madameisaacpereire

[madameisaacpereire]

Hi! So… this isn’t my first ask, since i’ve asked as an anon a few times, but this will be my first ask with my name.

As per @madameisaacpereire’s fic and advice, can you write something where the reader is the one who got an accident as well and she changed a bit. Henry knew what it was like to be in an accident and change but he wants her old self to come back? You can make it as it’s own, or with sparrow or angel. It’s fine if you write this or not! Totally acceptable.

Anything really, just something comfy. Thank you!

This one is so overdue, I am sorry it took me so long. It came out more bittersweet than I intended but I hope you still like it 😭💞

Perhaps that is enough - Henry Winter

It is late, and the house is quiet. You lie awake in the half-dark, listening to the faint drip of thawing snow from the eaves, the heavy silence of walls too old and too thin to keep out the weight of winter. Henry sits at the desk by the window, a book open before him, though you know he has not turned the page in some time. His glasses catch the lamplight, obscuring his eyes; his face, pale and unreadable, is fixed toward the paper as if by sheer force of will he could drag meaning out of words that have long ago dissolved into nothing.

You do not speak. You haven’t for some hours now, though once you might have filled the room with idle chatter — a stream of irreverent comments, questions, half-finished thoughts, all tossed into the air with the careless joy of someone who never imagined silence could be anything but temporary. But that was before, and this is after. The world is divided neatly down its center now: before the accident, and after.

You shift against the pillow, and his gaze flickers, quick as a blade, from the book to you. A small, imperceptible motion, but you have known Henry Winter long enough — longer than anyone else at Hampden, longer than Francis or Charles or Camilla or even Bunny — to recognize it for what it is: concern disguised as habit. He watches you the way one might watch a fragile artifact, valuable not because of what it is now but because of what it once was, and the knowledge that a careless touch might undo what little of it remains.

“Do you need anything?” His voice, low, unhurried, carries across the room.

You shake your head. The gesture feels clumsy, inadequate, but you do not trust your voice to hold steady, not tonight.

For a moment he studies you as though searching for some hidden meaning in your silence, then turns back to his book, though you know the question will repeat itself in an hour, and again after that, as if he cannot help but test the ground of your quiet, see whether it has grown any less impenetrable.

It occurs to you sometimes — though you cannot say it aloud — that he mourns you. Not you as you are, with your long silences and your sudden fits of fear at things once familiar, but the other you, the girl you used to be. The one who spoke too much, touched too freely, who laughed at his solemn pronouncements until even his composure cracked into a reluctant smile. He had called you insufferable, once. Annoying. A gadfly, buzzing too close to the flame of his thoughts. You had laughed at that, delighted, pressed a hand to his arm and teased him until he scowled, though you always knew the scowl meant little.

Now he would give anything — you can see it in the heaviness of his shoulders, in the long pauses that punctuate his careful speech — to have that noise back.

You remember little of the night itself. Only fragments: the sharp smell of pine and earth, the heavy heat of bodies pressing too close, Francis’s laughter, the strange, wild weightlessness that seized you in the moment before it all collapsed. And then — the farmer’s face, startled, grotesquely human in the light, the world tilting, a blow, the crack of something breaking — your head, the ground, memory itself.

When you woke the next morning your hands were scraped raw, your lip split, your body ached in ways you did not understand. And something else too, something deeper: as if the accident had gouged a hollow in you that no amount of time could fill.

Henry had been there when you opened your eyes. The first thing you saw was his face, unreadable as always, but his hands trembled when they touched your wrist, and you remember thinking — dazed, confused, not yet afraid — that you had never seen Henry Winter tremble.

The others speak of it rarely, if at all. Francis skirts around it with brittle jokes, Charles and Camilla with the same evasive tenderness they use to avoid mention of their parents, and Bunny — Bunny will not let it go. He was not there that night, but he knows enough, more than he should, and he makes a game of it: sly jabs, jokes at the dinner table, long monologues about manslaughter laws and prison sentences, all delivered with a honking laugh that grates like a blade on glass.

He tells anyone who will listen that Henry drives like a lunatic, that it was a wonder no one else was hurt when he “hit that deer,” and his eyes — quick, darting — linger too long on you when he says it, as though daring you to flinch. He does not know, not really, but the way he toys with the subject is worse than silence, worse than suspicion, because it makes you feel as though the whole terrible thing might spill out of you at any moment.

Henry does not speak of it directly — he is too careful for that — but you feel his awareness of it like a constant pulse beneath the surface of things. The way he reaches for your arm when you cross an icy path, the way his eyes flick to you in crowded rooms as if expecting you to vanish. And always, always, the weight of his silence: not indifferent, but thick with things unsaid, with apologies he will not give and regrets he cannot voice.

You wonder sometimes what he remembers of you before. Whether he thinks of the summers you spent together as children, when you were both too young to know what you would become. You running ahead, hair wild in the wind, turning to call for him to hurry, and Henry — slower, deliberate even then, a book tucked under his arm, eyes following you with that same strange intensity he wears now.

You think of the scar on his forehead, the one he hides beneath his hair. You remember the day he returned after the accident that gave it to him — though no one would ever tell you precisely what had happened — and how, for weeks, you could not look at it without a shiver. It had made him seem suddenly mortal, not the untouchable, unshakable boy you had known. Now, perhaps, you are to him what that scar once was: a reminder of the terrible fragility of things, of the violence that can shatter a life without warning.

Henry closes the book at last. He sets it carefully on the desk and removes his glasses, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with a slow, weary gesture. When he turns to you his face is unguarded, and you see, with a pang that is almost too much to bear, that he looks tired. Not with the sharp, purposeful exhaustion of study, but with the deeper fatigue of someone who has been carrying too much for too long.

“You should sleep,” he says softly.

“I can’t,” you whisper, and the sound of your own voice startles you. It is hoarse, thin, like a reed snapped in the wind.

For an instant his expression breaks, and there it is: relief, sharp and painful, flooding his features like sunlight through cloud. He rises from the desk and crosses to the bed, and when he sits beside you, you feel the heat of him, steady and grounding.

“I’ll stay,” he says, as if he has not already stayed every night since the accident.

And for the first time in weeks, you believe him.

Memory comes to you in fragments now, sudden and unbidden, like a slide lantern in the dark: an image flares up, brilliant for a moment, then fades, leaving only the shape of its absence on your vision. You remember your childhood in this way, half-seen, half-invented, because who can say where memory ends and longing begins?

There is a summer — you cannot place the year, but you know you are both young enough still to be barefoot, old enough to resent it when your parents call you inside too early. The days are long and heavy with heat, the air rippling above the road, and the two of you roam beyond the safety of porches and hedges into fields where the grass stands nearly to your waist. You talk ceaselessly, as you always did then, about nothing in particular: the shapes of clouds, the taste of blackberries on your tongue, whether ancient gods would look like ordinary people if they lived among you now. Henry listens in silence, his long pale face unreadable even then, though sometimes — if you are quick, if you catch him off guard — you glimpse a flicker at the corner of his mouth, the faintest smile.

He is not like the other children. You knew it before you had words for it. Where they run wild, careless and shrieking, Henry moves with deliberation, with an odd, self-possessed gravity. He does not laugh easily; he does not speak unless he must; he carries himself as though he has already grown tired of the frivolity of youth and is waiting, impatiently, for the dignity of age. You, by contrast, are all noise and motion, and together you are like two halves of an imperfect symmetry — his silence amplifying your chatter, your warmth pressing against his chill.

It was during one of those summers that Henry’s scar appeared. You remember it not for the accident itself — for you were not there — but for the aftermath. He had gone away for some weeks, and when he returned you saw it immediately: a huge, angry line carved into the right side of his forehead, trailing down to his eyebrow. It was not yet something he could hide beneath his hair, and you stared at it, horrified, fascinated.

“What happened?” you asked, and he said nothing, only pulled a book from under his arm and sat down beside you beneath the elm tree where you had been waiting. You pressed him, of course — you always pressed, needling him with questions until his patience wore thin. Finally, with a sharpness that startled you, he snapped, “It doesn’t matter.”

But it did matter. You knew it then, though you did not understand why. You had always thought of him as unshakable, untouchable, as though nothing in the clumsy, ordinary world could reach him. And yet here was proof that it could, that he was breakable after all. You remember reaching out — tentative, almost frightened — and touching the edge of the scar with your fingertip. He flinched, though whether from pain or shame you could not tell.

“It’ll heal,” you said, trying for brightness, though your voice faltered.

He looked at you with a flat, measuring stare, as if deciding whether to believe you.

You told yourself you would make him laugh, that you would not let the scar weigh on him. So you grew louder, chattier, more insistent in your efforts. You teased him about his long words, his insistence on reading when everyone else played. Sometimes you saw the irritation flash in his eyes — sharp, exasperated, like light glinting off a blade. But other times, rarer and far more precious, he laughed, quietly, almost against his will, and you felt as though you had cracked some code no one else would ever understand.

It is strange to think of it now, in the silence after the accident, when even laughter feels foreign on your tongue. But once, you had been the only one who could pull him back into the ordinary world, who could make him forget for a moment the dark interior landscapes he seemed to prefer.

There was a winter, too — you are certain of this one, for you remember the cold in your bones, the bite of snow against your cheeks. You and Henry built a fortress out of snow-bricks along the edge of the yard. Your gloves were soaked through, your hair stiff with frost, but you would not give in. Henry, precise as ever, stacked the blocks with care, smoothing the edges until they were perfectly aligned. You, impatient, hurled snowballs at him until one struck too close, crumbling part of the wall. He froze, his expression stormy with disapproval, but when you laughed and tackled him into the drift, he did not push you away. He let the snow cover you both, your laughter spilling into the pale air, his glasses fogged and crooked on his nose.

You remember that as clearly as anything, the sheer improbable fact of him lying there, a boy after all, not the austere figure he liked to pretend to be.

And yet — even then, even in those moments — you felt something distant in him, some unbridgeable divide. He let you close, closer than anyone else, but there was always a part of him you could not touch. Perhaps that is why you clung so fiercely, why you filled the space between you with your own noise, your own warmth, afraid of the silence that would otherwise engulf you.

Later, when you were older, the two of you began to speak of books more than games, of languages and myths rather than snowball fights and forts. You were not his equal — no one ever was — but you delighted in trying, in tossing irreverent questions at his serious expositions until he gave in and explained, patient and exact. You would touch his arm when he grew too grave, lean against his shoulder when he tried to disappear into his reading. “Don’t be so cold, Henry,” you would chide, grinning. “The world’s full of ridiculous people like me. You’d better get used to it.”

“I don’t want to get used to it,” he would reply, and though his tone was flat, there was a flicker in his eyes that told you he did not mind your ridiculousness half as much as he pretended.

Years passed like that, uneven and indistinct, until Hampden. Until Julian’s circle, until Francis and Charles and Camilla and Bunny, until the bacchanal. Until everything fractured.

Sometimes now, in the silent aftermath, you find yourself wondering if the accident has made you into Henry — quiet, withdrawn, cut off from the world around you. It is a thought that frightens you, because you know what such solitude has done to him. But Henry, watching you with that same unshakable devotion, seems to believe otherwise.

The bacchanal returns to you again and again, whether you wish it or not — in dreams that leave you gasping, in sudden flashes when your mind drifts too far. It is one of the few memories that remains intact, sharp as glass where everything else has blurred and dimmed. Most of your life before feels indistinct now, a faded watercolor; but that night is etched into you with merciless precision. You carry it like a scar inside your skull, and no amount of silence or forgetting will unmake it.

It begins with a kind of anticipation that is too sharp to be pleasure — the air raw against your lungs, the pines looming black against a sky that seems to flicker with unseen flames. The others move like shadows around you, half-human, half-transfigured, their voices low and strange, words slurring into chants that you half-know, half-invent. Francis and Charles are laughing, but the sound does not belong to them; Camilla’s hair catches the moonlight, and she looks like an oracle, a sibyl carved from white marble and set trembling into motion.

And Henry — Henry is at the center of it all, as if the night bends toward him, as if even the air cannot help but follow where he leads. His eyes gleam behind his glasses, sharp and unrelenting, his breath visible in the cold as he murmurs something you do not understand, something old, something heavy with the weight of centuries.

You had not meant to join them. When the first attempt took place you had meant only to follow, curious, unwilling to be left behind. Yet here you are, drunk on something you do not remember drinking, dizzy with the rhythm of drums that do not exist. The ground seems to tilt beneath your feet, the forest spinning, and suddenly you are running, all of you, crashing through branches, mud splattering your clothes, the sky huge and merciless above.

There is a moment — brief, ecstatic — when you feel yourself lifted out of your own body. The world blurs; your limbs are no longer your own. You laugh, wild, untethered, and someone — Charles, perhaps, or Francis — catches your hand, pulls you forward into the clearing.

And then.

The farmer.

It happens quickly, though later it will stretch into eternity in your memory. A face in the dark, startled, confused. The gleam of lamplight. A shout, a curse. The terrible, jarring intrusion of the ordinary world into your dream. And then chaos — Henry lunging, Francis stumbling, Camilla screaming, the air breaking open with the sound of struggle.

You do not remember the blow itself. Only the impact: a sudden white flash, a crack at the back of your skull, the ground rushing up to meet you. For an instant there is nothing but silence, enormous and complete, as if the world itself has gone still.

When sound returns it is in fragments, jagged and unbearable. Someone’s ragged breathing. The wet, animal sound of violence. The farmer’s cry — cut off too soon. Your own heartbeat, a thunder in your ears. You try to move, to speak, but the weight of your body is unbearable, and when you lift your hand it comes away slick with blood.

The sky above you is full of stars, cold and indifferent. They glitter as though none of this matters, as though they have watched worse and will watch worse again.

“—Y/N!”

Henry’s voice, sharp, commanding, slicing through the panic. You feel hands on your shoulders, lifting you, steadying you, and you open your eyes to find his face above yours, pale with something that looks dangerously close to fear. His glasses are hanging from his ear, his hair fallen across his forehead, and you see the glint of his own scar in the moonlight as he bends over you.

“Stay awake,” he orders, though you are already slipping under. “Do you hear me? Look at me. Stay with me.”

But you cannot. The world tilts again, and his face dissolves into shadow.

Later — though how much later you cannot tell — you wake to sunlight and the smell of pine needles crushed beneath your cheek. The others are gathered in a ragged circle, their faces drawn and white, their clothes spattered with mud and blood. Francis stares at the ground, rocking slightly, his hands trembling. Camilla clutches Charles’s arm, her eyes wide, glazed.

And Henry.

He sits apart, silent, his posture rigid, his hands folded neatly in his lap as though he were a man at prayer. But his eyes — when they flick toward you, when they rest on the raw wound at your temple — are not calm. They are fierce, calculating, alive with some desperate, unspoken resolve.

You try to sit up, but the world reels, and Henry is there instantly, steadying you with a grip that is firm enough to hurt.

“Don’t,” he says, low and final.

“What—” Your throat is raw, your voice foreign to you. “What happened?”

No one answers. The silence is worse than any confession. You taste bile at the back of your throat.

Henry does not let you speak further. His hand stays on your arm, steady, immovable, as though by holding you he can keep the night itself from swallowing you whole.

The return to Hampden is a blur. The car jolts along rutted roads, the windows black with condensation. Francis mutters under his breath, half-sick, while Henry drives with white knuckles clenched around the wheel. Camilla leans against the glass, her face ghostly in the reflection. Charles chatters at first, nervous, frantic, until even he falls silent, and the only sound is the dull thrum of the tires.

You sit beside Henry. One of his hands remains on yours the entire way, heavy, deliberate, as if daring you to pull away. You do not. You cannot. The warmth of him is the only thing that keeps you anchored as the world slides out from under you.

When at last the car pulls up to the house, when the others scatter in silence out of the car, Henry stays. He half-carries you inside, his grip unyielding, and when you stumble he steadies you with a force that feels less like kindness than necessity.

“Rest,” he says, laying you down, his voice low, controlled, but you see the tremor in his hands as he brushes your hair back from your face. “Don’t think. Just rest.”

You have all bathed already, each one slipping into the bathroom in turn, washing the blood from your arms, your faces, your hair, as though the water could scour away the memory of it. Fresh clothes, damp towels, the faint sting of alcohol and iodine where wounds have been dressed. They look human again, ordinary, but the smell of soap cannot disguise the fact that something irrevocable has taken place. You lie there, your own cuts bandaged, your clothes changed, yet you feel the blood still clinging to you beneath the surface, a weight that will not be rinsed away.

But how can you not think? Even in dreams you see it: the flash of the farmer’s eyes, the blow, the blood. The forest, spinning and endless, filled with voices that are not voices at all.

And always, beneath it, Henry’s face — pale, relentless, watching you as if you alone matter, as if your silence and your survival are the only things keeping him tethered to the world.

The days after the bacchanal blur together, indistinct as a fever dream. You wake and sleep and wake again, the light shifting on the ceiling like water, Henry always there — by the bed, by the window, seated with a book he never seems to read. When you stir he is instantly alert, his gaze steady, searching. He does not ask questions; he does not speak of the farmer, of the blood, of the chaos in the woods. He brings you water, cold cloths for your head, pages of Greek texts you cannot yet look at without nausea.

The others come and go, awkward, tentative. Francis brings wine but cannot meet your eyes. Camilla sets flowers by the bed. Charles asks if you need anything, though his voice is too loud, too strained. Only Bunny seems unchanged, chattering at the door about football scores and cafeteria food, his voice brittle as glass.

But Henry does not leave. If you wake at midnight, he is there. If you open your eyes at dawn, he is there still, pale in the gray light, his hair falling across the scar on his brow. Sometimes you catch him watching you with such intensity it frightens you, as though he is memorizing you against some inevitable loss.

Weeks pass. You walk the corridors again, though slowly, cautiously. The chatter that once spilled from you so easily has dried up; your words now are careful, rationed, as though you fear they might betray something. The others notice. Francis comments, half-joking, that you’ve gone monkish; Bunny tries and fails to coax laughter out of you with his usual barrage of nonsense. Camilla smiles, soft and sad, when you sit quietly beside her. Charles, once the first to match your liveliness, grows uneasy at your silences; you catch him studying you when he thinks you will not see, as if he is waiting for the old rhythm of your voice to reappear. Even Richard, cautious in his observations, remarks in passing that you seem different — quieter, withdrawn, a ghost of the person he first met.

Henry says nothing. But you see it in him: the way his gaze lingers when you decline to interrupt Bunny’s bluster, the way his shoulders stiffen when your silences stretch too long. He does not reproach you. He only watches, and in his watching there is something like grief.

Once, months before, he had snapped at you in the library — your chatter breaking his concentration, your hand tugging at his sleeve until he muttered, “Must you always be so incessant?” You had only laughed, pressing closer, teasing him until his expression cracked. Now you think of that moment often, the words echoing cruelly, because you see in his face that he would give anything to hear your incessant noise again.

The snow deepens. Winter closes in, cold and sharp, and still the silence between you grows heavier. You do not mean to withdraw, but fear is a lodger you cannot evict; it wakes with you, walks beside you, curls beside you at night. Loud rooms make your chest tighten, sudden laughter startles you into flinching. The woods are unbearable. The memory of that clearing returns at the faintest smell of pine, the faintest shift of wind.

And Henry — Henry bears it all without complaint. He walks you across icy paths with a hand at your elbow. He reads to you when the quiet becomes unbearable. He does not ask you to be as you were, but his eyes betray him. You see him grieving not the loss of you — for you are here, you are alive — but the loss of the girl who once laughed at him, who filled the empty spaces with her brightness.

One evening, weeks later, you find him seated at Julian’s office with his head in his hands. The lamplight spills over his shoulders, and for a moment he looks older, worn, stripped of the formidable composure he wears so carefully. You stand in the doorway, unsure whether to speak.

When he looks up his face is unguarded, and the sight of it cuts through you: he is afraid. Afraid you will never come back, afraid this hollow, quiet version of you is all that remains. And perhaps afraid, too, of his own guilt — that he once wished you silent, and was granted his wish in the worst possible way.

You step into the room. Your hand trembles as you reach for him, but when your fingers brush his shoulder he closes his eyes, and for the first time you understand that he is mourning. Not for the farmer, not for himself — but for you.

Spring comes, reluctantly. The snow melts into thick mud, crocuses thrust up through the thawing earth. You sit with Henry by the window, sunlight spreading across the floor. He reads aloud, his voice steady, the cadence of Greek as familiar as breath itself. You listen, silent, but when he pauses you find the strength to answer, your voice rough but sure.

His head turns sharply, and for an instant his expression fractures — relief, fierce and painful, rushing across his face like light through storm.

It is not the same as before. You are not the same. But in that moment you see what he has chosen: to remain, to hold fast, to love not the memory of you but the scarred, quieter self that remains.

And perhaps that is enough.

[madameisaacpereire]

not proofread first draft bullshit once more from this same request. this time, it's pool party sex with charles. mwah. nsfw, minors dni, etc. etc. also, the swedish is prob off and im blaming google translate for that one. if you speak it, pls lmk. if you don't, take it with a grain of salt.

that same kitchen floor

Charles Macaulay x fem!Reader.

You called it a “pool party” rather facetiously, for what it truly consisted of was a six pack of California Coolers, a bottle of scotch, three thatched lawn chairs, and a tiny blue kiddie pool filled with water, half melted ice cubes, and one single neon green inflatable raft, which you dutifully took turns lounging in, all arranged in the center of the garden behind the Macaulay family estate. 

Presently, it was Camilla’s turn with the raft. She laid in it, elbows and knees rested lazily against the vinyl, cheeks covered by a pretty drunk flush. Her swimsuit, a modest baby blue one piece without a single frill, was covered in haphazard dark splotches from the water, and her blue and white striped cotton shorts still hung from one ankle, kissing the grass. 

Charles sat in a lawn chair just beside you, with one foot on the pool float, lazily rocking her side to side without much thought about it. He held a bottle of beer, which you had no clue where he found, against his knee. His swim shorts were pristine white, as was his half buttoned linen shirt, from beneath which peeked the lean muscle of his chest. His skin was damp with sweat and burned bright red from the sun, but imperfection suited him. It only made him appear more beautiful, in your opinion.

When drunk and home, both twins took on a heavier accent— syrupy and sweet and oh, so indulgent— which fell pleasantly on your ears as Camilla rambled on in a self contained monologue that reminded you of the Henry she so often wrote you about from school. She appeared to be reciting a poem, the likes of which you were certain wasn’t her taste at all, but it curled from her lips like wobbly smoke and hung humid in the air in a way that felt poetic of its own accord, so you enjoyed it all the same.

“Before I think where I go, solitary, Today is burning hot— the sun poured down whole lumps of red hot fire,” She murmured, mostly to herself, “Not a tree, not a shed to shelter us from the intolerable glare. I too never used to think anything of heat or cold, from age 20 to 50— but last summer I felt the heat severely, for the first time— me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat…”

You pressed your back into your own chair and propped your feet just beside Charles’s, more for something to do than anything else. Neither twin seemed to notice. Camilla kept speaking in her dreamlike trance and Charles kept staring up into the trees, his all black sunglasses obscuring his gray eyes from view.

“…companion better than book, talk, art, So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within— Thy soothing fingers on my face and hands,” Camilla sighed and leaned her head back enough for her short blonde hair to dip into the water, “Thou, messenger magical-strange bringer to body and spirit of me…”

Charles shifted his foot slightly, enough that your ankles bumped. Your skin prickled. Startled from his own reverie, Charles’s shoulders curled forward and his gaze snapped to you, sunglasses slipping down his nose. You smiled and looked away, feeling impossibly warmer than before.

You’d had a crush on Charles for what felt like forever. Ever since you were children, really,  running around Roanoke Valley in a cluster of four— yourself, Camilla and Charles in their always matching outfits and telepathic sync, and little Claire, who was really only two years younger but much shorter and slightly tubby, at the time, but begged to be included the way a much younger child would— you’d harbored a fluttering admiration for him. 

It was the sort of admiration that left you writing love letters you’d never send anywhere but a hatbox beneath your bed, drowned in perfume and peppered with red lipstick kisses. The lipstick and perfume, of course, were pilfered from your mother’s dressing table— no proper young lady owned any such things of her own unless she was destined for a career of ill repute, according to your mother. It was the sort of admiration that grew in silence and absence, rather than disappearing the way you wished desperately it would.

He didn’t move his foot again, nor did you move yours, and eventually you felt his eyes leave your profile. From the corner of your eye, you watched him take a long drink from his beer, and you tried your best not to turn toward him again so you might better study the way his throat worked to swallow. That would be too much. Too embarrassing. 

One of the dogs, a tall, skinny Greyhound, bounded over and stopped to sit next to you, nudging your hand to remind you to pet it. This one was Rodger, your personal favorite of the Macaulay dogs, who seemed to worship the ground you walked on. You ran your palm over the top of his head and back, just how you knew he liked. This must be where Claire had gone off to— to fetch the dogs, who had been cooped up in the house for about an hour by now, which wouldn’t do. 

Sure enough, followed closely by Daisy— a white Italian Greyhound, shorter than Rodger, with large tan spots— and Easton— their sweet, long eared Cavalier Spaniel, whose head was all one big black spot, but whose body was mostly white— came Claire, in all her glory. 

She had grown taller and slimmed out some over the last few years, though she was still nowhere near as waifish and almost weak looking as her elder cousin but you thought it suited her well, and in truth, it did. She looked like the woman she was growing into, even at twenty; even in an old brown one piece that resembled a playsuit more than anything else, dotted by delicate pink flowers.

“Did I miss anything?” Claire settled in the chair across from you and crossed her legs. Two braids, messy with wear, hung over her shoulders. 

“Only our own little poetry salon.” You half joked with a nod toward Camilla, who was still going on in fractured, mis-matched quotations.

Claire nodded with a faint look of amusement, though there was something strangely sober beneath her eyes that struck you. Not for the first time, you wondered what happened the summer prior— the one spent in Vermont— and what it had to do with this change that had developed within your darling friend. More importantly, you wondered why she seemed to stiffen so much at Camilla’s words when she shifted from English to Latin, then back to English once more.

“Isn’t it my turn by now?” Claire interrupted, leaning forward as she uncrossed her legs.

Camilla hummed noncommittally, stretching her arms above her head.

“Maybe.”

Claire shot Charles a look. He checked his watch and rocked the float once more. His ankle pressed firmly into yours as he did so, warmth flooding through from your leg to your cheeks at the contact. You wanted to be over him, really you did, but it was little things like this that made it feel so impossible.

“She’s right. You’re over time, Milly.” He sounded apologetic.

Camilla sighed and pushed herself up off the float. You and Charles both took your feet from it, returning them to the damp, warm grass one after the other as Claire stood to take her rightful turn with a proud tip of her chin. Charles drained the last of his beer with ease before he stood, too, and ambled toward the small blue and white plastic cooler you’d dragged out along with your liquor. 

He rooted around in it for a minute, grumbling to himself as his twin sister plopped into the chair he’d now left empty. This, you knew, would annoy him some— the seat of her suit was wet with cold pool water, after all— but you didn’t get the chance to hear him complain about it. He slammed the cooler lid shut and turned to face the rest of you, his mouth curving in a manner that suggested drunk brooding. 

“Which one of you drank literally everything we brought out here?” He managed to not sound as accusatory as you were sure he felt.

“I’m guessing you did.” Claire trailed her fingers in the water, swirling pieces of ice against each other.

“I had the last cooler, technically.” You lifted your half empty bottle of saccharine strawberry liquor with an apologetic grimace.

He stared at you for a beat. You could imagine the look of betrayal in his eyes, even if his glasses obscured them from full view. You pushed your hair back behind your ear, teeth catching for a moment on your bottom lip before you stood. The chair arm dug into your palm when you pushed against it, leaving an angry pink mark. 

“I’ll help you bring more out.” You hoped your words came across soothing.

He half shrugged, though you could practically hear the ‘it’s the least you can do,’ he was probably thinking. You slipped your sandals back on with a sigh and started for the house. You didn’t bother to wait for him; the sound of ice scraping the inside of the cooler meant he was following anyway, carrying it along with him. 

The gardens were beautiful this time of year, even if you did have to step around a palmetto bug or two. Palmetto bugs were one thing you knew neither twin missed in Vermont— they were shiny black and evil winged creatures that never seemed to die, no matter what you tried— and, not for the first time, you found yourself a touch jealous of how far they got to spend most of their year. 

None of the dogs cared to follow you back to the house, not wanting to be locked back inside by mistake, but you didn’t mind. Roses passed, as did shrubs and trees, and you were soon pulling open the glass paned double patio doors to the dining room. You leaned against one to hold it open for Charles, your first real acknowledgment that he’d followed dutifully behind at all. 

“Thanks.” He murmured rather sulkily as he brushed passed you, heading straight for the kitchen. 

“Yep.” You answered quietly enough that you were certain he didn’t even hear you, allowing the door to click shut as you stepped into the house.

Your shoes shuffled against the dark wooded floor as you stepped around the grand dining table— twelve chairs, all dark, and an ovular table decorated by a china vase of pretty yellow hydrangeas in the center— and followed him. His shirt curved almost like a cape as he walked, white linen stark against the deep, rich interior of the house. He reminded you of an apparition; gauzy and only half there.

Surprisingly, the kitchen was empty when you entered. Their cook, Mrs. Ekholm, must have been on her lunch break. She liked to spend it, you knew, on the telephone with her children, back in Minnesota. A long distance call, to be sure, and one that came faithfully out of her check each month. You thought it sweet, anytime you’d heard her happy Swedish words curling through from staff quarters, that she would spend such money just to speak to her husband and children. 

Charles set the cooler on the floor near the fridge and tugged it open. You placed your palms on the counter just beside him and hoisted yourself up, allowing your sandals to fall to the tiled floor as you did so. He didn’t need help stocking the cooler, but might need it when it came to carrying it back, which was why you’d bothered to come along at all. Besides that, you liked to watch him do nearly anything, and this was the perfect excuse.

He worked in silence for awhile, digging out bottles and working them into the icy cooler water. It seemed, at times, that he was struggling to really see what he was looking for and it was this that emboldened you to reach out for the sunglasses. He stilled when your fingers brushed his cheek, warmth twining down your arms like vines as you tugged them from his face.

“Should be able to see now.” You smiled, cheeks hot.

He nodded slowly, blinking a few times. His eyelashes were sandy against his cheeks, which had been shaded a youthful red from the sun. You returned your gaze to your lap, folding the glasses neatly. 

“I really couldn’t see anything in here with them on, so… I appreciate it.” He was still looking at you as he spoke, fridge air curling cold around him.

It was your turn to nod, tapping your heels softly against the cupboard beneath you. 

“Yeah, it’s not, um. Not a problem.” 

The kitchen was quiet for a moment, save for the humming of the old fridge, and then he turned back to his task. Bottles clinked together as he rifled through. You were sure he looked beautiful, but didn’t dare look again. You felt your eyes carried an adoration too obvious now— you felt he’d really see just how much you cared for him and couldn’t deal with it. Not today. Perhaps not ever. 

You didn’t realize your heels were still tapping the cupboard door rhythmically until Charles was kneeling before the cooler, fitting bottles into it as nicely as he could, and even then you only noticed because his palm rested against your calf, stilling you. His touch was cold from the bottles, and firm, but gentle too. Your eyes drifted from his hand up to meet his gray eyes, which looked sort of soft and admiring in a way that made your heart hammer. You could almost believe that he liked you back, with the way he was looking.

“Sorry.” 

Your teeth found your lip again, worrying it.

“That’s alright,” Was he staring at your mouth as he spoke, or were you imagining that? “Just a little annoying. Not world ending.” 

His hand still hadn’t moved, though. That touch felt world ending, at least to you. You wanted to look away and couldn’t. Your lip felt swollen under your teeth and you longed to fidget more, if only to do something that might release the energy building within you. You swallowed. Still, he hadn’t looked away. 

“You okay?” He asked, letting his hand slide down to your ankle before it dropped back to the bottles.

You nodded, not trusting your voice to not come out shaky. You’d had plenty of moments like this with Charles in the past, plenty of moments where he touched you like it meant nothing more than it did when his hand found his sister or cousin, this was true. But something about this left you pressing your fingers against the granite countertop and the soft side of your own thigh, willing yourself not to tremble visibly. Something about this felt heavier.

“You sure? You look nervous.” 

Did he really not understand why you couldn’t bring yourself to speak? Was he drunker than you’d realized, more oblivious than you ever imagined? Or was Charles toying with you, flirting in his own way? What drove you craziest was the fact that you couldn’t tell.

“I am nervous. A little, anyway.” You said, immediately wishing you hadn’t.

His brows pulled together slightly, mouth curved in soft amusement.

“Why?” 

“I don’t know.” You murmured, suddenly very shy. 

But you did know. You knew very well why you were nervous, why his hand’s return to your leg made you feel like curling into a ball and weeping. You liked him— no, you loved him and had for a great many years— so much that it ached to be alone with him like this. 

You laughed breathlessly and forced your eyes from his. Your heart felt as though it might stop at any moment. His hand brushed your calf again. You felt yourself tip forward on the counter, just a little, involuntarily. A pure result of how much you wanted him in that moment. And then, he said your name. He said it the way he might to a crying child, or a horse on the verge of spooking. He said your name like he thought you’d run if he said anything else.

You’ll never know why he did what he did next. Perhaps he didn’t know either. Perhaps it was simply the amount he’d drank, or the weight of the humid Virginia summer in the air around you. Whatever it was, you gasped thin and near silent when you felt his lips brush against your shin. It was a barely there kiss. Light enough that he could easily pretend he’d never done it; not heavy enough to be written off as a joke. Your eyes fluttered shut.

“Do that again?” You barely recognized your own voice, so thick with breath and vulnerable in a way you swore you’d never sound while speaking to him. 

Without a word, he did. His lips were warm and dry as they pressed against your skin, the kiss still soft but more sure this time. Less ghostly. If he never did anything else, never touched you anywhere else, you could still live in this sensation forever. That felt dangerous to you; like a blade held against the thin flesh of your neck. 

His hand slid upward, one finger just brushing the soft underside of your knee. Your entire face felt so hot it almost hurt— like all the blood in your entire body had congregated there. And then: another kiss, an inch above the last one, but exactly as sweet. You didn’t dare speak, afraid to shatter whatever spell had fallen to make Charles touch you in such a fashion. 

Before you kew it had happened, Charles was on his knees for you on the same kitchen floor you used to sit on, all in a row— Claire on the far left, then you, then Charles, then Camilla— as you messily ate ice cream sandwiches, laughing at whatever mischievous thing you’d done only moments before. 

You’d dreamed of this moment countless times. You’d dreamed of what his lips would feel like as they lay kisses on your kneecap. His other hand found your other leg, smoothing over it just the same— as if he wanted, no needed, to feel every inch of your skin. His mouth drifted to the top of your thigh, still questioning, still seeming to wonder if you’d let him go further. 

It was ludicrous to you that he might wonder at all. You shifted closer to the edge of the counter without fully meaning to, chasing the feeling of his kiss on your skin. More kisses fell along your thigh dizzyingly. It felt, to you, like you were falling through time and space until his thumb stretched up to run along the hip of your white terrycloth bikini. Your eyes blinked open once again.

He looked up at you beseechingly, pressing the first of many soft kisses to your inner thigh. His thumb was still moving back and forth over your hip, and it was this that grounded you here. Here, on this white marble countertop. Here, in the kitchen of his childhood home. 

“Can I take these off?” He murmured, looking up at you through his lashes.

“Yes,” You couldn’t agree fast enough, “Yes, please.”

Your knee pressed into his shoulder, bracing as he pulled the bottoms down until they were out of his way. He stared for a moment, drinking in the way you looked: spread bare and glistening in his kitchen, full body flushed and warm, eyes heavy lidded. There was a level in which he seemed to feel like this was almost too much; a treat he did not deserve.

You cupped his cheek in your palm gently, wondering if he’d changed his mind. You supposed it would have to be alright, if he had, for he was Charles. The Charles of your childhood. The Charles you chased down to try and kiss years and years ago, the one you thought dreamily of when you and Claire made collages using your mother’s wedding magazines. If he were changing his mind, you wouldn’t allow yourself to bask in the disappointment. 

But then he smiled, slow and timid, and his face disappeared between your thighs. Your hand found his hair, still sunwarm and damp with sweat, and you whimpered. He was more skilled than you thought he might have been. His tongue curled and flicked over you with expert precision as if he had touched you before— never had he, of course— and his fingers, when he worked two of them inside of you, seemed to know just where to brush.

You refused to think of why that might be the case, only allowing yourself to feel the pleasure spreading through your hips and stomach by his touch. Nothing he’d ever done before mattered to you; only the things he was doing to you did. You tugged loosely at his hair, nails grazing against his scalp, and he groaned into you. That, you liked.

He worked pleasure from you as if it were second nature. As if he was born for it. It made you shake against him, head falling back against another set of cupboards as he touched and touched and touched you. You melted and boiled and died and came alive all at once, just for him; as though he was some sort of angelic specter come to try you, and this was the way he chose to do so.

When you came it took you by surprise, twisting through you from head to toe. You shook more. A cry came sharp from your throat. His movements grew more gentle until he was sure you were done, at which time he slipped his fingers out and stood to finally kiss you. You tasted yourself on his mouth and tongue. It was a lazy kiss, surprisingly. A sweet one.

Perhaps more would have transpired if you hadn’t then heard a gasp, causing both you and Charles to look over his shoulder. There stood a plump woman with dark hair and eyes, embarrassed horror on her features.

“Oj herregud!” She gasped out, one hand on her black fabric covered stomach.

“Mrs. Ekholm, I’m—” You started.

“My kitchen, äckliga syndare, anywhere else. Anywhere else. Kristus, this house.” She threw up her hands, speaking mostly to herself as she hurried from the room.

You couldn’t help but laugh, allowing your forehead to land on Charles’s shoulder. He laughed too, harboring just as much embarrassment if not more.

“Do you think she’s going to tell anyone?” You giggled, cheeks burning hot.

“God, I hope not.” He answered, still laughing softly.

“Kristus.” You said in your best impression of Mrs. Ekholm, starting off another round of laughter. 

When your laughter died out, he kissed you again. This time quicker, without a single undertone of sex to come. He handed you your swim bottoms from the floor, which you pushed off the counter and slipped on easily, and picked up the cooler with both hands. This, you would half-heartedly help him carry back to the others. 

Dimly, you wondered if Claire and Camilla would even notice that you’d been gone. You took the final sip of your wine cooler and opened Charles’s sunglasses again, perching them on top of his head. Maybe they would notice. Maybe they’d overhear a maid or two gossiping about it. But right now, it was something that transpired betwixt you for no discernible reason. A treat for just you. And for now, that was enough. 

[madameisaacpereire]

worlds slowest fanfic author tries really really hard

[madameisaacpereire]

Anything Goes (Lewis Milestone, 1936)

[madameisaacpereire]

[madameisaacpereire]

the accident

❝Faintly I recognized that this change was permanent, as much as I hoped it wasn’t; it was permanent like the way he now spoke, voice inflectionless and flat, and the way one eye had a grey-white film over it, and the stubborn way he limped around his room.❞

wasn't it about time?

precious moments + the guardian angel collection

I was nine years old when the phone rang in the late night. It woke the whole house. I heard my father on the stairs, sleepy and slow. When he answered, all the sleep left this voice and he called for my mother. She hurried down the stairs herself. I sat by my bedroom door in my white nightgown, printed in pink roses and blue ribbons, and twisted my freshly healed earrings back and forth while I listened. My mother gasped.

They did not go back to sleep that night. Neither did I— I was too busy piecing together the fractals of conversation that made it back upstairs as best I could, feeling sick to my stomach. ‘Poor boy,’ was one, ‘terrible accident,’ and ‘fell,’ and ’their grand staircase, can you believe it?’ were others. I pieced the story together before my mother knocked on my door to wake me that morning, listening fast to their discussion. 

My parents told me together, over breakfast. I knew the injuries must have been worse than they said— honestly, I thought Henry might have been dead— because in lieu of the usual oatmeal, our dining table was decked out with French toast covered in fresh cut strawberries, powdered sugar, whipped cream, and warmed maple syrup, but also because my parents were sat side by side across from me rather than their typical ends of the table.

Nerves budded beneath my ribs when I saw them. I walked slowly to my seat. They asked how I slept and I lied— I said I’d slept very well, like the dead, I said nothing woke me— and they told the story I already knew to be part falsehood. They said Henry was sleepwalking— he never sleepwalked— when he slipped head over heels down all 40 stairs, only to slam into a Duncan Phyfe table. 

I didn’t believe their story for a second. I knew Henry, knew he was too careful— his balance was far too good— to have simply fallen down so many stairs; they barely seemed to believe it themselves. I didn’t have to try to look horrified because I was. 

They kept me from school for a week, yet three miserable days passed before they allowed me to see him. When I finally did, I was afraid. He looked awkward and too small with his leg wrapped in a hulking white cast, blood soaked gauze over one eye and most of his forehead. He was scratched and bruised black all over. Worst of all, he wasn’t wearing his glasses.

“That’s not him. That isn’t Henry.” The words were out of my mouth before I could help them, tears burning my eyes.

“Oh, darling,” My mother leaned down to my level and pulled me into a warm hug, “I’m afraid it is.”

She held me as I quietly cried into her shoulder until I was calm enough to look again. When I looked up once more, Margaret had settled in the chair beside his bed so he didn’t seem as scary; but I couldn’t miss the extra makeup on her eyes, or the swollen wrongness of her cheek. Something I didn’t then have the words for transpired that week. Something that made me uneasy. 

He cowered from me, once I worked up the courage to walk closer to him. Movement had to have ached terrible, if the way he hissed in pain was any indication, and he squinted up at me with his good eye as if it might make it any easier to see me. If it weren’t for the circumstances, I’d have teased him about that.

“It’s just me.” My voice was quieter than I meant it to be, and my hand trembled as I reached for his.

He flinched from me, expression oozing with something I could only have described as terror, but he let me hold his hand anyway. An ache too big for my body swallowed me whole.

“Evy?” He croaked out exhaustedly, his little voice thick and raw.

His tooth was chipped, I noticed as he spoke, and there was a bloody scab on his lip. Tears pricked at my eyes once more. I couldn’t answer him without crying so I hummed instead, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. He squeezed it back and allowed his eyes to droop shut once more, finally seeming to relax. 

I realized my sheer anger as I studied his injured face. Anger toward anyone who allowed this to happen to him. Anger with Margaret and that man who called himself a father— I refused to even think his name anymore— and even my own parents, though I didn’t know what they could have done. Anger toward myself for not being there— hadn’t there been a time in this very hospital not yet four years ago when he was sick with fever? A time I had kissed his head, prayed to God, and sworn that I’d do anything to protect him as long as he got better? He did get better, so where on earth was I?— and still more anger. 

I felt anger that I’m still ashamed of now— at God for letting this happen to a seven year old child. I didn’t think there was any realm in which this could have been an accident; somebody hurt him. I knew it in my bones. I watched him rest until my anger boiled too high, bubbling over, and I couldn’t let it scorch him. So I slipped my hand from his and started back toward my parents, face red, limbs taut and trembling like a live wire.

“Don’t go.” 

He shouldn’t have been talking, this much was clear in just how gritty and painful it sounded. I stared at my parents— watching me with a look I didn’t understand, Mother leaning into Father for support— and wonder why they hadn’t done something yet. They knew something I didn’t. They’d deny it if I asked, of course, because adults always seemed to do that. But they could help him, I was sure of it, and it crushed me to think that they wouldn’t.

“Evy, please.” 

It wasn’t so long ago that he’d used that phrase to beg me not to make him play with dolls, and my stomach turned at the thought of it. I looked back at him in a way I hoped he’d find comforting, even if he couldn’t see it. 

“I just need to get a chair. I’m not leaving,” I sounded more sure than I felt, and miraculously tears didn’t fall— God knows they threatened to, “I promise I won’t.”

Adults scrambled to find me a chair and place it at his bedside. He shrank back each time anyone came near him— even me, as if it was reflexive— and he didn’t relax an ounce until I was settled back in the chair beside him. 

I stayed as long as staff allowed— they felt bad for him though, and had an easier time caring for him as long as I was there, so they let me stay even longer than they let his parents— and I didn’t even realize I’d left until I was being buckled into the car by my father. He must have carried me out just as he did when I was a smaller child. It would be a comfort if leaving Henry behind didn’t worry me so.

I showed up in the dining room in the morning, dressed in a pair of brown corduroy slacks and a pink sweater that made me feel brave, and insisted they bring me back to the hospital before I’d even had breakfast. I was carrying a stack of books already and I’d pulled my hair back— even pulled on a pair of shoes. My parents exchanged looks but they didn’t say no. How could they? 

Bernice ran out to the car before we left with a muffin in hand, insisting that I eat something before we left. My father didn’t make me wait until we’d arrived, for once, so I ate in the car instead— which would be novel if I could taste it, or focus on anything other than Henry lying in that sickbed, lonely and frightened and aching— and rolled my earrings back and forth so much it began to hurt. 

My chair was still beside his bed, where they left it, and though visitors weren’t technically allowed for another few hours the staff ushered me in anyway. The doctor needed to give him a looksee, they said, and he wouldn’t hold still long enough— had almost launched himself out of the bed, in fact, anytime a man had been anywhere near him— so they’d like very much if I could sit with him for it. To see if he’d calm at all. 

He still shied away some, even from me— even after I told him it was just Evy, just me, and I wouldn’t let any harm come to him— but he let me hold his hand again anyway, and they found it somewhat easier to look him over. They had him doped up on something they called Ultram, which made his only visible eye fuzzy and unfocused and somehow did nothing to touch his anxiety, though they said it should. 

I read to him that day, tirelessly. Even as he drifted in and out of sleep. I read from Black Beauty,— a book we’d both read through with Margaret at least three times by then— and Heidi— until I bored of it— and from my father’s old copy of The Odyssey. I read until my throat burned and my voice grews muffled, and I tried to keep reading still. 

 They let me stay overnight with him, putting two chairs together to make a bed. It may have been easier, they said, to care for him if I didn’t leave. So I drifted in and out of sleep in the two chairs beside his bed, feeling something akin to peace for the first time in five days. 

I stayed there another week, being kept from school all the while, and my internal sense of time became rather lopsided. My mother brought fresh clothes every morning, along with a muffin from Bernice. Margaret brought a bag of Peanut M&Ms when visitor’s hours opened up and on his way home from work, my father took to bringing me a burger and shake from McDonalds. 

They all made sure I ate and washed, which I didn’t know to be thankful for— I didn’t realize that if they didn’t take care of me, I wouldn’t eat or drink a thing. All I did know was watching over the little boy beside me, crumpled in on himself. 

I threw a fit in the hall when they finally made me come home, insisting that you return to school. I didn’t see how school could matter at this point, even though I had proof that Henry was beginning to recover, but it wasn’t up to me. 

At school I could hardly pay attention, though I tried, and I spent recess alone with a notebook. I wrote out a recap of each day, including everything Henry missed. I watched his class’s recess period through the window and took note of the goings on between kids he’d know. Margaret picked me up from school and brought me to visit her son, because this was part of the deal between my parents and myself, and this was where I read my notes to Henry and worked out my homework.

My anxiety around leaving him lessened its hold on me somewhat, thanks to this routine, but it didn’t keep my parents from worrying all the same. I heard about that in whispers when they thought I was asleep. ‘Unhealthy,’ and ‘psychiatrist,’ and ’no child of mine will ever see a shrink,’ and ‘what can we do?’ It annoyed me to no end. What could they do? They could figure out a way to make sure this never happened to Henry again, of course. But I didn’t bring it up to them and they didn’t seem to figure it out on their own.

Before I knew it, Henry was returning home— just a few short doors down from me. And while this spiked worry into my chest like Volleyball, it soothed too. I’d be able to watch him more closely, for longer.

He changed again once he was home, though. He began to throw tantrums anytime anyone entered his room, screaming and throwing things wildly to keep people away— even me. I ended up with a few scratches and bruises as a result, but didn’t hold it against him. I wasn’t angry, either; I pitied him. I spent all my free time over the next few weeks sitting in his doorway, reading to myself while he did the same. 

As weeks passed, his bruises faded and his scar began to lighten— only slightly— from its bright red. He allowed me to sit within the room, then beside his bed, and began working from textbooks I’d never seen as if his life depended on it. I didn’t try looking after the first time, because he struck me hard when I did— and he never had before. It bruised my ego and heart as much as it bruised my arm.

His birthday passed this way: him in his bed, books and papers surrounding him as he works, me sitting on the floor beside it with a copy of Betsy in Spite of Herself spread open on my lap. He refused to eat his birthday cake, even though it was his favorite flavor, and so I ate both pieces myself— or tried to— and left him with the ice cream served alongside it, which he ate without thanking me at all. 

Henry had always been quiet and moody, but even after Christmas it was as though this had been turned up to eleven. Faintly I recognized that this change was permanent, as much as I hoped it wasn’t; it was permanent like the way he now spoke, voice inflectionless and flat, and the way one eye had a grey-white film over it, and the stubborn way he limped around his room. 

Still, I pretended to myself that he’d recover further. That he’d one day be the slightly sweeter little boy that pelted me gently with apple slices and offered to kiss me on the front steps so I’d stop thinking about it once again. He wouldn’t, of course. And I knew that. But I pretended anyway.

[madameisaacpereire]

angel is to cathy dollanganger as wendy is to heaven casteel and as claire/sparrow is to carrie dollanganger do you get it

[madameisaacpereire]

REAR WINDOW (1954)

dir. alfred hitchcock

[madameisaacpereire]

You ever just wanna fuck?

[madameisaacpereire]

the way Bunny crashed out bc he got banned from the orgy...

[madameisaacpereire]

in case anyone asked (no one did) Francis to me is whatever David Bowie was —and it doesn’t even matter.

He is the personification of verbatim by mother mother—

(I think the artist is @kardamonich but I’m not sure I found it on pinterest)

[madameisaacpereire]

wendy & charles

[madameisaacpereire]

First off I just want to say I love your writing, I’ve reread it sm tbh, and can I ask for a fic where Henry helps the reader when she’s in a depressive episode? Sorta like the one you already wrote where she’s ill but, here she doesn’t rlly speak and her mood is rlly bad, and struggles with everything and having a will to do it etc?

ok hiiiii i hope this is ok! unedited first draft, might go over it again later, might not. i had some fun with this one, hopefully he isn't too OOC because i think this is the sweetest thing i've ever written about henry.

a month of winter

henry x reader, standalone.

   It starts gradually, the way these things so often do. A late assignment, a single class skipped in favor of lying in bed all day. But these things always snowball so rapidly. Late work turns into work left undone, a skipped class into weeks worth of missed classes, and you very soon aren’t leaving your bed for anything.

You’re not even cognizant of it happening until you’re drowning in work, graduation on the line, and you haven’t so much as brushed your teeth in... an amount of time you’d rather not disclose. You haven’t showered, or changed clothes. Your dorm room reeks of dead skin. Your sweater is covered in crumbs leftover from days ago, when you finished the last of your snacks. 

   The thing is, you know your classmates would help you in any way they could, if you only were to ask. They’d take down extra notes, sit with you until each paper has been written, or a particularly difficult passage translated. You’re sure they’d drive you out to the country in hopes of the fresh air helping your sensibilities. They operate much like a dysfunctional little family, in that way.

But everything has spiraled so far out of control that you’d find it embarrassing; it might strike pity into their eyes. You absolutely detest being pitied. And along with that, you’re having a difficult time truly caring whether you graduate or not. 

   Which leaves you at a sort of impasse for awhile. Work piling up, dehydration building, personal hygiene virtually nonexistent. The first day without food or water is nearly unbearable enough to snap you from your stupor, animal impulse seconds away from overriding this dead feeling. The following two days, however, you mostly spend asleep. It’s dreamless, painful and dry. But you find this type of emptiness more bearable.

   This is how Henry finds you. He wouldn’t typically drop in on you in such a fashion– you don’t tend to get along very well at the best of times– but Julian asked that he make sure you’re alright, and he’ll do anything Julian requests. You aren’t conscious of his presence at all, allowing him to survey the damage with a pinched expression you’ll never be aware of. 

   Your room’s level of disorder is incredibly disturbing to him. Things seem to surround your bed in circular layers. Circle one is mostly dust, circle two used clothes, circles three and four the wrappers of any and all snacks you managed to choke down (as though you threw your refuse as far from you as you could.) Circle five is more clothing, a much thicker carpet than before, six a heap (or several,) of different books, seven your school supplies. And the worst circle, in his opinion, is the one closest to you. Circle eight, fittingly enough, is little more than a wasteland. Two empty soda cans, an empty chip bag, crumpled school work, and you. 

    You’re the most terrifying sight in this room, if he’s honest. You almost look dead. He considers leaving but you shift in your sleep, movements weak; he catches sight of your cracked dry lips and sunken in eyes. That’s what kicks his sense of responsibility into high gear. If he were a less respectful son, he’d curse his mother for this internal obligation to assist distresssed women. Instead, he begrudgingly begins to pick up the pieces. 

   He heads to the hall, bringing a few handfuls of trash along with him, and dials Richard to ask for advice. Richard suggests he bring you to the hospital. He even offers to come along, which Henry shuts down. This feels personal, somehow, and he’d rather not involve more people than strictly necessary.

Henry clears a path to your bed, picks you up as carefully as he can, and brings you out to the car. He ignores the curious, half alarmed stares he gets from other students. They’re irrelevant to him. What matters is ensuring that you’re alright; because what good is an academic rival if she isn’t well enough to actively challenge him? 

   You wake a few times on the drive, but dehydration has you so delirious that you don’t comprehend what’s happening. You think it’s a strange dream and you don’t speak, so he doesn’t know you’ve woken. You fall back to sleep again, and only wake once more when nurses are fussing over you. The IV fluids filling your veins are making you shiver. It’s disorienting and more than a little terrifying. But it isn’t the worst part of your hospital stay.

   The worst part is Julian’s visit. He looks sorry that you’re ill, tells some long winded story about a time he was ill himself, and then mentions Henry. Offhandedly, as though it doesn’t matter or you must already know, he lets you know that Henry happens to be the one that found you. Your favored intellectual sparring partner. The classmate you love to hate. The man with the worst superiority complex you’ve ever witnessed.

You could pass away right then. Melt through the bed and into your grave. Since you aren’t chatty in response, Julian doesn’t stay long. A relief if ever you’ve felt one, and the rest of your stay is quite tolerable in comparison.

   They rehydrate you over the following few days. You’re cold for most of it, thanks to the near constant stream of fluids. They feed you clear liquids the first day and work you back up to solids painstakingly slowly. They try to make you talk with a counselor. Words still won’t come out of your mouth, but your doctors throw around a lot of words all on their own: psychiatric unit, facilities, transport, major-depressive-disorder, catatonia. They start you on a pill of some sort called Amitriptyline as soon as you can keep liquids down, which you take without question because you still don’t fully care what happens to you. 

   You sleep for a large chunk of that stay, and this is the main reason why you aren’t aware of how much arguing Julian and Henry do with the hospital on your behalf. You’re unaware of their insistence upon your release into their care, and how adamant they are that you don’t get shipped off to some facility or other. You’d be mortified if you did, so perhaps this is for the best. 

   You still can't speak as you’re being signed out. Henry’s the one bringing you back home. Shame and defiant anger prickle beneath your skin. He brings you fresh clothes that look suspiciously like your own. You’re sure they couldn’t possibly be yours, because they’re too soft and clean. You wear them anyway. It gives you the slightest hint of pleasure, however dull. 

   The car ride is fairly quiet. You’re still on verbal strike, and Henry isn’t really sure how to handle a version of you so silent. The only time he does speak is to give you some more humiliating news:

   “Julian and I agreed that you’ll stay with me until you’re well.” Henry says, pulling to a stop in front of his place. 

   Your face is redder than a stoplight, you’re sure of it. How can you stand staying with him for any significant length of time? Especially without speaking? You’re even angrier about this, but you let him usher you indoors all the same. He directs you to what seems to be the only bedroom in the place. The bed itself is perplexingly small. You toss him a questioning look.

   “I don’t sleep in here,” He answers as if you've spoken, “Now. Some of your things have been brought over, so you should find yourself plenty comfortable.”

   He explains that he is to be your companion for a few weeks, as if this is some sick Daphne Du Maureier novel, and only leaves your side long enough to allow you to settle into bed. The thing that makes you angriest is the fact that you’re already beginning to feel slightly better. You sit in silence that first evening, Henry reading to himself in a chair he unceremoniously places in the corner. You fall asleep glowering at the wall.

   The next day isn’t much better. Henry brings you tea and toast once he notes that you’re awake, as well as a cup of water and an empty cup besides. This, he explains, is so you might brush your teeth without wasting energy to get up. In the end, you do brush your teeth, and feel better for it. But there’s still a sullen, silent sort of argument beforehand. He hands you a pill, too. The same thing you’ve been taking at the hospital. An antidepressant.

   “Julian doesn’t think you should take these. He says all they’ll do is make you worse. But I’ve spoken with Richard and the doctor about it, and they both say you’ll get well much sooner if you do.” He doesn’t give you any further input.

You get to decide whether you continue on with this course of treatment, one which won’t even be semi-destigmatized for another thirty or so years. He files your choice away for later, once you've made it, and doesn't ask again.

     Today, he begins to read to you. He reads selections you’ve missed from classes. You find his voice comforting despite the cool monotony of it, which sickens you. Every now and again he pauses and launches into some of his own thoughts on the selection. You have plenty of thoughts yourself, but you don’t contribute. You do, however, make rather nasty faces at him when you disagree. It’s hard to tell, but you think he finds this amusing. 

   You have a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, along with some sugar-sweet coffee. For dinner, there are two foil covered plates delivered. It’s Sunday, you realize when he sets it in front of you, and this is a special delivery from the twins. There’s a glass of your favorite wine to go with it, chilled and set on the bedside table. 

   “I thought you wouldn’t like to see anyone yet.” He explains.

   The next day passes similarly. Tea and toast. Coffee and tomato soup. Wine and a suspiciously full plate of food. Tonight, however, Henry runs a bath for you. You sit in it, wearing your underclothes, and let him mechanically wash your hair. He doesn’t seem to enjoy this any more than you do. That brings you some solace, at least. The only thing you have to do is peel your wet underthings from your body and replace them with pajamas. 

   You bathe this way once every other day. Breakfast is always the same, lunch and dinner only slightly more varied. The readings change as he catches you up on classes, but they always last the same amount of time. You’re dragged into a comfortable routine with absolutely no responsibility to uphold it. Sometime after day four, you begin to make noises in response to things. A derisive grunt, a loud huff, even (once) something that sounds laughter adjacent. He gives you a moleskin and a pen to write with, which you do, and this is your first real communication with another person in two months.

   He asks why you didn’t come to anyone for help. You don’t answer this. But you do answer other questions, like ‘Would you like ham on your grilled cheese?’ Yes. Or: ‘Which sweater would you prefer to wear today?’ The black one. You also use this notebook to emphatically disagree with his musings on Plato. And it doesn’t even seem like he really minds, which puts you on edge. He’s rather indulgent. He actually pretends to consider your points.

   These disagreements are how you begin to work on overdue translations in the afternoons on week two. You work through them quickly, because there’s very little else to do, and find that you’ve caught up with the class in record time. You eat Sunday dinner alone in your room again. But he promises whoever's actually bringing these plates by the apartment that they’ll be able to see you soon. Quietly, of course, but you hear it all the same. 

   Week three is when he catches you smiling at something for a fraction of a second. He begins bringing you out to the yard for thirty minutes every morning. You take your tea and toast out there, bundled in enough sweaters and coats for at least four of you. The fresh air does you good, though you won’t admit it. This Sunday, he sets out proper clothes, and you make a physical appearance at Sunday dinner. You’re overwhelmed by all the hugs and well wishes you’re met with. But it’s in a good way. 

This Sunday, you say the first thing you’ve said in nearly three months.

   “Pass the salt?” You aren’t even fully aware that you’ve said it. 

   A hush falls over the table, anyway, and the salt appears before you in record time. This Sunday, you laugh at an awful joke Bunny makes. You’re still very clearly a shell of a person. But you’re getting better. You fall asleep in the car on the way back to Henry’s, exhausted from the excitement. He carries you in, carefully undresses you to your under-things, and tucks you into bed. 

   You continue to take your tea and toast outside in the mornings. You bathe every other day, with Henry’s clinical assistance. You talk more. You still won’t tell him why you never told anybody how poorly you’d been doing. But your lips are far from cracked by now, eyes no longer sunken in. You’ve begun to wander the apartment some. 

   You help him make lunch on Sunday, and you go along to dinner again. This dinner is less stilted and awkward than the last. It’s normal, or something like it. You chime in your usual amount and drink Charles under the table. And even though you fall asleep shivering on the car ride back, you feel warm all over. 

   The following week is spent moving back into your dorm room. You find that it’s pristine when you first show up, which surprises you most pleasantly. You bring your things back in small increments. Your first night back, Henry stays over. He doesn’t sleep, but works on something or other at your desk. It’s a comfort to have him there. If he weren’t, you’d likely be anxious about falling back into that pit of despair. He stays a few more nights, leaving earlier and earlier until he isn’t visiting your room in the evenings at all. 

   Your arguments, once hot and spiteful, have managed to fizzle out. What you have now is a calm enough friendship that you miss his presence. He misses yours, too, so once a week, he shows up at your door with tea and toast. When it’s nice enough, you take a leisurely half hour walk outdoors. You contradict him far less during classes, now preferring to bring up your differing opinions on those weekly walks. The resulting discussions are far more civil than they ever were.

   You still have bad days, of course. Days where getting out of bed seems pointless. Where you hope it’s true that smoking causes cancer. On these days, you spend the night in the bed Henry doesn’t use. You'll never address this, but you suspect it's all, somehow, Julian’s doing. The way his eyes twinkle when he watches you and Henry speak after class suggests as much.

[madameisaacpereire]

not proofread first draft bullshit once more from this same request. this time, it's pool party sex with charles. mwah. nsfw, minors dni, etc. etc. also, the swedish is prob off and im blaming google translate for that one. if you speak it, pls lmk. if you don't, take it with a grain of salt.

that same kitchen floor

Charles Macaulay x fem!Reader.

You called it a “pool party” rather facetiously, for what it truly consisted of was a six pack of California Coolers, a bottle of scotch, three thatched lawn chairs, and a tiny blue kiddie pool filled with water, half melted ice cubes, and one single neon green inflatable raft, which you dutifully took turns lounging in, all arranged in the center of the garden behind the Macaulay family estate. 

Presently, it was Camilla’s turn with the raft. She laid in it, elbows and knees rested lazily against the vinyl, cheeks covered by a pretty drunk flush. Her swimsuit, a modest baby blue one piece without a single frill, was covered in haphazard dark splotches from the water, and her blue and white striped cotton shorts still hung from one ankle, kissing the grass. 

Charles sat in a lawn chair just beside you, with one foot on the pool float, lazily rocking her side to side without much thought about it. He held a bottle of beer, which you had no clue where he found, against his knee. His swim shorts were pristine white, as was his half buttoned linen shirt, from beneath which peeked the lean muscle of his chest. His skin was damp with sweat and burned bright red from the sun, but imperfection suited him. It only made him appear more beautiful, in your opinion.

When drunk and home, both twins took on a heavier accent— syrupy and sweet and oh, so indulgent— which fell pleasantly on your ears as Camilla rambled on in a self contained monologue that reminded you of the Henry she so often wrote you about from school. She appeared to be reciting a poem, the likes of which you were certain wasn’t her taste at all, but it curled from her lips like wobbly smoke and hung humid in the air in a way that felt poetic of its own accord, so you enjoyed it all the same.

“Before I think where I go, solitary, Today is burning hot— the sun poured down whole lumps of red hot fire,” She murmured, mostly to herself, “Not a tree, not a shed to shelter us from the intolerable glare. I too never used to think anything of heat or cold, from age 20 to 50— but last summer I felt the heat severely, for the first time— me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat…”

You pressed your back into your own chair and propped your feet just beside Charles’s, more for something to do than anything else. Neither twin seemed to notice. Camilla kept speaking in her dreamlike trance and Charles kept staring up into the trees, his all black sunglasses obscuring his gray eyes from view.

“…companion better than book, talk, art, So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within— Thy soothing fingers on my face and hands,” Camilla sighed and leaned her head back enough for her short blonde hair to dip into the water, “Thou, messenger magical-strange bringer to body and spirit of me…”

Charles shifted his foot slightly, enough that your ankles bumped. Your skin prickled. Startled from his own reverie, Charles’s shoulders curled forward and his gaze snapped to you, sunglasses slipping down his nose. You smiled and looked away, feeling impossibly warmer than before.

You’d had a crush on Charles for what felt like forever. Ever since you were children, really,  running around Roanoke Valley in a cluster of four— yourself, Camilla and Charles in their always matching outfits and telepathic sync, and little Claire, who was really only two years younger but much shorter and slightly tubby, at the time, but begged to be included the way a much younger child would— you’d harbored a fluttering admiration for him. 

It was the sort of admiration that left you writing love letters you’d never send anywhere but a hatbox beneath your bed, drowned in perfume and peppered with red lipstick kisses. The lipstick and perfume, of course, were pilfered from your mother’s dressing table— no proper young lady owned any such things of her own unless she was destined for a career of ill repute, according to your mother. It was the sort of admiration that grew in silence and absence, rather than disappearing the way you wished desperately it would.

He didn’t move his foot again, nor did you move yours, and eventually you felt his eyes leave your profile. From the corner of your eye, you watched him take a long drink from his beer, and you tried your best not to turn toward him again so you might better study the way his throat worked to swallow. That would be too much. Too embarrassing. 

One of the dogs, a tall, skinny Greyhound, bounded over and stopped to sit next to you, nudging your hand to remind you to pet it. This one was Rodger, your personal favorite of the Macaulay dogs, who seemed to worship the ground you walked on. You ran your palm over the top of his head and back, just how you knew he liked. This must be where Claire had gone off to— to fetch the dogs, who had been cooped up in the house for about an hour by now, which wouldn’t do. 

Sure enough, followed closely by Daisy— a white Italian Greyhound, shorter than Rodger, with large tan spots— and Easton— their sweet, long eared Cavalier Spaniel, whose head was all one big black spot, but whose body was mostly white— came Claire, in all her glory. 

She had grown taller and slimmed out some over the last few years, though she was still nowhere near as waifish and almost weak looking as her elder cousin but you thought it suited her well, and in truth, it did. She looked like the woman she was growing into, even at twenty; even in an old brown one piece that resembled a playsuit more than anything else, dotted by delicate pink flowers.

“Did I miss anything?” Claire settled in the chair across from you and crossed her legs. Two braids, messy with wear, hung over her shoulders. 

“Only our own little poetry salon.” You half joked with a nod toward Camilla, who was still going on in fractured, mis-matched quotations.

Claire nodded with a faint look of amusement, though there was something strangely sober beneath her eyes that struck you. Not for the first time, you wondered what happened the summer prior— the one spent in Vermont— and what it had to do with this change that had developed within your darling friend. More importantly, you wondered why she seemed to stiffen so much at Camilla’s words when she shifted from English to Latin, then back to English once more.

“Isn’t it my turn by now?” Claire interrupted, leaning forward as she uncrossed her legs.

Camilla hummed noncommittally, stretching her arms above her head.

“Maybe.”

Claire shot Charles a look. He checked his watch and rocked the float once more. His ankle pressed firmly into yours as he did so, warmth flooding through from your leg to your cheeks at the contact. You wanted to be over him, really you did, but it was little things like this that made it feel so impossible.

“She’s right. You’re over time, Milly.” He sounded apologetic.

Camilla sighed and pushed herself up off the float. You and Charles both took your feet from it, returning them to the damp, warm grass one after the other as Claire stood to take her rightful turn with a proud tip of her chin. Charles drained the last of his beer with ease before he stood, too, and ambled toward the small blue and white plastic cooler you’d dragged out along with your liquor. 

He rooted around in it for a minute, grumbling to himself as his twin sister plopped into the chair he’d now left empty. This, you knew, would annoy him some— the seat of her suit was wet with cold pool water, after all— but you didn’t get the chance to hear him complain about it. He slammed the cooler lid shut and turned to face the rest of you, his mouth curving in a manner that suggested drunk brooding. 

“Which one of you drank literally everything we brought out here?” He managed to not sound as accusatory as you were sure he felt.

“I’m guessing you did.” Claire trailed her fingers in the water, swirling pieces of ice against each other.

“I had the last cooler, technically.” You lifted your half empty bottle of saccharine strawberry liquor with an apologetic grimace.

He stared at you for a beat. You could imagine the look of betrayal in his eyes, even if his glasses obscured them from full view. You pushed your hair back behind your ear, teeth catching for a moment on your bottom lip before you stood. The chair arm dug into your palm when you pushed against it, leaving an angry pink mark. 

“I’ll help you bring more out.” You hoped your words came across soothing.

He half shrugged, though you could practically hear the ‘it’s the least you can do,’ he was probably thinking. You slipped your sandals back on with a sigh and started for the house. You didn’t bother to wait for him; the sound of ice scraping the inside of the cooler meant he was following anyway, carrying it along with him. 

The gardens were beautiful this time of year, even if you did have to step around a palmetto bug or two. Palmetto bugs were one thing you knew neither twin missed in Vermont— they were shiny black and evil winged creatures that never seemed to die, no matter what you tried— and, not for the first time, you found yourself a touch jealous of how far they got to spend most of their year. 

None of the dogs cared to follow you back to the house, not wanting to be locked back inside by mistake, but you didn’t mind. Roses passed, as did shrubs and trees, and you were soon pulling open the glass paned double patio doors to the dining room. You leaned against one to hold it open for Charles, your first real acknowledgment that he’d followed dutifully behind at all. 

“Thanks.” He murmured rather sulkily as he brushed passed you, heading straight for the kitchen. 

“Yep.” You answered quietly enough that you were certain he didn’t even hear you, allowing the door to click shut as you stepped into the house.

Your shoes shuffled against the dark wooded floor as you stepped around the grand dining table— twelve chairs, all dark, and an ovular table decorated by a china vase of pretty yellow hydrangeas in the center— and followed him. His shirt curved almost like a cape as he walked, white linen stark against the deep, rich interior of the house. He reminded you of an apparition; gauzy and only half there.

Surprisingly, the kitchen was empty when you entered. Their cook, Mrs. Ekholm, must have been on her lunch break. She liked to spend it, you knew, on the telephone with her children, back in Minnesota. A long distance call, to be sure, and one that came faithfully out of her check each month. You thought it sweet, anytime you’d heard her happy Swedish words curling through from staff quarters, that she would spend such money just to speak to her husband and children. 

Charles set the cooler on the floor near the fridge and tugged it open. You placed your palms on the counter just beside him and hoisted yourself up, allowing your sandals to fall to the tiled floor as you did so. He didn’t need help stocking the cooler, but might need it when it came to carrying it back, which was why you’d bothered to come along at all. Besides that, you liked to watch him do nearly anything, and this was the perfect excuse.

He worked in silence for awhile, digging out bottles and working them into the icy cooler water. It seemed, at times, that he was struggling to really see what he was looking for and it was this that emboldened you to reach out for the sunglasses. He stilled when your fingers brushed his cheek, warmth twining down your arms like vines as you tugged them from his face.

“Should be able to see now.” You smiled, cheeks hot.

He nodded slowly, blinking a few times. His eyelashes were sandy against his cheeks, which had been shaded a youthful red from the sun. You returned your gaze to your lap, folding the glasses neatly. 

“I really couldn’t see anything in here with them on, so… I appreciate it.” He was still looking at you as he spoke, fridge air curling cold around him.

It was your turn to nod, tapping your heels softly against the cupboard beneath you. 

“Yeah, it’s not, um. Not a problem.” 

The kitchen was quiet for a moment, save for the humming of the old fridge, and then he turned back to his task. Bottles clinked together as he rifled through. You were sure he looked beautiful, but didn’t dare look again. You felt your eyes carried an adoration too obvious now— you felt he’d really see just how much you cared for him and couldn’t deal with it. Not today. Perhaps not ever. 

You didn’t realize your heels were still tapping the cupboard door rhythmically until Charles was kneeling before the cooler, fitting bottles into it as nicely as he could, and even then you only noticed because his palm rested against your calf, stilling you. His touch was cold from the bottles, and firm, but gentle too. Your eyes drifted from his hand up to meet his gray eyes, which looked sort of soft and admiring in a way that made your heart hammer. You could almost believe that he liked you back, with the way he was looking.

“Sorry.” 

Your teeth found your lip again, worrying it.

“That’s alright,” Was he staring at your mouth as he spoke, or were you imagining that? “Just a little annoying. Not world ending.” 

His hand still hadn’t moved, though. That touch felt world ending, at least to you. You wanted to look away and couldn’t. Your lip felt swollen under your teeth and you longed to fidget more, if only to do something that might release the energy building within you. You swallowed. Still, he hadn’t looked away. 

“You okay?” He asked, letting his hand slide down to your ankle before it dropped back to the bottles.

You nodded, not trusting your voice to not come out shaky. You’d had plenty of moments like this with Charles in the past, plenty of moments where he touched you like it meant nothing more than it did when his hand found his sister or cousin, this was true. But something about this left you pressing your fingers against the granite countertop and the soft side of your own thigh, willing yourself not to tremble visibly. Something about this felt heavier.

“You sure? You look nervous.” 

Did he really not understand why you couldn’t bring yourself to speak? Was he drunker than you’d realized, more oblivious than you ever imagined? Or was Charles toying with you, flirting in his own way? What drove you craziest was the fact that you couldn’t tell.

“I am nervous. A little, anyway.” You said, immediately wishing you hadn’t.

His brows pulled together slightly, mouth curved in soft amusement.

“Why?” 

“I don’t know.” You murmured, suddenly very shy. 

But you did know. You knew very well why you were nervous, why his hand’s return to your leg made you feel like curling into a ball and weeping. You liked him— no, you loved him and had for a great many years— so much that it ached to be alone with him like this. 

You laughed breathlessly and forced your eyes from his. Your heart felt as though it might stop at any moment. His hand brushed your calf again. You felt yourself tip forward on the counter, just a little, involuntarily. A pure result of how much you wanted him in that moment. And then, he said your name. He said it the way he might to a crying child, or a horse on the verge of spooking. He said your name like he thought you’d run if he said anything else.

You’ll never know why he did what he did next. Perhaps he didn’t know either. Perhaps it was simply the amount he’d drank, or the weight of the humid Virginia summer in the air around you. Whatever it was, you gasped thin and near silent when you felt his lips brush against your shin. It was a barely there kiss. Light enough that he could easily pretend he’d never done it; not heavy enough to be written off as a joke. Your eyes fluttered shut.

“Do that again?” You barely recognized your own voice, so thick with breath and vulnerable in a way you swore you’d never sound while speaking to him. 

Without a word, he did. His lips were warm and dry as they pressed against your skin, the kiss still soft but more sure this time. Less ghostly. If he never did anything else, never touched you anywhere else, you could still live in this sensation forever. That felt dangerous to you; like a blade held against the thin flesh of your neck. 

His hand slid upward, one finger just brushing the soft underside of your knee. Your entire face felt so hot it almost hurt— like all the blood in your entire body had congregated there. And then: another kiss, an inch above the last one, but exactly as sweet. You didn’t dare speak, afraid to shatter whatever spell had fallen to make Charles touch you in such a fashion. 

Before you kew it had happened, Charles was on his knees for you on the same kitchen floor you used to sit on, all in a row— Claire on the far left, then you, then Charles, then Camilla— as you messily ate ice cream sandwiches, laughing at whatever mischievous thing you’d done only moments before. 

You’d dreamed of this moment countless times. You’d dreamed of what his lips would feel like as they lay kisses on your kneecap. His other hand found your other leg, smoothing over it just the same— as if he wanted, no needed, to feel every inch of your skin. His mouth drifted to the top of your thigh, still questioning, still seeming to wonder if you’d let him go further. 

It was ludicrous to you that he might wonder at all. You shifted closer to the edge of the counter without fully meaning to, chasing the feeling of his kiss on your skin. More kisses fell along your thigh dizzyingly. It felt, to you, like you were falling through time and space until his thumb stretched up to run along the hip of your white terrycloth bikini. Your eyes blinked open once again.

He looked up at you beseechingly, pressing the first of many soft kisses to your inner thigh. His thumb was still moving back and forth over your hip, and it was this that grounded you here. Here, on this white marble countertop. Here, in the kitchen of his childhood home. 

“Can I take these off?” He murmured, looking up at you through his lashes.

“Yes,” You couldn’t agree fast enough, “Yes, please.”

Your knee pressed into his shoulder, bracing as he pulled the bottoms down until they were out of his way. He stared for a moment, drinking in the way you looked: spread bare and glistening in his kitchen, full body flushed and warm, eyes heavy lidded. There was a level in which he seemed to feel like this was almost too much; a treat he did not deserve.

You cupped his cheek in your palm gently, wondering if he’d changed his mind. You supposed it would have to be alright, if he had, for he was Charles. The Charles of your childhood. The Charles you chased down to try and kiss years and years ago, the one you thought dreamily of when you and Claire made collages using your mother’s wedding magazines. If he were changing his mind, you wouldn’t allow yourself to bask in the disappointment. 

But then he smiled, slow and timid, and his face disappeared between your thighs. Your hand found his hair, still sunwarm and damp with sweat, and you whimpered. He was more skilled than you thought he might have been. His tongue curled and flicked over you with expert precision as if he had touched you before— never had he, of course— and his fingers, when he worked two of them inside of you, seemed to know just where to brush.

You refused to think of why that might be the case, only allowing yourself to feel the pleasure spreading through your hips and stomach by his touch. Nothing he’d ever done before mattered to you; only the things he was doing to you did. You tugged loosely at his hair, nails grazing against his scalp, and he groaned into you. That, you liked.

He worked pleasure from you as if it were second nature. As if he was born for it. It made you shake against him, head falling back against another set of cupboards as he touched and touched and touched you. You melted and boiled and died and came alive all at once, just for him; as though he was some sort of angelic specter come to try you, and this was the way he chose to do so.

When you came it took you by surprise, twisting through you from head to toe. You shook more. A cry came sharp from your throat. His movements grew more gentle until he was sure you were done, at which time he slipped his fingers out and stood to finally kiss you. You tasted yourself on his mouth and tongue. It was a lazy kiss, surprisingly. A sweet one.

Perhaps more would have transpired if you hadn’t then heard a gasp, causing both you and Charles to look over his shoulder. There stood a plump woman with dark hair and eyes, embarrassed horror on her features.

“Oj herregud!” She gasped out, one hand on her black fabric covered stomach.

“Mrs. Ekholm, I’m—” You started.

“My kitchen, äckliga syndare, anywhere else. Anywhere else. Kristus, this house.” She threw up her hands, speaking mostly to herself as she hurried from the room.

You couldn’t help but laugh, allowing your forehead to land on Charles’s shoulder. He laughed too, harboring just as much embarrassment if not more.

“Do you think she’s going to tell anyone?” You giggled, cheeks burning hot.

“God, I hope not.” He answered, still laughing softly.

“Kristus.” You said in your best impression of Mrs. Ekholm, starting off another round of laughter. 

When your laughter died out, he kissed you again. This time quicker, without a single undertone of sex to come. He handed you your swim bottoms from the floor, which you pushed off the counter and slipped on easily, and picked up the cooler with both hands. This, you would half-heartedly help him carry back to the others. 

Dimly, you wondered if Claire and Camilla would even notice that you’d been gone. You took the final sip of your wine cooler and opened Charles’s sunglasses again, perching them on top of his head. Maybe they would notice. Maybe they’d overhear a maid or two gossiping about it. But right now, it was something that transpired betwixt you for no discernible reason. A treat for just you. And for now, that was enough. 

[madameisaacpereire]

“around every circle another can be drawn”, eduardo c. corral

[madameisaacpereire]

(talking about a character i really like) fucking annoying ass gayboy i hope he dies

[madameisaacpereire]

you’ve spoken. on it

i promised a dear friend of mine a threesome fic & must know which one you’d rather see. so. please vote here