Who: Annie & Teddy What: Breakfast for Dinner. Where: Hamartia and Teddy's SUV When: Friday Evening Warnings: dark thoughts, talk of murder, squishy cuteness, aawwwwkward
Annie had changed into a nice dress. It was a solid color, navy blue. Her red stockings offset the color nicely, and she wore a plain pair of mary janes on her feet. Teddy was taking her out, so she wanted to make sure she looked nice. She had half her hair pinned back, and she’d put on some nice make-up. It was light and looked natural, because she did not want to look like someone who wouldn’t be hanging out with someone who looked like an upstanding citizen. She looked presentable for someone who lived in that in that particular building.
She had her purse slung over her shoulder, as she skipped down the steps. She didn’t bother to check her watch. She checked it before she left her apartment. If he wasn’t already there, then she would just wait for him. She had just gotten to the bottom of the steps and looked around. The apartment complex was dingy and she was thinking about moving to something better. She didn’t mind run down places like this, but she knew she could do better. She could invite him over. Maybe they could just move in together?
She was getting ahead of herself. They’d just met.
Teddy had slept a long time that morning and even on into the afternoon. He’d been so conked out on the couch that he hadn’t even heard Janet doing anything in the apartment before she’d, presumably, gone to work. He’d showered and shaved and spent two hours deciding what to wear. Something comfortable, but casual, but not too casual as to look sloppy. But nothing was right enough. It hit him, during his wardrobe search, that Annie was young. He wasn’t sure how young, but probably around twenty. Which, for the first time, made him feel old. And for a few minutes his confidence had fled and he’d considered calling their date off. It was a date. He was sure of it. He wanted it to be a date, anyway. But he ate a snack and felt less like a total loser and finally settled on what to wear.
No way in hell was he canceling. Annie was amazing. He couldn’t stop thinking about her.
And finally four arrived and he checked himself in the mirror before he left. He promptly changed his clothes. The jeans, black dress shirt, argyle sweater vest and leather jacket were it. With his black Chucks and shirt untucked. Sort of casual. Sort of not. It was perfect. And he honestly had no idea why he cared what she thought of the way he dressed. She’d been watching him for who knew how long. Weeks? Months? Years? The idea was staggering. She’d already potentially seen his entire wardrobe anyway.
He went down to the lobby with a bit of a spring in his step. As soon as he spotted Annie his face lit up. She was so damn cute. And she liked him. She liked him for him. It was still surreal.
“Hey,” he greeted her, and felt suddenly like that was the dumbest thing to say. And why hadn’t he brought flowers? Did she even like flowers? Fuck this was hard.
There were a few people who'd come down the stairs before he did, but she hadn't turned to look at them. If they were there for her, they'd come up and get her attention. None of them had bothered to ask if she was waiting for someone. They just went along their way.
There were footsteps coming down the stairs now, and she could hear his voice. She turned to look up at him. He looked a little nervous. It made her smile. "You look nice," she said honestly. He did look nice. He looked neat and relaxed and he looked like he did before he went out. She liked it that he did all these things for her. He could have just rolled out of bed and taken her to the diner, but he didn't. She'd seen him look pretty rough. He had to have known that.
“So do you,” he said, and he meant it. It wasn’t a completely foreign thing for him to genuinely compliment someone. He’d meant any compliments he’d handed out to his siblings before, usually his sisters. But they were family and Annie was decidedly not family. She was definitely something special, though, and all the lines he usually used on people seemed trite and unworthy of her, even if they were true this time. He really had been thinking about her all day. He really did want to know how her day had been. If she’d thought about him. If she had fun plans for the weekend, even if he was going to be working and sleeping the whole time.
Instead of saying any of that he just walked up to her and took her hand. He was pretty sure she’d thought about him at least once that day. She was his own personal stalker, after all, and he really hoped she wasn’t done with him now that she’d given him his present and actually met him. “You ready to go? I’m driving. Do you have a car?”
"Thank you," she said with a soft smile. He was awfully quiet. He usually talked up the women he went out with more, but he wasn't doing that with her. The unfamiliar behavior had made her a little wary. She was all set to deal with a completely different sort of man than the one that was standing in front of her. She would have found the difference a little daunting, but she was used to adjusting to situations.
This was different though, and she knew it. She wasn't playing a role. She didn't have to. She was going to be playing herself. She hadn't done that in quite some time. It had just been her. Unlike him, she didn't have a family who accepted her. She could only admit what she liked to herself and her victims before she killed them or they killed themselves. Annie wasn't sure what to do with this.
He didn't even know her real name. She wondered if she should tell him.
"No, I usually just walk everywhere," she answered his question. "Or take the bus. Cars leave paper trails," she admitted to him. She liked to stay off the grid. Didn't enjoy being followed, but she was enrolling in the university for the spring semester. It wouldn't be her, though. It'd be Annie Lang who wanted to be a Kindergarten teacher. She had liked children, hadn't she? Joanne couldn't quite remember.
"Ready when you are."
“I was in the Army,” he said as he lead her out of the lobby and down the sidewalk to the place he normally parked his SUV. “I am a paper trail. Fingerprints. DNA. They already have it all.” He paused for a moment, then glanced down at her. “Did you know that? That I’m former Army?”
It was difficult for him to know what exactly she knew about him. He didn’t want to assume she knew something she didn’t and have some sort of weird misunderstanding. But he didn’t want to be annoying and tell her things she already knew either. Though he wasn’t exactly positive about her methods yet. Something he’d have to ask her when they weren’t in public.
That wasn't a new piece of information really. She'd looked up his name and there were all sorts of things on the internet that helped you out. Sit down at an internet cafe, punch a name into google. E-mail addresses, phone numbers, it was true. It wasn't hard to pick up his life. "Yes, I did." She didn't have the specifics. She hadn't broken into anything. She wasn't a hacker. She could've just paid someone to look into him for her, but the less people involved the better.
"Do you want to tell me about your time in the military?" She asked honestly. She didn't know how to go about talking to someone, she wasn't planning on destroying. She could take the same route that she did with people she ruined, but didn't want to do that to him, because that usually ended up in her rooting out bad things instead of things that were supposedly supposed to matter to people you liked, and she liked him. It wasn't the kind of girl likes boy liking. She wasn't even sure if she could feel something like that.
She felt like she should, because he was, on paper, perfect. If she were to find an ideal partner, he would have been the best candidate for it. It was a different sort of liking. It was the kind of liking that meant she wanted him to stay alive. She enjoyed his company. She enjoyed his acceptance. She wanted to keep him happy.
“Not really. It wasn’t any fun. I was forced into it anyway. But they paid for my degree so I guess I’m not supposed to complain,” Teddy said with a wry half smile. He was sick of talking about the military. It felt like everything kept coming back to that. First Gabe, then Ike. Everything felt kind of settled regarding his stint overseas now, however, and he wanted it to stay that way. And if that meant not telling Annie about it, he’d take it and hope she wasn’t offended.
When they got to his SUV he unlocked the doors and opened the front passenger side door for Annie. He couldn’t exactly remember the last time he’d been excited to go on a date. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized he’d never been excited to go on a date for the sake of the date itself. It had always been about setting his plans in motion. Getting to know someone so he could manipulate them, hurt them, twist their weak little idiot hearts around until he’d milked them for all they were worth.
Annie was so different though. He just wanted to take her out and buy her french toast and watch her eat. He wanted to get to know her just because she was her. It was weird, but he kind of liked it.
Annie didn't understand the feeling of being forced into anything. Then again, she usually flowed with the tide and then reigned in to her will. "I suppose you can't," she replied to show she was listening. It was odd. Usually her responses were so timed and organized and planned.
When he opened the door for her, she slipped into the passenger seat and plugged in her seat belt as he went around the other side. She should have said thank you right there. She felt stupid for not doing that, but she was too busy over thinking this entire situation. There was too much thinking happening. This stuff usually came so easily to her, but she couldn't treat him like she did the others. He was different.
"Thank you," she said the moment he climbed in afterward. "For opening the door for me." Her hands were set in her lap, and her fingers were drumming against her purse. It was then that it hit her. He hadn't really asked her anything about herself, and she knew so much about him. She wondered if he really wanted to know about her. Were they really going somewhere to get breakfast for dinner?
“Oh, you’re welcome,” Teddy said as he buckled his own belt and got the Xterra started. There were so many things he wanted to ask her. So much he wanted to know about her. But he didn’t even know where to start. He put the radio on but turned it down low before pulling out onto the street and heading for the diner, which was a few minutes away in a slightly better area. He glanced over at Annie and smiled awkwardly, but doing so helped him come up with what he thought was a good starting place. The beginning, so to speak. “So did you grow up in St. Louis? Or was that just where you went after you crossed? I came over when I was twelve and we all went straight to Chicago.”
The question he had asked her made her feel a little better. "I was born in Prague actually. I got adopted by an American family that brought me over when I was still young. We lived in Des Moine until my dad shot my mom, then himself. Then I was moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where my new parents killed themselves too. Then I went to Lincoln, Nebraska where I had my last family. The police had caught onto the pattern by then and I crossed over. I lived on the streets for a while, and then I..." she trailed off and looked out the window.
"It took me a while to get the hang of things on this side, and then I discovered what I could do. Everything became so much easier on this side. Then I met you," she said quietly. "I moved down there. I usually don't stay in cities, but there are much more resources and people are less likely to remember you." This was the most she'd ever talked about herself to someone and it felt strange. He'd probably be able to hear the hesitation in her voice, how she wasn't used to divulging this sort of information. "I was thirteen," she said thoughtfully. "You met me when I was fifteen."
Teddy listened and at first he wasn’t sure just what she was telling him, but then it all came together. She’d mentioned how easy it was to get people to off themselves but he hadn’t exactly thought much into it. Not enough to understand that’s what she did. He broke people down himself, but not with any intentions for them to die. His reasons were two fold. Selfish because he wanted their dark emotions. Selfless because he wanted them to see just how fucking stupid they were by the time he was done with them so that maybe they’d learn from their mistakes, from him.
It was funny though, that clearly both of their methods were aided by their powers. He wasn’t sure if he should outright ask exactly what her ability was, just as he wasn’t sure he should tell her what his was. There was an incredible weakness that came along with his and Annie was powerful. If she wanted, if he was just another one of her pet projects, she could all too easily use his power against him and end him. This was a bit like teasing a shark, he realized. But it didn’t scare him, though it probably should have. It just made him more intrigued.
“I grew up in Florida,” he said after a slightly awkward pause where he digested what she’d told him. “I ran away from home after I killed my little brother. It was an accident, sort of, but he deserved it. I got stuck in the foster system. Then my second foster family crossed over and everything was different. They’re my real family. Even if one of my brothers is a complete idiot.” And he wasn’t supposed to talk about the other one if he could help it. He glanced over at Annie. She didn’t have any family. He wasn’t even sure if she had any friends ...other than him. And he really hoped she saw him as a friend for reasons he couldn’t fully pin down. “What’re you doing for Thanksgiving? I don’t know if my family’s doing anything, but you shouldn’t be alone on holidays.”
She listened quietly to him tell her about his brother and how he hadn't meant it to happen. Her first time she killed someone it hadn't been an accident. That was a huge difference and she noted it. He did say he deserved it, and she wanted to know what he meant by that. She didn't think anyone really deserved what she did to them. They just happened to be there when she did it. There was no real emotion attached to her actions. Annie couldn't help but wonder what Teddy was feeling when he'd killed him.
He'd been stuck in a foster care system. She had her run in with that, but she liked picking out her own families. The couples who desperately wanted children but didn't have any. The ones who would hide her so the government wouldn't take her away. It was so convenient that way. She was thinking about telling him more when she received his invitation. Her entire train of thought had stopped.
"You don't want me in the same room with your family." She had said it so fast, she actually looked surprised. "They wouldn't like me," she added a beat after. She didn't know that, but she didn't have enough time to look into them. She didn't know enough about them to make herself sit through hours in an enclosed space with them and make them think it was okay to hang out with him. Most of the confidence that came from her encounters from research. She didn't have a chance to do research now.
This thing with Teddy could only really end in disaster.
“They love me. They know what I do, how I work. ...Mostly. I sort of haven’t mentioned Amber yet,” Teddy said and trailed off as he thought of how LW would react to that one. Or Zin. Gabe he could guess might take it better. So what. They didn’t have to like him to love him. He didn’t like Ike but he still loved him anyway. It was a two way street. “Regardless. They don’t have to like you. I like you. But I’d want you to meet them eventually, even if it’s not next week.”
And despite his words he felt damn sure they’d like her. Even if they knew what she did to people. Gabe had done far worse. What Annie did was poetic justice.
When he said the word love, she knew he wasn't just saying it for the use of the word or to describe how they felt about him. No, he was certain that he was safe there. It was a kind of safety she'd never quite felt herself. She felt safe in the way that she only had to rely on herself. Taking another, taking Teddy in the way she was doing now, was a liability. If she continued on this path she would have gained something worth losing. The thoughts came in succession, the list of consequences that would surface if she became involved with him. They came as observations, because she already knew she was involved with him. They were tangled together and it had been her who had initiated the contact.
She was the one who had followed him here. She was the one who'd taken care of his problem. She was the one who approached him in the elevator. Annie wasn't sure how she'd felt about meeting his family, especially if they all knew how he was. That only made her think of how they were. What were they like? Were they like him? They loved him. They knew him, but he was family. She wasn't family. "Sure." Annie sounded unsure, but she would do it because he asked her to. "What could it hurt?" It could probably hurt a lot if she wasn't careful.
If Teddy were thinking with his brain instead of his heart he’d realize pretty damn fast that he was likely wrong. Zinnia in particular would probably want nothing at all to do with Annie. Gabe would find her to be some kind of social complication. Janet would think she was dangerous and not good enough for him. And he would fully expect Ike to make some kind of snide remark about their age difference.
But he wasn’t thinking rationally. He was smiling like an idiot as he pulled up into the diner’s parking lot. “I haven’t had their french toast, but if it’s anything like the pancakes, you’re going to love it,” he said as he unbuckled himself and got out. He walked around the SUV quickly so he could open the door for Annie before she could get it open herself.
When they pulled into the parking lot, she started to unbuckle her belt. She'd heard his door open and was about to reach for hers, when she noticed him coming around the SUV so quickly. Annie watched him curiously before he opened the door for her. "Thank you," she said slipping out. SUVs were always so high off the ground, and she was pretty short. It was more of a hop really, and she fixed her skirt afterward to make sure she was decent. It was more out of habit than necessity.
She hadn't moved from where she stood, so he couldn't close the door. She just looked up at him for a moment, quiet. It could have been perceived as an awkward silence, but she was thinking of what to say next. It was apparent that she was thinking, which wasn't something she let people see often. After a few beats, she finally spoke. "Did you want to ask me anything else?" It was obvious that this was a question he'd have to ask before they went in where there were people. When they went inside, things would have to change. Their conversation would have to change.
Teddy still had one hand on the door and thought about her question while he licked his lips. Why did they feel so damned chapped all of sudden? It had to be the cold weather. And he did want to ask her more questions. Questions he couldn’t ask unless they were alone. He wanted to know everything about her. “Yeah,” he said after a beat. “I have a lot of questions. More than we could get through in one night. But... for now. Why do you do what you do?”
And he knew he was potentially opening himself up to have the question turned on him. But he’d answer how he felt it was best to answer if that happened.
“Because I can.” She hadn’t thought about the answer. It just came out. There hadn’t been any hesitation. She was being honest. She didn’t ask him why he did what he did, not yet. She was saving it for later. She didn’t know why she kept saving it. It wasn’t like she could feel any disappointment. He didn’t owe it to her. It didn’t bind him to her. If she never saw him again after today, she would just never find out. Still, she kept it to herself. “I’m hungry,” she said suddenly stepping out of his way and slipping her arm into his so he could close to door. “Let’s go be normal.”