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hargreeves-duncan · 4 months ago

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Hello! I know that you’ve been getting a lot of Five requests, so I hope this isn’t over doing it, but can I request Five x reader where they get to Hotel Oblivion (s3), reader gives him like, a spa day? Just because reader knows he bf went through so much to make sure they’re all safe and wanted to make sure he’s okay and well taken care of

a/n: anon, i love you for requesting this, you’re not overdoing it at all! this was super sweet to write!! hope you all enjoy some piping fresh (and not very well proof-read) content😚

summary: self-care at the end of the world

warnings: mentions of alcohol consumption, swearing

word count: 2.6k

The end of the world as you know it is no easy pill to swallow, and for a man who had spent his entire life trying to put a stop to it, it’s even less so. Since the identification of the Kugelblitz, Five hadn’t stopped running around, searching for every solution to prevent the apocalypse. So far, he had found nothing.

Lately, he had been shorter with everyone, and you were determined to do something to help him relax. After all, he had put so much into keeping you and his siblings safe all these years, most of the time at his own expense. You wanted to find the perfect way to comfort him, and you had just the plan to do so.

That morning, you came downstairs to the lobby, bright and early. Despite this fact, Five was already up and ready - perched at the bar with a cup of coffee.

You approached him with a warm smile on your face, “Good morning!”

He looked up, and his face softened almost immediately, “Good morning to you too.”

Just before you hopped onto the stool beside him, he tugged it closer to his own. He looked you up and down with an amused smile, “You look extremely chipper this morning.”

“That’s because I am.” You smiled proudly as you placed a keycard on the table.

He raised an eyebrow, sceptically, examining the keycard, “417? What exactly is this for?”

“For a room here.” You continued and he smirked slightly.

“Love, you do realise that we already have a room here? One that we’ve been sleeping in for the last four days?” He said, gently tapping the corner of the keycard on the table to justify his point.

“No, well, yeah, but this room is different. It’s the spa.” You said, eyes flickering up to meet his nervously. You couldn’t help but fear that he would think you an idiot for even suggesting it.

“I suppose, one day of relaxation couldn’t hurt.” Five mused, sitting up. He looked down at you, noticing how increasingly excited you grew as he spoke.

He sighed, smiling to himself, “Alright, I’m in. Should be a nice break for the two of us.” He said, leaning down to peck your cheek.

You grinned excitedly, biting your lip, “Okay, you keep that.” You said, pointing at the keycard still grasped between Five’s fingers, “I’m going to go set everything up, so, come up in like… twenty minutes?”

He watched as you got down, hurrying away hastily to prepare. He nodded, chuckling, “Alright, twenty minutes. Got it.”

**************************************************

Twenty minutes later, the door to the spa opened, and Five found you standing, looking like a proud child beside their science fair project, in the totally transformed room.

You had decorated it with sprinkles of confetti and tiny, heart-shaped specks of glitter. It looked like something out of a rom-com, but since you were the one who put it together, Five couldn’t care less how cliche it was.

The wooden table beside you had a red tablecloth placed over it, and on top of that, a wooden tray with two porcelain mugs, a teapot, two champagne flutes, a rather expensive-looking bottle of champagne, and a little note.

Five was almost sure that you had written some sweet notion on it.

Or, better yet, perhaps it was a quote from the latest book you had been reading. He had been the one to recommend it to you, of course. It was a collection of translated French poetry. Some might say pretentious, he said romantic.

Peering into the neighbouring rooms, Five could see the equipment you had carefully prepared for the day’s spa treatments. He knew you must have put a lot of thought into what would be on your itinerary.

As he took everything in the room in, his heart swelled with affection for you. For his entire life, he had tried so hard to make sure that everyone was cared for all the time, especially you, and seeing you put in all this effort just for him had him feeling more grateful than ever that he had you by his side.

“Thank you,” he said gently as he took your hands into his, fingers tracing over your knuckles.

“You’re welcome.” You beamed up at him. He brushed your hair away from the side of your face to cup it with one hand. He pressed a delicate kiss to your lips, and as he slipped his hand down, reaching for your hip, he instead met cloth.

He pulled back, raising an eyebrow, and then glanced down at the bathrobe in your hands that you were holding up to him, like an offering, as you grinned, “Here, you have to have the whole spa treatment.”

“Oh? The whole spa treatment, huh? Okay.” He chuckled fondly, taking the robe from you, “And will you be joining me in wearing this get-up?” He asked with a sly smile as he began to get changed into the robe.

“Of course.” You hummed, sliding your shirt off and slipping into a robe of your own. When Five turned back around, the two of you were matching in your fluffy white gowns. The sight of you was, certainly, a pleasant one.

“What’s first on the agenda then, oh, wife of mine?” Five smiled, hands slipping around your waist.

“Mm…” You paused, thinking about it, your mind a little hazy under his touch. Your gaze drifted back to the table, “Drinks.” You said decisively, making your way to them.

“What do we have here then?” He didn’t truly need to ask; you had told him more times than he could count about the herbal tea they served at your local spa, but he loved listening to you talk, so he asked anyway.

“This is that herbal tea I was telling you about! I didn’t think that I would be able to find any, but they had a bunch of it stocked up in the back room!” You gushed.

“Well, isn’t that just perfect?” Five smiled, pecking your lips again as he slung an arm around your shoulder, “And the champagne?”

“I don’t know, it just felt like a spa-y drink.” You laughed softly, and he chuckled, pulling you closer.

“I see….” He smirked fondly, pecking your cheek. You rolled your eyes, smiling.

“You know what I mean, though, don’t you?” You asked him, noticing his condescending tone.

He nodded, smiling, “I do.”

You nodded approvingly and poured a glass for each of you. You slipped a flute into his hand.

Five took a sip of his champagne, savouring the taste. Then, he looked down at you, mischief swirling in his eyes, “There is something I have to ask about.” He took another sip, “In terms of spa treatments, that is.”

You hummed as you sipped your own drink, tilting your head to the side. His thumb rubbed your shoulder, voice lowering an octave as he leaned closer, “The sauna. Is that set up, or…?”

You nodded, smiling shyly as you leaned into him, “It is set up. No spa day is complete without the sauna.”

“Of course not.” He smiled, kissing your jaw gently. He stood up slightly and adjusted his robe, “Shall we?”

“We shall.” You nodded, walking beside him into the room. He closed the door behind you, and the warm steam encompassed you instantly. You hummed pleasantly and slipped off your bathrobe; Five did the same.

You took one of the towels and slipped it over your body, sitting down. Five watched you do so and soon joined you.

You closed your eyes and felt the heat begin to seep into your muscles, melting away the tension and stress. You could only hope that it was doing the same for Five.

He sat down next to you, his thigh brushing against yours. He stretched his arms above his head, sighing deeply. "This is exactly what I needed," he muttered, closing his own eyes.

You hummed in agreement, leaning your head back against the wall. "It's nice, right? Relaxing?”

Five opened his eyes and glanced at you, a small smile playing on his lips.

"It is," he murmured, his gaze roaming over your figure, covered only by the towel. He slipped his hand into yours.

The two of you sat in comfortable silence for a while. You stole a glance at Five, his skin glistening with sweat, chest rising and falling with steady breaths.

He caught you looking, and a small smirk tugged at his lips, “Enjoying the view?"

You rolled your eyes, feeling a flush creeping up your cheeks. "Just enjoying the moment," you replied nonchalantly.

He chuckled, sarcasm creeping into his voice, "Of course," his voice became softer, "Completely innocent enjoyment."

“Mhm.” You nodded, leaning your head on his shoulder. Five put his arm around you, pulling you closer to him. His hand began to rub soothing circles on your back.

His touch sparked an idea in your mind, and you sat up straighter. You pushed his hands away and smiled at him, “Turn around.”

“What exactly do you plan on doing back there, love?” He asked, with a grin, as he turned.

You watched the ripple in the muscles of his back, strained. You reached up, hands gliding over his skin comfortingly.

“…’m going to give you a massage.” You simpered, pressing your hands deeper into his back. Five groaned appreciatively, practically melting under your touch.

“Lean forward a bit for me.” You gently tapped his back and he obliged instantaneously, with a soft groan.

You saw the tension in his shoulders lessen as your hands dug into the tight muscles, finding the right pressure to soothe the knots.

"You're really tight right here," you murmured, your hands pressing more forcefully into his back.

He inhaled sharply as his shoulders released their tension, “Yeah, well, that comes with trying to stop the apocalypse for two weeks straight,” he grumbled.

You pressed a gentle kiss to the centre of his back, “You shouldn’t push yourself so much,” you chided gently, continuing to work out the knots in his back.

Five let out a sound somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. “Easier said than done, love. There is always something that requires me to push myself with this family.”

“I know.” You soothed softly, moving your hands to a particularly tense muscle near his shoulder blades. “I still wish you would, at least, try to take better care of yourself, though.”

He hummed noncommittally, lost in the sensation of your delicate touches, “I take care of myself just fine…” he muttered, relaxing further under your touch.

“Five.” You said pointedly, pressing down on his back. He hissed.

“Fine, fine… maybe I don’t always take the best care of myself…” He admitted under his breath. His head lolled back with another sigh of pleasure at your touch.

You pecked his shoulder gently. You sat forward and your hands slipped away from his aching muscles and around him in a hug from behind, “You need to be more careful with yourself.”

“The fate of the world shouldn’t be resting on your shoulders.”

Five looked at you over his shoulder, eyes softening. He turned around and pulled you close, his forehead coming to rest against yours in a self-soothing gesture. He was quiet for a moment, contemplating your words.

He knew that you were right, but it was hard to accept that this shouldn’t have been the way things were when it’s how they’d been for as long as he could remember.

He sighed again, his breath warm against your cheek. “It feels like it’s been my responsibility for so long that I don’t know how to let it go.”

You held him closer, wrapping your arms around him affectionately. You pressed another gentle kiss to his shoulder.

“I’m not asking you to let it go, Five.” You murmured quietly, shaking your head. “I’m asking you to let yourself share that burden. You can suffer but you don’t have to do it alone.”

"I’ll try,” he said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. “I can’t promise it will be easy, but I'll try.” He leaned in, resting his forehead against yours.

“Trying is all I could ever ask for.” You smiled gently, pecking his lips and cradling his face between your hands. Your eyes searched his and suddenly you were all too aware of how long you’d been in the sauna.

Five closed his eyes briefly, relishing the feel of your hands caressing his face.

The steam had made his skin glistening and warm and you could feel the heat in his cheeks, “We should probably get out… we’ve been in here for quite a while.”

Five nodded, smiling to himself, “Good call.” He said, gently helping you up with a pat to your hip.

You gathered your things and stepped out of the sauna. You glanced back over at Five as he pushed his hair out of his eyes, “We can always go in the pool, cool off for a bit.”

Five looked over at you, his eyes still soft from your comfort. He nodded at your suggestion, a small smirk playing on his lips. “Lead the way, love.”

You padded softly across the room and to the pool. You placed everything at its side and eagerly stepped in, becoming embraced by cool, crystal water.

The contrast from the sweltering confinement of the sauna to the pool made you sigh pleasurably.

Five followed shortly after you, wading into the pool with you, the water lapping softly at his chest. He let out a sigh of relief as the water soothed his skin.

“You were right,” he noted as he swam closer to you. “This was definitely the right call.”

“Nice and cool.” You nodded in agreement, swimming over to his side.

“Mm…” Five pulled you closer to his side, wrapping an arm around your waist so that his chest was flush with yours.

He leaned down, his lips finding their way to your neck and placing a few stray kisses there. You leaned into his touch, gratefully, feeling your body grow sleepy under his affections.

His arm around your waist tightened, as he pulled you even closer to him. His voice was low as he spoke, "You look so relaxed, love," he purred, his fingers tracing lazy patterns up and down your back.

“Well, that is the point of going to a spa.” You hummed with a smirk. Five held you against him, leaning his back against the wall of the pool behind him.

Five chuckled, relishing the feeling of your warmth against him, and the cool water now enveloping you both, "Indeed it is..." he agreed, "And it seems to have worked on the both of us."

“Good. I’m glad.” You smiled fondly, pecking his lips twice over.

He returned your smile, his lips finding yours again… and again. Each kiss was more eager than the last. He tightened his hold on you, his arms wrapping around your waist and pulling you flush against him.

You felt your cheeks going warm as you clutched his shoulder for support.

A thundering crash sounded from the corridor. Five pulled back, immediately wary. He squinted at the doorway.

It was silent for a few moments, when the door flew open and Luther stumbled in, out of breath from his haste.

“Jesus! Luther!” Five cursed, turning you around and shielding you from view with his body. Your hands wrapped tighter around him in embarrassment.

“Woah… uh… sorry. Family meeting. It’s important so… you know… if you could both meet us in the bar as quickly as possible...” Luther said, casting a cautious glance between the two of you, cuddled up in the pool.

“Yeah, alright, amazing, thank you, Luther.” Five said, sounding entirely unamused.

When Luther made no attempt to leave, Five raised an expectant eyebrow at him, "Do you mind?" he said.

"Oh! Right, sorry, yeah." Luther smiled awkwardly, excusing himself and walking out of the room. Once his footsteps receded, Five groaned.

"Can't I get one fucking day off?" he sighed, head dropping against your shoulder.

#fanfic #fanfiction #the umbrella academy #tua #five hargreeves #five hargreeves x reader

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ratseathumans · 25 days ago

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Intro post because I realized I never have done one

INTRO :0

uh you can call me rat or eat or human or all of them..my name is confusing.

What I go by:she/her!

And I’m a minor so..uh..no harassment pretty please

Some fandoms/youtubers/Music I enjoy:

Ramshackle, Pine point, Brooklyn 99! Young Sheldon, Heathers (still need to watch the musical) INSIDE JOB!!! (So mad that show got canceled.) Gravity falls, THE FLORIDA PROJECT, everyone in my family has killed someone(book) Poetry?(is..is that a fandom..?) Whatever “:D :) :0 :o :p :3 :/ :\ :> :<“ is

Flamingo, Kubz Scouts, FunkyFrogBait, Danny Gonzalez, Kurtis Conner, and sometimes random shit

Alex g! Lana del ray❤︎︎ Mitski, Heathers the musical music, ICP, Mccaferty, Twenty One Pilots!! (Been a fan since I was born), maybe Will wood? Still figuring it out.

I’m currently learning a six string guitar so any tips will help! I’m also making 2 small projects: The Morning After (where a family find their daughter’s dead body because she died from rat poison, and they have to figure out if it was a suc!de or murder.) And Misty Grove! (Inspired by Pine point, And my friend group.)

Alaskan. Got any questions about that state I’m the gal to answer them

(I’m horrible at geography)

Oh yeah, sometimes I will maybe post some rants just to get them out of my chest, I don’t know why but I find comfort in that. So if those make you uncomfortable you just ignore them:)

DNI: prosh!ppers, Sex!xts, rac!sts, P3dos, and please for the love of the day, do NOT do anon hate, to me or other people, it’s rude and disrespectful.

People that are super duper kewl and you should go them check out:

@highclasshomosexual @zuicidegay @ep1cmorko @booyahhstormz @bluebrey @cornread @coins-and-beans @piratebeanscore @yoitsmealoserr @msmpictures @geralds-little-art-corner @ask-mayfly @averagetmntfan @arvilleaddict @whitepheasant536 @planetahmane @roguepierogi7 @ask-mayfly

#intro #finally #after what..3 months of owning this account #eeee #intro post #blog intro #ALEX G #MITSKI #HEATHERS THE MUSCIAL #INSIDE JOB #ramshackle #pine point #I DONT HAVE TIME TO TAG EVERY THING

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annlillyjose · 1 year ago

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WRITEBLR REINTRO – ANN LILLY JOSE

hello there!

following through with my tradition of posting a new writeblr intro every single year, here we go – a brand new reintro where i talk a little bit about myself and my current writing projects. so, here we go, onto all that good stuff!

about me

i'm ann, a twenty-year-old writer from kerala, currently based in kochi

i live with my husband, who is a musician, and lead a very creative life of sorts

i'm an infp, enneagram type 2

i write literary fiction and poetry

i'm a discovery writer and have a thing for sad stories with traumatised characters

i work as a content writer and social media manager for a wedding company

you can find all my published work on my linktree

my aesthetics: wilted flowers, fallen leaves, silhouettes, shadows, gentle friendships, indie music, unplanned trips, birds, fireflies, annotated books, old libraries and buildings, post-colonial literature, voids, romance

my wips

i recently finished a litfic novel called dairy whiskey and am editing it right now, hoping to get it ready for agent submissions in a month or two. i put my heart and soul and blood and bones into it, so if you’d like to dive into the story and read a few excerpts, you can check out the intro here and every other excerpt here!

rock salt is my main wip since finishing dairy whiskey. it is the story of identical twins rain and norah as they move out for college and navigate their lives on their own, which ends up in them growing apart. if you like complicated sibling relationships and the struggles of growing up, you’ll love this book!

i so badly want to start writing it, but i don’t think i’ll be able to until dairy whiskey is in a more secure position. so, there probably won’t be any updates for a few months, but you can read the wip intro here.

this is a gay vignette novel that i started writing back in 2021 as a source of personal joy. this is the story of how a singer-songwriter desperate for normalcy meets a boy with a heart heavy with guilt. this is the story of how they fall in love and it’s honestly quite wholesome <3

i haven’t worked on this book in so long and i’ve been trying to sneak some words in, but it feels like the book needs a fresh start. i don’t know, i just might start it all over again. but until then, here’s an outdated wip intro.

green room is a literary/experimental memoir documenting my teenage years as a writer. it is a deep dive into craft and how it affects life, particularly how it moulds you as a person. i haven’t started drafting this yet, but here’s a wip intro for now.

so, that’s about it!

if you’d like to be pinged when i drop a new publication or a wip update, just send me an ask to be added to my general taglist and i’ll tag you in those posts.

thank you so much for reading. i hope writing has been going well for you. if not, here’s some strength, some kindness, and some caffeine to keep going!

– love, ann.

general taglist (ask to be added or removed)

@shaonsim @heartfullkings @vnsmiles @dallonwrites @wannabeauthorclive @sienna-writes @violetpeso @flip-phones @silassghost @ambidextrousarcher @zoe-louvre @writing-with-l @magic-is-something-we-create @femmeniism @frozenstillicide @wizardfromthesea @rose-bookblood @coffeeandcalligraphy @rodentwrites @saltwaterbells @snehithiye @at-thezenith @subtlefires

#writeblr reintro #writeblr reintroduction #writeblr intro #writeblr #writer on Tumblr #literary fiction writer #my wips #my writing projects #navigation page #aljwrites

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hannahssimblr · 2 months ago

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Lucky Girl

Part Two Summary

We skip forward to 2011, as Evie and Claire are completing their final exams at school. Evie reflects on the year just gone, which was difficult after her heartbreak. She reveals that she and Jude emailed for a while, but eventually he stopped replying to her, and moved on with his life. She obsesses with Claire over his life in Berlin, and his beautiful Danish girlfriend, Astrid. Eventually, once it is time to go to college, Evie knows it is time to put the story behind her and move on, though she still carries the hurt with her.

Evie moves to Dublin to attend art college in September. She and Claire move into an apartment in the centre of town, owned by Claire’s father. At college, Evie becomes fast friends with an eccentric blonde called Marnie, who’s into slam poetry, performative feminism and dating gawky academics. Evie doesn’t have an instant connection or a great lot of faith in Marnie, but she finds her interesting, and unlike the people she knows back home in Tullamore, her dull hometown in the centre of Ireland. She is determined to be a different person in Dublin.

Evie gets along fine in college, but is a little surprised to find that she isn’t the natural talent she thought she was. She is used to being the best at art amongst her peers and being surrounded by equally capable artists has challenged her confidence in her abilities. She projects a lot of her insecurity onto Dean, a twenty-three-year-old student in her life drawing class who makes a pointed effort to find fault in her work. He infuriates her, but others ensure her he’s not actually out to get her. Critique is part of the class, and he’s merely speaking up.

Meanwhile, Marnie becomes invested in Evie as a pet project, and is excited to show her more of the ‘real world’, as she senses Evie’s innocence and inexperience. She takes her to a bar in town one night, and challenges Evie to flirt with at least one boy. This makes Evie anxious. She hasn’t been romantically involved with anyone in so long, and the last boy she even kissed was Jude, over a year ago now.

In the bathroom, Evie runs into Jen and Michelle, Jude’s ex girlfriend. She’s surprised to see them, having thought that she would never encounter Jen again after the summer of 2010. Jen is friendly, as always, and interested in Evie’s life, but Evie decides to be standoffish. Jen apologises for giving Evie the wrong idea about Jude’s intentions at the festival. She says she believed he liked her, and she wanted to encourage things to move along, but that she knows she overstepped. Evie pretends not to care. She pretends it is ancient history, and she’d prefer not to discuss it.

Later, she meets a boy named Stephen, and kisses him in the smoking area. She hates it, but feels triumphant. Jude is no longer the last boy to have kissed her, and now she can move on with her life and stop thinking about him for good.

At college, Dean questions Evie, and wonders why she’s so concerned about his opinion of her work, and by extension, her. She thaws on him, but remains reserved.

At Christmas, Evie and Marnie go to a party at Marnie’s friend, Fiona’s, house. There, Marnie and Fiona make fun of Dean for being working class and wearing clothes from a charity shop. Evie jumps to his defence, suddenly feeling a kinship with him, as she is from a working class background too. Later, she sees him on the stairs. He’s high and looks at her with an intensity that rattles her. When he touches her hand, she lets him. Curious about him, but also about herself.

Later, before going to sleep, Evie tells Marnie about how Dean touched her hand, and Marnie asks whether Evie was uncomfortable. She says no, but that it was an unusual thing for him to do. When Marnie leaves Evie’s house, she texts Dean and tells him off for being a creep. Dean texts Evie and tells her he doesn’t want to be involved in teenage drama. He blocks her before she can defend herself.

Evie returns home for Christmas. She sees Kelly for the first time in months at mass, and is disheartened when she ignores her and her whole family. Evie reflects on the difference between Kelly’s treatment of her and Claire, who she apparently treats with basic decency now that Claire and Shane are officially together. She wonders what about her so offensive to Kelly.

A fraught dinner with her family at her grandmother’s house makes Evie aware that the attitudes they have towards women are offensive. She sees her potential future in the women around the table, as housewives, women trapped in unhappy situations, unable to fulfil their dreams, serving their men and living a bland existence. It terrifies her, as she sees herself in every woman around the table. Bothered by her drunk, alcoholic husband, Evie’s mother takes her frustration out on her daughter, making a point that Evie is drinking too much. An argument explodes, and Evie leaves the table.

The next day, still rattled, Evie head to the local pub with Claire and Shane, where she immediately drinks far too much. She encounters Kelly by the bar, and tries to talk to her, only to be brushed off harshly. She’s hurt and tries to apologise, but Kelly throws a drink at her instead. Evie flies into a rage and flings herself at Kelly, but Shane steps in and hauls her outside for a stern talking to. He tells her he is worried about her, that she’s drinking too much and hanging out with weird people. Evie scoffs, and expresses disdain for Tullamore and all the boring people in it.

Shane takes the time to talk to Evie and gives her space to open up to him about her feelings. She talks about her sadness, her feelings of being unwanted and abandoned by people she cared about. The end of her friendship with Kelly took a toll on her self esteem, and has been worsened by how she has treated her in the aftermath. She talks about Jude too, and how she felt he liked her, and was hurt by her realisation that he didn’t really care for her at all. She asks Shane to tell her more about him, about anything he knows about the situation, but Shane refuses because it’s in the past, and she needs to learn to move on. He gives her wise advice about life, pain, and loss.

On New year’s Eve, Evie and Marnie go out to a club in Dublin. There, she third-wheels with Marnie and her weird boyfriend, and once the clock strikes midnight, she leaves the club in pursuit of pizza.

She joins the queue in the pizzeria, and quickly recognises Dean’s bleach blonde hair in the kitchen. She knew he worked at a pizza restaurant, but hadn’t known it was this one in particular. With drunken confidence, she decides she will wait until he finishes his shift, and confront him about what happened after the house party. She feels he was unjustified to block her without allowing her to explain herself.

When he finishes, they talk on the street, and he tells her she’s being dramatic. He makes a point of unblocking her on his phone, which satisfies her. Her self esteem couldn’t handle another rejection. He realises she’s drunk and insists on walking her home. Though she refuses initially, he convinces her it is safer. They talk the entire way home, and when they reach the door of her building, she inspects him, and decides that she thinks he’s hot.

Evie, Marnie, Dean and Fiona (from the house party) go to a pub one evening and talk about their plans for Evie’s birthday. Evie doesn’t want a party, but the girls insist on throwing one, anyway. Marnie and Fiona ask Dean about who he likes at college, but he’s not interested in the conversation. They ask him to choose between the three girls at the table, and to their horror, he chooses Evie. Marnie can hardly disguise her jealousy and calls an end to the night. She and Fiona leave, but Dean and Evie go to another pub for one last drink.

There, he opens up about his family struggles. His father passed away the summer before, and he is dealing with the aftermath. Evie feels the difference between them and cannot relate to this part of his life. Still, she feels for him, and can imagine the pain.

The conversation turns to lighter things, and Dean tells Evie that he thinks she’s sexy. He kisses her, and she likes it.

When he walks her to her door later, he asks to come in, but she refuses. He pushes her a little, but ultimately respects her ‘no’.

Evie and Claire meet for lunch, and Evie discusses her birthday plans with Claire. Claire becomes awkward and cagey, and alludes to vague reasons she won’t be able to attend the party. When Evie pushes her, she caves, and admits that she and Shane have plans that night. Jude is visiting, and she didn’t want Evie to know, because she knew it would upset her.

This rattles Evie, but she tries to keep her cool. She reminds herself that she’s over him, and doesn’t care about Jude anymore. Claire offers to keep them apart and ensure they’ll never run into one another, but Evie, play-acting the bigger person, tells Claire that he is welcome to come to her party if he wants to. She says she’s fine, but she’s lying. She spends the next week unable to eat out of anxiety.

When her birthday rolls around, Evie is so nervous that she drinks shots of vodka from the bottle she’s hiding in the house. At the party, Evie’s peers from college gather round and watch her open her gifts. Everyone has bought her alcohol, and she realises that this is her personality to them. She is the girl that drinks too much. She’s mortified, but laughs it off and thanks them. Marnie gifts her a comically large box of condoms, as a public, cruel joke about how Evie is still a virgin. She pretends not to be embarrassed, and acts cool, even though she feels like the butt of a big joke.

Dean shows up to her party disastrously drunk, and gifts her a bottle of expensive whiskey, stolen from work. She’s embarrassed to be with him.

A while later, Shane and Claire arrive with Jen and Jude. When Evie sees Jude, she almost chokes on her drink. She’s surprised by how good he looks, as she has spent a year and a half deliberately remembering him as uglier than he is, to make herself feel better. He is utterly beautiful, and just like always, her body does wild things when she looks at him. Still, he’s different. He’s not the skinny, elfin boy he was when she knew him. He looks like a man now.

He’s kind to her, and still charming, though he has lost a lot of his hyper energy. She’s curious about his life now, and longs to learn more, but knows she is different now, too, and she’s not supposed to care so much. They lose each other at the party for a while, only catching up later, when Jude tells her what he thinks is a funny story about a drugged up guy who was trying to do lines of cocaine off the vertical mirror in the bathroom. She realises he’s talking about Dean. Her Dean.

Suddenly ravenous after foregoing food for days, Evie opts to grab something to eat at a kebab shop nearby. Jude offers to go with her for company, and she allows him to. They sit across from one another in the booth, and they have a conversation about their lives. Evie is reserved at first, still stung by the way he left things, and his failure to respond to her emails. He apologises, and explains that his life moved on. He didn’t think she would be so hurt.

Despite her best efforts to be chilly, Jude’s charm eventually melts her armour, and she finds herself talking and laughing with him like she used to. He tells her stories from his world travels and shows her some photographs of his time in Thailand. Evie’s good mood comes crashing down when he scrolls too far on his phone, and accidentally shows her a picture of his girlfriend, Astrid. Her visceral reaction surprises her, but plays it off and is kind about the other woman. Jude, head over heels, gushes about how wonderful she is, and Evie decides it’s time to get back to the party.

When they say goodbye at the end of the evening, Jude promises to stay in touch. She doesn’t believe him, but she’s glad she got to have the closure she wanted.

Massive snowfall hits the city and shuts college down for a week. Evie and Claire spend their time wrapped in blankets at home, watching TV together. Desperate for a walk, Evie eventually leaves the house and heads towards town. While there, she gets a text from Jude, igniting an unexpected conversation. Eventually, he calls her, tired of texting, and she picks up. She wanders around in the snow, chatting and laughing with him. The conversation makes her feel warm inside, but the feeling fades when she arrives home to see Dean lingering on her doorstep. She’s still furious with him after his drunken antics at her birthday party.

Dean is quick to apologise and take complete responsibility for himself. He begs Evie for forgiveness and gives her a thoughtful birthday gift in place of the stolen whiskey. He explains that family troubles have had him feeling down and promises to do better by her. They make up, but when she arrives home, she immediately lies to Claire, and pretends that she still wants nothing to do with him.

Things progress between Evie and Dean, and by the time spring arrives, they are spending a lot of time together. Dean, however, is frustrated by Evie’s reluctance to take things to a more physical place. She lies to him and tells him she is not a virgin, so he doesn’t understand what’s holding her up. Eventually, she agrees on a date and time to do it with him, deliberately choosing a day when she knows Claire won’t be home to find out.

Dean comes over, and after some brief small talk, they have sex for the first time. She’s uncomfortable and unsure of herself, and the experience is awkward. She doesn’t like it so much, but is relieved to have it out of the way. Dean, however, is frustrated by her performance, and promptly leaves for work, leaving her alone in her bedroom. She calls Claire for comfort, but after chickening out and deciding not to share the truth, calls Jude instead. She doesn’t tell him what happened, but they have a conversation that calms her, nonetheless. It seems he has that effect on her.

As the college year winds down, things deteriorate between Evie and Dean. Family troubles have left him stressed and angry, and he takes his frustration out on her. Evie walks on eggshells around him, terrified to upset him, lest he insult her, or tell her she’s an idiot for a simple mistake. He still stays over at her house whenever Claire is out, but Evie has started to feel like a means to an end, an object for him to use, rather than an equal. She likes Dean, but she doesn’t like him when he behaves like this. In fact, he frightens her.

One evening, Claire confronts Evie, having found a pile of condom wrappers in the bin. She is confused and hurt, not understanding why Evie hasn’t spoken to her about her new relationship. Evie breaks down and admits that she was embarrassed, and that she knew Claire wouldn’t approve of Dean. Claire admits that she’s not thrilled about the idea, but that she would have liked to have been there for her, and to at least know what was going on, as Evie used to share everything with her. Claire tells her she’s become tired of the way she’s been acting, that she loves her, but she’s almost impossible to be around lately. She says she needs time away from the friendship.

In early summer, Jude returns to Dublin, and invites Evie to a movie night at Jen’s house. She has just had a moment with Dean that upset her, but she goes anyway, despite not feeling her best. They watch films together and eat snacks, and Evie enjoys herself for the first time in quite a while. Eventually, however, Evie’s relationship with Dean comes up in conversation, and Jude and Jen are taken aback. They’re surprised she would date someone like him, based on what they saw of his behaviour at Evie’s birthday party, but Evie attempts to defend him.

Feeling disrespected by their attitudes, she storms off to the bathroom to calm down. When she comes out, Jude is waiting in the hallway. He asks if he can speak to her.

They talk in Jen’s bedroom, but Evie is already bursting with rage. She explodes at him and wonders how he has the audacity to give input on her relationship after what he put her through. Once again, he tries to apologise and explain himself, but she won’t hear it. She projects all of her anger about Dean onto him and blindsides him with her accusations. He doesn’t know what to say. Evie insists that they cannot be friends, admits that she never stopped having feelings for him, and decides that it’s not healthy to stay in touch. She claims he makes her feel bad about herself, and then she storms out of the house into the rain. He doesn’t try to stop her.

Isolated and without supports left, Evie has hit rock bottom emotionally. When she and Dean go to a party at Marnie’s, a palatial seaside house on the Southside of the city, the vibes are instantly horrible. Evie senses something is off between her and Marnie, and feels like people around her are whispering about her, too.

Dean, who is only affectionate towards Evie when he’s on drugs, kisses her at the pool. She’s thrilled that he’s not embarrassed to do it in front of other people. When he takes her to Marnie’s home gym and tries to have sex, however, his demeanour changes upon her refusal. He berates her for being a prude, then leaves her alone while he goes to spend the evening with other people instead.

Later, Evie finds Dean, Marnie and Fiona among their other friends in the living room. Despite feeling awful, she feels she has nothing more to lose by sitting with them. They make subtle, hurtful comments about her that hammer further at her self esteem, and eventually, Dean produces cocaine for them all to take. Marnie comments about how Evie could not afford to pay for her share, but Dean says he’ll cover her, challenging her to take it, though he knows she’s not comfortable around drugs. In order to prove a point, Evie does it, but instantly hates it. She wanders around the grounds on her own, feeling insane.

Eventually, Evie finds Marnie’s ensuite bathroom, where she hides in the bath and waits for the drugs to wear off. While there, Marnie and Fiona come into the bedroom. She can hear them talking through the walls. They say vicious things about Evie and tear her character to pieces. They discuss her sex life with Dean and relay private details that Dean has shared with them. Evie is disgusted to hear her intimate life discussed like this. The girls talk about their own relationships with Dean, comparing experiences, and Evie realises that he has been sleeping with all three of them. She is the only one that didn’t know.

Hurt and angry, Evie rushes out of the bathroom. She realises it is too late to get the bus home, so she will be stuck in the house for the entire night. When she comes downstairs, she runs into Dean, flirting with another girl from college. They have an unpleasant interaction in the hallway, and he follows her outside to the front garden to talk.

Dean is cruel. He brushes off her complaints and claims that she was stupid and naïve for ever thinking he’d be different. He says he was only ever interested in seeing if he could get her to sleep with him, as a challenge, since she was wound so tightly. Upon realising that her feelings for him were real, he laughs, and as Evie replays their relationship, she can see all of his manipulative tactics so clearly. He had been playing with her emotions right from the beginning. She’s humiliated, realising that her inexperience and trusting nature caused this. She runs to a nearby beach, and sobs inconsolably.

Evie calls Shane, the only friend she feels she can talk to, and tells him what happened. Though it is late and he is more than an hour away, he immediately gets into his car and comes to get her. When he arrives, he’s concerned about her clothes (She’s still in her bathing suit), and she tells him she’s afraid to go into the house and get her bag, as she cannot face the others. Shane gets it for her. He puts her into his car and takes her home, as the sun rises over the city.

#lucky girl part 2 summary

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dreamersbcll · 1 year ago

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writer tara tries to brute force through writers block and always gives herself a headache. sam will catch her squinting at her laptop screen, scowling and growling. she picks her sister up and enforces mandatory cuddle time and runs her fingers through her hair.

“Soldier & The Poet”

(how could i not)

——————————————————————————

It’s been three hours, and Tara hasn't moved from that damn computer. In three hours, Sam had cleaned the kitchen, washed their bed sheets, cleaned their bathtub, and ordered Thai for dinner.

And Tara was still staring at her laptop screen, her eyes glazed over.

Now Sam knew better than to slam the computer shut, as they had gotten into many fights over lost writings and deleted files. She also knew that Tara was agonizing over her final story for her poetry class, a credit that would push her toward an early graduation. Sam wasn’t an idiot. She had to do this carefully.

When Tara got into the zone, she wouldn’t move for hours. She won’t eat, sleep, or even breathe until her vision is on the paper. It drove Sam fucking crazy.

As the clock ticked into hour four, she shook her head. This needed to end now.

She made her way over to the kitchen table, sneaking up behind Tara, and quickly snaked her arms around Tara's middle and scooped up and out of the chair.

Tara, freshly twenty-one, was still no more prominent than she was at age thirteen. She fought well, but Sam had the height and strength advantage. After a few moments of yelling at Sam to put her down, you asshole, she finally gave up squirming, just staring up at Sam, arms crossed in displeasure. Sam grinned as Tra jutted her lip out in feeble disapproval.

“Sammy. I’m almost done with my story. Put me down!”

Sam just shook her head with glee, carrying Tara towards the couch. “Nope, Hemingway. We’re gonna cuddle. I’m tired, and you owe me after your writing marathon!” she sang, dumping Tara onto the couch.

Her little sister hit the cushions with an oof, smiling despite the frown on her head. Scooting herself over so Sam could hold her, and she motioned for her big sister to join her. Sam slumped down next to her, positioning herself to face Tara.

The two sisters were nose-to-nose, one smiling, the other still slightly grumpy.

“You know, you could’ve just told me to stop,” Tara mocked, rolling her eyes in good fun.

Sam rolled her eyes right back, bopping Tara on the nose. “Like that would work. You’re over there, writing the great American novel while I sit all alone—poor me. So alone and abandoned,” she glumly said, feigning sorrow.

Tara rolled her eyes and smiled. “It’s my final project loser. And like you’d tell me to stop. You’re my, what were the words? Oh yeah, my biggest cheerleader,” she teased.

Shrugging, Sam pulled Tara into her chest, relishing how Tara sighed as she snuggled in. The two sat like that for a minute, soaking in the warmth of each other.

Finally, Tara broke the silence.

“I’m writing about us. It’s called The Soldier and The Poet. My brave knight protects the poet, who brings them fortune and fame in exchange for their loyalty and love,” she whispered into Sam’s chest.

Sam just hummed, holding her girl closer. She knew that already. She was reading Tara's work as she stood behind her. But it was nice to hear Tara say it out loud.

“Tell me about them, please,” she murmured, planting kisses into Tara’s hair.

She could feel Tara shiver against her chest, squeezing Sam tightly. Tara loved telling others about her work, but she loved telling Sam the most. The two had their own world alone, where they could exist. And both loved it dearly.

“There will come a soldier who carries a mighty sword-” Tara began, her voice wavering in excitement.

Sam closed her eyes, a grin on her face, letting her little Hemingway steal her heart all over again.

#scream #sam carpenter #tara carpenter #carpenter sisters #ao3 author #my writing tag #soft and sweet :)#thank you kai #AU: protect my heart

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ilikereadingactually · 2 months ago

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Small Ghost

Small Ghost by Trista Mateer, illustrated by Lauren Zaknoun

it's been a while since i read some poetry, and this was a quick but powerfully emotional read. i went on a journey.

the book in one sentence: a small ghost navigates the nadir of depression and the slow upward climb to feeling better through frank and conversational free verse, evocative photography, and slowly lightening art.

having made that climb upward from incapacitating depression myself many years ago, i found this collection extremely recognizable and poignant. Mateer doesn't try to disguise any of the extremity of the experience: the emotional and physical mess, the blank hopelessness alternating with sudden sharp anguish, the weeping in the grocery store (that one made me laugh). but neither is the slow brightening of the horizon disguised, as small ghost begins to pull herself out, gives therapy and medication a chance, starts finding or noticing or concocting things to live for, just a little bit longer.

all this blunt poetry, which is so charming and emotional on its own, is paired with fascinating photography of small ghost—a figure in satiny bedsheet—and a wide variety of other art that grows softer and sweeter as the book progresses. the combined effect feels raw to me, unpolished in a very pleasing way, a project born out of the extremity of feeling rather than any abstract idea. it's so evocative of a similar time in my life, and provides such wholesome comfort too, without any tinge of shame.

overall, a really honest, compassionate, humor-laden take on depression and grief and slow, gentle improvement.

the deets

how i read it: another e-galley from NetGalley, pretty soon i will have made it out of my backlog hole.

try this if you: love poetry about mundane activities but deep emotion, dig artsy books, or want a reading journey with a hopeful trajectory. can't help but think of one of my favorite musicals, which offers this trajectory too: no one's screaming at you, so you feel all right for ten minutes. if you feel all right for ten minutes, feel all right for twenty minutes. feel all right for forty minutes! drop it and smile, why don't you feel all right for the rest of your life?

maybe skip this if you: need to avoid depictions of depression and suicidal ideation. maybe that's obvious after reading this review but just reiterating

some lines i really liked: the most relatable moments, to me

It's strange, all the things you forget about when you can't find the scars to prove they happened anymore.

---

small ghost spends six hours on tumblr A day. At least. Looking at sad quotes, accidentally learning Greek mythology, getting caught up in shipping wars, pretending to be a poet, pretending to be a person.

---

She breaks all the plates just to order new ones, just to have something to look forward to for three to seven days. She pulls out a credit card in the middle of the night to buy the Barbie she had when she was ten.

---

but you haven't ruined your life. You have saved it. You're saving it right now.

pub date: September 24, 2024! It's out there, go find it!

#books and reading #booklr #bookblr #book recs #book reviews #poetry #small ghost #trista mateer

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pencap · 1 year ago

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You really inspire me. I used to write poetry when I was a child. Good poetry, I was told. But then I got into novels. And then I got into academics and stopped writing for fun altogether. Everything was so formal, so proper, and I was good at that too, but I feel like I stopped being able to express deep sentiments.

I've just started writing again in the past few years, and I love it. The "creative juices" as they say are flowing again, and it's wonderful - I've missed it. But I feel like I write less descriptively than when I was young. Like, I've lost how to write prose, and connect with.... feeling. I stumbled across your blog a while back - when it was quiet and still. But I followed because your words were so beautiful. And suddenly you're back! And you really do write so stunningly. But the way you've spoken a bit about yourself, your journey, has really struck me.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that you've had an impact on me as a reader. I feel by observing you get back on your feet again I'm getting back in touch with my past self, and that something is waking up within me. I want to write poetry again. And watching you do it, I feel like I can too. 💛

i have a distinct memory of the first poem i remember writing. it might not be the first i ever wrote, but it's the first i ever remember. it was handwritten, on a construction-paper-and-five-year-old-art notebook bound together as some children's art project. the poem was on a bright red page. i don't remember the words, but i remember writing it curled up against my desk, in shaky childish writing. it was about autumn, and colours changing, and leaves falling. it had meter and rhymes and very even lines.

on days that i do not feel like a writer, a poet, i remember that little girl who barely knew what a poem was. she was writing anyway. she was even good at it, i dare say. i wrote poems i didn't need to write all the way through middle school and high school, writing two and three and five times as many poems as assigned in my english classes.

but i stopped for a while, too. over the years, again and again, i stopped. i stopped because i lost touch with myself. i stopped because of schoolwork. i stopped because i left fandoms behind. i stopped because i felt like the words had dried up and i was scared that all i could piece together was flaking mud from a dry riverbed. i stopped for a hundred different reasons, a hundred different times, but i came back.

i don't write the way i did at seven, or fifteen, or even twenty-two. but then, i don't talk like i did at seven anymore, either. i don't think that way, or live that way, or even look that way. so maybe it's inevitable that my poetry changes, too. maybe it's good that my poetry changes, too.

and maybe it doesn't matter whether it's good or not. maybe what matters is that i am listening, and i am speaking. i am awake. maybe i am whole again, finding a part of myself that has been missing.

that little girl is still there, after all. she is always a part of me, and i think if i let her, she will always be talking to me. just like your past self is a part of you, too. all the words you said, all the words you never said. all the new words you are finding to say. they are all part of you, too. i know you will find your poetry again, because it has always been within you and always will be.

#sylvie speaks #ask sylvie #i am rambling greatly but i am trying to say #that i hear you and i see you and i feel you #you are not alone #and i am so so glad that you are here and writing #and thank you for your love and kindness and support

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foundtherightwords · 1 year ago

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Through the World's Far Ends

Pairing: Leonard Bast x Helen Schlegel (Howards End)

Summary: Several years after his ill-fated affair with Helen, Leonard enlists to fight in World War I, hoping it would put an end to his miserable life. However, when he runs into Helen again in the trenches of Passchendaele, Leonard discovers that life may still be worth living after all.

Warnings: angst, mentions of war, violence, and injuries, implied infidelity, suicide ideations

Word count: 7.2k

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

Those lines echoed in Leonard's ears as he looked over the mud-churned fields of Passchendaele that rainy October day of 1917. Had he read them ten years ago, back when he was still a boy of barely twenty-one with a head full of dreams and a heart full of poetry, he would have marveled at their beautiful ideal, their quiet exultation. Now, he couldn't help but snicker at them for their hopeless sentimentality. If there was anything of England in these foreign fields at all, it probably wouldn't be the England that pretty, posh Rupert Brooke was thinking about. No, it would be the England that Leonard himself was familiar with, the England of damp basement dwellings, of grimy streets, of cold and hunger, and long, tedious nights.

And if he should die, there would be no one to think of him. Not his brother and his two sisters, who had long ago given up on him. Certainly not Jacky, who would never have let him enlist had she still been alive. Poor Jacky. She had been rather excited when the war first broke out. To be honest, so had he. There had been a fevered exhilaration in the air, a sense of purpose in everything and everyone, hectic but thrilling at the same time, which had distracted the two of them, for a moment, from the miserable humdrum of their existence.

Still, for all that excitement, Jacky wouldn't hear of him enlisting, even though it would've at least solved their immediate financial problem—the Army pay wasn't much, but it would be something for her to live on. But she had burst into tears whenever he mentioned it. "No, Len!" she'd kept saying, clinging to him as if afraid Lord Kitchener would come to personally snatch him away. "If something happened to you, how would I live?"

Leonard had been tempted to say that if he should be killed, she could count on a war widow's pension, but Jacky had become so hysterical that he'd only given her a clumsy hug and said, "All right, Jacky, I won't go," while trying to hide the bitterness in his voice.

When she succumbed to the consumption that had been slowly eating away at her, a little over a year later, Leonard had sincerely mourned her. She had been his constant companion, for better or worse, for nearly ten years, and when she was gone, she left a void, if not in his heart then at least in his life. While she was alive, he had to find ways to provide for her, to take care of her. Without her, he was without a purpose.

After Jacky died, he'd thought that he would simply flicker out and die too. But he found that it was not so simple. Living had become a habit, and like any habit, it was difficult to shake off. And so he had enlisted, only waiting a decent period after Jacky's funeral so it wouldn't seem he was defying her memories. He didn't much care about the war. He only thought that if he couldn't give up his life on his own, he would let others snuff it out. He completed his training and was sent to Belgium just before conscription was introduced, in January 1916.

But even in the war, death eluded him. His health, which had suffered from malnourishment and the smog and grimes of London, actually improved thanks to Army food and regular, if strenuous, exercises. He didn't mind the cold and the wet and the mud of the trenches. And though he had seen men die in front of him, men blown to bits by shells, men cut to ribbons by barbed wires, men blistered and blinded and cooked inside out by mustard gas, and men who drowned in the mud because their friends were forbidden to pull them out, though death was all around him, he remained more or less untouched.

To be fair, he didn't exactly go looking for death. He thought that before he died, he should make himself useful and do what he could to help others, so he did. He followed orders without asking questions, bent his head under the explosions and the gas and the horrible weather and did as he was told. He tried not to shoot when he could help it, and when he did shoot, tried not to aim at anyone in particular. He didn't want that on his conscience as well. He preferred the menial work, never shying from digging and repairing the trenches, acting as a stretcher bearer, and carrying supplies to the front.

What he really wanted was to stop thinking. Once, a long time ago, during the darkest time of his life, and also the best time of his life, he'd wished for something to do, to stop him from thinking. Now he believed that if he toiled hard enough, made himself tired enough, he would be able to stop thinking. It didn't quite work yet. Even on days when he'd only had an hour or two of sleep, the thoughts kept coming, slowly but inexorably—about death, about Jacky, about things he'd done and hadn't done, about things he had buried deep in his mind—all rattling inside his skull like lunatics rattling the bars of their cages. The one thing he didn't think about was the future, for there was no future. The war may never end, and for some people, it would never end. Leonard had seen enough wounded men and shell-shocked men and men with scars deep within them, where nobody could see except for those who knew where to look, and he understood that those men would never come back from the war, regardless of what happened to them. Sometimes he wondered if he would be one of them.

Such thoughts were presently crowding his head as he turned over in the dugout, trying to find a comfortable position. There was a lull in the racket of gunfire and shellfire and rain, and he wanted to get some rest—not sleep, he had forgotten what it was like to really sleep for months now—before nightfall. A new shipment of supplies had just been brought in that day on mules and wagons, and Leonard's infantry unit would be assigned to haul these to the front after dusk fell.

The other men in the dugout were squabbling. Leonard didn't mind the bickering. In fact, he welcomed their voices to drown out the thoughts in his head. It appeared Percy Armitage had received some gramophone records in the post that had come with the supplies, but due to some accident or carelessness, the sleeves had been misplaced, and now they were arguing which was which and which to play first. The men were often sent little gifts like that from home, and these were freely shared amongst them all—it was how Leonard became acquainted with the works of Rupert Brooke and other war poets. Though books these days no longer held the allure and enchantment they once had for him, they were something to relieve the boredom in the trenches. All his life, Leonard had wished he could discuss books and music and culture with easiness, an easiness that did not come easily for men of his class. He thought, with a grim sense of smugness, that he could do so now, provided that the books were about the horrors of war.

"Lads, lads," Percy, a veteran of the Boer War and therefore older than most of them, was saying, like a stern but benevolent father to his children. "You shall all get a turn. But these are my records, and I'm going to choose first."

There was a scratching sound of the needle being lowered onto the record. The first soft notes floated out, and as if by magic, all the men fell silent, enraptured by the unimaginably normal, everyday sound of music.

But Leonard was mistaken—the music wasn't soft, not at all. For a moment, it seemed the shellfire and the thunder were coming in the middle of the day instead of at night as usual, as the first notes did not float but boomed from the gramophone, followed by bursts of what sounded like rapid gunfire that chased each other around the cramped dugout. While the music built and built, Leonard could almost hear the chill wind that blew across the battlefield, feel the drumming of the rain on his skin, and see, under his closed eyelids, the men jumping up from the trenches during a raid or slinking across No Man's Land for a reconnaissance in a moonless night. Herr Beethoven had never been to the trenches of Belgium, so how the devil did he capture it so well in his music? For it was, indeed, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, such as Leonard hadn't heard in years and years.

And, as though stirred by the music, memories surfaced—the gallery at Covent Garden, the music halls, the evenings he could get away from his desk at Porphyrion early enough to lose himself for a few hours in music and culture, but he never quite managed to lose himself in it, not really, no matter how diligently he attended the operas and the concerts, no matter how many books he read, he knew all the names but could never form his own opinion about them. And another memory, one of those he had buried away—a girl, her hair coming loose under her hat, her eyes, so bright they lit up the dreary interior of the Prince Regent's Hall, transfixed on the orchestra while she swayed slightly to the music, her elbow almost touching his a few times.

For the first time in seven years, Leonard allowed himself to think of her a little.

Helen. Miss Schlegel. His Miss Schlegel. No, not his. Never his.

He'd looked at her with wonder and envy then, in the gloom of the Prince Regent's Hall, like a failed artist looking at a painting in the National Gallery. Why did the music move her so? What was she hearing that he wasn't? What did one have to do to acquire such passion? Even back then he'd known, this was something he could never attain, something he could never be, and that was what had drawn him to her. He'd always tried to pursue beauty, always on some hopeless quest for it, but only ended up getting sucked down into the mud—not that different from where he was now, really.

In the past seven years, he had become quite adept at not thinking about her. Whenever he saw something that reminded him of her—and a lot of things reminded him of her—he would immediately find something else to think of, was there anything left in the cupboard for supper, whether he could persuade the landlord to hold off the rent collection for another week, whether it was too soon to write to one of his sisters, Blanche or Laura, again, to ask for money. He'd think and think furiously until all thoughts of Helen were pushed from his mind. He did it almost automatically now. It had turned into a habit, like everything else.

But here, in this cramped and clammy dugout, that habit had deserted him. Even some hours later, when he lifted the heavy pack full of hot rations on his back and walked out into the rain and the cold, she still occupied his thoughts, slow and dull as they were from lack of sleep. He stepped on the duckboards that crisscrossed the muddy landscape, one small figure in a long snaking line of similar figures, while shells and bullets whizzed by him, while the sweet stink of rot and the acrid smell of mustard gas assaulted his nostrils, while rain drummed on his tin hat, but he hardly noticed any of them. His mind was filled with Helen, Helen when he'd first seen her at the Prince Regent's Hall, Helen in her bright dining room at Wickham Place, her head tipped to the side as she urged him to talk about his walking, enthusiasm aflame in her eyes. And most of all, Helen when he'd last seen her. He heard her gently chiding voice, saw her face full of sympathy when she discovered the squalor in which he and Jacky had been living, felt the force of her righteous fury as she tried to help them, dragging them to confront the man she believed had been responsible for their misfortune—Henry Wilcox, the then-fiancé of Helen's sister, Margaret.

He thought of other things as well, things buried even deeper. He remembered the fire-lit room in the hotel in Oniton, the utter shame and despair he'd felt when he revealed the truth about Mr. Wilcox and Jacky to Helen, the tears in Helen's eyes as she drew him to her, her arms around him, comforting and seeking comfort at the same time, her mouth trembling under his, their bodies finding each other like two magnets, or perhaps two drowning victims in a heaving sea.

He wondered if she ever thought of him.

Probably not.

He wondered if she was still living in Germany. Margaret, Mrs. Wilcox, had told him so, on that freezing spring day seven years ago, when he trudged to the Wilcoxes' residence on Ducie Street in the hope of finding someone, anyone, to whom to confess his sin. Upon finding out from Mrs. Wilcox that Helen had been traveling in Germany and perhaps planning to stay there indefinitely, the confession died on his lips. He'd thought he knew her reason for staying away. Helen had asked her brother to send him a check of five thousand pounds, but the sight of it, with his guilt still so fresh in his mind, had burned Leonard so much that he'd returned it. At Ducie Street, he'd looked into Mrs. Wilcox's sharp and sad eyes, wondering what she knew, how much Helen had told her. Fear and shame had choked his voice, and he had gone back to his basement, unabsolved.

He had been so desperate, the remorse corroding him so relentlessly that he'd almost confessed to Jacky. But he'd held himself back. If he hadn't managed to control himself with Helen, then at least he had to control himself with Jacky. Telling her would have achieved nothing except to selfishly force her to bear the pain with him, and Jacky wouldn't have been able to bear it. Leonard had argued with himself that Jacky's affair with Mr. Wilcox might have driven him and Helen into each other's arms, but it didn't change the fact that Jacky had been the innocent party in his affair with Helen. It would have been cruel to deprive her of that innocence. And so Leonard had kept quiet and was determined never to think of Helen again, until now.

The irons of guilt were still there, but time and the horrors he'd witnessed in the war had blunted the edges, leaving only a kind of bittersweet nostalgia. Yes, he had done wrong and lost control of himself. But he had also gotten an adventure out of it, had seen and touched and tasted something of beauty. And hadn't he paid enough for his crime in the seven years since? So perhaps that was all right. He only wished Helen didn't have to pay as well.

Lost in his memories, Leonard didn't notice a shell exploding right next to him. He didn't feel the shrapnel hit him. He was only momentarily confused when the world went mute and turned sideways, but even that confusion didn't last long, for he soon had his answer when he fell off the duckboards and sank into the mud.

His last thought was, I hope they don't pull me out.

And then, the mud came over his head, and finally, mercifully, he stopped thinking.

***

In the field ambulance of the Women's Hospital Corps, Helen Schlegel was sitting down with a cigarette. What she really wanted was some hot cocoa, to have the thick sweet taste of it remind her of lazy evenings at Wickham Place, curled up on the bed with Meg and Tibby, talking about their day, laughing over nothing at all, in those carefree years that seemed a lifetime ago. But the supplies had run out, so she had to make do with a cigarette. She had been on her feet for nearly fourteen hours, and had only had about three hours of sleep before that, though she hardly felt tired anymore. Exhaustion was now a state of being, and she had gotten used to it, just as she had gotten used to a lot of things since joining the Corps two years ago. Even after the main Women's Hospital closed in Paris in 1915 and a new one opened in London, she had elected to stay with the field hospital, despite Meg's pleas for her to come home.

If Helen was honest with herself, she would admit that she was rather apprehensive about returning home. She hadn't stepped foot on English soil in seven years. When the war broke out, she had decided to stay in Munich, where she had been living at the time—after all, she was half-German, and she felt that to turn her back on Germany would equal turning her back on her own late father. Besides, there was a huge upsurge of anti-German hatred in England, as Meg had written to her. Tibby had had some trouble when enlisting due to his German last name. But it soon became clear that she could no longer go on living in Germany, if for nothing else than the simple reason of food shortage. Her German cousins were struggling themselves and could not help. So Helen had gotten on a train with every intention of returning to England, when her route brought her to Paris and the Women's Hospital there. Suddenly she'd found a place where she could be of use, since she spoke French and German and could help both patients and doctors. When Helen wrote to tell her sister she was staying, Meg had come to Paris herself, looking thin and worn-out, with gray in her hair. Her husband, Henry, had recently died. Henry's children, who had never quite accepted their father's second marriage, had kept their distance, and Meg had been living by herself in Howards End. Helen had briefly considered coming home to keep her sister company, but she'd decided she could do more good on the battlefield. So she'd told Meg to take care, and stayed.

When asked about her family, Helen always said that she'd lost her husband in the Somme. It was easier than the truth, though she believed that her fellow nurses and the doctors would not care or judge her if they knew. They were all women, most of them her age or older than her, but not by much, some younger, eager-eyed graduates from Oxford and Cambridge, and had seen a lot in their training. Looking at them, Helen wished she had gone to college, had done something more worthwhile with her youth. Oh, she had filled her days with plenty of pursuits, certainly, but what good had those done her, or anybody else, for that matter? Quite the opposite, in fact. It had all been frivolous, the meetings, the causes, the anger, and had led only to heartache and tragedy, not only for herself but for her family and for others as well. Yes, one good and beautiful thing had come from all that, but it was a miracle that it had existed at all, and Helen had to remind herself that the result of beauty did not absolve her of the sin she'd committed in creating it. She supposed it was why she had been so keen on staying at the front to help the wounded. She wished to atone.

And here was another chance for atonement—some stretcher-bearers were trudging toward the ambulance tent, their gait heavy and plodding. Helen sighed. She wasn't expecting to get any sleep—nighttime at the front was rarely quiet—but she'd had a letter from Meg and had been hoping to read it. Well, it could wait. She took one last drag of her cigarette, stubbed it out, and went out to meet the men.

When she first laid eyes on the form lying on the stretcher, in the gloom at the entrance of the tent, Helen thought the bearers were playing a practical joke and bringing them a load of sandbags. As they walked further into the light, she saw that it was not sandbags but a man, a man almost completely encased in mud. There were orders not to stop for anyone who fell off the duckboards, since doing so would hold up the line, but the stretcher-bearers explained that this man had been carrying hot rations, and the others, wanting to save his pack, had pulled him out along with it. The hot food had been recovered, so now here was the man—saved almost as an afterthought. Lucky bastard.

The women of the Corps didn't care who the wounded were, British or French or German, or why they were saved. So the mud-cased man was rolled off the stretcher onto a temporary bed. Helen and another nurse, Vera, who had left her history study at Queen's College in Cambridge to train with the Voluntary Aid Detachment, started picking off the mud in bloody chunks, dropping them into a bucket by the bed, and wiping off the residue with damp sponges. The man was still breathing, his chest moving up and down rapidly.

Vera removed the man's clothes with scissors and sucked in a breath. "He's got a lot of shrapnel in his legs, Helen," she said.

Helen continued to wash the man. "There's a lot on his back as well. I think he's going to need some morphine."

"I'll get it," Vera said and walked briskly off.

Under the sponge, the man shivered. "You seem to have a knack for finding me at my worst, Miss Schlegel," he said.

His voice was hoarse, clogged with mud, but it rang a bell in Helen's mind, a bell from far away and a long time ago, a time when she'd cared about music and art and social justice and fighting against the likes of Henry Wilcox. It had nothing to do with this world of mud and blood, when all she cared about was to help these men—boys, really—and to give them a little comfort while it still mattered. The war had simplified a lot of things for her. But apparently not enough, for here was the past, coming back for her in the form of—

"Mister Bast?" she asked, not quite believing it. "Leonard Bast?"

With trembling hands, she picked off the clay that had dried on his face like a death mask and gave him a quick wipe of the sponge. A pair of brown eyes, gentle and patient like those of a cocker spaniel's, blinked at her from under long lashes clumped together with mud.

"Good evening, Miss Schlegel," he said, with great difficulty.

Helen bolted up from the bed, heart hammering as if someone had trapped a machine gun in her chest.

Vera brought the morphine. "Are you all right, Helen?" she asked. "You're looking quite pale."

"I need some air," Helen managed to reply, before walking away, ignoring the bewildered look tinged with hurt in the brown eyes of the wounded man.

She ran out of the tent, into the cold and rain outside. The sky was a faded, patchy black cloth, lit up by the shells that flew and fell and exploded like fireworks. She couldn't tell if those shells came from the German side or the British side. She could only pray they didn't find their targets. A horrible smell hung in the air, the same smell that clung to her clothes and her hair and her sleep, the battlefield smell of death and gunpowder and mustard gas, but she breathed it in anyway, trying to clear her head and her heart.

Her first instinct was to weep, weep for the broken body covered in mud and the ruined, wheezing voice. Occasionally, she did weep over the wounded boys that came through the hospital, wept at the look in their eyes, sometimes imploring, sometimes reproachful, and at her own helplessness. But then came a burst of absurd joy, brighter than the shells exploding over her head. What did she have to be joyful about in this world, where boys were sent to die senselessly, meaninglessly? For a moment, she didn't care. He's here! Alive and—perhaps not well, exactly, but as well as could be! For a moment, she was that carefree girl again, curled up in bed with her brother and sister, comforted in the certainty that tomorrow would be exactly the same as today.

In the past seven years, if she thought about Leonard at all, it was often with regret and remorse. It was not that she wished she had behaved differently or things had turned out another way—no, never that. But she wished she could have given him some peace and let him know she never blamed him, so he mustn't blame himself. For she knew now what agony he'd lived through in all those years. One look at those eyes, so timid and frightened as they settled on her, and she knew. Yet there had been joy in those eyes as well, the same joy coursing through her that made her want to both laugh and cry.

Well, he was here now. If she wanted to let him know all that, she could. And she was finished with running away.

She went back inside. Vera was still washing Leonard's back, wiping away the seemingly inexhaustible mud. Helen took the sponge from her. "Let me do it," she said.

"Are you sure?" Vera asked. "You were very pale back there."

"I'm fine now. Go on, take your break." She handed Vera her pack of cigarettes.

With one last quizzical look at Helen, Vera pocketed the cigarettes and went out.

Leonard's eyes lit up as Helen sat down by the bed, and she felt her heart constrict, sweetly, painfully, in her chest.

"I thought you were a dream," he croaked.

"Don't try to talk," she said. It came out harsher than she'd intended. She asked him to move his fingers—good—move his toes—not good—turn his head—not so far, good—and told him she was going to remove the shrapnel now, short, business-like instructions and explanations, same as she did with all the wounded men.

"Have you been here all this time?" asked Leonard.

"We've been in Flanders since last year, yes."

He let out a small exhale, like a sigh, or perhaps a little laugh, amused at the twist of fate that had brought them together yet again.

"You're not pleased to see me," he said.

Helen reached for the tweezers, steadied her hand, and delicately picked a scrap of metal out of his flesh. "Don't be silly. I was shocked, that's all. It's not every day one finds a friend in a cake of mud."

"Is that what we are—friends?"

Were they? She didn't know what else to call him, what name she could give to the connection between them, fragile and near invisible yet indestructible as a strand of spider web. Henry Wilcox used to call Leonard her protégé, but she'd always hated how condescending that sounded. What then? Her lover? She didn't love him. What had happened between them that agonizing, intoxicating, magical night seven years ago was fueled by many things—pity, loneliness, even anger and a thirst for revenge—but not love. When she thought she'd fallen in love with Paul, Mr. Wilcox's youngest son, it had been madness. With Leonard, it had been madness as well, though a very different kind. She wasn't even sure if she was capable of loving someone in that way. Now, though, with her heart in turmoil and her hands shaking so much she was afraid she couldn't remove the shrapnel from his flesh without hurting him, Helen was no longer so sure.

So—a friend, then. It was inadequate, but it would have to do. She forced herself to say, as cheerfully as she could, "Yes, of course."

"I thought you'd be in England."

"I decided I would be more useful here."

They spoke politely, expressionlessly, like two passing acquaintances chatting at a train station's waiting room over cups of tea.

"How is—how's your family? Your brother and sister?"

"Tibby was wounded in Thiepval and was sent home last year. Meg is well. Her husband died, so she and—and Tibby are living at Howards End now. It's the Wilcoxes' country home, in Hertfordshire," she added, remembering that Leonard had never heard of Howards End.

Leonard was silent, then—"I'm sorry about Mr. Wilcox."

"I'm sorry for Meg. I've never liked him." Though she had come to understand Meg's love for Mr. Wilcox and no longer blamed the man for what happened with the Basts, Helen could never like him, personally. "How is Mrs. Bast?"

"She died, too," he said, his voice muted. "Consumption. Two years ago."

The tweezers froze between Helen's fingers. "Oh, Mr. Bast. I'm dreadfully sorry."

Leonard tried to shrug, but couldn't. They both fell quiet for a while. Helen thought about those who had gone and those who remained, like themselves, and how tangled their lives were, still. She also thought that Leonard had changed. Gone were his easily wounded pride, the bristling armor he clutched close to his person to protect himself from the world, and his desperate attempt at dignity. Now he gazed upon the world with more confidence, or perhaps simply with indifference, less troubled about what others thought of him. But he was sadder as well—indefinitely sadder, with that same faraway look in his eyes that she had seen in all of the wounded men that had gone through the hospital. She bent over his muddy body again.

"This large bit of shrapnel will have to come out under anesthetics," she said. "It can wait until the morning."

She finished getting out all the pieces of shrapnel she could, and slathered some antiseptic paste on the wounds. His body had changed as well. He was still thin and pale, but there was strength and a certain wiriness in him, and his paleness was simply due to the lack of sun, not from ill health. Muscles that she hadn't noticed before stood out in his back and shoulders. Then she realized she was caressing his back, blushed—and here she thought she'd forgotten how to blush—and pulled her hand away.

Leonard trembled again and grimaced. "I think—I think I'm getting my feelings back."

"Oh dear, how careless of me!" cried Helen. "I forgot—I'll give you some morphine for the pain." She injected the morphine, chattering inanely all the while, "It's good that you're feeling pain, you know. That means no nerves are damaged. But your leg is broken. I think you have a blighty one here. You'll have to go back to England." He looked away with a deep sigh, his eyes darkening, and didn't answer her. "You're not pleased about going home, Mr. Bast?"

"There's nothing for me to come home to."

If she wished to atone, then here was her chance. Yet for all her remorse, Helen had never once imagined what the scene of confession would look like, what she would say, what he would say. She took a deep breath, steeling herself.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bast—Leonard," she said.

Some light came back to his eyes when she called his name. "Sorry for what?"

"For running off that day—that morning—after—after—Oniton. For not explaining things afterward."

"There is nothing to explain." The light in his eyes dimmed again.

"Yes, there is. There is a lot to explain. Such as why I sent you that check—which, by the way, why did you send it back?"

"I told you, I didn't want your charity," he said through gritted teeth.

Helen smiled inwardly. Still that pride. So he hadn't changed after all, not that much. "It wasn't charity, you silly boy," she said, the term of endearment coming to her naturally. "I was—I was trying to right a wrong."

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"Yes, I did. I ruined your life."

"And I ruined yours," he said. "So I suppose we're even."

Helen gazed at him for a long, long time. He looked back straight at her. He had only done so once before, and when she caught the blaze in his eyes, the memory of their night came back, giving her strength. Eventually, she said, "You didn't ruin my life, Leonard. You have given me the best thing I could ever hope for."

And while Leonard looked on, puzzled, she retreated to the nurses' station in a corner of the tent, in search of Meg's letter.

***

Leonard watched her go. He'd considered refusing the morphine. The pain didn't bother him much. It was like the little irons, the ones that used to scorch his insides whenever he thought of Helen, had returned, only they were on the outside of his body now. Outside pain was much easier to bear. But while his mind was shrugging off the pain, his body couldn't, and his flesh jumped and writhed where the shrapnel had cut it, which was everywhere, inhibiting his breath, his speech. The morphine relaxed him, but it washed over his mind like the waves of some dark sea, making his head swim, making him afraid this had all been a dream.

It had been like a dream, when her voice came to him through the thick mud clogging his ears and the deafening ringing left by the explosion. If he hadn't been thinking of her just a moment before, he wouldn't have recognized that voice. It had seemed so impossible, so implausible, that she should be here. Even when darkness was lifted from his eyes and he saw her face bending over him in the lamplight, he still couldn't believe it.

He'd been anxious that she would not want to see him. When she ran off, leaving him with the other nurse, the one with the blonde hair pulled back into a severe bun under her white cap, he'd wanted to cry out, to stop her from leaving. She had left him once before, and he felt he would die if he let her leave again. But he couldn't find his voice, couldn't move. And when she came back, she remained brusque, as though she was angry. He couldn't blame her. She probably wanted nothing to do with him. But her hands were gentle as they moved over his wounds, and Leonard had allowed himself a sliver of hope.

His cheeks burned when he realized he was lying bare in front of her, with only a blanket covering his middle. If it didn't hurt so much, he would have laughed, too, laughed at himself for still feeling shy with her, after all that they had been through together.

She was coming back now, holding a small photograph, which she gave to Leonard. The photograph showed a child, a boy, about six or seven, wearing a sailor suit, with soft dark curls falling over his forehead. There was something vaguely familiar in the serious expression with which he was looking at the camera. Leonard thought perhaps it resembled Helen's, but he couldn't be sure.

"I should've stayed with him," Helen said, "but I couldn't stand by and do nothing while all this war effort is going on, so he's with Meg and Tibby at Howards End. His name is Leopold," she added, her voice slightly breathless. "I call him Leo."

"I don't understand," Leonard said. Was she trying to tell her that she was married? He glanced at her empty fingers, which told him nothing—nurses probably had to keep their hands empty and clean at all times. He tried handing the photograph back to her. She didn't take it.

"He's your son, Leonard," she said. "Our son."

Leonard lifted startled eyes to her face. She nodded, once. He looked at the photograph again. Yes, he saw it now. The familiar expression, which he'd thought to be Helen's, was his own. Those rounded, solemn eyes were his own.

Suddenly the irons came back, all sharp-edged and burning, as though Oniton had only been the night before. In the child, he saw all the pains, the fears she had gone through—that he had put her through. This was the real reason she stayed away, the reason she couldn't come home. His fault, his, his. The blanket, the lamp, the tent, Helen's eyes, they were all bearing down on him, crushing him. He couldn't breathe. He struggled weakly against the bedclothes, trying to get away from Helen, but his treacherous body refused to move.

Then he felt her hands on his shoulders, gently but firmly pushing him back down, and heard her voice by his ear. "Leonard, calm yourself," she was saying. "You didn't do anything wrong. I do not blame you. I am not angry. Please, calm down before you tear open these wounds again."

His desperate eyes searched for Helen's face. She was smiling at him, a small, tentative smile, fighting off the tears that were threatening to fall down her cheeks. At that smile, the scorching inside him cooled, and he breathed again, slowly.

"Miss Schlegel—" he began, once the thudding of his heart subsided.

"Helen, please," she said, her hands moving down his shoulders to clasp around his wrists.

"Helen." He savored her name on his tongue, and it was so sweet that he had to say it again. "I looked for you, Helen. After—Oniton. I looked for you. I wanted to—to apologize—"

"There was nothing to apologize for."

"I went to Wickham Place, but you were gone. I was afraid you had to move because of me. Then I found your sister, and she told me you were in Germany. And I believed that I drove you away, that you didn't want to see me again—" He was rambling now, his tongue and mind and heart loosened by the morphine, or perhaps by Helen's smile and the solemn eyes of the boy in the photograph, and all the memories he'd buried away came rushing forth like a flood.

"There was a time when I never wanted to see you again," she said. "I know it sounds appalling, but for the longest time, I didn't want to see you. I just wanted to put the whole thing behind me." She looked away for a moment. Leonard thought he could see the pain of those early days in her eyes, but what he felt now wasn't guilt. For the first time since arriving in Belgium, he wished to live. To live, so he could make it up for her, for their son, and perhaps for himself as well. Helen was looking at him again, her eyes brightening. "But then Leo was born," she said. "And from the moment I held him, I've loved him so much that nothing else mattered anymore."

He wanted to ask if she ever loved him. No, now was not the time.

"What is he like?" He couldn't speak the boy's name, not yet.

A tender smile crossed Helen's face. "He's the sweetest. Rather serious for his age. Meg calls him an old soul. He reminds me of you sometimes." She squeezed his hand. "You'll see for yourself, when you go back to England."

England. It had seemed so inconceivable just that morning, yet it was frightfully tangible now. Hope pierced Leonard's heart like barbed wire. "But—"

"I'm not asking anything of you, Leonard. Just that you meet him. If you want."

"I do." As he said it, Leonard knew it was true. He'd thought he had no one, nothing left in England. But now he had something. And when he saw Helen's smile and the tears in her eyes as she looked at him, and felt her hand in his, he realized he had something here as well, a spot of light in this place of mud and death and madness.

Another wave of morphine crashed over him, but Leonard fought against it, not wanting to drown in it just yet. This miracle, this blessing was too precious, he didn't want to waste it in sleep.

"I still don't believe you're really here," he murmured. "I was just thinking about you, right before I went under."

"Were you?"

"They were playing Beethoven's Fifth in the dugout. It reminded me of Prince Regent's Hall, of the day we met. Do you remember?"

A shy smile tugged at the corner of Helen's lips. "You still have some mud on your face," she said. She took the sponge and wiped away the mud. Her hand, whether by accident or on purpose, brushed across Leonard's lips. He managed to raise his arm, took that hand, and pressed her palm to his mouth. She didn't pull away.

The blonde nurse came back. A part of Leonard wished she would go away, and another part wished he could share their joy with her, with anyone. "You should get some rest, Helen," she said. "I can stay with him if necessary."

Helen squeezed Leonard's hand more tightly. "No, I'm all right," she answered, without taking her eyes off him.

The other nurse retreated. Helen lifted Leonard's hand, the one still holding on to hers, and kissed his knuckles. There was a moment of hesitation, and then, leaning down, she kissed his lips as well, tender and careful, so different from her fumbling, frenzied kisses that night so long ago.

"Sleep now," she whispered.

"Stay with me?" he asked, though he was already drifting off.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said, and, like a gesture of promise, took his hand again and laced her fingers through his.

Holding on to that hand, Leonard let out a deep sigh, and slept. While the rain and the thunder of shellfire continued outside, he slept and dreamed of their son, of England, and of home. Helen he didn't have to dream about, for she was there with him, and was going to be there when he woke up.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

THE END

A/N: Leonard is probably my favorite JQ character (after Eddie), and yet I struggled for the longest time to write something for him, probably because a) I'm too familiar with the source material and its other adaptation (the 1992 movie) and b) Leonard's story is rather finite and I couldn't figure out how to fix it in a way that makes sense to me. It wasn't until I reread "A Room with a View" and learned that Forster had written an epilogue/alternate ending that took place during World War I and II that I came up with the idea of doing something similar for poor Leonard. I totally ripped off a scene in A.S. Byatt's "The Children's Book" for this, btw.

The title is taken from Rupert Brooke's "The Beginning". The poem quoted in the opening and the end is "The Soldier", also by Rupert Brooke.

Thank you for reading!

#leonard bast #howards end #leonard bast fic #leonard x helen #helen schlegel #joseph quinn #joseph quinn fic

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scumbag-monthly · 2 years ago

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The Young Ones Were: A Final Word from Scumbag Monthly’s Editor 🖕💚

I was going to post this on 7th March – the birthday of the pan global phenomenon himself – but I think the emotion will be stronger tonight. Either way, I’ve chosen this post to say my last farewells to Scumbag Monthly and thank the people who helped make it what it was.

It was my decision as editor to end SM at Issue #25 and it was a difficult one to make. Although SM has come with both pros and cons, it’s something I’ve enjoyed creating and is something I’m very proud of. In a way, it would have been easier to carry on – sticking with the familiar is always easier – but I didn’t want our fanzine to drift off into nothingness. I thought twenty-five was a good number to end it at. Three years; twenty-five issues; three Rik specials; a zine for the fortieth anniversary – I think we’ve done alright, all things considered. More than alright! I’m so happy that we were able to add to the fandom in some small way.

I have a head for dates, so I can tell you with 99% certainty that I took on the reins of editorship at SM on 14th May 2020. It’s weird that that time feels both close and far away – international pandemics will do that to you. I’ve seen engagement and interest in this zine ebb and flow over the years. We’ve never really received enough submissions to keep us afloat long term. I used to ask my mutuals if I could add old art of theirs to zines to keep the Drawing Room full, and the amount of my fic that made its way into SM was not the result of an overinflated ego (I promise!), more the result of fic submissions falling even lower than art submissions. We’re a small fandom; that’s always been a problem for SM. While I’ve continually emphasised the importance of submissions to SM – how else would SM involve those not working behind the scenes? – the truth is that the end products simply wouldn’t have arrived on our website be it not for the so-called scumbag staff who dedicated their free time to making pages and content.

With a small fandom and ergo a small team, SM’s ambitions had to be realistic. We would all have loved to bring new segments out in every issue but, with a lot to do and limited time to get it done each time, this often wasn’t possible. I never wanted SM to become a burden to the people who made pages for it, as we all lead offline lives and SM was simply a passion project – we made this because we wanted to, because it was fun.

I won’t deny there have been points where SM burnt me out a tad. I think it was easy to lose sight of things during the lockdowns, or simply fall completely into one project. There are some zines where well over twenty of the pages were made by me because they had to be, and I’ve often feared that The People’s Poetry suffered because of this. I’m very pleased and grateful to point out that the page share became slightly less exaggerated after we found different people for each character, but (and I’m afraid I am going to have to be egotistical now XD) I’d be lying if I denied every zine since Issue #4 isn’t drenched in my blood, sweat, and improvised version of graphic design (not actually my passion, me being primarily a writer and all XD).

I hope this isn’t sounding too negative because SM really does mean a lot to me. I think it’s just that a mixed relationship is guaranteed with anything you give a lot of yourself to and I want to be honest here, at the end. It’s going to feel weird for me for a little while: no more new documents to set up, no more new pages to make, no more themes to discuss, no more Google Forms to collect. I will miss SM, but thanks to the internet it’ll actually still be here. We’ll be keeping the website up as an archive and the same with our Tumblr blog and Instagram (scumbag_monthly). For future runs of the Rik and Ade Fest, another blog has been set up (@rikandadefest). SM has also had a Redbubble on the down low for some time now and we’re planning on adding our designs of the lads there soon, if any of you fancy owning something with those on.

I realise this whole post comes at the risk of sounding pretentious and melodramatic… but sod it, you know? Here are the people I’d like to thank individually, on behalf of our fanzine.

@theevilesteviled -

First of all, the creator of SM: the reason you’re even reading this right now. During the period in which SM got going – that calm before the utter shitstorm of 2020 – we spoke nearly every day… though, living on different sides of the globe did limit our talk time to early mornings and late evenings. Ed is the reason SM ever launched. She did almost everything for the first few zines, often at the cost of her own sanity, and she inspired a passion for this fanzine within me.

In May 2020, when I found myself in lockdown limbo between college and university, Ed was struggling with the brunt of SM plus the new hell of online classes. When I took charge of Issue #4, I don’t think I realised the extent of what I was taking on – I certainly didn’t expect to still be editor nearly three years later! Even so, without Ed SM wouldn’t have gotten as far as Issue #4. I’ll admit when she initially proposed the idea for a The Young Ones fanzine, I didn’t assume it would ever actually happen. I agreed to take on Rick’s page, but never allowed myself to imagine we’d end up with a project that’d last three years. Surely, it was only other people who could pull off that kind of thing, right? Surely, a group of introverted young adults online weren’t really going to get anywhere with this, were we?

I’m not trying to make SM sound bigger than it is – I’m well aware how niche we are, have always been – but the point I’m trying to make is: thanks to Ed spearheading SM in the early days, I had the profound realisation that I can actually be creative and try new things and they’re not destined to fall completely flat on their faces. I think everyone involved with SM, be it through making pages or submitting their work, has experienced a version of this same realisation with the publication of each zine.

That’s thanks to Ed, so I’d like to formally express my gratitude. Thank you, ya bastard.

@xgardensinspace -

The lovely Deya! Deya has always been a big part of SM, right from the beginning. The portraits of Vyvyan, Rick, Neil, Mike, Balowski, and P that appeared regularly in our zines were drawn by them, as well as the ten portraits of our staff on our website. That’s not even mentioning the five exemplary covers they’ve whizzed up for SM!

Not only is Deya an exceptionally talented artist, they’re also an enthusiastic team player. From Issue #11 onwards, they’ve been our resident Mike. As most of us agree, Mike is the most difficult young one to characterise – Deya rose to the challenge with full commitment. Alongside taking on Mike’s Moments, for a period of time in late 2021 Deya posted as Mike to SM’s Instagram every Thursday, providing all of us with funny insights into Mike’s sense of fashion. There have also been times when my SM workload proved too much and they stepped up to write Comic Strip reviews for our Strip Tease – in fact, one of my favourite reviews is the one of Five Go Mad on Mescalin we wrote together for Issue #18.

Deya has always been passionate about SM, even when it seemed there were only a few of us who were. They’ve been incredibly supportive and understanding, often one of the first to volunteer to make art or write pieces for specials. To put it lightly, SM would be left severely lacking without their endless contributions and help and for that reason I’m incredibly thankful to them.

Last spring, I was lucky enough to finally meet Deya, when they visited the UK on holiday, and they were just as lovely in person as they are online. Thank you ever so much for your work on SM, you really are a cool person.

@drinkysketch -

I felt it only right to single out Julia here. Fandom spaces are ever changing and the individuals who’ve contributed to SM are no different. Despite this, Julia has been a constant cover artist for SM – not only did she create our first ever cover art back when SM was completely unknown, she’s since provided us with five more pieces for our covers. As the clever trousers among you will have worked out, that’s six in total. Almost a quarter of our regular zines!

There’s something instantly likeable about Julia’s art style: the shapes, the bright colours, the insistence on always giving Vyvyan one eye bigger than the other. The cover of Issue #1 especially is representative of SM – it’s the establishing shot – and I couldn’t imagine a better piece of art than the one Julia provided us with. I’d like to thank her for always being so eager to make art for us, even as the world’s gotten crazier and crazier. True scumbag style!

@codrington-road -

It was April 2020 when Haley first emailed SM with a fanfic submission and an offer to make pages for Neil. These were the early days of SM – Ed and I were just about keeping up with the zine’s Rick and Vyv content but were seriously struggling where Mike and Neil were concerned. It’s thanks to Haley that Neil is the only young one I’ve never had to make a page for… well, aside from that time we switched characters for April Fool’s in Issue #14… and she’s been a constant, reliable presence at SM since Issue #4.

There probably aren’t many people who could come up again and again with hilarious horoscopes on purpose, and I don’t know for exactly how many Wednesdays Haley manned Neil’s entries to our Instagram stories, but it was a lot. 9th June 2021 fell on a Wednesday – a little daunting for anyone. Yet, I think it’s that entry from ‘Neil’, a touching piece about missing people who are no longer here while still carrying the warmth they gave us within us, that sticks out to me the most.

Haley has always brought the exact right levels of surrealism, humour, and bloody hippie moping to Neil. She is probably secretly Nigel Planer. She’s helped keep the excitement for SM alive in me when I’ve been at my wit’s end with it and is in fact the main reason this fanzine didn’t fold after Issue #19. Honestly, she’s great. Have you read the fanfic she’s submitted? Pure brilliance. Her reviews of Rik Mayall's Bedside Tales and GLC were sublime.

Thank you, Haley, for encouraging not just me but everyone behind the scenes of SM and for being our resident Neil for so long. I know you’re a girlie, but I hope the seed of your loin is fruitful in the belly of your woman. Ta very much!

@martian-martian-martian -

Part of SM since Issue #18, Wisely is a person who truly deserves so much love. I first spoke to Wisely on Tumblr when they signed up to write about Rick and Kevin in our second Rik zine, in 2021. Needless to say, the results of their endeavours were some of the most memorable pieces in that zine. Rick still hasn’t recovered.

After that, Wisely only became more and more involved in SM, until they’d taken on the enigmatic fifth housemate, that scumbag named Petyr, as a regular in our zine. They did this despite the graphic design element being out of their comfort zone and even came up with a whole new page idea to spearhead. Cliff ‘sHits – as well as having a perfectly Young Ones-esq name – is exactly the kind of thing I always hoped would start happening with SM: that staff would strike out with new page ideas when they had the time. Wisely has a talent for twisting well known verses to fit the scumbag agenda and we thank them for it.

A keen promoter of SM – they could frequently be found suggesting submitting to our fanzine in the comments of TYO fanart on Tumblr – they’ve even written fanfic to keep zines full of content. I’d like to thank them for joining the team and enhancing the zine in the process. SM is all the better for having them.

@the-tardis-in-221b-baker-street -

Zoe already has a name for herself in Rik Mayall circles outside the scumbags; what fan wouldn’t go absolutely crazy at the sheer time and dedication she puts into her many cosplays? Zoe has a knack for morphing into the bastards she portrays… physically, at least. I’ve always found her to be as friendly as Alan B’Stard is devious. XD

It was during SM’s hiatus, when the spot of resident Vyvyan fell vacant, that Zoe immediately jumped at the chance to help SM out. Since Issue #20, she’s provided the voice of the beloved punk as well as producing a page of her own design, Top of the Plops. Zoe has also been quick to help out where reviews of Filthy, Rich and Catflap and of the music in The Young Ones are concerned, for which I am very grateful. Despite being the newest staff member at SM, she’s thrown herself fully into it and offered much needed reassurance and submissions whenever necessary. Zoe has been an optimistic voice at the fanzine: always up for new ideas and competitions, always there with schemes to boost engagement. Her DnD stats for the lads in Issue #24 were incredible.

We’ve had many scumbags writing for Vyvyan at SM over the years – more than we’ve had for any other character – and I’m thrilled we got Zoe in for our final run. She even made the cover art for our last issue. Thank you!

@aspinecone -

Aspen is someone I’ve shared online fandom spaces with since 2017. We’re both fans of Red Dwarf, but it was our shared enjoyment of The Young Ones that finally got us talking to one another. Last autumn, we finally met in person when we went to see Ade in A Christmas Carol - a brilliant day with a great friend that I'll always remember.

Aspen has had a presence behind the scenes of SM since the beginning, often submitting fanart and the odd piece of fanfic, until they took on the role of resident Balowski at SM from Issue #16 onwards. Creating content for the character most out of the loop with the others isn’t as easy as you might think, but Aspen has always produced insane, amusing pages for him. Aspen was also the original cover artist pencilled in for Issue #21, but graciously stood aside when they realised offline commitments were going to need more of their time.

During SM’s run, I’ve sometimes had hairbrained schemes such as making the badges several scumbags will be receiving very, very soon. I’m no design whiz – Ed and I always made SM out of Word Documents – and Aspen helpfully volunteered to remove the backgrounds from designs and clean them up. Like I’ve always said, producing SM has been a team effort. I’d like to thank Aspen for always being in my corner.

@cloubdustings -

Ava, the mad meme machine! If I recall correctly, Ava first popped up in scumbag circles in late 2020. She surprised SM with cover art for Issue #10 and kindly took on the role of resident Vyvyan from that same issue until Issue #19. 2021 was not a fun year – in fact, I’d argue it was worse than 2020 in some respects – so having Ava on the SM team to handle all Vyvyan content was a great help.

Ava has a very distinct sense of humour and you can usually tell which British comedian she’s most recently become obsessed with by checking her Instagram. XD Even with changing tastes, she’s still making content about Mr Mayall and her brand of whackiness is most definitely beloved by the fandom. Thank you for sharing it with SM!

@lumivarjo -

Lumi was around at the very beginning of SM and is actually responsible for the piece of grey tape bearing the zine’s name that became our logo. He was our original resident P, producing pages for us during the autumn of 2020. Lumi has always been more behind the scenes than at the forefront of SM, but has nonetheless also always been supportive. Being an artistic sod, Lumi is to thank for many of the key headers SM used, which were all vital pieces of the SM brand… if we want to get really pretentious. Thank you for being there for the zine!

@serenpop -

Pol was also around when Ed was proposing this insane new idea of a fanzine for The Young Ones and was our first resident Neil. Offline commitments saw them have to drop the role, but they reappeared again to help us out when we needed cover art at a pinch for Issue #9. A lot of SM’s Drawing Rooms have featured art from Pol, so I’d like to thank them for brightening up our pages!

Additionally, I'd like to thank the other scumbags who’ve made cover art for us: @frankenbolt (who made three(!) beautifully chaotic covers, including everybody’s favourite Modern AU); @whatacompletebastard (for the fab Breakfast Club parody that’s always been popular with the scumbags); @heinzpilsnerbloody (another talented artist who drew me a whole bunch of cool stuff in an exchange and kindly helped SM out); @colourshot-draws (our first anniversary zine cover artist and a genuinely lovely person); @postpunkpontypandyphantomthief (a massive Rik Mayall fan and integral part of the fandom); thedinodoodles (for being ahead of the curve and bringing us pirates before the Tumblr obsession); @rikhead (for the sheer dedication to detail on her cover and for her legendary skills in Rik Pic Hunting™); and @smashingblouses (for providing us with the brilliant TYO 40th anniversary zine cover art). I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: SM couldn’t have functioned without its cover artists. Thank you all. Big respec.

There are a few final scumbags I wish to mention and thank - SM's cheerleaders, if you will. These people have brightened up my day on various occasions and their enthusiasm helped make the zine what it was: @anglophobias, @my-blood-is-maple-syrup, @friedhofcreative, @shotsofnovacaine, @5gogh2, @mariigoldmayall, and @fourstarsandahamster.

Finally, of course, I’d like to say a quick thank you to the people who inspired this fanzine in the first place. Without the canon, there would be no fanon. They’re never going to read this thank Cliff but without the brilliance of Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer, Christopher Ryan, Alexei Sayle, Ben Elton, Lise Mayer, and all the recurring comic guest stars of The Young Ones, SM would have quite literally never existed.

We need comedy in hard times – to call out the shits in power, to keep us grounded, to simply make us laugh. I count myself incredibly lucky to have stumbled across fans of this anarchic ‘80s sitcom on Tumblr. Despite the time gone by between 1982 and 2023 and the changes in society and sensibilities, I think it’s an incredibly good thing that this comedy still connects with us. Most of the people I’ve spoken to on here, like me, weren’t alive during TYO’s initial run. It’s often assumed by certain bastards who shall remain nameless that the youth are trying to kill comedy, that we take offence too easily, that comedy classics are a thing of the past. To them I say: UP YOURS, UGLY! As long as there are people, there will be laughter; and among those of us laughing, there will be the young ones.

So thank you, scumbag reader, for downloading our zines and supporting our bastardly endeavours.

Signing off from Scumbag Monthly for the last time,

- R / @neil-neil-orange-peel <3

"This is it! It's really happening! Who needs qualifications? Who cares about Thatcher and unemployment?! We can do just exactly whatever we want to do! And you know why? Because we're Young Ones. Bachelor boys! Crazy, mad, wild-eyed, big-bottomed anarchists!!" - The People's Poet, 1984

#scumbag monthly #the young ones #tyo #rik mayall #fanzine #notice #goodbye

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