Tommy Ramsey & Camille Nichols' Romance Suite

"Huh. True." It hadn't even occurred to Tommy before Camille mentioned it to move somewhere it didn't snow, and honestly, he wasn't sure he was in favor of that. He was lazy and hated to shovel, sure, but there was something kind of magical about a real winter and that first snowfall of the season. "I don't know. I loved the snow as a kid, and... still do, when it's not so deep I need to be up during the night to keep up with shoveling it."

He'd put a lot more thought into where he'd live in the past year, since marrying Camille, than he ever had before. He liked Connecticut, but he could see himself in Chicago, too, and had really come to the conclusion that it didn't really matter where he lived as long as he could live with her. Or, well, a future real wife or something. "I don't know. I guess you're right, though." He paused as she mentioned it seemed like a nice place to raise kids, kind of surprised that she seemed to have put thought into it. "I like it, but I'm not really so attached to it I couldn't leave, if there was reason to."

He paused, wondering if there was reason. It was really hard to read Camille most of the time, and he wasn't sure if she made it that way on purpose. "Chicago's nice, too, though."

"Yeah, it just wouldn't really feel like winter without snow, I think," Camille agreed, thinking that even when it annoyed her, she would miss it if it wasn't there. "But if you don't have a house until you're older with children, then you obviously just make your kids do the shoveling," she joked.

She grew quiet as he mentioned being able to move away if there was reason to, knowing that if there was ever a time to confess feelings or share some of the current thoughts in her head, then this was probably that time. "I don't really have a strong connection to Chicago. Like, yeah, I grew up there and it's where my parents live, but... well, you've seen my relationship with them," she said instead with a shrug. It was probably better for her relationship with them that they didn't live in the same city. It was one of the things she had liked about Tommy's family when she had visited, the fact that they had treated her like she was one of them, even though they knew the whole marriage was less than real. She wondered whether it would be any different if she was genuinely in love with and married to him.

Tommy laughed easily as Camille suggested he just get his kids to do the shoveling when that time came. "I'm pretty sure dealing with social services asking why I was sitting inside while, like, my four year old was outside shoveling? Probably a bigger hassle than buying a snow blower." Then again, between his family and his education, Tommy couldn't really picture himself in a position where he wouldn't have the money to just hire someone to take care of the storm cleanup.

Then again, he'd also always expected to put off marriage until he was older and settled and had a good job. It was pretty clear that these sorts of things didn't really follow a plan. His lips set in a thin line as Camille fell silent, and he studied her, not sure how to interpret her quietness. It seemed like a good sign, like she was debating whether to tell him he did have a reason to consider moving, but Tommy was an eternal optimist, and he realized that. This thing with Camille had made him a lot more hesitant to accept his intuition. It was like everything he thought he had figured out, she'd promptly contradict.

"Maybe getting away from your parents would help things with them," Tommy pointed out, trying to keep his advice vague and not end up encouraging her to move to Connecticut. Selfishly, that's what he wanted to do, but it wasn't right for Camille. "Why did you stay in state for school, anyway? You're definitely smart enough to pretty much anywhere, and if you aren't that attached to Chicago..."

"I'm going to assume you know I would never really do that, judging from your laugh," Camille responded with a small smile, pretty confident in the fact that Tommy knew it was a complete joke. "I would make my husband do all the shoveling though, so be happy that you won't be around forever to be bossed around," she teased, trying not to think about the fact that she kinda liked the idea of bossing him around for the rest of their lives. Okay, only just a little. She wasn't really that bossy, no matter what he happened to say. It wasn't her fault that she was sort of OCD, and he just left his clothes strewn around their room all the time and she had to constantly tell him to pick up after himself.

She considered what he had said about her parents, thinking that he definitely brought up a good point. Maybe it would do some real good for her relationship with them if they weren't living right in the same city, or even the same state. Maybe there would be less taking each other for granted and whatnot. "Yeah, I think you're right," she responded with a nod. "Grad school out of a state is probably a good idea."

"And um, I'm not really sure why," she shrugged at his question. "Pressure from my parents, I guess. They actually met at Northwestern, and I suppose just growing up hearing about how that was the best time of their lives made me feel like it was the only choice I had." Her relationship with her parents was so confusing and screwed up. It was like she was constantly doing whatever she could do gain their approval, even after being disappointed by them time after time. No matter how many times she tried to convince herself that it didn't matter what they thought, she was constantly attempting to make sure that every aspect of her life was approved by them. It was the whole reason that this entire marriage with Tommy was way more complicated than she could handle.

"Oh, I don't know," Tommy countered, the grin never slipping from his face. "Parenthood can make even the sanest people do some pretty crazy things. And since you already have some weird aversion to doing things half-assed, you'd probably be either the most involved mom ever, or the least involved. And really, what's worse? Letting your kids fend for themselves shoveling, or being that crazy helicopter parent who annoys all their kid's teachers by already having a million questions about how little Jimmy's doing on the first day."

Truthfully, he couldn't imagine Camille not being a good mom, and it was really just a question of how overboard she'd go, but it was more fun to rile her up than to just come out and admit that. He cocked his head to the side as she told him she'd make her husband do all the shoveling so he should be relieved he had an escape. After considering for a minute, he shrugged, and admitted, "You're pretty awesome. At least worth putting up with snow."

Tommy listened as Camille talked about what had kept her in Illinois, not really getting it. She'd made it pretty clear that even if she wanted to earn her parents' respect, she didn't actually want to follow in their footsteps, so going to their alma mater just because seemed a little strange. "Did you even look at other schools, before you applied there?" he asked curiously, wondering just how much of Camille's life had been decided for her.

"Kinda weird to think about what kind of parent I would be, because it seems like something that's so far in the future," Camille laughed softly, thinking it was also a little awkward to be discussing with her future ex-husband who obviously wouldn't be the father of these future children, either. "Not until I'm at least 30," she said. She had a lot of her future plans mapped out by her ideal timeline, which was one of the main reasons she had been so distraught upon having made the hugest drunken mistake ever by marrying Tommy. Marriage wasn't supposed to happen until after she had finished grad school, with someone she loved and had dated for a considerable amount of time.

"What about you? When do want kids? Or well, do you even want them?" she questioned, ignoring the awkwardness she felt about discussing this sort of thing with him after realizing she was genuinely curious to know his opinion. In some ways, the thought of Tommy as a dad seemed utterly ridiculous, but then again, she couldn't help but think he would be an amazing dad someday.

"Yeah, of course I looked at other schools," she answered his question, frowning as she thought about how maybe she would have been a lot happier if she had done what she wanted without letting her parents influence her decisions all the time. "I got into NYU and almost ended up going there. How weird would that be? Being that much closer to you," she thought out loud. Weird wasn't really the right word. It would be more like amazing, she thought, but it wasn't like she would actually say that out loud to him. "Although if I had gone there, I would have had completely different friends and wouldn't have been on that cruise last year, so we would have never met," she shrugged.

Tommy shrugged, not really sharing the same view as Camille. She seemed to have everything planned down to the minute it should happen, and while Tommy was much more comfortable with living in the moment, he'd mostly found a healthy balance. His parents had weighed down his impulsiveness by stressing the importance of planning for life events... especially the ones you couldn't always predict. "My parents started saving money for me before I was even really a figment of their imagination. They met, and fell in love, and knew they'd have kids someday, and back then they weren't well off, so..."

He hadn't really gotten it until he'd met Camille. It had seemed like such insane foresight, to set up a bank account for a kid that hadn't even been conceived. But then he'd met Camille, and he could see having a family with her, and could see not wanting to have to worry about money when that day came. He nodded as she asked if he wanted kids, sort of amused because this was the kind of conversation that usually happened before the marriage. "Yeah. A couple, at least. I like having my little sisters and brother to torture - or, uh, play with," he told her with a grin. "So... I don't know? Maybe a little before thirty? Because when you think about it, it's pretty normal for kids to live at home until they're done with college, or at the very least, high school? And if you wait 'til 30 to start, by the time you have the second or third, you're looking at having AARP benefits by the time your youngest kid graduates."

Tommy could definitely see Camille at NYU. It was a good school, and she'd liked what she'd seen of Connecticut when she'd visited, and New York was close enough geographically that it wasn't all that different. "It would be kind of awesome, actually," he admitted as she asked him if it would be weird if she was that close. He lapsed into silence, though, drawing patterns on the bare skin between Camille's shoulder blades, and considering what she'd said about potentially never having met him.

"I don't know. Maybe us meeting was meant to be," he countered, thinking of all the times he'd sat through cheesy romance movies with lesser girls, and thought a similar message was totally bogus. "It's not like I've never been to New York. Maybe we'd have met on a ferry, or at Rockefeller Center around the holidays, or we'd have run into each other - probably literally - at Grand Central." He grinned. "Haven't you ever seen Final Destination? If something's meant to be, you can't just escape it by not being in the right place at the right time. It will reoccur 'til you're there."

"Yeah, I definitely want at least two kids. I hated being an only child and not having a sibling there who understood just how crazy my parents were at times," Camille thought out loud, thinking about how she wanted her own children to at least have someone there who could they relate to or vent to if she ended up turning into her mother. She paused as he explained not wanting to start having children too late, since that meant perhaps being ready to retire before all of your children were even out of the house, thinking that he made a very good point there. "True. Okay, so maybe like 27 or 28. I think that's still far enough away," she considered.

She laughed softly as he seemed to imply that they were perhaps destined to have met or whatever, not so sure if she even really believed in destiny. She was more of a believer that things happened because of choices you made and such, not because they were simply meant to happen. Besides, the very notion seemed way too romantic and was inviting deeper conversations that she wasn't ready to deal with at the moment. "You do realize that's a movie, right?" she responded to him instead.

This entire conversation about children and fate and everything was so not the sort of conversation two people in a fake marriage should be having. She hadn't even talked about these kinds of things with her ex-boyfriend, so it was completely freaking her out to be talking about them with Tommy. The two of them were getting divorced in a few months, and then it would be over. She needed to constantly remind herself of that little fact. "I need to shower," she announced as she got up from the bed, deciding the best thing right now was just to abruptly end this whole conversation and then pretend like it hadn't even happened later on.

When Tommy'd initially brought up things like where Camille would want to live and how many kids she'd want to have, it had been more to find a logical excuse she could use to explain to her parents why they couldn't work out. Instead, the similarity in their answers and how easy it was to find compromises when they didn't completely agree just made him more convinced they could work out, which was the last thing he needed. It wasn't until now that he realized he'd been looking for some explanation why they couldn't make this work for himself, just as much as he'd claimed to be looking at it for her parents.

Hell, she'd easily factored in what he'd said about when he wanted to have kids and adjusted her answer accordingly, and that was the sort of difference in opinion that could easily make or break a real couple. "I guess at the end of the day, something like being ready to have a kid just happens when it happens," he offered uncomfortably, trying to lighten the gravitas of their apparent compromise. It was kind of hard to overlook how readily she'd adjusted that to factor in his feelings, though, like she was thinking about starting a family with him.

He couldn't help but smile when Camille asked if he realized Final Destination was just a movie. "Yeah, and it's about dying. Not even falling in love. That doesn't mean the message doesn't work, though," he protested, even though he knew it was a dumb argument to make. It's not exactly romantic to compare the inevitability of meeting a soulmate with getting hit by a bus after you accidentally survive a plane crash.

Tommy opened his mouth to protest as Camille insisted she needed a shower, but closed it again when he noticed how quickly she climbed out of bed, like she was trying to avoid him. He flipped over and stared up at the ceiling for a minute, completely frustrated by his own inability to communicate with Camille and her apparent distaste at the idea of even trying to make things work. "This is just great," he muttered as he heard the water turn on.