A Dugray Boys Weekend
A/N: I do not own anything. Copyrights remain with their respective owners.
Thanks to CopperboomLulu for your review. I also love a good Trory. To me they remind me of the famous literary couples James and Lily Potter, Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet.
So how many of you guessed this was a Trory? Tell me what you think in the reviews.
Three men set off from New York promptly at 9am in the morning in a nondescript SUV and headed through the New York traffic towards the Hamptons for a fun filled weekend, away from friends and family.
This had been happening since the youngest of the three, in the SUV, TJ had been a freshman at college, all the way across in Stanford University, California. During the holidays, they would always spend a weekend away together.
It was especially hard for Lucas, now that he was a father of a newborn son, Matthew "Matt" Connor Dugray, who he had left with Serena, his wife, and the staff at their Manhattan apartment, but this was a regular getaway that he, Charlie and TJ always took. It was where they would reconnect with each other, away from the distractions of work, studies, family, girlfriends and wives.
It was the middle brother, Charlie, that was driving as they headed out of New York City into the Hamptons. There was a camping gear, three tents and other things packed in the back of the SUV, heading towards Cedar Point County Park, where they would enjoy an isolated weekend away from civilisation.
As the SUV pulled up to the campsite, the three brothers unloaded the tents, and the other gear that they had taken with them, and then locked the car. It had been TJ, through his experiences at military school that had suggested that they do a camping trip together as a way of leaving their worlds behind and connecting again as brothers.
Long ago, when Lucas had left for college, at Harvard, the three brothers had started to drift apart, especially as things between their parents, Jason and Emma, had gotten worse. Charlie had withdrawn into himself, shutting his parents and everyone else out, self-sustaining and pouring himself into his studies and music at Chilton and then his freshman year at College at Harvard, without noticing that, TJ, the youngest, who had been barely a teen at the time was suffering and began to act out to seek attention and affection that had suddenly gone missing, culminating in TJ 's exile by his father to military school and everything that had happened there which lead to their eventual reconnection.
And it had partly been caused by one Miss Rory Gilmore, who had just walked back into TJ's life, by pure chance. Pure chance that shooting on Superspies had finished a day early and he had caught an earlier flight out. Pure chance that Charlie had a date with his girlfriend that night and wanted to cancel on account of TJ's arrival. Pure chance that Charlie's girl worked with Miss Rory Gilmore who had agreed last minute, to double date.
This weekend, Charlie was sure, that talk of Rory Gilmore would feature heavily in the three brothers' time together. After all, Brokenhearted, the song penned by TJ and Charlie was all about her. As they arrived at the campsite, the three brothers began to set up, firstly by pitching the tents, and then by starting a fire in the pit that was provided in the camp grounds. By now, the local park ranger, if he came to check at all knew that they were there, and would usually tell the others to steer clear. He knew that the three men valued their time together, away from the rest of the world.
Once the fire was going and producing a nice steady heat, the three Dugray brothers got ready to roast marshmallows and more importantly, catch up on their busy lives.
The oldest brother, Lucas Scott Dugray was now Chief Executive Officer of Dugray Global Industries, the family company and he was responsible, along with their father, Jason, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, for the multi-billion dollar company ever since Janlen Dugray had passed away. As the oldest son, and heir, he had always known and accepted how Hartford society was and what he needed to do. He had known from an early age what he was expected to be, and so he followed that path, and made the best of his situation, whatever it was. In his mind, rebelling against something that was inevitable wasn't worth the fight. He found happiness where it could be found.
That had culminated in his marriage to his wife, Serena, in the eyes of his father, a business merger between an industrial conglomerate and one of the best private financial investment firms in the US. In his and Serena's perspective, it was a marriage based on love, for he knew that he was lucky to find someone that he loved who was also of society, and they had recently been blessed with little Matthew Dugray, a beautiful blonde haired green-eyed baby.
Their father, Jason Dugray was a career man whose sole goal in life was to make money. He had been Janlen's second son, and when his older brother, Jonathan had perished, without heir in a car crash, it was left to Jason to take over the family company. He had never really gotten over trying to prove himself competing against a dead older brother, and he had buried himself in work, making as much money possible for the company, to, in his mind, validate his position. This had of course, caused the lack of relationship between him and his wife and sons.
As they sat around the campfire, it was TJ that told Lucas of the re-entrance of one Rory Gilmore into his life. Lucas had been a bit fuzzy about the details when Tristin had been sent away to military school and why it had happened, at least until Charlie had moved down to North Carolina and told him why. But in Lucas's mind, this could be a good thing. Lucas smiled, as he heard that Rory had had a great time with TJ. "So," he said, "she wants to see you again. That's good."
"Yeah," TJ replied, "she does, and we exchanged numbers and emails. She works at the domestic politics news desk at the International News Tribune."
Charlie took a bite of his roasted marshmallow as he interjected, "with Liz." Lucas remembered, Charlie's girlfriend, his first serious girlfriend since he had graduated from Yale Law.
"So," Lucas continued, "the big question is, do you think that you want to date her, like you did back in High School?"
Charlie said, "by the way that she ogled me, and then him," he laughed, as he continued, "I would say she definitely wants him, physically. Whether Teej thinks that he and her can connect emotionally and intellectually is another matter." They all remembered TJ's teenage years, or at least what had gone around the gossip circles of Hartford. TJ had not been one to look for emotional or intellectual compatibility with girls at that age.
"That's not the question, Charlie," Lucas stated, "it's more in TJ's corner now. It's about what he wants to do."
TJ sat quiet, reflecting on the question Lucas had posed. Lucas was the big brother and protector of his younger siblings, including TJ. TJ knew that Lucas was looking out for TJ's heart when he asked his question. Both Lucas and Charlie knew that TJ's heart had already been broken once by this girl, when she had declared in the Chilton courtyard that she had hated him. The question for TJ was, did he want to take the risk that she might break his heart once more? "I don't really know," he said, "I've learned to survive on my own without her, and while I know her and I together would be an added bonus to a good life, if she really liked me, there are a few things that could get in the way, though, like the fact that I'm studying all the way across the other side of the country."
"That's all right," Charlie said, "if you want to go for it, then do so. If you don't want to then don't." Charlie remembered for the first time, back in High School, at Chilton and then at military school, where TJ had been affected by Miss Rory Gilmore. He remembered getting the phone call at home on Spring Break in his junior year at Harvard. He had received the phone call from the military school, saying that TJ had slit his own wrists so badly that he was in hospital. Charlie had known that TJ hadn't returned for Christmas break in his junior year, as punishment for breaking into the safe, it had still been too raw in his father's mind. But he never knew it had gotten that bad. After talking with Lucas, he had made a deal with his father to transfer down to Duke University, to be closer to TJ.
It had only been when Charlie had got down to North Carolina that he realised how bad everything had been over the past few years. Seeing TJ in hospital with wires and IV's had opened his eyes to how bad home life had become. He remembered TJ waking and seeing him sitting there beside him in the hospital. TJ's eyes had suddenly looked shocked to see him, to see someone in his family sitting next to him.
The next year and a bit, Charlie and TJ had lived in North Carolina before their huge fight and Charlie's enrolment in Yale Law School, and TJ's escape to Stanford, California. But before that, he had heard the whole story from TJ, about how he had tried to get Rory to go out with him, and how she had declared that she had hated him, and run off with her then Bag Boy boyfriend. He had heard how that had affected TJ so deeply that he had started running with Bowman and Duncan, who everyone in Hartford knew were never going to amount to anything much more than brats who would live off their parents money. It had taken long hours of talking to convince TJ that he shouldn't let the fact that Rory Gilmore had said that she hated him affect him at all and that he was a person who was worth loving and that TJ should grow and change for the better not to impress her, but for himself.
"She wants to see you again," Charlie repeated, "have a bit of fun. If it works out then great for you, you'll get the girl that you really like. You know, you're lucky you found someone so quickly, even if it did take you years to deflate your ego. If you weren't the arrogant 'King' of Chilton you would have had her earlier." Laughter rang around the campfire at the joke.
"Hey," TJ replied, "both of you were 'Kings' of Chilton before me." The Dugray boys had each 'ruled' Chilton Academy in their younger days.
"But for different reasons," Lucas said. "You were the one who got your kingship for your 'dating' abilities." For Lucas, the title of 'king' had come naturally, as heir to Dugray Global Industries, captain of the basketball team, and being the general all-round golden boy. Charlie had followed, the mysterious and aloof King, king because everyone knew not to piss him off, king because the girls thought he was a modern day Mr Darcy and secretly wanted him, yet he didn't ever give many of the girls the time of day. He was fiercely protective of those that he cared for, seen in the nasty streak that came out of Charlie some times, when his friends or other important people in his life were threatened. The girl that had broken his best friend's heart had effectively been exiled until she graduated after the damaging rumours about her had turned out to be true.
TJ was the school's notorious playboy, known for his way with the ladies and being the life of the party. It had been his way of dealing with his parents crumbling marriage, his father sleeping with his secretary and the maids, his mother off with the fitness instructor and gardener thinking that they could hide the truth. So he had sought attention from elsewhere, and being a Dugray, and good looking, there was plenty of shallow love from the crowd at school, and the girls. It was no replacement for true love though.
At Chilton, he had wanted Rory's attention, because she was someone that was real, someone who had no use for the Hartford Society mask. She had been reality in a sea of falsehood, and he wanted to experience and feel something real. Of course, she had seen him nothing more than a big-headed jerk who wasn't worthy of her attention. It had hurt that she couldn't see that he liked her, and when she said she hated him, it was a proverbial dagger to his heart, leading him to think that no one cared about or loved him. After all, if someone real, like Rory, who showed real emotions could say that she hated him, he thought, he mustn't really be loveable at all. Inevitably, when it came to reality and real feelings, he would only get hate. In the summer before junior year, he had tried to date to get over her, but he ended up dumping each of the girls before they realised that he wasn't loveable, that all he could do was make people hate him.
He'd fallen in with Duncan and Bowman that summer, they had been losers like he was, pathetic like he had thought himself to be. He found that he was looking for more real attention and had he thought by pulling stunts and getting caught it would force his parents to care, force his family to care, but all it had done was land him in military school, and the lowest point of his life. At military school, no one cared and that was what happened, he had slipped into a spiral of depression, he continued to think he was unlovable and only deserving of hatred. It was what he told himself as to why his parents had put him in military school, because they didn't want to waste their time or love on an unlovable, unwanted child. He had thought at the time, neither Lucas or Charlie cared as well, both off at college, and from what his parents said, doing well.
And then, after the incident, Charlie had moved to Duke and took care of TJ, making him slowly realise that he was loved. He remembered turning his life around in senior year, as his heart began to heal. Charlie had spent almost every weekend with TJ, tutoring him for SAT's and to catch up from the work from the previous years that had been missed or not learnt. Sometimes they would go off campus and just pretend that they were orphaned brothers living by themselves. He had never heard from his parents or Lucas in those years.
His life turned around, he made real friends with the other cadets, and as he began to find discipline, he went from just scraping pass marks in class to the top. The commanders started to take notice of his improved work and it seemed that things were easier when he had something to strive for. By the time, SAT's came around, he had managed a mark high enough for him to be accepted at Stanford, Yale and Harvard. He knew that Charlie had planned to go to Yale Law School, to study environmental law and TJ wanted to choose Yale to follow his brother, close as they were at that time.
The day he got his acceptance letter from Yale he had got permission to go off base and he wanted to surprise his brother with the news. That day, was the day of their big fight, when he had found out that Charlie had made a deal with their father, in return for Charlie going to Duke, he would report on TJ's progress and Charlie would go to Yale Law, graduate, work at Blackwood and Whitestone before joining DGI as its chief legal counsel once he had enough experience.
When TJ had overheard, he had felt betrayed in the worst way possible, and the result of their fight was that Charlie and TJ didn't speak for more than half a year, TJ going to Stanford and cutting all contact with his family, until the day that Lucas showed up at his dorm his wife's Vogue magazine in hand, open at the page where TJ had been in an Armani advertisement.
His first words were "you know Charlie's buried himself in his work, won't talk or see anyone. Just works and plays at the pub at Open Mic Night. Every song he plays is sad. He wanted to be with you, we both knew that you were suffering, so he made a deal with dad so that he could help you, and you blow up at him and come here. TJ, you hurt him badly."
When TJ had recovered from the shock of being found, he and Lucas had had a long talk. Before leaving, Lucas had said, "by the way, this is my wedding invitation, I want you to be one of my groomsmen, along with Charlie." After that, the three Dugray brothers had become closer than they had in more than twelve years, which had turned into their every-so-often camping trips.
Today was therefore quite momentous, as Rory Gilmore, inadvertently the catalyst for all of these events had just walked back into TJ's life, the girl that the song Brokenhearted, had been about, and now TJ had a choice to make. His brothers were the closest people in his life now, and he wanted their thoughts. "I say you go for it," Lucas said, "what harm can happen, you've matured a lot since High School, and if it doesn't work out then it doesn't. As least you tried, and experienced what you wanted to."
"This coming from the Golden Boy," Charlie replied, "who had the perfect High School sweetheart he married. Take it from someone who's been broken up with, not someone who fell in love at the first go. You've got to think it through, and be careful with your heart." Charlie had had a girlfriend when he was at Duke but when he had moved to Yale Law School, she hadn't followed and they had broken up. He had fancied himself in love then, but now, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, he may not have been.
Charlie took a bite of the marshmallow he was roasting on the campfire. "So it's really up you you what you want. What do you think is best for you right now?"
"So really," TJ replied, as he took a bite of his white marshmallow, "you have no answer." Lucas laughed.
"Yeah," Lucas said, "just do what you think it best for you. Sometimes love's like that, it's a journey into the unknown. Maybe you'll get lucky."
TJ sat there, taking another bite out of his roasted marshmallow. He had to reflect on what he wanted in life. This time, the ball was in his court, and he wanted to make the right choice.
The rest of the weekend passed without much other incident. Lucas showed the latest pictures of baby Matthew, and they hung out, relaxed, before the drive back to the New York City late Sunday afternoon.
A/N: Please read and reviews are very much appreciated. I'm new to this fandom so any help on characterization and facts and tidbits is very much appreciated.
A/N2: The next one-shot uploaded (tentatively named Emergency) will contain an example of self-harm. Please don't read it if you are sensitive to this issue or have had thoughts about self-harming.