MASK: Legacy Saga Interludes: Cross-Turns and Other Traffic
Redemption has led to ruin for at least one MASK agent. Can a country boy soldier help a Lone Ranger come to terms with her complicated relationships so she can move on with her life? (Tag Fiction to Legacy Saga 4: Redemption)
Author's Notes: This story is a dream come true for me. "Into Your Tent I will Silently Creep" is one of my favorite G.I. Joe episodes as it highlights my favorite redneck, Cross Country, and I couldn't be happier that co-writer Lisa L. has agreed let me cross him over with our MASK Legacy Saga. Of course I couldn't resist turning him into a love interest for my Annie and a foil for our beloved Scott Trakker.
Watch for "Into your Tent" episode references throughout these chapters. Please also remember we're playing in the G.I. Joe Sunbow cartoon continuity, so there may need to be some willing suspension of disbelief on some things.
Special thanks to long term reviewer dshortklutz for being such an Annie fan. Thanks to everyone else for reading and reviewing all our previous fics.
Disclaimer: I don't own anyone but Annie Turner. Everything else is copyright by whoever owns it.
** Chapter 1 **
Five of her favorite Brad Turner CDs were playing on random in her multi-disk changer as her warm moccasins tapped a comforting flop-flop-flop sound on the tile floor of the kitchen in her Lake Tahoe apartment. She bustled back and forth and to and fro, dressed casually in a pair of fleece workout pants and one of her favorite oversized sweatshirts. She had pulled her red hair back into a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck to keep it out of the way of the baking binge she'd embarked on earlier this morning. Grandma Turner would be rolling over in her grave if her granddaughter had been caught getting hair into any of her cooking. Several sharp raps with a rolling pin at a young age had taught her better than that.
Annie dropped the last unbaked cookie dough balls onto a sheet and smiled wistfully at the memories of spending time in Grandma Turner's kitchen. Cooking and baking are a lot like life, she and Grandpa would say. Mix it up with the right ingredients and everything will always turn out fine. It was times like this where Annie really missed their down home advice. She sighed deeply and slid the now full cookie sheet into the oven. Where did the recipe of my life go so wrong? Oh, right...when someone added the bat-shit crazy nut into the mixture...
That prompted Annie to remember another cooking related life lesson, this one from the kitchen of Dusty Hayes. They had been baking cookies, much as she was now, but the batch somehow didn't turn out quite as good as all their others. She and Dusty had racked their brains to determine what they had done differently but couldn't find the culprit. Finally Dusty just shrugged in his country manner: Darlin', sometimes you can use the same ingredients in the same recipe, but somehow when you heat 'em up, it just don't turn out right. The realization nearly brought her to tears. She and Scott had been that same old recipe until that one day when everything just got too hot and it wasn't right anymore. Dusty had then gone on to say that the reverse could also be true. Sometimes there's that little bit of somethin' that you change or that mystery ingredient that ya add that makes the recipe even better than it was before. And that can mean that ya might have to make the choice to discard somethin' that's worked for years.
Annie sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands as the oven counted down the last few minutes of cook time. She had done almost exactly that until Scott blindsided her with that crazy stupid godforsaken rescue mission. She had been several hours and one signature away from formally joining G.I. Joe and likely taking MASK's fill in country boy redneck mechanic with her. Cross Country had been that unexpected ingredient that had spiced up her life and shaken it up even more than it already was. He had turned it into...well, she didn't know what...except sometimes it felt better than what it had been previously with Scott. And now that she and Scott weren't together, she still didn't know exactly what she was going to do about him. Damn you Robert Blais. Damn you for walking into my life and being everything I have ever fantasized about. Damn you for making me question everything I ever thought I wanted in a relationship. Damn you for ... just...being...you...
Annie opened the oven door and pulled the last sheet of cookies out to cool. At the same time, someone knocked and then opened the door to the apartment.
"Annie?" called out a familiar voice.
"In the kitchen."
She turned to see two dark haired men walking through the entryway: one blue eyed and obviously younger wearing a High Mountain Rangers jacket and traditional black pants; the other brown-eyed and older, wearing his usual denim jacket complete with Confederate Flag. Annie's eyes flicked between both of them, then came to rest with a definite "what the hell" look on Ranger Cody Hawkes.
Robert Blais-Cross Country-spoke up first. "Hoo...smells like Aunt Hazel's kitchen in here. Back when she actually kept a decent one."
Cody walked over and gave Annie a kiss on the cheek and half a hug in order to reach around her and steal a cookie. "Someone has been spending their self imposed exile listening to her father's music and baking enough cookies for about thirty Christmases."
"And feelin' sorry for herself."
Annie glanced over at Cross Country while responding to Cody, who was trying not to smirk with his mouth full. "It's the last of my vacation."
"Not what I heard," Cross Country persisted.
Annie's eyes drilled into the bank of Cody's head as he gathered up a Ziploc bag full of cookies for the road. "You shouldn't believe everything you hear."
"That flush she's getting in her cheeks means she's getting irritated with something she doesn't want to hear," Cody said as an amused aside to Cross Country. "I especially love how her eyes light up when she's working up to a good rant, which will be to tell me how she hates being discussed in the third person, quickly followed by 'what is he doing here?'."
Annie glared at him. "You..."
"...are leaving," Cody finished Annie's sentence with a wicked grin and headed for the door. "Thanks for the cookies."
"Wait!"
Cross Country stopped her with a gentle hand on her chest as the door closed. "Why do you insist on bein' so thick headed? If you wanna know why I'm here, just ask me."
Annie made a show of putting all the cookies away. "Do you want some coffee? I can make a fresh pot."
He leaned into the kitchen entryway. "I'm more concerned with why the hell you're trying to avoid me, which is pretty damned nervy while I'm standin' right here in front of you."
"I'm..."
"I don't have a lot of patience for games, Annie, so I really hope the next words out of your mouth are gonna be 'I'm avoiding you because...' . 'Cause if you can't be honest with me, there's no point in continuin' this conversation."
"I..." He kept a steady gaze on her. "...I used you to make Scott jealous," she finally managed to spit out, "and I'm...not sorry it happened. I'm sorry that you could get hurt because of it."
"Was a little good ol' fashioned honesty so hard for you?"
The rest of the words came pouring out in a torrential flood. "I knew you were trouble for me the minute you walked into Boulderhill. So I did what I always do and deflected everything, laughed, kept it light...did everything I could to keep us to a friendly but working relationship. The worse it got with Scott, the easier it was to turn to you...then you buy me dinner...then I kiss you...then I'm going to run away to join the Army...then everything does a 360...and then I run home to Tahoe like always except they know me better than me and know I need time for me but then how am I supposed to know what I want when I won't even be honest with me and then you come in here like gangbusters to force the issue and it's even more confusing and I just want to..."
Cross Country took one large step into the kitchen, picked Annie up into his arms, and shut her up with a hard, passionate kiss. Whatever stream of consciousness she'd been on disappeared as she wrapped her arms around his neck and melted into him. She felt the darker side of her personality unlocking itself from the cage she kept it in, reminding her that she and Scott Trakker were no longer a couple and that there'd be nothing wrong with having a little Cross Country romp in the hay. The desire was almost too much to overcome...
He broke it off first, still holding her tightly in his broad shouldered embrace. "Had to test that out. You're right. Gets more confusin' every time."
"Being near you is like being on the newest exotic fantasy drug. While on it, my inhibitions go down and I'm higher than a kite without a care in the world. When you're gone, it feels like the worst downer ever. Sometimes I hate how I feel but in the next moment I'm wondering how I'm going to get more."
He chuckled. "That bad, huh?"
"Robert, I'm serious. What are we going to do about us?"
"I dunno." He had an odd look in his eyes. "You got anything you wanna tell me?"
"Grandma Turner taught me how to country fry a mean steak." Annie smiled wickedly. "Talk about it over dinner?"
"This don't let you off the hook. Not by a long shot, woman."
"Oh, but you haven't tasted my cooking yet."