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chapter four: what love is

a/n:

✨filler✨

tw(s) - rory has issues with food and exercise, brief mentions of some intense things, and les' jealousy is starting.

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"You've never been on a plane before."

Averman's skin has become waxy as the air hostess, moments before takeoff, gives her safety demonstration to fifteen people who are too tired to give a damn. His fingernails are digging into the leather of the armrest and his breathing is labored, and, frankly, he looks like he's going to puke his guts out.

In response to her bluntness, he swivels to face her and stares, owlishly, like she's just said something wrong.

"What?"

"Do I look like someone who's been on a plane before?" He asks, jaw clenched, somehow being sarcastic even as he's trembling.

Rory sucks her teeth.

"Your, uh, your dad has had this thing checked out, right?"

"We're billionaires, Les." She hums. "Yeah, the plane has definitely been checked out."

Averman nods jerkily. A hundred statistics about the likelihood of plane crashes and how they aren't going to plummet out of the sky die on her tongue as the hostess finishes her demonstration.

"Look, you're going to be just fine."

"I'm aware of that. That's why this is called an irrational fear."

"You're just going to feel a little strange as the pressure changes," She speaks over him, "and there may be some mechanical sounds, but that's all. There's no need to lose it."

Averman sighs deeply.

Takeoff, just like she says, goes smoothly.

When he feels that slight pull behind his navel, he grabs her hand and squeezes it so tightly that it hurts her. Rory doesn't complain, though, and watches his face (eyes clenched behind coke-bottle lenses and his nose scrunched up) as he goes through several stages of grief. She stays silent until the seatbelt light turns off and the flight attendants give the kids the okay to start walking around if they so see fit.

"I'll be right back, okay?" Rory pats him on the hand and then pries herself free from his grip.

She doesn't wait for him to answer her. She just walks down the length of the plane, a small smile on her face, toward the two women on staff.

One looks up at her as she approaches and returns her gesture. "Hi, Rory. How are you feeling?"

"I'm alright. Excited, even."

"That's good, I'm glad. Now, what can I do for you?"

"Okay, so, please don't look, but my friend's on the verge of throwing up everywhere so I was wondering if I could get a glass of water and a mint for him?"

They speak in hushed tones and the lady, not letting her gaze wander, nods. "Of course. Anything else?"

"And could you pass out those fancy little La Maison Du Chocolat truffles that my dad always has in stock for me, please?" The hostess steps into the kitchenette and gestures for her to follow. "'Cause I don't see these kids being big on caviar, and it's kinda late so I'm not sure they're hungry for real food, but I still want to sweeten the start of the trip, y'know?"

The woman pauses to look at her fondly. "Mhm."

"Oh, and, if the coach asks for any booze, don't give it to him." The fifteen-year-old makes a cut gesture by her throat. "Thank you."

(It had been so easy to find it when she browsed the newspapers. Young lawyer caught up in a DUI scandal.)

That earns the slightest break in her facade but, because Rory's smile gets tight at the edges and her father pays handsomely, she doesn't say anything. She just places the glass of water and the mint in Rory's hands.

"Thank you, again."

"Don't mention it. The chocolates will be out shortly."

Rory nods to not thank the woman again and walks away. Her teammates are all awake, much too excited to sleep but also too tired to really do much more than talk, and she does her best not to overhear anything she shouldn't be overhearing as she returns to her seat.

Averman is still worse for wear when she sits. She puts the water on the pull-down table and then turns to tap him on the shoulder.

"Hi."

"Hi." He mumbles miserably.

"We're alive."

"I can see that."

"Here." Rory grabs his hand and places the mint in it. "This'll help with the nausea."

Shakily, the redhead unwraps the plastic and puts the mint in his mouth.

"What's that for?"

"It's so you can see the turbulence."

"Like Jurassic Park?"

"...yeah. Like Jurassic Park."

"You have no idea what I'm talking about do you?"

"No. My grandpa doesn't like either of the Attenboroughs, so I didn't get to see it."

He, smiling, shakes his head fondly.

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A few hours later, the Mary touches down in Los Angeles, California at the ungodly hour of one in the morning.

The kids are marched through the airport by a few dedicated workers, dragging their feet and half-asleep, and then get put on a charter bus paid for by Hendrix. (Dean is snoring as soon as he sits in his seat and Connie's hand had to be held so she didn't get lost in the airport.) From there, they're carted halfway across the city to a hotel near the main stadium for the games and are shown to their rooms by an employee.

Team USA gets their own floor, a lounge with couches and a television and private bathrooms for each dorm.

All the girls get placed together and Rory takes the top bunk, making a breezy joke about her times at sleepaway camp, so that Julie can take the bottom.

They go to bed with their suitcases still mostly packed and their stuff haphazardly strewn about the room.

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"How the fuck are you actually awake right now?"

Rory reluctantly glances up from her copy of the Hobbit to meet Dean's gaze. She's sort of eating breakfast (the two fried eggs on toast are barely appetizing after an early phone call with her father and while kids eat pancakes around her) but mostly just getting absorbed into her book. A few of the others sit with her -- Jesse and Luis picking at their food, half-asleep, whilst Julie literally sleeps with her head on the table as Goldberg pretends like he isn't throwing bits of dry cereal at her head -- but she's the only one even remotely alert right now.

She shrugs. "I wake up this early all the time."

Dean's face screws up and he rubs his eyes.

"Why?"

"Because my dad likes me to stick with a routine." Rory tears off a bite of toast. "Like today, I started off with hygiene and then went to the gym to run a few miles like I usually would back home."

He blinks. "There's a gym?"

She nods.

"It took me about fifteen minutes to find it, but, y'know, whatever to stay on top of my game."

Dean stares at her oddly. She stares back, confused, with pinched brows.

"Do you and that slightly less rich kid ever think about anything other than hockey?"

"Well, I can't speak for Adam, but I'd like to say I have a bit of a life outside of it."

Doubt crosses his features but he moves on before she can comment.

"What are you eating?"

"Just some eggs and toast-- Y'know, this really feels like an interview, Dean."

"Why?"

Rory shuts her bookmark in her book so she can give him her full attention. "Okay, now it feels like I'm talking to my cousin's toddler."

"Dude."

"To answer your question, though, my, uh, dad has me on this strict diet."

His expression turns sour. "Oh, fuck that."

Before she can gauge what he's about to do, he reaches across the table to grab her plate and then walks away with it.

"Dean! Dean Portman!" She calls after him to no avail and, when she turns back to the table, she flashes Goldberg a perturbed look.

He shrugs and goes back to what he was doing.

"What's going on?" Averman questions groggily as he joins the fray and sits next to his goalie friend.

"Greg's being a dick." She huffs, brushing the food from Julie's hair. "And Dean stole my breakfast."

He raises an eyebrow but she has no answer for him.

The enforcer returns swiftly with two plates in hand, both of them stacked high with a myriad of things that make her queasy to think about, and slides one across to her.

"Dean--"

"You're fifteen. Stop eating like an old lady."

"But--"

"No."

"I--"

"No."

Rory sighs shortly, her shoulders falling as Dean digs in and effectively puts an end to her pathetic efforts at an argument.

"You heard the man." Averman adds with a goofy grin.

She doesn't respond.

Rory stares at the items on her plate for a long time, knife and fork gripped tightly between her fingers, knuckles turning white as the world swirls in front of her. She can't eat this. It's so much food. It's way too much food for a human being. How many calories?--

But Dean got it for her. He cared enough to get it for her.

Besides, her father won't know will he?

She can always go work out more later, right?

With incredible hesitation, Rory cuts into a pancake and takes a bite of it. (And, while she would never admit it, she savors how the taste of syrup, so sweet that it aches in her teeth.)

A little while later, when nearly everyone is awake enough to sit at the table and the room has filled out with kids from all over the world, Connie bursts into the dining area like a bat out of hell. She kisses her boyfriend on the cheek in passing and makes a beeline for the table, absolute glee on her face as she holds Rory's gaze from across the room.

"Why do I feel like I'm about to meet God?"

"'Cause you are." Julie hums definitively. "Though, you're so rich that I think you are definitely going to end up downstairs."

She makes a face as if to say 'fair point.'

She's still, somehow, slightly shocked when the other brunette leans between Dean and Jesse to get closer to her.

"Rory, you're never going to believe what I just saw--"

"Morning to you, too, Connie."

"The ski team from France. Four o'clock."

Rory, as well as everyone else sitting there, turns around just as their opponents enter through the other doors to the room.

"I desperately need to know if you know any of--"

"Oh, shit." Rory cuts her off. "That's-- Henri?"

The boy's head snaps up in response to her call of his name. At the sight of her, his face lights up with a brilliant, toothy grin.

"Rory! Is that you, ma chérie?"

"Excuse me, guys, I'll be right back."

She pushes her chair back from the table and meets Henri halfway. He hugs her as soon as she reaches him, lifting her off the floor effortlessly.

The rest of her team, meanwhile, sit at the table and watch the interaction with prying eyes.

"Who's Rory hugging?" Charlie asks, late to the party.

"We don't know." Luis answers. "I'm betting he's an ex-boyfriend, though."

Averman scoffs, trying to be aloof. "What? No way."

He's met with various, judgmental gazes.

"I mean, how do you know?"

"They're still hugging." Jesse snorts. "And look at how low that hand is. I'm with the pro-stopper. My money is on him being the ex with the poster."

Luis kicks him under the table.

"Pft, maybe they're just really close friends? What's so great about him, anyway?"

"He's tall, dark, and dreamy." Connie says what they're all thinking.

"...he's not that dreamy."

More judgment from his friends.

"Dude, you're shit out of luck." Dean puts it plainly. "She's into brothers and you're... the furthest thing. I don't think I've ever seen a situation more depressing."

Jesse snorts orange juice up his nose and laughs through his coughs as Averman stares at the enforcer, shocked.

"I-- What?-- I don't--" He sputters. "Adam, you speak French, what are they saying?"

"No way, Averman."

"But--"

"No."

His gaze slowly shifts to Guy.

"What?" Guy, maybe a little ticked off by Connie's comments, asks sharply.

"Your name is Germaine."

"Dude, even if I did speak it, I wouldn't help you."

"Wow. Okay. Ten whole years of friendship suddenly means nothing to you?"

"I'm not messing with the girl who could buy my parents' house out from under them and demolish it with her pocket change."

"Okay, this is about us, now--"

"She's coming back to the table." Charlie hums, drumming his fingers on the tabltop. "And he's coming with her."

The conversation stops there.

Rory smiles as she approaches them, Henri following close behind. Holding her hand.

"Hey, guys, this is Henri LeBlanc. Henri, this is Team USA Hockey."

Arms crossed behind his back, he nods in acknowledgment. "Hello, to all of you."

Most of the people at the table greet him. Averman, meanwhile, stares at him like he's the devil incarnate.

"I want to wish you good luck." Henri keeps grinning, either oblivious to the redhead or ignoring him happily. "Iceland is, comment dites-vous méchant en anglais?"

"Mean." She supplies for him.

"Ah, yes, Iceland is very mean."

"Uh, thanks." Charlie smiles. "Good luck to you, too."

Henri nods. "Well, I must be going, now. I just wanted to meet Rory's new friends."

(At the word 'friend', Rory's face flushes.)

"It was nice meeting you!" Connie says cheerfully.

"You, too." He turns to Rory, then. "I will see you again, no?"

"Uh, yeah. We can get dinner, show you all the American food you've been missing out on."

He nods and presses a kiss to her cheek, bidding them all adieu before he leaves to rejoin his teammates. (Averman's heart falls to his stomach.)

"What?" She asks when she turns back to them and catches them all staring.

"He's cute." Julie shrugs.

"He's my friend."

"He kissed your cheek." Luis points out.

"He's European."

"He was basically grabbing your ass."

"Ah, well, he also happens to be my ex-boyfriend."

Jesse and Luis grin triumphantly, and Dean, too, with a little bit of venom.

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After their class for the day, Rory sits in the lounge and tries to watch whatever show Kenny put on. He's sitting cross-legged on the couch behind her, his fingers combing through her hair as he braids it, and the combination of feelings is a little too distracting for her to keep up with the latest, nonsensical adventures of a group of teenagers. Luckily, Luis comes barging in, appearing mildly frustrated, meaning that she can lower the volume and focus on something else.

"Ten o'clock curfew, can you believe that?"

She lifts her shoulders in a shrug. "I don't think it's that bad."

He scowls at her.

"What? My curfew back home is half-past eight, and that's only if my head of security comes to pick me up. I'll gladly take the extra hour and thirty."

Luis rolls his eyes and lets his head flop back onto the cushions of the couch. There's silence, nothing but the muffled sounds from the television and Kenny's occasional instruction for Rory, for a moment before he speaks again.

"Averman likes you."

Rory makes a face and speaks around the hair tie Kenny has her holding in her mouth. "What?"

"You can't tell? He's always flirting with you."

"That's not-- he's just being nice."

Kenny snorts obscenely from behind them but makes no further comment.

"Rory, dude, trust me when I say he's got it bad for you."

"He doesn't have it bad for me." She goes to shake her head but Kenny tugs on her hair a bit to remind her to stay put. "That's not what love is."

"I never said love, but now I wanna know. What do you think love is?"

"Love is..."

She has to think about it. Has she ever been in love before?

(Well, yes, once, perhaps, but not in the conventional sense.)

"My grandpa... look he's ninety-eight, right? He's beaten cancer twice, he's a millimeter away from being legally blind, and he's on, like, thirty pills just so he can get out of bed every morning." She can see exactly when she loses him just by looking him in the eyes. "My point is that the fact that he is walking around is a miracle, and yet he always visits my grandma's grave."

Luis' interest piques. "Really?"

"Yeah. On her birthday, their anniversary, and the day she died -- three times a year, every year since she died seven years ago. He brings flowers to the mausoleum he had built for them and he, I don't know, talks to her?"

(There have been times, even, when she stood outside to give him his privacy and heard the faintest echo of him humming 'my funny valentine.')

"He sees her in everything. In birds, and butterflies, and me-- that's what love is to me, Luis. It's unmitigated adoration and loyalty, even seventy-something years later. Even after death."

Luis stares at her for a moment, a pensive look on his face, before he nods.

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a/n:

henri - 😊
averman -

if you read this fic and it's sequel the first time you know that lester averman is the little green jealousy monster.

also rory's dad (🤢) comes into the picture next chapter. good luck.

comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and I cannot stress how much they motivate me to continue! thank you