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

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

[From here, as requested by

fakes]
--

It 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.

She hadn't seen hide or hair of him during her mission, but when she went to have a drink in the bar at their hotel late the night before they were supposed to leave, she found him sitting in a dark corner. When didn't he sit in dark corners, really, but she rolled her eyes and put a smile on her face to join him.

Their breakup and subsequent dealings had been difficult, and after that State Dinner, she'd gone out of her way to keep her distance from him as much as possible. That didn't mean they couldn't enjoy a drink or two (or seven) while in Vegas.

Unfortunately--

When Annie woke to the pounding in her head, she almost couldn't open her eyes. When she finally managed, she ignored the immense nausea she felt and peered at the walls in the hotel room she was in. She hadn't been given this nice of a room, not on the Agency's dime, no. This was something else. Turning, she caught sight of a man's head and her eyes widened, causing the pounding to pick up and she clenched her eyes shut again with a groan.

Clapping both hands, right over left, on her head, she felt something heavy and lifted them again almost immediately. Seeing the wedding ring set on her left hand, she gasped.

"Oh, my God."

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"The rent on a place that overlooks the Capitol would be twice this place, at least," Annie said. "That's why I always dreamed about it."

She wouldn't be one of those wives, even if something had clearly happened to make him think she wanted forty grand on her hand. "What else do you think we need to talk about?"

"And we have two incomes," meaning he figured that her view could be a reality.

"Probably that fight." That fight. The one about kids, Annie's career, his career, Ben, their future. It wasn't going to be an easy discussion for either of them that much was for sure.

Annie promptly drained her wine glass.

Any discussion that was going to cover all of those topics was going to need liquid courage. Also, she was going to need to draw on her actual courage and her desire to hold firm before she wilted and ran away.

"Okay."

Clay did the same. They touched the subject briefly in the airport, but now they could really talk. He imagined at some point all of this was going to de-evolve into anger. Cooler heads would have to prevail later. The first step was to get it all out there.

"Like I said yesterday, I was terrified of our relationship."

"Right. I'm guessing that the basis for that hasn't really changed since..." She set the glass down so it wouldn't become a projectile later. "I'm still a field agent, you're still a Director and now, here we are."

She made a face in the direction of the window and then looked at him. "So, what do we do?"

"Well," he sighed as a way to fill the gap while he came up with what he had to say, "You said you weren't planning on getting pregnant. I assume that's still true?"

His fear rested with what would happen to their children. If children weren't in the plan right now, then it wasn't really an issue at the moment.

"I want to have kids eventually, especially if my husband is fifty years old." It came out snippier than she intended and she sighed, looking at the couch. "I'm sorry."

Her first thought was that it wasn't going to work. None of this was. "I don't want to wait eight or ten years."

"I don't want to either. I'd be too old to sit in those little kid chairs and stand up again." It wasn't a joke he was completely serious.

Clay looked at Annie for a solid minute while he weighed the information he knew. She'd been shot at, shot, beaten up, thrown into any number of death defying situations and walked out of them alive. Odds were she would continue to do that.

He spoke again, as if he was working something out out loud, "I just don't want our kids to wonder what happened to you for their entire lives. It's a terrible position to be in and would almost guarantee that they follow in our footsteps. I don't know if I want that either, he paused, "But you're a good agent. You've been okay this long and all of that is not luck." Some of it was, there was no denying it. It's how things worked out for all of them. "I have to believe you're going to come home."

"I am a good agent," she responded very matter of fact, very proud of herself and the work she'd done over the three years she'd been an operative. "I like my job, Clay. I'm good at my job. Being a mother wouldn't change that, but it would probably change me. And I can't promise that I'd want to stay at home, but I might. I might not. I can't promise one way or the other, but I don't want you to resent me if that's what I want to do. I can transfer to other areas in the Agency, too, you know."

She took a breath. "I have to believe I'm going to come home, too. I know I have a few good people back here making sure of it."

Clay nodded. He said he didn't want to hold her back in her career, and forcing Annie to quit fieldwork would do just that. She needed to make her own decision about it, just like he had.

"I'm not going to resent you. I said I didn't want you to hold you back. Saying you need to quit to have a family is going to do that. I don't want to do that."

Annie watched him as he spoke, her skills as an agent doing their best to read between the lines of what he was saying.

"I want to have a family, I always have. Always with you, actually," she said quietly. She traced a line over the couch's leather cushion, before sighing again. "Hearing you tell me I couldn't have the life I wanted with you really broke my heart."

Her voice cracked at the end of her sentence and she just knew she was going to cry. Her throat tightened and she swallowed hard to avoid it for as long as possible, but the tears came anyway.

"I'm sorry." Clay didn't know he'd hurt Annie quite like that and it bothered him that he had. The apology didn't do anything to make up for it, he was almost sure of that.

Instead of saying anything else, he decided to hug her.

"Maybe you were right." She sank into the hug, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder. "Maybe this is the worst idea two agents ever had. I love you, but maybe we weren't meant to be married, Clay."

Annie took a breath and pressed a kiss to his neck.

"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't."

That was really his only opinion on the matter. Clay didn't know if this was the right decision for the two of them.

"You've only thought about having a family with me and I've only looked at wedding rings for you. That has to count for something, right?"

"It counts for a lot as far as I'm concerned." Annie shifted in his arms so that she was still in a hug, but was more in his lap than anything. "I just don't know how to be the woman you want me to be and still be the woman I want to be."

"Who do you think I want you to be?"

The question was really nothing more than a measure of where Annie stood on them. They were in this together.

"I don't know..." She trailed off, her gaze floating around the room, taking in the man he was. "The perfect wife? Young, blonde, someone to stay at home and have your perfect children?"

It wasn't fair and she knew it, but sometimes she felt like Clay deserved something more than she could give him. Something his country club upbringing could provide.

If he wanted that, he would have been married decades ago. Clay wanted something much different. Before he told her that though, he wanted to know why she thought that.

"Why?"

"I just told you, I don't know," she told him, sitting up so he could see the honesty in her expression. "It's what you deserve. Someone who'll be there to cook you dinner, and something more than chicken because you have to be tired of that, and someone who doesn't get shot at all the time. Someone who's not addicted to coffee, someone who can appreciate all the little things you do more than I can?"

Which, now she was being ridiculous, because Clay would have been hard pressed to find someone who appreciated him more than Annie. Not just the life-saving stuff, either, but the little things. The coffee in the morning, the looks, the way he took care of her. Annie had been a wreck for nine months because she'd missed all of him. He'd become an important detail in her life, a friend she didn't know how to live without.

"And if I wanted that, I would have been married a long time ago." Clay was being just as honest as Annie.

"I don't care that you don't cook, getting shot at all the time bothers me, as far as a coffee addiction goes there are worse things."

Then he smiled, "I want someone who understands all of this. Someone who understands that sometimes, no matter how much I may want to, I can't share everything. I don't want the stereotypical housewife. I want someone who's happy with her life and someone who makes me feel better about my own. I hate to break it to you Annie, but that's you."

His smile continued, "And if they're our kids, they'll be perfect for us."

"Why weren't you married a long time ago? I never understood that, what with you being you. Charming, smart, well-off..."

She sighed and pushed her hands through her hair. "I love you, I've loved you almost from the first moment I met you and I've missed you from the second I walked out of your office. I want this to work and I'm afraid that it's not going to."

Her honesty was reaching all kinds of highs.

"I'm a spy. I lie for a living." It was simple, to the point, and one hundred percent true.

When Annie said she was afraid it wasn't going to work his response came automatically, "What can I do to make you feel better about everything?"

He wasn't sure if there was anything he could do, but he was willing to try anything Annie thought he'd help.

"I'm not sure." Honesty was continuing. "Don't be so quick to dismiss telling me what I can do. What you want from me. What kinds of things make you happiest and what doesn't. I want a marriage, Clay, not a dictatorship... in either direction."

She sighed. "And I do want kids."

"I think I want girls I don't know how I'd handle boys."

It wasn't the first thing he planned on saying but it's what came out first. As far as Annie's other points were concerned, he decided to chip away at them.

"That's fair. What you can and can't do, is up to you, not me."

"I want both," she said with a small smile on her face. "Little boys that can be just like you with their perfect hair and manners and suits that they can then go play in the mud in."

She didn't know it, but the visual had made the smile on her face grow as she'd imagined it. "I think you'd be so protective of any girls we had, threatening their boyfriends and just... being their 'daddy'. You'd be so whipped." Likely by all the women in his life.

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