tessa bell

Name: Tessa Jane Bell Nicknames: Tess, Tinker Bell, Tink Age: 21 Height: 5′0″ Sexuality: Bisexual

Rosetta: Oooh, yes! I haven't cooked anything in awhile, I need the practice before I get rusty!

Rosetta: What are we thinking? Stir fry? Soup? Pasta?

Tessa: OOH stir fry sounds delicious

“You know I will!” Misty giggled as soon as Tink said to twist her arm. She loved to see Tink so excited about these special people in her life. It reminded her of when Simon first came back into her life, like the missing puzzle piece in her life had finally fallen into place. “Awww, stop that’s so cute!” Misty answered excitedly. “You can tell him I’m coming over to meet his new kitty, and he can’t say no.” She didn’t care if she ended up being a third wheel to them at some point or not. After all, if Tootles’ new cat was there too, then she really wasn’t technically third wheeling! “What about your twin? Seriously, tell me everything.”

~

     She would have expected nothing less from Misty after she revealed that there was a new pet in their group, the girl inviting herself over to meet the kitten. “It’s so sweet—he actually saved him from a fire and has been taking care of him since.” After bonding with the little guy, neither Tootles nor Tink had the heart to send the cat to a shelter, so they decided to keep him. Well, more accurately he was going to keep him, because Tessa already had Blaze and Trinket at home. Still, she planned to visit often anyway, and she didn’t need the excuse of a new cat to draw her there.

     Ever since meeting her estranged twin, she had been wanting to spend less time around her own home; that was where her parents lived. “Peri is great,” she answered with a dreamy smile before a flicker of another emotion passed through her eyes. “I’m just trying to get to know them as much as possible before confronting my—our parents. I don’t even know what I’m gonna say.”

Being pulled into a hug, Peri giggled and happily hugged their twin in return. This was such a new feeling for them, getting to hug their own sibling, but it also felt completely right and normal for them to do as if the pair has been doing so all their lives. And hopefully now that they knew each other, that was exactly what they and Tink could do among other things as well. “Good because I have no idea how I would’ve handled it if you were upset with me. I mean, I know it’s bound to happen at some point but it would be great if it doesn’t happen anytime soon.” Peri commented with another giggle as they smiled cheerfully at Tink. Putting the bag filled with ingredients down against the counter, they beamed at their twin and nodded. “Yes! You have the rest of the stuff prepared, right? Or do we still need to go out and buy them?”

    She was still convinced that there was no way she would ever get upset with her twin. They were family. On the topic of family...Her parents—their parents weren’t home, and there was a reason Tessa had invited her sibling over when she had the house to herself; she had only had Peri for a couple months now, and wanted to soak up as much time with them as she could before reality came crashing down on the long-divided family. Tink hadn’t confronted her parents yet about lying to her for her whole life; they didn’t know she had met Peri, and at this point she wasn’t sure whether they even deserved to meet the child they’d sent away as a baby.

Tootles immediately noticed Tink relax, which was a good sign. He still had to tell her about the tattoo, though, which had him biting on the inside of his cheek nervously. Not because he thought she’d hate it, or make fun of him, but … It was just kinda silly, and he almost felt ridiculous explaining it to her.

He smiled at her reassurance, letting out a deep breath to just rip the bandage off. “Okay, well.. Nibs thought it would be funny to do a parkour bet with me,” he began to ramble, words jumbling together a bit as he continued, “and I lost the bet soo….” The rest came out sounding like one giant word, similar to when he’d confessed his feeling for Tink to Nibs — “NibsMadeMeGetARaveDaddyTattooOnMyAss.” Well, that probably could have gone better, but as he finished his confession he took another deep breath, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. It had sucked hiding that from Tink, even if he hadn’t been technically lying. Continuing again before she reacted, his words were coming out at a normal pace this time. “So uh… I-I guess if you really wanted to keep the shirt, you could,” he shrugged, “since it’s basically ingrained into my skin now….”

    The explanation Tootles gave started out sensibly enough—a parkour bet with Nibs, sure. Tootles lost, believable. The next bit was somewhat harder to parse out it all came in a rush, and Tink just sat there blinking at her boyfriend for an extra-long second until her brain had done the work of processing that jumble of words into a coherent sentence. Her eyes widened slowly as everything about this entire conversation finally clicked into place, and she covered her hands over her mouth to prevent any sound from escaping. He had asked her not to laugh. Wisely, she hadn’t promised any such thing, but Tessa still wanted to make an effort, for him.

Fawn nodded listening to everything Tink was listing off. Sounded about right for the events in their lives. Though the twin thing was still a loop she wasn’t fully prepared for herself. So she couldn’t imagine what it was like for Tink. “How are you.. I mean with the whole twin situation? Peri seem’s pretty cool from what I’ve gathered. May have already pranked them…” She added with an innocent grin. The news of the adoption though had her jumping out of her seat. “You guys are adopting a cat! Ah. Wow that’s getting pretty serious then huh if you’re getting a pet together? So cute. What are the name options?” 

~

     The question about how she was doing with her whole long-lost twin situation would have earned a thoughtful reply. Apart from the fact that she already loved her sibling like they were the missing half of her and they were having the time of their life catching up on all the missed time together, the situation was pretty complicated and left Tink with a lot of conflicted feelings—mostly about how her parents had lied to her for her entire life. But then Fawn mentioned that she had pranked Peri, and that easily distracted Tessa from her more sensitive emotions. “You didn’t! Ugh, if you scare them away...But I guess that’s one way to be welcomed to the friend group.” As for the pet situation with Tootles, she clarified with heat rising to her cheeks, “He’s getting a cat. I’m just helping him name it! We don’t even live together...but we chose Smokey.”

Misty rolled her eyes, playfully nudging her shoulder to Tink’s. “Not what’s up with me,” she corrected her friend, “What’s up with you?” She was curious to hear how Tink and Tootles had been doing — they’d been official for a little while now, and it seemed that everyone in their friend group was curious to watch their relationship unfold. Misty thought that they were a unique pair, but not in a bad way! She was mostly just nosy and wanting to hear how her friend was doing. Taking a bite of the slice of pizza on her plate, she elaborated once her mouth wasn’t full of food. “I don’t know, how is everything? You have a new boyfriend, a new sibling, like maybe I just wanna hear more!”

~

     Tink smiled as Misty pushed her to discuss both her boyfriend and her sibling, two of the most important people to have entered her life recently. Of course, Tootles hadn’t just come along recently, but her blossoming relationship with him was much newer than their friendship; it had only taken her a few years to look at him in a different light. She couldn’t be happier now that she had. And Peri—Peri was just the most amazing person she never knew she was always missing...Tessa couldn’t resist spilling when Misty was asking about topics that filled her with such excitement. “Okay, fine! Twist my arm...Things are great with Tootles. He’s adopting a kitty and he let me name it...Smokey!”

“Hello!” She yelled back after hearing her name. The cheesiest of grins upon her face looking towards her friend. Sometimes she really just couldn’t help herself. At least she was around a group that was poking and loving each other all at the same time on the daily. “Sorry, it was just too perfect. I promise I wasn’t just here to poke the bear and just run. I mean at least not this time, keep your eyes open though!” She stated with a small laugh. “Just wanted to catch up! I feel like it’s been ages and wanted to see what was new in the tink land.” 

~

     Tink rolled her eyes but gave in and relaxed, finally offering her friend a smile as she requested to catch up. She rubbed the back of her neck where Fawn had touched to warm herself back up as she answered, “Well, there’s not much to report besides the usual—schoolwork since the new semester started, magic studies at Pixie Hollow, making time for my tinkering projects, catching up and bonding with my long-long twin, picking out names for the cat Tootles is gonna adopt...What’s going on with you?”

It was a sweet, peaceful moment, watching Tink first wake up with a smile as she snuggled closer to him. It was undoubtedly the best way to wake up first thing in the morning, beating every other lonely morning he’d had in his apartment since he moved in there. Tootles was perfectly content with laying there all day, never letting the moment end. However, it only seemed to last a second as Tink abruptly sat up, announcing that it was time for breakfast.

A tired laugh escaped Tootles lips, holding his arms out to wrap around Tink’s waist and pulling her back down beside him. “Nooo, never,” he whined playfully, giving her a big hug so she couldn’t sit up again. “Can’t we just lay here forever?” He mumbled, face buried in her neck. “You’re so warm and cozy.”

     She fell back into his arms, giggling, and gave in to at least a few more minutes of peace before getting up for the day. His insistence on staying in bed, cuddled up and warm, could only work as long as his cuteness outweighed her hunger. Tink was a complete sucker for a good snuggle, though. With Tootles’ arms wrapped around her, she practically melted.

It was almost comical, the way that Zarina knew she should have expected this exact type of reaction… and yet she had no been prepared for it at all. God she should have just kept on walking and ignored the other girl all together. Done the exact same thing that Tessa had done to her so many years ago - wash her hands of the girl and just move on with a new life. But Zarina wasn’t built like that. She couldn’t just drop someone and walk away - nor could she really let go of anything, especially not a hurt that festered insider of her like an infected wound. So the mere sight of Tessa alone had brought on too much anger for Z to really ignore. And that anger only grew as the other girl acted dumb - playing everything off as if nothing was wrong between them. Like she had any right to come and try to make small talk. As if this reaction from Zarina isn’t completely warranted. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did a little bit of swearing offend you?” she snapped, voice dripping with sarcasm and an undertone of hatred. This was getting to be too much. Zarina could already feel herself starting to float off the ground and her face was heating up. “Like I said - what do you want? Because I don’t need to deal with any of your bullshit right now, I have places to be.” Not necessarily true - but she wasn’t about to make herself seem like a lone loser who lost everything when Tessa ditched her… even if that is exactly what happened.

~

    The unbridled anger in Zarina’s voice as she snapped at Tessa made her recoil slightly, not offended or hurt by the harshness of her words, but confused. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think her old friend hated her—but maybe that was the thing. Maybe she didn’t know better. It had been a long time since she’d actually spoken to the girl, but she didn’t recall any massive falling out or a reason that Z would have so much disdain for her right now. If there was something she was missing, she wanted to know what it was, have things cleared up so she fix whatever had gone wrong. “I just wanna talk to you,” she replied, realizing the other woman was quickly getting heated and close to losing control over her powers; they were still in public, which meant she had to de-escalate the situation before it could get any worse. But what was she supposed to say if her mere presence seemed to set Zarina off? Tink had always had a hard enough time controlling her own fiery temper—she had little experience dealing with the emotions of other people. What did her friends always do when she started heating up? “Um...maybe we should get some air. Or a drink, we could get something to drink.”

Tootles tried to act casual as Tink sat herself up and moved her legs off of his lap, but it was already too late to try to act casual. She was already onto him, or rather, she was reading into why he didn’t know where the tank top was. Huh .. He didn’t think the tank top mattered that much, but it was actually really cute. Suddenly, he felt guilty for trying to brush off the topic, not realizing how much it meant to her.

Cheeks still blushing, he couldn’t help but smile at her words. “No, i-it does mean something! Actually, I-I still have it —” Tootles was quick to admit, even ready to stand up to grab it out of his closet to prove it to her. He already knew she would ask why he had initially said he didn’t know where it was, and honestly, Tootles could hardly lie to Tink as it was, so it was better to just say it while he had the courage to rather than avoiding it. “Actually, there’s something I need to tell you..” He trailed off, gaze meeting hers. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

     His admittance that he still had the shirt relaxed Tink already; she was pretty sure she had just been overreacting as she tended to do, but Tootles agreeing that the rave was significant for them as a pair made her feel less crazy for being sentimental over a silly shirt. A physical object didn’t mean as much as the memories, after all. But even after he confirmed that he’d kept it, there seemed to be more to the story, which confused her.