...when you're expecting [odysseus]

[nelinha mairi azoulai]

always forward, never back

❝

She’d stalled longer than was necessary in telling them. Nelinha’s pregnancy was going to start showing soon, and she’d been grappling with the debate about sharing it or not. Given the circumstances, the uncertainty, she didn’t even know if it was Odysseus’s baby or Arcturus’s, but at the end of the day, she had decided it didn’t matter.

It was her baby. Regardless of both of them. If that meant she raised it alone, then that was that.

The fear, though, was not about the child. It was more about how this would shift her relationship-that-wasn’t-exactly-a-relationship with Odysseus. Linha liked him, really liked him, and he seemed to embrace her vibrant, slightly wild nature. They were an unexpected pair, but she found herself continually drawn to him over and over and over. There was a darkness in his soul, but it was tightly wrapped around this…ache. Nelinha was fascinated by the mystery of him, and the more she discovered it, the deeper she fell.

Staring up at his manor, Nelinha nearly turned around three times. What kept her moving towards the door was him. That he deserved to know, even if he hated her for it. And the fear of him despising her because of this sunk in her gut, even as she knew it could be justified. It wasn’t as if she had cheated - she had just met him, had just moved to London and had her liaison with him only days before she had come across Arcturus in a bar. From there, a romance had blossomed with Odysseus, while her fling with Arc had fizzled into friendship instead. No one could have known the way everything would be twisted in the coming months, including the world.

It was only that thought that kept her going, and she raised her fingers to rap on the door before opening it and slipping inside.

“It’s me,” she called, biting her lip. “Can we talk?”

odysseus layne rookwood ● no notes ● 325

MADE BY MIZO

[odysseus layne rookwood]

odysseus layne rookwood

february 3rd, 2023

odysseus was, previously, a firm believer in the profitability of chaos. he had made a living upon not only exploiting its existence, but on creating it for his own benefit. there was no use in bemoaning how life didn’t go as planned because – news flash, to apparently a lot of people – it never did. instead, the rookwood heir had carefully crafted a world in which chaos was fulfillment, safety, and security. chaos meant he was doing everything right.

that opinion existed more certainly when the world wasn’t in actual shambles. there was almost so much death and destruction that could occur before even he grew a conscious and realized that it was far beyond any management and exploitation. this was a senseless sort of disaster. one that, even with the right publicity spin, was clearly designed with only one thing in mind: death. it was harder for odysseus to get on board when it had spiralled as far out of control as it currently was. only an idiot said they never felt fear, but he would be damned before admitting just how often the familiar, creeping uneasiness settled over him nowadays. he had the wards around his manor checked nearly weekly to ensure few people could pass through the estate’s borders, and even fewer could dismantle it. after all, he would be caught dead before sharing space in safehouses with people who more certainly wanted him cut down for entirely different reasons.

nelinha was one of the few people allowed through the wards, though he hadn’t said such to her with any sort of certainty. odysseus was admittedly fond of her, but the woman was a force of nature that he worried would disappear at the slightest inclination that he was serious about seeing only her. it was a conversation they had not yet breached. he almost doubted they ever would, but that didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would in years past. perhaps it was all this war business going around.

upstairs in his study, the flame of his candle shifted from its normal soft yellow to a blue. someone had stepped through the wards. as such, he had begun to make his way downstairs when the door opened and he watched nelinha slip through. the smile that tipped up the edge of his lips was entirely unintentional, and for a moment, he simply waited at the top of the stairs and watched her.

“you know,” he eventually spoke up and began to make his way down the central staircase. “if you keep just walking into the manor like that, the people of the community are bound to think you’re breaking and entering. at least wait for a house elf to open it for you.” odysseus stepped down into the foyer. “they’ll make you tea. let’s try the sitting room, shall we?”

nelinha mairi azoulai

(C) ELLIE @ GANGNAM STYLE