Author's note: I'm new to this fandom but have already fallen in love with Sandy and Kirsten. I'm still trying to figure out the characters so I've written a series of mini-ficlets unrelated to each other to sort out my thoughts about them. I hope you enjoy them. The three little stripes mean a new ficlet's starting. If anyone's feeling generous and would like to beta read, I would be eternally grateful!
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, chances are I don't own it. So I hereby disclaim.
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He sees her and she smiles and his heart skips a beat. His throat closes up for just that second and he falls in love with her all over again.
He's loved her these twenty years. He'd been right with her as they went through life. He was there when she raged about those jackasses at the office and he toasted with her to whatever project that she had going that she was so excited about that she couldn't shut up about it. But only with him. He watched her show the world a whole different version of herself, one she knew they expected to see in her. They would never see how Kirsten could be as giddy as a school girl when she was feeling silly and they would never see her talk him down when a case got too much for him to bare. They would never see her fall apart because even Sandy had a hard time getting her to let him help her when she needed it.
Their marriage had lasted so long and yet the only time that Sandy felt truly happy, the kind of happy that makes your heart burst and makes you hug yourself from pure joy- was when she smiled. Sandy knew he'd never be happier than those times that his wife was smiling at him.
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Sandy was immersed in the evening papers when he heard his wife come home. They'd left an unfinished fight this morning and he hid behind the paper, hoping that she'd get the hint and leave him alone. But she found him, as he knew she would.
"Is Seth sleeping?" Kirsten asked as she walking into the sitting room.
"Yeah… he couldn't find Captain Oats so he kept on sneaking around trying to find him. He's got him now and has been down since," Sandy said.
"Look Sandy, can we just… can we just fight it out right now and then just make up and…" Kirsten could hardly keep her tears back.
"Hey, hey," Sandy rushed over to her, surprised and wracking his brain to find out what was so wrong that Kirsten was breaking down right in front of him.
"It's just… I…" She clutched at his shirt and he cupped her face and lifted it so he could look into her eyes. He could see the tears she was fighting to hold back.
"Talk to me baby," he said softly.
"My… and, I just…" She just wanted a safe place to cry. She was so focused on not breaking down that she could barely form words. When Sandy's arms enveloped her she buried her face in the crook of his neck and cried.
Sandy was worried out of his mind but for now he just tried to sooth her. He slowly rubbed her back and shushed her and whispered to her as she cried. Her fists pulled at his shirt where she was still holding on to him. Sandy could feel the material start to give at the seams but he didn't think this was the appropriate time to mention it. He was frightened of the force of her apparent grief.
When she regained a little control she looked at him and said: "My mom has cancer, she's been given a year."
---
When a thirteen year old client of his didn't show up for his day in court because he had been shot dead, Sandy moved on to the next case. When he came home he would tell his wife and she would hold him and somehow she always made the world a little brighter again. What he didn't realize was that the next time she looked at her thirteen year old son she would see all the things that could happen to him. Things made real because Sandy had taken them home for her to take the weight off his shoulders.
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Sandy held two pictures in his hands, taken on the same night at one of those god-awful parties Kirsten was always dragging him to.
The first picture was obviously staged. They stood together, all fake smiles and politeness. It was the face they put on when they were gracing the community with their presence. But there were signs of real affection in there as well, their fingers threaded ever so loosely, they didn't need a firmer grip because they knew the other would never let them drop. Their stance was angled towards each other just enough to clearly mark of the other as off limits to anyone thinking otherwise. There was true love there but you had to look for it through the shiny veneer.
The second picture showed her walking away from him. But she was looking back over her shoulder and laughing. He just had this look of complete adoration on his face and a dopey smile as he watched her walk away.
They were both so real. The role they played for the community and the role they played for each other. The truth was in both and in neither picture. The truth lay sleeping here beside him in their bed and tomorrow she would join him and their son for breakfast. She was his truth.
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"Oh you're a princess!" her mother said when she saw the costume Kirsten was wearing for the Halloween masked dance.
"Marie Antoinette to be exact," Kirsten said.
"Well you look beautiful, Jimmy'll love you when he sees it," her mother said and rushed out of the room to see to all the little details that always popped up right before these things.
"A girl who did as her parents told her; married a rich prince, spent loads of cash and got her head chopped off for her troubles. It seemed fitting," Kirsten told the empty room.
A part of her wished she could say that to her father. As it was, her little rebellion would go unnoticed. But right now it was enough.
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They were getting ready for bed. Well Sandy was lying in bed, ready to turn in but he was waiting for his wife who was doing that complicated dance of lotions and ointments that he just didn't get.
"Are you done yet?" Sandy asked, as he watched her cap one tube and open a jar.
"You can go to sleep if you want, I'll finish this in the bathroom," Kirsten said with a bemused roll of her eyes.
"Nah, I'll wait," Sandy sighed.
"You know the Newpsies think you're the perfect husband," Kirsten said, obviously she didn't really agree with them.
"It's my charm," Sandy told her. "I'm irresistible."
"I think they just don't know you well enough," Kirsten said.
"Oh baby, you wound me," Sandy said, dramatically holding his hand over his heart.
"But do you know what their main reason was?" She didn't wait for him to guess, they'd be there all night if he started listing his own awesome qualities. "That I'm not financially dependent on you. They figure there must be something great about you because, unlike half of them, I didn't marry for money!"
"Oh honey, you're not going to make me feel sorry for them, are you?" Sandy whined.
"A perfect husband would," Kirsten pointed out.
"Well, you have my permission to shoot me if I ever become that perfect," Sandy said, making a face. "I mean, just think about how boring I'd be! How completely predictable and whipped! No, I think you'll have to make do with your less than perfect husband."
Kirsten wanted to point out that a perfect husband wouldn't be boring and predictable because he was perfect but she refrained. She loved that he thought perfection was not something to be worked for but rather something to be avoided.
Done with her lotions and potions she crawled into bed and gave him a kiss. "I love you, faults and all," she said, because he was making her feel sappy and romantic right then.
"There's one thing I'd like to perfect though," he said as he started kissing her neck. "But it might take years of more practice."
"I think you're definitely on the right track," Kirsten giggled and caught his mouth for a searing kiss.
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"I don't even get a kiss before you run off to school?" Kirsten asked her ten year old son as he was rushing off to meet his car-pool ride.
"Mom!" Seth complained.
"Come back here and give your mom a cuddle," Sandy ordered his son.
Dragging his feet Seth came back and hugged and kissed his mother. "Thank you, sweetie," she said. "Have a nice day at school."
"And while you're in the hugging mood…" Sandy said.
With a monstrous sigh Seth gave his father a hug and kiss as well. "You are making me late!" He complained as he ran out again. They watched him hop in the car, already complaining about how totally annoying parents were.
"As a kid I never suspected how much fun it would be to embarrass your off-spring," Sandy said taking a sip from his morning coffee and feeling generally content.
"And it's so easy too!" Kirsten agreed, slipping her arm around his waist.
---
Sandy sometimes wonders how his darling wife got all those nicknames. Ice queen, dragon lady… bitch even. But Kirsten knows and keeps her silence.
When she was running the Newport group it was actually successful. It was a profitable business that she worked her ass off to run smoothly. She would go past nice, past rigid and to downright scary if that meant things would go the way she wanted them to go. She built herself a harness, made out of the lines she wouldn't cross and ran her business with an iron fist.
Sandy only saw the barest glimpses of her in her harness. He saw the loving wife and doting mother. He saw her when she chatted with her family over dinner and when she leaned on him just because it felt right.
He never realized how much her parents had shaped her. How her father's behavior towards her had shaped the armor she felt safe facing the professional world in, even if it made her heart heavy. Her mother had made the home safe and happy, at her own expense. Her mother had taught her to smile warmly and act like nothing was wrong even to the people she loved the most.
Sandy never realized that Kirsten had two pairs of full body armor and how lucky he had been to get under her skin despite the gifts her parents had left her with.
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As soon as Kirsten started dating this cute Jewish boy from the Bronx who couldn't be more different from her, she became interested in the elements as they were represented in art. She adored a series of small paintings of two very dissimilar rocks on the beach being worn down by the sand and surf until they were two identical pebbles. She loved to see a the sea in uproar, waves and wind crashing about but behind it was a city on fire. She could look at a picture of a large fallen stone that looked like a sleeping girl and was enveloped by the plants that used to be around it, for ages.
She liked them because she could finally feel what they meant.
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That's all folks. Please leave a message to tell me how I've done!