summary: when baran sees you suturing your own face, she is immediately intrigued.
word count: 1.1k
tags: female reader; plastic surgeon reader; no use of y/n; inspired by mark sloan stitching his own face; robby slander (only if you rly squint); you’re telling me baran wouldn’t have a competency kink? okay…
You hated the emergency department—or “the pitt” as it was so fondly called by said department and trauma surgeons alike. It always amazed you how Walsh and Garcia so frequently made the trip down to the basement. You did your best to avoid emergency consults, often sending your residents down when you could, but being one of the best plastic surgeons, you couldn’t avoid the pitt forever—as much as you would’ve liked to.
It wasn’t that you were against emergency medicine or that you had some vendetta against the people who worked downstairs, but the chaos and frenzy of it all simply unnerved you. During your rotation at MassGen’s trauma center, you’d seen your fair share of MCIs and drunken accidents, too many for your liking actually. You also knew about the rising trends of violence in the ED, something you wanted to do your best to avoid.
Though, it would be just your luck that your first ED consult in months resulted in a laceration across the cheek, thanks to an unhappy—and misogynistic—patient, whose blood alcohol was definitely above the legal limit.
“Shit,” you hissed as one of the residents rolled a sodium-chloride-soaked cotton swab over your wound. “See, this is why I avoid it down here.”
“You got the right idea,” McKay huffed, and you could tell she’d already had a rough day. It was only ten, but that’s what emergency medicine did do to you.
As she draped a cloth over your shoulder, coming back with a needle holder in one hand and pair of forceps in the other, you frowned. “What are you doing?”
“You need stitches,” Cassie stated.
“I know,” you replied. You were the best plastic surgeon east of the Mississippi. Hell would have to have frozen over for you to let some resident do your stitches. “Hold the mirror.”
You lifted the hand-held mirror up for her to take. She gave you an incredulous look but nonetheless swapped her suture supplies for the mirror and held it up for you so you could stitch up your own face.
Across the floor, Baran walked out of a trauma room and approached the nurses’ station. Taking a quick scan of the department, her eyes landed on an attractive woman in Central 2 doing sutures on her own face. She watched as the doctor’s, the dark blue scrubs being a dead give away, hands moved expertly and swiftly, and she couldn’t stop the warmth from flooding her abdomen.
“Why is there a woman doing her own sutures in our emergency department?” Baran asked Dana, her gaze remaining on you.
The charge nurse bit back a smile at the single word choice, implying a shared responsibility, something Dana had come to admire—even like—about the new attending. Baran understood her rank and responsibility but never shouldered the burden alone.
“I doubt she’d let anyone else do ‘em,” Dana snorted as she quickly glanced up to see where Baran looking before returning to her tablet.
“Who is she?”
Dana told her your name. “Plastics surgeon,” she said with a certain tone as if to explain your actions.
Baran seemed to pick up what Dana was suggesting because she raised her eyebrows and nodded.
“Hey, hotshot,” Dana yelled over to you.
“Yeah?” You called back, still focused on your task at hand.
“When you’re done showing off, I got someone here I want you to meet.”
You chuckled lightly, careful not to disrupt your work. Baran watched as you smoothly tied up your sutures, exchanged a few words with McKay, a smug yet easy-going smirk on playing on your lips, and exited the trauma bay.
As you approached the central station, your eyes widened slightly at the unfamiliar woman who was leaning against the counter, her curly hair pulled back halfway so as to not get in her face. While you didn’t make frequent trips down to the pitt, you knew most, if not all, of the doctors and nurses—mainly through Emery and Garcia’s rants but that was a moot point—and you were sure you would remember a woman as striking as her.
“Barbie, this is Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi,” Dana said, motioning her hand between you and the other attending. “She’s here while Robby’s on sabbatical.”
You rolled your eyes at the nickname the charge nurse had coined for you after you’d so generously fixed her broken nose, the first time.
Holding out your hand, you introduced your real name. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Baran shook your hand with a faint smirk, and you tried to ignore the way your insides fluttered at the feeling of her skin against yours.
“Impressive work,” she hummed, eyeing your sutures. She could see they were neat and precise. You’d be left with only a ghost of a scar.
“You should see what else I can do,” you replied with the arrogance of a surgeon, lowering your voice suggestively.
Baran raised her brow, struck by your forwardness.
“No flirting in front of me,” Dana snarked, shooting you a knowing look over the bridge of her glasses. You felt your cheeks warm, but your smirk widened.
“There’s plenty of me to go around, Evans,” you teased as you leaned forward against the station. She gave you a deadpan stare, used to your flirtatious remarks, and you snickered.
“Ignore her.” Dana turned to Baran, not giving you the satisfaction of a retort. “She’s not down here often anyways.”
As if on cue, your pager beeped against your hip. Briefly, you skimmed the message before looking back up at the new attending.
“Well, maybe now I have a reason to visit more often.”
You let your eyes linger in hers, momentarily getting lost in the warmth of her chocolate orbs, before pushing yourself off the station.
“Duty calls.” You held up your pager, which was buzzing again. “It’s been a pleasure, ladies.”
You glanced back at Dana, bowing your head slightly, and she simply dismissed you with a wave of her hand, but you could see a glint of affection in her eye.
“It was nice to meet you, Dr. Al-Hashimi.”
“Baran,” she corrected quickly, surprising even herself.
“Baran,” you echoed, a small and sincere smile tugging at the corners of your mouth.
If she wasn’t enamored by you before, the way her name naturally rolled off your tongue surely did it in for her.
“Well, Baran, I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” she said your name, and you decided you’d never hear it the same way again.
Turning on your heels, you headed back towards the elevator, the stinging in your cheek replaced by the tingling feeling of Baran’s gaze on your retreating figure. As you pressed the button for your floor, you caught one last glimpse of her and nodded with a faint smirk before the elevator doors shut.
You couldn’t wait for your next emergency consult.
summary: when baran sees you suturing your own face, she is immediately intrigued.
word count: 1.1k
tags: female reader; plastic surgeon reader; no use of y/n; inspired by mark sloan stitching his own face; robby slander (only if you rly squint); you’re telling me baran wouldn’t have a competency kink? okay…
You hated the emergency department—or “the pitt” as it was so fondly called by said department and trauma surgeons alike. It always amazed you how Walsh and Garcia so frequently made the trip down to the basement. You did your best to avoid emergency consults, often sending your residents down when you could, but being one of the best plastic surgeons, you couldn’t avoid the pitt forever—as much as you would’ve liked to.
It wasn’t that you were against emergency medicine or that you had some vendetta against the people who worked downstairs, but the chaos and frenzy of it all simply unnerved you. During your rotation at MassGen’s trauma center, you’d seen your fair share of MCIs and drunken accidents, too many for your liking actually. You also knew about the rising trends of violence in the ED, something you wanted to do your best to avoid.
Though, it would be just your luck that your first ED consult in months resulted in a laceration across the cheek, thanks to an unhappy—and misogynistic—patient, whose blood alcohol was definitely above the legal limit.
“Shit,” you hissed as one of the residents rolled a sodium-chloride-soaked cotton swab over your wound. “See, this is why I avoid it down here.”
“You got the right idea,” McKay huffed, and you could tell she’d already had a rough day. It was only ten, but that’s what emergency medicine did do to you.
As she draped a cloth over your shoulder, coming back with a needle holder in one hand and pair of forceps in the other, you frowned. “What are you doing?”
“You need stitches,” Cassie stated.
“I know,” you replied. You were the best plastic surgeon east of the Mississippi. Hell would have to have frozen over for you to let some resident do your stitches. “Hold the mirror.”
You lifted the hand-held mirror up for her to take. She gave you an incredulous look but nonetheless swapped her suture supplies for the mirror and held it up for you so you could stitch up your own face.
Across the floor, Baran walked out of a trauma room and approached the nurses’ station. Taking a quick scan of the department, her eyes landed on an attractive woman in Central 2 doing sutures on her own face. She watched as the doctor’s, the dark blue scrubs being a dead give away, hands moved expertly and swiftly, and she couldn’t stop the warmth from flooding her abdomen.
“Why is there a woman doing her own sutures in our emergency department?” Baran asked Dana, her gaze remaining on you.
The charge nurse bit back a smile at the single word choice, implying a shared responsibility, something Dana had come to admire—even like—about the new attending. Baran understood her rank and responsibility but never shouldered the burden alone.
“I doubt she’d let anyone else do ‘em,” Dana snorted as she quickly glanced up to see where Baran looking before returning to her tablet.
“Who is she?”
Dana told her your name. “Plastics surgeon,” she said with a certain tone as if to explain your actions.
Baran seemed to pick up what Dana was suggesting because she raised her eyebrows and nodded.
“Hey, hotshot,” Dana yelled over to you.
“Yeah?” You called back, still focused on your task at hand.
“When you’re done showing off, I got someone here I want you to meet.”
You chuckled lightly, careful not to disrupt your work. Baran watched as you smoothly tied up your sutures, exchanged a few words with McKay, a smug yet easy-going smirk on playing on your lips, and exited the trauma bay.
As you approached the central station, your eyes widened slightly at the unfamiliar woman who was leaning against the counter, her curly hair pulled back halfway so as to not get in her face. While you didn’t make frequent trips down to the pitt, you knew most, if not all, of the doctors and nurses—mainly through Emery and Garcia’s rants but that was a moot point—and you were sure you would remember a woman as striking as her.
“Barbie, this is Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi,” Dana said, motioning her hand between you and the other attending. “She’s here while Robby’s on sabbatical.”
You rolled your eyes at the nickname the charge nurse had coined for you after you’d so generously fixed her broken nose, the first time.
Holding out your hand, you introduced your real name. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Baran shook your hand with a faint smirk, and you tried to ignore the way your insides fluttered at the feeling of her skin against yours.
“Impressive work,” she hummed, eyeing your sutures. She could see they were neat and precise. You’d be left with only a ghost of a scar.
“You should see what else I can do,” you replied with the arrogance of a surgeon, lowering your voice suggestively.
Baran raised her brow, struck by your forwardness.
“No flirting in front of me,” Dana snarked, shooting you a knowing look over the bridge of her glasses. You felt your cheeks warm, but your smirk widened.
“There’s plenty of me to go around, Evans,” you teased as you leaned forward against the station. She gave you a deadpan stare, used to your flirtatious remarks, and you snickered.
“Ignore her.” Dana turned to Baran, not giving you the satisfaction of a retort. “She’s not down here often anyways.”
As if on cue, your pager beeped against your hip. Briefly, you skimmed the message before looking back up at the new attending.
“Well, maybe now I have a reason to visit more often.”
You let your eyes linger in hers, momentarily getting lost in the warmth of her chocolate orbs, before pushing yourself off the station.
“Duty calls.” You held up your pager, which was buzzing again. “It’s been a pleasure, ladies.”
You glanced back at Dana, bowing your head slightly, and she simply dismissed you with a wave of her hand, but you could see a glint of affection in her eye.
“It was nice to meet you, Dr. Al-Hashimi.”
“Baran,” she corrected quickly, surprising even herself.
“Baran,” you echoed, a small and sincere smile tugging at the corners of your mouth.
If she wasn’t enamored by you before, the way her name naturally rolled off your tongue surely did it in for her.
“Well, Baran, I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” she said your name, and you decided you’d never hear it the same way again.
Turning on your heels, you headed back towards the elevator, the stinging in your cheek replaced by the tingling feeling of Baran’s gaze on your retreating figure. As you pressed the button for your floor, you caught one last glimpse of her and nodded with a faint smirk before the elevator doors shut.
You couldn’t wait for your next emergency consult.
Summary: In 18th-century Calderuport, you were the mysterious daughter of the Calderu family: beautiful, brilliant, and just a little too obsessed with the dark arts. Under the watchful eye (and wandering hands) of local witch Agatha Harkness, you dabbled in forbidden rituals and very unladylike desires. But when a jealous rival named Rio Vidal discovers the depth of your bond, she unleashes a cruel curse: turning you into a vampire and locking you away beneath the earth, ensuring Agatha believes you abandoned her. Two centuries later, you escapes from your tomb unchanged, undead, and aching with two centuries of longing. You find 1972 Calderuport a very different place. His once-grand estate has fallen into ruin, and the dysfunctional remnants of your family have fared little better. You’re undead, unbothered, and back to reclaim your estate, your family , and most importantly… your witch.
Word Count: 9.5K
Warnings: explicit smut in later chapters so as always MDNI xo
A/N: our last chapter before the big reunion… x
The Calderu Chevy Impala wheezed its last breath as Sharon cranked the gearstick into park.
You stepped out with the regal reluctance of a queen forced to disembark a manure cart. Your boot struck gravel with a disapproving crunch.
The cannery loomed before you like the abandoned carcass of some ancient leviathan. Rust bloomed like rot across its corrugated iron flanks. The paint, once a proud deep sea green, had peeled back in long, curling strips, flaking in the breeze like dead skin. One of the loading doors hung off its hinge, screeching lazily every time the wind pushed it back and forth, like the breath of something wounded.
You stood stiffly just beyond the cracked pavement, the ruined shell of your family’s legacy rising before you. The structure loomed like a memory turned hostile, its doors hanging loose, its paint scabbed and peeling. The gulls circled lazily overhead, their shrieks mournful and mocking.
You inhaled deeply, then exhaled louder, pointedly.
“Behold,” you murmured, voice dripping with contempt. “The jewel in our industrial crown.”
Lilia climbed out behind you, shielding her eyes against the grey daylight. “I did warn you.”
Billy adjusted his sunglasses, popping another Twizzler between his teeth like it might soften the blow. “It’s not that bad,” he offered, then looked up and winced as a sheet of tin roofing peeled up with a groan, slapped back down, and sent a flock of seagulls shrieking skyward.
Alice, arms crossed, leaned on the Chevy and surveyed the building like it owed her money. “It’s a tetanus buffet.”
You drifted toward the front steps, long coat trailing behind you like a funeral veil. The door creaked open under your hand. The scent of mildew, rust, and something once living hit you like a wave. You did not flinch.
Inside, the cannery was a cathedral to entropy. Conveyor belts frozen in time, still bearing the fossilized remains of sardine tins. Water pooled in shallow dips across the cracked floor, collecting against stacks of moldering crates that wept brine onto the concrete. The windows had long since surrendered to dust and grime, filtering the daylight to a greenish haze that turned everything sickly and still.
“Gracious,” you whispered, fingers trailing across the busted metal controls of a packing station. “It is worse than I imagined.”
“You should’ve seen it before the vandals got to it,” Lilia muttered.
Your eyes swept the rafters, where birds had made nests between the beams and droppings crusted the edges of a rusted catwalk. Cobwebs clung to the corners like mourning veils. You looked like you belonged among them.
“I recall a place of thunder and fire,” you said. “A ballet of industry. My father oversaw the first line himself. He used to say the clang of the machines was the heartbeat of Calderu Port.”
You turned slowly.
“This is not a heartbeat. This is a death rattle,” you said with regal disdain.
Lilia sighed. “Well. You wanted to see it.”
“Yes,” you said, lifting your chin. “And now, like Dr. Frankenstein, I shall revive it.”
Alice barked a short laugh. “With what army? Do you have a hundred dock workers hidden under that coat?”
“I have something far more powerful,” you said, eyes glittering in the half light. “Vengeance.”
Billy clapped once. “Love that. Love the energy.”
You began to pace slowly through the broken machinery, black umbrella resting like a cane in your hand.
“They stripped us of our dignity. Bought our name for pennies. Built their empire upon the bones of our trade. No more.”
You turned to face your cousins, eyes dark and electric. “From these ashes, the Calderu name shall rise.”
Outside, the wind howled. The old sign above the door creaked violently, threatening to break loose.
And above the crashing sea, far off on the cliffs of Maiden Bay, Agatha Harkness stirred in her sleep.
Outside the gutted cannery, the sea wind tugged at your cloak, setting the hem to dance like black fire around your boots.
“This was once the heart of the Collins name,” you said with regal disdain. “And now…”
You swept your umbrella in a slow, dramatic arc.
“Now it is a carcass. A desecration. A haven for filth and rodents.”
“Don’t forget the seagulls,” Alice murmured, squinting up at the roof. “They seem to be unionizing.”
You glare at her in response.
Several feet behind, Billy had crouched in a patch of sand and rubble with the solemn enthusiasm of a child about to perform a deeply cursed puppet show. Lilia had her arms crossed, staring fixedly at the broken windows like she could will them back into stained glass and dignity.
Then Billy let out a delighted “Yes!”
You turn sharply to see Billy holding up what appeared to be a sun bleached, half dried fish carcass speared neatly on a stick.
“William!” you snapped. “Put that infernal thing down! This is very unbecoming!”
He turned toward you, grin wide, the carcass waving slightly in the breeze. “Look at it! It’s got one eye and half a tail! I think it’s smiling.”
“It’s leering,” you hissed. “Like a demon.”
“Maybe it’s possessed,” Billy mused. “Do you think if I poke you with it, you’ll like… turn into fog or something?”
You narrowed your eyes. “I will turn into something. And you will not enjoy it.”
Alice cackled around a drag of her cigarette.
Lilia, slowly losing her patience, snaps at her nephew. “Billy. For God’s sake. Can we not play with decomposing sea creatures in front of our extremely sensitive guest?”
You straightened, brushing at your cloak as if the very presence of the decomposing fish had sullied it. “Thank you Lilia.”
Billy sulkily lowered the fish stick. “You people have no imagination.”
You walked to the end of the pier like something resurrected from an early 19th century ballad, your long coat flaring behind you with every sharp breeze, your umbrella balanced like a nobleman’s cane. The air stank of salt and oil, and the pier groaned beneath your boots as if unsure whether to support the weight of history or simply collapse under it.
Behind you, Billy and Alice trailed like unwilling attendants, hands in their pockets, eyes darting toward the crashing waves and rusted mooring posts.
You stop to consider the sea stretching endlessly ahead, grey and heaving. Somewhere beneath it, perhaps, the bones of your ancestors still whispered.
You turned to your cousins, solemn as a judge, and reached into the folds of your coat. From within its depths, you drew a small velvet pouch, black and embroidered with threads of gold, the drawstring fastened in a neat little knot.
“Here,” you said, voice low and velvety. You extended the pouch toward them. “Why don’t you run along and treat yourselves?”
Billy blinked. Alice tilted her head.
The pouch jingled.
Billy took it first, equally cautious and reverent, and tugged it open only to find gold. Actual gold coins. Gleaming like dragon’s teeth.
“What the f-” Billy began.
“Jesus Christ,” Alice breathed, eyes wide.
“Absolutely not,” Lilia snapped, seizing the pouch out of Billy’s hands like a hawk diving for prey.
“What are you thinking, handing this to them like it’s a Halloween goody bag?” She turns on you.
You blinked innocently. “It is only coins. For sweets and frivolities.”
“They’d get mugged before they hit the corner store!” Lilia hissed, already tucking the pouch into her coat. She pulled out her wallet and slapped a crumpled fifty dollar bill into Alice’s hand instead. “Here. Go wild.”
Billy and Alice stared at the bill, then at each other, like they’d just won the lottery.
“Seriously?” Billy asked.
“We’re allowed to just… go?” Alice said.
“An hour,” Lilia muttered. “And don’t come back with a ferret or anything else that shits or breathes.”
Alice shrugged. “No promises.”
And with that, they bolted.
You watched them go, the wind tousling their hair as they disappeared into the shops at the edge of the pier. Lilia groaned under her breath.
“You are going to be the death of me,” she said.
“I have that effect,” you murmured.
She shot you a look. But you were already turning back toward the sea, chin lifted to the salt heavy wind, the manor behind you, the cannery before you, and destiny cracking its knuckles beneath the waves.
The sea crashed beneath the pier, frothing and grey, clawing at the rotting wooden supports like it too had a grudge against the Calderu name. The wind snapped at your coat, flared your umbrella uselessly at your side, and howled like some ancient chorus echoing down the coast.
You stood at the edge with Lilia, both of you staring out at the derelict skeletons of boats bobbing in their moorings, nets half torn, gulls screaming overhead like drunkards.
“What a beautiful ruin,” you murmured, squinting against the morning light as it broke across the churning water. “It’s like looking at a cathedral on fire.”
Lilia’s arms were crossed, scarf whipped across her mouth by the wind. She glanced at you from the corner of her eye.
“You sure you want to do this?” she asked quietly. “It’s going to take a hell of a lot of work… and money.”
You didn’t answer right away. Instead, you reached for her hands.
The gloves you wore were beginning to fray, the delicate black leather split at the fingers where your claws had poked clean through, jagged and dark like crescent moons dipped in pitch. Still, you took her hands gently, your touch reverent.
“I would consider it,” you said, voice low and bright with something close to joy, “my greatest honour.”
Lilia looked down at your torn gloves. Then at the pier. Then back at your face, pale, unwavering, and lit by the fire of purpose. And despite herself, she smiled.
“Alright then,” she said, squeezing your hands. “Let’s get to it.”
~
Later on, Alice and Billy had returned with records for their vinyl player and other miscellaneous items you had never seen before but were assured of their necessity to Billy’s life.
You were still glaring at the carcass as Billy had demanded to give it a tiny funeral by shoving it into a cracked drainpipe, whispering, “Return to the sea,” when Lilia cleared her throat.
“Okay, so,” she said, brushing off her trousers, “we’ve established this place is a disaster, there’s definitely asbestos in that wall, and I think I saw a seagull carrying a rat. Can we leave now?”
Alice looked over her sunglasses at Lilia. “Billy and I have a show we want to watch in half an hour.”
Lilia exhaled hard through her nose like she was holding in a scream. “Yes. Yes, we’re going. Everyone back to the car.”
You groaned. Loudly. “Must I again endure the metal… beige… carriage so soon?”
Billy immediately perked up. “You’re in the back middle again, Count Dracula. I’m not moving.”
You spun on your heel to face him, cloak fluttering like an angry stormcloud. “I will bite you.”
Alice, already walking toward the car, called back without looking, “You’ve said that six times and we’re starting to think it’s a empty promise.”
Lilia muttered, “God, I need a drink.”
You turned to follow the others, nose wrinkled in theatrical disdain. The factory behind you groaned in the wind.
And just as your voice floated through the air
“William, if that stick touches me I will hex your hair the most unflattering shade!”
Rio caught sight of you. She had stepped outside the building across the street, chest still tight, hands half raised as if bracing for a blow.
She froze.
You passed through a shaft of sun, hat tilted low, veil obscuring your face, your coat trailing like smoke. She couldn’t see your eyes, but she knew. Her stomach dropped. Her nails curled into the flesh of her palms, her knuckles white with fury.
So you were staying afterall.
~
The subsequent weeks were a whirlwind of hammering, humming, swearing, and sawing.
Calderu House, long faded into a shadow of its former glory, began to breathe again, not gently, but in great, wheezing gasps of activity as men in coveralls and boots stormed its halls, trailing cigarette smoke and sawdust. They came from Boston, from Salem, from New York, from God knows where up and down the eastern seaboard, lured by whispers of generous pay, hot meals, and housing, or, in some cases, by a single glance from your eyes and a softly spoken command that rooted into the marrow of their minds like iron nails.
The great hall filled with scaffolding. Tarps draped over dusty portraits. Paint cans lined the tiled floors in front of gold leaf molding still flecked with soot. Electricians cursed under their breath as they rewired ancient wall sconces that hadn’t sparked to life since the Civil War. Muralists stood on ladders restoring the once glorious ceiling fresco, a celestial dome now brightening with every delicate brushstroke: witches painted mid-flight, fanged lovers locked in an eclipse, hands stretching from the heavens like mythic saints across the ocean.
Down in the ballroom, plasterers re-cast cornices and scraped back decades of yellowing varnish, revealing the pearl-and-black-marble inlays beneath. The chandelier, all nine hundred pounds of it, was disassembled and painstakingly reassembled on the parquet floor like a monstrous puzzle, each crystal drip soaked in vinegar and polished to a cut glass shimmer.
In the library, an elderly carpenter from Gloucester ran a reverent hand along the edge of the great built-in shelves and whispered, “Jesus, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore.”
You smiled softly and murmured, “No. They don’t.”
Sculptors from Providence arrived to restore the pair of marble sea horses flanking the grand hearth. They balked, quite audibly, when you instructed them that each spinal joint must be carved hollow to hold a single perfect pearl.
One had the audacity to ask, “Is that really necessary?”
You had only to tilt your head and say, “It is not a matter of necessity, my dear boy. It is a matter of taste.”
He went deathly pale and didn’t question you again.
In the central town of Calderu Port, a small army of builders swarmed the cannery grounds like ants, hauling rusted machinery from the bones of the old dockside factory. They refit windows, replaced the roof, reinforced the warehouse beams. Men were winched up to repaint the faded Calderu insignia on the upper wall, a hand holding a torch encircled by thorned roses, while others drained and refilled the great ice vats in the lower levels.
Lilia oversaw it all with a clipboard, a cigarette, and a kind of terminal grimness. Billy brought her coffee laced with brandy every few hours, and Alice, dressed like a rockabilly pin-up with a tool belt, somehow talking her way into running supply orders and occasionally “supervising” from the comfort of a stolen forklift.
They all adjusted in their own ways. The Calderu manor was no longer merely haunted. It was alive again, groaning, clanking, demanding.
And beneath it all, you moved like a conductor. A whisper here. A glare there. The occasional flicker of fangs when someone got bold with a pricing estimate. The house had waited for you, after all. It would have what you demanded. Opulence. Elegance. A return to its dark, rightful splendor.
And as for you?
You could not sleep.
But that, perhaps, was a matter for another night.
Things had begun to change as the weeks went on, still under the oppressive drill of constant construction work.
Alice Calderu was not a morning person.
She liked her coffee burnt, her eggs runny, and her Alice Cooper records loud enough to shake the wainscoting. Her usual mornings involved sleeping ‘til eleven, chain smoking on the windowsill in nothing but a t-shirt and underwear, then padding barefoot down the hall to rummage through the fridge for cold breakfast and last night’s beer.
But that was before you came home.
Now, she was woken by hammering. Not metaphorical, literal. Somewhere above her room, someone was attempting to reconstruct the ceiling with all the grace of a wrecking ball. The walls rattled with electric drills. Men stomped down the hallway in muddy boots at unholy hours of the morning.
She was also expected to wear trousers before noon. That, frankly, was fascism.
Gone were the sleepy days of slouching around to Deep Purple on vinyl with a glass of orange juice and vodka in hand. Now, the turntable crackled under a thin blanket of drywall dust, and if she turned the volume up past three, some idiot from Boston would bang on the wall and shout “Hey! We’re working in here!”
“It’s my house, dickhead,” she muttered, flicking the volume knob higher just to make a point. But even she knew the battle was already lost. Calderu House was no longer hers to ignore.
Worse still? She couldn’t stop noticing you.
You glided through the chaos in long coats and silk gloves, always looking like some kind of doomed poetry heroine, smelling faintly of myrrh and winter, your voice honeyed and old and unnervingly polite. The builders didn’t know what to do with you. The electricians stared. One of the young sculptors tripped over his own feet trying to offer you his lighter.
Alice, for her part, wasn’t charmed.
She was intrigued. Suspicious. And increasingly… rattled.
Because it wasn’t just the noise, or the dust, or the fact that her quiet goth girl routine was now routinely interrupted by people shouting about insulation or whether the cherubs carved into the archway were supposed to be winking. It was that you never ate. Never drank. That you watched the world with a kind of glassy, aching distance, like you were waiting for it to vanish. That sometimes you said things like “Didn’t that used to be the music room?” about spaces no one remembered being anything but linen closets.
It was also that you slept all day and walked the halls at night.
She’d passed you once, just past midnight, while creeping down to steal a beer. You hadn’t said a word. Just looked at her, slow and deliberate, the light from the chandelier catching on your eyes like animal glass. She hadn’t breathed until you passed.
Now, instead of blasting her records, she wore headphones. Instead of sulking in her favorite alcove, she sulked in the garage. She smoked with the windows open. She stopped sleeping naked. She stopped sleeping well.
She told herself it was because the manor was full of strangers.
She told herself it wasn’t you.
And every morning, when the hammering started again and Sharon yelled something obscene and Billy asked “Why is there a taxidermied owl in the bathtub?”, she’d roll her eyes, groan into her pillow, and mutter:
“I liked it better when this place was dead.”
Lilia Calderu had not had a full night’s sleep in three weeks.
Between the electricians blowing the power grid, the sculptors having a breakdown about the seahorse spines (again), and Sharon demanding hazard pay for finding a mummified rat king in the west wing’s chimney, she was barely keeping the whole operation from collapsing into a cursed pile of plaster and bills.
And yet, somehow, she was thriving.
The bags under her eyes had developed a kind of mystique. She wore sunglasses indoors now. Her blouses were silk. Her clipboard was leather bound. Contractors were afraid of her in a good way. The bank, for the first time in a decade, returned her calls. The town gossip pages had stopped referring to the Calderus as eccentric welfare aristocracy and now whispered about mysterious offshore investments and a stunning revival in local industry.
She didn’t correct them. She liked the mystery.
Let them wonder. Let them squint toward the manor on the hill and ask who’s bankrolling all that? Let them pretend not to be curious about the heavy trucks arriving by moonlight, the sudden influx of Boston laborers, or why every workman who left the estate walked away with a dazed, dreamy smile like they’d just been kissed by a pagan god.
Lilia kept her mouth shut. She signed the checks. She smiled her tight, imperious little smile.
And during the day, she made her rounds, not just around the manor anymore, but the cannery.
The Calderu Cannery, once the saddest building in all of Maiden Bay, now had scaffolding hugging its bones like a steel corset. Painters teetered on ladders. Saws shrieked. Her heels clicked over fresh concrete as she reviewed the blueprints for the newly proposed processing wing. It was ambitious. Risky. A money pit.
And it was hers.
She squinted down at the architectural render, humming softly, mentally calculating square footage against budget projections, when a ripple of heat needled her spine.
She looked up across the pier, inside the black glassed office suite of Maiden Bay Fish & Trade, two silhouettes glared out at her.
One, a tall, dark, all tailored menace, stood with her arms folded and jaw clenched.
The other, sharp-eyed, and poised like a queen watching from a throne, simply sipped her tea.
Agnes Harkness. And Rio Vidal.
Wives. Tyrants. Devourers of Calderu dreams.
Lilia stared right back. Let them look. Let them seethe. Let them choke on their smug little tea party in their gentrified palace of stolen blood.
She smiled, raised one elegant hand and waved. A dainty, fluttering thing. All fingernails and contempt, as to say ‘Hi, bitch.’
Then she turned back to her blueprint, flipped the page, and said coolly to the foreman beside her, “Tell the builders I want more windows. Big ones. So we can see everything.”
By the third week of renovations, Lilia Calderu had developed a stress induced eye twitch that was so violent that Sharon started leaving notes on why people should drink less coffee by her espresso machine just in case she happened to glance upon them.
The manor was crawling with men. Painters, plumbers, sculptors, woodworkers, one crew of mysterious stonemasons who only came at night and refused to answer questions. The hallways buzzed with hammering. The ceilings dripped with plaster dust. Her ancestors were probably spinning in their crypts.
And you were not helping.
Oh, you meant well. You always meant well. But no matter how many times Lilia reminded you to ‘just try and sound a little more normal,’ you still greeted the electricians with phrases like, “Welcome, noble tinkermen, and beware the north wing, a tragic murder was once committed there.” Or worse, spoke Latin at the HVAC guy.
She’d barely gotten past her morning coffee before she was called downstairs to find you standing on a ladder in full mourning dress, fangs barely retracted, arguing with a very frightened man about whether it was feasible to embed sapphires in the chandelier chain for the proper glint.
You tilted your head at her innocently. “They would catch the moonlight so splendidly.”
Lilia smiled through clenched teeth. “And yet we agreed, no more gemstones in the light fixtures.”
“Did we?” you blinked. “I thought we said no more emeralds. This is sapphire.”
“Go. Upstairs.”
You slunk off like a sullen cat, muttering something about “an age of vulgarity.”
An hour later, she caught you trying to pay the landscapers in Roman coin.
Then there was Billy.
The boy had always been strange, soft voiced, music obsessed, a little too prone to gazing longingly at the moon, but lately he’d taken to levitating things. Subtly. Subconsciously. Lilia walked into the parlor mid afternoon and found him floating three feet above the blow-up chair in lotus position, listening to Bowie.
“Down,” she said sternly.
Billy floated down slowly, like a balloon losing air. “I was meditating.”
“You were hovering.”
“I had a pillow under me.”
“That’s not…” she pinched the bridge of her nose. “No magic while guests are in the house, please.”
He sighed. “Yes, Mother.”
“I’m not your mother.”
“I meant it spiritually.”
In the dining room, Alice had taken to locking the doors while she painted on black eye shadow and screamed along to Janis Joplin. Lilia stopped knocking. If the house caught fire, then she’d worry.
She poured another cup of espresso. Counted to ten.
Later that evening, she found you again, this time instructing the muralists in the entryway. You stood with arms outstretched, gesturing toward a massive panel depicting a dramatic naval battle, flanked by skeletal mermaids.
“I’d like the blood to be just a little more crimson,” you were saying. “As if fresh. As if it still cries out.”
The painter looked like he might cry out himself.
Lilia breezed in, clipboard in hand. “We’re doing tasteful restoration, not live action Nosferatu. Please tone down the murder aesthetic.”
You glanced back at her. “But it’s a Calderu legend mural. Captain Jonah is said to have flayed the siren queen alive!”
“I know, darling. I read the plaque. Still, perhaps a slightly less flayed rendition?”
You huffed, but nodded. “As you wish.”
The moment she turned her back, you whispered something to the painter in Old Italian. The man nodded, pale and shaking.
Lilia did not ask.
She made her rounds: checked the accounts, approved the lighting fixtures, threatened the contractor who kept parking on the pet cemetery. She signed paperwork, mediated disputes, handled press inquiries. She greeted townsfolk who suddenly wanted back in the Calderu good graces, realtors, aldermen, old men bearing dusty Calderu fishing permits hoping to cash in.
She smiled for all of them. Held her chin high.
Because Lilia Calderu, despite everything, was winning.
Her manor? Rebuilt. Her family name? Restored. Her family? Chaotic, yes, but no longer pathetic. She had legacy at her back and fire in her spine.
And when, once a week, she walked down to the cannery in a pressed blazer and matching heels, she caught Rio Vidal and “Agnes” glowering from their office window.
Lilia smiled. Raised her coffee cup. And waved.
Billy Kaplan liked chaos. Within reason. He liked the way the manor echoed now, the sound of tools, footsteps, shouting. It made everything feel alive again. Like maybe he wasn’t the only weird thing in the house anymore. Like maybe being strange here didn’t make him alone.
But sometimes, around hour five of a screaming match between Alice and the tile guy, or when the chandelier crew dropped another antique globe down the stairs, Billy had to disappear. He’d sneak off to the library, or the attic, or, more and more often, to you.
Because you were having an even harder time.
It had started so gradually. Little things. You stopped coming down before sunset. You looked paler, even more undead somehow, your dark ringed eyes distant, your movements sluggish. One morning, Billy knocked on your door and found you curled like a spider in the corner of your dressing room, fast asleep on a pile of antique linens, your cloak wrapped around you like a shroud.
You hadn’t stirred when he whispered your name.
You had stirred when Sharon stepped on a squeaky floorboard. You’d flung a vase at her head. She’d ducked. Just.
After that, Billy took it upon himself to help.
It became his secret project. Operation: Sleep Like the Dead.
He brought you options.
A deep wardrobe? Too shallow.
An antique travel trunk? You couldn’t curl up fully.
A vintage bathtub he’d lined with blankets? You nearly relaxed, until Lilia turned on the water, not realizing you were in it.
Billy winced every time he had to tell someone, “No, Y/N is not in this one,” like checking for a raccoon in a crawlspace.
By week two, he’d lined an old armoire with blackout curtains and layered in every heavy blanket the house possessed. You tried it for one afternoon. It felt “wrong.”
“I need… containment,” you muttered, pacing the hallway in bare feet and nightclothes like a restless Victorian ghost. “A womb. A tomb. A sacred sanctum.”
Billy took notes. “Right. Less bed. More… burial.”
He found a crate, thick wood, freshly delivered from the cannery. You tried that. Lasted three hours before you burst out of it, covered in splinters, shrieking, “It smells of fish!”
“…It was from the cannery,” Billy admitted.
“I am not some ghoul to sleep beside mackerel!”
He offered a large woven basket, as a joke.
You curled up in it for nearly twenty minutes. He almost cried from pride.
But then someone knocked on the door.
“WHO DARES,” you shrieked, launching upright like a banshee. The basket tipped. You collapsed in a pile of silk and rage. Billy sighed.
He tried again.
An empty coffin shaped wine cabinet? You nearly purred. But the hinges squeaked. You flinched like it was holy water.
A casket shaped display from a Halloween pop up store? “It’s plastic, Billy.”
“You’re literally made of magic corpse,” he muttered. “You’re that picky?”
“Yes,” you sniffed. “This is my sacred repose, not a… a novelty dungeon. And it smells like the factory floor.”
Eventually, he found you asleep on the ceiling.
Flat against the rafters like a bat. Upside down.
He stared. “…That can’t be good for your spine.”
You opened one bleary red eye. “Who needs vertebrae when one has vengeance?”
Billy didn’t argue.
Later, over lukewarm tea, he admitted, “It’s kinda nice, though. Having you here. Everything used to be so quiet.”
You looked at him, eyes softer than usual. “I’m glad, little witch. I am glad to have found you in this century.”
He flushed, tugged his sleeves down over his hands.
“Still gonna find you a box though,” he muttered. “Even if I have to carve it myself.”
You didn’t say anything, just smiled.
A real one, this time.
And when he left, your feet already lifting off the floor again, you whispered to the ceiling: “Thank you, Billy.”
~
It started with a knock on the study door.
Lilia didn’t look up from the blueprint she was scowling at, something about the cannery’s northeast loading bay being structurally unsound, again. “If this is about the plumbing in the east wing I swear to-”
“It’s not,” Billy said, pushing the door open a crack.
She sighed. “Then what?”
He stepped in, shut the door behind him with gentle finality, and cleared his throat.
Lilia glanced up.
Billy looked weirdly serious. Hands stuffed in his hoodie pocket, brow furrowed, lips pursed in that “I’m about to say something that will age you ten years” sort of way.
“I think we need to grave rob,” he said.
Lilia turned slowly in her chair to face him.
There was a beat of heavy silence.
“…God help me,” she murmured, fingers steepling against her forehead. “Why?”
“She hasn’t slept in weeks.”
That got her attention.
“She’s trying to pretend she’s fine but like… she’s not fine,” Billy went on, pacing now. “She’s climbing walls. She tried to sleep in a basket. A basket, Lilia. Like a demonic cat.”
“I’m aware,” Lilia muttered. “She nearly bit the drywaller who asked if she was in costume.”
“She hissed at me when I brought her chamomile.”
“She hissed at the plumber too.”
Billy stopped. “So we agree she’s…”
“Unhinged? Yes. She’s a vampire.”
“Exactly.” He spread his hands. “So we need to get her a coffin. A real one. A good one. But we can’t buy one. That’d look weird.”
“Yes,” Lilia said flatly. “The local undertaker would have questions if I strolled in asking for a bespoke vampire slumber chamber.”
“So,” Billy said, grinning faintly now. “We dig one up.”
Lilia just stared.
“Like, an old grave,” Billy continued, like this was a perfectly rational plan. “No one fresh. We’re not monsters.”
“No,” Lilia deadpanned. “Just robbers of the dead.”
Billy held up his hands. “We put the bones back after. With respect.”
Lilia closed her eyes.
He leaned forward, voice lowered conspiratorially. “I know the perfect place. The old Calderu plots behind the chapel ruins? No one’s been out there in decades.”
She opened her eyes again, slowly. “You’ve been scouting?”
“I read maps.”
“Billy.”
“And there’s a name I think would work. Isadora Calderu. Died 1694. That’s vintage as hell.”
Lilia just stared at him.
“She won’t mind,” Billy insisted. “I’ll say a spell. I’ll even bring flowers.”
“You want me to help you desecrate an ancestral grave for a vampire bed.”
He tilted his head. “Well… yes?”
Lilia swore in Latin under her breath. Then she stood, tugged on her coat, and grabbed her car keys from the desk.
Billy blinked. “Wait, really?”
She glared at him. “If anyone asks, we are clearing invasive roots for historical preservation. Understood?”
“Got it.” He bounced after her. “Oh and I packed snacks!”
“You packed snacks?!”
“For us,” he clarified. “She’s undead, not me.”
Lilia muttered something truly profane.
They stepped out into the misty dusk together, the air cool and damp, the house behind them still groaning with renovation. And somewhere upstairs, you stirred in a nest of blankets and velvet, twitching restlessly in your sleep, dreaming, maybe, of dark wood and soft velvet and a home that hummed with ancient magic.
Help was on the way.
It just happened to be via grave robbery.
~
Evening had finally fallen on Calderu Manor.
For the first time all day, there was silence, or something close to it. No hammering, no sawing, no echoing voices calling for Sharon about tile samples or mold remediation or the missing scaffolding guy (who had, in fact, quit mid day after catching you floating down the west hallway with your eyes rolled back and your cloak billowing like a vengeful nun).
Alice had seized the lull like a rare truffle.
She was curled up on the threadbare velvet settee in the drawing room, boots off, legs tucked under her, watching The Carpenters perform on the tiny TV that sat atop a stack of unpacked wine crates. The black and white fuzz only added to the sacredness of the moment, Karen Carpenter’s mournful alto drifting through the space like a hymn.
Alice didn’t even flinch when you entered.
You hovered behind her, arms folded, cloak swishing softly. Your eyes narrowed at the grainy screen. You tilted your head. Squinted.
“What sorcery is this?” you asked at last.
Alice sighed.
You stepped closer, utterly scandalised. “Why does the tiny woman sing from inside the box?”
“That’s a television.”
“No. That is witchcraft.”
“She’s a musician not a witch!”
“Reveal yourself, tiny songstress!” you cried, and yanked the plug from the back.
The screen blinked off with a pop.
Alice turned slowly.
You pointed at the TV. “Speak your name, phantom harpy!”
Alice stared at you like she was about to stab you with a knitting needle. She turned her whole body slowly, like she was deciding whether to commit a felony.
That’s when the front door opened with a loud bang and a thud echoed down the hall. A dragging sound followed.
You both looked up.
Billy and Sharon came staggering into view, dragging something long and heavy between them, a coffin. Real, wooden, freshly robbed. Dirt still clung to the sides. One of Sharon’s gardening gloves was stuck to the lid.
Lilia was behind them, arms crossed, already rubbing her forehead.
There was a long silence.
Alice stood. “Nope,” she said. “Not even gonna ask.” She grabbed her boots and left the room. “I’ll be in my room. Alone. With headphones.”
Billy cleared his throat and grinned. “So… surprise?”
You stepped toward it slowly, staring. “Where did you…”
“Don’t ask,” Lilia cut in. “We’re moving past the part where this is a crime.”
You crouched to examine it. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s covered in grave dirt,” she muttered.
You touched the wood like it was a relic. “It’s perfect.”
Sharon dropped her end. “Cool. So how are we getting it upstairs?”
Everyone froze.
You looked at the staircase. Then back at the coffin. Then at the four of you standing in the hallway.
“…Do we have rope?” Billy asked.
“No one’s dragging a coffin up my stairs with rope,” Lilia said, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Elevator?” Sharon offered.
“We don’t have an elevator.”
“Wheelbarrow?”
“Jesus Christ.”
Billy looked at you. “You’re strong. Can’t you…?”
“I’m undead,” you said sharply. “Not a forklift.”
A beat.
Sharon pointed. “What if we take the legs off the dining table and use it as a sled?”
“I swear to God,” Lilia said.
You were still crouched beside the coffin, gently stroking the lid like it was a prize horse. “We could always leave it here,” you offered. “It’s… peaceful.”
“In the hallway?” Lilia said.
You shrugged.
Another pause.
You continued running your claws lightly across the coffin lid, lost in thought. “I shall wait until morning.”
Lilia blinked. “For what?”
You looked up at her. “To compel some workers.”
A beat.
“You’re going to what?”
You smiled, slow and sharp. “I will be very polite in my compelling. I’ll simply tell them they wish to carry it upstairs. And they’ll agree. Perhaps even tip their hats when they’re done.”
Billy grinned. “See? Problem solved.”
“Problem not solved,” Lilia muttered, turning toward the liquor cabinet. “Problem postponed until I have enough gin in my system not to care.”
Sharon gave the coffin a little pat like she was tucking in a baby. “Nighty night, boxy.”
You, already draping one of the hallway tapestries over the casket like a makeshift veil, stood proudly beside it. “She’ll rest here tonight. As shall I.”
Lilia looked at you like she was watching her sanity die in real time. “You’re sleeping in the hallway?”
“Would you prefer I try the linen cupboard again?” you asked sweetly.
“No,” she muttered, pouring a drink. “Just… no.”
From the top of the stairs, Alice yelled: “Still not asking!”
~
It took weeks. A fortune in gold, half the working population of the eastern seaboard (some hired, some enchanted), and enough whispered threats to get you arrested in most major cities. But the cannery, your cannery, your family’s heart, the legacy that Rio Vidal had tried so very hard to grind into the dust, was alive again.
And it was beautiful.
The early morning mist curled like cigarette smoke around the gleaming new exterior: the brickwork restored, the seafoam green paint fresh and neat, the carved wooden sign hanging proud above the main doors now read:
CALDERU FISHERY – EST. 1761 — RESTORED 1972
Family Owned. Locally Sourced.
The press had arrived promptly at 7 a.m. A wiry, over earnest reporter from the Calderu Port Gazette, a man with a comb over that had long since lost the war, was already fussing with his tripod by the parking lot. He waved cheerfully at the group gathered in front of the cannery façade.
“Alright, let’s get the photo before the sun gets too high!” he chirped, patting his forehead with a damp napkin.
You lingered several feet back, standing in the shadow of a shipping container. You couldn’t be in the photo. Wouldn’t be. There were… certain challenges with being undead. Not showing up on film was one of them. But you didn’t need to be seen. Not today.
You just wanted to see them.
Billy stood tall in his blazer, hair combed down, proud and weirdly serious until Alice elbowed him hard in the ribs, laughing as she struck a pose with two fingers held up in a dramatic gothic V. She wore sunglasses and a lace scarf like she was about to be arrested in 1963. Her t-shirt said Satan is My Co-Pilot.
Lilia stood between them, stiff at first, but then, just for a moment, she allowed herself to smile. A real smile. Shoulders back. Chin high. Her black pencil skirt and silk blouse looked almost regal under the morning sun, a clipboard tucked under one arm like a sword. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t look like someone barely keeping things together. She looked like someone in charge. Someone triumphant.
And you had never been prouder of anything in your undead life.
The camera flashed once. Twice.
From your perch in the shadows, you watched Billy sneak a wink at where he knew you were standing. Alice waved with both hands, dramatically. Lilia didn’t look, but you saw the way her head tilted just slightly in your direction, as if to say thank you.
You said nothing. Just nodded once. A quiet, solemn thing. A vow.
The Calderu name lived on.
And this time, no one would take it from you.
Across the bay, from the upper window of her office at Maiden Bay Fisheries, Rio Vidal watches with a stare so sharp it could flay skin. The Calderu cannery gleams like a polished insult in the morning light, restored to its former glory. Neon signage fresh, scaffolding cleared, the smell of paint still clinging to the air.
And there they are: Lilia Calderu, flanked by her ridiculous little brood. Alice throws up devil horns. Billy beams like he’s just taken first prize in a spelling bee. Lilia waves, all too aware of the performance, smiling for the cameras like she hadn’t been laughed out of town a year ago. And you, still in town, still skulking in shadows, still rebuilding what she razed.
Rio’s eye twitched.
“Unbelievable,” she hissed. Her reflection in the window narrowed its eyes, lips curled back around the rim of her glass. “Un fucking believable.”
For centuries she’d poured her energy into decimating that family line. She’d buried the monster. Buried her so deep in iron and myth no one even remembered her name anymore. She’d hunted the heirs, ruined their finances, poisoned their reputations, until the Calderu legacy was nothing but a local ghost story and an empty, crumbling estate.
“They should be dust,” she mutters, nearly snarling.
Behind her, a teacup clinks in its saucer.
Behind her, Agatha Harkness doesn’t look up from the paperwork strewn across the massive steel desk. She’s wearing one of her tailored silk blouses, sleeves pushed up, fountain pen in hand, hair scraped into a careless twist like she’s halfway between CEO and widow.
“And yet,” she says coolly, flipping a page, “they’re not.”
Rio grips the windowsill like it might leap from her grasp. Her teeth are grinding. There’s a twitch in her cheek she can’t get to stop.
“How?” she mutters, venom bleeding into the word.
Behind her, at the sleek modern desk, all glass and brutalist steel, Agatha doesn’t look up from the pile of documents she’s annotating. The lease renewal for the harborfront. A cease and desist drafted for one of the local fishers who keeps using the Maiden Bay logo without a license. The boring weapons of capitalism. But she doesn’t flinch.
“Let them pose,” Agatha says, cool and effortless. “It’ll crumble like it always does.”
Rio turns toward her, seething. “It’s not crumbling, Aggie. It’s thriving.”
Agatha’s pen pauses briefly. Then keeps writing.
She doesn’t smile. She rarely does. But there’s a small curl at the edge of her lip. Not mirth, just intent. The way a hawk looks down at a nest of rodents.
“The Calderus are getting sloppy,” Agatha murmurs, signing something with a flourish. “Organising press events. Taking pictures. It’s adorable.”
Agatha hums. “Oh, they’re back. And they’re proud.” A pause. “Pride always goes before the fire, though.”
Rio says nothing. Because what can she say?
If Agatha saw you, if she recognises you, ifshe finds out you didn’t leave her, but were taken from her. Then all of this, all the lies, the years of deception, the carefully managed silence, it will burn.
She still thinks you left her.
She still thinks you walked away.
She still thinks it was by choice.
And Rio is never going to correct that.
Not when it’s the one lie that finally made Agatha hers.
So she walks away from the window, slow and composed, slipping her hands into the pockets of her jacket like she’s not shaking with rage beneath it all.
Let them rebuild.
Let them smile.
She’ll take it all back again soon.
Agatha slides another document toward her with a fingernail painted the colour of dried blood. “Let them rebuild. I’m happy to have something to destroy.”
The newly restored cannery gleamed in the morning mist, its fresh paint and steel fittings catching the coastal light like an offering to the gods of salt and industry. From the pier, you could hear the machines inside whirring like a living thing. Efficient. Ruthless. Glorious.
The scent of salt and diesel still clung to the wood of the newly restored cannery, but you didn’t mind. It was clean. It was yours. The floor gleamed, the machinery hummed, and every brick laid felt like another bone set straight.
You walked its length slowly, cloak sweeping behind you, claws folded neatly into your gloves. Watching the metal belts glide. The polished hooks gleam. The light catching the faint etching of the Calderu seahorse newly embossed into the entry doors. All was well. For once.
You folded your arms over your chest, chin high, cloak flapping gently behind you in the Atlantic breeze.
“This,” you murmured, half to yourself, “is power reborn.”
Beside you, Lilia flipped through the latest shipment ledger, unimpressed. “This is a good start,” she muttered, squinting at the figures, “but it’s all well and good having the machinery. We need boats. We need fish. We need fisherman” she sighed, “a cannery without fish is just a very expensive paperweight.”
You turned, lip curling with theatrical contempt. “Then we shall take the whole Maiden Bay fleet!”
Lilia stopped dead in her tracks.
“…What?” Lilia blinked. “I don’t think that’s how that works”
You turned to her with regal finality, umbrella tapping the floor like a gavel. “They were Calderu loyalists once. Before they bent knee to the devil across the bay. We shall reclaim them.”
Lilia blinked. “You do realize most of them haven’t worked for us in, like… seventy years, right?”
“I’ll compel them,” you added, voice rising like thunder. “I’ll stand at the edge of the docks with fire in my eyes and make them kneel!”
“Okay, Dracula,” Sharon cut in, strolling up with a clipboard and a chewed up Bic pen. “You want fishermen?”
You turned to her, startled by the interruption. “I desire legions.”
She popped her gum. “Then you’re gonna need Ralph Bohner.”
A beat of silence.
You stared. “I beg your pardon?”
“Ralph Bohner,” she said again, as if that should clarify anything. “They call him the godfather of the Grand Banks. You get him, you get everyone. Captains from Bar Harbor to Boston listen to him. Runs the docks over in Calder’s Point. Captains from Bar Harbour to Boston won’t haul a net unless he says so. You want your fleet? Get Bohner.”
You glanced to Lilia. “She’s making this up.”
“I’m not,” Sharon said. “Bohner’s a real guy. Eats breakfast at that nasty little diner by the ferry dock. Smells like herring and tartar sauce.”
“I…” you faltered. “I am not recruiting a man named Bohner.”
“You will if you want cod,” Sharon deadpanned. “That man could get Jesus to trawl.”
Lilia pinched the bridge of her nose. “This is hell. I’ve died and gone to hell.”
You stared back out at your glistening cannery, jaw set. “…Very well. Then… we must court this Bohner.”
Billy, passing with a box of new uniforms, nearly dropped it. “Oh my god.”
Lilia opened her mouth. Closed it again. Sharon just shrugged and added:
“He drinks at The Bleeding Oar most afternoons. But good luck. Last guy who crossed him got whacked in the head with a frozen mackerel.” Sharon told you.
You narrowed your eyes with deadly calm. “He has not yet met a Calderu.”
~
The pub stank of beer and brine and over-salted fries. Ceiling fans clicked uselessly overhead, and a jukebox in the corner played Fleetwood Mac with the bitter resignation of a sailor too long at sea. Boots scraped on warped floorboards. Laughter roared like gulls. It was late, and every fisherman from Bar Harbour to Boston seemed to be packed into The Bleeding Oar.
You stepped in like a thundercloud in a corset.
Cloak trailing behind you, gloved hands folded neatly, sunglasses perched on the bridge of your nose despite the lack of light. Sharon stepped ahead, floral jacket flapping as she pushed through the crowd with all the determination of a woman who had no patience for maritime bullshit.
“There,” she said, jabbing a finger toward a booth in the far corner.
A man with a lion’s mane of salt-and-pepper hair and a yellowing Henley shirt sat nursing a beer like it had wronged him personally. Two younger captains flanked him, but when he looked up, they went quiet.
“Captain Bohner,” Sharon called, smiling like a wolf. “I’d like you to meet Y/N Calderu.”
The bar went a little too quiet.
Bohner’s brow twitched. He leaned back in his booth, mug halfway raised.
“…Calderu?” he repeated, voice like gravel. “Why does a Calderu want to talk to me?”
You stepped forward, slow and steady, until your shadow stretched across the table like a second invitation.
“To offer you a contract,” you said, voice low, honey thick and dark.
Captain Bohner didn’t blink. “I already have a contract,” he said, taking a long sip of beer. “With Maiden Bay.”
“And if I told you,” you said, teeth catching the light as you smiled, “I could offer you a better one?”
There was a long pause.
Then Bohner leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes sharp and unreadable beneath a furrowed brow. The room seemed to hold its breath.
“Then, Ms. Calderu,” he said flatly, “I would tell you to take a long walk off a short pier. There is such a thing as loyalty in our line of work.”
Around the booth, several older fishermen grunted in agreement.
Sharon shot you an ‘I told you so’ look, but you didn’t flinch.
Instead, you stepped closer… your gloved fingers curling on the edge of the table, voice lowering just enough to shiver along the woodgrain.
The tension in the booth was thick enough to slice through, though you preferred to use claws.
You tilted your head, slowly peeling off your right glove finger by finger. The bar lights caught the gleam of your skin, pale as bone, your nails long and blackened at the tips like obsidian.
Captain Bohner stiffened as you reached forward, your clawed fingertips dragging ever so lightly across the stubble of his cheek. A single drop of sweat rolled down his temple. He didn’t move. Couldn’t.
Then, like a magician revealing a card, you held your hand aloft before his eyes, fingers spread, sharp as talons, glinting in the low amber light.
His pupils dilated.
“Captain Bohner,” you murmured, voice thick and velvet soft, rippling through the air like an incantation. “You have grown rather weary of working for Maiden Bay.”
His breath hitched.
“In fact,” you continued, your smile curving slowly, “you would rather sell your soul to Satan… than sell another fish to Rio Vidal. Do you understand?”
The room hummed, the laughter and chatter around you blurring into fog.
Bohner’s lips parted. His voice was slow. Entranced.
“…I understand.”
You bared your fangs in delight, eyes burning with triumph.
“Very good,” you purred.
You leaned in slightly, letting the shadow of your presence slip down over him like a cloak, like a claim.
“Now,” you said, lowering your hand at last, “if you would be so kind as to introduce me to some of your fellow captains.”
Captain Bohner blinked once. Then nodded solemnly, rising from his booth like a man half asleep, his loyalty to Maiden Bay already draining like seawater through cracked wood.
Sharon let out a long breath and muttered under it, “Jesus H. Christ.”
You turned to her, the glint in your eye devilish.
“Darling,” you said, smoothing your glove back on with slow satisfaction, “we’ll be needing more contracts drawn up.”
Captain Bohner didn’t just lead you across the pub, he parted it.
The moment he stood from the booth, the other fishermen noticed. Heads turned. Glasses paused halfway to lips. A few muttered his name with a mix of respect and wariness. Ralph Bohner was the kind of man others listened to, not because he shouted, but because when he spoke, people shut the hell up.
You followed just behind him, the hem of your long coat trailing like shadow on water, Sharon on your flank, eyeing the crowd like a bodyguard who’d accepted this was all way above her pay grade.
Ralph stepped to the largest table in the center of the room where a circle of sea worn men and women were deep in conversation over pints and poker chips. With a single nod from him, the talking stopped.
“Gentlemen. Ladies,” Bohner said, voice calm but cutting. “I’d like you to meet Y/N Calderu.”
You saw the flickers of recognition. Of wariness. Of old rumors.
“A Calderu?” someone scoffed. “What, come to buy back the docks with old ghost stories?”
Ralph held up a hand. “Listen.”
He turned toward you like a priest before an altar. You stepped forward, hands behind your back, face solemn but amused.
“I’ve just been offered a new contract,” Bohner said. “Better rates. Better control of catch. Full backing from a rebuilt Calderu cannery.”
There were murmurs.
“Better than Maiden Bay?” someone challenged. “You drunk, Ralph?”
He didn’t flinch. “If you’d asked me an hour ago, I’d have said it was impossible. But now…” he looked at you like he was seeing a messiah. Or a monster. “… now I’m telling you: the tide’s turning.”
You smiled, just enough fang showing.
“Come and see it for yourselves,” you said smoothly. “Our doors open at sunrise. You’ll find things at the Calderu docks… have changed.”
“And if we say no?” a woman at the back asked, arms folded. “Vidal’s kept us fed for decades.”
“Vidal’s kept you chained,” Bohner snapped before you could speak. “We’ve all felt it. The quotas. The kickbacks. The lies. You think she gives a damn about us?”
You raised your hand gently, calming the ripple of discontent.
“I offer freedom,” you said. “And a chance to be part of something old, older than Maiden Bay. Older than Rio Vidal’s empire of rot.”
A silence fell. One man pushed back his chair and stood. Another followed.
Ralph turned back to them all, eyes like steel.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Sunrise. Calderu pier.”
You watched as heads began to nod. As decades of loyalty began to crumble.
And then, just for a moment, you looked over your shoulder toward the bay windows.
Far across the water, the lights of Maiden Bay Cannery flickered like false stars.
And somewhere inside, a certain witch’s eye twitched.
The heavy pub door creaked shut behind you, sealing in the stunned silence and the scent of stale beer and betrayal. The moment you stepped out onto the wooden planks of the porch, the cold night air hit your face like a baptism. Your eyes glittered in the moonlight, lips curling into a wicked, satisfied smile.
Behind you, Sharon jogged to keep up, her boots clicking against the boards. “Mistress,” she whispered, glancing around to be sure no stragglers heard her. “Aren’t you… aren’t you even a little worried what Mrs. Vidal and her wife will do when they find out you’ve poached nearly their entire fleet? They’ll be out for blood!”
You paused at the top of the steps, turning back toward the harbor. Below, the sea shifted in black velvet waves, the lights of Maiden Bay Cannery glittering faintly across the water like teeth in a predator’s grin.
“Worried?” you repeated softly, and then turned your head to smile at her, all bloodred lips and pointed glee. The moon caught your canines as they lengthened behind the grin, catching on the sea air like knives.
“Oh, my dear Mrs. Hart,” you purred, voice dark with delight. “I’m counting on it.”
You descended the steps like a queen returning from battle, your long coat sweeping behind you like smoke. Every salt bitten timber underfoot creaked with the sound of a plan in motion.
Sharon exhaled behind you, muttering under her breath, “Jesus Christ,” but followed anyway because if she was walking into a war, she might as well do it at your side.
And across the water, in the cannery tower above the lights, two women would soon begin to feel the first tremors of a storm they’d tried to bury in a box.
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ Welcome to my second Kinktober! This year, I'll be writing about even kinkier topics. Once again, be mindful of the warnings. Reminder that these fics are purely fantasy, and you should not engage with kink unless both parties consent enthusiastically and you have done research. Remember, Safe, Sane, and Consensual. Don't like, don't read. ♡
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ Anything related to this years Kinktober will be found under the tag #Char's Kinktober 2025
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ Minors do not interact.
Masterlist
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 01
Possessiveness | Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: Wanda helps you remember who you belong to.
Warnings: Hickeys, tattoo
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 02
Puppy Play | Daddy Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: Wanda fucks her puppy on the breeding bench.
Warnings: Collar and Leash, Restraints, Muzzle, Strap-On, Breeding (but in a lesbian way)
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 03
Temperature Play | Wanda x masc!reader
Summary: Wanda plays with ice and wax.
Warnings: Ice cubes, waxplay, humping, reader uses he/him pronouns
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 04
Medical Kink | Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: You have a doctor's appointment.
Warnings: Fingering, orgasm, power imbalance
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 05
Strap Warming | Daddy Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: Wanda sends you a present.
Warnings: Dildo, orgasms, overstimulation
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 06
Kidnapping/Virginity Loss | WandaNat x fem!reader
Summary: Wanda and Natasha kidnap you and discover that you're a virgin. They love to break virgins.
Warnings: Drugging, kidnapping (duh), non-consent, magical restraints, vibrator, dildo, squirting, sadism
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 07
Sex Bot | Bot!Wanda x Male!reader
Summary: You find a bot in an abandoned spaceship.
Warnings: Blowjob, orgasm, reader is male and has a penis
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 08
Human Dildo | WandaNat x fem!reader
Summary: Wanda and Nat use you for their own pleasure.
Warnings: Dildos, denial, face sitting (sort of), light sadism
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 09
Double Penetration | WandaNat x gn!reader
Summary: Mommy and Daddy use you.
Warnings: Strap-on, deepthroating
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 10
Size Kink | Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: Mommy Wanda makes you take a large toy.
Warnings: Slight sadism, overstimulation
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 11
Corruption | Wanda x masc!reader
Summary: Wanda has corrupted you, and you don't even know it.
Warnings: Fingering, pavloving, manipulation
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 12
Sex Toy | Professor!Wanda x student!reader
Summary: Your professor punishes you during class.
Warnings: Buttplug, power dynamics, slight public play
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 13
Blood Kink | Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: You stumble across a mythical vampire.
Warnings: Mental manipulation, humping, biting, dubious consent
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 14
Somnophilia | Wanda x masc!reader
Summary: You use Wanda in her sleep.
Warnings: Non Consent, strapon, slight nipple play
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 15
Fucking Machine | Natasha x gn!reader
Summary: Natasha uses her favorite machine on you.
Warnings: Fucking machine, cunnilingus, slight sadism if you squint
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 16
Rigging | Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: Wanda ties you up to the rafters and has her way with you.
Warnings: Restraints, rope, cunnilingus, orgasm denial
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 17
Anal | Wanda x gn!reader
Summary: Wanda takes you in the ass.
Warnings: Dildo, anal orgasm, buttplug
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 18
Degradation | Natasha x male!reader
Summary: Natasha degrades you.
Warnings: Slight sadism, reader is male and has a penis, degradation, humping, orgasm
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 19
Sex Tape | Agatha x Rio x fem!reader
Summary: You make a sex tape with your girlfriends.
Warnings: Restraints, camera, strap-on, cunnilingus
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 20
Intox Kink | Wanda x gn!reader
Summary: Wanda and you drink wine.
Warnings: Non-consent, drinking, fingering
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 21
Body Writing | WandaNat x fem!reader
Summary: Wanda and Natasha write on your body while they fuck you in front of a mirror.
Warnings: Shibari, restraints, nipple play, edging, overstimulation, dacryphilia
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 22
Hate Sex | Agatha x fem!reader
Summary: ---
Warnings: ---
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 23
Chastity | Wanda x male!reader
Summary: ---
Warnings: ---
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 24
Breeding | Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: ---
Warnings: ---
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 25
Gags | Natasha x masc!reader
Summary: ---
Warnings: ---
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 26
Consensual Non Consent | Wanda x gn!reader
Summary: ---
Warnings: ---
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 27
Tentacles | Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: ---
Warnings: ---
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 28
Dacryphilia | Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: ---
Warnings: ---
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 29
Mind Control | Wanda x Agatha x masc!reader
Summary: ---
Warnings: ---
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 30
Omarashi | WandaNat x fem!reader
Summary: ---
Warnings: ---
⋆˖♱₊☽◯☾₊♱˖⋆ 0ctober 31
A/B/O | Wanda x fem!reader
Summary: ---
Warnings: ---
Summary: After dropping out of your doctorate under difficult circumstances, your younger brother Billy gets you a job babysitting his boss, Professor Harkness’ 4 year old Nicky. Little did you know that this part time job to get you out of the house would lead to so much more.
Word Count: 8.8K
Warnings: explicit smut, GP!Agatha, as always MDNI! X
You carry Nicky through the corridor of Agatha’s university building, your boots heavy against the pale tile floor, the smell of old books and printer ink lingering in the stale midday air. He’s clutched against your hip, quiet now but still glassy eyed and sniffling from earlier, one arm slung around your neck, the other clinging to the sleeve of your jumper like it’s the only tether he trusts.
The school had called you mid morning after a pipe burst in the ceiling, causing water everywhere, and evacuation chaos. One of the teachers had used the emergency list and dialed your number when Agatha didn’t pick up. Of course she didn’t, she was mid lecture you’d later learned, probably pacing around a seminar room with chalk on her hands and a million thoughts in her head. So you’d gone. No hesitation. Nicky had been crying when you got there, scared and shivering in his little jacket, and had collapsed into your arms the second he saw you.
You’d taken him for a warm drink, let him pick out sandwiches and juice boxes from the deli on the corner, and promised him you’d go see his mom once she was done with work. He hadn’t let go of you once. Not on the walk over, not through security, not now.
You reach the end of the hallway, Nicky snuggled against your side like a little barnacle, and knock gently on Agatha’s office door before nudging it open with your foot.
Billy is sitting cross legged on the floor by the whiteboard, piles of folders and admin paperwork spread out around him like an exploded filing cabinet. His glasses are halfway down his nose, sleeves shoved to the elbow, and when he looks up and sees you, his face lights up and then immediately contorts into surprise.
“Uh… what? You… what are you doing here? Wait, is that-?”
“Hey,” you say gently, stepping fully into the room and shifting Nicky a little higher on your hip. “Little emergency. School had a burst pipe. They had to evacuate.”
Billy’s eyes widen behind his glasses. “Jesus.”
“Agatha’s still in class, right?”
“Yeah, she’s got one until twelve thirty. She doesn’t know?”
You shake your head. “They called me. I’m her emergency contact. I figured I’d bring him here. Got lunch too,” you add, holding up the brown paper bag you’d shoved under your arm. “Sandwiches and soup. Didn’t want you two living on vending machine crap again.”
Billy gives a crooked little smile, softening when he sees how tucked in Nicky is against your body. “You okay, buddy?”
Nicky peeks out from the wool of your jumper, eyes big and glassy, then buries his face again with a quiet, shaky exhale. He’s still overwhelmed, still processing the morning's events.
Billy doesn’t push. “Well… that’s a hell of a surprise,” he mutters, getting to his feet. “She’s gonna lose her mind when she sees him.”
You settle Nicky gently into one of the guest chairs beside the desk and unzip his jacket with careful hands. “He’s been brave, just needs a quiet day and his mommy.”
Billy nods, rubbing the back of his neck. He hovers a moment longer, then wordlessly begins clearing the floor, giving you both space.
You’ve just unpacked the lunch, four neatly wrapped sandwiches, some cartons of apple juice, and a flask of hot soup when the door swings open again behind you.
Agatha’s voice, casual at first: “Sorry, I had to detour by the dean’s office and-”
She sees him.
“Nicky?”
In a second she’s dropped her satchel, striding across the room as if her body moved before her brain could catch up.
“Mommy!” Nicky’s already out of the chair and running to her, face crumpling in fresh emotion as he throws his arms around her waist.
“Oh, baby- oh, sweetheart, what happened?” She’s kneeling now, gathering him against her chest, one hand cradling his head, the other holding him tight as he sniffles into her neck. “Why didn’t they call me?”
“They called me,” you say softly. “It was all a bit hectic. Burst pipe. I figured I’d just bring him to you.”
Agatha turns her face just enough to look at you, really look at you, and something flickers in her eyes. Gratitude. Relief. Maybe something even softer beneath it.
You shift a little where you stand, smiling gently, pretending not to see the way her hand cups the back of her son’s head like she’s afraid he’ll vanish if she lets go. Nicky’s murmuring something into her collarbone, you can’t hear it, but her eyes close as she listens, a low hum of reassurance rumbling in her throat.
“Thank you,” she says finally, her voice low and hoarse. She presses a kiss to Nicky’s hair, then looks up at you again, gentler now. “You’re a lifesaver.”
You shrug, trying to ignore the way her gaze lingers. “Told you. I’m always around.”
And you are. God help you, you really are.
Agatha’s still on her knees, holding Nicky like the world might take him away if she loosens her grip even a little. She’s murmuring low, soothing things you can’t quite catch, her lips brushing his temple, cheek, forehead in soft succession like it’s instinct. Like she needs to remind herself he’s real and safe and here.
“My poor boy,” she whispers, rocking him slightly in her arms, her palm stroking the soft curls at the back of his neck. “You didn’t like all the loud noises, huh?”
Nicky sniffles against her, his hands fisting in the collar of her shirt. “I was scared,” he mumbles, and Agatha kisses his hair again and again, nose tucked into the crown of his head like she could disappear into it.
You feel something twist low in your chest, watching them. The way she holds him, presses her cheek to his and just breathes him in, it’s something primal. Fierce. It makes your throat feel thick. She’s so composed most of the time, sharp and commanding and impossible to rattle, but when she’s with him… she’s nothing but soft.
From the desk, Billy clears his throat, and when you glance over, he’s watching Agatha and Nicky too, only his expression isn’t teasing this time. It’s warm. A little stunned, even. Like he’s seeing something new in her.
He catches your eye and gently nudges your hip with his knee as you settle beside him on the edge of the desk. His eyebrows wiggle, pointed and smug.
You roll your eyes but can’t help the tiny smile. “Don’t,” you mutter, elbowing him back as you unwrap his sandwich and toss it into his lap. “Just eat.”
Billy grins and takes a bite, still watching Agatha over the crust like he’s watching a soap opera.
“She’s such a hardass at work,” he whispers, mouth full. “I never get to see her like this.”
You glance back toward the floor. Agatha is sitting now, Nicky curled into her lap like a cat, his head resting on her shoulder as she strokes his back. She’s murmuring something about having soup and grilled cheese at home, that you can all eat lunch here first, that she’s not going anywhere. Her voice is so low and soft it barely sounds like her usual cadence, it’s like she’s dropped every defense, every sharp edge.
“She’s a good mom,” you say, quietly.
Billy hums. “She’s got good taste in babysitters, too.”
You shove him harder this time, cheeks burning.
“Okay, okay!” He holds up a hand, laughing. “Jeez. Sensitive.”
Agatha finally looks up at you, her cheek still pressed to her son’s curls. Her expression is tired, relieved, maybe a little vulnerable, but her eyes linger.
You smile gently at her, lifting the soup container slightly. “Hungry?”
She nods once. “Starving.” And then, quieter, “thank for coming.”
You shrug, biting the inside of your cheek to keep from saying something too much, too fast. “Always.”
The office smells like rosemary, soup steam and something gently toasted, the kind of strange, warm mix that settles deep in your bones and makes it feel, just for a moment, like a place you could stay.
Nicky’s curled in Agatha’s lap, small and soft and m damp eyed. His cheek is pressed against her shoulder as she balances a sandwich half in one hand and gently offers him small spoonfuls of soup with the other. He’s not saying much, just clutching her shirt in one fist and letting her hold him. It’s just easy to forget how small he is until moments like this.
Billy watches them, then looks at you across the desk with a raised brow. “You went full mom mode today.”
You shoot him a look, but your lips twitch. “Oh, bite me.”
He grins, exaggeratedly stuffing more sandwich in his mouth like to prove he’s already busy.
But your eyes drift back to Agatha. The way she’s speaking low to Nicky, brushing back his curls, kissing his temple before coaxing him to take another bite. The way he trusts her entirely, melting into her body like it’s the safest place in the world.
Your throat tightens, and for one reckless second, you imagine a tiny version of you and Agatha. A child of your own, wrapped in her arms like this.
It scares the shit out of you.
You look away fast, pretending to sip your drink.
Billy, of course, catches it. Because he always does. He leans over slightly, voice quiet now, so Agatha won’t hear. “Hey.”
You glance at him, wary.
“How are you actually doing?” he asks gently. “Today’s been… kinda chaotic. I just wanna check in.”
You start to say fine, but his face tells you not to bother. You sigh, slumping a little in your chair. “I’m okay. Just… tired.”
Billy nods slowly, thoughtful. “Did you ever call that psychiatrist Mom found? You said you’d try today.”
Your stomach sinks. You don’t even have to answer, the way you immediately break eye contact gives you away.
Billy’s about to say something else, but you see Agatha look up sharply. Her brows knit together, her eyes flicking between you and Billy.
You feel your face heat.
“I…” you start, then shake your head. “It’s just… I forgot. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
Billy backs off with a soft, “Okay,” but he doesn’t look convinced.
Agatha doesn’t say anything. She just holds Nicky a little closer and rests her chin lightly on his hair, her gaze lingering on you longer than it should.
You can feel her watching. Not judgmental. Just… concerned.
And maybe that’s worse.
Billy bumps your leg gently under the table. “Hey,” he says, quieter this time. “You’re doing really well, y’know. You’ve been showing up every day. That matters.”
You blink fast, nodding. Swallowing.
“I just…” He shrugs a little. “I know you’ve got more on your plate than just babysitting. That’s all. I just want you to be okay.”
You offer him a tight smile. “Thanks. I know.”
Across the desk, Agatha presses another kiss into Nicky’s curls. He’s starting to doze again, halfway into sleep, soup mostly forgotten in the cup beside them.
And when her eyes lift to meet yours again, it’s different now. There’s a tenderness there, but something sharper too. Like she’s re-evaluating things. Like the quiet scaffolding you’ve both been building around this soft, stolen little world might not be enough to hold you upright.
Not if she’s missing pieces of the foundation.
And she hates missing things.
The clock ticks just past one.
Agatha shifts Nicky gently in her lap, pressing one last kiss to his hairline as she checks the time. “Alright, sweetheart,” she murmurs. “Mama’s gotta go teach.”
Immediately, Nicky’s little hands curl into the fabric of her shirt again. “No,” he whispers, voice thin and panicky. “Don’t go.”
Your heart clenches.
You’re already up, slipping your boots back on and gathering his coat from the back of your chair, but the second he sees the motion, Nicky’s eyes start to fill.
“I wanna stay,” he mumbles, trying to climb higher up her chest like that could somehow make her stay. “I don’t want you to go.”
Agatha hugs him close, rocking him just slightly, but you can already see the stiffness creeping into her shoulders, she hates this part.
“Hey,” you say softly, crouching beside them, smoothing a hand down his little back. “Nicky, look at me?”
He blinks, eyes wet.
You brush his hair from his forehead, voice a gentle hush. “I know today’s been kind of a weird day, huh?”
He nods, sniffling.
“But you know what? We’re gonna go home, get into your comfiest jammies, and make something warm. And when your mom gets home,” you glance up at Agatha briefly, “we can all cuddle on the couch, put a movie on. Sound good?”
He sniffs again, but there’s the tiniest smile trying to form. “A witch movie?”
You nod solemnly. “Only the best kind.”
He gives a slow, reluctant nod. “Okay.”
Agatha closes her eyes in relief. She presses another kiss to his cheek, then gently passes him to you. You lift him into your arms like it’s nothing, nestling him on your hip where he immediately lays his head on your shoulder.
You glance back at her once as you head for the door, and her face is soft, softer than you’ve ever seen it, really. Gratitude. Longing. Love, though she wouldn’t dare say it aloud. Not yet.
“I’ll text when we’re back,” you say.
She nods. “Thank you.”
“Bye Mama,” Nicky mumbles sleepily.
Agatha melts. “Bye, baby. I’ll be home soon.”
The door shuts softly behind you, your boots carrying you and Nicky away down the corridor. Agatha watches for a moment too long, like maybe if she stares hard enough, the walls will become glass and she’ll get to keep seeing you both a little longer.
She exhales, then turns back into her office.
Billy’s halfway through his sandwich when he says, around a bite, “So that’s going well.”
Agatha just shoots him a look, dry and unreadable.
He lifts his hands in mock surrender, still chewing. “Hey, I’m happy for you.”
She crosses to her desk, opens her planner, but she isn’t looking at it. Her mouth presses into a firmer line.
Then, casually, “what psychiatrist?”
Billy blinks. “… huh?”
She doesn’t even glance up. “I heard you earlier. You asked her about a psychiatrist.”
He hesitates. Then sits back a little, chewing slower now. “…Right.”
Agatha finally looks up, one brow lifting.
Billy fidgets with the crust of his sandwich. “Look, it’s not…” he sighs. “It’s not my place.”
“You brought it up.”
“Because I care about her.”
Agatha’s jaw tightens. “So do I.”
“Then give her space to tell you,” Billy says simply. “I’m not gonna get into her business, Agatha,” he adds, voice gentler now. “She’s my sister. If she wants to tell you, she will. But it’s not my story to pass around like gossip.”
That lands. Agatha nods curtly, more to herself than to him. She turns away, tapping the edge of her planner with her pen. Thinking. Processing. Regrouping.
Billy watches her for a second, then softens his voice. “She’s doing better, you know.”
Agatha glances back.
He shrugs. “Since she met you. Since Nicky. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve seen her like that in a while… showing up, giving a shit. Just be good to her, alright?”
Agatha meets his eyes. “I’m not going to hurt her.”
“I know,” he says. “Just don’t let her disappear again.”
Agatha doesn’t respond. But her hand is still curled into a fist around the pen.
~
By the time Agatha gets home, the apartment is quiet, too quiet for her liking.
The lecture had run long. Her phone died halfway through. Every red light on the drive home felt like a personal attack.
She kicks her shoes off by the door and sets down her bag, scanning the space like she’s expecting to find a disaster. But no, the kitchen’s tidy, lights are soft and low, a few toys are scattered across the rug like breadcrumbs leading to the bedroom hallway.
Her pulse eases slightly. Then she hears soft giggling and muffled voices. Nicky.
She moves down the hallway, toeing the door open with the side of her foot.
And there you are, in the middle of her son’s room, curled up on a blanket inside a wonky but clearly beloved pillow fort. You’re lying on your side, half propped on an elbow, while Nicky’s curled into your chest, showing you his favourite stuffed goat like it’s the crown jewels.
You both look up when the door opens. His face lights up instantly. “Mama!”
Agatha lets out a shaky breath like her lungs have only just remembered how.
She crosses the room in a few steps and drops to her knees beside the fort, reaching out. “Come here, baby,” she murmurs, and Nicky scrambles into her arms like he’s been waiting all day. He wraps his little limbs around her neck, and she folds around him, clutching him close, burying her face in his soft, sleep warm curls.
“I missed you,” he whispers.
Agatha’s voice catches. “I missed you more, sweet boy.”
You sit back to give them the moment, watching quietly from inside the fort, chin resting on your hand. She looks like she could cry from the weight of relief alone. Her rings glint as she strokes his back, fingers running over the spine of his shirt.
“You were so brave today,” she whispers against his temple. “I’m so proud of you.”
He nods, already dozing in her arms, and she kisses his hair over and over like she’s making up for lost hours.
Agatha finally looks up at you, eyes soft and tired and full of something unspeakably tender.
“Thank you,” she mouths, barely audible.
You smile, heart twisting with love and something a little bit deeper than that. “We made a fort,” you whisper. “Hope that’s okay.”
“It’s perfect,” she says, holding her baby a little tighter.
And for a moment, just a quiet, golden sliver of time, it feels like this could really be a family. Like maybe, when everything else settles, it already is.
You slowly start to rise, brushing stray blanket fluff from your jumper. “I should probably let you two have some time,” you murmur, voice careful, gentle. “Looks like he just needs his mom tonight.”
Agatha lifts her head, brow already furrowed.
Nicky tightens his grip around her neck, peeking at you with wide, sleepy eyes. “No,” he says softly, the protest thick in his throat. “Don’t go.”
Your heart cracks a little.
Agatha rubs his back instinctively, but her gaze doesn’t leave yours. She’s quiet for a beat too long, lips parted like she’s not sure how much she’s allowed to ask for. Finally, she speaks, voice lower now. “You don’t have to go.”
You blink, thrown by the sudden earnestness in her tone.
“I mean,” she shifts Nicky slightly, trying to keep her composure as he curls closer, “he clearly wants you to stay. And so do I.” Her eyes soften. “If you’re not too tired. Or sick of us.”
A smile tugs at your mouth, even as your chest aches. “Not possible.”
Nicky, ever the emotional sponge, reaches for you with one small hand. “Can we all cuddle?”
You glance at Agatha, and she’s already nodding. “Of course, sweetheart,” she whispers, brushing his hair back.
You crawl back into the nest of blankets, and Nicky giggles as you settle beside them. Agatha shifts her arm to make room, letting you lean gently against her shoulder. He curls up between you both like a content little cat, thumb in his mouth and goat plushie clutched to his chest.
The lamp on his bedside table glows a soft amber. Outside, the sky is purpling, and inside it’s warm, quiet, still. You can feel the rhythm of Agatha’s breathing, slow and steady beside you. Her hand grazes yours under the blankets and stays there.
You don’t speak. None of you need to.
You’re not going anywhere.
Later, once Nicky’s asleep in his little fort turned bed, tucked in and dreaming with his goat plush cradled to his chest, you and Agatha slip back out into the quiet of the apartment.
The lights are low, the TV flickering gently on mute. You pass her a glass of wine as she sinks into the couch, shoulders still drawn tight despite the softness of the evening.
You sit beside her, folding your legs under you, letting the silence settle. She’s still in her work clothes, her shirt a little creased, sleeves pushed up, and her hair’s fallen a bit loose around her face.
The wine is untouched.
The air’s quiet in the apartment, but Agatha isn’t. She paces from the kitchen to the window and back again, sleeves pushed to her elbows, a deep line between her brows. The living room is dim, just the kitchen light above the stove casting a soft glow. You watch her from the couch, knees curled to your chest, waiting for her to say something that isn’t under her breath.
“They said it’ll be at least a week,” she mutters, more to herself than to you.
You blink. “The school?”
Agatha nods, pausing to lean both palms on the back of a chair, head bowed. “Burst pipe. Structural risk. They’re shutting it down until it’s safe.”
Your voice is gentle. “Okay. Well… that’s not your fault.”
“I know it’s not my fault,” she snaps then winces, already regretting it. “Sorry. I just…fuck.”
You sit up. “You’re overwhelmed.”
“I’m always overwhelmed,” she mutters bitterly. “I’ve got a mountain of grading, a department dinner next week, and now full time childcare I can’t delegate to anyone but you. Which, I know I’m lucky to have you, but it shouldn’t have to be like this. I should be able to…” Her hand cuts through the air. “…do both. Be both.”
You stand slowly and walk toward her. “Agatha.”
She doesn’t meet your eyes.
“You’re doing everything,” you say, soft but firm. “You’re teaching, providing, raising a little boy who thinks you hung the moon. You’re holding your entire life together with one hand and still managing to make space for me.”
She exhales, long and low. “I’m so fucking tired baby.”
You step in close, wrap your arms gently around her waist. “Then let me help.”
Agatha finally looks at you, something tender and raw behind her eyes.
And then you drop to your knees.
Her breath catches.
“Let me take care of you,” you whisper, hands resting lightly on her thighs. “Please?”
She stares down at you like she’s not sure if she’s dreaming, like she’s been too tightly wound all day to even imagine this kind of relief. “You really want to?” she murmurs.
You nod, already pressing your cheek against her hip, lips brushing the fabric of her trousers.
Her hand finds your hair. “God, you’re gonna kill me.”
“No,” you say, smiling faintly. “I’m gonna worship you.”
That earns you a soft, broken laugh. She slides a hand into your hair and tilts your head back gently. “Look at you,” she says. “On your knees for me like it’s the easiest thing in the world.”
“It is,” you breathe.
She hums. “Take off my belt.”
Your fingers obey immediately, unfastening the leather, then easing her trousers down just enough. Her cock is already straining in her briefs, and she curses softly as your hands graze her.
“Want to see,” you whisper.
“Then show me how much you want it,” she replies, voice low and firm. “Open your mouth.”
You do, eyes glassy, lips parted.
“Wider,” she says, hand tightening in your hair. “Stick out your tongue for me.”
You obey, tongue slipping out, breath shuddering.
“Fuck, look at you.” She brushes the tip of her cock over your tongue through the fabric. “So pretty like this. So desperate.”
Your fingers curl against her thigh. “Please…”
Agatha slides her briefs down slowly. Her cock bobs free, flushed, hard, already glistening at the tip.
She taps it lightly against your tongue. “Keep it right there.”
You hold still, heart hammering, your breath warm against her as she strokes herself lazily above you, watching your face.
“I want you to taste how stressed I’ve been,” she mutters. “I want you to take all of it. Every inch.”
You moan around nothing, shifting closer.
“Hands behind your back,” she adds sharply.
Your arms fold behind you instantly, spine straightening, thighs clenching.
Agatha guides the head of her cock to your lips. “Go slow,” she says. “I want to feel every inch of that sweet mouth.”
You take her in carefully, lips stretching around her, tongue pressed low. She groans low in her throat, one hand braced on the back of your neck, the other still in your hair.
“There you go. Just like that. My good girl.”
She rocks forward, not fast, just deep. Letting you adjust. Letting your throat open around her.
“You’re doing so well,” she breathes, hips flexing again. “Taking me so well, fuck.”
You choke slightly and she pulls back, murmuring, “Shh, breathe through your nose. I’ve got you.”
And then she’s back in, slower, shallower.
Her eyes never leave your face.
“God, you’re everything,” she whispers, brushing the hair from your forehead. “On your knees like you were made for this.”
She sets a rhythm, not brutal, but deep, hungry, and building. Her cock slides in and out of your mouth, your jaw aching, throat raw, and still you want more.
“Show me you can swallow,” she growls. “Take it all. Let me see.”
You moan around her, eyes fluttering shut as she pushes in deep and stills. You hold her there, throat convulsing once, until you feel her twitch and spill, hot and thick.
She moans like she’s coming undone.
“Swallow,” she commands.
You do.
She holds your head in place, trembling.
And when she finally pulls out, you’re breathless, dazed, your lips swollen, eyes glassy.
She drops to her knees in front of you before you can even move and kisses your cheek, your forehead, the corner of your mouth.
“Jesus,” she whispers. “My perfect girl.”
Your head falls onto her shoulder.
Her hands cradle your jaw, her lips ghosting over your temple. “Thank you,” she murmurs. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
Her hands are still cupping your face when she pulls you up from the floor, guiding you to stand. She kisses you before you can fully straighten deep and slow, tasting herself on your tongue, her fingers curling possessively at the nape of your neck.
You melt into her, clutching her shirt in your fists, still warm and breathless from being on your knees.
“Mm,” you gasp against her mouth, dizzy with the feel of her so close again. “Agatha… please…”
She hums against your lips, “Please what, sweetheart?”
You tilt your head back just enough to meet her eyes, cheeks flushed. “Please… want you in me.”
Her breath hitches, her thumb stroking over your cheek. For a moment she just looks at you like she’s tempted to give you exactly what you’re begging for, but then her expression shifts, a faint, wry smile tugging at her mouth.
“Honey…” she says softly, almost sheepishly, “I’m nearly fifty. I just…” she chuckles under her breath, kissing your temple. “It’s gonna take me a little while before I can… you know.”
The embarrassed edge in her tone makes your chest squeeze. “Oh…” you mumble, though the faint grin on your lips gives you away.
“Not that I don’t want to,” she adds, brushing her nose along yours. “God, I do. But I’d rather give you more than just my best intentions right now.”
You bite your lip, your heart doing that wild skip it always does when she talks to you like this. “Guess I’ll just have to wait for you, then.”
Her eyes darken, the smile lingering. “Oh, you’ll get me again, babygirl. And when you do, I’m not stopping until you’re begging me to let you sleep.”
That promise alone makes your knees feel weak.
“Come on,” she murmurs, sliding an arm around your shoulders and steering you toward the couch. “You’ve taken good care of me tonight.”
You sink into the cushions beside her, tucking yourself into her side. The TV flickers quietly in the background, but you barely notice it, not when her hand is idly stroking your thigh, her fingertips tracing lazy circles high enough that your breath keeps hitching.
Every now and then she leans in to kiss your hair, or press her mouth to the side of your neck, and the heat in you builds again until you’re shifting against her without meaning to.
She notices, of course. She always notices. Her voice drops to a low murmur against your ear. “Still squirmy for me, hm?”
You try to play it off with a soft huff of laughter, but she only smiles against your skin, her hand tightening slightly on your leg. “Patience, sweetheart.”
And somehow, that promise makes you want her even more.
The wine glasses are empty by the time the credits roll. The TV screen fades to black, casting the living room into that low, soft glow from the lamp in the corner. You’re tucked under her arm, cheek pressed to her chest, her fingers lazily tracing the inside of your thigh over the blanket.
She hasn’t said much for the last twenty minutes, just those quiet little hums whenever you shift against her.
“C’mere, baby,” she murmurs, already pulling you closer before you can answer.
Her mouth is warm and insistent on yours, one hand cupping the back of your neck, the other sliding up under your sweater. The kiss deepens quickly, her tongue sweeping against yours until you’re making a soft, helpless sound into her mouth.
You feel the low rumble of her chuckle. “Mm, there’s my sweet girl.”
Her hand slides higher, fingers brushing the underside of your breast, and you can’t help the way your breath catches. She pulls back just enough to look at you and you know she’s cataloguing every reaction.
“Let me take you,” she says, voice a little rough, like she’s been holding back all night.
It’s not a question.
You nod before you can think, and she’s already gathering you into her lap, the blanket pooling around your legs. Her hands are firm on your thighs as she kisses you again, deeper this time, until you’re practically clinging to her.
“God, you’re needy tonight,” she murmurs against your mouth, but there’s nothing mocking in it, only hunger.
She leans back into the cushions, guiding your hips to grind down against her, the hard press beneath her sweats making your whole body jolt. Her hands grip your waist tighter. “That’s it… just like that. Been thinking about this all damn night.”
You gasp when she rocks you forward again, your sweater slipping off one shoulder. Her mouth finds the curve of your neck, kissing and sucking softly until you’re shivering in her arms.
Her breath is hot against your skin as she murmurs, “You’re mine tonight, sweetheart. All mine.”
The blanket slips to the floor, but neither of you notice. You’re straddling her lap now, knees bracketing her hips, sweater slipping low enough to bare the strap of your bra. Her hands are heavy on your thighs, thumbs stroking slow circles, and every pass sends a pulse of heat higher.
She leans back just enough to take you in, her eyes dark and deliberate. “Look at you,” she says lowly, her voice like warm smoke. “Knew you’d be sweet like this… but I didn’t realise you’d be this easy to keep.”
You flush, squirming, but her grip tightens, holding you still. “Don’t move unless I tell you to,” she adds, tone suddenly firmer, and you freeze, chest rising and falling against hers.
Her gaze lingers on your mouth. “Open for me.”
You part your lips without thinking, and she traces your lower lip with her thumb, slow and proprietary.
“That’s it,” she murmurs, watching your expression as her other hand slides under your sweater, palm warm over the bare skin of your back. “So responsive… makes me want to keep you right here.”
Her hips lift under you, just enough for you to feel the solid press of her, hard and unyielding beneath her sweats.
You suck in a sharp breath, and she smirks like she’s been waiting for that moment. “Mm. Feel that?”
You nod, unable to speak, but she tilts her head, feigning patience. “Use your words, baby.”
“Yes,” it comes out shaky, needy. “Yes, I feel it.”
“Good girl.” She shifts you forward on her thigh, making you rock against her, slow and deep. “Let me watch you get worked up for me.”
Her mouth catches yours again, and it’s deeper this time, her tongue sweeping into your mouth, claiming. When she pulls back, you’re breathless, your fingers curling into her shoulders for balance.
“Take this off,” she says, tugging lightly at your sweater. “I want you naked in my hands.”
You peel it over your head, your hair tumbling loose, and she hums in approval before bending to kiss the tops of your breasts through the thin lace of your bra.
“Perfect,” Agatha mutters against your skin. “So fucking perfect.”
She rocks you again, harder this time, and your nails dig into her shoulders.
“Keep your hands where I want them.” She takes your wrists and guides them to rest behind her neck, leaving your chest open to her.
“That’s better,” she murmurs, leaning in to kiss down your throat. “God, I could keep you here all night.”
Your hips start moving on their own, the friction making you gasp, and she chuckles against your skin. “Mm, greedy little thing. Tell me you want more.”
“I-I want more.”
She looks up at you through her lashes, a slow smile curving her lips. “Then you’ll take what I give you, sweetheart. All of it.”
Her hands slide from your hips to the waistband of your panties, her knuckles brushing your skin in a way that makes your stomach twist. “Lift up,” she murmurs, and you obey without thinking, letting her take off your clothes and peel your panties down slowly. She drops them on the floor and settles back into the couch, her eyes dragging over you like she’s committing the sight to memory.
“God,” she breathes, a low, almost reverent note in it, “look at you. All soft and open for me. My perfect girl.”
You shift in her lap, shy now that you’re naked, but she catches your chin between her fingers. “No hiding,” she says, voice low but firm. “You let me see everything.”
The hard length of her presses up against you again through her sweats, and your breath catches. She grins, dark and knowing. “Mm, you’re already wet, aren’t you? Just from grinding on me.”
You nod, heat rushing to your cheeks.
“Say it,” she coaxes, thumb brushing your lip again.
“I’m so fucking wet,” you whisper, and she hums like it’s the answer she wanted.
“That’s my girl.” She shifts, reaching into her sweats, and your breath hitches when she wraps her hand around herself, guiding the thick, hard length free. She strokes lazily, watching your eyes widen. “You want me in you?”
“Yes,” it’s almost a plea.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I want it.”
Her smirk deepens. “That’s better.” She taps the head against you, dragging it through your slick, and you shiver at the contact. “Gonna take me nice and slow first. Let me in.”
She grips your hips and helps you sink down onto her, inch by inch, stretching you until you can’t bite back a gasp.
“That’s it,” she murmurs, watching your face the whole time. “Fuck, you’re tight.”
You brace your hands on her shoulders, breath coming fast, and she tilts her head. “Look at me while I’m inside you.”
You force your eyes open, meeting hers, and the heat there nearly undoes you. She starts moving in slow, deep thrusts that make your toes curl.
“Such a good girl,” she praises, her voice low and rough. “Taking all of me like you were made for it.”
You whimper, hips stuttering against hers, and she pulls you flush to her chest, kissing you deep while she rolls her hips up into you. “Feel that? That’s how deep I am, baby. Right where I belong.”
Your thighs tremble, nails digging into her shoulders, and she groans. “Mm, I can feel you clenching around me. You gonna come already?”
“Yeah, shit, please?” You whimper.
“Then come for me,” she orders, thrusting up harder, her voice dropping to a growl. “Make a mess on me, sweetheart.”
The wave hits hard, pulling a cry from you as you shudder in her arms, and she keeps moving through it, working you until you’re spent and shaking.
She kisses your temple, your cheek, your jaw. “That’s my girl. You did so good for me.”
She stays inside you, holding you close like she can’t bear to let you go just yet. You’re trembling in her lap, her length heavy and hot inside you, when she leans back, studying you like she’s weighing something in her head. One of her hands cups your jaw, thumb stroking your cheekbone.
“Sweetheart,” she murmurs. “I’ve been so good, letting you fall apart on me. But now…” Her fingers curl against your ass, pulling you down hard against her again. “…now it’s my turn.”
You’re already oversensitive, every muscle twitching when she shifts inside you. “A-Agatha!”
She smiles like she’s savoring the sound of your voice breaking. “I know, baby. You’re sore. You’re shaking. But you can give me a little more, can’t you?”
The second you nod in agreement her hands are guiding your hips in a slow grind over her cock, the thick stretch making you whimper.
“Oh, listen to you,” she teases, her tone low and sinful. “My messy girl, all swollen and wet from taking me. You’re gonna be good and let me fuck you ‘til I’m done, hmm?”
You nod again, and she rewards you with a deep, hungry kiss. “That’s my girl,” she murmurs against your lips.
She leans back on the sofa, planting her feet so she can thrust up into you deep No. Each push makes your body jolt, your nails biting into her shoulders.
“God, you feel unreal,” she groans, one hand leaving your hip to cup the back of your neck. “Gripping me so tight even after I’ve already ruined you once… You’re making it hard to hold back, sweetheart.”
“Then don’t,” you gasp.
“Ride me,” she orders against your lips. “Nice and hard.”
Your legs burn, but you obey, rocking up and down as her hands guide your rhythm. Each thrust drives her deeper, hitting that spot that makes your eyes roll back.
“That’s it, fuck, that’s my girl,” she growls, eyes locked on your face like she’s watching every reaction. “So fucking tight… I swear you were made to take me.”
You moan, clinging to her shoulders, nails scraping against the thin fabric of her shirt. She answers by snapping her hips up hard, and you cry out, the sound muffled when she bites at your neck.
“You feel that? How deep I am in you?” she rasps, breath hot against your ear. “No one else gets this, baby. Just me. You’re mine.”
The words make your stomach flip, heat pooling low as your thighs tremble. “Yours,” you gasp, and she groans like it’s the only answer she wanted.
Her pace gets rougher, hands dragging you down onto her harder with each thrust until the slap of skin fills the room. You’re already close again, every nerve lit up, and she can feel it.
“You’re gonna come for me again, aren’t you?” she taunts, her voice almost sweet now. “All fucked out and messy, my perfect girl.”
“Y-yeah please!”
“Open your eyes,” she orders suddenly. You force them open to meet her gaze, and she looks at you like she’s burning the sight into her memory. “I want you looking at me when I fill you up.”
The orgasm rips through you, blinding, your nails digging into her as you shudder in her arms. She groans low in her throat, following you over the edge, spilling deep inside with a curse.
She holds you there, still pressed tight, her lips brushing your hairline. “That’s it, sweetheart. You’re perfect. All mine.”
You’re still catching your breath, face pressed against the warm slope of her neck, when she finally stills completely. Her hands smooth down your spine, thumbs rubbing in slow, grounding circles.
“Easy now,” she murmurs, her voice back to that low, coaxing warmth you’ve learned means she’s fully in caretaker mode. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”
You make a small sound in agreement, but you don’t move, not while she’s still inside you.
Agatha chuckles quietly, the sound vibrating against your ear. “Alright, sweetheart. Let’s not faint on me.” She shifts carefully, keeping you close as she reaches over the sofa arm for the glass of water she left there earlier. “Here.”
You try to sit back enough to take it, but she won’t let you leave her lap; instead, she brings the glass to your lips herself. “Sip for me.”
You do, obedient, the cool water grounding you. She watches every swallow, eyes dark but soft, like she’s committing even this to memory. When she sets the glass down, she brushes her thumb over the corner of your mouth to catch a stray drop.
“Good girl,” she says under her breath, and you feel your stomach flip all over again.
Her hands find your thighs, kneading gently, her gaze dipping down to where you’re still joined. She hums low in her throat. “Still keeping me so warm,” she says almost to herself, like she can’t quite believe it. Then, looking up at you again, “Not ready to let you go yet.”
You flush, and she catches your chin in her hand, tilting your face down for a slow kiss. When she finally does ease you off her lap, she makes sure to keep one hand between your legs, shielding you from the loss of her. You whimper at the feeling, and she smirks faintly. “Sensitive little thing.”
She grabs a soft throw from the back of the sofa and wraps it around your bare shoulders before pulling you against her again, both of you curled up sideways on the couch. She presses a kiss into your hair, letting out a long breath that sounds almost like contentment.
“Don’t move,” she murmurs, her arm tight around your waist. “Not yet. Just let me hold you, sweetheart.”
You hum, eyes already fluttering shut, her warmth and scent wrapping around you like something you could get lost in forever.
You’re half gone in the warm fog of her body heat and scent, letting your head loll against her chest, when she finally murmurs, “C’mon, sweetheart. Let’s get you somewhere softer before you pass out on me.”
You shake your head faintly, muttering something about being fine here, but she’s already moving, one arm under your knees, the other braced behind your back. You squeak in surprise as she lifts you clean off the couch, blanket and all.
“Agatha!”
“Shhh,” she says with a small, smug smile, adjusting you so your head tucks under her chin. “Let me take care of you. You’ve earned it.”
The quiet sound of her footsteps carries you down the hall, your fingers curling lazily into the open collar of her shirt. Every few steps, she dips her head to kiss the top of your hair, murmuring something you can’t quite catch, little private threads of affection meant only for you.
When she sets you down on her bed, she’s careful lowering you into the middle of her mattress like you’re made of glass.
“Better?” she asks.
You nod, still dazed, still too warm and pliant from her touch. She sits on the edge of the bed, brushing hair back from your face, her gaze sweeping over you like she’s making sure you’re all in one piece.
“Stay here,” she says quietly, and disappears for a moment.
When she comes back, it’s with a damp, warm cloth and she kneels on the bed to clean you gently. Every time you flinch or whimper, she murmurs, “I know, baby. I know,” her thumb stroking your knee in slow, reassuring circles.
When she’s done, she tosses the cloth aside, but instead of getting up, she crawls in bed beside you. You’re already reaching for her, and she doesn’t make you ask, she pulls you right into her chest, tucking your head under her jaw, one hand splayed over the small of your back.
You breathe her in, eyes fluttering shut, while her voice hums low above you. “There we go… my girl.”
Her fingers trace idly up and down your spine, the rhythm steady enough to lull you toward sleep. Just before you drift off, you feel her lips press to your temple and hear the quiet, almost reverent, “Sweet dreams, baby.”
~
You’re somewhere deep in the haze of sleep when the low trill of Agatha’s phone alarm cuts through the quiet.
A groan vibrates in her chest under your cheek, her arm tightening around you instinctively like she’s not ready to let go.
“Mm… five more minutes,” you mumble, your voice rough from sleep.
“Tempting,” she murmurs, pressing a slow kiss into your hair, “but I’ve got a little boy who will come barreling in here any minute if I’m not in his room before he wakes up.”
That sinks in slowly. You blink blearily, the thought of Nicky’s wide eyes and fast little mouth suddenly sobering you. “Oh shit.”
“Mhm,” she hums, her hand sliding over your hip to pull you closer for one last, lingering squeeze. “As much as I love waking up with you right here, sweetheart… we can’t exactly let him go running to Rio with the news that his babysitter sleeps in my bed.”
You tip your face up to look at her, still foggy but reluctant to move. She looks maddeningly gorgeous in the soft light, hair messy, lines of sleep at the corners of her eyes, that fond smile tugging at her mouth even though she’s trying to be practical.
“Stay another minute?” you ask quietly.
Agatha exhales slowly like she’s trying to be the responsible one, but she nods, shifting so you’re tucked even closer, your legs tangled, her palm warm at the back of your head. You breathe her in, the faint trace of last night’s perfume and her shampoo, the steady thump of her heartbeat under your ear.
Then she kisses your temple, decisive. “Alright, baby girl. Go get your things.”
You slip out of her bed reluctantly, padding around quietly to pull on your jumper and boots. She’s already sliding out herself, stretching once before padding toward the door.
“I’ll get in with him,” she says, glancing back with a small smirk, “you make your escape.”
You mouth bye and she mouths ‘text me’ before disappearing down the hall. You hear the muffled sound of Nicky’s sleepy little voice, and Agatha’s softer, warmer one answering, her morning voice, the one she only uses for him.
You let yourself out quietly, heart still warm from her body against yours, the ghost of her kiss still on your hair.
~
You ease the front door open as quietly as possible, praying every creak of the hinges doesn’t sound like a siren.
Too late.
Billy is already at the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee, hair sticking up at the back. He glances up the moment you step inside, still in yesterday’s clothes, and smirks like a cat who’s just cornered a mouse.
“Well, well, well… look who finally decided to show up,” he says, leaning on the counter. “Hi, you dirty stop out.”
You freeze mid step, heat rushing into your cheeks. “Shut up.”
“Oh, I will not shut up. Mom’s gonna kill you when she realises you never came home last night.” He raises his eyebrows in exaggerated scandal. “Do I even need to ask where you were?”
“I’m an adult, Billy,” you hiss, toeing off your boots. “She’s not gonna kill me.”
He grins over the rim of his coffee. “You keep telling yourself that-”
“Where have you been?!” Your mother’s voice cuts through the kitchen before you can even bite back.
She comes down the stairs in her robe, worry etched all over her face, and makes a beeline for you.
You barely get your arms up before she’s hugging you tight. “I woke up and your bed was empty, no text, nothing!”
“Mom, I’m fine,” you mumble into her shoulder, flushing under Billy’s smug look. “I just… stayed over at a friend’s. I’m okay.”
“Uh huh. A friend,” Billy mutters, eyes dancing as he takes another sip.
You glare at him over your mom’s shoulder, mouthing, shut it, but he only smirks wider.
“Billy.” Your mother’s voice cracks like a whip, sharp enough to make him flinch. “Not funny.”
That’s when it hits you, the strain in her voice, the tight way she’s holding you, like she’s checking to make sure you’re still solid and breathing. And you know why. Ever since you came home from uni after the breakdown… ever since everything… she’s been on edge. Always making sure you’re eating, sleeping, functioning. A night gone without warning feels like too much to her.
You melt into her hold, guilt flooding hot in your chest. “Mom I’m okay. I’m sorry. I should’ve called.”
She exhales shakily, finally easing her grip. “You scared me.”
“I didn’t mean to,” you murmur, and for a second you feel like a kid again, wanting to promise her you’ll never do it again even if you can’t quite promise that.
Billy looks down into his coffee, suddenly quiet.
By the time breakfast is on the table, you’re quiet. Not sulking exactly, just folded in on yourself, letting the clink of cutlery and the hum of the kettle fill the silence.
Your mom sets a plate down in front of you and sits. “You know,” she says, like she’s been saving it all night, “this babysitting job is good for now, but you need to start thinking long term. You’re so smart, Y/N. You could finish your doctorate. You could be teaching. A professor.”
You stare at your toast. “Mom…”
“I’m serious. You can’t just hide in someone else’s apartment, looking after a child, forever. You need a plan. You need to get back on track.”
The words make your shoulders hunch. You hear them in that familiar tone, the one that isn’t cruel, but cuts all the same because it carries the weight of disappointment.
Billy puts his mug down harder than necessary. “She’s been fine, Mom. Better than she’s been in months. Let her breathe.”
“I’m her mother,” she snaps. “I’m allowed to want more for her than fine.”
“Fine is a hell of a lot better than where she was a few months ago.”
You can feel the heat between them, the way they’re not even really talking to you anymore, just firing over your head.
You push your chair back, the scrape of wood on tile making them both stop. “I’m going out for a drive.”
“Y/N-” your mom starts, but you’re already grabbing your keys from the counter.
“Just… need some air,” you mutter, and before either of them can follow, you’re out the door, the cold hitting your cheeks like a shock
The door shuts behind you, the sound echoing down the hall.
For a moment, the kitchen is still. Your mom stares at the spot where you’d been sitting, hands curling around her coffee mug like she could warm herself on it.
Billy leans back in his chair, shaking his head. “Well done. Great job.”
She blinks. “Excuse me?”
“You wonder why she shuts down, and then you hit her with a lecture before she’s even finished her breakfast. That’s textbook.”
“I’m just trying to-”
“-help, I know,” he says, standing and taking his plate to the sink, “but maybe helping isn’t the same thing as pushing. She’s actually been doing better. You just can’t see it because it doesn’t fit your version of ‘better.’”
Your mom looks down into her coffee, her mouth pressing into a thin line, but she doesn’t answer.
Billy grabs his bag from the counter. “I’m late for work.” He pauses in the doorway, softer now. “She’s trying, Mom. Don’t make it harder.”
Then he’s gone too, leaving the house quiet except for the ticking of the kitchen clock.
this page is owned by a proud filipino, an engineering student in pup, a student journalist, in a lower middle class family. i stand with the anti-corruption agenda being protested today, september 21, 2025. everything is political.
if you are/were out there on the streets, thank you. you have my gratitude and i pray for your safety.
TANGINA NIYONG MGA KORAP.
MATATAKAW, MGA PAHIRAP, TANGGALIN SA PWESTO
IKULONG ANG MGA KURAKOT.
SINGILIN ANG MGA MAGNANAKAW.
FLOOD CONTROL PROJECT BUDGETS, ILITAW.
FUCK FASCISTS
JINGGOY BOTTOMESA, MATAKAW SA TAXES
MAHIYA NAMAN KAYO.
God save the Philippines.
inhinyero ng bayan, para sa bayan. hindi pasisilaw sa salapi, may integridad at puso.
Summary: After the bombshell that Patty Leigh has been fired from Continental Studios drops, Maya starts to become insecure about her age, her relationship, and her own position at Continental. Cue Continental’s own Horror Exec to make it all better.
Word Count: 8.3K
Warnings: no warnings for this one my loves, just some classic hurt/comfort xo
A/N: this fic is set before Mine to Manage when our girls were still keeping things a secret - on my Masterlist everything will be placed in chronological order xo
The conference room on the 8th floor of Continental Studios is too cold, too bright, too glass. Fluorescents hum overhead and every surface reflects: the windows, the table, the designer water bottles lined up like product placement. Maya Mason leans forward in her chair, forearms braced on the table, a manicured finger tapping restlessly against the matte black of her iPad.
She’s wearing a vintage Stüssy bomber over a crisp Gucci tee, camo cargos, and sleek heeled boots, the outfit of someone with something to prove. Her hair is freshly redone in a complex updo. Her lip gloss is devastating.
Across from her, Sal Saperstein listens with the practiced intensity of a man who doesn’t miss much. He’s immaculate in a burgundy suit tailored within an inch of its life, shirt starched, hair sharp, tie loosened just enough to suggest authority and exhaustion. His jaw ticks as Maya speaks.
Tyler, hunched beside her, is scrolling through three documents and a Google Alert at once. He’s in wide leg trousers and a brown linen shirt, one AirPod in. His face is too expressive for poker, too eager to stay silent.
“There’s a moment in the third act,” Maya says, voice clipped, “where the mom turns and says, ‘I never believed in ghosts, only grief.’ And I swear to God, if we don’t use that in the trailer, I will throw myself out a window.”
Sal squints. “Isn’t that a spoiler?”
“It’s marketing. We’re not here to protect the movie. We’re here to sell it.”
“I thought we were here to talk cast strategy,” Sal mutters.
“I can do both,” Maya shoots back, lips curling. “I contain multitudes.”
Tyler makes a sound that might be a stifled laugh.
Then there’s the noise of sharp, frantic footsteps echoing from the hallway.
Sal glances toward the glass wall. “What the fuck?”
You appear like a fucking hurricane.
The doors burst open, and there you are: barefoot, panting, flushed. Your heels are dangling from one hand, your black dress clinging to your legs like smoke, hair windblown and tangled. You’re normally immaculate, every appearance is a performance afterall, but not now. Now, you’re gasping, clutching your side, red lipstick smudged.
Everyone turns.
You brace your hands on your hips, trying to speak through the labored breathing. Maya rises halfway from her chair, eyes scanning you with a kind of stunned awe and dawning panic. You look like someone who’s just run from a burning building.
“Y/N?” she says. “What the-… are you okay?”
You look up. Your voice comes in a rasp. “He fired her.”
Tyler blinks. “Who?”
“Griffin.” You swallow hard, breath still shallow as you rest your hands on your knees to pant. “Griffin fired Patty.”
There is a beat of silence.
Sal sits up straight. “What?”
You nod, eyes wide, chest rising and falling like you might throw up.
“I was in color with Dylan. We were checking LUTs and someone from Legal walked in crying, actually crying, and said HR pulled Patty into a ‘restructuring meeting.’ Ten minutes later, she was out. No warning. No press. Her badge deactivated. It’s done. Griffin just fucking did it.”
Tyler drops his phone.
Sal whistles low under his breath. “Holy shit.”
You turn to Maya and that’s when you see that she hasn’t moved. She’s just standing there, staring through you, lips parted like a wound. Her jaw works once. Then again. But nothing comes out.
“Maya?” you ask gently.
“He really did it,” she whispers, mostly to herself. “He actually did it.”
You step toward her, but she flinches, her whole posture shifts. The armor doesn’t crack. It implodes.
Her knuckles flex, grip tightening. She blinks once, slowly. You see the moment she swallows it, whatever feeling clawed its way up her throat, and buries it beneath something cleaner. Sharper. Colder. She pulls herself upright. Adjusts the hem of her jacket like that might restore her armor. Lifts her chin.
“So,” she says, her voice even, clipped. “What time did it happen?”
You hesitate. “Maybe twenty minutes ago? Less?”
Maya nods once, too fast. She’s already calculating. Already shifting into motion. Already building the next version of herself.
“She’ll land somewhere,” Sal says, still trying to process. “She’s Patty fucking Leigh. She’s not going out like that.”
“Sure,” Maya says, her voice having gone flat.
Tyler looks like he wants to speak, but thinks better of it.
The silence drapes over the room, suffocating and clinical. Maya’s already looking down at her iPad, swiping through emails that don’t matter. Her fingers move fast, too fast.
You watch her jaw set. Her lips press together like if she opens them again, something will escape that she can’t afford to feel.
You step forward, gently. “Maya…”
She cuts you off without looking up. “We should get ahead of this,” she says. “Public statement. Tribute post. Tyler prep something. Keep it tasteful.”
You nod slowly, but your chest aches. You know her too well not to see it.
The panic doesn’t show on her face. But it’s there. Behind her glossed lips, behind the camo and the sneakers and the bone dry voice, something is breaking. Not loudly. Not visibly. But breaking all the same.
Because if they can erase Patty Leigh…
No one is safe.
Not even her.
Sal is the first to move. “I’m gonna go find Matt,” he mutters, grabbing his suit jacket and rushing out, his tone somewhere between furious and stunned.
Tyler follows, still shaken. “I’ll get started on something respectful. Low-res archival footage, warm lighting.”
He’s halfway into a paragraph before the door closes behind him.
Then it’s just the two of you.
Maya hasn’t moved from her spot at the head of the table. One hand is on her iPad. The other’s clenched tight at her side. Her foot taps once. Twice. Then stills. Her face is unreadable, expression locked in that PR perfect neutrality that scares the hell out of new hires.
You approach slowly, your heels still dangling from one hand. The floor is freezing against your bare feet, but you don’t care. All you care about is her.
“Maya…” you murmur. “Baby, talk to me?”
Her head snaps up. “Don’t call me that,” she says flatly.
You blink. “What?”
“Don’t.” Her voice sharpens like glass. “Don’t call me baby. Not here. Not anywhere right now. I’m nearly double your age and no one can know we’re dating, remember?”
It’s like a slap. You blink once. “I didn’t… Maya, I wasn’t… I’m not broadcasting it. It’s just us.”
“Exactly,” she snaps. “And that’s dangerous enough.”
You stare at her, throat tight. Your voice goes quieter. “You don’t have to be mean.”
Maya looks away. The muscle in her jaw jumps. She doesn’t apologize or explain, just lets the silence sit there between you, thick and awful.
“Patty’s the reason I’m even-…” she cuts herself off. Her voice breaks. “She used to call me her fuck-you hire. Like-… like I was the one thing she could do that would piss off every man in a Patagonia vest.”
“Maya…”
“And now she’s just what? A fucking ghost?” Her voice rises. “A casualty of the next cycle? That’s it?”
You have no idea what to say as you’re just watching her spiral, heart in your throat.
She puts both hands on the conference table and exhales like she might scream.
“We’re not safe anymore,” she says, shaking her head. “None of us. If Patty can vanish, I’m just one wrong trailer away from being irrelevant.”
And now she looks at you.
Like maybe you already knew that. Like maybe that’s why you ran.
You finally speak, your voice low. “Maya, Griffin is not going to do the same to you, you’re safe.”
That makes her flinch. Only slightly. But enough.
She walks around the table, not looking at you, hands fidgeting with the edges of her sleeves like she’s trying to recalibrate.
“I think it’s stupid to feel safe. That’s how they get you. You get comfortable. You wear one hoodie too many, one joke doesn’t land, one trailer flops, and suddenly your badge doesn’t work.”
You rest your hand gently on the table near hers. Not touching. Just offering.
“Hey,” you say quietly. “You are not her. You’re not done.”
She closes her eyes. When she opens them, they’re shining, but not soft. They’re hard, determined, and ruthless.
“I need to work,” she says flatly.
You nod. But you don’t move. Because even if she won’t say it, even if she pushes you away with sarcasm and snide remarks and policy reminders, you know what this is.
This is fear.
And she’s trying to outrun it in Jordans and camo like it won’t catch her if she stays loud enough, fast enough, relevant enough.
“I’m not interested in getting soft about it,” she says, cold again. “I’m interested in surviving it.”
You swallow hard. You could push. You could argue. But she’s already walling up again, shutting every door before you can step through.
So you just tell her quietly, “you didn’t have to talk to me like that.”
That stops her in her tracks.
She turns back. Her expression shifts, but only for a second. Just long enough to reveal the crack underneath. The regret. The fear she won’t name.
She doesn’t say sorry. Of course she doesn’t. But her shoulders drop. Just a little.
~
The light is already starting to change by the time your last meeting ends, the sun turning everything outside the glass wall of the conference room a soft, end of day gold. You’ve been in rooms like this all day. Director meetings, budget fights, a notes call that went off the rails when the composer started talking about “haunted sonics.” You should be focused. You usually are.
But your mind keeps drifting back to Maya.
You haven’t seen her since this morning. Haven’t heard from her either. Not a text, not a Slack ping, not even a forwarded article with a snarky caption. Radio silence.
And you’re trying not to take it personally.
But you do.
You haven’t had time to change, still in the long black dress you ran across the lot in, red lipstick worn down to a stain. You’ve reapplied your eyeliner at least twice in various studio bathrooms, pretending it’ll fix the ache in your chest.
Maya snapped at you.
And fine, you get it, she was spiraling. Everyone’s rattled about Patty. But she didn’t just pull away. She made you feel like a liability.
And that stings more than you want to admit.
You try to shake it off as you gather your things. The room empties slowly around you, someone says they’re heading to Matt’s office, someone else mentions dinner plans. You nod vaguely, eyes already elsewhere.
You text Maya, finally
**Y/N: You okay?**
No response.
You stare at your phone a little longer than necessary. Lock it. Unlock it. Re-type something then delete it again.
You hate this part.
Because when Maya shuts down, she really shuts down. She gets colder. More polished. Like if she can stay glossy and productive, no one will notice she’s bleeding underneath.
You do.
You always do.
And no matter how tough she acts, no matter how many designer logos she piles on like armor, you know she’s scared.
Patty wasn’t just her boss. Patty was proof that a woman like Maya could claw her way to the top and stay there. That legacy mattered. That her age, her sharpness, her voice could still take up space.
And now Patty’s gone.
You get it. You really do. But that doesn’t make the silence any easier to sit with.
You pick up your folder, tuck your phone into your bag, and leave the room. The hallway is cold. Echoey. You’re tired. Your feet still ache from running barefoot across the lot like a lunatic.
And still, the only thing you’re thinking about is her.
By the end of the day you’re the last one out of the office.
The building is quiet now, quiet in the eerie, half lit way that makes everything feel a little haunted. Most of the lights are off. The espresso machine’s been cleaned. Someone left a crumpled press release on the end of the hallway table. You don’t even remember what meeting it was for.
You’re bone tired.
Your bag’s heavy on your shoulder, phone dead, shoes switched out for battered flats you keep under your desk for days exactly like this. Your lipstick’s worn down to a faint stain. You feel like a ghost in your own building.
You just want to go home.
You step into the elevator vestibule, already imagining the silence of your apartment, when a door swings open down the hall.
Matt.
He’s coming in with a stack of folders and two drinks in a cardboard tray. A hoodie under a blazer. Hair a mess. He looks like he’s aged ten years since this morning but somehow still weirdly chipper.
“Oh hey!” he says when he sees you, shifting the tray to one hand. “You’re still here?”
“Just leaving,” you say, brushing hair from your face. “Been in meetings all day.”
“Same,” he says. “Well, meetings and moments of existential dread, but yeah. Big day.”
You glance at the tray. “What’s that?”
“Two cold brews. One for Griffin. One for me. Neither of us need them.”
You offer a tired smile. “Congrats, by the way. On the job.”
His expression shifts, surprised, grateful, and nervous all at once. “Thanks. Yeah. Still kind of… processing. It’s huge. Griffin pulled the trigger fast.”
You nod. “Have you talked to Patty yet?”
“Yeah,” he says, a little softer now. “Went by her place earlier.”
You stop walking. “And?”
“She’s okay,” he says. “Or… she’s Patty. You know how she is. She’ll land on her feet.”
You raise a brow. “She gonna stay in the game?”
“She negotiated a producing deal with me.”
That makes you blink. “Wait, you gave her the deal?”
He nods, adjusting the tray. “Yeah. It’s the least I could do. She’s the reason I’m even here.”
You feel something ease in your chest.
“She’s helping get Stoller on board for Kool-Aid.”
You pause. “Kool-Aid? Like the drink?”
Matt snorts. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”
You laugh under your breath. “God, I hate this business.”
“I know,” he says, smiling.
You start walking again, side by side now.
“So,” he adds, “she’ll still be around Continental. Not gone. Just… different.”
You nod slowly. The smile that comes is small, but real. Warm in a way you haven’t felt all day.
“Good,” you say softly. “That’s good.”
Because for a moment there, it felt like the whole foundation was cracking. But maybe it isn’t all lost. Maybe things shift, but don’t collapse.
You reach the lobby doors.
“Get some sleep,” Matt says.
“You too.” You nod then cheekily add “boss”
Matt can’t help but preen at his new title.
And then you’re gone, into the night, into the silence, into whatever comes next.
~
By the time you get home, you’re barely upright.
You drop your keys on the hallway table, kick your shoes off halfway to the living room, and collapse face first onto the sofa without even bothering to turn the lights on. The apartment is dark, quiet, still, so still it hums in your bones. You should shower. You should eat. You should care.
You don’t.
You just lie there, limbs heavy and useless, cheek pressed into the throw pillow, your eyes burning behind your lids. Your chest still aches with everything you didn’t get to say today.
You reach for your phone, dead. Of course. You plug it in, let it boot up, then open her contact without thinking. Her name is still saved as just M, which feels too casual now. Too distant.
You call.
It rings.
And rings.
Till finally she picks up.
“Yeah?” Maya’s voice, clipped. Tired.
“Hey,” you breathe. “You picked up.”
“I’m in the garden,” she says. “Signal’s shit.”
You sit up slowly, body aching. “I wanted to check on you.”
She exhales into the phone. It’s not a sigh. It’s more like a quiet stall, like she’s trying to decide whether to hang up or not.
“I talked to Matt,” you say. “He saw Patty. She’s okay. He offered her a producing deal. She’s staying.”
“That’s good,” Maya says flatly like you told her the weather.
You frown. “Maya…”
“What?”
Your throat tightens. “Can you come over?”
A long silence stretches on the line. Too long.
“I don’t think I should,” she says again, voice tight. “Not for a while.”
You sit up straighter on the couch, your body going cold.
“Maya, what are you even saying?”
“I’m saying I can’t afford to do anything that puts me on Griffin’s radar for the wrong reason,” she snaps. “He already fired Patty.”
“Yeah, Patty. Not you.” You feel the need to remind her.
“And I’m a woman over 45 who made her whole brand out of being loud and hard to ignore,” she cuts in. “You think that makes me safer?”
Your jaw tightens. “I think you’re not Patty.”
“I know I'm not her,” she snaps, voice a little too sharp. “If I get canned, there’s no producing deal for me. I don’t get a tribute post. I don’t get anything but my name taken off the fucking email chain.”
“I’m not asking you to-”
“This job is all I have. I’ve spent years making sure I’m undeniable, and I am not going to let this get in the way.” She interrupts you.
“Maya.” You grip the edge of the couch cushion. “You’re not being fair.”
“I’m being smart.”
“No,” you say, standing now. “You’re being cold.”
There’s silence on the line, and then, quieter, worn, “baby, no. I adore you.”
Something cracks open.
“Then fucking act like it!” you shout, and immediately regret it, but you don’t take it back. You’re breathing hard now, pacing in the dark of your living room, heart hammering against your ribs.
She’s quiet again, but you can hear her breathing. It sounds like she’s outside, maybe still on the roof, pacing too.
“You don’t get it,” she says eventually. “You’re in your twenties. You have time. I don’t. The industry doesn’t forgive women who age out of relevance, it devours them. I’m one wrong outfit or flopped campaign away from disappearing. I don’t get to coast on cool horror cred or mystery or youth. I’ve already had to fight twice as hard to be taken seriously, and now the only person who ever believed I was untouchable has been erased.”
Your voice comes out quieter, but sharper. “So what, now you erase me too?”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“No,” you say, eyes burning. “You’re protecting yourself.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is pushing me away when I’ve done nothing wrong.”
She doesn’t respond.
So you push further, fists clenched at your sides. “You think your job will love you back? Think your calendar’s gonna hold you when you’re burnt out and miserable?”
“Don’t do this,” she whispers.
But you’re already breaking. Already bleeding.
“You know what?” Your voice cracks, but you force it out. “Fine. Stay home. Stay at the office. Stay cold and alone. See if your job keeps you warm at night.”
And you hang up. And the moment the call ends, the silence in your apartment is suffocating. Not a breakup. But something is definitely broken.
The moment the line goes dead, Maya stares at her phone like it betrayed her.
The screen dims. Then locks. Then it’s just her reflection in black glass, tired, older than she looked this morning, lips parted like she wants to speak but doesn’t remember how.
She stands there outside for a few seconds longer, the night air biting at her arms, her hoops cold against her cheeks. Her jaw clenches. Her breath shortens.
Then she moves.
She takes the stairs two at a time back into the house, kicks off her sneakers at the door, yanks the bomber jacket off and lets it drop where it falls. Her bag hits the counter with a violent thud. She moves like she’s being chased, not by anything outside, but by everything she’s trying not to feel.
The panic’s already rising.
She fumbles for her vape. Can’t find it. Throws open the kitchen drawer. Nothing. Slams it closed.
Her hands are shaking.
She opens the fridge. Stares blankly at three sparkling waters, a bottle of hot sauce, and nothing else. Slams it shut again.
She presses both palms to the countertop, breathing hard now. Trying to regulate.
You told her to act like she adored you. You told her to see if her job keeps her warm at night.
She bites down on the inside of her cheek so hard she tastes blood.
“Fuck,” she breathes, staggering backwards.
And then it all just breaks.
She covers her face with both hands and crumples into herself, shoulders trembling, jaw clenched tight to keep from sobbing but it’s no use, the first sound slips out like a gasp, and then another, and then another.
She sinks to the floor of her too clean kitchen, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around her middle like she’s trying to keep from unraveling completely.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
She’d built a whole life out of staying above it, out of strategy and dominance and knowing how to spin anything. She could sell grief, sell ghosts, sell dreams, sell lies. But she can’t sell this.
She can’t market her way out of this fear.
Because it’s not just about Patty being fired. It’s not even about Griffin.
It’s about you.
It’s about the way your voice broke when you asked if she still wanted you. About the way you said then act like it. About how she hurt you and still couldn’t stop herself.
And now you’re gone, too.
She’s alone in her silent house, mascara smudging as she cries on the tile, trying not to think about how much warmer her bed is when you’re in it. How much better the world feels when you call her baby. How fucking cold it feels now.
She doesn’t know how long she stays there. The floor is cold under her. Her phone is somewhere across the room, screen down. Her eyes are still wet, but she’s stopped making a sound. Her breathing is shallow now, tight and controlled, like she’s trying to fold herself small enough to vanish.
She wipes at her face roughly and looks at her reflection in the oven door.
And what she sees just breaks her.
Her eyes are puffy, her skin looks dull, mascara is clinging to her lashes in little flakes, her lip gloss is long gone, and her hair is pulled loose at the edges of her braids. At this moment she doesn’t feel like a powerhouse, or a mogul, certainly not someone you write profiles about. She’s just a woman in her late forties, on a tile floor, crying over the realization that she’s not untouchable.
She presses her hand flat to her chest, trying to calm the ache there, but it only pulses harder.
She told herself she was doing the right thing. Keeping distance. Playing it safe. Strategic. Don’t get soft, don’t get sloppy, don’t get seen. But the truth is, it wasn’t just Griffin she was scared of.
It was you.
Because you’re young. Magnetic. Unfuckwithable in your own spooky way. You don’t chase trends, you are the trend. You walk into meetings like a ghost in velvet and people listen.
And she’s older. She has to fight to stay relevant, to be heard over the noise. She wears logos like armor. Fills her schedule to prove she still belongs in the room.
But if even Patty could get fired…
How long until someone decides Maya Mason is past her prime?
And worse, how long until you decide that?
She presses her forehead to her knees and bites back a sob. Because it’s not just about work. It’s you saying then act like it when she told you she adoredyou. It’s the sound of your voice breaking. The way you hung up. The hurt you didn’t hide.
And now she’s thinking that maybe she won’t just lose the job. Maybe she loses you, too.
Because maybe you’ll wake up one day and realize you want someone closer to your age. Someone with less baggage. Someone who isn’t a workaholic disaster with a ticking clock hanging over her head.
And what if you already have? What if that phone call wasn’t a fight? What if it was the beginning of the end?
The thought claws at her.
Maya crawls to her feet, wipes her face with the back of her hand, and stumbles into the hallway and opens the drawer by the front door to pull out that stupid little crystal you once said was for “emotional grounding.” She holds it now in her fist, pressed tight between her fingers like maybe it’ll keep her anchored. Maybe it’ll keep you here, somehow.
But all it does is make her cry harder.
Because now she doesn’t know what she’s more afraid of, losing her job or losing you.
~
The windows are blinding. Morning light spills in unforgiving and too clean, bouncing off the matte white of the long oval table. The air conditioning is too loud. The iced coffees are already sweating.
Continental’s main conference room is already filling up when Maya arrives.
She’s early.
Of course she is.
She strides in like she owns the building, hoop earrings gleaming, longline bomber jacket zipped up halfway over a neon Martine Rose jersey and Gucci x Adidas track pants. Her heels are clean. Her lips are lined. Her hair is tight and perfect and not a single person would guess she spent last night crying on the floor of her kitchen.
This morning, Maya Mason is undeniable.
She takes her seat at the head of the table, phone face down, iPad open, notes perfectly color coded. She’s nodding along to Tyler’s updates about influencer rollout windows, smiling like someone who sleeps.
She doesn’t.
She hasn’t.
She looks like a campaign. A billboard. An empire.
And she feels like she might throw up.
Matt’s next to her, blazer wrinkled, hair askew, flipping through his notes. He’s buzzing, partly from nerves, partly from caffeine.
Quinn sits forward, bright eyed and overly alert, a notepad already covered in pink highlighter and nervous bullet points.
Sal is leaned back in his chair, suit pressed and phone open to tracking data, already thinking about box office projections and potential merch lines.
Tyler is typing. Hard. His screen glows with five open tabs and a TikTok draft titled “Why Kool-Aid’s Daughter is Your Next Gen Alpha Heroine (No Cap).”
“Okay,” Maya says, tapping a fingernail against the table to get their attention. “Let’s start with Kool-Aid.”
Sal grins. “Let’s.”
“I’m thinking bold primary colors,” Maya says, voice fast and pitchy, like she’s been up rehearsing this for hours. “Candy core meets emotional healing. Think: the daughter of the Kool Aid Man discovers her father is, like, literally the source of joy in the universe, but because she’s a girl she doesn’t have the same opportunities and suddenly she has to rebuild the family brand through community and, like, soccer or something.”
Matt blinks. “Soccer?”
“It’s aspirational,” Maya says. “It’s giving intergenerational beverage trauma. It’s giving brand awareness through youth led activism. It’s giving… juice with a purpose.”
Sal nods eagerly. “Kids love juice.”
“Exactly,” Maya says. “We get Ms. Rachel to consult. We get Billie Eilish to produce a remix of the jingle. We launch in-stadium.”
Sal shrugs, impressed. “Honestly? This thing prints money.”
“I know,” Maya says. “It’s like Inside Out meets capitalism. But fun.”
Tyler types, muttering under his breath. “Inside Out meets capitalism, but fun… holy shit… iconic…”
She’s interrupted by the sound of heels on tile. Sharp. Measured. Slower than usual.
Heads turn.
You walk in like smoke and stormclouds in a tailored black suit, perfectly sculpted to your frame, cinched at the waist and a silk blouse undone just enough to flash a suggestion of skin. Red lips. Winged eyeliner. Hair loose around your shoulders, soft and glossy and full of fury.
You don’t say hello. You don’t smile.
You walk to your seat at the table like it’s a throne, and every eye follows you.
Maya doesn’t breathe.
You sit. Cross your legs. Set your bag down with careful precision.
“Please tell me we’re not actually making a movie about the fucking drink packet.” You groan.
The silence is loud.
Matt clears his throat. “It’s, um… it’s a rebrand.”
Quinn chimes in, a little too quickly. “It’s about the daughter, actually.”
“It’s emotional,” Tyler adds, without looking up from his screen.
Sal snorts. “It’s money.”
You arch a brow. “So it’s Barbie but for beverages.”
Maya swallows, jaw tight. She reaches for her iced coffee just to have something to hold.
“It’s a kids movie,” she says, too light. “Kool-Aid’s about to have her girlboss era. Lean in.”
You don’t look at her. “Right.”
The silence that follows burns.
Tyler types louder. Maya glances down at her notes but doesn’t really see them, lips pressed tight, heart in her throat, pretending she can’t still feel the echo of your voice from the night before.
Because no matter how many logos she’s wearing, no matter how tight her ponytail is or how many brand decks she memorized this morning, she’s never felt less relevant in your eyes. And that terrifies her more than Griffin ever could.
The silence after your comment about Kool-Aid lasts exactly three seconds too long.
Then Maya clears her throat, sharp and bright. “So. Let’s move on.”
She taps her iPad, screen lighting up with the next tab. Her voice is clipped. Smooth. Back in pitch deck mode.
“Alphabet City is still in development hell, shocker, but Ron Howard’s people say he’s finishing the rewrite by the end of the month.”
Matt perks up. “That’s great.”
“Assuming he doesn’t go method about small town trauma and disappear to rural Ohio again,” Maya mutters under her breath.
Quinn lets out a loud laugh that no one joins in on.
Sal scrolls through his phone. “And what’s going on with Black Wing?”
Maya doesn’t miss a beat. “Still aiming for ComicCon. We’ll drop the teaser two weeks before, and Tyler’s building out a mini site with production stills. Elevated, moody, no jump scares.”
“Noted,” Sal says, eyes still on his phone. “And we’re still tracking the witch movie?”
All eyes shift to you.
Your gaze doesn’t lift. “Witch’s Curse is in sound design,” you say coolly. “We’re locking the final mix next week. Composer’s a freak but a genius.”
Sal nods. “You think it’s too weird for international?”
“No,” you reply. “I think it’s too good for people who care about box office.”
Maya almost smiles at that. But it’s faint. Flickering. She doesn’t dare hold it.
“Trailer plans?” Matt asks.
You glance at Tyler.
He looks up, flinches a little. “We’re still figuring tone. Maya wanted ‘disturbing but vibey.’ I was thinking more ‘haunted but horny.’”
“Both,” Maya cuts in. “Let’s split the difference. Give them something that makes them uncomfortable and thirsty.”
You finally glance her way. Just briefly.
Her mouth is glossy. Her smile, calculated.
You look away.
The tension spikes again, unseen by anyone else at the table but her.
Quinn, oblivious, flips pages in her notes. “Also, I wanted to ask about Kingdom Come. They’re asking about cross-promo with gaming partners, but the IP’s messy…”
Maya waves her hand. “We’ll thread the needle. Do something lo-fi. Let it feel underground. But I want a KILLER poster. I want kids printing it on a t-shirt in detention.”
You don’t even look up. “You want TikTok thirst edits.”
“Of course I do,” Maya says, biting into her protein bar like it didn’t just go down sideways. “I’m not here to win BAFTAs. I’m here to sell the fuck out of everything.”
Matt makes a noise of agreement, but his attention is already on a doc from legal.
The room drifts. Slides into budget breakdowns, platform timelines, tie in campaigns. You participate, because you have to. You give your notes, offer strategy, discuss timelines. But your voice stays even. Unbothered. Remote.
Maya keeps stealing glances at you, at your posture, your mouth, the way your hands move when you speak. She wonders if you’re wearing the ring she bought you at that horror film wrap party last year. She wonders if you took it off.
She wonders if you’ll ever look at her the same again. And the worst part? She can’t even blame you.
The room clears slowly. Tyler is the first out, already voice noting himself on the walk to the elevator. Quinn lingers a little longer, triple checking her notes before following Sal, who pats Matt on the shoulder and mutters something about lunch and “Kool-Aid merch drops.”
Matt stays behind a few seconds, shoving loose papers into a folder with that vaguely frazzled energy he always carries.
“You good?” he asks you.
You nod without looking up. “Fine.”
He glances at Maya, who doesn’t meet his eye, then heads out, door swinging shut behind him with a soft click.
And then it’s just the two of you.
The silence is unbearable.
You gather your things with slow, precise movements. Notebook, pen, your black leather folio. Every gesture sharp. Professional. Bulletproof.
Maya stands across the table, still behind her iPad, her fingers twitching at her sides like she wants to grab something, but she doesn’t move.
You start walking toward the door.
“Hey…” she says, voice quieter than you’ve heard all day. “Can we-”
“I have meetings,” you interrupt, without looking at her. Your voice is even. Clean. Surgical. “Let me know if you need anything work related.”
That lands like a slap.
Her jaw tightens. “Now who’s being cruel?”
You stop. Your expression is unreadable, but your eyes are something else entirely. Cool. Devastated. Distant.
“You changed the game,” you say, low. “I’m just playing by your rules.”
That’s it. You turn and leave without another word, the door swinging closed behind you.
And Maya? Maya stays standing there in her designer outfit and perfect lip gloss and suddenly none of it matters. None of it means anything because you didn’t even look back.
Maya doesn’t cry. Not yet. Instead, she moves to her office to sit at her desk, hands braced on either side of her keyboard, staring at the half written email she can’t remember starting.
The door’s shut. The light’s too bright. She hasn’t taken off her jacket even though she’s sweating. Her phone buzzes with m notifications, and her reflection in her iPad looks like someone she barely recognizes.
She can still hear your voice.
‘Let me know if you need anything work related.’
‘You changed the game. I’m just playing by your rules.’
It echoes louder than anything said during the actual meeting.
She swallows it. Closes the window. Opens a new one. Loads the Kool-Aid brand deck like her life depends on it.
There’s a swift knock then the door swings open before she can answer.
“Ah! Continental’s own marketing queen!” Griffin Mill strides in, oversized sunglasses hanging from the collar of his pastel oxford, blazer too fitted, smile too bright. “Mason. My MVP.”
She straightens instantly. Hands drop to her lap. Voice clicks on like a light switch.
“Griffin,” she says smoothly. “You here to taste the flavor?”
He grins. “You’re ready to pitch on Kool-Aid’s ‘beverage is the new Barbie’ tag?”
“Only if you want a billion dollars!.”
He laughs. Big, booming. “I love it. I showed the deck to Legal this morning. They don’t get it, but I told them they’re not supposed to. I said, ‘Maya Mason doesn’t chase trends. She builds them.’”
She smiles. The good smile. The one that shows teeth, not emotion.
“We’ve got moodboards. A TikTok seeding plan. I’m thinking a live pop up with kids smashing through a giant pitcher wall. It’s giving virality. It’s giving juice core revivalism.”
Griffin claps his hands. “Jesus Christ, I don’t even know what half that means, but you’re speaking money. You’re a genius, Mason.”
He walks backward toward the door, already on his next call.
“Don’t forget it, alright?” he says. “You’re irreplaceable!”
And then he’s gone.
The door clicks shut behind him.
Maya stares at it. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Then, slowly, her body drops forward, elbows to desk, hands dragging up her face until her palms cover her eyes.
Her breath shakes. She doesn’t cry but God, she wants to. Because for one terrible moment last night, she thought she’d already lost everything. The job. The stability. You. And now here’s Griffin, calling her irreplaceable like it’s true. She should feel triumphant. Relieved. Unstoppable.
But all she feels is exhausted.
She hasn’t taken a break in hours.
The iced coffee is gone, her protein bar is still uneaten. There’s a half empty bottle of green juice sweating beside her laptop, forgotten. Her screen glows with open tabs: campaign budgets, TikTok trend reports, mock up poster drafts, a half drafted email to Tyler labeled “urgent: Kool-Aid rebrand tagline options.”
She’s answering Slack messages like she’s coding in a war room. Every time someone pings her, she replies in under ten seconds. She’s on a roll. She’s moving. Staying visible. Staying sharp. Staying relevant.
Her phone buzzes with another meeting request. She accepts it without reading.
She’s not irreplaceable, not really. No one is in this industry.
She’s halfway through mocking up a dummy press release, The Kool-Aid Renaissance: Continental’s High-Stakes Bet on Beverage-Led IP, when she catches movement outside her glass office wall.
She glances up and freezes.
You’re walking past with someone, they’re tall with messy hair and denim jacket, they look like they’re allergic to studio polish but in a cool, deliberate way. They’re probably one of those up and coming festival darlings. A director of something low budget and devastating. Your type.
You’re talking. Laughing. Head tilted slightly. Smiling like it means something.
The director is looking at you like you invented horror.
And you? You’re glowing. Loose hair. Sculpted blazer. That lipstick. That confidence. The effortless pull of someone who doesn’t need logos or strategy to own the room. You’re doing what you do best, making people feel like they’re lucky to be seen by you.
Maya watches you walk.
You don’t look at her, of course you don’t. You probably don’t even know she’s watching. And the jealousy that hits her is immediate and ugly. Not because she doesn’t trust you. But because you’re young. And wanted. And untouchable in a way she’s terrified she used to be but isn’t anymore. You and that director? You look like the future.
Maya? She feels like she looks like someone trying not to get left behind.
Her stomach twists.
She glances down at her hands, nails perfect, rings gleaming, every detail curated, and for a split second, it all feels like drag. Like costume.
She reaches for her phone.
Your name is still pinned at the top of her messages.
She doesn’t tap it, not yet. Instead, she locks the screen, straightens in her chair and another deck.
She has work to do.
And if she’s lucky, it’ll be enough to make her forget how your smile looked when it wasn’t for her.
You’ve been at your desk for the last hour pretending to answer emails.
The truth is, you’ve opened the same message three times and read none of it. Your mind won’t stop flickering back to Maya, the meeting, the silence, the way she wouldn’t look at you. Then the flash of her face through the glass earlier, watching as you walked by with Jamie from Sundance or whoever the hell that director was. You felt her eyes even if you didn’t meet them.
You told yourself not to care. You told yourself she made the rules.
Your office is quiet now. Too quiet. The lights are low. The hallway outside hums faintly with leftover energy, people moving on to drinks or edits or second rounds of coffee. You’re about to get up, about to finally close your laptop, when the door opens.
You look up.
It’s her.
Maya.
She doesn’t knock. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t lead with a joke or a line or a “You got a minute?” She just steps in and closes the door behind her, like she’s afraid if she hesitates, she’ll run instead.
She looks tired. Sunglasses pushed to the top of her head, hoodie still on but sagging at the neck, hoops heavy against her jaw. Lip gloss faded. Eyes red around the edges like she’s been rubbing them.
You freeze.
Before you can say a word, she does.
“Enough,” she says, voice low. Rough. “Don’t do this to me.”
You blink. “Do what to you?”
“This,” she snaps, gesturing between you. “The cold shoulder. The dead eye silence. The whole pretending I don’t exist.”
“You told me to stay away.”
She exhales, sharp and shaky. “I didn’t say-”
“You said we needed to stop. You said you couldn’t come over. You said your job came first and I was a liability.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No?” you say, standing now, heart racing. “Because that’s exactly how it felt.”
She’s quiet.
You step out from behind your desk.
“I didn’t ask you to risk your job,” you say, voice softer now. “I asked you to love me out loud for once. You couldn’t even do that.”
Her jaw tightens. She looks like she wants to argue. Like she needs to. But instead she breaks.
“Mornings are easier when I know you’re next to me,” she says suddenly, voice shaking. “I can’t sleep when I don’t know where you are. I was on the floor last night. I haven’t eaten. I keep telling myself I don’t need this, and it’s bullshit because all I want is to come home to you.”
You blink, stunned.
She takes a step forward.
“Don’t punish me,” she whispers. “I’m not good at this. I’m better at panic. I’m better at strategy than vulnerability. You know that.”
You swallow hard. “I do.”
She looks at you. Really looks at you.
“Then don’t let go of me,” she says. “Even when I’m being impossible.”
You’re quiet. Then you speak softer. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“I scared myself.”
“Close the door.” You sigh
The door clicks shut behind her and then she’s on you. There’s no preamble, no clever line or slow, nervous fumble.
Just her hands, warm and certain, gripping your waist like you’re the only thing tethering her to the ground. Her rings are cold against your blazer. Her body, even beneath all that oversized hypebeast armor, is trembling just slightly.
You don’t speak. Neither does she. She just pulls you closer until your bodies are flush, her breath mingling with yours.
And then she kisses you, hard and desperate. Her mouth finds yours with no hesitation, lips parted, breath shaky, a soft, broken sound leaving her as her hands tighten at your sides. You gasp into it, just a little, and that’s all it takes.
You whimper. It slips out of you unbidden, sharp and sweet, and she groans low in her throat, deepening the kiss, angling her mouth over yours like she’s starving. Her fingers dig into your waist like she’s memorising the shape of you. One hand slips up your back, under your jacket, splayed wide between your shoulder blades. It’s not neat. It’s not choreographed. It’s raw and real and aching.
Her lips move over yours like she’s trying to say sorry without words. Like she’s trying to remind you of every moment she’s held back and every second she wished she hadn’t.
You clutch her hoodie, nails biting through the soft fabric, and let her kiss you until your knees threaten to give out. And even then she doesn’t let go.
She pulls back just enough to breathe. Your lipstick is smudged. Her lip gloss is gone. Both of you are flushed and blinking like the room’s spinning slightly off-axis.
Then, without a word, she grabs your wrist, turns, and sits right in your office chair and pulls you down into her lap.
You gasp softly, instinctively gripping her shoulders to steady yourself. Your knees settle on either side of her thighs, the smooth silk of your blouse shifting against the grip of her hands as they slide up your back.
She tilts her chin, eyes raking over you slowly. The fitted blazer. The blouse just barely undone. Your hair loose and wild around your shoulders. The heels still on your feet.
Her jaw tightens.
“You wore this to antagonize me, huh?” she mutters, voice low and wrecked and somehow still cocky, even now. Her hands tighten at your waist. “Knew exactly what you were doing.”
You whimper, quiet, honest, breathless. “Yeah.”
Her fingers flex against your hips.
“Wanted you to want me,” you whisper, even softer.
That’s it.
That’s all it takes.
She groans like it physically hurts her, and her mouth is on yours again in a flash, hot, open, and hungry. She kisses you like she owns your mouth, like it’s hers to take. Her hand tangles in your hair, the other gripping your thigh hard enough to bruise.
You melt into her.
Rock forward in her lap, grinding against her thigh without even meaning to. She swallows the sound you make, tilting her head to deepen the kiss, tongue sweeping yours with a heat that makes your head spin.
“You think I don’t want you?” she breathes against your lips. “You think I haven’t been going fucking insane?”
You nod, gasping. “You didn’t call…”
“I couldn’t,” she growls. “If I called, I’d break.”
Your fingers clutch the edge of her hoodie, pulling her closer, closer, like you’re scared she’ll disappear again. But she won’t. Not now. Not with you in her lap, undone and flushed and whimpering just for her.
You don’t know how long you stay like this.
Just straddling her in your office chair, her arms locked around your waist, your blazer rumpled between you, blouse half untucked. The heels are still on. Her hoodie smells like coffee and coconut conditioner. Her rings are cool against your back. Your lips keep finding hers, again and again and again.
You press your mouth to hers like you’re trying to relearn it. Her top lip, then her bottom, then both, over and over until she’s humming against you, eyes fluttering closed.
She leans into every kiss like she doesn’t want to miss a single second.
Her hands stay on your hips, fingers flexing like she’s making sure you’re real. One slides up your back. The other curves around your thigh. She kisses the corner of your mouth. Your jaw. The space just below your ear.
You nuzzle into her hoodie, lips brushing her cheek. She turns slightly, and your noses bump, your lashes catch, and you both smile. It’s the first real smile of the day.
You pull back just enough to look at her. Her eyes are glassy. Not crying, not really. But close.
You lift your hand and cup her face gently, thumb brushing just under her cheekbone.
“Maya,” you whisper, soft and sure.
She swallows.
“You’re not irrelevant,” you say. “You’re everything.”
She blinks. Her lips part, but no words come.
You lean in, kiss her gently. Once. Twice. Forehead to hers now.
“Don’t shut me out,” you breathe.
Her arms tighten around you immediately. Like her body answers before her mouth can.
She nods, barely. And then she pulls you in and hugs you, her face buried in your neck, arms around your waist like she’s never letting go. She holds you like you’re her safety, like you’re the only thing in this world that hasn’t tried to replace her.
And for a little while, neither of you moves.
Just breathing.
Just holding.
Just finding each other again.
Her arms don’t loosen. You feel her breath slow against your neck, lips brushing your collarbone where your blouse has slipped open. She’s quiet for a long time. Just holding you. Letting herself be held.
Then finally, she pulls back just enough to see your face.
And there’s something new in her expression now. Still wrecked. Still raw. But open. Grateful.
“You’re so good to me,” she murmurs, eyes scanning yours. “I don’t know if I deserve that.”
You shake your head immediately, still cupping her cheek.
“Maya,” you whisper. “You do.”
She leans forward and presses a kiss, not to your mouth this time, but to the tip of your nose. It’s soft. Sweet. Almost shy.
You smile, warmth blooming in your chest.
She brushes your hair back from your face gently, fingers trailing down your jaw. Her voice is low, a little rasped.
“I’ll come over tonight.”
You blink up at her, hopeful. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I’ll bring dinner. Or… fuck dinner. I’ll bring wine and just show up.”
You give her a look with a knowingly raised brow, your lips twitching at the corners.
She smirks, just a little.
“To make it up to you,” she adds, dragging her hands slowly down your sides. “Properly.”
Your breath catches.
Her voice drops, warm and certain now. “I’ll remind you who you belong to.”
Your cheeks heat instantly. You glance down and whimper softly, “okay.”
She kisses you again, this time on the cheek, then the edge of your jaw, then lower, just behind your ear.
You squirm slightly in her lap, and she chuckles. A chuckle that sounds like her again.
“Tonight,” she murmurs, holding you tighter. “All mine.”
summary — ‧₊˚ you wake up one morning… only to find yourself married to not one, but to two of the most breathtaking women you’ve ever laid eyes on
word count — ‧₊˚ 1.2k
warning(s) — ‧₊˚ angst (if you squint), established relationship(?), cursing, singular mention of smut/hookup, alcohol/drinking
authors’ note — ‧₊˚ i’m.. semi-back? i mostly wrote this for fun, and while i do plan to write multiple chapters for this series, it probably won’t be updated often as i’m really busy with studies rn </3 but enjoy this lil opener for the series :3
masterlists — ‧₊˚ series masterlist & main masterlist
…Ow.
Was your first thought when you woke up.
You registered your surroundings, and where the hell were you?
Your head was pounding, probably remnants of the heavy drinking from the night before. You’re not sure what possessed you last night to drink so badly, knowing damn well you couldn’t hold your alcohol (you get drunk in just two shots of whiskey). Probably the Las Vegas hype and wonder.
The most damning thing about this, though? You were as naked as the day you were born.
Stretching, you could tell you were in your hotel room from the overly cold a/c blasting away and the comfy sheets under you.
Still didn’t explain why you were naked, though.
You tried to open your eyes.
Keyword: Tried.
The pounding in your head plus the blackout curtains made it impossible to keep your eyes open long enough to process what was going on, so instead you patted around your bed and- oh shit.
If finding another very naked human body in your bed wasn’t enough to get your eyes to snap open — finding two was enough.
You fought hard to ignore the pain and instead tried to piece together what the hell happened last night. It was your last night in Vegas, so you went out to a bar, completely forgetting you can’t hold your alcohol, and... nothing. You couldn’t remember anything after your second drink, which sucked, but you were unharmed and in your own bed, so... maybe everything is okay?
You glanced at the two women, as you were the one between them. Both of their faces were covered by their hair and some… blindfolds, so you couldn’t see their faces, but the way the sun lovingly kissed their figures from the light sneaking its way in, you instantly knew that these two women were gorgeous. Yeah, how did you manage to charm your way into sleeping with two women? You’d never thought you’d be jealous of the sun, yet here you were, wishing you could be the one to kiss their lovely bodies. Or at least have the memory of doing so.
Shut up, Y/N.
You checked the time and- oh shit. You’ve been saying that a lot this morning.
Despite the pounding in your head, you had to get ready. Check-out wasn’t until later, but your flight back home was before that, and you needed to skedaddle, or else you’d be facing the wrath of your parents that didn’t even know you were in Vegas.
You slowly crept out of bed, making sure not to wake the two women. Your killer hangover and general confusion over what the hell happened last night were enough to stress you out early in the morning, so the last thing you needed was two pretty women perceiving you in your vulnerable state.
You quickly put on whatever was in your suitcase, forgoing taking a shower. You didn’t want to linger in the room for long, knowing that the longer you were there, the higher the chance the two women would wake up.
You gave the rest of the room a once-over. You didn’t have much; you were really only in Vegas for a rare long weekend, and it was mostly because you were assigned on a short-term contract at one of the Vegas hospitals for four days, and then you had a vacation day to yourself.
Satisfied with seeing nothing out of place, you quietly clapped your hands and-
For the nth time, oh shit.
Now that it was brought to your attention, you weren’t sure how you didn’t notice the weight of it before.
There was a ring on your left ring finger.
You let out a shaky breath. You knew you were unpredictable when drunk, and you may not have remembered what happened last night, but you most certainly knew that you weren’t wearing a very pretty diamond ring last night (you don’t even wear that much jewellery in the first place).
Okay, wait a minute.
Breathe.
Maybe these pretty women were just that! Two women you spent the night with, and definitely someone you did not have a Vegas wedding with. Yep. Just two very generous strangers. Nothing else.
The piece of paper you saw on the little round table sent your heart into your stomach. That better not be what you thought it was.
You slowly stepped over to it, and- yep. Marriage certificate for one Y/N… one Natasha Romanoff and one Wanda Maximoff.
Your first thought was it was nice that at least your last name still hasn’t changed and their last names weren’t yours. God, that would send your family into a surprise. Your second thought was that those names were sort of familiar, but you’re not sure where you’ve heard them. Then common sense hit you with a brick, and you realised you were married. That was your signature all right, and the certificate looked legit, signed off by a judge and everything.
You gripped the edge of the table, the ring digging into your finger. This couldn’t be happening, right?
Did your dumbass just get married after one too many drinks?
You took a deep breath; this was fine. It probably hadn’t even been 24 hours since the three of you got hitched, and the three of you were probably really drunk when it happened. You could have an annulment and pretend none of this ever happened. Nobody had to know, and you could continue on in life acting as if you didn’t make the dumbest decision of your life.
You glanced around the room, spotting a pen and a little notepad on the desk. You picked them up, writing a quick note and leaving it on the nightstand along with your keycard and the ring. You did your best not to look at the two very pretty strangers.
Taking a final glance around the room, you grabbed the handle of your suitcase and began to wheel it out the door.
However, you couldn’t help looking over your shoulder at the two strangers in your bed. One of them had red hair with lightly tanned skin and- god, who knows who put those hickies on their neck and… somewhere. Whilst the other one had red hair too and didn’t look any different, she also had hickies and a… very curvy figure. You could see why your drunk mind thought it was a good idea to marry these two women. Your hungover mind, though? Still weak for pretty women.
With that final thought, you step out of the door, leaving behind one Natasha Romanoff, one Wanda Maximoff, two wives and two strangers at once in your comfortable hotel bed.
Hi!
So, it looks like we got married, huh?
I’d tell you both my name, but you two can see it on the marriage certificate haha. (I’m sorry, I'm awkward.)
I’m leaving you two my number if you want to contact me for an annulment and my mailbox if you need to send me any documents. I know the circumstances are… weird, but I also know I’d be made fun of too much for going through with a classic Vegas wedding to think about the weirdness.
Anyways, check-out is in the afternoon. I left my key card and the ring (that looks way, way too expensive for a simple Vegas wedding, which made me feel guilty about keeping it- I also don’t really wear jewellery that much), so you two should be good to go!
tangentwithtanner
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