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cillianslvt · 5 days ago

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can't buy me love | robert fischer x female!oc

summary | jane and robert aren't in an arranged marriage technically, but he sure has a way of making her feel like they are. fed up with it, she decides to take matters in her own hands. rating | (explicit) tags/warnings | established relationship, rich!oc, pinv sex, creampie, in my mind this is set in the 1950s because why not, light misogyny on robert's part (prude), fingering, couch fucking! word count | 5.7k (sorry) a/n | i've been writing on this one for a really long time and i'm kind of proud of it, so i hope you all enjoy it. this is week three's entry for cillian's birthday bash stories. the album this week was 1964's a hard day's night, and the song was can't buy me love.

The slight pout of her husband’s lip offended Jane Fischer. So, too, did the flutter of his eye lashes against his newly tanned skin, and the stretch of his finely made dress shirt against his shoulders as he leaned over his chair and tied his dress shoe. On days like this, she felt something akin to hatred swell in her chest for him, and she could never be sure whose fault it was: him, for being so silent, so stoic, so complacent, or her, for watching him be these things, and allowing it to make her burn inward with fury, but never expressing it.

Jane Fischer—née Hartley—was, on paper, the perfect match for the scion of Fischer Morrow. The woman was a Texas oil heiress in her own right, and beautiful in that charmed, non-offensive way that Robert’s father always encouraged him to look for. When Robert met her, she had been twenty-two and a recent Bryn Mawr graduate with a degree in history. They’d met at a charity benefit in New York, introduced to one another by friends of friends. They’d hit it off that night purely for the fact that they were both good-looking, affluent, young, and unsure of what to make of any of it.

Jane and Robert had stumbled their way awkwardly through three dates, and married two months into knowing one another, spurred on by the encouragement of both of their families. Her father told her that she would be the richest girl in the whole world, and Jane had agreed that would be a fine accomplishment. Any worries she might have had about doing something with her degree before becoming a mother and wife were quickly quelled by Robert’s quiet assurances that he did not wish to have children until much later. It seemed she could eat her cake and have it too with him.

Their marriage had been one largely void of conflict and strife. Robert was a quiet individual, who spent so much of his time working at his family business that he seemed, at times, to be merely an extension of it—like a traveling salesman who never found his way home. Whatever Jane did in the time she was not directly in front of Robert appeared to be of little consequence to him, except on the rare occasion that his own father took interest in it.

In the second year of their marriage, when Jane had considered going back to school for her doctorate, Maurice had taken Robert and her out for dinner and dissuaded her from doing so. He feared it would make her seem “too ambitious” and “unrelatable” to the other women she would encounter being Robert’s wife, which she found amusing, until she did not. On the ride home, Robert had told her that he did not care one way or another if she went back or not, but the way he had said it made it seem like he did care, and was only saying he did not simply to save face, so she abandoned the plan with only slight embarrassment—for whom, she wasn’t still entirely sure.

In time, she came to find that all of Robert’s vulnerabilities lay in two places: his father, who treated Robert like a chess piece more than a son, and his mother, who had died when he was a boy, and who seemed to take all the love he had experienced with her. Robert never seemed to know what to make of Jane. When he came home most nights, he approached her with polite hesitancy, as if she were a perfect stranger and not his wife. They talked about nothing—about the dinner the chef had made, or the size of their apartment, or the way the clouds swelled in the sky and threatened rain, and how dreary New York was in the winter, and how he was quite happy to be returning to Australia with his father the next week for business.

She had tried to unfurl for him, to take the first steps towards vulnerability. One night shortly before he came home, she sat upon their love seat dressed in a diaphanous nightgown, wearing nothing beneath the fabric. They’d had sex on several occasions before it, but the act felt perfunctory, even impersonal—like it had happened because of circumstance more than desire. Jane wanted to prove her willingness to give, and perhaps, in some way, to shock him out of the collected demeanor that greeted her every night when he walked in. There was more to Robert than he let on, and she knew this: she had witnessed it that first night they had met, in the smiles and the bits of conversations they’d had in the corner of the ballroom.

When he’d come home, Robert did indeed look shocked–almost scandalized. His lips pursed and he averted his eyes, before letting out soft peals of laughter that held little mirth. He did eventually turn his eyes towards her, but she could tell it took a great deal of effort; he smiled tightly, his cheeks drowning in a deep shade of red.

His embarrassment made her feel uneasy, like what she had done was somehow impure. She covered herself with a pillow and told him softly she had thought he might have liked it, but could see how he didn’t. Jane didn’t allow him to stutter out an explanation or apology, for the whole thing was bad enough and to experience any more of it would only cause her more harm.

Since that incident, they hadn’t had sex at all. He’d only recently just returned home from Australia, and for the first few nights they’d been able to blame it on him being tired from the long journey. It had felt distinctly relieving not to worry about their curious lack of having it while he had been away, and easier to forget about it all together in the nights following his return. But she knew they could not live like this, for she could not handle it.

Robert was a grown man. He had free will and the ability to string together words and communicate as far as she knew, and she’d had enough. Placing her coffee upon their shared breakfast table table, she said, “Why don’t you want to sleep with me? I know this is an inopportune time to bring it up, but it’s an odd thing, isn’t it? It baffles me.”

Robert’s surprise was evident—in the furrow of his eyebrow, in his audible swallow as he considered her intently, like he hadn’t quite heard what she said. But he had. “I don’t know what you mean,” he evaded. He was no good at lying. It took only a moment under her unflinching gaze. “I don’t know. I…was worried you might be doing it to make me happy, and I didn’t want to make you do something that made you unhappy.”

She realized he was being earnest as she watched him. “I’m your wife, Robert.”

“Yes, but—“ He did not finish the sentence, probably thinking the next words unkind.

Jane didn’t care. Unkindness was better than nothing. “But our parents forced us together. Told us to do it, is that it?” He nodded stoically. She scoffed. “I know you might not have chosen me completely of your own volition, and I have always known that, but I don’t mind it. I didn’t mind you, either. I mean, I did want you. I do. I was the one who said yes.” He was quiet, as always, so she continued. “How many women have you slept with? Someone once told me that you were something of an ineffable playboy. Is that true?”

“Really, Jane.” The lines on his forehead creased. He was ruffled by what she was saying. Annoyed. He didn’t want to talk about it. He was not the only one in the business of getting exactly what he wanted as soon as he’d wanted it. though. Jane continued.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I just want to know you, Robert.”

“You do know me,” he said pointedly. The familiar red hue formed on his cheeks and he averted his eyes downwards.

“Do you have a mistress?”

“What? No!” She saw a flash of anger in his eyes, and it thrilled her. “I have no interest in discussing these things with you.”

“I’ve slept with four men,” she prattled on, bringing her coffee cup up to her lips again. Her eyes ventured to the window, where the clouds threatened to spill over the city. But they weren’t going to talk about that. Not now. Not ever again. “Five counting you, really.”

He rose from the table, flush from his head to his toes. “I really must go.”

She stood as well, blocking him from moving forward. His eyes narrowed and for the first time in their married life, she saw there was something more to him than the simple shades of cool he presented to the world. He hardened. She spoke like one would to a timid deer. “We don’t have to talk. You could fuck me.”

“That’s a crude way to talk,” he scolded.

“I can be crude. As my husband, you think it would delight you.”

“Well, it doesn’t. You were meant to…occupy yourself. To have hobbies and interests. Don’t you?”

The words went through her, simple, meaningless puffs of indignant air. “I went to an all girl’s college, as you know, and we were often in want of the male appendage, but we had no male. Would you like to know the intelligent and clever ways we’d manage?”

His head dropped. Exasperation gripped him. “No. I would like to go to work.”

“I want it.” Jane stepped forward, so close to Robert she could smell the expensive quality of his cologne mixing with the scent of his skin. Her finger grazed the cuff of his suit as she batted her lashes up at him. She knew how to be beautiful when she wanted to be beautiful—had spent many hours of her life giving in to the sin of vanity—and she used it then. “I want sex.”

Robert’s jaw twitched. “Tonight,” came his clipped response. With that, he sidestepped her, walking briskly towards the door of their apartment and slamming the door shut.

Her lips curled into a self-satisfied grin.

—

Robert had a habit of never coming home when he was meant to, so it was a matter of guessing and waiting. Jane had guessed seven, and she had waited until nine.

By the time Robert unlocked the door and entered the apartment, the red lipstick she’d applied had long ago faded against the brim of her whiskey glass. But she was not drunk or angry. In fact, she had not yet even begun to develop the hazy fringes of disappointment.

She could tell it had been a long day just by looking at him: His shoulders slumped like Atlas’, and the blank gaze of defeat drowned out his eyes. There was no point in being so rich, she thought, if you had to be this miserable all the time.

“Does this mean I’m going to have to wipe this makeup off and get in one of those ratty nightgowns fit for grandmothers?” She attempted to joke.

Robert’s resulting look was withering. She took another long sip of the watered down drink in her hands before rising off the couch to greet him.

This time she’d put on more clothes: an expensive black tulle and pink silk evening gown with a tastefully scooped neckline. Its flared skirt had an intricate floral bedding along the bottom, and on her neck, she wore a dangle rhinestone necklace that her father had gifted her for her twentieth birthday. The heels she’d worn with the outfit sat abandoned under the coffee table, so that all separated her from the plush carpet were her stockings.

Robert surveyed their apartment as a soldier might a battlefield. His distrust of her was made evident by his rigid body, and how he stuck close to the door, as if he might need to flee out of it at any moment. She couldn’t help but let out stifled laughter. Her amusement sunk its teeth into her words. “Don’t be afraid of me, Robert,” she cooed, fingers wrapping around his tie.

He wet his lips but said and did nothing but look at her, his pale eyes alert. Up close like this, she could see him and all that made him desirable: the sharp sculpt of his cheek bones, the pretty twist of his freckled lips, the restrained intensity in his eyes.

In the times they had slept together, it had managed to be pleasurable in the way things you did for necessity could be: knowing, offhandedly, that it was good for them—that even though they did it with structure and hesitancy, the result was the same for them as they would have been otherwise. She had liked the way he tucked around her, and she did look forward to the moments near the end where, unthinking, he’d bring his hand up to her breast and hold it there. There was nothing wrong with him, only that he gave her fragments of himself when she wanted the whole thing. No longer did she want to part her legs and guide him into her, smiling sheepishly as he gathered the blanket around them and rocked forward. They weren’t making children, after all; they were meant to be making love. Fucking, even.

“You still look frightened,” she said, frowning playfully. Robert tensed. His hands wrapped around hers as she grabbed onto his tie.

“I’m only tired,” he answered.

“You’re always tired.”

“I’m always busy, that’s why,” he said sullenly. “My work requires a lot of me.” Her fingers loosened around his tie, but he kept them trapped in his palm. “I’m not afraid, though.”

“Then what are you?” she probed. The bit of alcohol she’d drank - or perhaps the two years of unfeelingness that lingered between them - made her bold.

“I don’t know. Obligated,” he admitted. He let go of her but stayed close. His voice was low and confessional–seductive to her for its newness. “I have been with women before, but none like you.”

“Not even the society girls?”

He smiled, somewhat amused. “What I’ll say is that I’ve met a lot of simple people with a lot of simple wants, and you are not one of them.”

“And what–you wanted something simple?”

“No. But you know that my father is a demanding individual; this is my life, for better or worse, and it was that way before I met you too.”

“So simple is what you think you deserve?” She didn’t mean for him to answer, but he did. She’d never gotten so much out of him all at once.

“No. But it’s a small price to pay for all that I have–for what we have,” he corrected.

“Don’t you know that other men your age and in your position don’t live like this? That none of them are so constrained by their father’s wishes?"

Robert loosened the tie around his neck and took a step around her to set his belongings on the chair. “Those men run businesses; my father is giving me an empire,” he said as he threw his cufflinks down on the coffee table.

If she were any other woman, one that came from a plain or even slightly lesser background, Robert’s wealth and importance would have staggered her to silence. Be it as it were, she only felt pity. Robert was trapped in a life of his father’s design, made to play the part of the dutiful son in a way that was unnecessary—and he didn’t even know it. She hated to think that even her, standing there as she was, had happened because his father had said so.

“Well,” Jane continued on, stepping down from the entrance. “This home isn’t an empire and I’m not an employee. Not in any conventional sense, anyway,” she teased.

Robert huffed out a laugh as he bent down and grabbed her tumbler off the coaster. He filled it again, the amber liquid sloshing around without ice as he brought it to his lips. Wincing at the sting of the unmixed alcohol, he wiped his mouth unceremoniously on his sleeve.

“You know, I always knew I wanted a wife so rich she didn’t need me at all,” he told Jane soberly. “That way if she ever did want me, it would be of her volition. It feels silly, saying it out loud, but my father warned me that I would be sought out for the wrong reasons if I didn’t watch out. So I developed a list of things to look for, and I picked rich and I picked intelligent. I didn’t figure anything beyond that.”

“Why? Wouldn’t a fool be easier?” Jane took the empty glass from his hand and sat it back on the table. Her lips hadn’t transitioned out of their smile. “They want very little—desire less than anyone, I’m told.”

“I know you thought I was foolish,” he told her. She went to protest but he shook his head. “It’s alright. Perhaps I am, in a way. A lot of men would’ve been very angry with you for the way you spoke this morning. For what you said.”

“You were angry,” she recalled.

“No. I was nervous. Well, maybe angry, but only with myself.” His eyebrows pinched together as he looked down, regarding her. “Composure has been everything to me, you see, and to my father, it ranks higher than any religion ever could. Ever since I was a kid, it’s been drilled into me how important structure and self-control is. My father has told me time and time again how fatal it would be if I were to do something to damage our reputation. He’s probably said some version of that to me more than he’s ever told me he loves me.” Robert paused for a moment, mulling his words over. “What you did this morning threatened all of my life’s training and practice, and it did frighten me. But I’m sorry I took it out on you.”

Jane couldn’t resist stepping forward and intruding in his personal space. He didn’t move, letting her invade. “You know,” she began, “I used to get terribly confused between apostles and apostates. At times I wanted to be both. You’ll have to forgive me for my heathen behavior, because I don’t think I’ll ever get it right..”

Amusement spread across his face, brightening it. “You could ruin me,” he told her.

“I wouldn’t. I’ve got a vested interest in your personal growth, Mr. Fischer.”

Her mouth parted slightly and her eyes shifted up to his lips. Robert was getting nearer, allowing himself to be tempted, swayed. He smelt warm and rich, like the expensive, woodsy cologne that lingered in the bathroom for hours after he’d left. She wanted to taste it on his skin. Dipping his head so his mouth aligned with her own, he closed the gap between them and finally kissed her.

Jane could feel the beat of his heart against her palms as she slid his suspenders off his shoulders. Robert’s hand fell upon her lower back, while the other curved delicately around her jaw. She helped him remove his belt and he sighed happily against her lips when she tugged impatiently at his dress shirt, freeing it from his slacks.

The more eagerness she displayed in her undressing of him, the happier he got, as if he’d finally come to understand she was more than a trophy he could appreciate, but not touch. He took off his undershirt and peeled it over his head, and her fingers roamed appreciatively over his skin. In the light coming from the large, open windows in the living room, it was easy to make Robert out—to see him. Freckles and moles unbeknownst to her appeared before her invitingly. Overwhelmed, or perhaps overjoyed, Jane kissed along the width of his exposed chest.

Robert laughed happily, guiding her mouth back to his. “I think I’d like to hear that story about your all girls school and the lack of male appendages now, if you don’t mind,” he told her between kisses.

Her fingers undid the button on his trousers and she grunted in amusement. “I can show you,” she whispered. She kissed his bottom lip and he nodded.

“Please.”

Robert began to undo the zipper at the back of her dress and she turned against him, aiding his efforts. The dress slid easily off her frame. His warm lips kissed the curve between her shoulder blades and his hands pulled her hips flush against his, so that she could feel his excitement forming against her. It was a far cry from the tepid foreplay they’d engaged in before.

She laid her head back against his chest and put her right hand over his. “I’m sure you probably know the trick.” Jane guided his hand to the waistband of her underwear.

His fingers fanned out beneath hers. “I think I might,” he answered.

Their hands worked together, moving beneath the thin fabric of her underwear. They brushed past her pubic hair as his lips pressed warm kisses to the hollow of her neck. It all felt so good, so solid and satisfying, she nearly shuttered against him—and he hadn’t even really touched her yet.

As one of his fingers dared to brush lightly against her, Jane gasped softly. A gush of wetness developed suddenly between her thighs. He held her body against his and she let go of his hand, giving him freedom to do as he wanted. His tongue laved against her skin as he began to part her with his finger.

For all of his previous timidity in the bedroom, she had suspected that Robert was not beside himself when it came to pleasure. Now, she knew it. He teased at her entrance, circling over it as his open mouth slid hotly across her jaw and found her lips once more. His tongue pushed into her mouth as his finger dipped experimentally into her cunt.

They were no longer concerned with offending one another—or at least, they had forgotten that they had once been. He slid another finger into her cunt and swallowed a mouthful of her moans while he curled his finger inside of her. He brushed against the spongy top of her walls, and relished in the collapse of her body into his.

“And who taught you this?” he asked warmly against her mouth.

“Another girl,” she said, voice strained. “She…she told me about it. How to do it.”

He tucked his chin over her shoulder, watching the unrestrained wiggling motion of her hips. “Have you done it often?”

Her fingers stroked up the back of his neck and she grabbed a fistful of his hair. She threaded her fingers through his waxen locks as he continued to work her open.“Often enough,” she panted. She could hear him swallow.

“Lately?”

“Nothing this good,” she whimpered, pressing her hips back into his as he drove his fingers inside of her. He huffed against her shoulder and began unlatching her stockings with his free hand.

“And do you do this often?” she asked, attempting to collect herself.

“Mm?” Robert kissed along her shoulder. “Touch you?”

“Use your fingers on women.”

She could feel the curve of his smile against her skin. “Not often enough. And never—“ He brushed the pad of his thumb over her clit “—like this.”

Jane reached behind herself to grip at his hip. “Oh, Robert!” she gasped, surprised by his sudden bravado. His laughter was light and she wanted desperately to keep drawing more of that sound out of him. Her hips pressed back into his own and she felt the hardened outline of him on her ass.

He’d been born in Australia to an English mother and an Irish mother, so he’d not been circumcised. She liked that about him. Mostly, really, she liked that she got to know it about him. To Jane, there was an eroticism to knowing him like that. Whatever seas separated them, she knew the shape of his cock, how it felt, how it looked.

Robert eased her underwear down her thighs, his movements reeking of earnest desperation. “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing her shoulder again. “I know this hasn’t been an entirely satisfactory marriage. We’ll—“ She felt him shuffle behind her and after a quiet second, his cock was brushing against her backside. “—work on it.”

Jane wanted to give him everything: to allow crudeness and impropriety and fault, to show him that indecency could be beneficial. With a foolish sense of disregard, she said, “Fuck me, Robert, just the way you want.” She could feel his moan in his chest before it rose to his throat.

Robert took her seriously, a thing he’d neglected to do many times before, moving her to the edge of the couch and turning her around to face him. He held her up by the arms, and, looking at her in the eyes, he seemed to soften slightly. His lips brushed lightly over hers and his cock jutted on his stomach between them.

“You make me nervous,” he confessed, laughing self-consciously. “Always have, even that first night. I thought you didn’t like me at all, truth be told. I found I was trying to impress you, and I’d never done that before. You wore those little white gloves—“ He paused and took himself in his palm. Jane watched as he stroked himself lazily, the tip of his cock becoming exposed. He was awfully close to her cunt. Her breathing seemed to halt. “—and a pink dress that went down to the floor. You didn’t giggle or bat your eyelashes, or even so much as blink in my direction for too long. In fact, at one point you leaned in and let the man next to you light your cigarette. I couldn’t have been more entranced if I had tried.”

Robert lined himself up to her cunt. She watched as the black of his pupils invaded the cool blue of his irises, and he pushed himself inside of her. It was a stretch at first, but one wholly desired by both of them. He panted softly against the bare skin of her shoulder, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. She felt his shoulders move beneath her hands as he tugged her closer, pushing her so nearly off the edge of the couch that she barely sat on it at all.

“I couldn’t understand you,” he continued, voice notably more strained, “I couldn’t understand your interest in me, couldn’t understand why you kept saying yes to seeing me again.” He pressed his mouth to the glistening column of her throat, brushing his thumbs against her warm cheeks. “And then one day, only a little after you had agreed to marry me, my father said that you were clever, dangerously clever, because now you were going to be the richest woman in the world and with a husband who wouldn’t say no to anything you wanted.” Robert’s eyebrows furrowed, accentuating the faint wrinkles between them.

His nose traced against the curve hers, and he found his way back to her mouth. He hovered over her lips with his, and she exerted her patience by not lounging forward and kissing him. He continued speaking, his hips stilling against hers; she almost whined in protest. “How right he had been, after all.”

Jane’s fingers fiddled with the hair at the nape of his neck. “Your father wants you to be his goddamn puppet on strings, Robert. He knows nothing.” She guided his face towards hers, and she kissed him once more. He brushed his tongue against hers greedily as she parted her lips for him.

She could feel herself opening for him, the slick between her thighs doubling as he started moving inside of her again. Jane could hardly wait to say her next words to Robert. She pressed her cheek to his and they rolled off her tongue: “Before you came home, I inserted a diaphragm inside of myself,” she whispered, “which means you can do exactly as you like without worrying. And I do want you to take what you want. I want you to show me what you haven’t,” she encouraged. Her nails scraped lightly over his shoulders.

Robert looked overwhelmed by what she was saying, his eyebrows still drawn together. She was worried that perhaps she’d crossed a line. But then he looked up at her and he smiled widely. Jane was sure he’d never been so attractive. She swiped a thumb appreciatively over the dimple in his cheek as he began to rut into her.

His thrusts were sharper now, so that she had to cling more tightly onto his slight frame to keep from topping over the couch. It felt incredible to be so full of him, and to be acting so unashamedly together like this. Nothing about their desire felt stolen or hidden. It felt open and free, like she had hoped it might come to be.

They watched each other as he drove his cock inside of her. He was alight with his desire, red in the cheeks and lips, pupils wide, soft whimpers escaping as the sound of their sex began to become audible. The slap of skin hitting skin that filled the air between them made everything so much better for her too. She arched her back and he gripped onto her hip, trying to keep her still.

She was surprised by the sturdiness of their bodies—by how much they could collectively give and take. He was fucking into her with force, as if seeing just how far he could go before he couldn’t anymore. Without meaning to, she began to moan; each time his cock jutted up inside of her, he hit parts of her she felt had never been accessed. She never wanted him to leave her, and so she clung to him. It only pleased her when he clung to her, too.

Robert pulled her off the couch, moving so deftly that she didn’t have to react before she was laying flat on her back against the cushions of the couch. They barely fit on it together, but he managed, throwing off the back cushions quickly to accommodate them both.

They took a moment. He smiled down at her, the same polite grin he had given her that first night, and she smiled up at him.

“It’s my turn to show you something I was taught,” he said, his voice low. “Keep your legs down, okay?” She nodded, and he pushed up off her, bracketing her between his arms.

She watched him curiously. His head hung and he maneuvered his body above hers. As he began to slip out from her, she gripped onto his arm. Robert looked up, chuckling. “It’s alright. This is how it’s meant to be at first.” He moved his body higher up hers, using the arm of the couch as a springboard. “See,” he told her, “When I push myself inside of you now, it’s going to feel good for us both.”

“Where’d you learn this?” she teased.

“Oh, same places you learned yours,” he answered happily, leaning down and kissing her fully on the mouth.

He rocked himself upwards, simultaneously grinding himself onto her and thrusting in. Jane whimpered. “Oh,” she said, her body already so sensitive. She felt she could explode with the warmth of her want at any second and him now focusing his attention specifically on it only added fuel to that fire.

Robert continued to rock forward, his cock thrusting slightly into her. They kissed and kissed, each one growing messier and less focused as they both became lost in their mounting desires.

He was so looking at her as he never had before. There was a softness in his gaze as much as there was his desire. Robert rubbed himself against her with the express purpose of seeing how good it felt to her.

She showed him; as her orgasm built inside of her, she shouted, “Yes, yes, yes” until she was arching up into him against her will and nearly shaking from the stimulation. Robert kissed every part of her as she came on his cock. Every part of her felt on fire because of him.

He plunged his cock more deeply inside of her as she came down from her orgasm, pressing his hand to her back so that she stayed slightly lifted off the couch and close to his body. She could tell he was close; his thrusts were becoming shorter and he was beginning to grunt against her. His hand crept up to her breast and she held her hand over his. “Oh, Jane,” he said, and that was it; his cock began to leak out into her. She laughed, proud and earnest and shocked.

Robert collapsed into her body, and she was glad to have the weight of him on top of her. They felt so close like this. Her fingers carded through his sweat slicked hair, and she wondered whose heart was beating the fastest between them.

His own laughter began to come out in soft peals. “I hope you do ruin me,” he panted. When she laughed, he added, “I really do, if what we just did was any preview of what that could be like.”

“There’s a difference between ruining someone and love, you know?” She pushed back his hair, looking up at the high ceiling. “Though, for many it’s a fine line.”

“Mm,” he hummed. “Well, you can be certain that I’ll be more agreeable to whatever you want to do to me from here on out, be it ruination or love.”

She smiled happily. “I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Fischer.”

He looked up at her and for the first time, she saw playfulness in his gaze. “I hope you do, Mrs. Fischer, because I intend for you to feel the same about me by the end. We are going to be the richest, greediest, most in love people in all the world, if only in this home.”

She didn’t think her smile could grow any wider. “I couldn’t want for anything more than that, darling. I really couldn’t.”

#robert fischer #robert fischer x reader #cillian murphy

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cillianslvt · 6 days ago

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i’m shook.

pairing: bill furlong (small things like these) x fem!reader

summary: 5.2k words. After your father’s death, you return to your childhood home in rural Ireland and find yourself drawn into an unexpected intimacy with Bill Furlong, your late father's oldest friend.

rating: M for non-explicit sex. infidelity. age difference. angst.

a/n: non-beta'd; all mistakes are my own. please be kind! (no-one will read this but I wrote it for me; apologies to Claire Keegan)

read on ao3

The wake was quiet, as your father would’ve wanted. You recognised more coats than faces. Most of them hadn’t been up the hill in years. They came in out of habit or pity, some because they owed your father favours they couldn’t now repay.

Furlong came early, and stayed longer than anyone expected. He sat near the stove, his coat still damp, and said very little. Just that he’d known your father since they were boys, since the coal yard was still Wilson’s and the sheds were made of real stone.

You hadn’t seen him in years, not properly. He looked older than you remembered, but less tired than most. He brought turf, the good kind, and left it by the back door without making a fuss. Later, when you found the bag, you felt the weight of it as though it had been laid directly on your chest.

You hadn’t planned on staying. Dublin still pressed at your thoughts, its noise clinging to your coat sleeves. But the house was yours now. And the neighbours—what few remained—came with casseroles and soda bread and inquiries disguised as condolences. So you stayed.

You lit fires even when you didn’t need to. Not for heat, but for the company.

Furlong came by again, a week after the funeral. Just to check on things. The boiler, he said. The state of the roof. You knew he was lying, but you made tea anyway, and he sat on the edge of the chair like someone waiting to be told to go.

You talked about your father. How he had a way of walking without swinging his arms. How he never owned a dressing gown, not once. Furlong smiled at that, said he remembered him at twelve years old, scraping ice off windows with the edge of a butter knife.

“He was kind to me,” Furlong said, and you nodded, because that was true, and rare.

The next day, you found a sack of coal on the step, and no note.

You should’ve said something. Should’ve returned it. But you didn’t.

Instead, you opened the stove, lit a match, and sat for a long time with your coat still on, listening to the crackle.

That evening, you saw him again—crossing the lane with his collar up, shoulders hunched in that way of his. He didn’t look at your house. But you knew he knew you were watching.

You found yourself watching for him.

Not every day, but most. The coal lorry passed irregularly, and you learned the sound of it—the rattle over the ridge of the lane, the low shift of its weight on the hill. He didn’t always stop. Sometimes you’d hear it and sit back from the window, ashamed.

But then there’d be another sack left on the step, and you’d have to light the fire again, not for warmth but so you’d have something to thank him for if he came back.

You wondered what the town made of it. If Mrs. Kehoe had said anything in the shop, or if someone had noticed his boots outside your door. But if they had, they said nothing. You were your father’s daughter, after all, and he’d always been left mostly alone.

You didn’t know what you were to Furlong. Not a widow. Not a girl. Not a wife. Perhaps just someone whose silences didn’t need explaining. When he came, you offered tea, and he drank it slowly, his elbows barely touching the table.

Once, he brought bread. Said his wife had made two loaves, and he thought you might like one. You accepted it, though it was still warm and you knew the lie of it straight away.

You didn’t eat it that night. Instead, you sliced it in the morning, toasted it on the edge of the grate, and ate it slowly with marmalade. You imagined his hands in the dough, though you knew it wasn’t true. Still, the bread was good. Dense and unsweetened. It filled you.

One Sunday, when the frost hadn’t yet lifted, he appeared at the gate with his cap in hand. He asked if the yard might need sweeping, though there were no leaves and the gravel had long settled. You opened the shed and stood there while he looked at your father’s old spade, the one still rusted at the edge.

“I remember him with this,” he said, lifting it like it was something holy. “He once dug a hole for a hedge and it near broke him. But he did it. He always did things slow, and all the way through.”

You said nothing. Just nodded.

That night, you left a small tin of scones on his doorstep. No note. You saw the light go on in their front room when he found them.

The days shortened. Smoke rose early from chimneys. The crows came back to the wires, blackening them like notes on a stave. You walked sometimes, out past the convent. You didn’t look at it, but you knew it was there.

You wondered if he thought about what he’d seen there. If it kept him up. You wondered if that had anything to do with you, with the way he looked at you now, when he did.

One evening, you left the door open a little longer than usual. The fire had gone low, but the kettle was hot, and the light was soft. You heard the lorry, then the steps on the gravel.

He paused at the doorway. Just a second too long.

Then he stepped in, ducking his head as though the doorway were too low, though it wasn’t. You noticed how he removed his cap slowly, how his hand hovered before he folded it and tucked it under his arm. He didn’t speak. You didn’t, either.

The fire had sunk, glowing low in the grate, and the kettle sang a little where it rested on the iron hob. You moved to pour the tea. Your hands didn’t shake, but you worried they might.

“I wasn’t sure if I should call,” he said.

You didn’t know what to say to that, so you said nothing, and let the tea run into the cups.

He sat where he always did, on the hard wooden chair by the wall. You wished, not for the first time, that the house had softer things—curtains that swung instead of hung stiff, a cushion to offer him, a lamp with a fabric shade. The place still felt like your father. His silence, his spareness. But you were here now, and not a man, and not him.

You placed his cup in front of him. He looked up and gave a small nod. That gesture—barely anything—settled into your chest like heat.

There was nothing to say. The room had no clock, no ticking. The only sound was the faint chime of the spoon in your own cup, and once, the shifting of coal in the stove as it fell in on itself.

You thought of the things you could ask. How the girls were. Whether his wife still baked that bread. If he ever sat up at night the way you did, full of thoughts that had nowhere to go. But you didn’t ask any of it.

Instead you looked at his hands. Not the nails, which were scrubbed raw, but the backs of them. The pale blue veins that branched and thinned into the wrist. His hands looked like they had once carried something tender and not let it fall.

You thought: if he reached out now, just lightly—just to take my hand—I would not move away.

You thought: surely he knows.

You thought: God help me, what if it’s showing?

Your chest felt tight. You placed your tea down without drinking it. He had, at some point, finished his.

“Right so,” he said, though it wasn’t late.

You stood with him. He placed his cap back on his head and glanced at the hearth as if it might speak.

“If you ever need anything,” he said.

You nodded.

He stepped past you. Your sleeve brushed his coat, only for a second, but you felt it all the way to your ribs.

At the door, he paused. The outside was dark now, the lane quiet. He looked back, and you waited, hoping—for something, anything, a hand raised, a shift, a question.

But he just nodded again, and left.

You stood there until the cold crept back in.

That night, you didn’t light the fire. You let the stove go out and sat in the half-dark, the cup of tea gone cold beside you. You didn’t bother with the lamp. The dark pressed its fingers into the corners of the room until it felt like the house might fold in on itself.

You didn’t cry. You weren’t sad, exactly. But something had opened, and now you had to sit with it. You could still feel the sleeve of his coat against your own, the slight roughness of the wool, the heat of something that might’ve been breath, or might’ve been nothing at all.

You should have said something. You should have stopped him at the door. But what would you have said? Please stay. I’m not afraid of what this might be. The thought made your skin prickle. Not with shame, exactly. With risk.

In the morning, you stood in the cold kitchen and thought about the things you needed. Matches. A new scuttle. Coal, though you had enough for now. You put your coat on anyway and walked down the hill.

The coal yard was quiet, the usual clangs and thumps dulled by the frost. A few black sacks lined the wall. The truck was gone. Inside the prefab, you saw someone moving behind the desk—paper rustled, a phone was put down.

When you stepped through the gate, you saw her. One of his daughters—though you weren’t sure which. Not the youngest. Not the eldest. One of the middle ones. Tall, her hair pulled back in a way that made her look older than she was, until you caught the roundness still in her face.

She looked up. Her eyes were startlingly familiar. You realised she must be close to your age, maybe younger by only a handful of years. The thought unsettled you—not just for what it meant, but for how little it moved you, in the way guilt is meant to. You weren’t ashamed. You were only… curious.

“Can I help you?” she asked, polite but tired.

“I was just looking for Bill,” you said, your voice too soft.

“He’s out with deliveries. Won’t be back ‘til after dinner.”

You nodded, already backing away. She glanced at your hands—empty—and you wondered if she could tell you’d come for something other than fuel.

“You can leave a message,” she offered, stepping out of the prefab, rubbing her arms in the cold. “Or if it’s for the house, I can take a note.”

You said no, no, thank you, it was nothing urgent. Just checking.

And she smiled at you—not unkindly. Not suspiciously, either. Just a small smile that said she knew how to mind her father’s place, and wasn’t worried about you.

On the way home, you watched the frost melt along the verge. The light was coming in low and gold, catching in the ditchwater, and the birds were busy, their wings loud against the quiet.

You didn’t know what you wanted, not really.

Only that something had started, and it wasn’t finished yet.

You hadn’t expected to see him in town. It was a Thursday, just after eleven, and you’d only come down to post a letter and buy flour. The shop was quiet. The cold kept most people in. You had already passed the convent—kept your eyes ahead, as always—and were turning down onto Quay Street when you saw him across the way, near Hanrahan’s window, staring at a pair of boots.

He didn’t see you at first.

He was standing beside a woman with cropped hair, wearing a fine green coat and gloves without holes. You recognised her from the funeral. She’d brought something—traybake or sponge—and left without staying long. She didn’t look like she belonged to the coal yard. She looked like someone who folded things properly and kept receipts.

She touched his arm then, lightly. He turned, said something low. She laughed—not loudly, but warmly, like it was a habit.

You meant to keep walking.

But something in the shape of him, the way his head tilted to listen, stopped you. Not jealousy, not quite. Just the sudden awareness that he belonged elsewhere. To someone.

He turned and caught sight of you.

He nodded first. Then, like she’d followed his gaze, she turned too.

You smiled. Polite. Small.

She stepped forward before he could, her gloves held loosely in one hand.

“Are you the neighbour?” she asked.

You said you were.

She told you her name—Eileen—though you already knew it. Her voice was pleasant. Clear. You could see how someone might feel safe beside it.

“You’ve been very brave,” she said. “It’s no small thing, coming back after everything.”

You didn’t know what to say to that. What everything?

But you thanked her, softly.

Furlong stood behind her now, his face unreadable. He looked older in the daylight, the lines at his mouth deeper than you remembered. You wanted to say something to him—to ask about the lorry, the frost, the scones—but nothing would come.

Eileen looked between you and him, then said, lightly, “We should be getting on.”

And then, to you, as she turned, “Don’t be a stranger. It’s good to have someone in that house again.”

You nodded.

They walked away together, slowly. She said something else, and he didn’t answer right away.

You stood still until they were gone.

That night, back in the house, you didn’t light the fire again. You left the flour on the table. You watched the sky turn to iron and thought of her gloves, her voice, the easy shape of her in the street beside him.

And still—you wished, in a corner of yourself that refused to shrink—that he had looked back.

It was late afternoon when he came. The light already going, low and gold through the bare branches. You hadn’t lit the fire, though you’d meant to. The room felt hollow with the cold. You were standing at the sink, your hands in lukewarm water, when you heard his boots on the gravel.

You didn’t move right away.

When you opened the door, he stood on the step with his cap in his hands.

“I was passing,” he said. “Thought I’d check the oil tank, see it��s not getting too low in this weather.”

You told him it was fine. That you had enough. But he stepped in anyway.

You didn’t stop him.

He looked different—smaller, somehow, though he stood the same height. Something behind the eyes was quieter. His mouth had that firm line it wore when he was holding something in.

You boiled the kettle, though neither of you mentioned tea.

He stood near the stove, rubbing his hands. You noticed how he kept them to himself—didn’t touch the chair, didn’t reach for the poker, didn’t even remove his coat. He was all edges now, like he was trying to pull himself in from the corners.

You said, finally, “Your wife seems kind.”

He didn’t answer at first. Then: “She’s a good woman. She’s always been good to the girls.”

And that was when you knew. Whatever you’d imagined—that this was mutual, that it lived somewhere beyond pity or familiarity—was something you’d conjured for yourself. You looked down at the cups, suddenly aware of the way you stood, of the line your body made in the light.

“I’ve overstepped, haven’t I,” you said, not meaning to say it aloud.

He turned to you then. Fully. Looked straight at you.

“You haven’t.”

His voice was soft, but not uncertain.

You didn’t know what to say. You felt suddenly very young. Not the years you’d lived, but the kind of young that comes with wanting something too much.

“I’m your neighbour,” you said, voice low. “And you knew my father.”

“I did,” he said. “And he was good to me. Kind, when others weren’t.”

You nodded, trying to steady yourself. You weren’t sure what you expected—an apology, maybe. Or a step back.

Instead, he reached out and touched your wrist. Just there, above the cuff. Nothing more than the weight of a thumb. But it was enough.

Enough to know he wasn’t only being fatherly.

Enough to know he had crossed the same line, in his own mind, more than once.

You didn’t move. You let him leave it there.

And when he did let go, it wasn’t with shame.

It was with care.

He stepped back. Picked up his cap.

“I’ll call again, if you want,” he said.

And you said yes, though your voice barely carried.

You lit the fire after he left. Not out of habit this time, but out of need.

And when the flames caught, you sat near them on the floor, not looking at anything in particular.

The room felt different.

Not warmer, exactly.

Just less alone.

That night, you couldn’t sleep.

The fire burned low, and still you sat by it. You didn’t bother with tea. You left the curtains open and the lamp off. There was no one to see you anyway. Outside, a dog barked once and then fell silent. You watched the clouds thicken and pass, watched the light shift against the ceiling like breath under skin.

His touch had been light. Barely a moment. But your wrist remembered it. You could still feel the heat of it, the pressure. Not heavy—only real.

You told yourself not to hope.

By morning, you were tired in that peculiar way where your bones felt thin. You washed your face too long and poured tea you didn’t drink. The fire was out. You didn’t bother relighting it.

You waited two days. Three.

No knock. No lorry. No boots on gravel.

The town was as it had always been—grey lanes, tidy hedges, the faint sound of the church bell at odd hours. You went for walks. You passed the convent, eyes forward. You stood too long in the post office pretending to read notices. You told yourself you hadn’t expected anything.

But the grief surprised you.

It wasn’t loud, and it didn’t arrive all at once. It came like weather. A slow saturation. You moved through the days like someone who’d been lightly struck. Not wounded exactly. Just left hollow in the places where expectation used to sit.

You told yourself you had misread him again. That he had come to his senses. That he was remembering his girls, and the quiet woman with the green coat who made two loaves at a time and never left a drawer open. And what were you, really, to disturb all that?

You let the coal run low. You washed your own windows. You did not go back to the yard.

It was four days before he came again.

Late afternoon. Just on the edge of dusk.

You heard the lorry before you saw him. You were in the back room, and your body went very still. You listened to the door of the truck slam shut, the careful step on the path.

You opened the door before he could knock.

He looked tired, his coat still on. There was nothing in his hands.

He stepped in like someone who had been outside for too long.

You said nothing.

Neither did he.

It was the kind of silence that had weight. That required both of you to hold your sides of it carefully.

He looked at you. Not your eyes—your mouth.

Then, without a word, he reached for you. Not suddenly. Not with force. Just a quiet movement, like putting his hand into a stream.

His mouth found yours, gently, as though afraid you might vanish under him. It wasn’t long. Just long enough to know it was real. Just long enough to say everything he couldn’t.

Then he stepped back.

And just like that, he was gone.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t explain. He closed the door behind him and didn’t look back.

You stood in the doorway long after the sound of the truck had faded.

The house was very quiet.

But you knew—finally, plainly—that you had not imagined him.

You didn’t light the fire that night, though the cold came in early. You sat near the hearth, arms wrapped around your knees, watching the last of the grey light bleed from the window. The air in the room held something—weight, stillness, the trace of him.

You hadn’t kissed in years. Not like that.

It wasn’t the kiss that left you breathless. It was what it meant. That he’d thought about it. That it had lived in him as it had in you. That he’d crossed whatever threshold he’d been circling in silence for weeks, maybe longer.

And then he’d gone. Not a word. Not even your name.

He hadn’t looked afraid. Only resolute.

As though he’d let himself have one thing—one honest thing—and then done what he had to do.

You didn’t cry. You felt too full to cry. You carried the moment like a weight under the ribs. It slowed your movements. Made you gentle with the kettle, quiet with your steps. You moved through the house like someone sharing it now with something invisible and alive.

You waited, though you told yourself you weren’t.

You thought of what he might be doing. Filling sacks, standing beside that old stove in the prefab, talking to the lads, lifting his daughters’ coats off the hooks at night. You wondered if he washed his hands the same way after—slow, methodical, as though penance could be scrubbed in.

But you knew he would come again.

You didn’t know how you knew. Only that you did.

It sat in your bones like the weather: that low ache before rain, that shift in light before snow.

He would come. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next week.

But he would.

And when he did, you would be here.

Not waiting.

But ready.

It was a Sunday.

The bells had long stopped ringing, and the town felt emptied out, like a theatre after the crowd’s gone. You hadn’t gone to Mass. You hadn’t even opened the curtains fully. The fire was lit low, the afternoon light already slanting across the floorboards.

You didn’t hear the lorry this time.

Just the knock. Once. And then the sound of the latch lifting.

He stepped inside without speaking. His coat was wet at the hem.

You didn’t ask what had changed.

He moved toward the fire like a man drawn by heat alone, then stopped just before it. His face had that unreadable look again, like it might crack open or vanish altogether.

You didn’t reach for him.

You stood still, close enough that the edge of your sleeve brushed his.

He touched your arm first. Not your hand—your arm, where the wool was thin and your pulse lived. Then he leaned in, slower this time, and kissed you again.

There was no hesitation now. No uncertainty.

You felt it in the way his hand cupped your face, in the way his mouth softened against yours, in how he pressed his forehead to yours before pulling you closer.

You sank to the rug together, knees touching, breath warming the space between. The fire popped gently behind you, and his hand slid beneath your jumper, not greedy, just steady. You closed your eyes.

He said your name once. Not loud. Just to say it.

Then he stood, and reached down for you.

In the bedroom, he was careful at first, as if he didn’t quite believe you were real. His hands traced your back like a map he’d studied but never touched. When you undressed, he turned his face slightly—not out of shame, but reverence.

Then something in him gave.

His tenderness deepened into something else—urgent, quiet, like thirst after a long walk. He held you close, touched his mouth to the hollow of your throat. His breathing grew uneven. Yours followed.

When he entered you, you held your breath. He gripped your hand tightly, as if afraid you might vanish. The ache between you was familiar and new all at once—like returning to a place you’d dreamed of.

You came first, quietly, your face turned into his shoulder. His name in your mouth but not spoken. He followed soon after, with a low sound you’d never heard from him before. Something human and helpless.

After, he didn’t move.

You lay tangled together, his head tucked beneath your chin, your legs still caught up in his. You could feel his chest against your ribs, warm and slow. His hand stayed in yours, even after your breathing softened.

The light outside faded further, slipping into evening. You didn’t turn on a lamp.

You thought he might leave.

But he didn’t. Not right away.

You both drifted, not into full sleep—just that half-state where the body forgets its edges. You heard the fire settle in the grate. You felt him sigh once, into your neck.

Later, when he rose, it was quiet.

He dressed slowly. Kissed your forehead.

He didn’t say when he’d be back.

He hadn’t meant to see her that day.

It was Saturday, and the girls had asked to walk the Square—Grace wanted to look in the chemist window, and Sheila had hopes of catching a boy from school she’d been watching all term. Eileen had her arm looped through his, her gloves tucked into her bag, her coat done up against the wind.

The streets were half-busy with weekend chatter. People moving slowly, watching their steps on the wet flags.

He heard her voice before he saw her.

She was standing outside the post office, the sun in her hair, wearing that coat that was too thin for the season. She looked different somehow—older, distant, as if she’d already begun packing her life back into herself.

Eileen saw her too and went straight over.

He stayed back with the girls. Watched his wife and the woman speak.

She smiled at Eileen. Said something low. Her eyes flicked to him only once—barely—and then away again, like it cost her.

He watched as Eileen tilted her head, said something in reply, and then—he saw it happen—he saw her say it.

“I’ll be leaving soon,” she said. “Back to Dublin. The house is too much. And classes start again.”

He couldn’t hear the words, not properly, but the shape of them was clear. He felt them in his ribs.

Leaving.

He had known, of course. The way people know summer ends. But knowing and hearing were different things. Knowing was manageable. Hearing turned the ground to water.

She turned to go, nodding once, polite.

Eileen waved, called after her: “Safe travels!”

She didn’t look back.

Furlong stood still beside the sweet shop. His girls were already wandering ahead, their coats flapping open. Eileen came back and took his arm again, warm and unaware.

“She’s a lovely girl,” she said. “Brave, too. It mustn’t be easy, being up there all alone.”

He nodded.

His heart felt full of smoke. No flame, just the slow ache of what had been lit and left to smoulder.

They passed Hanrahan’s. Someone from the parish nodded at him. He nodded back, not hearing a word.

He hadn’t told her what she’d done to him.

Hadn’t said that he thought of her hands at night, not in sin but in longing—wanting to know how they stirred tea, how they folded clothes, how they touched the edge of a window frame when the rain came in.

Now she would go.

And he would stay.

He would light the fire in the Rayburn and mend the latch on the yard gate. He would toast bread for his girls, and smile for Eileen, and wipe coal dust from his hands in the sink they’d had since the year they married.

He would go on, as men do.

But something in him had shifted, and he knew it wouldn’t shift back.

Not even with time.

Not even with prayer.

It was Christmas Eve when he came again.

You’d returned only two days before, the train delayed, the station cold and full of mothers with paper parcels. The town looked the same—maybe a little smaller—but you didn’t mind. The quiet suited you.

You hadn’t told anyone you were coming.

The house opened easily. The fire took on the first try. You bought bread and tinned soup, and left your coat folded on the chair where he once sat.

You didn’t expect him.

But you left the lamp on, anyway.

When he knocked, the air outside was full of sleet. He looked soaked through—hatless, no gloves, his face ruddy with cold. There was snow in his hair.

Neither of you spoke at first.

He stepped inside. You shut the door behind him.

He kissed you before the fire was even hot. His hands were cold and rough, but his mouth was warm. He held your face like he was trying to memorise it. You kissed him back as if nothing had passed between then and now, as if all the weeks had folded into this moment and lived only here.

You made tea but didn’t drink it.

You sat close on the floor, your legs tangled, your knees touching. He ran his hands through your hair like it was something he’d never let himself do before. You let him. You leaned into his body like you’d leaned into his silence the first time.

Later, in the bedroom, he touched you like a man with less time.

He wasn’t unkind—only urgent, full of need that had learned to hide. You met him with the same hunger. The roughness wasn’t cruelty. It was want made real. You clutched at his back, let him take you fully. When you came, it startled you—the way it shook something loose.

He followed soon after, with a low sound, his face buried against your shoulder. His weight on you was welcome. Heavy in the right places.

After, he lay beside you longer than he ever had.

The fire hissed in the other room. The house creaked like it always did in winter. His hand found yours under the blanket.

He didn’t say he loved you.

But he said your name, soft, and looked at you with eyes that held too much.

“You matter,” he said, quietly. “You have.”

You nodded, eyes wet but not from sorrow.

“I know.”

You touched his chest, the space between his ribs.

“This will never be more,” you said, not to wound but to steady.

“I know,” he echoed.

You lay there a long time, in the half-dark, the air around you full of the faint scent of turf and tea leaves and coal.