[MEME] -- #5, the AU from Hell

[freshoffthefarm]

[From here, as requested by fakesIt was an op in Vegas, which was so weird since most of her domestic ops stayed in the DC Metro area, and Annie had done her job well. The extra babysitting had been extra annoying (when wasn't it?), but he'd come along to visit an old friend... or so he'd said

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[freshoffthefarm]

Annie wasn't concerned about the money, either. She was concerned about Porter Webb being extremely upset about her darling son running off to Vegas and getting married in a drunken stupor to some floozy he'd dated for a year some time ago.

She didn't want to be a floozy.

"I'm not really concerned about that. I'm worried about what your mom is going to say about the rest of it. The marriage part. I think we can file the paperwork in Virginia, too. It'll just take longer."

[freshoffthefarm]

"Thank you," she said, her voice still soft. They both looked beautiful. When she saw how he was looking at her, her stomach flip-flopped again.

He'd always taken good care of her, he'd always had her best interests at heart, he'd always loved her.

Throat tight, she swallowed and asked, "What happened to us?"

[fakes_death]

He gave them a starting point at the gate, he was scared. Maybe he needed to be a little more articulate on the matter, "I didn't trust you enough."

When he realized how that sounded he had to elaborate, "I didn't trust that you'd stay with me, I didn't trust that you'd come home, and I didn't trust you to help me deal with all of that."

[freshoffthefarm]

It wasn't quite what she'd meant, but she was grateful that he'd articulated it a bit more. Being told that he'd been thinking of marrying her and trying to reconcile that with their breakup was difficult.

"And now? I don't know that any of that's changed." Was an airplane the place for a counseling session? No. "Let me rephrase that. We're going to need to talk about it before we tell anyone that we did this. If this is you want to do."

Her eyes said more about her feelings on the subject than her words did. She was trusting him not to break her heart all over again.

[fakes_death]

"I know I've been miserable for nine months without you." In his mind, that outweighed his trust issues apparently enough to marry her without working through any of it. Clay did not however, answer her question.

"I agree with you. There's a lot we both need to talk about, but I think we can really talk."

Unlike after their fight, "Why didn't we talk to each other after that fight?"

[freshoffthefarm]

"I was angry. After that op with Ben, hearing you use him as my excuse for joining the Agency, hearing that you thought that about me?" She still remembered how angry she'd been. She even felt a small flare up of anger just mentioning it. "I knew you didn't respect me as an agent. That you weren't over Ben, that you'd been just--"

She looked down at her hand, the rings staring back accusingly. "You'd been feeling all of it and you hadn't said anything. It was like you didn't even like me anymore and I didn't know." She was close to tears. "I didn't want to talk to you after that."

[fakes_death]

"Regardless of what led you to join the Agency, I've never thought that it had an impact on the kind of agent you are. You're good Annie."

He sighed again, attacking the Ben issue, "I didn't say anything because nothing else you've ever done should lead me to believe that you'd pick him over me."

Clay decided to hold her hand again, "I didn't stop loving you. Not during the fight, not nine months later."

[freshoffthefarm]

She let him take her hand, but she didn't address most of what he'd said. Instead, she laughed a little as she looked up at him.

"You can love someone and not like them very much at all. I know because I haven't liked you for months, but I didn't stop loving you, either. Last night, something must have happened because now this--" She held up their hands, showing him his ring, "and we still have to work through everything."

As dedicated and stubborn as they were, she wasn't sure if they could. She knew she wanted to try.

[fakes_death]

"I got that impression during that state dinner." It wasn't said in any sort of way that would be construed as snide. He was just stating a fact.

Almost forty thousand dollars of jewelry had to mean they thought, last night, that none of these issues would prevent them from having a happy marriage.

"I think we can work through it all. I like you, and I love you."

[freshoffthefarm]

The state dinner dig stung and she inhaled deeply to avoid making her own snarky comment in return. Even if he didn't mean it to come off snidely, she couldn't help but take it that way. Part of it was tiredness, part of it was that night.

Then he told her that he loved her in those words and she looked up at him. "I love you, too," she whispered, then leaned over to kiss him. The flight attendant chose that moment to appear and ask if they needed anything.

[fakes_death]

Clay returned Annie's kiss until he heard the flight attendant, at which point he turned to look at her and smiled, "I think we're fine for now. Thank you."

Then he turned back to Annie, "Do you want to stay married?"

[freshoffthefarm]

"I do." The irony wasn't lost on her and she grinned before sitting back in her seat to look at him. "Where do we start? I mean, your mother, my sister. Work? Living arrangements. There's a lot to do and we have..."

Annie looked at her phone again. "Four and a half hours to get a plan put together."

[fakes_death]

"Let's worry about living arrangements later. Right now we can do what we were doing before." His goal was to break up their tasks into smaller doable pieces.

"I say we tell your sister first, then my mother after we get that photo developed."

[freshoffthefarm]

"Right." She shouldn't have been offended that he didn't want to live with her, but she figured that it went back to trust and what they did and didn't have. After all, after a year and a half of dating, they'd only shared a closet.

None of it showed on her face or in her tone. Instead, she nodded along and made notes in her phone. "Danielle first, but not tonight. She'll want to stay up all night and talk about what happened and what we're going to do." In that aspect, his mother might have been better. "What about tomorrow and the office. I have a debrief to attend and Joan's going to want answers."

[fakes_death]

It wasn't so much that he didn't want to live together, more that he wanted a place that was theirs, not his or hers. Buying real estate always took time.

"I would just be honest, and decide what you want to do about your name. Are you going to be Agent Walker or Agent Webb?"

[freshoffthefarm]

"Oh."

It was the one question out of the myriad of questions they'd lobbed back and forth that she honestly hadn't even considered. The baffled look on her face was probably comical in it's confusion and she blinked at him.

"I honestly don't know. I always thought when I got married that I'd just be Mrs. Agent Whoever, but..." She paused. "What are your thoughts?"

She really, truly, wanted to know.