not_like_darrin (not_like_darrin) wrote in instorm, @ 2017-07-12 19:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | drake lee, fiona lee |
Homecoming Part I: The Arrival
Who: Drake and Fiona
What: Driving Into and Settling In Town
When: July 5th, Late Evening
Where: The Highway and the Motel
Status: Closed, Complete
“Where the hell are we going?”
It was a question that Drake Lee asked many times… in his head, but he never dared ask it aloud. Drake wasn’t the type of man who one would consider overly directionally challenged, and that was an opinion of himself that he held without the stereotypical masculine posturing of “being a man means that you automatically know exactly where you are at all times.” No, for the most part, Drake was the kind of guy who actually had very little issue admitting to his faults. It was just hard to wrap his head around the fact that he was going to Stormvale… a place that he had never really heard of up until that point. Not that the geography of North Carolina was exactly high on his list of things to learn about. If it wasn’t for the Jaguars, Drake wouldn’t have even known about Jacksonville, more than likely. And he didn’t even like football. Hated it, in fact. Still, spend enough time in Denver and you learn a thing or two about the pigskin sport.
He wouldn’t have been so keen to blindly travel to a place that he had never heard before if it wasn’t for the person who was sitting in the passenger’s side of their rental car. Fiona. His wife. That part of their relationship was still very new (actually, their entire relationship was still firmly in its infancy, but that was beside the point). So new in fact that it didn’t always occur to Drake to immediately think of her in such a way. If it wasn’t for the way that the ring glistened in the starlight radiance of the night sky as they drove towards their destination, he might have even forgot about it in that exact moment. Truth was, if it was for Fiona… Drake didn’t care where the destination was. If she needed him to go with her, he would.
While they may not have known each other for that long, Drake felt that he knew his wife well enough to know when she was concerned about something. And that was why he hadn’t bothered to ask the question, no matter how many times it flashed in his mind. No doubt, Fiona was worried about her father. The end result might have been very different, but Drake could easily put himself in Fiona’s shoes. A call about a parent getting into an accident. It could have happened to anyone that Drake knew and the situation would have been enough to cause a tight knot to form in his stomach while the memories that he tried to keep away crept up and shredded his mental defenses like they were thin pieces of paper. The fact that it was happening to his wife, to a member of his family, was seemingly the cruelest of ironies.
They should have been at Stormvale by that point in their journey. One of the good things about living in Denver was that it was situated at a very beneficial location for travelling to just about any other location in the country with ease. Southwest offered flights from Denver to Jacksonville, and they booked their seats quickly. If only the flight had managed to depart on time. Delays weren’t uncommon in air travel… and they were even more unwelcome as they were frequent. When magnified with the stress of knowing that someone was hurt… that only compounded everything. Drake had to give Fiona all the credit in the world for holding her composure as well as she had while they waited those extra hours for their plane to finally arrive, board and depart. He wasn’t even sure why the delay happened. Ultimately, it didn’t really matter. What mattered, in the long run, was getting to Stormvale as quickly as possible. In the short run (well, in the long run, too… the longer run, really), he had to support his wife. Vows had been exchanged overlooking the Las Vegas strip a short time prior… and part of those vows included for better or for worse. Drake never would have figured that the trials and tribulations would have started so soon, and yet there they were. Indeed, nobody could really predict when such situations would arise. Drake knew this just about as well as anyone.
He turned his brown eyes up towards the sky again for a moment. Just one day before, the skies were ablaze with various bursts of color, accompanied by piercing blasts of sound. The 4th of July was the first major holiday that Drake and Fiona had spent as a married couple, and that was something that mattered to Drake… even if he didn’t really care about the 4th as an institution in and of itself. It might have had something to do with the fact that, well… his people kind of invented fireworks anyway… so they really weren’t that big of a deal to him. Alternatively, it could have had something to do with the fact that Reading, Pennsylvania’s most famous daughter was a huge fan of the holiday. Again, one of those random facts that Drake just knew. It wasn’t like he actively looked into aspects of Taylor Swift’s life. Far from it, in fact. He did his best to avoid anything related to her (though it pained him to admit that “Trouble” had a good beat). Still, when someone was as omnipresent as she was… that was a difficult thing to accomplish.
Drake’s mind recalled just 24 hours before… holding Fiona in his arms as they watched the multicolored display among the crowd. How quickly things could change. If he had known… maybe he would have held her a little bit tighter and tried to savor the moment for just a few seconds longer. Instead, they were traveling down the North Carolina highway towards Fiona’s hometown in a rental car (bless airport adjacent hotels for having car rental companies that stayed open later than most).
“I just want to make sure that I know what we’re doing now… we’re just going to straight to the hotel that you mentioned, get some rest and then head over to your parents’ tomorrow, right?” It wasn’t like he wanted to really talk about the unfortunate reason for their travel, but at the same time it was the elephant in the room that was basically impossible to ignore. He didn’t know how to distract her in that moment… wasn’t sure if there was a way to do that, really. Although undaunted by the challenge, Drake had to admit that if this was one of the first of the labors that their newly created union would have to overcome… well… circumstance had decided to throw them into the deep end.
God damn circumstance.