Once Before (+18)
⚠️ DISCLAIMER & CONTENT WARNING: This is a work of fiction that, while it may reference real public figures, does not represent their real behavior, actions, or relationships; all events and dialogues are entirely invented for entertainment, with no disrespect or harm intended, and any resemblance to real events is purely coincidental. This story contains mature themes and is intended for readers 18+ only; reader discretion is advised. It is also a reader-insert narrative, meaning YOU (Y/N – Your Name) are the protagonist in a fictional relationship with a celebrity character.
Chapter 1: The Offer
The email arrived at 6:17 a.m., before dawn, when your apartment still felt like an underwater chamber—deep blue, hushed, everything filtered through glass. You looked at it without fully opening your eyes, the screen lit up on the nightstand, your full name in bold in the subject line, as if someone were calling you from another room:
"Y/N — Lead Offer: Trinity (Season 1)"
You didn’t open the attachment. You stared at the ceiling and counted the seconds between your breathing and the soft hum of the refrigerator kicking on.
You wake up a little before the city every day, as if the city were an animal best observed yawning from a distance. Your body was heavy from last night’s show, arms marked by harness straps, knees carrying that sweet ache you only learn to tame with time. At thirty-nine, softening exhaustion had become a minor art form.
And yet, your heart…
Your heart did exactly what it had refused to do for fourteen years: it climbed into your throat.
Not because of the title. Trinity sounds clean, precise, ominous without trying too hard. A political series about a naval officer who becomes involved with the Secretary of Defense and discovers he may be at the center of a conspiracy capable of destabilizing governments.
No.
It was the line beneath it.
"Central chemistry — emotional arc dependent on her bond with the Secretary."
You know how to read subtext. You always have. When a major studio sends you a project under maximum confidentiality, obscene budget, global campaign practically locked in, at a moment when you could choose anything, the question isn’t “What is this?” but “What do they want from me?”
You went to the kitchen, started the coffee maker, opened the balcony door, and let the cold air in. The city was half-blurred; the lights looked like badly finished stitches in dark fabric.
You unlocked your phone and opened the email again.
It was from Lidia. As always, no caps… except when she smells blood or money.
"TALK TODAY."
Then the technical breakdown. Budget. Shooting schedule. Contract.
And at the bottom:
RICHARD MADDEN — confirmed.
In black capital letters. Like a signature you never asked for.
You didn’t know whether it was the air or your memory that shifted first.
Richard.
The muscle you’d trained for fourteen years to pretend didn’t exist decided to stretch.
You met him when you were eighteen. You were already famous in that excessive way—like fame was a climate that wouldn’t let you breathe: world tours, choreography timed to the millisecond, helicopters trailing the tour, cameras waiting even when you bought water. There were weeks your face appeared on more covers than the president’s. Your name wasn’t a name; it was a collective shout. A registered trademark. A product.
And still, you were just an eighteen-year-old girl trying not to drown in the noise.
He was eighteen too. He’d been working since he was a child, already knew what a set was, a tape mark on the floor, a camera pointed at his face. But he didn’t have the magnitude of recognition he has now. No crowds following him. No photographers chasing him. He was an actor, yes—but not yet the headline-filling name he is today.
You crossed paths at an event saturated with flashes. A photo. A greeting. A hallway thick with people.
Then… silence.
What came next wasn’t seen. It wasn’t confirmed or sold.
You were a secret for five years.
Airports at impossible hours. Side entrances to hotels. Messages that disappeared. Hands letting go before anyone could look. You learned not to look at each other on red carpets. To feign unfamiliarity at events where you both knew exactly where the other was standing.
You lived an entire relationship in the margins of your public schedules.
At twenty-two, you got pregnant.
You remember the cold. Not the pain. The cold.
A white room. A gown open at the back. A sound that never became a full memory.
The abortion wasn’t the end. It was the crack. He didn’t leave that day—he left one years later.
The sentence remains unfair and true: he left.
Too young, too exposed, too fragile. The right words said at the wrong time.
You broke up at twenty-five.
You left to write.
You turned the pain into albums. Into stadiums full of people screaming lyrics without knowing every metaphor had a name. No one knew the breath at the start of track three was you stepping out of a hospital bathroom. No one knew the final удар in the last song wasn’t percussion.
You never made your story public. That was your one perfect pact. And you never saw each other again.
Until now.
You closed the PDF with a soft snap and pressed your forehead to the glass.
"It’s just a series," you told yourself.
But playing a woman who suspects the man she loves should be easy. You’ve had fourteen years of rehearsal.
Your phone vibrated. Lidia.
"Did you see it?"
"I saw it."
"It’s with him. And yes, he backed your name."
That hurt more than you expected.
You wrapped both hands around the hot mug and opened the script. The first pages were restrained. Almost cold. No music. No heroics. Just the feeling that someone is watching too closely.
You read twenty pages without raising an eyebrow.
Episode one. Your character: a decorated naval officer who begins to suspect that the Secretary of Defense—the man she loves—may be hiding information that compromises national security.
Then you reached the scene.
Episode two. Scene twelve.
A closed room in Berlin. A door swinging shut on a draft. Two bodies inches apart. No one else around.
He says:
"I thought you were dead."
She doesn’t respond.
The scene rests on breath.
You’ve lived a silence like that.
You could play it with your eyes closed. There was the apex. Chemistry. Not the kind manufactured through press. Not the kind you buy with budget or get by putting two beautiful people in a room—but the kind that betrays you, the kind that rearranges your ethics.
You kept reading. The structure wasn’t clumsy. The power didn’t rest on cheap seduction, but on how one person’s gaze can alter another’s moral compass.
This could be good, you thought. You hated yourself a little for thinking it. It could be excellent, you corrected. Because a part of you—the part that collects statuettes like talismans against chaos—knew you could take this story somewhere unexpected: put the camera on the face, not the uniform. Make silence the argument.
You opened the visual dossier.
Government hallways. Maps pinned with red tacks. Rain-streaked windows. Hands hesitating before touching.
Someone had thought this through.
Zoom with the showrunner at noon.
"I don’t want to shoot explosions," he said. "I want to film trust breaking in real time—and the two of you have something that can’t be manufactured."
You didn’t ask how he knew.
"I don’t want to be a poster in uniform," you replied.
"Perfect. I want you to be the strategy."
A comfortable silence followed.
"I know you and Richard have history. I don’t need details. But if you’re worried it could hurt the show, I think the opposite—it could elevate it."
You hung up.
Your method isn’t complicated: you say yes when no would be a lie.
If you said no, it wouldn’t be out of prudence. It would be out of fear.
You texted Lidia:
"I’m in."
You let it hover for a few seconds before sending it, like someone testing the temperature of water before diving in.
Sent.
That night you dreamed of a small room. Two chairs. Two scripts. Richard standing, looking at you with that contained intensity that was always his way of saying hello without saying it.
You didn’t hug.
You sat.
You turned the first page.
You woke before line one.
You made coffee. In your notebook, you wrote:
Trinity truth boundaries body memory no / yes
Underneath, in smaller letters:
"We don’t have to go back—but if we do, it has to be forward."
At three, you showered. Neutral sweater. Jeans. Hair pulled back the way you do when you don’t want to lie. In the mirror, you saw someone who’s looked like you for years—but this time, she wasn’t acting.
You looked at yourself before leaving.
You didn’t feel brave. You didn’t feel reckless. But for the first time in fourteen years, you weren’t running.
"Let’s go," you said.
Because this time, you didn’t want to hide.
Not from him. Not from the camera. Not from yourself.
Next Chapter