Robin could see Fanny through the glass of his office, industriously sorting through some papers on her desk. Why couldn't she have taken the day off like normal people and let him keep the shades down and the lights off? His head hurt, like some small creature of the night had moved in and was digging its way through the spongy cortex, and Robin wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else with his head in the toilet, instead of at work, going over the fiscal year for the lab in Jakarta.
Fanny probably thought he was muscling through a work migraine on sheer willpower, as if he'd ever been that motivated in his life. As if he hadn't drunk half a bottle of Scotch and picked a fight with the Tracys. The Tracys. LA's headlining act, the all-singing, all-dancing von Tracy family. Scott was a varsity jacket short of being a total meathead, and John was the postgrad uberdouche you didn't want to meet in a dark alley. And Robin had played them in poker. Oh God, there was no end to the idiocy. Thinking about it made it worse. Everything made everything worse. He opened his desk drawer. Where was his bottle of aspirin? There were too many things in his drawer.
Stapler. Post-Its.
"Sir?"
The clock he'd broken.
"Robin?"
He looked up. Fanny was standing at his desk—when did she get here?—a bottle of water in one hand and a small, white bottle of aspirin in the other. "For your headache," she said.
"Headache," he echoed, accepting the bottle of aspirin. "Yes. That's what this is." He winced. Smooth. "I mean...thanks."
Fanny set the bottle of water down on his desk. "How was the party?"
"The party?" Robin repeated, stalling for time so the better answer could work its way through the fog in his brain. "Oh, it was fine. Decent turnout. Good food." That was underselling it but he couldn't think far enough ahead to come up with anything better. He twisted the cap off the aspirin bottle and shook out two pills into his hand. "You know how it is."
"Any familiar faces?"
Right. Because that had been the plan. Show up, casually make the rounds, run into someone from the Good Ol' Days in a way that wouldn't seem intentional. A bit of a long shot, admittedly, and probably a bad idea, and definitely not part of Duncan's carefully curated schedule. Especially seeing as he'd left explicit instructions not to accept invitations to Anything while he was out of the country. "Not really. But I don't know what I was expecting anyway. You haven't seen the readout for the downtown properties, have you? I can't seem to find it."
"No, I haven't." Fanny was giving him a look, as if he was missing something obvious. "I just came to remind you about the meeting."
Robin opened the water bottle to wash down the pills. "What meeting?"
"With Branson Davis. At 10?"
The water went down the wrong pipe, and Robin choked, spilling water down his front. "W-what?"
"Friday at 10."
Robin coughed again, stabbing desperately at the wet stain on his tie. "But today's Saturday."
Fanny glanced at the clock on his desk as if it would back her up. "No, sir. It's Friday."
"No, no, no. Because yesterday was Friday, because there was a party. And people have parties on Fridays." That sounded incredibly inane, even to his own ears. "Today is Saturday," he repeated, a little helplessly, and even as he said it he knew he was wrong, because of course Fanny knew what day it was, and he didn't because did he ever? "Who the hell throws a party on a Thursday night?" He didn't actually expect her to have an answer. "And why did I go?"
He had to swallow what felt like the beginning of a faint panic. No. Couldn't lose his head. Not now. He had work to do. Branson Davis. 10 o'clock. Branson Davis. Robin glanced at his watch. Forty minutes. He had forty minutes to get to the meeting. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?" That was unfair because Fanny was everything at the office he wasn't—and she had probably said something on Monday, and then again yesterday, and maybe even this morning when he'd rolled up to work wearing his darkest pair of shades. Robin frantically rummaged through the papers to find his tablet. He found it under a pile of lab notes and grabbed it, and his phone and suit jacket from the back of the chair.
:
The quiet of the driverless car did nothing to settle his stomach. Robin nervously wrapped his fingers around the edge of the tablet. He couldn't seem to remember anything these days if it wasn't written down on a Post-It. And even then he forgot the check the Post-Its. But how could he forget a meeting with Branson Davis? Robin had spent the week being briefed about time projections and cost estimates, half of which he'd never understood, and half of which he'd forgotten on the elevator back from accounting. And he didn't really want to ask the guy in the glasses to explain it to him again. For the fifth time. Because Robin was dumber than a bag of rocks, which would definitely explain why he'd invited the Tracys to the table.
There was a bottle of whisky in the car somewhere, the kind intended for business meetings on-the-go, and maybe a drink would help kill the butterflies in his stomach. Though it was more like a lot of bees, the angry swarm roiling unhappily in his gut. That's how he'd collected bugs for his pinboard when he was little, except instead of whisky it had been a killing jar and a cotton ball soaked in ethyl acetate.
Robin fiddled around with the buttons by his elbow, and the liquor compartment popped open to his right, the bottle and snifter rising with a mechanical hiss. Macallan. Single Malt. He stared at the name. Duncan wouldn't approve. He'd have something to say about moderation, about keeping a clear head and seizing the day or some other trite adage that might work on people who weren't Robin. Duncan was the kind of person who made a mug of mulled wine last the entire Christmas season. Maybe an eggnog if he was feeling wild. Robin put a hand to the bottle. Duncan, who only tried to help, who'd sat him down a long time ago and outlined the acceptable topics to cover in polite conversation (health, family, upcoming trips to Europe), even though Robin had been perfectly aware it hadn't been appropriate to tell Mrs. Goldstein he'd finally tried acid. What Duncan hadn't told him then was how much harder it was to 'talk shop', this nebulous business slang Robin doubted he'd ever get his head around.
"The local traffic conditions have deteriorated due to an accident on Bella Garaza." The automated drone of the driverless car interrupted the silence. "We are currently on the fastest route to the Kepler Building, Ro-bin."
Robin pushed the compartment down, the bottle and glass slotting back into hiding. Duncan was right. Once was enough. Twice was just asking for it.
:
Robin used to be good at excuses. That he really did have a good reason for not doing his homework or skipping last period. Big, blue eyes and a megawatt smile had usually been enough to get him out of trouble. There was that one time he'd made Ms. Baker cry for the dead dog he'd never had. But now—when he stood in front of Branson Davis's office—his head felt slow, rusty, like something had dropped off its axel a long time ago, and he was nervous and vaguely ill, and the red carpet with its pattern of yellow fans was frankly nauseating. He swallowed the unease. Get it together, Robin. This should be easy. A few handshakes, a presentation, a little reassuring on his part.
He knocked, and the door opened, Branson Davis in the frame, and Robin stammered out, "I'm sorry I'm late." Twenty minutes. "There was an accident on the…" he trailed off because there wasn't much else to the excuse.
"That's fine. Come in." Branson Davis held the door open for him. "I'm glad we finally get to meet. We've worked with your father before."
"Ah. Yes." Robin stepped inside, trying not to squint in the bright light of the office, as if his retinas weren't bleeding and he was perfectly okay. "Thank you for seeing me."
"We'll have to get started as soon as possible." Branson Davis held out a hand in a vague gesture. "My partners, Roger Thornton. Laura Miller."
Robin shook hands with them.
"And my guests today—well, you know the Tracys."
What?
"Jeff, you remember Richard's son."
No.
Robin turned, and whatever Branson Davis was saying lost all clarity, fading out around the edges, because Jeff Tracy was standing there in the room, with Scott and John on either side of him, bookends to their father, the man, the myth, the legend; cosmonaut, visionary, industrialist—the magnate whose jawline launched a thousand lunar explorations. Jeff Tracy, wearing the same clipped annoyance Robin remembered from the blueblood socials at Harwick—a dark blue suit, pinstriped, a silver dagger of a pin across his tie—and Robin was fourteen again and Fitz had just poured yoghurt down his uniform, the awful, icy clot sliding down his spine, and this was a dream. It had to be a dream, because Robin couldn't possibly be standing in the same room as Branson Davis and Jeff Tracy when just last night Robin had—
"Robin?"
Robin started. "Huh?"
"The presentation?" said Branson Davis, pointing at something. "The projector?"
"What?"
"You mentioned you had some notes to show." Branson Davis looked a little concerned. "I didn't mean to spring this on you, but I thought you wouldn't mind, seeing as we're all in the same business. Jeff, you were telling me about your talk with the GDF, and Locke Industries have shown some promising prototypes in—actually, Robin, why don't you just show us?"
Robin tried to clear his throat. "Yes. Right." He couldn't remember what to do. The tablet. The presentation. He looked down, pressed a button, scrolled through, fingers slipping on the shiny surface. The moment seemed to stretch into eternity. His head was pounding, the queasy feeling coming back stronger. How long had he been standing there? A minute? An hour?
"Are you—"
"I'm fine. I-I have it here." But something was wrong. He stared numbly at the tablet. There was a crack across the right-hand corner, a crack from when he'd dropped it on the stairs, but that couldn't possibly be right because that meant he didn't have the right tablet. His stomach turned. There was nothing on this, just notes. He was suddenly hot, the starched collar pushing into his throat. "I was just—I have—" He stopped, the awful queasiness rolling over him again, and he only managed a step towards the door before his gut clenched, and he doubled over and vomited.
A deafening silence.
Robin coughed, straightening slowly, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He didn't feel better, and there was more coming, and he couldn't look up because he knew what they were thinking, and they were right. He fled.
:
And to answer your question, this is a Thunderbirds AU crossed with a modern day Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves AU.