Title: Affirmation
Rating: R
Setting: Vermont, in a ski lodge Matt's family owns. They're all nineteen or twenty years old except for Daniel, who's twenty-one.
Summary: The group is promised a free vacation, but a big storm keeps everyone trapped inside. Sammie and Matt are having relationship trouble, while Anna and Daniel struggle with their own issues. The others handle smaller problems. They find all the questions do have answers, and deep down, they already knew them.
Feedback: Feel free to review.
Dedication: for Cee.
Disclaimer: As per usual, I own Lex, Jeff, Anna, Chris, Matt, Sammie, and Anthony. My friend Cee owns Fred, Kate, and Daniel.
Story Notes: this story is one of two Christmas fics for my friend Cee. 'Affirmation' is the name of a song by Savage Garden.

(Part 01 / 06)

Jeff, Matt, Fred, Anthony, Chris and Daniel were playing poker around the coffee table. Kate was writing in her diary and keeping them company, while Lex, Anna, and Sammie sat trying to roast chestnuts over an open fire in the fireplace, which wasn’t working so well.

The band had played at Matt’s cousin’s wedding at his cousin’s request and for a fee. Fred, Kate, and Daniel were there because, well, nobody was sure why except that things weren’t completely normal unless Fred, Kate, and Daniel were around these days. Matt’s cousin had gotten married in Vermont, where the family owned and ran a lodge. The band and their friends got a free vacation along with playing at the wedding.

They’d gotten there a few days ago and had mostly been working since, rehearsing, playing at the rehearsal dinner, and then at the wedding. Most of the guests had left last night to avoid the impending storm, but their little group wasn’t supposed to be going home for a few days so that they could ski and have a good time. Unfortunately, the big storm was in the process of keeping them cooped up inside the lodge.

“I can’t believe two days after the wedding there’s a storm that’s going to ruin the next three days we’re here,” Jeff said, throwing his cards down and folding for the hand. “I really can’t.”

“This is your fault,” Matt said to Kate. “You and your stupid snow dance.”

“I was doing it so there’d be fresh snow for your skiing! Why is everyone so cranky?” Kate asked unhappily. “It’s fun being snowed in!”

“It’s more fun being outside skiing, Red,” Daniel explained. Then he muttered, “Where we are able to escape your voice for more than thirty seconds at one time.”

Fred grinned, “Be nice Daniel.” Daniel rolled his eyes but didn’t respond.

“At least the wedding went well,” Chris shrugged. “And we made a nice profit even though they got a discount on the band.”

“Why don’t we charge as much as a regular band?” Anthony asked, collecting his winnings for the hand with a full house.

“Because we’d never get hired. Would you hire a bunch of nineteen and twenty year olds for your own wedding?” Chris smiled easily. “Plus, it’s Matt’s cousin.”

“Yeah, yeah I know, we do for family,” Anthony shrugged.

“Owwww hot!” Sammie screamed, throwing a chestnut, which hit Lex hit in the face.

“Sammie! Dammit!” Lex put a hand to her eye. “You idiot!”

“I’m sorry! I burned myself!” Sammie howled. “It hurts!”

“Don’t stick your hand in the fire then!” Anna yelled, frightened that Sammie could act so rashly.

“Looks like the children need a time out,” Fred grinned, putting down his cards and wandering over to the fire, picking Lex up off the ground and kissing her cheek. “How’s the eye?”

“It’s been better,” she moaned. Fred laughed.

Matt got up to go check up on Sammie. “How badly did you burn yourself?”

“Not too badly,” Sammie mumbled. “It just stings a bit, that’s all.”

“You should go put some cold water on it,” Matt suggested helpfully. “You could –”

“We’re not dating, Matt, don’t go ordering around! And you don’t need to look after me!” Sammie snapped, while Matt looked mildly hurt.

“Fine,” he muttered, turning his back on her and walking away toward the kitchen. Sammie then got teary and left the room.

“Great,” Jeff mumbled. “They’ve never been like this after they’ve broken up before. They must be really hurting this time.”

“You mean we’re in for more fun with the happy couple?” Daniel asked sarcastically. Everyone else ignored him.

“Why do they break up if it hurts?” Fred asked. “If they want to be together then why don’t they just stay together?”

“Who the hell knows?” Chris replied. “They’re both damn selfish sometimes. They fight over the dumbest things. And they’ve been like this for a really long time.”

Fred was helping Lex to rinse her eye and Anna was putting out the small fire they’d started, so Kate took it upon herself to go talk to Sammie. Anthony got up and followed Matt to the kitchen. Chris and Jeff both tossed in their cards, as the game seemed to be over. Daniel grabbed all the cash on the table and said, “I win.”

“And speaking of selfish,” Anna said, walking up behind him and wiping her hands with a towel. “How come you get all the money?”

“Because I’m the only one who didn’t quit,” Daniel said simply. Anna hit his shoulder. “What? I didn’t!”

Anna just shook her head. “You wouldn’t even share with your best girl?” she asked.

“Red’s in the other room,” Daniel smirked. Anna smiled sweetly and then smacked the back of his head with her hand.

Kate followed Sammie into the room they were sharing. “What’s wrong?” Kate asked frankly.

“Nothing,” Sammie sobbed, sinking down on the bed and covering her face.

“Well, that clearly isn’t true,” Kate sat down and patted Sammie’s shoulder. “What’s up with you and Matt?”

“Nothing,” Sammie sobbed again.

Kate wasn’t sure how to approach this subject. Sammie, Lex, and Anna were the first girlfriends Kate had ever had that she felt wouldn’t instantly betray her the second she gave them a chance, and she was closest with Sammie. She knew Sammie and Matt always had their issues but she never saw Sammie completely lose it over something so minor before. In fact, Kate had never seen Sammie completely lose it like this over anything.

“Sammie, what’s the matter? You and Matt broke up but so what? You’ve broken up with him before, you’ve gotten back together, and it’s okay. He loves you to death, he didn’t even do anything that bad,” Kate talked quickly so that Sammie couldn’t interrupt, “You broke up because you felt it was too intense and needed a break – ”

“That’s not why we broke up! Well it’s part of it, but not really…” Sammie choked out. She looked pale and tired and very unhappy. “That’s just what we told everyone.”

Kate tried not to look too surprised. She’d never known Sammie and Matt to lie to their friends before. “Why didn’t you tell us?” Kate asked patiently.

“We just didn’t want anyone else to know,” she explained, wiping her eyes.

“Sammie, what happened? You can tell me, I’m your friend,” Kate said, wrapping her arms around her.

“I haven’t even told Lex and Anna yet,” she mumbled. “I haven’t told anybody.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Kate said quickly, embarrassed, “Do you not want to share? I can go get Anna and Lex if you want, I just thought we were friends and you were really upset so I offered to listen. I’m sorry, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Sammie looked stunned. “Kate, no, don’t be sorry. Of course we’re friends; it has nothing to do with you personally. It’s just hard to talk about.”

“Oh,” Kate grinned a little bit. Sammie smiled too. “Can I ask why you haven’t told anyone yet?” Kate questioned.

Sammie sniffled. “It’s just really complicated, that’s all.”

Kate knew she should be being supportive but her curiosity was beginning to get the better of her. “You want to talk about it?” she asked.

Sammie shrugged. “I don’t know…Matt hasn’t spoken to anyone either and I just…” she burst into tears again. Kate hugged her a little bit tighter.

“Hasn’t spoken about what?” Kate pushed gently. She knew that she couldn’t push too hard or too fast or Sammie wouldn’t tell her what was wrong. Daniel acted that way when he had a problem…though he didn’t typically sob about it.

“If I tell you, will you promise not to tell anybody, Kate? Please, you can’t tell anyone,” Sammie begged, sniffling again.

“Of course I won’t,” Kate promised. “I don’t tell Fred’s or Danny’s secrets.”

“Except when you’re really drunk,” Sammie smiled a little bit through her tears.

“Except then,” Kate agreed happily, “But I try not to get that way.”

Sammie smiled again. “I will tell you then, but you swear you won’t tell anyone?”

“I swear.”

Sammie took a deep breath. “You know how Matt and I had been dating?”

“Yeah?”

“You know how we messed around a lot?”

“Messed around how?”

“Like, had a lot of sex?”

“Oh! Yeah, Chris and I caught you one time!”

“Yeah, I know, I remember,” Sammie smiled. “Well…Oh God, I don’t even know how to begin this story.”

“You had a lot of sex and?” Kate suggested helpfully.

“Well, I guess the more you have sex the better chance you have of a condom breaking and getting pregnant,” Sammie shrugged. “I guess that’s what happened to Matt and me.”

Kate gasped appropriately. “You’re pregnant!?”

“Keep your voice down!” Sammie begged.

“You’re pregnant?” Kate whispered.

“No, but I was. I guess I was in denial for a month. You miss a period, no big deal, right? It happens to me about once a year. But after two months I bought a test and it was positive. I told Matt about it, and…” she let out a tiny sob, “We had a big fight.”

Kate rubbed Sammie’s back and let her calm down again before asking, “What did you fight about?”

“Well first, he asked if it was his, and that has hurt more than anything he’s ever asked me, because I wouldn’t ever cheat on him. I’ve cheated on other guys with him, but never on him! I love him too much!”

“What a jerk,” Kate responded automatically. She’d never taken Matt to be one of those guys who tried to get out of all responsibility that came his way.

“He took it back almost as soon as he said it, but it still hurt,” Sammie sniffled. “But then he asked what I wanted to do with it, and I said I wanted to get rid of it. And he flipped out. He started saying how his family was Irish Catholic and that it would freak him out and well…he wanted me to keep it.”

“You get to pick what you want to do,” Kate said. “Right? It’s up to you, isn’t it?”

“I know it’s up to me but then I went and looked up exactly what an abortion was! Until that point it was just this thing that women did that made a baby go away, I never thought about it before and I never thought I’d need one myself! And I saw what it was, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Matt there to hold my hand anyway,” she took a shaky breath but dissolved into tears again. Kate waited patiently for her to recover her composure. “Well, we weren’t speaking for a while, but I felt like the clock was ticking, so I was beginning to freak out and I kept trying to get Matt to change his mind and at least go with me to the doctor.”

“He didn’t go with you?”

“He finally agreed to after I promised I’d at least consider the option of keeping it, but it didn’t matter. You remember that weekend about a month ago when you were staying with me when Lex and Anna had forced Fred and Daniel to go to Pennsylvania for the weekend?”

Kate nodded. Lex and Anna both had family down there that they were going to visit and invited Fred and Daniel along. They key to getting Daniel to do anything of the sort was to get Fred to agree first. Fred, always looking to make Lex happy, agreed with no questions asked. Daniel, now without much choice in the matter because Fred was on his back, complained about the trip like it was the end of the world. But he went anyway, and in spite of his earlier bitching, Kate knew he probably had a good time. Sammie had invited Kate over for the weekend to do a girls weekend, and they had been having a very good time until Sunday morning.

“And you remember when I got really sick in the bathroom, and I told you I was throwing up, and to go call Matt?” Sammie asked.

Kate nodded again. She remembered that morning vividly. She woke up to find Sammie locked in the bathroom, saying she was ill. It scared Kate half to death.

“Well, that was a few days before I was supposed to go to the doctor. I miscarried.”

Kate inhaled sharply. “Oh no! You did?”

“Yeah. It felt like really bad cramps and a bad stomachache that hurt like hell. I went to the emergency room to make sure I was all right and everything, and I was, but the baby…” she couldn’t finish her sentence. She buried her face in her hands again and started to cry.

“I don’t understand though,” Kate said quietly. “I thought you didn’t want to keep it.”

“I thought that too, but…I don’t know. I miscarried and I just felt so inadequate, like I couldn’t have kept it even if I wanted to,” Sammie said shakily. “Matt became really tepid towards me, and treated me like glass, and he clammed up and stopped telling me how he felt, and finally we decided to just break up. It was just too intense, and I was really freaked out that he would knock me up again. And like, we swore we wouldn’t tell anyone because we didn’t want them to freak out or anything but it’s been really hard on us and I…don’t even know anymore, I can’t even talk to him really, it hurts so much, and he’s always been so good to me…”

“I’m sorry, Sammie, it’s not your fault,” Kate soothed. She couldn’t even begin to feel what Sammie was feeling but she knew Sammie and Matt had always had an intense relationship and this must have made it so hard for them. The situation was difficult enough anyway.

“You can’t tell anyone, Kate, you can’t! Promise me, please, you can’t,” Sammie begged again for her word.

“I won’t,” Kate said determinedly, “I promise.”

Sammie cried for a long time after that while Kate hugged her. Sammie eventually fell asleep on the bed, and Kate left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.

Anthony had just gotten the same story but from Matt’s perspective. Anthony was a bit upset that Matt and Sammie hadn’t told their friends that Sammie had been so sick but had sworn to keep their secret. Matt began to get really upset and was taking a minute to get himself back together, so Anthony let him do that and left him with a clap on the back before exiting the room.

He walked back into the main room and sank down at the piano. Lex and Anna had pulled the rest of their burned chestnuts out of the fire and were now messing around with them, trying to find one they didn’t completely destroy. Fred had fallen asleep on the couch, and Chris and Jeff had gone back to playing cards. Daniel was going haphazardly through a fishing magazine looking very bored, and Kate was coming out of the room she and Sammie were sharing. She looked a little white herself, but she didn’t say anything at all. She just sat down next to Fred on the couch and shut her eyes. Strange behavior…for Kate, anyway.

With a piano in front of him, Anthony instinctively began to play. The first song that came to mind was Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’ which he had been playing since he was about eight years old. He didn’t have a harmonica with him, but the song still sounded pretty good. He looked around. There was something incredibly cliché about the scene; a piano, people hanging around, and a big roaring fire. He couldn’t figure out what the cliché was.

As he started to play, Lex and Anna abandoned the chestnuts and walked over. They sat down in chairs and sang for him, since he didn’t really want to do anything but play. When he changed songs they got up and they danced and messed around. Daniel had abandoned leafing through the magazine and had instead taken to watching the two girls now dancing around by the fire.

The girls went over to Chris and Jeff and begged them to dance. They put their cards down and joined them. Jeff spun Lex around and she laughed, Chris dipped Anna and they were all smiling. Even Anthony, who was sitting at the piano, was smiling.

Matt had walked through the room quickly, and Lex called out to him, but he kept walking back towards the rooms they were sleeping in and didn’t stop. Anthony told them to leave him alone, as he was a bit upset at the moment, so they went back to dancing and laughing.

It amazed Daniel that they hadn’t all killed each other yet, or had at least gotten sick of each other. They hardly ever fought and they were insufferably supportive of one another. They forgave each other their mistakes. It was obnoxious. Each of them knew the others very well, and Daniel suspected that any one of the guys could take much better care of Anna than he ever could. Not that he wanted to be taking care of Anna, but still, it was something to consider. Fred and Kate had willingly joined their circle. Fred loved Lex more than anything or anyone, and Kate was always friends with everyone, though she was particularly close with Sammie, Jeff, and Chris. Daniel was much more cautious; he was surprised that Kate and Fred hadn’t ditched him when they’d found their new friends, but he never figured that all these new friends would be the same way. After all this time and all the bullshit, they weren’t going to ditch him either.

In fact, they always welcomed him to join everything they did. He would never admit it out loud, but it was nice to be invited places and be able to go out if he wanted to go. Especially with Anna. She always welcomed him along, she always stuck up for him to other people, and she was always reasonably understanding of him. She teased him and she smacked him from time to time, but Daniel also knew she loved him. She had only said it once when she thought he wasn’t listening, but she’d said it and he’d heard it. Anna was the only one he’d ever spent an entire night with; he’d had sex with plenty of girls but always left before morning. He’d woken up next to Anna on a countless number of mornings and afternoons. It was one of those really late nights she’d said it, at about four in the morning, after they’d spent the night drinking and dancing and having sex. She mumbled it to him, when she thought he was asleep.

It freaked him out at first. But she never mentioned it again and didn’t harass him to say it back. And it was nice that she loved him…even though he didn’t believe in love.

Kate had opened her eyes and joined the party on the dance floor. Her exuberant wiggling made everyone stop to watch her for a moment before Jeff grabbed her hand to join her. Once upon a time, Jeff would have hesitated, but he’d gotten over that…at least when it came to Kate. He adored Kate more than he’d ever admit, and she adored him right back. Kate had always liked Jeff a lot, maybe even more than the others; she followed him around and drove him crazy and they did things together on a pretty regular basis. They had something of an unspoken understanding. Jeff never took advantage of Kate, and Kate never took Jeff for granted. Their relationship was on and off over the years. They weren’t together right now, but it would only be a matter of time before they were together again.

Fred had also opened his eyes. This was because Lex had jumped into his lap and started poking him. He looked annoyed at first, but Lex grinned, gave him a big kiss and he followed her to dance with her, no doubt hoping that there were more kisses where that one came from. At Anthony’s suggestion, Chris had gone to get his saxophone and join him in providing the entertainment.

Anna, now without a dance partner, walked over to Daniel and sat down next to him. “You going to come ask me to dance or what?” she asked him.

“Wasn’t going to, no,” he said, “I’m reading this captivating magazine.”

“On the art of fly fishing?” Anna looked doubtful. “You fly fish now?”

“I could if I wanted, this is very helpful,” Daniel nodded. Anna rolled her eyes. She pulled the magazine out of his hands, walked over to the fireplace, and tossed it into the flames. “Hey! I was reading that!”

“You were not,” Anna said patiently. “And even if you were, you’re dull enough as it is without adding fly fishing to your list of favorite activities.”

“I am not dull!” Daniel protested. “I am funny and charming and girls find me attractive and people love me.”

Anna started to laugh. “People love you?”

“Well, people who don’t know me very well love me,” Daniel smirked a little bit. “But I am not dull!”

“Prove it,” she grinned, crossing her arms.

“Bite me,” he muttered, looking at the floor. “You really think I’m dull?”

Anna laughed a little bit and sank down next to him again, taking his hand. “You know I don’t think that,” she smiled. “Don’t mope. Come dance with me.”

“I don’t want to dance,” Daniel said defiantly, staring into the firelight.

“You’re good at dancing when you’re drunk,” Anna smiled. “Imagine how good you’d be sober.”

“You only think I’m a good dancer when I’m drunk because you’re usually drunk too and I’m holding you up,” Daniel grinned.

“Oh, shut up, you love it when I dance,” she said, wiggling against him a little bit.

“I like it when you striptease,” he smiled, referring to a particularly entertaining bet she’d lost to him. It was one of the most provocative things he’d ever seen, and he fully enjoyed her company for the rest of the evening.

“Don’t think I’m ever doing that again. Plus, even that time I needed two shots of vodka to get through it,” she grinned deviously.

“Not even for a special occasion?” Daniel asked her. “You loved it, you know you did.”

She smiled. “It was fun, if nothing else,” she admitted. “Okay, maybe for your birthday or something.” Then she whispered in his ear, “Maybe tonight if I get a little drunk and you dance with me right now.”

Daniel obediently stood up and followed her to dance.