Work Text:
Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing and am making no money off of this fic.
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The Divide by luvsanime02
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There is a subtle divide between the southern states and actually being in the South. Sally knows that she’s crossed that line when the waitress brings her an iced tea without prompting before she’s even ordered her food.
Peach and lemon and enough gin to choke an alligator, and Sally doesn’t care that she’s technically still at work and that it’s only lunchtime, she grabs the glass and has half of it swallowed in one breath.
Not a moment too soon, because her phone lights up with seven different email replies to work-related threads. She sighs. Shouldn’t she be exempt from having to deal with the work constant chatter while she’s literally driving fourteen hours to attend a meeting that she hasn’t even prepared for?
At that reminder, Sally quickly drinks the rest of her iced tea and ignores the emails entirely to instead open up the folder on the project for the upcoming meeting. It’s not like anything really important will be in those emails anyway, she reminds herself. If it was anything urgent, someone would call her.
No, her focus right now needs to be on this project, because she has to give a presentation in less than four hours, she’s been awake for two days now, and she has absolutely no idea what any of the project details are.
It’s not her fault. She wasn’t assigned to this project. Of all the times for Noin to come down with an awful case of the flu, Sally can’t believe their luck that it had to be now. At least Noin helpfully compiled everything into a folder for her to read. Now, if only she could get herself to focus on the words instead of wishing for another drink.
“Here you go, sugar,” the waitress says, suddenly appearing in front of her, and Sally blinks as another iced tea is set down in front of her like magic, along with a delicious-looking burger.
“Thank you,” she says sincerely, and then practically dives on the food, not caring about what she looks like. She hasn’t eaten more than a handful of raisins since this morning, and she’s starving.
The report will have to wait until after Sally’s done eating, but that’s alright. At the rate she’s going, her food will be gone in less than ten minutes, anyway.
This would have been a lot easier if she could have flown down here, but with the layovers and the expense of booking something at the last minute, even if the company would pay for it, the extra couple of hours really wouldn’t have been worth the effort of packing a suitcase and digging out her passport, in Sally’s opinion.
She might think differently when she has to drive those fourteen hours back home tomorrow. At least she gets to sleep in a hotel tonight, she thinks ruefully.
As she thought, the burger disappears alarmingly quickly, and Sally practically inhales her fries before slugging down her second drink. The gin’s starting to smooth out the edges of her panic, which is brilliant, but Sally reluctantly pays and leaves before getting a third glass. She wants to be relaxed, not on her way to becoming drunk, for the meeting.
Sally squints at the bright sun and takes a moment to stretch, and just decides to check into her hotel room now and spend the last couple of hours before the meeting in there while memorizing Noin’s presentation to the best of her ability. At least in her hotel room, there won’t be any distractions, and she can take a shower and try to keep calm.
It’s a plan, or as much of one as Sally has right now. Whatever, she’s got a meeting to attend and then a bottle of gin with her name on it tonight before she passes out and heads back north in the morning. For now, though, it’s time for Sally to immerse herself in the heat of the South.