¡Tink! (tinkhatespink) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-06-01 14:08:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, joe hardy, tinkerbell |
Who: Joe and Tink (and “Jill” the NPC)
What: Tink meets one of Joe’s “dates” as the girl is sneaking out
When: Late May
Where: The Hardy’s house
Rating/Warnings Low/None
Status: Complete
The young woman had given her name as Jill. At one point she had gotten the name of the man she had decided to go home with that night, but as she was waking up in his bed the morning after, she wasn’t sure if she could properly remember. It had started with a J, that was pretty much all she could remember. It wasn’t that big of a deal. names hadn’t been what either of them had really wanted that night. Besides, it wasn’t like they were ever going to see each other again.
Jill’s friends called these stringless trists “random romantic encounters,” and they could be a lot of fun, so long as certain rules were met: exchange no numbers, names are optional, never bring him home, don’t get drunk and never ever accept a drink you had not seen a bartender pour yourself, trust your gut, keep open lines of communication with a friend and always insist on protection once things got hot.
It was the kind of adventure that Jill, a career focused business associate in her mid twenties, often craved. Especially after spending 40+ hours a week in a claustrophobic grey cubicle, scurrying like an ant to make the arbitrary deadlines her boss (and sometimes her boss’s boss) gave her. With the right person, anonymous sex was the perfect kind of release. Her chosen partner for the night had been on that exact same page. The night had been utterly fantastic and exactly what Jill had needed.
The morning after a night of great sex could be tricky. Jill always made sure she was awake before her partner was. Getting out of the door before he stirred was the easiest way to avoid any awkward conversation. Jill hated the idea of having to pretend as though the previous night had actually meant anything more than what it was. It may have made her seem cold and careless, but she thought lying to herself and to the other person was even crueler.
The sun had just come up and Jill could see around without risking turning on a light. Carefully, she got out of bed and collected her clothes from the pile on the floor. She slipped on her bra, shirt and pants, stuffed her underwear and socks into her purse, and picked up her shoes. She wouldn’t put them on until she’d gone downstairs and no longer ran the risk of waking anyone up with the clacking of high heels.
When she reached the bedroom door, she cast a look over her shoulder at the form still laying in bed. He hadn’t moved. She let her eyes move over the sloping line of his body down to his hips where he disappeared under the thin sheets. She gave a quiet satisfied kind of sound before gently opening the door and quietly exiting the room.
When he heard the soft click of his bedroom door being shut, Joe finally opened his eyes. He listened to the sounds of the woman making her way down the hall and down the stairs. He let out a breath and rolled on to his back to yawn and stretch.
Jill had gotten down the stairs and was making her way towards the front door when she was startled by finding someone already in the kitchen. “Oh!” She gasped when she saw the young woman. “I’m...sorry, I didn’t realize anyone else was up.” Was this a sister? Oh, god, this was awkward.
Tink was half-asleep, standing in the kitchen, trying to figure out the coffee situation. She’d spent the night with Frank at his place a couple of times over the last couple of weeks, but everything was still new and fresh. When she slept in Frank’s bed (after their night-time activities were finished) she slept like a log. Out cold. It was the most refreshing sleep she’d ever had in her entire life. But she had to get up extra early to go to school. Finals were upon them, and Tink didn’t want her grades to suffer. Though, if they did, they did. Frank was more important than her grades, she thought.
Anyway, she jumped at the sound of the voice, the other woman gasping in the doorway between the hall and the kitchen. The coffee filters she was holding simply fell to the countertop. Thankfully, she wasn’t holding a mug or something else breakable. “Oh! Wow. Sorry. Right. Yes.” She gave the other woman a very tired smile. “Uh… I didn’t know Joe had a girlfriend. Hi, Joe’s girlfriend.”
Joe. Of course! Jill felt a little silly for not remembering a name so simple and common. Then came the G-word and Jill felt the heat that had already been rising in her cheeks skyrocket. She held up her hands quickly as if the word was something physical she had to deflect. “Oh, no, no.” Jill chuckled a little embarrassed. “No, I’m not his girlfriend. We’re-” Well, she couldn’t use the term friends. She wasn’t going to see him again. That was the whole point. “We, uh just-” If this was a sister she didn’t want the other girl to think of her as some kind of slut.
Finally after a few more false starts, Jill lowered her hands and relaxed. Ah, fuck it. “Look, we met at a bar last night and decided to have a little fun, that’s all. Tell...uh...you said his name is Joe? Tell Joe I said I had a good time, ok?” With that Jill proceeded through the kitchen. She paused at the front door only long enough to slip on her heels, and then she exited the house and into the glare of the day.
Tink blinked at the woman’s insistence that she wasn’t Joe’s girlfriend. Well, that was interesting. She’d never seen someone so adamant about something so simple. At the same time, Tink was pretty embarrassed that she’d assumed… well, she’d assumed more. No wonder Joe hadn’t told her about this girl. If they’d only met up in a bar, and--WAIT. This was a one-night stand?? Tink had never done that herself. Before Frank, she’d only had a couple of sexual partners, and they were all friends. Or had been. It’d never worked out for anything more or anything long-term. The one-night-stand thing seemed like an interesting proposition.
“Uh… okay.” Tink probably looked like a deer in headlights as she watched the other woman cross the kitchen, slip on her shoes, then head out the door. She was disheveled, with hair sticking up all over the place, and wearing one of Frank’s big t-shirts over her own pajama pants. It was definitely too early to be thinking about this kind of thing. She turned back to the coffee maker to try and figure it out again.
It was only a few minutes later when Joe came ambling down the stairs himself. He half expected to find Frank sitting in the kitchen, having returned from his morning run, coffee made, poured and newspaper out on the table, just ready to guess the occupation of the girl who had just left. Well, joke was on him. Joe had no idea.
However, it wasn’t Frank in the kitchen that morning, but Tink, looking as though she had literally just rolled out of Frank’s bed. Not exactly what Joe had expected, but was met with a shrug. It wasn’t the first time Tink had spent the night, and honestly, Joe was pleased that things seemed to be going well between her and his brother. They both seemed happy, and that was what mattered.
Clad in a pair of comfy looking pajama pants, Joe shuffled his way through the kitchen. “Mornin’, Belle,” he said with a yawn and a roll of his shoulders. He’d been awake before Jill had been, but had purposefully waited for her to decide how she was going to handle the morning after before he did anything himself. She hadn’t been the first woman to leave him without saying anything, and given how quickly things had progressed the night before, Joe had sort of expected it. Some people were looking for just sex and not companionship. If that meant Joe was nothing more than a tool to use to achieve that goal, then he was ok with that.
“Coffee’s up here,” Joe reached over Tink’s head to open the cabinet above the coffeemaker. “Frank still asleep?”
Tink turned her face when Joe reached over her to get to the cupboard. She vaguely remembered the coffee living up there, but would never have been able to come up with that as its home. She should pay more attention, especially if she was going to spend more nights here. With a sleepy smile for Joe, she reached up to take the coffee down. “Nah, he’s already on his run.”
Setting up the coffee machine was serious business. Tink focused on it for a moment, trying to get her tired mind to work. Then she glanced at Joe. “That girl… uh… That girl that just left? She said she had a good time.”
Joe paused in the midst of reaching for a couple of mugs for them. It seemed as though Jill hadn’t gotten out of the house as scot free as she would have liked. Usually it was Frank who caught whoever was leaving. Joe wasn’t so sure what he thought about Tink meeting them, even if it was accidentally.
He glanced at her a moment. If she was going to be spending a lot of nights at the house, then it was something she was going to discover at some point. He shrugged a little and got down the first two mugs -- one for her and one for him -- and then a third for Frank when he got back. “She told you that, huh? Well good. I’m glad she had a good time. That was the idea and all.”
“That was the idea?” Tink asked, settling the coffee into the coffee maker and flipping the on switch. She turned to look at him. “You’re not… dating that girl? Or like… anything?” She didn’t know much about this kind of thing, and was genuinely curious. There was no judgement in her face or her voice as she asked him, “You two just got together for one night of sex?”
Joe looked at Tink for a moment trying to gauge if she really had no idea what a one night stand was. It took half a moment, but he came to the conclusion that no, she didn’t. He understood that she was young and a bit sheltered, but even at her age, she must have at least heard the expression before. “Yeah,” he shrugged his shoulders. “People do that sometimes. They’re horny and don’t necessarily want all the complications of having a relationship, or, you know, seeing the person again.”
Tink had never had sex with a person she’d never seen again. Then again, there was one guy she wished she’d never seen again, but the others? She’d seen them again. She’d had sex with one of them again after the first time (even though it wasn’t all that much fun for her). It was hard for her to imagine sex as being the end of something instead of the beginning.
“Do you do that a lot?” She asked, still trying to wrap her head around the whole thing. Didn’t help that it was still fairly early in the morning, and she hadn’t had her coffee yet. Then, something occurred to her. “Does Frank do that?”
Joe had to stifle a laugh into his shoulder. He didn’t want to laugh at her, it was a fair question to ask. She could ask Frank the same thing, but considering they were still in the early stages of their relationship, it was probably better to not ask him flat out about his history. “No,” Joe shook his head, “Frank doesn’t do that. He’s more of the type to need and want that connection.”
The coffee maker started percolating and the warm pleasant smell of fresh coffee started wafting through the kitchen. Joe had the first part of Tink’s question to answer. “Do I do it a lot?” He leaned against the counter, thought about it a moment then shrugged again. “Yeah, I do.” Joe wasn’t ashamed of it. No one had ever made him feel ashamed of having multiple partners, but he did wonder for a moment if this would change Tink’s opinion of him.
Tink saw Joe stifle a laugh, and that made her even more confused. Why was he laughing? Was it a stupid question? Was there something she didn’t know? Now she was nervous. No, he didn’t. So, that meant that Frank wasn’t interested in a one-night-stand with Tink. Which was good, considering they’d spent the night together about four times in the last couple of weeks. (Okay, exactly four. Tink had been counting.)
She nodded. That may be what made her nights with Frank so much more meaningful than any other times she’d had sex in the past. There was a connection there that she hadn’t ever had before. She loved Frank. She was in love with Frank. She thought, anyway. As much as a girl like her could be. Now that she’d had this with Frank? She couldn’t possibly go back to what she’d had before. Drunk friends fooling around because of one-sided attraction, or Tink going out with a boy a few times to see if she had feelings for him (she didn’t). Now that she’d had something real, it was over.
“Do you like it?” Tink asked, again more curious than anything else.
“Yeah, I like it,” Joe nodded. He did not say that he had once had what Tink and Frank had -- that precious connection, that love -- but had it ripped from him. He wasn’t ever going to get it back and deep down, Joe didn’t think he deserved to have it. Tink was in her first serious relationship. It might work. It might not work. There was no way to tell. But, she was so nervous, full of fears that were so normal and common, the last thing Joe wanted to do was to make her worry because of his own broken life.
“It’s not for everyone,” he cautioned. “Like I said, Frank can’t -- and won’t -- sleep around. And that’s fine. Everyone needs something different to make them happy. With me though I don’t need that. I don’t want that.” So long as he wasn’t alone, he got what he wanted.
“Well, that’s good.” Tink nodded once. She still had some of last night’s mascara under her eyes. Just a little. Just enough to make her look really sleepy, really disheveled. She lifted a hand to tuck her hair behind her ears. “Because everyone’s different, right? And so long as you’re not hurting anyone… or being hurt by anyone… then do what makes you happy.” She paused, watching the dark coffee drip out of the machine into the pot. “You are happy, aren’t you, Joe?”
“Exactly,” Joe nodded with a smile. “So long as you’re honest with whoever you’re with and no one is pressuring you to do anything you don’t want to do.” Tink was a smart girl. One night stands were probably not for her, but she was certainly getting the concept and how it was supposed to be done very quickly. And if god forbid if things didn’t work out between her and Frank, if anyone ever did pressure her, or hurt her, they had one more “brother” they were going to have to deal with.
Her follow-up question caused his smile to falter slightly. He tried to recover it, but felt how forced it was, so let it go completely. Another shrug “Yeah. I’m happy. I don’t want any of those strings...” He cleared his throat and shifted his weight against the counter. “I’ll make breakfast for you and Frank.”
Any of those strings. Tink wondered what that meant. Was it too much pressure, or too constricting? Was there more to the story she didn’t know? It didn’t seem like Joe wanted to talk about it, though, and far be it from her to push. She’d been Joe’s friend first, though now she was Frank’s girlfriend. Did that make anything awkward between herself and Joe? She hoped not.
“You really don’t have to make us breakfast, you know.” Though, the only thing Tink could cook was toast, and she knew that Frank was pretty much banned from the kitchen. “I mean, I can grab donuts on my way to my final.”
“I don’t mind,” Joe said. He hated the anxious, nervous energy that rose up whenever the topic of his love life came up or when anyone asked him if he was happy. Why was that such a big deal? He needed to do something with his hands and the best thing he could do was make breakfast. He pushed himself from the counter and made his way to the stove. “I gotta make breakfast for myself anyway, so I may as well make it for you both as well.” And it kept Frank out of the kitchen. “It’s not going to be anything fancy. Just bacon and eggs.”
He got the pan ready with a slab of butter and prepared it for half a package of bacon for the three of them to share. As that got ready he beat together enough eggs to feed himself, Frank and Tink.
“Well, thanks. It’ll be the best breakfast I’ve had in a while.” Tink gave him a smile, and then poured herself some coffee. She dug through the cabinet for sugar, too. Because to Tink, there wasn’t such a thing as too sweet. She was a Fairy, after all.
“This isn’t weird, is it?” She asked, eyes occupied with the spices in the cupboard. Maybe she was looking in the wrong place for sugar. She didn’t know. “...I mean, me and Frank? It’s not weird for you, is it?”
Joe furrowed his brows. “Why would it be weird?” He asked with a glance up. “It’s not like you and I slept together. Then it’d be kind of weird.” And contrary to what some people may have thought, Joe did not sleep with every woman he met.
He gestured with the end of the fork he was using to beat the eggs, “Sugar is in the next cabinet over with the flour,” he said and then went back to preparing their breakfast. “I’m glad you and Frank are together. Franks my brother and you’re my friend. I want what’s best for both of you.” Plus, Joe was happy that Frank seemed to be getting beyond the heartache Callie had put him through. He was no longer blaming himself for that mess and Joe thought that was good. Frank needed someone who understood how his mind worked. As inexperienced as Tink may have been, Joe believed she would at least give it a better shot than Callie ever would have.
The bacon was sizzling nicely in the pan, creating a great mix with the smell of coffee already in the air. Joe glanced at Tink before he started to scramble the eggs. “It’s not weird for you, is it?”
“Thanks.” Tink was trying her best not to pull a face at it’s not like you and I slept together because eew. She dug into the cupboard where he mentioned, and pulled out some sugar for her coffee. That’s what she needed; sugar, sugar, and more sugar. She didn’t need cream or anything. Just sweet stuff.
“No.” She said, stirring the sugar into her steaming mug. “No, it’s not weird. I’ve always been surrounded by guys, you know? I just wanted to make sure you didn’t feel… like I’d pushed you aside, or something.” Her ears went bright red. “I know it sounds stupid. But I don’t want you to feel like I picked him instead of you.”
The statement made Joe pause for a moment and look at Tink. This time he really did laugh. “I don’t think you picked Frank over me,” he said. “I mean, I am the better looking Hardy brother,” he winked at her teasingly, “But I had a feeling when the two of you met that Frank was something special to you. I was routing for the two of you to get together. That’s the whole reason I sat you down the other day and let you in on the Strange Psyche of Frank Hardy.” Joe chuckled again and started dishing up some eggs and a couple of slices of bacon for Tink and handed her the plate.
Tink snorted a little when Joe laughed. Maybe it was hard for her to not be laughing when other people were laughing. Anyway, she shook her head a little. “That’s completely subjective.” She couldn’t help but grin at the wink, and lifted her coffee mug for a sip. The sip was interrupted by nodding, and she set it back down so she could accept the plate from him. “It was a useful talk, that’s for sure. I know what to expect now.” Though, a lot of it was still bound to catch her off guard.