Elliot and Emma: “It’s been fun. We’ve had a good run, but you parked in my spot. I’m going to have to kill you now.”
Because I love them and desperately need fluff.
"It’s been fun."
Emma looked up from her book as her brother strode onto the pool deck at their parents house. It wasn't warm enough yet for a true pool day, but the sun made it warm enough to lounge poolside in a pair of jeans and a sweater.
"What's been—?" Emma began, only for Elliot to cut her off as he continued.
"We’ve had a good run, you and I," he mused. "Some days, I even thought you were my favorite sib—"
Emma snorted. "Of course I'm your favorite—"
"—but then you went and parked in my spot..." he said, stopping at the foot of Emma's lounge chair as she rolled her eyes, preparing herself to defend her choice of parking, which had been a purposeful decision, figuring that since she was the first one to arrive home, she could park wherever she wanted, traditions be damned.
"AndI’mgoingtohavetokillyounow.”
Elliot's final sentence came out quickly enough that it allowed no room for Emma to explain herself and could barely be considered a warning. As h said it, he removed the paperback from his sister's hands and pulled Emma up in his arms, tossing her into the pool barely a second later. Her sharp, affronted screams were brief, lasting only until her head dunked beneath the surface of the frigid water.
Emma gasped as she emerged at the water's surface a few seconds later. She surged out of the water with astounding speed, scrambling to her feet as she climbed onto the deck.
"I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!" she shouted, chasing after her brother as he headed back towards the house and the only protection he could think of—their mother's steadfast rules.
They had never been allowed in the house straight out of the pool when they were dripping wet and Elliot figured there was no way in hell Grace Trevelyan-Grey would allow it now. His mother would never risk the beauty of her hardwood floors so one of her children could exact revenge...even if that revenge was possibly a tiny bit deserved.
Elliot was right about the floors. And he was right about his mother being a stickler for rules, so he felt safe as he stood in the kitchen, watching his drenched and shivering sister approach the wall of french doors, but Elliot had forgotten something important.
He'd forgotten his mother was a doctor. He'd forgotten that she would never leave her baby soaking wet out in the cold. He'd forgotten that she'd without hesitation bring her child inside and coddle her and warm her, doing all of those things while she chastised her eldest son who "should've known better than to toss his sister in the cold water."
And he'd forgotten how infuriatingly devious and charming his youngest sister could be, and how she'd milk the situation for all it was worth, playing up her discomfort and complaining to anyone who would listen about what Elliot had done.
And while Emma hadn't come remotely close to killing Elliot as she had so vehemently promised as she exited the pool, her revenge was somehow worse because before the day was through, Elliot had been lectured at least six different times about the stupidity of his actions, all while Emma got coddled and doted on, her car still parked in his precious parking spot, the one he'd claimed when she was still learning how to ride a bike.
Summary: When Emma’s studying gets in the way of celebrating Carrick’s birthday, it seems like just about everyone is disappointed, but Elliot gets it.
Characters: Elliot Grey & Emma Grey (OC)
Content Warning: Nothing, I think, unless you’re traumatized by the mere mention of studying at this time of year, which...um would be completely understandable.
A/N: Sort of requested. I picked the prompt— “How are you?” “Well, it’s so nice of you to ask…”—from this list and an anon suggested Elliot, so here’s a piece with Elliot & Emma.
Here’s the AO3 link if you prefer to read over there.
Life in the Shade (Fifty Shades) Masterlist
Technically, Emma was sticking to her brother’s rules for the day. She wasn’t hidden away in the library or her bedroom with only her textbooks, laptop, and lecture notes for company. She was in a spot where everyone could see her. If her mother or brothers or sister or any of their significant others deigned to join her, she would let them, but when she settled herself out on the balcony with her study materials, she hadn’t imagined any of the conversations with her family would last very long.
And that had been true so far.
Christian had opened the door only to question her and roll his eyes—an exasperated ‘you’re really doing this?’ and a reminder that she’d have to come in when the meal was served offered before he headed back inside.
Her mother had been out twice, giving two sharp remarks—the first insisting that if she stayed out in the cold and kept neglecting her sleep as it was physically clear she had been, she’d only end up sick on their Aspen trip. The second was only meant to guilt her inside—her father’s birthday only came around once a year, or so her mother reminded her as if Emma wasn’t already well aware.
Her father had at least been more subtle, simply issuing a wish that she’ll at least join them for the day’s lunch and dessert, dropping an extra blanket in her lap and a kiss on her head, pleased enough with a promise of dinner with her parents later in the week—after the semester was finished and all of this work was behind her.
Mia hadn’t even stepped outside when she arrived, instead choosing to send a string of text messages Mia only noticed seventeen minutes after it was sent during one of her five-minute-long breaks. The only response Emma offered her sister was a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Emma didn’t care that Mia thought she was being lame. And she didn’t care that Christian was annoyed with her or that her mother and father were a little disappointed. Emma had finals—papers to write and edit, exams to study for, presentations to pull together. For all her family’s emphasis on her studies and her grades, they certainly seemed a bit hypocritical now that it was interfering with family time, not that they weren’t about to have plenty of family time what with the holidays and a week away in Colorado, a trip Mia figured would be a lot more enjoyable with her GPA intact.
Emma stretched her arms above her head as the timer on her phone signified it was time for her to take another break—one of the longer, fifteen-minute ones earned after four Pomodoro cycles. She couldn’t believe she’d been at it for two hours already. She’d done the first hour at the kitchen counter, working silently while Mrs. Jones prepared appetizers, moving outside just before everyone arrived, knowing well enough that she wouldn’t have been able to maintain her resolve if she wasn’t already firmly planted on the balcony before things got underway.
It felt like she’d barely made a dent in the studying and Emma was about to forego her break when she heard the door behind her slide open.
“It’s fucking cold out here,” he said as he slid the door closed.
“Thirty-nine,” she mumbled. She’d been reminded by her mother several times of the temperature though Emma had simply insisted that it felt warmer because she was in the sun.
“You have a few minutes?” he asked and Emma held up the phone, showing the timer.
“You’ve got thirteen minutes…” She glanced at the screen. “And seventeen seconds.”
Elliot smirked as he lowered himself into the seat beside her, idly picking up one of her notebooks and skimming through a few pages of her pristine lecture notes.
“Everyone in there’s talking about you.”
“Well, what else is new?” Emma asked as she pulled her legs up onto the seat. It seemed like every time they all came together there was something new making her the topic of conversation. It was rarely something good.
“They’ve even got Dad in on it.” Elliot nudged her shoulder. “Pretty impressive, kid.”
“Yeah, well…” Emma laughed. “I’m sure if I was in there sipping wine, they’d somehow come to the conclusion that I should be studying since I have two exams, four papers, and a group presentation all due this week.”
It was meant to be a joke, but Elliot caught more than the humor—a slight edge nestled there behind her words. “That sounds like a lot, Em. How are you—”
She huffed, her eyes glancing at the neatly penned to-do list on the coffee table. “I’m almost done with drafting the last paper and then—”
“I meant how you’re doing, not the homework. How are you? Are you sleeping? Eating?”
Emma snorted, part of her wondering what the difference was. These days, every bit of her existence felt tied to her remaining assignments. And every time she crossed a task off the list, it was like she was earning a bit of herself back.
The other part of her wondered when Elliot had gotten to be so…well, so like their mother and Christian with their worrying over her wellbeing.
Emma groaned as her phone buzzed on the coffee table, Mia’s face flashing across the screen, but Elliot answered and pulled the phone to his ear. “Miss Grey isn’t available at the moment. Please leave a message after the beep. Beep.”
Elliot hung up the phone and set it back on the table. He sent a smirk toward Mia through the window, her mouth held open in pure surprise and offense as she looked back at them. Elliot turned his attention back to Emma when Mia stomped away. “I’m sure we’ll be hearing about that for the rest of the day. And before you try to change the subject, I didn’t forget that I just asked you a question, so how are you?”
“Well, it’s so nice of you to ask…” Sarcasm laced Emma’s words, a terrible habit she couldn’t drop even if it did feel nice to be asked after by Elliot when everyone else had only wanted to know about her progress or when she’d be joining them. Emma had every intention of continuing on with sarcasm and deflection, but her resolve faltered when she met her brother’s concerned gaze, his eyebrows a bit raised as he waited on a real answer.
She sighed pulling at the sleeves of her sweater as she considered how honest she’d like to be before the words simply started rushing out of her. “Honestly, I’m just...I’m busy and I have so much to do. And I’m exhausted and freezing and I never want to see another Word document or a PowerPoint slide or a highlighter ever again.” Emma knew it was the last push, that by the time Thursday afternoon rolled around, she’d be done and wouldn’t have to think about school for close to a month, but that didn’t make the long days in between any easier.
Elliot tugged Emma to his side, careful to grab the textbook open in her lap and move it aside before she lost her page. “You’re almost there,” he said, “and if they don’t understand why you’re out here, screw ‘em, right?”
Emma snorted at the idea of saying screw you to most of their family. She was sure she’d directed the sentiment toward Christian more than once, but never the others.
“Well, maybe not Mom and Dad, I guess,” he amended. Neither of them would ever truly fault their parents for wishing after more time with their children.
Emma smiled. “It is Dad’s birthday today. And Mom is…well, she’s...”
“Mom.” Emma giggled when they both made the conclusion at the same time, knowing it was explanation enough.
“And they get it. But Mia and Chris—they’ve never done what you’re doing. They—”
Emma opened her mouth to argue, but Elliot shook his head. “Christian’s never studied a day in his life and Mia only ever took classes that were pass/fail.”
He’d consciously left himself out of the conversation, forcing Emma to recall on her own that Elliot had once been the sibling they complained about missing family time—back when he was both taking college classes and working for a construction firm, biding his time until he was ready to open a business of his own. Back then, Emma had been the one her parents would put on the phone to invite Elliot to family get-togethers, hoping the small voice of his littlest sister would bring him home and away from his textbooks.
The timer on Emma’s phone dinged and Elliot squeezed Emma’s shoulder. “I’ll let you get back to it.” He leaned forward to tap the button to begin her next study session and picked up her empty mug. “You want more coffee?”
Emma shook her head, a quiet thanks coming from her lips as she pulled her textbook back into her lap. Elliot pushed himself off the cushion, taking a few steps toward the door.
“And, Em?” He waited for her to meet his eyes. “You should be proud of yourself. You’ve worked hard. Screw the rest of it.”
Emma nodded, a bit of warmth rushing to her cheeks as she realized that she was proud of herself.
Summary: When Emmeline says something to a brother in anger, she punishes herself with guilt. Healing comes in the form of another brother’s understanding.
Characters: Elliot Grey, Emmeline Grey, Christian Grey (mentioned)
Content Warnings: Angst (there’s some comfort at the end of this one), Adoption/ blended family challenges, underage (in the US) drinking, mention of previous abuse/ neglect
Emmeline could still taste the cabernet on her lips even though she hadn't refilled her glass since coming to sit alone in the pool house. The buzz had already settled in, there long before she took the bottle and left the crowd of her brother's birthday party, the alcohol clouding her thoughts, simultaneously slowing it all down and speeding it all up, the waves within her an impatient cycle, a steady exchange of crests and troughs.
There was little difference between that and the heated pool of water she'd set her feet into, or the red wine which she'd poured into her glass, or the music pumping through her headphones. The only difference was that those things were all contained and controlled. Limited.
But Emmeline felt as though she might burst just from trying to hold it all.
She flinched at the shoe nudging her in the side, a chuckle coming from her oldest brother’s lips as her body settled, her widened eyes returning to normal as she caught the beginnings of Elliot’s smile, just a quick flash of his perfect teeth. Emmeline paid him only a few seconds of attention before looking back to the water, headphones still rightly in place, the music louder than whatever joke Elliot had been keen on sharing, something she assumed he had done only because she had seen his lips moving as she turned away.
Rolling his eyes, Elliot slipped out of his shoes and removed his socks before lowering himself down beside his sister, shifting the mostly empty wine bottle from the space between them as he slid closer. Emmeline finally glanced at him again as he finished rolling up his pant legs and slipped his bare feet into the water.
“What are we listening to?” Elliot plucked an earbud from her ear. “Okay, then...I’ll pass,” he commented on the dark classical coming from her headphones, the mournful screech of a violin audible even before he brought the bud near to his ear. Elliot dropped it then, letting the cord fall into her lap, instead lifting and glancing once again at the level of the wine bottle, raising an eyebrow Emmeline didn’t see as her gaze turned once again to the pool’s water.
“So, what did that stupid brother of ours do this time?”
“Nothing,” Emmeline muttered, twirling the empty wine glass in her fingers and watching as the remaining drops of wine painted a red film over the bottom of the glass with each circle. “It’s fine.”
Elliot nodded a few times, considering it as he reached for the glass, pouring out the remainder of the bottle and taking a sip.
“So much for in vino veritas, then,” he said. “You know I’m not an idiot, right, Em?”
It was never a secret when Christian and Emmeline fought, never truly excluded from common knowledge although the two often put on a convincing show of neutrality, all tight lips and hushed conversations set away from the rest of the family, the two of them typically grinning and bearing it as they went through the motions in mixed company. The rest of the family always let them get away with it, let Christian and Emmeline sort through things in their own way when it wasn’t something they could simply poke fun at, when it wasn’t something they couldn’t sort simply by having one or both of them break from their moody character with a genuine smile, the rest of the trouble quickly falling away from there.
“He didn’t do anything,” Emmeline answered, reaching for the glass as he tipped the remaining liquid into his mouth.
Elliot studied her, half surprised she’d answered the way she had. His sister rarely missed an opportunity to call him an idiot and he’d gone through the trouble to set her up so perfectly.
“So, what did you do, then?”
Emmeline swirled her feet in the water, unable to find a response that would grant her a return to solitude, to something resembling homeostasis. As much as she wanted the words off her chest and out of her mind, with the shame of them released from every part of her being, she couldn’t bring herself to say it, not to Elliot, not to a single one of her family members.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to repeat it to anyone. She wasn’t sure she could withstand the pain of further judgment. Christian’s response, or lack of one, had communicated more than enough.
“Other than downing a bottle of wine on your own?”
Wine.
She shuddered.
Part of her didn’t want to even hear the word.
It was what started the trouble in the first place, a silly argument with Christian over a simple glass of wine, her brother’s high-handed insistence on rules and order hitting at the same moment as she finished her first glass, the liquid enjoyed on an empty stomach, prematurely flushing her cheeks and emboldening her words, hardening her stare as he chastised her over something she thought they were well beyond.
Their parents had voiced their assent to her enjoying a drink from time to time, in moderation and in a safe manner of course.
She had been following both bits of guidance.
“Elliot, I just want to be alone.”
Emmeline could’ve gone up to her bedroom, could’ve shut and locked the door and reclined on the bed she’d slept in every night before starting college. She could’ve been there now, staring up at the glow in the dark stars that still adorned her ceiling, remnants from a fascination with stars from over a decade ago.
Emmeline could’ve gotten away with that for the whole night if she’d claimed some sort of illness, feigned a headache or a queasy stomach, but she would have still heard the party music from there and her walls were still adorned with photos, selfies with friends and her family. And in the same way she couldn’t stomach telling her brother the truth, she couldn’t stomach their smiling faces looking back at her either, couldn’t stomach the racing thoughts the pictures would have forced into her mind, the assumptions and prematurely drawn conclusions she wouldn’t be able to talk herself out of with happy faces staring back at her.
“You know your security’s just outside the door, right?”
Emmeline hadn’t realized, but she wasn’t exactly surprised to learn Ryan was just outside. She was so rarely actually alone, so rarely without the shadow of security that it wasn’t anything new. And if Ryan was a few steps away, that meant Christian knew exactly where she was, but chose to let her be, a strategy so rarely employed that Emmeline wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by it, the silent treatment, the laissez faire attitude that was so incongruent she couldn’t recognize it as a strategy settled within her brother’s wheelhouse.
“Come back inside. Everyone’s just getting ready to sit down for dinner.” He raised the glass. “Dad's long winded toasts and all that.”
Emmeline shook her head. “He doesn’t want me there.”
“Dad?”
Emmeline shook her head, no sign of the smile Elliot was hoping for.
Elliot pushed himself up from the pool’s edge. “Christian’ll get over it. Always does, and I want you there. And I’m sure Mom and Dad will notice if you’re not there, so...” Elliot grabbed a towel off the cart and began drying his feet and legs. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s go in.”
He held a hand down to her, but Emmeline didn’t take it, instead covering her face to wipe away the tears, her shoulders suddenly quaking, the tide finally spilling over as she pushed herself back from the pool’s edge, climbing onto a nearby lounge chair and curling away from her brother.
“Em, what’s going on?”
“Just leave it,” she said, the words muffled by her hands. “Go back to the party.”
“I’m not going to just leave you alone like this.”
“You should.”
Elliot pulled out his phone. “Well, I’m not, and if you don’t tell me what’s going on, Christi—”
Emmeline interrupted him with a string of mumbled words, but Elliot didn’t catch it all, didn’t catch her whole admission because she’d hiccuped and then immediately let out a wail what he figured was only about halfway through, her back still to him, her arms still raised to cover her face.
“Em, I can’t hear you.”
She rolled towards him and the words came out as a shout, the annunciation clear and deliberate.
“I told him he’s not my real brother!”
Emmeline’s words echoed in the room, bouncing off the walls and the lapping water and the two of them, their imagined reverberation somehow louder than the heart beating in her chest, but only by a small measure. She stayed quiet, her head to the lounger, silent tears staining her cheeks as she watched Elliot put together what her words meant, connecting the fact that Emmeline saying those words to Christian was no different than her saying the words to him because the tentative ties that bound Emmeline to Christian were the very same ties that bound her to any of the rest of them, a mere legal technicality when it came down to it, a stack of signed papers and nothing more.
But Emmeline hadn’t meant that when she said it to Christian. She had calculated her error as soon as the words left her mouth, the “you can’t tell me what to do, you’re not even my real brother,” immediately shifting something in Christian’s face, the fight in him receding to make room for something else, making Emmeline grow immediately sick with dread and guilt and shame and now that she watched Elliot’s face shift in the same manner, it was once again renewed, the waves of nausea and pain and hurt within her begging for relief.
“Say something,” she insisted after a long silence fell between them.
Elliot took a breath, rubbing the back of his neck. “What do you want me to say to that, Em?”
His words were soft, no bite, no accusation or mean spiritedness or judgment, but she didn’t trust Elliot’s calm, didn’t trust it not to correspond to a whole lot of hurt behind his peaceful exterior. She didn’t trust that her brother wasn’t so quiet just because she had caused so much pain with a single sentence, five little words that she didn’t even mean, originally tossed at their brother only because the exact opposite was true.
Christian was her brother and he’d been well within his rights in that role in telling her off about the wine. Emmeline had used the sentiment to rail against him, a tool she’d kept unused for years, something she knew held a bit of weight and power in their family because despite a certain love and closeness shared by the four Grey siblings and their parents, they all held onto a small bit of doubt somewhere, held onto the idea that each of them had come from someplace else entirely.
It was a reckoning that took time and while Christian, Mia, and Elliot had gone through it years ago, had once used the words to get their way without much thought to the person the words were wielded at, Emmeline had never voiced the sentiment aloud, had never used it to get her way or argue against their influence, and she had been too young to remember when the others were going through that phase.
Mia would always talk about a time in the boy’s adolescence when their home had been like a war zone, back when Emmeline was only five and the others were in and out of arguments, a house of raised voices and slammed doors, but truth or exaggeration, Emmeline didn’t remember any of it.
She had her parents to thank for that, and how they navigated it all, she’d never know, but Emmeline understood long before becoming a teenager herself that it was a moody time in life and that it wasn’t usually personal. People said things in anger, but they all still loved each other. Yet despite knowing that, despite living through it three times already, she found the concept difficult to apply to herself, difficult to apply to the current moment.
Elliot crossed to where Emmeline had once again curled up on the chair, pulling her body in on itself in the same way she was set to pull her emotions back inside, keeping it all close in order to keep it together though she was already shaking.
Elliot set a hand on her arm, wrapping his fingers around her elbow as he tried to coax her to sit up. “Talk to me, Em.”
Emmeline’s hair shifted as she gave a gentle shake of her head and she tried to pull her arm from his grasp.
“Just leave me alone.”
“Em, I’m not leaving you alone.” Elliot reaffirmed his grip. “And if you won’t talk to me, I’ll have Chris and Mia come out, and Mom and Dad if we need to. Let me help.”
“I don’t deserve it.”
“Why? Because you hurt Christian’s feelings? You think you’re the first one to pull that line? We still say it to this day. You’ve heard it. You’re not that special.”
Elliot was right. She had heard it passed between them several times. The 'do you know what your sister did?’ and the ‘well, he was your brother first,’ and the ‘good thing we’re not actually related, then,’ all of it uttered with a bit of adoring exasperation.
Emmeline hadn’t said it like that though. There was no adoration in her words to Christian, just venom and spite.
“You don’t mean it.”
“And neither did you. You’ll have to do a lot more than that to get rid of us.”
Emmeline remained unmoved, resistant to his tugging and Elliot released the grip that he’d let grow limp, rubbing her arm for a moment instead.
“What can I do to make you believe me?” he asked, reaching for her wet foot instead. “Should I—”
Emmeline kicked her foot out of his grasp, sitting up and glaring at him with raw, puffy eyes.
“Alright, so no tickling, then,” he offered, frowning at his sister as she settled her chin on her knees, her legs folded up to her chest, the hem of her long dress settled over her feet.
It reminded him of when Emmeline had first come to them as a child, of how they’d find her folded into some small space, maneuvered back in the dark corner of a closet or behind some heavy furniture, settled far under the middle of a king sized bed, tucked away and tucked in on herself, the grip on her own limbs baring white knuckles to whoever found her, a fight offered when they tried to pull her out, to pull her into their arms and out of herself.
He almost expected her to start mumbling the words she’d said to herself back then, the words his mother had explained had probably been said to her over and over again, a steady stream of “suck it up” repeated over and over again until someone successfully got ahold of her, a rush of hot tears coming once the chanting stopped, always followed by the girl falling asleep for hours.
Elliot couldn’t remember her ever acknowledging it after the fact, almost as if she woke up from her naps with the whole scenario wiped from her memory. He had always thought maybe it was better that way
“Well, I’m here, and I’m not leaving you alone, so tell me—”
“It feels like I’m going to break,” she mumbled.
“You’re not going to break.”
“Fall apart, then,” she amended, her lip beginning to wobble even with just those three words, her voice lowered to a low muttering as she continued. “And if you don't hug me right now I think I might.”
Elliot took only a second for his sister’s words to register, to realize she’d offered consent for him to help, actually asked for it, and he pulled Emmeline forward then, letting her settle in his arms, the familiar release of tears and hurt rushing out of her as he held her close, his arms around her allowing for Emmeline to let down whatever fortifications she’d built up to hold it all in, allowing her to let the pain out as the relief rushed in. It was only a few minutes that passed before Elliot realized his sister would be missing dinner, only minutes before he realized that Emmeline’s breathing had deepened and evened out, and she was already asleep.
