Gone Australian 2.0
Who: Anneliese and Thomas What: Another vacation scene When: Somewhere between March 18 and April 10 Where: Thomas's parents home
Even on days of mostly uninterrupted sleep, Thomas still needed a certain level of caffeine in his system to feel entirely human. Addiction, perhaps, but completely fine with him. Standing out on the back deck overlooking the river, his precious mug of coffee cupped between his two hands, he was able to get the dual benefit of caffeine and a little air away from everyone else.
He loved his family, he did, and he wouldn’t want Anneliese to be anywhere but on that trip with him just then, but even so he’d needed the hour he’d taken for himself without even Han talking in his head for a little while.
A knock on the glass of the door behind him had him turning reluctantly away from the view to see who it was or at least what was needed of him, and he couldn’t say he was anything but slightly surprised to see the broadly smiling face of a Lottie Miller looking back at him. Charlotte had been a student of his mother’s for years and as pretty as she was, and as friendly as she was, he had always felt her attention far too cloying for his tastes and had never taken her up on the offer implied whenever she laid a hand on his arm or smiled up at him.
She all but bounced up to him then, all cascading copper curls and big brown eyes and a smile bright enough to make him wince slightly in anticipation of the high-pitched happy squeal she let loose at seeing him. “Thomas!” She announced, as if he might’ve missed her approach, “You’re home!” And even as he raised a hand in order to ward her off, she bypassed it completely to all but pounce on him to wrap her arms around his waist and hug him tightly, reminding him for at least the hundredth time that even in heels she was a good half foot shorter than him, and he was not a tall man.
There were so many people in the Caldecott household that Anneliese could barely keep track of anyone, just managing with those that were members of Thomas’s immediate family and keeping them straight, seemingly, only by the grace of God. So, she saw the ultra tiny redhead enter the home and mingle through the people present as if she was forever welcomed, and she thought nothing of it, or her. Anneliese wasn’t the sort to compare herself to every female that came within her line of vision, so the fact that the girl was considerably smaller and bubblier than herself was a detail that was disregarded as easily as the girl’s presence had been. Anneliese wasn’t being rude and she wouldn’t be, if she was introduced to the new girl, she simply had other things to do at the time.
That quickly changed when a scent met her nose, rankling her immediately though she couldn’t express why or how. It was a purely feline instinct, something that drove her from her position on the Caldecott couch where Christie had been showing her the pictures she’d promised and sending her toward the back porch without a word where she knew Thomas to be, having a moment to himself. What she found was the aforementioned redhead wrapped around Thomas like he was a long, lost toy, the scent of pheromones dripping from her like the cloying sort of perfume that was supposedly the perfect rip off of a designer fragrance, no matter that it came in an aerosol can.
Beneath that, the more alarming smell that offended the cat within Anneliese on a purely animalistic level, was the scent of Thomas’s discomfort. He didn’t want to be touched, didn’t want to be groped by this woman who all but wore her invitation like a horn on her forehead that she could poke at him with, and Anneliese did not want him to be touched with such intent. The sight of the other woman’s hands on him burned her, gave her pain right in the middle of her chest, and she was reacting before she even thought about it.
She threw open the door, her movements sleek and silent but very, very efficient as she made her way over to the pair and just gingerly enough that she didn’t bruise or snap the bones of the redhead’s fingers, removed them from Thomas and used a hand on her chest to make sure the other girl took a few steps back. “I’ll thank you to keep your hands to yourself,” she said quietly, darkly, barely restraining the urge to roar or hiss.
With a heavy swallow against his own discomfort at being blatantly grabbed and his personal space invaded by someone he had not invited to do so, Thomas had been about to try peeling Lottie off of him with all the politeness he could muster just then. Where she had a habit of treating him as if he were just any other man who could be expected to be pleased with the sudden press of a feminine body against his, he had always done his best to be alone with her in the hopes that keeping some distance between the two of them would keep him from having to blatantly lie out why exactly he had touch issues if she was too blind to reason it out for herself.
He had been too caught up in the wash of discomfort that could so easily turn to distress in its intensity to be aware of anything or anyone else. Until, that is, he caught a glimpse of Anneliese headed their way with a storm brewing in her expression as he’d never quite witnessed before.
His confusion over that note was more than momentary, as she physically removed Lottie’s grip on him and pushed her away. The redhead’s squeal of outrage sounded almost distant with the way Thomas was staring incomprehensibly at Anneliese. Her “Hey! What are y-” was cut off in its shrill notes under the force of the Were woman’s glare and the threat that lived in her words. Where she might otherwise have sputtered and kicked up a fuss, Lottie quailed with the instinctive understanding that she was on very thin ice in those seconds of heavy silence.
Where the little witch froze, the soft clearing of a throat behind the trio made Thomas’s gaze finally tear away from his bedmate long enough to see his mother in the doorway, Lilya standing behind her. “Anneliese. Thomas.” Nora crossed her arms beneath her breasts and spoke in clipped tones, looking somewhere far south of pleased. “May I see you two in the kitchen?”
Anneliese’s anger burned a brighter shade of red than even the other girl’s hair, intense and instinctive and so inexplicable that she couldn’t even begin to sort it out, even if she’d been in the place to. She put herself firmly between Thomas and what the leopard in her saw as a threat, her fingers flat against the sides of her thighs in an effort to keep them from curling into claws, and the rest of her following suit. It made no difference that the girl was obviously harmless, if not misguided. She had offended the cat inside of Anneliese on the most elemental of levels, and she could not calm down until the threat was removed.
Thankfully it was Lilya that stepped forward after Nora’s statement went unheard by Anneliese, who could not take her eyes off the tiny redhead, to begin ushering the other girl elsewhere, and it was that that finally snapped Anneliese out of it. She relaxed fractionally, her gaze immediately shifting to Thomas who was in turn looking at his mother. When Anneliese turned to meet Nora’s gaze, a wave of embarrassment washed over her, cloaking her in enough shame to send her gaze toward the ground beneath her feet, her hands clasping in front of her. She had no idea why she’d done what she’d done, as it’d just been from the part of her that acted without any sort of explanation, which was shameful enough without Thomas’s family, whom she very much liked, being witnesses.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, speaking to everyone in general.
The choice to bring Lilya with her in following after Anneliese in her sudden departure, had no doubt been as purposeful a thing as any that Nora did. The situation was quite the new one in their family but where others might falter or hesitate, Nora Caldecott made no bones over the command she took to defuse something that might otherwise get far too out of hand and used her years of experience to her benefit. The matriarch did not need to do so much as nod towards her daughter-in-law before the younger witch moved as expected to take the lynch-pin of Lottie away and no doubt maneuver her best to keep a scene from as much as start inside the house.
Thomas’s usually quick mind had stuttered in the face of sheer incomprehension of seeing the base territorial side of Anneliese emerge in front of him. Every single damn bit of what had been left unsaid between them over what they were muddied the issue to no end and left him with no concrete foundation to work off of in understanding what had just happened.
Nora looked between them. At her son who looked, not shell-shocked as that term was far too rife with pain for their family when it came to him, but entirely stunned. At the woman her son had brought home with him, a sudden picture of misery and apology. The latter garnered a longer look as it did come down to having met the woman such a short time before but after a moment or two the stern line of her lips softened and she sighed. “Kitchen, you two. Please.”
Anneliese was rife with the urge to run away, to take off and out so that she could shift and just be by herself to think, but that wasn’t possible just then. She’d already fucked up enough where the leopard part of her was concerned, and she couldn’t afford to ignore Nora’s wishes in favor of her own comfort. Still, the idea of going into a small, enclosed room and being looked at like she was supposed to know the reasons behind her actions, when she honestly did not, did not sound appealing in the least.
She nodded, walking toward the kitchen and crossing her arms in front of her, as quiet as she’d ever been in all of her life. She wasn’t sure what Nora was going to say to her, but she supposed if push came to shove, she could just go back to the states. Some people didn’t have the patience for territorial wildcat behavior, and it’d make sense if Nora preferred to not have her around until she got her shit in order.
Even with this sudden uncertainty and confusion, Thomas tentatively set a hand low against Anneliese’s back as they walked in front of his mother inside. The action was one honestly meant and yet hesitant enough with his not knowing what she wanted or even what the moment before had just been, that it could be removed in an instant should she show the slightest sign of wanting the touch stopped. They walked that way to a side door that would take them into the kitchen without having to face the rest of the family where they were in the sitting room or otherwise occupied in other rooms.
When they reached the kitchen Nora let the door fall shut behind them, clearly considering the situation for herself as she weighed all the variables she was aware of as well as any gleaned from her observation of her son and Anneliese since their arrival.
“I have to say,” she said finally, stepping around to the far side of the counter and indicating that they should take a seat at the stools on the other side of it with a vague gesture of her hand. “That was not a display I was expecting to see today.” While she liked the woman her son had brought home, she did, the witch was carefully keeping her view of the situation on how it concerned not just her son but the entirety of what that aggressive display meant. It was no light issue and should be treated with equal seriousness. “As impolite as it is, I have to ask if this is the first time this has happened or if the two of you decided to keep this to yourself, for whatever reason you might have.”
Anneliese was grateful for the small touch on her back as it was a silent sign that Thomas wasn’t entirely disgusted and upset with her, which was more than she’d hoped for once she’d realized what she’d done. She hadn’t been scolded very often in her life, not that she’d never done anything that warranted such a thing, simply that her parents hadn’t been the sort to deal out punishments in the form of a verbal dressing-down. Not that she thought Nora was going to do such a thing necessarily, but with the sheepish way she felt just then, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
She took the seat, unable to really look at anyone just then, and feeling a bit too much like a cornered rabbit for her own good. The fact that no one had done anything to make her feel that way, therefore the cornered sensation was entirely that of her own doing, made it worse.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “Never. I’ve never behaved that way before. I’m so sorry. I don’t know where it came from, it just... Happened. I know it sounds like an excuse, but I couldn’t control it.”
Teenaged years had been spent between the beach, his uncle’s workshop and studying magic under his mother’s tutelage. Of course he had gotten into his share of scrapes and minor rebellions of nothingness, but Thomas had been the more controlled son of the two Caldecott boys. It felt for a moment then as if he was a teenager being sat down alongside a girlfriend and was about to receive some sort of uncomfortable talk, only with the added benefit of not being sure what the hell had just happened outside or why the usually casual Anneliese had stalked out of the house to tear Lottie away with more possessiveness than he’d ever seen her show over anything other than her food mid-bite.
Nora looked between the two before her for confirmation. Where her son was so often difficult to impossible to read to those who didn’t know him, that damned military mask he’d worn long enough out of the sheer need to survive having gotten all but stuck in place, she still could read the man like a book. She knew that it wouldn’t occur to him to lie on the subject in any state, let alone one where he was looking for answers as well.
And the woman? Anneliese looked as lost as Thomas, as Nora had suspected.
There was really only one answer that fit what evidence she’d seen so far. What fit the way the two of them turned in towards each other unconsciously when they were within arm’s reach, the way his eyes tracked after her and her eyes tracked after him, and this - how the woman who hadn’t shown any signs of erraticness that could spill of some more preternatural answer behind it all, had turned quickly on another woman for coming onto her man. Nora had not spent her life surrounded by Weres by any means, but had certainly met and been friendly with enough to understand the broad strokes of their instinctive drives. “Have you considered...” and she chose her words wisely here, “It as part of a mating instinct?”
Of all the things that had stacked up over the past few months, of all the times she’d spent toying with the idea of what was between Thomas and herself, whether it was serious, permanent, etc, she’d never once considered that she could’ve been in the process of mating him. She knew the signs, the symptoms, and not once had it crossed her mind.
The fact that it took Nora, a woman she liked very much but did not know that well, to point out what was so obvious it was almost painful, was like a slap to the face after being rendered unconscious.
“Shit,” Anneliese breathed, her hands moving to cover her face, her elbows resting heavily on her thighs as she thought that through. Not that being mated to Thomas was a horrible fate. Not in the least. It was simply the weight of what was to come, what was involved with the sort of commitment that couldn’t be turned back or broken by anything other than death. She had no idea how Thomas felt about such a thing, but she supposed they’d have to be deciding very quickly while they could still break it off without Anneliese going insane if it wasn’t what he wanted.
While it wasn’t as if Thomas hadn’t considered what a stage more permanent with Anneliese might entail, honestly. Not simply because he was fairly certain he was in love with her (not that he’d said word one about it aloud, let alone to her or anyone else) but because when it came down to it, a relationship with Anneliese wouldn’t be exactly the same as a relationship with a woman who wasn’t a Were.
As much as politicians liked to tout the sanctity of marriage, there was nothing on the human scale that promised a permanence and fidelity to the degree that a Were’s mating did. There was no divorce, no separation, no changing your mind after the fact when you discovered you did not get along after all. As nasty as his Uncle Lawrence’s divorce had been with two kids involved, this was so far off the charts with what a fallout it could be that it couldn’t even see divorce from where it was.
It was quite a thing to be on the precipice of. Not to mention quite a thing to be pointed out by one’s mother, given how much it said of his sex life at that moment.
“I’ll leave you two to talk about this,” Nora spoke finally, when it looked as if neither Thomas nor Anneliese were about to speak in front of her and, really, she didn’t believe they should. “But I would recommend doing it elsewhere.” There were, after all, forever people coming in and out of the kitchen for one reason or another. She left quietly after that, but not before pausing to pat them both on the shoulder in turn with a sympathetic look.
Anneliese felt painfully awkward, embarrassed and anxious in the worst sort of way, both dreading finally dropping her hands to look at Thomas and finding she could do nothing but. As nervous as she was, she wasn’t nor had she ever been someone to beat around the bush. If he wanted out or if he didn’t, they had to face the situation head on. If he wanted out, it was time to put as much space between them as possible. If he didn’t, it was time to put in a call to schedule an appointment for a hormone treatment with Dr. Flynn as soon as she got home. Going into heat would surely only complicate matters further.
She considered him for a moment before standing. “Do you know somewhere we can go?” She asked, proud of how steady and normal her voice sounded. Nora was right. She liked Thomas’s family very much, but they didn’t need to be a part of this conversation. Having his mother involved, however brief, had been enough.
Having not been raised as she must've been with the prospect of mating for life almost a certainty, Thomas wasn't so sure about the idea of being put on what must be an absolute deadline for them both to make a decision there was no going back on. At least in civilian life, in his social life. In the years he had served as a military officer he had had to make decisions of similar magnitude, some he was content he had at least made the right decision and some he wished he could have rewritten, but even where he had never planned on being more than a one-woman man if he did try for a forever, it did nothing to lessen the gravity of the matter.
If he had any trepidation in the matter, in the end it would boil down to the very fact that she was the one who could be the one hurt the most.
"I do," he nodded and stood, pausing only to fish a spare key to his father's car from a drawer before he lead her out of the kitchen and out a door to the garage.
The drive was all but silent with the two of them stuck so far in their own heads, but thankfully a short one as he took them to a beach just outside of the city. Well away from where crowds of tourists and residents alike tended to wander, at midday it was an almost perfect surfing spot and one he'd frequented most often as a teenager.
Anneliese sat silently in the car, her hand curled into a loose fist and pressed against her lips as she looked out the window at the rather beautiful scenery that flew by, but taking in nothing. The weight of the decision she would have to put before him hung on her, and for a moment she almost hated her nature for being as it was. There was every chance he’d say he wasn’t ready for a commitment of that magnitude, and if that were the case they’d have to separate immediately and Anneliese would have to put herself on the next plane back to the states.
She wasn’t so negative as to say that she was always fucking up, but she had definitely fucked up this, no two ways about it. This was a decision that should’ve been put before him after thought and planning, not made under the gun because she’d lost her shit on some dippy redhead that couldn’t keep her hands to herself in front of his mother and sister-in-law. They could still take it back somewhat now, but she couldn’t take it all back, as to end it now simply wouldn’t be stopping their having sex at every available opportunity. They’d have to sever all connections entirely, at least for a good long while.
She was obviously already quite attached, a fact the predicament they were currently in made quite obvious, and there would be no taking the hurt back that would follow the separation. If she could go back in time and not bring this upon herself and him, she knew instinctively that she’d still make the same decisions. She would always look at the silent man with pain behind big, blue eyes and wonder if he was that freckled everywhere upon their very first meeting. She would still become his friend, go to him when she was shot with a silver bullet, and she would definitely still kiss him that morning after as he stood over her in a towel. Whatever the future might bring, she knew she could not abide a world emptied of Thomas. Not entirely. No matter how much having known him would hurt in the end.
When he parked the car, she climbed out, tucking her hands into the front pocket of her jeans and leaning against the car. She needed open air on her face, needed space just in case things went from bad to worse. “I’m sorry about that,” she said after a moment. “All of it. I wasn’t thinking. I should’ve realized that this could happen. I’m sorry.”
He sat in the car a moment longer after she stepped out of it, hands still on the wheel and looking at nothing in particular. There was a weight to the conversation ahead that he hadn't expected his day to hold and while he was hardly about to blame her for it, there was the feeling of needing to prepare himself for it. Whatever the outcome. The fact that he only knew the broad sweeps of what all it might entail did make matters hard to shake out to settle even in his own thoughts. He had fought against Weres, fought beside them, risked his life for them and had them risk their life for him, but his knowledge of them from those years overseas were mostly painted in shades of urgency and blood; what else he might know came from Anneliese and shreds here and there from others, but never had the topic of mates and mating been discussed with any depth.
He didn't know enough to know if they could even try to go back to what they had been, or if it had become an all or nothing decision in the truest sense. No matter his feelings for her, he felt underprepared and spared a mental curse for not having thought to find out more somewhere before it applied to the then and there of that moment.
He stepped out of the car as the thought struck of the fact that he couldn't be alone in the way he felt about her if that instinct was tugging at her. He knew that much about what they were facing.
Thomas took in her apology with a faint pang, his expression softening as he walked around the car to lean against it beside her. Within arm's reach but far enough away that he wasn't encroaching on her personal space by any means. "C'mon Liese, do you really think I'd blame you for this?"
At his words, Anneliese felt like she might began to cry. Now that she was aware of what was going on with her body, she knew her hormones had to be out of whack with the situation with the redhead, and the at least partial mating to Thomas, who she was convincing herself might be ready to be done with her. She felt like a basket case, like PMS had been cranked up to eleven, and she knew, as awful as it was just then, it would be nothing compared to what was to come.
She hated feeling that way. Being called ‘crazy’ was something that wasn’t unfamiliar to Anneliese, but very rarely did she ever feel like she was crazy. She definitely did just then.
“You could,” she said after a moment, still not looking at him. “I certainly do. I know the signs, I know my body, I am a Were, for fuck’s sake. If either of us should’ve caught on, it should’ve been me. I should’ve told you more about it when we started sleeping together all the time. I should’ve let you know it was a possibility. I knew it was a possibility, I just didn’t think about it. And now we’re down to two choices: We do a hard stop and I go back to the states tonight and we avoid each other until I get this out of my system, or it’s this for forever. It’s your life, and it’s your call.”
She couldn’t stand dancing around the subject at any time, and definitely not when she felt like she might burst into tears at any second. There was a no ‘let’s think about this’ or ‘let me sleep on it’. It had to be a decision made here and now. No two ways about it.
Thomas was far too familiar with the feeling of disconnect. He knew exactly what it felt to feel as if he couldn’t quite immerse himself in the world around him properly, and where the arrival and continued presence of his Familiar had done much to ground him where he might otherwise have floundered and spun too easily right out of control for good, hearing that burst of words from Anneliese then without her looking at him or even touching him felt far too disconnected a moment. He could hear the tears being kept at bay in the tightness of her voice and the subject was far too intimate a one to think she could be any more objective about it than he was, but just then he needed to look at her, to look her in the eye, even if his gut clenched in anticipation with what he’d seen in her face.
He reached out to her then, his fingers curling around her wrist to tug her in towards him. “Liese,” he repeated, voice rough, reaching out with both hands then to set his other at her waist as he turned his body in towards hers, his hip still against the body of the car beside them. There was a small hesitation in him, a visible start, before he lifted his hand from around her wrist to brush back a few strands of her hair from her face in what was at once a blatant delaying tactic to allow him a second’s more thought of what to say, and just the bone deep need to touch her then. “It isn’t just my life here.”
His blue eyes were steady on her face as he swallowed heavily, then spoke, “I’m broken, Liese. As much as I want to say that I can fix it and promise to be better one day, it- PTSD” what he almost never named aloud, but hung there always in the back of his mind all the same. “It’s never going to be something I’m just over.” He could do no less than tell her the truth up front as there really would be no going back from whatever decision they made and he would not see her suffer for it. “I love you, Liese, and I’m not about to go anywhere, but can you really handle that?”
Anneliese was keeping her distance just then out of the ingrained survival instinct that she had to assume was ingrained in everyone, or perhaps it was just hers. She was not someone who could lay her head in someone’s lap and openly weep, and she never had been. If she looked at him or touched him she was bound to start crying, and was it a moment that warranted that? She wasn’t sure, but she knew she couldn’t stop it, especially not when he gripped her wrist and pulled her to him.
She didn’t start crying in big ugly sobs, she was thankful for that, but she was crying by the time she met his gaze. Being a Were, and the inevitable mating that came as a result, was simply part of who she was. She couldn’t give it up; she couldn’t decide to turn her back on it, because even if she passed on a mating with Thomas, it could easily happen again. And the fact that it had already started happening? Spoke volumes. But Thomas, Thomas could turn his back on it then and there and never be faced with such severity again.
What he said, the fact that he thought he was broken had her hands lifting to cup his jaw, her forehead pressing against his as she shook her head to deny the words as he spoke them. She didn’t consider him ‘broken’ because of the PTSD, nor was it something she thought might make living with him unbearable. It was simply a part of who he was, something they would have to deal with, just as they’d have to deal with her shit when certain things arose. Still, she couldn’t deny hearing him say he loved her hit her like a mallet, even though that could easily be assumed as much as anything else about their situation in that said situation wouldn’t exist if it weren’t true.
“I love you. Of course I love you, or we wouldn’t even be here,” she murmured, “but don’t say that, ever again. You’re not broken, Tommy. I want to be with you, I want to stay with you, but it’s up to you whether or not you want to deal with me and my shit for the rest of your life.”
The pain in her expression and the sight of tears slipping down her cheeks was more than enough to make something twist in his stomach, and Thomas hated seeing her hurting in that moment as much as he had when there had been silver shot in her arm and the smell of blood too bright across his senses. She was not a woman prone to tears, he knew that, which only made it worse that this tangled up state she was in - that they were in - in that moment along with that silent creeping of instincts he didn’t really understand, had made her cry.
Her tears made him all too aware of his own flaws. Of that cracked feeling in his chest some mornings and the way his hands shook after a bad nightmare, of the roughness of his hands as he touched her, and just how asking her if she could really handle a forever with him had taken far more of him than he’d readily admit.
He was too glad when she did not shake off his touch, that she stepped in further and pressed her forehead against his when it would be all too easy then for the two of them to rip each other apart. And when she said that she loved him in return it was not candy hearts and flower bouquets, not well-planned or planned at all, really, and certainly nothing neat or easy, but when had any of that mattered to either of them?
Thomas tilted his head and pressed forward enough to kiss her, soft and slow, and when he pulled even the slightest bit away it was to tell her, “You’re stuck with me then.” And even when the moment felt heavy and even as he brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb, he added, “No accounting for taste, I guess.”
She had known she loved him long before she’d spoken the words, she realized, she just hadn’t thought about it as she just hadn’t thought to examine so many things that were taking place inside her. It was hard to fathom being so incredibly stupid for so long, but wasn’t that the point of epic love stories and sad country songs? Too many people didn’t realize what they had, what they felt, until it was almost taken from them. Anneliese apparently didn’t realize it until it was biting her in her ass.
She was sure there were people in the world that had nothing but lovely stories about summer days and noodle salad that would have no concept of why falling in love and making the decision to permanently tie yourself to the person you were in love with was such a drama-ridden episode, but Anneliese was well aware that neither of them were such people. Their love wasn’t bound to come wrapped neatly with a bow on top, but instead in a million scattered pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle a child had thrown into the wind. They’d have to find all the pieces and fit them together. She honestly didn’t want it any other way.
The fact that he wasn’t going to leave her had her feeling almost dizzy with relief, one hand dropping to his shoulder to hold herself up as she tipped her head for another kiss. Her face was still wet and no doubt a mess, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull back from him just yet. “You’re sure?” She murmured back. “It’s forever, Tommy. As long as I’ve got, which could be pretty long in the scheme of things.”
It had seemed a straightforward enough idea at the time, that most everything between them had been left unsaid. That months had been allowed to slip by and by without either of them voicing anything of real substance about the way they felt or thought to sound out how the other was feeling about everything. If he thought about it Thomas would have to admit that he had been thinking purely on a human level, where they could have stayed in that holding pattern for months or even years more without actually addressing a damn thing. That he hadn’t considered it from a Were point of view or taken anything really of her nature into account...it was almost embarrassing.
He had always been the thinker, the cautious one who considered every angle he could before making a move, and yet right there was a gaping example of where he had failed to exactly that. Where he had allowed himself to get complacent or even fearful of what might happen if he actually stopped and looked at what they were doing (he didn’t know which would be worse to admit).
He looked at her then, with the tear tracks down her cheek and her eyes already red-rimmed, looking somewhere between miserable and happy but absolutely gorgeous, and he nodded. “As long as you have. No matter what.”
It was a heavy thing, this new turn of events, a thing she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t eventually fuck up somehow, but if he wasn’t meant for her, if he didn’t answer every call her body made, she knew she wouldn’t have mated him. He was hers, he’d been meant to be hers all along, and they were making the decision to stick themselves with each other. It was final, overwhelming, a decision she’d been sure she’d never have to make, but there it was.
“You’re crazy,” she murmured fondly, her voice still thick and wet with tears, but she was smiling a little now. “You realize people are going to say that, right? I’m two handfuls and a spare bucket on my best day.” She tipped her head to kiss him again, lingering this time to taste his mouth, which made her think of something else. “When we get home, I’m going to have to call the doc,” she said. “Get some sort of treatment in me so we’re not making babies before we’re ready and, most importantly, so I’m not feeling the urge to rip the head off of any woman that looks at you.”
There was no doubt that this would require some serious reflection in considering the magnitude of the whole matter and how it would effect his life (and hers) in both the short term and long term, but where Thomas had made his decision, he had made his decision final. Even if the situation had turned on them so fast it near about made his head spin, and even if it had come down to a moment of do or die that neither of them had been remotely prepared for when they'd woken that morning. In the end, the options she had given him hadn't been options at all. Not with the way the thought of sacrificing his feelings to take the safer path and let her get on a plane and fly out of his life forever had felt as if his heart were being carved out of his chest with a steak knife.
He understood enough to know that by choosing a forever with her he was marking himself for future heartache as, while he would slow to age as she did, his family would remain unchanged in their all too human mortality. The thought ached like fire and yet he could not give her up in the present or future for fear of what was inevitable in life.
As far-reaching and permanent as that single decision could prove to be, it was not a thing to be mourned. It could not be. He loved her and she loved him, no matter how that knowledge was brought out into the open it was a knowledge to be treasured. With all that was fucked up in the wide world, for all the evil and for all that he had seen of the darker pitches of what people could do to one another, love and the connections strung between people were all that made it halfway sane.
"Wouldn't be news," he told her. Of what mattered to him and of anything that might've affected his decision, the opinion of others hadn't even made it on the list. He was just relieved to see her smile as happiness had not been among the emotions seemingly wrought in her by this shift in what they were. He had seen her territorial, angry, ashamed and grief-stricken, but nowhere in that wild tumble of emotion had been happiness until those last few seconds. "Good idea."
The surreal quality of the moment was nearly overwhelming, but Anneliese finally allowed herself to move in, resting her head against his shoulder and wrapping her arms around him to steadily breathe in his scent. Now that she felt like there wasn’t a cold fist in her chest, slowly squeezing her heart, she felt like she was taking her first real breath since she’d been sitting on the couch with Christie. And though it’d only been an hour or so before, it felt like an entire lifetime.
“I love you,” she said again, softly, her lips pressed against the side of his neck and found that it was as easy to say then as it’d been to press herself against him. She wasn’t sure why she’d done this to herself, why she’d thought ignoring the obvious for so long would be better for them in the long run, but she saw the error of her ways now.
“Are you parents going to be okay with it?” She asked after a moment, her lips still tucked against his neck as she thought. Anneliese’s family was human, so it had been something she’d lived with all her life, knowing that she was going to watch her family, all of her family, die around her. Thomas would be forced to do the same. It was an argument purist Weres had always used against mating humans with regular lifespans, as any child born as a result would inevitably die before the parents did unless they were turned. It was a complicated, fucked up thing, what had happened to them, but it was beautiful, too, in its purity.
Where earlier he had been barely able to breathe in the intense discomfort of having Lottie wholeheartedly invade his space to wrap herself around him, there was nothing even resembling discomfort in him as Anneliese tucked herself close up against him. There his arms wrapped unquestioningly around her, folding her into the embrace and holding her tight, his head turned to set his cheek against her hair. No matter what else, no matter the long road ahead of them that was bound to get rough in places along the way, he knew then that she was no more likely to leave him than he was to leave her.
Thomas thought he could handle the magnitude of the world just shifted beneath his feet as long as she was beside him. He nodded by degrees against her hair with a breath, "I know." No matter what else, that fact kept this change in status firmly on the side of something to be joyful about. Even where his thoughts could trip up over themselves with what they had just gotten themselves into, both in what she was asking of him and what he asked of her out of necessity.
As much as he wanted to, the only thing he could not believe her in was in that broken feeling that too often dogged his heels.
He breathed in the scent of her hair before he answered, "The only thing they will care about in this is that I love you, and you love me. Mum likes to say that 'the rest will work itself out.'"
Things had worked out far better than Anneliese had expected them to, and that was a pleasant surprise. Of course, there was still the rest of the trip to get through, and even knowing what was happening in her body, she could not assume that logic would win out every argument between the leopard and the woman and that she wouldn’t do something else crazy and animalistic if Thomas was disturbed in any way. She assumed Nora, who was one of the more sensible women Anneliese had ever encountered, would know better than to allow the redhead around again while Anneliese was there, no matter how rude or unfair it might seem. She wouldn’t be able to reach the hormone treatments until they got home, as she surely wasn’t going to walk up to some random doctor here to seek them out, and that was really all there was to it.
Of course, when the time came for them to have children, she would have to go off of the hormone treatments which would leave her in a state much like she was in now until she inevitably went into heat, and then she would be able to do nothing but fuck until she got pregnant. It seemed rather cruel that her biology would play such a big part in the whens and whats of her life, but there was nothing to be done about it now. Knowing what she did now, suggesting she and Thomas lock themselves away for a month or so until she went into heat and got pregnant, whenever that time came, seemed the most logical thing to do, but that could be discussed later.
“That’s good,” she said in reply to what he’d said about his family and how they’d feel on the matter. “I’ve caused enough trouble there today. I’d hate to stir up more.” She was still embarrassed for the way she’d behaved, no matter how much Nora had understood on why she had behaved that way. She was apparently going to be in their family for the long haul, and she didn’t want any of them thinking she was crazy or that she’d ever hurt any of them, as that just wasn’t the case.
Thomas pressed his lips against her forehead in answer. They would inevitably have to return and things would have to be settled out even at the most basic level with his family, but dinner wasn’t bound to be for an hour more and they could put off their return until then.
His parents would not be the problem, as he had not lied to her when he had told her that they would accept this shift of events as long as they believed it would make him happy. Even while it promised tough times ahead and far too many implications for the future to think about then if he wanted to keep a clear head, and even while the situation had caught them both by surprise, he wanted that forever with Anneliese. If it was all or nothing, he wanted it all. Between the two of them both they had more issues to deal with than Time Magazine, and still he wanted it all.