#it’s almost like we’ve been together for twelve years
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Friends & Family
Friends + Masterpost
Pairing: Anthony Bridgerton x fem!reader, Modern AU
Summary: Anthony has a very important question to ask, but the universe appears to be conspiring against him. Threequel. Set a year after the first fic in this series
Warnings: 18+ smut, minors DNI. Public sexual acts, vaginal fingering, vaginal sex, woman on top, back-to-back orgasm. Also, on a non-sexual front, all sorts of emotions and thwarted proposals.
Word Count: 5.4k
Authors Note: This is VERY, VERY belated request fill for the divine @colettebronte. She has had the patience of a saint as I have grappled with this request for many months. I hope this is worth the wait, but to be honest, after this delay, I'm not sure anything could be. Thank you to @sorryallonsy for betaing. Please enjoy <3
I
“Viscount Anthony Bridgerton, what is this??”
There is an undignified yelp, and a spatula drops to the floor with a loud splat. Apparently, he didn't hear you come in.
“Bloody hell! You scared the shit out of me… And what is the full-name business all about?” he exclaims, spinning around, holding his hands aloft as if in a hostage situation. The sight is made even funnier by the fact he is wearing one of your novelty aprons, complete with floppy bunny ears.
You have walked in from afternoon coffee with old friends to find your kitchen in absolute disarray. Pots, pats on every surface, opened containers, the contents of your spice cupboard all pulled out and haphazardly dotted around. There is a large pile of reusable shopping bags with half-open veggies in and what looks like a sourdough loaf cut open and likely going stale next to the complete wrong knife for the job at hand. There is almost no worktop surface that is left unused or covered in some sticky-looking residue from god knows what.
“I said yes to you making dinner while I was out; I did not say you could conduct some kind of controlled explosion in my kitchen,” holding your hands up in exasperated resignation.
Frankly, it’s a mystery why he offered to make dinner in the first place; you have never seen the man so much as boil an egg in all the years you have known him. And certainly not in the twelve months you have loved him. His idea of cooking is usually stopping at Whole Foods to pick up a hot rotisserie chicken.
He walks towards you with that adorable puppy dog expression, his perennial get-out-of-jail-free card. You pick a fleck of what you think is broccoli from his hair as he reaches you.
“Points for effort?” he pouts, a tiny smile toying with the corners of his mouth, seeking forgiveness. You let him pull you into his arms and kiss your cheek. “Do you still love me?” he teases, pulling back to shoot you that perfect-toothed charming grin.
“I’ll love you even more if you tidy all this up,” you counter, raising an eyebrow as he chuckles. “Although I’m intrigued. You have never once made dinner since we’ve been dating; why now?”
“Well, I wanted to do something special…” he says pointedly, pulling away to switch off the hob when there is a slight burning smell in the air.
“What’s so special about today?” You frown.
“Really?” He spins around to look at you, a slight pout as you wrack your brains. “What happened on this date one year ago?”
Ohhh…
You feel bad you had completely not realised it. Exactly one year ago to this day, you got together after many years of combative flirting. Heart melting in your ribcage as you suddenly realise this is him attempting to cook an anniversary dinner for you.
“You secret romantic, you,” you murmur, contrition and affection burning inside as you can't help but seek his touch.
“Don’t let anyone know,” he jests as he pulls you into his arms again and kisses your temple. “I have a reputation to uphold….”
“Of course…” you giggle, resting your head on his shoulders as you sway together in the bombsite that was your kitchen. “And here was me thinking you would do something far more risqué…”
“Such as..?” he prompts, intrigued by where your thoughts have gone.
“Oh, I don't know….” you run your fingers into his lush hair, pressing into him. “Maybe take me back to that same penthouse your friend owns. Maybe make it to that overpriced sofa this time…” his eyes flash dark and dangerous, licking his lips, and you feel compelled to continue, “Maybe even that enormous bed. And the balcony….”
He groans gently as his mind no doubt fills with the same images as yours. “Fuckkkkkkk….” he rues, “I should have done that. I’m definitely no Gordon Ramsey….”
You laugh and run your hands up his biceps. “Maybe not. But I do have a suggestion…” you offer, dropping your voice a little smokier.
“Tell me…” Anthony rumbles, nudging your cheek until your lips brush, fingers digging into your flesh where he holds you.
“Let's work up an appetite and then order from our usual. Tidying up can wait…” you whisper, mouth ghosting over his, fingers opening the top button of his shirt and toying with the patch of chest hair.
“You’re fucking perfect.”
You squeal gently as he picks you up and strides towards your bedroom. The little navy velvet box burning a hole in his suit jacket pocket can wait for another day. Perhaps.
—
II
During a boring editorial meeting the following morning, your phone buzzes in your lap.
AB: Can you be at mine at 7pm tonight?
Y/N: Yes… but why?
AB: All will be revealed 😉
AB: Come hungry for delicious protein
Y/N: Filthy. I like it. 😉😛
AB: OMG NO! Not THAT. Bloody hell…
Y/N: Shame…
AB: Well, okay, maybe a bit of that. Afterwards. 😉
Y/N: *victory dance* 💃
AB: I love you, you filthy animal 😛😘
—
You walk into Anthony’s kitchen at precisely 7pm that evening to find some very posh-looking man in a bowtie pouring some wine into the good glasses. The ones you are too scared to use.
“What is all this?” Your curiosity piqued.
“Cooking was a disaster, so this is recompense,” Anthony greets you with a hug and a brief kiss on the lips.
He looks handsome in his usual crisp shirt, undone just enough at the chest to be distracting, and custom-tailored trousers that cling to him just right. It takes some effort to tear your eyes away from him, but when you do, you now see a smorgasbord of cheese on his expansive, pristine white marble kitchen island, with fruit, crackers and all manner of chutneys.
“Oooh, lovely. Fancy cheese and wine night?” you guess.
“Indeed,” he replies warmly. “Baxter here is a world-renowned expert on such things. He will be taking us on a cheese world tour paired with the very best wines.”
“Sounds lovely. Thank you,” you nod to the man, then crowd into Anthony again. “The anniversary of our first proper date?” you guess, kissing his jaw, enjoying the slight rasp of stubble there.
“The lady is learning…” he ribs genially, taking your hand and pulling you along to take a seat on one of the stools.
Baxter speaks engagingly and knowledgeable, and admittedly, every cheese and wine pairing is exquisite. Just a bite from each, but after 10 countries, you are a little tipsy, leaning into Anthony and shooting him goofy smiles, resting your chin on his shoulder, cheekily grabbing his thigh where the fabric pulls taut right over his quad muscle so temptingly. You want to climb into his lap and wrap around him.
After an hour, the man politely takes his leave, mentioning he has left some more “adventurous” choices in sealed boxes in the fridge.
“What does adventurous cheese mean?” you tipsily ponder after the man has left. “Do you think it's abseiled down a mountain?”
Anthony laughs accommodatingly at your goofiness, taking your hand and leading you outside onto the balcony. “I assume strong-flavoured maybe. But I’m quite sure it's all bravado,” he assures.
You lean on the railing, looking down upon the Thames below, all of London seeming reflected in its inky depths, a thousand lights twinkling in its choppy waves, like a sea of stars beneath you.
“I could never tire of this view,” you declare wistfully, a warmth behind your ribs as he crowds into your back, placing a light blanket around your shoulders.
“It is yours to enjoy for as long as it is mine,” he breathes into your hair, kissing your temple and wrapping his arms around your waist.
You sway together gently in the breeze, your hands over his, pushing back into his warm body.
“I love you,” you say quietly, turning to nuzzle his cheek.
“I love you too,” he responds immediately, “and I have for so long now; it feels wrong when you are not with me,” his tone ardent, gentle. “Wait here….” he whispers, a waver in his voice that makes you pause.
You wait patiently as he slips back inside, the breeze dancing through your hair as you inhale deeply and soak in the city. Although you are high above street level, the sounds are still there, like a background hum. It’s as energising as the country air at his rural ancestral home in Kent, just in a different way—so vibrant and teeming with life.
Anthony seems to be gone for a while, so out of intrigue, you wander inside to the fridge, grab one of the containers Baxter left and take it back onto the balcony before he reappears. When you peel it open, you are taken aback by the smell. It's very pungent, even out in the open air.
“There is an important question I wa…” Anthony freezes mid-sentence. “Dear god, what is that smell?” he exclaims, his face scrunching violently.
“Oh, I think it's the cheese Baxter left.”
You swing the container around so it's right under his nose and watch him go white as a sheet and then double over to one side, dry heaving.
“That's disgusting!” He gags, quickly putting something small from his hand into his trouser pocket as he coughs roughly, almost bent double.
“It’s not that bad, is it?” you frown, bringing the container back to your own nose, closer than you had it before.
Then, a wave of nausea hits you, too. It smells of decay and bad feet and turns your stomach so violently that you have to grab the balcony railing to stop yourself from stumbling.
“Fuck that's terrible,” you stutter, trying hard to keep down the rich wines and cheeses you have already consumed.
“Throw it!” Anthony blurts, somewhat frantic.
“Where?” you panic, holding it away at arm's length, desperate to stay upwind of it.
“Off the fucking balcony! Fling it in the Thames! I can't even have that shit in my bins….” he yelps before another wretch doubles him over again.
Gripping the container, you fling the contents as hard as you can, watching the blob of cheese sail downwards in an arc for twelve storeys, hitting the river below with a distant but satisfying plop. You both stand there wheezing and gasping as you reseal the container immediately, fearful of any residual scent.
“Dear god, am I going to inadvertently ruin every one of these special evenings?” he grumbles under his breath, sounding more like a rhetorical question than anything.
You have no idea what he could mean, but you don’t have the capacity to ask - you have to run to the cloakroom as the mere olfactory flashback makes you nauseated.
When you reemerge ten minutes later, full of regret and needing toothpaste, you find him in his en suite bathroom in a similar fragile state. You both crawl into his bed feeling delicate, curling up foetal and holding hands across the expanse of the bed, him muttering apologies.
—
III
The following week, Anthony takes you back to the same restaurant where you had your second date, one year to the day later. Seeing the pattern in advance, you wear the beautiful little black dress he bought you recently. And you are pleased to make him temporarily tongue-tied when you slip off your coat to reveal it, whispering coquettishly in his ear that you are happy to skip dinner and return to his.
“Oh, we will,” he rumbles, a promissory note that lights a fire low in your belly.
After perusing the menu, you decide to order the same dish you had last time. You are certain everything is terrific, but you remember it being so delicious it had you making noises only Anthony usually can. Also, you are hoping for a complete repeat of the same night from a year ago. Memorably, it was the first time he managed to give you three orgasms in one night—you are very keen to repeat that.
But rather strangely, Anthony’s energy seems slightly off, almost nervous. You can only assume it's apprehension that this night does not go as the previous two attempts at anniversary celebrations have.
While you are sharing a delicious starter, a familiar face over the room at the bar catches your eye.
“Is that Benedict?” you frown, causing Anthony to twist in your booth and look.
“Probably,” he sighs.
You are nonplussed by his reaction, so you take it upon yourself to wave to him, to Anthony’s seeming chagrin.
When Benedict wanders over, you notice his shoulders are hunched, a shuffled gait. Not the usual mister sunshine he is.
“Hey Ben, everything okay?” you check as he pulls up nearby, hovering a little.
“I got dumped,” he exhales. “So I’m drowning my sorrows,” he explains, holding his whiskey tumbler aloft in a rueful toast.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” you grimace, knowing he has been more unlucky in love than not, which seems a shame; he’s a sweet, good-looking man but often gets used, attracted to people who take advantage of his giving nature.
“Anyway, I don’t want to interrupt your dinner…” he placates modestly, glancing at his older brother, who seems to be brooding.
“Don't be silly, you can join us,” you beckon him into the booth.
“No, he can’t,” Anthony interjects.
You frown at him. “Why not? It’s just dinner,” you dispute.
“No, it’s not; it’s our anniversary,” Anthony argues before turning to Benedict. “Brother, I love you and all, but would you kindly fuck off?” Anthony grouses, gritting his teeth.
“Anthony!” You admonish. “Don’t be a dick!” You roll your eyes. “Ignore your grouchy brother, Ben; of course, you can join us,” you offer again, seeing the hesitancy but also the sadness tugging at the corner of his eyes that means you are worried about leaving him alone.
He acquiesces, and as he wanders across to the bar to grab his jacket and join you, you scowl at Anthony. “He’s just been dumped. You could be nicer,”
“I could… just not tonight,” he says, almost harangued.
You decide not to dwell on why he seems unduly hung up on this evening’s plans, being so particular, watching him seem to fiddle with an item in his jacket pocket, then look askance across the restaurant, defeated.
“Anthony, are you okay?” You check quietly as Benedict walks back over.
“Yeah, I just….” He sighs and finally meets your eye squarely with a tinge of sadness. “I had other plans for us tonight. Not babysitting…”
At one point during the main course, Benedict excuses himself to the bathroom. Anthony has been mostly monosyllabic, almost sulking, and you feel guilty; perhaps he did indeed have other ideas for the evening.
You shuffle around to lean into him and grab his hand, placing it high on your thigh under the table, the message unmistakable.
“We can still have our plans for later…” you whisper hotly into his ear.
He seems to perk up immediately, his hand grasping your flesh in a way that catches your breath. “You always know what to say to make me feel better…” he murmurs, at once playful and reverent.
“Touch me…” you whisper, the need for him an instant, tart taste in your mouth.
“Here, in the restaurant? With my brother coming back to join us any moment?” His tone is incredulous but unmistakably aroused.
“Yes…” you hiss, pushing his hand up higher to the junction of your thighs where you burn molten for him always.
He growls when he realises you have made another style choice, this one scandalous—no underwear.
“I’ll do more than that, you wonderful minx,” he huffs, pulling your thigh over his lap under the tablecloth. He plunges two fingers into your aching pussy and presses his thumb over your clit. You gasp and grip the table hard, just as Benedict reappears.
It certainly does wonders for Anthony’s disposition, like he is a different man now. Chatting amiably to his brother as you subtly try not to look flustered, dripping silently into his palm as he holds still.
“Whatever you did to put this one in a better mood, thank you,” Benedict jests at one point.
“I just had to give the old grouch a hug and his favourite toy to keep him entertained,” you joke back, him not realising exactly how true that is. Anthony’s fingers flex deep inside you at your cheeky riposte, and you can feel his smirk as you have to cough to hide your moan.
“Well, thank you,” Benedict smiles, “you bring things out in my brother I never thought I would see. So whatever magic trick you are pulling, keep doing it.”
Anthony’s fingers curl hard against your g spot, and you have to laugh loudly to not scream.
“She’s the very best brother,” Anthony replies, lips brushing your temple as he flicks his thumb teasingly over your clit. “I hope one day you find someone as special as she is,” he offers, his first sympathetic noise to his brother of the evening.
“I should be so lucky,” Benedict adds quietly, tone pensive, glancing at his phone as it lights up by his elbow.
Anthony withdraws from your pussy; you whimper mutely, feeling bereft but also relieved, not sure you can act any longer. You watch as he brings those fingers up to his mouth and sucks them decadently as Benedict is distracted by his phone.
“Thank you for dessert, my love,” he thrums into your ear, “and the show,” he adds cheekily, your clit and pussy clenching, denied, so very aroused.
“Take me home right now, Anthony!” Your order is through gritted teeth, quiet but brokering no argument.
And he does.
—
IV
A tide of relief hits you as the door to his sleek penthouse clicks softly open; tossing aside your umbrella and slipping off your shoes in the fancy hallway. It's been a taxing work day; all you can think about is climbing into the shower, then curling up and watching something mindless until Anthony gets home.
“Y/n…”
An enticing but distant call in that familiar voice.
“Anthony?” you respond, puzzled. “I thought you would be out late tonight?” you add, wandering forward, trying to find the source.
“Change of plan….”
You cross the open-plan lounge area with its floor-to-ceiling view across the rooftops of London. It's been more than a year of dating, and still, you aren't entirely used to the sheer scale of his place compared to yours. It feels like it takes ages to get across just his living room.
“Where are you?” you frown, hands on hips. It sounds like he's likely in the bedroom.
“Follow the sound of my voice,” he entices, and yep, it's definitely from that direction.
However, when you wander in, the room is empty, the early evening sun blazing onto the soft, luxurious white duvet on his vast bed.
“Getting warmer,” he offers, quieter now, and you recognise his voice has an echo. He can only be in his en-suite bathroom.
You round the corner into that tastefully masculine room - all slate and birch - to be greeted by a sight that makes your lungs feel too tight.
There, in his sizeable sunken whirlpool tub, is one Anthony Bridgerton. Very naked and very wet. Standing so that the bubbling waterline hugs his hips—acres of toned torso, water droplets meandering down the washboard of his stomach and glistening in the thatch of hair across his chest. You bite your lips without even realising it, shifting your stance as you feel a ripple of excitement over your skin.
“Hello, Ms y/l/n,” he preens, knowing exactly how much the sight before you makes you tongue-tied and aroused.
“Hello…” you stutter back, eyes still feasting. “What is the CEO of Bridgerton Enterprises doing taking a bath at….” you glance down to check your watch, “... 5:25 pm on a Thursday?”
“It's a special occasion…” he smirks, wading towards the edge of the tub closest to you. “I thought a bath would be nice.”
You can't seem to look away from the wake of waves cresting his Adonis belt as he does so. The sight of something delicious just below the surface is almost hypnotic.
“My eyes are up here, you know,” he mocks gently, tongue literally in cheek, as you cut your gaze to his triumphant face.
“Wh… what special occasion?” you manage to stumble out.
“Surely you recall what happened on this night exactly twelve months ago?”
When you look nonplussed - frankly, you can barely remember your own name right now - he mock sighs.
“I surprised you on my way back from the airport?” he prompts.
“Oh!” you suddenly cotton on, “it's been a year since we exchanged keys!”
He nods, and a fetching beam breaks out across his face. “Ahhh, the lady remembereth,” he winks.
“So this is how you’re celebrating?” your eyes again drag covetously down his body.
“No, this is how WE are celebrating…” he corrects and gestures towards a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket at one corner of the tub, along with two long-stemmed flutes.
You can't help but match his grin now. “Well, I can’t find fault with that idea,” you admit, taking a step closer until you are at the edge of the tub surround.
“Hmm, I thought not,” he says silkily, closing the gap between you.
Grabbing the back of your neck with a firm hand, he draws you down into a deep, sensual kiss. His mouth claims yours. You shiver as warm water trickles down inside your top from the hand in your hair. He crowds into you, soaking your clothing with the press of his body as you kneel on the sunken tub surround.
“Oh no, this is all wet,” he feigns, tugging lightly at your sleeve, “you will just have to take it off.”
“Hmmm. I rather think that is your doing. How about you take it off?” you challenge, the banter between you never seeming to get old.
“Maybe I’ll just pull you into the water fully clothed?” he posits, raising an eyebrow.
You laugh and take a step back, revelling in his undivided attention as you strip for him, his chest rising and falling rapidly, his expression hungry; the only sounds are his panted breath and the bubbles roiling in the tub. You are down to your underwear, a new matching lacy set, as if you knew, on some subconscious level, it was a special occasion, when he lunges forward and makes you squeal as he effortlessly picks you up and hauls you into the huge tub with him. The warm, effervescent water is a balm and tonic, making your skin tingle.
“What is the point of celebrating anything if it’s not an excuse to get naked?” he offers silkily, cupping your jaw with both palms, his wet thumbs rubbing over your cheekbones, then his lips are back, plundering, seeking, his tongue tangling with yours as his hands roam your skin, arranging so you are straddling his lap, his cock a solid press against your inner thigh.
This is indeed how you always want to celebrate every milestone of your relationship—with wonderful, sensual intimacy. Anthony pulls back from the kiss, and you stare into his rich eyes, blissfully tracing the lines of his face with fingertips as he easily unhooks your bra and pulls it gently over the rounds of your shoulders. This close-up and soaked, his face is all sharp contours and smooth, lightly tanned skin.
“You are too handsome,” your internal monologue spilling out with a light mewl as his thumbs brush your nipples.
“I love you too,” he chuckles drolly to make a point.
“Oh yes, that too,” you append with a playful pout. Then, a more sincere “I love you.”
“Wonderful to hear,” he rumbles into your ear as his hands slide underwater to tug down your underwear.
He pulls you deeper into his lap, your thighs pushed wide around his slender hips. His rigid cock nudges your slit promisingly, and you wait with bated breath for his much-wanted invasion. But he pauses, and you feel the curl of his smile against your cheekbone.
“Champagne?” he teases, holding still.
“Now?!” you splutter. “How about you get inside me first?”
“I thought you'd never ask,” he answers, wry and laconic.
Any witty riposte you may have dies on your lips as he surges into your body, knowing you need no warm-up, ready for him the minute you rounded the corner of the room.
“Happy key day,” he murmurs as your eyes flutter closed and you moan loudly, him nudging that spot that makes you so addicted to him.
“Happy key day,” your response is a ragged exhale as you adjust to his deep invasion.
Every time it still feels like the first, like it's just too good, and you just want to cling to him and be fucked into oblivion or fuck him into oblivion. A potent, heavy feeling inside that makes you crackle with energy and feel sated at the same time.
“Fuck me, Anthony,” you sigh into his wet hair, pushing closer into his embrace, voicing your exact desires.
“With pleasure.”
You squeak as his hands grasp tight around your waist and haul you up until just his tip is still inside you, then slams you back down, a curse falling from your lips as he does. His handling is slightly rough in a way that feels perfect, his teeth glancing your earlobe before he sucks it into his mouth and bites lightly.
Then it's a wondrous carnal dance, your joint noises echoing up the slate tiles as you fuck wantonly. Taking over at one point and gripping the edge of the oversized tub, you ride him for all your worth, chasing that feeling only he, his cock, has ever given you. So addictive ever since that very first night.
“I only ever want to fuck you, always…” the words tumbling from your lips unbidden, no filter between your thoughts and mouth as you spiral higher.
Even in the full throes of passion, his expression softens as you confess it.
“Forever?” something vulnerable in his panted tone as you rise and fall upon him.
“Forever, Anthony Bridgerton,” you vow, sensing his need to hear it, wrapping your arms tightly around his shoulders, pressing all of your being into him, wanting your bodies to be forged together somehow.
His thumb slips between your legs, and you cry out as he snags your clit perfectly, eyes rolling, feeling like a live wire.
“I need to feel it; please give it to me,” he implores desperately, thumb flicking almost violently over your engorged pearl.
It doesn't take much more, and you are fracturing around him. Crying his name, fingernails leaving crescent shapes on his shoulders as you reach that high, unable to stop slamming upon him as you flutter, your whole body spasming in pleasure but unwilling to stop. Him roaring his approval as you squeeze his cock tight, rippling around him.
“Please don't come,” you plead to him, “I need more, Anthony, more,” a wrecked sob, wanting to orgasm again. He snarls, his teeth on your cheekbone, his grip tightening around your hips, staving off his orgasm as best he can.
You grab his face and babble nonsense, saying you need his cock forever, strung out on the edge, almost a mania in your being, needing everything he can give. He pants harshly into your open-mouthed, sloppy kisses as you keep riding wound so tight like a coiled spring, wanting to be speared open by him always.
“Marry me!” he cries as you both reach that peak together, an explosion in both of your beings, feeling him come inside you harsh and deep, moaning your name like a prayer.
You collapse upon him, the bubbles of the jetted tub tickle your skin as you heave breaths, wracked and sated to your very core. A high like you have never known.
“Did you just…. propose?” you stutter as your brain comes back online, his cock still buried inside you.
“Shit…” he laments. “That was NOT how it was supposed to go! I had it all planned out!” he decries, burying his face into your shoulder where you still sit upon him.
“Anthony….” there are no other words, shock tying your tongue.
He pulls back and looks contrite. “Please allow me a do-over?” his face so beseeching.
Raw emotion and victory crest hard in your veins, and you can't help but banter with him - as you always have, as you always will, until death do you part now.
“No, Viscount Bridgerton,” you rag, holding his face, “No do-overs. You will just have to live with the fact you proposed to me as we came together….”
His face is a jumble of warring emotions as you realise you have kept him on tenterhooks about your answer.
“…And you will just have to accept that I said yes with you still inside me,” you add silkily.
A handsome grin claims his whole face, relief and devotion coursing through him. “We can’t tell anyone,” he whispers as you resurface from another kiss.
“Our little secret,” you smile back as he finally slips from your body.
—
“You know I might be the first-ever Viscountess with a garden flat in Zone 3,” you chuckle, sitting in matching fluffy robes on his balcony, the sky a riot of colour as the sun sets.
A few minutes before, he had gotten down on one knee and produced a little velvet box. You squealed and said yes again, watching transfixed as he pushed a flawless, elegant three-carat diamond onto your finger.
Anthony frowns deeply. “Err, no. You are moving in here with me,” he asserts loftily.
“I’m not selling my place!”
“You can rent it out!” he waves dismissively.
“Urgh, tenants. Hassle.” You roll your eyes.
“Okay, fine, then we can just use it to store all of my stuff you hate, alright?” he counters, catching your gaze with a fiery challenge. Your insides ablaze that your trademark flirtatious antagonism will always be there, even once you are married.
“Oh, Viscount Bridgerton, you have a deal…” you whisper coquettish and swing off of your lounger onto his, straddling him and sealing the pact with a kiss.
“I’m just so glad I could finally make it happen.”
You flip around and settle between his legs, your spine on his chest, lacing your hands together over your robe. “What do you mean?”
He barks a laugh you feel echo into your back. “So this is not the first time I have tried to propose to you. Remember that disastrous cooking? Attempt 1. Cheese night when we almost died? Attempt 2. Benedict interruptus? Attempt 3.” He holds up a hand before you, counting each on his fingers. “I almost gave up.”
You laugh and realise with hindsight how he seemed off kilter on those occasions, a soft ache behind your ribs in empathy. “I’m so glad you didn’t. Give up, that is,” you murmur, running your fingers over his lovingly once he lowers his hand back to your belly.
“I jest; I would never give up trying to make you my wife,” he pledges solemnly into your hair, kissing the shell of your ear. “And I hope you will never give up on me, as terrible of a husband as I will likely be….” he demures.
“I can do that, old friend…” you tease, a callback to that first night you got together.
“Less of the old,” he chides, immediately picking up your invitation, an exact repeat of your words to each other that first night you got together, heart melting as you realise he remembers the conversation word for word, too.
“I've known you my whole life, Anthony,” you continue, that conversation etched into your brain, turning back over in his arms. “You can't lie to me…”
“I never will,” he goes offscript, and you exchange laden looks. Then, a dangerous smirk takes over his face as he leans closer. “But you can handcuff me to our bed anytime,” he adds, a nod to the joke you made that night.
“You wish, you lucky fuck,” you respond, aping his line.
He grins widely and pulls back, handing you a champagne flute from the nearby lounger table.
“From old friends to new family…” he toasts, sincere and ardent, clinking his glass softly against yours.
“Friends and family…” you smile, your diamond ring afire in the setting sun, as you take a sip and pull him in for a blistering kiss.
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Ask for help
Evan Buckley x Sister reader
A request by: @shauna-carsley - the request
Summary: As (y/n) and her fiancé get hit by a drunk driver, she loses the love of her life. Her family and best friend are trying to help her whenever and where they possibly can. Until she shuts them out.
9-1-1 masterlist
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“I’m so glad we get to do this again. I’ve missed you.” (Y/n) spoke as she braked for the light that jumped on red. She looked at her fiancé, who was sitting in the passenger seat and was smiling at her words.
“I’ve missed you too babe. It’s been a while since we’ve had a date night.” Jay said as he put down his hand onto her upper thigh.
Jay and (y/n) have been together since high school, junior year to be exact. They’ve reached their seventh year of being together. And in these seven years, a lot has happened. From Jay deciding to join the Navy seals, to a proposal from Jay before he went on his latest mission.
Meanwhile (y/n) chose to join the fire department and become a paramedic. He serves the country, while (y/n) serves the city.
Jay had just returned from his latest mission. And since their irregular schedules, they made an arrangement to have a date night every two weeks, well.. if Jay was not on a mission.
(Y/n) was driving through the LA streets, on their way to the restaurant they had chosen. She was so excited to be with her fiancé again. It has been six months since Jay went on his mission, he was lucky that it was only for six months. Worst case scenario, he would’ve been gone for twelve months. Which actually has happened once or twice, so (Y/n) was used to being without him now and then. Of course they texted, every single day. And when he had time, they would Facetime. There were so many stories to tell..
Laughs and smiles were sounding through the car, it felt good to have him back beside her.. It felt like he had never left.
“What the fuck..” (Y/n) mumbled under her breath as she was driving, and saw a car which was driving in the opposite direction, violently swerving to the left and making a sharp turn to the right on the other lane. This guy was driving like an imbecile. As if he had gotten his driver's license free with a box of cereal.
When suddenly the car on the lane next to her bumps into the side of her car. (Y/n) tries to keep her car under control as she starts steering the wheel like a mad person. But she couldn’t keep the car steady enough.
And the car sends them crashing into a tree. Her ears were ringing, and her vision was blurry. Her head was pounding, it felt like it was about to pop off of her head. “Fuck” she mumbled as she squeezed her eyes closed, trying to get rid of the headache and the blurry vision in her eyes. She let her right hand tighten on her left shoulder, which was hurting like a bitch. That was definitely a dislocated shoulder.
“Jay?” she says as she shook his shoulder, to try and get any reaction out of him.
“Jay! Baby please wake up!” she cries, as she gives him a push, but Jay’s unconscious body doesn't seem to move. Only the push she gave him got his head flopping down to his chest.
With a trembling hand, she reached out to her phone which was on the phone holder. Her hands were shaking so much, she almost wasn’t able to unlock her phone and press the numbers to call 9-1-1.
“T-..this is firefighter (Y/n) B-..buckley, station 118.. I..- I.. c- crashed my c-..car” she stumbled through the phone. “Can you see where you are ma’am?” The woman on the phone asks. “R-..rose.. Avenue”
“Hey.. have you heard anything from (Y/n) about Jay?” Evan asks Eddie as he puts on his turnout coat and steps into his turnout pants.
Eddie was (Y/n)’s best friend and they shared everything with each other. If Eddie and (Y/n) weren’t together, they would be texting each other. It was like they were glued to one another.
“Nope, haven’t heard from her. The only thing I know is that she went picking him up at the airport this morning.” Eddie answered as he stepped into the truck and put on his headphones with Buck following close behind him.
When the truck came to a stop on scene, adrenaline was streaming through Evan’s veins. He could see the windshield was broken into a thousand, maybe a million small pieces. And the front was sandwiched for a small part, with smoke coming from the engine.
But when Evan came closer to the car, his stomach turned and filled itself with anxiety when he realised the car which crashed into the tree looked suspiciously much like his little sister's car. He bit his lower lip as he approached the car with Eddie walking next to him.
Please don’t let it be (Y/n).
Don’t let it be his baby sister, and Eddie’s best friend.
But when his eyes fell onto the license plate, Evan knew enough and stopped Eddie in his tracks. “(y/n)” Evan spoke, as he pointed at the car. Eddie frowned at the random name drop of his best friend. “What?” Eddie asks, confused as he feels Evan’s hand still pressing on his chest. “The license plate... It’s (Y/n)’s car Eddie!” Evan said as he was still trying to process what was happening right in front of his eyes.
Eddie’s eyes shot towards the license plate. But as soon as he realised Buck was right they both started sprinting towards the car. “Fuck! (Y/n)!” Eddie’s voice screamed.
Sobs came out of (y/n)’s mouth as she grabbed at her left shoulder. “Hey, hey, hey! Oh my god, (y/n)..” Evan panted as he opened the driver's door and his eyes fell on his little sister. Her body was fully covered in bruises and cuts.
Meanwhile Hen and Chimney were working on Jay, trying to get his vitals and started to get him out of the car.
“Buck” she cries out as she hears his voice talking. “Yeah I’m here sis.. Let’s get you prepared to get out of this car, okay?” He tried to remain calm. Nothing hurts more than seeing your own sibling in distress.
Eddie gets in the back of the car, he puts the neck collar around her neck and secures it. “Jay..” she cried as she could see her boyfriend carefully getting lifted out of the car on a backboard. ”Is he okay?” she asked while a colleague handed her brother a backboard. Evan looked at Eddie with a concerned look in his eyes. “Buck?” she tried to get his attention. Evan didn’t know what to say. Eddie put a hand on (y/n)’s shoulder, “Let's just focus on you right now.” and he stepped out of the backseat from the car.
When put down the backboard they were lifting onto the gurney. (y/n) pulled at Eddie’s jacket. She felt like she was a kid wanting to ask her dad something. Eddie turned around looking at his best friend lying down on the gurney. He’d rather see her standing next to the gurney, helping people.
“Put my shoulder back in.” she demanded.
“(y/n)...” Eddie sighed. She tightened her grip on his jacket, and pulled him closer to her with all of her strength she had in her right arm. A dark look washed over her face, and her lips went into a thin line. “Put it back in damn’ it!” she spoke.
Eddie looked over at Evan, who was shaking his head lightly.
He sighed once more. He wanted to tell her to wait until she was in the hospital, that doctors would pop it back in its place. But he knew trying to go against it wouldn’t help. She would have that shoulder popped back in right now, one way or another. She didn’t care how much pain she would receive.
Her breathing starts to fasten as Eddie grabs her arm with both of his hands. He slowly extended the injured arm out to the side, raising the arm gently and bending the elbow so that the palm of her hands touched the top of her head.
She squeezed her eyes at the radiating pain that shot from her shoulder through her arm. (Y/n) took a deep breath as Eddie slowly moved her hand down towards the nape of her neck.
When he moved her hand to the opposite shoulder, (y/n) could feel the shoulder pop back in its place together with a flood of pain. She screamed all of the air out of her lungs as she felt the sharp pain leading from her shoulder all the way down to her hand.
Evan closed his eyes as he heard the scream of his little sister. He could feel it entering and leaving his body. Her scream went through marrow and bone. It sounded like she was being tortured.
Eddie carefully folded her arm back down over her abdomen in a ninety degree position. He couldn’t give her a sling, not when she was lying down on the stretcher with a collar around her neck.
“Is he okay?” (y/n) asked her brother when they wheeled her into the ambulance. Evan was so focussed on his sister, that he actually forgot about him. He didn’t know the status of her boyfriend. The ambulance with Jay in it had already left while they tried to pop (y/n)’s shoulder back in. “I am sure he is fine sis..” and gave her a slight smile.
________
“Thank god” Maddie’s voice sounded through her eardrums as (y/n) opened her eyes. She rolled her head to her left, and her eyes connected with her sister standing up from a chair which was next to her bed. Maddie gave her sister's hand a soft squeeze when a tear left the corner of her eye. “Welcome back” Evan said while he laid a hand on the shoulder of his older sister, trying to give her some comfort.
“Where’s Jay?” is the first thing (Y/n) asks as she looks over at her brother and sister who are now both standing at the side of her bed.
Evan looks at Maddie, as if they could communicate by only looking at each other. A sigh left Evan’s mouth and scratched the back of his neck, which was a habit of him when he was nervous.
He couldn’t tell her. It broke his heart into a million tiny pieces only to see her like this. What would happen to her, or to himself when he would tell her the truth?
“Jay.. uhm..” he started, as he sat down on the edge of the hospital bed (y/n) was lying in. He placed his hand on her lower leg, which was covered by the blanket. “He didn’t make it.” he continued, with a trembling voice. He knew how much his sister loved her boyfriend, they were soulmates.
“W-what?” she stumbled as her eyebrows narrowed. “He died on scene (y/n).. I swear, we tried everything we could to get him back. But it was too late.” Evan tried to explain.
Her heart started pounding in her chest and the voice of her brother seemed to fade as she heard those four words. She shakes her head. “No.”
(y/n)’s breathing became more rapid by the second, it feels like she can’t take a proper breath. Tears start streaming down her cheeks. “Is this some kind of sick joke? Please.. tell me this is one of your sick jokes.” she cries as her eyes shoot at Maddie and back to Evan.
Maddie shook her head and bit her lower lip, trying to stay strong for her little sister. While Evan bit on the inside of his cheek.
(y/n) squeezed her eyes closed to try and collect herself. “It’s all my fault..”
Maddie’s free hand went up to (y/n)’s upper arm and she let it rub up and down over her arm. “No. Don’t say that.” Maddie spoke up. “I was the one driving. Of course I am the cause! I was the one who drove us into a fucking tree!” (y/n) spoke through her tears.
“No. Some drunk ass driver bumped into the side of your car and didn’t give you a choice.” Evan said as he stood up from the end of the bed.
(y/n) turned her head towards the side of the room, and just stared at it for a minute. “How did he die?” she asked softly.
When she didn’t receive an answer after a few counts, she looked at her brother. “Tell me the truth.. How did he die?” she asks again. Evan took a deep breath, there was nowhere to hide, and his little sister wanted answers. And she knew Evan had the answers to her questions.
“Internal bleedings” he answered eventually.
She didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure if she had to. (y/n) sighed, wiped the tears from underneath her eyes and put the palm of her hand against her temple. “I wish we never got in that car.” she mumbled at herself.
“(Y/n)..” her brother’s voice sounded through the room. “Don't try and talk this right Evan.” She said quietly. “You-“ Evan’s wanted to comfort her, but he gets cut off by his sister’s voice.
“Get out.” She hissed.
Evan’s eyes wandered from (y/n) to Maddie who was on his right. He knows his sister was high in her emotions at the moment. She had just lost the most important person in her life. Evan and Maddie were quiet, silently communicating with each other, not knowing whether they needed to give her space, or to stay.
“Didn’t you hear me?! Get the fuck out!” She yelled at her brother and sister, who flinched at her reaction. They didn’t say anything and left the room. As soon as (y/n) heard the door close, tears fell down. She wanted to tear down the room with her bare hands, the only problem was: her leg was in a cast. So the only thing within hand reach was the table on wheels next to the bed.
She grabbed the top of the table, and gave it a hard push. The table hit the wall as a scream sounded through the room. He was really gone. Her finance. The man she wanted to spend her life with. The love of her life, ripped out of her life just with a snap of a finger..
After one week, she got released from the hospital. Evan picked her up and drove her home, even though she screamed at him to get out, he still showed up every single day during visitor hour or when they had to bring a patient in. He understood. She was mourning. And he would let her, even if she would scream at him or fight him. He would be there for his little sister.
When (y/n) got home, every single thing was just another reminder of Jay. A reminder of the accident, of what she lost. (y/n) couldn’t even attend his funeral because she was in the hospital, another thing they took from her. She couldn’t even say goodbye.
After a few weeks, she chose to move out to another apartment, she couldn’t live in her own home. Not when everything reminded her of him. So she went apartment hunting, even while she was walking on crutches.
A moving company helped her with moving into this new apartment, they also packed for her. But in the contract it was noticed they wouldn’t unpack. By the time she moved, she didn’t have a cast anymore, and didn’t have to walk around on crutches. So (y/n) tried to unpack what she could. It was such a mess inside of her head, that she had to call reinforcements.
Evan was in the bedroom, trying to rebuild (y/n)’s bed, which the movers took apart. Meanwhile Maddie and (y/n) were in the living room, going through box after box. “This box doesn’t have a label” Maddie opens the box, a confused look spread all over (y/n)’s face. Maddie takes out a necklace which was right at the top of the box.
This was one of the boxes she didn’t want to open or see, ever again.
As soon as (y/n) realises which box Maddie was going through, she stopped and stared at the spare dog tag which was dangling through her sister's hands. She bit her lower lip and she simply continued taking out the plates out of the box. When she takes a plate out of the box, wanting to stack them on the other ones next to her on the table, the plate slips out of her hand falling to the ground into a hundred pieces.
“Fuck!” (y/n) yelled as soon as she realised what she had done. Her elbows were leaning on her thighs, as she let her face fall into her palms. She tried to remain calm as tears streamed over her cheeks, and soft sobs came out of her mouth. “Hey, it’s okay.. We can clean this up.” Maddie says as she kneeled next to her little sister, trying to comfort her by rubbing her upper arm.
“No..” she whispers, “None of this is okay!” she raised her voice. “Calm down, it was just a plate. We can replace that.” Maddie tries to calm her down. “While you’re at it, can you also replace my fiance with it?” she shot back at her sister.
“Wow, what’s going on?” Evan’s voice sounded as he walked into the room.
“And you... “ (Y/n) stood up from her chair and started walking towards him and pointing at Evan. “You told me he was fine. When you rolled me into that ambulance.” she cries, while a waterfall of tears fell over her cheeks.
“(y/n)..” Evan saw a fire in his sister's eyes which he had never seen before. “You knew he didn’t make it. And you lied to me about it.” She continued as she pushed both of her hands into his chest. Evan was confused, one second he was just putting her bed frame together and now his sister was screaming, crying and fighting him.
“That was for your own good.” Evan shot back at (y/n). “You. Should’ve told me.” She wanted to shove Evan one more time, but before she could do that Evan grabbed her wrists. “No. You know why I didn't tell you?” Evan started. “Because I can’t stand seeing you like this! Look at you. You’re a mess!” He said as he looked her over. She wriggled herself loose from his touch. He was still holding her wrists.
“How could I not be a mess?! I'm the one who killed him, Evan!” she turned her back towards him, and dragged her fingers through her hair as more tears started to roll down her face.
Evan went silent, he knew she was still mourning. It seemed like she completely forgot that the car crash was caused because of some drunk moron, and started to blame herself for trying to keep them safe. Maddie wanted to pitch in, try and calm down the conversation. But before she could say something. (Y/n) spoke up, “Get out.”
She was kicking them out again. Just like she did in the hospital room. She wasn’t facing him or Maddie. She was just looking outside of her window. “Please. Get out.”
_____
“Hey this is (y/n)…say somethi-“ Eddie groans at the voicemail which is ringing through his right eardrum. He clicks on the red button to end the conversation and tosses his phone into his duffle bag.
Why was his best friend ignoring him? He didn’t do anything wrong, did he? Every single day he checked in on (y/n), just to ask how she was doing, if he could do anything for her or maybe just listen to her ranting about how life’s unfair.
But she hasn’t replied to any of his texts for days, and she wasn’t picking up her phone either.
“Someone seems frustrated..” Evan spoke as he entered the locker room in his uniform, unbuttoning his shirt while he walked to his locker.
They were getting ready to leave. Their shift was over, Eddie could’ve been home already but instead, he’s in the locker room being concerned about his best friend.
“Your sister isn’t picking up her phone. I’ve tried calling her at least ten times today, but it goes straight to voicemail.” Eddie said, concerned while he put on his jacket. “Have you spoken to her?” Eddie asks Evan.
Evan shook his head, “I haven’t, I already asked around, no one has heard from her.” He grabs his duffle bag out of his locker and places it on the bench behind him.
When the 118 was in the neighbourhood, they went and tried to see how she was doing. But when they rang the doorbell multiple times, she didn’t answer.
“It seems like every conversation I’ve had with my sister turns into a fight. At this moment, I’m not sure if she’s really mad at me, the team or herself.” Evan shrugged off his shirt and threw it in his bag.
“I know she’s still mourning, processing her loss.. but it’s like I’m not talking to the same (y/n) anymore, you know? She needs help, but I don’t know what to do.. not when she won’t talk to me.”
Eddie nodded, it wasn’t like (y/n) to ignore her brother, or her best friend. She was always the one who couldn’t leave people on read on texts, because she would feel guilty. Eddie closes his locker “Hey, you got a spare key to her new home?”
“Yeah, why?” Evan’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Eddie. “Well.. if she won’t open the door, I don’t have to kick it in.” Eddie pressed his lips into a thin line.
(Y/n) is lying in her bed, with a hoodie on and the hood resting on her head. Her covers were over her body. She was staring into the depth of her bedroom.
With every breath she took, she could hear his voice playing in the back of her mind. The car crash scene keeps playing on loop and she doesn’t know how to turn it off.
It was like she was stuck in her own mind. As if she wasn’t alive.
“Time to get up!” Eddie says as he grabs a handful of her covers.
A groan tumbled past (y/n)’s lips, but she didn’t bother to put the covers back over her body again. She continued staring into the depth of the room.
She was wearing an oversized hoodie, and her kitchen counter was fully overloaded with empty take out boxes and dirty dishes.
Since the fight (y/n) had with Evan and Maddie, but mostly Evan. She hasn’t spoken to them in days. She didn’t continue unpacking after that, everything was just precisely as they had left. She tried to avoid the living room at all costs, if she would even make it past the bedroom door. Jay’s stuff was still in there, the box was open, just how Maddie had left it.
Eddie took place on her bed, sitting on the side. “(Y/n).. Are you okay?”
He knew it was a stupid question to ask. Of course she wasn’t okay, but he wanted to hear her voice. He wanted her to tell him, she wasn’t okay.
“We didn’t have enough time.” she said barely above a whisper.
Eddie sighed as he heard her stumble those exact words. He placed his hand on her ankle, and rubbed his thumb on her ankle. “Come on, let’s get you up.”
He stood up, grabbed both her hands and pulled her towards him. “Why are you here Eds?” she asked him.
“Well, since you decided to ignore everyone who has been messaging and calling you, I decided to take matters into my own hands.” He explained.
(Y/n) let out a cry and let herself drop into the mattress and pillow again. But Eddie pulls her up again.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” She raises her voice as she pushes Eddie's hands away from her.
“Okay fine.” Eddie starts, putting both of his hands in the air as a sign that he didn’t do anything wrong. “Push me away, like you did with the team, with your own siblings. Punch me, I don’t care. You can tell me to fuck off. But I’m staying right here, whether you want it or not.”
(Y/n) just sighs, completely annoyed with Eddie’s words. She knew he wouldn’t leave. He would stay there until he knew what was up.
“Really. Who’s it that you’re mad at right now? Are you mad at Jay for dying? Are you mad at the team because we couldn’t save him? Are you mad at Buck and Maddie because they tried to help you? Talk to me.”
Her hands were in her hair now, grabbing large pieces. It was one of her nervous habits, playing with her hair, or this.
“No it's not you that I’m mad at!” she snapped, as her hands left her scalp, she probably pulled some hair strands out.
“It’s me! Okay! It’s me who I am really mad about! I could’ve prevented all of this!” She yelled as her voice turned heavy and tears started rolling down her face against
She always cries when she’s mad, it was something she couldn’t stop.
“It was an awful, unlucky accident. Some drunk guy drove into the side of your car and you lost control over the wheel. You really think that if you steered another inch to the other side it would’ve made a difference? No. If you did that, it would’ve probably been worse.” Eddie spoke up.
(Y/n) went silent. She had nothing to say. Just for a few moments, the room which was just filled with loud voices, was now completely quiet. Eddie sat back down on the bed, while (y/n) crossed her legs.
“When you pushed us away, we let you. But we’ve given you days, weeks, even months to process this. But this is where I draw the line. I can’t handle seeing you falling into a deeper hole than you already are.” Eddie let his elbows rest on his knees.
“And don’t tell me that I don’t know how you feel. Because I do. I also lost someone I loved, and I don’t want to lose you too.” (Y/n) could tell Eddie was trying to keep himself together.
“How am I supposed to go on with my life, while a part of me died on scene with Jay?” She cries as she wipes the tears off her cheek with the sleeve of her hoodie.
Eddie pushed himself closer towards her, as he could hear her breathing starting to fasten. It almost looked like she was having a panic attack.
“Hey! Hey! I’m right here. Okay?” Eddie gently took her hand and placed it on his chest so she could feel his heartbeat.
“Breathe with me now, okay? Slow, deep breaths” (y/n) tries to copy him through her sobs.
“Good, good, you’re okay.”
“Help.. I need help Eddie.” She cries and pushes herself against Eddie, burying her face into the crook of his neck. As a wet spot was being created on his shoulder.
That was his advice. Ask for help.
#911#911 fox#911 imagine#buck imagine#buck x reader#evan buckley imagine#evan buckley x reader#evanbuckley#imagine#911 abc#eddiediaz#eddie diaz
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All Too Well - DR3 x Fem!OC
Summary: Saying goodbye is hard. Saying goodbye to your family without telling them it’s a final goodbye is even harder. But Em has come to terms that Dan doesn’t love her the same way she loves him, and leaving on her own terms will hurt less than being told he’s ending things. March 2022.
Word Count: 12.3k
Warnings: fighting, all the angst this bad boy can carry, lil bit of a dickhead!Dan, running away from your friends, mentions of death, mentions of motorsport crashes and deaths, moving without telling anyone, lying to family, talk of medical procedures, frank talks about what people want to happen if they can’t decide.
A/N: We’ve kept you waiting, but we hope this was worth the wait! This part of our story is what started us on this madcap adventure together, and it’s a lot of what makes our beloved Em Em. Thank you in advance!
Em stared at the two boarding passes in front of her as she sat in the fancy Heathrow lounge, a caramel latte beside them. Heathrow to Dubai, Dubai to Melbourne. More than twenty hours spent on planes to get to Melbourne, to jump into work and get stuck in at the Australian Grand Prix. And it was the last thing she wanted to do.
She should be excited. She should be so happy because she was about to see the boys after over a week apart, she was about to see Dan. She was finally going to get to see the Ricciardos after almost two years apart. But she was dreading it, the memories from Saudi filling her head as she thought. Em forced her attention to the laptop sitting on her knees, emails up and the one she never thought she’d write sitting in the middle of the screen.
SUB: Resignation Letter
From: [email protected]
Dear Blake,
Please use this email as my official resignation, effective immediately. I’m sorry that I can’t offer any more notice.
Working with you has been fantastic, and I appreciate everything we’ve gotten to do over the past three years.
Kind regards,
Emma.
Signing it Emma felt wrong. Emma was for Zak Brown and Andreas Sidle. Christian Horner had used it the one time she was introduced to him at Red Bull. She was always Em or Ems now. Except for Dan, she was his Emmy. But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. Or ever again. If he called her that she thought she might lose the last grip she had on her composure and break.
The email was scheduled and sitting in her outbox to send after the race, and the last thing she did before boarding was reschedule her flight home. Instead of leaving Monday morning with the boys, she was going on Sunday evening. She’d be somewhere over Queensland by the time Blake received the email and the boys would be at least twelve hours behind her. It was enough time to make sure she could be well ahead of them and get away.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be smiling and laughing, and she was supposed to be in Perth right now cuddling her niblings and laughing with Grace and Joe. Learning to cook yet another family recipe and insisting that she and Dan were just friends. She couldn’t even answer the question honestly if they were friends now.
He’d sent her away. The one thing she begged him not to do, the pinkie promise she’d made him give. The only promise she had ever asked him to keep. Not to stay safe while driving, not to do anything else. Not to leave her alone. The near screaming match they’d had in his drivers room that Blake and Michael had to break up. The way he didn’t even look at her but told Blake to “take Ems to the hotel”. How she had tears streaming down her face as she was escorted through the paddock like she wasn’t supposed to be there.
She still didn’t fully believe that she’d dropped her phone in the car. Em shouldn’t even have been in the car alone with Blake, but Dan insisted she went to the hotel room so she went. She was left there alone in Saudi Arabia, where Dan knew she couldn’t leave the hotel. She stared out the window at the smoke from the rockets, completely alone all night until Michael knocked on her door the following morning and she had to pretend everything was fine.
She’d worked from hospitality and as soon as the race finished she changed her flights to go back to London instead of Perth, making up an excuse. And Dan bought that she was going back for her parents.
“Family stuff.” She’d said when he asked.
“Em, you don’t talk to your family much.” She was folding clothes into her case, the one she’d brought that had her Australia clothes already standing fully packed.
“Yeah, but it’s family. My parents have their thirty fifth wedding anniversary in a few weeks, I’m helping plan it.” Only the last part of her words were a lie and she bit her tongue.
“Everyone wants to see you, they all miss you and they keep asking when you’ll be over. The kids miss you.”
“I’ll see them in Melbourne, Dan. You go, enjoy your time at home with them.”
She’d gotten a car to bring her to the airport and Dan hadn’t even asked a question, just a “text me when you land”. There was no hug, no even quick hand squeeze like they usually did in the Middle East. That’s when she knew whatever they were doing. The nearly four years of sleeping together and pretending they weren’t, of the media wondering who she was and why she was always there, was over.
She’d promised herself that she wasn’t going to catch feelings, that it was just sex. That she could do it. That every time she told Dan “y’know, right?” it was purely platonic. That the slow sex was just them wanting to take their time, nothing else. That she hadn’t murmured to Dan to make love to her in Bahrain when they shouldn’t have even been sharing a room after Grosjean’s crash, when he kissed her and held onto her and whispered that he loved her as he entered her.
Because that was sixteen months ago and nothing had changed. It was never going to change between them. Their fight in Saudi had proven it, and now she had to pretend that everything was fine before she said goodbye to the people she loved for the last time.
She couldn’t keep working with Dan when not sleeping with him. She couldn’t watch him fall for another woman, couldn’t get introduced to more people as “Em, my best friend” anymore. She was his Emmy. He was her Danny. And not getting to love him and be loved by him how she wanted to was going to kill her.
The flights were what she expected, Dan had upgraded her tickets to first class like he always did and she wanted to kill him like she always did. She spent the flights and the layovers organising his calendar for the next three months, tracking his flights and cross checking the sponsor events that had been filled in. Everything up to Hungary was booked and ready to go. She checked her watch when she was halfway to Melbourne, realising that he’d be at the Optus event she was usually on his arm for. She was supposed to be there this year, but she told him to take Michelle instead. All the events around the Australian GP that she always went as his plus one, wearing the star necklace he’d gotten her for her birthday, and the matching earrings that were her Christmas present the same year. Her outfit was usually one he’d bought for her against her protests because “let me spoil you” was how he showed that he cared, and she always wore the gold moon ring on her thumb that matched the sun one she’d bought him for his little finger. Most of her wardrobe and all of her everyday jewellery were presents from Dan. Her life was completely entwined with his, and untangling it all was going to hurt.
Her flight got in at god-awful o’clock that Wednesday morning, she’d lost a full day having left London on the Monday evening, but she walked through Melbourne customs with her suitcase glad to just be through. She’d told everyone she’d get an Uber to the hotel and meet them for breakfast, but instead as soon as she appeared in front of the glowing Melbourne sign two small figures ran to her yelling.
“AUNTIE EMMY YOU’RE HERE YOU’RE HERE!” Em dropped her bags and fell to her knees, arms wide open to pull Isaac and Isabella into her and pressing so many kisses to their curly heads.
“I’m here, I’m here. I missed you both so much. So, so much. I’m so sorry I couldn’t see you, I wanted to see you sooner.” Stupid Western Australia and closed borders and not letting people through. Her eyes began shining as she took in the difference in the two kids, Isaac at least a foot taller and losing the childlike way he’d spoken. Isabella had doubled in size, long hair and a child instead of a toddler the last time she’d seen her in person.
“It’s ok, you’re here now! Nana said you’ll sit with us for ev’rything ‘cept the race? Cause we’ve got two years of birthday and Christmas pressies for you!” Isaac looked so proud, grinning as he took her wheeled carry on and pulled it.
“I can’t wait. Who’re you here with?”
“Grandad Joe! He has our sign, Uncle Mike and Uncle Blake told us we had to use all the glitter. We were gonna wait, but I saw you and I wanted a hug. Is that ok?” He looked almost worried of her response, but she ruffled his hair.
“It’s more than ok. All I wanted was hugs from the two of you.”
Isabella clung to her waist, Em lifting her up with one arm and mentally thanking Michael for the strength training that let her carry the girl and pull her suitcase with her. She looked around to see Joe holding a giant piece of bright orange card, Auntie Emmy written on it in blue and silver glitter. It was the shiniest thing she’d ever seen in her life, and it was coming home with her even with the craft herpes that would infest her suitcase. Joe pulled her into a one armed hug on the side his granddaughter wasn’t monopolising, pushing a kiss to the side of her forehead that made her want to cry.
“We missed you, kiddo. Grace wanted to be here but we couldn’t fit her in the car too, and Dan’s doing media today. You cut it tight to get in.”
“It’s my parents wedding anniversary next week, I’ve been helping. I have to fly out after the race on Sunday.” It was Wednesday, and she could see his face fall as he realised how little time they’d have together.
“We’re spending as much time with you as we can until you go. Those boys get you all year round, we get you for this weekend.”
“That sounds perfect.”
When they made it to the hotel Em was greeted with yet more hugs from Grace, Michelle, and Michelle’s husband Adam. There were tears in everyone’s eyes at the reunion, and the long hug from Grace was the best thing ever and broke her heart at the same time. It was so restorative, so good, but she wasn’t going to get many more of them.
“Dan checked you in, here’s your key. He’s got the room on the other side of you, Blake’s on the other wall, we’re most of our corridor. Do you want to get some sleep and we’ll call you at noon?”
The first thing Em noticed about her room was the adjoining door between her room and Dan’s. She closed the lock gently to make sure she was completely alone. After that she napped fitfully, waking up to knocks on the door and yet more hugs. The day was spent going to the zoo, kids hanging out of her as she swung them around and gave piggybacks, feeling exactly like part of the family. Blake told her to take the day off for jet lag, and she wasn’t complaining.
That evening was filled with fun as the kids clung to her while she pulled out the first of so many presents. Chocolate first so she could see their faces eating proper chocolate rather than the Australian stuff that didn’t melt in the heat. The bag of duty free was quickly eaten between everyone, a movie on tv as she filled everyone in on what she had been doing. It wasn’t until after eight that Dan appeared wearing a suit.
“Ems! I thought you were coming with me tonight?” She looked up from where she’d been half dozing with Isabella curled up against her, taking in her best friend wearing a navy blue suit and white shirt.
“Coming to what? I’m taking today for jet lag. What’s tonight?”
“The AusGP reception. You always come!” Confusion was written all over his face and Em swallowed once, looking at him carefully.
“I said I wasn’t doing anything this year. I have to leave pretty much straight after the race, I don’t have time.”
“Emmy, please.” She hated that she couldn’t resist him when he did that, when her name curled around his accent like that.
“I don’t have anything to wear.” This was the closest they’d ever come to an argument in front of his family. Their eyes were going between them as if watching a tennis match.
“I got you something.”
“Dan, you can’t do that.” It was pointless to argue but she had to try make her point. She couldn’t just do everything because he wanted her to.
“I did. C’mon, it’s three hours and some schmoozing and we can come back so you can go to bed. He did his best impression of puppy dog eyes, lifting Isabella from her. “You want to see Auntie Emmy all glam and pretty, right Is?”
“Yeah! She’s always pretty.”
“You’re very right. I left the dress in your room, Ems. Please?”
“Fine.”
She said her goodbyes and went into her room, making sure the adjoining door was locked before going into shower and change. As she walked into the bathroom she thought she heard the door rattle but ignored it, forcing herself to take time to put herself together.
Years travelling around the world had taught her how to make herself look presentable in very little time, forcing her to learn how to do a blow dry with a hotel hairdryer. It took less than an hour to have hair and makeup perfectly done, a wrap around her shoulders and a pair of heels on her feet. The dress Dan had picked was perfect for her. It was lavender, knee length with a corset top, and her jewellery worked perfectly with it. He had taste when it wasn’t about party shirts. Once she was ready she picked up a clutch and knocked on Dan’s door. He opened the door confused, but ready to go.
“I thought you’d use the adjoining door? It’s why I got us these rooms.”
“I’m tired, Dan. Can we just get this over with?”
The launch was like anything else, an event to deal with. There were speeches and then wandering around the room, Dan’s hand hovering at her lower back but not quite touching her. She smiled as she was introduced as “meet Ems, she’s my best friend and my manager’s assistant who keeps my life on track”, even while her heart was breaking. But she kept her cool, finally managing to break away from Dan for a few minutes to chat to Ted and Natalie from Sky while Dan did the rounds.
“I didn’t know if you’d be here. I was talking to Michael yesterday, he said you weren’t in Perth with them,” Ted remarked as Em looked at the almost empty glass of champagne in his hand.
“Is this going to end up as gossip on the notebook if we talk?” Nat nearly snorted with laughter, Ted shaking his head with a chuckle.
“Nope. I’m drinking so I’m officially off work duties. Unless you have any gossip about things? Anything that I can attribute to an unnamed McLaren source?”
“I don’t work for McLaren, thankfully Zak doesn’t sign my paycheque. But no, I’ve got no gossip. There’s some family stuff happening so I have to head home pretty much as soon as the race is over. But I needed to see everyone, it’s been almost two years and I missed them.”
“Fair.” They chatted about the season so far, studiously ignoring the controversy around the last race, until Dan arrived back to make excuses and get them to leave the party.
“Back to the hotel?”
“You read my mind.”
The car ride back was the most awkward one the two of them had ever done and Em didn’t know what to do. Usually if they were in a car alone together they’d be curled into each other or at least holding hands. But she was on her side of the SUV, Dan was on his, and the hand she’d stretched into the middle as a peace offering was ignored. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do with that. Didn’t want to know, really. All his actions did was solidify that the painful decision she’d reached was the right one. Just because things could be easy didn’t mean they were right.
When they reached their floor in the hotel Dan stopped outside her hotel room as Em waved the keycard at the lock.
“Night, Dan.”
“But I thought…”
“What?” She was sharper than she should have been, but she was jet lagged and tired and heart sore.
“I thought we’d be sharing a room.”
“Your family are two doors down and the kids are here. The chances of at least one of them knocking on my door before I want to get up in the morning are high, and I don’t want to have to explain why we share a bed when we’re not married. Do you?”
“Not particularly.”
“Exactly. I’ll see you in the morning.”
As soon as the hallway door closed behind her she double checked the lock on the adjoining door before flipping over the door lock. If she’d looked out the peephole she would have seen a confused and disappointed Dan standing in the hallway.
The next few days passed in a haze of having the kids around, working, and ignoring Zak. She knew he was the original source of the rumours the year before, he was the one who got Mazepin to start spreading that she was sleeping with all three of her boys. It was her greatest pleasure to get to tell him no, and she did it with joy.
But in between finalising as much as she could before her resignation was sent she had time to wander Melbourne alone. She loved the city. It had always welcomed her in, it was Dan’s home race and the place where she knew everyone adored him. Em wandered around a craft market, finding a jewellery maker who made gold charms and engraved them on the spot. It took her all of ten seconds to buy two and get them put on different coloured leather cords, one each for Isaac and Isabella. The front had a pair of angel wings for each of her angel kids, and the engraving on the back read love you forever, Auntie Emmy.
Leaving her family behind was going to be the hardest part of this, and she needed to make sure that they knew just how much she loved them. Em was so aware that she was about to be the first adult to choose to walk out of their lives, and she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to break their hearts the way hers would break too. She just hoped that when they realised she wasn’t coming back they’d know she wanted to tell them how much she loved them.
Practice and qualifying were shit and she felt her dislike of the team growing even stronger. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to deal with the stupid orange team and the way that they were favouring Lando already. Dan was the one who won a race last year, not Lando. He was the one who had proven himself with podiums galore. But they didn’t care.
That night she left the door between their rooms unlocked. Her bags were half packed, her resignation email was scheduled to send and she’d triple checked the timezone on it. Em had spent the last two days hugging everyone as much as she could, surprising Chloe by popping into the Aston garage before a practice and waving to Lance and Seb as she pulled Chloe into a giant hug. Scotty got one too, trying to put the love and care she had for her best friends outside her boys into a hug. There were waves to the people she couldn’t hug because rumours would start, giving Susie a recommendation for the restaurant they all ate at the night before so she and Toto could have a family meal with Jack in privacy. The small things to make sure everyone knew she thought about them and loved them.
Em couldn’t sleep straight away. Nights before races were hard, the crashes she’d watched with her own two eyes usually playing in her head. Dan in Anthoine’s car, Dan in Grosjean’s. Dan in Lewis’s place the year before with no halo. Dan in the rain and a tractor on track. All the ways she knew people had died racing she thought about and she couldn’t deal. Her fear every time Dan slid into his seat in the car was all encompassing but racing was his first love and she could never ask him to stop.
She was about to get up and go down to Michael’s room to ask for some melatonin, but the doorknob between the two rooms rattled and clicked open quietly. Em stayed still as she was, breathing in and out steadily.
Dan slipped into the other side of the bed. If she just opened her eyes she’d be able to see him. If she reached her fingers out slightly she could touch him. It was the first time they’d shared a bed since Bahrain and being just over covid and she wanted him to hold her. Her body was screaming to curl into him and tell him she loves him and she’s his and she doesn’t want him to fall in love with anyone else because she wants him to love her. To choose her over all the models in the world he could have.
She didn’t sleep that night, too aware of his presence in the bed. She could hear his snores but she didn’t dare look up at him, didn’t dare move in case she disturbed him. He needed his sleep the night before a race.
As the morning dawned through crappy hotel curtains she could feel the vibrations from the alarm on his watch, the one he always used to try let her get some extra sleep when he needed to be up early.
Please kiss my forehead. Please, Dan. Please just give me any sign you want me to stay. Don’t leave me again.
Every morning was the same when they shared a bed. He’d delay until the very last minute to stay in the warmth and then kiss her forehead in goodbye. And then he’d leave, not content to get out from there until he made sure she knew he said goodbye.
This time he slid out of the bed without touching her, padding across the still room and going back into his. Em heard the lock slide shut on his side and rolled over, tears filling her eyes.
It hurt so much already, how was she supposed to pretend that everything was fine? How was she supposed to act normal around everyone when she wanted to scream that they were over and nothing would ever be the same again? How could she be okay when she felt like this?
He’d left her alone. Again. He hadn’t even touched her but he’d slept in her bed and she never thought Dan could be so cruel. She never thought he’d leave her with the barest hint of his scent, that if she hadn’t been awake she wouldn’t have known he was there. The ache spread through her chest and she tried to quiet her sobs but it hurt. It hurt so, so badly.
A cold shower soothed her puffy face, getting rid of some of the usual redness while makeup did the rest. She was dressed in her usual race day gear of shorts, vans, a McLaren polo, and a Dan hat on her head by the time there was a knock on her door, Michael standing there.
“Hey, I’m heading in with Dan and Blake now. He said you’re going in with his family in an hour?” Another cut in her heart. More space between them. But she schooled her face into a smile, hoping Michael would believe everything was fine.
“Yeah. I said I wanted as much time with the kids as possible, it’s fine. See you there?”
“See you there.”
Michael was a couple of metres away from her when she stepped into the hall, grabbing her room key from the slot just inside the door.
“Michael?” He turned and she half jogged, pulling him into a tight hug.
“What’s this for?”
“Haven’t seen you as much. You know you’re my brother, right? How lucky I am to have you as my family?”
“You’re the most annoying little sister Ems, but you’re my little sister. I’ve missed having you around.”
“Miss you too.”
She watched him walk away as step one of her goodbyes was done. The next was to go to breakfast with everyone and pretend that things were normal for the next few hours until the race was over. She could do it. She had to.
Breakfast with the extended Ricciardo clan was fun, Isabella still clinging to her and Isaac insisting on sitting beside her. She soaked up every moment she got with them, walking out to the car Dan had arranged holding Isabella on her hip.
“That’ll be you in a few years,” Michelle commented as Em struggled with the car seat buckle before getting it right. “The mother, not the cool aunt. We can swap places.”
Another stab to her already mangled heart. “I dunno. Wait and see, but I’m not sure that’s on the cards any time soon.” Considering the only man she wanted to have a child with didn’t want to be with her, it was a no.
You’ll be a good mother, Em. Plus you’ll have loads of family around.” She wanted to scream that she was leaving her family behind for good this afternoon but instead she just smiled tightly. It was too close to home. She couldn’t keep this conversation going. It hurt.
The race matched her mood. The strategy wasn’t good, the car was a tractor, and the oblique team orders to not let Dan try overtake Lando made her want to scream. The team points would be the same, but no. Not for his home race even. The crowd were amazing and let out loud cheers every time the orange car made its way around the circuit, but it wasn’t enough and Em knew it. It hurt. Her last time at a Grand Prix, her last time cheering for the man she was so deeply in love with, and the team and car had let him down again.
The plan was already to delay debrief till Monday so Dan got to spend time with his family, and Em decided to head to the airport nearly immediately. She couldn’t stay any longer. She couldn’t deal with any more hints from Michelle about a niece or nephew in the future, couldn’t listen to Grace or Joe talking about how much they’d missed her. She couldn’t spend more time with Blake and Michael without wanting to break down and tell them that they had changed her life and she wouldn’t make them choose between her and Dan.
Because that was what it came down to. She was the last one in this group that was all united by their love of Daniel Ricciardo. She was the one who loved him so deeply it hurt, the one who loved every single member of the group to the moon and to Saturn. And she loved them so much she couldn’t bear to have them walk away from her. Because that was what would happen.
Her own blood family didn’t choose her. They saw her as a disgrace, as a failure because she was thirty one years old, unmarried and without kids. They didn’t realise that she was the one who kept Dan on schedule, who organised sponsor events and filtered out the crap he and Blake didn’t need to know about. She stopped the balls from falling out of the sky. Because she was just an assistant.
And if the people who gave birth to her wouldn’t choose her, she knew the family she’d built wouldn’t either. She was never the one who was chosen, and she didn’t blame them. She was just Emma. Danny was Dan. She knew who she’d pick if given a quarter of a chance.
She’d just finished packing when the adjoining door opened, Dan walking in already speaking but stopping when he saw the case by the door, her carry on full with the edge of the orange poster getting folded in.
“Where are you going?” His tone was accusatory and she steeled herself for the argument.
“Home.”
“Emmy…”
“Don’t Emmy me, Daniel! You know I have to go back for the anniversary.” She turned to look at him, watching as confusion turned to anger.
“And I also know that’s bullshit. I’ve known you for how many years, Em? You’ve visited your parents twice. Michael was with you one of those times, the visit lasted twenty minutes and even he didn’t have anything nice to say about it. Michael. Who has a good thing to say about almost everyone. So tell me the truth, why are you leaving now? Why not get on the flight with us tomorrow?”
“Because I have to go back.”
“Don’t lie to me Em!” He raised his voice and Em gave as good as she got, staring back at him.
“You want the truth, Dan? All of it?”
“Yes! That’s all I want, it’s all I’ve ever wanted with you.”
She took a deep breath, staring into his brown eyes for the last time, soaking in that even so angry he was so beautiful. She’d had the privilege of sleeping with him for nearly four years, of loving him for three. Whoever got to do that next would be so incredibly lucky.
“You left me alone. The one thing I ever asked of you, the only thing I ever asked you to promise me was to never leave me alone. I begged you. Whatever was going on, whatever was happening with us, please don’t leave me alone. And then there were bombs flying and I watched one explode and you made me get into a car and leave. You made me stay alone, and you didn’t come back to me that night. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know if you were even alive because I didn’t have my fucking phone until the next morning and all the news was in Arabic. You were gone to the track before I knew what had happened. You left. You broke your promise, Daniel.”
“I didn’t have a choice!” It was the worst thing he could have said.
“But Blake and Michael got to stay. Angela stayed with Lewis, don’t try to lie to me and tell me she didn’t. Britta stayed with Seb. You sent me away, Dan. I was sobbing and begging you to stay and you made Blake drive me away. You made me leave when I was scared.” She let her words sink into him fully. “Just leave. Get out of this room and leave.”
“Emmy…” His voice was soft and she blinked back the tears she knew she wanted to cry. Not until the airport. Not until then.
“GET OUT DAN!” She yelled at him for the first time, shock on his face. “JUST LEAVE! It’s what you’ve been doing this whole weekend, just leave.”
“Fine. Fine. If that’s what you want, I’m fucking gone. I’m done here, I’m gone. I’ll be downstairs in five for you to say goodbye to everyone.” She watched him walk through the adjoining door and lock it as Em’s heart completely broke in two. She’d ruined it. He was done. He was gone. He was leaving and she was going and she would never speak to him again because her Daniel wasn’t hers anymore. One person down, eight to go.
She brought her bags down to the lobby alone, everyone standing there waiting to say goodbye. Michael got a hug, she’d said everything she needed to earlier that day. Blake was beside him, wrapping her in a full body giant one and holding her tight.
“You know I love you, don’t you? I really love you.” Blake grinned and pulled her close again.
“Love you too, Ems. Moving beside you was the best decision I ever made.”
Saying goodbye to Michelle and Adam was hugs and whispers of seeing them for Christmas when she knew it was a lie. Grace pulled her into a hug that only a mother figure could, whispering in her ear.
“We’re coming over for Silverstone and yours and Dan’s birthdays, so we’ll see you then. We love you Em. If you need anything I’m only a FaceTime away. Don’t let them get you down when you’re with your family.”
“I love you too, Grace.”
Joe got a hug and a murmured love you, his hand patting her back soothingly. The kids were last, sulking as Em squatted down in front of them.
“So I got my angels a present to say goodbye, cause I know I didn’t get to see you lots. Want to see them?” There were identical nods and Em strapped the bracelets on, Isaac’s on a black cord and Isabella’s on a purple one.
“It matches the one I made you and Uncle Dan,” Isabella murmured as Em pulled her into a tight hug.
“It does. It’s a reminder that I love you both so very, very much. No matter how far away we are, I’m always going to love you, okay? Don’t ever, ever forget that. Pinkie promise me?” She held out her little fingers, laughing as they both enthusiastically took part in the ritual. She pulled them in for a final hug, pressing kisses to both of their heads.
“See you on winter break!” Isaac grinned as he spoke, Em putting a tight smile on her face.
“We call it summer break, but I’ll see what we have to do then buddy.”
“Do you want a lift to the airport? I’ve got the rental?” Joe asked but Em shook her head.
“Nah, I’m good. I’ve got an Uber coming, I just want to get on the road. It’s hard enough to say goodbye to everyone I can’t drag it out much longer.”
“Fair. Love you, kiddo.”
“Love you too, Joe.” Her phone buzzed with the notification that her driver was there and she started towards the door. Dan still hadn’t come down and that was it. He didn’t love her. He didn’t feel anything like how she did because no matter what he’d said, he’d never make her leave. But she made him leave. He was gone.
She was almost at the door when an oh too familiar voice called across the lobby, running up to them.
“I didn’t think you’d be leaving already.”
“My Uber’s outside, I need to leave.”
“Oh.” There was none of their usual hugs, none of the subtle kisses he pushed to the top of her head when they were separated. He didn’t even squeeze her fingers. It was like they were strangers. “Send a text when you get to London?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She turned to get her luggage into the car, shielding her face from everyone with her hair. The driver lifted it in and she was soon safely ensconced in the back seat, tears falling down her cheeks as she waved goodbye behind partially tinted glass.
“Was that Daniel Ricciardo?” The driver asked, Em forcing a smile.
“Yeah, I work with him.” It was true for another five hours at least.
“He seems like a good guy.”
“He’s one of the best.”
Tears streamed down Em’s cheeks the entire way to the airport, through the fancy check in area and security, and following her into her first class pod. She mostly ignored the staff apart from nodding at them, continuing to cry and wipe her eyes on tissues. The tears barely stopped until Dubai, only aided by Blake’s near constant texts as soon as her email sent.
She knew when she arrived in London that she had about twelve hours before the boys landed, Blake texting even while he was on his flights. She sent a I got back safely, receiving another flurry of responses.
Em, what’s this email about?
What’s going on?
Tell me you didn’t mean to send this
Is it the travel? Do you want to slow down? Why?
Ems we need you. How am I supposed to tell everyone you’re not coming with us anymore? Did you meet someone? Did something happen?
We’re about to land in Heathrow. Dan’s going to his place and looks miserable. I’ll be at your door in less than two hours.
When she got the final text Em grabbed the bags she’d hastily packed with clothes and the things she needed for the next eight days until the boys had left London for Imola. The address of the last minute airbnb was in her email, getting an Uber to it handy. She was long gone by the time Blake arrived, sitting in her temporary home for the next while and planning what she had to do. They’d leave England on the Wednesday, she had five days to empty her flat.
It started with an email to her landlord to give up the lease. Her family reasons excuse was accepted quickly, the landlord told she had to leave London and the apartment would be vacant from the end of the month. After that she had to start planning on where to go to.
There were too many memories in London. Nearly every street reminded her of Dan, of days walking around hand in hand to show him her London, not the tourist one he knew. The city she’d moved to at eighteen with a dream and a student loan and where she’d discovered who she was. Dan was everywhere in the city for her - memories of their first kiss in the pub she’d spent too many hours in, museums she’d dragged him to, streets he’d stolen a kiss from her at with a grin and a chuckle when they were waiting to cross the road. The cafes and greasy spoons she’d brought him to with the promise of not telling Michael. She couldn’t stay there, it was too much.
But everywhere she thought of had memories of him. Filthy weekends away when they were at home because of covid, eating out to help out and driving to Manchester or Glasgow to spend time together and have hotel sex. The midlands were completely out because of Silverstone, of memories of Enstone and the Renault factory, of Milton Keynes and his goodbye from Red Bull.
The only big city she could think of without a memory of Dan - with only one memory of her boys - was Liverpool. Which meant her parents. Which meant a conversation she never wanted to have. Calling her mother wasn’t like calling Grace. But she didn’t have Grace in her life anymore, so she had to do it.
“Emma, what country do you deign to call us from today?” Her mother answered the phone, disdain dripping from every word.
“Good morning, Mother. I’m in England. I was calling because I need to ask for a favour from you.”
“Yes?”
Em swallowed, teeing up words on her too thick tongue. “I had to leave my job, they didn’t have the funding to keep me on. I was wondering if I could move home for a few weeks while I’m applying for new jobs. I want to leave motorsports, there’s too much travelling and I want to settle down.” She hit every keyword that her mother had as she checked her bank account balance, spotting her final pay deposited in the account. It was more than healthy thanks to travelling so much for work and Dan covering that under work expenses. But she needed to be sensible, and renting somewhere without a job would be a mistake.
“You can. You will need to pay rent while you’re here.”
“Of course. Just let me know how much. It wont be for long, it’s just a few weeks. It’ll be like I won’t even be there, if I’m not interviewing I’ll be in my bedroom.”
“Fine. Let me know when you plan to arrive.” She sounded bored of the conversation already.
“I’ll be back April twenty fourth. I can send you the train details then.
“See you then.”
The difference between the call with her mother and a call with Grace just cut the wound in her chest even harder. Grace never let a call end without a million “I love you”s between them. She made sure that Em spoke to everyone in the family, and if Joe was out at the garage she took a message and told Em that he loved her. Instead her mother hadn’t even asked if Em wanted to leave a message for her father.
It felt so, so wrong.
The list of things she had to do before the boys left for Italy was beginning to shrink, but there was still so much to do. She ignored Blake and Michael’s texts, refusing to even open them. The chats were archived so the red dots didn’t irritate her. Dan didn’t send her anything at all, yet more proof that he meant everything he said in Melbourne. He was done with her. She didn’t realise that emotional pain could hurt this much. She’d never believed in soulmates, never believed in fate. She always thought that if a relationship ended she’d get through it. But now? This not quite a relationship over? It ached to her core.
Friday morning she had an appointment with a solicitor, walking in with a tear stained sheet of what she wanted to leave to different people. She’d always fought with Dan about being prepared if something happened to him, not wanting to know what he left her. She was one of the two people who could decide what medical treatment he got if he couldn’t consent. She’d cried when he told her that day in Spa when they got that tragic news what he wanted if he was in a crash like that. That he trusted her to not let him stay on machines. Some of her nightmares included his plaintive “I don’t want false hope” that made her ache.
She didn’t trust her parents to not do the same for her. They’d keep her hooked up to machines for as long as possible, they’d insist it was for “hope”. Em didn’t know what hope, but she knew them. They’d barely spoken for five years apart from occasional texts and birthday cards, they didn’t have the right to decide what happened to her.
It was a blustery Friday morning when she walked into that office and signed the papers to say Daniel Ricciardo, Blake Friend, and Michael Italiano were the people who decided what would happen if she couldn’t make her own medical decisions. She gave the lawyer the makeshift will that was handwritten and tearstained. It was simple - her cookbooks and exercise equipment to Michael because he was always trying to adapt her recipes. All but one piece of her furniture to Blake. Her CDs and DVDs to Dan, along with the coffee table he kept falling over. Her collection of Dan’s raceworn helmets to Isaac and Isabella. Dan, Grace, and Michelle were to divide her jewellery between them based on who wanted what. The rest of her belongings were to be sold and the money put in Isaac and Isabella’s college funds. It was too easy.
Even after everything that had happened, even after walking away, she trusted her boys more than she trusted anyone else in the world.
After all of that her final task was to organise her storage unit and movers. That was easiest of all if Em was honest. A call to a moving company who agreed to put everything in the unit without her there, and walking into a storage company. She signed a two year contract and paid the full rent then and there, surprising the man at the counter. Now she was able to disappear.
The texts kept coming from Blake and Michael. WhatsApp and iMessage, even a signal account she’d forgotten she had on her phone. Michael sent her instagram DMs so she deleted the app instead of trying to avoid reading them and appearing online. But finally it was Wednesday and she knew exactly when the boys were flying out of London City Airport. She’d organised the private flight for them, booked the plane and made sure the flight was as clean as possible. As soon as they’d take off her plan could start.
Walking back into her apartment felt too normal, just checking her post and finding it mostly full of letters from Blake. Get in touch, we’re worried, we miss you. Sentiments she knew he’d share but it would be easy for him to forget about her. The letters went out in recycling and she began to pack up her life.
The boxes were settled easily. Storage, donating, and Dan’s stuff. The ones for him filled quickly, clothes and accessories and things he’d left lying around the apartment that had become theirs instead of just hers. It took three boxes to get rid of the sense of him.
The storage boxes were easier, but the final thing she had to do at four that Sunday morning was decide what to do with her helmet wall. Ever since Monaco and his win, Dan had given her his race worn helmet for any new race design. She could name which race each of them was from, and in the middle was her Monza win one. McLaren had wanted it for the MTC but Dan refused to give it over, insisting it was his and he was keeping it. They got the trophy so he got the helmet. And then he put it in the middle of the IKEA shelves that they’d spent a weekend putting together and laughing.
Part of her - a large part if she was truly honest - wanted to donate them. Get rid of them for the clean break she insisted she needed. But she couldn’t. They were the good parts of the last four years, the best part of her life and the reminder that for years she got to love Daniel Ricciardo and travel the world with her best friends. Once she was settled somewhere she’d put them all back up to get her and explain to whoever asked that she was a part of Formula One for a short while, and it meant so much to her.
It took longer than she expected to get them wrapped carefully and boxed away. Two just about fit in one box, but they were light at least. When they were carefully labelled with the races, a tear falling from her eye when she wrote Monaco 2018 on a box in looping letters, she sat down to write notes to her boys. They deserved more than a resignation email and leaving without saying goodbye but if she saw them in person she wouldn’t walk away. She was barely strong enough to do that the first time. Em couldn’t do it again.
Dan’s took the longest. It started with anger. How could you make me love you when you didn’t love me back scrawled angrily, tears staining the lined pages as she wrote everything. But she couldn’t give it to him how she’d written it. She couldn’t deliberately hurt him. It wasn’t Dan’s fault that she’d fallen in love with a man who couldn’t love her back the way she wanted him to love her. It was her fifth draft, still tear stained, that was the one she was giving him.
Danny,
I’m sorry I didn’t say this in person but I couldn’t do it. We both know that things between us haven’t been working for a while. It’s nobody’s fault. I guess we just wanted different things. It happens to us all. But we’re both done and writing this is easier than another long conversation and another fight.
Go be happy. I’ll cheer you on from wherever I end up, no matter what. You’ve changed so many lives, mine included. Thank you for the amazing years and experiences. You let me do things that so few people ever get to do and I can’t thank you enough for that.
Emma
Michael and Blake’s were harder and easier. She only needed one attempt at them, trying to wipe the tears before they fell.
Blakey,
I’m sorry for leaving like this. I’m sorry for leaving you in the lurch, but I made sure that everything logistically is booked until the summer break. Just get him where he needs to be on time, you were always better at that than me.
I love you. You’re my big brother and i wasn’t going to make you choose between me and Dan, that was never going to be fair. I’ll be happy and I want you to be happy too. Find a girl and settle down or bring her around the world. I’m rooting for you the entire time.
Will you make sure everyone in the paddock knows I love them? Tell Chloe and Scotty to get their wedding planned. Chloe will be the most beautiful bride and I’m so sorry I won’t get to see her in person. Scotty will look ok, I guess.
Thank you for everything.
Love,
Ems
PS - the extra key is for my storage unit. A1 Storage in Wimbledon. Figured you’d be a good person to have it.
She folded Blake’s letter into an envelope and labelled it before writing the last one. Somehow this was the hardest, having to ask Michael to do what she couldn’t.
Mike,
I’m sorry for leaving and I’m sorry for asking you to pass a message on but I know you will. I love you so much. You made lockdown bearable even when I was being a bitch, and you made me actually enjoy exercising you cruel man.
Tell everyone that I love them and I’m sorry? You let me know exactly what a family is and how I deserve to be loved and that’s something I can never thank you enough for. Ever. I can’t make people decide between me and Dan. He wins every time and that’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s easier if I just leave.
Tell Grace and Joe I love them and I will forever be grateful for their love and support. Let Michelle know that she’s the best big sister ever. Please make sure that Isaac and Isabella know that I love them no matter what. It’s not their fault I left and I will always love them. Whoever gets to be their auntie is the luckiest person in the world and I wish it got to be me.
Tell all your family I love them, and ti voglio bene to Nadia and your Nana. I love you all so much, and I’m cheering you all on from wherever I end up.
Love,
Em
When the movers came she handed them the key to the storage unit, letting them know what to do. Everything was out of the apartment in a few moments and Em took a last look around her almost empty apartment. The memories were suffocating. Dan tripping over the coffee table, the London lockdown when they got back from Australia and they lied to Michael about what the yoga mat’s primary purpose was. The way Dan danced with her in the dark kitchen, distracting her from finding food for them in the fridge and getting them to sway in the silence. The kisses and living together like he loved her the same way she loved him.
He’d been blowing up her voicemail since Wednesday and she deleted them I listened to. The first “Emmy” hurt her too much, so she decided to practice self preservation for once. As soon as her voicemail said “you have an unlistened to voicemail from Dan” it was deleted. The same with Blake and Michael. She couldn’t do it.
Finally it was time to leave, and she carried Dan’s boxes one at a time into Blake’s apartment. The three were stacked one atop the other, the letters on top of them. Em stared at her thumb, at the moon ring that had been there since Dan bought it for her calling her his moon on dark nights. She couldn’t bear to take off the three necklace hanging on her chest, but this she had to leave behind. She wasn’t his moon, and he was too bright to be her sun.
She slipped it off and rubbed her finger against the warm gold, pushing a kiss to it before stepping back. The final thing she needed to do was leave the envelope with her medical power papers and will on Blake’s coffee table before she locked the front door and slipped his keys in his post box. It was done. She was gone.
The tube to Euston was quicker than expected and she joined the trek to the Liverpool train, settling into her seat a few minutes before they were due to pull out. Her phone lit up with a notification that the race was about to start, illuminating the photo from lockdown of her and Dan holding Isaac and Isabella. They looked like a family. Em unlocked her phone and pushed her thumb firmly down on the F1 app to delete it. A clean break.
The train pulled off exactly at two, her mind echoing Crofty’s “lights out and away we go”. Dan was in the car and racing and all she wanted was a good points finish for him. But she couldn’t check. She couldn’t let herself find out what he was doing.
Her tears fell harder as the train pulled into Milton Keynes, the memories of the last time she’d done this train journey as Dan’s plus one. His leaving Red Bull party, staying in a hotel with him the week before they flew to Perth for Christmas. It was the only time she’d gotten to visit the impressive Red Bull factory. Meeting Max properly, Christian cornering her with his wife - and keeping her cool around Geri fucking Halliwell - to ask if she could convince Dan to come back. Getting whisked away from Helmut quickly when he tried to speak to her, meeting the mechanics and team that she’d seen at several races properly for once. Yet another place she could never visit again because all she’d think about was Dan.
Em made herself stop crying shortly after, pushing a cold bottle of water to her eyes. She couldn’t be red eyed or puffy seeing her parents. It was bad enough returning with her tail between her legs. She didn’t know if she’d survive the I told you so.
*
When Dan got out of the car in Imola he knew what he had to do. His first stop was being weighed and getting his slip, Mike pushing one of those AG1 drinks into his hand to down to get electrolytes and water back into him. After that it was media rounds, apologising to Carlos, and doing media. Once the debrief was finished it was London. He needed to get to Emmy. For the second time he’d gotten on a plane when he should have been with her and he needed to apologise. Needed to make things right.
“The jet will be ready when we finish? I need to get back to London tonight.” Michael handed him a McLaren branded shirt and pair of skinny jeans to put on once he was out of the shower.
“It’ll be ready. Mate, you need to know that she might not want—“
“She’ll see me. It’s Em. She’s my Emmy. She’s going to see me and I’m going to tell her everything. I can’t do this without her. I can’t. I dunno how I did it before.”
“Ok. Go shower and head out.”
The debrief was painful. Lando on the fucking podium, Dan last. They wrote off his technical debrief after the collision. It was clear Dan couldn’t have done anything, and the rest of his race was nothing to write home about. He should have just retired. It was shit and he just had to listen to how Lando had a flawless race and was extracting the most out of the tractor McLaren had built. He had to wait until it was over, half listening and taking notes while stewing.
All he could think about was Emmy. He hadn’t reached out because he thought she needed space, wanted time. He’d had the fucking ring in his pocket in the hotel room and then they’d fought and he couldn’t exactly get on one knee and ask her to marry him after that. But now she was gone and she’d been gone for weeks and he didn’t know. He needed her to be ok. He needed to go home and see her on the couch and beg for her forgiveness because he was hers. His apartment was so fucking lonely, driving in and out of the factory without seeing her. Without going to sleep curled up beside her and waking up with the fairy lights glowing as she read whatever dog eared book she was rereading that month.
The voicemails were being listened to. Her inbox went from full to empty and he kept texting, determined to get through to her. Needing her to talk to him. To say anything at all. People kept asking where she was, he laughed it off and gave the excuse of family stuff. Natalie had nodded and said she hoped Em would be back soon. Chloe had looked at him oddly when she heard the excuse but he shrugged and moved on. The elder Stroll could be terrifying and he didn’t want to get on her bad side. Not even Scotty could save him from that.
There was nothing he could do but wait to be freed. The moment they were able to break - after Dan apologised to the mechanics for the job they’d have to do on the car - he was on his way to the driver room. Blake and Michael were already there with bags packed and ready to go.
It was a two hour flight to London and they landed at nine. After forcing their way through traffic in a black cab it was after nine thirty by the time they arrived at Blake and Em’s building. Dan stepped out of the car and grabbed his bags, heading straight upstairs to the two identical doors. He didn’t realise when it became more normal to stand in front of Em’s door than Blakes, but it had years before. He knocked twice to no response.
“Em? I’ve got my key, I’m coming in.”
The lock turned easily with the familiar key and Dan set his bags down to flick the light switch. What he saw terrified him.
The room was empty. The couch that killed his back, the coffee table his shins hated, gone. The bookshelves and the kitchen table they’d spent a lockdown day building, gone. Her helmet collection was missing. Em had once told him that if the building went on fire she would save whichever helmets she could. If they were gone, she was gone.
He ran to her bedroom but everything was missing. The fairy lights they’d taped up with double sided tape. Her bed. The throw cushions he laughed about. Even the case at the bottom of her wardrobe with the lingerie he’d bought her was gone. Her pink boots weren't there. It was like nobody had lived there for years. He couldn’t even smell her perfume in the air.
“Dan?” He hadn’t realised tears were streaming down his face when he turned to see his best mates standing in the doorway. “Mate, you need to see this.”
He followed them back to Blakes, pausing to lock Emmy’s front door. She had to come back. The idea that she wouldn’t come back was impossible.
Until he saw the boxes.
Three of them, neatly stacked almost up to Blake’s chest. There were three envelopes on them, and a glint of gold on top of one. He nearly ran to it, ignoring the post race soreness going through his body to see the ring he’d given her sitting on top of the one neatly labelled Daniel.
She’d used his first name. Emmy never used his first name unless something was wrong. He’d fucked up so badly that he didn’t want to open it.
Instead he held the ring firmly in his palm, the metal cold against his hand. She was there. She had been there and now she was gone and he didn’t know what to do. But instead he followed what Blake and Michael had done and opened his letter.
It was how impersonal it was that killed him. Em was done. She’d be fine. Thanking him for bringing her around the world and letting her work with him. She didn’t want another fight and she thought he was done with her.
She didn’t love him like he loved her and for a brief moment that made him want to die. The moments they’d shared, the times they’d said they loved each other. The times he’d held her and traced I love you down her back or against her clit when he was eating her out, desperate for her to know but too afraid to say it. The 'y’know, right?'. Everything from the last nearly four years. None of it had ever mattered because she wouldn’t have married him. He had her ring in his fucking ever present backpack and thank God he hadn’t tried to propose because she’d have said no and he’d have been humiliated.
“I guess you were right. Buying the ring was a mistake.”
His choked voice broke the silence, but it was Michael who got the next sentence in, cutting off Blake’s question about the ring.
“Mate, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“She doesn’t love me like I love her. I was wrong. I just got my heart broken so please, don’t rub it in right now?”
“Did you read any of what she wrote?”
“Yeah. She’s done. She thanked me for letting her travel with us. Like she didn’t earn her place. She signed it Emma. I was wrong, ok? I was wrong and I can’t take you rubbing it the fuck in when I think Im gonna break.”
“What happened? Because the two of you were fine in Bahrain, and then after Saudi she disappeared and skipped Perth, and she was barely in Melbourne. What happened with you?” Blake was the one who asked, Dan flopping on the couch beside him. He held out his much shorter letter for them to read.
“Things were weird when we got back after Christmas. Then we had covid and got through it. And Saudi fucking happened. With everything going on and keeping her safe I didn’t see her till after the race and she was already leaving. And in Melbourne we… We had a fight.” The memories of what he’d said were circling again, the anger between them, Em telling him to leave again. Him walking away.
“We thought that much. You didn’t even hug her goodbye.”
“She told me to leave!”
“In self preservation.” Michael’s voice was low and Dan was almost afraid of his best friend. “She said she didn’t want to make us choose between you and her, that she knew we’d pick you. So she left. I have to tell your fucking family she’s gone, by the way. She asked me to. So you’re going to tell me everything that’s happened between the two of you and we’re going to fix this. What the fuck did you do?”
He wanted to be annoyed that he was being blamed but he couldn’t blame the boys. So he let everything out.
He told them about wanting to kiss her in Blake’s that first night, of Monaco and their agreement that it was over once she left Monaco. Coffee and Silverstone and her birthday drinks. Spa and I love you when they were faced with the reality of what could happen with his job again. Em begging him to never leave her behind, that no matter what he wouldn’t leave her alone. Her dick of an ex who’d destroyed her self-esteem and meant she lost her friends. The meaning of 'Y’know, right?', the phrase that had been their mantra since 2019. That he hadn’t slept with anyone else since he’d met her because he just knew she was supposed to be his. That he’d bought the ring when they spent Christmas 2020 together but was just waiting for the right moment. And then in Saudi she’d been sobbing and he sent her away. He made Blake take her away from him. From them. He’d broken his fucking promise and again in Australia he walked away when he should have stayed in that room.
She’d picked the fight. She’d picked it so she’d be left alone and leave and the realisation of how well she fucking knew him hurt so much. She knew him like the palm of her hand and for a minute he forgot about it.
“Let me get this straight. You’ve known just how shit her family is for longer than any of us, and I’m the only one who’s actually met them. She asked for exactly one thing from you which was don’t leave her alone. And in Saudi, one of the countries she’s most scared of being away from us for any length of time, you made her go back to the hotel and stay there on her own. She begged you to stay and was sobbing and you left her to cry when she asked you to stay? I could fucking punch you right now.” He nodded at Michael’s words, shame filling every cell in his body.
“You made us leave her alone.” Blake spoke and Dan thought he was going to be sick. “In Melbourne. The morning of the race. 'Em’s going with my parents. She wants family time.' She didn’t know she was going with them, did she? Why?”
“She… I… No. We weren’t ok. I didn’t know if I could be in the car with her. Not after that night.”
“What happened?”
“I… Fuck. She kept the door between our rooms locked that whole week. But Saturday night it wasn’t locked. I had a habit of just trying it, just in case. It was open and I went in. I just lay down on the edge of the bed and watched her sleep for a while before falling asleep. I left before she woke up. She didn’t know, she was asleep the whole time.”
“You think our Ems was asleep for a full night before a fucking race? Are you an idiot? Did you get brain damage in that crash today? She doesn’t fucking sleep! You slept in the same bed as her for four fucking years and you don't know that? She’s into me for melatonin every damn night because she can’t sleep worrying about you. She was awake that entire night and you left her without saying a goddamn word and then you abandoned her again. Again, Dan. Don’t tell me you did something stupid and cheated on her like her fucking ex.”
“I never cheated. I haven’t touched another woman.” The thought made him sick. “I’m not that asshole. You know I’m not.”
“I don’t mean to be funny Dan. She lived beside me for nearly five years. She’s my friend. And now her apartment is for rent, your shit is here, and she’s told us all goodbye and to give messages to the people she loves. So you might not have cheated on her, but you broke her. It took us four years to help Em feel like herself again and put her pieces back together and you broke her.” Blake was opening another envelope mixed in with the post on his coffee table that Em had left in as he spoke, eyes widening slightly. Before he could get the words out Michael had to.
“You’re telling your family, by the way.” His voice was solid, a way Dan had never heard before. “She asked me to tell them but I can’t. I can’t break those kids hearts and tell them their auntie Emmy loves them forever but she can’t see them again. I can’t tell your sister that she’s lost a sister, and I can’t tell your parents that you ran off the woman they want you to marry. That the woman your mum teaches family recipes to had to leave, because you fucked up that much. You know she’s their second daughter, right? Even before whatever the fuck you’ve been doing started they adored her. From Monaco. Em’s lost the only decent mother she’s ever had because of you. She didn’t want to make us choose but if she was here right now I’d choose her over you any day.”
“If you think she doesn’t love you, read this.” Blake held out a package of papers, Dan skimming them.
Everyone in his line of work was familiar with leaving a will behind. The fucking academies basically demanded it at this point. He’d put Emmy on his own medical power of attorney form after Spa, told her what he was leaving her when she was ready for that conversation after Roman nearly died in Bahrain.
But Emma wasn't racing cars every weekend, so she didn't need the papers she signed. She didn't need to leave a will behind, but his name was there to make decisions for Em. She’d left him specific things. The cold fear snaked up his spine, tightening around his lungs and making it hard to breathe.
“She wouldn’t. She won’t do anything stupid. It’s Em, she wouldn’t.” The words came out as a rush but certain. She wouldn’t hurt herself. God, he couldn’t live with himself if she did.
“It’s probably just a precaution. But Jesus Christ, Dan. She’s gone. We have no idea where she is, we don’t even know what country she’s in. We don’t know what kind of head start she has and with the amount of frequent flier miles she has she could be anywhere. We can probably cross off here and Australia, but that doesn’t take away much.”
“I need to leave.” Dan turned to see Michael pick up his bag. “I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk. I’ll email you workout plans. She’s my fucking sister, Dan. She’s my little sister and I trusted you knew what you were doing with her. She said goodbye to me and I didn’t even know. You… I can’t look at you right now. I’m this close to quitting too because I don’t know you anymore. The Dan I grew up with? He would have said something. He wouldn’t make the woman he kept saying he was going to make his wife run away. He wouldn’t make her feel unloved. Just work out what you’re going to do. I’ll be on the plane to Miami but I don’t know if I’ll see you before then.” Dan watched as his oldest friend, the man he’d known since primary school, who’d supported him through thick and thin, walked out of the apartment into the London night.
“She’s gone. She’s really gone and she’s not coming back. I… I have to find her, Blake. I can’t do this without her.”
“You need to work out what you’re doing. You need to tell your family she’s gone. You need to do your job. We’re all hurting right now and yeah your heart is breaking. But its my job to do tough love and tell you that you need to work first and then think about her.” He stared at Blake in shock. “I’m pissed. But work first. Em somehow managed to take everything off my plate when she was leaving, because she didn’t want to make things hard on me. Go home, Dan. I have to call Chloe Stroll and tell her Em’s not coming back.”
“Not yet. Please. Let me f—“
“I’m telling her. You can hide it from the media, from your family, whatever. Chloe is Em’s best friend outside us. Do you really think she hasn’t tried calling Em already? Really?” Dan nodded once. “Go home. Your place, not the empty apartment next door you called home. Go home and get your shit together. Em would kill you if you fucked up a race over her.”
Dan got an Uber on his phone, taking his bags downstairs along with his letter from Em. He slipped the moon ring onto his little finger, settling it just above the sun. He needed her back. He just didn’t know how to find her.
#call it what you want fic#ciwyw writing#daniel ricciardo imagine#daniel ricciardo oneshot#f1 imagine#f1 oneshot#formula 1 imagine#formula 1 oneshot#formula one fanfic#formula one imagine#daniel ricciardo x ofc#daniel ricciardo x reader
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In 120 Hours
♥ ♥ Joseph Quinn x Fem!Reader
Summary: You work as a temp and are offered a very exclusive interview for a very exclusive job. You see, someone needs a personal assistant for a very eventful week, and you happen to be the perfect fit.
CW / disclaimer: 18+, language, mentions of drinking, rpf, fem!reader
Author’s note: I have no idea what being a personal assistant entails, or what London Film Festival is actually like, but we can all pretend that this is accurate shit, right? Enjoy!
Wordcount: 3K
part one - part two - part three - part four - part five
“Have you got any–”
You were already holding a hand out to him. Joe saw, grinned, opened his hand to receive a piece of gum from you and looked out the car window, hand on the door handle but not quite stepping out just yet.
Then he turned in his seat, back towards you a bit, but stared into the space in front of him.
“I’m not sure how I...” Joe trailed off, then looked at you, not finishing his sentence, but hoping that his eyes would do the talking for him.
“Could thank me? Have ever managed to function without me? Will go on living your life without me?” they were all jokes, and you were smiling, but Joe just nodded and went, “Yea,” with a crazed sort of look in his eyes. “Exactly all of those things.”
Joe stalled, looked at you, until you nudged him with a knee.
“Go on, the people are waiting,” Not just the people you could see from the car, but you imagined also all the important people, actors and actresses alike, in the cars queueing up behind you.
“Come with me,” Joe suddenly said.
“I will, I’ll see you right after the–”
“No, come with. Let’s do the whole thing together,”
You hesitated. This wasn’t in the job description. Lots of things hadn’t been, sure, but those things had been, you know, not quite so out in the open. Not like red carpets were, anyway.
“I think we’ve been spotted together enough as it is, I don’t want you to-”
“I kind of don’t want to get out without you.”
And you frowned, but only slightly, because there was that smile again. Fuck, that smile had gotten you into enough trouble as it was, and Joe fucking knew it too.
You checked the time. There was over twelve hours left still, technically speaking. That was over ten per cent of the entire job – quite a few too many hours to screw everything up and risk not getting paid. You had said you were reliable. Professional. You couldn’t, really...
“Please?” Joe opened a hand, presenting you with his palm.
But, ugh.
Fuck it. Why not?
You grabbed Joe’s hand and silently wondered if this was breaching the NDA you’d signed. Maybe not. You knew exactly who it was going to piss off though...
Stepping out of the car with Joe, you were met with girlish screams of adoration. Well, Joe was met with girlish screams of adoration. Then cameras flashed brightly, blinding you almost instantly, and you thought back to how precisely one hundred and six and half hours earlier, you would’ve never envisioned that this is where you’d end up.
Doing a red carpet with Joe.
In a slutty dress. With slutty high heels on. Without the engagement ring on.
Not even a full five days had passed...
Not even a full six days had passed, since you’d phoned your friend and she had told you about the vacancy. The whole thing felt like a vague fever dream now, like it had happened years ago.
“Please tell me you have nothing going at the moment,”
It was a weird way for your friend to answer her phone when you called to ask her if she had time to go for drinks that week. Because, consequently, you had all the time for all the drinks, you see, because you had absolutely nothing going at the moment.
No professional things. No personal things. Zero job. Zero fiancé – you really had to remove that ring, but you couldn’t yet. It used to belong to your grandmother before, after all, so it kind of felt like if you just wore it on another finger, it’d be fine.
Still adjusting to life as a single woman - with big bills that belonged to single women - working as a temp and having a best friend work at a temp agency, the two of you seemed a match made in platonic heaven. She always kept all the good stuff back for you, called you on her breaks to slip you information she definitely wasn’t meant to be giving you, so you could officially apply for the right jobs at the right times and use the right words to actually be invited to the interviews. It was perfect.
Sometimes, the good stuff would be going through PowerPoint presentations in stuffy conference rooms in deeply exotic places, like Belgium. Or you’d manage an entire office for two weeks, a holiday-cover that would start Christmas eve and left you in charge of a lot of empty desks because, didn’t everyone take time off around Christmas and New Year’s?
But then, other times, the good stuff was actual good stuff and had you help run huge music festivals, unexpectedly brushing shoulders with the likes of The Wombats and Liam fucking Gallagher backstage wearing knee high wellies, covered in mud.
“Oh my God, what have you got?”
No dillydallying. As a temp, there was never time. All jobs came fast, and all jobs went fast.
“It just came in, this phone call is unbelievable timing because I’m allowed to recruit for fucking once, finally, and you’d be so perfect for it!”
She had said that too when you’d been hauled off to dog-sit a poodle for some CEO of a company you had never heard of for two months, so you held off on the jumpy excitement your friend seemed to be exuding down the phone.
“It’s very short term and the money is amazing – I need a personal assistant for a high-profile client.”
“How short term, how much money, how high-profile?”
Like you said, no dillydallying.
“We’re talking not even a full week, just five days, all expenses covered and the salary’s generous. Very generous. And the money isn’t even the best part.”
Temping meant everything was short term, but this was the shortest a possible job had ever lasted you.
“Okay,” you said, knowing things were always too good to be true. There had to be a catch.
“If this is for a tory politician, or like, actual royalty, I’m out,” you warned, earning a huffed laugh from your friend.
“Don’t let this put you off, but there’s nothing else I’m allowed to tell you. You’ll have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before I can even send the job description over, and I’ll need you down in London for the interview as soon as possible, like, today? Could you do today?”
Oh, she was serious serious.
Okay, so... what was five days, really? If it was shit, it’d be over quick enough. You could really use the money too if it really was as good as your friend was making it out to be. And maybe you’d meet Meghan Markle, you know, if it was actually going to be royalty.
“Are we... are we talking like, Hugh Grant or whatever? Adele, maybe?”
Your friend laughed heartily.
“I can’t tell you anything else until you sign the NDA, but, I’m being so honest with you right now, you’re not going to want to pass this one up.”
And so, you’d given her the go ahead. Sure. Try get me in for an interview, why the fuck not? She said she’d make a call, get your CV into the right hands, and would call you back in a minute. When she did, not all but 11 minutes later, she’d already e-mailed you the NDA to sign. The interview wasn’t that day, but the day after – still too soon, but ok – and if successful, you’d start immediately too.
“Don’t worry, I think the interview’s just a formality – they love your CV, and from the sounds of it, they’re desperate. You’re a shoo-in. Get that NDA back to me and I’ll send you everything you need to know.”
She ended the call letting you know to reach out to her if you had any problems, and you said you would, knowing very well that you wouldn’t. You didn’t have problems. It was part of your charm. You carried solutions. You were dependable, reliable, one hundred percent guaranteed to make everyone’s life easier.
The only person you ever made things difficult for, was yourself. The proof of it was around your ring finger – on the wrong hand now, but still there.
From the names mentioned in the e-mail, which you’d immediately googled, you became none the wiser. They really kept you in the dark about who you were going to be working for, and the job requirements list was a lot. But you were good at job interviews. You knew the right things to say, the right energy to exude, the times to smile, the times to frown in serious thought – you could sell yourself better than you could sell anything else.
And you were competitive to a fault. No matter how arrogant of a celebrity was going to need someone handling their business for five days; you were going to get that job, and you were going to excel at it. Watch me, you thought, as you packed a carry-on with enough underwear to last you five days in case you were right. And if you were wrong, you could just spend money you didn’t have and maybe stay in London for a few days anyway. Visit old friends and old familiar places, because you kind of missed the place if you were being honest.
The next day your train had been late, and the tube had been packed, and you’d almost been run over three times, but you didn’t care. London was gritty and grimy and perfect. The London-shaped hole in your heart could really only be filled with the smell of searing, hot dust that lingered underground and became thicker and more prominent the deeper down escalators would take you.
You aced the interview. Of course you did.
Every question you were asked felt like they were trying to find reasons to not give you the job. They were all questions about what you thought about certain things, what your opinions would be about certain situations, what you really wanted, and you’d rudely interrupted. You’d said that none of it mattered, did it? It didn’t matter what you thought about anything, what your opinions were or what you really wanted in any situation – what mattered was that you would do your job. What mattered is whatever the client wanted.
They’d congratulated you. Said you got the job. And then, right on cue, the door had opened behind you.
“Joe, come in, meet your new PA who’s going to be with you for the rest of the London Film Festival.”
Joe mother fucking Quinn walked in, smiling, looking at you, like you were an actual person that people could actually perceive.
“Hi, nice to meet you.”
It was only a brief introduction before Joe was off again, called out of the room by someone else, and he said he'd see you later. Smiled again, and God, it was the kind of smile that could defrost the coldest of hearts. Joe's expression was objectively neutral, this was just his face, but his eyes exuded kindness in its purest form. Almost dreamily so.
You cleared your throat as the door shut behind him. All right. Back to business.
You were talked through the things you had already read the day before; the things you'd received in your e-mail. Things that didn't really need further explaining, but you listened politely anyway. You got a long explanation of how NDAs worked and it was almost laughable. Yes, they'd sue you if you broke it. You got it. But they were very adamant, needed to make sure that you really did in fact get it. Having to drag you to court wouldn't just be an awful thing for you personally, they also didn't want to do it because it was a lot of work on their end which they didn't have the time for.
Noted.
"All right. Get your things and meet us downstairs, your car is waiting."
"Car? Where are we going?"
"We're not going anywhere. You are. The itinerary, his full schedule, you'll find it all in your e-mail."
And when you looked at your phone screen, you saw you'd just received it, mere seconds earlier. Man, these people ran a tight ship.
Opening your e-mail in the car, you were greeted by a digital calendar that had all of Joe's days planned out, down to the literal minute. You could see past the five days that you would be working for Joe too, and although less busy, Joe had things happening nearly every day for at least the upcoming three months it seemed.
"Wow,"
This was... a lot.
It had everything on there. Wake-up calls, car pick-ups, lunch time, phone calls, coffee breaks, fittings...
There were several film screenings scheduled every day, obviously, that was how film festivals worked, and you wouldn't get to go to any of them. You weren't hired to sit and watch films with Joe, unfortunately. You were hired to haul Joe from one place to the next. Accompany him. Get him coffees. Check for schedule changes, because, “Everything is always up for change, so you better keep an eye out!”. Things could be delayed, or be postponed, or switched around – times, or locations – and it'd be up to you to sort things out. Make it all run smoothly. It was your job to make sure Joe would get to the places he needed to be on time.
"And he needs close eyes on him, because he tends to wander. Keep him company. He's used to having someone with him. A family member, a friend, but none were available for this. So, now he'll have you."
So... you were a luxurious babysitter, if you really thought about it.
"What other things are important? Anything that’s not been mentioned yet that needs special attention?" you had asked, and were met with a fast answer.
"Networking."
This whole week was all about Joe being seen and being spoken to by industry giants. Joe was invited to see many films, just about all of them, but it wasn't necessary for him to actually watch all of them. As long as he went to meet the directors, he'd be solid.
There were other obligations too. Besides the screenings there were screen talks, in depth-interviews, panels, debates, workshops, partner events (Joe wouldn't be going to those, no worries) and networking events (Joe had to absolutely be going to those, worry a lot). The industry happy hours were where it all happened, you'd been told several times.
Then, on Monday, day four, there was Joe's film screening - not his film, but the one he starred in. That showcased him. It'd be followed up by a Q&A, and then of course, happy hour after.
To make things even easier, more simple, not at all hectic or stressful: Joe also had studio photoshoots, two of them, and phone interviews to accompany the shoots. They were scheduled, slotted tightly in between all the in-person events and to be honest, it all seemed a bit much. Too much. No wonder they hired a PA for the week. This was overwhelming to say the least.
Your duties would end after the most important day. The awards ceremony. Film Festivals were a competition, and there were awards up for grabs. You'd need to make sure that after five extremely busy days, Joe would make it to the ceremony in one piece, in the right outfit, and at the right time, because people had already been talking, and Joe was meant to give a little speech up on stage if his film was to win.
"Remind him of that. Maybe help him with the writing, too?"
Sure. Why not?
"And there'll be two boxes delivered, not huge ones, it'll only be about 5000 copies, but they all need signing,"
Delivered where? Copies of what?
"Copies?" you asked, deadly afraid of sounding stupid.
"Photographs."
Oh. Alright. Of course. Yes. Fine.
In the backseat of a car, on your way to wherever they were taking you - they hadn't been clear at all - you saw that the signing of the photographs hadn't been added into Joe's schedule yet. You put down a few options and would check with Joe later until what time he minded working before you'd set it in stone. First task done. Your job had officially started.
Five days. One hundred and twenty hours of this. You checked the time. One hundred and eighteen still to go, technically, but, who was counting?
The car stopped and you heard the ratcheting of the handbrake being pulled by the driver. You'd arrived.
"Um, where are we?" you asked, undoing your seatbelt and gathering your things, but before the driver could answer, your door was opened from the outside.
"Hey, welcome," it was Joe, and he held out a hand to help you out of the vehicle. What a gentleman. That warm smile, there it was again.
"Are you ready?" Joe asked, taking your suitcase from you with an excited glint flickering in his eyes, and you weren't sure exactly what you were meant to be ready for. The whole week, was the correct answer.
Joe walked ahead of you, up the steps of a beautiful South London terraced house. Quite the mansion, by London standards. Joe stopped and turned as he reached the door. "I've only just moved in, so please, don't mind the boxes and, um, the lack of furniture. It's a mess. The only room properly done up is yours, so don't worry about that! They've made sure that at least one of us has a nice bed to sleep in,"
Oh.
"They made it look like a proper hotel room, I'm kind of jealous of it,"
This was Joe's home. His actual place, where he... you know, lived, and stuff. And where apparently, you were going to be staying too.
"This is your house?"
Joe stood in the door opening, and beckoned you in.
"It's just easier to have you close, come on in,"
Oh, this was going to be an interesting couple of days.
"Wonderful, thanks."
---
The Taglisted:
@ghostinthebackofyourhead @dirtyeddietini @kiwisa @jasminearondottir @josephquinned @cancankiki @sidthedollface2 @dylanmunson @munsonsgirl71 @alana4610 @emmamooney @xomunson @sadbitchfangirl @thatonefan-girl @paola-carter @eddiemunsonfuxks @figmentofquinn @haylaansmi @thewondernanazombie @munsonmunster @kellysimagines @mybffjoe @harrys-tittie @chaoticgood-munson @jenisnotlost @sherrylyn628 @bdpst-massacre @xeddiesbattattsx @05secondsofsexgods @lovelyblueness @adoreyouusugar @nadixq @prozacandnicotine @munsonswhore86 @alwayslindie @thefemininemystiquee @hauntingbastille @eddie-joe-munson @ali-in-w0nderland @pepperstories @phyllosilicate-s @thebellenouvelle @luvrsbian @joesquinns @choke-me-joey @alizztor @thelostmoonofpooosh @did-it-work @capricornrisingsstuff - (tag list currently full)
#joe quinn#joseph quinn#joe quinn x reader#joseph quinn x reader#joe quinn x you#joseph quinn x you#joe quinn fanfic#joseph quinn fanfic#fluff#joe quinn x y/n#joseph quinn x y/n#rpf#in 120 hours
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happy new year!
i have so much to be grateful for this year. i’ve been through a lot in the last twelve months, but i made it out okay and i’m glad to put all of the bad behind me : )
i can’t wait to see what the next year has in store <3
now for some special thank you’s to people who made my year better (if you aren’t here, it doesn’t mean i’m not grateful for you - i just have a terrible memory)
@forlix - what a wonderfully delightful addition to the end of my year. i don’t think i’ve ever connected with someone as quickly as i have with you - it feels like we were carved from the same falling star.
@sulfurcosmos - thank you for teaching me how mistakes and forgiveness and proper communication works. i don’t think i’ve ever had someone like you in my life, and through the ups and downs i’m eternally grateful to have you.
@astraystayyh - a rare example that some people can be truly beautiful on the inside and out. you’re just one of the loveliest people that’s ever graced this planet and i’m sm happy you chose me to share your light with.
@tasteleeknow - you. you. my ultimate soulmate of three. my reason for living my brightest star in the sky. my breath of fresh air. my crutch when i can’t walk. i shout at you about how much i love you almost daily but i truly do.
@lino-nyangi - my other ultimate soulmate. my blooming flowers in a field, my first rays of sunlight peeking through the clouds in the morning. when i think about how much i love you i choke on my own emotions.
@cosmic-railwayxo - my brain twin!!! we are so similar in ways that even now continue to surprise me. you’re so incredibly strong even if you don’t think you are. i can’t wait to see where the new year takes us.
@sweetestcherrywine my first friend on here my beautiful baby your soul is so PURE you deserve so much and i wish i had the ability to give you the entire world. you move through life with such an elegance you’re the perfect balance of everything.
@primoppang - my little moon. the rain that holds up my clouds. your everlasting patience with me is truly a gift that i cannot ever express how grateful i am for. i wish i could hold you in my hands and keep you.
@seeyouinourdreams - what an absolute delight of an individual you are. you’re so incredibly kind, one of the sweetest chocolates in the entire box. i literally cannot believe i got to sit next to you at dinner that is so baffling??
@goblinracha - you and your lovely mind came into my life at the perfect moment. you might not know it but you’ve taught me more about how to stand up for myself in a couple months than i’ve learned in years.
@chvnnie - this year has put us through the most taxing trials i think we’ve faced ever but i’m so so so happy we ended up okay on the other side. i truly love you, one of my best friends on this planet, i am so happy to be by your side (though not physically).
@woahfruity - you know. you know. you’re one of the brightest lights i’ve ever held i cannot ever thank the fates enough for bringing us together. i never thought i would be able to create such a beautiful connection with someone the way i have with you.
@isilentprincess - i’ve never had a sister but if i did i’d want it to be you. you’re my comfort, a place where i can go if i’m upset or i’m happy or i’m feeling anything and you’re always right there tethering me down.
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Watched Across the Spiderverse, got hooked, wrote fic, made fanart that went with fic. Tale as old as time. Enjoy!
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Dammit.
Dammit!
Gwen threw her mask off on what should have been Miles’ bed. Her Miles’ bed. But it wasn’t, just like all the other ones she’d tried and tried for hours. It wasn’t like Miles would only be in his room, or his apartment. He could be anywhere in New York. God, he could be anywhere in New York. How could she have been so stupid?
Before, she could sense him from universes away. Now, she couldn’t sense him at all.
You were right, Gwen.
You should have never come to see me.
Gwen bit back tears. The look he’d given her before falling off the highway in Nueva York was burned into her memory. He was mad at her, he had been betrayed by her, and she couldn’t fucking find him. He was in danger, and she would be the last person he would reach to for help.
Bzzzzzzzzzz.
She jumped out of her stupor. This was a familiar spidey-sense-buzz, Miles was here! He—
Wait.
No, he wasn’t.
Her heart sank. It was close, tantalizingly close. But it wasn’t Miles. This was a different spider’s signal.
“—someone in there.”
And they were coming this way.
Though it was late, she couldn’t just blend into the shadows. Miles’ room was all packed up, his furniture wrapped in plastic, his action figures stuffed into boxes. It wasn’t like she could turn invisible. New plan: she scrambled to the window, fiddling for the lock — and came up empty. But this window opens. She’d opened it before, and this was the exact same— no, it wasn’t.
“—my old room—”
It wasn’t the exact same place, it was an alternate dimension. Of course. And in this specific dimension, the windows don’t open, so she’ll never be able to make it out before—
“Excuse me?”
BZZZZZZZZZZZ!!
Her fellow spiders had arrived. Standing in the doorway was a woman in her late twenties, with longish bleach-blonde hair, and a man about the same age with thick locs and glasses. Who looked exactly like Miles.
A little too much like Miles.
“Whoa.” The man looked shocked. “Another Spider-Person! You look… exactly like Gwen. Why do you look exactly like Gwen? Did you have a sister you never told me about, or—”
“No, of course not.” The woman — also Gwen, said, assessing the situation. She was also named Gwen? She kinda looked like her… wait, if he looked and sounded a lot like Miles, and she looked and sounded a lot like Gwen, then…
Oh, god. It was her and Miles. From an alternate dimension.
“I’m not crazy, right? You see it too?” The man, no, Other-Miles, gestured with his hands just like her Miles did. Does.
“Yep,” she said. She turned her attention back to Gwen. “Sorry, are you… me?”
“Yes! And also no.” She shuffled her feet, not knowing what else to do. “So, yeah. I am Gwen Stacy, Spider-Woman… from a different dimension.”
A moment of silence. They looked at each other. They looked back at her. “Oh. Okay.”
“Wow, you guys are remarkably chill with this.”
Other-Miles put a hand around Other-Gwen’s waist. A pang of feelings hit Gwen’s gut like a brick. He could just do that in this universe? “Well,” he said, “we’ve been Spider-Man and Woman for like… twelve years now, so we’re used to weird shit.”
“Yep.”
“Cool, um… so, I’m sure you both are wondering why I’m here right now,” she said with half-assed finger guns.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Okay, so.” She sat crosslegged on the room’s bed. “Multiverse is real. A bunch of Spider-people from a whole bunch of universes got together to protect the multiverse.”
Other-Miles sits beside her. “And they didn’t invite us?”
…
Even he got a watch?
God, even though he’s half-joking, Other-Miles’ questioning almost makes Gwen burst into tears. Of course every multiversal version of Miles Morales wants to be invited. Wants to be visited. Wanted to know why his friends didn’t visit.
Other-Gwen raises an eyebrow. Gwen swallows hard, willing her eyes to stop burning. “Only issue, the leader of this alliance is this guy named Miguel, who is insane. He’s so scared of disrupting the multiverse, when it’s really this guy, Spot, who does it with his portals. Spot is this villain guy, by the way. Ruptures holes in space-time. Anyway, Miles…”
Other-Miles squints quizzically. She swallows hard. “My Miles isn’t even from my dimension. I accidentally got launched into his through science shenanigans, we met, and we just… clicked.”
Other-Gwen sits at Other-Miles’ feet, holding his hands. “That sounds awfully familiar.”
He laughs. Gwen hurts a little more.
“But we were separated. Each back to our own universe. Anyway, months pass. My dad tried to… arrest me after I revealed my spider-ness to him, and I was terrified, but Miguel took me in. I got a watch that let me transport between universes, and… and I wanted to visit Miles so badly… but I didn’t.”
Gwen covered her mouth and turned away. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
“Why not?” It was Other-Gwen. She'd laid a hand on her knee, ready to listen.
God, she's a saint.
“Because Miguel said he was an anomaly, and I wasn’t allowed to,” Gwen said, choking up. “He wasn’t supposed to be Spider-Man in his universe, even though he’s a great Spiderman.” Her floodgates open. “Like, he’s just so kind, and gentle, and he puts other people before himself, sometimes too much, and he’s just so sweet.”
Gwen sobbed for a moment. She caught the two of them exchanging another glance. They each took one of her hands, and Other-Miles slides off the bed to match his partner.
“And I had that watch for months and I didn’t visit him. Then, when I finally did, I didn’t tell him why I didn’t visit, or that I was actually on a mission or anything. I just showed up, and, and he looked so happy, but when he stood up to Miguel and stuff he found out everything, and he, he…” Gwen wiped her tears on her shoulder. “You should have seen how hurt he looked. I’ve given him so much pain. I even chased him, tried to get him put in jail because he was an anomaly, and that’s just what happens to anomalies. He was one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and I just… I just chased him. Didn’t go to him when he needed me most, didn’t support him when he needed me most, and now, he’s somewhere in the multiverse, and he’s in danger, and I can’t find him, and I don’t know if he’d even want me looking for him!”
Gwen ripped her hands from theirs and pounded the bed before curling into a ball and grabbing her hair. “I’m such an idiot. I… I don’t know where he is, or if he’s safe or anything. Maybe he won’t even talk to me…”
In every other universe, Gwen Stacy falls for Spider-Man.
Whether she meant falling to her death or falling in love, she wasn’t sure.
And, in every other universe, it doesn’t end well.
No, it certainly didn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” Other-Miles said after a little while. “C’mere.”
Then, Other-Miles and Other-Gwen took her by the forearms, pulled her off the bed, and into a hug.
Gwen couldn't help but collapse.
After so many hours of tension, Gwen finally relaxed. Into the hug, and into her sobs. They just held her and held her as she cried and cried. Something inside Gwen rejected this. She doesn’t deserve kindness, not after everything she’s done. Miles needs this hug much more than she does. Wherever the hell he is.
If he lets her, she would want to hug him exactly like this.
Other-Gwen rubbed circles on her back. “You must have been holding onto this for a long time. You must be so scared.”
Gwen just nods.
Other-Gwen leans out of the hug. “Why don’t we figure it out over some tea?”
Gwen wiped away her tears, finally taking in the world around her. “Isn’t it, like, midnight for you guys right now?”
“Nah, it’s about eleven.” Other-Miles hopped to his feet and twirled towards the door, finger-guns blazing. “Don’t worry, I’ll make the two of us decaf.”
————————--
“Kingpin brought you to his world?” Other-Gwen said, listening intently. The two of them had insisted she stayed for a while and tell them her whole life story, despite her protests that she clearly must keep going, and no, she’s not going to burn out, thank you very much.
“Yep! I mean, he ran the supercollider. He didn’t mean to bring me in. Anyway, somehow, when I was launched from the portal, I emerged into Miles’ dimension a week before the collider had even run.”
“You time-travelled?” Other-Miles’ voice echoed from the kitchen.
“I guess? I still have no idea how it happened. But I appear in this new dimension, and, of course, I have no idea what happened or what to do. So, I let my spidey-sense guide me.”
“Spideysense?” Other-Gwen asked.
From the kitchen: “I told you that was a good name for it!”
“Yeah, the entire rest of the Spiderverse calls it spidey-sense.”
“Fine, you win this one. We’ll call it spidey-sense.” Other-Gwen sighed. “Am I the only one who feels like this is ridiculous?”
“Yup,” he said, popping the p. “Continue, little Gwen.”
“Little Gwen?”
“Yeah, to differentiate."
“I’m not little,” she said with a huff. “I’m sixteen.”
“Well, I’m twenty-five, so… little Gwen.” She patted her head.
Is it too early for me to want her to adopt me so BADLY?
“You were saying, you travelled back in time, didn’t know what to do,—”
“Yeah, and so, I let my spidey-sense guide me to this one hoity-toity academy in Brooklyn… you guys have Brooklyn, right? Yeah, so I’m just at this academy and…” She tucked some hair behind her ear. “I meet him. Miles. He was funny and kind, and… like I said, we just clicked.”
“And, like I said, sounds awfully familiar.” she said, smiling. “How long have you guys been together for?”
“Oh! Um, we’re not actually together together, y’know? We’re more… friends right now, we haven’t really, um…” her face felt really hot all of a sudden. “Are you two… dating?”
“Dating? We’re not dating.”
Gwen felt utterly stupid. Then why were they living together? In Miles’ parent’s apartment, no less? Other-Gwen brought her hand up beside her face and wiggled her fingers, showing off a beautiful ring on her—
Oh.
Oh.
“You two are MARRIED?!” Gwen still felt stupid, just in a different way. “You guys can just… live together.”
“Yeah.”
“And have been for a long time.”
“Our second anniversary is in a month.”
“Without any tragic consequences.”
Other-Gwen raised an eyebrow. “…yes.”
So, all this time, there was a universe where Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales, Spider-Man, lived happily ever after? Where Gwen Stacy survived long enough to get married? Where she never had to worry about being too close to somebody, as it would inevitably end in tragedy?
She hadn’t realized she started crying again until Other-Gwen pulled her in. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Gwen opened her mouth to speak but figured it wasn’t very helpful to tell this Gwen that most of the multiverse’s Gwen Stacies are dead. “I don’t know,” she settled with, “everything.”
The electric kettle let out a chorus of dings from the kitchen. “Well, if you’re crying at the thought of us getting married,” said Other-Miles, grabbing various tea supplies from the cupboards, “Imagine being me, at the end of that aisle, realizing I was about to marry that goddess of a woman right there.”
Other-Gwen smiled and rolled her eyes. “Honey!”
“What? You were there! I was blubberin’ like a baby! I was tryin’ to hold myself together during the vows but I was really falling apart—”
Gwen slapped a hand on her mouth to stop another sob, which, of course, didn’t work. They were married. They’d made vows to each other. All her guilt somehow swirled into pure heartache.
“Aw, c’mere.” Other-Gwen put her arms around her again.
Other-Miles appeared with two mugs. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel upset.” He handed her one. “Here.”
Gwen hesitated. “Is this—”
“English Breakfast with a spoonful of honey?”
“How did you know?”
He only smiled. “Plus a squeeze of lemon juice.”
“Why not milk?” Gwen smirked. “I usually have milk?”
Other-Gwen put a hand on her shoulder somberly. “You’re gonna want to lay off the milk around now. Your gut will thank you.”
“But I’m not lactose— I’m not lactose intolerant.”
Other-Gwen grimaced. She brought her voice down to a whisper, “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”
Gwen took a moment of silence for all the cheeses, yogurts, and other treats she’d have to discontinue from her diet. Then, she realized that was stupid and there were bigger things at stake here.
They must have also gotten that memo. “Okay,” said Other-Miles, “What’s the plan here, little Gwen?”
She took a sip of her tea. It was perfect. “So, Margo, a.k.a. Spiderbyte, a.k.a. Tech Wiz Extraordinaire, is trying to remotely gain access to the Go-Home Machine’s history in order to find out where Miles went. In the meantime, the group of us have split up in an effort to find him more manually. As evident, it hasn’t worked. So, we’re just gonna keep hoping through universes until we find him.”
“That’s a good plan…” he said, “I think, I don’t know a few of those words. I was thinking more about the plan of talking to your Miles.”
She sighed. “Yeah, that’s the part I’m sort of dreading.”
“Forgive us for getting to the personal side, but you can’t blame us for really hoping you two work out.” Other-Gwen put down her mug, then clapped her hands. "So, you kept things secret from him. That’s in the past. Can you change the past?”
“…No.”
“What can you change?”
Gwen sighed. “The future.”
“Exactly. I know it’s difficult not to— did you just roll your eyes at me?”
“No, it’s just—”
“Just what?” Other-Gwen raised an eyebrow. It was the Jessica-Jones look, the Rio-Morales look, the look that burned into you from the inside out.
Gwen pulled into herself. “It’s just that… I don’t know, everyone keeps telling me that. But it doesn’t mean it works.”
“You sure you don’t want to give it another try?”
“Ugh, I’ve already given it a thousand tries.”
Other-Gwen opened her mouth to reprimand but stopped herself with a deep breath. “Okay, if that won’t work, let’s try a different approach. Let’s look at apologizing like it’s…” She scanned the room for inspiration, then lit up. “Like it’s a ballet!”
She took Gwen’s hands and yanked her to her feet. Twenty-five-year-old Gwen Stacy may have been stockier, but boy, was she buff. Are those the biceps I’m gonna have when I get older? Gwen thought. Damn.
“Okay. Imagine you’re onstage, or in the studio, whatever makes you more comfortable.”
Gwen started stretching from top to bottom in a routine she’d done a million times. She hadn’t done ballet in a while, being Spider-Woman and all. It felt nice to return to some sense of normalcy.
“We’re gonna get into first.” Other-Gwen put her shoulders back and heels together. “After all, what’s the first step of ballet?”
Gwen mirrored her pose. “Getting a good physical therapist.”
“Hardy har. What’s the second step of ballet, then?”
“Having confident feet.”
“Right. ‘Cause if you don’t know where your feet are…”
“You’ll never make it as a dancer.”
Other-Gwen broke from her refined pose. “…that’s the way your teacher phrased it?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“That’s sad. Anyway, it’s your foundation. You need’em, otherwise, you’re not going anywhere. It’s the same with apologizing,” she said, putting her feet in second position and fixing her posture. “Let’s establish the facts, let’s plant our feet. What are the facts behind this?”
Gwen moved to second position. “I hurt Miles.”
“Try a different fact. Try third. What happened?”
To third. “I was accepted into the Spider Society, and got a watch with the ability to transport to multiple universes, including his. But when I got the watch, I was told not to visit, as he was a threat to the multiverse. So I didn’t — for months.”
“Move to fourth.”
To fourth. “When I finally got a mission to Earth-1610, his universe, I broke protocol and visited him. But I didn’t tell him I was on a mission, or that he was deemed an anomaly, or,” to fifth, “that someone close to him was supposed to die, and he was supposed to let it happen.”
“He was supposed—” Other-Gwen’s eyes widened. “You didn’t even tell us that happened. That’s fucked. Sorry, screwed up.”
“You don’t have to— yeah.” Gwen pliéd from fifth. ”I can’t believe I didn’t tell him. Every single person in the Spider Society, including me, believed that death had to happen for the multiverse to stay together, and he was the only person who fought against it.”
“Can confirm that that’s seriously fucked up,” said Other-Miles, not looking up from his sketchbook. “Oh, by the way, I just got this out, I hope you don’t mind. Yeah, totally fucked. I’d do the same if it were me.”
Other-Gwen moved back to first. “Did you try and stop him?”
She sighed. “Yes. Because I thought that if I didn’t, the multiverse would fall apart. Which it wouldn’t, I see how little sense it makes now.”
“Sounds like you’re ready to set it up for the pirouette,” Other-Gwen said with a small smile, bringing a foot forward. “Remember, the guilt may be eating you up from the inside, but you hurt him. Not that your feelings don’t matter, they absolutely do. It’s just that his feelings are the ones being prioritized right now.”
“So, something like…” Gwen brings her foot forward to match. “I wanted to protect you, but, in doing so, I made you feel unwanted. No, not unwanted. I made you feel betrayed, alone, and not good enough.”
“Okay, now you follow through.”
She sets up for the pirouette. “I didn’t mean to make you feel this way—”
“Try it again. Put his feelings first.”
Gwen got ready for another pirouette. But she couldn’t continue. “…I don’t really know what to say.”
“Just follow through with what you said before. Do another spin.”
“Uh… I made you feel terrible about yourself, and that wasn’t okay.” She touched down from the pirouette and began doing all kinds of jumps and footwork, letting her muscle memory lead the way. “You don’t deserve that. You deserved to know the truth about everything from the start. You deserved a civil conversation on an equal playing field about what was going to happen. You deserved to have a say.”
Other-Gwen backed away, leaving the living room floor to her variant. Gwen fell into the routine from one of her old shows — step, touch, kick, touch. “I’m sorry, Miles, for everything. For not telling you what I should’ve.” Step, step, jump. “For not considering your point of view.” Step, jump. “For not believing you.” Step, touch, step. “For betraying your trust when you needed it most.”
…
Other-Miles and Other-Gwen looked on. “Well,” Other-Gwen said after a moment, “where’s the rest of the routine?”
“Oh, uh,” Gwen said, falling from her practiced pose, “after this is the leap. Where I jump to my dance partner and they catch me. Oh my God, wait. Wait, wait.”
“What?”
“That’s such a neat coincidence. A leap at the end. A leap of faith.”
Other-Miles gasped. “That’s such good symbolism! The leap of faith! ‘Cause this whole thing is a— whoa.”
“You do leap at the end of this, don’t you? Well, just remember. The dance partner, in this case, is you.” Other-Gwen put a supportive hand on her shoulder. “You’ve got to remember to catch yourself on the way down. You’re not a monster. You’ve made a mistake, but you’re not a terrible person. That is evident by how you’re working on yourself and making a promise to change your behaviour later.”
“Wow,” Gwen said. “Where’d you learn all this?”
“Therapy.”
“Oh.”
“Also,” said Other-Miles, “give him some time to figure it all out. Don’t expect an answer right away.”
“You can afford therapy for the both of you? In NYC?”
“Eh, we kinda flicker in and out when we can.” He put down his sketchbook. “It’s more like I like having time to work my thoughts out, and… y’know, I’m Miles, he’s Miles.” He splayed his fingers and mashed them together to emphasize his point of being one and the same.
“That is helpful. Thank you.” She took a deep breath in. “Thank you both, honestly, so much. I feel a lot better now and am filled with a lot less dread.”
“Hooray for less dread!” Said Other-Miles from the couch. He was back to being nose-deep in his sketchbook, felt-tip-pen behind the ear and everything.
Gwen smiled. Some things never change.
“Well, little Gwen,” Big Gwen said, ruffling her hair, “You got any more personal problems you need help working out, or do you just want to sit and finish your tea?”
She plunked herself back on the couch. “I don’t know, do you guys have any more… helpful pieces of advice? I guess?”
“Hm…” Other-Gwen picked up her tea and took a sip. “Here: It’s Mr. Morales and Mrs. Morales. Until at least a year of dating."
“Yeah, Gwennie found out the hard way that you don’t casually call my parents by their first names. They’re kinda sticklers for that.” He took his brush pen out from behind his ear and put the cap on it. “You haven’t met them yet, right?”
She pursed her lips. “No, I haaaaaaaave.”
“And did you—“ he said. Gwen nodded. “Oh. Oh no.”
Other-Gwen was quick to stop that negative thought spiral. “Hey, don’t worry, don’t worry. There’s still plenty of time for a better impression, so just apologize the next time you see them and it should all turn out okay.”
“I have another question, kind about that, but it may be a bit weird.”
“Ask away.”
"Are they — the Moraleses — both… alive in your universe? Like, why do you guys have their place?”
“God, little Gwen, how has your universe been treating you? Yes, they’re both alive. My dad was caught in some rubble one time, but he’s fine now. He just needs a wheelchair to get around, so the elevator breaking down every now and again wasn’t just an inconvenience anymore.”
“But by the time that happened, we’d been talking about moving in together anyway, so they just moved downstairs.” Her smile softened. “You can go say hi to them if you want, they know about the Spider stuff.”
“And is my dad— our dad— forget it. Is Captain Stacy alive?”
“Captain Stacy? Pffft.” Other-Gwen rolled her eyes. “He’s a math teacher.”
Gwen’s head was spinning now. Not only was there a universe where her and Miles were living together, happily married, but Captains Morales and Stacy were alive.
Miguel’s theory was bullshit.
Miguel’s theory was bullshit!
“What theory? What’s wrong?” Said Other-Miles, grabbing her forearm.
Shit. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Her mind had been suitably blown tonight, but she didn’t want this Miles to know his father was supposed to die, or tell this Gwen their relationship working out perfectly was a statistical miracle.
But they both were looking at her expectantly, with all the openness in the world. Maybe these two didn’t need to beat up their villains. Maybe they just talked them out of it.
But before Gwen could explain everything, her watch dinged, with a message.
From Margo.
“She’s found him! Earth-42!” She jumps from the couch and begins fiddling with Hobie’s watch.
“They found him?”
BWOOSH! A collage-like portal appears in front of her. “Yep!”
Other-Miles and Other-Gwen ignore all the swirling junk and newsprint that used to be their living room. They just stand and look at her.
“What?”
Other-Gwen smiles sheepishly. “Can we get one last thing before you go?”
“I guess, uh-OOF!” They pull her in for one more hug.
“Sorry, couldn’t letcha leave without one,” she says.
He gives her a kiss on the forehead, and they both let go. “Good luck out there, little Gwen.”
Gwen smiles. “Thank you for the tea. And everything else.”
Other-Gwen gives her a two-fingered salute. “No problem, Spider-Woman.”
“Now, go kick some ass!”
“Miles.”
“And give a meaningful apology. But don’t forget to kick ass on the way,” he said with a wink.
Gwen snorts. “Of course.”
She gives her multiverses selves a wave. God, this day has been wild. She leaps into the portal headfirst. She leaps like she’s onstage in a ballet, performing a routine she’d rehearsed thousands of times. She leaps with the knowledge that her dance partner will be right there to catch her.
In every other universe, Gwen Stacy falls for Spider-Man.
And, in every other universe, it is beautiful.
———————--
Both of them wait until the portal’s been closed for a few moments before saying anything.
The living room is a mess. The door to Miles’ old room is open. There’s an extra mug on the ottoman.
Other than that, there’s no record that all that was all real.
“What the fuck,” is all she can say.
Miles flops on the couch. “Oh my God, Gwen.”
“What the… even for Spider-people standards, that was— whew! That was so weird!”
“Gwen—”
“There’s another you, and another me, and we’re teenagers, and angsty as hell, and there’s a whole bunch of other Spiderpeople, some fuck named Miguel who’s screwing it all up, a- and the multiverse is collapsing?” She sighed. “Also, the multiverse is real, that’s new.”
“…Gwennie?”
Miles was looking up at her with those puppy-dog eyes — the same look when he first told her he wanted to marry her, and when he did marry her — a look with so much love it almost made her sick.
It didn’t take much these days.
“What’s wrong, honeybun?” She sat down next to him, and their arms gravitated around each other. Just like flips and death-defying maneuvers, having each other close was an instinctual reflex.
He let the silence hang as his eyes grew glossy. He grabbed his sketchbook and passed it to her.
Inside was a pen-and-marker sketch of her and Little Gwen. They were in matching poses, mid-pirouette-prep. He’d perfectly captured the warm moment — not that she didn’t think he could. Her thoughts about his art were what she always thought.
“Amazing, just amazing.” She turned her head up to him. “What’re gonna call it?”
He leaned back to look at her. “What about The Moment I Fell in Love With My Wife All Over Again, ink on paper.”
“You say that every time!” She said, giggling.
“And I mean it every time! I’m serious, I…” he waited for her to calm down, then quickly realized it was to no avail. “I was watching you two from the couch, and you just looked like a natural up there. Helping her with stuff, talking her through it, speaking her language…”
He rested a hand on her stomach. “And I guess it just hit me, like… that’s gonna be you and me… forever… in like, what, half a year?”
“Yeah, it is.” She kissed him on the nose. “And don’t discredit the job you did out there.”
He chuckled. “I mean, if a Miles had come through the portal I could have been a little more helpful…” He closed his sketchbook. “But it was a Gwen. And she needed a Gwen.”
The sun had long since set over the Brooklyn skyline. It was there, out the window, where the portal once stood. The day had been fairly normal until Little Gwen had showed up, but it ended like so many days did — with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her waist.
“God,” said Miles, in that low whisper that spelt safety, “I think I could make a million paintings about how I feel about everything and you right now, and it wouldn’t nearly be enough.”
She squirmed to one side to get a good look at him. “Wow, Miles Morales." She poked him on the nose. “Do you have a crush on me?”
He got a sly look on his face before saying, “Abso-lute-ly, I do,” and burying her face in kisses.
#gwiles#ghostflower#atsv#spiderverse#across the spiderverse#atsv fic#atsv fanfiction#atsv fanart#long post?#longishpost#+4k words
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Chapter Ten
Masterlist
Damian wondered if it would be okay to give into the urge to tackle Danny for cuddles now. He’d held back during the entire plane trip back, and he had snuggled with his mother rather than Danny when he’d found where they’d been fighting. He’d spent way too long pretending that he didn’t know such an important person in his life, and it was getting hard, he could practically feel himself vibrating in place. Damian was staring at Danny as he tried to figure it out, even though he knew that he could be considered rude for doing so.
Nellie was curled into one side, so the other was open for snuggling and there was enough room on the couch. Finally after twelve centuries, it was only five minutes according to his internal clock, Danny noticed him staring and smiled an okay. Still, Damian waited until Nellie gave her consent too before diving at Danny.
There were gasps around the room, and Damian heard at least one person yell his most common nickname in the tone that said they thought he was about to hurt somebody. He ignored all of them in favor of finally, finally, curling up into Danny’s side, one arm reaching behind them to tangle his fingers with Nellie’s. Damian’s eyes slipped closed as he let out a noise of contentment, but he knew that there were shocked looks directed at him from almost every member of his family. It wasn’t his fault that acting like the well adjusted person he used to be would have doomed the world to ending, so he didn’t feel like the gazes were quite warranted.
“So. How about I start out with a brief backstory and then we can get into your questions?” Danny’s voice sent soft rumbles through Damian with how close he was to them. It made Damian let out another sound filled with how content he was to be right where he wanted to be.
“That would be acceptable.” Father’s voice was tense enough that Damian knew him being so close to someone Father considered an unknown probable threat wasn’t giving everyone else the same comfort it was giving him. Oh well.
Danny took in a deep breath, telling Damian which story they were going to tell before they even started. “This is not the first life we’ve lived together. At first, we didn’t really know each other. Tim and I were online friends who discussed superheroes, but we didn’t know each other irl, we didn’t want to. In those days Amity Park, my hometown, was a neighboring city to Gotham, only about an hour or so away. I was adopted at around the age of ten by the Fenton family, in that life at least. I met Jason about eight years later when a government agency picked up signs of contamination on both of us. They called us ghost scum even though the actual term coined by the species we were technically a part of is Existences. Jason and I had both died at least once, brought back at different times and in different ways, but it meant we showed up on their scanners.”
“They’re called the GIW and they’re nearly nonexistent.” Nellie sounded sleepy, but Damian refused to open his eyes to double check.
“Yes, I was getting to that, but thank you.” Danny was surely smiling at Elle, but Damian knew it would drop as soon as the story continued, this was a hard time to relive for all of them who were there and remember. “The GIW did horrible experiments on us with a secondary purpose of killing us eventually. One of the worst things they did was make us believe we were being rescued utilizing some sort of hallucinogen that would make us see and hear whatever we wanted to see and hear then pretending to break us out only to punish us for attempting to escape. It took too long for us to be found, so by the time a real breakout was actually happening-”
“Jason flinched at his own guns.” Damian interrupted, finally opening his eyes to stare at Jason as the memory of that day played in his head. “He only realized it was a real gun when he used it to save us from an agent who was sneaking up on us. The hope and fear that lit up his face at that moment will always stay with me. No one got mad at me when I started to use excessive force, mainly because they were too busy doing the same. By the time we realized Da and Pops were gone, we’d basically destroyed the entire base, leaving the crippled remnants of their agents behind.” Damian saw the horror in Jason’s eyes, and all it did was remind him of that fateful day.
Danny ran their fingers through his hair, and he let it relax him enough for his eye to drift closed, leaning into the point of contact. “We didn’t fully trust that it was actually real, so Jason and I ran to Clockwork and Frostbite, two Existences who live in the dimension all Existences can call home, the Infinite Realms. We stayed there for a couple months to a couple years, time is hard to judge around Clockwork. When we got back, we couldn’t be separated from each other for too long because that typically meant the next experiment would be absolutely awful. Jason and I lived that life to an end that was a long time coming, dying side by side in the same way we’d always lived. It was a good life. Jack and Maddie were good in that one, we managed to rescue Talia from the mind control and brainwashing she was under, and we lived a full life that was full of love and joy.”
“If only it could have lasted into the next.” Elle’s voice was so miserable that Damian scooted closer to Danny to tangle the fingers of their spare hands together, giving his precious ghoul as much comfort as he could.
“Elle is right, the next life was absolutely awful. Damian was never born because Talia died early, Tim died as a tiny child, almost everyone we knew and loved were dying left and right. A combination of having to personally see most of those deaths, Fear Toxin, Joker Venom, and being constantly dipped into the Lazarus Pit drove the Dick of that life to such insanity he eventually blew up the entire universe, forcefully making everyone in that universe move on. Jason and I remembered our first life for the entirety of our second, but I didn’t remember either life we’d lived until I reached what I think is eighteen years of mortal life and full maturity as an Existence. Existences don’t age or count maturity in the same way that mortals do, so Elle is technically my adult child even though she’s only about sixteen-ish in mortal years.”
Elle hummed. “Jack’s a piece of shit in this life though.”
Danny groaned playfully. “You’re so lucky that you can swear because you weren’t there when most of the town got soul cursed because of that stupid wish.”
“What, you gonna tell me I’m strawberry crepe grounded because you’re jealous I can say fuck?” Elle was probably smirking, if the teasing frame of voice was anything to go by. Damian just stayed floating in the void of black behind his eyes, letting the voices of his loved ones wash over him as the sense of peace rocked him to sleep so suddenly that he barely registered when it happened.
~`~`~
“I’ve never seen Demon Brat go to sleep like that before.” Jason’s voice was quiet and full of shock, managing to express himself while still making sure he didn’t wake his brother up.
“You mean you don’t remember him sleeping like this before, just like you don’t remember him ever calling you Pops before.” There was a slight smirk on Danny’s face that Jason saw in the corner of his eye as he kept staring at Damian, half expecting him to wake up because Danny hadn’t lowered their voice at all. “Don’t worry he won’t wake up.”
Dick shifted, drawing Jason’s attention to the stiff way he was sitting. “Why did he call you Da and Jason Pops?”
“Because that’s what I call them!” Nellie chirped.
Danny chuckled. “He married Nellie here in our first life, so we were his in-laws. Talia is his mother, Bruce is his father, Jason is his pops, I’m his da, and you, Dick, are his dad. He just didn’t have a chance to address you as such before falling asleep.”
“How does he remember? Is there a way that we could remember?” Tim sounded like he wanted to ask more, but Jason respected his ability to cut his questions off, staying silent because he didn’t think he could do the same.
“I think he made a deal with Clockwork to prevent the chaos of our second life, taking upon himself the burden of remembering for us. I don’t think he remembers the second, because I don’t know if he ever existed in the second. As for a way that you could remember… Jason will remember eventually, as soon as the Pit’s Influence finally leaves him behind. As for the rest of you… only if you become an Existence, of which there are many types. If you’re asking to see if you managed to solve your case before, you didn’t.” Danny looked so sad at the end there that Jason couldn’t help what blurted out of his mouth next.
“What happened to Tim with the twin case?”
Danny looked even closer to tears, and Jason felt like kicking himself at seeing that expression on their face. “He died.” Shock kept the room completely still and silent. “He didn’t share it, adding another massive project on top of his work in his civilian life and his vigilante life. The rest of you, not knowing what was bothering him and not wanting to push him too hard just tried to pick up the slack in a desperate attempt at giving him a break. It didn’t work. The more time he had off from his other obligations, the more he sunk into the twin case, but he never found anything.” The words poured out of Danny like a waterfall of agony, paralyzing everyone else in the room with the sheer depth and intensity of the feeling. “It.. It got to the point that we all tried to bench him, but he grabbed a spare suit and snuck out. On route to the Twin Case Safehouse, which is where I live now, he ran into the Joker, who killed him. We.” Danny paused, taking in a deep, fortifying breath that had Jason stiffening in fear for what would be said next. “We managed to keep Tim alive and back to the Cave. He was the right kind of personality and in the right kind of space to become an Existence after death, but he-” Tears started leaking from Danny’s eyes, as he broke off to do some calming breathing techniques. A minute of silence later, he picked the thread of the story back up again. “He said that he didn’t want to continue existing, that he didn’t deserve to, because he’d never finished his case. He said that the only solution he could come to is that his target was already dead and he refused to continue living in any way when they’d already passed into Limbo. He was the first to die.”
“Who else died to the Joker?” Bruce’s voice was quiet and fearful, yet steady, like he was horrified of the potential answers but needed to know regardless. Jason needed to know too, Danny had come home exhausted every time he’d been assigned to guard the clown. Jason needed to know how bad it was.
“Jason and I in our second life, Bruce, Tim, Dick, Duke, and Steph in our first life. He ordered the bomb set that killed Jazz, Tuck, Sam, and Jack in that first life as well. He was at least involved in the situations that killed most of you in the second life as well. He blinded Dick only a month before he killed him, so there’s that. He baited Scarecrow into the attack that killed Alfred. He tortured Jon into silence and a near coma, and he was at least part of a lot of the hero deaths that occurred in that first life, although most of those weren’t the most well known of heroes. Every time I see him, I refuse to give him any satisfaction, locking my emotions and feelings deep inside to present a blank mask to him all the while fighting back my natural instincts to kill him,” Danny’s face and voice were as dark as the topic, “To torture him and show him just what he put my family through in a life he no longer remembers, to show him what true fear really is, to make him the focus of every joke he once pulled, to-” Danny cut off when Damian stirred in his sleep, automatically brightening as he turned a little more towards Damian to pass their fingers through his hair again, muttering things that Jason couldn’t hear that caused Damian to sigh and relax back into sleep.
“We’re movin on from this topic. You guys can go discuss whatever ya want to in another room, but I’m gonna set this couch up inta the bed it can become and Ma, Damian, n I will be takin a nap. Don’t disturb us for your own safety, now shoo.” Nellie glared at them while flapping her hands until everyone had left and closed the door.
Jason was worried for Danny, that was a heavy topic and a heavy burden to carry. He was worried for Damian too, carrying the same weight for so long must have been exhausting. Talia was waiting for them in the sitting room that everyone settled into for the post questioning discussion. She took one look at their faces and gave them all an understanding smile.
“I remember everything too. Jason and Danny both needed a stand in to take the burden of remembering everything in order for this whole thing to work. Ask all your remaining questions to me, I’ll answer what I can.” At the disbelieving looks she received, she let out a short bark of laughter. “I swear on my loyalty to High King Phantom that I will not lie to any of you for this discussion.” The words sent a feeling of power through the room. “Believe me now?”
Taglist: @blacksea21090 @chrysanthemum9484 @samgirl98 @may-rbi @justwannaseesomebrozawa @serasvictoria02 @treepainting @fluffykster @enderglace @sigdexae @persephoneblackrose @angelofsongsoteira @lazy-bouqet @littlefeather345 @icedbluesoul @autumnwulf @thefearfullone @alixanterm @skulld3mort-1fan @dulceringo @vidimirrayne @betinaplayingwriter @the-legal-shipper @currant-owo @crystalqueertea @fisticuffsatapplebees @bugaboo25 @dannyphantomphan @botwadtict @kyrianclawraith @mnemovoid @lyra689 @demiourgias @d4ydr34min9 @idontgetpaidenoughforthisshit @emeraldcorpral @bobred18 @emergentpanda-blog @apointlessbox @pastalavistamf @v-inari @shadow-otaku20 @hellomygay
#ttac(wygiaf)#Damian Wayne#Jason Todd#danny fenton#danielle fenton#Talia al Ghul#bruce wayne#Tim Drake#dick grayson#we finally got some backstory in#DeadOnMain#dcxdp#dpxdc#jason todd x danny fenton#i've been wanting to do a chapter or segment from damian's perspective for a while#it finally felt like it fit#Reincarnation AU#we get some insight into why danny hates the joker so much#i don't blame him#danny definitely glossed over a lot of important details#he didn't really want to answer questions about it#i mean#who tells your family that doesn't remember you like you remember them that you aren't fully alive and that you are a king of the afterlife#that isn't quite the casual news he was trying to make his life out to be#poor damian had to be touch starved of his own choice this life#because clockwork told him it would kill the world if done at incorrect times
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There wasn’t much more he could say, really. He’d already been at it for hours, begging for his life, and by this point Emmett was getting bored. Earlier in the night, it had been fun, as it always was. The empty threats of, “They’ll find me,” he’d said with shaky words. “They’ll—they’ll fingerprint me.”
Emmett had smiled, drill in hand, pushing the button once, twice, just for fun. Just to see the way it made him jump. “They’ll be finding parts of you for years,” Emmett said. “But I promise you, your hands will not be included in that.” His victim paled, and Emmett’s smile grew. But now, hours after, the light of morning teased the horizon, and Emmett had a lunch meeting at twelve. He needed to get a move on.
“I think we’ve both had enough, don’t you?” Emmett asked casually as he picked up the ax that had propped against the steel table to his left. The man sat there slumped over as much as he could be while still tied to the chair, duct tape across his lips. He’d managed to get it off a little over an hour ago, breaking the seal on the corner with a particularly powerful scream after Emmett had broken his kneecap with a sledge hammer. He was broken now Emmett thought, which was okay. That’s how he preferred his victims. After the hours they’d spent inside the warehouse together, he’d expect nothing else, really.
“You’ve taken up enough of my time tonight,” Emmett accused, because it was his fault. It was always their own fault. He just wanted to take the time to make sure they got what they deserved, every time. He was nothing if not thorough. Holding on by the haft, he spun the ax back and forth in his hand, intentionally careless with it the second it swung remotely near his victim’s leg. The freshly sharpened bit embedded itself in the soft skin, and the man in the chair coughed out a groan, fresh blood seeping out his nose while tears fell from his eyes. “Whoops,” Emmett laughed as he met his clouded gaze. His expression shifted into an overexaggerated pout of pity, though he knew he’d never actually be able to feel sorry for him or any of the others. “Oh, you poor thing,” he cooed, crouching down quickly to crowd him, nudging aside his shattered leg without thought to help himself closer. His victim lurched back as much as he could until both the rope and wooden chair stopped him from moving. Even bent down, Emmett’s intimidating frame towered over him, and he smiled as he stroked a gentle hand down the side of his victim’s face as he shook, dirt speckled sweat beading up along his forehead.
He smiled at his reaction, seeing the fear in his eyes felt like he was injecting something directly into his veins. Emmett assessed him, a little sad at having to leave so soon, but knowing that he still needed time for clean up. He sighed theatrically, swinging the toe of the ax forward again, nicking his victim’s intact leg, just for fun. He knew he didn’t need any goodbyes as he held the handle firmly in both hands, swinging the weapon towards his throat like a baseball bat. It was almost a clean cut, but he’d done better. And in his early days, he’d definitely done worse. His head hung there, held on by threads of tendons and tissue, a shocked expression frozen on his face as a residual tear fell from his eye.
Emmett’s shirt was the first thing to go. It was useless, really, already being drenched in blood to care about it now, but it was part of the routine. Dismembering was always time consuming, but satisfying. He slid his earbuds in, unworried about the bloody fingerprints left behind as he pressed the side button to initiate songplay. A soft pattering filled his ears, along with the quick, friendly uptick of a guitar, followed soon after by bold trumpets. He closed his eyes, letting the upbeat song fill him, move him, a smile spreading hopelessly across his lips. Rivulets of blood dripped down his face and bare chest as he swayed elegantly back and forth as if at a ball, lost in the music. At the crescendo of the chorus, he took his second swing of the ax, slicing cleanly through still warm skin. As promised, he took his hands first, kicking them off to the side as a reminder to burn off the fingerprints once he had finished dismantling the corpse.
He swung the ax again, and again, and again, until his body ached from it. Until the body beneath him ceased to exist. Until he was drenched in the blood of this man who had the audacity to try to touch what he now considered his. The song was on an endless loop, replaying constantly as he worked away at ridding the scene of evidence. After hours, he gathered everything up in barrels, he made his way outside to his dug up kill kit, shuffling through the strewn about items for a rag to wipe his hands. He glanced over at the vats of hydrochloric acid behind him knowing his night wasn’t anywhere close to being done. His blood still hummed in his veins, high from the kill and the lingering scent of amber and vanilla from hours earlier. Closing his eyes, he basked in the break of dawn, listening as the early morning songbirds sweetly welcomed the light of a new day.
#( emmett // 01 )#( tw: t0rture // mild g0re // bl00d )#( sorry for the insane tags tumblr fought me )
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Year of the OTP - September 2023 - I Wrote This For You
("Meet the Family" has a...long draft I'm still not happy with after 2 years of Endwalker. So have some 885ish words of yearning instead.)
[A letter in nearly type-perfect cursive font, the envelope also containing a pressed white flower yet retaining its sweet scent, delivered surreptitiously via postmoogle to the top of a certain gunbreaker’s pack…]
This is not at all fair.
I toss and turn, staring into the darkened ceiling and wonder when I became so restless. So needy.
I sprawl across the mattress, too big for only myself, missing you. It’s only been hours since we parted, only last night that we held one another, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
It’s not quite an ache, but almost, and I’ve no other words to describe it, running up and down my arms, my legs. A need to be touching, to be holding—but there’s only empty air.
A very specific not-quite-heated-ache low in my abdomen, between my legs, a sensation that will not be sated except by your touch.
I roll over and bury my flushing face in a pillow.
I didn’t used to feel such things. I used to not understand what others meant when describing wants and aches and needs. It was surely an exaggeration. Hyperbole for poetry and songs.
Even when we first met, and others hurled themselves at you, insistent—even desperate—I rolled my eyes and thought they were overdoing it. Certainly, physical intimacy can be enjoyable, but so is a game of tag, or cards, or simply sitting together discussing a book. Handsome you are, but I was convinced they were playing it up to win your attention.
Then somewhere, somehow, though I didn’t mean to, along our long and winding way I fell for you. And it seemed as if my entire world shifted.
The gleam in your eyes, the crook of your smile, the gentle roughness of your hands, the steady beat of your heart in your warm chest when pulling me close. All of you is a conspiracy to rewire my every reaction.
I understand now what it means to melt after seeing the ways you look at me. You ask me to tell you what I want, voice low and rough, and the frisson it causes is not imaginary. It shivers through me now, even just imagining you leaning over my back, calloused fingers on my skin, puff of hot breath on my neck, the rumble in your voice pitched just so…
I flip over again. Still alone.
I could never be mistaken for wanton. There’s still much I don’t understand. I still need to be coaxed and encouraged because this is all so new and a little embarrassing and a lot messy and I worry my inexperience, my need for guidance, just isn't enough to keep you.
I’ve come to realize there are times you neglect your own wants and needs to tend to mine. And while I am grateful for your attention and your patience, I need your happiness too.
There’s my blush again, as I think about not just your happiness but your pleasure, in duet with mine. The clench of your fingers in my hair, the tension in your neck and jaw as you arch. The way you moan, or call my name.
Your pleased reactions please me. And gods, the thought of seeing, hearing, feeling them again brings a fresh wave of aching in my limbs, more heat pooling low.
I want you. I need you.
I didn’t used to feel this way.
I didn’t see you, after hours or days or weeks, and think about how much longer it will be until I can have you alone, and then in my bed. Until we’re holding, kissing, touching…
There’s so much more to us than this; after all this time, all we’ve been through together. Some days I only want to sit silently in the same room, each doing our own work or play, basking in your company, your presence in my life more than enough.
Then there are nights like this, when I realize oh no, it wasn’t hyperbole, wasn’t exaggeration. That another person, that you, can make me burn and those desires will be the most wonderful and terrifying sensations.
I miss you, though it’s barely been twelve hours since you kissed me goodbye.
And so, since I cannot sleep, here I am writing down all the ways you make me yearn.
How I am counting the time until I have you here again, wrapped in each others arms, breath catching as lips and fingers find those perfect spots we each know so well on one another’s skin, your voice rumbling in my ear, demanding I tell you what I need but it’s you, just you, moving against me, with me, in me, until we both sing.
I would never have written anything like this before you. I would never have dreamed of sending such words as a letter. But I need you to know how loving you has altered my internal chemistry, and that cannot wait until we are face to face once more.
For one thing, you know I will be too shy to say it aloud. I can see you in my mind’s eye, smiling as you imagine my blushing.
But we have ever connected over written words, so here are mine, for you to hold and read and reread and imagine me imagining you until we are together again.
#final fantasy xiv#lyn writing#lyn edits#YOTP 2023#thancred waters#thancred x wol#wolcred#shippy nonsense#Aeryn Striker#demisexual wol still isn't sure how this happened#but she's gonna roll with it anyway
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My labor, and my leisure too (pt. 2)
This is significantly longer than I'd planned this section to be, but I couldn't justify breaking it up. As before, unedited and un-beta'd. The next (and I think final) part is underway.
First part here
******
Was this how the kids had felt during the briefing? Banging their fists on the walls of her certainty, trying to find a way to break in? She missed that. She missed being inside the walls. Now there she was, trying to claw her way through to Nicky and Joe. And it wasn’t working.
After the initial shock subsided, she and the kids – the other kids, she felt like a frightened child again – barraged them with questions. Surely there were things they wanted to do. Surely they wanted more time. Hadn’t Nicky talked about looking forward to seeing Joe going grey, seeing his laugh lines deepen and spread? Hadn’t Joe spent centuries mapping out the house he wanted to build, on a real planet somewhere, with no vents or circuitry to worry about gumming up with graphite and charcoal dust? What about the garden they could grow once they didn’t have to move around all the time? What about the pets they could have? The kids? The lives? They could have another century, with modern technology. Wasn’t that worth something?
But they were… not unmoved, they were both crying openly. Unpersuaded. Nile was beginning to suspect, unpersuadable.
“That was only ever a fantasy,” Joe said. “A fun way to pass the time. We always knew that.”
Nicky added, “We have spent more of our lives in space than planetside, now. Where would we go? There is no home to return to. There is nowhere that could become home, without all of you with us.”
“But you can’t –“ Jerrah’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “You can’t have thought this through. It’s been less than twelve hours! You’re still in shock, you shouldn’t be making these kinds of decisions yet.”
“If it’s our time – “
“Don’t you dare,” Nile growled. “Don’t you fucking dare say that, Nicky. Not now, not here.” He bowed his head and held his hands up in surrender.
“Twelve hours is more than Lykon got,” Joe said quietly. “It’s more than Booker got.” God, Booker. For the first time in almost three hundred years, Nile was grateful for having lost Booker (relatively) young. She could not have borne his grief on top of her own.
Joe went on, “But you’re right, it doesn’t have to be decided right now. We’d be spending at least a few more days on planning anyway. And the optimal window isn’t for a couple of weeks.” He grinned with some of his usual sparkle and winked. “You’re stuck with us for a little while longer.”
“This is not the way we wanted to tell you. But we could not let you give up this mission, not when there’s another way.”
“Well there’s still some disagreement about whether that even counts as another way – “
“Enough.” Nile cut Lijie off sharply. “We’re tabling this for now. Jarrah, go back to your quarters and review my calculations. Maybe I missed something. Lijie and Gert, pull up the notes from when we first started planning this. See if anything we’ve learned since then gives us an option other than a direct assault. Use the dining room. You and I,” she said to Joe and Nicky, “have some more talking to do.”
The three kids stood up, reluctantly, from the circle on the floor they’d all ended up in. Nile could see each of them looking for excuses to stay. “Come on guys,” she said. “This is a lot to deal with, and we will keep discussing it, and we will work it out together, but sitting around crying isn’t going to do us any good right now. We’ve got work to do.”
Slowly, they shuffled out. Joe opened his mouth to speak, but Nile held up a finger to tell him to wait. When the door had closed and she judged that the kids were far enough away, she scooted across the floor, wedged herself between the two men, drew them close to her, and burst into tears.
“You assholes,” she said as she felt them mold themselves around her. “You absolute bastards.” This was how they (and Andy, Quỳnh, and Booker) had held her when her mother and brother died. When Andy, and then Quỳnh, and then Booker had died. When their hope of ever returning to Earth had died. They’d been with her through thousands of years of loss, theirs as well as hers, and she sobbed until she was hoarse.
"I'm not ready to be the oldest," she murmured into Joe's shoulder.
He stroked the fuzzy stubble on her head. "Yeah, you're only what, 2600 years old? 27? You're just a baby."
A thousand times as old as she'd been when she first became immortal, and she felt no more prepared to handle this than she'd felt then. "Yes," she said, "just a baby. So I'm not ready. I'm not ready to be the only one who remembers Earth the way it was. I'm not ready to be the only one who remembers Andy. I'm just...not ready. To lose you. I can't do it."
She felt the press of lips against the top of her head. It could have been either of them. I'll have to be strong for the kids, she thought. I'm not going to have anyone whose first instinct is to take care of me, instead of expecting me to take care of them. I'm so old, we're all so old, it shouldn't matter. But it does, it still does.
"I've never been ready," Nicky admitted. "Not for any of it. Not for Andy or Quỳnh. Certainly not for... I still wake up sometimes and forget he's gone.”
"What happened to all that 'if it's their time' business?"
He laughed ruefully, and she felt the breath of it on her ear. "That is what I believe. It isn't always what I feel. And I remember my first death. I'd known I would die there, but when the moment came..."
"That animal need," said Joe. "Wanting more, always more. Of life, of feeling, of the people you love. You'd think it would be sated after living so long, but you just get more things you want to keep doing."
"So how can you just... throw it all away?" How many times had she questioned them in that plaintive tone? How do you, how can you, how could you. Needing answers about immortality that she wouldn't be able to understand for centuries to come.
"We're not throwing anything away. We're uh... " Joe screwed up his face, looking for the right word. "We're donating it. To people who need it more."
"The life we want to keep living is this life here," Nicky said, "doing what we have always done. Not a house and a garden, with neighbors we can't relate to and children we'd have to lie to. And there is no way to last another hundred years doing that. So..." He shrugged.
"Dying with your boots on," Nile muttered.
"Precisely."
She sat up and leaned back against Nicky, rubbing her face. Joe patted her leg in the way that meant "it sucks and I'm sorry but it's time to get moving." Joe had a rich and complex lexicon of physical affection, and she'd been fluent in it for millennia. She wondered if she'd live long enough to forget it the way she'd forgotten American English.
He said, "It's a happy ending, really," and she wanted to argue with him. But what could she say? "It would be better if it was just one of you, so I wouldn't lose you both at once?" That had been their nightmare for thousands of years. And she knew full well that losing one meant losing the other in all the ways that mattered. "You should give up the things that matter most to you so I can put off feeling sad for a little longer?"
She sighed. "No it isn't. It's just the best one available. If there has to be one."
Nicky wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her shoulder. "Even for us, there has to be. Even when we aren't ready."
She closed her eyes and recited the lecture she'd given to each of the kids, more than once. "We do the things that have to be done, that no one else can do. It's all right to be scared - you can do it scared. It's all right not to feel ready - you can do it unready. You can do it grudgingly, resentfully, exhaustedly, sadly. But you've gotta do it. Because we fight for what we think is right, and the only thing we're less able to do than stay dead is walk away."
When she opened her eyes again, Joe's gaze was there waiting to lock with hers. "Only one part of that has changed, Nile. We still can't walk away."
You can do it unready. You can do it sadly. "Ok," she whispered. "Ok."
#the old guard#the old guard fanfiction#my fic#nile freeman#yusuf al kaysani#nicolo di genova#kaysanova
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All I Think About Now
Sebastian Sallow x Ominis Gaunt
Ominis enjoys Sebastion’s voice a little too much
tags: i changed their ages for the seventh years to make them 18+, voice kink, first time, smut, it’s quite long
MINORS DNI
—
Sebastian and Ominis are best friends.
This is given to everyone at Hogwarts. Where there’s Sebastian, there’s Ominis and where there’s Ominis, there’s Sebastian.
Ever since their first year at this school, they’ve been inseparable, doing anything and everything together, even if that means getting up to no good.
They first met when they were eleven and twelve—Ominis the older out of the two—when Ominis was crying under his bed sheets because he couldn’t see what the common room looked like. Sebastian dragged him in the main room late at night, sitting him down on the couch, and describing each and every detail of the room, right down to how many cracks were in the marble flooring.
It was kind, the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for Ominis, and since that night, he always followed the other around, listening to each description of the castle halls and classrooms Sebastian could give.
It's the third year when their friendship really bloomed. They found the undercroft together while exploring secret rooms of the castle, and they claimed it as their secret room to hang out and just be alone together.
It’s nice, they’re always together no matter what happens and nothing or no one can get in the way of their friendship. Well, almost.
Around seventh year, Ominis begins to realize some things about Sebastian. It’s something that he never really cared to notice in the last year or so, never thought to think about late at night or while he’s in the shower. And that thing is Sebastian’s voice.
It’s deeper, and it bugs the shit out of Ominis.
He can’t place when sweet copper turns into a brassy tone that’s rough and almost misplaced in the back of Ominis’ memory, but it’s taking up too much space in his head.
Part of him wants to know if his face matches his voice. Needs Sebastian to describe each and every feature of his face because he’s stuck with the same barely imaginable face from fourth year.
It has his mind spinning with thoughts. The silky prone that dips into his ears makes him shiver every day, and he always tries to keep Sebastian talking just so he can listen to that voice rumbling through his bones.
It bridges a one way street between him and Sebastian, the older reaching and reaching just to hear how pretty Sebastian’s voice has become.
All his life, he hasn’t been able to see, darkness waves over the gray skies of his eyes, so he’s always relied on another’s voice to etch out something recognizable. He knows Sebastian’s voice, of course, can pick it out from a crowd of students, and still can, it’s the shock of growth that reverberates through him.
They’re older now. Obviously things will change, but Ominis didn’t expect for Sebastian to be attractive. Ominis doesn’t even know why he feels this way, but he honestly can’t get enough.
Sebastian’s almost nineteen. They’re graduating Hogwarts soon, and all Ominis can think about is why he hasn’t felt this attraction sooner. Maybe he could have done something about it then. Probably not, he’s kind of a wuss.
“Sebastian!” Ominis calls out for him after class is out. He bumps into a few people, pacing forward with his wand out in front of him.
“Yes, Ominity?” He hears the deep voice rumble again.
He rolls his eyes. “I told you not to call me that.”
They begin to walk together, Ominis sticking close to Sebastian's arm as a safety gate for what his wand couldn’t see.
“So…” Ominis drawls, trying to think of something to talk about. “Your birthday is coming up?”
He can hear the smile in Sebastion’s voice as he laughs. “Yeah? What about it?”
“You’re turning nineteen!” Ominis shouts excitedly. “We have to do something to celebrate, of course.”
“Ominis, we’ve literally never done anything for my birthday besides hang out in the undercroft.”
“I know, but this is different,” Ominis groans. “Come on, Sebi, we have to do this.”
He felt the rise of shoulder, a huff and puff falling into the air. “Well, where exactly are we going to go, hm? The Three Broomsticks?”
Ominis shrugs. “I thought we could have a picnic date or something. Something nice.”
“Hold on,” Sebastian stops walking, “did you say date?”
“Yeah! Like a friend date!” He wants to die, embarrassment crawling up his spine as the words blurt out on impact. He’s so good at lying. “We can get some butterbeers, go to the woods, and just have a nice little drink by the lake.”
He hears Sebastion think on it, a little hum slipping into his ears before a loud gasp catches him off guard.
“Or,” he exclaims, “you could finally tell me where Salazar Slytherns scriptorium is? We can spend the day exploring!”
The request oddly hurt to hear, but he couldn’t argue with it. In the past, Ominis has always told Sebastion they shouldn’t go looking for it, that they shouldn’t be putting their noses somewhere they don’t belong because they were too young to understand it. Ominis didn’t need to risk putting them in danger for the sake of knowledge neither of them needed to know.
Although he knows where it is, he’s never had the same curiosity that Sebastian carries. Almost every witch and wizard is curious about the secrets of the dark arts, but Ominis has seen it first hand, and he can conclude that it’s not all that great.
“I don’t understand why you’re so obsessed with that place, Sebastian,” Ominis groans. “I’ve told you so many times that it’s dangerous and I’m—”
“Ominis.” The silky drawl of Sebastion’s voice cut him off. It was low and in tune with the darkness of his desires that hides in his brain until he’s alone with himself. “Please.”
“Oh my god,” Ominis rasps, flustered beyond words.
“Please, Ominis? For me?”
“Fine! Just shut up!”
Sebastian giggles childishly. “You can never say no to me, can you?” Ominis senses a sheepish grin. “Meet you in the Undercroft at three? We’ve got homework to do.”
Ominis nods with a frustrated sigh. “Bye, jerk.”
Ominis’ classes were done for the day. Sebastion still had two left to go since he decided to pick up a few extra classes before graduation, so Ominis heads to the undercroft early.
The candle light is a welcoming reminder of the security the undercroft brings. It’s a reminder of how important his friendship is with Sebastian, and the secrets that have been shared between the four walls. To Ominis, it’s quite enjoyable to stay here when he has nothing else to do.
He sits on the cot in the corner of the room, leaning against the cold, stone wall. With a sigh, he closes his eyes. His mind traces back to the conversation earlier, the sultry tone of Sebastion’s voice riveting through his nerves. Omnis almost hates how easy it is for Sebastion to wiggle his way in now.
Usually, once Ominis makes up his mind about something—like not wanting to explore the scriptorium—he sticks with it. But there was something about the way Sebastion coaxes his name in honey that makes him give in. He almost hates himself for being like this, because it’s new, and it scares him tenfold.
He has about two hours before Sebastion meets him again. He’s tired, so he lays down and rests.
“Ominis…” The sultry voice calls out to him. “Ominis, please.”
“Stop it,” Ominis says. The voice leans into his ear.
“But don’t you like this? My voice?”
“N-No…”
It tuts. “Now tell the truth.”
“Yes…”
“There’s a good boy.”
“Sebastion…stop it.”
Ominis shouts abruptly, waking up in a frenzied state. His heart is racing, and a sort of arousal breaks through his mind.
That’s never happened before.
“You okay, Ominis?” Sebastion’s voice echoes.
Ominis squeezes his eyes shut, letting out a deep breath to calm himself down. “Yeah…nightmare.”
It was far from the truth. But he obviously isn’t going to reveal to his best friend he was dreaming of Sebastian calling him a good boy. It gets stuck in his mind for a moment, a jolt of arousal coursing through his abdomen at the mere thought of it all.
“Why did you let me sleep?”
Sebastian shrugs. “You looked cute, I dunno.”
Ominis groans, his head pounding with tiredness. “Whatever…”
He lays on his back for a few moments, the boys sitting in comfortable silence. He’s never had a dream like that before, never wanted one either, because it’s going to be something he’ll think of from now on.
Fuck. What the hell is happening to him?
“You need help with homework?” Ominis asks, a poor attempt to distract himself, but it proves futile. Now he just wants Sebastion to stop talking.
“Nope! Finished all of it while you were sleeping.”
“Without my help?”
Sebastian laughs. “Yep! Guess I don’t need you that bad after all.”
“Oh please,” Ominis snorts, “you need me, you just don’t know it yet.”
They laugh, and it's quiet again.
Ominis doesn’t mind the silence—especially now—because it’s a sign of how much they don’t need to talk to enjoy each others company. But the dream keeps tormenting him.
Everything was black, but Sebastion’s voice was so strong and clear as day. He could almost feel the heat against his ear as if it was real, the vibrations of brassy tones crawling up his spine and slipping him into a coma of sensuality.
“There’s a good boy.”
He bites his lip, remembering the words that are going to haunt him forever. He wants to stop thinking about it considering Sebastion is in the same room as him, but right now, he can’t stop his mind from wandering off into the dark abyss.
He wonders how it would feel if it was a reality.
No, stop it, Ominis.
“What are you thinking about?” Sebastion’s voice slaps him with heat.
He’s next to his ear, whispering with amusement lacing his deep voice. Ominis gasps in surprise, not even hearing when Sebastian moved to his side.
“Nothing,” Ominis mumbles.
“Well, it’s obviously something, Omity.” Sebastion pokes his cheek playfully. “So, speak.”
It wasn’t demanding, but Ominis thinks it is, sugarcoated in lustrous red oil that stings his skin white. It tightens an invisible rope in his stomach, a shaky breath emitting over his lips, as he opens his eyes and turns his head to the other, just so his ear isn't abused by the voice that makes his mind silly.
“It's nothing, seriously. I was just thinking about what dinner could be tonight. I hope it’s the chicken.”
The cot creaks under the weight of another body climbing on top, a shoulder brushing up against Ominis until Sebastion’s almost cuddling him.
“Yeah, me too.”
This sequence isn’t unusual for them. Ominis is used to Sebastion climbing into the bed with him, pressing against him just to fit on the small bed only built for one. Unfortunately, now it's worse for Ominis, the other snuggling his face into the crook of his neck, the feeling of lips pressing against Ominis’ ear.
He just hopes Sebastion doesn’t feel like talking, which is wrong of him to assume because Sebastian literally never shuts up. However, Sebastian is quiet for once, soft breaths ghosting over the cartilage of his ear.
A little moan causes his mind to go blank, static thoughts brimming with frenetic energy that explodes through his body. His muscles tense up, it feels like spiders are crawling over his skin, and he can’t take it. Why does Sebastian have to be so alluring? Why couldn’t Sebastian’s voice stay the same, why did it have to become an issue for Ominis just to hear his best friend speak?
Liking boys has never been something he’s experienced before. Actually, liking anyone has never been something he’s cared about, never having any time to think about another person during his day-to-day activities. He’s never been aroused to the point it hurts all because of someone’s voice, but it causes him to have sinful thoughts he wants to push out and let rot on the ground because it feels so wrong to have.
Ominis wants to hate himself with every fiber in his body for feeling like this, but part of it feels too good to ignore.
“Please don’t fall asleep on me, Sebastian,” he mumbles.
“I’m not,” he whispers, lips brushing against Ominis ear. “You’re just comfortable to lay on.”
Ominis’ breath hitches, a soft ‘fuck’ ghosting from his tongue that he doesn’t mean to emit. He can feel the heat coursing to his cheeks, and although he can’t see himself, he is sure he looks a pathetic mess of red gush.
Without a second thought, he pushes Sebastian away from him.
“I’ve got to go.”
Sebastian’s confused voice echoes out. “What? Where are you going?”
Ominis doesn’t answer him, using his wand to navigate his way out of the undercroft and to the halls of Hogwarts. His heart is racing with adrenaline and lust, trying to catch his breath now that it feels as if he can finally breathe freely without Sebastion holding him down.
He rushes to the slytherin hall, walking down a forgotten corridor that leads to an abandoned detention chamber. He found it by accident a few years ago when he was younger, still getting used to the new atmosphere around him, his wand guiding his every move. Ominis usually never comes here, but when he does, it’s the perfect place to be alone considering no one else is around to hear him.
Ominis shuts the door behind him, a dusty slam echoing from the walls. With a little sigh, he makes his way to the desk meant for the headmaster and sits down.
He aches below, trying to busy his mind with thoughts to distract him from the issue at hand, but it proves futile, Sebastion still at the forefront of his mind.
Ominis doesn’t want to touch himself, but he can’t help but lower his hand, his thumb swiping over the length covered by the fabric of his trousers. His breath is shaky as he exhales, eyes shut as he dwells in guilt and soft pleasure.
He’s slow, applying light pressure here and there as uses his palm to grind up into himself. He surpresses a little moan, teeth gnawing at plush lips, and he really wants to stop, but he can’t. Once he’s given in, he doesn’t see how he can make himself think of anything other than Sebastian’s voice seeking him out and victimizing him into submission.
The dream pops back into his head for a moment, the ringing of Sebastian calling him a good boy adds fuel to the fire, and part of him wishes it was a reality. He knows it would be more sensual in real life than it was in the dream, because Sebastian would be able to see the effect it has on Ominis.
Sebastian would definitely tease him for it, too. The thought alone makes Ominis shiver.
He dips his hand underneath the elastic of his trousers, wrapping honey-twine fingers around the width of his cock. With a slow and steady jerk, his jaw drops open, a sultry moan causing him to blush shamefully. His actions are file and impure, but he doesn’t want to be frustrated until the end of time. Ominis needs to let himself go this one time, needs to feel himself shiver in pleasure to Sebastion’s voice one time. Maybe then his obsessive thoughts will stop.
His cock tenses under his hand, stuttering moans bring him closer to the end he craves yet wants far from his own grip. Ominis wishes his hand was Sebastion’s, wishes the pleasure driven to his mind came from his best friend, wishes for praise to be whispered into his ear as he finishes. It’s almost too much for him to think about, but it brings him closer and closer.
Sebastian’s name slips from his tongue, unintentionally, but it causes him to finish into his hand, a bit quicker than usual. His subconscious laughs at him, his mouth folding into a frown as his chest heaves with shameful breaths.
This is when the guilt hits him. Ominis curses at himself for letting himself go this far into his delusional arousals, but part of him feels satisfied that he finally spilled into his hand…fuck, now he has to clean himself.
With a sigh, he heads to the common room, turning down the boys hallway, and to his room. He gathers some clothes and a towel before shuffling to the showers.
~
Sebastian’s birthday is in two days, and he absolutely will not stop reminding Ominis about the scriptorium.
“Okay!” Ominis raises his voice, fighting the smile that dares to expose his humor in Sebastian’s begging. “You don’t have to keep reminding me.”
“Oh, but I do,” Sebastian taunts. “You might forget, tell me you never promised to show me.”
“But I’m not going to forget.”
“If you do I’m—”
Ominis groans. “Please, stop talking.”
Ominis was teetering on the edge of his sanity, Sebastian’s voice a devil on his shoulder. But when does Sebastion ever listen?
He starts going on and on about the scriptorium, homework, making jokes here and there, and it’s torture for Ominis, having flashbacks to pleasuring himself to the pure sound of Sebastion’s voice. It makes him blush red, feeling the heat rise to his face.
It’s late at night, they’re under the candle-lit room of the undercroft. Sebastian is laying in his lap, Ominis’ back to the stone wall, sitting with his legs crossed on the small cot.
His hands beg to play with the strands of hair atop Sebastion’s head, to run his fingers through the locks that the other had said before were brown. But that would be too romantic, right? It wouldn’t be appropriate to do such a thing, right?
Although his mind screams at him, his hands begin to shake as his fingers lace between the strands of Sebastion’s hair. It almost burns to the touch, metaphorically of course, but the tingling sensation makes him shiver. Sebastian didn’t even bat an eye either, there was no hesitation in his voice as he kept muttering about school, nothing to suggest he wasn’t okay with this, so Ominis kept to it.
“Did you know Poppy met a graphorn? She named it Addax.”
Ominis hums, ears open to the low grain of Sebastion’s voice but not the words excreting from his mouth. He can hear the sigh Sebastion makes when he tugs at his hair a little.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing exactly, but he does it again, just to hear it. Does Sebastion like his hair being played with?
A soft moan slips into his ears, confirming his question instantly. He smiles to himself, forgetting Sebastian can see him, but something inside him didn’t care. Ominis grazes the top of Sebastion’s scalp with his nails, pulling slightly. He’s teasing the other, not even realizing what he’s starting.
“What are you doing?” Sebastion mumbles. There’s something lacing the words with a dark red hue.
“Oh..uh…nothing,” Ominis begins to pull his hand away, but Sebastion stops him, strong fingers wrapping around his wrist to keep him in place.
“I didn’t say to stop, Ominis.” He mutters.
Sebastian lets go of Ominis’ hand after he begins to touch him again, a sigh of content sending a shiver down Ominis’ spine.
They don’t talk anymore, silence a deafening sound that defeats him. Ominis is careful this time, not pulling Sebastion’s hair like was doing before, only softly threading his fingers through tangled strands. But he can tell Sebastian isn’t having it, pushing his head into Ominis’ hand, almost begging him to go just a little harder.
He doesn’t, however, and it’s almost impossible to stop from smiling.
“You’re being a tease, Ominis.”
There’s something dangerous lingering in the air. Something thick laced with red hot passion that’s invisible to the naked eye, but Ominis can almost hear it, and he knows Sebastion can see it. It’s only between the two of them it appears, dangling on the edge of something more if they choose to let it.
“I’m not doing anything?” Ominis questions, never stopping his soft movements through soft strands of hair.
“Ominis,” Sebastian dares to lower his voice, deeper than Ominis has ever heard it.
Lust covers the darkness of Sebastion’s words, and it’s quite a turn on for Ominis.
He doesn’t know what to do, fingers frozen as his lips part slightly. He feels Sebastian move, startled when the ghost of the others breath falls onto his lips.
Is this a dream?
Ominis gasps quietly when lips are softly placed on his own. This is definitely a dream, Sebastion would never kiss him, he would never beg for Ominis’ touch like he was before. Even still, Ominis kisses him back, a soft sigh of content swallowed by Sebastion’s mouth. If this was a dream, he’s sure as hell going to take advantage of it.
Sebastion’s hand slithers to the back of his neck, pushing against him to deepen the kiss. They’re mouths move in perfect rhythm, Sebastion pushing him to lay down on the bed, crawling on top of him.
Open-mouthed kisses begin to trace down his chin and to his neck, Ominis’ hands coming up to Sebastian’s hair once again.
This time, he does tug, pull each strand his fingers lace into, bringing them closer as his lips part with a moan echoing through the room.
“Sebastian…” Ominis hums.
He hears Sebastian groan, lips coming to his ear as Sebastion speaks: “Say it again.”
“Fuck, Sebastion…” Sebastion softly bites his ear.
Sebastion laughs, dark and full of arousal, and he continues to kiss his neck, sucking little dark spots into porcelain flesh, claiming and claiming until Ominis is his. Ominis wants Sebastion to keep talking, but the feeling of his lips was nothing but pleasurable.
“Do you want this?” Sebastian asks after a few moments, kissing up to Ominis’ chin.
Shyly, Ominis nods his head. He wants it more than anything.
“Words, Ominis,” Sebastion whispers against his lips. “Unless you want this to stop, of course.”
“No!” Ominis whines. “Please, I need it.”
Sebastian laughs. “Oh? Do you need it?” He taunts.
“Please,” Ominis tries to kiss him, but he doesn’t allow it. “Sebastian, please.” He begs again.
Sebastian tuts, causing Ominis to whine once more, but he gives in, smashing their lips together in harmony. This time, it isn’t slow, it’s sloppy, spit daring to drip down Ominis’ chin, he moans and whimpers into the others mouth and it’s immediately swallowed up. It’s a sin that feels godly, and Ominis is soaking up.
Hands fumble with Sebastion’s robe, slipping it off the others shoulders. He hears it fall to the ground with a daunting pouf as his hands return to unbutton Sebastion’s shirt.
His fingers are shaky and unsure, but his mind is a vender who craves for the touch of skin. He wants to feel Sebastian against him in every way possible. Ominis sits up slightly to allow Sebastion to take off his own rope, hands swift to take off their shirts so they’re both half naked.
Sebastion kisses lower and lower, tongue lapping around Ominis nipples, causing him to elicit a sharp moan in response to the sudden stimulation.
His arms wrap around Sebastion’s head, holding onto him as Sebastion pleases him. His eyes flutter shut, moaning as Sebastian goes lower, mouth hovering over the ache in his trousers.
“Are you sure you want this?” Sebastian hums, kissing over his clothed cock.
“Yes, Sebastian. Please.”
Sebastian pops the button that was clasping Ominis’ pants together, unzipping them before peeling them off his legs. Sebastian made sure to grab his underwear while tugging them off, leaving Ominis exposed to the others gaze.
This is when Ominis becomes embarrassed. He’s never seen his own body, so he doesn’t know if he looks as good as he thinks he does. He tries to cover himself, but Sebastian pins his hands down by the side of his head.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Sebastian whispers. “Your body is beautiful.”
Sebastian places a sweet kiss onto Ominis’ lips, then nothing. He’s not on top of Ominis anymore, the ghost of his figure haunting him.
“Where’d you go?”
There’s no response, but he hears the shuffling of pants and fabric hitting the floor. He jumps when he feels a finger sliding across his stomach, slowly making his way down to his cock. He whimpers when Sebastian’s cold hand wraps around his aching mess, a soft yet rough jerk causing him to moan loudly.
“What’s got you so hard for me?” Sebastian whispers. “Surely it can’t be from just kissing, hm?” He tugs at Ominis’ cock. “What is it, lovely?”
“Ah…” Ominis moans, blushing a terrible red color. “Y-Your voice,” he admits sheepishly. “It’s your voice.”
“My voice?” Sebastian laughs. “What about it?”
It’s cruel how Sebastian jerks him while continuing to make him speak full sentences, yet it’s also something that turns Ominis on even more.
He doesn’t answer this time, caught up in the pleasure of it all, and when Sebastian notices, he leans down to his ear and speaks again.
“Be a good boy and answer me, yeah?”
“Fuck,” Ominis moans again. “I don’t know. I just like it. It-It sounds nice.”
With a laugh, Sebastian carefully flips Ominis onto his stomach, crawling on top of him, hands pressing into the small of his back. His body presses flush to his back, a kiss planted to his ear.
“Pretty boy, so good for me aren’t you?”
Ominis moans, pushing his ass against Sebastian.
“What is it, Ominis? Tell me what you need.”
Ominis is too shy for that. He buries his head into his arms, whining at the obscenity of it all, he wants to beg for it, but he can’t get the words out. A hand grips the curve of his ass, Sebastian’s face still near his ear.
“Do you want this?” Sebastian teases, fingers slipping over Ominis hole. There’s no doubt he felt the shiver rip through Ominis’s body. “Do you want my cock there, too?”
Ominis nods.
“Then tell me that.”
“I-I want you inside me, Sebastian.”
“Good boy.”
He asks himself how they got here. How they both ended up naked with Sebastian about to finger him open. But he’s too caught up with lust to over think it right now.
Sebastian laughs, a wet fingers circling his hole before slowly pushing in. His fingers were thick, thicker than Ominis could have imagined, and it makes him moan with pain and pleasure coursing through his body. It felt as though lightning had just struck him.
After a few moments, Sebastian begins to slowly move his finger in and out, allowing Ominis to get used to the feeling before adding another. Two was almost too much for him, but he felt the pain fade away into nothing by an abyss of arousal, moaning from the scissoring motion Sebastian provides.
“Fuck…” he mumbles into the cot, his ass involuntarily pushing up into Sebastian’s motions. “It feels so good.”
At this point, he was thinking aloud, his brain having no problem with letting Sebastian know how good he feels right now. With another careful jab, something shoots through his body, a soft mumble of ‘right there’ falling from his tongue.
With the approval, Sebastian hits that spot again and again, curling his fingers into Ominis, causing him to feel ecstatic. A knot boils deep within his stomach, his orgasm fast approaching.
“Sebastian, I’m about to—ah fuck!”
Sebastian adds a third finger, stretching him open easily now. His spit was fucked deep inside, feeling the vulgar wetness as Sebastian kept his pace.
“Go ahead. Do it, lovely.”
Ominis finishes against the rough surface of the cot, feeling himself pulse as cum spurts, messy and deserved.
Sebastian doesn’t stop however, prodding him open until Ominis is a sent into overstimulation. His legs are shaking, moans becoming louder and louder until he’s left with nothing, the emptiness soon replaced with the glide of Sebastion’s cock between his cheeks.
“Do you want it, baby?”
Ominis cries out a soft “Yes!”
Slowly, the tip of Sebastian’s cock begins to fill him up, and he can tell this isn’t a dream anymore. They’re actually doing this. Fuck, how did they get here again?
It’s painful at first, the stretch a burning pit of desire and lust that tremors in bones. But soon that fades away, Sebastian buried deep inside of him, the drag of his cock a pleasant feeling that he knows he’ll be addicted to after tonight.
Sebastian moves slowly, inching out before bucking his hips, skin flush to Ominis’ ass. It’s intimate and full of pent of feelings of love and joy that Ominis has safeguarded until now, and he hopes this between them is only an acceptance of Sebastian’s feelings towards him.
If it wasn’t, he’s going to be in a world of hurt in the morning. Right now, he just needs this.
“So tight, Ominis,” Sebastian groans, holding himself up, hips quickening. “So good for me, baby, fuck.”
The vulgarities slipping into Ominis’ ear makes him hard again. His whines as Sebastian fucks him, the pace becoming vigorously rougher as the seconds go by, the tip of his cock ramming against the spot inside of him that makes him shrivel up in pleasure. It’s a different feeling than just jerking himself off, he can’t quite place it but it’s so good.
“K-Keep talking,” Ominis moans.
“Oh? Is my cock not enough to make you feel good?” Sebastian teases—Ominis knew he would tease him about it. “Do you need my voice to push you over the edge?”
“Yes—fucking christ fuck!” He moans when Sebastian almost slams into him.
“You’re such a dirty boy. How long have you liked my voice?”
Ominis can barely make out his words, moans and whimpers nothing more than a mantra on his tongue, but he tries anyway.
“I don’t—I don’t know…” Sebastian rams in to him. “Fuck! A few…a few months.”
Sebastian laughs darkly. “And did you ever get off to me?”
“Mhm…last week.”
“Such a needy baby, Ominis. You could’ve just asked me to help you.” His voice is shaky, hips never slowing down. “I would’ve helped you cum all over yourself, lovely. And you would’ve enjoyed it as much as you are now.”
Sebastian moans into his ear, whispering a soft ‘I’m close’ as his hips stutter. Ominis cums again, without warning, pleasure soaking into his body like rays of sunshine shining onto his skin. A few seconds later, Sebastian is spilling inside of him with a low, growling moan.
They stay like this for a while, Sebastian falling onto Ominis body with a breathless sound. The walls of the undercroft soak up their soft whimpers and moans after they’ve finished.
“Can you get out of me now,” Ominis groans, his snarky attitude back in an instant. “It feels weird.”
Sebastian laughs, pulling out of Ominis with a groan. “You weren’t complaining a few minutes ago.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up.”
“Aw, but don’t you like it when I talk?”
Ominis whines in distaste. “I swear to god, you should’ve never found out about that.”
“Well at least I know how to get to you now.”
“No,” Ominis sits up, wincing at the burn of pain that basks in him. “I’m not gonna allow you to tease me like that.”
“But, baby,” Sebastian whispers in his ear, “Don’t you like my voice?”
Ominis pushes him. “No.”
“Liar,” Sebastian laughs.
“If you don’t shut up, your birthday gift isn’t happening.”
Sebastian places a kiss on his forehead. “I think I’m fine with that.”
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Hey Mom, Dead Mom
Bonus chapter: You won’t believe the mess that we’ve become
bonus chapter has arrived! this was originally a scene from the second chapter, but it ended up with so much Cole and Jay interaction that it would have caused the whole fic to be unable to be read as a standalone. I still really like it though, and it explains a few things in ‘Cause daddy doesn’t love me, mommy is a god, so I’m posting it as a bonus chapter. this is cross posted to ao3 as well
~
Cole dialled the number slowly, as if it would delay the inevitable. He watched it ring three times before Jay picked up. “Hello?” He said.
“Hi, Jay,” Cole said softly. “It’s Cole.”
“Cole!” Jay exclaimed. How did he manage to sound so happy when Cole had been ignoring him for months? Cole had been expecting anger and yelling, not Jay sounding like this call was his birthday present. “Whatcha need? Do we have to get kicked out of another cinema?”
“I need to talk to you about stuff,” Cole decided to say. Best to get straight to the point rather than dance around it. Pun not intended.
“Talk about what?” The concern was evident in Jay’s tone.
Cole took a breath and got it over with. “I’m being sent to boarding school.”
“WHAT?”
“Yeah,” Cole said. “I’m leaving on Sunday.”
“B— but why?” Jay sounded so hurt. Cole wished he could stop Jay from being hurt.
“I don’t have a choice, Jay,” Cole said over the phone. “I’m sorry.”
Jay’s voice was very small. “Can we at least meet up? Before you leave?” The twelve-year-old asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Cole said. He blinked the tears out of his eyes. “Tomorrow? It’s the only day I’m free…” Dad wanted Cole to be packed by Saturday, since he was leaving on Sunday, and tomorrow was the only day he could sneak out.
“Okay,” Jay sounded choked up, like there was something stuck in his throat. Cole imagined that he was crying over the phone.
“See you,” Cole said. Then he hung up before Dad could see he wasn’t packing.
~
The next day came much too slowly. Cole spent most of the night practicing what he was going to say to Jay, how he would apologise for not being around for so long. Cole really wasn’t good at this whole ‘being a good friend’ thing.
When tomorrow finally came around, Cole jumped out of bed and got dressed as quietly as possible. Most of his clothes were already in the suitcases, but a hoodie and pair of jeans were still out. Cole put them on and got out of the house quickly. Dad was at work, because he couldn’t be bothered to help with anything, but better safe than sorry.
The cafe they’d chosen to meet at was decently busy when he arrived. People streamed in and out, clutching cups of coffee and talking on the phone. One man was so distracted that he almost lost his wallet twice. Cole picked it up for him and watched him go out the door cursing. Kind of rude, but Cole didn’t care. He was too busy waiting for Jay.
“Hey,” a voice said, and Cole turned to see Jay sliding into a seat. “Haven’t seen you in a while, Rocks-for-Brains,” the familiar nickname made Cole smile.
“Same.”
Jay clasped his hands together. His expression was grim. “So, you’re really leaving? No offence, but your call yesterday didn’t explain a lot.”
“Yeah, I am. My dad’s forcing me to go,” Cole’s voice was thick.
“So we’re never gonna see each other again?”
“I don’t know,” Cole shrugged, and it was the truth. Dad wanted him to stay at MOSPA even during breaks, so that he could ‘build character.’
Jay sniffled and wiped a tear away. “If this is the last time we see each other, it’s gotta be the best one-and-a-half hours possible.”
“I’m sorry for not being around and ignoring you,” Cole said suddenly. He’d been wanting to say that ever since Mom died.
“You were grieving for your mom, dummy,” Jay narrowed his eyes. “You still are. I mean, yeah, you were a bit of a jerk, but it’s not like I was mad. And even if I was, it’s all forgiven.”
“You’re supposed to be mad and screaming at me.”
“Do you want me to? I’ve been doing drama lately, so my vocal cords are really good. We can do the whole ‘old married couple screaming at each other’ thing.”
That made Cole laugh a little. Jay was exactly the same as he’d remembered, always cracking jokes and trying to make people smile. “No thanks, I prefer not getting kicked out of places.”
“You sure? We can even flip a table and throw coffee,” Jay sing-songed.
“That’s a safety hazard. Coffee is really hot.”
Jay rolled his eyes and turned to the counter. “You want anything? I’m buying.”
“No, I’m buying, since I’m the one who was a jerk,” Cole stood up.
“Nuh uh, oldest pays.”
“It’s only six months,” Cole glared. They were already back to their old dynamic, which was nice. He’d missed hanging out with Jay.
“Six months is enough to be half the year.”
“Yeah, so you’re old?”
Jay gasped in mock horror. “I am not old!“
“M’kay, grandpa.”
Jay stuck his tongue out at him. “We’ll split it fifty-fifty,” he said.
“Fine.”
~
A hot chocolate and muffin later, it was past two in the afternoon. Cole shot up when he saw the time — he had to be back home soon!
“I’m sorry, Jay, but I have to go,” he packed up his stuff and closed the backpack.
Jay looked at him understandingly. “Your dad’s gonna be back and you have to get home.”
“Yep,” Cole said. He pulled a little box out of his pocket and handed it to Jay. Hopefully the stuff inside wasn’t messed up from being jostled around. “Here, this is for you. A goodbye present.” He pressed the box into Jay’s hand.
Jay looked at it curiously. “What is it?” He asked.
“I already told you,” Cole said. “It’s a goodbye present.”
“But what’s in it?”
“You’ll have to figure it out yourself,” Cole smirked. He gave Jay a hug and ran out the door. He hoped that Jay liked the bracelet.
#bruise childhood friends au#ninjago#ninjago fic#ninjago au#lego ninjago#jay walker#cole brookstone#cole hence#ninjago cole#ninjago jay#ninjago fanfiction#cole ninjago#jay ninjago#kit's writing#I am unhappy with the ending but I ran out of juice so this is what you get
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ARC Review of Charlotte and the Seductive Spymaster by Grace Callaway
Rating: 4.5/5
Heat Level: 4/5
Publication Date: January 11th
Premise:
Lady Charlotte Fayne is outwardly a respectable widow of the ton, and secretly the founder of a society of lady detectives. Her latest mission unearths a deadly plot by anarchists, as well as the shocking reveal that her late husband is not only alive, but also investigating the same group.
My review:
This is the BEST second-chance historical romance with estranged spouses that I've ever read; The anger and resentment is REAL between Charlie and Sebastian— of course there’s gonna be hella beef when a hero is caught with his "mistress", refuses to deny it, fakes his own death, and emerges twelve years later and is caught out because he can’t handle his not!widow kissing another guy so he throws a rock at them. But what’s equally real is this all-encompassing attraction (obsession even) that never dimmed between them, even after twelve years apart.
In the previous books in Lady Charlotte’s Society of Angels series, Charlie is seen as this level-headed, elegant lady… so obviously, this means in her book she’s very much NOT. She’s haunted by her husband’s betrayal and supposed death even as she completely fails to move on with other men (and believe me, Francis Devlin tries lolol). She’s also in the position where her friends and fellow investigators are getting married and having kids all while she feels like the odd one out. That being said, she’s still the classy, hyper-competent investigator we’ve all known to come and love.
Sebastian is a smooth, equally hyper-competent spy, and is down just as bad for Charlie as he was twelve years prior, except he knows he’s in the doghouse after the whole faked-death thing. I did have to laugh at Seb’s wistful thinking early on about what would have happened if they weren't separated, something along the lines of "we were horny before, but who KNOWS what kind of kinky fucks we could have become if we had more time together :( ". And his secrets don’t end with his faked death either; there’s more to Sebastian’s past that he slowly starts to reveal while he tries to regain Charlie’s trust and it was really heart-wrenching to read how he grapples with his need to protect Charlie and his own internalized shame. And all of this is happening while the two of them work together to thwart an anarchist organization in the lead-up to the Great Exhibition.
I liked how Grace wrote Charlie and Sebastian’s path to reconciliation: sure, the attraction, respect, and even the love between them never really went away, but it's the hurt and lack of trust that keeps them apart juuuust enough for most of the story so they keep doing dumb stuff like agreeing to a no-strings FWB relationship. It’s also this lack of trust that leads Charlie to assume the worst about Sebastian based on some questionable third-party sources.
Speaking of which, I appreciate that this book establishes that abusive and coercive sexual relationships and grooming comes in many forms and that boys and men can absolutely be victims in a way a lot of other historical romances don't, or skirt around. There are plenty of HR heroes I've read who blithely describe having sex with much older women when they're little more than boys, and a lot of times it's glossed over and we move on, but I am very glad this book was not one of them.
The sex:
Classic Grace Callaway sex scenes, which means it’s hot and heavy, the hero usually professes wanting to eat the heroine out 24/7, there’s generally one sex act that’s never been done before in Callaway-verse and no it’s not him eating ass (which has happened before, and happens here— good on them), and someone might say “gamahuche” but that’s alright and you move on. Charlie and Sebastian have this super hot give-and-take, almost-goading dynamic where they each give as good as they’ve got and there’s a decent chance arguments might end with sex. They also do that thing in second chance romances that I love where they know EXACTLY what the other person likes and they aren’t afraid to use it on (against?) them.
I feel like the Lady Charlotte series has been a little more sex-toy forward (see: Pippa and Cull and ye olde sex swing), so it feels inevitable there would be a scene where Charlie shows Sebastian exactly how she pleasured herself for the twelve years he was away, namely, with a collection of dildos. I’d say that was the hottest scene in the book, but it’s also tied with The Time They Do Things With Meringue And A Butter Boat.
There is also scene where she employs a riding crop on him (in public! After some sexy shadow puppetry!), and while the crop itself wasn't used that much, it DID serve a purpose, and if that purpose is Charlie utterly failing to edge Sebastian as punishment for not telling the truth and accidentally getting him off sooner than she wanted, then so be it.
Overall:
I adore Grace Callaway and this book hit all the points I wanted from a second-chance romance with a married couple: it had the romance, the tension and angst, and you immediately feel that despite their estrangement, Charlie and Sebastian know each other better than anyone else and in that sense, they truly belong together. I would absolutely recommend this to any historical romance reader, though I do suggest starting from the beginning of the Lady Charlotte series.
Thank you to Grace Callaway and her team for the ARC in exchange for my review.
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Eulogy for my Blue 2008 Honda Civic
To the car I drove for my entire adult life up until this point, from the summer I graduated high school to the days leading up to my 30th birthday:
You’re not dead, not yet. But you’re dying and you’re not mine anymore, which hurts almost just as much. I bought a new car. Not because I didn’t love you anymore, but because I loved you to pieces; worked you hard and far into the retirement digits of your odometer.
I hope I took good care of you. Regular maintenance, timely oil changes, and preemptive new batteries. Washed and vacuumed by hand, every time. I never let you go out with flat shoes or an empty tank. When those 18-year-old college freshmen in the campus parking lot put little dents in your side I wept and rubbed mineral oil into the scuffs to get the paint out. When your visor split open I put a bolt through it to keep it closed, and I promise, no one noticed. When the center console broke I installed a new hinge that didn’t squeak, making it better than before. When your steering wheel started peeling I bought you a leather wheel cover to protect you, fashionably. When your exterior black weather seals started peeling and standing up in the air like cowlicks, I gave them a snip to preserve your clean bullet-like silhouette. When the outer weather seals on the windshield started peeling, I maintained perfect faith that you wouldn’t let the rain leak into the cabin. You didn’t.
You ferried me through college and first jobs and heartbreak, with your sagacious yellowing headlights and forward-heavy stance. I sang more songs aloud to you than any other. I know there is the salt of tears crystallized in your upholstery. We went to mountains and beaches together, from Hollywood to San Diego, always on an adventure somewhere. And you never broke down, not even once.
No bluetooth. No rear-view camera. No electric power steering. No tickets. No accidents. No tows. We were careful and skillful and diligent.
I salute my metal companion, who honors the legendary name Honda Civic and its massive expectations of reliability to fill. You were loved from day one to the very end. I was never embarrassed by you, even when you started looking weary. I was proud to tell people I’d been loyal to you for so long, that I did everything in my power to fight the natural course of time and entropy.
The state in which you leave a person’s home vastly outweighs how you first entered it. The final time I sat in your driver’s seat, I looked through the windshield and remembered all the places we’ve explored together over the last twelve years, all at once.
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SlyFox Day 4: Clue
“Are you finally going to tell me where we’re going, or am I going to be in the dark for the entire train ride?” Carmelita complains, again, for the eighth time. Sly knows the exact number because he’s been counting.
He gives her a cheeky smile and squeezes her hand where it sits on the armrest between them, linked with his. “We’re almost there. Just gotta be patient for a little longer.”
“I’m the embodiment of patience.”
“Mhm.”
“Don’t ‘mhm’ me!” She smacks him lightly on the arm. “I’m very good at being patient when I want to be! I wouldn’t have gone after you for as long as I did if I wasn’t.”
“I’d say something like ‘you got me there’ but I’m pretty sure it was your stubbornness that did that.”
The fox grinds her jaw, then lets go of her annoyance with an audible sigh. “Will you just give me one clue? One single clue to what we’re doing today?”
“Mmm…okay.” Sly makes a big show of pretending to think about what to tell her. “The clue is that there are clues involved.”
“Seriously?!” Carmelita throws her hands up.
“Seriously.”
“You can’t give me anything more than that?”
“Afraid not.”
“It’s our anniversary, Sly. You know, that thing that couples celebrate together? As a couple?”
“I wouldn’t ever forget it.” He leans over and gives her a quick peck to the cheek, which makes her grumble without any real heat behind it. “Besides, I asked if I could make it a surprise this year. You didn’t have to say yes.”
“I know that,” she says as she folds her arms over her chest and stares at the back of the seat in front of them. “It just drives me up the wall not knowing something.”
“Well, I can assure you that you’re going to love what I’ve got planned.”
“And if I don’t, you owe me a dinner at the fanciest restaurant in Paris. Anything I want, full course meal, and a gondola ride afterwards.”
“Of course.” The raccoon can’t keep the amusement out of his voice, because the train is coming to a halt right as she finishes listing off everything she wants, and he can see their destination outside.
Carmelita doesn’t connect the dots until they get off and he starts directing her towards the building. When she sees the large, fancy font out front, it stops her in her tracks.
“An escape room?” She asks, sounding as if the idea wasn’t even close to what she had considered he had planned.
For the first time since booking the appointment, Sly starts feeling unsure of his decision. He gives a slightly nervous laugh. “Yeah, well, I remember you mentioned a few months back that you’ve never tried one before, and it sounded like you wanted to. And, y’know, I’m pretty good at finding clues, but I need a lot of help piecing them together.”
His partner looks at him. Looks at the building. Looks back at him. A bright, excited grin breaks out across her face.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” She asks, grabbing his arm and dragging him forward as she marches inside. “We’ve got a case to solve! You better have picked the hardest kind they have, Ringtail, or I’m going to be very disappointed in your faith in me.”
“Oh, don’t you worry; I wouldn’t dream of underestimating you.”
True to form, they’re booked for one that’s estimated to take two hours to complete with at least five people – it takes the two of them an hour and twelve, shattering all previous records and earning themselves a commendation from the owners. When they’re on their way back home, armed with chintzy matching t-shirts declaring themselves “Mystery Masters”, Carmelita lays her head on Sly’s shoulder with a satisfied smile.
“Thank you. I had a great time.”
“I’m glad you liked the surprise.”
“Maybe we should do another one next year.”
“Another escape room?”
The fox laughs and shakes her head. “Another surprise. But with more clues leading up to it – I was losing my mind trying to figure out what you had planned.”
“Okay. Next year I’ll make it a scavenger hunt. How’s that sound?”
She rolls her eyes and hugs him tighter.
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Newish Comics, Regular Edition (thank you extremely early spoilers meaning I spent yesterday on the Gotham War stuff, this is a big edition and I’ve been holding myself back from touching these for FOUR WHOLE WEEKS):
Birds of Prey #1: Righto so as I read this my levels of trust are building just slightly. There is at least reasoning being built into this scenario. Also I note the note that this is post Green Arrow #6
The list!!! I’ve already ranted about this but I want to note how IMMACULATE the order of “Shiva, Selina, Talia?, Cheshire?” is. Shiva’s the obvious starting point. She’s heavily associated with Sin, she’s an actual Bird of Prey from several team lineups, there’s the whole Dinah and Shiva relationship… Dinah would consider this. Jumping to Selina next, as someone who again has had multiple BoP appearances, is known to ally up if asked, exists in the antihero spectrum, Dinah’s probably also now aware she’s been looking after Lian. Then Talia. I am unaware of Talia being associated with any BoP team lineup ever but she’s an obvious next place for thoughts to go. Talia has Views and if you’re looking at dangerous people who can help with an extraction rescue she’s an option. Then finally, Cheshire. Who Dinah full well knows would cause ALL LEVELS of drama if Dinah asked her to go after Sin given everything around Lian, but is willing to consider it anyway for a moment there.
I do adore the art style in this, DC’s really putting out some stunning LOOKING books at the moment, also the old fashioned comics style and colour here are giving me vibes of the Black Canary 1991 run.
“What’s more important than a sister” remains excellent, Barda and Cass together is just amazing, and I’m interested in what happens with Zealot and Meridian. I understand why Harley’s there even if I don’t like it, and it’s largely approached better than I expected (I just can’t summon the energy to care about that fight scene, it’s establishing stuff to jury rig a reason for Harley to be here at all, I just don’t care about Harley enough, though does Harley have a secret past with the Dava Sborsc ‘collect all the single punches’ form of martial arts?)
My actual big question is: Sin is SIXTEEN? I mean I know we’ve had 2.5 reboots since the last time she was on page in comics, but she was approximately 10 years old after One Year Later. She was in PRIMARY SCHOOL. That’s even faster aging than Damian! (I guess we could stretch the point to her being 11-12, but it feels older than she was depicted)
Blue Beetle #1: The thing I MOST adore about using that JLI picture for Ted is that even with this comic set in the current present, Ted was on the team with a proper USSR Red Rocket. Ted you were a superhero 32 years ago?
Also amused we got a zany Charlton Comics era villain back.
RED BEETLE IS BACK!!! Oh no. Also almost impossible for it to be Paco given various reboots, so… (I’m sure Ted is fine. They’re not killing him off permanently in the first issue of this)
Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #1: BEA! TORA! “Each day is a gift, and I get to share it with my best friend!” (Howling. I’m howling. They’re going to spend this entire mini baiting us all aren’t they)
…Martha immediately starts comparing Fire & Ice to her and Jonathan. “Gorilla Grodd’s little sister” (whose name appears to be Linka Grodd? And who is queer).
NOOOO THEY’RE BREAKING UP! AND THEY WEREN’T EVEN TOGETHER! YOU TWO JUST LESBIANED YOURSELVES INTO A BUSINESS TOGETHER! AND A TWELVE MONTH LEASE!
“Abandoned by my best friend, maybe the only true friend I’ve known.” (Get a room together)
AWW YEAH AMBUSH BUG!!
I am going to thoroughly enjoy this BECAUSE the entire run will be queerbait and hopefully Bea and Tora might finally get to kiss or something in issue 6. I am ready for this. Just gals being pals.
City Boy #4: this remains outstanding in my opinion. I really like what they’re doing with Cameron, and they’re making using Darkseid actually make sense. Also Chemo blowing up Bludhaven has been recanonised!
Shazam! #3: “Dan Mora an alien?” bookmark ahhahahaha. The background details are where Mora really has fun.
NOT THE AUDITORS.
This just remains silly fun (the Moon Emperor?) so I’m enjoying it.
Warlord #18: this week in the land of Skartaris we apparently DID manage to get out of 500km of desert in a single issue. Amazing work, Grell.
Travis once again using his gun. How many bullets left, Travis, how many. Can you make more?
Then they get attacked by the BLOODMOON and kidnapped by space aliens for breeding purposes. After running away from a T-rex.
And then…TRAVIS MORGAN BONDAGE SCENE. I’ve missed these, Grell, how have you been coping?
Travis gets transmuted into a minotaur. This will clearly only go well. (Sadly it gets fixed like three pages later)
Tara saves the day twice because Tara’s actually more competent than Travis.
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