Fic: Protect and Survive: Coming Clean (Stargate)
Title: Coming Clean
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: het
Summary: January 1995, shortly before the wedding of Charlie Williamson and Anna Lorne. That almost never happened.
A/N: Okay, originally, I'd wanted to keep working on The Right Thing to Guide Us but then I wanted to make mackenziesmomma happy and asked her to research some houses and we chose, of all people, Charlie's family and well, I knew that they weren't exactly poor but I didn't know how rich they were (Charlie always kept that to himself, apparently) and uh, apparently Anna didn't know either until shortly before their wedding. This is how she learned about it.
It takes place in January 1995, so six months after the Golden Trio graduated, which means that Charlie just started out as his first permanent duty station, while the other two learn to fly some million dollar toys and Anna is still taking care of her Bachelor's degree. God, they were all so tiny back then :D
And yes, there's going to be a second part to this, I promise.
Coming Clean
“Coming clean
Means never closing curtains I just changed my scene
Oh but you know what I mean and I will learn throughout my life
To never believe what will have been.”
Brandi Carlile, “I Will”
Three days left until his wedding and he still hasn’t told her. Three days and six months of more or less living together and he still hasn’t told her. Three days, six months and two years of being together and he still hasn’t told her. He sighs. It really is about time.
So. Probably now’s as best as any time, seeing as Anna and he arrived at the Garden of the Gods, the hotel for their reception, this afternoon but none of their friends or relatives are here, yet. Anna’s parents had to stay in San Francisco for work reasons, his parents are still staying in Boston for procrastination reasons, Moore, Lorne and their respective girlfriends are supposed to be stuck on the road from Columbus AFB to The Springs, Laura Greenspan has to adhere to the Academy curfew… Perfect time to tell Anna about what kind of family exactly she’s about to marry into.
Okay, no time like the present and all that.
He clears his throat. Anna, her hair in a towel turban after a dip into the whirlpool downstairs, looks up from her lazy channel surfing. “You okay, Charlie?” Ah, shit. She probably realized that something has been bugging him the entire eighteen hours ride from Fairfield to The Springs the moment they slammed the car doors shut back at Travis AFB yesterday morning.
Yeah, okay, time to get it over with. “Yeah, I’m uh fine. I just… uh…” God, get a grip on yourself. He clears his throat again and fully turns to her. “Okay, uh, so… you’ve been to Nantucket…”
“Oh God, don’t remind me of that.” It wasn’t that bad, at least the first two times. She’d had a couple head to heads with his mother but nothing really bad and since there are two houses on Nantucket and there wasn’t enough family to fill both of them at the time, they’d been good both times. Until the third time, when his mother had urged him to invite Lorne and Moore along. That had gone so badly that they have standing orders to stay the fuck away from both Nantucket houses, forever, but yeah, no time to dwell on that now.
He decides to simply plow on. “And you’ve been to Connecticut…”
“Oh God, please don’t remind me of that.” Okay, that was to be expected. The one time he’d taken her to Greenwich on his parents’ request had gone abysmally bad. Since both he and his mother absolutely hate that fake Tudor style abomination of brick, wood and glass from the Twenties that is their largest estate, they’d both been in a rather foul mood and his father just having had to fire his CFO for attempted fraud hadn’t helped matters much, either. And Anna… yeah, she’s probably never gonna see eye to eye with her future mother-in-law.
Anyway, no turning back now. “And you’ve been to the Boston Private…”
“Okay, that was a nice one.” She’d been there on her own, a week into her junior year, since she’d been considering to apply to Harvard Law and his mother, ever the gracious hostess, had actually offered their private apartment in Boston - a gift from his father to his mother on their tenth anniversary because Mother didn’t very much like the “official” one used for conducting business and functions - for Anna as accommodation. “Can we go there… wait.” Uh-oh. “Charlie… what is going on here?” Damn.
He’d thought he could ease into it but yeah, he probably blew that chance. He takes a deep breath. “We also have London, the English country house, New York, The French Alps, which you'll be expected to visit annually, and Chicago…”
That came out in a kinda rush and he hopes she didn’t hear half of it because every time he has to tell someone about just how much property his family owns - and that’s just those they actually use - he feels embarrassed to the core. Also, she hopefully didn’t hear the thing about being expected to attend the annual weeklong winter house party at “the Chalet” - as his mother likes to call their Megève house - that his family has been throwing for family, business partners and friends ever since they bought the damn thing. And, note to self, better not tell her about the summer getaway thing on the family yacht and Nice.
As it looks now… even if she did hear any of it, she doesn’t believe him. She snorts and then says, in a kind of affected voice, “Oh, and of course a teeny tiny only six figure cabin in Aspen? Of course.” Then she drops back into her usual voice, a bit of dead-pan mixed into it. “Seriously, Charlie, who are you trying to kid?”
“It... was just above seven figures.” Oh God. That wasn’t supposed to slip out.
She does a double take. “...what?” At least he has her full attention now. Yay.
“The Aspen cabin. It was just above seven figures. And it’s in Breckenridge, not Aspen.” And… that was probably a bad idea. Why did he just have to say that?
Anna clearly doesn’t look happy now. “Charlie.”
Maybe pretending he has no idea what is her problem will help. “What?”
“Charlie!” Or maybe not.
He clears his throat. “Look, Anna…”
“You just told me that your family owns a “just over seven figures” house in fucking Breckenridge, Colorado, like it’s… like it’s nothing.” No, that’s not how he said it. Because he doesn’t believe that. Actually, that’s the reason he doesn’t like to think about just how rich his family really is. Because it always sounds so insane and unreal and really, that’s why he loves serving his country. Nothing insane or unreal about tha… “And… a house in France. And one in London. And one in God knows where else. And whatever, probably a couple fucking Lear jets or whatever because you have to get to all your houses in style!”
They’re mostly Gulfstreams and one Embraer but yeah, probably not the right moment to tell her about that. He tries to sound reasonable. “Anna…”
Anna doesn’t seem to be appreciating it much. “How much is your family worth?”
“What?” Not appreciating it at all.
And sounding totally unreasonable herself. “How much is your family worth?” What is that question even supposed to mean, anyway?
Also… “I don’t actually know.”
“Oh God. I can’t believe this.” If he’s honest, he can’t believe it, either but that’s the truth. He has no idea how much his family and their corporation and subsidiaries are worth exactly. He doesn’t even know exactly what his trust fund is worth. Mostly because he likes to pretend that ever since he told his father he wanted to join the armed forces instead of taking over the family business, his father killed the fund. Unfortunately, he never did.
Anyway, not the issue. “Anna, please…”
She shakes her head, furiously, losing the turban, her wet hair spilling out and then jumps off the bed, her eyes blazing. Oh God, has he ever told her how hot she looks when she’s really mad about something? “When were you planning to tell me that I’m marrying into a bloody Fortune 500 family?”
“100 actually and…” Oops.
Anna looks seriously unhappy now. Which is weird since, you know, he is currently trying to do exactly what she just asked of him. “Will you stop doing that?”
“Doing what?” Come to think of it, that was probably stupid.
“Correcting my assumptions about your family and just making everything worse.” Yep. He should have known that on his own.
Okay, he really needs to get the situation under control if he doesn’t want to spend the night outside in the snow. “Look, Anna, I’m sorry, I just…”
“It’s never going to work.” Huh?
He blinks. “What?”
“I said it’s never going to work!” She’s really upset now, from the way she’s pacing and gesturing and he starts to wish he never even thought about coming clean to her.
And he probably already knows very well what she means but maybe he just misheard her or misinterpreted something? “What is never going to work?”
“…this! Us!” Wha… “My father owns a fucking book store, my mother teaches art at high school and your father… I don’t even know what your father does.” Most of the time, he doesn’t either, but really isn’t that beside the… “But whatever it is, he’s obviously making millions every day or something!”
That is, unfortunately, true. But really, if that is her problem, he’s got a solution. “I told you that’s not the life I want. I meant it when I said that I’d rather…”
“I don’t care what you meant, Charlie!” Wait, that’s not how she’s supposed to react! She’s supposed to remember what he told her during last Spring Break, when they managed to get away from everyone, spending it in a little B&B up in Oregon. She’s supposed to remember that he told her all about realizing how the thought of being the sole heir to his family’s fortune and business absolutely terrifies him, how stepping into his father’s footsteps is literally the last thing he wants in this or any other life and how he’d rather live on his junior officer’s salary and her scholarship money and barely make ends meet than take even one penny from his parents’ or his fortune if it just meant being able to do what he wants to do with his life, love who he wants to love. To be free.
Instead, she’s… “You led me to believe that your family has some money but you’re actually Oliver Queen, Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark all rolled into one, minus the dead parents.” What… what is that even supposed to mean? “You… you lied to me, Charlie!”
He… what? Nuh-uh, no, he didn’t. No. He might have omitted a few truths but he never let her in the dark about the fact that he’s still his father’s heir, despite everything and how much he doesn’t want to be that. He tries to stay calm. “Sweet Tea, I wasn’t being…”
“No. No!” Okay, calm is not something she wants to stay. He can deal with that, right? Right. It’s not their first fight and he managed to survive all the other ones.
Okay, uh, how to respond to that? “Uh…”
“No!” Obviously, that wasn’t it. “And you get the fuck out of this room, right fucking now.”
…what? He stares at her, standing next to the door, her hand on the handle. She is… is she being serious? “Anna, you don’t really mean…”
“And the wedding is fucking cancelled!” She didn’t just say that. Nuh-uh.
Okay, judging from the volume at which she said - okay, yelled - that and the glare she’s throwing him, she did say that. But really, she didn’t mean that, right? “Look, won’t you please at least reconsider…”
“The hell I’ll reconsider anything.” Aw, come on, it’s not like he just told her he cheated on her or something! “Out, Lieutenant Williamson!”
She… she can’t mean that! She can’t be serious! Really, something went wrong here but he’ll be damned if he can’t get it back under control. He always could clean up everyone’s fuck-ups at the Academy and he already cleaned up one massive personnel records clusterfuck at work. He can do this. If she’d just listen to him. “Anna, please…”
“Get the fuck out of this room, right fucking now!”
Okay, maybe she won’t listen and… how the hell did he just end up in the corridor outside their room? Without a key, too. Huh. He blinks, then moves to knock on the door but even before his knuckles touch the wood, he can hear a muffled, “Don’t even think about it. Just go away,” and the force in that is so big that he feels dejection crawl all over his skin.
It feels so bad that all he can do is slowly back away and walk down the corridor, towards the elevator, down into the lobby and the only reason he just walks out into the biting cold of a Colorado January night is that just when he’s about to leave the lobby, the door opens to reveal a guy heavily bundled up in thick jacket, a scarf covering half his face and a beanie covering the upper half of his head. And the voice coming from somewhere beneath the folds of fabric saying, “Holy shit Charlie, did you have to get married in the worst month of all?”
Wait. That can’t be Evan Lorne. Evan Lorne’s supposed to be on the road, together with Tom… “Don’t mind Beach Boy here, he just forgot how to cope with a little chill down in Mississippi.” Okay, either the shock of Anna cancelling their wedding made him hallucinate or Evan Lorne and Thomas Moore have grown into even more reckless drivers than he remembers from the probably worst two days he ever spent with anyone on the road in the summer between Second and First Year.
He clears his breath. “I…”
“So, what are you doing here instead of snuggling up with my sister… oh God, that sounded wrong. Did that sound wrong to you, Tom?” Driving fever, definitely. And way too many cokes and a couple Red Bulls on top of it, too. He has seen Evan Lorne battle fatigue through more than one all-nighter, and thirty hours exercise and this is exactly what he sounds like close to the end of one.
Moore, for his part simply nods and gives a short, “Yep,” his hands in his pockets, only wearing jeans and a Falcons boxing team hoodie instead of half his closet like Lorne, flaunting his Maine heritage for all the world to see, yet again. He’s very close to sighing.
And… he knows he shouldn’t do it, should keep his mouth shut but for some reason, it slips out, “About that… Anna just kind of cancelled the wedding.”
For a moment, Moore and Lorne just stare at him and he feels himself go beet red in the face - one of the reasons he never even considered becoming a pilot: no one would take a fighter jockey serious who blushes under the slightest scrutiny - and then… they laugh. Those… assholes laugh at him, indecently loud and irritatingly amused and oh God, now they’re even doubling over and wiping tears from their eyes. He was never exactly good with this whole friendship thing but he’s pretty sure that laughing is not how friends are supposed react when you tell them that your fiancé just cancelled your wedding.
Thankfully, their laughter dies down after a few more slightly humiliating minutes and Lorne is the first to recover enough to be able to speak. “Okay, that was a good one, Charlie. Now why are you down here?”
Moore is still laughing quietly so he can’t help throwing the guy one his very rare glares. At least it works. He turns back to Lorne. “I wasn’t joking. She just threw me out of our room after she called off our wedding.”
He hopes that his dead serious tone - God, he didn’t just nearly choke on that last part, right? - will convince them that he was being dead serious and at least Lorne seems to have realized that there’s more to that story. Lorne frowns. “Charlie… what’s going on here?”
Oh God. He realizes that if he wants to get out of this with dignity, he will have to tell them about everything. About his family being really old Boston money, about having kind of lied about growing up on Nantucket - they did, still do, live there for most of the year but come November, it’s back to the Terrible Tudor, all until March - about his family owning a three million dollar one-hundred-and-thirty-five-foot yacht they only use a couple weeks each summer and a house in the French Alps and their own fucking planes for fuck’s sake. He’ll have to come clean about everything he desperately to escape from the last four and a half years.
He takes a deep breath. “Look, it’s all just a misunderstanding. It’s not what it looks like. I told her something I shouldn’t have told her and she got upset about…”
“No way.” What? “You asshole.” What? “I never thought that you of all people would stoop so low as… she’s my fucking sister, you absolute fucking jerk.” What is Lorne going on ab…
Bloody fucking hell, where did that just come from?
“Why in God’s name did you just punch me in the fucking face, you moron?” Mother would be horrified but goddammit, one of his two best friends just hit him in the face, without even telling him why first.
And why is Moore just standing there like… “You know what? Fuck this, fuck you, I’m gonna take care of my sister.” But what in God’s name does Lorne think he did? “And fuck this wedding. January. Which asshole thinks getting married in January is a good idea? God, I’m just so fucking done…”
And with that, Lorne just wanders off, still wearing that ridiculously thick jacket, shoulders hunched, hands shoved into his pockets, pretty sure still muttering on profanities.
He blinks and oh good, that’s a nice shiner already starting to form. He blinks again, harder, faster and… he still got nothing. A little helplessly, he turns to Moore who just gives a long-suffering sigh and makes a face. “He had to dump his girlfriend last night, after catching her with one of our instructors, doing “night maneuvers”. Repeatedly.”
Right. At least that explains why one of them arrived here without a girlfriend. And does nothing to justify trying to punch a friend’s lights out.
But yeah, he’s kind of tired of fighting, the full reality of what just happened - Anna freaking out and cancelling a wedding he’d wanted with all his heart for the last two years, Lorne apparently suspecting him of what, cheating on Anna? - finally starting to settle in and he just kind of… slumps down, not even looking at Moore when he wearily asks, “And what about your girlfriend? Did she bail on you or something?”
It earns him a humorless laugh and a shrug that looks way more casual than Moore obviously feels. “Kinda. She dumped me, saying I was getting a little too excited about “this whole wedding gig”. Whatever, I wasn’t being serious with her, anyway.” Yeah, right. Just like he hadn’t been serious about their fellow cadet Lydia Debenham, while mooning over her for three full years. God, that guy is such an… “Anyway, you know what’s great about being over twenty-one and not expected to fly for the next seven days?” He throws Moore a dead-pan look. “Alcohol. You get to legally buy alcohol, and lots of it. Now come on, I’m buying.”
Really? That’s Moore solution? Getting shit-faced? “Look, I don’t think…”
“Don’t worry, they’ll sort it out, whatever it was that happened between you and Anna, and Lorne will be sorry that we got a head start on him by the time they’re done.” He wants to protest again but Moore is adamant, a weird note of steel creeping into his casual voice, just like every time when he puts his foot down. “Look, I know you didn’t cheat on her and she will set his head straight just as he will set hers straight. And in the meantime, we’ll get to sample the bar and find a way to treat that shiner so you won’t look like a prize fighter in your wedding pictures. Get going.”
Okay then. Of course he definitely won’t be drinking at the bar - especially if Moore’s buying - but yeah, maybe they’ll have enough ice for him to pack on that black eye. He sighs, dejectedly. “I… I guess they’ll have some ice, at least?”
At that, Moore positively beams and grabs his arm, dragging him along towards the bar and he finally gives in. It can’t get much worse than this anyway, can it?
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: K+
Genres: het
Summary: January 1995, shortly before the wedding of Charlie Williamson and Anna Lorne. That almost never happened.
A/N: Okay, originally, I'd wanted to keep working on The Right Thing to Guide Us but then I wanted to make mackenziesmomma happy and asked her to research some houses and we chose, of all people, Charlie's family and well, I knew that they weren't exactly poor but I didn't know how rich they were (Charlie always kept that to himself, apparently) and uh, apparently Anna didn't know either until shortly before their wedding. This is how she learned about it.
It takes place in January 1995, so six months after the Golden Trio graduated, which means that Charlie just started out as his first permanent duty station, while the other two learn to fly some million dollar toys and Anna is still taking care of her Bachelor's degree. God, they were all so tiny back then :D
And yes, there's going to be a second part to this, I promise.
Coming Clean
“Coming clean
Means never closing curtains I just changed my scene
Oh but you know what I mean and I will learn throughout my life
To never believe what will have been.”
Brandi Carlile, “I Will”
Three days left until his wedding and he still hasn’t told her. Three days and six months of more or less living together and he still hasn’t told her. Three days, six months and two years of being together and he still hasn’t told her. He sighs. It really is about time.
So. Probably now’s as best as any time, seeing as Anna and he arrived at the Garden of the Gods, the hotel for their reception, this afternoon but none of their friends or relatives are here, yet. Anna’s parents had to stay in San Francisco for work reasons, his parents are still staying in Boston for procrastination reasons, Moore, Lorne and their respective girlfriends are supposed to be stuck on the road from Columbus AFB to The Springs, Laura Greenspan has to adhere to the Academy curfew… Perfect time to tell Anna about what kind of family exactly she’s about to marry into.
Okay, no time like the present and all that.
He clears his throat. Anna, her hair in a towel turban after a dip into the whirlpool downstairs, looks up from her lazy channel surfing. “You okay, Charlie?” Ah, shit. She probably realized that something has been bugging him the entire eighteen hours ride from Fairfield to The Springs the moment they slammed the car doors shut back at Travis AFB yesterday morning.
Yeah, okay, time to get it over with. “Yeah, I’m uh fine. I just… uh…” God, get a grip on yourself. He clears his throat again and fully turns to her. “Okay, uh, so… you’ve been to Nantucket…”
“Oh God, don’t remind me of that.” It wasn’t that bad, at least the first two times. She’d had a couple head to heads with his mother but nothing really bad and since there are two houses on Nantucket and there wasn’t enough family to fill both of them at the time, they’d been good both times. Until the third time, when his mother had urged him to invite Lorne and Moore along. That had gone so badly that they have standing orders to stay the fuck away from both Nantucket houses, forever, but yeah, no time to dwell on that now.
He decides to simply plow on. “And you’ve been to Connecticut…”
“Oh God, please don’t remind me of that.” Okay, that was to be expected. The one time he’d taken her to Greenwich on his parents’ request had gone abysmally bad. Since both he and his mother absolutely hate that fake Tudor style abomination of brick, wood and glass from the Twenties that is their largest estate, they’d both been in a rather foul mood and his father just having had to fire his CFO for attempted fraud hadn’t helped matters much, either. And Anna… yeah, she’s probably never gonna see eye to eye with her future mother-in-law.
Anyway, no turning back now. “And you’ve been to the Boston Private…”
“Okay, that was a nice one.” She’d been there on her own, a week into her junior year, since she’d been considering to apply to Harvard Law and his mother, ever the gracious hostess, had actually offered their private apartment in Boston - a gift from his father to his mother on their tenth anniversary because Mother didn’t very much like the “official” one used for conducting business and functions - for Anna as accommodation. “Can we go there… wait.” Uh-oh. “Charlie… what is going on here?” Damn.
He’d thought he could ease into it but yeah, he probably blew that chance. He takes a deep breath. “We also have London, the English country house, New York, The French Alps, which you'll be expected to visit annually, and Chicago…”
That came out in a kinda rush and he hopes she didn’t hear half of it because every time he has to tell someone about just how much property his family owns - and that’s just those they actually use - he feels embarrassed to the core. Also, she hopefully didn’t hear the thing about being expected to attend the annual weeklong winter house party at “the Chalet” - as his mother likes to call their Megève house - that his family has been throwing for family, business partners and friends ever since they bought the damn thing. And, note to self, better not tell her about the summer getaway thing on the family yacht and Nice.
As it looks now… even if she did hear any of it, she doesn’t believe him. She snorts and then says, in a kind of affected voice, “Oh, and of course a teeny tiny only six figure cabin in Aspen? Of course.” Then she drops back into her usual voice, a bit of dead-pan mixed into it. “Seriously, Charlie, who are you trying to kid?”
“It... was just above seven figures.” Oh God. That wasn’t supposed to slip out.
She does a double take. “...what?” At least he has her full attention now. Yay.
“The Aspen cabin. It was just above seven figures. And it’s in Breckenridge, not Aspen.” And… that was probably a bad idea. Why did he just have to say that?
Anna clearly doesn’t look happy now. “Charlie.”
Maybe pretending he has no idea what is her problem will help. “What?”
“Charlie!” Or maybe not.
He clears his throat. “Look, Anna…”
“You just told me that your family owns a “just over seven figures” house in fucking Breckenridge, Colorado, like it’s… like it’s nothing.” No, that’s not how he said it. Because he doesn’t believe that. Actually, that’s the reason he doesn’t like to think about just how rich his family really is. Because it always sounds so insane and unreal and really, that’s why he loves serving his country. Nothing insane or unreal about tha… “And… a house in France. And one in London. And one in God knows where else. And whatever, probably a couple fucking Lear jets or whatever because you have to get to all your houses in style!”
They’re mostly Gulfstreams and one Embraer but yeah, probably not the right moment to tell her about that. He tries to sound reasonable. “Anna…”
Anna doesn’t seem to be appreciating it much. “How much is your family worth?”
“What?” Not appreciating it at all.
And sounding totally unreasonable herself. “How much is your family worth?” What is that question even supposed to mean, anyway?
Also… “I don’t actually know.”
“Oh God. I can’t believe this.” If he’s honest, he can’t believe it, either but that’s the truth. He has no idea how much his family and their corporation and subsidiaries are worth exactly. He doesn’t even know exactly what his trust fund is worth. Mostly because he likes to pretend that ever since he told his father he wanted to join the armed forces instead of taking over the family business, his father killed the fund. Unfortunately, he never did.
Anyway, not the issue. “Anna, please…”
She shakes her head, furiously, losing the turban, her wet hair spilling out and then jumps off the bed, her eyes blazing. Oh God, has he ever told her how hot she looks when she’s really mad about something? “When were you planning to tell me that I’m marrying into a bloody Fortune 500 family?”
“100 actually and…” Oops.
Anna looks seriously unhappy now. Which is weird since, you know, he is currently trying to do exactly what she just asked of him. “Will you stop doing that?”
“Doing what?” Come to think of it, that was probably stupid.
“Correcting my assumptions about your family and just making everything worse.” Yep. He should have known that on his own.
Okay, he really needs to get the situation under control if he doesn’t want to spend the night outside in the snow. “Look, Anna, I’m sorry, I just…”
“It’s never going to work.” Huh?
He blinks. “What?”
“I said it’s never going to work!” She’s really upset now, from the way she’s pacing and gesturing and he starts to wish he never even thought about coming clean to her.
And he probably already knows very well what she means but maybe he just misheard her or misinterpreted something? “What is never going to work?”
“…this! Us!” Wha… “My father owns a fucking book store, my mother teaches art at high school and your father… I don’t even know what your father does.” Most of the time, he doesn’t either, but really isn’t that beside the… “But whatever it is, he’s obviously making millions every day or something!”
That is, unfortunately, true. But really, if that is her problem, he’s got a solution. “I told you that’s not the life I want. I meant it when I said that I’d rather…”
“I don’t care what you meant, Charlie!” Wait, that’s not how she’s supposed to react! She’s supposed to remember what he told her during last Spring Break, when they managed to get away from everyone, spending it in a little B&B up in Oregon. She’s supposed to remember that he told her all about realizing how the thought of being the sole heir to his family’s fortune and business absolutely terrifies him, how stepping into his father’s footsteps is literally the last thing he wants in this or any other life and how he’d rather live on his junior officer’s salary and her scholarship money and barely make ends meet than take even one penny from his parents’ or his fortune if it just meant being able to do what he wants to do with his life, love who he wants to love. To be free.
Instead, she’s… “You led me to believe that your family has some money but you’re actually Oliver Queen, Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark all rolled into one, minus the dead parents.” What… what is that even supposed to mean? “You… you lied to me, Charlie!”
He… what? Nuh-uh, no, he didn’t. No. He might have omitted a few truths but he never let her in the dark about the fact that he’s still his father’s heir, despite everything and how much he doesn’t want to be that. He tries to stay calm. “Sweet Tea, I wasn’t being…”
“No. No!” Okay, calm is not something she wants to stay. He can deal with that, right? Right. It’s not their first fight and he managed to survive all the other ones.
Okay, uh, how to respond to that? “Uh…”
“No!” Obviously, that wasn’t it. “And you get the fuck out of this room, right fucking now.”
…what? He stares at her, standing next to the door, her hand on the handle. She is… is she being serious? “Anna, you don’t really mean…”
“And the wedding is fucking cancelled!” She didn’t just say that. Nuh-uh.
Okay, judging from the volume at which she said - okay, yelled - that and the glare she’s throwing him, she did say that. But really, she didn’t mean that, right? “Look, won’t you please at least reconsider…”
“The hell I’ll reconsider anything.” Aw, come on, it’s not like he just told her he cheated on her or something! “Out, Lieutenant Williamson!”
She… she can’t mean that! She can’t be serious! Really, something went wrong here but he’ll be damned if he can’t get it back under control. He always could clean up everyone’s fuck-ups at the Academy and he already cleaned up one massive personnel records clusterfuck at work. He can do this. If she’d just listen to him. “Anna, please…”
“Get the fuck out of this room, right fucking now!”
Okay, maybe she won’t listen and… how the hell did he just end up in the corridor outside their room? Without a key, too. Huh. He blinks, then moves to knock on the door but even before his knuckles touch the wood, he can hear a muffled, “Don’t even think about it. Just go away,” and the force in that is so big that he feels dejection crawl all over his skin.
It feels so bad that all he can do is slowly back away and walk down the corridor, towards the elevator, down into the lobby and the only reason he just walks out into the biting cold of a Colorado January night is that just when he’s about to leave the lobby, the door opens to reveal a guy heavily bundled up in thick jacket, a scarf covering half his face and a beanie covering the upper half of his head. And the voice coming from somewhere beneath the folds of fabric saying, “Holy shit Charlie, did you have to get married in the worst month of all?”
Wait. That can’t be Evan Lorne. Evan Lorne’s supposed to be on the road, together with Tom… “Don’t mind Beach Boy here, he just forgot how to cope with a little chill down in Mississippi.” Okay, either the shock of Anna cancelling their wedding made him hallucinate or Evan Lorne and Thomas Moore have grown into even more reckless drivers than he remembers from the probably worst two days he ever spent with anyone on the road in the summer between Second and First Year.
He clears his breath. “I…”
“So, what are you doing here instead of snuggling up with my sister… oh God, that sounded wrong. Did that sound wrong to you, Tom?” Driving fever, definitely. And way too many cokes and a couple Red Bulls on top of it, too. He has seen Evan Lorne battle fatigue through more than one all-nighter, and thirty hours exercise and this is exactly what he sounds like close to the end of one.
Moore, for his part simply nods and gives a short, “Yep,” his hands in his pockets, only wearing jeans and a Falcons boxing team hoodie instead of half his closet like Lorne, flaunting his Maine heritage for all the world to see, yet again. He’s very close to sighing.
And… he knows he shouldn’t do it, should keep his mouth shut but for some reason, it slips out, “About that… Anna just kind of cancelled the wedding.”
For a moment, Moore and Lorne just stare at him and he feels himself go beet red in the face - one of the reasons he never even considered becoming a pilot: no one would take a fighter jockey serious who blushes under the slightest scrutiny - and then… they laugh. Those… assholes laugh at him, indecently loud and irritatingly amused and oh God, now they’re even doubling over and wiping tears from their eyes. He was never exactly good with this whole friendship thing but he’s pretty sure that laughing is not how friends are supposed react when you tell them that your fiancé just cancelled your wedding.
Thankfully, their laughter dies down after a few more slightly humiliating minutes and Lorne is the first to recover enough to be able to speak. “Okay, that was a good one, Charlie. Now why are you down here?”
Moore is still laughing quietly so he can’t help throwing the guy one his very rare glares. At least it works. He turns back to Lorne. “I wasn’t joking. She just threw me out of our room after she called off our wedding.”
He hopes that his dead serious tone - God, he didn’t just nearly choke on that last part, right? - will convince them that he was being dead serious and at least Lorne seems to have realized that there’s more to that story. Lorne frowns. “Charlie… what’s going on here?”
Oh God. He realizes that if he wants to get out of this with dignity, he will have to tell them about everything. About his family being really old Boston money, about having kind of lied about growing up on Nantucket - they did, still do, live there for most of the year but come November, it’s back to the Terrible Tudor, all until March - about his family owning a three million dollar one-hundred-and-thirty-five-foot yacht they only use a couple weeks each summer and a house in the French Alps and their own fucking planes for fuck’s sake. He’ll have to come clean about everything he desperately to escape from the last four and a half years.
He takes a deep breath. “Look, it’s all just a misunderstanding. It’s not what it looks like. I told her something I shouldn’t have told her and she got upset about…”
“No way.” What? “You asshole.” What? “I never thought that you of all people would stoop so low as… she’s my fucking sister, you absolute fucking jerk.” What is Lorne going on ab…
Bloody fucking hell, where did that just come from?
“Why in God’s name did you just punch me in the fucking face, you moron?” Mother would be horrified but goddammit, one of his two best friends just hit him in the face, without even telling him why first.
And why is Moore just standing there like… “You know what? Fuck this, fuck you, I’m gonna take care of my sister.” But what in God’s name does Lorne think he did? “And fuck this wedding. January. Which asshole thinks getting married in January is a good idea? God, I’m just so fucking done…”
And with that, Lorne just wanders off, still wearing that ridiculously thick jacket, shoulders hunched, hands shoved into his pockets, pretty sure still muttering on profanities.
He blinks and oh good, that’s a nice shiner already starting to form. He blinks again, harder, faster and… he still got nothing. A little helplessly, he turns to Moore who just gives a long-suffering sigh and makes a face. “He had to dump his girlfriend last night, after catching her with one of our instructors, doing “night maneuvers”. Repeatedly.”
Right. At least that explains why one of them arrived here without a girlfriend. And does nothing to justify trying to punch a friend’s lights out.
But yeah, he’s kind of tired of fighting, the full reality of what just happened - Anna freaking out and cancelling a wedding he’d wanted with all his heart for the last two years, Lorne apparently suspecting him of what, cheating on Anna? - finally starting to settle in and he just kind of… slumps down, not even looking at Moore when he wearily asks, “And what about your girlfriend? Did she bail on you or something?”
It earns him a humorless laugh and a shrug that looks way more casual than Moore obviously feels. “Kinda. She dumped me, saying I was getting a little too excited about “this whole wedding gig”. Whatever, I wasn’t being serious with her, anyway.” Yeah, right. Just like he hadn’t been serious about their fellow cadet Lydia Debenham, while mooning over her for three full years. God, that guy is such an… “Anyway, you know what’s great about being over twenty-one and not expected to fly for the next seven days?” He throws Moore a dead-pan look. “Alcohol. You get to legally buy alcohol, and lots of it. Now come on, I’m buying.”
Really? That’s Moore solution? Getting shit-faced? “Look, I don’t think…”
“Don’t worry, they’ll sort it out, whatever it was that happened between you and Anna, and Lorne will be sorry that we got a head start on him by the time they’re done.” He wants to protest again but Moore is adamant, a weird note of steel creeping into his casual voice, just like every time when he puts his foot down. “Look, I know you didn’t cheat on her and she will set his head straight just as he will set hers straight. And in the meantime, we’ll get to sample the bar and find a way to treat that shiner so you won’t look like a prize fighter in your wedding pictures. Get going.”
Okay then. Of course he definitely won’t be drinking at the bar - especially if Moore’s buying - but yeah, maybe they’ll have enough ice for him to pack on that black eye. He sighs, dejectedly. “I… I guess they’ll have some ice, at least?”
At that, Moore positively beams and grabs his arm, dragging him along towards the bar and he finally gives in. It can’t get much worse than this anyway, can it?