#literally got home from work and immediately started reading The Kings Men

[lewkwoodnco]

Heyy:) I just wanted to request a George x fem!reader one shot :P I totally understand if you don't want to write it or if you don't like the idea or anything but I was thinking a fic inspired by "wildest dreams" by Taylor? Just some silly teen romance vibes you know🤭 (and please no Angst or anything, I can't take that shit atm😔)

Wildest Dreams - George Karim x Reader

A/N: going to be taking a break from the requests in my inbox to work on my 12 days of fics series! (but will get back to them after im done heheh) I might have completely butchered this ask im so sorry BUT I made it as fluffy as I think it gets (w George at least), just had to do the 77 thing i have no self-restraint, also this poem is soso beautiful one of my absolute favesss but idk whats up with the formatting :(((, wc 3.3k!

TAGLIST | MASTERLIST

Subtle Bridges

Walking with me, you'd once pointed to the fragility and ingenuity of a spider's web. Subtle bridges, you said, On bridges some men hang. A warning that has stayed While I read history traced in blood and tears of men. I was caught in the end with a nest of books. They burned anyway, and now I bend to build an emperor's endless wall. Like a thread of longing the border runs in loops and bends, and along it we root the gravestones of nameless men. A king's metaphor, This is, history raised from ash and bone -- a symbol Of its vast futility, or of eternity. Which it is I do not know, But since leaving home some things have come clear. No one literally breaks from loss, not even here. And some ties won't give. I sometimes dream of you, and walking, in gardens where love and knowledge hang.

By Yvonne Koh

She was at the Kensel Green Cemetery with the rest of her team from Fittes, after being called down by DEPRAC because of a robbery. They had spread out over the building, looking for any sign of the missing relic or the culprit, when she heard a slow, grinding noise from inside the hall. She quietly crept in to the silhouette of a shadowy figure bent over the casket.

"Can I help you?"

The boy's head snapped up immediately, painfully slamming against the stone shelf behind him. She let out an involuntary gasp, briefly wincing at the hollow thunk.

"Didn't do it," he groaned, steadying himself against the wall. "...whatever it was that...someone did."

She squinted at him using the little light spilling in from the corridor. He couldn't have been more than a year or two older than her. Against her better judgement, she kept her voice down.

"This is a crime scene!" she hissed at him.

"I - what?"

"Who are you?"

"I'm not a thief, or a relic man. I promise."

Her eyes swept his scruffy appearance critically. "Why would I think that?"

"Ms L/N?"

She turned, momentarily speechless, barely registering the rustle of the boy stealing away into the darkness. She blinked against the brightness of Inspector Barnes' torch, glancing back to check that he really was gone.

"Everything alright?"

She paused for a moment longer, as if willing him to rematerialise in the corner he had been crouching in just a moment ago. Nothing. Her eyes narrowed. Interesting. Very interesting indeed.

"Must have been the wind."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

George was staring out the kitchen window glumly, lazily stirring his mug of tea. The weather was as pleasant as it got, and Lockwood had roused them all at the crack of dawn for a breakfast picnic, to 'boost morale.' Of course, George should have known better than to hold his breath, especially when loud angry voices had started to shake him awake when he had been halfway through groggily packing their picnic basket. Now, he sipped his cold tea through thin lips, listening to the slow, steady footsteps approaching the kitchen and the wan face belonging to them.

"Let me guess. You and Lucy are no longer in the mood for a picnic?"

Lockwood sombrely shook his head. George sighed, picking up the picnic basket. Seemed like a shame to let his slaving away go to waste. And he was still very much in the mood for the strawberries and cream he had packed inside. Which is why George had been heading out for a solo breakfast picnic with enough food for three when he heard a foreign voice stop him.

"George Casper Karim."

He looked up from the doorknob in alarm. It was the girl from Kensel Green Cemetery. He hesitated, trying to gauge her expression.

"Ex-employee of Fittes Agency, fired after six months for insubordination, currently a researcher at Lockwood & Co."

"Brilliant. Astonishing, really, how you've repeated my own job history back to me."

She frowned. He relished the stab of satisfaction. He'd had a shitty morning and was likely going to have a shitty day, so really, having a go at someone was probably going to be the highlight.

"There's no need to be rude."

"I think I'd know where I've been the past couple of years, thanks very much. Forgive me for not being more impressed."

Still looking a little disgruntled, she pressed on, firmly clutching the waist-high gate. "I've got a bone to pick with you, if you don't mind."

He eyed her warily, and decided against approaching her any further. "You can pick it just fine from over there."

She looked mildly peeved, but he didn't trust her as far as he could throw her. After a few long, tense seconds, she relented, not that she was happy about it..

"So...you were right. You're no relic man."

That was quick. "Thank you. Have a nice day." He closed the distance between him and the gate in a few quick strides, pushing against it, but she pushed right back with a steely look in her eye.

"Don't know about the other bit, though."

He didn't like the look in her eye; the look of someone knowing something he didn't. His mouth went dry.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Might be more convincing if your associate hadn't mentioned a talking skull. Awfully difficult to contain a visitor without a ghost jar, wouldn't you say?"

He swore under his breath. "Fucking Lockwood can't keep his mouth shut."

"I don't expect DEPRAC takes kindly to thieves or hooligans-"

He let out a bark of laughter. "Hooligan? Me?"

"-or strange boys who break into places they shouldn't be-"

"You can't prove it was me."

"Wanna bet?"

A challenge. A dare. His mouth was already open to call her bluff when the self-satisfied smirk curling at the corner of her lip gave him pause. Lockwood wouldn't be much pleased if he gave DEPRAC another reason to steer the agency dangerously close towards closing. He wasn't like Lockwood or Lucy - he was careful, very careful. Too late George wished he had been a little more careful all those years ago in covering his tracks - but, to be fair, he had no reason to think anyone at Fittes would have been capable enough to put two and two together.

Until now.

"Look, why don't we...talk about this, like civilised people? I've got strawb - you like strawberries and cream, don't you?"

She sneered again. George was beginning to think that was just how her face looked.

"You want to bribe me with...strawberries...and cream?"

"It's not bribery. Just...a friendly chat. Agent to agent."

Which was how they ended up on a grassy hill at one of the meadows at the outskirts of London. He had never been there before, but Lockwood had remembered it as a prime spot for cosy family picnics.

"So what else do you know about me?"

She chewed a bite of scrambled eggs thoughtfully before responding.

"You're obsessed with the Problem. An obsession that made you an asset, initially."

She had heard that he was the one who had identified the visitor, Edmund Bickerstaff, but what she had had difficulty wrapping her head around was how he had managed to do it with only the vast yet imprecise volumes of the Archives at his disposal. Imagine what he could do with the carefully curated library at Fittes. She stared at him, trying to figure him out. There was a gentle breeze blowing and the slight movement made him look marginally more affable but not any more comprehensible. She let out the breath she was holding.

"You must have really screwed up for Fittes to have let you go."

He shrugged. "It was a long time coming. Fittes never really was the type of company I was interested in working at, and I was never the type of employee Fittes was interested in keeping."

"What about now? Have you ever considered leaving?"

"Why would I?"

"I've taken a glance at Lockwood & Co's financial records. You can't be making much, if anything at all."

"And go from being broke to being broke and homeless?"

"Homeless? What about your parents?"

"I visit them, occasionally, but they're a right piece of work. Last time I saw them was my grandmother's 77th birthday. I think there was a row but I can't be completely sure because I was a little, er, sloshed. The party ended, and I expect the champagne went flat, and my aunt was the last to leave. She was sitting on the floor with a merlot in her hand, and her voice was ringing through the halls. The curtains were burnt, my parents didn't talk to each other for a week, and one of my brothers had broken his hand. But I could never forget sitting in that empty dining hall, holding those sodden, scorched curtains, listening to her saying nothing lasts forever, nothing lasts forever."

The sunlight had a diffused quality to it, at least the little of it that managed to pour through the layer of clouds blocking the sky. The ashy light threw a powdery glow on George's face, and for a moment she felt as though she was in that dining hall with him, listening to those same laments. He glanced at her, and she felt a sudden, foreign uncertainty grip her heart.

"Now I feel really bad about lying."

His hand slipped, missing his mouth by a good couple of inches, nearly sending the contents of his glass down his shirt.

"Lie? What lie?"

"I kind of haven't, not really...actually spoken to any of your associates."

He chokes on his laughter, and when he throws his head back she wonders if she's ever seen anyone laugh as freely as him. It's a ridiculously enticing sight.

"Touché. Touché."

He looks at her in the eye, unabashed, with an unnaturally casual intensity. It almost feels impolite.

"So...yeah. Maybe I was suited to be a Fittes agent, once upon a time, but not anymore."

"That's a pity."

He looks at her weird, and she hastily changes the subject.

"Do you do this often?"

"What, taking strangers out for breakfast?"

"No. Bring a girl out here, feed her some strawberries and cream, maybe a Shakespearean sonnet or two..."

"I don't set much store in Shakespearean sonnets. I'm not...I'm not much of a poetry person."

There's something reserved in his face that makes her feel terrible for asking.

"I've really only read one worth remembering. Subtle bridges, you said, on bridges some men hang. Some ties won't give. I sometimes dream of you, and walking, in gardens where love and knowledge hang."

He bites into a strawberry, which stains his lips a bright red. She looks away a second too late.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After reluctantly agreeing to keep the matter of the stolen ghost jar between the two of them, she never expected to see him again. And yet, as fate would have it, they crossed paths again roughly a week later. She and one of her teammates had been assigned to a Church to handle a relatively weak Type Two, when she heard a scuffling sound from one of the rooms whose door was ajar. Her teammate froze, and she didn't feel much braver either. They approached the room cautiously, rapiers at the ready.

"Hello? Anyone there?"

"Y/N?"

The glare from their flashlights blindly darted over the room before it settled on the floor, illuminating a bleeding George looking the worse for wear, hissing at the harsh florescent light.. She visibly relaxed.

"Oh. You again."

Lockwood and Lucy exchanged a look.

"Do you two know each other?"

A silence followed. George looked to be at a loss of words and she, too, couldn't quite find the right answer.

"We've...met."

They helped George up while Lockwood smoothly explained the situation, and how they would never dream of intentionally From the derisive eye rolls of his remaining, uninjured associate, there was clearly more to their presence than he was letting on, but she wasn't paid nearly enough to go through the trouble of finding that out. Apparently, they had already dealt with the Type Two, so she filled out her report as vague as she dared to be, while they wandered out to flag down a cab.

George lingered behind briefly, dabbing at his nose experimentally while she put the finishing touches to her file.

"We can't keep meeting like this, you know."

"Like what?"

She shook her head, surprisingly having to bite back a smile. "You're incorrigible. If you keep sneaking around for much longer I'll have to report you one of these days."

He pulled his face into an exaggerated sulk and ducked as she tried to smack him with her case report.

"Alright, alright!"

True to his word, their less-than-ideal meetings came to an end. Instead, they continued to occasionally meet at that serene, refreshingly Edenic sloping hill. She'd return from a client meeting or from scoping out a location and the front desk would have a message waiting for her, from one vaguely snippy anonymous man. Sometimes he'd be waiting at the hill with snacks, which she'd ravenously dig into, though he was less generous on the biscuit front. He tells her about the happenings of 35 Portland Row and his research and bounces his latest theory on the origins of the Problem off of her. She tells him about her week, and the bothersome, inept people she works with, and on their joint cases he's snarky towards all the right people. It makes her feel special.

On one such evening, they were lazing on a picnic blanket, and a pleasantly warm breeze was toying with their hair. George was looking at the severe, fragile branches encroaching on the powdery blue sky through heavily-lidded eyes. She was absent-mindedly fiddling with his surprisingly soft fingers, distractedly breathing in the faint, antiseptic smell of ammonia that clung to his clothes. She was thinking about how sharp he was and how quickly he picked up on details on their joint cases. No matter how many times she saw him pick apart a case with a carefully perfected elegance, she felt like a part of her would forever be in awe of his beautifully intricate mind.

"Sometimes I feel like your talents are so wasted here. Imagine what you could do with access to all of Fittes' resources."

"i don't need Fittes's resources to be a good researcher."

She watches the yellow daffodils tossing their heads back just inches in front of them through her eyelashes.

"i know you don't. It can't hurt, is all I'm saying."

"Why do you care?"

She paused. Why did she care? She cared about him, sure, but it was no different from how she cared about her teammates, her friends, but with George...it somehow felt more personal. She sighs irritably, releasing the bubble of frustration lodged in her throat all week. She just wanted what was best for him. It takes her a minute to come up with her hesitant response.

"I...don't know. I don't care. But sometimes I can't help but wonder...what if this was what you needed to uncover the root of the Problem?"

He half-laughs, but stops short at the sight of her face as she lifts her head off his chest. "You can't be serious."

"Why not?"

"Y/N...statistically speaking -"

"All I'm saying is the answer could very well be in the Fittes library and you might be the only one who'd know where to look."

She lies down again, and whispers to the trees rather than George.

"Just...something to think about."

As time went on, their relationship began to bleed into more public spheres. She dropped by Portland Row occasionally, and they even had tea at her apartment once. On this particular afternoon, they were in George's room at Portland Row. She was looking through the titles on his alarmingly tall bookcases while he was at his desk, copying some runes from a book while telling her about his latest experiment with the skull. Her eyes roved over the titles restlessly, unseeingly, in a futile attempt to distract herself from her upcoming assignment. She let George's voice wash over her, pleasingly varied in tone and comfortingly familiar, soothing the itch in her brain. After a moment or two, she realises he's stopped talking, and looks up to see him staring at her with a frown on his face.

"Er, sorry. Drifted off there for a while."

"I guessed."

He studies her with an inscrutable expression and she's been caught too off-guard to come up with anything other than the letter burning a hole in her desk.

"You alright?"

She sits on a chair next to his and rests her chin on her knee, feeling oddly wooden. After getting to know George, she had taken the comfort of being able to somewhat predict his mannerisms for granted, and the thought of heading into this blind made her nervous.

"My team's been assigned a case outside of London."

"Oh. When?"

"We leave this weekend."

He looks too stunned to ask the question weighing on both their minds.

"It's for a month."

"A month," he echoes distantly, as if not quite sure what to make of that piece of information. His face remains impassive and she waits for a reaction which never comes. "What about that celebratory dinner?"

"We leave after it."

"Oh."

For someone who usually always had so much to say about anything and everything, his current conversational skills were desperately wanting. Say something. Be affected, she begs internally. She needs to hear him say it. She needs the sickness in her chest to be real, to be founded.

"It'll be...different without you." The careful look on his face makes her feel like he's picking out her emotions from her face and engineering an optimal response. "I'll miss you."

It doesn't comfort her in the way she expected it would. Suddenly, she can't even bear to look at him.

"You don't have to."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Either George had decided that she needed some space or he was just as pissed as she was, because she didn't see one sign of him over the next few days. Good. She hardly noticed. The thousand times a day he crossed her mind were only out of relief, and nothing else. But as much as she pretended otherwise, by the time the celebratory dinner rolled around, his absence had taken a toll on her. She couldn't tell if she was hoping or dreading seeing him again.

She was on a balcony on the upper floor, looking miserably into the radiant foliage of the gardens below, where unfamiliar faces flitted with a lightness of heart she envied. Their shadows are tall and intertwine ceaselessly, making her dizzy. Her bags were packed, her ticket was waiting on her mantle, and all loose ends were tied up. Even her one chance at happiness for the rest of her life.

There's a rustle behind her and she turns to see George standing a considerable distance away from her. He's only marginally closer than the first time they met, properly, when he was standing outside their front door and she was pacing behind the garden gate. She wants to cry in relief. Instead, she finds it in her not to look away. Maybe it's the confusing lighting, but there's a soft edge to his face.

"I thought I saw you come up here."

She doesn't say anything; she's too happy to. And yet, a part of her is still deeply unhappy with the sight in front of her.

"Have you...tried the food?"

"...it's not as good as yours."

"You must be leaving soon."

"Tomorrow." The thought makes her want to rip her face off.

"You'll be back in a month."

She drummed her fingernails against the marble railing, carefully choosing her words.

"What if things change in a month?" What if, she wanted to say, you meet someone else who loves you better than I can?

"It's only a month."

"A whole month."

"I don't understand. Why are you so afraid?"

"Because - because you'd forget me. You'd forget me, and our memories would sink six feet under, and you'd move on and my heart would break and...you wouldn't care."

She's never felt this way about anyone before, and she doesn't know how to express how badly she needs him to stay.

"I don't want to go back to not knowing you, George."

The setting sun burns into her neck and all of a sudden, she feels unbearably hot. Her hair is plastered to her forehead and her hands feel clammy. Her face is flushed and she feels ridiculous in her dress. But he's here, and she's said it, so she lets herself dream, if only for a moment.q

"I think about you every day. One month, two months, three months...I'll wait."

TAGLIST: @avdiobliss @dangelnleif @elenianag080 @mitskiswift99 @mischivana @houseoftwistedspirits

[benevolentbirdgal]

Purim: a Jewish holiday and wild ride from start to finish

So let me tell you about the absolute soap opera that is the Jewish holiday of Purim. The scene is set in ancient (appx. 4th century B.C.E.) Persia during the first Jewish Diaspora, in the city of Shushan (typically identified in secular sources as Susa, a now-abandoned ancient city in what is now Iran). I’m telling you, as a work of literature (even beyond theological implications for Jewish people), this book has everything: love, drama, royalty, intrigue, ego, plots, irony, mystery, and a strong female lead. 

[some non-slur swearing below]

Ahasuerus, party-loving king of Persia executed or exiled (translations argue) his wife Vashti, and had to find a new queen. Why did he do this, you ask? Well, it really starts with an 180-day party across his kingdom for all his subjects to celebrate the third year of his reign. After that absolute rager, party-bro KA has another one immediately after for a week, this time just for the capital city of Shushan. Vashti was having a woman’s party in her quarters, presumably living her best life, when party-bro sends his top seven yes-men to deliver a message to Vashti. This sleaze-ball wants her to appear at his party in front of everyone, wearing her crown, with the clear implication being only her crown. Vashti more or less tells him to pound sand (I mean, not the literal translation, but that’s the sentiment). 

KA’s advisors convince him that this is not only an offense against the king but also against all the men in the country (ah, the joys of ancient patriarchy and toxic af masculinity). KA writes a degree that women must respect their husbands so he has an official reason to get rid of Vashti. Vashti is soon thereafter out of the picture and the king is short a queen. Whether she was a Wise Lady With A Point Who Got Screwed Over or a Vicious Jew-Hating Adulteress Who Had It Coming has been a matter of furious debate for over two millennia (the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud vociferously disagree on her). In any case, KA regrets it pretty quick and wants a new queen. 

At the behest of his advisors (you know, since their last advice worked out soooooo well), KA had a big contest/forcible gathering of young women from around his kingdom and a Jewish woman, Hadassah, was the winner.  Hadassah was an orphan raised by her cousin Mordechai in the city of Shushan. Hadassah is more commonly known as Esther, because she changed her name to hide her identity as a Jew (at the behest of Mordechai). In any case, KA decided he liked Esther best and she became queen (it’s specifically mentioned both that he loved her most and that the palace staff liked her because she was nice to them-it’s unclear how much of an influence the latter was). 

Concurrently, a wicked man named Haman was the top advisor to the king and the king would basically rubber-stamp whatever Haman wanted. Haman was a raging Jew-hater-this will be relevant later. 

Some time into Esther’s reign as queen, Mordechai, who has taken to hanging around the gates of the palace to keep in touch with Esther, overhears a plot by two guards, Bigthan and Teresh, to kill the king. Mordechai alerts his cousin, and she tells the king. It’s recorded in the book of deeds and life keeps moving. 

Some time later, Haman decides (after a promotion to head lackey) that he wants all to bow to him as he passes. Mordechai refused to bow to Haman every single day (citing that as a Jew he bowed to no man), and that did not sit well with Haman. So despite being prime minister and presumably having more important things to do, “genocide the Jews” made it to the top of to-do list. He didn’t like them before, and Mordechai refusing to treat him like a special snowflake was something he took really, really personally (totally can’t think of any modern politicians like that, nope). He told KA, who frankly doesn’t seem to ask enough questions, that there was a people disrespecting the king and his laws throughout the land, and could he pretty-please exterminate them. As a bonus, Haman would “donate” 10,000 silver kikar to the royal treasury (modern conversion vary, but all agree this an absurd amount on money). 

KA handed him the royal seal to do so. Haman was feeling lucky I guess so he decided the best course of action was to draw lots to pick the day for the massacre. [Purim is lots in Hebrew, so that’s where the name of the holiday came from]. The message went out to all the provinces that on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, that they citizens and leaders should murder all of the Jews, young and old, man, woman, and child, rich and poor and take their possessions as spoils. 

As this wasn’t exactly a state secret, the Jews knew and were quite distressed. The planned slaughter was like a year out, but what the actual fuck were they supposed to do? If you lived in Persia at that point that, the empire was functionally your entire world, unless you were fabulously/ridiculously wealthy and well-connected. Having several months notice the other locals and your rules were going to slaughter you and take your stuff isn’t particularly useful when there’s really nowhere to go. 

In Shushan, Mordechai (who, although not explicitly in text, is in oral/Talmudic tradition a leader of the Jewish community) goes into mourning. He dresses in sackcloth and ashes, he weeps, and he fasts at the gates of the palace, as Jews throughout shushan and the kingdom are doing. Esther hears of her cousin’s mourning behavior and tries to send along nice clothes through a messenger, which he refuses. It is then that she learns of the decree. Mordechai (through the messenger) implores her to go ask the king if the Jews not getting murdered could be a thing. Esther explains that she could be killed for approaching the king unsummoned. Mordechai stresses the severity of the situation. Esther agrees to ask the king and tells Mordechai to have the Shushan Jewish community fast day and night (as opposed to just day as prior) for three days, and she and her handmaidens will fast too (no word on what the handmaidens thought of this).

On the third day, Esther bravely approached the king, asked him if she could request something. He said anything, up to half his kingdom (which implies to me that homedude, for all his flaws, was actually into her). Esther invited him to a party, where he and Haman would be the only guests. At the party she asks if she can another request. KA is open to it and she invites him to another party the next night. Party-bro king is obviously down and Haman is tickled to death at this second invitation. 

He goes home to brag to his wife, Zeresh, about the invite and also to bitch about how angsty he is Mordechai is still alive (this angst reignited by passing him on the way home). Zeresh suggests he have fifty-foot gallows built to make Mordechai an example on, with the king’s permission, ASAP. Haman orders the building of the gallows, feeling secure in the knowledge that his bestie the king will execute Mordechai on them. 

Back at the castle KA can’t sleep. He demands a bedtime story from the his records, because those will presumably put him to sleep. The story that gets read, ~coincidentally~, is of Mordechai saving KA’s life. Haman had sidled on up to the castle to speak to the king about killing Mordechai, and the king called him in. KA asks Haman, if he were to honor someone, what should he do? Haman is thinking “this is obvi about me” and tells the king that the honoree should be donned in royal clothing, and ride through the streets on a fancy horse with people someone shouting how great he is. KA is like great, love it, perf, go do that for Mordechai. Haman is not a happy camper but does the thing. After that, he goes home and tells Zeresh about it, who warns him that this is a very bad sign. 

Finally, that night is the night of Esther’s second soiree. Haman and KA attend. The latter offers to Esther anything she wants, up to half of his kingdom. Esther asks that her life, and the life of her people be spared. KA is like “whomst” and Esther revealed it was Haman. At this point Ahasuerus.exe stops working and he takes a walk to the gardens. He comes back to see Haman begging Esther for his life, and KA thinks Haman is assaulting her. Haman was seized by nearby guards.

One of the chamberlains is then like, hey, KA, coincidentally there’s these super high gallows Haman just had built. Why not take care of the problem that way? (The fact that the random nearby chamberlain was like yup, that dude, hang ‘em in the morning, probably says a lot about how Haman treated most people around him, even more than forcing all to bow to him). KA orders it be done. 

Not that Haman was around to be sad about it, but what happened next would have massively pissed him off, as his old job then went to Mordechai. Esther then implored of the king that the degree to allow the massacre of the Jews be reversed. The king couldn’t Cntrl+Z the order to murder-all-the-Jews, but he could issue an order that they could fight back. The proclamation was sent throughout the land, and the Jews were able to prepare. Since the royal decree had been amended, the governments (princes, governors, satraps) largely reformulated their plans accordingly, but plenty of Jew-haters still wanted to use the opportunity. The ability to self-defend meant that the communities weren’t massacred. In most of the kingdom, the Jews were now safe. Outside of Shushan, the fourteenth of Adar became a feast day. 

Shushan was still not safe though. Antisemites were still out and mad (and apparently had not learned from the previous day), so Esther asked the Jews of Shushan to be allowed to defend themselves once more. Her wish was granted, and the Shushan Jews were able to defend themselves once more (so Purim is celebrated a day later in walled cities). 

The story ends with the decision to write it down, and although there some debate on authorship, it is traditionally attributed to Esther herself cowriting with Mordechai. 

Nowhere in the book is God mentioned. Nowhere is there divine intervention (at least not explicitly). Just Jews sticking up for themselves, being brave in the face of mortal peril, and a metric fucktown of chutzpah. 

[darkmulti]

𝐏𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐭:

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐤𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐨𝐫 𝐉𝐊

⚠️: if you’re a softy, keep scrolling. If you click ‘keep reading’ don’t complain.

Pairings: Jungkook x female reader

A/N: just a little side note, all of them (all the split profiles) will have a mafia vibe to it.

—

We also hit 2000+ followers! Thank you so much for supporting me in the last four months, it means so much to me! I love all 2000 of you. Sending hugs and kisses❣️✨

—

Since Tasteless won’t be out for a while (I want to finish all four parts so y’all won’t have to wait.) I decided to make a new series. After Yandere Profiles are done, I’ll be starting on this. Right now request are closed but I would love feedback. And yeah, I hope you enjoy! Thank you once again!

Not edited!!! Sorry for any errors!!

~ NSFW ~

𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 (𝐃𝐈𝐃) 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐚 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐲/𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬.

This profile is for entertainment purposes only and do not represent the real Jeon Jungkook.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Meeting JK:

Jungkook’s an angel

He truly loves you so so so much

You know that he would do anything for you

He loves cuddles

He loves hugs and kisses

He’s still very possessive

And is very strict about you going out

Since he’s a mafia leader

Your life is always at risk

And you know that

But you don’t care

You believe that you can protect yourself

But Jungkook doesn’t

So when you go out “alone” he’s actually right on your ass

His men are always around

It does comfort you a bit

It shows that he cares

So you don’t mind it

As long as they give you space

Jungkook loves to spoil you

He’ll buy you the best of the best

He won’t hesitate to spend money on you

If it makes you happy, he’ll do it

Jungkook wants you to love him

Love him no matter what

He wants to make sure that you do love him before he introduces JK to you

Jungkook still hasn’t told you about his other side

The side that puts up with killing or torturing people

The side that doesn’t feel anything

Jungkook’s afraid that you’re going to leave him if he told you

And if you did leave him it would trigger JK to come out

That was the last thing he needed

Jungkook stopped torturing people after he met you

Since then JK has been hiding in his body

JK’s been gone for two years

Best two years of Jungkook’s life

But he knows when JK does come out

He’ll either kill everyone in sight or find you and harm you since you’re the reason he’s been trapped

Finally he decided to tell you about it

When he sat you down and faced you

You thought something bad had happen

Immediately you start panicking and asking him questions

But once he told you that he has another side

You were very intrigued

You watched the movie “Split” before and it’s one of the best movies you’ve seen in your entire life

So now knowing that your boyfriend is like that

It was exciting in a way

You told him that you wanted to meet JK but Jungkook looked at you as if you were fucking insane

“No no no no no no no! What if hurts you? Y/N I have no control over him! He has a mind of his own!”

You were bummed out that you couldn’t meet JK

So you decided to run away

That would surely bring out JK

You ran away in the middle of the night

About an hour after you left Jungkook woke up

He wasn’t angry

He was afraid something bad might happen to you

Jungkook looked everywhere in his house

Then told his men to look at the cameras

When Jungkook saw you run away from him

JK came out

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

JK’s Behaviour:

JK knew about you

He loved you just as much as Jungkook did

Except JK was a little more impatient

And very very strict

His dominance was clear to everyone

Do not joke around him

He will slice your neck open

More on the tougher side

He’s able to do cruel things without thinking twice about it

And while doing these cruel things, he won’t feel any emotion

JK’s literally like ‘head empty, just violence.’

JK’s voice is deeper

He’s more possessive

JK doesn’t want anyone to even look at you

He just wants you to be his

JK does things fast and efficient

He was able to catch you right away

You ran away to a hotel and waited for Jungkook or JK to arrive

To be honest you were pretty siked about meeting JK

I mean,,, if your plan worked

You waited until your door got kicked down and JK immediately ran to you and grabbed you by the neck

(Jesus imagine him choking you with all those tattoos on his beautiful, veiny hand.. shejejje. Pleaseeee I can’t!!! Okay sorry)

First thing you noticed was his outfit

Jungkook wore baggy clothes that were black

But right now this man was wearing a full black suit

At three in the morning

This confirms that this was JK

You give him a smile and get closer to his face

Though his looks were the same

His scent was different

His presence was different

And you absolutely loved it

JK quickly catched onto your dirty thoughts

“I heard from a little birdy that you wanted to meet me.”

His arms wrap around your waist, his hands resting on your ass

“I did want to meet you. Do you know who I am?”

“The love of my life?”

You couldn’t help but smile

Everything about him turned you on

A more dominant and less caring side of Jungkook made you desperate

“So.. do you want me to fuck you on this dirty, hotel bed in front of all my men or, go home and make you feel like the only girl in the world?”

“Second one please.”

Okay go to sleep y’all

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Sex with JK:

If you were going to be completely honest

It was way better than sex with Jungkook

JK knew all the spots

He knew all your kinks

Everything felt so good

He took you from behind and in front

Size kink came out of no where

JK could easily pin you down and destroy you

He was so much stronger

Well he used his strength against you

Jungkook was always gentle

He always went slow

And was always teasing you

But JK went for it

No lub, no foreplay

His cock slammed into you dry

It was so painful yet pleasurable

You loved that he didn’t give a fuck

He was rough

He was fast

And he wasn’t an easy cummer

Degradation and overstimulation king

He kept playing with your clit while thrusting

Honestly just by looking at him got you super horny

He just had that vibe

JK LOVES TO CHOKE YOU

And lick you

And mark you

When he’s fucking you from behind he spanks your ass

He wants to cover you with his cum

First round, he fills you up

Second round, on your face

Third round, on your ass

Forth round, down your thighs

He will not stop until you squirt around him

JK would definitely want a ddlg relationship with you

And would definitely be into thigh riding

Maybe he likes whips and handcuffs

JK does not like to use toys on you (vibrators are a big no no)

He believes that he doesn’t need anything besides himself when pleasuring you

JK will tightly hold you down by your neck, fuck you viciously and make you tell him that he fucks you better than Jungkook

He likes saliva, cum and tongues

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You were quick to fall in love with JK. But in a way you feel like your cheating on Jungkook. Who would you pick?

Jungkook, the most kind, caring and loving boyfriend.

Or

JK. Dominant, sexy and fearless.

𝐏𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐭

[jq37]

The Case File – Mice and Murder Ep 1

The Case of the The Pernicious Party  

Hello, hello, hello! It’s been a hot second but your resident D20 recapper is back to tackle the newest season: Mice and Murder! Y’all had to know I wasn’t gonna sit out the murder mystery, are you kidding me???

I might be playing around with the format a bit in the coming weeks to make sure I have the best possible system for keeping track of possible clues, suspects, and theories as we untangle whatever web Brennan weaves for us this season so don’t be surprised if things change a little. 

Anyway, without further ado, onto our mystery!

Summary

In case you missed it, this season takes place in an alternate, Zootopia/Wind in the Willows-esque universe where all the characters are animals but history seems to have happened in more or less the same way--for example there was still a King Charles but he was a King Charles Spaniel (cute Brennan). Our story specifically takes place in the English village of Tufting Meadows.  

We start with Katie’s character--Gangie Green (Weasel/Thief Rogue) in the graveyard of the Anglican Chapel (Our Lady of Prayerful Paws). Gangie, we learn, is an orphan who was kicked out of the orphanage at some point for thievery. Obviously, he’s not reformed of the habit because he is here to do some graverobbing. On a nat 20 (that Katie hilariously doesn’t notice even though her total is like a 29) Gangie can see through the window of the rectory that there is a weeping window inside--Catherine McCabbage who is being (dubiously) tended to by Raph’s character, Vicar Ian Prescott (Owl/Bard, College of Eloquence). 

Ian comes from a line of men of the cloth but he’s not exactly the best speaker despite his subclass. He’s doing his best though! The widow’s husband (Conor McCabbage) died at the local mill in what has been declared an accident but she suspects foul play. She’s been hearing his voice on the wind and wants Ian’s professional opinion on whether this could be a sign from God or if her husband might be speaking to her from beyond the grave or something like that. Ian gives a very muddled and not very comforting answer but seems pretty sure that something sketchy did in fact happen. Then, he sees a crack of lightning outside which illuminates the graveyard where he gets a glimpse of Gangie. 

He goes to check it out (and Gangie fully has an elderly goat he’s dug up slung over his shoulder) but “gravedigger” is his legit job so Ian decides to assume whatever’s going on is legit and not ask too many questions. He goes back to the widow (who, before she leaves, says that maybe sometimes people need to work on God’s behalf) while Gangie takes the body Loam Hall (a massive manor, built into a hill).

We cut to the next day and our next two characters! 

At 22B Hamsted Street in a pretty well appointed home are Ally and Grant’s characters. First up, we have Lars Vandenchomp (Huge ass Doberman/Battlemaster Fighter) who is so tough looking but also so Swedish sounding--it’s A Lot (so, incredibly on brand for Ally). Lars is security for Grant’s character Sylvester Cross (Fox/Inquisitive Rogue) who is a kinda (to use Grant’s word) “foppish” Sherlock Holmes type. He was hired by Squire William Thornwall Brockhollow to figure out what happened with Conor McCabbage (and clear him of negligence in running the mill) but he couldn’t find any evidence of any funny business, making this the only case he’s never cracked. He’s not as young or popular as he once was so this is, understandably, bumming him out. He’s even more bummed out when he realizes that William has invited him to his 60th birthday party that’s happening that night (as kind of a prop to show that he did his part in trying to solve the mystery) and Lars has already RSVP’d yes. He grudgingly agrees to go as it’s one of those asks that’s really more of a veiled demand but decides to pull the money he was paid from the bank first so he can return it and really stick it to the guy.

Finally, we cut to our last set of PCs who are on their way to Tufting Meadows via a very luxurious train. Inside are Sam and Rekha’s characters! Sam is Buckster $ Boyd (Peccary which is like a small boar/Mastermind Rouge) a Texan Oil Tycoon who acts exactly how you’d expect a Texan Oil Pig to act. Yes, you pronounce the dollar sign as “dollar sign” (even though as we find out later his middle name is Cassius so it’s like Cash which I think is super cool). With him is Rekha’s character, Daisy D'umpstaire (Raccoon/Assassin (???) Rogue another American (from South Carolina) though it seems she’s My Fair Lady’d herself into an upper class socialite (her last name was previously Dumpster). They’re traveling with their accountant, an Armadillo named Armond who seems kinda skittish and concerned about their travel expenses but Buck tells him that to make money you gotta spend money and they’re gonna make a *ton* of money on this trip. They’re also so so mean to him for absolutely no reason. 

When the train stops, they’re greeted by Templeton Padhop (a frog, natch) who is the chauffeur of Loan Hall, sent to fetch them. A wheel on his car is broken so he joins in on the Armond abuse immediately and has Armond roll into an Armadillo ball and replace it. Poor guy. When they show up they're greeted by a footman--a pug in a bowler hat named Milo Snout.

Meanwhile, Lars and Sly (Oh, Sly fox, I see what you did there Grant) are similarly greeted by another footman--a lizard named Basil Baskins. On a 23 perception check, Lars sees that Jeremy “Jez” Brockhollow is inside (the son of William who is a badger btw) and also clocks Gangie (who they know as a career criminal who disappeared like a year ago). Gangie doesn’t notice Lars though. 

Ian, who is also invited, shows up at about the same time as Sly but very quickly, the conversation is taken over by Lucretia “Lucy” Brockhollow, William’s older, eccentric sister who immediately gets into it with Lars about astrology and the occult (she thinks bad stuff is happening because of a curse let loose when Sly’s old rival--a rabbit named Fletcher Cottonbottom who is the son of his former employer--opened an Egyptian tomb). They’re thick as thieves right away because Ally is a nonsense magnet. And not like a regular magnet, one of those big electromagnets. 

Daisy and Buck spot William’s kids--the aforementioned Jez and his older sister Constance--along with their husbands Dr. Corbin Magpie (Constance’s and obv a magpie and a doctor) and Osmond Sheffield (Jez’s who is a Ram and a lawyer). Daisy is too stuck in her conversation with a truly unhinged squirrel (Lady Eugenia Bristlebrush who clearly does not know she’s in a murder mystery because she just keeps talking about how much she hates and wants to kill everyone) to hear what’s going on but she indicates the conversation to Buck who is able to eavesdrop and hear that they’re lamenting that Catherine--the widow--RSVP’d no which is gonna look really bad, like they didn’t invite her (bad PR). 

Buck, introducing himself as a business partner of William, eases into a conversation with the husbands which their respective spouses also join into and we learn that Buck's dad was British and a friend of Willian’s. Buck bonds with Jez (who is a bit of a dilettante) really quickly since Buck is ready to go drinks-wise immediately (and there’s a stellar pun about the “American [Drinking] Constitution''). Through the window, Buck notices Gangie outside getting his attention. 

At the same time, Ian is going from party guest to party guest, giving out the penances he forgot to earlier at church (as one does). We see him talking to the Lord and Lady Bramble (a cow and hedgehog, respectively) and while she wants to pray her way out of situations without doing any legwork, he wants to buy his way out and gives Ian 250 pounds. A frustrating but financially lucrative conversation.  

Buck goes outside to talk to Gangie who has a list of names of the bodies he’s been collecting. We’re not told what Buck is doing but it seems that this list is extremely valuable to him in some way. Gangie (who Buck keeps calling Gangly, to his annoyance) pays him handsomely (like, with a 50% tip) for the list (and Gangie gives him the real list, despite Brennan saying he didn’t have to). We also learn that Gangie has allegedly been getting the orders from someone in Loa Hall and they flow from William himself.

Matilda Molesly (a mole and the head maid) invites Gangie to come in from the rain--she’s the only person who’s been consistently nice to him and he agrees to come in for tea and scones. 

Everyone is ushered together by the butler (because of course there’s a butler--he’s quite literally a fancy rat named Thomas Gilfoyle) and William gives a speech where he wishes Conor well and kinda highlights that he did hire Sly to solve the case in a “Hey, I did my bit don’t blame me” kind of way. He also makes a 150k pound donation to the church (and Ian thought 250 was good) and tells his daughter not to read the praise he got for it from the cardinal when she mentions it (I wonder if that was choreographed). Sly interrupts the speech to “magnanimously” give his money back, to William’s annoyance. Buck notices that Lawrence Longfoot (a nouveau rich, rabbit photographer) takes a pic of the scene but with Sly in the foreground and William in the background. 

Then, a few things happen at once (in a very cinematic way):

As the camera flashes, Mrs. Molesly drops her tray, eyes hurt by the light. Lady Calliope Fawnbrooke (Deer, Matron of the Arts) helps her up.

In the moment of dark, after the flash goes away, the butler disappears. 

Buck thinks he sees a shape through the window, out in the rain. 

A cheer goes up for Sly for returning the money but all Sly can focus on is one figure he recognizes in the back of the room. Daisy, who is downing her drink and not cheering for him. He downs his as well, and looks at her until she breaks the stare and leaves the room. 

And this episode doesn’t end with a dead body like I thought, but with a flashback to a younger Sylvester, 12 years ago when he first met Daisy.

PC INTERPERSONAL DRAMA Y’ALL!!! Get HYPED! 

Case Notes

Here is a compilation of all the characters (PCs and NPCs introduced in this episode). 

Sly mentions that Ignatius Cottonbottom faked his own death as a part of some scheme which seems like a backstory point that might come back later--we now know that there exists a way to convincingly fake your own death in this world. 

Sly walks with a walking stick because of some “mysterious accident” but we’re jumping into a flashback next week so it looks like we might find out about it pretty soon. 

Sly also mentions he used to be the personal physician to the elder Cottonbottom so those are skills he has. I wonder if that’ll be useful to this healer-less party. I wonder if cleric was even an option in this world which seems to be low to no magic. It would explain by Ian is a bad and not a cleric. 

Lars has a military background which I wanted to mention in case it becomes relevant later. 

And Dr. Magpie grew up poor and still acts it a bit even though he married a very rich woman. Brennan uses the very good line, “He forces his body into the shape of an apology”

This might be a really deep cut reference but did anyone else here was the old Britcom “Keeping Up Appearances”? Cause I was getting serious Bouquet/Bucket energy from Daisy. 

This is an all College Humor season and it shows. The energy of 6 (7 if you count Brennan) top notch comedians sparking off of each other, trying to one up each other is off the charts. Some of the best bits this episode:

“When God closes every door but one, you go through the door that is open.” followed by “I’m an owl by the way.”

“Time is money, here’s both” from Buck re his inscribed gold pocket watch--everyone at the table loved that so much and they’re right. 

Armond going from being a third to a fourth wheel. 

And the names--I already shouted out a ton on the main recap but also a rat butler (like Rhett Butler) and naming the mouse Cat(therine). Can’t forget Gangie Green/gangrene from Katie. Also points to Ally for the data stealing Eel Musk which broke Brennan a little. 

I know we just went through this with Crown of Candy but what are these animals eating? Like, in Zootopia there were only mammals so we can assume the carnivores are eating like birds and fish but there are sentient birds here. I know this isn’t important. I’m not trying to do a CinemaSins gotcha. I just wonder, you know?

Y’all were waiting for all the lights to go out during that speech and then come back on and there’d be a body too, right?

If Brennan makes the bad guy a chicken or a duck or something so he can make a “fowl play” joke, he is cordially invited to catch these hands. 

I have been waiting for Raph and Katie to do D20 forever. Their specific brand of nonsense on Rank Room was always amazing. 

I love love love that Grant and Rekha are the PCs that have ~a past~ because they are so funny together. If you haven’t seen their episode of Game Changers, you absolutely must (it’s also a murder mystery actually!). 

[morwensteelsheen]

Do you have any advice for someone who wants to write Éowyn x Faramir fanfic in a way that remains authentic to who they are/how Tolkien envisioned them? Of all the fics I’ve read on this pairing, yours just stands out to me as being most in character, whether you’re writing them in Middle Earth or a modern!au. I agree with you about Faramir being gentle but NOT a crybaby and Éowyn not a loose cannon and actually somewhat frosty! Any advice you have would be appreciated. Cheers!

bro... 🥺❤️ that is so kind of you, thank you so much!!!! Like holy moly I am going to be riding high on that compliment all week hahaha, i’m giddy thinking about it. 

i’ve been fretting about how to answer this question because i think i still struggle quite a bit with their characterisations. also i’m terrible at framing advice, so i’m going to try and answer this by giving my interpretations of certain things and how that effects how i write about them, and hopefully that will be helpful? also i’m so sorry, this is literally 6,000 words, this totally got away from me. 

To start quite generally, i think it’s super helpful to realise that almost all of the characters in LOTR are devoid of any significant internal life because the book is structured as a retelling of historical events to frodo, which are later written down and then “translated” by tolkien. unless a character is explicitly telling frodo/someone else what they’re thinking, we don’t really know what’s going on in there (except éowyn and i’ll come back to this later). But the other reason we don’t really get a sense of most characters’ internal lives is because they function as, essentially, heroic/fantastical archetypes and responses to other elements of literature. People tend to shy away from this because of this weird postmodern backlash against tropes, but it’s, i feel, extremely important to remember that these characters aren’t in the books because they’re fully-fleshed out human beings, they’re there because tolkien needed characters to fulfil certain narrative roles. this is not a value judgement, but acknowledging that’s what’s going on here is helpful for us as we try to figure out what these characters would be doing when canon doesn’t explicitly tell us what they’d be doing (or what they’d be doing in an au/a rewrite/whatever). 

All this to say: all of these characters are born out of a specific literary and historical context, and i think in the first instance its suuuuuuuupa helpful to go back and figure out what that context is, because it helps you to build out a character profile in your head that feels true to character even when you’re operating in the great canon unknown. 

Okay so for some general thoughts on each of the kiddos:

Éowyn

I’ll start with éowyn because i think i’ve spent the most time thinking about her lately and i feel like i’m finally starting to get in her head a little better. I’m not super confident in my take yet, but it’s getting there, i feel. 

éowyn’s metatextual character history is really fascinating and really important for understanding who she is. éowyn is, essentially, a direct response to the character of lady macbeth and what tolkien saw as a massive disservice to her character at the end of the play. I had a much better pull quote from tolkien talking specifically about that, but i can’t seem to find it right now so you’ll have to use this really brief overview instead — sorry! I will update this if i come across the quote again. 

understanding that foundation in lady macbeth, we can start to ask certain questions about éowyn vis a vis lady macbeth. What are the things that we know — in text — make lady macbeth and éowyn similar? Quite a lot, actually. They’re both ‘fully realised’ women (and i’ll come back to this in a sec), they’re both not naive about the mechanics of power — lady macbeth is a conniver, éowyn is left in control of a whole ass kingdom while the menfolk are away etc —, they’re both hindered by their gender (this is obvious for éowyn, but i HELLA recommend reading lady macbeth’s come you spirits/unsex me here speech and thinking about the relationship between womanhood and violence, especially in light of éowyn’s experience of battlefield violence and later decision to give it up to go be a hippie in ithilien), and they both have to deal with men being frustrating. I love and will defend théoden quite explicitly, but it’s important to realise that he did, in essence, fuck éowyn over entirely and abdiate on his familial responsibilities to her, before you even get to his abdication of duty to the crown etc. 

The other big — very big, i feel — similarity between éowyn and lady macbeth is that they are both tremendously emotionally distant and restrained. But éowyn, unlike lady macbeth, is capable of camouflaging her emotional distance when necessary. Here, from ROTK, is a passage of crucial important to understanding éowyn: 

‘Alas! For she was pitted against a foe beyond the strength of her mind or body. And those who will take a weapon to such an enemy must be sterner than steel, if the very shock shall not destroy them. It was an evil doom that set her in his path. For she is a fair maiden, fairest lady of a house of queens. And yet I know not how I should speak of her. When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily, and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel. Or was it, maybe, a frost that had turned its sap to ice, and so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken, soon to fall and die? Her malady begins far back before this day, does it not, Éomer?’

‘I marvel that you should ask me, lord,’ he answered. ‘For I hold you blameless in this matter, as in all else; yet I knew not that Éowyn, my sister, was touched by any frost, until she first looked on you. Care and dread she had, and shared with me, in the days of Wormtongue and the king’s bewitchment; and she tended the king in growing fear. But that did not bring her to this pass!’

‘My friend,’ said Gandalf, ‘you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.

‘Think you that Wormtongue had poison only for Théoden’s ears? Dotard! What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs? Have you not heard those words before? Saruman spoke them, the teacher of Wormtongue. Though I do not doubt that Wormtongue at home wrapped their meaning in terms more cunning. My lord, if your sister’s love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained her lips; you might have heard even such things as these escape them. But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?’

Emphasis my own.

there’s a whole hell of a lot going on here, but i’m going to try and boil it down to a couple main things:

1. gandalf and aragorn immediately see misery in éowyn, but they are both very good at reading people. faramir (later, in the steward and the king) also senses the misery, but he is explicitly talented at reading people, and even he takes a while to fully understand what’s going on in her head

2. Éomer, who éowyn feels obligation and duty to (both as her brother, but also her superior in rank) has no idea that éowyn is suicidal. he knows she’s not happy, but he thinks it’s not until aragorn shows up that she finally becomes despondent and is amazed to hear that that’s not the case, to which gandalf responds, essentially: you weren’t meant to know, she was working with a will of steel to hide her emotions from you because she wanted to protect you from it. So éowyn is well versed at controlling her emotions when she needs to, and is not prone to showing them where she doesn’t want to.

3. Gandalf describes éowyn first as wrought from steel (which, short of an incredibly hot fire, is not easy to break), and then amends it to say that she is made of ice. Ice, compared to steel, is far easier to melt. Maybe inadvertently on tolkien’s behalf, i think this speaks to the nature of éowyn and faramir’s relationship — first she is melted by fire (battle, the witch-king, etc) and the she is warmed by the sun (faramir! Minas anor! The winter has passed, etc). 

4. Earlier i said the characters in lotr don’t really have a huge internal life, except for éowyn. This is where that comes in: éowyn, we are supposed to understand, has a really intense internal life, because her mind is really all she has. We are meant to understand that she’s got a lot going on internally, but there is a very specific reason we’re not privy to it. That’s important to think about.

what this does is widen the gulf between what éowyn’s thinking and feeling, and what she’s actually saying and doing. If you’re writing (as i tend to prefer) in a way that deals with her inner life quite intensely, building that gap up is much easier to do. She’s going to have a lot of thoughts, and almost all of them are going to be hindered by either other people’s expectations of her, or her own expectations of herself. And that’s going to cause problems for her — maybe not always throwing-herself-at-death level problems, but certainly problems.  

so there’s that. Then i think there’s a lot to be said for widening the net on éowyn inspirations. I’ve looked to joan of arc (which i kind of hinted at here) quite a bit. I feel like the joan of arc comparison is easy to understand so i wont waste too much time on it, though i will say i’d actually recommend reading catholic interpretations of joan of arc, not later protestant Girlboss interpretations because i think those miss the point of joan of arc entirely. 

I was going to try to comment more on the gender element but i feel like i’m not on great footing with that yet so i will leave that to the side for now.

Faramir

tbh i was kind of dreading getting to this because i still find it exceptionally hard to get into his head, so wish me luck lol 

I’m going to be a total bore and recommend you check out this article. Bear in mind that that was written by a dude at the citadel so it’s going to stray into the realm of Military Brain at points, but i think it’s a worthwhile read anyways. 

ah christ, faramir. okay. cowabunga.

faramir, more so than aragorn, is the platonic ideal of a romantic hero. Both in the genre sense (as in, romance novels) and in the sense of the artistic movement of romanticism, i know i’ve said exactly this before but it’s worth reiterating. I’ll start with the romantic influence and then go onto the romance.

So the romantic movement is a really important intellectual, cultural and political movement, and you will have to forgive me because i am only loosely a modernist and more a contemporary historian, and not at all an expert in literature or art history, so this is going to be, like, a 101 level understanding of what was going on. 

The romantic movement is kicked off as a reaction to both the emphasis on rationality and quantifiability promoted during the enlightenment, and the bourgeois economic revolutions (this is the french revolution, mostly, but the later revolutions across the european continent in 1848 and the kickstarting of the industrial revolution in england). Romanticism was, essentially, a return to intense emotionality, reverence for nature, and appreciation of that which is, ultimately indefinable. Not necessary for writing a fanfic, but reading about the idea of the sublime is kind of a fun rabbit hole to go down if you’ve got time to spare. 

A lot of present day writers will talk about the romantic movement as a break with the past, which is, i guess, kind of true, but is also not really true. The romantic movement — as much as the enlightenment — took its inspiration and logical from classic art and thought. But it interpreted the classics differently to the enlightenment. Whereas the enlightenment era thinkers were fascinated by the rationality and mathematical precision of the greeks and romans, the romantics were more interested in their emotional liberty, and the epic (in the truest sense of the word) shows of emotion and experiences of human life. 

but what does this mean for faramir? A lot! 

The first time we’re introduced to faramir (if not in name) is in fotr, when boromir talks about the destruction of the bridge at osgiliath, when he describes an epic story of war and heroism, wherein only four total people survive swimming from the bridge: two unnamed others, boromir, and faramir. right from the off we know that, if nothing else, he’s not a limp-wristed little lordling, he has the fortitude to survive what few others can. 

Then, barely half a breath later, we get a description of faramir’s premonition, the fact that it came to him repeatedly, and that he immediately volunteered to go blues clues his way through it. We get the sense that he’s a guy who doesn’t back down from a challenge. And then faramir goes away for a while, until two towers, when we meet him again in the brilliance that is ithilien. And here i’m going to go back to our friend from the citadel for some interesting character insight:

the rangers under the command of Faramir are armed with long bows, giving them the capability to wage war over distances greater than most of their foes. This is the same type of warfare deemed cowardly and dishonorable by the chivalric knights, but is far more effective and less perilous than the face-to-face [...] This tactic also reveals Faramir to be a conscientious leader, minimizing the risk to his subordinates while maximizing their effectiveness in battle. Faramir was considerate of the risk he put his men to and sacrificed the idea of glorious face-to-face combat in favor of a weapon system that would be less desirable in the eyes of men such as Boromir, but also much more efficient. [...] Using camouflage and stealth, the warriors un d er Faramir's command set themselves apart from all other military units besides the elves in The Lord of the Rings and ultimately align themselves more closely with the soldiers of modern warfare than with the ancient heroes prevalent in the work of Tolkien. 

Okay enough of the military history because it’s soul-crushingly boring, but the gist is that faramir is, (whatever else he is) a very unique figure. Taking this as a value neutral statement, we get the sense, before we even hear him own to it himself, that he’s a man apart from the rest. I think it’s important also to think about the extent to which he is situated as a part of nature when we first meet him, even if we later know that he is from this big, awful stone city, we are meant to immediately associate him with nature. And not nature in a primitive sense, i’d argue, but nature in the romantic sense, where it speaks to the beauty of creation etc etc etc 

Then there’s the bright sword speech, which im not going to say anything on because cleverer people than me have dealt with it much more efficiently, but i would say that the takeaway from that, besides that he loves peace yada yada yada, is that he likes talking about peace. He has opinions on the war, perhaps even a controversial opinion, and by god, he wants people to know it. So thinking about what that level of immediate and almost impolitic honesty says about him is worth thinking about as you try to write him. 

Later, we get to see faramir in the white city, and what we see is that he’s kind of a drama queen! I say this lovingly, but it does correspond to him going off on one immediately about how the war sucks ass and how he’s above it and how all the other people of middle earth are shit, including his own, and how much better life was In Númenor (which is, essentially, the crux of a lot of romantic poetry. And my headcanon of faramir’s connection to romantic poetry is here). 

The other thing we learn in the white city is that faramir is very aware of himself as a person, and is actively altering whatever his base inclinations are to fit his desired personality. Here’s what i said in a comment on swaddledog’s excellent hearts and minds: 

When Denethor hits him with the "ever your desire is to appear lordly and generous as a king of old, gracious, gentle," he's not saying it because he thinks that sort of behaviour comes naturally to Faramir but because he knows he has to work really, really hard at it. I think inherent in that desire is also the failure — he tries, but sometimes he comes up short (often, even — that kiss on the wall wasn't exactly gracious and gentle!), and it's because he sometimes comes up short that Denethor knows it doesn't come naturally to him. And you get that perfectly, just so, so perfectly.

That gap between what faramir thinks he is and whats to be versus what he actually is is very important for understanding him. Though, as i say, i really struggle with writing faramir, so it’s definitely not an easy thing to work into a fanfic. 

I realise i’m probably not articulating this as well as i should, but that’s because dealing with faramir is a tremendous arseache for me, lol. I think basically my advice here is to familiarise yourself with a lot of these romantic figures and try to bear them in mind as you write. pierre bezukhov from war & peace actually fits quite closely to what i imagine young (as in, pre-ring war) faramir is like, with some necessary alterations for canon, and the fact that faramir seems like he’d be slightly more responsible than pierre. And certainly far, far, FAR more confident. 

So that’s the romantic, and then there’s the romance. I saw a post a few months ago that identified faramir as, essentially, a love letter to women. And he totally is: he’s this fucking baller guerrilla warrior who quotes poetry and reads widely and falls in love deeply and sweeps a woman off her feet because he finds her beautiful and incredible and worthwhile even when she’s at her absolute worst. emotional intimacy is real, hallelujah! And so i think any time you’re writing faramir you’re going to have to keep that in mind, because he is this sort of breathless romantic. He’s a character that exists (inadvertently because tolkien couldn’t predict the future) to act, outwardly, as an antidote to the All Men Are Shit mindset. How much you actually keep him on that pedestal is up to you. I like to nuance his character with a bit more chaos, let him be a bit of a shameless flirt in his younger years, let him be so high and mighty in his romantic behaviour that he doesn’t realise that sometime éowyn just wants to fucking chill, that sort of thing. 

There are lots of other character moments that stick out to me that i dont want to say a huge amount about, but will instead link to this incredible meta about faramir’s númenóreaness, with the disclaimer that dealing with that sort of capability in any serious way scares the shit out of me, so i have mostly just Pretended I Can’t Read every time i think about it, except for a super brief reference at the end of this fic. 

Okay onto the meat of this (oh my god, i’m so sorry for how long this is)

Faramir + Éowyn = true love

Before i start, i just want to point out that in terms of seeing their relationship, we only really get it in the steward and the king, which is significant for a lot of reasons. For one because tolkien got a huge amount of shit for how quickly they fell in love (people accused it of being war-bride stuff, which typically was not a great arrangement for those involved) — tolkien himself said ‘shut the fuck up dude’ to that, and this is probably because tolkien married his wife, edith, right before he went off to war. I’ll come back to that in a sec because it’s important. 

The other reason it’s important is because the steward and the king features some of the most consistent lofty and high-fantasy prose of the entire series. Tolkien does this magical thing where he weaves high brow purple prose in with deeply casual, familiar (for the early 20th century) vernacular, and to great effect. And he does this for a reason, he wants to create the sense of this deeply developed, fantastical world that extends well outside the bounds of what we are allowed to see in text while also allowing us the rhetorical space to relate to the characters we see. It is, then, significant that there is almost none of the “low-brow” vernacular speech in the steward and the king. It means tolkien’s got all thrusters on full, so to speak, in terms of the romance. He wants to evoke arthurian romances, courtly/chivalric love, the sort of fated-by-the-stars love that nobody would think to deny because of the time constraints because it seems so abundantly obvious that this love is Meant To Be.

But that’s just what he’s doing tonally. In terms of content, he’s weaving a more complex picture. 

We’ll start with the obvious. Emotionally, both éowyn and faramir are at their worst. Sort of. éowyn’s worst might have been when she did her suicide run on the pelennor in terms of self-destructiveness, but i think her real low point is actually when she wakes up in the HoH, basically immobilized, prevented from dying, and now aware she’s going to have to do the One Thing she refused to do, which is watch everybody she loves go off to die, and then sit about and wait for her own death. faramir, meanwhile, went off to a hopeless battle (expecting to die) after mouthing off at his father, then wakes up to find out he’s not only alive, but the only surviving member of his family (for some reason! because don’t forget gandalf is very clear that he shouldn’t find out about denethor’s death until Later), is now the fucking steward of gondor, and also this mythical king is Back. also he too has to sit around and wait for death. So emotionally neither of them are doing too great. 

Their first impressions of one another are very important. 

faramir, of éowyn: “and he turned and saw the Lady Éowyn of Rohan; and he was moved with pity, for he saw that she was hurt, and his clear sight perceived her sorrow and unrest.”; “He looked at her, and being a man whom pity deeply stirred, it seemed to him that her loveliness amid her grief would pierce his heart.”

So he knows who she is, and he can see that she’s physically hurt, but also can see she’s feeling all kinds of fucked up. And the first emotion he feels is pity. He’s assessing her in terms of pain and sorrow, and all of these sorts of emotions éowyn seems desperate to divorce herself from. And he offers her pity. That’s significant. 

éowyn, of faramir: “she looked at him and saw the grave tenderness in his eyes, and yet knew, for she was bred among men of war, that here was one whom no Rider of the Mark would outmatch in battle.” 

She doesn’t know who he is, not really, but she does immediately think he could kick ass. And that’s her first and only real assessment of him. That’s also significant. 

And éowyn is miserable, and she’s so miserable she’s actually willing to openly talk about if (if only to a limited extent) and faramir does what is, I think, one of the most incredible things in the entire book. He functionally disarms her, lets her down gently, and places them on equal footing with a single joke:

‘What would you have me do, lady?’ said Faramir. ‘I also am a prisoner of the healers.’

There’s merit in interpreting this straight, but I actually think it's quite funny to relate the safety and security of a hospital in wartime to a prison, to a cage. And I think tolkien’s aware of this, and not really intending us to read it straight. What this does is soften éowyn up enough that she asks for what she wants, but also seems to make her more interested in dealing with him, even if she reacts badly to his compliment of her. 

And then they fall in love, and whatever. The chapter’s there, there’s a million fanfics out there about it, whatever. 

But faramir’s proposal is Big, and deserves thought for what it says about their relationship. People like to bitch about it because they take it to mean that éowyn has had to change all this stuff about herself, give up her desire to be a firebrand or whatever to go off and be a lovely prince’s wife in this noble hippie commune over those hills yonder. I think that’s totally wrong.

I think what’s going on in faramir’s proposal and éowyn’s response is a really fascinating illumination of the accord they’ve reached with one another through their (admittedly brief) courtship. Here’s why:

First, faramir tries to approach the conversation with a bit of subterfuge. Not in the weird negative way, just in that he’s not hitting it head on at the start. He obviously still doesn’t understand what’s going on inside her head fully, so tries to ask around the question (‘why aren’t you at the cormallen?’) instead of asking the question he’s obviously interested in. éowyn has no time for this, and tells him to nut up or shut up. And he does! 

But then there’s this line: 

But I do not offer you my pity. For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten.

Two things going on here: one, faramir’s rescinding his initial emotional reaction. He felt pity for her, but has now come to know her well enough that he realises she doesn’t need pity, and isn’t dumb enough to try and force it on her. But the second thing, almost more important, is that he assesses her in the terms that she prefers, which is that she has won herself renown and has shown her valour. These are not the things Faramir values, we know this, that’s the whole point of the bright sword speech. But they are the things éowyn values, and he loves her, and is willing to acknowledge what her desired self image is. That’s a huge concession she’s won off him, that’s big. 

And then éowyn responds:

I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.

here’s my potentially controversial take. I don’t think she’s giving up on her desire to be a fighter of some sort, but she’s giving up on some specific traditions, which is that of the mythical (but, let’s be clear, functionally nonexistent, save for éowyn) shieldmaidens, and of the riders of the Mark, who, as we have been told throughout the books, are given to valorising warfare and martial acts above all. This is supported by her saying “nor take joy only in the songs of slaying.” she’s not saying she won't take any joy in it, or that she won’t still praise it when it earns her admiration, but that’s not going to be her only raison d’etre anymore. Her life is going to move beyond the realm of death and killing and battlefield survival to growth and life and the future. That’s also a concession on her behalf. 

And then there’s this hella romantic kiss on the walls, which is fucking brazen behaviour, but is also i think representative more of the unique situation than setting a trend for them. It is, i think, the positive equivalent of éowyn’s slaying of the witch king in terms of its uniqueness. In the same way that she’s not going to keep going around throwing herself headlong into fights she’s not meant to win, she’s also not going to be publicly playing tonsil hockey. This is the big moment, and then it’s back to the reserve from there. 

Really, their entire relationship is, to me, about a series of negotiations. One culture and another, wives and husbands, old and new, war and peace, life and death, etc. they are similar in a lot of ways — both are intensely headstrong — but they’re similar primarily in character, not necessarily in belief, and so much of what they’re going to have to do as a pair is work to find their harmonious accord, if that makes sense. Sometimes they’ll do it peaceably, sometimes they’ll have blow up fights, but their entire relationship is going to be predicated on negotiating the space between, if that makes sense? 

Okay i said i’d say some stuff on the relationship of tolkien and his wife edith to faramir and éowyn. Tolkien was adamant that they were beren and lúthien (that’s on their tombstones), and i’m full willing to grant him that. But i think it’s complicated by the fact that faramir is, in some senses, tolkien’s self-insert. Obviously authors can have stand-ins for their opinions without the character having to be them exactly (and i think there’s more merit certainly to saying that tolkien’s 100% self-insert is tom bombadil) but i think there’s something worth exploring to the connections between beren and lúthien and faramir and éowyn. I know the morality issue makes B+L more closely comparable to arwen and aragorn, but, as I argue for here, the mortality issue (or lifespan issue) isn’t totally alien to faramir and éowyn.  

As i write them, there are some core themes i’m pretty consistently thinking about, so i’ll just list em here in case that’s any help to you.

Family 

This would be: life after orphanhood, life as the last of a family, what your obligation to your family is, how you go on and have your own family after having had a less than ideal childhood, etc.

Duty

Here’s what I said about their differing approaches to duty in a now-abandoned draft chapter from willow cabin:

Faramir has said, not in as many words, that she should not begrudge him for following orders. This, she knows, is a crucial difference between them. They each hold duty above all other charges, but their interpretation of what exactly that means is different. It comes from the differences in power they wield: he has ever been empowered to change the course of decisions before they are made, while she is forced to react to them after. To him, then, it would be unreasonable to disobey direct orders, given that a failure to change them in advance is a reflection upon his skills, not the legitimacy of the command. She, however, has rarely had control over how and when orders are given, and so sees no inherent legitimacy to them, and thus no reason not to disobey orders that are unjustly given.

Time

As I alluded to above, éowyn is going to live a significantly shorter life than Faramir, and she is no doubt very aware of this. But this also means that they’re going to experience time differently, and that will have an impact on their behaviour. What might seem like foot-dragging to éowyn seems like impatience to faramir, etc

Healing

We never actually see faramir’s reaction to finding out denethor tried to burn him alive. That’s a lot. We have no idea if he knows when he proposes to éowyn. When does he find out? What does that do to his mood? Etc. but also, éowyn says she’ll become a healer — what does that really mean? Is she going to be nurse/doctor éowyn from now on? Will she broaden the definition of healing (for my part, i say yes, which is what i’ve been trying to do in willow cabin, though a little less successfully than i’d hoped)

Gender

This is a slightly less popular theme in the bookverse fics, but i think as part of éowyn and faramir’s relationship of negotiation, they’re going to have to deal with éowyn not feeling one hundo thrilled about being a woman. And i think that raises some interesting questions about what faramir’s response to that will be. men/manhood is often treated as the historical default — so what happens when someone like, say, éowyn, starts challenging the notion of gender and gender roles around faramir? How does he react? What does that do to his own self-image? Etc. 

Okay. yes. That’s all i can think of right now. I am so, so sorry this is so long, i just totally brain dumped there. If you have any questions at all though please please do hit me up and i’m super happy to read whatever you’re writing (literally gagging for farawyn content rn lmao), if you’re comfortable sharing etc.

[massivedrickhead]

Loving your series of one shots bud!! I, myself, am a massive fan of fluff and happiness (tooth rotting), how about a prompt where Beca is in LA with Khaled (post PP3) and she is finding it really tough, physically and mentally, especially knowing Chloe isn't there, she hasn't spoken to her in a while, and she believes her to be happy with Chicago elsewhere... and when she returns home... She finds Chloe there. Waiting. (Or the equivalent, where Chloe is engaged, Beca hasn't spoken to her in a while, and she comes home to see her there) xxxxx

Hi, thank you so much! 

I might have gotten away from the prompt a little, but I hope you like it anyway.

I’m kind of tired and emotionally tonight so I don’t know if this is any good, and it’s kinda long so I hope that’s okay haha

Read on AO3

------

“Beca, are you listening?”

Chloe Beale is single.

“Mhm,” Beca said, pulling her eyes away from Facebook on her phone and looking back at Theo. “Sorry.”

“Everything alright?” He asked, knowing it wasn’t like Beca to zone out in a meeting like this. 

“Yep,” Beca said, turning her phone face down. He raised his eyebrows. “It’s Chloe.”

He closed his eyes with a sigh. “Is it an emergency?”

“No,” Beca said, putting her hands in her lap to resit the urge to pick her phone up again. “I am super focused and professional.”

“Can we talk about your album for, like, ten more minutes?” Theo said, trying to keep up his face stern.

“Absolutely,” Beca said, her eyes dropping again, briefly, to her phone.

The meeting felt like it lasted a lifetime, but eventually Beca hurried out and back to her own office, puling Facebook up on her phone.

Chloe Beale is single.

Chloe’s profile picture had changed from the sickeningly sweet picture of her and Chicago showing off her engagement ring, to just a simple selfie.

Beca clicked into her contacts list and her thumb hovered above Chloe’s name.

She should call her, right? 

She scrolled down further, and hit call on Aubrey’s name.

“Aubrey Posen,” Aubrey said, using the same tone of voice she would use to greet a stranger, and not one of her closest friends.

“Aubrey what’s going on with Chloe?”

“I’m doing great Beca, thanks for asking,” Aubrey replied.

“Aubrey.”

“I don’t know,” Aubrey said, her tone softer. “She’s been unhappy with him for a while.”

“She has?”

“Yes,” Aubrey said. “When did you last speak to her?”

“It’s… It’s been a while,” Beca said, sounding guilty. “Work has been a bit much.”

“I know,” Aubrey replied. “You should call her.”

“Yeah,” Beca said. “Thanks.”

“Speak to you later, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Beca said. “I’ll call you.”

She ended the call with Aubrey but once again hesitated before calling Chloe. Apart from the occasional surface level text or exchange of snapchats and memes, she really hadn’t spoke to Chloe for a while. Not properly. Not the way they used to. 

She was scared that if she called her now, Chloe would be mad at her. 

She drummed her fingers against her desk, her stomach twisting slightly, as she tried to decide what to do. She never handled confrontation very well, it’s why she’d spent so much of her life just walking away from situations.

Beca picked up her phone again, and typed out a text.

Beca: Hey Chlo’. I’ve just seen Facebook, are you okay? xx

She hit send and closed her phone before she could overthink it, and tried to focus on her work again. 

She had a bunch of album art she needed to look through and pick her favourites. (Yes, her job was pretty awesome.)

She also had twenty unread emails that had popped up in the ten minutes she had spent on the phone to Aubrey/deciding what to do about Chloe. (Yes, her job was also pretty demanding.)

As her phone buzzed on her desk with Chloe’s reply, Theo poked his head through her office door.

“What’s up?” She asked, resisting the urge to pick up her cell to read the message.

“Have you got plans tonight? Because you need to cancel them if you do,” he said, looking stressed.

“Why?” Beca asked with a sigh.

“The head of the label is coming in for a meeting tomorrow morning and he wants to hear your new album and it is nowhere near ready for that,” he said.

“Isn’t he in Europe?” Beca said with a groan.

“He is literally flying in for this meeting. There is a lot riding on this album, Beca,” he said. “He took a big risk when he signed you as a solo artist after the Khaled collab.”

“I know that,” Beca said, running a hand through her hair. “I know. But it isn’t getting released for another two months, why does he need to hear it now?”

“I don’t know how his mind works, I just know we need to impress him tomorrow,” Theo said.

“Okay,” Beca said. 

“No distractions tonight, okay? Take an hour now and we can get started at,” he glanced down at his watch, “5:30.” He closed the office door behind him, and Beca immediately picked up her phone, pushing away the sudden wave of nerves.

Chloe: I’ve been better xx

Beca: Are you free right now? xx

Chloe: Yeah, I just finished work. xx

Beca called Chloe, this time without hesitation, and the redhead answered on the second ring.

“Hey,” Chloe said, her voice sounding heavy.

“Hi,” Beca replied, sinking back into her chair at the sound of Chloe’s voice. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed hearing it. “What happened?”

“Can we not talk about it?” Chloe asked. Beca could hear the sound of New York traffic over the phone and she felt suddenly homesick.

Not for New York specifically, but for that tiny apartment she and Chloe had shared in Brooklyn. For that level of closeness and intimacy. 

She liked L.A. fine, and her new home was, on paper, a thousand percent better than the Brooklyn apartment, but it still didn’t feel like home. She would trade her state-of-the-art kitchen, king-sized bed, hot-tub - all of it - for one more night in that apartment. One more night sleeping beside Chloe. One more night where Chloe’s arms would snake around her waist and pull her close, mumbling that she was cold. One more morning eating breakfast together before they parted for work. One more evening making dinner and watching trashy TV.

What made it hurt more was that she knew there was no going back to that apartment. Chloe had moved in with Chicago, Beca had moved out to L.A., and Fat Amy was somewhere in the Bahamas. Someone else was living in their apartment now. Sleeping in their cramped bed, making food in their kitchen.

“How’s work?” Chloe asked, breaking Beca out of her thoughts.

“Busy,” Beca said. “It’s… It’s a lot right now.”

“Are you taking care of yourself?” Chloe asked. And Beca thought just how like Chloe that was. While she was going through a heartbreak, she’d rather make sure Beca was okay.

“I thought that was your job,” Beca said, smiling at the soft laugh Chloe gave. She could hear the sounds of keys jingling and a door opening.

“That’s kinda hard to do when I’m all the way in New York,” Chloe said. “God it’s so cold outside. I need a vacation.”

Beca glanced at the sun streaming through her office window. “Maybe you should come to L.A.,” she said, without really thinking. As soon as the sentence left her mouth, she realised this was something she wanted more than anything right now. 

“That would be nice,” Chloe said with a laugh.

“I’m serious,” Beca said, feeling a mixture of nerves and excitement. 

“Come on, Becs. I can’t do that,” Chloe said. “I have work.”

“Take some time off?”

“The flights are expensive-”

“-I’ll pay for the flights,” Beca said, cutting her off. “I think… Chlo’ I think I need this. I need some time off. And I think you need it too?”

“Yeah, I need it,” Chloe said. “Are they even gonna let you have time off?” 

“I can ask,” Beca said. She looked down at her watch and saw she only had ten minutes before she had to get back to work. “Look, if you want to come, I can make it happen. I’m working for the rest of the night, but give me a call tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay,” Chloe said. “I’ll call my boss.”

“So you want to come?”

“Yeah. Yeah I want to.”

——

Beca glanced around her nervously as she stood at the arrivals gate of L.A.X. airport a week later. She was wearing a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses but she was still afraid someone would recognise her.

Then she caught sight of ginger hair and suddenly Chloe was walking towards her and Beca felt her nervousness drain away.

Chloe grinned when she spotted her, and started walking more quickly, practically running by the time she got close enough to hug her. She dropped her case and flung her arms around Beca, squeezing her into the tightest hug she could manage.

Beca was going to make some sarcastic joke, but the feeling of Chloe’s arms around her caused her voice to die in her throat and her eyes to fill with tears. 

“I’ve really missed you,” Chloe said, squeezing tighter and planting a kiss on her cheek and releasing her.

“Missed you too,” Beca said, grabbing the handle of Chloe’s case. “How was your flight?”

“It was fine,” Chloe said, grinning. “Why are you dressed like a spy?”

“Um, because I am?” Beca said, laughing. “I just don’t wanna get spotted.”

“Right,” Chloe said. “You’re a big deal now.”

Beca laughed and shook her head. “It’s a lot,” her voice was a little quieter. 

Chloe frowned slightly, and then her eyes widened as she saw a few men with cameras hovering outside the entrance to the airport.

Beca sighed. “Just ignore them and stick close to me.”

They walked out of the airport quickly, and as soon as the men spotted her, they started yelling. 

“Beca! Beca! How’s the album going, Beca?!”

“Beca! What do you say about the rumours that you’re dating your producer?!”

“Holy shit,” Chloe muttered under her breath as they made their way to Beca’s car, the paparazzi following them, continuing their barrage of questions.

“Beca! Introduce us to your friend!”

“Beca is it true you’re dating-”

Whatever name he was planning to say was lost in the sound of Beca slamming her door shut, and starting her car. She honked the horn a few times to get them to move out the way.

“Beca, what the fuck was that?” Chloe asked, pulling on her seatbelt as Beca pulled out of the parking lot. 

“Fun, right?” Beca asked, glancing in her rearview mirror, making sure they weren’t going to follow her home. 

“Does that happen every time you go out?”

“Not always,” Beca said. “To be honest they were probably there just hanging about to see if anyone would turn up. I don’t think they knew I was there before they saw me.”

“Jesus,” Chloe said. “I forget you’re like a legit celebrity now.”

Beca pulled a face. “I���m not. Not really.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Beca said, glancing over at Chloe. “Yeah, just… Just really looking forward to this time off. I had to work a lot of late nights to get Theo to agree with this.” Chloe frowned. “You know that guy was full of shit, right? There’s nothing going on between me and Theo. I haven’t been dating him. I haven’t been dating anyone.”

“Why not?” Chloe asked.

“Why not, what?”

“Why haven’t you been dating anyone?”

Beca shrugged. “I haven’t met anyone I liked.” They were quiet for a little while longer as they continued to sit in L.A. traffic. “So, can we only talk about my love life or are you going to tell me about you and Chicago?”

“There’s nothing really to tell,” Chloe said, turning to look out of the window now they had gotten off the highway. “I just… It wasn’t working. We were fighting a bunch. I wanted him to be different and he wanted me to be different.”

“I’m sorry, Chlo’,” Beca said. 

“It’s okay,” Chloe said. “It’s better in the long run. At least we weren’t married with kids before we figured it out.”

They sat in a comfortable silence as Beca drove them the rest of the way to her house, the radio playing quietly. 

When Beca pulled up to to her house, Chloe let out a low whistle.

“Right, you live in a fucking mansion now,” she said.

“It’s hardly a mansion,” Beca said, feeling embarrassed. She took Chloe’s bag from the trunk and they made their way into the house. “You want the tour?”

“Please.” 

Beca showed her around, dropping her bag into the guest room. The tour ended on the deck, and Beca grabbed a bottle of wine and two glasses from the kitchen on the way. They sat in comfortable loungers and looked out as the sun set over L.A.. 

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Beca said, pouring them some wine.

“Me too,” Chloe replied, cheers-ing her glass against Beca’s. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“Anytime, Chlo’.”

As they sat in silence watching the sunset, Beca felt a warmth spreading through her chest. For the first time since moving to L.A., she felt like she was home. And then she realised something.

Something she’d known all along, really.

She glanced across at Chloe, who was smiling with her eyes closed, letting the sun soak into her.

Chloe.

Chloe was her home.

She placed her hand on top of Chloe’s and squeezed, softly.

Chloe opened her eyes and looked over at Beca, still smiling. She adjusted her hand so her fingers were threaded with Beca’s. 

Beca looked away, blinking against the sun and feeling tears stinging her eyes.

If Chloe noticed, she didn’t mention it. She just carried on smiling, and turned back to face the sunset, their hands still linked. 

“It’s beautiful out here,” she said. 

“Yeah,” Beca said. “I feel like I never actually get to relax out here. I spend so much time just sleeping at my office these days.”

“I knew you weren’t taking care of yourself,” Chloe said.

“There’s just been a lot of pressure at work. This is my first solo album, and if it fails… If it doesn’t do well everyone will know that my last one was only a success because of Khaled,” Beca said. “I can’t fail at this.”

“You won’t fail,” Chloe said, softly. “You’re so talented, Beca. You’ve got this, I know you do.”

Beca smiled. “I wish I didn’t have to do it without you.”

“You don’t,” Chloe said. “I’m only on the other end of the phone. You can call me anytime.”

“It’s not the same,” Beca said. “Sorry, I just miss how things used to be.”

“I know. I miss it too,” Chloe said. 

“If I’d known things wouldn’t stay that way forever, I might have done things differently,” Beca said.

“What do you mean?”

Beca shrugged, feeling like she should stop talking before she said something she’d regret. She didn’t want to cause an awkward situation that they both had to live with for the two weeks of their vacation.

“Don’t go quiet on me now,” Chloe said.

“I just wish I’d been more honest. Braver,” Beca said, avoiding looking at Chloe.

“It’s not too late,” Chloe said.

But Beca shook her head. “Sorry. I’m… I’m rambling. I’ve probably drank too much.”

“I guess it’s getting late,” Chloe said, letting Beca’s hand drop. “We’ve got a long day of relaxing ahead of us, right?”

“Yeah,” Beca said. She stood and stretched and helped Chloe to her feet. “If you get hungry or anything during the night just help yourself.”

“Thanks,” Chloe said, kissing Beca on the cheek. “We’ll finish this conversation tomorrow, okay?”

Beca laughed, and felt her cheeks burn. “I dunno what you’re talking about.”

“Night Becs,” Chloe said.

“Night.”

Chloe woke a few hours later, her head hurting from too much wine and sun and not enough water.

She made her way to the kitchen and drank what felt like her body weight in water. As she was about to head back, she heard noises coming from Beca’s office. 

The door was open and a dim light was creeping onto the landing.

Chloe peaked inside to see Beca sitting cross-legged on her chair, her hair tied up messily, the light from the computer screen the only light in the room.

She was talking to someone on the phone, her voice a little hoarse.

“No, I get that Theo,” she said, her hand resting on the back of her neck. “But when I spoke to you yesterday, the track was fine.” She watched as Beca tucked the phone in between her ear and shoulder and the began typing into her computer. “Uh huh. So like, more bass? Less bass?” She stopped typing. “I don’t know what you mean by the same bass but different.”

Chloe had heard enough and stepped into the room. 

She placed a hand on Beca’s shoulder and tried not to laugh when she jumped. She held out her other hand for Beca’s phone. 

Beca sighed and handed it over.

“Hi Theo,” Chloe said, smiling. “It’s Chloe. You remember me from the USSO tour, right? It’s 2 am, and Beca’s on vacation. I know. I’ll pass your apologies on. Goodnight Theo.”

She clicked end on the call and passed the phone back. 

“Theo said sorry.”

Beca laughed and put the phone down. “Thank you.”

“Does this happen often?”

“Oh yeah,” Beca said. “Theo and I are both kinda nocturnal so sometimes he’ll call me with ideas.”

“No wonder you look so tired,” Chloe said.

“Gee thanks.”

“Come on, it’s bed time.” Chloe took her hand and pulled her up. “This room is off limits while you’re on vacation, okay?”

“Yes ma’am,” Beca said, smiling. “How are you finding the guest room?”

“It’s nice,” Chloe said, as they hovered outside Beca’s room. “Why?”

“No reason,” Beca said.

“Becs, you can just say it you know?”

Beca laughed, and looked down. “I can’t. I’m not good at this.”

“Okay,” Chloe said. She pushed Beca’s bedroom door open and gave her hand a tug. “Come on.”

“Chloe,” Beca said softly, closing her eyes when Chloe cupped her cheek with her hand. “Wait.”

“Hey,” Chloe replied, her voice just as gentle. “Look at me. Tell me what you need.”

Beca swallowed hard, tears burning her eyes. “I’ve… I’ve been waiting. That’s what I wanted to say before. Why I haven’t dated anyone since Jesse. I’ve been waiting for you. I… I waited to tell you and I waited too long.”

“It isn’t too late,” Chloe said, pulling Beca into a hug. “You can tell me now, it isn’t too late.” She felt Beca take a deep breath, and when she spoke her voice was muffled by Chloe’s shirt.

“I’m in love with you. I’ve always been in love with you. And I know you and Chicago just broke up. I don’t need to hear it back.”

Chloe ended their hug and cupped Beca’s face in her hands again, her thumbs brushing away the tears. 

“I wanted Chicago to be different than he was. That’s why we didn’t work out. I wanted him to know what I needed without me having to ask. I wanted him to know when I needed a tea instead of a coffee. I wanted him to bring me an aspirin when I was two hours into a study session because he knew I’d have a headache by then. I wanted him to know when I wanted to talk, and when I just needed to sit and listen to music. I wanted him to know me. I wanted him to know me the way you know me. I wanted him to be you, Becs. And… And when I realised that… When I realised it was you that I wanted… You that I was in love with… That’s when we broke up.”

“You love me?” 

“Yeah,” Chloe said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Yeah I love you.”

Beca let out a teary laugh. 

“Can I kiss you?”

Beca nodded, and Chloe’s mouth was on hers, and Beca knew she was home.

[innittowinit]

Run Rabbit Run (1/3)

Summary:

When Assassin Technoblade receives an offer he can't refuse, to kill the king, he starts to live a double life as a knight inside the castle walls.

Unexpected to him, he meets a pair of troublesome brothers, a skilled gardener and a father figure in the process, Can he go through with it this time?

AO3

Arriving at the castle gates

The objective was simple: infiltrate the palace, earn the king’s trust, kill him and then get the hell out of there. Really, for a skilled assassin, such as Technoblade, it should have been easy; he’d been given a couple months to work on getting this target but he had been confident he’d have it done in less than a week.

Usually, he would never accept offers to assassinate royalty but he had been down on funds and his client had offered him so much gold. You see, most of the time the work it took to not get caught for these kinds of jobs just outweighed the reward but this person must have really had some vendetta against the King as, when Techno had initially declined, he had quadrupled the amount of gold he would get as an award.

In today’s economy? He was not in any position to be declining that kind of offer.

And so, confident that he was being paid fairly for his work, he began working under the King - arguably one of the biggest mistakes of his lifetime.

---

“There’s a new guard coming in today” A scruffy looking boy, dressed in a long white apron had chirped as he stacked plates and glasses full of expensive looking cuisine and beverages onto a tray for the butler to carry.

“Knight, Tommy” The butler corrected as he repositioned some of the plates so they wouldn’t fall “And I don’t know why you care so much, Phil brings in new Knights all the time”

“Ugh!” Tommy, the boy in the apron, had groaned as he dug his hand into the silverware drawer, trying to fish out some that he would need to polish the least, “Come on, Wil! Poor guy is probably terrified, he probably thinks Phil will like...accuse him of treason or something if he makes any sort of mistake, we should welcome him!”

“Okay Okay” Sighing, Wilbur picked up the tray, grabbing the silverware for Tommy once he decided he was taking too long, “We’ll go say hi to him when he gets here, for now, just do your job and cook the food”

With that, the conversation seemed to be over, Wil ruffling the cook’s already messy hair and leaving to take the tray to whatever room the King was in.

---

Applying for the role of Knight had all been a part of his plan, having an excuse to be carrying a weapon around with him was far far better than having to try and hide it and come up with excuses whenever someone found one. Part of being an assassin was being able to plan far far in advance.

Walking up to the Palace, it was obvious that this was a wealthy kingdom, not at all like where he had been born. In a way, the fact that he’d be killing someone rich helped with the guilt. Jealousy could always be more powerful than guilt. Creamish grey pillars stood tall on either side of the actual castle portion of the palace, the entire thing being surrounded in a tall stone wall that looked as if it was more for aesthetics than for use in an actual battle. In Techno’s experienced opinion, it didn’t look like it had been used at all for the original intended purpose, in fact it looked as if it had been scrubbed clean by the servants after every storm to keep it looking pristine.

Somebody must have been watching him approach since as soon as he got to the moat a large drawbridge was lowered for him to walk across and into the safety of the walls.

“New guy!” Whipping his head around to the source of the sound, he spotted two men dressed in different uniforms, They were both taller than he was however the blonde boy was quite clearly younger, having more boyish features on his face.

The pair quickly jogged over to him, both grinning like idiots as they introduced themselves, “I’m Wilbur and this is Tommy!” The taller of the two spoke “He’s my younger brother, the king took us in to work for him when we were living on the streets so please don’t be nervous, he’s extremely kind and will definitely want you to see this as your new home”

Techno had to keep himself from chuckling, to him this was nothing more than a workplace, somewhere he could plant his seeds and then strike when nobody was looking, still though, he needed to keep himself as unremarkable as possible in order for his plan to work.

“Quiet type huh? That’s fine, I’m sure the King would still like to meet you first though so just follow us” Wilbur hummed as he spun around on the balls of his feet, leading Tommy and Techno towards the main building. It was a little morbid how they didn’t realise they were inviting death into their home, the thought of the pain he would inevitably bring these people always seemed to upset him so he tried his best to push that fact away as far as he could.

This was his job, he was being paid. The blood wouldn’t be on his hands, as always it would be on his client’s.

Tommy had squirmed his way between the two older men as they walked through the gardens, he had to admit the rose bushes that lined the royal stone brick path looked beautiful, especially during this time of year, it was so warm and bright.

“Hi Tubbo!” Tommy had called out to a boy with brown hair who was tending to some purple aster’s, the boy (who he assumed was this Tubbo guy) gave an enthusiastic wave back, his smile was incredibly welcoming and friendly. Needless to say, it was obvious the two boys were friends, but he also had a little bit of an edginess to him, he cut off the dead flowers with so much precision that Techno was half expecting him to be a second assassin here who was just being careless about hiding their skill with weapons. One look at that stupid smile made it very clear that he was in fact not an assassin though, instead he just seemed to be very skilled in his craft.

“That boy over there?” Wilbur chuckled, seemingly noticing Techno staring “That’s Tubbo,  Tommy’s best friend, they met when we first moved in here and they’ve been pretty inseparable ever since. Honestly, if you hadn’t been moving in today he’d probably have made some excuse to come down to the garden, probably to ask Tubbo for fresh vegetables or something”

Nodding silently, Techno willingly gathered information on the dynamics of this strange little family, information was truly the most powerful weapon and knowing how to manipulate them if he’d ever need to do so, would be a very important life skill.  

A man clad in shimmering Iron armour pulled a rope as Wilbur informed him that they needed to be let back inside, a few seconds later a low bell rang and the large wooden doors slowly began to open. Really, the interior had been just as expected, grandiose and extravagant, clearly owned by a man who had far too much money than he knew how to manage. Suddenly Techno felt a little less bad about ruining their family, sure, it was entirely fueled by jealousy but still it felt rather disgusting to know that he had to kill in order to feed himself whereas some people could live a life as ravish as this, without even making a dent in the wallet.

“It’s… big”

Clearing his throat, to try and break up some of the silence, the piglin heard his voice reverb around the high walls. This hall would surely be good for playing music, the ambiance would definitely make the worst of pianists sound like Mozart.

“Yeah, I was a bit overwhelmed at first too.. Isn’t it pretty?” Wilbur sighed, placing a hand on Techno's shoulder as he let a grace smile dust his lips, “It’s really inspiring to think of the Artists that would have worked here”

“Oh my GOD” Tommy groaned, grabbing them both by the arm and starting to hop up the white marble staircase in the centre of the room. “We already have one Wilbur. Don’t encourage him, New Guy!”

After being dragged the rest of the way around the palace, they eventually ended up standing in front of a large wooden door with golden accents, spelling out things that Techno couldn’t read. He had to admit, it would be nice to live with so much gold, but throughout his life he’d learnt to suppress all his Piglin urges in order to not be deemed sub-human (even if he technically wasn't even a human.)

For now he could live with the gold he earned by working hard and doing his job.

On the subject of his job, Tommy had knocked a few times and then immediately opened the door, causing Techno to cringe beyond belief. Seriously, who knocks without waiting? And to the King no less.

“Oh? ‘Ey mates”

With Blonde, wispy hair that reached his shoulders, and dressed a royal suit of green, a man spun around in a comically large desk chair to face them. He had a golden crown placed atop his head with a few different coloured gems embedded into it, it was magnificent and every instinct in his body was telling him to pounce, pounce, POUNCE.

He hated the common misconception of Piglin’s being animalistic brutes who were nothing more than crooks but clearly this man thought more than that. He had only just met Techno and he hadn’t even cared to hide his Gold before allowing a piglin into his home. In a way, he was conflicted. Once King Philza was gone, he could take that crown for himself and bask in it’s golden glory but then again… this man had been one of the few people who trusted him. Sure, the trust was misplaced, Techno was planning his death of course, but it was nice to not be labeled as a criminal because of his species for once.

Sure, Technoblade was a renowned assassin but he was an assassin because no other jobs would hire a piglin, there was quite literally nothing else he could do to make an income. Plus, he was strong and he felt less sympathy for his victims than most would. He supposed that was just one of the perks that came with growing up in the nether, you were always desensitised to death.

“It’s nice to meet you!”

The King got up out of his chair, walked towards Techno and...bowed? Needless to say he was a little taken aback.

“I sincerely hope you enjoy your time with us here in Minecraftia, we’re a small Kingdom but I’m sure both Wilbur, Tommy and any of my other staff members would be thrilled to help you get settled. Will you two show him to where he’s going to be staying? I’m sure he’s exhausted from traveling so far”

Was this really a nice king? Why had he got the assassination request? This man was so gentle to bow to his Knight, who hadn’t even been knighted yet, and somehow someone hated him so much to pay for his death.

Shrugging it off, Techno decided it wasn’t his problem. After all, the blood was never on his hands.

[milliethekitty27-writing]

England and Tea

The very first time Arthur Kirkland had his first cup of tea, he wasn’t very impressed. It was popular elsewhere, especially in Portugal, but he’d just… never really liked it. He actually hadn’t tried it much, but João loved it and kept trying to convince him to drink it. Arthur usually waved a hand and made some other comment, generally teasing João about preferring leaf juice to a much stronger ale. João always rolled his eyes. 

“You’ll discover how delicious it is one day.” he’d say. 

“I think that we’ll find a black swan before that happens.” Arthur would roll his eyes right back and they’d carry on whatever conversation they’d been having.

João accompanied Catherine of Braganza when she traveled to Britain in 1662 to marry the new King Charles II. It was an awful crossing; even João looked a bit seasick. The princess immediately asked for a cup of tea after stepping off on the dock.

João laughed as Arthur flailed a little. Arthur offered her an ale instead, but the princess looked disappointed. 

“I think you’ll have to start looking for a black swan, my friend.” João said at the wedding ceremony. He was holding a cup of tea while Arthur still held onto an ale. “She’s going to take your court by storm.”

“She’s Catholic.” Arthur snorted into his mug. “That alone is enough.” 

Arthur liked Catherine, though. She was a bit pious, but she was fashionable. She walked with him fairly often, talking about the past kings and queens. She may not have been popular queen, surrounded by controversy, but for a Roman Catholic she wasn’t too bad. Catherine was a quiet and mild woman that never turned against her ever-sleeping-with-others husband and had grown to seemingly embrace the English court life. She grew on Arthur, for her love of the countryside, for her curiosity, and her personality. She was more interesting than he’d originally thought, even if she was Roman Catholic. 

She got him to taste tea in 1671, after years of trying to convince him. She pressed the cup into his unwilling hands and watched as he tasted it. 

He almost spat it out all over her and João almost cried laughing, visiting for a short period before he’d return home. 

“Ale is far better.” he said. She’d made a face at him and Charles II had laughed from where he was sitting. 

She had kept trying, though, and as it grew more popular Arthur had to cave - it wasn’t as bad as he thought. (he would die before he admitted it to João, though, because João was unbearable when he was smug) 

Arthur accompanied her to Portugal in 1692, several years after Charles II had died. He was going to wait a few days before returning back, both to settle her in and to speak with João about some issues, but she insisted he stay for tea one morning before he left. 

“Tell me, dear Arthur-” his former queen said rather mildly, her cup clicking onto the saucer. “-have you grown more fond of tea, or have all my efforts been in vain?” Arthur made a bit of a face.

“I like it.” he admitted finally. “Just don’t tell João.” João let out a bark of laughter, settling into the empty chair at Catherine’s other side after shucking off his coat. Arthur went red. “I just said it to make her happ-”

“Sure you did, my friend.” João kept grinning. “I suppose you’ll inform me that you’ve found some black swans, then?” Arthur scowled.

Arthur’s interest in tea grew and grew, even after Catherine died. Tea was popular at court, he’d say defensively. The East India Company, originally encouraged by Charles II, grew more and more powerful as it brought the tea he so loved. India and China had tea galore, which he savored on every visit. He declared war over spilled tea (America found out that the hard way) and found strength in the hot porcelain he’d press between his hands in any weather. He and João drank tea together despite the other trends, remembering a mild mannered queen who teased Arthur about his love for ale. 

The first nation Arthur invited for afternoon tea was João. It was 1850 and Arthur had attended a few of Duchess Anna of Bedford’s little tea parties. They were enjoyable and he enjoyed the hour or so to just relax a bit. João visited him and found Arthur sitting in the garden, a tray of sandwiches and cakes sitting next to the steaming pot of tea along with two cups. The British Empire raised an eyebrow.

“Are you coming to join me, then?” he asked rather dryly. João had laughed.

“If Catherine saw you now, I don’t think she’d recognize you.” 

“I have grown more refined with age.” João had shaken his head, but they’d sat in the garden and drunk their tea, chatting about this and that like the old men they were (much of it was spent complaining about their rowdier neighbors and the struggles of colonies) 

Arthur’s love of tea stayed with him to the current day. He recalled Matthew handing him a steaming mug before they set off to discuss the matter of confederation, or sitting with Neeraja under the hot Indian sun to bicker about business. He remembered holding the lukewarm cups in shaking hand as he hid in a foxhole with Francis, the pair of them silently remembering days when the only thing you had to fear from the sky was an arrow or the rain, or gripping a cup as Churchill roared assurances over the radio that the war was not over yet, that they would stay calm and carry on. He drank tea whenever his blood pressure threatened to boil over (which was frequent in those Cold War years) and he only refrained dunking his cup over Francis’ head when he was stupid because he’d much rather drink the cup. 

Arthur kept a great china cabinet in his household. Many of the cups were incredibly old and faded with age and use. Some of them were newer and the ones he broke out when João came over to visit and they took tea together. Some of them were gifts, some were ones he’d bought, but he had a few on the top shelf that had belonged to Catherine or the other royals he treasured. 

Oh yes, he’d hated tea before, but now he would drink it whenever he needed. He just wouldn’t thank João for introducing it to him. After all, he couldn’t have João getting too big of a head now.

Judging by João’s smug smile, João knew that Arthur appreciated tea too much and was just too proud to thank him for it. Git. 

----

Thanks for reading!

Read this on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28014237

This was written after I started wondering about tea in England, while drinking a cup of tea. For something that the English so love, it really hasn’t been around that long; it was popularized by Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess, in the 1660s. 

I have midterms/finals coming up so I can’t be quite as thorough as I might have wanted to be, but that’s how life is in December; exams and holidays. Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate! 

Source 1: “A Brief history and Types of British Tea” by Elaine Lemm. 

Source 2: “Afternoon Tea” by Ben Johnson

Source 3: “The History of Tea”

Source 4: “Catherine of Braganza” from Wikipedia

João Henrique Lisboa-Carriedo is a fan name I found for APH Portugal. Portugal and England have a super long history together, apparently going back to the Treaty of Windsor in 1386 and some events earlier. I like to think they’re friends that bitch about Spain, France, and literally everyone else plus get into passionate discussions about anything and everything. Neeraja is the name I’ve been using for India. 

Also, fun fact, there are black swans in Australia. England would explore Australia under James Cook in like 1770, so England actually liked tea before he found black swans. Ha ha.

[snarkwrites]

mine | tim speedle | csi:miami

Notes:

Okay, so here’s the thing.. Those smutty one shots and the one shot I wrote at Christmas about Tim Speedle and an ofc who was an old girlfriend? They were originally part of this huge backstory I came up with years ago too and like.. Given that I’m posting the backstory in bits for Greg, I thought why not do the same for Tim. So, if you were ever wondering where the OC from the christmas one shot came from.. This is her. A little more thought out and less vague. Anything not explained there, or in the smut I’ve already posted and plan to post eventually, will be explained here.. Because fuckkit.. Might as well make this a chapter thing too...

Pairing:

Tim Speedle x OFC, Sylvie.

Warnings:

Uhh.. Angst and unresolved feelings at first. Filth you’ve all already seen but more to come.. Maybe a little action and suspense? because I have plans for this one, mhm.

Oh. Right off the bat.. Ya’ll are not gonna like Ryan Wolfe in here at first if I’ve done my job properly. Because as it went on the show, he’s gonna be... hard to warm to here. I chose to keep him in and have him, as well as Cardoza and others, working on the shift opposite of Tim.

Tagging:

@chasingeverybreakingwave​

@twistnet​ 

[ faq | tag list doc | soundtrack ] 

                                            ONE.

“Damn. Are you even gonna open this and humor a thought of going?” Eric waved around the class reunion invite that Tim had gotten in the mail and tossed on the counter. From across the room, Tim continued to dig around in the fridge, trying to find the case of beer he’d picked up on his way in.

He was refusing to answer the question.

Grabbing the case of beer, he sat them on the folding table they’d set up in the living room to play poker at and he took a beer out for himself, popping it against the counter, taking a long sip from the bottle.

Eric was already in the kitchen. Throwing together the traditional go to sandwich for their poker nights.

“Hey, that new guy’s not comin, right?”

“Wolfe? Yeah.. I think Walter with his big mouth invited him.”

“Goddamn it.” Tim swore, grumbling. “There’s just something off about the guy, I’m telling you.”

“Either way, it’s not our problem, man. He’s on the other shift, remember? Are you gonna answer my question, Speed, or do I have to drag the answer out of you, buddy?” Eric asked, giving Tim a pointed look.

Walter stepped into Tim’s apartment with Ryan coming into view right behind him. Tim’s jaw set and when Walter asked “Drag what answer out of Speed, man? What’d I miss?” as he wandered over to grab himself a beer and take a seat at the table, Tim shrugged. “It’s nothing, Walt. Forget Eric here ran his big fuckin mouth.”

“Doesn’t sound like nothin, you grouch.” Eric remarked, chuckling when Tim gave him what he thought was a silencing glare. As per usual, it did not work.

Ryan, the new guy, spoke up from over nearby Tim’s fridge, nodding to a photo booth strip held on by a magnet. “Is this your girl, Speed? Damn… you never mentioned you were seeing a model.” as he shook his head and let out a low and appreciative whistle.

Eric’s gaze settled on the photo strip and then back on Tim. Tim was all but trying not to explode. Getting defensive and touchy as he tended to whenever that particular strip of photos came into a conversation. He tried to give Ryan the subtlest shake of the head no, but it was too late.

Tim was already lost to thought, dwelling on the past.

Ryan eyed him, a brow raised. “Sore subject?” he questioned. Eric glared at Ryan and grumbled, giving Tim a silent look of agreement about the new guy. Tim nodded and smirked, mouthing back “Told you so, idiot.” before fixing his gaze on Ryan and shrugging. “Not really, no. We dated for a while.”

“High school and college.” Eric spoke up, ignoring Tim’s glare. “What? It’s true, right? That’s not just a while, Tim. That’s literally almost a decade, man.” 

“Are you going to let me answer the guy Eric,or nah?” Tim asked, giving Eric another pointed glare as he took the worn deck of cards and shuffled them a few times, starting to deal. When Eric went quiet, Tim continued. “I took the job here. We broke up.”

“The man is lying. What happened was he didn’t ask her to come with and she didn’t try to stop him. So they never actually broke up. They just lost touch. And if you got that invite man, maybe…”

“Invite to what?” Ryan asked, an amused look as he fixed his gaze on Tim. So far, he got the suspicion that neither Tim nor Eric were particularly warming up to him, but it didn’t really matter. He was there because Walter asked if he wanted to play a few hands. And given that of everyone they worked with, so far Walter was the only real welcoming member of the forensics team on either shift, he wasn’t about to turn it down.

If nothing, he figured, he could show Eric and Tim up in a game or two and then leave… Unless the current conversation and it’s effect on Tim Speedle proved to be too interesting and amusing to continue to pass up.

“Class reunion. If I wanted to go back and listen to a bunch of douchebag jocks talk about their glory days, I’d go.” Tim answered, grumbling and shifting around in his chair, wondering when in the hell they were all going to get off the subject.

“She might be there man, you never know.”

“Eric, if it were going to work out in the first place, one of us would’ve said or done something. We wouldn’t have just left it the way it was.” Tim pointed out. Turning his attention to his hand as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, brown eyes carefully surveying the other men around the table.

He smirked when he realized that of them all, the only one who was really good at keeping a consistent poker face was Eric. Then again, Tim thought to himself, Eric knows me too well. He knows I learned how to read him like a book years ago. 

“She’s in Miami right now, actually. I saw her in the lobby of that high end hotel earlier today when our team got called to work that double homicide.” Ryan smirked as he just casually dropped the bombshell. Holding Tim’s gaze a few seconds. Trying to get a read on the guy, see if he might have a winning hand this round.

Tim nearly choked on the sip of Michelob he’d taken and eyed Ryan. The guy had to be trying to bullshit him. Probably to cover for his lack of a poker face, Tim mused, smirking at Ryan as he did so. “She lives in New York, buddy. You probably saw somebody who looked like her. I doubt you saw her.”

“Oh trust me… You don’t see a girl like that a time or two and confuse her with somebody else.” Ryan smirked right back, waiting on his words to hit the intended mark before dropping the bigger bombshell. “Her name is Sylvie, right? Because that’s what the frat boys hounding her for selfies and autographs called her.” 

Just the slightest drop of Tim Speedle’s jaw was enough to make Ryan’s entire night. At this point, he was just genuinely enjoying having a rib at the guy. It wasn’t a secret around the lab that Eric Delko and Tim Speedle were nothing if not tight knit. That’s why it surprised more than a few people when the two seemed to just welcome Walter with open arms and no hesitation. And yet, they went above and beyond to cop snide attitudes with both himself and another man he worked with, Jesse Cardoza.

Tim eyed Ryan, a brow raised. Then he just shrugged. “It’s your play, Wolfe.” he barely managed to unclench his jaw enough to say it, but he did. He hoped that his tone would clearly indicate that for tonight, the topic was over. Even though he knew already that no thanks to Ryan’s words, tonight was going to be a long one for him…

Was she really in Miami? Or was Ryan just being an asshole as per usual?...

,, he’s gotta be saying it to get a rise and more of the story outta me… that’s it... unless she’s here. She does travel a lot, man.. Your ma is always real quick to tell you about every single move she makes when you call back home every Sunday.” Tim shoved the intrusive thought out of his head and it was immediately followed by another. ,, It’s been years and nothing but silence. Neither of us tried to keep in touch and it’s not like we couldn’t... But.. she did come to you in the hospital that first few nights... if she wanted you to know she was there, she would have stayed, just drop the what ifs or you’re going to lose your goddamn mind.” 

Ryan made his call and Tim smirked, shoving some more chips into the middle of the table. “I see your King and raise you.”

Eric nearly spat his drink. He eyed Ryan, wondering if the guy had any idea of the wrath he’d probably just unleashed on himself by pushing buttons as openly as he had been. And he felt bad for the guy. Just because he worked with Cardoza, it didn’t necessarily make him the same.

He leaned in and offered up a quiet warning into Ryan’s ear when Tim got up to go and grab himself one of the Cuban sandwiches sitting on a plate near the stove. “You might want to lay off, Wolfe. Tim’s still hurting and bitter as hell about her, but too damn stubborn to do anything.”

“Which is fucking stupid, if you ask me.” Ryan answered, gazing across the room, smirking as he called out to Tim, “Hey, can I get another beer, man?”

Tim gave him the finger and flopped back into his chair, taking a few bites of his sandwich. “If you get up and get it, yeah. By all means.” Tim chuckled as Ryan gave him a dirty look, but after a little grumbling, he got up and grabbed himself a beer.

“What would you do if she was in town, man?” Eric was the one who asked the question.

Tim pretended not to hear him, but it wasn’t something that he wasn’t already wondering about himself. Did he even really need -or deserve for that matter, to do anything?

XXX

“6 am, sharp.”

“Rex if you remind me one more time about this stupid photo shoot, I swear to fuck, I’ll cancel. I came to Miami to relax. Not be hounded and have gigs booked for me. This was supposed to be my vacation, you’re literally not even supposed to be here.” I rolled onto my stomach on the hotel bed. The patio doors were open and the breeze blowing in off the ocean was relaxing.

Or it had been until Rex felt fit to show up and ruin things.

To be fair, I thought to myself, you’re the one who won’t just tell the guy that you’re not re-signing with his agency when your contract ends. But he seriously couldn’t take a fucking hint when I left on a red-eye and didn’t think he should know?

I was flipping through the television when I happened on a local news show. And they were showing an interview at Miami Dade PD about a pending case that was pretty huge in the media right now.

But that wasn’t what was catching my attention at all.

My eyes fixed on the five seconds glimpse I got of Tim as he hurried into the station. So handsome that I could feel my heart breaking all over again at the sight of him. I sighed and turned off the television.

I wound up on the balcony, staring down at the streets below. Wondering what he was doing right now.. Trying to imagine just how differently everything might have actually gone if I’d been braver back then. If I’d spoken up. Told him that I loved him and I didn’t want to lose touch or for us to be over.

I could’ve come with him.

And then I remembered the fear I felt the night my mom called me, fresh off the phone with his mom… The night I almost lost him.

And I remembered the feeling I felt when I finally made it to his side, a whole two days later. Seeing him lying there in that bed, hovering between life and death. The fear that he’d wake up and he’d want me to leave over-ruling every basic instinct in me that was telling me to stay. Take care of him. At the very least, get some closure. I didn’t deserve him then and the fact remained.

I don’t deserve him now, either. And too much time has gone by... I’d lost any right to tell him how I felt now. He probably had his own happy life. A better one. Who would I be to come in and lay it all on the line and destroy that?

If I’m being truly honest with myself here, I’ve never actually deserved Tim Speedle. And I’ve always known it. It’s why I had to let him go back then and a big reason why I was fighting myself so hard to keep from going to him now.

But I wanted him so badly. I needed him.

Everything felt wrong without him. I tried to move on, I tried convincing myself he was a high school and college boyfriend and my best childhood friend before that, but deep down, I knew.

Tim Speedle was, is and will always be, the man I love.

But I’m not good enough for him and hopefully, he’s moved on by now. God I hope he’s happy.

The thought had me taking a few shaky breaths and wiping away a tear that had been lingering in my eyes, threatening to roll down my cheek. I wandered back inside and even though I knew it wasn’t a good idea… I found myself searching his name.

Biting my lip as my heart skipped a beat or two when I realized that his phone number was still the same. And it was listed, not private.

I’m not exactly sure why, but I went to my contacts. And for a good ten minutes, I hovered over his name… I actually went as far as to pull up the conversation box and read over the last conversation we had. Before I realized it, I was crying again and that empty feeling was creeping back in…

,, you came all the way to Miami. You can’t keep living like this…” my brain taunted me. And then, another thought crept in, ,, if you wanted him, you shouldn’t have just let him leave without saying so. All you had to do was tell him you wanted to come. What, were you expecting some flowery proposal? For him to drop the chance of a lifetime for you? And what if he had, huh? What then? You know he would’ve hated you and by now, you two would be over… Nobody ever stays...Your own father couldn’t even be bothered to stick around, Syl… The man has probably forgotten all about you by now.”  and before my mind got any darker, I slipped off the bed and grabbed my favorite jacket. Maybe taking a ride down to the Keys would help me get this off my mind. Or driving a few blocks over, going to the beach to look at the stars.

All I did know was that suddenly, it felt like the very vast and open space in this 5 star hotel room was rapidly closing all around me.

[chikabika]

I wanna talk about Whole Cake Island too!

So, I’m reading Whole Cake Island right now. And I have THOUGHTS about Sanji and Luffy’s “”””fight””””. And it’s probably nothing anyone hasn’t said before but I’m gonna write it out anyway.

(TL;DR Sanji and Luffy fight and it hurts because they both go for the throat. Also Nami has been through this shit I am surprised she’s putting up with Sanji trying to leave in the slightest.)

So first, yeah, I’m screaming into a pillow because this shit is rough. Let’s get those personal emotions out of the way first. 

Sanji’s whole thing is that he cares and serves, right? His love language is acts of service and that’s primarily shown through feeding people. When we meet the Vinsmokes (I shall not be referring to them as his family) we see pretty quickly that they are the antithesis to everything Sanji is. 

The men are literally said to lack the ability to sympathize or empathize. Not only do we see this is the case, but Reiju says so herself:

They do not value cooking nor food. Judge tells Sanji to never cook again, Niji wastes food.

And, of course, the brothers have no qualms about hitting women. The whole chivalry/won’t hit a women thing is a huge can of worms I don’t feel like unpacking in part because I don’t feel like I could talk about it without discussing women’s power levels and roles in One Piece. And I’ve already digressed too much.

So yeah, the Vinsmokes are the opposite of Sanji and hold none of his values. In fact, they may be why he holds some of his values, because they are as far from the Vinsmoke’s values as possible.

Okay so the two chapters in particular when Luffy and Nami find and confront Sanji! 

Pretty immediately we see that 1. Sanji was not expecting them, 2. He’s distressed that they’re here, and 3. It complicates things for him.

Like, that is not a face of someone happy to see his friends who have come to save him. That is an “oh fuck” face. (And as a sidenote, yeah, it’s a whole lot harder to sacrifice yourself when you’re confronted with the people you’re leaving behind, HUH, SANJI????)

Luffy’s all happy to see him, feels like they’ve accomplished their goal, doesn’t question that Sanji would want to come back. And he’s got things to do! Like save Wano and beat up Kaido! Chop chop Sanji let’s go on adventures! Plus, I would think that Luffy would also have the expectation of his crew that they understand that no one gets to leave if they’re doing it to sacrifice themselves. He’s already shown he’s gonna come get you and Sanji knows this. Sanji’s first arc with them after Baratie was going to save Nami from Arlong and her self-sacrificial bullshit! Luffy’s modus operandi is saying “Oh, you thought you were in a lose-lose situation and the only solution was to sacrifice your happiness and well being? Fuck that! You’re my nakama, let me save you!”

Both Luffy and Nami aren’t questioning Sanji’s wanting to come with them. They’re here, it’s time to go!

And so then we see the surface level reasons why Sanji would say “No, I can’t go with you.” And we also see that he knows Judge is watching him.

I don't think Nami's buying it either. She's done this. She knows what it's like to be trapped by circumstances, to have your loved ones held hostage. And she did this shit too! She fuckin laid it down, lied to her nakama about it all being a farce in her efforts to keep them out of her dangerous situation! Maybe the words sting, but I think this face of hers is even more from her thinking about how they all know eachother so much more, and know how Luffy wouldn't leave one of them behind. So Sanji must be under some real duress right now. Like, I feel like she could extrapolate a lot from what he's saying because she knows that's not who he is. And because she's tried the same shit. And, I wonder if she’s hurting for him because she knows what it’s like.

Every chance she gets, she reiterates that there was nothing between them, that she doesn’t care about them, that she tricked them, and even uses her supposed killing of Usopp as support of her betraying them. She is desperately trying to get them off this island. Arlong is well covered, we all know what’s up.

And, the parallels are pretty clear for Sanji. He’s got family being held hostage (Zeff, and the Strawhats too), and he couldn’t leave anyway because he’s got explosion bracelets on. Plus he’s got his own self-sacrificial streak (which I could guess comes from being raised in a household where you’re told you don’t have any value and everything you do is wrong-the fact that Sanji still cried at Judge’s rejection of him right before his escape speaks to how as a child he still wanted Judge’s approval and love as a father).

So, he comes out swinging with the thing that we previously established would be the shittiest thing to say, that Luffy rejected the possibility of him saying.

And then he starts on this buckwild speech that is so fucking hammed up I almost questioned if Sanji meant for them to understand the opposite of his words, and was just putting on a show for the Vinsmokes.

Nami only says he’s going too far when Sanji starts insulting Luffy’s dream, which the whole crew believes in and supports. 

Also, as a side note, it doesn’t really make sense to me that Nami would just take on the role of “you’re going too far, you can’t believe what you’re saying!” Maybe Chopper would do that cuz he’s gullible and shit. BUT NAMI FREAKIN DID THE SAME SHIT. I would almost expect a “...” speechbubble from her and later her saying something like “He really tried his best to make that look convincing, didn’t he? He’s not very good at it.”

Nami’s savvy!

But anyway, yeah, Sanji tries to go for the throat to push thme away saying shit about Luffy not being able to become the Pirate King. My first reaction to this whole thing was: 

“WOW HE'S REALLY DOING IT, HUH? HE'S LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH TO SAY THE MOST HURTFUL SHIT HE CAN TO HIS LOVED ONES SO THEY'LL STAY AWAY SO HE CAN SACRIFICE HIMSELF TO STOP ANYONE FROM GETTING HURT”

Usopp has tried to leave too, but his situation was different. His reasons were stated clearly and he didn’t try to pretend that all the shit they’ve gone through together and the bonds they’ve formed were fake. Nami, Robin, Sanji? They try to do the “ah, I never loved you” bullshit. 

But Sanji’s is the first time that from the get-go, the audience knows before the confrontation everything that’s going on for the crewmember trying to fake betrayal. With Nami and Robin, we didn’t learn their backstories until after they tried to push people away. With Sanji not only did we get it beforehand, but when Luffy and Nami show up, we are shown the three pieces of information that Sanji thinks about and that motivate him to push his crewmates away:

His hands (his treasures) are bound and threatened.

His nakama are threatened.

Zeff is threatened.

He’s backed into a freakin corner! And he know’s Luffy’s track record on crew members trying to leave! So he goes for the throat and when that doesn’t work (or for the whole performance he’s putting on for the Vinsmokes) he attacks Luffy.

Luffy says he won’t fight Sanji, and I wonder if this is because of Water 7 and Usopp. That fight was so fucking painful, I wonder if Luffy vowed to never fight someone like that again?

Clearly he isn’t getting through to Sanji, even though, to him, Sanji should know what the deal is by now.

So he goes for the throat himself! Which is honestly just heartwrenching on Oda’s part and pretty unfair on Luffy’s part. Though, when has Luffy ever been fair lol. His whole crew agrees his selfishness levels are above emperor!

This page pretty much sums it up:

Also, throughout this entire encounter we get glimpses of Sanji thinking about the crew and meeting Luffy, which is cool to see his internal world somewhat.When Luffy first shows up. I mean. Look at the pain on his face.

This is not a “we have a difference in ideals and are fighting over it and I’m thinking about how we met because I regret that it’s come to this.” fight. It’s not even a fight. It’s Sanji desperately saying “Please leave before you die because of me!”

Actually, maybe it is kind of a fight of ideals because Sanji is fighting to say “leave me behind I’m not worth it” and Luffy’s saying “yes you are.”

For all the extremely clear things going on emotionally for people in this scene, I’m surprised Oda just left Nami’s responses at this. But, since he did, it means I get to interpret them how I please!

This could simply be read as her feeling betrayed and shit. But again, they all know the history of the crew. This could just as easily be her saying “You went too far.” or “I can’t believe you wouldn’t believe in Luffy enough to come back with us.”

I said she could probably guess at him feeling like he’s stuck, backed into a corner. And if I remember correctly she is aware that the Strawhat’s lives are threatened if Sanji doesn’t comply with Big Mom’s wishes. But she probably wouldn’t guess at the bracelets being bombs and doesn’t know (but might guess) at the Baratie being threatened too. Nami knows all about people who claim “family” as an excuse to hurt and bind you.

But basically, I would think for her, it would be a situation of her feeling like at this point Sanji should know Luffy well enough to know he won’t give up, and to trust Luffy enough to take Sanji home. So why the fuck would he try to play this game when they’ve all seen that it doesn’t work? Why say the most hurtful things he can think of? And why not just come home now?

I don’t think she’s angry at him for the betrayal he’s trying to act out, I think she’s angry at him for the betrayal he’s committing for not trusting the crew to get him out of there.

(Again, haven’t read past this part but I could absolutely see later Nami saying “do you think we acted hurt enough for them to buy it?”)

And then of course, the last four pages of the chapter where Luffy clearly calls bullshit on Sanji, saying Sanji felt the pain of his kicks more than Luffy did. And Sanji is just starting to fucking lose it. (panels from right to left)

Like, Luffy. Chill. It hurts so much! But no, he can’t just call Sanji out. He’s gotta go for the kill, present Sanji with an unacceptable situation he knows he can’t refuse. Or at least hopes he can’t refuse. Because for Luffy, Sanji leaving is an unacceptable situation.

Not only will he not eat (which, god, using that against Sanji is almost too much, fuck, Luffy), but he won’t even fucking move so get your ass back here soon before I starve, Sanji.

To use the two very deeply entrenched facts about these characters this way is sure something, huh?

Sanji will feed anyone who is hungry. He cannot stand hunger, almost.

Luffy eats all the damn time and lots and never refuses food. For him to say “i’m going on a hunger strike, I’m not eating until it’s from you” IS JUST SO MUCH.

Also side note god what cruel people to laugh at Sanji’s pain as Niji and Yonji are doing.

Sanji thought he could get away with thinking he’s expendable (just like Judge has said in every time period we’ve seen him on the page) Luffy flat out rejects that. Sanji is essential, an required part of the crew and a required part of Luffy’s dream. Just like the crew have adopted his dream as a part of all of their own ultimate goals, so Luffy is saying that they are all part of his ultimate goal. He has adopted them into him becoming the Pirate King.

And goddamn if this arc isn’t about found family. The blood of the covenant is thicker, don’t cha know.

[jq37]

The Royal Report– A Crown of Candy Ep 1

There Is Strength in Sweetness 

Much like the years, the seasons of D20 start coming and they don’t stop coming. Fantasy High: Sophomore Year is barely in the record books and we’re already jumping into our new season--the Game of Thrones/Candyland mashup: A Crown of Candy!

If y’all have been with me since Sophomore Year then you know that I did very in depth recaps of every episode with a very specific format but I’m gonna try something new for this season.

The format might change a little between episodes as I figure out what works best so bear with me but the plan is to do more highlights and opinions than a blow by blow. But, like, we’ll see what happens.

So, anyway, saddle up your Meep and let’s visit Candia--one of the six kingdoms of the land of Calorum (aka: a fridge. We see you Brennan, it’s a fridge). Twenty years ago, the Ravening Wars wreaked havoc but they’re currently in a time of peace which (mostly) everybody is psyched about.

Meet the Family

This is not a new observation but, while most seasons of Fantasy High focus on found family, this season is all about family-family, specifically, the royal family of Candia and their associates. 

We’re first introduced to Murph’s character--Sir Theobald Gumbar (Level 3 Eldritch Knight)--who is the a huge, golden-armored, gummy bear, leader of the Tartguard, protector of the royal family, and the logical endpoint of Murph’s lawful good predilections. Sir Theo is, of course, on time with bells on for the big Saint’s Day/Coming of Age birthday party for the twin princesses of House Rocks. Unfortunately, he’s clearly never seen The Little Mermaid because when the heralds announce the princesses, they don’t show up. Frustrated, he goes to try and find them.

The first place he checks is with Zac’s character, Chancellor Lapin Cadbury (Level 3 Celestial Warlock). He is (in no particular order) the royal tutor, a chocolate bunny, an official of the main state sanctioned church of Calorum (the Bulbian Church), and a pompous ass. Oh, one more thing? He and Theobald can’t stand each other. There is nothing funnier than two very proper grown men who hate each other's guts. Sir Theo shows up to his classroom where the princesses are having a lesson--or at least they’re supposed to be. Further inspection shows that they’ve just left two straw dummies in their place. Classic.

So, we pan out to the city to meet my favorite characters so far (I absolutely play favorites but I also disclose when I’m doing it so I think I’m in the clear) the twin princesses/chaos gremlins--Jet and Ruby Rocks (both level 1 Rogues) played by Emily and Siobhan. Theo may not have seen The Little Mermaid but the twins have def seen Aladdin, because their number one pastime seems to be escaping the palace to roam the city--hilariously illustrated when they chuck a gem into a peasant's bag and his reaction is a super nonplussed, “Guess the princesses escaped again.” They’re got the Disney Princess-itis really bad because both of them feel stifled by palace life and want more--specifically, Jet wants to be a warrior and resents having been born in peacetime (especially since she’s slightly older and in line for the throne) and Ruby wants to run off and join the circus as an acrobat. They are total twin BFFs to the point that their Thieves Cant has been reskinned to Twinspeak which is a detail I love so much (and that will become unspeakably tragic if something happens to one of them Brennan). 

Jet gets a letter from her secret crush Thad, an Avocado from Fructera (these are the sentences I am being forced to write this season folks) and schemes with Ruby about how they can get to Comida (the capital city) to meet him--possibly by sweet talking Theobald which is easy because he’s so thirsty for respect. Sure enough, Theobald and Lapin soon find them, following their path of destruction and the princesses are brought back to the castle.

Back at the castle, we’re introduced to Lou’s character--King Amethar Rocks (Level 3 Storm Herald Barbarian)--who is having a somber moment, surrounded by the statues of his four older sisters who died in the Ravening Wars, leading his reluctant taking of the throne. He’s interrupted by Lord Calroy (his right hand guy and a full ass talking slice of cake because Brennan is trying to break me this season but I refuse to give him the satisfaction) who lets him know that his daughters have escaped and his delighted reaction immediately lets us know which side of the family they take after.

Finally (at least wrt PCs), we meet Ally’s character--Liam Wilhelmina of House Jawbreaker (Level 2 Ranger) who is a political prisoner/ward of House Rocks and a soft, outdoorsy, mountain kid who is perpetually followed around by his pet pig--Peppermint Preston whose death will absolutely force to me to Google “Best Denny’s Parking Lots for Fistfights.” He misses his dad but not his dick brothers because Ally isn’t allowed to have a fully happy family in any season. Liam is from the disgraced House Jawbreaker and his brothers seem to expect him to try and off the King while he’s in their orbit. While he’s in the woods, looking for seeds (as one does) he finds and accidentally breaks an important looking teacup, which we’ll get back to.

The other important character we meet this episode is an NPC--Queen Caramelinda, mother of the princesses, wife of Amethar, and keeper of 100% of the impulse control of House Rocks. She’s the main disciplinarian to Jet and Ruby, the clear decision-maker in the kingdom, and the only literate one out of her and her husband. She also seems to be the only character that respects Lapin’s authority. 

An Inciting Incident

So, with all our characters assembled, all that’s left is the plot hook which Caramelinda provides in the form of a personal letter from Emperor Gustavo--the head honcho of the entire realm and his old friend--to Amethar. He’s not doing well health-wise and he needs to name an heir that’s not related to him at a big tourney that he’s personally inviting Amethar to. Amethar is a little slow on the uptake but Caramelinda eventually connects to dots for him that it seems very likely that Gustavo is going to name him emperor.

Amethar is not vibing with that information at all but Caramelinda basically holds him by the ear until he reluctantly agrees to go--though he insists that Ruby and Jet also come along to keep him company. Caramelinda only agrees on the condition that Lapin goes with. She also invites Liam (who is caught off guard but game) and Sir Theo is basically going by default. Caramelinda is staying home to hold down the fort but the talking slice of cake is going because Brennan hates me and doesn’t want me to be happy. 

The traveling party is chosen, the twins have been gifted with sick, inherited weapons from their aunts: Flickorice--the Twizzing Blade (Jet) and Sourscratch--the Puckering Bow (Ruby). It’s almost time to be off, but there’s still one last thing to get to before we leave the twins’ party. 

Lapin, feeling the pull of something broken (told you we’d get back to it) subtly makes his way outside, but is followed by Jet and Liam. Now, if you remember, I said earlier that Lapin is an official of the Bulbian church. Which is why it’s so surprising for Jet and Liam to see him talking to the Sugarplum Fairy, a deity of the Sweetening Path--a non-sanctioned more animistic religion that really only has sway in Candia. He fixes the teacup and then she appears, telling him that he’ll need to be wary once he leaves her sphere of influence and that boldness will be required in the days to come. Lapin, who seems to be having this conversation very begrudgingly, asks if she’s asking him to do anything in an official capacity and she smiles and says that she’s not asking for her third wish(!). Then what does she want? She wants him to know that there is great risk in what he is doing, but not acting is the greater risk. The coming challenges will be great, but he must protect the royal family or all is lost. She wouldn't have used her second wish to bring him to them if that weren’t the case. They hustle back and spill this to Ruby, obvs.

Anyway, onward! The next day, the caravan is set up and--with a warning about a sugar free chocolate warlock (ominous, as sugar free chocolate always is) they’re on their way to meet their escort out of Candia. Ruby decides to do her acrobat thing and is hanging out on top of the carriage instead of inside it as she and Jet “subtly” (read:not at all) bring up the Sugarplum Fairy to Lapin to see if he cracks.

Suddenly, the caravan stops. There’s a tree felled in the path, which really only means one thing in this kind of story. 

Ambush.

Ruby, outside of the carriage and unprotected, takes 16 points of damage and is fully down with a failed death save due to some unknown effect. The carriage is riddled with arrows. 

Everyone rolls for initiative and that takes us into a new (sure to be recurring) segment I’m calling:

Things I’m Concerned About

I’m concerned about Jet and Ruby (and not just because I’ve been worried about Ruby for a while due to things the cast has said and because she fully *died* this episode). They have their genres so wrong. They think they’re Disney movie protagonists but they’re in Game of Thrones and they don’t know it. Being Wrong Genre Savvy is a BAD position to find yourself in. Carriage surfing shenanigans don’t fly in a world that wants you dead.

OK, Carameinda. I’m inclined to be pro-Caramelinda. Like, she’s the hardass but she needs to be because Amethar isn’t helping run the kingdom. If this was a different story, she wouldn’t give me any pause but I read Macbeth and feel some light Lady Macbeth vibes. Gonna be keeping an eye on her.  

Calroy and Sir Toby (didn’t mention him, he’s a slightly lower ranked Gummi Bear guard and friends with Theo). In a story like this, I’m looking for the possible betrayals before I get blindsided and the only people who can really betray you are people who are supposedly loyal to you. Calroy had a little aside with Amethar about how he shouldn’t be the Emperor if he doesn’t want to be--which isn’t wrong but is also something someone angling to keep him off the throne for other reasons would say--and Sir Toby decided to stay behind to help hold down the fort--again, either an innocuous decision, or angling to be left alone and to his own devices. 

Whatever is going on with the Sugarplum Fairy and Lapin? Do not care for that one bit. I understand that a Warlock pact is mechanically very similar to a Paladin oath and a Celestial Warlock pact is even moreso but guess what? Still don’t trust it. I know Ruby’s Arcana check said that she’s generally a chill spirit but I still don’t trust it. And getting Wishes from your follower? Weird and suspicious. What’s your game, lady?

Emperor Gustavo apparently has a daughter who is barred by law from taking the throne when he dies. That sounds like a very strong motive for *something* at some point down the line. 

I’m a little concerned Jet is being catfished by this Avocado. First of all, not a sentence I thought I’d ever write. Second of all, I’m probably just being paranoid. But that feels like a great way to get a princess alone for kidnapping or shanking or something. 

Update: Brennan did an AMA and, regarding the previous bullet point he said, and I quote, “You are right to be concerned!” so now I’m concerned about that too! Fun!

I’m concerned about the mechanics of how a slice of cake person works. Slice implies a full cake. Where is the rest of the cake Brennan? Where is it? And, like, Brennan said on the post-show stream that we’re making the “what do they eat?” question weirder than it actually is because we’re made of some of the stuff we eat but hey Brennan? If I could pick a flesh toned and textured apple off a tree? That would be weird, OK? And I’m sorry for everyone else who had to picture that but it had to be said since Brennan is insisting on walking us down this garden path.

I’m concerned about whatever the hell is happening with Liam. Disgraced dad, mom is a shaman of the local fringe religion (Sweetening Path, like Lapin), and his brothers want him to shank the king or something? No way this ends in smiles for everyone. 

Brennan said Pyramid of Food so I’m concerned about fruit rollup mummies. 

OK but more than anything, I’m concerned about the death rules of this game. Death in D&D is cheap but, in a campaign like this, it can’t be. I’m not super well versed in GoT but it’s my understanding that resurrection in that series is possible but rare. Brennan said he specifically didn’t let Ally stock certain healing spells and that’s very telling about how things are gonna be handled. I guess we’ll see in the upcoming battle episode how that works but my general thought is, I hope everyone made interesting backup characters.  

Five More Things

So, my thoughts on the new characters. I love Ruby and Jet with my entire heart. Watching Emily and Siobhan roleplay sisters and enable each other and hype each other up is so fun--or it would be if I wasn’t low key bracing to lose one of them sooner rather than later. Zac playing against type and Murph playing to type are both fantastic. I want nothing more than for Theobald and Lapin to continue sniping at each other. I hope that’s the first PvP fight of D20. Amethar is a lot of fun but clearly in over his head and I’m interested to see where he’s pushed. Liam is literally just vibing. Hope he doesn’t have to commit regicide!     

God, the House Rocks PCs are such a disaster family. I love it. The moment when Calroy comes in and is like, “The princesses have escaped,” and Amethar breaks into a grin and is like, “Dude, that’s so dope!” I was like OH, so it’s *all* of them, huh. But, honestly, this should have been on the “Things I’m Concerned About” list because come on. They’ve not all gonna make it. And then we’re gonna have to watch the remaining family members react to that? Oh no. 

Love Ruby’s bow. I have a player in my game who also has a magic bow that produces energy arrows because, truly, who has the time to deal with the logistics of how many arrows you had left after last fight? Magic arrows. Boom, done. Next. 

Getting bagged on by your Patron for not having a spell when she’s the one who gives you your spells is so funny. Also, Mending isn’t a Warlock spell which makes it even funnier. 

**I’ve given myself a 3k word limit on all of these to try to put some boundaries on myself but, Lol, prize to the first who guesses closest to the first episode I break that rule.**

[kpoppwriter]

The Weight Of A Crown pt. 3

Anon asked: i was surprised when i saw pt 2 of the weight if a crown and i'm not ready(but please continue, i can handle myself,, i think)

Genre: fluff/angst royalty au

Words: 1.2k+

Warnings: none really

a/n: oops I accidentally made a new series I got some ideas for where this can go so if people like it, I’ll keep writing also i’m sorry for the cringy name I gave the boys’ kingdom it’s literally a romanized way to say 17 in korean oml it was either that or Carat kingdom

pt.1 | pt. 2 | pt. 3 | pt. 4 | pt. 5 | epilogue 

It’s been a month since you had lunch with Prince Mingyu. You had taken Minah’s words to heart and completely severed contact with him. He had tried to see you again, sending you flowers and letters and requests to visit. You never responded but damn, did it hurt. You still wished Minah hadn’t said anything.

The day started as normal. You were woken up early and went downstairs for breakfast. Minah waited for you, spouting off your list of daily tasks and meetings. As she read over the list, she hesitated when she got to your final engagement of the day. 

“You have a meeting with the king of the...Shipchil kingdom.”

“Okay? Why do you look so worried about that?” you took a sip of your drink

“That’s the kingdom of the 13 princes.”

You almost spit out your drink. Yes, you had seen that kingdom’s name in your research but you hadn’t seen anything about that being the kingdom of the 13 princes. You so wanted to cancel the whole meeting but you knew how your kingdom and theirs had a good relationship and you couldn’t ruin years of work because of one of the princes. You opened your mouth to say something-

“No, we can’t cancel the meeting,” Minah stopped you

“I wasn’t going to ask that,” you tsked, “I was going to ask who was going to be there.”

“As far as I know, just the king and maybe the 1st prince but some of the other princes usually tag along when there are meetings between the kingdoms.”

“You don’t think Prince Mingyu will be there...” you asked almost rhetorically

“I don’t know, Your Highness,” Minah admitted, “If he hasn’t gotten the message yet, he might but I think your message has been very clear.”

You nodded, taking another bite of your toast. Your food didn’t taste good anymore. Everything felt sour. 

~

The day felt like it dragged on but also went by so fast. Too fast. Before you knew it, it was dinner time. You could feel the nerves burning in your throat spreading through your chest as you were dressed up. You were really dressed up tonight. Probably since such an important noble was going to be at dinner. 

You tried to calm yourself down as you walked down to the dining room. You could hear male voices as you approached. All talk was quickly stopped as you walked into the room. Standing around the long table was 13 young men dressed up just as much as you. They all bowed respectfully. 

“It’s an honor to meet you, Your Majesty. I’m sorry to say that the King wasn’t able to make it tonight as he fell ill a few days ago. I hope it’s alright but he sent us in his place.” one of the princes said

“No, of course, it’s okay! I’ve heard about you and was hoping you’d all be here tonight,” you smiled, “Shall we sit down and introduce ourselves?”

The boys all sat down around the table. They all went around and introduced themselves. It was a lot of information to take in. I mean...there’s 13 of them and you didn’t know any of them. Well, except one, who for the whole evening kept his eyes focused on anything but you. 

You spent most of the evening speaking with the eldest son Prince Seungcheol, who was the prince who had greeted you when you arrived in the dining room. He was rather sweet but kept a regal air to him when he spoke with you. It dropped immediately when he spoke with his brothers, which was usually to scold them. Some of the younger boys, as well as some of the older ones, enjoyed having fun and just, in general, being loud much to Prince Seungcheol’s dismay. Some of the boys piqued your interest, like Prince Jeonghan who had fallen asleep at the table and Prince Jihoon who was very quiet and seemed very reserved. There were qualities about each boy that interested you actually. They were quite a unique bunch. 

“Shall we move this out to the courtyard?” you offered, “The night is still young and we all seemed to be having fun.”

Well, almost everyone, but you chose to ignore Mingyu as he was ignoring you.

“I don’t see why not,” Seungcheol agreed to the delight of the others

You all made your way out to the courtyard, the night sky covering the outdoors in a layer of darkness. Lanterns lit up the stone walkways as well as the moon. You continued to talk politics with Seungcheol, Prince Seungkwan and Prince Joshua occasionally adding to the conversation. You would peak over on occasion and spy Mingyu sitting at the metal table where the two of you had lunch with Prince Wonwoo. 

At some point, Prince Seungcheol ran off to assist one of the boys who had injured themselves while running. You noticed Mingyu was alone. You approached him cautiously, unsure if he’d even talk to you. You knew you shouldn’t have even approached him but you couldn’t help it. You felt like you were being pulled towards him. 

“Hi,” you said quietly

You saw him shift uncomfortably in his seat. His eyes didn’t even glance towards you. You sighed and sat across from him so he’d have to look at you. 

“I’m sorry,” you fiddled with your fingers, “I should’ve at least explained myself.”

“That would’ve been nice,” he grumbled

“I know, I just need to watch myself and who I’m around. And there’s been some rumors-”

“Rumors?” his voice raised a little but barely over a whisper, “I thought you wouldn’t be the type to care about rumors. Especially after the conversations we had.”

You wanted to defend. yourself but Prince Seungcheol came back over to you, Prince Seokmin holding onto a limping Prince Soonyoung following close behind. 

“I’m sorry to cut this evening short, Your Majesty but Soonyoung seems to have really injured himself.”

“No, no! Don’t be sorry! Please go, if you must,” you turned to Prince Soonyoung, “Are you okay enough to make it home?”

“Yes, of course, Your Majesty,” he gave you an embarrassed smile

“Alright, well it was a pleasure meeting you all.”

You bid your goodbyes to the boys and watched as they left the courtyard. You wished you had more time to speak with Mingyu but maybe it was for the better that you didn’t.

~

A few days passed since the evening with the princes. You were again eating breakfast listening to Minah spout..blah blah blah you know all this.

“Prince Mingyu has requested to see you. He says its urgent and won’t take no for an answer.”

You hoped this was your chance to apologize and finally get back on good terms with him. You had finally admitted to yourself that you possibly had feelings for him, despite everyone’s advice against getting involved with him. 

“Let him come. I imagine that he wouldn’t say it’s urgent if it wasn’t an urgent matter,” you hummed

Minah looked at it apprehensive but agreed nonetheless. The two of you were interrupted by a servant coming into the dining room. He said that some important mail had come over from the King of Shipchil. You asked Minah to read it aloud to you, your hands too busy with eating. She skimmed over the letter, a small gasp falling from her lips. 

“What is it?” you asked scared 

“It’s a proposal from Prince Seungcheol.”

“What do you mean? What kind of proposal?”

“A marriage proposal.”

[paradisobound]

Down In the Forest

Summary: Dan Howell is the heir to the throne in his kingdom, due to marry and take the seat within the year. However, he doesn't want that. Running away to the clearing outside of his kingdom every night, he meets Phil, who is from a neighboring kingdom. As Dan develops feelings for Phil, he realizes that his crush on Phil is actually problematic in more ways than one.

Word Count: 6.8k 

Warnings: Vampire!Dan 

**Read on Ao3**

A/N: This is my second fic written for the @phandomreversebang! It was based on the prompt by @2easy2hate which was essentially a royal vampire!dan au which I thought was super interesting to try and do! My beta for this fic was @hiddenpastry and they were so helpful and encouraging with my procrastination haha I have plans to release an epilogue in the next few weeks where it'll have a glimpse into the future which Val and I agreed will help to tie up whatever may be 'loose' at this end of this one shot.

The forest was a sacred place for Dan Howell. He wasn’t exactly sure why he felt so calm being here, but he did. The sound of the leaves bristling in the wind and the distance chirps of birds were calming. He was used to coming here as soon as he was done with his studies for the day, after the sun had set and no harm would be done to his sensitive skin.

Today was no different for him. Notebook in hand, and bag slung across his body, he trudged through the grass, past the trees, to the small clearing where he took refuge from the day. He chose this place when he was just a child, after fighting with his parents over his obligations.

His first lesson of the day was writing, then it was history, and finally it was his lessons on moral obligations as the heir of his kingdom. He had a list of rules he had to have memorized before he became heir on his 18th birthday...less than a year away. It was a rule in their kingdom that the eldest son takes over as soon as they turn 18 years of age. It was also a rule that 6 months before they take the throne, they need to be married...but Dan didn’t want to think of that. Especially when his first “party” to find his future wife was in less than a week.

That’s partly why Dan ran away at night, after he was dismissed by his teachers. He enjoyed coming here where he could write in his notebook and get immersed in his own little world, where none of this existed and he could be a normal teenager. Not the heir to the most successful kingdom in modern history.

Dan sat down on the grass, leaning back and resting against the tree behind him. He propped his legs up and opened his bag against his side, taking out his notebook. It was getting well-worn, well-used. But that didn’t bother Dan. Not as he opened to the halfway point of the pages and went back to the story he was writing.

He’ll remain here until his hunger gets the better of him, and he’ll have to go back to his kingdom, back to his castle, to feed.

Because that’s one of the rules of the Vaedian Kingdom: you never feed in public.

It’s not uncommon for the people living around the kingdom to know that the Howells had unusual habits. That’s what they say anyway. Dan didn’t realize he was different until he was taught about it...about his immortal abilities.

Maybe as a child, Dan should have known that when his hunger reached a peak, it wasn’t normal to suddenly have glowing red eyes or sharp teeth that jutted out of his gums. But to his family, it was normal. His entire family was this way, so there was no reason for Dan to be any different.

At the thought of food, his stomach grumbles and Dan ignores it, instead he looks down at his notebook and rereads over the last line he had written down. He doesn’t even know what this story is anymore. It’s more like a stream of consciousness, a way for him to gather his thoughts about his ever changing life as he grows older.

He reaches into his bag and pulls out his pen and begins to scribble down the next parts of his story. He lets his hand and his mind interconnect and even just writes until he can’t anymore.

The moonlight is coming down on him, brighter than it was before. The stars in the sky are illuminating everything around him and he supposes that this is the time he should start heading back.

He packs up his notebook and his pen and slowly stands up, stretching from sitting down so long in such a cramped position. He adjusts his clothing and his bag against his hip and begins the short journey back home, where he’ll have a snack and then go lay down in his bed chamber.

***

“Prince Daniel, you were out late last night?”

Dan looks up from his school work to his servant Johnathon in front of him. He’s got a drink in his hand, and he’s setting it in front of Dan. The dark maroon color is enough to make Dan’s stomach swoon at the thought of indulging in it’s glorious taste. He takes the glass and picks it up, taking a long sip and letting the copper taste sit on his tongue.

“If I may ask, your highness, but what do you partake in when you go out at night after your studies?”

“I go to the clearing and write in my notebook,” Dan answers honestly. He can trust Johnathon. He’s been the family servant for literally hundreds of years and he remains as loyal and as faithful to the Howell family and the Vaedian Kingdom as they come.

“What are you writing about?” Johnston asks, “Practicing your writing skills for when you have to make ceremonial statements?”

Dan shakes his head and takes another sip, “I just write.”

“Stories?”

“Sort of,” Dan replies.

He finishes the last of the drink from the glass and sets it back down. Johnathon picks up the glass out of habit. Dan goes back to his school work, finishing up his copying of the 15 Moral Obligations of Vaedian. He only has one through 4 memorized, and he knows his teacher is going to be after him about it today. He’s trying to memorize as many as he can but the problem is that they are so pointless and boring that Dan really can’t find the will to actually give a damn about any of them.

But if he told this to his teacher, or to his father, he would be immediately cast as being traitorous to the kingdom by being the heir and not adhering to the basic standards.

They’ve been around for millennia and Dan frankly just feels like they’re outdated. Maybe when he’s king he can rewrite some of them. But he doesn’t even know if that’s allowed. Somehow he feels like that is even more frowned upon.

“Your brow is furrowed,” Johnathon says suddenly, pointing to the space between Dan’s eyebrows. “Keep doing that and you’ll no longer be a young prince, but you’ll look older than your father.”

Dan lets out a laugh and Johnathon smiles back before turning on his heels and heading out of the living chamber towards the kitchen.

Speaking of his father, Dan knows he has a meeting with him soon about the party where he’ll be meeting his potential wife. But he really is dreading the entire thing, if he’s being honest. He doesn’t want to go through with any that, and for a multitude of reasonings...all of which are frowned upon.

The clock on the mantel suddenly chimes that it’s one and Dan gathers his belongings and stuffs them into his bag before flinging it over his shoulder. He makes his way to the library where his studies will begin soon and he tries to ignore that heaviness in his feet.

Dan has his meeting with his father following his school time, but he wasn’t entirely shocked by that. He knew it was coming when Johnathon found him in the library and told him he needed to report to his father's office as soon as he was done.

It’s even less shocking that when Dan gets there, his father immediately presents him with a series of photos of the various daughters from the neighboring kingdoms and begins to talk to Dan about how he needs to decide on what one he wants to pursue.

Naturally, none of the girls appealed to Dan. But yet again, none of them were going to anyway when he had a natural inclination to prefer men instead. But somehow, he still found himself being bound by the outdated rules of the kingdom and he pointed to the picture of a brunette girl who’s name was written as “Julianna” underneath. His father seemed to like that choice and waved him off as being able to leave now.

So Dan did, back to the clearing where he always went.

He double checked before he left that his notebook was still in his bag and he grabbed a few extra pens as the ink in the one from the night before seemed to be dulling. He intended to spend as long as possible out in his clearing without any disturbance from any of his obligations.

As he passed by the last set of trees and started to walk into the clearing, he immediately stopped in his tracks at the sight of another person that already had beat him there.

His first reaction was to get angry, because this was his secret spot and how dare a person find it without Dan’s permission. He wanted this spot all to himself with no one else here.

But as the future heir, he knew deep down that he couldn’t act that way. And instead when the male looked up, Dan just met his eyes as a look of shock overcame them both.

“I’m sorry,” Dan begins, “but how did you find this place?”

The male set down his notebook in front of him and Dan looked down long enough to notice it was a drawing of a flower. The male was here to draw just like Dan was here to write.

“I just went wandering in the forest and I happened to see this clearing,” The male says. “I didn’t intend for anyone to know about this.”

“Are you drawing?”

The male picks up his notebook, almost like he’s self-conscious about Dan calling him out, and nods, “I don’t have a space to draw without being distracted and being here has been working wonders to ease my block.”

“So you don’t mind that I join you as you draw?” Dan asks.

The male shakes his head, “No, not at all.”

Dan walks into the space and sits down on the opposite side from the man. He takes out his notebook and flips open the pages to where he left off. He fishes in his bag for a pen and pulls it out, uncapping it with his teeth. When he gets ready to write, the voice from the other side interrupts him, “Can I get your name?”

If Dan had a beating heart, he was sure it would suddenly begin to beat fast. But because he doesn't, he was instead subjected to just an overwhelming feeling of anxiety as he thought about the idea of this man knowing who he might be.

It was common for the commoners around them in their kingdom to know the royal family, and to know their names. But it was uncommon for them to know what the royal family looked like. The only time the royal family opened the castle walls was for the lavish parties and the crowning ceremonies.

By the time those events happen, most people don’t even remember what they looked like because they’ve changed. In reality, the royal family is immortal, but their aging is a different story.

“My name is Daniel,” he finally says.

“I’m Philip,” the man introduces himself, “but I prefer to be called Phil.”

Dan smiles. “Then you can call me Dan.”

Phil smiles back at him and Dan feels something that’s akin to a blush.

They mostly sit in silence, both of them working on their own art before Phil yawns and stands up and announces he should head back home. When Dan goes to say goodbye, Phil makes the sudden announcement that they should walk home together to the village.

Dan doesn’t want to tell Phil about him just yet, and so he quickly says he’s going to stay for awhile and they can walk back together another time. At the mention of another time, Phil smiles and asks, “So you’re going to be here again?”

Dan just nods and says, “I come here every night.”

Dan eventually does make his way back, and it’s even later tonight than it was the night before. When he passes through the castle gates and makes his way inside, he’s greeted by Johnathon who gives him another glass of that delicious red liquid. He takes it with him to his bed chambers and sips it through the night.

Dan technically doesn’t need to sleep. He doesn’t feel tired, he just feels lethargic if he’s used too much of his energy. So after he finishes his glass, and sets it in the hallway for Johnathon to grab when he makes his midnight rounds, Dan just lays in bed and closes his eyes.

Sometimes that’s all he needs to feel anything until the sun comes through his curtains and he has to retreat to the living chamber where he works on his studies until his schooling time comes.

***

His mum stops him the next morning after Dan gets up from his bed. She tells him that they have to talk about his party and Dan reluctantly agrees to follow her to her office where she has plans laid out about every detail.

“We’ll bring in the finest pastry chefs to the kingdom for you,” she begins. “All of the cakes that you can think of will be there.”

“How many people are coming?” Dan asks.

“Well, we’re not opening the grand hall up for nothing, my dear Daniel,” she scolds. “So your father sent special invites to all of the kingdoms around us, with a select few going to some families in the village.”

“We’re allowing villagers to the party?” Dan asks, because he’s truly astounded by this fact.

“Of course!” his mother says. “Commoners are always invited to the parties where the heir finds his wife. It’s a status symbol that you should have learnt about in your lessons. Do I need to have a word with Lady Mallory about your studies?”

Dan shakes his head and immediately refuses the proposition, “No, there is no need.”

His mum gives him a stern look and goes back to discussing the plans.

Dan has to admit that parties in the grand hall are few and far between. He actually only believes that his family has only ever had one party there in his lifetime. Other than that, it remains closed to everyone, including them.

By the end of the meeting, Dan’s proper exhausted and even though he has to go to his studies, he would rather retreat to his bedchamber where he can sit and wait for the sun to go down so he can head to the clearing and meet up with Phil again.

Dan doesn’t even know why his mind immediately goes to meeting up with Phil. He’s only met the guy once and even if they did seem to get on rather quickly, there shouldn’t be a reason for Dan wanting to be with him so quickly again.

But yet, he finds his mind wandering to Phil and his raven locks and blue eyes instead. Lady Mallory calls him out on his distractedness but Dan brushes it off as just being a rough day, not because he was daydreaming about another man.

When the lessons are over, Dan doesn't immediately leave to go to the clearing. He goes to the kitchen first and grabs a snack to hold him over. Johnathon hands him a blood cake when he gets there, and Dan immediately partakes in eating it despite the bitter taste it leaves on his tongue.

The blood is getting old now, a bit stale. Dan can tell right away. The taste is nowhere near that fresh copper taste that he loves so much. The grimace that he gives off is enough for Johnathon to speak up, “They’re going on a fresh hunt tonight, my lord. You’ll have new nutrients tomorrow.”

Dan just nods and finishes the rest of his cake before asking for a glass as well and gulping it down.

The sun is way past set when he makes his way to the clearing with his bag slung across his body. He’s half expecting for Phil to not be there, because for mortals, this is late at night. For Dan, it’s really just a beginning for him.

But he still feels a spark of happiness when he moves into the clearing and sees Phil sat in the same position he was in the night before. He’s concentrating hard in his sketchbook, busy working on another piece that Dan is actually a bit curious to see.

Phil looks up and greets him before he can sit down. When Dan finally does settle down, he chooses a spot beside Phil because he’s feeling a bit better about having him here with Dan in the clearing. In a way, it’s making everything feel less lonely even though Dan used to come here for the sole fact that he wanted to be alone, away from everything.

“Dan,” Phil says out of the blue, “have you ever been to a party at the castle?”

Dan suddenly picks his head up, nervous about actually answering the question because he’s afraid he’ll give too much away, “No, I haven’t. Why do you ask?”

“I’m from another kingdom...Vargaria, and not even supposed to be here. But my father was naturally invited to the royal party. While I’ve attended some of the royal parties my father has hosted, I don’t know what it’ll be like to attend the party at this kingdom. If my father knew I was here, he would more than likely disown me.”

Dan suddenly doesn’t like that. He doesn't like knowing Phil is going to be attending the party and seeing him pick his future wife that he doesn't even want, nor love. Furthermore, he doesn’t know how to feel at the thought of Phil admitting to him that he was from a neighboring kingdom, especially Vargaria. Dan knew firsthand that Vargaria and Vaedian have very tense relations.

Everything about this almost feels wrong, like they’re breaching a line of boundaries in their newly found acquaintanceship that shouldn’t be breached.

“What do you think it’s going to be like?” Phil suddenly adds, not letting Dan say anything in regards to his previous admission.

“I’m assuming lavish,” Dan says. “Lots of people, decorations. Fancy dresses and food.”

“Did your family get invited as well?” Phil asks.

Dan doesn’t know how to answer that. Because if he says no, that’s an obvious lie but if he says yes, then how does he handle the situation without giving anything about himself away?

“I don't think so,” he says, immediately feeling regret cloud his mind.

“Oh that’s a shame,” Phil says. “Would have been nice to at least know one person who is there. I feel like I’m going to be horribly out of place.”

“I will be too,” Dan mumbles.

Phil looks up. “What was that?”

Dan stiffens. “I said I would be too.”

Phil just nods and gives him a sympathetic look and goes back to his drawing in silence.

They don’t say much else, which Dan finds fine because the conversation took a turn anyway and he feels it might be rather awkward to continue it and also keep his identity intact.

When Dan returns back to his bed chambers that night, all he can think about is how he shouldn’t have any further contact with Phil. By rule, they’re supposed to remain civil with their relations with each other from the neighboring kingdoms but Dan still knows that this casual of a relationship is frowned upon.

Sitting at his desk and looking out of his window towards the valley and village beneath them, he sighed. Technically speaking, Phil is meant to be an enemy to him. He shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t even be looking forward to meeting up with him in the clearing any further.

Nothing of this sort can happen any more. Dan’s putting a stop to it now.

But then that means that Dan will have to give up his writing spot and that thought makes him a bit sad. He can always find a new one, he supposes. But it won’t be the same.

So Dan doesn’t return to the clearing for 3 full nights. He instead remains home and sits at his desk, unbothered with the window open, and tries to write there instead. He doesn’t get nearly as far in his story as he did when he was in the clearing, but he can’t afford to go there anymore.

It’s not until a final meeting with his father finally snaps him that he decides to go back there, needing and wanting to just get away and put an ending to all of this. He doesn’t want any of this. He wants to remain unbothered. He doesn’t want a lavish party. He doesn’t want to be married. And furthermore, he doesn’t want to be king!

When he gets to the clearing, running as fast as he can, he’s met immediately by Phil, whose expression was less than welcoming. “Why did you lie to me?”

“Lie to you about what?” Dan asks.

“You’re Prince Daniel,” Phil says, “Heir to the Vaedian throne and it’s your party that I’m attending this weekend.”

Dan opens and closes his mouth a few times, “How did you find out?”

Phil turns his head, “My father has warned us about you,” he spits out. “Your kingdom is built on a throne of lies.”

“And I don’t suppose yours isn’t?” Dan snaps back.

“I made a mistake befriending you,” Phil snarls. “My father warned me of you from a young age and I feel half-dumb that I didn’t see through you in the first place.”

Dan doesn’t know what to say or how to react. He’s never been in an altercation like this before and it’s frankly extremely unnerving.

“You can’t even speak for yourself,” Phil says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Dan spits back. “The kingdoms of Vargaria and Vaedian have always been tense. I should have known from the first mention of your kingdom that this was nothing but trouble.”

“That’s tough speak for someone who intends to marry my sister,” Phil presses. “I was told today that you’re planning on marrying Julianna.”

Dan’s memory snaps back to the name of the kingdom on the bottom of the picture of Julianna and he suddenly feels a bit ill. He didn’t even know that’s what he’d chosen but maybe that’s why his father had seemed so pleased with himself.

“You’re not marrying her, and our kingdoms are not going to be united by the bloody hands of you.”

With that, Phil turned on his heels and walked away, leaving Dan feeling anger beyond anything that he has ever felt before.

How could he ever think that Phil was ever a decent person? Surely his first mistake was trusting a stranger anyway.

When Dan walks back to the castle that night, he feels an overwhelming sense of dread, and he finds himself resting in bed the entirety of the following day.

***

“The party is in two days, Daniel, and you’ve hardly done anything in preparation for it.”

Dan looked down at his notebook that was poised open in front of him to avoid the unwavering gaze of his mother as she hounded him about this. He didn’t want to go through this lecture again. It’s one that he’s gone through three separate times now over the past day.

“I wasn’t aware I had any preparations to do,” Dan snapped back.

His mother rolled her eyes and tossed up her hands, almost in defeat. “Well, have you ever sent a letter to Julianna of Vargaria?” She asked. “The kingdom has sent a letter on your behalf but you should have known to send the letter yourself as well.”

“I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Good Lord, Daniel! What has gotten into you?” His mother finally snapped. “We have been preparing for this day for almost 18 years and you’re about to ruin it all. I don’t understand where your attitude has gone these past few years. You’ve turned into a snub-nosed little brat!”

Dan flinched at the insult, trying to not let it get to him. So many thoughts ran through his head. Like how his parents lied to him for so many years. How they never actually cared about him, just about their kingdom and its reputation. About how they hid who he really was until he was old enough to realize that he’s been born into a kingdom of vampires amongst humans.

Finally, with the tip of his tongue clicking against the back of his teeth, he spits out, “I don’t want to marry and I don’t want the throne.”

He slams his notebook shut and gets up to leave when the feeling of her hand on his wrist in a tight grip stops him. He whips his head back, staring at her aggravated expression.

“You’re not leaving right now,” she says.

“I have nothing more to say right now,” Dan says back, trying to remain calm but his demeanor failing quickly.

She lets him go and he quickly rushes out of her office, ignoring how deafening the silence from her was to his ears when he heard no more cries of protest leave her.

His eyes gathered with tears and he fought to keep them back as he desperately wished more than ever that he was never born into this life. He should have never been born as a royal and he should have never been born immortal. He would have much rather loved to have been a commoner who receives one life and then gets spared the rest of eternity.

Before he knows it, he’s ran back to his secret clearing. Dan stood there, his chest heaving and his eyes watering heavier as he lost his battle and unleashed the sobs that wracked his frame.

“Oh what does the prince of bloodsuckers have to cry about today?”

Dan picks up his head and sees Phil sitting there, drawing away in his sketchbook again. Dan honestly wishes he would have never encountered him again but it’s clear that luck did not work in his way.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to go?” Dan asks. “Somewhere maybe in your own kingdom?”

Phil just shrugs and looks back down at his sketchbook, “It’s easier to be here than it is to be back home.”

Dan sits down on the grass and wipes away the wetness from his cheeks. He should be embarrassed crying this much over something as stupid as the mention of the rest of his life. He should feel embarrassed for the fact that he was crying in front Phil after what had just happened between them.

But another part of him just doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t care about any of this. He wants everything to just cease around him and end but it’s never that simple. It’ll never be that simple as long as Dan is immortal and the world around them still passes like normal.

“Why were you so nice to me when we first met?” Dan finds himself asking.

Phil shrugs again and doesn’t speak.

“What made you change when you found out who I was?”

The curiosity was getting to Dan, not just because this was Phil, but because his mother's words were still eating away at his core but he also felt like maybe it was a bit rebellious to speak to the kingdom he’s supposed to be marrying someone from.

Phil looks up and Dan sees his expression quickly change from hardened to confusion. He blinks a few times and then finally speaks, “Does it really matter?”

Dan wipes the remaining wetness from his cheeks and shrugs because no, it really doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to know. He does want to know why in a way.

“So what are you drawing today?” Dan asks.

Phil turns the sketchbook around and shows him an array of flowers and trees. It’s actually really beautiful. But Dan doesn’t want to stroke his ego and tell him so after their outbursts.

They sit in silence for a while, and eventually Phil leaves without saying a word. Dan supposes that wasn’t all that painful. In a way, he did see Phil as a sort of new friend when everything was just beginning with them. So for him to be seen that way again in a new light wasn’t all that bad.

His stomach is rumbling by the time he finally gets up to make his way back home. He’s feeling a bit lethargic, and his skin a bit inflamed. And it’s only when he’s back in the castle and he falls to his knees while Johnathon grabs him, that he realizes he was just in the sun for a little bit with nothing to eat.

In that respect, he almost got his wish that everything would just end.

***

It’s the morning of the party and Dan wants nothing more than to leave and run away. He doesn’t want to make an appearance in front of everyone while he meets Julianna for the first time. He still only has a vague knowledge of what she looks like, just based on the photo that he was presented with for her.

And what’s worse is that all he could see was Phil in her features.

Dan wishes that he could forget about Phil. He knows that he needs to, but yet he can’t stop thinking about his special spot and seeing Phil there every time that he’s gone for the last few trips.

They got along so well when they first met, and Dan really does deep down want to be friends with Phil. He’s not even sure why his heart is telling him that it’s the right thing to do but yet, he does feel deep down that it is.

He’s confused.

Dan’s known for as long as he’s been able to freely think that he wasn’t attracted to women. He much preferred men. It’s something that he’s had to keep a secret, but he did tell Johnathon in pure confidence when the overwhelming urge of shame for his kingdom overtook him one night when he was told about the marriage.

Now that he was actually being forced to marry for the good of the kingdom, his memories of the days where he used to dread this are now here. He’s stood in front of his wardrobe, with his ceremonial garb hung in front of him. Tears are gathering in the corner of his eyes and he’s realizing now that he can’t back out from this.

A knock on his bedroom door shakes him out of his head and he wipes away the tears with the back of his head as he yells an airy, “it’s open” towards the door.

His door slowly opens and Johnathon walks in, a glass on a tray balanced on his hand, “You were looking a bit peckish earlier, Daniel. So I brought you a fresh drink to hopefully give you some more life.”

Dan lets out a small laugh as he walks towards him and takes the glass in his hand, indulging in the coppery taste on his lips. Nothing will ever be better than fresh blood, but it’s unfortunate in the fact that it’s in high demand: it’s not all that plentiful.

“Where did this come from?”

“A freshly hunted deer from just a few hours past.”

Dan nods and finishes the rest of the drink in one gulp. He hands Johnathon back the glass and wipes the excess liquid off from his lips with his hand.

“Are you ready for this evening?” Johnathon asks him, the question seemingly out of the blue.

Dan shakes his head, “I don’t think all the years in the world would ever make me prepared for this evening.”

“It’s not your royal marriage ceremony, you know,” Johnathan says in sympathy. “It’s just meeting a potential wife. You can still turn her down if you feel like she is not fit for you. There will be plenty of other suitors who will love to…”

“Johnathan, you know that I don’t want to marry a woman,” Dan says.

“But I’m afraid you have no choice.”

“I’m aware,” Dan answers back, his words catching in his throat, “but I’m afraid that I think I have many fallen in love with someone else.”

“And who might this person be?” Johnathan asks.

“A man.”

***

The party is in full swing. Everyone is in extravagant gowns and Dan, looking down at the guests from the balcony of the dining hall, can see how fancy everyone looks. Dan casts his glance around the perimeter, seeing if he can spot who he’s looking for. And sure enough, stood with a drink in his hand was none other than Phil, laughing with what appeared to be his sister, Julianna.

Dan’s due to make his way down the grand staircase in just a few moments. During this time, he’ll be expected to walk down the stairs, stop at the end, and extend his hand out to Lady Julianna. He’ll talk her hand, they’ll walk to the middle of the dining room, where the guests are mingling, and will perform their first dance together. If Dan likes what he sees and what he’s been presented with, he can then announce at the end he has chosen to marry her.

But Dan already knows he’s going to turn her down.

Dan’s not sure when he fully came to the conclusion that he, deep down, was actually falling for Phil. Maybe it came when he realized he couldn’t stop thinking about him. Or when he couldn’t stop thinking about how well they got along before they realized who each other were.

Or maybe it’s a deep seated need inside of Dan’s core to just say fuck the system and to do what he wants to. Which is not only marry a man but also marry someone he shouldn’t even be marrying.

In some convoluted way, he’s halfway there if he marries Julianna.

Just then, the music slowly starts and Dan feels an ache in his chest that surely would be his heart thumping if it actually beat. He squeezes his fingers in his palms and slowly moves into the view of the bottom of the staircase where everyone is gathered around, staring up at him. He hates the attention. More than anything else, he just wants to hide and be away from everyone's center of sight.

His mother and father are stood at the foot of the stairs with Julianna standing in between them and everyone else standing behind. Julianna looks beautiful, Dan can’t even disprove that. Her features are stunning and her dark hair is cascading so nicely over the shoulders of her dress. Dan almost feels bad knowing he’s not going to actually marry her.

He descends the stairway and makes it to the bottom where he takes Julianna’s outstretched hand and leads her to the center of the ballroom. They make eye contact and Dan sees her beautiful blue eyes staring back at him with intent, a smile on her lips.

When he looks at her, all he can imagine is Phil...and he feels a bit sick.

Dan loses eye contact with her halfway through their dance. But that could also be because he keeps stepping on her toes and he knows that she’s flinching and giving him some looks but really, he can’t be assed to change the way he’s stepping. He doesn’t want to be here so why would he focus on doing a perfect first dance?

The music stops and he bows and she curtsies back. They turn to the crowd and bow again as everyone applauds. He turns back to her and gives her a quick smile before separating from her and rushing away.

He’s only just arrived to the party and he already can’t stand to be there for any longer. He wants out. He wants to leave, to not be there anymore. He grabs at the collar of his top and rips open the buttons, letting the fabric fall open, exposing his neck to the cool night air.

Dan’s running out of the kingdom now, and he’s not looking back. He’s never used his fast speed before for anything other than some gimmicks when he was a kid, but now he’s running as fast as he can to the clearing. When he gets there, he stops short and collapses to the forest floor, tears running down his face.

He’ll have to leave his kingdom now. He can’t go back there. He’s made a fool out of everyone...including himself. What was he thinking running away like that?

Oh right...because Dan can’t marry Julianna when he’s in love with her brother. Like the pathetic person he is, he’s going to spend the rest of his immortal days pining over a guy who hates him and who Dan should hate back but can’t.

He furiously rubs away the tears from his eyes and takes a shuddering breath as he tries to calm himself down. He can survive in the forest, Dan supposes. He’s never had to hunt for his subsistence before but he can surely do it. He’s just gotta catch a deer or two, right?

God, he’s never gonna be able to make it. He should have never ran away.

“What a performance.”

Dan looked up and followed where the voice was coming from. Phil was stood next to a tree, his arms folded over his chest. Dan didn’t really want to face him right now. He just wanted to be as far away from any of Phil’s family and kingdom as he could be after humiliating himself with Julianna.

“If it makes you feel any better, Julianna didn’t like you either,” Phil says with a chuckle.

“How bad is it?” Dan asks, the words catching in his throat.

“Everyone is a bit chaotic but I left in the midst of it all,” Phil says, walking forward and then taking a seat next to Dan.

“I figured.”

“I don’t blame you,” Phil says. “My family is wanting me to marry someone as well but I can’t find the reason to want to.”

“Yeah…” Dan says, “I just do not fancy…”

Dan stops himself and looks at Phil who is studying him with wide eyes.

“You’re attracted to men?” Phil says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Dan hides his face and then picks it back up and nods slowly.

“I am too,” Phil says softly.

They sit in silence, and Dan feels like he can cut the tension with a knife. He’s never been in a situation or a conversation like this before. It was a bit daunting and a bit terrifying all at the same time. He didn’t know what to think or how to react.

“When I first met you, I was really happy to find someone that was like me,” Phil says. “In my Kingdom, I was the outcast. I never fit into what anyone else was doing. That’s why I came here to draw. Being here was like an escape from that and when we started meeting up, I genuinely felt like I was meeting someone just like me.”

Dan felt the same way. He could never put into words how he felt about meeting Phil but this was exactly it. Meeting Phil felt the same way for him. Maybe that’s why he took a liking to Phil so quickly?

“I felt the same way,” Dan says. “I really liked being able to just sit here with you.”

Suddenly, a hand is coming up and touching Dan’s cool skin. His chin is being tilted to the side and Dan follows the lead as he comes face to face with Phil. Phil leans in and presses their lips together in a burning kiss. Phil’s lips felt so warm in comparison to his.

When Phil pulls back, Dan stares at him, not sure what to do. Phil just laughs, “Your lips are cold.”

Dan just laughs and shakes his head, “Comes with the whole...package.”

They sit in the clearing for a while longer until Dan can hear his name being called by Jonathan and he figures he needs to actually go back and face whatever consequences are bearing his name. He makes his way back to the castle but not before sharing another quick kiss with Phil and then saying goodbye as they both leave.

At the castle, Dan is yelled at and cursed at and then banished to his sleeping chamber which he knew was going to happen anyway. When he gets to his room, he strips down and dresses into his nightgowns and slips into the seat at his desk. He opens up his notebook that he’s been writing in and he writes down the words:

I love Phil from Vargaria

[spookyboogie3]

MY FAVORITE AH MOMENTS W/O R*an H*yw**d

Also keep in mind some of these moments i picked Bitch Face r*an may have been present for but this aint about his stupid ass. 

The straw bit on Off Topic

Fiona and Trevor’s “Look at us” “Look at us” “Look at us” in TTT

Drunk Jeremy inhaling helium, followed by Jack and Trevor on Off Topic

“Krusty KrAYAYAB!!!” TTT

Jeremy trying to slam his face through a table, followed by Michael doing the same thing

“my god…… the munchdew” “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” Minecraft: Skyfactory

Actually all of Simple Farmer Geoff from Skyfactory

Whatever those sounds were that Jack was making in the beginning of GTA video

Alfredo screaming as he continues to fall down a steep tube in a GTA race

DESTROYING THEIR OFFICE DEAR LORD

“How did he drown though?” “UNDERWATER, MATT!”

Anytime Fiona starts to RAGE in TTT (bonus if others join in)

The time Gav was the phantom in TTT and he kept dying and being brought back and Jack spitting water and then trying to catch it

Alfredo’s Magoo moments in Minecraft

Geoff laughing in the background of a video hes not in

Lindsay fucking around with Chef Mike on Harecore Minigolf

Lindsay fucking around in general

Gavin and Fiona playing Animal Crossing and laughing at the stupidest shit

The Fish Tempura incident on Wheel of Fortune

Lindsay’s reasoning for why her and Michael should have 4 kids

Geoff’s fucking ad reads (my favorite is 23&Me)

The whole thing during Push the Button where everyone especially Michael gets mad at Fiona because she said the best candy to get while trick or treating was lollipops

Matt’s fucking desk in the corner of the room

Anytime Millie is in a video

Everyone falling off the pink ladder during TTT and dying repeatedly because of it

Alfredo “the two-time champ” Diaz dying very early in YDYD 3

Gavin and Michael fucking up almost every game they play on Play Pals

RAY OR NO and then RAY OR NAY on Off Topic

Reddit Roasts Geoff

Gavin asking if someone could kill 20 cows with their bare hands and the proceeding so say he could rip out a cow’s veins by reaching into its neck

Ify’s narration during Let’s Roll Ave Caesar

The internet losing its shit when Jeremy shaved his head years ago

“We need a knife” Gavin comes back with a hammer

Griffin chain sawing the Off Topic table up

“How do I put the boat in the water??” “Right click you animal”

As of 2020, 8 years of playing Minecraft, certain people still do not know how to play the basics of this fucking game.

Honestly it took over 200 episodes for some of them to figure out how the compass worked. You know after they decided that the sun was setting in the wrong direction. (this was in 2016??)

Flynt coal still is a joke they make

So is Day 2

Whatever happened in that GTA lets play where someone called a mugger or a hit on someone and the game glitched and 50 guys showed up and lined up on the street below from where they were playing

Anytime Gavin gets mugged, it’s an old running gag but it’s a classic

The time a mugger fucking started driving the fire truck away after mugging Gavin with Michael and Jeremy still in the truck thinking the other is driving and it takes them like 2 minutes to realize what happened while Gavin’s yelling “come back”

They got a water jug and immediately started water boarding each other

“It pinged and went dingle”

“Hey Trey-Boi” “Hey Gay-Boi” Immediately realizes what he has said

Jeremy’s website puns

(OLD) Ray jerking off in the corner during a let’s play

(OLD) the world in Minecraft never loading and everyone screaming about as Geoff says its fine for him

Jeremy’s “I AM MONSTER TRUCK”

Jack taking AH to Disney……in Minecraft

On Twitter, Gavin asked about recommendations for a computer mouse and Fiona starts sending him pictures of actual mice.

“Its not ghey, if its on the moon”

Literally anything Fiona does as Po

Jeremy saying the heterosexual flag is boring

UNO THE MOVIE!

Geoff fucking cackling the whole time.

“here’s looking at you kid”

the video was almost 3 hours long

“you know what my favorite color is? blue” “oh really? You know what my favorite hand is? Yours

They all want it to end but no one wants to lose and so they fuck each other and that prolongs the game. Also they put on more rules, so they just keep getting more cards if they don’t have a card to match the previous

Alfredo saying he won’t participate in ghost hunter because he knows what happens to people of color in horror movies

Fiona walking in on Off Topic with a protein shake and Gavin asks if shes drinking milk and she says without missing a beat “ah no that’s cum” and everyone laughed not expecting the answer

(OLD) “SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER” *falls in hole*

(OLD) Ray and Gav running in a panel dressed as X-Ray and Vav and Ray running the whole way around the room before he got to the stage

Duck taping Jeremy to the wall

(OLD) All of Minecraft Episode 3 Plan G (This was the very first AH video I watch and why I know who they are)

Geoff and Gav creating Achievement City and giving everyone houses just to prank Jack into burning house down with lava.

Ray’s house is a dirt block with no furniture and single torch

Geoff’s giant ass house next to Ray’s tiny house

Jack tries to destroy everything with lava throughout the episode

“lets be honest, I realistically didn’t lose anything”

Michael stealing art from Gav’s house “NOO! I want nice things”

The sign to Michael’s says “Awaiting Approval, Awaiting Approval, Awaiting Approval” he runs into house and say “I’m home”

Ray also steals this sign at some point

Plan G – The failsafe.

“Oh whats this? Is this a button? Whats this? (pushes button) Yeah it was a button”

“Did you push the button?”

“Yeah”

“okay”

“wh-what does it do?”

“uh…”

Cue Achievement City beginning to explode as Michael starts screaming

Rays reaction “NO, MY SHITTY HOUSE JUST GOT EVEN SHITTIER!”

Not something funny but something VERY IMPORTANT. AH admitting that they all fucked up and how shitty their behavior was when dealing with harassment in the fanbase. People were racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic, and just downright horrible to a lot of the employees at RT and AH. This came up after Mica Burton left the company and talked about it publicly and how nothing was done about it. Fiona who also experiences these same things, along with Lindsay and other employees, but Fiona took the charge on the Off Topic talking about people can’t continue to get away with that behavior. She got to sound off her feelings to a group of white men who all respected her and LISTENED to what was saying and how she felt. She cried; Geoff cried. They all want to do more, so this doesn’t happen in the future and they’re not tolerating the racist and horrible comments. AH taking a mature moment to talk about how they failed to stop these comments and Geoff was right when he said the company has a long way to go.

 Outside of AH each member has more to them than just all of the comedy and laughs and dumb shit they do

Geoff helped found Roosterteeth and Achievement Hunter. He has a beautiful daughter in Millie who is awesome in her own right. He’s a recovering alcoholic. Currently doing F**k Face podcasts. Was in the fucking army. Takes accountability for every mistake he makes.  

Jack also helped start Achievement Hunter. He does so much work for charity. His twitter is full of things to help people go vote. He’s like the dad to AH, especially Fiona. He’s happily married to his wife Caiti.

Michael was an electrician and has a lot of handy man experience. He made a few videos online about him raging at games and that got the attention of RT. He’s currently married to Lindsay who he met because of RT. They have two kids together.

Gavin is an expert at high speed filmmaking and know how use and edit footage from a slow-motion camera. He has worked on actual films. One of the creators of the Slow Mo Guys. Worked his ass off to get to work for RT. Currently dating model and cosplayer Meg Turney

Lindsay flips between being the mom of the group and a complete chaos queen and we all love her for it. She started as an editor for the RT podcast and then AH stuff. She is an incredible voice actor, most known for Ruby Rose (RWBY), Space Kid (Camp Camp), Hilda (Xray & Vav) just to name a few. She also has a degree in finance

Jeremy started as a fan who made videos on the community page. He took over Ray’s place after Ray left to do Twitch full time. He is a self-published author and a skilled rapper and singer. He’s currently married to his wife, Kat.

Matt also started as a fan making videos on the community page. He actually interacted and made stuff for the guys in really early Minecraft episodes. Seriously this guy is like king of Minecraft. He has a degree in electrical engineering. He also has pretty decent singing voice.

Trevor is THE BOSS. Has a degree in aero-space engineering and is getting paid to babysit AH. Currently dating Barbara Dunkelman, RTs queen of puns.

Alfredo worked at IGN before RT and is a well-known streamer. He is the best when it comes to first person shooter games. He and Trevor look so similar.

Fiona. Po. Her majesty. Host of This Just Internet. A Twitch streamer. Baby of the bunch. Grew up in Europe. Her and Gav act like a pair of siblings. She has stated and showed time and time again she will fight for people to have safe spaces for anyone who needs them.

Ify, our new guy. He is wonderful and I want to stay forever. He’s a comedian, a writer, and an actor. Co hosts F-ing Around with Fiona. Has his own film podcast, Who Shot Ya? I look forward to more content with him in it, cause everything he’s been in so far has been great.

 Were all hurting but well make it through this

We have all these wonderful moments and a lot more that I didn’t list and this incredible team of personalities with their own accomplishments and achievements. Not to mention old team members who were also great additions and the entire crew behind the scenes editing and making videos look the best that they can.

 Here’s to Achievement Hunter and to this community. We need to be here for each other in times like these.

@theonyxranger gave me the idea for this based on their own post they made about the fans giving their favorite moments without bitch face and there were just too many. Oop. 

[badboy-mysweetboy]

What the hell is a commission?

Sweet Peax fem! reader

 This has been stuck in my head forever, and I don't know why... it started as a drabble then it just took off my guy. Random Tags: @missmarrinette​ @the-gargoyle-queen​ @xserpentlife​ @theangriestpea​ @sweetpeaxreader​ @sweetpea-fvck​

Really an eviction? 

That’s no coincidence. I’m going to Major  McMoy about this bullshit. Grabbing my skateboard and slamming my trailer door, I speed down to City Hall. The streets are damp from the ongoing rain this past few weeks, shoving people out of my way I kick up my old board before the concrete stairs.

Running up the familiar hallway to her office, shutting the door behind me our eyes meet.

“Y/n? What are you doing here?” McCoy's voice rung out, gulping, setting my hand down on the chair. My tongue darting out dampening my bottom lip before speaking up, “How much is the debt and next year of rent for the trailer park?”

Her eyes widened momentarily, “I-Uh, Why are you asking, Y/n?” With raising eyebrows she caught on, with a small smile, McCoy turned as her finger pounded on the keys. “It’s about $50,000, but I already have an offer and-”

I interrupted, “No, the Lodges want to pay for your silence, but if that’s what it’s going to take.” She looked a bit taken back before I continued, “I know about you and Mr. Sheriff, I’m the only one. That’s a bigger bomb, so give me 1 week. Deal?”

“A week? That’s literally impossibl-”

“I’ve done it for Pop’s and I’ve done it for the White Wyrm, please Sierra do me a solid. I’ve never come in short. Not once.”  Now crossing my arms as the Major looked between me and the red number on the document. softly she nodded as a smirk took over my face, “See ya next Friday, and remember ‘Tell the Lodges to piss off til then’, I’ll be here. 3:45pm sharp. And no telling anyone about this like the last times.” With another short nod, my feet took off as my board glided against the polished halls of City Hall. Men in suits yelling and a few women flipping me off.

The neon lights of the city blurred as my feet vibrated on the board that speed down the streets I call home. Pulling my shitty, old phone from my jean pocket. Scrolling threw contacts stopping for a moment to see the top message,

~Sweet Pea<3~

I’ll be home in a few days, this job fuckin blows. Love and miss you baby <3

Smiling softly at the last message he sent me I kept scrolling. A familiar contact name popped up on the screen, “Ok hello, Mrs. Wealthy.” Hitting the green phone putting it to my ear.

“Mrs. Lodge, Hello...” 

It’s been over 97 hours of my hand dancing on pages and canvases, and days melted into songs that have played over 20 times. The darkening of my eyes and increased amount of caffeine and candy is taking its fuzzy toll. My palms dug into my eyes then dragged over my face as I pull paints and inks from their places. Once again dragging the brush across the cloth of the Lodge daughter and other various things requested, “It’s almost like she knew.” It was strange but she and another buyer made up 45k while I had the other 5 in savings. 

Standing with stretching hands and popping back, I grab my empty cans of energy cans and toss them in the trash bag among the others. Taking the 6 pack of Monsters off the counter and to the mess I’ve called home for too long. The music drowned out the sound of a familiar bike and the front door trying to open, turning to see the chair in front of the door budging. Moving it and opening the door I was meet with the other artist Serpent, Jug. 

“What do you want?” I growled as he shifted awkwardly, clearing his voice he sarcastically responded. “Ya know, Fp misses his favorite bartender, and Toni is all alone with drunk Fangs. What have you been doing?” Rubbing the now darker e/c eyes, with Sweet Pea’s black and white flannel that well could be a dress. “Studying Jug, you probably don’t know what it’ like being stupid. But it sucks. Tell your father that I’ll be back at work on Saturday. Goodbye Jug.” Shutting the and replacing the chair. 

Back in the crouched position, I presumed the strokes of ink and oils as the next several hours melted into lost time. 

Blinking madly the last stroke met the page and “Fucking finally! Yes! WooHoo!” Grabbing the hairdryer and drying it my eyes met the digital clock that read

 3:21 pm Friday.

Placing the last painting in my portfolio and grabbing my board. Taking off on my board once again, to Pops. Stopping at the same black van Mrs, Lodge’s profile could be seen, while handing her one of the two portfolios in my hand. Opening the backpack it was all there, looking up met with a smile. As she held out a painting of her daughter, “Beautiful as always, Y/n.” Nodding, making my way into the diner the other costumer was sitting with her son.

Walking to the booth she smiled up at me, then her son turned. “ Hello Archie, Mrs. Andrews here’s your piece. If I may, I need to go.” She slowly unzipped it revealing a portrait of her son, a big gleaming smile turned to me. “What is that, mom? Y/n?” Archie looked between us when her mom handed me an envelope, “Remember what I said over the phone, bye!” Winking at the two before running out, “I have 10 minutes to get to McCoy, come on baby don’t let me down.” Dropping my board and skating down the well-known streets, rain fell from the sky making the wheels spin faster as my old converse pounded against the floor pushing me towards my destination. 

Beating against my chest hurt as my lungs burned, running up 3 floors and bursting into Major McCoy’s Office. “I’m here, Not late! Y/n present! Now here.” Inhaling deeply looking up to see Mr. Lodge’s anger-filled face. “I’m not saying this again Hiram, the buyer shows tomorrow, if they don’t show. The trailer park is yours till then. Get The Hell Out- oh Y/n here for Josie? She’ll be here in a few, just sit down till then.” Her demeanor changed as I dragged myself to a chair as Hiram stormed out. Lazily raising the bag in the air. “It’s there, all 50k. Until we see another day. Hey rain looks like melted dimands and- what am I talking about?” 

Worry was painted all over McCoy’s face as she glided over to me, placing her hand on my forehead it felt nice and warm. “You’re sick, y/n. When was the last time you slept-” 

McCoy’s POV..(whaaaattttt? lol ) transitions to 3rd POV

“Oh Y/n.” I mumbled softly as her dark eyes fell shut and her breathing shallowed, grabbing the backpack and putting it all where it needs to be, “Once again Y/n you saved the day, only if your Sweet Pea knew.” and signed off the eviction. Pulling a blanket from the closet and draping it onto y/n’s sick form. Walking back to my desk I rang up Sherif Keller “Hello babe, I need you to go down to the trailer park and tell em’ that the park was paid for. They live rent-free for the next year.” Smiling as he asked who, “An anonymous buyer but not Lodge, make sure they know that.” Looking at the shivering form across the room, “Love you, see you later. Bye-bye.” Placing the phone on the receiver and calling another well-known number. 

“Mayor McCoy?” The gruff voice came from the other side, “ FP I need you to come to my office, please. Now.” Hanging back up, and walk up to her form once again. Placing my hand on her forehand, my hand almost stung at the touch. “Damn girl, what did you do?” 

Soon Fp showed up and immediately noticed y/n, “What happened?” He kneeled next to her cupping her face, turning to face me. “I’m taking her home, Sweet Pea won’t be happy,” he grumbled bridal style carrying her, “Just make sure she gets well, she deserves it.” With a raised eyebrow he shrugged it off and put y/n on the front of his bike making sure she doesn’t fall off, with of course her precious board bunji corded to the back of the bike. 

Stopping in front of her and Sp’s trailer, Fp slowly took Y/n from the bike to her home. Sighing he walked into her home and placed her on the bed before his phone rang, “Yes?” Fp ran out of the trailer to his own. 

 Sweet Pea’s bike was rolled into park as Keller was giving the news. 

“People of the trailer park community it brings me joy to tell you this, an anonymous buyer has saved you all from eviction and paying rent for a year. This buyer wishes to stay anonymous but let it be known it was no a Lodge, so celebrate!” Before he turned to his car passing Sp who had a shocked expression. 

Smiling he dashed into his trailer to find a mess of art supplies and trash bags filled with candy wrappers and energy drink cans. Smiling went from worried within seconds, “Y/n? Baby? I’m home! Where are you?” He walked through the trailer finding her under a blanket shivering fast asleep, quickly coming to her aid he shook tried to shake her awake but received a grunt. Putting y/n under all the blankets he could find he went to find some medicine for when she woke up. Then he got a call from Fp.

Cheers were heard from miles around as every Serpent partied and drank in The Serpent King’s trailer about staying in their homes and not paying rent for a year. The detective couple went to demand who bought the park as Major McCoy kept her promise before Fp joined them in asking. 

(Back to McCoy POV)

The four stood in front of me with demanding looks; the 2 Jones, Betty, and Sp. “They made me promise not to tell a soul and-” The writer spoke up,” But this is a good thing, they should be proud. We just want to know Major McCoy, the people want to know and plus-” He ranted before I got tired of the secret and him just pushing my goddamn buttons. “Fine, you want to know who bought your debts and rent for a year and save Pop’s twice and even saved the White Wyrm from the Lodges?” I snapped and they all nodded. “Y/n L/n, she bought them all plus other things but those were the most expensive.” 

Seeing their faces was all the same. All Shocked for sure. Sweet Pea’s eye’s widened, I continued, “She came up with $50,000 in a week due to commissions and paid it off today about 25 minutes ago, now I suggest someone goes and tends to her, I bet 50k that she was awake for about 168 hours and has a terrible fever. If that’s all get out of my office.” 

“What the hell is a commission?” Sweet Pea asked as Fp repeated ‘50k’ like it was the only word he knew. “She sold art Sweet Pea, that’s why her hands probably hurt.” They all left rethinking what just happened.

The three walked into the serpent’s trailer while Betty went to pick up stuff for y/n’s fever. Sweet Pea was able to get her into the shower as the other 2 hung out in the living room area. Jug observed the table with thrown sketches out of the way and paint cups filled with brushes. “She came up with 50k by art? Wow, she is talented for what I can tell.” Placing a sketch of Sweet Pea down looking at the garbage bags. Fp’s hands were in his hair, “50k- $50,000 dollars. She saved our asses and we didn’t even know-” Fp mumbled and his son answered, “she didn’t want us to know, Why?”

“Why? Because the serpents are my family. And family saves their ass no matter the cost, and I don’t want a single dollar from you or I’ll shove my sick ass foot up your ass, kapish?” Y/n’s now way deeper voice answered Jug as she made her way to the kitchen for some water. 

Y/n POV

Drinking the water, Sweet Pea’s arms wrapped around me as his chin rested on my shoulder. “You’ll get sick babe.” I yawned as his grip got tighter, “I don’t care and how long since you’ve slept?” The trailer door opened as Betty walked through with a grocery bag full of things, “I thought I said no buying shit, and probably 170 hours Sp. Now I love you all but I’m going to bed night, I’ll be at work at 4 Fp, Come on Sweet Pea. Bed Time.” I grumbled as the rest chuckled, “No you will not come in tomorrow and Betty, darling I don’t care what you have to do but make y/n take her medicine. Goodnight everyone and-” Fp stood and walked over after telling Betty something, I don’t know, I was in a bone crushin hug. “Thank you y/n for everything, you’re a true serpent through and through. Love ya kid, now sleep.” Before stepping out Betty held out NightQuil, being so tired I just twisted off the cap and took a gulp.

“Nasty, now goodnight.” Turning and before I could walk Pea picked me up and placed me on our bed. Getting underneath every single blanket, he kicked off his shoes and pulled me into his chest. His hands danced in my hair and within seconds I was lulled to sleep to Sp’s voice. 

Sweet Pea that night made a vow to give himself that small, velvet box in his underwear drawer will be given to her and he will cherish her till the end. 

[breanime]

Good Enough (Part Two)

Requested by @delicatelilyflower:  Oh gosh, okay, do you remember that fic you write “good enough”? Well, could you write it but in Billy’s POV? I think it could be interesting to see how he felt during all of this! Thank you so much! 💗

So this isn’t so much a Part Two as it is a companion piece, but I was too lazy to think of a new title, haha. 

Here’s the original, from the Reader’s POV, maybe read this before this one?

*gif not mine*

Billy was late. He was three hours late, to be exact, and he knew it. Luckily for him, he knew you were fine waiting at home, and luckily for him, he was on his way to you.

He let himself into the place you shared and smiled when he saw you. You were fast asleep on the couch, surrounded by the mis-matched colored walls. He chuckled to himself as he approached you. It had been his idea to paint the living room, but he was a slow study. The room, in all honesty, looked worse now that he’d gotten involved with it, except now, with you in it… It had the best view in the whole world.

He leaned over you, his hand brushing against your warm skin, and Billy felt his heart melt. You were so beautiful, so soft and sweet and perfect. How he got you—how he kept you—was a mystery to him, frightening and fantastic all at once. But he was determined to keep you, even if he had to keep you locked in the penthouse like a dragon guarding his princess, for as long as he could. 

“You know,” he said softly, the back of hand caressing your sleeping face, “we have an entire bedroom for this exact purpose.”

You smiled as you woke up, and Billy was glad that he was sitting on the edge of the couch, because otherwise, he would have fallen to his knees at the sight of you; pretty eyes blinking up at him, lips spread in that perfect smile aimed at him—only him. “I thought our room was for another purpose…”

He laughed, kissing you and the two of you started talking. He told you about the benefit he had to go to—a favor to Curtis—and felt his heart speed up when you said the dreaded words: “I can go with you.”

He both loved and hated when you said that. He loved it because he loved you, loved that you were always so willing to be with him, knowing good and well that those benefits were Billy’s least favorite thing. You just wanted to be there to be with him, to support him. He’d never had that before, someone who just wanted… be there for him. He loved it.

But he hated it, too.

He hated the thought of you, charming and beautiful and warm, being surrounded by all those fakes and phonies, of the men and women who would flock to you, wanted to possess you and own you… His fists clenched with just the thought of it. You were such a beacon, such an inviting presence, you couldn’t help it—it was one of the things Billy loved about you. But him… Those parties were work for him, he had to force a smile, shake hands, trade small talk and insignificant chatter with people he’d never want to spend time with in his regular life. It was like he was a robot; it was forced and stiff and fake. Not him at all. He didn’t want to expose you to that, didn’t want you to see him like that…

…what if you left him?

Quickly, he assured you that he’d be home sometime soon and convinced you to go to bed—the actual bed—while he headed out.

Crisis averted.

A few days later, he got a text from you. Gonna be out late with Karen. Be home later.

He texted back, glancing over at himself in the mirror. He was getting a fitting for one of his suits to prepare for the event tonight; a huge waste of time (the fitting and the event), that he was forced to do because of the social nature of his job. His fingers moved quickly: That’s fine. I have another event I have to go to. Don’t wait up. He sighed, pocketing his phone. He wanted to come home to you, hold you in his arms and not worry about shaking hands with rich assholes who knew him for an upstart with a violent past, but he had to. It wasn’t his favorite part of his job, but it was a part of it nonetheless. He just had to suffer through it, and then he could go home to you.

But then he heard the whispers, excited and predatory, about a beautiful woman at the gala, of how she was so friendly and witty and enticing—and he knew immediately they were talking about you. It didn’t take him long to find you after that, he just followed the scent of lust and wandering eyes, and there you were, surrounded by four women that Billy knew for a fact wanted to take you home. He saw red. He felt the cool, empty mask he put on for these kinds of events slip away, and his real self—selfish and harsh and territorial—come through.

He came up and took you by the elbow, stopping himself from literally tossing you over his shoulder and carrying you off like King Kong. Be cool, Russo. Be cool. “I need to speak with Y/N,” he said through gritted teeth. He led you away, ready to talk…

…and made it all worse.

He yelled at you—something he’d never done before, and the way you looked at him… Pretty eyes so wide, he could practically see the resentment in them. “I don’t want you here!” He had said—shouted—at the only women he’d ever loved.

He watched you run out and felt himself deflate. Fuck.

He looked for you, jogging back out to the ballroom, looking for you in that amazing dress, but he didn’t see you. He didn’t bother asking around—the thought of people watching you was already on his mind, he didn’t need any proof to add fire to his already present jealousies. Instead, he went around the entire place looking for you. It took him less than five minutes to cover the grounds—partly because of his training, and partly because he had a very specific you-radar that helped him scan the crowd—before he had to admit that you were gone.

Loosening his tie, he hoped into his car and drove home—speeding just a little bit, replaying the argument in his head. God, he loved you. He loved you so much, and he yelled at you. He ran his hand through his hair, pulling at the strands, shaking it as he drove. Fuck. He was such a fucking idiot. Who was he to yell at you like that? To grab you and pull you away just because he was a coward and afraid you were going to leave him. Hell, who could blame you if you did? You wanted to be with a man, not a machine, not someone who had to play a part at work, someone who only pretended to be what you were—warm and funny and open. You deserved better, you deserved someone…whole.

Billy came into the house, pissed at himself and wanting nothing more to hold you and beg your forgiveness. He slammed the door behind him, both to let off some steam and to let you know he was coming. He stomped to your room, still pissed at himself and still revved for a fight, even though he knew better. But you had to know, he shouldn’t have yelled at you, and he didn’t… Didn’t mean for you to leave. He wanted it, yes, but he hadn’t wanted to make you leave, hadn’t wanted to start a fight.

“Fuck, Y/N, I didn’t mean I wanted you to—” his eyes landed on the bag you had on the bed and widened as he realized you were packing, and his heart nearly stopped, “what are you doing?”

You sighed, wiping your cheeks. You were crying. He’d made you cry. “What does it look like I’m doing, Billy?” You snapped back, voice wavering. “I’m leaving. Just…give me a minute and I’ll be out of your way.”

Billy moved, standing between you and the door, knowing that all it would take for you to get him to move would be just to ask him to. He put his hands up, wanting to touch you but afraid you would recoil if he did. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if you did. “What?” He asked, shaking his head. “Why?” He knew why.  “Y/N, baby, I’m sorry I raised my voice at you, I was being a dick, I know—”

“I can’t do this anymore,” you said, and Billy’s heart broke. “I love you, Billy, I love you so much, but…” He shook his head again as you spoke. But what? There should be no but—you were everything he ever wanted, exactly what he needed. You couldn’t go. “I’m not enough for you and I know that,” you went on, “So I’m not going to hold you back any longer…”

Billy felt his hands shake. He’d faced down criminals, terrorists, dangers of every sort, but this… He had never been so afraid, so heart-stoppingly terrified, in his entire life. “Baby, what are you talking about? Don’t,” he stepped towards you, willing his hands to stop shaking, “don’t go. Just… Talk to me, what’s going on?”

“You’re embarrassed of me!” You screamed, eyes flooding with a new set of tears, “You are! I’m not blind, Billy, I’ve seen all those women from the galas and parties and benefits—they’re beautiful and I can never match up to that!” His jaw dropped. You had no idea how wrong you were—and that was his fault... “So I’m done, I’m leaving and now you can be with one of them and not have to be ashamed to be seen with her or have your picture in the paper—”

Billy grabbed you for the second time that night, pulling you to his chest. He wrapped his arms around you tightly, not even noticing that, now that you were in his grasp, his hands had stopped shaking. You sobbed against his chest, fisting your hands in his shirt as he rubbed your back. God, he loved you. And look what he’d done to you; letting you think that you weren’t enough for him. You were everything. He put his mouth on the top of your head, breathing in your scent, and closed his eyes. He ruined this. He ruined everything. He should have known that he would, that he was never good enough for you—and he never would be.

No.

No, he couldn’t—wouldn’t—just let you go. He needed you, he loved you, and he would fight for you. Even if it meant having to be vulnerable. You were more than worth it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice soft and low over your heartbreaking, shuddering cries, “Baby, I am so, so sorry.” He kissed the top of your precious head. “I never meant to make you think… God, I swear, I had no idea you felt like this…” He sighed. “I really am a dick.” He pulled back, so that he could look at your face and carefully, softly wiped your tears. “Let me be very, very clear, Y/N.” He took a breath. “I love you. I am so in love with you, it’s scary. I want… I want to be with you for the rest of my life.” He watched your eyes widen and continued. “Baby, please, please understand that I have never been ashamed or embarrassed of you, ever. Never. You’re the most amazing, gorgeous, beautiful person on this Earth. I’m so lucky to have you,” he swallowed, “And I’m selfish. You know that. Y/N, the only reason I never take you to these parties is because I don’t want to share you. And I don’t like having you see me when I’m working, when I’m not myself because… You’re the only person I can really be honest with. And I love you for that, Y/N.”

He held you as you spoke, telling him your fears and insecurities, and he listened with a heavy heart. You had been so sad, so lonely, for so long, and he hadn’t even noticed. He’d let you down.

But he was going to spend the rest of his life making it up to you, and he told you so.

You smiled then, watery eyes lighting up in that special way they did only for him, “That almost sounds like a proposal, Russo,” you joked.

Billy grinned back at you. “Aw, sweetheart,” he said, kissing you again, a little deeper this time, “trust me, you’ll know when I propose.” His grip on you tightened and you sighed contently as he kissed you once more. “But best believe, I’m gonna make you Mrs. Billy Russo someday…someday soon.”

He took you to bed then, whispering just how much you meant to him, and how much he loved you. He made it a point to back his words up with his touch; caressing and kissing every inch of you, telling you how unbelievably beautiful you were and hoping to God you believed him. Because it was true. You were beautiful, inside and out. And you were his just as much as he was yours. He knew that, and he didn’t need to be afraid anymore. You loved him.

“I love you,” he said, lips against yours, body on top of yours, eyes staring into yours, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

You smiled. “I love you, Billy,” you said back, “I love you.”

He kissed you again, and as he held you, his whole world in his arms, he knew who he was. The job, the mixing and mingling, his past—none of that mattered. He wasn’t just Lieutenant Russo anymore, but he wasn’t just a pretty face either, nor was he just Billy Russo, CEO—he was yours. And because of you, because of your patience and love and warmth, he knew who he was.

He was good enough.

*******************************************************************************************

I copied and pasted a few bits from the first part, but I did try to add a few things every time I did. I hope you liked this--thanks for reading!

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