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howtotrainyourginger · 6 years

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Rating: NC17 (or FRAO) Pairings: Ed Sheeran/Original female character Disclaimer: This story was inspired by Ed Sheeran, but it is fiction. I am not claiming that any of the following is true. Distribution: Please do not archive or repost this story anywhere. Warnings: Explicit depictions of heterosexual sex, some possibly triggery descriptions of developing a serious physical illness, also an entire conversation about fisting. Word Count: 15,439 in this part.

Summary: There’s probably a world out there where Ed has nipple piercings, designs custom bullriding chaps in his spare time, and makes his living by playing a giant black keytar. In that world, his girlfriend isn’t sick.

He’s never really wanted nipple piercings or a keytar, but, all things considered, he’d trade this world for that one in a heartbeat.

–>Stargazer, Part 1

Stargazer, Part 2:

Ironically, the night she decides that she is no longer interested in fighting, Hannah has a huge fight with her mother. Your house is not small, but there is nowhere in it that you can go and not hear them yelling at each other. Hannah may be tiny and ill, but she is fierce, and she refuses to back down. You go outside for a while and sit in the back garden, smoking. Iris comes outside as well, eventually, and sits beside you. She takes one disgusted look at your cigarette and says, “Really?”

You look down at it. “This is my first one since... it's been almost a year.”

“Well. Don't let my mom see you.”

“Your mum can piss off.”

“Yeah,” says Iris. Then she starts to cry.

Wordlessly, you scoot toward her and put an arm around her. She leans against you and cries as you smoke. When the cigarette is finished, you drop it to the ground and cover it with your foot, thinking about getting another. But you don't. After a while, Iris stops crying. You think about taking your arm back. But you don't.

She says, “Lily was three when I was born. She's always been there. My whole life.”

You're not sure what you're supposed to say, so you say nothing. You're looking up at the black sky, stars so tiny and faint, so far away. You've seen them much brighter than this, much closer, more brilliant. In Iceland, there's a place...

“I'm only 24,” says Iris. “If I live a regular life, there will be more time without her than with her. A lot more time. I can't... I can't imagine that. I can't imagine life without my sister.” She starts to cry again. “It's not fair. It's not fair, it's not.”

Inside the house, Hannah and her mother are still arguing. You can hear them, but not what they're saying. What you picture Hannah saying is that she doesn't want to die shitting herself while screaming out that it's okay.

“I can't imagine life without your sister either,” you say quietly, and push your glasses up so you can rub your free hand over your eyes.

“You're a good guy, Ed,” says Iris quietly.

“Thank you.” Not that it makes a bloody bit of difference.

“Lily loves you.”

“Yeah. But she's smart in other ways.”

You'd wanted to marry her. It crossed your mind a lot, actually, how you would propose, where you would take her, how you would make it special. The two of you never really talked about it, not seriously, not yet, but it had been in your head for so long. Since you met her, maybe. Maybe before that. You wanted to be with her forever, raise a family, get old and fat together. How could that be too much to ask?

Right now, sitting in the garden with your arm around Iris, this is the moment it occurs to you that loving someone – really loving them – is the same thing as agreeing to watch them die. Not just when you're old and fat, but whenever it happens, in whatever way. You knew this already in a sort of far off place in your head, but now you know it closely, all over your body, in your skin. The love is a contract. It means we will be here together until the moment when one of us is no longer anywhere, and whichever one of us is left over, that one will bear the weight of an incredible sadness in their bones, forever. What you want to say is that you never signed up for that. Not on purpose. You want to say to Hannah, 'No, sorry, you are not allowed to leave me yet. I am not ready for you to go. I am not ready to be sad for the rest of my life. I am too young.' You want to curl up in her lap like a child and let her protect you from what is happening. She would, you know. If it were possible. She would run her fingers softly through your hair and with her perfectly calm, steady voice, she would tell you that everything was fine, and you would try so hard to believe her.

But no one can protect you from slowly losing the thing you love most in the world, and the fact is you did sign up for this. From the moment you tumbled into a hammock laughing with a girl at a party, this has always been what would happen.

It's just happening very, very fast.

“You said surgery would be the hardest part.”

Iris lifts her head from your shoulder, but she doesn't pull away from you. “I didn't mean the surgery,” she says. “I meant seeing her in pain. Watching someone you love, just hurting. That's what's hard.”

The two of you sit there in silence. Inside the house, the yelling continues.

“It's going to get harder,” says Iris. “I can't, I can't think about it right now. I just can't think about it.”

Hannah's mother wants her to come back to America. She seems fixated on this idea, like if Hannah just leaves England – leaves you – then somehow that means she will leave her illness behind as well. Hannah, of course, refuses.

“You understand, don't you?” she asks you softly one night, curled up in your arms in bed, her head lying on your chest. She says, “You know why I'm not doing this anymore.”

“I know,” you tell her, and run your hand down her back. The doctors said a few months. Continuing treatments may prolong Hannah's life as long as six additional months, but the way her sickness is spreading so fast, resisting everything that gets thrown at it, those six months would not be a good six months. At least without the treatments, she won't have to suffer quite as much.

“Do you hate me?” she asks. Then she chuckles, pokes you in the side, and says, “Jesus, Ed, you don't have to wait so long before you say no.”

“You don't know I was going to say no. Maybe I do hate you. Maybe our whole relationship has been a lie.”

She gives a resigned sigh. “I always suspected. I hate you too, you know.” Her hand slips under your t-shirt to rest fondly on your stomach.

“Suppose that means we're breaking up? Bit of a relief, to be honest. I can't be arsed to fetch you any more soup.”

“Owen and I moved out two weeks ago,” she says. “Just been waiting for a good time to tell you.”

“It's all right. I only asked you out on a dare anyway.” You tilt your head up from the pillow to kiss her bald head before leaning back again.

“I only said yes because I've always felt sorry for short guys.”

“Ouch,” you say, but with a laugh. “Little too close to home maybe?”

She snickers softly, and her hand on your belly slides up and down again, like she's petting you. Then she says, “You're still the cutest guy I ever dated. Have I told you that?”

“What, seriously?” You're surprised, but you find yourself grinning smugly anyway.

“Of course, now that we've broken up, I'm joining Tinder.”

“So is there anything that you...” Your voice stops in mid-question. It had seemed like a good time to ask, when the conversation was lighthearted, but now it occurs to you that there's no way to ask this in a lighthearted manner. “Do you want to do anything?” you finally finish. “I mean. Is there anywhere you want to go? Or someone you want to meet?” You could make it happen, probably. You've got connections. You've got money.

“On Tinder?” she jokes.

You pass your hand down her back slowly, not saying anything. One day, not long from now, she won't be there under your hand. Her cheek won't be on your chest, her palm lying on your stomach under your shirt. Every time you have thoughts like this, they hit you so suddenly, so hard. Everything seems normal, and then: boom, an image of you lying here by yourself after she's gone.

“Hey.” She sits up and looks down at you, concerned. It's embarrassing that your eyes are wet, your throat so tight out of nowhere. You turn your head but she touches your face, cups your cheek, her thumb going across your beard. “Babe? You okay?”

You nod, not looking at her. God, I'm going to be so lonely, is what you don't say. How can you do this to me? How can you leave, knowing I won't recover? “Fine,” you murmur. “It was just a question.”

Then she leans down again, re-situates herself so that her face is pressed into the side of your neck as you lie there together. “I love you so much, Teddy,” she whispers to you. “Don't let me go a day without saying so, all right?”

“I'll set a daily reminder on your phone,” you say quietly, wrapping your arms around her. Her small body, lying mostly on top of you, starts to shake, and for a second you think maybe she's crying, or trying not to. Then you realize she's just giggling silently. That makes you smile, but then suddenly you're sad again, and you squeeze her tight to your chest, swallowing against the lump in your throat.

Softly, she says, “If I think of something I want to do, I'll let you know.”

“Anything. It could be anything.”

She presses a kiss into your neck. “I'll let you know.”

Before you, she had never been to a music festival. Not a proper one, not in the wide open countryside or a muddy forest with stages in all different directions and camping and everyone smelling like spilled beer and piss. You always think of the two of you as having similar backgrounds, but some things are just cultural, you suppose. Hannah never went to music festivals as a teenager and you never snuck into a rival high school to steal their team mascot's costume and ride around shirtless in the back of a pickup truck burning it.

Americans.

You love being the reason she gets to experience something new, though. Back before she moved in with you, you took her to her first festival with a group of friends, and the whole time you all wore costumes so that no one would recognize you and ask for selfies or autographs. You could just enjoy the music and hang out with your mates like anyone else.

Hannah loved it. She didn't stick with you the entire time, which was fine of course. She wanted to see some of the bigger acts you weren't interested in while you went to the smaller stages and saw some of your friends performing, remembering what it was like playing these same stages yourself a few years ago. Your group often split off into pairs or threes during the day and met back up at night, usually drunk or high or both, to dance stupidly under some random tent or make out with each other or have Very Important Conversations™ sitting on folding chairs or blankets under the stars.

On the first full day of her first festival, Hannah disappeared for a few hours with a couple of your other friends, and when they showed back up that evening, they weren't wearing their masks but had their faces painted in bright colors. Hannah wore a soft baby blue onesie with polka dots and a hood shaped like a unicorn head, with a little plush horn and everything. The hood wasn't up when she found you in the crowd, though. Her light brown hair was in two French braids, and fully half of her face was obscured with a delicate painting of a white and dark pink stargazer lily.

“There you are,” she sing-songed happily, walking slowly toward you with her arms outstretched for a hug. She was grinning that instantly recognizable grin of a Hannah who is very high. It made you laugh as you took her in your arms. You were pleasantly drunk yourself but hadn't been smoking anything yet. The big petals of the painted flower spread themselves across her forehead, down over one eye, and completely over her cheek, the bottom of the lowest petal running exactly along the edge of her jaw. A narrow green stem slipped down the side of her neck. You pulled her close and planted a big kiss on the cheek that had been left bare. She smelled warm and sweet and smoky. “I just met the nicest people,” she told you. “From Spain.” Then she said, “I'm going to teach you Spanish. Do you want me to teach you Spanish?”

“I already know enough Spanish,” you said.

She said, “You don't know any Spanish!” and laughed.

“Sure I do.” You searched your memory for anything vaguely Spanish. “I know that taco cat backwards is taco cat.”

She tilted her head thoughtfully and then nodded. “You're right! Taco cat. I'll add that to my syllabus.”

“Gracias. La vida loca. Amigo.” You leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Sombrero.”

The two of you giggled and swayed and danced until late in the night, Hannah with her braids and face paint and unicorn onesie and you wearing a blue snapback to cover your ginger hair and a black and white panda bear onesie with a little tail and ears. She laughed as you spun her around one-handed, your other hand clutching a red solo cup of vodka and peach Robinsons.

When you eventually made it back to your own tent, your other friends were there already. You and Hannah stayed up with them talking, sitting on a blanket with her leaning back against you and your arms wrapped around her from behind. You kissed her neck in the silences, and when everyone else had fallen asleep, you slowly unzipped her onesie and slipped your hand inside the warmth under the soft fabric. She was wearing a tank top and panties under it, so your hand went under the bottom edge of her tank top and slid up her smooth skin to cover one boob. She sighed in your arms and squirmed just a little to give you more room.

“Do you think,” she said softly as you kissed her neck and fondled her breast, “there's life on other planets?” She was looking up at the sky.

“Mmm,” you said, paying attention to the way it felt when she breathed, the softness of her skin to your lips. It was not really an answer.

“Do you think they can see us from wherever they are?” she went on anyway, voice quiet. “Do you think they're like us or do they have like tentacles for fingers? Do you think they breathe air?”

“They're like us,” you murmured into her neck. But as soon as you said it, it sounded wrong. If they were exactly the same, then what would be the point of them? “But with one difference,” you added, and that sounded better.

“What is the difference?” she asked, sliding her hand over your other hand, which had abandoned your drink and was also going into her onesie to rest on her tummy. She traced her fingertips softly over the back of your hand. It tickled. “Tell me,” she said.

“I dunno,” you answered, kissing her. “But it's something really important.”

“It would have to be,” she agreed with a sigh. “If there's only one difference, it would have to be really, very important. It would be the most important thing about them.”

“Mmm,” you said. Your hand was slipping down her body, fingers edging underneath the little strip of lace at the top of her panties. Her skin was so warm.

“Maybe there are other us-es,” she said. “Other Hannahs and Eds on other earths. Do you think, maybe? And there's one difference every time. Like, on one earth, Ed is American.”

You snorted a laugh against her neck. “Never happen.”

“He's from Southern California and became a surfer and talks like... you know how they talk on Clueless? Like that. And we met in college.”

“American surfer Ed went to uni?” It doesn't sound very believable.

“On one earth, Ed has black hair. Everything is just the same except that. His hair is jet black. And on one earth, he's gay.”

“Hmm.” Your hand slid down further, inside her panties, over the little fluff of her pubes. Her hand rode along on top of yours, pressing your fingers gently to curve them between her legs.

“On one earth we didn't meet at all. You came here without me tonight and you weren't a panda. You were a monkey with a long tail.” Hannah was the one who picked out your panda bear onesie.

“I don't like that earth,” you said softly.

“And there's an earth somewhere,” she said, “where I never got sick. I didn't have to miss a year of college. And my dad didn't die. Because no one ever gets sick there.”

“Is that Ed ginger?” you asked. “The one where no one gets sick?”

“Yes, but he shaves his beard. He keeps the mustache but shaves the beard and it is awful. This fluffy orange mustache and no beard.” You could hear the grin in her voice. “His Hannah is always trying to get him to shave it or grow the beard out too. But he's so stubborn.”

“He's a lad. Let him be proud of his mustache.”

Hannah giggled softly. Then she turned her head more toward you and said, “I wish I'd met you on that world, though. My dad would have liked you.”

You kissed her cheek, the bare side, and murmured to her, “Guess we'll just have to make do with this one.”

“Mmm,” she said, letting her thumb pass back and forth over your knuckles. “It's better than the one where we didn't meet.”

“Little bit,” you agreed.

“Just barely,” she said, and shifted her legs wider apart for your fingers.

The weird thing is that without the treatments, she seems to get better. You know she's not really getting better, not on the inside, but she's no longer nauseated all the time and it only takes a couple of weeks for her hair to start growing. At first, just this baby-soft fuzz appears, which you find yourself touching a lot (for good luck, you tell her), but within a month it turns into real hair, and by Christmas she's got that short hairstyle again, a lot like the one she first got before the treatments started. It's still pretty extreme by most standards, but it also looks youthful and edgy – and intentional. She no longer has to wear the wig to go out. Her eyebrows still haven't fully returned, but she fills them in with makeup, and if it weren't for the weight she's lost and the port still embedded in her chest, you'd almost believe nothing more than a drastic haircut had ever happened.

She's less active now, though. She naps a lot, doesn't go to the gym anymore. Sometimes she has to put down her wooden quilting hoop and just sit still and breathe for a moment. Then she smiles so you'll know she's okay, makes some sarcastic comment, and starts sewing again. Her mother and Iris are still here. Your parents visit a lot, too, and Stuart and Lib. You all go to church together a few times, and it's nice having your family around so much, people who just act normal and don't spend the whole time looking at Hannah like she's some kind of time bomb about to go off.

And as much as you've disagreed with each other in the past, it is impossible for you to deny that Hannah's mother is a great cook. Like really, really great. She even made a chicken and broccoli casserole (one of Hannah's favorite foods) with an additional separate casserole just for you without any broccoli in it, because she knows you don't like broccoli. And it was amazing. You put your personal casserole leftovers in the fridge with a note that said ED'S – KEEP OUT and refused to share it with anyone else, but you still only managed to make it last a couple of days.

Hannah's mother is also the only person besides yourself that you've ever seen beat your dad at Monopoly. This would have been funny if she hadn't beaten you as well.

But even though it's nice having everyone around, and you can tell Hannah is grateful that they're all there, the best times are at night, just the two of you cuddling in bed and talking and making each other laugh until you fall asleep. It's during this time that Hannah finally tells you what she wants.

So you take her to France. On Christmas Eve, the two of you arrive in a small field and climb into the basket of a hot air balloon with a smiling old man named Michel and one of his sons. Michel's other three sons help to untie the balloon from its tethers but stay on the ground and wave merrily to Hannah as you begin to float up rapidly into the air. She's got a huge smile, recording video on her phone to show Iris later.

“Oh my God, this is incredible,” she says, turning the phone toward you. “Ed, isn't it incredible?”

It's fucking cold, so you're wearing a beanie and coat, and the fur trim around your hood ruffles violently with the wind. “I'm freezing my balls off,” you say to the camera, but half of the sentence is drowned out by the loud hiss of fire shooting up into the balloon. You're trying not to look at the ground rushing away. Shite. Maybe this was a bad idea.

Hannah laughs and points the phone at Michel and his son. “Hello!” Michel says with a heavy French accent, and his son echoes “Hello!” in the same way, waving. This is the extent of Michel's English, though his son can hold a conversation with you. He tells you they will keep the balloon at about three thousand feet above the ground. “Very high,” he says, smiling. “So do not jump out. Okay?”

Not bloody likely. You're holding onto the thickly padded pole extending up from your corner of the basket, gripping it for dear life. Hannah puts her arm around you, leans her head against your shoulder, and takes a selfie. Then she puts the phone away. “Thanks for being such a good sport about this,” she says with a grin, giving you a little squeeze.

“We could have gone to Fiji,” you say. “It's warm in Fiji.”

“It's Christmas, babe. It's supposed to be cold. Isn't it beautiful? Look down there.”

The small field that the balloon launched from is far below by now, and it is surrounded by other small fields, squares of green and brown bordered by trees, with scattered dustings of snow. The sun is sitting quite low in the sky, and the way the shadows stretch across the ground, it makes the snow lavender in some places. Outside of the shadows, the late sunlight reflecting off the snow makes it pink and orange, like piles of flower petals. From up here, the different shapes and colors of the ground turn the whole earth into a lumpy patchwork quilt.

You pry one arm away from the pole and put it around Hannah, pull her close. She fits perfectly to your body, like a set of matching salt and pepper shakers, and rests her head against you. She is wearing white earmuffs. In this way, standing together in a basket three thousand feet above France, the two of you watch the sun sink below the horizon in the most gorgeous display of reds and oranges and pinks and purples, a colorful fading light that illuminates the whole world for such a short time before abruptly going out.

“A sunset from high in the air,” says Michel's son when the sky is fully dark. “It is very lovely, yes?”

“Yes,” says Hannah, turning to smile at him. “Beautiful.”

“There is more beauty in a few moments. Would you like to sit?”

“Yes, thank you.”

There isn't much room to move around, but Michel's son slides a plastic storage bin over to your side of the basket, and Hannah sits down on the lid. Then she scoots to one side and pats the other side, so you carefully lower yourself onto the lid beside her, not letting go of the pole until you're fully seated. The bin isn't big enough for both of you, really, but that's okay. Hannah leans forward and rests her crossed arms on the edge of the basket, looking out at the dim world. Behind you, every so often, there's a loud hissing sound as Michel sends a flame up into the balloon, lighting it up in the night like a lantern. He and his son speak quietly to each other in French.

Floating this high above the ground is a little less scary while you're seated. Because the balloon has no wings, there isn't any wobbling like there can be in airplanes. And it moves a lot slower than a helicopter, without the nauseating feeling that comes from turning too quickly. It's actually, once you get used to it, really sort of peaceful and nice. Still fucking cold, though. You put your hand on Hannah's back, gently run your fingers up and down the softness of her coat.

Her short hair waves a little in the cold breeze. “Oh,” she says after a while. “There it is.”

The city doesn't come up all at once, but gradually, little flecks of yellow light illuminating buildings on the ground, pinpoints in the night like stars. As you drift closer, the flecks of light start drawing together, condensing into streams and finally rivers of orange and yellow light slicing through the darkness of the earth, glowing hot. “Oh, wow,” you find yourself saying. “Look at that. It looks like lava.”

“It looks like the inside of a burning log,” says Hannah. “You know, the embers?”

“Paris is called City of Light,” Michel's son says pleasantly. “It can be seen from many miles away, even from space. The city, it is spiral, like a snail's shell. From the lights going in a spiral like this, you can see that it is Paris. You can see from the space station.” Smiling, he gestures upward, to the ISS many miles away.

“It's incredible,” you say.

“The Christmas Illuminations make this time of year more special from above,” he adds. “We will see shortly.”

The city is huge, even from this height, and within minutes the ground below the balloon is lit up in every direction, so far you can't tell where the edges are. It's a glittery lake of fire with burning currents running through; it seems weird that you can't feel heat rising off it.

Michel's son points out landmarks as you drift by them, some far away and some so close you float directly overhead. The Eiffel Tower juts up from the city like a solar flare, dazzling with its twenty thousand sparkling lights. More than thirty illuminated bridges criss-cross the city in glowing lines. And the Champs-Élysées (“The most famous avenue in all the world,” Michel's son informs you proudly) is a mile and a half stretch of white lightening, blazing with hundreds of trees draped in vibrant garlands of Christmas lights.

Hannah is entranced. She's still got her arms crossed on the padded lip of the basket in front of her, leaning forward to rest her chin on top, but as the balloon sails over the brilliantly glowing city, she slips one arm down and reaches for your hand. With your fingers intertwined, she gives you a happy smile and then looks out across the ocean of lights again. You settle Hannah's hand clasped with yours against your thigh, your other arm resting on the edge of the basket like hers. But you're looking at her face more than you're looking down at the city. It's hard to tell which is glowing more, which beautiful thing is more bright.

In just over an hour, the balloon finally reaches the opposite edge of Paris, and Michel uses a small radio to contact his sons on the ground and tell them exactly where to meet the four of you. Because this type of travel depends on which way the wind blows rather than any type of conventional steering, several different sites are potential landing options, but Michel aims quite expertly for one of them as his son explains to you what is happening. This is the part you were worried about. For someone who doesn't like heights, it's not the actual height that is as bothersome as the idea of coming down in an uncomfortable way.

You and Hannah stand for the landing, each holding onto one of the basket's corner poles. She's got the biggest smile. The balloon's descent isn't nearly as rapid as the ascent was, so you're coming into the field at a very shallow angle, but it's still a bit terrifying to see the ground coming at you because even though it's not a straight drop down, the balloon is still moving fast. “Oh shit. Oh shit!” you squeak as the basket skims across tall grass and bumps itself up and down against the earth. The leading edge scrapes the ground, tilting the basket so that the whole thing starts to tip over as it drags a stripe across the field. Hannah is laughing. Michel and his son don't seem bothered. His other sons are there waiting, and they run forward to grab the sides of the basket to slow it down. One of them hops onto the back, his weight pulling the whole thing upright again. All of this only lasts a few seconds, and then the balloon jerks to a stop. Hannah reaches for your hand once more as the two of you wait until Michel's sons are sure the balloon won't float away again if you get out. She's looking very pleased with herself, and now that you haven't died horribly, you're feeling pretty pleased as well.

“Did you enjoy?” Michel's son asks.

“Yeah, that was really cool. Really cool,” you say. “Cheers, man.”

“It was wonderful!” Hannah tells him. “Thank you so much for this.” But she has a hard time climbing out over the lip of the basket. One of Michel's other sons easily picks her up and lifts her over it, setting her down gently on the outside. She falters as he lets her go, and reaches back to steady herself on the pole, but her hand finds your shoulder instead.

“All right?” you ask.

“Yeah.” She nods, giving you a reassuring smile, but two steps away from the balloon her knees buckle and she takes a hard seat in the grass with a surprised, “Oof!”

“Hannah?” If it were anyone else, the sight would have been funny, but you can't hide the worried note in your voice as you help her up.

“Sorry, I'm just...” She swallows and closes her eyes, then takes a deep breath and opens them again. “I guess I'm more tired than I thought.” She chuckles a little self-deprecatingly.

“Here, let's do this,” you say, and turn around, crouching in front of her. She gratefully leans forward against you and puts her arms around your neck, and you grab the backs of her thighs and stand. You carry Hannah across the field and all the way to the waiting car on your back like this. Usually on Christmas Eve you or your brother find yourselves piggy-backing the other one home drunk from the pub, so it almost feels like your normal tradition. She's a lot lighter than Matt is, though.

Back at the hotel, you order up from the restaurant downstairs. A fancy Christmas dinner of oysters and roast pheasant and chestnut dressing, with Bûche de Noël for dessert. Hannah is so tired, though. “I think I'll just,” she breathes slowly, “take a little nap first. Okay? You can start without me.” So you eat your pheasant alone in front of the TV, watching the first Inbetweeners movie overdubbed in French while Hannah sleeps. It's getting late when she wakes up, but she's feeling a bit better and the two of you share the oysters from their slowly melting bed of ice, smiling at each other across the little table and nudging each other's feet with your feet. The curtains over the balcony's glass doors are open wide and the lights from the Champs-Elysées twinkle down below. When she's finished eating, Hannah takes her drink over and stands there looking down the avenue toward the Arc de Triomphe, holding the cold champagne flute so it rests against her cheek, not drinking from it.

You come up behind her and wrap your arms around her body, and she leans back against you. There are still some people out walking despite the late hour, couples holding hands as they take in the beauty of the illuminated street. “Do you want to go for a walk?” you ask her quietly.

“No,” she says. “I don't need to walk down it. I just wanted to see it. With you.”

“Let's go somewhere else,” you suggest. “We don't have to go back home right away. We can go... haven't you always wanted to see the pyramids?”

She laughs softly and turns around in your arms, putting her slender arms up to circle around your neck. You can feel the bottom of her champagne glass graze your skin just above the collar of your shirt. “I have never,” she says, going up on tiptoes to kiss your lips, “wanted to see the pyramids.”

“I haven't taken you to Vegas yet,” you say. It seems suddenly like a huge oversight. How could you have never taken Hannah to Las Vegas?

“I've never wanted to go to Vegas either,” she says, smiling.

“Rio,” you say.

“We've been to Rio.”

“Have we? Together?”

“Yeah, remember? It was just for one night. You kept asking me what everyone was saying but I didn't know most of it because it was Portuguese.”

“Oh. Fair play. I just thought you were really off your game.”

“I'm never off my game,” she says, and kisses your lips again. She tastes of champagne, a little, though she hasn't had much. Her lips are so soft. There's no longer any trace of the medicine-smell that coated the inside of her mouth for so long.

As you kiss, your hands slide down her hips and circle around to her bottom. Then you pull back just a bit, your lips still close to hers, and murmur, “What do you want to do?”

She gives you a little grin. “I want you to take your clothes off,” she murmurs back, letting her fingertips trace softly down the side of your neck. “After that, we can improvise.”

Immediately, you take a step back from her and reach up to grab the neck of your shirt. “Improvise?” you repeat as you start to pull it off over your head, knocking your glasses crooked. “Does that mean sex? Because if it doesn't–” You get the shirt off and let it drop down to the floor, then adjust your glasses. “--I think I'd rather just have sex.”

She's laughing at you as you quickly unbuckle your jeans and shove them down. “Charming, Ed. Really charming.”

“Course I'm charming. I'm English. It's our thing.” You go to pull your foot out of your jeans and end up hopping a couple of steps on your other foot. She's not getting undressed. When you've got one leg free, you pause and say, “Are we... I'm not doing this alone, am I? Why are you still dressed?”

“Maybe I like watching you,” she says smugly, and takes a sip from her glass.

Kicking your jeans away, you come forward in just your boxers and socks and take the drink from her. She watches you set it down. “Let me help you,” you say, reaching for her shirt to take it off.

She stills your hands with hers, chuckling softly. “Wait a second.”

“Something wrong?”

“No. I...” She bites her lip, still grinning. “Just wait here,” she tells you, and then she walks over to her suitcase and stoops to get something out of it that you can't see. “I'll be right back,” she calls over her shoulder before taking whatever she picked up into the toilet and shutting the door behind her. The door swiftly cracks back open and you hear her say, “This time, don't start without me,” before it closes again.

She's only gone a couple of minutes. You wait sitting on the edge of the bed in your boxers, absentmindedly rubbing the bottoms of your feet across the floor, letting the carpet scrunch your socks down so only your toes are covered, the rest of the sock bunched up around the middle of your foot. When she comes back in, you look up pleasantly and proceed to choke on your own saliva.

Hannah has never really been a lingerie girl. Sure, there have been some pretty bra-and-panty sets that you've liked in the past – there's a black satin thing in particular that comes to mind – but that's kind of it, always very simple and functional, the sort of thing she can wear under her regular clothes. Often her underwear doesn't match at all, a peach bra and blue panties for instance, but it's not like you've ever cared. She always looks sexy to you regardless of what she's wearing over her bits, whether it's satin and lace or just plain cotton or has Wonder Woman printed on it. And usually if she only has on underwear and you happen to be nearby, she doesn't end up keeping it on for long anyway.

So this is new.

Everything is white. The top is strapless so her shoulders are totally bare, the contrast of the white against her body making her ivory skin look darker than it normally does, more tan. Her small breasts are being pushed up a bit by round, solid white cups underscored by a satin ribbon that encircles her body and ties in a loose bow in the front. This is something she couldn't wear under her normal clothes because of the sheer material flowing loosely down from there to her hips, where the hem is also edged in white satin. It's like some kind of too-short nightgown. Her tiny panties are solid white like the bra cups but with a band of lace around the top, and you can see a strip of enticing bare tummy skin between her top's flowy satin hem and the lace of the panties. As she walks toward you, the silky material swishes sexily around her hips. You can see her body through it, see her slender waist and her belly button and her scar all showing through.

She's also got on sheer white thigh-high stockings, the kind that stay up on their own, with lace around the tops. And – for some reason – gloves. Long white gloves of opaque raw silk, smoothed all the way up to her elbows. She looks... she looks like a cross between an innocent angel and some kind of high-end escort getting ready for the opera.

Which is to say, she looks gorgeous.

“Oh,” you hear yourself manage when you've finished coughing. “Wow.”

“Do you like this?” she asks playfully, giving you a little twirl. The wispy fabric fans out to the sides as she does so, briefly revealing more of her stomach and her back. The panties are tiny in the back too, not quite a thong but cut so that the bottom portions of her cheeks are visible. It's fucking hot. She's smiling as she turns to face you again, running her silk-covered hands down her sides and clearly enjoying the way the gauzy material feels against her skin.

You're about to blurt out the thing about opera-going prostitutes but manage to stop yourself in time. You really don't want to fuck this up by saying the wrong thing, so what you end up telling her is just, “You look amazing.”

“The saleslady called it a baby doll set,” she says, coming forward and casually putting one knee up on the bed beside your thigh, “but can you imagine having a baby doll dressed like this?” She runs her white hands down her sides again thoughtfully, and you're wondering if she's noticed that you tented your boxers the moment she stepped into the room.

“That would be a bit... inappropriate,” you agree, looking down at her knee beside you on the bed, the way she's standing with her other leg between your legs. Your fingers trail up her stocking as if they're moving without your permission, over the lace at the top and then the bare skin of her upper thigh. She's so... soft...

Hannah's hand comes up to cup your cheek, her palm surprisingly warm. For some reason you'd thought the gloves would be cool to the touch, but the silk has absorbed her body heat so it's like being held by incredibly smooth, warm skin, so soft it's almost liquid. Your beard catches in a thousand tiny places against the material as you look up, making your face tingle. She's smiling as she leans forward for a kiss.

You gather Hannah into your arms and she straddles your lap, sitting down on top of you as you kiss her. It's like holding a gossamer cloud which is floating thinly around a solid girl. She feels so delicate under your hands. You want to touch her all over, just rub yourself against her body and feel the smoothness against your skin and hair. As you trail gentle kisses down the side of her neck, your hands slip under the feather-light material so you can grasp her back, and the way the fabric drapes softly across your wrists tickles in this new way. This is sexier than you would have thought it could be, and your cock feels tight and hard inside your boxers, pressing against the side of her thigh as she sits on you.

The gloves are the best part. Hannah runs her hands softly down your neck and across your shoulders, and the caress is what you imagine a warm breeze would feel like if it were a solid, loving thing, if it wanted to tease your skin into loving it back. Then her hands slip lower, over your sproingy chest hair, silk-covered fingertips tickling through the orange fluff until they find your nipples hidden among the tattoos and graze gently over the tiny pink nubs, making you shiver. Your face buried in her neck, you can feel her smiling at your reaction, and her fingers linger at your nipples, rubbing light circles around them until they poke out firmly from your chest, swollen and sensitive. Every touch there sends a tingle zipping straight down to your erection.

“That tickles,” you murmur against her skin, half giggling. She smells so good.

Hannah just grins and moves to kiss your lips again, her mouth warm and sweet. Those gloves, the smoothness of them, the silk glide of her fingers alongside your nipples, the softness of her lips, the way her nightie brushes your arm hair so gently and the heat of her body through her panties against your lap... You can feel her breathing under your hands, the way she moves so easily when you squeeze her to you, and it's all so sexy and perfect, so soft, so–

“What is this made of?” you pull back to ask, taking the delicate baby doll fabric between your fingers and rubbing it against itself. “Is it just – is it silk or...?”

She huffs a small chuckle, looking down to where you're examining her lingerie. “Yeah, it's mostly silk. Not this part.” She briefly touches the satin ribbon with her white fingers. “It's nice, right?”

“It's great.” You lean in for another kiss but have to pull back once more to add, “Worms made it, then? Like, actual worms.” Half as a joke and half because you just want to, you gather the loose folds of sheer material in your hands and lift it up to rub your face in it, baring Hannah's flat stomach.

She's laughing at you. “You know, I think they had another set like this in your size, if you want to get one for yourself when we go home.”

You glance up, still holding the fabric to your cheeks. “Yeah? Think I could pull it off? With the stockings and everything?”

“You would be so pretty.” She drops a hand down to your thigh to pinch up a few ginger leg hairs and tug on them. “We'd have to shave you first, obviously. I'd get you the blue set. Bring out your eyes.”

It's a joke of course, but for some reason in the moment the thought of shaving your body completely smooth and slipping into something skimpy and silky makes your cock twitch. “I'd just be your house boy then. Never wear anything else.”

“I'm sure my mom would appreciate that.”

Her soft fingers are sliding up, edging into the leg holes of your boxers, and as soon as her fingertips touch your balls, you're kissing her again, your hands sliding down her back, dipping under the lace of her silk panties to give her bottom an appreciative squeeze. The silk stretches softly around your knuckles. She's pushing the other leg of your boxers up your thigh until your hard cock peeks out, just the head poking from under the black cotton hem, plump and ready. Her fingers go to it immediately, and the feel of warm silk sliding around it makes you shudder as you kiss her. She pushes your foreskin down and back up over the pink tip with her soft fingers and the ticklish feeling spreads like a skipping stone up your stomach and down through your thighs.

“Mmm,” you hum against her lips, sinking your fingers into the fleshy cheeks of her bottom and pulling her forward in your lap. As she rubs gently at your cockhead, a tiny drop of fluid starts to form in the puffy pink slit. There's something about those gloves, the texture of them rubbing around your most sensitive places. It's so arousing you know it could easily drive you mad.

And then, God, when she tugs the waistband of your boxers away from your body, and she reaches inside to get your cock out with her ridiculously soft and warm hand... the feeling of her fingers circling around your stiff flesh and squeezing, her silky thumb passing over that spot underneath the head, nearly makes you jump out of your skin. As she kisses your lips, she starts rubbing it up and down in her smooth fist, this even pumping motion, over and over. Fingers bumping over the ridge of the head as she moves your skin up and down. Her other hand going up to caress your neck, your tongue in her hot little mouth. Jesus Christ, it's like being in some sort of trance, the same shivery sweet moment playing out again and again with every silky stroke of her hand. That slick bit of fluid gathering at the tip of your cock eventually rolls down, chased out by another one, and the clear drips get smoothed along your shaft. You finally have to pause the kissing just to breathe in a ragged breath.

“That,” you whisper with a self-deprecating chuckle, “can't go on much longer.”

“What can't?” she asks innocently. Her hand doesn't stop, warm silk sliding up and down, damp now. Her thumb goes over the tip on the upstroke and a tickle flares through your belly each time. You haven't had many chances to be intimate with Hannah in the past few weeks, with everyone around so often. It feels like such a long time since she's made you come.

“That. Bloody hell.” Slide of wet silk across your cockhead, and your belly clenches. You press your cheek against hers to steady yourself, eyes falling closed.

“This?”

“Jesus Christ.” You squeeze her bottom again, glad to have something to hold onto.

“Do you want to come?” she murmurs near your ear, that slick warm glove still rubbing. The other one grazes your neck softly, like a kiss. “Would you, if I kept going?”

“Yeah. It's the, it's those gloves, it's like... um...”

“Should I stop?” She isn't stopping. It's not even fast, just steady. Those intense little flares, over and over.

“No. I mean. Yeah. Soon.”

“Tell me when.”

Your hand is sliding down further under her silk panties, palm full of warm round flesh, the side of your finger slipping across the little crinkle of her asshole. You nuzzle against her cheek, inhaling the scent of her skin as she goes on stroking your cock with slick silk. When your fingertips finally reach the damp slit of her sex, you leave them there, just touching the hot skin. It makes her squirm in your lap and grind down against your hands, sighing softly. You missed this when she was still on the treatments, the way she gets so wet so easily, how her body craves your touch.

“I want you,” she breathes, and then you're sucking her bottom lip into your mouth and finally pressing your fingers upward.

That night your lips touch every bit of Hannah's body, everywhere, from her mouth and neck down to her small round breasts and flat stomach, over her scars, and from her sheer stocking-covered toes up to the soft exposed skin of her thighs and the damp scrap of white silk between her legs which you have to pull to the side with your fingers. Your mouth lingers there until neither of you can stand it any longer, and you finally take her just the way you used to, not too gently, one sock still hanging off your foot.

You're both on the edge already, so it doesn't last very long. When she comes, she gasps out your name, and you can feel her clenching around you, so hot and slick, even softer than the silk gloves she's digging into your back. Just knowing you've fucked an orgasm out of her after so long not being able to, that's what pushes you over the edge, how hot she is when you make her come, how desperate and vulnerable and sexy. You're pulsing inside her, again and again, sweating and breathing hard, face pressed to the side of her neck. Her silk fingers sliding down your back. She's trembling under you.

“Ohhhhh God,” you groan quietly when you've finished. You're lightheaded, pleased with yourself and with Hannah and with expensive French hotels that have really nice bedsheets. Sometimes she makes fun of you because of the grin you can't help grinning when you come, so you're hiding it against her neck, prickly orange beard to her smooth skin. “I love you. So much.”

“Teddy,” she says, still gasping. She sounds scared. “Teddy, I can't breathe. I can't breathe.”

“W-what?” You quickly push yourself up off of her. “Hannah? Jesus. Are you—?” She's lying there panting, her eyes panicked. Your afterglow vanishes immediately. “Fuck, are you all right? What can I do? Tell me what to do.”

She's squeezing your shoulder hard, and you can't tell if she's pushing you away or trying to keep you from moving, so you stay where you are, hovering frozen above her. Her mouth is open, her chest rising and falling fast as she tries to catch her breath. She's not choking, just breathless and scared, her small fingers digging sharply into your flesh. It scares you that she looks so scared. She shakes her head at you as if to say there's nothing you can do, so you just wait like that watching her struggle to breathe. Helplessness bubbles up from somewhere inside you like trapped air under oil. You reach forward and gently cup her face with your hand while she gasps.

“Hannah, look at me,” you say. It's your best impression of her own calm-when-something's-wrong voice. “You're okay. You're gonna be fine, all right?” You have to talk over the sound of her harsh panting. “Just try to... try to slow down, okay? You're fine. You're fine.”

She doesn't seem to understand what you're saying at first. But she looks at you, her light brown eyes finding your eyes, and after a moment she nods and you can feel her grip on your shoulder relax fractionally. Then she tilts her head back on the pillow and breathes more deeply, forcing herself to slow down. Those shuddery gasps start to come fewer and farther between, like the end of a heavy crying session. She's still trembling though.

You're stroking her hair, watching, throat tight. She's all right. She's fine. She's going to be... but fucking hell, that was scary. For a moment you thought... but she's fine. She's fine. Without meaning to, you're syncing your breathing with hers. In, out. In, out. She's fine. Everything's fine. The sweat at your temples is drying cold. The air between your naked body and Hannah's feels cold. The only warm spots are where her gloved hand is on your shoulder and where your fingers are carding into the soft strands of her short honey-brown hair. The only sound in the room is Hannah trying to get her breath back under control. It feels louder than it probably is.

Finally, she's breathing normally again – at least, the kind of breathing that has become normal for her, shallow with a pause in between. Her hand comes up to cover yours and she moves your palm over her mouth to press a soft kiss into it. “Sorry,” she whispers.

“No, don't be sorry. Are you all right?”

She gives you a little nod but says, “I didn't mean to scare you.” She's cupping your palm against her face, your hand sandwiched between her soft cheek and a silky glove. Her chest is rising and falling with a kind of steadiness that looks intentional, like she's still consciously regulating her breaths.

“It's okay. You didn't scare me.”

Her smile is tired but wry. “You looked scared. Come here.” She gives your arm a gentle tug, and you lean down close, drop a kiss on her forehead before lying down on the bed beside her, head on the same pillow as she turns toward you, her stockinged leg slipping alongside your leg and resting warmly against your skin. You want to wrap her up and pull her safely to your chest, but you just lie close like this instead, facing each other, giving her room to breathe. “I love you, too,” she says quietly, and closes her eyes. Usually she gets up to go to the toilet after sex, but right now she looks too worn out to move. After a moment, she adds in that same quiet voice, eyes still closed, “And I would still love you. Even if you fucked me to death.”

“That's not funny,” you protest immediately, but she's obviously biting back a smile, and somehow that makes it okay. You can feel yourself starting to relax.

She opens her eyes to give you a sly look. “Wouldn't be the worst way to go.”

“It would be for me!”

Her warm silk-covered hand slides down the front of your body and wraps loosely around your softened penis, which is still tacky with sex. She doesn't do anything, her arm just resting between you as she holds it, but her touch reminds your body of the fantastic orgasm you've just had, and a hint of your afterglow creeps back in. “I should probably,” she says, “get one of those breathing machines. The one with the tube, not the mask.” Her doctors have been recommending for a while that Hannah start oxygen, just to make it easier on herself.

“All right,” you tell her softly.

“I wouldn't have to wear it all the time. Maybe just in bed.” Her voice is quiet, trailing off the way it does when she's tired or sleepy.

“You could wear it all the time if you want. You might like it.”

“I might like to breathe,” she agrees.

“You'd look hot with a tube wrapped round your face.”

“Think so?”

“I've always thought so. Soon as I saw that face, I thought, d'you know what? There ought to be a tube wrapped round it.”

“Breathing tubes and wearing women's lingerie. Why am I just finding out all your fetishes tonight?”

“That's not all of them. Don't even get me started on...” You pause briefly to think. “Fisting?”

“Oh good, I thought I was the only one into that.” She yawns, and as she yawns, her hand tightens fractionally around your cock, then loosens again. “I can fist you in the morning if you want. A good old fashioned fisting before we leave Paris.”

“The traditional Christmas fisting,” you say with a little grin.

“Where I'm from, we just call it Fistmas.” She really sounds like she's about to drift off now. Her eyes are closed, face relaxed. But her mouth is open slightly to help her breathe. It's after midnight. If you didn't know, you'd guess she was already asleep.

“Merry Fistmas, then,” you murmur, shifting just a little bit closer to her warmth.

She makes a soft sound of acknowledgment and squeezes you again.

About two hours later, Hannah wakes up to go to the toilet. Her silk glove has dried to your cock in a couple of places with traces of semen and she moves without realizing this, accidentally ripping the thin material away from your skin fast like an Elastoplast. The sensation jerks you awake with a confused and pained, “What the fuck?!” that comes out more like, “Whuhzuck?” and she laughs so hard she has to lie back down to catch her breath.

After you and Hannah arrive back in England on Christmas Day, she doesn't leave again.

At first she only wears the breathing apparatus at night, this thin clear tube that nestles underneath her nose and goes up over her ears, tucking behind them like a pair of glasses and then meeting together again beneath her chin before connecting to the machine which rests on the floor by the bed. It's not really oxygen, not like one of those canisters of oxygen they use in space, which is what you'd sort of been picturing. It's more like a filter. It scrubs the air in the room and delivers a higher concentration of oxygen through the tube so Hannah can get the amount she needs without her body having to work hard to breathe as much as everyone else. You've seen these things before but never really knew how they worked.

She wears it the next time you fuck her. You had thought... well, you know that at some point you're no longer going to be able to have sex with Hannah due to the progression of her illness, and using the breathing tube makes her seem sicker than before, so you had thought maybe... maybe she wouldn't be interested in sex anymore. But she's the one who started it, late one night, turning to you in the dark and whispering, “Teddy? You awake?” her hand sliding gently across your chest in that familiar way she has always touched you, her lips pressing to your shoulder.

“Mmm?” you murmured back, covering her hand with yours. “What's up? You need something?”

She snuggled closer and began to kiss your neck, her hand sliding down. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I need something.”

You took it slower that time, watching her face between kisses, listening to her breathing and the tiny intermittent hissing sounds the machine made. Aside from the tube on her face, she still looked just the same as always, and even though she wasn't quite as energetic as she used to be, she was still loving and warm and soft and sexy. It wasn't like fucking a sick person. It was like fucking a tired but still turned on version of Hannah. And she did breathe hard after, but it wasn't scary, and she grinned and kissed you and fell asleep smiling.

It was only later that you realized she probably wanted to have sex wearing the breathing tube to prove to you that she was still the same girl, not just some dying body lying next to you in bed.

She does decide she likes it, the machine. She doesn't like the way it leaves marks on her face when she sleeps with her head turned to the side, but she likes not struggling to breathe, just the way you thought she might. So eventually she starts wearing it during the day as well. She doesn't tell anyone her plan to do this – in fact, you think it was probably a spontaneous decision – but the base of the machine has wheels and it's got an extendable handle like a small suitcase, so it's not hard for her to take it wherever she wants to go.

One morning you're sitting at the table having breakfast with Hannah's mother and sister when suddenly there's a thud sound from another room. All three of you look up at each other sharply, but before anyone can comment, there's another loud thud and another, then several in a row, thud thud thud thudthudthudthudthud. You and Hannah's mother both stand up quickly to go investigate while Iris just sits there looking baffled, but before either of you make it away from the table, Hannah comes trudging into the kitchen pulling the small breathing machine behind her. It's the first time she's taken it out of the bedroom. “We need a little,” she says tiredly, and makes a vague gesture with her hand, “ramp or something. Don't wanna break this on the stairs.” She jiggles the handle of the breathing machine.

After an awkward pause, Iris says, “You could start keeping it downstairs.”

“Our bedroom is upstairs,” says Hannah.

“I know. But you could sleep downstairs if you wanted.”

“You could sleep anywhere,” you add. “We could sleep anywhere. I can literally put a bed in any room in the house.”

Hannah gives you a fond look. “Could you literally put a ramp on the stairs?”

You smile and point finger guns at her. “That can happen.”

The ramp on the stairs does happen, but she only uses it for a few days. Going down seems easy enough, but you hate to see her struggling to drag the machine back up the ramp in the evenings – she has to stop halfway up the stairs to rest – and so one day you make an executive decision, and within a couple of hours there is a brand new bed in one of the small downstairs rooms, which was originally supposed to be an office but no one ever used it for anything but storing random stuff. (Drums, mostly. You're honestly not sure why you have so many drums. They must have all come from somewhere.) You move Hannah's green velvet chair into that room, too, and some framed photos of the two of you together. One of the teddy bears from your bedroom. And Owen, of course. When you show her what you've done, she stands in the doorway looking at the room silently for a long moment, then just nods.

That night, the two of you sleep there together for the first time. It's not a good sleep. The hissing of her machine keeps waking you up. When you look over at her in the dark, she's breathing so shallowly that at first you can't see her chest rising and falling at all. You watch her until she rolls onto her side before you close your eyes again.

Hannah doesn't want to argue with her mother anymore. And her mother doesn't want to argue either, you can tell – obviously, no one wants to fight with a dying girl – but the woman just can't help herself sometimes, making these little comments every now and then that aren't necessarily antagonistic but still make it obvious that she's unhappy with Hannah's choice. Like when Hannah mentioned how grateful she was that her mother had decided to stay in England and spend so much time with her, and her mother gave her a pointed look and said, “I would never abandon my family.” As though that's what Hannah was doing, as though she were doing it on purpose.

But now whenever her mother says these things, instead of taking the bait like she might've before, Hannah just gives her a hug and says, “Love you, Mom.” And her mother sighs, wraps her arms around Hannah, and usually asks if there's anything she can do for her or if she wants something specific for dinner. Hannah's mother still has some trouble with British traffic laws, but nothing will keep her from the Co-Op if her daughter decides she wants lamb chops or pasta.

This is the most time you've ever spent with Hannah's mother. She's not fat but has the kind of softness that develops when your solution to most problems is a good meal, and lately you've had more problems than usual. It's like she's gained the weight that her daughter has lost. Your own mother has practically adopted the woman.

“Be nice, Edward,” your mum tells you one day after you've muttered a sarcastic comment to her about Hannah's mother's guilt trips. “Everyone expresses grief in different ways. Just think of how difficult her life has been. First losing her husband... and now...” Her voice trails off as she looks at you, and you immediately put an arm around her shoulders and squeeze so you don't have to watch your mum's face while she thinks about what it's like to lose a child. She sags against you for a moment. “This has all been so hard. Please don't take it out on Rose.”

Rose, Iris, Lily. Your house full of flowers, like a hospital. Or a cemetery.

“Sorry,” you say. “I'll try not to.”

It's Hannah's decrease in appetite that worries her mother so much. At least once every meal, she asks, “Lily, how's the food?” because it prompts Hannah to take another small bite and give her a smile or thumbs up. “There's still plenty left. Here, have some more sweet potatoes.” She heaps food onto her daughter's plate like she's got every expectation of feeding eight people from it, even though she must know most of it will remain untouched.

Hannah protested at first – “It's great, Mom. I'm just not very hungry right now, you know?” – but lately she's been allowing the extra helpings of fried chicken and macaroni and potato salad to pile up on her plate without a word. “She just wants to take care of me as much as she can,” Hannah tells you one afternoon, sitting with you on the sofa during a rare moment alone together while watching a Buffy rerun. (It's the one where Buffy's mum asks if she's tried not being a vampire slayer, and even though you don't mention it, you know the scene reminds you both of Rose.) Hannah's curling into your side like a cat, her little breathing tube pressed to your shoulder under her cheek, and you can smell her apple shampoo. She's the one who brought up the food thing. “I'm not going to take that away from her,” she says. “It makes her happy to feel like she's helping.” Hannah's body is so thin that her jaw and collarbones and the bones of her wrists and ankles look like they're trying to push through to the outside of her skin. In a weird way, she seems not quite fully developed anymore, like a baby bird in the nest who hasn't got feathers yet, just this pink skin stretched over a tiny bird-shaped frame, like if you picked it up it would weigh nothing.

“It would make her happier if you actually ate the stuff she cooks.”

“Ugh, don't you start guilt-tripping me, too. I already told you, I don't need to eat as much as I used to because I'm not as active anymore. I mean, it barely takes any energy to do this.” She puts one hand in the air in front of you, fingers together, and makes a slight up and down motion with it. You assume this means working on her quilt, which is still piled unfinished in her green velvet chair.

“It's not a guilt trip. I just don't want to be the only one getting fat.”

That makes her smile. Her slender hand drops down to pet your slightly-more-pudgy-than-usual stomach through your t-shirt. “Mmm, I like you when you're fat.”

“It's a good look, isn't it? Fat and ginger. With specs. They'll be beating down the door to offer me modeling contracts.”

“Well it's never too late to make something of yourself. You could be the next Gerber baby.”

“Isn't that, like, the one thing it's definitely too late for?”

“Nah.” She trails her hand up your body and runs her fingertips through the longish stubble of your beard. “All you need to do is shave.”

Your fingers follow hers thoughtfully through the little orange hairs. “I could be the first Gerber man.”

Cuddled together like this, you can feel Hannah's startled jump as the phone lying on the sofa near her hip suddenly blares out the first few notes of Toxic by Britney Spears. You have to move your arm for her to reach for the phone, but after she looks at the display, she silences it, gives you an eyeroll, and snuggles back up to you, leaving the phone where she dropped it on the sofa.

“Well?” you prompt after a moment, settling your arm back around her.

“You're ridiculous,” she says, but she's smiling. You can hear it.

You give her a nudge. “Annnnnnnnd...?”

“And I love you, but you really can stop setting random alarms to remind me to tell you. I would tell you anyway.”

“You forgot on Tuesday.”

“I didn't forget. It was internal. I said it in my heart. Also you're a freak for keeping track.”

“A freak that you love, oooohhhh, oooooohhhhh.” If her head weren't resting on your shoulder, she would be able to see one of your smugger expressions right now. You've been setting a new reminder on her phone at a different time every day, with a different song as the alarm. But for some reason Toxic has been stuck in your head lately.

“Dork,” she says, and pokes your belly.

In your best Britney voice, you sing, “Baby, can't you see? I'm calling. A guy like you should wear a warning. It's dangerous... I'm falling.”

“I thought it was my sister,” Hannah mutters.

That stops your singing. “You... what now?”

“Iris. I just thought she was calling me. That song is her ringtone.” Hannah turns her face to look at you, and you can feel her breathing tube slip across your shoulder. You're not wearing your smug look anymore. “What?” she asks.

“What? Nothing.”

She narrows her eyes at you.

“What?” you say again.

Hannah sighs and turns her face back toward the TV. “You know, if you're not going to say it back, you could at least try to grope me or something. Where's the affection?” She reaches for your hand and gives it a tug, pulling your arm tighter around herself.

You give her an obliging squeeze and kiss the top of her head. “I love you, too,” you murmur into her hair, nuzzling against the short, sweet-smelling strands. “Every day.”

“That's more like it,” she says, and giggles softly when your hand also moves in for a cheeky grope.

She says the pain is a burning sensation. You imagine something like acid reflux, but she describes it more like a sunburn on the inside. “It's not really that bad,” she reassures you. “I almost never feel it anyway.” She gently shakes one of her prescription pain killers in your direction. The pills make a rattling sound inside the bottle. You remember taking some of the same thing at a party once, a long time ago.

You're watching her sit on the bed and meticulously count out her medication, dropping each dose into one of those pill organizer things on the nightstand. On a whim, when she's not looking, you put some chocolate in one of the compartments. She turns back to the organizer with another bottle of vitamins and pauses at the sight of bright blue amongst all the white. “Oh, good,” she says. “Can't forget my Wednesday M&M.”

“It's more important than all the rest of that combined.”

She leans toward you and gives your cheek a quick kiss. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

You're not sure which one of the medicines in her pill organizer keeps her from attending your gig. It's a charity show, your first public performance since Hannah got sick, and she tells you she'll be there, that she wouldn't miss it for anything. You have to get to the venue early for promo photos, but she and Iris plan to come along later with Rose and your parents. None of them have shown up by stage time, not where you can see them anyway, but that sort of thing happens sometimes and you're not worried, at least not about your family coming to the show. Of course they're coming. But you do have some nervous energy to work off on stage since you haven't performed in a while, and it feels good – it feels like a relief – to hear the crowd screaming as soon as you walk out, to listen to them sing along to every word of your songs, to feel that rush again. You can't stop smiling.

But when you begin to sing Hannah's song, that's when you realize something's wrong. It's the one that's not about her, the one she loves so much that it's hers now even though it wasn't when you wrote it. Always during this song, you glance over to the side of the stage and smile at her, watch her mouthing the words along with you. This time when you look over into the darkness at the side of the stage, Hannah's lips aren't moving in time with yours. Her eyes are sad, distant. Her hair is... oh, bloody hell, it's Iris.

You try the other side of the stage, then down in the front of the crowd, squinting at all the faces which blur together without your specs. Hannah's not there. When you look over at Iris again, she's biting her bottom lip, there in the shadows looking for all the world like a younger version of her sister, like you've somehow traveled backward a few years and you're seeing the woman you love for the first time, and this song isn't her favorite anymore. You have to take a moment, step back from the mic and nod to the audience, let them fill in the gaps for you. You're smiling at their cameras, sweat rolling down from your temples, but everything feels so wrong so suddenly. It's as if someone is pulling the stage floor out from under your feet, daring you to keep strumming your guitar while you fall.

When the song ends, Trevor meets you onstage with another pre-tuned guitar, and you lean toward him as the two of you switch instruments, ask him if Hannah ever arrived. He tells you no, but her sister's here, and your parents. He says Iris had tried to catch you before your set started, but by the time she got here, you were already walking out onto the stage. You immediately turn toward the mic – and roughly 5,000 people – and say, “Uh, will you guys excuse me one second? I'll be right back. Just, very quickly–” You start to put your guitar on the stage, then change your mind and start to hand it back to Trevor, who is still holding the other one, and the two of you do an awkward little shuffle around each other while the crowd titters before you manage to escape into the wings. Trevor stands confused on the stage for a brief moment with both guitars before swiftly walking off after you.

“Where's Hannah? Is she all right?” you're asking Iris before you even reach her, and she's already nodding back at you, though her expression seems alarmed. Probably because she's never seen you leave the stage in the middle of a show. Or maybe because you didn't stop until you were so close she had to take a small step backward.

“Yeah, she's—she's fine,” Iris reassures you right away. “It's just, she took a little too much medicine before we—”

“What do you mean too much? How much did she, is she—?”

She's shaking her head. “No, it's not like—she didn't overdose or anything like that! It's just, um, she was starting to feel it, you know, and—” She makes a vague sweeping gesture toward her own body, indicating the source of Hannah's pain. Just as she does this, someone in your waiting audience screams out for you to come back, and a peal of more screams mixed with laughter rolls through the venue. Iris seems flustered by this and tries to explain more quickly, slightly raising her voice. The words come out in a rush. “She wanted to make sure she'd be able to last through the whole show, so she took an extra pill but you know how they make her sleepy if she hasn't eaten anything? And she only had like three bites of a sandwich all day and we were getting ready to come but she was so tired she kept dropping her machine and finally Mom just made her go to bed. I was going to stay with her but she wanted me to come and—I called but you didn't answer your phone so I—”

“But she's okay though?” you interrupt. “She's just sleeping?”

“Yeah, she's fine and our mom's with her, so— and she told me to tell you she's really sorry and don't worry and she'll see you at home.”

Don't worry. Sure. As if it's a switch you can just flip. But you find yourself nodding and turning toward the stage, already walking swiftly back out before Mark can reach you to ask what's wrong. And now the audience is cheering for you again, so loud that the sound almost drowns out whatever it is that you're feeling, and you take your guitar from Trevor and fasten the strap, put on a big smile for everyone and say, “Right! Where were we?” And the screams are even louder when you begin the first few notes of the next song.

Most of the rest of the gig is a blur. You reach the end of each song not really remembering how you got there, but your hands and your voice and your feet know all the moves by heart, and you feel yourself pushing – even not paying attention with your head, your body still pushes – and you break some strings and sweat through your shirt, and the energy in the room keeps you moving like a hamster in its wheel, stubborn and determined to go until you get somefuckingwhere. A girl in the front row passes out, and you intentionally don't look at her while security pulls her over the barrier and carries her limp form away.

When you step offstage before the encore, Iris asks if you're okay. She's looking at you with this expression you can't read, so you make the same expression back to her and wonder if she can read yours. “Why, don't I seem okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, watching you reach for a towel to wipe your face. “Yeah, you're... I mean, you're doing a great job out there. The loop stuff. It's cool to see it up close.”

“Thanks.” You bury your face in the towel. The crowd is still screaming for you. It's funny to hear that sound after so long, how you can always tell the difference when it's for you instead of someone else. When you look back up, she's got her eyes on the floor, arms wrapped around herself, looking a little bit lost back here among the ropes and equipment boxes and crew. “Hey,” you say, and reach out to give her a friendly bump on the arm with your fist, but for some reason instead you end up pulling her in for a hug. “Thank you for coming.”

“Yeah,” she says, returning the hug. As she pats your sweaty back, you notice the difference in the way Iris hugs from the way Hannah does. Hannah always turns her face toward your neck, but Iris does that thing where she turns her face away, cheek to your shoulder. You let your hand fall down her arm as you pull away to head back onto the stage.

During the last song of your encore, when you take out your phone to snap a photo of the screaming crowd, you can see the three missed calls from Iris.

Back in your dressing room after the show, before you even let anyone else in, you call Hannah.

“I'm so sorry, Teddy,” she says softly. “You know I wanted to be there.”

Your ears are still ringing so it's hard to hear her. “No, it's all right. As long as you're okay,” you say a bit too loudly. There's some kind of stain on the floor, and you kick at it idly with your shoe. “You've seen me play a million times.”

“Oh, I wasn't going for you. I heard Ginger Spice was going to be there.” Geri Halliwell is the only former Spice Girl that Hannah hasn't met yet, so it's been a running joke between the two of you that she shows up at any event Hannah misses. But it's been months since either of you brought it up, and the unexpectedness makes you snort.

“Thought I was your ginger spice,” you say.

“How many times do I have to tell you it doesn't count unless you wear the Union Jack dress?” You can hear her yawning almost before she finishes the sentence.

“I'm leaving here in... maybe, an hour? I'll wear it for you when I get home if you want.”

“Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want,” she replies sleepily. “Don't... don't come home yet.”

Someone is knocking on the door to your dressing room. “Eh? Don't come home?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Go out.”

“Out? Where?”

“Anywhere. Go out. Have fun. Get drunk. It's just, you haven't really let loose in so long, and since I'm not there to slow you down...”

Knocking again. “You want me to get drunk?”

“I want you sloppy and incoherent.”

“You don't slow me down.”

“Of course I do.” Hannah isn't supposed to drink because of her meds, so you haven't let yourself have more than a glass or two of wine for a long while.

“You really want me sloppy? Like, more sloppy than usual.”

“I mean it. Don't come home unless you're being carried.”

“Ed!” someone calls from outside the door. It sounds like Mark, but you know there are probably several people out there waiting for you.

“Sloppy and carried,” you repeat into the phone. “Got it. See you in the morning?”

“In the morning,” she says. “Love you.”

“Love you.” You slip the phone into your pocket and go throw open the door, startling everyone standing in the hallway. Mark is there, and Stu, and Iris, your parents, three friends, the organizers of the charity concert, and – randomly – Geri Halliwell. She's holding a bottle of wine. “You've got to be shitting me,” you blurt out.

Stuart frowns at you. “Haven't you showered yet? You look like a drowned ginger rat.”

“Sorry.” Your hand reaches reflexively up to your sweaty hair. “Haven't had time. Hello.” The hello is for Geri Halliwell. Geri fucking Halliwell! The one time Hannah hasn't come!

“Hi,” she says. “Don't worry. Drowned ginger is the new platinum blonde.”

After a very quick shower, your mission to get absolutely fucking spangled begins with the wine Geri brought but quickly progresses to three rounds of shots in your dressing room at the venue, then pints at the pub down the street, interspersed with more shots of something that is a different shade of purple every time someone hands you one. You and Geri belt out 2 Become 1 through the pub's poorly set up karaoke system, but she leaves before you and your friends and two random footballers start on the Jäger bombs, of which you drink six even though the second one makes you throw up in your mouth a little bit. A woman who was on Big Brother three seasons ago keeps filming you for her snapchat and trying to drag you away from your friends to dance, so you throw some pretty fucking epic shapes in the crowd, and everyone seems to be having a great time for a few hours. More and more people show up and join in the dance party. It's fun, and it makes you realize how long it's actually been since you did something like this.

But eventually, as you're looking around to see where the next drink is coming from, you start to notice that all the people you actually know seem to have gone home. At this point, rather than really dancing, you're just barely shuffling your feet in the middle of a group of complete strangers who are laughing and pointing their phones at you, and somehow you've managed to spill something cold and sticky down the front of your shirt. It's a very odd, familiar-yet-unfamiliar feeling to realize you've managed to get yourself abandoned drunk at a bar in the wee hours of the morning with a D-list celebrity and her friends who are all using any excuse to touch you. This hasn't happened in... it feels like years. It's been years. “I have to go,” you mutter in no specific direction, pushing someone's hands off your shoulders. It's very loud in here. “I need to go... home.”

The Big Brother woman links her arm through yours and is tagging along as you stumble dizzily away from the crowd. She's saying something but you're not listening, and you almost trip and fall, catching yourself hard on the edge of a wooden booth. What time is it even? “I have to go home,” you say again, and push ineffectually at her hand, which has a tight grip on your arm. Her fingernails are long and sharp. “I need to go. My... my girlfriend's sick.” You reach for your phone, but it's not in your pocket anymore. There's a tight knot in your stomach, something you haven't felt in a very long time. It's panic. Jesus Christ, where's the fucking door? You need to get outside.

Then, like a lifeline, you spot her. A sense of relief washes through you, and you find yourself snatching your arm from the woman you don't know and barreling toward the one you recognize, literally running from one end of the bar to the other, pushing by some dude and knocking over a wooden stool along the way. Iris spots you just before you throw your arms around her, and you can feel her sudden intake of breath as you bury your face in her neck, hugging her fiercely. She gives you a comforting stroke down your back, and your eyes squeeze closed. You sway in the hug, making her sway too. “Thank you for coming back,” you mumble against her sweet-smelling skin. For some reason you feel like you're going to cry, but no tears actually come, and you think you probably sound normal. Well, normal for being fucking smashed.

“I never left,” she says. “I was waiting for you. I have your phone.” You don't reply to this, just pull her closer, nuzzling your face against her neck. It seems like such a safe place to be right now, the only familiar place you've been all night. She smells like Hannah. They use the same shampoo. Your lips are against her skin, her hands on your back. “Come on,” she says softly, giving you a gentle, guiding push toward the door. “Let's get you home.”

You don't want to let go of her. There's this feeling you have, which feels so real right now, that if you let go, even just long enough to walk out through the bar door, she will disappear again. This is how it is, you think drunkenly. People leave you. The ones who feel like family. They leave you all alone and you have to start over from the very beginning with someone you don't know, and you don't want that, not ever again. You don't want all your history to be forgotten, to have to build something from the bottom up with someone you haven't even met yet. It's not fair. It's too much work. There may be new people in the world that you could eventually love, but there are a few that you already have love for, and those are the ones you can't let yourself let go of, the ones that it makes sense to build something with. Those are the people you can't lose, not if there's any way you can help it. They are the ones you need to keep close. As close as you can. But how? How can you get closer than this?

That is the thought running through your drunk and scared and lonely mind when you lift your face from her neck and kiss your girlfriend's little sister on the mouth.

You don't know what Iris is thinking about when she kisses you back.

What you want to believe is that all your problems, or at least some of them, at least one, will be solved with this kiss. It is good for a drunk kiss, long and passionate and both new and familiar at once. Her lips are soft and warm and her breath smells sweet like cider. Her body fits so perfectly within the circle of your arms, just exactly the way Hannah used to, her long hair tickling against your skin. It feels like this kiss has been coming for a long time, so long that for a moment you can't remember if it has ever happened before or not. It feels like you have kissed Iris many times already, but then you remember you have only thought about it, and dreamed about it once or twice.

What you want to believe is that somehow this will help.

But when it is over, nothing about your life has changed. You are still drunk and scared and lonely at a pub, and there is still a knot in your stomach, and the woman you love is still dying at home and you have no idea what the fuck you're doing right now except making it all worse.

“Sorry,” you mumble to Iris without opening your eyes. “Sorry, sorry.” Your lips aren't touching her anymore but you can still feel her there, the memory of the kiss lingering on your mouth. You don't know what else to say. You're still holding her.

Then she pushes you away, very gently, steadying you as you take a stumbling step backward. She says in a perfectly calm, rational voice, “We need to go, Ed.”

Fuck. Your head falls forward in a nod.

As soon as you turn away from her, the tight knot in your stomach unfurls itself, and you vomit a giant purple puddle onto the floor of the pub.

Concluded soon.

#ed sheeran #fanfiction #ed sheeran fanfiction #ed sheeran fanfic #teddy sheeran

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