FanFic100: #045 Moon
Wait, what was that? Did she just hear a car door slam? And is that Hailey’s voice? She strains to listen into the night, Evan sleeping peacefully beside her - why is it that she woke up and he can continue sleeping undisturbed, huh? - and she’s suddenly wide awake when she hears a guy’s voice answering Hailey’s laughter. Or, more precisely, the voice of a guy she doesn’t know.
As far as she remembers… that was not part of the plan. Or at least not of the plan Hailey told them in the few minutes between finally emerging from the bathroom and rushing off to - supposedly - meet her friends in town. Because she suddenly remembers how Hailey had looked when hurrying past the living room, she decides to get up and meet her daughter downstairs. Something… smells fishy about this.
Careful so as not to disturb Evan she gets up and even contemplates closing the window so that the continued talking and giggling from outside won’t wake him up. She just has this feeling that he would be much less unobtrusive in his reaction to Hailey being brought home by a man neither of them know… and of whom she also has never spoken before. And who was not on the agenda for tonight.
So she hastens down the stairs into the living room. If her calculations are correct, Hailey couldn’t have yet seen that the light had been out. Quickly, she switches it on, plops down on the couch and grabs what she’d been reading before going to bed. Thankfully, it’s one of those books that make it plausible that she couldn’t go to bed before finishing it - Hailey is smart enough to tell page-turners from torture books you just pretend to read in a matter of moments. Also, thankfully, over the years she had been able to cultivate the art of looking totally unfazed even if she’s just out of bed.
All of this benefits her now as Hailey tries to open the door quietly to basically sneak in… and that is a telltale sign that the little good night scene outside was about more than just saying thank you to a friend for giving you a ride on their way home. Three… two… one… “Good evening, young lady.”
The steps in the hall halt and the floor slightly creaks which tells her that Hailey just turned towards the living room door that is slightly ajar. She’s pretty sure that her daughter had seen the shine of light and hoped to get past it without discovery. For a moment, nothing happens but then Hailey obviously came to the conclusion that pretending she hadn't heard her calling out would not look good on her as the door is opened and she steps in.
“Evening, mom and… uh… night, mom!” Yeah, right. No way she’ll let her escape to her bed, now that she saw the astounding transformation her daughter went through a few hours earlier in full light.
So when Hailey turns around and is half away, she says using her best CO voice, “Cadet Third Class Hailey Lorne,” her daughter comes to an abrupt halt and even winces at that, “you will turn around ASAP.” Reluctantly, Hailey heeds her order and turns around slowly, now looking very contrite and not exactly happy about being ordered around by her mother. “Is there a specific reason you’re trying to sneak in like a common thief at oh dark hundred?”
For a moment it looks like Hailey will answer with something like “With all due respect, that’s none of your business, ma’am,” but then she seems to have realized that it would get her nowhere so instead she says, “I just… didn’t want to wake anyone up.” She raises her eyebrow, hoping it’ll still work on 18-year-old Hailey like it worked on twelve-year-old Hailey and… yep, it does. “Really, mom. I know you and dad had a long day and everything… honestly!”
Yeah, right, like she’d believe one word of that. Mainly… she doesn’t believe it because she had reacted like this every time her parents had caught her trying to sneak into the house after a secret date. “Uh-huh. Sure.” Hailey seems to relax a little, probably thinking she’ll let her go. But not today. “So what’s with the elaborate hairdo and the mini-skirt and… is that lipstick?”
She’d said it in a casual tone… but immediately, Hailey’s face becomes bright red. So yes, she knows that her daughter is old enough to vote, a college freshman and a Cadet in her university’s ROTC Wing but she’s asking out of curiosity, not really to chastise her. This really isn't like her usual tomboy self and Hailey knows that judging by how she fiddles with the hem of her mini skirt and suddenly looks a little out of place in the clothes she usually laughs about on other girls… and in which she looked very confident and at ease just a moment ago. Huh.
“I… um… I just… mom, please, can I just go to bed?” Someone is trying to be really evasive tonight… and forgot that evasive behavior never served to satisfy her mother’s curiosity.
“Of course. After you explain the mini skirt and the sneaking in. Come on… tell me his name, at least?” If possible, Hailey’s face even grows redder. Yeah, that’s what you get for trying to keep things like these from your omniscient parents. But at least now she understands what made her mother stay up late when she was young and snuck out to meet guys her parents wouldn’t have approved of.
Bravely, Hailey tries to save her dignity at least a little bit and says, “It’s really not important, mom.” Not important, her ass. If it wasn’t important, Hailey wouldn’t have gone out of her way to look anything but the girl she usually is - a spitfire that came home sporting a bruised knee more often than not when she was a kid and delighted her mother by expressing an avid interest in everything that goes boom from earliest childhood and her father by taking to his flying lessons faster than either Aaron or Zack - and that’s what both intrigues and worries her.
The worry part also is what makes her become serious when replying, “Honestly, Leelee, I’m not asking you to harass you. I’m genuinely curious who got you to wear a mini skirt.” She’s about to add, “And who might be the guy your father would swear to disembowel if he had been the one to catch you in the act,” but refrains from it, having seen that Hailey knows full well how Evan would have reacted to this.
Hailey and her father love each other fiercely - he’s still bursting with pride whenever someone asks how Hailey’s doing and he can tell them that she chose USAF ROTC and is top of her class of Cadets Third Class and in almost all her classes at college and she would never do anything to hurt her father. Which is why she’s interested in knowing first hand if this really has the potential to threaten this father-daughter relationship, as she’s starting to fear.
Hailey, finally having seen that she has no chance but to be honest, sighs, takes off her high heels and gingerly walks over to the couch to sit down beside her. She sighs another time and then… smiles at her, a little guiltily and says, “Alexander. His name’s Alexander Weston.” There’s more to it so she gestures for Hailey to go on and almost as if she’d been secretly waiting to tell someone, she continues, “He’s… mom, don’t go ballistic on me now, okay?”
“He’s not a junkie or a john or something like that, right?” Oops. That wasn’t supposed to come out so fast but what else did her daughter expect with an opening like that, huh?
“God, no. Mom!” She wants to point out to Hailey that asking her not to go ballistic didn’t exactly help her case but her daughter seems to have seen that herself now, anyway. “It’s just that he’s… a yearling at West Point.” A… what? And… West Point? “A Third Class Cadet, mom.” Oh, someone feels smug that she knows more than her retired USMC Lieutenant Colonel mother.
And someone will probably have a tough time convincing her father she wasn’t abducted by aliens and replaced with a clone or maybe a copy from another universe. She suppresses a sigh and says, smirking, “Good luck explaining that to your father.”
Hailey bites her lip, a motion that usually works fine on Evan and a little less successfully on her… and most of all it tells her that her daughter is about to ask something of her she most probably does not want to do. “Um, you know… now that you… I was kinda… I thought… you could tell him maybe?”
Yeah, right, uh-huh, sure. Except… no. This is a mess Hailey has to get out of herself. “I don’t think so, Cadet Lorne. He’s your boyfriend.”
“No, he’s not.” Gee, reverting back to schoolgirl, much? “My boyfriend, I mean.” Ah, yeah, sure. That’s why they took so long to say good night. “Well… not yet, anyway.” Oh… could the blushing and the purposefully dismissive tone mean that Hailey… her little girl… that she’s in love for the first time?
She takes another look at Hailey, sees the likeness to both herself and Evan, sees the little girl who wasn’t quite as planned as her two brothers but never any less welcome - in fact, even before she was actually pregnant with Hailey she’d been wishing for a little girl deep down - and who seems to have grown into an independent young woman in the blink of an eye. An independent young woman now very obviously in love. Oh well. “Okay. Let’s make a deal, huh?”
Hailey perks up a little and now she looks somehow like Evan when he heard or saw something that he really likes. “Sure, mom.”
“You tell your father…” Hailey’s face falls and that does cut a little into her heart, “but I’ll be there when you do it.” Of course Evan would never do anything to Hailey but… he’s also his father’s son and Lorne men… they are all about tradition. Theoretically he should have learned everything about the consequences of being narrow-minded and stubborn from those two years so long ago when he didn’t speak to his father - he never said anything about it but she just knew he suffered - but yeah… he’s still a Lorne from head to toe.
However, Hailey… doesn’t look too happy about her suggestion. Yeah, well, she probably wouldn’t either if she didn’t know the complicated history that surrounds Evan and her and Evan’s father. “Mom can’t you… I mean…”
Mh. Obviously, her daughter’s instincts are pretty good and it must be pretty important for her because otherwise she can’t explain the sudden timidity. So she becomes a little more sternly. “Hailey… this thing between Alexander and you… could it become something serious?”
Biting her lip again, Hailey takes a little time to answer but in the end says, smiling, “Yeah. He’s just… this is different, mom.” Yeah, she could see that.
Trying very hard not to smirk, she replies, “Which is exactly why you have to tell your dad. And I promise I’ll be there to keep him from going completely nuts.” Hailey wants to stage another wave of protesting but then it seems to register with her what she just told her and she takes a rare moment to think first and act later.
Then she finally grins and says, “Thanks, mom. And… um… I’ll get to bed now, huh?”
Now she does sigh. “Yeah. Night, Leelee.”
Hailey leans over to her and gives her a kiss on the cheek, wishes her a good night and almost skips up to her room. Smiling and shaking her head - had she really been that young herself? - she gets up and makes her way back into the bedroom. When she slips between the covers, Evan stirs slightly and she curls up against him. “Our little girl’s in love,” she whispers against his chest and kisses it before she adds, “Know what that means? We’re getting old, Colonel.”
To her surprise… he whispers back sleepily, “As long as we’re getting old together… I’m fine with it.” Then he tightens his arms around her, gives her kiss on top of her head and she has the feeling that however pissed he’ll probably be about Hailey dating a grunt, things will even out in the end. They always did… even though sometimes she had to threaten him with throwing him out of the bedroom. So grinning at this last thought… she finally drifts off to sleep.
~*~
TBC in Runs in the Family.