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fadyelj · 2 months ago

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All Summers End In Beirut

That summer in Beirut was never meant to be a journey inward; it was a time to shed the tension that had been building for years, a silent rage caged behind words, waiting for release. If I hadn’t confined it to words alone, that rage might have carved valleys out of stone. Instead, Beirut had to become the channel, blurring into nights spent chain-smoking in dimly lit pubs, romances that ended at dawn, and goodbyes that lived only on social media — Adieu, my dearest Beirut, though Beirut would know better.

I didn’t come here to romanticize the city or to make sense of my past. Beirut was simply the stage for a deliberate escape, a place to lose myself, not to find myself. Depth? I didn’t want it. Self-discovery? Even less.

You go to Paris to find yourself, not Beirut.

They say romantics run from reality, but I think the opposite can be true. Sometimes, it’s the realists who are drawn to it, clinging to the poetry of a place like Beirut, knowing full well the inevitable heartbreak. Still, they chase it, how can they live knowing that the greatest art has always been born from the agony of others.

Most who know me now might think I loved Lebanon from the very start, that my attachment was unshakeable, rooted in my childhood. And yes, I loved it — loved the version my father painted in late-night stories, those poetic tales he’d spin after slipping me a few bills for my Arabic lessons. My American-born Lebanese mother would look on, quiet but approving, as if to remind me that the language, the culture, was theirs, and that I was the inheritor of this beautiful burden. I memorized Ana esme Fady, w ana mn el Lebnan before anything else, words embedded as deeply in my identity as my own name.

My childhood was grown around Lebanon , a world away, yet vivid, woven from stories passed down like folklore. For years, my father’s tales could hold a magic of their own, sketching a distant land in colors bright and cinematic . But as soon as I began to think critically, that magic wore thin. I dug deeper, searching for something beyond his poetic recollections — and, yes, I found it. I just didn’t like what I saw. The stories, once so full of promise, started to feel threadbare, unable to hold up to the truth I’d uncovered. Resentment crept in. I felt the weight of belonging to a place I’d barely touched, a version of Lebanon that felt faded, passed down like an old newspaper, each retelling dulling its colors.

My father never wanted us to inherit his hate for the ugly parts of Lebanon. But the more I learned, the more I felt its grip on me. My God, as I fell down the rabbit hole of history and politics, the anger took root. I hated it. I hated my people. How could they turn heaven into hell? What gave them the right? I was only a child, but even as an adult, I still can’t find the answers. The unfairness of it all punctured me — the idea of a “home” drilled into my mind, yet always out of reach. Baba’s explanations never quite satisfied me. How could they do what they did? This new idea of Lebanon felt like a burden I hadn’t asked for, a heritage as heavy as it was distant. My anger grew as fierce as my love once was, aimed at my parents for planting this identity inside me, one that felt both too far away to reach and yet too close to escape.

When you’re a child born to the diaspora, there’s a harsh awakening. The stories you once loved take on shadows, and you begin to see yourself as part of a fractured history. A life in the diaspora is unforgiving, forcing you to carry a culture defined by survival and loss, a homeland that calls to you just as it keeps you at arm’s length. And yet, you’re expected to honor it, to love it. But where the hell was it for me all these years?

In those years of resentment, I lost myself in what you might call the most “American” ways possible — masking everything behind a polished exterior, where emotions were kept in check, and vulnerability was a distant concept. I crafted a composed, respectful façade, presenting a calm demeanor to the world while slipping in and out of identities like costumes, each one leaving its mark until the reflection in the mirror became unrecognizable. Certain truths I’ve kept buried, tucked away, left unspoken for the sake of the moshtamaa and a culture that expects us to live in quiet service to its ideals. Those years were a season of cold, each step pulling me further from warmth, further from a true self I could barely reach. Even today, I find myself still living in service to the moshtamaa. If I weren’t, wouldn’t I be writing freely?

But the moshtamaa wins, as it always does, leaving two choices: pretend and save face, or die by its sword. So, I’ve learned to play the game we all know too well, the one practiced behind closed doors. I walk the line between what’s true and what’s accepted, balancing carefully, learning to give just enough to satisfy but not enough to betray what lies beneath.

Today, though, I’m grateful to have found warmth again, in places I least expected, maybe even in Beirut itself. If this story is about anything, it’s about laying the bricks for a return that would come later — a return built on facing myself under a different sun, through eyes altered by time and distance, in a city that doesn’t promise forgiveness but offers, perhaps, the faint hope of reconciliation.

I’ve always considered myself a pessimist — or at least I was. Now, I’m less certain. Do you believe in naseeb? In the idea that everything is maktoub? Most days, I do. When the world throws me down, leaving me to stare at the pieces of something I thought I’d built, it’s almost comforting to believe this was fate, set out by some higher power. It’s a rational way to face my failures, a way to soften the edges of my shortcomings — and my friends, there have been many.

But then, there are other days, those rare days when my focus sharpens or when I’m medicated enough to believe fully in my own power. On those days, I don’t believe in naseeb. In those moments, it’s up to me to seize the world, to mold it, to make it my own. I’ve tasted the highest highs and endured the lowest lows, and somewhere between them, naseeb lingers in the background, watching, almost amused. Funny thing, this naseeb — it’s there when you’re at your worst, a crutch to lean on. But at your best, you realize it’s only ever been a story you’ve told yourself to make sense of things.

That’s why, sometimes, I hated this culture — or is it society pretending to be culture? I haven’t spent hours dissecting the difference. But I still wonder why this culture sometimes feels like a weight. Kindness can be a strength, yet sometimes it feels like a burden, a weakness we carry with pride. We’re so polite, even in revolution, so restrained, so respectful. We humanize everything. As Lebanese, we’re raised to be hospitable, welcoming, open-handed, even to those who come to tear us down.

It’s birthed into our history, in the very fabric of who we are. We’ve been the greatest lovers, poets, philosophers, building legacies out of words, hospitality, and resilience — but at what cost? We’ve shown grace to invaders, generosity to those who left scars, keeping that welcoming face, even as our eyes are gouged out . This hospitality, is it a survival instinct or our own self-inflicted wound?

We offer kindness to those who have broken us, a habit we can’t seem to shake. And that, more than anything, reminds me I’m Lebanese. Not through resilience, but in this weakness, this tendency to submit to fate and rationalize everything through comforts like naseeb. We’ll rationalize until it destroys us, convincing ourselves it’s out of our hands, that we’re powerless in the grand scheme. Maybe that’s the true Lebanese trait: cloaking our wounds in politeness, surrendering to the story we’ve been told is maktoub.

That summer in Lebanon was meant to last just two weeks — enough time to keep my mother from losing her wits and for me to avoid getting too attached. Lebanon was on the brink of a full-blown economic collapse, but somehow it was still the kind of crisis you could strangely enjoy. We Lebanese have a talent for squeezing joy out of hell itself. But the food poisoning was relentless; I swear I had more bouts of it than actual meals. Gas was scarce, leaving me stranded in the Chouf for two weeks alone. The electricity cuts, ones I’d later learn to base my schedule around, were already routine.

In 2021, Lebanon was cheap if you had U.S. dollars. “You could live like a king,” they’d say. A king, perhaps, but in a crumbling kingdom, a decomposing throne on shifting ground. That short, two-week escape stretched into five long months, a summer that took on a life of its own.

What do you do for five months in Lebanon? You put Baba’s folklore to the test. He’d told me he’d lived ahla eyam — the best days of his life — there, so I set out to see if his glory days held up, with my own modern twist, of course. The summer had to commence with the usual formalities: endless relatives streaming in daily (we were foolish to think two weeks would ever be enough), a parade of faces remarking on how much I’d grown, offering life advice I’d never follow, cursing the country I was born in, and reminding me, insistently, that I was Lebanese. Looking back, I wish I could’ve handed them that reminder with the same smug tone they’d given me. They needed to hear it, not me — after all, they weren’t the ones constantly reminded of where they came from. And it showed.

Then, finally, the real summer began: the clubbing, the drinking until I felt out of body, the strange sensuality of Beirut’s nights washing over me. Chain-smoking until my lungs felt scorched, wild kisses with strangers whose names I’d forget, tasting the city on every tongue. By dawn, I’d come home smelling like a chimney, my mother half-wrinkling her nose, half-smiling.My mother, first experienced Lebanon in the aftermath of the civil war, under Syrian occupation. Her homecoming was to a Lebanon in ruins, where she endured nasty, sexual remarks from Syrian soldiers on the streets — a Lebanon that had barely survived yet clung to the hope of reconstruction. For her, the country had weathered war, and through its scars, she could still see its beauty.

I am as doe-eyed as she was, hopeful for Lebanon’s rebirth. Yet, it saddens me to think of her early hopes — built on resilience but weighed down by reality. My mother loved the Lebanon I experienced that summer, perhaps even envied it. Watching me live it seemed to offer her a glimpse of the dream she’d never fully held. But her Lebanon never stood a chance, whether from the war or the expectations placed on her as a Lebanese woman raised in the diaspora.

It’s impossible to put into words how much my mother sacrificed to raise her children as Lebanese. She learned Arabic alongside us, prepared the traditional foods that connected us to our roots, and carried the weight of social expectations with grace, kindness, and love. If my father gave us Lebanon, my mother, in countless ways, taught us what it meant to be Lebanese, especially within the diaspora. For this, she’s rarely received the credit she deserves.

The summer grew lonely fast, and with time on my hands that I barely knew how to use, where better to spend it — or rather, who better to spend it on — than the faces on dating apps? I downloaded them all, swiping through profiles like browsing a gallery. I skipped anyone listing philosophy or psychology as interests — the very subjects I read into alone but had no desire to mix with summer flings. A philosopher would kill my buzz, and a psych enthusiast? Probably too eager to “read” me and fail.

I’ve never bought into zodiac signs, thinking we mold ourselves into those traits if we let them define us. As a Cancer, I’d rather avoid that “complicated” stereotype. And yet, you, my Beiruti lover, slipped through the cracks. There were plenty before you, and to be clear, I am no sex symbol — quite the opposite, really. But I have a certain charm, a mask I wear well, though, it unravels fast when the right string is pulled. I have a bad habit of being too deep for those who don’t care, and maybe too blunt for those who do.

This wasn’t supposed to be a journey of depth, I remind you, but I made an exception. After all, I was the ajnabi, the foreigner with broken Arabic, overly polite, saying please and thank you into every sentence, careful not to get too personal. The one who always leaves.

In a world where everything is instantly accessible, connections too often die before they’ve had the chance to truly live. A few minutes on an app, both revolutionary and tragic, now seem enough to define intimacy. But then again, everyone before you faded into irrelevance; after you, they simply ceased to matter.

You appeared unexpectedly in my swipes. Looking back, it almost disappoints me that it began there, as if it’s an insult to everything that came after. Whatever this was, it broke every boundary of digital connection, beyond anything an algorithm could contain. You shattered every rule, challenged each line I’d carefully drawn to keep people out. I may never write like the legends, but I would later love you with the urgency of those who inspired them.

Have I sold you the groundwork for a coming-of-age love story? God, I hope not. Those stories aren’t written for people like us, and they’re certainly not meant for places like Beirut. I won’t say if we broke that rule, but if we did, it was a story lived in the soul, never meant to be captured for the eyes- certainly not yours.

The dating app was our first encounter, our first in-person meeting the second — both unfolding in a single, impulsive night. It was the only time I allowed myself to be that spontaneous, that open. For once, I let go of who I thought I should be; I just let myself be.

I wish I could reach back, shake that past self, urge them to stay present, to see things as they truly were. Over the past two years, I’ve rewritten this story more times than I’d like to admit, asking myself: What was it about you that’s so hard to release? What keeps me searching for traces of you in others, only to come up emptier than you left me? The answer should enrage me, but instead, it humbles me. I could have cast you as the villain, and in many ways, you were. You shaped so much of who I would become: how I’d love, the person I’d grow into. And yet, here I am, sparing you, as if you were a debt I owed for sins from a forgotten life.

You were never the villain; we were just kids, and all summers start and end in Beirut.

That night replays in my mind like a vinyl on loop, the needle pressing down, cutting through the haze of a post-pandemic fog. I wasn’t nervous, and neither were you. In Beirut, no one knew me yet. Does that sound pretentious? Maybe so, but that probably means you don’t know Beirut. I didn’t — not then, not until a year after that summer. But I learned quickly: in Beirut, everyone knows everyone. It’s a city stitched together by connections, faces you know by name, names you know by rumor. That’s what makes it beautiful and, just as often, unforgiving.

Did we have dinner? I can’t remember. But I remember the abandoned home we tried to climb — somewhere in Gemmayze, or Mar Mikhael, maybe Sodeco. I was hesitant, still too green to embrace the thrill of Lebanese lawlessness. But you, with that maddening confidence, climbed as if you belonged there, as if the city, its people, and even its emptiness were yours to claim. You wore that boldness well, like armor, until, like all armor, it eventually cracked.

We ended up on a bench in Mar Mikhael, talking into the night. I let years of pent-up anger spill out, pouring words over you like gasoline, almost hoping you’d catch fire. Was I that fragile, that quick to unload it all? You, though, you kept your calm, saying so much with so few words, holding back just enough to keep yourself safe. I’d learn to play that game eventually, but never as well as you.

That night, we seemed to live a hundred lives in a few hours, time expanding until it felt like it might never end. But, of course, it did. Something shifted in me as it drew to a close, like a new wire connecting deep in my mind, a change I’ve carried ever since. It ended with a kiss, messy and unapologetic, pressed against the walls of Mar Mikhael under a blue streetlight, your confidence outbidding mine, as if we were two revolutionaries daring the world. A soldier watched us, but we didn’t care.

Beirut was a different time then. The soldier couldn’t even feed his kids, let alone care if two strangers kissed in the street. Beirut today, the soldier beats you just so he can feed his kids — and somehow, you understand.

I’ve written about this too many times, penned it as if it were my will and the country its witness.

I‘ve only given you the beginning, and though the story doesn’t end here, for you, it must. Perhaps I haven’t left you fulfilled; Beirut has that way about it — a love in extremes, a city defined by the unfinished, and inhabited by those merely passing through. That summer felt endless, with stories I’ll never put to paper. I’ve come up with countless reasons why all summers must end in Beirut, but in the end, they’re only theories. You’ve seen my contradictions laid bare. Whitman was allowed his contradictions, so why not me? Am I Whitman? No, not in this life, and not in the next. But I’ll contradict, freely.

In the end, there will always be three sides to this story — yours, mine, and the truth.

What I know to be true is this: you shook me in ways I never expected, and here I am, writing about a time that perhaps should have been left unwritten, simply lived. Maybe it was my American politeness, or my Lebanese hospitality, that softened each retelling, but no matter who you are now, you will always be my Beirut.

The summer of 2021 has never returned, yet it left me with more than I bargained for — lessons about life, about myself, about the person I longed to be and what I must never become.

You offered me revolution but gave me meghli ice cream, and I forgive you.

A year later, I moved to Lebanon, learning to love Beirut as you once taught me to , holding it like a secret, forgiving its sins, and embracing it as if I were your sacrifice to the city. If that’s what I was, then I’ll honor it. Beirut always knows better.

I promised myself not to search for you when I returned, not to wish for you in the eyes of strangers. But when I broke that promise, every face fell short — not because of them, but because of us…

My dear, this city without you is like nurturing a lone flower in one hand while severing its roots with the other.

#arab #lebanon #beirut #coming of age

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dorminchu · 10 months ago

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The Gentle Hum of Anxiety, Chapter Two

Read Chapter One here!

Notes:

Surprise! Here's another chapter, because I had an Eureka moment with Madeleine's knowledge of the Safin family & Safin pilfering from Madeleine's candy-bowl.

Alone in her apartment, Madeleine cuts the lights and lays in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Five years under the pseudonym 'Swann' rendered moot, just like that. Pulling up roots is always a thankless process, but she'll have to disappear sooner than later. Dye her hair. Pop up in a different country inside of a month. Life will resume its fragile stability, with or without her father's intervention. That's the short-term solution. Its alternative only ever comes true in dreams.

Anyone on a first-name basis with the soon-to-be erased Madeleine Swann is in the crosshairs. Friends kept at arm's distance will speculate for a while on her abrupt disappearance. Emails and cards sent to her last known address have a habit of turning up fruitless. But they will have other people to fill the shallow mould left in her wake. A woman with her credentials and connections can find a job most anywhere.

She rolls onto her back, but doesn't close her eyes. The porcelain mask, safe its carved box, sits on the end-table next to the recorder. She's always been more comfortable away from home. Now she is taking work home with her, just like her father and his endless stacks of bound folders and locked cabinets.

This, of course, is an extreme case, and cannot be counted as a slip of judgement. She cannot stomach the comparison, nor the idea of Lyutsifer Safin invading her office twice, only to take back this icon.

Since she was born, and before that, her father has kept records. Men he'd slain personally or in his stead, crossed, worked for when SPECTRE was operating under the name QUANTUM. She's looked over the files, in between holidays and schooling, enough times to recall a handful of names.

A week after leaving Nittedal, while he was planning her mother's funeral, her father pulled her aside to explain.

The Safin family were chemists, working on Blofeld's payroll up until the fall of the Soviet Union. Sometime in the early 'aughts the family's contract was terminated. Lyutsifer, the sole survivor and inheritor of his father's syndicate, was rendered comatose, hospitalised. The doctors chalked the cause of death up to food poisoning and sealed the case.

Madeleine always has had the feeling there was more to it than that, but as a child, she contented herself in a perpetual state of faux-indifference.

There is no reason to start looking deeper now. She has survived on account of her carefully curated ignorance. It is the only way she can stomach her own reflection.

She sits up. Crosses the room, barefoot. Flicks a switch; the lights snap on. Squinting, she makes her way over to the end-table and opens the drawer. She keeps a notebook and recorder in her desk at the Hoffler Klinik, and one in her flat, for nights such as this. She reaches for the recorder. Clicks it on, listening.

Each time his ragged voice breaks through tinny speakers, she strains to discern his words: "...saving someone's life connects you to them forever, the same as taking it. They belong to you."

The hitman in the mask is a creature without humanity. The man beneath permits less room for a childhood monster's nomenclature, or aggrandisment.

Her thumb pushes the stop button. She takes the pen and writes:

Affected by loss. A chasm left in absence of a family he can never fill.

She resumes the recording. Hits the button before the clatter of the lid causes the audio to peak. To hear her own voice succumb to fear is something she cannot stomach. Not while the shock is fresh.

She writes: Finds amusement at others' expense. Favors control. Eager to instruct me. (foxgloves, memory bo—

Ink slashes across paper.

Madeleine's body shudders on the exhale.

Inhale, hesitance.

Exhale, dragging.

She turns the page. Writes:

Reserved but not passive. Deeply invested in father's work. Exhibits sense of entitlement/ownership exacerbated by personal loss. Pause, to look over what she's written, not because of her unsteady hand. She adds, Memory box — mine? His own?

A man who brought with him the relic of a botched hit. If he would pursue the family into Nittendal, why not track down her father afterwards?

She's never asked, point-blank, if her father had anything to do with what happened that day. Her parents were closer to Madeleine, individually, than they were to each other. Her mother stopped putting up that front after Madeleine was old enough to start walking to school unaccompanied.

It wouldn't be the first time her father put his occupation before the well-being of his progeny. Men like her father, like Lyutsifer, operate on the principle of an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Beneath all the pretty words and platitudes are brutes in well-tailored suit jackets. She is unfortunate enough to inherit the aftermath. Unlike her mother, she has no vices with which to control her aside from an empty heart.

It stands to reason, then, that Safin's love for his father could have blinded him to a similar truth. His father put business before family, and it simply caught up to him in the end. Just like maman. In lieu of self-reflection, he has fixated on the girl he spared for seventeen years.

She looks back at what she wrote: Displeased at the idea of returning for following appointment, or at my lack of reaction to the mask? She strikes it out, and writes below it:

Entrenched within his own designs of heroism. The line between vengeance and justice has become irresolute. To enable such a delusion would be to the detriment of his recovery. Unable to determine at this time whether his emotional responses are feigned or stem from cognitive dissonance. Will require further analysis.

Next morning, she gets to her office an hour after the building opens its doors. Most of the other clinicians are genteel to her face. But there's always bound to be speculation about Madeleine’s certifications and clincial, aloof disposition. Twenty four is awfully young to become an MD. In five years, she'll have enough time and money to settle down and less to fret about, or so goes the canned line.

She's done what she can to make her clients feel safe and respected within her office. She's on amiable terms with her coworkers. Shouldn't that be enough?

"You're up late," Sophia says from her desk. "Did you get some sleep?"

Madeleine hums. "Just enough."

"Your first client won't be here for another hour. If you don't take a break every so often you're going to kill yourself."

Hand poised on the knob, Madeleine forces herself to smile. It is not requited. "Idle hands, you know? I really need to get to—"

"—Safin, isn't it?" Madeleine turns the knob, but doesn't push the door open. "He dropped by earlier." Sophia gestures to the desk. "Left you these."

On the desk is a small boquet. White chrysanthemums. Madeleine hadn't noticed. She's passed by Sophia's desk so many times it has simply become part of the background. This is the last thing she intends to discuss, least of all with anyone at work.

If that's asking too much, perhaps it's time to look for a different secretary or hell, a new job. As if it would make a difference. He'll keep doing this until the only place she can run to is an early grave.

She looks at Sophia, busy with her mortage and children going off to university and issues befitting of an easy, uninteresting life. Madeleine has never taken the time to know her more intimately than small-talk. Sophia might sense something is amiss, but never grasp the heart of Doctor Swann's troubles beyond youthful ennui and poor taste in men.

"I see," says Madeleine tartly. "I'll set them in the vase."

Sophia peers at her from the top of the paper. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes. Thank you."

The door closes behind her. Madeleine pitches them in the rubbish bin.

When he steps through the door, his eyes wander to the framed icon. If he thinks anything of it, he doesn't elaborate. He takes a seat. “You look tired.”

Madeleine says, “I’ve had a long day of work.” His eyes fall on the vase, empty. "I'm afraid I am allergic." A verifiable lie. If he is as attentive as he's letting on, she'll soon find out.

Rather than call her bluff, he has the gall to look empathetic. "Do you realize why I have selected you, Dr Swann?"

Her carefully constructed veneer of professionalism falters. She cannot give him an inch. “I do not.”

You resent the very nature of my survival, and what it signifies. If you're seeking to redeem yourself, that is not possible.

"Your mother was buried in Döbling Cemetery, in Vienna. It's a beautiful cemetery." Two divides; anger and terror, freezing her in place. It is as if he has reached across the desk and slapped her. Her eyes well up. She sucks in a slow breath through her nose and exhales, quietly, as he continues: "You stopped sending flowers."

Her mother's resting place, a simple headstone, wedged between others. When her father's lease on the grave in ran out, Madeleine saw no reason to continue ordering flowers. She'd only done it for his sake, not that he had asked her to. He was too pride to admit such a mistake. It would be to acknowledge his own weakness in front of her, something beyond his capabilities.

“These games,” she says, repulsed by the slight catch in her voice, “the mask, these questions. It’s all a little rote, I think.”

Safin frowns. "The flowers I sent have a meaning." He meets her eyes. "A token of grief. Bereavement and comfort."

Perhaps the only way to get to the heart of his affliction is to let him talk. There is no harm in it, while she catches her bearings. She bites her tongue and holds his gaze.

"The first year, purple lilac — mourning — and white clover — think of me. White roses —" a knowing look that makes her want to throw something "— devotion, silence, reverence for the dead. Peonies and stargazer lilies — for sympathy. Blue delphinium for dignity. Statice for remembrance. Last year, blue hydrangeas — regret, a want of forgiveness."

"I was expecting something more drastic than flowers," Madeleine finds her voice. It is cold and carefully polite.

He inclines his head. "There is no need. We already understand one another." His gaze does not avert, the eyes not quite dead. Whatever humanity was once there has been snuffed out and leaves only the darker undercurrent of a sentiment best left unspoken.

"What makes you think I would understand you?"

His mouth curls. Bile in her throat. "Both of us, born into organised crime. Marred by tragedy."

"You're speculating."

"You asked me to explain myself." His eyes fall to the glass bowl, brimming with pink candies. A psychiatrist's inside joke. The average patient that crosses her door will only see the vessel, the candy, no further than the confines of his own mind. This room has been curated with care.

Wetting the pad of his forefinger, he reaches into the bowl. The candy is waxy, a little sweet. The kind of thing that's too boring to eat with any gusto.

A flicker of repulsion, on the cusp of something else she fails to conceal, shifts into rigid comprehension. When he smiles, her stomach twists upon itself.

"I want to ensure," he says, "there is no misunderstanding between us. Thank you for your time."

In his hands, the mask is little more than a tool to inspire fear. She hangs it on her wall as a declaration of war, with a proper frame. It looms over her office wall, the spiderweb cracks in the porcelain giving the right eye a hollowed visage. A constant reminder of what she is undertaking. What she must never become, nor indulge in. She is asked, Where did you get that? myriad times, and Madeleine smiles flatly and says, a gift from a client, and that's the end of it.

a/n: Third time I've rewatched NTtD, and the greater significance of the candy-bowl sailed over my head completely until a commentator (I think it was on youtube or tumblr) pointed out its Freudian shape and, uh, potential for symbolism. After a good deal of snickering (yes, I'm very mature) I stopped to consider. If the idea was to depict Safin's salacious, quietly unhinged fixation with Madeleine (well, more so the power he assumes he has over her), well, I think the screenwriters didn't let him get weird ENOUGH. The fic probably won't go above a heavy-T to light-M, but it certainly flirts on the borderline.

#nttd #no time to die #canon divergent au #lyutsifer safin #madeleine swann #I haven't seen enough brian depalma films to indicate his works as a frame of reference #but things are going to get psychosexual and fucked up! >:D

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leviabeat · 8 months ago

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The story of Volbeat’s Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies album

By Dave Everley | Metal Hammer | June 2013

Full Article ⬇️

Born from the ashes of death metal band Dominus, Volbeat’s mix of metal and rock’n’roll caught the attention of the world – and Metallica frontman James Hetfield in particular. As the Danes geared up to release their fifth album, Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies, in 2013, mainman Michael Poulsen told Hammer about the personal loss that drove the band.

Michael Poulsen has a tattoo on the back of his hand that reads ‘Little E’. It’s one of countless pieces of ink on a body that’s no stranger to the tattooist’s needle, and like all the other designs that adorn every square inch of visible flesh below the Volbeat frontman’s neckline, there’s a story behind it.

“We were on tour with Metallica, and one day James Hetfield comes in our dressing room looking for me,” he says. “He said, ‘Where’s Little E?’ Our drummer, Jon, went, ‘Who’s Little E?’ And James said, ‘Little E. Little Elvis, man’.”

Up until this point, Michael had been engrossed in a film on his laptop, headphones on, oblivious to the fact that the Metallica frontman was hunting for him. The next thing he knew, Hetfield was looming over him, brandishing a gift for the singer of his new favourite band.

“He’d bought a painting of Elvis and written on the back, ‘To Little E, here’s Big E, with love and respect, James Hetfield.’ That was a really cool gift. So when I came home, I got ‘Little E’ tattooed here. Why not? That’s what tattoos are about: stories. I want something to remember.”

That he says this with no small degree of pride shouldn’t come as a surprise. His band have spent 12 years carving out a place for themselves as the missing link between Elvis Presley and Metallica, channeling the outlaw spirits of both of those iconic acts into a gas-guzzling noise that distills metal, rockabilly, country and western and shit-kicking rock’n’roll.

The hard work has paid off. Their record label are expecting the album to go straight to No.1 in Denmark, while a series of electrifying live shows and festival appearances have sent their profile skyrocketing in Britain and America. The patronage of the world’s biggest metal band hasn’t done them any harm, either.

“It was inspiring to see how Metallica worked,” says Michael. “I had Metallica posters in room as a kid, even before I had my first guitar. And then, years later, you’re on the road with them. I had to ask myself, ‘Is this real?’”

You can read plenty about Volbeat in the title of their fifth album, Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies. It’s a phrase that evokes another time altogether, an era when elegant lawbreakers were the rock stars of the day. It’s a celebration of the bad men (and women) of the Old West and the old-school metal bands who influenced the young Michael Poulsen to form his first band, Dominus, back in the early 90s.

Today, sitting in his management’s office on one of Copenhagen’s main drags, the frontman looks every inch the rebel: greased back black hair, black T-shirt, black jeans, black shoes. His speaking voice is low and quiet, a world away from the wolverine howl of his singing voice.

“I’d just isolate myself in my living room, in total darkness,” he says of the writing process for the new album. “I’d watch a lot of Italian spaghetti westerns – Once Upon A Time In The West, those kind of films. Sometimes it’s just about the right feeling – the scenery, the lines, the dusty look. I have my own soundtrack when I see those kind of pictures.”

These cinematic influences paid off. Volbeat’s new album is as vivid and colourful as the tattoos on their singer’s arms. A parade of characters march through its songs, some real, some fictional, some supernatural. The galloping Pearl Hart is the tale of a real-life 19th century stagecoach robber; The Nameless One sets Tarot cards, time travel and a sinister, cane-carrying antagonist to an steel-plated backdrop; Doc Holiday celebrates one of the more marginal characters of the Wild West, lacing its old school metal groove with some nifty banjos.

The most personal track on the album, Dead But Rising, takes a very real figure as its starting point and turns it into something more spiritual. Jørn Poulsen, Michael’s father, was an amateur boxer and a fan of Elvis Presley, and he passed a love of both onto his son. When he died four years ago, his son promised to make a pilgrimage to Elvis’s home, Graceland, in his memory.

“I was driving to Mississippi, where Elvis was born, when the navigation in the rental car just went out,” says Michael. “Then I noticed an eagle that had been following the car for a while. I said, ‘What is it with that eagle? Is my father trying to tell me something?’ I got emotional about it and I decided to follow the eagle. And that’s what Dead But Rising is all about – it’s about me, today, trying to reach out for that eagle. I said, ‘When I come home, I’m gonna get that eagle tattooed on my hand as a memory.”

He nods to another pair of tattoos on his hands: one is an eagle, the other is his dad’s name. “My dad had this eagle tattooed across his chest,” he says with quiet pride.

Like everything on the album, there’s a clarity and muscle to the track. This is in part down to new recruit Rob Caggiano, who co-produced the album with longtime Volbeat associate Jacob Hansen. Until very recently, Caggiano was a member of Anthrax. Then, in January, it was announced that he was quitting the thrash titans. His reasons were vague, though he admitted that “Anthrax was never a creative outlet for me.” A month later, he announced that he would be parlaying his production gig with Volbeat into a full time job as guitarist.

Today, Rob's cautious when it comes to the subject of his old band versus his new one. “There’s been a bit of a misconception,” he says. “When I put out the press release about leaving Anthrax, it wasn’t really about me wanting to stop touring. I thought it’d take a little time to figure out my next move as a guitar player, and that the producing thing would be the perfect way to bridge that gap. A lot of people read into that the wrong way.”

Is Volbeat a permanent thing?

“Yes,” he says, no hesitation.

It’s ironic that a man who left an outfit he claims he felt “stifled” in Anthrax ended up joining Volbeat. Without actually saying it, Michael Poulsen makes it clear that he’s the boss of this band. “I write all the material,” he says firmly at one point, while bassist Anders Kjølholm and drummer Jon Larsen are noticeable by their absence today. But then every band needs its leader, and Poulsen is Volbeat’s James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich rolled into one.

You have to admire his ambition and his will to succeed. Denmark is hardly a hotbed of metal: aside from Lars Ulrich, the only other artists of note to emerge from this small, damp but utterly charming country were Mercyful Fate and their sometime leader King Diamond. Indeed the latter even crops up on one track, the characteristically theatrical Room 24, a song based on an experience Michael had when he awoke in a hotel room in the middle of the night to find himself unable to move and feeling like someone – or something – was sitting on his chest, the latter presence voiced by the King himself.

“Michael is a fan of Mercyful Fate – he even has a Mercyful Fate tattoo,” says King, speaking from his home in Dallas. “I met him a couple of years ago, and we became very good friends very quickly. He approached me to sing on the track, and said, ‘It would be super cool if you were interested.’ I don’t really do that for anyone any more, my voice is very difficult to handle for other people. Michael’s very Danish, like I am – does things his way.”

The presence of King Diamond tells you as much about where Michael Poulsen is coming from as all the quiffs and Elvis tattoos. For all their retro stylings, they’ve got a metal heart – the frontman started his musical career as a teenager in the death metal band Dominus, who released four albums during the 90s, the third of which was titled Vol.Beat (a portmanteau of the words ‘Volume’ and ‘Beat’). Michael still cites Slayer as a major inspiration, alongside Mercyful Fate and, of course, their unofficial mentors in Metallica.

“When I was growing up, my dad and mum played a lot of old records – Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry,” says Michael. “I love that stuff – it’s a drug somehow. My own record collection growing up was metal. But I listen to a lot of different styles of music. If something moves you, I don’t care what it is.”

Elvis Presley, and James Hetfield, would be proud.

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 244

#volbeat #michael poulsen #volbeat interview #metal hammer #metal hammer article #Lil'Ee story #metallica story #Michael's writing process #outlaw gentlemen & shady ladies #Jørn Poulsen #graceland story #dead but rising #rob caggiano #leaving anthrax #king diamond story #room 24

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roosterbruiser · 2 years ago

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𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐞 ☾☽ 𝐕𝐈𝐈𝐈

☾☽ 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐞𝐲 "𝐑𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫" 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐰 𝐱 𝐅𝐚𝐲𝐞 "𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫" 𝐋𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐫

☾☽ 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: It’s been almost three years since the accident that took half of her, and Faye “Clover” Ledger seems fine, really. She loves her old house, she has a perpetually expanding vinyl collection, she’s got a job she likes on base, and she is only a short drive from the beach. She’s grounded--literally. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw feels like he’s been homesick his entire life. He’s always on the move; jumping from one squadron to another, living one mission to the next. Somewhere in between losing both his parents and carving a successful career as a Naval aviator, he’s never found himself a home. When a call to serve on a high-priority mission with an elite squadron brings Rooster back to Miramar, he finds that home. Except it’s not a house that he finds--it’s the former backseater that observes and records the mission for the Official Navy Record.

☾☽ 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

☾☽ 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

☾☽ 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝟐𝟒𝐭𝐡, 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟗

There is an obsessiveness about Rooster, but it is not an unwelcome obsessiveness, nothing devient about it. When I sit in the lounge with the other aviators--some of them talking lowly and waiting with unshielded impatience and others trying to get some shut-eye on the brown couches--and listen to the radio during dogfights, his obsession for preservation is wildly apparent. The way he preserves his speed, preserves the safety of himself and others. He is a natural-born leader when he’s in the air and falls into the position easily, as easily as falling into bed at the end of a long day.

I think this stems from the loss of his father, a freak accident that was never on anyone’s radar--the kind of accident that people don’t even think of happening because it was truly perfect conditions when it occurred. Maybe he’s obsessed with the preservation of his team because he remembers what it was like when his father died and his mother was left by herself to not only pick up the pieces but to raise Rooster all by herself, something she never agreed to. What a lonely life she must’ve had, when a piece of herself was missing, gone forever, with no goodbye. A wound that never healed. And when I think this, my throat aches because it is how I feel about myself, my life--Maggie gone, my life emptier than it was supposed to be.

Sometimes, when I catch him looking down at the watch that I know was his father’s or when I pass Memorial Hall and Rooster is standing before Goose’s portrait with a deep want pulsing in his body, I want to tell him that I know what his mother must have felt like. I want to tell him that I lost a part of myself, too, and I never got to say goodbye. Maggie and Goose died similarly--in front of the person that loved them most, their life forever stalled right there in that horrifying moment. I want to tell him that I wish there was a part of Maggie, even if it was only half of her, that I could hold close and watch breathe and sneeze and hiccup and cry and laugh and grow. I want to tell Rooster that he probably saved his mother, unknowingly, his entire life.

I don’t tell him this, though. I don’t tell him because even if there is an invisible string connecting us, even if things have been far too perfect, even if things have been frightfully easy for us, even if our time together has felt like a dream--I don’t know him the way I wish I did.

“I feel like you know a part of myself that I don’t even know yet,” he had told me that very first night he came to my house, when Stevie was on his lap and the tequila was fading and he was creeping into my body.

And I feel like he’s obsessed with me--with my home, with my cat, with my opinion.

“I just--I want Admiral Simpson to respect me,” I’d told Bob, the styrofoam of my empty coffee cup partially destroyed beneath the wrath of my freezing fingers, “his approval means a lot to me. And, like, he was the one that picked me up by the bootstraps and I don’t want anyone to think that I’m just like--that I’m just like fucking a random pilot in the dorms or that I’m fucking--fuck, like multiple pilots or--!”

Bob’s laughter, a dry and quiet kind of laughter, interrupted me. I blushed bright baby pink--I had a tendency to ramble when upset, especially when it was with someone I was comfortable with, and honestly--especially if it was Bob.

He was reclined on the ugly brown couch in the lounge, which was both remarkably empty and remarkably bright, sunshine glimmering off every surface brightly. Bob had his own cup of coffee, half-full, which he sipped as I spoke.

“Faye, you should give yourself more credit. Sure, you had some help when you were down, but ultimately you made the decision to get back up. Right?”

I looked at his eyes, his earnest blue eyes that had never been anything but. His glasses were pristine, which I knew was because of the piece of velvet he kept in his pockets at all times to cleanse them, and his hair was brushed and neatly gelled. And his mouth, which was smiling softly, had never said anything even resembling unkind.

He had played this part before many times, either talking Maggie out of fucking an army boy with a dirty mouth or trying to ease my worries about an upcoming assignment. And he had played the part of listener more than anything, nodding and smiling or frowning, reaching a consoling hand at the right moment. He was just plain good at being there, just plain good at listening.

“Right,” I mumbled, but then I thought of my underwear in the pocket of Rooster’s flightsuit and then I was blushing all over again, “maybe I just shouldn’t mess around on base anymore.”

He nodded, smiling with his nose crinkled.

“That might be a good idea,” he said, “and maybe you shouldn’t tell anyone about it except for me. You know, just until you know what’s happening for sure, right?”

I nodded rapidly.

“You’re right, you’re so right. Bob…do you know why they call him Rooster?”

Bob had genuinely cocked his head then, leaning forward slightly with a question written all over his face. He was earnestly wondering, waiting for me to tell him why.

He paused there for a long moment, looking up at me as I smiled guiltily, swallowing my laughter. And I watched his face fall then contort to a look of childlife embarrassment. His mouth opened and closed and then his eyes fluttered to his coffee cup, his cheeks blushed deeply.

“I had to, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Maggie just possessed me.”

Bob took a drink from his cup, shaking his head, smiling now. He was still very red.

“Evidently so.”

Ever since our encounter in his dorm, ever since Bob saved us from being caught by anyone else in the squadron, we have not so much as kissed each other on the job. I had told Rooster some of my conversation with Bob that evening, about my concerns with professionalism, my desire to keep work at work and home at home.

And he listened, nodded, then smiled.

“Whatever you want,” he told me, “you call the shots, Lieutenant Ledger.”

But now that we are measuring our glances on base and only ghosting our fingers over each other when no one else is around to see, he is on my doorstep every single night, the Bronco parked right beside my car. I welcome him into my home each evening, never stopping to pause my record or the dinner on the stove.

And then I’ll hurry back to the kitchen, my body flushed already, and he will put his bag in its unofficial-official location in my closet right beside my empty suitcases. Then he’ll make a pit-stop by the ottoman to pet Stevie for a few minutes, inhaling my home and dinner on the stove or in the oven. Then he comes through my kitchen doors-- with that fucking smile under his mustache and he’s wearing a t-shirt that hugs his body and his eyes are soft with sleep and his shoulders are practically glued to his ears with the stress of the mission--and sees me in my slippers and with my hair in a clip and my hands messy with flour or meat. And we just look at each other, drinking each other in for the first time, pretending like our stolen glances at work never happened at all.

Then he’ll kiss me, wrap his arms around my waist and watch me whisk parmesan into an alfredo sauce or take steamed broccoli off a burner. And his body is so perfectly molded to mine that I want to let everything burn, want to just sink into his body and live in his arms forever. I want to just give up and let him carry me through life.

But instead, I’ll kiss his shoulder and ask him if he wants a glass of wine at dinner.

He kisses the top of my head before he grabs the wine glasses, which he found one evening while searching my cabinets and drawers out of an untamable wave of curiosity. And when I’m busy grabbing a loaf of bread from the stove or my hands are massaging kale, he will flip the record or pick a new one when the static at the end of a record curses through the speakers.

And then when we eat dinner at the table and I’ve lit taper candles and finally turned the music down, he pulls my chair out for me and never starts eating until I’ve taken the first bite. He will ask me a million questions, internalizing every bit of our workday just for that moment--asking me what I thought when Hangman said this or when Maverick did that.

He has sunk comfortably into this repetition and I think that as much as he does this because he wants to, it is also maybe because I told him about my deep love for rigid routines.

Right now it is a Wednesday and the sun is thinking about setting, falling deeper into the sky as it fades to an orange-gold. The clouds dotting the sky are beginning to pinken around the edges and the breeze is sweet and cool. It is maybe the coolest it has been all summer--all the windows in my house are open and the curtains are billowing softly. I have even lit incense so my house smells like patchouli and lavender.

It is heading towards six in the evening and there is a sheet of carrots roasting in the oven, two chicken breasts sizzling in rosemary and olive oil on the stove, and raw cookie dough wrapped in the fridge to chill.

I am leaning against the kitchen counter, biting my lip, straining to remember if the dough needs to be chilled overnight when my phone buzzes on the counter.

Tramp: Grabbing a few bottles of that wine you like. Need anything else for dinner? Dessert?

Me: Got it all covered here. Brown butter chocolate chip cookie dough is chilling now :)

Me: Thanks for the wine, too. Trying to get into my pants or something?

Tramp: Says the one with cookies baking…

Tramp: ;)

I can’t help the grin that is fighting its way to my lips, the blood that rushes straight to my head whenever I see his stupid nickname appear on my lockscreen. Fucking Rooster.

I cross the kitchen and step into the living room, which smells like outside. The trees, the grass, the mud, the crisp evening air. Stevie is blinking at me from her usual spot, perched very still and silently. I only have to look at my collection for a moment before I know what I want to play.

ABBA’s Voulez-Vous album starts as I walk back through the kitchen door. It smells like rosemary and garlic in here and the chicken is beginning to brown when I peer over the pan. It smells like Sunday nights when Maggie was alive--when I would make anyone in our squadron dinner in my old apartment, squeezing everyone into my living room and shooing everyone out of my galley kitchen when they attempted to help me. It reminds me of the four or five bottles of wine--all my favorite brand of prosecco--that would end up in my fridge because no one dared to show up empty-handed.

I used to keep my records in wooden crates back then, stacked on top of each other under my thrifted record player. And everyone would take a crate and sift through, pulling records they wanted to listen to. And inevitably, Maggie would pick a Fleetwood Mac album and get everyone up and dancing while I minced garlic and mashed potatoes. I never felt left out--I used to live for those moments. Moments where everyone danced around my old coffee table and Bob warned everyone that they were being too loud and Maggie pretended like she knew how to read palms. When we would eat on the floor, sitting on couch cushions and balancing our plates on our knees. When we were all very young and nothing felt permanent.

And right now the music is so loud, loud like it was in my apartment all those years ago--the song Angeleyes is playing--that I almost don’t hear the front door open and close. I almost don’t hear Rooster mockingly crooning, “Honey, I’m home!” when he steps into the foyer. I almost don’t hear the brown paper bag in his arms rustle as he tries to take his boots off with no hands. I almost don’t hear it all, but I do.

So when he’s standing in my entryway with my big wooden door locked behind him, dressed in jean shorts and an old UVA sweatshirt with his aviators pushing back into his curls and he’s singing along to ABBA under his breath, I am standing at the top of the stairs, smiling.

It isn’t until he starts for the stairs that he notices me. He pauses, his feet scissored on different steps, and his eyes fall to my slippered feet and climb up, up my body until they’re resting on mine. The fist, the one that lives deep inside me, is clenching every muscle in my chest. This is how it goes when he sees me--his lips part before they break into a grin, his eyes glaze over with that look of devotion and affection, his body tenses and relaxes at the same time but in vastly different ways.

When I see him for the first time in my home and not on base, my entire body feels like a San Diego summer: like golden sunshine and endless blue skies, like melted ice cream and scorching asphalt. I am blushing when I think about his mustache and how wet I want it to be, how soon I want his head between my legs again, how badly I want his body against mine.

“You really are stupid pretty, Faye,” Rooster sighs, shaking his head thoughtfully, “I mean--just look at you, baby.”

I have to roll my eyes to pretend like my stomach isn’t sitting in my chest. Fuck.

“Give me my wine,” I smile, then add lowly, “tramp.”

He tsks softly and ascends the stairs expeditiously, hand coming to rest on my lower back. The paper bag rustles between us as he presses his chest against mine, grinning down at me so sweetly that I make a mental note to schedule a teeth cleaning.

“Gimme some sugar,” he says.

And if any other man on the planet had said that to me, me right now at my big age of twenty-six-years-old, I would have laughed them right out the door. But when he says it with his dark-colored eyes and his glimmering lips and his mustache and his sultry body pressed against me, I can do nothing but press my mouth against his. And I am not sure if I will ever get used to kissing him--his mustache tingling the space between my mouth and nose, his tongue faintly running across my bottom lip, his nose pressed against the side of my own.

If he pressed his lips to one of my pulse-points and felt just how badly he makes my heart race, I would be done for.

When he pulls away from my mouth, his scorching breath fans over my skin that’s already growing damp at the thought of his mouth on me. He sprinkles kisses to my chin and jaw and my cheeks and my neck and I am already gasping for air, pulling him closer.

“Wait,” I say breathlessly, smiling with my chest flushed, “chicken! Gonna burn!”

And he lets me go and I fall back, empty, wishing he could just hold me all the time and I would never feel alone. He’s grinning at me, looking around the house at the open windows and incense and Stevie on her ottoman. And just as I am about to step into the kitchen, he gently holds my hair in his hands and tugs one time so I’m turning to him again. Then he holds both my cheeks in his hands, thumbs rubbing those familiar soft circles, and looks down at me.

“This is the best part of my day,” he says and even though his voice is teasing, his face is not. His eyes are serious and his mouth is smiling but honest.

And maybe he means that the best part of his day is coming home to my house, which feels like his now, and eating my dinner and buying me wine and washing our dishes and listening to records and making me cum. But maybe because of who I am or who he is, or because he’s 35 and I’m 26, I know that he means holding me, seeing me is the best part of his day.

I hold his wrists and they’re very solid and warm beneath my palms. I think I could hold them forever. And then I move his left palm to my lips, guiding it with my grip. I kiss him one time there, in the middle of his open hand, batting my eyelashes at him. His lips part and I watch his breath get caught in his throat.

“Hold that for me, will you?” I whisper to him.

I close my fingers around his left hand and curl his fingers into a fist. Then I kiss his middle knuckle before turning away and going through the kitchen door. Without turning around, I know he watches my moving figure--his mouth still open slightly--until the door closes on me.

It’s something my mother used to do with me and Maggie. I don’t know why I did it, why it has made my chest ache so badly--but I know that a certain nostalgic glee is climbing all the way up, up, up my throat. I had forgotten all about that and remembered so suddenly when I brought his palm to my mouth.

Everything is so easy in our evenings. Once his bag is put away and he has greeted Stevie, he stands behind me, kissing my throat and holding my hips against his.

“Smells incredible,” he mumbles against my skin.

His jaw fits perfectly in the slope of my body where my neck gives into my shoulder. The weight of his head feels very normal, very safe--like wearing an apron when I cook, like putting gloves on in the winter, like taking a warm shower on cold mornings.

“Thank you,” I say softly, “set the table, yeah?”

“Aye-aye, Lieutenant.”

Even all this is easy--he somehow has memorized where everything is in my kitchen. He knows which wine glasses I prefer and which plates are for everyday use and which ones are saved for special occasions. He knows where I keep linen napkins and silverware and trivets. He whistles the entire time he sets my sweet dining room table, smiling like it’s the only thing in the world he wants to do.

“Let me get that,” he says, slipping a spare pair of oven mitts on before he opens the oven and retrieves the roasted carrots.

He grins at me as he sets them on a trivet on the island. I want to faint. I want to cry.

When we sit down to eat, each plated with a chicken breast and a heaping of roasted carrots and pieces of buttery sourdough, the song Lovers (Live A Little Longer) is playing. Just like always, he waits until I take a bite of chicken before he starts in on his food. It is an unspoken thing, something I’ve noticed because I watch him through my lashes.

“You missed your calling,” Rooster says, nodding at his plate, “I don’t even like carrots.”

This is what he does everytime I make him dinner and I know that it’s because his mother raised him with manners. He always opens the door for women, always acknowledges a new presence in the room, always makes sure I finish first. But his eyes are gleaming so prettily, so honestly that I know beneath those manners that he was raised with--he is just being painfully honest.

“Heard Maverick talked to the Big Guy,” I say, meaning Ice.

Rooster nods, exhaling from his nose. He shovels a bite into his mouth and sits back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. We are sitting across from each other, his back to one of the doors to the living room and my back against a warm window.

“Hope he ripped him a new one,” Rooster says confidently.

I take a sip of prosecco and it’s bubbly and dry on my tongue. He’s watching me and I set my elbows on the table before giving him a very small shrug.

“You’re hard on him,” I say slowly, metering my tone and phrasing, “I’m sure it’s warranted. Is it?”

Rooster is looking past me now. He is nodding slowly, biting his lips, thinking of what to say to me next. I take another bite.

He answers while I’m chewing, “We have a history.”

Another sip of prosecco and his eyes find mine. I’m smiling teasingly, cutting another bite for myself. He’s watching me with his hands on either side of his plate.

“Mysterious,” I whisper, but don’t press.

He chuckles.

“Hangman’s got a thing for you,” Rooster says, adopting my teasing smile, “making goo-goo eyes at you all day today. Puffing up his chest, practicing his cock-walk.”

“I thought only rooster’s did that?”

I bite my lip when he narrows his eyes into mine.

“I think I even heard him ask Bob about you,” he teases, nonchalantly shrugging.

“And what did he ask Bob?”

A beat passes. Rooster is teasing me. It makes me giddy. I remain composed, though--lips on the surface of my wine glass, fork resting softly in my left hand.

“If you were looking for a new pilot,” he answers finally.

Then a stone sinks in my belly. And I don’t mean for it to happen but my face drops, drops like my heart in my chest, like my eyes dropping from Rooster’s to the taper candle instead. I can feel it--the gloss over my eyes, the slack in my brow, the frown pulling my lips, the blush creeping out of my cheeks and into my hands--and I can feel Rooster stiffen across from me.

I can’t help it and I don’t want it to happen and I don’t mean for it to happen, but I think about the day Maggie died. I think about trekking through the snow and the gnarly tree roots and mud until I found her on the forest floor, lying on her back in the tuft of her parachute. And from far away, I wondered if she was just sleeping, just hit her head and lost consciousness on the way down. But when I came closer, stood above her and saw her unmoving eyes and her bloody scalp and her contorted limbs--I knew that she was dead. I think about our jet that exploded in the air and the twenty-mile radius our shrapnel covered. I think about how I laid beside her, somewhere between awake and asleep, somewhere between alive and dead for eleven hours before my ESAT turned on. I don’t remember moving my fingers to it, don’t remember turning it. It was off and then it was on and Search and Rescue was hovering above me.

I look up at Rooster and smile again, pretending like there are no tears dotting the corners of my eyes, pretending like I’m not choking back a lump in my throat. Pretending like I’m not thinking about Maggie’s body.

He’s across from me, his plate abandoned, hands holding either side of the table like he’s getting ready to push himself up and come to me. He doesn’t soften when I smile--his eyes search mine like he’s looking for some kind of injury, like he thinks my wounds are visible. External.

“Already found myself a pilot,” I say, but my voice cracks.

I take another drink and start cutting my chicken again.

“What happened just now?”

His confidence never ceases to amaze me, to knock the breath out of my mouth. He will bring to light any part of a conversation, mention any look or expression and press about it. And lying to him, skirting around something he’s curious about--it’s futile.

“You know I’m never going to fly again, right?”

I say this without looking up.

He breathes. His hands are still framing his plate, curled into soft fists.

“I guess I didn’t know that,” he says, “I thought eventually you would get back up there.”

This isn't like falling off a horse. You don’t just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and hop back on. Maybe it would be like that if a horse stomped my sister to death and dragged her around a loose-dirt arena for hours.

“Nope,” I say, trying to sound casual, trying so hard to blink my tears away, “I’m fine where I am.”

And usually when I tell people this, they shift uncomfortably, but nod. Usually when I tell people this, they aren’t Naval Aviators and they don’t really understand the brevity of what I’ve said. Usually people just assume I won’t get back up there.

But not Rooster.

“Doesn’t that feel kind of like a waste?”

When he asks this, his voice is even and steady. He is not being malicious, never is. He is just asking me a question over the dinner I made for us, at the table he set.

I cross my arms before my plate and meet his eyes. The taper candles are burning lower and lower, wax melting onto the clay holders. I search his face--his open eyes, his neutral mouth.

“A waste of what? Naval resources? Training?”

I wish I didn't sound bitter, but I do.

He doesn’t flinch.

“Talent,” he answers.

Just like that, he’s knocked me off my feet again. Sometimes I am ready for a fight--my tone dripping in bitterness, the stone in my belly growing steadily until it’s a fucking boulder and compressing my lungs. Sometimes I am already putting up the defense, balling my fists, narrowing my eyes. Maybe I’m protecting my peace--maybe I’m protecting my open wounds.

I square my jaw. He’s still watching me softly. The record has finished and turns emptily. I cannot stand the silence.

“I’m gonna pick a new record,” I whisper, balling my linen and putting it on the table.

He doesn’t move from his spot, but his eyes follow me all the way past the table and out to the living room. When the door shuts behind me, shields me from Rooster, I have to hold my knees and take a deep, deep breath.

Somehow he is the first person that has ever challenged me that way--somehow he is the first person who has argued with me without actually arguing with me.

“Fuck,” I whisper, searching the shelf for a new record, hastily wiping the bitter tears from my cheeks.

The windows are still open and the sun is setting finally and the room glows orange. I graze my fingers over the records, shaking a little bit. I hastily turn on Seasons of Your Day by Mazzy Star and let a few seconds of In the Kingdom play while I wipe my cheeks hastily. I think of Bob’s teasing words; no crying in the Navy.

I walk back into the kitchen and Rooster hasn’t resumed eating. It makes me ache. I want to touch him, his shoulder, but I feel too fucked up suddenly. Like I have witnessed things people shouldn’t and it has permanently damaged me--damaged my heart and the way I feel things.

Like he knows this, he reaches out and holds my wrist as I am passing him to my own plate. His fingers hold my wrist securely, but not tightly. He is begging me, silently, to look at him. That’s all it takes to make my head turn. His face looks like the word please. He’s begging me, begging me.

“The wound is still fresh,” I say, sounding less bitter and more sad, “and you didn’t say anything wrong, but I just--I just won’t fly again. There’s not even a question. I just…can’t. I can’t, Bradley. I won’t.”

He is nodding and shaking his head almost at the same time, lips parted. He pulls me closer to him by the wrist until I’m sitting on his knee. He wraps his arms around my torso--my arms, my waist--and secures his hands in my lap as he kisses my hair and neck.

“I didn’t mean to fight you,” he tells me, “you don’t have to explain yourself, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, baby.”

“You didn’t know,” I whisper, “I’m not mad at you. It just…hurts still.”

A beat passes and he rests his nose on my neck, pushing through my hair.

“Where does it hurt, honey?”

For a moment, all I can hear is the flickering candle, Mazzy Star, and Rooster’s breath mirroring my own. He tightens his arms around me and I lean back just enough to straighten my back, giving him more of my weight. His legs, his glorious thighs, split so I sit lower on him. I rest my cheek against his forehead, heart steady.

“Here,” I say, pointing to my chest.

Like I’m nothing, like the laws of gravity are not applicable to me, he scoops me up in his arms tightly. I stiffen, but then he’s kissing the side of my neck and standing, carrying me to the living room. It’s almost completely dark now.

He lays me down on the rug, hovering over me as I lay very still, very compliant.

“Here?” he asks, pointing to the same spot I had pointed to.

I bite my lip and nod and his head comes down slowly. He presses his lips to the middle of my chest, over my heart, and lingers there just breathing into my knit sweater. His hands are on either side of my arms and he keeps his face there a moment longer, pressing another quick kiss before he comes up to look at me.

I’m trying very hard not to cry.

“Where else?” He asks and he means it and I know he’s really asking me what happened to me? What happened to me when my sister died? Why won’t I fly again?

With shaking fingers, I point to the scar on my jaw. The tree branch.

He wastes no time, moving up to press slow, sensual kisses along the entire scar. It is a jagged one, white now, but used to be bright pink on my face. It starts almost at my ear and runs all along my jawline, stopping at the point of my chin. My face is hot.

“Where else?” He mumbles against my skin.

His mustache prickles me, feels so good.

“My vocal cords,” I whisper, “they were bruised. From…”

I can’t make myself say it. Bruised from screaming, screaming my sister’s name, wailing like a banshee when I saw her dead body on the parachute.

He doesn’t ask. He kisses all along my throat, his right hand holding my waist.

“The pressure--it burst my eardrum on my right side.”

He moves up slowly, sprinkling an abundance of warm kisses on my ear.

I point to my forehead. My concussion.

“I hit my head coming down, too.”

His lips are there again and he’s still holding me tight under him.

“I was so confused,” I whisper to him, “I would get lost driving around my hometown. I would get lost on base.”

He nods, still kissing my head.

“Tell me everywhere it hurt, baby,” he whispers.

“Here,” I say pointing to my right shoulder, “dislocated when I punched out.”

His hair tickles me when his lips come down on my shoulder.

“And I had frostbite on both my hands. Moderate. All my fingers.”

He sits up and moves so he is straddling me. I love his weight on top of me. It makes me want to close my eyes, put up my hands, and fall asleep. He’s looking down at me with very soft, very serious eyes. He takes my right hand, never breaking his eyes away from mine, and kisses the tips of each of my fingers. I am the one that has to close my eyes--I feel like I”m burning up, I feel like I’m on fire.

Common Burn is playing.

“Look at me, honey,” he whispers, picking my left hand up, “wanna see your pretty eyes. Pretty, brown eyes.”

When I open my eyes, he’s kissing my left fingers--starting at my thumb and ending on my pinkie. My chest is almost heaving now.

“Here,” I point to my left wrist, “sprained.”

He pulls my left wrist to his mouth and kisses all the way around it, holding my open hand against his face so he can kiss my palm. And he doesn’t say it, doesn’t say anything, but closes my fingers softly so I am holding his kiss. Here, hold this for me, would you?

“Four ribs on my left side,” I tell him, “the tree.”

So he finally lowers himself, his fingers pulling at the hem of my sweater, nudging it up and up until my skin gooses in the crisp air conditioning. I almost squirm at the feeling of his lips there, but instead I just close my eyes. Wasn’t it enough that I’d lost my sister? Wasn’t it enough that I’d watched her die? I was in so much genuine pain after she died, physically and emotionally and mentally. That’s how the vicodin had started--very seriously, very truthfully. I needed to not feel the ache in my ribs and the throb in my head and the scabs on my fingers.

He lays his cheek on my naked belly and my fingers find his hair almost entirely on instinct. He relaxes into me and I hold him there against me.

“Can I tell you something without you looking at me differently?”

“Differently?” he asks softly.

I screw my eyes shut.

“Pitying me.”

He nods, kissing the space between my ribs. I stare at the ceiling again.

“When you have a twin…sometimes you can feel what they do,” I start and he stiffens against me, bringing his eyes to the underside of my jaw, “and I felt everything Maggie did. All the good parts--when she was happy, when she was in love. I knew what she was thinking and she knew what I was thinking, too. But I felt the bad parts, too--I knew when she was blushing and when she had a pimple coming on.”

I take a deep breath and Rooster holds me tighter, like he knows what I’m going to say.

“And so I felt it when she died,” I say calmly, breathing through my nose.

And I’m going to say more, can feel the words dribbling up my throat, but I don’t. Nobody in the world needs to know what I felt that day. When her bladder released. When she screamed my name. When she cried all the way down. When she thrashed as her cords snapped. When she hit the ground.

“Oh, Faye,” Rooster coos.

He thinks about what to say and I know it’s because he wants to say, you poor baby.

“I’m so glad you’re alive.”

I feel like he’s just pushed me off a skyscraper. Like I’m falling through the air, really free-falling, flailing. Like the wind has been knocked out of me. Because doesn’t he know that I wanted to be dead for a long time after she died? That I was barely keeping myself alive? That I never thought I would feel as happy as I do right now with him on top of me in my living room, on my rug, dinner forgotten and taper candles melting? Doesn’t he know that?

My mouth is dry.

“You know, if I ever got into a jet again,” I started, sighing, “I would never fly with Hangman.”

And then we are laughing, his chest rumbling against the flat part of my hips and my legs. His breath is hot on my bare skin and I want to stay here always.

“Who would you fly with?”

I pretend to think, feeling the blush evading my cheeks and chest.

“Phoenix, probably,” I whisper.

He groans against me while I laugh.

“You’re breaking my heart over here, honey!”

Then we just lay there, on the floor. The wind blows gently into the room, tickling the exposed skin of my belly that Rooster’s hand is splayed over. He’s stroking me, just like he always does, and letting his head rest on my breasts. I’m playing with his hair, looking up at the ceiling with dry eyes. There is an uncertain weight rendering from my body and seeping into the rugs below me. My heart feels bigger than before.

“Remember our first date?” He asks.

I stifle a laugh.

“What do you consider our first date?”

He sighs into my skin, holding me tighter.

“Flat Rock Beach,” he says softly, “cherry wine, figs.”

My throat feels tight. I nod, keep his hair between my fingers, keep holding him to me.

“‘Course I do,” I whisper, “it was eight days ago.”

He pinches my skin softly and I bite my lip. He moves so his chin is resting on my breast now, digging slightly into the soft tissue there. It’s so close to hurting me, but not close enough for me to tell him to move. I think even if he was hurting me, I would never push him away from me.

“And remember when you told me to be angry?”

I pull my brow together, biting a smile.

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Can I tell you what makes me angry--you know, give a little part of it away.”

I am a puddle again, here on the floor. The lines on his forehead are faintly pressed into his skin when he brings his eyebrows together very slightly, just pinches them together as his eyes narrow.

“Always.”

He sighs before he says it and I can feel his pulse start to race on my thigh.

“Maverick pulled my papers from the Naval Academy.”

And I can see it with my own eyes--see the uncertain weight rendering and leaking onto my body from his. I want to take it in my hands and keep it safe, keep it with me. He doesn’t have to carry it anymore.

My chest is tight.

“Why would he do that?” I ask softly, raking my hands through his curls.

Despite himself, his eyes slip shut and he sighs, leaning into my touch. It’s like whenever I touch him, he has no choice but to relax. It makes me want to kiss him all over.

“I don’t know,” he whispers, “it was all I had left and he took it away from me. It took four years off my career, Faye. Four years.”

I frown. Poor baby. I want to pity him. Instead, I sigh, keeping my fingers in his hair, keeping his chin on my breast.

“He was close with your father,” I say and his eyes find mine, “wasn’t he?”

He knows that I heard everything Hangman had said in the training room. Maverick was flying when Goose died.

“They were best friends,” Rooster whispers, his voice breaking very softly.

I nod.

“Maybe he didn’t want to lose you, Bradley.”

☾☽ 𝐚/𝐧: listen...................I am a puddle of mush at this point. and so, so mentally ill. kisses!!

☾☽ 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫

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obsidianstrawberrymilk · 2 years ago

Text

My issue with Korra isn’t that the characters were uninteresting tbh - it’s that they were the exact opposite of that. There was so much room for exploration. Avatar was such a good show (with flaws) because developed it’s characters fantastically (up until Aang’s S3 arc, which could have been handled a lot better imo) - they took the troupes it would’ve been easy to resort to - naggy mom friend, happy go lucky kid, badass girl, edgy guy - and showed the complexities behind them. Aang hides the loss of literally his entire life behind his cheerfulness, and it’s shown how he snaps, gets angry and runs away. Toph’s entire persona is carefully crafted to defy the helpless role she’s been cast in her whole life - she’s not just badass, but badass purposefully. Zuko has a desperation born of years of abuse behind his angst. Katara has survivor’s guilt and trauma, forced parentification, and rage behind her hot temper and mothering, and is allowed to explore those. Sokka is goofy, but he’s intelligent, cunning, and it’s shown how his goofy façade hides his insecurities over his own skills and masculinity.

Korra never gave it’s characters room to breathe. We never got the chance to see who they were past the love triangles, too-fast plots that were dropped after one season, and robots for some reason. Mako was introduced as the edgy love interest, and despite how interesting his backstory is and all the potential behind it (especially with his parallels to Katara - he has so many!!), that’s who he stayed. Bolin, same as the goofy comic relief. Asami, she just... has no real personality. She’s... strong willed. Sometimes she’s angry, I guess. There’s never anything even to hold onto with her - her feelings over her mother’s death are never really explored, nor are her relationships with really anyone sans her romantic bonds with Korra and Mako. Her scenes with her father in S4 showed hints to some potential, but it wasn’t enough to make me invested in a character I had spent three seasons up till now looking at as a blank slate - the Token Badass Nonbender, and that’s that. Jinora’s one of the more interesting characters on the show, but there was a lot more room to explore her insecurities surrounding if she can live up to her grandfather’s legacy, her spirit abilities, and Kai and their relationship especially.

Really, it’s just... Mako’s parents were killed in front of him when he was eight, and then he was forced to basically raise Bolin without a home. Bolin had no stability in his life for most of it, and his only real trusted figure was his two years older brother. Korra is an avatar who was never given a chance to develop any identity outside of that, seeing the world, one carved from the ashes of imperialism and genocide, for the first time. Asami has a father who manipulates her and works with terrorists, but unlike Ozai with Zuko and Azula, genuinely loves her. Even within just these four there are such interesting ways you could go. But Korra was really the only one allowed to develop at all, and even then, for some reason she has to be brutally tortured to... ‘humble’ her? Like, I did like that arc, but there’s also some... things going on there.

Maybe there could have been an episode like the Southern Raiders but for Mako, where he and idk Asami? anyone really, hunt down the firebender who killed his parents, and he’s forced to confront the source of his trauma that started it all. Maybe we could have a storyline about the Triple Threats, Mako and Bolin’s time with them, how bad their circumstances were and some of the things they were forced to do. Maybe something like The Beach but for Asami, letting her crack and break about her complex feelings towards her father. We could have seen more of Mako being an older brother to Kai, Kai’s development from selfish and flightly to kinder and more grounded with Jinora. Maybe we could have been shown more of Kai’s backstory - his parents? Idk.

Korra, of course, would still need to be the focus. Maybe something like Nightmares and Daydreams but darker, like, towards the end of every season to explore how the pressure and trauma from being the avatar is negatively affecting her. Idk.

Just... let the characters develop. Breathe. Be people and not just caricatures or placeholders, yk? This goes for Jinora, Ikki and Meelo, Kai, the Krew, the adults, everyone - Korra had four seasons. Maybe not time for everyone, but at least for more than they gave. At least time for the main four.

#legend of korra #avatar #korra #mako #asami sato #bolin #jinora #kai #character development #or lack of it #just let them be people yk??#let them have trauma #let them have depth #let them grow beyond love interests of comic reliefs #not to mention all the political and thematic exploration korra moved to fast to cover but whatever ig #legend of korra critical #lok #lok critical

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years ago

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What would happen if Jiang Cheng found A-Yuan hiding in the tree stump at the Siege of the Burial Mounds and decided he's going to take in this toddler Wei Wuxian's was raising and raise him, in the memory of what WWX promised to be for JC?

sequel to this aka Delight in Misery (ao3)

“Sizhui?!” Jiang Cheng roared as he stormed into Lan Wangji’s room. “You named him Sizhui?”

Lan Wangji had already long ago become inured to Jiang Cheng’s huffing and puffing. Anyway, Jiang Cheng had medicine in his hands when he stormed in, which meant that he wasn’t bothered enough by it to come yell at him outside the usual time - and that meant that whatever it was, it was no big deal.

Accordingly, Lan Wangji didn’t give the yelling any more thought than it required, opting instead to turn onto his stomach in silent invitation.

Sure enough, Jiang Cheng came over to sit on the bed, grumbling the entire time he undid the bandages on Lan Wangji’s back and starting to spread the soothing balm onto the slowly healing wounds.

“I can’t believe you picked ‘Sizhui’ as a courtesy name for A-Yuan,” Jiang Cheng said, sounding thoroughly disgusted and more than a little disgruntled as well. His hands, however, were as gentle as his voice was harsh. “Sizhui. Was carving ‘Lan Wangji loves Wei Wuxian’ into the woodwork too subtle for you?”

Being face down made it easier for Lan Wangji to hide the way his lips twitched.

At first, he had been disturbed at the notion that his grief for Wei Wuxian’s loss – an endless well of despair, an injury that would never heal – might in some ways be balanced with instances of joy, and yet, in time, he had slowly come to accept it. After all, Wei Wuxian himself had never remembered pain for more than a moment; he would not have wanted Lan Wangji to deny himself the pleasures of A-Yuan’s cheerful presence, the peace of being surrounded by Wei Wuxian’s belongings, the amusement of Jiang Cheng’s sarcastic commentary that was so thoroughly ungracious it could only be laughed at.

The adjustment had not been easy. Lan Wangji was broken in both body and heart, lingering too longer in regrets of the past, while Jiang Cheng had walked a fine line on the verge of true madness, periods of calm interrupted suddenly by grief so intense it manifested as hysterical anger and furious lashing out, his own servants trembling to see it - it was only when Jin Ling had ended up with them, a safe haven for him in his younger years while Lanling Jin sorted out its own internal issues, that Jiang Cheng had started to calm down. His nights were still full of nightmares, brutal soul-shattering screaming ones that Lan Wangji suspected matched his own, but there were now entire days in which the man who kept him company (because apparently “seclusion” wasn’t considered a real word in Yunmeng Jiang, and “alone” was translated to mean “with me”) was a serious, earnest sect leader with a penchant for snide quips rather than the devastated wreckage of a human being he had met upon the Burial Mounds.

They had not been particularly close, before, and their personalities weren’t exactly compatible. And yet, to his surprise, Lan Wangji found that he didn’t miss the serenity of the Cloud Recesses as much as he thought he would, but rather appreciated the noise and clamor that Jiang Cheng brought into his life.

“ – like two drops of water, both of you,” Jiang Cheng was saying. “Sizhui and Rulan! These are people’s names! They’ll have to bear them their entire lives! Do you think when they’re adults they’re going to enjoy telling people, ‘oh, yes, well, you see, the people who named us had absolutely no sense of dignity or proportion, so –’”

“How is A-Ling?” Lan Wangji asked, feeling his ears go red. He had known about Jin Ling’s courtesy name since long ago, but he hadn’t known until Jiang Cheng had told him that the name had been bestowed by Wei Wuxian, or that Wei Wuxian had praised his sect and maybe even him in the naming – it sometimes made him wonder if his feelings, which he’d long believed to be unrequited, might not have been so hopeless after all.

That didn’t mean he wanted to talk about said feelings with Jiang Cheng, though.

Luckily, Jiang Cheng’s attention was very easy to divert when it came to his precious nephew. “Good! His teeth are finally coming out properly, so we won’t have to deal with all that wailing and gnawing anymore – I thought we’d have to lose A-Yuan’s fingers to all that biting before it ever happened –”

“I thought you told him to stop.”

“Of course I did. Did he listen? No. He just looked sad and obedient whenever I looked at him, and snuck his fingers into the crib whenever I didn’t – I should’ve gotten you to give him the order. He actually listens to you.”

Lan Wangji hummed in response, listening as Jiang Cheng continued in his usual manner to update him about the development of the children they were raising – teething for Jin Ling, Lan Yuan’s rapidly swelling waistline (he was almost recognizable as a child again instead of the pile of bones he’d been after he’d recovered from his fever) and the need to start him on physical conditioning soon, the investment of time and effort that all three of them were putting into trying to convince Jin Ling that his first word should be ‘jiujiu’ – and then, from there, about developments at the Lotus Pier more generally.

At first, Lan Wangji had thought there was a purpose to these updates, that he was meant to give some sort of advice as payment for taking up food and resources, but after a while he realized that Jiang Cheng just wanted someone to listen to him.

He didn’t seem to have anyone else that would.

“– finally finished the full set of docks, so maybe the fishermen will stop beating my ears in about it,” Jiang Cheng was saying. “And yes, damn you, your idea about opening up hotels was both very popular and very profitable – just goes to show that your Lan sect’s reputation for being above it all isn’t in any way justified, you lot make money better than the Jin sect…your brother came by again.”

Lan Wangji tensed.

“Stop that! Your back’s bad enough without adding knots to it.” Jiang Cheng pressed down on one of them purposefully: it hurt for a moment, and then released, and Lan Wangji involuntarily relaxed as the relief spread through him. Jiang Cheng either had a very good teacher in massage or a natural-born talent for it; Lan Wangji hadn’t yet figured out how to ask which it was. “He’s still looking for you, that’s all, and it’s starting to take a bit of a toll on him; he looks like he hasn’t slept in a while. I’m starting to almost feel bad about it.”

It was very classic Jiang Cheng, Lan Wangji had found, to orchestrate a punishment for someone and feel bad about it almost immediately thereafter. It was no wonder A-Yuan had him so thoroughly wrapped around his little finger.

“You can tell him, if you want,” Lan Wangji said reluctantly. Telling would mean seeing, and while he missed his brother very much, he was still very angry over everything that had happened. “I do not want the Lotus Pier to suffer for having harbored me.”

“Stop being so damned self-sacrificing,” Jiang Cheng said, and Lan Wangji wasn’t looking but he could hear him rolling his eyes. “I don’t care how much you enjoy it; I for one can��t stand it. Anyway, if my Jiang Sect can’t hold our heads up against another sect’s anger, we don’t deserve to be called a Great Sect. It’s like I told you: the moment he actually admits that you’re missing, rather than being all ambiguous and vague about it, I’ll tell him.”

Lan Wangji was secretly glad, even though he knew it was petty of him.

The thought of how frantic Lan Xichen must be after all these months, the idea of him not sleeping, of him travelling to all the sects to ask again and again if they’d seen him…the thought of it hurt, he didn’t deny it. But it didn’t hurt as much as finding out that Wei Wuxian had died with no one by his side – as finding out that his brother, who knew what Wei Wuxian meant to him, had known and deliberately omitted to tell him.

Just as Jiang Cheng was deliberately omitting to tell Lan Xichen the truth now.

“The sect would lose face,” he finally said, offering up an explanation for his brother’s actions, both then and now.

“Yeah, well, fuck your sect,” Jiang Cheng said. “I picked my sect over my family, too, and where did that leave me? Now it’s all I have left.”

His hands stilled for a moment.

“…except you and kids, I guess,” he said, sounding especially bitter about it in the sort of way that Lan Wangji had learned indicated that Jiang Cheng was having an attack of feelings and not particularly enjoying the experience. “You’re not that annoying.”

That was practically stating that Jiang Cheng would die without them.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said, and after a moment Jiang Cheng continued rubbing in the salve. There was even a brief moment of silence, probably Jiang Cheng being thankful that Lan Wangji didn’t call him out on those feelings. Normally, Lan Wangji would just enjoy it, but… “You could have children of your own.”

Jiang Cheng choked, his hand slipping as he nearly fell over. “What?”

“Children,” Lan Wangji said. “You could marry.”

Not that marriage was a requirement for children, as Jin Guangshan continuously seemed to demonstrate – according to some of the gossip Jiang Cheng had recently reported, he’d recently brought another bastard son home.

“I’m trying, aren’t I?” Jiang Cheng asked, indignant. “I’ve gone on three matchmaking dates –”

Lan Wangji was well aware. He had been the one to whom Jiang Cheng had exaggeratedly complained after each one of those disastrous dates.

“Deliberate sabotage,” he said, because even without having left the four walls around him in months he could figure that much out. “Why?”

Jiang Cheng hesitated, then snorted. “Well, let’s hope not everyone’s as perceptive as you. It’s the agreement I made with the Jin sect to allow me to raise Jin Ling – no other children.”

Somehow, Lan Wangji hadn’t expected that.

He swallowed, his throat suddenly tight. He knew, of course, that there was nothing Jiang Cheng wouldn’t do for his last living blood relative, even risk having his Jiang sect turned into nothing more than an inheritance to be gobbled up by the Jin sect, but he hadn’t realized – that the Jin sect would take advantage of the grief and trauma that Jiang Cheng suffered, the same grief and trauma that he himself suffered from every day…

It made him taste bile.

“Though you’ve nearly screwed that up, you know,” Jiang Cheng said, sounding suddenly amused. “Back’s done, by the way.”

Lan Wangji sat up and turned his head to look at Jiang Cheng. “How?”

Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes. “Well, given your injuries, I’m the one out there teaching Lan Yuan all the basics, aren’t I? The Jiang sect hasn’t started accepting disciples that young yet, so he stands out. Everyone’s starting to say that he’s mine.”

“His surname is Lan.”

“And Wei Wuxian’s was Wei; that never stopped people from talking, did it?” Jiang Cheng scowled a little at the reminder he’d just given himself; as Lan Wangji had found out these past few months, Jiang Cheng was a master of the self-inflicted injury. “The latest I’ve heard is that I fell in love with some lady from the Lan sect who left her child with me when she died – honestly, it’s a bit sad that they can’t think of anything more interesting. Why would I be stupid enough to make the same mistakes as my father?”

Lan Wangji frowned. Jiang Cheng’s voice was shading near to actual pain, rather than his usual bark without a bite – he had let slip enough about his childhood for Lan Wangji to have figured out that the old jokes about the Jiang sect leader’s favoritism for Wei Wuxian were not jokes at all.

More like an old wound ripped open so many times that it would never heal.

It was no surprise, then, that it hurt him to be cast in the same role.

“You could always tell them that the lady still lives,” he said mildly, pretending his words weren’t hurting himself this time. Maybe Jiang Cheng had a point when he said that Lan Wangji enjoyed self-sacrifice. “Only that she’s ill, or in confinement, and cannot be seen.”

“Not a chance! Like I’d ever do something like that,” Jiang Cheng said, and Lan Wangji very briefly loved him for his immediate rejection of the idea. “Besides, if I say that, what do I do when you do come out of here and claim him? Everyone will think we’ve been sleeping together.”

Lan Wangji politely didn’t mention the occasional night that Jiang Cheng spent huddling by his side, wild-eyed, until the nightmares went away, or the way Jiang Cheng would occasionally lend a hand with certain physiological reactions that Lan Wangji could not bear to deal with himself, turning what might have been a trigger for self-hatred and near suicidal despair into a process as mundane as the baths he still needed help taking; neither of those were what was meant.

“No one would fear that you would have children if they thought you cut your sleeve,” he pointed out, not sure why he was pushing the issue. Even if people did say that, it was only rumors, after all, and temporary ones: when Lan Wangji could walk again, even the most pointed would swiftly fade in favor of ones that slandered Lan Wangji’s reputation instead.

“I’m still hoping to get married eventually,” Jiang Cheng said. “Just – after Jin Ling is an adult. Once he’s sect leader, he can release me from the promise I made. No harm done, assuming I don’t die first.”

Lan Wangji nodded. It made sense, though for some reason he felt some dissatisfaction.

“Though,” Jiang Cheng continued, looking thoughtful, “it might not be that bad an idea to spread some rumors. If I never commented on it, people would never know for sure if it was true or just slander by some dissatisfied female cultivator after one of my horrible matchmaking meetings.”

“It would still affect your reputation.”

“Like I care,” Jiang Cheng scoffed. “Let them talk! If anyone is stupid enough to think that the contents of my bed have any impact on my abilities, I still have Zidian to show them the error of their ways. And I will, too; don’t think I won’t!”

Lan Wangji abruptly felt lighter inside. Of course Jiang Cheng wouldn’t care; he hardly ever cared about anything other than his sect and the children – and anyway, just because Lan Wangji had never told Jiang Cheng directly how he felt about Wei Wuxian didn’t mean that he hadn’t guessed. He had given Lan Wangji Wei Wuxian’s bedroom, after all. “I would never be so foolish.”

Jiang Cheng huffed and tossed his head, then turned to say something that he promptly forgot in favor of gaping at him. “Hanguang-jun, what are you doing with your mouth?”

Lan Wangji allowed his smile to widen. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Stop it! It’s creepy! Go back to being humorless and dull this instant!”

“No.”

“This is my sect and you’re my guest; you have to do what I say.”

“No.”

“You’re worse than A-Yuan,” Jiang Cheng complained. “At least he pretends to listen. I’ll have to raise Jin Ling to be properly obedient.”

For some reason, Lan Wangji didn’t think he would have much luck with that.

#mdzs #jiang cheng #lan wangji #lan sizhui #jin ling #my fic #my fics #delight in misery #accidental life partner acquisition #lacommunarde

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gingersnappe-9 · 3 years ago

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Quisiera: Growing Pains (2)

Javier Peña / F!Reader; Post Narcos

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1.9K words

Summary: You have a lot on your mind. You never expected Javi to be one of them. But that's nothing a good soak can't fix, right?

Warnings: mention of loss of parent & degenerative diseases, minor depictions of sexual thoughts, minor profanity

A/N: because I'm a major dork, and no one asked, I created the floor plan for the reader's house and my friend @followwhereshegoes designed it in Sims for me. The photos are at the end of the chapter. I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!

Your hair blew in the wind as you drove your work-beaten Ford F-250 home. Papers from a long day of checking up on animals and livestock fluttered beneath your now empty thermos for coffee. Your head bobbed with the familiar bumps and turns of the road as you drove home. The ride wasn’t unlike it had been any other day, but as you pulled into your driveway and peaked to the left and you knew he would be there. You had known for a few weeks now that Javi had been back. On a courtesy visit for Don Jesús -- Javi’s dad -- he had mentioned his son might be returning to Texas soon. That had to have been roughly two, maybe three months ago?

You never thought you would see him again. The kid who always thought he knew best. The one who was so sure of himself and that the world was his oyster. You weren’t surprised that he didn’t recognize you though. That was Javi you grew up with. This Javier was different. It was plain to see that he carried a weight with him. Knowing the things he knew, holding on to whatever he’d done in the back of his mind now and forever. He wasn’t the bright and shiny version of Javi you once knew, but he was still as golden as ever.

As you hopped out of the car and twirled the keys on your finger, you were beyond satisfied at your decision to postpone your reunion with Javi. Crossing the threshold of your house you recalled how panicked he looked. The quick flashes of “oh shit” in his eyes before he masked his uncertainty with precision and a charming smile. To others, he played it off fine, but you knew Javi before he was Agent Peña. You’d practically grown up with him so you were privy to those subtle tells.

Javi’s abuelos moved to be closer to their son and his family. His grandparents and your parents met in English class after they moved to America and the families stayed close ever since. Javi’s family was from Mexico, and yours came from Colombia. Each of your tíos and tías helped watch and raise you and your primos. While most of your blood relatives were still in Colombia, you loved your found family here in the States. All of the birthdays spent in one another’s backyards with copious amounts of candy that came pouring out of piñatas. Big Christmas gatherings with mountains of food like ponche, pozole verde, and dulcitos like your favorite manjar blanco. Above all, you remember the laughter.

You laughed so much as a child. Someone could look at you in such a way and you would have burst out into a fit of giggles and happy squeals. It was a bittersweet thing to recall. Things were just… different now. You grew up. Life changed, you certainly had.

This was the home your parents had built not too long after they came to America. You still felt like a little kid playing house sometimes. Being the sole occupant felt strange after the years you spent growing up with the place bursting with laughter, people, and above all love. But life changed. Your mother had died of a heart attack the year before you finished vet school. Ten years back, your father was diagnosed with early onset dementia and it was left to you to make the hard decision of placing him in a nursing home. You couldn’t care for him with the hours you worked at the clinic, and you didn’t think your heart could bear seeing the man you admired slowly fade away. It made you feel awful to admit, but there was only so much a heart could take. It could’ve been different if you still had your mamá, but it was just you.

Your body hitched a bit as you bent over to pull the dirt caked boots off your feet. Growing up is fun, they said. They never mentioned anything about rapid onset aches and pains once you passed thirty. You loved being a vet, you loved taking care of horses and all manner of livestock; being there for the folks who relied on you, but man alive was it taxing on the body.

As you padded your way into the study just to the left of the front door, you dropped the excess paperwork and lunch pale on your desk; your boots onto the old mat so as to not spread anymore dirt in the house. Trying your best to properly file away your paperwork, billing receipts and lists of future visits, you found your mind wandering back to Javier.

The wonderful way his bone structure had sharpened with age. Yeah he was a good looking teenage boy -- a bit on the thin side, but strong in body and mind -- but this version of Javi was a stud. His skin was naturally tanner than some, but it was even more bronzed by the sun from his time down in Colombia. A man with strong looking hands that wrapped the circumference of the tumbler glass filled with neat whiskey meanwhile yours could only manage to get around halfway. You were extremely annoyed at how he could pull off a damn mustache without looking like a creep. Finding that you were spending far too much time thinking about Javier Peña rather than getting your ass ready for bed, you set off on your nightly routine.

Pushing yourself up and out of the desk chair was more tiresome than you would have liked to admit, but not impossible. You then opened the door that led into your bedroom. It still felt a bit weird to call it your bedroom after all this time.

You had redecorated the place to your tastes. The main bedroom now had a beautiful four post bed with pleated gossamer drapes around the posts. The warm wood bureau and doors matched the deep trim of the window sills and frames throughout the house. You removed your everyday jewelry and placed them in the little wooden dishes you had bought in Colombia the last time you visited. You had just turned twenty two then, and didn’t care to remember how old you were now. Admiring the fine artistry of the delicately carved lines and lacquered scenery of a village always brought back fine memories, summers spent in a home away from home. Peeling off your work clothes proved a bit more challenging now that your muscles and bones had started to stiffen from the wear of the workday. You walked into your bathroom as naked as the day you were born, a small perk of having moved into the main bedroom since it had an ensuite bathroom.

After the long day, a shower just didn’t seem like it was going to cut it. You pivoted to the left and began to draw a steaming hot bath. A few drops of essential oil were splashed into the piping hot water. Your abuelita did always say, “Medicina cuando la necesita, pero los remedios naturales siempre son los mejores.”

Medicine when you need it, but natural remedies are always best.

Once the tub was filled as high as it could go and still accommodate your body, the taps were shut off, and you slipped into the warm bliss. The water worked its magic while you turned on a small radio that sat on the windowsill. It was tuned in to some station based in Mexico that always played música rancheras. You were a self-proclaimed “old soul” and loved your parents' generational music. It was a not-so-guilty-pleasure for you. Even when you were younger, some of the other kids made fun of you for not liking the more modern music. But your mom always reassured you it was because you were un romántico. A romantic.

The soulful melodies and elegant guitar echoed through the steam from the bath as your aches and pains were softly pulled from your bones. The sky outside the window was a dusty pink muddled with orange. The heat from the bath was wonderful. Your mind wandered ever farther as you sunk deeper into relaxation. Tonight was one of those evenings you imagined someone else in the tub with you, it was one of the reasons you’d thrown in a couple extra bucks when you redid the bathroom. You imagined leaning against their chest, them running their hands up and down the inner part of your thighs, getting closer and closer to where you wanted their touch the most.

Big and strong hands. Ones that weren’t afraid to leave an imprint, a reminder of their presence. Your cheeks flushed at the thought of them gently pressing and squeezing into your thighs, chest, and hips. The fantasy completed itself when you put a face to this mystery man.

Warm brown eyes, a well-defined jaw, somewhat pouty lips that practically begged you to kiss them with a fucking mustache of all things. You imagined the sound of his voice right next to your ear, whispering dirty things while he continued to paw at your body with confidence. The fresh recall of your most recent conversation made the day dream seem all the more real. It was intimate, enticing. You hadn't had any real boyfriend in a while and with the luscious way the water lapped over your skin, you couldn’t help but squeeze your thighs together unconsciously as his conjured words echoed in your mind.

You feel so soft, Armorsita. Do you like when I touch you here, baby? Oh, you do. I can tell. Mi dama. Tell me. Tell me how much you like it, how much you love being mine. Let me have you, all of you. Let me show you just how much I love touching you right…

Your mind snapped back when your head slipped from its perch on the back of the tub. The room felt steamier than it had before even as the water temperature had dipped to lukewarm.

Was I really just fantasizing about Javier Peña of all people?

It was official then. You needed to get into bed and sleep off whatever delusions these were and come back to reality.

Fully washed and dried, you finished your routine by lathering yourself in your favorite lavender body lotion. Your body felt much better without the thin layer of Texas dust smothering your skin. Something different, however, clouded your mind, or rather, someone. It was a bit alarming how easily Javier permeated your idle thoughts. The encounter suddenly became very clear.

Why did you say goodnight as sultry as you did? Was that even sultry? Why do I keep thinking about it being “sultry”?

Your mind recalled the brief moment your lips touched his cheek. It wasn’t unlike any other time you kissed a friend goodbye. You’d been doing it forever. It was how you said goodbye. You knew that, and so did he. So why did it carve out its own special place in your mind? Why were the sensations so clear and vidid? Why did you so badly want to do it again and again without pause?

Of course your mind would fixate on the person who had just recently come back into your life. It was only natural. Humans are designed to notice differences. It’s a survival technique. To pay attention to possible threats. And you had yet to make up your mind if you considered this version of Javier Peña a friend or foe.

Taglist: @hnt-escape @betti-book @mcueveryday @athalien

#pedro pascal characters #narcos au #narcos #narcos fanfiction #javier peña

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lunaverseimagine · 4 years ago

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Golden

Pairing: Cedric Diggory x Hufflepuff!Reader

Request: “hi, i really love everything you've written and I was wondering if you could maybe write a Cedric Diggory fluff cuteness study with a hufflepuff female reader if not that's totally okay, just want to say your amazing! Thanks!” - @erikathehufflepuff

Warnings: Food, slight angst but mostly fluff

Word count: 1.9k

Gif not mine, credit to owner

One paragraph. You were supposed to write a three-foot long essay about the use of boom berry in modern potions, and all you’d got so far was one measly paragraph. Open books lay haphazardly on the table you’d claimed for the evening, their pages void of any relevance to your assignment. You rested your forehead on the parchment in front of you, letting out a frustrated huff. How were you going to finish in time when you couldn’t find anything useful? You didn’t normally leave homework until the day before it was due, but school had been so busy lately, plus there was a quidditch match that you wouldn’t miss, even if it meant detention with Snape.

You loved the thrill of matches, students sporting their house colours, energy radiating from every stand. You donned as many yellow clothes as you could, full to the brim with Hufflepuff pride. For this match you and your friends had made a giant banner depicting a badger that was enchanted to dance when Hufflepuff scored a goal. Holding the banner up made your arms ache, but it was worth the pain to see the Hufflepuff team mimicking the badger’s dance on their brooms. But even that couldn’t beat watching the way Cedric’s face glowed as he became absorbed in the game: eyebrows slightly furrowed, cheeks flushed from flying, hair sticking in all directions. You were convinced he was born to be a seeker. You were so lucky to have him as your best friend, and seeing him so full of life made you feel complete. The most wonderful part of all was after Cedric caught the snitch, earning a Hufflepuff win. Instead of enjoying a victory lap, he flew straight over to the Hufflepuff stand to share the win with his house, grinning at the first years who were so full of excitement they were jumping up and down. After holding the snitch in the air, erupting a cheer from the crowd, he turned to where you and your friends were standing, beaming up at him.

“Nice banner Sunshine.” He winked at you before joining his team, a chorus of cheers calling after him. You had tried to ignore the way his nickname for you made your heart race.

A poke on your shoulder pulled you out of your thoughts and back into the musty library, where you lifted your head with a small grunt.

“Whaddya want-” You stopped abruptly at the sight of the Golden Boy himself grinning down at you, holding a plate of steaming food. Much to your dismay, your stomach let out a loud groan as the smell of casserole hit your nostrils. Cedric laughed good-naturedly.

“I noticed you weren’t at dinner and figured you’d be here.” He shrugged. “Sounds like it’s a good thing I came.” He let out another chuckle, and you silently willed your stomach to be quiet. Noticing that the table was occupied, he placed the plate carefully on your lap and sat in the chair beside you. You took the cutlery he handed you with a nod of thanks, your heart swelling at his thoughtfulness. Sustenance was exactly what you needed right now. In fact, Cedric always seemed to know what you needed: when to bring you hot chocolate and a blanket because you were so absorbed in studying that you didn’t notice you were shivering. When to crack a joke because you hadn’t smiled in a while. When to hug you because sometimes words weren’t enough. Suddenly you were overwhelmed with a rush of feeling that made heat rush to your cheeks. Your stomach flipped in a way it never did for anyone else. But Cedric was your best friend, and you treasured that friendship with your whole being. You would never want to risk what you already had.

Realising you’d been still for too long, you started shovelling forkfuls of the delicious meal into your mouth. Cedric was perched at an angle so he could face you fully, watching with amusement as you wolfed down the food. “Graceful.” He remarked.

“Shuddup.” You replied through a mouthful, gravy dripping down your chin. You wiped it away shamelessly with the sleeve of your cloak.

Glancing at your parchment, Cedric shook his head. “Did someone spend so long making banners they forgot to do their homework?”

“Oh shove off Ced.” You pushed his arm lightly, but there was no conviction in your words. Honestly, you were grateful he’d come, not just for the food but also the company. Everything felt easier when Cedric was around - your problems felt a bit lighter and the world a bit happier. “You know you loved the banner.”

“Can’t deny it.” You shared a playful look with him, both of you struggling to hold back grins, before placing your empty plate on the floor, not bothering to clear space for it on the table. “Come on Sunshine, let me help.” He nudged your knee with his, and the edges of your lips twitched into a reluctant smile. You couldn’t tell if it was the offer of help or the nickname that made you feel so elated.

“Really?”

“Of course. Now, what fun topic are we working on today?”

“Boom berry.” The monotony in your voice perfectly communicated your level of enthusiasm for this essay. Unaffected, Cedric’s brows furrowed as though he was trying to remember something, and your stomach flipped at how cute he looked when he was concentrating. It was like having a front row seat to a match, seeing the focus carved into his features. Suddenly his eyes widened, and he left you at the table as he roamed the shelves.

Not wanting to sit uselessly, you grabbed one of the books you’d abandoned earlier. You hoped you’d missed something on your first skim-through, that the book actually held all the information you needed. Alas, this was not the book to save your essay. Seconds stretched into minutes as you fruitlessly turned page after worn page, wondering where Cedric was.

Eventually a book thumped on the table beside you.

“Wiggenweld.”

“Bless you.” Cedric laughed affectionately at your joke, setting off a bubbly feeling inside you. There weren’t many people who would laugh at your corniness the way he did - full of fondness and sincerity.

“The Wiggenweld potion. It’s a healing potion that uses boom berry juice! This book has everything you need for your essay, I used it last year.” Cedric’s eyes were bright, pleased he’d found something that could help you. You let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank you so much Ced. Honestly, what would I do without you?”

“Ah, we don’t have to worry about that Sunshine, I’m not going anywhere.” As if to prove his point, he sat on the chair next to you, opening the book to the chapter you needed.

You spent a while poring over the pages, making bullet points on some scrap parchment that would form the outline of your essay. After finishing your last point, you looked up in triumph to find Cedric staring at you.

“What?” You asked, feeling suddenly self-conscious. Maybe you still had gravy on your chin? You wiped it again just to be safe.

Cedric shook his head as if pulling himself out of deep thought. “It’s- it’s nothing.” You eyed him suspiciously, but sensed that he didn’t want to be pushed, so you stayed silent. He cleared his throat. “How’s the essay going?”

You smiled up at him. “I’ve got the outline thanks to you, now just gotta write it up.” Your smile faltered a bit. “This is always the tricky bit. I never know how to word things.” You stared at the mostly blank parchment, the empty space so daunting, wishing it would fill itself.

“I can help.” He was being so kind to you, but to your confusion you felt conflicted. Cedric noticed the slight narrowing of your eyes, hastily adding, “only if you want me to, of course.”

“I appreciate the help, I just-” You thought about how to phrase your words. If only Cedric could help you with this. “I don’t want to take advantage of you. You do so much for me, but is redoing an essay you did last year really your top choice of pastime for a Friday night?” Cedric blinked, taken aback at your question, as though it had never occurred to him to be doing anything else.

“Well, I… I…” You took his loss for words as an opportunity to continue.

“You have so many friends, you could be with them, and yet you’re in the library with me.” You looked at the books in front of you, comparing them to the music and fire-whisky that you knew Cedric could be enjoying instead. You were holding him back from all of that fun. And yet- you hadn’t asked him to be here. You hadn’t asked him to play exploding snap with you in the common room into the early hours of the morning. You hadn’t asked him to sit with you at mealtimes when he had a whole table of friends to eat with. You hadn’t asked him to lend you his scarf in Hogsmeade when you’d forgotten yours, and then spend the rest of the day with you in the Three Broomsticks. But he chose to do all of those things.

Cedric held your hand in his, sending sparks along your skin. You suppressed a shiver. “Sunshine, this is where I want to be. With you.”

You looked up at him, expecting to see pity, but instead his face reflected the vulnerability on your own.

“With me?” For just a moment, your eyes flicked to his lips, imagining what it would feel like to kiss him. You thought that Cedric wouldn’t notice, but when your eyes met his you knew you were wrong. Cedric noticed. He always noticed. He was attuned to you, to every change in your expression, to every inflection in your voice. He often knew how you were feeling before you did. His attentiveness never ceased to surprise you, to make you feel seen and loved.

His voice was slightly husky as he replied. “With you.” You saw him mirror your actions, glancing at your lips before closing the distance between you, cupping your neck in his hands. You met him halfway, hands on his shoulders, and when his lips pressed against yours, it was better than you’d imagined. It was golden. Fireworks exploded in your stomach, sending a warm feeling to the ends of your fingers and toes. Nothing had ever felt more right. So exciting, and yet so safe. When Cedric finally pulled away, you couldn’t help but admire his tousled hair, the look of wonder in his eyes, the dimples in his cheeks as he beamed at you.

“Sunshine, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.” Your hands still on his shoulders, you kissed him on the cheek, and he watched you in adoration. He knew then that he would never tire of you. Your smiles were like gifts, and he treasured each one. It was why he called you Sunshine. A smile of yours could brighten up the darkest room, and he always wanted to be around you. Wanted to be the reason you smiled, the reason you were happy.

“Ced, that was...” You trailed off. How could you describe it? There were no words, so instead you kissed his other cheek. He crinkled his nose in reply. “I’d love to say we can make up for lost time but...” Your gaze travelled to your unfinished essay.

“I’ll be having words with Snape.”

End

Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed please like/reblog, it’s what motivates us to write <3 Feel free to check out my other stuff too :3

#cedric diggory #cedric diggory x reader #cedric x reader #cedric fluff #cedric imagine #hufflepuff #harry potter #hogwarts #quidditch #cedric diggory imagine #cedric diggory fluff #cedric oneshot #cedric fanfic #cedric fanfiction #cedric diggory oneshot #cedric diggory fanfiction #cedric

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pasteljeon · 5 years ago

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don’t need ur love (m)

❥ pairing: ot7/reader

❥ warnings: some vague descriptions of sex, just really angsty sorry :(

❥ based on this prompt: bts being in a relationship with y/n but then slowly all of them fell out of love with her and with another girl. from @/armyforlifelove :”)

❥ summary: four lessons on love.

❥ notes: exams are finally over so i’m super excited to share my upcoming projects soon <3 i hope you enjoy this little ficlet and lmk what you think!

One. Love is fickle.

There is not one boy, there are seven.

“Jimin, I’m not angry. I don’t blame you. You don’t feel the same for me anymore. I accept that. I can’t do anything about it, and I’m not going to sink down and beg you to love me. I know my own worth. I am worth loving, I am worth being cherished and treasured.” You give his cheek one last fond pat, smiling lopsidedly as you pick up the handle of your suitcase.

His lips are downturned, eyebrows pinched and body stiff.

They watch with mirroring expressions of guilt and sorrow as you give the place a final, lingering sweep. But there is also relief and gratitude. You have never been the petty type, never been vindictive. You have always been the mature one, the fun one, the level-headed one.

You say, “Thank you for the memories. I’ll see you around.”

Jimin opens his mouth, like he’s ready to apologize again, but all that comes out is an uncertain, “You too.”

The penthouse is the same as always, clothes scattered on couches and loveseats and hung over the dining table chairs. Yeontan’s toys lying in a pile next to his little bed. Your mug, your clothes, your books and papers, they’re all gone. It’s like you were never here.

The door shuts quietly.

You fall in love in summer.

They pluck you from the crowd, these gorgeous boys, and they carve a space in your heart and fill it with them, until your chest feels so full and warm.

You’re happy for a long time. Winters pass. Spring blooms, so lovely and sweet and it makes your nose itch. They’re soft and kind and their touch is reverent, sometimes bold and daring and always loving.

Then it stops.

He’s distant, shifty-eyed and avoids you like the plague. Slowly, they all become just as detached. And you realize.

Time’s up.

He cries and cries and begs for forgiveness, he buries his face in your stomach and his hands are shaky and cold. He’s sorry, he sobs. He’s sorry he fell in love with someone else.

Yeah, you think. You’re sorry too, because you could have saved yourself from it if you’d only looked hard enough.

Taehyung is the only one that stays with you that night. You send Jimin away, too anguished and defeated to comfort him.

He’s the last one, the one whose heart still flutters when he talks to you, touches you. But you know. You know that eventually, he will leave too.

He kisses your tears away and he holds you close, murmuring sweet nothings until you finally fall into fitful sleep, and his stomach hurts, hurts so much with the way you’re curled into him, so small and fragile, clutching at his shirt as your eyes flicker with whatever dream you’re having.

And he swears he’ll never let you go, never betray you.

“It didn’t break me. How could it? I loved them so much, yes, but this isn’t the end. It’s not the be all end all. It can’t be. I believe that there’s more out there.” You stare into the dark contents of your drink, your reflection rippling across the surface as you trace the handle absently.

The person across from you watches you with a startlingly intense gaze, fingers crossed as they lean in, arms braced on the table.

“It was like … there was a bullet to my heart and a hole in my chest, and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night drowning in anguish and tears burning in my eyes and cheeks wet. Sometimes it’s a struggle to breathe when I think of them, when I do something that reminds me so vividly of them.”

Two. Love is painful.

There were seven boys, now there is only one.

You press your forehead against his. Your voice is soft, your breath is warm and your words are sweet. He thinks he’s dying. Your ache is palpable, your grief burns, lighting a dull pain travels, throbbing and expanding, at the base of his spine.

“It’s weird because it’s not like you wake up one day with this sudden revelation that you’ve fallen out of love. It happens slowly, over a period of time, when the things you did before and the things you liked about your partner no longer holds the same charm. Suddenly, the small things that had made you fall so hard for them are annoying. Their laugh is too loud, too ugly. They leave their utensils in the sink, they forget to separate the lights with the darks They look … ordinary. Just like everyone else you pass on the street. Suddenly, they’re just … somebody. Just not somebody to you.”

“It’s okay, Taehyung. You loved me, and that was enough.”

He sobs out a garble that sounds like your name. He puts a hand over his face, shame and guilt overwhelming him like a tide that threatens to choke the life out of him completely.

You pry them away gently, and you kiss him. It’s wet and uncoordinated, lips slick and salty with your mingled tears.

You stumble into the bedroom, and he presses you against the mattress, hands heavy and hot as he makes love to you one last time. He pours everything into it, everything you’ve been through together, everything he feels for you. Slowly, slowly, because he’s saying goodbye. For real this time, because he can never look back without this weight of failure and guilt.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, he chants, like a broken record, he sears the movement of his lips into your skin and you bear the scar even as you close the chapter for good.

Three. Love changes you.

“But then it starts to fade. The hurt, it lessens with every day that passes. The tightness in your chest loosens and the world starts to regain some of its colour, your body begins to stomach more, your taste buds remind you that food can taste brilliant.”

You find retain old habits and find new hobbies. You reconnect with old friends, make new ones. You go out for dinner, drinks, dessert, the movies, to their houses for barbeque, the skating rink, rollerblading, the occasional club. Not all at once, never in quick succession, but you go when called, go when you ask.

You are reminded that you still have a life outside of the all-consuming romance.

You learn how to draw the perfect wing, you shop, you redecorate, you work, and at the end of the year, you take a two-week vacation to travel somewhere new. You take pictures, write stories, finish your thesis and you graduate.

You enjoy your life.

You still see them, on billboards, TV shows, concerts, YouTube videos, articles, your friends buzz with news about them, at first hesitantly and apologetically, now eagerly and excitedly.

You are proud of them, of where they’ve come, where they are, who they are and what they’ve accomplished. They are an inspiration, legends, and you are grateful to have shared a part of your life with them, to have been born in the same era as them, because this universe makes no mistakes.

And you move on.

You are living.

Four. Love is worth it.

It is worth every tear, the anger and sorrow, the loss and the sacrifice.

And sometimes, the world works in mysterious ways.

Sometimes, you go full circle, only to end up where you should have been from the very beginning.

“Is it too late, have we been through too much, have I lost you? Is it unfair for me to ask if we could start again? The moment you left, I knew … I knew I’d given up something good. Something beautiful and I wasn’t ready to commit, couldn’t see all that I had in front of me. I was foolish, I was … a coward.” He reaches out to touch your hand gingerly, barely a graze, gauging your expression. You don’t move, and he curls his fingers over your palm.

“I thought … I thought that it was natural for me to follow, I thought I felt something for her, but I was wrong, I was so wrong. God, you have no idea how much I hated myself for hurting you like that. I … I love you, I have loved you all this time, and I miss you. I miss your smile, your laugh, the way you hold me, the way you touch me, the way you can comfort me with just your presence. I miss the way you loved me. I missed … you. I miss the colour of your soul.”

“So, I was wondering. If it isn’t too late, if we haven’t been through too much, if I haven’t lost all of you yet, would it be fair to ask you to start over again with me?” His warmth is familiar, his eyes are a burnished gold and the truth is, you are strangers. So much time has passed, he looks a ghost from the past, he talks like him, walks like him, still hates bitter things like him, but he’s not him anymore. You know this because his expression is wiser, he has looked in the mirror and found himself and he is ready to try again. To do better, to dare to become someone better.

But is it too late? Are you ready for the risk of your heart being broken all over again?

Isn’t life a game of risk and reward?

You squeeze his hand gently. “I would like that.”

Taehyung beams. His smile is still boxy, his jaw line sharper, silky hair permed, and it flops over his forehead. He looks older, is older. He pushes the black locks back and strokes his thumb over your knuckles. He’s more comfortable in his own skin, you think his chest is wider, shoulders broader.

“Can I buy you a coffee?”

#smutcentralnet #ksmutclub #btsghostie #jungkook x reader #jimin x reader #taehyung x reader #ot7 x reader #yoongi x reader #hoseok x reader #namjoon x reader #jin x reader #taehyung smut #ggukienet #poly bts #bts angst #taehyung angst

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wafflesandkruge · 4 years ago

Text

when you love someone

The Grand Palace was quiet at this hour with nearly everyone asleep, save for the two royals themselves. Although he’d gone to bed at his usual time, sleep had eluded him and he’d tossed and turned until he simply gave up. He’d slipped into the kitchens the same way he had when he was a boy, but instead of desserts, he found himself looking for something a bit stronger. But to his surprise, he’d found his soon-to-be wife already there, her personality more bracing than any liquor he’d ever tasted.

for @trackermal: “ehri and nik and ‘how come she loves you?’”

Ehri looked at Nikolai over her glass of brandy with obvious distaste. He couldn’t help but think she had spent a little too much time with Zoya- they had the same unimpressed expression seemingly reserved just for him, like he was a cheap street magician who kept bumbling his tricks. Which was rude, because he was perfectly capable of juggling.

“Should a wife really be looking at her husband like that?” He attempted to reach for his glass, then remembered Ehri had stolen it. She’d developed a taste for his favorite drink in her few weeks in Os Alta. With a sigh, he fetched another glass from the cabinet and poured another one for himself.

Ehri scowled. “Like what?”

“Like I just killed your childhood pet in front of you.”

“My sister did that once,” she mused.

“Makhi?”

“Correct.”

“Hmm. Elder siblings really are the worst, aren’t they?”

“I’ll drink to that,” she muttered as she clinked her glass to his. A bit of amber liquid sloshed over the side and onto the table, but she didn’t seem to notice as she brought the glass to her lips again. Nikolai wondered just how much she’d had before he’d walked in. When he’d entered the room, he’d found her sitting at a table under a window, the moonlight bathing her in a silver glow as she’d sipped at rice wine and stared out at the city with a melancholic expression. In her pale dress, she might as well have been a statue carved by a skillful hand.

He often wondered if he’d ever be able to love her the way a husband loved a wife. Attempted murder aside, he found he was quite fond of her; her sharp wit and sharper tongue were always worthwhile sparring partners and she was undeniably pretty in the unassuming manner of a spring blossom. But the fondness he had for Ehri never grew into anything more than the affection he'd feel for a close friend, not in the way it did with...her.

He cleared his throat loudly, suddenly not wanting to dwell on those thoughts. Ehri cut him a baleful glance.

“Yes, dearest husband?”

“I was wondering, sweetest wife, the reason for your late night visit. I’m assuming you weren’t here for the excellent view?”

Ehri scoffed and reached for the bottle again. “The view here is nothing in comparison to Ahmrat Jen. I am marrying into a backwater village.”

Nikolai clutched at his chest in mock hurt. “You wound me.”

“And I’ll do it again.”

He let her threat of regicide slide and sipped at his glass. As he’d hoped, she sighed and began to speak to fill the silence.

“I talked to Mayu today.”

Nikolai raised an eyebrow. The Tavgharad girl had been confined to a separate wing of the palace ever since she’d recovered from her self-inflicted wound. To his knowledge, there had been no attempt at contact from either of them. His puzzled thoughts must have shown on his face, because Ehri snorted and shook her head.

“It was that Shu guard of yours. Tolya. He snuck me into the east wing for half an hour.”

A bolt of panic went through him. Tolya? If his most trusted guard was helping plot against him, why would she reveal that? His grip on his glass tightened until his knuckles were white. But before his thoughts could spiral further, she rolled her eyes.

“Don’t look like that, you’ll get wrinkles. And what would you be without your good looks? He was within earshot the entire time to make sure we weren’t plotting anything. Ask him yourself.”

“But...” he started, his mind still struggling to grasp the magnitude of his friend’s betrayal. “Why would he help you?”

“Because he’s an incurable romantic,” she replied, her gaze shifting away from his face. Her hands shook as she raised her glass again and downed it in one go. He waited for her to say more, to finish her thought, but her lips were pressed into a thin line as she looked at anything but him.

It hit him a moment later.

“Oh.” He suddenly felt like the world’s biggest fool.

“Took you long enough. And I thought they said you were clever.” Her words were sharp, but there was visible relief on her face as she finally set her glass aside. He supposed he ought to have been touched she trusted him enough to let him in on so big of a secret. Though he supposed he didn’t have much to gain from it, not when he was the one who needed the wedding to happen.

“So how long...” his voice trailed off.

“Since we were seventeen. She’d just been assigned to my guard, and she was the only girl my age in the palace who wasn’t scared to talk to me.” She traced the grain of the wooden table with a finger, seemingly lost in her memories. “She kissed me first, actually. Stupid on her part, when she knew I could have had her executed for even touching me. But it all worked out. Until it fell apart again, I suppose.”

“What happened?”

“She said she wouldn’t be staying. That she’d go back to Shu Han the first chance she got because she couldn’t see me wed to another.” Ehri gave a brittle laugh. “Her jealousy is stronger than her oath of loyalty, I suppose.”

Nikolai averted his gaze. He had the distinct feeling Ehri wouldn’t appreciate it if he saw her cry. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. Well, actually,” she conceded, sniffling a little, “it is. But it’s not your fault we were born as two people who couldn’t be together in this life.”

He suddenly found his glass terribly interesting. He wasn’t sure if she’d meant to hint at his own personal dilemmas, but their conversation was getting uncomfortably close to turning on him. And of course, she decided to pounce on that.

“You and the general.” It wasn’t a question, or even speculation, but a statement. Nikolai tried not to wince.

“What about General Nazyalensky and I?”

“You care for each other.” Her golden eyes were bright with unshed tears, but they were still narrowed in triumph. Saints, did everything have to be a fight with her? Nikolai ran a hand through his hair and tried to keep his knee from bouncing.

“Of course we care for each other,” he said with a forced laugh, “As I’m sure you know, four years ago-”

“That’s not what I mean,” she interrupted. She leaned in closer until he could smell her floral perfume. He tried not to lean back. That would have been a loss for him. “The two of you are like Mayu and I. Zhiji. When they know you better than you know yourself.”

He thought about denying it, as he’d always done. But perhaps it was the drink, or the lack of sleep, or the company, that he gave a tired nod. It wasn’t his best decision, but it felt fair. Surprisingly, Ehri didn’t gloat. Instead, she looked even gloomier if possible. She slumped back into her chair.

“Why hasn’t she left, then? Will she still be seeing you behind closed doors even after we are wed? How can she still love you?”

How indeed. Nikolai reached for the bottle again, only to find it empty. They were both going to regret this the next morning. He sighed and folded his hands together so they would stop trembling.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve her. If she tells me she wants to leave tomorrow, I wouldn’t stop her.”

Ehri’s brows furrowed. “You wouldn’t fight to keep her here?”

“No. Sometimes, love is about letting go.” And that was what all love was in the end, wasn’t it? The loss of it. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Saints, he needed another drink. He pushed himself up from the table and started digging through the cabinets again.

She was silent as she turned that over in her head. Nikolai found a half-full bottle of kvas, probably hidden away by a kitchen boy to show off to his friends later. Not his favorite, but it’d have to do. He’d replace it with a nicer bottle the next day. He brought it back to the table and filled both their glasses.

“I don’t think I like that very much,” Ehri said, staring into her drink as if she could scry secrets from its surface. “Love should be something you fight to keep, no matter what.”

He offered her a tired smile. “Then you’re the braver one of us, Princess. Personally, I’m a bit tired of fighting at the moment.”

“You give shitty advice,” she accused.

“I’m drunk.”

“It’s an improvement.”

He decided to let her have the last word. They sat in silence as the moon climbed higher in the sky, the last bottle quickly polished off between them. There was a certain comfort in the quiet, an understanding that he only found with Ehri. It was rather nice. But if he ever told her that, she’d probably laugh in his face. Saints, he wished he’d meet a decent royal at least once in his life.

Ehri was the first to push away from the table first some hours later, the legs of her chair scraping against the stone floor with an ear splitting screech. Nikolai winced.

“Have a good night, o’ honorable husband,” she said as she brushed some dust off her sleeve. Her entire body swayed with the motion. “Don’t get assassinated. I don’t think I could manage to look mournful at your funeral.”

“Sweet dreams, darling wife,” he said with some amusement as he watched her stumble out of the kitchen. If he’d been feeling kinder, he might have offered to walk her to her room. But when he already knew what the answer was going to be, he didn’t have the strength to waste his breath.

#if anyone tags this as nik/ehri i will knife you #kos #king of scars #kos writing #nikolai #ehri #zoya #mayu #tolya #zoyalai #mayri #grishaverse #leigh bardugo #my writing

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sw124 · 4 years ago

Text

Ambrosia

[Reader is Female, for the record there is a rare phenomenon known as Golden Blood where a individual is RHnull having no RH factor which means they have no - or + in their blood. For more information please research it further on your preferred method. This is an Undertale original Vampire AU done by @taytay2656 ]

Here you were, standing in the lions den. The lion in question was staring you down, sizing you up. Lord Xyrus, owner of this lovely castle and noble of the area. You came here looking for work, knowing full-well that this was not the place for you...but you didn’t have much choice.

It was either this or return to your home and be forced into a political marriage to a man who would turn you into another trinket in his growing harem of ‘brides’ so to speak. You did everything in your power to look like a peasant girl, giving away your clothes, bartering for any scraps of clothing and even rolling in dirt. Well it worked, by the time you go there you looked like some vagabond tossed out of their home.

Now here you were asking for help... before a person you knew would be dangerous...especially if he found out your secret. You flinched as he stood up and walked around you, you held your breath as he took his seat again.

“Well you seem to be in good health, you’ll be put to work outside on the grounds. Do well and you may work your way up to being a maid in the house...or be apart of my...nobles.”

He smirked at you, you cursed your face...your mother always told you that you were born with a ‘youthful’ face. Round and cute, you shook your head and bowed to him.

“I will do my best out on the grounds my lord, I promise not to be a disappointment to you.”

He gave you a stern nod and lead you outside, he introduced you to a senior member of the groundskeepers. He was a tall, older man but had such a welcoming smile, his name was Arthur and he took you under his wing. You didn’t have much trouble adapting really, true you were born into nobility you snuck away to help the maids and servants with chores as a way to pass the time. Your favorite thing to do was go outside in the garden an help tend to the flower beds and vegetable patches.

You felt truly at ease here, yes it was dangerous to be in the presents of Lord Xyrus but you’d take this over being a harem girl any day.

.....But this ease would not last long...

[six months later]

It was one particularly nice day that you were outside, one of the workers...a young girl came running up and telling you the lord wished to see you. You waisted no time stepping down off the ladder with your basket of apples, handing them to the girl you made your way to the castle where Lord Xyrus was waiting.

“Ah, there you are. I need you to do me a special chore, my brother who lives up the way needs his home cleaned and since I can’t spare any of my indoor servants at the moment an you seem to be the most...studious you seem to be the most qualified for this.”

You tilted your head, he had plenty enough servants to spare...but then again it was best not to argue. You nodded and listened closely to his instructions on where to find his home. You listened carefully and headed off into the woods.

Odd that the two don’t live together given their family but then again sometimes family are better living their own lives. The path towards the home spiraled through the woods, you didn’t mind really. It was so nice to see the beauty of the woods here, for a moment you stopped, extend your arms and breathed in the luscious air of the woods.....

That was a mistake...

The wind was knocked out of you when arms wrapped around your midsection, next thing was the sharp prick of teeth sinking into your skin. You got a look at your attacker, his burnt umber kimono slowly staining with your blood. You noted he was rather large frame...that and you were practically lifted off the ground into his hold. You could feel his tongue dig into the muscles, ripping them to produce more blood, he took flesh that was for sure. Yes he got a taste of your blood...and he wasn’t letting go any time soon.

“.......Are you done yet?” You groaned, folding your arms across your chest.

You felt him jump a little as he let you go, you fell flat on your butt. You turned and glared at him but it faded when you saw his...scared expression. Slowly you stood up, slightly dizzy from the loss of blood but it was slowly coming back. Along with your wound closing up.

“Next time don’t drop me, you must be the masters brother. He didn’t give me your name so mind telling it to me?”

He didn’t answer...he just stared....you stared back and sighed. You looked around and just barely through the tree’s you spotted a small cottage, probably his home. You turned to him, took his hand and started pulling him towards the cottage in question. He needed to clean up and so did you...funny he didn’t resist.

“Well I suppose we can get you cleaned up and we can do introductions then hm?”

You weren’t sure what to say, poor thing looked lost...alright sure he just tried to kill you but you just survived his attack. That probably not only surprised him but scared him, the cottage inside was small but it felt like you stepped into the story book.

The floors inside were lined with tatami mats, there was a cute little square filled with sand and a fire going in it. There was a line from the top of the ceiling holding a pot, a nice place to cook a stew. There was a smaller room where a futon mat was laid out for sleep, you doubted he slept much but it was still nice. There were scrolls and books on shelves about.

This place was truly a little slice of heaven, if things were different you would have loved to live here...even if you had to live with someone who just tried to take half of your neck off. You walked to the little washbasin in the corner of the room, it was half filled with water. Taking up a rag you dipped it in the water and walked over to him, he backed away when you came close.

“Now don’t be difficult, your brother Xyrus sent me to take care of things around here an my guess is also take care of you. So be still please, if you leave blood sitting on your face it’ll get sticky.” You managed to get pull him close and dabbed his stained mouth clean.

Once he was clean you washed off around your neck, you poured some water into the washbasin and let the rag soak. You went to the smaller room and proceeded to look for a clean kimono to change your....right you didn’t know his name.

“Whats your name please, I need to call you something.”

“C-Cayden!” He practically hiccuped his name, you almost giggled at it but kept your composure.

“Very good then, come here master Cayden I got a clean kimono for you. Please change an I’ll go wash that one, don’t want it staining.”

In a daze he took the kimono, walked into the smaller room and proceeded to change, you waited till he came out. Seems all his kimonos had the same color, orange. You took his sullied kimono and headed outside, just a few steps away was a stream. Kneeling you began washing and scrubbing the kimono clean of your blood. You heard him come up behind you, he knelt down beside you.

“Y-you shouldn’t be at my home, does my brother know about you?!” You couldn’t miss the waver in his tone.

“No your brother doesn’t know, doubt if he did he’d send me to you. An if your referring to my blood...I took great measures to make sure no one found out about my blood, golden blood isn’t exactly something you want others to know about.” You smiled at him and patted his head, he was so sweet.

“Well...when your finished with that we must head back to his castle, my brother would be very cross with me if I kept you.”

That made you sad, you kinda hoped you’d stay and be ‘his’ servant but its not like you had a choice, you were obligated to obey.

“Alright master Cayden, as you wish...if its not too much trouble do you have a cloak or anything I could wear. Don’t wanna walk into his home covered in blood, might scare the others.”

He nodded and ran back to his cottage, by the time he got back you were just hanging his kimono on tree branch to dry in the sun. It was adorable how he put it over you and fastened the clasped around the front. He took you by your hand and swiftly lead you down a carved path towards the castle, if you knew this was here it would have made the trek to the cottage easier...but you digressed. The sun was starting to set by the time you reached the castle, you barely stepped foot into the castle grounds when you saw master Xyrus.

He was damn near running towards the both of you, you were tempted to hide but then why? You didn’t do anything wrong, in a blink he was before you tearing the cloak from you. He gripped the part of your clothes that were still stained with blood, he inhaled and turned to you. Eyes widening, you could have sword you saw a glint of saliva forming in the corner of his mouth...

“Inside...please.” He whispered to you as he fixed the cloak back on you.

Doing as you were told you walked back in, looking back to be sure Cayden wasn’t getting yelled at. But instead Xyrus was simply patting his brother’s arm and sending him on his way, thats good at least there wasn’t bad feelings between the two. You were careful to avoid the maids and servants around, just because your clothes were covered didn’t mean they couldn’t smell your blood. Finally you reached master Xyrus’ quarters, you closed the door and were about to sit down before it opened again, the master stepping inside.

He closed and locked the door, again the cloak torn from you. His arm swiftly wrapped around you and pulled you into an embrace, his fangs the color of ocean pearls gingerly pierced your flesh. Compared to Cayden it was a change, to steady yourself you held on to him. This did feel a lot less painful, after a moment he pulled his head away. Kissing the mark he left, already starting to heal.

“Hmm yes...to think I had you in my possession and never knew.” He purred, he cradled the back of your head as he tilted it forward.

“You’ll live among my nobles from now on, on top of that I think I’ll give you a name.”

You blinked at him. “An..what name is that?”

You watched as a Cheshire grin formed on his face as he leaned in to your neck.

“Ambrosia...” he hissly moaned as he again pressed his fangs into you..for another drink.

End, more to come if you wish to have more.

#undertale #undertale oc #fanfic

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soukokuwu · 5 years ago

Text

NAKAHARA CHUUYA

FOREVER YOU

》 sadly, angst (chuuya x reader)

》 trigger warning! death

》 summary: it’s your birthday, and Chuuya has plans

》 word count: 2.2k

》 i- i tried.. i wanted this to be better but also i suck so have some slight angst, guys 🥺 let me know how it is

“every inch of you is the most beautiful thing that God ever created”

︻⋆︻⋆︻⋆︻⋆︻⋆︻⋆︻⋆︻⋆︻⋆︻⋆︻⋆︻⋆︻

Chuuya hummed to himself as he strolled into your shared apartment, flinging his coat on the coat rack before making his way into the kitchen with the groceries. Skilfully, he started chopping up the beef and toasting the bread, making your favourite beef sandwich, with no changing the recipe you taught him.

An hour later, Chuuya was armed and ready. He looked at the wall clock. 11am. Right on time. He had requested a leave day from Mori, to which Mori had no qualms about.

Every year, on this date, he’d request a day off. Unless an extremely urgent matter came up that only Chuuya could handle, the ginger would rather spend the day with you. It was your birthday– and anniversary– after all, and even though you’d always tell him it wasn’t necessary, he did it anyway, and he knew you were secretly grateful for it. For the past three years, the two of you had a routine: meet up at the same spot, 12pm, and spend time together.

Picnic basket in hand, he got ready to leave the apartment. “Today marks the third year,” he whispered to himself, heart pounding loudly in his chest. “Why do I still feel like this?”

➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶

By noon, Chuuya had arrived at the usual spot. His lips curved into a smile as he spotted where you were, slowly making his way over. He thanked the heavens that the weather was good today. It was a breezy day, and even though it was noon, the sun wasn’t too strong. Not that it would matter much, there was a lot of shade provided by the trees near your spot.

Chuuya wore the biggest smile he could manage as he approached you, his mind flashing back to the first moment he ever laid eyes on you.

◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤

It was five years ago.

You were the secretary to the lousy excuse of a CEO of a tech company, who happened to be Port Mafia’s enemy. Diligent and knowledgeable, you had attracted Chuuya’s attention since you introduced yourself. All he had wanted was to extract information directly from your boss, but he had ended up getting it from you. As he expected, you had been smart enough to see through his disguise. But much to his surprise, you voluntarily agreed to cough up information on your boss. The disdain you had for the CEO was obvious by how you handled the whole situation. Chuuya didn’t know what went down between you and the CEO, but he knew you hated the man, and you wanted to be rid of him. So, after the whole ordeal, which thankfully landed the CEO in jail, Chuuya offered to help you get another job, away from that environment.

That was when the two of you had formed a friendship. At first. But after a few dinners, a few wine discussions later, you couldn’t help but admit it to yourself too, he was as attractive as they could get. Chuuya had been nothing but considerate, putting you first, thinking of you even when he should be worried about himself. It was hard not to fall for him. It was a big bonus that he is as handsome as he is. Not that you could ever find it in yourself to admit it to him directly, considering how shy you could be when it came to these things. But, nevertheless, Chuuya knew how you felt.

As your friendship progressed, the dinners outside after work translated to dinners in either of your homes, the glasses of wine you usually drank turned into bottles, and the small conversations turned into passionate kisses.

You loved how he was always gentle with you, making your heart melt, treating you like the most precious thing in the world. Something you had never felt before, despite having been in several serious relationships in the past.

Chuuya, on the other hand, had never dated seriously before you, and it surprised him how fast he had been moving with you. But it was a good kind of surprise, a pleasant surprise. Not once in the relationship did Chuuya ever regret pursuing you, or letting you into his whirlwind of a life. You were of strong mind, and never let the fact that he was an executive of the Port Mafia be a problem. If an issue arises, you certainly weren’t a child about it, and it was one of the many things Chuuya admired and respected you for. Any arguments that happened would never find its way into the next day, and anything petty or toxic never found their way between the two of you. And he had decided, then and there, you were made for each other.

It had been only six months in and the two of you had already decided to get a shared apartment, solely due to the fact that it was getting tiring only getting to see each other through video call every night. Both of you did have hectic work schedules after all. The decision to move in together proved to work wonders for your relationship. He knew he had never felt as happy as he did after cohabitating with you. Heck, just after your relationship passed the one-year mark, Chuuya had already thought about marriage, and he was glad that you seemed to be on the same page as him.

◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤

And today, it’s the third anniversary. Chuuya couldn’t believe how fast time flew. He had laid out the food and poured the wine in a wine glass. It was a simple meal, and yet it meant so much to him. Slowly, his hands traveled into his coat pocket, fiddling with the small velvet box.

“Hey,” he mumbled, hesitant. “If all that didn’t happen, would you’ve said yes?”

But you didn’t say a word.

You couldn’t.

◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤

Three years ago.

Chuuya had left the mafia headquarters early and was going to head to your workplace to surprise you. It was a special occasion after all. He bought a bouquet of your favourite flowers before heading over. He was grinning ear to ear as he got closer to your office. He could just imagine how happy you’d be the moment you saw him. He couldn’t wait to give you an endless amount of surprises that day.

But then it all happened in a split second.

He was just across the street, and even in the crowd of people, your eyes had caught his. A throng of people pushed past you, running out of the company lobby. The structure had already started to crumble, and you knew it was too late. There was no way you could escape in time, no way Chuuya could propel himself forward in time. You were in too deep. But then you smiled as you mouthed to Chuuya, ‘It’s okay.’

And then the building swallowed you.

‘Bomb kills 37 in suspected terrorist attack’ was the headline for your demise.

➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶

There was only one word to describe Chuuya after what he witnessed: inconsolable.

A part of him was lost forever.

He didn’t show up to work for weeks. Mori knew exactly what his executive needed, and he didn't interfere in his grieving. There were no urgent missions that needed Chuuya’s personal tending to anyway. And even when he finally did appear, no one dared mention you. Those who knew of the two of you already texted Chuuya their condolences, not that any of them ever got a reply.

How could he bear to see or talk to anyone when he blamed himself for not being able to save you? All he could think of in the weeks after your death was how he should’ve went off earlier, how he probably shouldn’t have stopped for the flowers, then maybe, just maybe, you would still be in his arms, alive. Perhaps engaged to him, even.

◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤

The first anniversary consisted of just a bouquet of daisies, your favourite.

The second anniversary saw a little more effort. There was music, and Chuuya recited some poetry.

And now, now was the third anniversary. Of your death.

Dying on the same date you were born. Was this what people considered poetic?

Chuuya pulled his hands out of his pockets, letting go of the box. He reached for the sandwich he made and took a bite, well aware of the tears welling in his eyes. He didn't stray from your recipe at all, and yet it tasted different. The wine he downed did nothing to soothe the ache in his heart, serving only to make it worse when he remembered it was your favourite.

He spent the next hour there with you, staring adoringly at your gravestone. Just seeing your name carved on there made him feel just a little more home. Sure, he always visited when he had the chance, but with nothing in tow. Your birthdays would always be special. He had decided that when you were still here and he would keep it that way even when you’re not. No matter how stupid he felt talking to thin air, he would still do it anyway. It was the only time he would ever allow himself to act as though you were still here. Not that he could talk much. Just a few words and he would start choking up.

It was the same every year.

After visiting you, he would go back to your shared apartment and clean up. Although, it was empty almost 364 days of the year, given Chuuya lived in his own apartment, the one he had before he moved in. He couldn’t stand spending the night alone in this place, not anymore. He also couldn’t bring himself to throw any of your belongings away. Everything was still where they were three years ago.

Usually he would just make sure everything was neat and tidy before leaving to occupy himself. But this year, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but wallow in your loss. The moment he got back, he shut the front door, leaned back against it and fell to the floor. The tears he had tried to hold back came rushing out. He looked around and all it did was make him feel even worse.

All he could see in the empty living room was the two of you playfighting on the couch. He was tickling you, and happy tears would be streaming out your eyes. You were deadly ticklish. You couldn’t tolerate it for the life of you. Or the times you would tickle him instead, when he was beating you at a playstation game. Sometimes he’d still beat you, and you’d pout and stick your tongue out so adorably. Then he’d let you win the next game.

In the kitchen he could see himself throwing flour at you during one of your baking sessions. There were days when you were bored and had roped Chuuya into baking with you. He had feigned defiance by playing with you during the process. Truth be told, he loved doing anything with you. You always made it a good time. Baking would usually end with the both of you covered in flour or chocolate, sometimes not even having baked anything. And he wouldn’t trade it for all the food in the world.

In the bedroom all he could envision was the intimacy. The first time you had fallen asleep together, his arms wrapped around you, the alluring scent of your hair permeating his senses. The first time the two of you became one, how gently he had handled you then, how passionately you had returned his love. And similarly, all the times after that.

Then there was the bathroom during your morning afters, where you would be brushing your teeth and Chuuya would appear behind you, snaking his arms around your waist and pulling you into the shower with him instead. How you’d complain but you’d be smiling brightly at the same time. You’d be content to be pulled anywhere, as long as it was with Chuuya.

The last place his eyes laid on was the balcony, still decorated with the fairy lights he had placed. Exactly three years ago, he decorated the balcony with fairy lights the moment you left for work. That was all part of the plan. Decorate the balcony, go to work, leave early, surprise you at work, go for a good dinner, come home... and propose to you. You had been together for two years then, and Chuuya didn’t want to wait any longer.

Chuuya pulled out the velvet box from his coat and opened it. The diamond ring glimmered brightly. Not once did he stop carrying the ring. He didn’t even know why, he just did. It was as though he felt like leaving it around would risk the chance of him forgetting you.

And god, he didn’t want to. Never. You meant the world to him. The only one he was sure he would sacrifice himself for. But he didn’t get a chance to. You had left. And neither of you had a say in it.

He leaned his head back in frustration, his hands falling to the floor, his grip around the red velvet box never loosening. But for the first time in a long time, he let himself go, he let himself cry this out, his emotions taking over him. All he could think of was the grief, and how everything would be fixed if only you were here. Why did you go somewhere he couldn’t follow? Why wasn’t he allowed a goodbye? Why of all people did it have to be you?

I miss your laugh. I miss your smile. I miss how you’d make such a mess whenever you cooked. I miss coming home to you. I miss touching you, kissing you. I miss our little talks. I miss everything about you. I miss you, I fucking miss you.

“Come back, I love you,” he sobbed, burying his head between his knees, “Please come back to me.”

It’s so lonely. Too lonely.

︼⋆︼⋆︼⋆︼⋆︼⋆︼⋆︼⋆︼⋆︼⋆︼⋆︼⋆︼⋆︼

“please come home, this doesn’t feel right.”

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megan-is-mia · 4 years ago

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I saw that you were asking for yandere twst prompts so I'm here to deliver! Could I maybe get Riddle with delusional prompt number 21? Thank you so much!!

(I’m always happy to deliver the yan content :D) 21. “All I want is you. All I’ve ever wanted was you.” (Yandere! Riddle Rosehearts x Fem! S/o)

The red mist that blanketed the town each new moon was no natural phenomenon. No, it was proof of the ancient curse that made the little hamlet so prosperous but also exacted a heavy toll for the gifts it brought. Long ago when the town was but a few ramshackle huts, the villagers had struck a deal with the Crimson Tyrant. A being who could take on human-shape if he wished but was absolutely inhuman in nature. The village would be kept under his protection from all disasters both natural and man-made. In exchange for this protection, the town would have to make monthly sacrifices to the being. The Crimson Tyrant’s demands varied from month to month. Sometimes he’d demand that baskets of strawberries be brought to his dwelling, sometimes he’d order that the village bring him horses from their stables to do with as he pleased. And sometimes, rare as it was, he’d ask for them to bring him one of their own to feast on in the darkness of his abode. Each new generation of villagers was skeptical of his existence until they failed to fulfill his orders, be it from laziness or ignorance of the truth, and he came tearing through the town in a bloodthirsty rage. (Y/n) had been born and raised on the legends of the Crimson Tyrant. Yet her young heart did not feel the fear it should have. Instead, curiosity drove her to wander closer and closer to the being’s stronghold until one day with a satchel of strawberries held tight under her arm she set off towards the Tyrant’s home once more. Today would be the day she met the being in the flesh and found out for herself which of the legends of him were true and which were old wives tales only. (Y/n)’s sudden appearance threw the Tyrant off guard, the villagers had never visited him when it was not the new moon and he was at a loss for how to respond. “Why are you here mortal?” the Tyrant called out from the darkness as (Y/n) made her approach. “I am here to make a friend of you Crimson Tyrant, and as a token of our newly formed friendship I have brought you strawberries” the girl responded taking her satchel off and opening it so the being could see the contents and smell the tantalizing, fruity aroma of the freshly-picked berries. Unable to resist the temptation of the offering the Crimson Tyrant cautiously emerged from his home, taking on the shape of a delicate-looking young man so he would not cause his guest more fright than necessary. Normally when accepting offerings he’d try to grab them as quickly as possible and disappear again to the darkness but (Y/n)’s cheery expression caused him to linger in the sunlight. When he finished the treat she’d brought him, only then did he retreat once more to the safety of his hideout. This interaction would not be the last of its kind, for (Y/n) made a habit of visiting the Tyrant at least once a week, always bringing a peace offering of some sort for him. Slowly, ever so slowly the ancient being was falling in love with his human companion. For the first time in a long time, he realized how lonely his existence had been. He never wanted to be alone again, so as the new moon drew ever closer he knew what he’d asked for from the villagers: (Y/n). And he would not eat her like all the other human sacrifices he’d received but make her his wife. When the news of his request reached the young woman’s ears her reaction was less than agreeable. (Y/n) tried to run away from the town in the dead of night only to be dragged back by her fellow townsfolk and locked up in village jail until the night of the new moon had arrived. Like every soul before her, she was dressed up for the Tyrant and bound in chains so she would not run. “I thought we were friends” (Y/n) sobbed as she lay helpless on the being’s doorstep. “I thought of you as my friend” she went on her eyes squeezed shut as she continued to cry. The Tyrant did not enjoy the sight of her tears at all and kissed away her tears as he ran a soothing hand up and down her bound body. “Were you just pretending to enjoy my company and waiting for the right moment to exact revenge for bothering you in the first place?” (Y/n) babbled on as she was lifted into the being’s arms and carried into the darkness of his domain. There was dead silence except for her own whimpering breaths.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way (Y/n), I would have preferred for you to be brought to me unbound with a smile on your face. But you must understand all I want is you. All I’ve ever wanted was you. You’ve carved your way into my heart and I can't live you without any more” the Tyrant said softly. “Crimson Ty-” the girl began before being cut off by the being’s mouth. “-Riddle, my name is Riddle. As you are going to be my wife, you deserve the privilege of knowing my name” Riddle said after he pulled away from (Y/n)’s lips. He had been imagining how soft her lips would feel against his, and the reality was even better than he had hoped for.

“You, you, you” (Y/n) said dumbly, unable to construct a proper sentence with how bewildered she was by this turn of events. “You aren't going to eat me?” she finally managed to say with great difficulty. She was given an answer to this question in the form of another kiss being pressed to her lips as Riddle came to halt and set her down on a soft surface she could not see. The male carefully undid the chains around her before he wrapped his arms around her waist and let his head rest on her shoulder. (Y/n) felt a shudder go through her at how intimate the position was but she dared not struggle. She’d seen him truly lose his temper only once, and there had been numerous close calls besides that. If she’d had any sense those moments would have alerted her that her pursuit of friendship with Riddle would only end in her misery. Alas, she’d been an optimistic fool who’d gotten over her head with dark forces she could not comprehend. (Y/n) had unknowingly stolen the heart of a creature without morality or mortality and there was no hope for her. No one from the village would try to rescue her, they’d simply assume she’d died like all the rest. Little would they know of how much worse a fate had befallen her… THE END

#Yandere Twisted Wonderland #Twisted Wonderland #Yandere Riddle Rosehearts #Riddle Rosehearts

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amive2567 · 4 years ago

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Levi Ackerman x Reader

Summary: Levi has to cope with the loss of you.

Warning: Angst

Words: 1.436

A/N: That´s my first post and i hope you like it.

Disclaimer: Attack on Titan and the characters belong to Hajime Isayama.

Levi P.O.V

I am sitting in my office and doing the paperwork Erwin assigned to me. Outside of the window, the birds are twittering which is slightly distracting. They are just too noisy, which upset me. On the other hand, they make the day less depressing and fill it with noises which I prefer from the silence. Well, even this moment of peace got destroyed when Hanji burst into the room with a big fat ass grin on her face. "What do you want four-eyes?" I asked her while I filled out another record. "I just wanted to ask something." She said and sat down. "The answer is no." I spat at her and hoped that she will go, but she stayed and pouted. "I didn’t even say something. You can’t deny a question you haven´t heard." "Well, I can and now leave my office. I have better shit to do than talking to you." I hissed. She grimaced and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "You are such a mean person. I just wanted to ask if you would like to give me your paperwork because today is..." I did not even let her finish the sentence. The rage inside of me just got the best of me and I slapped my hand on the wooden desk. "No. Now leave shitty four-eyes." Her eyes widened and she nodded understandingly that I will not cooperate with her. "Alright but don’t do too much shorty." She opened the door but froze in the doorframe. "If you want to talk about it and get a day off Erwin will understand." Her voice shook a bit but I didn´t show any type of empathy. "Well, could you leave now?" I demanded and she left me and my thoughts alone.

Today, 33 years ago, the most precious person in my life was born. A light to call home if I put it into something ridiculously poetic. Why did Hanji have to remind me of her? Y/N and her calming E/C in which I could've drowned. It has been one year without her and every day is a challenge. She was the last bit of hope in this awful hell and even this bit of hope was taken by those titans.

I lowered my pen and got up from my desk chair, which I had been in since yesterday. My back cracked while I stretched myself. I looked outside of the window and enjoyed the three birds that chirped and flew happily through the sky. I wish I could be like them. Free and happy. I opened the window and let the fresh air into my office. I looked at the blue sky and wondered how this day would be if I hadn´t been so sluggish. I could´ve saved her. I closed my eyes and took a breath. I never regret my choices and even if it hurts, I won’t regret it this time either. It happened and if I mourn about it nothing will change the fact that it happened. I can’t change it and that’s it. I must accept it and live with the thought that Y/N is gone and will never come back. One of the birds chirped and landed in front of me. It tilted its head and looked at me. For a second, I thought that the bird wanted me to forget my dark thoughts. I shook my head and closed the window again.

I turned around and saw that all the papers were scattered around the room. I cleaned the mess and tried to work again but my thoughts drifted away and I laid my head on the desk. Why did the only light in my life have to vanish and leave me with darkness and pain? I walked out in the hallway and down to the kitchen to get me some black tea. I need to get rid of those thoughts. There’s nothing in the world that changes it. It happened and I couldn’t do anything against it. These are the facts. I filled the water in the teakettle and let it start to boil. In the time that the water boiled, I stood on a chair and grabbed a teacup from the upper shelf. Which idiot thought about putting the cups in this shelf? If I find this person there is someone on stall duty in the next few months. The teakettle whistled and I filled the cup with the hot water. "Ah found you. It’s a miracle that you even left your office." Says a deep voice behind me. I rolled with my eyes and turned around. "What do you want eyebrows?" I asked him harshly. "You get today off." He commanded and I wanted to complain, but he shook his head knowingly. "That’s an order and nothing to talk about. Hanji will take care of the paperwork." He explained and I stared angrily at the ground. "I don’t need a day off. I’m fine." I said and glared at him. "How can you be fine if..." "I don’t want to hear it." I interrupt him. "She is dead, Levi. You have to accept it." He said again and I glared another time at him. "She is dead and will never come back." He said again and I felt the urge to hit him with a chair. "Don’t you dare to talk any further!" I barked but he opened his mouth again. "She is dead Levi. A Titan ate her." I rushed forward and grabbed him by his collar. "I. Said. Don’t. You. Dare. To. Talk. Any. Further." I spelt with my bared teeth. He opened his mouth, but I kicked him in the stomach. He stumbled back and noded. "Enjoy your day off." He said and I watched with anger in my eyes how he left the kitchen. I swore under my breath and took the cup of tea with me to my office.

I open the door and saw that the papers were removed from my desk. I rolled with my eyes and sat back at the desk. I stared at the blank wall and thought of all the things that Y/N showed me and how she carved herself into my cold heart, just with her encouragement and happiness. I wanted to marry her last Christmas, but the Titan came first and took the love of my life. My eyes started to burn, and my vision went blurry. I can’t cry, that’s not like me. I am humanity's strongest soldier I can’t cry, it's weak.

"It’s not weak to cry, Levi. Even the strongest person needs to cry sometimes." Her voice echoed through my mind and I buried my head in the crook of my arm. A salty tear left my eye and rolled down my cheek. A sob escaped my mouth and I broke down. All the pain I tried to hide in the last year came over me and drowned me. It was like daggers were stabbed in my heart. It feels just like yesterday when I saw that the titan grabbed her and ate her alive. Her haunting screams echoed in my mind and I sobbed even harder. Why did this have to happen to her and not to me? I ask myself this a lot of times, but I concluded that life wanted me to live in my living hell. My sobs echoed on the bare walls of the office and the desk shook, just like my body.

A light knock brought me back and I looked at the closed door. I wiped away the tears and said, "Name and business." in my normal voices. "It’s S/N. I wanted to ask if we could play with my wooden trains." "Come in." I answer and the door opens. A little boy with my raven hair and Y/N E/C eyes came into the room. In his hands, he held some of his trains. I stood up and walk to him. I kneeled in front of him and stared him in the eyes. "I love you S/N and I will always protect you." I wrapped my arms around the small boy and hugged him. "I love you too dad and I believe mommy loves us too." He answered and a small smile spread across my face. "You are right. Let us play." I said and we started to build a proper railroad. In the end, Y/N even left some of her pureness in the world and even her personality stays with me. S/N is my light and I will keep him safe. No matter what it takes.

#levi ackerman #x reader #aot #angst #levi ackerman x reader #sad #attack on titan #erwin smith #hanji zoe #titan #first post

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hello-robin-goodfellow · 4 years ago

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SHAKESPEARE AND THE PRETTY SPEECHES OF A KING

@ardenrosegarden @amalthea9 @lioness--hart @princesssarisa @hmmm-what-am-i-doing @suits-of-woe @malvoliowithin @noshitshakespeare

I was once watching Brows Held High review of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944), where the reviewer, Kyle Kalgreen, analized how it faired in the context of British World War II Propaganda Machine, as a Shakespeare film adaptation and in comparison to the Kenneth Branagh 1989 Film Adaptation.

There is a moment he pauses to analyze the most popular speech of the play, wich is the Saint Crispin’s Day Speech:

What’s he that wishes so?

My cousin Westmoreland?

No, my fair cousin.

If we are marked to die, we are enough

To do our country loss; and if to live,

The fewer men, the greater share of honor.

God’s will, I pray thee wish not one man more.

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold

Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;

It yearns me not if men my garments wear;

Such outward things dwell not in my desires.

But if it be a sin to covet honor,

I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.

God’s peace, I would not lose so great an honor

As one man more, methinks, would share from me,

For the best hope I have.

Oh, do not wish one more!

Rather proclaim it,

Westmoreland, through my host,

That he which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart.

His passport shall be made,

And crowns for convoy put into his purse.

We would not die in that man’s company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is called the feast of Crispian.

He that outlives this day and comes safe home,

Will stand o' tiptoe when the day is named

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall see this day, and live old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors

And say, “Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.”

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,

And say, “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot

But he’ll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day.

Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words,

Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,Warwick and Talbot,

Salisbury and Gloucester,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.

This story shall the good man teach his son,

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be rememberèd—

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now abed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

(William Shakespeare. Henry V: Act IV, Scene III)

Beautifull. Powerfull. Lie.

Because, as Kyle Kalgreen apoints, while the Laurence Olivier had to cut it to make Henry V more simpathetic, the original Shakespeare text and the Kenneth Branagh Film Adaptation have this scene following the Saint Crispin’s day speech, where the young king reads a list of the english man who died in battle:

Edward the duke of York, the earl of Suffolk,

Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire;

None else of name, and of all other men

But five and twenty. O God, thy arm was here,

And not to us but to thy arm alone

Ascribe we all! When, without stratagem,

But in plain shock and even play of battle,

Was ever known so great and little loss

On one part and on th' other?

Take it, God,For it is none but thine.

(William Shakespeare, Henry V: Act IV, Scene VIII)

The death nobleman are named, while the death common soldier is just ‘None else of name’. The death nobleman is ‘so great loss’. The death common soldier is ‘so little loss’. Contrary to what King Henry V promissed, not everybody who died fighting on his name in France will be considered his brother, remembered and mourned by him.

And them later, we watch the consequences of the reign of his son in the Henry VI trilogy of plays, and in Henry VI Part III, our new protagonist gives this beautifull speech about the blessing of a commoner’s life while sitting over a molehill:

This battle fares like to the morning’s war,

When dying clouds contend with growing light,

What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,

Can neither call it perfect day nor night.

Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea

Forced by the tide to combat with the wind;

Now sways it that way, like the selfsame sea

Forced to retire by fury of the wind:

Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind;

Now one the better, then another best;

Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,

Yet neither conqueror nor conquered:

So is the equal of this fell war.

Here on this molehill will I sit me down.

To whom God will, there be the victory!

For Margaret my queen, and Clifford too,

Have chid me from the battle; swearing both

They prosper best of all when I am thence.

Would I were dead! if God’s good will were so;

For what is in this world but grief and woe?

O God! methinks it were a happy life,

To be no better than a homely swain;

To sit upon a hill, as I do now,

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,

Thereby to see the minutes how they run,

How many make the hour full complete;

How many hours bring about the day;

How many days will finish up the year;

How many years a mortal man may live.

When this is known, then to divide the times:

So many hours must I tend my flock;

So many hours must I take my rest;

So many hours must I contemplate;

So many hours must I sport myself;

So many days my ewes have been with young;

So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean:

So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:

So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,

Pass’d over to the end they were created,

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.

Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!

Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade

To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,

Than doth a rich embroider’d canopy

To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery?

O, yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth.

And to conclude, the shepherd’s homely curds,

His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle.

His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade,

All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,

Is far beyond a prince’s delicates,

His viands sparkling in a golden cup,

His body couched in a curious bed,

When care, mistrust, and treason waits on him.

(William Shakespeare. Henry VI Part III: Act II, Scene V)

Also a beautifull and powerfull speech, if a bit revealing of a romanticized view of the poverty that Henry VI never lived. And also a lie, or, at least, a half truth for Henry VI himself.

By contrast to the Molehill Speech, here is the dialogue exchange between him and two keepers, in the next act:

Second Keeper

Say, what art thou that talk'st of kings and queens?

Henry VI

More than I seem, and less than I was born to: A man at least, for less I should not be; And men may talk of kings, and why not I?

Second Keeper

Ay, but thou talk'st as if thou wert a king.

Henry VI

Why, so I am, in mind; and that's enough.

Second Keeper

But, if thou be a king, where is thy crown?

Henry VI

My crown is in my heart, not on my head; Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen: my crown is called content: A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

Second Keeper

Well, if you be a king crown'd with content, Your crown content and you must be contented To go along with us; for as we think, You are the king King Edward hath deposed; And we his subjects sworn in all allegiance Will apprehend you as his enemy.

Henry VI

But did you never swear, and break an oath?

Second Keeper

No, never such an oath; nor will not now.

Henry VI

Where did you dwell when I was King of England?

Second Keeper

Here in this country, where we now remain.

Henry VI

I was anointed king at nine months old; My father and my grandfather were kings, And you were sworn true subjects unto me: And tell me, then, have you not broke your oaths?

First Keeper.

No; For we were subjects but while you were king.

Henry VI

Why, am I dead? do I not breathe a man Ah, simple men, you know not what you swear! Look, as I blow this feather from my face, And as the air blows it to me again, Obeying with my wind when I do blow, And yielding to another when it blows, Commanded always by the greater gust; Such is the lightness of you common men.

(William Shakespeare. Henry VI Part III: Act III, Scene I)

We can perceive here a condescending tone that King Henry VI has when he talks with two members of the people. He is surprised to see that they don’t believe in a divine right that gives him a “natural kingly aura”. They don’t see him as a superior, wise and benevolent saviour, but only as a man who once weared a crown, but now, without the crown, they don’t have any obligation to obey him.

And Henry VI can’t accept that.

Later, he is rescued by Clifford, Warwick and Clarence from imprisoment under King Edward IV’s rule. And when those three man offer him back the crown and title of king, he don’t refuse it to live the simple commoner life he described as more beautifull in the Molehill Speech. He accepts it. Even if he intends to let the actual work of ruling to Warwick, Clarence and Queen Margaret, he still wants the sense of superiority, the privileges and the confortable life offered by the title of king that he grew accustomed to since he was nine months old.

By justaposing those speeches and scenes, Shakespeare pulls us of the rug in our view of those two characters, who want the people to believe they are good, heroic and chivalrous kings, anointed by God himself, when in reality what anoints them is their money and their armies.

Intentionally or not, with those plays, Shakespeare was at the same being a precursor and subvertor of the Relatable Royal Trope, showing that those people with the title of kings are like us... but not really.

They feel sadness, fear, anger, love, envy and jealousie like us, but they are more rich, powerfull and privileged then us.And they don’t really want to renounce that power, because it will take away their sense of being superior to us.

To paraphrase Kyle Kalgreen:

Beware pretty speeches

(Kyle Kalgreen. Brows Held High: This Day is Called the Feast of Crispian, a review of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V. October 26th, 2018)

Specially if they come from a person that wears the crown of a king.

#history plays #theater #literature #tragedies #shakespeare #william shakespeare #will shakespeare #henry v #henry vi #the wars of the roses #bardolatry #brows held high #kyle kalgreen #cinema #laurence olivier

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