Title: Dinner for Two
Fandom: Vorkosiganverse
Pairing/Rating: G, gen, Ivan, Gregor (and Miles, who is present in their thoughts)
Word Count: 1074
Disclaimer: Everything Vorkosigan belongs to L.M. Bujold and her publishers (or whoever has she given the V-verse to)
Summary: Ivan sometimes has dinner with Gregor.
AN: I this fic is written for the Bujold fest over at the LJ, in answer to the prompt: " Ivan being competent and surprisingly intelligent on Barrayar while Miles is unavailable during his honeymoon." Well, the timespace of this fic is a bit bigger. Also, there's very little of the prompt here. And there are many ways of being competent and intelligent.
AN2:Somehow inspired by sahiya. Inspired in the way that after reading her first fic (In a Name) for the Bujold Fest I was filled with a desire to write something in the Vorkosigan universe and after seeing that she had posted the promised (and much awaited, in my part) second fic (When You Fly) I opened my OfficeWriter and wrote this.
It's not all that well known thing, but Gregor and Ivan sometimes have dinner together.
Well, Gregor is known to have one on one dinners from time to time with his friends and confidants – Miles, for example, has been over at the residence for that purpose quite a lot of times over the years. Lately, Mark has been added to that list, in some occasions. Laisa – very often, now. That's not surprising, really.
And, of course, Ivan has many a dinners for two – mostly with somebody female, charming and willing. So private dinners are not an occurrence unheard of for either of them.
A dinner for two with just Gregor and Ivan, however – that's a rare one. Those times can be counted on fingers (more or less), and toes can still be set aside for the future. Ivan can foresee they will be needed, though. It seems getting married and becoming a father (well, future father) has changed nothing in Miles' ability to find trouble upon his neck. And everybody else's necks, really.
And that is exactly the reason for those dinners. Miles.
The first dinner is some months after Gregor's little... let's call it vacation, all right? The call – a polite request – comes one evening when Ivan is getting ready to entertain the absolutely amazing Alicia Vorkellerman, whom he has spent weeks on chasing and who has finally bestowed her attention on Ivan.
The call comes just as he's debating dry red (the expensive and impressing choice, but really, he doesn't particularly like dry red) versus white vine (much more to his liking, but also seen in fashionable circles as somewhat plebeian – so he usually enjoys it on the rare evenings when he's on his own). It is Gregor himself – which is unusual enough for Ivan to panic and imagine all the possible scenarios for bad things happening that would make Gregor – Gregor! – the only logical choice to contact and inform him. Among others there is also a thought that getting a personal call from Gregor must mean all of the more probable choices – his mother, uncle Aral and aunt Cordelia, Miles – no, not him, he's on an assignment somewhere with that fleet of his – are not able to call. Which can not mean anything good.
So there are several seconds during which Ivan is desperately searching his memory for any mentions of an event that would be important enough for all those three to attend (opera? some small circle state dinner? entertaining foreign diplomats?), which could have gone wrong... And Gregor's assurance that everything is all right – Ivan supposes his worries must be quite easily read on his face – does really nothing to calm him. Because there is something about Gregor's own face that... So he accepts the invitation for a private dinner in the residence, all the while wondering what might have happened.
He then calls his mother, and after that, the Vorkosigan residence, under the guise of saying hello. Since he has just seen his mother a couple of hours earlier, and was dragged along for a visit in the Vorkosigan residence the day before that, he suspects he must truly look an idiot. Like uncle Aral always says. But the calls make him feel better. Except that uncle Aral is a bit too calm and aunt Cordelia smiles a little too much. And something that has Gregor, uncle Aral and aunt Cordelia acting uncharacteristically really points in only one possible direction. Especially since the little menace is somewhere out there, doing who-knows-what. Except that Illyan – and that means the aforementioned three, too – must know something... And that something is probably not good at all.
Having reached that conclusion Ivan is not especially surprised when Gregor, instead of explaining anything, starts to reminiscence about their childhood adventures (or rather, misadventures, for the most part) together with Miles and Elena. Ivan is surprised to find that the distance of years has made the memories that were once clearly labeled as embarrassing/ disturbing/ generally bad experience into those still embarrassing but fond "remember when" (and isn't he a little young to have "remember when"?) childhood memories that are easy to recall and that make you laugh and shake your head. Gregor never explains – and neither does anybody else, but later some remarks from Miles and the files requested and read several, several years past the actual event, when his security clearance is finally high enough, to request and read certain files without getting a nice all expenses paid vacation courtesy of the ImpSec, he is pleased to confirm his suspicions. Yes, Miles. Yes, not good at all.
When Ivan gets at home in the early hours of morning after that first dinner and finds his comconsole overflowing with messages from fair Alicia – each consequent rising in volume and content, he finally remembers he forgot to call her and cancel. He hazily makes plans for apologizing and explaining, but falls asleep somewhere in the middle of deciding what kind of flowers to buy to go with the apology. In the end he does apologize but does not explain. He doesn't get a second chance with her, but he's surprisingly all right with that.
The next call is over a year later. The scenario of the first dinner more or less repeats itself.
And thus it goes.
In the months the ImpSec – and a lot of other factions – spend searching for Miles' body (and neither Gregor nor Ivan ever say the word corpse) they have three dinners. Except that this time Ivan knows exactly what is wrong with Miles and it is very, very difficult to share memories and laugh. So he shares memories of Miles with Gregor and Gregor shares with him – and, surprisingly, they have never before really talked about Miles' first "great adventure" - and he shares laughter with Gregor, and... well, lets leave it at the fact that the time Mark finds him in the maze drunk and, well... That is not the only time.
But Miles comes back. The little bugger always does.
So when the comconsole chimes and there's Gregor asking whether Ivan has a free evening for a private dinner (Laisa is out with your mother, I think they are planning to revolutionize the Vor-ladies' dresscode), Ivan says: "Of course," and then calls to Emily Contague with apologies and promises to make it up to her next week. Miles is somewhere in the Quaddiespace – Ivan can't recall the name of the station right now – with Ekaterin, on what was supposed to be a peaceful honeymoon, but really, it's Miles – and Ivan thinks he'd better keep this week's evenings open. Just in case.