THEN AGAIN • TC ✔️

19. Check-up

"What the fuck just happened?" Timmy asks weakly. His mouth is hanging open a little and his gaze keeps flitting between Clem and the door. She shrugs a little. It's only now that she realises that might have been a slightly rash decision.

"I, uh. Nick is no more," she says. Rubs her nose and tramps through to the kitchen. Puts the lid back on the crumble container, moves it to the fridge.

"But I-" Timmy starts like he wants to protest, but then he just sits there, looking dumbfounded. Clem waits for him to continue. Starts wiping down surfaces with a dishcloth. "Are you okay?" he asks finally, and Clem-

Is Clem okay?

She should be. She's fine. It's nearly Christmas. She should be happy, she's spending it with Timmy. She should be happy, she's seeing her parents and her sister in the New Year.

But she's actually kind of bummed out about this whole Nick thing that she's convinced herself not to be bummed out about. Because at the end of the day, Christmas will come and go and she'll still not be any closer to meeting her soulmate, or even just someone she can love for the time being. Nick's one of the only chances she's had at that over the past half year, and like--

(If Timmy would just hurry up and fall in love with her, it would make things so much easier.)

--she's still going to be alone at the end of it all.

"Yeah," she nods, scrubs a little harder at the counter. She knows Timmy hasn't bought it because she can practically feel his frown from across the room, scorching, burning into her face.

"You sure?" he asks, propping his feet up on the coffee table. (She's told him not to countless times, but somehow (conveniently) it never seems to register.)

"Yeah," Clem says again. Timmy nods hesitantly, and she swallows around the lump in her throat. Half begins washing up, half keeps an eye on Timmy as he puts something on TV. It's a Christmas special of some sitcom, and suddenly the atmosphere is quite soothing. She lights a three-wick candle on the kitchen counter and starts cleaning, elbow-deep in soap suds.
Plate after plate is rubbed spotless, left on the drying rack, as Timmy hunches over his marking on the couch, back stooped, shoulders sagging. It looks highly uncomfortable, and he keeps on shifting around. Clem wants to tell him that he'll kill his back if he carries on like that. Wants to tell him that he should work at the table - she'll even come and keep him company, if he likes - but she keeps quiet and starts drying up. Listens to the laughing tracks on the TV and smiles from time to time as she watches Timmy squint at the paper he's marking, bring it closer to his face. Clem loves it when his nose scrunches up and his lips pull to the side and when his pen runs across the page in little scribbles, circling and underlining and explaining.

(Also, she loves the fact that he actually tries with his marking. Actually outlines the method and gives working marks and little comments on the bottom. Having him as a teacher must be fucking awesome.)

Once there's nothing left to wash up, she goes over to the window. Closes the curtains and feeds Philomena, who happily gobbles down the fish flakes and starts idly swimming around again. Clem washes her hands, which are pruned from the hot water, and rounds the back of the sofa, where Timmy's posture is even worse than it was the last time she checked.

Clem stares at the screen for a moment, and then kneads her fingers into Timmy's shoulders. At first, he tenses, his shoulders drawing up to his ears defensively. But then he relaxes into it, letting out a big sigh. The biro drops to the page he's working on and Timmy flexes his fingers, cracks the knuckles of his right hand, then the left.

Clem digs harder into his shoulder blades, slower, and he groans. His head falls back against the sofa, his hair just tickling her stomach over her shirt, and she laughs as he mouths a thank you. Clem clambers awkwardly over the back of the sofa, so that she's sitting on the top and Timmy's head is nestled between her legs. It means she can relax a little, her own posture going to shit just so he can have a nice massage. (She doesn't mind. Is glad of an excuse to touch him, happy just to work her fingers over the softness of his green shirt that he always looks so pretty in.)

His head comes to rest against her thigh as he stares absently at the TV screen. Clem karate chops his shoulders and he laughs. Nuzzles his cheek against her leg, and her motions get softer, gentler. She ends up just stroking his shoulders, no force whatsoever. Timmy's eyes keep drooping shut - she can feel his lashes fluttering against her leg every time he dozes off and comes back around. Clem has half a mind to cart him off to bed. Tuck him in, read him a bedtime story.

(And maybe Nick does have a point about her treating him like a child, only it's not like Clem's- there's no weird complex going on here, she just...likes Timmy. Wants to look after him.)

But she doesn't put him to bed because that would be odd. Still, her back is killing her, slouched over like this, and Clem slides down the back of the couch. Lands pressed up so closely behind him, so close that she can cross her legs over his lap and sit there, curled around Timmy like a tree. He kind of is like a tree, actually, all long limbs and towering height.

Not now, though.

Now, he's soft, pliant, ready to be moved in whichever way suits Clem the best. She laughs as he flops against her, almost alarmingly warm. Clem delicately removes the paper and pen from his lap, to which Timmy immediately shoves one leg on top of the other. Starts shifting around, tugging his shirt down from where it's ridden up around his pale hips.
She catches a glimpse of soft, soft skin, before Timmy is curling back into her chest, his knees drawn up into his own chest. She smiles. Hesitantly wraps herself around him so that her arms, too, are circling Timmy's knees. She's literally hugging all of him at once, and she loves it.

He snorts again at something on the TV. Pushes his face half into Clem's collarbone, awfully confident for someone who can't even order takeout over the phone without stammering. Maybe that's just the sleepiness, though. Maybe it's making him care a little less.