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whorekneecentral · 1 year ago

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Holiday Greetings

Virgil Van Dijk x Fem!Reader

Warnings: holiday postcards bring together friends, old friends reconnect, falling out with family, virgil never gave up on the friendship, mentions of bad relationships, surprise visits, old habits die hard, wet dreams, sharing a bed, making dreams a reality, oral (m!receiving), sub!virg vibes for like 0.2 seconds, penetrative sex (p in v), choking, using of the word 'whore' in a sexual context, sweetness from the big man at the end.

Word Count: 2,934

Author's Note: again, so sorry for posting this late but y'all know the big man is my babyyyyy so hopefully you guys like this one as much as I do!

merry smutmas series

You send your old friend a Christmas card every year and when he sees that a certain someone was no longer in the picture, he pays you a long overdue visit.

The world works in funny ways; the red string theory and what not, you find the people that were meant to be in your lives one way or another.

He just happened to always be your person.

You and Virgil were old friends, you grew up down the street from each other; your families were always interlinked, the two of you attached at the hip - from school to Virgil's football matches around the corner from the houses, you were together.

At 18, you upped and left Holland without so much as a warning; all Virgil received was a letter in the mail, letting him know that something had happened with your family and you could no longer stay there. He tried to get you to come home, telling you that his mom would be more than happy to have you with them, which was true but you assured him you'd be fine.

He never gave up, asking you again when he signed with the Celtic and then again when he was with Southampton and Liverpool.

Despite you not taking him up on his offers to move in, you always kept in contact with Virgil; you didn’t talk often, a happy birthday message or a message of congrats when things went well for his career.

You never fully settled until recently, moving from job to job, place to place. For a while, you didn't have an address, bouncing from Belgium to Germany and then Spain before you finally settled in Switzerland.

Regardless of your lack of address, you and Virgil kept up your tradition of sending holiday postcards. It was your yearly catch-up, but you and Virgil would send a card back-and-forth and write a little message on the back of it.

For the last few years, there has been an addition to your cards; first it was your puppy, Sammy and then over the last 3 years, your boyfriend, John.

Virgil had never personally met John, but based on your type in men, he could tell that John was no good for you. The first card he got with him in it, you were happy, smiling but as the years went on, there was still a smile but he knew you well enough to know you weren’t you.

This year's card arrived early, the first week of December rather than the week before Christmas. Liverpool was wrapping up for the holidays as they'd be going on winter break. Virgil was pleasantly surprised to see that it was just you and Sammy on the card this year. He flipped it over to see what you had written on the back.

Dear Virg,

I don't have much to report this year; turned a year older, got a promotion and I bought a new car - yes I still have the old one, I cannot bring myself to trade/sell it.

I see that you've made some big moves, congratulations skipper! Proud doesn't begin to cover it and you know that I always said you'd make it big.

Hope all is well with you.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Yours always,

Y/n.

Virgil smiles, your words and card tucked safely back into the envelope it came in as he took his laptop out to look up something; flights to Switzerland.

He had some time between the end of the season and his return to Holland for the holidays. What better way to spend the time than to visit his favourite person in the world?

It had been years since he last saw you; frankly he hadn't seen you since you left all those years again but nothing's changed between you two. You were still y/n and Virgil - attached at the hip as always.

Switzerland was even colder as he expected it to be. Despite coming from cold, cold England, Virgil still felt as if he was underdressed.

The car parked at the curb as he checks the return address on your holiday card and the address he had put into google maps. Assuring himself he was at the right place, he got out and grabbed his bags, walking to the porch.

Christmas had always been your favourite holiday so to see your house decked out in decorations, lights and garland wasn't a big shocker. The little plaid doggie bed by the door was an assurance that he was in the right place - you had sent him a picture of Sammy in the same spot when you first adopted him.

Virgil shook off the nerves, knocking on the door. A part of him wanted to run away but another part of him couldn't wait to see you.

Sammy must have made it to the door before you, barking to alert you that someone was at the door. He could hear your voice, "shut your big mouth! I heard it!" You tell the dog, scooting him out of the way to open the door.

"He- what the fuck?" You passed, shocked to see who was at your front door.

"Is that how you greet everyone who comes to your house?" He asked you, a big smile on his face.

You laughed, setting your coffee mug on the entryway table, not saying anything but pulling Virgil into a bone crushing hug; it felt the same as it did all those years ago, it felt like home - he felt like home.

You stepped aside. "Please, come in. Make yourself at home."

Sammy runs over, jumping on Virgil. The man reached down to say hello to the dog, scratching behind his ear. You shut the door, noticing his bags. "Where are you staying?"

He glances at you, the same sly look on his face that you'd seen a million times before. "I was hoping I could stay here?"

You laughed, nodding. "Yeah, of course." You pulled Sammy away from Virgil for a minute, letting him take off his coat and walk into the house a bit more. "What the hell are you doing in Switzerland?" You asked him, sitting on the couch.

Virgil shrugged, joining you on the couch, "I came to see you, seemed like the right time to pay you a visit."

Just as well as Virgil knows you, you know him. You're certain he pieced together your break up and that's why he's here.

"You know you don't need to look after me, Virg. I'm not 15, I'm a big girl." You glance at your friend.

Virgil nods, his hand patting your thigh, "I'm not looking after you, y/n. I'm visiting my friend."

"Well in that case, how about dinner? My treat."

"Oh I'm the footballer and I don't have to pay for dinner? I should come visit more often." He jokes as you reach over his lap to the side table to get your phone.

It was as if no time had passed; you and Virgil comfortable in each other's space as if you were in your childhood bedrooms, giggling about the rumours at school or rerunning the tackles Virgil made on the pitch.

You settled on what to eat for dinner; a local place that made the best pizza on the planet, based on the fact that Virgil ate half the box, you'd say he agrees with your statement.

At some point throughout the night, you two shifted from spot to spot, just chatting about life. From the dining room table to the kitchen and finally back on the couch.

It was rather domestic and so easy for you two to slip into this little routine, even though Virgil had only been there for the evening. You're leaning on him, his arm over your shoulder with Sammy curled up on the other side of him, a movie playing quietly as you continued chatting.

"So do you like it?" You look at him and he nods. "Being captain is the dream come true. It's a great team, the place is so.. I don't think there's a word to explain how special it is to me and the guys.. we've got a fantastic team both on and off the pitch."

"That was such a PR response." You teased, laughing. Virgil smiles, pinching your shoulder softly.

"I'm going home after this, back to Breda. I'm there until new years and then it's back to Liverpool."

"That's nice," you smiled, "tell your mom I say hello."

Virgil laughs. "You can tell her yourself, she always tells me that you two are friends on Facebook."

"Don't diss your mom, dude! You're just hating because your mom is cooler than you and she gets to have me on Facebook and not you."

"I don't have Facebook, I'm not 67 years old."

"You shouldn't hate when you've got a big ass head like that."

"Shut up!" He laughed, smacking your arm softly. He sighs, glancing at you, "you should come home, it'd be nice to go home, no?"

"I.. I can't." You tell him, turning your attention back to the tv.

"Why not? It's been years, y/n. I'm sure your family wants to see you and so much has changed, don't you wanna see our home?"

"I can't, Virg. Not after what happened."

His brows furrowed, leaning back a bit to fully look at you. "What did happen, y/n? You never told me."

You shake your head, things were said that couldn't be taken back - none of which were your fault but no one ever seemed to care. Your family never reached out to apologize so you never did too.

Virgil looks at you, your silence was an answer in itself but he can't help but wonder what went wrong. He had asked his mom, knowing your mom and his were close, they often chatted and still do to this day but his mom never told him anything. She'd often remind him that if he doesn't know, it's because he's not meant to know.

He can't help but feel sad; not only for you but for him, for what could have been if you two had maybe gotten together, if maybe you had never left home.

You quietly get up, excusing yourself and heading up to your room. Virgil hadn't been your place before but in the short time he has been there, he figured out where things went. It was like a second home to him, he took it upon himself to clean up and take Sammy out before coming back in and locking up.

He makes his way up the stairs and knocks on the first door to the right, the same room that you occupied when you were at home.

Suppose old habits die hard.

"Y/n?" He knocks on the door, peeking into the room. "Can I come in?"

You nod, lying on your bed. Virgil lets himself in and sits next to you on the bed. You're on your side, your back to the man as you feel the weight of the mattress shift, his hand passing through your hair gently. You roll, now facing him and curling into his side.

"I'm sorry," he whispers into the silence of the room. "I didn't to upset you when I said-"

"You didn't," you cut him off. "It's just.. complicated is all."

Virgil shifts, now lying next to you and you move to rest your head on his chest. The two of you cuddled against one another, comfortably relaxing as you'd done a million times before when you were teenagers.

You're not sure when the minutes turned into hours but you had both fallen asleep.

The sound of Virgil's voice woke you from your slumber. You thought you heard him say something but when you glanced at the man, he was still fast asleep. You just assumed he was asleep and settled back into bed.

A few moments later, he makes a sound - a soft whimper.

You open your eyes to check on him again, trying to see if something was wrong and yet, he was still sleeping. You figured he was just dreaming.

You see make out his silhouette on the bed, the blanket tossed over Virgil as he shifted in his sleep. You can hear him mumble, you shake him softly. “Virg, you okay?” You ask when he groans. He rubs his eyes, confused for a moment.

“Y/n? What are you doing ?” He hadn’t realized the blanket had slipped down when he sat up. You glance down and you instantly look away. “Oh uh, sorry.”

He was confused for a moment, he looked down and he pulled the blanket back up, his cheeks red and shy. “Sorry! I didn’t realize-”

“It’s okay,” you glance at him. “It happens. I didn't mean to wake you, it's just.. I heard my name and you were, well, groaning." You trailed off, Virgil's cheek burning hot as he looked anywhere but at you.

It takes you a second but you connect the dots. Between the hard cock hidden away under the blanket and the avoidance of his glance, you realized why he was calling your name.

“Oh,” you breathe, “um, if you want.. I can help you with that if you want.”

Virgil seemed shocked by your offer, his eyes widened. "What?"

"I mean, it was obvious you were dreaming of me, Virg. It's not like I haven't seen you naked before," you joked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Yeah but.. this is different."

Your hand rests on his thigh, “not really, I'm just helping you with it.”

Virgil shifts in the bed, suddenly feeling a bit shy and he can’t help but think about what you’d look like on your knees, looking up at him. He nods, “oh-okay.”

“Yeah?” You ask, looking at him. Virgil nods once more, slowly moving the blanket off his lap. You shift to lay between his legs, pulling his cock out of his boxers.

He watches as your lips wrap around his cock, tongue running over the tip. His hand tangles in your hair, pulling it away from your face as you lean down all the way, taking all of him into your mouth.

Your cheeks hollow around him, Virgil's hips buck at the feeling. A half smile playing on your lips when you glance up at him. You can see the red on his cheeks, the way his eyes follow you every move, watching as your head bobbed up and down, your cheeks hallowed around him.

It had been months, if not longer since he’d been with anyone like this; every time he even dared touch himself, you were the thought on his mind. It was like he was a teenager again, crushing on you and just wishing you'd make the first move because as confident as he was on the pitch, he was far too shy to make the move on you.

He'd be lying if he said he never imagined what it would feel like, what you would look like, how you'd make him feel.

It didn’t take long; your hand sliding up his torso and your lips wrapped around him, tongue pressed to the underside of his cock. Virgil's hips buck once more, you can feel him at the back of your throat.

He pushes you off of him, your brows furrow. "What? Something wrong?" You asked him, your tongue passing over your bottom lip, tasting him.

The sight of that alone makes his cock twitch.

"I wanna feel you," he whispers and you can't help the smile on your face.

You let Virgil pull you up for a kiss, tasting himself on your lips as he undressed you. Slowly, a pile of clothes ends up on the floor and you're on all fours. The man's behind you and your back arches, the curve of your spine evident when he drags his finger along it.

Virgil pushes into you, his name falling from your lips. “God, please Virg, like that,” the words tumble out, begging him for more as he fucks you.

His hands squeezing your hips, nails digging into your flesh. Your hand reaching under you, fingers barely reaching to rub your clit.

He pulls you up, his arm wrapped around your neck, your back pressed to his chest. His fingers dig into the side of your neck for a moment, squeezing you a bit.

The two of you facing the mirror in your room, “look pretty girl,” he whispers into your ear, “look how pretty you looked all fucked out.”

Your eyes open, looking at the screen in front of you. his eyes meet yours, and you smile. “You’re such a whore,” he hums, chuckling.

Between the angle you were at and his hand sliding down to rub on your clit, your head drops back onto his shoulder, begging him to let you cum.

Your eyes find him in the mirror and you don’t even have to say anything, he knows exactly what you’re saying.

“Shh, it’s okay sweetheart, I know.” He tells you, thrusts getting sloppier by the second.

The two of you in sync, Virgil's chest pressed to your back as you came down from your orgasm. He peppered kisses all over your back, rubbing your side softly. He leans to press a kiss to your neck before pulling out slowly.

You're flat on your stomach, catching your breath when Virgil moves off of you and shifts to next to you. His arm rests over your back, rubbing your skin soft. "You okay?" He asks quietly.

Glancing at him, you smile. "Perfect."

Virgil smiles, leaning over to kiss you.

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#merry smutmas xoxo #virgil van dijk #virgil van dijk x reader #virgil van dijk smut #football #football x reader #football x you #football x y/n #football smut

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turneradora · 3 months ago

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'RIVALS

‘Lots and lots of sex': Dame Jilly Cooper on her show Rivals

"Would you like a large drink?"

A visit to Dame Jilly Cooper’s house in the Cotswolds is everything you would hope it would be.

It's just after midday, as displayed on the numerous clocks on the packed walls of her hall and living rooms. Almost every surface inch is taken up with art, family photos, framed cartoons or sporting memorabilia - including, rather unexpectedly, a signed Emile Heskey Liverpool shirt.

Despite the relatively early hour, the writer of some of the best-selling novels of the 1980s is keen to share the contents of her drinks cabinet.

She believes in providing old-school hospitality at the former 14th Century monks' dormitory she has called home for more than 40 years, and where she lived with her husband Leo until his death in 2013.

Earlier, on the way into her village, we drove past a jodhpur-clad gent on a horse, who gave us a roguish, charming smile. He could have ridden straight off the pages of one of her Rutshire Chronicles books.

Her so-called "bonkbusters" - a term Dame Jilly does not like - were set in the world of the horse-owning, bed-swapping, countryside-residing upper classes.

"Low morals and high fences" is how she rather perfectly sums up the books. With their mix of sex and scandal, they were publishing sensations.

The second of the books, 1988's Rivals, has just been adapted into an eight-part Disney+ series with an all-star cast including Aidan Turner, David Tennant, Danny Dyer, Victoria Smurfit and Emily Atack.

Dame Jilly served as an executive producer, which is why we have been invited to pay her a visit, although she does not want to claim credit for what she describes as an "absolutely wonderful" adaptation.

"How much of a say did I have? Not much," she laughs, explaining that her grandson Jago was a runner on the production, so when she went visited the set, she was better known as "Jago's granny".

She suggested some changes, though.

"I did occasionally say, 'No, I don't think they should be jumping on each other quite so early in the story' and things like that."

'Sex, drinking and parties'

Set in the world of 1980s TV, Dame Jilly is relieved that the most outlandish sensibilities and plotlines of Rivals have not been toned down for a more sensitive 2024 audience.

In the first episode, before even the opening credits, a pair of fully exposed male buttocks are on display during a "mile-high" sex scene on Concorde.

"That was not in the book," she nods approvingly.

"It’s fun. It’s quite naughty too." She pauses, before adding: "There is a lot of sex. In one episode they have every member of the cast coupled and fornicating for the next 20 minutes and all of that."

Dame Jilly sounds rather shocked by what she saw. "Well, 87 is very old and you do forget about sex," she offers by way of explanation.

When I ask her what in life makes her blush, she gives a rather surprising answer. "Books I wrote in the old days. Because I'm amazed at some of the things I wrote about. They are quite strong."

It turns out that she is currently in the middle of re-reading Rivals to swot up ahead of more interviews about the show.

"Lots and lots and lots of sex," is her review.

"The 80s really were the most fun time," she muses.

"Masses of sex, masses of drinking, masses of parties. The younger generation all wish they had been born then."

However, she's quick to point out that one of the most non-MeToo-friendly aspects of the TV series, when an uninvited bum grope is used as a replacement for a chat-up line, wasn't in the print version.

There are many aspects of the 1980s for which she is nostalgic, in particular what she perceives as a major change in the dynamics of relationships.

"I think women are much tougher, much stronger and much more forthright. And I think men are much, much less macho. I mean, macho has gone. You are not allowed to be macho.

"Women are stronger and men are weaker, therefore there is not so much sexual desire between them," is her summation.

She also believes there is another contributing factor to a decline in modern love lives.

"Everybody jogs. They get up in the morning, they jog all around the countryside for hours. They do exercises. That’s what they do now. They don't have sex any more. They are far too tired to have sex now. Jogging is bad for people's love life. Ruinous."

Back in the 1980s, the idea of Jilly Cooper teaming up with Disney would have seemed as likely as Rivals being chosen for Jackanory.

There is no doubt that she's thrilled by the collaboration.

"I loved Disney as a child. Passionately. Dumbo, Bambi."

There are many aspects of the 1980s for which she is nostalgic, in particular what she perceives as a major change in the dynamics of relationships.

"I think women are much tougher, much stronger and much more forthright. And I think men are much, much less macho. I mean, macho has gone. You are not allowed to be macho.

"Women are stronger and men are weaker, therefore there is not so much sexual desire between them," is her summation.

She also believes there is another contributing factor to a decline in modern love lives.

Back in the 1980s, the idea of Jilly Cooper teaming up with Disney would have seemed as likely as Rivals being chosen for Jackanory.

There is no doubt that she's thrilled by the collaboration.

"I loved Disney as a child. Passionately. Dumbo, Bambi."

In previous adaptations of her work, Dame Jilly was not happy with the casting of "the handsomest man in England" Rupert Campbell-Black, the fictional former Olympian and future Conservative MP, notorious for his conquests in the boardroom and the bedroom.

This time, the part has gone to the English actor Alex Hassell, who starred in His Dark Materials. In Rivals, he is seen without any material at all, courtesy of a nude tennis scene.

"They interviewed 600 people for that one," reveals Dame Jilly, who was delighted with the final choice, despite some obvious differences to her literary creation.

"He's very handsome. Rupert's blond-haired and blue-eyed in the book, but he's become dark and dark-eyed. But he’s very sexy."

Further details about her main character are explained during a walk with Dame Jilly through her large garden, as she points out the view over a valley, which inspired the literary location of his mansion.

She also guides us to small two-storey outbuilding, gently announcing: "I wrote Rivals in there. Above a room with all the garden tools. It was very quiet."

The only hard part about interviewing Dame Jilly is trying to stop her continually asking her own questions, such is her enthusiasm and interest in every aspect of life.

She reveals that until Rivals she had never heard of Danny Dyer ("he's lovely, quite shy"), the aspect of modern life which most frustrates her is inheritance tax, and she is not a fan of the concept of internet dating ("awful").

She also enjoyed looking back at a busy year, which has included having a damehood bestowed on her by King Charles.

It turns out he used the occasion to pass on some betting tips. "He laughed and said, 'By the way, if you are going to Ascot, we’ve got some rather good horses'."

There was also an invitation to Downing Street by the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who had revealed himself to be a fan of her books. "He was lovely," she enthuses.

"The King. A prime minister. I’ve got about a bit," she giggles. "There was me saying I never meet men any more."

One thing she will not be doing is writing anymore Rutshire Chronicles: "No, I think Rupert’s old enough now."

However, this TV version of Rivals, only goes up to halfway through the novel, so if successful, the plan would be more seasons.

"I hope so, yes," she beams. "That would keep us all very happy for the next few years."

We are invited to take a seat at the kitchen table, followed by an offer of cakes and more suggestions of stiff drinks.

When I ask if a cup of tea could be an alternative, a look combining disappointment, disapproval and pity comes over her face.

Once again, modern man has let Dame Jilly Cooper down.

Rivals is on Disney+ from 18 October.

#aidanturnerinternational #aidan turner #séries #rivals #declan o’hara #declan

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charlesandmartine · 2 days ago

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Tuesday 24th December 2024

It doesn't seem possible that it is Christmas Eve. Christmas does seem to have snuck up on us. There are trees and lights here, and I think I heard jingle bells in Coles yesterday, but the whole razzmatazz thing is not really in train here or anywhere on our travels such as it usually is at home. Coles are insistent on the TV that I buy a ham the size of a small country, we settled for a very nice basted and stuffed joint of pork in a small box. We note that Love Actually is on Stan, as is 'Its a Wonderful Life.' Well, that's TV sorted. 'Gavin and Stacey' is on a paid channel, so we might have to wait till we get home for that, so no spoilers, please. Our Christmas Day shopping complete, all in, including Coles finest mince pies, veg, ice cream, SB, a feast let me tell you, tallied about £40. Bargain.

Manly was heaving today, and such a contrast to the town we left in October, which, of course, was still springtime. Now, it has emerged like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Manly is now vibrant with life and colour. The cafés open and spilling out onto the streets, the Corso, previously an empty street, now with a bustling street market selling trendy craftware. Young folk everywhere, milling around any outlet like moths to a light bulb. We described it as Clapham by the Sea. We bought a pie.

This evening, we caught a ferry into Sydney to celebrate Christmas at St Andrew's Cathedral for four lessons and carols. Like Liverpool, Sydney has two cathedrals; St Andrew's being the Anglican one. The service was extremely good, starting in the traditions of time immemorial as the lone chorister sings the first verse of Once in Royal David's City before the choir processes up the nave and the congregation joins in. The music was excellent, led by a very competent Director of Music who coaxed all of us to belt these familiar carols out. The building itself was quite remarkable. Firstly, building work began in 1819, which is just 31 years after the first fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour. When all other aspects of building a new city urgently needed attention, they built a cathedral as well. Its first architect, Francis Greenaway, had been transported for fraud!Secondly, it is a faithful but smaller replica of a Norman European Cathedral, built 1000 years before in the Perpendicular style similarly used in Canterbury, Winchester, and York. To put a perspective on timing, 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing,' was penned by Charles Wesley, who died just at the time of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. This is a young country that has come such a long way in such a short time.

It was surreal to attend a carol service wearing shorts. The vicar in his opening remarks apologised if it was a little warm in the cathedral, but they had left the doors open all day hoping to cool it, and fans were installed to move the air around. Compare this to last Christmas and our attendance at a similar service in Gloucester Cathedral. We froze.

Leaving the service we strolled back down George to see celebrations in the square by the old GPO building where a massive Christmas tree had been erected, and festivities with band and choir were leading community singing of seasonal songs. Very jolly.

We then made our way to Circular Quays and the Fortune of War pub, the oldest in Sydney, which first served beer in 1828. A great atmosphere, served by Irish barmaids, and drinking Byron Ale. Great end to a most enjoyable day. We walked home, passing houses in dark streets, gardens bedecked with Christmas lighting, loving the atmosphere here, our second time here at Christmas.

ps. We had our first mince pie of the season today.

#St Andrew's Cathedral Sydney #The Fortune of War

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dailyanarchistposts · 23 days ago

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Way of death

Still, the emphasis on debt is puzzling, since nothing in the ethnography suggests that in the 1950s debt was a pervasive concern of everyday Tiv life. Here I think we have to turn to a larger historical context.

The early history of the Tiv is difficult to reconstruct, but they appear to have arrived in the Benue River valley and adjacent lands sometime around 1750 – that is, during a time when all of what’s now Nigeria was being torn apart by the Atlantic slave trade. Early stories told how the Tiv, during their migrations, used to paint their wives and children with simulated smallpox scars, so that potential raiders would be afraid to carry them off. They established themselves in a notoriously inaccessible stretch of country, and offered up ferocious defence against periodic raids from neighbours to their north and west (Abraham 1933: 17–26; Akiga Sai 1954; Bohannan 1954). Some of these raids were not entirely unsuccessful. It’s probably not insignificant that the nearby Jukun kingdom, which made a series of ultimately unsuccessful attempts to conquer the Tiv in the 18th century, disposing many Tiv captives to slave-dealers on the coast in the process, was also seen, in later times, as the real origin of the ‘organisation’ of the mbatsav (Abraham 1933: 19, 31–5; Curtin 1969: 255, 298; Latham 1973: 29; Tambo 1976: 201–3).

One might also consider the actual origin of the famous copper bars used as social currency.

Copper bars had been used for money in this part of Africa for centuries; often, it seemed, they were used not just for social purposes but broken up into small change for use in ordinary commercial transactions (Jones 1958; Latham 1971; Northrup 1978: 157–64; Herbert 2003: 196). Ibn Battuta saw people using copper bars to buy everyday wares in marketplaces in the nearby Niger region as far back as the 1340s. Most of the bars current in 18th- and 19th-century Tivland, on the other hand, were not local products. They were mass-produced in factories in Birmingham, and imported through the port of Old Calabar at the mouth of the Cross River, by slave-traders based in Liverpool and Bristol. The Tiv were unusual in restricting these bars to social purposes. In all the country adjoining the Cross River – that is, in the region directly to the south of the Tiv territory – they were still used as everyday currency.

It is hardly surprising that Tiv were suspicious of such items. Almost everywhere else, they were also the currency of the slave. During the 1760s alone, perhaps 100,000 Africans were shipped down the Cross River to Calabar and nearby ports, where they were put in chains, placed on British, French or other European ships, and shipped across the Atlantic – part of perhaps 1.5 million exported from the Bight of Biafra during the whole period of the trade (Eltis et al. 2000; Lovejoy and Richardson 1999: 337). Some had been captured in wars, raids or simply kidnapped. The majority, though, were carried off because of debts.

In fact the Atlantic Slave Trade as a whole was a gigantic network of credit arrangements. Ship-owners based in Liverpool or Bristol would acquire goods on easy credit terms from local wholesalers, expecting to make good by selling slaves (also on credit) to planters in the Antilles and America, with commission agents in the city of London ultimately financing the affair through the profits of the sugar and tobacco trade (Sheridan 1958; Price 1980, 1989, 1991). Ship-owners would then ship their wares to African ports like Old Calabar. Calabar was the quintessential mercantile city-state, dominated by an African elite who dressed in European clothes, built themselves European-style houses, and in some cases even sent their children to England to be educated.

On arrival, European merchants would negotiate the value of their cargoes in the copper rods that served as the currency of the port. The cargoes themselves consisted of cloth, iron and copper ware, incidental goods like beads, and substantial numbers of firearms. The goods were then advanced to Calabar’s merchant elite, again on credit, who assigned them to their own agents to move upstream.

The obvious problem was how to secure the debt. The trade was an extraordinarily duplicitous and brutal business, and merchants who often doubled in the interior as no more than raiders and kidnappers were also notoriously bad credit risks. As a result, a system quickly developed where European captains would demand security in the form of pawns.

It would seem that, with the development of commercial towns on the West African coast, institutions that must have originally resembled Lele pawnship, or Tiv wards, had gradually transformed into what was effectively a form of debt peonage. We don’t know precisely how it happened, but the process was clearly well under way even before Europeans appeared on the scene in the 16th century. Debtors would pledge a family member as surety for a loan; the pawn would then become a dependent in the creditor’s household, working his fields or tending to his household chores – their persons acting as security and their labour, effectively, substituting for interest. Still, there are clear signs of a historic connection: for instance, if a girl was pledged, the creditor generally had the option of marrying her when she reached maturity, thus cancelling the debt, exactly as among the Lele. And critically, pawns were clearly distinguished from slaves. The difference only became blurred once it became the custom for the masters of slaving ships, on advancing goods to their African counterparts, to demand pawns – for instance, two of the merchants’ own dependents for every three slaves to be delivered, preferably, including at least one or two members of the merchants’ families (Lovejoy and Richardson 1999: 349–51; 2001). This was in practice not much different than demanding the surrender of hostages, and at times created major political crises if captains, tired of waiting for delayed shipments, decided to take off with a cargo of pawns instead.

Upriver, debt pawns also played a major part in the trade. In the Cross River region, this trade seems to have had two phases. The first was one of absolute terror and utter chaos, in which raids were frequent, and anyone travelling alone risked being kidnapped by roving gangs of thugs and sold to Calabar. Villages lay abandoned; many fled into the forest; men would have to form armed parties to work the fields (Equiano 1789: 6–13). This period was relatively brief. The second began when representatives of local merchant societies began establishing themselves in communities up and down the region, offering to restore order. The most famous of these was the Aro Confederacy, who, calling themselves ‘Children of God’, and backed by heavily armed mercenaries and the prestige of their famous Oracle at Arochukwu, created their own justice system, with the Oracle acting as a kind of regional court of high appeal (see Jones 1939; Ottenberg 1958; Afigbo 1971; Ekejiuba 1972; Isichei 1976; Northrup 1978; Dike and Ekejiuba 1990; Nwauwa 1991). This system was notoriously harsh, and itself seems to have functioned above all to either reduce as many villagers as possible into slavery by judicial means, or to assign penalties (always denominated in brass rods) so hefty that culprits would be forced to sell themselves or members of their families into slavery.

These same merchant societies also assisted in the dissemination of a secret society called Ekpe, most famous for sponsoring magnificent masquerades and for initiating its members into arcane mysteries, but that also acted as a covert mechanism for the enforcement of debts. In Calabar itself, the Ekpe society operated primarily as a means of enforcing contracts and collecting debts (Latham 1973: 38). But it was open to anyone willing to pay the hefty initiation fees – which were also exacted in the brass rods the merchants themselves supplied. In the town the fee schedule for each grade looked like this (from Walker 1875: 120):

In town, membership became the chief mark of honour and distinction. Entry fees were no doubt less exorbitant in small, distant communities, but the effect was the same: thousands ended up in debt to the merchants, whether for the fees required for joining, or for the trade goods they supplied (mostly cloth and metal put to use creating the equipment and costumes for the Ekpe performances), debts that they thus themselves became responsible for enforcing on themselves. These debts, too, were regularly paid in people, ostensibly, yielded up as pawns. But in these cases the line between pawns and slaves soon became effectively non-existent.

In the countryside, practices varied. In many areas, copper rods became general purpose money. In the Afikpo district (Ottenberg and Ottenberg 1962: 124), on a remote part of upper Cross River, we learn that copper bars, supplied by the merchant societies, were not used to buy food but restricted to social purposes, ‘for gifts and for payments in funerals, titles, and other ceremonies’. Most of those payments, titles and ceremonies however were tied to the secret societies that the merchants themselves had brought to the area:

In the old days, if anybody got into trouble or debt in the upper parts of the Cross River, and wanted ready money, he used generally to ‘pledge’ one or more of his children, or some other members of his family or household, to one of the Akunakuna traders who paid periodical visits to his village. Or he would make a raid on some neighboring village, seize a child, and sell him or her to the same willing purchaser. (Partridge 1905: 72)

The passage only makes sense if one recognises that debtors were also, owing to their membership in the secret societies, also the debt collectors. The seizing of a child can only be a reference to the local practice of ‘panyarring’, current throughout West Africa, by which creditors despairing of repayment would simply sweep into the debtor’s community with a group of armed men and seize anything – people, goods, domestic animals – that could be easily carried off, then hold it hostage as security. It was actually a quite sensible expedient in an environment with no central authority, where people tended to feel an enormous sense of responsibility towards other members of their community, and very little responsibility towards anyone else. In the case cited above, the debtor would, presumably, be calling in his own debts – real or imagined – to those outside the organisation, in order not to have to send members of his own family.

Such expedients were not always effective. Often debtors would be forced to pawn more and more of their own children or dependents, until finally, there was no recourse but to pawn themselves (Harris 1972: 128). And of course, at the height of the slave trade, ‘pawning’ had become little more than a euphemism. The distinction between pawns and slaves had largely disappeared. Debtors, like their families before them, ended up turned over to the Aro, then to the British, and finally, shackled and chained, crowded into tiny slaving vessels, and sent off to be sold in plantations across the sea.

∗

If the Tiv, then, were haunted by the vision of an insidious secret organisation that lured unsuspecting victims into debt traps, whereby they themselves became the enforcers of debts to be paid with the bodies of their children, and ultimately, themselves – one reason was because this was, literally, happening to people who lived no more than a few hundred miles away. Nor is the use of the phrase ‘flesh debt’ especially inappropriate. Slave-traders might not have been reducing their victims to meat, but they were certainly reducing them to nothing more than bodies.

What was remarkable that all this was done, the bodies extracted, through the very mechanisms of the human economy, premised on the principle that human lives are the ultimate values, to which nothing could possibly compare. Instead, all the same institutions – fees for initiations, means of calculating guilt and compensation, social currencies, debt pawnship – were turned into their opposite; the machinery was, as it were, thrown into reverse; and, as the Tiv also perceived, the very gears and mechanisms designed for the creation of human beings collapsed on itself, and became the means for their destruction.

As the above examples reveal, the change could only be effected by violence – in the case of the Atlantic slave trade, what is almost certainly the greatest and most catastrophic outbreaks of commercial violence in the history of the world. Yet at the same time, I think the very intensity of the catastrophe can help lay bare some of the mechanisms by which human economies could have, in many other times and places in human history, overcome the conceptual barriers between social currencies, as tokens of a debt that cannot be paid, and commercial currencies, as means of cancelling debts in their entirety. One thing is clear: the change was effected by violence. Above all, it was only violence that could rip a human being entirely from the web of unique human relations that thereby made her a unique individual, a daughter, sister, wife, lover, friend, so as to make her the exact equivalent of anyone else. But of course, this violence was already present even when lives could only be equivalent to other lives. Among the Lele, men could not be compelled to do anything they did not agree to do, but women could still be beaten if they completely refused to comply with the system that rendered them exchangeable. Among the Tiv, Akiga Sai is even more explicit:

Under the old system an elder who had a ward could always marry a young girl, however senile he might be, even if he were a leper with no hands or feet; no girl would dare to refuse him. If another man were attracted by his ward he would take his own and give her to the old man by force, in order to make an exchange. The girl had to go with the old man, sorrowfully carrying his goat-skin bag. If she ran back to her home her owner caught her and beat her, then bound her and brought her back to the elder. The old man was pleased, and grinned till he showed his blackened molars. ‘Wherever you go,’ he told her, ‘you will be brought back here to me; so stop worrying, and settle down as my wife.’ The girl fretted, till she wished the earth might swallow her. Some women even stabbed themselves to death when they were given to an old man against their will; but in spite of all, the Tiv did not care. (1939: 161)

Anthropologists have spent much of the 20th century studying kinship systems, often creating elaborate and elegant diagrams to understand what Le´vi-Strauss so famously called ‘the exchange of women’ (1949). It was only after feminist authors like Gayle Rubin (1975) began to point out just how coercive such systems ultimately are, how much violence lay beneath them, that anthropologists suddenly seem to have concluded that the entire subject was no longer particularly interesting. Yet it would appear that it is precisely through elaborating on this underlying violence, through the transformation of pawns into peons, for example, that systems of debt could begin to take what we would now consider commercial form: that is, as a series of quantifiable, fully exchangeable equivalents, and that social currencies could become money in the familiar sense of the term.

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seabreeze2022 · 4 months ago

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Wales day 6 and 7, August 2024.

Today we trek to a Castle in Caernarfon on the Wales mainland. Neil and Beverley have seen this multiple times so they did some shopping in town while Nancy and I did a 1 hour self guided tour.

Neat little town, this was a four day weekend and it was busy.

You can’t go to Caernarfon without going to the “Black Boy Inn.” As the sign says, built in 1522. Making it one of the oldest pubs in Wales. To pit in perspective, 254 years before America was founded.

This is the front door.

Neil and Nancy bellying up to the bar while putting in our order of Guinness.

Round two….

Wales is known for their love of poetry. They have a yearly competition where the winner is presented with a one of a kind hand built chair. Here I am sitting in one from a bygone era.

From the “Black Boy Inn” we headed to a great Indian food dinner. I thought it a bit strange that a sign in the entry said “no personal sodas allowed.” Turns out being muslim they did not sell alcohol. So you were allowed to bring in your own beer, just not sodas.

Day 7 morning walk. One of many wild flowers, vines and blackberries along the walk.

Neil’s twin sister Janet and her son’s dog joined us for the walk this morning. The day prior we ran into one of Neil’s neighbors near Saint Ceidio’s Church. She mentioned she had the key to the church and helped keep an eye on it. When stopped at her house and retrieved the key that day. She was kind enough to invite us in. She and her husband had taken an old water mill that was in ruins and rebuilt a beautiful house out of it. So today we will get inside of the church.

This church is a 19th century church built on a site that may have been used as a church as long ago as 630 ad. This church was rebuilt using the stones from a 14 th century church previously sitting here.

West wall with its bellcote.

Neil with the key to the door. The round headed doorway may be from the 14th century.

This church has not been in use for many years. So we had to knock down several spiderwebs. Neil made himself at home in the pulpit. Which he had also done in the church in New Bedford, Mass. Which was featured in the movie Moby Dick.

In the back of the church was a stretcher used to carry caskets to the graveyard.

An inscription on slate in the memory of a 21 year old who died in 1802.

Dropped the key off at the old mill which is now a house.

Janet, Charlie and Nancy checking a pasture on the way home. Hurry up we don’t want to miss tea time!

After lunch we drove to the north shore of Anglesey to look at this lighthouse on the point to the right.

Point Lynas lighthouse is very unique. Since it is plenty high to see from the sea. It is built into the wall of the building with light only visible for 180 degrees.

The walk to the lighthouse.

The gate leading to the lighthouse. There are a couple of rooms that you can rent here. Not sure how nice those expensive rooms would be when the fog horn sounds.

Here is the actual light. There is a modern radar antenna, and anemometer on the roof. The ship pilots used this point to help ships getting to Liverpool. The pilot station was built in 1776. This light was built in 1835 which is visible for 18 nautical miles.

A heather covered hillside leading to the water. One seal was visible nearby.

Windy out here on the point.

View from the point back towards the lighthouse.

Neil in the heather.

Neil working the lath in his shop, which he let Nancy try her hand at. One more night watching “Rawhide” then we leave on the ferry the next day for Dublin. What a great vacation, thanks to Neil and Beverley Gadsby.

#seabreeze2022 #seabreeze2023

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lavelleestates · 1 year ago

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protect-daniel-james · 1 year ago

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Jamie in Liverpool. the mid-1990s, Liverpool slowly waking up from the nightmare that was the 1980s. “The city is starting to grow again, come alive, new venues opening, new buildings going up. It feels like we have to reflect that with what we do – the extra hours in training, working on our games, finishing late, the going out afterwards, sharing that buzz, the little ripples of excitement that are coming through with the new music and clothes, with the optimism of house music and kids going to Ibiza and bringing it all back with them.“ New buildings growing in and around the city center, EU-fundings materializing, owners of the land finally investing money into new developer projects after years of leaving the land untouched and obsolete after getting it in the era when the city council was frantically trying to get money from its selling...No more city on the brink of collapse. No more Thatcher’s England. Little Tory Franko arrives in the wilderness, the jungle. Of course Jamie fits into the city. (Jamie didn’t feel like it in the first years, and described himself as an outsider). Of course Franko doesn’t. (Frank Sr. surely watched the news on the TV with a smirk. Those fucking Scousers. Thatcher sees right through them. They just want more money - for what? To waste on the freeloaders on benefits?).

This fic can be a love letter to Liverpool. I wrote about Everton and Liverpool in my thesis, and I fell in love with the city and its story.

#look idk what Frank Sr.'s political inclinations are #but he strikes me as the type to label himself a self-made man and say #if I made it you can too so stop complaining #(we see how he treated Franko)#lampardverse #that's a fic prompt

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ollieofthebeholder · 1 year ago

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to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest): a TMA fanfic

<< Beginning < Prev. || AO3

Chapter 33: August 2000

This will be the third year in the row they’ve done this, but the first they don’t have to sneak away to do it. Not that there’s anything wrong with where they’re going, exactly, except that they probably aren’t technically old enough to do this on their own, but the bigger issue is Gerard doesn’t usually ask his mother for the money ahead of time. She hasn’t noticed yet—or said anything if she has—but it’s still a risk. Honestly, that adds to the thrill of it.

But he doesn’t have to this year. He’s developed a knack for spotting rare books that aren’t…the sort his mother trades in…and discovered, to his mild surprise, that he’s also quite good at selling them at a profit, and he’s saved up enough that he doesn’t have to rob the till to make up the difference. So this year, rather than stay out all night the night before and meet Melanie and Martin once they’ve found a suitable excuse to slip out and join him, Gerard boldly knocks on the door of the house they’ve all been living in for the last year, and when Uncle Roger answers with a benevolent smile, he asks if Martin and Melanie can come with him for the day.

“Yes, I think you’re old enough to be responsible,” Uncle Roger says, which Gerard tries very hard not to resent, and lets him in to go get the other two.

An hour later they’re ensconced in a compartment on a train, breathless with laughter and also a little bit of exertion, considering they cut it pretty close and only just made it onto the 8:58 before it pulled out of the station, but that’s part of the fun of it. Gerard leans back in his seat and takes a moment to study Martin and Melanie—he and his mother have been out of the country for the last three months, so he hasn’t seen them. Melanie’s hair has grown out long enough that it brushes her shoulders, but she’s cut her bangs into a rather flattering asymmetrical sweep across her brow, and she’s had her ears pierced. Martin has new glasses, the lenses thicker than last year’s, and he’s switched from plastic to steel rims, but the eyes behind them sparkle with delight. They’ve obviously been spending a lot of time outside in the sun—Melanie’s neck and shoulders are reddish-pink and Martin’s face is so freckled you almost can’t see the skin underneath—and they look…good.

At the same time, there’s something a little off about both of them, and Gerard can’t figure out exactly what it is.

“Are you going to tell us where we’re going this year?” Martin asks. “Or is it a surprise?”

“Liverpool,” Gerard says. Martin’s face lights up. “So we’ve got a bit under three hours to catch up. I want to hear what you two have been up to while I’ve been gone.”

Melanie immediately launches into a description of exams and end-of-term parties, of imaginary games played in Regent’s Park and hidden corners of London explored. Martin nods along and occasionally puts in a word here or there, but doesn’t contribute until Melanie prompts him and he shyly admits he’s started learning to row.

“I thought it might…you know. Help,” he says, gesturing at his body. “But it’s not.”

“You’re not built like that.” Gerard’s education has been more skewed towards the esoteric and the paranormal than the practical, so it’s not like he has scientific knowledge to back him up, but the fact of the matter is that Martin has always been, not to put too fine a point on it, fat. He doesn’t overeat—he doesn’t starve himself, either, Melanie and Gerard won’t let him—and he’s walked more of the city than the other two put together. He’s also strong for his age, frequently hauling boxes of books around the shop for Gerard’s mother and lifting both Melanie and Gerard up to high places with hardly a thought, and now the rowing. But he’s still fat, so as far as Gerard is concerned, that’s how he’s made and that’s how he’s going to stay. Either that or he’s going to be twelve feet tall by the time he’s sixteen. He also knows it doesn’t usually bother Martin unduly that he is fat. “Has your mum been giving you crap about it again?”

“Maybe a little,” Martin admits. “I do enjoy rowing, though. I’m good at it. And it’s…nice to be good at something that isn’t…that.”

The temperature in their compartment drops a couple of degrees. Gerard’s stomach lurches as he realizes that Martin and Melanie have talked about everything but the shop. It’s not open quite the same number of hours when Gerard and his mother are out of town, but Aunt Lily is still there twice a week, and it being summer Martin at least has almost surely been helping, but Melanie didn’t mention it and neither has Martin.

“Have you…found any more of…his books?” Gerard can’t bring himself to say Jurgen Leitner’s name. His hatred and resentment of the man, and his books, have been growing steadily over the past few years. “Or books of power?”

“N-no,” Martin says, but there’s something uncertain in his voice. Gerard looks at him until he caves and admits, “Not books.”

Gerard’s stomach does another somersault. “What happened?”

Martin takes a deep breath. “I—it was a person. At the end of term concert, someone bumped into me and my glasses fell off, and I—when I looked up, I-I swear I didn’t mean to, but I saw—h-he was, he’d been touched. And then he came to the shop a couple weeks later, a-and he recognized me.” He rubs his cheek in a seemingly unconscious gesture. “He had a book to sell and, and he asked if getting rid of it would make everything stop, and he got so mad when I said I didn’t know…”

“It—it probably won’t, but—that’s not your fault,” Gerard stammers, staring at Martin. “Wait, what do you mean you could see he’d been touched?”

Martin blinks at Gerard. “I mean he had the same…like the books. It’s, the books aren’t magic, Gerry, they’re just…full of the Fourteen. That’s what I see when I look at them. I thought you knew that.”

“I guess it just never occurred to me.” Gerard looks at Melanie. “Did you know that?”

Melanie frowns at him. “Yes? I’ve known that since we had our eye exams at school last year and he told me to mind my manners because the bloke doing them had something to do with the Flesh.”

Gerard turns back to Martin. “How could you tell that?”

“They’re all different colors,” Martin says. What of his skin isn’t freckled turns pink. “S-sorry, I—I forget sometimes you two can’t see them too. The, the touches or—I don’t know what to call them.”

Melanie folds her arms over her chest. “I’ve tried. I can’t make myself see them. You think there’s like a carrot or something that makes it easier to see that the Fears have been somewhere?”

“That’s a myth. The whole thing about carrots making your eyesight better, I mean.”

Gerard nods, but doesn’t tell Melanie the truth—that she doesn’t want Martin’s ability. It’s been bestowed upon him by the Ceaseless Watcher, and gifts from the Fourteen always come with strings attached, really nasty ones usually. At this point, the best he can do is just protect his brother and sister as much as he can and hope nothing ever pulls on those strings.

“Are they at least nice colors?” Melanie asks, slumping down in her seat so she can prop her feet on the cushions opposite. “I mean, as much as anything about the Fears can be nice.”

“They’re not…awful,” Martin says slowly. “Well, the Corruption is kind of a nasty shade, but…”

All right, Gerard has to admit he’s curious. He checks to make sure the compartment door is shut. “How’d you figure out what colors were what?”

“Aunt Mary always tells Mum what Fear the books belong to, so I figured it out that way.”

“Which one’s your favorite?” Melanie asks. Gerard shoots her a filthy look and she sticks her tongue out at him. “Look, if he has to see bright glowing colors of things that hate us, at least there must be one that doesn’t suck to look at.”

“The Lonely isn’t too bad,” Martin says softly. “It’s grey, and it’s…softer, I guess? It doesn’t glow as bright.”

“There’s a shocker,” Gerard mutters. He pats down the pockets of his oversized leather trench coat—he’ll grow into it eventually, he hopes—and comes up with a stub of a pencil and a crumpled bit of paper. It’s better than nothing, so he smooths it out on his knee. “Right, let’s get these written down.”

He prints the names of all fourteen Fears in a neat list, then writes GREY next to LONELY before winking at Martin. “I know you know them all already, but just in case one of us starts seeing them too. And I kind of want to start integrating them into my art, if that’s okay.”

Martin brightens a bit. “That’d be cool.”

“What was the first one you figured out?”

“The Web, only ‘cause Aunt Mary said that book I found at Bergen’s that first time was the Web, and I remembered it. It’s purple…a royal purple, like the ribbons Mum had tied around her bouquet at the wedding.” Martin waits for Gerard to write that down. “Then the End—that one’s easy because of the Book. It’s white.”

“Is the Dark black?” Melanie asks. “Or is that too obvious?”

“Um, it’s kind of a very dark blue. It’s almost black, but not quite. Not like the Vast, that’s a brighter blue like the sky.” Martin screws up his face like he’s trying to remember. “The Slaughter’s red, really bright red, like blood. The Desolation is orange like fire, and the Hunt is, it’s somewhere in between? It’s hard to explain. I get it mixed up with the Slaughter sometimes, but I can usually tell after a while.”

“Slow down, slow down, I can’t write that fast.” Gerard presses the paper to the door in hopes of getting better leverage with the paper. After a moment he says, “Okay, got it so far. What have we got left?”

“The Stranger, the Buried, the Flesh, the Corruption, the Spiral, and the Eye,” Melanie says promptly. “You said the Corruption was nasty?”

Martin makes a face. “Yeah. It’s this…it’s like snot, o-or pus. Kind of a yellowish-green. It, it looks sick. The Flesh is pink, but it’s pink like salmon mousse is pink. Not like, like roses or whatever.”

“Makes sense,” Gerard mutters. He pauses as the train rattles over a point, then finishes the word PINK. “The Buried?”

“Brown—well, kind of a brownish-tan really. The Spiral is yellow. A really bright yellow, most times. It hurts my eyes.” Martin looks down at his hands. “The Stranger, um, I’m not sure about that one, actually. I-I don’t think Aunt Mary has any books from the Stranger? I’ve kind of been looking, but…”

Gerard scowls, but not at Martin. “Don’t invite that sort of thing into your life, Martin. If you ever see something that’s the Stranger, you’ll know because it’s not the same color as the others.” He draws a question mark next to STRANGER. “That just leaves…the Ceaseless Watcher.”

“Green,” Martin says promptly. “The same color as the stones in those earrings of your mum’s, and my mum’s wedding ring.”

Gerard finishes writing and smooths out the list against his knee. “Okay. I think I’ve got them all.” He contemplates the list. “Honestly, except for the Corruption, this doesn’t look too bad. If you didn’t know what they were, it’d be almost…pretty.”

“Like those recordings they show people in Soylent Green just before they recycle them into food bars,” Melanie mutters. “Too bad I can’t just stop wearing all those colors as a fuck-you to the Fourteen.”

Martin laughs. It sounds a little forced to Gerard. “They wouldn’t be so bad, maybe, if they didn’t glow. But I’m not kidding, they hurt my eyes sometimes. Especially when…I dunno if some books are stronger than others, but sometimes it’s bright.” He touches his glasses lightly. “I wonder if that’s why I keep needing thicker glasses. Because looking at the light from the Fears hurts my regular eyes.”

“I don’t think it works that way.” Gerard isn’t actually sure about that, but he speaks with authority anyway. “Like you said, you’re not looking with, well, your regular eyes. They’re probably going…dormant or something when you’re Looking. If you need thicker glasses, it’s just because your eyes are changing, but that happens with loads of people.”

Melanie cocks her head at Gerard. “So you’re saying he’s fine? That he’s not eventually going to, I dunno, get to the point where his mortal eyes don’t work anymore and the only way he can see is to navigate by the glow of the Fourteen and hope there’s nothing around that hasn’t been touched by them in some way for him to run into?”

She’s too smart for her own damn good, Gerard thinks, and the picture she paints is a bleak one that is, unfortunately, all too possible. He’s hoping it won’t get that far, though, since they know what’s going on and can take steps to mitigate the damage, so he fixes her with what he hopes is a withering glare. “Who ever heard of something like that?”

“Isn’t that the entire plot of Daredevil?” Melanie shoots back.

The conversation derails from there into a spirited debate on whether the Fears exist in the comic book universe and whether Matt Murdock belongs to the Beholding or the Corruption, and by the time the conductor announces they’re pulling into Lime Street Station, Martin and Melanie have gone back to being excited about their day trip. Gerard hasn’t forgotten about the talk about Martin’s eyes, though, and he vows to himself that he’s going to look into it, that he’s going to find out how much danger Martin is actually in from his ability and what it might mean for him, and for the rest of them.

Not today, though. Today he’s going to enjoy the day out and hope like hell they don’t run into anything more dangerous than a persistent seagull.

“Come on, birthday boy,” he says, looping his arm through Martin’s and nodding for Melanie to do the same on the other side. “Where do you want to start off?”

#ollie writes fanfic #to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest)#tma fanfic #gerard keay #melanie king #martin blackwood #fatphobia mention #implied/referenced emotional abuse

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dunkzillla · 2 years ago

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A Place to Call Home (4/4)

woof. we are finally here at the end! this chapter actually kicked my ass. the way it was in my head just did not translate on paper, so I rewrote it a million times. it’s still not 100% but I just had to finally make myself happy with this. thank you to KG and Drea for not only the support and the heartwarming comments, but also for joining me along on the NigelBryan obsession that shows no signs of sloshing. You’re both the best!!! I hope you all enjoy, and let me know if you love them like I do.

Title: A Place to Call Home

Pairings: Nigel McGuinness/Bryan Danielson, Bryan Danielson/William Regal, Bryan Danielson/Wheeler Yuta/Claudio Castagnoli/Jon Moxley

Ratings/Warnings: Language

Summary: And Bryan knows what he means. Because as they’d pulled away from Nigel’s little house on the quaint little street, he realised that his heart ached just a little bit. It had, in two weeks, become a home away from home. Because it was Nigel’s, and even though he had never been there, there were traces of Bryan throughout. Bryan felt at peace there, at home, even though he’d gone there specifically to tell Nigel that he wasn’t where he should be, that he wasn’t home. It’s how Bryan knows he’s right, that home isn’t a fixed place, home is a feeling. Home is here in Ring of Honor, by each other's side, causing and creating chaos. But home is also back in Liverpool, in that little house, at the pub with Jenny, Robbie, Tom and George. It’s in Blackpool in that old fashioned B&B. It’s in all the places they’ve travelled across the country, across England and Japan. Home is Nigel, home is wrestling. Home is places you feel just right, with the people that make you feel just right.

Word Count: 7,464

Parts: ONE | TWO | THREE

AO3

I love the bones of you and that I will never escape. — The Bones of You, Elbow.

The first few days back in the States are a blur of meetings, sleeping and eating. Nigel gets all fucked up by jetlag, and Bryan has to be the one to get him up in time for said meetings, and deal with his insessant pawing in the middle of the night when he can’t sleep. They stop in a little Air B&B in Jacksonville, and Tony sends cars to pick them up when they need to have meetings in person, but most of the time it’s done via Zoom, because Tony doesn’t want his latest signing getting spoiled.

Bryan had called Tony right away, scared that Nigel would change his mind if he waited, and they’d had a long conversation about what Nigel wanted to do, and what it would take for him to come back. Which, once Tony started telling him the finer details of the Wembley stadium show, and how he could already picture Nigel being an important part of the show, wrestling or not, seemed to get the itch well and truly under Nigel’s skin, and by the end of that conversation, a verbal contract had been signed, and Nigel was officially going to be All Elite, starting off with Ring of Honor commentary, but could progress to literally anything else, providing Nigel wanted it enough and he passed physicals.

At the end of that call Nigel had shut the laptop closed and then looked at the wall for a good five minutes before he said, “Fuck, I’m really doing this, arent I?” Then he’d realised that he’d just told Tony he’d work for him while still actually having an actual real life job. He had a breakdown upon realising he had to quit his job, saying that he’d rushed into this and he shouldn’t have done it, and maybe he should call Tony back and tell him he was being stupid.

Bryan slapped him and told him to pull himself together. They had a small fight, nothing too crazy, but Nigel accused him of selling him a pipe dream and Bryan called him a coward. It ended with Nigel calling his boss and telling him the news that he was quitting, effective immediately. It didn’t go down well, and Bryan almost felt like taking the phone from Nigel and hanging up when he heard the way the man talked to him, even from his position on the couch next to him.

After that it had all been go go go. Tony got them on a private flight and they were taken to where they were staying. Then all the meetings. And Bryan had had to do his own kind of housekeeping, and he’d called Claudio and told him he was back, but he was going to be busy for a little bit. He didn’t explicitly tell him that Nigel was with him, or what was happening, because even though he knew Claudio wouldn’t tell anyone and ruin the big surprise, Bryan wasn’t going to ruin it either. But he promised that once everything settled down, he’d come home.

He called Regal too, and the call was a car crash from start to finish.

“Darling,” He’d said, tone firm and a little cold, despite the pet name. “Nice to finally hear that you’re alive.”

“I’m sorry, I took the loss harder than I thought.” Bryan had responded. Nigel was across from him, looking at him curiously, but half asleep too.

“Yes, well, must have been some loss if you ended up halfway across the world in bed with Nigel McGuinness.” The words were spiteful and almost bitter. Bryan’s never really spoken to Regal about Nigel, not about him as a wrestler and not about their relationship. Back when they were young he didn’t get to see Regal as often as he liked because of how much he was on the road, and when they were together there was never really much talking about other people, so he never really discussed his relationship with Nigel with Regal. But the man knows how he feels about him, it’s abundantly clear, it always has been. So to hear him sound so cold about him, them, after finding out he’d called Nigel last year, was something that Bryan hadn’t expected.

“You called him.” Bryan had said back, because he couldn’t deny that he had been in Nigel’s bed, that it was like that between them, because it was.

“Yes, last year. I should have known that if I wanted Nigel to do anything I should have gotten you involved first. Seems you have done the impossible, Bryan. The great Nigel McGuinness, back in the business. Congratulations.”

Bryan had felt his skin prickle. It had been a while since Regal had been like this with him, more than a while, quite a long time actually, probably since the last time they wrestled and he’d worked his way into Bryan’s head.

“Who said he’s back in the business?” Because they hadn’t told anyone, and he was sure Claudio wouldn’t have told him.

“As soon as I knew you were over there darling I knew what you were doing. Doesn’t take much to find out what Mr Khan is up to, either. Tell me darling, just how did you convince him to get back into the ring? Your hand in marriage? A couple of children and a white picket fence home?” The sneer at the end of the words had made Bryan feel cold. Regal was jealous. But that didn’t make sense — they’d never, ever been jealous of the other’s separate relationships. Not when Regal got every sweet young wrestler he could into his bed to test them, and not when Bryan had multiple other relationships at the time. So why now?

“Why are you doing this?” Bryan asked him, and Nigel had started looking at him with more interest then, like he realised that Regal was being difficult on the phone.

“I just don’t understand why you went to him, of all people.”

“You know why.”

Regal had been silent for a while, and then said, “Yes, well after how long it’s been I would have thought those silly little feelings would have disappeared.”

Bryan had bristled, because those words were full of misplaced jealousy. Regal has never been a one man type of guy, and neither has Bryan, and that’s always been okay. But when it comes to Nigel, it seems like it’s not okay.

So, rather cruelly, Bryan had responded with, “And after everything you’ve done you’d have thought that our feelings for you would have disappeared.”

Regal responded with silence, like he’d realised what he’d been saying.

“Where are you?” Regal had said in the end.

“Not at home, that’s all I can say.”

“Oh darling, it’s not like—“

“Don’t say anything, don’t ruin this for him. For me. Please?” Bryan had begged. He’s not a begging person, really, but he is when it comes to Regal. He knows that sometimes the man’s cruelty knows no bounds, and that he wouldn’t think twice about lifting the lid on Nigel’s return before it happened and ruining the whole thing, just to spite the man.

“You’re assuming people are going to care, Bryan.”

It was another cruel, knife twisting remark. And the way Nigel had stiffened beside him told Bryan that Nigel had heard every single word.

“They will. Otherwise you wouldn’t have called him last year. You know just as well as I do the asset he can be.”

Regal had said, “You don’t need him. This isn’t what was supposed to happen when I left.”

And Bryan had just shrugged even though Regal couldn’t see him. “Then maybe you’re losing your touch.” Bryan said, and a sick feeling had washed over him as he remembered getting on his knees in front of Mox, begging him not to hit him for what he did. Slapping Mox. Distancing himself from them all as he took Regal’s side.

“Tell Nigel to keep an eye on his phone calls in the next few days.” Regal had said, and Bryan’s body had washed cold, and he’d gripped the phone so hard that he feared it could break.

“William don’t, please don’t—“ but Bryan hadn’t been able to finish his sentence before the phone was put down on him. No goodbye, no I love you. Just the vicious beep of the call disconnecting.

“He hasn’t changed, has he?” Nigel had said, breaking the silence after the call. And Bryan had wanted to scream, because he’s always known what Regal was like. He’s the Gentleman Villain, after all, and he’s as mean as he is handsome. But with Bryan he’s always been softer, and this time, this run they had together, the Blackpool Combat Club, he was different. Different with Mox, different with Claudio, different with Yuta. He was a softer, gentler man when they weren’t in the ring or training. But no, Nigel was right. He hasn’t changed, and he never ever will, and Bryan is stupid for thinking otherwise.

Bryan travels to Dynamite alone. They’d flirted with the idea that Nigel could come, they’d hide him, but ultimately it’s not worth the risk of the surprise getting out, and there’s only a few days until Supercard of Honor, where Nigel’s making his big return, so he stays home. Bryan had thought about not coming too, but then when they’d caught up on everything, Bryan found out that Yuta has called out fucking Shibata, and he needs to talk to the little shit before Friday.

He doesn’t tell the others he’s coming. And when he gets to the arena, he goes to see Tony first, gets checked over by medical to make sure he’s clear to return, and then hides himself away.

If his time with Nigel has reminded Bryan of anything, it’s that he’s not very good at talking about how he feels, or saying the right things, and sometimes it’s just best to show up and prove that you’re here. That you’re here to stay.

So when he’s watching the monitors, and the guys are out, circling Kenny Omega, Mox getting ready to squash him like he’s an annoying bug, Bryan runs out.

The feeling of finally going back out to a crowd, of hearing the roar of your name, the booming base of your music hitting, it’s electric, and Bryan feels it all the way to his bones when he finally makes it into the ring. The last time he was inside the ropes, he’d just lost to MJF, and his heart was broken and it felt like nothing could fix it.

The next day, he was in England, in Nigel’s house.

Nearly three weeks later he’s back home, in the ring with his boys, he’s got Kenny on the mat and Yuta is screaming with feral rage in his face and its wonderful. It’s fucking wonderful because his heart is healed, Nigel is back in Jacksonville, watching this all transpire on TV, going over the notes Tony sent him to prepare for Supercard. He’s back, and so is Bryan, and it doesn’t matter that he lost his last shot at the title because he’s back renewed, he’s got his family back and the little piece of his heart that’s been somewhere else for the last decade is finally back. The little missing piece of his soul is home and he can finally, finally focus on becoming the best version of Bryan Danielson he’s been since 2009.

“You little shit,” Bryan says immediately when they get behind the curtain, slapping Yuta upside the head. “You called out Shibata?”

“Ow! Hello, Bryan, nice to see you too, yes, I did miss you, you fucking prick.” Yuta complains, rubbing his hand over the back of his head where Bryan hit him.

“Now now, Yuta, language,” Claudio admonishes softly, but he’s smiling, all soft and dopey like Claudio gets sometimes. “Prinzli, you didn’t tell us you were coming back.”

“Surprise?” Bryan says, not too dissimilar to the way he did when he first turned up at the car dealership to see Nigel.

“A nice surprise, at that. Come on, let’s not talk here.” Claudio says, and he gets an arm around Bryan’s shoulders as they walk back towards their locker room. Mox is ahead of them, having not said anything yet, all bouncing energy, shoulders rolling as he jumps and bounces his way into the room.

“So, what the fuck you got to say for yourself, Danielson?” He says once the door is closed. Mox is on the offensive, his shoulders hunched and his fists clenching. Bryan doesn’t blame him, not one bit, after how they left things.

“I’m sorry,” Bryan says, realising that there’s not a lot he can say beside that. “I know I can’t take anything back. I know can’t change what he’s done—“

“Ain't talkin’ bout’ him, where you been? Claudio said you were finding yourself in fucking Blackpool.” Mox grumbles.

“Oh. Did you…” Bryan looks to Claudio, because he doesn’t know if he mentioned Nigel’s name.

“No, I didn’t. I figured that’s something you’d have to explain for yourself.”

“Fuckin, enough with the secrets, what the fuck is going on?”

Bryan lets out a breath. “I went to see Nigel. I found him, and I went to see him.”

“Nigel as in, Nigel McGuinness?”

Bryan nods, and he watches as Mox works it all out in his head, lets the information roll around in his head for a moment before he says,

“He alright?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s. Good. He’s a car salesman.” Bryan says, and he says he is one rather than was one because, well if he can keep this a surprise for just another two days, the look on everyone’s faces when Nigel walks out at Supercard is going to make Bryan’s heart burst.

“A fucking car salesman? That’s fucked. We got him to thank for setting your head straight? You speak to the traitor?”

Mox’s questions are quick fire as he unrolls the ring tape from around his wrists. Claudio’s undoing his boots, and Yuta is watching them quietly.

“Yes, and yes. But we’re not — he isn’t important right now, Regal, I mean. He’s gone. We’re still here, and Yuta is calling out people like Shibata. How could you let him do that?”

“Don’t put that on me, I don’t go to ROH.” Mox says, pointedly looking at Claudio.

“I had no idea he was going to do that! He just did it!”

Yuta tries to make himself small in the corner, like they’re not talking about him.

“Yuta?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say! You want me to keep pushing and keep challenging and who better than to challenge than The Wrestler, Katsuyori Shibata?”

“I admire your spirit, Yuta, but we could have had a conversation about this, got you ready. We’ve got like, two days.”

“No offence, Bry, but you weren’t here to have a conversation with.”

Bryan deserves that, he really, really does. Because he wasn’t there. And even if Yuta had called him, he might not have answered, not with how he’s been wrapped up in Nigel these past few weeks.

“Yeah. Yeah, I wasn’t. Have you been studying?”

“Yeah, with my notebook and everything. I’m ready, Bry. I’m gonna’ do you proud.”

Bryan goes up to Yuta, runs his fingers through his hair and smiles. He hasn’t been good to Yuta, not for quite a while, and it’s time to start showing the guy he handpicked for Blackpool Combat Club that he is proud of him, that he can be the mentor that he was looking for.

“I’m always proud of you. You’ve been doing great, Yuta. Just keep studying, Shibata is gonna’ come at you hard, you need to be prepared.”

“I will be. I’m prepared.”

Bryan ruffles his hair. Bryan doesn’t think you can ever be prepared for a wrestler like Shibata, but having the confidence to call him out and say you’re ready to face him, well it’s half the battle won in his eyes.

“So, what are we doing for dinner? I’m fucking starving, and I’m not having catering.” Mox says, and he’s leaning back against the lockers now, hoodie off, sweats low and inviting on his hips.

Bryan bites his lip. “I’m gonna’ be cutting it pretty close with my flight, so I’ll just be grabbing something at the airport.”

“You’re leaving? Are you not coming to Supercard?” Yuta worries, and Bryan cups his hand to the back of his neck.

“I am, but I have some things I need to take care of at home. I’ll meet you there, okay?” Bryan’s not letting Nigel turn up to Supercard on his own. When they’re there and it’s started, Bryan will have all the time in the world to fuss over Yuta before he goes out for his match. But up until then, he’s got to see this through with Nigel. He started it, after all.

“Better not be him.” Mox says, suddenly looking more alert, more uncomfortable.

“Depends who you mean by him.”

“His Lordship.”

“No, Mox. It’s not. Told you, he’s gone.”

Mox rolls his chewing gum around in his mouth, like he’s trying to work out whether he should believe him or not. In the end, Mox gets to his feet and comes up to him, pokes him in the chest.

“You mean that?”

“I mean it in the way we’ve both always meant it. I’m here, Mox.”

Mox gives him a nod. Regal is never gone forever, no matter what he does, he can never leave the two of them forever, the same way Nigel has never left him, never will leave him, no matter what happens between them. The same way Mox, Claudio and Yuta will always be a part of him no matter what. It’s just a waiting game to see when he will pop back up in their lives and weave himself back in with ease. But for now, Bryan is here, with Mox.

“Yeah. Alright. Do what you gotta’ do,” He says, and he drops a kiss to Bryan’s mouth. “Love you.”

Bryan wants to latch onto him and never let go, show Mox how sorry he is for how everything has played out these last few months, for not being there for him, for choosing Regal again. But that’s not them, and even though there’s more to say it won’t get said for a while, it will get said on a random night when neither of them can sleep and Mox is chain smoking and Bryan makes them herbal tea. So it’s enough for now. Just like there’s more to say to Nigel, for now it is enough.

“Love you too.” Bryan says, and he knows he doesn’t say it enough. He’ll be better, from now on. Better for all of them. For Claudio, for Mox, for Yuta, and for Nigel.

The flight from St Louis to Jacksonville is only a couple of hours, so when he makes it back to the Air B&B, Nigel is still awake. He’s got his laptop open in front of him, papers spread out around him. It’s like he’s learning lines for a play. He’s making sure he knows everything he can about every wrestler on the card, and he can see Yuta’s page front and centre.

“Hey, didn’t expect you to still be up.”

Nigel pauses whatever he’s watching on the laptop and rubs at his eyes. “I was going to go to bed, but then I got an angry message from Jen. I forgot it was Wednesday.”

It’s Wednesday, and normally Nigel would go to the pub with his friends. But instead, he’s halfway across the world getting ready to debut in Ring of Honor as a commentator. A life none of them know Nigel has or has had.

“What did you tell them?”

“That I didn’t feel well. I’m not gonna’ tell them about all this until you know, it’s actually happened.”

Bryan comes and sits next to him on the couch, one of Yuta’s old matches is paused on YouTube on the screen of Nigel’s laptop, and there’s multiple tabs open at the top.

“They’re probably bullying her because we’re not there to save her.”

Nigel huffs, “Probably. She’s gonna’ hate me for leaving.”

“She’ll be proud of you.”

Nigel makes a noise, like he doesn’t want to talk about telling his friends about his old life, and his old life starting again. Bryan’s definitely pushed enough, so he doesn’t push with this.

Nigel presses play on the YouTube video again, picks up his pen and continues making notes. Bryan watches with him for a little bit, because this is one of Yuta’s matches he hasn’t seen, and he gets lost in watching how much Yuta has changed, how much different he’s become under the Blackpool Combat Club, even under Chuck and Orange.

“I’m worried about him going up against Shibata.” Bryan says quietly when the match ends with Yuta’s hand raised in victory. He’s clean shaven there, looks so young that it makes Bryan feel a bit weird for being his boyfriend.

“Why?”

“It’s Shibata, Nigel.”

“Yeah, but your boy’s good. He’ll give it to him good, and if he loses, well, you pick him up and you go again. He’s already done what no man has done before, and that’s become a two time Pure champion. If the kid loses, then he loses. Lesson learnt. He’ll go on and do even more great things.” Nigel says, like it’s that easy.

And well, maybe it is. Maybe he’s getting too focused on titles again, and not focusing enough on everything else. Yuta will be okay.

“Come on, let's go to bed. We have a busy travel day tomorrow.”

“I haven’t travelled this much since I retired. I forgot how big the US is.”

“Well you’re gonna’ get used to it again. Because on Friday, you’re officially out of retirement.”

Nigel shuts the laptop closed and scoops up all his papers. There’s a warm smile on his face when he says,

“Yeah, yeah I am.”

Luckily, they get Nigel into the arena and into a private locker room without being spotted.

Yuta keeps texting him, asking him if he’s arrived yet, and what room he’s in, and Bryan has to tell him that he’ll be there soon, because he’s just got to get Nigel out in front of all the people getting into their seats, get him out on that commentary table and then he can focus on Yuta and his match.

Nigel’s pacing the room, reading over his notes half dressed, worrying his lip over his teeth.

“Maybe this was a bad idea. What if nobody remembers who I am?” Nigel asks very quietly, and he’s still staring at the papers.

“I get why you’re nervous, but Nigel, there’s not going to be a soul in the building who doesn’t know who you are.” Bryan promises, and he stands up from his chair, digging into Nigel’s bag to get his tie out so he can put it on him. There isn’t much time left till showtime, but they don’t have to be at guerilla until after it’s started, because Tony wants Nigel to have a proper entrance, not just a quick mention that he’s in the booth.

“That sounds like a massive lie, but alright.” Nigel sighs, and he lets Bryan snake the tie around his neck and do the loops until a perfect knot is formed.

“You’re gonna’ go out there and there’s gonna be so much noise. Biggest pop of the night. Just enjoy this night. You’re back. You’re home.” Bryan says as he does the top button of Nigel’s shirt up, and tightens the knot of the tie, so that it sits perfectly around his neck. He picks up the waist coat that they’d picked out, the whole suit a dark blue, cut just right against Nigel’s figure.

“You talk about home a lot for someone who hasn’t actually been home in almost a month.” Nigel says to him, letting Bryan slip the waist coat on and start doing it up.

“Home isn’t a fixed place. Home isn’t a roof and four walls. Home is a feeling. It’s when you know where you belong, when it doesn’t matter where you go, or what you do, home is where you feel just right,” Bryan says, smoothing his hands down Nigel’s chest, pushing out any creases in his clothes. “Did you feel just right in Liverpool?”

Nigel shrugs a little. “Sometimes.” He admits quietly.

And Bryan knows what he means. Because as they’d pulled away from Nigel’s little house on the quaint little street, he realised that his heart ached just a little bit. It had, in two weeks, become a home away from home. Because it was Nigel’s, and even though he had never been there, there were traces of Bryan throughout. Bryan felt at peace there, at home, even though he’d gone there specifically to tell Nigel that he wasn’t where he should be, that he wasn’t home. It’s how Bryan knows he’s right, that home isn’t a fixed place, home is a feeling. Home is here in Ring of Honor, by each other's side, causing and creating chaos. But home is also back in Liverpool, in that little house, at the pub with Jenny, Robbie, Tom and George. It’s in Blackpool in that old fashioned B&B. It’s in all the places they’ve travelled across the country, across England and Japan. Home is Nigel, home is wrestling. Home is places you feel just right, with the people that make you feel just right.

“You feel at home here?” Bryan asks.

“It’s like moving back to your mum's place. Always feels like home.”

“Ring of Honor will always be a place you call home. We can have an array of homes.” Bryan says, and from underneath his t shirt he untucks Nigel’s spare key that’s hanging on a frayed little rope chain. Nigel hadn’t asked for it back since they left England, and Bryan isn’t giving it back. He needs to be prepared in case Nigel ever tries to disappear out of his life again.

“Is that my key?”

“The spare one you gave me. It’s mine now, by the way.”

“Just like my dressing robe? And the tie you stole?”

“You gave me all of them, there was no stealing involved.”

“And just why do you need my key?”

“Jenny is going to need someone to back her up when she beats your ass for lying about your past.” Bryan says easily, and it makes Bryan’s heart beat incredibly fast, the way the grin spreads across Nigel’s face when he says it. Bryan doesn’t know what’s going to happen after tonight, they’re going to be busy again, making towns, tapings, whatever happens with Yuta’s match tonight. But what he does know is that he’s going to be with Nigel through it all, and no matter where they go, back to Bryan’s home, back to Liverpool, or somewhere new. It will be home.

“She’s going to kick your arse too, you told her you were a personal trainer.”

“Then we will lock ourselves away. That’s why I have the key.”

Bryan shakes his head and puts the key back under his shirt. He picks up Nigel’s suit jacket and steps behind him to slide it over his shoulders.

There’s a knock on the locker room door, “Nigel? You’re needed at guerilla.”

“Coming, thanks.” Nigel calls back, and he turns to Bryan, smoothing down his suit and rolling his shoulders.

“Showtime.” He says, and Bryan nods. There’s a ball of excitement in the pit of his belly. It’s not nerves, he knows that there’s only one way this is going to go, and that’s fucking fantastic, because it’s Nigel. Nigel did commentary a lot when he was a wrestler, and it was effortless, it’s going to be the same tonight. Effortless, like riding a bike, talking, and sleeping.

“Just have fun. You’re going to be great.”

Nigel makes a face, but it turns soft quickly, and his long fingers reach out to run through Bryan’s beard, a habit he’s seemed to pick up lately.

“Bry?”

“Yeah?”

Nigel leans in and kisses him, just a soft sweet kiss, but it makes Bryan’s head spin nonetheless.

“I love you too.” He says, and then he’s turning and leaving, out of the locker room door and following the assistant who’d come to get him towards guerilla.

Bryan hadn’t actually gotten to properly say it. He’d tried, that first morning at Nigel’s place, tried to tell him that just because they’d clashed in the ring, beaten the hell out of each other, it didn’t mean that Bryan didn’t love him. But Nigel had cut him off before he could finish the words, and then Bryan hadn’t tried to tell him again. Showed him, maybe, but he hasn’t said the words. And now Nigel is telling him he loves him. Words he longed to hear for so long, finally, finally he’s hearing them. And he can’t even say it back because he’s about to go out in front of a live crowd for the first time in over a decade, and there’s going to be hours and hours before Nigel comes back behind the curtain and he can tell him.

Nigel’s music is hitting before he even gets to guerilla, and he just catches him stepping through the curtain when he does. The music is so very similar to his old theme, and nostalgia hits Bryan hard and heavy in the heart. The crowd reaction can be heard through the curtain, no need for Bryan to be at the monitor, but he does anyway, because he needs to see it. There’s a Union Jack behind Nigel’s name on the screen, loud and proud along with the music.

Nigel looks like he never left. The crowd is cheering and he’s soaking it up, two fingers in the air, just like he always did. There’s a buzz backstage as people walking past catch his face on the monitors, his name being uttered in shock and disbelief as Ian and Caprice go crazy waiting for him to join the table. Nigel does a lap around the ring, and Bryan can see the look on his face, that age old I love this face.

He looks right, he looks perfect out there, he looks like he’s stepping through the doors of his parents home, being welcomed back with open arms and a feast of his favourite food on the table.

The first words out of his mouth when he gets to the commentary table are did you hear that reaction? And Bryan feels like his heart might burst.

Regal tried to twist the knife the other day, planting the seed that they were banking on people caring that Nigel was coming back. Nigel had worried not twenty minutes ago that people wouldn’t remember who he was. But he sees it now, Nigel sees just how much people have missed him, how much people have been wondering where he went after his retirement, how much they wished he’d come back. The crowd went crazy, and he’ll see later, when Bryan makes him watch it back, just how at home he was making an entrance in Ring of Honor again.

“That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it?” A voice comes from behind Bryan, and he turns from the monitors to see Yuta. He’s got his ring tights on, and a Blackpool Combat Club hoodie, and there’s a smile on his face, he’s not accusing Bryan of anything.

“Yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t—“

“Don’t. I get it. There’s just some things you have to do,” Yuta says coming to stand next to him. His hands are tucked into the pocket of his hoodie and he’s watching the screens. “I can’t believe he’s really back, that Nigel McGuinness is really here. Is he going to wrestle?”

Bryan shrugs with a smile. “Was hard enough convincing him to come back and do this, I think we’ve got a ways to go before we get him in some boots again but, keep your title tonight and Shibata might be the least of your worries.”

“He can just have my title, it’s fine. I like my head attached to my neck, thanks.” But Yuta is grinning, and Bryan can practically see the match playing out in his head. He knows kids like Yuta and Daniel have learnt a lot of their techniques and styles from the wrestling they watched growing up, and the idea of being able to get into the ring with another one of their heros is crazy and exciting.

Bryan smiles, “How are you feeling?” He says, and it’s time to switch over to focusing on Yuta now. Nigel is out there on commentary, clearly already killing it as he gels instantly with Ian and Caprice, Bryan can focus on his protege now.

“A mixture of everything. Scared, excited, nervous.”

“Where’s Claudio? How’s he doing?” He hasn’t even stopped to ask how Claudio’s been during everything happening with Eddie. He’s such a bad boyfriend. But he’s going to be better, he really is.

“Locker room. Mox is here, we were gonna’ do some stretches and stuff, told them I wanted to find you first.”

“I’m sorry. I just needed to see him through to the end, I started it.”

“And I’m glad you did. I’m glad you got him here Bryan.”

Bryan looks back at the monitor, there’s a match on the kickoff now, and he can hear Nigel’s voice loud and excited about the moves he’s calling.

“Me too. Now let’s go and get you ready for your match.”

Yuta loses his title. Bryan is heartbroken when the streamers fly out over Shibata, and Yuta is laying there just getting covered in them. He, Mox and Claudio collect him from guerilla, letting him fall into their arms when he comes back through the curtain. It’s the first time Yuta’s lost a title without Regal there, so the usual post match breakdown goes a little different. There’s no watching the match back immediately, no trying to learn from your mistakes immediately. Mox bundles him up in a hoodie, feeds him a protein bar and makes him drink a bottle of water.

By the time Claudio goes out for his match, he’s feeling better. Bryan sits with him and gives him a little shoulder massage because he feels a pull in it, and they discuss how they’re going to go forward. That Yuta will get the title back one day, or a different one, there’s so many, and Yuta’s good enough to go for whatever he wants. He tells Yuta he’s proud of him, and that he loves him, and it feels like home when Yuta smiles and tells him he loves him back.

Claudio wins his match, and Yuta decides he’s going to do a run in, even though Mox grumbles about it because he knows he’ll get shit from Eddie about it later.

Bryan follows him to guerilla, watching the show wind down and go off air on the monitors. He watches as Nigel shakes Ian and Caprice’s hands, and through the curtains he can hear the fans shouting his name. Nigel does a circle around the ring, shaking peoples hands, signing posters and tickets and leaflets. When he’s on the stage again, he lifts both hands up into the air and sticks his fingers up at them, and everyone cheers. The grin that splits across Nigel’s face is enough to power Bryan through the next million years. He can see the happiness there, the pride. All the worries he’d had about not being remembered, nobody wanting him back, the doubt that Regal had put in his mind without even talking to him. It’s all gone now, people are chanting his name, begging for an autograph, no doubt asking him about returning to the ring.

When Nigel finally steps back through the curtains, a loud cheer erupts from everyone backstage, and Bryan can see that there’s a little tear in his eye. Bryan steps back, there’s so many people here that want to talk to him, and Bryan’s more than happy to let them. After all, they haven’t seen him for over a decade either.

Claudio’s off doing media, and Yuta’s tucked under his arm as they watch the swarm of people surround Nigel. There’s Joe, Eddie, Christoper Daniels, BJ Whitmer, Colt. And every time someone walks past they realise the circle has Nigel in the middle, and they end up joining. Every so often, Nigel points over to Bryan, and everyone turns to look at them before turning back to Nigel.

“Is Nigel coming home with us?” Yuta asks, exhausted now the day’s over, leaning into Bryan’s side.

“For the time being, at least. I kind of dragged him over here without a plan in place, so you know, unless he’s running back and forth from England to here every week, he can stay with us until he’s got something more permanent in place. Is that okay? We’ll have to talk to Claudio and Mox too, of course.”

“S’okay with me. Want him to teach me how to do the Tower of London.”

“If you ask nicely I’m sure he’ll be happy to. He thinks you’re cute, you know.”

“He what?” Yuta perks up a little then, and Bryan laughs at him.

Nigel manages to pull himself away from the group and comes over to them, and Bryan can see the little flush of colour that settles on Yuta’s cheeks.

“So, I take it no one knew who you were?” Bryan says, but he’s smiling up at Nigel. There’s a soft, warm look on his face, a bright light in his eyes, and that smile, god it’s beautiful. He hasn’t seen Nigel smile like this in forever.

“Oh bugger off. I hate admitting when you’re right, but I’ll give credit where credit is due.” He says, like he’s not even a little bit mad about being wrong.

“Sorry about your title kid, you did good though. I really enjoyed your match.” He says to Yuta, who’s just staring at Nigel with a type of fanboy wonder that Bryan knows he used to look at Nigel with.

“Thank you. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too, Yuta. I’m looking forward to calling your matches. You have a nice bridge, you learn that from Dragon?”

Yuta gives a little nod. “Can you teach me the Tower of London?”

Nigel laughs, “Not sure I even remember how to do it myself, but I’ll give it a bloody good go.”

Yuta beams, “Thanks Nigel.”

“Come on, Claudio should be back soon, and Mox will be wondering where we are. They’ll be happy to see you.” Bryan says to Nigel, and he takes Yuta’s hand, because he knows he needs that right now. An anchor, some TLC. Bryan’s more than happy to give it to him tonight, after losing his title, and everything that’s happened these last few months.

They walk back to the locker room together, and Nigel talks through the match with Yuta, giving him tips on what he could do next time, how he could have beaten Shibata. Yuta listens intently, not looking away from Nigel even when people stop Nigel to shake his hand and welcome him back.

Claudio and Mox are in the locker room when they step inside, Claudio’s packing the belt away in his case, and Mox is a ball of frantic energy, pacing the room. Probably worried about where Yuta got too, worried that he was in a bad head space and ran off.

“Nigel fucking McGuinness.” He says, instantly holding his hand out to bring Nigel into him.

“Moxie.”

“Bryan says you’re a car salesman. What the fuck?”

“Yeah well, not anymore. I’ve officially signed here.”

“As you fucking should, Nigel McGuinness has no business fucking business being anywhere but here. You getting back in the ring?”

“You sound entirely too much like Dragon,” Nigel shakes his head. “Haven’t decided on that. Probably not, though. Pushing fifty, Moxie.”

“Stings in his sixties and man can still kick ass, age is just a number, Nigel. And anyway, we need another match. One you don’t let me win because you wanna’ be in Bryan’s pants.”

Nigel splutters, and Bryan’s own eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. Yuta and Claudio snicker between themselves.

“That’s not what bloody happened! You beat me fair and square.”

“Of course you did.” Mox is smirking, seemingly ending the conversation there and going to sit next to Yuta, throwing an arm around his shoulders and planting a large, loud kiss against his temple.

“Nigel, my old friend, ignore Moxley, as you know his favourite pastime is winding everyone up. I have missed you.” Claudio stands up and embraces Nigel, their too tall figures melding together. Nigel is visibly smaller than Claudio now, a switch from before, when Nigel was pretty much always the biggest man in the room.

“Castagnoli, fucking finally a ROH World Champion. You were great out there.” Nigel says, and he’s got a hand on the back of Claudio’s neck.

Bryan remembers a time when he got insanely jealous of Claudio. He and Nigel had tagged together against Chris Hero and Jigsaw, and Claudio got busted open at the end of the match, right around his eye. Nigel had cupped his face so tenderly, told him it was going to be okay, and helped him to the back. He fussed over him the whole time he got medical attention, stayed with him once he got his stitches, and switched rooms with the random guy that Claudio was rooming with so he could keep an eye on him, in case he had a concussion or suddenly lost his vision. Bryan was not a rational guy back then, and he didn’t like that Nigel was doing all the things he did with Bryan with Claudio. He’s not that way inclined anymore, he knows it’s just a testament to the man he’s always loved, that he cares so wholly and deeply about his friends and loved ones, but seeing the two of them together again does bring back memories.

Nigel and Claudio talk quietly for a while and Bryan just watches them, watches old friends get reacquainted, his family licking wounds from a loss. He feels a peace settle over him. All those missing pieces that have slotted together start to glow inside of him, welding themselves together and making him whole again.

A few weeks ago, Bryan was lonely. Regal was busy, and Bryan was too busy chasing down MJF and the World title to worry about where his family were and what they were doing. He was lonely and he knew, deep down, that there was something missing inside of him. It took him the loss to realise what he needed to do, to finally go and find the man that’s been missing from his life for so long.

And now, Bryan is once again in a ROH locker room with Nigel McGuinness. He’s not lonely, he’s got his family, and they’re all on the same page, fighting to good fight against the Elite.

Nigel’s key is warm against his chest under his shirt, and his voice is loud and warm in the room as he talks with Claudio. Mox is making Yuta laugh, and every so often, someone knocks on the door to come in and say welcome back to Nigel.

A few weeks ago, Bryan got on a flight to bring Nigel McGuinness back home. To bring him back to wrestling so that Bryan could be the best version of himself, because without Nigel Bryan has felt lost for the last decade.

Nigel McGuinness is home, and Bryan Danielson no longer feels lost.

Bryan stands up and steps over to Nigel, nudges his shoulder against him to get his attention. Claudio goes to sit down next to Yuta and starts packing up his bag.

“Hey,” Bryan says. “You wanna go home?”

“Home where?”

“Home with us, for now. Until you decide where you want this home to be.”

Nigel lets a smile spread across his face, and Bryan thinks it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Yeah, home sounds good.” Nigel says, and he turns, probably to get his bag, but Bryan catches his wrist and entwines their fingers together.

“Love you, Nigel.” He says, and Nigel smiles, bright and wide, and squeezes Bryan’s fingers.

“Let’s go home, Dragon.”

#writing #nigel mcguinness x bryan danielson #blackpool combat club #final part!#I hope you all enjoy!

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