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magicbystarlight · 3 months

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Venomous - Part Eleven

Masterlist, Part One

Summary: A wife. A mother. A witch with someone else's name. That’s the life you didn’t want. So Tom offered you more.

Word Count: 3K

Warnings: 18+, a bit of an angsty one, arranged marriage, age gap relationship, ptsd, war. Minors DNI.

A/N: Our poor reader can't catch a break.

The last days at the Manor passed mechanically. Wedding appointments set for Easter Break—dress, cake, invitations, dinner. A book left unread despite the pages turned. Smiles that didn’t reach your eyes. Laughs that were hollow. Unanswered letters. No word from your brother. Nothing in the papers about the Muggle war.

Abraxas was at your side, arm slung too casually around your shoulder as you walked through Platform 9 ¾. Your trunk somewhere behind being dragged along by the Malfoys’ oldest house-elf Honey. Or was it Bunny? An unsubtle reminder to the growing crowd that you were a Malfoy, even if not in name yet.

At least your mother hadn’t come.

His goodbye was drawn out. You smiled and dutifully let him kiss you again and again until he couldn't keep you any longer. You hoped your own face didn't betray your joy as you stepped onto the train. The compartments were full as you dragged your trunk. It took longer to find Larissa and Abigail than usual thanks to the added weight.

Their concern felt wasted on you when you stepped into the compartment. Too much of your friendship had been spent on your petty problems when their families lived in constant danger that you knew nothing about.

You insisted you were fine, that it had only been a bit of stress, and everything was okay now. You brushed off concerns about Abraxas’ behavior, rewriting his jealousy as protection. You were fine, everything was fine.

The conversation veered to them and you listened intently. A funny story about Larissa’s mother getting on the wrong train in the underground. Talk of Abigail’s father’s wonderful cooking. Love letters they found under her little sister’s pillow. It made your heart ache.

“We should set up a dinner or something for the Easter holiday,” you said as the laughter was starting to subside. “So I can meet your families.”

Your friends shared a look that didn’t look pleased with the idea. “Won’t you be too busy? With all the planning? We don’t want to add to your stress.”

“Too busy for you? Never.”

“It’s just,” Larissa said slowly, trying to find the words to say, “well, we know how your family feels about half-bloods. You might not mind, but they’re not gonna be happy with it.”

“They know we’re friends, it’s not that big of a deal anymore. Maybe they’ll be upset if they find out one of Abby’s parents is Muggle, but we can go somewhere Muggle and they’ll never even know. Make a day of it, a real day, show me more of the Muggle world. I’ve never even seen London past the windows in the Leaky Cauldron.”

Larissa went to say something else, another argument against it from the frown in her face, but Abigail cut her off, face lacking its normal color. “We’ll see. I’ll need to owl my parents and ask if they can make the time for it. Easter’s pretty busy for them.”

Your face fell before you could catch it and school it into something false.

“We can do Cambridge instead!” Larissa offered quickly, too eager compared to her hesitation a moment before. “I’m sure Mum would love to have you both over. And it gets so pretty in the spring there—”

She continued, naming reason after reason Cambridge was the place to be for Easter. You worked your smile back, though it was as hollow as it’d had been at the Manor. A tentative date set for the Tuesday after the holiday—you had no appointments set and Abigail would be too busy helping out around home before then. Color still hadn’t returned to her face.

When enough time had passed, you excused yourself to use the restroom. They didn’t offer to join you.

Scalding water splashed from the tap, causing your hands to retract with a hiss. You waited for the temperature to correct itself and tried not to scratch at the pain.

Abigail didn’t want you meeting her family. Larissa could spend a week with them and you couldn’t even have dinner. You always knew they were a little closer. How could they not be when you barely put any effort into the friendship? They may have been your best friends, but today you realized you weren’t theirs.

That was okay, you told yourself. You would do better.

You looked up into the mirror as you scrubbed your hands. A crack cutting diagonally down it you hadn’t noticed before. How poorly were these restrooms maintained?

The door swung open.

“—almost punched Ralph McLaggen in the middle of Diagon Alley! Over her? Can you—“

The Slytherin girl from Potions cut off abruptly as her gaze met yours in the mirror. The one who loved to tell people about your torrid affair with Slughorn. You’d have to remember her name eventually.

Her grin was sickly sweet. “You looked great at the Minister’s ball.”

“Thanks, but,” you said, matching the acidic tone. “I don’t remember seeing you there?” Then you laughed, shaking your hands dry and turning to see her now scowling face. “Oh right, you must have seen me in the paper! I’d almost forgotten.”

You walked to the door, eyebrow raised expanctly at her friend who still stood in its way. She squeaked out an apology before moving aside. “Well lovely to see you, Judith. Hope your holiday went well.” Maybe you didn’t have to learn her name.

—

Dumbledore wasn’t at the welcoming feast. It wasn’t unusual. Since First Year he’d been in and out of class aiding in the fight against Grindelwald. But you felt the absence more now. You’d wanted to talk to him about Warrick.

There were eyes on you. More than usual it seemed. You kept your back to the Slytherin’s table.

Abigail had recovered, at least.

Her smiles were warm again as conversation swirled at the table around the next Quidditch match. Ravenclaw had only had one match the previous semester and it left them at an advantage, same as Slytherin and it was expected the match would be tense. You listened attentively as some of the team’s players explained how many points they’d need to rack up to gain the lead. It surprised you how attentively they listened when Larissa started dissecting Slyhterin’s weaknesses and strengths. Her insight was, well, insightful.

“We’ve got the pitch on Thursday, you’ll be there?” Erin Lockhart, this year’s captain, asked her as you all made your way back to the tower.

Larissa’s face was bright. “Haven’t missed one yet, have I?”

It was past midnight when the three of you finally clambered up the stairs to your dormitory. Normal. A truly normal night. Not a mention of engagements or wars or stalkers. Filled instead with Quidditch and school worries and silly little jokes. So many new things noticed about people you’d known for years. Funny how that can happen when you’re not existing solely in your own head.

Larissa was giggling about how good Henry Higginbottom’s hair looked when she stopped abruptly after opening the door. You thought maybe the ladies at Twilfitt and Tattings had outdone themselves and delivered early, but a melodic chirping drowned it out.

On your bed, in a rather large and intricate gilded cage, was Ravenclaw’s emblem. A Golden Eagle.

Their eyes were such a familiar shade of brown.

“When did you get an eagle?”

“I didn’t.” You felt cold. “I’ll take my chances with whatever gilded cage awaits me rather than whatever crate you’re offering.” Could Tom never stop with his fucking metaphors?

Abigail was the one to investigate. She plucked an envelope from the bed, turning it over. Your name was on the front in familiar handwriting and an even more familiar teal seal.

Of course Azar was still doing Tom’s bidding.

Anger seized as you took the letter she handed over. Blood splatters marred the parchment.

Found her in Astrid’s owlery.

A likely story.

Apparently she’d been there a while and now she seems a bit confused about what she is. Thought getting her out of there was for the best,

You scoffed. Of course he would decide what he thinks best.

but the dungeons aren’t a good place for her. She needs to spread her wings.

One thing he wasn’t wrong about.

I know Selene said no to getting you an owl, but she never said no to an eagle.

He remembered that? It’d been years since you’d asked.

Dippet was happy enough to approve her as a pet for you. Unsurprisingly, you’re one of his favorites.

It was a surprise to you.

She prefers hunting for herself, so she won’t be a bother. She’ll even take the post for you. You’ll have to give her a name though. Our aunt only ever called her örnen.

That sounded like Aunt Astrid.

Sinc Love,

Uggy Az

P.S. There’s no excuse. I’m sorry.

P.P.S. She was perfectly tame until I put her in the cage. You’ll get along well, I think.

The anger had dissipated by the end. Not gone entirely, but less. You still weren’t convinced it wasn’t some new trap laid, but for now you’d let it be what it seemed. A sincere apology. Those were so rare.

“Uggy Az?” Larissa questioned, reading the letter over your shoulder.

“It’s what I called Azar when I was really little. It was supposed to be Uncle Az.” You reached for the latch, pulling the door open. “Mum hated it cause it sounded like I was calling him an ugly ass.” Cautiously the bird stepped out, stretching her wings and legs. She was beautiful.

You knelt at the end of the bed and she met you there. This close you could see the gold speckled throughout her eyes. When you reached your hand forward, she bent her head and let out a chirp at the contact.

“What should we name her?” you asked, stroking her.

“Princess?” Larissa offered before her face immediately went sour and shook her head. “She needs something more classical. Aethon?”

That made you shudder. Would that make you Prometheus?

Abigail’s fingers joined yours to stroke the brown feathers. “How about Drein?”

The eagle let out another chirp.

“You like that?” you asked. “Drein?”

She chirped again and seemed to nuzzle against your hand.

“Well,” Larissa laughed, joining you and Abigail in your affections to the bird, “Drein it is.”

—

Sweat covered you as you shot up from bed. A nightmare. You couldn’t remember much beyond explosions, screams, and a hand around your throat.

The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter past five. Too early to start the day and too late to try to sleep. Not that you’d be able to sleep anyways.

Drein stirred from her perch atop your wardrobe when you moved. It was odd how comforting it was when her eyes followed you to your desk. Being watched by a predator was normally so unsettling, but for once you didn’t feel like prey.

You took a piece of parchment and your quill and began to write. It wasn’t right. You scratched it out and started again. Still wrong. Dashed through the new sentences and tried again. No.

Curiosity got the best of Drein, her wings fluttering softly as she landed on the edge of the desk. Her head cocked as you ripped off the bottom, bare part of the parchment.

Why? You wrote. Your quill hovered for a moment more. I miss you. A few tears landed on the parchment before you wiped away the rest. Drein crept forward, pushing her head against your hand.

“Can you do me a favor?” you ask her. She blinks. “Take this to my brother.”

—

Drein had returned by that night. There was no reply. A week passed. Days that weren’t quite bad, but exhausting.

Transfiguration was the easiest. An essay to write from the substitute instead of hands-on practice. Astronomy. History of Magic. Ancient Ruins. Herbology. Arithmancy. Potions. Care of Magical Creatures. None of them required a wand often.

But Charms and DADA?

Horrible.

Abigail thought you were sick. First you fainted and now you were struggling in class? You’d gone and gotten checked just to ease her concern. You weren’t sure how no one noticed the crack in your wand, but you powered through. It did seem to work a little better as the days passed. Less resistant. A few more days, maybe a week or two, and it would be fine. Like nothing happened.

Whispers followed as they always did. Some with pity, but more with glee. You’d walked into a room more than once to be greeted with hurriedly hushed voices. Thankfully your housemates were more akin to pity.

Saturday afternoon you sat alone in the common room, where you’d been since after breakfast. It was a dreary day outside, but you couldn’t pull your attention away from the window. There wasn’t anything else to do. Abigail had left for some Divination project she had to work on with a Gryffindor and Larissa was serving a detention she’d gotten the last day of last semester. Abraxas had planned to visit, but something had come up and he postponed for Sunday. Homework was done and you didn’t feel like tracking anyone down to occupy time.

Why hadn’t Warrick written you back?

A very nasally, high pitched noise came from beside you, breaking your concentration. Myrtle Warren stood there, nose high in the air. She held out a folded piece of parchment. “Avery asked me to give this to you?”

Your eyebrow shot up. Myrtle was muggleborn. Azar didn’t like interacting with that sort, let alone entrusting them with anything.

She cleared her throat again impatiently and wriggled the note.

With a muttered thanks, you took it. She still stood there. It simply read: Library?

“He told me to wait for a yes or no. Wants me to walk with you there for some reason if you say yes. Very odd, I think, but he’s paid me ten galleons just to bring this, and it’ll be another twenty once I get back to him with an answer.”

Ten galleons just to get you a note. Thirty in all to get an answer. And an escort.

“Was there anyone with him?”

She shook her head. “No, he was all alone. Just like you. And me.” She shrugged. “Probably why he asked me.”

Azar must be hoping to apologize in person. There hadn’t been any chance to catch you alone throughout the week. You’d ensured that. While Myrtle wasn’t your first option of a companion, she was better than nothing. And talking it out with Azar was better than staring out a window. You needed to thank him for Drein, too.

Myrtle was surprisingly patient. You’d had to put your things away up in your dorm and she waited without a single complaint. It was unlike her. She hadn’t gained the nickname Moaning Myrtle for nothing.

It was probably the promise of galleons that kept her so quiet as you walked down the staircases.

“Do you mind if we stop by the restroom?” she asked as you landed on the second floor.

Had she not been so patient before, you’d have said no. But she had been. So you relented, eyeing the staircase wistfully and hoping she’d be quick. You wanted to see Azar. Know if it had been real.

Her favors weren’t over. “Could you check if there’s anyone in here? I don’t like an audience.”

You fought the urge to roll your eyes and did as requested. It was empty, thankfully. “All clear,” you called from the end of the stalls.

“Well that is very,” Myrtle’s voice changed, the nasally high whine turning deep, honeyed, and unmistakable, “convenient.”

You twisted, wand in hand, to witness as Myrtle’s face bubbled. Her robes stretched to accommodate the added height and width, its blue yellowing to green, Ravenclaw’s emblem contorted into Slytherin’s. You’d meant to Stupify him, but nothing came. A red jet of light shot from his. With horror, your grasp on your wand loosened involuntarily and it shot from your hand. He caught it effortlessly.

“I’m not here to fight,” Tom said evenly. He eyed your wand, surveying the damage. “Not that it seems you’d be able to put up much of one.”

“Fuck you,” you hissed, despite the pounding in your ears.

He smiled. “I have missed your quick wit.” When you said nothing, he sighed. “I wanted to apologize.”

You repeated, “Fuck you.”

“That’s fair.” Your wand clattered on the floor as he threw it back. “I deserve worse.”

You don’t move. You consider it for half a second, hand tensing to reach for your wand, but you don’t. It’s useless.

“I didn’t understand how horrific what I did was. But I do now. And I’m sorry.”

Lies. Lies lies lies lies lies.

“I don’t want your apologies. They don’t mean anything. You regret nothing. You understand nothing!” Your voice rose, angry panic outpacing your ability to quell it.

“Forgiveness will take time, I know. I’ll be patient.”

Tears seared your cheeks. “Forgiveness?” you questioned. “Forgiveness for what, Tom? For—for trying to kill me? For stalking me? For ruining my life?” Yanking the Malfoy heirloom from your finger, you held it up. “I only have this,” you threw it, aiming for his frozen face that didn’t even flinch and missing by a yard, “because of you. If you’d have left me alone, none of it would have happened. You took everything. And for what? What has it gotten you in the end?” Your arms were shaking as you gestured to the lavatory he’d trapped you in. “Downing polyjuice to corner me here and listen to me tell you that I hate you.”

Quaking shoulders. Terrified and angry and devastated. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“I don’t know.”

It came out so soft, yet the words thundered in your head. He’d been so confident months ago. Spewing nonsense about power and freedom and breaking traditions. Now he stood there and said he doesn’t know why he continues to torment you?

“You don’t know?”

Cracking sounds reverberated against the walls.

“You don’t fucking know?”

Glass shards fell to the floor as the mirrors over the sinks shattered.

You crumbled.

Next Part

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HP Tag List: @bamboozledflamplant @squishytomatoes @benonlinear @byelannie @itsccc

Venomous Tag List: @pearlsofme @fck-this @ambria @sheeple @strangunddurm @weirdowithnobeardo @emberenchanted

#tom riddle fanfiction #tom riddle x reader #abaraxas malfoy x reader #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle x fem!reader #tom riddle x ravenclaw!reader #ravenclaw reader #venomous

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uwmspeccoll · 1 year

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Decorative Sunday: Paste Paper Edition

In 1942, Harvard University Press printed 250 copies of Decorated Book Papers: Being an Account of the Designs and Fashions by the bookbinder, author, and creator and collector of decorative papers, Rosamond Bowditch Loring. Published by the Harvard College Library Department of Printing and Graphic Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the 234 sale copies of the first edition sold out within months, despite the “then considerable price of ten dollars” and the economic stressors of the war. In addition to eight plates reproducing examples of 18th century decorative papers, the first edition includes twenty-five samples tipped in, many of which are from the author’s own extensive collection.

While Loring collected a variety of a decorative papers, the examples shown here are from the chapter on paste papers, Loring’s area of creative specialization. The sample papers included in this chapter are all Loring’s own work, or that of her student, Veronica Ruzicka, who bound the first edition (it is worthy to note that Ruzicka is the daughter of illustrator, wood engraver, and type designer Rudolph Ruzicka, whose work we have highlighted several times). Ruzicka also contributed an essay when a second edition of the book was finally published by Harvard University Press in 1952, along with Dard Hunter and Walter Muir Whitehall.

Rosamond Loring (May 2, 1889 – September 17, 1950) studied book binding under Mary Crease Sears at the Sears School of Bookbinding in Boston. Sears, about a decade older than Loring, had had to battle to learn the trade; women were barred from the Bookbinders Union but most commercial binderies were happy to hire women for particular tasks, such as sewing sheets, but maintained a strict separation of roles, preventing employees from learning the whole binding process from start to finish. Eventually, Ms. Sears secured an apprenticeship in France to complete her studies and opened her binding school in Boston shortly after, training several generations of women binders. While studying under Sears, Loring became frustrated with the lack of options for quality endpapers and became determined to make her own, which she sold to other binders at Ms. Sears’s studio. Her first major commercial commission was for the Houghton Mifflin publication of The Antigone of Sophocles, translated by John J. Chapman (Boston, 1930).

Our copy of Decorated Book Papers is a gift of Dick Schoen.

-Olivia Hickner, Special Collections Graduate Intern

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avatar-anna · 2 years

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The Professor

summary: you and harry are perfect strangers

words: 3.5k

tw: none

PART III, PART V, PART IV, PART II, PART I Series Masterlist

June 2021

This summer, were trying something new.

Since school was out, you decided you needed to get out more. You’d seen less of Edward because he was getting busier and busier with his super secret project. He still texted and called, and since you were busy with school, helping the police department from time to time, filming your educational videos, and writing papers along with grading them, you didn’t mind not seeing him as much. You liked that you could go a few weeks without seeing each other and still remain close friends…or whatever you were. That was something both of you were okay with not discussing for the time being.

In the past, you spent a lot of your summers indoors or around Cambridge, but this summer, you decided to branch out and explore. You read books and case files in cafes, you biked around town more, you even wanted to plan a road trip with Edward. Before, your summers, while enjoyable, were pretty monotonous. Maybe it was because the world was finally opening back up again, but you just had this itch to get out of your townhouse more. And take the Emperor with you, of course.

It was a sunny afternoon in Cambridge, and you were sitting on a patio table of a cafe you started frequenting. They had all sorts of tea flavors and fun summery drinks you wanted to try. Something in you was pushing you to try new things, and instead of shying away from it, you embraced it. The sun was shining brightly, your paper was coming along splendidly, and the Emperor was basking in the sunlight inside the pram you bought for him. This summer was off to a beautiful start.

“Do my eyes deceive me, or is Dr. Y/l/n outside and actually enjoying the sun?”

You immediately perked up at the sound of Edward’s voice, your lips curving up into a smile involuntarily. “What are you doing here?”

“To see you, of course,” he said from behind his mask.

Edward was still standing, so you could see all of him. He, like you, was dressed for summer in corduroy shorts and an opened, button-down shirt made of a colorful patchwork of different fabrics.

“Sit down!” you said, gesturing for the open seat across from you beside the Emperor.

He did, petting your cat as he did so, who leaned into Edward’s touch. Seems you weren’t the only one who missed your friend.

“You’re in a particularly sunny mood today,” he said.

“I’m embracing life, Edward,” you said, slipping your straw beneath your face mask to take a sip of your coffee—some kind of rose latte that you didn’t love but felt like you needed to finish to be polite. “And I consulted on a case in New York, which was very fun. Well, not fun. Satisfying. You know, because I got to be a part of saving a life and stop someone from doing horrible things.”

Smiling, he said, “That’s great, Y/n. I’m really happy for you.”

He said it, but he didn’t sound happy. Admittedly, it was somber stuff, but you hadn’t gone into the explicit details, ones that you would never forget, you literally weren’t able to.

“Are you okay? You seem a little off.”

“Me? Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, but again, he wasn’t very convincing. “Listen, there’s something I wanted to—”

“So, I had this idea, but I wanted to run it by—Oh, sorry. Go ahead.”

“No, no. You first.”

Now that his eyes were on you, even if they were covered by dark sunglasses, you flushed with nerves. You’d never done something like this, and you thought you had more time to prepare and find the right words, but this summer was all about taking chances for you, so you swallowed your fear and just blurted it out.

“I think we should go on a date.”

Edward’s eyebrows rose, but you couldn’t tell what it meant. “A date?”

“Yeah, you know, since things have been opening up more, and we’ve never actually seen the bottom of each other’s faces, I just thought now would be as good a time as any, right?”

When he didn’t answer right away, you started to panic. Did you read the last three months wrong? Edward told you he liked you, you held hands when you sat and talked in your townhouse, he was showing interest, right? You couldn’t be that oblivious, and you didn’t think you read the signs wrong. You checked. Your evidence backed up your inferences. This should’ve been seamless.

You were almost never wrong, but now you were worried you got everything completely wrong. “Unless…you don’t want to?”

Edward was quick to reassure you. “I do, you have no idea how much I do. I’m just…shocked by how forward you’re being.”

Leaning forward, you stage whispered, “It’s not too much, is it?”

Edward leaned forward too, and this time you could tell he was grinning. “No, not at all. I think it suits you.”

He couldn’t see it, but you were smiling beneath your mask. “Great. So? What do you say?”

You’d never been this forward before, but Edward made you feel confident. In your mind, you had nothing to lose.

“I’d love to,” he said, holding your hand across the table. “Now, what do you say to heading back to your place? I missed looking at constellations with you.”

Butterflies Edward had called them. They were going crazy in your stomach, but they didn’t freak you out. They just made you excited. You thought this new you suited you too.

----------------------------------------------------------

It was late, way past midnight, and he was still in your house. You weren’t quite sure where the time went, or how you managed to talk for that long, but there both of you were, sitting on your couch, neither of you making any kinds of moves to leave.

“If you weren’t a professor, what would you be doing?”

It took you a moment to think about that, to give him an answer that wouldn’t end in Edward lecturing you about taking care of yourself and putting yourself first.

“I don’t know, I think I was made for teaching and helping people. It’s what I’m good at.”

“But do you teach because you love it or because you’re good at it. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, Y/n.”

Edward worried about you a lot. Something you thought you would find irritating, but actually found endearing.

“I know, but for me it is,” you said, squeezing the hand that was holding yours. You realized he liked that. Small affectionate touches. You weren’t the affectionate type but you liked being that way for him. “I love helping people. For the first half of my life, I was stuck doing things for other people, and I hated it. I was good at math, I am good at math, but being forced to do it all day made me never want to look at or solve complicated theories ever again.

“This is the life I chose for myself. Sometimes I think that with this…gift, asset, whatever you want to call it, that I should be doing more, so I help the police department and I share my knowledge with others and hope that’s enough.”

You let out a breath, surprised you said so much. You knew it wasn’t physically possible, but you felt like a weight had been lifted off your shoulders, like in that moment, you weren’t just talking to Edward, but to everyone who ever criticized your decision to leave solving unsolvable math and science problems behind to take up teaching.

“That felt good, didn’t it?” Edward said, like your answer was exactly what he wanted you to say.

You narrowed your eyes at him. “You’re very smart, Edward. Not as smart as me of course, but—”

“But who is?” he finished for you.

You sat with him in comfortable silence, neither of you knowing what to say next, but not ready to say goodbye, either. This was the latest Edward had ever stayed over, and that fluttering was stirring in you. You’d never had anyone spend the night before, but you thought he would make a good first.

“I should probably go,” he said suddenly, as if he just realized it was nearing three in the morning.

Reminding yourself that this was the summer of embracing change and trying new things, you took a deep breath and said, “You don’t have to.”

“No?”

“It’s late, and you must be tired. You can stay. If—If you want to, that is.”

You wondered if his heart was beating as fast as yours, or if his palms were starting to sweat. Maybe you’d read these last three months entirely wrong, maybe asking him to stay was a terrible idea, one you clearly didn’t think through. Your invitation for him to stay the night was exactly that: a place for him to sleep. But did Edward know that? What if he took your invitation as more? And neither of you obviously slept with a face covering, there was a chance you would see his face tonight.

You’d insisted on the face masks because you didn’t want to get yourself or Edward sick, but part of you also liked that you had to wear them. It was social distance as well as emotional distance, like keeping what you completely looked like a secret was the one thing that prevented you from fully opening up to him. Were you really ready for that?

“Y/n?”

So in your thoughts about Edward possibly staying the night, you forgot he hadn’t said yes or no yet. Blushing, you looked back over to him. “Yes?”

“I can see the gears turning in that beautiful brain of yours. You don’t have to be so stressed. If you don’t want me to stay, I won’t. It’s not a big deal.”

“I do!” you blurted, your face turning red at how quickly you corrected him. “I, um, I think it will be fun. But…I just don’t want you to think that it means that we’re having sex.”

The blunt delivery of your statement had him laughing, so much so that it calmed your nerves a bit. “I didn’t think that at all,” he said. Inching closer to you, he reached for your hand again, rubbing his thumb across the back. “So, got an extra toothbrush?”

----------------------------------------------------------

You were at home, laying on your floor and watching constellations, only it wasn’t with Edward. Your phone was clutched in your hands, your leg crossed over the other revealing colorful patterned socks peeking out beneath your ankle-length jeans. You needed to make a phone call, but you didn’t know what you were going to say.

How were you going to tell him?

Thankfully, you got a phone call before you had to make that decision. It was the former student you employed to help edit your videos. “Hello?”

“When were you going to tell me you knew Harry Styles?”

The name sounded familiar, and you recalled one of your students mentioning it in one of their questions at the end of class once, but you didn’t know him. “I…I don’t?”

“Y/n, are you pulling my leg right now? It’s all over the Internet,” they said.

“What is?” you asked, more confused than ever.

“The pictures! You’re at a cafe and casually sitting with one of the most popular men in music. How the hell did you not know?”

Your mind was going into overdrive with all the new information you’d just received. “I—I need to—to go,” you said, hanging up without another word.

The only time you really used the Internet was to look up scholarly journals or to search for a new recipe, but now you typed in the words, “Harry Styles,” when the search finished loading, your eyes widened. “Holy shit.”

You rarely cursed, but this instance was worthy of using expletives. Edward…Harry…whoever he said he was…was not who he claimed to be. He was famous, like really, really famous. He’d just won a Grammy, he had two albums, he was on the cover of Vogue, and he had a larger than life following. The man online was not the man you knew in person. He was charismatic and outgoing, he sang songs about sex, he was a more vibrant version of the person you’d come to know. Edward was soft spoken, but Harry was…some kind of rockstar.

You consumed everything you possibly could, your eyes scanning his Wikipedia page—he had a Wikipedia page!—in a minute. Singing contest shows, albums, awards, band breakups, world tours, you read everything. You knew more about him than you wanted to know.

And you were there too. In a recent article by some tacky looking publication with obnoxious colors and loud titles that made your head hurt, there was a picture of you and Edward—Harry—sitting at the cafe last week. The pictures looked innocent enough, but the headlines claimed you were a secret lover, a possible affair.

An affair? You clicked on one of the linked articles on the website, hating yourself for reading something like this. Another picture popped up. He looked like he was at some wedding, holding hands with another woman.

You turned your phone off after that, not wanting anymore pictures or words forever ingrained in your mind. He was seeing someone. He had a…a person. Someone that meant something to him. Someone that wasn’t you.

It hurt, especially because you really thought he’d shown interest the last few months, but that was probably a lie too. He spent the night just last week! Sure, you didn’t do anything but sleep, but that was a big step. Apparently not. Just before you clicked out of the website, you saw that she was a director. Maybe he was only interested in people who led similar lives, and you certainly did not.

You felt silly all of a sudden. You tricked yourself into believing that someone actually cared for you. No one had ever shown interest in you outside of the knowledge you held, all the remarkable things you could remember. When you visited her for Spring Break, your mom went around telling people you were a human computer, getting people to ask you questions and see how quick you could respond. Like your students in class but not at all the same. You weren’t a person to be valued or cherished, you were an object of fascination. A circus freak that could do tricks on command.

You laid on the floor with your head pressed against the wood panels, heart pounding and mind spinning. Words flew around so fast they were unintelligible. Nothing made sense, and as someone who could make sense of everything, it was frustrating you. A headache quickly developed into a migraine, and you didn’t know what to do. Shutting your eyes wouldn’t change anything, would probably only make things worse. You read too much too fast, and now it was overwhelming you.

A knock on your front door temporarily distracted you. You stood up from your position on the ground, but every step towards your door was a painful one. Peeking through your peephole, your heart clenched, your stomach filled with dread. It was him.

You were in no way ready to face him, so you didn’t. “I—I’m not feeling well.”

“Aw, really?” he asked, sounding disappointed. “Well, let me in and I’ll take care of you.”

He sounded so sweet and so sincere that you almost let him in, but you stopped yourself. “I haven’t gotten tested yet. I’ll—I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? Let me in, Y/n. If you’re not feeling well, I want to help.”

His kindness made you angry all of a sudden. With everything swirling around and your migraine, you blurted, “I don’t want to see you right now, Harry.”

It was his name, but it didn’t sound right on your tongue. He seemed to recognize it, though. With both of you so close to the door, you heard the soft thud of his forehead leaning against it as he quietly muttered, “Fuck.”

“You lied to me,” you said, trying to hide the quiver in your voice. “Why would you lie to me?”

“I—I didn’t lie, I—”

“Don’t give me that omission bullshit! You didn’t even tell me your real name!”

You remembered the first time he’d come over to your house. The two of you were so engrossed in your conversation that you didn’t even realize you hadn’t shared each other’s names until he was about to leave. He told you his name was Edward, and you didn’t question it. Why would you?

“I can’t believe this,” you said. “I—We talked about you being a murderer, and I laughed it off when you could’ve actually been one. I’m such an idiot! I actually—I actually trusted you!”

“You can trust me. Please just—Please let me in, and I can explain everything. Just please let me in.”

He sounded desperate, but he wasn’t getting it. You did let him in. He knew you more than any other person you knew, but you clearly didn’t know him. You had a hard time trusting people, it was why you didn’t have many friends or colleagues or a long romantic history. Trust was something you had a hard time handing to people, but somehow he managed it, and he took it and stomped on it, crushed it in his hands like a piece of paper. You couldn’t trust him. He lied to you about who he was for months and didn’t try to tell you the truth. Not once.

“I know about the woman you’re seeing. The director,” you said suddenly You had never spoken so venomously before, and you hated it. You hated how all of this was making you feel. “I asked you out because I liked you and you managed to convince me that you liked me too, but—but you ruined it. I learned so much about you in minutes, and I can’t forget it. I wish I could forget meeting you, but I will never be able to.

“I can win a chess game in two moves, I could solve some of the most complex physics equations before you probably even knew what algebra was, I know four current languages and two dead languages, I’ve read the Bible cover to cover multiple times, I came close to solving the three body problem. I bet you don’t even know what that is!

“I’m an expert in multiple fields of psychology, so imagine my surprise when I found out you weren’t who you said you were. Not once did I suspect anything,” you said, surprised that all of that came bursting out of you.

“I am. Y/n, please open the door,” he pleaded. He sounded like he was crying, which made a couple tears slip down your cheeks.

You steeled your nerves, feeling like each one of those butterflies he made you feel died and floated to the bottom of your stomach. “I’m glad I found out now and not while I was still teaching, I can’t imagine how badly my students would make fun of me for being so clueless.”

Hearing the calmness in your voice, you heard him grow frantic on the other side of the door. “It’s not your fault, Y/n, I was just trying to—”

“You’re right. It’s not my fault,” you said. “I don’t like to believe in coincidences or chance, but maybe there’s a hint of it here.” You paused, finding the strength to get the words out. You hadn’t thought it through, and perhaps you were being too rash or emotional, but you said it anyway. “I was offered a job today. In New York. I was going to call you and tell you about it, maybe celebrate even if I was planning on turning it down, but then I got a different phone call first, and I found out about you, and…

“I’m going to take the job, and I—I don’t want to see you before I leave.”

“Okay, I know you’re mad, and you have every right to be, but I am begging you not to go anywhere before I can explain. There’s so much that I want—that I need to say. Y/n please.”

You were done fighting. Mostly because your migraine was becoming too much and you were still processing the overload of information, but also because you couldn’t handle talking to the person on the other side of your door anymore.

“Just go,” you said, more tired than you’d ever felt before. “I can’t—I can’t let you do this to me.”

Your mind, which was normally sharp and organized, was currently in shambles. You'd never felt this lost before. You could always rely on your instinct and your knowledge, but it was failing you, and that was something you couldn't handle.

“Please. Please. Open the door, Y/n. Please let me in. Please, I’ll explain everything. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”

Taking your cat, you left him at the front door, still knocking and begging you to let him explain, but you didn’t want an explanation. None of it would change the fact that he lied for months, with no plans to stop.

You don’t know when he left, or how long he knocked on the door. If he left of his own volition or if your neighbors grew tired of the noise. You just didn’t care to know. As you rested on your bed and hid from everything you learned the best you could, you just…didn’t care anymore.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

tags: @remuslupinwifee @majasophieanna @michellekstyles @wolwolsighs @harrystylesrecs @cwiphswmwasohmm @his-only-angel-1989

#harry styles #harry styles x professor yn #harry styles imagine #harry styles x reader #harry styles oneshot #harry styles fanfic #harry styles blurb #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fluff #harry styles x you #harry styles writing #harry styles one shot

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totowlff · 4 months

Text

extra — you asked for this

➝ who the hell is in your bed, cassandra?

➝ word count: 3,3k

➝ warnings: cursing, mentions to hitler, homophobia, allusions to domestic violence, cheating, emotional abuse, stalking and comparisons between horses and people

➝ author’s note: my boss is being a real bitch today, so keep this adorable extra in tribute to her

Looking at the picture frame on the table, Albert Aldersey pressed his lips into a thin line. In the image, he was holding a newborn Helena, with a restrained expression, without showing any emotion. Beside him were his two eldest children; on the left, Jason looked at the camera seriously, while on the right, Cassandra was smiling widely, clearly excited about the new addition to the family.

“You never get tired of being a thorn in my side, do you?”, he thought to himself, looking away from the documents that Henry had left at Stansted House, at his request. And given the amount of paper inside, the man had worked hard over the past few weeks looking for information.

Upon opening the folder, Albert came across a large photo of a man. He had a smile on his face, his gaze directed somewhere to the left of the camera. Dark hair, brown eyes, white shirt with the first two buttons open. The logos embroidered on his shirt were all too familiar.

— Torger Wolff — he murmured, reading what was written just below the image, along with the photo credits. Nothing like the name Andromeda had told him when she spoke about her meeting with Cassandra at their youngest daughter's house.

He had realized something was unusual with his wife as soon as he heard her come into the foyer. He heard her telling John, the household’s head butler, that the things she had bought on Savile Row were in the boot of the car and should be taken to Albert's closet. He could hear Andromeda running quickly up the stairs, the sound of her heeled shoes echoing through the corridor.

— Andromeda — he shouted from the drawing room. The clicking of shoes stopped momentarily, as if the woman had hesitated for a few seconds before changing direction and heading towards him. As soon as she appeared at the door, Albert looked up from the newspaper and saw that there was, in fact, something wrong with her.

— Yes, Albert — she said in a low voice.

— Is everything okay? — Albert asked her, lowering the edition of the Daily Mail onto his lap.

— Yes — Andromeda replied, her voice tense. The navy blue dress she was wearing had a dark stain.

— Did you have any problems getting my suit?

— No, it was ready. John is taking it to your closet.

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them.

— What is that stain on your dress?

Looking down, Andromeda pursed her lips.

— I spilled tea on it.

— Where did you go for tea?

— I went to Pimlico to visit Helena. Jack is in Switzerland, she is alone with Tommy and I thought it would be nice to stop by, see how they were doing — she snorted, putting her hand to her forehead — But Cassandra was there...

Albert felt his muscles tense and his nostrils flare when he heard that name. “Damn it”, he thought, dropping the newspaper on the armchair and jumping to his feet.

It was a name he hadn’t heard in a while, and sooner hoped to forget; the greatest mistake he ever made, if he had any hand in her making, which was still an uncertainty to this day.

— And what did that bint say this time?

— Albert — his wife said, a reproachful edge to her voice.

— What, Andromeda?

— Please…

Albert couldn’t help himself. Any time his daughter was brought up in private company, he couldn’t help but talk about how she’d wronged him.

His daughter — if she was his, mind you — had always had a rebellious streak, thinking that she was too good to be just a wife and mother and had to make her own way in the world. She was an ungrateful aberration that spat in the face of the traditions and ideals that the family had held for centuries.

Albert had sent her to Cambridge to get a classical education and to meet an appropriate suitor, but instead, she decided to change her course without telling him or Andromeda, and ended up doing marketing, or some hogwash, for a motorsport team in Northampton. Even worse, the team she worked for was owned by the Germans! His grandfather, who was a Royal Navy officer in both World Wars, was likely turning in his grave, knowing his great-granddaughter was working for the company that made Hitler’s limousine. It would have been less awful if she’d worked for McLaren in Woking, at least they had a respectable English heritage.

— You know she is, there's no point in denying it. You try and bring a daughter up right by sending her to good schools, send her to university to get an education, try set her up with someone respectable, but she dates men without a pound to their name and takes some ridiculous job — he shouted — If she thinks we're going to take her back just because she finally realized that we were right all along…

— She found someone, Albert — Andromeda said, suddenly.

He couldn't hold back a laugh.

— Are you telling me that she found someone capable of putting up with her? — Albert said, mockingly — Because you'd have to be crazy to stand being around her for more than five minutes...

— It's worse than that — his wife murmured, running a hand over her face.

— And what could be worse than that?

— She's pregnant — Andromeda shouted, suddenly.

He felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. After hearing so many times from Cassandra herself that she wouldn't marry or have children because she wouldn’t give her parents the satisfaction, the news seemed unbelievable and infuriating in equal measure. Albert shot his wife a skeptical look.

— Are you telling me that Cassandra found a man witless enough to not only be around her for more than five minutes, but crazy enough to breed her?

— Albert, she's not one of your mares — Andromeda murmured.

— Even if she were, she’d have gone to auction straight away — he said — Too willful. Plus, my mares have a good lineage, good blood running through their veins, unlike that tart. And you know who's to blame, don't you?

That was the other effect hearing the name of his estranged daughter had on him — it reminded him of Andromeda’s possible indiscretion with one of his trainers some thirty-five years ago. His name was Seamus Doyle. Normally, Albert made a habit of not trusting the Irish, but his father had hired him when he was in charge of the stables. Albert kept him around after he took over because the man was as talented with horses as Albert had ever seen, like he practically spoke their language. However, when Cassandra started growing hair the same shade of red as Seamus’, he became suspicious. Nobody in his family or his wife’s family, to his knowledge, had had red hair, so it had to come from somewhere.

Andromeda denied it to this day, but Albert knew better.

Nevertheless, he knew people would talk if he treated Cassandra like the bastard he knew she was; it would reflect poorly on him and his wife both if word of Andromeda’s missteps came to light, so he had no choice but to raise Cassandra as if she was his own, but that didn’t mean he had to treat her like she was his daughter behind closed doors.

His strategy most of the time when she was growing up, was to simply ignore her, and it wasn’t surprising to him when their disdain for each other became mutual. It was easy enough to simply send her to boarding school and forget about her most of the time. He was too busy with the stables anyway, so he let Andromeda and the household staff handle things related to the children and simply signed the checks for the school bills.

Andromeda's eyes glistened with tears. “She knows what she did. It must be the guilt eating her up inside”, he thought, turning to the armchair and taking the newspaper he was reading in his hand. Albert was already near the door when he heard his wife call his name.

— What? — he grunted, without looking back.

— She said the baby's father is named Christian. He works in finance — Andromeda murmured.

A small smile appeared on his face. “That’s all I need”, Albert thought.

The next day, he contacted Henry, a private detective he had on retainer for certain occasions. He liked to be sure about certain things, like business dealings and the people interested in his children. He’d used Henry’s services when Jason told him that he intended to marry Rose, the girl he’d met at Cambridge and had been courting for a while, something he agreed on after an extensive investigation into the girl's background and family. They held no peerages or titles that he could find, but their family had long been in the jewellery business. They even made the medals and badges by the armed forces, and used in official investitures, which is why Albert gave his blessing to the union, despite Rose giving him nothing but three granddaughters and an enormous amount of headache.

Helena's boyfriend received the same sort of investigation, but, fortunately, the youngest had made a sensible choice. Jack was a relative of the Marquess of Normanby, and his parents had important ties with the royal family; the fact that he was, according to Henry’s dossier, the godson of the Duke of York, made him a perfect choice.

Cassandra, on the other hand, was the real problem. This was something he realized when she told him, in front of the then-Lord Glamis, during a dinner planned by Albert to introduce him to Cassandra in hopes of making a suitable match, insisting that she was not a broodmare to be auctioned off. Later, in his office, she defiantly repeated herself, telling him that she would never give him the satisfaction of her getting married or having children, which earned her a slap that left her face redder than her hair. Incensed, Albert told her that she made it incredibly difficult to put up with her, let alone love her, and she would end up an old spinster like her aunt.

However, that episode did not discourage her antics. After that, Albert had the impression that her determination to challenge his authority became even greater. The men she started to have relationships with were absolutely inadequate.

All the same, it made the man in the photo he was holding even more intriguing.

From what Henry had gathered, Christian was the man’s middle name. He’d included several photos of him; accompanying her to doctor’s appointments, and standing in the doorway of the dreary matchbox-sized townhome she’d lived in — that Andromeda had insisted on buying for her, for some reason, like she couldn’t afford to rent her own place.

His real name was Torger and he was born in Vienna, the son of an anesthetist and an art transport specialist, who died from cancer in the 1980’s. From what this “Torger” had said in interviews that were included in the dossier Henry prepared, he made his fortune in investing, especially in technology companies.

His involvement with motorsport came later, when he bought shares in the Mercedes-Benz Formula 1 team, becoming the team's CEO, which made him Cassandra’s boss. He didn’t want to even think about how his daughter managed to end up pregnant by her boss.

However, Cassandra’s choice still seemed strange to Albert, as this “Torger” did not have the profile of the man his daughter has had relationships with before. To his knowledge, she usually went for the brainy, academic sort. The one serious boyfriend he knew of — Callum, from what Helena had told him — was someone that she’d met at Cambridge, and had reconnected with when he was working on his doctorate at Oxford. He had no ambitions beyond his research, apparently, not even wanting to teach full-time. Typical.

Albert didn’t think there was anything wrong with getting an education, he was a Cambridge man himself, as was most of his family, for many generations, but he firmly believed that staying in school and collecting degrees was useless; one had to join the real world eventually and apply that knowledge somehow.

According to Henry’s dossier, this Torger person hadn’t even finished university.

— Mr. Aldersey? — a voice broke him out of his own thoughts. He looked up to see John standing in the doorway with a somber expression on his face.

— What now?

— Mrs. Aldersey is waiting for you to go to Lady Sybil's exhibition.

Albert snorted.

— Do I have a choice?

— I don't think so, sir — he replied with the shadow of a smile on his lips.

Letting out a sigh, he got up from the armchair and headed to the door, where John was standing, holding the tweed jacket that matched the waistcoat and trousers Albert was wearing. Albert threw it on as he headed downstairs.

When he arrived in the foyer, he found Andromeda standing near the door, adjusting her Cartier watch on her wrist. Hearing his footsteps, the woman looked up at him.

— I already told Sybil that we're on our way — she said.

Albert ignored his wife, straightening his lapels and adjusting his lapis cufflinks before heading out of the entrance of the house, where John had the Land Rover waiting. As he took his place at the wheel of the vehicle, Andromeda's voice was a mere whisper.

His mind was elsewhere, specifically on the gaps in Henry’s dossier. He had gathered a large amount of information about Torger, there was nothing relevant about his family other than the fact that his parents were immigrants. Albert hated it when Henry's reports didn't give a clear and objective view of those being investigated, especially their relatives. He could not imagine having the Aldersey name involved with people who did not live up to the importance and relevance of that family.

Aside from that, Cassandra was proving to him that she had made the first right choice in her life. The man was tall and fairly handsome, and had money. The fact that he was a bit older than his daughter was of no object, either, but it made him wonder if the poor bloke wasn’t desperate, divorced, or both.

After parking the car near the entrance to Sybil's gallery, Albert and Andromeda walked the few meters to the entrance in practically silence. At the door, in addition to a security guard, there was a woman dressed in a dark blazer, her blond hair carefully arranged in a low bun.

— Good evening, sir, madam — the woman smiled — Could you come with me?

The path to the room where the exhibition opening was taking place was a blur of color. Albert hated going to Sybil's gallery. He hated the clean, bright white walls and lighting, he hated the people that hung around the gallery, gawking at ridiculous-looking paintings and sculptures, he hated the vegan canapés she always served at the events she held.

But what Albert hated most was having to interact with Sybil's circle of friends. To him, not a single decent person would be caught dead there, just the artsy, continental pillow biters and muff divers like his sister-in-law. Andromeda could deny it all she wanted, but Albert’s suspicions were not unfounded. He had long suspected that Sabine, the French woman that was always with Sybil, wasn’t her housekeeper.

Upon entering the exhibition hall, he came across what seemed like a crowd milling about. The conversations filled Albert's ears, and he felt irritated by the sound of laughter and the clinking of champagne glasses.

— Romy! — Sybil's shrill voice sounded somewhere to his left. Turning his face, he saw his sister-in-law approaching with a wide smile and her hair down in gray waves. “Why doesn’t she color her hair? She looks so old and haggard”, Albert thought to himself — I’m glad you came!

— I would never miss an exhibition of yours, and you know I love porcelain.

Albert rolled his eyes.

— And that's exactly why I called you — she replied, before looking at her brother-in-law with a certain disdain — I'm surprised to see you here, Bertie.

Albert swallowed hard, grimacing at the stupid nickname. It was what his mother called him, but his dreadful sister-in-law found out once and never called him anything else.

— Why do you say that, my dear sister-in-law?

— As far as I’m aware, you’d rather look at horse’s fannies all day than at art.

— Sybil, please — Andromeda whispered, placing a hand on her sister's arm — Albert was very kind to accompany me here today.

The woman looked at him suspiciously.

— Bertie has never been kind to you, Romy.

— There's always a first time, isn't there? — Albert replied — Besides, what kind of husband would I be if I didn't protect my wife from the influence of the disgusting company you keep?

Sybil stepped forward, her eyes filled with anger.

— If you cared about protecting my sister, you wouldn’t put your filthy hands on her so much — she whispered, before putting a fake smile on her face and turning to her sister — Want me to show you what’s on display, Romy? There's a Hungarian vase that I'm sure you'll love.

With his nostrils flared and his face red with anger, Albert wanted to take his wife and leave immediately, and give his sister-in-law a piece of his mind on the way out. However, he knew that doing that, in addition to causing a scandal, would only give Sybil the reaction she wanted. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

He picked up a glass of champagne from a tray carried by a passing waiter, trying to focus on something other than the terrible music booming through the gallery, or the cynical commentary of the people around him. He stepped toward one of the windows and glanced at his watch, praying that time would pass faster and that he could finally leave.

Albert was in the middle of his fourth slice of pesto and tomato toast when he noticed that Sybil and Andromeda were looking at the piece that was right next to him.

— Ah, Romy, this one was a real find — his sister-in-law said, pointing to the small figure protected by the acrylic — It's a figure of a pantalone made in Vienna around 1745. It was in a private collection for a long time before being sold to an Austrian antiques house. You know how I found it?

— How?

Albert glanced at the figure, but unimpressed. It was of an older bearded man in glasses. It looked like a clown to him, the kind of thing one would find in a charity shop and not a high-end gallery exhibition.

— I was studying to put together this exhibition and found a very interesting book about Austrian porcelain. It was written by one of the greatest experts in the field, Elisabeth Bednarczyk…

Albert's heart skipped a beat. It wasn't possible...

— Did you say Bednarczyk?

His sister-in-law raised an eyebrow.

— Yes, Bednarczyk. Elisabeth Sturm Bednarczyk, actually, she is a very well-known scholar and collector in Vienna.

That woman couldn't have the same surname as Torger's mother by mere chance. It couldn't be a coincidence, especially because Torger was from Vienna, and Albert couldn’t imagine that “Bednarczyk” was a common surname in Austria…

— Do you know if this Elisabeth has a sister?

Sybil raised an eyebrow.

— I only contacted her to buy the piece for the exhibition, Bertie. I don’t generally interrogate business contacts about their personal lives or hire private detectives to stalk them, unlike you. It’s almost like you don’t have enough personal issues of your own, isn’t it?

— Just doing my due diligence, Sybil — Albert simply replied, as he looked at the piece of porcelain. “And because of that, I know that this family just became my problem too”, he thought to himself, as he read Elisabeth Bednarczyk’s name on the base of the acrylic.

#toto wolff #formula 1 fic #wlffog #f1 fanfic #formula 1 fanfic #f1 fic #toto wolff x oc #formula 1 x oc #formula one x oc #f1 x oc #formula one fic #toto wolff fanfic #formula one fanfic #etlwlff

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catullus101 · 2 years

Photo

A. E. Housman’s translation of Horace’s Ode Diffugere Nives, in More Poems (1936)

“During my time at Cambridge, I attended [Housman's] lectures for two years. At five minutes past 11 he used to walk to the desk, open his manuscript, and begin to read. At the end of the hour he folded his papers and left the room. He never looked either at us or at the row of dons in the front. One morning in May, 1914, when the trees in Cambridge were covered with blossom, he reached in his lecture Ode 7 in Horace's Fourth Book, 'Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis.' This ode he dissected with the usual display of brilliance, wit, and sarcasm. Then for the first time in two years he looked up at us, and in quite a different voice said: 'I should like to spend the last few minutes considering this ode simply as poetry.' Our previous experience of Professor Housman would have made us sure that he would regard such a proceeding as beneath contempt. He read the ode aloud with deep emotion, first in Latin and then in an English translation of his own. 'That,' he said hurriedly, almost like a man betraying a secret, 'I regard as the most beautiful poem in ancient literature,' and walked quickly out of the room. A scholar of Trinity (since killed in the War), who walked with me to our next lecture, expressed in undergraduate style our feeling that we had seen something not really meant for us. 'I felt quite uncomfortable,' he said. 'I was afraid the old fellow was going to cry.'”

qtd in Richard Perceval Graves, A. E. Housman: The Scholar Poet (1972)

#a e housman #horace #cambridge university #trinity college

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mattsbella · 28 days

Text

“impossible” - matt sturniolo

୨୧ ₊˚•. ↳ pairings : matt sturniolo x almira gomez (fem!oc)

—— ୨୧ ₊˚•. ↳ warnings : angst, fluff

୨୧ ₊˚•. ↳ summary :

ALMIRA GOMEZ had been a fan of the triplets ever since they started, coincidentally she also lived in boston, but in cambridge. she was posting on instagram once when the MATT STURNIOLO noticed her post, also posting pictures with the same caption. is it impossible for these two to get together?

chapter 006

“leave me alone”

messages, insta, real life

——— MESSAGES ———

matt.

almira please listen to me.

one missed call from matt.

almira please.

mira cmon

mira you just need to read one message

please almira just answer me

one missed call from matt.

mira 🌅🩷

leave me the fuck alone.

matt.

fine.

wait no its not fine

mira please.

mira 🌅🩷 HAS SILENCED NOTIFICATIONS 🌙

——— INSTAGRAM ———

@almiragomez

liked by matthew.sturniolo, shpk.nazi and 76 more

almiragomez how i feel rn (i have been crying for the past 2 days)

CREATOR HAS TURNED OFF COMMENTS

2 HOURS LATER

——— MESSAGES ———

matt.

mira please i will literally beg you just answer one call i can explain everything.

mira 🌅🩷

get on ur knees then.

matt.

still crazy huh?

mira 🌅🩷

now you answer my call.

“you have 4 minutes” almira says as she snuggled into the blankets of her cozy bed, and matt hold his phone to his ear. almira had him on speaker since she wanted to sleep right after.

“ill only need 2. so basically bree used to be one of my fucking talking stages who is obsessed with me.. i mean its me” making almira giggle a bit. “anyways, we ended off things the day before i found your account but she hasnt left me alone since. i swear to god i dont like anyone but yo- shit.” matt finishes and realises what he just said.

“what did you just say?” almira exclaimed as she giggles and immediately gets hanged up on, she finishes the laugh and goes to sleep.

but after about 20 minutes. she heard the doorbell.

she gets up from bed and goes to the front door.

“whoever cut my sleep off i will kill yo- matt?” she says as she opens the door and sees matt holding a bouqet of pink and white roses with brown paper wrapped around them, and a small bow on the bottom, with a letter on the top and a kinder bueno.

“i know this sounds fucking weird and shit but like i remember you saying you wouldve hated if someone asked you out from call so im never doing that, anyways besides the point, as i was saying, i would never ever like someone more than you mira, i swear” he says in what seems like one breathe, making him pant currently.

almira is speechless just looking at him with mouth agape.

“please say somethi-“ matt says in a soft soft whisper before he gets cut off with almiras lips on his.

sure they kissed before but not like this, not this lovingly.

as they pull away matt asks “can i be your boyfriend?” with a soft voice.

she giggles “yes you idiot”.

——— INSTAGRAM ———

@mattspinkshirt

liked by matthew.sturniolo, nicolassturniolo, shpk.nazi and 36 more

mattspinkshirt ME RN (marylou gonna be screaming “nuse reja jeme”)

matthew.sturniolo AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

↳ mattspinkshirt AHHHHHHH MY BABYYYYYY

↳ user : WHAT?

nicolassturniolo WHAT HAPPPPPPPEEEEENEED

↳ mattspinkshirt becoming a wife happened

matthew.sturniolo I PUT A RING ON ITT (not yet 😩)

↳ mattspinkshirt u better.

↳ user : HUHHHHHHH?

↳ user : HWAAATATATA YALL CLIP THIS

christophersturniolo tell me why matt just messaged the groupchat “I DID ITTTTT” and leaves.

↳ mattspinkshirt oh so im a joke to you. @matthew.sturniolo

↳ matthew.sturniolo NONONONO NEVER EVER EVER UR THE LIGHT BENEATH MY WINGS THE LITERAL LIGHT OF MY LIFE AND THE LOVE OF MY LIFE 😭😭😭😭😭😭

↳ mattspinkshirt i love you. 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🖕

↳ nicolassturniolo okay enough flirting

@rootbeersn1fan

liked by mattspinkshirt, shpk.nazi and 78 more

rootbeersn1fan literally our beach. ( i love my gf so much i love her)

CREATOR HAS TURNED OFF COMMENTS

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a/n

idk if this is last chap

#sturniolo triplets #christopher sturniolo #matt sturniolo #sturniolo fanfic #nicolas sturniolo #nick sturniolo #sturniolo smut #impossiblefanfic

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somedaylazysomeday · 1 year

Text

Winner Take All - Part Two

Nathan Bateman x fem!reader (no use of y/n)

Almost ten years after graduation, you run into Bateman again. You still aren't impressed.

Rating: Explicit, lemon, etc. Minors DNI!

Word Count: 7,000

Warnings: mentions of alcohol and drunkenness, bad language, references to events at the end of Ex Machina, crassness, oral sex (female receiving), unprotected piv, creampie.

Previous | Next | Masterlist

---

A little more than a decade after graduation, you were settled comfortably in a chair that cradled you like something precious. You had a drink in your hand and your phone in your lap. Not your business phone, either. Your personal phone. Since you had started Primary, you had refrained from combining the two, and it meant you could leave your work phone at home on your nights off and avoid any distractions.

After all, you couldn’t disturb the haven that was trivia night at the Estuary.

The decision to move back to Cambridge, Massachusetts hadn’t been one you made lightly, but it was also the easiest choice you had made in a long time. When you had left almost a decade before, the move had been accompanied by a sense of poignant loss. You had loved your time here, and coming back held a sense of homecoming that was comforting given everything else that was going on.

You had worked for the same company for almost ten years after graduation. After starting out on the research team for vasculitis, your focus soon shifted from research to drug development for a potential treatment you had helped identify. You were moved to the Celiac disease team after the drug was successful. You were proud of the work you had done there, but when a position opened up on the multiple sclerosis team, you had lobbied for it. Apparently, the reputation you had gained and the papers you had published worked in your favor, since you got the position and made several important connections besides. After years on the multiple sclerosis team, you had been next in line to lead it.

All your work hadn’t gone unnoticed, and the Vice President of Development had asked you to check out the Cambridge market, scope out the potential for a Massachusetts branch. You were a natural choice since not only had you gone to school there and were familiar with the area, but you also knew what to look for in several key departments.

You had reported back favorably. The biotechnology industry was busy, especially in nearby Boston, but there were several key market segments that weren’t being served. You wouldn’t pretend you didn’t harbor hopes of being assigned to that branch, either.

Unfortunately for those hopes, the company had chosen not to open a branch in Massachusetts. And unfortunately for the company, you had decided to do it yourself. Was it an insane thing to do? Yes. But you knew the area, you knew the field, and you had the contacts. You had applied for grants before you even left your old company and, as an alum, you had secured a place in one of MIT’s business incubators. You had filed the paperwork just before you moved here and you were the proud founder of your own biotechnology company, Primary Enterprises.

It had taken off, and you had been steadily growing for the past three years. The work was varied and interesting. Your interests always skewed closer to biotech than business, but you liked to think you were doing fairly well running Primary. You were busy, though, so your limited free time was spent doing things you loved, like going to the Estuary for a round or two of trivia.

Your first time back here, you had felt like a washed-up creep, trying desperately to relive your college glory days. Pushing that mindset away had been a process, but well worth it. You had played trivia in college because you enjoyed it. Why should that change simply because you were older?

With a slow, savoring sip of your drink, you watched the screen. Trivia still wasn’t incredibly popular, but it drew a few people. Usernames trickled in, surrounding your usual Champ until you could hardly pick it out in the crowd.

Though when The Conqueror flashed up onto the screen, you saw it without any trouble.

It felt like your heart stopped as you scanned the familiar interior of the Estuary, comparing your memories of Bateman against theories of what he might look like now. At last, you caught a glimpse of him.

He was sitting at the bar, chatting with Noor, Mira’s husband. They took turns bartending while the other watched their adorable daughter. Bateman turned his head to the side, glancing at a nearby group of students who had gotten noisy. It was tricky to recognize him with the way he had shaved his head and let his neat beard grow into something wild and bushy, but you knew that nose, proud and strong with glasses perched on its bridge.

When you had positively identified Bateman, you relaxed back into your chair. The adrenaline that had flooded your system eased off, but your heartbeat picked up. You hadn’t thought about him in years, so you weren’t about to approach him.

But… you mused, firming your jaw. But maybe you could beat him. You were, after all, older and wiser. You had accumulated more knowledge than you ever had in college.

As the game started and you began rolling through the questions, it seemed that wasn’t going to be the case. Maybe you had learned some things over the past decade, but Bateman apparently had, too. You were never ranked further down than third place on any question, but if you were ranked first, The Conqueror was second. He was beating you again.

You played fervently, your attention rapt on the screen in front of you or the smaller screen of your phone, but it was no use. You lost, a somewhat distant second place to The Conqueror’s first.

After the final scores appeared on the screen, you glanced at the bar only to feel an odd surge of disappointment. Bateman was gone.

The spike of regret was an unwelcome surprise. You took a moment to puzzle that out while you finished your drink. The best theory you came up with was that you were sad to miss an opportunity to catch up with someone from your past, even if you had never particularly cared for the young genius.

Ah, well, you decided, pushing yourself up and out of the comfortable armchair. You had other things to focus on. You had unwound slightly from the pressures of the day, but Primary Enterprises would take up most of your attention for the rest of the night and the entirety of the next day. Maybe you could sneak in some planning when you got back to your apartment. If you were going to continue competing with some of the bigger biotech companies, Primary would need to push for something innovative…

You had waved goodbye to Noor and were within sight of the exit when you felt fingers close around your wrist. You turned sharply, raising your eyebrows in a way that took your resting bitch face to an incredibly active bitch face.

“Whoa, whoa,” the man entreated, releasing you immediately. “Just wanted to say hello.”

Despite having seen Bateman from across the Estuary earlier, you hadn’t recognized him then. It was the glimmer of mischief in his intense eyes that finally made you remember. “Bateman.”

He grinned, looking you up and down while you took the opportunity to do the same to him. Bateman was even more muscular than he had been as a student. Apparently, he had kept up with the workout routine even after he had graduated. That beard was a wild thicket around his jaw, but it made his teeth gleam, turning his familiar smile into something blinding. His glasses were more stylish, the frames thinner and better suited to the shape of his face.

Bateman opened his arms, his plain shirt straining across his chest with the motion. For an unbalanced moment, you thought he was inviting you in for a hug, but it became clear that he was gesturing to the table. “‘Bateman’? Is that seriously all I get after a fuckin’ decade? Sit down, talk for a minute! We gotta catch up.”

You settled into the chair across from him - mostly because he had kicked it out with such force that you were worried it would break your knees if you didn’t sit down in it - but before you could ask why he was in Cambridge, he spoke.

“What have you been up to for the past… how long has it been? I dunno, a decade?”

He knew exactly how long it had been, unless he’d suffered a life-altering concussion at some point that you hadn’t heard about. Still, you humored him, your excitement at catching up with a familiar face outweighing the fact that you didn’t remember liking him very much.

“Well, I’ve started my own biotech company,” you started, the familiar words falling from your lips even as they curved into a polite, professional smile. “We mostly focus on auto-immune diseases, but we’re looking to expand into the hormone therapy field. We’ve been-”

“Yeah, yeah,” he interrupted, cutting your elevator pitch short with the wave of a hand. “I mean, what have you been doing? Outside of the company?”

“Out- I mean, not a lot,” you stammered. “Primary takes up a lot of my time…”

Bateman tsked at you and you started remembering just how much you hadn’t cared for him in college. With your temper sparking, you leaned forward enough to catch his eye. “And what about you? From all reports, you’ve made Blue Book your entire personality.”

“That isn’t true,” he countered. “I also box.”

His expectant look, aimed at you from just over the top frame of his glasses, irked you. You snapped, “I don’t know what you want me to say, Bateman. I started a company, we’re competing against companies with more people and bigger budgets and it’s completely taken over my life. Happy?”

“No,” Bateman denied. “I could have gotten all of that from your LinkedIn profile. You really need to change that fuckin’ picture, by the way. That sweater was doing you no favors.”

You stared at him, wishing you could come up with something scathing to say about his appearance, but other than the bottom-heavy look earned with the combination of his shaved head and full beard, you had nothing. “You’re an asshole.”

“You knew that,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, and I chose to talk to you anyway when I could have been spending my time doing more important things,” you bit out. “Like rearranging my sock drawer by color or cleaning my ice-maker.”

To your displeasure, Bateman seemed to find that hilarious. His head tipped back as he gave a loud laugh. When he returned his gaze to you, he had to wipe a tear from his eye. “I’ve missed this,” he said, gesturing back and forth between himself and you. “Our little will-they/won’t-they back and forth. Too bad you graduated and fled the state before we could get to the resolution last time, huh?”

If brains were capable of creating audible noise, yours would have made the iconic sound of a computer making a dial-up connection. When the screeching finally faded enough to allow you some semblance of thought, you managed, “You need to get out of your mom’s basement and interact with real people more often. There was no back and forth.”

Bateman’s eyebrows rose in sharp skepticism as he tilted his head to peer over his glasses at you once more. “Yeah? What do you call all of this, then?”

“Irritation!” you burst out, standing up. You thought briefly of trying to deliver a parting shot, but it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Instead, you simply turned and left.

To your displeasure, Bateman was at the next trivia night as well. You weren’t proud of it, but you had researched him when you got home. Apparently, Blue Book had a conference scheduled in Cambridge. You couldn’t get too pissy; it had been on the company’s calendar for a full year. But at least it was starting that weekend. Odds were that Bateman would be gone before you ran into him again.

The second time you saw him at the Estuary, you rationalized that the conference may have run longer than expected. After all, you hadn’t researched how long Blue Book conferences lasted. For all you knew, it was a week-long affair. Bateman beat you soundly at trivia that week and you were looking forward to it being the last time that happened.

The next week, Bateman was still there. Maybe he had some administrative stuff to handle before he went back to… wherever it was that he lived. You did manage to beat him in that trivia game, but only because a swarm of college students - most of whom were decked out in Schwarzman sweatshirts - distracted him during a few pivotal questions. He didn’t look happy, but he did salute you with his beer bottle as you left for the night.

When his shaved head still showed up the following week, you’d had enough. “What are you doing here?”

He had turned slowly, rotating on his barstool to face you with his thick brows already raised. “It’s a public place, sweetheart. I’m allowed to exist in those.”

The old endearment rankled just as badly as it had ten years before. “Don’t call me that. Why are you so determined to exist here all of a sudden?”

“Someone told me I need to interact with real people more often,” Bateman said dryly. You rolled your eyes and left.

Nearly another month had passed when Amber sent you a screenshot of an article about how Blue Book was opening a branch in Cambridge. Beneath the image, she wrote, Weird, huh? Guess he’s trying to take advantage of all the interns and graduates from Schwarzman.

The following week, you managed to beat The Conqueror, and it was by such a wide margin that you took a screenshot of the results. Halfway through sending it to your old college friends, a silhouette came between you and the nearest lamp. “What the fuck?”

You glanced up, unsurprised to find that the demand had come from Bateman. You answered the likely-rhetorical question as you finished your message. “It’s called a cell phone, genius. I would have thought a tech guy would know that.”

“First off, that’s hardly a phone. It’s so old, I half-expect it to have a slide-out keyboard… or a rotary dial,” Bateman mocked. “Secondly, you’re cheating.”

“Cheating?” you repeated immediately, lowering your phone. “I am not! If anyone is cheating, it’s you!”

Noor was nearby, gathering up empty glasses and wiping down tabletops. He paused, frowning at both of you. “The system doesn’t really allow-”

“Leave it,” Mira told him, tugging on his elbow to lead him away. “This has been a long time coming.”

“I’m not cheating!” Bateman denied, outraged. “But this is the second time this month that you’ve beaten me. It’s statistically unlikely to the point of near impossibility. You have to be cheating.”

“Well, I’m not,” you replied, crossing your arms childishly. “Maybe you’re getting dumber.”

“I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response,” he told you. “There’s only one way to make sure you’re not Blue-Booking answers: I’m gonna sit by you on trivia nights.”

You were halfway through rolling your eyes - already preparing a reminder that genericization wasn’t a good thing - when the second part hit you. “Fine, then I’ll be able to prove that you’re the one who’s cheating!”

So that’s how trivia nights went from that point on. Over time, you decided that, since you were sitting together, you might as well split a pitcher of beer. Then it turned into beer and an appetizer or two. Then, suddenly, you were hanging out even on non-trivia nights.

One such night found you playing a game of pool at the Estuary. Nathan lined up his shot, calling “Fourteen, corner pocket.”

You scoffed. “Bateman, there are a half-dozen balls between fourteen and the cue. There’s no way you’ll make that shot.”

“Yeah?” he asked, then hit the cue ball with a decisive motion. To your shock (and childish dismay), it avoided all obstacles before cracking into the fourteen ball, which sank neatly in the corner pocket. Nathan turned to you with a cocky grin. “I’m the master of everything around me.”

You were both a little tipsy by this point, which was the only reason you brought up the one subject you had steadfastly avoided up to that point: “So that wasn’t you who got stabbed by your own AI last year?”

Nathan’s face froze for a split second before he recovered. “Nope, not me.”

“Hmm…” You drew out, squinting at him. “For the founder of a major company, you’re a shitty liar.”

Nathan scoffed. “How dare you? I am an extremely gifted liar. It just so happens that I’m telling the truth about this.”

“Mm hmm,” you hummed, carefully broadcasting your skepticism.

“Come on,” he continued, “none of those articles even mention me.”

“That’s exactly my point,” you argued. “The mysterious ‘sources’ mention a tech mogul and every damn news source spent the next month speculating over who it could be… but none of them mentioned you.”

Nathan avoided your eyes, sinking the ten ball instead. You ignored his lack of ability to take turns and continued with your pet conspiracy theory instead. “You’ve spent the last decade making sure you’re linked with any mention of ‘tech’ or ‘genius’ or ‘innovator’. It was suspicious. You’re notable in the blank spaces, Nathan.”

He glanced up at you, dark eyes wide with surprise. You realized too late what you had done. You made a point to call him ‘Bateman’, though he had been ‘Nathan’ in your mind for a while now.

“I-” Nathan paused, the tip of his tongue coming out to sweep over his bottom lip as his brows furrowed. “I… I think that’s a song. Did you just rip off Taylor Swift?”

You paused for a moment. He was uncomfortable and you couldn’t blame him. Instead of pushing this, you decided to give him a momentary reprieve. With a loud snort, you said, “Maybe if I was talking about getting your name tattooed on my body.”

“Great idea! You should,” Nathan agreed, his eyes sweeping down over your form. His gaze was so heavy, you could almost feel its weight. “Do I get to help decide where?”

“To be clear, I’d rather die.”

“Pity. Anything would look good…” He paused, letting the silence stretch for a beat too long. Wildly, you wondered if he was going to compliment you, but he finished, “-with my name on it.”

You rolled your eyes. “That just makes me feel bad for your chauffeur. You must get crazy horny when you drive past the massive Bateman building Blue Book is constructing downtown.”

“Oh, you’ve seen that?” Nathan asked, perking up slightly.

“You’ve made it hard to miss.” You took advantage of the less-crowded pool table to sink three balls in rapid succession.

“It’s gonna be great!” Nathan enthused. “I’ve already started a program with MIT to work with their students, offer internships and stuff. I’m even starting a scholarship program for promising students. I’ll pay their MIT entrance fee and tuition if they sign on to work for Blue Book afterward… Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m not stupid, Bateman,” you told him. “I can recognize a misdirection when I see one. You were the one in the news, weren’t you?”

“No,” he insisted stubbornly.

Your gaze fell to his torso. “You would have to have a scar. You’re vain, but not vain enough to get plastic surgery for something that could be hidden so easily.”

There was something hollow around his eyes despite the salacious grin he sent your way. “If you’re so desperate to get my shirt off, you could just ask.”

You shook your head, recognizing the end of the conversation. “For the record, I’m glad you’re okay.”

His mouth opened, but no sound escaped him. You bent your attention back to the game, sinking the eight ball. “I win, Bateman.”

“Have I ever mentioned how much I hate spending time with you?” Nathan complained. “And, for the record? I liked ‘Nathan’ better.”

Problem was, you did, too.

Trivia nights were lasting longer and longer for you and Nathan, and that wasn’t the only change in the Estuary. Mira had gotten rid of the armchair in your typical section. It had been old and worn-looking, but when you complained about the change, Mira had told you that it was damaged in a drunken fight and couldn’t be repaired. She’d had to throw it away, but she had replaced it with an extremely comfortable couch. Unfortunately, that couch was just barely long enough for two people to share.

…Which was how you had ended up in your current circumstance. You and Nathan had been sitting together during trivia and you simply hadn’t moved apart after the game ended. Now, it was several hours later and you were curled up on the small couch together.

You were leaning into Nathan and his head was resting on your shoulder. Your feet were propped on the small table in front of you. Nathan had mocked you for it, but you didn’t see the harm. The only thing on the table was an empty beer pitcher, two mostly empty glasses, and a plate that had once held an appetizer trio.

He mumbled something that you didn’t quite catch. You hummed absently, the inflection managing to turn the sound into a question. Nathan leaned off of you, resting against the thickly padded back of the couch instead. He repeated his question more distinctly this time: “Did you really never feel anything between us?”

You frowned, pointedly not looking at him. The section where you sat was mostly empty. Hell, the Estuary itself was mostly empty. It was near closing by then, and whatever crowd had existed on the weeknight had long since dissipated.

You probably would have gone on ignoring your companion, but he planted his elbow in your side and nudged you gently over and over until you finally gave in. “Well, I don’t think you’re irritating anymore.”

“That’s it?” Nathan asked with a disbelieving laugh. “Can I get a little more than that?”

With a sigh, you said, “I don’t know what it means - or if it means anything at all - but I have more fun arguing with you than spending time with anyone I actually get along with.”

“Well, if you want to know what I think-”

If you never had to hear another thing that Nathan thought, it would be great. So, to avoid hearing this particular thought, you grabbed his chin and angled his face so that you could deposit a kiss on his lips.

It was supposed to be a light kiss, just a brush of your lips across his. Enough to distract him without crossing any lines. Unfortunately, your body didn’t seem inclined to listen to you. After that first light kiss, you returned for a second, then a third - each touch of your lips on his deeper than the one before.

Part of you wished you could blame your actions on the alcohol you had drank that evening, but it wouldn’t make sense. The beer pitcher had been empty for an hour and Nathan had drank the last glass… and subsequently refused to buy another, but that was only him being his typical asshole self. The point was, you were in full control of your senses. The only thing driving you to act as you had was desire, pure and simple.

When you pulled away, the motion was reluctant. You didn’t want to break that contact, but you also knew you had crossed a line… even if Nathan had been kissing you back. You opened your eyes as you sat back, trying to adjust your vision as quickly as possible so you could see Nathan’s immediate reaction.

He was pouting.

Nathan Bateman, head of the biggest tech company in the world and high-ranking member of the Forbes Billionaires List for the past six years, pouted when you stopped kissing him.

“C’mon,” he complained, though his voice was quiet enough to lack the grating tone normally present in his whining. “Been waiting ten fuckin’ years for that. You can’t stop now.”

Well, that answered that question.

You smiled despite yourself, and watched with amusement as Nathan’s lips quirked into a smile as well. “I guess that was a better answer, then?”

“I’ve always been a slow study,” he told you, trying to kiss you again. When you turned your face to keep your lips out of reach, he contented himself with kissing and nibbling at your jaw. “You might have to expand on it for me.”

“What would your shareholders think?” you asked. Nathan was an incredibly public figure and, while you weren’t a direct competitor, there could be questions about what he was doing with someone like you. There would be accusations that you were trying to scam some funds from him, at the very least.

With dark eyes and a rough tone, Nathan insisted, “I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. Never have, except this one super nerd with a weakness for biotech.”

“Yeah, you’ve really had a weakness for me,” you scoffed.

“Wait, are you serious?” he asked, sounding almost offended. “I wasn’t exactly subtle when we were in college.”

“First, remember that I was pretty sure we hated each other,” you reminded him. “Second, I thought all of the flirty shit was you messing with me.”

“Why did you think I always sat somewhere else until the game was over?” he pressed, exasperated. “I kept getting hard every time you’d beat me.”

“I didn’t beat you that often,” you said inanely. To be fair, you were still trying to process everything he had said up to that point.

“Every question you beat me on, sweetheart,” Nathan amended. “Fuck, nothin’ hotter than someone who’s smart and isn’t afraid to prove it. And then the first game you won, you didn’t even brag about it or rub it in my face. Hot and classy. I barely got back to my dorm.”

You laughed disbelievingly and Nathan held his hands up. “Listen, I’m not trying to talk you into anything you’re not interested in… but if you are interested, I’ve been down for ten years. Just say the fuckin’ word.”

A precious handful of moments were wasted between you as you struggled to come up with a clever word to say, but you tossed it out the window and pressed another kiss to his lips. He responded eagerly, instantly trying to deepen the kiss into something that wouldn’t have been appropriate in public, but you pulled back.

“Was that enough of a confirmation, or do I need to actually say it?” you asked, feeling playful at the heat and eagerness in his eyes.

“Babe, the only thing I want you to say is my name.” His dark brows waggled at you and a smirk gave his full lips an asymmetrical tilt. His hand in yours pulled you steadily toward the door of the Estuary.

When you reached the street, you paused, a thought occurring to you. “Nathan-”

He interrupted before you could finish what you were saying. “Yeah, kinda like that, but sexy.”

“How’s this for sexy?” you challenged, “My apartment is closer.”

He paused, looking torn. “I wanna argue that, but my place is a while away. I also don’t have neighbors, but after we’re done pissing yours off, we can relocate.”

The thought that he was planning some kind of future with you - even just the kind of future that was a handful of hours away - warmed you and you opted to walk to your apartment instead of trying to hail a ride.

When you reached your building, Nathan started to laugh. “You seriously moved a few blocks down from the Estuary? Be honest, you chose this place because it’s close to your trivia hookup.”

You tried to bristle at his theory, but he wasn’t wrong. So you kissed him instead.

As far as you knew, the elevator had been updated to teleport you to your floor, because the trip seemed to take no time at all. You fumbled with your keys while Nathan counted how many times he could make you shiver as he trailed fingertips up and down your back. You pulled him inside, already kissing him again even as you locked your door.

“I would offer you a tour,” you explained between kisses, “but I know you don’t care.”

“I care,” Nathan replied, his words interrupted just as often as yours had been, “just not right now. Wanna get you-”

He broke off with a groan as you grabbed his ass and gave it a healthy squeeze. “Where’s the bedroom?”

You laughed, hardly recognizing the throatiness of it. “Now you care?”

Nathan’s eyes were starting to look a little unhinged. “I’ll fuck you here, but we’d both be more comfortable in a bed. You have ten seconds to decide.”

In a few steps - and exactly eight seconds - you were in your bedroom. Nathan was already peeling away the material of your shirt while you worked at his pants. Fortunately, neither of you had dressed up for a trivia night at the bar, and stripping took very little time… though you would treasure the way Nathan’s face froze when he saw you in nothing but a bra and underwear.

Before long, he was pressing you back into the mattress, kissing you all the while. His body settled between your legs and you gave a subtle wiggle, trying to gauge whether you were wet enough to accommodate him just then. It was close, but you were ready enough to risk it.

It didn’t matter.

Nathan broke away from your lips, planting his hand on your chest when you tried to follow him. “No, no. You just lay there and keep making those pretty fuckin’ sounds for me.”

You shook your head, smiling ruefully. You should have known Nathan would never get straight to things. He liked to take his time, experiment, and - more than anyone knew - torment. Ah, well. At least you would finally get to see if his mouth was good for anything other than pissing you off.

True to form, Nathan started off with a tickling exploration of you, observing every way you reacted to his touches on your outer lips. Then he moved his attention to studying how you moved when he traced your inner folds. Teasing fingertips parted you, tracing every bit of delicate flesh until he ended with a soft brush against your clit.

You tilted your head up, ready to complain about his slow pace. As you parted your lips, he sealed his mouth over you, brushing your clit with his nose even as he thrust his tongue as far inside your core as he could reach. You choked on the breath you had taken, collapsing back onto the mattress even as the muscles of your stomach contracted with pleasure.

Nathan was good at this. Surprisingly good, you admitted to yourself. His mouth was plundering you, but never in a way that felt overwhelming. Not that you were in control of your senses - in fact, the opposite was true - but the pleasure never seemed to melt into an amorphous shape. You could feel every little thing that he was doing to you, and it was always just spaced out enough so that you approached the edge of orgasm, but couldn’t manage to hurl yourself over it. Even the odd scratch of his beard against your sensitive folds had you ready to beg for something a little more.

“Nathan,” you barked. Or, at least, you tried to bite out his name, voice harsh to show your irritation. Instead, it came out in a whine, a plea so desperate that it rose almost out of hearing at the end.

He grinned against your folds. “There it is.”

You grimaced at him, but Nathan thrust two fingers deep inside of you and lavished attention on your clit, pulling your legs up and over his shoulders to circumvent any attempt of squirming away from him… Not that you could even consider it. No, you were too busy imploding around his fingers and trying not to scream.

Instead, you writhed across your mattress, gasping his name as he kept the waves of pleasure crashing over you until you were worried you would drown with it. Eventually, he let you press his head away. Before you could fully recover, you heard something strange. You looked down to find Nathan cleaning the shining remnants of your orgasm from his mouth. His beard was damp with what his tongue couldn’t reach and that distracted you so thoroughly that you almost didn’t notice the way the muscles of his arm were flexing.

And then you did notice and it was all you could concentrate on.

“Bateman,” you said, quickly amending that to, “Nathan.”

He glanced up, face quizzical like he wasn’t jerking off at the foot of your bed. You bit back a growl, turning it into, “Get up here and fuck me.”

The grin that spread over his face seemed even wider with the darkness of his beard and it made you smile back. His kiss pressed you back against the mattress again, but he cut it off to ask, “You wanna be on top or bottom?”

You considered it for a moment. “I don’t think either of us want to wait for me to get my leg strength back. You can be on top.”

He nodded, shifting with pent-up energy. You glanced down between you, catching a glimpse of his cock straining to reach you. He was visibly leaking and so hard that he had to be in pain. Even those mindless movements had turned to helpless little thrusts against the bed.

When you leaned back, spreading your legs for him, the awestruck look on his face erased any shyness you may have felt. (Though there was a limit to how shy you could really be since his face had been buried in your pussy only a few minutes before.) You could feel the wetness of your core, dripping with Nathan’s spit and your own slick.

“Are you-? Shit, I need a condom…” Nathan moved to stand, but you caught at him. He had bragged about his clean bill of health a week before - though you hadn’t thought to tie that to anything more serious than idle conversation at the time - and you were feeling adventurous.

“If you want,” you told him. “But I’m clean and I know you are, too. I’m on the pill. We can-”

You never got the chance to finish your offer. By that point, Nathan was on top of you fully, his cock falling heavily against your folds. He gave a short groan. In half a moment, he was inside you, having thrust inside in a single ill-paced move.

You gasped sharply, your nails digging into his back as you struggled to adjust around him. Nathan wasn’t a small man, and even your well-prepared body could have used a slower entrance.

“Fuck,” he growled. “You good?”

“Yeah, just… just need a minute,” you panted, feeling the way your inner muscles were dancing over his length as you stretched to fit him.

“Sure, sure,” Nathan agreed, eyes half-closing as his jaw flexed. “Feel so good. So good. If I had known… I would never have left you alone. Would have begged you for this.”

“You never left me alone anyway,” you pointed out, a slight tightness in your voice the only thing that betrayed you.

He chuckled, and the low rumble of it ran through you like a pleasant shiver. Your breath caught as your body switched from ‘don’t move’ to ‘please move please-please-please’.

You rolled your hips, working him a fraction of an inch deeper. Nathan’s shoulders flexed with effort as he shook his head. “Don’t do that, sweetheart. Not unless you want me to lose control.”

You did it again, fighting back a grin when he looked down at you with wild eyes. He must have caught whatever mischief was in your face, though, because he nodded intently. “If that’s how you feel…”

His first full thrust drove the breath from your lungs and you never did feel like you got it back. Part of that was from the incredible thickness of him working in and out of you, the way he felt sliding from you and pushing his way back in. It was a gorgeous sensation, and your toes were curling with the pleasure of it even as your brow crinkled.

But the feeling of him inside of you wasn’t the only thing that kept you off-balance. No, the intensity on Nathan’s face had you stumbling. Those dark eyes were burrowing into yours, and you felt like he was studying your very soul even behind the lenses of his glasses.

You closed your eyes as he hit your g-spot, sending shivers running through you.

“Don’t do that, sweetheart,” he pleaded. “Keep those eyes open, okay? Need to- fuck… Need to see you. Want you to see me…”

That command - along with the searching kiss he planted on your lips - left you too close to come back. “Nathan, I- I’m…”

He nodded easily, like he was coolly unaffected by the news of your impending pleasure, but his hips thrusted so sharply that you let out a little cry. “Go ahead, come for me. Shit, come on me. I’m gonna- Won’t last much longer, either.”

You rolled your hips just a little harder, purposefully clamping down around him. Nathan hissed out a breath, his head tilting back with it before he fixed his eyes on you once more. There was a groove between his thick brows, like he was fixing all of his concentration on you alone.

It was the sexiest thing you’d ever seen.

“Come for me, sweetheart,” he urged, fingers tightening on your hips as he managed to spear a tiny bit deeper into you. “Come on, let me feel you…”

You felt your core tighten around him - tighter than you could ever dream of doing normally - and then release, milking him for cum he wasn’t giving up yet. He gritted his teeth and fought to keep going, eyes locked on yours the entire time.

At the peak of your orgasm, your mouth fell open and you could feel that sound was coming out. What that sound was, you didn’t know; there was a roaring in your ears too loud to hear past. But, from the smugness on Nathan’s face, it was safe to assume that it was his name.

Just as you were coming down from your peak, Nathan reached his. Those dark eyes were still locked on yours, but you could see the way they tightened around the corners as he speared himself as deep into you as he could go. Through your own aftershocks, you could feel the way he was pulsing inside of you, painting you with hot streams of cum. When Nathan finally relaxed, he was resting almost his full weight on you.

It should have been unpleasant, you reflected. You were both sticky with cooling sweat, and you could feel cum beginning to gush from around Nathan’s softening cock. Your thighs ached at being forced apart for so long and you could feel the beginnings of beard burn forming in several fascinating places.

Yes, it should have been unpleasant, catching your breath with Nathan Bateman. But even as you struggled to catch your breath, you both found enough air to share a chuckle.

“Guess I should stop crushing you now,” Nathan murmured, pulling out before rolling off you.

You grimaced and squeezed your thighs together in an attempt to fight the flow of cum steadily leaking out of you. Nathan saw the motion and grabbed something off the side of the bed, handing you a piece of fabric in the next moment. You snorted when you realized it was a sock.

“I’d offer to get you a washcloth, but my knees aren’t working yet,” Nathan told you. He squinted around the room. “And I have no idea where your bathroom is.”

You snorted. “Well, there are three doors in this room and we came in through one of them. I like those odds.”

“You think 50/50 is good odds?” Nathan asked, sounding scandalized. “Remind me never to go gambling with you.”

“50/50 would be incredible odds in gambling,” you argued, feeling faintly ridiculous bickering about it with a sock pressed between your legs. “Just admit you’re not a gambler, Bateman.”

Nathan rolled onto his side to face you and your eyes were drawn down to the scars on his chest and stomach. You pulled your gaze away quickly, but the wariness on his face told you that he had seen you. Quietly, he said, “I only gamble when it matters.”

To break the mood, you scoffed. “I’ve seen you bet whether a bird would eat some roadkill.”

“It was a hawk and it was trying to fly away with an entire racoon!” He sounded outraged, but there was a glimmer of good humor growing in his eyes once more. “I made fifty bucks on that bet, too.”

“The true foundation of your fortune,” you replied.

He rolled away and stood up, pausing a moment as if to check whether his knees would hold up. “I’m going on a brave, daring quest to your kitchen. Assuming I make it alive, do you want anything?”

“I’d love a glass of water,” you requested. As he reached the door, you said, “If you reach the piranha moat, you’ve gone too far. And if you run into the dragon, the password is ‘butterscotch’.”

“Ha, ha,” Nathan fake-laughed over his shoulder as he disappeared into the darkened hallway.

You sat smiling like an idiot for longer than you would care to admit.

---

Author's Note - And that's it! Thanks for reading - I would love to know what you thought!

I don't offer a taglist for explicit works, but you can find other works on my masterlist!

#fanfic february #fanfic february 2023 #fanficfebruary #ex machina #ex machina (2015)#nathan bateman #nathan bateman x reader #nathan bateman x you #reader insert #reader insert fic #reader insert smut #lemon #not suitable for minors #minors dni

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livingdreams97 · 2 years

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Emily Dickinson- "The past comes back" (part 1)

Emily Dickinson x fem! reader/oc

Summary: An old friend of Lavinia's returns to Amherst after years out of town and not seeing each other. But what happens when Lavinia's friend turns out to be not only her friend, but two more girls and one of them turns out not to remember her.

Words: 3.366

Masterlist

NOTE: If you see any spelling mistake im sorry, english is not my first lenguage and i try to do it the best possible.

Emily's POV

Today was another day, another day less in this cruel and superficial world. Life is something monotonous, without changes, without news and without any inspiration.

I let out a sigh looking out the window of my room, sitting in the chair in front of my desk and with a blank sheet of paper for hours. Although in reality it could have been only a few minutes and that the overwhelming silence of my mind makes me believe that more time has passed than it actually has.

Lavinia: You're not going to believe who's back.- she says completely excited almost knocking down the door of my room to enter.

Emily: Who's back?- i ask setting the paper aside and giving her my full attention.

Lavinia: My best friend is back.- she shouts jumping excitedly in her place.

Emily: Since when do you have more friends than Jane, Abby, Abiah and Toshiaki.- I say laughing at her attitude.

Lavinia: First of all, that has offended me. - she claims me crossing her arms over her chest. -Second, I have more friends apart from those weirdos and third; you are the one who only has one friend: Sue.- She lists looking at me with narrowed eyes.

Emily: Okay now i'm the one that is ofended.- i say loking at her with narrowed eyes.

Lavinia: Whatever, you're not going to spil the emotion of my moment.- she assures me pointing to me.

Emily: Okey. - i say raising my hands in the air with innocence. -Can you tell me who's back already?- i asked, slightly interested.

Lavinia: Y/n Harvard is back.- she shouts full of emotion.

Emily: Harvard like the university of Massachusetts?- i ask slightly confused.

Lavinia: Yes, her great- greatgranfather was the main founder of the university and thats why she moved to Cambridge back 13 years ago.- she answers me and I open my eyes in surprise.

Emily: Wow that's impresive.- i say and she nods her head. –But why they had to move there?- i ask confuse, since I don't see a clear reason to move there and now return to Amherts after thirteen years.

Lavinia: They moved because her grandfather died and her father had to occupy the position of director at the university.- she answers me and I nod without being entirely sure.

Emily: And why she is back now?- i ask still unsure.

Lavinia: From what Maggie has told me, her maid has told her that they have come to fix some things in the house and the family land.- she answers me and I nod in understanding.

Emily: And why aren't you with her now? - Confused question. -If they've come back for things around the house, it means they won't stay long and you should take advantage of it.- I explain and she smiles full of emotion.

Lavinia: That's because mom has talked to Y/n's mother and has invited them to have dinner with us.- She replies, jumping back on the spot. -So I need you to behave, don't do anything strange and don't say any of your poetic reflections.- she orders me pointing her finger at me.

Emily: And what if I just don't go down to dinner? - I ask hopefully.

I'm hoping she'll let me stay in my room, writing and waiting for the dead to show up so I can have an intellectual conversation with him. Because I don't like it very much when there are people at home and less when I don't know those people. Y/n may have been Lavinia's best friend, but I don't remember her and we may not have even exchanged words in the past.

So I hope that for fear of me making a scene or saying something I shouldn't, Lavinia will let me stay in my room in my inspiring solitude so that I can enjoy the tranquility of my loneliness by myself.

Lavinia: Nope, that's not going to happend.- she shake your head. -Sue and Austin will also come to dinner, so you have to go down to the dining room and socialize with our guests.- she tells me seriously.

Emily: But why? - I ask in the form of an exaggerated false cry. -I don't even know who Y/n is or I'm sure we didn't even talk when she lived here.- I complain seeing how she opens her eyes in surprise.

Lavinia: Emily Elizabeth Dickinson have you forgotten about Y/n? - she asks me completely surprised.

Emily: Okey there's no need to use my full name.- i say impressed by her tone of voice and the use of my middle name.

Lavinia: Yes, it is necessary, how could you forget about Y/n? - Question completely surprised. -Sue, Y/n, you and I were like the town quartet, they never saw one of us without the others.- she tells me and I open my eyes surprised by the new information.

Emily: Wait what?- i ask completly taken away.

Lavinia: You really don't remember her?- she asks me between impressed, sad and surprised.

Emily: No i don't.- i respond by shaking my head uncertainly.

Lavinia: Could you at least pretend that you remember her when she comes to dinner, please.- I laugh and I nod confused.

Emily: Why do you want me to pretend that I remember her? - I ask interested and confused.

Lavinia: Because she has always held you in esteem, she always said that your mind was incredible and she always asked about you when we wrote to each other.- she explains to me and I open my eyes in surprise.

Emily: Now I feel bad for not remembering her.- I tell her feeling some guilt in my stomach.

Lavinia: You're right to feel bad, you were just as obsessed with her as she was with you.- she tells me and I frown trying to remember her. -You were actually closer to Y/n at that time than you were to Sue.- she explains and I look at her completely impressed.

Emily: Is that serious? - I ask with my mouth slightly open.

Lavinia: Why would i lie?- she asks me confused - Anyway, when you go down to dinner, clean the remains of ink from your hands and make sure that she doesn't realize that you don't remember her, please.- she asks me and I nod with a sigh.

Emily: I'll try not to let her know.- I nod.

Lavinia: Okay, thank you very much.- She thanks me and walks towards the door of my room. -They'll come around five o'clock, so be ready and try to be as normal as possible,- she begs me and walks out the door, closing it behind her.

Once alone again in my room, I try to think and look through my memories in search of Y/n. If what Lavinia has told me is true, I don't understand why I don't remember her and the friendship we had.

I try as hard as I can to remember her, but I only see Sue and my sister, along with Jane, Abby, Abiah, and Toshiaki. Suddenly inspiration strikes me, so I turn back in my chair to the table and start writing on the blank paper from a while ago.

Watching the clouds go by, life went by and you, like a cloud, passed through my boredom. And then your heart and mine were united, as the edges of a wound come together.

The last dreams and the first gray hair all beautiful things sadden with shadow; and today your life and my life are like stars, because they can be seen together, being so far away...

I well know that oblivion, like cursed water, it gives us a thirst deeper than the thirst it takes away, But I'm so sure I can forget...

And I will look at the clouds without thinking that I love you in the deaf habit of an old sailor that he still feels, on solid ground, the undulation of the sea.

(Jose Angel Buesa, it's not Emily's but imagine it is)

Y/n's POV

I'm excited, ecstatic even. Today I had returned to the place where I was born and where I lived my first 10 years of life. The last time I set foot in the house where I was born was 13 years ago and time has had its effect even on it.

Everything was the same, but there was something in the environment that made it strange and gave a feeling of ignorance. I don't know if it's because of the dust, the white sheets covering every piece of furniture in the house or the perspective of where I'm seeing the house now.

When I was ten years old, barely one meter thirty, my vision was different and the things within reach of my hands were reduced. But now that I am 23 years old, I am 1.73 meters tall and I see things from a different angle. The things or places that I could not access before are at the height of my hands.

I go up the stairs caressing the railing of my childhood home, remembering how it felt to slide down it and the good times I spent on these stairs. I remember the times Lavinia, Emily, Sue and I would race up the stairs. Like the time I fell from them with Lavinia, because Emily pushed me laughing and I clung to my best friend ending with a small scar on my eyebrow thanks to the fall.

I stop looking at the corridor on the second floor, where the rooms are and I walk towards the back where mine is. As I walk down the hall in a relaxed manner, I look at the photos hanging on it and stop when I see a family photo.

In the photo you can see my father sitting on a sofa, with my mother sitting to his right and my older sister to his left. Then my brother is on my mother's lap and I am sitting on my father's lap.

I am the youngest of three children, my older sister Amber got married seven years ago and already has two children Adam and Alana. Adam is already five years old and Alana just turned 3 just two weeks ago. And she is four months pregnant with her third child.

Amber is the oldest of the three, then there is Brandon and then there is me. Amber is 6 years older than me, Brandon is two years younger than her and four years older than me. So right now my sister is 29 years old and Brandon is 27 years old.

My brother was harder to settle down, or at least that's what my parents tell everyone. He got married just two years ago and his wife is also pregnant with his first child. The truth is that I don't have a very good relationship with her, because there is something that doesn't convince me about her attitude and I'm not sure that she deserves my brother.

But they're already married and my brother loves her, so there's nothing I can do about it.

And then there's me, the youngest and only single of the three Harvard Anderson children. The truth is that I have never been interested in meeting a man and starting a family. To be honest, I don't think I'm ever will be a good mother and I don't even know how to dedicate myself to serving a man other than my father. And it's not that I like too much to serve my father or do any domestic choir.

I am more interested in studies, training as a person and knowing something more than cooking or housework. Thank God, my parents have never pressured me to get married, since I am my father's right eye and he has always pampered me in everything.

In addition to my father being the director of Harvard, he has given me the opportunity to attend some classes on what interested me and has also taught me everything I wanted to know.

I stop dead in front of the door of my childhood room, take a deep breath and open the door taking a step inside it. I see the walls painted a pale pink slightly faded by time, the relief of the furniture under the sheets and I smile longingly.

In quick movements I begin to remove each of the sheets, revealing my single bed with the ballerina quilt, the nightstands, the dark brown closet in which I used to hide when I played hide-and-seek, the chair where my mother put my clothes for the day after and finally the desk in front of one of my windows.

Delicately move my fingers over the surface of the table, feeling the relief of the names carved on it. I smile sadly, remembering my last day in this house and the promise that was made in this very room.

Flashback

Lavinia: Why do you have to go?- she asks with teary eyes and a pout.

Y/n: Because I have to go with my family.- i answer with teary eyes just like her.

Emily: And if you stay with us?-She asks hopefully and pointing to herself and her little sister.

Y/n: I don't think they'll let me.- I answer with a pout, trying with all my strength to avoid crying.

Emily: But they have to leave you, you can't go and leave us here.- she whimpers letting the first tear fall from her eyes.

Sue : You can do that.- supports her best friend. -I don't want to lose you either.- she sighs with sadness and resisting the desire to cry just like me.

Y/n: I can't do anything.- I whisper and feel how the tears begin to fall from my eyes again.

Lavinia: But you can't go, if you go you'll forget us and I don't want you to forget me.- She starts to cry and throws herself into my arms.

Y/n: I don't want to leave my best friends either.- I whisper, hugging the youngest tightly.

Emily: Don't go.- she begs me starting to cry and joining the hug.

Sue: Please?- She asks with a somewhat broken voice, approaching more calmly and joining the group hug.

Y/n: If it were up to me I would stay here with you forever.- I assure her, crying with them. -But I can't choose.- I whisper very sad to leave my friends behind.

Sue: You have to promise us that you'll come back.- she asks me separating from the hug and with a tear sliding down her cheek.

Lavinia: Yes, you have to promise.- support her sister's best friend.

Emily: And if we make a promise.- she offers and all the same attentive ones. -I took this from father, but I don't really know what he does or what it is used for.- she comments taking a screwdriver from the pocket of her dress.

Sue We could write our names on something with that.- She points to the sharp object in our friend's hand.

Lavinia: Let's write our names on Y/n's desk and promise to be friends forever.- She jumps up from the floor and grabs the pointed object from her sister.

Sue: I think it's a good idea. - she supports her, also getting up from the ground. -But you and Y/n will not write, because you are very small and it can be dangerous.- she says and I pout crossing my arms.

Y/n: You say it as if you were much older than the two of us.- I deny getting up from the ground and helping Emily to do it too.

Sue: I'm older than you by two years and older than Vini by three.- she points at us and we both stick out our tongues at her.

Sue starts carving the names of the four of us into the bottom left corner of my desk, being careful not to hurt herself, and ends up making an infinity over the names.

Lavinia: Now we will be friends forever.- she says excitedly hugging me around my waist and I do the same with her.

Emily: Promise us that you won't forget us.- She asks me looking straight into my eyes and there is something in them that creates curiosity in me.

Y/n: I promise.- i assure with a nod full of strength. -I promise to write every week.- I assure them and the three of them smile at me a little happier.

Emily: And we promise to answer each letter.- she promises me and she throws herself on me to hug me tightly by the neck.

Sue: Friends forever.- she says joining the hug from behind.

Lavinia: Friends forever.- she repeats against my shoulder.

Emily: Friends forever.- She secures against my neck, tickling me and making my heart race unexpectedly.

Y/n: Friends forever.- I say and close my eyes to enjoy my last moments for a while with my friends.

A couple of minutes later my maid, Clement, arrives to let us know that we have to go and that my family is waiting for me by the family carriage. We parted from the embrace and they escorted me to the carriage. Emily was holding one of my hands tightly and Vini was holding my other hand in the same way.

As soon as the carriage moved on and left Amherts farther and farther behind, a bigger and bigger hole opened up in my heart.

End of Flashback

That was the last time I saw my best friends, I haven't seen them again in 13 years and thanks to my return that will change today. Though I'm not so sure Sue and Emily share my excitement about the reunion.

I kept my part of the promise and wrote to them every week. It didn't matter if I didn't have anything interesting to tell, I just wrote and told them how much I missed them. I remember that I wrote three letters, one for each one and to prevent one from feeling less than the others.

For the first five months the three of them answered my letters, telling me what they did in their day to day and the adventures they had.

But one day Emily stopped responding to my letters, I never understood if I had written something that had offended or annoyed her and that's why she stopped writing to me. But Vini assured me that that was impossible and that Emily was just in a rebellious phase too busy to anything else.

Then Sue stopped writing to me three months after Emily did. This time Vini explained Sue's family situation to me and I understood her reasons for her to stop writing to me. After all, death at an early age is hard, especially when she is someone close and part of the family.

The only person with whom I have continued to correspond my letters during these thirteen years has been Lavinia. The only change was that instead of weekly, we wrote to each other every month and recounted everything that had happened to us.

Thanks to those letters, i received information about how both Sue and Emily were. It was the only source of information I had about them and to this day I thank Vini for continuing to keep in touch with me.

Thanks to her I knew that Emily had begun to be interested in poetry, that Sue and Austin; her older brother, they had started a relationship and had been married not long ago.

But I don't hold a grudge against either of them. Each one has a life of her own and a promise from when we were children is not something that you have to take into account when you get older.

You have to mature, grow as a individual and look forward without letting negative memories and feelings decide what you will do. That is why, as much pain and sadness that the lack of response caused me by my friends, I do not hold a grudge against them and I am excited to be able to see them again and speak personally to catch up.

Do you guys think that the parts are too long? Or they have a good lenght?

#emily dickinson x reader #emily dickinson #emily dickinson x female reader #emily dickinson x fem reader #hailee steinfeld #hailee x reader #hailee steinfield x reader #hailee steinfield x fem reader #emily dickinson x fem oc #dickinson series #love #lgbtq #dickinson #drama #reader #female oc #female reader #oc character

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