I'm so sorry for your rubbish week and very grateful for your political posts - they've been very helpful. But on a lighter note, consider... Garcy meets Darklina academia AU???
Conferences in London during the summer season are always hit or miss. England, for example, has never actually heard of the word, and there is always the risk that it will be nine degrees Celsius and pissing it down in the middle of June. But academics everywhere are slavering to be let back into the wild after two years of staring at their colleagues' faces on a tiny Zoom screen and pretending it's the same as a real conference, and so Lucy and Flynn have decided to wing it. Arranged for the kids to stay with Rufus and Jiya, departed Stanford with great relief, and flown all the way to London for a super-duper-real conference at the Institute of Historical Research, followed by the annual pilgrimage up to Leeds for the IMC. People. Weird. Gross.
Flynn, of course, is deeply occupied in checking the transcription of his Middle Armenian primary sources on the plane, and is inclined to bark when Lucy interrupts him. They are on rather frosty terms by the time they land at Heathrow and take the Underground into the city, and don't speak again until they decide where to go out for dinner. Afterward, as their tempers have been improved with food, they stroll hand-in-hand in the thick blue dusk; the weather is, for once, mildly cooperative. The lights of London are coming on, and Lucy says, almost shyly, "Do you think we're going to be all right?"
Flynn looks at her down his long nose with dry amusement. "Speaking about the world, or the two of us more specifically?"
"I don't know." Lucy pauses, thinks about it. "Both. Either. Everything."
"As for the world," Flynn says, "if nothing else, we historians know that it's been through worse. As for us, we should be fine. As long as you let me finish my paper revisions when we get back to the hotel."
"Or," Lucy suggests pointedly, "we could FaceTime our children?"
Flynn snorts. "They're with Uncle Rufus, who is probably spoiling them rotten as we speak. They are also fine."
Lucy rolls her eyes to the heavens, but after they get back and she sends a quick text to Jiya to make sure that all is well with the hellions, she opens her laptop and starts making some last-minute revisions to her own PowerPoint deck. They are both full professors at Stanford now, which is a gift not to be underestimated in these troubled times, but she still can't quite shake the feeling that someone is going to turn up at her office, announce that she has been unmasked as a fraud, and turf her out forthwith. Impostor syndrome is a bitch.
They go to sleep, wake up on a grey morning that is at least not actually raining, take the Tube to Russell Square, and head to Senate House at the University of London, tramping upstairs to the IHR with the rest of the conference attendees. They perform the usual shuffle of collecting name badges, coffee cups, and resolving last-minute tech mishaps, which all feels a little sweeter now that it's their first in-person conference since the pandemic started. It is as they are doing so that a tall, dark man comes up to Flynn and says, "Garcia Flynn, is that you? I've so enjoyed your work on the function of the oprichniki in extending Ivan Groznyy's political and territorial legitimacy."
Lucy has gotten used to unfamiliar academics swanning up to her husband and announcing their admiration for his stuff in a field that she didn't even know he worked on, and muffles a small, amused sigh. The newcomer's name badge reads Aleksander Morozov - Saint Petersburg State University, and so he and Flynn instantly switch into fluent, rapid-fire Russian as they start discussing, evidently, the oprichniki of Ivan Groznyy. (Is that Ivan the Terrible? It is, right? Lucy really needs to brush up on her languages.)
It is as the men are engaged in this fashion (and rather animatedly; this is a subject on which they are apparently prepared to go all day), that a dark-haired woman steps up next to Lucy and rolls her eyes at her in a sympathetic fashion. "Don't take it personally. It happens to me all the time too."
Caught off guard, Lucy laughs, and they both peer at each other's name badges in the usual academic-at-a-conference habit of surreptitiously checking if this is someone they particularly need to schmooze with. The woman is also from SPSU; her name is Alina Starkova, and Lucy has seen her in the speakers' program, scheduled to present a paper on the economic and social policy of the 19th-century Russian Empire. They nod at each other, shake hands, and exchange small talk on the weather and their trips here. Then, when the conference organizers are clearing their throats and glancing meaningfully at the chairs in a way that means they are hoping to start somewhat on time, Flynn and Aleksander take no apparent notice of this and continue their argument. Loudly.
Lucy and Alina look at each other, sigh deeply, roll up their metaphorical sleeves, and wade in to grab their respective other halves by the arm, more or less (somewhat less) gently. (Alina is wearing an engagement ring, and the way she looks at Aleksander is the same way Lucy looks at Flynn, that same affection and exasperation mingled, so it's a guess, but a good one.) "Oh my god," Lucy mutters, towing Flynn away. "Good to know you haven't lost your habit of harassing innocent scholars in the wild."
"He's not innocent." Flynn glowers. "His paper in Russian History either deliberately misread or flat-out missed some of the most consequential sources in the entire -- "
"Garcia," Lucy says, in her best wifely tone. "Shut up."
Despite everything, and often many appearances to the contrary, Flynn knows what is good for him, and does so. They sit down across from Aleksander and Alina, and the women engage a long-suffering look, communicating the exact same silent message about their men. If you put those two idiots together, they would doubtless blow up the entire world in a pile of garbage. Probably best to not.
