if eight centurions have a meeting and they all sleep through it did it really happen

Sophia had arrived just seconds after Laurel had. Just because she wasn’t old enough to drink yet, didn’t mean getting up this morning had been easy. Sophia had never been a morning person, and having stayed up well past midnight to celebrate the New Year had left the young girl feeling extra tired.

She carried a large coffee in one hand, and a pile of files with a small bag that held her breakfast in it, in the other hand. Normally she would’ve had the files in a bag, but she couldn’t find the bag she usually used. Which was why she was late, and why she was currently miserable. Sophia dropped the files onto the table she shared with her co-Centurion, before picking up her breakfast.

The Centurion glared at Davis as he started to talk to her, daring him to say anything before she finished her blueberry muffin. Everyone knew not to talk to her until after she finished eating breakfast, least they want to continue living. The older boy would eventually learn this.

~~

Liam had set several alarms for this meeting, and yet he hadn’t woken up until he had snoozed the seventh alarm the 15th time. On any normal meeting day he was usually on time, sometimes even early. Today Liam was almost 20 minutes late, he figured he should’ve been more careful the night before. He may have taken one too many tequila shots, and he didn’t actually remember how he got back to barracks last night, or actually making it to midnight.

The point is, Liam felt horrible. His head hurt, the light hurt, his stomach felt like it was doing backflips. He had to squint his eyes, as he walked into the meeting room, “sorry, I’m late.” He mumbled, as he sat down. He fought the urge to lay his head on the table in front of him, he just wanted to go back to bed.

New Years had been an entirely different experience for Christian this year, and with a bed time of 2:00 in the morning, he'd say things were going pretty well so far for the new year. He'd technically missed the ball drop, but the night hadn't died young. Christian's stomach was full of water to stop the alcohol from taking his day from him, which was going to be one of the busiest he'd have this year. He'd woken, groomed, and arrived five minutes before the meeting, having dragged his partner Corinne with him. Despite her little amount of alcohol intake, she hadn't handled it well.

"When this is over, I gotcha." Christian had whispered to Corinne. "I'll cover your duties until noon and then Lennie will take over. Put on your game face for this, and I'll give you a bonus candy today." Christian couldn't help but grin at the tradition. He hadn't missed a day yet when it came to supplying Corinne with a candy she hadn't tried. "It's called pedialyte, and it'll lift you back up like you wouldn't believe." Christian promised, before returning back to his own personal space.

Christian was far too pleased with himself, and if you didn't look at the wildly tired eyes, you'd think he'd have gone to bed at a normal time. "Sophia. Liam." Christian had greeted with nods. While normally Christian wouldn't allow a single moment to pass without mocking the Davenports and Virgos, Christian was nearly beaming with happiness. It didn't even occur to make a joke towards Liam, which had a lot of subject matter based on his hangover. Then, there was Sophia, but Christian never could bring himself to even make a joke towards her or her family after Aspen had gone missing a year ago.

Corinne hadn't been feeling the best. She had gone into the bathhouse with Lennie, Lauren, and Christian and they may have had some drinks that night. The daughter of Chione had minimal to drink, but it had hit her like a train. It probably had something to do with the fact that she didn't drink very often and that the last time she had drank before this was last year, so her body was in no way used to the alcohol that she had consumed.

Usually the brunette would have gotten dressed up for these meetings in a nice blouse and jeans of some sort to keep a nice appearance, but today Corinne was wearing grey sweatpants and a light blue hoodie with her hair tied up. The night had been brutal, she had been stuck by the toilet for a good portion of the night, which Lennie had helped her with. When the ball dropped Corinne had been woken up on the bathroom floor by Lennie to tell her.

In her hand she held a water bottle and took a seat in her chair. She was thankful for Christian and everything he was doing. "That sounds weird, but I'll take it." She said referring to the bonus candy he was talking about. "What's the non bonus candy?"

Liam had managed to make himself semi decent looking this morning. Not as nice as he usually tried to look for meetings, but hey at least he tried. He was wearing a pair of jeans. He figured jeans looked just a bit better than sweatpants and a grey sweatshirt. He had pulled the hood up over his face though trying to block out the nice ray of morning sunshine that was coming through the window and hitting him in the face. He smirked, at his co-Centurion, “I have no idea.” Referring to the fact that he had blacked out well before midnight. Which was very unusual for him.

~~

Sophia yawned as she took the last bite of her blueberry muffin. “I think Cassia is in charge today,” she answered as she got up to throw out her trash. She sat down again, and played with the lid to her plastic mug, since she had already run out of coffee. She hoped it was Cassia, all Sophia knew was that it wasn’t herself. It was never her. She was in charge once, but apparently she’s too moody, and none of the others wanted to get yelled at this early so she wasn’t allowed to lead morning meetings anymore.

"Aaaaaand, I'm ignored." Christian continued his whisper-conversation with Corinne. "I wish I had that power, to tune anyone without a net-worth of seven-figures out." He told her. He wished Lauren was here; getting her fired up and yelling was easy, he'd seen it happen over things much more petty than being ignored. That was to say, impressions were important, and being to Cohort to yell like that might be proud, but wouldn't be seen as respected.

"We call them-" Christian whispered, playing with a theatrical tone, "sour patch kids." He slipped the little baggie out from his pocket and slipped them onto her lap. He was beginning to miss his own "candy." He'd forgotten to take any painkillers since the late afternoon before, which was an astronomically bigger gap than he was used to. Of course, he couldn't just whip them out and take them in front of everyone. It would just be something he had to wait for.

"The blue ones used to not be there." He told her. "That's sorta America's rule to candy. Blue, pink, and red are the best colors to go for, in that order." He said, giving her a makeshift and fake lesson on the ethics of candy.

"It's okay, all the important people don't ignore you." Corinne said as she unscrewed the lid to her water bottle and began to drink some of the contents. She tried to go slowly this time with it because last time she slammed back water it all came back up and it wasn't a good time, she was sure that no one wanted to see that now at the centurion meeting, especially since some of them looked like they needed to throw up still.

"You'd be tuning my father out then if he were around." Corinne said with a small laugh even though it didn't help with the small pounding headache that she had.

As he introduced the candy of the day she looked at the packaging. It was bright and colourful, she could see why kids would go after them to eat. She began to open the package with the little slit on the top and her fingers reached in to grab a blue one. "No blue ones before? That's upsetting, blue is my favourite colour." She said pouting a little for a joke before she popped the blue one in her mouth. Immediately her face scrunched together as she tasted the sourness to it, but after she got to a nice sugary taste. "They're pretty good." She commented.

---

Cassia had never been late for a Centurion meeting before. She had ended up staying up later than she would have liked to, but her family had company over and her mother always felt like it was rude to go to bed while people were still over, so she stayed up to help entertain guests and eventually they all when home at three in the morning and by the time the house got clean it was four. Cora Prescott was not a mother who liked to go to bed with a messy house and typically that meant Cass and her siblings would have to help out.

The daughter of Vulcan walked into the meeting room where the rest of the centurions sat. "I'm sorry I'm late." She said and then sat down in her usual spot. "I accidentally slept in a little, but we can start the meeting and hopefully be done in a good time. I'm sure you all have things you'd rather be doing today." Cassia said with a warm smile to the whole room and began to jot down who was in attendance this meeting.

"Luckily we don't have much on the agenda today. Just setting up the filing and paperwork schedules for the month of January, overseeing combat missions that can be handed out, and our goals for the year. Keeping it nice and breezy today."

“I don’t remember anything from after my first shot of the absinthe.” He mumbled back. Liam was pretty sure he was still drunk. His vision was still blurry, and everyone had two heads. He straightened himself up in his chair though, the moment Cassia walked in through the door. He wasn’t actually sure what was supposed to be discussed today, Liam figured he would just let Laurel take care of it today. She was less hung over than he was.

~~~

Sophia listened to the conversation as she searched the small pile of files in front of her for her notes, she had written down ideas and plans the other day, now they didn’t seem to be anywhere. Which was annoying cause she purposely put the notebook on top of the files so that she wouldn’t forget them in the morning.