Work Text:
'Cut it out!' Anthony thundered, risking a brief over-the-shoulder to glare at his two youngest siblings in the back seat. Their increasingly vicious debate had been raging since he'd opened his eyes that morning and he'd had it.
'Don't look at me!' Gregory complained, outraged that he was being included in Anthony's ire, 'It's herrrrr!'
'Ugh, you are so delusional,' Hyacinth snapped, her eyes rolling so hard Anthony wondered whether they might actually disappear forever into the back of her head.
'You are both still talking when what I need from you is complete silence.'
'You don't drive with your ears,' Hyacinth pointed out with that acerbic tween logic Anthony was well and truly tired of dealing with.
'It's distracting, like sensory overload,' Gregory supplied helpfully, before flicking his sister's ear unhelpfully.
Anthony cringed as an unholy shriek filled the car and the backseat became a war zone. The car actually began to rock under the force of their fighting. How did these fuckers always seem to sense when he was most stressed and heap on more?
'Stop it this moment or I will cancel the party.'
'You wouldn't, mum wouldn't let you.'
'You want to find out?' Anthony snapped, gripping the steering wheel tighter as he navigated into the left lane, battling to squeeze in front of a van that did not want to let him in. He gave a sarcastic wave through the back window and pressed his foot to the floor, only to have to brake almost immediately as the lights turned red. He closed his eyes momentarily and sucked in a deep breath. Just a few minutes more of this and he could eject the two horrors behind him at the school gate and indulge in a rare, uninterrupted stress session to complete his morning commute.
Thirty seconds. He got thirty seconds of peace before Hyacinth groaned and began wailing.
'My folder! I left my art folder at home!'
'You can do without it for one day,' he tried to reassure her.
'No! It's due today! I need to hand it in or I won't get a grade.'
'This is why I do everything online,' Gregory chimed in with a superior tone that Anthony knew was only going to provoke his sister further.
'It's art, you idiot, I can't email in a painting,' she hissed at Gregory, and then turned back to appeal to Anthony, 'We have to go back!'
'Sorry, Hy. I have a meeting, I can't be late for this one.' Anthony spoke between gritted teeth, trying and failing to keep his tone even. It seemed like every morning brought some new drama with these two. All he wanted was get into the office with enough time to down a strong coffee before he was dragged into endless tedious meetings that he hadn't had time to prepare for. Was that so much to ask?
The obvious solution would be to send Greg and Hy with a driver of course, that is how most of their classmates arrived at the disgustingly expensive private school they attended. But Anthony's dad had always taken him to school and he would be damned if he would let the tradition die with him. He just wished he knew how his father had managed it without bursting a blood vessel.
'You have to go back and get it. Please!' Hyacinth whined, tears beginning to form. Anthony cracked the knuckles of his left hand with his thumb, irritated that he was failing at keeping his family happy again.
'I'm sorry, we can't today. I really need to get into the office and this will be a good lesson for you to get organised,' he tried the firm approach. Not that it had ever worked before.
'No! Anthony you don't understand, I need my folder!' Her voice went up several pitches, her breathing becoming ragged as she worked herself up into a full meltdown. He checked his watch again; Hyacinth's tears were his kryptonite.
'Oh here we go,' Greg groaned, 'we're all going to be late now.'
'Shut up!' Hyacinth shouted.
Anthony made the decision and snapped the steering wheel around aggressively to turn off the main road and loop back home.
THUMP.
Out of nowhere a body bounced onto his bonnet and rolled up the windscreen. Anthony gaped as the figure slid off his car in slow motion.
Wild screams from the back seat.
'Oh my god, Anthony! You killed someone!'
'You killed a cyclist!'
Anthony heard the impatient horns behind him, the sound of his sister announcing she was calling their mother, but mostly he heard ringing in his ears as his life ended. Had he just killed someone?
Feeling like he was moving underwater, he battled with his seatbelt clicker, hand waving frantically over the console as he tried to remember where the hazard lights were on this car.
'Do not call your mother,' he instructed Hyacinth fiercely, lurching back to snatch her phone away.
'Hey! That's mi–'
'Stay in the car.' He cut her off with a full potency glare and backed out of the driver's door, pointing at his siblings like two barely trained dogs. Which … if the shoe fits.
Fucking fuck. Shit.
He rounded the front of his car, hoping like hell that he had not in fact just become a murderer. The cyclist was a woman, he realised, a long plait of dark hair trailing down her back from under a pink helmet that now sat skew-whiff. She was ludicrously dressed in a blinding patchwork of lycra that made his go-to excuse of not having seen her pathetically inadequate.
Slender and long-limbed, the woman was sprawled on her side, just beginning to draw one leg drawn up closer to her chest. One look at the limb told him it was not a mere bruise she was groaning about.
He bent forward to peer over her shoulder, 'Are you ok?'
'What the fuck do you think?' Anthony jumped at the ferocity of her first words.
Not dead then.
'Alright, let's take a breath.'
'I am breathing! You take a breath!' The woman snapped, rolling onto her back and moaning some more.
Anthony raked his fingers through his hair. Fuck's sake. He thought about the notoriously prickly Pronto team sitting in his boardroom waiting for him to present them his final offer. He did not have time for this today.
'Can you move enough to get off the road, do you think?' He asked, checking his watch surreptitiously.
No answer. The woman was trying to sit up and panting in pain. He sighed heavily, waved apologetically at the line of cars behind him and squatted down next to her. She tipped her head back as he leaned closer and Anthony's head swam.
The most startlingly beautiful brown eyes squinted back at him, framed by delicately arched brows. He had hit the most gorgeous woman in the world, so pulse-jumpingly hot that even a bike helmet and being crumpled by pain could not diminish her impact. Suddenly tongue-tied, Anthony couldn't think of a single thing to say. Emergencies were his thing, usually. But in this moment he couldn't think of anything useful like calling for help or doing first aid. His mind could only lament his bad luck in having met her this way.
'My bike,' she whimpered, looking around to find it.
Anthony saw it lying prone in the gutter next to his front wheel.
'It's right there, a little beaten up.'
'Same,' she joked through gritted teeth.
Anthony's eyes wandered down to the leg that she had been holding. It was definitely broken, there was no way that lump near her ankle was normal. He'd have to call an ambulance. That would take at least thirty minutes in peak hour. He wasn't going to make it to his meeting. The cacophony of impatient car horns filling the air matched exactly the panic he was feeling about how his morning was unfolding.
Out of nowhere, a man dressed in overalls and work boots loomed over them, shouting, 'Can you get out of the road already?'
Before Anthony could formulate a response the woman shouted over her shoulder, 'Oh sorry, is my being run over inconveniencing someone?'
'It's peak hour, we all have places to be!' The man shouted back immediately, not at all chastened by the sight of the woman's injury. He had the sort of aggro thick-necked look about him that Anthony recognised as pointless arguing with. Blokes like him only spoke one language.
'Are you fucking serious right now?' The cyclist screeched.
Anthony put a steadying hand on the woman's shoulder and leaned in a bit to say under his breath, 'Just ignore him, I'll take care of it.'
This guy would be the perfect target for all Anthony's frustration about the current situation. He drew on all the menacing posh twat energy he'd mastered at his exclusive boys' school and stepped closer to the guy, walking at him until he was right up in his face and then following him as he stepped back, finger poking into his chest.
'The only place you need to worry about being right now is back in your car, unless you want to join her in waiting for an ambulance?'
Faced with this sudden change in temper and physical threat the man put his hands up in surrender and backed off, 'Alright, alright. Settle down mate, just move out the way.'
'We'll move when it's safe to do so and not a single second before. So either settle in or find another route to work today, mate,' Anthony spat. It wasn't exactly the best example to his siblings but getting out some aggression felt bloody good.
'Fucking ridiculous,' the guy muttered as he turned and walked off, strutting with clear agitation but with his fuse stamped out.
Riding the high of winning that battle, Anthony swung back to the woman in the road and tilted his head cockily, dusting his hands off.
'Has anyone ever told you you're a really angry person?' The cyclist piped up.
'I got rid of him didn't I?'
'Yes, well done.'
Anthony came back to the side of the beautiful woman and squatted down again. 'Maybe we could scoot you to the side?' It could take a while for an ambulance to get here and–'
'No ambulance!' The woman insisted fiercely, 'just get me my phone, I'll call my mum to come and pick me up.'
'Are you joking? You do realise your leg is probably broken?' Anthony gaped at her. What on earth was she thinking?
'Of course I realise that! The leg is attached to me, you know? I can feel it. Just get my phone, in the bag.' She waved over her head, indicating the bag attached to her now crumpled bike and clicked her long fingers.
Anthony gritted his teeth at the order. Beautiful or not, this woman was making it very difficult to care that he had nearly killed her. Grinding his teeth together and huffing through his nose, he swallowed the string of frustrated feedback he had been about to unleash. He instead focused on the fact that he did not need the negative publicity that would come from a front page headline about him abusing an injured woman.
Whatever she was saying, it was evident the woman wasn't thinking straight. She'd just hit her had, potentially, and he needed to make the decision for her.
'I'll just call an ambulance,' he insisted, swearing when the phone in his hand would not unlock. Then he realised it was Hyacinth's.
'No, no ambulance! I'll be fine, just help me move to the side and I'll wait there.' She began trying to shuffle across the asphalt, crying out as she pressed weight onto her hands. Clearly the leg was not the only injury.
'Stop that. How far away is your mum?' Anthony bobbed down and grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to stop moving.
'Not far,' she answered vaguely, avoiding his eyes.
Why didn't he believe her?
'Have you broken a bone before? Because that's about to get real painful when the shock wears off.'
'I'll be fine.'
Anthony dialled the emergency number and began to put the phone to his ear, but before he can it is snatched from his grip and the woman presses the end call button.
'Are you insane?'
'I said don't call an ambulance.'
She'd definitely hit her head.
'We can drive her to hospital!'
Anthony swung around and groaned. Hyacinth was out of the car and around his shoulder before he could intervene, swaddling the woman in her school blazer and babbling on about how close the hospital was and it wouldn't take long at all.
'Hyacinth! We cannot just drive her to hospital.'
'Of course we can!' Hyacinth jutted out her chin in a way that told Anthony he was about to face another losing battle.
'You have school! And she might need urgent care, not to mention I have my–' he broke off, aware of how callous he would sound to list off his mundane work responsibilities in front of someone who was facing weeks of recovery thanks to his lapse in concentration.
It didn't matter what he was about to say, Hyacinth had already summon Gregory out and had begun to explain to the woman how she's an expert at first aid and not to worry about a thing.
'I did a first aid course last week, they made us all do it before our adventure camp next month.'
A weak, 'Oh?', was the only response from the cyclist, whose face was now fading from a healthy golden glow to a dishwater grey as she bit her lip and politely listened to Hyacinth.
'My name's Hyacinth, and this is Gregory, and the one who ran you over is my big brother, Anthony. What's your name?'
'Kate,' the woman bit off, closing her eyes now too. Anthony began to feel that tremble of fear again that he had injured her very badly.
'Are we taking her to hospital?' Gregory looked to Anthony. He'd learned through bitter experience never to follow a Hyacinth order without confirmation from a higher authority.
Anthony dithered for a micro second. A detour to hospital would be the last nail in the coffin of his day. There would be no chance at all of making that meeting. They'd lose the Pronto deal. But also, he felt responsible for this woman, this Kate.
He had hit her, but it was more than that. Beyond her dazzling beauty, Anthony felt something he couldn't quite articulate. A buzzing warmth in parts of his chest he hadn't used in years. It was something about the way she was hiding her pain in front of his brother and sister, partly the way she had refused an ambulance when she so clearly needed one. Her commanding and insistent words made it clear she harboured no desire to be rescued, yet he had never wanted to rescue anyone more.
'Yes, we are taking her to hospital.'