#and I won’t condemn her for it

[eywaseclipse]

If anyone wants to get allegorical with me I wouldn’t hate that. Because right now all I can think about are the parallels between Neytiri and Lucifer becoming fallen angels….

Defeat, acceptance, then rage. (My favorite song!) lol (also read the tags too)

[halojalex]

Lisa is a Zionist

ok source?

[dutybcrne]

Okay, but like

With his full powers now, COULD Neuvi make Furi functionally immortal by imbuing her with his power/tying her life to his?

[parasite-core]

Aaaand Calio’s run has officially gone full villain run, he was super impressed with his past self’s planning with Gortash to set off the events of the game and he made a deal with Bane’s champion to kill Orin and take the Netherstones for themselves and rule Balder’s Gate as partners with the Elder Brain’s power under their control.

[rafesfawn]

🪽🧺 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐂𝐎𝐎𝐋

𝜗ৎ⋆｡˚ when rafe sees a precious little doll on the side of the road with a broke-down car, how can he resist out of the kindness of his heart offering her a ride? just a ride home, that's all...

or how trailerpark!angel!reader and rafe met!

warnings: use of the nickname pet & little one, reader! is eighteen-nineteen! bit of perv!rafe, barely proofread!

a/n: first time writing a rafe fic/blurb! im so excited, also this is based on this ask and thank you so much for sending something I really appreciated it and I hope u like it mwah! I would say you two meet in like early season 2 (right before the cross storyline) also for the format slight ib to others on here esp @rafesangelita (sorry for the tag!)

this was based off of this ask! which tysm i literally love requests and rafe and trailerpark!angel!reader is my new obsession <3

a small, meaningless kick was made to the tire while you huffed and groaned, putting two hands over your frustrated features as all you wanted to curl up into a ball and cry.

“piece of shit,” you mumbled under your breath, kicking the tire once more, but immediately a whimper fell from your lips. the pain shot from your toe up to your spine. making you sniffle and tip-toe in pain. in your denim ruffle skirt, white socks, and pink converse, you sat down on the asphalt, on the side of the road, leaning against the side of your broken-down car.

she wasn’t the best car, but she surely got you around most of the time. most of the time. it was a little volkswagen beetle, light pink in color, covered in so many stickers some wondered if it was passing inspection. it wasn't.

sitting with your head against the car for what felt like hours (it was maybe ten minutes), but spending even that on the side of a main road in kildare island was torture. especially with the beating sun late august provided.

rafe was speeding down the road on the way to play golf and get drunk with topper and kelce. “ah shit, i don’t know, man.” he said into his phone, holding it up with one hand; his voice gruff and confident, topper on the other line. “you really think i won’t kick your ass today huh?” a smirk grew on his already smug expression.

letting out a short chuckle at toppers response, nothing anybody ever said meant more than a laugh to him. or that's what it used to be like anyway, his act wasn't together if anything, it was worse than it'd ever been. his father condemning him to disingenuous "discipline" to forget about the possible death of his golden daughter.

"the fuck?" he mutters into the mic, his voice laced with confusion. as he sees up ahead on the road, a pink car broken down, with the most precious thing sitting against it. a pout on the angels soft lips and the most defeated look in her eye. aw, you just fell right into my lap, didn't you? little angel.

your eyes glued on the pavement, your entertainment of watching a little ladybug try to make it to safety in the distance, was shortly interrupted.

a nice black truck coming into view it came to such a short stop it almost took your breath away, the breaks slightly screeching at the haste. a tire replaced the spot the ladybug once was.

you stood brushing the dirt and gravel off the backsides of your pale thighs, left bare by the short fabric of your skirt.

the man stepped out of the truck. he was tall, and the sleeves of his polo looked like they were about to burst at the seams, not able to contain the biceps beneath. his features strong and statue-like, his deep sea eyes hidden behind the curtain bangs that hung over his forehead. a grin that seemed too genuine, too good to be true.

you removed your heart-shaped sunglasses, placing them on top of your head to see him more clearly. your possible savior, but he was anything but.

he stepped a bit closer, seeing the state of her already pretty beaten car, "having some car trouble?" rafe asked as if he wasn't stating the obvious.

you pretended he wasn't either as you nodded, the frown only slight now but still on your lips as your eyes remained looking up into his.

"aw.. poor thing we can't have that, what happened?" his voice, a mockery of sympathy. as he inspected the piece of shit car she loved so much. his care coming from a place of ownership, of burning ache or want.

still, in slight shock, you hadn't answered him, following behind him as he reopened the hood like he owned the car. not even realizing you'd been rude and not replied till he spoke again. "little one, i can't fix it if you don't tell me what's wrong." a heady mix of gentle and firm that made your mouth go dry and your head dizzy.

"oh- it's been on her last limb for like ever, i guess she finally called it quits... right on my way home." you said with a little sad laugh that rafe wanted to bottle the sound of and listen to on repeat. "and I really need to get home," you added fiddling with your fingers in front of you.

a sweet girl all out of options, rafe was so glad he was here to provide her with his help. "tell you what, I'll take you home and come back and fix this thing up for you, huh?" he offered, there goes his saturday plans he presumed. it'd be worth it. he told himself he'd make it worth it, with those shy eyes and the expression you carried like a lost puppy. you'd owe him he'd make sure to get something in return.

just like he figured, you shook your head. never wanting to accept such a grand favor. "I can't ask you to do that, I mean, I don't even know your name." nerves, curiosity, and a glint of something else tinged in your voice, so many wonders in that head as soon as his truck came to a stop for you. why? the only question running through your mind.

"It's rafe, can I help you out now?" his genuine grin turned almost smug at his own remark, brushing that bangs out his face, the effort pointless as they immediately fell back again.

you paused. picking at the already chipped white nail polish on your sore fingertips, a larger-rougher hand covered your own, stopping your movements with that firm gentleness he carried around her. you looked up at him, he was so much closer. the scent of some cologne that probably could pay your rent, and a tinge of smokey wood filled your senses.

"pet?" he questioned with an expecting tilt of his head, calling you that like it was the most natural thing in the world.

your body and mouth responding before giving another second for your brain or anxiety to think it over, you nodded. "can you please give me a ride home?" you hesitantly asked, it felt weird. getting help, and even asking for it felt foreign, he offered it so graciously like it was nothing.

looking down upon her, his grin turned genuine once again, his eyes seemed almost proud it was a soothing balm to her nervous heart. a rosy hue to her cheeks as his palm covered the side of her neck, making a few pats to the flesh before leading her to his truck.

you'd owe him. something he was sure you were ready for.

[quest-draws]

Image description: A four page black and white comic of my tortoiseshell cat, Bunny, complaining that I won’t let her in from the screen porch.

Page 1 

Panel 1: A small tortoiseshell cat sits on the other side of a glass door, looking up sadly, saying, “Mama! Mama, help! I’m in the screen porch!” 

Panel 2: She scratches at the door. “Mama! Mama I’m trapped! I’m trapped in the screen porch! Mama!” she cries. 

Panel 3: She looks through the glass with her sad, innocent expression. “I see you, Mama! Can’t you hear me? Why won’t you let me in? What have I done, Mama!”

Panel 4: The left corner is dominated by a close up of her face, as she reminisces about the cat tree in the screen porch. We see her perched on the very top, looking out over the backyard.

She says, “Was I not grateful enough, Mama? You gave me a throne, here in the screen porch! A place where I could look down upon the world as a god!”

Page 2

Panel 1: While she’s perched atop her cat tree, it begins to rain outside. Bunny looks askance at it from behind the screen. 

“But I couldn’t touch it, Mama!” she narrates, now in boxes instead of word balloons, “I could see the rain lavish the earth, but never feel its cool caress!”

Panel 2: A paw rests on the screen. On the other side, two birds chirp, unbothered by the presence of Bunny.

 “I could smell the blood of the song birds, but never taste its warmth! I lived as Tantalus in this screen porch, Mama!”

Panel 3: Sitting on a cushioned chair, bunny looks out over the yard, barred from her by the porch screen. 

“Tormented by what I could never reach!” 

Page 3

Panel 1 : Another reminiscence, this time of Bunny running through the open door to the screen porch earlier that day while I was taking out the garbage. 

“And yet I returned, again and again and again! Was that my sin, Mama? Is this my punishment? To be condemned forever to a hell of my own choosing?” 

Panel 2: Returning to the present, Bunny looks up from the otherside of the door, her eyes wide.

“Is this what you call justice, Mama?” She says. “Is this what you call love?” 

Panel 3: From Bunny’s perspective we see me; I am ignoring her, going about my business. She calls out to me, “Answer me, Mama! Mama!”

Panel 4:I glance back at her, unmoved by her cries. “Mama!” she yells. 

Page 4

Panel 1: Pulling out we finally see more of the wall which has the door to the screen porch. Directly beside it is a cat door that goes through the wall, out into the screen porch. Another cat, Bunny’s sister Maggie, is coming through the cat flap with no issue.

 I say, “ Bunny, I know you know how to use the cat door.”

Clawing at the window, tears in her eyes, Bunny screams “MAMA!!”

End ID.

[therealslimshakespeare]

|| Radio ||

Requested plot points? ☑️

Circa: early February 1944

Immediate previous fic: Favorite Escape

Summary: when your hodge podge radio won’t work, who should ya call? Probably the flight engineer

Warnings: usual universe warnings apply, 18+ but nothing very alarming really happens in this one, references to others are made, some potential slut shaming in the beginning if ya squint? perhaps some queer baiting but it’s the Buckies rolling around on the flooor, they’re one massive queer bait lbr, it’s not me. Also. My shit Crystal Radio making descriptions- don’t come for me I haven’t made one and I spent five hours falling down a rabbit hole as to how the guys made them in the camps and at the end of the day I said: screw it! And went with one of the Brit’s scenarios 🍻

Edited only by my tired little eyes, full warning and have mercy 💋

Also, just a note I feel compelled to make- this fic centers around women in the army, in a war, which they’re spending under dire conditions in a POW camp. Yes there is love here, there is also hierarchy and discipline and the enforcement of that does not make one character or another necessarily callous or less loving. They are their ranks first and foremost as all signed up for.

“They’re forging papers, you know.” Maureen broached the topic to Egan one day, late February and when her cheeks were still bruised from Ida’s book.

Bucky paused his tracing of a map, sooty finger trailing along a river with the same incomprehensible name as its twin running parallel, he didn’t know anything about papers or anyone making them and she knew that. “Who?”

“Good ones. Identification, passports.” She enumerated.

“Who?”

“The Poles. The ones with the-“

“-the liquor.” he finished for her, remembrance and condemnation heavy in his wry tone. “The ones you stayed out all night with.”

“Stayed long enough for them to get drunk enough to show me.”she replied, without heat, which was surprising.

“Some grand plan of yours, huh?” He bit back a laugh, it was a fine way to cover her ass for being insubordinate. It was a way he’d likely try if he was in her place.

“No.” she swore instead. “Just luck, I happened to see them. They got careless. Maybe an answer to all Jack’s prayers.”

“Yeah. Anything to give that rosary a break.”

“Yeah.”

“You asked them?”

“What for?”

Bucky regarded her with thinning patience but something kept him from snapping, the feeling of a riddle still to be solved. “For some papers.” he clarified, measured and intent, she knew how much easier that would make their plans for Ida.

Maureen shook her head, glancing down at her twisting hands, “I didn’t want to-�� her mouth twisted too, “-I wanted to ask a superior first.”

Bucky considered that for a moment, slightly touched at her newfound wisdom, “Why not ask Buck?”

She shook her head again, auburn hair curling under her chin just so, even here in the stalag she had some traces of the old charm. “He’s got too much to worry about for me to be bringing in hypotheticals.” she was so upset by something she would not even meet John’s eye and he felt a slice of remorse for how he hadn’t even noticed the ground down change in her since she got here, his drinking buddy and the soft fleshed rival of merry old English days was a gruff and battered and sullen woman; being a red blooded American male, he regretted that dismal change. “And I'm worried about what to bargain with. What can I promise? We haven’t got much and I don’t have— there’s not much anyway, but what we’ve got I didn’t wanna promise. Not without-“ she still hadn’t met his eye, he tracked hers; a furious roving of pale blue back and forth across the floorboards and it made Bucky itch.

“Who signs these papers?” Bucky asked, thinking the logistics through, knowing she’d perk up if he brought them up.

“Haven’t a clue. Maybe they haven’t figured that part out yet. I don’t know. I just know they’ve got papers.”

“Good ones.”

“Yeah.”

“We haven’t got much.” he agreed, clicking his teeth in thought, “What’d you give them for the liquor?”

“They just invited me.”

“Didn’t have to lend a hand or nothin’?” he balked and Maureen threw him a glare that seemed more hurt than rage, and chastened by a voice inside that sounded much like his mama’s, he amended with sheepish humor, “Hell, feel like lending a hand myself these days, if it’d get me a whisky.”

Her gnarled fist curled white in her lap, she managed hoarsely, “They just wanted to talk about home. To someone who hadn’t heard about it a million times before.”

“They got cigarettes?” he asked.

“As most common payment for their booze -they’ve got enough to insulate their shack three deep.”

“Cigarettes won’t cut it then.”

��I’ve been thinking.”-

“Yeah?”

“The radio. I’m the only one who doesn’t think it’s worth the risk but, I know, it doesn’t matter, it’s happening. Gale’s going to keep trying. And if it works-“ she rubbed at her eyes, tired and unsure, “-that’s quite the bargaining chip.”

Bucky nodded slowly, eyes narrowing as his smile grew a touch broader, “News of the outside world.” he was half in agreement, “Buck asked for a week. Been four days.”

“He’s stumped.” Maureen retorted instantly. “And he’ll stay that way and he’ll go nuts and you’ll go die going over the fence and then he’ll have no reason left not to die too.”

Bucky whistled, low and chiding, “You’re full of rainbows today, Candy.”

“You know who he oughta ask.” she shook off the barb. “But he won’t. And I don’t want him risking it for this thing anymore than anyone else, but you all want it so bad, and they’ll shoot us for it if it works or not. I’m not asking her. But you would. Might as well get shot for it working, right? Isn't that what you said yesterday? You know who he should ask.”

Bucky’s keen eyes showed the moment it dawned on him, his eyebrows shot up and his mouth sagged and he ran a weathered hand over his face, “Awww shit, Candy.” came garbled behind his palm. “Ah shit.” he said again with conviction as he shoved the hand into his pocket, wretched acknowledgment of her point clear on his face.

“I didn’t want to suggest it, told Ida it’s a fucking dangerous thing and I’ll never forgive if— but you all—“

Bucky grounded aloud, “Nah, nah she’s -Lu would solve it.” he muttered, shushing her. “Demarco really pummeled you the other day, huh?” he added, and that got her to meet his eye, she looked spooked and a little incensed, “Saw him fuckin’ you up behind B compound but sheesh, s’like he hollowed you out worse than a jacolantern; yer shifty as hell.”

“He-“ Maureen still felt like blanching at the memory of Benny’s terribly correct opinions, his disappointed eyes and his fist full of her flight jacket asking her what in the living fuck was wrong with her besides a concussion, a sick childhood and an ever nauseating jealousy of Buck Cleven’s paternal time and effort, “-he had some admonitions. After…after the other night.”

Bucky hummed, shitty smirk taking up residence on his face, “How ‘bout that.”

“I’m gonna be better.” she muttered and Bucky felt for her, could almost taste the echo of his identical and hollow determination to climb the mountain of bad habits when weak from spuds and pneumonia. He told himself the same every morning and fell into bed condoning his failure every night, like a ritual.

“You’re gonna get us those papers.” he corrected, shoving off the wall to come near her, give her the full Major treatment and maybe a friendly hand, “And you can promise your drinkin’ buddies news from the radio.”

Maureen nodded in understanding, no joy or animation left in her green eyes. She used to enjoy a bit of subterfuge, now she only felt hollow misery at the thought that she'd dragged Lu into this, too. This risk she hated so much and yet no one cared. Lu would be glad to be dragged in, it’s true, she was itching at the chance to be useful and to make Gale proud, it’s how the girl was wired. It’s how most girls were wired, Maureen supposed, desperate to make Gale Cleven approve. Lu’s enthusiasm wouldn’t make the sight of her being made to kneel in the mud and have a bullet put in her head any easier, wouldn’t make Maureen feel any less responsible for it when her lifeless body thudded to the earth.

All that lovely goodness stamped out.

Over a radio.

Bucky’s hand felt too hard and too big on her shoulder. He had gone before the vision cleared, mud and wire and the freezing main square at Ravensbruck fading back to the musty bunk room. Maureen shook herself and stood up to make herself somehow appealing, reamniante some semblance of the cheerful rashness that had led her to the Polish combine in the first place: she found it hard to inspire. She’d like to count that a victory but she knew better, she wasn’t reformed she was just tired.

A washed face and a fake smile and the promise of news from outside would have to be enough to bank all their risks on, it would have to be.

“Crank,” she greeted the man in the hall, flashing him clean, water brushed teeth and her gentlest, freshly soot lined eyes, “I’ve been tasked by Major Egan with an errand, spare a minute to babysit me?”

__________________________________

Bucky finds Buck Cleven in his own bunkroom, Demarco outside on watch and that’s all Bucky needs to know to guess the radio is out and Buck’s working like a fiend yet again to make it work. Sure enough, he’s hunched over the table with it, mittened hands shaking from cold and exhaustion and a sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the paltry sweater he wears.

Bucky walks in and Gale gives him a soft, acknowledging glance before continuing to his work. Bucky takes up his usual place behind Buck’s left shoulder to watch and Buck, being used to it, goes on.

“My little Kriegie Marconi, huh?” Bucky allows the nagging impulse he has felt for weeks while standing in this position to finally exert itself, and his forefinger lifts and swirls in the curling gold strands of hair at the nape of Gale’s neck, his friend almost bolts away but then seems to choose a prey’s tactic and just stills, goes very still and Bucky scritches the scalp beneath his grab in assurance he don’t meant anything by it. He doesn’t think he does, at least.

Gale, wary and with a voice close to mechanized it’s so stilted, inquires with ever-present politeness, “You alright Bucky?”

It’s better than that whole ‘major’ business; getting called Major as if that meant shit anymore. “Yeah, ‘course I am.” Bucky rakes his fingers through the hairs there at the nape of that dainty neck, scritches the scalp with all four of his main ones, and uncovers a white long scar sliding round once he lifts the hairs there. “Why wouldn’t I be? Gonna be a father soon.”

Buck does jerk then, away from his touch and wheeling his chair around to glare at Bucky; it’s an impressively executed little pirouette and John misses the feel of his warm neck and oil soft hair. “Jesus John.” he reprimands.

“We’re gonna get outta here Buck.” John swears, he’s so sure of it because he cannot in all his thinking and predicting ever imagine a scenario where they don’t, and he chooses to think it’s not delusion but a good omen. “Ida’s gonna have that baby and when it’s safe we’ll all meet up.”

Gale is looking at him like he’s his own father again, Bucky knows that look, it always makes him equal parts ashamed and desperate, “Jus’ like that.” Gale mocks in a husky gust.

It’s devastating, and it’s intended to be, and Bucky could bear that with better humor if he could still touch Gale and his hair. “Just like that.”

Gale hums and it’s a mean sorta vocalization that makes Bucky’s heart thud and his skin prickle hot, it’s the kinda noise you kiss off a person, he thinks, but it’s Buck and so he doesn’t know what to do with it. “It’s gonna get you killed.” Buck is saying instead and Bucky lets him, “I know you all think she’s cracked up and maybe she has but it wouldn’t hurt to listen to Kendeigh sometimes when she’s tellin’ ya shit that a five year old could accurately guess, -goddamn it.”

His voice rose to a strong rage by the end and Bucky takes a chair opposite him, sick of standing there like a dumb dog waiting for his scolding to be over. “So what.” Bucky challenges him, “We just wait around and Brady pops out a child and the krauts let us keep it and it’s our new mascot and we all sing zippidy doo da, huh? Huh, Buck?”

Gale’s hands fell away from his face with a slam to the table, a shocking degree of anger showing for a split second and it gave Bucky an odd degree of gratification. “I jus’ want you to find a plan with better odds.”

Bucky sniffed and leaned forward, went in for the kill and Gale was looking at him like he expected it, like it was his turn to play daddy to everyone here and Gale for once was so beaten down he wouldn’t just allow the changing of the guard, he was close to angry at its lateness. It made Bucky’s heart thud.

“I’ve been listening to Kendeigh.” Bucky refuted briefly, “And we’ve got a plan.” Gale gave him a tired look of encouragement to go on, “How long’s it been since you slept? Huh, well, we got a plan. Practically perfect, or it will be, just need the radio.”

“Ain’t giving this away.” Gale said, “Not for anythin’, even useless.”

Bucky patted the table top in easy assurance, if he could have reached Buck’s thigh, he’d have patted that instead, “No, no, don’t need to give it away, just need it to work. So,” he softened his voice and his eyes tightened, “I’m callin’ Lu in.”

Oddly, Gale does not fight it. Not aloud, at least. There’s an anguished look of hate on his face and Bucky mirrors it. It’s for this place and the fucking awful choices they have to choose from every goddamn day.

“You run this by Ida?” is all he asks.

Bucky pops his flaking lips audibly, “What, need us both gangin’ up on you to agree? She’ll sign off. Smith’s an officer. Gotta remember that sometimes, Buck.”

The way his Buck swallows hard and dry contradicts his words, “I do remember that.”

“Really?” Bucky’s mouth gives a soft smile of doubtful incredulity and Gale’s mimics it, mournful but a smirk all the same, “Feel like she should answer to ‘Gale’s Baby’ these days. Lieutenant Smith who?”

Gale scoffs, “Careful now.”

“No really, she’s an officer and she wants to be treated like one. It’ll do her good to have work. Her kinda work.”

“Could get her killed.”

“Layin’ in her bunk could do that.”

Gale grunts, its sounds like an agreement.

“So I say Lieutenant Smith gets put on radio detail. Like her goddamn job description suggests. Huh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Gale lets out a shaky agreement.

“Aaaaand,” Bucky draws it out as he rises again and saunters over to Buck who is ready for him and loose this time, “how bout I go back to bein’ the one you’re frettin’ ‘bout all the time. Got me almost jealous of the girl. How ‘bout I do. Huh?”

Gale’s scoff is fond as anything as he looks up at John with cheerful derision, “And you ‘bout to be a father? Make me an old man? Fuck no, ya looney.”

“Alright.” Bucky concedes with hands up in surrender before lurching forward and grasping Gale’s rickety chair back by its wobbly spokes and hefting it partially off the ground, beautiful and outraged prude of an occupant still seated in it, “Then I’ll play daddy and put you to bed, how ‘bout that.”

“John Egan for fucks sake-“ Gale’s fists pounded on the meat of his shoulders and his outraged protests wafted against Bucky’s neck and his jabbing knees collided with the meat of his thighs and Bucky hadn’t felt so close to him or so happy to be alive since England.

“Major sir, the hell is goin’ on?” Demarco’s tame inquiry from the safety of the doorway made them both lose their grapple and they collided together onto the floor, bunk bed barely missed by their heads and the hapless chair mixed up between their limbs.

Bucky grinned, hip sore from his fall and kidneys suffering from Buck’s trapped elbow there, “Puttin’ Goldilocks to bed.” he replied.

DeMarco processed that and the scene before him with grave sobriety before saluting lazily and turning to go, “Right on, sir.”

John did his best to rise up without further pinching Gale who was indeed trapped beside him and beneath him, chair legs wound between a lanky human leg in a puzzle that Bucky realized might take some caution to untangle without harm. Strangely, Buck wasn’t moving, he was just looking up at him like a cat would their clumsy master who has done somethin’ stupid which was a surprise to neither. It was so innocuous a look and so nostalgic, it winded Bucky with the realization he hadn’t seen it in ages, just as he hadn’t felt his boney ribs against his own and the feel of his elegant hands yanking him around in a fight. This miserable place really was stomping out the glow in the best people.

“Ya know Buck,” he ventured, clearing his throat for extra casualness, “I’ve missed you.” When Gale only kept looking up at him, perfect porcelain face with its unsettling scars and wary eyes without a lick of storm in them, John Egan grabbed his shovel and dug his own grave a little deeper, drug a finger down his cheek. “Missed all this.”

Bucky didn’t know what he meant by “this” but it felt safer and worse all at once, since he did miss Buck but he and Buck never used to hang out on floors with a chair as chaperone. Mercifully, Buck neither points that out nor moves away, acting very much like he needed to heaped on the floor with Bucky and a stray chair every bit as much as John did. Like it’s doing him good.

“And you couldn’t’ve jus’ said.” Gale murmurs with the softest eye roll of the century and Bucky feels like beaming and it must show in his face so strong and bright after a sunless winter that after a flash Gale’s cheeks flame from it and he averts his eyes.

“I dunno Buck, could I?” Egan asks one blushing cheek and Gale hasn’t got a good reply for that, so they just lay there on the floor.

“Go on now, get off me.” Gale doesn’t shove at him, he presses his hand to John’s forehead like he would a dog and John goes, obedient as one.

———————————————————————-

They found Lu with Murph and Benny and Brady, measuring out what seemed to be lot lines between Love Shack #9 and the next combine, boot scuffed perimeters already visible in the light snow and drawn in a decently tidy rectangle. There were guards loitering nearby, nosey as always with their cigarettes and their antsy dogs anytime someone did something out there besides piss or pace or stare at the fence.

“What’s all this?” Bucky inquired cheerfully, coming up to them with Gale, bundled and shivering behind him.

Benny looked up from tilling a furrow with his boot, right where Lu’s mittened finger pointed out. “It’s for the garden. S’posed to be spring before long.”

“A Chicago man oughta know better, Benny.” Egan snarked.

���Need us?”

Bucky sniffed, a casual set to his body that belied his quest, “Just the little one.”

Smith promptly looked startled, then eager. “All well Majors?”

“Need your advice on the color of my cufflinks with this suit.” Bucky extended his arm and beckoned her, “C’mon back in for a minute. One of you too, need a watch to go with the cufflinks.”

———————————————————————

With Benny on guard, Brady and Kendeigh having excavated the radio’s shell from the floorboard and table leg in which it resided, the Buckies stood over Smith’s small frame as she sat at the table and inspected the simplistic device with keen eyed appreciation for the construct.

“It’s really marvelous.” she assured Cleven, running her fingers over the carefully coiled wire and precarious pin.

Gale didn’t even crack a smile. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked instead.

She shook her head, a frown gathering. “Never made one-“ she cautioned.

“-but you get the idea.”

“Yes sir, I do.”

“So what’s wrong.”

Lu ran her fingers over the wire, again and again, the dusty metal not insulated, just bare copper, likely stripped from somewhere. It reminded her of early days as a cadet when they threw chicken wire mixed with hydraulic lines at herself and her fellow rookie engineers and told them to sort it, testing to see if they knew which was which. It had been so rudimentary she had wanted to laugh until she realized others were being flunked.

This was so basic she was stumped.

“Take your time, Lu.” Bucky spoke up after a burdened pause during which she could almost feel Major Cleven breathing down her neck.

“Candy, can I try with the headphone?” she asked at last, frustrated and out of her element, just a few months out of a plane and she had already lost her touch.

Maureen passed it over and Lu pressed it to her ear, not to discern what was quite obviously radio silence, but to imagine the whole process in reverse, track it down the cord all the way to the base, each possible breakdown of the conduction.

She fingered the ramshackle diode with burgeoning suspicion. “What’s your crystal?”

“That’s just…lead.” Cleven muttered.

“From?”

“Ground pencils.” Bucky supplied cheerfully.

Smith bit her lip, “We need sulfur added. Lead won’t conduct on its own.” She figured Cleven knew that, the grim and unmoving set of his mouth suggested so.

“Just- sulfur?” Maureen asked.

“If I had sulfur we could add it to the lead dust, ignite it and-“ Smith grinned at Kendeigh, knowing that she alone may have shared her enjoyment of a small conflagration from time to time, “burn it down and you’ve got something close enough to Galena. Just need a pinch of it should work.”

Bucky shoved his hands in his pockets and surveyed the mostly morose room. All except for the two girls grinning at each other over the hypothetical of a little chemistry experiment in a highly flammable wooden combine.

“We’ve got sandy soil.” Buck’s contemplative drawl spoke up, “Dunno if we could extract enough pure sulfur.”

Maureen stared back at Egan instead, “Other sectors have gotten portions of kits, chemistry kits, radio kits, they’ve been smuggled in with all sorts of stuff. Inside of a violin, oat bags. Nothing to fully build something. They might have sulfur. I could make inquiries and- well, Jack could pick it up next time the band goes over C compound to entertain the poor Aussie bastards.”

“How do you kno- nevermind, actually. Nevermind.” Bucky broke off, “Alright. Sure, why not. Ya sure that’s it?” he asked Lu once more.

She gave a helpless little shrug. “Gotta be. Or the wire’s dirty. Where’d it come from anyway?”

Gale gave Bucky a long suffering look as Bucky seemed to swell a couple inches and bounce back on his heels at the mention of his scrounging prowess. “The lamp.” he nodded above them all.

Jack Brady scoffed, short, clipped, betrayed, “That why it cuts out all the time? Strobed us so bad last night -thought the room was possessed.”

“Sacrifices Jack, sacrifices.”

———————————————————

Benny had hauled in enough water buckets to elicit some negative attention from the guards, and when the inspection came the inmates of the Love Shack insisted the drenched floors and table of the Majors’ barracks were due to sanitation post regurgitation. At night, with only one stolen torch light from Combine 15 to illuminate the endeavor, a basin of water beneath a smaller bowl in which lay their precious and recently procured ingredients, a science experiment began. The Majors and Ida gathered round, all looking as ghastly and spectral in the light of the flashlight as Brady’s fake ghost. It held the thrill of a bonfire night except for the stakes, which all in the room did their best not to dwell on.

“Zippo, Candy.” Lu gave the word and Maureen, with only the protection of Ida’s bent aviators to keep from a scorched cornea, flicked on her lighter and set the mixed powders ablaze.

It flamed up high and smelly, making Benny gag and mutter something about Meatball’s gas to a tittering Brady, and then died down to a yellow smoking ember.

“We should let it sit.” Lu surmised with a squeeze to Maureen’s only somewhat singed hand, her big dark eyes surveying the burnt bowl and their smoking experiment with glittery excitement at the possibility of success, “Let it cool, settle, maybe strain it. Can you get me a net? Oh Candy come now, get me a strainer?” she begged with a laugh as Maureen rolled her eyes at the idea of yet another trip to the Stalag Market for the most random items imaginable. If they hoped to not be suspicious, they’d need better lies or more money.

“How about cheesecloth?” Kendeigh tried not to grin indulgently- and failed- in the face of Lu and having recently been allowed to set something on fire

Lu kissed her cheek. “Cheesecloth would be perfect.”

In the end, cheesecloth did indeed prove perfect, and amongst the burnt dust of the combined minerals was a gritty little pinch full of the needed crystals. Or so Lu said, Gale agreed but the crease between his brows hadn’t lifted for two days; Bucky’s fingers had begun to twitch in antsy need to manually smooth them out. He imagined Maureen felt the same but she hadn’t said, uncharacteristically forbearant now she had some job to keep her sane. Even if it was playing fetch for Lu.

—————————————————————

“Well, this is it.” Gale muttered when the watch had been set once more, Murph and Hambone on the steps, Crank inside, Brady at the door, Benny at the window. Even Major Clark had joined them in the barracks for this final try and Lu’s cheeks were maroon from the attention even as her deft hands steadily pressed her concoction beneath its intended rod.

“Pass me the pliers, sir?” She asked and for a moment, the teacher became the apprentice and Gale fetched her the stalag forged tool, rudimentary like everything here yet the gripped and pulled and lifted same as the pliers back home. “You could check your look in this wire’s reflection.” She complimented Gale’s buffing of the copper wire.

He shrugged in turn. “Didn't wanna leave anythin’ to chance. That it?” he asked as her hands stalled and she surveyed her work.

Lu nodded solemnly. “Yes sir.”

Gale picked up the headphone from in front of him on the table like it was a gun he was about to bring to his head. “Here.” He extended it to her instead, “S’right, it was your job, you should be the first. Cmon.”

Despite her voiceless protest he pressed the headphones into her hands and Lu, never knowing how to disobey an officer, folded immediately.

For a good ten seconds everyone in the room held their breath as Smith pressed the headphone to her ear and gently wiggled the clothespin along the wire, searching and tuning, her face holding that old peaceful concentration they hadn’t seen since the last mission. She was at home with her mind tuned to another dimension. The pilots in the room knew that look, that was the look of someone at home with something that terrified them all the same, the gut swooping feeling of clearing the take off and sledding along the tops of the clouds. Wrong and strange and utterly incomparable to others, it was the closest to home one’s mind could be. Lu belonged somewhere on those electric currents and searching them out was like finding oneself again.

Then at last, Lu’s eyes sharpened out of their dreamy haze of concentration and she said, gentle as always, “It’s the BBC sir.”

💋 Hope you enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s lifeblood, please feel free to scream in comments or the inbox, I love it and wanna hear it all. Trust me, nothing is “too dumb”. Your thoughts mean the world to me.

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can you see the stars in your dreams (and do they have a lot to say about me) - Part 10

Or: a secret Admirer AU

PART 1 || PART 2 || PART 3 || PART 4 || PART 5 || PART 6 || PART 7 || PART 8 || PART 9

It takes a bit for Steve to go to pick up Eddie’s letter. A part of him is afraid of what he’ll find. It’s just, this will be in reply to the first letter he’d written that felt wholly like his own. So, he hesitates, afraid the words will condemn him, or there won’t be any at all. So, he stalls.

Chrissy never asks him about it, just follows his lead the way she always has when it comes to Eddie.

When he does finally go to the library to pick it up, he goes alone. Steve knows Chrissy’s going to be upset, and he gets that. It was stupid, and childish, and dangerous. He trusts Chrissy, he does, but he doesn’t want to share this response with her.

Not yet.

It’s safely tucked into his backpack; the library had felt too open—left him feeling exposed—for Steve to feel comfortable opening it there, without Chrissy there as his shield.

He’s about to enter the bathroom, ready to hunker down in a stall and read the letter when a snide voice coming from behind stops him in his tracks.

“You know, it’s fucked up that you’ve been following your girlfriend around like that.”

Steve turns, stunned. He’s stuck in the entrance to the bathroom, the swinging door hitting him in the back as he stares into the angriest set of eyes he’s ever seen.

He only recognizes her in the nebulous way everyone in a small town recognizes each other, but she’s glaring at him like he ran over her puppy without telling her.

“What?” Steve asks, already lost in this interaction after one sentence.

She huffs. “Chrissy can have friends,” the unknown girl spits. “And, get this, she can even have guy friends.”

She gasps showily once she’s done speaking, hand over her mouth and everything. Steve almost wants to smile, it reminds him so much of Eddie. But, her eyes are still hard, and her hands are fisted tight like she’d rather hit him than talk to him.

“I know that.” Steve says for lack of anything else to say.

Both of the girl’s eyebrows raise and she laughs condescendingly enough that a couple girls walking down the hallway look over and giggle at his predicament. No one else pays them any mind.

“Do you?” she asks, taking a step forward, forcing him back, a step into the bathroom. “Because you sure like to follow her around as she talks to Munson.”

Steve’s own brows are furrowed now as his confusion mounts. Is she here, what, defending Chrissy’s right to be friends with Eddie? Even if they were dating, Steve wouldn’t stop her from being friends with anyone. Hell, even at the height of their relationship issues, he’d never once tried to stop Nancy from seeing Jonathan.

He’s not following her around as some sort of fucked-up chastity chaperons. It’s about her safety.

“Jason—” he starts, but she cuts him off with such a disgusted scoff that he closes his mouth hard enough that his teeth clack together.

“Oh, so Jason was a dick-bag, so you’ve decided to follow in his footsteps?”

“No, that’s not—”

She laughs, and it sounds mean. “No, no, of course it’s not creepy when you do it,” she says, clapping like he’s the one putting on a little show for any passerby to see. “King Steve is above all that.”

She takes another step forward, and Steve, for some fucked up reason, can feel his hands shaking. As if this girl is really a threat. She feels like one, with her clenched fists and acerbic tongue and all her goddamn assumptions.

“You don’t know anything about me.” He wants it to come out assertive. It doesn’t.

He feels small.

She laughs again. “Everyone knows everything about you,” she replies. “Not much to know, is there?”

It’s a rhetorical question, but it still scratches into all of his hidden little insecurities. Maybe they’re not all that hidden anymore because he can feel his face crumpling in on itself, and can’t do anything to stop it.

“We’re not even dating,” he blurts out, quick and panicked, voice catching embarrassingly with emotion.

Steve takes a few more quick steps back, breath shuddering in his lungs as he lets the door swing closed between them. Just before it slams shut, Steve catches sight of the shocked look on the girl’s face. He can’t bring himself to care.

God, why did he say that? Some unknown girl is a little mean to him and he outs Chrissy’s secret, just like that?

It hadn’t felt just a little mean, though. It’d felt like he was being flambéed; it still does.

Because she’s right. Everyone always is, about him. Big house, no parents. Pretty, but the pool’s shallow. Not the sharpest tool in the shed. Bullshit.

Not much to know, is there?

He’s got an empty house, and an empty spot at his side to prove it. Nancy hadn’t stayed, and the wound's long since healed over, but Eddie’s been carving out a similar one in his own shape for months now. It grows deeper each time he smiles at Chrissy only to sneer at Steve behind her back.

It grows deeper each time he talks to Chrissy with Steve’s own words pouring out of his mouth.

The late bell rings just as Steve stumbles into one of the vacant stalls and slumps onto the dirty floor, too overwrought to care what filth he’s getting on his ass.

He just needs a second.

“Steve?” It’s the same girl’s voice, barely recognizable without anger punctuating it. “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t answer, but his breathing’s still labored with emotions, so it doesn’t take her long to zero in on his location and swing the stall door open.

“That’s disgusting,” she says, but she shuffles into the stall with him and sits on the dirty linoleum across from him, close enough that their knees knock. “If I get salmonella, you’re paying my medical bills.”

When Steve finally looks at her, her nose is wrinkled in disgust, hands fisted around her knees like she’s trying to keep from touching the toilet or the wall.

“I don’t think that’s how salmonella works,” Steve replies quietly.

The girl rolls her eyes, but it doesn’t feel as mean, somehow. She just looks tired, ashamed almost, even as she replies, “like you’d know,” bitchily. Steve glares at her, and she slumps into herself with a muttered, “sorry.”

They stare at each other. He’s close enough that he can see all the freckles on her cheeks, the eyeliner smudged beneath her eyes, the frizz of her unconditioned hair. And suddenly, it’s all too much.

He laughs, loud enough that it echoes strangely off the vacant bathroom walls as the girl stares at him like he’s lost his mind. It’s just—he’s sitting in the bathroom, knee to knee with a girl who’s name he doesn’t know after arguing about a girlfriend he doesn’t even have.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, waving his hand in front of his face like that’ll somehow dry up the tears of hilarity creeping down his cheeks. “It’s just, I don’t even know your name.”

She scoffs again, but the tap of her knee against his takes the sting out of it. “Robin Buckley,” she says, smiling crookedly at him. “We’re supposed to be in Clickity Clack’s class together right now.”

Steve narrows his eyes, staring hard at her as he tries to match her face to the class. He comes up blank.

“I sit behind you,” she says, interrupting his deer-in-headlights moment with an answer instead.

He squints at her, barely comes up with an impression of frizzy hair and dirty shoes. “Sorry,” he says.

“You borrowed a pen, like, last week.”

Steve pouts. She’s just making fun of him now, smiling as his discomfort grows. “Sorry!”

He shoves her knee, and even though it’s gentle, she shrieks as more of her jeans come in contact with the boy’s bathroom floor. As if she has any right to complain; with her taking up so much space, he’s pressed right into the toilet.

As if to retaliate against him, she asks, “so, you’re not dating Chrissy?”

It’s a probing, nosey question, He shouldn’t be surprised. After knowing Robin for a sum total of five minutes, he can tell she’s a picker. She picks at people, and secrets, and skin, only to be surprised when the spot starts bleeding.

It’s all spiraling out of his control, anyway. First Chrissy, then Jeff. Who’s next, his Mom?

So, here, in the dirty boy’s bathroom, he snaps.

“She’s just helping me with Eddie, okay?” he says, words coming out harsher than he means them to.

Robin’s squinting at him again as she asks, “Munson?”

“She has better handwriting.”

It shouldn’t mean anything to her. But her eyes widen a second later as she stares at him like she’s never seen him before, eyes blown wide, mouth gaping open unattractively. He feels like a zoo animal, caged into this stall so she can gawk.

He’s three seconds away from standing up and leaving the bathroom entirely to flee this situation he no longer understands, when she says, “you’re the one who left Munson the note!”

 *** 

The reaction is immediate. Steve slams himself back hard enough that his head thunks hollowly against the stall. She’d make a joke about empty skulls if he didn’t look three seconds away from having a full-blown panic attack. Robin’s not equipped to deal with that, she’s usually the one panicking. So, she reaches out to squeeze his knee hard enough that his rabbiting pupils meet her eyes.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she says, unsure exactly what secret she’s keeping.

There’s a web of information here, and she’s not spinning the narrative together correctly. The facts are this:

  1. Chrissy dropped a note into Eddie’s locker when she thought no one was                   looking.

  2. Eddie smiled as he read the note.

  3. Soon after, Eddie started spending a lot of time with Chrissy.

  4. Steve started following her around like some sort of over-eager attack dog. 

But, if Steve had written the note, what does that mean? Chrissy’s always seemed nice, but are they playing some sort of cruel joke on Eddie? Does she need to warn her fellow outcast that he’s about to be Carrie’d?

“Who told you about the notes?” Steve asks, voice dead beneath all the shaking.

She holds her hands up. Afraid, suddenly, that he might hit her. “I saw Chrissy drop one in his locker,” she responds, even as she adds another known fact to her list:

  5.   There are multiple notes.

Steve shrinks further away from her, withdrawing his feet like she’s the one that’s the threat. Her leg’s cold where his was pressed against her. She’s always been shit at reading people, but this is starting to look like more than a prank found out.

She goes over her list again, adds a few more things on it:

  6. Steve needed “help” with Eddie.

  7. Steve is afraid of someone finding out about the notes.

He’s curled his arms around his knees and drawn them up to his ribs, containing himself into a much smaller ball than she’d imagined a fully-formed teenage boy could manage.

It’s the familiar posture that drives it home for her; she’s putting her evidence together, and creating a picture she’d never expect.

“I thought you were playing a prank on him!” Robin cries, too loud if Steve’s flinch is anything to go by. She can’t help it— there’s something manic running through her as she stares into Steve’s scared, heartbroken eyes.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he murmurs into his knees, and god help her, she believes him.

“No, you wouldn’t,” she says, hoping her grin doesn’t look as deranged as it feels. “Not with your big gay crush on him.”

She slumps back against the stall, sighing with contentment. She’d always known that there must be other queer people in Hawkins, rule of law, statistics, and all that. But, now she has a name and a face and it’s King Steve of all people! She’s so excited she might just shake right out of her skin.

But, when she opens her eyes, Steve’s gone white as a sheet, a sweat breaking out along his brow like he’s in the middle of a basketball game and not sitting stationary.

Robin can’t tell if he’s even breathing.

She reaches out, trying to pat his knee consolingly. He jerks back, smacking into the wall again in his desperate bid to get away from her.

It’s only then that she realizes what she’d said. Robin slaps her hand over her mouth and curses into it, muffled, shit, shit, shits leaking out around the seal of her fingers. What’s she supposed to do now?

Inversely, the more Robin panics, the more color blooms back into Steve’s cheeks until he’s leaning away from the wall to peer into her face. “Are you okay?” he asks, sounding downright concerned, as if she hadn’t just outed him thirty seconds before.

God, was Steve Harrington actually a nice guy?

Robin flaps her hands around and feels like scum as he leans back away.

“I’m sorry!” she cries, finally reaching out and making contact with his kneecap. The awkward patting doesn’t feel like enough to make up for her careless words.

She’d been so busy seeing herself in him that she’d forgotten he wouldn’t know to look for the same thing reflected back.

“I only noticed because I was always looking at her, but she couldn’t stop looking at you.”

Steve’s brows are furrowed as he asks, “who?”

Robin rolls her eyes even as her heartbeat shudders in her chest, and her own anxiety sweats start moistening her armpits. “Steve, come on.”

He stares at her, and she stares back, trying to beam the information into his head. She doesn’t think she can say it aloud. But, his hands are shaking, a light tremor running through them from fingers to palms. She did that. The least she owes him is a little honestly in turn.

It must work because his eyes damn-near pop out of his skull as he whispers, “Chrissy?” quietly enough that it barely carries to her ears. She nods, her own hands now shaking up a storm until she tucks them into her armpits to settle them down. “I’m not dating Chrissy.”

Robin nods, “I know that now.”

They sit in silence, a couple of mirrors reflecting back at each other with shaky breathing and sweaty bodies. In tandem, they settle, feet tangling in the space between them until Steve’s knee is slotted with her own, foot nudging dangerously close to her ass.

“You like her?” he asks, and he’s smiling now. She almost gets what all the girls see in him.

Robin nods. “Unfortunately.”

“Hey!” Steve says, laughing as he rocks their legs together. “That’s my best friend you’re talking about!”

“Straight best friend,” Robin says, voice droll to cover up all that hurt.

“Maybe,” Steve says, then grimaces. “Probably.”

Robin sighs, slumping into her own stall wall as she whines, wriggling around on the floor despite all the scum on it. Steve laughs at her, squeezing his calves together tightly enough that she’s forced to stop moving. Damn jocks.

“Kind of a cliche though, huh?” he asks, voice teasing. “You’re, what? A drama kid, and you’re crushing on the head cheerleader?”

Robin kicks out at him, narrowly missing what she assumes are his balls. “Band nerd, thank you very much!” she corrects, putting on haughty airs to disguise the blush blooming on her cheeks. By Steve’s smirk, it must not be working. “Besides, what about you? King of the jocks in love with the king of the freaks?”

He kicks her back, and soon, they’re all out scuffling on the boy’s bathroom floor in the middle of class over crushes on people that’ve never looked their way. It ends with her holding his precious hair over the dirty toilet bowl, threatening a swirly until he calls uncle.

“To crushes on straight people?” Steve asks, unfairly un-winded from their impromptu match as he holds out his pinkie finger like they’re little kids again, sharing a secret.

She has her doubts about Munson’s supposed straightness, but she knows an olive branch when she sees one. She’s low on friends, and Steve’s starting to seem like a good one.

Disheveled, out of breath, and feeling lighter than she has in years, Robin links her pinkie with Steve’s, and they shake on it, a silent toast to untenable crushes.

*** 

“There’s another one.”

Chrissy whips her head back, taking a hasty step away from Jeff at the sound of Steve’s voice. “You’re late,” she says, smoothing down the lapels of her skirt like it wasn’t Jeff’s hands that had ruffled it all up.

Does this count as cheating?  The thought enters her brain unbidden, and she has to bite her lip against a laugh that would undoubtedly alert the whole library to their presence. Cheeks aching from the strain, she finally looks up to where Steve’s standing.

All levity drops from her when she sees Steve’s face. It’s too pale for his normal complexion and his eyes are puffy and red like he’d either been crying or making a concerted effort not to. Most telling is his hair, ruffled all to hell atop his head like he’d been running his fingers through it for hours.

“Steve,” she breathes, forgetting all about Jeff and his big, strong hands around her waist as she rushes to her best friend, palms cupping his face. “What happened?”

Steve snorts and asks, “did you not hear me? There’s another one.”

He gestures to his side and only then does Chrissy notice the girl. She’s got mousy brown hair that’s in just as much disarray as Steve’s, and when Chrissy looks her way, she gives a dorky little wave. Chrissy nods back, palms still clutching Steve’s cheeks.

“Another—“ Chrissy starts, looking between the pair, before the meaning of Steve’s cryptic words sink in. “Oh. She knows about—” she starts before trailing off, unwilling to say the rest out loud with a stranger nearby.

“About Eddie, yeah,” Steve says, nodding his head, her arms shaking up and down with the movement.

“I’m Robin, hi!” the girl says, too loudly for the hushed atmosphere of the library.

“Hi?” Chrissy replies, eyeing her distrustfully for a moment before looking back at Steve. “And it went okay?”

Steve nods again, and this time it’s Jeff that laughs, stepping up beside her. Chrissy, suddenly realizing the position she’s in, drops Steve’s face with a blush, hiding her hands behind her back like that would stop anyone from having noticed the awkward hold she’d just had on him.

 “Three for three on accidentally getting outed to people who aren’t going to send a lynch mob after you,” Jeff says jokingly, before continuing in a far more serious tone. “You’ve gotta be more careful, man.”

“I know,” Steve groans. “But, hey, I got three great people out of it.”

He smiles at Jeff and Chrissy, and even loops his arm with Robin’s and yanks her closer like he’s going to initiate a group hug, right then and there. Robin puts a stop to that by elbowing Steve in the side until he drops his hold.

There’s a small, wriggling part of Chrissy that seethes with jealousy as she watches them squabble like siblings. But, Jeff’s warm at her side, and she’ll probably go over to Steve’s again this weekend, and Robin seems pretty cool, so she pushes that feeling down and bumps into Jeff right back.

“Did you also tell him this whole thing was stupid?” she asks, looking at Robin.

Robin, who’s got Steve in a headlock, drops her hold suddenly enough that Steve collapses to the carpet. “Uh, I—“ she says, not even acknowledging Steve as he grumbles beneath her. “Me?”

Chrissy snorts. “Yes, you.”

“Oh!” Robin says, flushing at the misunderstanding. “I mean, no. Us lesbi—I mean, wait.” Steve laughs, and Robin kicks him in the side until he flips from his stomach onto his back, finally sitting up and hauling himself off the carpet. “I mean, I don’t think we’re close enough for that yet?”

Chrissy’s got her eyebrows raised, and the longer she looks, the redder Robin gets, clearly embarrassed about her fumbling words. “I don’t know, you guys seem pretty close,” she finally replies, putting Robin out of her misery.

“You’re the only one for me, Chris,” Steve replies, wrapping her in his arms because he’s the absolute worst.

She hums, letting him rock her back and forth right here, in the middle of the library for anyone to see. “You’re the best boyfriend I’ve ever had, you know?” she asks, ignoring the way Jeff coughs to hide a laugh somewhere behind her back.

“I know,” Steve replies, kissing her forehead.

*** 

Robin’s surprised when she’s invited over to the Harrington house, but she dutifully follows Steve to his car, sliding into the passenger seat. Parked beside them, Jeff is doing the same with Chrissy’s car, and when she squints through the two panes of glass separating them, she’s pretty sure they’re holding hands.

“What’s going on with them?” she asks, tilting her chin in their direction.

“Hmm?” Steve asks before following her line of sight. “Oh, they’re totally dating, but no one’s told me yet.”

“Oh,” Robin says, looking away, unwilling to see the way the couple is smiling at each other.

Not wanting to think about her own hurt feelings anymore, Robin adds that to her list. This time, it’s not a list of clues, but a list of ways that this is the messiest situation she’s ever seen.

Steve has a crush on Eddie Munson and is writing him love notes.

Eddie clearly thinks Chrissy is the one writing the notes, and,

Eddie??? Probably has a crush??? On Chrissy???

Chrissy is dating Jeff, Eddie’s best friend, but hasn’t told anyone.

Steve Harrington is queer.

The last item on the list is less of these people making a mess, and more a dangerous add-on that has her heart ratcheting up at the thought of any more people finding out, even Eddie. Maybe especially Eddie.

“Sorry, Buckley,” Steve says, reaching over to pat her knee consolingly. “Maybe they’ll break up?”

Robin looks back at Chrissy’s car only to see a pink blush painting the other girl’s face. She looks away, groaning as she bends over to bury her face into her raised knees.

“You guys are all the worst,” she mutters into her jeans, rubbing her face against the rough fabric.

Steve laughs but reaches over to smack her in the leg hard enough that she automatically flinches them back down. “No shoes on the upholstery.”

“Yes, Mom,” she mocks, but settles her feet onto the carpet anyway.

It’s not a long drive—the high school is located centrally to Hawkins, so you can reach pretty much anywhere within fifteen minutes. Loch Nora is only about ten, and within those ten minutes, Robin fiddles with the radio dial incessantly enough that Steve reaches over and flings his glove compartment open so she can rifle through his tape deck instead.

It’s a surprisingly varied collection. She’s just settled on a Pat Benatar cassette when he pulls into the driveway and cuts the engine.

His house is big—two stories and wide, too, but aside from the porch light, there are no lights on, nobody home.

Chrissy pulls into the driveway right behind them, jumping out of her car and rushing to the front door before anyone else has even made it out of their cars. She’s already grabbed a rock out of a potted plant, snatched a key from beneath it, and stuffed it into the imposing front door before the rest of them have stepped out of their seats.

“Yeah, Chris, show everyone where the hide-a-key is, why don’t you,” Steve grumbles, walking beside Robin up to the porch, Jeff on their heels.

Chrissy just swings the front door open, turning around to stick her tongue out at him. “You mean show all your wonderful friends where it is?”

Steve scoffs. “You’re all assholes, and you know it,” he replies, but he’s smiling, small and secret as he follows her into his own house.

Robin stops at the threshold, eyes wide. She’s heard all about Harrington’s ragers, even if they’ve dropped off to nothing recently, but this isn’t at all what she’d pictured. The house is big, but it’s emptier than she’d expected. Not much on the walls, nothing on the coffee table, no signs of life at all. Chrissy goes through the entire first floor, turning on every light in the place until it’s lit up like a beacon.

Only once she’s done does Steve seem to relax; he uses the toes of his opposite foot to kick off his shoes before bending down and lining them up by the front door. Robin follows his lead, sitting down on the cold hardwood to untie her own high-tops and put them neatly beside his. Jeff takes his own sneakers off while Chrissy tromps through the place in her clean white sneakers like she owns the place.

“Shoes, Chris,” Steve chides.

Chrissy rolls her eyes, but she dutifully kicks her shoes off in Steve’s direction, laughing as he mutters to himself while he cleans up her mess. They remind her so much of siblings that Robin wonders how anyone was ever fooled that they were dating. It’s like all it takes to convince the masses is a letterman jacket and standing a little closer than conventionally allowed.

Had the pair even ever said they’d been dating?

They sit next to each other on the couch, Jeff taking a nearby chair, and Robin settling for the empty space on Steve’s left, too afraid to take the spot next to Chrissy.

She feels awkward, like an intruder in their little inner circle despite Steve inviting her along. The feeling’s only amplified when Chrissy asks, “you didn’t pick up Eddie’s letter yet, did you?” causing an all-out fight between the pair.

Jeff and Robin make awkward eye contact as their voices grow louder, grimacing in commiseration. She won’t say it, but secretly Robin thinks Chrissy is right—it is a stupid risk to pick up the letter himself. Hell, it’s a stupid risk to do this at all.

“Well, can I see it?” Chrissy asks, holding her hand out like it’s a foregone conclusion that Steve will put it in her palm.

He hesitates, looking over to where he’d left his bag by the front door. “Not—” he starts, cheeks turning a faint pink as he searches for words, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Not yet, okay?”

Chrissy blinks, clearly surprised. Before she can respond, Jeff cuts the tension with a, “that good, huh?” which has Steve’s blush darkening to a bright scarlet and Chrissy throwing her head back and laughing.

Something in Robin warms at the teasing. She’d known that Jeff and Chrissy were accepting, but it’s different to see it in front of her—proof of concept. There’s a knot in her mouth that Robin swallows down, afraid that if she doesn’t, her own confession might burst out of her.

I’m a lesbian.

She’s never said it aloud to anyone but her own face in the mirror. She wants to taste it on her tongue. Maybe someday, with these people, she’ll get to.

PART 11

[stevebabey]

totally didn’t expect the other part to do well at all but 😳 apparently i don’t know steddie fans. as such, have a part two <3 part one is here again, look out for the borrowed hunger games lines

“You’ve ruined your life, you know that, right?”

The kitchen had been basking in the lull of the quiet morning before Eddie had spoken up, breaking the silence. Steve blinks, realising he’s been zoned out staring at the swirling bubbles atop his mug of coffee and look up at Eddie across the table.

“Doing what you did.” Eddie continues. There’s this slight in his voice. Steve figures it’s not really aimed at him.

Chief Powell had agreed to not release the details of the case to the public for obvious reason. However, it went without saying that of the cops working the case, not all would be so free-thinking. There were plenty who deemed leaking the alibi and letting the town devour Steve’s reputation a more than fair consequence.

And, well, Eddie didn’t have any reputation left to tarnish or save.

Steve takes a sip of his coffee and lets the warm flavour coat his tastebuds as he tries to puts his thoughts in the right order.

He knows how Eddie sees this— sees it as this burden that he’s imposed on Steve’s life. That he had been able to accept it at first, the whispers of freedom tempting enough that he could be selfish enough to gasp them.

Then yesterday afternoon, Steve had come back from Bradley’s Big Buy with dried yolks splattered across the windscreen and regret howled through Eddie like a hurricane, fierce and wild. Realisation of what Steve had condemned himself to— no- what Eddie had condemned him to finally sunk in.

Steve can tell he’s been stewing on it all night. In the couple weeks he’s been here, staying in under the Harrington roof just down the hall from Steve, he’s surprised by how easily his brain has tacked on to Eddie’s habits. His little Eddie-ism’s. That’s what Steve calls them.

Like how Eddie’s nose will twitch if there’s something on his plate he doesn’t like, but he’s too polite to say it.

How he thumbs up and down the edge of a book when he’s reading, completely entranced. Doesn’t even notice his moving, twittering fingers.

How he’s always so much twitchier the morning after a sleep laced with terror after terror. It gives him away before Steve even see the bags under his eyes, the hollowness of his face.

Steve recognises that one from himself, from back when he’d gone through it all for the first time. The flinch is unshakeable when you’re convinced it’s all going to come back— that the world is going to tear itself up and spit out monsters you haven’t even dreamed of.

Today, Eddie isn’t twitchy like that. He’s tired, a sunken in face that comes from a bone-deep aching tiredness. He picks at his breakfast, bitterly avoiding the eggs on his plate.

And Steve can’t pretend to understand how Eddie grew up — can take his guesses but ultimately won’t get near the experiences he knows Eddie has lived through. Steve has only ever been on the other side. Stayed silent while someone else through snide comments and used the word fag like a jagged blade, to cut someone down.

So, he doesn’t know. Not even a year with Robin as his best friend and all her knowledge could’ve prepared Steve for the startling fear he’d felt when coming out of the store to the sight of a group of boys around his car, cartons of eggs in hand. One with a crowbar.

They would’ve smashed his windows if he had come out a minute later, he’s sure of it.

It had been like getting doused in icy water — the Letterman jackets on all of them, the sneers, still jeering taunts as they’d scattered across the parking lot. Steve had felt the bile rise in his throat as he got in the car and sat, staring at the steering wheel, his slimy fear melting and mixing with his anger.

Eddie’s point of view suddenly resounded within Steve in a way he hadn’t known before. Standing on tables, hollering about conformity, leaning in to every foul rumour about him— like a person drawing to full height, making himself as big as possible, to scare off a bear.

Steve gets that a little more now.

So, when Eddie tells him you’ve ruined your life he knows what he’s trying to tell him. Except, Steve doesn’t know how to say lightly that he’d gladly ruin his life to save Eddie’s. It’s too much — but Steve always is. Always loves in these big heavy ways that are too hard to handle.

So instead, he shrugs and says, “Consider it a trade.”

Eddie cocks his head, like a dog, just an inch.

“For following me into the lake and saving my life.”

Eddie scoffs and his head lolls back dramatically like what Steve’s said is ridiculous. “Jesus H Christ, dude, you saved yourself. I told you that I would’ve been too cowardly to come after you if Birdie and Wheeler hadn’t gone in first.”

He mutters the word cowardly with a hiss.

“Well then, a trade for drawing the bats away.”

“You mean the time I nearly became hamburger helper for the bats?”

“Christ, Eddie,” Steve scoffs. “I didn’t take you as someone who fished for compliments so hard.”

Eddie frowns, dropping his fork with a clatter on his plate. “I— what? I’m not- I don’t even—”

Steve cuts in. “You helped us and you saved my life, whether your horrible little brain can admit that or not. So,” He sits back in his chair with another little shrug and sips his coffee. “Equal trade.”

Eddie frowns, a crease forming between his brows. “No, not equal, Steve. You don’t get what you’ve done you— ugh, you just don’t—”

He huffs, cutting himself off, clearly unsure of how to voice his frustrations. He slumps back in his chair and eyes the eggs on his plate again with a glare this time.

Steve waits a moment and hopes he isn’t overstepping when he says, voice quiet, “I know, Eddie.”

Across the table, Eddie’s eyes raise to meet Steve’s and he doesn’t sound smug, he doesn’t sound angry, he just sounds defeated when he speaks.

“Do you?”

“Maybe not quite the extent of it until yesterday but, yes… I know.”

His words sink it and Eddie looks… affronted. His eyes get a little wide and a tremble finds his lips. Like the whole time he’d been convinced Steve wasn’t sure what he’d been getting into, that the reality hadn’t set in— that any moment he would rescind his alibi and throw Eddie to the cops and let them snap the cuffs back on him.

Steve hates that expression. Loathes that Eddie is so surprised that anyone would do this for him — something as important as keeping him alive and out of prison. Steve hates it because he knows it means that somewhere along the way, somebody had convinced Eddie that nobody would.

So, if he’s got to be the one to convince Eddie that someone will— that he will make the effort, will put his neck on the line because… well, isn’t that what Steve does best?

He’ll do it gladly.

Eddie picks up his fork and stabs his fork into the egg, the buttery yolk spilling onto the plate. Steve takes it as a truce, as him meeting him in the middle.

"So,” Steve swirls the mug in his hand and swills another sip back. Swallows it and takes a page out of Eddie’s book and goes the joke, leaning forward, forearms on the table. “If I’m gonna be your boyfriend for the foreseeable future I should probably know more stuff about you. Y’know, like, uh, the deep stuff.”

Eddie’s sunk back down in his seats but at Steve’s final sentence, he perks up. A smirking sort of grin crossing his face and Eddie twists a piece of his hair in front of his mouth. He hasn’t kept eating yet, too focused on the conversation.

"Uh-oh, the deep stuff.” He’s got that teasing tone in his voice. “Like what?"

"Like...” Steve scrambles to pull something from his brain. “Um, what’s your favourite colour?"

“Oh well, now you've stepped over the line."

Eddie’s sarcasm melts into a chuckle as Steve laughs, ducking his head instinctively. When he lifts his gaze, he’s relieved that Eddie looks a little lighter. Not much but a smidge of difference — Steve can see it if he squints. He’s sure it won’t be the last conversation they’ll have about this but for now, it’s settled.

Curiosity piques in Steve and he tries to sound casual when he says, “No, really, what is it?”

Eddie blinks and curls his hair around his finger once more, tugging it lightly. He seems to be considering his answer, eyes dropping to the sweater Steve’s donning.

“Yellow.” He finally says. “Not mustard but, y’know, lighter. Colour of the moon on Halloween or…”

“Cheese?” Steve suggests.

Eddie laughs. “Yeah, the right kind of cheese, sure. What about you? Favourite colour?”

Steve considers it — for the longest time, it had been red because Tommy had told him that red or blue were the coolest colours to like, way back in third grade. No one has asked him since then.

“Pink, actually.” Steve admits, hand coming up to brush across his nose, trying to hide behind the motion. He envies Eddie’s long curls suddenly. He feels the need to explain, more words rolling off his tongue. “Like, y’know, when the sun starts to set, like all dusky, it’s just… nice.”

Eddie’s staring at him peculiarly, his lips parted yet quirked up in this faint smile. If Steve didn’t know any better, he’d call it awe. Breaking his stare, Eddie chuckles again, finally properly picking his fork up to finish his meal.

“Steve Harrington.” He murmurs warmly, more to himself. His lips twitch with a smile. “You just keep surprising me.”

—

some people wanted more 🤲 uh get tagged idiot - normally i don’t do taglists but u were all so kind as to reply to the post & i didn’t get a chance to say thank u for ur lovely words! this is my thank u! have sum more!

@friendlyorange @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @lostinadmiration @life-love-musicaltheatre @oldlovershippiemusic5 @phoeniceae @catateme9 @lolawonsstuff @justagaypanda @pluto-pepsi @whoopstie @scenesofobx @justforthedead89 @musical-theatre-gay @theperksofbeingstjimmy @ikilledabuginthewall @imauselessartist @fridgebaby @lingeringmirth and uhhh @corrodedcoughin cos i still do a little squeal when u rb my tings even tho we’re mewchies :D

[orithereticent]

Half elves are so interesting to me.

You’re born to parents with ridiculously different lifespans. One parent could potentially live to be 750-1000 years old. The other parent has 100 years at best.

But you? You’ll probably live to be about 200.

And more often than not, you’re parents aren’t together long term.

Maybe you’re raised by your elven parent. You’re looked at with pity, a half human, not really an elf. You’re elven parent looks at you with dread, they know they’ll watch you age and die. Wither like a flower before them with nothing they can do to spare you or themselves.

Or maybe you’re raised by your human parent. They breathe a sigh of relief that they won’t outlive you. But they watch in fear as they watch themselves and the humans around them age as you stay young. They know that you’ll find yourself alone.

They’ve condemned you to forever live on the outside, regardless of whether you’ve been raised by humans or elves. You’re condemned to watch one parent die far too soon, while another remains young while you age and die.

(I’m playing a half elf, I was just thinking about how she must be viewed by her human father versus her elven mother.)

[councilofcastamere]

SAINTLIKE | AEMOND TARGARYEN X READER

a b r i d g e m e n t : when you, now a Lannister, return to King’s Landing, Aemond ensures you won’t leave.

TW: smut, groping, mentions of anal, penetration, oral (fem receiving), degradation mixed with praise???, creampie, breeding, slight cum eating

CREDITS FOR THE AEMOND PICTURE TO ultravi0l3t on Pinterest!

TAGLIST: @toodlesxcuddles , @imsoshygirl

“Gods, Helaena,” you sigh softly, spraying your perfume on your dress. your slender fingers continue to spray it on your neck, behind your ears and the inside of your wrists. “It feels strangely comforting to get away from all that gold up in Casterly Rock.”

“I’ve missed you, sister.” she said in response, sitting on your bed with her eyes focused on her sewing. "But Aemond missed you more.”

“I'm sure he did,” you say softly, biting your cheek to prevent a smile from spreading. your eyes flickered to the bed Helaena was sitting on. the chambers Aemond had snuck a thousand times in to get some comfort to sleep. “Do you have any-"

“The dragon eats the lion,” your little sister suddenly interrupted you, looking up from her sewings. “The lion is blinded by pride, but the dragon is blinded by rage.”

you dropped the perfume on the floor, dumbfounded by Helaena's interruption.

“Come again?” you asked softly, careful as to not undermine her. you knew better than to undermine her sayings after the time she proclaimed Aemond had to close an eye. “What are you talking about, sweet sister?”

she only hummed, and sprayed some perfume to the back of your knees as you lifted up your dress.

"I will see you at supper, sister." she dismissed your question with a gentle tone, standing up.

you bid her goodbye, your confusion present to what it meant. However, you shook it off. Your boys were with the Septa, Aemond was practicing his swordsmanship, Aegon was doing god knows what...

you readied your hair again, making certain the curls at the bottom were luscious enough. you then headed out to the halls, your flat flootwear tapping against the ground with each step you take.

“Aunt y/n!” you heard a masculine voice call out, causing you to turn your head at the voice. you recognised the two brown-haired princes instantly.

“Nephews,” you smile warmly, embracing Lucerys first. you rubbed his back and asked him how he was doing, to which he delightfully replied that he’s officially betrothed to Rhaena.

you rise up again and turn to the eldest, Jacaerys. you could have sworn you saw him blush, but you knew better than to act as if you know the truth. you engulfed him into a hug, your scent rubbing off on him. “How have you been?”

he blinked twice, his mouth slightly parted at seeing you again. “Good, auntie.” he said softly, attempting to stand tall and noble.

“Good.” you nodded respectfully, trying to brush them off politely. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some urgent business with your mother.”

they both nodded, and scurried off to the courtyard, you knew that if you mentioned you’d be visiting your dear brother’s chamber, all you’d hear are subtle sighs of annoyance and whines disguised as uncertainty.

you treated down the grand halls again, finally reaching his chambers. there were no guards, strangely enough, and you took the liberty of opening the door, entering, and shutting it behind you.

“Sister.” his voice startles you, causing you to turn around. “What brings you here?”

“Aemond,” you smiled, trying not to let your eyes flicker to his tunic less form, stepping a few steps closer to look him up in the eyes. “You are attending supper, are you not?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked gravelly, his hands sliding down to the small of your back. you tried to avoid it, but you felt a small sense of arousal affecting your thoughts. “After all, nothing more than a supper with… family.”

“Aemond,” you whisper, as if he had just said a sentence condemning the gods. “No matter how you think about it they are still Rhaenyra’s. Half Targaryen.”

“Is that what she told you after you confronted her?” he asked huskily, his hands sliding down to your hips. “That her fucking a strong was just, and that they’re still half-fucking-Valyrian?”

“Aemond, stop,” you say in a hushed tone, feeling his other hand run across your stomach area, covered by the dress, unable to feel your full breasts due to the material of your dress. “We shouldn’t. My lord husband-”

he broke off your sentence by pressing his lips upon yours, his tall figure looking over you as if it was a shadow, your face in his hands as if it were a precious gem needing to be cradled.

“Your craven of a husband is out fucking whores, not seeing the absolute fucking beauty he has in front of him,” he murmured between kisses, his slender hands working to unbutton your dress. “But it’s fine, I suppose. You were meant to be mine anyways. Meant to be carrying my children.”

you tried not to kiss back, you really did, but his hand crept up the second your dress was dropped, and kneaded your breasts. then he took advantage of your little gasp as to slip his tongue inside. you let out soft moans, your hand flying to his hair.

“Perfect, rōva mandia,” he coos, his hand once again switching positions to rub at your asscheeks and hips. “After 4 sons, you've remained sensitive. That cunt of a Lannister must have not pleased you enough, has he?”

the only thing you could do was shake your head, placing little kisses on his neck and face which in all honesty, were adorable to him. your eyes looked at him so purely, yet he couldn’t see you as anything other than a vixen born to seduce him.

“Be a dear and show your little brother what he has missed,” he whispered in your ear, and you obliged rather quickly, crawling onto the bed, your tight little back-hole showing for him.

“Hm,” was all he said as he took his time stepping, coming to rub one of your ass cheeks as he took a look at your tight asshole. “We'll have countless nights to do that.”

you were about to open your mouth, before he tenderly turned your body over, leaning in to lick the corners of your lips, purposely drooling some of his saliva into your mouth.

“The gods have made us be together, for they know how we belong.” he murmured in between planting kisses on your jaw and throat. “You belong in black and red. I’ll give you the gold anytime you desire it.”

you grow even wetter at his words, pushing your hips up to rub yourself against his already rock-hard cock prominent through his breeches. the feeling did not last long, as one of his hands moved from gripping the sheet next to your head, to pinning your hips down.

“Oh, do you desire me now, rōva mandia?” he whispered, brushing your nose against his. “I’ve grown, sister. I am a man now. A man worthy of you.”

his lips kissed the top of your breasts, before latching onto your nipple, swirling his tongue around it while he kneaded and pinched the other with his hand.

“Ae-aemond,” you whine, your eyes trained on his bulge. you looked up at him and you couldn’t look more possibly beautiful than now. “Fuck me, please.”

“Patience, sister,” he rubbed your stomach, his other kneading your tits. you whined but quickly stopped once he brushed some hair out of your face. “You’ll be given my cock, but beforehand I'll have to taste your sweet essence I’ve been thinking about for years.”

“Aemond, I need it,” you begged him, rubbing your foot all over his crotch to rile him up. “I need you.”

he only let out a satisfied hum, kissing each toe and trailing up to your calves, knees, thighs up until his big hands spread them apart.

you remained too aroused to properly function, letting out a deep breath when his tongue only took one lick of your folds. what followed after was his thumb rubbing your sensitive pussy, having you let out fast breaths.

“Are you not used to having anything other than your husband’s cock touching your cunny?” he asked mockingly, placing a kiss on your wet folds. “Of course not, my sweet sister deserves to get fucked like a whore, and treated like a princess.”

you let out a whine at his words, practically thrusting your hips into his face. he licked at your folds and used the muscles of his tongue to fuck into you pleasurably. he let out a few grunts himself as if he was tasting the sweetest essence ever known. his hand rubbed up and down your thigh as you wrapped them around his head.

he continued tongue-fucking you, occasionally stopping to suck on your sensitive bud, his big hand continued to caress and massage your thighs, slurping up your sweet taste. you let out the most melodious moans he has ever known.

“Valonqar,” you moaned out, thrusting your hips against his face. he sucked and swirled his tongue against your clit. your muscles clench around him tighter and tighter, feeling something build up in your stomach. your body tensed up as his tongue gave his final thrusts.

“Come for me, rōva mandia, come hard for your brother,” he murmured, his tongue making his final trust on your stimulated clit. “Scream my name.”

you finally bursted, your orgasm washing over your. half of the juice shot down Aemond's throat and the other half drooled down his chin. he eagerly slurped up your juices, before rubbing his cum-covered chin against your breasts, rubbing the cum off on your breasts.

“My sister, my love,” he coos, kissing the shell of your ear. “The best woman to give my cock to.”

he got rid of his breeches and pulled out his hardened member, throbbing with pre-cum. he let out a soft hiss as it rubbed against your entrance, teasing you endlessly.

“We should stop,” you say softly. “Anyone could come i- ah!”

you let out a gasp as he began to began to circle your sensitive button with the tip of his erection. his hands were placed on your waist, pinning you down.

“Let them,” he murmured close to your lips, his unoccupied hand coming up to trace his thumb over your bottom lip. “Let them see how a dragon has claimed another dragon. As it should be.”

you moan loudly, feeling him push his fat head into your throbbing pussy. his cock was much better than your lord husband’s, thrusting slowly into your tight heat. his face cane close again to plant suck and kiss on your jawline, holding your face to the side.

“My sister is too beautiful,” he murmured in between occasional quiet grunts, feeling you deeper with each trust. “The only cunt that’s perfect for me.”

he could feel you tightening around him, your sweet eyes looking up at him. his one eye met yours, locking eyes intensely. your gasps and moans, accompanied by clapping sounds lingered around the room. his hand creeped down to knead your breasts, brushing a thumb over your hard nipple. his hips went upwards to thrust deeper. he could hear those telltale cries of ecstasy, and basked in it.

“You wish for me to put a babe inside of you?” he asks mockingly, rubbing your cheek against his hand. “Of course you do. You’re mine, and once that husband of yours knows his place, we will be wed.”

you clenched around him, juices already wetting his cock inside of you. your eyes roll to the back of your head as his hand rubbed your clit. you looked up at him once again, and he looked majestic and vulgarly gorgeous. his hair sticking to his forehead, not as straight anymore now that it’s wet. you were a sight for sore eyes to him as well, your dark hair messy and disheveled, your cheeks red and your neck scattered in hickeys.

after a few moments, you came undone, spilling against his cock. not soon after, he slowed his thrust and shot his load inside of you, a part of him forever embedded within your womb.

“Too beautiful,” he murmured, planting kisses all over your breasts and collarbone. “You have been mine since we were children. You were meant to be my betrothed. Tis I who has always loved you.”

you only smiled, but even that made his heart flutter and his cock twitch. he slowly engulfed you into a kiss, slipping his cock outside of you.

“My children have taken a liking to you,” you smile, rubbing your nose against his. “I’d love for you to stay by our side.”

“Which I will do,” he replied, his big hand rubbing your stomach. “After all, they ought to meet one of their own.”

you were about to attempt to stand up on shaky legs, but his veined hands cupped your face and slowly pinned you back down.

“Do not clean yourself up, rōva mandia,” his melodic voice ringed. “Let us depart to supper with my seed, deep inside of you. The bastard might realise how little chance he makes with you.”

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

In The Gloomy Depths [Chapter 7: Sapphire] [Series Finale]

Series summary: Five years ago, jewel mining tycoon Daemon Targaryen made a promise in order to win your hand in marriage. Now he has broken it and forced you into a voyage across the Atlantic, betraying you in increasingly horrifying ways and using your son as leverage to ensure your cooperation. You have no friends and no allies, except a destitute viola player you can’t seem to get away from…

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), parenthood, dolphins, death and peril, violence (including domestic violence), drinking, smoking, freezing temperatures, murder, if you don’t like Titanic you won’t like this fic!!! 😉

Word count: 5.2k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Tagging: @nightvyre @mrs-starkgaryen @gemini-mama @ecstaticactus @chattylurker, more in comments 🥰

💎 Thank you for reading (and tolerating all my nautical puns)! 💎

How can love be a curse? How can it be something to fear, to condemn, to break?

She has dreamed of him all her life. First he was a protector, almost fatherlike, and then a remote, bewitching phantom as she crept into adolescence, and then when Harwin Strong died Daemon sailed over Saint George’s Channel to offer her solace in England, and at last the fantasies she never would have confessed to anyone were fulfilled, two marriages and four children later. Rhaenyra remembers what he told her in the mist-draped lakeside cottage where they met in secret, crossing paths like an asteroid striking a planet: My wife means nothing to me. She’s not like us. She is young, and weak, and afraid, and I could never respect that kind of person. Her father owns the last Connemara marble quarry in the world, and I needed a son. But the only woman I want is you.

Aegon fires the pistol as he chases her through the corridors of A-Deck, and when she shrieks nobody hears, or if they do they don’t appear to rescue her; the ship is full of people screaming, sobbing, clawing for their lives against wet walls and locked doors. He shoots and misses again. There’s something wrong with his hands. He keeps fumbling with the gun and almost dropping it, hissing in pain as he squeezes the trigger, and there’s blood staining his fingers.

Good, Rhaenyra thinks. I’m glad he’s hurt. I hope he’s dying.

She sees an open room and ducks inside, slamming the door behind her and barring it with the weight of her body as Aegon rams it with his shoulder. Rhaenyra is surrounded by the trappings of another family who purchased first-class tickets: chairs with velvet upholstery, a faux fireplace, paintings by Rousseau and Boccioni and Homer. The lights flicker and the steel beams of Titanic groan, low and disastrous. There isn’t much time left.

“Daemon!” she yells as loudly as she can. If he hears her, he’ll come running. I have to get to a lifeboat. I have to live for my father, for Jace and Luke and Joffrey, for the children I will one day give Daemon.

Rhaenyra struggles with the lock as Aegon batters the door and it quakes on its hinges. Just as she latches it, he fires the pistol through the door. Wood cracks and splinters; a bullet pierces Rhaenyra’s ribcage like a blade. There is unbearable pressure, and then a sharpness, a pain she believes she cannot stand until it keeps getting bigger, deeper, ripping her open and filling her with dark wet weight like the ocean surging into Titanic. She crumples to the floor. When she coughs, blood spurts out onto her lips. Rhaenyra wipes it away and then stares at the red on her palm.

I can’t die now. My life just became what it was supposed to be.

Aegon punches a hole through the mangled door large enough for him to reach in and unlock it. Then he stands in the threshold looking down at her, his hands shaking but his eyes hard, fierce, unflinching. Rhaenyra has never seen him like this before. She didn’t know he could be good at anything.

“How the fuck did you get on the ship?” Rhaenyra snarls as she scrambles away, hacking up more blood. The black opal ring Daemon gave her gleams like onyx or obsidian, something born of heat and earth and insurmountable, ancient gravity.

Daemon and I were made for each other. The same blood, the same bones, the same will to carve treasures from the bleakest places.

Aegon follows her across the floor, slow stalking steps. He doesn’t answer; instead, he shakes his right hand a few times—steadying himself, casting out tremors like demons—and then grips the pistol with it. He raises the gun, the barrel aimed at Rhaenyra’s face.

“Daemon?!” she screams, but he isn’t here. Then she asks, sudden desperate confusion, her blue eyes wide: “Why are you doing this?”

Aegon’s voice is calm. “Because she can’t be free unless you and Daemon are gone.”

That girl? Daemon’s sad, stupid wife? I’m dying because of HER?

“Father never loved you,” Rhaenyra seethes, red on her teeth, blooddrops spilling from her lips like rubies. Her eyes are cold, glinting sapphires, pools of freezing water that only needs minutes to stop the heart. “Just like Daemon never loved her.”

“I know. And I used to care. It almost killed me, it almost ate me alive. But now I’m better. And I finally know exactly who I’m supposed to be.”

Aegon pulls the trigger.

~~~~~~~~~~

As Daemon descends the Grand Staircase, you crawl down towards the next landing, your head spinning, your hands empty, writhing on your belly like a snake.

The dagger???

But you can’t find it, and you don’t have time to stop and search. Daemon is only a few steps behind you. When your palms hit B-Deck, you try to drag yourself upright, grappling for the banister; but before you can get your feet under you, Daemon kicks you and sends you hurtling down the next flight of stairs. You tumble towards C-Deck, clawing in vain for something to break your fall. Your head strikes the English oak wood and you hear your father’s bewildered voice as he sat at the dining room table in Lough Cutra Castle: Where are you going? When will you be back?

Never, never, never; and now from somewhere below you recognize the roar of rushing water.

“You were going to kill me?!” Daemon taunts as he bears down on you like a storm. Blood soaks his throat and the white shirt beneath his black suit jacket. His eyes are bright, feral, monstrous. “After all those times I spared you when I could have drowned you in a river or a hot bath or the sea? You’re so fucking useless. You really can’t do anything right. All you had to do was shut up and endure, and you could have lived to be an old, old woman with all the comforts my empire afforded you. Now, my dear, you will never see another sunrise. And when Titanic sinks, you’ll be buried with her.”

Down, down, always down towards the ocean floor, you crawl faster away from him as his footsteps grow louder.

“Help,” you moan weakly. Aegon? Anyone? But the only reply is the echoing of your own voice and the sounds of the dying ship: breaking metal, distant screams, gushing torrents of seawater.

You crash into C-Deck and again try to stagger to your feet, but Daemon is here, shoving you as if from a cliffside or off a balcony. And as you plummet down the Grand Staircase towards D-Deck—where the First-Class Dining Saloon is, where Thomas Andrews once assured you that Titanic was unsinkable—it is not hard wooden steps you collide with but swirling ice-cold seawater. You plunge beneath the currents and then come sputtering up to the surface, your white wool coat drenched and threatening to pull you below again like an anchor. You struggle to shed it with arms that are rapidly going numb.

I’m so cold, I’m so cold, if I don’t get out of the water I’ll be dead in minutes—

Daemon’s fingers close around your throat and he forces you under the waist-deep water. You thrash and try to push him away, to pry him off of you, but your muscles seem to have disappeared, they have been scraped off your bones and now you can only wait to die, your breathless lungs burning as your body freezes. You have a sudden vision of Daemon in his firelit study at Lough Cutra Castle, marveling at a shard of Larimar dredged up from the Caribbean Sea and quoting the first known treatise on gemstones, written by Theophrastus in the time of Alexander the Great: Of things formed in the earth, some have their origin from water.

“No!” you scream through the depths, bubbles rising up to air you cannot taste. You claw at Daemon’s hands, but you cannot wound him, cannot get a grip on him, and hasn’t that been true since you married him five years ago?

The dark, freezing water makes you want to give up. It makes death feel easy, painless, inevitable. You imagine faces you’ll never see again: Draco, Aegon, your parents, Fern. You hope Carpathia will be here soon to rescue the survivors. You wonder what will happen to Aegon’s paintings.

Through the water come the muffled booms of explosions, four of them, surely something catastrophic, the ship splitting in half or a distress flare misfired or boilers bursting and shearing through what’s left of the hull. Then Daemon’s hands vanish from your throat and someone is hauling you up out of the icy currents, they are freeing you, they are disinterring you from an oceanic grave.

“I’m here!” Aegon is shouting as you burst into open air, gasping and flailing. He drags you towards the Grand Staircase where you can climb out of the flood, but you’re looking for Daemon. He is a few yards away and floating face-up, one hand clasping his chest and a gurgling sound leaking from his throat. The water around him is turning red. He’s fading, but he’s not dead yet.

“Aegon, he’s still—”

“I know. I’ll take care of him once you’re out of the water. I don’t have any more bullets left.”

“I want to do it.”

“We need to get you dry and warmed up—”

“I want to do it,” you say again, and Aegon lets you go.

You twist off your black opal engagement ring and throw it into the water beside Daemon. Then you place both of you hands on his chest and push him beneath the surface, Aegon standing just behind you with the barrel of the pistol in his grasp in case he has to use it as a club. The glacial seawater froths and whirls as it rises over Daemon’s hemorrhaging chest. He startles—a death rattle, a late rite—and resists feebly, gazing up at you with glassy, disbelieving eyes. They ask: How did this happen? I was supposed to kill you, remember? I own you. I own jewels trapped in subterranean darkness all over the world, and you are the very least of them.

“Draco isn’t yours,” you tell Daemon as you force him under. “Rhaenyra isn’t yours. And I’m not yours either. Now sink and die and make me free.”

He twitches, he bares his crimson teeth at you, but after all this time finally Daemon is the weak one. The rising water flushes maroon around him, his skin goes a frail and translucent bluish-white, his heart is drained until the chambers are cold and grey and empty. You hold him beneath the water until the bubbles roiling up from his nose and mouth disappear. He will never touch you again, he will never hurt anyone, he will never bruise or break or ensnare or captivate. And who will inherit his mines scattered across the planet?

Draco. His only son. And my family and I will act as trustees until he’s eighteen.

“We have to go,” Aegon is saying. He must have taken off his coat before he went into the water after you. He stands shivering in only his white shirt and green corduroy pants, the ocean now lapping at his chest.

“Rhaenyra?” you ask.

“She’s gone. I’m sure.”

“It’s over,” you say softly, feeling weight like stones roll off of you, feeling warmth like sunlight on your face.

As if in reply, the listing ship groans and the lights flicker again. “Not yet,” Aegon says, grabbing your hand. “Let’s hope there’s a lifeboat left.”

You wade to the steps and climb out of the water. Aegon helps you wring out your soaked hair and the skirt of your gown, then snatches his black wool coat off the steps where he left it and puts it on you. You race up the Grand Staircase to C-Deck, and then B-Deck, and then the A-Deck landing where you find your green handbag with Aegon’s tiny aluminum lighter still inside.

“I think you dropped this,” Aegon says when he spots the dagger on a nearby step, still covered with Daemon’s blood. He wipes it clean on his corduroy pants and then passes it to you. When you hesitate to take it, he grins. “Who knows. You might need to stab someone else tonight.”

“I never want to draw blood again.” But you accept the dagger and place it in your handbag, the captive gemstones glimmering there: amethyst, tiger’s eye, black opal, emerald, ruby, bloodstone, sapphire like the North Atlantic Ocean that is swallowing Titanic down into her cold, crushing belly. Then you ascend one last flight of steps to the Boat Deck, passing the bronze cherub statue and the ticking clock, stealing a glimpse up at the dome of glass and wrought iron that will soon shatter when the sea punctures through it like a bullet or a blade.

Outside the night air is so frigid that ice crystals begin forming in your hair, and the hem of your blue gown begins to stiffen as it freezes. You are barefoot, you only now realize, and if splinters from the pine planks of the deck needle their way into your flesh you won’t be able to feel them. There are only two lifeboats left on this side of the ship, one of which is already being lowered down to the sea. Officers are still directing women and children into the other. Benjamin Guggenheim and his companions are very drunk, clumsily herding frantic first-class passengers towards the boats. The string quartet is now playing The Merry Widow by Franz Lehár.

“Come, come quickly, Lady Targaryen!” the officers shout when they see you, knowing by your gown that you belong here, perhaps recognizing you from strolls on the Promenade Deck or when you and Daemon boarded Titanic in Cork with much fanfare. Aegon helps you into the lifeboat, his wounded hands cradling yours. Another distress flare is shot into the sky, metallic rain, doomsday portents.

We’re going to be alright, you think. We’re going to survive this.

“Darling, you’re sopping wet!” one of the women in the lifeboat exclaims, and they all begin to fret over you. There are dogs here, a Pomeranian in one lap, a Yorkshire terrier in another.

“Get her under a blanket,” Aegon is saying. “Keep her warm or she’ll get pneumonia. Give her a lifebelt.”

“We will, we will,” another lady shimmering in jewels—a mother of two boys in heavy coats and blue-striped pajamas—promises him. “We’ll take good care of her.”

You turn back to Aegon. “What?”

He tells you, his voice quiet: “Petra, they’re not going to let me in.”

“No, no, you can’t stay here—”

“Women and children only!” an officer booms, then begins waving several shrieking maids towards the vessel, just moments from launching.

“Aegon,” you say, horrified. He’ll die if he stays. He’ll drown or he’ll freeze and he’ll be entombed at the bottom of the Atlantic. “No.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“No you won’t,” you sob, then look desperately at the officers. How can I change their minds? “He’s a Targaryen, he’s a first-class passenger, he must be allowed aboard!”

“A Targaryen?!” one of the officers says distractedly as he battles with the rigging. “I know all the Targaryens on Titanic, and he’s not one of them!”

“Just look at him,” the other officer mutters, meaning: He isn’t dressed like someone with castles or mansions or titles or mines. He can’t be someone who matters.

“He is,” you plead, tears stinging on your cheeks as they freeze. “He’s Aegon, he’s a Targaryen, please, he can’t be left behind—”

“Women and children only!” the first officer barks at you as the other pushes away a group of panicked young men in black suits trying to bribe their way into the vessel. “And if you want to stay here with him, that’s your business, but get to it so the rest of us can try to make it off this ship alive!”

“There’s more than enough room for him, for Christ’s sake, there are dogs in here!”

“There will be other lifeboats, love,” one of the women tells you as she drapes a scratchy wool blanket across your shoulders, but you don’t believe that’s true. The maids are climbing into the lifeboat; the officers are beginning to lower it with sharp lurches that make the occupants gasp.

You reach for Aegon, your hands catching on his drenched shirt, the thin layer of ice cracking beneath your fingers. “No, no, Aegon, I can’t go like this.”

“You have to,” he says calmly, and he holds you face still and touches his lips to your forehead, a kiss goodbye, gentle and lingering.

“No—”

“You have a kid. You have to go. Draco will be looking for you on Carpathia.”

“You deserve to be free too.”

“I’ll stay out of the water for as long as I can,” Aegon says like a vow. “I’ll try to find something to float on. And once Titanic goes down…maybe the lifeboats will come back to pick up any survivors.”

The water is too cold. I’ve felt it, I’ve been paralyzed by it, once you go under you only have minutes. “You can’t…you won’t…”

“Petra,” Aegon says, and his eyes turn desperate. He knows it’s his only chance. “Make them come back for me.”

“I will,” you swear to him.

And he pries your fingers off his shirt and rips away from you before your resolve can weaken. High above and through tears that blur your vision, constellations of stars gleam like diamonds.

~~~~~~~~~~

He runs to the other side of the Boat Deck, searching for lifeboats that haven’t launched yet. He can’t find any. There are swarms of passengers weeping, shouting, jostling, and officers trying to restore order. Pistols and flares are fired, chairs are tossed overboard for passengers to cling to as they float. But Aegon knows that won’t be enough; if they stay submerged, they will die.

I need something bigger. I need something I can lie on. A door or a dresser or…

He shoves through the crowd to get to the ship’s railing. Below, the ocean has gotten so much closer. He sees a lifeboat bobbing in the waves, just far enough away that someone brave enough to leap could not get to it. Inside, along with perhaps twenty first-class women and maids, Aegon recognizes Laenor Velaryon and his ever-present Parisian friends. They are puffing on cigars and toasting glasses of brandy, celebrating their good fortune. They must have successfully bribed their way aboard.

“Fuck,” Aegon sighs, his breath fog in the frigid air.

How am I going to stay out of the water long enough to survive until I’m rescued?

Then he replays the evening in his mind—his first night with Petra, perhaps his last night on earth, red silk and candles and oil paint and the warmth of her beneath his hands—and Aegon gets an idea. He sprints back to the Grand Staircase and soars down to B-Deck, seawater ankle-deep on the floor. He splashes through the corridors to the staterooms once occupied by Daemon Targaryen’s wife and child, now rid of him, now waiting for what will come next. Aegon hurries through the sitting room, passing the taxidermied tiger head above the fireplace and the large, heavy chest where Daemon made Petra lock up the art she bought in Paris.

She didn’t remember to put the real Picasso’s paintings in a lifeboat, but she saved mine, Aegon thinks. If I make it out of this alive somehow, I’m marrying her the second we dock in New York.

He goes to the bedroom, finds what he needs, carries it with him as he returns to the maze of hallways. Now the icy water is nipping at his knees.

~~~~~~~~~~

The ocean is calm, the lifeboat rocking placidly on inky surf. The women comfort their children and their dogs. You take Aegon’s aluminum lighter out of your handbag and light yourself a cigarette, then pass it around so the other passengers can thaw their lungs with hot plumes of nicotine, here in the early hours of the morning when it feels like you’ll never be warm again. The officer who took command of the vessel—the same one who shouted at you and refused to admit Aegon—is rowing vigorously as you and several other women help him, staring horror-struck at Titanic as she goes down by the bow.

“We have to get away from the ship,” the officer keeps saying, and he sounds genuinely petrified. A woman in a glittering gold gown steers with the tiller. “Or she’ll suck us into the water with her.”

There are shadows of other lifeboats nearby, also fleeing from the condemned Titanic, that miraculously colossal and opulent triumph that everyone had told you was unsinkable. You wonder which one Draco and Fern are in, undoubtedly cold and frightened but safe.

Aegon deserves to live too. I have to find him, I have to save him.

Now there is seawater flooding over Titanic’s deck at the bow, where you and Aegon saw third-class passengers—now dead, or very soon to be—kicking around pieces of the iceberg that they didn’t know had doomed them. The ocean surges higher, covering B-Deck, and A-Deck, and finally the Boat Deck, where the towering funnels collapse and you can hear shrieks and guns firing. You know you won’t be able to see Aegon from here—you won’t be able to tell if he made it into a lifeboat somehow, or if he is one of the figures that falls from a lethal height into the waves, or if he is crushed or shot or trapped below deck and drowned—but still, you cannot stop looking for him, peering through the night to where Titanic glows in her spotlight of white-gold electric luminescence.

As the bow sinks, the stern begins to rise, higher and higher until the tension cracks the ship in two, and the passengers you share the lifeboat with wail and sob as the ship’s lights blink out for the last time and the gravesite goes dark. Women call out the names of their husbands, fathers, brothers, adult sons, knowing they must be dying. You can only watch with tears streaming down your face, thinking: How could he survive that? How could I have left him?

The stern bobs for a while in the nightscape sea, a shade, a phantom, and then it plunges into the ocean. The water—indifferent, dispassionate, not a mortal but a titan, here long before humans and destined to outlast them, not unlike the treasures of the earth—gulps down metal beams and pine planks and split bones and shredded flesh. There are screams, so many, so pitiful, so loud they fill the sky, and the howling women in the lifeboat cover their ears and those of their children so they will not have to try to exorcise the sound from their memories later.

As soon as the stern has been consumed by the depths, you say to the officer: “We have to go back to look for survivors.”

“Are you mad, Lady Targaryen?” he snaps at you; but there are tears in his bloodshot eyes. “We’ll be mobbed if we sail into that. They’ll pour into the boat until we go under too. Do you want to freeze to death with them?”

“People will die quickly. They are dying already, the water is cold enough to kill in minutes. If we start rowing towards them now, most of the passengers will be dead by the time we get there. And then we can rescue anyone who’s left.” Please still be alive, Aegon.

“Not a chance in hell,” the officer says.

You turn to the other women. They blink back at you in dazed, timid terror. “It’s murder to leave your men behind,” you implore, you beg them to agree. “Help me row to them.”

But the women only weep softly to themselves and look to the officer to tell them what to do. He smirks at you victoriously, an expression of no humor but rather grim, fearful misery that could drive someone insane. In the lap of one woman, the Pomeranian whimpers.

I can’t leave Aegon, you think. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

You open your green handbag and pull out the dagger, the blade pointed at the officer. He shouts and bolts away from you, incredulous, furious.

“You’re threatening to kill me?!”

You shake your head. “I’m offering you a gift.” You turn the dagger around so the officer can grasp the handle. His gaze catches, transfixed and wondrous, on the gemstone spheres like perfectly aligned planets. “This dagger is worth more than you would make in a decade of work. Go back for survivors, and it’s yours. Refuse, and when we are rescued and my son inherits my husband’s fortune, I will make it my life’s work to destroy you. I will follow you anywhere on earth. I will ruin you. So take the dagger as payment and break my curse, and let us save the people who are left.”

The lifeboat sways in the small, serene waves, and the stars revolve high above in a moonless sky, and you and the other women wait for the officer to reply. After a minute or more—we have to go back now, right now, we don’t have much time—he finally lifts the dagger from your open palm and tucks it into his belt.

“Fine,” he says, picking up his oar again. “Let’s go. I cannot abide your damnation. I’ll be haunted by enough ghosts already.”

He and several of the other women row into the throng while you find the flashlights stored in the bottom of the lifeboat, then perch at the bow searching for Aegon. Instead you see hundreds of bluish corpses floating in their lifebelts, dead men and women and children, some of them first-class or crewmembers of the ship but most of them third-class passengers: Italian, Polish, Greek, Syrian, Russian, Chinese, Irish, discarded people, good for dying in the operations of mines or factories or railroads and little else.

“Aegon!” you shout over the water, but he does not answer. There is only the mist of your own words and the sound of cold currents rippling as the lifeboat cuts through them.

Your group saves two people from the sea, both nearly frozen to death and unable to speak: one man floating on a table washed out of a dining room, one little girl clutching her dead mother. Then a long time passes with no living souls to salvage.

“Have we done enough now, Lady Targaryen?” the officer asks you gravely. “Have you seen a sufficient number of the dead to assuage your wrath?”

“Not yet,” you say, steely, your eyes fixed on the water as the flashlight illuminates lifeless faces, scraps of wreckage, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then the light settles on him.

When the stern of Titanic went under, so did Aegon: there are ice crystals in his hair, and his clothes are freezing to his skin, and his lips are blue, and he’s shivering violently. But unlike over 1,000 other passengers, he didn’t stay in the depths long enough to perish as the cold stopped their hearts and lungs. He had something with him, a life raft, a second chance, a treasure mined not from some far-flung crevice of the earth but from the bedroom where he uncovered you, where you found each other and never wanted to go back to the way life felt before.

Aegon is sprawled across the oval-shaped mirror that once stood beside your bed, the fractured glass reflecting the stars that glimmer in the night sky. His ravaged hands cling to the wooden frame. And when the beam of the flashlight skates across his face like moonshine, Aegon knows you’ve come back for him, and he reaches for you until your hands link with his and help pull him aboard.

~~~~~~~~~~

Carpathia arrives an hour later, just before four in the morning on April 15th, and as the sun rises over the North Atlantic Ocean you and Aegon find Draco and Fern on the bow deck, where stewards are distributing blankets and tea to the survivors. Women wander the ship pleading for help finding their lost loved ones, weeping endlessly for their brothers, their fathers, their husbands. Your tears have stopped entirely.

Carpathia’s passengers are generous. They offer in charity their food, their clothing, even their rooms. Children share their books and toys with Draco. Fern teaches him how to play marbles; you read him The Story of Saint Patrick. A doctor onboard disinfects and bandages Aegon’s hands, and assures him that he will be able to play viola again, not now, perhaps not even soon, but one day.

That first afternoon, as you and Aegon are taking a stroll on the Boat Deck, you spot a man painting a scene of the sunset: gold, tiger’s eye, ruby, red beryl. Aegon shows him some of the portraits from his scuffed leather portfolio…though, of course, one in particular is not suitable for mixed company. The man is so impressed that he insists Aegon must not be deprived of the ability to create such beauty for lack of supplies, and gifts him an easel and some paper, brushes, and oil paints.

It’s difficult with his sore, bandaged hands, but Aegon still wants to try, and when his brush begins to shake he asks you to help him. Aegon explains things to you as you steady his hands: chiaroscuro, scumbling, alla prima, glazing, impasto, a foreign language that will soon become familiar. Already, you are learning. And as Carpathia sails into New York Harbor on the evening of April 18th, Aegon takes a paintbrush and draws a circle around your ring finger in vivid, sapphire blue, a worthless gift of no gleaming gems or metal, a vow that means everything.

It’s been years, but Aegon remembers the way to his mother’s house. He leads you, Draco, and Fern to the doorstep of the Hightower mansion on Fifth Avenue. He knocks and a butler answers, a middle-aged man who gapes at Aegon in shellshocked disbelief.

“One…one moment, sir, if you’d be so kind to…to…to just wait here, please,” the butler stammers, then disappears inside. A few minutes later, a different man appears in the threshold. He must be Aemond, tall and white-blonde and precise in every movement, his left eye concealed by a black leather eyepatch. His remaining eye, a clear alert blue, darts to where Fern is holding Draco on her hip and then to you and Aegon, his bandaged hands resting so lightly on you they could never leave a mark.

Then Aemond’s face softens, and there is a kind sort of relief that seeps in, and you imagine your parents will look the same way when you return to Lough Cutra Castle. “You’re home,” he says quietly.

And Aegon smiles and replies: “We all are.”

[royalrebelpropaganda]

imagine being in love with your best friend who is so committed to her destiny she will lock herself into a marriage with a boy she doesn’t like at all. and she will condemn you, too, to a century of slumber. and she will mourn you the whole goddamn time but it won’t stop her from doing it. and SHE is the one who is labeled chappell roan coded. briar beauty is good luck babe coded and I won’t hear a word to the contrary

[alilixx]

Heyy could u write a greg house x reader

Shes a doctor or prob a surgeon and its like season 1 ep 13 , she gets sick and needs a heart transplant or something like that but she doesn’t want to then house convinces her coz he likes her and house lies for her so she can get the transplant and they used to flirt before and all but after that they confess about liking each other and start dating ☺️ thanks

IM SOO SORRYYY SCHOOL STARTED AGAINNN SOO LESS TIME FOR WRITE FANFIC BUT I WILL TRY WRITE FOR EVERY WEDNESDAY AND WEEKEND <33

Surgeon!FemReader x Gregory House

You had already noticed unusual signs for several weeks. At first, it was just fatigue. Nothing more. You convinced yourself it was due to your endless hours in the operating room, those sleepless nights that kept piling up. Just a bit of exhaustion, something every surgeon knows well. But the palpitations intensified, followed by slight dizziness, then that crushing sensation in your chest, as if your own heart was fighting against you. You eventually ran a series of tests, discreetly, hoping it was nothing.

But the results didn’t lie: severe dilated cardiomyopathy. Your heart, your most precious instrument, the one that allowed you to save lives day after day, was betraying you. But you refused to believe it.

Today, as you sat in House’s office, surrounded by his diagnostic team, you were desperately searching for a way out, an alternative explanation. Something that would prove this was all a mistake. After all, you were a doctor, you knew diagnoses were never infallible.

"I want your opinion," you finally said, crossing your arms as if to shield yourself from what was coming next. "I did my own tests, but I want to be sure. Maybe I'm too involved to see things clearly."

House looked up, intrigued by your direct tone. "Too involved? You mean, too much in denial."

Cameron stepped forward to review your results, her eyes scanning every detail. "The echocardiograms clearly show dilatation of the heart chambers. You already have a heart murmur, you’ve felt it, haven’t you?"

You frowned, hesitating to respond. Of course you had felt it. But admitting it would make everything more real.

"I want to believe it’s something else," you murmured, your voice betraying, for the first time, a hint of vulnerability. "I’m a surgeon. I can’t... afford to have a failing heart."

Foreman shook his head, pragmatic as always. "You can’t afford not to act either. If you let this get worse, you won’t even have the chance to enter the operating room next time."

You looked away, your throat tight. Fear was rising inside you, a fear you hadn’t felt in a long time. You had always been able to control everything, every incision, every move. But now, it was your own body slipping through your fingers.

House, as always, wasted no time twisting the knife.

"It’s fascinating. You’d rather believe that all this will resolve itself, as if your heart is just going to miraculously decide to heal. Spoiler alert: it won’t." He tilted his head, scrutinizing your face. "But I’m curious. Why consult my team if you’ve already done the tests yourself? Looking for validation or an excuse to do nothing?"

His sarcasm irritated you, but you knew he was right. "Because I want... I want to be sure."

"Sure of what? That you’re dying? Let me confirm it for you, you are. Now that’s settled, we can move on to the next step: you’re refusing the only solution that could save you because you’re afraid of losing control. Interesting, but not surprising."

"I’m not afraid," you retorted, more to convince yourself than to answer him.

House didn’t believe you for a second. He moved closer, leaning his cane against the edge of his desk.

"You’re lying to yourself." His gaze pierced through yours, as if he could see past all your defenses. "You’ve seen how many transplants fail. But you’ve also seen how many succeed. So why condemn yourself when you know you have a chance to make it?"

Silence fell over the room. His words struck you deeper than you wanted to admit. You had spent months running from this reality, pretending it was just a passing episode. But here you were, sitting in front of specialists who left you no escape. That’s when House chose to play his final card.

"I’m going to ask you a very simple question." He sat back behind his desk, tapping the file of his favorite patient: you. "Do you want to die just to stay loyal to your own arrogance? Or do you want to live long enough to annoy me even more?"

You felt a strange warmth rising to your cheeks. House hadn’t spoken those words with his usual cynicism. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but you knew he genuinely cared about you. And that thought unsettled you more than anything else.

You lowered your eyes to your trembling hands. You were a surgeon, a strong person. Yet, for the first time in a long while, you felt vulnerable. And House had seen it from the very beginning.

The silence in House’s office was heavy after the intense discussion about your condition. The diagnosis was now certain: a heart transplant was your only chance. Yet, one question remained, one that had been haunting you. If you were really going to undergo this operation, there was only one person you trusted enough to put your life in their hands: House.

So, in a rare moment of vulnerability, you took a deep breath and asked the question you had been dreading from the start.

"I want it to be you. You’ll be my surgeon."

The team exchanged stunned glances. House, however, remained silent for a moment, his piercing blue eyes fixed on you. Then he let out a dry laugh.

"Me? No. Bad idea. Very bad idea."

You frowned, stung by his reaction. "Why? You’re one of the best doctors I know."

House straightened up, pressing his cane against the floor before fixing you with an unusually serious look. "I’m not a surgeon. I diagnose. I play with ideas, I take risks, but I don’t hold a scalpel over living patients. I don’t do surgeries."

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. He was so confident, so skilled at solving impossible cases, and yet, here in front of you, he seemed hesitant. You stepped closer to him, determined to understand.

"Are you afraid of messing up?" you asked, your voice low but sharp.

House let out a sarcastic laugh, but you sensed a certain nervousness behind his tone. "No, I’m afraid of killing someone because of my damn leg and my trembling hands. If you want someone to do this surgery without screwing it up, ask a real surgeon."

His rejection hurt you deeply. You had opened up to him, and he was pushing you away without a moment’s hesitation. You felt anger rising within you, mixed with the pain of a feeling you didn’t want to name.

"I thought I could trust you," you whispered, your eyes burning with disappointment. "But I see I was wrong."

Before he could respond, you turned on your heels and left the office, leaving House and the team behind. The sound of your footsteps echoed in the empty hallway as you walked towards your own uncertain future. Your heart was pounding painfully, both physically and emotionally. He had rejected you when you had offered him your fragile trust.

A few days later, you found yourself in the pre-op room, your face calm, but your mind in turmoil with conflicting emotions. You had finally accepted the transplant, even though it terrified you. Another surgeon had been assigned for the operation, a competent colleague, but not House. His refusal still haunted you, the abrupt way he had pushed you away, as if your life meant nothing to him.

The medical team busied themselves around you, but all you could hear was a dull hum, lost in your thoughts. An anesthesiologist approached, and as you lay down on the operating table, a strange sense of calm washed over you.

Then, in the haze of preparation, something caught your attention. A voice, familiar, behind the masks and caps.

"Start the anesthesia. We’re going ahead with the transplant."

You weakly opened your eyes. It was House.

Your heart skipped a beat, as if, even before the surgery, he already knew how to unsettle you. You tried to move, to speak, but the anesthesia was already taking effect. Everything became blurry, but you heard his voice clearly, that deep, slightly rough voice that comforted you despite yourself.

"Sleep now, it'll be fine. You’ll be alive to yell at me later."

Then total darkness.

You woke up in a hospital room. The soft morning light filtered through the curtains, and you felt a dull ache in your chest. But more than that, you felt your heart beating. A new heart. A strange sensation, both comforting and unsettling.

You slowly turned your head, and to your surprise, you saw House sitting in the corner of the room, his gaze fixed on you. He looked exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept in days. His eyes locked on yours with a new intensity, almost worried.

"I knew you were stubborn, but you really outdid yourself this time," he said, without a hint of humor.

You looked at him, still too weak to speak. Then, slowly, you remembered what had happened before the surgery. He had refused. You had been hurt. But now, he was here.

"You... operated on me?" you finally murmured, your voice hoarse.

House gave a slight nod, avoiding your gaze for a moment. "Yeah. I didn’t really have a choice, apparently. Everyone’s incompetent except me." But there was something else in his voice, an unspoken admission.

You tried to sit up, but the pain in your chest made you wince. House immediately stood up and moved closer to you. "Take your time. Don’t be stupid."

You stared at him, still in shock from what you had just discovered. "Why? Why did you do it when you said you didn’t want to?"

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Because..." He paused, searching for the right words. That wasn’t like him. "Because I couldn’t let another surgeon kill you. If someone was going to save you or lose you, it had to be me."

He looked straight into your eyes, and this time, you saw the fear behind his usual cynicism. The fear of losing you, the fear of failing. It wasn’t just about the surgery, it was about feelings, the ones he didn’t want to admit, but which were so clear in that suspended moment.

"You were scared," you said softly, a slight smile on your lips. House looked away, grumbling. "I’m not afraid of anything. I’m just smarter than everyone else."

But you knew. You knew he had taken this risk because he cared about you, even if he would never say it outright. You placed your hand on his, a simple gesture, but one that spoke for you. And, against all odds, he didn’t pull his hand away.

The days following the surgery were filled with moments of uncertainty and relief. Each steady beat of your new heart was a promise that life would go on, a victory against fate. But something lingered, like a palpable tension between you and House. He came to see you almost every day, always with his usual sarcasm, but something had changed.

That morning, you woke up with the same familiar pain in your chest, but this time it was different — the pain of healing. You slowly sat up in your bed, observing the soft light filtering through the hospital curtains. Your body was still weak, but each day felt like a small victory. And despite the fatigue, you were more clear-headed than ever.

The door to your room opened gently, and of course, House walked in, leaning on his cane with that familiar limp you knew so well. He stared at you for a moment, as if assessing your condition, then casually remarked:

"How’s my favorite patient? Still alive, apparently."

You managed a smile, even though part of you still wondered why he could never be serious for more than a few seconds. "I’m doing well, Greg. And you know it."

He raised an eyebrow at the sound of his name. That wasn’t something you used often. Usually, you always called him "House," like everyone else.

He came closer and sat in the chair next to your bed, letting out a sigh. "Well, that’s good news. I would have hated to explain to the team that I messed up my best patient. That would be bad for my reputation."

You knew he used humor to mask something deeper. A silence settled in, almost comfortable, but filled with unspoken words.

"Why did you decide to operate on me?" you finally asked, breaking the silence. "I hurt you when I asked, but you did it anyway."

House looked away, as he often did when faced with a question that was too personal. He tapped his cane against the floor, searching for words or perhaps a way to sidestep the answer.

"It was a challenge. I couldn’t let another surgeon handle such a complex operation, especially on someone as annoying as you." He smiled, but his gaze betrayed something else, something more sincere. "And I guess I was a little afraid you’d slip away from me."

This confession took you by surprise. You knew House wasn’t the type to openly express his emotions, especially not with such direct words. You watched him in silence, your thoughts swirling. He had taken a huge risk by operating on you, not just medically, but emotionally.

"I’m not going to slip away from you, Greg," you murmured. "Not now."

His eyes settled on you, softer than usual. "Not now," he repeated, almost to himself.

Initially, it was supposed to be temporary. Just long enough for you to fully recover from the surgery, for your body to adjust to the new heart, and for you to be closely monitored, "just in case." House had insisted, almost casually, on this option.

"It would be stupid to leave you alone. If something goes wrong, I’d rather have you in my sight, not on the other side of town," he had said, as if the decision was purely pragmatic.

You had hesitated. Living at House's, even temporarily, seemed risky, given the complexity of your relationship. But somewhere, you felt that beneath his usual cynicism, he genuinely cared about you. So you had agreed, thinking it would last just a few days, maybe a week or two.

The first night at his place was strange. His apartment, which you had visited a few times before, felt more welcoming than you had imagined. A blend of old and modern, of perfectly organized chaos, typical of House. Medical books stacked everywhere, piano sheets scattered about, whiskey bottles casually left on the coffee table. You felt like an intruder in his space, but he made no effort to make you feel otherwise.

"Make yourself at home. I don’t have silk pillows or almond milk, but there’s unlimited Ibuprofen," he had said, settling onto his couch with a glass of whiskey.

That first night was calm. House kept an eye on you from the corner of his gaze, even though he pretended to be absorbed in an old documentary. Despite the strangeness of the situation, a certain serenity had settled in.

The next day, as you began to get used to this new arrangement, someone knocked at the door. You weren’t expecting visitors, especially not this early in the morning. House, already up (for once), went to open it, and you immediately recognized the familiar voice of James Wilson.

"Hey, House, I brought donuts. I wanted to talk to you about a case..." His voice cut off abruptly as he entered the living room and saw you sitting on the couch, a cup of tea in hand.

The silence that followed was almost comical. Wilson looked at you, then at House, then back at you, as if he had stumbled upon a scene he couldn’t quite comprehend.

"What the... ? What are you doing here?"

You gave a slight smile, a bit embarrassed, while House, completely unfazed, grabbed one of the boxes of donuts that Wilson had brought.

"She lives here. Well, temporarily," House replied before taking a bite out of a donut, as if the situation was perfectly normal.

Wilson stood there, speechless for several seconds. "You... you let her live with you? You?"

House shrugged. "It’s easier for post-operative monitoring. And besides, she’s not unbearable. Well, not all the time."

Wilson blinked, still in shock. He slowly sat down on a chair, setting down the other box of donuts. "That... that’s so unlike you, Greg."

"Well, maybe I’ve changed. Or maybe it’s just convenient." House made a dismissive gesture, but you could see that even for him, this situation was still new.

Wilson gave you a questioning look, searching for answers. You simply shrugged, an amused smile on your lips. "It’s temporary, really."

Wilson shook his head, clearly disturbed but also amused. "If you tell me he let you choose a movie last night, I think I’m going to faint."

You laughed lightly, and even House cracked a small smile, despite himself. The tension slowly faded, and Wilson relaxed, even though he continued to shoot you incredulous glances from time to time.

Days passed, and what was supposed to be a temporary arrangement stretched on longer than expected. There was no specific date for your departure, and House didn’t seem in a hurry to see you go. In fact, he even seemed to enjoy your presence, even if he categorically refused to admit it.

One evening, as you settled into the couch with a blanket over your knees, House sat down next to you without a word. He turned on the TV and flipped through channels until he found an old black-and-white movie. It had become a routine: you spent the evenings together, sometimes in silence, sometimes exchanging sarcastic comments about what you were watching.

It was in this tranquility that Wilson made his second appearance at House's place.

"I brought wine," he announced as he walked in, looking noticeably more comfortable with the situation this time.

You smiled, shifting a bit to make room for him. House raised an eyebrow. "Wine? Since when do you bring wine to my place?"

Wilson shrugged. "I thought we could celebrate... I don’t know, this strange normality?" He glanced at you as if to make sure everything was okay.

The evening went off without a hitch. The wine flowed, sarcasm flew, and Wilson, despite his more serious habits, allowed himself to be caught up in the relaxed atmosphere. The movies changed on the screen, but soon it was the discussions that took over.

"I have to say, I’m still surprised you let her stay," Wilson remarked, casting a glance at House.

House, lounging casually on the couch, responded without really looking at Wilson. "It’s not so bad. She doesn’t bother me too much. Unlike you."

Wilson rolled his eyes. "I bring you wine, I do my best not to invade your space, and this is how you thank me."

You laughed, shaking your head. "He doesn’t know how to do anything else, James. You know him."

"That’s true," Wilson replied with a smile. "But anyway, I’m glad you’re recovering well. He seems to be taking good care of you."

You turned to House, who was clearly avoiding your gaze. "He’s doing what he can," you said softly, but with a smile in your voice.

House pretended not to hear, focusing on the television. But in his silences, you could feel that he was getting used to this new life.

Days passed, and what was supposed to be a temporary living arrangement quietly settled into a routine. Little by little, you had begun to integrate into House's daily life, and he, without a word, had allowed you to do so.

One evening, after a long day at the hospital, you got home before him. House had sent you a terse message: "I’ll be late. Bistro operation in the kitchen." You smiled at his words, already imagining what that meant.

Tired but determined not to let it get you down, you began rummaging through House's kitchen cabinets. He had everything, but nothing was in its place. A controlled chaos that, surprisingly, made sense to you. You grabbed some vegetables and an old skillet, determined to prepare something before his return. The kitchen was a place where you could lose yourself in simple tasks, away from the complexities of your work as a surgeon.

A few dozen minutes later, as you were focused on a sauce you were preparing, the door opened. House entered, looking tired but intrigued by the aromas wafting from the kitchen.

"Are you pretending to be a chef now?" he said as he approached you.

You smiled without turning around, continuing to stir the sauce. "I thought it would be a change from pizza boxes and whiskey."

House leaned in slightly to smell what you were making, nodding his head in approval. "I suppose that works for me. But if it’s bad, you’ll hear me complain for days."

You chuckled softly, knowing very well he meant it half-seriously. He made no attempt to push you away from the kitchen; on the contrary, he grabbed a knife and started slicing the bread, his movements precise despite the cane that always lingered nearby.

The scene was almost domestic. House, with his usual sarcasm, and you, focused on your sauce. You didn’t talk much, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. There was a certain peace in these simple moments. You sensed that he was getting used to this new dynamic, even though he was still incapable of admitting it out loud.

"I have to admit," he finally said, slicing a piece of bread, "you’re not doing too badly for a surgeon. Maybe it’s time to change careers."

You gave him an amused look. "You say that now, but just wait until you taste it."

"Oh, I fully intend to critique every bite."

He was smiling slightly, but you could feel the bond growing a little stronger with each shared meal, each simple task completed together.

It had been a long time since you had left the operating room, but you didn’t miss your home at all, and House understood that... well, House is House.

A few weeks later, after several similar evenings, you had finally made official what was happening between you. It hadn’t been a grand romantic declaration, far from it. As with everything involving House, things had evolved naturally, in a sort of unspoken agreement that was becoming clearer and clearer. One evening, as you were both settled on the couch, he had placed his hand over yours, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Do you mind if we drop the ‘temporary’?" he asked, his eyes fixed on the television screen.

You felt your heart race, even though the question was posed in that casual tone that characterized him. You squeezed his hand slightly in response, your smile overshadowing the answer you didn’t even need to say. Indeed, it was his way of asking you to be his girlfriend.

The following Monday, things were different, but not enough to shake up the universe of Princeton-Plainsboro. You had decided to keep nothing hidden, but without making it a topic of conversation. After all, it was impossible to hide anything from House’s team.

Wilson, of course, was the first to react. When he saw you enter the hospital together that morning, he furrowed his brow, an expression somewhere between amusement and surprise.

"So, it’s official? You finally made it official?"

True to form, House simply rolled his eyes. "Officially? If it makes you happy to label it that way, then yes."

Wilson smiled, a little too pleased with himself. "I knew this would happen, but I have to say, it’s impressive that you held out this long before admitting it."

You couldn’t help but chuckle softly, amused by the dynamic between the two friends. "He has his moments of resistance," you added jokingly.

But the real test came when you arrived in the diagnostic room, where House’s team was already gathered. Chase, Cameron, and Foreman were discussing a new case, but they all looked up when you walked in together.

Chase was the first to react, his eternal smirk in place. "Oh, I see. That’s why we all stayed until midnight last week. You had ‘personal’ plans."

House stopped, crossing his arms with a piercing look. "You’re right, Chase. And if you keep talking, you’ll end up with the chore of sanding the autopsy room again. Unless, of course, you want to find yourself a social life."

Foreman cracked a playful smile while Cameron seemed half-surprised, half-envious. "So... you’re together?" she asked with a mix of shyness and curiosity.

You exchanged a glance with House. You hadn’t discussed how you were going to handle this with the rest of the team, but it seemed it was already out in the open.

"Yes," you replied simply, with confidence. "We’re together."

Without missing a beat, House added with a smirk, "But don’t worry. It’s not going to affect my desire to make your lives miserable."

You had gotten into the habit of cooking together from time to time, even though House continued to tease you about your culinary skills. You also spent many quiet evenings talking about everything and nothing or simply watching movies in silence.

One evening, as you were chopping vegetables in the kitchen, House approached you and set a glass of wine on the counter.

"Looks like we’ve become boring, huh?"

You laughed softly, setting down the knife. "If that’s what you call boring, I’m perfectly fine with that."

He looked at you, a smile softer than usual on his lips. "Well, as long as you’re okay with it, I guess I can get used to the boredom."

It was the first time he admitted, without sarcasm or dark humor, that he enjoyed this new life together. And you knew that behind his facade was a man deeply attached, even if he showed it in his own way.

[sleepynegress]

Black actor who faced abuse over role in Romeo & Juliet calls for industry-wide action

Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, who played Juliet alongside Tom Holland’s Romeo, says racist abuse went on for months

The actor Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, who received a barrage of online racial abuse after being cast in a production of Romeo & Juliet this year, has called for industry-wide action to protect black and brown actors.

The abuse aimed at Amewudah-Rivers began after the Jamie Lloyd Company theatre group announced the cast of its production in April, with Amewudah-Rivers to play Juliet and the Spider-Man star Tom Holland playing Romeo.

Amewudah-Rivers has revealed she also received hate mail, and that she did not feel safe while working on the play, her West End stage debut, at the Duke of York’s theatre.

“There were many days where I didn’t know how I was going to get through it,” she told the Stage. “The flurry of abuse was sustained throughout the whole job. I received death threats, hate mail sent to the theatre. I didn’t feel safe at work.”

‘Too much to bear’: Black actors condemn racial abuse of Romeo & Juliet starRead more

The 26-year-old, who was nominated at this year’s Black British theatre awards, said the minimal set and closeup camerawork of the production made her feel “very exposed” on stage. “Off the back of the abuse, having to stare down the camera lens and have my face be blown up in this theatre was really tough mentally,” she said.

Amewudah-Rivers said the harassment also affected her family and friends, as well as the show’s cast, crew and producers at the Jamie Lloyd Company, who condemned the initial abuse in a statement on social media at the time and said further harassment would be reported.

The incident led to an open letter of solidarity with Amewudah-Rivers being signed by more than 800 predominantly black female and non-binary actors – including Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Lolly Adefope, Freema Agyeman, Wunmi Mosaku and Tamara Lawrance.

Amewudah-Rivers described her experience as an “incredibly tough” induction into the West End. She said: “I know what it means to move through life in a black body. Racism is something we have to navigate every day, so I was very aware of the potential for something like this to happen.

“I think what I was unprepared for was how long it went on for, and also having to navigate it while doing the job. It was four months of battling against this energy, and it’s something I still have to deal with. I really had to reckon whether it was worth it, this sustained feeling of duress.”

The actor called for “broader conversations industry-wide” about the protection of global-majority actors and said it was “not enough to represent our communities on stage, there also needs to be an infrastructure of support”.

“Safety has to be at the forefront. We can’t do our best work if we don’t feel safe, if we don’t feel held, if we don’t feel understood,” she said. “I think more needs to be done, especially because I know I’m not alone. I know other actors who have had similar experiences, more recently, too.”

According to Amewudah-Rivers, the response to her casting showed how the UK theatre sector was still lagging behind in terms of onstage racial diversity.

“For it to cause such outrage that I was cast in this role means we have a long way to go. Theatre has a legacy of community, it should represent society. Especially in London – there’s a big black British community here and in the UK. It shouldn’t be a surprise. Our histories as black people have been erased. It’s about re-education. I’m not the first black Juliet, and I won’t be the last.”

[mariacallous]

It’s the most startling thing I’ve seen in this year’s presidential campaign – the astoundingly large gap between how young men and young women plan to vote this November. Among women under age 30, an overwhelming 67% plan to vote for Kamala Harris, while just 29% say they’ll back Donald Trump. But among young men, a majority – 53% – plan to vote for Trump, while 40% say they’ll support Harris, according to a New York Times/Sienna College poll. That’s an astonishing 51-percentage-point gender gap.

It’s easy to understand why so many young women favor Harris – she has an inspiring life story, champions reproductive freedom and would break the biggest glass ceiling of all by becoming the first female president. But I’m mystified why so many young men back Trump.

Many of them seem to like Trump’s machismo. They like that he talks tough. They see him as an icon of traditional manhood. But all this raises an unavoidable question: should Trump be looked to as an icon of manhood considering that he boasted of grabbing women’s genitals, was found liable for sexual assault and had an affair with an adult film star soon after his wife gave birth? That shouldn’t be anyone’s model of manhood.

Many young men seem to admire Trump’s king-of-the-jungle vibe: he roars, he bellows, he boasts that no one can ever beat him (unless they cheat). But when you cut through Trump’s tough talk and look at the record, it becomes clear that Trump did very little for young men in his four years as president.

Whoops, I should note that if you’re a young man making more than $1m a year, Trump did do a lot for you, thanks to his colossal tax cuts for the richest 1%. But for the more than 99% of young men who don’t make $1m a year, sorry, Trump didn’t do diddly for you, other than cut your taxes a wee bit, a tiny fraction of the tax cuts that he gave to the richest Americans.

I recognize that many young men feel uncomfortable about the Democratic party, partly because some Democrats unfortunately treat men as a problem – and sometimes as the problem. If the Democrats were smart, they’d see that young men – like every other group in society – have problems that they need help with, problems like affording a home, finding a good-paying job, obtaining health insurance, affording college and having enough money to raise a family.

Regardless of how you feel about Harris, the truth is that her policies will do far more for young men than Trump’s policies will. It’s not even close. She is serious about lifting up young men and young women, and she has plans to do so.

Unlike Trump, Harris will help with soaring rents and home prices. She has pledged to build 3m new homes to help drive down housing prices. In another big step to make housing more affordable, she plans to give a $25,000 subsidy to first-time home buyers. Unlike Trump, Harris is also attacking the problem of high grocery prices – she has promised to crack down on price-gouging at the supermarket.

For many young men, health coverage and high health costs are a problem. On those matters, Trump will only make things worse. He has repeatedly promised to repeal Obamacare. That would be a disaster for millions of young men and women because they would no longer be able to be on their parents’ health plan until age 26. What’s more, repealing Obamacare will push up healthcare prices.

Many young people complain about their mountains of student debt. Trump won’t help on that; he has condemned the idea of forgiving student loans. In contrast, Harris wants to expand Biden’s debt cancellation program, which is hugely popular with young Americans. What’s more, Trump backed huge cuts in student aid – a move that would make it harder for young people to afford college. Harris is eager to make college more affordable by increasing student grants. Not only that, she is looking to what Tim Walz, her running mate, has done as Minnesota’s governor. He has made Minnesota’s state universities and community colleges free for students from middle-class and lower-income families.

If you’re a young man frustrated by how little your job pays, you should know that Trump – doing a big favor for his corporate allies – did nothing to raise the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage. Harris strongly supports raising the minimum wage.

Trump has made two big promises to make your life more affordable. Without giving details, he says he will cut auto insurance prices nationwide in his first 100 days in office. He also says he will cut energy and electricity prices in half during his first year in office. If you believe those far-fetched promises, then you’ll probably believe me when I say I have a bridge to sell you.

If you’re a young father or if you hope to have a family someday, you should know that Harris’s policies will do far more for you than Trump’s. Recognizing how expensive it is to raise a family, Harris has called for creating a children’s tax credit of $3,000 per child per year and $6,000 for a newborn.

To improve work-family balance, Harris has long pushed to enact paid family and medical leave so that people can take much-needed paid time off to spend with their newborns or care for sick parents or children. (Most Republicans oppose a paid leave law because their corporate donors oppose it.) Trump doesn’t have similar pro-family policies – his main policy proposals are huge tax cuts for corporations and the ultra-rich and large tariffs on imports that will dangerously push up inflation.

Although many young Americans don’t realize it, Biden and Harris have worked hard to create good-paying jobs for those who don’t go to college. Biden and Harris fought to enact three important pieces of legislation – an infrastructure bill, a green energy bill and a computer chips bill – that will create about 1m construction jobs, factory jobs and other jobs across the US, many of them unionized jobs with strong benefits.

If you’re one of the many young people at Starbucks, REI, Apple or elsewhere who support unionizing as a way to increase your pay and improve your working conditions, you should know that Harris is a strong supporter of unions and enthusiastically backs legislation to make it easier to unionize. But billionaire Trump dislikes labor unions. When he was president, he and his appointees did dozens of things, large and small, to weaken unions and create roadblocks for workers seeking to unionize.

There’s no denying that Trump’s tough talk makes many young men feel good. But tough talk is cheap. It won’t help anyone pay the rent, afford college or raise a family. Harris doesn’t talk as tough as Trump, but her record and her policies make undeniably clear that she will do far more for America’s young men and women than Trump will.

I don't agree with every point he makes here, and I also don't think a lot of young men are voting based on rational and objective things like whose policies will benefit them most. But I still thought this was an interesting read.