InsaneJournal

Who: Tas and Anna
When: March 12
Where:Tas’s place
What: Delivering a hug and mocha milkshake~
Rating/Warnings: Low/None
Status: Complete when posted


It wasn’t a big deal to run and get a mocha milkshake thing from Baxter Bakery on her way to Tas’s apartment. Anna was so well known at the establishment that all she had to do was walk in the door and lift up two fingers to indicate she wanted two of her usual, and they had her drinks ready to go by the time she reached the cash register.

Then it was a quick drive over to Tas’s place, singing along with the radio. It sounded like her friend needed some support, so Anna was ready with arms wide open! And mochas!

She headed to his door and frowned. One mocha in each hand meant she didn’t have one to knock. She tried using her knee, but that didn’t make much sound. Then she tried the tip of her boot, and that sounded angry--like she was pounding his door down! She called out, “Sorry! I just don’t have hands!” Through the door, then thought better of it. In Orange County that could be taken literally. “I mean, my hands are full!”

Tas had been working away at a map that he’d had commissioned for him. Normally full of energy and easily distracted, Tas became totally engrossed in what he was doing whenever he was making a map. He was so intent on carefully penning in and shading a mountain range, tongue sticking out in concentration, that, despite his sensitive hearing, he didn’t hear Anna’s first failed attempt at knocking. He almost missed her kicking the door too.

He grew very excited for a moment at the idea of Anna with no hands. He wondered what could have caused it. Was it her dreams? It would have been a very interesting dream if it involved her losing both her hands. Or maybe her hands had been replaced with lobster claws! That would be so exciting. His next emotion would have been feeling sorry for her - his friend Killian had lost one of his hands because of the dreams and it didn’t make him happy at all - but before he’d quite made it there, Anna had corrected her statement.

“Hi!” Tas said, throwing the door open. “I thought for a minute you might have had lobster claws, and I was really, really excited about it. But mocha milkshakes are almost as good!” He helped relieve one of her hands of the milkshake before showing her into the apartment. It was no longer a bouncy castle, which Tas was unexpectedly relieved about. The apartment still kind of smelled like wet dog, a smell Raistlin and Tas had never been able to get rid of no matter how hard they tried, but one that Tas was already accustomed to, and the paint on the walls was peeling (though, Tas had covered the worst areas of the walls with his maps), but the place was tidy.

Anna couldn’t help but laugh when Tas opened the door. “I’m sorry! I didn’t make you … excited. About Lobster Claws. Then disappointed. Anyway, Mocha!” She handed it over, grinning brightly. Then she walked into the not-bouncy house apartment, missing that weird wish thing for a moment before bringing her mind back to Tas and the current predicament. She pulled her purse down off her shoulder to set down, then her nose wrinkled. “...what’s that smell?”

“What’s what smell?” Tas said. He didn’t bother closing the door behind Anna as he led her into the apartment. “Oh! You mean that smell that kind of smells like an old smelly wet dog? That’s just the apartment. We don’t know how to get rid of it, but you get used to it after a while! Sometimes when I cook it helps cover up the smell.” And sometimes it just combined into something that didn’t smell very appetizing at all.

Anna found it funny she’d never noticed it before. But then again, she’d probably been distracted. She could get that way sometimes. “I imagine cooking would! Garlic and onions… sounds delicious.” She beamed as she followed him into the living room. “I’m sorry about your dreams, Tas.” There wasn’t much of a transition there. Anna just jumped right in. “It sounds like you could use some friendly support and comfort!”

“Did you want something to eat?” Tas asked. “I could probably whip something up if you’d like!” Tas was a very good cook, having learned from his mother, and he did rather enjoy cooking for his friends.

At the mention of his dreams, Tas sighed dramatically and flopped like a rag doll onto his couch, and then took a noisy sip from his milkshake. “Oh, it was the most boring dream I’ve ever had in my whole life. I mean, there was one where we were trapped in a slave caravan for four days and that was really boring, and people kept yelling at me which wasn’t very nice, but even that dream ended with a whole army of elves attacking from the woods to free us and then Fizban - he’s an old wizard friend of mine who died - he nearly blew us up, so even that dream wasn’t nearly as boring as this one.”

“No no, I’m okay.” Anna said, holding up her mocha milkshake. That’s all she needed to keep her tummy full and her blood sugar high. “Let’s do dinner another time, though.” She added, then followed him to the sofa to perch on the edge, watching him. “Oh man! It sounds”--confusing, really, since Anna’s dreams were nowhere near as complex--”awful!”

Tas’ dreams weren’t so much confusing so much as the fact that he assumed everyone could follow his rather disjointed train of thought when he was telling stories. “It really was awful,” Tas said, letting out a heavy sigh. He didn’t really need a hug for comfort, the dream already being a distant memory, but he loved hugs and it suddenly occurred to him that Anna was there to give him a hug. He put down his milkshake so he could throw himself into her arms.

Thankfully Anna saw it coming when Tas put his milkshake down. She just had enough time to scoot hers out of the way before she was being attacked by a Tas!Hug, which, she found, was one of the better hugs. Anna wrapped the arm that wasn’t holding her milkshake around him and laughed. “I’d nearly forgotten about the hug delivery!” She’d been so preoccupied about the milkshakes, she’d forgotten the main purpose of the visit! She set her drink down on an end table, then wrapped her arms around him properly and squeezed. Anna was pretty amazing at hug-giving.

“Oh, you should never forget about hugs,” Tas said sagely, pulling away from her and smiling. “Hugs are pretty much the greatest thing ever. You know, they’ve done studies that say people who give lots of hugs live twenty years longer than people who don’t.” If pressed, Tas would have to admit he couldn’t remember anyone actually saying that to him, but he was sure it was true.

Anna was pretty sure there wasn’t scientific data to back up that statement, but she completely believed it, regardless. “It’s a good thing that I give tons of hugs, then!” Anna beamed over at him. “Because I’ve got a lot of years of huglessness to make up for.” She reached for her drink again.

“Years of huglessness,” Tas gasped. “That sounds horrible. Why did you have years of huglessness?”

Oh. Maybe he didn’t know? Had Anna never told him about her past? She took a big gulp from her mocha, careful to avoid a frozen headache, and then swallowed. “I was really sick when I was a kid? I mean, my sister went off to boarding school and I had to stay home because my immune system was so awful, and I spent a lot of time alone until I was about sixteen. But by then I was used to the homeschooling, so I didn’t go to high school, but then I went to college.” Had she just talked nonstop? She inhaled sharply. “And now here I am!”

“But surely your parents must have hugged you. And your sister!” He said the words without much thinking about the fact that not everyone had parents that enjoyed hugging. He’d certainly gotten a lot of hugs from his own parents, and from his little sister though she’d only been six when he’d left home. “I was homeschooled too though! Much better than high school. I went to my friend’s school for a day once and his teachers just yelled at us for talking. It was really quite rude, if you ask me.”

Anna frowned. “Why would they yell at you for talking?” She asked, torn between offended and astounded. She’d ignored the bit about her parents hugging her. And her sister. Truth was, so many people were afraid of her--because she was sick--they didn’t hug her. Not as much as they should have. Anna was a little attention deprived. Physically, anyway. So she was making up for it now. “I mean, I can understand it in college, but…. High school? Aren’t people supposed to be talking? Isn’t that a part of learning??”

“They did. Caramon and I were just talking about our plans for after school, and the teacher kept telling us to be quiet.” Tas pouted, obviously still a little disgruntled about that. He definitely counted himself among the lucky to have been able to enjoy the lessons his parents gave him.

“Well, I promise I’ll never yell at you for talking.” Anna beamed. She settled back against the sofa, cuddling up against him a little as she nursed the mocha milkshake. “We should do something fun to get your mind off Dreams and everything! Unless you’re busy with your maps.”

“I’m never too busy to do something fun!” Tas said. If you wanted to work hard, first you had to play hard was Tas’ philosophy. One of many of his philosophies. “The maps aren’t going anywhere! What did you want to do? Climb a mountain? Fly a rocket ship?”

“Oh my god, yes!” Anna brightened, sitting up straight and turning around to face him. She was pretty close to him on the sofa, he could probably count all her little freckles. “Can we really go climb a mountain or fly a rocket ship??” Or had he been kidding? Oh, if he was kidding, that was mean!

Tas would never kid about something as important as flying on a rocket ship or climbing a mountain, though now that Anna had agreed, Tas realized he had no idea where he would get his hands on a rocket ship for them to fly around in.

He sat back on the couch, eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed as he concentrated, finger tapping lightly against his cheek. “I don’t know about the rocket ship,” he admitted finally. “Unless you’d happen to know where to find one?” This was accompanied by a very hopeful look before he moved on. “But there are some mountains not far from here that we can definitely scale!”

Anna thought for a moment, then reached forward to set her drink down on the coffee table. “I don’t know about where to find a rocket ship.” She didn’t let that get her down, though. Anna bounced up and down once. “I wanna go scale a mountain! I did it once in my Dreams, and it’s a lot harder than you might think!” She grinned brightly. “C’mon, should we go now? We should go now! We can go for a hike or something! I wanna get out in nature and smell some flowers.”

Tas was momentarily disappointed when Anna said she couldn’t find a rocket ship, though he really wasn’t terribly surprised. “Oh yes, let’s go now!” Tas said. “I just need to get ready for an adventure!”

He ran into his room. Once there, he put on the pouches he’d bought (Tas had discovered from his dreams that pouches could hold far more things in them than his pockets, and had recently purchased a few to attach to his belt), and grabbed his hoopak staff. It was a wooden staff, forked at one end and encased in metal and pointed at the other end. The forked end had a sling attached, and the whole thing worked as a kender weapon, walking staff, and musical instrument, emitting a high pitched whine when Tas swung it above his head. It had apparently shrunk in the journey from his dreams, being rather too short to actually work as a walking staff now, but Tas still liked to keep it close when he went on adventures. Checking his hair quickly in his mirror, he decided he was ready and ran back out of his room.

“I’m ready! Let’s get going,” he said, retrieving his mocha milkshake from the coffee table and heading for the front door.

Anna was a little surprised when Tas jumped up from the sofa and disappeared. She sat for a moment, awkwardly, then stood and picked up her mocha milkshake to sip. He came back in a moment later, though, and she brightened at the sight of him. “Hey! Wait, what…?” She asked, motioning toward his new additions. The staff? The pouches? “What’s this?” She was more curious than anything else. And the pleased kind of curious.

Tas grinned widely. “You can’t go on an adventure without a hoopak staff and a belt full of pouches!” Tas said cheerfully. “Well, I guess you could. I used to go on adventures all the time without them. But I’m a way better adventurer in my dreams, and there I believe you need a hoopak and pouches for an adventure, so I’m probably right.” It was a little confusing, sometimes, there being two of him, but it made things interesting so he didn’t mind.

“Well, I could, since I don’t have a hoopkack staff and a belt full of pouches!” Anna said, then laughed. “I can’t wait to adventure with you with your new things! I’m sure you can fit all kinds of awesome things in there,” she motioned toward his belt. “And I’m sure you’re right about a lot of things. Now c’mon, are we going to stand around talking all day, or are we going on our adventure??”

“You should get some! Pouches, I mean. I don’t think you can really find hoopak staff’s over here. Even in my dreams, only kender use them, and we don’t really have any kender here in America. Except for me, of course.” He giggled. Even though he wasn’t entirely kender just yet, he was still pretty proud of his dream heritage.

“Of course we’re going on an adventure!” Tas said, and he turned on his heel and all but marched to his front door. “To the top of the mountain!”