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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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.

When Clay saw that smile, he wondered for what felt like the hundredth time since he'd broken up with her nine months ago, how he could have let her go. "What if they don't like perfect hair and suits? What if they like...football?"

Endless kid football games almost made him shudder.

Sorry, Clayton. Your disgust at the thought of football is apparent and it makes Annie's smile turn into light laughter.

"Would it really be that bad? You wouldn't have to coach and I'm sure you'd be the only man in your position at the Agency leaving early for games," she teased. The younger agents, sure, but Clay really would be sixty when their sons would be playing football.

Clay hadn't actually done the math when thinking about their future family other than he'd be much older than he should be to be the father of adolescent boys.

"I'm not really a football fan, that's all." It might all be moot anyway. They could just have girls.

"I know you're not, which means that we should start with getting season tickets to the Redskins." She wasn't serious, but he wouldn't know it by looking at her. "The girls... I can't imagine how you're going to spoil them. I'm going to put my foot down and say no ponies."

STILL teasing and he still wouldn't know.

Clay had no idea Annie was teasing, "Then they can't go riding with Dad. I'm going to have to disagree with that one."

He was going to spoil them, he had no doubt at all.

"Your stable thing doesn't have horses to... rent or whatever?" Annie had no idea how riding horses really went. It wasn't her area of expertise. "I mean, really. I don't have a horse. What if I wanted to go riding with you and your mom?"

"You're welcome to. They have horses adults can use. Horses for children are a little harder to come by. That's all."

He had no idea Annie would even be interested in riding with them on Sundays. Clay'd love to have her, in fact, it might be a good environment to break the news to his mother.

"We could tell her on Sunday."

That's what she got for harassing him and teasing him. At the suggestion that she actually be present when he told his mother, Annie's mouth dropped open and she lost a little of the color in her face.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

As much as it scared him the sooner they told his mother the better. The longer they waited the angrier she'd be at him and he didn't want to go through another month of not speaking to his mother.

"You're officially her daughter-in-law. I'm sure she'll be thrilled."

"I'm fairly certain that your mother is one of those mothers that operates on the idea that there is no woman out there that's good enough for her darling son. The fact that we got married in Vegas will only enforce the belief that I'm some kind of siren harlot that did something awful to you. Add in the rings and the fact that I'm twenty years younger than you are and it won't matter how much she thought she liked me before. Clay, the woman will dislike me. I'm going to be hated amongst all her friends, your friends..."

Annie had a legitimate fear that that section of his life was something she'd never fit into.

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

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