fool (lester averman)

chapter three

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chapter three: team corporate sellouts

a/n:

rory's ability to eviscerate grown men but her inability to talk to kids her own age is so brilliant.

tw(s) -- some one-off mentions of bad things and potentially bad french (pls correct me)

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Don Tibbles picks Rory up from Connie's house early the next morning.

She thanks the girl's parents for letting her stay the night, tells the girls she'll see them later, and then finds herself in a limousine, sat between two security personnel and directly across from the man who, once upon a time, might have been important to her life.

"Is this necessary?" She tries not to make eye contact with the men sitting on either side of her. "This level of security?-- What do you think it's going to happen at the games?"

"Your father demanded it." Is all Don says.

He shrugs his shoulders afterward and wipes his hands like Pontius Pilot to say that it's out of his control.

Rory stares at him. Blankly.

It isn't a secret to her that the Myrtles hate Don Tibbles. In fact, it's quite infamous, the kind of feud that has sold its fair share of articles, think pieces, and student-made documentaries promoted by a throbbing vein in her father's head and his shaking fists--

If she had to pinpoint it, she was seven when she realized the man who used to take her and her nannies out to dinner became enemy number one. However, according to Oliver Myrtle, it had been when she uttered her first comprehensible sentence. He tells everyone he meets that will listen that Rory, sitting on his lap in a room full of businessmen and little lines of white powder, had raised her big blue eyes and said, with her whole chest:

Fuck Don Tibbles.

(Rory, knowing her father has a tendency to lie, doubts the truth of that statement. She does, however, find the utter drama of it amusing.)

"What?" Rory's nose scrunches up. "Does he think that we're the Kennedys? No one wants to shoot him that badly."

The look of doubt that crawls across the face of his former friend makes her lift a brow.

"How's the team?" Don changes the topic, handing her a granola bar from the mini-fridge.

"They're cool. Mostly nice so far, even if I'm me and they're them."

Rory dedicates a lot of attention to getting the wrapper open without getting stray bits of granola everywhere. He, meanwhile, doesn't say anything -- just stares at her as if he's expecting more from her until she looks up, triumphant in her endeavors, and catches him.

"What?"

"That wasn't exactly what I was asking, dear-- "

"Oh, I know." She takes a bite of her snack. Mrs. Moreau had insisted that she at least eat a little something before she left, so she isn't very hungry. "You wanted me to spy on them."

Don sputters. "What? No."

"You do. You want me to be your rat."

"Lola--"

"I'm not going to do that. Not for you."

"But you'd do it for your father?"

Rory smiles, then, and all the words she can't and won't say bulge in her cheeks, "You have no idea what I'd do for my father."