#DILF LUCIEN STRIKES AGAIN

[separatist-apologist]

Right Where You Left Me

If our love died young, I can't bear witness

Chapter 8: You Hit Me Like a Hurricane

Read: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | AO3

Summary: Lucien's stupid fucking penis

When it rained, it poured. Elain was midway through the breakfast rush when a familiar face strolled through her door. Graysen Nolan. He worked at the bank his father owned and when he did come by, he always came in a navy suit. Neatly coiffed, short brown hair that was a near match for his tawny eyes and a rather handsome face always garnered Graysen a lot of attention.

Just not from her. Elain had been turning him down for as long as he’d been coming around for all the good it did her.

Now, though….now she was supposed to go on a date with Lucien, assuming he ever came back. He’d been gone for three weeks wrapping up a case and though he face timed with Ivy each night, Elain still had no idea when he’d return. Maybe, she reasoned, as Graysen made his way to the front of the line, what she needed was a side-by-side comparison of both men. 

“Hey you,” he grinned.

“The usual?” she asked. Graysen always had a soy milk latte. 

“You remembered,” he all but crooned. “Can I have one of the blueberry muffins, too? And a date, while you’re at it? Tonight, seven o clock? I’ll pick you up.”

“Does that ever work?” she asked, walking to the case to pick out his muffin.

“We’re about to find out,” Graysen replied cheerfully. “Come on. Don’t reject me in front of Doris,” he added conspiratorially at the elderly woman watching the two of them with eager eyes.

“Aright. Tonight, seven. But only to spare your ego.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” Graysen grinned, paying quickly. “I’ll meet you right out front.”

“He’s handsome,” Doris told Elain too loudly, earning an easy grin thrown over Graysen’s shoulder…and a scowl from Eris Vanserra at the very end of the line.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Eris interrupted, five customers back. “Is he really that handsome if he doesn’t bother to tip?”

“Oh, you hush,” Maureen ordered, poking Eris in the stomach. Elain turned back to her customers, dreading Eris’s slow approach. Taking advantage of his position as the last person in line,

Eris leaned his elbows on the counter, stretching his long, lean body.

“If you’re trying to bring Lucien home early, this is a good way to do it,” Eris began casually as Elain worked on his coffee. 

“This has nothing to do with Lucien,” Elain said quickly. “And it’s none of your business.”

“No, I suppose not…though who is watching my niece tonight?”

“Not you,” Elain shot back, sliding his cup across the counter. “So don’t worry about it.”

Eris jammed his usual twenty in her tip chair, holding her gaze as if to make a point. Most of her patrons tipped, even if it was just a few coins tossed in the jar but it wasn’t an expectation. Besides, not everyone carried cash on them. She didn’t have a set up for tipping on a card. Not yet, anyway. 

“No, but my mother?”

“Your not girlfriend Arina, actually,” Elain replied, digging in that knife. Eris had been trying so hard with Arina and getting absolutely nowhere. “Your family doesn’t have a monopoly on my daughter.”

“No, just half her genes.”

“Go away, Eris.”

“This is going to blow up in your face. The Nolans are a different breed, Elain.”

“Well, you’d know,” she all but sneered. 

“He’s not going to be nice like Lucien—”

“How do you know Lucien is nice?” Elain interrupted, hands on her hips. Eris rolled his eyes. 

“Because I grew up with him dragging around his little baby dolls and I see his puppy eyes every time he sees you. Also, and most importantly, Lucien is nice. Just barely a Vanserra at all, if we’re being honest. All the charm, none of the grit.”

“Maybe if you had less grit and more charm, Arina would let you take her on a date,” Elain offered sweetly. Eris scowled. 

“Arina’s days are numbered,” he warned. “Just like yours. I hope you two like being sisters because that’s how this will end. You, tucked away in some cozy cottage with eight more little gingers and Arina in a penthouse warming my bed.”

“That sounds like a really nice fantasy you have there, Eris,” Elain continued. “But to get a woman in your bed, she needs to like you, first.”

“She likes me,” Eris informed Elain. “You’ll see.”

“I suppose I will.”

Eris wasn’t the only one opposed to Elain and Graysen’s date. Arina strolled in after her class ended, Ivy in two, hands on her hips.

“You’re going out with Nolan?”

Elain sighed, elbows deep in bread dough. “Are we friends with Eris, now?”

Her cheeks flushed and Elain didn’t dare comment on it. “No. Of course not. He did tell me, though. What about Lucien?”

Elain wiped her forehead with her arm, ignoring the way her stomach lurched violently. “What about Lucien? He’s been gone for weeks.”

“He’s coming back,” Arina insisted, which was, perhaps, even worse. Lucien was likely up to no good. Buying a home with a pool in the backyard right by the park, researching school districts and looking for jobs. She knew what Lucien’s return meant. He’d be relentless, he’d come after her with everything he had. She just needed to know she was choosing him and not settling because it was easy.

So Elain left Ivy with Arina, showered and made herself look nice, all the while knowing what she would have done had it been Lucien promising to arrive at seven o clock. At the very least, she would have shaved her entire body. There would be no touching—over the clothes or otherwise—which made her feel particularly pressed to primp and preen.

Graysen was late. Ten minutes, to be exact. Elain sat on her front step feeling stupider by the minute in her floral sundress and her carefully curled hair. It was annoying considering she could have been in sweatpants eating in front of the television instead of trapped in a push-up bra waiting on a guy she only half-heartedly wanted to spend the night with. 

Lucien wouldn’t do this.

“Oh, shut up,” she whispered to the voice that sounded suspiciously like Eris’s. Graysen rolled up in a flashy car, top down, wind in his hair.

“Hop in,” he called with a honk of his horn. Elain sighed, but did as he asked. Graysen grinned when he saw her, leaning over to kiss her cheek.

“You look amazing,” he said. “Sorry I’m running behind. Work was a mess. I was thinking we could go to my place, though? Order take out, watch a movie…get to know each other?”

Elain had to bite back a scream. None of that was a date, it was merely the night she’d intended to have but trapped in Graysen’s house. 

“I have to be home by ten,” she replied.

“Oh right, your kid,” he frowned, pausing at a red light. “No worries. I’ll get you home in time.”

Oh right, your kid. The words clanged through her, leaving a sour taste in her mouth. “Her name is Ivy.”

Graysen nodded, one hand on the steering wheel. Another expensive watch, just like Lucien and Eris and every other man in her life these days, and yet Graysen’s rolled up sleeve and his posture made it seem as if he wanted her to notice it. Even Eris, who wasn’t subtle, didn’t make any kind of show when it came to his wealth. 

“How old is she?”

“Five.”

“That’s a good age,” he said, taking her towards the Vanserra’s part of town. Graysen lived nearby, not in the same gated off neighborhood—no one but the Vanserra’s lived up there—but in an equally nice two story that he’d very obviously built himself. It was modern, the architecture strangely eclectic, as if he’d tried to smash together four different time periods with the beige stone, the turrets, and the bay windows. None of it was original, like the veneer of opulence with rot just beneath. 

He was proud of it, though. Graysen gave Elain the full tour as he described how much it had cost him for this installation or that. The art was bland, the furniture uninspiring. She thought of her own house and the bright colors and the plants and the maximalism compared to Graysen’s minimalism and knew he would have hated seeing how she lived.

“How does Thai sound?” he asked once they were in his massive, open kitchen. Elain almost offered to cook something just to use his fancy glass top stove and the silver pots hanging over the range. She didn’t want to give him any ideas, not when this date was already a cover for fucking. He’d put in no effort and after a year of asking her out, Elain just assumed he’d be more interested. 

She guessed, judging by how Graysen hung his suit jacket over the edge of a bar chair, that most women didn’t ask him to. Good looks could get you everywhere. “How’s your bakery doing?” he asked after a moment, leaning over the counter to really look at her. 

Elain slid her phone from her pocket, ignoring the missed call from Lucien to pull up Eris’s name.

“It’s good. I love it.”

Maybe you were right. Can you pick me up?

“You’re always busy,” he agreed. “It's intimidating. I hope you don’t mind but I peeked at your financials….you bought the bakery from us…in cash?”

“In cash,” she agreed coolly, immediately annoyed. He didn’t register the tone.

“Impressive. You don’t turn much of a profit, though. I could help with that.”

“I’m alright,” Elain replied. Graysen reached for her hand as her phone lit up in the other.

I’m ALWAYS right. Where are you? 

He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “Well, I’m around. I like to help.”

“I appreciate that,” she lied. She was starting to not appreciate any of it at all. “Do you want to maybe go out, tonight?”

Graysen’s eyebrows raised. “Go out? Why?”

“A date…it’s just…this feels like a hook-up,” she finally told him, her stomach churning again. She was going to throw up though she couldn’t explain why. The sudden, overwhelming nausea made her feel too hot, too sensitive. She didn’t want his hand on her, didn’t want to be standing in heels. 

“It’s a little of both,” Graysen said wolfishly. “I figured you’d be down.”

Because she already had a kid. He didn't need to say why he figured she’d be down—Elain had heard it before. She must be easy, must always want to fuck because they had proof she’d done it before. Perhaps worse was always the underlying assumption she should be grateful for the interest at all, as if no one would want her outside of wanting an easy lay.

“Oh.”

At Graysen’s house. 

“It’s cool if you’re not,” he amended hastily. “We can just chill, see where the night takes us.”

“Can I have a glass of water?” she asked, trying to swallow against her urge to break down crying. 

Graysen pulled a bottle of water from his nice fridge. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she lied, gulping down the cold water. “It’s been a long day, I guess.”

“For real,” he agreed. “I hope you don’t think—”

Loud, furious thumping on his front door interrupted whatever he’d meant to say. Graysen scowled.

“What the fuck is up with these delivery drivers?”

Elain trotted after Graysen, well aware it wasn’t Thai food but Eris Vanserra on the other side, grinning like an asshole when the door was yanked open.

“What did I tell you about people who don’t tip, Elain?” he chided by way of greeting? “This place is fucking ugly, by the way. I didn’t know people paid money for McMansions still…it’s very…two thousand tens, I think.”

“What are you doing here?” Graysen demanded as Elain slipped from beneath his arm.

“I’ve come to rescue my sister,” he replied. “She thought you wanted to take her somewhere, not paw at her like a bear.”

“Your sister?”

“Yeah, you heard me. Sister,” Eris’s amusement faded to ice. “So I’d consider your next words with exceptional care.”

Graysen said nothing at all, merely slammed the front door in both Elain and Eris’s face. Eris’s anger slipped back into amusement.

“I’ll have you know, your daughter and I were playing hide and seek when you called in this rescue,” Eris grumbled, walking her down the immaculate hedged lined sidewalk to his sleek, black car.

“With Arina?”

“Yes, Elain. With Arina,” Eris said, yanking open her door with a relish. “I like kids, you know. I want one…probably just one, actually.”

Eris snapped the door shut, a reminder of truly how low the bar was when it came to romance. “Leave Ivy until ten,” he murmured halfway home. 

“So you can use my kid to get into Arina’s pants?”

“Because I like the excuse to spend time with her,” Eris replied with a surprising amount of emotion. Elain didn’t dare ask Eris what her he referred to. She merely slid from the leather interior of his car into the cool night air. Eris waited for her to type the code to her door before zipping into the night. She wasn’t going up—not yet.

She marched to the corner store, still nauseous, still hungry, still anxious. Filling a little basket with gingerale and snacks, Elain paused when her fingers grazed a pickle jar. She hated pickles, always had…with the notable exception of Ivy’s pregnancy. It was the sour and the salt. For whatever reason, the combination calmed her furious stomach. She’d gone back to hating the taste the moment Ivy entered the world.

Elain grabbed a jar before turning to the body care aisle. “Fuck you, Lucien,” she whispered, unable to look at the cheerful pink box as she grabbed it. They’d had unprotected sex one time, the day of his fathers funeral in the bathroom, and she’d thought he’d come on her leg, not in her body. 

Overreacting. You’re just overreacting. she repeated the words over and over as she paid, as she walked home, as she went into her ocean themed bathroom and peed on that stupid fucking stick.

Elain set the test on the kitchen counter against a paper towel and went to work on her jar of pickles. It took her all of thirty seconds. The test should have taken three minutes.

“Fuck you, Lucien,” she said again, staring at that pink plus sign. “Fuck you.”

~*~

Five weeks. That was how long it took to pack up his entire life, to leave his job, and get all his belongings into a U-Haul so he could drive two states down, dump it all in storage, and move back into his childhood bedroom. 

“Welcome home,” his mother crooned when Lucien woke that morning. He had only one objective—see Elain.

“Thanks. Hey, can you watch Ivy tonight? I’ve got plans with Elain.”

“What kind of plans?” his mother asked. 

“After hours at the zoo kind of plans,” he said roguishly. “Called in a couple favors…and made a donation. I thought she’d like to meet the seals.”

“I’ll bet Ivy would, too,” his mother reminded him and Lucien was certain she would. This was about Elain and showing her a perfect time in a low stakes environment where she didn’t feel pressured by his penis. Though they’d been having sex, the point, he hoped, was to prove he was the sort of man she could depend on. Trust, even. Father material, husband material, the whole thing. 

On his next date, if Elain wanted, they could do something as a family. Perhaps a vacation to Disneyland. Children liked Disneyland, he thought. Lucien didn’t bother calling to let Elain know he’d arrived, hoping to catch her looking messy and covered in flour, hair a mess after a late lunch rush. His favorite, he thought with a relish.

“Elain!” he called, taking the steps two at a time. It was Ivy who unlocked the front door with glee. No trace of her infection remained if the flowers woven into her braided pigtails were any indication. “Hey you!”

“Hey!” she smiled, all but launching into his arms. “Where’s mama?”

“Taking a shower.”

“Can you do me a favor? Will you go grab some clothes for Amera’s tonight?”

“Do I get to stay? Can I swim?”

“Yes and…” Lucien pretended to think before dropping her to the ground. “Yes. Go, go, go,” he added, rushing her down the hall before flinging open the bathroom door. Elain screeched, yanking back the seashelled shower curtain to look at him. 

“You’ve never heard of knocking?!” she demanded, eyes sliding over his body. He’d put the nice slacks and the vest back on, well aware of how good he looked in a pair of well-tailored pants and a white button up. 

“It’s not my fault if our daughter has no sense of stranger danger,” he replied cheerfully. “I missed you too, by the way.”

Elain exhaled a soft breath, her face strangely pale. “I didn’t think you were coming back.”

“I told you I was. I had to wrap up one last project and then I ran out the door. I’m back in my mom’s house like a total loser so I expect you to lick my wounded pride tonight.”

She groaned again. “No licking.”

He shrugged. “More for me. I’m gonna wait in your bedroom and when you’re ready, why don’t you come in and give me a show?”

Elain snapped the curtain closed. “What’s gotten into you?” she demanded. “I seem to recall a date, not some easy lay—”

“Whoa, hey, who said you were easy? I am fighting for my life in the trenches when it comes to you. I have a date planned. Ivy’s packing up as we speak. Mom is gonna watch her and I am taking you to meet some very friendly seals.”

There was a beat, and then her pale face peeking behind the curtain again. “Seals?”

“That’s right, Elain. Did you think I forgot our first date at the zoo? I got us in after hours so you can meet them, like shake their hands—”

“Shut up,” she whispered, her eyes brightening. “You did not.”

“Of course I did. And then we’ll have the finest zoo nachos money can buy and you’ll rethink your position on licking.”

Elain smiled. “We’ll see.”

She vanished for the second time to the sound of running water. Honey and jasmine filled the steamy air, sending Lucien retreating to check on Ivy. She was working on shoving a massive pink elephant into a small backpack, which suited him just fine. He meant what he’d said to Elain about the show, strolling into her neat bedroom to rifle through her underwear drawer. 

Lucien dug out a lacy pink number just as his eyes snagged on a plastic bag holding a curiously familiar sight half wrapped in a paper towel. Lucien dropped the underwear to open the bag, his trembling fingers pulling out a positive pregnancy test.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered to himself. “Oh my God.”

He’d been so careful…except after Beron’s funeral. He’d been too drunk and angry to think about protection and had, he thought, done a good job pulling out. Clearly not if she was taking a pregnancy test.

“Daddy!” Ivy’s voice cut through Lucien’s frantic thoughts, prompting him to shove the test back into the bag and leave it exactly where he found it. Ivy had been testing out what she liked calling him and begun doing so over the phone. Sometimes he was Lucien—or Lulu, if she was trying to draw a reaction—and other times he was daddy. Lucien knew which he preferred, though he didn’t dare try and sway her in any one direction.

He heard the shower cut just as he stepped into her little pink bedroom, still holding that enormous elephant. “She doesn’t fit,” Ivy told him helplessly, throwing her hands in the air before collapsing to the ground in tears. 

Father, you’re a father—and you will be one again. “That’s okay,” Lucien murmured, picking up the backpack filled with a mishmash of unmatched clothes and zipping it. “What if I carried her?”

Ivy blinked away her tears. “That would be good.”

He booped her nose. “See? You don’t have to cry. You take your backpack and I’ll take Ellie and we’ll let Amera deal with it all afterwards.”

Ivy wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Okay.”

Elain peered in draped in a fuzzy purple bathrobe, her hair pulled off her face. “Everything okay?”

No, he nearly screamed. Lucien offered her an easy smile. “All good.”

He’d had the zoo all planned out after endless back and forth e-mails with a woman named Emily. There was supposed to be wine—that was the first thing to go. Elain passed politely when they arrived, taking a bottle of water without fuss and Lucien, unsure what the protocol was when your oldest daughter's mother was pregnant with your child again, did the same. In truth, Lucien could have used several shots back to back.

He’d joked about nachos but he’d arranged for a nice seafood dinner and that, too, went immediately out the window. Lucien had to frantically text Emily, who was at home, to give it to anyone else. He wasn’t an expert, but he didn’t think pregnant women could eat fish. It made his joke about zoo food literal truth and, at the same time, utter misery. He’d planned a nice meal, not to watch Elain pick at a hotdog with a green expression.  

His one saving grace were the seals. Elain was allowed to do more than meet—the keepers brought her right up to the edge where she could put her hand in the water and touch their rubbery little bodies. Still, Lucien was hiding his disappointment by the time he brought her back to his car, even as Elain all but bounced with each step, her cheeks bright. “Lucien, that was perfect.”

Standing in front of her car door, Lucien gaped. “Perfect?”

Elain nodded, biting her lower lip. Lucien reached for her face impulsively, kissing her before he could blurt out that he knew. Just—fuck, he was in love with her. Five weeks without her had been misery. How had he ever managed five years? She was so sweet, rising up on her tiptoes, arms around his neck, to kiss him back. 

“It’s too easy to impress you,” Lucien whispered, cupping her cheek all the same. 

“Try harder, then,” Elain replied, kissing him again. Lucien almost fell to his knees then, was left standing only by some otherworldly magic. He pulled open her door, checking out her side profile as she slid onto the leather. Clad in soft lilac, nothing about her seemed different. If he’d managed to get her pregnant at Beron’s funeral, that put Elain closer to seven weeks than six. Almost two months. Had it really been that long? 

“Since Ivy is already at your moms, do you want to stay the night?” Elain’s voice was almost breathless when he got in the car, the back of his shirt sticky against his back. 

“You’ve reconsidered, haven’t you?” Lucien teased, not daring to look at her. He was too obvious and he knew it, was betraying everything he thought, everything he felt. Elain, oblivious as she’d always been, didn’t notice. 

“No. I’m too tired to have sex tonight, with all the walking…and I don’t think you want to compete for second best tonight.”

“Hurtful but fair. Do you want to get something to eat?” Babies needed to eat, right? And so did the people carrying them. Elain huffed softly, leaning her head against his chair as they drove into the night, her legs stretched into the seat well. “Something salty.”

“C’mon—now you’re just teasing me.”

Elain swatted harmlessly. “Don’t be disgusting. What about french fries?”

“I could do that.”

He stopped so Elain could order half the menu, stars in her eyes, utterly unapologetic even when Lucien shoved her hand away to keep her from trying to lean across him and pay. “Sit down,” he hissed, all but throwing his wallet at the unamused worker. “This is my date.”

“Our date,” Elain argued, for whatever it was worth. “You’re trying to trick me into having sex with you.”

“Oh please,” Lucien retorted with a roll of his eyes. “We have children, sweetheart. I can have sex with you any time I like, money or not.”

“Can not.”

“No? So that night at your place…I imagined that?”

“What night at my place?” Elain replied, digging into one of the paper bags Lucien dropped on her lap for piping hot fries. “I don’t recall any night at my pla—oh, you mean the guy who can in six second with the tiny pe–”

“That’s enough of that,” Lucien interrupted. “You’re going to wound my fragile ego.”

“I can say it because we both know it's not true.”

That just barely pacified him. “Did you have fun tonight?”

“Yes,” Elain admitted through a mouth filled with fries. She ate the entire rest of the drive to her place, tapering off when it was time to get out of the car.

“I ate too much,” she whispered when he pulled open her door.

“You barely ate at all,” Lucien replied. He didn’t remember any of this from the first time. Had she felt so sick? He’d been at home and at lacrosse and all the other things he’d done as a seventeen year old but Elain had also been busy. If she’d been sick, he never would have known it.

And Elain was sick, puking fries right back up mere moments after they got up the stairs. Lucien followed after her, perched on the edge of the tub to hold her mass of golden brown hair. 

“Bring me the pickles,” she managed, heaving loudly a second time. Lucien grabbed a scrunchy from the sink counter and tied her hair back before stepping over her crouched body for the pickles in the fridge. Elain was hoarding them, as if she were afraid there might be a shortage. He twisted off the top before handing it to her, surprised when Elain just…took a drink.

“Is there something you need to share with me?”

She grimaced, pressing her back against the light blue wall, head half hidden beneath a barbie pink bath towel hanging from a rod. 

“I’m pregnant…again.”

Relief. It was pure relief to hear her say it. Lucien joined her on the white tile floor, lifting her legs so they were sprawled over his lap, his hands rubbing her bare shins. She looked over at him with those doe eyes and he could have been fifteen beneath the bleachers all over again, holding that pregnancy test while she watched. Terrified. 

“Don’t you dare,” she whispered when he closed his eyes, lips pressed together. It was all just like before.

Only Beron was dead this time.

Lucien couldn’t help but laugh.

“Let’s have a baby.”

It was the second time he’d said that to her.