Good luck with your surgery, if that's happening today!! Hope you have a nice quick recovery 💕 and in my head I'm going to pretend you had it purposely planned for summer break so you wouldn't be out of race weekend gif commission for us
So like, fun fact, when my mom called to book my surgery date (I promise I would have done it myself but I was in either El Salvador or Nicaragua at the time), my only requirement was post Assen (obviously, since we went there) and ideally not during a race weekend.
more caseydovi secret baby au <3 ty @telecommunikate for your good humour as this au continues to torment me <3
Casey is four years old and too many people are staring at him, he doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong but he knows that he must have mucked something up somewhere along the way. His face is wet with tears and he’s sobbed so hard his chest hurts from it.
Sweetie, you look like a dog who wants to be put down, his mum sighs, dragging a hand through her hair and liberating a loose strands from her tight ponytail in the process, you gotta forget about all of them, everyone else, just run — keep moving forward and look ahead, not back over your shoulder, sweetie.
Casey left home an hour ago, left Olivia polishing off her jam smeared toast at the dining table while Dovi, tender gaze fixed on the little girl opposite him, nursed the last lukewarm dregs of Casey’s shitty instant coffee.
“I’m going for a run,” Casey declared as he fiddled with his airpods, a Christmas gift he wasn’t quite sure what to make of yet.
He wasn’t in the habit of listening to music while running and the noise cancellation feature struck him as eery. When he called his sister to thank her for the gift he’d let slip that what he actually liked was the feeling of the airpods tucked snuggly in his ears while he was running — without actually listening to anything on them. She’d laughed at him, loud and delighted, until he threatened to hang up.
Dovi nods, his gaze sweeps languidly over Casey, “you’ll be back for lunch?”
Casey nods. An hour, give or take. Certainly back before midday. There’s a small chicken from one of the neighbours defrosting in the sink.
Dovi hums. Olivia takes a loud crunching bite of her toast, sends a shower of crumbs scattering down her front.
Dovi snorts but before Casey even moves, Dovi has reached across the table to retrieve a napkin and hand it to her.
That was an hour ago.
Casey rounds the corner and spies his house with the neat procession of daisies Olivia insisted on planting along the fence and instead of slowing down — he speeds up.
His lungs are burning, lips wind chapped, and his legs are protesting the abrupt change of plan but Casey doesn’t stop.
He keeps running, doesn’t look over his shoulder to check if Dovi has meandered onto the porch, if he’s armed with the glossy paperback that he’s barely made a dent in despite pulling it out almost every day he’s been here.
Casey’s lungs are screaming at him but he forces his legs to keep moving. Momentum. He doesn’t know what will happen if he stops moving. He’d rather not find out.
Dovi showed up on his doorstep two months ago and he’s still here. He’s gracious and tidy and good-humoured. He’s politely unobtrusive except in all the ways that he’s not. His clothes are mingled in and amongst Casey’s laundry hamper and every time Casey catches a whiff of his shower damp skin in the mornings he feels, for a split second, catastrophically unmoored.
There’s a tightness in Casey’s chest. He ignores it. His body doesn’t belong to him anymore in that moment, he couldn’t stop if he wanted to, it’s a machine for him to wrestle with — against.
Momentum.
He read an article on his phone last week about how a woman in America, brain dead and on life support, gave birth. Even after his water broke and he was being carted into the maternity ward, Casey still hadn’t made up his mind one whether he actually wanted to have a baby or not but at least he could demand an epidural.
Momentum.
Dovi is living out of a suitcase in Casey’s guest room and he’s fixed the wobbly leg on the coffee table that Casey had been meaning to get around to for years.
For that month after Dovi showed up on his doorstep, Casey had woken up every morning half expecting the guest bed to be made up and the room empty. It’s been two months and Dovi is still living out of a single suitcase but Casey has stopped pausing by the guest room every morning when he pads down stairs to start breakfast.
Momentum.
Casey’s lungs burn when his knees give out and he finally collapses. All he can do is wheeze helplessly as he rolls onto his back, clawing at his own chest in a pathetic bid to dispel the tightness.
There’s nothing keeping Dovi here. Olivia, sure — he’d come back for her but he wouldn’t need to stay, not on her account. She doesn’t need him to stay, not yet anyway. She’s a clever little creature and she likes Dovi a great deal but she doesn’t know him well enough yet to doubt if he’ll actually follow throw on his promises to come back. She doesn’t need Dovi to stay.
Casey thinks about the long walk home ahead of him. Blinked up at the sky and imagines stepping through the front door to find Olivia is alone at that dining table.
Olivia doesn’t need Dovi to stay. Olivia wasn’t the one Casey needed to worry about.
Casey’s heart is still thumping away frantically in his chest, like a little bird that hasn’t yet realised the danger has passed. It rained last night, the grass is still wet under his back, the cold damp seeps through his t-shirt. Casey breathes in and out, feels each lungful of cold icy air rattling around in his chest, and doesn’t realise how hard his teeth are chattering until his jaw starts to ache.
He doesn’t know how long he lies there. His shirt is sticking to his skin when he finally getting to his feet, slow, every joint aching him and reminding him why spontaneity is something he can’t afford anymore these days.
His breath comes out in pale frosty puffs, Casey doesn’t want to know how red his face must be. He can already tell that his body is going to punish him for this lapse in judgement tomorrow.
There’s a twinge in his ankle that truthfully was closer to a twinge half an hour ago, it’s now sliding closer and closer to a persistent throbbing pain with each laboured step.
He cant call anyone to drive him home. Can’t or won’t, his mum’s unimpressed voice pierces through the fog. Casey shakes his head. He’s so preoccupied with ignoring the phone strapped to his armband that it doesn’t even occur to him to us it to check the time.
He only thinks to check once he’s slowly hauling himself up the front steps. It’s almost two hours past when he promised to be back. Casey’s throat is dry, he’s pretty sure he’s shaking. He rips his dormant airpods out of his ears and stuffs them in his pocket. His hands are so cold that he can’t feel his fingers.
Olivia is still at the dining table, orange crayon clasped in one hand and slice of apple in the other. She’s muttering to herself. Casey sucks in a relieved breath as he kicks off his runners.
Faintly, he can hear the sound of conversation. In another room, Dovi voice floats above the noise of the television, he asks someone something in Italian. Casey stills as Dovi’s rich buttery laughs grows louder and louder until he suddenly appears at the other end of the hallway.
Casey exhales softly.
Dovi’s brow furrows, he lowers his phone from his ear, “my mama,” he explains quietly, “you didn’t — I was asking her about the chicken.”
Right.
Casey nods mutely. His legs are weighing him down like anchors and ankle is starting to hurt like a motherfucker. Somehow, amidst it all, his knees are feeling a little wobbly too. He must be getting old.
He should apologise. Instead what comes out of his mouth is, “you stayed.”
