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manesalex · 5 years ago

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you could treat me better if you really wanted to

Okay, I’ve seen the episode and it was worse than I expected. But I needed to write this for my own well-being.

Kyle helps Alex get a break from Roswell.

This is for all of my fellow Alex fans who are hurting right now. I hope this helps just a bit.

Warnings for references to abuse, gaslighting, sexual assault, an ableist comment, and alcohol use. Also, spoilers for the latest episode and that whole threesome thing.

***

“Where’s Alex?” Liz asks when the rest of the group is gathered in the Crashdown for the latest update.

Kyle sighs, waving his phone, “Alex is working on all of this remotely. I’ll keep him updated on anything he needs to know.”

“Oh, is he sick? Is his prosthetic bothering him?” Liz asks quickly. Kyle is surprised by her concern, based on what he knows, but maybe she had convinced herself of something that wasn’t true to excuse all of this.

“You do realize what you’re all asking of him all the damn time, don’t you?” Kyle finally asks, unable to hold it in any longer. Watching his best friend break apart last night had been the final straw. “He’s risking court-martial for you every day. At best a dishonorable discharge. He’s regularly dealing with his father for all of you. And he doesn’t complain. He just keeps giving you everything you ask for, everything you want, no matter how much it hurts him.” He takes a deep breath before turning to look directly at Maria and Michael, “And you two? You two should be ashamed of yourselves. What did he ever do to you that makes you think he deserves to be treated like that?! You used his trauma and his love for you both against him. You manipulated him and you told yourself it was okay. You didn’t even give a shit about how any of that affected him. Because you both got what you wanted.”

***

Kyle wakes to a pounding at his door. He looks up at his clock, at the glowing 8:00 AM and pushes to his feet. It’s probably Liz again, pestering him on his one day off, but, on the off chance it isn’t...

He’s surprised to see Alex on his doorstep, tears streaming down his face. He’s in little more than a white t-shirt, a jacket, and jeans, both messy and awkwardly put on, like he had scrambled to get dressed. “Were you serious about that beer?”

“Come on in, man? Maybe skip right to the whiskey?”

And so it all comes out of Alex. His adventure with Maria, how he had almost died, how they had all gone back to Michael’s to patch him up. How Maria had kissed Michael in front of him, had forced him into a kiss, though he doesn’t say those exact words. He mentions that he wanted to leave. That he said as much, both before and after. What had happened between him and Maria and Michael and how he had left the morning after, feeling more alone than ever. How he had let Michael decide how it felt for him, but he didn’t feel loved. He felt used.

“Alex, I think maybe you should take a vacation? Maybe go out to the cabin? Or go completely out of town? I think… You need to see a therapist and you need to get somewhere safe.”

“Nowhere is safe, Kyle,” Alex admits softly. “I only ever felt safe with him and now... I know he loves me, but... Even after this, I thought… I’m so stupid.”

“You’re not stupid, man,” he replies, refilling Alex’s drink. “Look, take my bed, I’ll crash on the couch. And we’ll figure out what you should do tomorrow. But… I know you love them both, but I think you need to set up boundaries with them. You… You set them up with me, right? You can do that with them. I’ll help you if you want.”

“Thanks, Kyle,” Alex replies, leaning into him. “You’re a good friend.”

***

“What did you mean we manipulated him?!” Maria stalks after Kyle as he leaves the Crashdown. “We love him! We wanted to-”

“How many times did he tell you he wanted to go, Maria? Who was this really about? Comforting Alex, who had been stabbed? Because there are so many ways that you could have comforted him that didn’t involve ignoring him saying ‘no’. Or was it all about you and Michael. Making Michael feel better because he could have both of you for once? And making yourself feel better about the ways you’ve hurt Alex?” He takes a deep breath before saying, “You know about his dad, Maria. You know what his father did to him. And you know how that man doesn’t know love or acceptance. And you weaponized his need for both.”

“I didn’t-”

“I know you didn’t mean to, Maria. You probably didn’t even realize you were doing it. But you did it. And you’re finding all kinds of excuses for it. As if Alex doesn’t already find excuses to forgive you both for every damn thing you do to him!” He takes a breath. “Stay the fuck away from him right now.” He turns around and walks away, ignoring her calling after him.

***

Kyle is at home, just having finished texting Alex the details he needs to know over the encrypted messaging program Alex had set up on his phone. He’d left the rest of it out, not sure if he’d crossed a line. In truth, he probably had. But Alex isn’t going to stand up for himself, so Kyle will, knowing Alex will probably tell him off for it. At least he’s someone Alex will stand up to. Maybe the only one who actually loves him who Alex will stand up to.

He startles at the knock on the door, but stands up to answer it. Only to find Michael standing there, smelling like bourbon and acetone, barely holding himself up. He’s instantly aware of how badly this can go. But he steps aside and lets Michael in.

“He told me he felt loved,” he sounds hurt and confused.

“Did he?” Kyle asks, well aware of the answer. “Or did you tell him that’s how he felt and he just… Agreed with you?”

Michael’s face falls at that. But he doesn’t answer.

“Guerin, he loves you both. More than himself. I don’t think he thinks he’s worthy of either one of you. You know, he said you were a good man? And that he is evil? He’ll accept whatever you give him. Because he loves you. No matter how much you hurt him. And because he doesn’t think he deserves to be loved. And he wants you to be happy.” Kyle pauses, considering. He knows what Alex would want him to say. Alex would want him to comfort Michael Guerin. To tell him it was okay to treat him like that. But he can’t. He won’t. “You’re not the only one who grew up feeling unloved, Guerin. You’ve met his dad, right?”

“Yeah, he-” he looks at his left hand, still wrapped up, and then back at Kyle.

“He hates Alex. Because he’s gay. He tried to change him.” He pauses, “And his mom is gone too, you know.”

“I didn’t-” Michael objects, cutting himself off.

“I know,” Kyle replies. He considers again what Alex would want him to say. He can’t do it. He can’t absolve Michael. But he can give him something. “Figure it out, Guerin. If you really love him more than yourself, you need to figure out how to love him right or you need to let him go. And let him find someone who can love him the way he deserves.”

He grabs Michael’s truck keys from him before ushering him back out the door. “I’ll have Liz pick these up for you. Walk home, Guerin.” Then he shuts and locks the door behind him, well aware that it won’t really keep him out if he wants to come in.

He returns his attention to his phone, slowly typing out a message to Alex, “See any cute boys in Austin yet?” He plants himself on the couch, turning on the TV and waiting for a reply.

#roswell fic #roswell new mexico #roswell new mexico spoilers #kyle valenti #alex manes #actual cinnamon roll #protect him at all costs #michael guerin #maria deluca #*myfic

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apositivelifeaffirmingway · 6 years ago

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Holding On and Letting Go

Alex Manes Appreciation Week: Day 5: what-if (with tiny a side of AU thrown in) [Mature/Explicit]

What if, when Jesse Manes burst in on Alex and Michael in the tool shed, he'd smashed Alex's hand instead? What if, instead of Alex, it was Michael who enlisted in the Air Force?

( AO3 link )

"Alex."

Alex froze, his hands hovering over the ‘artifacts’ he was in the process of rearranging, attempting to make room for some new thing Grant had found on the dark web that he wanted to add to the display.

That voice. His voice; it sent an electric energy traveling up the length of him - from the tips of his toes to the tips of his fingers and back again. Alex had forgotten how much he'd missed it. Both the voice and the feeling it elicited; he'd forgotten how much he’d suppressed the loss, how well he’d been able to ignore the giant hole in his chest that had appeared when Michael had left.

Alex turned, slowly, preparing himself to set eyes on him again, the first time in almost four months.

“You’re back.”

He must have come straight from the airport, because he was dressed in fatigues, a giant duffel and an overstuffed camo print backpack both lying discarded at his feet. His hair was cut short, what used to be a wild mess of curls now tamed and combed back from his face. Alex involuntarily flexed his right hand, the memory of the feel of Michael's curls in his fingers overwhelming him.

"I'm back," Michael echoed, his expression slightly clouded, his brow slightly furrowed, his tone cautious.

Alex felt a pang of guilt, though he wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t the one who’d run away… Still, he took a step toward Michael, pulling the visor off his head and tossing it to the ground as he flashed back to their first kiss. It wasn't lost on him that they were in the same section of the museum, the same cheesy displays surrounding them. Really the only thing different now was them.

"How are you?" Michael's eyes flickered from Alex's face to his hand and back again.

Alex, who had only just had the cast removed from his hand a week prior, raised his left hand up and slowly flexed his fingers, internalizing the dull, lingering ache, ignoring the tightness in the tendons from the permanent scar tissue that would prevent him from ever pursuing a career in music...

The surgeon had only been able to do so much...the damage had been extensive.

"I'm okay," he replied, dropping his hand and meeting Michael’s gaze.

It wasn't a lie, not really. He was okay. He was managing, anyway. His father was locked up and his brothers were coming around, being semi-supportive and growing more so as time passed. Alex was surviving, moving past the trauma. He certainly didn't intend to work at the UFO Emporium the rest of his life...he still had plans and dreams and they didn't seem as impossible anymore, even if he had to adjust his expectations to fit his new reality.

"I tried to write you," Michael said, dropping his shoulders and jamming his hands into his pockets before looking away, "so many times. But I didn't know what to say. I feel like that -," he turned his head back and nodded at Alex's injured hand, "- was entirely my fault. I shouldn't have ever stayed in that tool shed."

Michael’s hunched posture was in direct conflict with the authority and respect his uniform demanded and Alex, who had grown up surrounded by military and the supposed steely strength it implied, felt a pang of sadness.

Taking another small step towards Michael, lessening the distance between them, Alex shook his head, the sting of tears behind his eyes.

"This,” Alex lifted his scarred hand into the space between them, “wasn’t your fault. My dad is a homophobic monster. It was his fault. Only his fault," Alex's voice rose slightly, hoping Michael would understand...hoping Michael would know that he didn't blame him for what Jesse had done that day.

Michael nodded, but he looked unconvinced and that broke Alex's heart. It wasn’t fair, the amount of damage and destruction his dad had caused the last few months. It made Alex seethe with anger, and also regret.

Alex had spent weeks blaming himself after Michael left Roswell. He was convinced he was the reason –even after everything they went through after the day Jesse had found them – that Michael was just too traumatized to even look at Alex let alone be in the same town and so he bailed. It took Alex a long time, and the support of friends, to get over what his dad had done to him. Even if those friends still didn’t know who it was that had been with Alex the day Jesse barged in on them…

When Michael had left Roswell it had been sudden and unexpected, at least for Alex. After Jesse had attacked them in the shed, shattering Alex's hand with the hammer, they'd not seen each other for nearly a week. Alex had literally been in lock-down (recovering from surgery and downing painkillers). Even when he was finally lucid enough to go anywhere he wasn’t allowed out of the house. Jesse wouldn't let him leave and expressed to him, more than once, using all sorts of colorful and cruel slurs, that Alex was to keep his '%*#^ mouth shut' about what had happened. Not that anyone would believe it if Alex told. Jesse Manes was a pillar in the community. A respected military man who was third generation Roswell-ian.

Alex knew the implied threat was real; the tone in his father’s voice more than enough to deter him from attempting to sneak out. Even when his father would pass out from drinking too much, Alex didn’t dare try to leave. His father had never hurt him so badly before, the majority of the violence at home prior to that day mostly verbal, with the occasional hard shove against a wall, or a direct punch to the gut; bruises that were easily hidden by clothes and always assumed to be the result of the occasional bullying he experienced at school. Alex had seen his dad mad before, but never as full of blinding rage as when he’d bust through the tool shed door. Alex attributed the excessive drinking, which was also new, to the violence of that day. He found himself hoping, as messed up as he knew it was, that his dad felt guilty for what he’d done.

Alex knew he’d never really know. Their relationship was too fractured; there was too great a power imbalance and too much disappointment directed towards Alex. His father would never deign to lower himself to admit any regret or shameful feelings regarding his behavior, and the fact Alex even wanted him too was his own burden to bear.

Then, about a week later and after one too many glasses of whisky at the Wild Pony, Jesse chose to drive the handful of miles home from the bar, causing an accident that killed three teenage girls, one of which was Rosa Ortecho.

Alex was finally free.

Alex left the house for the first time in a week on a mission to seek Michael out, and he found him at Sanders Auto. He’d just started working there right before the tool shed incident. Michael’s face, upon seeing Alex, was full of concern and relief and sadness and joy. Alex could read it all, because he felt all the same things. They’d embraced, holding each other for a long time. The news about Jesse was all over town, Alex didn’t doubt Michael knew. They didn’t talk much that day, which suited Alex fine. He wasn’t ready to face what had happened in the tool shed, or what his father had just been responsible for; he was fine with ignoring all of it for one blissful moment.

Things progressed rather quickly after that. Jesse was charged with three counts of vehicular homicide, pleading guilty (he had no other choice – there were multiple witnesses to his presence at the bar and Mimi DeLuca expressing gleefully all over town, to anyone who’d listen, how she’d happily testify to how many drinks Jesse consumed that night; not to mention, his blood alcohol level was well over the legal limit). The judge sentenced him three days after the accident; twenty years with an opportunity for parole after ten.

It was outrageous, the sentence he’d been handed down. He’d cost three young women their lives, and it seemed that wasn’t worth more than a guarantee of ten years prison time. Alex had gladly joined Liz and Arturo and the families of the other girls in protesting the sentence. But their protests didn't matter. The judge’s decision was final as he stated he’d taken into account the 'upstanding nature' of Jesse's life in Roswell (up to that point), as well as his 'outstanding service to this country' (even though he was shortly thereafter dishonorably discharged).

After the sentencing Alex had felt a deep pang of guilt for having never reported his abuse. His father might have been sent away for much longer if there’d been record of his cruelty; if everyone knew how disturbed and violent and homophobic he really was.

Alex also avoided the Crashdown after that, ashamed of his connection to the man who’d killed Liz’s sister. Even after he learned Liz had left town, deciding to skip graduation, he couldn’t bring himself to face Arturo. At least not yet.

Alex was 18 when his father was sent to prison - an adult by legal definition - so he was allowed to continue to live in the house where he'd grown up. His first night there without Jesse, he'd packed up all the photos and awards and ribbons and medals; everything military or Air Force related went into boxes and into the tool shed. Alex wouldn’t be returning there for escape; the tool shed was tainted with the violence of that day, and Alex’s reason for needing a place to escape was locked away. It was freeing, erasing his father from the house.

It was only a few days later, after Jesse's sentencing, that Alex asked Michael if he wanted to stay at the house, too. He didn't use the words 'move in', he just mentioned that there were a lot of empty bedrooms. Plenty of room for him to stay if he didn’t want to sleep in the back of his truck anymore.

Michael accepted Alex’s invitation, though hesitantly, making it very clear to Alex he was just crashing, and might decide to leave at any moment. That was fine for Alex; all he wanted was to know Michael was safe and had a place to go that wasn't the back of his truck.

They didn't kiss, or embrace, or even touch each other in any way for almost a month. In fact they didn’t even see each other all that much. Michael worked early shifts at Sanders, and Alex worked late shifts at the museum. When they did see each other it was usually just to sit in a comfortable silence, sometimes filled with idle chit chat, sometimes more meaningful words exchanged – though that was far more rare. Sometimes Alex would find Michael staring at his cast with a pained look on his face. Alex wanted to say something in those moments to alleviate what he assumed was Michael’s guilt, but Michael would quickly look away when he noticed Alex watching him, and Alex never could quite figure out the right words to say, anyway.

Some nights Michael wouldn’t come back to Alex’s at all. The first time Michael didn’t come back, Alex felt in a panic, imagining some Air Force pal of his dad’s having done something to him – even though Alex had no reason to think that. All the airmen that knew Jesse had been nothing but supportive of Alex, a few of their wives even bringing him some frozen meals.

As it turned out, Michael had gone to the Evans’ and so from that night forward, if Michael ever didn’t come back to the house, Alex had to assume he was with Max and Isobel.

It was hard, though. Being so near Michael but not touching him or kissing him. Even after the traumatic end to their first time, Alex wanted nothing more than to rekindle some of the innocent joy they’d had in their connection. Alex had never felt anything more powerful or more right than that day with Michael. It was a feeling Alex supposed he might end up chasing forever and he could only hope he would find it again, or more specifically, that he would find it again with Michael.

But Michael kept his distance, and Alex didn't push, even though it was all he thought about. Even though late at night, alone in his bedroom, he would touch himself, letting his good hand wander all over his body while the memory of he and Michael played over and over in his head. Knowing Michael was on the other side of his bedroom wall made the want all the more powerful.

It was the Fourth of July holiday when things changed, when they finally came back together. They'd spent the day at the Evans'; Max and Isobel had hosted a barbeque and most of their graduating class was there. Alex hung out with Maria and they talked about the postcards they'd each received from Liz as she’d road tripped across the country (Liz also sending Alex a very nice letter telling him she didn’t blame him for his father’s actions, and saying she hoped they would see each other more when she returned. Alex felt somewhat healed after that letter). Michael, Alex quietly noted, spent most of the day huddled with a depressed looking Max.

When it had come out, after the accident, that Rosa had been Jim Valenti's daughter and not Arturo's, Liz had rescinded her invitation for Max to road trip with her and instead she'd taken Kyle. It’d seemed odd to everyone, but she'd insisted to Maria that it wasn't romantic, that she didn't think she could ever be with Kyle like that again, not after finding out the truth about Rosa. But Liz didn't talk about Kyle in her postcards, which made Alex doubt her resolve with regards to Kyle had held out. Maria had more faith in her, and teasingly chastised Alex for not thinking better of their friend. In any case, Max was a depressed mess over it all, and Michael was seemingly his emotional crutch.

It warmed Alex's heart to see Michael be there for his friend. Michael had a big heart and a caring nature and it was one of the things Alex liked best (loved) about him. Even if he wished Michael were at his side instead of Max’s. But no one knew about them (and they weren’t even officially a ‘them’; they’d just had one magical, momentous night. It wasn’t Michael’s fault that it was all Alex could think about). It never seemed to be the right time to talk about it or confess it, either. So Alex held it in, trying not to stare too much or too long. Trying not to attract the attention of Maria, or Max, or Isobel. Trying not to let on he had fallen hard for Michael Guerin.

Alex sometimes thought Maria knew, just by the way she'd look at him, but she never asked. So 'museum guy' remained a mystery to her, and Alex continued to keep the more intimate details of that day to himself.

Things were noticeably different with Michael when they'd returned from the barbeque. Rather than retreat to the room he’d been sleeping in as he usually did, Michael followed Alex to his bedroom. Alex let him, curious and hopeful about what it meant, and when he turned to ask what was going on, Michael was on him, hands grabbing and pulling, lips hot and wet and hard and desperate and Alex let his question die on his lips as he eagerly accepted Michael's advances, his own hands grabbing and pulling until he had Michael held so close he could feel his pounding heartbeat against his own chest.

The clothes quickly come off, both Michael and Alex pulling and tugging and kissing every newly revealed patch of bare skin until they were both naked and hard and rubbing against each other and when Michael pulled back slightly to grip both he and Alex in his fist, pumping them together as he pressed heated kisses to Alex's neck and collarbone. Alex gasped, sparks of white spotting his vision.

Somehow they made it to the bed, Michael on top of Alex, his hips pressing and grinding and Alex felt like he might pass out because of how good it felt. It was good. So, so good. His memory of being with Michael nowhere near this level of intensity. His skin was on fire, his senses heightened so that every brush of lips on skin left a blazing trail of white hot nerves that sung out with pleasure. Alex let Michael take control of it all, happy and willing to be an instrument in his hands.

Alex hummed with pleasure as Michael’s touch traveled his body; he felt like he was floating in the clouds while simultaneously drowning in a vast sea of pleasure. When Michael stopped and pulled back, his face slick with a sheen of sweat and his pupil’s exploded wide with desire. Alex swore he could see straight into Michael’s soul. Alex felt himself lose his breath. The man was a vision and Alex wanted him always and forever.

"Are you okay?" Michael asked, his voice husky and thick.

"Don't stop," Alex nodded as he reached his good hand to cradle the back of Michael's head, threading his fingers into the thick mass of curls and pulling him down into a deep kiss. His injured hand was mostly forgotten, Michael's touch more of an effective painkiller than any pill could be.

When asked, Alex directed Michael to the bedside table for condoms and lube.

Michael moved to put the condom on Alex, a reversal from their first time. Alex grabbed his wrist to stop him, silently questioning if he was sure. Michael just grinned and winked, gently pulling his wrist from Alex’s grip and sliding the condom on before moving a loosely held fist up and down him a few times to tighten the condom. Alex closed his eyes while a soft moan escaped his lips; the sudden shock of cold startled him and when he opened his eyes he saw Michael squeezing ample amounts of lube on him, spreading it up and down his shaft before putting more on his fingers and applying it to himself. Alex wanted to ask him again if he was sure, if he was ready, but Michael moved too quickly, straddling Alex’s hips and lowering himself onto and then all unspoken words faded from Alex’s lips as he succumbed to the ecstasy of the feel of Michael all around him. Alex elicited a long, deep moan; Michael was so tight and felt so good.

When Michael’s weight had settled Alex opened his eyes and the expression he saw on Michael's face, the way his damp curls framed his face and stuck to his forehead almost brought Alex to tears. He was so beautiful, so open, so giving. His expression one of....love? Dare Alex even think it possible? They barely knew each other, could they even be in love already?

Michael’s features, soft and relaxed, tightened slightly when Alex shifted beneath him. But then Michael was the one moving, his hips rolling and his hands splayed out on Alex’s abdomen as they both moved with soft, breathy moans escaping both their mouths.

Alex felt it all, every slight shift and move. When Michael tightened around him he gasped loudly before sitting up and with his good hand he gently but urgently pushed Michael to the side, flipping him to his back so Alex was now on top.

They settled and Alex pulled back slightly before pressing in again. The soft moan that came out of Michael's mouth nearly sending Alex over the edge. He was so close already, he knew he had to go slower or he'd come before he’d even given Michael the chance to get there.

Alex laid down fully on top of Michael, pressing their bodies together as he let his good hand thread into Michael's hair. He rolled his hips, slowly moving in and out, pressing in as deep as he could, bolstered by the guttural pant of breath that came from Michael each time he did.

The very definition of heaven was how Alex felt at that precise moment.

Michael's legs shifted and he wrapped them around Alex, Michael’s hands lighting at Alex’s waist, then his ass, massaging and gripping and pulling Alex even closer - as if it were possible for them to be any closer.

"Harder," Michael groaned breathlessly, and Alex buried his head into the crook of Michael's neck with a grin, moving harder and faster.

Last time, their first time, had been sweet if not a little bit awkward and a little bit clumsy. That was okay, though. Neither of them had known exactly what they were doing and it took a little time for them to really figure out each other’s bodies.

But this time was NOT like last time. This time was pure desire unleashed; no awkwardness, no hesitation, no clumsiness. Michael knew all the right places to touch, and his boldness led Alex to respond in kind. But there was something more to it, too, and Alex could feel it. Michael was holding nothing back, and not just his sexual desires but his emotional desires, too. That was what made the look on his face so scary and exhilarating; in that moment Alex saw what he meant to him. He could read it in Michael’s eyes, in his smile, in his touch. Michael loved him - there was no doubt of it.

Alex's pace quickened, fueled by a young love that still contained all possibilities. An unwritten future stretched out in front of them.

Alex bit softly at Michael’s neck, his jaw, before capturing his mouth with a kiss he hoped conveyed the intensity of his emotions. He was so close, and even though he wanted to slow down to make sure Michael was with him, he couldn't. He needed to get there and the fact that Michael's voice was murmuring in his ear, encouraging him with soft punctuated groans to go harder, go faster, wasn’t helping.

Panting and moaning together, Alex thought maybe they could actually come together but then he felt it building, cresting, he so moved to pull out but Michael held on to him, wrapping his legs tighter and gripping his ass harder. Alex had no time beyond that because then he was coming, groaning Michael's name and biting his neck and pumping his hips while the waves of orgasm washed over him. It was nearly more than he could take and he wondered if he'd pass out it felt so good...

It was over quickly, yet also seemed to go on endlessly. Slowly regaining his senses, he felt Michael, still hard, between them and even though he never wanted to separate their bodies again, even though he never wanted to remove himself from Michael’s embrace, he slowly pulled back, watching Michael's face and feeling oddly happy as Michael's expression clouded when Alex pulled out of him.

Pulling off the condom, Alex tied it off and tossed it to the floor before sitting back on his heels. He was still between his legs, Michael’s knees wide apart to accommodate Alex. Michael was hard, so hard, and Alex stared happily at the naked, open visage of Michael for a long moment before reaching out and griping him tight. Michael's reaction was instant as he sucked in a breath, his hips thrusting up and down and then he was fucking Alex's hand. Alex let him thrust, varying the pressure of his hand ever so slightly as Michael chewed on his lip and elicited soft, breathy moans.

They watched each other, eyes locked, Michael lifting his hips to push in and out of Alex's fist. It was almost more intimate than what just happened. When Alex relaxed his hand, releasing him, Michael stilled. Not speaking, they just stare.

Leaning down slowly, Alex pressed a kiss to the head of Michael’s cock and Michael sucked in sharply. Smiling, Alex took all of Michael into his mouth.

"Oh, fu-," Michael gasped, his hands flying to thread into Alex's hair and he was gripping and pressing and Alex was letting him fuck his mouth.

Alex worked his mouth on Michael, responding to the gasps and moans and the tightening grip of his hair. It didn’t take long before Michael loudly groaned, pushing Alex off him and coming, his chest now slick with more than sweat.

Michael’s eyelids were heavy as he slowly blinked; Alex watched him flutter them a few times before his eyes shifted and he peered up at Alex through his eyelashes. They looked at each other, their breathing slowing and evening out, matching. It wasn’t awkward, or embarrassing. It was comfortable, and felt…well, to Alex it felt like home.

After a few minutes, Alex moved to get up, his shifting weight causing Michael to sit up and grab his arm.

"Don't go.”

"I'll be right back," Alex smiled, pulling away and heading to the bathroom, returning with a hot, wet washcloth.

Michael was lying back, but he sat up when Alex walked back into the room. Sitting on the edge of his bed, Alex gently pressed Michael back down onto his back before proceeding to wipe him clean with the cloth. Michael's hand was on Alex’s arm the whole time, feeling up and down and around, massaging his muscles, working around his shoulder and upper back. His hand wandered as far as it could reach, all while Alex gently cleaned him up.

It was a level of intimacy Alex didn’t think he'd ever get to experience, and certainly not with Michael. Their first time had been special, up to the end anyway, but for Alex their second time would be the one against which all other times would be measured. Alex knew that without a doubt. And he wondered if it would always feel so magical (Ethereal? Cosmic?) when he and Michael were together. He hoped so...

"Thank you," Michael said, after Alex had cleaned him up.

They were lying together in bed, still naked, legs intertwined. Alex's head was resting on Michael’s chest, his left arm draped across Michael’s body. The weight of the cast on his hand pulling slightly and sending a dull ache up his arm, but it was nowhere near uncomfortable enough for Alex to relinquish the moment. He could live like this forever, safe in Michael’s embrace.

"It's no big deal," Alex responded sleepily, with a quiet yawn that elicited a soft, light laugh from Michael.

"I didn't mean about just now," Michael said softly after a stretch of silence, and from his position Alex could hear his heart rate quicken.

Alex nodded, squeezing Michael with his left arm and with a small smile he pressed a series of soft kisses to his chest.

"I'll treasure this night," Michael added, his hold in Alex tightening as a he pressed a kiss to the crown of his head.

"Me too," Alex replied, closing his eyes against Michael’s soft touch, his hand lightly tracing lines up and down Alex's back and he can’t remember, when he falls asleep, if he said the words out loud or just thought them; ‘this was the best night of my lift’.

There's bright morning sunlight streaming through the window when Alex wakes.

He feels satiated. Satisfied. A little sore in his legs. Stretching, he reaches out but finds the bed beside him cold and empty. Sitting up he listens but hears nothing other than the creaky quiet of the house around him. His bedroom door is ajar, and looking around his room Alex can’t see any of Michael's clothes. Alex climbed out of bed, pulling on a pair of shorts and hurrying to the room where Michael had been sleeping only to find all his things are gone.

Alex was confused. Hurt. Did he do something wrong? Walking back through the house, he found no trace that Michael had ever even been there. Returning to his bedroom he stood in the doorway looking around his room. That was when he finally noticed the note; the white paper blending in with the white pillowcase.

Walking slowly towards the bed, Alex felt apprehension start to creep in, unsure if he wanted to know what the note said or not.

He was scared to know.

But he has to know.

Alex,

I meant what I said last night. I'll treasure our night together. But I have to go. I'm enlisting in the Air Force and ship out to boot camp today. I didn't want to tell you because I knew you'd try to talk me out of it and I really don’t think I could ever say no to you. Please take care of yourself. I will see you again.

Michael

And that was the end of it. Until now.

They were standing roughly an arm’s length from each other, their positions reminiscent of their first kiss. Alex was having a hard time separating the memory of that day six months ago from the present. He felt like he should be saying to Michael ‘Okay, talk’.

"Why'd you do it? Why'd you enlist?" Alex asked instead, not bothering to try and hide his hurt and confusion.

Michael's expression shifted, and he cast his eyes down. Alex hoped he felt guilty, at least a little.

Alex had spent days after Michael had left feeling angry. He felt lied to, and used. And he didn’t even have anyone he could talk to. He didn’t know what Max or Isobel knew; Liz was gone, but he couldn’t talk to her, or Maria, anyway because he’d never told them about Michael to begin with. He wouldn’t out Michael just because he’d been left feeling like a jilted lover. They weren’t boyfriends, they’d made no promises…but none of that was of any comfort to Alex, who still felt abandoned.

It had taken Alex a bit of time to move on; knowing Michael would be back, knowing without a doubt he’d see him again and have the chance to confront him about the way he left; that was what gave him the strength to move past the hurt. Or at least he’d thought he’d moved past it.

"I joined up to protect myself," Michael responded, looking up again and Alex could see pleading in his expression, he could see a yearning from Michael for him to understand.

But Alex didn't understand; this was all seemingly out of the blue. Michael had never spoken positively of the military, in fact he'd outwardly criticized it many, many times.

"To protect yourself from what?" Alex asked, apprehensively.

"I found something, when I was staying at your house," Michael paused, "In the tool shed. In your dad's stuff. A folder of old photographs from 1947. From the crash. The UFO crash. Photos of your grandfather."

"What?” Alex leveled an incredulous look, a smile playing on his lips because...this was a joke, right?

But Michael’s expression never wavered, and Alex felt the absurdity he felt about what Michael was saying fade. He was being serious, and Alex didn’t know what to make of that.

“Michael-," Alex arched his brow and sighed before looking down and shaking his head. Why would Michael go back to that shed? And why search through his dad’s stuff? And…UFO’s?

Alex felt a seed of anger start to blossom in his gut. If Michael couldn't even be honest with him...

"Alex," Michael took another step closer, his hand lifting Alex's chin so they were looking each other in the eye, "I'm serious."

And for whatever reason, Alex’s doubt began to fade and he started to believe him. He wasn't sure he believed the UFO part (though his granddad had been stationed in Roswell in the late 40s…), but he believed Michael's motivation; he believed Michael believed it and for the moment that was enough.

“Fine,” Alex sighed and Michael dropped his hand, “So? What does a UFO crash have to do with you, or joining the military? Do you actually believe in that stuff?”

Alex sensed he’d said the wrong thing as soon as the words were out of his mouth. There was a shift in Michael’s expression, microscopic though it was, and Alex saw it. His guard went up; not completely, but it was there. Alex could see hesitation in Michael’s expression.

“Sorry, I-,” Alex started but was cut off.

"I'm an alien, Alex. And if your dad ever gets out of prison, I'll be in a position to protect of us from him and anyone else who might want to hurt us."

“You’re…what? Us? Who is us?" Alex stumbled, choosing to ignore for the moment the giant bombshell Michael just dropped on him.

"Me. Max. Isobel," Michael said, slowly, and Alex stared, the realization all this was really happening starting to sink in, things beginning to make sense to him.

“We found out your dad was part of a secret military project studying the crash and when he got sent to prison it was the perfect opportunity to try and find out more,” Michael said, slowly, and Alex felt his heart sink.

Not because of the alien stuff – which to be honest was still too absurd to even wrap his head around – no, it was because that meant…

“Did you only stay with me so you could snoop through my dad’s stuff?” Alex took a step back, his resolve crumbling as his heart started to crack. He’d been invested, he’d had real, true feelings for Michael and if it turned out they weren’t really reciprocated…well Alex wasn’t sure he could handle that.

“No. No!” Michael started to shuffle closer, but stopped when Alex held up his hands.

“No. I didn’t,” Michael clenched his jaw.

“Okay, maybe at first that was the plan, but I stayed because I wanted to. I found that stuff the first night I was there. I could have left right then, but I stayed. I stayed. For you.”

Alex crossed his arms and leveled a hard stare at Michael, trying to make sense of the changes in him. The Michael standing before him had gone through basic training; had been brainwashed by the US military complex. Alex might not be in, but he knew how it went. His dad was in (or had been), his brothers were all in. He’d seen firsthand how they’d each been changed after going through basic.

But Michael…the longer Alex stared the more he saw the same Michael he knew four months ago; the one he’d always known. The one he’d had the greatest night of his life with.

"I’ll always stay for you. And come back for you. And protect you," Michael added, "I'll always be here to protect you from him or anyone else. I refuse to ever let anything like that,” Michael indicated to Alex’s hand, “happen again."

"Alien?" Alex questioned, trying to hide the ridiculousness he felt in saying the word; seeing Michael stiffen slightly before he nodded, never breaking eye contact with Alex.

"I’ll tell you everything I know," Michael said softly, arm reaching out to gently grip Alex's bicep, and when Alex didn’t pull away he smiled.

Aliens. An alien. Michael.

Alex softened, relaxing his posture and arching his brow slightly.

The one thing Alex knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was he didn't want Michael to leave again. He didn't want Michael to walk away, or look away, or stop touching him. Alien or not, it was Michael, and that trumped everything else.

Michael let go of Alex's arm and Alex immediately reached out to grasp Michael's hand in his, rubbing his thumb over the soft skin on the back of his hand. Alex looked at their hands, Alex’s showing the visible scars of the physical damage from their first time together, Michael’s showing the undetectable scars of a possible coming war, the potential scars of the unknown future that lay ahead of them.

"Okay," Alex breathed, looking up to meet Michael's gaze again.

Alex was nervous, and curious. He was scared. Not of Michael (or the others) but of the unspoken intention behind Michael being in the Air Force and what that might mean. Alex was scared for Michael. And he hoped he was making the right decision; he hoped they both were making the right decision.

And even if they still barely knew each other, Alex knew enough (Michael was an alien! That was huge!). Alex knew he was safe with Michael and that Michael would never hurt him or allow him to be hurt; Alex knew Michael was safe with him, and apparently Michael knew that too. It made Alex feel so incredibly happy to know Michael trusted him enough to reveal such a big secret to him.

"Okay?"

Alex nodded, a small smile playing on his lips as he watched Michael's eyes move down to his mouth then back again.

"I love you, Alex," Michael murmured softly, invading Alex's personal space as he wrapped his arms around him and kissed him softly, tenderly.

Alex wanted to say it back, but thought he'd just enjoy the kiss first. There'd be time to say it back after.

AO3 link

#Roswell New Mexico #Alex Manes #Michael Guerin #Malex #alexmanesweek2019 #rnm #roswell nm #rnm: mine #mine #mine fic #this is like 6300 words just fyi.#scheduled post

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xtruss · 2 years ago

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Letter From Biden’s Washington: Dishonor, Trump’s and His Party’s, Is the Real January 6th Takeaway

Liz Cheney, defying the G.O.P., offered a searing indictment of the former President at Thursday’s hearing.

— By Susan B. Glasser | June 10, 2022

Liz Cheney, the Republican from Wyoming, emerged as the most brutally effective prosecutor of Donald Trump.Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty

— In last night’s long-anticipated House select committee hearing on the January 6, 2021, insurrection, viewers learned that former Attorney General Bill Barr called Trump’s election claims “bullshit”; that Trump’s own daughter Ivanka agreed with Barr; and that when one of Trump’s lawyers told his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that the claims of voter fraud were empty, Meadows asked, “There’s no there there?” But, as Susan B. Glasser writes, “the most unforgettable words were those of Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who, in defiance of her party, is helping to lead the investigation by the House panel.” What can we expect from the rest of the hearings? Glasser offers a glimpse—along with a cogent analysis of the most upsetting moment of evidence about the attack, what the true scandal of January 6th has always been, and where American politics are today — Jessie Li, Newsletter Editor

There were many memorable lines, and even a few revelations, in the long-awaited House select committee prime-time hearing on the harrowing events of January 6, 2021. Viewers on Thursday night learned that Donald Trump’s own Attorney General, Bill Barr, had dismissed his “rigged election” claims as “bullshit.” They learned that Trump’s own daughter Ivanka agreed with Barr. And they learned that Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had been informed of the complete and utter emptiness of Trump’s false election claims by one of Trump’s own campaign lawyers. “There’s no there there?” Meadows asked the lawyer.

But the most unforgettable words were those of Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who, in defiance of her party, is helping to lead the investigation by the House panel. Speaking directly to her fellow-Republicans in Congress, the vast majority of whom have continued to support and promote Trump even after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and sent them fleeing for their lives, she concluded her presentation with a warning: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

In the course of a searing forty minutes, Cheney was given the starring role in laying out the select committee’s case against Trump. She marshalled the evidence—much of it new, much of it devastating—to show how the former President knew that his claims about the election were a lie but used them to inflame his followers and summon them to the Capitol anyway. She nailed it.

It was, in the end, appropriate that it should be a Republican who emerged as the most brutally effective prosecutor of Trump, the former President who has not only escaped being banished and disgraced by his party but remains its leader and the putative front-runner for its Presidential nomination, should he run again in 2024.

At the end of her presentation, Cheney showed what might have been the night’s most revealing witness statement—a short clip of Jared Kushner. In it, Kushner was asked about the repeated threats to resign made by Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and his staff, as they sought to stop Trump from unconstitutionally seeking to overturn the election. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who served as one of the former President’s close advisers throughout his four disruptive years in the White House, said that he did not take Cipollone’s threats to resign seriously. He thought that Cipollone was just “whining.”

It was a brutal moment. Kushner did not believe Trump’s false claims about the election. But he, like so many others surrounding Trump, like so many of Cheney’s Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill, who knew full well that everything Trump said about the election was a lie, chose to wash his hands of the matter. Instead of trying to stop the President, he and Ivanka purchased a 32.2-million-dollar lot on an exclusive private island near Miami, in December, 2020, and he started writing his memoir. Whining, indeed.

The hearing began and ended, as it should have, with Trump himself. “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney said, consciously echoing an interview that she gave to Fox News on the afternoon of January 6th, while she and her colleagues were still in hiding from the pro-Trump mob. It said everything about where American politics are today that on Thursday night, a year and a half after the events in question, Fox News did not dare to broadcast Liz Cheney’s remarks—or to air the full hearing live, as the other networks did. Instead, it chose to run its regular evening programming of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the Trump propaganda machine.

There is a moment, often replayed in the various January 6th retrospectives, that always hits me like a gut punch. It is the frantic call over a police radio at around 2:30 p.m. on January 6th. “We lost the line! We’ve lost the line,” an officer screams. It was the moment when the Capitol was overrun, ransacked, and occupied by a hostile force for the first time since the War of 1812. I wanted to cry listening to it again on Thursday night.

The January 6th committee hearings will continue throughout June and have been a year and a half in the making. The panel has reportedly interviewed a thousand witnesses and reviewed many thousands of pages of documents. It has chronicled what the committee’s chairman, the Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, said on Thursday was a “sprawling, multipart conspiracy aimed at overturning the Presidential election.” Cheney declared it a “sophisticated seven-part plan,” and future hearings will dive deeper into its components: Trump’s spreading of election misinformation; his plot to fire the acting Attorney General in order to get the Justice Department to further his false claims; his pressure on Vice-President Mike Pence to block the counting of the electoral votes; his pressure on Republican-led state legislatures to switch their electoral votes and scheme to send fake electoral certificates to Congress; his summoning of the mob to the Capitol on January 6th; and his refusal to do anything to stop them once they were there, rampaging.

Thursday’s hearing suggested that there is still much to be learned from the investigation, as the evening offered only a glimpse of what the testimony has uncovered. One of the night’s more tantalizing nuggets was Cheney’s revelation that Trump, when told about rioters chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” seemed to agree with the sentiment, telling his staff, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.” Another came when she noted that multiple Republican members of Congress who had participated in Trump’s plotting had unsuccessfully sought Presidential pardons for their roles.

After less than two hours, it was clear that much of the most damaging information from the committee’s probe will come from Trump’s aides, advisers, and even family members. Jason Miller, a Trump campaign adviser, was shown testifying that Trump had been clearly and unambiguously informed by his campaign’s data expert that he would certainly lose. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that he had not heard from Trump himself on January 6th but had received a call from Meadows. The White House chief of staff expressed no interest in the attack on American democracy, according to the nation’s top military officer, but offered only concern that Trump, not Pence, still be seen as in control. “We have to kill the narrative that the Vice-President is making all the decisions,” Milley testified that Meadows told him. “We need to establish the narrative that the President is still in charge.” To Milley—and to all of us listening at home—the conclusion was obvious. As Milley said, it was just “politics, politics, politics.”

Before the hearings began, committee members had promised stunning revelations. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat and lead House prosecutor of Trump during his second impeachment trial, memorably said that they would “blow the roof off the House.” I’m not sure we know yet whether he was right. Already it is clear that the information gathered by this remarkable investigation will keep historians busy for years, sifting through the wreckage of an American political system battered by the former President’s unprecedented and unpresidential actions. But, unfortunately, the true scandal of January 6th had always been apparent, long before the House select committee made it clear once again on Thursday night: the mob never would have been there had Donald Trump not lied about the election he lost. ♦

— Susan B. Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on life in Washington. She co-wrote, with Peter Baker, “The Man Who Ran Washington.”

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sciencespies · 3 years ago

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The True History Behind 'Six,' the Tudor Musical About Henry VIII's Wives

https://sciencespies.com/history/the-true-history-behind-six-the-tudor-musical-about-henry-viiis-wives/

The True History Behind 'Six,' the Tudor Musical About Henry VIII's Wives

Meilan Solly

Associate Editor, History

Inspiration struck Toby Marlow during a comparative poetry class at Cambridge University in fall 2016. Participating in a discussion on William Blake, he found his mind wandering and began scribbling a series of unrelated notes: “Henry VIII’s wives → like a girl group … Need Lucy!!”

Then an undergraduate student tasked with writing an original show for the upcoming Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Marlow brought his idea to classmate Lucy Moss, who agreed to help bring his vision of a Tudor-themed pop musical to life. The product of the pair’s collaboration—Six, a modern reimagining of the lives of Henry VIII’s six wives—premiered on London’s West End in 2019 to much acclaim. (A cast soundtrack released in September 2018 similarly became an unqualified success.) Now, after an extended delay caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the musical is finally making its Broadway debut.

L to R: Abby Mueller (Jane Seymour), Samantha Pauly (Katherine Howard), Adrianna Hicks (Catherine of Aragon), Andrea Macasaet (Anne Boleyn), BrittneyMack (Anna of Cleves) and Anna Uzele (Catherine Parr)

Liz Lauren

Six “didn’t come out of a love of the Tudor period particularly,” says Marlow, 26. “It came from us having an interest in the representation of women in musical theater, having women on stage doing funny and hilarious things.” Moss, 27, adds, “What we were interested in doing was reframing the way that women have been perceived in history and telling their side of the story.”

The Tudor period, with its “soap opera”-esque political machinations and rich cast of female characters, offered the duo the opportunity to explore contemporary issues like feminism through a historical lens. Though Six prominently features the rhyme historically used to describe the fates of the Tudor king’s queens—“divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived”—the musical moves beyond these reductive one-word summaries to present its subjects as fully realized individuals. “With all of them,” says Moss, “there was so much of interest beyond the moment they got married or divorced.”

Marlow and Moss drew on a range of sources when writing Six, including Antonia Fraser’s The Wives of Henry VIII and documentaries hosted by historianLucy Worsley. The musical’s layered repartee deftly balances references to Tudor culture with nods to modern music, like the line “Stick around and you’ll suddenly see more” (a play on “Suddenly, Seymour” from Little Shop of Horrors). Still, Marlow explains, the show’s goal isn’t to convey history with 100 percent accuracy. Instead, “It’s [asking], ‘What if Anne Boleyn was like this?’ And how does that change the way you think about this very famous historical figure?”

youtube

Six frames its story as a makeshift talent competition in which the wife whose life was most tragic “wins.” The rules are simple: “The queen who was dealt the worst hand … shall be the one to lead the band.” Each wife sings a solo summarizing her experiences, engaging in acerbic banter in between verses. (During these numbers, the other wives act as both backup singers and dancers; beyond the six solos, the 80-minute show features three group numbers.) Ultimately, the women decide to form a girl band instead, leaving the king out of the narrative and imagining an alternate future featuring far happier ends for all of them.

Historian Jessica Storoschuk, who has written about Six extensively on her blog, has found that in school and popular culture, the queens are usually only talked about in terms of their fate. “[Six] is this kind of ridiculous satire of [that],” she says. “It’s a really intelligent way to explore their experiences, or, I should say, one part of their experiences, because their downfalls are not all of their lives.”

Below, find a song-by-song (or wife-by-wife) breakdown of the true history behind Six. Click through the interactive tools to learn more about specific lyrics from the show.

The song: “No Way,” a Beyoncé- and JLo-inspired “girl boss feminism” anthem, says Moss

Though Catherine of Aragon’s marriage to Henry lasted 24 years—collectively, his five other marriages spanned just 14 years—she has long been overshadowed by her successors. The daughter of Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, Catherine came to England as the bride of Henry’s older brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales. But Arthur died shortly after the pair’s wedding, leading the Spanish princess to (eventually) marry his heir, Henry.

By all accounts, the couple enjoyed a loving relationship that only deteriorated due to a lack of a male heir and the king’s infatuation with Anne Boleyn. In the late 1520s, Henry sought a divorce from his first wife, arguing that her previous relationship with Arthur was the reason for the couple’s lack of a surviving son. Determined to protect her daughter Mary’s rights, Catherine refused to concede.

Apple News readers, click here to view this interactive.

Six’s account of these events, “No Way,” takes its cue from a June 21, 1529, meeting at Blackfriars in London. After years of debate over the validity of the royal couple’s marriage, a papal court was conceived to address the king’s so-called Great Matter. Appealing directly to her husband, Catherine fell to her knees and delivered an impassioned monologue:

Intending (as I perceive) to put me from you, I take God and all the world to witness, that I have been to you a true and humble wife, ever conformable to your will and pleasure. … If there be any just cause by the law that ye can allege against me, either of dishonesty or any other impediment to banish and put me from you, I am well content to depart, to my great shame and dishonor; and if there be none, then here I most lowly beseech you let me remain in my former estate, and receive justice at your princely hand.

A 1544 portrait of the future Mary I, Henry and Catherine’s daughter

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Portrait believed to depict a young Catherine of Aragon

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

After uttering these words, Catherine left Blackfriars, ignoring the clerk’s calls for her to return. Without turning around, she declared, “On, on, it makes no matter, for it is no impartial court for me, therefore I will not tarry.” The queen was correct in her assessment: Henry had no intention of remaining in the marriage. Determined to wed Anne, he broke from the Catholic Church in order to make her his wife.

Catherine’s Six solo could’ve been a “super emotional [sad] ballad,” says Moss. Instead, she and Marlow chose to emphasize the queen’s defiance, emulating Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” and setting the tone for the rest of the musical.

The real Catherine followed through on her fictionalized counterpart’s pledge to remain “queen till the end of my life,” refusing to acknowledge her marriage’s annulment even on her deathbed in 1536. Catherine’s legacy, historian Julia Fox told Smithsonian magazine last year, “is that of a wronged woman … who did not accept defeat, who fought for what she believed to be right until the breath left her body.”

The song: “Don’t Lose Ur Head,” a “cheeky” number modeled on Lily Allen and Kate Nash, according to Moss

Arguably the most (in)famous of the six wives, Anne is alternatively portrayed as a scheming, power-hungry seductress; a victim of her callous father’s vaulting ambition; or a worldly, charismatic woman who rose to the kingdom’s highest office only to be targeted by jealous men.

A near-contemporary painting of Anne Boleyn

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The truth of the matter depends on which scholar one asks. Most of Anne’s letters and papers were destroyed following her May 1536 execution on contrived charges of adultery, incest, witchcraft and conspiring to kill her husband, so much of what is known about her comes from outside observers, some of whom had reason to paint her in an unforgiving light. Even the queen’s date of birth, writes historian Antonia Fraser, is a fact “that can never be known with absolute certainty (like so much about Anne Boleyn).”

Anne’s song in Six, “Don’t Lose Ur Head,” draws its name from her method of execution: beheading by sword. Moss says she and Marlow view the number as a playful response to historians’ continued vilification of the queen as “calculating and manipulative”: “We were like, wouldn’t it be fun to mock [that trope] and make it that she was like ‘Well, I’m just living. I did this thing randomly, and now everything’s gone crazy.’”

Apple News readers, click here to view this interactive tool.

Though the tone of “Don’t Lose Ur Head” is intentionally more irreverent than the real queen, who Storoschuk says “was incredibly shrewd, very well educated, well read and well spoken,” the broad strokes of the song are historically accurate. Anne spent her teenage years in the courts of Margaret of Austria and Francis I of France, gaining a cosmopolitan worldview that helped her stand out in England. When she caught Henry’s eyes, she was a maid of honor in service of his first wife; rather than becoming Henry’s mistress, as her sister Mary had, Anne refused to sleep with the king until they were married. To wed Anne, Henry broke with the Catholic Church and established himself as head of the Church of England. Finally, the once-besotted king fell out of love in dramatic—and, for Anne, fatal—fashion just three years after their long-awaited marriage.

The song: “Heart of Stone,” a slow, Adele-like ballad

Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, has gone down in history as the “boring” one. According to Fraser, she was intelligent and “naturally sweet-natured,” with the “salient characteristics [of] virtue and common good sense.” Historian Alison Weir similarly describes Jane as “endowed with all the qualities then thought becoming in a wife: meekness, docility and quiet dignity.”

Moss and Marlow tried to flesh out these descriptions by highlighting Jane’s political savvy. During her comparatively brief courtship with Henry, Jane drew on many of the same tactics used by Anne Boleyn, most notably by refusing to sleep with him until they were married. Presenting a submissive front may have been a tactic, says Moss. It’s also worth noting that Jane used her position to advance causes she cared about, including restoring her stepdaughters, Mary and Elizabeth, to their father’s favor and speaking out against the closure of England’s religious houses.

Apple News readers, click here to view this interactive.

On one occasion, Henry reportedly dismissed his new wife by advising her to “attend to other things, [for] the last queen had died in consequence of meddling too much in state affairs.” “Heart of Stone” acknowledges this risk, but Six’s version of Jane chooses to remain steadfast in her love of Henry and their son, the future Edward VI.

Following Jane’s death in childbirth in 1537, Henry memorialized her as “the fairest, the most discreet and the most meritorious of all his wives”—a distinction no doubt motivated by the fact that she’d given the king his only surviving male heir, writes Weir. (Edward took the throne “Six” reflects this enviable status by identifying Jane as “the only one he truly loved.” As she herself acknowledges in “Heart of Stone,” however, Henry’s affection is conditional on her ability to provide him with a son.

Henry chose to include Jane, rather than his then-wife, Catherine Parr, in this dynastic portrait. Painted around 1545, the work depicts Edward, Henry and Jane at its center and Mary and Elizabeth in the wings.

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Speaking with Vulture last year, Moss said, “The idea was about the strength of choosing to love someone and committing to someone, and that being an equally valid feminist experience.” She added, “I love that [Jane] gets to say, ‘I wasn’t stupid, I wasn’t naïve.’”

The song: “Get Down,” a 16th-century take on the rap and hip-hop “trope of being popular and bragging about your Ferrari and your Grey Goose,” says Moss

Anne (or, as the musical calls her, Anna) of Cleves was, in some historians’ view, the most successful of Henry’s six queens. After just six months of marriage, she earned the king’s enduring affection by agreeing to an annulment. Then, she proceeded to outlive her former husband, not to mention the rest of his wives, by a decade. “[Anne] did get pushed to the side in a rather unceremonious way, but she had a pretty good life,” says Storoschuk. “She was given several properties. She gambled a lot. She got to go hunting, she had the best clothes and the best food. She was loved at court.”

A 1540s portrait of Anne of Cleves by Bartholomaeus Bruyn the Elder

St. John’s College, University of Oxford, via Art U.K. under CC BY-NC-ND

“Get Down” focuses on this victorious period in Anne’s life, celebrating her independence as a wealthy, unmarried woman at Tudor court. In line with the musical’s goal of reclaiming the narrative, the number also reframes the incident that led to Anne’s annulment. Henry, enchanted by a flattering Hans Holbein portrait of his bride-to-be, was reportedly repulsed by the “tall, big-boned and strong-featured” woman who arrived in England at the beginning of 1540. Declaring “I like her not! I like her not!” after their first meeting, the king only went through with the wedding to maintain diplomatic ties with Anne’s home, the German Duchy of Cleves, and other Protestant allies across the European continent.

After just six months of marriage, Henry, eager to replace his short-reigning queen with the young, vivacious Katherine Howard, had the union annulled on the grounds of non-consummation and Anne’s pre-contract with Francis, Duke of Lorraine. Anne, from then on known as the “king’s beloved sister,” spent the rest of her days in luxury.

Apple News readers, click here to view this interactive.

Moss studied history at Cambridge and says much of her schoolwork centered around early modern German visual culture. Six actually includes a standalone song, “Haus of Holbein,” that satirizes 16th-century beauty culture and Henry’s portrait-driven search for a fourth wife: “Hans Holbein goes around the world / Painting all of the beautiful girls / From Spain / To France / And Germany / The king chooses one / But which one will it be?”

Given Holbein’s reputation for accuracy and Henry’s own declining looks (at the time of the couple’s wedding, the king was 48 years old), Marlow and Moss chose to turn the tables, having Anne proclaim herself a fan of the much-vilified portrait. Further cementing Anne’s mastery of the situation, “Get Down”’s refrain finds the supposedly unattractive queen hanging up her likeness “for everyone to see.”

The song: “All You Wanna Do,” a catchy number modeled on the work of “young pop stars sexualized early on in their careers,” like Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears and Ariana Grande, as Marlow told Vulture

For much of history, Henry’s fifth wife, Katherine Howard, has been dismissed as a wanton woman of little import. Writing in 1991, Weir described her as a “frivolous, empty-headed young girl who cared for little else but dancing and pretty clothes.” Fraser, meanwhile, wrote that “[h]ere was no intelligent adult woman, wise in the ways of the world—and of course courts.” More recent scholarship has taken a sympathetic view of the queen, with Gareth Russell’s 2017 book, Young and Damned and Fair, leading the conversation. As Russell argues, “[Katherine] was toppled by a combination of bad luck, poor decisions, and the Henrician state’s determination to punish those who failed its king.”

Katherine’s Six solo, titled “All You Wanna Do,” echoes Russell’s characterization of its subject as a victim of circumstance and predatory older men. Though her exact birthdate is unknown, Katherine may have been as young as 17 when she was beheaded on charges of treasonous adultery in February 1542. Henry, comparatively, was 50 at the time of his disgraced wife’s execution.

Apple News readers, click here to view this interactive.

The king was far from the first man to sexualize Katherine. “All You Wanna Do” details the queen’s relationships in heart-wrenching detail, from a liaison with her music teacher, Henry Manox (the song suggests that he was 23 to Katherine’s 13, but as Storoschuk points out, he may have been closer to 33), to an affair with Francis Dereham, secretary to the dowager duchess, Katherine’s step-grandmother. When each new romance begins, the teenager declares herself hopeful that this time will be different. By the end of the song, however, she realizes that all of her suitors have the same goal in mind.

According to Moss, she and Marlow wanted Katherine’s song to start out with a “sexy, seductive” tone before transforming into a “narrative of abuse” with echoes of today’s #MeToo movement. Marlow adds, “It was kind of like us talking about what happened to one of the queens and finding a way of relating it to something that we would recognize as a modern female experience.”

Katherine’s “life was so tragic,” says Storoschuk. “She was so young, and she really had very little agency over her own life. ‘All You Wanna Do’ really encompasses that.”

The song: “I Don’t Need Your Love,” a soulful, Alicia Keys–inspired love song

Often reduced to the one-word summary of “survived” or the role of nursemaid to a succession of ailing husbands, Henry’s sixth wife, Catherine Parr, was actually a renowned scholar, religious reformer and perhaps even protofeminist. In Six, she takes ownership of these attributes, refusing to be defined by her romantic relationships and instead listing her manifold accomplishments: “Remember that I was a writer / I wrote books and psalms and meditations / Fought for female education / So all my women can independently study scripture / I even got a woman to paint my picture.”

Apple News readers, click here to view this interactive.

As the last of the six to take the stage, the fictionalized Catherine has dual obligations: namely, sharing her story and setting up a satisfying musical finale. “We needed one of the queens to be like ‘Wait, we shouldn’t be competing with each other. We should support each other,’” says Moss. “Fortunately, [Catherine’s role] as a writer, educator and advocate for women helped with that.” Encouraging the wives to take back the microphone, Catherine calls for them to assert themselves outside of their marriages to Henry. “It’s not what went down in history,” the six admit, “[b]ut tonight, I’m singing this for me.”

Catherine Parr’s fourth husband, Thomas Seymour

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The real Catherine led a rich life beyond what’s captured in “I Don’t Need Your Love.” As alluded to by the song’s first verses, which find Catherine telling a lover that she has “no choice” but to marry the king, the twice-married young widow initially had another suitor in mind: Thomas Seymour, the dashing younger brother of Henry’s third wife, Jane. (The would-be couple wed soon after Henry’s death in 1547, but their marriage was tainted by Thomas’ improper conduct toward his new stepdaughter, the future Elizabeth I.)

Despite being forced into a relationship with Henry, Catherine made the most of her position, pushing her husband to embrace Protestantism and encouraging him to restore his daughters to the line of succession. She narrowly escaped an attempt by the court’s conservative faction to have her executed on charges of heresy, winning back Henry’s favor even after he’d signed a warrant for her arrest. Catherine died just a year after the king, succumbing to complications from childbirth in 1548.

youtube

Based on a True Story

British History

Elizabeth I

England

Henry VIII

Kings

Medieval Ages

Monarchs

Musical Theater

Pop culture

Queens

Theater

Tudors

#History

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deusmodum · 8 years ago

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NAME: Liz GENDER: genderqueer. EYE COLOR: green. HAIR COLOR: brown / soon to be red again. RELATIONSHIP: in a polyamorous relationship with my qpp and my girlfriend. ZODIAC: leo FAVORITE COLOR: green / purple FAVORITE SEASON: fall / winter. FAVORITE PLACE: don’t necessarily have one other than my room. FAVORITE HOLIDAY: halloween. FAVORITE VIDEO GAME: ffx / destiny / dishonored LAST SHOW/MOVIE YOU WATCHED: shameless us / nymphomania volume ii

WHAT’S YOUR HONEST OPINION ABOUT YOUR MUSE? I.. think she’s probably one of the most important characters I’ve found in my life, honestly. She has her ways, she can be brutal and angry and capable so many horrible things, but eventually chooses to reel that part of herself in to help and care about others. That speaks to me on such a personal level. I see so much of myself in her from that darkness within her to the way she sees herself and I relate to it so much that it’s almost painful. I love her and will always love her. Good, bad, and ugly.

WOULD YOU DATE YOUR MUSE? No, she’d kill me. I have no desire to date her at all aside from that though.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE KINDS OF THREADS? The ones where I can explore thoughts and feelings in depth, whether it be fluff, angst or smut. Anything that lets me delve deep into a character’s psyche will be my favorite always.

ARE YOU A SELECTIVE ROLE-PLAYER? I can be.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE MUSE (IF YOU HAVE MORE THAN ONE)? Out of my muses, I think Root would be my favorite canon. And as for my original characters ( you can find them all at @digimmortality ), it fluctuates from muse to muse. Some days I like some more than others, but I love them all equally.

WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO JOIN THE FANDOM? I’d had an indie blog before for an original character in the Destiny fandom, but it faded away. After a few unsuccessful group rps, and my downward spiral into Person of Interest sort of happening at the same time ( as well as writing her in a 1x1 ), i wanted to see what it would be like to write her with others and explore more of her. luckily, most of the people i write with all sort of joined around the same time as me and have made it worth it to stay around.

DO YOU SEE YOURSELF STAYING WITH THE FANDOM FOR A LONG TIME? Absolutely, I’ll write Root for as long as I can. The show itself is so rich with canon source material, and can be crossovered with so many other beautiful shows, and has the potential for really awesome canon-compliant AUs. That combined with how relaxed I am here and how much the people here mean to me and make me feel so welcome and loved.. I can see myself being here for a while.

TAGGED BY: @fatherofmachine TAGGING: @alittlemcyhem , @apragmatist , @goodsoldi3r , @xtremesoteric , @themimicry , @thetheurgist + anyone else who would like to steal it. there’s no obligation if you don’t want to do this either!

#▸⟨ s��ɴᴄᴇ ᴡʜᴇɴ ɪs ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʀᴇʟᴇᴠᴀɴᴛ ⟩◂ ‹ ooc ›

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50funny · 4 years ago

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Mage- Chapter 63- Special Assignment

Written By 50Funny

Part 1- VIPs

Liz, Bip, and Alex stood in the neat and clean hallway in front of a small door being guarded by two soldiers. Liz looked up at one of the soldiers with a confused and somewhat frustrated expression.

“Huh, what the hell do you mean?” Liz said aggressively.

“Just like we said, he can come in but without one of those red cards I can't let you enter.” One of the soldiers replied, maintaining his composure.

Liz took in a deep breath preparing for another tirade. Alex stepped in front of her.

“Listen I’m not going anywhere without my friends. If they don’t come in then I don’t simple as that,” Alex threatened.

“You have been summoned by the president himself for an important meeting. If you refuse then you will be in active rebellion against the state. Is that really worth it just to prove some kind of a point?” said the other soldier.

The man who had accompanied the president during the meeting with all the mages walked down the hallway towards Liz, Alex, and Bip. He looked down at the piece of paper clipped to his clipboard, scanning the page and writing on it. He stopped in his tracks and looked up as he heard the commotion happening at the door in front of him. Liz pushed Alex out of the way to once again face off against the soldiers.

“Listen I have to have a word with the president so I'm getting in there one way or another,”

Liz held up her hand next to her. It began to glow a light blue tinge as the room's temperature slowly began to drop. The solider raised their weapons up and shifted into position ready to fight. The two stared each other off waiting for the other to make the first move. Liz clenched her fist tightly before taking a step forward towards the men.

“Settle down settle down, no need for anyone to get hurt,” the man said as he steed towards the group.

Liz stopped in her tracks and turned to look at the man. The solider also looked before quickly dropping their arms and saluted the man.

“Umm… who are you?” asked Bip.

“Don’t be rude… that's the vice president.” One of the solider said.

“Haha, it’s fine, no need to berate him for it. Now what seems to be the problem here?” the vice president said.

Liz looked at the man with a mix of frustration and anger.

“I need to see the president and these two don’t seem to get that.”

“The boy has been authorized to see the president but the girl and the flying rat don't have authorization.”

“Who are you calling a rat”

The vice president turned to look at the two men.

“Well I appreciate your hard work and effort but there’s no need to cause a fight over this. The meeting isn’t anything confidential so there shouldn’t be any problems if she comes with us.”

“Huh… really?” said Bip.

Liz, Bip, and Alex all looked on in surprise at the vice presidents' carefree nature towards security. The two soldiers stood aside leaving the doorway unblocked. The men saluted as the vice stepped forward and open the door. He walked through into the corridor behind before beckoning for the group to follow behind him. Alex and Bip stepped through the into the corridor followed by Liz making faces at the soldiers as she did. The group followed behind the vice as he walked down the long corridor still writing on his paper.

“I’m sorry about that, their good solider but sometimes people around here can be a little bit uptight, Mis?”

“Liz… thanks for the help back there.” Liz answered.

“Umm.. and what can we call you… sir?” asked Bip.

“The official title is Vice President Stone, But you can call me Joe, no need to be too formal.”

“You seem pretty casual for the vice president,” Alex said in confusion. “Oh, by the way, I’m Al…”

“Alex, I already know all about you.”

“Huh how do you know me already?”

Joe signed the bottom of the piece of paper before lowering his clipboard to his side and focusing on where he was walking.

“The green and blue cards were handed out at random with seventy percent being green and thirty being blue. The red card that you received was special,” Joe explained. “I was tasked with going through a list of all mages called to the meeting and listing those best suited for a special assignment and the one highest on that list who actually showed up would be selected.”

Alex listened on intently to the vice president's word.

“So… what your saying is…” Alex said, his mind starting to race. “I’m basically the best mage ever, I’m the best man for the job,” Alex began to rant, no small hint of pride coating his voice.”

Bip and Liz rolled their eyes as they listened to Alex continue to ramble on.

“Haha… well, to be honest, you were actually our second choice.”

Alex stopped in his tracks as he felt a pain in his chest and his pride shattering leaving him to soak in his embarrassment. Liz and Bip began to snicker at Alex further drenching him in his embarrassment.

“Haha guess you’re not quite as good as you thought you where… hey, number two?”

“Oh please, teach me your greatness mighty number two.”

“Shut up I’m still better than either of you!” Alex yelled. He had a moment of realization, quickly calming down and looking to the vice president. “Huh hang on a second. Did you say a special assignment? What am I going to be doing?”

Joe let out a slight smile before stopping as he reached the door at the end of the hall.

“I'll let the man himself explain that to you.”

Joe reached out his hand and pulled the door open and walked through. Liz Bip and Alex turned to look at each other, nodding in solidarity before walking through the door.

Part 2- The Commander And Chief

The group entered the room and looked around in amazement. The walls were covered in stunning and expensive pieces of art. In the center of the room was a large circular rug with a leather couch on either side. Along the back wall of the room was a large window looking out over a beautiful garden with the silk curtains being held out of the way with golden rope. Sitting in front of the window was a large, heavy-looking wooden desk with the president sitting behind it smiling at the group as they looked around. On either side of him stood a bodyguard keeping a close eye on the group and following there every move.

“Ahh Alex… it’s good to finally see you, I've heard so much about you,” The President said as he stood up and held his hand out towards Alex.

Alex gaze shifted across to look at the president. He stared at his hand with confusion for a moment before reaching out to shake it.

“Ahh yeah it’s good to meet you to… Sir…” Alex stammered awkwardly. “So you already know who I am?”

“Please no need for the formality, call me Chris, and of course I know you, Joe has told me all about you. Not even a Mage for a year and you’ve already had quite a promising career, haven’t you? You managed to infiltrate and take down the infamous Channel 4014 and put an end to the horrors being committed there, a feat that the government was unable to perform for years. You also took part in the operation in Niske meaning you already have experience working with the military, and on a personal note, the events in Niske lead to my administration gaining power… so thank you for that. From what we can tell you also have quite the history before becoming a Mage, traveling the country, and getting into all sorts of mischief. All of this seems to make you the perfect candidate to work as my bodyguard.” The President explained.

“Your bodyguard?” Questioned Alex.

“Yes… My team of body guard’s will be with me at the signing in Lemia with me and while I trust in there ability I would feel more comfortable with a skilled mage by my side, so what do you say?”

Alex turned away and thought for a moment. The bodyguard to the Presidents right let out a slight growl.

“Sir… please reconsider,” the guard said.

Chris turned to look to his guard with a surprised expression.

“As the chief of your guard, I can assure you my team is more then capable of keeping you safe. There is no need to hire some child.”

“Please Adam… I’ve told you not to call me sir. I know as the chief of guard you must feel some sort of dishonor at me hiring extra help but trust me I have plenty of faith in you and your team. Having a mage around is simply an extra precaution.”

“There’s no need to reprimand him,” Alex said drawing the president's attention back to him. “Thanks for the offer and all, I'm flattered really… but the answer is no. You’re not wrong about any of my accomplishments so I can definitely see why you would want me on your team, but there is one thing that you didn’t account for. I have my own reasons for doing the things that I do, my own goal that I’m willing to risk my life for. The only reason I even stuck around to hear what this job was was to satisfy my own curiosity. So the answer is no, I'm not gonna risk my own life for something that doesn’t benefit me at all.”

The chief guard looked at Alex and let out a low pitch growl.

“See sir, Mages are all just selfish creatures.”

Chris raised his hand up in front of his subordinate instantly silencing him.

“So you say that you have your own personal reason for what you do, by any chance, you wouldn’t be talking about your father would you.”

A wave of shock hit Alex as the president's word sunk in. He took a step back as confusion spread across his face.

“What the… ho… how the hell do you know about that.”

“We’re the government… Your father was a Mage and the founder of the Guild Of The Silver Sun. He retired to look after you and your sister but was pulled back into the line of action for a special government job. He later disappeared and was reported as deceased. You know I was actually poking around some old archived documents from the old administration and managed to find some classified documents about your father… Tell you what, you join me in my mission to bring peace, and ill give you all the documents regarding your dad. What do you say?”

Alex averted his gaze from the president and raised his hand to his chin. His mind began to race as he considered the proposal.

“Peace huh… don’t make me laugh!” Liz yelled as she stepped forward towards the president.

Alex snapped out of his thought and turned to look at his friend. The bodyguards reached into there concealed holsters and pulled out their guns. They aimed their weapons directly at Liz as she continued to look threateningly towards The President.

“You talk about peace like you actually think it's possible. You have to realize that Lemia won't give up until every last magic user is dead.”

“Umm… who is she?” Chris said as he turned to face Joe.

“Shes appears to be a companion of Alex, I let her in,” the Vice President explained.

The President let out a brief sigh before raising his hand up to his guards. The guards lowered their weapons to there side.

“You seem to have some very strong opinion on the Lemians, might I ask why?” Asked the President.

“Because I am one!” Liz yelled at the top of her voice, Alex and Bip looked over to Liz in shock from her sudden confession. “I was raised in a Lamian household by loyal Lemian parents. I learned first hand what the Lemians think of magic users. They think magic is evil and won't be satisfied until every last one of us is dead… and you wanna talk about peace with them? the only peace Lemia wants is socked with blood, so if we want to survive the only option is to strike first.”

There was an uncomfortable silence that came over the room as Liz started to breathe heavily. The president looked down at his desk before closing his eyes.

“I’m sorry that you had to go through all of that.”

Liz let out a slight grunt of confusion as the president looked back up from his desk.

“I understand your pain and anger at Lemia, but I also understand the pain that this constant war with them has caused.” The president stood up and walked over to the window behind him. He looked out over the soldiers going about their business below. “ I have been lucky enough to get to lead this country through a time of relative peace, however, I have heard of the horrors brought by a full-scale war with Lemia. If we continue on the path we are now, war is an inevitability with them and I don’t think I could bear to see my people suffer through that let alone lead them through it.” The president turned around to once again look at Liz as he walked back over to his seat. “ I know there is a good chance this whole thing falls apart, hence the extra precaution, however, I cant turn up the chance to bring on the first true peace between our countries there has ever been. I hope you can understand that.”

Liz looked away in thought for a moment. She clenched her fist together tightly as she struggled to hold her tung. She turning back to face the president.

“Ok, I can understand that I’m sorry for my outburst. But despite that I still think that this mission is a fool's errand, I couldn’t live with myself if this all goes wrong and I didn’t do anything to stop it so… let me be a bodyguard so I can be there to fight when the time comes.”

“I’m sorry but no, I have no use for any more guard’s, you will work the position you were assigned,”

Joe shuffled over to the president before leaning over to whisper into his ear.

“Umm excuse me, if I might make a suggestion, if she has grown up surrounded by Lemian culture then her insight might be useful. We should at least place her on the forward strike force to put her knowledge to better use.”

Chris once again looked down in thought before looking up to Joe and nodding.

“Ok then, you can come with the main attack force. Now I have some work to do so if you wold please make your way to the barracks for further instruction."

The group nodded before turning around and walking towards the exit, preparing themselves for their new life as soldiers.

________________________________________________________________ Thank you for reading chapter 63 of mage. forgot to upload this yesterday but spose it doesnt really matter since no one reads these. If you like what you see consider checking out my AO3 at this link https://archiveofourown.org/users/50Funny to see all new chapters 3 days early. If you feel so inclined please consider following my tumblr for all updates and other tid bits. Until next time , have a good one.

#Mage #Magic #Magical #Story #Original Story #Fantasy #Fantasy Story #Writing #50Funny

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alfausanews · 6 years ago

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Liz Peek: Instead of attacking Trump, here's what Romney should be doing

It was dishonorable for Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah to write an op-ed for The Washington Post attacking President Trump.

#Technology #Sports #News #Politicts #Actors

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wantonlywindswept · 5 years ago

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muses: here, have some writing mojo! it’s only been like six months!

me: great, fabulous, wonderful, welcome back! so what are we writing about?

muses: jameson curnow getting ptsd and having a panic attack

me: ...

me: u kno what, i’ll take it

#shitposting #dishonored #liz writes dishonored #apparently #jameson curnow #i know i know he's basically an OC at this point #does this keep me from loving him?#no

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thegeminisage · 6 years ago

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what is this dishonored i keep seeing from u 👀👀👀

HI SORRY I TOOK SO LONG TO ANSWER U I WAS GONE ALL DAY PLS TELL ME UR STILL AROUND

dishonored is a game for ps4 (well the first one was on ps3 but they remastered it & the 2nd one is ps4) and it’s really good

basically it’s about this dude named corvo he’s the body guard to an empress and one day she gets ganked and her small daughter gets kidnapped and corvo gets blamed for both of these things and tossed in jail and tortured and sentenced to death ie he’s dishonored

and then someone helps bust u outta prison and a magic twink shows up and marks your hand to give you witchcraft powers and you get a SECOND CHANCE and then it’s your mission to find out where ur small rat daughter is, rescue her, avenge the empress, and clear your name

and u can choose how you want to play - if you want to do a “clean hands” playthru where you kill no one and redeem yourself and remain an “innocent” man OR if you want to murder EVERYBODY for doing this to you

(and the world is like 1800s london and there’s a plague happening and it’s a police state and everybody is dying and rich people are the Worst and also whales power everything - whale oil makes electricity and whale meat is what people eat but the whales are gods maybe? it’s spooky. also you can eat rats to recover magic power)

and anyway the more you kill the darker the world around you gets - there are more plague rats, more sick people, etc.

it’s cool because there’s a lot of creative ways to accomplish whatever you’re doing - there’s about 600 ways to kill people or not kill people, to stealth or not stealth, it’s all very open-ended even if storywise you mostly get one of 2.5 endings

and while it can sometimes be frustrating the game doesnt TELL you everything automatically - some story stuff has to be gleaned by going through notes - like that corvo is immune to the plague or who the empress’s daughter’s bio dad is or whatever. the worldbuilding is #good and it’s bethesda published so the gameplay is sometimes deeply hilarious. i can’t rec it highly enough. come to dunwall, eat rats, kill people, listen to killer sea shanties

#personal #liz answers asks #dishonored #liz plays dishonored #cant remember which tag i used #i have a playthru on my youtube channel...#i even wrote a fanfiction. i'm very picky about what i write fic about but i was Moved #didnt think id like that game but i love it #its VERY violent but man it's so much fun

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wantonlywindswept · 5 years ago

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i don’t have my computer so there is no fancy graphic, but here’s another one off the @badthingshappenbingo list. Dishonored fandom, Geoff/Thomas, written for @darthfluff and like the four other anons who asked for it

#dishonored #dishonored fanfiction #darthfluff #liz writes dishonored #badthingshappenbingo #geoff x thomas #whump bingo #i honestly had a good chunk of this done it just needed finishing #and i felt like writing SOMETHING #so here have a thing

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wantonlywindswept · 6 years ago

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more Thomas/Geoff soulmate shenanigans

‘ah yes’, says my brain, like a useless turd, ‘in response to not being able to write something we shall now go and read fic for three hours instead of even looking at the piece of writing that we were working on. excellent.’

.....

yeah so anyway have some more modern-AU Thomas/Geoff kinda-romcom soulmate shenanigans. follows from this.

-----

Thomas' soulmark was on his hands.

The darker skin was painted on the undersides of his fingers, smudged along the curve between thumb and forefinger, splotched across his palms. It wasn't uncommon for marks to be on a person's hand, but it was a bit odd to be on both. Still, the oddity of Thomas' mark was nothing compared to his twin brother's: the imprint of a hand wrapped around the base of his throat, which he wore with devilish pride.

Said devil had also stolen his phone charger the previous night, which meant that Thomas now had a dead battery and no way to double-check his intel--which meant that he was crouched outside of his target's house, in the Void-forsaken cold, watching for any sign of movement within and debating how hard he was going to punch Connor the next time he saw him.

"Fuck it," he muttered.

Thomas dropped down from the tree he'd been nesting in for the last three hours and made his way to the house's back door. It wasn't an assassination, at least; he would have just pulled out and come a different day in that case. And given his monitoring of the target's schedule over the past week, the likelihood of him being home was less than 10%.

Geoff Curnow was, by all accounts, a man of habit, and he seemed inappropriately married to his job given all the long hours he pulled.

The house's security system was good--but Thomas was better. He made quick work of the alarms and locks, slipping into a modestly-sized kitchen and immediately heading toward the study. He'd already memorized the layout--blueprints were readily available on realty sites--but he hadn't seen the interior, and was a little surprised at how inviting the place seemed, despite looking barely lived in.

There were a few prints of landscapes on the walls--mostly ocean views--interspersed with award plaques and the occasional photo frame. The furniture was sturdy but simple and unadorned, and even with how bare the place was of warm touches, Thomas still had the bafflingly unmistakable feeling of home.

A home that didn't have his brother in it. A home that didn't contain his surrogate father, or the extensive group of deadly idiots that he privately considered his family.

Ridiculous.

Thomas slipped into Curnow's study, being careful not to touch the placement of the door, and made it a whole three steps in before realizing he was being watched.

He stopped moving instantly, dropping into a crouch and twisting his head around to meet wide purple eyes--

That were about a foot off the ground.

"Whuff!"

"Shh," Thomas hissed instinctively, entirely aware of how ridiculous it was. The eyes moved through the darkness, making their way over to him until he could make out the vague outline of a muzzle and soft floppy ears.

"Whuff?"

"Void's fucking sake," Thomas muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. There hadn't been any mention of a dog in Curnow's profile, and he was going to murder whatever idiot novice had left that little tidbit out of the report.

The dog--more of a puppy, really--wasn't at all aggressive, at least, and Thomas allowed a quick pat on its head before he stepped past to access Curnow's laptop. He inserted a thin USB into the side and waited impatiently for the computer to boot up, immediately going to access the BIOS.

The puppy butted its head against his leg and Thomas made a disgruntled noise, dropping one hand to pet it into silence as he went through the process of creating a dummy admin account. The files he'd been sent to retrieve--more specifically, to copy and delete--were behind further security, which was more annoyingly tedious than actually difficult to bypass.

Tiny needles sank through his glove and into his finger and Thomas jerked his hand back with a smothered yelp.

He scowled down at the puppy, who wagged its entire backside at him, blinking its guileless purple eyes. With a muttered curse, Thomas got the file transfer started and relented, kneeling down and pulling off his gloves as he watched the download tick down. He clicked his tongue, beckoning the dog forward, and the pitch-black bundle of fuzz happily stood up on its hind legs to put its paws on his chest.

They had dogs at the Rudshore compound, but they were all older, lean things, rescued from the streets or--on a few memorable occasions--stolen from undeserving owners. The puppy's fur was soft as down, its ears endearingly floppy and babyfat still pudging around its middle, and Thomas couldn't help the smile that tugged on the corners of his mouth as he scratched behind its ears.

"I suppose it doesn't matter that you were left out of the report," he murmured. "Not much of a guard dog, are you?"

The puppy lolled its tongue out at him and let out a pleased yip, and Thomas chuckled quietly.

"Shadow?"

Shock jolted through every nerve in Thomas' body.

He spun around, gripping the trigger of his wristbow. With eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw Captain Curnow standing in the office doorway, wearing a stretched Academy long-sleeved shirt and thin pajama bottoms, one hand rubbing sleepily at his eyes as the other groped for the lightswitch.

Thomas measured his shot, and as the officer's fingers touched the switch, the sound of shattering glass cracked through the silence.

The shards of lightbulb and ceramic didn't even reach the ground before Curnow lunged forward. He got a fistful of jacket as Thomas hastily dodged out of the way: enough to keep him from darting around the desk like he wanted. He was instead pulled back onto a solid elbow in his gut, doubling over with a wheeze as he blocked another punch with an upraised forearm. His thick winter jacket softened the hits, but that didn't mean they were anything but painful.

And even half-blind, Curnow was a good fighter. Blows were dodged or deflected; he put himself solidly between Thomas and the door and didn't budge an inch. Thomas had vision on his side but Curnow had familiarity, easily stepping around the obstacles in the room with the knowledge of their exact placements.

Thomas was just starting to get concerned about his chances of escape when Curnow took a sharp step toward him--and then immediately pitched flat on his face as he tripped over the ink-black puppy, which went darting away with a startled yelp.

Thomas stood and stared, just for a moment, blinking in dumb shock at his unexpected fortune.

But then Curnow cursed and started to get back up and Thomas wasn't stupid enough to waste the advantage, darting over and dropping down to straddle the other man quickly. He pinned Curnow's lower body to the ground with his hips, hooking his feet along the inside of his ankles to keep him from kicking. Curnow struggled to throw him off, to push himself to his feet, and Thomas hastily grabbed him by the wrists, automatically wrenching them to press against the small of his back--

And froze, heart pounding in his ears, as a surge of sunshine flooded through his veins.

Beneath him, Curnow stilled and inhaled a stuttering gasp.

"You--"

Thomas stared down at his hands: at Curnow's wrists held tight within them. He watched dumbly as the marks on both their skin morphed, fading out and blanching lighter into patched vitiligo. He felt a burst of surprise-hope-joy that wasn't his own, because the elation that warmed his own heart was quickly smothered by cold logic slapping it back down.

Geoff Curnow was his soulmate.

Geoff Curnow, one of the cleanest cops in the entirety of Dunwall, had a criminal for a soulmate.

The wonder in Thomas' chest--in Curnow's chest, in Geoff's chest--started to wane into worried fear, and the synesthetic taste of his apprehension sat sour and unhappy on Thomas' tongue.

"Who are you?" Geoff rasped breathlessly into the carpet, turning his head to the side. He was trying to see Thomas, catch a glimpse of his face as his pupils dilated, eyes adjusting to the dark.

Thomas squeezed his eyes shut and reached up to yank the laptop around, the bright screen flashing in the dark.

Geoff flinched, making a small, hurt sound of surprise as the light blinded him. Thomas turned the computer back around just as quickly and sat up, rolling Geoff onto his back.

Strong fingers caught a fistful of his jacket to keep him in place, but he was already leaning down, tucking his hand behind Geoff's neck to tilt his head back and claim his lips.

Geoff froze, for one heart-stopping second. Then he melted into the kiss, wide unseeing eyes softening into something intimate and terribly tender that Thomas knew he didn't have the right to witness. The grip in his coat loosened, Geoff's hand sliding up to cup his jaw instead, his thumb stroking gentle across Thomas' cheek.

The places where their skin touched sang, sparking electric like a string of bulbs lighting up one after the other. Thomas pressed closer, kissing Geoff urgently, desperately, giving into a full-body craving he didn't even know he'd had. Geoff's fingers tangled in his hair and his body arched beneath him and Thomas squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing the nausea rising in the back of his throat as he reached for a pouch on his belt.

Concern-confusion tingled in his blood; Geoff pulled away with a quiet hum, his touch gentling.

"What's wrong?" he asked, soft and quiet and so sincere that Thomas ached with the undeserved care in the words.

He buried his face into Geoff's neck.

"I'm sorry," he rasped, and pressed a sleep dart into his soulmate's shoulder.

"What--" Geoff inhaled sharply, muscles locking up as realization dawned; surprise-hurt-fear crackled down Thomas' spine. "No--no, don't--"

"I'm sorry," Thomas whispered again, keeping his face tucked away. He could feel Geoff's body shutting down, with a distant, hazy mirror in his own limbs.

"Don't..." Fingers curled loose around Thomas' wrist, weak and beseeching. "Don'...go..."

Thomas exhaled a shaky breath as Geoff went limp. The fogginess weighing down his body disappeared along with his soulmate's consciousness, the tangle of confused-desperation and fear-hope finally unknotting from between his shoulder blades, and he laid Geoff down with consummate care.

The puppy--Shadow, Geoff had called it--padded over to nose at its owner's shoulder with an unhappy whine.

"He's alright," Thomas said quietly, reaching up to flip on the desk lamp, bathing the room in a gentle glow. "Just asleep."

He looked back at Geoff, now illuminated by the dim light, his features soft and relaxed in slumber. He had known what the man looked like, abstractly: even simple espionage jobs required knowledge of the intended mark. But staring at a handful of pictures of your target was far different from gazing directly at the relaxed, unschooled face of your soulmate.

Thomas stretched out his hand, tracing Geoff's cheek with his fingertips. Even that bare amount of contact sent a shock of warmth running through him, and the sudden flush of longing-love-need was all his own.

Geoff mumbled in his sleep and turned into the touch and Thomas yanked his hand back, curling his fingers into a tight fist atop his thigh to keep from reaching out again.

Even with Geoff unconscious, the yearning he sensed from the other man was like a physical pull: like a thousand strings drawing them toward each other, and the intensity of the reciprocation Thomas felt was as if someone had shoved their hand in his chest to grab hold of his lungs.

He looked at Geoff and couldn't breathe with how desperately he loved this man he didn't even know.

He looked down at his hands, scarred and coated in the blood of others, responsible for crimes that had affected hundreds, then looked back at Geoff. He saw a good man, an honest man, and the lurch of juxtaposition set his head spinning, nausea cramping tight in his gut.

Thomas buried his face in his hands with a low moan.

"Fuck."

#dishonored #dishonored fanfiction #geoff x thomas #liz writes dishonored #dishonored soulmate shenanigans #aaaand now for the sleep that's only like #5 or so hours overdue #ha #ha ha ha #..../looks at wife guiltily

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