"Raise Your Glass And We'll Have A Cheer (My Dear Acquaintance)." (Vorkosigan Saga) G
Title: Raise Your Glass And We'll Have A Cheer (My Dear Acquaintance). (On Archive Of Our Own)
Author:
lannamichaels
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Rating: G
A/N: For
azurelunatic, who crafted this excellent fic prompt. The title is from My Dear Acquaintance by Peggy Lee and Paul Horner, of which I am most familiar with the Regina Spektor version. Happy 2021, y'all!
Summary: Gregor's neighbor from down the hall has left him a box of chocolate pretzels and a bottle of champagne. They're probably not poisoned.
Gregor's neighbor from down the hall has left him a box of chocolate pretzels and a bottle of champagne. They're probably not poisoned.
There's a note with them. It says: 'My ex sent these to me. I didn't want to eat the feelings, but I felt bad throwing them out. Please do me the favor of taking them off my hands. IXVP, apt 114.'
Gregor eats the pretzels. They're kind of stale. The champagne goes back to 114 with a note stuck to it that says 'I don't drink alone. GSVB, apt 121.'
So he should have known he'd get a sticky note on his door that says 'My place, 9pm?'
IXVP, who Gregor has had a nodding acquaintance with in the hallway since Gregor moved in five months ago, gets packages addressed to Ivan Vorpatril. Sometimes a letter goes astray and Gregor has to slip it under his door. Such are the bonds that apartment living are made of, Gregor has learned.
Ivan Vorpatril's apartment is in a similar layout to Gregor's, but decorated like Ivan's mother had done it. This was actually the case, Gregor discovers after thirty seconds of looking around and Ivan mentioning his mother bought him the rugs and then Gregor seeing a photo on the wall of the formidable Lady Alys Vorpatril from back home.
Oh. Gregor should have known from the Vor name. There's a large Barrayaran expat community in the area, which is why Gregor had come here, and he should have put it together.
Ivan catches Gregor looking and then clearly does the same calculation. "Oh, shit," Ivan says. "Vorbarra. I thought you were from the other-- oh, shit, you're the Crown Prince."
"Guilty," Gregor says.
"I think we're related?" Ivan says and pulls out his phone like he's going to call his parents right here and now to get the current state of the Vor family tree.
"Through Dorca," Gregor says, because frankly he's related to everyone through Dorca. Okay, that's not true. Sometimes he's related to them through the Vorrutyers. But he really is related to everyone named Vor. It was a problem at home. One of the reasons Gregor's mother had sent him here after university was so that Gregor might meet people who aren't somehow related to him.
"God, no, I think the other way," Ivan says, and brings up Facebook. "Sorry, when I saw you were getting stuff for Vorbarra, I thought it was, you know, a cadet branch. Why'd they send you here anyway?"
"I work in finance," Gregor says, because his dreams of being a freight engineer had been firmly quashed by his grandfather as being impractical for modern day royalty.
Ivan looks up. "BCF? Ugh, me, too, I'm over in logistics. You're probably ignoring my e-mails as we speak."
That's very possible. Gregor's days are packed to the gills with back-to-back meetings, most days, and he's not rude enough to be checking e-mail on his phone all the time like some of his colleagues. Beta is full of expat royalty and Gregor's had to rub enough elbows with them to know that he doesn't want to come off as rude as they do. But it means that Gregor spends his nights catching up on e-mail and has to prioritize which to care about. "So why'd they send you to Beta?"
"To keep a leash on my cousin Miles. Miles Vorkosigan," Ivan adds, like there's another Barrayaran named Miles who needs a leash. And there might be, but Gregor only knows one of them: the Prime Minister's oldest kid. "And then I stuck around after he turned around and went home. Do you know how much quieter it is without him around?"
"Yes," Gregor says sincerely.
Ivan laughs. "Yeah. Well. So here I am. My mother says I have to stay here until I find someone to bring home. Grandbabies or bust. At least you don't have that, right? I mean, I assume your mom's got that handled."
Gregor's mother has told Gregor that if he makes her arrange his marriage, she's going to be very disappointed in him. Gregor's grandfather would do it, but he thinks it's Gregor's mother's job. "Not really. She wants me to have a hallmark movie romance." It's not a secret that Gregor's parents had an arranged marriage. It's also not a secret how Gregor's father had died; it still comes up in the tabloids sometimes, when the tabloids remember Barrayar. It's pretty much the only thing people Gregor meets know about his country: a yacht spectacularly sank and everyone who survived it all agreed it had been the fault of the deceased Crown Prince Serg and no other.
Gregor's father had been a scandal-magnet. Gregor had grown up being told repeatedly that that was not how he should behave. There'd even been one of his distant cousins who got thrown out of an event for-- wait, was that Ivan?
"Did you get thrown out of the New Year's Ball once for getting drunk?" Gregor asks.
"Um," Ivan says. "Beta has this thing called not incriminating yourself-- yes, okay, fine. In my defense, I was twelve and I didn't know I had to build up alcohol tolerance. I thought I could drink like my parents and be fine. My mother still doesn't let me have more than two glasses of wine with dinner. I'm going to be eighty years old," he says, building up steam, "and I'm going to meet someone out of the blue in a completely different country and they're going to say to me, hey, Ivan, didn't you once vomit in the King's statue garden before your voice broke? And I'm going to have to live with the fact that this is the one thing I did that I can't live down, and no one remembers anything else about me."
"I once fell off a balcony," Gregor offers. "I was probably drunker than you were."
Ivan perks up. "I heard about that! Miles sent me the worst letter, he had to pull you out of a pond? I can never believe Miles's stories about anything. All the craziest ones are true."
Gregor would rather be one of Miles Vorkosigan's crazy stories than have anyone know what actually happened. Even Gregor's grandfather believes he tripped. "So did you not want the champagne for-- uh, medical reasons?" Gregor asks.
"Oh, like Uncle Aral?" Ivan asks. "No, no, I'm good. I just didn't want to deal with the whole thing. Ben's nice, you know? He probably sent gifts to all his exes. But, ugh. I don't want to think about Ben."
There's an awkward moment where they both look at the innocent bottle of champagne. "We could leave this at 105's door?" Gregor suggests. Apartment 105 is a couple with three kids under the age of seven. If anyone should have surprise champagne, maybe they should.
"Naw, let's keep it." Ivan says. He gets some glasses from his shelves and then hands the bottle to Gregor. "Look, if I accidentally injure the Crown Prince, my entire family tree will rise up and send me nasty e-mails. You do the honors."
Gregor gets the champagne open with no injuries reported. The champagne tastes better than the pretzels had.
"Ben absolutely just googled what's a good affordable champagne," Ivan says, almost wistful. "He was the kind of guy who reads foodie blogs and then decides where to go on dates. He didn't own anything that wasn't well-reviewed. I bet his new dating profile says something about how good a listener he is."
So does Ivan want to think about Ben or not? Gregor's not sure how to handle this. "Why'd you break up, if I can ask?"
"Oh, the grandbabies issue," Ivan says. "He wants them. I'm skeptical." He looks toward Gregor. "What about you? Interested in grandbabies?"
"I think technically I'm required to," Gregor says.
Ivan snorts. "Yeah, true. Sucks to be Crown Prince."
"It's not the end of the world if I don't manage it," Gregor says, because it's not. "There's a line of succession for a reason. But I think everyone would be happiest if I had some kids myself and we didn't have to go further down the line. I know my cousin Gabe doesn't want to move home from Marilac for it."
"Sucks to be a Vorbarra, then," Ivan amends. "My family's not been a Vorbarra since my great-grandfather, so at least it's never going to be me. I can be dissolute somewhere else and no one cares what that'll do for tourism. I bet you're really good at waving."
"Olympic-level," Gregor agrees dryly. "It's my only salable skill."
"No, I bet you've got an MBA." Ivan pauses for effect. Gregor waits for it. "So, yeah, waving's your only skill. Why didn't they have you do political science?"
"It is recommended that a constitutional monarch not actually know how the government works," Gregor says. "Also my mother thought it'd be too easy for me."
"I believe one of those," Ivan says and refills both their glasses.
"So what about you? Why'd you pick this?" Gregor asks.
"Family legacy," Ivan says. "My father's a higher-up in Ops, my mother-- well, you know my mother. If I wasn't professionally organizing something tricky, I'd have to change my name. I think their dream is that I'll end up as the next Prime Minister's chief of staff."
"But not the Prime Minister?" Gregor asks.
"Remember the part where I can't live down the time I vomited in your garden?" Ivan returns. "Ugh. Everyone vomits in your garden all the time; it's practically a sport. But, no, Ivan, you're twelve, that's your only enduring legacy from now on. Plus, I don't want to be Prime Minister. But really it's the first part."
"Because the first part's the part you tell your parents," Gregor translates. "And you don't tell them that you don't want to."
"There is an art to saying no to Lady Alys Vorpatril," Ivan says. "It is an art I don't know. So, no, I don't tell them that part. Have you ever said no to my mother?"
Well, no, but, "I say no to my mother and my mother says no to your mother," Gregor says.
Ivan snaps his fingers. "Right! Right! That's how we're related. What's it, they're some kind of cousins?"
"Probably?" Gregor asks. He's much better at his genealogy going backward than going outward. Outward is too wide; everyone's in it somewhere. At least his ancestors stay static. "We're definitely related somehow on the Vorbarra side."
"Yeah, my Vorbarra great-great-whatever-father was Prince Xav. But that's really distant," Ivan says.
Not actually that distant, but everyone always conveniently forgets that King Ezar married one of his Vorbarra cousins. So Ivan's barely related to King Ezar, but he's not all that far away from Gregor. "Not on the maternal line," Gregor says.
"I'm talking about the maternal line-- oh, you mean your dad's mother?" Ivan's face scrunches up. "Ugh, I came all the way to Beta to play a game of Vor Geography and then lose it. Everything I do shames the Vorpatrils."
Gregor pats him companionably on the back. "Cheer up, you lost honorably."
And Ivan does cheer up at that, oddly. "You're right. I charged into battle without a plan or a strategy and was destroyed by your cavalry, but I put up a good effort and that's the important thing."
Gregor laughs. He raises his glass to Ivan. "Happy new year, Lord Ivan The Brave."
Ivan grins. "Happy new year, Crown Prince Gregor."
This entry was originally posted at https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1173723.html.