#writelbr

You move into the Miller household by the end of the week. They're all there to welcome you, including Joel's husband, the mustache man that properly introduces himself as Tommy. He has a sly smile but mostly keeps to himself, patting Joel on the shoulder before mumbling something about leaving just in case 'the witch' arrives; they're not overtly affectionate with one another like they are with the girls, Tommy planting a loud kiss on Sarah's cheek and ruffling Ellie's hair before he leaves. Joel doesn't seem particularly bothered by the lack of affection and it makes you wonder whether they're just like that, or if they're keeping to themselves because they think you might issues with it— Or perhaps they're marriage is on the brink, which certainly would be bad. A horrible thing for the girls to go through, even if a small part of you can't help but let your eyes wonder down to Joel's ass as he walks you to your room and wonder what it would look like out of his jeans.

The house itself is incredible— A huge pool in the backyard and a TV room that is bigger than your old bedroom, your new bedroom with an en suite and a closet so big it almost makes you cry. The pay isn't the best, but it's better than anything you could possibly even think of receiving with the sort of experience you have under your belt.

"This is you. The girls and I sleep on the upper floor, but my office is next door if you need anything. Tommy's across the hall." Joel offers you a small smile, something conspiratorial gleaming in his eyes. "Hope you're a heavy sleeper. He snores like a damn truck."

Yeah. You should definitely start reading up on how to help children cope with the trauma of divorced parents.

The girls are… Something. They're not nearly the complicated she-devils that you would've expected considering you were the fifth nanny in the last year to come around, but they aren't exactly easy either. They bicker constantly. Sarah's older, a little more understanding, but Ellie has a way of getting under her skin that you'd be impressed with if not for how difficult it makes your life

You meet the witch during one of those fights. Sarah accidentally stepped on an issue of Ellie's Savage Starlight as you brought them their post-school snack and the younger girl nearly threw herself into her sister, yelling about how much of an asshole Sarah was — she'd stopped calling her sister a cunt after your initial talk and, while you could see it was still her first instinct to do so, she swallowed the word down every time — and how she didn't respect her. It somehow spiraled into Sarah bringing up Ellie's adoption and you had to literally place yourself between them to keep Ellie from punching her sister.

You're still standing between them, Sarah's shrill yelling ringing your ear and your hands on Ellie's shoulders when the woman walks in. You've been thinking about Tommy's comment about 'the witch' ever since your first day, curious as to whom it could be if anyone at all, and you don't need to hear Ellie's scoff to know it is her. Tall, blond and imposing, the woman walks in as if the house was her own, throwing her designer bag — A vintage Chanel that you can tell is original without even needing to check the stitching — on the couch and waltzing into the living room.

"Hi, children."

Ellie mumbles a word that sounds a lot like 'cunt' before storming off. You absentmindedly wonder if you should ground her for doing so even after your conversation but, to be fair, you only requested that she kept that word out of her mouth in regards of Sarah.

"You're the nanny." The woman says when neither of the girls make a point of welcoming her and you shove your hand forward for her to shake. She looks you up and down, not even bothering to hide her assessment before she finally takes your hand. "I'm Tess Servopoulos. Joel's partner."

"Business partner. Kind of. She does the finance for dad's company." Sarah pipes up. She throws herself back on the couch, carefully sidestepping the Savage Starlight comic on the ground and picks an Oreo from the tray. "He ain't home."

"I'll wait."

Tess sits down on the leather couch with the elegance of a panther, eyes eyes never leaving you; she isn't outright rude, but you've faced enough mean girls in high school to recognize the stare down she gives you. It makes you puff up a little, shoulders squared and chin held high in defiance. Tommy walks in from the backdoor, sweaty from whatever workout routine he'd been doing, hair piled up high above his head.

"Hi kid, hi nanny." He winks at you before turning to Tess, giving her a solemn nod. "Demonic entity."

"Hello, Thomas. Thought you might be at work with Joel." She hums, raising an eyebrow at him. "Still sucking him dry, I see."

"Jealous much, Valak? We both know you'd rather be the one su—"

You clear your throat, motioning your head to Sarah. She laughs, rolls her eyes and then shoves another Oreo into her mouth. "Y'all are disgusting."

"Close your mouth when you're chewing."

"Yes, ma'am." Sarah smiles at you before turning back to her homework.

"Don't call me that! Makes me feel old." You snicker, poking her calf with the tip of your booth.

"If there's one thing you're not, sweetheart, is old." Tommy grins, throwing himself on the couch. His eyes go back to Tess. "You gotta be, what? At least fifteen years younger than Ms. Servopoulos here?"

The woman scoffs, but you can see the way her shoulders straighten. Before you can say anything, the shoots back.

"Which means she's too young for you, Tommy. Practically your niece's age."

There's a part of you that wonders if you should stick around. Tess is a guest, and you're sure Joel wouldn't like for you to just leave her alone in his house, but you decide that the girls have to be your priority— And also you need to escape the conversation. You jump up, smoothing your mini skirt.

"I gotta check in on Ellie." You offer Tess a smile. "Make yourself at home, ma'am. Mr. Miller should be here any moment."

"I should go too." Sarah says, getting up slightly more casually than you, but you can see the same desperation reflected in her eyes. "Got an essay to write."

"Didja hear that, witch?" Tommy's voice floats down the hallway. "The young, hot nanny called you 'ma'am'."

"She's not hot."

"She is to Joel."

The last thing you hear before walking into Ellie's room is a noise that's almost a growl.

Your heart is beating wildly in your chest when you sit down on Ellie's bed, trying to think of what you can say to the girl; you know she needs your help, at the very least someone to listen to her vent, but all your brain can do is think of Tommy's words.

She is to Joel. She is to Joel. She is to Joel.

You barely register Ellie's grunt of disapproval at you. "If you're here to scold me, you can fuck right off."

"I'm not going to scold you. That's your dad's job. I just want to talk." You sigh. "Do you understand why what you did was wrong?"

"She started it."

"That's not what I asked, El. This isn't about Sarah. Not right now, at least."

The girl stares at the ceiling, a pout on her lips. You lay down next to her, heels dangling off of the bed. When Ellie gives no sign of talking, you continue.

"You escalated. And too quickly, may I add. Yes, she stepped on your comic and it hurt your feelings, but that doesn't mean you gotta jump her— Save that for when you need to start splitting the inheritance." You give the girl a small smile, feeling just a little proud when you notice Ellie's lips quiver into a smile of her own before she settles back on her pout. "You start punching her now and she'll learn all your moves and how to block 'em."

"She always does this. Acting like I'm…" The words escape her, her eyebrows furrowed deeply. Ellie is silent for a long moment, but you stay quiet next to her, letting her process and untangle her feelings. "Like I don't belong here."

"When was the adoption finalized?"

"Six months ago. But I was…" She falls quiet again, mulling over her own words. "Joel was fostering me for a while before that. She never… She doesn't want me here."

"Did Sarah tell you that?"

"She didn't have to." Ellie shoots back, her voice trembling with anger and something else— Something much too pained for a girl her age. "I know when I'm not wanted."

"You shouldn't assume people's feelings like that, you know. Not only because it's not fair to her, but also because you could be very mistaken. You see, back in high school my best friend and I got into a huge fight over this guy, Paulie. Well, that wasn't his name but we called him that because he looked like Pauly D, y'know?" The girl gives you a blank stare that makes it clear she doesn't know who Pauly D is, but you simply wave your hand and keep talking. "Anyway, Bianca and I had this huge falling out because she thought I was trying to get with Paulie even though I knew she had a crush on him— This was right around the time she started taking these weight loss pills, y'see, and they made her go a little… Well, off her rockers, really. She got super aggressive and would talk for hours if no one stopped her. Some shady old guy sold 'em to her in the back on an alley and I'm pretty sure it was just meth. Oh, by the way, that's a life lesson I can give you: Don't fall for those weight loss traps. You'll lose your entire sense of reality and the weight all comes back later on anyway."

"The life lesson is to avoid weight loss pills but not the shady guy selling meth to highschoolers? Got it."

You bump your elbow against hers, and Ellie falls into a fit of giggles at her own joke.

"I'll talk to her. This is your home, and your family; you shouldn't be feeling like you're not a part of it."

Ellie groans, her eyes going wide. "Please don't. I don't want her knowing that—"

"Don't worry, kid. I won't let her know we talked about it. I have functioning eyeballs and a mouth like it's no one's business, I can spin it in a way she won't even think it might've come from you."

The girl falls silent, the frown between her brows making it clear she doesn't believe you. You decide to change the subject then, your eyes tracking the glow-in-the-dark stars glued to the purple ceiling of her bedroom.

"Have you decided what you'll be for Halloween?"

"Nothing."

"You can't be nothing." You roll your eyes. "How are you going to get any candy if you're not dressed up?"

"You want to go trick-or-treating? I'm pretty sure I'm past the age for that."

"Are you kidding me? You're never too old to go trick-or-treating, it's all about the attitude." You smile. "I used to put on a sheet to go as a ghost, like that nobody saw my face and had no idea I was fifteen and not, y'know, ten. C'mon, when's the last time you did it?"

Ellie shrugs. "Never."

She tries to sound nonchalant about it, but you can't tell there's something heavy in that single word. You pat her thigh, already jumping out of the bed. "Oh, we're so going trick-or-treating, it's the best night of the year! What are you dressing up as? C'mon, tell me tell me tell me tell—"

"Oh my God, okay!" Ellie laughs, her eyes lighting up. "Can I be Sally Ride?"

"You got it, ma'am. Sally Ride you shall be."

You give her a small curtsy, already skipping out of the room; you have no fucking clue who Sally Ride is, but you'll be damned if you won't make it happen for her.

You wake up that night to a loud thud, followed by a giggle and a shushing noise; Joel is gone for the night, some architectural award with the Witch and you panic for a long moment wondering if he's home early or if a pair of robbers would giggle as they broke into the house. Eventually the noises get a little louder, closer to your bedroom, and you force yourself to get out of bed, your hand grabbing the closest thing you could use as a weapon: A hairdryer.

You creep closer to your door, heart thundering inside your chest as you yank the bedroom door open; on the other side, rather than a burglar, you find Tommy and a woman, clutching to each other as they stumble down the hallway: Tommy's shirt is open as askew, bright red lipstick marks on his mouth and jawline, the woman's makeup smudged as she stares down at you.

"Who's this? Your daughter?" The woman smiles brightly at you, hand stretched out. "I'm—"

Tommy pushes her into his bedroom before she can finish the sentence, an embarrassed smile on his face.

"Sorry." He tells you, already halfway through into his bedroom before he pokes his head back out. "Hey, don't tell Joel about this, okay? He's going to be pissed. G'night!"

You can only nod, the hairdryer hanging limp from your hands. As you climb back into bed, trying to ignore the lewd noises coming from across the hall, you think that a burglary might've been a better outcome than the clusterfuck you just witnessed.

You don't sleep the rest of the night, mind running through every possible scenario; you can tell Joel his husband is cheating on him and probably get fired, or you could let him find out on his own, become an accomplice and then get fired. One of the girls could hear, or run into the woman while she's leaving, and then what? You pretend you didn't know? You tell them the woman was there for her? It's your first month with the Millers and things are already so fucking complicated you think you might not last to the second month.

You could just lie. Pretend you don't know, say Tommy was lying if he ever tells Joel that you were in on it— You could put on noise cancelling headphones the next time Joel was gone for the night, you could pretend to be passed out or that you sleep like the dead and that you had no idea about what was going on. You could feign innocence and say you thought Tommy was a porn addict and those were the noises you heard.

You could punch Tommy in his cheating fucking face. Now that sounded like a perfect plan.

Halloween comes faster than you expected. You still haven't confronted Tommy about what you saw, but he didn't seem too concerned about the whole thing, winking at you the next morning and moving on with life as if you hadn't caught him cheating on his husband. As if the guilt of that knowledge didn't keep you awake all night and all of the nights following the incident; it's none of your business in the end, and you keep telling yourself that, trying to avoid Joel's sad eyes, keeping his tired face away from your mind every time it was possible.

Sally Ride, as it turned out, was an astronaut— Not only that but first North American woman to go to space, and you feel a little silly for not knowing who she was, as if your lack of knowledge was a failure on your part. Gay and a fucking icon, you end up going on a forty-minutes exploration of her life on Google before you were able to close off the page and find Ellie her costume: A blue NASA jumpsuit and a replica of Sally's helmet that cost a small fortune; you bill it to Joel's credit card, and pray to the universe that he won't deduct it from your salary.

Sarah took care of her own costume, a dress that was too short for your liking, a hell of a lot of glitter on her face and a pair of green and purple wings a friend let her borrow; she wouldn't be trick-or-treating with the two of you, rather going to a party at a friend's house that you she might be a little too young for. Her outfit was so pretty, though, that you relented in letting her go, knowing that her make-up deserved to be seen by more people than the kids on the streets or the tired parents giving out candy.

Tommy's gone by the time you corral both girls into the living room, and Joel sat in the living room in his pajamas, hair skewed everywhere, a half-finished crossword puzzle forgotten on his lap. He squints at the girls, particularly at Sarah, and then shakes his head. "You forgot to put on pants."

"I'm wearing a dress, dad." Sarah rolls her eyes, fixing up her lip gloss on the hallway mirror. "I don't need pants."

"That's a shirt, not a dress. Go change."

"She's cute, Mr. Miller." You say, even if you do agree the dress is a little too short for her age. "Don't you think she looks like the prettiest butterfly?"

"I'm a fairy." Sarah screeches, panic etched all over her face. "Do I not look like one?"

You hum, shifting from one foot to the other, pretending to think. "It's kind of giving butterfly, honestly. I think the green sparkly dress you got last week would bring more of a fairy vibe to it."

The dress is just as cute as the one she's wearing, but at least six inches longer. The girl groans, and then stomps back to her room, complaining about how you should've told her she looked like a fucking insect sooner.

"See, Mr. Miller?" You raise an eyebrow, smiling sweetly at him. "That's how you get a girl to change her outfit."

"She better come out lookin' like a fuckin' nun." He grumbles under his breath, and then points at Ellie's outfit. "See? This is nice. It's what children should be wearing."

"Thanks, Joel. I feel real pretty." The girl's voice comes out muffled by her helmet, and you don't need to see her face to know that she's rolling her eyes. Joel splutters and tries to backtrack, but she simply waves him off.

"And what are you supposed to be, miss?" He asks, then, clearly eager to move on from the subject. You give a little twirl even if he didn't ask for it, posing with your hands on your hips, one leg stretched out; your costume is simple, a combo of a black tennis skirt and a tight shirt, white socks and heels.

"The hot nanny." You tell him as if it's obvious. "Y'know, every dad at Ellie's school is jealous of you because I'm living in your home and every soccer mom hates me because they think I'm a gold digging whore that's going to steal you away from your… uh…"

It had seemed funny when you first came up with the costume, partly because it was true, partly because it wasn't: Being the hot nanny to two gay men sort of defeated the whole point of being the hot nanny in the first place, but then Tommy's face swam back into the forefront of your mind, the tipsy woman next to him and his pleas to not tell Joel; you feel so fucking guilty you don't even notice the way Joel goes pale in the face the longer you keep talking.

"We should get going." Ellie says when the silence lingers just a couple of seconds on the side of awkward, her plastic jack-o-lantern basket in hands. "There's a double feature of Halloween later on TV that I wanna catch."

You snort, thinking of the scrawny little girl watching horror movies by herself as if she had an appointment with them. You turn to Joel, frowning when he simply nods and picks back his crossword puzzle.

"Mr. Miller? Aren't you joining us?"

He looks up at you as if you just grew another head. "Reckon that chaperonin' the girls is what you are being paid to do, miss."

"El, go pick up the candy bowl and put it outside, please?" You wait for her to leave the room before you turn back to the man. "Now, Mr. Miller, I'm not trying to tell you how to parent your own children—"

"Great, you really shouldn't be tellin' me how—"

"— But this is absurd. It's bad enough that Tommy fuc— fudged off to God knows where but this is your daughter's first ever proper Halloween. Can't you find a little bit of time out of your visibly busy evening to spend it with her?"

The look on Joel's face makes you wonder if he might fire you right then. Instead, he swallows thickly, staring at you as if he'd never seen you before.

The three of you leave the house a quarter past six; the sun hasn't set just yet, the streets bathed in shades of purple and oranges, both from the sky and the decorations around the neighborhood— The Miller's residence is the only one without a decked out lawn and you make a note to change that next year, already planning to make it the spookiest house in your block. Joel is still in his pajamas, wrapped around a deep burgundy robe, his slippers dirtying up on the sidewalk; the air is chilly, colder than the last month had been, and you pretend not to shiver in your skimpy outfit. By the third house, Ellie is all but skipping ahead of the two of you, her helmet bouncing between the other children that run amuck, rushing up to the doorsteps of the neighbors with confidence.

By the fifth house, Joel drapes his robe around your shoulders; you want to deny it, a witty quip about how a bathrobe doesn't really go with your outfit, but it's warm and soft, smelling of verbena soap and Joel's aftershave. You shove your arms through it without thinking, hugging the fabric close to your chest.

"I didn't know." He tells you; it's the first thing he speaks ever since leaving the house, though you hadn't been in silence. You'd gone the entire way filling him in on stories of your childhood, of the best and the worst Halloweens you had, a whole fifteen minutes tirade on the old lady that lived five houses down from yours — it was actually a trailer at the trailer park you lived in, but you don't tell him that — and would only give the full-sized candy bars to boys.

"Huh?" You ask, unsure of what he's talking about.

"That it was Ellie's first Halloween. I didn't know. I would've done something special if I knew. She… She doesn't talk to me a lot. Which I get, y'know, after everythin' she's been through it's though."

You hesitate, thinking back to your conversation with Ellie, carefully measuring your words before you start talking. It's a fine thread to walk on, expression your concerns while maintaining Ellie's trust in you.

"I think she's feeling… A little othered from the rest of you. Maybe that's why she doesn't talk about her past. It only cements to her that she's not a Miller."

Joel frowns at you. "But she is."

"I know, Mr. Miller. But I don't think she feels that way just yet. I think you and Tommy should spend more time with her alone, without Sarah around. Make sure she knows she's your daughter just as Sarah is."

He answers you with a grunt, but you can tell your words have some effect on him— Joel is silent the rest of the walk, frowning at the ground, but he smiles brightly at Ellie when she comes back to show him her overflowing candy basket, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and making a show out of stealing a KitKat from her.

The night ends with the three of you on the living room couch, Ellie nestled between the two of you and an ocean of candy on her lap; she'd not one bit scared of the movie on screen, actually chuckling whenever Michael Meyers pops up on screen. You pretend not to be scared, stealing a Jolly Rancher as an excuse for why you jump during a particular scene. Joel smiles at you over Ellie's head, tired but soft, his eyes shining in the semi-lit room.

'Thank you.' He mouths, the music from the TV drowning out any sounds but the words hit you loud and clear anyway. You smile back, winking and settling further into the couch.

Bonus Cover:

I wasn't going to post it as I prefer the above one, but then I thought, hey, bonus cover!

Also, a vintage photo of Jodhpur!

Plus, Sofia would like this one, but she has no say in this. Sorry, Butler!