#case 63

The day after you two get married, when you’re on your honeymoon. The Isle of Skye in Scotland.

You’ll wake up together, in a rental cottage you’d seen on Pinterest.

A photo you’d looked at for years, whenever you needed a mental vacation.

A little place out in the middle of rolling green fields with white, weathered clapboard and old, wavy glass in the windows. Sheep grazing behind it. Cuillin mountains in the background.

Peter had found it and surprised you, two whole weeks. Just the two of you in that exact cottage.

"Do you know the one?" He asks.

With shaky hands, you take your phone out of your pocket. It’s your background.

You’d just seen the photo for the first time, minutes before he’d shown up at your doorstep.

Peter knows he’s changed the timeline by coming back to see you.

He had to come back, though, because before you meet him and fall in love, you meet a man who will eventually kill you.

A man who sees your wedding announcement in the paper.

He finds you when you come back from Scotland.

You and Peter don’t even make it to your first anniversary.

Peter can’t let that happen.

He sounds crazy, you shouldn’t believe him.

But when he shakes your hand, you can’t let go.

He hugs you and starts crying.

You let him stay.

He’s funny. Brave.

And patient. Lets you take as long as you need to fall in love with him. He's not going anywhere.

Loves to listen to you obsess over things, hear your mind digging deeper and deeper into something.

Peter needs to be with you almost every minute of the day, to be sure you’re safe.

Sometimes he sits bolt upright in the middle of the night, short of breath, dreaming you’re still gone.

Stays awake until the sun comes up, just looking at you.

Possessive during sex, a holdover from watching you be ripped out of his life.

Passionate and desperate, Peter tells you over and over that you’re his.

He kisses you deeply, his body heavy on yours, hands gripping you so tightly it almost hurts. "We're going to feel this way forever. *Feel that?* How deep I am inside of you? Every single part of you. Forever."

Lays claim to every place on or in your body that he can touch and taste. Memorizing you.

Like he can fuse your skin with his through sweat and heat. Never separated again.

Driving you to the edge over and over, until you beg him.

Until you feel as desperate for him as he remembers feeling for you, when he thought he’d never see you again.

*****

Vincent Caldwell

You’re his patient, assigned to him because he happened to be there the night you admitted yourself.

The hospital he works at is hours away from your house, but it’s the one you felt compelled to drive to.

The nurse brings him up to speed as he makes his way to see you for the first time.

She says you’re inconsolable, plagued by dreams and things you know aren’t true.

You go on and on about how you can’t tell reality from fantasy.

You ask about your husband and daughter, but then insist you’re single. Something about playing a piano. Going to Europe. But you don’t know if any of those things are true.

You’re sitting in a hospital bed, covering your face with your hands.

He greets you as he enters. Your hands drop.

You look at each other.

Vincent with a smile and a white doctor's coat. His hair pushed back neatly from his face. A clipboard in his capable hands.

The man from your dreams. Your fantasies.

In another life, he’s yours.

Vincent isn’t so easily convinced. But he’s drawn to you. Feels like he knows you.

The things you say feel familiar to him too, even though they’re not real.

He takes a sabbatical from the hospital. Patiently helps you separate your life, and his life, from whatever shared delusion you two have.

He’s not sure it’s a delusion anymore.

He introduces you to his daughter.

The 3 of you fit together like parts of a whole, a family.

You stay.

Sex with Vincent is where the veil lifts, between reality and whatever else draws you together.

Memories of being with him thread through every touch. Your future, other lifetimes, you both feel it.

He kisses down your ribcage, and you know he’s done the same thing, at some other time.

His tongue buries itself inside of you. You both remember the time you were leaning against a bathroom sink.

Vincent was on his knees. Hidden under your wedding dress, eating you out like you were the cake and champagne toast that was being delayed while everyone looked for you two.

He made you come twice, turned you around so you could both watch in the mirror as you had sex for the first time as a married couple.

Vincent ran warm water and wet a hand towel. He cleaned you up gently, kissed you softly.

You both laughed at the absurdity of it.

Hiding like teenagers. You heard people calling out for you.

The reception had been damn expensive, and you two were busy having sex in the bathroom.

Neither of you cared. You were happy.

Here, in bed, now. Laying in others’ arms. Both of you bask in the memory.

The memory that never was.

You’d just moved into Vincent’s house. You weren’t married. He hadn’t even asked. Yet.

Things like that shouldn’t be normal.

But Vincent isn’t unsettled by it.

He feels lucky.

He gets to experience those amazing, precious memories before they even happen, if they ever happen at all.

Like a gift that makes him appreciate you even more.

main masterlist :: Join My Fic Taglist

@burymesanti, @sosa2imagines, @silvernight-m, @myhohastuff, @apesarecuul, @mangoslushcrush, @clemdango04, @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction, @daydream-believer19, @eternallyvenus, @iolaussharpe-24, @spacecowboyhotch, @bulletgoth, @eternallyvenus, @minigirl87, @oscarssimp, @oddballwriter, @scarlettmoon98

@pigeonmama @miluiel1, @everythingbutresolved