Pairing: Declan O´Hara x Reader
Summary: The secret was supposed to be just theirs. Saturday morning pastries with a fictional scarf. A garden no one could see into. A month of everyone pretending not to notice — and one Friday night at the Bar Sinister where Declan finally, spectacularly, ran out of patience. The beginning of everything. And the end of pretending it wasn't.
Warnings: angst, miscommunication, jealousy, emotional repression, friends to lovers, slow burn, alcohol consumption, sexual content, explicit language.
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The drive to your place was quieter than anything that had ever existed between you before.
Meaningful in a way neither of you fully knew how to navigate yet.
Declan kept one hand on the steering wheel, the other occasionally flexing against his thigh — like he was resisting the urge to reach for you and hadn't quite decided whether to stop resisting.
You'd been noticing everything about him for years. That particular detail was hardly new. What was new was that you no longer had to pretend you hadn't.
When he pulled up outside your building, he didn't immediately turn off the engine.
Really looked at you — in that way he had, the one that felt less like being seen and more like being understood. Like he was reading something he'd been trying to decipher for a very long time and had finally found the key.
"You're not getting rid of me now," you said softly. Trying, slightly, to break the weight of it.
A faint smile appeared on his mouth. Almost reluctant. Like it had arrived before he'd given it permission.
Something warm settled in your chest.
He exhaled slowly. Then reached over — unhurried, certain — and his hand finally found yours where it rested on your knee. And even though you'd never been like this with each other, it felt less like a beginning and more like something finally returning to where it had always belonged.
He brought your hand up slowly. Pressed a kiss to your knuckles.
Then he leaned in, and this kiss was different from the ones in the meeting room — slower, heavier, like he was trying to say everything he didn't trust words with yet. Your fingers tightened in his shirt instinctively, and he responded immediately, pulling you just a fraction closer. Still controlled. But no longer holding back entirely.
When he finally pulled away it was only enough to breathe. His forehead rested against yours for a moment.
"I'll see you tomorrow," he murmured.
"Yeah." A beat. Then, quieter: "I'll pick you up."
Your heart did something small and inconvenient.
And didn't miss the way he stayed there a moment longer — just watching you walk away, like it cost him more than he'd admit.
The knock came before you were fully conscious — before coffee, before coherent thought, before anything resembling dignity had been assembled. You opened the door still half-asleep, hair catastrophic, dressing gown the colour you loved doing its best and failing to make a convincing argument for itself.
Declan stood on your front step. Casual jacket. Collar not quite done up. Hair not fully settled yet, like he'd left the house before giving it the chance.
Like he hadn't wanted to waste time.
He looked at you for a moment.
"Morning," he said. Simply.
You blinked. "You're early."
"I said I'd pick you up."
"I didn't think you meant this early."
A faint smirk. "I changed my mind."
You stared at him for a moment — sleep-brained, slightly undignified, entirely unprepared — and then stepped back to let him in, because there was very little else to do when Declan O'Hara showed up at your door before you were fully conscious.
He stepped inside without hesitation. Looked around your flat with the particular ease of someone who had been here before and was quietly registering that this time was different. You leaned against the doorframe and watched him do it.
"You. In my flat. Before I'm dressed."
His eyes moved over you — just once, just enough — and then back to your face.
"I like it," he said simply.
Then he stepped closer, unhurried, and his voice dropped slightly.
"Messy hair," he said, almost to himself. His eyes moved to your neck, and he pressed a kiss there — brief, deliberate, entirely unfair at this hour. "Dressing gown. At home." A pause against your skin. "I especially like this version of you."
Your heart did something entirely unreasonable.
"You're dangerous," you muttered, pushing off the doorframe toward the kitchen — with as much dignity as the situation allowed, which was not very much.
He said it so easily. Like it was obvious. Like it had always been true and he'd simply run out of reasons not to say it out loud.
But you smiled at the kettle for considerably longer than was strictly necessary.
Behind you, you heard him pull out a chair and make himself comfortable with such confidence knowing that he was more than welcome.
Reaching automatically for a second mug, you supposed he was right.
Those first weeks existed in their own particular quality of light. It felt like something out of a dream — the specific, unhurried kind that you're aware of while it's happening and don't want to examine too closely in case it dissolves.
Mornings that started earlier than they needed to because neither of you wanted to waste them. Evenings that ran late for the same reason. There was something wonderful about being with him now. No more second-guessing. No more pretending not to notice the things that had always been there.
He still argued with you. Constantly, cheerfully, the way he'd been doing it for years and saw absolutely no reason to stop now that he was allowed to kiss you afterwards. If anything, he argued more — because he'd discovered that winning an argument and then watching you try to maintain your indignation while he kissed your temple was one of the more satisfying experiences available to him.
You still corrected his scripts. He still told you you were wrong. You still crossed out his lines without ceremony and handed them back.
He still said better like it cost him something.
You still said I know like it didn't.
Everything was completely different.
The bubble you'd built around those first weeks felt entirely your own. What neither of you knew was that the people around you had already noticed — not that you were together exactly, but that something had shifted. The air at Venturer was warmer. Lighter. Even Freddie commented on it, to no one in particular, and then looked surprised at himself for saying so.
The details that betrayed you accumulated the way these things always do — too small to notice individually, impossible to ignore collectively.
There was the Tuesday you arrived at Venturer with one of his cigarettes behind your ear, entirely without noticing, until Lizzie looked at it for four full seconds and then studied the ceiling with great interest.
There was the meeting where Declan contradicted something you said and then, mid-sentence, caught himself smiling at you in a way that had nothing to do with the argument — and Freddie, who had been watching, quietly set his pen down and looked out the window.
There was the afternoon Taggie came to find her father and found your coat on his chair and the faint trace of your perfume in the air and simply closed the door again without knocking.
There was the way he started leaving his office door open. Not wide. Just ajar. In the specific way that meant he knew where you were.
There was the morning Rupert arrived at Venturer unreasonably early — which was almost unprecedented and should have been warning enough — and found the two of you in the kitchen. You weren’t touching. Weren’t doing anything remotely incriminating. Just standing side by side with mugs of coffee in your hands, wrapped in a silence that felt as comfortable as the two of you looked.
Neither of you seemed particularly concerned with filling it.
Rupert stood in the doorway.
For nearly one month, Rupert Campbell-Black said nothing.
Which was, by any measure, one of the more remarkable things he had ever done.
You thought you were being subtle.
You were not being subtle.
You were, in fact, being so transparently not-subtle that the people around you had collectively decided the kindest thing to do was pretend not to notice and let you have it a little longer — which was, in its own way, the most affectionate thing they could have done.
You didn't know that yet.
Not knowing was the best part.
It was a Saturday morning, which meant you had nowhere to be and no particular intention of being anywhere.
The garden at the back of your house was small — modest in the way that city gardens always were, hemmed in by brick walls and neighbourly proximity — but you'd spent two years making it yours. Pots along the wall. Climbing things that were finally starting to climb. A small table and two chairs that got considerably more use in summer but that you refused to put away on principle.
You were on your knees in the far bed, entirely in your own head, when you heard the gate.
Declan stood at the garden entrance, one hand on the latch, a paper bag in the other. He was wearing his weekend clothes — which meant slightly less formal than usual, collar open, no tie —and paused for a moment, as though whatever excuse had brought him there had already started to feel less solid than it had on the drive over.
"You left your scarf," he said. "At Venturer. On Friday."
"It's Saturday," you said.
"You live in the opposite direction."
You sat back on your heels and looked at him. He met your eyes without flinching, which was either confidence or stubbornness — with Declan, the distinction had always been difficult to establish.
"Is there actually a scarf?" you asked.
"There's pastries," he said, holding up the paper bag.
"Why didn't you just lead with that?" you said, already smiling.
He laughed — short and genuine — which made the smile worse. You were fairly certain your face was doing something completely unreasonable and equally certain you didn't care.
He set the bag on the small table and looked around your garden with the quiet attention he gave most things — taking stock, forming opinions he would share whether or not you'd asked for them.
"That one's overgrown," he said, nodding at the climbing rose along the left wall.
"It's meant to look like that."
"It looks like it's trying to escape."
He made a sound that suggested he and romance had differing definitions.
You pulled off your gardening gloves and went to the table, opening the bag. Pastries — two of them, from the place near Venturer that you'd mentioned once, months ago, entirely in passing.
You looked at them for a moment.
"You remembered," you said.
"You mentioned it." Simply. Like it was nothing. Like he hadn't driven across the city on a Saturday morning with pastries from a specific bakery you'd referenced once in a conversation he'd apparently filed away without telling you.
You handed him his coffee — you’d made more than usual on instinct, which said rather a lot about where things had got to — and took the chair opposite him.
The morning was cool and bright, the kind that made everything look slightly more manageable than it actually was.
"You didn't have to come," you said.
He looked at the bag. "Not from there."
"That's a very specific defence."
You smiled at your coffee.
He watched you do it — with that particular attention he'd had more lately. Just watching. Not saying anything.
"The rose is fine, by the way," you said.
"That doesn't make it fine."
"It makes it none of your business."
He picked up his coffee. "I'm just saying."
"You're always just saying."
He said nothing. But the corner of his mouth moved — which from him was practically a declaration.
You worked for a while. Or rather, you worked, and he sat with his coffee and watched you work, occasionally offering observations that you mostly ignored and occasionally admitted were correct, which you could tell satisfied him enormously even when he said nothing about it.
At some point the garden went quiet in the way it did when the city noise ebbed and it was just the two of you and the sound of birds doing something optimistic somewhere in the climbing rose.
You sat back from the bed and looked at it.
"Mm." He was right behind you — closer than you'd registered, crouched down at some point without announcing it. "The left side's still—"
You turned your head and found him considerably closer than expected. Close enough that the argument dissolved somewhere before it reached either of your mouths.
"We're in my garden," you said quietly.
"No one can see over the walls."
"So technically," you said, "this doesn't count as public."
Something shifted in his expression. That almost-smile that arrived before he'd decided to let it.
He reached over and brushed a bit of soil from your jaw — thumb against your cheek, brief and certain — and then didn't move his hand away immediately.
"You always have dirt on your face when you garden," he said.
His thumb moved slightly. Just once.
Then he leaned in and kissed you — soft and unhurried, the kind that had nowhere particular to be and no interest in rushing. Your hand found his jacket lapel without deciding to. His other hand settled at your waist like it had always lived there.
When he pulled back it was only enough to breathe. The garden around you entirely indifferent to all of it.
"You came all this way," you said quietly, "for pastries."
"And the scarf," he said.
"There might be a scarf."
You laughed — low and genuine — and he kissed you once more, briefly, before pulling back. He stood unhurriedly, dusted nothing in particular from his trousers, and recovered his composure with the practised ease of a man who intended to take this to his grave.
You took it. Let him pull you up.
"Come on," he said. "The pastries are getting cold."
"You sound very concerned about the pastries."
"I came a long way for them."
"You came a long way for me," you said.
Which was, from Declan, as good as anything.
And the garden sat quietly in the Saturday morning behind you — the climbing rose doing exactly what it wanted along the wall, entirely unbothered, just as you'd always said it would.
The following week brought Patrick.
Which was, in itself, an event.
Patrick O'Hara was, in almost every way that mattered, his father's son. He had the same eyes. The same stubbornness. Even the way he walked into a room — like he'd already decided he belonged there — was unmistakably Declan.
The difference was that Patrick had never learned to hide any of it. Where his father filtered everything through several careful layers before it reached the surface, Patrick wore every thought on his face the moment it arrived. Which made him considerably easier to read and, in certain situations, considerably more entertaining.
He arrived at Penscombe on a Wednesday afternoon already brimming with opinions from time spent away, and with the sort of confidence that suggested he had never once considered the possibility of not being welcome.
You were in the kitchen with Taggie when you heard the front door.
Then: "Where is everyone?"
Taggie smiled before she'd even turned around.
Patrick appeared in the kitchen doorway a moment later — taller than you remembered, which happened every time, like he made a specific point of growing between visits. Behind him, slightly more cautiously, stood another young man about his age. Dark hair. Easy smile. The effortless charm of someone who had long since realised it got him exactly what he wanted.
Patrick's face lifted the moment he saw you.
He crossed the kitchen in four steps and pulled you into a hug that lasted considerably longer than was strictly necessary — the kind that had been happening since he was young enough that you'd had to crouch down to receive it. Now you had to reach up slightly, which felt like a quiet betrayal every time.
Taggie watched from the counter with her arms folded.
"Hello to you too," she said.
Patrick didn't let go. "Shh. I'm busy."
"And she's Y/N." He finally pulled back, still holding your shoulders, and looked at Taggie with a completely unrepentant smirk. "There's a hierarchy. You understand."
Taggie looked at you. "Do you see what I deal with."
"Constantly," you said, with a smile you didn't try to hide.
"You're both being dramatic," Patrick announced, already turning toward the fridge. He opened it, inspected the contents with great seriousness, and then — almost as an afterthought — added: "Taggie, you look great by the way."
"Oh, now you say something—"
"I hate him," Taggie said, to no one in particular.
"No you don't," Patrick said cheerfully, from inside the fridge.
She was already smiling despite herself.
Patrick reappeared with an apple and settled back beside you, an arm slipping around your shoulders with the comfortable ease of a habit formed over years.
"You've grown again," you said.
"Everyone keeps saying that." He grinned. "You look great, by the way. Doesn't she look great, Tom?"
His friend — Tom, apparently — smiled from the doorway with the easy appreciation of someone encountering an unexpected and pleasant surprise. "She really does."
"Tom," Patrick said, gesturing between you with the apple, "this is Y/N. She's basically—" He paused, clearly searching for the right summary. "She's important. You'll understand once you've known her five minutes."
"That's very kind," you said.
"It's accurate." Simply. In exactly the way his father said things that were true and saw no reason to dress them up.
Tom smiled and held out his hand. "Nice to meet you."
"And this," Patrick continued, pointing at his sister with considerably less ceremony, "is Taggie. She's annoying but she makes excellent food, which mostly cancels it out."
Taggie picked up a dish towel calmly, as if she had been waiting for this moment.
Patrick saw it coming and was already moving — around the kitchen table, laughing, with Taggie in pursuit and absolutely no remorse on his face whatsoever.
"This is normal," you said.
"Good to know," he said, with a grin that lingered just slightly longer than necessary.
From the hallway — the sound of a door.
Then Declan appeared in the kitchen entrance.
He took in the scene: Taggie brandishing a dish towel, Patrick using the kitchen table as a defensive perimeter, you leaning against the counter trying not to laugh.
"What the hell is happening in here," he said — not quite a question, not quite a complaint, somewhere in the register he used when something was annoying him and he was choosing to find it amusing instead.
"Your son," Taggie said, slightly breathless, "is being a menace."
"She loves me." Patrick finally stopped running and pulled his sister into a side hug, fully aware her protests were just for show. Taggie made a sound of protest, then settled into it despite herself.
"Yeah, yeah," she said, patting his arm twice before extracting herself and returning to the counter with as much dignity as the situation allowed.
Declan's eyes moved around the room — Patrick, Taggie, Tom — with the brief, cataloguing attention of someone taking stock. Then they landed on you.
He held your gaze for precisely one second longer than necessary.
You looked back trying to maintaining perfect composure.
He looked at the ceiling.
"Dad." Patrick crossed to him, and the hug between them was brief and slightly awkward in the specific way of fathers and sons who loved each other and hadn't quite worked out the physical vocabulary for it yet. "Tom's staying a few days. That's alright."
"It's fine." Declan looked at Tom properly for the first time. "Patrick's friend from university?"
Something about the sir satisfied Declan in a way he didn't entirely conceal. He nodded once — which, from him, was practically a red carpet welcome.
Then his eyes found you again.
You raised your eyebrows very slightly.
He looked at the ceiling again.
The afternoon passed the way Penscombe afternoons did — sprawling, unhurried, everyone orbiting the kitchen and the garden without any particular plan. Patrick talked for approximately four hours straight, which seemed to be his natural rate, covering university, a road trip, an incident involving a borrowed car that he told with great enthusiasm and that Declan listened to with an expression of controlled parental concern.
Tom was, as Patrick had promised, easy company. Genuinely funny. Interested in everything. The kind of person who asked questions and actually listened to the answers.
He also, you noticed in a distant, unbothered sort of way, had been finding reasons to sit near you all afternoon.
You didn't think much of it. People were friendly. That was fine.
What you did notice was Declan, across the room, noticing the same thing.
His expression hadn't changed. It never did, particularly. But you knew his face well enough by now to read the small, specific tension in his jaw that meant he was feeling something he had decided not to act on.
He looked away immediately.
You hid a smile in your wine glass.
A little while later you slipped inside to refill it, glad for the quiet of the kitchen after the noise of the afternoon.
You'd barely reached the counter before you heard footsteps behind you.
Not Patrick's — too deliberate. Not Taggie's — too heavy.
"He's making eyes at you," Declan said, low enough that it didn't carry past the kitchen doorway.
You didn't turn around immediately. Poured your wine with great composure.
"Who is?" you said, completely aware of who he was talking about.
"Tom?" You turned then, leaning back against the counter. "He's being friendly."
"He's been friendly for four hours." The word came out with a specific dryness that made it quite clear what he thought of it.
"He's Patrick's friend. He's making conversation."
"He asked you about your job twice."
"People ask about jobs, Declan. It's considered normal."
"He already knew the answer the second time."
You looked at him. He looked back — jaw set, arms crossed, looking for all the world like a man who had an entirely reasonable grievance and was prepared to defend it indefinitely.
"Are you jealous, Declan O'Hara?" you asked. Quietly. Almost sweetly.
"I'm making an informed assessment of the situation."
You pressed your lips together very hard.
"Declan." You kept your voice low. "We are in Penscombe. Patrick is twenty feet away. You cannot do anything about your informed assessment."
His jaw tightened fractionally.
"I'm aware of that," he said. With great dignity.
"So nothing. I'm just — noting it."
"Noted," you said. "Duly noted. Now go back outside before someone notices you followed me in here."
He didn't move immediately.
He exhaled through his nose — that specific sound that lived halfway between exasperation and something considerably more affectionate — and turned to go.
You waited until he looked back.
"There's nothing to note," you said. Simply. Quietly. Just for him.
Something in his expression shifted.
He held your gaze for a moment.
Then nodded once — short, satisfied, entirely himself — and went back outside.
A few days later, back in the office, the patience Declan had been exercising at Penscombe was running considerably thinner.
By late afternoon the office had gone quiet in the way it did when the city outside started turning gold and everything inside slowed down without meaning to.
You knocked lightly on Declan's door.
You pushed it open anyway.
He was at his desk — sleeves rolled, tie slightly loosened, glasses perched low as he worked through something with great focused intensity like he was personally offended by whatever he was reading.
Without looking up: "If that's Rupert, I'm not here."
His head came up immediately.
And for a second — just a second — something moved through his expression. Softer than his default. Almost amused.
Then, quietly: "Come here."
You leaned against the doorframe. "That sounded very commanding."
He closed the file slowly. "It was meant to."
You raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really?"
That flicker in his eyes again. The one that had become far too familiar.
You stepped inside, slowly.
"Careful," you said lightly. "I might start thinking you're bossy."
You stopped in front of his desk. Too close now. He looked up at you properly.
"You've been smiling all day," he said. Quieter.
"No." A beat. "Just distracting."
"Declan O'Hara." You tilted your head. "Are you distracted at work?"
His jaw tightened. "Yes."
You leaned slightly closer. "By what exactly?"
His eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second. Then back up.
The air in the room changed. Again. In that way it had been doing lately — suddenly and completely.
"Careful," you said softly. "People might think you've gone soft."
He stood. Slowly. Deliberately. Walked around the desk until there was nothing between you.
A faint, dangerous smile.
"Only where you're concerned."
He didn't let you finish. His hand came to your waist — not rushed, just certain — and then he kissed you. Slow at first. Testing. Like he was still, even now, slightly amazed this was something he was allowed.
You responded immediately.
And that was all the permission he needed.
The kiss deepened almost effortlessly — heat building gradually, like neither of you were in any hurry but neither of you were stopping either. His hand tightened at your waist, pulling you closer as your fingers found the front of his shirt without thinking. A soft exhale escaped him against your lips. Something restrained breaking, just slightly.
Not chaos. Not desperation.
Something controlled — but finally honest.
When he pulled back it was only enough to breathe. Forehead brushing yours. Both of you slightly undone.
"You're trouble," you murmured.
"Mm." His hand didn't move from your waist. "You started it."
And when he kissed you again — this time, there was no hesitation left at all.
His hand began to travel down, just like his kisses along your neck. You felt yourself growing warmer by the second.
"Declan." His name left you almost breathless.
"Hmm." Amused. Perfectly aware of what he was doing to you.
"Someone could walk in." No conviction in it whatsoever.
"Then we'll make it quick, won't we?" All the confidence in the world, as he dropped to his knees, you perched on the edge of the desk, his eyes travelling up to yours. "You're so beautiful." His hands slid your skirt up slowly, deliberately.
You curled your fingers into his hair, mouth falling open.
He pressed a kiss to your most sensitive spot — slow, intentional. An involuntary sound escaped you.
"So wet." His voice came out rough. "Is this all for me?"
"I don't know," you said, with a smirk you couldn't help. "Maybe it's for Tom."
He looked up at you, raising eyebrows. "Oh, really."
He understood the tone immediately — and decided you were going to pay for it. His fingers began moving inside you with a calculated rhythm, his tongue doing something that should have been illegal. You tightened your fingers in his hair, his name falling from your lips like a prayer.
"Declan." More desperate this time. You could feel yourself right on the edge — any moment someone could walk through that door, that rush of adrenaline mixing with his impossible, infuriating talent —
"What—?" You stared at him, completely undone.
He stood up slowly, composed himself as if nothing had happened, and said with a smile you would very much like to remove from his face: "That's for your smart mouth."
"Declan." Total disbelief.
"What, love." Not even a question. Genuinely, infuriatingly pleased with himself.
You looked at him sideways. Then smiled.
You moved behind him. Lips to his neck, hands tracing his chest slowly, deliberately. He didn't react — or pretended not to, which was not the same thing.
Then you changed strategy.
You sat in his chair. Slowly. Your hands beginning to travel down your own body with a calm that was almost provocative. He noticed — of course he noticed — looked up from the papers and went completely still.
"What are you doing?" Lower than it should have been.
"If you won't make me come," you said softly, "I'll do it myself." Your fingers began making slow circles, legs slightly parted, eyes holding his directly. A low sound escaped you.
You watched his jaw tighten. He was trying to resist.
Within seconds he was back on his knees.
This time there were no games. Frantic and slow all at once — a contradiction that only he knew how to make sense of. Your hands found his hair again, his name the only word your brain could still form.
"Are you going to come for me, love?" Muffled. Rough.
"Yes." All you could manage. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."
And you came — trembling, his name leaving you louder than was strictly advisable, completely incapable of caring.
He rose slowly. Kissed your stomach, your neck, and finally your mouth — slow, with a smile you felt against your lips.
"Why are you laughing?" you asked. Already smiling yourself, completely dishevelled, completely gone.
"I came in my pants," he said, in the same tone he'd use to discuss the weather, "like a fucking teenager."
You looked down. Confirmed it. Looked back up at him.
And the two of you started laughing — teeth against teeth, messy and ridiculous and completely, entirely yourselves.
You didn’t know how, but it seemed that almost every Friday — without any planning — you ended up at the Bar Sinister. This one was no different. Rupert had mentioned drinks, Freddie had shown up, Taggie had brought Lizzie, and somehow, by nine o’clock, half of Venturer was occupying a corner of the bar with the easy chaos of people who had been doing this for years.
Patrick and Tom arrived later, fresh from wherever they'd been and in considerably higher spirits for it.
Tom found you almost immediately.
"Y/N." He settled beside you at the bar with such ease, like he had decided you were the best company in the room and wasn't being subtle about it. "Patrick said you work at Venturer. That must be—"
"Fascinating and occasionally maddening," you said. "Yes."
He laughed. "He also said you're the only person who argues with his dad and wins."
"He really doesn't, from what I've seen." Tom leaned slightly toward you. "Can I get you another drink?"
"I'm alright, thank you."
"You sure? Because I was about to—"
"She's fine." Declan appeared on your other side, smoothly, with a glass of whiskey and an expression of absolute neutrality. "I've got it." Settling your favorite drink beside you.
Tom blinked. "Oh — right, sorry, I didn't mean to—"
"No trouble." Perfectly pleasant. The pleasantness of a man exercising considerable self-control.
Tom smiled easily and turned to Patrick, who had appeared beside him.
He looked straight ahead.
"Smooth," you said, very quietly.
"I don't know what you mean."
His jaw moved. "He's been doing this for two days straight."
"Declan." You kept your voice low. "We are in public."
He didn't look fine. He looked like a man conducting an internal argument he was determined to win through sheer force of will.
You looked back at the bar. Took a sip of your drink.
The music shifted. Someone suggested dancing — Shelley, inevitably — and the group migrated toward the small dancefloor at the back of the room in the loose, uncoordinated way of people who had been drinking for several hours and no longer cared about looking coordinated.
It was easy and warm and exactly what Friday evenings were for — Taggie laughing at something Freddie did, Rupert standing at the edge pretending he was above dancing while clearly about to cave, Shelley already entirely committed.
Then Tom appeared beside you.
Not intrusively. Just — there. Moving with the music, grinning, entirely good-natured about it.
"You're a good dancer," he said.
"I've been told," you said loudly, and laughed.
He said something else, leaning slightly closer to be heard over the music.
You didn't see Declan move.
You felt him first — a hand at your waist, certain and immediate, his presence at your back before you'd fully registered it.
"Tom's a good lad," Declan said, close enough that only you could hear it. "But he's been making eyes at you all evening and I've run out of patience."
"I know what he is," Declan said. "And I know what I am. And I'm done pretending one of those things isn't true in public."
You turned your head slightly. "Declan—"
Not dramatically. Not for an audience. Just — turned you toward him and kissed you, certain in his choice and wasn't interested in reviewing it.
For a moment, the noise of the bar receded entirely.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested briefly against yours.
"Right," he said quietly. More to himself than to you.
Tom had taken a very diplomatic step backwards and was looking at the ceiling.
Patrick, standing nearby, was staring at his father with an expression that cycled through surprise, comprehension, and then something that looked considerably like satisfaction, all in about four seconds.
"Finally," he said. To no one in particular. To everyone.
Rupert, from the edge of the dancefloor where he had been pretending not to watch, raised his glass.
"I've been waiting," he said pleasantly, "for approximately two years."
"It's been three," Taggie said, from somewhere behind him.
"Three," Rupert amended. "My mistake."
Declan looked at the assembled group.
You were trying, with limited success, not to smile.
"I hate all of you," he said.
"No you don't," Patrick said. He was still grinning — and he looked, in that moment, so much like his father that it was slightly alarming. "You're practically glowing, Dad."
"You absolutely are," you said.
And the smile you'd been holding finally arrived — small and warm and entirely yours.
His hand hadn't moved from your waist.
"Drinks," he said, to the room in general. "Since apparently this is now an occasion."
"It absolutely is," Freddie confirmed.
Tom, to his enormous credit, laughed. "Congratulations," he said, genuinely. "And — fair enough."
Patrick clapped him on the shoulder. "Sorry, mate. Should've mentioned."
"Would've been useful information, yes."
The bar reassembled itself around you — noise and warmth and the particular chaos of people who had been waiting for something for long enough that its arrival felt less like a surprise and more like an exhale.
Declan handed you your drink.
His hand found yours at the same time.
You leaned slightly into him.
"Patrick's going to be insufferable about this," you said quietly.
He squeezed your hand once.
And somewhere across the bar, Rupert leaned toward Taggie with the deep, unhurried satisfaction of a man whose patience had been thoroughly vindicated.
Taggie smiled into her drink.
"You tell everyone everything," she said.
"And I'm always right," he replied.
Which, on this particular occasion, was entirely true.
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Chapter 5 is finally here!!! I hope you enjoyed it <3 I wanted to show a softer, more romantic side of them this time, and of course the long-awaited reveal everyone was expecting at the end haha. Let me know what you think!! Love you all, be safe and kind!
