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chiseler · 3 years ago

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Larger Than Life

In 1927, Albert Bertanzetti and his three-year-old son, William, were taking a stroll when they stopped to join a small crowd watching a film being shot on the streets of Los Angeles. During a break in the shoot, Albert suggested his son go show the director, Jules White, his little trick. So William toddled over to White and tugged on his pant leg. When he had White’s attention, William flipped over, went into a headstand and began spinning in circles. White was so taken with the trick he gave the young Bertanzetti a small uncredited role in the two-reel short, Wedded Blisters. Afterward, William earned a regular role in the popular Mickey McGuire series of shorts, where he played Mickey Rooney’s younger brother Billy. Taking prevailing anti-Italian sentiments into consideration, in the credits he was cited as “Billy Barty.”

Barty had been born in Millsboro, Pennsylvania in 1924, but when it was determined he had hay fever, Albert decided to move the family West, to the dry, clean air of Hollywood. Depending on how you look at it, hay fever was the least of Barty’s problems. Or maybe not, given how things worked out.

Apart from hay fever, Barty had also been born with cartilage–hair hypoplasia, a form of dwarfism. Being extremely small for his age at three (as an adult he stood three-foot-nine), when it came to early film roles he was almost exclusively relegated to playing diaper clad infants. It was a director’s dream—having an infant on set who could not only take direction, but could walk, run, talk and do tricks as well. As a result, along with the Mickey McGuire shorts, he played infants in everything from the all-star live action adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (1933) to Golddiggers of 1933 (1933) to Bride of Frankenstein (1935). In fact Barty, tiny as he was, would play diaper-clad infants until he hit puberty.

Over a career that would span seven decades, along with infants, Barty would play his share of elves, leprechauns, imps, Hobbits, trolls, assorted other fairy tale and fantasy characters, clowns, court jesters, pygmies, sideshow performers and mad scientist assistants. Ironically, for having appeared in over two hundred films and television shows, Barty did not appear in the three touchstones of American Dwarf-centric cinema: Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), Sam Newfield’s The Terror of Tiny Town (1938), or Mervin LeRoy’s The Wizard of Oz (1939). No, although he would appear in the behind-the-scenes comedy Under the Rainbow (1981), contrary to the general assumption, Billy Barty was never an original Munchkin. There are reasons for this.

In 1932 when Browning was working on Freaks, Barty was only eight, he was not a professional carnival freak, and he was too busy with the Mickey McGuire shorts. And after the shorts’ seven-year run ended in 1934—two years before casting began on Tiny Town or The Wizard of Oz—Albert Bertanzetti, recognizing talent in all of his children, pulled Billy out of the movies and sent the whole family on the vaudeville circuit.

Now, 1935 was hardly the most opportune time to try and break into vaudeville. As an entertainment form it had been on life support for a decade already, with theaters either closing down or becoming movie palaces with performances, almost as a sad afterthought, taking place after that evening’s double feature had ended. Those performers who could were trying to break into pictures, and those who couldn’t were vanishing without a trace. Now here was Barty, who’d been working regularly in films for nearly ten years, trying to break into vaudeville. Nevertheless, Billy and Sisters, as they were touted, marched on, with a musical act featuring Barty’s sister Evelyn on piano and accordion, his other sister Dede playing violin, and Barty himself on drums. They all sang and danced a little, and the adolescent Barty told jokes and did impressions. In his later years he remembered the time fondly, mostly because it gave him a chance at that early age to see much of North America.

In 1942 Barty enrolled in college in Los Angeles and majored in journalism, hoping to become a sportswriter. While there, he joined the football and basketball teams, where he was both a novelty and a ringer. He also played second base on a semi-professional baseball team for a spell, where by his own account he was walked forty-five times.

Instead of pursuing work as a sports columnist after graduation, he returned to show business. Later he was quoted as saying, “You don’t see any little people doing newscasts, you don’t see any doing sports writing, you don’t see any sports announcing, you don’t see any coaches, but there are little people who are capable of doing these things, who have proven themselves.” You get the sense there was a little personal bitterness there, hinting he may have been forced back to Hollywood because that was the only place he could find work.

By 1947, now an adult with a gravelly but high-pitched voice, Barty sported a boxer’s face on a disproportionately large head. In many ways he resembled a diminutive William Demarest, and in many roles would adopt Demarest’s gruff but lovable demeanor. Shedding the diaper at last, he nevertheless picked up where he left off, playing assorted pygmies and leprechauns and elves, usually for cheap laughs.

In the early Fifties he became a regular member of Spike Jones musical comedy ensemble, The City Slickers, and was a big hit on Jones TV shows, where he became especially known for his slapstick, spot-on Liberace impression, and his ability to roll off his piano bench into a head spin, a trick which continued to serve him well.

Growing up, Barty said, he had no idea he was different, that his parents never told him there were things he couldn’t do because he was too short. By the time he was thirty, however, he’d come to learn the rest of the world was not quite as accepting as his parents. In 1957, Barty put out a call for little people from around the country to join him for a get together in Reno. Only twenty people showed up to that first convention, but it became the foundation for Little People of America, a support and advocacy group pushing for equitable treatment and civil rights for dwarfs, midgets and other people of unusually small stature. His aim was to ensure little people across the country would be treated fairly, would be able to get jobs, and would be granted the same accessibility rights afforded the normally-sized. It always struck me as a little odd that, for all his tireless efforts lobbying to normalize perceptions and treatment of little people throughout American culture, Barty, without much apparent gumption, would continue to take roles some might call demeaning, or at the very least helped cement those stereotypes he was fighting so hard to break. Perhaps to him it was simply paying work, it was showbiz, and he knew full well what his role was within that world. But the apparent ironic contrast between his activism and his work would lead to a public tiff in the Seventies with fellow small actor Hervé Villechaize of Fantasy Island. Barty, who’d appeared on the show, felt Villechaize was undercutting all his work when he said bluntly that people like him and Barty “were midgets, not actors.”

After the second annual Little People of America convention, Barty began courting Shirley Bolingbroke, a little person who had attended the meeting. When he proposed, however, she declined, telling him she was a devout Mormon, and so would never consider marrying anyone outside the faith. In 1962 Barty relented and converted to the church of Latter-day Saints, and the two were married. Although Mormon insiders and publicists have made a big deal of Barty’s enthusiastic True Believer status within LDS, it would be many years before he agreed to get baptized and receive full member status, and then only to participate in his son’s baptism.

Around the time of the marriage, as Barty was making regular TV appearances on various comedy and variety shows (including a recurring role on Peter Gunn), he also began hosting a weekday afternoon local kid’s show in Los Angeles which was called either Billy Barty’s Big Top or Billy Barty’s Big Show, depending on who’s doing the remembering. That stint may well have brought him to the attention of the sinister Sid and Marty Krofft, who in the late Sixties conscripted Barty to become a regular on several Krofft shows including H.R. Pufnstuf, The Bugaloos, and later Sigmund The Sea Monster, where he played the titular sea monster opposite Rip Taylor and aging child star Johnny Whittaker.

For all the low-brow antics and his uncredited roles in Elvis movies, it must be said Barty was always a compelling and charismatic screen presence, a, yes, larger than life character. In those few rare instances when he played roles that made no references at all to his height—like Abe Kusich, the shady drunken cockfighter in Day of the Locust or Ludwig, Rod Steiger’s sidekick in W.C. Fields and Me, he proved himself an electric onscreen presence who could dominate any scene.

(Just a quick aside, in 1980 Ralph Bakshi rotoscoped Barty to portray both Bilbo and Samwise Baggins in his animated version of Lord of the Rings. I wasn’t aware of that at the time, but thinking back on it now, the way both characters moved, it seems so obvious I was watching another Billy Barty performance.)

In 1975, around the same time he opened a Southern California roller rink he called “Billy Barty’s Roller Fantasy, Barty established The Billy Barty Foundation. As an adjunct to Little People of America, the Foundation aimed to provide practical assistance—money, adaptive equipment, etc.—to little people in need, particularly children. And after campaigning for George H.W. Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign, he sat on a panel of advisors working to hammer out the details of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which President Bush signed into law in 1990.

At the same time he was sitting on that panel, Barty was also producing, directing and starring in Short Ribs, a syndicated sketch comedy series featuring an all-dwarf cast including Patty Maloney, Jimmy Briscoe and Joe Gieb. The show, which was modeled after SCTV and SNL, only aired in the Los Angeles area and ran thirteen weeks. After the show went off the air, Barty was slapped with two lawsuits, one from the show’s co-producer William Winckler and one from the show’s co-writer Warren Taylor, both of whom claimed Barty owed them money. The suits ended up, inevitably, in small claims court. Barty lost both suits, and even though few people had ever heard of, let alone seen the show, news of Barty in small claims court was too much for reporters to resist, and the case received smirking national attention.

After the suits were settled, Barty continued to work, but a bit more sporadically. He had one-off roles on Frasier, Jack’s Place, and a few low-budget quickies, and seemed to be edging more into voice roles, providing characterizations for a Batman cartoon and The Rescuers Down Under, to name a couple. But he was still working until the end, when he ended up in the hospital with cardiopulmonary issues in late 2000. He died on December 23rd of that year at age 73.

In the late Eighties he told an interviewer, “I’ve never looked at acting as ‘Ahhh!’ and ‘Gee!’ I started in vaudeville when I was five and for me it was just walking on a stage and I’m gonna perform. Later on I was impressed by many things, like when I worked with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in Tough Guys. That was an ‘Ahhh!’ for me. When I look back, even today, I guess I can go ‘Ahhh!’ because I worked with Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell in Gold Diggers of 1933 when I was nine. Then they were just grown-ups on the stage. As I look back, I’m more awed now than I was when I was actually doing it.”

Those who knew and worked with Barty always recall what a joy it was, how kind and enthusiastic and funny he was, a real spark who could enliven even the most questionable production. I would never deny that. I’ve always loved and admired Barty, and have sat through countless godawful films and TV shows simply because he had a role, no matter how small.

That said, I do have to wonder if at the end, after all his decades of work fighting for the dignity of little people everywhere, he felt like a bit of a hypocrite for spending those same years and more cementing the stereotype in the American consciousness. I also wonder if he died still wishing he’d become a sportswriter for a Des Moines daily instead.

by Jim Knipfel

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johngarfieldtribute · 3 years ago

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ART IS UNIVERSAL!

I love the movie posters from Old Hollywood, and the international releases often brought a fresh look to the film’s promotional materials.

The French movie poster for FOUR DAUGHTERS prominently featured Julie. By the time the movie hit overseas, his groundbreaking debut performance was something of mass appeal to audiences.

In comparison, the promotional materials prepared in the US before the film’s premiere popped in photos of Julie and fellow supporting player Jeffrey Lynn as afterthoughts.

Julie’s incredible performance was groundbreaking. He is the screen’s first REBEL HERO and one of the earliest Method actors in film. He precedes Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Paul Newman and others. Read TCM’s profile on Julie here.

Julie‘s hometown paper, The New York Times enthusiastically praised his debut. It’s hard to believe these upcoming SPOILERS are actually in a review. More accurately, it reads like a PLOT SUMMARY. However, this reviewer recognizes Julie’s incredible debut performance, so it’s worth transcribing. (Note the low key ad for the movie in the bottom right).

Warners’ ‘Four Daughters” a Sentimental Comedy at Music Hall

Friday, August 19, 1938

by B.R.C. (NYT film reviewer and freelance journalist, Benjamin R. Crisler)

A charming, at times heartbreakingly human, little comedy about life in a musical family of attractive daughters which occasionally is ruffled by the drama of a masculine world outside, “Four Daughters” at the (Radio City) Music Hall, attempts to agree with Jack Warner’s recent assertion in the advertisements that it is the climax of his career. Putting aside Mr. Warner’s career for the nonse, we may assert with equal confidence that “Four Daughters” is one of the best pictures of anybody’s career, if only for the sake of the marvelously meaningful character of Mickey Borden as portrayed by John (formerly Jules) Garfield, who bites off his lines with a delivery so eloquent that we aren’t sure whether it is the dialogue or Mr. Garfield who is so bitterly brilliant.

Our vote, though, is for Mr. Garfield and for whatever stars watch over his career on the stage and screen, because, on re-reading the dialogue, as we have just done carefully, it seems to have lost something of the acidity, the beautiful clarity it had when Mr. Garfield spoke it. As the most startling innovation in the way of a screen character in years—a fascinating fatalist, reckless and poor and unhappy, who smokes too much, who is insufferably rude to everybody, and who assumes as a matter of course that all the cards are stacked against him, Mr. Garfield is such a sweet relief from conventional screen types, in this one character, anyway, so eloquent of a certain dispossessed class of people, that we can’t thank Warner Brothers, Michael Curtiz, the director, Mr. Epstein and Miss Coffee, the screen playwrights, and even Miss Fannie Hurst, the original author, enough for him.

In addition to Mr. Warner, Mr. Garfield and the Music Hall, “Four Daughters” is also a triumph for Priscilla Lane, who is much more attractive, animated and intelligent, than the run of ingénues; for Jeffrey Lynn, a new romantic discovery who knows how to be handsome inoffensively; for Claude Rains, as the musical father; Frank McHugh, as a rich beau; May Robson as Aunt Etta; Rosemary, as the voice of the family, and Lola as the quiet homebody. In fact all the Lanes—a prolific and talented tribe—meet at the Music Hall this week, and one would hardly know which Lane to take, so inviting are all three, not to mention Gale Page, who makes an attractive fourth.

The story begins gayly with a blossoming peach tree and a family quintet rendition of Schubert’s “Serenade” with Papa wielding his flute like a baton, with Priscilla playing the violin, Lola at the harp (if we remember correctly), and Gale at the piano. It is a house full of music and youth and femininity, and the good-natured grumpiness of Papa, who hates jazz, and with only the remotest threat of masculine invasion. But see how the serpent enters this Eden: First Mr. Lynn, a composer, comes swinging on the gate, and then his orchestrator from the city, Mr. Garfield, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, no money, not even a clean shirt, a personal grudge against the Fates, an interesting vocabulary and a heart of purest suet— Mr. Garfield, the eternal outsider.

In the long run it is this character—and a very fine cinematic invention he is—who steals the picture. His suicide is the pivotal theme, the tragic incident (and Mickey himself would call it an incident) which brings the cinematically predestined lovers, Priscilla and Jeffrey, back together again, after Priscilla’s impetuous sacrifice of herself and what she fancied was the altar of two other people’s happiness. But it’s just a simple family affair, after all, and it ends—the old folks a little older, the young ones a little less gay—with the same flowering peach tree and Schubert’s “Serenade,” and with the discordant squeak of Jeffrey swinging on the gate again to interrupt Priscilla’s fiddle part. It may be sentimental, but it’s grand cinema.

Variety, the show biz bible newspaper had this to say:

December 31, 1937 11:00pm PT

Four Daughters by Variety staff

Score one for Warners on this gentle drama from Fannie Hurst’s novel, Sister Act. It’s a beguiling film which reveals John Garfield as an interesting picture prospect. Formerly Jules Garfield, of Broadway’s Group Theatre, the actor turns out to be much more forceful personality on the screen than he was on the stage.

This tale deals with the heart-throbs of the four talented daughters of a professor of music. It’s a simple, gay and lovable small-town household. And as the various girls acquire beaux, the old man looks on with a twinkling eye, and kindly Aunt Etta bustles about to make the place homelike.

Michael Curtiz’s direction is both affectionate and knowing. Claude Rains is irresistibly persuasive and attractive as the father. Priscilla Lane has the best part as the youngest sister. May Robson plays the aunt in proper mother-hen fashion. As the ill-starred newcomer, Garfield plays with such tight-lipped force that for a time he threatens to throw the picture out of focus by drawing too much interest.

1938: Nominations: Best Picture, Director, Supp. Actor (John Garfield), Screenplay, Sound

The Spanish version of the movie poster also gives prominence to Julie’s scenes as Mickey Borden. Incidentally, Frank Sinatra and Doris Day starred in a musical remake from 1954, YOUNG AT HEART. Scuttlebutt is that Francis Albert would only do it if the ending was changed to his liking. Glad he did it so we could have that beauty of a title song.

The poster above shows a different angle for the promo campaign. Notice that Julie is touted as “the most dynamic discovery since Cagney.”

Looking like the total outsider. The nonconformist. Check out that stubble. Turns out, Mickey was the sensitive observer. Such a natural!

The studio paired Julie with Priscilla Lane in several films. Here’s a compilation of clips of their screen time.

“I believe the more successful an actor becomes, the more chances he should take. An actor never stops learning.” —John Garfield

How about an honorary Oscar awarded posthumously for Julie’s incredible work in film? This was only his first film role and his later performances showed even more depth—more maturity. What an amazing gift he had, and it’s a huge loss that he was taken too soon.

#john garfield #four daughters #priscilla lane #foreign movie posters #frank sinatra #doris day #young at heart

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buoyantsaturn · 4 years ago

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I’m Cool to Watch Atlas Burn (1/?)

summary: Bianca's been having a lot of private conversations with Chiron. Nico won't hold anybody's hand but Will's. Will might be 13, but sometimes he still acts like he's 10.

chapter title: Bianca's Rescue Operation Goes Very Wrong

word count: 3,388

read on ao3 | read bring on the monsters

When Nico turned twelve, he decided that he was suddenly too old for hand holding. Sometimes Bianca would reach out for his hand as they climbed the stairs out of the Underworld, or even just on the walk between the dining pavilion and the Big House, but Nico would always snatch his hand away. He had led a quest across the country, he was training with the best warriors in Elysium (and Punishment, when Alecto wasn’t looking), and he was almost a teenager. He didn’t need to hold anybody’s hand.

Except that Will was already thirteen, and he still liked to hold Nico’s hand whenever he had the chance. If it was Will, it was okay. Best friends were different. And it just so happened that Nico’s best friend hadn’t let go of his hand since they left camp.

They were heading north, the three of them packed into the backseat of Jules-Albert’s car. Nico wasn’t entirely sure where they were going - Chiron had given the message to Bianca, because she was older - but he knew they were on a “retrieval mission.” Whatever that meant. For the last hour, Will had practically been bouncing in his seat and tugging on Nico’s hand, babbling some over-excited nonsense. Nico was just surprised that Bianca hadn’t told him to shut up yet, but she’d been abnormally quiet for the last week or so, ever since Chiron had pulled her aside for some important discussion.

“It’s so cool that you have your own driver,” Will was saying for maybe the fifth time. “That’s, like, rich people stuff! Like, my mama doesn’t even have her own driver, and, I mean, she doesn’t say she’s rich, but she kind of is.”

“Well, my dad is the god of riches,” Nico reminded him.

Will elbowed him. “Your dad’s the god of a lot of stuff.”

Nico grinned. “Okay, Apollo spawn.”

“Can you please get him to stop calling me that?” Will asked with a pout.

“Seph calls you that sunshine boy,” Nico told him. “Is that better?”

Will’s nose scrunched up. “I think just sunshine is good enough.”

“Okay, just sunshine.”

“Gods, you’re the worst.” Will dug his elbow into Nico’s side with more force than before. “Anyway, how come you didn’t get this guy to drive you to Texas when I was at school last year? Maybe then you wouldn’t have spent the whole visit asleep.”

“Dad said I had to get better at shadow traveling before he would give me a better mode of transportation,” Nico explained. “Jules is good for long distances when I need to keep my energy up, and he’s fast, but he’s not always fast enough, you know? So I had to know how to get somewhere quick without draining all my energy in case of an emergency.”

Jules turned off the main road, and Bianca sat up straighter. She spoke up for the first time since leaving camp. “I think we’re here.”

“Okay,” Will said. “And where’s here?”

Nico leaned over Will to look out the window. It was difficult to see so late at night, but he’d trained his eyes to see better in the dark after spending so long in the Underworld. “Military school?” He turned back to his sister and grinned. “Bia, we’ve talked about this, you’re not getting rid of Will that easily.”

Bianca huffed and folded her arms. “That’s not what we’re here for.”

“Are you going to tell us?” Nico demanded.

“There’s a demigod here,” Bianca said. “Chiron got a message from one of the satyr scouts. She’s powerful, but undetermined, so Chiron thinks she might be a target for Beckendorf.”

At the sound of his old friend’s name, Will’s gaze dropped to his feet. Nico squeezed his hand.

“We’re here to pick her up and take her to camp,” Bianca continued. “It should be quick and easy. Grover should be waiting for us inside, and he’ll take us to the demigod. We’ll sneak her back out, and we’re done.”

“That’s it?” Nico asked with a frown. “Then what are we here for? That seems easy enough for just one person.”

“I invited you for the company.”

Will leaned around Nico to ask, “Then why am I here?”

Bianca rolled her eyes. “Because you two are attached at the hip.”

The car stopped. Jules stepped outside, moving around the car - faster than one might usually expect for a zombie - to open Bianca’s door. Before climbing out, she turned to the two boys and said, “Stay behind me, stay quiet, and don’t touch anything.”

Jules waited outside while the demigods walked in through the front door.

It didn’t take them long to find Grover - really, he found them. “Bianca?” he asked as he approached, and his eyes flickered toward Nico and Will. “I thought you were coming alone.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I brought backup. My brother, Nico, and his friend, Will.”

Grover’s eyes widened. “Two Big Three kids? Oh, that’s no good. Um. Maybe you should go back outside and I’ll just find a way to bring Lou Ellen to you.”

Bianca frowned. “We’re already here. What’s the problem?”

Grover leaned forward and hissed, “Monsters.”

“I think we can deal with a couple of--”

“Mr. Underwood,” a voice boomed from across the hall, and the four of them turned to face the man walking toward them. “You were not supposed to leave the gymnasium. And who are these others? Outsiders?”

Bianca raised one hand and snapped her fingers. Nico felt like the very atmosphere rippled away from her fingers, and he had to blink a few times to shake that feeling away. She told the man, “We go to school here.” Really, he should’ve easily been able to tell that she was lying, considering how much snow they’d tracked inside.

The man blinked, then said, “Yes, of course. Why have you all left the gymnasium?”

“Bathroom,” Grover blurted, causing the man to raise a suspicious eyebrow. “We were all looking for the bathroom, and went through the wrong door. We’re going back right now.”

The man hummed and nodded. “Yes, I’ll walk you back. Lead the way.”

Grover started forward, so the demigods followed. They weren’t able to speak again until they had entered a crowded gymnasium, complete with gently flashing lights and too-loud music. Will made a noise of disgust, and Nico glanced at him in confusion. “School dances are the worst,” Will explained.

Nico would have to take his word for it.

The teacher that marched them into the gymnasium vanished as soon as they were inside, so Grover pulled them toward the corner to continue talking.

“That was the monster!” he whispered - as much as he could over the music.

Will frowned. “But he’s just a guy.”

“You didn’t see that lady with the chimera,” Nico commented. “I thought she was just some lady, too.”

“What is he?” Bianca asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Grover replied, shaking his head, “but the smell...that’s undeniable. And there’s no doubt that he can smell you guys, too. Which is why we need to get out of here, and fast.”

“Right,” Bianca said with a single nod. “So, where’s our girl?”

Grover pointed across the gym toward a set of bleachers. There was a group of boys playing cards, and a girl with dip-dyed purple hair amongst them. She seemed to be winning, if the noisy complaints from the boys were anything to go by. “Lou Ellen Blackstone. She has a crazy kind of control over the Mist, but nothing that tells me who her parent might be.”

“A minor god?” Bianca suggested.

Grover shrugged. “Maybe, but she’s the most powerful child of a minor god I’ve ever seen.”

“We can figure that out later,” Nico told them. “How do we get her out of here without Mr. Monster catching us?”

“Dr. Thorn,” Grover corrected.

Will replied, “Nah, I like Mr. Monster better.”

“Ignore them,” Bianca said to Grover. “Nico and I can shadow travel. I think I should just grab her and make a jump. The Mist should cover up our disappearance.”

“You’ve never jumped with another person before,” Nico reminded her.

“I’ve jumped with you.”

“No, I’ve jumped with you.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you said--”

Will waved an arm between them. “Okay, nobody’s shadow traveling with anybody. We’ll go out the old fashioned way. Grover, what’s the best escape route?”

“Back out the way we came,” he answered. “Through the front door.”

“That’s the best route?” Nico asked.

“It’s the fastest.”

“But we’ll be out in the open!”

“Hey, shut up,” Bianca said suddenly, her eyes darting through the crowd. “She’s gone.”

The three boys spun around to see what Bianca was looking at. The bleachers were still full of boys playing cards, though Lou Ellen was no longer with them.

“What do we do?” Will asked. “Split up and look for her?”

Nico squeezed his hand with a, “No, no splitting up. We don’t know what Mr. Monster is, and I don’t want him to try to pick us off one by one.”

Will’s grip on Nico’s hand tightened. “Uh, yeah, no. I don’t want that, either.”

Without saying a word, Bianca pushed past them, leaving them no choice but to follow after her. She marched up to the boys on the bleachers and demanded to know where Lou Ellen had gone.

“She went somewhere with Dr. Thorn,” one of the boys answered.

“Which way did she go?” Bianca asked.

The boy pointed across the gymnasium. One of the doors was still swinging shut.

They took off at a run. Grover definitely wasn’t the fastest of the group - Nico thought it was pretty unlikely that he’d ever meet anybody faster than Will - but he was clearly pushing himself to lead the group outside onto a snowy cliff.

They found Dr. Thorn about a hundred yards away from the school, far enough away that the lights didn’t reach him, so they could really only see shadows in the glow of the moon. Bianca already had her bow drawn with an arrow nocked by the time they heard a shout of, “Stop! Not one step closer!”

They paused. Nico focused on the shadows, forcing himself to see more clearly after being among such blinding lights - he felt much more comfortable out here in the cold, the quiet, the dark, about to fight a monster instead of socializing with people his own age. He could make out the difference between Lou Ellen and Dr. Thorn. He had a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming. His other hand had a small box that Nico couldn’t identify.

That was as far as he got before a projectile launched toward them. Nico tackled Will into the snow to get him out of its way.

“Where did that come from?” Bianca called out.

“Somewhere behind him,” Nico replied, jumping back to his feet and pulling Will up with him.

Dr. Thorn yelled to them, “Keep your distance, and I won’t have to kill you yet.”

“Let Lou Ellen go, and we won’t have to kill you,” Bianca shot back as she pulled out her knife. “Yet.”

“Bia,” Nico said softly. “Jump.”

His sister nodded, and in the next second, she had disappeared. Then, Thorn was howling in pain, and Will ran forward. He managed to get a hold of Lou Ellen, and Nico could hear him reassuring her that everything would be alright. Nico was about to jump in and help his sister finish off the monster when Bianca was suddenly thrown aside. Nico didn’t even have the opportunity to move before Thorn dove toward Will and Lou Ellen, grabbing them both.

Nico had his sword in his hand in a second.

The next few things that happened were so quick that even Nico couldn’t see it all through the dark. There was the deafening noise of giant fan blades and wind that almost knocked him off his feet - something mechanical was flying near the edge of the cliff, though it wasn’t an airplane, so Nico didn’t know what it was. He did know that they started firing guns in their direction. He hit the ground to avoid any stray bullets.

Something caught Thorn’s shoulder, causing him to release Lou Ellen, but it wasn’t a bullet. Whatever it was came from the opposite direction, somewhere behind Nico. He was able to see Lou Ellen stagger toward Grover, who pulled her off to the side, away from the fight. Then Thorn started dragging Will toward the edge of the cliff, and that’s when Nico got back to his feet. He could risk a few bullet wounds in order to save his best friend from monstrous kidnapping.

He ran about halfway, and when it became clear that he wasn’t going to catch up, he jumped into the darkness and emerged with an arm outstretched, inches away from grabbing onto Will’s coat. Something silver flashed by the side of Nico’s head, lodging into Thorn’s body and knocking him off balance, over the edge of the cliff.

Will went with him, screaming Nico’s name.

“Will!” Nico shouted back, scrambling to the cliff’s edge, but he couldn’t see anything down below. All he knew was that the giant flying fan blades were getting farther and farther away, and his best friend had been lost to the darkness.

Nico was still screaming for his friend by the time Bianca pulled him back from the edge. “There’s nothing you can do for him right now, Nico,” she told him. “He’s not dead, so let’s just hope it stays that way. We’ll find him, after we get Lou Ellen to camp.”

Nico let his sister pull him to his feet, then he brushed her off. “No, I’m not going back to camp. I’m going to find him.”

Bianca grabbed his arm in a death grip. “No, you’re coming back to camp. You’re no use after a single jump, and we’re in the middle of nowhere. You’re lucky that Jules is still waiting for us, because you’d probably pass out just from summoning him.”

Nico yanked his arm out of her grip, crossing his arms across his chest, though he continued to walk alongside her. They found Grover and Lou Ellen heading toward the light of the school.

“Where’s Will?” Grover asked as soon as he could see them. Nico’s eyes narrowed into a glare, which he pointed at the ground. “Oh. Oh, no. Not another one…”

“Another one?” Lou Ellen asked, eyes widening in fear.

“Don’t listen to him,” Bianca told her, drawing Lou’s full attention in her direction. “Lou Ellen Blackstone, right? My name is Bianca, and this is my brother, Nico. We’re going to take you someplace safe, alright?”

“What was that thing?” she asked. “And what kept hitting him?”

“We don’t know,” Bianca replied, “but I don’t want to stick around to find out. C’mon, we have a car--”

“Hang on a second,” a new voice said, and four heads whipped toward the woods. A girl, maybe a year or so older than Bianca, stepped toward them, and as she entered the light, Nico saw at least ten other girls following behind her. They all wore the same silver jackets, though the girl up front had an extra ring of silver in her hair. “Nobody’s going anywhere before we get some answers.” She grinned straight at Nico. “Hiya. Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, lieutenant of Artemis. I hear I have a couple new cousins.”

Thalia explained the situation while the Hunters of Artemis - a group of girls all around Bianca’s age - set up camp, complete with silver tents and a few campfires. Lou Ellen was set up with Grover near one of the fires, with one of those silver jackets wrapped around her. Grover seemed to be explaining everything to her to the best of his ability.

Nico just wanted to get out there and find Will.

He couldn’t even be excited about meeting the goddess of the hunt herself, only requesting that she let him hunt with her. She had refused, claiming that she didn’t hunt with the company of men, and then she ran off into the woods.

Now, Nico sat with the name manticore burned into his brain, ready to raise hell in a literal sense if that’s what it took to get his best friend back.

He sat inside one of the tents with Bianca and Thalia, drumming his fingers impatiently against his crossed arms. Thalia seemed ready for a nice, long chat, and if Nico didn’t feel quite so dizzy, he would’ve been out of there already.

“Why don’t you two tell me what happened out there,” Thalia said after a short while, “before we showed up, at least.”

“Chiron sent us here to pick up an unclaimed demigod,” Bianca explained, “but once we got outside, it was too dark for me to see much of anything. Nico has much better night vision than I do.”

Thalia turned to him, and Nico heaved a heavy sigh. “That thing - the manticore - almost pulled Lou Ellen off the edge of the cliff. Then this...flying thing showed up and started shooting at us. Will pulled Lou Ellen away from the manticore, but it grabbed him and took him over the cliff.” He paused. “I almost had him… Just an inch more, and I would have had him…”

“Flying thing,” Thalia cut in. “What do you mean by that?”

Nico shrugged. “The loud, flying...thing! I don’t know, I’ve never seen one before.”

“Oh,” she replied with a grin. “The helicopter.”

Nico raised an eyebrow, and nodded his head slowly. “Sure, the...helicopter.” For the tenth time in as many minutes, Nico wished Will was there. He always managed to fill in the blanks in Nico’s sentences perfectly without making him feel like an idiot for not knowing about different things from the modern world. And he was much better at explaining that Nico and Bianca were - what was his phrasing? - misplaced in time.

Thalia stretched her arms over her head. “Well, since Lady Artemis is hunting down the manticore, we really just need to wait around for a while. It shouldn’t take her that long, at least not to track him, but we’ve got plenty of time to relax. We can all rest here tonight, and then in the morning, we’ll head to Camp Half-Blood to wait out Artemis’s return.”

“No,” Nico snapped. “We’re not waiting around. That thing took my best friend!”

Bianca set her hand on Nico’s arm, and he leaned away from the touch. “Nico, there’s nothing we can do right now.”

“We can try!” he shouted, his voice cracking near the end. Nico looked away and pulled his knees up to his chest. He was not about to start crying in front of a couple of girls.

Bianca turned back to Thalia. “We’re going back to camp tonight. You can come with us, or you can meet us there later, but I won’t make Nico wait that long.”

Thalia didn’t respond right away. It wasn’t until Nico looked up at her and saw her nodding that she said, “Okay. Give us a few minutes to pack up, and we’ll go with you. Bianca, would you mind helping out?” She stood, so the siblings got to their feet as well. “Sorry, Nico, but the other girls… They don’t work well with boys.”

Nico crossed his arms with a huff. “I don’t want to hang out with a bunch of girls anyway.”

Thalia grinned. She ruffled Nico’s hair as she passed him, telling him, “You’re even cuter than Percy, sometimes.”

Before Nico could ask what that meant, Thalia stepped outside.

Bianca took Nico by the shoulders, forcing him to face her, though he kept his gaze to the ground. “We’ll find him, Nico,” Bianca told him, and Nico’s eyes flickered upward. “First thing in the morning, we’ll talk to Chiron.” She waited until Nico nodded before continuing. “Go find Jules-Albert. We’re going to need a bigger car if we’re getting everybody back to camp.”

Nico nodded again, and Bianca’s hands fell away from his shoulders. She started to leave, but Nico caught her with one hand wrapping around her own.

He held his sister’s hand as they left the tent together.

thanks for reading!!

buy me a coffee | more nico birthday event stuff

#solangelo #will solace #nico di angelo #mine #my writing #bring on the monsters #nico birthday event 2k21

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years ago

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LIZ LEARNS TO DRIVE

November 13, 1948

“Liz Learns To Drive” (aka “Liz's Driving License” and “Liz Learns to Drive”) is episode #16 of the radio series MY FAVORITE HUSBAND broadcast on November 13, 1948.

Synopsis ~ George teaches Liz to drive and she immediately gets in an accident. Through a communications mix-up, George thinks Liz has intentionally run over George's high school sweetheart, Myra Ponsenby!

Note: This episode was aired before the characters names were changed from Cugat to Cooper. It was also before Jell-O came aboard to sponsor the show and before the regular cast featured Bea Benadaret and Gale Gordon as the Atterburys.

“My Favorite Husband” was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) by Isabel Scott Rorick, which had previously been adapted into the film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942). “My Favorite Husband” was first broadcast as a one-time special on July 5, 1948. Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, and a positive response to this broadcast convinced CBS to launch “My Favorite Husband” as a series. Bowman was not available Richard Denning was cast as George. On January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change to Cooper. On this same episode Jell-O became its sponsor. A total of 124 episodes of the program aired from July 23, 1948 through March 31, 1951. After about ten episodes had been written, writers Fox and Davenport departed and three new writers took over – Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and head writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer. In March 1949 Gale Gordon took over the existing role of George’s boss, Rudolph Atterbury, and Bea Benaderet was added as his wife, Iris. CBS brought “My Favorite Husband” to television in 1953, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as Liz and George Cooper. The television version ran two-and-a-half seasons, from September 1953 through December 1955, running concurrently with “I Love Lucy.” It was produced live at CBS Television City for most of its run, until switching to film for a truncated third season filmed (ironically) at Desilu and recasting Liz Cooper with Vanessa Brown.

MAIN CAST

Lucille Ball (Liz Cugat) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. “My Favorite Husband” eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon.

Richard Denning (George Cugat) was born Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger Jr., in Poughkeepsie, New York. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles. Plans called for him to take over his father’s garment manufacturing business, but he developed an interest in acting. Denning enlisted in the US Navy during World War II. He is best known for his roles in various science fiction and horror films of the 1950s. Although he teamed with Lucille Ball on radio in “My Favorite Husband,” the two never acted together on screen. While “I Love Lucy” was on the air, he was seen on another CBS TV series, “Mr. & Mrs. North.” From 1968 to 1980 he played the Governor on “Hawaii 5-0″, his final role. He died in 1998 at age 84.

Ruth Perrott (Katie, the Maid) was also later seen on “I Love Lucy.” She first played Mrs. Pomerantz, a member of the surprise investigating committee for the Society Matrons League in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25), as one of the member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress” (ILL S3;E3), and also played a nurse when “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16). She died in 1996 at the age of 96.

Bob LeMond (Announcer) also served as the announcer for the pilot episode of “I Love Lucy”. When the long-lost pilot was finally discovered in 1990, a few moments of the opening narration were damaged and lost, so LeMond – fifty years later – recreated the narration for the CBS special and subsequent DVD release.

GUEST CAST

John Hiestand (Cory Cartwright) served as the announcer for the radio show “Let George Do It” from 1946 to 1950. In 1955 he did an episode of “Our Miss Brooks” opposite Gale Gordon.

Bea Benadaret (Woman Driver) was considered the front-runner to be cast as Ethel Mertz but when “I Love Lucy” was ready to start production she was already playing a similar role on TV’s “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” so Vivian Vance was cast instead. On “I Love Lucy” she was cast as Lucy Ricardo’s spinster neighbor, Miss Lewis, in “Lucy Plays Cupid” (ILL S1;E15) in early 1952. Later, she was a success in her own show, “Petticoat Junction” as Shady Rest Hotel proprietress Kate Bradley. She starred in the series until her death in 1968.

Frank Nelson (Officer Frank Nelson) was born on May 6, 1911 (three months before Lucille Ball) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He started working as a radio announcer at the age of 15. He later appeared on such popular radio shows as “The Great Gildersleeve,” “Burns and Allen,” and “Fibber McGee & Molly”. Aside from Lucille Ball, Nelson is perhaps most associated with Jack Benny and was a fifteen-year regular on his radio and television programs. His trademark was playing clerks and other working stiffs, suddenly turning to Benny with a drawn out “Yeeeeeeeeees?” Nelson appeared in 11 episodes of “I Love Lucy”, including three as quiz master Freddy Fillmore, and two as Ralph Ramsey, plus appearance on “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” - making him the only actor to play two different recurring roles on “I Love Lucy.” Nelson returned to the role of the frazzled Train Conductor for an episode of “The Lucy Show” in 1963. This marks his final appearance on a Lucille Ball sitcom.

Herb Vigran (Sergeant Martin Lewis, Homicide Squad) made several appearances on “My Favorite Husband.” He would later play Jule, Ricky’s music union agent on two episodes of “I Love Lucy”. He would go on to play Joe (and Mrs. Trumbull’s nephew), the washing machine repairman in “Never Do Business With Friends” (S2;E31) and Al Sparks, the publicity man who hires Lucy and Ethel to play Martians on top of the Empire State Building in “Lucy is Envious” (S3;E23). Of his 350 screen roles, he also made six appearances on “The Lucy Show.”

The name Martin Lewis may be a tribute to the comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who first performed together in 1946, and went their separate ways ten years later.

THE EPISODE

ANNOUNCER: “It is morning, and Katie the maid has just put breakfast on the table and Liz and George are sitting down to it.”

George is reluctant to read the paper at the table after Liz’s previous chastisement about ignoring her at breakfast. This time, she encourages him to pick up the newspaper and when he does, she has torn a hole through the center so she can see him and he can read the news!

Lucy Ricardo also had the same complaint about Ricky on “I Love Lucy”!

LIZ: “I’m looking at you through an automobile ad. The new Nash has blue eyes for headlights. And your ears look like both doors are wide open.”

Nash Motors Company was an American automobile manufacturer based in Kenosha, Wisconsin, from 1916 to 1957. In 1938 Nash debuted the heating and ventilation system which is still used today. The aerodynamic 1949 Nash Airflyte was the first car of an advanced design introduced by the company after the war. Nash went out of business in February 1954.

Katie says she had the same problem with her first husband, Clarence. As a last resort, she set his newspaper on fire!

In “Be A Pal” (ILL S1;E2), Lucy also tries setting fire to the newspaper to get her husband’s attention! Considering all the trouble Desi had to assure the studio audience’s safety for the Los Angels Fire Department, it is amazing this stunt was allowed!

Through his ‘holy’ newspaper, George reads about his old college girlfriend, Myra Ponsenby. Liz is unenthusiastic.

LIZ: “What’s new in Lower Slobbovia?”

In “First Stop” (ILL S4;E14) Fred Mertz calls One Oak Cabins “Lower Slobbovia,” which is a term first used in 1946 by Al Capp in his comic strip "Li'l Abner” to describe a place that was unenlightened and socially backward.

Liz is clearly jealous and wishes Myra would “drop dead” claiming there isn’t room enough for the both of them in town. George says the article claims she is driving into town in her new imported car called a Zebra [a fictional car].

LIZ: “I’m glad she’s got a car. It was dangerous riding around on that broomstick.”

Myra is married to Mr. Minky the peanut king, who Liz insists she married for his money. Tired of hearing about Myra, Liz begs George for another driving lesson. The last time he gave her a lesson she drove their Hudson into someone’s kitchen!

The Hudson Motor Car Company made automobiles in Detroit, Michigan from 1909 to 1954. In 1954, Hudson merged with Nash-Kelvinator to form American Motors Corporation (AMC). The Hudson name was discontinued in 1957.

George gives in and promises to give her a lesson on the back roads after work. When he gets home, she tells him she practiced before he got there, but forgot to open the garage door! Liz finally finds the starter (after trying the cigarette lighter and the radio). Then she has trouble finding the clutch. George is foaming at the mouth in anxiety.

Liz finally gets the car on the road - but the wrong side! They nearly have a collision! George gets frustrated and Liz dissolves into tears.

Much of the driving lesson dialogue and situations were recycled in the episode “Safe Driving Week” in October 1950. In it, George is elected town Safety Chairman just when Liz creates havoc on the roads.

Later, Cory Cartwright volunteers to help Liz pass her driving test. He wishes her luck, as she goes into the police station to get her driver’s license.

NELSON: “Name?” LIZ: “Elizabeth Cugat.” NELSON: “Address?” LIZ: “321 Bundy.” NELSON: “Race?” LIZ: “Of course not! I don’t even have a driver’s license!”

After much rhetorical to-ing and fro-ing, he takes her fingerprints and gives her the eye test:

NELSON: “Read the letters on the wall over there.” LIZ: “M-E-N.”

The eye test and fingerprinting that Liz undergoes are repeated when Lucy Carter helps her son Craig get a license in a 1969 episode of “Here’s Lucy.”

Somehow Liz passes the driving test and gets her license. Naturally she gets in an accident on the way home with Cory. The car is a wreck, but they are okay. The other driver is a woman (Bea Benadaret) who says she will call her lawyer and the police.

Liz doesn’t know what she will say to George about the damage to the car. Cory agrees to help her get it fixed before George finds out.

When “Lucy Learns To Drive” (ILL S4;E12) in 1955, she also has an accident after her first lesson. Like Liz, she has to come up with a story so that her favorite husband doesn’t get angry!

When Liz finally gets home, George tells her that Myra Ponsenby has been reported missing. Liz couldn’t care less, but George wants to know why she’s so late home and is acting so peculiar. The phone rings and George eavesdrops on her conversation about the car. Not knowing to whom or what she’s talking about, George believes that his wife has done away with Myra!

LIZ (on the phone): “You know how George feels about that old wreck. That wasn’t the first time she’d been hit. Did you see all those dents in her trunk? And her rear bumper was in pretty bad shape, too. Wasn’t it awful? I thought she’d never stop yelling. And all I did was hit her with the front wheels.”

An overheard telephone conversation on the very first filmed “I Love Lucy” episode in 1951 convinces Lucy that Ricky is going to murder her! Of course, Ricky is merely talking about ‘getting rid’ of his girl singer, Joanne.

George, thinking Liz is a murderer, emerges from hiding to confront her. Clueless, Liz doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, but George is sure she will ‘get the chair’! Just then the doorbell rings and it is Sergeant Lewis (Herb Vigran), of the homicide squad. A worried Liz hides in the kitchen while George answers the door. After a moment of doubt, Liz decides to give herself up. She tells the Sergeant to arrest her!

Down at the police station, Liz is confronted by the policeman who issued her driver’s license, who has now transferred to homicide. The questions he asks mirror those of the driving test earlier in the day. Liz decides to tell him the whole story, thinking she’s confessing to a traffic accident and not a murder!

NELSON: “What did you do with the body?”

LIZ: “I had them jack it up and haul it away on a truck.”

Frank Nelson also played a policeman named Nelson in “Ricky and Fred Are TV Fans” (ILL S2;E30) in 1953. In it, Lucy and Ethel are mistaken for Sticky Fingers Sal and Pickpocket Pearl. The dialogue is different, but also features rapid fire questions and answers between Ball and Nelson.

The telephone rings and it is announced that Myra Ponsenby has been found alive! She was in jail after speeding through a small town and arrested.

In “Tennessee Bound” (ILL S4;E15) new driver Lucy Ricardo also sped through a small town (Bent Fork) and was arrested!

After a moment, Liz suddenly realizes that that they assumed she murdered Myra! Liz laughs, knowing that she will now get the car fixed without any fuss!

In the usual bedtime tag, Liz is up late reading a murder mystery. George spoils the ending so he can get some sleep: the butler did it. George says the butler killed his wife because she talked too much when he was trying to go to sleep!

LIZ: “Ohhhh! Goodnight, George.”

#My Favorite Husband #Lucille Ball #Richard Denning #Bea Benadaret #Frank Nelson #Herb Vigran #radio #1948 #CBS #Bob Lemond #I Love Lucy #Here's Lucy #Driving Test #Hudson Cars #Li'l Abner #Nash Automobiles #John Hiestand

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gatesofember · 6 years ago

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The Whitethorn Hearth: Chapter 3

PJO Arranged Marriage/Royalty AU Part 9

Rating: M | Pairing: Solangelo

Prev | Next | AU directory | Read it on AO3 (Recommended) | Arranged Marriage AU Masterpage

Summary: The long-awaited celebration of Prince Nico’s wedding to William of Solace has finally arrived. Between all the wedding duties, keeping Octavian as far from the royal family as possible, and dealing with the occasional fiasco, the grooms still manage to find plenty of time to themselves. But as they enter the new chapter of their life, they will encounter new challenges. Will must say goodbye to his family and move to a new home. Nico remains unpopular among his own people and sometimes still struggles to express himself to his husband-to-be. And what will happen between Nico’s guard and the pretty maid who works for Will’s family?

Nico’s day had started off miserable and it didn’t seem like his wedding night was going to be much different. He was only half-dressed, his room was full of people waiting for the bedding ceremony, and Will was nowhere in sight. Nico never been so uncomfortable in his life.

He didn’t even feel entirely at home in his new room yet. Nico had only moved quarters a few weeks prior, relocating from the rooms that were intended for royal children to the apartments designated for the heir to the throne and their consort. The bedrooms were mostly identical—each had painted ceilings, marble floors, and a small private balcony—but heir’s was gold while the consort’s was silver. Nico had elected to take the silver room instead, deciding that gold suited Will better.

“I know they’re not as large as your rooms in Diana, but I think you’ll like them anyway,” Nico had said while giving Will a tour of their apartments a few weeks before. “You’ll have a view of the palace grounds, a personal study with a private library—”

“—and my new husband will be just a few doors away,” Will had said. “I couldn’t be happier.” Then he’d kissed Nico, and Nico’s thoughts had wandered to imagine some of the benefits that sharing quarters with his new husband might entail. He could be alone with Will, hold Will, kiss Will in private, strip Will’s clothes off and lick every inch of his skin—

Nico forced himself to stop fantasizing and attempted to cleanse his mind. Jules-Albert had already changed him into his nightshirt and dressing gown and the last thing Nico needed was for everyone to notice his body becoming aroused through his thin clothes. The bedding ceremony was mortifying enough as it was.

Fortunately, Nico was far too nervous and uncomfortable for any such embarrassing autonomic reactions to take place. Nico didn’t like having guests in his bedroom to begin with, especially not while he was in such an unclothed state, yet the entire Plutonian court was there to witness Nico’s discomfort. The bedding ceremony was an ancient tradition to ensure that the marriage would be consummated, but Nico thought it seemed more like an invasion of privacy than a political necessity.

Nico glanced at the others again. Hades was quietly talking to his advisers. Reyna had been watching him, but politely turned away when Nico looked at her. Only Persephone held his eye. She tilted her head toward the crystal cabinet and winked.

Nico flushed. He hadn’t forgotten about Persephone’s gift. He didn’t know whether he would use it that evening, but a glass of wine sounded like a welcome antidote for his agitation.

Will finally arrived a moment later, escorted by his father and stepmother, his older siblings, and his aunt. Will smiled at Nico, but quickly averted his eyes. He wore a white silk dressing gown covered in colorful floral embroidery. Nico’s attention drifted to the sash around Will’s waist, imagining himself untying it after everyone left. He would rip off Will’s dressing gown, toss it aside, and then he’d—

Nico’s cheeks burned and he turned his gaze downwards, once again grateful that he still felt far too uncomfortable for his physical arousal to become embarrassingly apparent.

Artemis stood at the foot of the bed to perform the blessings. Much of what she said was only a repeat of the vows from earlier that day—prayers to Gaea for gifts, to Aeon for a long-lasting bond, to the Morai for good fortune, and to Rhea for faithfulness—but there were also prayers to the Erotes, asking them to bless Nico and Will’s physical union. Nico stared at his slippers to avoid eye contact with everyone as the prayers became increasingly embarrassing. When Nico did muster the courage to glance at Will, Will’s face was bright red while his oldest brother whispered something in his ear. Will’s eyes drifted to Nico, then he quickly looked away again.

Artemis asked them to come forward and directed their parents to pull back the bed covers. Nico and Will climbed in to lie side-by-side—Nico on the right, Will on the left—and the blankets were pulled back over them. Artemis stopped to squeeze Will’s shoulder before the heavy silver curtains around the bed were drawn. Nico heard the footsteps of everyone leaving the room. Someone extinguished the lamp, the door shut, and Nico and Will were left in complete darkness.

When the footsteps faded way, the room became quiet and the air felt stiff. Nico could faintly hear the distant roar of the crowd outside, but it was otherwise so silent that when he swallowed, the noise seemed to echo through the room. Could Will hear the way his heart was pounding? Was Nico breathing too heavily?

Will said nothing. Neither of them dared to move. Nico didn’t know how long they lay in silence before he finally gathered the courage to speak.

“That was uncomfortable, wasn’t it?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Will croaked.

They fell silent again.

“Do you—” Will started.

“Are you—” Nico began.

They both halted.

“My apologies,” Will said. “You were saying?”

“No, you speak first,” Nico replied.

“It was nothing. I was just thinking that it’s awfully dark.”

“Oh,” said Nico. “Then I’ll turn the lamp back on.”

Will started to speak, but stopped when Nico pulled back the curtain and left the bed to walk blindly to the oil lamp on the crystal cabinet. He felt around for the lighter, clicked it, and transferred the flame to the oil lamp. When the light flooded the room, Nico glanced into the crystal cabinet and found the bottle of wine Persephone had promised hiding in the back. He would have to thank Persephone later. The wedding night was proving to be far more uncomfortable than Nico had predicted and alcohol had never seemed more appealing.

Nico was still trying to decide how to ask Will if he wanted a drink when the fireworks started. The crowd outside roared even more loudly. He supposed that more guests must have started to gather outside to watch.

Nico heard the bed creak, followed by the soft pad of Will’s slippers on the floor. Will stopped behind Nico and touched his shoulder gently and carefully, like he was afraid of scaring Nico away. “Would you like to see the fireworks?” he asked.

“Of course,” Nico said, turning back around to face him. “You can watch them from the balcony, if you’d like. I’ll join you in a moment.”

Will looked confused, but didn’t question him. He crossed the room and glanced back at Nico once before walking outside.

Nico quickly opened the door to the crystal cabinet and retrieved the wine and glasses. How would he offer it to Will? Would Will think that Nico was trying to get him intoxicated? Nico admittedly thought it would be nice to drown out his nerves, but he had no intentions of drinking more than a glass or two. He had promised Persephone that he would remain sober.

Nico decided to pour them each half a glass to start, and then followed Will outside.

Will was leaning against the balustrade, staring up at the sky. The red glow of a firework lit the side of his face and gleamed against his silk dressing gown. Will looked over his shoulder as Nico walked out and his eyes settled on the glasses in Nico’s hands.

“I was given this wine as a gift,” Nico stammered. “I thought we might drink it together, if you’d like. But we don’t have to if you’d rather not.”

Will looked back up to meet Nico’s eyes, smiled, and said, “I’d like some.”

Nico’s hands shook when he handed Will the glass. He was grateful that Will didn’t comment. He just smiled and took a sip as Nico stepped next to him to watch the fireworks.

The balcony was behind a corner on a side of the palace that made it difficult for the crowds to see them, but it still offered a beautiful view of the palace grounds and the fireworks lighting up the night sky. The crowd was loud and the fireworks were louder, but Nico could still feel the weight of the silence between him and Will. He hoped the wine would do something to settle the anxiety twisting in his stomach.

“It has a nice, earthy flavor,” Will suddenly commented. “Who gave it to you?”

“My mother,” Nico said. “It’s my favorite.”

They were quiet. Nico took a long drink from his glass.

“Is Asterion with Reyna?” Will asked.

“Yes,” Nico answered.

Again, they were quiet. Nico glanced at the side of Will’s face to watch the red light of the fireworks dance over his cheeks. He tried to take another sip of wine, but realized he’d already downed the entire glass.

“It’s a bit cold,” Will said.

“I suppose so,” Nico replied.

It wasn’t cold. Nico didn’t think so, anyway. Perhaps it had been a subtle ploy to lure Nico into sharing his body heat.

Nico stepped a bit closer to test his theory, but noticed Will’s teeth chattering. Not a ploy, then. Will really was that overly sensitive to cool weather.

Before Nico could feel too disappointed, Will’s knuckles brushed against his. Nico’s little finger hooked around Will’s, and then Will held his hand.

“It is a bit cold,” Nico said, even though it wasn’t. “Perhaps we should go back inside where it’s warmer.”

Nico squeezed Will’s hand and brought him back into his bedroom, but he didn’t know what to say or how to move forward. Why was it that his attraction to Will was overwhelming at the most inconvenient times, but he didn’t know what to do when he finally was allowed to act on it? He blamed the bedding ceremony. If it hadn’t been for that ridiculous ritual making him feel so uncomfortable, Nico surely would have gotten Will out of his clothes by then. The entire point of the bedding ceremony was to ensure the marriage would be consummated, but in Nico’s opinion, it had only made consummation unnecessarily difficult.

“Would you like more wine?” Nico asked.

Will took Nico’s glass instead. “I’ll serve. Why don’t you have a seat?” He nodded toward the bed.

Nico was glad that Will turned away, because his face was already burning at the mere thought of getting back in bed with Will. Did Will intend to start the process already, or was Nico reading too far into things? Where should he even sit? If he climbed into the bed and sat on the far side, would he seem too presumptuous? Should should he sit on the edge instead?

He was still debating when Will appeared behind him again. “What’s wrong?” Will asked.

“Nothing,” Nico answered, quickly perching on the edge of the bed.

Will looked unconvinced, but handed Nico his glass and sat down beside him. “I was thinking that we could just talk for awhile,” Will said.

Nico was a bit disappointed, but mostly relieved. He wasn’t certain if he was ready to proceed yet. “What did you want to talk about?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Anything you’d like.”

Will paused. Nico didn’t know what to say.

Eventually, Will cleared his throat and said, “Well, I, for one, am glad that today is over. I was miserable until I finally met with you this afternoon. My bathing ceremony was a disaster.”

Thank the gods that Will had thought of something before the silence became awkward again. “Mine was terrible, too,” Nico said. “What happened at yours?”

“Family discourse,” Will said. “Lee and Michael nearly started a fight, but they managed to overcome their differences in favor of teasing me. The whole family has been on edge lately...probably because they’ve been forced to be around Octavian so much.”

“Is Octavian really that bad?”

“Gods, he’s impossible.” Will sighed before taking a deep drink from his wine glass. “He actually stormed out of my bathing ceremony after a small family argument. I confess that I’m glad he did. The whole thing would have been worse if he’d stayed.”

Nico laughed. Will usually avoided talking about his cousin, but the few stories he’d told had given Nico enough information to know that Octavian was not a likable person. “When will I have the pleasure of meeting your cousin?” he asked.

Will’s lip curled. “Never, hopefully.”

“I think it’s strange that your family has been in the palace for a month and I have rarely even seen him.”

“‘Strange?’” Will repeated. “‘Fortunate’ would be a better word. My family has been monitoring Octavian to ensure that he has minimal contact with your family. I even had Lady Reyna order your guards to consider Octavian a threat to your security.”

Nico snorted. “I’m sure,” he said.

“But Octavian isn’t the only reason my family has been so emotional lately,” Will said. “My father has been especially distressed. He misses Hyacinthus, he’s losing a child to marriage, and to make matters worse, Kayla told me earlier today that she is considering joining the Sorority.”

“Why would that make things worse? Shouldn’t he be proud?”

“Under normal circumstances, yes, but I predict that he won’t handle that information well. He’s already bitter that my aunt Artemis steals me away for half the year and he won’t be pleased if he discovers that she has corrupted another one of his children.”

“Corrupted? The Matestra?”

“My father has a peculiar way of viewing the world,” Will said. “But that is another conversation entirely. Tell me, why was your bathing ceremony so unpleasant?”

Nico sighed and prepared himself with another gulp of wine. “My father was...well. Himself. Prince Jason was annoying, as usual, and Prince Percy does not know how to keep his clothes on. He obviously doesn’t understand Plutonian bathing ceremonies.”

Will looked amused, but asked, “Are Neptunian and Plutonian bathing ceremonies so different?”

“Haven’t I told you about Prince Percy’s bathing ceremony?” Nico asked.

Will shook his head.

“Well, it was terrible,” Nico said. “Mostly I was referring to the...um...social nature of Neptunian baths. At Prince Percy’s bathing ceremony, both he and Prince Jason were naked in the pool. The whole thing was quite confusing and distressing. It got worse when I watched you race just after I escaped. I was even more confused and distressed to see my fiancé without a waistcoat, especially when I couldn’t stop thinking about naked men.”

Will laughed and Nico felt the blood rush to his face in embarrassment when he realized what he’d just admitted. Oh, yes—that was why he’d never told Will what had happened at Percy’s bathing ceremony. “I think I’ve had enough wine for one evening,” Nico announced, but he’d hardly even half finished the glass. He always talked too much when he was nervous, which was part of the reason it had taken him so long to get engaged. “I didn’t mean to say something so offensive.”

“I’m not offended,” Will said as Nico reached over him to set down his glass on the bedside table. “Tell me, Your Highness, if seeing me without a waistcoat bothered you so much, how do you feel about seeing me in my dressing gown?”

“Will.”

Will laughed softly and set his glass aside, too. “I shouldn’t tease,” he said. “I know it’s difficult for you to talk about such things.”

“I’ve been trying to do better,” Nico said. Hestia and Persephone had advised Nico to be more open with Will about his feelings. They told him that it would ultimately be better for their relationship if he felt more comfortable being honest with Will.

Will smiled as he stroked his fingers through Nico’s hair. “So have I. I am learning to understand how you express your feelings—your physical gestures, the way you look at me, and the subtleties in the words you chose—but I also know that you have been working hard for me. I can see a massive change in your language when I reread your letters.”

“I’m glad. Sometimes I worry that....” Nico stopped abruptly as Will’s words sunk in. “Wait a moment. You reread my letters?”

Will’s eyes drifted away. “It’s silly, isn’t it?”

“No. No, it’s not. I do, too. I keep your letters and I reread them when I miss you. Actually, I have them all right here.”

Nico slipped off the bed and rummaged underneath until he found the box he kept hidden there. He pulled it out, stood back up, opened the latch and presented it to Will.

Will hesitated before he accepted the box. He ran his fingers over the paper silently as Nico took a seat beside him. “You kept all of them?” he asked.

“Yes,” Nico replied. “Every single one. I liked reading them.”

Will rifled through the letters. At the sight of one, he suddenly stopped and pulled it out. “I wrote this?”

Nico leaned on Will’s shoulder to read the opening words: My dearest prince. “Don’t you remember?” Nico asked.

“I don’t recall being so bold. I was so afraid of offending you.”

“That changed after I visited the Expo. Before that, you were always formal and polite, but afterwards, your letters began to read more like love letters.”

“And did you like that?” Will asked.

“Gods above, yes. Suddenly, the person I was falling in love with had started to woo me. I sometimes imagined your voice saying these things to me out loud.”

“But can you imagine how Hedge would react if he overheard me call you ‘my dearest prince’?” Will laughed. “He’d be furious.”

“I don’t particularly care what Hedge would think. I would like it.” He scooted closer and added, “Although I’d prefer to hear you call me your ‘dear husband.’”

“My dear husband,” Will repeated, brushing his hand through Nico’s hair. “I like the way that sounds.”

Nico leaned into Will’s hand and hummed in agreement. “So do I,” he said. “And I have been thinking—now that we’re husbands, there’s no need for you to address me as ‘Your Highness’ anymore. Not in private.”

The easy smile on Will’s face flickered. “That’s...you’re asking me to...?”

Nico took Will’s hand and kissed his knuckles. “I’d like you to use my given name. In this room and when we are alone, I’d like you to call me ‘Nico.’”

Will looked shocked. He remained silent for a moment, but then he wet his lips and said, “Nico.”

Nico smiled. “I think I like that best.”

“Then that’s what I’ll call you,” Will said. “My dear Nico. I think I like that best, too.”

Nico kissed Will’s knuckles again, then spread Will’s fingers open and kissed his palm, then the inside of his wrist. Will leaned forward to steal Nico’s lips. They kissed a few times before Will broke away and whispered, “I can’t believe you kept all my letters.”

“Your letters are treasures to me,” Nico said. “Have I ever told you that it was through your letters that I began to fall in love with you? Before I knew what was happening, I was already completely infatuated.”

“I think it was the same for me,” Will said. “I admired you as a child, but my feelings were...juvenile. It’s different now. There were moments when I read your letters that I had to stop and think, ‘This is real. The Prince of Pluto wrote this to me personally.’ You sent me your thoughts and feelings and I grew to know you as a person, rather than as an idol. Now I love you more deeply...and perhaps a bit more selfishly, too.”

“Selfishly?” Nico asked, intrigued by the implications of what that might mean. “How’s that?”

“I want to be with you constantly,” Will said. His fingers stroked Nico’s hair. “I want to be closer—to know more about you, to be part of your life, to use your given name. I want to touch you like this. I want to kiss you. I want to lie beside you and hold you while we sleep. So as you might imagine, I am very, very happy right now.” He shifted closer. “And Nico?”

Nico had severely underestimated how much he would like hearing Will use his given name. He couldn’t manage more than a garbled noise that sounded like, “Hn?”

“I would like to kiss you now. Would you like that, too?”

“Please.”

Will leaned forward, pressed his forehead against Nico’s, and Nico held his breath until Will closed the gap between them. The kiss was soft, yet deep and passionate in a way that made Nico feel like his bones were liquid. They parted, then Will kissed him again, then Nico kissed Will, and soon it became clear that it wouldn’t end with just kisses.

It was happening. How many times had Nico played out this scenario in his mind? How many times had he imagined his wedding night or woken up covered in sweat after a heated dream? He had eagerly awaited his wedding night for so long, but suddenly it all seemed to be happening too quickly.

Nico understood consummation only in theory. He had received instruction on how it worked mechanically, but he still felt utterly unprepared. How did one go about initiating it? How would Nico be able to deal with the embarrassment? Would he even be able to meet Will’s eyes? What would they say to each other? Were they supposed to talk during, or should they remain silent?

Nico thought he saw a spark of nervousness in Will’s eyes. He might have imagined it, but perhaps Will was having the same thoughts as Nico. He took a deep breath, placed his hands on Will’s shoulders, and straddled his lap.

“Is this alright?” Nico asked.

Will nodded. “Yes.”

Nico cleared his throat. “I think that we should continue kissing now.”

“Kissing seems like a good point to start from.”

“And then, when we’re ready....”

“Yes. When we’re ready.”

They kissed again, but it felt too distant. Nico slipped his arms behind Will’s neck and Will wrapped his arms around Nico’s waist. When Nico held Will more tightly and deepened the kiss, Will responded in kind, but something was still missing. Nico craved something else—something less static.

“May I....” Nico’s hand hovered over Will’s arm. He mimed touching Will.

Will nodded. “And may I?”

“Yes,” Nico answered.

Their lips met again. Nico ran his hand down Will’s sleeve, he combed through Will’s hair, and his fingers curiously wandered to touch Will’s side. Will’s hands slid up Nico’s arms and his back, dragging thin fabric over Nico’s skin. The sound of their kisses was only interrupted by the occasional whispered question. “Do you like this?” they would ask. “May I touch here?”

This was what Nico had been craving—active, dynamic touch. Will’s hands were on his sides, his back, his waist. They were touching him, stroking him, driving him mad. Will’s hand had scarcely touched his waist, but it still sent shivers through Nico’s body. How could every single touch make him react so strongly? Finally, Nico reached for the sash on Will’s dressing gown and struggled to untie it with shaking, fumbling hands. He was mesmerized by the way Will rolled his shoulders to shrug it off when Nico finally managed to get it open.

“Mine, too,” Nico said. He grabbed Will’s wrist and pulled his hand to the knot on the front of his own clothes.

Will untied the sash and Nico’s dressing gown fell to the floor. He kissed the corner of Nico’s mouth, then his jaw, and then his lips trailed towards Nico’s neck. Nico gasped when Will’s lips grazed beneath his ear. Without thinking, he pushed Will away, slamming his shoulders into the bed beneath them. “Sorry,” Nico said, quickly releasing him.

Will didn’t move. He stared up at Nico, laying on top of the blue silk that lined the inside of his dressing gown. His eyes were large and black, his lips dark and wet. Nico could see freckles dotting the skin exposed by the wide collar of his nightshirt. How many times had Nico wondered whether the freckles on Will’s face and arms extended to his chest?

Will reached up and wrapped his arms around Nico’s neck. “I don’t mind,” he whispered, pulling Nico closer.

Nico had always expected that Will would be meek on their wedding night, but he’d been wrong. Will wasn’t merely allowing it. He was reciprocating, even initiating, and it drove Nico mad to think that Will wanted this, wanted him....

And then Will was on top of him, bending over him, kissing him, and Nico felt dwarfed and powerless. He’d imagined Will in that position more than he cared to admit, but he’d never expected that fantasy to become reality. And yet there was Will—gentle, soft, kind Will—poised dominantly over Nico, yet still somehow docile and yielding when Nico pushed up into his kiss. Will opened up to him and accepted him, and it made him seem just as vulnerable as Nico felt.

Nico rubbed his palms up and down Will’s thighs like he’d yearned to for months. He couldn’t stop himself from exploring, grasping Will’s legs and testing how they felt in his hands. Will didn’t ask him to stop or give any indication of discomfort, not even when Nico’s exploration led his hands higher on Will’s body, under his nightshirt—

Will bowed his head and let Nico pull his nightshirt off his body. Nico tossed it aside, letting it land somewhere on the floor beside the bed. When Will started to pull up Nico’s, Nico quickly scrambled to sit up and help Will remove it.

Nico had barely gotten the chance to admire Will when Will kissed him again and whispered, “How do you want to do this?”

Nico’s face burned. He’d received instruction on what to do in both roles, and both appealed to him. He wanted everything. He wanted all of Will’s body, he wanted to be inside Will, he wanted Will to be inside him, and he didn’t know what he wanted most or which to do first. He wanted to do odd, shameless things like rub himself against Will’s thigh until he climaxed. He wanted to have his hands full of Will’s hair or Will’s skin. He had spend night after night imagining all sorts of things he wanted to do with Will in bed, but he was too embarrassed to say any of that out loud.

“I don’t know,” he finally answered.

“Then...would you like me to show you how I like it?”

Nico’s body flared with heat. “Gods, yes,” he said. The idea of Will showing him what he liked was unbelievably erotic, beyond even his most obscene fantasies. Suddenly, Nico was buzzing, throbbing, burning, just because of Will’s words.

Will had never seemed more captivating to Nico. He’d been attracted to Will for a long time, but Will’s sensuality had always been passive; Nico had projected an aura of allure on Will, perceiving a seductive magnetism even when Will’s intentions were clearly pure. That night, however, Will radiated passion. He took Nico’s hand and showed Nico how to touch him, and just when Nico assumed that Will meant to play the penetrating role, Will touched Nico the same way.

Something within Nico, some carefully restrained emotion, suddenly broke free and flooded his body, rushed down his limbs until it filled even his fingers and toes. Nico found himself babbling uncontrollably, blurting out that Will was perfect and gorgeous. Embarrassing declarations of love slipped through his lips—words that he’d been too nervous or too proud to use before. Was it the wine still loosening his tongue? No, it couldn’t be. Nico had never been so bold when he’d had wine before. Nico had never felt quite so weightless, so delirious, so vulnerable, and he certainly had never welcomed those feelings the way he did right then.

But Will—Will. It was like he was hanging on Nico’s every word. He looked at Nico with such adoration and awe. He answered every one of Nico’s praises and declarations of love with his own.

Nico didn’t understand what was happening. He was confused. This was not going according to the instructions he had received, they were not touching each other the way he had been told to, and it was so much more passionate, so much deeper and more intense than he had ever been led to expect. He had been told that it might feel pleasing, but ‘pleasure’ couldn’t describe the flooding of Nico’s senses. He felt like the heavens had opened up to him. It was like he was completely connected to Will—he was in Will and Will was in him, their souls wrapped together in such a tight embrace that Nico doubted they’d return to their bodies without taking a piece of the other with them.

Nico didn’t understand what was happening. But Nico didn’t care. Nico wanted it to never stop; he wanted to be that close to Will forever, to remain in that bed with his skin touching Will’s and their hearts melded together, floundering in the tide of love that threatened to consume them.

What was Will feeling? Was this as intense and pleasing for him as it was for Nico? Did Nico’s hand even come close to driving him as wild as Will’s drove Nico? Did Nico look even half as beautiful to Will’s eyes as Will did to his?

It was that image that sent him over the edge. He hadn’t expected it to happen so suddenly or so quickly, and he felt instantly mortified. They hadn’t consummated the marriage, they hadn’t reached for the lubricant, and they hadn’t even decided who would be in which role, but Nico had already been overwhelmed. “Oh gods,” Nico whispered. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Why are you apologizing?” Will asked. “I wanted you to.”

And then Will kissed Nico and asked for permission to continue. Nico granted it, then Will touched him, Nico touched him back, and it was somehow still amazingly good until Will finished, too. Nico fell back in the bed beside Will when it was over, holding his hand and catching his breath.

Nico turned to look at Will. Will turned, too. Something bubbled up inside Nico’s chest until suddenly he was laughing, and so was Will. Nico still wasn’t certain what had just happened, but he knew that he’d liked it. He could worry about consummating the marriage later. For a few moments, he was content to do nothing but kiss and laugh and exchange a few affectionate nonsense words with his new husband.

Just when Nico was starting to feel sleepy, Will kissed his forehead and said, “Shall we clean ourselves off?”

Nico grabbed Will’s arm to keep him from getting up. “Already?”

“I suppose it can wait, but I’d prefer not to make more of a mess than we already have.”

Nico frowned. “Aren’t we going to do that anyway?”

Will laughed. “Are you not finished yet?”

Nico paused and tried to figure out what Will meant. “Will,” he said slowly. “We still have to consummate the marriage.”

Will’s brow wrinkled. “We just...” he started, then his face broke into a grin. “Did you want to do it again?”

“I...yes?” Nico answered. Did Will think that what they’d done before was enough to consummate the marriage? Did Will not understand how consummation worked? Regardless, doing it again sounded nice.

“You’re certainly eager,” said Will, crawling over to kiss Nico.

Nico was still confused, but when his lips parted against Will’s in a deep, heated kiss, the only thing that seemed important was that Will was naked in his bed. He was melting under Will’s soft mouth, consumed by the faint taste of sesame cakes, honey, and wine lingering on Will’s tongue. Nico’s body felt powerless, but he didn’t mind—he wanted to be overpowered by Will’s intoxicating touch and to lose himself in their passionate embrace.

Nico didn’t hear Asterion at first. He was displeased when Will suddenly pulled away and looked at the door, but once the blood stopped pounding in his ears, he heard the faint sound of claws against wood.

“Asterion,” Nico mumbled, groggily rolling out from underneath Will to get out of the bed. He found his dressing gown on the floor and threw it over himself on the way to the door. As soon as Nico turned the handle, Asterion happily pushed his way inside.

“He usually stays with me at night,” Nico explained as Asterion trotted past him to greet Will. “It’ll be a bit cramped, but if you don’t mind...?”

“Of course not,” Will said. Asterion nudged his hand to signal that he was ready for petting. “Our darling son is always welcome to stay.”

Nico nearly melted watching Will coo over Asterion, and decided to forget about consummation for the time being. They would have plenty of time to worry about it later. He doubted that they would be able to accomplish anything with Asterion in the room, anyway.

He and Will cleaned themselves off at the washbasin and changed back into their nightshirts before climbing into bed with Asterion. Will took the left side and Asterion managed to use half the bed on his own, so Nico found himself wedged between them in the center. Fortunately, it offered a pleasant excuse for him and Will to fumble their way around figuring out how to hold each other while they slept. They ended up facing each other, their legs tangled together while Will rested his head on Nico’s arm.

“I don’t have to leave tonight,” Will whispered.

“We can stay together until morning,” Nico said. “And we can stay together tomorrow night, and the night after that.”

Will hummed when Nico pecked his lips. “I’ve been waiting for this a long time. Being able to stay together alone, uninterrupted...just you, me, and Asterion.”

Nico tried to stifle his laughter in Will’s hair, but Will pulled back to kiss him. Then they kissed again, and again, until Nico started to lose himself in the memories of what it had been like to touch Will, to be touched by Will, and to hear Will say, ‘Would you like me to show you how I like it?’

What had Will meant by that? Nico had assumed that Will had been referring to which role he wanted to take in the consummation, but evidently he’d been wrong. Will had instead given Nico specific instructions on how to use his hands. How would Will have known what felt good unless...?

Nico broke away from the kiss. “May I ask something?”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“‘Nico.’ Call me Nico.”

Will’s lips slid into a small, blissful smile. “Nico,” he murmured happily. “It may take some time before I get used to that. What did you want to ask?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said before, about how you like it...did you mean with hands? By yourself?”

Will looked at Nico curiously. “Haven’t you?” he asked.

Nico blushed and shook his head. “No.”

“But you must have felt aroused at some point,” Will said. “I know you did. How did you take care of it?”

“Take care of it...?” Nico repeated. “I didn’t.” He paused, then admitted, “Well, sometimes I’d...against my bed.”

“Oh,” Will said. “I see. Well, it’s easier if you use your hands, I think.”

“Doesn’t it...uh....” Nico hesitated, realizing that his question would probably make him sound horribly ignorant. Will looked at him patiently until Nico cleared his throat and whispered, “Won’t it make you go blind?”

Will chuckled a bit, but Nico was relieved when he didn’t outright laugh at him or tease him. “Of course not. It doesn’t cause hair to grow on your hands, either.”

That had been Nico’s next question, but he didn’t admit it. “And clearly it doesn’t cause...uh...impotency?”

“Why would it cause impotency?”

Nico cleared his throat. “You might...run out,” he explained.

Will looked puzzled. “Run out of what?”

“Of...well. If you...um...expel fluids every time, eventually you won’t have any left.”

Will stared at Nico in silence. Nico grimaced. “I just said something very foolish, didn’t I?”

Will was quiet for another second before answering. “It doesn’t cause impotency,” he assured.

“Right,” Nico whispered, slowly trying to digest the information. “I was told that touching oneself was shameful.”

“Shameful?” Will repeated. “It is a healthy response to typical bodily functioning. Why is it shameful?”

“I...do not know.”

“Do you think it’s shameful?”

Nico wasn’t sure. He’d never questioned it before, but now he wondered. Why had he believed it was shameful to begin with? Logically speaking, it didn’t seem to make sense. If it didn’t blind him, cause hair to grow on his hands, or make him impotent, then what exactly was the harm? Besides, Will had done it.

“If it is shameful, I do not care,” Nico decided. Bitterly, he realized that he could have given into his excitement without feeling ashamed every time that he’d fantasized about Will. If he could have made himself feel even half as wonderful as he had that evening, it seemed foolish not to have indulged himself all along.

Nico’s eyes widened as another thought occurred to him. If Will had indulged in touching himself, then didn’t that mean that Will had fantasized, as well?

“Will?”

“Yes?”

“Did you think about me?”

“When?”

“When you...used your hands.”

“Oh.” Will paused thoughtfully. “It wasn’t like that. For me, it’s...physical. Somatic. That’s all. It’s a sign that my body is healthy, or a normal expression of health, or a normal result of health, or...I don’t know. I’m aware that most people think differently.”

“So you didn’t think about me that way?” Nico asked, struck by a sudden pang of insecurity and loneliness. He’d started to hope that he and Will had endured the same consuming want. If Will felt that way, then Nico’s feelings weren’t shameful at all. But if Will didn’t....

“Nico,” Will said softly. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

Nico couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips. “I know.”

“Touching myself is about feeling good physically. This—” Will gestured between them, “—is something else entirely. It just didn’t occur to me to connect my body and my love for you.”

Nico noted Will’s use of the past tense. “Do you still feel that way?”

“Yes...and no,” said Will. “When I realized that you wanted to be intimate with me, I started to want it, too, because I knew it would make you happy. But later, it began to appeal to me in other ways. I started to crave being close to you and touching you. I was looking forward to tonight. I think that the way I feel about it is still somehow different, but I don’t believe that’s a problem.”

“And did you like it?”

“Being intimate with you? Of course I did. I liked it very much and I would like to do it again.”

“So then, if I were to say that I did think about you that way....”

“I know you did.”

Nico’s face burned and he almost argued defensively, but when he saw the way Will was smiling at him kindly, it completely disarmed him. “That doesn’t bother you?” Nico asked.

“Not at all. It’s perfectly normal.”

“And not shameful?”

“Not shameful.”

“Good,” Nico said. “Because I thought about you a lot. You have no idea how desperately I’ve been waiting for tonight.”

“You weren’t alone,” Will assured. “I wanted to marry you so badly. In fact, the only thing I wasn’t looking forward to about our marriage was the prospect of facing Plutonian winters. You know how I hate the cold.”

“Then come to my bed and I’ll help you stay warm.”

Will laughed. “I was hoping you’d say that. But I think I might come to you in the spring and summer, too, if it means we can lie together like this.”

“Well, I was planning to do a little bit more than lie together.”

“Like what?” Will asked. Nico wasn’t sure if Will was teasing or if he really didn’t understand what Nico had in mind.

“Firstly, I’d get rid of your clothes,” Nico said.

Will laughed when Nico’s hands slipped under his nightshirt. Nico pushed him back against the bed and climbed on top of him. Will’s arms wrapped around Nico’s shoulders and pulled him close. “Haven’t you had enough yet?” Will asked teasingly.

“I’ll never have enough,” Nico answered. He tried to wrestle Will out of his nightshirt, but Will’s body suddenly went stiff.

“Wait, stop,” Will said. “I can’t do this with Asterion watching.”

Nico had nearly forgotten that they weren’t alone. He looked over his shoulder to find Asterion lying with his head between his paws, watching them curiously. His tail started to thud against the bed when he noticed both Will and Nico paying attention to him.

Nico was torn between laughing at Will for being ridiculous and agreeing with him, but either way, Asterion’s presence made bedding his new husband impossible. Ultimately, even Nico’s desire for Will wasn’t strong enough to give him the heart to kick Asterion out, so he just sighed and helped Will fix his nightshirt. “I promised him that he could still share my bed after I married you.”

“Just when I thought we’d be free of chaperones,” Will mumbled, but he didn’t look upset. He reached across the bed to pat Asterion’s head, and then Nico snuggled between them again. With Asterion’s heat at his back and Will’s against his front, Nico felt more at peace than he had been in a very long time.

#solangelo #Nico di Angelo #Will Solace #arranged marriage AU #solangelo arranged marriage au #pjo arranged marriage au #royalty au #pjo royalty au #solangelo royalty au #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #The Heroes of Olympus #Heroes of Olympus #the trials of apollo #trials of apollo #toa #hoo #pjo

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weirdbooksifoundatwork · 6 years ago

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New Year’s Update

On New Year's 2015-2016, I made a resolution which I have re-made every year since: to

1) Read as many books as possible throughout the year, with the ultimate goal of (1a) reading at least 52 books (1/week) in one year, and

2) Keep an accurate and up-to-date list of all the books I'd read, so that I'd never forget.

I'm happy to relate that, after three years of trying, I have successfully achieved Resolution 1a! This year I finished 79 books! In past years I’ve posted my results on Facebook, but for the first time ever I can share the results with ya’ll here.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson // John Green and David Levithan

German Men Sit Down To Pee // Niklas Frank & James Cave

The Music and Hymnody of The Methodist Hymnal // Carl F. Price

Finland and its People // Robert Medill

Faust // Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

John Quincy Adams // Harlow Giles Unger

The Oboe Concertos of Sir William Herschel // The American Philosophical Society, Edited by Wilbert Davis Jerome

Hark, A Vagrant // Kate Beaton

The Art of Castle in the Sky

R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robot’s // Karel Capek

Are You My Mother? // Alison Bechdel

Music Master of the Middle West: The Story of F. Melius Christiansen and the St. Olaf Choir // Leola Nelson Bergman

The National Anthems of the World // Martin Shaw and Henry Coleman

Inventing Champagne: The Worlds of Lerner and Loewe // Gene Lees

The Complete Plays of Sophocles // Translated by Robert Bagg and James Scully

The Lapps // Björn Collinder

The Unbearable Lightness of Being // Milan Kundera

The Warlords of Appalachia // Phillip Kennedy Johnson

Batman: The Killing Joke // Alan Moore

Ragtime // E.L. Doctorow

March: Book One // Rep.John Lewis (GA-5)

March Book Two // Rep. John Lewis (GA-5)

March Book Three // Rep. John Lewis (GA-5)

Songs of Innocence and of Experience // William Blake

The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge // David McCullough

The Politics of Black Women’s Hair // Althea Prince

From Memory to Memorial: Shanksville, America, and Flight 93 // J. William Thompson

Ask Me About Polyamory // Tikva Wolf

A.D.: After Death // Scott Snyder & Jeff Lemire

Silent Builder: Emily Warren Roebling and the Brooklyn Bridge // Marilyn E. Weingold

American Indians and Their Music // Frances Densmore

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town // Jon Krakauer

Russian Regional Flags: The Flags of the Subjects of the Russian Federation // Anne M. Platoff

Saga: Volume One // Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples

Saga: Volume Two // Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats // T.S. Eliot

Saga: Volume Three // Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples

Saga: Volume Four // Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples

Saga: Volume Five // Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples

Saga: Volume Six // Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples

Canadian City Flags: 100 Flags from Abbotsford to Yellowknife // NAVA

Saga: Volume Seven // Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples

Saga: Volume Eight // Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples

Candide // Leonard Bernstein, Hugh Wheeler, and Richard Wilbur

West Side Story // Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum // Burt Shevelove, Larry Gelbart, and Stephen Sondheim

A Fiddler on the Roof // Jule Styne, Jerry Bock, and Sheldon Harnick

The Big Book of Bisexual Trials and Errors // Elizabeth Beier

She Loves Me // Joe Masteroff, Jerry Bock, and Sheldon Harnick

Funny Girl // Jule Styne, Bob Merrill, and Isobel Lennart

South Pacific // Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Joshua Logan

The King and I // Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown // Clark Gesner & John Gordon

A Little Night Music // Stephen Sondheim & Hugh Wheeler

Of Thee I Sing // George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, and George & Ira Gershwin

Hello, Dolly! // Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart

Great Buildings and their Constructors // Albert Kahn & Associates

History of Copper Harbor, Michigan // Clarence J. Monette

History of Jacobsville and its Sandstone Quarries // Clarence J. Monette

Two Steps Forward // Graeme Simsion and Anna Buist

Step Aside, Pops: A Hark, a Vagrant Collection // Kate Beaton

The Contract with God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue // Will Eisner

The Great Gatsby // F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Old Man and the Sea // Ernest Hemingway

Grief is the Thing with Feathers // Max Porter

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing // Hank Green

The Verge // Susan Glaspell

The Adding Machine // Elmer Rice

Wuthering Heights // Emily Brontë

Mulatto // Langston Hughes

First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Roll // Jeanna E. Abrams

A Long Day’s Journey Into Night // Eugene O’Neill

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo // Stieg Larsson

A Wizard of Earthsea // Ursula K. LeGuin

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? // Edward Albee

Genannt Gospodin // Phillip Löhle

Fences // August Wilson

A Christmas Carol // Charles Dickens

The Tombs of Atuan // Ursula K. LeGuin

#personal #book #books #library #libraries #i'm not gonna tag all the authors and titles #i simply do not have the willpower

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theliterateape · 2 years ago

Text

Finding Purpose in a World on Fire

by Don Hall

For an awful lot of people, the two years of COVID caused them to question their existence, the framework within they worked and survived. Not so much for me. I remained gainfully employed throughout; I even made a job change in the midst.

No, I had no existential crisis until I was unceremoniously punched in the throat with the knowledge of what my wife was doing during that dark period. While I was working in a casino for the first half and researching data privacy and writing marketing collateral for the second half in order to do that most American thing—make the cash, pay the bills, keep the credit score from plummeting—she had created an entire life apart from our marriage.

So, we divorced in record (Vegas) time and now I get to have my existential crisis. Mind you, I genuinely hold nothing against her. That's how life unfolds sometimes and choices we don't think through come to bite us in the ass or wound those whom we love.

It does, sometimes, oftentimes, leave one of those involved at a place where starting over from scratch presents itself. At my age, starting over is daunting to say the least. I recognize that hundreds of thousands of people over the course of the past three years or so have had a similar What the fuck happened to my life and now what am I going to do? scenario. Small restaurateurs, bar owners, local retail shop keepers—the pandemic destroyed far more in its wake than merely those who contracted the virus.

“Then it was that the thought of death burst into my daily life. I would measure the years separating me from my end. I would look for examples of men of my age who were already dead. And I was tormented by the thought that I might not have time to accomplish my task. What task? I had no idea. Frankly, was what I was doing worth continuing?” ― Albert Camus, The Fall

Existence after leaving Chicago went from the feeling of creating some sort of legacy to the day-to-day grind of survival. Work the gig, make the money, pay the bills. Las Vegas doesn't seem to need anyone like me with my specific set of skills. That certainly isn't the fault of the city. Like so many things, I leapt before I looked and came to Sin City without having an accurate concept of the place.

At the time I wrote that Las Vegas Stinks... of Possibility:

That’s the thing about this move. It could be Alpine — deceptive promise with hopes dashed to the ground. It could be Treasure — all possibility and anticipation. We’ll certainly see in the new year which one it is but for right now, Las Vegas stinks… of opportunity, potential, possibilities undreamt of, and a genuine sense of something different for which to look forward.

These days, it's difficult to see it through that patina of potential. As soon as I left the casino gig, I recognized that I had zero interest in working for a casino or a hotel in Las Vegas. Hospitality designed exclusively to cater to our worst instincts combined with the manipulative goal of separating tourists from their life savings left a stink I couldn't abide. Outside of that industry, there just aren't enough interesting jobs left in the area. Strip away the Strip and this is a tiny place.

Aside from the lack of opportunities for myself, I find that the atmosphere, the encouraged debauchery, has taken something from me I can't get back. Vegas was for she and I, together. We aren’t together anymore. My ability to find any sense of joy in this city has vanished.

Step one of my existential crisis solved. Leave Las Vegas (but not in a Nick Cage, die by alcoholism way, because he did it better than I would).

Step two: now what?

I had entertained the idea of taking a year to couch-surf, checking out, and traveling the country. Then I was watching Pulp Fiction the other night:

Jules: Well, that's what I've been sitting here contemplating. First, I'm going to deliver this case to Marsellus, then, basically, I'm just going to walk the Earth.

Vincent: What'cha mean, "walk the Earth"?

Jules: You know, like Caine in Kung Fu: walk from place to place, meet people, get into adventures.

Vincent: And how long do you intend to walk the Earth?

Jules: Until God puts me where He wants me to be.

Vincent: And what if He don't do that?

Jules: If it takes forever, then I'll walk forever.

Vincent: So you decided to be a bum?

Jules: I'll just be Jules, Vincent; no more, no less.

Vincent: No, Jules. You've decided to be a bum. Just like those pieces of shit out there who beg for change, sleep in garbage bins and eat what I throw away. They got a name for that, Jules: it's called "a bum". And without a job, a residence or legal tender, that's exactly what you're going to be: a fucking bum.

I don't do well with aimlessness. In this case, Vincent Vega is 100% correct. The idea sounds romantic and all-Kerouac, shuffling around the country, town to town. The reality is some nights sleeping in a Prius, bad choices of food, fewer showers, and no place to receive mail.

And still... Now what?

Finding the where is a bit of a preoccupation. I suppose I need a place to focus on in order to get moving. After hours and hours of research, I've decided on Denver. All the things I miss about Chicago—bookstores, small arts venues, jazz, a robust arts community, nonprofit industry designed to improve the world—are there. I've lived on the East Coast, the South, the Midwest, and the Desert. Never lived in the Mountains, so that works for me.

I also need to keep in mind that my father is in ill health and my mother needs some help. They've offered to put me up in Kansas for a time so I can be of assistance. My ego alerts me that this is moving home with my parents (which at twenty-five seems somewhat reasonable but at fifty-six feels like giving up) but my ego is a problem. I need some time to rebuild my existence; they need some help. Win-win.

On the ApeCast a few weeks ago, Joe and I talked. Himmel was out of the country and Joe stepped up for co-hosting duties. We talked about fun stuff and then we dove into a touchier topic. I called it Old White Guy Problems. We talked around the idea of being a man of a certain age and feeling like starting over. After decades of experiences and achievements finding yourself with nothing material to show for it.

Joe confessed that at sixty-one, he didn't anticipate working three part-time jobs to simply pay rent on a Bronzeville apartment by himself. As we talked, I recognized that while my specific reasons for my life blowing up in my face were unique, this state of being—older, with a serious amount of life experience and an impressive resume, completely adrift, and still struggling with basic survival—is not unusual.

"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

That's the reframe. Perspective is everything.

The specifics of where I live and what I do to pay the bills is ultimately less crucial than why I do what I do. What purpose do I serve? Am I merely a creature of consumption and survival or is there something more than drives me? These are questions I'd guess an awful lot of people are asking right now. COVID shocked the world into a dark gaze into the void of routine and comfort, of complacency in the face of chaos just at bey.

The bizarrely beautiful aspect of these moments of self doubt and wonder at the point of it all is that those things that consumed me during that time of daily grind, living check-to-check, accomplishing more in terms of paying those unceasing bills than embracing the awful complexity of life mean almost nothing.

The cultural debates over CRT, trans rights, the environment, Trump, Amber Heard, Netflix, Elon Musk, abortion, guns, and crime suddenly seem mostly silly. Writing think-pieces about these cursory issues immediately feels like a waste of time.

Finding purpose when the world is on fire is the challenge. Some find a cause. Some find a god. Some lose their minds. A few—really, a tiny few—do all three and become hateful partisans spending their days looking to shame one another for not embracing their cause, their god, their insanity.

My purpose seems to be creation. I used to create theater, then events, then stories. Now, I want to create books. But for whom to read them? And does that actually matter? Who are the books for?

In Stephen King's twenty rules for writing, the number one rule is:

First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience. “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story."

Joe tells me on the ApeCast that during one of his three part-time jobs, the one that often requires him to stand on a boat for hours with nothing to do but be present, he engages in a mindful meditation. He thinks in a loop "Compassion, honesty, and humor." It keeps him grounded and gives him a picture of how he wants to be seen in the world. Knowing Joe the way I know him, I'd say his meditation is doing the trick because he is one of the most compassionate, honest, and funny humans I know.

It reminds me of a Steven Covey exercise I used to do with my eighth grade students. "Begin with an End in Mind." The exercise was to write three eulogies for your own funeral from the perspective of a family member, a friend, and a co-worker. The idea is that by writing what others will say about you once you're gone, you define how you want to be seen in the world while alive.

Today, that exercise places an awful lot of priority on the opinions of others so it doesn't quite work for me. That being said, there is benefit from some iteration of it, I believe.

Perspective. Reframing.

"Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber."―Kurt Vonnegut

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mediumgayitalian · 8 months ago

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oh my GOD I’m going through ur roadtrip playlist and am loosing my mind over fergalicious

like just imagining it coming on in the car

will being all jumpy and excited

and nicos like ??? wtf ?? is this???

and then the words start and will is spitting out every line all cocky and very animatedly singing to nico like blowing kisses to him with the track “muah muah”, doing little air hammer curls on each “i be up-in the gym- just workin- on my- fitness” and then reaches over motioning to nico “he’s my witness” just very sassy playful and soo so into it.

and nico would try to tease at first like “oh my gods will turn this off” but quickly become very flustered and entranced

i feel like either driving would be grEAT

it’s either nico trying to keep his eyes and attention on the road as will is singing and dancing and trying to rope him into it

or it’s will doing too much while driving, using one hand while the other is flailing about and he’s twisting all around but is still driving excellently, and nico kind of wishes he wasn’t because then he’d have a valid reason to shout at him to cut it out for real, because he’s not sure he’s going to live through the end of the song with the way the butterflies in his stomach are going insane, twisting almost as violently as will is dancing and he’s just rlly not sure he’s going to make it

and then the lil interlude + rap comes on

and nico’s gone for, he’s sure of it

and will’s oblivious

jumping to turn it up even more

so SO sassy

“honey get some patience, maybe then you’ll get a taaahste”

“taystay tastah”

nico is dying, and-

“-drama lil mama I don’ wan’ a take yur man”

is that his country accent??? slipping out?? yes- it is.

nico is simply,

dying.

will is having a blast though, in his own little word

except nico is fully in this world, because will is genuinely performing to him

and he might need to bury his face in his hands if the song doesn’t end soon

i got waaay too carried away with this lmfao :,)

its so long??? im so sorry😭😭

i LOVE ur writing and i LOVE how u write them

so if u do this, ill eat it up in any way u do it

this is just me rambling as i listen to fergalicious over and over

thx for the stellar playlist

enjoying it lots

muah! muah!

LMFAO YES AGREED CONSIDER THIS CANON!!!! only tweaking it to add a detail i haven’t fully revealed yet — nico’s sister was killed because of a drunk driver when he was little. aside from jules-albert, he doesn’t EVER let anyone drive him around. will is v much passenger princess in that vehicle keeping nico thoroughly distracted lmfao

#F TO THE E TO THE EYES ON THE ROAD #ask #road trip au #road trip

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swanqueeneverafter · 7 years ago

Text

22. Tallahassee, Pt.1

Storybrooke. Present. Blanchard Loft's Door. (Mr. Gold knocks on the door with his cane. Emma Swan opens the door.) Mr. Gold: “Ready to go, Miss Swan?” Emma: “Almost.” (Henry Mills approaches.) Henry: “Do you think it will be cold where we're going or warm?” Emma: “I think layers are always a good idea.” Mr. Gold: “I thought the terms of our agreement were quite clear. You owe me a favor - you alone.” Emma: “I'm not leaving Henry here with Cora lurking around, so either we both go or we both stay.” (Mr. Gold thinks.) Mr. Gold: “Then we'll have to purchase another plane ticket, won't we?” Emma: (Taken aback:) “Wait. We're flying?” Mr. Gold: “Don't worry, I'm covering expenses, even the new ones.” (Mary Margaret Blanchard approaches Henry and helps him with his jacket.) David Nolan: (Coming down the stairs:) “You're a real gentleman, aren't you? (David gives a bag to Emma and walks over to Gold:) All right, Gold. You're going out there with my family. Just know if anything happens to them—” Mr. Gold: “Then you'll what? Cross the town line? And David Nolan will hunt me down in his animal rescue van?” David: “I'll be devastated. This isn't a threat. It's a request. Take care of them.” Mr. Gold: “I promise no harm will come to your family. After all... we have a deal.”

Storybrooke. Present. (Inside a car, Mr. Gold is driving out of town.) Henry: “So, where are we going?” Mr. Gold: “Logan International Airport.” Emma: “I think he meant after that.” Mr. Gold: “Let's just take things one step at a time shall we?” Emma: “Do you really think that shawl's gonna work?” Mr. Gold: “Well, if it doesn't, and I revert to my cursed self, we're all gonna have some problems. It'll work.” (Mr. Gold's car crosses the town line, and a blue light shimmers over him.) Emma: “So?” Mr. Gold: “My name is Rumplestiltskin. And we're gonna find my son.” The Land Without Magic. Past. Portland, Oregon. (Emma exits a building, checks to see if anybody is watching her, breaks into a car and steals it. As she drives away a man pops up from the backseat of the car.) Man: “Impressive. (Emma screams:) But really, you could've just asked me for the keys. (Smiles:) Just drive. It's fine.” Emma: “I just stole your car. Your life could be in danger.” Man: “Neal Cassidy.” Emma: “Yeah, I'm not telling you my name.” Neal: “No, I don't need it to have you arrested when the robbery's in progress.” Emma: “Emma. Swan.” Neal: “Good name.” Emma: “So do you just live in here, or are you just waiting for the car to be stolen?” Neal: “Why don't I tell you over drinks?” Emma: “Excuse me?” (Turns to look at him and unknowingly runs a stop sign.) Neal: “Hey! Eyes on the road.” Emma: “I am not having drinks with you. You might be a pervert.” Neal: “I might be a pervert, but you're definitely a car thief.” Emma: “I said I was sorry.” Neal: “You didn't, actually.” (Police sirens.) Neal: “Oh.” Emma: “Damn it.” Neal: “That's why I said, ‘eyes on the road.’”

(Emma pulls over the car.) Neal: “Screwdriver.” (Emma gives him the screwdriver and he puts in the keys, climbing into the passenger seat.) Police Officer: “License and registration.” Emma: “Hi.” Neal: “Terribly sorry, officer, but this is actually my car. I'm... I'm trying to, uh, teach my girlfriend how to drive stick.” Police Officer: “She's got a lot to learn.” Neal: “I know. But, you know... women.” (Emma looks at him.) Police Officer: “All right, I hear you. It's a warning... this time.” Neal: “Yeah. Thank you so much.” (As the police officer leaves, Emma turns to Neal.) Emma: “What are you, some sort of a misogynist?” Neal: “You're welcome. Go, go. We got lucky.” Emma: “ ‘We’? This isn't your car either, is it?” Neal: “Hmm?” Emma: “I stole a stolen car?” Neal: “Now how about that drink?” (Smiles.) The Storybrooke Dock. Present. (David, Mary Margaret and Leroy have just released Hook from the hospital.) Hook: “You didn't even ask me about my recovery.” Mary Margaret: “How are you feeling, Hook?” Hook: “Come closer and feel for yourself.” David: (Pushes Hook backwards:) “You wanna lose the other hand? Where's the ship? Come on. Archie told us; it's shielded somehow, isn't it... mate?” Hook: “Aye. That it is. Follow me. I don't know what you expect to find. Cora won't be there.” David: “Maybe she left something behind that will tell us where she went. Let's go.” (David pushes Hook forward) Leroy: “No funny business. I'm watching you, pirate.” Hook: “Yes, dwarf. That should deter me from any malfeasance.” Mary Margaret: “Oh, don't worry, Leroy. He'll help us.” Hook: “What makes you so sure?” Mary Margaret: “Because you're a pirate. You know which way the wind blows, and right now, it is gusting towards us.” Hook: “Oh, I see where your daughter got her gumption. (Looks at David and smirks:) Follow me.” (He pushes Leroy aside and climbs the invisible stairs that lead to his ship.) Hook's Ship. Present. (David is climbing down the stairs that lead onto the main deck.) Leroy: “You sailed this ship from our land. Can you sail it back?” Hook: “My ship? She's a marvel. Made from enchanted wood. We weathered many a storm together, seeing many strange glittering shores. But to travel between lands, she must go through a portal.” David: “Yeah. What do you know about Cora's plans?” Hook: “Cora's not the most communicative of lasses. But let me tell you this: whatever malice she has in mind, her weapon of choice is in here.” (He taps on something that is covered by a cloth. Leroy removes the cloth from the object to reveal a cage. He looks inside to see the Giant, Anton.) Mary Margaret: “Who's that?”

Hook: “Remember the giant at the top of the beanstalk? Cora used magic to make him travel-sized. Whatever she intends to do with him, it's important.” David: “Oh, I think you know exactly what she intends. You're holding out.” Hook: “Well, either have your lovely wife torture it out of me, which I promise will be fun for both—” (David grabs Hook by the throat.) David: “Why don't you and I have some fun?” Hook: “I don't know what she's planning. (Holds up a key:) Why don't you wake the bloody giant and ask him yourself?” (Mary Margaret takes the key to the cage from Hook. She opens the cage.) Mary Margaret: “Hey. (Anton wakes up; startled:) It's all right. You're safe now. (Anton climbs out of the cage:) What's your name?” Anton: “Anton. Where's that witch?” Mary Margaret: “She's gone.” Anton: “What did she do? She made me small.” David: (Grabbing Anton's shoulder to turn him around:) “Come on. Let's get you outta here.” Anton: “You.” David: “Me?” Anton: “You! Uhh!” (He uppercuts David. David goes flying backwards over a railing on deck.) Mary Margaret: “David!” Leroy: (Running toward Anton) “Hey! Hey, over here, you big—” Anton: “Aah!” (He throws Leroy down the stairs of the ship; causing him to hit his head. Anton walks down the stairs. David pulls a gun from his holster, but Anton kicks it away. An arrow whooshes by Anton's shoulder and grabs his attention. He turns to see Mary Margaret pointing a loaded bow at him.) Mary Margaret: “Step away from my husband.” Anton: “You may have me outnumbered, but this isn't over. (To David:) You think I forgot what you did? I didn't. You'll pay for your evil. I promise you'll pay!” (Anton runs off the ship.) Storybrooke General Hospital. Present. (Belle is sitting in a chair watching television.) Bill Godwin: (On television:) “Hey there, folks. Bill Godwin here. Be sure to tune in to ‘Good Morning, Storybrooke’ every day at 7:00 AM. And now back to ‘Expose.’” (Ruby enters, carrying a basket.) Ruby: “Hey.” (Belle turns toward Ruby. There's a period of silence as Belle wonders what she wants.) Ruby: “You don't remember me, do you?” Belle: “Um... sorry, no I... I don't.” Ruby: (She sets down her basket and sits in a chair next to Belle:) “I'm Ruby. (She turns off the TV:) You used to come into my granny's diner a lot before. Anyway, I... thought you could use some comforts from home. (She reaches into her basket and pulls out a book:) You were always telling me about Jules Verne, so I brought you my favorite—’The Mysterious Island.’” Belle: (Belle takes the book:) “Thank you. Well... were we really friends?” Ruby: “Yeah, we were.” Belle: “Then tell me the truth. Before I was brought here, I was hurt. I was bleeding, and then this man came. And he... he healed me. Then I saw him hold a ball of fire in his hands. How? How is that possible?” Ruby: “The nurse said that the tranquilizers can give you wicked nightmares.” Belle: “No, I know what I saw. And I don't need any more tranquilizers or—” Ruby: “Belle—” Belle: “Don't call me that. Why does everyone keep calling me that? I don't— (Belle is grabbed by the severe nurse who tries to restrain her:) I'm fine, I don't—” (King George/Albert Spencer enters in the background; unseen by the others. He stands silently watching the struggle.) Severe Nurse: “Take it easy. Take it easy.” (She finally gets Belle back in her chair.) Ruby: “Has she been like this the whole time?” Severe Nurse: (She injects Belle with a tranquilizer:) “More or less. We've had to keep her heavily sedated. Okay, let's get you back to bed. Now here we go. (She gets Belle to stand:) There.” (She begins to lead Belle back to her room.)

Albert: (Making his presence known:) “Everything all right in here?” Ruby: “Everything's fine, Mr. Spencer. Since when do you care?” Albert: “Oh, I don’t. Just enjoying the suffering of others is all.” Ruby: “Well, that sounds more like the man we all know and despise.” Albert: “Charming as ever, wolf. When you’ve lost everything like I have, you’ll know exactly how it feels.” Ruby: “You lost everything because you wouldn’t let Snow and Charming live their lives. Reveling in the misery of others is no way to live.” Albert: “Perhaps you’re right. But then again, misery does love company.” Land Without Magic. Logan International Airport. (Emma, Henry, and Mr. Gold are going through security.) Henry: “Have you ever been outside of Storybrooke before, Mr. Gold?” Mr. Gold: “No.” Henry: “Are you nervous?” Mr. Gold: (Holding back anger:) “No.” Henry: “Are you worried about meeting you son?” Mr. Gold: (Explodes:) “No, Henry, I'm fine.” Emma: “How about we talk about this later, kid? We're next.” Henry: “It must be really hard not to use magic, being like everyone else.” Emma: (To Mr. Gold:) “You've gotta put your shoes in.” Mr. Gold: “How terribly uncivilized.” (Henry goes through the metal detector. Mr. Gold puts his shoes in the x-ray machine bin.) Security Officer: “Uh, scarf and the cane go in the basket.” Mr. Gold: “What?” Security Officer: “Scarf and the cane go in the basket.” Mr. Gold: (To Emma:) “I can't.” Emma: “You have to.” Man Waiting in Line: “It ain't rocket science, buddy. You ever been on a plane before?” Mr. Gold: “Have you ever been impaled upon a cane before?” Emma: “My... father's a little nervous. We're headed to a family reunion. Sorry.” Mr. Gold: “Your father?” Emma: (In a lowered voice:) “Just put your shawl in the bin. I'll help you get through.” Mr. Gold: “If I let this go, I could forget who I am.” Emma: “I'm not gonna let that happen.” Mr. Gold: (After pausing for a moment to consider what Emma has just said, Mr. Gold let's out a sigh:) “Okay.” (He puts his cane and shawl in the bin. Immediately, he feels pounding in his head and becomes physically unstable. He manages to make it through the metal detector with Emma close behind. She quickly pulls the shawl from Mr. Gold's bin and places it back around his neck. Emma stares at him with a concerned look; seeking reassurance that he is all right. Though winded, Mr. Gold nods.) Henry: (Unaware of the situation:) “Guys, there's a Cinnabon's here!” (Henry runs off as Mr. Gold composes himself.)

#sq #swanqueen #swan queen

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bpoole500 · 7 years ago

Text

The 100 List: Books

Lists of books you “must” or “should” read are numerous.

Usually, they indicate you’ll die an incomplete person if you don’t manage to get through them all before your date with mortality. It can be offputting.

I have no delusions about my ability to identify superior literature. But people will ask what one is reading, what one might recommend. What that might entail will be different depending on when you offer your suggestions. Your list today is different than it would have been ten years ago. It will be different still ten years from now.

In that spirit, here’s my list of the 100 books or series that, if someone asked my opinion, I’d suggest checking out. It’s up to you, of course. Life’s too short to read things that don’t engage you. But some of these might.

1. A Game of Thrones – George R. R. Martin

2. A Spy Among Friends – Ben Macintyre

- Macintyre mostly focuses on non-fiction from earlier in the 20th century, with a focus on the World Wars and Cold War. His style is so engaging that even where you know the outcome, you still manage to feel suspense about it.

3. Albert Campion series – Margery Allingham

One of the “Four Queens” of British mystery fiction in the early 20th century, Allingham was never as well known in the U.S. as sister Queen Agatha Christie. Recent efforts to reprint her works in new editions have made her available to a new generation and they’re absolutely worth discovering.

4. The Alienist – Caleb Carr

5. Alphabet (Kinsey Milhone) series – Sue Grafton

6. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon

7. American Gods – Neil Gaiman

8. An Arsonist’s Guide To Writers’ Homes in New England – Brock Clarke

9. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie

10. Apathy and Other Small Victories – Paul Neilan

- Be warned: this book can be so blazingly funny at times, you’ll be unable to restrain yourself from laughing out loud. Which could get you an odd look or two if you’re reading this on, say, a train or other form of public transportation.

11. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand

12. Bangkok 8 – John Burdett

13. The Baroque Cycle – Neal Stephenson

14. Black Mass – Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill

15. Bloodsucking Fiends (A Love Story) – Christopher Moore

- I could have included several more Moores on this list. This entry, and Lamb, are the places to start in the bibliography of this highly entertaining writer.

16. Carter Beats the Devil – Glen David Gold

- One of the most engaging pieces of historical fiction from the past 20 or so years.

17. Casino Royale – Ian Fleming

18. Cathedral – Nelson DeMille

19. The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril – Paul Malmont

20. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexander Dumas

21. Crisis on Infinite Earths – Marv Wolfman and George Pérez

22. The Cry of the Owl – Patricia Highsmith

23. The Custom of the Country – Edith Wharton

- Wharton appears on this list more than once. After you’ve tackled her most famous novels, this is the place to go next.

24. The Dante Club – Matthew Pearl

25. Dark Places – Gillian Flynn

- Gone Girl might have been the phenomenon, but this is Flynn’s best book to date.

26. Darkness Take My Hand – Dennis Lehane

27. The Day of the Jackal – Frederick Forsyth

- If you only know this story from one of its movie versions, you owe it to yourself to check out the original novel. It’s a brilliant Cold War classic.

28. DC: The New Frontier – Darwyn Cooke

- The late Cooke’s love letter to the Silver Age of comics may be one of the most heartfelt entries on this list.

29. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania – Erik Larson

30. Death on the Nile – Agatha Christie

31. The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson

- Larson never fails to bring infamous moments of history to vivid life. You can’t miss with any of his books, but this one is his most popular for very good reason.

32. The Devil’s Company – David Liss

33. Diamond in the Rough: A Memoir – Shawn Colvin

- The singer/songwriter’s unsparing account of navigating the brutal music industry and a whole bunch of personal demons make this memoir as compelling as her music.

34. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies – Ben Macintyre

35. The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death – H.P. Lovecraft

36. The Fade Out – Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

- A post-World War II Hollywood murder mystery/noir that’s one of the most compelling tales to emerge from the world of comic books in the past few years.

37. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

38. Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire trilogy – Rod Duncan

38. The First World War: A Complete History – Martin Gilbert

39. Fool – Christopher Moore

40. From Russia With Love – Ian Fleming

- Putting aside the pre-PC ethos of the series, one of the compelling aspects of the written Bond is how imperfect Ian Fleming let his lead character be.

41. Gai-Jin – James Clavell

- Clavell’s entire Asian Quarter saga is a must for fans of sweeping historical fiction. This was the last entry the author completed before his death.

42. The Giving Tree – Shel Silverstein

43. Good Omens – Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

44. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

45. Harry Hole series – Jo Nesbø

46. Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling

47. Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories – Agatha Christie

49, His Dark Materials trilogy – Philip Pullman

- The Harry Potter series has been more of a lightning rod for controversy, but Pullman’s trilogy doesn’t just push the boundaries of what a “children’s” series can do, it ignores them entirely.

50. Holidays on Ice – David Sedaris

51. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne

52. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton

53. The Hunger Games trilogy – Suzanne Collins

54. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke

55. L.A. Confidential – James Ellroy

56. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal – Christopher Moore

57. The Last Hurrah – Edwin O’Connor

- This isn’t an easy book to find these days, but its portrait of a seasoned politician gearing up for one last campaign will resonate with political junkies of all stripes.

58. The Lies of Locke Lamora – Scott Lynch

59. London – Edward Rutherfurd

60. Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry

61. The Lord of the Rings trilogy – J.R.R. Tolkien

62. The Magnificent Ambersons – Booth Tarkington

63. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett

64. The Map of Time – Félix J. Palma

65. The Marvels Project – Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting

66. Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian

67. The Meaning of Night – Michael Cox

68. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins

- Collins pretty much pioneered the modern detective story with this novel.

69. Ms. Marvel: No Normal – G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona

- A few years ago, if you told comic book fans that one of the genre’s most beloved new characters would be a Pakistani-American Muslim teenager from Jersey City… well, you wouldn’t have told anyone that because no one could have predicted how amazing this character would turn out to be.

70. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie

- Christie plays fair, giving you all the clues you need to detect her fiendishly clever climactic twist, all the while gulling you into not noticing it.

71. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie

72. The New York Stories of Edith Wharton – Edith Wharton

73. 1984 – George Orwell

74. Noble House – James Clavell

75. Peter Grant series – Ben Aaronovitch

- A series that mixes a grown-up take on Harry Potter with a modern police procedural winds up being one of the most purely entertaining sagas of the past decade.

76. The Power of One – Bryce Courtenay

77. The Professor and the Madman – Simon Winchester

78. The Queen of Bedlam – Robert McCammon

- This is actually the second book in McCammon’s Matthew Corbett series. And while the original Speaks the Nightbird is absolutely necessary reading, this is where the writer really sets out the parameters for what’s to follow, in often shocking fashion.

79. Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow

80. Revolution on the Hudson: New York City and the Hudson River Valley in the American War of Independence – George C. Daughan

81. The Rising of the Moon – William Martin

82. The Sandman – Neil Gaiman and collaborators

- Bashing this landmark “comic book for people who otherwise wouldn’t read for comic books” has become fashionable recently. Don’t listen to the naysayers, this is some of Gaiman’s best work.

83. The Second World War: A Complete History – Martin Gilbert

84. The Secret History – Donna Tartt

85. Seven Wonders – Adam Christopher

86. Shogun – James Clavell

87. Shutter Island – Dennis Lehane

88. Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury

89. Spenser series – Robert Parker

90. The Spies of Warsaw – Alan Furst

- Furst’s vaguely interconnected World War Ii spy novels are all worth checking out, but this one is by far his best.

91. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

92. Tales of A Fourth Grade Nothing – Judy Blume

93. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Books Scare and How It Changed America – David Hajdu

94. The Three Musketeers – Alexander Dumas

95. Thursday Next series – Jasper Fforde

- An absolute love letter to the world of books and reading, Fforde packs more imagination into a single chapter than some writers manage in an entire series.

96. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. – Ron Chernow

97. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne

98. The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919 to 1939 – Edward Hallett Carr

99. Watchmen – Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

100. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

#books

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years ago

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THE QUIZ SHOW

October 23, 1948

“The Quiz Show” is episode #14 of the radio series MY FAVORITE HUSBAND broadcast on October 23, 1948.

Synopsis ~ Liz and George need a new dishwasher, and Cory gets them a chance to win one on the radio quiz show, "His and Hers."

This script was used as the basis for the “I Love Lucy” episode "Lucy Gets Ricky On the Radio" (ILL S1;E32) first aired on May 19, 1952.

Note: This episode of “My Favorite Husband” was aired before the characters names were changed from Cugat to Cooper. It was also before Jell-O came aboard to sponsor the show and before the regular cast featured Bea Benadaret and Gale Gordon as the Atterburys.

MAIN CAST

Ruth Perrott (Katie, the Maid / Mrs. Van Tassle) was also later seen on “I Love Lucy.” She first played Mrs. Pomerantz, a member of the surprise investigating committee for the Society Matrons League in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25), as one of the member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress” (ILL S3;E3), and also played a nurse when “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16). She died in 1996 at the age of 96.

Mrs. Van Tassel only giggles. Since Perrott is the only other female in the show, the role would fall to her. In other episodes, Mrs. Marge Von Tassle is played by Elvia Allman.

GUEST CAST

John Hiestand (Cory Cartwright) served as the announcer for the radio show “Let George Do It” from 1946 to 1950. In 1955 he did an episode of “Our Miss Brooks” opposite Gale Gordon.

Frank Nelson (Smiley Stembottom, Radio Host) was born on May 6, 1911 (three months before Lucille Ball) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He started working as a radio announcer at the age of 15. He later appeared on such popular radio shows as “The Great Gildersleeve,” “Burns and Allen,” and “Fibber McGee & Molly”. Aside from Lucille Ball, Nelson is perhaps most associated with Jack Benny and was a fifteen-year regular on his radio and television programs. His trademark was playing clerks and other working stiffs, suddenly turning to Benny with a drawn out “Yeeeeeeeeees?” Nelson appeared in 11 episodes of “I Love Lucy”, including three as quiz master Freddy Fillmore, and two as Ralph Ramsey, plus appearance on “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” - making him the only actor to play two different recurring roles on “I Love Lucy.” Nelson returned to the role of the frazzled Train Conductor for an episode of “The Lucy Show” in 1963. This marked his final appearance on a Lucille Ball sitcom.

Hans Conried (Mr. Atterbury, George’s Boss) first co-starred with Lucille Ball in The Big Street (1942). He then appeared on “I Love Lucy” as used furniture man Dan Jenkins in “Redecorating” (ILL S2;E8) and later that same season as Percy Livermore in “Lucy Hires an English Tutor” (ILL S2;E13) – both in 1952. The following year he began an association with Disney by voicing Captain Hook in Peter Pan. On “The Lucy Show” he played Professor Gitterman in “Lucy’s Barbershop Quartet” (TLS S1;E19) and in “Lucy Plays Cleopatra” (TLS S2;E1). He was probably best known as Uncle Tonoose on “Make Room for Daddy” starring Danny Thomas, which was filmed on the Desilu lot. He joined Thomas on a season 6 episode of “Here’s Lucy” in 1973. He died in 1982 at age 64.

Hans Conried played Mr. Atterbury in several episodes until the role was assumed by Gale Gordon and became a series regular in 1949.

Herb Vigran (Harry, George’s Friend / Radio Announcer) made several appearances on “My Favorite Husband.” He would later play Jule, Ricky’s music union agent on two episodes of “I Love Lucy”. He would go on to play Joe (and Mrs. Trumbull’s nephew), the washing machine repairman in “Never Do Business With Friends” (S2;E31) and Al Sparks, the publicity man who hires Lucy and Ethel to play Martians on top of the Empire State Building in “Lucy is Envious” (S3;E23). Of his 350 screen roles, he also made six appearances on “The Lucy Show.”

Rolfe Sedan (Mr. Charles Van Tassle) first worked with Lucille Ball in the 1934 film Kid Millions. When Lucy Ricardo ate snails in “Paris at Last” (ILL S5;E18), Sedan played the Chef who was outraged that Lucy wants to put ketchup on his food. He is probably best remembered as Mr. Beasley the mailman on “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.”

Mr. Van Tassel is a lawyer who lives in Sheridan Falls. He is also competing on "Mr. & Mrs.”

THE EPISODE

ANNOUNCER: “It's morning and George Cugat is seated alone at the breakfast table. Liz is helping Katie the maid in the kitchen by fixing the toast.”

From the dining room, George hears Liz scraping the toast and knows that breakfast has been burned - again! George has tried to fix the faulty toaster. He tightened the spring to make the toast pop up better.

LIZ: “You’d better apologize to Katie. She fell into the sink running back to catch a high fly. And if it ever learns to throw a curve we’re really in trouble.” GEORGE: “Well, what do you do? Buy a new one?” LIZ: “Either that or buy Katie a fielder’s mitt.”

The toaster proved to be one of Lucille Ball’s favorite props on “I Love Lucy”. Many episodes began with the toast popping up into mid-air and Lucy (or Ricky) catching it (or not)!

Liz compares George’s morning kisses to coffee - they wake her up.

GEORGE: “I have a confession to make. My caffeine’s been removed.” (GEORGE and LIZ kiss) LIZ: “Mmmm. Sanka!” GEORGE: “You’re welcome!”

Sanka was one of the first caffeine-free brands of coffee. It came to the USA in 1910 as Dekafa, but was re-branded in 1914 as Sanka, a name derived from the French “sans caffeine”. Sanka was a sponsor of “I Love Lucy” after their relationship with Philip Morris ended. They were included on the animated sequences leading into commercial breaks.

A commotion in the kitchen finds Katie fighting off the automatic dishwasher run-amok! Liz pleads with George to buy a new dishwasher if only to insure that they don’t lose Katie.

George insists that women have it too easy, stating that pioneer women didn’t have a lot of electronic gadgets to do their housework.

LIZ: “Of course they didn’t. And where are those women today? Dead!”

A failed attempt at getting Ricky and Fred to buy them automatic dishwashers brings the same accusation from Ricky and response from Lucy in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25) in 1952. They agree to turn back the clock to see who can cope with life without electronic gadgets - the men or the women.

Liz says that without a new dishwasher, she’ll have to help Katie with the dishes and get dishpan hands - not very kissable. George still refuses. They argue who (or whom) will tell Katie that she isn’t getting a new dishwasher.

Later, Liz invites Cory Cartwright over to ask him if he knows of any radio give-away shows where she might win a dishwasher. She notices he has bottle of Tabu on a string - fishing for women!

Tabu is a perfume from Dana that started marketing in the US in the 1940s. The scent is primarily of patchouli oils. It was called the “forbidden” scent!

Cory has friend that produces radio giveaway shows and provides Liz a long list of the many items that are up for grabs, ending with “Arrowhead Springs”!

Arrowhead Springs is a mountainous neighborhood of San Bernardino, California. It is named for a geographical formation in the side of the mountain that resembles a large arrowhead. A resort and spa sprung up at the foot of the mountains. In 1948, Life Magazine brought attention to Arrowhead Springs with a photo shoot featuring 6 Hollywood fashion models, which is likely why it is on Cory’s list!

Cory phones his friend, Smiley Stembottom, host of “His & Hers” - a husband and wife game show. Liz is doubtful George will want to participate, but promises to get George to listen to the broadcast airing that night.

On “I Love Lucy,” the radio quiz show was known as “Mr. and Mrs. Quiz” and Frank Nelson’s host character was named Freddy Fillmore instead of Smiley Stembottom.

After dinner, Liz convinces Liz to stay home and listen to the radio, something she rarely does and George knows it. Liz spurts out several nonsensical titles of shows she says she listens to:

“Portia Faces John’s Other Wife” ~ a mash-up of “John’s Other Wife” (1936-42) and “Portia Faces Life” (1940-53).

“Ma Perkins Can Be Beautiful” ~ a mash-up of “Ma Perkins” (1933-60) and “Life Can Be Beautiful” (1940-56)

“When A Girl Marries It Pays To Be Ignorant” ~ a mash-up of “When A Girl Marries” (1939-57) and “It Pays To Be Ignorant” (1942-51), a comedy show sponsored by Philip Morris.

“Libbey Owens: Girl Glassblower” ~ Libbey-Owens-Ford was a North American glass manufacturer in business from 1930 to 1986.

Liz suggests a quiz show, but George is resistant. He calls them “horrible” and full of “a lot of silly characters making fools of themselves in front of a microphone.”

On the radio, host Smiley Stembottom (Frank Nelson) of “His & Hers” introduces Mr. and Mrs. Paul Roni. He asks them the jackpot question: “What is stored at Fort Knox?” Liz answers “gelatine”. The answer, as George knows, is gold.

Liz is thinking of Knox Gelatine, not the Kentucky military installations that are home to much of America’s gold supply. Charles Knox developed the world’s first pre-granulated gelatine. He packaged dried sheets of gelatin and then hired salesmen to travel door-to-door to show women how to add liquid to the sheets and use it to make aspics, molds, and desserts. Gelatin is also the prime ingredient of Jell-O, a dessert that will become the main sponsor of “My Favorite Husband” in 1949. Fort Knox, the gold depository, will be frequently mentioned by money-grubbing Mr. Mooney and Harry Carter (both played by Gale Gordon) on “The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy,” respectively.

Smiley signs off by announcing the contestants for next week: Mr. and Mrs. Tom LeFevre, Dr. and Mrs. Charles Van Tassle, and Mr. and Mrs. George Cugat. Liz hasn’t had time to tell him and George is furious!

The phone rings and it is Harry (Herb Vigran), George’s friend, who ribs him about being on a quiz show, comparing it to “Queen for a Day”!

“Queen for a Day” had women competing for prizes by disclosing their hardships for an audience vote. It began as a radio program in 1945 and moved to television in 1947. Its final queen was crowned in 1964. The show was mentioned by Ethel Mertz as a way for Lucy to get Ricky’s name in the press on “The Publicity Agent” (ILL S1;E31) in 1952. Instead, she pretends to be the Maharincess of Franistan!

George’s boss Mr. Atterbury (Hans Conried) calls and instead of being angry, he thinks it is a great idea as it will give the bank publicity and prove how smart bankers can be.

Next day, George brings home a bunch of reference books to bone up for the quiz. He asks Liz a history questions to test her:

“What is the Monroe Doctrine?” ~ Liz doesn’t know for sure, but thinks it is about the guy who sang “Racing With the Moon.” Imitating Vaughn Monroe in a gravlley voice, she sings a few bars before George cuts her off.

It actually refers to President James Monroe. The Monroe Doctrine (1823) warns European nations that the United States will not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs.

They move on to Natural History:

“What is the name of and animal with long, sharp, fangs and a shaggy head who stalks his prey at night?” ~ This reminds Liz of Corey Cartwright!

The real answer is undoubtedly wolf. In parlance of the 1940s, it was also an analogous term for a womanizing man. Hence the term “wolf whistle”.

George resolves that on the show he will answer all the questions and Liz will just stand there smiling.

The day of the quiz, Cory consoles a worried Liz by telling her that he has the answer sheet, thanks to last night’s date with Adele, the producer’s secretary. Although Liz is sure it is wrong, she sneaks a peak at the answers anyway.

Al Jolson

The sap runs every two years.

“Life With Father”

To scrap the barnacles off of her hull.

Liz memorizes the answers, even though she doesn’t know the questions.

On “I Love Lucy” there were only three questions before the jackpot question, not four. Also, the prize was $500, not a new automatic dishwasher.

Before leaving for the studio, Liz is dressing and repeating the answers to herself. George reminds her that he will answer all the questions.

At the studio, the show begins with the announcer (Herb Vigran) introducing Smiley and three couples. Mr. Atterbury cheers from the audience when the Cugats are introduced. Smiley announces that because the men on the show are so intelligent (a lawyer, a doctor, and a banker) they have thrown out the easy questions they were going to use in favor of more difficult ones.

Attorney Mr. Van Tassle (Rolfe Sedan) is first up. Whatever Smiley says, Mrs. Van Tassel just giggles. His question is:

Q (Smiley): “Who discovered the Fountain of Youth and claimed he could live forever?”

A (Mr. Van Tassle): “Ponce de León.”

In “Desert Island” (ILL S6;E8) in 1956, Ricky announces that he’s going to be in a film about the history of the state of Florida. The state’s history begins in 1513 with its founding by Spanish explorer Ponce de León. Ricky says he will appear in the ‘modern’ scenes playing with his band in the hotel nightclub.

Meanwhile, just offstage, presumably while the LeFevre’s are answering their questions, Liz and George nervously review their procedure: George will do all the talking - or so he thinks! Liz and George are called to the stage.

Q (Smiley): “Who discovered the Fountain of Youth and claimed he could live forever?”

A (Liz): “Al Jolson.”

Al Jolson was the name of a popular jazz singer of the time. He was a rival of William Frawley (Fred Mertz) in vaudeville. A film of his life was released in 1946 and in early 1948 it was done for radio starring Jolson as himself.

On “I Love Lucy” the first question is different: “To whom do you make your federal tax check out on March 15?” but instead Fillmore asks “What is the name of the animal that fastens itself to you and drains you of your blood?” The answer Lucy memorized was “The collector of Internal Revenue.” when the real answer was “A vampire bat.” [Tax Day was first set on March 1st in 1913. It was moved to March 15th in 1918 before being finally set as April 15th in 1955.]

Smiley asks the Cugats his second question:

Q (Smiley): “What is your congressman’s term of office?”

A (Liz): “The sap runs every four years.”

Liz is wrong. The answer is every six years.

This is the same question that will be asked on “I Love Lucy”, although on radio we never hear the original question that Lucy / Liz is answering: “How do subfreezing temperatures in the arctic affect the growth of trees?”

George begs to be allowed to answer. Smiley asks question number three:

Q (Smiley): “What has caused America to have such a large increase in population?”

A (Liz): “Is it ‘Life With Father’?”

Life With Father holds the record for being the longest-running non-musical Broadway play in history. It opened in November 1939 and played until April 1947 amassing 3,224 performances. The play was written by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, adapted from stories compiled in 1935 by Clarence Day. The play was adapted into a 1947 feature film and a 1953-55 CBS television series running concurrently with “I Love Lucy.”

Smiley asks his fourth and final question:

Q (Smiley): “Why did the French people put Marie Antoinette under the sharp blade of the guillotine?

A (Liz): “To scrape the barnacles off her hull!”

Liz is wrong again. George never got a chance to answer. They become the first couple never to get any of the answers right.

The real answer is not given on the show, but after the French monarchy was abolished in 1792, Marie Antoinette was convicted of treason and executed by having her head cut off in a public square.

Since the jackpot counts for 100 points, George and Liz could still win the electric dishwasher - plus the bonus prize of 300 dirty dishes. Liz finally realizes that they switched the questions after she memorized them!

Jackpot Q (Smiley): “At the last session of the big four foreign minsters in Paris, when Russia and the United States were in disagreement, what did Andrey Vyshinsky say to Secretary of State Marshall?”

A (Liz): “I give up, George. Let’s go home.”

A Big Four Conference of foreign ministers in June and July 1946 involved much haggling between the Soviet and Western ministers. However, the attendees managed to agree on final treaties with Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland. George C. Marshall was Secretary of State under Harry S. Truman between 1947 and 1949.

Liz gets it right. She has won the new dishwasher!

On “I Love Lucy” the bonus (aka jackpot) question was "What did George Washington say when crossing the Delaware?” Ricky is truly queasy at how poorly he’s doing on the show, so he blurts out to Lucy, “Please let me sit down. This is making me sick!” which was the correct answer!

LIZ: “I didn’t even know I spoke Russian!”

In the usual bedtime tag scene, Liz and George are in bed trying to sleep. She wonders if George ever pretends. George appeases her.

GEORGE: “I pretend I’m all alone on a deserted island and I see coming toward me a girl with flowers in her hair. Now what do you pretend?” LIZ: “I pretend she’s ugly. Goodnight, George!”

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chiseler · 6 years ago

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LARGER THAN LIFE

Instead of pursuing work as a sports columnist after graduation, he returned to show business. Later he was quoted as saying, “You don't see any little people doing newscasts, you don't see any doing sports writing, you don't see any sports announcing, you don't see any coaches, but there are little people who are capable of doing these things, who have proven themselves.” You get the sense there was a little personal bitterness there, hinting he may have been forced back to Hollywood because that was the only place he could find work.

In the late Eighties he told an interviewer, “I’ve never looked at acting as ‘Ahhh!’ and ‘Gee!’ I started in vaudeville when I was five and for me it was just walking on a stage and I'm gonna perform. Later on I was impressed by many things, like when I worked with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in Tough Guys. That was an ‘Ahhh!’ for me. When I look back, even today, I guess I can go ‘Ahhh!’ because I worked with Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell in Gold Diggers of 1933 when I was nine. Then they were just grown-ups on the stage. As I look back, I'm more awed now than I was when I was actually doing it.”

by Jim Knipfel

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gatesofember · 6 years ago

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The Privilla: Chapter 3

PJO Arranged Marriage/Royalty AU Part 2

Rating: G | Pairing: Solangelo

Prev | Next | AU directory | Read it on AO3 (Recommended) | Arranged Marriage AU Masterpage

Summary: Almost ten years after their first introduction, Will and Prince Nico meet again. But this time, they are no longer children. Will, the illegitimate third son of Duke Apollo, has had a few prospective suitors, but none of the offers have been as lucrative as his family has hoped. Prince Nico has had his fair share of suitors, as well; with the pressure of being heir to the throne of a kingdom in economic turmoil, Nico is expected to marry for profit and security. However, his icy personality has driven many impatient suitors away. The two young men may prove to be exactly what the other needs.

“I do not believe this one will be as terrible as you fear,” Reyna said from the other side of the privacy screen. “Her Divinity arranged it. She would not send you an unlikable suitor.”

That is because I am the unlikable one, Nico thought as he raised his chin so that his manservant, Jules-Albert, could tie his jabot.

Nico had agreed to this meeting despite his reluctance mostly because it was Artemis who had asked. They’d had their disagreements in the past, but Nico trusted her and had no desire to disappoint her.

“My father has spoken to me of the meeting with your nephew,” Nico recalled saying over a game of Acies before Artemis left Divitia. “I must ask if you are aware of my current record as a suitor, Your Divinity. Previous meetings have not gone well and should this meeting go awry....”

Artemis had smiled encouragingly. “Worry not, Your Highness. It will not affect our relationship.”

“But you are willing to offer your nephew as a suitor despite my...my....”

“Your Highness, I have known you since you wore children’s gowns. You and my nephew are both fine young men. If the meeting does not go as hoped, you will part amicably. I have faith in you, Your Highness.”

Nico had not felt reassured. “I do not want you to hope too much, Your Divinity. I would hate to disappoint you. If your nephew were to be unhappy with me–”

“Nico,” Artemis had said plainly, disposing of the pleasantries. Nico was alarmed by the sudden change in address, but he did not take offense. “You will not disappoint me. You are as dear to me as kin. My nephew is a patient, kind-hearted man and I believe you will enjoy his friendship, but if I am wrong, then I will leave it be. In any case, you have already met him.”

“Have I?” Nico had asked with a frown, trying to remember. “I do not recall.”

“You were but six years of age,” Artemis had answered. “It was the evening of my inauguration. I made the introductions and you became friends in an instant.”

Nico had stared at the figurines on the board in thought, but he had been unable to recall. “I apologize. I do not remember.”

“That does not matter,” Artemis had said. “You were friends then and I believe you can be now.”

Nico had avoided Artemis’ eyes. If he’d met her nephew at the Sororal Inauguration, Bianca would have still been alive. It had been before he lost her, before those lonely, nightmarish years on the countryside....

“There have been many changes since then,” he’d replied.

“Yes,” Artemis had agreed. “But, perhaps, not too many.”

Nico shook away his thoughts as Jules-Albert brushed off his coat and breeches. “He is expected to arrive late this morning, correct?” he asked.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Reyna answered. “He will be here in time for the mid-day meal.”

“And my father and I will entertain Her Divinity and Lord William outside in the cypress grove?”

“That is correct. The Queen and the Princess will take their meal in the Queen’s antechamber today to leave the four of you to your discussions. Following that, you will invite Lord William for a walk in the Queen’s garden.”

Nico sighed and nodded as he stepped out from behind the partition and went to sit on the lounge chair at the foot of his bed. Jules-Albert offered Nico a pair of shoes, and when Nico nodded his assent, he knelt to put them on Nico’s feet.

“And you will offer him your arm,” Reyna said. “You will smile at him. You will be polite.”

Nico squashed his desire to retort and merely nodded. This time, he would play the role of a good suitor – at least for the Matestra. Besides, he needed to find a husband, and he hoped that this attempt wouldn’t be as disastrous as the others. “And then my father and I will remain with them in the Privilla for the three days of their stay?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Reyna confirmed.

Nico was glad. The grounds of the royal palace contained many estates like the Privilla built by generations of Pluton sovereign. Although Nico had stayed in many of them in his childhood, the royal family had mostly remained within the main residence, the Palatium de Divitae, since the Scarlet Delirium and the downfall of Pluto’s once-wealthy economy. While the Palatium de Divitae and its surrounding estates had once housed many nobles, the fashionable days of the Pluton court had passed and the palace now was home to only the royal family and a select group of courtiers. Nico barely remembered his once-opulent lifestyle; he had been so young when he’d been sent to live on the countryside during the worst parts of the contagion’s rampage. Still, he enjoyed the occasional excuses the royal family found to indulge in the lavish pleasantries that used to define the court.

When Jules-Albert finished polishing Nico’s shoes, Nico rose to his feet and nodded to Reyna. “I assume the estate has been prepared?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“And the necessary items from my wardrobe?”

“Taken care of, Your Highness.”

“And Asterion?”

“He will be at the Privilla, Your Highness.”

“Good.” Nico left the bedroom for the drawing room next door. Hazel’s room also connected to the drawing room, and they had a series of studies that they used for various purposes, like Hazel’s artwork or Nico’s Acies board. Hazel, upon Nico’s inspection of the chambers, appeared to be in her painting room. Although they hadn’t always gotten along, Nico was fond of his little sister. She turned and called out a good morning to him when she heard him leave his bedroom, and Nico greeted her in return. At only eight years of age, she was already a fine painter. She had gifted several of her works to Nico and he had them hung in his bedroom or studies.

“Tell me about the Matestra’s nephew again, Lady Reyna,” Nico said as he sat down in the drawing room.

“He is a consor,” Reyna began, taking a seat when Nico gestured for her to do so. “He has been studying in Venadica since he was Hazel’s age, perhaps younger. He is your age now, and is the third child of Duke Apollo of Diana – illegitimate. His mother was a singer and Apollo’s mistress for a time.”

Nico chose not to dwell on the topic of Will’s illegitimacy. It was not uncommon for nobles in Jupiter or Neptune to have lovers aside from their spouses, but such things were considered unacceptable in Pluto. The thought made Nico feel uncomfortable, even though Nico was illegitimate himself. The nature of his birth was very secret; not even Hazel knew, nor had Bianca. Nico shouldn’t have known.

“Have you met him?” Nico asked. As a soror, Reyna had been trained in Venadica, as well.

“I have,” Reyna replied. “Only once or twice and it has been a very long time, but I do recall that he was pleasant company. In any case, he has studied medicine under Asclepius himself and he practices when he returns to Diana in the winter. He has had no serious suitors as of yet, but his family has been searching. And he is extremely wealthy.”

Nico nodded. A wealthy husband was, in all honesty, exactly what he needed. He’d even tried courting the son of a wealthy merchant, despite his lack of a title – of course, that arrangement had fallen through quickly. The boy had been completely unrefined, so Nico sent him on his way. Nico probably could have done so more politely, but what was done was done.

“What topics of conversation do you recommend?” Nico asked, for conversation was not something he had any remarkable skill in. He was receiving oratory lessons from Reyna, so he wasn’t as miserable as he once had been, but he still lacked some basic understanding of one-on-one communication.

“You might ask about his family or his studies. It is most important, Your Highness, that you are responsive when he speaks to you. You have an unfortunate habit of acting uninterested and indifferent around potential suitors, but in this case, you must remember to be more companionable.”

Nico heard Hazel giggle in her painting room, and, although he was irritated, he ignored her. “I will behave cordially,” he muttered. Reyna was not uncomfortable scolding Nico; she could be quite harsh with him. Still, he considered Reyna trustworthy, and perhaps even a good friend.

Nico spent most of the morning pacing while Hazel painted in her studio and Reyna read in the drawing room. He picked at the cold cuts Jules-Albert brought for their meal and drank a few sips of tea, but his unease persisted. He hated being introduced to suitors, mainly because he knew he’d fail before they even arrived. Nico wasn’t easy to like. He wasn’t even tolerable enough to be someone’s husband.

“Your Highness,” Reyna said, causing Nico to jolt in surprise. “Pacing will accomplish little more than wear in the flooring.”

“Then what do you suggest I do with my restlessness, Lady Reyna?” Nico snapped. Reyna raised an eyebrow at his tone, which only served to irritate Nico further. He huffed and stormed over to sit across from his adviser. “How much longer do I have to wait?”

“Not long,” Reyna replied, setting her book aside to give Nico her attention. “I suspect we will be called to greet them soon.”

Nico rubbed his palms on his breeches and asked, “Do you think this coat will do?”

“It is a very fine coat, Your Highness.”

“Good,” Nico mumbled. “It’s not too plain?”

Reyna sighed. “Your Highness, the trim is silver with sapphires. I do not think it is plain.”

“I don’t want him to know exactly how desperate my family is for his dowry,” Nico said defensively. “You will stay with me, correct?”

“I will be present, should you need me.”

“And you won’t leave me alone with him?”

Reyna looked at Nico disapprovingly. “I will remain an appropriate distance away from you and Lord William.”

“But what if I–”

“If you are to marry him, you must be able to hold a conversation with him in private.”

Nico let out a breath of disappointment. “This will go horribly,” he muttered.

“Your Highness, all you are required to do is be polite. Smile at him, nod, and answer his questions. And I beg you, do not tell him that he has the face of a toad.”

“I only did that once, and he highly exaggerated my phrasing,” Nico scowled. “Besides, he did look like a toad.”

Reyna gave him a stern look. “And if Lord William looks like a toad, what will you do?”

“I will not call him a toad,” Nico answered begrudgingly. “Unless, of course, the similarities are remarkable, then I do not think it would be out of place to–”

“Your Highness,” Reyna cut in sharply. “Sometimes, I almost believe that you purposely sabotage your meetings with potential suitors. You will not make fun of Lord William’s face, or his voice, or his laugh, or his personality, or his intelligence, or any peculiar gestures that he might have the habit of making.”

Nico crossed his arms irritably. “Very well, then; I simply won’t speak at all.”

“If that is what you must do, then so be it,” Reyna snapped back. That said, she picked back up her book and started to read again, making it clear that she no longer had any interest in speaking to Nico. Nico knew he ought to reprimand her for using such a tone, but he didn’t feel up to it. Reyna was right, as usual.

It wasn’t long after that they were summoned to the Hall of Gold to greet their visitors. The hall was a large, open area at the front of the palace that opened to the city outside. Nico recalled balls being held there when he was younger and the court was wealthy and fashionable. Although the room was still magnificent, it had fallen into disuse over the years.

Nico’s parents, King Hades and his Queen Consort, Persephone, along with his younger sister were present as the Matestra’s carriage arrived outside the palace. The doors to the Hall of Gold were held open and the royal family stood at the entrance, watching as the guests exited the carriage.

The Matestra came first. Artemis was followed by the captain of her guard, Lady Thalia, and her aide, Lady Hestia. Nico had seen Lady Thalia during the Matestra’s last visit, but he had not spoken to her. He tried to avoid conversation with Thalia whenever possible; she made him think of Bianca too much. Lady Hestia, however, Nico was fond of. They had known each other a long time, even before she was hired as Artemis’ aide. Hestia was always calm and polite, and something about her always made Nico feel soothed. He hoped he would get the chance to talk to her while she was there; she had not been with the Matestra on her previous visit.

And then Lord William exited the carriage.

Nico did not remember the first time he had met Lord William, so he only was able to predict his appearance based on what he had been told by Reyna and Artemis. He had known that his suitor would be blond and tan-skinned with blue eyes and have an average height and build. As William approached with his aunt, Nico was glad to see that he did not look like a toad, but beyond that, Nico saw nothing noteworthy about him. He had nice features without being irresistibly handsome, which Nico supposed was a good thing; if William had been too handsome, Nico was not sure that he would ever be able to look his suitor in the face without making a fool of himself. William was not unpleasant to look at, however, and Nico found himself pleased with his appearance.

Pleasantries were exchanged when Artemis and William reached them, but Nico paid them little heed, instead examining William with interest, as though he might be able to discern more from his character by the intensity of his gaze. Will looked back at him and smiled, which Nico supposed was nice, before lowering his eyes meekly.

Nico was snapped into paying attention when Will bowed to him and said, “It is an honor to meet you, Your Highness,” having apparently been introduced.

“You as well,” Nico said, and even though he tried to put an air of friendliness into his voice, his tone remained flat.

When Hades led the guests into the Hall of Gold, Nico fell in step beside William and examined him from the corner of his eye. He had a good, strong posture, which Nico supposed he approved of, and his gait was acceptable. His coat was nice, too; pale blue with gold embroidery and very fine buttons. It was obviously well-made and expensive – a testament to his family’s wealth. William’s hair was tied back, but rather untamed, which Nico supposed was excusable.

After directing Artemis’ servants to the Privilla, Hades, Artemis, Nico, and Will took their lunch outside in the cypress grove – a meal of venison and fruit from Persephone’s orchards. Nico allowed Artemis and his father to control the conversation, instead busying himself with scrutinizing Will’s dining etiquette. It was passable; he was obviously well-educated on the matter. When Artemis asked him a question, Nico realized that he had been paying his suitor far too much attention and turned to focus on the conversation and the meal.

Nico felt something stroke up his ankle and he almost jolted in surprise. He managed to keep his composure and fought the urge to peer under the table. When it happened again, though, he looked up at Will, who was sitting across from him, and realized that the thing hitting his ankle was most definitely the toe of a shoe. Will, however, made no movement to suggest he’d done it on purpose, so Nico let it slide. Surely it had only been a mistake. Will wasn’t trying to....

But Nico felt the shoe on his ankle again. That time, when he looked up, Will offered a shy, guilty smile. Nico didn’t smile back, so Will looked away again, his expression crestfallen.

Had he given Will the impression that he disliked it? Nico always had trouble with suitors, in part because he was never able to seem friendly. But this particular meeting was important; Artemis herself had arranged it and Will’s family’s wealth could prove invaluable to Nico. Had he scared Will off? Nico had only been surprised. Will seemed like a pleasant young man. Nico didn’t want to ruin their first meeting by being unfriendly as he had with so many of his previous suitors. He hoped Will would look back so that he could try to smile for him.

When Will didn’t, Nico impulsively stuck out his foot and ran his toe over Will’s ankle just as Will had done to him. Will looked at him, surprise written plainly across his face, and Nico smiled nervously. Will smiled back.

When the meal was over, Nico had forgotten about his directions to invite Will for a walk until he heard Reyna, who was standing to the side of the grove with the servants, clear her throat loudly. Nico reluctantly rose to his feet and looked at William, and although he tried to appear friendly, he was sure his face was as cold as usual. “Lord William,” he said, keeping his nervousness carefully hidden. “I wonder if you would join me for a walk in the gardens.”

“I would be honored, Your Highness,” William said, standing up from his chair.

Nico started to lead him towards the gardens when Reyna cleared her throat again and Nico turned his head to look at her. She discreetly patted her elbow as a reminder for Nico to offer Will his arm. Nico gave her a petulant look, having hoped that she’d forgotten about that bit, but Reyna merely patted her elbow with more force and frowned at him sternly. Nico nodded sulkily, having absolutely no desire to engage in any kind of physical contact. Nico did not like to touch and he did not like to be touched. It was, he supposed, one of the many things that made him such an undesirable suitor.

Nico swallowed his discomfort and was about to hold out his arm, but when he turned to William, he found that William had already offered his. He hesitated in surprise for a moment before taking it, but stayed a respectable distance away as he walked William towards the gardens.

William cleared his throat, which irritated Nico, who had heard enough cleared throats for one day. “These gardens, as I understand, are designed by Her Majesty?” he asked.

“Oh...uh...yes,” Nico stumbled, unprepared to speak just yet. “My mother takes pride in the grounds of the palace. She made it her project when she married my father.” Nico internally applauded himself for his quick answer, but soon after, it became silent between them again. He led Will through the flowers in silence, his eyes darting around in the hopes that something might jump out and distract William from Nico’s awkwardness and discomfort. His hand felt sweaty on Will’s elbow and Nico wanted to take it back, but he resisted.

“The grounds are quite beautiful,” William said suddenly. “My compliments to Her Majesty.”

“Thank you,” Nico answered. “She loves to hear that her gardens are enjoyed.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “You will see the gardens around the Privilla tomorrow. They are quite beautiful there, as well. Do you like gardens?”

“I do, Your Highness,” Will answered. “The grounds at my father’s estate are lovely. I enjoy reading there when the weather is nice.”

“Then you like to read?”

“Oh, yes. Mostly I read for my studies, but I read for amusement, as well.”

“Tell me about your studies,” Nico said, recalling that Will was a consor studying medicine. He could likely talk about his schooling for hours, and then Nico would not have to speak for quite a while.

“I am currently doing research on plant cells for the purpose of utilizing their medical properties,” Will said. “I find it quite interesting, but my brothers and sister tell me that it is boring. When I first started, I considered becoming a tutor and my studies were in a more general field, and then I decided that I would rather heal. I have been a consor since I was seven; not long after I first met you, Your Highness.” William suddenly faltered. “I...I mean, since my aunt’s inauguration. We were introduced.”

“I have been told,” Nico said. “You must forgive me; I have no memory of the meeting, but I have heard about it.”

William looked disappointed for a moment, but then he smiled. “It was long ago, Your Highness. Although it is a happy memory for me.”

Nico opened his mouth to speak, then promptly shut it and turned his head to face forward, focusing on the stone path and white flowers in front of them rather than on his confusion. He wasn’t sure how it could be such a happy memory for William. Perhaps he was referring to the inauguration itself rather than his meeting with Nico. That seemed more sensible. Of course the memory of his aunt becoming the Matestra was important for him.

Another silence fell between them, but this time, Nico was less desperate to fill it. He didn’t mind the silence; he only hoped that William didn’t mind it, either. William, however, proved difficult to read. He smiled at Nico whenever Nico turned to look at him, which Nico didn’t quite understand. Why would he smile so much?

At least, Nico thought, the meeting was not off to a disastrous start. William was polite. He didn’t seem to be fed up with Nico yet. Perhaps if Nico could keep himself from being too horrible a suitor, he would be tolerable enough for William to marry, and then when William tired of him, it wouldn’t matter anymore.

#solangelo #Will solace #Nico di Angelo #arranged marriage AU #pjo Arranged Marriage au #solangelo arranged marriage au #royalty au #pjo royalty au #solangelo royalty au #solangelo fanfiction #solangelo fanfic #pjo fanfiction #pjo #toa #hoo #trials of apollo #Heroes of Olympus #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #my fic

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