Who: Hale and Tink When: Early October Where: Tink’s Shop What: Checking in Rating/Warning: Low/None Status: Complete
So, the old man who owned the shop really didn’t care who was on shift and when. Now that Dean wasn’t working there anymore, Tink was pretty much ran things. They’d lost their secretary, the manager, and a couple of the mechanics. So Tink was there nearly twelve hours each day, working on cars, doing paperwork, keeping up with the computers. It was keeping her really busy, and she’d talked to the Old Man about hiring on some new staff. Until he did, she’d have to wait, and work, and pray to God that he’d have a good bonus set up for her at the end of the year.
She was looking forward to Halloween, though, and made sure to remind the Old Man every day that it was coming up, and she was taking some time off.
Hale didn’t get much chance to get out to see people during the day so he’d decided to take advantage of the light caseload on his desk to take a long lunch and go visit Tink at work. His cell phone was turned on, the ringer at full volume and fully charged so if something came up and he needed to head back he could. That was the only drawback to working for the FBI, his time wasn’t really his own anymore but he knew that would be a problem in any job he took with law enforcement and that had been all he ever wanted to do. He pulled his car into the garage that he knew his friend worked at and turned the engine off, checking to make sure he pulled the keys from the ignition and put them in his pocket before getting out. The last thing he wanted to do was lock his keys in the car, he knew his friend. She’d probably never let it go.
“Hey Tink. Where you at?” he called as he made his way into the shop, looking around for the girl he jokingly called his favorite blonde when telling his mom who he’d made plans with. She knew better than anyone that there wasn’t anything for either him or Tink but friendship.
Tink was in the back, hanging up some Halloween decorations in the like, employee area. Where the water cooler and fridge were, by the lockers. It was nice to clean up the real cobwebs in lieu of fake ones. She turned at the sound of the voice and broke into a grin, the chair she was standing on teetering dangerously. “In here, Hale!”
Hale turned towards the sound of her voice, speeding up a bit when he saw the chair she was standing in wobbling. “You need to be more careful,” he said quietly, reaching out with one hand to steady it and holding the other out to help her down. “If you fell and I was here - somehow, somebody would blame me for it.” he told her with a quick smile once she was on the ground. He took a glance around the room and then back at her. “I was going to ask you to lunch but it looks like maybe I should ask if you need some help decorating this place for Halloween. So...what can I do to help, and why isn’t your boyfriend here helping?”
Tink laughed. “Your presence alone isn’t a predetermining factor in litigation. I mean, if someone was that desperate to sue you, they’d figure out a way.” Of course, in Tink’s mind, ‘blame’ turned into ‘liable’... it was probably because of the poster on the wall about how to stay safe as an employee. But she accepted the help down and dusted her hands on her coveralls. Of course, the fake spiderwebs and stuff were pretty much stuck on there, with the grease and all the other junk she had on her poor, delicate hands working this job. She’d have to wash them.
“What? No. He’s got a life, he can’t follow me around like a puppy all the time. As much as I want him to.” She said, grinning softly. “You’re tall. Hang these things.” She said, passing over some skeleton decorations and tape.
“They wouldn’t get much of anything if they did. I don’t have anything,” Hale told her with a grin. “You could have called him and asked him for help. Or called me instead of me just happening by,” he told her scolding her gently. He took the decorations from her hand and started surveying the room. “Not hard to be tall compared to you. Where do you want them?”
“Hey!” Tink said, frowning and folding her arms across her chest. She looked a heck of a lot like her Disney Cartoon Counterpart when she did so. A glare crossed her brow, too. Though, it was far from intimidating. “I’ll have you know I’m slightly below average height, thankyouverymuch!” Then she pointed to the spot where she wanted the decorations hung.
Hale couldn’t help but laugh at her response. He’d always liked teasing her about being shorter than him because of that look she would get on her face. It was amusing more than anything. “You keep telling me that but I don’t think the slightly really matters all that much,” he teased as he went to hang the decorations where she’d pointed. “So I did have a reason for coming by today. Besides getting roped into helping you decorate.”
When he laughed, she broke and started laughing, too. “Oh, you’re just mean. Simply mean.” She said, then moved over to help him with tape or push-pins, or whatever it was they were using to tack up the decorations and make the garage look a little bit more spiffy. “Oh? You’re not just here to help me hang skeletons and spider-webs?” She asked, the grin still present on her features.
“I prefer to think of it as being honest. Besides you know you love me,” he told her, giving her a cheeky grin and a wink. He used the tape she held out to secure the decorations, using enough that he was sure they wouldn’t come down on their own until Christmas at least. “No. I wanted to ask you about this guy you’re dating, Billy,” he told her, giving her a serious look before moving on to hang the next decoration. He knew some people would have just done a search for information on the guy, and with his job he’d have been able to find out things that the everyday citizen might not have found, but he didn’t want to do that to Tink and Billy. He wanted her to tell him about the guy.
Tink blushed deeply at the mention of her new boyfriend. “Oh? You wanted to talk about Billy. We can do that. We can absolutely talk about Billy.” She had one of those dreamy, far-off looks in her eyes, the kind that a girl got when talking about a school crush. “What do you want to know?”
Hale knew that look, he’d seen it a few times before. Not necessarily with Tink but with other girls definitely. “How about we start with how you two met,” he said. “And then we can go from there.”
“Uh.” Tink said, blinking a few times. How had they met? It felt like it’d been such a long time ago--well, December actually was a long time ago. “He came into the shop, he had a fix-it ticket. I’m sure he could have taken care of it himself, but those tickets need to be signed off by a licensed mechanic, so… Gosh, that feels like a billion years ago.”
Hale listened to Tink’s recounting of how she’d met her boyfriend, reserving any judgments until the end. “When did he come in?” he asked, trying his hardest to keep the cop tone out of his voice.
“Uh… around Christmas time?” Tink said. She didn’t notice the cop tone in his voice. He usually asked questions, and Tink was more than willing to supply answers. Often times he thought things that never would have occurred to her. It was valuable insight.
Hale processed that quickly in his head, it had been almost a year so Tink was probably well out of the infatuation stage, which meant that the new had worn off the guy so he possibly was as awesome as Tink thought. Or close to it because he’d be stupid not to acknowledge the possibility of his best friend being in love with this guy. It was obvious that she cared about him from the way she talked about him. Cared about him a lot. “How long until he -” his question got cut off by his cell phone going off and he sighed as he answered it, listening for a few seconds after saying hello and then giving Tink an apologetic look as he told the person on the other end that he’d be there as soon as he could. “I wanted to take you out for lunch but I just got called back to the office. Some new information came in,” he told her, before leaning in to give her a friendly hug. “Next time. Lunch I promise,” he said heading back to his car to leave, his mind already switching back to the case he was working on as he left.