#oc: johan groeneveld | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

woodsdyke · 1 year ago

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in a shot, i'd swap my body for a body of water worry the cliff side top as a wave crashing over i'd lower the world in a flood, or better yet i'd cause a drought if I was a rip tide, i wouldn't take you out

been slowly picking at this throughout the month, took forever because i was in the process of moving. had a lot of fun with it tho. aveline and johan, really awful as fiancés but great vengeful gay besties. make them regret everything they did to hurt you. go girlies. fuck up their day

(white wasn't customary for weddings in the 18th century but consider: it was for the vibe. ty)

some additional info about these two under the cut because i think about them sooooo much

(tl;dr what if u were two traumatized gay people who had to get married but instead you did crimes that would get you executed by the state, found each other again, now gayer and happier, and became besties who bond over how fucked up your life was and how cool it’d be if the people who hurt you got what they deserved. Wouldn’t that be neat?)

TW discussions of abuse (inc. of children)

Aveline Montclair and Johan Groeneveld both grew up as aristocrats, and have always been godawful at it in new, exciting ways. Aveline is aggressive, stubborn, and prone to lashing out, and her family is unable to find a suitor for her because she’s now stabbed two of them in the hand with a fork (deserved, maybe overkill). Johan is an incredibly reluctant admiral of the dutch royal navy, a kind-hearted, captivatingly anxious man who would much rather be doing a nice artist residency in the countryside right about now.

Their families have a very long history, so ultimately they decide to just marry the two of them off to each other and be done with it. ‘won’t this be an absolute disaster and cause inevitable chaos’ probably. they don’t care.

Their engagement is short-lived but miserable; Aveline despises Johan for taking away the last scrap of freedom she had and trapping her in a life she hates (despite knowing that Johan really didn’t have a say in any of this). Johan resents her because he’s just trying to make the best of a bad situation, while she’s hellbent in making them both miserable.

(we won’t unpack how they both expected unhappiness from the start because the thought of marrying each other made them both feel sick – besties, you are gay. You’ll get there. It’s ok)

To skim over a Lot of things, Aveline runs off with pirates, Johan makes a series of mistakes that lead to him defecting from the navy and going on the run because he knows what will happen if the royal navy finds him. Despite all odds, they run into each other again. It’s a disaster, at first, until they realize some time apart has made a difference, and most importantly helped them realize they’re more alike than they thought. They’re a couple of scared, hurt kids, forced to grow up too fast, who want someone, something to pay for what was done to them. they spent years of their lives at each other’s throats and never stopped to think that maybe there was a bigger enemy to challenge that wasn’t each other.

Turns out when your every move isn’t controlled by your abusers, you can actually make decisions for yourself, and can decide not to ruin your own and someone else’s life over misplaced blame and defensive anger.

turns out if both of you are so intensely repulsed by the thought of being in a heterosexual marriage with anyone, let alone each other, maybe you are gay

and during all of it, they knew. The last thing anyone in the Montclair or Groeneveld families wanted was for Johan and Aveline to realize they’re better friends than enemies. Aveline’s mean, she wants blood on her hands, and Johan has the quiet, relaxed cunning that’s frightening in an angrier man and straight up dangerous in him. They’re a threat as a pair, ironically enough for the people who set them up to tear each other apart so they wouldn’t have to deal with them or acknowledge how badly they fucked up their kids.

Aveline wants to tear into her problems with her teeth. Johan is tired of being fearfully obedient and wants everyone to know it.

things aren’t fully right between them, not really, and won’t be for a very long time – too much history, too much of a lifetime of abuse at the hands of the same people – but things are good between them. one of those once-in-a-lifetime kinds of friendships. Regardless of the outcome, having someone to get angry with, to mourn the loss of a childhood with, to voice those thoughts kept close to their chest on the ways they hope those who hurt them will pay, it’s healing, and right now, they need each other (they always did).

And no matter what happens, if Aveline ever gets the revenge she dreams of, if Johan can have a life well-lived, in spite of being told he was always destined to fail, there’s one thing that won’t change:

Aveline is an only child, Johan is the only surviving Groeneveld son. There’s power in knowing the Montclair and Groeneveld bloodlines end with them.

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