¡Tink! (tinkhatespink) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-08-23 21:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, anders, tinkerbell |
Who: Tink and Anders
What: Making-up after the Shattered Sight plot
When: Sunday or Monday
Where: Their house
Warnings/Ratings: Low/None
When Anders woke up that Sunday, he felt good for all of five minutes until he remembered the fight he had with Tink the week before. They hadn’t spoken since, and he had shown up one afternoon when he had known Tink wouldn’t be hope to collect his stuff and leave his keys on the kitchen counter. Luckily, he was never one for owning a lot of things, his stuff consisting of mostly clothing, books, and cat toys, and the boxes all fit in his hotel room.
It felt as though he was thinking clearly for the first time in a while. His thoughts hadn’t been muddled, per se. He had made it through work with hardly a problem (he had made one of his nurses cry, he recalled, and he was definitely going to have to apologize for that. Hopefully she wouldn’t quit the clinic for that), and could get through his day to day life easily enough. No guilt for the last week, only anger enough that Justice would peek through sometimes when he thought about Tink and their fight, but that was it. And now, he had a week’s worth of guilt slam down on him.
His one reprieve was, looking back at the fight, he was pretty sure that Tink hadn’t been herself either. He didn’t know what kind of Orange County magic had turned everyone against each other (it seemed like the type of thing blood magic was capable of, though ), but he really hoped that that was all it was and that their break-up wasn’t real. And so, that morning (after buying a lot of dried mackerel to feed to Sir Pounce-A-Lot. He hadn’t exactly treated the cat kindly over the last few days, and Sir Pounce-A-Lot wasn’t coming out from under the bed. Hopefully with enough goat’s milk and fish, Anders would be able to make things up to his furry best friend), he had gone and bought a new kitchen table and chair set, solid wood and large enough that Tink’s entire family could sit around it if she chose to have them over for dinner some night, some simple carvings of leaves and flowers along the edges and legs of the table and along the backrest of the chairs, and he sat with them on Tink’s front lawn, waiting for her to come home.
Tink woke up on Sunday morning, she felt... strange. There was a different feeling than the rest of the week. She started to remember the things she'd done, the strange feelings she'd had. After a shower and breakfast (Red Bull and Pop Tarts) she was feeling guilt tearing her up inside. She sent text messages to her brothers, because she'd had fights with them last week. In the kitchen, the set of keys were still sitting on the kitchen counter where Anders had left them. She leaned against the opposite counter and stared at them, wondering how on Earth she was going to make this right.
Was it... really over? Did he mean it when he said he wasn't ever coming back? Sudden terror filled her. It was bad enough knowing that Anders' struggles with Justice were keeping them apart, but now... was this the end? She didn't want it to be. She was scared. So she did what she felt she had to do; she went out for donuts.
When she returned, she pulled into the driveway in her little car, and stopped, staring out the window. Was that Anders? ...on the lawn? She climbed out of the car slowly, cautiously, and collected the box of a dozen donuts from the passenger seat. Then she headed up the walkway toward the front door.
"...what are you... doing?"
“Waiting for you,” Anders said, offering her a tentative smile. “I was hoping we could uh… talk. About what happened earlier this week,” Anders said. He was surprisingly nervous about all of this. “I uh… bought you,” us? “a new dining room table. Because, you know, I thought you might need one?” Smooth Anders, very smooth.
Tink wrapped an arm across her stomach, leaning her weight on one hip as she listened to him. She felt nervous, too--probably just as nervous as he was, judging by his rambling speech. She couldn’t help but smile. Just a little. Nervously, tentatively.
“We should talk.” She said, and pulled keys from her pocket with her free hand. “I have… donuts. Do you want one?” She took a few steps to the front door to unlock and open it.
“I won’t say no to a doughnut,” Anders said. That seemed like a good sign (or, at least, not an awful sign), and as Tink unlocked the door, Anders cast Heroic Aura on himself so that he had the strength to lift the new kitchen table. He wasn’t about to leave it out on the lawn where anyone could walk off with it.
Tink opened the front door to let him into the house, then moved to the kitchen to… move some of the charred remains of her old furniture out of the way. She hadn’t bothered moving the stuff since it was mostly destroyed… a few days ago. Was that really only a few days ago? She moved it as he brought the new in.
“Thank you. For … the table.” She said, though she wished it was for them and not just for her. She stood awkwardly for a moment, waiting for him to put it down, then leaned back against the counter and tried to look cool. Tink was far from cool. But she was trying to pretend that just being in the same room with him wasn’t making her heart thunder.
Anders grabbed one of the jelly filled doughnuts that Tink had picked up and began to munch on it. “You’re welcome. It was the least I could do,” he said, and watched Tink for a moment. “Listen, Tink. I don’t care if you’re there helping tearing down the system with me, and I don’t think you’re selfish. Not even a little. I think everything you do at the garage, everything you do in general is amazing. I said so many things I didn’t mean the other day, so many things that had never crossed my mind before,” that wasn’t strictly true. Anders had never thought those things, but Justice had. Justice disapproved of Tink’s distraction in general, and Anders wasn’t about to let him interfere with that part of Anders’ life. “I guess I was hoping that it was the same for you.”
Donuts pretty much made everything better. Tink dug through the box, too, simply to have something to do with her hands. She tore an old-fashioned, maple donut with her fingers, and started to pick at it, but his words made her stop. It made hope and warmth bubble up within her. When she turned to look at him, those emotions were apparent in her eyes. Along with guilt. Remorse. And, yes, a little fear.
“I didn’t mean any of those things I said, either.” Her voice cracked, and Tink felt like a little girl again. She hated that feeling. “I don’t know what came over me, and then… then I was yelling at you, and I didn’t even think twice about it. Not until this morning, anyway.”
At Tink’s words, at the crack in her voice, Anders stepped toward her to wrap her in his arms. “It must have been the County,” Anders said, and while he was happy that Tink hadn’t meant anything, the thought wasn’t exactly a comforting one. It was one thing when there were things that crawled out of the dark, like spiders or demons, and being body switched or forced only to tell the truth wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. He didn’t like the implications that the County could mess with their emotions, and make people who loved one another turn against each other. “It wasn’t just you. You should have seen how mean I was to poor Sir Pounce-A-Lot. I’m so sorry I let it get so out of hand, Love.”
He hadn’t even noticed he was acting strange when it was happening. Would he notice if Justice started down the path he had taken in Kirkwall?
After practically melting into his embrace, Tink finally lifted her arms to wrap them around him, too. It was such a relief to be able to bury her face into his chest again, she felt like she might cry. She didn’t, though. She pressed in close, holding him tightly. “I am, too. Lady Widge slept on the sofa the whole week because I kept snapping at her. I was so afraid that you were really… gone.” Her voice cracked again.
“I’ll be here for as long as you’ll have me, Love,” Anders said, kissing the top of Tink’s head. “I don’t intend to leave any time soon.” If anything, the dread he had felt in the pit of his stomach when he had woken up that morning and thought he and Tink might be over just served to make him even more sure of that fact. “I don’t want to be apart from you.”
Jesus, Tink was gonna start crying. She breathed in deep and slow, her arms tightening around him even more. Hopefully she wasn’t hurting him. But she wasn’t going to let go. Not now. “I don’t want want you to be apart from me, either,” she managed to say.
When she pulled back to look up at him, her eyes were watery. That didn’t stop her from smiling, though, as she went up on her toes to kiss him.
Anders relished in the kiss. They hadn’t been dating for long, but it was already hard for Anders to imagine his life without Tink. They’d already been apart so much, so much more than Anders had ever wanted, and when he broke from the kiss, he stared into Tink’s eyes, cradling her face in his hands and gently stroking her cheek with his thumb.
“I understand if the answer is no, especially given how I just blew up the dining room table but… I’d like to come home.”
Tink breathed easily for the first time in what felt like months. She was lost looking up into his eyes as he held her cheeks, finding that she could look into them indefinitely. It wasn't uncomfortable or awkward like one might imagine, but felt like home. She felt like she was home again.
"This place hasn't been home without you." Tink replied gently. Her lips turned up into a warm, genuine smile. "Your keys are still on the counter where you left them."
The selfish part of Anders was elated. He had missed coming home, curling up with his beautiful girlfriend and their two wonderful cats every day. He had missed having Tink be one of the last things he saw at night and one of the first things he woke up to in the morning. The less selfish part of him, the much, much quieter part of him, wished that Tink had ended things so that he wouldn’t hurt her someday.
“I’ve missed it,” Anders said. “I’ve missed you. Sleeping alone just isn’t the same anymore. I love you, Isabel Coleman.”
Tink was willing to brave the future pain if it meant she got to have Anders in her arms now. Maybe she was selfish, too. Thinking of herself in the present instead of herself (and Anders) in the future. But that was all pushed aside for the time being. This was a reunion, a happy occasion. Two lovers coming together again to complete one another in a way that neither had expected, and both had cherished then missed while they were apart. She cuddled closer, nuzzling against whatever part of his face she could reach--almost like a purring cat looking for affection. The near overwhelming relief and love she felt were almost too much for her to handle. “I love you, too.”