Who: Tony Wyrzykowski and Cate Adler What: Tony and Cate both have some feelings to work out after Kent's Big Night. When: Wednesday, June 5, 2019 | Evening Where: The Kestrel (of course) Warnings: BIG EMOTION, small kissing and very mild sex talk
Tony was at the Kestrel almost every night Cate was working, whether or not Kent could be there, because he liked chatting with her and keeping her company during the slow patches. He also liked that he could sneak into the office with her when she went on her break to eat something and/or make out for a while. It was busier than usual tonight with all the extra people in town for the photoshoot, and he hadn't had a chance to talk to her until she left to take her usual break, and then he finished his beer, said so long to the Quodpotters he'd been shooting the breeze with, and followed her back into the office.
He closed the door behind him and turned to smile at her. "Hey, sweetheart. All these people in town for the photoshoot are running you off your feet, huh?"
Cate had been picking at some food from the kitchen for most of the evening, so she wasn't all that hungry. She wasn't even sure if she'd been hungry when she was eating; her stomach had been tied up in knots all day, and while the passage of hours had somewhat cooled the anger, it had been replaced by something that felt a lot more sour.
She went into the office and took a seat on the edge of the desk, barely looking at him as she passed, and not answering his question. She'd kept up pleasant dialogue with everyone throughout the evening, but now it was impossible to keep pretending. Part of her wanted to talk to him, but there was a sharper part that was afraid it might only make the knots worse.
She let out a shaky breath. "I need to ask you something."
Tony was already frowning in puzzlement before she even spoke, because this cold shoulder was not Cate. He came forward, but hesitated before reaching out to touch her like he usually would have, because he could read the room and it didn't seem like it would be welcomed right now. Instead he tucked his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, anything. Are you… is everything okay?"
Cate shook her head, both an answer to his question and an avoidance of one. In that moment, with that expression on his face, she was tempted to let it go. She wasn't made for staying angry or holding grudges; it would pass in a few days, and things would go back to normal.
But she couldn't exactly expect them to talk to her if she wasn't willing to do the same, could she?
She reached out and rested one hand lightly on his chest, her one concession to that desire to make peace. "Why didn't you tell me about Kent and Fitz? That Kent was hurt?"
Tony was only mildly reassured by that touch; he lifted a hand to cover hers, gathering her fingers in his. "Aw, honey. I didn't want you to be worried. It wasn't bad, nothing a little bruise paste couldn't fix. Anyway, I figured he would tell you. I didn't want to get in the way." He smiled hopefully at her, hoping to clear up that expression on her face. "And… Fitz… you know, it's complicated for me, since we've been friends forever. I don't even really know what to say about the whole thing. Are you mad at me for not telling?"
Cate had to purse her lips and force herself not to interrupt, despite all of the responses that kept coming to her mouth. "You didn't want me to be worried," she repeated flatly. "So it was important enough for you to go over and take care of him, but not important enough to let me decide for myself whether I should worry. Kent did tell me, for the record. This morning. After all was said and done. I mean, it's okay. I couldn't have been there before it was done anyway, right?" She looked away at that.
"Catey, no, that's not--" Tony dropped her hand to scrub his fingers through his hair. "It's not like that, sweetheart. He didn't tell me about it either -- Fitz did. Kent wasn't going to tell me, except that I already knew. And… I don't know, I wanted to talk to him about it. Just him." He reached out to touch her chin gently and turn her face back toward him. "I wasn't trying to leave you out of things, baby. It was just the way it happened. But I'm really sorry for hurting you." He was, genuinely; caught up in the moment and all the subsequent moments of last night, he hadn't considered that it might hurt Cate.
Her hand fell, and she tucked it under her thigh to keep herself from reaching out again. She wanted to keep her head turned away, almost spitefully, but the urge passed quickly enough that there was only the slightest tug of resistance before she looked up at him. "It's not about trying. It's worse because you didn't try. Neither of you did. It's not the first time, and I just—" She bit her lip, and her eyes shifted away from his, even though her face remained pointed forward. "When something happens, I know I'll never be the first one who can be there. For either of you. So when you don't tell me things until the next day...it's like I wasn't even worth bothering."
"No, sweetheart," Tony protested again, but it was a weak protest, and uncertain, because now that she'd made him think about it, she wasn't wrong. He dropped his hand from her chin and looked down, thinking back to when Kent had collapsed in medical and Tony had been his emergency contact, and he hadn't called Cate until later. Or when Fitz had punched him and the first thing he'd thought to do was go straight to Kent. Neither of them had intended any harm, but Cate was right, and his stomach plummeted with the knowledge of how hurt she must be.
He sighed and pushed his hand through his hair again, putting it into hopeless disarray. "I'm so sorry, baby. I never wanted to hurt you like that, I just… I didn't think about it. I know we talked about how hard it is not being able to apparate when everybody around you just takes it for granted, but I guess I just don't know. What can I -- what can we do?" Tony reached out again, resting his hand on her shoulder as he watched her face. "You're worth it, Cate. How can I make you feel like you are?"
Cate shook her head again, and this time she was trying to ward off the tears that were welling up in her eyes. She could feel the sincerity in his words, and it only made it harder to not tell him everything was okay and ignore that near-overwhelming tug of sadness in her chest. This wasn't her, this angry, dramatic, discontented girl, and she didn't want it to be her even now, when the feelings had brimmed up so high that she couldn't ignore them anymore.
"I don't know," she said, the words thin and watery despite her efforts, but no less genuine for it. "It's not that I think you need to tell me every little thing all the time. I don't want you to take this for some sort of ultimatum or rule or...I don't know, jealousy? It's not. I swear it's not." Maybe jealousy of wizards, if she looked at it from the right angle, but not jealousy in the relationship sense. "I have a good life, and I don't like feeling like this. But with you and Kent I just...I want more, like sometimes I'm not enough, and I don't know what to do with it." The tears brimmed over then, not in sobs, but a slow trickle down her cheeks.
Tony couldn't help it -- at the sight of tears sliding slowly down Cate's face, he put his arms around her, holding her close. "Sweetheart," he said again, his own voice gone thick. "You're enough. You're incredible. I don't know how I got lucky enough to be with you. How either of us did." He bent his head down to lay a kiss on the top of her head, and rubbed her back softly while he thought about it. "Can I tell you something?" he said at last. "Something Kent and I talked about last night?"
This time, Cate snuggled up against him without hesitation. The lingering anger had seeped away entirely, and she was very quickly losing the battle against her tendency toward equilibrium. Another time, she might have laughed at his question, since it was very clear from this discussion that she preferred knowing things to not knowing them. But she wasn't quite there yet. Instead, she just nodded into his chest and murmured, "Yeah. What did you talk about?"
"I told him that I--" Tony hesitated a moment, running his fingers gently up and down Cate's spine. "See, he said something dumb about how you and I were going to end up together, and I said neither of us would do that to him. I kind of thought you two would end up together because he's always been in love with you, and I always said I was okay with that. And for a while I thought I was, like I was doing a good deed or something, helping you and Kent get together and realize you were this perfect couple, but the truth is, Catey…"
He stepped in a little closer, tightening his hold on her as a shield against any pain. "I love him. I don't exactly know what to do with that, but I do. And it made me realize that since the start I've been… not jealous, I guess, but more like… greedy for everything I could get of him, because sooner or later you two would figure it out and-- anyway, I'm so sorry about that, sweetheart. I think I finally get it how he can feel that strongly about both of us, and I'm sorry I didn't figure it out sooner, because I think my -- my insecurities maybe made it harder for you. I said from the beginning I didn't want to get in your way, but I think I did anyway, and if that's what's making you feel like you're on the outside looking in sometimes -- I'm sorry," he repeated.
Cate pushed back from him; not away, but to put enough space between them that she could look up at him. Her cheeks were still wet, and while the tears hadn't stopped entirely, they had slowed to only an occasional drop as she processed everything Tony said. "Of course you love him." She could see it in the way they interacted, in the way they looked at each other in vulnerable moments, in the intensity of their connection. "How could you not?"
She raised her hand to his chest again, much the way she had when this conversation had started, but this time with far more tenderness in the touch. "And you and I, we're—I don't want to say 'friends with benefits' because I think it cheapens it, but it's...not the same. Maybe it's just not there yet, or maybe it won't ever be, I don't know." She watched his expression, hoping desperately that she wasn't hurting him. It would have felt a little bit too much like revenge if she was, and that wasn't what she intended at all. "I like being with you, and being with both of you. I'm not saying I don't. But it's different."
Cate drew a long, shaky breath, even as that tightness in her chest had begun to claw at her again, for entirely different reasons now. It was almost enough that she lost her nerve, but she forced the words out. "Do you—if you want me to step out now, I will. I told him I would, if it was needed, and I—" The tears started again in earnest. "I can't lie. It would hurt. I don't—" She looked away, biting her lip hard enough that she was surprised she didn't draw blood. "I don't want to be in your way, Tony. I never meant for that to happen."
"You're not. You couldn't be." Tony took her hand from his chest, raised it to his lips, and pressed a kiss into her palm. "I like being with you, too. And I like seeing him with you, how he looks at you, how much you brighten him up. I don't want to stop doing what we're doing, as long as it's working for everybody." He leaned down to kiss away a tear as it slid down her cheek. "I keep making you cry, huh? I'm sorry about that, baby." Reaching for the box of tissues on the desk behind her, he offered her one. "But… yeah, it's different with you and me. Everything's so heavy with Kent, but with you it's so easy. I like all our time together, I like taking you out, I like the sex." Tony grinned, one hand falling to Cate's waist. "I really like the sex. I think it's okay that it's different between us, Catey. I think it works just fine that way. Especially because I'm not gonna be insecure about it anymore, and we're gonna tell you things when they happen. I will personally come and get you the minute anything happens with Kent. Okay?"
"Easy when I'm not making puddles on your shirt, you mean," Cate said, and something very near a laugh bubbled up in her throat, even though the tears were still streaming steadily. They were lingering aftershocks of all she'd had to say, of the emotions that had brought them to this conversation in the first place, but mostly they were tears of relief. She'd never quite thought about things the way Tony put them, but it made a lot of sense to see their relationship through that lens. "It's that way for me, too, with you. A balance for the intensity that is Kent." She debated for a long moment and added, "I love him, too. It sort of...sneaked up on me, I think."
She nodded and stretched up to kiss him lightly, finally reaching for the offered tissue. "Okay. I'll try, too. To not let the insecurities get to me." She bit her lip. "He probably thinks I'm mad at him. I mean, I was mad at him, but…. I'd better text him back. It's been a good twelve hours, and you know how he dwells."
Tony smiled fondly. "Yeah, I do know. Definitely text him so he can stop fretting." He leaned in to kiss the tip of her nose. "I meant it when I said you're incredible, Cate. And he and I both know how lucky we are to have you. He better know how lucky he is all around." Tony dipped in lower to catch her mouth again in a sweet, lingering kiss. "And speaking of lucky, and easy… have you got time for a quickie before you have to go back out?" He grinned hopefully.
This time, she did laugh, and the only answer she could possibly give was to slide her arms around his neck and kiss him.