#philly-osopher

[the-everqueen]

19, 24?

three songs that are your guilty pleasure

so…quite a lot of music counts as a guilty pleasure for me. this is what happens when you go to grad school for musicology and happen to be surrounded by people who have no qualms about making moral judgments about you based on your music tastes. that said! we’re going to go with three songs that i absolutely blast when alone in the house:

“sweatpants” - childish gambino (look…i really like fast raps)

“genius” - lsd, feat. lil wayne (it’s stuck in my head, it slaps, and the only guilty thing about it is that i can’t stop tormenting my neighbors with the sound of my voice belting along with sia’s)

“introduction and rondo capriccioso, op. 28″ - saint-saens (…yeah yeah, the western classical music canon is a hegemonic construct but it’s just so PRETTY, i wanna learn violin just for this)

three favourite old songs

not sure what counts as “old.” 40 years ago? 200 years ago? we’re going to just say pre-aughts and see what that gets us:

“something in the way she moves” - james taylor (this is such a soothing song and has a pleasant association)

“if i ever lose my faith in you” - sting (…don’t @ me i love sting)

“prelude in d minor, op. 23 no 3″ - rachmaninov (we’re just going ALL the way back, i’m sorry it’s another white dude, but i started playing this one for fun this semester because the lullaby in the middle! also that slight harmonic shift in the A reprise!)

[fourteenacross]

Would you ever write a character from another musical getting a cameo in ghosthunters?

Hmmmmmm. Maybe! It’s not something I’ve ever put any serious thought into before, but I’m not like…opposed to the idea!

[a-classic-fool]

2, 20, 21 for the book asks?

2. What are you currently reading?

Just started The Dreamblood Duology this morning (N. K. Jemisin, yes, I know :P) and I’m re-reading parts of the Chernow Ham biography as research for my Chernow Sucks At Women meta-post-thing. 

20. Best summer read?

Oooh. Hm. I particularly like mass-consuming mysteries in the summer, and I admit to having thoroughly enjoyed reading all the Tana French Dublin Murder Squad books last summer. As for summer-vacation-style summer reading, then really long books. Because then you don’t finish the book halfway through the plane ride and end up spending the rest of the flight trying not to talk to your seatmate. 

21. Best winter read?

I like old British books in the winter. Brontes are good, Tess of the d’Urbervilles is good, Ian McEwan is good (a couple of winters ago I read Sweet Tooth over winter break and it was cozy and perfect), A. S. Byatt is good (I think I read Possession last time I was in England in January and it was such good rainy train ride reading). 

[ciceroprofacto]

For those of us less familiar with army stuff, would you mind explaining a little more about what a "mustang" is and what the connotations of Alex being one would be? Thank you!

oh- yeah, so a ‘mustang’ is someone who went from being enlisted to officer. 

They’re generally highly-respected and well-liked on both the officer and enlisted side of things because they know what it’s like to be the grunt at the bottom of the chain of command and they’re bringing enlisted skills and mindsets to their leadership as an officer.  During Hamilton’s time, that was probably even more true since the divide between the social caste of enlisted footsoldiers and educated, wealthy officers was far more defined.  I’m not sure how much that really applied to Hamilton though since he got his commission before really serving in any major battles.

Also- it’s a modern slang term, so it wouldn’t have been something people would’ve called him.  I think it came about around WWII, but don’t quote me on that.

[scioscribe]

This doesn’t get talked about often enough, but @philly-osopher, in addition to all of her other talents, has superb taste in music.

[adhd-ahamilton]

Flirtation, 11?

11. What do you like best about this fic?

Hmm, that’s a difficult question!! There’s a couple of things I could think of!

1) The fic premise was one of the earliest Lams ideas I came up with, back when one of the main engines for imagining scenes in my head was ‘how could a possible bio series based on John Laurens go?’ (I got really into it? And got very specific about some things? Like I always imagined it as two seasons of 10-12 episodes each. Not sure why.) Hold Your Grandmother’s Bible was also inspired that way. But because of that, my original vision of it in my head was very, well, visual. Which became an issue when I started writing and suddenly realised that I really wanted the opening ‘shot’ to be really atmospheric, but couldn’t figure out how to communicate that through writing. The thing lingered there in my drafts for months just as a couple of paragraphs because I just felt really dissatisfied with the feeling of it. In the end, I decided for Ham’s birthday I’d finally just try and make it work, and... well, I’m pretty happy with it! Still doesn’t evoke EXACTLY what I was imagining in my head, but ‘the whole scene is lit with a warm, orange glow’ just... doesn’t translate into words very well lmao.

2) Most of the getting together fics I’ve read for historical Lams have pretty much begun with Hamilton making a sexual advance. That’s super plausible and I enjoy those fic a lot, but I wanted to kind of try something else for a change with this one! ‘Cause for me, one of the most interesting and emotionally satisfying things to read about is, essentially, intimacy and vulnerability. So, I really wanted to communicate that in this one, Alex is already pretty head over heels - and John is not far off, though he’s much less aware of it. And even more so, John doesn’t really understand Alex’s feelings either - something that’ll become more obvious over the next couple of sequels, heh. So not only did I have to communicate this about Alex, I had to do it through the eyes of John, who isn’t getting the message. (Also, the bit where John watches Alex and he’s looking at him with such an expression of love that Alex is really taken aback... yeah, not the easiest thing to write from John’s perspective, lol.) I love writing layered stuff like that so it was really fun and I enjoyed being able to write this other side of Alex!

3) When I first envisioned the fic, there really wasn’t any examination of Alex and John’s relationship up until this point. I fact, as it was imagined as a visual thing as I said above, there was v little internal thinking going on. (Which, heh, I’ve always admired the skill of some authors to communicate so much about their characters’ mindsets without ever outright telling us what they’re thinking, so I’ve tried many times recently to emulate that minimalist writing style, especially since I have a tendency to over-explain in, um, pretty much all situations... but clearly, it hasn’t always worked out. :P) That could’ve been a good fic. But because it took so long for me to write those parts, by that time, I had a lot more ideas about their relationship and how they would view it given the standards of the time. I still have a looot more to learn about all of that so I can’t say for sure that it’s accurate, but I think it’s probably better embedded into those contemporary norms, and certainly made for a more thoughtful and interesting fic IMO. So in that sense it’s kind of a good thing that I kept putting it off out of frustration, haha!

So there’s a few things I liked about it? Also I overthink these things a lot, is the other message here. :P

[yr-obedt-cicero]

ARIUS PLEASE WHERE IS THE ACCOUNT OF LAURENS HITTING HIS HEA CHFJFHHDBDJFJDKD

It's from a marker in one of the Valley Forge cabins (Likely used by aides). Credit to @philly-osopher's post because that is where I'll be taking the image from. It's not written in any books or letters, but it is mentioned at Valley Forge's website also.

“At various times during the encampment this garret was used as sleeping quarters for many of the house's inhabitants. There is an account of aide-de-camp John Laurens rising in the morning and hitting his head on the low ceiling. Later, a lot cabin was added to provide more sleeping and work space for the aides-de-camp. After that point, free and enslaved servants, who had few possessions and scant furnishings, may have slept here.”

(source)

Honestly I don't blame him, apparently visitors who have been there, and are relevantly short, still manage to knock their heads. And by the looks of it - as I've never actually been - the ceilings are quite low.

[swan-archive]

top 5 tea and/or coffee shops in the Bay Area?

Or if you prefer, top 5 teas?

top 5 tea and/or coffee shops in the Bay Area?

basic bitch answer, but: i’m totally a slut for Philz. their mint mojito iced coffee is my poison of choice when i’m making irresponsible caffeine choices on my day off, and granted they’re a chain but their storefronts are nice places to hang out and mooch wifi.

Bello Coffee and Tea was my neighborhood shop before i moved, and i’m still very fond of it as somewhere to go and work when i’m sick of sitting in my house.

Teance in Berkeley is almost too fancy for me, but sitting at their tasting bar and reading a mile-long list of teas described in the same florid and basically meaningless language as people describe fancy whisky sure does make me feel classy. plus their shop has a really nice ambiance and is just a great place to lounge for a couple of hours.

not really a shop anymore since they closed their storefront, but T-We makes my favorite tea blends in SF and you’ll all be happy to know that that last time i irresponsibly spent $50 with them they sent along a bunch of free add-ons, including this really nice earl grey-scented soap, and wrote me a personalized thank you note. i’m a REGULAR, you guys!!!

Asha Tea House is my favorite boba place in the city, which is a huge problem because it’s like three blocks from my work. their milk tea is really nice in that it’s not crazy sweet, which i’m kind of sensitive to, and their boba are the perfect texture, and i always feel weird talking about the texture of boba, so maybe we’ll just leave things off here.

top 5 teas

white peony

genmaicha

really strong chai with a bunch of spices and extra ginger

mint tea with sugar, either iced or hot

jasmine milk tea with boba

[aswithasunbeam]

what do you think was wrong with Angelica Hamilton? Like, do you think there was something underlying before Philips death that brought it out or do you think it was just Philips death that caused her mental state? I just am so attached to her, I mean, she seemed like she would have had a great life and future if she hadnt lost her brother so young, its so sad.

Such a good question! Though Philip’s sudden and violent death was a highly traumatic event for Angelica along with the whole Hamilton family, I think it’s very likely that Philip’s death triggered an already existing mental illness for her. I wrote a longer post about Angelica’s relationship with her family and her breakdown a while back, and the great @philly-osopher added on a wonderful addition arguing Angelica may have been suffering from schizophrenia based on the records of her symptoms. Here’s the link to that post if you’re interested in reading more!

[tacticalgrandma]

okay but with history!John's obsession with his uniform and powdering his hair, you know he, Herc, and Alex have had long tortuous discussions about the exact aesthetics versus functionality of his suit + cape. also this could be an in-universe reason why the suit design changes every couple weeks

This absolutely happened, and it went something like this:

-“Hey Herc, so how expensive was this suit to make?”

-“Millions of dollars, and making more of the material would be a legal and technical nightmare. Why?”

-“I was just wondering if you could make one in white?”

-Herc calmly asks him to leave.

The cape was definitely an add-on, too. John went on and on about fear and intimidation and cultural memory as Alex sat unconvinced at a sewing machine. John also wanted to add some 90′s style shoulder spikes but Peggy, Alex and Herc managed to talk him down from that. Thankfully, John has the whole “playboy billionaire” alter-ego to vent his sartorial frustration. Unfortunately, this also means that John has a serious crisis about his duty to his city every Gotham Fashion Week.

Alex borrows from John’s closet constantly and thinks John hasn’t noticed. John lets it slide and buys more of the big sweaters that Alex looks really cozy in.

[the-everqueen]

Thomas Jefferson is so hilariously The Worst in your story and I love Mattie and I know this is a weird request coming from me but can we see them stopping by the shelter with the kiddos later?

the sort-of sequel to this fic:

“Hey, man, how’ve you been?”

John glances up from his laptop to find a ghost from spring break leaning over the front desk. Thom grins at him like they’re old friends instead of one-time camping neighbors who haven’t interacted in months. “Did your kids pass their finals?”

“Um. Yeah? Sure.” He thinks Ethan dropped out to pursue a music performance track, but he never verified that. He looks past Thom to his daughters — Martha and Marie, he remembers. “Are you here to adopt a pet?”

“Nah, the ASPCA ads stopped having an effect, so we thought we’d see the animals in person.” Thom rolls his eyes, without letting go of that good-natured smile. “We’re looking to expand our family.”

“We want a dog,” Martha says. Her sister nods solemnly.

“Well, that’s a big decision,” John tells her. “We have a lot of dogs that need good homes. Maybe we can meet some and —”

“John! Kitten said her first word!” Alex explodes out of the back room, pulls up short when he sees Thom and the girls. If it were midcycle, his fur would be standing on end and he might perk his ears; since it’s new moon, or close enough, his brows wrinkle and his nose twitches, subtly sniffing at their visitors.

“This is my boyfriend,” John says, to cover for him. “He, uh, helps out when we’re short-staffed.”

“Alexander Hamilton.” He sticks out his hand.

Thom stares, glancing between the two of them. “Thomas Jefferson, professor of philosophy.” He doesn’t shake Alex’s hand. Alex’s mouth tightens in a way that John recognizes as the precursor to baring his teeth, but then — “These are my girls, they’re looking to adopt a pet. I think they could handle some extra responsibility.”

Alex drops to a crouch, arms propped on his knees. “Hmm. Yes, you both seem quite mature. Do you know what kind of dog you want?”

“Fast,” Marie says, at the same time Martha says, “Smart.”

“Those are good things.” Alex shoots John a wry grin. Like he doesn’t think his werewolf boyfriend is a genius — it’s the tugging on his leash John minds. He’d like to keep his shoulder in its socket, thank you very much. “I can think of a couple that might meet your qualifications. Let’s go say hi and find you a new friend.”

For someone who doesn’t hesitate to call a Twitter troll an “ignorant fuckwit with less common sense than a cockroach,” Alex is good with kids. He likes them, asks lots of genuine questions and lets them talk, nodding or making additional points. He takes the Jefferson girls to the back room and introduces them to a couple of dogs — he also translates Misty and Plato’s noises for them, rattling off their favorite spots to be scratched and what they like about the girls. Marie giggles when Plato, a terrier-mix, swipes a lick to her nose, his puppy-thin tail whipping his sides in excitement. “He likes you,” Alex confirms, his own body almost vibrating with barely-contained energy.

John hopes the Jeffersons think his boyfriend is just quirky.

Thom seems less than interested in getting on the floor and letting mutts run over him. John tells him about how terriers are clever but require firm discipline so they don’t develop bad habits.

“Was it hard training your dog?” Thom asks.

“My… oh? Alex?”

“Funny your dog and your boyfriend have the same name.”

John feels his blood go cold. “Ha, yeah. I, uh, I adopted Alex first. Weird coincidence.”

“Hmm.”

“But, no, it wasn’t hard. Training him. He’d been through a lot. I mean, he went through a bad chewing phase, and I made some unexpected Ikea trips.” John swallows, wills himself to stop rambling. “But it was worth it.”

Alex glances back and smiles at him.

Marie gets down on her hands and knees and barks, a childish sound interspersed with laughter. Plato yips and darts around her, trying to get her to play. Martha giggles. “Dad, I want this one.”

“He seems… feisty.”

“His name is Plato. You like Plato.”

“The Grecian Plato wouldn’t pee on my carpet.”

“This one won’t, either,” Alex says quickly. “But if you have a garden, you might want to keep him out of it, I think he’s a digger.”

Thom’s lips press together in obvious distaste.

Marie scoops Plato into her lap and gives her father a Sad Face. Plato squirms, but even John has to admit the face is pretty effective despite that. Her lower lip juts out and quivers, curls hanging over her big shining eyes. “Daaaaaaaad.”

Plato whines.

“He’ll be sad if we just leave him,” Martha says. “We spent all this time playing and then we go home without him? He’s gonna think it was his fault.”

“He needs a good home,” Alex adds. “Somewhere he can run around, get lots of attention. He’s young, too, so he should be trainable.”

John nods. “A friend of mine runs an obedience school, if you want a recommendation.”

“Seems like I’m outnumbered.” Thom kneels down and Plato wriggles out of Marie’s arms to scamper over to him, licking his outstretched hand. “Well, it’s your choice, girls. Little fella is pretty cute.”

Minutes later, he’s signing adoption papers. Alex presses his forehead to Plato’s, silent wolf goodbye, before handing him over to Martha, who buries her face in his wiry tan fur. He twists around to give sloppy kisses to her cheek and neck. Thom scratches his ears. “Maybe our furry philosopher here will be making a class field trip.”

Alex elbows John.

John rolls his eyes. “No.”

Thom gets a weird expression; as a distraction, John reminds him that Plato has had his most recent round of shots but should get a visit to the vet in the next couple months so they can be sure he’s healthy and adjusting well to his new home. Thom extends another invitation to drop by his class, bring his dog Alex for a playdate. John smiles politely.

When the Jeffersons are gone, Alex turns to him. “Let’s adopt a puppy.”

John groans. “No.”

[fandomtrumpshate2017offerings]

philly-osopher / ossapher - FTH Contributor Page

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philly-osopher / ossapher’s offerings:

philly-osopher / ossapher Auction #1

Type of fanwork: fic Subtype(s): n/a Fandom(s): Hamilton (Miranda), American Revolution RPF, Aubrey-Maturin series (Master and Commander), Justified, Cryptonomicon, the Adventure Zone, Temeraire Rating(s): G, Teen, Mature Length/size: up to 5k words, 5-10k words Especially interested in: I like writing gen or slow-burn romance. I've written a lot of Lams for the Hamilton fandom but would be willing to branch out. I can write modern AU or historical setting. I really like fantasy AUs. Will not: I will not write explicit content. I am really not a fan of Washington/Hamilton. Notes: I would hope for approximately $5 for every 1K I write, but I also am very bad at writing fic to a particular word length goal (my one-shots turn into novels and my novels turn into one-shots) so I'm afraid to specify exactly.

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[fourteenacross]

FMK shitheads-verse Schuyler sisters

uuuuggggggghhhhhhh why would you SAY THAT my CHILDREN I can’t KILL one of them 😫

Okay, okay… fuck Peggy, because even though her style/personality is not my normal type, she is a lesbian who looks like JCJ, SO. Marry Eliza, because Eliza is perfect wife material in that she’s future-minded and organized, but also still an asshole which is important for anyone I marry. And kill (ugh) Angelica, but like in the last one, we’ll throw her off a cliff very gently into some blankets? :D?

[a-classic-fool]

H, M, N, and P please?

(H) How would you describe your style?So once, in this fiction workshop I was taking senior year of college, I brought in a story in that was set in the south of England and was from the perspective on an old man. And the primary comment in the class was, “Wow, you really know how to sound like an old British man.” Which may or may not have been a complement, I don’t really know, but either way, I think that’s a pretty decent summation of my writing style: I write with a healthy dose of old English man. (So, long sentences with precise punctuation, burying emotions and events under the surface, relatively calm and distanced prose, etc.) I also, separate from that, get pretty imagery-heavy? I don’t wanna say “poetic,” cause that sounds a bit pretentious, but I am really careful of the language I use and the descriptions I use and the rhythm and flow of the words.(M) Got any premises on the back burner that you'd care to share?I’m planning out slash beginning to take vague stabs at a longer sequel to “Y si pierdes mis huellas,” about Nina + trio at Nina’s graduation, because I’m so attached to Nina and I wanna play with what happens when you take the trio out of the barrio and out of NYC. I also have a Lams fic I’m working on (although I realized I hadn’t finished “Bedroom Songs” and I needed to do that first). (N) Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?I have no particular AU that I wish someone would write, but I love reading peoples’ AUs! I’m not fantastic at thinking up wild AUs, and I love wild AUs. In general, I really like when other people write long plotty stories - I Struggle with plot and I love getting swept along by a good twisty story. (Also, I lied at the beginning, I want someone to write a long, canon-era Laurens Lives AU.)(P) Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an "architect" or a "gardener"? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)I’m definitely more of an architect. I used to think that planning my work out meticulously made me Less Of An Artist, and then I realized that if I didn’t plan things I got stressed and never finished anything. So I plan pretty carefully, even if it’s incomprehensible to anyone but me. When I’m writing a fic (or original fiction or a single poem or a collection of poems), I plan out story arcs, I plan out sub-arcs, I plan out chapters, I plan out themes or images that I want to be tracking across the piece, I make notes about character motivations that I want to make sure I’m being true to. I also let myself be surprised too - if an image or a plot point or a character’s wants arise organically, I let that happen.

[schuylering]

This may just be me but it annoys me when I read fanfiction about Angelica and they make her super ‘woke’ and she hates slavery and doesn’t have any slaves. Like I like Angelica but she owned slaves and we shouldn’t ignore that and try to make her Into something she wasn’t

I mean, it depends on what kind of fic you’re reading–the musical obviously exists in a whole different world than fic about the actual historical figures. If it’s fic about the actual historical figures, then yeah, it is a documented fact that the Churches owned slaves, and as far as I know there’s no evidence that Angelica was against slavery, and ignoring that feels distinctly disingenuous. 

If it’s fic about the musical characters, than it gets a bit less clear-cut for me, because you have characters who proclaim anti-slavery sentiments to a level that is far from the documented historical fact for the historical figures they’re based on, and indeed the existence of the people enslaved by these historical figures, even those who played a specific and important role in the events being portrayed in the musical, are often erased in order not to draw attention to the fact the these figures owned slaves. (William Lee and Cato are the ones I’m particularly thinking of here.) 

So it follows for me that if the characters of Washington and Mulligan don’t own slaves in the musical universe, Angelica probably doesn’t either. The musical is to a large extent invested in making a wide swath of historical figures into something they weren’t anyway, so at the end of the day, it doesn’t bother me in musical fic if writers follow what the musical is doing already.

(ETA: now edited based on @philly-osopher‘s on-point factchecking--thank you!!)

[cherrypoison1889]

Fluttering (Thomas Hamilton/James McGraw)

Fandom: Black Sails

Pairing: Thomas Hamilton/James McGraw (Flinthomas or Flinthamilton), James McGraw/Miranda Barlow (mentioned)

Rating: PG

Beta: @philly-osopher (Thanks for the cheer-leading!)

Thomas pays an unexpected visit to James. James reveals a little more of himself - in more ways than one. Based on this absolutely adorable fanart by @samhound :)

AO3 link

Thomas’ heart beat wildly in his chest. He pressed his hand lightly against it, wanting to slow its frantic pounding, but in vain. The last time he was this nervous, was... well, he could not really recall the last time. Thomas believed himself to be a fairly level-headed man, and yet, there he was, frozen in place by his own panic. And what a trifle it was to be worried about! This would be hardly the first time he had called upon the Lieutenant McGraw, but it certainly felt so. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that he had never visited James in his quarters before. Thomas thought it was quite ungentlemanly of himself to not have announced his arrival beforehand, but the matter was rather pressing.

For the past several weeks, James had been refusing any invitations from Thomas that were not related to their work. He was perfectly civil about it, of course, but Thomas could sense that there was something amiss. Only recently had Miranda convinced him that it might be related to to them becoming lovers.

“He's probably thinking you are angry with him,” she had said then, “and I think he's punishing himself for it. I suppose you should talk to him. And do make sure that he comes to dinner tonight.”

Thomas could hardly believe his ears. Him? Angry with James? Especially over something like his relationship with Miranda? Impossible. Early in their marriage, he and Miranda had reached an agreement that both of them could seek relationships with other people, and Thomas had never once been jealous or resentful of any of her paramours. However, James couldn't have possibly known that – were Miranda and Thomas’s marriage more conventional, he would likely harbor some animosity towards James, which is surely what James must be thinking is the case. Thomas considered Miranda's suggestion. I must simply explain this misunderstanding to him, face to face, he ultimately decided.

Which is how Thomas found himself standing in front of the door that led to James' room. It was in an attic of one of those tall but thin London townhouses, where it always seemed to be cold, regardless of the weather. The corridor was dark, despite it only being midday.

Thomas shuffled his feet with unease, before finally raising his hand to knock. If he doesn't open after a minute, I shall just leave him a note, he thought to himself, before rapping against the door twice.

Hearing only silence in response, A bout of disappointment coursed through Thomas, before he chastised himself for being an inconsiderate moron. Naturally, the Lieutenant must have had some prior appointment and was not home. Thomas was just about to turn back, when the door was yanked open rapidly, revealing James McGraw himself.

Thomas froze in place almost immediately. He opened his mouth to greet the Lieutenant, before realizing he was seeing a lot more of James than he was used to.

'Revealing', it appeared, was the key word here, as James stood before him, stripped of his neatly pressed uniform, bare-chested and sporting only a pair of well-fitting white breeches. His broad chest was covered only by a smattering of ginger hair and a myriad of freckles. Thomas could feel a sudden rush of warmth in his cheeks and prayed to God that the dim lighting was enough to hide it.

“Good day, Lieutenant,” Thomas managed to choke out, impressed with how steady his voice was, “I hope I'm not interrupting anything?”

“I- No, of course, not, My Lord, I-” James stammered for a moment, before removing himself from the doorway, “Please, do come in.”

Thomas had never seen James so flustered before, and truly, it was one of the most endearing sights he had seen recently. A faint tinge of blush was also visible on James' face, which only magnified the surge of affection coursing through him.

It appeared that only then James realized his state of undress, and hastily grabbed a shirt that was hanging over a chair, before pulling it over his head, much to Thomas' disappointment.

“I apologize for my appearance, My Lord,” James said, muffled slightly by the shirt, “I wasn't expecting company today.”

“No apology necessary, Lieutenant.” Thomas dismissed, “If anything, I should be the one apologizing, coming here unannounced.”

“Well, I assume it must be urgent then,” James' response had been intended to be witty, but it's delivery was rather solemn, and he was avoiding Thomas' eyes.

“It is nowhere near as urgent as you make it to be. Miranda and I – we would be very much delighted if you decided to join us for dinner tonight. Just us three,” Thomas glanced at James' face and braced himself for the inevitable refusal.

“My Lord, I... I apologize but I simply- I cannot accept this invitation,” There it was, “It is hardly proper-”

“James.”

The Lieutenant stopped his excuse abruptly. While Thomas had used James' Christian name before, those times were so few and in-between that every time it happened, James seemed to forget his train of thought.

“If you're punishing yourself for your relationship with Miranda, you must know that I don't resent you for pursuing her. I assure you,” Thomas added with a smile in his voice, “I've known of her intentions towards you even before you two became lovers. And I completely encourage you to continue your affair.”

James was silent for several moments more before finally reacting.

“Oh.”

And just that one disbelieving utterance was enough to further endear the Lieutenant to him. He glanced at James, and their eyes met. They both smiled at each other shyly, before Thomas cast his eyes downward, in attempt to conceal his blush.

After another few moments Thomas spent composing himself, he lifted his head to look at James once more. This time, he could definitely make out the blush on James' cheeks. Thomas then repeated his earlier question, “James, will you be joining Miranda and myself for dinner tonight?”

“It would be my pleasure,” James replied gallantly, before adding, a little quieter, “Thomas.”

And really, it was all Thomas could do not to wrap the darling man in an embrace. He even came closer to James, before catching himself the very last second, and ultimately settling for a warm grip of his forearm.

“It’s settled then,” Thomas answered, his eyes shining, “I shall see you this evening, then?”

James nodded, and with that, Thomas took his leave, sending one final smile at his liaison, before closing the door behind him.

And as he walked down the corridor, though his heart still beat wildly, it was from a different emotion entirely.