#one thousand and one nights retelling

[scentedsstuff]

The Wrath & The Dawn

By Renée Ahdieh

Rating: 2/5 ⭐️

Coming off from the excitement of having finished The Sands of Arawiya duology I wanted to keep within the Middle Eastern based fantasy books and that's how I ended up reading 'The Wrath & The Dawn.'

Quick Plot Summary:

It's a retelling of the One Thousand and One Nights tale, where Khalid, the young Caliph of Khorasan, claims a bride every night and by dawn she dies.

This is where our main character Shahrzad is introduced. Having lost her best friend to the Caliph, she devises a plan of revenge that would see the end of his murderous reign once and for all. But ofcourse, not everything goes to plan as Shahrzad comes to discover that there is more to the Caliph than what meets the eye.

Thoughts:

This book was an interesting read, that's for sure. It had its moments but ultimately lacked direction (this is mostly applicable to the 2nd book and the series as a whole but these problems do find their footing in the 1st book).

To start off on the positive, I liked the very beginning of the book. The mystery, the allure of the tales that Shahrzad would tell, these drew me in immediately as a lover of fantasy and folklore.

Unfortunately, as the book continued I found that there was less that I liked and there are a number of reasons why.

1. The main character

I'd say it's a no brainer that if the main character isn't that likeable, the book becomes less tolerable the more you read it.

Our main protagonist Shahrzad is presented to the reader as the epitome of a YA protagonist. She's said to be cunning, fearless, and a skilled archer, to name a few, but through out the book she comes across as this careless, and short tempered girl who couldn't keep anything to herself if she tried.

She talks about getting revenge on the Caliph, but does very little in actually carrying out these plans. Her so called 'revenge plan' only lasts a few days before she starts catching feelings for the Caliph. This leads into yet another rant of mine regarding this book;

2. The Romance.

In my opinion it is both fortunate and unfortunate that I consider the romance to be the most entertaining part of both this first book and the second.

On one hand the chemistry was there, despite complications and obstacles faced I eventually ended up liking the idea of these 2 main characters together.

Did it develop much quicker than I would have liked? YES, but eventually, due to the writing (which I did enjoy for the most part), I grew to like them as a couple.

On the other hand, I couldn't bring myself to care about much else, and that is most definitely a problem because I found myself skimming through parts of the book that weren't related to this.

3. The Magic System

Again, this is a fantasy book that has its own magic system and yet, we see so little of it. It is touched upon maybe once or twice with the main character but after that not much is mentioned until the second book, which in my opinion is a little too late to be introducing your readers to a whole new magic system, especially in a duology. If it is supposed to be a component that exists within a world you've already set up, it's not something you just throw in later but should be established more thoroughly as a foundation in the world building.

And these were just the points I wanted to expand upon the most. Pair this with characters that were mediocre at best, and a tendency to drag out descriptions and there's only so much I can like in the book.

All in all it was another 2 star read for me. Here's hoping the next book I post about reaches above 2 stars.

[kenna-is-reading-stuff]

Definitely one of my favorite duologies of the year. We love retellings and the sacrificial bride trope in this house

[luveline]

kisses before dinner — steve comes home to his girls after a long day. 2k, mom!reader

Steve has a back ache twinging between his shoulders that takes his breath away as he treks the last step up to the front door. The door gets caught on the latch when he pushes it open, which is awesome, Steve’s so glad you’re being safe late at night, but deplorable in that he has wood grain etched into his jaw and no way inside. 

“Girls?” He knocks the glass pane. “Anybody home?” 

Everyone should be home. Your car is in the driveway, the girls’ shoes are by the wall. He pushes the door open as far as he can (not far) and weasels his face into the gap to look for you. It’s dark besides the upstairs bathroom light. 

Steve calls your name a few times, but eventually comes to the realisation that you’re all asleep and he’s locked out. He closes the door and heads back to his car to scrounge the spare back door key from under his seat. 

He fights through the garden gate covered in brambles to the backyard. It hasn’t been touched since summer, forgotten things left to the elements. Avery’s bike flakes with copper coloured rust against the wall. The trampoline net is tangled and fallen off of one side. There are plastic cups in the stinging nettles growing back beneath it and gummy bears swollen with water along the paving stones like some poor retelling of Hansel and Gretel. He unlocks the back door and promptly knocks over the trash can he’d left in front of it. His back whines as he cleans it away, but at least it’s warm inside. 

It’s good to be home. 

He shoves the toppled garbage back into the can, washes tomato sauce off of his hands in the sink, and lets himself bask in his own poorly lit company for a moment, rubbing his tired eyes. He was hoping for a welcome party. It took longer to help Robin move than they’d anticipated. 

“I won’t be back for a while,” he’d said apologetically down the phone. 

“Okie dokie,” you’d crooned. He didn’t need to see you to know there was a baby in your lap. “Just come home when you can, babe. And lift with your knees! I’ll put your plate in the fridge, yes? Love you.” Your voice turned to sugar. “Love you, love you, love you, honey.” You definitely weren’t talking to him at that point. Mother of my kids, he’d thought reverently, the strength of a thousand men restored for an hour or two before the fatigue truly set in and he and Robin considered leaving the rest of her furniture on her new front lawn.

He scratches his hair from his eyes with both hands. Mother of my kids, he thinks again. You’ve actually managed to keep the kitchen tidy, the only evidence of a day of play being the grape juice rings on the dining table placemats. How the fuck you’ve done it is a miracle worth marvelling. Three children, one (admittedly smaller) baby bump, and a full eighteen hours by yourself. You’re very impressive. 

He decides to tell you emphatically with his face in your neck. He should shower, and he will apologise to you for subjecting you to his sweaty hair in the morning. You’ll shrug off his apology, say something sweet about for better or worse or maybe wrinkle your nose and kiss him anyways. 

Steve honestly can’t find any shame about how much he likes you. Like and love can begin to diverge in a marriage, especially after kids when your duty as parents is more important than it is as partners, but you’ve yet to let him pull away, and he won’t give you a reason to. He’ll keep trying as hard as possible to be a husband you can adore. And you don’t have to do much, really. Realistically you give the majority of yourself every day to Steve and your kids, but he would cling to you if you got sick of it. He knows he would. You could turn hermit and live under the bed, and Steve would spend half his life on his stomach just looking at you.

Half trying to pull you out again. The other half getting the girls ready for school. He’s so tired he doesn’t realise that this is too many halves. 

When he gets to the top of the stairs he feels like a lifetime has passed since he left that morning, bright and early at 5AM. There’d been driving, car swaps, booing at people from behind the wheel, a hundred boxes, a million trips up and down the stairs, and a suspicious washing machine recalibration. This was without the cold coke drinking, peanuts, popcorn, mistimed movie references, and the obligatory insulting of Robin’s girlfriend’s mauve chaise, of which Robin refused to participate. 

Between all that, there’d been worrying, and a want for more phone calls. Promise me you’ll call me if you need anything at all, he’d said that morning, giving your face a fond caress. There’s a confidence that comes with this much love. Steve can pour every inch of his affection for you into one touch and knows you’ll soak it up like a sponge. Really. Any problems, any stress, any tantrums. Just call me. I’m ten minutes away. 

You were grateful if amused, telling him he didn’t need to worry so much, and then offering him another slice of toast. 

Is it weird how much I love my wife? he wonders, pushing open the bedroom door gently. 

You’re actually awake! He’s shocked and a little betrayed to find you looking at him, but the betrayal fades when he notices the swelling around your eyes and your trembling arm as you hoist yourself up under Avery’s weight. He’s woken you up coming in. 

“Sorry,” he mouths, frowning at your shakiness. 

You manage a smile and beckon him forward. The problem is the little ladies strewn about in the way. Avery drools on your chest while Dove takes up the entirety of Steve’s side, spread into a star shape, and Bethie snores loudly by your knees. An especially aggressive one makes him laugh as he rounds the bed to your side. 

“Hello,” he whispers, taking your face into a loving hand, “sorry I’m back so late.” 

You smile into his palm but don’t say anything. 

“You okay? Had a good day?” he asks.

You hum something nonsensical. He wipes at your cheek in the rough way you enjoy, your face bumped with every stroke of his thumb.

“Did you…”  Your eyelashes flutter closed. “Did you eat?” 

“Loads. Sorry. I’ll eat my dinner tomorrow.”

You wrinkle your nose. He’s been dying to see it. “Don’t bother, it wasn’t my best.”

“All dinners are your best.” 

You cover his hand with yours, and then you steal it away from your cheek and kiss it all over. Steve bends down to hug you.

“Missed you,” you say at the same time. Steve laughs. “Was it a long day?” you ask. 

“I could ask you the same thing.” 

“It was aeons,” you say. “The girls were good, mostly. Baby not so much.” 

“Aw, no,” he croons softly, “what’s she been doing?” 

“She won’t let me eat.” 

Steve rubs the top of your arm. “I’m sorry, honey. You should’ve called me.” 

“What are you gonna do, H?”

He breathes out into the side of your face. “You’re right, like always. What can I do?” 

He can’t do a thing to ease your morning sickness, so… Steve ends up taking a knee on the bed beside you to hold you for a while, no rush to lay down even though he aches in strings and shouts. “I’m glad I can’t get pregnant. I’d have hundreds of your babies if I could and it would be torture.” 

You laugh at his absurdity in the giggly startled way he’d been hoping for. 

“Did you throw up?” he asks, pulling away enough to see your face while his hand starts the soft journey down your front to your bump. You’re about three months along and the bump came quickly. It’s cute and Steve loves it and he tries not to be weird about it but he’s weird about you. 

“No, just kept churning. I made eggs for breakfast and we can’t eat them anymore.” 

Steve kisses your cheek, the corner of your eye, knowing it’ll make you happy. Your smile follows swiftly after, and he kisses that with gusto. “I don’t even like eggs,” he mumbles.

“You love eggs.” 

“What was it like being the stay at home mom today?” he asks. 

“Hard. But fun. Avery was being really nice to me all day, did you have something to do with that?” 

“Avery’s always nice.” 

Your smile widens impossibly, “Yeah, but she was asking me if I wanted to sit down and if I needed a glass of water all day.” 

Steve shrugs. “Doesn’t sound like something I’d do.” 

“Well don’t do it again, H. She’s just a baby. She doesn’t need to worry about me.” 

Steve strokes your forehead, totally in your orbit. “She’s not worrying. Are you worrying about her when you take care of her? And sometimes you need a reminder.” 

You chew it over. “Okay… you’re right. You win that one, Harrington. Mostly ‘cos I’m too tired.”

Steve always wins when he gets to slide into bed next to you. You push yourself over and bunch the kids up tighter. There’s not quite enough room for him. He feels as though he’s one little legged kick from falling back out, but he doesn’t mind, wrapping an arm around you and Avery where she’s sliding off of you and onto the mattress between you both. The poor girl is in a deep sleep, dribbling from the corner of her mouth. Steve wipes it away. 

“You comfortable enough?” he asks. 

“I’m fine. Thank you for asking.” 

He rests his head against yours on the pillows. “Missed you.” 

“But you had fun, right?” 

“It was great. I feel like I ran a marathon.” 

“Exhausted?” you ask. 

“And accomplished… You sure you’re okay? It was a long day by yourself. That stunt you pulled in the kitchen? Incredible.” 

“I thought you’d like that. I told the girls you’d buy them a pony.” 

“You did not.” 

You laugh into his cheek. “No, I didn't, you caught me… I’m fine, really. I did miss you. It’s not nice, not seeing you. I’m used to a couple of hours, but it started feeling wrong when it was dark out, I… it’s silly but I was thinking about how horrible it would be if you never came back–”

Your pitch lifts up as Steve gasps and slaps a hand over your mouth (doesn’t slap, but covers, big hand on your lips and pressing them shut without sympathy). 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He meets your eyes, smiling hard despite the fatigue clinging to you both, and doesn’t buckle, even as you kiss his palm again. “Pregnancy brain is a scary thing.” 

Your eyes turn to melting. He’s putty immediately, pulling your hand away to caress your cheek. 

“Wanna be crazy in love in the morning?” he asks gently. You put your arm behind Avery’s back and smile as she snuggles into your ribs. Steve kisses your nose. “Go to sleep, honey. I can feel how tired you are. Back to normal in the morning.” 

“Love you, Steve.” 

“Love you, too.”

[butchhamlet]

do you have any good shakespeare retelling book recs?

what a beautiful time to ask this, says guy who has left this ask collecting cobwebs in his inbox for months! because guess who has two thumbs and just finished queen goneril by erin shields! WHAT a fucking play, holy SHIT, this is some of the best characterization of the lear sisters that i've ever read and the exploration of womanhood as filtered through class + race + shitty families + political maneuvering is so so so good. also the things shields does with the og playtext... chef's fucking KISS

anyway, recency bias aside, i've been meaning to make a post about my favorite shakespeare retellings for a while, and i think i never actually did it because i wanted to make a lear retelling ranking list and then i never read some of the ones on my TBR. so whatever. the learlist will happen someday. here are my favorites in general. (here is my goodreads shelf for the retellings i've read, good and bad, and here is the shelf for the ones i have yet to read.)

in no particular order:

a thousand acres by jane smiley: outsold. epitome of what makes an effective retelling--a book that clearly has something to say about and to the original text, but that also isn't afraid to diverge, to exclude here and zoom in there. ungraciously, this is "lear on a farm" and it starts a little slow, but holy fucking shit, i can't do justice in a paragraph to the way this book unraveled me. one of the best books of all time mayhaps. also, introduced the edmund character by describing his ass. 10/10

the last true poets of the sea by julia drake: i don't read that much YA anymore but jesus fucking christ. books tailored for me specifically. twelfth night retelling about siblings + mental illness + being bisexual + love triangles that actually make sense (emotions are confusing!) instead of being contrived + beautiful description + excellent dialogue + THE MENTAL ILLNESS. books that made me start crying in zoom class in 2020

rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead by tom stoppard: kind of a cop-out answer because we all know this one. but that does not detract from how good it is. this is one of those plays, at least for me, that makes me think, "ohhhhhh, THIS is what theater can do. this is using its medium to the absolute utmost." it is so clever and it makes me want to cry. i think about "i don't know. it's the same sky" more often than i can say

american moor by keith hamilton cobb: not exactly a retelling, but a one-man play about a Black man auditioning for the lead role in Othello, tangling as he does with his relationship with shakespeare's work and cultural dominance. suuuuuch a good fucking play even beyond the analysis of othello (which is excellent); the language is so fucking incredible. everyone who likes shakespeare should read this.

teenage dick by mike lew: modern teenage richard iii; this one's more reimagining than retelling, because it diverges pretty sharply from the plot of richard iii, but god, it's so fucking fun. and upsetting! really upsetting also.

foul is fair by hannah capin: i will be so real. i read this in high school and some of the YA books i've revisited since did not hold up for me. so idk if i can tell you this is "good" with my full chest. but the pitch is "lady macbeth gets sexually assaulted at a party and decides to fucking kill the boys who did it" and i stayed up until like 1am to finish it because it was such a vicious gleaming wild ride

the stars undying by emery robin: does this count? hard to say, because it's just as much a retelling of roman history than shakespeare's antony and cleopatra (honestly, more, since it focuses on the era where caesar and cleopatra were lovers, which is before shakespeare's play). but i'm counting it anyway because it's bisexual space opera cleopatra and it's the best book i've read so far in 2024 and it's making me crazy and i'm writing a thesis on it < genuinely

peerless by jihae park: macbeth, but college applications, featuring asian macbeths (they're twin sisters >:3) who think their classmate has taken their place in their dream school because of affirmative action/DEI. this play is absolutely VICIOUS. it's macbeth x heathers. think it mirrors macbeth in faltering a little in its final stretch, but it still fucks hard

the wednesday wars by gary d. schmidt: okay, not a retelling; this is about a preteen boy in the 60s. but it's one of the best most genuine and heartwarming books i've ever read and it manages to be hilarious while also foregoing cheap slapstick punching-low humor for a hell of a lot of warmth and passion. and the main character interacts with shakespeare a lot as a running theme so i can justify putting it on this list. #evangelizing

of course, i would be remiss not to mention that @suits-of-woe / @mjulianwrites has written the best take on Two Gentlemen of Verona to ever exist, and i mean that quite seriously. unfortunately it hasn't been published yet so we'll all just have to prayer-circle about it. i would also be remiss not to take the opportunity to. uh. coughs. do a bit of casual self-promo. if you 1. have ocd 2. have gender or 3. think about malvolio a lot. boy do i have the novella for you

will definitely add to this when i read more retellings; feel free to drop recs in the tags/replies/reblogs/my askbox!

[ranikyani]

Semper Fidelis Vol II

Note: My first story cont.✨ & Open to constructive criticism as always. This was supposed to be a short one shot but y'all hyped me up in the comments of the last one 🫣 so here's part two 🥂 Warnings: Angst, Fluff, Smut, Use of AAVE, n-word, Suspicions of Cheating Mentioned Work count: 7k <

Read Volume I

Andrea excused herself from the crowd, weaving her way through the party goers and gracefully accepting well wishes with a practiced smile. The weight of Mark’s whispered words sat heavy on her chest, like a sleep paralysis demon. She pinched the skin on her arm taut to make sure she was actually awake. She reached the edge of the room and pushed on the door to the balcony, it opened harder than she intended causing it to slam against the windows behind it, and the frigid air swished around her body. It felt like every molecule in her body was aflame, so she inhaled deeply, surrendering to the frosty sensation.

Mark’s words replayed over and over again in her mind, each repetition cutting deeper.

They’ve been fucking. 

They’ve been fucking. 

They’ve been fucking. 

She shook her head, trying to dismiss it as drunken nonsense, but Mark had always been a reliable force in their lives. He was always one to push people's buttons and say the things others wouldn’t dare. 

But this? The timing… This wasn’t just some vulgar joke or offhand comment. It felt too deliberate as if it was meant to hurt. She looked out over the fireworks crackling in the night sky, the colorful explosions reflecting in her eyes, but the joy they were meant to bring couldn’t penetrate the storm raging in her heart.

Behind her, the party carried on unaffected. Laughter and music filled the air as Terry’s hearty laugh rose above everyone else's bringing her attention back to him. He was surrounded by a small group of men, his broad shoulders shaking as he laughed with his whole body retelling some old story she’s sure he’s told a thousand times before. His charisma still holding his audience captive, as always. 

She studied him from afar, taking note of the way he carries himself, so confident and relaxed. 

The way his green eyes crinkled and damn near closed when he smiled. 

The way he looked at her when he noticed her staring. 

Was it love? Or was it guilt?

“Mrs. Richmond” 

Andrea turned abruptly to find Colonel Amara Knight standing beside her, her expression soft but inquisitive.

“Colonel,” Andrea replied, forcing a smile. 

“You looked like you needed a moment” Amara said while stepping closer, her tone low and conspiratorial. 

“I noticed when you ran out of there… These big parties can be pretty overwhelming, but a little air always helps and this is a beautiful place to decompress..” 

Andrea nodded and turned to look down on the city below, appreciating the excuse to step away before she forgot herself and pushed her husband's alleged mistress off the roof.

That was the only option.

Sure she could hold her own in a street fight, but she wasn’t confident she could stand a chance against all that jujitsu shit. 

“You’re right. The view is breathtaking”

Amara smiled at Drea’s simple response, her eyes scanning the skyline and the chaos of the city below “Terry’s lucky, you know…” she started, “Not every Marine has someone like you holding down the fort at home and he couldn’t have made it this far without you. You’re the glue to keeping everything together, Andrea. Don’t ever forget that,” she stated matter of factly.

Andrea swallowed, her throat dry and glanced at her for a moment trying to determine her sincerity. Did she know? Did she hear Mark too? Was this all in her head?

She offered a tentative smile but before she could respond Terry’s voice boomed loudly from behind them

“Aye, there you go Drea!”

“You’re social battery doesn’t usually run out before mine, you okay?” Terry inquired, softening his voice and slipping his arm around his wife’s waist after he made his way to her. His touch was familiar and warm, but yet, it felt foreign in that moment. Andrea turned to him, his cheesy smile lighting up his whole face as Amara stepped back with an unreadable expression dissapearing into the crowd. 

“I just needed a breather,” she sighed out, her shoulders slumping as she pushed all the air from her lungs 

“Understandable.” Terry nodded “Great speech by the way, baby.”

“You always know how to make me look good” he added kissing her temple.

She half heartedly chuckled “You make it easy.” 

Sensing something was wrong, Terry turned to face her so he could look into her eyes and take in her expression. 

“You sure you straight?”

The question caught her off guard and she considered telling him what she heard and confronting him right then and there. But the party wasn’t the place. And she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to hear the answer.

“I’m fine,” she lied, offering a convincing and reassuring smile, “Just tired. It’s been such a long day.”

He nodded again, diving right into problem solving mode, “Well, why don’t we just sneak out early? We can go downstairs to just relax and let our guests continue to enjoy themselves.”

She hesitated, the thought of being alone with her own husband suddenly overwhelming “Maybe in a bit,” she shot back steadily. “I should mingle a bit more first.” 

“Let me know when you’re ready love” Terry kissed her on the forehead and shimmied passed the crowd to take his place on the dance floor screaming “woah-woaohhhh- hooooo!” as ‘Before I let Go’ started blaring through the speakers.

When he blended in with the crowd, Andrea turned back to the skyline taking a deep breath as her decision started crystalizing. She needed answers. She’d let Terry enjoy his night. He worked hard and sacrificed so much to give them a comfortable life; but she wasn’t going to wait long to get them.

The sheer curtains hanging in their bedroom did little to block the morning sunlight beaming through their bedroom windows. A dull ache throbbing at her temples was a lingering reminder of all the champagne she drowned herself in the night before.

Beside her Terry snored lightly his heavy arm slung upward and draped over his forehead. He looked peaceful and unburdened, his face relaxed in a way she rarely saw and she envied him because her own mind felt anything but peaceful as Mark's words resurfaced like a bad dream.

They’ve been fucking. 

Andrea’s phone buzzed on the nightstand beside her making the jewelry she discarded before crawling into bed last night clunk and rattle. She flipped it over and frowned, a text from Mark.

“We should talk. Call me.”

Her heart skipped a beat as she stared at the message. Knowing she couldn’t stay in denial and avoid these conversations forever she sat up slowly, careful not to disturb Terry and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The cold from the hardwood floor under her bare feet made her wince, headache still pulsing in her skull. The chill cut through the fog from last night's alcohol and she slowly made her way to the bathroom in her strapless lace black bra and panty set. Pajamas weren't on the to-do list when they made it downstairs from their party. She reached for her baby pink silk robe to wrap around her and made sure to close the bathroom door softly, gently turning the lock. Going back to the text she received, she clicked on the contact photo, and pressed the call button. Mark answered almost immediately.

“Hey Drea” 

“Mark” she replied steadily despite her stomach twisting in knots at the sound of his voice.

“What did you mean last night?”

There was a pause, and when he finally spoke his voice was low and serious “I think you already know...”

Andrea tightened her grip on the phone, the implication of Mark’s words resting heavy on her chest.

 

“I don’t know, Mark..” she said, her tone sharp, “That’s why I’m calling.. Stop with the fucking riddles and just tell me what’s going on!” She exhaled, her shaky breath,  and then added more softly

“...please?” 

“Look,” he began, “it’s not my place to get in the middle of this Dre... But you a good woman and you deserve to know the truth.”

“The truth about what?” she snapped back immediately 

Another pause as Mark seemed to be weighing and calculating his next words.

“Terry and Amara.”

“What about them?” she whispered back

“It’s been going on for a while,” Mark admitted, “I didn’t want to believe it at first but… the signs are there.”

Andrea’s mind raced as she plopped down on her vanity stool to support herself before her knees gave out. She quickly thought back to every interaction she’d witnessed between Terry and Amara. The way they shared inside jokes, all the military lingo, the lingering glances she’d chalked up to professional camaraderie. Could she really be that blind?

“Do you have proof?” she asked, her voice tight. 

Mark hesitated. “Well, Not exactly... But I’ve seen enough to put the pieces together. The way she grabs his arms and clings to him when you’re not around... Late nights at the base... Private conversations… I see the way they act when they think no one’s watching.”

At this point the room was spinning and her stomach was doing summersaults. Circumstantial evidence wasn’t enough, not for something this serious, something that could blow up her life when she just got her husband back full time. 

 “That’s not proof Mark, that’s speculation,” she gritted out trying her best to stay calm. She needed his help, talking to this man crazy was not the answer.

“Maybe,” he fired back “but I wouldn’t have said anything if I didn't think you deserved to know.”

She stood up and swallowed hard, an involuntary reaction to his unwelcome revelation as thoughts of the previous night flooded her mind, “Why now? Why would you tell me at his retirement party?"

She started pacing back and forth as she recalled the events from last night, "And like that?… why was I up there in front of all those people..” 

“I was drunk,” Mark admitted, his tone laced with regret, “And I hate to see you in the dark when everyone else… knows.”

“Everyone else?” 

Mark sighed. “I’m sorry, Dre. I didn’t mean for you to find out like this. But you need to talk to Terry. Or Amara.”

Andrea ended the call without another word. She couldn’t listen to this shit anymore. Not without concrete evidence. 

She did everything right. 

All those late nights alone when Terry was deployed and she could’ve been fucking their fine ass, heavy set, brown skin neighbor down the hall in apartment 1738 who always was a little too eager to help with groceries?

She stayed faithful.

She maintained frequent calls and dinner dates with her mother-in-law. She even took charge of his younger cousins, keeping them out of trouble and guiding them with patience. Every game she could attend during football season? She was there. 

What the fuck?

The room tilted sideways, her stomach cramped like someone just punched her in the gut, and her mouth started to salivate uncontrollably. She dropped to her knees just in time. Her body heaved over the toilet as she vomited, everything inside her coming up in sharp, gut wrenching waves. Her body was sore and empty from expelling everything out of her stomach, but her mind was full and hosted an uncontrollable storm of disbelief and pain.

After cleaning herself up, she gently pulled the bathroom door open, careful not to wake her husband, and padded out of their bedroom and into the kitchen to the smell of leftover party food lingering in the air. She started the coffee maker, the whirring and bubbling sounds filling the otherwise quiet apartment. 

Is this what it felt like to be in the twilight zone? 

Still slightly drunk, a little sore physically, and confused? She couldn’t stop her mind from replaying events of the night before, dissecting every interaction. 

Amara’s carefully neutral expressions. The way she backed away when Terry came outside to check on her. That fact that Terry didn't leave her alone with Amara long when he noticed them together. Marks slurred words. Terry’s affectionate kisses. Was everything a facade? 

The sound of heavy footsteps broke her trance. She glanced over her shoulder to see Terry, shirtless and groggy, scratching the back of his neck as he approached. 

“Morning,” he grunted sleepily.

“Morning,” Drea replied, forcing a small smile. 

He reached above her grabbing two mugs to pour their coffee and pulled the creamer out of the fridge. She was so deep in thought she couldn’t even hear the last drops of coffee sputtering out from the machine. 

“Hell of a party, huh? I don’t think I’ve been that drunk in years,” Terry laughed, handing her a mug three quarters of the way filled so she’d have room for her favorite cream and sugar.

“You deserved it. Everyone had a great time.”

“You were incredible last night, by the way baby. That speech? Perfect!” Terry took a sip of his coffee, closing his eyes slowly in content as the coffee worked its magic. 

She watched him as he just sat there completely at ease? It was hard to believe Terry would be capable of anything suspicious when he looked so relaxed, so utterly free of concern. Like a man who’d just retired... 

They fell into a silence that was comfortable for him, blissfully unaware of the confusion and doubt swirling within his wife. 

It was at that moment she decided. This is it. 

She decided right then and there to be done with Mark and his bullshit. In over 10 years, her husband never gave her a reason to doubt him and here she was driving herself crazy just because his drunk ass friend said so? 

No.

Enough was enough.

A Week Later 

The past week had been a delicate balancing act for Andrea. On the surface, life with Terry’s retirement was settling into a peaceful rhythm. For the first time in what felt like forever, they woke up together each morning, no more rushed goodbyes or hurried calls squeezed between drills or assignments. 

Terry was home and Andrea was determined to savor every moment, but beneath the surface, as much as she tried to forget, Mark’s words lingered in her mind. A poisonous echo she refused to give life to. She hadn’t confronted Terry, nor had she read or replied to any of Mark’s follow up messages. Instead, she buried herself in creating a routine for their life together. 

Mornings began with shared coffee on their balcony, the harbor stretching out before them like an ever changing painting. They laughed more often, rediscovering the rhythm of living in the same space. Andrea even convinced Terry to join her in pilates and yoga, an experience that had them dying of laughter as Terry struggled to maintain poses Andrea had mastered with ease.  

Still in quiet moments when Terry wasn’t looking, Andrea found herself studying him, watching for cracks, signs, or anything that might confirm or deny the suspicions Mark had planted. She hated this new version of herself, self conscious, suspicious, and guarded. But she couldn’t shake the doubt.

Today, though, she was determined to push past it.

Today was about them. 

Andrea stood in front of her closet, smoothing the soft fabric of a turtle neck dress she hadn’t worn in ages. Its cranberry hue complimented her warm brown skin, and the way it cinched at her waist gave her a boost of confidence. She paired it with simple gold hoops, target shark boot dupes, then checked her reflection in the mirror.  

“Drea” Terry called from the living room, his voice carrying easily through their apartment “You almost ready to go to lunch? I’m starving over here!”

After clipping her cherry charm on her coach purse, Andrea grabbed it and stepped into the living room smiling. Terry’s eyes lit up when he saw her. He was wearing dark Levi’s jeans and a crisp black button down rolled up to his elbows, each cuff pressed with precision . His gold chain glistening subtly at his neck, catching just enough light to draw the eye. 

“You look amazing,” he said, crossing the room to kiss her cheek. 

“Thank you, Handsome” she replied softly, smoothing his shirt collar. “Ready to go?”

They took the short walk through the whipping wind to a bistro situated on the harbor, the warm sun heating their faces between gusts of frigid air. The restaurant was cozy, with open windows framing the water below, and the sound of soft jazz played over the hum of quiet conversations. Their table was dimly lit and tucked into a corner. Andrea sipped on a mimosa while Terry ordered a whiskey neat. 

“To us,” Terry said, raising his glass. “And to finally have time to enjoy life together.”

Andrea clinked her glass to his, smiling even as a small knot of unease tightened in her chest. She took a long sip, the cool drink washing it away and calming her nerves. As their meals arrived, Terry reached across the table to take her hand. 

“You’ve been a little quiet these past couple of days,” he said, his thumb rushing over her knuckles. “Is everything okay?”

Andrea hesitated, the question she’d been avoiding rising to the surface. Her instincts told her to retreat, to keep things light, but the weight of unspoken words between them was growing too heavy. Instead, she decided to share an honest truth about something else. 

“I’ve been adjusting,” she admitted. “It’s… different, not being a military wife anymore. It feels like I’m learning how to be your partner all over again.”

Terry nodded, his expression thoughtful. “I can understand that. I’ve been adjusting too. It’s strange not having a mission to wake up to every day, but honestly, I’ve never been happier. You’re my mission now.”

The sincerity in his voice tugged at Andrea’s heart. She smiled, squeezing his hand. “I think we’re going to be just fine,” she said more to herself than to him.

“We got this baby,” he replied.

“Hey, later on tonight around dinner I told Amara she could stop by so I could look over her Q1 report. I wanted to give you a heads up.”

Andrea winced at the mention of Amara's name but quickly put on a smile, grateful that Terry’s attention was fixed on his plate and not on her.

“That’s fine, honey,” she said, her tone overly sweet to mask her irritation. “You trying to reenlist already?” Her attempt to tease him for missing work made him chuckle.

“No. Not at all,” he said, shoving a fry in his mouth and pausing to chew. “But we’ve been talking about this for a while now, and I think it’s time we really commit to it. You know?”

Andrea raised an eyebrow, a knowing and amused smirk curling on her lips. “And what’s that?”

Seeing Terry nervous was a rare sight, This man, her man, was the embodiment of quiet confidence. But in this moment, seeing him a little unsure made him less militant and more real, more human. She loved it.

“You know,” he murmured, tracing the rim of his glass with his long finger. “Having a baby.”

Andrea sat up a little straighter, a mixture of surprise and warmth settling in her chest as she watched him wrestle with his words.

“It’s just… I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Like, really thinking about it,” he continued, his voice growing more tentative. “And now that I’m home for good, I feel like we’re ready. It’s terrifying, but I know we can do this, Dre!” he said confidently. He paused and glanced up at the ceiling reflecting on his words.

“I mean, when I look at you, like really look at you, I can’t think of why we should wait any longer,” he said, his voice softer now as he clasped his hands together and fiddled with his fingers. 

“You’re so compassionate, and strong, and you’ve been an amazing wife.. I can’t imagine how amazing you’ll be as a mom. But… It's a big step. I just want to make sure we’re both ready for this. I know you’ve been working from home, but it might still be a lot with the baby crying all night, and trying to get them to calm down, and… well… you’d really be stuck with me forever after that.” He pursed his lips, cutting himself off mid rant.

He tried to stay quiet and listen to her response, but he couldn’t help himself, the words just kept spilling out. And Andrea listened intently, her smile growing he waved his hands around and continued yapping away. 

“I’ll recon when we get home… logistically, it’s a lot of groundwork to cover. We’ll need to baby-proof the house, right? Like all the outlets… And I read something about crib safety… Aww man, and there are so many different types of cribs. And then the sleep schedules? Oh shit, the sleep schedules, don’t even get me started on that... We might not sleep for years if we don’t figure that out. Have you heard about sleep training, baby? Some people swear it’s bullshit, but others-”

“Terry” Andrea interrupted with a laugh, unable to hold it in any longer. 

He froze, his ocean blue eyes widening as it set in how much he’d been rambling non-stop. 

“Sorry… It’s just a lot to think about, you know?”

“I know,” Andrea said with a teasing smile “Look at you, all.. flustered.” 

“I am not flustered,” he says with a raised eyebrow now trying to play it cool like he wasn’t just about to lose his mind over the number of crib manufacturers. 

“Yeah, you are, and you’ve really thought about this Terry. Probably more than I have, actually.” She says letting out a small laugh.

“You’re really worked up, huh? I thought I would be the one freaking out but look at you, baby! I can’t believe it,” she teased.

There was a softness in Andrea’s voice as she teased him, but underneath it was still a deep affection. She was used to Terry’s steady control, the way he carried the world on his shoulders without flinching. But in this moment, she saw the crack in his armor, and it made him even more real to her. He was truly home for good and the reminder of their new reality and what their future had in store was unexpectedly endearing. Her smirk faded, the desire to tease replaced by something tender, something that pulled her closer. Love. In these small, unguarded moments, when he was a little unsure, she loved him even more. She leaned in and kissed his cheek, her heart swelling.

“Alright, now..” Terry responded, trying to stifle a smile, “I guess I just.. I want to make sure we’re on the same page and doing this for the right reasons, you know? And I just keep thinking, what if we-”

“Terry,” Andrea interrupted, cutting him off with a gentle smile

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

He scrunched his brows, processing her words slowly.

“Wait… what?”

“I said yes, Terry. Yes, we can start trying for a baby.” her tone was light, still amused by how flustered he was. 

A deep breath escaped him, one he probably didn’t even realize he was holding. His face softened, and his voice quieted, the relief evident in his words.

“I just wanted to make sure-" he started, but then stopped himself. His face softening as he finally looked at her.

Quietly and laced with gratitude he said, "Thank you."

"For saying yes," he clarified simply.

Andrea reached up to gently cup his face and pressed a sweet kiss to his lips. “Of course,” she assured, her voice soft and certain.

“I’m ready for this, Terry. We’re ready.”

As they continued their meal, Andrea allowed herself to fully relax, leaning into the warmth of the moment. For the first time all week, she felt like she could breathe. They lingered at the table long after their plates were cleared, sharing stories, laughing, and stealing small touches. By the time they left the restaurant, Andrea felt lighter, convinced that the life she dreamed of with Terry was not only still within reach, but on it's way to becoming a reality. As they walked back to their apartment, hand in hand, the weight of their discussion settled softly between them, unspoken but understood. She looked up at him as he held the door for her to enter their building, and in that moment, everything felt right. 

Terry leaned against the door frame of their bedroom, arms lightly crossed, with a small smile playing on his lips as he watched his wife sit on the bed, pulling the zipper of her boots down.

Retirement meant he didn’t have to rush to bed, worry about the next mission, checking in with superiors, or making sure the squad had all their gear prepared.

The absence of all pressure was both relieving and unsettling because for the first time since high school he could take a breath without the weight of his unit, his family, his country, and the world on his chest. Andrea had always been the rock in their relationship while he was away, but now, Terry could feel that she was learning how to navigate this shift in their dynamic as well.

The soft orange glow of the afternoon sun illuminated their bedroom highlighting her every move. She slipped off one boot, then the other, and Terry felt an undeniable urge to help. 

“Need a hand?” he asked, his voice low as he approached slowly closing the space between them.

Drea looked up through lashes, a playful gleam in her eyes “Of course.”

“Come here and turn around” 

She stood up and walked toward him. Following his command and turned her back to his chest so he could unzip her dress revealing her new red satin fenty set. 

His voice was a low growl, his eyes heavy and glazed with desire. “This for me?” he asked. 

She didn’t answer with words, but instead nodded, her lips twitching as she fought to hold back a smirk.

His hands found their way to her waist, pulling her closer. He wanted her in every sense. But more than that, this was now a mission, he wanted her to be the mother of his children, and to build a life together that was deeper than just the two of them. 

Andrea’s fingers slid down his neck, her touch soft but possessive, as if she too could feel the responsibility of the commitment they decided to make, the commitment to create something more. Terry couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful than that and the desire to take care of her while she carried his babies sent shivers down his spine. 

“Terry, are you sure about this?” she whispered, her voice was low but steady and he felt the weight of her question. 

“I’m sure,” he breathed out, his words thick with emotion. He leaned closer, his lips brushing against hers.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

Terry sat back, a quiet smile tugging at his lips as he looked at Andrea with feet set in place on either side of his hips and her hands planted firmly on his chest. His hands moved up and down her back in a steady soothing rhythm as she bounced up and down his shaft. 

They’d been each other's first everything, first kiss, first love, first time. They’d explored one another’s bodies so many times it felt like they knew each other inside and out, every scar, every curve, every mole. He knew if she wanted to she could make him bust in seconds, and all he had to do was give her “that look” and she’d be gone off into the stratosphere. 

But something about this time, intentionally trying to conceive, felt completely different. 

It was like they were 16 and starting all over again. Every movement and touch was mesmerizing, like they were discovering something they’d long since memorized. The softness of her skin under his calloused palms rooted him in the moment, where every little thing felt significant.

There was no rushing. As the sun dipped lower, its fading light reflected off her nipple piercings, casting a soft red and pink glow.

Terry gripped her ass and quickly flipped them over, a little faster than intended, earning a soft giggle from Andrea. 

She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with lust and affection, before pressing a light kiss to his chest, right over his heart.

“I love you,” she whispered 

“I love you,” he murmured against her neck, his voice low and sincere. “..so much, Dre.”

Using one hand to support his weight and the other gripping her waist he rolled his hips slowly, sinking deeper with each thrust. The sound of her slickness filled the air and with each plunge into her sex, he could feel his tip gliding against her cervix. Drea's moans grew louder, raw and throaty, as if they were coming from somewhere deep within her soul. Terry's focus was unwavering, driven by a single obsessive intent, to breed her and make her his in every way possible. He felt that familiar sensation building deep in his stomach, a warmth spreading quickly through his entire body. 

"Baby..." he cooed, placing soft kisses along her shoulder.

She moaned softly, her legs tightening around him, but she didn't speak, her eyes still shut as she lost herself in the moment.

“Andrea.. Look at me now” he said more sternly. 

When her eyes finally blinked open, he gently asked “Are you sure you want this?”

“Yes Daddy!” she shouted, her voice strained as she answered without hesitation.

His rhythm faltered, something about that word ignited a spark in him. Something primal. 

“Daddy, huh?” he said, his voice a little rougher than intended “I didn’t know Daddy sounded so good on me.”

“Oh, it sounds perfect on you” she breathed out 

“Yeah? Ok, mama…” 

“Yes!” she cried out in pleasure, “Let’s make a baby, Daddy” 

Those words were all it took, and Terry released what felt like the heaviest load in the deepest part of her pussy. With every stroke, his love for her seemed to intensify, and they came together gazing at each other through the haze of passion driven intoxication.

With their bodies tangled together, surrounded by disarrayed pillows and damp sheets, he basked in the pure feeling of satisfaction and contentment. They stayed that way for a moment, neither moving, just listening to the sound of each other's breathing and racing heartbeats, until Drea gently tapped at his butt cheek, signaling him to roll over.

“I’ve been doing some research…” Terry mumbled while intentionally keeping his pelvis aligned with hers so he didn’t slip out of her wet folds, gently flipping them over so she could be on top.

“I read something about how I should stay inside you for a bit after to increase our chances…” he said closing his eyes lazy clearly still sensitive to her touch

“Oh yeah?” Drea chucked as she straddled him. His hands instinctively went to her hips as she teasingly rocked back and forth slowly up and down his shaft, tracing patterns on his chest, and savoring the quiet aftermath of their decision. Her soft moans filled the space around them and as he laid there, Terry couldn’t help but think that this was just the beginning. A new chapter starting for the both of them. 

He opened his eyes, gently placed his hand on her stomach, and started rubbing small circles. “Hey baby,” he whispered with a grin

She burst into laughter, unable to hold it in. “We’re probably gonna need to try more than once, baby.” 

“We can try,” he said, tickling her sides for emphasis, “...whenever you want, baby. But I got that super sperm. He’s in there. I know it.” He said, pressing his lips and giving her a confident nod. 

“He!? Oh my God, Terry, please just stop!” she laughed, nearly out of breath from her fit of giggles

His watch beeped alerting him that it was the top of the hour. “Matter fact, I need to make sure he in there good, let me see something…” Using his hand to brace the back of her neck he flipped them over once again laying Andrea down on her back. 

"I got a meeting in a hour. Now that my first procreation tour is complete..." Terry said, his voice trailing off "...It's playtime.

"Let's see how fast I can make you cum again." he added with a mischievous grin

He pulled out, sat up on his knees, and leaned back for a better view. She could feel the cooling sweat from his thighs dripping down the back of her legs; Everything was sticky and from this angle he could see all his precious potential babies getting ready to slide out of her and onto the mattress. 

Gravity was a bitch. 

Using the head of his dick, he scooped up what he could and slid back into her, mixing her cream with his seed as he pumped in and out. Terry was determined; they were making a baby today. 

He studied every feature on her face as she moaned in pleasure, like he was seeing her for the first time, she was beyond beautiful. Truly. Inside and out. This new phase of their life was the beginning of something so sweet he thought. So many new adventures they had to look forward to without the daily stress and worry that he might not make it home.

He couldn’t help but wonder which traits their little bundle of joy would inherit from their mother. He wanted his son to look just like her. He used his right hand to push her thigh to her chest and his left thumb to circle her clit, using any of their cum that did manage to seep out as natural lubricant. Terry's gaze was focused on her lips, he locked in on the subtle difference her top lip slightly darker than the bottom a feature he always admired. Andrea bit her bottom lip, arching her back as her eyes squeezed shut. That's when he heard a soft word echo across the room.

“Oh” 

He blinked, confused. Then knitted his brows together. He knows he heard it. Clear as day, but her lips didn’t move. Terry knew he gave good dick. But telepathy? This was next level shit right here.

Andrea continued nibbling on her bottom lip, her breath coming in shallow gasps and he started drilling inside her steadily.

That’s when Terry noticed her out of the corner of his eye. Amara hovered in the doorway watching like she was trying to memorize every detail, her eyes wide and her mouth slightly agape. A quiet realization hit him. She's the one who spoke.

His curiosity peaked as he wondered how long she’d been standing there watching them. His gaze drifted to her feet, her crisp white shoes giving away the otherwise dark silhouette. His eyes slowly traveled upward as he took in her figure from the ground up. When his eyes reached her face, they locked with hers for a moment while he continued rolling his hips and thrusting in and out and in…

“fuuuccckkk” he exhaled, his eyes fluttering shut as he threw his head back in sheer ecstasy when Andrea clenched around him.

She was nearing her next orgasm and completely unaware of her husband’s work wife standing in the threshold of their bedroom staring. When he opened his eyes Amara was still locked in place observing, it was odd the way she watched them with unnerving focus, it was more strange that his dick was still hard and he couldn’t bring himself to pull out.

When their eyes met once again, Amara dropped her phone and the 3 ring binder she was holding. It smacked the floor with a loud slap. Opening her eyes wide with shock, Andrea’s head snapped toward noise. Shows over. 

“OH MY GOD!”

Drea jolted up using all the strength in her core to force herself into a forward crunch so she could straddle Terry’s hips. She locked her arms around his waist and buried her face in Terry’s neck; he twitched involuntarily inside her. There was no way there were finishing this round but he didn't want to stop, he still felt her throbbing around his member and her warm breath heating his neck. Damn.

“Sorry! Shit- Sorry!” Amara stammered, looking at her feet now, clearly flustered.

She crouched down awkwardly to grab the binder, fumbling with her phone on the floor unable to pick it up on the first try. Terry stayed on his knees holding Drea close to his chest and felt around for a sheet to wrap around them. 

“You gotta be fuckin kidding me,” Drea mumbled out against his neck.

When Amara finally got a grip on her phone she dashed out the room, pulling on the door handle to get it to close, and disappeared quickly down the hallway like she needed to talk to a man about a horse.

Once the door slammed shut Andrea looked at him, still processing what had just happened, her face flushed and eyes narrowed. Terry removed the blanket and placed his hand on her back to lower her down on the bed. He pulled himself gently out of her and gravity was back at it again. What a waste.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “I didn’t expect that.”

The bed shifted below from Andrea standing up “I’ll.. uh… I’ll be in the bathroom,” she said with a nod toward the shower.

There was no masking the confused expression on her face as she slowly walked away. Terry wasn’t sure how to feel. He was relieved that Andrea hadn’t said anything more, especially with Amara still in their home, but he could sense the tension building in her too. That didn’t sit right with him. Annoyed by the interruption, the difficult conversation he’d need to have with Drea, and the work waiting for him with Mara, he swung his legs off the bed and grabbed his Levi’s and wife beater from the floor. After dressing quickly, he made his way to the living room to go over Amara’s report. He wanted to get it done as fast as possible.

As he approached the common area he stopped by the kitchen to wash his hands at the sink, it was probably best not to get sweat and cum all over official government documentation. He could see Amara sitting on the couch fiddling and organizing papers that must’ve jumped out of place when her binder fell.

“Sorry you had to see all that” he yelled out from behind the island. 

“I was kinda expecting you to knock,” he said with a soft chuckle trying to make light of the awkward situation as he grabbed a paper towel to dry his hands. 

She didn’t respond immediately, once she had everything sorted back into place and snapped the rings of the binder closed, she stood up. 

“Why the fuck would you ask me to come here Terry!?” she spat venomously.

Terry paused, his face momentarily blank as he processed what she’d just said. Then, as if a switch had flipped, his expression darkened, and his handsome features contorted into a fierce scowl.

Menacing.

Lethal.

If looks could kill she’d be on her way to the morgue.

“Why are you talking to me like you just caught me cheating on you Amara?” He whispered back harshly, lowering his neck so he could look her directly in her eyes.

Just as she opened her mouth to speak, he kept going “I was with my wife, you here early as shit might I add, and you just let yourself in like you own the place? Huh? That key was supposed to be for emergencies only Amara, I mean what’s good with you my nigga!?"

Before she could respond, he pressed on with a very important question,

"Who. The. Fuck. Are. You. Talking. To!?” he gritted out, his voice growing louder with each word.

Retirement had already started to chip away at his legendary composure and unwavering demeanor. Pleasantries were gone. Pokerface be damned. He was beyond pissed and she knew it. To avert his gaze and his sharp arched eyebrow, she dropped her head and stared at her hands taking a deep breath before replying.

“I know she’s your real wife, Terry. But I miss you!" she whined.

"I asked for your help on this report but I thought..” She trailed off ‘..I thought since you have all this free time now that you’re retired that you might want to spend some of it with me.”

“Mara, what are you-”

“Actually, I’m going to go,” she interrupted. “This was silly and I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt and I definitely didn't realize you’d be 'that' busy if I came by early.”

Amara didn’t wait for a response. She picked up her things, turned on the heels of her crisp AF1s and walked out, leaving Terry standing in the middle of the room. 

From the shower Andrea watched their exchange unfold on her phone from their security camera as the hot water trickled down her body. It was as if Amara’s words hung in the air like smoke. Terry stood there motionless, staring at the door as she walked out. When the door clicked shut behind her, he let out a long sigh and plopped down on the couch holding his head in his hands. Through the screen her eyes stayed locked on him and she observed him using his flattened palms to run his hands forward over his little waves, focusing on the rhythm to ground himself. 

Her hands trembled as she clicked her phone shut, she was right back to where she was the night of the party. Scared, uncertain, and questioning everything. Those words echoing again in her thoughts:

They’ve been fucking. 

She had successfully buried everything Mark said deep, she trusted Terry, she believed in him. But now? The air was once again filled with doubt. 

“This shit not normal," she muttered to herself.

She could feel the weight of what she’d just seen settle in. Drea couldn’t keep pretending her feelings of doubt weren’t there no matter how much she wanted to have faith in Terry. So, this was just the start. If she wanted the truth, she’d have to dig deeper. And this time, she wouldn’t stop until she found it.

A/N: This was my first attempt at a little smut scene. Imma need my OG writing girlies out there to host a masterclass because I'd like to register asaptually! I think I got one last chapter in the chamber to finish this one out. K. Thanks. Byeeeeee 🏃🏾‍♀️💨

tags: @alldthoughtsinmyhead @blackpinup22 @ticalsstallion @enchantedillumination @j0joworld @blackerthings @novahreign @onherereading @prettyisasprettydoes1306 @ashanti-notthesinger @kumkaniudaku @idyllicbarb @alonahh @ovohanna24 @skvrpion @fakxmbj @kindofaintrovert @notapradagurl7 @zillasvilla @hotmessexxpress @secretlifeoofmarpessa @nahimjustfeelingit-writes @nayaesworld @solunaseira @persethegawd @liquorlaughslove

[cowgurrrl]

Strangers

Pairing: Javier Peña x fem!reader (cowgirl!reader???)

Author’s note: goddammit is this gonna be a thing

Summary: Javi struggles to assimilate back into civilian life in Texas until an old friend returns [1.5k]

Warnings: Texas Javi my beloved, language, addictive tendencies, PTSD symptoms, Javi + Steve 4eva, reader has a brother, southernisms, pining, yeah there’s probably gonna be a part two 🙄

Javi really did try his best to leave Colombia and the ghosts that pricked at his memory every time he turned a familiar corner. He wanted to do better. He felt he had to. Too many people died for him to just throw away his chance at life, but the days were long and hot, and he was so fucking tired. The nicotine patches stopped working, and the bottle suddenly wasn't enough to convince himself he was doing what he was sent to do. That he was doing the right thing. That he was a good person. 

He expected the feeling to leave him once he left the imaginary borders of Colombia and returned to the northern valley. He thought working with his dad and getting his feet back under him after years of being pushed and pulled at Reagan's whim would feel better than shaking down teenagers for narco information. Of course, it didn't disappear in the cacti and hazy horizons of Loredo or the arms of his father. It's only been a couple of hours, Peña, he thought. Give it some time. Who knows? Blistering Texas sunsets might be good for burning the blood off his hands. 

Except everybody in his small town knew of his exploits in Latin America. They knew his name was plastered to boxes full of evidence against the cartel and then some. They knew Chucho's boy was some kind of fucked up veteran or hero or whatever they wanted to call him. He avoided going into town more than necessary when he first got home because of how often he got stopped. It didn't matter if he was going to the hardware store, HEB, or the mechanic. Somebody ended up talking to him about Escobar or Cali. He couldn't escape his past even thousands of miles away from it. The only good thing about his newfound fame was the free drinks people pushed his way in the shit hole bar just on the outskirts of town. 

He tells himself to slow down, what with the early mornings and long days he's working, but it'd be a dick move to turn down free drinks, right? Sometimes, Javi loses hours in the bar, betting money on pool, flirting with women passing through town, and telling war stories of the jungle and sicarios and whatever else comes spilling out of his loose lips. He tells himself he's coping the best way he knows how when he comes down for breakfast looking and feeling like shit, his hair practically wet from lingering cigarette smoke, but he knows better. 

His dad deals with Javi's vices the same way they dealt with his mother's death: inefficiently and without making a sound. The most Chucho does is shake his head and sigh when Javi comes stumbling in at some ungodly hour. What more could he do? Javi barely told his dad where he was in the world. How was he supposed to tell him what he'd done? What he saw? What he allowed? No, his dad can never know. It'll kill him. It'll kill Javi to retell. 

Sometimes, Javi will call Steve and ask about Connie and the kids, and they'll act like they're old school buddies and not tethered together through tragedy and white powder. Steve will ask him about his sleep, and Javi will give some bullshit answer which makes Steve laugh. "Yeah, me too," he says one time. "Woke the baby up the other night 'cause I was talkin' again. Don't even know what about. Isn't that fun?" Javi doesn't give much away. He never does, but sometimes, it's just nice to know he's not alone in his struggle to get back to normal. 

Javi is back in town for a full forty days before he finally stumbles across you. At first, he doesn't remember you or your first name. Your last name, however, rattles around his skull until he finally gets the courage to ask if he knows you as he stands in line at the store. "You look familiar." He says, making you laugh. 

"I'd hope so. You were practically livin' in my house in high school." You say, throwing him back to his high school baseball days, spending time either in the field or on the ranch with your older brother. You were a little bit younger than him— the daughter of a weathered cattle rancher— and only caught his attention when you were in the way or being an obnoxious teenager. Man, did you grow up pretty, he thinks. Suddenly, he's hyperaware of his sweaty hair, rumpled shirt, and god-awful farmer's tan. 

"Last I heard, you'd moved out of town," Javi says, crossing his arms over his chest and eyeing you carefully. The freckles dotting your face from all your time in the sun should be considered lethal, especially when you smile. 

"Last I heard, you were engaged." Just as you did then, you don't hold your punches. The jab doesn't hurt, but it does make him laugh, an embarrassed blush crawling up his neck.

"Alright, you got me there," he says. "How's your brother?"

"Good. Married Suzanna a few years ago, and now they've got some babies running around." 

"They live around here?"

"Dallas," you say. "Dillon thinks he's too good for us and decided to be a real estate agent out there instead."

"Sounds riveting," Javi says and you laugh. The line gets shorter and shorter as you talk, but he can't focus on anything but you. "And you? What's a pretty girl like you still doing in this shit hole?" Something behind your eyes flickers at the comment and you take a deep breath, suddenly all too aware of how hot it is today.

"Somebody's gotta get Daddy off the horse every once in a while."

"And what? Your mama can't do that for you?"

"She knows better than to keep tryin'. I'm just as stubborn as he is, so one of us'll win or give up before the other." 

"Well, my money's on you." He says easily. You stare at each other for a little bit longer than necessary before the clerk calls you by name to get your attention. Your items are scanned, bagged, and paid for all in the span of a few seconds. You have no reason to linger in the checkout aisle, but you do, rocking on your boots' heels just a little. 

"Don't be a stranger, Peña." You say, looking him over as if you're seeing him for the first time. 

"I don't think this town's big enough for that." He says, and you chuckle.

"No, I don't think so either," you say. "Tell your dad I said hi." With all your Southern hospitality, you turn and leave. Javi watches you go until the clerk calls his name and breaks him out of it. Well, that and the sound of something crashing to the floor makes him reach for a gun he doesn't carry anymore. His shoulders brace for an explosion, and he can't catch his breath. He stares at the box and the broken jars in it as a pissed-off employee storms off to find a broom. He scoffs. 

Javi has dealt with some of the most dangerous people in the world, and jams are what spike his adrenaline. 

He tries to shrug it off and pay the cashier, but his ears are still ringing, and his heart is still racing when he climbs back into his truck. Fucking jam. He tries to forget about it as he drives home. He wants to forget about it. He wants to think of anything else. 

If that happens to be your smile, the way your laugh fills the air, or the inconspicuous way you looked at him when he complimented you, it's just a coincidence. 

When he gets home, he's craving a drink or a cigarette or something more physical to get his mind off of what happened. His shoulders slump with the weight of memory and Chucho sees. He always sees. He just doesn't know the right way to fix it. 

"Y'know, uh… your friend you used to play baseball with?" He asks, seemingly out of nowhere, as Javi puts away the groceries. He furrows his brows and gives his dad a confused look.

"I had lots of friends I played baseball with."

"He was datin' that girl you went to Homecoming with when you were a freshman?" Of all the things his dad remembers, of course, it's that. Javi resists the urge to roll his eyes and grinds his teeth instead.

"Suzanna?" He asks and Chucho snaps his fingers in a way that tells him that was the right answer. "His name was Dillion. What about him?" 

"Well, his dad heard you're back in town and invited us over for a barbecue," he says nonchalantly and Javi scoffs. "I'm not sure how he didn't know, but you know that old fucker's always out doin' something. Somebody probably told him something or the other. Anyway, you can say no. I told him you were still adjustin'."

"I'll go," Javi agrees too fast. "Might be good to… get outta the house. Wouldn't wanna be a stranger." Chucho is surprised but not displeased with Javi's answer, and they leave it as is. 

It's just reintegrating into civilian life. It's just socializing. It's just a barbecue. It's not an interrogation or a raid. It's coping. 

Apparently, coping could be really fun if he plays his cards right.

TAGLIST: @abbyhaslongshorts @kiwiharrykiwi @sumsworldz @myloveistoolittle @anavatazes @shyminnie07 @beezusvreeland @eddiemunsonsbedroom @harriedandharassed @doodlebob-mp3 @ignorethisplz2004 @buckyispunk @d1lf-loverrr @vee-bees-blog @moel-jiller @anoverwhelmingdin @casssiopeia @space-zaddy-din-djarin @rainy-darling @its-me-mila @mnn11ankamaaka

[readychilledwine]

The Cursed Ballet

Eris Week - Day 6 - AUs and Retellings

(Swan Lake)

Summary - As war with the Deathless God approaches, a new dancer entered Autumn turning Eris's world inside out.

Warnings - Beron, curses, Eris kind of being a male-whore to add interest later

A/N - Happy Day 6 of @erisweekofficial! So listen, I've written this 4 times and settled on it being a 3 part mini series. Otherwise, it got far too long, and I was worried people would lose interest. I love this concept, though, and I'm very excited to share it with you all.

🍂Eris Week Masterlist🍂Eris Masterlist🍂Master Masterlist🍂

Dividers by @tsunami-of-tears

Instruments being tuned as a stage was set were familiar noises to you. Especially now that your life has been flipped upside down.

You continued lacing the ribbons of your ballet flats, no one looking at you. No one even acknowledging your very existence. Why would they, though?

A human in the Autumn Court. A human who, to them, somehow stole the lead spot in this performance from a female who had probably been training 10 times longer than you have ever been alive. You were used to this, used to being forced to travel and perform since he came and ruined everything.

You'd been to countless places the last few years, cities you had never dreamed of seeing, people and Fae you never thought you would meet. He always forced you to come back to Prythian, though. You had danced in all the mortal kingdoms, in every court. Yet for some reason he kept you here, anchored to this place like a second prison in case your body was no longer enough.

Of the 7 courts, Autumn was your favorite to dance in. The beauty of the leaves, the crisp fresh air, the well maintained stage. It was all enough to distract you from why you were truly here. From the magic the plagued your body. You finished tying the slippers around your ankles, mind trying not to linger on the curse you and your older sister now shared. “It's fine,” you whispered. “You've danced in front of thousands of fae.”

Your warm ups were spent alone as well, the isolation you were forced to endure was the cherry on top of this curse. The first contact you'd have tonight was a tall, slender female looking you up and down before declaring they were ready for you to stage.

Eris groaned from his place in his family's play box. He loved the ballet, he loved the graceful choreographed dances, the stories told through music and movement, but he would be lying to himself if he didn't say he was annoyed. 

His recent flavor of the week had been whining in his ear for 72 hours, 48 minutes, and exactly 23 seconds regarding his father's demands for a mortal girl to be put in the role of Odette. 

His current lover was pretty.

But she wasn't pretty enough for him to listen to the complaints and crying day in and night out. 

Eris felt himself freezing as the human girl took the stage. Every movement was clean, exact, graceful. She may as well have been fae with the way she made it seem as though she was the music. He didn't clock his father's smirk, the look of sick satisfaction Beron had. 

“Pretty little thing, isn't she,” Beron said softly to him. “And so very talented for being human.” 

Eris nodded, “Does she.. look familiar?” Flaming red hair in a tight bun, long elegant limbs. Her nose, the shape of her eyes, all of it felt so familiar to Eris, yet he could not place her. 

That is, until the scene.

Eris looked at his father, the High Lord still smirking in his seat, “And why is one of his spies here?”

Beron rolled his eyes, glancing at Eris as the fae applauded, throwing flowers to the mortal girl. “He needed someone to keep an eye on her while he handled more pressing matters.”

“He, an all powerful sorcerer, could not handle taking a 26 year old human female with him to handle matters?”

“I've heard she's rebellious,” Beron stood as the girl exited the stage. “Besides, she requires water at night.”

Eris's eyes slowly shut, but he followed Beron, the understanding of that cryptic message hitting his heart. 

You tried not to be afraid as Beron Vanserra dragged you through the gardens of the Forest House by your upper arm. His son followed behind you two, refusing to look your way. “Please, you are hurting me.”

“I was informed you needed a heavy hand. He may tolerate your games, but I will not, girl.” 

It was a moment Eris would remember long after she was gone, his father throwing a mortal woman to the mudded ground. The noise she made on impact had him shifting from side to side, eagerly awaiting Beron's departure from Crystal Lake. 

“Watch her until it happens, she won't be able to leave the lake once it does. If she tried to run, kill her.” 

As soon as he was away, as soon as Eris knew they were safe, he rushed to her. “Are you alright?”

You could only nod at him, tears in your eyes as a nearly silent sob managed to make it's way through your throat. 

“Does she know you're here,” Eris asked gently. “Does Vassa know you're here?”

“No,” Your tone was firm. “My presence here is a trap. For your brother, Jurian, and her.”

Eris processed the information like a complex novel, “He's near, isn't he?”

You focused in on the curse that bound you to him, “Yes, but no. He's still trapped on his lake, but he can.. project himself for small amounts of time.”

Your eyes finally met his and Eris's whole world shifted and changed. 

The bond was dull due to only being able to half click into place, but it was there, creating a harmonious rhythm with his own heartbeat as the moon began to rise behind the two of you. 

He understood why you would need the lake then, what your curse had been. Glowing golden light surrounded you, engulfing your figure before dying out. 

And now Eris found himself trapped watching as his mate got into the water, defeat clear in even this form. 

“Rhysand,” he called in his mind. “We have a complication.”

He sent Rhysand what had just happened, sent him the image of you floating on the clear waters of the lake. 

“Be careful,” Rhysand's voice came back slowly. “Vassa says her sister's curse is more dangerous than her own.” 

But Eris didn't respond, his eyes on the swan that had taken the place of his mate. 

How absolutely cruel to curse Vassa to her bird form by day and to be a woman by night, but you a woman by day, swan by night.

Two sisters left chasing each other. 

A curse Eris now made his personal mission to break.

General Taglist:

@hnyclover @glitterypirateduck @slytherinindisguise @mischiefmanagers @bloodicka @starsinyourseyes @the-sweet-psycho @mariahoedt @rinalouu @sarawritestories @starryhiraeth @starswholistenanddreamsanswered @cumuluscranium @loneliestluvr @eternallyelvish @azrielsmate3 @daughterofthemoons-stuff @meritxellao @aria-chikage @hungryforbatboys @lilah-asteria @fandomrejects @sleepybesson @tayswhp @itsswritten @milswrites @littlest-w01f

[steveshairychest]

Eddie Munson is a name all artists know.

His work fills museums and galleries and decorates the walls of many homes. His most famous work, 'A Boy Kissed By The Sun', features a man staring over his own bare shoulder with a look of adoration, his lips pulled into a fond smile as he regards the viewer. His skin is kissed with freckles that are painted to look like small, glorious suns. Each brush stroke is careful, precise, and full of emotion that people have spent years trying to decipher.

This man stars in nearly every one of Munson's paintings; he's his muse. But the catch is Eddie doesn't know this man. He claims that the golden boy comes to him in his dreams, that he wakes some nights and feels as if he has lived a thousand lives with his muse. Some nights, he startles awake because it felt so real. He could still taste the honey on his tongue from the kiss that still lingered on his lips.

If you put all his paintings together, it looks as if he is retelling his life with the golden boy. There's scenes depicting the boy dancing in a kitchen, holding a guitar on a messy bed, smiling while sitting in the passenger seat of an old van, standing in front of a mirror with his hands ghosting over the scars at his sides. All of the paintings feel so intimate; like a peak into a life Eddie doesn't remember living.

His latest addition to his gallery has captured quite a crowd, it features the boy that is usually so beautiful and wrapped in sunlight, weilding a bat full of nails, a bat that is covered in blood just like the man and the ground around him. His wounds are angry and red and are hard to look at because it looks as if the man had pieces of himself eaten away. Eddie had awoken with a scream when he'd heard the boys cries fill his dreams; his own scars from an accident years ago aching and burning.

"It's achingly beautiful." A voice says next to him. They both stand in front of the latest art piece, their shoulders almost brushing. Eddie turns his gaze to the man beside him and he swears his heart stutters to a stop. He's seen those freckles in his dreams, he's tasted those lips and felt the heat from that golden skin. He must be dreaming.

"Although, it feels almost familiar." The man turns to fully face Eddie and the both of them just... stare. The air feels charged with something unspeakable, unknown, but also familiar. He's stared into those honey gold eyes every night in his dreams. He's lived a thousand lives with this man and instead of asking for his name, his story, his everything, all he can do is stare.

Eddie lifts a hand to reach out and touch but pulls back at the last minute, afraid that he'll disappear in a puff of smoke if he so much as breathes too hard.

"It's you."

[materlux]

Garden of Abundance.

CW: Mentions of death, angst, gender neutral reader.

I love him almost as much as Genti, almost.

Honkai Star Rail | Main Masterlist

There is a place on the Luofu, a once well kept garden visited by many, now a restricted zone, overgrown and wild. There is myth and history surrounding the place, a great battle once took place there, that is history; it is said that the soil is enchanted and that the flowers that grow from it can heal all, that is myth.

   Jing Yuan knew this as he made his way up the stairs, being general came with perks, one being access to all restricted zones. The guards by the entrance greet him as he passes, vines creep along the walls and seem to reach out for him. The garden remains overgrown and lush, the sunlight brings out the colourful flowers; no matter the season the flowers stay in bloom, some say they even stay blooming throughout the night.

   A patch of blue catches the eye, an ever growing patch of forget me nots, nearby a bench stands undamaged. After all these years it should have rotted away yet it stands pristine as ever, Jing Yuan sits, the wood creaks softly but stays stable. Before him the flowers seem to grow further out of the bounds of their bed, before his eyes new leaves unfurl and bulbs unwrap, when he was first brought here the sight unsettled him.

   He remembers the words his master had told him; this place, its story, was best left forgotten. It is not a story to be proud of, Jing Yuan doesn’t remember the details anymore, he’s glad he doesn’t. From what he remembers, it really wasn’t a battle that took place here, that is merely a facade, in reality what happened here is more akin to a funeral. 

   You once stood here, young yet sickly, you were originally a part of a cult of Abundance. In an act of rebellion on your part, you who was meant to be an emanator, defied your own aeon and as a result you were cursed by it. Luofu is dedicated to The Hunt in the search for Yaoshi, you had no reason to be in a place like this, unless you had a death wish, and perhaps that is exactly what you did.

   Jing Yuan wonders what reasons you might have had for wanting to be buried in a place like this, so far from your home and your born belief; did you have a death wish? Did you think the Luofu could help you? Or were you simply running away from those chasing you, they would never follow you here.

   The then general met you in this very garden, millenia ago you asked them to honour your wish, a wish to be buried in this very garden. There was no fight here, it is a safe guarded secret among the Luofu’s generals, present and former, that you died of your curse in the company of the general. Below the ever spreading patch of forget me nots your body remains to this day, who knows if it has rotted by now or if it ever will, to find out one would have to dig up the flowers and at this point that would be sacrilegious.

   Jing Yuan wonders if the myth is true, is the ground here imbued with magic, and if so, is it your’s or the Abundance’s. The wind whisks up leaves and pulls at his hair with a certain playfulness, perhaps your spirit keeps this garden company, he thinks so, that is why he makes a point to visit. In the same sense as the wind is playful, the waters are wise; in their gentle trickle he often hears a voice whisper, he supposes it’s you. Most days you are silent, but on others your voice distorts along the walls, echoing the same saddened sentiment: “A thousand forget me nots bloom in my place, and yet, here I lay forgotten.” 

   If he could, Jing Yuan would open the garden to the public, retell your story so you could be remembered and be in the company of many more, but as it stands you must make do with him. He tries to soothe you; tells you about the Luofu, tends to the garden, and unsurprisingly naps here in the sunlight.

[elliemarchetti]

Eris Week Day 6: AU/Retellings

Inspired by one of @foxcort’s unhinged prompts because I couldn’t resist although I’m not totally out of my writing/Tumblr hiatus yet. Hope my contribution to @erisweekofficial will still be appreciated even if it’s in Cassian’s POV.

Disclaimer: I know some of you will see this more as Cassian's self-pitying account of an event that highlights his inadequacy as a mate, but in my eyes it's an excerpt of the happy life that awaits Eris and Nesta once her contacts with the Night Court will be reduced to a minimum, only from the point of view of someone who will remain in the past. Still, and for this I turn to the admins of Eris Week, if you find it inadequate for any reason you have every right not to reblog it and I won't bear you any grudge. You guys are amazing, and when my life will be a little more normal I can't wait to read everything that's been written and show some love to all the wonderful fanarts I'm sure the artists have made.

Plot: The Lord of Bloodshed is having the worst time of his life. The heir of Autumn can’t really say the same. This is the famous scene at the Court of Nightmares reimagined with a totally different plot for the whole last book so if it doesn’t really make sense, I’m sorry.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 1529

When the next song began, its notes lighter, the steps easier than the ones they had just engaged in, Nesta didn’t hesitate to take Eris’s hand. She seemed eager, like her partner wasn’t the monster they all told her about but just a good dancer who instinctively knew her body screamed to do those extra, solo turns that had catalysed the attention of the whole room. Cassian realized he wouldn’t have let her go, too worried about the impractical design of her dress, too apprehensive she was drunk on the music and not paying enough attention to her surroundings to succeed.  If he had been in Eris’s place, he would’ve scolded her by the end of the music, dragging her off the dancefloor, while the heir of Autumn studied her with his amber eyes as they chatted amiably, chuckles audible here and there. The General couldn’t hear everything they said, but as they got closer he caught a few scraps, words that made the blood in his veins boil.

“… I didn’t see this side of you…”

He wasn’t smiling, but she met his stare anyway as she responded, suave and flirty. She never spoke to Cassian in that tone, always composed, almost defensive, in the rare occasions their topic hadn’t revolved around training or the thousand obligations they were subjected to due to their roles. Maybe it was because he had never spun her, never murmured sweet nothings in her ear, sentences so refined her mouth twitched to one side. Unable to witness more, he turned to Mor, who watched from beside Feyre and Rhys, her face neutral and aloof. He couldn’t imagine how she was feeling, knowing she was the one who taught Nesta those steps.

“Are you inquiring after my eligibility?” Cassian heard Eris joke, his sharp smile turning into a full-on silky laugh at her reply. As it often happened, he felt inadequate in his vulgarity, in his lack of grace. A brute, as the eldest of the Vanserras liked to define him. There was no room for someone like him by the side of a female capable of carrying a political meeting on her inexperienced shoulders and tear someone’s head from their neck in the same week. That duality, the savage rage and silver fire mixed with a beauty able to bring kings to their knees was too much for him, no matter how many times he had claimed her as his, yet his feet moved instinctively, and he reached the pair at the very end of the waltz, trying to ignore how his tapered fingers had descended into the hollow of her bare back or how her cheeks were flushed.

“Move,” Cassian said coldly, halting their private moment. He stood before them amid the sea of people cradled in black, just another piece of Night, until Eris stared at him down his straight nose, ignoring the burning violence oozing from the warrior’s hazel eyes.

“Go sit at your master’s feet, dog,” he hissed, teeth bared, but Nesta was quick to interject, accepting her mates unspoken offer.

“We’ll play later, Nesta Archeron,” the fireling retorted, putting too much emphasis on her last name for Cassian’s liking, before aiming for the dais. For an instant, really just the time of the song, the General deluded himself that he had won, that he could somehow be the knight in shining armour of the story, the hero who saves the princess from the villain and thus obtains her hand and eternal, unconditional love. Those empty illusions were shattered when he followed her into the dark and suffocating corridors of the Court of Nightmares, when he watched her slender figure enter the chamber assigned to Eris for the duration of his visit, her steps cautious and silent as a cat’s. She barely glanced at the slightly ajar door, too focused on her lover’s eager embrace, and Cassian clenched his jaw at the portrait of carefree happiness.

“You’re tickling me!” she giggled as the snake peppered her neck with light kisses, the sound like a harp strumming high and sweet. From his hiding spot, Cassian saw his nemesis’ half-smile widen as he hooked a finger under one of her dress’ straps and pulled, flooding him with pounding, vibrating jealousy. He had to remind himself to breathe when the silk slid down her chest, briefly exposing one of her breasts before Eris could sweep her to the bed, the impalpable skirt mostly gathered between her parted legs, firmly clutched around his waist. As he feasted on her exposed skin, her body went loose and taunt in so many different places Cassian didn’t know where to focus: she was bent and shaped and directed by her lover, her widened pupils hiding under long lashes thanks to the skill of the fingertips massaging her core. The ghosts of nearly faded love bites revealed themselves on the lower part of her ass as she arched her back in ecstasy and Cassian’s face went slack. It wasn’t him who left those marks on her, the memory of the sleepless night spent together forever imprinted in his memory, so she could only have had other partners, or maybe she had previously entertained herself between Eris’ sheets, protocol be damned. The matter quickly slipped out of his mind when the smell of her arousal flowed and swam around him, clouding his senses as she melted under someone else’s touch. There wasn’t enough space inside him, not in his mind or his heart, for what the situation made him feel, he just knew he was hard under his trousers, his body ready to honour and worship someone he had been unable to keep up with when he had the chance.

He was about to leave to deal with his shame when their gazes met. He would have expected those merciless and cold eyes to pin him to the spot, he supposed she would scream in anger, or perhaps warn Eris with quiet disdain that some beast beneath them was spying on their tryst, but instead her irises glimmered and she let out a moan, her flawless red lips, sin personified, parted to draw a likewise perfect O. As if awakened by that sound, her lover crawled back to her mouth, his hands busy undoing his pompous clothing. Cassian knew what was about to happen, he had watched and performed this dance for centuries, in the frenzy of inexperienced youth and in the blind search for solace when the need was too much. He had fucked females on all fours like some kind of wild animal, knees hurting on marble floors and feet losing their grips in the mud, in a foolish attempt to fill the void left by Nesta, but no one showed on their features the pure, feral delight that crashed on his mate’s face when Eris entered her all at once, like a conqueror of death, glowing as he devoured moonlit skin and shared heartbeats. Between one fast thrust and the next, he lifted Nesta’s arms above her head, their matching rings glinting as if lit by an inner fire. He guided her through the orgasm with ease and they came together, a rising cacophony of panting and groaning.

“I hope you’re with child,” he whispered, his words so shocking they made Cassian audibly gasp. There was no way he hadn’t heard the sound, even lost in his unchecked, dark joy, yet he decided to ignore it.

"Why so?" she murmured seductively, gleaming with wanton desire as she drank in his expression, whatever it was. She didn’t seem to object the idea, nor she sounded eager to postpone it as long as she could.

“It would give us an excuse to speed up the organization of this wedding. I know my father wants it to exude power, to convey all the strength of our family, and my mother wishes for every detail to be perfect, but I’m growing tired of this façade,” he replied honestly, then lovingly erased a smudge of kohl from the corner of her left eye, a remark of the familiarity they shouldn’t have had yet.

“She has no daughters and I have no mother,” she pointed out, amazing Cassian with the nonchalance she used to address her traumatic past. “Let her have fun.”

“I know, and I will never show even a hint of displeasure when she will inevitably take you away for the whole day to pick the best party favours and select the optimal spot to best showcase the sheer magnitude of the orchestra you so wisely selected, but the only thing I aspire to is to finally be able to get away from the intrigues and the backstabbing for a while, to travel wherever we want and show you all the wonders Prythian and the Continent has to offer,” he confessed, and Nesta kissed him again, dangling her love and triumph in Cassian’s face, a silent dismissal to whatever his role had been in her night.

Slowly, the fearsome Lord of Bloodshed retreated in the shadow, engulfed in a cocoon of grief and rage at the Mother’s mistake, the sound of his shattering heart deafening in his eardrums.

[gothamgf]

meet cutes nyc — j.sc

tags sungchan x reader, meet cutes, fake dating, fluff

wc 2k

summary two strangers, a single question, a pile of lies and the (real) story of how you first met

author's note a birthday gift for my friend baixu <3 two other parts may or may not come... the story is based on the "meet cutes nyc" acc on tiktok lol it's so cute

"Excuse me, sorry, are you two a couple?", a male voice asked. 

Your steps momentum cut short by the stranger. Although the sight of his face was a total discovery, the sound of his voice happened to sound quite familiar in your ears. It has taken you a few seconds of looking around to unconcerned flashes of passing by New Yorkers, to realize you were the one that was meant to be interrogated.

You’ve been meaning to confirm your suspicions, asking an innocent « Me? », plucking your messed-out hair by the wind behind your ears. You were still walking, though, caught in the relentless flood of rushed Americans, when a tall silhouette swooped in from nowhere, protectively ghosting his hand over the small of your back.

« Yeah, man. » He quickly answered. His tone coming off thoroughly annoyed at the question. He immediately went into a defense mode, assuming that the man was one of the thousands of cat-callers that would ruin city girls’ days and nights. 

To both of your surprises, the man kept on following you, even after the tall stranger’s cold response. « Would you mind telling me the story of how you first met? », he followed up.

You slowed down, as did your makeshift guardian. Realizations slowly washed over you, security eased your heartbeats, but a rush of adrenaline started pumping in your veins. 

Your expression shifted to a beaming smile. You turned your face to the first look of who you slowly figured happened to be your new fake partner, catching the sight of the most adorable line of teeth you’ve ever seen. It only took a shared glance for mutual understanding to sync the two of your minds, telepathically agreeing to playing a role you were both lucky and silly enough to play, right there and then. 

« Oh, my bad man I thought you were bothering… my girl. » He apologized, attempting to dab him up in pure new yorker style, though the interviewer’s hands were fully occupied by his phone and microphone. A friendly pat on the man’s shoulder seemed to suffice as an apology, to which he replied « No worries. »

This whole awkward interaction has given you enough time to get into character, giggling your role in. You felt confident enough to answer the previous question. You figured you’d go the classic route, an authentic, basic story that the interviewer might not even select to post on his feed later. You felt confident enough to retell the quick tale you just mentally crafted, smiling proudly at the rush of inspiration that has miraculously come to you, when you’ve heard the sound of your voice being smashed by his. 

« So, we met at work. » You said. 

« We actually met at a wedding » He also said. 

You exchanged confused glances, him, through his dark brown framed glasses. You, with a twisted dimple framed smile. He embarrassingly chuckled at the slight grimace that bloomed on your face, allowing himself to fix his mistake of speaking over you, crossing his arms. 

« We technically met at work, but I fell for her at a wedding. » He calmly explained, as you deeply nodded in agreement and relief for the salvage of what you almost believed was the premature end of your cover.

Watching him unravel a huge pack of lies gave you time and space to take a mental step back, and feel. You felt oddly free, randomly speaking to two strangers at once, in a country you most likely won’t ever set a foot again in. The nature of this exchange was the strangest, scariest and most thrilling you’ve ever been in. So you’ve wondered, watching the two men talking over your head, what about this very conversation didn’t make you want to run away?

« Basically », he started, searching for his words in your anticipating gaze, only to feel furthermore destabilized. « We were both… interns at this law firm and I just thought she was, like, really really cute but I didn’t act on it, at first. » His words slowly but surely fell out of the lips you were growing quite attached to observing. 

« I had a huge, really secret crush on him, though » You added with inexplicable braveness. He looked just as taken aback by your statement as you were, in a way that made his teeth shine through yet again.

« I didn’t know that, love? » He chuckled, calling you that name in a way so natural that it may have triggered the first ounce of nervousness, since the beginning of this improvisation. 

« Um… » You started, knowing that you had to come up with something as quickly as possible before your flustered state and growing anxiety would take the better of you, making you run away from the spontaneous kind of moment you’ve knew rarely occurred in your train of life. « So a coworker of us invited us to his wedding, a destination wedding in… » 

« South of France. » He completed your sentence, naturally placing his hand on your shoulder. You shared a glance, yet again, both of you about to explode out of your smiles, and break from characters as you wondered if this detail was too much. 

« What changed at this wedding? » The interviewer you almost forgot the presence of, asked, ripping you out of one of the eye contacts that seemed to bring you closer and closer. 

« Everything. » He breathlessly answered, his mind going back to the lavender scented wedding that had never happened. « She… well she just had the kind of beauty that made me want to like, snatch the bride’s bouquet and marry her on the spot you know. » He softly spoke, his gaze still glued onto yours. 

« With her pink dress, » He added, scanning you up and down, smirking at your undeniably flushed state. « and flowers in her hair. »

The words effortlessly spilled out of his mouth, with the sole and accomplished goal of making you into a babbling, flustered mess. Where was his sense of team work, you wondered, as you decided to turn away from him, acting embarrassed from the fictional memory, when really, the chilly weather of early autumn started to have no effect on your heating body. 

« Don’t act shy, you knew you looked amazing. » He said, nudging your shoulder, leaning down to your search for your face, giggling at you, like he would to a baby. 

« It was just the first time you saw me out of my wrinkled shirts, that’s all. » You shrugged, as you helplessly tried to regain a sense of confidence in this conversation. He couldn’t stop laughing. And you were growing addicted to the sound of it. 

He then asked if he could continue the story, or if you wanted to finish it. You let him do it, only now realizing how impressive his story-telling has been so far. 

« So I kept admiring her during the week-end, but I was like, absolutely terrified to make a move. And the right time never really arrived, you know. » He kept on confidently lying, now moving around his free hand. « So we came back to the firm, and it took me a whole month to gather up my courage… to finally ask her out. »

« He left me notes. » You added, mentally apologizing as you noticed interview’s mouth opening a little too late. « He’d leave notes on my desk, for work stuff, or just to wish me a good day… until he once told me to go to the rooftop, and then he asked me out. » You teasingly glanced at him. « Get your facts right. »

He chuckled, yet again. His eyes glowed with mischief, when he added a new turn to the story that was being crafted before the interviewer’s, and perhaps the world’s eyes « Yeah, but you rejected me that time anyway. » 

You failed at hiding the surprised look on your face, though you were quick to react. « Well obviously, I didn’t want to lose my internship because of a guy? »

« And I didn’t want to lose you over an internship. » He stated, with a whole new gaze now, that was close to making your knees tremble. He was charming, you were now realizing. Way too charming. « Which is why I kept leaving her notes, bringing her her afternoon coffee whenever the office’s machine was down, or when it wasn’t. I was practically begging her to go out with me. » He stated, pulling you closer to him, proudly smiling at the interviewer, who now arbored a matching expression on his face. 

You scoffed at his imagination. « And I fell for it. » 

« For me, » He corrected you, bringing his attention back to you. « You fell for me. »

You would’ve thought of this line as one of the corniest you were even given to receive, but something about him made you relax into his touch, nodding at his words, losing yourself to him, really, and liking everything he’d say to you. 

« How long ago was it? » The entranced interviewer asked, completely falling for it all, just like you did. 

« Well, tomorrow is actually our anniversary, so 12 months ago. » You instinctively responded, the overwhelming amount of fun you had in lying plastered all over your face.

« I still have a hard time believing it has been this little time » He added, slightly leaning himself over the microphone, since the street grew louder from the incoming sirens. He turned back to you, waiting for the police car to rush down the entire street. As it’s alarm, died down, he took in your entire features, and in a soft voice that fell like a feather on your ear, clashing against the stumbling and rumbling of the concrete jungle, he said, « I feel like we’ve known each other since forever. »

« And after almost a year, what’s your favorite thing about each other? »

« Well… » You looked at him, and remembered, in a flash, that you actually didn’t know a thing about the man who had wrapped his arm around your shoulders. You couldn’t help but burst a little laugh, him joining you in the act. You hoped the camera captured it as a flustered moment between the two of you, instead of your characters completely breaking out of their shells. Your search for answers on the lines of his face ended up with the realization that this happened to be the easiest question to answer so far. 

« He is so funny, one of the funniest person I have ever met. And he is… full of surprises, so easy to get along with. » You truthfully answered. 

« So easy to… love » You ended up adding, his undeniable handsomeness catching you in a mirage that would make you say any fucking thing on camera. 

It was now his turn to be taken short by the natural flow of your words. His smile slowly faded into a more serious expression. An epiphany of the absurdness of this very minute crashed upon him, a storm of feelings rising out of the pile of lies he tried to bury himself into. 

« He’s very gentle, too. I always feel safe with him. » You concluded your statement, now staring at the interviewer’s face with a soft smile, patiently waiting for the same kind of vague compliments to be placed upon you. 

« As for me, the more time I spend with her, » His voice sounding clearer now that you weren’t looking at him. « the more I want to know her. Like fully know her, more than she knows herself. There isn’t a single thing about her that isn’t my favorite. » 

You turned to look back up at him, as he turn to look back in front of him. 

« But if I really really had to choose… it would be her dimples. » He giggled as he watched yours dig inside your cheeks.

« Finally, what are you most excited to do in the future together? » User @meetcutesnyc asked. 

You looked at each other, knowingly. 

« Learning about each other. » You both answered. 

« More. » He added. 

GOTHAMGF©

[fayes-fics]

It Had To Be You: Chapter 9 - Nobody Else Gave Me A Thrill

Masterpost PREV | NEXT

Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x fem!reader, Modern AU

Summary: You two finally figure it all out on New Year's Eve...

artwork credit @colettebronte

Warnings: none, really… just some swearing and love confessions.

Word Count: 3.8k

Authors Note: A multi-chapter modern rom-com retelling of When Harry Met Sally. Here we are; this is the final chapter! Both reader and Benedict finally see the truth. There will be a short, hopefully humourous epilogue to this story as well, which I will post tomorrow. Thanks to @colettebronte for betaing. I hope you have all enjoyed this fic <3

For the next few weeks, the dreary weather, the clocks changing, and the chilly nights drawing in match your sullen mood. Your argument with Benedict at the wedding made you so sad but resolute to try and put it behind you.

It's the last weekend in November when you are buying a Christmas tree that you feel the worst. Making a mess of dragging the tree back to your place alone, leaving a trail of needles behind you, you stop halfway and slump onto a doorstep. Recalling with perfect clarity how you and Benedict had bought one together from the same man the previous year, laughing carefree as you easily carried it between you. Then you drank mulled wine as you haphazardly threw on lights and ornaments, dancing to cheesy Christmas songs. It's what you miss the most—his companionship, the ease of time spent with one of your favourite people.

Just as you are wrestling the tree through your front door, exhausted, sweaty and prickled by a thousand tiny shitty needles that seem to have it out for you, your phone pings with a message.

BB: I'm sorry for how things ended at the wedding. I've been thinking about it for weeks now. Please call me. I want to talk. 

Pride (and your current disastrous had-a-fight-with-a-tree-and-lost appearance) stops you from doing what you genuinely want to—picking up your phone and Facetiming him to sort it all out.

Not ready yet.

__

Two weeks later, it's mid-December, and you are sitting cross-legged on your living room floor with a big glass of wine, wrapping presents for friends, when your phone pings again. For a while now, almost every day, he has been sending links to Insta posts with adorable and hilarious content. Each of which you have enjoyed but couldn't bring yourself to reply to. This time, it’s a message.

BB: If you are available at the moment, please call me.

You stare at the little pop-up notification and take a gulp, a weird weight in your chest at the idea you might cave this time. Perhaps. Once you are done wrapping this gift. A few minutes later, your phone pings again.

BB: Okay, I assume no call means:

BB: (A) you can't take a call right now

BB: (B) you can, but you don't want to talk to me or 

BB: (C) you desperately do want to talk to me but are trapped under something heavy

BB: If it's A or C, please call me back later, doesn't matter what time

BB: Also, if it’s C, please call 999 if you are in danger, then call me after. I don't have any heavy-lifting equipment… 

You can't help but giggle at his gentle, silly humour, attempting to diffuse the tension. A large part of you wants to call; you even have the phone in your hand, but at the last minute, you rest it against your forehead with a sigh, something stopping you. Your stupid rebound fling being the biggest one, Benedict’s cutting remark about how quickly you let someone else into your bed, making your stomach roil. 

Still not ready yet.

—

“Obviously, she doesn't want to speak to me,” Benedict laments, his words muffled into a scatter cushion on Kate and Anthony’s sofa. 

It's the morning after they've returned from honeymoon, three days before Christmas. While they are thankful Benedict popped over with some basics to make breakfast, they could do without his melancholy—they’re much more about a ‘let’s have newlywed sex on the kitchen table’ vibe.

“What do I have to do? Get hit over the head? Be in some calamitous accident?” Benedict whines, twisting his head in aggravation as if trying to burrow himself head-first into the furniture.

‘What do we do?’ Anthony mouths to Kate, who throws her hands up defeatedly.

‘How should I know?’ she mouths back, frowning. ‘He's your brother.’

‘Your friend's fault,’ Anthony shoots back.

Kate crosses her arms and gets a look like a sour lemon, and he instantly regrets that line.

Benedict lifts his head to look up at them, and she has to stifle a giggle behind her hand at the deep red imprint of the cushion zipper on his forehead.

“If she wants to talk to me. She will call me back, right? I'm done with making an idiot of myself….” Benedict claims boldly.

__

You are sitting on the sofa at your childhood home early evening on Christmas Day, almost disgustingly full of Baileys (your mum's tipple of choice on this day) and Christmas pud, watching The Wrong Trousers - a family tradition - when your phone pings with a message.

It's from Benedict and your stomach vaults. You honestly thought after more than a week of silence, he had given up trying. And part of you was so sad. There is no text this time, just a video attachment. You excuse yourself to the downstairs cloakroom, taking a seat on the closed lid of the toilet, intrigued as to what it is.

The video starts with him looking directly into the camera, his handsome face filling the frame and making your stomach swoop again. Fuck, you have missed seeing it.

“Merry Christmas y/n. I hope you are having a nice time. I miss you, and I hate how we left things,” he opens honestly, “and when Bridgertons don't know what to do, we always act stupidly. It's our ‘thing’. So here, You can blame this on my genetics...”

The video cuts to black briefly and then fades into him, a huge 6ft lump, crowded behind a plastic toy piano on the floor, probably one of Daphne’s kids' toys. You instantly giggle at the ridiculous visual as he apes a maestro, closes his eyes as if about to play Chopin, and flexes his hands. Then, the tinny, electric sound of some familiar notes being played hesitantly begins. He isn't exactly a natural pianist.

“Hey, I didn't just meet you, And this is crazy, 

You know my number, So call me maybe,

It's hard to feel right without you, lady

You know my number, so call me, maybe…”

You are instantly laughing. He's such an adorable, charming idiot. Sitting behind a miniature plastic piano and playing, half in earnest, half in jest. At least his voice can hold a semi-decent tune. It brings an affectionate mist to your eyes even as it continues…

“Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad

I missed you so bad; I missed you so, so bad

Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad

And you should know that, I miss you now… so, so bad….”

For the last few words, he slows down the song and looks directly down the lens pointedly.

Something in his pleading look is the straw that breaks the camel's back proverbially, and with a slight tremor in your hand, you scroll to his name and hit the FaceTime button before you can think twice about it. The sound of the tone, as it rings, feels so loud, and each crisp ‘bringggg’ makes your nerves jangle. Just as you are about to hang up, the call connects.

“I'm sorry it took me so long to answer. I had to find a private spot.” he sounds a little winded.

“Where are you?” you frown, an unfamiliar background behind him.

“My childhood bedroom. Aubrey Hall.”

“Oh my god! Show me!” You enthuse, your initial equivocation derailed by nosiness, which you decide to frame instead in your mind as mere curiosity.  You never got to see it the wedding weekend for, well, reasons you don't want to dwell on right now.

He quickly flips the camera around, giving you an audio-guided tour of the room he grew up in. Dark blue walls with framed posters for his beloved Blur alongside Travis, Radiohead and Shaun of the Dead. Silly stick-on glow-in-the-dark stars on the high ceiling that are likely too high for anyone to bother getting out a ladder and peeling off. Shelves with little wooden car models he made with his dad before he died, mixed in with certificates of achievement from school, shiny brass archery trophies, and his early sketches in those cheap snap-in frames. And lastly, a collection of jagged small rocks and colourful pebbles. It makes you feel so very affectionate for little teenage Benedict.

“You are bloody adorable!” you blurt out, almost forgetting all the awkwardness from the past few weeks.

The camera flips around, and his lopsided grin fills the screen. “Thank you. I try to make a habit of it…”

You smile back and then sigh. “I’ve missed this,” you confess quietly, wistfully. 

“I’ve missed this too. You. Us. Can we please be friends again? Please? I know we both have a lot of things to talk about. With that night and all… but… can we reset? I need you, Bluey. I am miserable without my best friend,” he pouts, his raw honesty making your chest ache. 

It’s exactly how you feel, too. Except with a massive pang of regret that he seems to want to forget your magical night together. Sex is never like that, at least not for you—electric and addictive. Doing a reset to save your friendship feels like the most logical step. Still, it doesn’t stop the “what if” fantasies running in your head with increasing frequency, especially on a day like today—nostalgia, sentiment and overindulgence swirling in your being. 

“I would like us to be friends again,” you exhale, a lie by slight omission, drumming your fingertips on your cheek nervously to stop you from saying more. 

“Wonderful! Then it is so! I can’t wait to see you again! Are you going to the New Year's party? The one Simon & Daph are hosting at the Sky Terrace? Cos if you are, I was wondering, if you don’t have a date if we could go together? We always said we would be each other's plus one if neither of us is with anyone…”

That he wants to completely reset to that world makes your heart crack. You want to scream at him, ‘No! I want to be your real date! Pick me, for real, this time!’

“I… can’t do that,” you waver, and it comes off sounding tired.

“You have a date?” It’s soft, hesitant, trepidatious.

“No…” you admit, “I just don’t think it’s a good idea to go together like that. I… I can’t be your consolation prize anymore, Benedict,” you blurt out, the hurt taking over your tongue.

The look of stunned surprise on his face makes it worse. As if he had never even seen it from that perspective.

“That’s not what I….” he begins but is interrupted by a loud door bang as it slams into the wall and a yelling voice.

“Stop fucking hiding and get your bloody arse back downstairs. You can’t miss family dinner on Christmas Day!” Colin scolds loudly offscreen.

“I’ve got to go…,” he sighs reluctantly as an arm manhandles him up and off the bed. “Merry Christmas,” he adds, belatedly realising you both forgot to say it earlier on the call.

“Whoever it is, hang up. No one is more important than family on Christmas,” Colin gripes. “That’s it, I’m taking your phone…”.

The screen is filled with random shapes and loud noises as they seem to wrestle like children. And then the call suddenly disconnects. 

You sigh and tip sideways against the cold tile of your parents' cloakroom wall.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

__

Benedict takes stock of his surroundings. December 31st, 11:00pm, lying on his stomach on his sectional chaise, staring up at the big flatscreen on his wall.

This isn't so bad… he tries to convince himself. I've got Jools Holland’s Hootenanny - the only decent New Year's programme, some Glenfiddich and Mini Cheddars - the best snack there is… 

He sighs and realises how pathetic he sounds, even in his own mind, alone in an empty flat.

__

The man whirls you around, and you are almost thrown straight into Kate and Anthony.

“I should never have let you drag me to this,” you grouse so only they can hear.

They both shoot you an apologetic look until you are whipped away again. This man’s dancing style is more akin to a waltzer amusement ride than anything sensual or fun. Your shoulder is already aching. It's a far cry from the surprising salsa Benedict pulled out of the bag last New Year’s Eve. And the idle thought of him has you spiralling…

“Mind if we stop?” you puff as the band finishes the song with a flourish. He’s some slick European investment banking type, and really, you couldn't give two shits about offending him, merely your ingrained politeness kicking in.

He nods and goes off to grab drinks as you stand, hands on hips, trying to gather your breath as you watch all the people moving like a mass of limbs on the crowded dancefloor as the following number begins.

Why the fuck am I here?

__

This is much better… Benedict rationalises to himself as he wanders down the rainy, empty East London streets not far from his Hoxton pad. Who needs to be at a big, crowded party pretending to have a good time?

He pauses outside a trendy shop on Old St, selling overpriced crap that he's not even sure what it is.

See? I can do some window shopping. He tells himself silently—clutching at anything to distract himself from the creeping sense of dread in his gut. A slow twisting knife as he thinks about you dancing the night away, ringing in the New Year with some fancy, handsome man who definitely doesn't deserve you.

What does it matter to me? We are just friends. Best friends… the only friend I ever want to see every day… the only one who truly matters….

He has thought about how to repair the damage between you so much over the last few weeks that he's exhausted himself. Really, he just wants you back. All of you, ideally, but being realistic, any part of yourself you will let back into his life. The suggestion of a reset he made on Christmas Day being his cowardly way out.

—

You are fake laughing at the banker’s story as you lean around the pillar you are backing yourself against in an attempt to secure more personal space. Glad of the heated lamps and the glass overhang to shelter from the drizzle.

“I'm going home,” you growl.

“You’ll never find an Uber,” Kate points out deadpan as you turn back around and keep faking amusement.

__

Just as his thoughts spiral, Benedict hears a chuckle on the other side of the road. There, a couple are laughing together, wrapped in each other's arms, kissing, looking like no one else in the world matters… and it’s like a lightning rod hits him square in the chest.

Suddenly, all he can see are images of you, fluttering like motioned-filled playing cards from above, swirling into his eyeline, then floating onto the glistening pavement around him. Vignettes of his life and where you intersect at so many pivotal moments. The day he left uni - the car ride where you bickered like an old married couple, the day he moved to Paris - your dilated pupils and hitched breath on the Eurostar when he whispered in your ear, the unerring sympathy when you heard about his divorce, the way you held his hand when you wandered after dinner somewhere (he doesn't even recall where… only that it was with you), watching movies together on FaceTime, your incredulity when he confessed to his uneventful recurring sex dream, your surprise and, yes, arousal as he led you in the salsa dance, the way you tucked so neatly into his arms haunting him. And finally, how it felt to be buried inside your gorgeous body as you clung to him, calling his name like a siren song, intimacy like he has never known, the profundity of the connection petrifying the very life out of him. 

But as he stares down at his tatty old Converse, the same ones he wore the day you met, in fact, all he sees in the puddle beneath him is the simple truth he has been in denial about, possibly for a decade or more. Rippling refractions of your face - your knowing smile, bright eyes, your wonderful, happy expression…

And before his brain acknowledges it, his feet are moving….

Walking fast…

Then it’s a jog…

Then it’s a run….

.. his feet carrying him to the one place he knows with every fibre of his being he wants to be.

—

You wander as if in a daze, seemingly surrounded by nothing but couples, kissing, dancing, whispering, and it's the final straw. You spy Kate and Anthony sipping champagne together and slope over.

“I'm going,” you sigh.

“But it's almost midnight,” Anthony protests.

“Being surrounded by people kissing is just…” you shrug, melancholy creeping in like a clingy fog around your heart.

“I’ll kiss you,” Kate placates, and Anthony perks up to no end at that suggestion, nodding enthusiastically as you both roll your eyes, bemused. “Stay? Please?” she pleads, pouting and grabbing your hands.

“Thanks, Kate. But no. I have to go. Have a wonderful night,” you bid them, kissing her gently on the cheek. “Happy New Year,” you whisper as she returns the greeting.

__

Benedict's lungs are burning as he races down Old St towards Shoreditch, not far from where you celebrated last year. He ignores the ache in his muscles and keeps going, checking his watch to see 11:56pm and racing harder.

I need to be there at midnight!

__

As you walk to pick up your coat, a sight makes your heart leap into your mouth and stops you dead in your tracks.

There, rounding the top stair, casual in old faded jeans, those ancient Converse and a chunky knit jumper… is Benedict. Hair fluffy and dishevelled from the rain, out of breath and scanning the crowd desperately. As if he is seeking someone.

Then his eyes finally land on you, and your world tilts. 

Oh god, is he here… for… me?!?

Then he is striding purposefully towards you, and it seems like the crowds part. His eyes blisteringly intense, like they were on that fateful night. You try to school your face, aiming for casual indignance; you probably fail spectacularly— your heart thumping wildly.

“I've been doing a lot of thinking…” he begins as he pulls up before you. “And the thing is… I love you..”

Everything grinds to a halt, and your head feels dizzy.

This must be a prank, surely?

“What?” you stutter, disbelief rocking your core.

“I love you,” he says with a simple shrug as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

“Ben.. I… what do you expect me to say?” you blurt out, floored.

“How about you love me too,” he smiles a tiny fraction, and you hate it.

You hate how RIGHT he is. Your body is a total jumble of live wires, but your mind is suddenly calm. It's like the clouds of your thoughts part, and it all seems crystal clear. And yet, something in your stubborn heart won't let you admit it. Terrified what it could mean to voice it.

“Look, Ben, I know it's New Year, and I know you may be lonely tonight. But please don't do this,” you implore haltingly, tears prickling hot in the corners of your eyes, “...not like this,” you whisper, defeated.

“Okay, how about like this….” he throws his hands up. “I love that you won't admit you love me. I love that you are looking at me like you want to kill me right now. I love that my body is screaming at me cos I ran here as fast as I could.” he gestures down at his slightly shaky legs.

“Ten seconds to New Year's!!” a loud voice blares out over the speakers.

“TEN!!” the crowd chants.

“I love that we are idiots who would never admit to how in love we are.”

“NINE!”

“I love that you are my blue lobster, rare and beautiful as a diamond but a delicious soft treat under that hard as nails shell….” 

“EIGHT!”

He tilts your chin to look up at him, a thumb swiping a tear you didn't even know had escaped. 

“SEVEN!”

“Don't leave me out here in the wind, y/n…,” he murmurs softly.

“SIX!”

“I… I love that you never give up,” you whisper so quietly even you can barely hear it. 

The smile that lights up Benedict’s face makes your whole being feel like the stars live inside your chest.

“FIVE!”

“I love that you take homemade salads on a road trip,” he smirks playfully, referring to the first day you spent together all those years ago.

“FOUR!” 

“I love that you kept your amazing dance prowess under wraps,” you laugh over a stilted snuffle, everything in you fizzling.

“THREE!”

“I love that I can still smell you on my clothes after we spend the day together,” he sighs, moving in closer, your eyes hypnotised by the movement of his cupid’s bow.

“TWO!”

“I love that you came here tonight,” you admit, your hands circling his forearms as you sway slightly in unison.

“ONE!”

“I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night,” he confesses, his lips ghosting over yours now, smiling crookedly even as he speaks.

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!” the crowd chants.

All around you, party poppers go off, colourful ribbons of streamers, and the sound of glasses clinking fills the air. But it’s background noise, your whole focus on each other.

Finally, your lips meet, the fireworks under your ribs matching those in the skies above, the same as it was that first time weeks ago. You melt into each other's embrace, your kiss a seal of a pact and the promise of something new and infinite.

“For the record,” he rumbles, his minty breath hot on your lips, the strains of Auld Lang Syne ringing around the rooftop. “I'm not saying this because I’m lonely and not because it’s the New Year. I came here tonight because when you finally realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start…”

“...as soon as possible,” you exhale, completing his sentence with him as he nods, grinning from ear to ear. 

The drunken chorus around you gets louder; he chuckles and shakes his head. “I’ve never understood this stupid song.”

“I think it’s about remembering not to forget. Or not forgetting to remember. Or something,” you peal a laugh, knowing you are talking gibberish and not giving a damn. “Anyway, it’s about old friends,” you add pointedly, moving in for another spine-tingling, heart-melting kiss.

As you part, he cradles your jaw in his hands. “It was only ever you, y/n,” he sighs, hazy eyes burning into yours, his whisper fervent but contented into your skin. “It had to be you.”

Benedict taglist: @makaylan @foreverlonginguniverse @iboopedyournose @aintnuthinbutahounddog @severewobblerlightdragon @margofiore @writergirl-2001 @heeyyyou @enichole445 @enchantedbytomandhenry @ambitionspassionscoffee @chaoticcalzoneranchsports @nikaprincessofkattegat @baebee35 @crowleysqueenofhell @fiction-is-life @lilacbeesworld @angels17324 @broooookiecrisp @queen-of-the-misfit-toys @eleanor-bradstreet @divaanya @musicismyoxygen84 @benedictspaintbrush @miindfucked @sorryallonsy @cayt0123 @hottytoddyhistory @truly-dionysus @fictionalmenloversblog @zinzysstuff @malpalgalz @panhoeofmanyfandoms @kinokomoonshine @causeimissu @delehosies @m-rae23 @last-sheep @kmc1989 @desert-fern @starkeylover @corpseoftrees-queen @magical-spit @bunnyweasley23 @how-many-stars-in-the-sky @amygdtjhddzvb @sya-skies

[farmlesbians]

i’d like to get to know you i’d like to take you out we’d go to the hail mary and afterwards make out instead i’m typing you a message that i know i’ll never send rewriting old excuses delete the kisses at the end when i see you the whole world reduces to just that room and then i remember and i’m shy that gossip’s eye will look too soon and then i’m trapped overthinking and yeah probably self doubt you tell me to get over it and to take you out but i can’t i’m too scared and here’s the night bus i have to go and the doors are closing and you were waving and i like you and i’ll never let it show and you won’t wait and maybe i won’t mind i work better on my own and now i’m home a little bit drunk and i ask myself what if it’s not meant for me love what if it’s not meant for me love a few days pass since i last saw you and you've taken over my mind i’m retelling jokes you made that made me laugh pretending that they're mine i wanna tell the whole world about you i think that that's a sign i’m losing self-control and it's you it really is one thousand times i look at your picture and I smile how awful's that i’m like a teenage girl i might as well write all over my notebook that you rock my world but you do you really do you’ve turned me upside down and that's okay i’ll let it happen cause i like having you around i’m electric a romantic cliché yeah they really are all true when we catch eyes at that stupid party i know exactly what to do i’ll take your hand and we will leave french exits from me and you and now I'm home a little bit drunk some things don't change and i know now me and you were meant to be in love

[secret-smut-sideblog]

The Rabbit

Lavellan x Blackwall

18+ drug use (weed), dom/sub, thigh riding, breast worship (f!), rough oral (f!), multiple orgasms, rough sex, p-in-v, doggy style, dirty talk, squirting, choking, spitting, unprotected sex, violence, blood and gore, tearful goodbyes

The battle for all of Thedas nearly drawn to their door, Vella and her bear share an urgent night of passion before it all falls around them...

Masterlist, Prev Chapter

-

"Really? You never learned how to play Wicked Grace?" Varric gave her a dubious stare.

"Is that so unbelievable?" Vella countered, sidling up to the table. "How easily you've forgotten I'm a wild woman from the forest." She sighed with mock weariness, smiling at Blackwall as his hand came to her hip.

Cullen flitted his gaze as she plopped into Blackwall's lap.

"You never taught her?" Varric directed at Blackwall, that amused sparkle in his eye.

"Are you kidding?" Blackwall laughed, his wide hand squeezed her thigh under the table. "You thought Solas could play you out of the clothes on your back? Nah, I know a card shark in the making when I see one."

Vella scoffed in mock affront and stuck her tongue out at him. Cullen caught on his own spit at the reveal of her tongue ring. Suddenly, he was very focused on his cards after a few solid coughs.

"Oh, he's got you pegged." Dorian agreed.

"Actually, I'm the one-"

"Could we start, please?" Cullen cut her off, his face scarlet. "I have a thousand things to do."

Bull laughed behind his hand, giving her an appreciative wink as he pushed coin onto the table. Vella smiled and tossed her leg over her thigh, lighting a pipe of elfroot.

"You're going to give the poor man a complex." Blackwall laughed low, speaking Elvhen to her under his breath. Spreading his cards in his hand.

"If that's all it takes..." She hummed mischievously.

"Hey! No elf whispering." Varric chided. "I'm barely convinced you don't know how to play as it is."

"Varric!" Vella gasped, leaning on a palm. Giving the slightest wiggle in Blackwall's lap. "Have I not proven myself trustworthy yet?"

"Oh no, Sunshine." He warned in a tease. "You may be sweet, but women as beautiful as you are always cunning."

Vella smiled wide.

He was right, of course. She had never played this game, but their companions tells were easy told to her. Even more so as the drink started flowing. Her own imbibing herbs left her warm and fizzled, leaning back into Blackwall's wide chest as content as a cat in a sunbeam.

Vella smiled at Cullen as he spun a tale from his templar days. It was rather tame to her standards, but he told it with the boisterous joy of retelling something rather sordid.

"What did he do?" Josephine urged through a giggle.

"Saluted. Turned on his heel. And marched out like he was in full armor."

The table lit with laughter, appreciative remarks thrown from all sides. The air warm with drunken comradery.

Blackwall's hand had come to rest on the curve of her hipbone, giving his own rough chuckle. A slow but insistent drag of his thumb on her waist had started, a near unconscious sign of his hidden desire.

She couldn't help but agree. This strain of elfroot left her snuggly and needful, barely restrained from kissing at his throat at the table.

It was criminal how attracted she was to this man. At all times, in danger of rubbing into him like a beast in heat. Gods when they finally get to live together...

The thought intruded, as it was bound to.

If. Not when.

They were facing down Corypheus within the next few days, she was sure of it. Though she was without foresight, there was something tight pulled in her gut. A certainty that he was somewhere within her horizon.

But she didn't want to think about that now. Only focused on the warmth surrounded behind her and the sensation of being slow and soft. Blinking up at him in adoration.

His stare caught hers, smiling under his mustache.

"No need to stare at me like that, dove. I'm already in love with you, don't need more persuading."

"You two are so..." Cassandra sighed dreamily, face propped on both hands. Eyes aglow with the unabashed reverie only brought out with a few tankards of beer.

"Careful Seeker," Varric chuckled. "You might come off as a romantic. And I just won." He planted the Angel of Death card on the table nonchalantly.

"No!" Cassandra cried. Slamming her hand of cards down in a huff.

But all of their companions became peripheral to Vella as her body saught for more touch. Both the elfroot and the heat of his body had left her heavy and sighing. Nuzzling into his throat like a hungry kitten.

"Do you need my attention, little bird?" He teased under his breath. But she could feel the drum of his heart against her. He needed it just as bad as she did.

"Are you going to win?" She whispered in his ear.

"Absolutely not." He chuckled.

"Then throw the game and fuck me." The whisper pushed directly into the well.

His breath caught in his throat, and she smiled against it. Rising off his lap to give a demure goodnight to their friends. Many voices rung out to wish her off, and she sauntered away. Headed towards her chambers.

Vella made her way upstairs, humming happily. Shedding her clothes in a line as she made her way to the bed. Snatching one of Blackwall's tunics that she had 'borrowed' from the back of a chair. Letting the linen fall over her as she pulled her hair through the neck to cascade down her back again.

She climbed into the bed with the satisfaction of a rabbit in a burrow. Curling up in the blankets as it pulls the earth around it. Humming out in contentment.

She had just fallen into a near sleep tranquility when the bed shifted behind her. Strong arms taken up around her under blankets.

"Mmm..." She turned, pressing into him. "You're made for cuddling."

"Am I?" He chuckled low, pulling her to him by her waist. Weaving his limbs into hers.

"Very. So big and warm and sweet." She praised, wiggling happily into his hold.

"And furry." She added, tugging in a soft tease on his beard. "I just want to kiss you all the time. You're wonderful."

"Maker, you're going to puddle me." He accused, his pupils wide with love as he stared down at her. "That elfroot made you too sweet."

"And yet, I'm not being eaten." She sighed mournfully. "I thought bears liked honey."

The blood rushing through her body was utterly intoxicated by the feeling of him against her. Tangling her limbs into his and kissing at his throat.

"Do you want to be tasted, honey?" He hushed, voice husky with desire.

She nodded up at him, her eyes seeking plaintively.

She had always leaned towards dominance in intimacy, but he pulled something from her. Something soft and submissive. Fallen under him a tame little thing, asking to be touched with wide eyes and softly parted lips.

"You're so beautiful." He marveled quietly, running his thumb over her bottom lip. Scanning her face in reverent glances. "Maker, how are you so perfect?"

He leaned down and kissed into the side of her neck. A wide hand pushed up her ribcage to cup her breast, thumbing her nipple over his tunic.

She whined softly, pulling his leg with hers to press his thigh against her sex. Grinding slow into the taut muscle.

"Fuck, yes." He encouraged, pressing his thigh harder into the ridge of her. Grabbing her ass in a handful to rock her against him.

"Could you cum on my thigh?" His deep voice sweet in its request.

She nodded again, pulling the tunic up to her clavicle. Arching her chest up in unabashed request.

He agreed immediately, breathing hard through nose as his mouth descended onto her peak. Licking the sensitive nub into his lips.

She bit into her lip as her head craned back. Another whine caught in her throat. The growl of his moan against her tingled through her whole body. Her cunt fully flooded with arousal. Climbing closer and closer to her tipping point with each grind of her hips. Her soft cries getting needy and choppy.

His tongue slurped and popped around her nipple, tongue flicking and laving flat lines through panted breaths. Watching her under his brow with dark blown eyes. Twisting her other nipple between his fingers.

How he already knew how to fast pull her thread was entirely unfair. The points of her body and how they needed to be touched to unravel her completely.

"Oh gods..." She moaned, gripping his forearm. Orgasm tight pulled in the drive of her hips.

"Yes, cum on me pretty girl." He praised around her breast. Grasping the outside of her thigh, pulling her deeper. "I want to lick your cunt while it's clenching."

The vulgar of it sent her over. Shuddering through waves of pleasure striking out through her body. Clawing into his back.

He smiled, rising off her tender breast to descend between her legs. Cupping the apex of her thighs in both hands.

"So sweet." He sighed out in contentment as he nestled between. Licking her cum from her thighs. The bristle of his beard teased against the soft skin as his tongue pushed deep into her. Slurping obscenely as he lapped cum into his mouth.

"I love you." She sighed around her moans, pressing her hand against the headboard as he took her apart with a suckling tongue. "Fuck, I love you Thom."

She froze, the intoxicating herbs and touch had left her mind hazy. But her calling of his true name only drove him harder against her. His calloused hands dug into the fat of her thighs, moaning into her core. Yanking her flush to his face. Eating voraciously, tongue and lips crushing into her with animal fervor.

She whimpered cries, and he growled into her. His steel eyes watched her writhe under his brow. His fingernails dug painfully into her thighs, but the pain only danced deliciously with her delirious pleasure. A flood about to burst the dam.

He lapped flat at her tender clit under the suction of his lips. Just the sound was enough to send her over, but the ferocity was overkill. She came in a strangled, shuddered cry. Her body trembled and curled up with a terrible pleasure. Fisting in to the sheets as her head craned back. Pelvis the nexus of an earthquake that rocked her whole body.

"Ohhh fuck yes." Thom growled, leaning back to thrust his fingers into her still clenching cunt. Eliciting a cry from her as he fast slammed his fingers inside. "Give it to me, baby."

A shuddering she had rarely experienced tightened around his fingers. Her thighs wet with release. She clamped her hand over her mouth to muffle a shriek. Her eyes utterly lost in her skull.

Thoms deep groans of appreciation watching her soak him were only heightened by him pulling his fingers free slowly to lick them clean. He kept her gaze as he licked his wrist up into his palm, her cum slick veiled along his skin.

She urged him up to her with pulls of her legs. Undressing him with rapid fingers as he met her above.

She opened her mouth wide, tongue stuck out flat in request. He understood implicitly and spat in her mouth. Her cunt clenched hard and she led his hand to her throat as she kicked off his trousers.

His reverent love making was wonderful, but this is what she always craved. Fucking nasty and mean. The kind of fucking done by animals in rut.

His eyes flashed dangerously, understanding her again. Flipping her onto her belly easily, hiking her hips high with rough grunting yanks.

She moaned into the pillows, arching her back. Giving him the full display of her submissive body curled for him.

"Maker's breath." He huffed, taking a full handful of her ass. Spreading his hand down her lower back. "Such a beautiful whore."

Vella moaned loudly, and Thom grabbed a fistful of her hair. Pulling her up to him as he lined up behind her. Growling into her ear as his hand tightened around her throat.

"You're my whore, aren't you?" His thick cock breached her as he threatened, pulling a strangled moan from her. "My pretty little whore, soaking the bed."

She nodded dumbly, already fluttering around the mass of him. A third orgasm refining to a spear inside her, nearing to striking distance.

"That's right." He huffed, thrusting hard into her. The slide against that mind-numbing place inside her entrance was near unbearable. Her body tried to collapse against the sheets, but his hand spread flat across her sternum. Demanding her to stay.

"You're not going anywhere." He promised in a huff. His thrusts picked up speed. "Not until I'm done with you."

"Yes, ser." She moaned. The squelching of her cunt so salacious it made her dizzy.

"Keep talking." He demanded. Gripping her hip as an anchor. Her body jolting with the force of his thrusts. Fingers digging into her neck.

"I can't, I'm about to cum!" She pleaded in Elvhen around mewls, mind unable to speak Common anymore. "Fuck, you're going to make me-"

Her words cut off in a whip of cries as she came again. Fingernails scrambled into his sides behind her. Choking on her own raw pleasure.

He cursed under his breath and released her in a heap under him. His hands took up both sides of her hips to solely thrust.

"Say my name."

"Thom." She pleaded.

"Again. Louder."

"Thom, please! Please!"

She looked over her shoulder at the wild bear rutting into her.

"Please cum Thom! I need you to cum!"

He finally buckled, a hand bracing on her lower back as his face crumpled in release. Driving sloppy into her as he bellowed behind clenched teeth. Her cunt flooded with warmth, pulling a wide smile from her. No matter how he insisted and promised he couldn't help but to cum inside her. It wasn't a problem anymore, so she could revel fully in it.

He fell back into an open kneel, huffing and sweating. Eyes glazed and rolling marble in his head.

Vella turned and pulled him onto his belly. His body limp and pliant to her leading, following easily. Fallen under her in a slump.

She sat on him and drug her nails lightly up and down his back. His deep moan exactly what she was looking for.

After a moment of gentle scratching, his breath returned in slow pulls of his chest. Body completely loose under hers, arms curled around his head, face slack against the pillow.

"You still with me?" She teased in a quiet voice.

"Uh-huh..." He sighed, his eyes struggling to focus.

"I'm not convinced. Quick, what's the capital of Orlais?"

He smacked her thigh with a limp palm. Pulling a giggle from her.

"Asshole..." He laughed, reaching back to pull her down to him. Wrapping around her, cocooned within the safety of his limbs.

"Language!" She chided in a whisper.

"Shit. Fuck." He pinched her side. "Motherfucker."

"You forgot Shitfucker."

"I love you." He smiled loosely at her, eyes soft in adoration. "Do you want to get married?"

"What?" She laughed.

"Wait, are you serious?" She hushed, rising onto elbows over his head.

"Yeah. I am." He smiled, her hair fallen curtain around him. His hands rested on her ribcage, rubbing thumbs in slow waves. "Would you marry me?"

"Dalish don't get married." She smiled with a shaken head. "We call it Bonding. And we're already engaged to be bonded, silly."

"Wait, what?" He stood on elbows now. Staring shock into her.

"Yeah, I gave you my hair..." She led in amused confusion. Planting a palm over the small pouch that he always wore pendant around his neck. "You gave me the boots you made me..."

"That was a proposal?!"

She burst into bright laughter at the absurdity of it all. She was sure he understood the meaning of the gesture after all of their lessons. He certainly acted with the appropriate solemn in taking her proposal gift.

"Yes, it was. We've been engaged to be bonded since the Grand Ball." She offered through fits of giggling.

"I-" His eyes darted down in thought, then started flooding with tears.

"Oh, dove." He warbled.

"Hey, shhh." She wrapped around him. Soothing his body into hers. "It's okay..."

"It's not okay." He countered around the tight of his throat. "I did all of that to you and didn't even know we were..."

"I forgive you." She kissed his ear, tightly holding him. "I forgive you, Thom."

He hitched a sob into her shoulder. Trembling within her woven embrace.

-

"Come on, baby." Vella huffed under her breath. Firing arrow after arrow into Corypheus. Watching her love slam into him with the last of his strength. Shield braced under the hail of red beamed death. "Come on, come on."

She threw a barrage of daggers to get him off of Thom, Dorian flanking behind her to unleash his own hellfire. Bull rushing past to cleave into Corypheus' calf.

The monstrosity cried out in rage as he fell to a kneel. Vella ran forward, seeing her target through a tunnel of spectral vision. Dagger poised along her forearm.

Thom raised his shield for her and she leapt off of it into a drive of her dagger. Screaming from deep in her gut as the blade speared through his throat.

Corypheus' breath cut as he stared shock into her. The orb pulsed with power as he still tried to wrestle it into his command.

Rage untethered flowed through her, this death a culmination of everything she had suffered. Screaming in holy rage again, she bore over him. Pulling her dagger from his throat and ripping her teeth into the putrid flesh. Blood smeared in the cavern of her mouth. Teeth rending flesh.

The orb flew to her hand, raised high above her head. A deafening beam of power flew to the heavens from it. Shaking the earth below her as she tore away his throat.

As he fell limp, she released him to the Fade as she spat blood. The orb shattered above her in the same breath. Sky shuddered closed. Earth pulverized around her.

Thom's shield came over her body as the castle crumbled around them. Dragging her to a run as it all fell away.

She blinked the dust out of her eyes, coughing through debris in the air. Taking fearful count of her companions. Letting out a deep breath of relief when she found them all whole.

Far into the battlefield, Solas stepped forward. Reaching out a tentative hand as he fell to a kneel.

Vella stared in confusion as she rushed toward him.

"Solas, what are you doing he-"

His gentle cupping of the remnants of the orb paused her. His body leaned in a bow of mourning.

"The orb..." He hushed, shaking his head.

"Solas..." She reached for his shoulder, but he stood. Leaving the pieces to the earth. "I'm so sorry."

She understood the loss of elvhen artifacts. The gouge they left in the already ragged tapestry of their people. But, somehow, this felt beyond that.

He tried to pull from her hand, but she ducked around his front and pulled him into a tight hug.

His breath stilled in his chest, arms held out uncertainly. But they wove around her after a moment. His head tucked into her shoulder.

They stayed entwined there. His hands grasped her back as he pulled away. Eyes swimming in sorrow.

"No matter what comes," He looked down at her. Stepping away with eyes locked on her face. "I want you to know you will always have me."

"Solas, wait-"

"Vella!"

She turned at Thom's frightened call at her absence.

"Here!" She called in return. "I'm here!"

When she turned Solas was gone.

-

Vella stared up at his unfinished fresco, wiping a tear with agitated fingers.

"Hey." Thom's kiss on her shoulder greeted ahead of him.

"Hey." She smiled sadly. Leaning back into his chest as his arms snaked around her waist.

"Men I care about really have a bad habit, huh?" She looked back up at the gouge he had left. "Dissappearing."

"I'm sorry, dove. On both of our accounts."

"I hope he's okay." She sighed. "I just want him happy and safe, no matter what."

Something shuddered inside her chest, drawing her eyes down in shock. Jolting her breath to a still.

"Vella?" Thom came around her front. Searching her with frantic eyes.

"I'm okay, I think." She pressed a hand to her sternum. "It's the ancestors. They just spoke... sorrow? They've never given me only a feeling before."

No, this felt beyond them. Something larger. Full under her heart.

"Solas...?" She whispered, but the feeling fell away again.

"Fucking well..." Thom sighed, shaking his head ruefully at her. "Come on, love. We're almost packed."

"Oh shit, I've still got to say goodbye to everyone!" She paused their stride to take a paintbrush from Solas' desk. Slipping it into her pocket.

"I hate that you're leaving." Josephine sighed. "I mean, I'm happy for you! Happy for you both. But I still hate it."

"I'm going to miss you too." Vella smiled. "And I won't be gone. We'll be in, I'm sure, constant communication as I 'rule' from the sidelines." She curled her fingers at the word. The gold bracelet with an enchanted stone caught the light. "Dorian made us these special afterall."

Josephine slid her matching ring around her finger. "I know. Leliana and Cullen have theirs, too. But it won't be the same. You're such a calming presence. I don't know how many spats you can settle from the Free Marches."

"You'll do great." Vella cupped her cheeks and kissed her forehead. "You'll all do great."

"Where are you going first?" Josephine urged. "I'll have Leliana send scouts to assure your arrival."

"Honestly, I have no idea." Vella smiled brilliantly. "Isn't that great? I'm not leading for once!"

"We're tracking down one of my men on the road towards Ostwick." Thom offered over her shoulder as he came up behind.

"Oooh, I'm good at tracking." She smiled.

"The best." Thom agreed, sliding his hand around her waist. "That's why I hired you."

"I hope I can earn my pay." Vella purred.

"Ugh, enough." Josephine laughed. "Get out, both of you."

Vella pulled her into a hug, and Josephine sighed into her shoulder.

"Call on me if you need me." Vella assured as they separated. Both her and Thom turned. "I'll find my way back, no matter what."

"Wait!"

Sera ran out of the castle door. Leaping into a hug on Thom's chest.

"You're staying! We've talked about this!" He laughed heartily. Hugging her tightly to him.

As Sera blubbered goodbyes into him, Dorian's hand came to Vella's shoulder. Nodding his own tearful goodbye on the road towards Tevinter.

She kissed both of his cheeks and wiped his tears.

"Don't be a stranger." He sighed.

"Never." She chastised. "You can't, either." She held up the bracelet again.

"Right. We're connected now." He sighed in mock weariness.

"Ha-ha! You have to be my friend!" She teased.

"Be safe." He pulled her into a deep hug. "Don't die, okay?"

"Love you." She murmured into his shoulder.

"Love you, too." He warbled. Wiping his eyes again as he pulled away. "Ugh! Go on. Get."

"That's the goodbye I was looking for." She smiled. Hopping up onto Ghilana behind Thom. "Good riddance, all of you."

"Hope your trip is terrible." Josephine laughed.

"Hope Skyhold falls into the canyon!" Vella agreed in a call. Smiling wide at her retreating friends.

She wrapped tight around Thom's waist and leaned her head into his wide back. Letting out a long-held sigh. Finally, moving forward in the quiet of two bodies. The earth awakening with the damp of spring around them.

Despite everything, daffodils had bloomed.

~

~

~

okay this is the end! unless ya'll want some Trespasser chapters 👀 (but I just started it irl, no spoilers!) genuinely thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone following this story with me! mwah! mwah I say!!! ❤️

[butchhamlet]

are there any shakespeare retellings you recommend? i really enjoy retellings but it's also difficult to find ones that like. actually understand the source material... i've read your novella duodecimal and really liked it btw! excellent take on twelfth night :-)

THANK YOU SO MUCH WAH... yes, i can recommend some retellings! i keep intending to make a big post with my recs, actually, but there are so many out there that i haven't read yet... so for now here's an incomplete list:

a thousand acres by jane smiley: the first one that came to my mind seeing this ask. it's a retelling of lear set on an american farmstead, and the adaptation is done beautifully and smoothly--it's just distinct enough from OG Lear that you can judge it as a book on its own but also as a lear retelling. and it's sooooo good. it starts a little slow, but the character work is so excellent and it almost made me cry (i will note that there's a pretty hefty cw on this one but... saying what it is is technically spoilers? but feel free to send another ask or message if you want to know up-front)

the last true poets of the sea by julia drake: books that made me have to turn my camera off in zoom class so i could bawl properly. books written for me specifically. this is a loose YA retelling of twelfth night (looser than some of the other retellings on this list) and it's like. perfect. the teenage dialogue actually sounds like teenagers. every emotional beat clubbed me over the head. the love triangle is present--and done really well; it's not present for drama but because sometimes being a teenager is confusing--but more than that this is a book about the relationship between violet and her sibling, and about mental health, and god it makes me CRAZY. also girls kiss in this one

rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead by tom stoppard: i mean. i think most people into shakespeare know r&gad. but in case you haven't read it yet, it's an absurdist play from the point of view of rosencrantz and guildenstern and it's absolutely fucking brilliant. not sure what else to say about this; you've really just gotta read it

teenage dick by mike lew: another play, this one on the modern side--a retelling of richard iii set in a high school, focusing explicitly on disability issues. kind of more a reimagining than a retelling, honestly, but i really like the exploration of r3's themes and also it's fucking hysterical. although i will say there's a kind of jarring tonal shift in this one near the end, so don't go to it for something 100% comedic

american moor by keith hamilton cobb: okay this isn't exactly a retelling but if you've ever read othello you have to read it. you just have to. please god if you've ever read a shakespeare PLEASE. it's a monologue from the perspective of a black man trying out for the role of othello, half-resigned to being pigeonholed into playing that specific role in a very specific way as directed by a white director, but also half-chafing against that resignation, and also exploring the complexities of loving shakespeare as a black man, and it's soooooo so good

exit, pursued by a bear by e.k. johnston: this one is kind of cheating because it's not really a retelling, in that it has next to nothing to do with the winter's tale except that there is a hermione character and a leontes character and a paulina character. i still think it's a very very well-done YA book, though, and one of the only ones i've read that deals head-on with abortion

foul is fair by hannah capin: okay, i will admit i read this one some years ago when i was more into YA, so i'm not sure i would still go crazy over it now, but the plot of this book is that the modern lady macbeth character gets assaulted by a guy at a party and decides to kill everyone who let that happen. and then she does. and idk i read it in two days it felt like being on crack

the wednesday wars by gary schmidt: this one is DEFINITELY cheating, because this isn't a retelling of anything. but if you like shakespeare and you're open to reading historical fiction about a kid in the 60s using shakespeare as a lens through which to understand the chaos of his life (from the vietnam war to his school crush)... it's so good. it made me nearly sob. beautiful book

i'm also a fan of ryan north's shakespeare choose-your-own-adventure books, but those aren't exactly retellings and also the humor will probably not work for everyone. but i like em <3

and finally, i would be remiss not to shout out the fact that @suits-of-woe wrote an INCREDIBLE retelling of the two gentlemen of verona that, like, redeemed the fact that that play exists. if you've read that play and you thought, "wow, i wish this were explicitly homoerotic, or not a rape apologia, or good in any way," you will LOVE macy's book. unfortunately it isn't fucking published yet but WITH YOUR HELP--

[insanityclause]

“It must have been in about 1979, I was in New York on holiday. I was sitting up with a friend, and we were both stoned as owls.” Jane Wymark was retelling her brush with a piece of theatre history. She recalled the sound of a telephone cutting through the sour, rising smoke. Wymark answered. Distant and absurd on the other end of the line, a telegram message from her mother. “It said something like: ‘Wonderful job. Hamlet, please come home.’”

After several minutes of laughter, it occurred to Wymark that the call might not be a joke. “So I rung my mother up, and said ‘I’m really sorry if I’m waking you up in the middle of the night for no reason, but is this real?’ And she said, ‘Yes, come home right now, because they want you to play Ophelia.’”

Wymark was being parachuted into a production of Hamlet that was being talked about as among the best of the century. Derek Jacobi, a Shakespearean actor then in his forties and recently made famous by his star turn as the Roman emperor in the television series I, Claudius, was in the title role. In some quarters, Jacobi’s poetic, volatile performance was being talked about as the Hamlet of his generation.

A film of the production would be broadcast in America and viewed by more people at once than any in history. When The New York Times asked Jacobi how he felt knowing that a generation of viewers would come to consider his interpretation definitive, he replied: “That way lies madness.”

One night, Wymark recalled, the cast were taking their bows in the furnacelike auditorium. “By the time we got to the end of the show we were pouring sweat,” she said. “Well I wasn’t, because I’d been dead for a while, but Derek and the guy playing Laertes were just sopping. We’d done all the usual curtain calls and everything, and then Peter O’Toole comes wavering on to the stage.”

O’Toole, then almost 50 and skeletal-gaunt, was carrying in his hands a little red book. As the audience hushed he explained that the book was given to the actor who was considered the definitive Hamlet of his generation. When O’Toole had played the part in 1963, the actor Michael Redgrave had given him the book. Redgrave had been given it by someone else, a great actor of the previous generation, and now O’Toole was passing it on to Jacobi, who in turn could give it to whomever he pleased.

The notion that each generation has its definitive Hamlet is a critical will-o’-the-wisp that has dogged the play almost since it was written. The Edwardian essayist Max Beerbohm called Shakespeare’s most famous part “a hoop through which every eminent actor must, sooner or later, jump”, but only one actor in thousands gets to “give” his or her Hamlet in a professional production. “Everyone — great, good, bad or indifferent — wants to play Hamlet,” the actor Christopher Plummer once said.

Why? The question feels redundant. If you are someone who needs to perform, you are someone who needs to perform Hamlet. In Withnail and I, the 1987 cult comedy film about actors and their ambitions, the bloated, fey, lecherous character known as Uncle Monty has a short speech on the subject: “It is the most shattering experience of a young man’s life when, one morning, he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, ‘I will never play the Dane.’ When that moment comes, one’s ambition ceases.”

Earlier this year, I set out to find the red book.

As a trophy, a tradition, a secret succession, it seemed to embody some of the most romantic ideas about the part. I felt that in mapping its passage from player to player, I could trace a shadow history of the thing that has been driving the whole theatrical world for centuries: ambition.

This is what brought me to ask the retired Wymark about her encounter with the book. And this is how I eventually came to be standing outside a rambling, gabled cottage in north London, uncertain about whether to ring the bell until a vast Shakespearean sneeze told me I was at the right place. The door opened and I shook hands with a neat, elderly man who looked just like Derek Jacobi. The living room, decorated with antique furniture and hung with flower paintings, left an impression of a precisely chosen life. I said that I wanted to ask him about a red, leather-bound book, handed down from actor to actor, that had passed through his hands decades ago. I said he might be the oldest living actor to have held it in his hands. He furrowed an alpine brow and fixed his pale blue eyes on a tiny point just past my left eye. “Oh God,” he moaned, in an agony of remembrance. “It was a little copy of Hamlet . . . ”

Of course, there is no definitive Hamlet. This is true, and so obviously true that people have been saying it for hundreds of years. “There is no such thing as Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” wrote Oscar Wilde. “There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies.” This is true! Hamlet is sour, obedient, suicidal, sarcastic, self-indulgent, flip and outright murderous before the end of his second scene. Modern scholarship has been wincingly keen to stress the heterogeneity of possible responses. As I once heard a professor say in a university seminar, should we be speaking of Hamlets, rather than Hamlet?

Perhaps. But we should also be honest: that sucks and we hate it. We also can’t ignore the genealogy of great Hamlets that exists, stretching all the way back to Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s star performer and business partner, for whom the role was written. That the character and the play are both radically unstable and look totally different in different hands seems to have made us more eager to pinpoint a single actor’s performance as the one. Producers, theatre managers, actors and journalists have connived to reinforce that idea.

Hamlet does offer an actor a scope and centrality that no other part does. “It’s the great personality role in Shakespeare,” Jacobi explained when we were sitting down, his hands conducting the silence around him as he spoke. He had settled in a winged leopard-print armchair, like a portrait of himself. On the side table was an Olivier Award, a small bronze sculpture of the great Laurence Olivier himself, the man who won both Best Actor and Best Picture for his 1948 film of Hamlet, and then launched the National Theatre in 1963 with a production of the play. “You use much more of your own personality as Hamlet,” Jacobi said, “rather than becoming Hamlet by going out and acquiring things. . . Hamlet will look how the actor looks, sound how he sounds, move how he moves. You play yourself as Hamlet.”

Jacobi first came to prominence as a teenage Hamlet, in an eye-catchingly serious schoolboy production at the Edinburgh festival fringe. In his early twenties he joined the germinal National Theatre and played opposite O’Toole’s Hamlet as Laertes. In his forties, he was given the red book by O’Toole, filmed in the role and toured the world. He was sworn to revenge under sheets of pelting rain outside the real Elsinore castle in Denmark. He soliloquised and played mad by the Egyptian Sphinx as the sun set.

A particular challenge of playing the part, Jacobi told me, is delivering lines so famous they risk breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief. In his production, the second act began with Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy. Unusually, it was played as a speech delivered to Ophelia, rather than on an empty stage. In Sydney, at the end of the tour, Jacobi was waiting nervously in the wings. “I thought, ‘This is probably the most famous line in all drama. What if I forgot it? What if I went on and my mind went blank?’ And I went on, and I started . . . 

“To be, or not to be, that is the question/ Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or–

Or–

Or–

Or–”

Blinded to the astonishment of a thousand spectators by the force of the footlights, Jacobi realised he’d dried. Dried completely. It wasn’t like he’d forgotten the words. It was like he’d never known them. An entire minute of silence passed, until he was audibly given his line by Ophelia. Somehow, he got through the performance and the rest of the run. Afterwards, Jacobi didn’t go on stage again for two years. When I mentioned the incident, his eyes turned tight and hooded. He asked to talk about something else. Sensing my cue, I returned to the red book.

“Oh God. Rich!” he called into the next room. “Who did I give the book to?”

“You gave it to Ken Branagh,” called Richard Clifford, Jacobi’s partner, from offstage.

“Ken! I gave it to Ken,” said Jacobi. Then, calling back: “Who did Ken give the book to?”

“Tom Hiddleston!”

“Tom! He gave it to Tom.”

I asked how he had received the book himself and he went back into the trance of remembrance. “Now, I was playing Hamlet at the Old Vic. And at the curtain call one night, Peter O’Toole came on to the stage with this book and gave it to me. And he had originally been given it by . . . Oh . . . ” He trailed off, unable to remember Redgrave.

“Oh!” cried Clifford from the kitchen.

“Oh!” cried Jacobi in the living room.

Johnston Forbes-Robertson. That was the name of the first owner of the red book. Forbes-Robertson was a legendary Victorian actor who played Hamlet into his sixties. The book itself was a Temple Shakespeare, a handsome reader’s edition of the play printed around the turn of the century and bound in red leather. He probably bought it in a West End bookshop, pacing around between rehearsals. Or so I’m told by Russell Jackson, an emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham. “It would have been instantly recognisable,” he told me. “You can hold it more or less in the palm of your hand.”

In 1996, Jackson was working as a script consultant on a film of Hamlet directed by Branagh, who was then in the middle of a hurtling, flame-tipped ascent to near-unprecedented eminence among Shakespearean actors. As a leading man who had run his own theatre company and could direct and star in internationally released film adaptations of the plays, there was no one to compare him to but Olivier. He was now at work on a princely four-hour fantasia, shot amid fake fallen snow at Blenheim Palace with himself in the starring role.

He had cast his old hero, Jacobi, as Hamlet’s murderous uncle Claudius. On his last day of shooting, after the traditional applause that follows a final take, Jacobi asked for silence. Jackson kept a diary at the time: “[Jacobi] holds up a red-bound copy of the play that successive actors have passed on to each other, with the condition that the recipient should give it in turn to the finest Hamlet of the next generation. It has come from Forbes-Robertson, a great Hamlet at the turn of the century, to Derek, via Henry Ainley, Michael Redgrave, Peter O’Toole and others. Now he gives it to Ken.”

Hamlet had been a pivotal document in Branagh’s life. As a teenager in 1977, he had seen Jacobi play the role at the New Theatre in Oxford. In his memoir, he remembers it as one of the moments that inspired him to become an actor. “I didn’t understand it at all, but I was amazed by the power of it because it seemed to be affecting my body. I got the shakes at times.”

Two years later, Branagh went to interview Jacobi, who was then playing Hamlet at the Old Vic. “I got a note from someone called Ken Branagh, saying, could he interview me for Rada’s magazine?” Jacobi told me, referring to the prestigious London acting school Branagh attended. “He was a personable young man. He asked good questions. As he left, he said: ‘I’m going to be playing Hamlet one day, and you’re going to be in it.’”

“Ken,” Jacobi added with a smile, “wasn’t slow in coming forward.”

It was no secret that Branagh had set his sights on matching, even reanimating, Olivier’s career. With his movie of Hamlet, he was threatening to run away with the crown. But while the film won plaudits from some critics, it made back only around a quarter of its budget, and Branagh was nominated only for best adapted screenplay at the Oscars, a curiously backhanded compliment for a Hamlet that advertised itself as the complete text.

Branagh held on to the book for more than 20 years, passing over several acclaimed Hamlets (David Tennant’s agonised spectre foremost among them) in that time. “I took special pains to make sure it was preserved,” said Branagh, who was reached with written questions via an agent and an aide during the shooting of his new film. “I felt the book was something rather treasured and private, and not something that you in any way crowed about. You were a temporary custodian.” In 2017, he finally handed the red book on to the actor sometimes thought of as his protégé, Hiddleston.

So there it was. Redgrave to O’Toole to Jacobi to Branagh to Hiddleston. But still, something wasn’t adding up. I began desperately ringing round old actors asking for snippets of information about the red book, and started reciting the list of names from Jackson’s diary entry: Forbes-Robertson, Ainley, Redgrave, O’Toole, Jacobi, among others. Every time I read the list, everyone said the same thing. Where the hell is Olivier?

Here is a story about Laurence Olivier. Once upon a time, in the early 1800s, there was a great Shakespearean actor called Edmund Kean. He was the Hamlet of the Romantics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that watching him was “like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning”. Kean was also renowned for playing Shakespeare’s other great soliloquist, Richard III. As the hunchbacked villain, Kean would rage and swagger and strut about, swishing a great sword in his hand. That sword was passed to William Chippendale, a member of Kean’s company. Chippendale gave it to an actor called Henry Irving, who gave it to the great Ellen Terry who, we understand, gave it to her great nephew. His name was John Gielgud. Gielgud gave the sword to his contemporary, Olivier, telling him to pass it on to the great actor of the next generation. And Olivier kept it.

He is rumoured to have been buried with it. Certainly, the sword has not been seen since his death. (One of the last people to see it was Jacobi, who confirmed to me that Olivier still had it as a very old man.) Is Olivier really lying in his grave with no tongue between his teeth and Kean’s sword beside him? If he is, it feels like a little parable about the sharp, inward points of ambition. Here was a man who got everything and more from a life in the theatre. But he couldn’t bear to part with a prop sword.

The question of why Olivier never received the book becomes more pressing when you read the letters he received playing Hamlet from the Edwardian actor Henry Ainley, the book’s second owner. On opening night, January 5 1937, Ainley telegrammed Olivier in his dressing room: “THE READINESS IS ALL.” Later that night he wrote: “You, my sweet, are the Mecca . . . Pay no heed to the critics, they do not know. You are playing Hamlet; therefore you are a king [ . . . ] You rank, now among the great.”

Ainley’s hornily free-associating letters seem to imply a physical affair at times. “Larry darling, I have been tossing (now now) about at night thinking of you,” he writes in one of the letters, currently kept by the British Library.

“Well, you know what you did. I can’t walk [ . . . ] And the child has your eyes.” Yet it is Olivier’s fame that Ainley most obviously covets. “Soon you will be like [me],” he writes in another. “Your public, your following all gone, dear old boy! The harlequinade. We do not endure!” There is no mention in their correspondence of the red book. Whether Ainley had already given the book away, or felt compelled to hang on to it, or simply had forgotten it, remains a matter of speculation.

It’s not the only agonising gap in the archive. In 1963, an older Olivier cast Peter O’Toole in the production of Hamlet that would open the National Theatre. O’Toole had already played a wild, revelatory Hamlet at the Bristol Old Vic in 1958, in which he famously climbed the proscenium arch mid-performance. It was an interpretation that harnessed the young actor’s modernity. “He’s a lean, lank, individualist Teddy Boy!” one reviewer enthused.

But in 1963, Olivier had other ideas. “It was very strange,” remembers Siân Phillips, O’Toole’s then wife, now aged 91. “Larry [Olivier] had talked him into this terrible costume. He looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy, with a Peter Pan collar and clean, beautifully cut dyed blond hair.”

Phillips thought Olivier seemed to want to trim the edges off her husband. “Larry had this new kind of concept of a very tidy Hamlet, which was the opposite of what [O’Toole] did best. But he had such regard for Larry, who was flattering him enormously. He just did everything asked of him.” Phillips had put her own starry career on hold to let O’Toole have the spotlight. She did his filing and kept track of gifts he had been given, making sure people were thanked, which was why she found it strange that she’d never heard of the red book.

Together, we wondered if the unhappy production had made it a sore point for her husband. “The thought did cross my mind once or twice that Olivier might be trying to sabotage him,” she said. “But how could he want to do that on the opening night of the National Theatre?” On the other end of the phone, I thought of Kean’s sword.

Perhaps this is harsh. Perhaps we can understand the desire to have and hold on to a physical token of fame, strength, adulation, applause, youth — the things that slip away from even the greatest artists. All performers live in fear of unemployment and redundancy, and even the successful ones are loved, fiercely and temporarily, for being someone they’re not. “Today kings, tomorrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing,” wrote William Hazlitt, the English essayist.

“British theatre has traditionally privileged innovation,” the Shakespearean scholar Michael Dobson told me. In France, he explained, you could see Phèdre performed with the same gestures, the same intonation, for hundreds of years. “The British are always inventing new things, like gas lighting and ways of doing ghosts with mirrors. It’s never the old, boring Hamlet your parents used to like. It’s always got this young, original, absolutely real actor in it, instead of those stylised old geezers.”

In which case, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories about great actors who fell from fashion. It was Burbage who first delivered Hamlet’s acting advice to the players: “O’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”

Until the modern day, actors didn’t play big roles just once or twice in their careers, in a long run of performances. They performed them frequently. Even in Shakespeare’s time, actors became associated with certain parts in the minds of spectators. Burbage died in March 1619, and the funeral baked meats were hardly cold when he was replaced by another actor, Joseph Taylor.

An unreliable but enticing story has it that Burbage taught Taylor, and Taylor taught the next great Hamlet, Thomas Betterton. Betterton was the Hamlet of Restoration theatre, among the first to play opposite women. Confronting his father’s ghost, Betterton’s Hamlet could “turn his colour”, as though his face had drained of blood with fright. Betterton made his face “pale as his neck cloth”.

Betterton died in 1710, immortality assured. Within a few decades his reputation had been all but vaporised by the greatest actor of the century, David Garrick. Garrick was almost a religion among theatregoers. “That young man never had his equal as an actor, and will never have a rival,” was the poet and critic Alexander Pope’s verdict. Garrick was both a shameless showman and pioneering realist. He played Hamlet in a mechanical fright wig that made his hair stand on end when activated.

Garrick was replaced by John Philip Kemble, a severe and statuesque Hamlet. In the early 19th century, Kemble was outmoded by Kean, whose ascendant star was quickly selling out theatres. “Places are secured at Drury Lane for Saturday, but so great is the rage for seeing Kean that only a third and fourth row could be got,” wrote Jane Austen, struggling to get seats. Out with the old. Next came Samuel Phelps, the actor-manager who first made a point of performing the original texts of Shakespeare’s plays. He was toppled by Henry Irving, a drawn and gothic actor. Irving was supposedly the inspiration for Dracula; his theatre manager was Bram Stoker.

Enter the melancholic, effeminate figure of Forbes-Robertson, the first owner of our red book. His Hamlet, first performed in 1897 and still being revived into his sixties, was in some ways the last definitive stage performance in this unofficial, highly debatable but surprisingly enduring tradition. “Nothing half so charming,” George Bernard Shaw wrote of his performance, “has been seen by this generation.” Orson Welles described one recording of Forbes-Robertson as the most beautiful Shakespearean verse-speaking he ever heard. You can still listen to it on YouTube, uploaded from an ancient LP.

“The next reference to the actor’s art,” creaks the old voice above the hiss of imperfectly transcribed sound, “is Hamlet’s advice to the players, written, obviously, by an actor who has complete command of his calling.” In a voice ponderous with time but still capable of lightness and precision, he begins the passage in which Hamlet gives notes to a theatrical troupe. “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.”

Forbes-Robertson would have seen more clearly than many of his successors how rapidly the galaxy of theatrical ambition was expanding. He was the first great Hamlet to play the part on film, in a lumpy silent production in 1913. If that film looks stagey and stylised to modern eyes, then looking back at these nested revolutions in realism, it’s also obvious that old actors have always looked that way in the eyes of their successors. Naturalism is just the style each era brings with it.

Hamlet’s advice was itself part of this reach towards the endlessly receding goal of the real. To an Elizabethan audience, the travelling troupe with their heroic verse and stagey couplets would have seemed obviously to belong to a previous generation of players, one playwrights like Shakespeare, and plays such as Hamlet, were making redundant. Hamlet says to the players what the theatre is always saying: be young, be modern, be new.

You can’t ask too much of very famous actors. Basic professionalism demands that they don’t tell you anything too interesting. They live like criminals, travelling under pseudonyms and booking the front seat on aeroplanes. We abhor in their personal lives the basic human latitude we praise in their work. “I am myself indifferent honest yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me,” Hamlet says to Ophelia. “What should such fellows as I do, crawling between heaven and earth?”

I had hundreds of questions for Hiddleston, the 43-year-old star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and current holder of the red book. Unfortunately, Hiddleston is not an easy man to reach. As the man who plays Loki in the Marvel series (global gross about $30bn), he has been watched at his craft by an unimaginable number of human eyes. He does his work in green-screen and widescreen settings that would also have been unimaginable to 90 per cent of the people named in this article. Where Burbage played Hamlet without an interval, Hiddleston’s fame is a postmodern mosaic, put together in franchise films with an average shot length of two seconds. Given that he commands multimillion-dollar fees for these acts of cinematic pointillism, you may imagine his time is precious. I was able to reach him by phone for 15 minutes during press week for Loki season 2’s Emmy campaign. “Good morning,” he said, dialling in from Los Angeles. “I mean, sorry, good evening.”

Hiddleston played Hamlet in a fundraiser production for Rada directed by Branagh in 2017. He told me how he had left drama school and joined Declan Donnellan’s Cheek by Jowl theatre company, standing out as Cassio in a somewhat legendary modern Othello, in which Ewan McGregor played Iago opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead. Branagh saw the production and persuaded Marvel studios to let him cast this relative unknown in Thor, which then grossed almost half a billion dollars. Afterwards, they sat down for lunch and Branagh suggested Hamlet. “And I said, ‘I would absolutely love to do it with you. What an honour.’”

The production played for three weeks in Rada’s tiny theatre, with tickets that were won by lottery. Among the critics, Michael Billington, Britain’s most decorated theatre writer, was one of the few to have got a seat. “If I had to pick out Hiddleston’s key quality, it would be his ability to combine a sweet sadness with an incandescent fury,” Billington wrote in his review. On Saturdays, Hiddleston remembered, there were gala performances for graduates and theatrical somebodies. “I think at the first one almost everybody with the last name ‘Attenborough’ in the UK was in attendance.”

On one of these evenings, a glass was clinked with a spoon. Jacobi began to speak, explaining something about a book that had passed from actor to actor. “And then Ken was at the microphone, explaining that the responsibility of the keeper of the book is that they pass it on to the next generation. And suddenly Ken said, ‘I’d like to present it to Tom.’”

We were 10 minutes into our 15. I looked at my list of questions — on frontispieces, annotations, signatures, printing quirks — about the red book. Hiddleston was in LA. The book was in London. He was not contractually obliged to talk to me, as he was to the other journalists who were waiting on iPhones all over the world. All that was sustaining this conversation was the actor’s private enthusiasm for the kind of acting he is rarely, if ever, able to do anymore.

Hiddleston began to talk at length. He said the gift of playing the part was to be presented with the most beautiful, profound poetry written in English about the question of being alive, of death, of the possibility of spiritual life after death.

An email arrived saying our time was up. “It has the effect of making me feel more alive,” Hiddleston was saying. “Learning and internalising those great soliloquies, and having to perform them, there is no escaping those big questions of what it means to be alive,” he went on, the minutes ticking by. “And actually I find it very reassuring to ask those questions. I find it repetitively reassuring to say those words. Because it actually makes your life mean something.”