That Same Niceish Hotel in New York | Sunday Morning

[defenderofdesmoines]

So, it turned out that you couldn't just deliver a big, dramatic, speech and end it with a mic drop about your own sexual assault without -- weirdly! -- most of your friends wanting to check that you were okay.

Sounds fake, right?

In any case, Annie had received a text from Rey today that she hadn't headed back to Fandom just yet, and thus, she'd made a few arrangements.

First and foremost, she had called down to the front desk with some basic sizing information, and within an hour, a discreet employee had appeared at the door with clothes for both herself and Diego (and then had left with an absolutely massive tip, since Annie had added to it when he'd given her a second look, just to be safe.)

With that taken care of, Diego had headed out on a run just to get out of the room for a little while (since he wasn't the one with the famous face running around dropping truth bombs on television), and Annie ordered basically half of the room service menu for brunch while waiting for Rey.

Clearly the cure for her hangover, amongst her other less physical ailments, was pancakes.

[for she who is mentioned, but also open for phone calls or boyfriend or whatever, too! eta: warning for discussion of sexual assault in the Rey thread!]

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[defenderofdesmoines]

The thing about Maeve was that she had had to deal with this, personally, but she had a way, way worse guy to deal with.

Didn't make it right, but at least The Deep wasn't going to laser anyone in half if he didn't get his way.

"It's been like, impossible," Annie sighed, rubbing her temple. "Have you seen, like...any of the advertisements with me around, too? Because they changed my uniform right after this, too."

[thatwaslucky]

"I did wonder about that," Rey admitted. She also hadn't realized how many times she'd see ads with The Seven around here. "Was it related?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"No, it was mostly because I beat the shit out of some frat boy rapists and they had to revamp my image pretty quick, because, like, that is not a very Starlight-y thing to do," Annie replied with a little laugh.

Though now that she was thinking about it, it did seem sort of related in that it was yet another facet of her life having to deal with creepy dudes. Almost like a narrative arc, or something.

"On the bright side, though, I saved a girl?" Only one so far! One save. Exactly one.

[thatwaslucky]

"Congratulations," Rey smiled, but she had to ask, "How is that not a Starlight-y thing to do when you're Starlight?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Vought has this, like, idea of what Starlight stands for, and it doesn't entirely line up with...me," Annie admitted. And wasn't that a whole other punch to the gut? Like, just go ahead and appropriate her own image and explain it back to her, Vought. "Like, that speech I was supposed to give last night was real different from what I actually said."

And again, this was why she wasn't a hundred percent sure she wasn't going to be walking into the tower to get fired tomorrow.

[thatwaslucky]

"You did the right thing, you know," Rey told her, since she kind of figured she could predict what the speech was supposed to be.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Well, you kind of got me thinking earlier in the day," Annie shared with a slight smile. "And then the teen thing was bad, and -- like, a lot of kids look up to me. I hope people remember the stuff I said that wasn't about anyone's dick."

Because like, that had been kind of the bombshell, yes, but she also said a lot of other stuff!

[thatwaslucky]

"I think they will." Okay, that may have been Rey's earnest optimism showing through. "What happened at the teen thing?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Oh, jeez. I had to answer a bunch of questions from kids, and they all wanted to talk about dating." Well, one of them had wanted to talk about whether her Hindu friend was going to Hell, so there was that. "One of them straight up asked if I'd ever had sex, and I was right in the middle of giving like, an honest but appropriate answer when the pastor I was working with gave me this look. So I said I was saving myself for my husband."

Annie at least had the grace to look pretty embarrassed, but that also probably explained where a portion of her impromptu speech had come from.

[thatwaslucky]

Rey paused.

"Probably for the best they don't have access to the radio broadcasts," she said lightly.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Well, hey, that got the first real genuine laugh out of Annie in, like, a solid twenty-four hours at least.

"I don't think anyone believed me," Annie said when she had herself under control, shaking her head. "Like, Diego was there and there was this snort from the back when I said it. But like, it's also just sort of messed up to tell kids that, and I felt so bad about it."

[thatwaslucky]

"I don't understand why anyone would care," Rey admitted. She might not be the most open about it, but what anyone did wasn't anybody else's business.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"So like, remember how there's all those weird, arbitrary rules in my religion?" Annie checked. "Sex before marriage is a big no, if you go strictly by the Bible."

Obviously, Annie did not hold herself to such standards.

[thatwaslucky]

"I don't want to speak against your religion, but that's a pointless rule," Rey told her.

Probably not a shock, considering her opinion on the Jedi relationships thing too.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I mean, I agree," Annie said with a smile. Like, obviously. "It's a really old-fashioned one, anyway. A lot of young Christians tend to ignore it, and like -- I kind of think of it as, like, I'm dating to find a long-term partner, and...I'm not going to buy a car for the rest of my life without test-driving it."

Test-drive it a few times.

[thatwaslucky]

"And it's depriving yourself of connections because a book told you to," Rey said. "It just makes no sense to me."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"If I'm charitable about it," Annie said, "I like to think a lot of these rules are holdovers from times before we had medicine and things." Like, she knew that a lot of those weird food rules had to do with food safety in a time before refrigeration; she was pretty sure that some of these sex ones might have been a good way to try to create family units in a time when single motherhood was a lot harder? "But there's no reason we need to keep it going in 2021, you know? And I don't really like telling kids that, either."

Being a teenager was hard enough without some sparkly, superpowered role model telling you that sex outside of holy matrimony was shameful, too.

[thatwaslucky]

"I'm glad you took it back," Rey told her with a little smile. "I am really proud of you for this."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Thank you," Annie said, softening a little. "I mean, I hope it was worth something."

She wasn't really holding her breath (bam dum tss) on The Deep getting fired or anything, but she hoped she had at least forced Vought into a position of some kind of accountability.

[thatwaslucky]

"There's no way that it didn't mean something to somebody, at the very least," Rey told her.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I think I'm gonna be paying for it for awhile, so I hope so." Vought was one thing, yes, but there was also her mom to think about, and the people she'd known since she was a little kid....

And that was when there was a knock on the door, and Annie cut her eyes over to Rey again. "You're staying for brunch, right? 'Cause I ordered like, every waffle in the city."

And a bunch of other stuff, too.

[thatwaslucky]

"I can," Rey said. "I'm not sure I've ever had brunch."

She was still deprived of so many things.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"How have we let this go on so long?" Annie asked, worriedly as she went to the door. "It's the greatest meal of the weekend."

Annie negotiated in the hallway with whoever had brought the food for a moment, then signed the slip he gave her (with Diego's name, omg subterfuge) before digging out a couple of fifties from her pocket and adding them in when she handed it back and ushered him away. (Look at that, she was a person who bought silence, now. So weird.)

"The big thing that separates brunch from breakfast," Annie told Rey, pulling the stacked cart the guy had brought into the room, "is that brunch is just code for 'I slept in but I still want breakfast food.'"

[thatwaslucky]

"Could we not just have breakfast food whenever?" Rey checked, because breakfast for dinner seemed to be a thing. "But... wow."

That was a lot. A lot.