A Niceish Hotel | Night

[knife_bender]

Chalk this up as one of the most emotionally exhausting days of Diego's life, and it had to have been so much worse for Annie. He was more than happy to get her out of the Believe Expo and hole up with her in a hotel on Vought's dime (not that they knew that). It was a little surreal having to be incognito by paying everything in cash while Annie was off to the side in a makeshift disguise, but he could already see it was needed. It was all over the news whenever they passed a TV.

At least they managed to not get recognized on the way up to the room. Though, really, who would imagine Starlight hanging out with a guy that looked like Diego?

"Oh thank god there's a minibar," Diego said as soon as he opened the door to their room.

[For Annie and NFB due to distance! ETA warning for description of sexual assault in the comments]

Comments

[knife_bender]

Diego frowned. He knew it had happened early, since she had been acting off for awhile, but the first day? She didn't even have a chance to enjoy anything about the job.

He didn't really know what to say to that, but he did free up one of his hands so he could reach for hers.

[defenderofdesmoines]

No, she'd had the chance to enjoy literally almost nothing about it.

Annie twined her fingers through his, swallowing a little to try to keep from starting to cry just at that. Like, get ahold of yourself, January.

"So," she continued carefully, "he took me to the conference room, and I'm, like, losing my shit, fangirling all over the place. So he invited me to sit down in Homelander's chair, which is, like, a huge deal. A huge deal." She cleared her throat before continuing, "And then he asked if, like, I'd had a poster of Homelander as a kid, and...Diego, this is where I maybe fucked up, 'cause I said...no, but that I'd had one of him. Of The Deep, I mean."

She could see how he might have thought she was flirting. It didn't excuse anything, but it did make her want to go back in time and smack herself on her dumb little blonde head for thinking he'd take it innocently.

[knife_bender]

"Annie, you shared an anecdote about when you were a kid," Diego said. "You didn't fuck up at all."

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie nodded, because she knew that was true, like, logically, but she was also reaching for the little bottle of tequila, too.

"Yeah, well." She gave a rueful little roll of her eyes. "I think he saw it as, like, something else. 'Cause that's when I turned around and he was --"

Okay, she could not actually bring herself to say it, right now, but she did make a very descriptive hand gesture. "Like, six inches from my fucking nose."

[knife_bender]

"Jesus." The sick feeling in his stomach was back, but it didn't stop him for reaching for the alcohol. "That's fucking gross."

Focusing on how disgusting and inappropriate it was helped him tamp down on the anger he was feeling. He didn't want her to regret opening up to him by doing something stupid like lashing out. This was supposed to be about her feelings, not his.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"It was disgusting," Annie agreed, nose wrinkling up as she went ahead and took a quick sip of her tequila. (And then she was just going to help herself to some of your soda, Diego, because it had been ambitious to decide to shoot straight tequila exclusively.) "And I bolted." Like, she really needed him to know that, because she had rejected that asshole so fast, and made herself really clear in those seconds before she'd reached the conference room doors, even.

"And then, before I could leave," she said slowly, biting her lower lip, "he said it was just a matter of how bad I wanted to be on the team."

That was what made this all so, so, so gross. He hadn't just been out for a blowjob from the dumb new girl. He'd tried to make it into this transactional, blackmailing thing.

[knife_bender]

"What the fuck." Okay, well, maybe he wasn't so great at keeping the anger in. What had happened before was still gross and wrong but being rejected and resorting to blackmail was on a whole other level.

He took a breath, and set aside the little bottle of vodka in his hand because he was definitely holding on to it too hard and didn't want to break the thing. "What a fucking asshole."

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie was nodding, and like, okay, she might have been tearing up just a little. Just a teeny bit. She'd been keeping this secret for weeks, and while she hadn't told Diego because she'd known he would almost certainly be downright murderous and she didn't want him to get hurt, seeing him so firmly on her side was still a little overwhelming.

"Such a fucking asshole," she agreed, her voice a little wobbly in spite of her efforts to keep it steady. "So I broke every goddamn screen in there. Made the lights flicker. The whole show. Gave him a chance to take it back, you know? And instead, he doubled down, pointed at the damage, and said he'd tell people I attacked him unless I -- unless I did what he wanted me to do."

For like three minutes, maybe.

[knife_bender]

He was feeling pretty murderous right now, and probably wasn't keeping that off his face. Honestly, if he hadn't made her a promise and she didn't look so upset right now he probably would have left immediately to find the guy.

"How did you get him to back off?" he asked. If the whole light show didn't put him off, then what did?

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I didn't." And she sounded pretty miserable about that, because she still didn't know what she would have done. (And she certainly wasn't going to tell Diego that part of her had considered going through with it. That didn't seem like it would accomplish anything but hurting him, and he already looked pretty damn upset.) "Queen Maeve came in. She told him Ms. Stillwell was looking for him, and he left."

Annie swiped a tear away from one eye, shaking her head a little as she reached over and squeezed Diego's hand. "And Maeve? Blew it all off. Shrugged. Told me to clean myself up and made herself a drink."

Never meet your heroes, indeed.

[knife_bender]

"What the fuck?" Really, it could not be said enough. To be assaulted and then have someone you looked up to just brush it off was extremely fucked up. And the fact it was her first day there made it that much worse.

"God, Annie, I am so sorry," he said. "I wish I could say something to make this better but--"

He shook his head and looked down at their joined hands. Anything he had to say involved what he wanted to do to The Deep and what he wanted to say to Queen Maeve, none of which would make her feel any better.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"You're already making it better," Annie replied softly, managing a small, slightly-watery smile. "I feel like such an asshole for not telling you sooner, because it's helping, I just -- I didn't want you to think of me differently."

Or to go try to fight The Deep, but he knew that part already.

[knife_bender]

He didn't really feel like he was making her feel better. Or maybe it was more he was so angry and didn't know how to get rid of it outside of violence and that was why he was feeling so useless right now.

"I don't think of you differently," he said, squeezing her hand. "And you're not an asshole. You have put up with way more shit these past couple weeks than anybody ever should."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"It's been hard," Annie said again, quietly. "And really lonely." Which was her own fault, she knew, because there had been people willing to help her with this and she just hadn't been able to let them. "It all kind of messed with my head, for a little while."

Which might explain why she'd just had a super public breakdown, yeah. It hadn't exactly come out of nowhere, especially when paired with the new uniform and the way Vought was commoditizing the shit out of her at every turn.

[knife_bender]

Diego lifted up Annie's hand and kissed the back of it. "Thank you for telling me. And I know I already said it, but I'm so proud of you for what you did today."

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie smiled a little more widely, some tension leaving her shoulders. "Thank you. I feel like all anyone is going to focus on is the part where I talked about The Deep's dick."

The rest of it had been good, too! At least, Annie had thought so. Especially for an improvised speech.

"I just couldn't keep lying," she added, sighing.

[knife_bender]

"Hopefully that asshole gets what's coming to him." Even if it wouldn't be coming from Diego, unfortunately. "And for what it's worth, I don't think they're going to fire you."

Just from a PR perspective, it wouldn't look very good.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"You don't?" Annie asked, surprised. "I mean, I talked about ticket prices and told kids it was okay to have sex before they're married, and then I told everyone that a member of The Seven is a creep."

Like, Annie was pretty sure she was super-duper fired. At the very least, demoted and sent off to be hero to some midwestern city or something.

(Ooh, maybe she could get herself demoted back to Fandom. That was kind of an idea.)

[knife_bender]

"You admitted you were assaulted by your coworker on live TV, what would it look like if they fired you for that?" Diego asked. "One thing I've learned over the past couple weeks is that Vought really cares about how they look to the world."

He thought maybe, worst case scenario, they would find some reason to say she was on leave or something. But outright fire her? No way.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I mean, that's true," Annie said, considering that thoughtfully. "They really do."

That...was an interesting idea. She had a lot of room to negotiate here, actually, if you thought about it that way.

Maybe she could even keep her old uniform.

"Well, if I do end up staying on the team, and anything else -- you know, shitty happens," she ventured, breaking off another piece of her Kit Kat, "I promise I'll actually tell you."

[knife_bender]

"Thank you," he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. "I've got your back, okay? No matter what."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I know," Annie murmured, scooting a little closer to him. "I know you do. I just -- I couldn't talk about this with anyone. Like, I cried all over Rey that first week after it happened, and then gave her a Kuddle Buddy and ran away like a weirdo."

So at least it hadn't just been them, and their relationship.

[knife_bender]

"I know. I'm not upset at you didn't say anything." He totally understood why she hadn't, and he couldn't even imagine how hard it must have been to talk about it.

He was more frustrated with himself. He wasn't used to not being able to do anything. He believed Annie when she said he was helping but he sure as hell didn't feel like it.

[defenderofdesmoines]

She was kind of picking up on that -- considering she had specifically ruled out violence, she had to think Diego was trying to figure out other ways to supportive, and she knew how helpless he probably felt just from her own experience hearing about his childhood abuse.

"At least if anything else shitty happens, it won't have to do with him. He's super scared of me," she said with a touch of actual confidence before shifting a little so she could lean her head against Diego's shoulder. "But like, the whole day was kind of shitty even before I, like -- said my thing. What'd you think of my roundtable?"

She was smiling, because she had heard him, so. Maybe she was trying to lighten things up a little.

[knife_bender]

He huffed out a small laugh. "I learned you are a terrible liar."