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In their first year, Orson befriends the shy, mistrustful boy he shares a desk in fourth period with.
In their second year, he’s drunk and the world is brighter and he manages to pull his friend in and kiss him, and then neither of them stop at that.
At the end of their third year, the two of them exchange numbers all over again, and as soon as they move, they exchange addresses as well.
Orson, predictably, finds himself enlisting in the military. It’s an automatic, obvious choice. But that still doesn’t stop him from dragging Galen to dinner once every few weeks.
“Are you really fine with skipping your work?” Galen asks every time, scandalized.
Unlike Galen, Orson was never the academic type. “I’m breezing past everything anyway,” he replies.
They’ll talk a bit, chat about work a bit, recall old memories for a bit.
And sometimes after dinner they’ll find themselves retiring to some hotel for the night, or to wherever Orson’s staying. Sometimes they’ll just wave goodbye. Either way, Orson leaves with his heart a little bit lighter.
Neither of them ask how long this can last.
If they don’t ask, then they don’t need to ask, they won’t need to think about it.
“I love you,” he says, one time, when he’s too drunk to tell a lie and when Galen’s too drunk to remember it in the morning.
Galen just laughs, presses their lips together and swallows the sentiment from Orson’s mouth.
“I love you too.” He whispers into the kiss, and the words force themselves from Orson’s tongue down his throat, settle like lava in his stomach.
It lasts- or at least, he thinks it does, until Galen has to go to some expedition somewhere.
And then, abruptly, it falls apart.
Three years later, when Orson isn’t yet quite over his former lover, he finds out from gossip. Galen’s got a new lady love, and her name is Lyra.
(he remembers that name, remembers it from his days in the Programme, and he wonders how Galen chose someone like her over him)
(then again, he’s not surprised)
He finds Galen again, just in time to see him get married.
Because Orson is Orson, he doesn’t give up.
“Hey,” he calls Galen up, “Want to meet for dinner?”
And Galen being Galen, he doesn’t say no either.
“I can’t do that to her,” Galen says.
“What about what you did to me?” Orson returns. It’s a low blow and he knows it, and so would most anyone else. But Galen isn’t most anyone else, and he flinches just a little.
That’s all it takes for Orson to break his way through the barrier now between them, and it’s terribly, awfully simple.
“I won’t let him go,” Lyra tells him, softly and fierce. And she looks him in the eye and Orson knows a fellow predator when he sees one, a growl rumbling under the softness of her, and she would tear out his throat and leave him for the hyenas if it came to that.
But Orson is a predator too. He smiles, lets a little bit more of himself show as he speaks next. There’s a darkness in him, after all, a fire that will burn anything it touches. “I won’t either.”
It’s an odd push and pull between them, him and Lyra. Him, the family friend, and her, Galen’s wife.
But what are labels except for things other people place on you. Orson’s never let that deter him.
“I won’t make you choose,” he promises Galen, because he knows if he made Galen choose he would lose him.
Galen smiles too, “I would never let you go,” he says, and it’s completely truthful, completely selfish of the man. He’s never known about propriety, after all, never instinctively thought of others before himself. But Orson’s fine with that- he’s never been the letting go type anyway.
“You’re pregnant,” he says one day, looking at Lyra and her still-flat stomach.
She blinks.
But she’s been quietly hovering her hand over her stomach for weeks now. It’s obvious, to anyone apart from her husband.
“Congratulations,” he says instead, dryly.
“Galen,” he murmurs, and he can see it, how the other’s pupils dilate, how his breathing grows shallow and soft. Foolish to think Galen had ever gotten over him.
He leans in, a little too close for comfort, too close to simply be friends, but Galen isn’t stopping him, isn’t moving, is just there.
When their lips meet the kiss is chaste, brief and sweet and Orson stops himself from going anywhere else, decides to content himself with just that for the night. Anything else wouldn’t be appropriate, after all. Not yet.
He smiles, faint and sly.
Lyra knows of course. Lyra knows everything. It’s a fact Orson has come to accept. She looks at him sometimes, looks at them, and there’s something in her eyes that’s shadowed, something quiet and knowing and simmering under the surface.
Still she says nothing and they are the both of them caught there, in that inexorable push and pull.
His office is always a tad colder than comfortable. He prefers it that way, it increases the discomfort of anyone who comes in.
One day, he catches a glimpse of himself, in the metal of a table leg, finds himself staring into his own eyes. Almost without thinking, he’s pressing a hand over his flat stomach, a frown furrowing his brows.
If only I could have given you a child, he thinks, just the once, and then he closes his eyes and does not think of it again.
“We don’t know what to name her,” Galen says one day, and Lyra nods, sitting down with them.
Orson blinks. There’s a sudden heat infusing his chest, something overwhelming that won’t settle in him.
“... Jyn,” he says eventually, finds himself looking to Lyra for confirmation. It was his sister’s name. It was meant to have been his sister’s name.
Lyra smiles, “It’s beautiful.”
The baby is actually fairly cute.
It’s a scandal.
“Hello Jyn,” he murmurs, touches the kid’s nose with the tip of his finger. The girl giggles, reaches out a chubby hand and grabs at his finger.
“I’m your uncle,” he continues, “Orson.”
Jyn giggles, and tries to bite his finger off and eat it. He’s rather grateful she’s barely grown teeth yet.
He’s fond of her, he realizes, fonder than he’d realize. But she has a sweet smile, and he thinks he’s glad to be a part of this strange, dysfunctional family.
He kind of is nowadays, after all.
When the Senator approaches him with his request, Orson looks at him, his teeth wolf sharp and his ambition hot on his tongue. He smiles, and declines.