Angels and Demons

All About Trust

- Chapter Sixteen -

Gathering small articles of clothing, you piece them together and dress up the soft plush toy in your hands, smiling as you dress the little thing up to your satisfaction. You admire it for a moment, basking in its cuteness; a job well done. You mentally pat yourself on the back.

"You did not."

"Yes, I certainly did."

Beaming, you hold up the stuffed tiger in your arms; donned in blue flannel, jeans, and tiny black and white converse.

Bree snorts as she places a teddy bear back on the shelf. "It looks just like Chase."

"You think he'll like it?" You look at the tiger, smoothing out any wrinkles on the flannel.

Bree snorts with a smile. "Oh, he'll like it. Hell like anything you give him." A hopeless romantic, she thinks, as she watches the smile that graces your face.

You hum, lips quirking upwards. You both move in line to purchase the tiger as well as the mini teddy bears that Bree holds in her arms; the ones shes giving to the rest of the team for Valentine's Day.

You can't hold back a small smile as you remember presenting an artificial weight of a human heart, looking at Chase with a quirk on your lips as you asked him to be your Valentine's.

The looks the rest of the team gave you made you quip to them; "Oh, have a heart."

Valentine's Day is the next day, and yet you can't help but feel a little jittery. Sure, you spent the past few years gift-giving the team something you knew they would like (giving Leo a video game or movie, Bree a novel or a piece of clothing she would like, or comics to Kaz and Oliver (they inhale comics like they're going out of style)). Skylar loves experimenting with new weapons or gadgets, and although she doesn't use them often since gaining her powers back, she still loves to fiddle with them and use them for training. There was a small switchblade that you had stashed in your dresser for her. She doesn't use weapons often, not really at all, but you saw her eyeing the blade and knew she would love it.

Mr. Davenport would give you a side-eye for it and probably would say something, but you couldn't bring yourself to care. It was a tiny thing, he would get over it.

This Valentine's would be the first that you and Chase would have as a couple, and although you and he would gift smaller things in the past to each other, this year you wanted to do something more, something he would really-

"You're getting lost again." After purchasing the stuffed tiger and the cashier enclosing it in a cardboard box, you hold onto the box as you and Bree make it outside the store. "You're overthinking it, he's gonna love it."

"Yeah, but I feel like I could be doing more." Your fingers clench the box tighter as you both head to the nearest exit.

"You got him what-" she counts on each of her fingers "-a leather journal, a stuffed tiger, and what else? What was the biggie gift?"

"Two tickets to a classical symphony."

She snaps her fingers in quick succession. "That one! He's been wanting to go to that one for months! That symphony event is a major event, whats his face conducting yet?"

"Helmet Van Jurgen is conducting it."

"And aren't the tickets super crazy expensive? Like only celebrities can attend?" She turns towards you as you both exit the mall. "Wait, Chase told me he couldn't get tickets because not only were they unattainable limited tickets, but you had to be invited to the event." She shakes her head in confusion. "How?"