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“ you’re welcome. ” he isn’t entirely convinced she’s happy with it. the gift is so different to what anya has received in the past, and he’s sure she’d described them as perfect too. a book, in comparison, was just so ... ordinary. unsure of what to do with his hands, nico places them on his hips. what comes after the present? there are no props around them. no champagne glass or dessert to dig into, no parent ruining the moment. he looks to cecilia for some guidance. “ is that a trick question? there is only one place that serves food that is of a suitable quality, ” nico chimes in, then after realising the question was directed at anya he turns to her, “ unless you’ve magically discovered another one, of course. ” unfortunately, he remembers every single place in roseville, and the thought of eating at a place that makes carbonara with cream or with alfredo on the menu made him nauseous. “ and she will not let me change my room with yours, which, might i add, is significantly larger. so whatever summer bonding you both have done -- i resent it. ” he would rather not talk about home. not when they are all here, together. “ how is gallagher? ” he has many questions -- what better time to talk about it than now? “ and the new president? does she allow visitors? there are a few people i’d like to see. ” @fallingwatcr​

“ the-- ” with a disgruntled sigh, he quickly surrenders. money can’t buy you everything, like the incentive to not sound like a fucking idiot. but, by now, tigs knows there’s nothing in the world that would’ve attracted devon to learn about buddha, the symbol of inner peace and enlightenment. his frown deepens, hand rubbing over his eyes as his patience, already stretched out into a thin layer, hangs on by a single thread. “ no one ubers milk, ” he points out, frustrated. she’s so spoiled, it floors him, and if she was going to live with him then things were going to have to change. “ who do you know that ubers fuckin’ milk? it’s down the road. a ten minute walk. ” he gestures towards the door. “ go. get. the. milk. ”

usually, nico would hover over the pan, sample the sauce and criticize everything and anything -- it was constructive. it always is! but today, he walks straight past the counter, grabs two wine glasses and fills them up with one of their good wines which are saved for special occasions. he looks up at her to see if she notices as he pours the wine. “ i have some excellent news, ” he starts, because he really can’t wait to tell her! he places a glass of wine besides her then moves to lean against the side of their fridge. nico is still amazed how they can fit everything into something so small. but they managed, and recently, that often felt more important than anything. “ i spoke with giuseppe. about many things. that man does not know how to run a business. but anyway. more importantly, he agreed to showcase your art. an exhibition of sorts. all for you. isn’t that wonderful? ” he says with a proud smile.

“ then raph can take that up with fuckin’ buddha. ” reincarnation, karma -- what bollocks. he supposes, in theory, they have a point. what could be worse than being reborn to get through another lifetime? “ you’ve got medical insurance, ” he points out, like a parent reminding their child that they’ve already received their pocket money for the month. but the truth is -- well, he’s pretty sure she already knows it. far too cocky not to. “ good for you. now you sound like every fuckin’ guy on wall street. ” to her question, he simply shrugs. barely a lift of the shoulder. “ gettin’ the fuckin’ milk now or what? ”

“ but, you know, targeted ads are kinda nice, right? they always know what you’re looking for! ” scott didn’t really understand why it was such a bad thing, unless you’re a creep that had something to hide. which, after the last year at gallagher, a lot of people had secrets. “ hey, there was no competition and you know it. ” actually, it was one of his hardest yet. his focus had been all over the place, not least because of his breakup with luce. “ peaceful? ” mira sutton, peaceful? not a word he’d associate with her but happy that he now can. “ i’m not jealous. but what, is my replacement also super peaceful? are they super zen? and like, really boring? ”

“ oh shit, for real? see, this is what happens when you don’t have your friends on find my friends. ” you never know where any of them are! “ i’ve got a work thing here and actually i’m catching up with-- ” he stops himself, pressing his lips together momentarily. “ wiiiiiith noah. but hey, it’s good to see you as well, dude! what’re you doing now? you got time for a drink? ”

Nur likes to believe she’s grown smarter and wiser over the years. It helped when people let her down. Even though there was a part of her that wouldn’t have minded the company, she knows she shouldn’t want it. Her head was already in a whirl because of him, she didn’t want it getting worse. She doesn’t forget that in a few days Orlando will be discharged and Tigs will be out of her life as fast as he re-entered it. The way he’s looking at her right now is familiar and damn, she hopes it wasn’t so familiar. She’s seen that look so rarely, in specific moments where she thought he was allowing her into that part of him he hid and sheltered away from everyone else, and that had made her feel special. Silly girl. She wishes she could forget, but couldn’t. It was a curse of sorts. It was dangerous territory thinking about this, so she clears her throat and nods. “I will.” She won’t. She needs to walk and think. She’s kinda angry once again, but she doesn’t show it. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that, she turns around to walk away, needing to be away from a suffocating situation.

“ damn, that is sad, ” he says, like he doesn’t need any convincing. once upon a time -- no, it wasn’t too long ago and what they had was very much real -- but, once upon a time, this information might’ve inspired the military technique of falling asleep in ten seconds to rescue stephanie and defeat the evil. he’d wake up, triumphant, to have done something good and to have her next to him. “ well, in that case, i’ll have to make sure she feels right at home. ” his smile slowly grows when she looks past him, and maybe from a different angle it may even appear sort of sad, in a regretful sort of way. scott has enjoyed getting older, even if it was completely different to how he’d imagined it to be, but what he didn’t expect was how he feels like he understands her better now than he ever used to. it didn’t seem possible. “ you got any tips i can pass on? ” as someone who also was not able to return home. but now that he’s made the connection, maybe that wasn’t the right question to ask. he doesn’t know. there’s still so much he doesn’t know. “ facts, ” he says with a click of his fingers followed by an index finger pointed at her -- the evolved finger gun. “ but if you ask nicely, you get unlimited peanuts so it’s kind of a win-win. ” poor louis, missing out on some of life’s greatest treats. he finds unbridled joy in spotting parts of her he’s familiar with, that she hasn’t changed to the point where he doesn’t recognise her -- not because it reminds him of the past, but it warms him to see she’s managed to keep the best parts of herself. he could easily see how some people don’t. maybe when the lights go off, and the people behind them cough loudly and they can’t make their whispers any quieter, he might end up wondering if she thinks the same for him. “ oh no, i’ve upgraded from watermelon burst. i’m way more minty fresh now. i think you’ll like it-- ” he places his hand over his mouth and breaths against it. it passes the check. “ smell for yourself? ” he leans in, just a little bit, mouth open slightly, enough to back out and play it off as a joke, just in case. but he laughs all the same, naturally, without much thought. “ but, i mean, yeah-- this is-- i mean, you feel the same, to me. but hopefully you can take on a pint of guinness now? oh, and how’s uncle paddy? and finn? ” are things working out for him? are things working out for you?

there’s a soft halt of footfalls when she speaks, bringing to light the assumption she would have accepted his offer. a small pauses, and it only takes a half turn for him to face her again. he looks at her in a way that invites familiarity. in these small moments, where his actions feel so visible, there’s an awkwardness that latches onto his skin which he hasn’t learned how to shake off yet. it’d been aggressive, when he had known her, but it had come up from time to time, like picking her up in the middle of d.c. or sharing an earphone with her. he hadn’t know what to do with it besides showing it in the form of a scowl. slowly, he releases a deep sigh. he knows he lost the right to worry about her the moment he had decided to leave her behind. regardless: “ at least call an uber, ” he grunts. surely she can afford it.

anya’s reaction makes him puff his chest out with pride. what a successful surprise! not that it takes much to make anya happy but she seems happy nonetheless. and so, when cecilia says her first comment, he glances at her disapprovingly through his peripherals, as subtle as he can, though he realises there was no need for it once she finishes her sentence. “ yes, yes. please, open it. ” after much debate, they settled on a book and some of her favourite snacks. some nerves start to show, since all of nico’s suggestions got vetoed, but he agreed on the basis that whatever book cecilia (conor) picked out would be one anya would enjoy as it looked totally uninteresting to him. “ your friends won’t come looking for you, will they? i would prefer it if they didn’t. ” god knows who she might have replaced estella with. @fallingwatcr​

“ caden? ” head bops round to confirm. he’s the last person scott expected to bump into in paris. the last time they’d seen each other must have been years ago, as was the case for most of their cohort. “ damn, it’s really you. what are you doing here, man? ” @gallagherisms​​

with no office space in cecilia’s home, and bile reaching his throat when he thinks about going near sal, he has resigned to work in a nearby family owned pizzeria. it is small, loud and ugly. the ceramic on most of the tiles have been chipped off. but the food is reasonable, and sometimes he doesn’t have to order anything. unlike other places. giuseppe, the owner and chef, has far too many wrinkles. it almost makes nico squeamish to look at him, but it makes him seem like someone who has lived a long and good life. they argue a lot, almost everyday. or, well, nico tries to because he challenges the way giuseppe runs his business and giuseppe finds it amusing. today, however, nico returns home with a smile on his face. “ cecilia! ” he calls out, closing the door behind him. “ cecilia, come here. i have something to tell you. ” @gallagherisms​

“ have you now? ” he takes the way she says ‘nothing serious’ as a way of clarifying it’s just a hobby, in case he’s worried. the concern he feels is instinctual, natural over decisions he doesn’t deem as practical, and if it does become something serious, then over time he will learn to control it. “ is that how you’ve been spending most of your time? ” he asks, momentarily forgetting she had connor around for the summer. “ enjoyed yourselves so much that you never once invited me round for dinner! ” but he’s not bitter about it. not one bit. “ anyway, i should shower and rest before i wake up tomorrow with a terrible fever, which may already be inevitable with the way sal has drained me of all my energy. it is simply astounding. how he is related to us, i do not know, cecilia. ” he walks over to the door, holding it open for her to leave. “ goodnight. i’ll see you tomorrow. ”

“ no, we wouldn’t have. ” it’s said with the same endearment as one agreeing to something so impossible for the sake of protecting their imagination, because he still can’t believe it, that they’ve run into each other. he’s scared that if he blinks or looks the other way, she’ll vanish and he’ll wake up from a coma. it wouldn’t be the first time he’s met her in a dream. “ in your dream, is there someone wearing a bright pink wing? because they keep popping up in my dreams, and i’d like to know who it is. ” there’s a sudden rush of emotion, from speaking to her like this again. it’s a feeling he never thought would be hard to come by. the nine hours of flight time that had seemed tediously long before suddenly felt like it wouldn’t be enough. “ we don’t want to ask for lotto numbers, though. they might be the same as our flight number, which might be the same number of days since we last saw each other, then we’ll know we’re actually not so lucky. ” he’s pretty sure the plot of lost was that they were dead the whole time. but still, if he was dead, maybe it would be lucky to be able to see luce one more time. it’s strange, to think the last time he’d seen her like this, up close enough to see the small mole on her cheek and her baby hairs out of place, they’d been happy. if he’d known at that time that he wouldn’t see her again until years later, he might never have left ireland. but luckily, he’d been able to carry all of that happiness with him throughout his twenties, stored inside a little glitterball most would call a rock, shining it’s light into the little spaces in his life, which eventually brought him onto this plane. “ and see, if there is a flash mob, and they’re singing 100 gecs, that means we’re both getting off this damn plane. ” his laugh is quietened by the soft ding alerting the cabin along with an orange sign for seatbelts to be put on. silently, he puts his laptop away and fastens his seatbelt, then turns to her with a warm smile on his face. “ hey, i really missed you. ”

“ ... online. ex-broadcast, recently online. and yes, everything you’re thinking is probably correct. ” it wasn’t the best career choice he’d made, but after a change in the newsroom and his views on how they report the news not aligning with others, he realised the grass was not always greener. brows lift in pleasant surprise. “ oh, which one? ” 

she walks home when it’s late. a lot can happen in thirty minutes. and, like she said, there’s fuck all to see. maybe it’s a chance for her to wind down after a stressful day, leaving whatever happened at the hospital actually at the hospital. there’s no degree of separation between his work life and personal life. every kid that enters the gym, whether they know it or not, becomes someone he feels responsible for. so he somewhat understands the desire to do so but he feels a sense of frustration that makes his jaw clench in knowing she walks home at night for thirty minutes. hopefully, or most likely, she isn’t alone. “ okay, ” he sighs through his nose as he checks the time on his watch. orlando will be knocked out for a while but the small possibility of him waking up without tigs besides him makes him hesitate for a moment. after a moment or two, he points his head backwards towards the car pack. “ i’ll drive ya. ”