valerie anna . climbing the stairway (24k) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-04-04 22:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | green arrow, lady |
Who: Orin and Valerie
What: Signing paperwork, the most romantic thing about marriage.
Where: A lawyer's office.
When: Er. Recently.
Warnings: Not a one; though Orin is being very honorable for a rake/cokehead, which should be dire warning enough.
The lawyer’s office was quiet, which was a nice change given the events of the morning. Orin had sent a car for Valerie, but he wasn’t sure if the woman would show up, not after everything that had happened. Sure, her conversation with Arrow made it sound like she hadn’t had a change of heart, but his conversation with Adam earlier in the day had left him wondering. And, as the Seattle Times was only too happy to point out the large dip Monarch stock had taken that morning, he wasn’t making any assumptions about Valerie’s attendance at this meeting.
There was no indication of any turmoil, however, in Orin’s posture or his expression. He was sprawled in the chair in khaki and button-down white, stubble lining his jaw and eyes blue and clear. The lawyer, and older man, looked entirely unruffled by the wait.
Valerie was dressed to the hilt. She had a fifties-style dress on, an abhorrent style she tended to wear when she was feeling defensive, like she might need the extra fabric, even if it was wrapped tight enough to make no qualms about why she was there. If she was the Little Mermaid in her high heels, there was no sign she felt the knives, and her appearance was flawless grace, even if she brought no smiles to the meeting. When she stepped through the door, a file folder in one hand with her copy of the agreement, she nodded politely at the lawyer and then glanced at Orin with an expression so neutral you couldn’t have cooked with it. “I’m sorry I’m late.” She didn’t offer an excuse. She sat.
Orin hitched up the fabric at his thighs as he sat up, shifting and making himself comfortable with the movement. “We weren’t in any rush,” he told her, blatantly taking in her appearance. “And seeing as you’re important to this proceeding, we couldn’t very well start without you,” he added, finishing his slow sweep of her body and finishing at her face. She smelled a little like the roses he knew had been delivered, and it made him smug, even with everything else in turmoil
The lawyer excused himself to obtain Valerie’s representative, and Orin just kept looking at the woman beside him. Waiting.
Valerie turned to look at him. She wasn’t flawless, and she was angry at him, but also distressed about something. She wasn’t going as far out of her way to hide it as she could, or perhaps wasn’t capable of doing so. “I have a representative?” she asked.
He nodded, leaning a little to the side in the chair, so he could see her better. “Honey, this is a contract. It isn’t me being a monster. You got plenty of outs, and you got plenty of money coming your way. But if you don’t want to be here, you don’t have to,” he said, speaking as plain as he could.
She nodded. She hadn’t swept her hair up or curled it like she had the night previous, but as always she took pains with her appearance, and the short feminine style complimented the dress. It seemed somehow harsh. “I know. I could have stayed home.” It was nice of him to say that, she thought, readjusting the purse on her lap. She didn’t really have an out, though. Her own money would be gone within the week. If she wanted to stretch, she could probably last another couple weeks before the effects were severe enough to really limit her, but no, she didn’t really have an option. “I want to be here,” she said. She realigned her gaze over the lawyer’s desk, and tapped the folder with one manicured nail. It was still a pleasant lavender from the night previous. “I just don’t speak lawyer and so I have a lot of questions, that’s all.”
“Your lawyer will represent you, not me. He’s looking out for your interests, not mine,” Orin assured her. He knew she didn’t have a real good opinion of him (for obvious reasons), but he wasn’t going to shaft her the way she seemed to be expecting. She wouldn’t be able to sue him, either, not with clean counsel on either side making sure everyone knew their rights. “Honey, bottom line is this - I need your help, and I’m willing to pay for it. I’m not trying to cheat you out of anything, so relax,” he said, slouching back in the chair, his expression possibly, maybe a little wounded.
She was annoyed at him for being hurt at something like that. It was like being irritated at her for wearing the severe armor--that is, dress. “I represent me,” she said, perhaps a little sharper than she meant to. “I’m not paying him to represent me, and the only one I know for sure that is looking out for my interests is me. I like you, and I know you’re doing what’s best for you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sign a contract blindfolded. Not even for your pride, though I don’t understand how you can possibly have any left after last night.” She averted her gaze.
He was quiet a second, and then he pushed himself to his feet with his hands on the arms of the chair to aid the movement unnecessarily. “Well, then we got to come back and do this when you have representation you aren’t questioning. I’m not going into this with you not trusting your lawyer, honey. Not when it can come back to bite me in the ass.”
“No,” Valerie said, firmly. She could afford delay any more than she could afford a lawyer. “I went over it myself, and I’ll have my questions and then we can go home.”
He didn’t sit back down. “Not a chance, Val. You go on and find yourself a lawyer you trust. I’ll pay for it, but I’m not going to have a contract that you’re being forced into without counsel,” he said, and it was very obviously he had no intention of bending, not on this matter.
“That’s just it, you would have to pay for it. It always comes back to money, Orin. Please sit down, this needs to be finished before I can get any of my things in order, and most of it is already in boxes.” Voices in the hallway just outside came closer, and she turned around to gave him an unmistakably pleading look. This needed to happen now, when she was just short of desperate and far enough away that no one need know.
The lawyers came back into the room on her last word, and Orin pointed at the unfamiliar man from the practice across the hall. “He can go,” he told his own counsel. “Then I want you to pull up the name of the nearest women’s legal practice and get one of them over here instead.” He pulled out his wallet, and he scribbled an IOU on a piece of paper, leaning over the lawyer’s desk as he wrote. “Move this money into Ms. Anna’s bank account while we wait, so she can pay her attorney,” he said, and then he wandered to the window and tucked his hands calmly into his pocket as he looked outside.
Valerie looked at the lawyers and didn’t trouble herself to add to the commentary. She waited until the dismissed lawyer had turned and left (looking insulted). It was a good compromise and some of the tension went out of her fingers on the line of the folder. She really had done her best with the contract (her copy had a lot of pencil marks), but nothing had made her feel quite that stupid. She missed her stage, where she was in her element, but she knew well enough that she couldn’t take it wherever she went. She didn’t look at Orrie again.
It took a half hour of silence for the woman to arrive. She was in her 40s, blonde and southern, and she ushered Valerie out of the room and to an adjacent space to discuss her concerns with the contracts, her goals, her desired outcome and other particulars.
Orin merely stood by the window. He was pretty sure this day couldn’t get any damn worse.
It could, if Valerie decided to walk out of there, but she didn’t. She wanted to know what certain terms meant. Her questions oriented around those terms, and also around the timing that he had in place. She was surprised about the children, surprised he would think about it, but didn’t object. She thought she shouldn’t be surprised that he didn’t expect fidelity, but she was anyway.
The lawyer, who did so much pro bono work that you could see her youth drained from her eyes, only gave Valerie pause because of her accent, which she associated with... let’s say men she didn’t entirely trust. She got all her questions answered to her satisfaction, however, it just took a couple hours. The lawyer picked up the scent of distrust five minutes in and brought in a legal dictionary.
Both came out, and Valerie sat down and asked for a pen.
When the women came back into the office, Orin took his seat again, and there was the implication that he’d been standing there the whole time, just looking out that window. He didn’t hesitate when he sat, didn’t think Valerie’s counsel had advised her to have a damn thing changed in the document. Truth was, the document was much more favorable to Valerie than it was to Orin, and even a pro bono attorney could see it. She could marry him, divorce him in a month and collect a paycheck for life - he actually expected her to do just that, even if he didn’t say as much.
He reached for the pen that was handed to him, and he waited just long enough for the witnesses-on-retainer to come in and watch them signing the documents before signing his name with a flourish.
Valerie’s name on the paper looked like an old, old inkblot print, formal, even stylized. Satisfied with her end of the deal, anxious to get this finished, she signed on her line, and then she sat back and gathered her purse and her paperwork. The lawyer gave her a business card, probably recognizing Orrie from the newspapers, and Valerie smiled and tucked that away. She raised expectant brows at Orrie.
He stood, and he shook the lawyers’ hands and thanked the witnesses, making a mental note to have Audrey send them all something to thank them - a cheese basket or something - and then he held a hand out for Valerie. If he’d been tense before she signed, there was no indication, and right then he just looked like a happy, future-groom holding out a hand to his future-bride.
Valerie stood up when he did, and a warmer, happier smile was directed at the female lawyer, an unthinking ally in this particular situation. Faint roses--or perhaps her rose oil from the previous night?--joined the embrace as he stepped away and she slid close to his side. They moved out.
Orin slid a hand around Valerie’s waist, as if they were the closest couple to exist, as if nothing at all had happened the night before. He kept his hand there all the way to the elevator, where he pushed a button and looked down at her. “When does the yelling start? Everyone seems real sure you’re going to hand me my ass for last night.”
“I’m not your mother, Orin Monarch,” Valerie said, looking up at him. “And I just signed a paper that says your ass is yours to do with what you like. What were the flowers for?” The neutral expression was back, the bland, careful one.
“A man can still apologize,” he said, nudging her into the elevator when it opened, one hand on the center of her back. “Even if the contract doesn’t say he has to,” he told her, glancing down at the old-fashioned dress she wore (not for the first time), and he wondered if it made her feel better somehow, all that vintage. He touched his fingers to the fabric on her shoulder, the material strangely chaste beneath fingers accustomed to things much more modern.
She stepped into the elevator, and then she moved deliberately back, not entirely out of his reach, but enough to make it clear what she was doing. She had the height to look him in the eye, or at least not crane her head, and she leveled an angry, and yes, hurt gaze straight at him. “I do not accept your apology. I know you enough to know that you are too smart to do something like that in public without being aware of what you were doing. You could have warned me in advance, at least.”
He couldn’t admit that he did know in advance, because then there would have to be a reason, and his expression hardened as he looked forward, waiting for the doors to open. When they did, he stepped out, putting a hand on the elevator door to hold it open for her. “Next time I need to snort something, I’ll tell you before I go find my fix,” he told her, but it was distant - he was on edge from his conversation with Adam, and it was the wrong time to make this about what he did at night, even if she wasn’t aware of it.
She turned her head to look at him as she stepped out too. “No you won’t,” she said, flatly. She came closer, brushing against his hip, but not out of affection. “And you better fix your problem, or your cousins are going to fix it for you. Probably by shipping you off to a very expensive detox resort in the middle of the night.” Her eyes were bright as they focused on his. “Do you need help fixing this problem?”
“You going to help me?” he asked, the grin on his lips an entertained one, despite his anger and stress.
She wasn’t laughing. “If you need it.”
“Afraid it’ll leave us broke?” he asked, watching her with an expression that was undefinable, a combination of curiosity, surprise and sharp attention, which was all focused on her.
She blinked a solid blink of surprise and consternation. “Orin, darling, you could kill yourself with a crack habit before you run out of money.”
That surprised him enough for it to show on his face. “Worried? If I die, you get a whole lot of cash, remember? I might think you care, honey, if you aren’t careful.”
She was insulted. “I don’t want you to die.”
There was no warning. He reached for her, dragged her close to him, all male heat and friction. “And why is that, honey?” he asked, looking down at her, that ridiculously chaste dress rumpled against his designer khaki and white.
Automatically, Valerie resisted. She didn’t have her weight or her balance and her breath gave a little gasp right before it made it out of her throat. “I’m not that cold-blooded,” she managed, trying to get a heel that had become dislodged back on. She tried to turn and see if there was someone he was trying to fool, or something.
There wasn’t anyone. And once she found her heel and her breath, he let her go; resisting women weren’t to his taste.
The car he’d sent for her was waiting, and he motioned for the driver to remain inside, choosing to open the rear door for her himself. “I think you’re a confusing little minx,” he told her, as he leaned on the edge of the door. “What’s underneath all those chaste dresses and perfectly done up hair?” he asked her, realizing he didn’t know. Even having slept with the woman as Arrow, he didn’t know.
And just as quickly, she was set again on her feet. It was like the hot tub, but without the laughter and the conversation. She thought that he’d probably forgot that by now. “You’re changing the subject,” she reminded him, thinking that there was only Valerie under the clothes, and what else could there be?
“Am I?” he asked, but he only played dumb for a second or two. “Honey, if I need your help, I’ll let you know,” he told her, looking at her straight on as he said it. It was the closest indication he’d given that everything was fine, that there wasn’t anything for her to worry about. His secrets, he felt, were all being exposed, and he didn’t like it, but he didn’t want to worry her, either, he found.
Valerie looked at him for a long time. Her head was tilted and her eyes were clear, and she was staring at him with concentration, as if she could read what was behind his expression if she kept at it long enough. Eventually, slowly, she dipped her head into a little nod. “I believe you.” She shifted her weight all at once and leaned forward to touch her lips to his in a cool, chaste kiss that had the look of casual affection. “But you better talk to your family. I wasn’t joking about what they would do. They love you.” She dropped back into the backseat of the car, pulling long legs in after her.
“I talked to them,” he admitted, not closing the door yet. “It didn’t go so well, and I’m pretty sure Adam’s going to disavow me.” He sounded casual, but there was something more to it, something like anger behind the calm, collected words.
One knee reappeared back again, and she stared up at him in surprise. “You’re not serious.” She saw his face. He was. “...He can do that?”
“My money isn’t his, Valerie. Nothing to worry about,” he said, assuming her reaction was on that account alone.
“He’s going to disavow you about me, about the party, or about the drug habit?” she asked, ignoring that.
“He’s going to disavow all knowledge of my person, Valerie. It’s like cutting someone off publicly. No family, nothing.” He leaned forward against the door, letting it swing toward her slightly without closing. “That worry you?”
“Why would he do that?” The other knee appeared; now she was sitting and watching him over the door. “It seems like family would be... more.”
“Ro’ll still talk to me, no matter what he says, but the man’s running for office. He can’t have any scandal hanging over him. Our stock took a dive today, and everyone at the company’s panicking. Imagine what that sort of thing does to a campaign.” He looked at her, realizing he was saying too much, too much stuff that was real, and then he nodded toward her legs. “Get on in. He’ll drive you back on home.”
Valerie didn’t have family to compare this to. Her mother had been more of a dependent than anything. Yet she frowned, uncertain. The stocks had taken a dive, of course. She wasn’t particularly surprised. Reluctantly, she pulled in one heel, and then another. “Well.” She looked again at his face, sensing there was something deeper there he didn’t want her to see. “Let me know if you don’t want to invite him to the wedding.”
He closed the door, and he tapped the window so the driver would open it. He leaned on the glass as it lowered, not putting any weight on it. “He’s family, honey. I’ll always invite him. No matter how much he pisses me the fuck off.”
At that, she smiled at him. It was a real, warm, red smile. “Good.”
He watched her a moment longer, saying nothing, but looking like he wanted to. And then he stood and tapped on the roof with the flat of his palm, indicating the driver should go. This was going to be harder than he’d planned, he realized, and it felt like everything was unraveling at his feet.
He sighed, and he turned to go back inside. He wanted to make provisions for Willow with the lawyer before heading back to the office.