WHAT: Laurence is overthinking and invites Carol over for dinner WHERE: The Dragon Covert WHEN: Thursday, December 15th WARNINGS: Some discussions around mortality, but otherwise nah STATUS: Complete
It was funny, sometimes, how much could change in a year. A year ago, Laurence wouldn’t have invited an unwed woman over for dinner, the two of them alone, and he certainly wouldn’t have been cooking dinner for them – the most he could have managed a year ago was meat over a fire, the outside charred and the inside raw, and that was something he’d have only done in desperation. It was unthinkable that he’d have his sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he cooked, forearms bared to her, or his jacket hung carefully over the back of a chair instead of over his shoulders. A year ago, he had been ashamed that his guests could see into his kitchen from the parlor.
He certainly wouldn’t have done any of that with hardly a second thought to the impropriety of it all. And yet, here he was, standing over the stove, Carol seated in the kitchen as he put the final touches on their dinner. Lan Xichen was working late this evening, and Temeraire had his study group out back – Laurence knew better than to hover while Temeraire was with his friends, though he often prepared snacks for the students.
The truth was, Laurence didn’t particularly care to spend the evening by himself. He’d grown used to a certain level of solitude in his life – a captain didn’t have the luxury of being too friendly with his crew, but his expectations had shifted somewhat in the last few years, both through Temeraire’s constant companionship and then Lan Xichen’s. He knew he shouldn’t be jealous that Temeraire was making new friends – he had, in fact, encouraged it – but he still felt the twinge of it when he wished for his company and Temeraire was otherwise engaged. And lately, with Lan Xichen’s family, a family that Laurence had hoped to soon be able to call his own, being snapped up in one fell swoop, unexpectedly and painfully, Laurence didn’t particularly care for solitude.
He finished plating the pasta.
“Would you mind bringing the wine?” Laurence asked, nodding toward the wine rack as he took up the plates through the door to the dining room. The room itself was a little large for two people; it had originally been a military mess hall, but he and Lan Xichen had not done a poor job of converting it into something more befitting a home than a barracks.
“Thank you again for accepting my invitation; I know it was last minute, and I’m sure you’d already had your evening planned.” He placed the plates at the table, and waited for Carol to take her seat before he took his. “How is Miss Vance?”
A dinner invitation from Laurence, last-minute as it may be, wasn’t unwelcome in Carol’s book. They had become friendlier since Stephen’s disappearance; he had become her new chessmate, and she liked spending time with him. He could be so prim and proper, always with the Miss Danvers until she’d changed that to Captain Danvers and later just Carol. It made it all the more fun to fluster him with impropriety and salaciousness, honestly. Leaving him speechless and staring at her with a furrowed brow was one of her favorite things.
But she would also freely admit a call for dinner tonight when her Defense shift was just ending and she was planning on heading home was unexpected and maybe a little concerning. Something about his voice on the other end of the line made her agree, though. He sounded like he had something on his mind, and if he was specifically calling her, she knew that was for a reason. He had been through it lately, too, losing all of Lan Xichen’s family in one go. She didn’t have it in her to turn him down or even attempt to postpone.
She’d offered to help him with dinner, but by the time she arrived, he clearly had it covered. It was too bad she was interested in women because a straight woman in her position would have had a hell of a view, with his sleeves rolled up and his forearms flexing as he moved. He was a powerhouse in her own right, and she respected him for that, even if she didn’t feel the urge to drool over him.
“Emme’s really good,” was her reply to his question as she placed the wine on the table and slid into her seat. They were still working on putting things back together after Carol’s bout of bad behavior, but she kept that to herself. Her self-absorption had seen plenty of airtime, and she had put that to rest to focus on making things right. They were making progress, heading in the right direction, and that was the most important thing in the world to her. “How’s Lan Xichen? It has to be tough, losing his whole family that fast.”
“He’s as well as might be expected,” Laurence said, pushing the pasta around on the plate before he realized what he was doing. He forced himself to still his hand. “Cloud Recesses is still here, so he’s set up a shrine there, and he’ll be tending to it and praying for them weekly until his mourning is over.”
He gathered some pasta on his fork. “It feels terribly selfish to be relieved that he, at least, was spared.”
“I wouldn’t consider it selfish,” Carol countered, spooling some pasta around her fork as well. “He’s your partner. Of course you’re glad he was spared. Losing people you care about is hard enough, but losing him?” She shook her head. “If I ever lose Emme, it’ll break me.”
Laurence wanted to say that he was sure that Emmeline was unlikely to go anywhere, but he found himself unable to get the words out; he simply didn’t believe it anymore.
So instead, he said, “Yes.” A simple enough agreement. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if Lan Xichen left and Laurence remained. He imagined it would be not unlike Cullen’s last few weeks in Vallo, though, at least Laurence would have Temeraire still.
“There is some comfort in the sense that it seems that committed partners often seem to leave together,” he added after a moment. Not always, like in all things, there were exceptions, but it happened often enough to be a pattern.
“There’s that,” Carol agreed. That’s what she wanted if Emme disappeared, to go with her. She hated to leave the other people she loved in the lurch – Kamala, Tony, Pepper, Wanda, so many of the other Avengers and the Defense teammates who had become her friends – but she knew she would be heartbroken. And while she was known for getting back up after getting smashed in the face, that would be a trial.
“Losing people gets into your head, huh?” She reached out to expertly uncork the bottle of wine and pour generous portions into waiting glasses for them both. “Good thing we have alcohol.”
“Not always,” Laurence said. “I’ve lost other friends before, and I was sad for them, but it’s not so different than losing friends to war, or to distance – my own world didn’t have phones or the internet, and when I was sent to the colony and New South Wales, I could have easily expected to wait a year and a half at least for responses to any letters I might have sent; it was a nine-month journey by sea from England to New South Wales. But to lose so many so quickly…”
He swallowed a mouthful of wine for fortification.
“And I worry for Lan Huan,” he said, frowning. His hand reached to his pocket to brush the ring there; perhaps keeping the ring on his person wasn’t the wisest course, but at least he knew that Lan Xichen was unlikely to accidentally stumble upon it than if he secreted it away in a drawer somewhere. “Even if we both remain here until the end of our lives… When Temeraire visited from the future, he said 150 years had passed. I was long dead, of course; I don’t imagine I have much longer than a score of years left in me, two if I’m lucky, and Temeraire’s years didn’t surprise me – his grandfather was near 300 when last we saw him, I believe – but he said Lan Huan was still with him. I hadn’t thought…”
He frowned. It wasn’t that Lan Xichen had kept it from him. Laurence had never asked, had never even suspected that Lan Xichen’s life would extend past the boundaries of what Laurence considered a natural human lifespan.
“I hate the idea of leaving him alone, when I pass.”
Carol nodded slowly, taking all of that in as she chewed thoughtfully on bites of pasta. She could understand those concerns; she had them herself. No one she loved now would live as long as her. The witches and wizards of Emmeline’s world tended to have extended lifespans, living well into their hundreds, but they wouldn’t go on forever. Carol wasn’t sure, but she might. The Space Stone had changed her on a molecular level, and she figured she had just about forever left to live; it was called an Infinity Stone for a reason.
“You may have to leave him, but he won’t be alone.” She wasn’t sure how reassuring that was, but she was going to try her damnedest. “I’ll be here. I’m sure half the population will be here, given how many of us aren’t quite human. We’ve got him.”
Laurence smiled wryly. “Thank you,” he said. “It will be good, knowing he’ll be cared for, though I’m not quite sure how to feel about everyone I care for outliving me by decades. I’ve never feared my own death, but it rather puts things in a different perspective when near everyone I know might expect to live a century or more.”
“It won’t be easy for us either,” she offered. She had thought about this a lot, ever since she’d realized she wasn’t aging and probably wouldn’t for a long time, if ever. She hadn’t outlived a natural lifespan yet, but she knew she would. She knew she’d see everyone she cared for die, even Emmeline, eventually. It wasn’t something she relished, but she knew it was an inevitability.
His hand drifted to his pocket again, frowning. “Is Miss Vance…” he started, stopped, and tried again with, “If you knew that your partner would only be around for a fraction of your life,” not even half; Temeraire had come from 150 years in the future; Laurence could not have been present longer than a third of that time, “would you still wish to marry her?”
“Yes, I would.” There was no pause, no thinking about it – just firm, sure words. “I could live forever, Laurence. Literally, forever. And Emme, if she’s lucky, will get past a century, maybe up to 150. But I still want to marry her. Maybe I won’t get her for my forever, but I’ll get her for hers. And why shouldn’t we get to have that?”
Laurence smiled at the quickness of her answer. He didn’t know if Lan Xichen thought that Laurence’s lifespan had been comparable to his own when they’d first discussed the idea of marriage, if learning otherwise had changed his feelings on it. But he was suddenly certain that if their positions were reversed – if Laurence were the one who would live centuries, and Lan Xichen the one who was likely to die before he saw his first – that he wouldn’t hesitate to marry him either.
“Would,” Laurence started, and then stopped himself. He had already pried far too deep into Carol’s personal life with the questions he’d been asking, questions he likely would not have asked if he’d been fully in his right mind, but he was in command of his facilities enough to recognize would you allow yourself to fall in love again, after as a gross overstep of their friendship.
“Thank you,” he said instead. “I… know these are concerns I need bring up with Lan Huan himself, but you’ve done much to ease my conscience. I worry, sometimes, that he’d not known what he’d agreed to, when the matter was first discussed, and that he would feel obligated to continue on despite fresh regrets.”
Carol nodded as she polished off another bite of pasta. She didn’t mind being an ear for him or a shoulder to lean on. She was on the opposite side of the dilemma he was going through, but she could understand where he was coming from. If her answers helped, she was happy to give them – the food and wine was just a fringe benefit.
“What else were you going to ask?” She took a sip from her glass of wine, eyebrows raised as she looked at him across the table. “You cut yourself off, but there was more,” she clarified as she lowered her glass again. “What is it? Hit me with it.”
“You needn’t answer, or even consider answering,” Laurence said hastily. “I should not have even begun…” There was no sense in acting as though he hadn’t meant to ask though; Carol was too straightforward for him to fall back on her politely ignoring the aborted question. “If Miss Vance were to pass, and you still had a long life ahead of you, would you allow yourself to fall in love again?”
This time, it was Carol’s turn to twirl her fork idly in what was left of her meal – and there wasn’t much, just enough to keep the fork’s tines from scraping against the plate. She was quiet for a long moment, thoughtful, and when she looked back up at Laurence across from her, it was with a soft sigh.
“I’ve been in love twice before Emmeline,” she revealed. “And I would consider both of them to have been the love of my life, at that point in my life. I don’t think it’s impossible to have more than one.” She hated to think she could ever have missed either Maria or Natasha; they would both always be such big pieces of her life, even if their time together had passed. They both still lingered in her heart, carried with her every day.
“I’ll love Emme for as long as she’ll have me,” she continued. “Hopefully, that’s for the rest of her life. But when she dies… I’m open to the possibility of falling in love again. Not right away, probably not for a long time, but I think she’d want me to, eventually.”
Laurence nodded. "It pains me to think of Lan Huan falling for another," he confessed, feeling like a jealous cur, "but not as much as it pains me to think of him living the rest of his days after me alone. I could not bring myself to ask Temeraire, when he was here, whether Lan Huan had found love with another."
He wasn't terribly hungry, but he'd not eaten enough to absorb the wine he'd drunk, so he forced himself to eat another few bites.
"You know, I'd asked two women to marry me, back home. I hadn't put much thought into either proposal, and they were both ultimately rejected, for one reason or another. I think, perhaps, I'm having the opposite problem now."
He was sure – as sure as he could be about just about anything – that Lan Xichen would say yes; he could not stop thinking of all the reasons he might – or should – say no.
Carol nodded along. That made sense to her. She didn’t like thinking of the women she’d loved being with anyone else, but that was unrealistic. She wasn’t the end-all, be-all, and she truly meant it when she said she believed it was possible to have multiple loves in one lifetime. That meant, sometimes, the loves she’d found would find more of their own, too.
She chuckled as she brought her glass to her lips to polish off the last of her wine. “Didn’t have that problem, personally,” she admitted. “I’ve only proposed once and got a yes for it. I probably shouldn’t have, but–” She pressed her lips together – those were not thoughts that were necessary to share – and shrugged. “Not thinking about it and overthinking it are both too extreme. You’ve put thought into it, and you know he’ll say yes. Now you just need to act.”
Laurence gave her a sympathetic smile at her shouldn’t have – he didn’t know if it was just the usual uncertainty that came with living in Vallo, or the pre-wedding nerves, before one had a chance to truly settle into married life, and he was sure that it was none of his business either way – but he was confident when he said, “I am sure, quite sure, that you’ll make a fine wife, you and Miss Vance are well-matched.”
He managed another bite of the pasta before he gave it up for a lost cause – he would come back for leftovers later, he was sure, but now he had little appetite for it. “I’d told his brother that I would ask him by Christmas,” Laurence said, then hesitated, “it seems terribly gauche to ask him so soon after his family’s disappearance, though I’m not quite sure how to measure such a thing.”
The rules of polite society had less of a hold on Laurence now, not only the year in Vallo, where the rules were entirely different, but they’d been changed ever since he’d entered into harness seven years ago, and especially so after his treason and transport to Australia, but he longed for them now: if there were a proper mourning period to observe, then his timeline would be clearer, instead of the uncertainty of proposing too soon to be seemly, or waiting unnecessarily long after.
Carol hummed. She could understand that. Going from this whole family of in-laws you thought were in your future to all of them gone, watching how it affected the person you loved most – nothing about that was simple. She was lucky she hadn’t been struck by any terrible loss while she was here. Emme had, but it had been a while since then; they’d disappeared over a year ago, when they were still just dating.
“I don’t know if there’s any perfect way,” she admitted. “But maybe your best solution would be to loop Lan Xichen in on what you’re thinking. You two have discussed getting married, right? Ask him what his feelings are on it now. I doubt it’s changed, but then you’re not going off guesswork.”
Laurence stared, for the moment speechless, and then, abruptly, he laughed. “That would, of course, be the logical course,” he said. “I think I’ve been trying to be overly gentle with Lan Huan’s feelings, and I’m certain he not think I’d done him any favours whatsoever if he knew it was troubling me without speaking to him about it.” No, he rather suspected that Lan Xichen would think him foolish for it, and would tell him so in that affectionate way of his. “I thank you, for the serving of common sense. I won’t be a minute tidying up, if you would care to precede me to the parlour, and we might finish off this bottle of wine.”
“Sure, happy to assist,” Carol grinned. It was kind of nice to know she’d been able to be a good sounding board and give Laurence a dose of common sense when he needed it. She’d been in his position just last month, putting herself through similar self-inflicted drama. It felt a little bit like she had rectified that situation.
She stood, grabbing the half-full wine bottle off the table by its neck. “Meet you in the parlor. Don’t keep a lady waiting long, Captain Laurence.”