Ethan Page: 'Cause Your Love is Better Than Any Love I Know. It's Like Thunder -- Lightning (The Way You Love Me is Frightenin')
Pairing: Ethan Page x fem!Reader
Summary: A surprise party for your birthday with lots of familiar faces. But the get-together isn't the only thing your husband has up his sleeve.
rating: G
warnings: none. this is fluff
prompt: Whispering in their ear, lips touching the skin. and “The door’s locked.”
requested by: Anonymous
notes: This is also a tribute of love to the now retired weekly v-log. Written as part of my Ethan’s!Reader series. It can be read standalone, but there are references made to little details from the previous five stories.
So this was the last request I had on my list to fill and it was also request number 50.
Thank you so much for reading and to anyone who requested a story. Thank you for anyone who enjoyed this little world I made for Ethan and his reader wife and their family. I'll admit I got a little emotional closing the door on everything for now. I hope you'll read and enjoy the other stories I'm working on!
tag squad: @gabbynorth98 @brokenglassslippers @alyhull @tryingtofindaplaceinthisworld @irish-newzealand-idian-dutch @sillynilly27 @from-wherever @estrella-brillar13 @emmarablack13 @brittsdmd @dancingwithsilhouettes
Ethan Page: 'Cause Your Love is Better Than Any Love I Know. It's Like Thunder -- Lightning (The Way You Love Me is Frightenin')
“SURPRISE!”
You blink as you look around the backyards. Birthday decorations are strung up on the back porch, balloons tied to chairs and a banner strung up. Twinkle lights decorate the trees along the edges of the yard and friends and family occupied nearly every corner.
And not just the friends you’re used to seeing all the time — more than a few people seem to have made a very long trip to come see you.
Mark is by the grill and has paused what looks like a comically frustrating conversation with both Preston and Danhausen.
Hook, Bowens, Dante and Darius are already over by the swing set with your kids.
Alex Abrahantes was talking excitedly with some of your colleagues from work.
And Scorpio is talking to your mother, who adores him.
Ethan is busy filming your expression as you realize what’s going on, which is why Eddie is actually the first person to reach you. He pulls you into a hug that pulls you right off of your feet and spins you around. “Happy birthday, Ma!” he greets you warmly.
“I’ve asked you not to call her that,” Ethan complains half-heartedly.
Ruby laughs, nudging Eddie so he sets you down and steps aside. “Happy birthday,” she tells you warmly, pulling you into her own quick hug.
A few more people approach you excitedly, but eventually Scorpio shouts out, “All right, let the man say hi to his wife!”
Laughing, you make your way to Ethan and smile at him. “You did all of this for me?”
When he’d woken you up that morning, it was with breakfast in bed before telling you he’d made arrangements for you to go get a manicure and pedicure before you had a nice family dinner together to celebrate while he watched the kids. He grins slyly at you and nods, clearly pleased with himself. You beam up at him in return, leaning up to kiss him as he holds his phone out, framing you both for the camera. You laugh at his insistence on recording everything, even now that he has taken a step back and retired his weekly behind the scenes v-log to focus on other projects and more time with the family. It’s sweet and very much him to want to capture as many memories as he can.
It’s an interesting mix of people in the yard. Your longtime friends have encountered Ethan’s more unique and colorful colleagues over the years and everyone gets along really well.
Well, actually, a lot of them still don’t know what to make of Danhausen, and Mark admittedly gets frustrated and storms away from the grill as he yells at your very nice very evil friend that his name is Mark, not Mike while Danhausen insists that Mark only wears suits and so he cannot possibly be one in the same.
The bright laughter of your son can be heard throughout the yard as he runs around with Dante and Darius. You grin as your daughter seems more than content to follow Hook around. She’s latched onto him quite a bit and has gone so far as to run inside to grab one of her own hoodies, sitting beside him now quietly eating chips while casting sidelong glances at him. You don’t mention that he might be your daughter’s first crush, in case Ethan has another doom spiral about her growing up too fast.
But you’re glad that Hook doesn’t seem bothered by it and you know that as the child of a wrestler, that he actually seems more than willing to be around for your kids whenever they need him.
You laugh to yourself when Danhausen takes a spot next to Hook and seems to engage both the younger man and your daughter in some conversation.
As Eddie and one of your brothers talk loudly, making Ruby burst out laughing over something you couldn’t hear, you realize you’ve formed quite the little extended family.
“I’m pretty sure your mom’s got a crush on Scorpio,” Ethan remarks pulling you from your thoughts. You turn and look as his tag team partner continues to make conversation while she giggles.
“Good thing dad’s a confident man,” you reply with a laugh.
For the most part, it’s a very relaxed party. Ethan had ordered in some food from your favorite restaurant, but Mark, Preston, and Ethan alternate between spending time on the grill to serve up more food for your guests.
You’re kept busy, circulating around and thanking everyone for coming, making small talk, and joining in on conversations.
“Hey,” Ethan’s voice catches your attention. He’d ducked inside a little while ago and had just made his return.
“Where did you run off to?” you ask, eyes narrowing playfully. “Up to no good?”
“I was finishing something important. Come with me."
Your eyebrows lift but you nod. Alex helpfully takes your drink and plate of food to set aside as Ethan takes your hand and pulls you inside the house. He leads you through the house and upstairs into your bedroom. He closes the door behind you and locks it, smiling at you as your eyebrows tick up curiously.
“Sit,” he gestures to the foot of the bed and so you do. “So, I thought about showing this to everyone at the party. Even got a projector set up. But it’s a gift and so I decided wanted to just give it to you and you can decide if you want to do that,” he explains as he connects his laptop to the television in your room. He presses the space bar on his computer and then sits beside you.
Your teeth dig into your lip as the first image on the screen is Ethan, recording himself on his phone. He’s young, it’s before you even started dating but some of the familiar faces in the shot are out in your yard right now. The people that had introduced you.
“Oh, hey,” a voice says from off screen. “That’s her. The one I was telling you about.”
On screen, Ethan of the past turns behind him and sees you. You don’t even fully remember the party where you met. But you remember that your first impression of him had been negative. He’d barely looked at you and seemed full of all of the bravado he brought out in the ring. But watching it play out in front of you, you see that little bit of shyness you saw the first time you really met and remember his confession that night.
“You made me nervous,” he’d told you that night as you shared a Lyft home from a Halloween party. “Everyone who knew you talked about how great you were before we met and then I actually saw you and…”
He’d asked you out after confessing that.
“Wow,” Ethan of the past comments in the video, bringing your focus from the memories in your mind to the ones playing on the screen. “She’s…wow.”
You blush as you sit beside him as if it’s being revealed to you for the first time.
The scene from the party transitions into another. This one taken when you two had just started dating. You’re laughing and making faces at the camera before he tells you he’s taking a video and not photos, and you smack him with a throw pillow.
There are more scenes — footage of the two of you at his shows backstage, spending time with his friends, your friends, your families together. The first trip you’d taken as a couple. Sometimes there are clips of you talking and laughing, other times it’s a montage set to music that you recognize as your favorite songs.
There’s footage from the week he got a concussion six months into dating you and had taken a break from work to stay with you, it was the week you decided to move in together and he proposed. “How long are you going to love me?” on-screen Ethan asks teasingly.
“Until something better comes along,” a younger you replies on screen. “I mean for me. This is as good as you can get.”
His laugh emanates from the television, eying the camera comically to break the fourth wall for whatever audience he was planning on sharing the video with. “Wanna try that again?”
“Forever,” you grin, flashing your engagement ring at the camera.
It’s birthday parties and anniversaries. It’s moments before a date night where he’d whipped out his camera and recorded you despite your protests and laughter while he insisted “It needs to be caught on camera!”
“What does?”
“How beautiful you look right now.”
It’s footage from your wedding, including the way he’d accidentally walked into the room you’d gotten ready in while you were in your dress and every single bridesmaid screamed it was bad luck until he covered his eyes and nearly walked into the wall while shouting apologies and dropping his phone to avoid the superstitious bad luck.
It’s your first dance as a married couple.
It’s the day you actually requested he record without telling him why before letting him know you were pregnant and then follow up footage of him immediately trying to learn everything he can about crib safety standards and announcing you need a bigger house before you take the camera from him and remind him to take a deep breath because you have plenty of time and the way he sits down and pulls you to stand in front of him before he presses a kiss to your abdomen and tells you he loves you.
It’s not all the bright happy memories, there are some parts of the video where you’re both stressed or where pregnancy hormones are driving you insane but Ethan has always insisted that it’s important to document it all — to save it to look back on when you’re old and gray together and appreciate it all.
Footage of your daughter and all of her firsts. Clips of your first Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and her first Christmas. It’s your daughter finding out she’s going to be an older sister. It’s your son and daughter meeting for the first time in the hospital and you two joking about how Ethan had panicked so much he nearly went to the hospital without you in the car when you’d announced you were in labor.
It’s the night your son spent in the hospital before his kidney surgery when he was just two where you’re asleep curled on the hospital bed with him that Ethan apparently filmed from the doorway. “He’ll be okay. He’s strong like her,” he mutters for no one in particular other than the recording, his voice thick with emotion.
It’s every family Halloween costume.
It’s the aftermath of a water balloon fight in the house Scorpio had facilitated.
It’s all of you on the road with him and playing in the park with other members of the roster and your kids.
It’s you giving Dan Lambert a lecture backstage about what is and is not appropriate to say in front of your children or polite public in general while Ethan and Scorpio snicker in the background and the older man apologizes sheepishly to you.
It’s the day he took your daughter to the store and got you a toy you’d always wanted as a child to match the one he gave your little girl for her birthday.
It’s a video from that very morning, making breakfast in bed with help from the kids. And more setting up the party with everyone else in attendance. “You’ve got a good woman,” Eddie says to the camera.
“Oh, trust me. I know,” Ethan from earlier in the day remarks from behind the camera. “I’ve known from the start.”
The scene cuts again to an old video — him filming from behind a curtain at a house show early in your relationship, Ethan was eying the crowd with the others before a match. The camera focuses on you. “See that girl there?” he asks his friends. “I’m going to marry her.” When they ask him how long you’ve been dating from off camera, Ethan of the past lets out a chuckle. “Two weeks. Feels like I’ve been struck by lightning.”
It cuts back to you walking into the party just a little over an hour ago, Eddie scooping you into that hug. “Still feels like I’m struck by lightning every time I see her,” Ethan comments from behind the camera before raising his voice to tell Eddie not to call you “Ma.”
Tears are in your eyes as the screen fades to black and a happy birthday message scrawls across the screen. His hand finds yours and you turn to look up at him. “You’re crying,” he notes, a little concerned. “Did you —”
“I loved it. You’re truly the Scorsese of vlog editing. This is my favorite,” you assure him. Then he lifts his eyebrows at you and you laugh, wiping at your eyes with the hand he’s not holding. “Okay, tied for favorite with the time you took Ruby to Buc-ee’s.”
He lets out a bright laugh at that, leaning over and pressing his lips to yours. “Like I said, something for us to look back on when we’re old and gray.”
You smile, kissing him in return and nodding. “It’s perfect. If you want to show it downstairs we can, but I’ll probably cry again,” you point out with a smile.
“We could go downstairs and play it on the projector,” he acknowledges. “Or we’re alone and the kids are occupied.”
“Almost everyone we know is downstairs or in the yard,” you point out with a laugh even as he hauls you into his lap.
“The door’s locked,” he reassures you, pulling you in for a kiss — deeper and hungrier this time. Now you feel struck by lightning.
Of course, there’s a knock on the door in that very moment. Sighing, you stand up from his lap and go to answer it. Your eyebrows lift as you see Preston standing in your upstairs hallway. “Is everything okay?”
Preston is silent, but maintains eye contact as he lifts up a cheeseburger and takes a bite.
“Dude, we’re not doing the weekly v-logs anymore, I already told you that,” Ethan says, stepping up behind you.
“Are you still going to pay me?” Preston asks.
“Are we giving people monies?” Danhausen’s voice interjects and you peek into the hall to see him standing further down the hall.
You let out a bright laugh and shake your head. “Come on, let’s get back to the party.”
You two do play the video for the entire party. You unwrap some gifts which range from a bag of Doritos and a bouncy ball from Hook and Dante respectively, to home made art from your kids, to a pair of sunglasses from Scorpio that match his and Ethan’s. They sing happy birthday and you’re so enthusiastic about the cake Ethan selected from your favorite local bakery that he jokes to your guests that “Sometimes she’s not even this excited to see me when I get home from the road.”
At the end of the night, the party is winding down. Many of your guests have gone home, but everyone who came in from out of town lingers. Some are going to stay in the guest room or the living room, others rented an AirBNB nearby together. Someone lit the fire pit in the yard and most everyone is gathered around it, making conversation, sipping drinks, and picking at leftover food.
Your kids, who have been up way past their bedtime are tuckered out — crashing from the day’s excitement and the sugar rush from the cake. Hook has gathered up your little girl in his arms and Dante does the same with your son. “We’ll take them up and make sure they get to bed.” You smile and nod, thanking them both.
You start to collect up some trash, but Alex is quick to his feet — taking the garbage bag from you and insisting you not lift a finger since it’s your birthday and he and Ruby start to straighten up. You observe everyone now that they’ve taken your task off your hands.
A strong arm winds around you from behind and then Ethan’s chest is pressed to your back, he leans down towards your ear. “What’re you thinking about?” he asks in a low whisper, lips brushing against your ear as he speaks before he presses a quick kiss to your neck.
“How lucky I am,” you tell him honestly. “How lucky we are.”
You feel him smile against you and he squeezes you tightly. “And it’s only going to keep getting better," he assures you.
You hum happily at that. "And we made it through a whole day, with all of these guys here, and not a single person got themselves hurt."
"OW!" you hear Bowens shouts loudly.
"You were supposed to catch it!" Darius shouts back.
"Is it bleeding?"
"...N-no?"
"Yes, it is," Ruby's voice chimed in.
"You jinxed us," Ethan tells you plainly.
"I know. I know," you lament. "I'll get the first aid kid."
"At least it wasn't me this time," Scorpio tells you as he walks past.
As you step away from your husband to get the first aid kit, you glance over your shoulder and see him looking at you and you offer him a bright smile. "I wouldn't change anything about our lives together," you remind him. "Not even the moments like these," you say before walking towards the door. "Anthony, do you want a regular bandaid or a character one?" you joke.
There's a pause as you slide the patio door open. "Which characters do you have?"
Ethan's laugh booms through the backyard.
No, you wouldn't change a single thing.
