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"You're not falling apart you're dealing with an extremely stressful situation, on top of the fifty other stressful situations you have, as well as a death of someone you cared about." Jolie let out a deep sigh as she reorganised her thoughts, she should have known he'd have the audacity to ask her something so major only to start backtracking after he got the response he was looking for in the first place.

She mulled over her reply knowing he needed to hear something real from her. Something he could understand even if he didn't like it. "I hate dating." Jolie said firmly because it was true and it didn't exactly play an insignificant part of her decision making. "I always feel like I'm just wasting time, I'm never invested enough. You're high maintenance to deal with but it's the kind I can handle easily enough and I know I'm high maintenance too but you've never been upset about that. At least from what I can tell." If he couldn't handle her honesty then that wasn't her fault.

"I answer the phone whenever you call Nik, you're already essentially the third person in whatever relationship I'm in, and I've never been particularly interested in polyamory." There was probably one too many times that she'd climbed out of bed in the middle of the night leaving whatever boyfriend alone and cold to go to his side. She'd never been in love before, not really not in the way people tended to dream about. Sure there were moments of middle school naïveté, or high school passion. But they didn't matter really. They weren't anything that would make her look back on and swoon or smile. Jolie couldn't help but wonder if she was the problem sometimes. It could just be having grown up in the gang her heart was always more in that, she got her emotional fulfilment through her friends and sexual fulfilment through whoever she was seeing at the moment. There was probably such a thing as being too practical or maybe she was just too loyal for her own good.

"So we give them a story. We had a passionate one night stand and I was so good in bed you had no choice but to beg me to marry you." Jolie joked heading over to her purse that she'd dropped onto one of the chairs when she'd first come in. "Or we tell them the truth or nothing at all because it isn't really their business why exactly it's happening. Let them decide why and ignore it." She said with a shrug her attention still focused on her bag.

"You're not asking me for a lot." Jolie corrected finally grabbing some painkillers. Moving over to his side she took one of his hands and placed the pills there. "You're asking me for my entire life Nik. I do actually take that seriously." Because that's what this was, there was no coming back from this sort of agreement. Divorce or a separation, both would undermine what they were trying to do in the first place. Leaning against the desk next to him she crossed her arms, Jo wasn't quite sure if he'd be a fan of her next demand. But this was a negotiation.

"But you're right, I do want something real. That's one of my three conditions. If I do this then I want a real marriage, a real partnership all of it. I won't just be your business partner that you share a bed with. I know you love me and I love you too. Maybe not the way people who are marrying usually are, but if I'm giving you my whole life then I need to know if you can you give me yours. If you don't want to deal with the mess of me falling for someone then don't give me a reason to, I don't think it's particularly unreasonable that we could manage a real relationship."

Nicholas Sterling was tired. The sort of tired that couldn’t be explained by sleeplessness or late hours, but a bone-deep weariness that had a way of creeping up on him from time to time, whenever he felt as if he were a bowstring drawn too tight, ready to snap. Now he leaned against the massive redwood desk he’d kept in the office out of respect for the old man, massaging his temples in an attempt to drive away the mounting headache.

“This is just the kind of rational, eloquent speech every man wishes to hear upon proposing marriage,” he said dryly, a ghost of humor threading through the rasp of exhaustion in his voice. Then again, his proposal hadn’t exactly been the kind women dreamed of either. Less an expression of devotion, more a business arrangement. Which, in truth, it was. Nik had long abandoned the romantic ideals, left them behind along with his youth and Selena, bloodied and slack in his arms, as she always was in his memory these days. To marry would be to drag another innocent soul into this, and the thought nauseated him.

But Jolie wasn’t innocent or helpless.

His hand fell away from his temple as he turned, catching her reflection in the mirror. “As much as I’m flattered by the decisiveness — are you sure?” He’d already gone over every angle, turned the idea inside out, and still couldn’t figure out what Jolie stood to gain. She didn’t need the position. She would remain his most trusted adviser regardless. She wasn’t damaged in the ways he was—wasn’t rigid and distant and incapable of anything beyond an occasional, meaningless fling. She still had a chance at a normal life. “You’re sure you don’t want something… real? Organic — whatever.” He gestured vaguely, irritation flashing across his features as he failed to find the right word. “I’m asking for a lot. You could at least think about it. Say, in a year you come across someone you actually want to be with — dealing with that would be a mess.”

At the mention of James, Nik let out a low groan and tipped his head back, closing his eyes against the fresh wave of pain clawing at his skull. The headache was suddenly tiptoeing dangerously into full-blown migraine territory. “Jolie, I do so much as breathe in his direction and his ego somehow finds a way to be bruised by it. It’s not a very sturdy construction, despite its size.” It had gotten worse since they broke up, and Nik was fairly certain James had, at least partially, decided to blame him for it. The late nights. The endless phone calls. Jolie’s unwavering loyalty to Nik. There was nothing between them—nothing in the way James seemed to believe—but there was no doubt their plans would ruffle some feathers. “I’d say it’d look suspicious, considering anyone with a working brainstem can see we’re not together. And we’d be going from nothing to engaged essentially overnight.”

He’d woken up with a low, simmering pain in his bad knee, but this late in the day that low simmer had turned incessant, and he felt the joint buckle slightly under his weight as he pushed himself off the desk to step around it. A hiss of frustration slipped through his teeth.“Shit. I’m fucking falling apart.” Jaw clenched, he let his body collapse into the chair. With his head tipped back against the backrest, he cast Jolie a slantwise look. “You’ve always been more concerned with how things will affect me than him — we can’t entirely fault him if he loses his shit.” A slow, sinuous smile tugged at his lips as he arched a brow. “Maybe that’s a good thing. If he overreacts, he’ll be shooting himself in the foot. Think about it. Nothing says good, stable leader quite like having a jealous hissy fit.”

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Samantha wasn't going to lie to herself, she wasn't thrilled with his initial reaction. She'd thought she was being tense over nothing, but having the first thing she saw being pure unadulterated panic just wasn't the response she was expecting. Intellectually she knew that she should have seen a trauma flair up coming. He hadn't been surprised when it had taken a couple of years before she could stop needing a knife under her pillow when she slept. Marriage hadn't seemed like much of a problem, even though she begged for a couple of years. In retrospect she could respect the fact that he wanted to wait until she was a bit older. Maybe she'd missed that too in her own excitement over the whole thing. So she waited out his mental cycle cataloging each expression and touch.

"Shitty reality tv references are never inappropriate." She told him solemnly even though her lips twitched focusing in on the humour of the situation for a moment. "Trash TV does a lot for peace in the nation." He got her. It was nice to have someone who got her. She recentered herself just a little bit before they had to be serious again.

Her head tilted to the side into his hand dragging out the comfort of the gesture. "I mean yeah, I would have a little bit more tact if this was something upsetting me." She'd stopped hiding her displeasure with things when she hit puberty and decided the best way to get her point across was to commit a mass amount of arson. "Not fire kind of upset, but I wouldn't like... throw a test at your face and reference Maury. There's probably something more appropriate for that." She shifted on her feet wondering if he was trying to gage her response for his own best way to reject it. If she'd read this whole thing wrong and the past was too much for him to want this now. Dragging in a deep breath she steeled herself trying to readjust to the new unexpected situation. Fuck she really should have seen this coming, the thought just kept playing on loop.

Taking his hand off her cheek she held both of his in hers, squeezing tightly. It was strange sometimes the calluses on her own compared to how smooth his were. "Look if this is too much, or if you just don't feel ready or if you just don't want it." The with me was left hanging an insecurity she didn't really realise she'd ever feel making itself know to her suddenly. Samantha quickly beat it down into the depths of her brain.

She wasn't exactly thrilled with her next statement but it was true. Jesus fucking christ it was true. "I can get rid of it. I'm going to pick you first. I want this, what we have most." He was her dream and she'd already compromised before about the whole money thing, she could compromise on this too. "I don't need a baby to be happy or whatever. We already have a dog." Samantha had to throw the joke in, even trying to keep this serious it just slipped out. She didn't really know if it was a defence mechanism or an attempt to soothe him.

At times it still startled him, this life. He would find himself flooded with a sense of having been transported, suddenly and without notice, into someone else’s life. This happened at the strangest of places and oddest of times and sometimes he would stop and try to figure out what had prompted it — a smell, some memory, this city so deeply familiar to him it seemed he’d never be entirely rid of this sensation.

Sometimes, it prompted in him a sense of gratefulness, which he found strange and unfamiliar, as he’d never been particularly well-versed in the feeling. Sometimes, it was a sense of being an impostor, of having stolen someone else’s life — after all, having blown through so many chances that were afforded to few, how could he of all people end up where he was? It happened just now. Keys rattling in the lock as the door swung open, a dog’s warm body pressing insistently against his legs, the sound of soft whines of excitement (Had anyone ever been this consistently excited about his arrival?), Sam’s voice spilling from somewhere inside the house. He’d gotten better at shoving that feeling deep inside when it came.

“What? A test?” he called back, trying to push Oreo inside so he could close the door. This sense of being outside his body, of being outside his life and watching from the sidelines, a film roll spinning, was probably why the realisation hadn’t come to him immediately. He made his way through the hall on muscle memory, the sound of dog paws on old hardwood following him, and it was only when his lizard brain got startled by a thing flying at him that he finally snapped out of it. “You don’t mean—” He turned the ziplock baggie in his hand, staring at its contents as if they were something he couldn’t quite comprehend.

His confusion was a crease between his brows, a startled look he cast her as he lifted his eyes. At least now he was absolutely sure he was inside his body again — his heart a startled bird beating itself frantically against the ribcage, the tinny sound of rushing blood in his ears, his fingertips gone numb. This felt like another chance, a do-over, something he certainly did not deserve. Something he didn’t know how to not fuck up, the way he had that first time, all those years ago. She even had the same uncertain tension in her shoulders that Daisy had, which left him unsettled and reeling. Daisy had known that there was no love between them, that it was doomed from the start. But to have his wife watching him so closely — was he truly such a fuck-up that the wrong reaction was almost expected of him?

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, his own voice strange and raspy in his ears, as if he’d forgotten how to use it. “I’m afraid I’ll do it all wrong again.” Really, he should’ve planned better, gone over the scenario until he was sure he could react appropriately — Sam deserved better than this mess. He forced his frozen limbs to move, and the feeling of her soft hair beneath his fingertips as he placed his hand on the back of her head and pulled her to his side, was a grounding thing. He stood that way for a moment, finding his balance, before he lowered himself to a crouch in front of her, gazing up.

“How are you feeling? Are you alright?” What a stupid question. He wasn’t even sure what he was asking - Are you sick? Are you happy? He was vaguely aware of the way his hand shook as it slipped down from the back of her neck to the delicate bones of her wrist, fingertips slipping down the back of her hand, as if he were afraid to touch her. A startled laugh escaped him, the kind that came from an inability to comprehend the wave of contentment that had flooded him, the sense of terror underneath, the fear of inadequacy, all at once. “Well, you’re making shitty reality show references, so it must mean you’re fine.” He lifted his gaze back up to her, catching her eyes, before he reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Are you happy?” It’s what he’d meant to ask the first time. It’s what he was afraid of. He was still sometimes terrified that she’d eventually come to her senses and decide there were too many things wrong with him. Chris didn’t think he’d ever be rid of that feeling — but a child? That felt big. Permanent. “Do you want this?”

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Jolie looked at him in the mirror with a frown on her face as she weighed what he'd just asked of her, head tilting. "Not that I don't think it's a good plan. Validating your claim and the will with a marriage is smart. Especially someone with a deep history in the gang, the old guard already respects you and this will settle the last of their complaints. We trust each other, we're of one mind most of the time and you're not exactly ugly." The marriage wouldn't be difficult and arranged marriages for power were a common occurrence in history for a reason. She'd never really considered what her marriage would end up being like, a more nebulous event than anything else. Nik asking her, the rational, the ease in skipping the annoying and messier parts of a relationship were all fairly alluring. It also felt more stable to her than anything she could ever imagine. They'd also probably have pretty cute kids. "I don't mind telling you when you're wrong." She very purposefully didn't say 'think'.

"But part of this plan also needs to be about undercutting James and his bullshit claim." Jolie turned to look at him head on arms crossing. "You're supposed to be trying not to ruffle his ego. We've been broken up for five months. How do you think us being engaged will look to him?" No one would accuse her of cheating, the timeline didn't give room for that.

But that didn't mean his ego wouldn't take a beating. Especially since Nik had been an unfortunate factor of their slowly petering off relationship. Her friend needed her and Jo was nothing if not loyal. Their friendship and the writing on the wall for Nik's oncoming rise had been a point of contention at times. Still she and James had both been fairly uninterested in each other by the time things came to an end. "I don't care if he's upset but I do care about the way this could affect your seamless and peaceful transition stage." Jolie emphasised with a raised brow.

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Samantha turned onto her stomach hand propping up her head as she flipped over the letter. It was weird being so detached from it all now. There used to be a time when she dreamed of nothing else than being the right hand man of the Hearts, of following Marcus everywhere. When a white picket fence was nothing more than a hilarious fantasy meant for someone else. It still wasn't a white picket fence but the compromise of a brownstone in the Village was a pretty good alternative. Besides at the end of the day neither of them could really leave New York City. Sure it was bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside, luxury was still never anything but the standard her husband expected and accepted. She could deal with it. It was comfortable and warm, nothing like the picture perfect look of his family estate the few times they'd visited.

"I took a test it's positive." Samantha called out once she heard the front door open. The tension in her body betrayed her overly casual tone. It was stupid, this was something they both wanted. They were married, they had a house, they had a dog, they had more than enough fucking money for it. They were both only loosely associated with the gang for years now, freed fairly easily in part due to their close friendship with Matt. Both able to realise that they no longer needed the emotional crutch it once provided.

But it was still terrifying. His family sucked, hers was nonexistent, she didn't buy into the idea that you needed to have a good example to be a good parent. If anything having shit felt like a better set up. Samantha knew the things she'd lacked, the things she dreamed of having. She knew what to do.

Samantha moved to sit crosslegged once she heard him coming around the corner pulling out the sealed pregnancy test from her back pocket and throwing it at him. "Congratulations you are the Father." She watched carefully for his reaction, one she already knew would never be negative. But for the first time in a long time that hare-brain expectation of rejection flooded her body again.

@cruenta