#a doll to dress up—that’s still all she is to most of the fandom | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

raw-lesbian-energy · 2 months ago

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The Promening

Summary: Prom arrives and everything goes wrong.

Fandom: Murder Drones (The Explorer Drone AU)

Pairing: Sera-V, mild Nuzi

Features: Self-Insert Character

Word Count: 7,058

Warnings: Mild cursing, murder, dismembered body parts, violence, brief cannibalism

A/N: Sentences between “{ }” brackets are in Russian (so whenever Doll is speaking lol)

—————————————————————

It had been three weeks since the incident with the eldritch snake-crab that had been J, and Uzi was still as gloomy as ever. At first, she had just been upset about N, but now prom was coming up, and the teen wanted to do anything but attend it.

She already knew her dad wouldn’t let her skip, even though she had made her hatred for the event clear. She refused to look at any dresses, avoided anyone on the committee, and tuned out any talk of the event. No one was going to ask her to go anyways; Thad would’ve been the only possibility, but he already had a date.

She was drawn from her angsty thoughts as her internal clock reminded her of the time, making her realize she was going to be late for school. As much as she wanted to just stay home, she knew her dad wouldn’t tolerate it, especially since she had missed a lot already from her time at the spire with N. The thought of him made her gaze wander up to the ceiling covered in papers, her eyes focusing on one particular sketch among them. It was a very badly drawn sketch of her and N, but Uzi could still tell effort had gone into it, which made guilt churn in her core. This guilt made itself heard as she let out a long groan, already sure this would be a very long day.

——————

Seraph idly tapped her pen against her cheek, her brows furrowed as she got lost in her own head. A lot of things had occurred over the week since she had talked to V, but what had most of her attention was the fact students had suddenly started going missing.

Of course her first instinct was to ask V, but she could tell the murder drone hadn’t been responsible, and N didn’t seem vicious enough to do it by himself. She decided to turn to the school’s security footage instead, but all cameras at the crime scenes had been scrambled, which left her with nothing to work with.

She was pulled out of her thoughts by a frustrated groan, drawing her gaze over to where Uzi was sitting. The purple-haired drone was crumpling up a piece of paper, tossing it haphazardly at the recycling bin before grabbing for a new piece. Only after a few moments did she crumple that one as well, and Seraph noticed her pile of paper was quickly growing smaller. A frown crossed the teacher’s face at the sight, and she quietly got up from her desk, grabbing some more papers and walking over to her. She reached Uzi’s desk just as she was crumpling her last piece, her shadow drawing her attention up.

[You okay?] The text blipped onto Seraph’s visor, helping to avoid drawing the other student’s attention. Uzi’s scowl only deepened in response, her gaze turning away as she grumbled something the teacher couldn’t hear. Seraph decided not to push further, instead silently setting the papers down and retreating back to her desk. She could feel Uzi watching as she moved, only sparing her one last glance before sitting down and returning to her own work.

After what felt like forever, the final bell rang and the students quickly got up to clear out. Seraph calmly watched them go from her desk, though she kept her focus mostly on Uzi. The purple-haired drone had haphazardly thrown her papers between the pages of her notebook, trudging out of class with her head hanging low. The explorer drone made no movements to follow, instead focusing on cleaning up her own space first before stepping out of the classroom.

“Maybe I should have a talk with Khan about her…” she thought, turning to head back to her unit. As she began the walk, however, a psychotic-sounding laugh suddenly reached her audio receptors and she stopped, turning around to see Uzi pulling the missing persons flyers off the bulletin board down the hall. She promptly skipped away with them, still laughing, abandoning her books and backpack in the middle of the floor as she left.

“…Okay, yeah, that talk needs to happen now.” Seraph determined, quickly moving to grab Uzi’s discarded stuff. A few of the pages came loose as she picked up the teen’s books, revealing them to be covered in the strange symbol Seraph had seen on Uzi’s first project. She had no idea what the symbol meant, but she chose not to dwell on it as she finished packing Uzi’s things and headed for the Doorman unit.

She made a quick stop at her own unit to put away her belongings, but just as she re-emerged, she saw Lizzy and Doll walking away with an annoyed Uzi in tow. The sight alone made her both confused and concerned, and as soon as the three were out of earshot, she promptly went to the Doorman unit for answers.

Knock knock knock!

There was a few seconds of silence before the door slid open, and Seraph was greeted by a cheerful-looking Khan gazing up at her in surprise.

“Seraph!” He exclaimed, his chipper tone matching his expression. “I wasn’t expecting you. What can I do for you?” Seraph’s expression flashed with concern, but she promptly corrected to a more calm face.

“I’m here because I need to return Uzi’s belongings.” She stated, holding out Uzi’s bag. Khan’s eyebrows raised, and after a moment, he took the bag back from the brunette.

“Oh, thank you.” He said, though hesitation flashed across his screen. “Did she, uh, forget it in your class?”

“Actually, she left it out in the hall.” Seraph admitted, her concern showing more clearly now. “She had… abandoned it, to take the missing persons posters off of the bulletin board.” Khan’s brow furrowed at her words, his grip on the bag tightening somewhat. The action caused a stir of guilt in Seraph’s systems, and she let out a small sigh.

“Mr. Doorman,” she started again, “I feel like you and I need to have a talk about Uzi.” Khan met her gaze with a quizzical look, though Seraph could see the underlying worry in it.

“What about her?” He asked.

“Well,” Seraph took a breath, “Her behaviour compared to the other students is… concerning. She’s kept isolated, her classmates don’t treat her well, and if I try to ask, I’m met with very short and cold responses. All in all, I’m worried about her.” Khan blinked, and the same flash of worry passed over his expression, but he kept neutral.

“I see.” He replied. “Well, I did talk to her other teacher, and two of her classmates will be taking her to prom tonight. That should help her be more social!” He gained a hopeful smile as he spoke, while Seraph’s expression gained an edge of disbelief.

“You mean Lizzy and Doll?” She blurted. “They’re the two that bully Uzi the most.” Khan’s smile dropped at her response, and Seraph felt her guilt double almost immediately.

“Mr. Door-… Khan,” she tried, taking a gentler tone, “I want to help Uzi, and I’m sure you do too. But forcing her into things, and worse forcing her with people she does not get along with, is only going to hurt her.” Khan’s expression flickered with regret at her words, but he managed to steel himself, meeting her gaze once again.

“Well, if that’s the case, how about you come help chaperone the dance tonight?” He suggested. “That way we can both keep an eye on Uzi and make sure she has a good time! She honestly could use some better role models too…” his voice wound up trailing at the end, but his words made Seraph’s expression soften a bit.

“Well, I’ve been assigned as a chaperone anyway.” She admitted. “I just need to get my outfit on, but I’ll meet you there.” Khan perked up in response, and the gleam of hope on his screen helped ease Seraph’s guilt a bit.

“Sure, sounds good!” Khan said, sounding more excited. “I’ll see you there, then!” Seraph nodded and waved as she left, heading back to her own unit next door. Her outfit was already laid out on her bed, and she took a moment to look it over before taking her day clothes off to put it on. It slipped on her easily, and as she looked into the mirror to adjust her top hat, she couldn’t help but feel a small tug in her processors.

“I wish V could’ve come…”

Seraph froze, eyes hollow as she stared at her reflection. She quickly shook her head to clear the thought, as well as stop any others like it from forming.

“Come on Seraph, you know better than that.” She muttered. “V can’t come because she would cause a school-wide panic. The students’ safety comes first.” She glanced back at the mirror again, taking a breath to clear the small blush on her screen before fixing her hat one last time. Feeling as ready as she could be, she headed out of her unit, turning down the hall to head back to the school.

——————

Meanwhile, back at the pod, V was growing increasingly annoyed at N. His sulking had reached a whole new level, and it was taking all her willpower not to jump from her chair and chop his head off. But she still had him believing she was chained down, so she kept herself seated.

Her new plan was to have him to free her, and with Seraph having told her about the prom, she saw a perfect opportunity. Given his inability to catch enough to eat, she hoped that he might just be desperate enough to go along with it.

First step was to have him get them nice outfits, which he had done with surprising efficiency. A full black three-piece suit for himself, and a lovely strapless red dress for her. She had to admit, he had an eye for fashion. Now all she had to do was convince him.

“We can’t interact with the workers anymore, V.” N told her. “We’re too dangerous.”

The response made her eye glitch. She had hoped he would’ve been more compliant, but she wasn’t giving up easily.

“Uh, exactly.” She replied. “We show up, fabulous, the sad purple one lets us in- cause she has no friends- we kill everyone and pop her little head off.” She kept a casual and proud tone as she spoke, but N still remained unconvinced.

“I’m not freeing you for prom murder, V!” He argued, growing louder as he spoke. “J went holo-spooky snake crab, and we maybe grew up in a haunted mansion!” He stepped closer, grabbing the back of her chair and getting much too into her personal space for her liking.

“Aren’t you worried we have no idea what we even are?!” He near shouted. She was quick to shove him away, her chair spinning in the process and leaving her with her back facing him. The pod fell silent for a moment, and V felt an expression of worry cross her screen, her gaze shifting to the broken mirror on the wall. She remembered how it shattered when Uzi looked into it, how that cursed symbol had flashed on the worker’s screen and vanished again.

“Promise me you and that purple thing will stop prying into that stuff.” V spoke at last, her voice softer now. N didn’t reply, and through the fragments of the mirror, she could see a concerned look etched on his screen.

“If you free me now,” she tried instead, turning her chair back to face him, “I promise we’ll only kill what we need to survive. Just you and me, N.” N’s gaze flickered over to the key on the console, but he made no move for it, instead looking back at her.

“…What about Uzi?” He asked. V’s expression quickly shifted to annoyance.

“She’s a worker, N.” She replied, her tone growing stern. “We can’t bring her along.”

“And what about Seraph?”

V froze, her eyes turning hollow as a shot of panic rushed through her systems. N was looking right at her, his expression showing nothing but sadness and hurt.

“I heard you two talking the other day.” He spoke again. “Were you planning to leave her here too?” V hesitated, her gaze flicking away for a moment before she steeled herself.

“She doesn’t matter to me.” She lied, folding her arms. N’s saddened look deepened, though it now held an edge of sympathy.

“Are you sure?” He asked. V glared at him coldly.

“Yes, I’m sure.” She spat. Despite her harsh tone, N could see she wasn’t telling the whole truth. It wasn’t the usual anger he saw from her, her shifting gaze and tightly folded arms making her seem almost afraid.

“V…” he hesitated, trying to find his words, “…if you’re hiding something, we can figure it out together.” There was a somewhat hopeful tone in his voice, and V’s stern expression cracked slightly. A brief flicker of panic went across her screen, though N didn’t seem to notice.

“Even if we each only have pieces,” he continued, “please, what do you kno-”

His sentence was cut short as V swung her sword, slicing his head clean from his shoulders. His body stumbled and collapsed against the wall of the pod, and V stood before him, a mix of sadness and guilt on her screen.

“What’s best for you.” She replied. “Even if you hate me for it.” She gave him a quick salute in an attempt of respect, then grabbed the red dress and flew out of the pod hatch to head for the bunker. She knew N would be angry when he woke up, but she couldn’t let him stop her. This had to be done, one way or another.

——————

“Any sign of her yet?”

Khan and Seraph stood by the wall of the gym, looking out into the crowd of drones. Prom was in full swing, with many people chatting and dancing, but neither chaperone had seen Uzi yet.

“Nope, still no sign of her.” Seraph answered Khan, managing to keep her voice steady. Khan frowned, his gaze turning to the clock on the wall to check the time again. Seraph felt a pang of sympathy as she watched him, already having a feeling Uzi was skipping but not having the heart to say so.

“Hey, I’m sure she’s fine.” She tried reassuring him. “Maybe her dress tore and she’s just looking for a way to fix it.” Khan looked up at her, managing a small smile in thanks for her efforts, but all attention was quickly drawn as a spotlight was activated and Lizzy walked out on stage. The sight of her alone made Seraph’s concern for Uzi increase, but she kept quiet as Lizzy stepped up to the mic and grabbed it.

“Okay, listen up, nerds.” She spoke, her voice carrying through the gym speakers. “We’re doing this a little early, but since the entire prom court mysteriously disappeared, your queen by forfeit is, uh… this.” As soon as the words left her mouth, a figure landed behind her on stage, kicking up a small cloud of dust. Their body was obscured in the shadows, but there was no mistaking the haunting glow of their bright yellow LEDs.

Panic swept over the crowd, and Seraph felt time stop. The frantic cries of the students were muffled to her as she stared up at V, in a strapless red dress, poised and ready to kill. She only briefly looked away to see Khan, who also had a terrified expression, his body frozen as he watched the scene onstage.

“Easy, judgy-bots.” Lizzy’s voice cut over the crowd, drawing Seraph’s attention. “V’s my friend. She’s done with the murder or whatever, we’ve been hanging!” As she spoke, a projector screen rolled down from the ceiling, the projector displaying various photos and selfies of V and Lizzy. Seraph looked up at each of them as they flashed by, feeling a storm of emotions flood her processors. She still couldn’t bring herself to move either, watching as V walked up to the front of the stage.

“Yes, best friends.” She said, her voice carrying that same sadistic tone Seraph heard when they first met. “So easily manipulated~” Her psychotic laugh soon echoed through the gym, her claws switching out for guns when she suddenly froze.

“Prom queen?” She blurted. Everyone in the gym fell silent, and Lizzy managed an awkward smile in response. Another girl then stepped on stage with a crown, causing V’s expression to twist with embarrassment. Seraph felt her thoughts and emotions stop short, the realization that V was being crowned prom queen rendering her completely confused. Lizzy, however, was quick to regain composure, taking advantage of the silence.

“So, forgive and forget, or I’ll get my dad to dock your frickin’ grades!” She snapped. “And you can’t sit with us, Rebecca!” The blonde pointed into the crowd, the spotlight falling on another drone with blue hair and purple bangs. She was momentarily stunned by the sudden attention, but her expression soon turned angry.

“Fine, I forgive her!” She snapped back, folding her arms. “Settle.” This response prompted many of the other drones to relax, murmuring their agreements and even applauding for V.

“Clap harder, losers!” Lizzy shouted. The crowd quickly erupted with applause, cheering and chanting for V to give a speech. This was enough to snap Seraph out of her shock, and she soon started to move, weaving through the students to try and get to the stage.

V, who was still recovering from the awkward situation and the crown being placed on her head, was quick to notice Seraph in the crowd. Her core stuttered for a moment at the sight of her, guilt rushing her processors as she saw her expression. She retracted her wings and claws without thinking, a flash of fear for how she looked making her move to the front of the stage.

CRASH!

Everyone froze as the roof of the gym suddenly caved, with N and Uzi landing a few feet behind the crowd of students.

“Unhand them, you fieeee… eend?” Uzi’s bold tone soon turned uncertain as she stared at the crowd. “I’m confused.” Seraph also found herself confused, but in the moment of looking back, she noticed a flash of red out of the corner of her vision. She turned to see Doll standing there with a murderous grin, her hand poised strangely, and the symbol that the teacher had seen on Uzi’s drawings was glowing at her fingertips. Doll pointed her hand right at V, and that was all it took for Seraph to know that something horrible was about to happen.

“On second thought, you’re way hotter than Doll.” Lizzy suddenly blurted, panicking. “Run, idiot!” V hardly had time to process the words before Doll closed her hand into a fist, a wave of energy rushing through the crowd at the disassembler. Metal bars shot out from underneath the stage, two piercing through V’s arms and another through her left leg.

At this, panic ensued.

Drones began screaming and running, scrambling in every direction to escape the new threat. The gym doors locked, trapping everyone inside. V struggled to escape the bars, sounds becoming muffled as panic took hold. Lizzy was tossed like she was nothing. The other drone’s neck was snapped, her body crushed into oil. Everything was happening so fast, and she was helpless to stop it.

“{Hello, V.}”

The voice cut through the fog like a blade, and V’s gaze snapped forward to see the worker responsible. Doll glared at her with nothing but hatred, and before V could speak, a wave of pain overtook her as memories from someone else were forced into her vision. A small droneling hiding in a cabinet, watching as V herself caught and killed two adult drones, laughing maniacally. The memories vanished as quickly as they came, but it was all V needed to realize why this drone was out to kill her.

“{Anyway, you get it.}” Doll said, her right eye glitching from normal back into the symbol. Another metal bar stabbed through V’s stomach, causing her to choke as oil spurt from her lips. Seraph’s eyes hollowed at the sight, and without even thinking, she rushed forward and grabbed at Doll’s arm.

“Doll, that’s enough!” She tried, though her voice was far more panicked than she wanted it to be. “Please, this won’t solve anything!” The symbol disappeared as Doll focused her attention on the taller drone, her expression looking scarily bored.

“{Seraph. The one teacher to actually care.}” She said, her calm voice even scarier. “{This is not something that concerns you. Please, do not interfere.}” Before she could respond, Doll’s hand once again lit up with that symbol, and Seraph felt an invisible force grip around her waist. With shocking strength, the brunette was thrown backwards, slamming into the gym wall with a choked cry. The sound of groaning metal followed, and by the time Seraph could focus again, she had been pinned against the wall by twisted metal beams.

Horror flooded V’s systems at the sight, but it was instantly replaced by rage. With a growl, she wrenched her right arm free, switching her hand for a gun and firing right at Doll. The navy-haired drone hardly blinked. Her eye flickered, the bullets bouncing off a force field. With a flourish of her hand, a large kitchen knife appeared, launching forward and slicing V’s free arm clean off. V gasped in pain as her arm went flying, everyone else watching from the sidelines in horror, including Uzi and N.

“Holy crap, what is she doing?” Uzi blurted, turning to N.

“This isn’t what I expected at all!” N replied frantically. There was a beat of hesitance afterwards, but he spoke again, “I guess we should, uh….” he trailed off, but his intention was easy to read. Uzi let out a groan in response, but didn’t argue. Meanwhile, Doll had used her powers to tear down a ceiling fan, altering the blades to become jagged and sharper. With a flick of her wrist, the fan shot off, flying straight for V’s head.

V felt time slow as she watched the blade rush at her, her gaze turning away for only a second to see a pair of panicked violet eyes on the wall, watching helplessly.

“Seraph…” the name sent a wave of fear through her systems, “…if I die here, what happens to-?”

She couldn’t finish the thought as there was a sudden flash of motion, and N kicked the deadly fan off course. It wound up embedded in the ceiling behind them, and Uzi leapt out from behind V, kicking the knife from earlier right back at Doll. The red-eyed drone deflected it easily, and after a second, the symbol from her eye appeared on the locked gym door. The trapped students were quick to realize and rushed out, shoving Khan along with them as they made their escape. The older drone didn’t run though, instead watching the stage from the hall with a worried expression.

“{Uzi, you would really side with the Murder Drones?}” Doll spoke, a tone of betrayal in her voice. “{I’m not the only one who’s lost family to them.}” This statement caught both N and V by surprise, their focus quickly shifting over to Uzi.

“Bite me!” Uzi shot back. “Whoever started this wants us to fight! I’m not dealing with anything well, but…” she hesitated, her voice softening, “…I’m done dealing with everything alone.” Her gaze turned over to N, a small smile crossing her face as she met his eyes. N returned the smile, still looking mildly concerned, while V’s gaze once again flickered to the blip of purple light in the shadows against the gym wall.

“We move forward together, or not at all.” Uzi’s voice drew V’s attention again, a frown on her face as she looked over at the purple-haired drone. Doll, however, looked unamused.

“{Cute,}” she said, her tone soon turning annoyed, “{but I don’t need help.}” Her eye once again switched back to what Uzi recognized as the Solver symbol, and another metal beam erupted from the stage, stabbing through N’s leg. Using the opportunity, Doll tore two more ceiling fans down, launching them forward at high speeds. In a split second, Uzi was shoved aside, saving her as the blades sliced N and V to pieces.

“NO!” Seraph’s sudden scream was heard over the music, drawing Doll’s attention to her. The two drones made eye contact, and Doll’s cold stare caused Seraph’s core to freeze in pure terror. Doll reached into a back pocket in her dress and pulled out another knife, the older drone unable to look away as she raised it up…

…and was thrown off as a chair raced by her head.

Doll quickly turned her gaze, now glaring at Uzi from across the gym. The red-eyed drone took the opportunity to lock the gym doors again, ultimately locking Khan out of the gym as well. Seraph was hit with a flood of emotions as she looked down on the scene, feeling relief at not dying but concern for Uzi and fear for V. She couldn’t see either of the disassemblers now, just the pipes from earlier and a splatter of oil leading backstage.

Uzi, meanwhile, stood completely open in the centre of the gym, and Doll’s knife was now pointed at her. She had nothing within reach to defend herself, having already thrown the nearest chair, so when the knife was thrown right at her, she reacted on instinct. She held out one hand and winced as the blade pierced it, but was quick to recover, pulling it out and approaching Doll. Doll’s expression briefly flashed with surprise at Uzi’s move, but she didn’t let it stop her, readying her solver to use on Uzi directly.

--// ERROR: absoluteSolver_trn [like object non-interactive]

The note on her screen made Doll freeze, panic appearing on her face before she turned angry and pulled a third knife. She once again threw it at Uzi, but this time, Uzi merely deflected it and kept walking. Doll couldn’t mask her panic anymore, slowly backing away as she realized this fight had just gotten a lot more complicated.

Meanwhile, hidden behind the curtains backstage, N and V were working to piece themselves back together again. A severed arm slowly crawled towards them, prompting N to pick it up and look it over.

“Is this-?”

“Mine!” V snatched it from him before he could finish, holding the arm in her teeth. An angry scowl donned her screen, and N felt a mix of frustration and sympathy.

“Ew.”

Both drones looked up at the sudden voice, seeing Lizzy standing nearby. She was surprisingly unhurt despite having been thrown, and a mildly disgusted look sat on her screen.

“You look like garbage.” She told them.

“You freakin’ traitor!” V spat, her voice muffled by the arm still held in her teeth. Lizzy gave her an annoyed look, snatching the arm from her mouth.

“As if you weren’t using me to try and kill everyone, Ms. Petty.” She retorted, her gaze turning to the severed arm. “Where does this freaking go?” V held an angered glare, while N attempted to be friendly.

“Thank you, Lizzy!” He chirped.

“Shut up, loser.” Lizzy and V replied in sync. N quickly slumped back against the wall, silently hoping Uzi was at least doing okay.

From up on the wall, Seraph watched the fight anxiously, her eyes darting between Doll and Uzi. A stray knife stabbed into the light controls, causing the gym to become lit up in flashing rainbow colours. Doll grabbed the knife with her solver and threw it. Uzi flipped to dodge it. She landed back on stage, stopping the knife with her boot and kicking a microphone stand at Doll. Doll caught it with her solver, holding it before launching it back at Uzi and pinning her down.

“Crap!” Seraph managed to keep herself from shouting this time, but her panic had increased tenfold. Doll was duplicating knives now, and had several of them all pointed at Uzi still stuck to the floor. Seraph struggled hard, but the metal beams refused to budge, so she came up with a desperate plan and tried to copy the hand symbol Doll was doing.

“Maybe it’s an underlying code…” she flicked her hand as much as she could, but there was no glow, and no moving of metal to be heard. She quickly gave up, knowing it was no use, leaving her to watch helplessly as Doll went for the kill. Just as the knives were about to hit, a blur shot in front and the knives ricocheted off of N’s outstretched wing. Seraph’s eyes widened in shock, since the last she saw him Doll had dismembered him.

“Quit saving me!” The brunette could hear Uzi’s shout even from where she was, watching as N helped her to her feet before suddenly twirling her. Their movements quickly became a mix of a dance and an attack, moving together to counter against Doll and blasting her back with an explosion. The force shook the room and Seraph, a cloud of smoke briefly blocking her view as the fight below continued on. She could hear the sound of things being thrown, but it wasn’t until the smoke cleared that she saw Uzi kick Doll square in the face.

Doll was sent sprawling from the hit, the lights finally settling back to normal as Uzi landed and readied for another attack. Doll didn’t stay down long, getting back on her feet and readying her hand, pointing the solver symbol at Uzi once more.

BANG!

The shot echoed through the gym as Doll suddenly staggered, oil spraying from a large crack in her screen. Her eyes flickered before she collapsed, and behind her stood V, her right hand swapped for a gun and a piercing glare on her screen. Uzi, who had flinched from the shot, quickly met V’s gaze with a glare of her own.

“V! We-” Uzi hardly got to speak as V suddenly turned, unfurling her wings and flying up to the side wall. Seraph flinched at V’s sudden approach, eyes wide in surprise as the disassembler swapped her hand for a tool she didn’t recognize.

“Hold still.” Was all V said, and Seraph tensed as a loud hum started from the device and a yellow laser shot out. It sliced through the metal beams like they were nothing, soon falling away and freeing Seraph from their hold. The explorer didn’t even have time to fall as V grabbed her, holding her with a gentleness Seraph did not expect and flying her back down to the gym floor.

“I-I, uh… thanks.” She managed, before letting out a yelp as V smacked her upside the head.

“Don’t ever do something that stupid again.” She scolded. “She could’ve killed you!”

“Wh- me?!” Seraph exclaimed in a mix of surprise and offence. “I thought she had killed you! I saw you and N get sliced to pieces right on stage!”

“Please, I’ve survived worse.” V folded her arms, brushing off Seraph’s concern. “You, on the other hand-”

“A-hem!”

Both drones stopped arguing at the sound, turning to see Uzi and N staring at them. Uzi looked very annoyed while N looked surprised, and the realization that they’d heard everything made both Seraph and V look away.

“As I was saying,” Uzi continued, clearly frustrated, “we needed Doll alive for answers, V!”

“What?” V replied in annoyance. “She’s fine! Ah…” her expression changed as she looked down at Doll, seeing her lying still in a large puddle of oil.

“A little tuckered out…” V muttered, now mildly embarrassed. Seraph couldn’t take her eyes off Doll’s body, a mix of horror and sympathy swirling in her processors.

“V did that on purpose!” N suddenly exclaimed, snapping Seraph from her daze. “She’s hiding mystery stuff and being overdramatic about it!” V’s expression immediately turned angry.

“N, you suck!” She snapped.

“Both of you, shut it!” Uzi shouted, drawing all eyes to her. She glared the disassemblers down before her her gaze turned to an object on the floor. She knelt down to pick it up, finding it was Doll’s bracelet with a strange tag and a unit key attached.

“Lucky for you, we’re not done yet.” She spoke again, standing and holding up the bracelet. Seraph felt her concern rise, glancing over at Doll’s body, but chose to say nothing and merely followed as Uzi, N, and V walked out of the gym. Khan was waiting anxiously on the other side, his face lighting up when Uzi walked through the doors.

“Uzi!” He exclaimed, rushing over. “What happened in there? Are you-”

“I’m fine, dad.” Uzi interrupted him, annoyed. “We handled it.” Khan froze at his daughter’s words, his expression saddening as he stood there, unsure what to say. Seraph felt a wave of sympathy for him, walking over to put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s good of you to care, Khan.” She told him, giving him a small smile. Khan’s sadness faded slightly at the reassurance, and he gave a small nod in response. His gaze turned back to Uzi after a second, and Seraph looked over to see annoyance, but also a mild twinge of guilt on the teen’s face.

“Uzi, maybe you should go back with your dad.” She suggested. “It’s been a long night-”

“No way.” Uzi cut her off, masking her guilt as she folded her arms. “I’m finding out what the hell was going on at Doll’s place, with or without you.” Seraph gave her a harsh look, but much to her surprise, Khan stepped in between them.

“It’s alright, she can go.” He said. “Just keep an eye on her for me, will you?” Seraph met the older drone’s eyes with worry, but Khan only smiled, giving her a small, sincere nod.

“Alright, if you insist.” Seraph relented at last. “I’ll bring her home myself later, okay?” Khan nodded again, his smile widening slightly as his gaze turned back to Uzi. Her annoyed expression faltered, guilt reappearing as she shifted her gaze away, but neither said anything as Khan turned and started the walk back to his unit. All four drones watched him go, and Uzi felt guilt stirring in her core before she shook her head to refocus.

“Come on, we have a unit to check out.” She said, starting off down another hall. N, V, and Seraph followed silently, with N and Seraph looking wary while V kept a bored expression. Soon enough they reached Doll’s unit, and a strong tar-like smell could be detected seeping out from under the door. Seraph recoiled slightly at it, but said nothing as Uzi used the key from Doll’s bracelet to unlock and open the door. It slid aside with a soft hiss, and the scent increased tenfold as the group stepped into the pitch dark unit. N soon found the light switch and turned it on, and all four drones looked at the kitchen with shock and horror.

The kitchen was covered with worker drone bodies, oil stained all over the floor and appliances. Scattered parts hung from hooks or were thrown in pots, with one arm laid out on a cutting board, and the upper half of one drone could be seen stuffed into a top cabinet. ‘FATAL ERROR’ shone in bold red letters on their visor, and both Seraph and Uzi felt a chill at the sight. The sound of metal clinking made both of them freeze, but their fear quickly vanished as they looked over to see V idly chewing on a dismembered arm.

“Ugh, self respect!” Uzi scolded, pulling the arm out of the murder drones’ mouth. V gave her an annoyed look before licking residual oil from off her hand in a fashion much like a cat would. Seraph watched the murder drone with a mix of concern and confusion, but promptly shook it off and silently headed further into the unit. She chose to check down the hall first, opening the door to the bathroom and finding the blood-filled tub and stack of mirrors leading up to the ceiling vent.

“…Well, that leaves more questions than answers.” She muttered. She looked back over as N pulled a sheet off of something at the dining table, revealing two more drone corpses that had been sat in dining chairs. Each of them had a bullet hole clean through their visor, their bodies posed in fear, and Seraph was quick to notice one of them had hair the exact same colour as Doll.

“I… think we found her folks.” N said quietly. Both V and Seraph walked over to look, though V seemed rather unbothered.

“Literally didn’t even taste that good.” She said casually, picking her teeth with one claw. N’s gaze fell on her, a mix of concern and disgust on his face.

“V, you kinda suck.” He told her. V only laughed, picking up one of the roaches with her claws.

“Yeah, I’m not doing okay.” She replied, eating the robotic insect. Her smile faltered as she felt eyes on her, and glancing over, she saw Seraph looking at her with nothing but worry. A sudden rush of guilt flooded V’s systems and she forced her gaze away, turning instead to watch as N helped Uzi climb over the kitchen counter to join them.

The purple-haired drone warily approached the two bodies, noticing a lanyard around the neck of who she could only assume had been Doll’s mother. With careful hands she lifted the name tag, showing a photo of the same drone when she was alive, accompanied by the number 048 and the name ‘Yeva.’ The bright red eyes in the photo only confirmed that the woman had been Doll’s mother, and Uzi couldn’t help but feel a twinge of empathy for her classmate.

A strange, quiet noise suddenly reached Uzi’s audio receptors, drawing her attention from the name tag. Her eyes widened in horror as she looked up to see Doll at the other end of the table, completely healed, and using her solver to point a bullet right at her.

“{Just in time for dinner.}”

BANG!

The sound of the shot faded, but no collision followed. Instead, the bullet had been caught, by Uzi, with her own solver power. All eyes were focused on Uzi now, each of them displaying fear, but Doll’s expression also showed sympathy.

“{I… I’m sorry for you…}” she managed, a genuine tone of worry in her voice. Uzi hardly heard her, still staring at the bullet frozen in front of her. Her solver soon deactivated and the bullet shot, swerving around her head and piercing through the glass of the window behind her. All eyes had followed it, but soon refocused on Doll, who was giving Uzi a saddened look.

“{If I find what I’m looking for,}” she said, “{I’ll help you too.}”

“What?” Uzi blurted, now even more scared than before. Doll didn’t explain further, her body starting to glitch and fade like she was a hologram.

“{I am sorry.}” She told her.

“Wait! Oh, don’t you dare!” Uzi shouted, but Doll was already disappearing. V leapt into the air and launched a rocket at the navy-haired drone. The explosion clouded the room in smoke, but as it cleared, there was no sign of Doll anywhere. Uzi let out a loud groan of frustration, tossing her head back and her arms up as she shouted.

“I hate it here!”

——————

Meanwhile, outside the bunker, the wind howled as a single worker drone made his way through the city. He scanned up and down the ruined streets, stopping only when he noticed something familiar sticking out of a pile of snow. Kneeling down, he brushed it aside to reveal the object, soon finding a pair of circular-shaped glasses.

“Oh, that’s where I left my excuse to be outside right now.” He said, straightening up and putting on the glasses. His vision became clear with the help of the lenses, and he turned his gaze up just in time to see something hurtling out of the sky right at him. He barely managed to dodge it as it crashed, part of it exploding and sending debris flying. The worker shouted at what he now realized was a landing pod, scrambling to his feet to make a run for it, but a second pod immediately crashed down in front of him and cut him off. He cowered as it exploded too, surrounding him in a ring of fire and debris, the flames roaring and crackling in the harsh wind.

A moment of silence passed after, but as the worker raised his head up, he heard more noise and saw a third pod coming down from the sky. This one didn’t crash, however, instead using its strange legs to slide down the sides of the buildings and land neatly in the street. The door of the pod opened a second later and a figure leapt out, brandishing a sword as they landed, reeled back, and sliced the worker’s head clean off.

His head flew in a high arc, oil trailing behind as it landed and rolled in the snow, his glasses landing on his face a second later. The attacker let the oil drip off of their sword, the light of the fire glinting off of the blade and illuminating them, revealing them to be human. A space helmet obscured their face, but a baseball cap and a bow sat on top, and a name tag was pinned to their suit with the name ‘Tessa’ engraved in it, along with the title ‘Certified Technician.’

“Righty-o, work to do.” Tessa spoke, sheathing her sword. “Eh, J?” At the call of her name, the disassembler emerged from the ship, flying over and hovering next to Tessa. She tossed a set of keys to her that the human caught easily, hitting a button on a remote and locking the pod behind them.

“Maintenance work.”

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sweetpumpkinmouse · 2 months ago

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Quick hot take:

The things that people accuse Uzi of being, other character did worse than her.

“Uzi is so toxic towards N—“ J was heavily implied to be physically and mentally abusive to N. And while in a lesser extent, despite V’s intentions being good and all, she still was down-right awful to N.

“Uzi killed her classmates—“ in a show called MURDER Drones. Literally a good portion of the cast has blood on their hands. Let’s also not forget Doll, bucko!

“Uzi is suck a pick-me—“ Rebecca and Emily are lying dead on the floor right there./j

Look up what a pick-me is, because that’s not what Uzi is. A pick-me is someone who projects misogyny and outdated stereotypes onto women just to put them down for male attention.

Now, tell me, when has Uzi ever done these things? When did she ever put other female characters down for their interests? When has Uzi ever went up to N or Thad, and went “girls are so catty”?

NEVER! She dresses alt and is neurodivergent and cringe!

“If the roles were reversed Nuzi wouldn’t be so popular—“ I would also like to say the same thing about Envy, but I’m not a fan of ship-bashing. And not to be that guy, but I would also like to argue that if J and N’s genders were reversed, J wouldn’t be as liked as she is.

TLDR: Uzi is not a perfect character. She is not a perfect victim. A lot of the things that her and the other characters do require context, but Uzi gets hated more.

I also already talked about in more depth as to why most of the hate Uzi gets is stupid in the past, so if this wasn’t as detailed or as thought-out as the last one, I apologize. I just wanted to get stuff off my chest, because I just found a resurgence in fandom stupidity.

I’m open to other opinions and critique, so don’t be afraid to body slam me into the ring.

#murder drones #murder drones fandom #rant #i’m tired #gonna face the consequences of my actions later

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bhaal-battle-beer-bard · 4 days ago

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✨Let's talk about OCs!✨How would you describe your OC's personality/aesthetic? What's your favourite thing about them? Tell us a fun fact(s) about your OC or their creation!

❤️Send this to at least 3 people to spread some OC appreciation!❤️

Thank you 😃😘 OC appreciation is really important. Well, in the BG3 community it's massive anyway. Maybe it will spill over into other fandoms too, so more and more of it 😉 (I wouldn't dare talk about my OCs from other fandoms to be honest 😅🫣)

To not always only do it for Saulus, I will do it for all my three Tavs😁

Saulus' aesthetic is a classy romantic bard one: you have flowers, nature, birds and wooden instruments playing with the colours of the wind. You should know her bard book by now 😉 That is it!

Have real bhaal babe Saulus then it will change to grotesque blood, gore, skulls and madness. So let's better stay with the butterflies and flowers Saulus 😅

In clothes her aesthetic started from a battle bard always in her medium armour.

In the camp she only ever wore decent high-necked clothing. Swapping clothes with Shadowheart's strict Sharite wardrobe was the order of the day because she also likes dark leather, dark purple and silver.

Simply anything to cover as much of her skin as possible, which she does not find desirable like Astarion's flawless porcelain skin.

But thanks to Astarion and other Tav friends and the great @aristenfromwarsaw , who showed her the beauty of her body, Saulus has stopped looking at her body the wrong way and has started loving it.

Now she dares to show more and more skin; yes, she even likes to show her thighs and occasionally her stomach 😉 And sees that she also deserves beautiful dresses, which she loves to wear. Or some crazy black leather clothes are also still her style 😉 (The full bhaal mode is something😂) She no longer hides and now enjoys being sexy and trying new things. She is either an elegant lady or a degenerate Bhaal Leather Warrior, those are her styles xDDD

And that is the fun fact and what I love most about her: She was created for an evil run and just ended up to be and become more and more the silliest good time girl ever! 😄 That is her and I can't deny it. She loves love. She can have a sense of humor like a twelve-year-old boy. She is infinitely stupid and naive when it comes to the people she loves. She doesn't mince her words and is incredibly wisecracking, but she only means it in a funny way.

Oh and her whole character is based on the song Perception check from Tom Cardy 😄 (She hit harder than every warrior)

✨Devorah's aesthetic is dress up doll all the way. She is a drow. She is magnificent. She is beautiful. ✨

Her colors were pink and green at first. Then I saw that blue, black, red and white suit her just as well 😂 So she always matched all her make up and body painting to her clothes. She always wore the finest robes. Better to be well dressed than to be too good. And she had no problem walking around in underwear or even completely naked. 😏😉

So beauty, fine fabrics, beautiful colors, luminous under dark mushrooms are her aesthetic.

Fun fact+most likey: I always liked the name Devorah and thought I would use it in the next fantasy game. I didn't know that Lae'zel's voice actress was called that xD She can give the meanest evil eye "thanks" to Volo 😆

She is playing the flute because Tom Cardy the human bard does ;)The gnome kink came from Barcus' "I would kiss you, but neither of us deserves that" which I didn't have in the first two runs and it stuck in my mind so funny as her mission to kiss him xD Being a drow is just fabulous 😏 All the little goblin men love her 💁‍♀️ It just stayed and...yes I have stupid sense of humor and I love it 😆😆 This bard side of BG3 is kinky, ok? 😄

Jeleyah's aesthetic was based on the fact that blue is her color and she has a slightly Nordic touch. ✨

She is always at the forefront with her golden heavy armor. The shield of her comrades. In camp, however, she likes to take off the armor to show the woman underneath. The loving, attentive and tender woman that she is. Then she likes to wear very feminine and figure-hugging clothes.

Fun fact+most likey: I created her in almost every race because I couldn't decide 😂 And in the end I decided on half-elf. And I still think she looks beautiful. I just love her eyes and her gentle face. Really. Her sweet, beautiful face brings me joy. Especially because I know that she always wanted to do the right thing for everyone and always put the needs of her friends first.

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the-dumpster-fire-of-life · 1 year ago

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Heyyy so yk the series that you were doing where what it would be like to be Tom or bills daughter? Sooooo I thought maybe do one where Tom and bill both had daughters young and both moms are not in the picture and the daughters are total bffs like they are always together?? Just a suggestion I don’t know if you still do that anymore you don’t have to tho anyways bye!

(this would actually be so dope if it was real)

Mini Thems

They raised mini thems! They raised mini thems!

From birth you and your cousin were practically twins

You guys were born mere days apart, same age and everything and even as they grew up they were attached to the hip

Since Bill and Tom are identical twins their kids would most likely have a lot of the same features from their dad's

You and your cousin are confused as twins all the time and it's so funny

You guys wouldn't call yourself twins though

Bill and Tom were so surprised when they found out they were having kids at the same time

But Bill was actually so excited and Tom was just as stoked as well

Bill wanted to raise you guys side by side as well

You and your cousin have sleepovers all the time

You guys are gonna put Bill and Tom int cardiac arrest as well

You guys LOVE defying then

Oh my god and tease them about you guys having boyfriends or girlfriends?

Your dad's are freaking out and denying you guys are growing up

You guys share clothes all the time and sometimes fight about it but still lend each other stuff

More like stealing because you guys never ask, just take

You guys are the literal definition of sibling, but you're cousins instead

The Tokio Hotel Fandom loves you guys

There may be little dicks of fans but the older fans were so excited when you guys came!

So many tabloids and paparazzi were dying to take pictures of you guys

You guys were so alike that sometimes people couldn't tell y'all apart until one did something the other didn't

You guys were the center of attention and absolutely dolls growing up

On stage and off you guys were stars

Your dad's would take you guys on tour as well just because you guys wanted

Tom and Bill gave you guys whatever you could ever please and gave you everything they didn't have

Your uncle's, Gustav and Georg as well?

You guys learned how to give your dad's gray hairs from them

Gustav and Georg would babysit you guys and suddenly you were screaming bitch, ass, shit and so much more

You got your sassiness from Uncle Gustav 1000%

You guys were taken out and photographed in so many cute outfits because Bill dressed you guys to match or be the opposite and it was so cute

Tom basically made you guys mini hims when he had you guys as well

You guys were blinged out and fashionable with makeup as well when Bill dressed you guys

Tom was baggy clothes for his daughter and niece, Bill was makeup, skirts, large tea shirts, shorts, sunglasses, painted nails and bags and so much more

So safe to say, y'all raid Bill's closet a lot

You guys love spending time with Heidi as well

You guys take her dresses and clothes as well and she loves doing your guys' hair when asked

Great step mom and step aunt if I say so

Your cousin and you could talk like telepathy without words and it's so cool

Just subtle looks and you guys know exactly what the other means

You guys are one of the most iconic familial duos to live

You guys are often compared to your dad's and a lot of fans hope you guys take after them

Gustav and Georg were so surprised at first as well but actually were one of the first to meet you guys when you were born

Georg is the kill for you uncle and Gustav is the ride or die and knock a bitch out uncle

They pick you guys outta school without your dad's knowing all the time

They made you guys little mini thems for your dad's for revenge on Bill biting Georg and spraying him with hairspray

Tom was collateral as well

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@billsjum6ie @bigbootahjudy @ilovebill-and-gustav @r3dheadedw0rld @kiwitsune @V4mpyboyy @novaaisstupid @billybabeskaulitz @yas-v @iischafer @dilfverz @ahswhore0 @graciegizmo3184 @sweetpuffy12 @80s-tingz @ryiana @yuriayato5 @bunnysenpai31 @banshailey @bellastoner420 @victryzvv9 @stxngnr @killed-kiss @stilesandjames @m00nzyblogs @sylisan @lyzit @trixiekaulitz @laylasbunbunny @5hyslv7 @limaswife @nyxwritesshit

#tokio hotel #tokio hotel imagine #tokio hotel x reader #bill kaulitz #bill kaulitz imagines #bill kaulitz x reader #tom kaulitz #tom kaulitz imagines #tom kaulitz x reader #gustav schäfer x reader #gustav tokio hotel #gustav schafer x reader #gustav schäfer #tokio hotel georg #georg listing #georg #georg listing x reader #heidi klum

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sunnie-angel · 6 days ago

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The Early Years

conrad oxford x reader summary: on the eve of war, a childhood best friend develops into something more, first love blooming between you. a complete (mostly) canon compliant rewrite of the king's man (no knowledge of the movie is necessary to read) tags: period misogyny, grief, minor injury, off screen death, unresolved sexual tension rating: mature | wc: 12.8k a/n: this was supposed to be a little one shot for conrad's birthday, but has spiraled into what might be my longest fic to date. it will be releasing in three parts (my dreams of a one shot have long since faded) and i'm hoping that people will give this a chance even though it's not my usual fandom. this has been so much fun to write and this fic truly would not exist in this form without @batchilla who has been the most incredible beta reader. series masterlist | ao3

Nanny Celeste says you’re to make a new friend today. She dresses you in your Sunday best and scolds your brother for mussing up his hair. A duke’s son, she says and you scowl into the mirror because the only duke around here is the Duke of Oxford and he’s only an old man with sad eyes. His son’s probably going to be just as boring and it doesn’t matter how many ribbons Nanny puts in your hair, you won’t become friends, you refuse. Georgie isn’t any help, tugging at the ends of your hair and babbling about finally having another boy to play real games with. You kick him in the shins for that but he just laughs.

Your second impression of the duke doesn’t change your first. He’s still old and the lines of his face still make him look worn out and sad. He doesn’t look very impressive or dukely, just tired. His son is pale faced and gangly, knobby knees poking out from underneath his short pants. Conrad, as he’s introduced to you and your brother, doesn’t even smile. Just bows stiffly like one of your dolls when you force it to. You hate him already. He probably doesn’t know any fun games to play, just spends his time standing in a corner stiffly, waiting for the clock to strike a new hour.

Mother makes you curtsey, a firm hand on your shoulder. You scowl at the floor as you do, but you do as your told. Seemingly satisfied with your compliance, the adults move on, moving in to the parlour trailing your brother behind them. Quickly craning your head to check that no one’s watching, you poke out your tongue and make a face at your mother’s back. A soft hicuppy peal of laughter startles you and shame faced you notice the Oxford boy is still watching you, his grave face twisted up into a grin. He sticks his tongue out at you and laughing you make another funny face in return. That’s how Nanny Celeste finds the two of you.

Gripping your little wrist tight she pulls you along to join the others sitting in the parlour. Despite her scolding flowing over and around you, you don't feel repentant in the slightest. The little duke might be fun to play with after all.

Twice a week and after the Oxfords return from church on Sundays, you and your brother are trotted out to the estate on the other side of the village to be “good influences” for Conrad. It makes a kind of sense, the way your mother explains it to you as she makes you promise to behave yourself this time, after all Conrad will one day be a member of high society and the two of you are the only children near his age and approaching suitability for miles. Most of the nuance goes right over your head, of little interest to a 10 year old wearing shoes that pinch her toes. But whatever the reason you show up like clockwork, the duke’s own driver picking you and Georgie up in a shiny black automobile.

Shola’s a very patient man, putting up with all of Georgie’s many, many question about the car’s engine. The day Shola brings a new Packard around, edges still chrome and shiny, you have to cover your ears to not go deaf from Georgie’s excited squealing. He, of course, denies doing any such thing with all the flustered dignity a 12-year old can muster, which is to say it wasn’t convincing at all. Unfortunately for you, Georgie’s enthusiasm for all things mechanical is the only thing that saves your first ‘play date’ with Conrad.

The other boy is awkward. Doesn’t know if he should speak or stand in silence, offer you tea or run to hide in another room. His hands are knotting around themselves and the atmosphere is so truly awkward that you wish you had played ill today. He’s not the laughing boy anymore, too absorbed by the quiet echoing halls of a house with only grief to fill it. You dig your toe into the plush fabric of the carpet and wonder idly if the two of you will get scolded later for not trying hard enough.

“The car that brought us here was very nice,” your brother says, breaking the awkward, hovering silence.

“There’s more than just one car in the stables, Shola lets me watch him fix them sometimes,” Conrad offers shyly.

And that’s all it takes. Suddenly the halls are always filled with childish voices crowing with glee. Small feet running down carpeted hallways and desperately avoiding the hands outstretched in games of tag. The servants’ corridors have sticky smiles popping in and out trying to find brand new hiding places in the latest session of hide and seek. The gardens though, oh the gardens are what you love best. Conrad confesses he’s never climbed a tree before and you’re so appalled.

“Never?” You confirm, shocked. “But you’ve so many here!"

“It’s dangerous,” he says, a little pink around the ears.

“Not terribly,” Georgie chimes in.

“C’mon, we’ll show you how its done,” you insist imperiously, grabbing his hand to drag him over to the nearest tree with low branches. You don’t want to scare him off yet.

“It’s rather sticky,” he says, touching the roughened bark gingerly.

“Good so you won’t slip right off,” you retort. He looks at you sceptically, likes he’s not quite sure if you’re only joking. At that moment, George puts his shoulder under Conrad and heaves, causing him to scramble for a better grip on the branch. It’s not the most expert mount, you think, hands resting on your hips, but it’ll do. Conrad clings to the branch like a rather bedraggled cat. The only difference is, he hasn’t started yowling yet. The three of you spend the rest of the afternoon improving Conrad’s tree climbing capabilities, only heading for the house when the sun is starting to touch the tree tops and the knees on all of your clothing is thoroughly muddied.

Nanny Polly never scolds you – much – when she finds out what latest antics you and your brother have gotten Conrad into. Mostly she tells you not to get caught next time or to at least cover up the evidence better. The only real rule she gives you is to not get Conrad into any trouble, the Duke's not so understanding of the mischief children can get up to, see. She’s much kinder than Nanny Celeste is about the state of your dress and for that alone you would adore her.

Summer slowly fades into Autumn, Winter blowing in fiercely only to melt away to a gentle Spring. Conrad is much less timid now, else you wouldn’t have been able to stand his nonsense for so long. He climbs trees much faster than you, a state of affairs you refuse to acknowledge, due to an utterly unfair advantage of his longer limbs. George keeps trying to pull him away to study the fleet of cars stored away in the stables which you only grudgingly agree to on the condition that you can feed the horses treats, a far more interesting pastime than the silly engines that don’t have a spark of intelligence behind their eyes. A grey mare in particular has taken a liking to you after an exhaustive campaign of treats and neck scratches, a feat you’re very proud of even if the boys would rather watch Shola clean spare parts.

You’ve fed the mare her standard treat of carrots and scotch mints and have moved on to grooming her occasionally. She seems to have decided that you require grooming in turn, nibbling at the top of your head and using you as a scratching post until you can barely contain your laughter, having to steady yourself against the stall door to avoid falling over from the force of her affection.

“Emily?” A voice calls, and you freeze. No one’s told you that you can’t play with any of the horses, they just haven’t told you that you can either.

Slowly you turn to face the speaker. The mare must recognise your fear because she stops nibbling at you, whickering gently. Leaning heavily on his cane is the Duke, a hollowed out expression moulding his face into something resembling devastation. You bob a curtsey.

“I’m sorry Your Grace, I was just petting her,” you explain, tongue clumsy in your mouth. It's the first real conversation you’ve had with the Duke.

“No, it’s nothing. But for a moment you looked so like—"

“Father!” Conrad calls, finally having noticed the man’s presence. “Come and see, I’ve changed the oil all by myself!"

“I helped!” yelps Georgie, indignantly, eager to have his contribution acknowledged.

The Duke never forbids you from feeding the mare after that, but you check to see if anyone else is paying attention now before you slip her a mint or a sugar cube. If anything, you see even less of the Duke than before.

Summer fruit starts ripening in the hedgerows, sweet wild currants and blackberries that you teach Conrad to pick. His tight lipped smiles become just as berry stained as yours and you tease him about his greedy fingers. Still he slips you the last of the wild strawberries and they've never tasted so sunshine sweet. Slowly, then all at once Georgie stops accompanying you to the estate.

“He’s going away to school in the Autumn,” you explain to Conrad when he asks. Double checking your path, you reach up and haul yourself up the next branch. “Mother wants him studying more before the term starts, doesn’t want him making a bad impression but he hates sitting still."

“Oh,” Conrad says. It takes you a few minutes to realize that he’s stopped climbing after you. “I’ll be old enough to go to Eton too.” He pauses again and you shift to a more comfortable seat in the crook of the branch. The wind blows through the branches and tangles your hair. Climbing up to see the bird's nest had seemed like such a good idea on the ground; nearly three quarters of the way there and now you're not so sure. “I don’t think he’ll let me.”

“Why not? You’ll be old enough and you’re a duke’s son.” you say. It’s a matter of fact in your world that all the boys in your social circle, when they’re old enough, all go away to school. Like clockwork, they’ll grow out of their short pants and into their school uniform. Honestly you’d been glad that Conrad was a year younger than George because then you wouldn’t be left all alone for another year. You’d still expected to eventually be left behind.

“He’ll say its too far or— or that its too dangerous, that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He doesn’t think I’m ready.” Conrad spits out the last word, angrier than you’ve ever seen him. “He thinks I’m a child, that I can’t do anything right. If he could he’d keep me locked up at home for the rest of my life.”

“What’s wrong with home?” you ask, slightly hurt by how worked up he’s getting. “Home’s where Polly and Shola and— and the dells and the forests are. Its where the cars are in the stable, and the horses and the berries in the summer.” And me goes unsaid.

“But I don’t want to stay at home!” He yells, body shaking. “He’ll have me trapped here until I die, and I hate it!” Conrad slams his hand down on the branch he’s leaning on. “I’ll— I’ll never see the world or— or meet any of mother’s relatives. I’ll—” with each new injustice, he slams his fist against the tree.

“Conrad...” you warn him, starting to get nervous by how his fury and the wind are starting to shake the tree.

“No!” He yells up at you, ruddy faced with anger. “I won’t stay shut up—” the branch gives no indication before it breaks with a loud crack, sending him tumbling to the ground. The birds in the nest fly away from the noise.

Calling out his name, you scramble down to to where he lies unmoving at the base of the tree. It takes long, agonizing seconds to reach him, to reach out with shaking hands to clasp at his shoulder. He turns to face and you whimper at the sight of blood streaming down his throat from a gash in his chin.

“That hurt,” he says wonderingly and you promptly burst into tears. Conrad had looked so still and pale lying on the ground that for a brief, terrible moment, you’d thought he was dead. The earth had stopped spinning until you’d reached out and felt him warm under your hands, alive and bleeding. Very awkwardly he pats at your shoulder and you throw yourself at him, blubbering in relief onto his shoulder.

“I’m sorry!” you sob, fingers digging into his shirt. “I thought the tree would be strong enough, I never would have taken you up otherwise. And now—” you hiccup “they’ll never let me come back and it’s all my fault.” A tentative hand strokes the nest-like mess of your hair and you sob harder. Now your brother will be going away and you’ll never see your only true friend again because the only rule you’d ever been given was to never get him into any trouble.

“It’s alright, I’ll tell them— I’ll tell them it was my fault, that tripped when I was running. You won’t get into any trouble, I promise. And then you’ll come back and we’ll spend time together like always and we’ll make George so jealous that he’s away at his awful school.”

You sniffle and curl around him tighter, ignoring the resigned note colouring his voice in favour of clinging to the proof that he’s only injured.

Georgie goes off to Eton and Conrad does not, not even when Conrad is old enough, not even when he begs. Troops of tutors pass through the halls of the estate under Polly’s watchful eye. In a sort of compromise, you are allowed to sit in on his lesson providing you don’t distract him, a classroom of two instead of twenty.

He never complains to your face about this turn of events – not since that disastrous incident with the tree – but you can still tell from the stubborn set of his jaw, the way his eyes stray towards far off scenes past the windowpanes, that he’s unsatisfied. He wants the world and grand adventures in it but instead he’s got you and a home that’s closing in around him. You know not to take it to heart when his eyes go hazy with far off lands instead of listening to you chatter on or that he gets frustrated when your unsanctioned outings never go further than the village, a line you refuse to cross out of fear of the Duke's displeasure. Favoured as you are, as dear a friend to the family you know yourself to be, there's some mercies you know won't be extended to you. Each time you refuse his entreaties with a smile and each time the smile slips off his face. Even knowing doesn’t stop the sting of it.

Still, you make the most of it. A sticky sweet childhood turning into the endless summer of adolescence. Running after him through the tall grass, his longer legs carrying him much faster than yours until you’re pouting about the first of many unfair advantages. Swimming in the creek just along the edge of the estate and squealing at the chill of the rapidly rushing water. You always have to splash him first before he’ll get in, rolling his eyes but folding up the hems of his pants anyway. Trips to the village sweets store with its large glass jars full of every kind of candy imaginable for paper twists full of barley sugar. You’ve gotten into the habit of crunching the hard candy down into little shards between your teeth before you let them melt away, always finishing your sweets too quickly and then filching some of Conrad’s. His startled shouts are almost as sweet as the candy cracking open. These are the times you’ll look back on as still firmly innocent, without the shadows of adulthood or war looming overhead.

In this way five years unspool, lessons punctuated by brief periods of freedom. Time has ways of getting away from you, slips through fingers that aren’t trying very hard to hold it close like the cold water of the creek. Rather than weeks or months, you start to mark time by when your brother is home or not. Georgie comes home only for the holidays, drips and drabs of his attention and time that you eagerly look forward to. When the three of you can spend time together just as you did when you were still young children. It’s George’s presence that makes you aware that you’re not those same children anymore.

It’s hot, the first true day of summer blazing across the sky. Naturally, you’re down to your shift and up to your knees in the creek competing to see who can knock the other off balance first and into the water completely with Conrad. He splashes water at your face and you squeal, hands coming up to shield yourself. This turns out to all have been a distraction as blocked from view by your own hands, he lunges forward and catches you around the middle, plunging you both into the crisp water. Spluttering the two of you surface, your thing underthings utterly sodden and clinging to you.

“No fair!” you shout, “That doesn’t count as winning, you went under too.”

“Yes but you went under first and so I should get the point,” he says smugly and you scowl, dashing the dripping hair out of your eyes.

“Fine,” you narrow your eyes at him. “I’ll just have to get even.” Your words are said sweetly but the mean hook of your foot around his ankle is not. Windmilling his arms you grabs ahold of your shoulders, shouting in laughter as he foils your attempt and the two of you end up locked in a grappler’s embrace. Strong glare of the sun is already drying the edges of his hair, reflecting off the shining waters. Your wet shift is still cool, not yet warmed by your body’s heat and his thin shirt is still translucent and dripping. For a moment, you realize how tightly your bodies are twined together, one of his legs pressed between yours for balance, his arms wrapped around your shoulders pressing you firmly to his chest.

“Oxford!” The sudden cry breaks the fragile moment and he releases you so quickly that you fall on your ass in the river. Shading your eyes from the sun’s reflection, you squint up the bank for the source of the voice.

“Georgie!” You call back excitedly, “Come on in, the water’s gorgeous!”

“Winner’s the one that stays standing longest,” Conrad chimes in, somewhat nervously.

George pauses a moment longer, a still shadowy figure on the bank, before shedding his coat and joining you in the water.

Much later, when the sun is about to set and your teeth have begun to chatter, George holds his jacket up to shield you as you slip your dress back on. You dress in silence, struggling to get your dry clothes to cooperate with your still damp underthings.

“I go away for only a term and suddenly you're a woman," he sighs, head still turned to the side for a semblance of privacy. "Is mother already planning your debut?"

You scowl at the reminder that your breasts have budded from flat to noticeably something, the way your hips have swollen wider and your old stockings dig into the flesh of your thighs right above your knees.

"I don't care," you respond hotly, tugging roughly at your dress.

"You're not the only one who grew up," George says leadingly and resolve to ignore him. He continues anyway. "Conrad's what, 16 or 17 now? Nearly taller than I am and he's already broader across the shoulders."

"So?" you ask, wringing out your hair.

"My point—" he sighs, "—is that neither of you are children now, or won't be for much longer. Maybe you shouldn't be acting like children anymore. People won't see it the same way."

"We're friends," you insist.

"And I'm not saying you can't be," George says mildly, shrugging his jacket back on. "Only you need to be more circumspect in your affection or people, who don't know you both as well as I do, will come to the wrong conclusions. Conclusions that would hurt your reputation but leave him unscathed. Do you understand what I'm saying?" He stops in his tracks, training his gaze to meet yours.

You swallow. "Conrad wouldn't ruin me."

"He wouldn't mean to," is all George says.

George's words must carry the weight of some curse only to be found in a dusty Eton library because the next morning you wake up to blood on the sheets and the knowledge that you aren't a child any longer.

You can't unhear the warning now, can't stop the awareness of watching eyes catching your every move. Servants, villagers, local members of the ton. Their eyes scratch and pry, make you shy away from touches that you would have welcomed only yesterday. Staring at the mirror as your new hemlines are marked, you no longer see yourself through your own eyes but through the gaze of everyone else upon you. Does your bodice display your figure too much, cling in a way that might mean your innocent actions become fraught with danger? Is the colour too bold, too inviting?

It takes sometime before your dresses are ready and slowly your wardrobe changes. Your hair too, no longer down and loose, free to tangle in the wind and catch in brambles along with your skirts is held up by too many pins that scratch and itch at your scalp. Headaches are a frequent companion as you adjust to the weight of your crowning glory, as your mother now calls your hair. George only smiles sympathetically from the corners of rooms and sneaks you handfuls of the first summer berries.

Before you can see Conrad — before you can leave the property boundaries even — there are rules. Reams of new rules that your mother and Nanny Celeste instruct you in until your head spins and you can feel the weight of all the eyes on you closing in like iron bars. New ways to talk, to stand, to address others. Distances that have to be observed, body language that now communicates new meanings. Only a handful of days ago you were still in the soft cradle of childhood, now you cannot breathe without some kind of reprimand.

Two weeks since George discovered you playing in the creek, the Oxford butler announces the intentions of the neighbouring young miss to come over for tea later that afternoon. A kind of trepidation follows Conrad around all morning at this clear break in your well established routine. It's been, well, years really since you haven't seen each other for such an extended period of time and never do you go to the trouble of announcing yourself beforehand. The point being, it's odd and Conrad doesn't know what to do with this disruption.

He doesn't think that he's committed any great sin against you. You parted on good terms when he graciously admitted your victory over him, you'd even told him you'd see him soon with a smile. There may have been a few glances from George that Conrad didn't quite understand, but nothing from you. Not even when you broke your word and didn't come round for weeks did he hear anything from you. Only George, who still came around, though albeit sparsely and tight lipped. Perhaps you had gotten ill, caught cold from the water and all the times Conrad had dunked you under. But then George would have mentioned something wouldn't he? So it must have been something Conrad had said or done that had offended you so to ignore him for weeks. He doesn't quite understand what it could have been, he's gone over the day a hundred times to the point where his Geography tutor had rapped him over the knuckles for not paying attention, but still he can't pinpoint any moment of harm. Conrad is prepared to beg for your forgiveness by the time the appointed hour has come around, grimly set in his determination not to drive you away again any further.

It's not the girl he's expecting that walks through the parlour doors. That girl would have had wild hair, a wicked grin that always makes his knees strangely weak, and skirts perpetually on the verge of disarray. This woman, the one that walks through the door, is not her. She wears her hair piled high, her skirts longer, and there's an air of restraint that simply strikes him as wrong, the way it's so carefully painted on. His tongue feels heavy and useless in his mouth at the appearance of his friend who isn't. Before he can manage to speak, Nanny Celeste ducks in through the door behind her and takes up residence in a chair discreetly positioned at the corner of the room he had failed to notice earlier.

"Won't you sit down?" is what comes out first and he curses himself inwardly for how stilted it sounds.

"I— yes, some tea too would be lovely," you answer him, taking hold of the elbow he reflexively offers you and steering him as far away from your chaperone as the room allows.

"I'm sorry, I must have done something to offend—" he starts only to trail off as you begin serving and pouring him tea, a task you've always both taken care of for yourselves.

"Don't be silly," you tell him dismissively, a trace of your usual attitude seeping through. "You haven't done a thing. Mother simply wanted me to start preparing for my debut — it's why George was sent to find me the other day."

"Surely that doesn't take up all of your time?" he wonders, gratefully accepting the teacup and saucer you press into his hands, already perfectly doctored to his liking.

"Well the education of a future duke, though thorough, doesn't exactly prepare one for running a household or becoming a society lady," you say, taking a sip of your own drink and closing your eyes for a moment at the taste, more familiar to you than the blends your family stocks at home. "Mother and Nanny Celeste have to rectify my ignorance before I can make my debut."

"But you're the furthest thing from ignorant!" he exclaims and you shush him, nodding your head to were your unwanted guest sits pretending at disinterest. Quieter, he tries again. "You're not ignorant. You're always showing me up at History and your Latin's flawless."

You stutter for a moment, grip going tight around the cup in your hands at the unexpected praise. "It's not very difficult to beat you at Latin."

"I am rather hopeless at it," he agrees with a grin, at ease with the truth. "It's wasted on me but not on you."

"Being able to read Ovid or translate Seneca doesn't prepare me to run a household or— or how to organize a christening." You flush at the reminder that its not only your ability to host social events that your future husband will be expecting from you. "The expectations are different for me once I'm out in society and I'm woefully unprepared."

"You're worth more than what you don't know," Conrad says simply.

You take another sip of your drink, then shake your head as if to clear it. "Look at us, all gloomy! This is supposed to be a reunion, not a funeral."

"Well—" Conrad starts, putting his tea down on a side table. "When I was sure that I'd done something to make you hate me forever, I figured I would need a rather grand apology."

"Which you know by now is not necessary," you interrupt him.

"Yes — and I'm very glad of that — however, I did still work very hard on my sweeping apology gesture so will you let me finish explaining it to you?" He says exasperatedly.

"Fine, fine, do continue." You wave him on imperiously, struggling not to break your composure. "Thank you. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, was that I decided the only way back into your good graces was to make friends with your other favourite Oxford."

"No!" you gasp.

"After a long, hard campaign involving much bribery and many, many falls on my part, your favourite grey mare Morgana and I have come to an agreement. I bribe her with the finest apples and mints money can buy, and she will suffer my presence on her back just long enough for a loop around the front lawn."

"Oh I would have liked to see you try," you try to stifle your giggles at the mental image behind your hands. You are failing.

"Now, if it would so please you, I think I've got just enough mints left to bribe her into taking us both for a ride today."

"Truly?" you ask, the yearning lancing through you like a physical thing.

"Whenever you'd like," is his patient response.

With only a brief glance over your shoulder at Nanny Celeste, you weigh up your options. Conrad only encourages you with a grin and with a huff you make up your mind.

Putting aside your own tea, you seize his wrist and start dragging him towards the door. "Nanny, we'll be going for a ride on the grounds, we shan't be long!" You call over your shoulder as she starts sputtering and getting out of her seat to follow. "Run!" you hiss at Conrad and the two of you do, laughing all the way.

"Quickly, quickly!" Conrad urges you to hurry up with greeting your favourite lady so he can slip the bridle on before anyone but Shola breaches the stable doors.

Affectionately your roll your eyes and give her whiskery snout one last fond scratch before moving out of his way. He has to grip you tight around the waist to lift you onto her wide back, the ease with which he does it startling you. Not so much children anymore, either of you.

With a practised ease, he swings himself up behind you and urges Morgana into an even trot. Fugitives all, the three of you escape the stable yard just as Nanny Celeste hits the cobblestones. Reaching the tree line, Conrad slows the mare to a walk and you lean back into him, no longer needing to keep your balance so controlled.

"You act like the two of you are enemies, but she seems to like you well enough," you tell him, enjoying the leisurely sway of Morgana's gait.

"I think it helps that I grew up to look more like mother," he confides, for once not wincing over the word. "Morgana was hers first, after all."

"No one said a word," you breathe out horrified. "I wouldn't have interfered if I'd known."

"I'm glad it was you," he says. "You were about the first person she didn't try to take a chunk out of aside from mother, and now, well, me. She wasn't so lonely because of you and I think mother would have wanted that."

The two horseback riders slowly fade into the foliage of the willow trees, too far to make them out as distinct shapes any longer. Orlando doesn't move from his position at the window. A memory, fragile as spun smoke, overlays the scene, when it was Morgana's original owner on the mare and Orlando at her back. The details of that memory are long gone, but the happiness remains bright, standing out against a faded tapestry of many other such moments.

"They make a lovely picture, don't they?" Shola muses, a pointedness to his tone that Orlando steadfastly ignores. "Perhaps there will be a happier ending this time."

"They're both still children," is what Orlando settles on, leaning heavily on his cane. "I don't know that Emily and I were ever that young."

Nanny Celeste, the tale teller she is, immediately relays the whole incident to your parents. You bear their scolding with good grace, well aware that they would never turn down an invitation from a duke, a fact you had made sure to mention Conrad before leaving. Warmth suffuses your entire body at the simple memory of his actions, his prepared apology that had turned out to be one of the most thoughtful things anyone has ever done for you. It gives you the strength to sit through round after round of interminable lessons on the necessity posture and social graces expected of you once out in society.

Conrad's invitation, when it comes, is full of insincere apologies and the reassurance that not only should Nanny Celeste be present, but that Nanny Polly would also be present. For your peace of mind, he had written, and you'd had to stifle giggles at the thought of Polly sternly telling you to sit 5 centimetres further apart.

It's not quite the adventure of last time, but its still time spent in Conrad's company and so its not wasted. Polly very cleverly keeps Nanny Celeste occupied with conversation and so your privacy is slightly less purely for show. There's no more running through fields and chasing each other up trees, but there's still the first of the summer currants sitting on a plate for you.

To your surprise, the Duke himself makes an appearance towards the end of your visit. His eyes skim over you to focus on Conrad, then how close his chosen chair sits to the edge of impropriety, too close to your skirts to be dismissed as accidental.

"Conrad," he says mildly, but Conrad straightens up in his chair at the first hint of censure. "Your cousin Ferdinand has invited us to to visit and I've decided to accept his invitation. We'll leave next week, so I'm afraid your social commitments will need to be cut short for our preparations."

"We're to leave England?" Conrad asks, shocked.

"It would seem so," the Duke answers dryly. His hand tightens around the head of his cane.

Sensing an opportunity, you seize upon your chance. "Your Grace, might I make a claim to your son's time after your return? Only, I've been so worried about my debutante ball, I'm a dismal dancer you see, and Conrad has offered to open the ball with me so that at I'll have enough time to practice with my partner so I shan't make a complete disgrace of myself."

The Duke turns to consider you, head tilting to the side as he re-examines you as though you are some sort of strange creature that has wormed its way into his home and he's not quite sure if its the type of creature you welcome in with open arms or go for the rat poison. Conrad makes a frantically confused face behind his father's back but you simply jut out your chin and stare down the Duke of Oxford.

"It seems like my son will be needing formal wear as well as a day suit," is all he says and inwardly you shout with glee. It's as close to outright permission as you're likely to get but now Conrad will have an ironclad excuse to be there too. Conrad grins at you wild and disbelieving, before quickly schooling it into something just the wrong side of manic to pass for bored disinterest when his father's attention swings back to him. "Perhaps next time you might discuss your intentions with me before making promises to others, Conrad."

"My apologies, father, I only sought to do the right thing," Conrad says insincerely. Seeming to understand that he won't be pulling out anything resembling coherence from either of you, the Duke simply sighs and takes his leave.

"That was terribly clever of you," Conrad says to you in a shocked whisper.

"It seems as though the world is coming to you," is all you have time to get out before Nanny Celeste is dragging you out the door.

Your parents are both appalled at your forwardness and ecstatic that you've secured, if not the Duke's, then his son's attendance at your debut ball. George, of course, is slightly put out at not being able to partner you for the opening dance but he's a far worse dancer than you are and the argument of your poor toes is enough to reluctantly convince him. That does not stop your brother from sending you warning looks everytime the topic is brought up.

Giddiness thrums through you when Shola and the shiny black car finally pulls around to bring you to the estate. Hums and dances along your veins until you can barely sit still through the short ride, peering out the windows as if that would make time any faster. Nanny Celeste's cold hands clamp down around yours to quiet their fidgeting. Startled, you look up to see her lips pursed in a grim expression.

"What did your parents tell you this morning?" she asks and its strange to think that this woman who has been such a constant in your life would think that anything would have changed.

"Nothing," you tell her honestly. "Father hemmed and hawed over the morning paper and mother told me again to mind my lessons." Her hands tighten around yours to the point of pain and you try to jerk them out of reach.

"Don't ask Lord Oxford about his trip," she pleads with you and you draw back, frightened at her insistence. "It's been in all the papers — on the wireless even — Conrad's cousin and his wife are dead. Murdered."

"But that's exactly why I should be asking then!" you insist, naively certain that when it comes to your friend, you would know best.

"He was there!" Celeste hisses. "It was reported in the morning's paper, that the Duke and his son were there when it happened. He was there and more people than his family were killed." You shy away from her intensity, press your back against the curved leather seat of the car, as far away as the cramped interior will let you. She must notice your discomfort, because the hard line of Celeste's shoulders soften. "I don't want you getting hurt because the little lord is grieving. There's— there's bigger things going on, things for kings and ministers to decide and all of it's starting with his cousin's killing. Just don't go poking any bears, yes?"

You nod to appease her serious eyes, then slip out of the car before it fully comes to a complete stop, unnerved by the seriousness of her warning. It's not hard to find the drawing room, you've walked the carpeted halls so many times now, but Celeste's words ring in your ears, chasing you like phantoms. The door swings open too quickly, but beyond it lies Conrad. The pale, papery quality of his skin and the bruise-like darkness beneath his eyes feels like an omen.

"One two three, one two three," the dancing instructor, Monsieur la Roche counts out, clapping his hands to the beat of the Victrola record. "Feel the music, let it move you— no!" he barks out in horror as once again your newly long skirts twist around your ankles and your face roughly gets reacquainted with Conrad's shoulder. Monsieur la Roche takes a deep, fortifying breath before clapping his hands together and saying "Attend! We will take a short break so the young mademoiselle is not sent 'ome in pieces, yes?"

With a heavy sigh, you throw yourself into the nearest chair.

"You're regretting asking me to be your partner now, aren't you?" Conrad tries to joke but it falls flat, the skittish look in his eyes and hands tucked deep into his pockets betraying him.

"Any shortcomings in this are entirely mine," you reply honestly. The sweat on your brow has been caused by your many, many mistakes after all. "Do sit down, you're making me nervous with all your looming around. Having to look all the way up at you is going to make me dizzy." That last bit isn't strictly speaking true, but it gets him to listen to you all the same.

"At this rate I'll have you backing out on me, and then where will I be left? Dancing with George as he treads on my toes at my first ball?" You sigh wistfully. "I'd much rather have the dashing future duke thank you very much even if I now need to be the one to mind your toes."

"Oh I'm 'dashing' now am I?" he remarks and you freeze. That part wasn't meant to be said out loud.

"Purely the shine of your future title of course, how else am I meant to make an impression? My family's own poor standing or my insignificant charms?" you scoff to cover your embarrassment. "I'd much rather face the horde with you at my side. It's much less frightening to face my first ball knowing you'll be doing it all for the first time with me too. Isn't that what you've always wanted too? The first step moving into the wider world." Horrifyingly, your attempt to distract him and cheer him up only intensify his earlier pallor.

"My first foray outside of England wasn't very successful, by all accounts," Conrad says wistfully, gazing off to some unseen memory.

Drat. Double drat. Don't go poking bears indeed.

"I was sorry to hear of your loss," you tell him gently, tentatively reaching out to squeeze his forearm. The sudden contact brings him back from his reverie but the memories don't dissipate.

"I was there, when it happened. Well when it happened twice."

"You needn't tell me anything you don't want to," you offer him the out but he doesn't seem to notice it.

"There was a bomb—" he begins, and your hold around his arm instantly tightens at the thought of how close to death he came. "—it came at us so quickly and I didn't— I didn't think. I just, just knocked it out of the way I suppose. It all happened so quickly…"

"That sounds pretty successful to me," you reassure him, still not quite able to reconcile the boy whose arm you still clutch and the story he's telling.

"No but you don't see!" He grows agitated, throws off your arm to stand and pace, running his fingers distractedly through his hair. Celeste catches your attention out of the corner of your eye and you shake your head at her to reassure her.

"There were people standing right where I knocked the bomb," he says at last, the confession pulled from his lips reluctantly. Once the floodgates have opened, he can't seem to bottle the words back up inside. "If I'd just been quicker, if I'd been better, no one else would be hurt or— or dead." He whispers that word, so taken up by the guilt and grief that he barely notices you gently tugging at his wrist to sit next to you, or the way his body curves around you, a flower turned to its sun. "I could have saved them but I didn't."

Gently you lace your fingers with his. "You're 17 years old, Conrad. There were grown men there that didn't do what you did, and what you did was try and save the lives of those around you. To save yourself. That's plenty enough heroics for anyone. Who's to say more people wouldn't have gotten hurt if you hadn't acted as you did?"

He grips your hand tightly and pointedly doesn't look at you. You pretend you don't notice the shimmer in his eyes.

"Besides, do you know how put out I'd be if you let yourself get blown up before you'd kept your promise?" You squeeze his hand back. "I'd find a way to be the first living person to haunt a ghost do you hear me?"

He gives you a watery smile and its the most precious thing you've seen, far more precious than any of the jewels kept safe in your mother's jewellery box or any of the paintings by the grand masters hanging in the halls. Slowly you lift a hand and brush his dishevelled hair back into place.

"Quelle surprise! If these uptight English dances will not get you moving to the music, perhaps something with a little more passion, non?" Monsieur la Roche's voice in your ear has you jumping back in surprise, the feeling that you'd been caught doing something illicit making heat rush to your cheeks. "Up, up! Me'mselle Celeste, if you could put on the record marked 'tango', we shall be very well set I think!"

The dancing master urges the two of you up and out of your seats. You manage to throw one helpless, terrified look at Conrad before the two of you are being set into position.

"Are they meant to be standing that close?" Celeste asks, wringing her hands nervously.

"But of course! They will need to be much closer if he's to lead her properly." The overly energetic man fairly bounces around the two of you, correcting an elbow here, pushing a body closer there, fixing the direction of a foot. Celeste is likely looking on in pure horror, only you wouldn't know because your entire field of vision is completely taken up by Conrad.

It's a much closer hold than any of the dances you've been instructed in before, no chaste hands touching before spinning apart like any of the group dances or the comparatively softer stance of the waltz. He's instructed to hold you close, and he does. A few taps of the dance master's cane and his chest is pressed against yours.

"Your left leg, bring it closer, yes?" Monsieur la Roche calls to Conrad. "The gentleman must lead the legwork and how is she to know if your body does not tell her?"

Conrad grimaces, then does as he's told. You struggle to contain the rising heat in your cheeks and the way your heart has started racing even though the dance hasn't started yet. Can he tell how clammy your palms have gotten, you wonder.

"But his leg is pressed up against her-- her unmentionables!" Celeste gasps. "It's indecent!"

"Pah! Indecent, not so indecent that her Majesty, Queen Mary, did not request a performance of the tango only weeks ago!" The Frenchman sniffs at the perceived attack on his good taste. "Now, one-two one-two one…" He starts clapping out the beat of the music and barking out directions that the two of you struggle to follow.

Thankfully, the instructions are enough to distract you from the press of hands against yours, the warm weight of the body moving with you, as you simply try not to fall over. Oddly enough, the more martial beat and the emphasis on footwork straightens the two of you out into something almost passing for competent. Not quite gliding across the floor, but at least not tripping over imaginary obstacles anymore. Really all the credit should go to Conrad, holding you steady until you found your footing couldn't have been easy but he's barely stumbled since figuring out the basics. In fact you barely move in his arms at all, he's figured out how to hold you so still.

When Monsieur la Roche finally deems you have learned to master the music or some such thing and finally calls an end to the lesson, sweat trickles down the back of your neck and sticks the baby hairs framing your face to your forehead. Your hair is escaping from the careful chignon your maid had pinned it into only that morning and you're panting for breath in the most unladylike fashion possible but you cannot bring yourself to care a whit.

A hand thrusts a glass of cool water in front of you and gulp it down with a groan having never tasted anything sweeter.

"Steady on," Conrad mumbles, catching you by the elbow and leading you to a seat. "Plenty more where that came from, only don't make yourself ill."

Leaning your head back with a thunk, you simply groan again. "Tell me that this will all be worth it?"

"I— yes, it'll be worth it."

It's hard to tell, and often you've only got the cheerful words of the dancing master to tell you otherwise, but you do improve. Slowly. Enough that you're no longer worried about breaking Conrad's toes or tripping over the hem of your dress. You dance with Conrad three times a week and though the tango has been strictly stricken off the set list at your mother's insistence — can't have everyone thinking you're a girl of loose morals from the start — Monsieur la Roche still insists on practising it. A small, buried part of you is glad of it, glad that the chance to dance and twirl laughingly across the floor hasn't been fully hemmed in the way all of your other small freedoms have.

When Conrad misplaces his copy of Propertius, it's with a tight smile that you offer him yours. You won't need it for much longer after all, not when your life will be taking a far different direction.

There's a single moment when you know there's no going back. Whereas before there was some sort of nebulous sense that all of this was temporary, a mistake that everyone would soon realize and all would go back to the way it had once been. Now, now there is no sense that childhood is something that will ever be given back to you.

It had been a rare, rare moment when your mother had had time for you. Or rather, you had been made to make time for her. She does this sometimes, comes sweeping through the echoing hallways of your life, leaving what she sees as order and you see as suffocation behind her. Her way of showing her love, you know, but it never ceases to make the fabric of your dresses draw too tightly across your lungs.

On this day, she had swept into your bedroom, trailing her lady's maid behind her as a darkly clothed shadow. She had gone straight to your linens chest and tutted in disapproval.

"We'll have to commission entirely new underthings for her trousseau, these simply will not do," she sighs, and her maid hastens to scribble down her words in a little notebook hanging from her chatelaine like they were something holy. "Honestly dear, why didn't you say anything when the seamstress was already here to alter your chemises?" your mother admonishes you.

You sigh, and put aside your book. "I wasn't aware that I needed anything beyond what I already had."

"Bed linens can wait until we know in which bed you'll end up," she remarks offhandedly and your blood runs cold. You can't feel your fingers. "We'll start with your underthings—" she holds up a comfortably well-worn set of drawers, "—as these won't reflect well on you at all. Two, no three, sets of nightgowns with Valencienne lace. Better to have too many in case your husband feels the need to tear one or two off of you. Four sets of drawers in semi-sheer batiste, four chemises trimmed with broderie anglaise and Valencienne lace…"

It's a kind of cool, detached horror that gets you through the rest of your mother's affection. Her unwavering certainty at the course of your life, tied up and packaged so neatly to improve your family's situation, to improve George's future. You can see it now, a future where your only choices are the colour of the drapes and who to invite over for tea.

"You don't even know if I'll have a proposal by the end of the year," you interrupt her list-making, woolly-headed. Something about the quality of the lighting makes the room appear not quite real.

"Oh there's no use being pessimistic," your mother chides you. "Between your father and I, we'll see you well set up for the rest of your life. Oh!" she exclaims, having caught sight of the one doll you had kept through her previous purges. "What's that ratty old thing doing in your room? Collins," she instructs her maid, "—take it away, the church should still be collecting goods for the poor."

"Wait!" you cry, suddenly possessed with the desperate need to preserve at least this. "Please don't." The doll's cloth body crushes feebly against your chest.

"Darling, really, you're much too old for such things," your mother says as she advances towards you.

"I'll—" you cast around for some sort of excuse. The solid wood panelling of the wardrobe hits your back. "—I'll pass it on to my children, just this one. Please?"

"Now, now, let's not get all worked up over some silly old doll." She reaches for it but you won't let go. "Besides, any husband good enough for you will be able to buy as many new dolls for your children as you desire to give them." She tugs again and your arms go limp. The doll is handed over to Collins, along with the rest of your hopes.

Funny how a single moment marks the end of one part of your life and the beginning of another. All it takes is one successful curtsey before the right person and suddenly you're a woman now. All it takes is one shot and suddenly the world is teetering on the edge of war. A single, silly remark and suddenly the past is a foreign land to you.

George is the one to walk you into the ballroom, but it's the sight of Conrad that settles you back into your skin. There must be something wrong with your eyes because as soon as you see his fair head turning towards you, the nerves quiet and you can no longer the blood-heady thrum of your heartbeat in your ears. He grins, a small private thing, but meant for you nonetheless.

Somehow, you float down the stairs and into his arms just as the first strains of the opening waltz begin. Monsieur la Roche must be proud, you think half deliriously, because you haven't trod on Conrad's toes once.

"What are the odds on Georgie threatening me to a duel, do you think?" Conrad interrupts your spiralling thoughts and suddenly you can no longer float by on the self-deception that this is any other dance lesson.

"What?" you ask puzzled. "Why on earth would he want to do that for?"

"Here, when we swing by the front corner of the room next, see for yourself," Conrad tells you. "He looks right about ready to strangle me in my sleep. Are you sure he doesn't mind not being the one to open the ball with you?"

"It's a little too late to be expressing regrets now," you reply, finally catching sight of George's scowling face. He's all dark thunderclouds hanging low on the horizon and you can't possibly think why. You're behaving yourself, exactly the way he told you to, acting the part of the grown woman you can't escape. "He's probably planning to scare off all my dance partners at some point tonight and claim his brotherly sense of duty drove him to it."

"He'll be very busy then," Conrad says, spinning you across the floor in a way that would have you seething with jealousy if he were to do the same with any other partner. "It looks like almost everyone can't take their eyes off of you."

"What— no!" you say aghast, "I refuse. Absolutely not, no thank you please."

"You can't refuse to be admired!" he laughs at your indignation. "Besides, you can't blame everyone for being enamoured with you, they've only seen you look dazzling from afar, you haven't broken anyone else's toes or shown them up to be ridiculous yet."

"I have not broken any of your toes!" you whisper shout at him, infuriated at the blatant lies your best friend is spewing.

"Well sometimes I wish you had instead of simply bruising them over and over again," he snarks back. For a second, one single, tiny second, you're tempted to stomp on his perfectly polished shoes. Conrad must catch the glint in your eye because he hurriedly leaves the subject alone. "What, no protests about making me look ridiculous?"

"But its so laughably easy to do?" you reply, unable to stop the grin spreading across your face."Really, whoever thought the hundred years war was exactly 100 years long?"

"Then they should have called it the 116 years war then," he pouts, and then bows as the music ends. The rest of the room comes rushing in, the weight of hundreds of eyes settling back onto your skin. Conrad offers you his elbow to escort you back to your family and you balk at the thought of re-entering the crowd that now appears to a solid, heaving mass.

"Let's find Georgie, and then some refreshments," he offers, putting off the greedy eyed mamas and potential suitors for a moment longer.

"Oxford," George greets Conrad stiffly and you roll your eyes at his posturing.

"Do stop being off putting George, or you'll never find anyone willing to dance with you, let alone marry you," you tease him. "Help me find a topiary to hide behind until Conrad can find us some refreshments?"

With one final dark look in Conrad's direction, George offers you his arm. "There's an awful statue of what I think is supposed to be a Grecian urn that most young people seem to be avoiding."

The reason for why the urn — and it really is quite a tacky piece of flower arranging — is so abandoned, is that most of the society mamas, including your own, seem to have claimed it to hold their own court. It's too late now to find another spot — a crowd this thick Conrad's liable to never find you again. So instead you glare up at your brother who is looking increasingly embarrassed at his blunder as the two of you stand there and awkwardly hope on whatever lucky star is passing overhead that no one will spot you. It's when you catch you name among the rest of the frivolous gossiping that you start to rethink how quickly you'd misjudged your brother's choice of hiding spot.

"…is so lucky, isn't she?" titters one lady you don't recognise. "Not really fair to the others to share an opening ball with her when she's barely out in society and already secured the attention of the Marquess Bolebec, next Duke of Oxford."

Your face burns as you realize they're talking about your friendship with Conrad. They make it all sound so— so mercenary, as if even in dirty smocks and with a perpetually runny nose you had been intending to seduce him.

"Its not so set in stone as all of that," and that is clearly the voice of your mother trying to demure but only succeeding in sounding smug. "Besides, her father and I wouldn't want to punish her for finding a good match by depriving her of her first season."

"No," sighs a third voice. "But it really is unfair — the boy's not even of age, hasn't entered the marriage mart at all and he's already been snapped up so quickly. Why, if he only had a chance to meet my granddaughter…"

"There's plenty of eligible young men coming out into society this year," your mother snaps back sharpish. Defensive of her territory. Your fingers dig into your brother's arm claw-like. The soft dew of exertion dappling the back of your neck has turned to shards of ice.

" Oh yes!" chimes in the first voice. "Gertrude do let me introduce you and your granddaughter to a dear friend of the family, Lucius Thomassen. An American, but his family were Dutch patroons before the Civil War so absolutely no class but the family's made a fortune in iron and steel…"

Stiffly you turn your head towards your brother. Whatever ghastly expression has plastered itself to your face must make him regret his trickery because he tries to apologize.

"Don't," you cut him off in a strangled voice you don't recognize. "Is this what everyone thinks? About me and the 'eligible Marquess Bolebec'?" Stepping behind the urn must have been a step into a slightly off-kilter different universe.

"I didn't know how to just tell you, if you'd even believe me," he confesses.

"So, what, you decided that cryptic hints and warnings would be kinder?" Hysteria is bubbling in your throat. Only the weight of your perfect coiffed hair is keeping you tethered to the earth.

"And Conrad?" you ask sharply. "Does he know?"

"I don't know," George tells you honestly, a slump to his shoulders. "Some days with the way he acts, I think there's no way he isn't at least a little aware, but then others…you're both so young is the problem."

"According to society, I'm an adult and he'll be one soon too," you say mechanically, throat dry. Is it fear that maybe he doesn't care for you or that he might actually return the feelings you've only just started to realize have been growing in your chest for years now that have you so unbalanced?

"Do you feel like one? Ready to take on all the responsibility that comes with that?" you shake your head. "You shouldn't — neither of you — should have this hanging over you when you aren't even certain of who you are yet." George sighs heavily. "But I worry that if Conrad doesn't propose by the end of the season, Mother and Father will find some other eligible young bachelor that meets all their standards for what you should want out of life instead of taking your opinion into consideration at all."

"So that's it then? Just one—"

"Excuse me," cuts in the flat tones of an American.

In unison, you turn with your brother to face the untimely interruption that had the gall to butt into what was very clearly a private conversation. The American grins too wide, too many of his teeth on display for it not to be unsettling. He looks between the two of you expectantly and when neither of you pick up the conversational bait, he soldiers on alone.

"I saw you taking a turn around the room earlier and thought it'd be lovely to dance with such a fine young lady," the man says still smiling.

"One usually waits to be introduced first, before asking a young woman to dance," George retorts icily.

"Oh but where are my manners? I'm Lucius Thomassen of the New York Thomassens, current guest of the Viscountess of Tewkesbury. Would the young lady care to dance?" He bows and extends a hand gaily. You simply stare at his audacity.

"Then it should be the Viscountess doing the introductions, not you," George gets out through gritted teeth.

"Do forgive me, in America we're not nearly so formal with all of this nonsense. Why, if two people find themselves to be agreeable to one another, they simply say how do you do."

"I'll pardon your ignorance this once," you decide, if only to hurry the man along so you can dismiss him.

"And how very kind you are too," he says, snatching up your arm and nearly pulling you bodily along with him towards the dance floor. Helpless you look back at George who is fast fading into the throng of people, slack jawed with shock at the man's impudence.

"I may have agreed to forgive your lack of manners but I most certainly did not agree to a dance," you tell him frostily, even as you assume the starting formation of the quadrille. You nod and smile stiffly at the partners joining you, unwilling to appear rude before strangers.

"Yes but what a shame it would have been to have left a beautiful young woman on the wall when she could have been showing off her considerable accomplishment on the dance floor," is all he has time to reply before the movements of the dance pick up and you have a reasonable enough excuse to ignore him in favour of concentrating on the dance.

Conrad regrets deciding he could brave the refreshments table alone. Then again, for your own sake, it's probably better that you aren't suffering through this as well. His father has long since disappeared off to a smoking room to sit and read through the energetics of the society mamas and young folk. Conrad will have to ask his father how he managed to slip away so seamlessly, even with his bum leg. He'd really like to know the trick of it because he's been mobbed left and right as soon as he'd left you with George.

Very politely, with the kind of restraint Shola had — beaten? Sparred? Inculcated through the passing on of martial teachings? — struggled to get him to understand, he'd carefully disentangled himself from the mobs of salivating mamas and debutantes with mercenary eyes and found his way to the punch bowl. Well, more like the line leading to the punch bowl. Honestly, who organises these things so poorly? Trying not to betray his nervous energy, he settles for looking around the room to find you. The sort of Grecian urn is as ugly as George intimated it to be, but there you are, tucked away safely with George with no buzzing gnats to make your already fragile evening worse. That is of course, the moment the woman waiting next in line to him chooses to speak up.

"Why, its the young , Marquess Bolebec, isn't it?" With a pasted on grimace of a smile, Conrad turns to greet the latest in a long string of 'new aquaintances'. "The last time I saw you, you were a squalling infant in your mother's arms at your christening. My how you've grown!" The speaker, an old battle axe of a woman is dripping in diamonds. Conrad has to blink away the after burn of their sparkle before he can begin to make out her vaguely familiar face.

"Lady Sedgewick!" he finally recalls. "I hadn't expected to see you here—" he scrambles for the etiquette lessons Polly had so obstinately driven into him when he'd confirmed his intent to follow through with his 'promise' to see you through your debut. "My father and I were very sorry to hear of your husband's passing."

"The old goat was much better off passing onto a more heavenly realm," she waves off his condolences with a sad smile. "And I expect you hadn't thought to run into me at all seeing as you've never come round calling. No, my niece is in her third season as her mother was too useless to see her into a marriage during the first two."

The line shuffles forward. "I wish you the both all the best in your endeavours," Conrad tells her rather sincerely.

"Ah, but look at you, such a dashing young man. Your mother would be very proud you know," Lady Sedgewick says and Conrad has to choke back unexpected tears at the words. "And such a darling lady friend too, to have opened the ball with."

Instinctively Conrad searches you out with his eyes but you aren't behind the urn anymore. No, George is cutting a rather desperate swath towards the dance floor and you are engaged rather passionately in a dance with a man Conrad doesn't know. He can feel his brow furrowing but he doesn't quite have it in himself to play at the mask of bored socialite.

"…does the charming lady and her dance partner intend to announce their engagement soon?" Lady Sedgewick probes coyly. Too distracted at the sight of you twirling in and out of the hands of some stranger, Conrad doesn't catch her meaning.

"I wouldn't know, I'm not privy to that information," he answers her rather shortly. "Oh Lady Sedgewick I do believe that's your drinks." Rather abruptly he ushers the drinks into her hands, the crystal chilled from the drinks clammy against his palms. He barely remembers to gather the refreshments intended for you before striding across the ballroom as quickly as his long legs will carry him, the tails of his jacket flaring out behind him.

He reaches George just as you do, trailing your unwelcomed guest. With his dark hair heavy with pomade, he gives off the unavoidable impression of oiliness.

"Lord Bolebec, your timing with the refreshments is impeccable," you greet him with palpable relief and any irritation drains out of him. Conrad makes sure to brush your gloved fingertips as he hands your glass over and you give him a knowing look that says you know exactly what he's up to. George has to clear his throat for Conrad to remember to hand over his drink too.

"Well, aren't you going to introduce us?" interrupts the apparently American fellow — if his accent is to be believed. "I remember you being quite the stickler for that."

His eye twitching noticeably, George says, "Marquess Bolebec, may I introduce Mr. Lucius Thomassen of New York and current guest of the Viscountess Tewkesbury. Mr. Thomassen, the Marquess of Bolebec, the next Duke of Oxford."

"Well it's been very nice to meet you, Your Grace—" Conrad is so caught off guard by the incorrect address that he very nearly misses the next part, "—but shouldn't we get back to dancing, my lady?"

You knock back your drink in a very unladylike matter before pushing the cup into George's unsuspecting hands. "Unfortunately my next dance has been promised to the Marquess." Luckily Conrad does not miss his cue to offer you his arm. The feeling of your arm resting ever so delicately over his has him standing taller.

"Oh, perhaps then the next one? I'm sure your dance card couldn't have filled up so quickly," he tries again, smiling that same tooth-baring grin.

"I'm afraid it is completely full, Mr. Thomassen," false regret dripping from you words.

"We really should be on our way if we don't want to miss out on the waltz entirely," Conrad adds very unhelpfully.

The slower tempo of the waltz proves a welcome respite to you both. Against all expectation, it's the dance floor with all its prying eyes that is the most peaceful part of the evening. You close your eyes, just for a moment, trusting that Conrad will be there keep you standing.

"That was a very interesting fellow," he remarks, breaking you out of the moment.

"Who, Mr. Thomassen?" you reply with surprise. "He's very…American," is what you settle for, not wanting to ruin the moment with your complaints.

"I hear New York is beautiful in the autumn," he says and you give him the Look, the one that says I know you're up to something and I don't know what but quit it while you're still ahead.

"Heard from who? We know practically all the same people and none of them have ever been across the Atlantic." you ask him accusingly.

Sheepish, he can't meet your eyes. "Well, I read it in a book."

"You can read?" you tease him. "I had no idea from the way you butchered poor Keats' poetry only last month."

"Well of course everything I've ever learned has come out of a book — I've never been allowed anywhere or to meet anyone interesting. How else am I to know anything about the world when my only chance to see it ended on such a spectacular note?" There's a high red flush to his cheeks. It can't be exertion, the dance is much to sedate for that, and the room isn't that warm even if he is wearing full black tie.

"You'll see it all someday," you reassure him. "You'll probably cross off all the places in the atlas and then some. But home's not an entirely bad place to be either. I'm sure you'd miss it were you to leave."

"Would you ever want to leave here? Leave home, I mean?" Conrad asks, leading you into the last rotation of the waltz.

It's not your family house with the cold hallways and closed doors that 'home' conjures for you. Its the warmth of the Oxford Estate, trailing after George and Conrad down to Shola's workshop as Polly and Celeste chase you down twisting staircases, the first burst of summer fruit across your tongue and mud caked on your knees. It's Conrad crowing with glee when you translate a passage faster than he can get through it or begging you with pleading eyes for the last of the tea scones.

"No— I, I think I'd be content to not to leave at all, not without a very good reason."

Time turns into an awful blur, late nights of dancing and talking to people who only want the smallest version of yourself. Food so rich it turns your stomach and enough alcohol that you never feel fully sober has you in a constant daze. Celeste has taken to keeping you bed bound until your feet toughen up and stop blistering at the end of each night. Every morning you hiss at her routine of swaddling your feet in clean cotton and poultices but you cannot deny its efficacy. And every moment like a pebble in your shoe, you can't get rid of the thoughts of Conrad and marriage.

Isn't that the answer to all your problems? To that feeling in your stomach whenever he compliments you freely, a remedy to the slow syrup that crawls down your spine when he holds you close to dance? A husband that won't curtail your choices, would celebrate the paths you want to take even if they lead you away from the receiving rooms of the aristocracy and up a tree with a book. Isn't this what you want? Is it what he wants?

Something stops you from bringing the matter up with him outright. For one, there's never a private moment to ask, not between parlour teas and soirees, crowded dance floors and tittering audiences. Too many eager faces to waiting to watch you break your heart So you swallow it down, your love, your questions about the future, let the world spin around you into a haze of music and layered silk taffetas. Champagne bubbles burst under your nose and sweet cordials slip down your throat easily, coating the unease that's taken up permanent residence in your stomach.

It's an undercurrent that seems to be catching. Murmurs of unrest on the Continent weave their way through every gathering, fans covering gossiping mouths, eyes darting. Fewer men — fathers, uncles, husbands — attend, closeting themselves away in smoking rooms, sucking down fat cigars and rumbling over the latest headlines. The whole world is trembling on the edge of some great precipice while the balls whirl gaily on, society celebrating even as the ground is already crumbling beneath their dancing shoes. What are your concerns to compare to all of that?

A hot, sticky night in August has most of the room lamenting about the damnable heat. It's a room mainly devoid of men, all of them occupied at Parliament as the whole world dances right up to the edge. Conrad and George have been stuck to your side the whole evening, unwilling to let you out of their sight as the strange, high pitched drone of fear pitches ever higher. Music somehow doesn't seem appropriate. There is very little interest in dancing, young people clustering around strong drinks with hushed conversation, sweat beading on brows and upper lips. Mr. Thomassen buzzes around, his flat American accent cutting through the hushed murmurs, but you can't care to pay attention. Conrad's arm and the cold glass in your hand are the only thing keeping you present.

A sudden commotion at the front of the room breaks through the tension.

"Quiet! Quiet!" calls out the host. "The Prime Minister's making an announcement on the wireless!"

The crowd surges towards the front of the room and the butler wheeling in the wireless on a tea cart. You're almost crushed by the surge of people, all thoughts of decorum evaporating at the prospect of the unthinkable. George and Conrad do their best to protect you but instead you end up wedged between their chests, struggling not to get any lip rouge on the front of Conrad's shirt.

"Quiet!" comes the cry again, and the crowd falls silent.

"…received his passport, and His Majesty’s Government has declared to the German Government that a state of war exists between Great Britain and Germany as from 11pm on August 4th.”

#conrad oxford x reader #conrad oxford #sunnie writes 🌻#cut all the flowers series #divider by saradika-graphics

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undergroundbillions · 6 months ago

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I SEEN YOUR POST,,, AND I CAME!! i have a couple of questions abt some history with merchandise and whatever (unless you guys made a post abt the hallmark raggedies alread) ! :)

1. So do you guys have any history or insight of the Hallmark raggedies? If so id like to hear, im a big fan of the hallmark branch of the raggedies!!!

2. Do you guys have any fun hcs? If so what are they!

My example of one is: i hc Ann making dresses and skirts for her friends!! Or even Henny hating bugs but he collects them for his bug collection lol

3. Why do you guys even care about Rag Dolly in the first place? What made you guys want to find it AND want to revive it? Was it a personal project or better yet a fan project put up together by fans (aka the mods aka aka you guys, i think unless im wrong lol)

You guys are cool and im excited to hear any other updates on the revival of Rag Dolly, yall are so cool and talented,, can't wait to see what you guys do in the future!!! Keep it up guyss!

Ok! Here we go!

We don't know much specifically about Hallmark. At that point, Bobbs-Merrill was in charge of the licensing of Raggedy Ann images and books, while the family was still in charge of the dolls. Hallmark licensing began in 1969 and continued throughout the 70's. They published the cardbooks, which came with tiny dolls (which for licensing purposes don't actually count as dolls, but rather as other toys). And the pop-up-book records, stationary, and lots of random little things. Big company buys lucrative licensing and puts it on everything for a few years, that's the story!

Oh man when I ask for hc questions I mostly mean ones *about* headcanons, I'm bad at open ended questions like that lol. But here's a few I've been thinking about recently: I think Marcella has regular fainting spells when she gets exhausted. This doesn't really transfer to the dream but it happens in real life. Ann and Andy's seams and faces are all wobbly because Poppa's too often drunk to sew straight lines. This isn't a hc because technically it's canon to Gibson's writing but Poppa made Marcella a little toy boat from wood scraps and that's where the inspiration for the boat in her dreams comes from.

What got most of us interested in the musical was the video by CollinLooksBack going over what little was known about the show at that time (2019). At that point, we knew about the movie already. If you want to know more about the little details of the time before RARE specifically was founded, I've written up a timeline on our website! (And I plan on expanding it) Idk what the difference is between a personal project and a fan project in this case? We thought the show was interesting, and liked the music, so we decided to start looking for it! The organizers are all theater people, the majority of us went to school for theater and plan on working in it. We knew we had the background and resources to make an actual revival happen. Specifically the founder, Gwyn, who has certain legal and industry connections that are making things go a lot smoother. But really, we never thought we'd get this far, we weren't thinking this deeply about it. It was 2021, we all needed something to do and people to talk to. None of the organizers knew each other, though a few early members were mutuals from the 1977 movie and other fandoms. It just slowly got more serious and we continue to take it more and more seriously the farther we get. Most importantly, all of the main founders have deep personal connections to the story. We have all suffered illness and loss of loved ones. I mean I literally discovered the show like two months after my mom died I don't think you can get much more fated than that. We like the show, it means something to us, and we think it deserves a second chance in it's actual intended form and not as a huge broadway spectacle. It's literally still popular in Russia, why shouldn't it be popular here?

-𝕸𝖔𝖉 𝕲𝖊��𝖊𝖗𝖆𝖑 𝕯.

#thanks for the ask!#raggedy ann revival effort #raggedy ann musical #rag dolly #rag dolly musical #raggedy ann broadway #if anyone says sorry for your loss or anything like that im exploding #im serious #dont fuckin do it #you dont need to try to console me actually i really dont want you to

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languajix · 5 months ago

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WIP Weekend - FFR Fashion Show Theme

Time for an unusually long WIP Weekend snippet! In honor of the Fandom Family Reunion's current theme, 'Fashion Show,' here is a bit from a little Hold Every Memory side story I'm working on that I currently refer to as the duckling story.

@tmnt-fandom-family-reunion Cabin 14; just me!

You may remember this bit from 'Cause Your Future's Ready to Shine:

Here is a snippet from the duckling story that revisits that in more detail:

---

He had been vibing with his eyes closed, foot bopping to the music, when a few impatient little taps on his arm startled him out of his almost-meditation. He nudged one side of his headphones off his ear and propped himself up on his elbow. "What's up, little birdie?"

"We're gonna make you pretty!" Alicia declared, tugging at his forearm insistently, and okay. That was that. He dropped his phone into his pocket, rolled to his feet, and followed obediently, unthinkingly, just the slightest bit dumbstruck as she gripped his wrist in her own tiny hands and towed him along behind.

Pretty.

When was the last time he'd really let himself feel pretty?

Huh.

The living room was relatively quiet; most of the kids were in the gym with Raph, watching him punch stuff. All except Alicia, who was herding him towards the living area, and Belle, who was already sprawled out on the couch with assorted bags and plastic containers pried open around her.

Alicia pulled him to sit in front of said couch, facing outwards, and once he'd followed her unspoken direction she patted him on the shell like an obedient pet, and he snorted quietly, leaning back.

He felt small hands grasping under his mask tails and pulling them behind him, splayed out over the curve of his shell, and he resigned himself to being played with for a while like a big green doll. It was cute. He was glad that Belle seemed to be coming out of her shell, enough to be goofing around like this with a friend.

The girls whispered between each other, interspersed with happy giggles. Someone began tugging on his mask tails. He tried to relax into the music coming from his one headphone still over his ear, and to ignore the way the memory of the word pretty still ignited something small but warm in his chest. 'Pretty' wasn't for turtles like him, not with their whole… situation. The Foot stuff and. You know. The green. The muscles. He'd tried to enjoy a few stolen moments wearing skirts or dresses when they were younger, play it off all goofy and unashamed, but all of that bravado had crumpled under the weight of loss and fear and that awful numbness.

He barely flinched in surprise as a couple of bead necklaces slipped over his head, hitting his snout with a plastic clatter, leaving him blinking and shaking his head a little to dislodge them until they settled properly around his neck and over the front of his plastron.

"Sorry," Alicia whispered, and she and Belle broke into more silly laughter.

"And what do we have here?" Raph passed by with a water bottle in his hand and a tiny duckling in one arm, all sweaty and gross from his workout.

"Your ducklings are making me pretty, Raphy!" Mike grinned up at the squinted curious look he was being shot, trying to come off as wholly confident despite the tiniest little self-conscious thrill running down to the tips of his fingers. He didn't know why being pretty was suddenly just a little embarrassing, why it made him feel strangely vulnerable.

"Well then," Raph rumbled, and Mike could hear him walking around behind the couch. Normally this might be time for a rude comment, something about how you're gonna need a lot more than that to make this bonehead pretty, and Mike braced himself for it with a lot more steel than that kind of silly comment perhaps warranted, but Raph only hummed.

"You got a good start, there, but I bet we can make it a little more even," Raph said, and Mike couldn't remember the last time he'd heard his brother sound that utterly soft and gentle. He felt more tugging on his mask tails as Raph did… something to them. He still wasn't entirely sure what.

"Am I gonna be a pretty princess, Raph?" Mike asked, joking but also kind of not.

"The prettiest, Mike," Raph assured him with an audible grin in his voice, tone teasing but not mean, and Mike was so thankful that they were finally, finally back to a point that Raph could joke like this. "I'm gonna have to fight all the knights of the kingdom away with a stick. Lemme at 'em."

"Does that make you the dragon, then?" Mike mused. "Protecting the princess up in the tower?"

"Y'know what? I'm okay with that. Can't beat fire breath and a lotta sharp teeth, and of course the scales," Raph tugged Mike's mask tails one more time. "There we go. Lookin' better?"

"Yeah!" Belle exclaimed. "Thank you, Mister Raph!"

"None of this 'mister' stuff, okay kid? Just Raph."

"Okay Mister Raph," the ducklings chorused, and did Mike say that he loved them? Because he did. Raph's ducklings were awesome. He could tell Raph agreed by the way he harrumphed grumpily.

The girls kept playing with Mike's mask for a while, eventually urging him to take the headphones off completely. They snapped a few hair clips onto the edge of his mask - and ow, that kind of hurt - and then Alicia pretended to comb the top of his head with a blunt plastic comb, which he could feel through the mask as a sort of light massage. That, along with a smattering of small fingers pressing against his shell so lightly that he could barely feel it, was actually sort of calming. Like a clumsy little spa trip.

Leo walked through at one point just to eye him over with his mouth pressed flat, looking like he wanted to say something but was carefully restraining himself. This is a waste of time, probably. Mike stuck out his tongue, daring him to be anything less than complimentary and supportive in front of the kids. Leo walked on.

(…Leo was still a work in progress, though they were finally starting to get somewhere, thank shell. He'd turned into a bit of a phantom in the lair since the kids were first dropped off, but Mike wasn't giving up his hard-won ground just because Leo was a little nervous around some pint-sized pipsqueaks.)

"Okay, we're done!" Alicia cheered as Belle slid his mask tails back over his shoulder. "Go look! Look!"

He slid to his feet and obligingly puttered over to the mirror on the wall nearby; one of the many cracked, tarnished, over-used and under-loved things they'd filled the lair with when they realized they'd be having human guests.

It was as he suspected, kind of - the sort of little girl makeover with plastic baubles and bright colors, beauty in the playfulness and simplicity rather than in any sort of elegance. Strings of beads clicking against his plastron, hair clips attached to the edges of his mask…

…but his mask tails. Oh. He stared, for a long, long second, a stuck record, a caught breath.

The girls had used a purple ribbon to turn his tails into a braid, with beads interspersed through the many loops. They'd somehow managed to stick to his family's colors - blue, red, purple. White. Yellow, green.

(I carry you with me everywhere I go, he had told Donnie, once, when he caught Donnie looking at his purple painted nails. He knew Donnie loved it because Donnie gave him one of those rare quiet smiles, and the astral plane had warmed like a breaking dawn.)

Looking at himself in the mirror, wearing the colors of Donnie, of Raph, of Dad, April, Casey… he felt right, he felt happy with himself in a way that he had been so sure he'd never entirely feel again. He felt pretty. He felt complete.

He grinned, and it felt so real.

He turned, then, to get a better angle.

He started ugly chortling.

They'd stuck a terribly fun assortment of stickers to the back of his shell, right in the spots he couldn't reach - puffy stickers, holographic stickers, a few with fuzzy bits. Unicorns. Shooting stars.

It reminded him of himself when he was a kid. He'd done that, once. Got a whole box of rejects, slapped them on his brothers' shells.

"Look at that! I am, in fact, very pretty," he said for Alicia and Belle's benefit, "you guys should go into business as professional stylists! Raph can be your second customer."

"In your dreams!" he heard from the dojo nearby, and he snorted.

He stared again at his reflection, and you know what?

He did feel pretty.

#hold every memory unpublished #wip weekend #cabin 14

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littleeyesofpallas · 1 year ago

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Not to be a weirdo and go all anime tiddy detective(again...) but I've been seeing my awkwardly salvaged Gigi/Senjumaru post getting notes, and among other issues i have with how that post wound up I do feel like I didn't actually articulate my characterization of Senjumaru's design very clearly.

Kubo's got certain sensibilities about his character design. Usually i get fixated on his love of dramatic "crazy face" and the fandom at large fixates on that one big breasted body type he knows the fans love, but he also has a pretty robust cast of modestly proportioned girls. That being said, he walks a line on that, and is very deliberate in making sure to always remind everyone that his small breasted characters do still have a noticeable chest. It's a little weird but it's pretty specific because you'd think it would be easy enough to let their silhouette flatten out for the sake of simplicity, or speed, or just because sometimes a camera angle won't naturally emphasize the bust, yet time and again he stays consistent on it in a way that predicates intent.

Also worth noting in the context of things here, Isane sort of implicitly binds on account of otherwise conflicting omake details vs her strict canon appearances. Unohana implicitly binds due to her traditional style of dress that fundamentally includes flattening out the chest silhouette. AND YET in the face of those facts they're still drawn to show distinct curvature to the chest line. Rukia, Hinamori, and Shino are all generally infantilized as a part of their design aesthetic, Rukia passing as a 15yo, Hinamori being demure and doll-like(ala her name), and Shino being part of an expressly younger generation than the heroes when she's introduced. They're still drawn with noticeable breasts: moreover there is every opportunity to just entirely lose their silhouettes to the featureless blackness of the shinigami uniform, and Kubo goes back in with the white ink anyway. SuiFeng and Hiyori actually both nearly dodge this by wearing clothes that do actually obscure their body shape, but then Kubo seemingly compensates for that modesty by giving Sui Feng her sideboob outfit when she throws off her haori(and its apparent attached sleeves?), and giving Hiyori almost out of place cleavage(well, that and almost constant midriff shots)

Point again being that these are characters with distinctly small breasts, for whom one should imagine no one would be up in arms about being drawn without some subtle bumps in theri chest line, and yet Kubo still does not miss the detail...

So with that intentionality in mind, the fact that he then went out of his way to... I don't want to call it "cleverly"... but eh... """cleverly""" avoid drawing attention to Giselle's chest by putting her in an oversized top, and even changing its design around the sleeves, and subsequently part of her silhouette(she was slightly curvier, and her outfit was less fluffy in her early appearances?), as her "reveal" chapter got closer, becomes a noticeably meaningful choice. In particular in proximity to the "reveal."

And you know who else he seemed to have taken similar care in how he drew? Shutara Senjumaru. And granted, as i prefaced this whole post with facetiousness, not as insulation but as disclaimer, this is a ridiculous angle of approach. it's a ridiculous premise. the evidence and logic underpinning every step of it is dumb, but in spite of any of that, Shurata's silhouette jumped out and grabbed me from her very first appearance. The line from her neck/shoulder down to her waist is unlike how he's drawn any other flat chested/small breasted shinigami. And that comes in conjunction with the rest of her aesthetic:

She is dressed like something between a Geisha: high class personal entertainer, a Tayu or Oiran: a high class prostitute, or a Kabuki actor who could likely be playing a character styled after or explicitly in the role of either.

Obviously her most striking feature is the bizarre headdress, which appears to be made of kanzashi[簪]: a rather broad category of hair accessories typical of geisha and oiran.

She appears to be wearing two exaugurated pins to create the shape of a crescent moon with what look like they would be the sort of hanging elements of a bira-bira kanzashi; meaning that each of those vertical bars hanging from the underside of the moon would be free to swing back and forth from a connecting link or chain(s).

The radiating golden bars from the top I assume would be a kind of hanagushi hair comb, again with obvious exaguration given its size.

And the under hanging radiance being something like miokuri.

It also gives off super distinct vibes of an art movement that I hate that I cannot for the life of pinpoint right now... I want to say it was Spanish colonial(???) that used to specifically carve halos in this style, not as a round solid disc, but as a series of geometric rays... I hate to say that the thing I always think of is how Death Note borrowed it for its pseudo religious imagery. (although I guess the French did it too a bit during the reign of King Louis the XIV, but i always associate it with the mexican art of catholic saints, but I'm not even sure if I'm thinking of the right thing.)

In any case those are motifs or themes that we never get to see explored. boo...

Shutara is however kind of unexpectedly underdressed for a super powered clothier. Her one exterior cloak thing is as bas I can tell not anything real, even ignoring its defiance of gravity. If she were an oiran you would expect more layers, and the distinctive thing i don't know the name for that they hold in front of them and conceals their hands... She does however have the unmistakable oiran raised shoes.

And finally her makeup is a little vague but with relative consistency she's been depicted as extremely pale, which strongly suggests white makeup, typical of unfortunately all three aesthetic culprits, thus not actually narrowing the reference down at all.

Taken then with her theme of clothes and costuming in proximity of theater, the power of clothes/costume and thus presentation and roleplay, Kubo's super distasteful conflation of Giselle's transgender identity as some kind of "disguise" or "deception," kabuki using onnagata --male actors specifically trained in female role performance and upheld and even coveted at times throughout history as an apex of femininity, even above and beyond that of ciswomen-- the fact that Senjumaru is just straight up a masculine name, etc...

Like i said in the other post about all this, which i'm reluctant to even link back to, without any further elaboration it's impossible to say what this actually means for shutara as a character, and any inworld logic that applies. I don't think she is supposed to be a literal actress, like she has some personal history of professional theater training and performance.

That feels like it should be obvious. But understand that while all of this was a pain in the ass to try and lay out explicitly, it's something that, knowing all these disparate factoids already, I didn't actually have to think about at all when I first saw Shutara. I just clocked her as a queer woman immediately. It felt super obvious.

But now for my due diligence.(i actually totally thought there woudl be more of it at first...) Because as confident as I am in my theory, even I can recognize that it is not without holes. For one, entirely outside this pattern is Liltotto, who is actually very consistently drawn without the otherwise ubiquitous indication of AFAB breasts I point out otherwise. And she is certainly given no particular trans coding the way I associate with Gigi and Shutara.

i was going somewhere with this and i forgot... i think i though there dbe a bigger string of tangents to go off and when there werent my brain just kinda fizzled out without drawing a conclusion...

#no im not tagging this one #no one really needs to see it #its just me griping about my old posts #instead of editing them #because my compulsion is fickle in its methods #okay no i lied #bleach meta #if only so itll actually show up in my archive correctly later

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the-s1lly-corner · 2 years ago

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Random creepypasta character hcs VOL. 3(?)

Lost count on these but yeah I wanna drop more headcannons!!!

Nina is genderfluid and uses any pronouns! They also wear binders every now and then + they wear pride jewelry

Also they dye their hair like. A few shades lighter because he likes how the roots look when they grow out!! Same note they dye their own hair!!

I'm sorry for really focusing on nina but I've been flashing my design for her; but she also wears fake fangs

Before eyeless jack became eyeless, he has heterochromia! One eye was brown and the other was more gold!

Obligatory "I hc that ej and nina would be friends" but they do each others nails and would help each other put together outfits

A majority of eyeless Jack's shirts are band shirts

The neighborhood, TV girl, hollywood undead, mother mother, ICP, ect ect are a few of his favorites! Granted I think his wardrobe would become more limited since he lives in the woods alone in my au...

Still focusing on EJ, in my au before he got all.. monsterified... I feel like he was studying to be a doctor

Ironic and kinda messed up considering now he's forced to dissect people to sustain his own body but yeah

I'm pretty sure I said this before but I'll say it again since I love the concept; but Ben 99% of the time is bound to electronic devices. Basically meaning you'll rarely, if ever, see him drag himself out. Even when he does it takes a lot out of him, and he can only wander for so long until he has to go back

More au stuff but to help give jill her own unique vibe and stuff, I designed her to look like those old dolls you'd see way back then. You know the ones, with the porcelain faces and ragdoll-like bodies!! She still has her black and white clown look but yeah!! Due to this she also has visible tears and stitches on her; mainly on the limbs!! I also kinda wanna give her a sort of lolita dress look, if I ever draw her again! Give her loads of frills and stuff

Tying this all off since shes made to resemble a doll shes short 😔☝️ a moment of silence for lady

She can still stretch her limbs like jack, though

Though tbh idk if jill could do that or not <\3 but shh it's my au

Jane is much more... well idk the right wording, but I guess shes more masc presenting in my hc/au? She doesnt wear a dress or pair of heels like her canon look

I adore her canon look dont get me wrong, but I feel like considering that shes gunning for Jeff, that isnt too practical; esp considering jeff is.... something else

Basically wears stuff that's easier to run in, add some protection to her if she falls, swap the heels out with running shoes, no dangly accessories, ties her hair back. If not she'd definitely cut it down short

She still has her mask, though, but its a prosthetic she made/received herself since I dont think she'd want to touch the one jeff gave her

So yeah!!

Also I feel like, out of most the creepypastas, she has the best chance of living her own life in society; she only has intention to end game jeff, but asides that shes just. Mostly normal. Shes in therapy for her trauma, she has a job, she lives in her own place, ect

Oh that also reminds me! I keep rattling in about "my au" this, "my au" that, but I havent actually... released anything about it outside of headcannons

Idk if it'll be out in written fanfics, or as comics, or just one shot half au-accurate drawings or WHAT but

Basic run down of the au; time skip has taken place, havent decided a set amount of years, but it's been long enough that characters (that age) like jeff or jane are in their 20s (so like anywhere between 7-13ish years)

Slender still has his mansion, but it's hardly like anything the old fandom had,, it's no where near as huge or extravagant; its about as good as an abandoned mansion can be with little to no access to materials to upkeep it, and hardly anyone lives in it

Also same area ej lives, but they don't interact much and have a tense dynamic; both refuse to change locations

Still fleshing out the mansion idea!! So this is subject to change!!

Anywaus

Obviously characters who dont age/are ghosts/undead dont change ages; so like ben and sally are still the same, and the same applies to others like

Uuuuuh

Puppeteer, laughing jack and jill, slender and his brothers (this au does not include THAT one, fuck that one, we only have splendor and trender here), zalgo

Oh speaking of zalgo! He exists!! They don't really have a physical/tangible form though, hes more so a concept/untouchable entity that corrupts whatever it touches and causes chaos

Anyways

Also eyeless Jack's aging is... slowed; not by much but yeah!! Side effect of his curse and the whole "his body is changing into something horrific", and the slow age thing is a whole thing about the curse trying to extend his life span in order to cause more damage to himself and others

Real goofy stuff

Anyways

Laughing jack lives in his lil box and mostly transfers from person to person via the box being passed around

Be it garage sales or being sold in a goodwill, he eventually finds a new family to torment

No one suspects the old ass jack in the box!!!!

Ysah that's about it

Sits

Anyways yall should totally send me In requests (please read my pinned first!!)

#creepypasta headcanon #creepypasta #creepypasta au #au #slenderman #creepypasta nina the killer #eyeless jack #laughing jack #laughing jill #ben drowned #zalgo #jane the killer

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the-king-andthe-lionheart · 2 years ago

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the whole “sansa is the most relatable woman” thing is so triggering for me because as an afab person with late diagnosed autism sansa reminds me so much of the girls who used to bully me. i relate so strongly with arya because we both struggle with having conservative femininity imposed on us by society and are demonized for not adhering to “traditional” femininity

Hello @daenerysthevampireslayerr !

Yes, I find Sansa to be an alienating character for me as well, and I know a lot of people who feel this way. Sansa is a rich hetero white girl who abides by the status quo and perfectly fits into the highborn feminine box in her world. She is extremely classist and misogynistic, as well as closed-minded, selfish and vain and disloyal to a family that has done nothing to earn that disloyalty from her. As a mixed race bisexual woman who was born illegitimate and raised by a single mother, we weren't exactly rich either. We lived paycheck to paycheck. I also wasn't conventional looking so I myself grew up being bullied.

And while I was a little girl who loved "feminine"-coded things (playing with dolls and barbies, wearing dresses and make-up and jewelry) and romances and dreaming about happily ever after, I still can't relate to her. And that's because I was raised by a gender non-conforming mother who despised "feminine"-coded things and made me feel lesser for liking those things and for being a creative. I literally was the outcast when it came to me, my older sister, and my mother. I also wasn't blind to the world at large and I relate to Arya's anger at society and the injustices of the world, and how trauma can up that anger and make you lash out. I was also open-minded like her.

I just can't relate to Sansa, and people in this fandom proclaiming that Sansa is "the most relatable" has a very narrow view of what's relatable and what isn't, but from what I can tell, a lot of toxic Stansa's seem to be more conservative and has more of a tradfem/tradwife/tradcath or puritanical mentality. So they think every woman should be able to relate to Sansa, and every man in the audience should be in love with her, or some such nonsense. Of course, this is extremely exclusionary, because of how misogynistic and transphobic these people tend to be. Suffice it to say, I will never relate to Sansa, and if other people don't relate to her that should be accepted as okay. We all have preferences and we didn't all grow up in the same way. Why should I like a character who treated her little sister like crap on her shoe, didn't care she was almost killed by her betrothed, continues to think lowly of her even when she thinks Arya is dead, is disloyal to a family that didn't treat her badly at all and loved and constantly praised her, and is completely unrepentant for any of her bad behavior. She never reflects on any of her past behavior because she never thinks anything she does is wrong. She refuses to acknowledge, feel shame/guilt, take responsibility, and try to be better. If she did this in her arc, I would probably feel different about her as a character (Even though I still wouldn't relate to her), but she's forever the most frustrating POV to read for me where her character and it's development is concerned.

A lot of people in fandom cry about how people can dislike/hate Sansa, but go on to love Jaime, and I'm going to reveal why Jaime is one of my favorite characters. It's because even though he's done horrible shit, he acknowledges it, takes responsibility for it, and wants to do better. Does he do better? I think he does, it's not a lot better, but he's making progress, and he'll make better progress when he stops trying to act like Tywin. But it's the fact that he acknowledges all this and wants to be better (whether he achieves it or not) that makes him more likeable to me than Sansa, who has never taken responsibility for anything in her life and who doesn't want to do better. Yes, Sansa hasn't done as much bad as Jaime, but I really don't care. :P

But also, I think character relatability is overblown. Some of my favorite characters aren't relatable to me, or I only share one or two qualities with. I don't need my favorite character to be my copy. I do tend to relate more with Arya than my average favorite characters, but there is still several things about Arya that isn't relatable for me personally, but that doesn't make me love her less. And Sansa doesn't need to be relatable to be liked or loved by fans. It all has to do with preference. But suffice it to say, if it weren't for the toxic Stansa's I would have been neutral about Sansa in the books post AGOT. However, their toxicity makes it impossible. :/

#arya stark #anti sansa stans

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the-bjd-community-confess · 8 months ago

Text

TW: Sexualization of (fictional) minors/shipping discourse

Mod: batch 5 of these, so anons who need to can avoid the topic

1. if you have an opinion on shipping discourse/fiction purity/all that stupid BS, i just hope your dolls snap in half. don't care what the opinion is. go outside. shut the fuck up. get any other kind of life than the one you're living. you people -- all of you people, every single one of you people -- are literally the worst and most annoying people online and if all of you just up and vanished nothing, i mean nothing, of value would be lost. stop shitting up the doll blog for god's sake.

~Anonymous

2. Mini DDs are either hypersexualized or heavily child coded. Yes, there's overlap, but I have yet to see a nice MDD that isn't dressed like a toddler, a whore, or some combination of the two.

~Anonymous

3. Sorry to bring up this topic again. A reminder of how this all started, I guess, was with the Angelphilia doll. I went and looked and was genuinely confused... I'm sorry but as a CSA survivor who was abused from infancy to age 6, pedophilia refers specifically to pre-pubescent children... that doll does not look pre-pubescent, she looks like every other anime girl of an ambiguous high school age. It really bothers me as a survivor when people misuse and conflate terms. It's also really upsetting to see people equate fictionalized sexualization of post-pubescent representations of minors to actual, real abuse of children. Maybe this makes some of you uncomfortable but if it can be a tool to prevent abuse of real children, idc about fiction. Don't look at it if it upsets you or triggers you. Stop seeking it out. You are an adult now, you are not the victimized child anymore. Or, if you are so concerned, please get involved with a real organization that works in intervention and prevention of child sexual abuse and stop white knighting on the internet over fiction. Please. I wish there had been so many "concerned citizens" to intervene and protect me and the other victims of my biological father, as there are who make confessions about a piece of plastic.

~Anonymous

4. All we said was putting obviously underage characters in suggestive situations is fucking gross and we will block your disgusting ass if you post it, and sure enough the lolicon/shotacon defenders crawled out of the goddamn woodwork with their stupid little handbooks full of strawman arguments and smug fucking attitudes to scream at us to try to say we're the ones who need to touch grass or Let People Enjoy Things™ or whatever fucked up braindead holier-than-thou stance they're taking. God shut the hell up. I'm tired if seeing your disgusting asses showing up and defending this goddamn shit, you fucking pedos.

~Anonymous

5. I don't give a fuck about your issues, I still don't want lolicon in my fucking hobby and no smoothbrain pervert will make me feel otherwise

~Anonymous

6.Re: CSA

This hobby is full of Chicken Littles that see CSA everywhere. Most of you will never be reasonable about this. To the other reasonable people out there in BJDLand, do your own thing, and when one of these Chicken Littles starts squawking at you, go hard on them with ban hammers and legal threats for stalking and harassment. Scorch the earth around them so they will never bother you again. That, or make private places where you and other reasonable people can hang out. I know of a place already where reasonable BJD people hang out and you Chicken Littles can’t touch them. In b4 “Bait!” “You’re creepy Anon!” and so on. Go. Cry. Moar while being keyboard warrior slactivists.

~Anonymous

Mod: Reasonable People is doing a lot of heavy lifting here Anon, even as your neutral Mod I'm not sure that's the phrase I'd use for this

7. "Ch*ld s*x sells" is fucking disgusting, but to the right market, it is the truth. If you think that's not the case, you haven't been around long enough to see what most of us have seen. I've seen an entire fandom go to shit because the pedos flooded it and made it stigmatized to even be associated with the related media. It's sickening to watch go down in real time, and I absolutely refuse to sit by and watch the same thing happen in this hobby. At this point I'm convinced we're all yelling at the same person and their sock accounts anyway. But stop glorifying it. Stop normalizing it. Stop excusing it. Stop "boo hoo just don't look lol"-ing it. Stop "live and let live"-ing it. Stop "fuck you I'm a survivor and this shit is harmless so here's some shotacon I made hurrdurr die mad"-ing about it. Stop "I'm gonna accuse you of wasting authority resources on it because there's no victim involved lmao shut up"-ing it. Stop "lel touch grass and let me enjoy my lolicon"-ing it. Just stop. You're disgusting.

~Anonymous

8. Keep screaming at me all you want, I'm still going to call out and fight against lolicon in this hobby

~Anonymous

Mod: Batch post reply to a previous one:

9. "'It’s still just as gross as the real thing' This line, this line alone made you honestly the biggest asshole and I hope you're fucking ashamed. I hope you grow the fuck up and look in the mirror and see what a fucking dumbass you were saying this with 100% confidence."

I said what I said you fucking clown, die mad about it or go touch grass and fuck back off this blog where you belong

~Anonymous

10. I can't wait for the FCSAM debate to be over from this blog, there's too many dangerous and predatory opinions being given weight here and people are far too comfortable with their gross takes. Suggestive depictions of minors are fucking gross. Bottom line. If you disagree, you should be shunned.

~Anonymous

11. You know what is weord to me? I'm not seeing people screaming that your doll is LITERALLY THE SAME as REAL sexual abuse. Obvi that is dumb af. But we, as a group, need to understand that normalizing the sexualization of child features (yes, AP nono, YES panty shots of MDD) is not ok. The main point is that it validates and creates a safe space for pedo-like thoughts. Is that what we want?

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #BJD Confessions #Community Confessions

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andro-dino · 8 months ago

Note

Yooo if you're still doing the ask thingie maybe 7, 8 and 14 for Kira and Ren? 🙏

sorry for the kinda slow response on this one wueh 🙏

Kira- this is mostly like, stuff I enjoy doing with him and dna, but I love explorations of what post-canon would look like for him. Especially when people acknowledge like, how insanely fucked up his entire life has been up to that point, it’s really interesting playing with how he interacts with both the main gang and society at large, especially if you go the route of it being kinda rocky at first and it taking a while for both him and others to fully adjust. I also really enjoy giving him closer bonds with other dna members and just all the different ways their dynamics can be portrayed. As for things I hate, as with a lot of characters but Kira especially is victim to this for obvious reasons, I despise how oversexualized he is a lot of the time and how much people reduce his character down for the sake of that. There’s so much about him that’s super interesting and complex but people just end up being so weird about him and it makes me sad. One specific example that I can call to is that I discovered a while back that kite/kira is a ship that exists and tbh, I really enjoy it I think they have a lot of potential to be really interesting together, but like all of the posts I saw of them were just so weird and gross and that’s really upsetting to me.

Ren- I think just giving her more individual dynamics with others is really fun. She doesn’t really have a lot of one on one bonds with other characters in the actual show so I really enjoy when people explore the individual friendships and relationships she can have with others. For me, I find takanosuke and Shinobu the most fun to pair her with but honestly anyone you put her with is a fun time. I also like thinking about her and benkei having a closer father-daughter relationship they make me happy <3

Unfortunately for things I dislike, it’s like so much. No one does her right and I think that’s upsetting. Her personality is so fun and unique and I feel like no one really gives her the full grace of that. She’s silly and stupid and energetic but she’s also determined and tough and hardworking. She can be stubborn and reckless and narrow minded and she can also be reasonable and kind and sarcastic. I love her personality and her characterization so much but I think that most fanon portrayals of her focus too much on very narrow views of her character and don’t really give her the full depth that she has. Also, this next one is like, old fandom stuff and not really super present with her, but all of the ship content I’ve seen with her sucks ass and mischaracterizes her really badly. I think in general with a lot of older depictions of her, most of her actual character gets ignored entirely and people just go “GIRL” and just put whatever the hell they want to onto her and none of it works like ever.

Kira- Kira’s such a dress up doll character I think you could put him in like anything and it’d work. I don’t know much about the style, but from what I’ve seen, I think putting him in visual kei could be fun.

Ren- REN I ACTUALLY HAVE ONE FOR!! I love to think that she would enjoy scene fashion and I have for forever it works so well. I’ve actually doodled a scene-ish look for her before

#axel’s silly little thoughts #I get passionate about mischaracterization of guys I care about a lot if you couldn’t tell 🫶#I like ren so much man #I would draw her more if she wasn’t so goddamn hard to draw

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criticallyacclaimedstranger · 2 years ago

Text

Fic: Dream Job

Read on Ao3

Fandom: Triple Frontier

Ship: Frankie Morales x Jay ‘Lady’ Ray (OFC) **Series masterlist**

Warnings: Angst, family cuteness, assholes being rude to Holly, some light violence as a result of that, PiV sex, impregnation kink and dirty talk.

Words: 5,686

Summary: Frankie and Jay are both out of the military. Jay has earned her degree and is working as a physical therapist, Frankie works at the base, Alma is three and a wonderful handful. Life should be perfect, but Frankie's not happy. Something's missing.

A/N: This was supposed to be a fic about Frankie's midlife crisis and set up his reasons for turning to drugs, but that sonuvabitch hijacked this piece and now it's about his goddamn impregnation kink. So. There you have it, I guess.

Taglist: @amneris21 @apascalrascal @harriedandharassed @kikis-writing-world @lovesbiggerthanpride @miraclesabound @mswarriorbabe80 @pazizz @paulalikestuff @rambling-in-purple @trinkets01

The rain is pouring down with a vengeance and Frankie's shoulders rise to his ears as he tries to keep the wet away from his neck. He's not wearing a proper jacket, though, so it's useless. The rain is unseasonably cold and just yesterday the weather was warm and sunny, so the twists and turns are a little abrupt for him to have thought about taking a weather appropriate jacket this morning.

Where the fuck is she?

Just as he thinks about texting her and letting her know she can pick him up from the nearest corner store, the family friendly SUV that Jay hates with a vengeance comes around the corner and pulls to the side, stopping in front of him. Frankie gets in on the passenger side. He cranks up the heating immediately. "Sorry I'm late," she glances at him. "Client."

"That's okay." He presses a smile for her and gets one in return. "How was your day?"

She shrugs. "It was okay. Busy. You?"

"Same." Jay checks the time, and grimaces.

"Can you get Alma from mom's while I get groceries? Or d'you wanna do the shopping? We're out of a lot of things."

"I thought you said you were going on your lunch break?" He can't help it; his voice is accusatory. "That's why you had to take the car."

"I didn't have time! Maddie is away, I had to take all her clients, I haven't even had time for lunch today!"

He can hear she's close to snapping, so he reigns it in. "We'll go together," he rules. He knows Jay, knows that in this state she's unable to make any sensible decisions in the store. He also doesn't want to wait with Alma at Jay's mom's place. The woman spent the entirety of Jay's childhood letting the girl know she was wrong for not wanting to wear dresses and play with dolls. Dorothy has made amends, is respectful towards the family, a wonderful grandmother to Alma, but as it turns out, this is the one grudge Frankie will carry for the rest of his life. Coming from a loving and supportive family himself and having a child of his own, he can't fathom how a parent would treat their child like Jay has been treated.

He turns his face away and stares out the window. Being a parent is the best mission he has ever undertaken, but some days are tougher than others. And it's surprisingly difficult to get by with just one car: his truck is in the shop with an unidentified brake problem. It annoys him tremendously that he couldn't figure it out himself. He fixes most things on both their cars, is good at it, but this was beyond him and it's crippling his manly pride more than he wants to admit, especially to himself.

There's also the question of his job. He's torn about still being employed by the military but not being in active duty. On the one hand, he loves that he can still fly. He enjoys training new pilots. Still going to the base every day is familiar, and he gets to fly out to other bases as well from time to time. On the other hand, he's done with missions. He's getting to be done with the military. Sometimes feels like he's in limbo. Half in, half out. Sitting behind a desk whenever he's not handling the controls of an aircraft is strange. Regular hours at the base, comfortable and practical though they may be, is strange. Jay is so enthusiastic about her job. She graduated as a physical therapist when Alma was barely a year old, and immediately got a job at the local VA center where she had done clinical duty. She started part time but quickly moved up to full time, and Alma was put in daycare with Frankie often picking her up in the afternoons. She often works overtime, taking extra clients, feeling strongly about the work she does helping combat veterans recover from various injuries and amputations. Frankie and her usually make the day-to-day work, but sometimes it gets tricky and since his car broke down, it's been hell to puzzle together their hours. And no matter what conflicted feelings Frankie harbors against Jay's mother Dorothy, it's a blessing that she lives close by and can pick Alma up when her parents are unable to. Frankie wouldn't mind being a stay-at-home dad, but the family needs two incomes. That's something else that seems to bother him right now: how the days just float by with work, daycare, dinner, barely a couple of hours of play with Alma before her bedtime... He wants more time with her, wants to be more present. The idea of maybe trying for another baby has been brought up a couple of times between him and Jay, but the thought of having two children dumped at daycare and never seeing them is... depressing, somehow. They arrive at Dorothy's, where Alma is fussy after a long day. Dorothy has given her a snack, but the girl is tired and feeling abandoned, and now very upset about having to leave granny. When they leave, Frankie sits in the backseat with Alma, who's wailing about everything and nothing, while Jay maneuvers the car to the supermarket.

"You staying here with her?" she asks when they're parked. Frankie hears the hint of tiredness in her voice, even if she tries her best to not sound stressed. Alma gives up a great wail.

"Alma wanna gooooo!"

"We'll come with," Frankie suggests. "Alma, corazon, remember when we talked about behavior in the supermarket? How we gotta be calm and let other people do their shopping in peace? That still flies, okay?"

Alma takes a deep, shaky breath and nods, her big brown eyes filled with tears. Jay smiles at her in the rear-view mirror, knowing that even if they're crocodile tears, Frankie will melt at the sight of them. He's a sucker for his special little girl.

"Can you help mommy and me with the shopping?" Frankie asks, fishing up a napkin from his pocket and wiping up the tears and snot from Alma's face.

"Alma can help," the girl reassures him, receiving a quick kiss on her forehead.

They get a cart and Frankie lifts Alma into the child seat.

"You wanna hold the list?" Jay offers, handing her the paper. Alma accepts it with a very serious face and starts to turn the list around in her hand, pretending to understand the words written on it.

"What's first?" Jay asks, bending down to trace the first word on the list with her finger.

"Shock-lat!" Alma states, drawing forth a grin from both her parents.

"I think it says milk, mijita," Frankie chuckles. Alma seems to want to start to protest, so he quickly brings her attention to the next item on the list, while Jay gets the milk. When Jay returns, Frankie relinquishes Alma and the cart to her to go get the juice.

He stops by the magazine racks, a car on a magazine cover capturing his attention, and stops to browse for a second. Barely two pages into the magazine, he hears a greeting behind him:

"Yo, Morales!"

He suppresses a sigh when he hears the voice of one of the most obnoxious dickheads ever to walk in fatigues, Captain Ryan Hall. The man's a strutting chick magnet and knows it; moreover, he's a douche who fucked up everything in life except his military career – and even in that area he's going for some kind of Razzie Award. He was reprimanded for leaving his last posting in Afghanistan with an unreported case of the clap, which he then proceeded to transmit to a variety of women at home. One of them reportedly got meningitis as a complication. Hall, of course, doesn’t give a shit.

Hall,” Frankie replies curtly and watches the guy pick out two titty magazines and toss them carelessly into the cart, joining a six-pack of beer and two big jars of that whey powder.

”Partying tonight?” He can't help himself: the cart's contents look like they belong to a nineteen-year-old, not a man of Frankie's age.

"Not gettin' one for yourself?" Hall questions, nodding at his reading for tonight. Frankie shakes his head and puts down his magazine.

"Lady keeping you on a tight leash, is she?" the guy leers and Frankie, whose primary mode is mellow, just wants to punch him in the face.

Jay shows up around the corner with the cart, and Alma gives a delighted little shriek when she sees her daddy.

"Speaking of the devil," Hall winks before eyeing Jay. "Ray. You're lookin' well."

"Same," she nods, more interested in the tightness of Frankie's jaw than some asshole she no longer has to work with. "Frankie? We're almost ready."

"Yeah, I'm done."

Hall, however, is not done.

"Civilian life looks good on you," he comments, eyeing Jay in a way that makes both her and Frankie bristle. "You don't miss the action?"

"Nope," Jay quips while trying to prevent Alma, now bored, from tearing the list into little pieces. "Alma, don't litter. We're done real soon and can go home for dinner."

Hall shakes his head. "Hate to see a good soldier go so wrong. But that's what you get when you let women in. They quit as soon as the bullets begin to whistle by. Makes more sense for them to just have babies."

Jay freezes, her blood thumping in her ears. She stares at Hall, this absolutely fuck knuckle of a man, not sure she heard right. Did he really say that?

Meanwhile, Frankie has stepped up to him and is speaking in a dangerously low voice.

"Say that again."

"Calm down, Fish, you know what it's like..."

"I don't. Say it again, and we'll find out."

Hall is looking more uncomfortable by the minute, and Jay can see from the way the muscles of Frankie's long neck are protruding that he will start swinging soon. She puts her hand on his shoulder, eyes on him, not Hall.

"Frankie."

"I'm good."

He relaxes immediately and steps back, even manages to smile at her. Hand on her back, he guides her away and can't stop from laughing when Alma points at Hall and yells Stupidface. Jay immediately admonishes her daughter about pointing and saying bad words, but Frankie can hear that she doesn't really mean it this time.

They finish up their shopping and go home, Jay unusually quiet during the entire car ride. Alma is fussy again, and Frankie does his best to keep her from making a scene in the back seat. The girl is going through some "daddy is stupid and so is mommy, but a little less so" phase, so as soon as the family gets home, Jay entertains Alma while Frankie cooks dinner.

After dinner they try to switch but Alma isn't having it, so Jay ends up giving her a bath, and reading her a bedtime story. By the time she appears in the living-room and collapses on the couch, she looks beat. Frankie immediately makes room for her in the best corner and holds out his arm so that she can curl up with it around her shoulders.

"I'm so fucking tired," she sighs. Frankie pulls her against him and kisses the side of her head.

"I know. Sorry I can't help, but neither one of us want her to have a total meltdown."

"You are helping," Jay points out. "You cooked dinner, you cleaned the kitchen, you did laundry."

"That's just normal teamwork," Frankie shrugs. "We both do that every day. I wish I could figure out how to work with her so that you'd get some relief."

"It's a phase," Jay yawns as she reaches across Frankie for the remote on a cushion next to him. "She'll snap out of it."

"Hopefully soon," Frankie mutters, relinquishing the remote to Jay. She flicks through the channels, finding a show where competitors are baking one crazy cake after another. After a few minutes of watching, Frankie clears his throat.

"Amor?"

Jay's hum lets him know that she's listening.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Hall said some pretty messed up shit."

She tenses up momentarily; a bundle of annoyed muscles flexing against him, before softening again.

"He's such an asshole. I can't let him get to me."

"You know it's not true what he said," Frankie tells her hotly, feeling a strong physical need to say it out loud. "Not one word of it. You're better than all of them put together."

Jay smiles as she turns her face towards him and kisses him lightly on the lips.

"You're always looking out for me. Thank you."

“Always.”

Five minutes later, she's asleep against Frankie's shoulder.

A couple of hours later, just when he's about to join Jay in bed, Alma wakes up crying from a bad dream. He goes in to comfort her, but Alma keeps screaming for mommy, so Jay has to come to the rescue. Feeling a little rejected, Frankie returns to bed, wondering what it would be like to have two kids screaming for Jay, not wanting him. Ashamed for these feelings of jealousy, he reminds himself that Alma is a toddler, and that all he can do is make her feel safe, comfortable, and nurtured.

When Jay stumbles into bed a little later, she barely has time to throw her arm around his waist before she's out cold. Frankie remains wide awake for an hour or two, staring into the dark, a strong assurance growing in him. He wants more children, wants another baby with this amazing woman who's sleeping tucked into his side. He has no idea how he'll support two children, but he wants to try, he needs to try.

When he finally succumbs to sleep, his final thought is about how he'll break it to Jay, especially after today, with that unfortunate encounter in the supermarket.

*** Jay has to drive Frankie to the base the following day as well and pick him up after work. Throughout the day he tries to call the shop, but nobody is picking up, and he's beginning to fume.

When he’s finally walking out of the base, he sees Jay waiting for him on the parking lot. She’s standing outside the car, talking to a couple of former teammates, swapping news. He joins them, gets a quick kiss on the cheek from Jay who quickly wraps it up. They say their good-byes and get in the car, but just as Jay’s about to turn the key in the ignition, she freezes, her eyes narrowing. Frankie follows her gaze across the parking lot and sees Hall, striding towards his truck.

“Let it be,” he says in a low voice, knowing what she’s thinking. “Jay.”

“I’m good.” But she’s still following Hall with her eyes, her lips pressed together in a tight line. Before Frankie can stop her, she’s opened the door, slipped out, and is on her way towards Hall.

“Shit,” Frankie sighs and gets out of the car, following her. She’s quick on her feet, reaching Hall just as he’s about to get into his car.

“Hey!”

Hall looks around just as Jay’s knuckle connects with his jaw. His head snaps back and he crashes into the side of his car. Frankie’s heart skips a beat and he’s there just in time to pull her away. She’s calm and collected, following him willingly.

“Should have done that a long time ago,” she lets Hall know. “You are human trash, and if you ever open your ugly fucking face at me again, I’ll make sure you’ll be taking all of your meals through a straw for the rest of your life.”

With that, she turns around and returns briskly to the car. Frankie throws Hall a look of warning, catching the man’s confusion and humiliation, then follows her. They get into the car and Jay drives away. When the parking lot has disappeared from the rear-view mirror, she sighs deeply.

“That felt fucking good.”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” Frankie shakes his head. “He’ll report you.”

“He won’t confess to having been beat up by a woman,” Jay scoffs. She has a point: Hall would rather just forget about it than have the whole base know that Jay Ray clocked him.

She keeps her eyes on the road and seems calm enough, but now she’s rubbing her right knuckles with her left hand.

“You hurt?” Frankie questions, still not sure what he thinks of the whole situation. He knows Jay can fend for herself, but this was unnecessary and dangerous.

“Nah, just a little sore. Haven’t punched anyone without gloves in years.”

“You think it was such a good idea?”

“Probably not,” she shrugs and hits the turn signal, coming out on the highway. “But I wanted to.”

Frankie glances at her, still trying to sort out his feelings. Jay has always been a fighter, ready to stand her ground, and he always admired that about her. She never takes any shit from anyone, and Frankie was always the first one to cheer her on. So why is he feeling so conflicted about it now? Is it really because she's no longer in the service, and - Lord forbid - because she is a mother? The mother of his child?

Does he think so little of her?

"You're not happy about it, are you?" Jay interrupts his musings, her voice matter-of-factly. Frankie has to smile. There it is again: her fearless ability to put him right on the spot.

"I'm not unhappy about it," he says carefully.

"That's unusually vague, even for you."

“It’s hard to know what to say. It was fucking hot but so very dangerous.”

Jay laughs, and the mood in the car lightens up immediately.

“Doesn’t hot and dangerous go hand in hand?” she retorts, and Frankie chuckles. They drive for a mile or so in silence. Frankie chews on his lower lip, scratches his mustache, fidgets until Jay sighs.

"Look," she tells him quietly, her eyes on the road. "I can see something's up. And it’s not just me being hot and dangerous."

"Nothing's wrong."

He can sense the tension in her. He and Jay have always shared a strong belief in communication, ever since they got together. It is a cornerstone of their relationship.

"I mean it," he now tries to verbalize his turmoil. "Nothing's wrong, I just... I don't really know where I fit in."

He can see from her that she has questions, but she's letting him speak.

"I mean," he makes another attempt, "you have your job. You're good at it, you love it. I have mine, but... I'm not sure I want it?"

"Oh?" The question mark is encouraging him to go on.

"I don't know, it just feels like it's not really me anymore, I guess. I love flying, but..." He shrugs. "I just don't know."

"You know it's just a job, right?" Jay points out. "You're not there forever. You can quit."

"And do what?" he scoffs, as they're closing in on the whole point. "We have a kid, we need two incomes, and I don't have a degree."

"You can always get one."

"Ain't got that in me."

"If you're going to bitch and moan like Tom..." Jay warns him, but with a hint of softness in her voice. He chuckles.

"Not to you, I wouldn't."

Jay checks the rear-view mirror, hits the turn signal, and gets off the highway. As she slows down and comes to an intersection, she turns her head to Frankie.

"Look, I'm not going to tell you what you should do. But you know I'll give you my opinion if you ask for it, right?"

"Yeah."

"And I'll support you, whatever you decide."

"I know. I just need to figure this out."

"Of course. We can talk more about it tonight."

Alma is over the moon to see her parents when they pick her up at Dorothy's. It’s a funny age: for no apparent reason, one day is all sunshine and sunflowers, the other is thunderstorms and hail. She clings to Frankie, who carries her to the car, listening patiently to her prattling on about her day. When she's strapped into her seat, Frankie's phone rings: it's the repair shop, and his truck is fixed. He feels lighter than he has in days when Jay drops him off and he gets to drive himself home.

Alma spends the rest of the evening being her most charming yet high energy self, dragging Frankie around the house as a part of her games. When it's time for bed, Frankie helps her brush her teeth but finds that there is not much assistance needed, only supervision. When did his little baby get this big? Proudly and with a little lump in his throat, he watches her rinse and spit, then brush her hair, before helping her use the toilet. When she's tucked into bed, he folds himself next to her with a picture book and starts to read it in Spanish. Alma traces the English words, sometimes stopping at one, asking what the letters mean, and Frankie tells her in both languages. They always speak Spanish during these moments together at bedtime, and Frankie cherishes them tremendously. His parents raised three children but always found time for all three of them at bedtime, talking and cuddling and just making sure they were comfortable and safe. He remembers those moments fondly and wants his child to have them as well.

"Time to sleep, Almalita," he whispers when the book is read, and his daughter is blinking sleepily.

"Will you braid my hair tomorrow?" she yawns, rubbing her eyes.

"Of course." He brushes the hair out of her face and kisses her forehead. “Can I have kisses?”

Alma carefully puts her tiny hands on either side of his face and places wet little kisses on the patches in his beard, first on one side, then the other. She always kisses the those spots, and Frankie will always remember why: at barely two years of age, Alma once spent an entire bedtime story tracing them with her fingers and eventually asking What is this? Frankie had explained to her that the bald patches were there for kissing, so that little girls’ soft lips wouldn’t be scratched by the beard. Since then, Alma always kisses him there.

"Thank you, mijita. Sweet dreams.” He gives her another kiss, inhales the sweet scent of his amazing little girl, before gently scraping his mustache against her cheek, making her giggle.

He gets out of bed and tucks her in properly, handing her the favorite stuffed toy du jour, and kisses her again with a Good night before retreating to the door. Turning around for a last look, he feels his heart swell two sizes.

God. She went from newborn to a tough, almost independent three-year-old in the blink of an eye. When did this happen? While he was working and someone else was raising her?

He finds Jay in their bedroom, getting undressed.

"She go down okay?" she asks as he shows up in the doorway. Nodding, he leans against the doorframe and watches her take off her bra. A spark of desire flies off deep in his groin, but Jay puts on a sports bra almost immediately.

"You going out?" he asks, a little disappointed. She nods as she pulls on a hoodie.

"I gotta go for a run, clear my head a little. Long day."

He nods, meeting her smile as she comes around the bed and up to him. Putting her hands on his shoulders, she leans in for a quick kiss.

"I won't be long. Don't fall asleep."

"Oh...?" He raises one brow, and Jay grins.

"Yeah, that's right, daddy's getting lucky tonight."

"Is that so?"

"But mommy needs to let off some steam first."

She slaps her hands to his ass cheeks before brushing past him. A few moments later he hears the front door open and close.

Frankie needs to talk to her, must tell her that he's ready to have another kid. He has no idea about what he wants to do for a job, but he knows with absolute certainty that he wants to have a baby with her. He has so much more love to give, his heart pours over with it whenever he looks at her, at Alma, and he wants to share it with a fourth family member.

He busies himself with chores until he hears the front door open again. Hurrying to the entry, he finds Jay untying her shoes. When she straightens, he wants to tell her immediately, but there is something about her flushed, panting appearance that leaves words for later. Instead, he grabs her by the shoulders and presses his lips to hers. Jay kicks off her shoes and Frankie wants to get her upstairs, but she drags him to the living-room instead. Before he knows it, he’s on the couch and he has no clothes on and she’s standing in front of him and she is naked as well, and so fucking sexy. Frankie grabs her by the wrist and pulls her to him, almost making her topple over, but Jay regains her balance and is about to straddle him when he moves his hands to her waist and pulls her down on her back on the couch. She presses her nails into his triceps when he slams into her. She’s so fucking wet and tight, like only she can be, and she smells of sweat from her run, and it drives him wild. He doesn’t give her time to adjust to his size, not this time, and her toothy kisses tells him she’s more than okay with it.

Jay mewls, grabs his upper arms, and one of her legs goes around him and twists, and then she pushes him up and over, and he capsizes over the edge of the couch. She follows, holding onto him tightly, and hisses when her knee hits the floor. Frankie grunts when his back takes most of the fall, but Jay is now on top of him and she grabs his dick, all slick from having been in her pussy. She pumps it a couple of times before leading it into her again, and he thrusts upwards despite knowing she doesn’t like it when she’s on top and wants to do all the work, but he must get inside her again. “Fuck!” she gasps and her back curves out when she leans down, her fingers pressing between his ribs as she kisses him. His hands run down the length of her, reclaiming every known inch of her that he can reach. Her teeth close around his lower lip and draw it out when she straightens her back and starts to ride him frantically. Frankie covers her tits with his hands and pinches, kneads, rolls her nipples between his fingers until she throws her head back and sounds a throaty, loud moan while rubbing against him, her whole body shaking with the orgasm tearing through her.

Frankie clenches his teeth and allows himself to enjoy the sight before him before he, too, succumbs to the climax that shuts his eyes close and makes him grunt in helpless surrender.

Jay collapses over him, her face fitting so well where his neck curves into his shoulder. Her breaths are short and shallow, her body heavy on his. He wraps his arms around her and keeps her close, so close he can feel her heart drumming to the same quick beat as his own.

Gratitude washes over him, complete and overwhelming, along with the feeling that he doesn’t deserve her, yet knowing that he’s done everything to deserve her. The two of them belong together, and Alma with them. The best thing he ever did was to make a baby with Jay.

It seems so clear and simple now. What has he been waiting for, really?

"Jay," he murmurs, caressing her side, "let's make a baby."

"Huh?"

"Let's have another baby. We've talked about it often enough. Why not just go for it? I want to have another baby with you."

"What about your job and all that?" Jay gets up on one forearm and caresses his cheek, her fingers lingering on the bald spots in his beard.

"I'll figure it out. We will figure it out." He turns his face so that he can kiss her palm. "Jay, I don't know for sure what I want to work with, but I'm absolutely certain that I want another baby with you. Being a dad is the best job I ever had."

He waits for her answer, hoping she has one for him now and not later, worrying about being too pushy but knowing that he needed to make it known what he really wanted. When she starts to smile widely, he feels calm.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay." She laughs a little. "Yes. Let's have another baby."

"You sure?" Frankie has to ask. This went so much easier than expected. Jay slaps him lightly on the chest.

"You want to put a baby in me or not?"

He laughs at that, then rolls both of them over so that he's on top and dips his face down to kiss her neck.

"Gonna fill you with my cum," he murmurs, already hardening at the thought. Their sex life was amazing when Jay was pregnant with Alma, and he's already looking forward to a reprise. Jay slides her hand down between them and teases him with soft fingers.

"Gotta get you big and hard first, daddy," she breathes, "and then you can fuck me, and cum inside me, all the way inside, and if it doesn't take, you'll have to do it again and again and again..."

There's nothing original about her words, but they make him feral. He kisses her hotly, plunges his tongue inside her mouth, barely gives her the time to reciprocate before he drags his lips along her jawline, nibbles on her earlobe, kisses his way down her neck and chest, suckles one nipple, then the other, while growing stiff and ready to finally slide into her again.

She grunts when he pushes into her, and he feels his knees complain.

"Not the most comfortable place to fuck, huh?" he chuckles breathlessly, taking a moment to pepper her face with kisses. Jay combs her fingers through his hair, tugging a little at the neck.

"Bedroom?"

He lets out a little growl at the idea of pulling out, but her suggestion makes sense. They scramble to their feet, and only fifteen seconds later he pushes into her again, this time on soft bedding.

"I love you," he murmurs when her hungry pussy takes him balls deep. "I love you so much."

"And I love you," she assures him before pulling him in for a kiss. She moans into his mouth when he starts to move, breaks the kiss to instead trace her warm lips along his neck. Frankie leans his head back, exhaling in a low moan at her ministrations, lets her pour her love over his neck and shoulder before chasing and capturing her lips with his once again. He fucks her without hurry, indulges himself in the way her strong pussy clutches his cock in a slow drag in and out, her sounds, the surrender of her limbs underneath him. His brain is soaked in pleasure and fixed on his purpose: to fuck a baby into her, let his love grow in her womb, become a tiny person for them to take care of.

Jay's breaths are coming in short and shallow now. She whines and throws her head back, her hips rising to meet his in a wordless plea for him to go faster. Frankie obliges her, wrapping one arm around her head, keeping his eyes trained on her face. He smiles a little at the faces she makes when she gives herself up to pleasure, finds it amazing that he can know these funny, intimate details about her.

"Almost," she gasps, reaching between them to rub her clit. A moan tells him she found just the right spot.

"God, Frankie, so good, fuck, don't stop...!"

His balls are tight, he's going to blow within seconds, he growls as he tries to hold it together for just one more thrust, and another, and another, holy fucking God, now Jay is cumming underneath him, her mouth wide open as if she's about to scream, but not a word comes out, and the second after, he empties his balls inside her, presses himself to her as tightly as he can, paints her womb with his cum.

He must have dozed off because he startles when Jay's carefully nudging him off of her. He rolls heavily onto his side next to her and opens his eyes to her sleepy smile. He smiles back and raises his hand to caress her cheek, admiring the way her eyes close at his touch, like she's a cat basking in his adoration.

"You sure about this?" he whispers. Her eyes open again, calm and unfathomably blue. He wishes his daughter could have had those pretty blue eyes.

"I am. Don't tell me you're having second thoughts."

"No," he hurries to assure her, "but with everything else going on, your job, my job, Alma being a handful..."

"I'm still on the pill," Jay reminds him softly. "It might take a while."

He didn't even think about that, and the realization makes him equally jittery and relieved.

“We’ll have time to figure stuff out, then,” he summarizes, hoping it won’t take too long. Jay nods.

"We will."

Slowly, she turns onto her back, and stretches.

"I'm gonna take a shower. You comin', too?"

He's too tired really, but when Jay gets up and he sees that ass walk out the room, he's suddenly in a hurry to follow her.

#triple frontier fanfic #francisco catfish morales #francisco frankie morales #frankie morales #frankie x lady #my fic

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