Fic: Protect and Survive: It's Only Just Begun (Stargate)
Title: It's Only Just Begun
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: het
Summary: January 1995, shortly before the wedding of Charlie Williamson and Anna Lorne. This is how Evan Lorne saved it. Mostly singlehandly
A/N: Righty-o, second part to Coming Clean and the story of how wet behind the ears Second Lieutenant Evan Lorne saves the wedding of his sister. I admit, I love writing the gang in their early twenties. They're all so young and so cute and I really just want to cuddle all of them. Awww!
It’s Only Just Begun
“And I wanna see what it’s all about
And I wanna live, wanna give something back
Don’t tell me that it’s over
It’s only just begun
Don't tell me that it’s over
Or that this song is sung
The song is sung.”
Amy MacDonald, “Don’t Tell Me That It’s Over”
She’s done. So, so, so fucking done. The entire preparations for this fucking wedding were one exhausting and unnecessary thing after another. From her mother continuously questioning whether she is really ready to get married at twenty, if she knows what she’s doing and if she, maybe won’t reconsider after all to Charlie’s mother trying to interfere with each and every little thing, she’s so done with this wedding.
In the beginning, she’d thought that the struggle she and Charlie fought to convince his mother that the Broadmoor definitely wasn’t their preferred location for the reception was the biggest thing that could happen but boy, had she been wrong. And Dad hadn’t helped much either, what with his well-meaning “advice” that really, darling, it’s hard to be a soldier’s wife, do you really want to chain yourself to a man’s career for the rest of your life?
And then, then Charlie had to go and make it all implode. Explode. Whatever. Right into her face, in any case. “No idea how much my family’s worth” her fucking ass. “That’s not the life I want” yeah right. She doesn’t care if it’s what he wants or not, it’s still what and who he is and okay, she understands why he never told Evan and Tom about it but God, she’s the person he’s going to marry, to spend the rest of his life with and…
A knock. She actually growls. “I told you to stay the fuck away!”
Another knock, this time harder, more of a pounding. Wow, Charlie must be really pissed off.
Well, good. So is she. “Leave me the hell alone!”
Silence. So at least that… “It’s not Charlie.” It’s… ahaha, no, that can’t be. He’s not supposed to get here before tomorrow morning. No way that’s her idiot bro… “It’s just me, your idiot brother. Now open the damn door or I’ll call you Anna Banana for the rest of your life! The entire rest.”
Okay. That’s a pretty serious threat, and ever since they made an officer out of her idiot brother, he had this alarming tendency to not mince words and threats. In a split second decision, she leaves her packing be for a moment and walks over to the door and opens it. It reveals indeed her idiot big brother, dressed in… what must be the biggest, thickest jacket she ever saw, a scarf still loosely wound around his neck and a beanie on his head.
She really, really doesn’t want to but oh God, she can’t help herself. She has to laugh. “Oh God,” she can squeeze between two bouts of laughter, “you lived in this place for four years.”
That’s really all she can get out because the positively grumpy expression in his face just makes her laugh harder while she waves him in. He comes in, the steps in his heavy boots sounding like he’s stomping and… no, he is stomping. He doesn’t only look grumpy, he is grumpy, and it wasn’t just her teasing that made him so. Evan and she had had a very rocky relationship, right up until he left home for the Academy, but she still knows her brother, even though she couldn’t stand him for the first fifteen years of her life. She knows very well what he looks like when he’s seriously pissed off about something.
And why does he keep rubbing the knuckles of his right hand?
“So,” he says, still wearing the frown and the ridiculously heavy jacket, “you’re packing?”
No, I’m just reordering my suitcase is the first thing she wants to say but yeah, when he’s in that kind of mood… “Looks like it, yes.”
He nods, a little absentmindedly, rubbing his knuckles a little more forcefully until obviously forcing himself to stop. “Want me to take you back to the City right away or do you want to sleep a night on it?”
…wait, what?
She blinks and then realizes that he must have met Charlie somewhere between the car and her room and that he must have learned from Charlie that she cancelled the wedding. And his only reaction is that he doesn’t ask, doesn’t judge, doesn’t try to make her reconsider. Just asks her whether she wants to go home now or needs another night. She must have something in her eyes because his features becoming a little blurry with all the sudden moisture in her eyes. “I…”
“Oh God, Berkeley, don’t tear up on me now.” Virtually the worst moment he could have chosen for calling her by the nickname he’d given her in her freshman year at the private Christian high school their mother had forced them both to attend by way of “I teach public school. I know what’s going on there.” when she’d decided that Berkeley with its history of free thinking was the only college she ever wanted to attend. She’d hated that nickname and then she’d missed hearing him say it so he’d taken to starting all his letters from the Academy with “Hey Berkeley!” and oh God, she is tearing up.
She takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I… it’s just… it’s just good to see you, Blues.” When he’d pinned the infamous Berkeley on her, he’d already been wanting to go Air Force for at least four years, so she’d instantaneously returned the favor and pinned “Air Force Blues” on him and the girls in her class had taken it up because each and every one of them had been head over heels with his blue eyes and well, it just kind of stuck.
He then moves to hug her for a moment and she breathes in his faint scent - the cologne their father uses, too, mixed with stale coffee and a whiff of something that might or might not be jet fuel - and it gets even harder not to end up a crying wreck in front of him. “It’s good to see you, too, Anna,” he tells her and when he lets go of her, he adds, “And good that I creamed that asshole just a few minutes ago.”
Which gives her enough pause to take a step back. Just like that, the tears that threatened to spill over just a moment ago are done and she narrows her eyes at him. “Evan Alexander Lorne. What did you do?”
He shrugs, apparently wholly unashamed of whatever is going to follow. “Put Charlie in the hurt locker is what I did.”
He… he what? “Please tell me you didn’t just hit my fiancé.”
Evan shrugs again. “Sure did. Fair and square in the face, just like he deserved.” He frowns again. “Coming to think of it, that was even more than the bastard deserved.”
More than… he just hit Charlie! Decent, peaceful, diplomatic Charlie who would never resort to unsanctioned, unnecessary violence. Charlie who wouldn’t even fight her over her decision to cancel their wedding. She feels her hands curl into tight fists. “Why, in the name of everything that is holy, did you fucking punch my fiancé in his fucking face?” She kind of hopes he missed the fact that she’d called Charlie her fiancé - as opposed to, for example, ex-fiancé - because damn, that was the second time she slipped like that.
“Well, because that asshole cheated on you!” Now agitation seems to have taken the place of irritation. Unfortunately, it explains basically nothing.
Because if there is anything, anything, that Charlie would never do to her it’s cheating on her. “How did you even get that idea?” She’d thought Evan had finally gotten over the fact that one of his best friends - any man, really - is in a steady relationship with his sister and that they decided to get married the earliest they could.
Apparently, she’d been wrong.
“Because he fucking said so!” Ahahahaha, yeah, no, he didn’t. He might have lied - or at least omitted a few truths - about the real wealth of his family but he’d never tell anyone that he cheated on her.
Not when he never did that, after all. “He said so? Second Lieutenant Charles Walter Williamson III told you of all people that he cheated on me? In those exact words?”
She can see that Evan’s first instinct is to yell that yes, that’s exactly what Charlie said but then, after a moment, his inherent honesty visibly wins over and he lowers his gaze, clearly contrite, even though he doesn’t want to be. “Not… in those exact words.”
And… that’s it. She tries not to sigh. “And what were his words?” This is worse than pulling teeth, good God.
“Well,” Evan says and draws out the vowel until the word is nearly unrecognizable, “it was… something along the lines of… telling you something he shouldn’t have told you?”
Right. And how does Evan Lorne, one of the three smartest graduates of the United States Air Force Academy’s class of ’94, come to the conclusion that that means that one of his best friends is cheating on his sister? By now, she has a very hard time not to howl with frustration. Instead, she tries to treat this as an exercise in patience. Patience she should have had with Charlie but it can’t be helped now. “Which part of that made you come to the conclusion that naturally, that means that he must be cheating on me?”
Evan doesn’t answer right away. Instead, it looks as if… as if he gave in to something, or something became too great to bear. His shoulders sack and he pulls the beanie off his head in a kind of defeated gesture, even goes so far as finally taking off that damn jacket, before sinking down on her side of the bed, next to her open suitcase. He doesn’t look at her when he finally speaks again, sounding painfully flat and defeated, “Caught Hazel and Gopher last night.” Oh no. She wants to say something but he keeps on talking, in that same terribly flat voice, “Third time this month, even though she promised me she’d stopped seeing him. Told her sorry but she was above my pay grade and just left her place. Begs the question how such a dumbass like me could ever even graduate from the Academy, huh?”
There’s a humorless laugh from him, and that is probably worse than if he’d had ignored having to be a manly man just for a moment and gone to cry on her shoulder. She’d never gotten to know the girl he’d started dating only days after arriving for undergrad pilot training at Columbus but God, had he fallen hard. He’d tried so hard to be casual about it in his letters but she’d seen right through his usual smokescreen of omitting most of the truth.
If she’s honest, though, she’s glad that he’s finally broken up with the girl. Three months ago, he’d told her in confidence, so that their mother never learned about it, that he’d caught her kissing one of his instructors - the aforementioned Gopher guy - at some official squadron function or other. She’d told him that stuff like that sometimes happens and that that’s no reason to end the relationship, if he really means business about it but when he’d told her that he’d caught them getting it on heavily in Gopher’s car, on base, only two weeks later she’d urged him to end that thing.
The fact that he still kept going on with it, even though, rationally, he agreed with her, told her very clearly just how much he’d fallen for this Hazel person and it hurts her to see him so dejected. However, “I’m sorry you had to deal with that, Blues. She didn’t deserve you, not even a second of your time, and you did the right thing with calling it quits. But… that’s not what Charlie did.”
He looks at her, the beanie still clutched tightly in his hands, as if he needs something to hold on to. “So what did he do for you to cancel your wedding?”
That’s a good question, actually. For a moment, she’s tempted to just tell him everything - about how Charlie never really told them anything about his family, how he deliberately held back with the truth about the people who raised him, how his family could very well own half the property in this country and possibly a few others, too - but then she realizes that as much as she wants to… it’s not her place. She still thinks he should tell his friends and his friends should know but she also has a pretty good idea of why he never told them, after all. Charlie is probably the only man in the entire world who’s thoroughly ashamed of the huge legacy he’s going to have to inherit one day.
She fumbles for words as she sits down next to him, pushing her suitcase a little further down the bed. “I… it wasn’t exactly like Charlie said. It was more like he told me something he should have told me a long time ago, and I got upset about not having known about it for such a long time.”
That makes Evan frown. “So what was it that he should have told you long ago? Something Moore and I knew?”
She shakes her head. God, this isn’t getting any easier. “No, it’s… Look, it’s not my place to tell you. It’s just… it’s huge, and it has an impact on who he is and how we are… how he is going to live his life.”
Okay, that probably made it sound even stranger. And yeah, Evan’s frown deepens. “Look, Anna, I’m just trying to understand… is it something bad? Like, I don’t know, an illness or something?”
No, oh God, no, thank God, it isn’t. She couldn’t even think about… no, oh God, imagining Charlie with an illness as live changing as that… God no. Actually, she doesn’t want to, can’t, imagine Charlie as anything other than the gentle, immensely healthy, immensely smart person that he is. She’s the one looking away now. “No, nothing of the sort. Just… difficult, and I just wished I’d known earlier about it is all.”
If she’s honest… that really is all there is to it. She’d just wished she’d known earlier, had had more time to come to terms with the fact that she’s about to marry a very, very rich guy with very, very rich parents who probably expect stuff of her she will never be able to fulfill. More time to realize that whoever he is and however much money his family is and whatever his parents are going to expect of her as the wife of the sole heir of their legacy, it’s never going to change the fact that he’s the only man she’ll ever want, exactly the way he is, with every little ounce of baggage that he carries around with him.
Aw, shit. She blew it. She really, really… “Are you sure you’re not just trying to protect him by making something up when he really just is a cheating…”
“For the last time, no!” She’s had it now with the fucking accusations of cheating. “Charlie didn’t cheat on me! That man has the heart of a perpetually confused golden retriever!” It’s true, he does. Even though she knows that he always pulled more than his weight in any war-fighting endeavor he and his fellow cadets had to go through, Charlie Williamson is really the most gentle, most loyal, most easy to confuse guy she ever met. “Cheating is the last thing Charlie would ever do. God, how can you even think something like that about one of your best friends!”
“Then why,” uh-oh, Evan’s getting agitated again, and this time it’s not directed at Charlie, “in God’s name, did you cancel the fucking wedding?”
Because she was suddenly so afraid that she would never measure up, never be enough for the world that Charlie comes from, that he will inevitably have to go back to in regular intervals, even if he doesn’t want to. Because she was afraid that once he realized what living on second lieutenant’s pay and a rather meager scholarship really meant, Charlie would make her responsible for pushing himself in that direction, that he would hate her for that. Because she was afraid he would stop loving her if he realized that she would never fit into the world he came from.
She fiddles with the belt of her bathing rope, a thick lump stuck in her throat. “It’s complicated.”
“Compli... It’s complicated, she says.” Why is he being an idiot about this, now?
“It is,” she insists.
“Compli... okay.” Okay? Okay what? “Here’s the thing. Do you think Charlie loves you?” What kind of stupid question is that, anyway?
Alright, a pretty good one. At this point, she wouldn’t be surprised if it were Charlie who’d cancel the wedding once and for all. But yeah, that doesn’t change one important thing. “I know he does.”
“Okay, fine, good.” Alright, she knows that slightly annoyed look. Evan’s mind latched onto something and he’s starting to get impatient because he’s three steps ahead of her already. There’s a reason why a dumbass like him could graduate with honors from the Academy, after all. “Do you love Charlie?”
She frowns, still not sure where this is going. “Yes, of course.”
He’s standing now, energy finally flowing back into him, leading him to gesture a little wider than usual, acting a little more erratically. “Do you want to love him, cherish him, good times, bad times, etc., etc. until death do us part?”
Well… “I do.”
“Congratulations, you may kiss the bride. Celebrations, confetti, alcohol.” Or maybe that’s just the driving fever after eighteen hours on the road with Thomas Moore.
She shakes her head, not willing to accept so effortless that things are going to work out exactly like that. She, did, after all, just throw out the guy who wants to marry her, in a fit of insecurity and fear. “Evan, it’s not that easy.”
“Yes, Berkeley. Yes, it actually is.” It almost scares her of how serious he just sounded. He’s only two years older, and for a moment he sounded as if it were ten years, as if he had seen so much more in life, knew so much more. As if he knew exactly what he wanted in life. “You love a guy, he loves you, you want to spend the rest of your lives together, you get married. Just like that.”
But it’s not that easy. Not when you just did a very stupid thing to the man you love. To the man who, hopefully, still loves you. “Look, I know what you’re trying and…”
“I’m not trying anything, Anna.” No? Well, that’s not what it’s looking like to her. “I’ve seen you with each other, right from the first moment you two met.” Yeah, and right from the first time he’d made it clear that he would decapitate any guy daring to go out with his sis… “Every time he came to California, every time you came to The Springs, that one time on Nantucket and yes, I also at least know about Oregon.”
He… what? “How the hell…”
He rolls his eyes. “Big brother, officer of the United States Air Force, remember?” Yes, but what does that have to do with finding out about that super secret trip to Oregon she went on with Charlie last year? “Also, I’m friends with a certain Thomas Moore, computer science major?” Right. That explains a lot. “Anyway, I’ve seen you two, I’ve listened to Charlie, I’ve listened to you and quite frankly, if you two don’t tie the knot in three days, I’m gonna make you.” Oh God, she hates it when he gets all authoritative. “I’m gonna use that ceremonial sword I bought for the occasion and make you say “I do” to each other, just watch me.”
She makes a face and replies, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “What, no shotgun?”
At that, he shrugs again and she can see the grin threatening to break through. At least he seems to be over his break-up, then. Woohoo. “I’m more of a traditional kind of guy.”
She snorts. “Traditional guy, my fucking ass.”
“Language, young lady.” She can’t believe he has the gall to waggle his finger into her face just like Sister Theodora, the teacher she hated most back at Convent & Sacred Heart. She nearly jumps his throat.
But yeah, not helping. So instead she sticks out her tongue and rolls her eyes, growling, “Yeah, yeah,” just like she always did with Terrible Theodora.
Thankfully, he doesn’t punish her with another letter to her parents, like Terrible Theodora but just gives a kind of weary sigh. “Look, you love him.” Yes, she does. After everything is said and done, she still does. “And he loves you.” Right now, she can only hope so. “Whatever it is, you’re gonna work through it. In three days, Dad’s gonna walk you down the aisle, Mom’s gonna need a whole box of tissues, you’ll say “I do” and you’ll be happy. It really is as easy as that.”
She wants to believe that. She wants to believe that just because he’s her big brother, everything he says is true and everything will work out in the end. She still wants, despite everything, to marry Charlie and be happy with him until the end of her days, etc., etc. She wants Charlie, despite the money and the property and the family. She wants the whole “till death do us part” thing, the shared bank account, the patient’s provision, the on-base living. She wants it all so bad.
Trying not to sound too pitiable, she asks, “Promise?”
She half expects Evan to grin and make some quip or other but all he does is nod solemnly and raise his right hand, to say, no mocking whatsoever in his tone, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Right. Just for a moment, she allows herself to be twelve again, right after the neighbor’s boy, her first crush moved to a different state without even telling her goodbye and her big brother had had a rare moment not being an idiot when he’d seen her sitting in their backyard garden, trying so hard not to cry. He’d sat down next to her and told her, in the infinite wisdom of a fourteen-year-old boy, that Carl Parsons was a big whopping moron and that it was no use crying over a guy who didn’t appreciate you because someday, there would be one who would and they’d be happy. Much happier than she’d have ever been with Carl Parsons the Whopping Moron. Against all odds, her idiot brother had been right that day.
That is, you know, if she doesn’t go on ruining it anyway. It’s her turn to look contrite now. “You know, maybe I should… maybe I should reconsider this whole packing thing.”
Now he does laugh, even if it’s closer to an amused snort. “Yeah. While you do that, I’m going to look for Charlie. I have a bad feeling about leaving him alone with Moore.”
Yeah, well, who wouldn’t. Charlie and Tom were involuntary roommates at the Academy for two years and aside from one memorable meltdown on Charlie’s side they’re probably still talking about in hushed tones in the hallowed hallways of the Academy, they’d gotten along surprisingly well. At one point, Charlie hat even confided in her that he did miss Tom during the guy’s short stint as an exchange cadet at West Point and well, the first and only alcohol induced blackout Charlie had ever had had been courtesy of Thomas Moore and the generous house bar the Williamsons kept at the pool house of Nantucket Main, as they like to call the slightly bigger Nantucket house. She throws her brother a mean look. “Maybe you shouldn’t have left him alone with Tom in the first place, then.”
Which… was a stupid thing to say but thankfully, Evan foregoes telling her that she shouldn’t have thrown out Charlie in the first place and instead tells her, “Maybe I shouldn’t.” Then he makes for the door and she follows him. Before he opens it to leave, he rolls his eyes again and says, “Okay, I guess I need to see that Moore hasn’t already bought half the bar to drown his broken heart in or something.”
Oh no, not another broken male heart. She can barely deal with one, especially if one’s her brother’s heart and the other’s the heart of a quasi adopted brother. “Please don’t tell me he dumped Whatshername, too.”
Evan just rubs his neck and rolls his eyes again. “Long story, just ask him.”
Yeah, ahahaha, right, “Most definitely not.” At that, Evan shrugs again and turns to leave but something inside of her makes her move forward and put her arms around him, burying her face in the crook of his neck and murmuring, “Thanks for coming, Blues.” For a moment, he doesn’t react but then she feels him hug her back, surprisingly fierce and the only thing keeping her from tearing up after all is telling him, “Just remember: if he ends up drunk off his ass, he’s your responsibility. Don’t even think about dumping him on my doorstep.”
She feels him laugh again, this time a real, genuine laugh she can feel vibrating through his body, followed by a murmured, sincere through and through, “Yeah, I love you, too, Berkeley.”
There’s one more almost teary moment before she’s kind enough to let him preserve what is left of his manly dignity and lets go of him to give him a little shove out of her door, telling him, “Try not to go blinding drunk, Mom and Dad will be here tomorrow and I’m not willing to make excuses for any of you feeling under the weather.”
His only answer is turning around and giving her the finger before sauntering down the hall. She rolls her eyes and shuts the door, turning around to see her open suitcase still on the bed, a little haphazard now and walking slowly back she makes a final decision to shut it and then pull it off the bed, putting it away to not use it again until after she’s officially Mrs. Anna Williamson.
She can figure out everything else - how to be Mrs. Anna Williamson the military wife, how to be Mrs. Anna Williamson the heir’s wife, how to be Anna, married to Charlie - later because if everything goes well, they will have a lifetime to figure out how to be who they need to be. And so help her God, everything will go well, or she will borrow Evan’s sword and take matters in her own hands. Is that really too much to ask?
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: het
Summary: January 1995, shortly before the wedding of Charlie Williamson and Anna Lorne. This is how Evan Lorne saved it. Mostly singlehandly
A/N: Righty-o, second part to Coming Clean and the story of how wet behind the ears Second Lieutenant Evan Lorne saves the wedding of his sister. I admit, I love writing the gang in their early twenties. They're all so young and so cute and I really just want to cuddle all of them. Awww!
It’s Only Just Begun
“And I wanna see what it’s all about
And I wanna live, wanna give something back
Don’t tell me that it’s over
It’s only just begun
Don't tell me that it’s over
Or that this song is sung
The song is sung.”
Amy MacDonald, “Don’t Tell Me That It’s Over”
She’s done. So, so, so fucking done. The entire preparations for this fucking wedding were one exhausting and unnecessary thing after another. From her mother continuously questioning whether she is really ready to get married at twenty, if she knows what she’s doing and if she, maybe won’t reconsider after all to Charlie’s mother trying to interfere with each and every little thing, she’s so done with this wedding.
In the beginning, she’d thought that the struggle she and Charlie fought to convince his mother that the Broadmoor definitely wasn’t their preferred location for the reception was the biggest thing that could happen but boy, had she been wrong. And Dad hadn’t helped much either, what with his well-meaning “advice” that really, darling, it’s hard to be a soldier’s wife, do you really want to chain yourself to a man’s career for the rest of your life?
And then, then Charlie had to go and make it all implode. Explode. Whatever. Right into her face, in any case. “No idea how much my family’s worth” her fucking ass. “That’s not the life I want” yeah right. She doesn’t care if it’s what he wants or not, it’s still what and who he is and okay, she understands why he never told Evan and Tom about it but God, she’s the person he’s going to marry, to spend the rest of his life with and…
A knock. She actually growls. “I told you to stay the fuck away!”
Another knock, this time harder, more of a pounding. Wow, Charlie must be really pissed off.
Well, good. So is she. “Leave me the hell alone!”
Silence. So at least that… “It’s not Charlie.” It’s… ahaha, no, that can’t be. He’s not supposed to get here before tomorrow morning. No way that’s her idiot bro… “It’s just me, your idiot brother. Now open the damn door or I’ll call you Anna Banana for the rest of your life! The entire rest.”
Okay. That’s a pretty serious threat, and ever since they made an officer out of her idiot brother, he had this alarming tendency to not mince words and threats. In a split second decision, she leaves her packing be for a moment and walks over to the door and opens it. It reveals indeed her idiot big brother, dressed in… what must be the biggest, thickest jacket she ever saw, a scarf still loosely wound around his neck and a beanie on his head.
She really, really doesn’t want to but oh God, she can’t help herself. She has to laugh. “Oh God,” she can squeeze between two bouts of laughter, “you lived in this place for four years.”
That’s really all she can get out because the positively grumpy expression in his face just makes her laugh harder while she waves him in. He comes in, the steps in his heavy boots sounding like he’s stomping and… no, he is stomping. He doesn’t only look grumpy, he is grumpy, and it wasn’t just her teasing that made him so. Evan and she had had a very rocky relationship, right up until he left home for the Academy, but she still knows her brother, even though she couldn’t stand him for the first fifteen years of her life. She knows very well what he looks like when he’s seriously pissed off about something.
And why does he keep rubbing the knuckles of his right hand?
“So,” he says, still wearing the frown and the ridiculously heavy jacket, “you’re packing?”
No, I’m just reordering my suitcase is the first thing she wants to say but yeah, when he’s in that kind of mood… “Looks like it, yes.”
He nods, a little absentmindedly, rubbing his knuckles a little more forcefully until obviously forcing himself to stop. “Want me to take you back to the City right away or do you want to sleep a night on it?”
…wait, what?
She blinks and then realizes that he must have met Charlie somewhere between the car and her room and that he must have learned from Charlie that she cancelled the wedding. And his only reaction is that he doesn’t ask, doesn’t judge, doesn’t try to make her reconsider. Just asks her whether she wants to go home now or needs another night. She must have something in her eyes because his features becoming a little blurry with all the sudden moisture in her eyes. “I…”
“Oh God, Berkeley, don’t tear up on me now.” Virtually the worst moment he could have chosen for calling her by the nickname he’d given her in her freshman year at the private Christian high school their mother had forced them both to attend by way of “I teach public school. I know what’s going on there.” when she’d decided that Berkeley with its history of free thinking was the only college she ever wanted to attend. She’d hated that nickname and then she’d missed hearing him say it so he’d taken to starting all his letters from the Academy with “Hey Berkeley!” and oh God, she is tearing up.
She takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I… it’s just… it’s just good to see you, Blues.” When he’d pinned the infamous Berkeley on her, he’d already been wanting to go Air Force for at least four years, so she’d instantaneously returned the favor and pinned “Air Force Blues” on him and the girls in her class had taken it up because each and every one of them had been head over heels with his blue eyes and well, it just kind of stuck.
He then moves to hug her for a moment and she breathes in his faint scent - the cologne their father uses, too, mixed with stale coffee and a whiff of something that might or might not be jet fuel - and it gets even harder not to end up a crying wreck in front of him. “It’s good to see you, too, Anna,” he tells her and when he lets go of her, he adds, “And good that I creamed that asshole just a few minutes ago.”
Which gives her enough pause to take a step back. Just like that, the tears that threatened to spill over just a moment ago are done and she narrows her eyes at him. “Evan Alexander Lorne. What did you do?”
He shrugs, apparently wholly unashamed of whatever is going to follow. “Put Charlie in the hurt locker is what I did.”
He… he what? “Please tell me you didn’t just hit my fiancé.”
Evan shrugs again. “Sure did. Fair and square in the face, just like he deserved.” He frowns again. “Coming to think of it, that was even more than the bastard deserved.”
More than… he just hit Charlie! Decent, peaceful, diplomatic Charlie who would never resort to unsanctioned, unnecessary violence. Charlie who wouldn’t even fight her over her decision to cancel their wedding. She feels her hands curl into tight fists. “Why, in the name of everything that is holy, did you fucking punch my fiancé in his fucking face?” She kind of hopes he missed the fact that she’d called Charlie her fiancé - as opposed to, for example, ex-fiancé - because damn, that was the second time she slipped like that.
“Well, because that asshole cheated on you!” Now agitation seems to have taken the place of irritation. Unfortunately, it explains basically nothing.
Because if there is anything, anything, that Charlie would never do to her it’s cheating on her. “How did you even get that idea?” She’d thought Evan had finally gotten over the fact that one of his best friends - any man, really - is in a steady relationship with his sister and that they decided to get married the earliest they could.
Apparently, she’d been wrong.
“Because he fucking said so!” Ahahahaha, yeah, no, he didn’t. He might have lied - or at least omitted a few truths - about the real wealth of his family but he’d never tell anyone that he cheated on her.
Not when he never did that, after all. “He said so? Second Lieutenant Charles Walter Williamson III told you of all people that he cheated on me? In those exact words?”
She can see that Evan’s first instinct is to yell that yes, that’s exactly what Charlie said but then, after a moment, his inherent honesty visibly wins over and he lowers his gaze, clearly contrite, even though he doesn’t want to be. “Not… in those exact words.”
And… that’s it. She tries not to sigh. “And what were his words?” This is worse than pulling teeth, good God.
“Well,” Evan says and draws out the vowel until the word is nearly unrecognizable, “it was… something along the lines of… telling you something he shouldn’t have told you?”
Right. And how does Evan Lorne, one of the three smartest graduates of the United States Air Force Academy’s class of ’94, come to the conclusion that that means that one of his best friends is cheating on his sister? By now, she has a very hard time not to howl with frustration. Instead, she tries to treat this as an exercise in patience. Patience she should have had with Charlie but it can’t be helped now. “Which part of that made you come to the conclusion that naturally, that means that he must be cheating on me?”
Evan doesn’t answer right away. Instead, it looks as if… as if he gave in to something, or something became too great to bear. His shoulders sack and he pulls the beanie off his head in a kind of defeated gesture, even goes so far as finally taking off that damn jacket, before sinking down on her side of the bed, next to her open suitcase. He doesn’t look at her when he finally speaks again, sounding painfully flat and defeated, “Caught Hazel and Gopher last night.” Oh no. She wants to say something but he keeps on talking, in that same terribly flat voice, “Third time this month, even though she promised me she’d stopped seeing him. Told her sorry but she was above my pay grade and just left her place. Begs the question how such a dumbass like me could ever even graduate from the Academy, huh?”
There’s a humorless laugh from him, and that is probably worse than if he’d had ignored having to be a manly man just for a moment and gone to cry on her shoulder. She’d never gotten to know the girl he’d started dating only days after arriving for undergrad pilot training at Columbus but God, had he fallen hard. He’d tried so hard to be casual about it in his letters but she’d seen right through his usual smokescreen of omitting most of the truth.
If she’s honest, though, she’s glad that he’s finally broken up with the girl. Three months ago, he’d told her in confidence, so that their mother never learned about it, that he’d caught her kissing one of his instructors - the aforementioned Gopher guy - at some official squadron function or other. She’d told him that stuff like that sometimes happens and that that’s no reason to end the relationship, if he really means business about it but when he’d told her that he’d caught them getting it on heavily in Gopher’s car, on base, only two weeks later she’d urged him to end that thing.
The fact that he still kept going on with it, even though, rationally, he agreed with her, told her very clearly just how much he’d fallen for this Hazel person and it hurts her to see him so dejected. However, “I’m sorry you had to deal with that, Blues. She didn’t deserve you, not even a second of your time, and you did the right thing with calling it quits. But… that’s not what Charlie did.”
He looks at her, the beanie still clutched tightly in his hands, as if he needs something to hold on to. “So what did he do for you to cancel your wedding?”
That’s a good question, actually. For a moment, she’s tempted to just tell him everything - about how Charlie never really told them anything about his family, how he deliberately held back with the truth about the people who raised him, how his family could very well own half the property in this country and possibly a few others, too - but then she realizes that as much as she wants to… it’s not her place. She still thinks he should tell his friends and his friends should know but she also has a pretty good idea of why he never told them, after all. Charlie is probably the only man in the entire world who’s thoroughly ashamed of the huge legacy he’s going to have to inherit one day.
She fumbles for words as she sits down next to him, pushing her suitcase a little further down the bed. “I… it wasn’t exactly like Charlie said. It was more like he told me something he should have told me a long time ago, and I got upset about not having known about it for such a long time.”
That makes Evan frown. “So what was it that he should have told you long ago? Something Moore and I knew?”
She shakes her head. God, this isn’t getting any easier. “No, it’s… Look, it’s not my place to tell you. It’s just… it’s huge, and it has an impact on who he is and how we are… how he is going to live his life.”
Okay, that probably made it sound even stranger. And yeah, Evan’s frown deepens. “Look, Anna, I’m just trying to understand… is it something bad? Like, I don’t know, an illness or something?”
No, oh God, no, thank God, it isn’t. She couldn’t even think about… no, oh God, imagining Charlie with an illness as live changing as that… God no. Actually, she doesn’t want to, can’t, imagine Charlie as anything other than the gentle, immensely healthy, immensely smart person that he is. She’s the one looking away now. “No, nothing of the sort. Just… difficult, and I just wished I’d known earlier about it is all.”
If she’s honest… that really is all there is to it. She’d just wished she’d known earlier, had had more time to come to terms with the fact that she’s about to marry a very, very rich guy with very, very rich parents who probably expect stuff of her she will never be able to fulfill. More time to realize that whoever he is and however much money his family is and whatever his parents are going to expect of her as the wife of the sole heir of their legacy, it’s never going to change the fact that he’s the only man she’ll ever want, exactly the way he is, with every little ounce of baggage that he carries around with him.
Aw, shit. She blew it. She really, really… “Are you sure you’re not just trying to protect him by making something up when he really just is a cheating…”
“For the last time, no!” She’s had it now with the fucking accusations of cheating. “Charlie didn’t cheat on me! That man has the heart of a perpetually confused golden retriever!” It’s true, he does. Even though she knows that he always pulled more than his weight in any war-fighting endeavor he and his fellow cadets had to go through, Charlie Williamson is really the most gentle, most loyal, most easy to confuse guy she ever met. “Cheating is the last thing Charlie would ever do. God, how can you even think something like that about one of your best friends!”
“Then why,” uh-oh, Evan’s getting agitated again, and this time it’s not directed at Charlie, “in God’s name, did you cancel the fucking wedding?”
Because she was suddenly so afraid that she would never measure up, never be enough for the world that Charlie comes from, that he will inevitably have to go back to in regular intervals, even if he doesn’t want to. Because she was afraid that once he realized what living on second lieutenant’s pay and a rather meager scholarship really meant, Charlie would make her responsible for pushing himself in that direction, that he would hate her for that. Because she was afraid he would stop loving her if he realized that she would never fit into the world he came from.
She fiddles with the belt of her bathing rope, a thick lump stuck in her throat. “It’s complicated.”
“Compli... It’s complicated, she says.” Why is he being an idiot about this, now?
“It is,” she insists.
“Compli... okay.” Okay? Okay what? “Here’s the thing. Do you think Charlie loves you?” What kind of stupid question is that, anyway?
Alright, a pretty good one. At this point, she wouldn’t be surprised if it were Charlie who’d cancel the wedding once and for all. But yeah, that doesn’t change one important thing. “I know he does.”
“Okay, fine, good.” Alright, she knows that slightly annoyed look. Evan’s mind latched onto something and he’s starting to get impatient because he’s three steps ahead of her already. There’s a reason why a dumbass like him could graduate with honors from the Academy, after all. “Do you love Charlie?”
She frowns, still not sure where this is going. “Yes, of course.”
He’s standing now, energy finally flowing back into him, leading him to gesture a little wider than usual, acting a little more erratically. “Do you want to love him, cherish him, good times, bad times, etc., etc. until death do us part?”
Well… “I do.”
“Congratulations, you may kiss the bride. Celebrations, confetti, alcohol.” Or maybe that’s just the driving fever after eighteen hours on the road with Thomas Moore.
She shakes her head, not willing to accept so effortless that things are going to work out exactly like that. She, did, after all, just throw out the guy who wants to marry her, in a fit of insecurity and fear. “Evan, it’s not that easy.”
“Yes, Berkeley. Yes, it actually is.” It almost scares her of how serious he just sounded. He’s only two years older, and for a moment he sounded as if it were ten years, as if he had seen so much more in life, knew so much more. As if he knew exactly what he wanted in life. “You love a guy, he loves you, you want to spend the rest of your lives together, you get married. Just like that.”
But it’s not that easy. Not when you just did a very stupid thing to the man you love. To the man who, hopefully, still loves you. “Look, I know what you’re trying and…”
“I’m not trying anything, Anna.” No? Well, that’s not what it’s looking like to her. “I’ve seen you with each other, right from the first moment you two met.” Yeah, and right from the first time he’d made it clear that he would decapitate any guy daring to go out with his sis… “Every time he came to California, every time you came to The Springs, that one time on Nantucket and yes, I also at least know about Oregon.”
He… what? “How the hell…”
He rolls his eyes. “Big brother, officer of the United States Air Force, remember?” Yes, but what does that have to do with finding out about that super secret trip to Oregon she went on with Charlie last year? “Also, I’m friends with a certain Thomas Moore, computer science major?” Right. That explains a lot. “Anyway, I’ve seen you two, I’ve listened to Charlie, I’ve listened to you and quite frankly, if you two don’t tie the knot in three days, I’m gonna make you.” Oh God, she hates it when he gets all authoritative. “I’m gonna use that ceremonial sword I bought for the occasion and make you say “I do” to each other, just watch me.”
She makes a face and replies, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “What, no shotgun?”
At that, he shrugs again and she can see the grin threatening to break through. At least he seems to be over his break-up, then. Woohoo. “I’m more of a traditional kind of guy.”
She snorts. “Traditional guy, my fucking ass.”
“Language, young lady.” She can’t believe he has the gall to waggle his finger into her face just like Sister Theodora, the teacher she hated most back at Convent & Sacred Heart. She nearly jumps his throat.
But yeah, not helping. So instead she sticks out her tongue and rolls her eyes, growling, “Yeah, yeah,” just like she always did with Terrible Theodora.
Thankfully, he doesn’t punish her with another letter to her parents, like Terrible Theodora but just gives a kind of weary sigh. “Look, you love him.” Yes, she does. After everything is said and done, she still does. “And he loves you.” Right now, she can only hope so. “Whatever it is, you’re gonna work through it. In three days, Dad’s gonna walk you down the aisle, Mom’s gonna need a whole box of tissues, you’ll say “I do” and you’ll be happy. It really is as easy as that.”
She wants to believe that. She wants to believe that just because he’s her big brother, everything he says is true and everything will work out in the end. She still wants, despite everything, to marry Charlie and be happy with him until the end of her days, etc., etc. She wants Charlie, despite the money and the property and the family. She wants the whole “till death do us part” thing, the shared bank account, the patient’s provision, the on-base living. She wants it all so bad.
Trying not to sound too pitiable, she asks, “Promise?”
She half expects Evan to grin and make some quip or other but all he does is nod solemnly and raise his right hand, to say, no mocking whatsoever in his tone, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Right. Just for a moment, she allows herself to be twelve again, right after the neighbor’s boy, her first crush moved to a different state without even telling her goodbye and her big brother had had a rare moment not being an idiot when he’d seen her sitting in their backyard garden, trying so hard not to cry. He’d sat down next to her and told her, in the infinite wisdom of a fourteen-year-old boy, that Carl Parsons was a big whopping moron and that it was no use crying over a guy who didn’t appreciate you because someday, there would be one who would and they’d be happy. Much happier than she’d have ever been with Carl Parsons the Whopping Moron. Against all odds, her idiot brother had been right that day.
That is, you know, if she doesn’t go on ruining it anyway. It’s her turn to look contrite now. “You know, maybe I should… maybe I should reconsider this whole packing thing.”
Now he does laugh, even if it’s closer to an amused snort. “Yeah. While you do that, I’m going to look for Charlie. I have a bad feeling about leaving him alone with Moore.”
Yeah, well, who wouldn’t. Charlie and Tom were involuntary roommates at the Academy for two years and aside from one memorable meltdown on Charlie’s side they’re probably still talking about in hushed tones in the hallowed hallways of the Academy, they’d gotten along surprisingly well. At one point, Charlie hat even confided in her that he did miss Tom during the guy’s short stint as an exchange cadet at West Point and well, the first and only alcohol induced blackout Charlie had ever had had been courtesy of Thomas Moore and the generous house bar the Williamsons kept at the pool house of Nantucket Main, as they like to call the slightly bigger Nantucket house. She throws her brother a mean look. “Maybe you shouldn’t have left him alone with Tom in the first place, then.”
Which… was a stupid thing to say but thankfully, Evan foregoes telling her that she shouldn’t have thrown out Charlie in the first place and instead tells her, “Maybe I shouldn’t.” Then he makes for the door and she follows him. Before he opens it to leave, he rolls his eyes again and says, “Okay, I guess I need to see that Moore hasn’t already bought half the bar to drown his broken heart in or something.”
Oh no, not another broken male heart. She can barely deal with one, especially if one’s her brother’s heart and the other’s the heart of a quasi adopted brother. “Please don’t tell me he dumped Whatshername, too.”
Evan just rubs his neck and rolls his eyes again. “Long story, just ask him.”
Yeah, ahahaha, right, “Most definitely not.” At that, Evan shrugs again and turns to leave but something inside of her makes her move forward and put her arms around him, burying her face in the crook of his neck and murmuring, “Thanks for coming, Blues.” For a moment, he doesn’t react but then she feels him hug her back, surprisingly fierce and the only thing keeping her from tearing up after all is telling him, “Just remember: if he ends up drunk off his ass, he’s your responsibility. Don’t even think about dumping him on my doorstep.”
She feels him laugh again, this time a real, genuine laugh she can feel vibrating through his body, followed by a murmured, sincere through and through, “Yeah, I love you, too, Berkeley.”
There’s one more almost teary moment before she’s kind enough to let him preserve what is left of his manly dignity and lets go of him to give him a little shove out of her door, telling him, “Try not to go blinding drunk, Mom and Dad will be here tomorrow and I’m not willing to make excuses for any of you feeling under the weather.”
His only answer is turning around and giving her the finger before sauntering down the hall. She rolls her eyes and shuts the door, turning around to see her open suitcase still on the bed, a little haphazard now and walking slowly back she makes a final decision to shut it and then pull it off the bed, putting it away to not use it again until after she’s officially Mrs. Anna Williamson.
She can figure out everything else - how to be Mrs. Anna Williamson the military wife, how to be Mrs. Anna Williamson the heir’s wife, how to be Anna, married to Charlie - later because if everything goes well, they will have a lifetime to figure out how to be who they need to be. And so help her God, everything will go well, or she will borrow Evan’s sword and take matters in her own hands. Is that really too much to ask?