never wanted anything from you (except everything you had)
{ One-Shot AU for head, heart, hand. }
@saintbeau asked: I know you said in the Canon ending, up until a certain point, Oliver was planning to let the reader live. If he'd never decided to kill them, do you think they'd suffer a similar fate as Farleigh and be forced out? Or do you think there's ever a possibility of 'the pet coming with the house' so to speak? I think to a degree Oliver's yearning to take Felix's place could lead him to essentially slotting himself alongside the reader if they'd allow it.
Summary: After the death of your best friend and his sister, you can't bring yourself to stay at Saltburn, even when their grieving mother wishes you would. However, after several years away to process and grow, you find yourself back in touch with Oliver Quick, who's changed so much in the time you've spent apart. Fate certainly has a funny was of working out, so you're not entirely surprised to end up back at the place you'd once called home.
Need to Know: They/Them. Explicitly NB Reader. Reader is from a well off family but has pretty much been adopted by the Cattons. Oliver/Reader are endgame here.
Warnings: Very poor relationship with reader's parents. SALTBURN-CANON ENDING; Felix & Venetia are still dead, but we get a happy ending this time. Also not sure if it needs a warning but Oliver does admit to killing Felix.
A/N: 4162 words. This got away from me. this ends up being so painfully fluffy. it's VERY Oliver/Reader, Oliver's less of a bastardman and he doesn't kill Elspeth but her health is failing significantly like it does in the movie. i think i might have made him a better person as compared to the film, but it's still canon compliant mostly. it ends so fluffy and happy tho, i love it omg. AGAIN THIS IS NOT CANON TO head, heart, hand.
TAGLIST IN COMMENTS!! // TAGLIST ALWAYS OPEN ! (just message or comment to be added)
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There is no world where you stay where Oliver wins.
But there's a world where you leave, heart too heavy with grief, where you transfer from Oxford and spend time as an adult reconnecting with your own family, where he finds you again. Your parents don't respect you as family, but you're granted access to their lives, to be in their line of sight; you become almost like a live-in assistant who takes meals with them but for whom they show no outward affection.
It's all you have left.
You tell yourself it's enough.
"That Catton fellow offed himself," your father says it with such idleness, as if reporting the weather.
"Sir James?" You almost choke on your breakfast, and father peers down his nose at you over his morning paper, giving you a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes.
"Yes, sorry, I forgot you knew him -"
"Surely it doesn't say that he offed himself," your mother frowned, tugging at the corner of the paper to try and get a look at the article. They bicker lightly, charmingly, in the middle of this cafe about the death of your best friend's father, and what the article is saying or implying, but you just wonder about Elspeth.
Later, when you search through old papers and memories and notebooks, you find the number for Saltburn and call. Duncan's voice is familiar, as is yours to him.
"Captain," the old nickname is so gentle on his tongue, the most gentle you'd ever heard him be about anything. Then, as quickly as you'd heard it, the gentleness is replaced with apology, letting you know that Elspeth is unavailable, but that you'd be welcome to attend Sir James' funeral. You know you'd never be able to bring yourself to attend.
It's Oliver who reaches out, deliberate, in the months that follow. It's slow going, too formal for how intimately, how messily you knew each other for those few months in the Spring and Summer. He apologises, says he saw you on the cover of a tabloid trailing a pair of aging socialites and looked further into it.
"You looked -" he tells you over dinner in the city, beautiful, settled, no more of his youthful awkwardness; it had only been a few years, but how glad you were to see him, "fucking miserable," he says so gently, taking your face in his hands. Oh fuck, you'd missed him, missed his touch, missed how clearly he could see you - you burst into tears in the restaurant.
Dating Oliver makes you feel like a whole new person, raw, relearning yourself, realising you'd been living like a ghost since you'd left Saltburn. Your hyper competency had needed an outlet and your parents had provided that, but you were barely a person, to them or to yourself. Now you were learning who you were, alone.
Quieter. More focused and driven in your professional endeavours. As dangerously charming as Farleigh ever was. The memory of Venetia peeking through in your wickedly sharp wit. An echo of Felix in the affection you carried with you, in your smile, in your laugh. A living ghost, learning to love and embrace the ways in which you were haunted, rather than grieving for them.
You spend nights in his little flat, take refuge from your own life in his, and Oliver's the one who informs you that Elspeth has moved into town, leaving Saltburn echoing and empty, if not for the skeleton crew that maintains it.
"She wants to see you," there's a strange look in his eyes when he says it, something conflicted, almost dark, but when you smile, he too lights up.
Elspeth holds you for a very long time. In the middle of a cafe in walking distance for your both it turns out, there's tears in her eyes, and a joyful smile, and she doesn't let you go even as Oliver goes and order you all drinks.
"So beautiful, you've always been so beautiful," she murmurs, long, elegant fingers feather light against your features, no care for propriety here, "you're so grown up." It's like she's trying to connect the person you are now with the memory she has of you. Tears are welling in your own eyes.
"I'm sorry I left, mum." There's a lump in your throat and her tears start to fall as she takes your face gently, cradling you against her, laughing through her bittersweet memories.
"I never blamed you, pet, never," she assures, voice wet with tears but reassuring nonetheless. Oliver sits down on your other side, wordlessly leaning into you both, resting his head on your shoulder. The three of you stay like that for a long moment. You can hear Elspeth sniffling quietly.
The moment breaks, she lets you go, and when you sit back up, Oliver takes your hand, lacing his fingers with yours and resting your joined hands on the table. Immediately Elspeth's eyes focus upon them, and she gives a warm smile to your both.
"I cannot believe you've found each other again," and she sounds so genuinely joyful, "it's funny how the universe works out." Oliver gives a faint, bashful smile, leaning into you, bumping your shoulder for a bit.
"I'm a lucky man," there's something wonderfully, desperately loving in his eyes when he looks at you in this moment. It is, to him, the total and complete truth. Before you're overwhelmed by your urge to kiss him, however, Elspeth continues.
"After all that's happened, I am glad luck, and life, have brought you both back to me; I was just saying to dear Ollie the other day," Elspeth rests her cool, well manicured hand on your free hand, sitting on the table, "the two of you should come stay at Saltburn again."
Something constricts in your throat, grip on Oliver's hand tightening momentarily.
"I know," Elspeth is quick to move her hand to your shoulder, seeing the way your expression changes, drops, "but that house still holds so much love for you, my dear pet," and she takes a deep, shaky breath, finally admitting, "and I can't bring myself to be there alone."
Looking to Oliver, he gives you a gentle smile, nothing but sweet warmth and reassurance; he's changed so much since Saltburn, so sweet, so sublime. That version of Oliver didn't know how to love you or Felix in a way that was good for any of you, you came to realise, but this Oliver, oh this Oliver had crafted himself a home in your heart with love you didn't think anyone other than Felix had been capable of.
"It can be our home again," he murmurs, a sentiment Elspeth echoes like she hadn't even realised that was what she had wanted from you both;
"It can be your home again."
The drive to Saltburn feels like a memory, of young laughter and loud music and Summer sweat whipped away by the wind in Felix's convertible. The car you'd chosen to take with you is far more sensible, but still relatively ostentatious, and when you ask Oliver to drive, he of course obliges you. Still, the music is loud, and the day is warm, and even if the two of you are quiet, there's still a warm hand on your knee.
And you still feel loved.
Saltburn creaks and echoes with familiarity.
The doors open, and though you don't recognise the footmen either side of the entrance, you certainly recognise Duncan. He's older, of course, as are you. There's a touch of grey by his temples, and he's paler than you remember, but still prim, still gaunt and haunting -
"Mister Quick," until his eyes fall on you, and he softens almost imperceptibly, but you see it, you hear it in his voice, "and Captain Y/N," almost like it's an in-joke between you both by now.
"It's good to see you, Duncan," you tell him sincerely, and for the briefest moment he actually smiles.
"And you as well."
Everything's the same, just as Elspeth had assured you both. Everything's the same, just as when you'd left. Fled. Alone all those years ago.
Coming back, hand in hand with Oliver, it feels surreal.
Grand foyer, red staircase, secluded alcove that you and Venetia used to tease Felix about regarding his 'accidental' bout of cousin fingering, Henry Seventh's cabinet, the arch Felix claimed his grandmother haunted, the Green Room, gardens through the windows, Rubens that Felix never cared for but you had always appreciated. Still broken piano. Blue Room; still blue. The King's bedroom, not that you cared for Henry the Eighth, but Felix always liked to bring it up. The long gallery. Portraits of Cattons you had never cared for. Shakespeare's folios that you and Felix had spent a Winter going through, just to brag that you had, without realising how few people would care.
Sir James' teddy was absent from it's usual chair. Something about that makes something ache in your chest, just a little. So you look away, to the maze beyond the windows that you never want to go in again.
You know this house, this route, like the back of your hand even now. Oliver holds your hand tightly as you rest your hand on the intricate doorknob of the midnight blue door that you both remember so well.
"Are you okay?" Oliver's voice is quiet, is reverential, as you hesitate. Nodding once, you push open the door.
It still smells like Felix. His things are still here, still a bit of a mess. Books and knickknacks and photos. His wardrobe door is still ajar, the way you know you left it when you'd been scrambling to pack your own garments when you'd last been here, and his clothes still hang there, frozen, a moment in time.
It aches, but it doesn't... hurt. Not like you thought it would. It almost seems silly, to have this preserved for so long.
"Can we stay in here, Duncan?" You call out, knowing he must be around somewhere, he always was.
"I thought you might," Elspeth's gentle voice from the doorway makes you and Oliver both jump. But she's smiling at you both, and once the shock has worn off, you can't help but laugh. It sets you all off, laughing warmly, fondly, all three in Felix's perfectly untouched room.
Elspeth does, however, let you know that they've had the bathroom redone. She doesn't say it's because of Venetia, but you're quietly grateful nonetheless. You don't know if you could bring yourself to bath in there if all you could think about was Venetia's blood across the bathroom floor. It's different now.
When you try out the new tub, still claw-footed, still deep and soothing, there comes a knock at the door you'd left ajar out of habit.
"Mind if I join you?" It's Oliver, with a teasing little smile and hope in his eyes. He does not wait at the door like you know he once had, he is bold, he is unapologetic, he is confident in his love. Enthusiastically you wave him over, delighted to create new, better memories in this bathroom that no longer resembles the one you know.
There's still this strange kind of divide; Oliver, at times, still acts like a guest. Saltburn's been your home for too long for you to feel uncomfortable within it's walls, but Oliver's still always asking permission. For everything. He asks if he can borrow some of Felix's old clothes and looks relieved when you look at him like it's an absurd request.
"He's not going to be wearing them."
Elspeth gets this look in her eyes whenever she recognises any of Felix's clothes on Oliver, fond and nostalgic as she tells him she's glad they're no longer gathering dust.
"Beautiful clothes for a beautiful boy," she liked to say.
It takes you a few weeks to realise Elspeth's ulterior motives. Her health is failing. She has no family left. She needs people. As Oliver had pointed out so long ago, you were both desperate to be needed. Much like when you were younger, your own parents had no qualms about you living your life at Saltburn without them; they'd hire another assistant. The email they'd sent back to you did however note that you had been the best assistant either of them had ever had. It's the nicest thing they'd ever said to you.
Elspeth speaks to you alone one morning during the fall, the grounds turning all shades of golds and oranges.
"I..." your thoughts are moving too fast, her offer was so simple yet so overwhelming, "can't take Saltburn." A deep sigh escapes her, and she looks out over the grounds, but pets your knee, "I won't leave," you try to placate her, "you, or Saltburn, if you'd like me to stay; I'll be like Duncan -" this gets her to laugh, fond and bright, "but I think it will complicate things with my own family."
She tells you she understands. Her voice is getting weaker by the day. Then, after another long moment of gentle silence and contemplation, she speaks carefully.
"And Oliver?"
Part of you kind of knew this was coming.
"He might love Saltburn more than me," you admitted with a chuckle, "and he loves you dearly, you know that right?"
"He's such a strange, beautiful creature," Elspeth muses fondly, "I don't know if James even looked at me the way he looks at you," she smiles at you, expression turning soft and nostalgic for just a moment, "Felix used to look at you like that, didn't he?"
"In his own way," you agreed, unable to look her in the eyes while knowing exactly what she meant, exactly what she could see in this moment.
"They say we have more than one soulmate in our lives, pet," she says softly, reassuringly, and you look up once more. There's gentle hope and fragments of old grief that wrap around your heart as she continues, giving your knee a faint squeeze, "I think you're one of the lucky ones."
And your mind settles back on Oliver, how good, how kind, how loving he's been in the year since you'd reconnected. Finally, you're able to smile.
"I think so too."
Oliver seems genuinely surprised when you and Elspeth approach him with the offer. He keeps looking at you, confused. All you can do is smile, assure him that you want Saltburn to be in his name.
"I'm not abandoning you," you laugh, "I'll be here as long as you'll have me, help take care of any paperwork or maintenance or, well, calling people to take care of those things."
"They're a good house pet," Elspeth actually teases, while Oliver is still silent, looking at you in awe. He stutters through a verbal agreement, and Elspeth delightedly says she'll get the contract drawn up in the next few days.
"Why me?" Oliver finally asks, and Elspeth stands, wrapping her arms around him in a hug.
"You've worked hard all your life, Ollie, I can see that in you," she murmurs, "and you loved the ones so dear to me. I know you will love this home, and my darling Y/N, and one day I know it will be a family home again."
Oliver is quiet during supper, he keeps looking at you with this unreadable expression, almost grateful, but somehow intrigued. There's something lighter about him now, less tension carried in his shoulders, a small smile he can't quite get rid of. After you all eat, he offers you his arm and asks you to stroll the grounds in the moonlight.
"I thought it'd be you," his voice is so soft. The moon makes him glow. He's wearing the pale, linen shirt of Felix's that catches the light so beautifully.
"I could tell," you can't help but smirk, gently ribbing him. When he laughs, it almost sounds disbelieving.
"Saltburn was your home first."
"Saltburn is a place," you tell him, "my home was always the people in it."
"Felix was your home," he remembers when you'd told him that, how wide Felix had smiled when he'd heard it.
"And now," you're surprised by how your voice catches as you realise what you're about to say, "it's you."
"You love me," Oliver turns with wide, adoring eyes, while you can't help your shy smile.
"Of course I love you, you know I love you -"
"You love me-love me," he sounds like he's discovered the meaning of life, like he can see it in your eyes. Then, very suddenly, a whole new realisation seemed to wash over him, "I think I actually want to spend the rest of my life with you."
Oh! Is this -?
"I don't have a ring, fuck-!" Before he can get any further, you're kissing him, wrapping your arms around him, desperate to make him taste how much you fucking love him. Giddy and burning with desire, you feel like a teenager again, overwhelmed with delight and affection in this old house you call a home.
When you suggest that you meet his parents, properly this time, Oliver makes a face like he's bitten a lemon. It's a beautiful, cool mid-morning at the beginning of Winter, grey light reaching through the curtains to caress you and your fiancé, wrapped up in Egyptian cotton sheets.
"I've met them before," you remind him gently, hand splayed out across his chest as he looks at the ceiling, "I don't hold that Summer against you."
"Felix stopped... trusting me," his voice barely breaks a whisper, "he stopped loving me because of them," it trembles, catching, and you see tears in his eyes. A flush was rising up his cheeks, grief and a strange kind of fury overwhelming him it seemed, much to your surprise, "you should hold that Summer against me, should hate me, should -" it's spilling from him now, with such speed, such anger that it's almost frightening.
"Ollie, love -"
"I wasn't in my right mind, I was sick and obsessed and- and- and I can't believe I hurt you like that -"
"What are you talking about?"
Through his tears, his grief, his outburst, Oliver threw his arm over his face, unable to look at you, unable to look at anything in this room he now seemed to regret being in.
"I just wanted him to love me too," Oliver choked out, "I know you tried to help me - I can't believe I hurt you, I know you loved him - but I didn't want him to love anyone if he didn't love me."
"Oliver."
"I put the cocaine in his wine. I gave him the bottle. I left him there."
To your surprise, as much as the news hurts, it comes in a dull wave of grief, not the sharp, stinging kind you were braced for. What you don't expect is the sympathy that wells up inside of you for the man who just admitted to killing your best friend.
But you had spent years grieving for Felix, had come to terms with it, made peace with it. It's a shock to the system, of course, to learn he was murdered, but you can see the hurt, the guilt that Oliver had been carrying with him, and knows how it feels to be overwhelmed with love for Felix Catton to the point where you'd do unspeakable things with him in your heart. You'd ruined lived over one-word insults spat in his direction because that was who you were, that was what you did.
And you knew Oliver Quick, who he was, how he operated, the kind of desperate jealousy and need to be needed that became dangerous or perverse when they went unsated. Neither of you were the people you once were.
Carefully, you drape yourself over Oliver as he wept, wrapping him up tightly in a hug with one arm, other reaching up to brush through his dark, messy hair.
"Loving Felix makes us do terrible things," you murmur softly, fingers carding through his hair, "you took someone special from this world, but we can't change that."
"Why the fuck are you being so nice right now?" Oliver groans, voice full of disbelief, "I just told you -"
"You loved Felix and he stopped loving you back; you were drunk, and obsessive, and out of your mind with some psychosexual desire. You killed the man you loved, that we loved," you recount firmly, and he quiets down, still sniffling, "do you regret it?"
"Yes," he whispers.
"Are you lying?"
A long pause follows.
"I don't know."
"Did you ever stop loving him?"
"I don't think I ever will," then, moving his arm, he reaches out for your face, gently cupping your jaw. His eyes are bright red, smudged tear tracks shining on his cheeks, "I don't think you will either." You shake your head, confirming as much, before you turn your face and press a kiss to his palm.
"You're not that same person, Oliver, neither am I. The version of me from that Summer might never forgive the Ollie that killed Fi, but I know you now, and I know you love me, and you'll love this house, and the memory of Felix, just like I will."
"Why are you so good to me?"
"Because you're not a saint, and you're not a devil. You can't change the past. You're just a human, full of flaws, but you're better than you used to be, I know."
"I love you." He coaxes you forward, bringing you in for a passionate, messy kiss, murmuring against your lips, "I love you, I love you, I love you."
Still, you keep this revelation between the two of you. Elspeth never needed to know.
It was a small ceremony at the beginning of Spring on the grounds of the Saltburn Estate. Elspeth was barely able to get out of bed anymore, so the location was more for her sake than anything else. She'd insisted on taking the reigns for planning the wedding though, looking through folders and magazines with you and Oliver at her bedside.
A beautiful flower archway, Duncan officiating, and only your families as guests. At your suggestion and reassurance, Oliver had worked hard to repair his relationship with his family.
"You don't have to lie about being important anymore," you'd smirked at him, "you're inheriting the Saltburn Estate, you're marrying into my family; you're Oliver Quick, that means something."
Oliver's family had marvelled at the estate the minute they arrived at the property; his sisters and their partners seemed shocked and delighted.
"Is this your place?" One had asked you, eyes bright and incredulous as you and Oliver were giving them all the tour.
"Ollie's actually," you give him arm a squeeze as you give him a proud smile, watching as he ducks his head, flush with embarrassment.
"This is you house, Ollie?! What the fuck!?" Another shouted, even as her own partner laughed while asking her to tone it down.
Before the wedding even begins, his oldest sister has talked him into letting she and her children visit in the Summer.
It comes as a surprise when your own parents show up, though you suspect it's because Elspeth personally called to invite them, not because of you. They too are impressed by the house, but less so than the Quicks; they'd been there for gatherings in years past, after all.
When your grandmother arrives, however, that's when it all becomes real for you. Unlike your parents, she dotes on you. Your grandfather had been the head of the business when he'd been alive; your grandmother was a dedicated professional, but always a romantic at heart, which is where your mother claimed to have gotten her artistic proclivities from.
Oliver says you have the same, beautiful eyes, and she chuckles.
"He's a charmer, I see," she teases, but wraps him up in a hug. "You be good to them, Mister Quick," your grandmother tells him in a faux-stern voice as she leans out of the hug, "we're the kind of family you don't want to get on the wrong side of." Despite how she's waving a finger at him and doing her best angry glare, Oliver can't help but cast you a fond smile, wrapping an arm around you.
"I'm aware, ma'am; every day I feel lucky to have Y/N by my side."
This seems to sate your grandmother, who pets his cheek fondly, and tells you that you've got a good one.
"I think so too."
It's a beautiful, perfect day, the best day of your life so far, where the worst day is now but a mere memory. All that matters is Oliver Quick, and the love in his eyes as he looks at you, as he promises you;
"This house will be full of people who love you for the rest of your life."
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