#When September comes I will become a new woman

[tenjiiku]

Thinking about 1995 rn

Im thinking a lot abt all of my abandoned fics 🦦

[lokideservesahug]

A Taste Of Victory

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Pairing: Jenson Button x reader (implied), Mark Webber x reader (implied).

Warnings: Jenson is a bit of a dick to reporters, sexism,

Notes: This isn't even the big peice of writing that started all of this but that is coming soon... And the photos may not be aesthetic but they sure as anything are time accurate (even using photos from the specific days). I tried to make sure of it (as well as the dates) to give you good visuals so I hope at least someone appreciates it. Also I tried a new header format. Please tell me your thoughts

Summary: Y/N Y/L/N, the newest 2009 rookie who's also...a woman? The media are desperate to pick her apart and see how well she'll do so let's have a look:

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Y/L/N residence, 7th September 2008

You sit back and sip happily on your coke bottle. Any minute now. Any minute and your phone will be blowing up. Or at least that's what Frank had told you (you still can't get over the fact that THE Frank Williams insists that you call him that, or that you'll be working for him next year). You focus back on the image on your screen,

Lewis Hamilton in his McLaren. Of course a favourite to win this season especially after his incredible performances even from his rookie season. And despite trying to clear your mind of all bias for next year, you can't help but wish that he might win. He seems like a nice guy and it's a better him than some of the others. As Hamilton reaches the ever famous, ever gorgeous Eau Rouge, the image changes, the camera focuses on the white, green and red Honda of Jenson Button. He swerves slightly, performing a certainly showy move especially for just FP2.

Despite the numbers not being as much as Hamilton supporters, some F1 fans are putting their money on Button winning the championship instead. You scoff at the thought alone. Goodness knows Formula 1 doesn't need another cocky playboy as the world champion and goodness knows Jenson Button appears to be exactly that. Gosh why couldn't a more sensible seeming driver win say Mark webber or even Fernando Alonso again. You internally scold yourself, these men will be your co workers in only a matter of months. Just the thought makes you feel a matter of emotions; which you are quickly pulled out of as the commentators voice grows louder. You watch as Fernando Alonso puts in a particularly fast lap and the more you think, you can't help but feel almost a bit...nervous.

☆-☆-☆-☆-☆

Albert Park paddock, 27th March 2009

You hold your head up high as you enter the paddock. Bright flashes of cameras shine in your peripheral but you try your hardest to just keep your head down and focus on getting to the Williams hospitality. You glance up, taking in the sights surrounding you. The bright Australian sun paints the paddock? that you've been so long awaiting, in such a light, that you finally feel a sense if fulfilment- and you're not even in the car yet.

Too entranced by the sights around you, you fail to notice the person just in front of you. You're met with the sight of a crisp yet untucked shirt. You panick, instantly going to apologise when you meet the eyes of the person you bumped into. "Woah, careful there." Jenson Button. Oh gosh. "Someone needs to slow down." He laughs and you assume his enjoyment is coming from your misfortune. Now you'd never thought you were the type to become speechless but as you're finally met with the first driver on your official Formula 1 debut, you can't help but panick even more, squeak out an apology and speed walk towards Williams.

Gosh, you wanted today to be perfect and here you are crashing into people already. What a clumsy fool you must look like. You groan as you realise what you've done.

Now, like any unfamiliar place, you find that it was pretty easy to get yourself lost, even in place with such an easy concept (curse Melbourne event planners for trying to make too much go on at once and make it confusing). Most people also don't expect to get recognised in an unfamiliar place even if it's where you work (and your hiring was widely broadcast).

"Hey, are you alright?" You turn to look at the Autralian man whose voice, up until now, you'd only heard through a screen. You meet the eyes of Mark Webber and smile shyly. "Hi, sorry to be a bother but do you know how to get to the Williams hospitality." He just gives you a small grin, clearly not seeing your lack of knowledge as incompetence or anything like that "Of course, follow me and welcome to the paddock by the way." And as Mark leads you away, you can't help hut feel glad you'll be seeing more of him (and not just for how polite and kind he is).

☆-☆-☆-☆-☆

Post race interviews, 29th March 2009

After you step down from the podium, and your team has dispersed (after all congratulating you, some even with tears in their eyes). You walk away to a quieter part of the paddock to gather your thoughts. You go behind the tows of hospitalities only to find Mark Webber hunched over. You aobseve him, he's sporting a serious, disappointed and almost worried looking expression as he looks out into the distance. You walk up to him and place a soft hand on his shoulder in an attempt to gently coax him out of his thoughts and to try and offer some comfort

Without a word, he turns to look at you and his shoulders raise slightly. You give him a small smile and sit down next to him. You both sit next to each other in silence, sharing a comforting moment, silently offering support and understanding to one and other.

The air shifts (and you try to not get to excited at the prospect that your presence alone may have somewhat comforted him). The air shifts, this time it isn't tainted by negative emotions but rather fatigue and acoplmisent on your part. The both of you probably look like a true sight, disheveled, tired and sweaty, however there's a warmth between you both as you share a brief moment of tranquility amongst the chaos.

Someone calls your name and the moment is broken. You nod to Mark who gives you a small smile back and a short "Well done for today." As you smile at him and walk off to go to interviews.

You pass some fans, signing their Williams caps and exchanging excited "Well done!" And "Thank you." Pleasantries. You revel in the post win glow. It's one thing to win in your rookie season, but to win your first race? Now that's just unheard of. You hurriedly sit down in the assigned seat for you and wait for the other few straglers to arrive. You look down, placing your hands on your lap in an attempt to thwart the nerves threatening to bubble.

Brawn driver, Rubens Barrichello is the second to arrive followed not long after by Jenson Button. Rubens gives you an easy smile and yet another congratulations. You feel incredibly fortunate to have you welcomed so quickly and easily by him over the past few days of testing. You return his smile with one of your own and a small wave.

When Jenson finally sits down, an FiA representative gives the 3 of you a short introduction and then begins. Quite a few people had warned you before you entered this room that many people would want to speak to you, but you didn't expect such an onslaught.

A short, bald man stands up and adresses you. "So Miss Y/L/N, you just managed to win your debut race, which is an incredible feat but how much of it do you think is down to the car." You try not to take offence to the question, it was a pretty basic question afterall (even if it was worded a bit harshly.) You let out a small laugh. "I think it's a joint effort really. The car was looking really good this weekend but I also have a history of running fairly well at this track." The reporter nods his head and continues. "So do you think this victory will encourage other women to become involved in F1?" You nod excitedly at him. "Oh I hope so. I hope it's encouragement to all women out there that weren't sure if they could." The reported thanks you and sits down.

A few more reporters ask questions. 90% of which are adressesdfor you and a few others adresses to the men beside you (mainly to Rubens and Jenson about Braen and its last minute establishment).

This time, a slightly more lean, dark haired reporter speaks up, once again directing his questions towards you. "Y/N, how did your fellow drivers perceive your and your entrance into F1?" You nearly furrow your brows at the biazzre question (Well it's possibly bizzare that it's adressed to you). "I uh don't know. Why don't you ask them." You gesture to the drivers either side of you as the reporter repeats his question to the other pilots. "Gentlemen, your thoughts on the newest addition to the paddock?" Rubens gives you an encouraging pat on the shoulder mid sentence "She's obviously fast and I think she's managed to impress us all." The reporter nods to Jenson; and despite your belief that he's he's too cocky for his own good, you can't help but feel a bit excited and a bit anxious to hear his repsonse. "Her lap times were phenomenal during the race." You smile at his words, maybe he wasn't as bad as you thought. However, he continues "I think my only criticism I have of her is that she seems to smile less than Kimi." The reporter smirks as you lower your eyeline slighty. "Yeah and she's much easier on the eyes than Kimi." The room erupts into low laughs as you feel shame and embarrassment pool in your gut.

The reporters continue to ask a few questions that you don't pay too much attention to as you nearly get complety lost in your thoughts. One asks Jenson if he thinks you have the potential for the championship. He laughs as he awnsers "There's no denying that she's fast. But she's in a Williams, she's not going to win the championship." You bite your tongue at Jenson's words and what you think is a jab at you (not realising the true intention if insulting his old team).

Yet another reporter asks you a familiar question along the lines if how exactly you think you managed to win. Fed up being in a room with a bunch of old men, trying to pick you apart and insult you with the same few questions just worded differently, your resolve finally snaps.

"Well not that anyone is caring to ask, but I've done this track a million times over. I've practised again and again and again to get my performance perfect yet no one is congratulating me on how well I went around that track. Brawn were amazing today and I'm sure they will be in the future as well but please dont let that take away from what I've done today." You shuffle back in your chair slightly, feeling a bit uncomfortable under the stares but stay strong, unbreaking (and not noticing the stare of admiration coming from the British driver to your left and never knowing the love filled look of another Australian pilot, watching on a screen not far away).

☆-☆-☆-☆-☆

Top Gear Studio, May 2009

You listen anxiously as Jeremy Clarkson introduces you. Yes, Jeremy Clarkson. As he shouts your name, the camera pans to you and you walk forward, shaking Jeremy's hand and sitting down in the green, faux leather sofa.

"Now obviously I want to ask the obvious..." He speaks over the crowd's quietening bustle and you expect the next question to be one you've hears bwfore. About your gender, you- "What on Earth have you done to that Williams to make it so good?" You laugh, the familiar humour of the Top Gear host you've only ever seen on a screen putting you at ease.

"Well I don't know but maybe its because I'm far more polite to the car than other drivers." Jeremy smiles at your words and invites you into light conversation about you finally being viewed as a serious title contender. The two of you continue until you hit more general off-track talk "So, how much do you train and have you managed to find enough time to see your friends and family. Because some people have such an odd view on things like that." You let out a dramatic sigh. "Gosh they're making me train so much. More than just once a day and there are so many regimes that I can't keep track of anymore. But family wise, well I spend far less time with them than I do do training, I can tell you that much." The audience laughs which encourages you to continue. "I see my friends and family in-between weekends when I can and sometimes they'll even come to races. But gosh. I feel awful saying this." Jeremy leans forward slightly "No, go on..." Your smile becomes a bit embarrassed as your cheeks warm. "Well even on free weekends, with how crowded the paddock can be, I'll come home and just want to be alone." Jetemy shakes his head. "Well that makes sense. But you're in a very crowded space all weekend, does that mean that you've you've asked out by a lot of guys throughout the season so far?" Your eyes widen widen the insinuation. At your lack of instant response, Jeremy clarifies, "Come on! Gorgeous girl such as yourself in such a male dominated sport, I bet loads of men and probably even some drivers too have asked you out." You quickly deny the claims and the two of you move on to your lap times in their old car but you don't miss the way your mind flashed with the image of a certain dark haired Red Bull driver as Jeremy asked his previous question.

☆-☆-☆-☆-☆

>To be aired 28 June<

You huff out a low sigh. If you overthink today anymore, you think you might be sick. Your phone pings. You know you shouldn't have it on you but it has helped to keep you entertained as you wait. You look down and see a text from Mark. His text, wishing you good luck makes you smile and you shoot him a small thanks and silence your phone as you hear footsteps behind you.

"Are you ready?" You turn you head and nod to your future teammate as Michael Schumacher steps forward. "Question is, are you old man?" Your words make him smile and your nerves ease slightly. "I don't think I can ever be ready for something like this. But the more important thing is you." He places a caring hand on your shoulder.

If you told your child self, or heck even yourself a year ago that you're friends and future teammates with 7-time world Champion Michael Schumacher, you think you'd have laughed at yourself until tears streamed down your face. But in recent months and more specifically recent weeks, the two of you have been getting much closer. Michael offering you advice, you offering great support on current drivers habits firsthand as a warning for next season. And you even met Michael's family a month or so ago; them nearly adopting you into their clan.

A woman with headset approaches you both and taps you on the shoulder, "A minute to go." She gives you a small thumbs up and walks away, mumbling into her headset. You give her an uncertain nod as Michael pats your shoulder again. "Go out and show them what you've got kid and I'll see you out there." You give him a nervous smile and as you hear a distant shout of your name, you pull yourself together and pull your face into an excited expression, ready for the reaction to your announcement and overjoyed to have a front row seat to people's reactions to your teammate.

☆-☆-☆-☆-☆

You sit alone in a booth of a bustling club. Loud music nearly deafening but you'd take it any day over the continuous commentary you heard at track. You don't know how many time you can hear "It looks like the title fight is over. Y/L/N's engine is overheating and she's slowing down. It looks like Jenson Button may be champion." Without feeling sick especially when it's directly followed by your voice on the team radio, voice cracking during an apology as your mechanics tell me to back off to cool the engine.

You think of the image of Jenson's Brawn overtaking you and pulling futher into the distance; the sight of not one but two Red Bulls overtaking to fight a battle that should be yours. A voice cuts through your thoughts. You look up, meeting the eyes of the person speaking. "Are you alright?" You're surprised that Jenson came to speak to you, especially after his victory. Gosh in your vulnerable state, you even think that he might not be too bad. How silly of you. You give him a gentle nod (clearly not enough to convince him). He gestures towards the seat next to you "Is it alright if I sit here?" You nod, not Trusting your voice in this moment. "Well-" "You w-" You finally crack a smile as you speak at the same moment. He gestures to you "Sorry, you go." You smile at him. "Well done Jenson you gave a great drive this season." You expect him to smirk, to revel in your compliments but instead he just gives you a soft smile and a shake of his head. "Don't be silly. That championship would be yours if Williams ever learnt how to build cars properly. But thank you." You look down at his words, all of your emotions finally coming to the forefront. "Hey, you look like you need to be cheered up. You don't need to feel like this going into next season..." He passes and his brows furrow. You look up at Jenson who is now standing and for the first time all year, allow yourself to admire him. The way that his still slightly hair drops as some strands stick to his forehead. "You-" He furrows his brows again and then laughs freely. "Oh yeah, you're taking my job. Well Miss Y/L/N, he grabs your hand and pulls you up from your seat, Elliciting a small noise from you. "Then we need to dance to celebrate and to cheer you up." You just shake your head and follow him, finally smiling as you follow his foolish adrenaline (and probably slightly alcohol-fueled) giggly nature; placing down your phone and missing the texts.

Mark Webber: Hey Well done on today and I'm sorry what happened. Hoping to speak to you at some point later...

M.S: Hey Hase, well done on today, you drove so well I hope you know that. Corinna and I wanted to invite you to our...

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Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.

As always, likes, reblogs and especially feedback is always welcome!

Taglist: @nikfigueiredo @mysoulispainted @leclercings @d3kstar @hiireadstuff @a-beaverhausen @nichmeddar @lozzamez3 @stinkyjax @marymustdie @littlesatanicassholebitch @mehrmonga @insanedeathwish @ems-alexandra @a-disturbing-self-reflection @cherry-piee @thatgirlmj

[limeade-l3sbian]

Who was Kagney Linn Necessary?

(the gofundme for her memorial/funeral will be at the end.)

Kagney Linn Necessary was born in Harris County, Texas in 1987, and raised in St. Joseph, Missouri and in Ridgway, Pennsylvania. [x]

In her early years, she moved to California with ambitions of becoming an actress and a singer but entered work as an exotic dancer before signing with LA Direct Models, a pornographic agency. Karter entered the adult film industry in September 2008.[x]

But that wasn't the entirety of who Kagney was. At face value, the only information I could find with a quick search was the basic information above from Wikipedia. All anyone seemed to know about her was who she was when she was in the "industry." I wanted to see what I could find about her, the person. Not Kagney Linn Karter, but Kagney Linn Necessary.

I raked through interviews she had, her personal social media accounts, and any other articles that I could find just to find any little facts about her that I could.

I thought about omitting her time within the porn industry to focus solely on everything else except that. But I feel it would be tasteless to keep it out. I think it needs to be mentioned. I think it is important to show that women pulled into the porn industry are not these separate beings from any other woman with dreams. This was a 36 year old woman who was just like any other woman who was preyed upon.

Necessary released an EP, The Crossover, in 2018. In 2022, Karter released her debut album, titled The Take Over. [x] She would post clips of her singing covers of songs as well as songs from her upcoming EP on her Instagram.

In 2022, she began learning how to play the piano, even posting a video of her progress.

Necessary was also a recovering addict. In 2021, she posted about the things that helped her stay clean and how she was pleased at having a second chance at life. In an interview, she was intentionally vague about the substances she used, only referring to them as "candy" and "a little bit of everything." But with no insurance or money for rehab, she opted to detox herself at her parents home, working at their tanning salon for free in exchange for "produce."

She moved from Los Angeles to Ohio in 2019 and got involved with pole dancing fitness studios before being involved the opening of one in Akron, called Alchemy Pole Fitness. She posted many videos of herself having fun and practicing new/old moves.

In November 2023, she was posting pictures of her new house and how well it was coming together,

[their website leads to a website called Alchemy Space Studios and says that it was founded and run by a separate woman. But upon looking up the LLC for the business, Kagney is named as the registrant and she is named as the owner of the space in two separate articles.]

In 2015, Carter claimed musician Chris Brown paid her $2,500 to be his escort. She reportedly tweeted things like 'I WILL NEVER F*** A WOMAN BEATER EW DISGUSTING' and 'HE IS PURE EVIL' about Brown.

I just felt like adding that because what a queen.

From her students from the studio and friends, she was known to love animals, including her dog, Murphy, and had a deep devotion to the community she was cultivating in Ohio. She was known to be fearless and empathetic, creating her studio as a place for people to feel safe and accepted.

These were the things I could find of her from her personal accounts and the people who loved her. She wasn't an object that will be missed for what "uses" it had. She was a woman who had dreams, who had a community who love her, who had a husband who loves her, dogs she cared for and loved who loved her, and a mother who loves her. I didn't want her story to be another reblog of a lost life.

I know this post is sporadic and clunky, but I wanted to just grab any information I could without crossing boundaries (ex. contacting the family or something tasteless like that). I just wanted to share what she had already shared with the world.

Her friend, Megan Lee, has posted a gofundme that has already surpassed their goal. But I would still suggest donating if you are able. Rest in peace, Kagney Linn Necessary. 💜

[iiseult]

𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝐹𝑜𝓊𝓇: 𝑀𝓎 𝒟𝑒𝒶𝓇 𝐿𝒾𝓉𝓉𝓁𝑒 𝒲𝒾𝒻𝑒

CWs →  BALDWIN OILS HIMSELF UP, angst, love letters, themes of war and death, historical inaccuracies, slow burn, she/her pronouns, AFAB reader, eventual smut (once reader and baldwin are both over 18), leprosy, time-period accurate sexism

Wordcount: 3.3k

Note: This might be my favorite chapter. Please let me know your thoughts, and pay special attention to the cross necklace. You'll see what I mean. <3

It was not so dramatic, the way his illness progressed, but progress it did. The Holy Disease was inevitable, and he’d always known that. Six months and he was losing sight in his left eye, his peripheral vision effectively ceasing to exist. Twelve months and the eye was becoming clouded and sapped of its color, like something bleached by the sun, only a baby blue now when it used to be so much deeper. Eighteen months and everything through the eye was covered in an indispersable layer of silver mist. And then there was his little finger, the poor little finger on his left hand which he could no longer feel, and when he commanded it to move, it was as if a phantom were possessing it. If it weren’t for the fact that he could see it moving, wiggling back and forth, he likely wouldn’t have any idea whether or not it was really happening. Often he frowned at it in concentration, exercising his will over it and forcing it to move, desperately trying to feel something. Every time he was forced to give up, frustrated. However, the majority of his skin and all of his features were still perfectly intact, and for that he was grateful. 

That September he fell ill with fever. Forty-two days and nights he laid in bed, watching drowsily as the sun made its daily voyage across the heavens, warming his too-warm skin and blinding his aching eyes. In periods of occasional lucidity his thoughts lingered only on you. He would see a flash; then the fullness of your lips, the sweet curve of your neck, the shape of your back, and were you wearing your sapphire today? He could picture it clearly, lying against the firm softness of your full bosom, gleaming like a winking eye. Ah, sick mind. Shameful thoughts. He redirected them. What of the kingdom, his kingdom? What of his sister Sybilla, and her son, his baby nephew Baldwin V? They did not come to visit because Sybilla claimed she couldn’t bear the sight of her beloved brother in so much pain. And then his mother was dead, a few months buried. Nobody left to come visit.

He continued to read during this time. He was brought books on war and strategy, classic and ancient tales of love and romance, history, and Greek literature, of which he had always been very fond. Perhaps it was these such books that gave him his next brilliant idea. 

He sent for ink and parchment, lots of parchment, and when he felt well enough he sat up in bed and took up his supplies and got to work. Pages upon pages he produced, many times rambling and repetitive in nature because of his fever-addled mind, but always strikingly sincere. From his very heart he wrote, hours each day, and he didn’t share his work with anyone. When Raymond visited he would conceal everything under the covers, or else slide them under the bed. 

It was a woman, always the same woman, that he wrote about or wrote to or described in as much detail as he could. Each time he painted a picture of her with his words, a new facet of her beauty was revealed, a new angle, a new reason to love her. And he knew that he did love her. Completely enchanted. Utterly enraptured. Such tender feelings, such longing! He found himself writing cliches while trying to adequately express the extent of his feelings. And each one of these pieces of writing was addressed to you. 

“By chance, I met you in the library. I was playing chess. Raymond likes to cheat when I look away from the chessboard because he says the battlefield is just like a game of chess, and in a real battle you must never look away because your opponent does not always play fair. But I would forfeit all my knights and rooks for you, so I looked away from him and towards you instead. 

“And when you looked at me, my heart leapt in my chest and a feeling like warm water cascading down my shoulders overtook me and I could not speak. I held my hand out to you and did your bidding, and then I could stand it no longer so I went away. The warmth was becoming unbearable. I was overcome. As if I were a cauldron of boiling water, I burned and then softened and turned pink as something bubbled up inside me. I know all this happened for you. And when ever I thought of you and your exquisite beauty for the rest of the day the same feeling came, tingling in all my nerves. I thought then that it was not unlike having a fever. 

“But now I know better, and now that I know with refreshed memory what fever is like, I can say that it’s nothing like you. This fever is harsh and unrelenting. This fever is painful, not pleasurable. There is a heat threatening to overtake me so that I never cool down. But what is this feeling that comes when ever I see you? Dearest Lady, I suspect that this must be love.”

But those were the good days. Those days he could think clearly and articulate properly. So many more of his days were spent too sick to stay awake, drifting in and out of this mortal plane, tangled up in a haze of confusion and stale bedsheets, having long since sweated through them. 

His birthday passed. Sixteen, finally, but he didn’t know it until days later, when came his next period of lucidity. His sister sent a gift– fresh, new robes made of silk to soothe his raw skin, embroidered in rich, gold thread. Raymond brought him a quill made from a peacock feather, blue and green and shimmering. It made him laugh when he saw it. Raymond was referencing a joke between the two of them, where the peacocks in the garden often interrupted their conversations with their awful, hideous squawking (for such magnificent looking creatures, their calls were surprisingly grating). And from you, lying on the bedside table, was a parcel of brown parchment tied with a thick white ribbon. He knew that ribbon, for he had seen you wear it in your hair once. 

He pulled it loose and placed it aside, intending on keeping it on his person at all times so he might always carry a piece of you wherever may go. He peeled back the paper, sliding it off to reveal a mahogany box. It was unremarkable, but his heart was beating wildly in his throat as he flipped up the delixate metal latch and opened the sleek lid. Resting against the silk-lined interior were two things; a large glass jar full of an amber-colored liquid, sealed with a cork; and a delicate chain with a plain gold cross hanging from it. And then, under the jar, he saw something else– the corner of a folded piece of parchment. A note! He snatched it up and unfolded it hungrily. It was written in your pretty feminine hand, which sent a fiery gust of heat blasting through his veins. 

“Your Majesty, happy sixteenth birthday. I know this is but a meager gift for a king, but I fear I cannot match your wealth or creativity. The necklace is one of the only things I brought from home. I wore it round my own neck every day then, and I do believe it has served me quite well, given my current position as queen. I am giving it to you in hopes that, God willing, your condition might improve. The oil is what I use after my baths to soothe dry skin, especially in these coming winter months. Perhaps it will help you in a more practical sense. Many birthday wishes, and prayers for a speedy recovery. Sincerely, your wife, Y/N.” 

He pressed the letter to his chest, almost as if he were trying to become one with it. Then he took the delicate gold chain between his fingers and unclasped it, draping it across his neck and securing it again. It fell against his collarbones and glistened handsomely, feeling very cold against his feverish skin, and yet his heart warmed when he thought of you wearing this very chain, day in and day out. What had touched your skin was now touching his. The very notion was enough to make him shiver. 

He did not take the necklace off again, not even for his bath that evening, or after it when he retired to his chambers for the remainder of the night. 

Baldwin shrugged off his bathrobe and layed, completely nude, on his silk sheets, where the jar of oil from you was waiting. He savored the feeling of its cool glass against his hands, still rife with fever, and then pressed his cheek to its surface, deeply inhaling the rich scent of the night air which drifted through the open window. To know that your hands had touched that very jar made him pulse with excitement. That you had thought of him with some amount of tenderness, that you had thought of him at all, touched him. 

Carefully he pulled the cork from the mouth of the jar with a gentle “pop,” and set it aside. He brought the jar up to his nose. It smelled sweet and flowery, very fresh. Clean. Comforting. Smelled like you. He sucked in another deep breath through his nose, letting the gentle fragrance wash over him and sink into his pores. Then he dipped two fingers into the jar and spread the thick liquid along his forearm, coating the skin there thoroughly. It was silky and cool and left a gloss in its wake. His dry, parched skin drank it up greedily, plumping up almost immediately. It was delicious. 

He poured a dollop of the stuff into his hands and rubbed them together, relishing the feeling of his slick palms sliding against each other. Languidly he massaged it into his chest, his arms, and his robust shoulders. He threw back his head and slowly worked the pads of his fingers into his delicate neck, feeling the tendons there roll beneach his touch. A small sound escaped his throat. Then he moved his hands lower, not neglecting a single inch of flesh. He splayed his fingers out over the white planes of his thighs, well-toned as they were, and then slid lower, past his knees and to his ankles. It was pure bliss. 

Once he was satisfied, he popped the cork back in the jar and leaned over, placing it on the side table, then blew out the candle, laying down finally with a sigh. His body sunk into the cloud of his mattress, his aching limbs met with instant relief. Beneath his pillow was your letter and ribbon. He slid his hand under it to feel for them, just to make sure they were still there, and once he was convinced, he slipped right under into a dreamless sleep. 

The very next morning, he woke to find that his fever had miraculously relented, leaving his forehead cool and dry. Amelia immediately informed you of his recovery, and though you were relieved, feeling as though a great weight had been lifted from your shoulders, you couldn’t help but wonder how he had recovered literally overnight. It seemed nobody knew the answer, not even the physicians that came to examine him throughout the rest of the day. But perhaps it was better not to question it. 

Baldwin had but a few days to enjoy his renewed health before he thrust himself urgently back into work. During his prolonged illness, the ever-fickle political state of Jerusalem had become alarmingly unstable. The Saracens were threatening to wage war, led by the wise and formidable Saladin and his army, rumored to be made up of some 20,000 men. So Baldwin was faced with a harrowing decision, with thousands of lives hanging in the balance. Should he send his men to battle despite their meager numbers, where they would inevitably be met with death and destruction? Most of his knights had already been laid to waste, leaving behind largely unskilled fighters, and only 4,000 of them at that. And could he fulfill his kingly duty to fight alongside them, or would his frail body betray him? Such questions made him wonder if he was even worthy of his title. 

Self-loathing ate at him over the coming week until finally, he was forced to take action. Reynald de Châtillon had been pressuring him incessantly to fight, no matter the risk, arguing that it is God’s will and therefore Jerusalem could never fall. Baldwin wasn’t so sure. But deep in his heart, he knew he had no more time left to waste. 

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞

The morning was fair and the early sunlight mild, falling through the trees in pale yellow streaks. The trees had been turning all shades of red and orange for the past month, and now they were withering brown, falling, falling. The smell of smoke and chill was perpetual, and very pleasant. The month of November. Autumn in its prime. You woke up that morning not to the melodic calling of birds, which you had become accustomed to, nor the gentle rustling of leaves stirred by the wind, but the muffled cries of Amelia as she came to rouse you from your slumber. Though she had stuffed a handkerchief against her mouth to dampen the sounds, it was no use, and she could not stop it. You had woken up before she even made it to your bedside.

“Oh Amelia, whatever is the matter?” you asked, sitting up in bed with alarm and looking at her, concern heavy in your gaze. You’d seen her upset before, and it wasn’t an uncommon thing to see, but never had she been so outwardly aggrieved in your presence. The poor girl’s shoulders shook with every breath she took. As gently as you could, you got out of bed and guided her to sit on the edge of your mattress, where she promptly collapsed. 

“Oh, Your Majesty,” she wailed, looking up at you through tear-filled eyes, “the most awful, terrible thing has happened!”

Her bottom lip trembled, and her cheeks seemed to be flushing darker by the second. In fact, she seemed on the verge of hyperventilating, sensitive soul that she was. 

“What? What’s happened, dear girl?” you urged, wiping a runaway tear from her chin. An anticipatory panic had begun to build up inside you. All you could think was that somebody must be dead. Suddenly you were very worried for Matilda, whose frail, brittle bones would likely not survive an accident, which was a very real possibility. In her line of work, what with all the manual labor, you often feared for her health, though she always insisted on being fine. But those thoughts were soon completely dashed from your mind. 

“The Saracens…they’ve come! They’re here to take Jerusalem!” 

You were stunned into speechlessness. You did not quite know the full gravity of such a thing, of how dire this could be for your whole way of life, and that of your mother before you and of her mother before her. How much would change, were the crusaders to fall! But Amelia’s next words gave you a relative idea. 

“They say they’ve brought 20,000 men to Montisgard, to match our army of 4,000. Oh, Your Majesty, we are lost, lost!” she wailed, burying her tear-stained face in your shoulder. For a moment after that she continued talking, uttering those same words over and over again, “lost, lost,” as if trying to understand the meaning of them. But to you the message had been clear enough, and your heart dropped all the way down to your bowels and all you could think was; Baldwin. 

Baldwin, the sweet fair-haired boy who’d kissed your hand like it was a holy relic on your wedding day; the one who’d known you well enough from a scant few glimpses here and there to know which gifts to buy for your birthday– and, for the record, they had been the most thoughtful gifts you’d ever received; the one who, unbeknownst to you, prayed for you every night and every morning; the one who had loved you since the beginning. That one, going to fight in a war he was doomed to lose. 

And then you were crying too. Great, fat, burning tears glided down your cheeks and into your mouth and onto yours and Amelia’s dresses as you clutched her to you. Your breath could come only in heaving gasps, ripping through your chest painfully. So great was your pain! You could not see that boy die. Then came an image of his broken body lying alone on the muddy battlefield, indistinguishable from all the others in death. Snot dripped down your nose. You cared not. 

Matilda opened the door and came in quietly. Your eyes pleaded with her not to deliver to you any more bad news. Her face, drawn into a solid, impassible mask, revealed nothing, except that it looked wan and much older. In her hands was a towering stack of parchment, so tall that it obscured her entire chest from your view. 

“Your Majesty,” she called demurely, much softer than usual, “before his departure this morning the King instructed me to bring these for you.” 

Rather violently, you wiped the tears from your eyes and wordlessly took the stack into your own hands, taking great care not to drop any. Everything was blurry but you flipped through the pages nonetheless, sinking further and further into a state of hysteria as you did so, realizing with a pang of horror that each and every sheet was a letter from Baldwin, addressed to you. There must have been a thousand of them, enough for one every day since your marriage.

Three years worth of love letters. 

You clamped a hand over your mouth, trying in vain to abate the new volley of tears welling up inside you. Never had you known such love and devotion from another human being, and you couldn’t even say thank you.

Or goodbye.

As you flipped through the pages, you became grave and still. 

“My Dear Little Wife, you were beautiful today. I could smell your rose-scented oil from down the corridor. How I love that good smell…”

“My Dear Little Wife, would that I could take you out to the city on my horse, that your beloved arms could wrap tightly around me as we gallop across the orange earth…”

“My Dear Little Wife, as the imminence of war falls upon me, I know that my time may soon come to an end. If I could wish for one thing in all the world, it would not be to cure myself of this accursed affliction, but to have more days to spend living in bliss under the same roof as you. To know you is to love you, my dear. I am sorry if we lose this battle and you are stripped of your queenly title. I am sorry for all that might happen then. Understand that I fight for you, ma cherie. With all the love and tenderness one man can hold in his heart, I bid you goodnight, as your faithful husband, Baldwin IV.”

Yes, that was it, the last letter in the stack, dated only yesterday, and presumably at night. You promised to yourself, and whatever else was listening, that in the event that he did not return, you would read and cherish each and every letter. But you could not dwell on that thought. He would come back. He must. Because you needed him. 

“Heavenly father, if you would bring him back to me, I swear I will spend every last day by his darling side.” 

//taglist: @lzsia @eatmeandbirthmeagain @likeanecho344 @lunargraveyard @yoursoulisinyourkeepingalone @stickparrot

if anyone else would like to be added, please comment to let me know!

[elegantlyeva]

I’m begging for Rafe angst pleaseeeeeee

Should've Listened

a/n: hi bb, sorry it's a few days late. Thank you for the request!

Warnings: Rafe, Murder, Kidnapping

Word Count: 1.1K 

You’re new. Kind of. You had just moved to the Outer Banks in September, and once Rafe met you, he made sure to silence anyone who tried to bring up Peterkin. Which, albeit, wasn’t easy, but after a couple of punches and a few hundred dollar bills, he was able to keep you oblivious to most of the things he got up to in his free time. Until now.

“I told you. I—I fucking told you to stay home. But you just don’t know when to quit, huh?” he mocked, taking tantalizingly small steps towards you. Your heart must’ve been setting world records with how fast it was beating.

“Rafe…I didn’t—” you inhale a shaky breath, stepping back from him. “I didn’t see anything, Rafe.”

He let out a laugh, an evil-sounding thing. “See, I’d love to believe you,” he drawled. “But unfortunately, the scream you let out could’ve been heard down the block.” You back up a bit more until you physically can’t.

He shakes his head. “I really wish you just stayed home, sweetheart,” he says, coming up to where you’ve backed yourself against the tree, raising a hand to cup your cheek. The action makes you whimper, from fear or longing—you didn’t know.

Rafe hadn’t been around the past couple of days; he was helping some sick little old lady. He let you meet her once a few days prior, then told you that you weren’t allowed to be with her alone, and if she ever tried to contact you, you needed to tell him. Limbrey, her name was. She was nice, a little airy in your opinion, but she made really delicious cookies.

When you left your house an hour ago, it was with the intention of helping your boyfriend relax. Your bag was filled with self-care products, face ones that he’d let you put on him if you really begged. You had your pajamas in it too, assuming you’d get up to some activities later and be too tired to go home.

In hindsight, he did tell you he was busy with work tonight. But in your defense, you thought he meant paperwork or phone calls for his dad. Not whatever this was.

Yet here you were, sandwiched between Rafe and a tree, all because your too-curious eyes peeked into the back of his (open) truck.

“Who, uh, who was he?” you ask, eyes darting around, planning an escape.

Rafe, as if reading your mind, wraps a tight hand around your bicep, smirking a little when he feels your body relax under his touch (despite you not wanting it to). “You run, you become a liability,” he starts. “And, baby, I really hate loose ends.”

“I wasn’t gonna—”

“You really wanna keep lying?”

Saying nothing, you shake your head in defeat.

Rafe sighs. “Don’t worry about the guy. He was an idiot.”

Your breath hitches. “You’re the one who killed him?”

“Fuck off,” he says, rolling his eyes at your wary look. “No, I didn’t kill him.” Sighing, like explaining this all to you was an inconvenience—and perhaps it was. “He pissed off the wrong woman,” he says, looking at you pointedly.

You were dumb to think Rafe was actually interested in helping innocent old ladies. “Limbrey killed him?”

“You didn’t find it weird I told you to stay away from her?”

“No?” The confusion in your voice makes him snort.

“Course not. You just listen blindly, right? Until it actually fucking matters.” He curses. “You should’ve stayed home.”

“Why do you have the body, then?” You really wish you had just stayed home and finished watching Gossip Girl.

He was just working so much lately, and you missed him.

Rafe scoffs. “That shit was an accident. I would’ve left it with her, but I needed the rest of what’s in there.” Pointing back towards the truck, your curiosity gets the better of you once more, and you move your head to focus behind him.

Rafe tightens the grip on your arm until you can feel a bruise forming. “Watch it. I think you’ve seen enough today,” he says, starting to drag you toward Tannyhill, your panic rising.

“Rafe, please, please. I won’t tell anyone, I promise,” you beg, scrambling to get away, but his grip on you is too tight.

“Why exactly do you think I’m bringing you inside?”

The question catches you off guard. He’s going to make you say it? What a cruel thing to do.

“To kill me?”

Rafe sighs. “I’m not a murderer,” though you’re starting to believe him less and less.

“You’re not gonna kill me?” you ask, just to clarify, and the vulnerability in your voice makes him soften.

“Course not, baby.” He presses a kiss to your temple, quickly.

You relax a little. “Why, uh, why are we going inside, then?”

Rafe shakes his head. “As much as I’d love to think you really aren’t going to tell anyone about what you saw,” you try to cut him off, but he continues, “I don’t. So unfortunately for you, we’re going on a trip in the morning.”

You shake your head, breath quickening. “Rafe, what? I can't just get up and leave. I have a family. Not to mention, I’m supposed to be going out with my friends tomorrow.” As soon as the words leave your mouth, you mentally facepalm. What a dumb thing to be worried about. “You can’t keep me here.”

He nods. “You’re right, I can’t keep you here. They’ll come looking. Hence the trip. C’mon, don't be dumb.”

“Trip where?”

“You’ll figure it out once we’re there. Now come on, like you said, you’ve got friends and family, so it’s time to write them a letter,” he says, shoving you past the front door.

You think you hear Sarah in another room with Rose, but you’re not sure. “You’re gonna tell them you ran away, and to not come looking for you because you want to try life on your own.”

You scoff. “They aren’t going to believe that.”

Rafe shrugs. “Well, for their sakes, you better hope they do.” The way he says it sounds like a threat.

“And if I don’t wanna come?”

He smiles sinisterly. “Oh, sweetheart. It wasn’t a choice.” 

[tavolgisvist]

Paul about the breakup of The Beatles in The Lyrics, 2021

The four of us just knew how to fall in with each other and play, and that was our real strength. That made it all the more sorrowful to think that our breaking up was almost inevitable. So there’s a wistful aspect to ‘Get Back’. The idea that you should get back to your roots, that The Beatles should get back to how we were in Liverpool. And the roots are embodied in the style of the song, which is straight-up rock and roll. Because that was definitely what I thought we should do when we broke up – that we should ‘get back to where we once belonged’ and become a little band again. We should just play and do the occasional little gig. The others laughed at that – quite understandably – because by then it was not really a practical solution. John had just met Yoko, and he clearly needed to escape to a new place, whereas I was saying we should escape to an old place. Reviving the old Beatles just wasn’t on the cards. It was too late to be recommending that we not forget who we were and where we once were from. If my dream at the time really was to get back to where we once belonged, John’s dream was to go beyond where we once belonged, to go somewhere we didn’t yet belong. I’ve already mentioned how in September 1969 we were in a meeting and talking about future plans, and John said, ‘Well, I’m not doing it. I’m leaving. Bye.’ In the ensuing moments, he was giggling and saying how this felt really thrilling, like telling someone you’re going to divorce them and then laughing. At the time, obviously, that was wildly hurtful. Talk about a knockout blow. You’re lying on the canvas, and he’s giggling and telling you how good it feels to have just knocked you out. It took a while, but I suppose I eventually got with the programme. This was my best mate from my youth, the collaborator with whom I’d done some of the best work of the twentieth century (he said, modestly). If he fell in love with this woman, what did that have to do with me? Not only did I have to let him do it, but I had to admire him for doing it. That was the position I eventually reached. There was nothing else I could do but be cool with it.

(Paul McCartney about Get Back (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

That was coupled with the business problems at Apple Records, which really were horrible. The business meetings were just soul-destroying. We’d sit around in an office, and it was a place you just didn’t want to be, with people you didn’t want to be with. There’s a great picture that Linda took of Allen Klein, in which he’s got a hammer like Maxwell’s silver hammer. It’s very symbolic. And that’s why we have the little nod and a wink in the middle section to ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’, in the lines ‘I never give you my pillow / I only send you my invitations’. That whole period weighed on me to such an extent that I even began to think it was all tied in with the idea of original sin. Even though my mum had christened me as a Catholic, we weren’t brought up Catholic, so I didn’t buy into the concept of original sin on a day-to-day basis. It’s really very depressing to think that you were born a loser.

(Paul McCartney about Carry That Weight (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

The Beatles stuff all got too heavy, and 'heavy' at that time had a very particular meaning for me. It meant more than oppressive. It meant having to go into meetings and sit in the boardroom with all the other Beatles and with the accountants and with this guy Allen Klein. He was a New York spiv who had come over to London and talked to The Rolling Stones and persuaded them he was the man for them. Prior to that, he had persuaded Sam Cooke he was the man for him. I smelled a rat but the other chaps didn’t, so we had a fight over it and I got voted down. I was trying to be Mr Rational and Mr Sensible, and it all went haywire. It was early 1969, and The Beatles were already beginning to break up. John had said he was leaving, and Allen Klein told us not to tell anyone, as he was in the middle of doing deals with Capitol Records. So, for a few months we had to keep mum. We were living a lie, knowing that John had left the group. Allen Klein and Dick James, who sold our publishing in Northern Songs without giving us a chance to buy the company, were both hanging around in the background of this song. All the people who had screwed us or were still trying to screw us. It’s fascinating how directly we acknowledged this in the song. We’d cottoned on to them, and they must have cottoned on to the fact that we’d cottoned on. We couldn’t have been more direct about it. ...

Contracts were written on funny paper. Lying behind the song is the idea of the contract as a relationship between two people. The negotiations are at once business negotiations and romantic negotiations; I’m thinking of the lines ‘And in the middle of negotiations / You break down’. The breakdown in negotiations is also a kind of nervous breakdown. The problem was that, by this stage, everything was up for negotiation, and miscommunication was the order of the day. We weren’t really writing together anymore. Each person was bringing in little bits of this and little bits of that. And we all knew that phase of our lives, of being The Beatles, was coming to an end. We were working towards an album, knowing it was probably going to be our final fling. Though Let It Be was released later, Abbey Road was indeed the last album we recorded in the studio. There was an upside, however. I’d got married to Linda, and our relationship offered some respite from the dreary infighting and the financial stuff. The lines ‘One sweet dream / Pick up the bags and get in the limousine’ were a reference to how Linda and I were still able to disappear for a weekend in the country. That saved me.

(Paul McCartney about You Never Give Me Your Money (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

This was just after The Beatles broke up, and I was trying to establish myself as a solo artist with a new repertoire. If it was going to work like the Beatles repertoire had worked, I had to have a hit. One in two songs had to be a hit. So, this was a conscious effort to write a hit, and Phil was very helpful. We knew that if we had a hit, it would cement our relationship and we would keep working together, which we did with the RAM album. It would prove that we were both good – he as a producer and I as a singer songwriter. Releasing my first solo song after the breakup felt like a big moment. Thrilling, though tinged with sadness. It also felt like I had something to prove, and that kind of challenge is always exciting. The song went to number two in the UK singles chart and number five in the US Billboard Hot 100, so it did pretty well. Of course, this was still a time when there was a bit of tension between John and me, and this sometimes filtered into our songwriting. John made fun of this song in one of his own, ‘How Do You Sleep?’The only thing you done was yesterday And since you’ve gone you’re just another day One of his little piss takes.

(Paul McCartney about Another Day (1969/1971), The Lyrics, 2021)

This song was written a year or so after The Beatles breakup, at a time when John was firing missiles at me with his songs, and one or two of them were quite cruel. I don’t know what he hoped to gain, other than punching me in the face. The whole thing really annoyed me. I decided to turn my missiles on him too, but I’m not really that kind of a writer, so it was quite veiled. It was the 1970s equivalent of what we might today call a ‘diss track’. Songs like this, where you’re calling someone out on their behaviour, are quite commonplace now, but back then it was a fairly new ‘genre’. The idea of too many people ‘preaching practices’ was definitely aimed at John telling everyone what they ought to do – telling me, for instance, that I ought to go into business with Allen Klein. I just got fed up with being told what to do, so I wrote this song. ‘You took your lucky break and broke it in two’ was me saying basically, ‘You’ve made this break, so good luck with it.’ But it was pretty mild. I didn’t really come out with any savagery, and it’s actually a fairly upbeat song; it doesn’t really sound that vitriolic. If you didn’t know the story, I don’t know that you’d be able to guess at the anger behind its writing. It was all a bit weird and a bit nasty, and I was basically saying, ‘Let’s be sensible. We had a lot going for us in The Beatles, and what actually split us up is the business stuff, and that’s pretty pathetic really, so let’s try and be peaceful. Let’s maybe give peace a chance.’ The first verse and the chorus have pretty much all the anger I could muster, and when I did the vocal on the second line, ‘Too many reaching for a piece of cake’, I remember singing it as ‘Piss off cake’, which you can hear if you really listen to it. Again, I was getting back at John, but my heart wasn’t really in it. This is me saying, ‘Too many people are sharing the party line. Too many people are grabbing for a slice of the cake, a piece of the pie.’ The ‘sleep in late’ thing – whether that was accurate, whether John and Yoko actually slept in late or not, I’m not sure (although John often was a late riser when I would drive out to Weybridge so that we could write together). They were all references to people thinking that their own truth was the only truth, which was certainly what was coming from John. The thing is, so much of what they held to be truth was crap. War is over? Well no, it isn’t. But I get what you’re saying: war is over if you want it to be. So, if enough people want war to be over, it’ll be over. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but it’s a great sentiment; it’s a nice thing to think and to say.

I’d been able to accept Yoko in the studio, sitting on a blanket in front of my amp. I’d worked hard to come to terms with that. But then when we broke up and everyone was now flailing around, John turned nasty. I don’t really understand why. Maybe because we grew up in Liverpool, where it was always good to get in the first punch of a fight. The whole story in a nutshell is that we were having a meeting in 1969, and John showed up and said he’d met this guy Allen Klein, who had promised Yoko an exhibition in Syracuse, and then matter-of-factly John told us he was leaving the band. That’s basically how it happened. It was three to one because the other two went with John, so it was looking like Allen Klein was going to own our entire Beatles empire. I was not too keen on that idea. John actually had Allen Klein and Yoko in the room, suggesting lyrics during writing sessions. In his song ‘How Do You Sleep?’ the line ‘The only thing you done was yesterday’ was apparently Allen Klein’s suggestion, and John said, ‘Hey, great. Put that in.’ I can see the laughs they had doing it, and I had to work very hard not to take it too seriously, but at the back of my mind I was thinking, ‘Wait a minute, All I ever did was “Yesterday”? I suppose that’s a funny pun, but all I ever did was “Yesterday”, “Let It Be”, “The Long and Winding Road”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Lady Madonna”, . . . – fuck you, John.’ I had to fight them for my bit of The Beatles and, in fact, for their bit of The Beatles, which many years later they realised and almost thanked me for. Nowadays people get it, but at the time I think the others felt they were the ones who were victims, who were being hurt by my actions. Allen Klein already had a history with The Rolling Stones. I just thought, ‘Oy oy oy, no, this guy’s got such a bad reputation.’ And good old John says, ‘Oh, if he’s that badly talked about, he can’t be all bad.’ John had this kind of distorted thinking, which was amusing sometimes. But not when someone was going to take everything that John and George and Ringo and I owned and had worked really hard to get.

So, I stood up as the sensible one and said, ‘This is not good.’ Klein wanted twenty per cent, and I said, ‘Tell him he can have ten, if you have to go with him.’ ‘Oh no, no, no,’ they came back. ‘No, he wants twenty.’ It seemed to me they were just fucking out of it and making no attempt to do anything sensible. A lot of hurt went down during that period in the early 1970s – them feeling hurt, me feeling hurt – but John being John, he was the one who would write a hurtful song. That was his bag.

(Paul McCartney about Too Many People (1971), The Lyrics, 2021)

Towards the end of 1969, John had quite gleefully told us it was over. There were a few of us in the Apple boardroom at the time. I think George was away visiting family, but Ringo and I were at the meeting, and John was saying no to every suggestion. I thought we should go back to playing smaller gigs again, but the answer came back: ‘No’. Eventually John said, ‘Oh, I’ve been wanting to tell you this, but I’m leaving The Beatles.’ We were all shocked. Relations had been strained, but we sat there saying, ‘What? Why? Why? Why?’ It was like a divorce, and he had just had a divorce from Cynthia the year before. I can remember him saying, ‘Oh, this is quite exciting.’ That was very John, and I had admired this kind of contrarian behaviour about him since we were kids, when I first met him.

He really was a bit loony, in the nicest possible way. But whilst all of us could see what he meant, it was not quite so exciting for those left on the other side.

(Paul McCartney about Dear Friend (1971), The Lyrics, 2021)

This is one of my favourite songs. It's a ballad with a brass section, but it’s always felt Victorian in style to me. It’s very heartfelt. ‘A love so warm and beautiful / Stands when time itself is falling’. I like that idea, instead of just saying, ‘It will go on forever.’ I got a good feeling writing this song, and listening to it now, I still do. ‘Love, faith and hope are beautiful’. The brass solo is lovely for me because it harks back to the brass bands that were so common when I was a kid; there would often be brass bands in the park or in the streets. My dad played trumpet, as I never fail to mention, and he had his own little band – Jim Mac’s Jazz Band. The first instrument he bought me was a trumpet, and he taught me the scale of C which, when you go on the piano, becomes B-flat. It’s all very complicated. That’s why we didn’t even bother learning music. I realised that I wanted to swap the trumpet for a guitar, so I asked his permission, and he said, ‘Yes, okay.’ ‘Warm and Beautiful’ was written well after the demise of The Beatles, and at this time we knew sadness. I knew about delving into your mind to look for help and looking for some sort of solace in a song. I liked the idea of writing a song in a universal way that dispels the sadness. You write about the wonderful things you know in the world, and you try to write so that it will sing well and be well received by people dealing with grief something that inevitably surrounds all of us at one time or another. On a more personal level, the main inspiration for the song was Linda…

(Paul McCartney about Warm and Beautiful (1976), The Lyrics, 2021)

After The Beatles thing became so depressing, Linda and I decided we’d get out of London and start living full-time on our small holding in Scotland. It was quite a difficult period because of the band’s breakup but it allowed me to see another side of myself. First and foremost, we did everything for ourselves, and at this point it was Linda, Heather, Mary – who was still a baby – and me. If we needed something to eat, we’d go into town in the little Land Rover, come back up, and cook it. We didn’t have anyone helping us, except for one guy, the shepherd, because it was a little sheep farm. It was an experience that allowed me to be a man. <…> I’d grown up in Liverpool and gone on the road with The Beatles around the world and then around again, and now here I was on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and it was sensational. <…> This was the kind of thing I’d never done, ever, in my life, and it was amazingly liberating. I got to do all the things I think a lot of young people still dream about today – the famous ‘gap year’. I sense a lot of people want that freedom, escaping the rat race…

(Paul McCartney about When Winter Comes (1992), The Lyrics, 2021)

After the breakup of The Beatles, I wouldoften just sit around a lot. Sometimes I sat in the kitchen while the kids were playing. Maybe they were drawing. Maybe they were doing bits and pieces of homework. In this case, I came across the chords and I just felt optimistic, and I liked the idea of a song saying that help is coming and there’s a bright light on the horizon. I’ve got absolutely no evidence for this, but I like to believe it. It helps to lift my spirits, to move me forward, and hopefully it might help other people move forward too.

(Paul McCartney about Great Day (1972/1997), The Lyrics, 2021)

Wings, which we began in 1971, was in many ways an experiment to see whether there was life after The Beatles, to see whether that success could be followed. It was the result of asking myself, ‘Am I going to stop now?’ The Beatles were so wonderful and all-encompassing, so successful. Now, should I stop and look for something else to do? But I thought, ‘No. I like music too much, so whatever the something else is, it will be music.’ <…> But it wouldn’t be The Wings, like The Beatles. Just Wings. My problem after The Beatles was, who’s going to be as good as them? I thought, ‘We can’t be as good as The Beatles, but we can be something else.’ I knew that if I were to go ahead with this project I’d have to tough it out, but I had reserves of courage from being part of The Beatles when pennies were thrown at us at the village hall in Stroud, when we were still starting out. <…> Starting off a new band is always a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of hard work too; you have to establish yourself. Following The Beatles was one of the most difficult things for me, just trying to live up to those expectations. It was even more difficult for her [Linda]. I started to write songs for Wings from 1971 onwards, when we got started, and I tried to keep them away from The Beatles’ style. There were avenues I could go down that I wouldn’t have gone down with The Beatles, like bringing in the influence of reggae, which Linda and I got into in Jamaica. I fancied doing something crazy, and Wings allowed me a little bit more freedom. So, this is a love song in which Cupid’s arrow is referenced, but it’s a malevolent arrow. It’s possible I’d seen an illustration of Cupid and thought, ‘Cupid fires a bow, but I’ll switch it. It won’t be love; it will be the opposite.’ The character in the song has been wounded. He’s been cheated on. And it could’ve been a great relationship, could’ve been fantastic. As things stand, you couldn’t ‘have found a more down hero’, because there was nobody more down than me at that moment. So, get it together and bring your love. I have always had a soft spot for this song. There’s a nice horn riff in it, and it’s funky. Sometimes you write to get a sort of feeling rather than a perfectly ‘correct’ lyric. Sometimes the lyric can be secondary to the feeling. This one has as much, or more, to do with the feel of the song, the groove.

(Paul McCartney about Arrow Through Me (1979), The Lyrics, 2021)

John described ‘Coming Up’ somewhere as ‘a good piece of work’. He’d been lying around not doing much, and it sort of shocked him out of inertia. So it was nice to hear that it had struck a chord with him. At first, after the breakup of The Beatles, we had no contact, but there were various things we needed to talk about. Our relationship was a bit fraught sometimes because we were discussing business, and we would sometimes insult each other on the phone. But gradually we got past that, and if I was in New York I would ring up and say, ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’

(Paul McCartney about Coming Up (1979), The Lyrics, 2021)

It’s very possible that I’d been feeling down in London. I was back in the solace of family and Liverpool, and what with the Beatles troubles down south, I was likely thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to get home and have that comfortable feeling again?’ So, there may have been some of that in the background. I wouldn’t rule it out. When I wrote the song, I hadn’t been back home to Liverpool for a long time. But now I was at my dad’s house, which wasn’t quite home because it was a house I’d bought him when I got some money – a five-bedroomed mock Tudor place in Heswall near the River Dee. But it was still Liverpool, and it was ‘homeward’. So I added, ‘Once there was a way to get back homeward / Once there was a way to get back home’. The song turned out to be quite soulful, and I think that’s what attracted me to those lyrics in the first place – that notion of consoling a baby or reading kids a bedtime story. ‘Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry / And I will sing a lullaby’. Those are lines – or something with a similar sentiment – that most parents probably say to their children to soothe them when they’re growing up.

(Paul McCartney about Golden Slumbers (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

It became a refuge of sorts, and it was nice to get away from London and everything – both the good and bad – that comes with the city. I would drive a Massey Ferguson 315 tractor and mow the hay, and I loved that because I’d been a nature fiend as a kid, and this freedom just gave me time to think – ‘Down to Junior's Farm where I want to lay low’. It was such a relief to get out of those business meetings with people in suits, who were so serious all the time, and to go off to Scotland and be able just to sit around in a T-shirt and corduroys. I was very much in that mindset when I wrote this song. The basic message is, let’s get out of here. You might say it’s my post-Beatles getting-out-of-town song.

(Paul McCartney about Junior's Farm (1974), The Lyrics, 2021)

The context in which the song was written was one of stress. It was a difficult time because we were heading towards the breakup of The Beatles. It was a period of change partly because John and Yoko had got together, and that had an effect on the dynamics of the group. Yoko was literally in the middle of the recording session, and that was challenging. But it was also something we had to deal with. Unless there was a really serious problem – unless one of us said, ‘I can’t sing with her there’ – we just had to let it be. We weren’t very confrontational, so we just bottled it up and got on with it. We were northern lads, and that was part of our culture. Grin and bear it. One interesting thing about ‘Let It Be’ that I was reminded of only recently is that, while I was studying English literature at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys with my favourite teacher, Alan Durband, I read Hamlet. In those days you had to learn speeches by heart because you had to be able to carry them into the exam and quote them. There are a couple of lines from late in the play: O, I could tell you But let it be. – Horatio, I am dead I suspect those lines had subconsciously planted themselves in my memory. When I was writing ‘Let It Be’, I’d been doing too much of everything, was run ragged, and this was all taking its toll. The band, me we were all going through times of trouble, as the song goes, and there didn’t seem to be any way out of the mess. <…> Around the time we recorded ‘Let It Be’, I’d been pushing the band to go back out and play some club dates – to get back to basics and just bond again as a band, end the decade like we’d begun it, just playing for the love of it. We didn’t get to do that as The Beatles, but that idea did inform the direction of the Let It Be album. We didn’t want any studio trickery. It was supposed to be an honest, no-overdubbing album. It didn’t exactly end up that way, but that had been the plan.

(Paul McCartney about Let It Be (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

This song is also an analogy for when something goes wrong out of the blue, as I was beginning to find happening around this time in our business dealings. Recording sessions were always good because no matter what our personal troubles were, no matter what was happening on the business front, the minute we sat down to make a song we were in good shape. Right until the end there was always a great joy in working together in the studio. So there we were, recording a song like ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ and knowing we would never have the opportunity to perform it. That possibility was over. It had been knocked on the head like one of Maxwell’s victims. Bang bang.

(Paul McCartney about Maxwell's Silver Hammer (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

In much the way that Linda wanted to flee from New York society– the constrictions of Park Avenue and Scarsdale – I wanted to flee from what The Beatles had become. I was hoping to escape, she was hoping to escape. So we had this feeling that we had each pulled the other ‘out of time’. Though the song was written immediately after The Beatles’ breakup, it was somehow included under the Lennon-McCartney rubric, where it doesn’t belong. It was one of my first solo songs, but because of the deal, it got caught in the publishing net. That was very annoying. <…> …the central idea being that there’s so often a split between the inner and outer. <…> The elements of fear and loneliness are very much to the fore. ‘Maybe I’m afraid of the way I love you’ is itself a troubling idea. While it’s true that Linda is the person I’m addressing, it’s also true that I’m dealing in fiction. Starting with myself, the characters who appear in my songs are imagined. <…> In any event, this song isn’t the conventional way of presenting a relationship, or of some of the contradictions that can arise from being in love. <…> It shows the fragility of love.

(Paul McCartney about Maybe I’m Amazed (1970), The Lyrics, 2021)

John went to the exhibition, and I think that was when he and Yoko met, towards the end of 1966. He climbed up a ladder to see what she’d written on the ceiling, and got close enough to it to read it, and it said, ‘Yes.’ So he thought, ‘That’s a sign; this is it,’ and they fell madly in love. Once they were an item, there was the whole Beatles recording thing, where she would be there too. I think this started at the beginning of the ‘White Album’ sessions – so, around the end of spring in 1968. And at first we all – all of us except John – found it pretty intrusive, but we went along with it and worked around her. And eventually I came to the realisation that, look, if John loves her, we’ve just got to let it be, and we’ve got to support this relationship. That was basically my feeling. Then, a year or two later, The Beatles broke up, and it was a bad period, a real low point, where everyone was taking potshots at everyone. And I felt that John and Yoko were particularly good in the potshot department, saying things in interviews, or comments that would make their way to you. They would say not always very pleasant things, and looking back on it, I sort of think, ‘Why? You’re annoyed, so say something unpleasant?’ Over time, the situation eased off and my relationship with John got better, and I used to see him in New York or speak to him on the phone.

(Paul McCartney about Golden Earth Girl (1993), The Lyrics, 2021)

I’m not sure I thought of it at the time, even though this was well after The Beatles disbanded, but I can’t help connecting the oppressiveness associated with that phrase to the oppressiveness that coincided with the end of The Beatles. Not that The Beatles are over exactly. It’s not like we were some little band that never had another record; even though half of us have died, the phenomenon continues stronger than ever. Everything I do seems to be painted with ‘Beatle’…

(Paul McCartney about Put It There (1988), The Lyrics, 2021)

Add to this

[skellish]

Please help a disabled (seeking disability) trans woman keep her apartment!

Hi everyone, my name is Delia, I’m a 25 year old trans woman with several disabilities, such as ADHD, possible autism, BPD, depression, anxiety, CPTSD, chronic fatigue, et cetera. I need real help in order to keep the apartment that I fought so hard to get. I am seeking disability right now, but it is going extremely slowly and I don’t know when I’ll see any help from the government. Let me explain a bit of my situation.

Medicine has never really worked for me, and I recently decided I needed to come off wellbutrin because it was making my anxiety a lot worse, as well as depleting my ability to really feel anything at all, so my doctor recommended I stop and try a new med. I can’t afford to go to the doctor very often so I stopped the medicine a month ago and am going back in September to try something different that will hopefully help.

Essentially, I live in income based apartments and lately, my disabilities have been either preventing or seriously hindering me from getting to my job. I used to work basically full time at my deli job and it became too much due to me being burnt out for like the last 5 years, so I had to cut down. I work three days a week now, and it’s already becoming too much again because of said perpetual burn out and medication withdrawal. I have either been missing work entirely or been late every single day, and they haven’t fired me yet but I fear the worst is coming soon.

Right now, my rent is $372, my water bill is already behind, power bill still needs paying, and I only have ≈$100 in my bank account right now. I am planning to yard sale both this Friday and Saturday, and next, and get some more cash before it is due, which is on the 10th of August. On the 10th, they will serve me an eviction notice to get out by the 20th unless I can get the money.

I am asking here if anyone could spare anything, any amount is immensely appreciated. I have been on my own for a few years now with little to no support, and I've always despised needing or asking for it, but the fact of the matter though is that this is my last Hail Mary to save my sinking ship, and I'm desperate.

I know most folks here are also struggling though, and I hate to make this post, but I am kind of at my wits end in regards to keeping this apartment. This has been my first somewhat stable home in pretty much my whole life and I'm terrified of being forced to move yet again. If I can just get this month’s rent paid, I will be able to find a new, more tolerable job in the meantime while I am seeking disability benefits, and then hopefully keep the ball rolling.

Any amount will help, I am honestly begging and I will appreciate anything anyone can spare, be it a donation or a share.

Update 8-12-24: so we have made some good progress here and I am thankful. Sadly some unforseen expenses had come out, so not exactly where I'd like it, but it is coming along. I've just got 8 ish days left to come up with the rest though, so. I am considering selling my Playstation, and that was unconscionable previously, so things are fairly dire.

V3nm0: @Skellish

C@sh@pp: $Skellish69

Goal: $372

Current: $110 / updated: $190, (still need $182)

[submissiveebrat]

When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything." He adds seconds later: "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." — Trump in a previously unreleased recording made by "Access Hollywood" in 2005, published Friday by The Washington Post and NBC News

"If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America #MakeAmericaGreatAgain." — Trump tweeted in April 2015. He later deleted the post.

"It must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees." — Trump to a female contestant in 2013 on an episode of "Celebrity Apprentice."

"Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?" — Trump tweeted in September 2016. He was referring to former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado, whom he publicly shamed for gaining weight when he owned the contest

"It's certainly not groundbreaking news that the early victories by the women on 'The Apprentice' were, to a very large extent, dependent on their sex appeal." — Trump wrote in his 2004 book, "How To Get Rich."

"All of the women on 'The Apprentice' flirted with me — consciously or unconsciously. That's to be expected. A sexual dynamic is always present between people, unless you are asexual." — Trump, also from "How To Get Rich."

"You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever." — Trump in an interview with CNN in August 2015, referring to Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly.

"Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president? I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not s'posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?" — Trump in a September 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, speaking about then-primary rival Carly Fiorina.

"It doesn't really matter what (the media) write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass." — Trump in an interview with Esquire Magazine in 1991.

"A person who's flat-chested is very hard to be a 10, OK?" — Trump in an interview with shock jock Howard Stern in September 2005.

"I saw a woman who was totally beautiful. She was angry that so many men were calling her. 'How dare they call me! It's terrible! They're all looking at my breasts.' So she had a major breast reduction. The good news: Nobody calls her anymore — nobody even looks — and not only that, it was a terrible job." — Trump to Stern in 2008.

Congratulations America, this is who is now president AGAIN. A misogynist, sexist, vile pig. Good Job. 👏👏

[baddiewiththebook]

Over the Years | e.m x reader | p. 5

-> The origin story of Eddie Munson, and how he fell in love with the worst person he possibly could - his best friend.

-> eddie munson x you (she/her)

-> friends to lovers, slow burn, angst

-> warnings - strong language, suggestive themes, smut [18+]

a/n -> This chapter goes along with the next. As promised, the second part will come out within the hour of this one being posted.

-> <-

September 1982

“I hate boys.”

You let yourself into the Munson household by using the spare key "hidden" underneath the 'Welcome' mat on their front porch. It's become a little habit of yours to barge into their home.

Wayne sits on the couch with the television on far too loud for anyone with a normal hearing range. Unfortunately for him, Eddie has left him nearly deaf with all of that noise coming from his room. It would have been a quiet evening by himself with Eddie out at band practice, but Wayne should know better by now that you'll show up like you live here.

When you plop down next to Wayne, he doesn't hesitate to offer the plate of food he's just dished up for himself. He wrestles with his age to get off the couch, then walks through the kitchen to find a new plate.

“Thanks,” you chew through a dry biscuit. Wayne says he likes the outside crispy, but you’re sure that he will be down to nothing but gums when these rocks break his teeth off soon.

Wayne rounds the kitchen island with a brand new plate of food for himself, and an extra napkin for you to hold under your chin. Although he knows very little about clothes, he can see the shine still on that new blouse of yours. He would hate to see you ruin it with some gravy and a bucket of fried chicken.

Wayne sits down again next to you, “Eddie isn’t here.”

You sniffle over the pile of mashed potatoes, “I know.”

Dressed up like you’ve got somewhere to go and you have no one to take you there, Wayne can make a guess of why you might be here.

“What happened?” Wayne nudges you.

You’ve got on the nicest pair of pants you own with a bright blue top and a pair of kitten heels. You’ve taken your mother’s jewelry, which Wayne is sure she’s not pleased about.

“Isn’t that your mom’s necklace?” Wayne asks dumbly.

You cross your arms. “Rodney ditched me.”

“Who?”

Kids these days and their drama. Wayne can hardly keep up with Eddie, and now he’s got you here crying on his couch. You’re hardly a bother anymore. It’s more bizarre when you’re not here eating his food, watching his television and napping on his couch.

“Rodney said we’d go out Friday at seven,” you tell Wayne. “It’s Friday. It’s eight. No Rodney.”

Wayne could not imagine disrespecting a young woman like that. You've got to be out of your mind if you think making a promise like that can just be tossed out of a window.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” he pats your knee. “Want me to kick his ass?”

Wayne’s become a father figure to you in a way, since you don't have one. Your mom refuses to tell you anything about the man that got her knocked up. That's a direct quote from what she says. You're not being rude.

“No,” you let a soft laugh sneak past your sorrowed heart.

Wayne's television hums. You watch the wheel spin onto one hundred dollars, and the contestant cheers as she gets to guess another letter.

“Brook Shields,” you guess the answer.

Wayne cocks his head at you, “how did you get that so fast?”

You shrug, “I’ve seen Endless Love.”

“Endless- what?”

“Keep up old man,” you joke.

Wayne grunts, “not you too. I get enough of that shit from Eddie.”

You sit with Wayne that evening with dry eyes, except for the occasional tear falling from laughing a bit too hard at his bewildered expression when you fill in nearly all of the answers to the game show he loves so much.

“What are you going to do with that brain of yours?” Wayne asks as the program nears the end, and the screen begins to dim.

You shrug your shoulders, “I don’t know.”

“You’ll go to college though, won’t you?”

“I can hardly afford groceries,” you reply.

It is an honest answer. Your mom is out of a job, aside from her new night time prowling. She tries to sneak out while you’re tucked into your blankets in your bed. It doesn’t always pan out that way. You’ve heard the heels clicking in the kitchen, before she leaves into the night time.

She’s back before you wake up. And, she’ll take you off to school before she goes to bed for most of the morning. You can only assume this by the way she’s dressed in pajamas without any makeup when you come home.

Wayne watches from afar. Your mom has been stepping back in their friendship recently, and he wonders if everything is okay at home. When he does catch glimpses of her through the living room window, she's a bit gray and a bit dull. Her usual cherry cheeks are sunken. Her eyes are swollen. Her clothes are scandalous in her own definition.

A flood of headlights break through the blinds in the Munson trailer. If the lights aren’t enough to warn you that Eddie is about to plow through his front door, then the absolute deafening sound of bass and guitar blasting through the speakers in his van would give you enough of an inclining.

Kicking his boots off in different directions outside the home, Eddie stamps out his cigarette on the porch railing, and he flicks the nub somewhere into the night.

Dancing his way into the trailer, Eddie first catches you sitting next to Wayne in a bright blue get-up. Isn’t it a bit much to be that done up for some boy? Yes, he knows about Rudolph. That silly little boy from one of your classes. He’s been following you around like he’s got a leash tethered around that funny little sweater vest he wears to school. Really? A sweater vest? It’s a bit pompous if you ask him.

Randy has got to be the most snot-nosed booger-eater that Eddie has had the misery of meeting. He’s got these judgy little eyes that squint in Eddie’s direction any time you hang around him at lunch. Not to mention how bushy his eyebrows are. If you like caterpillars that much, Eddie can find you one around the trailer park that you’ll like much more than - what’s-his-name.

“How was your date?” Eddie hesitates to hold back to venom corroding his teeth. It’s silly to be jealous of some guy. Eventually you would be with someone, and Eddie would find his someone. It’s just strange to not have you at band practice. You haven’t missed a single one - well, now you have.

Your face falls at the mention of Rodney.

In the past few hours, you forgot about the ache in your chest that Rodney never showed at your front door. The absent sore on your heart reopens. Your throat closes a bit.

There was a pinch of hope that you held onto that he might show up with a reasonable excuse. Or, he’ll at least be bold enough to show up and to beg for a second chance. With the time approaching midnight, the odds are withering away into nothing.

“Good,” you fib.

Naively, you lie to Eddie.

“How was practice?” You ask secondly.

A spark lit his bottom on fire and he was bounding about the trailer like a wild animal. Excitement radiates off of his skin.

“You won’t believe what happened tonight!” He yells a bit too loudly for old Wayne, who wiggles his pinky into his ear. “We got a call back from the Hideout! They want to see us perform!”

“That’s great, Eddie!”

“Congratulations, kid.”

Wayne has to stand and clap Eddie on the back to congratulate his nephew. The pair of them look to each other adoringly, before either of them remember that you’re still there on the couch.

“I should go,” you know how late it is, and your mother - er - she would be shivering in worry by now. Probably. “I’m really proud of you, Eddie. Can I come to the show?”

“There’s no way I can perform without my best girl,” he wraps you in a strong hug, “Tuesday at seven! I want both of you there!”

“You got it,” you punch his chest a bit awkwardly.

When you do leave, Eddie takes the spot you once sat in on the couch. He switches programs because whatever game show Wayne is watching is not to Eddie’s taste. Eddie prefers something that will make his skin crawl.

“Ed,” Wayne clears his throat, “I think we should talk.”

“Talk?”

Wayne stands in front of the television blocking Eddie from flicking to yet another channel.

“Your little friend got stood up on her date,” he teeters back and forth, unsure if you want Eddie knowing this. But, you’re his best friend as far as Wayne is concerned.

Eddie frowns, “what?”

“She’s been with me all evening,” Wayne sighs. “The poor girl is rattled. I mean- you know you cannot do that to a woman, right?”

Wayne begins to turn everything into a lesson. As he lectures Eddie, the lines of reality begin to blur. You’ve been stood up by this douche? Nothing gets past Eddie like that. The ridges of his knuckles turn whiter than snow.

“Eddie,” Wayne scratches his forehead, “I need you to promise me that you’ll never treat a woman like that. You know better, right?”

Eddie hasn’t brought a girl by the house yet. It doesn’t occur to Wayne how horrible the people treat Eddie at school. He assumes it’s just a bit of play and a bit of teasing. Eddie can handle himself for the most part.

“Yeah,” Wayne snaps out of his head when Eddie finally speaks up, “I got it, Wayne.

-> <-

[Sep 1982 . . . again]

tags -> @leelei1980 @sheneedsrocknroll92 @jesuisbuginette @starrywhitenight @meetmeatyourworst

[acesw]

Knowing our Arcanists 5: Tennant

Welcome to entry five of my series: "Knowing our Arcanists"! This is a series in which I introduce and tell the stories of our fellow characters in Reverse: 1999. Today we have: Tennant!

My god, its everyone's favorite lesbian and scammer. This woman is partially why I got into Reverse: 1999 in the first place, and she's probably the reason why a good chunk of the fandom started playing during launch. But anyways, lets get started.

Ada Tennant was born in Birmingham, UK on September 8th in the 1920s. She became more active in the 40s as a notable socialite and scammer, using her arcane skill in which she's able to transform anything of lesser value (like coal) into diamonds.

She grew up as part of the House of Tennant, a famous and wealthy arcanist family in the 20s-30s. Her father, Laurence Tennant, was a senior official mineralogist who managed diamond mining, identification, and transportation for British India. For some time, Ada lived in New Delhi, India, to be close with her father.

In 1937, Laurence went missing, accused of stealing a batch of diamonds and replacing them with disguised coal through his arcane skill. Over the course of the investigation, Ada—a teenager at the time—was put under long-term surveillance by the British Indian Army for a year, before she ran away herself and disappeared in 1938.

Recently after her disappearance, there have been reports about arcanum-related thefts where batches of diamonds are being stolen and replaced with charcoal with arcane skills. Its likely that Ada had moved to Paris.

Since then, Ada started going by her family name Tennant, and has become a lot more active as a merchant and scammer. She became the talk of the town, being well-loved by many wealthy women and being an interest of many wealthy men.

It should be noted that its clear that Tennant has a higher romantic interest in women, as she's mainly flirtatious with them. She has a bit of respect for the male clients around her; at the same time, she's a gentlewoman. She knows how to please all the hearts and minds of the women around her, and is not afraid to use such to her advantage.

She attended and hosted many banquets and struck deals with many clients over time. Many left their fortunes with her, and she simply replies with her usual tricks. To successfully lie is an art, and Tennant is good at it.

Tennant is no doubt very charming and a very well-mannered person. She's skilled in her social capabilities and can talk and flirt her way to people's desires. But don't let such make you disregard her humility. She holds value to her "humble" beginnings and her own worth as a person, having a bit less care for luxury when it comes to human connection.

Despite this, she knows luxury when she sees it, and will leave a comment or two about it as she's knowledgeable on the subject. Her knowledge brings her quite far, knowing when to compliment or when to give advice for those who share her sense of style.

She's also a clean person, being considerate of the people around her, and maintains her health and style to be at its best. These won't prevent her for carrying a gun for obvious reasons, but she'll handle it and her clothes with care.

At the same time, you also can't let Tennant's flattery fool you. She's incredibly clever and deceptive, making intricate ways to scam others and leave with no trace. She'll be impressed when one can figure her out, maybe a bit disappointed when her tricks fail.

But overall, her intentions are difficult to predict and read. If she can find that one shares the same skill level as her, she'll also be quite impressed of such capability.

Speaking of which, Tennant is not very easy to manipulate back, as she will do anything to find the very truth she'll want to know. Whether she will sweet-talk into your heart, or break it for you to see the consequences.

[mads-nixon]

Hey Mads,

I saw your requests are open. Could i please request a Dating Eugene Roe headcanon? Thank you 💕

Dating Eugene Roe Headcannons

Eugene Roe x Reader

Masterlist

A/N: My first ever BoB fic was about Gene, so he holds a special place in my heart. Thanks for requesting! I loved writing these!! this is about the fictional portrayal of easy company on the show. nothing but love and respect for veterans on this blog!

So you and Gene meet in Aldbourne when Easy first gets moved there in September of 43' (you meet in october).

You're sitting in a coffee shop reading in the corner, and he thinks you're easily the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

Being a shy guy, Gene doesn't say anything to you the first time he sees you. He just subtly glances at you from his spot across the shop.

Turns out, he isn't as subtle as he thinks and you totally notice the staring but don't mind it because you think he's very handsome.

You come into the shop every saturday morning, and every Saturday morning, he's there as well. After a few weeks of sneaking glances, you decided enough was enough.

You walk over and introduce yourself to him, and BOY does he go red when you say that you've noticed him.

Despite the awkwardness of the beggining of the conversation, things fall into a steady rhythm, and you find yourself enjoying his company.

Gene's very soft-spoken and respectful (the BEST listener in the whole company if you ask me)

You get to know each other a little bit, and when you have to leave, you write down your address on a table napkin with a grin, telling him you're free the next day at 6.

The next day, he shows up to your house at 5:55 with a bouquet of roses, wearing his dress uniform. He offers you his arm, and the two of you are off to Swindon for the night.

It ended with a sweet kiss under the stars at your porch (there was no light on because of the black-out being in effect)

from there, it was history, and you soon fell for the cajun medic, and he fell just as hard for you.

Whenever he gets weekend passes, the two of you go for day trips to Swindon or London, strolling down the streets softly talking.

In London, you take him to Crystal Palace Park, where you lay out a soft blanket and have a cozy picnic. Your head lays on his lap, and he gently runs his hands through your hair as he talks about his family back home.

You LOVE hearing the different stories of his grandmother and her healing abilities. It only makes sense that Gene would become a medic to help people, following in her footsteps.

As his training continued and the concern of Sobel leading the company grew, Gene began to bottle up his anxieties and distance himself from you slightly.

I feel like Gene is the type of guy who wouldn't want to tell you his problems because he doesn't want to add to your plate, so he suffers in silence.

You confront him about it and he sighs before telling you everything about Sobel and how incompetent he is. (you hate him with a burning passion...possibly more than Eugene does, but it's close.)

Sunday dinner with your family becomes a weekly thing as time drags on. Your dad was hesitant to bring an American into your house, but he likes Gene more than he ever would have thought.

I'd like to think that Eugene buys you small trinkets that reminds him of you (idk where this came from but it's in my mind now)

OKAY...JEALOUS GENE IS HOT, MAN

we all know he can get fired up (after moose get's shot, he rips Dick and Harry a new one), but what gets him really fired up is when he's jealous

Some nights when you're out at a pub, men will make passes at you despite him sitting right there...boy it grinds his gears.

I have a feeling he would just sit there silent because if he opens his mouth, he knows he wouldn't be able to control himself (imagine his *angry* look after Sobel screws up the training mission in curahee) .

You notice and reach out for his hand over the table, trying to calm him down. "I'm going to get us some drinks," you squeeze his hand before getting up.

Gene's eyes follow you as you waltz across the room, and he takes a deep breath.

His gaze falls to the table for a moment, and when he turns back to you, he sees red. There's a British soldier at the bar who's all up in your personal space and is getting closer every second. Eugene can see the discomfort all over your face.

He shoots up from the table and quickly makes his way over to you, wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you behind him as he faces the guy.

"Do we have a problem here?" He asks, looking down at the man with fire in his gaze.

The Brit cowers instantly, taking his drink off the table before walking away. "No, sir."

Even through the man was super annoying, seeing Gene like that is incredibly hot, and you turn him around and kiss him.

He calms down pretty quickly after that.

Whenever they have to leave for Upottery, you share a sweet goodbye filled with tears (a lot from you and a few from Gene), and promises of writing.

You keep in contact through letter for the whole duration of the war, and the second he can leave after it's over, he comes straight to Aldbourne and asks you to marry him.

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[detroitpedxing]

Meet Susie Wiles, the ‘ice maiden’ who propelled Trump to victory – and his new chief of staff

On one hand, Susie Wiles is the generous neighbour who brings you casseroles and sends you flowers when you’re in the hospital. On the other, she’s a ruthless political operator who was the mastermind behind getting Donald Trump back to the White House. Alex Hannaford talks to those who know her to find out how she became one of the few people who can handle her boss...

On her Twitter/X profile, she wears a blouse and cardigan, drop earrings, and a gold necklace, her grey hair perfectly set. But Susie Wiles’ “Golden Girl”, grandmotherly image belies the role that consumes her. Wiles is one of the most powerful players in Republican politics, who ran Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election and who has just become his next chief of staff.

In his statement on Thursday evening Trump said that Wiles “just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history” and “is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected”.

“It is a well deserved honour to have Susie as the first-ever female chief of staff in United States history,” he continued. “I have no doubt that she will make our country proud.”

Wiles, 67, is the first woman to be appointed White House chief of staff and in his victory speech in Florida the President-elect Donald Trump mentioned her previously little-known name seven times.

“Let me also express my tremendous appreciation for Susie and Chris —the job you did. Come, Susie,” Trump said. “Susie likes to stay in the back, let me tell you. We call her the ice maiden”, he joked, adding. “She is not in the background (anymore).”

A ruthless political operator, for the past 12 months her focus has been on absolute victory. And on Thursday evening, Trump confirmed her as his White House new chief of staff.

The Hill political newspaper called her “the most powerful Republican you don’t know”; The New York Times described her as “perhaps the most significant voice inside Mr Trump’s third presidential campaign”.

But who is she, and what makes this cake-baking, bird-watching 66-year-old grandmother tick?

Wiles has worked in Republican politics since the late 1970s and went on to become a campaign scheduler on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential bid, and later in his administration. In her late twenties, she moved from New Jersey, where she was born and raised, to Jacksonville, Florida, with her then-husband, Lanny, an “advance man” who handled publicity for candidates during political campaigns.

When the couple had their two daughters, Katie and Caroline, she took some time out to raise them but then went full-throttle back into the game – eventually running Trump’s Florida operations in his first bid to become president. Many attribute him winning the state by 1.2 percentage points over his rival Hillary Clinton to Wiles.

Choosing to stay in Florida instead of heading to the White House, Wiles focussed her efforts a couple of years later, on helping the Trump-anointed Ron DeSantis in his campaign to succeed Rick Scott as governor. Their relationship soured, with him blaming her for leaks and despite her denials, it is thought he was behind her ousting from the team. She officially left for health reasons in September 2019, but one friend of Wiles told me she was “really down at that point – at the very bottom”, and that leaving presented an existential crisis for her.

But then, in 2020, she got a call from Trump. He wanted her back on his team. And not only that, he wanted her to head it up.

Wiles’s father, Pat Summerall, was a professional football player and later a well-known sports broadcaster. Peter Schorsch, publisher of Florida Politics, who has known Wiles for a decade and considers her a friend, says Summerall would reach tens of millions of people each Sunday with his broadcasts and was such a voice of authority that he thinks some of that ability to take control; to command an audience, rubbed off on Wiles. Another former colleague and friend agreed that her gift as a “people person” was probably inherited from her dad but that her warm personality came from her mother, Katherine Jacobs, “who was a wonderful woman”.

However, it wasn’t all apple pie and roses. Summerall was an alcoholic and, after divorcing Katherine, was estranged from Wiles and her two siblings, Jay and Kyle, for some time. But, as an adult, Wiles left the door open for him to reconcile, and Summerall credited her with eventually helping get him into rehab for his addiction.

In 2017, Wiles and Lanny separated. Schorsch described it as a “quiet divorce between two prominent people” but he thinks it had the effect of freeing Wiles up to focus on her political career in her sixties, “to where she can be devoted to whoever her principal is at the time; undistracted when working on a candidate”.

Her soft edges however aren’t enough to hide a reputation for being a rottweiler, unafraid of baring her teeth. As a political operative, “Susie does not f*** around,” Schorsch says. “There is no other way to say it. It’s not that she’s hard, it’s not that she’s mean, but if you try to promote yourself or if you flimflam or you’re not honest about something, Susie will knife you herself.” It’s perhaps a trait her new boss is particularly fond of.

Schorsch recalls an instance when she oversaw the DeSantis campaign and a consultant who was brought in chose to speak to the media when they were told not to: “Susie immediately cut this person off and it took years for them to repair that relationship.”

But he says she also possesses this “southern grandmotherly kindness”. For example, he says, she knew the names of the volunteer working tirelessly for the campaign in a far-off county, and she takes care of the people working with her. “She’s very good at offering familial advice to a lot of her young staffers.” He recalls one such staffer had just had a baby and Wiles emphasised the importance of taking time off. “There’s an emphasis on making sure the people working for her are taking care of their home lives too.”

Schorsch says she’d very much fit into the kind of decorum and stagecraft that is a hallmark of British politics. Unlike her boss maybe “she just respects so much of the institutional stuff, the discipline of it all, while at the same time being a very savvy operator”.

It was a savvy “Team Trump” that recruited Wiles to the campaign. By taking all the “craziness” that surrounds Trump and adding what Schorsch calls a “disciplined ground game”, it seemed to be the sleight of hand helped Trump along to victory. Schorsch noted how Mar-a-Lago became “so much more disciplined since Susie became the chief gatekeeper.”

What’s more, he thinks that Wiles sees no need to rein in Trump’s worst excesses. “It’s a much more pragmatic ‘let Trump be Trump’ philosophy: he says certain things to the Maga crowd, but he also offers an incredible tax policy to the billionaire crowd, and they like that. I don’t want to say she’s made a deal with the devil, but she knows what Trump’s about.”

It’s this ability to think two things at once and instinct to know what people want that makes her such a smart operator. John Delaney hired Wiles when he ran a successful campaign to become mayor of Jacksonville back in 1995, after which she became his chief of staff.

“Four weeks into the campaign she kind of transformed the thinking and the messaging,” he says. And there are certain Trumpian elements to her too – in terms of her ability to connect with a crowd and give them exactly what they want. “She is an absolutely brilliant political savant with incredible instincts about what the public thinks; what can fly,” Delaney says.

Delaney says Wiles wants to help the people she works for reach the goals they are aiming for, even if she doesn’t always agree entirely with their politics. “She has no ego. She’s very much a behind-the-scenes person.” But despite friends and colleagues being willing to talk about her and her ability to do a difficult job, she remains an enigma and fiercely guards her personal life. Even members of the Trump campaign are reluctant to talk about her.

As for working for Trump, Wiles might not always agree with his delivery, his choice of words or even his political stance on an issue, but Delaney says politics is about what people can overlook in one candidate and what they can’t overlook in another. In that way, she’s very much like the voters who might have held their noses at the ballot box; “dyed in the wool” Republicans who may not have loved their candidate, but who got over the line.

Delaney doubts that Wiles’ politics always chime with Trump’s. “She would be what I’d call left on LGBT+ issues. And I can’t believe she would necessarily agree naturally with Donald Trump on immigration, but that’s more me speculating.”

Delaney agrees with Schorsch that, political career aside, Wiles is a sweet, good-natured person. “If she lived in your neighbourhood and you were sick, she’d bring over a casserole,” he says. “If you needed an electrician to be let into your house, she’d figure out how to do that. And if you were in the hospital, she’d visit and send you flowers. She’s just a really nice person.”

When Wiles is at home, he says she likes to tend her garden and she enjoys cooking. She’s known to be an avid birdwatcher, too, although as one person who knows her told me, “I doubt she’s doing much birdwatching at the moment.”

“And she’s crazy about her girls and her grandkids,” Delaney says. She’s not flashy, doesn’t splurge on five-star hotels, and he says as a practising Episcopalian she’s a “church-every-Sunday person and prays frequently”.

Nate Monroe, a columnist for the Florida Times-Union newspaper who has known Wiles in his capacity as a journalist for a decade, says her critics would say that sweet, personable demeanour “masks a very, very calculating, hard-charging operator. As much as she is very well thought of, she is equally feared. And she is a dangerous person to cross.”

In January, Monroe penned a devastating editorial, castigating DeSantis for his presidential campaign and pointing out personal traits which ensure he “always chooses cruelty over kindness, dog whistles over empathy, divisiveness over grace”. Just to ensure the knife was well and truly twisted, Monroe added: “Who was it that Trump called out during his victory speech [in Iowa], that diminutive figure standing at the periphery of his entourage on stage? Susie Wiles, the adviser DeSantis cast out, is one of Trump’s most trusted confidantes. Oops.”

Monroe says those familiar with Wiles knew that by cutting her out of his inner circle – and humiliating her in the process – DeSantis would eventually get his comeuppance. He also says Wiles is “almost allergic to drama” – which may sound illogical – comical, even – when you consider who her boss is. But Monroe has another take. Perhaps it’s a good fit. Perhaps, in Susie Wiles, Donald Trump has found a calm, steady hand.

[immediatebreakfast]

I love how Renfield is the oldest (59) and Mina is very likely the living youngest, and yet they bond so well. (It reminds me how well Mina befriended the 99 year old Mr Swales that he sought her company and felt care for her.) It probably contributed that Jack may have experience with interacting with "madmen" and studying, Mina had lived with and loved a "madman".

It's truly incredible how a simple conversation between an old man in physical cell, and a young woman in a mental cell put such a dent in the Count's plans that he had to flee to Transylvania once it was clear that nothing would stop the crew.

Even if the repercutions were huge in the narrative, in between the horror and the action it was just a visit (probably the first visit that Renfield had in a long time) to talk.

Reading again the entry I noticed how hostile Renfield is towards Mina at first,

"You're not the girl the doctor wanted to marry, are you? You can't be, you know, for she's dead." - R.M. Renfield, september 30.

and even with everything one can say about sexism, and the building infantilization of Mina, let's remember that this is the first time Renfield meets someone that is specifically associated with Jack. Renfield's remarked abuser in both authority, and personhood in general. Also by probably being informed by Dracula himself that both Mina and Jonathan are the key players in this continuous attacks against his plans in England, on top of just almost correctly assuming that Mina must share the same opinion towards the mentally ill that society has.

Three strikes against Mina that she switfly defeats by treating Renfield like the person he is, and talking to him in a normal manner. After taking care of her beloved Jonathan, and being at Lucy's side most of her life Mina is aware of how the Other is viewed. Maybe as she saw Renfield, Mina thought of a worse reality where the man on the bed was her Jonathan in Budapest, maybe she saw how Seward reacted to Renfield's words, and realized what was actually layed out in the room. Or maybe Mina just saw an old man in need of an ear, and she just listened.

This is the first time that Renfield puts a face on a victim of the Count's games, he puts a voice on the young victim whose life is going to violently end in what he thought was supposed to be eternal bliss. Lucy is a distant dream for Renfield, the revenge against these people who dared to put up a fight against this old ancient evil that goes beyond all of their years combined.

Renfield never knew Lucy, but he knows Mina now.

Renfield sees the young Mina Harker, entering life with her equal young husband in hand, and trying to solve the murder of what he knows now was her best friend, and he reflects. He reflects on everything he has done, on what has passed, and what he can do tomorrow.

Mr. Renfield asked if he might see me. Poor man, he was very gentle, and when I came away he kissed my hand and bade God bless me. Some way it affected me much; I am crying when I think of him. This is a new weakness, of which I must be careful. Jonathan would be miserable if he knew I had been crying. - Mina Harker, october 2.

And the man is devastated to see how he is helping orchestrate the murder of another young lady to please the Count. He becomes desperate to leave (a request that is denied by both Seward, and Van Helsing), so the Count can't have access to the inside of the asylum. It doesn't matter if he looks like a coward by the time's literary standards because if the only way to at least save that young lady is by acting like one? Then Renfield might as well do it, he has nothing to lose sans his life.

I think that the key difference between Mina, and Jack when it comes to Renfield is empathy, and the ability to simply treat the other person with the same humanity you should be treated.

Jack may have studied, and climbed until he got to be the head of an asylum, but his own biases, mental problems, and ableism blurred the lines between patient and doctor so hard that he made Renfield's life a boring hell. From when their dynamic was introduced, to Renfield's death, the narrative dictated how Seward was putting both into a deep spiral in which, not even with Renfield's manipulations, none of them were going to come out in victory.

In contrast, Mina has cared for Jonathan without any restrain, and has lived in service of what the situation demands of her at all times. She knows, as a young victorian lady, how to balance herself without trying to compete, or win the other person in the room with her. Mina only needed to genuinely talk to Renfield to break his heart because she gave him the respect, and honestly she expects for herself when talking.

[majesty-madness]

A Past Encounter - Bucky Barnes x reader (nsfw) Sneak Peak

Summary: Being in a relationship with Bucky, Y/N prided herself on knowing him quite well but when she’s accidentally teleported back to 1940, Y/N discovers that there is a whole other Bucky that she has yet to meet. The sweet flirt that had everything going for him before his unfortunate capture by HYDRA.

Tagged - @honeyrydernot @spn-obession @tinyminxie @fluffybunnyu @saintmagx @hopelessromantic423 @marygoddessofmischief @theeleggymeggy @lethallyprotected

Commissions are available so don't forget to check that out!

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September 20, 1941.

Y/N could scarcely believe that two months had already passed since she first arrived. In all honesty, it felt so much longer given all that she’s had to adjust to including her new job as an assistant to that lovely old woman, Irene, who’d provided her with brand new clothes when they’d met back in June. 

Never in her life had she ever been an assistant to a seamstress, but it had been a surprisingly fun experience. And it was also thanks to Bucky, once again, that she was able to work now seeing as he had convinced Irene to hire her. Though that didn’t take too much effort, the older woman stated she’d be grateful for the extra pair of hands. 

Speaking of Bucky, there had been an incredibly thick tension growing between them ever since they danced together. 

There was already something going on between them but when Bucky had basically asked Y/N to stay with him, the signs were painfully obvious. 

Every morning, Y/N reminded herself of the sickly sweet lyrics that played as they held each other.

It’s love, this time it’s love

My foolish heart…

Foolish indeed and she knew it, more than anything.

She was torn in two, desperately yearning to reach out and touch him, hold him close as if he were her’s to hold, and at the same time, held back by the years of intimacy with the Bucky she knew from her own time. 

Was it wrong to want Bucky from a time way beyond the moment they’d met? Was it wrong to love the parts of him she never knew? Was it wrong to have the slightest desire to stay?

Y/N shook her head, Stop it!

This was a common occurrence by now, Y/N falling into deep thought while involved in another task at hand, and right now Steve was showing her how to draw. 

“Do you need help with this part, Y/N?” Steve asked, kindly, the hand housing a pencil stopping in mid stroke on the paper. 

She stuttered out a forced laugh, while shaking her head again. “No, no I’m fine, just got lost in thought. Please continue.”

Steve apprehensively nodded though proceeded explaining his sketching technique.

Bucky, sitting at the dinner table watched the pair carefully, the newspaper in his hands stuck on the same page for the last twenty five minutes as he too become lost in thought; a pretty little thought by the name of -

A loud ringing made the trio jump, heads snapping over to look in the direction of the telephone that sat next to the radio. 

“I got it.” Bucky said, already standing up from his chair and walking over to the phone. Without missing a beat, he picked it up and answered with a polite, “Hello?”

After a couple of seconds, Bucky grinned. “Hey, Ma, how are you and Rebecca doing?”

Y/N glanced up at the mention of the name; Rebecca, his sister.

________

a/n: If you've made it down here, then you read the preview so first off; thank you! And second, I need to deeply apologize to those of you who were waiting for this chapter. I know I said that it would be released the 29th and I truly had intended to post it then but as luck would have it, my mental health took a freaking swan dive off a cliff and I found myself struggling just to write this (I'm okay, I promise). My track record with posting on a consistent schedule has always been iffy, and every single time I make a simple goal of what to post and when, something comes along and completely clotheslines me. I'm trying to get better about that, and I've taken steps to reevaluate my goals, and to look into better ways to set a schedule I can stick to. So again, thank you for reading and I'm sorry for the delay. Wishing you a good day!

[sl-newsie]

American Woman (Thomas Shelby x American OC) Ch. 36: Take Charge

Masterlist: https://www.tumblr.com/sl-newsie/739551758747090944/american-woman-thomas-shelby-x-american-oc?source=share

“Thank God, you’re staying!”

If I hear those words any longer they will become my motto. The day after Thomas visited me I got calls from everyone asking if I was still in England. Before I know it things are going smoothly as if nothing’s changed. The only reminder of Grace’s absence is when I’ll spot Thomas alone in his office, staring outside the window. I’ll prepare a small tea tray and quietly slip it on his desk before he notices. A small gesture but he’s always quick to thank me when he sees me next.

Today’s bustle seems like any other except there’s a caravan of wagons approaching. I look out the front window to see the Shelby men hopping out and gathering near the barn. Is there something I should be concerned about?

I walk up to the men as one approaches a wild horse. Cautious and quiet. They appear to be in good spirits so that takes away some worry. Thomas isn’t out yet. Finn’s busy talking with Uncle Charlie. Maybe Arthur can tell me what’s going on.

“... Need to lay low once the baby comes.”

His conversation with John makes me gasp. “Linda’s pregnant?”

Arthur turns around with a big grin on his face. “Yes!”

I’m shocked, but in a good way. “Jesus. Between you and John we’ll have kids running everywhere. Congratulations!”

“Thank you. We’re expecting around September. ‘M gonna be a dad! Me, a fucking dad!”

I clap my hands together and praise the sky. “A thousand blessings on you both!”

We all share the same thought. A new baby is what we need now to help chase away the sadness that’s plagued us. And I know Arthur is going to be a wonderful father. 

Footsteps approach and Thomas joins the party. This is strange. He’s carrying a satchel. As if he’s going camping.

“Where are you lot going?” I ask him.

“To the woods, for some hunting.”

I stifle a laugh. “Hunting? You’re joking.”

“I’m not joking,” Thomas replies and I follow him inside the barn.

“I didn’t think you’d be willing to get your hands dirty with something like that.”

Thomas leads his black steed out of the stall. “Kill a deer, kill a man. Same thing.” He pauses for a minute. “Ever heard of the Mickey Free? ‘S a bar in Boston.”

This question is out of the blue. “No. Why?”

Thomas looks to see we’re alone and leans in. “Don’t tell the others yet, but our dad just died there.”

Arthur Shelby Senior. Dead. In whatever manner of way he died I can’t gather too much sympathy for this news. He, like many others must, assumed I was playing into the Shelby charm of lust. How am I supposed to feel sorry for that? Thank God Thomas cast him out and defended my integrity.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I finally respond.

“No need, I know you didn’t like him,” Thomas waves it off. “This hunt is to remember him, and forget him. Now you, Verena, are going back to Watery Lane before Ada accuses me of keeping you captive.”

Now it’s my turn to wave off his concern. “Oh it’s no trouble. It’s been a tad isolating but the country is a nice change from the city.”

From looking at the side of his face I see that Thomas agrees; but there’s something else he’s thinking of when I say that. Maybe he thinks he’ll never be able to truly relax while he's away from Birmingham. He mounts the steed and joins the parade of horses trotting into the woods. I give them all a wave goodbye just as they disappear behind the trees. A small men’s holiday might be just what they need.

Same filthy streets, same stuffy air. The car sent to pick me up drops me off outside the Shelby household. The driver says nothing, only helping to carry my suitcase to the door. Without the Shelbys here it feels less exciting. More empty. Once inside an unnatural silence drapes the atmosphere, that is until I hear heels clicking down the hall.

“Verena?” Polly sticks her head around the corner. “Tommy finally let you out of that place.”

I start to tell her I was there on my own free will but something about her seems off. She looks nervous. And tired. As if she’s been thinking too much. I’ve been so busy keeping watch over Thomas’ mourning that I didn’t think about reaching out to others. 

“What can I help with, Polly?” It’s a loaded question.

The older woman looks away shaking her head and walks towards the door. Is there something I should know about?

“Polly, where are you going?”

“Confession. At the church.”

“Should I come-?”

“No,” she sharply cuts me off. “I need to do this alone. Go help in the office.”

I try to follow her. “Polly, please. You don’t look well-”

Polly holds up a hand to stop me just as she shuts the door. “Do as you’re told.”

If she- But I- Oh. Okay. I can help with some paperwork. But honestly the thought of being stuck at a desk all day doesn’t seem as fetching. 

“‘S not fair,” Esme whines for the fifth time.

I was right. This is awful. I’ve been here an hour and both Lizzy and Esme are in no mood for pleasant discussion. Now I see why John was so eager to go on the trip. Esme’s current pregnancy is making her grouchy and sensitive. The only thing keeping her settled are her frequent whiffs of cocaine. And to top it off,  Lizzy’s still cross from my interactions with Thomas.

“They’re off drinking and shooting rifles as we sit here,” Esme complains. “Listening to the mugs swearing, spitting on the bloody floor for us to fucking wipe up! Without men here they’d be like dogs pissing up the wall.”

Just then the door opens and Polly walks in. I can’t tell if her stress has depleted or not. The good news is that she doesn’t want any of Esme’s attitude either.

“Esme, just… Get on with it.”

Esme groans and sniffs up more cocaine. “I’m bloody five months gone!”

I follow Polly to the safe and try to ask gently. “Polly? Do you feel better?”

She ignores me and leans her head against the safe. “Forgot the combination.”

“24-8-22,” Lizzie calls.

Polly’s just as puzzled as I am. “How’d you know?”

“Tommy talks in his sleep,” Esme pokes at her.

“Shut up, Esme,” Lizzy mutters.

Wait. Does that mean-?

Polly groans again. “He’s changed it.”

Lizzie gets up and starts fiddling with the dial. “You’ve put it in wrong.”

“No I haven’t,” Polly argues.

I step out of their way and go back to the table. This is it? Listening to them squabble while all the men are away? I actually was happier at Arrow House.

“I have been sleeping with Tommy,” Lizzie mentions. “Every now and then, when the mood takes him. Happy?”

No. I most certainly am not. I was right. While Thomas comes to me for empathetic consultations, he still doesn’t initiate physical emotions. Is May right? Does he think I’m too fragile?

“None of it’s fucking fair.” We know, Esme!

Knock knock.

Wonderful. Now who’s adding to the meeting of misery?

Linda opens the door with a bright smile on her face. “It’s me! Arthur said you’d be short-staffed today.”

She is so out of her normal standards. Linda walks around and practically scoffs at the illegal business. Her comments of purity against the company go ignored by the others. That’s it, I’m out. I’m already dealing with Lizzie’s comment. I don’t need this either.

I take an Irish goodbye and excuse myself back to the house. It may be lonely in the kitchen but at least the chicken I cook doesn’t squawk like those women do. I don’t know when the Shelbys will be back but that doesn’t mean I can’t fix a nice dinner for myself. Maybe I’ll call Ada and see if she wants company-

“There you are!” Linda walks in. “You’re coming too.”

I go back to washing dishes, uninterested. “Where?”

She comes up and slings an arm around mine, leading me away. “To the Bull Ring.”

I gawk at her bluntness. “Why?”

“To strike.”

I’m still confused. “For…?”

“Female workers’ rights. Come on, you of all people should appreciate this! You Americans had to go through tons to get the right to vote.”

“There’s a bit more to it than that-”

“Let’s go!”

She drags me out into the street to join the line of women workers marching towards the strike.

Something tells me I should go. Not for the extreme feminist cause but to be sure that no one gets hurt. Polly’s wild look in her eyes tells me her stress has melted into ambition. 

“Revolution! Now!”

I attempt to quiet her. “Polly, please! Calm down-”

“No I will not fucking calm down! We’ve been through this shit for too long!”

“Hallelujah!” Esme yells.

I knew coming back wasn’t such a grand idea.

The following morning Polly leans back in a kitchen chair with a cloth over her eyes. Clearly in a hangover. For three hours yesterday they shouted and raged against the male patriarchy. It didn’t help when people started passing around spirits.

Thud.

The front door closes and I hurry over to see if my suspicions are correct. Sure enough, Thomas is back. Maybe the fresh air did him some good.

“Morning, Thomas. About Polly- I tried to keep her safe.”

He takes a puff on his cigarette. “The strike?”

“Yes. It reminded me of women’s marches back home, but ours were a tad more civilized if you can believe it.”

He walks straight past towards where Polly and Lizzie are sitting.

“I heard you were giving speeches off the back of a wagon, Pol.”

She doesn’t move. “I can’t remember a fucking thing.”

“Well, Moss tells me you were threatening to burn down the town hall.” Thomas looks back at me. “Verena, will you please give us a moment alone?”

I have to keep my smile from falling. What? Is he upset with me? Does he think I’ll start ranting about freedom like a typical American?

“Of course, sir.”

Don’t show them disappointment. It’ll only give Linda and Lizzie more teasing ammunition against me. I retreat back to the parlor and set to dusting shelves. If I could slip out I’d properly dispose of my anger by swatting a broom against the alley wall. What am I supposed to do if you never let me in, Thomas?

“What are you doing?” 

Must have been a quick ‘moment.’ I thought for sure he’d call for Lizzie to- No. Stop right there, Steenstra. Jealousy never gets someone anywhere.

“Cleaning,” I say, keeping my face directed away from Thomas. 

“You know we can hire people to do that, right?”

I hum softly and continue wiping off the dirt. “I am hired help.”

“No. You’re not a maid, Verena. You keep us sane.” Thomas slumps into the lounge chair and runs a hand through his hair. “Fucking Russians. You will not believe the shit I went through last night.”

Again with the Russians. I warned him.

“Did the duchess try to kill you?”

Thomas rolls his eyes and glares at the wall. “Walked around practically naked in the dead of night, pointing a gun everywhere and demanding that poor Mary watches us fuck.”

My hand freezes and I slowly turn to look at him. “Y-You didn’t-?”

“No!” He quickly answers. “She- Please, please recite something clever.”

Clever? Is he using me just for my wit now? “Um- Alright. Sometimes life is like carving an apple.” Thomas’ stressed face changes to one of surprisement but I keep going. “When you find an apple with a brown spot you cut it out, right? It’s the same situation with people. We cut out the worst parts of ourselves to get along with one another.”

He thinks for a minute. “So you’re saying I should cut myself out? Just how much, eh?”

“What? No! Why would-?”

“Not everyone sees the good in people like you do, Verena.” Thomas pulls out a cigarette and stands up. “Never stop, love. Thanks by the way for keeping a watch on Polly.”

I offer a smile. “No problem. I might stop by later to see Charlie.”

The mention of his son immediately makes Thomas relax. “Right, Charlie. It’ll be nice to get some time with him. Do you need me to drive you?”

“No, no. I’ll manage. I’ve got some letters to mail first. My moeder goes crazy if I stay out of contact for more than a week.”

Thomas nods and walks out towards the door. We both know family comes first. As for his predicament with Duchess Tatiana Petrovna… It’s not my business but isn’t it a bit early to be courting after Grace’s funeral? Is this situation even a courtship at all? It doesn’t sound like Thomas initiated it. Curious, considering it’s usually the woman falling into his bed rather than her roping him in. Perhaps it’s a taste of his own medicine.

From the outside Arrow House looks as empty as before. What’s different this time is the friendly sight of Charlie and his nanny waving at me through the top window. Thomas’ car is here but there’s no sign of him at the door. Maybe he’s with the horses. I let myself in and the housekeeper immediately appears.

“Hello again, Mary. I’m here to check on Charlie.”

“Of course, Ms. Steenstra.” She leaves me to it and mutters something along the lines of “…More behaved than that other woman…”

Other woman? Who else has Thomas brought over? Does she mean the duchess? 

Instead of marching up the stairs I take a detour into the dining room, taking a seat at the head chair. The glorious portrait still hangs but instead of portraying confident power the painting resembles a man who has nothing but his horses. A lonely man.

Click click click.

“Bold of you to sit on a king’s throne.”

There she is. Duchess Tatiana Petrovna herself. That’s who poor Mary was talking about. There’s no question about her obvious beauty and she knows it. She looks down at my two hair braids with amusement. What is she here for? And is she talking about my seating choice? I meant no disrespect when I chose it.

I look down at where I’m sitting and back to her. “…It’s a chair.”

Thomas walks up behind her and sees where she’s looking. “That’s my chair. ‘S alright, you can-”

“It’s his chair,” the duchess states. “Move.”

Is she serious? Stay calm, Steenstra. You’ll only provoke her.

“It’s still just a chair, miss. He says I can sit in it.”

Her narrowed gaze doesn’t falter. “Move.”

I keep the same cool tone. “No.”

“Or else you will be moved.”

A hint of American attitude makes my face twitch into a look that dares her to continue. “Try me, duchess.”

Her jaw drops and Thomas steps forward trying to calm the storm. “Ladies, please. Mary, could we please get some tea?”

The duchess ignores his attempt and keeps looking at me. “He is your boss. You need to respect-”

“I respect Mr. Shelby just fine,” I respond evenly. “It’s you who’s out of place. You are a guest at Arrow House. I suggest you treat your host with respect. Good day.”

She resumes her stunned silence as I stand up and strut past them. Behind me I can already hear the complaining.

“…Let her speak to a Duchess like that?” she asks.

“You have your ways, the Americans have theirs. I don’t interfere.”

Just because she’s a rich duchess sleeping with him doesn’t mean she can order us around with an iron fist. I climb the stairs to Charlie’s room trying to clear the grudge from my thoughts. The bedroom door opens and the nanny steps out.

“He’s asking for his father. Shall I go fetch him?”

“Oh, no. I just saw Mr. Shelby downstairs. I’ll go get him.”

I pivot back to the stairs despite the internal urge to be as far away from the Russian royal as possible. Stay strong. It’s for Charlie. And if she wants to get on my nerves then she’ll face the bull head-on.

I see the couple walking down the hall. “Thomas! Charlie wants you.”

The gangster leader excuses himself and jogs past me, giving me a grateful nod. I take a deep breath and finish descending the stairs to where the duchess is. Time to set things straight.

“What are you doing?” 

“What do you think you’re doing?” I ask in a low but demanding voice. “The poor man just lost his wife and you’re playing him like a bitch in heat!”

She doesn’t flinch. “Grief can take many forms.”

Not Thomas. This isn’t how he grieves. He likes to be alone. 

I signal for the housekeeper. “Mary, may I please have some whiskey?”

She notices my situation and nods. “Of course, Ms. Steenstra.”

But the duchess isn’t satisfied with my request. “Why ask? Demand it! She will have-”

My face flinches to look at her with murderous eyes. “Get out. Go.”

Her jaw drops. “This is not your house-”

“Then get the fuck away from me before I do something regretful.”

Now she smirks at my temper. “Are Americans this rude?”

My fists clench. “Americans do not look down to people who are not wealthy or of royal blood.”

“There’s fire in your eyes but you tame it. Could you kill me? Would you kill for love?”

“Murder for selfish intentions is not something I will stain myself with,” I state harshly and notice Thomas returning from Charlie’s room. “Excuse me, Thomas.”

Before he can respond I rush back to the door. I don’t wait to hear any more. How can he stand this woman? Lizzie is one thing but at least she gives me a fraction of respect. Petrovna only sees me as nothing but a tourist servant. As much as I was looking forward to seeing Charlie I will not be stable as long as that woman is around. 

Foreign relations consultant, indeed. I will stand my ground. No more waiting. It’s time to take charge for a change and bring my own tricks of the trade to the table.

@meadows5

[morbidology]

Just after 3:30 AM on September 20, 2015, the 911 dispatch center in Sunrise, Florida, received a frantic call from a man reporting that his girlfriend was having trouble breathing and was going to die. The caller, in a state of panic, shouted, “I don’t know, man, she’s not breathing! She’s gonna die, man! Come on, someone help her!”

Police and paramedics were immediately dispatched to the apartment on 128th Drive. Upon entering the dimly lit apartment, they were confronted with a gruesome scene. Blood smeared the hallway walls and floor, accompanied by fragments of what appeared to be human tissue, creating a grim trail leading toward the bathroom.

The officers followed the eerie sounds of wailing, growing louder as they approached. They observed that the bathroom door had been torn off its hinges. When they entered, they found 24-year-old Fidel Lopez, the caller, sprawled on the floor. He was clutching the lifeless, naked body of a woman, his tears mingling with the blood on the floor. She was identified as his 31-year-old girlfriend, Maria Nemeth.

As the officers approached closer, the full horror became apparent. Maria was not just dead; her intestines had been ripped out from her vagina.

Lopez was immediately arrested at the scene, and he was transported to the police station, He told detectives that he and Maria had been drinking tequila together in celebration of moving into their new apartment. He said at one point, they began having “violent” sex and Maria asked him to put a beer bottle and his fist inside her vagina. He said that he complied, and that it had been her idea and that she enjoyed it. He said afterwards, she went into the bathroom and vomited, and that he later found her in the bathroom struggling to breathe.

However, Lopez’s story didn’t correlate with the evidence found at the crime scene.

Lopez eventually broke down and changed his story. He told detectives that he had become a “monster” when Maria twice said her ex-husband’s name as they were having sex in the closet. He said that after hearing another man’s name, he became furious. “She called me the name of the other fucking guy,” he said. “And she said it twice, and she was wrong and she was confusing me with him. At that point, I get mad, I get really, really, bad.”

He claimed he left Maria in the closet and then began smashing things around the apartment and punching the walls. What he said next horrified even the most seasoned detectives....

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