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antihero-writings · 4 years ago

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His Butler Cemetery, Chapter 3: The Problem of the Nights

Fandom: Black Butler | Kuroshitsuji (manga)

Fic Summary: Four visits to the cemetery, each growing in emotional intensity, and spanning backwards in time. (Spoilers for the manga!!)

(I'll put the links to chapters 1 & 2 in a reblog!!)

Chapter Summary: “Young Master, Edward. If something you held most dear suddenly shattered one day...What would you do?"

"Dear, God. What a terrible ordeal you've tasked my sister with...."

Character Focus: Edward and Lizzie Midford

Notes: Eyyy remember this fic? The one I planned to finish in October 2018? Hehe...Yeah...

I never forgot about this fic... life just kinda got in the way and I moved on to other things. I have so many fics on my computer that I just can't seem to figure out how to finish, and this chapter was one of them. Lately I've been trying to go through some of them and either just slap an ending on them, or split them into multiple chapters so it's more manageable, haha. So I just picked a way to end it, even if I'm not entirely satisfied XD

I actually really really like Edward as a character, and was kind of inspired by the quote above to write this. I was excited to write for him for this fic, and really really liked this chapter, so I couldn't go without posting it at some point!!I hope people still like it, even though it's been so long...I'd deeply appreciate it if you could leave a comment to let me know!!

By the way, I am NOT caught up on the manga, so please don't spoil anything from the recent chapters for me!!

Chapter 3, the Problem of the Nights:

Edward never could win against her.

Father would laugh and say that the Midford women had always been strong, and it was no cause for shame.

Still, there’s something particularly humiliating about getting your ass kicked by a cute little girl….Especially when she’s your younger sister.

The world would coo over her: her pretty shoes, her curly blonde hair, her frilly dresses, and sigh in awe that someone so cute could be so skilled with the sword.

And, if he was perfectly honest, she was incredible. He would never deny that, never say the praise was undeserved. Often he was her biggest fan, her loudest cheerleader, and if anyone dare lay a finger on her, or say a single syllable of slander, they’d certainly have a sword to answer to.

And, he supposed, her proficiency was good for him too, in a way, because it pushed him to work harder.

But no matter how many days he spent waking up early to wave his sword at empty air, no matter how much mastery he had compared to his classmates, he could never catch up to her. Sometimes it felt like the race was rigged, and he wasn’t moving at all.

He applauded her, admired her.

But sometimes he would throw his sword into the wall and demand that it listen to him. That he, a thirteen-year-old boy could and should be better at swordplay, than a ten-year-old girl who decorated her world in pink plushies and bonnets.

When the other nobles chatted with Lizzie, and about Lizzie, and then turned to him to ask what he’d been doing, sure he had a story to top hers…

Sometimes he would hold his head high and boast of his accomplishments, and Lizzie would have only the loftiest of compliments to add.

But other times that question would ring through his head, and his tongue would fall limp in his mouth.

Because no matter how much he’d done, if he was the top of his class, he could never triumph Lizzie.

What have I done lately? Not much compared to Lizzie.

Mother was not the kind of person who would answer for you; unlike most mothers she wouldn’t boast of her children smallest accomplishments. In fact, in even their greatest endeavors she could find “room for improvement.” He wasn’t complaining: this too was a good thing; he would never be where he was now without that.

But sometimes he just wished she would just wrap her arms around him and say that she was proud of him.

There was Father at least, who was the softie of the family. Who would clap him on the back and tell Francis not to be so hard on him, that he’d done more than well. His eyes would shine as he promised he was a champion in his own right, as well as his eyes. And that helped. Still…

Still, he didn’t feel like much.

It wasn’t that he was bad at things, or dumb. He was quite smart, good at school, but he didn’t…excel.

The thing about Lizzie is that there were only a few things she practiced, but she excelled at them.

Jack of all trades, master of none, so they say.

And no one notices you unless you’re very good at something, or very bad at it.

So he faded into the background. Lizzie’s cheerleader. His parents’ son. And he told himself he was alright with that.

Beneath all those intermingling feelings of pride and jealousy was a question:

How could such a small girl hold so much fight inside her? How could those gentle eyes hold so much fire?

It didn’t make sense. She was supposed to be sweet, and gentle, and soft. So what was it that drove her to get the gold when he could only ever snag second place?

He got his answer when he met Ciel.

The twin boys, one of whom she was destined to marry—some day, after they had learned how to be gentlemen in a world of men who weren’t gentle.

Well he couldn’t approve of that without meeting him first.

The twins were…so small. Smaller even than Lizzie. Big blue eyes like stormy days.

One marched up to him and demanded who he was, and what he was doing there, and that his name was Ciel, and he was to be the Earl some day. The other, hid behind his father’s pant leg, and muttered his greeting from afar. And when Mother scolded Mr. Phantomhive to keep them in line, and comb their hair properly, even the bolder one shirked into the shadows.

He finally understood what Lizzie had that he didn’t:

Something to protect.

When he took up the sword, it was for the sake of the sword itself, and a name.

When she took it up, she did so for something more than the trade, the passed-down-name, the skill. The sword was a means, not an end. There was something—someone—she loved, or was learning to at least, and if that person were ever threatened, she didn’t want to stand on the sidelines and cry. She wanted to stand between him and danger and do everything in her power to keep the hurt at bay.

She didn’t care about being well-versed in the sword: she just cared about protecting him. The sword was simply how she’d do that. And, well, the irony of being something is that you’ll only be good at it when you’re looking beyond it.

And it was that, that passion, that idea that there was something beyond, that this was all in preparation for a war against anything that stood to harm him, that was why she excelled. Because he didn’t have anything calling him to it, besides the fact that the Midford’s had always been good at it. As long as he didn’t have a reason for it within himself, he would never excel.

So, from then on, he never complained, silently or aloud. From then on he was nothing more than her firmest supporter, and when people asked what he had done lately, expecting his story to top hers, he could be okay that he would never be better than her at some things.

And then, one snowy December, when they were putting their finishing touches on their Christmas tree, and competing to make the best cookies, someone arrived at their door to tell them they found Mr. and Mrs. Phantomhive in a pool of their own blood…and the twins…they didn’t find.

She didn’t cry. She didn’t immediately burst into a thousand shards of glass like he would have expected.

He would have liked it better that way. Because he could deal with that. Because he could do something, he could run up to her, hug her, kiss her, comfort her. Be the big brother.

No, the Midford women had always been strong, and she was no exception. She didn’t fall to pieces. She went into her room, put on a black dress and bonnet—(as was proper). And she went to the funeral, as all good little noblegirls should.

And all throughout the service, as they lay Rachel and Vincent to rest, beside two little graves they all knew were empty, as the vicar read from a Bible a passage about sheep, and finding your way home, he kept glancing at her, kept waiting to see the tears to stream down her face, for her to fall to her knees.

Her eyes were big, and blank, and full of almost-to-the-surface tears, yet she was sugar and spice and everything nice; the picture of an English noblewoman.

She went about her day, whole, composed, proper. And no one could have guessed that grief wasn’t another thing she excelled at.

But he’d never quite forget that night. The sound he heard, even through the passing years.

That night, after the funeral, after mother sent her off to bed with a few proud words, and father kissed her one to many times, after Edward grabbed her hand and asked “Are you sure you’re okay?” After she said “Yes, I’ll be fine.”—

He woke up to the sound of screaming.

He shot up in bed, wondering if he’d dreamed it, heart yammering, breath burning. He didn’t bother to light a candle, just stumbled out of bed, and ran down the halls, calling her name.

When he reached her room, she was sitting on the floor beside her bed in her little white nightdress, and tear tracks staining her face; in pieces. A perfect gold stain on the world.

She reached her hands weakly out to him as he knelt down before her, and wrapped her arms so tight around him that he thought she might break him too…and she cried into his nightshirt until she stained it. But he didn’t care.

Many little girls run to their parents in this situation. But he knew, if she had gone to their parents, mother would have told her there was no use crying, they weren’t coming back, and father would have doted on her, and she wanted neither…or rather, something in between. So she came to him.

This wasn’t the last time.

During the day she would go about her life as normal.

But every night she woke up. It was always somewhere between 14:00 and 16:00 he heard her screaming, calling the name of the sky. Either that, or he would hear a faint knock on his door, and see the face of a broken little girl in need of her big brother.

It became muscle memory for Edward to comfort her. To throw off his covers and run to his sister’s room, or he would pat the blankets beside him to say come here, and either way he’d wrap his arms around her tight, as if trying to wring the tears out of her, and she would sob until they burned rivers in his skin. He would brush his hands through her golden hair, whispering things in her ear like shh, and it’ll be okay, and singing old lullabies, all the while knowing knowing the quiet would come. And he would pray. Pray that things would be okay. Pray that the one who created the universe would grant some solace to this sweet little sheep.

He would pray, and the next day, with tears barely barred from his own cheeks, he would kick the wall, and demand why and how a merciful God could do this to someone like her. Why he would take good people from the world.

—(He would pray, and he thought one day he heard Him say They aren’t yours to keep.)—

Sometimes she asked if they could go to the cemetery in the morning. They would dress in their finest blacks, looking like ink blots on the world, onyx with gold filigree in the cracks. She would carry bouquets of flowers, the petals sifting off in the wind, and add them to those there, left by the miscellaneous others who cared for them…And she wouldn’t cry then, no. She wouldn’t cry until it was past the witching hour.

She didn’t give up. Didn’t stop living. For all intents and purposes she was the same as she’d always been…but something was missing when they crossed blades.

She woke up less and less as time went by. Eventually her visits to his room were stray nights in the grand scheme of things, and she didn’t cry so hard. Sometimes she’d just sit with him, or ask to play chess, or chat with him till the morning came.

And then one day, after the grief didn’t burn so badly in her chest—

Her fiancé came back without an eye, and with a pitch black butler.

He didn’t talk about what he’d gone through, or how he’d come back. He didn’t speak of that day his parents died. He didn’t mention how his brother died—he didn’t mention much of his brother at all.

He wasn’t that brazen, bold, grinning child they knew before. He was dark, and serious…and he never smiled.

And Edward was glad to have him back…yet from the start he couldn’t help but feel…uneasy. Like something was wrong. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. There were too many questions, too many gaps in information, and the darkness that seemed to flock to this boy now didn’t help.

And Edward, though Lizzie’s fire was only stronger since he came back, her skill even more unmatchable, was at last able to get a few good hits in sometimes.

He couldn’t believe he never saw it before, his reason beyond the sword, the task of carrying on a name... it was there from the beginning.

He knew who it was he had to protect.

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changed-for-safety · 1 day ago

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HAHAHA I didn't do anything special when I married him I DID adopt a kid for wil and him to share tho (his names Corbin and they're Abt to have another called Beatle) Something fun was yesterday me and my friend were getting them married to Alex. The plan went as such: Renovate the house until his birthday do the ten heart date on his birthday propose to him after and it went thru! we were proud. anygays enjoy your blond gay rat husband <3

BRO we can be married to Sam together 💪

-fran 🎸

YAHOOO!!!

i bought the bouquet back in the end of summer year 1 and painstakingly waited until spring 1 yr 2 because i wanted kent to be there.

the best decision i could've made tbh. (well.. aside from the fact that proposing on spring 1 makes the wedding date kent's birthday... like. welcome back from war, sir, happy birthday. i'm marrying your son!)

i also think sam (if the game didn't have the "three days" mechanic) would encourage his fiance to have the wedding when kent returned.

i have. so many thoughts. like for example, kent would appreciate if you asked his blessing (AND HE GIVES IT FREELY!!! as you can see in the screenshots!!)

godd... he's so proud of sam and so happy he found someone he loves.

sniffles.. samfam you are my everything..::

#stardew valley #stardew #sdv #sdv sam #francis yammers

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harryandmolly · 6 years ago

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i could write it better than you ever felt it - FINAL

summary: fuck growing up. this is freedom, this is life, this is youth – 2007 Warped Tour style.

warnings: Language, vintage Something Corporate, oversugaring tea amidst Londoners

word count: 5.2k

A/N: this is it, fam! thanks for coming along in my time machine. I hope it’s everything you dreamed it would be. Shawn’s song is “As You Sleep” by Something Corporate, highly recommend a listen. thank you for everything you are and everything you give me. I love you guys.

Lucky 13.

The emblem of the 2007 Warped Tour has surrounded her all summer, but it feels especially present today somehow, on the last day of tour in Carson, California.

It seems a contradiction in terms, lucky 13, which Val supposes is probably the idea. She knows it’s a cheeky nod to the counterculture vibe that Warped Tour represents, but it also feels representative of her in some ways.

Val’s had a very contemplative and quiet three weeks since she gathered her things and walked out of that hotel room, leaving the scribbled note on the pillow behind her. She’s turned inward, no longer hounded by her conflict with Raf or Bea, able to focus on herself for the first time in a few months. And she’s picked out a few things that coincide with the theme of the summer.

Val is often reckless, and sometimes maternal. Val is book smart, and also street smart. Val embraces academia, but sometimes thinks she could drown herself in music and never read books again. Val is vibrant even when she is broken.

Humans are made up of contradictions, Val knows that as well as anyone. She is not suddenly realizing that she is not only one thing -- her dichotomies are not really news to her. But as she thinks about the people she loves most, she sees the way certain parts of their personalities bump up against other parts and fight for dominance, and she loves them more richly for it.

Humans are made up of contradictions and Val is embracing that from here on out. She arrived on the first day of Warped wearing a blink t-shirt with a textbook on Ming dynasty art in her trunk. All summer, she studied the ways she doesn’t fit in here in the scene anymore like she was looking for reasons to make a clean split and join her adult life across the pond. But the truth is, she failed. She looked for the ways that made her feel different from this world that she helped in her small way to build, but it’s as much a home to her as academia is and it will never truly feel foreign, no matter how many hours she spends crouched over a 9th century vase with a tiny brush. So her biggest contradiction, her inner strife over choosing academia over pop punk, it fades into her skin like her tattoo, as much a part of her as the dimple in her chin or the curls in her hair that she decided not to straighten today.

Val walks the grounds as the sun begins to fade. The last sets of the day are in progress or being set up. With earbuds in playing Boys Like Girls, she strolls between booths of merch people clinking beers and congratulating each other on a summer well done, between groups of kids comparing signed merch, between crew guys beginning to break down and pack away equipment to be pulled out next June for another go around.

She imagines who she’ll be next June.

She walks slowly on her way to Smartpunk. It seems her body is just as hesitant as her mind to attend this one last set, but she’s doing it anyway. She’s not sure why -- to prove a point to herself? To indulge in the talent one last time? To try to believe in a miracle?

She doesn’t like any of those options. She settles on curiosity and keeps her feet moving in uncharacteristically small steps.

She stands at the back, nice and far from any moshing action, by the All Time Low booth so she can sit on the edge of the table without getting grief from Vinny Vegas.

She wears a small smirk as the space around her fills in. It seems every Warped attendee is a Forefront convert now. She doesn’t blame them. But damn is it a far cry from their first sets in June.

They’re announced over the yelping cries of fans wearing out their last screams of summer. They hustle out in a group, with their tall, gawky frontman bringing up the rear as usual. He plants himself in front of the mic and swings one powerful arm above his head with a wild grin to wave as his adoring fans.

And it begins.

They put on a hell of a show. It’s not a given -- just because you’re good in the studio doesn’t mean you have the chemistry or energy to do well live. There are special bands that make a live concert a nearly religious experience -- her friends in Paramore and All Time Low among them. Forefront has gotten their sea legs this summer and won’t easily lose them now.

She takes the time to notice each member -- passionate, goofy Francis on rhythm guitar, hard-hitting, soft-spoken Seth on the drums, raucous pretty boy bassist Bobby. And then Shawn, switching between his keyboard and guitar effortlessly like he was born with a damn instrument in his hand, charisma leaking out of him all over the stage, making everyone in a fifteen mile radius certain that he’s born to do this.

She closes her eyes through the end of “Open End” and waits for “Swim” to start. When Shawn switches back to the keys at this point in the set, he usually engages in some chit chat with the boys or yammers on to the fans about how much they inspire him or whatever. But he’s quiet and the air around the stage is tense because everyone knows something’s up.

Val opens her eyes. He’s where she expected him to be, propped at the edge of his bench with his fingers resting over the keys, looking down at them frozen.

“We’re gonna play you a new one today.”

Val’s stomach falls out and flops into the dirt at her feet. She’s glad she’s sitting on the table because she can’t feel her legs. She overwhelmed by certainty that whatever’s about to happen, it’s going to be personal. And it’s going to hurt like hell.

Shawn is quiet for a few more electrically charged moments before he closes his eyes, rolls his shoulders forward and leans into the mic, singing before the instruments join him.

“Close your eyes and I will be swimming, lullabies fill your room, and I will be singing, singing only to you. Don’t forget I’ll hold your head, watch the night sky fading red.”

His fingers work furiously against the keys. The piano line is so intricate and shows off his talent for the instrument in a way she’s never seen. He keeps his eyes down at his hands as they dance, distracting him enough from the content of the lyrics so he can get through them without breaking down like he did when he wrote it.

“But as you sleep, and no one is listening, I will lift you off your feet, I'll keep you from sinking. Don't you wake up yet, cause soon I'll be leaving you. Soon I'll be leaving you, but you won't be leaving me.”

Val closes her eyes again and lets herself fall back into their last night, into their frantic lovemaking punctuated by irresponsible, unkeepable promises. She thinks about the weight of his legs between hers as she drifted off with him in the last full night sleep she got on tour. She remembers the way she let her hand rest on his side of the bed to try to tell when he left by how cool to the touch it felt.

“In the car, the radio leaves me searching for your star, a constellation of frustration driving home, singing my thoughts back to me, and watching heartache on TV.”

It feels so good to get this out, Shawn thinks as he hits each note just the way he wants it. This song came spilling out after their last night together in a way that felt too easy. After all that he put her through, he doesn’t deserve to have his art come easy. But art is never fair.

By the second chorus, Val knows the words. It’s hard not to zero in when you know they’re about you. She notes the way the crowd reacts, arms in the air waving at him like he’s Jimi Hendrix, cheering along, eating up everything he gives them.

Good, she thinks, he deserves it.

The lead into the bridge is still piano heavy, but his fingers know the strokes of the keys as well as his heart does, so he gets to sit up and look around, grinning as their fans cheer, watching the sky explode vibrant summer watercolors over the trees on the horizon. A thick, soothing breeze passes through.

He looks back through to where he saw her a few songs ago. He lets his gaze stay there long enough that she knows now that she’s been spotted. He licks his lips and leans into the mic, but keeps his eyes up at her, perched on the ATL merch table like she owns it.

He repeats the lyrics even though each word feels like tearing at scabs that won’t be healing for a while. He pours it all in, everything he has left, every piece of I’m sorry, every hint of thank you, every whisper of I love you, it soars out over the heads of the fans who love the words but don’t know the boy that wrote them.

They’re for her.

As the final note fades out under sweeping cries of gratitude from the scene kids that came to celebrate their home and community, Val stands, brushes the dust from her skinny jeans and secures her earbuds back in place. With a final nodding smile to Vinny, she turns from the stage and walks off in gigantic, loping steps to read about John Singer Sergeant and listen to Dookie on repeat.

+++++++

December 18th, 2017

Shawn doesn’t often fit most musician stereotypes -- he doesn’t drink too heavily, he doesn’t do any drug harder than weed, he’s kind of a serial monogamist.

But he does love a moody walk along a body of water.

With a pair of good headphones, a carefully curated playlist and a path along the water, Shawn can figure out anything. When he gets stuck on a song, he goes to the water. When he’s in a weird spot with someone he’s dating, he goes to the water. He doesn’t like to get too spiritual about it, but it does feel somehow clarifying.

So one afternoon in London when the sun is out and the Londoners are out with it, Shawn decides to join them. He’s there on business promoting the latest Forefront album with a Live Lounge performance on BBC Radio 1 with Nick Grimshaw. He’s jetlagged and a little turned around by the Underground system like he usually is when in London but he’s otherwise feeling just fine. He just needs a walk by the water today. He tries not to look too closely at why.

He bundles up in the Barbour jacket his mum got him last Christmas and sets off down the stairs into the opulent Savoy hotel lobby decked out with a Christmas tree in every corner and fresh garland wrapped around every non-moving object in sight. He smiles at it -- nobody does Christmas like the Brits. He’s looking forward to going home in a few days to see his mum and the rest of his family and decompress for a few weeks before heading back over to the UK to write and record their next album.

He gets reflective like this -- the combination of the water and the music offer him perspective he can’t usually reach otherwise. He tucks his hands in his pockets and sets off through the garden that opens up into the Victoria Embankment Gardens, usually lush and green in the spring and summer, full of life and people. He likes it like this, though, cold and quiet and almost like a little secret.

2017 has been good to him. Forefront played seven new countries this year on their world tour in celebration of their sixth studio album. He’s gotten a little better over the years about being more present in those moments rather than looking forward anxiously to the next album and the expectations that surround it. That attitude really spoiled the last few records, but the new friends he’s made in the industry have helped guide him through that. He’s even becoming friends with the Irish guy from One Direction now, though they had very different paths to the music industry. He seems like a cool guy.

Personally, 2017 wasn’t really a banner year. He broke up with Jess in April after almost a full year. He’s had a few of those lately -- relationships that start hot and don’t make it past a year mark. He should take a closer look at that and figure out why he can’t seem to stay in a relationship for longer than 11 months, but he’s too tired to think about it now. It’s been a long fuckin’ year.

It’s been a long ten years, actually, since Joy Ride. He thinks back to the show they played at home in Toronto over the summer to celebrate the big anniversary. They played the whole album start to finish, something they’ve never gotten to do. Being immersed in it like that brings back a lot of memories of that summer when everything really kicked off. Not all those memories are ones Shawn likes to think about.

He doesn’t think about Valentina much. It’s by design. He doesn’t even play “As You Sleep” as often as it’s requested. It just… doesn’t feel healthy for him. He’ll pull it out every once in a while when curiosity gets the best of him, when it’s been long enough that he forgets how sharply he still feels every word of that song. He usually regrets it.

He lets himself wonder about her sometimes, like today when he’s knee deep in nostalgia anyway. He still sees Raf and the other Streets guys. They went on a hiatus for a while around 2013 but are back again recording a new record somewhere in Malibu, from what Shawn’s heard. When he sees them, he doesn’t ask about her. He doesn’t want her knowing he’s asking. And he thinks sometimes he doesn’t want to know what she’s really up to, he’d rather imagine.

He falls into his favorite daydream. He likes to think she stayed in the UK (he always felt like that was the place for her to end up). Maybe she got a job in conservation at Oxford or Cambridge or some other hoity-toity university. Maybe she met a nice, polite, skinny, bookish English guy who looks at her like a miracle every time she speaks to him. Maybe they had a small wedding at his local church and his family loves her because she’s colorful and articulate. Maybe they have dogs -- sheepdogs or setters or something, good country dogs. And maybe they’ve had a little girl.

That’s where he usually shuts the daydream down. For obvious reasons.

But when he doesn’t, he thinks about her and who she might be. He thinks about thick, lush curls flopped over a tiny forehead. He thinks about pouty little lips and a chin dimple that matches her mother’s. He thinks about little feet that kick hard because she’d have to be strong, of course.

Now that he’s letting himself think about it, he thinks maybe she’d look kinda like the kid that’s staring at him, reaching out from her pram that’s parked next to the bench he’s strolling past. He smiles at her and she beams back with a grin that has only two teeth. It makes Shawn laugh.

He glances over at her lucky mum or dad.

And it’s almost like he expected it, like it had to be her. I mean, this kid really couldn’t have been anyone but Val’s. She’s just… so Val.

So when Shawn looks her over, from her sweeping dark curls and her leather trousers and her ankle boots, he’s barely even surprised to see her. He just tips his head back and chuckles at the universe.

“Hey mister,” she calls, and her voice sets his skin rough with goosebumps, “Can I have your autograph?”

Shawn lets go of where he’s holding on to the wrought iron fence above the banks of the Thames and walks over, his chelsea boots scratching at the frosty stone.

She doesn’t stand to greet him. She’s got a similar look on her face, bemused acknowledgement of fate and its tricks, like she was thinking about him too and they both somehow willed this to happen. Her long slender legs are crossed. She has one black leather-gloved hand in the pram in the grasp of her little girl who’s chewing on her finger and no longer paying Shawn any attention.

“Hey, Vally,” he sighs. He doesn’t mean to call her that, it just happens. She doesn’t visibly react beyond a slightly deeper dimple in her cheek, so he figures he scraped by with that one.

“Were you on your way somewhere?” she asks, glancing back as if she realized she might be taking him away from something.

He shakes his head. “No, I just-- I’m staying at the Savoy and I like these gardens. I just wanted a walk.” He has enough presence of mind to pause his music. He doesn’t bother to mention it’s an old Streets song. That she wrote.

“We like it out here. We live over by the Farringdon stop but we take the train out here because we like the waterfowl.”

Val looks down at the pram as she speaks. Shawn takes that as an invitation to acknowledge her more formally.

“Who’s this?” he asks breathlessly.

“This is Alice,” Val replies with as much pride as he’s ever heard from any mother, “Alice Fernanda Moreno, she’s nine months old and very hefty for her age because we run a body positive household and she loves mashed carrot and swede.”

Shawn lifts a hand and waves in that open-close way he does like he’s a big toddler himself. Alice kicks hard and squeals at him.

“She’s… so beautiful,” he marvels. Val’s smug smile tells him she agrees. Shawn doesn’t share his next thought because it feels like a line and he doesn’t want to go there.

Because she looks exactly like you.

“I picked out a real pretty one,” she jokes, tightening the wrap of the thick wool blankets around Alice as she yawns.

Shawn continues staring at her openly, trying to pick out features that could belong to any potential father, but as far as he can tell, Alice is simply a clone of Val. It’s Val’s throat clearing that brings him back.

“Sit, Mendes,” she suggests, patting the warped wooden bench. Shawn lowers himself on the other side of the pram as Val rocks it back and forth with her foot.

“She’s been fussy today, but it’s naptime. She has to give in eventually,” Val mutters like she’s reasoning with herself. Shawn grins.

“You have a daughter.”

Val doesn’t look up from the pram as she rocks it. She just nods and snuggles into her prim peacoat.

“I have a daughter.”

Shawn can’t bring himself to ask. She’s wearing gloves so he can’t see if she’s wearing a ring. He stays quiet and studies her instead.

She looks largely the same, barely even older than she did at 22. Her sense of style is maybe the only thing he can see that’s changed in the ten years since he’s seen her last. There’s something comforting in that.

He wonders if he seems different. He works out more now, eats right. He’s definitely put on a whole lot of muscle since he was scrounging for burger scraps on Warped. He’s gotten a few more tattoos she can’t see. He also has an actual stylist now, which is sometimes weird, but he’s elevated the black skinnies, Vans and band tees to black skinnies, $800 boots and silk button-ups. So there’s that.

He’s still got that lip ring though.

But… he wonders if he seems different. If he carries himself differently. If he comes off more confident, more calm, less wide-eyed and wondering.

Because she seems the same. She’s always glowed from the inside out like this. Maybe the glow feels a little stronger now. Or maybe it’s just because she glows through herself and her baby girl all at once. Shawn sits back and watches them -- he could bathe in it all day.

“You know it’s been ten years?” she breathes.

Shawn nods slowly. “I know. Kinda feels like 40.”

She laughs and a piece of him astral projects back to nights tangled up in her bunk kissing her neck and trying to keep her quiet so her brother won’t come mock them from outside the bunk curtain.

“It does,” she muses, “But sometimes it feels like fifteen minutes ago, too.”

Shawn tips his head back and sniffs, looking up through a tall pine as its needles shiver.

“Has your decade been good to you?” she murmurs. He lifts his head back up. She’s staring down at the baby.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s been great. We’ve toured a lot, done a few more albums. The guys and I, I mean, you know us, we’d push each other in front of a bus most days, but we’re brothers and maybe obsessed with each other, too. We’re on a great ride.”

Val lifts her eyes to his briefly, all too knowingly, and lowers them back to the pram. “That’s good.”

Shawn shakes his head. “That’s not even at all what you meant, was it?”

“Nope.”

Shawn goes quiet, contemplative. Val waits him out until he’s ready.

“It’s harder than I thought it would be,” he chokes finally, “Everything about it. Writing after Joy Ride, it was… it got bad. I mean, I was ok, like fundamentally, but I didn’t feel good. We had so many eyes on us. We had no idea what to do, just like no one else does. Some tours were great, some were bad. And the whole deal makes everything else harder. It’s hard on my family, my friends. I… I haven’t been in an actual good relationship in… five years, at least. This year was better. We’ve gotten our feet back under us. I let it all out in the last album, and that helped.”

“I know, I heard it.”

Shawn looks up from Val’s hands in the pram. For the first time all morning, he’s really, truly shocked to the bone.

“You did?”

Val doesn’t answer him exactly, just mutters something about needing to get the baby inside and announces they’ll head down the lane for a cup of tea. She leads them to a little corner coffee shop made for hipsters, not for women with very expensive prams, but Val doesn’t seem to care and parks in the corner by the fire. She layers down, stripping off her scarf and coat to a black turtleneck. Her cheeks go warm as she settles in and orders for them.

Shawn keeps his mouth shut and tries not to do the mental math of how many of the songs he’s released in the last ten years have been written about her, and exactly how many of them she might have noticed are definitely, totally written about her.

She folds her manicured hands together and looks up at him. His brain mercifully shuts off.

“It took a while after that summer for me to get there, but about three years later, I was around Oxford with some friends and I saw your latest album, on vinyl no less, in some indie record store. I suddenly got this feeling that I had to stop my whole life for a minute and go in and buy it. I bought it and the one that came before it, I said goodbye to my friends and I shut myself up in my flat for a couple days with a bottle of whiskey and just… let it happen.”

Shawn winces. “Wish you’d have just skipped over Making Midnight.”

Val smirks. “I wish I had, too.”

Shawn scoffs and leans back in his chair, mock offended. Val giggles and dumps an ungodly amount of sugar in her Earl Grey.

“I was glad to just hear your voice again, actually. I’d done a good job of avoiding it. Too good, maybe, because it was a real shock to the system when I heard it again.”

Shawn knows how that feels. He went through a Val cleanse too, a much shorter one because he doesn’t have her willpower. And then he heard a song she wrote with Alex Gaskarth for All Time Low’s Dirty Work and he let her back in.

“From then, I just bought your records when they came out. I really loved this last one. It really… I dunno, it just really felt like you, I guess.”

Shawn keeps his head down as he stares at his tea. He hears Alice coo. He looks up to see Val lifting her out of her pram to bounce her in her lap, baby in one arm, cup of tea in the other.

“God, it’s so fuckin’ good to see you,” he croaks, shaking his head a little, “Especially…”

He trails off, unwilling to finish. He ducks his head again.

“Especially with a kid I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to have?” Val guesses.

Shawn glances up and nods.

“Do you want to hear about this?” Val murmurs, ignoring Alice as she yanks at some silky curls.

Shawn chews on his lower lip. “Yeah, I think I do.”

It’s Val’s turn to look down. She stirs the mountain of slowly dissolving sugar at the bottom of her mug and sighs.

“She’s just mine. Last year I started to get a little anxious about my biological clock, especially given the last time I got pregnant. I saw a fertility specialist and we discussed my history and she agreed if I want to have children, it’s probably better to start now. So I went in for IVF. On the second cycle, I got pregnant with Alice. The pregnancy was complicated, but my doctor was a saint and did everything absolutely right. The birth went perfectly. So now it’s me and Alice against the world.”

Shawn slides his tongue against his lower lip, taps his foot impatiently against the leg of his chair. “Just you two?”

“Just us two,” Val replies easily, “There were a couple guys in and out before her, but I haven’t gone out with anyone since I got pregnant. I didn’t feel the need. I just wanted to focus on her. I’m glad I did.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes, reflective. Then Val stands and looks down at him.

“Would you mind holding her for a minute? I need to use the loo.”

Shawn bites his lip and nods, standing to complete the transfer. Alice is asleep in her mother’s arms, but, as Val explains with a chuckle, “she’s a snuggle whore -- she’ll go with anybody for a little cuddle.”

Shawn sits. Alice curls up against his chest and pops her tiny lips in her sleep. She radiates warmth from her little swaddled bundle. As he stares down at her, Shawn fundamentally understands why Val hasn’t needed anyone else in her life since Alice arrived. He thinks if Val let him, he’d never put her down.

Alice stretches a tiny arm out in her sleep and punches Shawn in the chest. He snickers, jostling his little bundle, but it doesn’t wake her. He starts to get comfortable, sliding down in the chair a bit so he can rock her, but Val’s hand on his shoulder startles him.

“It’s ok,” she says, “Keep her, if she’s not fussing. I’d rather she stay asleep.”

Shawn nods eagerly and strokes Alice’s back with his long, rough fingers. Val sits across the table with her elbows propped up like she’s physically restraining herself to keep from snatching her child out of his arms. It makes Shawn grin.

“You ok over there?”

Val blushes, caught. “It’s usually just the two of us. I don’t ever have to share her. I’m not used to jonesing.”

“I’ll give her back if you want,” Shawn mumbles reluctantly. Val giggles.

“No, it’s ok. She looks happy.”

Shawn hums. She does look happy.

“So are you working?” he asks quietly, not wanting to wake Alice.

Val nods. “We are, we work at the V&A in the medieval department. We just started back about a month ago after my maternity leave. The museum’s been very generous. They let me walk around with her strapped to my chest all day. She helps consult on various matters, charms my coworkers into letting me leave bottles of breastmilk in every fridge in the museum. I shifted from conservation to curation a few years ago, which is a steadier, more lucrative track. I think it’ll be better for us.”

Us. We’re working at the V&A. We started back at the museum. Shawn’s enamored. He goes pink and brushes through the curls on the back of Alice’s neck.

“Sounds like you’ve got a great partner here,” he quips.

Val is quiet for a minute. “We’re very happy together. But we get a little lonely sometimes. Like when it’s cold and mummy really doesn’t want to get out of bed but Alice is screaming bloody murder. Those are the only moments when this isn’t the greatest thing in the whole world.”

Shawn looks up. Val is watching him carefully. Before he can speak, she swallows and lowers her gaze.

“But we get along, you know. We’re ok.”

“Yeah,” Shawn says, “I know you are.”

They chat. They talk about Raf and his wife Rachel and their little ones -- Val and Alice will be heading across the pond to spend Christmas with them and her parents. They talk about Bea and how she’s spent five years with the same guy up in Edinburgh and she seems actually happy. They talk about their near miss at Alex’s wedding last April -- she came for the ceremony but had to skip out of the reception, Shawn the opposite. They chat through several more cups of tea, an array of pastries, and another nap cycle until it’s dark and quiet outside. Val stares mournfully out the window as she puts on her jacket with Alice back in her pram, gurgling quietly.

Shawn is silent, brow furrowed. He pays the tab with a ghost of a smile and thinks about walking back to his hotel to sit in his room with the TV to try to drown out this day. It’s… unappealing to say the least.

They walk to the door. Shawn holds it open for Val and Alice and considers that they probably look to anyone else like a young family that spent the day together and are headed home to a warm dinner and a cozy night in.

Val’s heart pounds in her ears faster than their boots’ steps on the crunchy ground. She wants to swallow the words, but she doesn’t think she can. Not with him.

“Would you like to walk us home?” she breathes.

Shawn’s smile is extraordinary. He looks up from Alice’s curious brown eyes.

“Yes, please.”

Support your local Ho for Happy Endings and buy me a ko-fi!

Taglist: @smallerinfinities @the-claire-bitch-project @stillinskislydia @achinglyshawn @infiniteshawn @alone-in-madness @alone-in-madness @singanddreamanyway@accioalena @randi-eve @shawnitsmutual @embracehappy @itrocksmysocks @yslsaint @peacedolantwins2 @kitykatnumber

#shawn mendes #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn mendes fic #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes fluff #punk!shawn #warped tour shawn #dad!shawn

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changed-for-safety · 3 days ago

Note

Thank you so much about the warnings about the gore

no problem I saw one of the first posts on the mw tag about a week ago, then it spread to a few others and I got worried it seems that the other tags have been cleansed but its always good to keep a lookout, yeah? I just want everyone to be safe but also know when to tell people somethings wrong. those images are extremely destructive to peoples mental health and can be traumatizing! the people who do these things are sick humans. I often believe people can change but creating multiple accounts in honor of terrifying minors and people who are just scrolling for fanart and memes is absolutely sickening, and I hope the person who started this 'trend' realizes how disgusting they are. I doubt that they will tho, they're too far along.

#⚠ important ⚠#francis yammers

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mst3kproject · 6 years ago

Photo

419: The Rebel Set

I’ve got two off-topic intro stories I can tell here and neither one is worth it so I’ll tell them both. One is that I did in fact have a four-hour layover in Chicago once. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough time to do anything but wander around the airport, eat soft pretzels, and be mildly impressed that they have an entire dinosaur skeleton in Terminal C. No way I could have fit robbing an armored car in there. Also, although I am from Canada I have never been to the Canadian Exhibition – but my grandmother once had a vision of Jesus there, so I guess it is a great place to meet celebrities.

Master Criminal Mr. Tucker hires three nobodies – an out-of-work actor, an unpublished writer, and a guy whose mom was famous for something – to commit a robbery for him. Then, when they’re all stuck on a train with him, he sets about murdering them one by one so that he won’t have to share the money. It worked for the Joker, right? He stages Famous Jr’s suicide and throws Writer off the train, but Actor (a guy named Johnny, married to a woman named Jeannie) gets wise and tries to turn himself in to the police. Somehow or other it all ends in a drawn-out foot chase through a train yard in which Tucker kicks Johnny’s ass repeatedly, until finally electrocuting himself to death. Johnny goes to jail.

Did this movie somehow switch titles with The Beatniks by accident? There are beatniks in this one, whereas there were none in that film, and there were rebels in The Beatniks, while the protagonists of The Rebel Set don’t seem very rebellious. Weird.

In many ways, The Rebel Set reminds me of a Coleman Francis film. For starters, there’s the dreariness of the sets and photography. The Beatnik Bar looks like it’s in somebody’s basement, it’s probably dim and chilly and the poetry is bad, and it just isn’t somewhere we want to hang out. The train never looks like a train, mostly because nobody bothers to pretend it’s moving – anybody who’s been on a train knows it’s never a smooth ride. The roadside where they stage the accident doesn’t look like it’s anywhere near Chicago (unless this is set in the same universe as The Beginning of the End). The railway yard looks like John Carradine is just around the corner singing Night Train to Mundo Fine.

For another thing, The Rebel Set is full of little moments that make no sense at all. Like the rich couple who decide to slum in the beatnik bar, where the husband heckles the one-eyed poet until they get thrown out. What the hell was that? It had nothing to do with the plot. Why were they even in there? Or how about the two ditzy old ladies on the train who sit around and have strange conversations with Tucker and the conductor? There was a moment when I honestly wondered if they were undercover cops but they were just… there, like the kids in The Beast of Yucca Flats feeding soda pop to the pigs. I think they were comic relief, but it’s kind of hard to say when they were so conspicuously not funny.

How about the conductor wanting the Writer to help him with his memoirs? The Writer takes his card but obviously doesn’t mean to call him, because he considers the material beneath him. Again, I think this is supposed to be funny, but it’s not. The conductor (who is later insulted again by the old women when he won’t stay and listen to them yammer) doesn’t seem like somebody whose life story is likely to be as interesting as he thinks, but the rude brush-off he gets does not make us like the Writer, either. I’m honestly not sure we’re supposed to like any of these guys.

Who is this stuff for, anyway? Is the scene with the rich couple intended for the ‘creeps’ or the ‘squares’? The couple are presented as pompous and patronizing, even the wife, but the beatniks are a bunch of fatalistic losers who are nearly incomprehensible. The one-eyed poet is clearly meant to be an object of fun, as is the ditzy waitress. The scene seems to be trying to have it both ways, going ‘lol, stupid rich people!’ and ‘lol, weirdos!’ at the same time, and therefore alienates both.

Also like a Coleman Francis film, The Rebel Set manages to squeeze all the excitement out of things that should constitute action and suspense. Red Zone Cuba had us confused during an invasion and falling asleep over daring escapes. The Rebel Set tries to have chase scenes, daring heists, and murders, but it mostly just makes us go, “huh?” The heist proceeds according to plan, with no real feeling that the criminals are at risk of discovery. The fight between Johnny and Famous Jr. on the train is predictable dialogue followed by clumsy fisticuffs. The chase at the railway yard goes on, and on, and on, while Johnny gets repeatedly beat up by an old guy dressed as a priest.

The only scene that comes near working the way it’s supposed to is when Tucker throws Writer off the train. We knew it was coming, of course, but Writer declaring “I don’t want any of your damn money!” and then the cut to the train going by, with the blare of the horn to drown out his scream, isn’t bad.

Yet another thing that makes me think of Coleman Francis is how, despite its bizarre attempts at humour, The Rebel Set as a whole is a No Joy Allowed movie. Nobody gets a happy ending. Tucker dies, but so do Writer and Famous Jr. Johnny survives, just barely, but he’s definitely going to serve time no matter that he confessed and helped catch Tucker – since nobody saw Tucker’s death, for all they know Johnny murdered him, too. Jeannie just wanders off alone in a strange city, having lost everything.

In fact, The Rebel Set is so Colemany-Francisy that I was surprised Johnny survived. I really expected him to be gunned down by the cops in the railway yard, no questions asked. I figured Tucker would get caught and brought to justice, since he was obviously the villain of the movie, but I thought all three of his stooges would be killed first, victims of his hubris or something. Instead, The Rebel Set hammers home how tragic the situation is by having Famous Mom show up at the end to tell reporters she is going home to her son, unaware that he’s in the casket being carried by. This tries so hard to pull on the heartstrings that, like Last Clear Chance, it loops past infinity and earns snickers instead of tears.

Does this movie have a message? I have some trouble with that. There are a couple of ideas that could count as a theme, but none of them work, and they certainly don’t unify the film. The most obvious is crime doesn’t pay, which is another thing that makes this feel like a Coleman Francis film. Both Red Zone Cuba and The Skydivers had criminals being punished for their deeds, along with everybody else around them. The only thing missing from The Rebel Set is the airplane.

The ending, with Famous Mom’s sudden appearance, suggests that there’s a side of Appreciate What You Have: Famous Mom didn’t take time to be a mother to her son when he needed her, and now that she’s decided it’s time, it’s actually too late. This could apply to Johnny, too, since it could be argued that he didn’t appreciate Jeannie and how hard she worked to support him. He lies about what he’s doing, both to protect her and so that she won’t try to talk him out of it – but he would have been protecting her far better if he’d just refused to get involved. At the end, he’s ruined her life as well as his own.

How does this apply to the others, though? I guess you could say that Famous Jr. didn’t appreciate that his mother loved him, but the point was that she was never around. Writer certainly isn’t presented as a guy with anything to appreciate, since the only thing we find out about him was that he spent years writing the Great American Novel only to be told it was unpublishable. I think we’re supposed to see these guys as men who lose everything, but they don’t seem like they had much worth losing.

The third possible theme is don’t get distracted from chasing your dream. All three of the guys Tucker hires have some kind of goal going on that they might have realized if they hadn’t ended up dead or prison. Famous Jr. wanted his mother to love him – and it is revealed at the end that if he’d stayed home, he would have gotten his wish. Perhaps this is meant to imply that Johnny could have made it on Broadway, and Writer could have been a New York Times best-seller, if they’d only kept trying. Rather than work for fame and fortune, they got distracted by an apparent shortcut, and it destroyed them.

Besides the ending, there are a couple of places where The Rebel Set is slightly less dreary than the Coleman Francis Trilogy of Tedium. We mostly know what’s going on, at least, and it tries to be funny even if it doesn’t succeed. Johnny and Jeannie are allowed to actually love and support one another, whereas onscreen couples in Coleman Francis films are usually bitter and distant. There are actual location shoots that aren’t in a desert somewhere and occasionally there’s music. Even when it’s not being as nihilistic as Francis, it’s still pretty bleak and dull, and I get the idea it was also made by somebody who thought tragedy was automatically art just because it’s tragic. It sucks, and I have no interest in watching it again without Joel, Crow, and Tom to lighten things up.

#mst3k #reviews #the rebel set #50s

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still-a-hetalian · 6 years ago

Text

A FrUk Fairytale

For FrUk Week 2018 Day 5: Princess and Knight

@frukweek

Summary: In which Arthur locks himself up in a tower, calls a dragon a floozy, and gets rescued by the most annoying Frenchman he’s ever met in his entire life.

A note on human names: Alistair (Scotland), Caden (Wales), Patrick (Northern Ireland), and Seamus (Republic of Ireland)

Can also be found on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15485028

All in all it really wasn’t too bad of a deal. Arthur would’ve liked to have been allowed to get out a little bit more than once a week (he wasn’t supposed to leave his tower at all but he managed to strike up a deal with the dragon who guarded him to let him out once in a while – most people thought gold was their weak spot but really it was tiny swatches of embroidery, weird, Arthur acknowledged, but it was incredibly more convenient than gold) but anymore was probably asking for too much and word would definitely get out that he could actually leave the tower if he was caught wandering.

It’s not like he would get in trouble or anything if he was caught, but it would completely ruin his plan – or more accurately his and his brothers’ plan. There were probably much better ways to avoid marriage than locking yourself in a tower with a dragon and telling everyone in the kingdom you were trapped but so far it was working out brilliantly. He didn’t have to attend to any of his princely duties, he got to read and embroider as much as his heart desired, and no one bothered him, with – of course – the exception of one of his brothers covertly stopping by every once in a while for tea.

The plan was going great, he only had to wait until the princess who was fervently trying to get his hand in marriage to lose interest and he would be free again. Though unfortunately, somewhere along the line though the tale of his predicament got muddled as it passed from person to person and turned into a tale about a princess trapped in a tower. Arthur could understand where the confusion came from, a similar story told to the brothers when they were younger was what inspired this ridiculous plan but it still brought on some unfortunate challenges. Making his voice a higher pitch when he called out to the “gallant” knights who came and tried to “rescue him” wasn’t that big of a deal, all he needed to do was wait until his dragon noticed them and burned them to a crisp, but still, Arthur couldn’t help but me miffed.

Unfortunately, as what happens to all great plans, they must come to an end, and this one was ended by one annoying French prick.

Arthur had been going about his usual morning routine of sweeping the floors and enjoying the serenity of no one to interrupt his calm. He enjoyed listening to the birds chirping outside his window until he heard the galloping of horse hooves approaching the tower.

He wasn’t expecting any of his brothers for at least another two days so that could only mean it had to be a suitor. All Arthur could do was roll his eyes and hope that the dragon would return soon from her morning hunt for food.

“Allo! Young maiden, are you up there?” Arthur heard a voice say from down below. He sighed and dropped his broom to the floor.

Might as well get this over and done with before he starts looking too hard at the tower, Arthur thought to himself. There was a hidden door at the bottom. As long as you knew where it was, it was fairly easy to access but most knights didn’t make it that long.

“Yes, of course, brave knight. I am up here withering away all by myself,” Arthur called out in falsetto, dramatically draping himself against the door frame of the balcony looking out across the land surrounding the tower. There was no way the knight would be able to see him from that ground at that angle but frankly, there was no harm in amusing himself so Arthur loved to ramp up his performances.

“Don’t worry I will rescue you soon, ma chere,” the knight called again.

Wow, so original, Arthur thought to himself and wandered back inside hoping the dragon would return and end his suffering.

Arthur tried to return to his chores but he kept hearing the pounding of boots from the knight running around the castle. This was probably the longest any knight had lasted but Arthur tried not to get worried, the dragon would be back any moment… and at that he heard the tell-tale sound of gigantic wings flapping as she returned.

Arthur stopped what he was doing and waited to listen for the knight being burnt to a crisp but it never came. Dropping what he was doing again he ran to the balcony to see what was going on and was greeted with the sight of a suspiciously calm knight holding out a bag of scraps of fabric to the dragon.

Oh no, they were just random scraps of fabric, but they were embroidered useless scraps of fabric. Arthur cursed the dragon’s poor taste in needlework and the knight’s knowledge. Countless other knights had tried to entice it with gold only to meet fiery deaths but this one seemed wiser than that.

He watched as the dragon sat back on its haunches and carefully looked through the bag, delicately sorting the scraps with its claws and peering at each one carefully. It would probably give the knight just enough time to find the door – except, the knight wasn’t there anymore.

Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck – Arthur inwardly chanted to himself as he heard the pounding of boots up the tower staircase. He scrambled for something to block the door, but everything would be too large for him to budge.

FUCK! Arthur continued his incredibly unhelpful inner monologue. He looked around and saw an old wooden chair. Fine, he would have to resort to desperate measures.

*****

Francis woke up with a splitting headache. All he could remember was running up some dark stairs, opening up a heavy wooden door, and BAM – complete blackness.

He tried to lift his head but was met with shooting pain and so resorted to laying back down and turning his head to the sound of a voice coming from the balcony.

“Oh you floozy, really? You see any old colorful scraps of fabric and you’ll betray me like that. How am I going to deal with this? There’s no way my brothers will get my message in time to help!” The blond man yammered on but his voice was making Francis’ headache worse, he had to give the man some credit though, it was pretty impressive to be able to ream out a dragon like that and live. He also had to give it to the dragon though, whatever it did wrong it looked pretty remorseful – if the giant lizards could even look remorseful.

Oh no, he was losing it, he definitely had a concussion from whatever slammed him in the head.

All Francis could do was groan.

This seemed to catch of attention of the other man in the room and he stopped mid-sentence. The dragon saw his opportunity to escape and flew off as the angry man stalked over to Francis lying on the ground.

Francis pretended to still be knocked out as the man leaned over him.

“I know you’re awake, who are you?”

Francis sighed and opened his eyes; his headache was slowly receding. Upon opening them, the first thing he saw was the man holding a wooden chair leg, ready to swing again. The second thing he noticed was the hideous tunic the man was wearing.

“Really, I come to rescue you and you’re wearing that, I may be able to save you from this tower but obviously I won’t be able to save you from your fashion sense,” Francis said.

The man lowered the leg in surprise and contempt.

“Excuse me?” The man sputtered out, his face going a little blotchy.

If you looked past the tragic fashion sense and monstrous eyebrows, Francis supposed he could consider…

“I’ll have you know! This is the height of fashion in my kingdom!” the man said. Francis tried to listen but all he could focus on were the black furry creatures pasted above the other man’s eyes…like dancing caterpillars – merde, definitely a concussion.

“…now I demand that you leave me be at once or you will face the consequences!” the man concluded as Francis finally tuned back into the one-sided conversation.

Francis struggled to sit up and when he did, he said, “mon cher, before you continue talking I need to clarify something first.”

The man huffed but let him continue.

“Am I correct in assuming that you are the beautiful young maiden trapped in the highest tower, guarded by a dragon, to be punished by an evil witch for all of eternity?” Francis asked.

“Oh god, is that what people are saying nowadays, Alistair is going to have a field day with this…,” the man trailed off, throwing the chair leg to the side. “Really? Beautiful young maiden? Evil witch? This isn’t a bloody fairytale.”

“Well yes, that is what the story promised. Instead it seems that all there is a grouchy young prince and an easily distracted dragon,” Francis said.

“Not that easily distracted, you are the first knight to figure out her fascination with embroidery,” the man told him.

“I’m honored,” Francis said, trying to get up. “Oh well, no matter. We must be going either way, I hope you have your things packed, my prince.”

As Francis got to his feet he looked down and gave the other man a winning smile, it would be easy to charm him, it always was. Unfortunately, though, he was met with an unimpressed face.

“I’m not leaving,” the man said. “Also, my name is Prince Arthur, please use that full title I have no desire to become familiar with you.”

Francis tried to not be thrown off by his curt tone.

“Are you not trying to escape?” Francis tried again.

“Of course not, why the bloody hell would the staircase be unlocked if that were the case?” Arthur said testily. He had a point, it didn’t dawn on Francis until then that it was suspiciously easy to get up the tower.

“Well either way we must be on our way, I still need to collect my prize,” Francis said, brushing himself off.

“Are you really going to be this much of a pain our entire journey?” Arthur asked in monotone.

“Are you really going to be so rude the entire time?” Francis sniped back, his patience finally being tested.

“Rude! I’m a prince! You can’t talk to me like that!”

“Well, this is no way to address your savoir!”

“You didn’t save me! I didn’t need to be saved!”

Francis caught himself before he continued this ridiculous argument. They were wasting daylight and they would need to leave immediately if they were to be at the king’s palace by the end of the week. He was running out of time…

“Are you coming with me or not?” Francis huffed.

Arthur seemed to consider his options before answering.

“I suppose I have to, word will get out about the truth if I don’t,” he sighed. “It has been a while since I’ve seen all of my brothers...”

“Well then. Grab some things and let’s set out.”

They gathered enough supplied for the two-day journey and set out on the horse that Francis rode there on.

*****

They of course, fought the entire time. They fought about their seating arrangements - Arthur resented sitting in front like some helpless maiden – they fought about when to stop, they fought about what sort of bird was making a call, they fought about directions, everything, every possible thing to fight about, they seemed to cover it.

Francis started to regret this immediately. Desperate measures though…

Hours passed and the sun started to dip down in the sky.

Finally, they agreed that they needed to stop to set up camp and eat dinner. Both completely worn from the events of the day, they decided to ignore one another instead.

They quietly worked around each other as Francis set up a tent and Arthur started a fire. He was fantastic at burning things he found after many previous cooking attempts so the job suited him well.

It was quiet but peaceful in the woods. His brothers had informed that this area of the woods was relatively safe to camp in at night but the next days journey might not so he savored this feeling.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Francis said, breaking the silence. “If you weren’t trapped, then why did you stay in the tower.”

Arthur sighed. It was only a matter of time before the Frenchman asked.

“Short answer: I was avoiding getting married,” Arthur said.

“And the long answer,” Francis asked.

“Listen I really don’t want to get into it but there was this nobleman’s daughter who decided to become infatuated with me once it got out that after my eldest brother became king I would need to be married in order to secure my future. Don’t get me wrong she is quite lovely and will probably make someone out there a wonderful wife. But. Just not mine,” Arthur trailed off.

“And why’s that?” Francis pressed when he figured he wouldn’t get the rest out of Arthur so easily.

“She has one major flaw.”

“And what’s that?”

“She’s a woman,” Arthur said flatly. “While I would not be the first man with no interest in women to marry one for the sake of show, I would prefer not to have a loveless marriage to someone who deserves much better than that.”

“And so you lock yourself in a tower?” Francis asked, perplexed.

“Listen, it was really my eldest brother’s idea,” Arthur started.

“The king?”

“Yes, well, the others helped as well. But it was mostly Alistair’s idea and I figured I might as well go along with it, but as you could tell from the stories, the idea got a little out of hand,” Arthur said.

Yes, Francis had heard enough interesting stories about the young king that locking his little brother in an abandoned tower guarded by a dragon might not actually be the most outlandish thing the man had ever done. There was one particular rumor Francis really liked that went something along the lines of within the first month of his rule he managed to convince a king whose the kingdom had been at odds with theirs for years that the reason it rained so much in his kingdom was due to a curse from an old witch that said that if any neighboring kingdom attacked them, the invaders’ lands would be flooded with all of the rainwater the ground had been collecting.

Personally Francis thought it was the most outlandish rumor he’d ever heard but after finding out the truth of Arthur in the tower, he was more inclined to believe the stories. Some people thought the new king was absolutely insane but Francis was starting to believe that he may just be smarter than people realized, and definitely more creative. Really, letting a harrowing – and very sympathetic – story spread about his poor “sister” trapped in a tower would definitely win some sympathy points with his new subjects… and get rid of any of the more idiotic noblemen in his realm… And perhaps distract people from any growing pains in taking over the kingdom…

Francis had been lost in thought for too long and missed the question Arthur asked him.

“Sorry?” Francis said.

“I asked what a knight would possible want with a princess?” Arthur said.

“Well the reward of course,” Francis replied. “And I’m not a knight.”

“You’re not?”

“No, I am a prince from across the channel,” Francis said, puffing up a little.

“Oh, so you are French,” Arthur said unpleasantly. “Wait, what reward?”

Francis was about to answer when he heard a rustling in the bushes behind them. The two froze looking around but the fire made it difficult to see in the shadows. There were footsteps, he was sure of it.

“My brother had said that these parts were supposed to be safe –“ Arthur said.

“Well hello there!”

The two whipped their heads around to across the fire from where they were sitting to see a group of men standing there smiling.

Oh no.

Arthur noticed what they were holding in their hands.

They were travelling minstrels.

Arthur immediately wished they were being robbed. It would be impossible to shake these guys off once they latched on. He would rather be beaten and left for dead than have to sit through the same painful songs minstrels always sang with out of tune instruments and obnoxious joy.

“We noticed you two travelling through and figured we’d come and say hi. Would you mind if we played a little tune?” the one man, probably the leader asked. His smile looked demonic in the light of the fire but Arthur knew the man meant no harm… probably.

Arthur tried to silently communicate with Francis to turn down the offer but Francis seemed to have the same “deer-caught-in-carriage-lights” as he did.

“I don’t –“ Arthur started to say.

“YES we would love to hear your music!” Francis interrupted through clenched teeth.

The minstrels looked delighted and started whispering among themselves what to play first. Arthur was fairly certain he heard one of them whisper, “c’mon boys this is the first time one has agreed in months we gotta make it good,” but Arthur was already trying to block them out.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Arthur leaned over and hissed at Francis.

“There have been many stories about slighted minstrels attacking unwilling audiences, we cannot upset them,” Francis whispered back, keeping his eyes on the band of colorful musicians.

“Oh god, this is not how I want to die,” Arthur started to despair.

“Exactly, which is why we need to make them as happy as humanly possible. Smile and clap and we’ll get out of this alive, okay?” Francis said.

They did as Francis said. For two and a half hours. If Arthur wasn’t so tired and ready to snap, he would be almost impressed that they were able to play for so long.

Next to him he heard Francis let out a yawn and everything went to a complete stand still. The minstrels stopped their music immediately and Arthur and Francis froze.

This is it. My brothers will never be able to find my body. Arthur internally panicked.

“Oh my, excuse us, it’s so late you both look like you’ve spent all day travelling, you must be tired,” the leader said, breaking the silence. “We should get going anyway.”

“O-oh, yes. Lots of travelling and lots tomorrow so it’s probably for the best we head to bed soon. Thank you so much for this, uh, incredible performance,” Francis said, sweating.

“Oh where are you traveling to?” the leader asked again as the others were starting to pack their instruments.

“My sister’s wedding,” Arthur said quickly.

“Oh where do she –“

“Far, very far, you wouldn’t know the town,” Francis interrupted the leader. He stood up and handed the men a pouch of coins as payment for the music, trying to get them on their way.

“Oh, well, that’s nice. It was very nice meeting you!” the musicians said as Francis tried to usher them away.

The musicians wandered off back into the night and the two men both deflated in relief.

“Figured it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to disclose our true identities,” Arthur said.

“Yes, that’s probably for the best. Let’s head to sleep, I think I may pass out if I stand any longer,” Francis said, heading for the tent.

Arthur smothered their camp fire enough that only glowing embers remained and followed the other man in.

Both were two tired to fight over sleeping positions, and if by the end of the night they had moved closer together, tangling legs and sharing warmth, no one had to know.

********

The next morning, they were quick to break down their camp. They would need to ride as fast as possible in order to make it to the castle in time so they wouldn’t have to suffer through another night outside.

The very thought of sitting through another concert in terror for their lives, was deeply unpleasant for the both of them.

Francis’ horse put up little fuss for the hard pace that they were setting, trying to get through the dense forest to get to the sprawling farmland which surrounded the kingdom’s capitol.

There was slightly less arguing throughout the day. The two still slung barbs at each other but they held more of a fond tone than anything truly biting. Arthur talked about his time in the tower and his brothers while Francis would talk about his home and his journey to Arthur’s kingdom. There was still that one question that Arthur was almost worried about asking: What was Francis after? He rode all this way to save a princess? Arthur thought that seemed ridiculous, there had to be more to it.

Arthur was about to ask again what the reward for his “rescue” which Francis mentioned last night when the city walls came into sight. He knew they shouldn’t waltz in the front entrance as someone would definitely recognize him and word would spread quickly. He didn’t know everything that had happened since he was gone nor what his brother might be planning so it was best that they met with him first before anything else.

“There’s another entrance that we can go to that links directly to the castle,” Arthur turned his head and told Francis. Francis nodded and listened as Arthur gave him directions.

They found an outcrop of rocks that when they moved certain ones, it uncovered a small hole that would drop into a tunnel. It was too small for the horse but large enough to walk through. Francis let his horse go, it was simply one he had bought when he landed on the shores of Arthur’s kingdom and figured someone else might make better use of it since he probably would not be able to return to it anytime soon.

They entered the tunnel and Arthur directed the way as best as he could remember. They were sure to be quiet as they went in case anyone was patrolling down here.

Finally, Arthur was sure he found one of the entrances in the castle which would make the least amount of fuss – hopefully - the kitchen.

Francis and Arthur worked together to lift up the heavy stone cover above them and Francis gave Arthur a boost through the hole, as he was the shorter of the two and needed help lifting himself up.

When he did though he was essentially popping out of the stone floor giving one of the kitchen maids one hell of a scare as she shrieked and flung the scones off of the plate she was holding onto the floor.

Arthur took one look at the sad pastries lying scattered on the floor and said, “Well isn’t that a bloody shame, they looked so good.”

“P-p-prince Arthur?” the young girl stammered.

“Yes. And if you don’t mind could you find something for me and my companion to eat – oh, and alert my brother I am back,” Arthur said, while helping Francis out of the hole in the kitchen floor.

The young girl seemed to have to take a minute to collect herself and then sprang into action, unfortunately still holding the platter as she rushed out the door in search of the king, or perhaps one of the other princes, which ever she ran into first.

“Mon dieu, what are those things?” Francis said, looking at the ruined scones on the ground.

“Scones, or at least they were.”

“What they are is an offense to the art of baking,” Francis said disgusted. Arthur didn’t even have it in him to argue back as she looked around the deserted part of the kitchen looking for something to eat.

Finding some cured meat, cheese, and bread, Arthur and Francis had their meal and planned their course of action. It would be best for Arthur to meet the king in private but that probably would not be easy – though keeping his return quiet might not even be an issue as the kitchen maid more than likely had already told at least a dozen other people in the castle already.

They had barely finished their meal when the young woman burst back in – still holding the scone tray. Arthur worried for her health.

“The king has arranged for you to meet in his chambers, we must be quick, there will be visitors coming tonight,” the girl said, in between gasps of air as she tried to catch her breath.

Arthur brushed off his clothes and caught Francis’ eye. The other man just nodded and followed him as he followed the girl to the door.

They wandered throughout the castle, rushing past some bewildered servants as they made their way to the king’s rooms.

“Who is visiting tonight?” Arthur finally thought to ask as they neared their destination.

“Lady Pemberton and her father I do believe,” the young woman said. Arthur felt himself grow cold.

“What’s wrong Arthur?” Francis asked, noticing his expression.

“That’s the young woman I was telling you about. The reason why I was in the tower,” Arthur whispered back to him.

Francis wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. Something in his chest tightened at the thought of Arthur being forced to marry this young woman as it seems the elaborate excuse not to was unravelling. It was sympathy for the man. Of course. Definitely sympathy, he repeated to himself, but he couldn’t lie to himself. Sure, the man was cranky and argumentative, and had terrible, terrible, terrible fashion sense, but at the same time he was amusing in his own right and there was something about his interaction with Arthur that just felt right somehow. There was still hope though… if the king was willing to uphold the reward…

They came to a large wooden door, and the servant knocked rapidly on it until the latch was undone and it swung open. A relatively tall man with hair the same color as Arthur’s appeared in the doorway waving them in.

Arthur and Francis entered the sitting room as the man re-latched the door.

“Good to see you again, Caden,” Arthur said to the man, laughing slightly. The man spun around and caught Arthur in a bear-hug.

Francis looked around and saw three more men sitting in the room. Two red-headed twins were quietly fighting about something or other on a couch at the far end of the room.

Those must be Princes Patrick and Seamus, Francis thought to himself.

Which meant that the last man sitting in a highbacked chair with fiery hair must be the king. Francis caught the man observing him and everything seemed to fall into place. Everything. The rumors, the plan, this was definitely the kind of man that would come up with such absurd ideas but still somehow pull them off. He had the same green eyes as his four brothers but there was something in them that seemed to make the man look like he was constantly sizing you up but also laughing at you in the same beat.

The king seemed to find something in Francis that he liked as he finally broke the starring contest that the two were engaged in, and reached for the glass of wine sitting on the small table beside him.

Arthur came up behind him, huffing and trying to sort out his messed hair. Caden, Arthur, and France all took empty seats. Caden sitting in the other highbacked chair in the room beside the king, while Francis and Arthur shared the closest couch.

“Well, welcome back,” the king said to Arthur, smiling softly. “I suppose you have a fantastic excuse for showing up so suddenly.”

Arthur looked at Francis then delved into the bare facts of their encounter and journey to the castle, trying to be quick. As he told the story, three of Arthur’s brothers seemed to be absorbed, but Francis could still feel the king’s eyes on him. There was something about this entire situation which unnerved him.

After Arthur finished his tale, he looked at Alistair as if to ask “what now?”

Instead of addressing Arthur, the king looked at Francis and asked, “And I suppose you’ll be wanting that reward that the rumor circulating seems to promise?”

Arthur immediately looked at Francis, remembering the mention of a reward from the night before. Francis looked back at him slightly uncomfortable but resolute.

“Yes,” the Frenchman said.

“Francis what is he talking about?” Arthur said flatly. Arthur looked at his eldest brother but the man only snickered and nodded his head towards Francis.

Arthur looked at him and Francis just sighed.

“The reward, ma cher, for rescuing the ‘princess’ according to the rumors is her hand in marriage,” Francis said, not quite meeting Arthur’s eye.

“You’ve got to be fucking –“Arthur started to say.

“Alistair, you won’t let this happen, right? We put Arty in the tower just so he wouldn’t have to marry,” Patrick spoke up from the other couch. The king said nothing but only shrugged and continued to drink his wine with a smile on his face.

What the hell is he up to, thought Arthur.

“Well it would be rude for our knight here to have gone through all of this trouble under false pretenses,” the king said sarcastically. A little too lightly for Arthur’s taste, this was his future at steak.

God what a prick, he wasn’t the one that was being offered up as a prize, - wait, Arthur thought to himself. How did he know about the prize? He may have heard a rumor here or there but…

“You’re the one who started the rumors aren’t you?” Arthur looked Alistair dead in the eye, not even trying to hide how much he loathed his brother in that moment.

At that, the other man burst out laughing. His four brothers and Francis looked at the king bewildered.

Maybe I was wrong, perhaps he is insane, Francis thought.

“WHAT!” Something in Arthur just seemed to snap. Either from the stress of the previous 48 hours, or perhaps the entire year that this charade had taken place. He got to his feet and it seemed to snap the tension in the air as the brothers immediately started to argue.

Francis only sat there though. It was a strange move but there had to be a reason for the king’s actions.

The king seemed to catch his eye and Francis understood.

“Well this was obviously the best possible solution though wasn’t it?” Francis said plainly. The arguing came to a quick stop when the men noticed that he had spoken.

“What are you – “Caden started to say.

“Let him talk,” Alistair interrupted. He leaned back in his chair amused.

Francis cleared his throat, suddenly a little uncomfortable as all five men – four of which he had never met and one he’d only know for 48 hours, a very eventful 48 hours but still – turned their attention to him.

“It was the best possible solution to your problem,” Francis started. “There was clearly no chance that Arthur would willingly marry any of the potential female suitors and this story created enough stir in the kingdom that it would attract attention. It became a trial of sorts for anyone wanting Arthur’s hand in marriage since they would obviously need to be clever and devoted enough to get past the dragon. But, this still allowed Arthur to have a chance at being happy since if it was a princess in need of rescue it was sure to attract many male knights wherein if they eventually did pass and found out that Arthur is a man then they could either chose to marry him or you could simply offer him so sort of financial compensation instead.”

When Francis finished his explanation, he looked at the king again, waiting for him to say something.

Instead the man just burst out laughing.

“Nah, mate, I did it just for a laugh. But I did enjoy your theory,” the king cackled, his eyes sparkling. Francis didn’t believe him for one moment but he couldn’t blame the man for keeping up appearances.

Arthur’s face went red and he started to sputter.

Before he could say anything foul though there was a knock at the door and a servant entered to tell the group that their guests were arriving.

The king shoo-ed the man away and got up, his brothers following suit as Arthur and Francis remained dumbstruck in their seats.

Alastair let his brothers leave the room first as he paused by Arthur’s side and leaned down to whisper in his ear.

“The man wasn’t wrong about this being the best possible solution. You can thank me later,” Alistair whispered, winking at Francis.

He left the room with a loud slam of the door leaving Francis and Arthur in silence. Neither really knew what to say now. Eventually, Arthur needed to ask the question that had been weighing on his mind the last few days.

“Why did you come rescue me?” Arthur said to Francis quietly.

“It seems that you and I are in very similar circumstances. I need to marry, mon amour,” Francis sighed. Arthur just looked at him confused.

“Then why go through all of that trouble?” he asked, suddenly feeling fragile. Francis could only let out a weak laugh.

“There were plenty of women to choose from in Paris but when I heard of the rumor of a beautiful young princess trapped, it all seemed so terribly romantic, no?” Francis started to smile at Arthur.

“But then won’t your parents be expecting you to have kids? Heirs?” Arthur said almost desperately. “This is all so sudden. You don’t really mean to propose to me do you?”

Arthur was starting to feel a little hysterical. At that, Francis simply grabbed Arthur’s hands in his and looked Arthur in the eye.

“Arthur I would never pressure you into something that you don’t want, and I know most of our time together so far has been nothing but violence and arguing, but something tells me I would be content if that was how I spent the rest of my days,” Francis said sincerely.

“God, don’t tell me you believe in love at first sight,” Arthur said very uncomfortably, trying to extract his hands from Francis’.

“No of course not, but I’ve learned enough about you to know that I’d like to learn more,” Francis said, almost as if he was asking a question.

Arthur deflated a bit at that, he could feel his cheeks warming and replied.

“Perhaps I’d like that too.”

Francis smiled and pecked Arthur on the cheek before standing up.

“Well now that that’s settled, we should probably go break the news of our betrothal to that young woman so her heart can finally be set free,” Francis said.

Arthur just rolled his eyes and snorted but followed Francis out of the room, all of the tension from everything seeming to melt off of his shoulders. He and Francis did seem to make a fantastic team…

The End…for now.

#hetalia #fruk #aph england #aph france #day 6: princess and knight pirate #day 6 #aph scotland #aph wales #aph northern ireland #aph republic of ireland #sorry I think this is a little late but i was allllmmoostt done writing it and then life happened #ugh #as it always does of course #anyway this is definitely the longest thing i've ever written #and am truly shocked that i was able to write this monster in less than 24 hours omg #my writing #fics #i might add on to this but meeeehhhh #though i really do want to flesh it out a lot more with their relationship with each other and the brothers' relationship

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the-firebird69 · 3 years ago

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and a few things may have been up with Mary, and we know the truth. Hera Zues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTqV9MEoyU0

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-01/pope-francis-mass-mother-of-god-women-dignity.html

poseessoin to preserve or juiced to max only lasts so long ok. tons of years no. and yours have gone longer but not just laying around gttting zapped.

Hera Zues

they feel odd as if they were meant to be blamed. and were by some. and no it is no surprise...what is to them is your prpensity to yammer blast yoursefl and your arrogance. as you have no idea why. nor do you want to know

Thor Freya

and a few reasons

Zig Zag

we wont tell no

Olympus

no we wont

Hera Zues

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curareblog · 4 years ago

Photo

{Maison Francis Kurkdjian (MFK) ~ Sample Set ~ See Reviews Below}

Fine, yes, I admit it. I heard the incessant yammering about Baccarat Rouge 540 and had to try a sample for myself.

As one small act of mercy, MFK offers a reasonably priced sample set wherein one can select four samples of interest. The packaging of the samples is exquisite and most certainly enough to make the author feel posh for five minutes. That is, until I realize that these cards are bulky and now relatively without purpose once I disposition the fragrances.

One sample I selected is now among my favorites. One is a perfumer’s approximation of chemical warfare. Let’s just say my hypocrisy was well placed.

Let’s just get this out of the way

Baccarat Rouge 540 1/10

First and foremost, any time I hear the word Baccarat I think of an absurd episode of an even more absurd show my cousin watched, where one of the “spies” referred to him self as “Baccarat, John Baccarat.”The irony here being that... in a casino... Baccarat is a game that is played... So why make your cover... Anyhow. Absurdism and silly name aside, I had to lay my nose on what everyone was raving about. Forums, YouTube, you name it. The words on everyone’s lips were “Baccarat Rouge 540.”

God, I wish they all would have shut up! Not once in my life have I been so inclined to scrub a fragrance from my flesh as I was when I sprayed Baccarat on my skin. The worst part of it all was that the fragrance was tenacious as hell and stuck to my clothing, my skin, and anything it touched. I seriously wonder if this was created to evaluate just how far humans would go to convince themselves that chemical warfare disguised as niche fragrance is worth purchasing.

So, all this fuss and none of the description of what it smells like. Fine, let me paint that picture. Baccarat Rouge 540 starts with two lines that intersect at exactly one, creating a perfect right angle. The rasp of cotton candy (ethyl maltol) and musty mothballs join flush to create a poisonous, fluffy, scratchy essence. This spun “confection” is then put in a rusty tin can, doused with stagnant water, and left to fester in a windowless attic until mold started to grow on the top. My significant other put it bluntly - everything smelled “dank.”

This whole concoction gives me the same queasy feeling in my stomach as I had when I read this... charming article. Almost as if Mr. Kurkdjian is pressing all of the pleasure points of modern perfumery not only to hopefully dazzle us, but also to slowly poison us at our most unwitting.

Ciel de Gum 6/10

This is a crowd-pleasing incense-lite scent that dries down to an inoffensive vanillic Yankee Candle waxy warmth. Ciel de Gum has a distinct grande dame vibe, as if the wearer might be so inclined to wear period pieces past the age of 60.

Grand Soir 6/10

Interestingly, this smells almost like a men’s lavender cologne, warmed up with feminine touchstones such as vanilla and amber. If Ciel de Gum was a grande dame fragrance, Grand Soir is even more so. Dark brocades and silks accompany black opera gloves that hand you a lacquered fan with barely a glance. The performance hall’s all lowlights, red velvet seats, and the stuffy sweetness of a decaying building.

Aqua Celestia Forte 9/10

My Longest Yeah Boy Ever.

Yes I know that’s not the original meme, but it’s a vast improvement.

Anyhow, Aqua Celestia Forte is the kind of fresh that makes you feel clean even if you haven’t showered in two days. It’s the kind of fresh that says, “Yes, I woke up in a 5-star European hotel and used their bar soap, put on a fluffy white robe, and threw myself on the bed with a sigh reserved only for entitled movie actors and actresses.”

Is it the most revolutionary fragrance in concept? Perhaps not. But is it absolutely compelling in its execution? Yes!

At first it smells like the citruses and the fresh elements are fighting it out with some soapy white floral background noise. Once the slug-fest subsides, there is an incredibly juicy jasmine nestled into the low hum of soapy citrus. It is perhaps the one fragrance that I’ve tried that successfully uses the strident zip of mint to great success.

It’s not for everyone - if you don’t like fresh, soapy, white florals... Well you know what to do.

#fragrance #review #perfume #cologne #maison francis kurkdjian #baccarat rouge 540 #br540 #love #hate #photography

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mostlyfrukheadcannons · 7 years ago

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Posting my late submission for frukweek2017 this time on Tumblr! It’s for the Day 5 prompt: “It’s really hard to say I love you”. Beware, its 9,228 words long, and there are slight spoilers for Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo! Or you could read it nicely sectioned out on A03. Enjoy!

@frukweek

Title: It’s Hard for Me to Say “I Love You” (But I do!)

At half-past three in the morning, Arthur wraps his mitten-insulated hands around a hot baking tray.

He pulls out of his oven a batch of souffles — standing proud and puffed up in several flavours — orange blossom, French vanilla, pistachio, lemon and so on. With a critical eye, he carefully puts them down.

So they dot his already crowded mahogany breakfast table. Swim amidst bowls filled with stuffed figs, pastries piled upon lavish porcelain plates, and a hearty mille crepe cake that brings this all together in a picture of domestic felicity.

It’s enough food to comfortably feed an army. But in the zero-dark hours of the morning, there’s only Arthur sitting down in his apartment to not-really-appreciate it. He listens to the droning of the London traffic outside of his apartment. Listlessly pokes at his empty plate with a fork. It’s just him, and his tired eyes, and his shoulders sore from cooking all night — aching to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

Mirthlessly, he entertains the scenario of what would happen if a few nations happened to stumble through his doorstep. Spot the burgeoning breakfast spread he’s set up all on his own. Have their minds blown, because surprise-surprise obviously England can cook...it’s been centuries and he’s not stupid.

Then England snaps out of it. Executes this notion with absolute swiftness. With a cool flame slicking across his skin, he thinks: “nonononono — the world must never know — never find out — he must never be known to cook competently.

Why?

Because he is England. English. Horrible-foodland. God Save the Queen, tally-ho and whatnot. It’s who he is, of course.

Arthur gags at how quickly this self-deluding lie comes to his mind. “Bullshit.” He’s perfectly aware of the truth. England looks tiredly over his shoulder, at the kitchen counter behind him, where he knows what he’ll see.

He sees the phantom of an old memory: A slender and handsome figure. Whose blue-ribboned ponytail is swept elegantly over his right shoulder. His nimble hands flying over the stove, adjusting all the buttons, as his lively eyes keep track of all the things bubbling and stewing. He’s got an apron tied around his hips, and he speaks with a gentle voice, teasing, “Oh Angleterre, what would you do without me cooking for you in the morning? Why, die of food poisoning of course.”

Then, there are even more distant memories, of a delicately beautiful youth calling across the fields to a stubborn bushy-browed barbarian— to come feast on the fish that he’s caught and cooked with a delicious mix of wild herbs — before it grows cold.

Gaul. France. Francis.

He doesn’t visit anymore. Not since The Quarrel . The lock of his apartment hasn’t been broken for ages. A pretty face hasn’t poked his head through the door — to remark upon incorrigible Angleterre and his damp little island — for the longest time.

Even though England has kept everything else the same — his stuffy attitude — his stuffier sweater vests — his horrible taste — everything that France would want to taunt England over, and more.

So shouldn’t France be here by now to insult everything with his poncey accent.

Shouldn’t that be the way things are?

If, there is light, there is shadow. If there are heights, there are abysses.

If there is English artlessness, then there is French finesse.

So where is Francis now?

It’s an absurd instinct, carried to the finest degree of stupidity. But Arthur is despondent and desperate. He will stubbornly cling to his faults and foibles, because they are the scraps of what he has left of their light-and-shadow, point-and-counterpoint, intertwined past relationship. And maybe, maybe if he waits long enough he’ll come back...the dead will rise from their graves...and frozen lakes will burst ablaze...The bright days will return...

Sitting at the breakfast table alone, staring at all the dishes, Arthur knows he is waiting for a moment that will never come. He had thought that maybe making a breakfast spread of his own could bring back the comforting nostalgia of the past. Instead, too many vivid little memories of better breakfasts crowd around the plates and bowls, gibbering and yammering, and just making Arthur feel queasy, and unbearably sick.

He ends up bringing all the breakfast foodstuffs to this homeless shelter. The lady in charge“Are you sure you want to give this all away? Again?”

“Sure,” Arthur replies.

After all, it’s not as if I have anyone I to share this breakfast with.

England walks home alone.

Really, if anything, England had thought that his relationship with France would end in a cataclysmic catharsis of centuries of hatred. The fallout would have been stupendous, the impression made on the world indelible.

Never in his wildest imaginings would he have expected for it to end in a gradual slide into total obsolescence. Not when for centuries Europe and the world seemed to revolve around Anglo-Franco powerplay and rivalry. These days France and England seem less politically relevant, especially in relation to each other.

The final nail in the coffin was Brexit.

Now England just sits at the back of meetings, watching France and Germany run the EU like an old married couple. Their dynamic is so powerful, they have become the de-facto runners of world meetings. Germany is relentless focus and brutal efficiency, forcing discussions to stay on track. Whereas France is silver-tongued, and quick-witted. He soothes the ruffled feathers of nations whose squabbles are halted by Germany, holds the attention of the world with clever quips, and generally maintains an amiable balance in the atmosphere, that facilitates the smooth running of meetings.

The two are undeniably a power couple. What place does England have in this new world?

In this, Italy is sympathetic. Sure, he appears bubbly as always on the outside. But Arthur knows that in truth, Feliciano is a complete wreck. He’s guilty about how his economy just isn't holding up, compared to the other EU economies. Hence, his disastrous breakup with Germany a few years back. Shortly after that, England had stumbled upon Italy in Prague, hysterically hitting on anything that walked on two legs, before collapsing from a pub-run induced alcohol poisoning. Since then, they’ve shared something of a silent understanding. Arthur checking in on Feliciano, to make sure his self-medicating doesn’t go out of control, and the sweetheart giving him gifts of limoncello and chocolates in to ease his pain in turn.

“Dude, you okay?” Alfred asks, concerned, poking his arm with a pen, and rousing him from his reminiscences. Like this, America only manages to remind England that while only a tiny strip of water separates England from France, but a whole Atlantic ocean separates him from the American, it is Alfred who is seated by his side in his meeting. While Francis (and Arthur knows he’s in charge of the seating arrangements), has found it fit to fling him as far away from his royal Frenchiness as possible.

Something inside him snaps. Deep down, England is still a spoilt and selfish brat — that wants attention — and will throw violent tempers if that is what it takes to get some.

When he and Francis happen to be in the same room alone (the latter innocently turning to the coffee machine for a drink), Arthur convolutes some topic raised during the meeting, angles it at France, and rips into him.

Let it never be said that the English are not gifted at bloodsport. In a matter of minutes, Arthur conjures up saints set on fire during the Hundred Years War. Sobbing surrendering French foot soldiers slaughtered on the battlefields of Agincourt. William the Conqueror’s Harrying of the North. The British military conquest of Canada. French-funded American Wars of Independence...and so on.

The effect is instantaneous. Francis changes from a graceful sylph, to an Angel of Death. His blue eyes become burning sapphire that can raze and maim. His creamy complexioned countenance becomes becomes cold ivory. His features are angular and cutting, far from the wide fond smiles the Nation of Love is so famed for melting into.

There is even blood spilt.

"You know what ," Arthur thinks, " maybe this is what we’ve been reduced to, this is as good as we’re going to get along…..."

And he resigns himself to it.

warning The Count of Monte Cristo spoilers here

Fate though, occasionally gets bored of melodrama. Sometimes other strings are pulled, other forces, set in motion. Situations transform into things startlingly foreign......and completely alien.

It happens one afternoon, on another world meeting. After a particularly productive session, when all the centuries-old minds of the nations were surprisingly engaged in heated intellectual debate, Germany calls for a four hour recess, just to positively reinforce that behaviour.

England sees no need to leave the building then. He settles down in some inconspicuous corner with an armchair, and pulls out a massive novel to read. The words thrum gently through his mind. The weight of it in his lap is comforting.

Unfortunately, he is soon interrupted. France shows up, with sleek glasses, an attache, and a few papers in hand. He says something about his boss needing England to sign the papers. England pointedly ignores him. France can just leave the paperwork on the table and sod off. What’s the point. It’s not as if they have anything meaningful to say to each other.

Besides, Arthur’s getting to one of his favourite parts of the novel. The skies could come crashing down, and the Brit couldn’t care less, especially if it had no plot significance.

And then, abruptly, the book is snatched from his hands. England is jarred from his meditative reading state. He looks up to hiss at France with fire, fury, and shock.

France is scrutinising the cover of the novel with piercing eyes, before he jeers out “Angleterre — you’re reading The Count of Monte Cristo?”

Arthur blinks, just as surprised as France is. He had just let his hands grab a book from his bookshelf in his apartment, guided by the whim of his heart, before he’d started reading, and didn't stop. He hadn’t, for a moment, considered the nationality of the book, or noticed the unfamiliarity of its language, when he had perused the pages. Now Arthur expects taunts about the undeniable superiority of the French language, along with rounds and rounds of humiliation utilizing this as ammunition.

Instead, France is furious, snarling out: “You finally pick up one of my works, at long last after so many years. You could have stories of fairies, of paradise, of kinship, just about anything beautiful. But you choose — you choose Angleterre — to bloat yourself on a story of REVENGE? ”

For a terrifying split-second, England finds himself buckling under the weight of France’s gaze, which is creaking with the baggage of thousands of years, seizing with mangled corpses trying to tear away from the silence that holds them back...stinking with gangrene and rotting blood...

But old habits die hard. Under fire, Arthur whips out his intellectual halberd and charges Francis.

“What are you buggering on about you gormless berk. Did you even read the Sparknotes for The Count of Monte Cristo? Fine, this is a book about the Count’s vicious revenge against those who have so grievously wronged him. But you would have to be blind not to see that there is more. ”

Arthur snatches the book back from Francis’ grip. Speeds the pages of the book through his fingers, until he reaches the page that he was on, before he was so rudely interrupted. He then shoves the book in Francis’ face, and says, with the irritation of a disrespected schoolteacher, “Read the section I’ve highlighted in turquoise.” Then he begins to lecture.

“O.K., there’s a revenge plot swirling around with the Count and his machinations. But other things are unfolding at the same time. Look at Chapter Ninety-Five. You may recall here the subplot where the nobleman M. Danglars (one of the count’s future victims) wants his daughter — Eugenie Danglars to marry this aristocrat she has no love for — to uphold their family’s noble image.”

“He reminds her of how she is tied down by her family’s legacy, their history. She must be dragged down with disappointment, if that is what the arranged marriage holds for her. Her history necessitates it.”

“In the novel, so far, we’ve only seen the example of the Count twisting his deeds to match the evil done to him in his past.

“See how Lady Danglars responds instead to her father’s insistence that she be tied down to her obligations and her history as a member of the Danglars history.”

Francis reads out the section:

“in the shipwreck of life—for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes—I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and consequently perfectly free.”

Arthur can’t help but grin: “Clever girl gives the middle finger to the illusion that she must live a life pervaded with a sense of waste — as a slave to her family, her past and her history. She rejects the marriage that is foisted upon her, and makes her own decisions unfettered by others.”

And then with more vigour and energy he adds: “Later, she even elopes with her true love, her singing teacher Louise d’Armilly, to the shock and scandal of everyone else. They create their own little love story, away from the brutal machinations of the Count’s revenge plot, and the novel.”

“Is that not beautiful?”

Arthur can’t quite read the expression on Francis’ face — the room’s lighting means that he can only be sure that his lips are wryly arching across his countenance. That usually signifies the sharpening of a verbal blade, and Arthur braces for impact.

“You know, Arthur, some would say that Louise and Eugenie were just friends that ran away from Eugenie’s troubled family situation. And that you are reading far too much into their relationship.”

There it is. Arthur bristles in absolute indignation. Takes up his pen, and jabs Francis hard in his chest. “And you call yourself the Nation of Love! For chrissake, Louise and Eugenie are said to sleep together in the same bed. Everyone comments on how intimate their so called ‘friendship’ is. Dumas even uses the phrase ‘the breast of Sappho’ to refer to Eugenie’s nature. He literally refers to the poetess that lived on the island that lesbians are named after. How much queer subtext do you bloody need?”

With an unassailable conviction, Arthur declares: “Screw you Francis. This is love that escapes from the entanglements and trappings of vendettas and grievances. Eugenie and Louise figure out how stupid it is to be tied down by the past, ages before the Count even has an inkling. They learn to, as Dumas writes, Live and be happy...wait and hope .”

Arthur stands upright, chin raised and defiant, challenging Francis to even try rebut his argument. His emerald eyes pierce deeply into azure ones. Until, he realises that his glower is completely lost on Francis — because Francis is laughing, mirthful and amused.

“I know, I know,” Francis’s eyes are twinkling, and he raises his hands in mock surrender. “I just wanted to rile you up. It’s so rare that I get to prod you into stripping off all those prudish pretenses, to expose you bare as the die-hard romantic that you truly are!”

Arthur squawks, and rather fails to pass it off as a refined sniff, before he responds “I’m just interpreting the text as it was intended to be understood.”

“Sure, mon cher, revert back to your priggish facade. With you, it’s always one step forward, two steps back — into splendid emotional suppression” Francis teases. Arthur is surprised to find himself letting out a shaky breath of relief, so he can’t quite respond to Francis’ words.

“Although come now, Angleterre, perhaps after Dumas, you could read a nicer book. A Tale of Two Cities, perhaps? A story intertwining both our hearts, our capitals...”

Arthur rolls his eyes in irritation. “The title is misleading. You mean a Tale briefly of London, but mostly of Paris. Chiefly about how sure, England and its justice system is corrupt — we’re going to talk about that for a while. But by jove, the Frenchies are so bonkers — we’ll spend chapter after chapter talking about how barmy they’ve become.” Arthur adds with a smirk, “I believe I don’t even need to read the book to know how problematic you are.”

Arthur is mentally shaking his own hands, congratulating himself for one-upping Francis in the literary arena TWICE in a row .

But Francis, for some reason, is grinning like a cat that’s got the cream. This unsettles Arthur deeply.

“Well of course, Angleterre, comfort yourself with a long story of the glory days when all the angry populism and demagoguery was on the other side of la Manche , and not in England. You would really need that now, wouldn’t you .”

Arthur gives Francis a warning look: This Taunt comes Too Soon, Too Contemporaneous, Too Fresh, don’t you bloody raise that up as a point...

“Because Brexit.”

Over 1,000 pages of The Count of Monte Cristo nearly smash into Francis’ obnoxious countenance. Arthur’s suitcase is next in line for his use as a makeshift projectile. Francis has the nerve to cheer, when it misses. So Arthur doesn’t hesitate to try knock Francis’ head off his shoulders, with the metal chair that he swings at the bloody git. Francis manages to parry, by raising the entire desk over him as a defensive shield.

It’s stupid, it’s dangerous, but it’s them .

Somehow, this is the best that Arthur’s felt in ages.

There was their relationship, rotting and shrivelling away in this coffin, with England staring at it morosely, reading it it’s last rites. Until out of the blue, it had sprung up, thrown open the coffin lid and screamed “SURPRISE MOTHARFUCKAARR. YOU THOUGHT I WAS DEAD?”. It had swiftly proceeded to upend everything all over again in Arthur’s life.

Maybe that’s the TLDR; of Anglo-Franco relations.

They exchange volleys of insults over text messages. Engage in snark-to-snark combat over phone calls (because real life face time is not enough to get it out of their system). There are long emails, that really belong to the long, winding speeches before epic set-piece battles in dramatised historical enactments.

It’s breathtaking. The alacrity with which everything had snapped back together. Arthur can’t help but feel giddy at the thought of how quickly they’ve fallen back in step with each other, because of how deeply their quarrelsome ways are coded into their being.

Things get so good, Arthur finds himself taking the chunnel to Paris more often. And when he does, Francis is always waiting for him outside the train station, with a smile, and some teasing variation of how ‘he’d gladly offer asylum to another sodden Englishman clawing for an escape from their damp, grey, island’. Earning him a glare from Arthur. Just like that, he would motion for Arthur to come walk with him along the glittering streets of Paris. And Arthur, would respond with some half-hearted slur like “You watch out, you cheese-eating surrender monkey. I’ll might take over your country by accident.”

Of course, there are still slip-ups. One time, after Arthur pops out of Gare du Nord Station, the first thing he says to Francis is “Ugh, why does your metro reek so thoroughly of piss.”

Immediately, he knows that it’s the wrong thing to say. Francis’ expression darkens. The wistful, romantic air about him dissipates into a horrifying nothingness. He grits out “Really, Angleterre? You have all the sights and smells of my beautiful Paris to behold, but this is what you notice.”

A knee-jerk reaction: Arthur scoffs and digs his heels in: “It’s true! You can't deny that there's the stench of piss. It’s what so many tourists comment on when they first arrive in your city. What use is there denying it, when the smell is wafting about everywhere...You might as well go around telling people that gravity doesn’t exist.”

Francis’s gaze hardens. Some tiny voice at the back of Arthur’s mind is screaming at him to stop, but centuries of habit continue to stubbornly push him along, over the cliff edge, to the point of no return: “It's hardly my fault — why should I be reproached —” Arthur can’t slam the brakes — “for telling you what is clearly the truth. You,” he points at Francis, “and your people — you talk of prettiness, and elegance. You say that everything must be perfection ...anything less has no place here. And yet —”

“— yet, when push comes to shove, your City of Love doesn’t smell only of pastries and springtime flowers. Your Metro stinks of piss. Because after all that, in truth, you will pick the messiness of the common people, over your abstract renaissance elegance. You let the homeless and the destitute hide away in your Metro, especially during the cold and bitter winters, because liberté, égalité, fraternité, and some things are more important than looking pretty.”

“Your hypocrisy — it makes me sick — do you get what I mean?” Arthur finishes furiously, his heartbeat pounding madly in his ears.

“Oui, crystal clear, Angleterre,” Francis purrs, his face now relaxed into an annoying cheshire grin. He readily puts his arm in Arthur’s, before sweeping him across Paris. Arthur is simultaneously infuriated and relieved. He’s not sure how long he’s going to be able to last like this — to be able to keep his trap shut and all the poisonous insults in — especially when Paris is such that every time he visits, he finds more reasons to hate the city.

For instance, Arthur can't help but tell Francis that You French are too poncey . Bloody hell, they just need to grab a bite at a cafe. But no, the cafe has to toast the bread, like the bread itself is a five star dish. And the fillings, what kind of schmancy-bourgeois stuff do they even put in there? And the system is also completely rigged, because how is Arthur supposed to make his incredulity known to Francis, when whatever drugs the French put in their food makes Arthur gag himself, by stuffing as much of it in his mouth as quickly as possible, effectively making him shut himself up.

And France is a den of temptation and debauchery. For god's sake, they have entire shops dedicated to just selling cheese (‘fromageries’), which is obviously just an excuse so they can pair it with wine and get drunk. And oh, Francis keeps plying him with too many wines, until his head spins from all the flavours, and the bevy of wine appreciation tips that Francis serenades him with in a lilting tone; and then the blasted frog has to nerve to laugh when his stiff-upper lip isn't so stiff anymore, and he can’t argue back properly.

And finally, French are just plain rude .

Arthur, completely drunk, just wants to stumble along the River Seine looking thoroughly put out by every French civilian. But this blasted bereted mine has the AUDACITY to mock his uptight mannerisms. This is nothing short of CASUS BELLI. He will respond by mocking the mime’s mimicry in furious retaliation! God save the Queen! So the First Anglo-Franco Pantomime war begins! Bollocks to the bystanders asphyxiating with laughter. Along with the French philosophical types standing around, watching he and the friggin bereted frog mime their way into satirical infinite regression, with all the seriousness they would pay some Derridian poststructuralist commentary on ‘sign’, ‘signifier’ and ‘symbol’.

(Eventually, Francis has to drag him away, while he's still hollerin“you got nuthin on Rowan Atkinson, ya hear me? NUTHIN.” “Oh Angleterre, there's no doubt you would have won. If not eventually because you would be arguing with an enfeebled old man” )

Francis, surprisingly, decides to return the visit — grace the poor sodden mess that is British Isles with his lovely presence — because what else would the poor English folk live for? Arthur meets him at Waterloo station, and greets him with a smack of a rolled up copy of The Sunday Times .

Together, they stroll through Trafalgar Square. Point at the columns, the arches and the statued impressions of people they used to know so well…...

Francis makes a disappointed crooning-noise in his throat, when he sees that there are no more vendors selling pigeon feed to eager tourists. “Really”, he sighs dramatically, “Somehow I find myself missing your crazen devil-hordes of pigeons. Your people and tourists eagerly offering up their foodstuffs to the winged harbingers of poor sanitation — and the inevitable ‘shitzkrieg’ they would unleash on your dear Nelson’s monument. The ultimate essentialization of the Anglo-Saxon spirit!”

Arthur scowls, but kind of agrees. Then, infected with French cooties (i.e.civil disobedience), he screeches at this security guard that’s forbids these parents from putting their little kids between the paws of the large iconic lion statues. Francis, backs him up with a shout of “Viva la Revolution.” Then the security team arrives. The Anglo-Franco duo chuck them into the fountain. And make what both have always preferred to diplomatically word as a tactical retreat .

On another day, Arthur meets Francis along his coastline at Dover. As Francis skips off the ferry boat to join him near the docks, Arthur tries to memorise every detail of the experience: golden sunlight glimmering off Francis’ hair, the salty scent of the ocean breeze mingling with those silky locks, and the way fresh air fills up their lungs, adding colour to their faces.

And then suddenly, Francis’ arm is wrapped and pressed tightly against his, his face smiling startlingly close to Arthur’s. It takes Arthur everything to try regain enough presence of his mind, to pull Francis along to this spot he’d spread a picnic mat across, near a lighthouse at the White Cliffs of Dover. From a large knapsack, he pulls out what he proudly thinks are ten particularly handsome kites. “Handmade — I designed them myself,” he tells Francis, with a hint of pride.

“Kite-flying? Surely there’s something more stylish and sophisticated we can do today, rather than this childish sport.” Francis sniffs, his designer coat and scarf now very evident.

“...Trust me, by the end of today you’ll be begging to take those words back, you frog...”

Despite this early vote against his plans, Arthur stubbornly hands a kite over to Francis.

As soon as Francis takes the kite, Arthur notes smugly, that the promising seeds of repentance are shimmering in his cerulean eyes. Francis lets out a hum of delight, as said kite immediately comes alive between his fingers — shivering and crackling at the lightest touch of the breeze. Of course, as one would expect of his nature, Francis quickly lets go of the kite, so it soars eagerly out of his hands, carried by the wind to a place amongst the sun’s rays.

After that, it’s a scramble — to get more and more kites in the air: ones that puff up like linen-clouds...ones that swirl about in a whirlpool of colours...ones that trail excessively long iridescent tails across the horizon...

Then, they’re laughing and trying to do kite tricks: loop-the-loops, cartwheels and downward swoops. There’s a little good natured competition, where they snidely give each other tips, and try to one up each other's kite tricks with something more extravagant each time.

After a while, Francis takes a kite down, and starts to tie something to it with nimble fingers. Arthur braces himself, and watches cautiously, because he suspects that Francis is about to do something mean — like tie a key to the kitestring, so when he lets the kite fly back into the air, he can maneuver it, such that the jagged edge of the key cuts off the string of one of Arthur’s kites, causing it to be lost to the sky’s void forever...

But when Arthur looks closer, he realises that contrary to his fears, Francis is not tying anything sharp to the kite to weaponise it. Instead, he’s fiddling with a dainty fairy-like trinket, that Arthur guesses he’d cleverly fashioned out his blue hair ribbon, and a few tiny seashells he’d picked up earlier — from the beaches of Calais before getting on the ferry. “For you, mon petit Angleterre,” Francis calls out, giving Arthur a cheeky wink, before releasing the kite. It shoots up into the air, and the fairy strung along to it flies higher and higher — with beautifully, fluttering blue-ribboned wings…...

Instantly, Arthur is hit by another vision from another time: when a young, and irritated Britannia spent hours and hours running across fields, chasing after yet another one of those pesky silk ribbons that Gaul liked to tie in his hair, which the blasted wind always managed to work free and carry away like a prize...

Of the summer breezes that would sweep over the tall grasses in the fields of Normandy where the two of them had first met, carrying the scent of earth, and grass and flowers.

Of the zephyrs, that billowed the pretty, voluminous tunic of a rosy-cheeked youth, and the dusty green cloak of an irritated boy that just wanted it to stop blowing leaf-bits into his eyebrows.

Of the wind, that tousled silky golden locks of hair until they melted into the air like spun-sunlight…...that cranked the windmills of two strange lands in the Middle Ages until their personifications started quarreling over whose windmill design was superior…...that puffed up the sails of English and French boats that took off on long journeys in search of the New World….or directed this ridiculous contraption fuelled by hot air that Arthur insisted was ludicrous but Francis maintained was romantic because it would carry a rooster, a duck, and a sheep for the first time in flight over the heads of the French court in Versailles….

And then, memory swings back again to the earliest days, when the colours of the world were too vivid and bright to actually be real. When a grumpy little boy would angrily insist that his self-proclaimed ‘grand frère’ hoist him up onto his ‘strong’ shoulders, so he could look at very top of the tallest shrubs, where the fairies would lovingly put their little babies in cradles, so the wind could gently rock them to sleep…...

Arthur shoots an equally formidable grin back at Francis. Because today, there is the two of them, running along the White Cliffs of Dover, with kites soaring in the air, like wishes trying to fill up the sky……

In the evening, just before he leaves to take a ferry back to Calais, Francis nearly makes Arthur’s eyes pop out, and his heart burst in his chest, when he admits that he actually did enjoy what they had for lunch: cod, cooked crisp in lard and batter, drizzled over in balsamic vinegar, and lightly dusted in sea salt. British, but snackable.

(Touch wood...Snap a wishbone...Find a four leaf clover...Hang horse shoes all around...will this luck last?)

Although, as Arthur quickly learns, some things certainly have changed, compared to the past.

The first sign is a cordial invitation that Arthur receives — to what Francis cheekily calls a workdate but what Ludwig calls an emergency EU prep session.

He arrives in Berlin at six in the morning, German time, to meet Francis and Ludwig at the station.

At first it is puzzling, and painfully awkward. Arthur finds himself uneasily trying to skirt around the powerhouse that is Francis’ and Ludwig’s dynamic collaboration. After finishing a modest pile of relatively trivial paperwork, and eying how the duo’s working styles complement each other so perfectly , Arthur is frustrated, and wants nothing more than to leave. But Francis pins him down to his seat, with this open, honest, anxious look that he probably doesn’t know he’s shooting Arthur — every now and then when he looks up from his work to glance at the stuffy Englishman...as though he were worried that Arthur might disappear...

And then, in a swift moment, with an intangible build-up, all the pieces fall together. Arthur starts sniggering at the sight of Ludwig and Francis scrambling about like headless chickens: Ludwig wildly gesticulating at Francis from across the room, and Francis indignantly shushing him whilst charismatically cooing at whatever vital personage is on the telephone.

It’s all too easy to join forces with Ludwig, to bully technophobic Francis into accepting that "there's an app for this!" (“The trick, you see, is to threaten to steal his carry-on chapstick and moisturiser.” “...NON, LUDWIG!!! DON’T LISTEN TO HIS SAVAGERY!!!” “Or you keep speaking with a terrible French accent until he agrees to use the apps—” “— ROSBIF DON’T YOU DARE —” “—For instance ‘zees eez le baguette ohonhonhon’—” “— Merde — ”)

The three of them fall in step with each other, when they escape from Ludwig’s office building, into the crisp wintery air of noontime Berlin, humming with the catchy tunes of streetside buskers. Francis chatters on and on about all the pretty things he notices about Berlin, Ludwig nods his head intently, and Arthur throws in his more utilitarian observations into the mix.

As they pass under the broad-brimmed shade of a tree, Arthur fancies that time slows down a little — just enough for him to observe how dappled sunlight falls on Francis and Ludwig, how jovially the former links his arm with the latter, and how he's looking at the dusting of little snowflakes on Ludwig’s nose. He feels something like the sensation of a key warming in his hand...the need to let out something from a certain door

“The two of you will be good for each other. I wish the both of you all the happiness in the world,” Arthur finds himself saying, quite sincerely, despite how each word constricts his chest agonisingly.

Francis and Ludwig are startled — clearly the ongoing conversation was nowhere near this territory. Almost too quickly, Francis responds: “Non, non, non, Arthur — the two of us are just friends —” he laughs — “with some benefits I’ll admit — but nothing more!”

“Riiight,” Arthur responds skeptically, not entirely convinced. Francis is not done speaking though, and Arthur reads depth in his eyes when he continues, “I however, along with Ludwig, wish you and Alfred all the luck in love.” There is even the slightest tremble to Francis’ lilting voice as he says this.

It’s Arthur’s turn to be utterly baffled.

“Please don’t say that in front of Ivan — he will definitely assassinate me in my sleep, even I was the one that gave him tips on how to proposition Alfred in the first place...”

“Besides,” Arthur adds haughtily, “I will have you know that I wrote a fifty page theory on personality trait compatibility, based on our American and Russian — complete with diagrams, flowcharts, and excel sheets. Cambridge is publishing it, by the way.”

Ludwig perks up, “You mentioned diagrams, flowcharts, and excel sheets.”

Arthur’s countenance twists into a deranged grin, and he whips something out of his suitcase.

Francis and Ludwig quickly learn why Hungary, Japan, and Korea rejected Arthur’s application to the Yaoi fanclub, citing ‘intensity’ as their primary reason.

The sensation of a key warming in his hand intensifies. In fact, it spreads out, permeating his entire being — as though the universe were wrapping him up in a swaddling cloth, and babying his every whim. And he sees in his mind a wondrous vision: a building full of doors, so many possibilities, so many futures he could walk into if only he were willing to use that key.

Now, that he’s certain that Francis is single and available on the market again — he can freely indulge in — and yes he can outright call it that now — his massive crush on the Frenchman. (he’d read far too much Austen, and Bridget Jones to not be able to recognise infatuation, especially if it had been going on for centuries.)

So he gives himself full licence to read too much into Francis’ every word an action:

Go giddy with glee when Francis casually comments that Earl Grey cream might make good choux filling.

Soak up and savour every lilt and syllable of Francis’ voice, over the telephone or over his shoulder, when they’re physically apart or together.

Or wake up with his insides completely messed up, when someone breaks into his apartment at 3am, wielding a bag of groceries, and an umbrella for fencing, because “ surely the second Great Fire of London will happen if incorrigible Angleterre tries cooking his own breakfast ”)

(All along his apartment, Arthur hangs: rabbit foots and sprigs of lilies of the valley. He cheers far too much when a ladybug lands on his balcony rail. If Francis notices this latest eccentricity in his behaviour, he does not comment.

Lady fortune has smiled upon him, and Arthur swears that this time, he’ll take the chance. )

Unfortunately, for all the best laid plans of mice and men, Arthur’s completely fucks up those he made for Valentine's Day.

The World meeting that precedes each year’s Valentine’s Day celebrations starts at one.

It is four , when Arthur’s motorbike screeches to a halt, at the base of the neo-classical building that the meeting is being held in.

Self-consciously, Arthur checks himself in his motorbike’s side mirrors. And screams internally. Oh God, his hair is such a tangle, not even birds will nest there, not even if the rest of the world were spikes.

And he probably reeks. He’d been sweat-soaked in sweltering heat, and then drenched sopping wet by torrential rains, before arriving. Only his waterproofed trench coat lends to his appearance some semblance of order.

“Dammit,” — he spots the nations slowly filing out of the building — the meeting obviously over. Cursing his own poor timing, Arthur dashes up the building’s stone steps, trying to make up for lost timing. His eyes dart to and fro, searching for a specific suave and smiling countenance, amidst the swirling sea of nation’s faces. But this quest is not too hard, for like how Ariadne’s thread guided Theseus out of the Labyrinth of the Minataur, there are clues to lead Arthur to the one he is seeking out.

You see, every Valentine's Day, just after this particular meeting ends, the self-proclaimed country of love will present each and every national personification with a single rose. Hence, the ocean of roses that are bobbing about in the air, held aloft by nations, as they make their way down the balustrade stairs. All Arthur has to do is barrel through these nations upstream, to the epicentre of where the roses are radiating from…

Arthur’s heart is pounding furiously in his chest, and into his ears. Trying to distract from the stress, Arthur keeps track of and counts the number of roses, because it’s like counting sheep right? Instead the stars dancing about his vision burn brighter — when a sonorous voice tangles with his thoughts, and whispers into his ear a lesson about roses, their numbers, and what they mean when they are gathered together in a bouquet...

One rose (love at first sight)

Two roses (your love is returned)

Arthur spots Tino and Berwald. Tino is tickling Berwald on the nose with the rose, as Berwald sneezes...Arthur can’t help but wonder if this is what they could be, as he leaves the marble steps of the building behind, and enters the building’s ornate entrance…...

Ten roses (you are perfection)

Twenty roses (believe in our love)

Thirty six roses (I cherish our moments, keep them in my heart...)

Abruptly, a hand reaches out from the crowd, and slams him against a pillar.

It's Antonio — brandishing his rose like a customised weapon of torture, his green eyes gleaming like the shattered end of a beer bottle. “You’re late, mi amigo. Bad move. You’ll want to watch out, if you keep making such stupid blunders.”

Behind him, is the ridiculous Prussian — Gilbert — crudely sliding the stem of his rose across his throat, and making gurgling and slitting noises for sound effect.

Arthur scowls, and pushes them off. Romano and Matthew are more much more helpful to his cause. The former angrily hauls two-thirds of the Bad Touch Trio away, screaming into their ears about micromanaging other people’s lives. Matthew the sweetheart, uses his rose, to point down one of the branching hallways.

Arthur firmly nods his head, and continues on his journey.

Forty-four roses (till death do us part)

Fifty roses (unconditional love)

Seventy-seven roses (it was fate that we’ve met)

Arthur just groans, when Ludwig brushes past his shoulder so hard, that he’s nearly knocked off his feet. He almost doesn’t bother to register the threat growled into his ear, “Just remember, I can snap you like a twig.”

How many shovel talks is he going to have to sit through? How painfully obvious were his plans for today? And does he appear so unreliable that nearly everyone needs to warn him off……

(Of course he does. To them all it seems like he’s just horrendously late, and for one of the few occasions this year that actually matters — Valentines Day. And yet here he still is, still wandering through these hallways, with the gall to hope that Francis is such a loser that he’s still stuck sitting around waiting for him, rather than the freaking pinnacle of gorgeousness and charm that has places to go, who deserves to be waited on hand and foot, rather than treated like this shitshow Arthur’s……)

His salvation arrives in the unexpected form of Feliciano. To Arthur’s infinite shock he silences Ludwig by pulling him into a deep kiss, his softness and reverence in touch melting into the rigid ardence of Ludwig’s figure. When they part for air, Feliciano gives Arthur a cheeky wink, that says “Buona fortuna”, and also “there’s still some time to mend things”. And then he takes off, whisking off a blushing Ludwig who’s still stuttering as he hangs off the Italian’s arm.

Well...that’s probably counts as a good sign….

99 roses.....

Finally, passing a corridor, Arthur drinks in a sight that brings him relief. France, still sitting by a window.

Even standing by the doorframe, Arthur catches a whiff of Francis’ perfume — lilies and lavender — that sings of softness and elegance. The sophisticated cut of Francis’ suit: a tight-fitting jet-black vest and a fuchsia undershirt wrapping especially tightly about his waist bring out the slightness and strength of his figure.

And of course, there is Francis’ hair, swept down his right shoulder in glorious cascading curls, it's spun-sunlight ethereality brought out by the solid shine of its rose-gold clasp by the crook of his neck. Their striking beauty is only paralleled by the intense vividness of Francis’ azure eyes, set off beautifully by the sapphire earrings hanging by each ear.

This is a siren’s song, each note hit upon so perfectly, that any sailor would gladly throw themselves to their watery deaths just to drown in that enchanting melody. And any bright-eyed youth after reckless Paris, would still hand the golden apple to Aphrodite over Hera and Athena, in vain hope. Even they knew the tragedy of the Iliad by heart...

(...Arthur wants nothing more than to to brush his chapped lips against the softness of Francis’ neck……

But the thought also makes him feel nauseous…..

Because isn’t that what the rest of the world thought, when they’d passed Francis?

Isn’t he permanently…’on call’ during Valentine's Days?

...For all the lonely nations, that can’t bear to sit alone with their frustrations, their hands, and a box of tissues… Just shoot him a text, and Big Brother France will be there...)

But Arthur pushes these thoughts down.

Instead, he’s preoccupied another more pressing observation: there is a heaviness about Francis in this moment.

His gaze is downcast, fixed on his hands. Slender fingers curl about thin air. Not a single rose rests between them... Not one rose for Francis…...This…...was surprising. Arthur wonders why he’d never noticed before, that hardly anyone ever thought of giving roses to the nation of love, when he gave them out so freely and so abundantly.

And so, the nation of love was now staring at the angry red scratches criss-crossing his palms — Francis never did believe in shorning roses of their thorns — looking oddly pensive.

And as the afternoon light streaming from the window by him fades, eerie things are done to the depths of his face. Shadows pool in the callouses on his palms, and in the shallows under his eyes that Francis always pretends isn’t there….

“You reek, you know. Like someone who got dumped in a ditch full of roses. No wonder they warn — that the fragrance of roses lingers around the the hand that gives them out. Really, frog. You should have listened —”

Francis looks up.

Arthur tries to (casually) slide himself to the seat beside Francis. For a moment, he sees Francis’ expression melt into appreciative relief, before a thought flits across his mind — that crashes indignance and hurt across his face like a rogue wave.

“Well if it isn't the Black Sheep of Europe — I don't suppose he has any reason for why he’s so unfashionably late, on the day of l’amour. ”

Arthur blinks, the glinting edge of the rapier in Francis’ voice cutting deep into him.

“I’m sorry...I’m truly sorry...I got…...held up,” Arthur fumbles for words. In a blind panic, he sticks his hand on the inside of his trench coat and sparks some magic there. “Here’s a peace offering though?” he manages to say out nervously,

With trepidation, he pulls out of his coat flaps a steaming cup of tea that he’d just conjured up then and there.

He slides it anxiously, across the table to Francis, watching closely for his reaction.

For a moment, it seems like he’s forgiven.

Francis gives him a funny look — one elegant eyebrow raised, and one corner of his lips quirked slightly downward. His hands catch and cradle the steaming cup, so the porcelain warms the cuts on his palms. The spark starting in Francis’ eye suggests that he is mildly impressed with how the silvery bud that slowly blooms in the cup as it absorbs the heat of the water swirling about it. And after he lifts the cup to his lips to take a first sip, the cerulean depths of his pupils are alight with all the wondrous velocity of thought that an experienced chef greets a flavourful drink.

‘Of course he likes it’, Arthur thinks giddily, ‘I just stole it from Queen Titania, Ruler of all the Fae folk, with a shoddy spell’. One day, he’ll wake up cursed to be a crumpet, his eyebrows mounted above the Fairy Queens throne. But for now, he thinks that it's all worth it…...

Then abruptly, Francis’ expression crumples, as though stricken by a thought so terrible, the tea’s tastes more abhorrent than bile. He sets the cup down with a sigh so heavy, it threatens to crumble all of Arthur’s being.

Silence looms over them, like the blade of a guillotine.

When Francis finally speaks, his voice is soft — but in the way physics states that the light flutter of a butterfly’s wing might sets off a tornado elsewhere. “Thank you Arthur, I appreciate the tea. But it still doesn’t change one very important fact…” Here, Francis pauses briefly...

“Arthur, you were busy preparing something special for someone else during today , which is why you were late — I know.”

Immediately, Arthur starts protesting, but the intense quality of Francis’ gaze crushes all his words.

“No — I have to say this, let me finish Angleterre.”

So Arthur stares at him, like his whole existence boils down to Francis’ every breath, and word, and expression.

“Listen, Arthur — you certainly won’t believe your ears when you hear it.”

There’s a laugh, silvery and lovely in the way beautiful and tragic things are.

“It’s hard for me to say I love you…...but please believe me when I say… that I truly do.”

“Oh,” Arthur thinks, completely dazed.

“Mon coeur, mon beau Angleterre. I have wasted all my poetry and art on whirlwind romances. I have lavished my most passionate kisses and most skillful moves in bed on the most trivial one-night stands. So now…...I have nothing truly special to give you, no matter how much I want to...So it is no wonder…” — here Francis chokes a little — “it no wonder you don't return my feelings. You are wise, you keep your loveliest turns of phrase, and your most ardent declarations of love to yourself — until that special person that manages to capture your heart comes along. I am clearly not that person…”

“I know — I can see it from how you smile, amused, whenever you see me flirt with others — like you’re watching the silly antics of some wool-brained eccentric. When it already drives me crazy just seeing you chatter with Alfred, even though I know now that you’re only brothers.”

“We shouldn’t talk to each other for a while after this, just give me enough time to get over — ”

Sharply, Francis stops. Arthur stares at him blankly in return. Their eyes shift slowly to their hands. Arthur’s hands have caught Francis’ midair, just a heartbeat before they could fly to Francis’ silken locks, to tug at them like he does when he’s distressed.

Arthur gently sets Francis’ hands on his lap, his emerald eyes never wavering from cerulean. Then he tries to find words, not even the best ones, just anything to fill the silence between them before the moment slips away. Eventually he settles on this as an opening line: “Francis, you’re completely wrong.” Because isn't that what he’d always loved to tell him, since long ago?

“You...make too much of my hesitance to express affection. I am just as afraid as you are, of baring my heart, and making myself vulnerable. In fact it’s also lack of practice, that makes me unwilling to try put my...fondness for you into words.”

“And your flirting...you’re kind of right — I’m always entranced when I watch you do it — the way with a few words and fashion tips, you bring out the charm in anyone. Until the world stops spinning, and we all realise that oh god, the person you were hitting on, they were beautiful all along. I’ve seen you make the days of so many strangers like that. You’re also partly wrong, however, because it strains all of my acting skills to stop my jealousy from showing…especially whenever you find the need to preface anything nice you do for me with “Big Brother France”......”

“But back to my reluctance to voice my deepest the feelings of my heart. You know I don’t have practice, so it’s hard for me to say I love you — even though by God, I do! But fortunately, for clumsy idiots for me there are…”

Arthur sparks some more magic under the table, hoping desperately with all his heart that this magic spells works.

It does. After a dazzling flash of light, Francis gasps — because bouquets of roses start falling all around them in a neat circle. Ten bouquets in total. Ten roses in them each. Arthur catches one, and holds it out to Francis.

“Fortunately for idiots like me, who are clumsy with words...there are roses.”

Arthur is breathless, so the words come out raspily, not at all suave. And with the loud ringing in his ears from how bloody petrified he is, he can’t quite hear whatever words Francis is whispering.

The roses in the bouquet — they come in a disorganised riot of colours, and varieties, shapes and sizes. There’s only one common thing that these roses share, that unifies them into a bouquet…...

“They’re nothing much,” Arthur chokes out with a dry mouth. “Florists find them all the time, in their supplies of roses that are delivered to them. But they throw them away, because these roses are deformed, and ugly.”

Which is, again, a half-truth.

Because what Arthur wants to ask Francis is this: Doesn’t he also think, that in a most peculiar way, these ‘defective’ roses are beautiful?

That although these blossoms are no doubt nature’s ‘mistakes’, don’t they look so tender? Coming from all over the world, and despite being such garden varieties, haven’t they all still found something special? Appearing like petaled-lovers that had pressed against each other so ardently, that the faeries granted their wish and allowed them to join together as one.

Aren’t these roses, freaks of nature, just as freakish as like the two of them -- personifications of their nations but also just human? And can Arthur and Francis be like these roses...drawing close together…...?

But all these meanings are scattered everywhere in his mind — he can't gather them up together and present them nicely to Francis like a gift. Not like how he could call in favours from all the faerie folk in the world, to gather all these peculiar roses together into a bouquet for Francis. Or madly teleport about florist shops in England using his nation-shifting abilities, to scrounge up these roses, until he was almost too late for the meeting today. It’s just him and his emotional stuntedness now. And argh, he knows he’s doing that sullen, brooding thing right now, where he just sulks at Francis like a child. All while expecting the Frenchman to know exactly what he wants to say, even if Arthur himself can’t make sense of the awful mishmash of his own feelings that slosh about him.

Francis pulls through. His right hand lightly carcasses one of Arthur's cheeks, and thumbs the rims of his ear so fondly, it sends shivers ricocheting down Arthur’s spine.

Slowly, Francis guides Arthur closer, while himself leaning slightly forward. Until their lips meet. Arthur can’t help but let out a contented sigh when that happens. Francis’ lips are softer than he could ever have imagined, and there’s the sweet taste of whatever vanilla chapstick he’s using. Embarrassingly enough, when Francis’ tongue flicks out to lick his lips and he can't help but laugh and draw away slightly. To look into cerulean eyes, glistening slightly with tears, because if Francis is feeling anything close to what he’s feeling, then of course he’s crying, his heart is close to bursting with happiness.

They both laugh.

“Well, mon amour, I’m glad we haven’t missed out on any of the typical drama that happens during a love confession scene in literature — !” Arthur and he snigger.

“But,” Francis swiftly adds, “Perhaps it is now time for us to move to more...intimate forms to express our mutual admiration .” His hands now suggestively tug at the collar of Arthur’s trenchcoat, as his being takes on a despicably debonair mien.

Arthur rolls his eyes, “You’re incorrigible, you know that? Are you sure you don’t want me to freshen up first? I think I need a shower.”

“Trust me, with your hair ruffled like that, and your crisp scent of guy and petrichor -- you’re the delectable embodiment of boyishness begging to be defiled.” — and that voice immediately sends all of Arthur’s blood running up his face, but also down south.

So Arthur smirks, and leans back, and lets Francis take him just like that.

THE END!

Hope you enjoyed it!

#day 5: “It’s really hard to say ‘I love you’.”/Peach #frukweek2017 #fanfiction #late submission

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