Allison x Emily, 5!
5. one night stand and falling pregnant au hi it's been forever. honestly i was kinda surprised to see an ask for these guys lol it also feels like forever since they've shown up. anyway, idk how shippy this is (maybeee a lil fucked up?), buuut happy women's day.
When we were younger, Mother always called Emily my little doll – porcelain and perfect, always following after me.
Emily grew snappier about it as she grew older. True, she would still go along with whatever I wanted, for the most part, but was she ever happy about it? For a long time now, I couldn’t do anything but make her angry.
But ah, it’s important to note: that wasn’t my problem last night, and the proof of it is naked in my bed right now, even if she is starting to pull my covers up over her chin.
“Shut up,” Emily says, hazily cracking an eye open, letting the faintest silver of gray peek through. Such a pale color, almost white, not unlike cracked glass. She used to have blue eyes. I do miss them, sometimes, but either way, she’s lovely, even if she’ll never happily hear such a thing from me. Emily, aren’t you aware that it’s important to know how to gracefully accept a compliment?
“I haven’t said anything, though?” I give her a charming smile that she will also never gracefully accept.
Charming has always made Emily look like she wants to hit me over the head. Today is no different. She absolutely looks like she’s contemplating violence, but instead actually attempting to strangle me with my own sheets, she says, “If you say anything, I’ll kill you.”
Unlikely. I am, by all accounts – not just my own! – exceedingly difficult to kill.
“Whatever you want,” I say generously, taking the liberty to reach around, wrap an arm around her shoulders, pull her in. It makes her grumble a bit, but she doesn’t try moving away. I suppose it might be because I run hotter than she does. Her skin feels so cool against mine. I wouldn’t mind warming her up, if she was in the mood for a little morning exercise with me.
“You’re far too happy about this,” she says, cracking an eye open.
“Why wouldn’t I be happy about this?” I lower my voice and my head to her face. “A beautiful woman in my bed, isn’t that something worth celebrating?”
She snorts. “I didn’t realize you had the leisure to be interested in this sort of thing.”
…Odd. To her, did I seem particularly busy as of late?
“I always have the leisure to be interested in this sort of thing. Don’t you always say I have too much free time?”
Emily never did like how much I did with pretty boys and pretty girls.
For whatever reason, this is what rouses her from half-aware drowsiness. Wide awake now, enough that her frown is truly directed at me instead the general ungodliness of the early morning. “What are you talking about, I’ve never told you that before.”
This is a blatant falsehood. We both know this.
“By any chance, is your memory going? Ask Asher, he’ll tell you you’ve been saying it since we were all children.”
“Since we were.. all…children,” she repeats, slow and suspicious for absolutely no reason at all. Her eyes narrow. “I’ve said this to Wilhelmina. I’ve never said this to Allison.”
I don’t believe I enjoy the implications of that sentence.
“Allison? Who’s that, another pretty lady who’s caught your attention?” The thought of it is irritating. It’s bad enough, dealing with that Joachim. Now Allison as well? “You’ll really make me jealous talking like that. Who wants to hear some other woman’s name in bed, mm?”
Names, names, names. Do I know an Allison? There’s Hannah, but is there some other little nothing that takes up Emily’s attention?
“Ridiculous,” Emily hisses. She pushes me off her and sits up, sheets falling down to her waist. I don’t have much of a chance to appreciate the view before she hits me.
It’s a decent shot, knives scoring deeply through my face, scraping against bone. It’s also entirely unprovoked. I don’t mind a fight – I love a fight – but Emily isn’t Asher. I can’t imagine she’d actually enjoy this sort of thing in the bedroom. Did I already make her angry today?
… Hmm. I’m bleeding quite hard, actually.
Well, that doesn’t matter. What matters more is how I’ve managed to invoke Emily’s displeasure. Even when I’m deliberately annoying her, the most she’s ever done is insult me. She’s never actually hit me like this. Is she just in the mood for a fight? If she wants a fight, I’ll give her one. Just as soon as I get all of this out of my eye.
There’s. There’s so much blood in my eye.
No, that shouldn’t matter. I don’t normally care about that sort of thing. Why do I care right now. Something like this doesn’t mean anything to me. I shouldn’t care. This is fine. Why do I feel like there’s something wrong. Something’s wrong. What’s wrong?
…Hey. Hey.
I’ve been fucking knifed in the face.
Of course there’s something wrong! In any normal world, I’d be calling 911! Fuck it, someone else would have to call 911, I’d be passed out on the ground! Why am I acting like this is normal? This isn’t normal! This – this – !
THIS REALLY FUCKING HURTS ACTUALLY.
“Jesus fuck,” I wheeze, immediately clamping my hand over the bleeding ruin in my face that used to be a working eyeball. Fucking finally Wilhelmina’s healing starts kicking in beneath my fingers. Why is that only happening now? When I’m actually me, injuries start healing immediately, it shouldn’t be different for her. Unless she decided to keep it from healing? Why would she keep it from healing?
“Do you remember who you are now?” Emily says, spinning a knife or two in a fun little trick that I’m sure I’d appreciate more if I, you know, had two eyes.
“This is the shittiest morning-after,” I manage. Isn’t the worst it gets supposed to be a… a… what’s it called. One night stand. A pump-and-dump. What’s the fucking word I’m looking for.
“Your name.”
Right. That. How could I forget.
It takes me a couple tries, but I get there eventually. “Allison Lee,” I say to Emily’s incredibly unimpressed expression.
“Very good, well done,” she says.
“Yeah, thanks, I appreciate it, are you happy.”
“I’m never happy,” Emily says flatly. Then she turns away to rummage around for her clothing, because obviously stabbing someone in the face isn’t something to be concerned about at all. I bet she does this kind of thing everyday, doesn’t she?
“Did you have to use knives,” I grit out. Where did you even get those. You’re naked, there’s zero places for you to hide them. How did you do that. That’s not possible. What the fuck.
“You’re getting increasingly immune to blunt force trauma, so as it happens, yes,” Emilly says, like that’s a reasonable thing to say.
I fucking hate this place.
Emily puts on clothes. I sit on the bed with my hands over my eyes. At some point, she says, “Are you going to lie down there all day.”
“Who’s lying down,” I say.
Me. I’m lying down. I don’t remember doing that. It doesn’t really matter.
Emily sighs. “Sit up.”
“Why.”
“You can go back to sleep if you want, I don’t care,” Emily says briskly. “But you’re just smearing blood all over your face right now. It’s hardly hygienic.”
“So?”
I can feel her carefully, gently place her hands on my shoulders. The faint warmth of her breath brushes against my skin. Unnecessarily close. Uncomfortably intimate.
Then she yanks forward and forces me into a sitting position. I’m almost glad to be in Wilhelmina’s body right now, because if I had actually been me, that would’ve done some terrible things to my shoulder joints.
“Put your hands down,” she says, and wrenches my hands away from my face by the wrists.
I squint at her with one eye. She’s perfectly put together, fully dressed and hair neatly combed back. You wouldn’t think at all that she’d been in bed with me five minutes ago, or… however long ago that was.
“You’re terrible,” I say.
“And you’re filthy,” Emily says. “Don’t move.” She grabs a wet towel from a bowl on the nightstand – I don’t think that was there before? – and starts wiping down my hands with the brusque, irritated efficiency of a woman who has to clean up her mud-covered child for the third time in three hours.
“I’m not a child.”
Emily holds the towel up to the light, frowning at the red smeared across it. She sets it aside, exchanges it for a fresh towel. “If that was the case, you’d be cleaning up all by yourself. But you aren’t doing that, are you?”
No. I’m not.
I don’t want to. I don’t want to do much of anything right now.
“Not the eye,” I say, which is the one overwhelming desire I feel right now.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Emily says, like it’s ridiculous that I don’t want her, the person who stabbed me in the eye, to come anywhere close to my eye. “Your eye is likely already healed, there’s no need to make a fuss about it. You can’t walk around with your face like this.”
Can’t I?
It’s like this, day in, day out. Can’t do this, can’t do that. If it’s not Emily reminding me, then it’s my own logic keeping me in line. Here’s a grocery list of guidelines of how to adjust your behavior, your thoughts, your everything. It’s not, after all, like you’re allowed to act like you.
What am I, anyway? Certainly not the original Wilhelmina Sterling, but sometimes, I get so damn close.
I hate this. I hate her. I hate this.
“And why not?” I snap out. “Wilhelmina Sterling picks fights, is it really that weird if she picks the wrong fight and gets stabbed in the eye because of it? Haven’t you always wanted to stab her in the eye anyway? No one’s going to think it’s weird that you finally had enough and did it!”
“What are you even trying to – I haven’t always wanted to stab Wilhelmina in the face–”
“I’m sure Rosie Beckett’s always wanted to give it a shot. But then again, that’s nothing new. Who doesn’t want to stab her in the face? Something like that should be normal by now. Isn’t it normal?”
That’s what this world is like. A step backwards in modern sensibilities, no sympathy required or even wanted. Hard, cruel, completely insane in what it considers status quo.
I want to go home.
Emily tries saying something. I don’t give her the chance.
“I’m sorry I’m making a fuss about this. It might be normal for you, but in my world, you don’t walk off being stabbed in the face!”
“It isn’t as if it’s normal here –”
“Then stop acting like it!”
Silence. Emily is making… an expression. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care what it is. I just…
I don’t want to be here.
“You’re right.”
I look up. Emily has one hand over her eyes, looking a little like she has a headache.
“Am I?” I say. “About what?”
She gestures vaguely at my head. “This would be a debilitating injury in anybody else. A permanent one, in most cases. For Wilhelmina… no. She easily brushes off damage that would be significant and perhaps fatal to other people. It doesn’t faze her. You’re wearing her face. I suppose I expected the same amount of indifference from you. It’s…unreasonable of me to do so.”
…Huh. “Is this an apology?”
“It’s an explanation. You can take it as an apology, if you’d like.” She raises her hand, as if to go for my face again, and then drops it. “Your eye probably is healed by now, but even if it isn’t, it’s good to get the blood off. It can’t be comfortable.”
She offers me the towel. I take it, because in the end, she’s right. It isn’t comfortable.
“...It’s getting worse,” Emily says, as I gingerly dab at my eye. She doesn’t need to clarify what it is.
“You think so?” I say dryly. I couldn’t even recognize my own name. I don’t like that she stabbed me, but if she didn’t, I don’t know how long I would have been stuck like that. If this goes on for much longer…
I can’t let this go on for much longer.
Another sigh. “Was it you, last night? Or….”
Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Was that me?
I let my head loll back. “Wouldn’t we both like to know the answer to that.”
