Look! I did it! I did the thing and it only took a decade!
Welcome to "My Ever After", which is a working title for my sequel to Unforeseen and may very possibly change in the future. This is going to pick up more-or-less right where Unforeseen left off, and begin to delve into the lives of Lauren and Tamsin now that they are both fae. To properly understand everything that goes on, you should probably read Unforeseen first - that that's just a humble suggestion from me. 0:)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Obvi.
Without further adooooooo...~
"You know, Tamsin", Lauren said cautiously as she was blindly lead through what she can only assume is the corridor leading to her girlfriend's apartment, judging from what she could recognize on the drive here and the distinct sounds of street cars scraping along and slow-moving foot traffic outside, "last time I was taken somewhere without knowing what was going on, I ended up in Valhalla with quite a few angry valkyries trying to kill me."
Tamsin cringed at the accentuation on the word kill, happy that Lauren couldn't see her reaction and was too engrossed in placing each foot solidly on the unseen ground to hear her sharp intake of breath. The happenings of Valhalla, and the physical strains that those stressful few days had put on them (Lauren was still favoring her right arm over her left, and Tamsin's jaw seemed as if it was holding onto it's large purple bruise as long as it could), were still fresh in the couple's minds. The two of them had hardly even begun to talk about the possible mental and emotional repercussions of the whole ordeal – not that Tamsin was in any kind of rush to discuss them. Despite her discomfort, however, Tamsin forced an invisible smile in the doctor's direction and gently gave Lauren's shoulders a reassuring squeeze.
"Don't worry, doc. I promise I'm not going to drag you to a mythological plane then steal away your humanity, if that's what you're worried about."
Lauren smiled to herself now, letting out a mock sigh of relief and playfully shoving her shoulder back to connect softly with Tamsin's.
"Oh, well at least there's that."
Tamsin continued to lead her girlfriend up the stairs, carefully escorting her up the steps without ever removing her hands from the slender shoulders. When they finally reached Tamsin's (brand new, heavy, and reinforced) door, she quickly leaned forward to unlock and open it before raising her hand to untie the secure knot of the bandana over Lauren's eyes with nimble fingers and stuff it in the doctor's own back pocket. Slowly, her eyes opened, and she blinked several times to adjust to the sudden light flooding her vision. Once she had adjusted, the doctor leaned into the door way a little bit to look around the large, open floor plan apartment that she had gotten so accustomed to since beginning her relationship with the detective so many months ago. Other than the beautiful new hardwood floors that had been laid at some point immediately after the groups' adventure in Valhalla, and the curtains that were drawn out of the way of the large and usually covered windows overlooking the city, Lauren didn't notice anything strikingly different about Tamsin's apartment. Picking up on her girlfriend's confusion, Tamsin gently grabbed her hand and pulled her into the apartment to lead her to the bedroom at the end of the hall (but not before pausing to lock the door behind her – Lauren noted several additional locks on the new door, and bit back the urge to question the valkyrie about it).
"You brought me straight to your apartment, blindfolded me even, after a traumatic and life-changing journey, so you could pull me straight to bed?" Lauren asked, an amused grin gracing her features as they crossed the threshold to Tamsin's bedroom. "Not that I am opposing that, mind you. You could have probably done without the blindfold, however." The doctor then pulls the bundled fabric out of the pocket of her jeans, raising an eyebrow in the valkyrie's direction. "Unless we aren't done with the blindfold yet?"
"Do you like the new floors?", Tamsin said in reply to change the subject as she slipped her hand out of Lauren's grasp and slowly slinked towards the dresser, walking backwards as she did so and doing her best to keep the Lauren's gaze.
The doctor looked down and appraised the new hardwood, knocking it gently with the tip of her shoe once or twice, honestly impressed that Tamsin had pulled up the beige carpet she had seemed so attached to. Lauren raised her eyebrow again as she looked back up at her girlfriend (was that a title that they are still using?, she wondered, after everything that they had been through).
"I suppose getting all my blood out of your carpet proved to be a more challenging feat than you thought?"
Swallowing the lump in her throat (and the sudden wave of guilty nausea that came with it), Tamsin pulled a tight smile.
"Something like that. I just know how much you like this stuff. It's just like the stuff at the compound, you-"
Lauren took a large step forward, effectively closing the distance between Tamsin and herself, and caught her girlfriend's lips in a loving kiss before she could finish her sentence. She attempted to deepen it further, raising her hand to the detective's hip to grasp a handful of her favorite blue leather jacket, but was distracted from her efforts when she heard the distinct sound of a drawer being pulled open. Pulling back with a quizzical look on her face, Lauren looked first at Tamsin's sheepish grin then over her shoulder to see what could possibly be so important in the valkyrie's bureau that she felt the need to open it when there were much more pressing matters at hand. Her brow furrowed even more when she noticed that this particular drawer was filled with neatly folded and carefully placed clothes – quite the contrary to the way Tamsin would usually just throw her clothes in the drawers without regard for organizing or even folding them. Lauren then gasped as it dawned on her, an embarrassing number of seconds later – the clothes in the drawer weren't Tamsin's. They were hers.
"Tamsin…?"
"After everything that happened, I thought maybe you'd want some help adjusting to, you know", Tamsin shrugged her shoulders as she rolled her eyes, searching for the right words, "adjusting?"
When Lauren didn't say anything, the valkyrie let out a huff and turned out of her grasp to open the remaining drawers. As each opened, Lauren was shocked to see that every single one was filled with her own carefully folded clothes, in the exact way and order that she had left them in her apartment. Still in shock, the doctor slowly walked over to the door to Tamsin's closet and opened it – half of the closet looked just as she remembered it, with Tamsin's clothes haphazardly thrown onto and over hangers or (more often than not) just laying in various piles on the floor. The other half of the large closet, however, was filled with Lauren's jackets, slacks, and blouses carefully hung up and even color coordinated the way that they had been in Lauren's closet on the Light compound. Lauren spent a long time staring at the space that used to house Hurricane Tamsin's wardrobe in shock, only pulled from her reeling thoughts when she felt strong arms wrap around her midsection and a chin connect softly with her shoulder.
"Don't be mad, doc. I just thought you'd like some help with this whole 'oh shit I guess I'm not human anymore' thing. Especially since there's a whole new set of rules for you to learn now. And there isn't a better teacher than me."
"You? Rules?"
"Okay, so maybe not the rules part. But the valkyrie part?" Tamsin made a soft pffft noise. "I got this. I just want to help, you know? This is all kind of my fault. I don't want you to be mad, though."
"Kind of?", the doctor questions, but Tamsin hears the smile in her voice. "How could I be mad, Tamsin?", Lauren spun around in her girlfriend's arm and placed their foreheads together. The valkyrie let out a relieved sigh and the breath that she didn't know she had been holding – she was honestly concerned that Lauren would be upset, either that Tamsin had made this decision for her after all the other choices that were made for her over the past few years, or even simply that Tamsin had Dyson and Bo sneak into Lauren's apartment on the Light compound to steal all of her clothes and most of her other personal belongings and carefully organize them in her own apartment. Though Lauren didn't know it yet, Tamsin had even had much of her lab equipment brought over and transformed her former workout room into a make-shift study and lab for the doctor to use as she saw fit. Lauren brought her hands up to gently cradle her girlfriend's face as she leaned back to look at her, the laughter in her eyes evident even under the tears that were beginning to well up there. "You could have just asked me to move in, though."