Work Text:
"Here it's safe, here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true
Here is the place where I love you..."
Gene and Tina liked doing jigsaw puzzles together.
Tina would always say that she enjoyed organizing all of the puzzle pieces by their color and shape, and challenging herself to put them all together in a way that created a recognizable picture which she knew was hidden somewhere. Tina found this activity to be relaxing after a long day of anxiety and overstimulation that she'd feel when she came back from school after socializing with her classmates. It was her favorite activity to do when it was raining and miserable outside.
Gene just liked having an excuse to spend the day with his older sister.
*
They were spending that rainy Saturday afternoon hidden away in Tina's bedroom and working on a jigsaw puzzle.
Tina had been given their jigsaw puzzle as a late birthday present from her grandfather a few months earlier, and she had forgotten all about it until it fell out of her disorganized closet and onto her bedroom floor earlier that day. It was of a beautiful field of daisies overlooking an old English house. This jigsaw puzzle reminded Gene of a puzzle that ladies at an old folks' retirement home would enjoy spending their afternoon putting together. He thought that those old ladies were right about how they should spend their afternoon, even if Louise thought that they should be doing something that was more exciting.
Gene was sitting on Tina's bedroom floor as he looked to see where a flower puzzle piece that he was holding belonged on their jigsaw puzzle. Tina was closely studying the reference picture on the box that their puzzle had come in.
He could hear raindrops falling against Tina's bedroom window and feel warmth coming from his older sister.
*
When Gene and Tina were together they would both become intensely focused on a task that they were trying to complete. They would ignore everything else that was around them.
This was incredibly useful when they were trying to complete their puzzle of a field of daisies overlooking an old English house in a timely manner, and less useful when trying to convince their family that they hadn't died when neither of them had said a word to anybody in hours. They would eventually hear their mother shouting at them from their kitchen where she had finished cooking dinner to ask them if they were still alive and ready to eat dinner, and Gene would shout to her that they needed five more minutes to finish this section of their jigsaw puzzle before they ate. They had a system.
Louise always said that Gene and Tina would get lost inside their own world whenever they were together, and that nobody else was ever allowed in. They understood each other so completely.
Gene wondered if that hurt Louise's feelings.
*
They were both silent sitting together on Tina's bedroom floor and working on their jigsaw puzzle. There was an occasional sound of acknowledgement when one of them would finish a section of their puzzle, or find a puzzle piece that had previously been missing.
It was peaceful. They both needed to spend this time together after they'd had a long and stressful week at school.
"I think that this piece is part of the house," Gene informed Tina as he placed it into one of her carefully arranged and labeled piles of puzzle pieces. They went from smallest to largest and were arranged by her into color, shape and pattern.
In comparison to her, Gene's preferred method of studying each puzzle piece as he worked and trying to see where it would fit within the bigger picture was a lot more unconventional. He liked it that way. They both had different methods when it came to putting together their jigsaw puzzle, but when they finally finished it would still be the same picture that they'd worked on together. That was what Gene cared about more than anything.
"Thanks," Tina mumbled to Gene without looking up from her latest pile of carefully-sorted puzzle pieces which were supposed to be all of the different petals that belonged to the daisies in the field.
They were white, yellow and pink.
*
"We're almost finished," Gene said as he looked down at their jigsaw puzzle with nervous anticipation. There was only a single unplaced piece of their puzzle left, and after that they would be finished after spending their entire day together in Tina's bedroom sitting on her floor. Finally getting to finish their puzzle and seeing what the completed picture looked like after all their hard work had always been Gene's favorite aspect of doing a jigsaw puzzle. "Who should put down the last piece of the puzzle? Should we flip a coin? Ask Mom and Dad to decide? Or we could ask Louise if she wants to do the honor..."
"You can put down the last puzzle piece," Tina said. She looked over at Gene and gave him the last piece of their puzzle before she stood up from where she'd been sitting on her bedroom floor. "I don't mind. You DID volunteer to spend an entire Saturday doing a puzzle of a field of daisies overlooking an old English house with me instead of playing with Louise or working in the restaurant with Mom and Dad, so it only seems fair that you should get to do it."
Gene smiled at his older sister before he carefully placed the last piece of their jigsaw puzzle and looked down at their finished creation.
He saw a field of daisies overlooking an old English house, and he saw his sister.