But he doesn't have to," she protests. "That's the point. I like doing that stuff for him."

A pause. Neither of them say anything, and Clem starts taking off her makeup with a cotton round. "Look, don't bring Timmy into this," she says.

Nick scoffs. "It's kind of hard not to, the kid follows you wher-"

"He's not a kid-"

"He's younger than you-"

"By a year-"

"He's like a child, Clem," Nick rolls his eyes. "You can't even go anywhere without him following you. He's always waiting outside for you in the mornings like a fucking- I don't know, like a- a puppy. A puppy."

(That's not true. Is it? No, Timmy's not always outside waiting for her in the mornings. He's not, because sometimes he's in his room. Getting dressed. Or doing something that means Clem can't come in with his cup of coffee. Something she maybe thinks about a little too often.)

"Oh my God, he's a grown man, he can-"

"You don't treat him like it!" Nick retorts, and maybe he's got her there. Maybe she does like to baby Timmy a little, but only because he's so thin and so cuddly and so easy to please. "You treat him like he's your son, always- picking up after him and-"

"I said, don't make this about Timmy," she cuts in, and Nick rolls his eyes.

"I'm not making it about Timmy, it is about Timmy," he scoffs. "Look, just- I want something better than...whatever this is," he gestures between the two of them. "Well, maybe not better, but. More interesting. I want to actually see things and do things and you're obviously so fucking attached to your little- kid, that-"

"He's not a kid!" Clem laughs, and she meant to spit it out but actually it's just funny. Because Timmy isn't a kid. She only does those things for him because she cares about him, because she wants him to be happy.

Because she wants him.

"Okay, well..." Nick trails off. "I mean, like. Whatever. Just. This isn't working, is it?" he says resignedly.

Clem shakes her head from side to side, opening her tub of moisturiser. "Obviously not," she replies. Dots some of the gel on her cheeks, her forehead, her chin. Turns around as she rubs it in, finally looking at Nick.

"Right, well."

"Well," she repeats. Pulls her top lip over her teeth as she rubs in the moisturiser around her nose.

"So, we're not doing this anymore?" he asks. Clem just shrugs again.

"I guess not," she replies. "Unless you're that desperate to-"

"No, I- yeah. Maybe we should just..." he doesn't finish his sentence.

"Fine by me," she shrugs. Rummages in a little pot on her vanity for a chapstick.

So that's how it works out that Nick is escorted out of their apartment with a Tupperware of leftover crumble, and that's how it works out that when Clem turns sround, she's met with a very confused Timmy.

A Timmy who's wearing his special green shirt, cross-legged on the couch, looking absolutely dumfounded.