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thinking about freshman disorientation. such a good fic. 33 chapter, over 55k words slowburn that didn’t even end with them getting together, it just ended with cooper realizing his feelings. oh and also it’s a fricken detective au murder mystery???? like wtf it’s so awesome

#american housewife #fanfic #fic rec #fanfic rec #american housewife fanfic #cooliver #cooliver fic #oliver otto #cooper bradford #ao3

heyyy…..how y’all doing 🚶🏾‍♀️🚶🏾‍♀️🚶🏾‍♀️…..

it’s been a while! let’s just say life has not been fun for me! but i finally wrote a part 2 to my anorexic oliver fic "sticking to the routine." for those who read that. a couple people asked for a part 2, and although it took me a while, i finally wrote it and posted it!

thank you to everyone who commented on the first part! i really appreciate your support and every comment warmed my heart 🫶🏾🫶🏾

I will post the links to both part 1 and part 2 for those who haven’t read part 1!

TW: this series is about oliver struggling with an eating disorder, specifically anorexia. therefore, there will be heavy mentions of eating disorders ofc, disordered thoughts and behaviors, body image issues, body dysmorphia, negative self talk, hospitalization in part 2, etc.

part 1: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49134724

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

part 2: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51732889

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

#american housewife #oliver otto #cooper bradford #cooliver #katie otto #greg otto #taylor otto #anna kat otto #angst #ed fic #hurt/comfort #fic #ahw #cooliver fic

oliver reflects on past christmases spent with cooper

genre/tags: established relationship (for the first time ever lol), fluff, introspection, christmas cliche, ~ 1.8k words

Oliver focuses on the soft rumble of concrete beneath the car. He knows this road. It stretches past Westport Unified with its new renovations and the same old drop off/pick up lane that was the bane of his mother’s existence back when he and his siblings were younger. He looks out the window, briefly, and his eyes trace sprawling estates, the mansions of his high school classmates, obnoxious Christmas light displays blurring together against the early winter dark as Oliver shifts his attention from the exterior to interior of the car.

Beside him, Cooper drives with one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting loosely near the gearshift. That’s something new, Cooper driving. Cooper, who never liked to try new things and once thought driving was beneath him. He’s not the best at it, especially now that they live in the city and have no need, but Oliver lets Cooper take the route home. It’s oddly comforting to him, letting go for once and allowing Cooper take the lead on something. Life had stretched them thinner than either of them like to admit, their careers had been quite demanding, consuming a lot of their time together, but they’d figured out how to make it work. He thinks about it a lot, where they are now, how far they’ve come and all the work they’re putting into the future. But sitting in the passenger seat, childhood memories blending together outside his window, Oliver isn’t thinking about his life now or what’s ahead. He starts to reflect on Christmas, past holiday seasons spent with his best friend. How he’s changed over the years, and how Cooper has, too.

Oliver remembers the first Christmas Cooper ever spent with his family, though at the time it didn’t feel like a beginning so much as an awkward favor. His parents were busy, as they often were, distracted by their own travels and obligations, and Katie had invited Cooper to spend the holiday with them. Cooper had welcomed himself inside, his hair neatly combed and a stupidly sheepish smile plastered across his face. Oliver remembers thinking how out of place Cooper looked in the living room, his posture perfect on the couch and tone polite, asking Katie how many vacation homes the Otto’s owned, oblivious as always to her disdain towards him. Her attention, instead, was focused on breaking up an argument between Anna Kat and Taylor. It was something supid, much too insignificant for Oliver to recall now.

No matter how hard Katie tried to push Cooper away, he became an irreplaceable part of their family. Like Trip and Franklin, he was a constant at every family gathering, a part of Otto tradition. Oliver remembers watching Cooper laugh with his sisters that year, playing a board game amidst the piles of crumpled up wrapping paper on the carpeted floor, and thinking, although he didn’t have the language for it yet, how easily Cooper fit in once he stopped trying so hard.

They pass the turn on to Cooper’s old road, and Oliver remembers how his first Bradford Christmas party came the following year. He recalls aloud to Cooper being so nervous he couldn’t feel his hands, and smiles at the laugher he draws from the memory. He’d been so anxious, eager to fit in. Everything about that house was huge, designed to impress, from the towering tree in the foyer to the staff that appeared before he’d even realized his champagne glass was nearing empty.

Cooper had kept close to him that night, always at his side. Still to this day, Oliver doesn’t know if it was for his own sake or Oliver’s. Cooper had guided him through conversations with tipsy relatives who smiled too widely and asked too many questions, his hand occasionally brushing Oliver’s as if to remind him he wasn’t alone. At some point, the two of them had slipped out onto the back terrace, the cold stinging their faces and seeping in through their dress shirts. They’d watched the snow fall in clumps from the eave of the roof as Cooper leaned against the railing with a sigh, his breath fogging in front of him, and admitted these parties always made him strangely lonely. That he was grateful Oliver was here, that they had each other. That they’d always have each other and he was so, so grateful for that. Oliver remembers being drunk and not knowing how to respond, just standing there, shoulder to shoulder with his best friend and listening to the quiet of winter mixing with the muffled music of the party. He remembers thinking that even though he hadn’t said anything, that Cooper knew what he wanted to say. That something very important had happened between them even if neither of them said it out loud.

December of Junior year was different in ways that were both obvious and difficult, new emotions and tension mixing with the change in his routine. Oliver remembers how distraught he’d been thinking he was losing Cooper forever, before Cooper had moved in with them that summer, his suitcases and trunks lining the hallways, their lives overlapping in a way they never had before. Christmas that year was loud and cramped and chaotic, the tree leaning slightly to the left because Greg dropped the stand on his way up the stairs, presents stacked unevenly beneath the boughs.

Oliver remembers talking with Cooper late into the night, underneath the safety of Christmas break, no school in the morning and the freedom to sleep in as late as they wanted to. One night, after everyone else had gone to bed, he and Cooper had sat on the living room floor, the room dark except for the soft glow of the tree, talking about everything and nothing. Their knees bumped, warm fingers brushing against each other in the dim light. Oliver remembers falling asleep that night in Cooper’s arms, the basement not yet renovated. He woke up to the sight of his hair in his eyes and snow piled high on the windowsill. Oliver doesn’t know why he remembers that Christmas so vividly. Maybe something bittersweet about being grateful for Cooper and taking every opportunity to hold him close after being so incredibly scared to lose him. Or maybe he’ll never know, that’s how complicated feelings and memories and all these things can be.

College had pulled them apart geographically, although only across a city, Oliver at Harvard and Cooper at culinary school, but no distance really mattered. Oliver remembers coming home for Christmas break that first year with a new awareness of how temporary everything felt, how quickly time moved when you weren’t paying attention. The two of them had changed in small ways, new habits and stories and frustrations. But when they sat at the kitchen counter late at night, conversations so reminiscent of years before, it was almost as though nothing had changed at all. Oliver remembers that was the year he realized it. How all his thoughts always drifted towards Cooper when he imagined the future, that Oliver subconsciously included him in every plan he made, even though their established paths in life didn’t entwine. It wasn’t a sudden revelation, but an understanding that was simply inevitable. Something he didn’t really need to think about or question, something he knew for certain.

And now, this past December in New York, two weeks before they packed their bags and put on their coats and headed home for Christmas, Oliver had come home late from the office to see Cooper dragging plastic bins out of the storage closet. A week earlier, they’d squeezed a small tree into the corner of the living room. Cooper had picked it out himself after a late shift at the restaurant, insistent on a balsam because it reminded him of home. They decorated it sometime past midnight, Oliver still in his dress shirt, his tie loosened around his neck, and Cooper, barefoot and tired with his sleeves rolled up. Cooper pulled an ornament out of the box and laughed, handing it to Oliver. It was small and handmade, Anna Kat had gifted it to him when she was little. Over the years, they’d built up a collection from everywhere. One Oliver’s assistant had given him as a joke, a few they bought impulsively window-shopping on the West Side, the pickle Cooper had to practically dissect the tree to find last year. They didn’t talk much while they worked, Christmas music played softly in the background as Cooper’s shoulder brushed against Oliver’s when they pulled out decor from the little cardboard dividers. And when they finally stepped back, Cooper immediately noted the tree was imperfect and a little uneven, but Oliver liked it. It felt deliberate, unique to them. Looking back now, it’s almost a reminder of everything they’d shared thus far, the basement apartment and endless conversations across the room, stories and memories and touches and expensive gifts Oliver can’t even recall now, just that Cooper had thought of him. The way they always know what the other is feeling, how it doesn’t need to be said aloud. It’s all undeniably theirs.

Cooper makes the last left turn, pulling into the driveway of Oliver’s parents house. When Cooper turns the ignition off and asks how his driving was, Oliver laughs and reassures him and out of the corner of his eye he notices the porch light is on, waiting for their return. He can see the glow of the Christmas tree through the windows, Taylor and Trip talking with Katie in the living room, their kids watching cartoons on the TV. Anna Kat and Franklin must be somewhere else in the house, but Greg catches a glimpse of the car from the kitchen and waves, his face brightening as he yells something that’s inaudible to Cooper and Oliver, but looks something along the lines of the boys are home.

Oliver’s attention diverts as Cooper turns to him with that familiar smile, softer around the edges than it had been when they were kids. Cooper reaches for his hand, their fingers threading easily together. Like it’s natural, easy, like it’s always been meant to be. He’s so grateful Cooper is here with him, with his family. That even after all this time, after seemingly everything in their lives has shifted, that this one thing can stay the same. Because Oliver’s been thinking about all the Christmases that have led them here, their lives woven together through shared moments and unspoken feelings and chance. How love, he’s learned, grows quietly, year after year, in familiar places, until one day you wake up and realize it’s been there all along. In every touch and gift and seemingly insignificant conversation. And now, he realizes, that love he feels has grown so much that it’s hard to imagine his life going any different than it has. After so many years of strategizing and wishing things were different and praying for his future, when Oliver is next to Cooper, he’s exactly where he’s meant to be.

@ficsnships

#cooliver #american housewife #christmas #oliver otto #cooper bradford #cooliver fic

i found this draft from like eight months ago around june i think when i was cooliver crazy and it pmo because why didn’t i finish this challengers is my fav movie ever :(

#i miss summer #challengers au #cooliver #cooper bradford #american housewife #cooliver fic #cooper is always a freak lol

watched american housewife for the first time since august + my clubs pool opened and i could finally hit the tanning/writing combo again bless #youngho