HARRY STYLES
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RIVALS
☆ Declan O'Hara
What We Don't Admit (mini series) (FINISHED)
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HARRY STYLES
Instagram Story - H and Violet
RIVALS
☆ Declan O'Hara
What We Don't Admit (mini series) (FINISHED)
What We Don't Admit
Chapter 6 - No distance
Pairing: Declan O´Hara x Reader
Summary: Declan O'Hara, it turns out, is significantly more bearable when he's happy. Significantly.
Word Counting: 3,5k
Warnings: angst, miscommunication, jealousy, emotional repression, friends to lovers, slow burn, alcohol consumption, sexual content, explicit language.
masterlist
── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ──
Now that the two of you were officially together, everyone around you had become thoroughly sick of it.
Not because either of you were obnoxious about it.
Quite the opposite, actually.
It was subtle. Constant. A quick kiss exchanged in passing down Venturer corridors. Declan's hand resting absently on your knee beneath meeting tables. Your fingers brushing the back of his neck whilst arguing over television programming schedules like touching him had become second nature.
Which, somehow, it had.
And Declan —
God, Declan had become unbearable.
Not softer exactly.
Just happier. Lighter around the edges in a way nobody had ever seen before and nobody quite knew what to do with.
Rupert noticed it first, naturally.
"You realise," he said one evening over drinks, "that you look physically ill whenever she leaves a room now?"
Declan barely looked up from his whiskey. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Oh please," Freddie snorted from the armchair opposite. "You tracked her with your eyes through an entire meeting today."
"No I didn't."
"You absolutely did," Rupert grinned. "Frankly, it was revolting."
Declan exhaled slowly, leaning back into the sofa with reluctant resignation.
"I just—" His voice quietened slightly. "I wasted a lot of time."
That made both Rupert and Freddie pause.
Because Declan O'Hara admitting regret voluntarily was practically a historical event.
His gaze dropped briefly into his glass.
"I should've been with her long before all this."
Freddie's expression softened beneath the teasing. "Well," he said lightly, "you got there eventually."
Rupert pointed at him dramatically. "Don't encourage him. He's already become insufferably romantic."
"I am not romantic."
"Declan, you looked at her earlier like a dying Victorian man seeing sunlight for the first time."
"Fuck off."
But there wasn't any real irritation behind it anymore.
Only truth.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
A few weeks later, Declan had made the catastrophic error of hosting the Venturer meeting at his house.
Which had seemed, at the time, like a reasonable decision. It was convenient. It was practical. It meant he could leave whenever he wanted because it was his home and he was in charge of it.
What it meant in practice was that Rupert had arrived two hours early, declared the living room "significantly more comfortable than the office" and shown absolutely no signs of leaving when the meeting ended. Taggie had appeared with food — because Taggie always appeared with food — and somehow by early evening the meeting had dissolved entirely into drinks and the particular chaos that assembled itself around this group of people without anyone making a decision about it.
You stood from the sofa eventually, collecting a few empty glasses.
"I'll take these through."
Declan looked up instantly.
You tried not to smile at how immediate it was.
During the entire meeting, Rupert had deliberately sat between the two of you "for professionalism," which apparently translated to Declan glaring at him for nearly two hours straight. So now, the second you disappeared toward the kitchen —
Declan lasted approximately thirty seconds before following.
Of course he did.
You were placing glasses beside the sink when you heard footsteps behind you. A familiar presence filled the doorway.
"You're meant to be socialising," you said lightly, without turning around.
"I was."
You glanced over your shoulder. "Sulking isn't socialising."
"That's your opinion."
A smile tugged at your mouth as you turned fully toward him.
He looked unfairly attractive tonight. Sleeves rolled slightly, tie loosened, curls messier than usual after hours of everyone crowding around his house.
And he was looking at you.
That look.
"You ignored me all evening," he murmured.
Your eyebrows lifted. "Ignored you?"
"You sat on the opposite side of the room."
"Because Rupert physically shoved me there."
Declan exhaled slowly, stepping closer. "Still didn't like it."
Warmth spread through your chest despite yourself.
"You saw me all day."
"Not enough."
That did something dangerous to your heartbeat.
You tried to recover. "You're clingy now. Interesting development."
"I'm selective."
You laughed softly. Declan's eyes stayed on you. Too focused. Too warm. And suddenly the kitchen felt significantly smaller.
"You're staring again," you whispered.
"I know."
A beat. Then he moved closer properly, hands settling against your waist with quiet familiarity. Not rushed. Not hidden. Like touching you had become instinct.
"You realise," you murmured, "people are literally in the next room."
"Mm."
"And Rupert absolutely knows you followed me in here."
"I'm aware."
You smiled slowly. "So shameless."
Declan lowered his head slightly, lips brushing your jaw first instead of answering.
Your breath caught instantly.
"Declan…"
"Hm?" Against your skin, sounding far too pleased with himself already.
"You're doing that on purpose."
"Yes."
The honesty made you laugh softly before it dissolved into a quieter breath when his lips found the sensitive spot beneath your ear. Your fingers curled instinctively into the front of his shirt.
"Someone could walk in," you whispered, despite making absolutely no effort to move away.
Declan pulled back just enough to look at you. Eyes darker now. Amused.
"And yet," he said quietly, thumb tracing slowly against your waist, "you're still standing here."
Your heart skipped.
"You're insufferably confident."
"I have reason to be."
You rolled your eyes slightly, but the smile betrayed you instantly.
Declan noticed like he always did.
His forehead rested briefly against yours as he exhaled softly, like even this still overwhelmed him a little.
"You have no idea," he murmured, "how difficult it was sitting away from you for two hours."
"That's dramatic."
"It's accurate."
A laugh escaped you before he kissed you properly this time — slow enough to feel deliberate, warm enough to make your thoughts scatter immediately.
When he finally pulled back, both of you slightly breathless, a faint smirk tugged at his mouth.
"Later," he said quietly.
You blinked. "Later?"
His hands squeezed lightly at your waist. "We finish this later."
The confidence in his voice sent heat straight up your neck.
"Declan O'Hara—"
He kissed you once more — quick, smug, entirely satisfied with himself — before stepping away and fixing his cuffs like nothing had happened.
You stared at him in disbelief.
"You're evil."
A slow grin. "I know."
And before you could retaliate, he turned toward the doorway. Perfectly composed. Leaving you standing there trying very hard to remember how breathing worked before following him back into the living room.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
Later finally arrived.
Though not without difficulty.
Mostly because Rupert, for reasons that were absolutely intentional, had become impossibly reluctant to leave.
He sprawled dramatically across the sofa with another drink in hand, entirely too comfortable for a man who had supposedly been leaving for the last forty minutes.
Declan looked one inconvenience away from murder.
You, meanwhile, sat quietly amused beside Taggie, watching the entire thing unfold.
"I think," Rupert announced lazily, "we should all stay for another bottle."
"No," Declan replied immediately.
Rupert ignored him. "Perhaps two."
"Get out."
Taggie finally laughed softly, setting her glass down. "Rupert, you promised me ice cream earlier."
That got his attention instantly.
"Oh, darling." He was already standing. "Well why didn't you say so sooner?"
Taggie rolled her eyes fondly as he took her hand.
Declan narrowed his eyes. "You're doing this on purpose."
Rupert grinned shamelessly. "Obviously." He glanced at you briefly, amusement practically glowing. "Try not to destroy the kitchen."
"Leave," Declan said flatly.
Rupert laughed all the way out the door.
And finally —
silence.
You pretended not to notice the way Declan immediately looked at you. Pretended not to feel the anticipation that had been simmering between you both all evening. Instead, you gathered the remaining glasses and disappeared back into the kitchen.
Calm. Composed.
At least externally.
The sink filled softly as you placed the glasses down one by one, trying very hard not to think about the fact that Declan was somewhere behind you in the house.
Trying and failing.
Because a moment later you felt him. Not touching yet. Just — there. Warmth. Presence.
And then finally, his hands settled slowly against your waist.
A breath escaped you immediately.
He pressed the first kiss just beneath your ear, unhurried and knowing exactly what it did to you already.
Your eyes fluttered shut.
"I've spent the entire evening thinking about you," he admitted quietly between kisses. "Waiting for this."
A smile tugged at your lips despite yourself. "And whose fault is that?"
You turned slowly in his arms, hands sliding upward until your fingers reached the back of his neck, catching lightly in his curls.
He exhaled softly at the feeling.
"You're right," he murmured against your jaw, kissing the corner of your mouth. "Entirely my fault."
You laughed quietly. "You must be desperate if you're agreeing with me this easily."
His eyes lifted to yours — darker now, amusement mixing dangerously with something far less controlled.
"Oh, I'm desperate," he said quietly.
The honesty of it sent heat straight through you.
Your fingers tightened in his hair.
And Declan's restraint snapped entirely after that.
Then he kissed you again —
Slower now. Warmer.
He pulled you closer, your bodies pressing together, and you felt him against you — a low sound escaping before you could stop it.
"Bed." The word left you like a plea.
It was all he needed.
He kept kissing you as he moved toward the bedroom, never having crossed that distance so fast in his life. The moment they arrived, the kiss turned frantic — hungrier, more desperate, like neither of you could hold it together a second longer. Clothes came off impatiently, carelessly, until there was nothing left between you. Mouths finding necks, collarbones, anywhere they could reach.
You pushed him onto the bed.
Your lips found his neck, your hand trailing slowly down his body — all that muscle, hard and somehow soft at the same time. You took your time. Mapping him.
"Y/N." His voice came out tight when your mouth grazed just above where he actually wanted it.
"So impatient," you murmured, dragging your lips lower.
"Please." Almost begging. Completely begging.
So you gave in.
You started slow — just your lips at the tip, your tongue catching the small bead forming there. His breath stuttered. Then stopped entirely. Then a sound escaped him — low and undone — when you finally took him in fully, both hands working what your mouth couldn't reach alone. His hand found your hair and tightened, guiding you to his rhythm, and the mix of control and desperation in it made your stomach pool with heat.
"Fuck."
He let you go on until he felt himself getting too close — then he pulled you back.
"Not yet." His voice was rough, barely holding together.
You crawled back up his body, mouth retracing its path until it found his again. His hands slid down immediately, fingers finding you with a precision that shouldn't have been possible — deliberate, certain, like he'd already memorised exactly how to make you lose your mind.
"Always so wet for me."
"Yes." Barely a word. More of a breath.
You rolled your hips against him and he groaned, jaw tightening.
"Please." Now it was you begging. And you weren't even slightly embarrassed about it.
He didn't make you ask twice.
When he finally pushed in, the sound that left you was something you couldn't have planned — full, and warm, and finally. You held still for a moment, just feeling him, before you started to move.
"So tight." The words fell out of him like he couldn't help it.
"Declan." His name escaped you as you found your rhythm, slow at first, your movements deliberate. Then faster. His hands found your chest, and then his mouth did, and the addition of it made your head tip back.
"So beautiful." He said it half in disbelief, like he still couldn't quite accept you were real.
When he saw you getting close he flipped you — smooth, certain — now you were beneath him on the mattress. He started moving deep and steady, and your sounds climbed with every motion.
"Don't stop, please, I'm almost—"
"Wouldn't dream of it." Low. Breathless. He was almost there too and you could hear it.
Your hands clutched the duvet, then found him instead — nails dragging down his back, fingers curling into his hair, pulling. He shuddered.
"Declan."
You came apart underneath him, legs trembling, his name the loudest thing in the room. He felt you tighten around him and it undid him completely — your hands still in his curls, gripping — and he followed you over the edge.
"Y/N." Your name on his lips like a prayer, like a surrender.
He collapsed over you, stilling, his mouth finding your neck in soft unhurried kisses as you both slowly came back to yourselves. Still inside you. Your hands drifting to his hair, stroking now instead of pulling.
Breathing. Just breathing.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
It was your idea, the bath.
You'd mentioned it half-jokingly whilst still catching your breath, and Declan had looked at you for a moment — that look, the considering one — and then simply gotten up without a word.
By the time you followed him to the bathroom, he'd already run it. Bubbles reaching the edges. Steam rising gently. A candle lit on the windowsill that you hadn't even known he owned.
You stopped in the doorway.
"You have candles," you said.
"I have a candle," he corrected, not looking up from where he was rolling his sleeves back down. "Singular."
"Where did it come from?"
"Taggie."
"Of course it was Taggie."
He looked at you then. That quiet, unhurried look he'd been giving you more lately — like he was still, occasionally, slightly amazed by the fact of you.
"Get in," he said.
"Commanding as ever."
"Yes."
You got in.
The water was exactly the right temperature, which you noted with the satisfaction of someone whose standards were high and had been met. The bubbles were excessive, which was also correct. You settled back against the edge and watched Declan settle on the side of the bath, reaching for his cigarettes from the windowsill with the ease of a man entirely comfortable in this particular domestic arrangement.
"You're not getting in?" you said.
"In a minute."
He lit the cigarette. Exhaled slowly toward the window, which was cracked open just enough. The candlelight caught the side of his face — the line of his jaw, the grey at his temples, the slight furrow between his brows that wasn't quite a frown and never really was.
You watched him.
"What?" he said, without looking at you.
"Nothing." You smiled at the bubbles. "You just look very serious for someone sitting next to a bath full of foam."
He looked down at you then. Something shifted in his expression — that almost-smile arriving before he'd decided to let it.
"You have bubbles on your shoulder," he said.
"I'm in a bubble bath, Declan."
"Mm."
He reached over and brushed them off anyway. His hand stayed on your shoulder a moment longer than necessary.
You looked up at him.
He looked back.
The candle flickered between you.
"Get in the bath," you said quietly.
One last drag. The ember died against the windowsill. And then he got in.
The water displaced. Considerably. Some of it sloshed over the edge, which he observed with great displeasure.
"You could've warned me about the overflow situation," he said.
"I'm not very big, Declan. That was entirely you."
"The bath is small."
"The bath is a perfectly normal size."
He settled behind you, which you hadn't entirely planned but found you had no objection to whatsoever. His legs on either side of yours. His chest against your back. One arm finding your waist like it had always known where to go.
You leaned back into him.
He exhaled slowly against the top of your head.
The bathroom was warm and steamed and smelled of something expensive that was probably also Taggie's, and outside the cracked window the city made its distant, indifferent sounds, and none of it touched the particular quality of quiet that existed in this room right now.
"This," you said eventually, "is very domestic."
"Mm."
You looked down at the bubbles. Then up at the candle. Then at his arm around your waist.
"You know," you said, "if someone had told me two years ago that Declan O'Hara would willingly get into a bubble bath—"
"Don't."
"—I would have said—"
"Don't finish that sentence."
"—absolutely not, that man has never relaxed a day in his life—"
"Y/N."
"—and yet here we are."
A pause.
"Here we are," he said. Drily. But his arm didn't move from your waist.
You smiled. "Are you relaxed?"
He considered this with what appeared to be genuine seriousness.
"I'm horizontal in warm water," he said finally. "That's as close as I get."
You laughed — low and genuine — and felt him exhale slowly against your hair. Not quite a laugh. But close.
"Good enough," you said.
"Mm," he agreed.
His thumb moved in a slow circle against your stomach, absent and certain all at once, and you felt something settle in your chest — quiet and warm and entirely new. Not the breathless, uncertain thing of the first weeks. Something deeper than that. Something that had weight and permanence and wasn't going anywhere.
"Declan," you said softly.
"Mm."
"I'm glad it was you."
A pause.
His arm didn't move. But something shifted in the quality of the silence.
"What do you mean?" he asked. Quietly.
"All of it." You turned your head slightly, not quite enough to see him properly but enough. "The arguing. The cigarettes. The years of it." A beat. "I'm glad it was always going to be you."
He was very still for a moment.
Then his lips pressed to the top of your head. The kind of kiss that wasn't trying to lead anywhere. Just — there.
"You're going to make me say something," he murmured against your hair.
"I'm not making you do anything."
"You are."
"Declan."
"I know." His voice came out rough at the edges. "I know. Me too." A pause. "Obviously."
You laughed — low and genuine — and felt him smile against your hair.
"Obviously," you repeated.
"Don't push it."
"I would never."
"You absolutely would."
The candle flickered. The city hummed distantly. The water had started cooling slightly at the edges but neither of you moved to do anything about it.
After a while he reached for his cigarettes again — or tried to, stretching slightly from behind you.
"Are you seriously—"
"Last one," he said.
"You said that about the last one."
"This is a different last one."
You grabbed his wrist before he could reach the packet. He looked down at your hand. Then at you.
"You're going to smell of smoke in my bath," you said.
"It's my bathroom."
"I'm in it."
A beat.
He put the cigarettes down.
You released his wrist.
"Thank you," you said, with great dignity.
"Don't thank me. I'm getting one the moment you're out."
"I know." You settled back against him. "I'll allow it."
He made a sound that was almost — almost — a laugh.
His arm came back around your waist.
The candle burned low between you.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
Later, much later, you were tangled together in the dark of his bedroom — your leg draped over his, his hand moving slowly through your hair, both of you somewhere between awake and not.
He kissed you again. Slow, like you had all the time in the world.
"I love you," he said. Into the kiss. Quietly. Like it had always been true and he'd simply stopped finding reasons not to say it.
You felt the smile form on your mouth before you could stop it.
"I love you too," you said.
He pulled back just enough to look at you — really look — like he was still, occasionally, slightly disbelieving that this was actually his life now. His hand moved into your hair, stroking, before he pulled you back in.
You pulled apart eventually and just looked at each other. Your hand found his face — his nose, the line of his moustache, the curve of his cheek.
"You're going to put me to sleep," he murmured, a small smile at the corner of his mouth.
"It's nighttime. That's exactly what you should be doing."
"Not when I have a beautiful woman next to me." And then — without warning — he attacked your neck with kisses, all teeth and absolutely no grace, and you dissolved immediately.
"Declan—" His name came out between helpless laughter, your hands pushing at him without any real conviction.
"Not so composed now, are we?"
"Ok. Ok. You win—" You could barely get the words out.
He pulled back, triumphant, and rearranged you so you were nearly on top of him — your head against his chest, his arm around your shoulders, your hand finding the warmth of his skin. He caught your hand and began drawing slow circles into your palm.
The day finally caught up with you all at once.
"Mm." A small, contented sound. Your body finding the most comfortable angle against his without you even thinking about it. Sleep pulling gently at the edges of everything.
What you didn't know was that Declan stayed awake a little longer.
Watching you drift off. Tracing the line of your shoulder. Thinking about a garden with a climbing rose he still maintained was overgrown. About pastries from a specific bakery. About a note folded in a coat pocket. About every moment he'd filed away without meaning to, every door he'd refused to open, every year he'd spent convincing himself that what he felt was something other than what it was.
He thought about all the time he'd wasted.
And then — for the first time in longer than he could remember — he let it go.
Because you were here.
Finally, irreversibly, entirely here.
His hand stilled in your hair.
Outside, the world carried on without them, indifferent and unhurried, and somewhere across Rutshire a climbing rose was doing exactly what it wanted along a garden wall.
Entirely unbothered.
Just like you'd always said it would.
Declan closed his eyes.
And for once — there was no chaos. No misunderstanding. No distance.
Just him.
And you.
Finally.
── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ──
And that's a wrap on this one. 🤍 I started writing this on a complete whim — one dinner party scene, too much Rivals brainrot, and absolutely no plan — and somehow it turned into this. Six chapters of slow burn, terrible communication, one shattered whiskey glass, and two people who were always going to find their way to each other eventually.
Thank you for every comment, every reblog. You have no idea how much it meant to sit down and write the next part knowing people were actually waiting for it. Declan deserved his ending. So did y/n.
As always — all characters belong to the wonderful Jilly Cooper. I'm simply a woman with a delusion and too much free time.
Until the next one. <3
— love you all xx
What We Don't Admit
Chapter 5 - At Last
this GIFTS are not mine!
Pairing: Declan O´Hara x Reader
Summary: The secret was supposed to be just theirs. Saturday morning pastries with a fictional scarf. A garden no one could see into. A month of everyone pretending not to notice — and one Friday night at the Bar Sinister where Declan finally, spectacularly, ran out of patience. The beginning of everything. And the end of pretending it wasn't.
Word Counting: 6k
Warnings: angst, miscommunication, jealousy, emotional repression, friends to lovers, slow burn, alcohol consumption, sexual content, explicit language.
masterlist
── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ──
The drive to your place was quieter than anything that had ever existed between you before.
Not uncomfortable.
Just heavy. Different.
Meaningful in a way neither of you fully knew how to navigate yet.
Declan kept one hand on the steering wheel, the other occasionally flexing against his thigh — like he was resisting the urge to reach for you and hadn't quite decided whether to stop resisting.
You noticed.
Of course you did.
You'd been noticing everything about him for years. That particular detail was hardly new. What was new was that you no longer had to pretend you hadn't.
When he pulled up outside your building, he didn't immediately turn off the engine.
Neither of you moved.
Then he looked at you.
Really looked at you — in that way he had, the one that felt less like being seen and more like being understood. Like he was reading something he'd been trying to decipher for a very long time and had finally found the key.
"You're not getting rid of me now," you said softly. Trying, slightly, to break the weight of it.
A faint smile appeared on his mouth. Almost reluctant. Like it had arrived before he'd given it permission.
"Wasn't planning to."
Something warm settled in your chest.
He exhaled slowly. Then reached over — unhurried, certain — and his hand finally found yours where it rested on your knee. And even though you'd never been like this with each other, it felt less like a beginning and more like something finally returning to where it had always belonged.
He brought your hand up slowly. Pressed a kiss to your knuckles.
Then another.
Then he leaned in, and this kiss was different from the ones in the meeting room — slower, heavier, like he was trying to say everything he didn't trust words with yet. Your fingers tightened in his shirt instinctively, and he responded immediately, pulling you just a fraction closer. Still controlled. But no longer holding back entirely.
When he finally pulled away it was only enough to breathe. His forehead rested against yours for a moment.
"I'll see you tomorrow," he murmured.
"At Venturer?"
"Yeah." A beat. Then, quieter: "I'll pick you up."
Your heart did something small and inconvenient.
"You don't have to—"
"I want to."
You looked at him.
He looked back.
So you nodded.
And got out of the car.
And didn't miss the way he stayed there a moment longer — just watching you walk away, like it cost him more than he'd admit.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
He was early.
Of course he was.
The knock came before you were fully conscious — before coffee, before coherent thought, before anything resembling dignity had been assembled. You opened the door still half-asleep, hair catastrophic, dressing gown the colour you loved doing its best and failing to make a convincing argument for itself.
Declan stood on your front step. Casual jacket. Collar not quite done up. Hair not fully settled yet, like he'd left the house before giving it the chance.
Like he hadn't wanted to waste time.
He looked at you for a moment.
"Morning," he said. Simply.
You blinked. "You're early."
"I said I'd pick you up."
"I didn't think you meant this early."
A faint smirk. "I changed my mind."
You stared at him for a moment — sleep-brained, slightly undignified, entirely unprepared — and then stepped back to let him in, because there was very little else to do when Declan O'Hara showed up at your door before you were fully conscious.
He stepped inside without hesitation. Looked around your flat with the particular ease of someone who had been here before and was quietly registering that this time was different. You leaned against the doorframe and watched him do it.
"This is new," you said.
"What is?"
"You. In my flat. Before I'm dressed."
His eyes moved over you — just once, just enough — and then back to your face.
"I like it," he said simply.
Then he stepped closer, unhurried, and his voice dropped slightly.
"Messy hair," he said, almost to himself. His eyes moved to your neck, and he pressed a kiss there — brief, deliberate, entirely unfair at this hour. "Dressing gown. At home." A pause against your skin. "I especially like this version of you."
Your heart did something entirely unreasonable.
"You're dangerous," you muttered, pushing off the doorframe toward the kitchen — with as much dignity as the situation allowed, which was not very much.
"Only with you."
You stopped.
He said it so easily. Like it was obvious. Like it had always been true and he'd simply run out of reasons not to say it out loud.
You didn't look back.
But you smiled at the kettle for considerably longer than was strictly necessary.
Behind you, you heard him pull out a chair and make himself comfortable with such confidence knowing that he was more than welcome.
Reaching automatically for a second mug, you supposed he was right.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
Those first weeks existed in their own particular quality of light. It felt like something out of a dream — the specific, unhurried kind that you're aware of while it's happening and don't want to examine too closely in case it dissolves.
Mornings that started earlier than they needed to because neither of you wanted to waste them. Evenings that ran late for the same reason. There was something wonderful about being with him now. No more second-guessing. No more pretending not to notice the things that had always been there.
He still argued with you. Constantly, cheerfully, the way he'd been doing it for years and saw absolutely no reason to stop now that he was allowed to kiss you afterwards. If anything, he argued more — because he'd discovered that winning an argument and then watching you try to maintain your indignation while he kissed your temple was one of the more satisfying experiences available to him.
You still corrected his scripts. He still told you you were wrong. You still crossed out his lines without ceremony and handed them back.
He still said better like it cost him something.
You still said I know like it didn't.
Everything was the same.
Everything was completely different.
The bubble you'd built around those first weeks felt entirely your own. What neither of you knew was that the people around you had already noticed — not that you were together exactly, but that something had shifted. The air at Venturer was warmer. Lighter. Even Freddie commented on it, to no one in particular, and then looked surprised at himself for saying so.
The details that betrayed you accumulated the way these things always do — too small to notice individually, impossible to ignore collectively.
There was the Tuesday you arrived at Venturer with one of his cigarettes behind your ear, entirely without noticing, until Lizzie looked at it for four full seconds and then studied the ceiling with great interest.
There was the meeting where Declan contradicted something you said and then, mid-sentence, caught himself smiling at you in a way that had nothing to do with the argument — and Freddie, who had been watching, quietly set his pen down and looked out the window.
There was the afternoon Taggie came to find her father and found your coat on his chair and the faint trace of your perfume in the air and simply closed the door again without knocking.
There was the way he started leaving his office door open. Not wide. Just ajar. In the specific way that meant he knew where you were.
There was the morning Rupert arrived at Venturer unreasonably early — which was almost unprecedented and should have been warning enough — and found the two of you in the kitchen. You weren’t touching. Weren’t doing anything remotely incriminating. Just standing side by side with mugs of coffee in your hands, wrapped in a silence that felt as comfortable as the two of you looked.
Neither of you seemed particularly concerned with filling it.
Rupert stood in the doorway.
Looked at you both.
Turned around.
Walked back out.
And said nothing.
For nearly one month, Rupert Campbell-Black said nothing.
Which was, by any measure, one of the more remarkable things he had ever done.
You thought you were being subtle.
You were not being subtle.
You were, in fact, being so transparently not-subtle that the people around you had collectively decided the kindest thing to do was pretend not to notice and let you have it a little longer — which was, in its own way, the most affectionate thing they could have done.
You didn't know that yet.
Not knowing was the best part.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
It was a Saturday morning, which meant you had nowhere to be and no particular intention of being anywhere.
The garden at the back of your house was small — modest in the way that city gardens always were, hemmed in by brick walls and neighbourly proximity — but you'd spent two years making it yours. Pots along the wall. Climbing things that were finally starting to climb. A small table and two chairs that got considerably more use in summer but that you refused to put away on principle.
You were on your knees in the far bed, entirely in your own head, when you heard the gate.
You looked up.
Declan stood at the garden entrance, one hand on the latch, a paper bag in the other. He was wearing his weekend clothes — which meant slightly less formal than usual, collar open, no tie —and paused for a moment, as though whatever excuse had brought him there had already started to feel less solid than it had on the drive over.
"You left your scarf," he said. "At Venturer. On Friday."
You looked at him.
"It's Saturday," you said.
"I was passing."
"You live in the opposite direction."
"I took the long way."
You sat back on your heels and looked at him. He met your eyes without flinching, which was either confidence or stubbornness — with Declan, the distinction had always been difficult to establish.
"Is there actually a scarf?" you asked.
A pause.
"There's pastries," he said, holding up the paper bag.
"Why didn't you just lead with that?" you said, already smiling.
He laughed — short and genuine — which made the smile worse. You were fairly certain your face was doing something completely unreasonable and equally certain you didn't care.
He set the bag on the small table and looked around your garden with the quiet attention he gave most things — taking stock, forming opinions he would share whether or not you'd asked for them.
"That one's overgrown," he said, nodding at the climbing rose along the left wall.
"It's meant to look like that."
"It looks like it's trying to escape."
"It's romantic."
He made a sound that suggested he and romance had differing definitions.
You pulled off your gardening gloves and went to the table, opening the bag. Pastries — two of them, from the place near Venturer that you'd mentioned once, months ago, entirely in passing.
You looked at them for a moment.
Then at him.
"You remembered," you said.
"You mentioned it." Simply. Like it was nothing. Like he hadn't driven across the city on a Saturday morning with pastries from a specific bakery you'd referenced once in a conversation he'd apparently filed away without telling you.
You handed him his coffee — you’d made more than usual on instinct, which said rather a lot about where things had got to — and took the chair opposite him.
The morning was cool and bright, the kind that made everything look slightly more manageable than it actually was.
"You didn't have to come," you said.
"I know."
"I have pastries."
He looked at the bag. "Not from there."
"That's a very specific defence."
"It's accurate."
You smiled at your coffee.
He watched you do it — with that particular attention he'd had more lately. Just watching. Not saying anything.
"The rose is fine, by the way," you said.
"It isn't."
"It's mine, Declan."
"That doesn't make it fine."
"It makes it none of your business."
He picked up his coffee. "I'm just saying."
"You're always just saying."
He said nothing. But the corner of his mouth moved — which from him was practically a declaration.
You worked for a while. Or rather, you worked, and he sat with his coffee and watched you work, occasionally offering observations that you mostly ignored and occasionally admitted were correct, which you could tell satisfied him enormously even when he said nothing about it.
At some point the garden went quiet in the way it did when the city noise ebbed and it was just the two of you and the sound of birds doing something optimistic somewhere in the climbing rose.
You sat back from the bed and looked at it.
"Better," you said.
"Mm." He was right behind you — closer than you'd registered, crouched down at some point without announcing it. "The left side's still—"
"The left side is fine."
"It's—"
You turned your head and found him considerably closer than expected. Close enough that the argument dissolved somewhere before it reached either of your mouths.
He looked at you.
You looked back.
"We're in my garden," you said quietly.
"We are."
"No one can see over the walls."
"No," he agreed.
A pause.
"So technically," you said, "this doesn't count as public."
Something shifted in his expression. That almost-smile that arrived before he'd decided to let it.
"Technically," he said.
He reached over and brushed a bit of soil from your jaw — thumb against your cheek — and then didn't move his hand away immediately.
You stayed very still.
"You always have dirt on your face when you garden," he said.
"I'm in the garden."
"Mm."
His thumb moved slightly. Just once.
Then he leaned in and kissed you — soft and unhurried, the kind that had nowhere particular to be and no interest in rushing. Your hand found his jacket lapel without deciding to. His other hand settled at your waist like it had always lived there.
When he pulled back it was only enough to breathe. The garden around you entirely indifferent to all of it.
"You came all this way," you said quietly, "for pastries."
"And the scarf," he said.
"There is no scarf."
"There might be a scarf."
You laughed — low and genuine — and he kissed you once more, briefly, before pulling back. He stood unhurriedly, dusted nothing in particular from his trousers, and recovered his composure with the practised ease of a man who intended to take this to his grave.
He offered you his hand.
You took it. Let him pull you up.
"Come on," he said. "The pastries are getting cold."
"You sound very concerned about the pastries."
"I came a long way for them."
"You came a long way for me," you said.
He looked at you.
Didn't deny it.
Which was, from Declan, as good as anything.
You went inside.
He held the door.
And the garden sat quietly in the Saturday morning behind you — the climbing rose doing exactly what it wanted along the wall, entirely unbothered, just as you'd always said it would.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The following week brought Patrick.
Which was, in itself, an event.
Patrick O'Hara was, in almost every way that mattered, his father's son. He had the same eyes. The same stubbornness. Even the way he walked into a room — like he'd already decided he belonged there — was unmistakably Declan.
The difference was that Patrick had never learned to hide any of it. Where his father filtered everything through several careful layers before it reached the surface, Patrick wore every thought on his face the moment it arrived. Which made him considerably easier to read and, in certain situations, considerably more entertaining.
He arrived at Penscombe on a Wednesday afternoon already brimming with opinions from time spent away, and with the sort of confidence that suggested he had never once considered the possibility of not being welcome.
You were in the kitchen with Taggie when you heard the front door.
Then: "Where is everyone?"
Taggie smiled before she'd even turned around.
Patrick appeared in the kitchen doorway a moment later — taller than you remembered, which happened every time, like he made a specific point of growing between visits. Behind him, slightly more cautiously, stood another young man about his age. Dark hair. Easy smile. The effortless charm of someone who had long since realised it got him exactly what he wanted.
Patrick's face lifted the moment he saw you.
"There you are."
He crossed the kitchen in four steps and pulled you into a hug that lasted considerably longer than was strictly necessary — the kind that had been happening since he was young enough that you'd had to crouch down to receive it. Now you had to reach up slightly, which felt like a quiet betrayal every time.
Taggie watched from the counter with her arms folded.
"Hello to you too," she said.
Patrick didn't let go. "Shh. I'm busy."
"I'm your sister."
"And she's Y/N." He finally pulled back, still holding your shoulders, and looked at Taggie with a completely unrepentant smirk. "There's a hierarchy. You understand."
Taggie looked at you. "Do you see what I deal with."
"Constantly," you said, with a smile you didn't try to hide.
"You're both being dramatic," Patrick announced, already turning toward the fridge. He opened it, inspected the contents with great seriousness, and then — almost as an afterthought — added: "Taggie, you look great by the way."
"Oh, now you say something—"
"Love you."
"I hate him," Taggie said, to no one in particular.
"No you don't," Patrick said cheerfully, from inside the fridge.
You caught Taggie's eye.
She was already smiling despite herself.
Patrick reappeared with an apple and settled back beside you, an arm slipping around your shoulders with comfortable ease of a habit formed over years.
"You've grown again," you said.
"Everyone keeps saying that." He grinned. "You look great, by the way. Doesn't she look great, Tom?"
His friend — Tom, apparently — smiled from the doorway with the easy appreciation of someone encountering an unexpected and pleasant surprise. "She really does."
"Tom," Patrick said, gesturing between you with the apple, "this is Y/N. She's basically—" He paused, clearly searching for the right summary. "She's important. You'll understand once you've known her five minutes."
"That's very kind," you said.
"It's accurate." Simply. In exactly the way his father said things that were true and saw no reason to dress them up.
Tom smiled and held out his hand. "Nice to meet you."
"You too."
"And this," Patrick continued, pointing at his sister with considerably less ceremony, "is Taggie. She's annoying but she makes excellent food, which mostly cancels it out."
Taggie picked up a dish towel calmly, as if she had been waiting for this moment.
Patrick saw it coming and was already moving — around the kitchen table, laughing, with Taggie in pursuit and absolutely no remorse on his face whatsoever.
"You little shit—"
"Language, Taggie—"
"I will end you—"
You looked at Tom.
Tom looked at you.
"This is normal," you said.
"Good to know," he said, with a grin that lingered just slightly longer than necessary.
From the hallway — the sound of a door.
Then Declan appeared in the kitchen entrance.
He took in the scene: Taggie brandishing a dish towel, Patrick using the kitchen table as a defensive perimeter, you leaning against the counter trying not to laugh.
"What the hell is happening in here," he said — not quite a question, not quite a complaint, somewhere in the register he used when something was annoying him and he was choosing to find it amusing instead.
"Your son," Taggie said, slightly breathless, "is being a menace."
"She loves me." Patrick finally stopped running and pulled his sister into a side hug, fully aware her protests were just for show. Taggie made a sound of protest, then settled into it.
"Yeah, yeah," she said, patting his arm twice before extracting herself and returning to the counter with as much dignity as the situation allowed.
Declan's eyes moved around the room — Patrick, Taggie, Tom — with the brief, cataloguing attention of someone taking stock. Then they landed on you.
He held your gaze for precisely one second longer than necessary.
You looked back trying to maintaining perfect composure.
He looked at the ceiling.
"Dad." Patrick crossed to him, and the hug between them was brief and slightly awkward in the specific way of fathers and sons who loved each other and hadn't quite worked out the physical vocabulary for it yet. "Tom's staying a few days. That's alright."
"It's fine." Declan looked at Tom properly for the first time. "Patrick's friend from university?"
"Yes, sir."
Something about the sir satisfied Declan in a way he didn't entirely conceal. He nodded once — which, from him, was practically a red carpet welcome.
Then his eyes found you again.
You raised your eyebrows very slightly.
He looked at the ceiling again.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The afternoon passed the way Penscombe afternoons did — sprawling, unhurried, everyone orbiting the kitchen and the garden without any particular plan. Patrick talked for approximately four hours straight, which seemed to be his natural rate, covering university, a road trip, an incident involving a borrowed car that he told with great enthusiasm and that Declan listened to with an expression of controlled parental concern.
Tom was, as Patrick had promised, easy company. Genuinely funny. Interested in everything. The kind of person who asked questions and actually listened to the answers.
He also, you noticed in a distant, unbothered sort of way, had been finding reasons to sit near you all afternoon.
You didn't think much of it. People were friendly. That was fine.
What you did notice was Declan, across the room, noticing the same thing.
His expression hadn't changed. It never did, particularly. But you knew his face well enough by now to read the small, specific tension in his jaw that meant he was feeling something he had decided not to act on.
You caught his eye once.
He looked away immediately.
You hid a smile in your wine glass.
A little while later you slipped inside to refill it, glad for the quiet of the kitchen after the noise of the afternoon.
You'd barely reached the counter before you heard footsteps behind you.
Not Patrick's — too deliberate. Not Taggie's — too heavy.
"He's making eyes at you," Declan said, low enough that it didn't carry past the kitchen doorway.
You didn't turn around immediately. Poured your wine with great composure.
"Who is?" you said, completely aware of who he was talking about.
"You know who."
"Tom?" You turned then, leaning back against the counter. "He's being friendly."
"He's been friendly for four hours." The word came out with a specific dryness that made it quite clear what he thought of it.
"He's Patrick's friend. He's making conversation."
"He asked you about your job twice."
"People ask about jobs, Declan. It's considered normal."
"He already knew the answer the second time."
You looked at him. He looked back — jaw set, arms crossed, looking for all the world like a man who had an entirely reasonable grievance and was prepared to defend it indefinitely.
"Are you jealous, Declan O'Hara?" you asked. Quietly. Almost sweetly.
"I'm observing."
"You're jealous."
"I'm making an informed assessment of the situation."
You pressed your lips together very hard.
"Declan." You kept your voice low. "We are in Penscombe. Patrick is twenty feet away. You cannot do anything about your informed assessment."
A pause.
His jaw tightened fractionally.
"I'm aware of that," he said. With great dignity.
"So."
"So nothing. I'm just — noting it."
"Noted," you said. "Duly noted. Now go back outside before someone notices you followed me in here."
He didn't move immediately.
He exhaled through his nose — that specific sound that lived halfway between exasperation and something considerably more affectionate — and turned to go.
"Declan."
He stopped.
You waited until he looked back.
"There's nothing to note," you said. Simply. Quietly. Just for him.
Something in his expression shifted.
He held your gaze for a moment.
Then nodded once — short, satisfied, entirely himself — and went back outside.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
A few days later, back in the office, the patience Declan had been exercising at Penscombe was running considerably thinner.
By late afternoon the office had gone quiet in the way it did when the city outside started turning gold and everything inside slowed down without meaning to.
You knocked lightly on Declan's door.
No answer.
You pushed it open anyway.
He was at his desk — sleeves rolled, tie slightly loosened, glasses perched low as he worked through something with great focused intensity like he was personally offended by whatever he was reading.
Without looking up: "If that's Rupert, I'm not here."
"Rude," you said.
His head came up immediately.
And for a second — just a second — something moved through his expression. Softer than his default. Almost amused.
"You," he said.
"Me."
A pause.
Then, quietly: "Come here."
You leaned against the doorframe. "That sounded very commanding."
He closed the file slowly. "It was meant to."
You raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really?"
That flicker in his eyes again. The one that had become far too familiar.
"Yes."
You stepped inside, slowly.
"Careful," you said lightly. "I might start thinking you're bossy."
"I am bossy."
"Mm. Noted."
You stopped in front of his desk. Too close now. He looked up at you properly.
"You've been smiling all day," he said. Quieter.
"Is that a complaint?"
"No." A beat. "Just distracting."
"Declan O'Hara." You tilted your head. "Are you distracted at work?"
His jaw tightened. "Yes."
Your stomach flipped.
You leaned slightly closer. "By what exactly?"
His eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second. Then back up.
"You know exactly what."
The air in the room changed. Again. In that way it had been doing lately — suddenly and completely.
"Careful," you said softly. "People might think you've gone soft."
"I haven't gone soft."
"Sure."
He stood. Slowly. Deliberately. Walked around the desk until there was nothing between you.
"No?" he said quietly.
"Not even a little bit?"
A faint, dangerous smile.
"Only where you're concerned."
Your breath caught.
"Declan—"
He didn't let you finish. His hand came to your waist — not rushed, just certain — and then he kissed you. Slow at first. Testing. Like he was still, even now, slightly amazed this was something he was allowed.
You responded immediately.
And that was all the permission he needed.
The kiss deepened almost effortlessly — heat building gradually, like neither of you were in any hurry but neither of you were stopping either. His hand tightened at your waist, pulling you closer as your fingers found the front of his shirt without thinking. A soft exhale escaped him against your lips. Something restrained breaking, just slightly.
Not chaos. Not desperation.
Something controlled — but finally honest.
When he pulled back it was only enough to breathe. Forehead brushing yours. Both of you slightly undone.
"You're trouble," you murmured.
"Mm." His hand didn't move from your waist. "You started it."
And when he kissed you again — this time, there was no hesitation left at all.
His hand began to travel down, just like his kisses along your neck. You felt yourself growing warmer by the second.
"Declan." His name left you almost breathless.
"Mm." Amused. Perfectly aware of what he was doing to you.
"Someone could walk in." No conviction in it whatsoever.
"Then we'll make it quick, won't we?" All the confidence in the world, as he dropped to his knees, you perched on the edge of the desk, his eyes travelling up to yours. "You're so beautiful." His hands slid your skirt up slowly, deliberately.
You curled your fingers into his hair, mouth falling open.
He pressed a kiss to your most sensitive spot — slow, intentional. An involuntary sound escaped you.
"So wet." His voice came out rough. "Is this all for me?"
"I don't know," you said, with a smirk you couldn't help. "Maybe it's for Tom."
He looked up at you, raising eyebrows. "Oh, really."
He understood the tone immediately — and decided you were going to pay for it. His fingers began moving inside you with a calculated rhythm, his tongue doing something that should have been illegal. You tightened your fingers in his hair, his name falling from your lips like a prayer.
"Declan." More desperate this time. You could feel yourself right on the edge — any moment someone could walk through that door, that rush of adrenaline mixing with his impossible, infuriating talent —
And then he stopped.
"What—?" You stared at him, completely undone.
He stood up slowly, composed himself as if nothing had happened, and said with a smile you would very much like to remove from his face: "That's for your smart mouth."
"Declan." Total disbelief.
"What, love." Not even a question. Genuinely, infuriatingly pleased with himself.
You looked at him sideways. Then smiled.
You moved behind him. Lips to his neck, hands tracing his chest slowly, deliberately. He didn't react — or pretended not to, which was not the same thing.
Then you changed strategy.
You sat in his chair. Slowly. Your hands beginning to travel down your own body with a calm that was almost provocative. He noticed — of course he noticed — looked up from the papers and went completely still.
"What are you doing?" Lower than it should have been.
"If you won't make me come," you said softly, "I'll do it myself." Your fingers began making slow circles, legs slightly parted, eyes holding his directly. A low sound escaped you.
"Fuck." Barely audible.
You watched his jaw tighten. He was trying to resist.
He never stood a chance.
Within seconds he was back on his knees.
This time there were no games. Frantic and slow all at once — a contradiction that only he knew how to make sense of. Your hands found his hair again, his name the only word your brain could still form.
"Are you going to come for me, love?" Muffled. Rough.
"Yes." All you could manage. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."
He didn't stop.
And you came — trembling, his name leaving you louder than was strictly advisable, completely incapable of caring.
He rose slowly. Kissed your stomach, your neck, and finally your mouth — slow, with a smile you felt against your lips.
"Why are you laughing?" you asked. Already smiling yourself, completely dishevelled, completely gone.
"I came in my pants," he said, in the same tone he'd use to discuss the weather, "like a fucking teenager."
You looked down. Confirmed it. Looked back up at him.
And the two of you started laughing — teeth against teeth, messy and ridiculous and completely, entirely yourselves.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
You didn’t know how, but it seemed that almost every Friday — without any planning — you ended up at the Bar Sinister. This one was no different. Rupert had mentioned drinks, Freddie had shown up, Taggie had brought Lizzie, and somehow, by nine o’clock, half of Venturer was occupying a corner of the bar with the easy chaos of people who had been doing this for years.
Patrick and Tom arrived later, fresh from wherever they'd been and in considerably higher spirits for it.
Tom found you almost immediately.
"Y/N." He settled beside you at the bar with such ease, like he had decided you were the best company in the room and wasn't being subtle about it. "Patrick said you work at Venturer. That must be—"
"Fascinating and occasionally maddening," you said. "Yes."
He laughed. "He also said you're the only person who argues with his dad and wins."
"Patrick exaggerates."
"He really doesn't, from what I've seen." Tom leaned slightly toward you. "Can I get you another drink?"
"I'm alright, thank you."
"You sure? Because I was about to—"
"She's fine." Declan appeared on your other side, smoothly, with a glass of whiskey and an expression of absolute neutrality. "I've got it." Settling your favorite drink beside you.
Tom blinked. "Oh — right, sorry, I didn't mean to—"
"No trouble." Perfectly pleasant. The pleasantness of a man exercising considerable self-control.
Tom smiled easily and turned to Patrick, who had appeared beside him.
You looked at Declan.
He looked straight ahead.
"Smooth," you said, very quietly.
"I don't know what you mean."
"You absolutely do."
His jaw moved. "He's been doing this for two days straight."
"He's friendly."
"He's very friendly."
"Declan." You kept your voice low. "We are in public."
"I'm aware."
"So you need to—"
"I'm fine."
He didn't look fine. He looked like a man conducting an internal argument he was determined to win through sheer force of will.
You looked back at the bar. Took a sip of your drink.
The music shifted. Someone suggested dancing — Shelley, inevitably — and the group migrated toward the small dancefloor at the back of the room in the loose, uncoordinated way of people who had been drinking for several hours and no longer cared about looking coordinated.
You went with them.
It was easy and warm and exactly what Friday evenings were for — Taggie laughing at something Freddie did, Rupert standing at the edge pretending he was above dancing while clearly about to cave, Shelley already entirely committed.
Then Tom appeared beside you.
Not intrusively. Just — there. Moving with the music, grinning, entirely good-natured about it.
"You're a good dancer," he said.
"I've been told," you said loudly, and laughed.
He said something else, leaning slightly closer to be heard over the music.
You didn't see Declan move.
You felt him first — a hand at your waist, certain and immediate, his presence at your back before you'd fully registered it.
"Can I—" you started.
"Tom's a good lad," Declan said, close enough that only you could hear it. "But he's been making eyes at you all evening and I've run out of patience."
"I told you, he's just—"
"I know what he is," Declan said. "And I know what I am. And I'm done pretending one of those things isn't true in public."
You turned your head slightly. "Declan—"
He kissed you.
Not dramatically. Not for an audience. Just — turned you toward him and kissed you, certain in his choice and wasn't interested in reviewing it.
For a moment, the noise of the bar receded entirely.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested briefly against yours.
"Right," he said quietly. More to himself than to you.
You opened your eyes.
Tom had taken a very diplomatic step backwards and was looking at the ceiling.
Patrick, standing nearby, was staring at his father with an expression that cycled through surprise, comprehension, and then something that looked considerably like satisfaction, all in about four seconds.
"Finally," he said. To no one in particular. To everyone.
Rupert, from the edge of the dancefloor where he had been pretending not to watch, raised his glass.
"I've been waiting," he said pleasantly, "for approximately two years."
"It's been three," Taggie said, from somewhere behind him.
"Three," Rupert amended. "My mistake."
Declan looked at the assembled group.
Then at you.
You were trying, with limited success, not to smile.
"I hate all of you," he said.
"No you don't," Patrick said. He was still grinning — and he looked, in that moment, so much like his father that it was slightly alarming. "You're practically glowing, Dad."
"I am not glowing."
"You absolutely are," you said.
He looked at you.
You looked back.
And the smile you'd been holding finally arrived — small and warm and entirely yours.
His hand hadn't moved from your waist.
He didn't move it.
"Drinks," he said, to the room in general. "Since apparently this is now an occasion."
"It absolutely is," Freddie confirmed.
Tom, to his enormous credit, laughed. "Congratulations," he said, genuinely. "And — fair enough."
Patrick clapped him on the shoulder. "Sorry, mate. Should've mentioned."
"Would've been useful information, yes."
The bar reassembled itself around you — noise and warmth and the particular chaos of people who had been waiting for something for long enough that its arrival felt less like a surprise and more like an exhale.
Declan handed you your drink.
His hand found yours at the same time.
Not hidden.
Not careful.
You leaned slightly into him.
He didn't move away.
"Patrick's going to be insufferable about this," you said quietly.
"I know," he said.
"He gets it from you."
"Absolutely not."
You smiled.
He squeezed your hand once.
And somewhere across the bar, Rupert leaned toward Taggie with the deep, unhurried satisfaction of a man whose patience had been thoroughly vindicated.
"Told you," he said.
Taggie smiled into her drink.
"You tell everyone everything," she said.
"And I'm always right," he replied.
Which, on this particular occasion, was entirely true.
── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ──
Chapter 5 is finally here!!! I hope you enjoyed it <3 I wanted to show a softer, more romantic side of them this time, and of course the long-awaited reveal everyone was expecting at the end haha. Let me know what you think!! Love you all, be safe and kind!
What We Don't Admit
chapter update
✦ AUTHOR'S NOTE
small update — this week has been absolutely insane (I know it just started so you can only imagine and the rest is going to be similar) but i finally managed to start writing chapter 5 and i'm hoping to post it this weekend. So please, be patient. P.S. THANK YOU FOR ALL THE LOVE — it genuinely means everything. 🤍
What We Don't Admit
Chapter 4 - Say It Properly
Pairing: Declan O´Hara x Reader
Summary: A night out with Shelley was supposed to be a distraction. It was, briefly. Then Declan showed up — and somewhere between a drunk car ride, a note slipped quietly into your coat pocket, and one industry party too many, the distance between you ran out of places to hide.
Word Counting: 5,2k
Warnings: angst, miscommunication, jealousy, emotional repression, friends to lovers, slow burn, alcohol consumption, explicit language.
masterlist
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The atmosphere inside Venturer had become borderline unbearable.
Nobody said it aloud, of course.
That wasn't how things worked there. You all understood the unspoken rules — keep it professional, keep it moving, pretend that the tension sitting in every room like a third person wasn't slowly making everyone slightly insane.
But everyone noticed.
Meetings that had once consisted of you and Declan effortlessly pulling ideas apart and rebuilding them better had dissolved into clipped responses and careful silences. Where there used to be shared looks across tables, arguments that turned into something else halfway through, private jokes muttered under your breath that made Rupert complain he was being excluded — there was now avoidance so deliberate it practically had its own chair.
Even Freddie had stopped making jokes about it.
Which was, genuinely, saying something.
Rupert, naturally, found the entire situation both tragic and deeply entertaining — which was his default response to most things, but he was leaning into it particularly hard this time.
"You're both behaving like divorced parents at a school play," he announced one afternoon, sprawled across Declan's office sofa with a drink balanced on his chest and no apparent intention of leaving. "It's exhausting to witness."
Declan didn't look up from his paperwork. "Get out."
"She walked past your office three times this morning without looking in."
"Fascinating. Get out."
"You used to leave your door open specifically because—"
"Rupert."
"Right, yes." He took a sip of his drink. "Getting out."
He didn't move.
Declan set down his pen.
Rupert swirled the whiskey around his glass thoughtfully, something he did when he was about to say something he'd actually considered rather than something designed purely for his own amusement.
"She cried," he said. More quietly than usual. "After the dinner party."
The room went still.
Declan didn't freeze dramatically. Just — stopped. Hand still on the desk. Something in his shoulders changed almost imperceptibly.
"She what?"
Rupert looked at him properly now. The performance, for once, entirely gone.
"I went by her house. She didn't ask me to — something just felt off about the way she left." A pause. "She answered the door and looked at me for about half a second."
He stopped there.
Declan said nothing.
"That was enough," Rupert said simply. "I've known her a long time. I've never seen her look like that."
The silence that followed was a different kind.
"She didn't say anything about you," Rupert added. "Didn't have to." He set his glass down. "That's the part you need to understand, Declan. It wasn't anger. Angry people shout. Angry people ring you at midnight and say terrible things back." A pause. "She just — crumbled."
Declan looked away. At the window. At nothing in particular.
And Rupert — who had known him long enough to know the difference between the arrogance and what lived underneath it — understood something in that moment that he hadn't quite let himself acknowledge before.
Declan didn't just feel guilty.
He was devastated.
Rupert stood up. Set his glass down. Straightened his jacket with the air of a man who had said what he came to say.
"I'm not telling you this to make you feel worse," he said at the door. "I'm telling you because you need to understand what you're actually dealing with here." He paused. "Fix it. Before you lose her."
He left.
Declan sat very still for a long time after. Contemplating what everyone's opinion was.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
Meanwhile, you were doing what you did best in situations like this — functioning perfectly well on the surface while conducting a small, relentless war against yourself underneath.
You answered calls. You attended meetings. You laughed at the right moments and contributed the right things and smiled at everyone who needed smiling at.
You just didn't smile at him.
It cost more than you expected, that particular omission. You hadn't realised how much of your ordinary day had been quietly oriented around him until you were actively redirecting it. The instinct to turn when he walked into a room. The habit of knowing where he was without looking. The way a good line in a meeting would form in your head and you'd think — he'd like that one — before remembering.
It was exhausting in a way that had nothing to do with the work.
"You look better," Rupert informed you one evening at Penscombe, appearing beside you on the sofa with a purposefulness of a man who had decided a conversation was happening whether you wanted one or not. "Comparatively speaking."
You gave him a look. "That's a terrible thing to say."
"It's an honest thing to say." He settled back comfortably. "You looked dreadful last week."
"Thank you, Rupert."
"You're welcome." He poured himself a drink. Then, without looking at you: "You don't have to talk about it."
"Good. Because I don't want to."
"I know." A pause. "I just wanted you to know that I know. And that it was his fault. And that he knows that too."
You were quiet for a moment.
The fire crackled across the room. Someone laughed in the kitchen — Taggie or Caitlin, probably. The sounds of Penscombe carrying on around you, entirely indifferent to the small wreckage of the last few weeks.
"That's the problem," you said finally. Quietly. "Knowing it was his fault doesn't actually help."
Rupert looked at you sideways.
"No," he agreed. "It doesn't."
"Because I still—" You stopped. Turned your glass slowly. "He was the one person I was certain would never look at me like that. And now I don't know what to do with that. With any of it." A pause. "And I feel like I'm being completely dramatic about the whole thing."
Rupert looked at you.
"You're not," he said. No humour in it. No qualifier. Just certainty.
A silence settled between you for a minute.
He refilled your glass without being asked.
"He's losing his mind," he said eventually. Simply. Not as consolation. Just — fact.
You didn't answer.
Rupert stayed where he was.
And for once, that was enough.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
It was Shelley's idea.
Which, in retrospect, explained everything.
Shelley had a particular talent for making things sound entirely reasonable in the moment and completely catastrophic in hindsight — a quality she deployed with great enthusiasm and absolutely no remorse. When she'd appeared at Penscombe the following Friday afternoon with an energy of who had already decided what was happening, Taggie had taken approximately four seconds to cave.
You had lasted six.
"Just dancing," Shelley had said, in the tone of someone who had never in her life meant just anything. "Nothing dramatic. One drink. Maybe two."
Seven drinks later, you had completely lost count.
The club was loud and warm and mercifully full of people who knew nothing about Declan O'Hara or dinner parties or the way a person's chest could ache for weeks over something they couldn't quite name out loud. The music was too loud for thinking. That felt, currently, like an extraordinary gift.
"You're a very good dancer," Taggie informed you seriously and loudly, both hands on your shoulders as you moved together in the approximate direction of the beat.
"I know," you agreed laughing, with great confidence.
Shelley appeared from somewhere, three drinks balanced improbably between her hands. "I've just told two separate men that we're celebrating a divorce and they both bought us champagne."
"Whose divorce?" you asked.
"Does it matter?"
It did not, apparently, matter.
Taggie took her glass. You took yours. Shelley raised hers with the solemn authority of someone conducting a ceremony.
"To terrible men," she announced.
"Terrible men," you agreed, perhaps slightly too quickly.
Taggie caught your eye over the rim of her glass.
You both looked away.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
Taggie rang her father at half eleven.
Not because anything was wrong, exactly. More because you had attempted to climb onto a booth seat to better hear what song was playing and Shelley had declared this inspired and joined you, and Taggie had made the executive decision that someone with slightly more authority over the situation was required.
Declan answered sleepily on the second ring.
"Taggie."
"Hi, Dad." A pause. She turned slightly away from the noise. "So. Everything's fine."
Silence.
"Where are you."
"That's — not the important part."
"Taggie."
"We might need a lift."
Another silence. Longer.
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
He found you exactly where Taggie had described.
The club was everything Declan O'Hara despised — overpriced, overcrowded, aggressively loud in the way that suggested the volume was compensating for something. He moved through the crowd with the energy of a man with somewhere to be and no patience for anything between him and it.
Then he saw you.
And stopped.
You were on the dancefloor, completely at home in the music in the way some people simply were — unselfconscious, unguarded, nothing performed about it. Your hair was slightly wild. You were laughing at something Shelley had said, head thrown back, and the lights caught you every few seconds and then let you go again.
Declan stood very still.
You looked beautiful.
The noise around him seemed to recede slightly.
He'd seen you laugh a thousand times. In meetings, in kitchens, in cars, across tables at Penscombe. He knew the catalogue of it — the polite laugh, the surprised laugh, the one you tried to suppress and couldn't. He knew all of them.
This one was the one you only produced when you'd genuinely forgotten to be careful.
He stood there longer than he needed to.
Then Taggie appeared at his elbow and hugged him.
"You came." Taggie said with a drunken tone.
"I said I would." He didn't look at her. His eyes were still on you.
Taggie followed his gaze. Said nothing for a carefully calibrated moment.
"She's going to be mortified tomorrow," she acknowledged.
"Good," Declan said. And started walking.
You noticed him before you fully registered who he was — a tall figure cutting through the crowd with that specific walk, purposeful and entirely unimpressed with his surroundings. You thought you'd never seen anything so beautiful. Then your eyes caught up with your brain.
"Oh," you said.
"Oh," Shelley agreed immediately beside you, with great interest. Then, lower, with quite the satisfaction "Finally."
Declan stopped in front of you. His expression was complicated — several things happening underneath it, only one of them making it to the surface.
"Right," he said. "We're leaving."
"I'm dancing," you informed him.
"I can see that."
"I'm not finished."
"You are, actually."
You drew yourself up with the careful dignity of someone who was significantly drunker than they were prepared to admit. "You're not in charge of me, Declan O'Hara."
"No," he agreed. "But I am the one with the car."
You considered this seriously.
"Fine," you said. "But I want it noted that I'm leaving under protest."
"Noted."
He held out his hand to help you navigate the dancefloor.
You took it without thinking.
Neither of you mentioned that.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The car was blessedly quiet after the noise of the club.
You sat in the back with Taggie, who had dissolved into that particular post-night-out softness — head on your shoulder, eyes already closing, radiating the deep contentment of a evening that had been a success. Shelley had been dispatched to her own door first, waving cheerfully from her front step with the energy of someone who had already forgotten the second half of the evening.
Declan drove.
You watched the city move past in the dark outside the window.
"You have very nice hands," you said, at some point.
In the front seat, Declan's eyes briefly found yours in the rearview mirror.
"Do I," he said.
"Mm." You considered it with great seriousness. "Good shape."
A pause.
"I'll bear that in mind," he said.
You nodded. Went back to the window.
Then: "I'm not that drunk, you know."
"You're significantly drunk."
"I'm pleasantly drunk. There's a distinction."
"Is there."
"Yes. Significantly drunk is when the room moves. Pleasantly drunk is when everything is just—" You gestured vaguely at the window. "Softer."
He said nothing.
But in the mirror, very briefly, something moved at the corner of his mouth.
Then Taggie stirred against your shoulder and began singing softly to herself — something unidentifiable, half the words missing or invented, entirely committed to both. You joined in without hesitation, harmonising with great enthusiasm on the parts neither of you knew, which was most of it.
Declan's expression, when you caught it in the mirror, was the look of a man who had decided not to find something funny and was losing the argument with himself.
"You're both tone deaf," he said.
"We're emotive," you corrected.
Taggie pointed at you in sleepy agreement without opening her eyes.
And for approximately four minutes — the city sliding past, Taggie's half-invented song filling the car, the night loose and warm around all three of you — you forgot entirely that you were supposed to be angry with him.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
It came back when you arrived.
Taggie had fallen properly asleep by the time Declan pulled up, and it took quite the effort of both of you to get her inside and settled on the sofa with a glass of water and the dignity she deserved. She murmured something grateful and was gone again before you'd finished the sentence.
The house settled into silence around you.
You stood in the hallway, coat still on, suddenly very aware that it was just you and Declan and a quiet that had weight to it.
"I can get you a taxi," he said.
"It's fine." You sat down on the bottom stair, mostly because your feet had decided they'd contributed enough. "I'll wait a minute."
He leaned against the wall opposite. Arms loosely crossed. Watching you in the way he always had — with that attention that had always felt different from other people's attention, more specific somehow, like he was actually seeing rather than just looking.
The silence stretched.
"Why did you come?" you asked finally. Genuinely.
"Taggie rang."
"You could've sent someone."
He held your gaze. "No," he said. "I couldn't."
You looked at your hands.
"I hate that," you said quietly. The drink had left everything slightly closer to the surface than usual, edges softer, words arriving before you'd properly decided on them. "I hate that you can just — say something like that. And it lands. Every time."
"Because it's true."
"That's what I hate about it." You exhaled. "Because six weeks ago you stood outside that terrace and looked at me like — like I was exactly what I've spent my whole life trying not to be." The words came out steadier than you expected. "And you were the one person I was certain would never do that."
He crossed the hallway without drama and crouched down in front of you, putting himself at your level. Just — there. Close enough that you could see his face properly in the dim light.
"Look at me," he said quietly.
You did.
"What I said was wrong." No qualifications. No scaffolding around it. "Not because I was jealous. Not because of the whiskey. Just — wrong. And I'm sorry. A real one." His jaw tightened slightly. "You are the last person I would ever want to hurt."
Your eyes burned.
You looked away quickly, at the wall, at nothing.
"You're considerably easier to stay angry at when you're being insufferable," you said, voice slightly unsteady.
"I can manage that if it helps."
Something that was almost a laugh escaped you.
He reached up and tucked a piece of hair back from your face — simple, careful, the gesture of someone who had been wanting to do it for some time.
Your breath caught.
"Let me take you home," he said.
You nodded.
He stood. Offered his hand.
You took it.
And this time, both of you noticed.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
He walked you to your door.
Not because you needed him to. Just because he did.
You stood on your front step and turned to face him and the street was very quiet and the night was very dark and there was approximately three feet between you that felt simultaneously like nothing and like a great deal.
"Thank you," you said. "For coming."
"Always," he said.
That word landed somewhere it wasn't supposed to.
You looked at him for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.
Then: "Goodnight, Declan."
"Goodnight."
He waited until you were inside.
You stood in your hallway with your back against the door and listened to his footsteps on the path and said nothing and did nothing and simply stood there until the sound was gone.
Your eyes were very bright.
You did not cry.
But it was a near thing.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The morning arrived with all the enthusiasm of a punishment.
You were aware of your own head before anything else. Then the light. Then the slow, methodical inventory of the previous evening — the club, the dancing, Taggie's song in the car, Declan crouched in the hallway while you said things you'd been keeping carefully contained for weeks.
You pressed your face into the pillow.
The pillow offered nothing.
When you finally made yourself vertical — out of necessity rather than any genuine desire to be upright — you moved through the motions of morning on autopilot. Kettle. Dressing gown. The vague, optimistic notion of tea.
Your coat was draped over the chair where you'd left it.
You picked it up without thinking, and something crinkled in the pocket.
You stopped.
Reached in.
A piece of paper, folded once. Small. Like it had been placed there carefully, without wanting to be noticed.
You stood in your kitchen in your dressing gown, hair catastrophic, head making its displeasure loudly known, and unfolded it.
His handwriting was exactly what anyone would expected — decisive, slightly impatient, no flourishes.
I left Aspirin's in your bag. Don't forget to drink water.
You said some things last night. So did I.
When you're ready — and only when you're ready — I think we should finish that conversation.
— D
Then, below, in slightly different ink. An afterthought he'd gone back for:
You're a good dancer, by the way. Don't let it go to your head.
You stood there for a long moment.
Then sat down at the kitchen table.
Put the note in front of you.
And smiled — small, complicated, entirely against your will.
Insufferable, you thought.
Completely, irredeemably insufferable.
You thought about when he'd done it. The car, probably — when you'd been looking out the window, or laughing at something, not paying attention. Quietly, without announcement, the way he did everything that actually mattered.
You looked at the note again.
When you're ready.
You folded it once. Storing it in a small box on your counter.
And stayed there a little longer, in the morning quiet, with the light coming in through the window.
Not ready yet.
But closer than you'd been yesterday.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The following week, the atmosphere inside Venturer had become borderline unbearable.
Not in the same way as before.
Before had been cold. Deliberate. The careful distance of two people who had decided, without saying so, to stop letting each other in. That had been its own particular kind of painful — the absence of something that had always been there.
This was different.
This was the note in your coat pocket that you hadn't thrown away. This was Declan leaving his office door open again, which everyone noticed and nobody mentioned. This was the two of you arriving at the same moment in the corridor outside the meeting room and both stopping, and something passing between you that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't quite nothing either — and then both moving on without a word, as if you hadn't both just felt the ground shift slightly underneath you.
Something had changed. Not resolved — not even close. But shifted. Like a window left open after a long winter. Not warm yet. Just — different air.
Everyone felt it without being able to name it.
You felt it most in the moments when you almost looked at each other and didn't quite.
Almost was doing a lot of work that week.
Rupert, who missed nothing and pretended to miss everything, had been watching all of it with focused attention, witnessing something he'd been waiting on for considerably longer than he was letting on.
"The tension in this building has become genuinely unbearable," he said. "Freddie nearly walked into a wall this morning. I blame the two of you entirely."
"Get out, Rupert."
"You left your door open this morning."
Declan said nothing.
Which was, of course, an answer.
Rupert stood. Straightened his jacket. Paused at the door with the air of a man who had timed this perfectly.
"The party Friday," he said casually. "She's coming."
He left before Declan could respond.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The Venturer industry party was exactly what it always was — loud, expensive, full of people performing versions of themselves for each other's benefit. You'd been to enough of them to move through one on autopilot: the right conversations, the right amount of wine, the right smile deployed at the right intervals.
You were managing perfectly well.
And then a young producer — handsome in an irritatingly polished sort of way — had spent the better part of twenty minutes finding increasingly creative reasons to make you laugh beside the bar.
You weren't thinking about it. You were just — present. Laughing at something actually funny for the first time in weeks. It felt unreasonably good.
Across the room, Declan wasn't doing very well.
You were wearing red — a lace dress that did absolutely nothing to help his composure — hair pulled back loosely, a few strands escaping in a way that was probably accidental and was somehow worse for it. It left your neck entirely visible. You looked breathtaking.
And he did not like what he was seeing from afar.
"He's looking at her every time she laughs," he said, in a tone that suggested this was a prosecutable offence.
Freddie nearly choked on his drink. “Jesus Christ.”
"Every single time."
"They're talking Declan, what do you expected? You need to—"
"He's leaning in."
"Declan."
"He's—"
Taggie appeared on his other side. "Dad. You're glaring."
"I'm not glaring."
"You look like you're planning something illegal."
"I'm considering my options."
Rupert, who had been watching the entire situation unfold with the deep satisfaction like he was attending a very good play, took a leisurely sip of champagne. "You know," he mused, "this could all be resolved quite simply if either of you had ever possessed basic emotional communication skills."
"Shut up. Like you're the one to talk."
"Or," Rupert continued, ignoring the last comment, entirely untroubled, "you could continue whatever Victorian tragedy this is. Personally I find it very compelling."
Across the room, you laughed again — the real one, the one that reached your eyes — and rested your hand briefly on the producer's arm.
Too close.
Something ugly twisted inside Declan instantly.
Before he could stop himself, he set his glass down hard and was already crossing the room.
"Meeting room. Now."
You turned. Declan had appeared beside you — jaw set, eyes fixed, with a tone that showed that he made a decision and was not currently open to discussion.
The producer blinked. "Sorry?"
"I wasn't talking to you."
The temperature in his voice could have frozen the Thames.
You stared at him in disbelief. "Excuse me?"
"The Whitmore contract. We need to go over it."
"Now?"
"Yes. Now."
The producer looked deeply uncomfortable. You looked furious. Declan turned and walked away before either of you could argue, which was either confidence or cowardice and you hadn't decided which yet.
After a long beat, you exhaled. Apologised to the producer — who looked, frankly, relieved — and followed.
The meeting room door had barely closed behind you before—
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" you snapped.
Declan turned. "What's wrong with me?"
"You dragged me out like I was a fucking child."
"He was practically—"
"Don't." Your voice was sharp. "Don't finish that sentence."
He closed his mouth.
You stared at him. The anger was real — still there, still sharp at the edges — but underneath it something else was running, quieter and considerably more inconvenient.
"There it is," you said. "The jealousy. Right on schedule."
"You think this is jealousy?"
"That's new." Your voice was dry, letting it all out. "Usually you just glare and pretend it isn't happening."
"I know." He said it without deflection. Without the usual armour. Just — plainly. "I know that's what I do."
That stopped you slightly. Not expecting it.
Because he wasn't arguing. Wasn't turning it back around. He was just standing there, jaw tight, looking at you like he'd made a decision he intended to keep.
"You don't get to do this," you said, quieter now. "You don't get to treat me the way you did and then appear like that every time another man looks at me. You don't get to have both."
"I'm not trying to have both."
"Then what are you trying to have?"
He held your gaze.
"You," he said. Simply. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world and the most terrifying. "That's the whole problem. It's always just been you."
The silence that followed had weight to it.
Your heart was doing something unreasonable in your chest.
"You have a very convenient way of showing that," you said. But the edge in your voice had softened — not gone, just — different.
"I know." He exhaled. Ran a hand through his hair. "What I said at the dinner party — I've gone over it every day since. What possessed me. Why I—" He stopped. Tried again. "I was watching Rupert with you all night and something in me just — I took something ugly that was mine, and I aimed it at you. Because I didn't know what else to do with it."
"That's not an excuse."
"It's not meant to be." His voice was rough. "It's just the truth. And the truth is I was frightened and jealous and I said the one thing I should never have said. To the one person I should never have said it to."
You looked at him.
The anger was still there. It hadn't disappeared. But underneath it — underneath all of it — was the note folded in your coat pocket. Was the car, and Taggie singing, and him crouched in the hallway at eye level because he'd decided that was what the moment needed. Was when you're ready written in slightly different ink because he'd gone back to add it. Was all the years of friendship.
Neither of you said any of that.
But it was there.
"I hate what you did," you said finally. Quieter.
"I know."
"And I—" You stopped. Your voice faltered slightly. "I hate even more how much I missed you. That's the part I can't seem to get past. That even after everything I still—" You shook your head. "It's very inconvenient."
Something moved across his face. Tentative. Careful.
He stepped closer.
Close enough that you caught it — cedarwood and smoke and him, the specific combination that your body had apparently been cataloguing without your permission for years.
"I know the feeling," he said.
He reached into his pocket.
And held out a cigarette.
Not a grand gesture. Not a declaration. Just — the thing that had always existed between you, offered back without ceremony.
Your throat tightened.
You took it.
The silence stretched.
"I hate what you did," you said finally.
"I know."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it's the only true thing I've got right now." He exhaled. "I didn't mean any of it. Not one word."
"I remember what you said," he continued. "About how people look at you. Like you're decoration. Something temporary." His eyes stayed on yours. "I have never looked at you like that. Not once. Not for a single second."
He stepped closer.
"I— I couldn't stand anyone looking at you," he said. Low. Certain. "Not like that. I don't want anyone else thinking they can have you. I couldn't stand it at the dinner party and I couldn't stand it tonight and I'm done pretending that's something other than what it is."
You looked at him, not really sure what to say.
"Which is what, exactly?" you asked. "Say it properly, Declan."
He exhaled.
Like the answer had been living in him for a very long time and was finally, reluctantly, done waiting.
"Love," he said. "I love you. And I've been making myself very stupid about it for longer than I care to admit. And I— I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but I know with certainty that I wanna do something about this. About us."
Everything stopped.
The noise of the party beyond the door. The hum of the building. All of it.
Just him, just Declan, standing in a meeting room at a party he despised, having apparently decided that tonight was the night he was done being careful.
"You're impossible," you said.
"I know."
"You're arrogant and insufferable and you just dragged me away from a perfectly pleasant conversation like a Victorian husband—"
"I know."
A pause.
Your voice softened completely.
"And I love you too." Your voice broke slightly.
That was it.
That was the moment everything snapped into place.
Declan didn’t hesitate.
He pulled you in.
The kiss was immediate—sharp, intense, like everything they had been holding back for years finally collapsing at once. No hesitation now, no space left for doubt.
His hand came up to your jaw, firm but careful, like he needed to make sure you were real. Your fingers gripped the front of his shirt instinctively, pulling him closer without thinking.
And God—
he was exactly what you always feared he would be.
Completely consuming.
His mouth moved against yours with a confidence that made your thoughts scatter instantly, like he had been waiting too long for this to be anything less than inevitable. Heat surged through you, your back pressing against the table behind you as he followed you down without breaking the kiss once.
A low breath escaped him against your lips—something between relief and restraint breaking.
When he finally pulled back just slightly, his forehead rested against yours.
Both of you breathing hard.
Neither of you moving away.
"You're trouble," you murmured, slightly breathless.
The corner of his mouth curved. "You started it."
You laughed — quietly, slightly undone — and he kissed your neck.
"Mm." you murmured.
Than kissed you again, slower this time. Less urgency and more certainty. Like the first one had been about finally and this one was about always.
The kiss didn’t end because either of you wanted it to.
It ended because Declan forced himself to stop.
Slowly. Reluctantly.
Like every instinct he had was telling him to ignore everything else and pull you back in again.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he exhaled against your lips, forehead still resting against yours, both of you slightly breathless, slightly undone.
And then he did something that surprised you.
He stepped back.
Just enough to look at you properly.
"I should take you home," he said quietly.
You blinked. "Now?"
"Yeah." His jaw tightened slightly, like the decision was costing him something. "I don't trust myself to rush this."
That made your chest tighten in a completely different way.
You didn’t answer immediately.
You looked at him.
No arrogance. No game. Just — him, barely holding the line, choosing to hold it anyway.
You nodded.
"Okay," you said.
And meant it.
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Part 4 is finally here!! clearly the last episode of Rivals gave me a little inspiration for this one… and honestly, I couldn't stop writing, so this one was a long one. but it finally happened — these two idiots finally stopped being idiots. We’re slowly getting close to the end of this mini-series, which makes me emotional because I’ve genuinely loved writing this story (and fully embracing my Declan O’Hara obsession again).
as always, please leave your thoughts and opinions!! I love reading them more than you know, and thank you so much for all the love this story has received so far <3 stay safe, be kind, and I love you all xx
What We Don’t Admit — Part 3 is now up 🤍
Let’s just say this story is completely consuming me at the moment and I’m honestly loving writing it so much. I’ll try to post Part 4 over the weekend… but no promises 👀
Truthfully, I should probably be studying instead, but we’ll ignore that for now ehehehe
Hope you enjoy this one <3
what we don't admit chapters
Part 4 will be up today!! Be ready 👀
What We Don’t Admit — Part 3 is now up 🤍
Let’s just say this story is completely consuming me at the moment and I’m honestly loving writing it so much. I’ll try to post Part 4 over the weekend… but no promises 👀
Truthfully, I should probably be studying instead, but we’ll ignore that for now ehehehe
Hope you enjoy this one <3
what we don't admit chapters
What We Don't Admit
Chapter 3 - Unresolved
Pairing: Declan O´Hara x Reader
Summary: Declan O'Hara is exceptionally good at not feeling things. He's been proving it for years. What happens when that finally stops working? One restaurant. One wrong moment. And two people standing face to face, finally close enough to the truth to almost touch it — but not quite ready to.
Word Counting: 3,8k
Warnings: angst, miscommunication, jealousy, emotional repression, friends to lovers, slow burn, alcohol consumption, explicit language.
masterlist
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The problem with losing you was that Declan noticed it everywhere.
In the silence beside him during Venturer meetings where your sarcastic comments used to make Rupert laugh so hard he nearly choked on his coffee — that particular laugh you'd try to suppress behind your hand before giving up entirely, shoulders shaking, completely undone by your own joke.
In the empty passenger seat of his car after late nights at the office. A small thing. An insignificant thing. Except it wasn't, because you'd had a habit of filling silences without even trying — observations about nothing, half-finished thoughts, the occasional comment so dry he'd had to look away to hide that he was smiling. The drives home were considerably longer now. Or felt it.
In the way nobody handed him cigarettes anymore.
That one was the strangest. You'd never made a thing of it — never announced it, never expected thanks. You'd simply always seemed to know when he was reaching for the packet before he'd fully decided to, and yours would already be extended toward him. He'd taken it for granted so completely that the absence of it felt almost like a physical thing. A hand that wasn't there.
Worst of all —
you stopped looking at him.
Not dramatically. Not cruelly. You hadn't made a scene or drawn a line or told anyone what had happened between you on that terrace. You were still polite. Still warm with everyone else. Still smiling at Taggie in the kitchen and laughing properly at Freddie's stupid jokes and listening patiently whilst Rupert rambled for hours about himself with the endearing shamelessness of a man who'd never once doubted he was worth listening to.
You simply looked through Declan now.
Clipped responses. Brief eye contact. Professional conversations conducted with the careful neutrality of someone who had decided, quietly and without announcement, to stop letting him in.
It drove him fucking insane.
Not because he didn't deserve it.
Because he did. Because he knew exactly what he'd done and why, and the knowing made it worse — made every clipped response land with the specific weight of something earned.
"She's going to forgive you eventually," Freddie said casually one afternoon, sprawled across the office sofa with a drink in hand.
Declan didn't look up from his paperwork. "I don't need your advice."
"You look homicidal."
"I am homicidal."
Freddie smirked. "Well, there's a shock."
Declan slammed the folder shut. The sound was satisfying for approximately half a second.
"She won't even look at me."
Freddie raised an eyebrow. "And whose fault is that?"
The silence that followed had weight to it. The particular weight of something no one needed to say out loud.
Then, quietly — in a register Freddie had rarely heard from him:
"I didn't mean it."
Not an excuse or a justification. Just — the plain, useless truth of it.
Freddie's expression softened. "I know you didn't."
Declan leaned back heavily in his chair, pressing a hand over his face. The leather creaked beneath him.
"I just—" He exhaled. Sharp. Frustrated. "I watched him touching her all night and I—"
"Lost your mind," Freddie said, knowing that feeling all too well, "because you're catastrophically in love with her."
The room went very still.
Freddie took a calm sip of whiskey, smirking now.
"Oh, relax. Everyone knows."
"Everyone—" Declan said worriedly.
"Declan." Freddie cut him off. "You once threatened to fire a man because he flirted with her at a Christmas party."
"He was an idiot."
"He said she had nice eyes."
"She was uncomfortable."
Freddie stared at him.
Declan stared back.
A beat passed. Then another.
And then — slowly, with the specific expression of a man watching a very obvious thing become undeniable — realisation moved across Declan's face.
"Oh," he said.
A pause.
"For fuck's sake."
Freddie raised his glass in a small, unhelpful toast.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The next few weeks were unbearable in the way that only happens when two people who know each other too well are actively avoiding knowing each other at all.
Everyone noticed. Nobody said anything. Which was its own kind of unbearable.
Taggie cornered you in the Penscombe kitchen one evening — a Wednesday, quiet, the kind of afternoon where the house had settled into itself and there was nothing to hide behind. She didn't announce it. Just appeared beside you at the counter, picked up a dish towel she had no intention of using, and stood there for a moment deciding what and how to say it.
"What happened?" she asked. Simple. Direct. "Between you and Dad."
You kept your eyes on the vegetables in front of you. The knife was very useful suddenly. Very requiring of attention.
"Nothing happened."
Taggie said nothing for a moment.
"You used to follow each other around," she said quietly, "like you'd both forgotten how to exist separately."
You looked up sharply at that. "We did not."
The indignation in your voice was genuine. So was the small, uncomfortable recognition underneath it that she was, infuriatingly, entirely correct.
“You did.” A pause.
Taggie's expression didn't change. She had her father's patience when she wanted to use it — stillness that simply waited, unhurried, for the truth to arrive on its own.
"It was his fault, wasn't it."
Not a question. The way she said it made that clear.
You didn't answer.
You looked back down at the chopping board instead. Focused very hard on something that required no focus at all.
Which was, of course, an answer.
The silence stretched for a moment. Then Taggie exhaled softly — not quite a sigh, something smaller than that, something that sounded like pieces clicking into place she hadn't entirely wanted to click.
"Oh," she said quietly.
Just that. But the way she said it — the weight of it, the gentleness — made your throat tighten in a way you hadn't been prepared for.
"It's fine." You said it before she could say anything else. Kept your voice even, practical, the tone you used when you needed people to stop looking at you a certain way. "I'm fine."
Taggie looked at you for a long moment. Expressions softening.
She didn't argue. Didn't push. Didn't offer the kind of well-meaning consolation that would have made everything worse.
She simply reached over and topped up your wine glass without being asked.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
You were managing.
Not well. But adequately. Which, under the circumstances, felt like enough.
And then Maud came back.
You saw them from across the restaurant — a Saturday afternoon, somewhere you'd gone specifically because it was a quiet, unremarkable place where nothing ever happened. No one you knew. No conversations you'd have to navigate. Just a corner table, a book you'd been meaning to finish for three weeks, and a glass of wine that wasn't about anything except being left alone with it.
You saw him first.
Declan, at a corner table near the window — shoulders carrying that familiar tension he never quite put down, the kind that lived in him so permanently you suspected he'd stopped noticing it years ago. And then the woman across from him. Elegant. Composed. Unmistakably Maud — leaning forward slightly, her hand resting lightly over his on the table.
You stopped walking.
The waiter behind you said something apologetic, stepping around you.
You didn't hear it.
From across the room, whatever they were discussing looked serious. Intimate in the way that only comes from years of shared history — children, a marriage, a whole life you had never been part of and had never pretended to be.
Declan's jaw tightened. Something he always did when trying to stay measured. When he was feeling something he hadn't decided what to do with yet.
Then Maud reached up and touched his face.
Just briefly. Just once.
You turned around quickly and walked straight back out.
The cold air hit you the moment you pushed through the door. You stopped on the pavement, closed your eyes, and pressed a hand to your chest — feeling your heart doing something unreasonable against your ribs, willing it to slow down, to behave, to stop reacting like this to something that was none of your business.
Then you kept moving. Coat pulled tight around you, no destination, just the instinct to put distance between yourself and what you'd just seen before it had the chance to settle properly.
It makes sense, you told yourself. They have children. History. A whole life that existed long before you were ever part of any of this.
You have no claim on him.
You never did.
You were halfway down the street when you heard him.
"Y/N."
You didn't stop.
"Y/N—" His voice came differently the second time. Lower. More desperate. The voice he used when he wasn't performing anything.
"I'm fine, Declan." The words came out clipped and clean. Controlled. You were quite proud of how controlled they were. "Go back inside."
"You saw—"
"I said I'm fine."
He caught up with you anyway. Of course he did. Declan O'Hara had never in his life respected a conversation that walked away from him.
"Will you just—" He stepped around you, frustration written across every line of him, forcing you to stop. His voice dropped. "Look at me. Please."
You did.
That was a mistake.
Because he looked undone — in the specific, unguarded way Declan almost never allowed himself to look. Like he'd left something important at that table and run out without thinking, and was only now reckoning with what it had cost him.
"It's not what you think," he said.
"I don't think anything." Your voice was remarkably steady. "It's none of my business."
"Stop doing that." He exhaled sharply, one hand dragging through his hair — gesture he made when he was running out of ways to contain something. "Just— stop."
"Doing what?" The steadiness had an edge to it now. Your heart was going too fast and you were quite certain he could tell.
"That." His jaw tightened. "Deciding it doesn't matter. Deciding you don't—"
"Declan." The word came out with a crack in it. Just slight. Just enough. "Please don't."
"She means nothing—"
"She was your wife." The words landed harder than you'd intended. "She's the mother of your children. Don't stand in the here and tell me she means nothing — that's not something I want to hear you say. It's not something you should be saying."
He went quiet.
Good.
You pulled your coat tighter. Exhaled slowly. Gave yourself a moment.
"I'm not angry about Maud," you said finally. Quieter now. "I don't have the right to be angry about Maud. And I know that." A pause. "But I am angry about the dinner party. I'm still angry about that. And seeing you in there just now, thinking maybe you were — maybe things were—" Your voice caught. You pushed through it. "It just reminded me that I've been sitting with what you said for weeks. Making excuses for it. Telling myself you didn't mean it."
"I didn't."
"I know that." The words came out almost desperate. Raw in a way you hadn't planned. "That's exactly the part I can't get past, Declan. You didn't mean it and you still said it. And it still—"
You stopped.
Swallowed against the tightness in your throat — that specific, stubborn ache that had been living there for weeks and refused to go away no matter how many times you told yourself you were fine.
You weren't going to finish that sentence.
You weren't ready to finish that sentence.
The street was quiet around you. A car passed somewhere nearby, headlights sweeping briefly across his face — catching the lines of it, the way he was looking at you like he was seeing something he'd spent a very long time trying not to see.
"Tell me what to do." His voice came out low. Rough. Stripped of everything else — the arrogance, the deflection, all of it gone. Just the plain, unguarded underneath. "Just— tell me what you need me to do."
And that — that specific thing, Declan O'Hara asking instead of deciding, standing in a street asking you what you needed — broke something open in your chest that you absolutely had not been prepared for.
Your eyes burned.
You looked away.
"I don't know," you admitted. Barely above a whisper. "I genuinely don't know."
He said nothing.
The silence between you was enormous. Full of everything neither of you were saying and both of you knew.
Then, at the end of the street — a familiar figure, coat half-buttoned against the cold, hands in his pockets, looking entirely too unsurprised to have found you here.
Rupert.
Of course.
He stopped when he saw you. Read the situation in approximately one second, the way he always did, because whatever else Rupert Campbell-Black was, he had never once in his life failed to read a room. His eyes moved briefly to somewhere behind you — to Declan, presumably — and back again.
He didn't say anything. Just tilted his head gently in the opposite direction. A question without words.
You shook yours slightly.
Not now.
He accepted that with a small nod and fell into step beside you without being asked, without comment, without any of the dramatics he was entirely capable of and chose, tonight, to set aside entirely.
"I need to go," you said to Declan. Without turning back. The words came out steadier than you felt.
"Y/N—"
"We'll talk." You swallowed. "Just — not tonight. Not like this."
You didn't wait for his answer.
You turned and walked, Rupert a steady half-step beside you, and behind you you heard Declan exhale — sharp and frustrated and helpless all at once — and the sound of it followed you half the length of the street before the night finally swallowed it whole.
You didn't look back.
You were almost certain he was still standing there.
The drive home was quiet. Rupert kept his eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel and didn't say a single word — which, from a man who treated silence as something to be solved, said everything. No commentary. No observations. No well-timed remarks designed to make you laugh before you were ready to.
Just the road and his presence beside you like a full stop at the end of a sentence you hadn't finished writing yet.
He pulled up outside your house and left the engine running.
You sat there for a moment, not quite ready to move.
"Rupert—"
"You don't need to. Not tonight." He said softly, knowing you would eventually tell him when you were ready, not because you felt obligated to give an explanation.
You looked at him. "Thank you."
A small smile tugged at your lips, though it clearly took effort.
"Get some sleep, yes?" He smiled back.
You nodded. Got out. Closed the door.
You made it to your front step before the first tear fell. Just one. The one you'd been holding since the restaurant.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
Maud was still at the table when he returned.
She took one look at his face and reached for her wine.
"Ah," she said quietly.
Declan sat down heavily. The chair scraped against the floor. Around them, the restaurant continued its quiet Saturday afternoon business — murmured conversations, the clink of cutlery, none of it touching the particular silence that had settled over their corner of it.
A long minute passed.
"I appreciate you coming," he said finally. "But this isn't—" He stopped. Looked at the table. Chose the words more carefully than he usually bothered to. "It isn't what I want."
Maud studied him for a long moment in the way she always had — unhurried, clear-eyed, without the need to fill silence with something easier. It had been one of the things that made loving her simple, once. And complicated, later. She saw things plainly and she didn't pretend otherwise, which was a quality Declan had always respected even when it had been aimed directly at him.
"Is it her?" she asked. Quietly. Without accusation. Like she already knew and was simply giving him the space to confirm it.
Declan said nothing.
Which was enough of an answer.
Something moved across Maud's face — slow and complicated. Not quite hurt. Not quite surprise. Something closer to the particular relief of a weight you've been carrying so long you'd stopped noticing it, finally being set down somewhere you're allowed to leave it.
"I always wondered," she said. Measured. Like she'd thought about how to say this before and was choosing each word carefully. "When we were married." She turned her wine glass slowly between her fingers, eyes on it rather than him. "She never did anything. I want you to know I know that. She was never — it wasn't like that. But there was always something." A pause. "The way you were with her. The way you talked about her when you thought you were just talking about work." She glanced up briefly. "I used to think I was imagining it."
Declan's jaw tightened.
"Maud—"
"I'm not saying it to hurt you." She met his eyes steadily. "I think I'm just relieved. To know I wasn't imagining it. To finally understand it properly." A small, sad smile crossed her face — not bitter, just honest. The smile of someone who had arrived, after a long time, at something like peace with a thing that had once been painful. "You've been making yourself very stupid about this for a very long time, Declan."
He said nothing.
She set down her glass.
"Whatever just happened out there—" She nodded once toward the street beyond the window. "Fix it. Properly this time."
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
Later that night, Declan stood outside alone.
No particular reason. Just the need for cold air and the quiet that didn't ask anything of him — that didn't require him to be articulate or composed or any of the things he'd been spending considerable energy pretending to be.
The cigarette between his fingers had burned down to almost nothing before he'd taken a single drag. He'd forgotten about it entirely, which wasn't like him. He forgot very little, as a rule. Details, conversations, the precise moment something had gone wrong — these things stayed with him longer than he'd ever have chosen.
Lately, the rule had stopped applying.
He heard the door behind him. Knew the footsteps without turning — their particular rhythm, unhurried and quiet, the footsteps of someone who had learned early that arriving softly into a room served you better than announcing yourself.
Taggie stopped beside him, wrapped in an oversized cardigan that had probably started life belonging to someone else entirely and had long since stopped caring. She didn't speak immediately. That was one of the things he'd always been grateful for in her — she'd never felt the need to fill silence just because it was there. She understood that sometimes silence was the only honest thing left in a room, or a garden, or a night like this one.
They stood together for a while.
The garden was dark, the shapes of it just visible — the treeline at the far edge, the outline of things. Somewhere in the distance an owl moved through the branches, a brief soft sound and then nothing. The night smelled of rain that hadn't arrived yet. The particular heaviness of it.
"You saw her today," Taggie said finally.
Not a question.
"Yes."
"And?"
Declan took a drag of the cigarette at last. Let the smoke out slowly.
"And nothing. She walked away."
Taggie said nothing to that.
Which somehow made it worse than if she had.
"I keep—" He stopped. Tried again. "I keep going back over what I said. That night." His jaw tightened. "I've said a lot of things in my life I'm not proud of. That's hardly — this isn't new territory for me." A pause. The cigarette burned. "But that was different."
"Because it was her," Taggie said quietly.
He didn't answer immediately.
He didn't need to.
"I've known her for years," he said finally. The words came out slowly, like something being examined in daylight for the first time. "Years. And in all that time she has never — not fucking once — made me feel like I wasn't—" He stopped. Something moved across his face, complicated and unresolved and entirely unlike him. "She just looked at me like I was worth looking at. Even when I was being impossible. Even when I gave her every reason in the world not to."
Taggie turned slightly toward him.
He wasn't looking at her. His eyes were fixed somewhere in the middle distance — on nothing specific, on everything at once.
"And I repaid that," his voice dropped, "by saying the one thing she needed me never to say." He shook his head slightly, the disbelief of it still sitting fresh even weeks later. "The one thing."
"Dad."
"I know."
"No." Her voice was quiet but firm. "Look at me."
He did. Reluctantly. The way he did everything that cost him something.
Taggie's expression was soft but unflinching — a combination she'd always managed that he'd never quite understood how she'd come by. She had her mother's eyes sometimes. The kind that saw things plainly and simply refused to pretend otherwise.
"Say it," she said. "Out loud. Just once."
He looked at her for a long moment.
His throat moved.
"I'm in love with her." The words came out rough and quiet — like something he'd been holding at arm's length for so long that the act of setting it down ached in a way he hadn't anticipated. "I have been for — I don't even know how long anymore. Long enough that I can't remember what it felt like before." A short exhale. Humourless. "Which is a deeply inconvenient thing to realise when she won't look at me."
Taggie was quiet for a moment.
Then she reached over, took the burned-out cigarette from between his fingers, dropped it onto the ground, and stepped on it quietly.
"She'll come back," she said. Simple. Certain. "Not because she has to. Because she wants to. Because whatever you said that night — she knows who you actually are, Dad. She's always known. That's the whole point of her."
Declan looked out at the dark garden. His jaw tightened at the possibility — not against it, but at the weight of it. At what it would mean if she did. At what it would mean if she didn't.
"And if she doesn't?" he said quietly.
Taggie looked at him with the patience of a daughter who had spent her entire life watching her father be brilliant and stubborn and occasionally, spectacularly catastrophic — and love him anyway.
"Then you go and get her," she said. "You have never once in your life waited for something you actually wanted. Don't start now."
He had absolutely nothing to say to that.
The night settled around them, heavy and still.
Eventually Taggie went inside. She squeezed his arm once as she passed — brief, wordless.
Declan stayed where he was.
After a moment he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes.
Stopped.
Put them back.
Stood there instead in the dark, in the garden, with the rain finally beginning to fall — softly at first, just the suggestion of it — and thought about a woman somewhere across the city who was probably doing the same thing he was.
Not sleeping.
Not quite ready.
But almost.
Almost was something.
He held onto that.
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Part three is here!! This one took a lot out of me to write — in the best way possible. So much happening beneath the surface with these two, and I hope it came through. What did you think? Are we getting closer to redemption, or do they need to suffer just a little bit more first? I'd love to hear your thoughts — drop them in the comments, I read every single one. Also, English isn't my first language, so if you spot any mistakes please do let me know (kindly ;)). That's all for now. Love you all, take care of yourselves. xx
What We Don't Admit
Chapter 2 - What Everyone Else Could See
Pairing: Declan O´Hara x Reader
Summary: Before the jealousy, before the dinner party, before everything fell apart — there was this. Late nights at Venturer. Whiskey-soaked conversations. Shared silences that lasted too long to mean nothing at all. Somewhere between lingering touches, half-finished dances, and feelings neither of them dared name, Declan and Y/N built something dangerously close to love without ever admitting it aloud. And the worst part?
Everyone else noticed long before they did.
Word Counting: 2.4k
Warnings: angst, miscommunication, jealousy, emotional repression, friends to lovers, slow burn, alcohol consumption, explicit language.
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The thing about Declan O'Hara was that he was exceptionally good at not knowing things.
Not out of stupidity. Quite the opposite.
He simply had a long-standing arrangement with himself: certain things were not examined. Certain doors were not opened. And if something threatened to open them anyway — he poured another whiskey and found something else to argue about.
It had served him well for decades.
Until you.
The first time he realised something was terribly wrong with him was the night you fell asleep on his shoulder.
It had been late — one of those nights at Venturer that should have ended hours earlier but somehow never did. The meeting had dissolved somewhere between whiskey, half-finished ideas and Rupert Campbell-Black being, as usual, entirely unhelpful. Most people had gone home. The office had settled into that particular quiet that only existed after midnight — rain against the glass, desk lamps casting everything amber.
You were beside him on the leather sofa, shoes discarded near the coffee table, lazily flicking through a script.
Declan was complaining about Rupert. Again.
"He's a menace," he said flatly, pouring himself another whiskey.
You hummed without looking up. "You say that like you don't adore him."
"I tolerate him."
"You flew to New York because he said he was bored."
A pause.
"...That was different."
A quiet laugh escaped you. Effortless. Not performed.
And that was always the problem with you. You never tried to affect him.
You just did.
He glanced over. Your eyes were already half-closed, exhaustion finally catching up.
"You should go home," he said.
"So should you."
"I own this building."
"You still look exhausted, darling."
Darling. You always said it so innocently. Like it meant absolutely nothing.
Declan had a complicated relationship with how much he liked hearing it.
A few minutes later, your head tipped slowly onto his shoulder.
The movement was so natural it almost felt rehearsed.
Neither of you moved. Neither of you spoke.
Declan went completely still.
Your perfume hit him properly — warm, subtle, entirely wrong for a room like this. Your breathing evened out against him. One hand rested unconsciously against his forearm, like it belonged there.
Like you belonged there.
And for the first time in years, Declan O'Hara forgot how to think.
"You know," Lizzie's voice came from the doorway, amused and knowing, "most people usually start with dinner before looking at someone like that."
"I'm not looking any differently."
"Oh, sweetheart." She grinned. "You absolutely are."
"Fuck off, Lizzie."
She lingered a moment longer. Her expression softened slightly.
"Don't move her," she added. "She needs it."
Then she left.
Declan didn't move for a long time after.
Not because he couldn't.
Because he didn't want to.
He filed that thought under things not to examine and left it there.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
He managed to leave it there for approximately three weeks.
Then came Rupert.
It was always Rupert.
Because Rupert touched everyone, flirted with everyone, moved through the world like it existed purely for his amusement — and people, helplessly and inevitably, let him. Declan had long since made his peace with this. Rupert was simply Rupert, and fighting it was about as useful as arguing with weather.
Normally, Declan ignored it.
Until it came to you.
It happened at Penscombe. Summer evening, too much wine, the kind of night that stretched itself out lazily. Rupert was sprawled across the sofa beside you, one arm draped along the cushions behind your head, telling some absurd story involving a polo match and a minor royal whose name he kept getting deliberately wrong.
You were laughing properly. Head tipped back. Eyes bright.
Declan watched Rupert lean closer every few seconds — not deliberately, not consciously. Just naturally. The way people always drifted toward you without meaning to, like something warm they hadn't realised they'd been cold without.
He'd always found it endearing before.
Tonight, something hot and unfamiliar turned over in his chest. Ugly in a way he had no name for and no interest in finding one.
"Darling, you're entirely too pretty to be listening to business conversations," Rupert announced, with the dramatic sincerity of a man who'd never said anything lightly in his life.
You laughed. "And yet somehow I survive them."
"Barely."
Rupert leaned in to murmur something near your ear. You tilted your head to hear it.
"Rupert." Declan cut in. Dry as gravel.
Rupert looked up. "Mm?"
"Do try behaving for at least five consecutive minutes."
The room went briefly quiet.
Rupert blinked. Then laughed — loud, delighted. "We all know that's a lost cause, chum."
Declan rolled his eyes.
Across the room, Taggie hid a smile behind her wine glass. She'd grown up watching her father bury things. She knew the specific tone his voice took when he was feeling something he hadn't permitted himself to feel yet.
She said nothing.
You, completely oblivious, stole an olive from Rupert's plate and carried on listening to the story.
Declan picked up his whiskey and told himself — convincingly, almost — that it was just the alcohol.
He was getting better at lying to himself. He considered this progress.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The second sign was subtler.
Which somehow made it worse.
You had a habit of touching people when you spoke. Not flirtatiously — just warmly. Instinctively. A hand on Freddie's arm when you laughed. Fingers brushing Taggie's shoulder without thinking. You leaned into conversations because you genuinely liked people, liked closeness, liked making whoever you were with feel like the most interesting person in the room.
Everyone accepted it without question.
Because that was simply you.
But with Declan, something had shifted — gradually, without announcement — until the touches had become a language he'd started listening for without meaning to.
He noticed every single one.
It was worst during meetings.
One afternoon you leaned across him to reach paperwork on the other side of the conference table. A perfectly ordinary movement. Your hand landed briefly on his shoulder to steady yourself, and your perfume hit him a full second before he registered anything else.
You were already sitting back down by the time he remembered where he was.
"And then we move the funding into—" Freddie paused. "Declan."
Silence.
"Declan."
He looked up.
Freddie was staring at him carefully, trying very hard not to draw conclusions.
"You've been looking at the same page for five minutes."
Across the table, Rupert's eyes were already bright with something insufferable.
You looked concerned. "Are you alright?"
Declan cleared his throat.
"Fine."
Rupert took a long, considered sip of his coffee.
"Mm," he said pleasantly. "Clearly."
Nobody pushed it.
Which was, in many ways, considerably worse than if they had.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
A few weeks later, you were sitting on the kitchen counter at Penscombe before sunrise, wrapped in one of Declan's jumpers after spilling tea down your own clothes.
The fabric swallowed you whole.
You hadn't questioned it. He hadn't offered an explanation. It just happened — the way most things between you just happened, without negotiation, without ceremony.
Rupert noticed immediately.
"Oh," he said slowly, grin already forming. "This is escalating."
You frowned. "What is?"
He pointed at you with his coffee mug. "That is not nothing."
Taggie glanced over her shoulder as she cooked, letting out a low laugh but saying nothing— entirely like her. She'd spent years watching her father navigate every feeling sideways. She recognized the signs.
Declan didn't look up from his cigarette.
"She was cold."
"Mm." Rupert leaned back with the satisfaction of a man holding a winning hand. "And yet you look like someone personally offended by the existence of winter."
"Shut up."
Freddie snorted into his coffee.
You laughed quietly, tugging the sleeves over your hands. The jumper smelled faintly of cedarwood and smoke and him.
Across the kitchen, Declan caught the small smile you tried to hide in the collar.
It did something deeply inconvenient to his chest.
He didn't ask for the jumper back.
You didn't take it off.
That was the detail everyone noticed.
Not the borrowing.
The keeping.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The arguments between you never really felt like arguments.
They felt like rhythm. Like something that had learned how to exist between two people without anyone's permission.
"You're wrong," Declan said flatly.
"I'm rarely wrong." You didn't look up from the script. "And I'm definitely not wrong about this."
"The second act collapses under its own weight."
"The second act is the point."
He sat down opposite you without asking. As always.
"You're emotionally attached to it," he said.
"I'm professionally attached to it."
"With you, they're the same thing."
You looked up at him slowly. Over your glasses. A small smile pulling at the corner of your mouth.
"You're more annoying when you're right."
"I'm always right."
"Delusional," you murmured.
But you crossed out three lines and handed it back without another word.
Declan looked at the page.
"...Better."
"I know."
Neither of you moved after that. Neither of you ever really rushed away from each other — and the strange thing was that Declan had stopped noticing how unusual that was. How natural it had become to simply stay.
He noticed now.
He wished he hadn't.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
It was at the Bar Sinister that the last of his defences started to show their cracks.
Thursday evening. Loud enough that you had to lean in to hear each other — which was either the worst thing about the place or the best, depending on the night. You were three drinks in and telling him about a disastrous production meeting, your hands moving as you spoke, laughter breaking through before you'd even finished setting up the punchline.
"—and he said, with complete sincerity, that the target audience was everyone—"
"Everyone."
"Everyone, Declan. Adults, children, dogs presumably—"
He laughed. Properly.
It caught him off guard, the way it always did. You had this talent for finding the gap in him — sliding past every wall he'd spent thirty years constructing and reaching something genuine on the other side without him ever seeing you coming.
"What did you say?" he asked.
"I told him it needed significant reworking and then I cried in the taxi home."
He shook his head. But the smile didn't leave.
You were watching him with something open in your expression — something you never bothered hiding, because you'd never seemed embarrassed by what you felt. That was the dangerous thing about you. You simply felt things, plainly, and somehow made it look like the most natural thing in the world.
"You should do that more," you said.
"Do what?"
"Laugh." Quietly. No pressure behind it. Just an observation, offered back to him like a gift he hadn't asked for.
Declan picked up his glass.
"Don't push it."
But he didn't look away from you either.
And somewhere underneath the whiskey and the noise and the thirty years of carefully maintained distance, something he'd been filing under things not to examine began, quietly, to refuse to stay filed.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The dance happened without planning.
It was late. One of those small gatherings that had started as dinner and dissolved, as they always did, into wine and music that had slowed to something no one was paying attention to anymore. Rupert had disappeared with Taggie. Freddie had vanished entirely. And somehow — just somehow — it was only you and him left in the middle of the room.
You turned slightly.
"You're not dancing."
"I don't dance."
"That sounds like a lie you tell people to avoid effort."
Declan exhaled through his nose. "You're insufferable."
"You've said that already."
A pause.
Then, reluctantly:
"...This is ridiculous."
"You're still standing here."
That was enough.
His hand found yours. Not dramatic. Not performative. Just — there. Warm. Certain. And when he pulled you closer it wasn't a performance either. It was instinct.
Your other hand rested lightly against his shoulder as you moved together slowly. Not really dancing. Not really anything else. Just existing in the same rhythm whilst everything else blurred into background.
For once, Declan wasn't thinking.
And you weren't either.
"See?" you murmured. "Not so bad."
He didn't answer.
But his hand tightened slightly at your waist.
"You're staring," you said softly.
"I'm not."
"You absolutely are."
A pause. Shorter this time.
Then — quietly, before he could stop it:
"Can you blame me?"
The words landed between you like something irreversible.
Your expression shifted. Softing. Like something you'd been holding carefully at a distance had been allowed, briefly, to step closer.
Your heart was doing something inconvenient against your ribs.
Across the room, Rupert leaned slowly toward Taggie.
"They're hopeless," he murmured, with the deep satisfaction watching something inevitable finally happen.
"Rupert—"
"No, darling. Look at them." He tilted his head. "Practically courting in Victorian code."
Taggie watched you both for a moment. "He's going to be unbearable when he finally admits it," she said quietly, almost to herself.
Rupert looked delighted. "Insufferable," he agreed.
Fredie, like everyone else, was watching the two of you, witnessing a slow-motion collision that he predicted two years ago.
Neither of you noticed any of it.
Because Declan's hand had shifted slightly lower at your waist.
And your fingers had curled more tightly into his shoulder.
And the music kept playing.
And neither of you moved.
Not once.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌⋆˚꩜。﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
The conversation that mattered came later. Much later.
Outside Penscombe, long after everyone else had gone to bed. The air smelled of rain and cigarettes and somewhere in the distance Rupert was still drunkenly singing to himself.
You were staring into your wine glass.
"What is it?" Declan asked.
You hesitated. Then shrugged. "Nothing."
"Liar."
A small laugh. Then silence. Then, finally:
"Sometimes I hate how people look at me. Around all of this." You gestured vaguely — the house, the wealth, the whole world of it. "The parties. The flirting. The assumptions. Men here look at women like we're decorations. Something temporary." A pause. "I think that's why I like being around you lot. Rupert, Taggie, Freddie. You make me feel safe."
Declan's chest tightened.
"And me?" he asked quietly.
Your eyes lifted to his.
"You especially."
It hit him harder than it should have.
Because the truth was, Declan had never particularly considered himself a good man. Not carefully. Not in the way that mattered. But when you looked at him like that — like you'd weighed him up and found something worth trusting — he almost believed it.
He should have said something then.
He didn't.
He picked up his cigarette instead, and looked out at the dark garden, and let the moment pass the way he'd let all the others pass.
And that was the cruelest thing about all of it — not the dinner party, not the words he'd say later that he couldn't take back.
It was this.
All these moments he'd chosen to leave unspoken.
Every door he'd refused to open.
Right up until the night he blew one off its hinges entirely — and broke something he hadn't even admitted he was holding.
── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ──
Part two!! I decided to go back a little and show more of their relationship before the dinner party, so you can properly understand their dynamic — and why what happened hurt so much. Please tell me what you think!! Also if you see any error say so, english isn’t my first language, so be kind <3 Okay, love you all bye xx
materlist
What We Don't Admit
Chapter 1 - Love Spoken Badly
Pairing: Declan O´Hara x Reader
Summary: A dinner party, too much jealousy, and one sentence Declan O’Hara can’t take back. When Rupert’s harmless flirting pushes Declan too far, buried feelings finally explode into sharp words that leave Y/N more hurt than he ever intended. And for the first time since they met, walking away feels easier than staying.
Word Counting: 1.2k
Warnings: angst, miscommunication, jealousy, emotional repression, friends to lovers, slow burn, alcohol consumption, explicit language.
── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ──
Nobody who knew Declan O’Hara was remotely surprised by the fact he despised dinner parties.
Hours trapped in overheated ballrooms surrounded by wealthy parasites and champagne-soaked aristocrats sounded remarkably close to hell in his opinion. Men with wandering hands and louder mouths crowded around crystal decanters pretending to discuss business whilst eyeing each other’s wives. Said wives, dressed in impossibly tight couture, returned the favour with bored smiles and empty laughter.
Thankfully, Rupert Campbell-Black was seated opposite him.
Unfortunately, so were you.
Declan took a slow sip of whiskey as Rupert spoke animatedly beside you, one arm lazily draped over the back of your chair like he owned the room — like he owned everyone in it. Typical Rupert.
And God, tonight was not helping.
You looked devastating.
Soft curls framing your face effortlessly, red lipstick staining the rim of your wine glass every time you drank. The black dress clung to you like sin itself.
Declan wished he’d stayed home.
Rupert leaned closer again, fingertips gliding lazily along your arm as though personal space had never applied to him in the first place.
“Darling,” he murmured for what was probably the fifth time that evening, “you look fucking heavenly tonight.”
You laughed softly into your wine. “That’s enough flattering, Rup. What exactly do you want from me?”
A grin spread instantly across his face.
“See? This is why you’re my favourite. You know me too well.”
You tilted your head towards him, amused despite yourself. “Mm. So there is an ulterior motive.”
“There always is.”
Across the table, Declan’s jaw flexed.
“Sir?” the waitress asked politely, offering him a tray of prawn cocktail.
“No,” he muttered flatly, not even looking at her. His eyes stayed fixed on Rupert’s hand still touching you.
Eventually, you glanced over.
Declan looked unfairly handsome tonight. Black tuxedo. Bow tie loosened ever so slightly. Dark curls slicked back from his forehead. The sharp outline of his moustache twitching every few seconds like he was restraining himself from saying something catastrophic.
You and Declan had been friends for years now. Late nights at Venturer meetings arguing over impossible ideas. Drunken evenings at the Bar Sinister that somehow always ended in laughter. Weekends at Penscombe helping Taggie in the kitchen whilst Rupert caused chaos somewhere nearby. Somewhere along the line, without meaning to, you had fallen hopelessly in love with him.
With his sharp Irish charm. His impossible confidence. The rough edge of his accent that softened whenever he spoke to you. The loyalty beneath all that arrogance. The quiet tenderness he hid from almost everyone else.
He felt your gaze instantly.
Still, he refused to look at you. Something was wrong, you could feel it.
“What are you doing after this?” Rupert asked casually, now tracing idle circles against your palm.
Declan tightened his grip around his whiskey glass.
“Oh, nothing exciting,” you replied with a laugh. “Probably boring myself to death at home.”
“Perfect,” Rupert grinned. “Come back with me.”
You blinked at him. “Why?”
Rupert smirked. “I’ll show you why.”
That did it.
Declan’s grip tightened once.
Then harder.
And suddenly—
CRACK.
The whiskey tumbler shattered violently in his hand, shards of crystal scattering across the pristine white tablecloth.
“Fuck” he whispered furiously.
The room fell silent.
Every head turned.
“Jesus Christ,” someone whispered.
Rupert frowned immediately. “Chum, are you alright?”
But Declan was already standing.
“I’m fine.”
The lie came clipped and sharp as he pushed back his chair and strode out onto the terrace without another word.
You stared after him for barely two seconds before excusing yourself quietly and following him outside.
Cold night air hit your skin instantly.
Declan stood against the brick wall, cigarette between his fingers, shoulders tense enough to snap.
“Light?” you asked softly, placing your own cigarette between your lips.
Without a word, he pulled a lighter from his pocket and flicked it open.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
You watched the sharp line of his profile instead. The way his jaw kept clenching. The way he inhaled smoke too deeply.
Something was definitely wrong.
“What’s going on?” you finally asked.
“Nothing.”
The answer came too quickly.
You narrowed your eyes slightly. “Right. So smashing glasses is just something you do recreationally now?”
Declan exhaled sharply through his nose, dragging another long pull from the cigarette before finally looking at you.
“Are you fucking him?”
Your heart stopped.
“What?”
“Rupert.” His voice hardened instantly. “Are you sleeping with him?”
You stared at him in disbelief.
“I didn’t realise the two of you were—” he cut himself off with a bitter laugh, “—although I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Rupert would sleep with anything that breathes.”
Silence.
The second the words left his mouth, regret flashed across his face.
Real, immediate regret.
But then— instead of stopping, his jealousy twisted the knife further.
"Don't look so shocked," he muttered bitterly, avoiding your eyes now. "You spend half your time draped all over each other."
That dit it.
Your expression crumpled almost imperceptibly, but Declan noticed.
Of course he noticed.
Because suddenly it wasn't just anger speaking.
It sounded like judgement.
Like all this time he'd been watching you through the same lens as everyone else.
“Love—”
“No.”
You dropped your cigarette to the ground, crushing it beneath your heel as you shook your head slowly.
“You know what, Declan?” Your voice wavered despite your best efforts. “You of all people are the last person I ever expected to say something like that to me.”
He opened his mouth again, panic flickering beneath the anger now.
“You know Rupert is like a brother to me.”
“I know, I—”
“No, clearly you don’t.”
Silence.
Heavy.
Your eyes burned painfully, but you refused to let the tears fall.
“Fuck you, Declan.”
The words hit him harder than the shattered glass had.
You turned immediately, walking back inside before he could stop you.
“Y/N—”
Desperation this time.
Real desperation.
But you kept walking.
Inside, the orchestra had started playing something slow and elegant. Couples drifted towards the dance floor whilst waiters floated between tables carrying champagne.
Rupert spotted you instantly.
“Darling, finally,” he grinned, approaching you. “They’re dancing and you promised me at least one—”
Then he saw your face.
His smile disappeared immediately.
“What happened?”
You forced one of your usual warm smiles onto your lips, though it felt brittle now. “Nothing, Rup. I’m just suddenly exhausted.”
His eyes flickered towards the terrace doors instantly.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” You swallowed thickly. “I think I’m just going to head home.”
Rupert studied you carefully for a moment. Behind you, the terrace doors opened.
Declan stepped back inside, one hand rubbing harshly over his beard, frustration written all over him.
Rupert noticed the tension instantly.
“Alright,” Rupert said gently, attention returning to you. “But you call me if you need anything, understood?”
You nodded with a small smile.
“And I promise I’ll save the last dance for you next time.”
That finally earned a soft huff of amusement from him.
“Mm, I’ll hold you to that, darling.”
You smiled before leaning up to press a soft kiss to his cheek, then reached down to collect your bag.
And despite feeling Declan’s eyes following you the entire way out—
you never looked back.
── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ── ★ ──
Part one!! I’m kinda nervous ahahah. This is my first time doing something like this, so please, kindly let me know what you think! in the second part we’ll see more of their relationship before this. ok, ily byeee <3
masterlist
What We Don't Admit
Mini Series
(Photos from Pinterest, collage by me)
Pairing: Declan O´Hara x Reader
Summary: Everyone at Venturer knows two things for certain.
Declan O’Hara hates losing control. And Y/N has been hopelessly in love with him for far too long.
Unfortunately for them, everyone else seems to know that too.
Between late-night meetings, whiskey-fuelled dinners, chaotic gatherings at Rupert Campbell-Black’s house and endless unresolved tension, the line between friendship and something far more dangerous starts to blur. Declan refuses to admit what he feels — until jealousy, sharp words and one disastrous dinner party finally break the fragile balance between them.
Now forced to face everything they’ve avoided for years, both must decide whether they’re brave enough to ruin their friendship for something real.
Or whether they already have.
Warnings: angst, miscommunication, jealousy, emotional repression, friends to lovers, slow burn, alcohol consumption, sexual content, explicit language.
a/n: let’s just say my obsession with Declan O’Hara is officially back and I’m feeling deeply delusional about it 😭 keep in mind not everything is exactly like the books/show. I took some creative liberties while writing this. also, Declan is divorced in this story.
don't forget, all characters belong to Jilly Cooper — I'm simply borrowing them, bending them slightly to my own delusions, and returning them (mostly) unharmed. Y/N is yours, as always.
english isn’t my first language, so if you spot any mistakes feel free to tell me nicely <3 please be kind and leave your thoughts!! I’d genuinely love to hear them. ily bye <3
Chapters:
Chapter 1 - Love Spoken Badly
Chapter 2 - What Everyone Else Could See
Chapter 3 - Unresolved
Chapter 4 - Say It Properly
Chapter 5 - At Last
Chapter 6 - No distance
No man has ever slayed this hard 😯
these are like the pics i took with my cousin when we were 13, posing in the middle of nowhere and eating that shit up
Cassian [does something stupid]
Nesta: What an absolute fucking idiot.
Nesta: I can’t believe I’d die for him.
I wish you a goodnight on Harry’s words 🤍
i’m not even exaggerating when i tell you this moment changed my life
Lisbon (7/18)
— Love on Tour: Lisbon (18.07)