#poetic license taken

[lastflowerofyourhouse]

i've seen some people debating whether the little cigarette salute after the soup scene was g1deon or pyrrha, and i personally believe it was g1deon for two primary reasons.

the passage states that harrow looked him directly in the eye right before he did it, but doesn't mention his eyes looking at all strange or different, or use any particular adjectives to describe them (the words "dark" or "shadowy," for example, could be taken as poetic license to a first-time reader while actually serving as foreshadowing).

i don't like the idea that it was pyrrha. pyrrha already has lots of personality and tons of opportunities to show it off. let g1deon be a lil dramatic and personable sometimes! let him have a fun moment!!

[ifancyharry]

Too late

Please let me know if you liked this, i love feedback!!

Word count: 6.8k

What is it: childhood friends to strangers to lovers; YN is getting married and she and Harry haven't spoken in five years. Harry hopes it's not too late, because he's been in love with her since he was 10. angst

TW: mentions of marijuana

When Harry received the invite he was coming back from his usual morning run. It had started as a rather nice kind of morning, really; the weather was warm and the sun kissed his tights with every jog he took, turning his skin a nice golden color, but not enough to make him sweat to the point of grossness. 

Days like that were rare in London, especially in May, so Harry, while he was running, thought about five nice things he could do outside to take advantage of the beautiful weather. Of course, he obviously hadn’t taken in prospective the possibility of getting home to an invitation to his best friend’s wedding, so instead of sun bathing, eating his favorite meal on the porch and whatever other three things he’d come up with, he closed the door behind him, shut all the blinds, and sat on his bathroom floor for hours. And not what felt like hours. He really sat there until his bum had taken the shape of the floor’s tiles. 

He has to admit, albeit without little shame, he tried to throw up a couple of times. He most definitely knows how dramatic that sounds, but call it poetic license or a really bad taste in romantic movies, it felt appropriate at the time. Because he really did feel like throwing up. 

When he started feeling too pathetic to excuse his behavior, he jogged downstairs once again, and he picked up the invite in between his fingers. If he’s being honest, he really hoped the letter wouldn’t be there anymore. He’d rather have imagined it. A nightmare he couldn’t seem to wake up from, or perhaps a sick joke? YN wasn’t like that. She could never joke about such things. 

Harry was definitely the more unserious out of the two, and even he wouldn’t dare to pull such a prank on her. So he knew the invite was real. 

After a brief moment where he seriously contemplated going MIA and pull another ‘kissy’ post and disappear until the upcoming year, he took out his phone from his hoodie’s pocket and opened the calendar app. 

As he came closer to the date, he was praying to god he’d be busy. Call him coward all you want. He was really hoping YN chose the date of the Met (it’s not like he was planning on going, but he’d definitely reconsider if it meant missing her wedding) or the date he’d set for an album release. She hadn’t. She actually chose a nice, free Sunday at the end of the month. And Harry felt like lying on the bathroom floor all over again. 

If Harry was any other person in the world, he would have felt guilty. Because you’re supposed to be happy if your best friend’s getting married. Except, Harry isn’t like other people. Because Harry’s been in love with YN since he was a child; since the very first moment she moved next door and Harry wasn’t even old enough to know what love was all about. He’s certainly aged now, and with it you’d think the love he felt for her could have subdued, or fade, but it never did. It stayed with him until the very day he received the invite. 

Harry eyes briefly the piece of paper in his hands, ‘You’re invited to YN and Graham’s wedding’ and bla bla bla, written in that one font Harry despises (he truly doesn’t, he wasn’t even aware that font existed before this morning), and he feels the sudden urge to pick up a lighter and burn it. That’s how much he despises that font. That’s how much he loves YN. Because seeing her name close to another who isn’t his, makes him want to never get out of bed ever again — he contemplated doing that already, and, frankly, he probably will, at least until he isn’t required to do something like a show or whatever else Jeff schedules for him. 

The thing is that the invite wouldn’t have had this effect on him if YN and Harry were still friends. Because despite Harry still calling YN his best friend, he doesn’t know if she considers him even a friend anymore, and he made it that way. It’s his fault. Harry, who’s someone who never takes accountability for anything, knows it’s his fault. And everyone around them knows, but sometimes Mitch, who maybe cares about him to the point of hiding the truth from him for his sake, tells him it wasn’t his fault entirely; he says: you followed your heart, so you made the right choice — which coming from Mitch means a lot. But Harry, despite appreciating the effort, knows it’s not true. Because he did follow his heart, but he lost her. So really, he would have preferred a life in pain beside her. Because now he’s still in pain but without her. So who won? 

-

YN never thinks about Harry. She doesn’t think about him when she’s shopping at Primark and sees a fruit theme stuffy she knows he’d like, she doesn’t think about him when she gets in the car and her bluetooth connects to his playlist on her Spotify automatically (she told Graham many times it wasn’t her fault, it was kind of a default thing her car did), she’s not thinking about him now, in front of her closet, debating whether she should wear a dress he bought her for her wedding rehearsal dinner.

YN sometimes likes to pretend she never knew Harry. She likes to pretend she never moved next door to him when she was only ten, she likes to pretend he never auditioned on xfactor, she likes to pretend she loves Graham as much as she loves Harry. 

Other times, YN likes to pretend there’s a universe in which Harry’s the one she’s marrying. In this universe, she imagines never meeting Graham, she imagines Harry never leaving and shattering her heart, she imagines the cat they’d adopt, the house they’d buy, how they’d raise their children; in this universe she sees herself always happy. 

She knows she’s not being fair to Graham, so she lets herself linger in this universe only for a couple of minutes and especially on hard days when she feels overwhelmed, it doesn’t make it more morally right, she’s aware of that, but what else could she really do? 

When YN sent Harry that invite, she certainly didn’t think he’d come. It’s not like she appositely called Jeff and asked — begged — him to free his schedule the day of her wedding. She asked Glenn instead because she’s friendlier with her. 

A part of YN still wonders why she did it, from time to time. Maybe, if she was a bad person, she could’ve done it because she wanted Harry to see her happy and in love. But she’s not like that. She could never imagine hurting him in that way. 

So, she always comes to the conclusion that maybe she sent the invite because she just misses him. It’s not like she has to have another reason. Missing him is enough. 

She knows no one is truly aware of the affection she feels for Harry. What she feels for him isn’t nowhere near what she feels for Graham. In the past, she used to be so scared of feeling such things for another, because with those feelings came the realization that she also had something to lose. And she truly felt like she couldn’t do it without him. 

But then, he left her. And she did do it without him. She met Graham, graduated college, and got engaged. And at one point, she felt like she’d give up everything to have Harry beside her again. So, can you blame her if she remembered his address by heart? Can you blame her if she invited him? 

-

Harry feels like a pretentious asshole. 

He hates his car; he hates the flashy yellow color of his Ferrari, the sound it makes when he revs the engine and all heads turn to look at him. All but one, because YN’s the only one that recognizes him by the sound of his car. Even five years later.

When he gets out of the car, he feels like everyone’s looking at him, and he doesn’t dare shift his gaze to see if she’s looking at him too. He feels like they all know what he did that night, that he broke her heart. He feels exposed before them.

He’s glad YN invited Jeff and Glenn too, and he waits for them to get out of their car too before approaching the crowd.

“So nice!” Glenn exclaims once she’s out of the car, shutting the passenger’s door loudly behind her. 

Harry looks around and has to admit, it really is nice. A nice old cottage in the English countryside, with a big well-kept garden full of flowers he knows it’s where the wedding will take place (because YN loves flowers). It’s nice. He’d be a liar if he said otherwise, but it’s not YN. Because YN, or at least the version he knew of her, wanted to get married in the winter — on Christmas Eve —, in a small chalet with only her close family and friends, where the snow would never stop falling and they’d be forced to stay in with the fireplace popping and wool, chunky blankets to keep everyone warm. 

“YN!” He hears Glenn once again, and he shifts his attention to her. 

She’s standing on the porch, wrapped in a long black coat definitely too warm for the weather, and despite being far from where he’s standing, he can see her clearly. She hasn’t changed. It’s still her. 

Harry doesn’t know what he was expecting. Maybe a more grown up version of her, definitely boring and that kind of resembled her mother a bit. He wasn’t expecting her. The YN he once knew still there, perhaps more beautiful than ever. 

He feels his heart skip a beat, and with her walking slowly towards them, waving politely at a couple of guests that stop to greet her on the way, he feels warm. A kind of warm that resembles the one he felt as a kid when he was sick and his mum would take care of him. He feels something that reminds him of a certain familiarity, like he had been floating all this time and he’s finally back on the ground. He feels parts of himself coming back with every step she takes forward.

“Hello” he hears her giggle, and he feels the sound resonate in his chest, spreading all over his body up until the very end of his fingers. 

“Hi!” Glenn squeals, shrugging her shoulders and stretching her arms forward, closing YN in a hug between her arms.

“I’m so happy you came” she says, her voice muffled by Glenn’s shoulder, and Harry isn’t sure if she means him too. 

She hasn’t exactly looked at him, but Harry isn’t upset about that. He knows her. He knows how she is. She never makes eye contact when she’s uncomfortable. And Harry feels a certain smugness come with it. He’d rather make her uncomfortable than uninterested, because with her uncomfortableness comes the realization that maybe, maybe — deep down, under her skin and rooted in her heart — she did miss him too. And maybe it’s not like Mitch says. Maybe it was his fault and he should’ve fought for her. 

However, Harry realizes things always late; because she’s getting married to someone else now. 

YN briefly hugs Jeff too, and after that, she smiles awkwardly at Harry and waves at him with her hand, “Hey” she says, her hand dropping by her side. 

“Hey” he replies, and he watches as she hugs the coat closer to her body as a sudden gust of wind embraces them, ruffing her hair. Harry can make out the faint scent of her shampoo, and as it fills his nostrils, his mind is swarmed with memories of hot summer nights where they would talk in bed for hours after swimming in his stepdad’s pool all day, minds free of whatever worry a 15 year old could have, sweaty bodies sticky together, tanned skin against skin, Harry not being able to make out where he’d end and she’d begin. 

“This place is so nice!” Glenn interrupts, and YN is grateful for that, because she isn’t sure what she would’ve done if Glenn hadn’t talked. She fears she would’ve leaned in to hug Harry if she’d stared a second more into his green eyes. 

In the five years they spent apart, YN always wondered if there would come a time when she’d no longer remember the exact shade of green of his eyes and the way they used to twinkle when he’d talk about something he was passionate about. 

Now, YN doesn’t know what things Harry’s passionate about, but his eyes are the same color she remembered. Despite the stubble on his chin, and the cheeky grin he used to give her turning in a more mature one, his eyes stayed the same. 

“I know, right! Graham picked it, he used to come here on vacation with his family when he was a child” YN smiles happily at Glenn, and turns her body to look around herself.

Harry frowns at her words. Of course Graham picked it. She never would’ve if it was up to her, he knew that. And somehow, call him an asshole all you want, he feels a certain smugness coming with the awareness that he knows YN more than her own fiancee does. 

“It’s nice” he agrees, and he smirks at her when she snaps her head in his direction, probably not expecting him to talk, “but I prefer winter weddings, you know? With the snow and everything…” 

YN’s happy smile turns in a frown when she hears the words come out of his mouth. She isn’t entirely sure about Harry’s motives. She doesn’t know if he remembers that she wanted to get married in winter or if he’s just expressing a preference. She doesn’t know this Harry anymore.

“It’s beautiful, YN” Jeff chimes in, and YN shifts her glance towards him and smiles at him too.

“Let’s go, then! I want to introduce you to Graham” she exclaims, and turns around, grabbing Glenn by the arm and intertwining it with hers.

“C’mon” Jeff says, patting Harry on the shoulder as an encouragement.

Harry nods and starts to walk beside him, his hands tucked in his pockets as another gust of wind flies over them. 

He watches YN walk in front of him, too occupied to talk with Glenn to close her coat against the wind, and he’s sure he can make out the floral design of the Gucci dress he bought her on his vacation to Italy many years ago. How happy she looked when she opened it, and Harry remembers he thought about how much he wanted to buy her every pretty dress in the world if it meant seeing her so happy.

He kisses his mouth at the memory of every dress he saw in those five years and that he thought about buying. Now, knowing she still wears his gifts, he wishes he did. He wishes he bought everything that reminded him of her. 

Harry knows it’s just a dress, and he shouldn’t get this flustered over such a simple thing as that! But with it comes the realization that maybe, in her deepest subconscious, she wore it for him. And Harry’s content with that. Because maybe then that means that those five years apart didn’t mean anything. Maybe then she missed him as much as he missed her. And Harry feels warm at the mere thought. Maybe he hasn’t lost her entirely.

-

Harry met Graham, and everything went somehow fine. 

It’s not like she was imagining Harry fighting Graham over her — no, that’s just a thought that pops in her mind every once in a while when she catches herself fantasizing over what her life with Harry could be like.

It’s weird to YN how there’s someone in her life that Harry didn’t know until she introduced him. And not just someone; her future husband. It sets a weird kind of awareness, because until now she was almost pretending Harry was in an island unknown to mankind, without his phone and that’s why he wasn’t calling. 

Now, seeing him shake her fiancee’s hand, smiling politely at him, she realizes Harry wasn’t stranded on an island without technology; the missing phone calls were a choice. So she should be happy she’s no longer involved with such a person. 

Why isn’t she happy, though? Why does she catches herself wishing she could go up to his room, lay on his bed and talk to him? 

She really wishes she could tell him she’s scared of marrying Graham. She knows he could tell him that and he wouldn’t judge her like everyone else would. She knows he’d have the answer. He’d say something like “get your stuff, I’ll start the car” and they’d laugh and run away to the nearest McDonald’s drive through to stuff their mouth with a big mc or some chicken nuggets, and Harry would purposely stain her wedding dress with barbecue sauce, and she’d laugh. As I said before, whenever she catches herself fantasizing about an alternative universe with Harry, she’s alway happy.

So, then, why didn’t she call? Why did she let five years pass? Five years without hearing his voice. Seeing his eyes. 

She doesn’t know why. 

At first she was mad, because Harry made love to her and then he left. So she was really really mad. Then, after the anger had subdued, she got scared. Scared he didn’t want her anymore. Scared their friendship wouldn’t be like before — now, she thinks it doesn’t matter if their friendship had changed. She wanted Harry around, no matter what.

She’s aware sometimes nostalgia makes you remember things that were never there. But she feels like it was different with Harry; it’s why she’s walking towards his room now, heart in her throat, and hands twitching at her sides.

She wishes it could be easier. She wishes she could be different. She has a fiancee. Why is she going to Harry’s room? Why did she invite him in the first place!

The cottage has six rooms upstairs, and she remembers exactly in which room she put Harry. He’s the only one without a plus one, so his room is smaller than the others. She hopes he liked it, but she knows he didn’t. It’s too fancy, for him. He doesn’t like flashy things, which is kind of ironic for someone who owns six cars, but who is she to judge when she helped him pick the very one he came here with? 

When she stops in front of his door, she feels ashamed, and she’s scared someone may catch her, even if she’s not doing anything wrong, just greeting an old friend. But Harry wasn’t always a friend. There was one night in which they were more than friends, and she feels herself fluster at the thought of being alone with him in a bedroom.

She releases a big breath and closes her hand in a fist, knocking it against the door. 

When he doesn’t answer she tries again, “Harry, it’s YN”, she clarifies. 

Nothing.

She stands before the door for a couple of minutes, but then realizes he’s not going to answer. He doesn’t want to see her. 

It’s fine. She’s fine. 

She understands, it’s been five years. She can’t pretend nothing has changed between them. She feels stupid when she turns around to head back to her room and a single tear rolls down her cheek. She wipes it away before anyone can see. She refuses to cry. She cried enough when he left. 

This gave her the answer she needed. She’s marrying Graham, and if before she wished Harry’d persuade her in not marrying him, she knows he doesn’t care now. 

-

Harry’s sitting on the his bedroom’s floor, freshly showered, his hair still a little damp from the water, waiting near the outlet on the wall for his phone to charge. He’s playing with the chord of his phone’s charger as he listens to his mother rumble on the other side of the line. 

He’s not paying much attention to what she’s saying, his mind is definitely more focused on this morning’s encounter he had with YN’s fiancee. Harry tried to be on his best behavior, because despite hating Graham, he loves YN and he wants to be respectful of her choices. Harry has always been someone that never fought for what he wanted. He kind of always went with other’s decisions. He doesn’t know why he’s like this. Sometimes he thinks it’s just easier to let others decide for you, other times he’s aware it’s a matter of accountability: he doesn’t want to be responsible for his own choices, because then if something goes wrong, he doesn’t have anyone to blame but himself. 

“How’s YN? I’ve seen her Instagram and she looks even more beautiful” he hears his mum say, and his eyes widen at her words.

“Mmmh, yes, she’s beautiful” Harry agrees, chewing at the skin of his thumb. 

“Do you think she’ll have a baby soon?” Anne asks, and Harry almost wants to throw his phone against the wall at the mere thought of the love of his life having a baby with someone else.

“I don’t know, mum… I don’t think so” he shakes his head, but his words aren’t that much convincing to him. He doesn’t know if YN wants to have a baby with Graham. She had expressed her desire to have a big family when they were still friends and when she thought the timing was right, but was it now? Was it with Graham? He honestly doesn’t know.

“You know, I always thought she had a little bit of a crush on you” Anne giggles, almost childishly.

“She’s getting married” Harry says, and his tone suddenly turned stern. He doesn’t want to be rude, especially to his mum, but thoughts of what could’ve been have been hunting him especially hard since he saw her, and he doesn’t want to come to terms with the fact that maybe something could’ve happened between them if he had been a little more brave.

“She isn’t married now” his mum says, and he rolls his lips in his mouth. 

Weird enough, he knows what his mother means: she’s giving him an ultimatum, a sweet reminder that there’s still time. She’s not married yet. But what could Harry do? He really wishes someone could tell him. He wants his mum to say, Harry, tell her you love her before it’s too late. And he swears he’d do it. He’d do it right now. But coming up with that decision on his own? He’s not that much impulsive. 

“Mum” he says, “I have to go now. It’s time for dinner”.

“Okay, my love.” She replies.

“We’ll talk tomorrow” he nods, and ends the call, throwing his phone in his lap.

He shuts his eyes tightly and his head drops between his knees, his hands reaching up to clutch his hair at the roots. 

He feels pathetic. He feels like screaming in a pillow. He picks up his phone again and taps at the scree to check the time: 7.37 pm. At this time tomorrow the love of his life will be married to someone that’s not him.

-

Harry is late. Everyone has already eaten their appetizer and he still hasn’t shown up. Yn knows she probably shouldn’t care, especially after he didn’t answer the door after she knocked on it three times feeling like a naive teenager with a school crush. But still. She wonders what he’s doing. It’s not like she blames him, this dinner is pretty boring, and coming from the bride says a lot! But Graham especially requested no music and no dancing while eating, so the room is kind of quiet, albeit for a soft giggle or whispered words every once in a while. 

She’s biting in her pasta when Harry walks in, and suddenly she feels breathless. He’s beautiful. The kind of beautiful that warms her insides and reminds her of the color yellow, the sun shining when they visited Rome together, the tan he used to get at his stepdad’s pool when she’d spend hours looking at his lips while he sunbathed and she wondered if they tasted like chlorine. Beautiful. 

He walks slowly towards where he spots Jeff and Glenn, and YN looks at him shamelessly; he’s wearing cream tailored pants that hug his tights perfectly, paired with a silky blue blouse tucked at the front of the pants. She swallows the mouthful of pasta. When they were friends he definitely didn’t dress like that, he was more into skinny jeans and flowery button down shirts. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t like him like this. But, must I dare say, she’d like Harry even if he was wearing a trash bag.

He throws her an awkward smile before sitting down, and she shifts her eyes down on her plate, suddenly aware of being caught staring. 

As dinner goes on, she never raises her eyes from her plate, not even when she feels a familiar pair of green eyes burning her skin.

-

YN pushes her palm against the wooden door and takes in a big breath once the fresh spring air hits her warm face. She takes a step outside and the door closes behind her with a thump. She cringes at the sound and hopes it didn’t wake anyone up.

It’s almost one in the morning and she couldn’t sleep. She doesn’t know wether it’s pre-wedding anxiety or the thought of another universe soon to be lost forever, but she felt a heavy weight on her chest that made it hard to breathe.

She looks at the garden before her and decides she wants to take a walk in the rose garden. She’s always loved flowers, and she thinks seeing some beauty could help her clear her mind.

She makes her way down the cobbled path, illuminated by some lamps paved across the way, but when she reaches the start of the rose garden, she has to blink a few times to accustom her eyes to the darkness. 

The garden is the only thing she likes about her wedding location, and she’s thankful Graham agreed to get married there. He decided everything else, so at least he left that part up to her.

When she turns the corner of the hedge that divided the rose garden from the location of the wedding, she’s surprised to see a dark figure sitting in one of the reception’s chair.

She walks closer and she’s able to make out a familiar pair of broad shoulders bent over. Harry’s sitting on a chair from the first row, his head hanging low between his shrugged shoulders, his legs are slightly opened and his forearm is resting on one of his tights, the bright fire red of what she knows is a joint illuminating the side of his face. 

She’d recognize Harry even in darkness, but she still feels her heart fall to her chest when she realizes he’s right in front of her, sitting probably where he’d be tomorrow.

She debates whether she should go sit next to him or go back to her room and pretend she never saw him. It’s almost like she can’t control her own legs when they start to walk towards him.

With the movement, Harry turns his head around and his eyes widen at the sight; YN’s walking towards him, but what’s most shocking to him is that she’s making her way down the aisle. He suddenly gets up on his feet when he sees her, and when she stops right in front of him, she gives him a mischievous smile.

She’s breath taking. If this is what Graham will see tomorrow, he doesn’t know how he’ll manage not to faint.

“Walked like a true bride!” He says jokingly, and she giggles at his words, slapping his chest lightly. Harry feels the skin burn under her touch.

“Couldn’t sleep?” He asks, and she shakes her head.

“Can I?” She says, gesturing to the lit joint he’s holding between his fingers. He’d almost forgotten what he was doing before she appeared.

“Mhmh” he nods, stretching his arm. 

She doesn’t take the joint from his fingers though, she just opens her mouth and waits for him to place it between her lips, and Harry swears he can feel himself faint, his head dizzy with all the love he feels for her.

He holds the joint between her lips and she takes a long drag from it, tilting her head towards his fingers, closing her eyes after she inhales. She opens her mouth again and opens her eyes as she exhales the smoke from her mouth, Harry watching closely her every movement, his eyes dark and glazed over.

He watches as she turns around and sits on one of the white chairs, the one next to where he was sitting before, and she tugs one leg to her chest as she hugs it closer to her chest.

Harry stays standing before her for a while, looking at the faint image of the cottage behind her and absentmindedly smoking his joint. When he feels her eyes on him, he looks down at her. It’s been years since they’ve been this close, and suddenly he’s 15 years old again, his hands twitching at his sides from how much he wants to stretch them out and just touch her.

“Graham is nice” he says, and immediately after he cursers himself in his mind for ruining the moment when he sees her gaze harden.

“Yeah, he is…” she whispers. 

Harry tilts the joint towards her to ask her if she wants another hit, but she shakes her head no and he drops his hand at his side, nodding his head.

“I really like the place, by the way. I was only teasing this morning” he shrugs, smiling at her. 

“You were?” She asks, and when he nods she says, “so you remember?”

“Of course I remember.” And he doesn’t have to say anything more, because they both know what he means.

“Graham picked everything” she releases a shaky breath at that, and Harry takes another drag from his joint and raises both his eyebrows to signal her to continue as he exhales the smoke from his mouth.

“I wasn’t… I didn’t want this” she shakes her head, shifting her gaze from his eyes to an indefinite point behind him.

Harry wonders whether she means the cottage or the wedding. Perhaps she even means their fight. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t dare ask, ignoring the voice in his head telling him that maybe she’s offering him an opening to a conversation he isn’t sure he wants to have.

 “I’m sure it’ll be wonderful anyway.” He smiles and throws the joint’s butt on the grass.

“Yeah” she nods firmly, and he’s aware of the tension lingering between them.

“I better go,” she says, getting up from the chair and tugging at the sleeves of her sweater to cover her hands “big day tomorrow”.

She smiles awkwardly at him when she walks past him, and Harry notices the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. 

He shifts his gaze in front of him, staring out in the darkness. He’s about to lose her all over again, the bitter night five years prior vivid in his memory, hitting him like a bullet. He thought the pain from leaving her that night had left, and he wonders how much time it will take for it to stop hurting. Maybe it never will.

He’s sure he doesn’t want to live his life with the memory of her back planted in his brain, leaving him once again. He doesn’t want to think back to her and remember her like this. Leaving.

So, when she’s about mid way through the aisle, he calls her name.

He doesn’t have a speech in his mind, and when she turns around with her brows furrowed and her shoulders sagged he doesn’t really know what to say, how to tell her.

“What, Harry?” It’s the first time he hears her say his name in five years, and he’s upset she sounds so defeated. He wishes he could make this easier for her, but he doesn’t know how.

His chest floats as he takes a big breath. 

“Whatever” she says, shaking her head, but Harry notices she doesn’t turn around.

“Don’t marry him” it’s the only thing he manages to say, and he isn’t even looking at her, he’s still looking out in front of him, and she wishes he could look at her to see if he’s joking or not.

She scoffs, because despite the words coming out of his mouth made her insides warm , she isn’t sure if he’s being serious. “You’re so… so immature! You enrage me!”

“No, no!” He hurries, waving his palms in front of him. “Hear me out, then you can — you can leave. if you want you can leave.” He nods, trying to convince himself, but he really doesn’t want her to leave.

“Don’t marry him. You know he’s not right for you! He… he’s controlling, he doesn’t know you! You shouldn’t marry someone like that.” He’s standing in front of her now, and he grabs her hands in his.

“Is that the only reason you don’t want me to marry him?” She whispers, looking up in his eyes.

“No… i-“ he sighs. 

“You can’t even say it, Harry.” She frowns, trying to free her hands from his grip, but he only tightens it, intertwining his fingers with hers.

“I can say it.” He nods, “i don’t want you to marry him because I want it to be me. I— I have loved you since I could remember.”

She shuts her eyes tightly at his words, “you don’t mean that”.

Harry frees her hands and reaches for her face, caressing her warm cheeks with his thumbs.

“I do. I do.” He nods, “look at me, angel — please look at me” 

YN opens her eyes and Harry can feel his heart clench at the sight of her beautiful eyes filled with tears. 

“You had me, Harry. All those years ago, you had me. But you let me go! You have no idea how… how hard it was”

This time, Harry closes his eyes and then reopens them, despite being aware, the thought of making her suffer is hard to face. 

“I thought… I didn’t…—“ he shakes his head, his hands still keeping the firm grip on her face, “my life was hard, YN. It was crazy. I thought… you weren’t ready. I didn’t want to ruin you.”

“You did anyway. I hated you for what you did to me. I hated you for leaving.” She frowns, tears spilling from her eyes, but Harry wipes quickly at them with his thumb before they can roll down her cheeks. He leans down to place a delicate kiss between her eyes.

“I never once left you. In my heart it has always been you.”

He can feel her start to soften, but the she says “It’s too late now.”, and she shakes her head, her hands reaching up to remove Harry’s from her face. He complies, not wanting to force her. “I’m getting married, tomorrow.” 

“Angel, please” he whispers, but she’s already turned around, and Harry’s left alone in the middle of the aisle.

Suddenly he feels nauseous, and he brings a hand to his chest to calm his restless heart. As I said before, Harry realizes things always too late.

-

The next morning, Harry wakes up on his bed with the sound of an alarm he forgot he’d set. As he rubs the sleep off his eyes, he can’t wait to get the hell out of this place as soon as he can, and when he reaches for his phone and checks the time, he remembers why he set the alarm so early in the morning: this way he can avoid everyone from the ceremony on his way out. 

He can’t bare the thought of sitting through the wedding. He’ll send YN some fancy gift that she’ll enjoy with her husband and then he’ll disappear from her life once again. 

He knows it’s better this way.

He did it one time before. He knows already how long it will take to mourn their lost friendship and get back on track. The sooner he goes home and sleeps his feelings off, the sooner he’ll feel better.

He hurriedly throws his clothes in his suitcase, without caring if they get wrinkly or ruined. He grabs his phone and its charger and doesn’t even bother to check the bathroom twice to see if he left something behind. He doesn’t care, he’s eager to get far away and never face the heartbreak he’s leaving with.

As soon as he opens the door, though, the bag in his hand falls from his grip to the ground as he takes in the image in front of him. 

YN’s against the other side of the wall, her head hung low between her shoulders. 

“YN?” He asks, and she looks at him with her big, glossy eyes, and Harry feels like staying. He feels like grabbing her hand and tugging her inside, kissing her until he’s finally able to show her how much he loves her.

“I’m not… I—“ she shakes her head, her voice trembling as she gets her back off the wall and takes a step towards him, “i called the wedding off.”

It’s the only thing she says, but Harry feels butterflies fly in his stomach. His heart clenches in his chest, and he has to bring a hand to his chest like he did the night before to make sure he’s not having a heart attack.

“It’s not too late.” She whispers, “if you still want me, it’s not too late.”

Harry reaches up to her and tugs her closer to him by her arm. 

“I’ll never not want you”.

YN steps in the room and closes the door behind her, and Harry gently takes her face in his hands and tilts her head up. He looks from one eye to the other attentively before placing his lips against hers, and he almost contemplates not closing his eyes in fear she’d no longer be there when he reopens them, but YN moves her hands from his neck, to his shoulders, and he feels her grabbing his shirt between her fingers and holding him closer, her fingers digging in his skin. She’s real. She’s here, and he’s kissing her. It’s been five years since he’s last tasted her, and this time he’s kissing her without guilt. Because it’s not too late. Life just started.

YN parts her lips slightly and Harry sucks her bottoms lip in his mouth, eager to taste her more. 

His tongue licks over her lips and when she whimpers against his lips, he sneaks his  tongue inside her mouth and caresses hers with his. He explores her mouth like his life depends on it, and he feels like he wants to drink her. He wants to get drunk on her taste and never recover.

YN moves her hands from his shoulders to the hem of his shirt, tugging on it, and Harry parts from her mouth breathlessly. He feels dizzy and he’s not entirely sure it’s from the lack of air.

“No” he says, taking her hands in his and squeezing them in his grasp.

YN pouts at him and he tilts his head to kiss it away from her lips with a brief peck: “i want you. I really do. But not here”.

She widens her eyes at his words and realizes she was almost about to have sex with Harry when her ex fiancee and his family could hear them. She giggles loudly at the thought, and Harry, despite not knowing why she’s laughing, lets out a chuckle, shaking his head and looking at her with a bewildered look in his eyes.

“Let’s leave then.” She says when she calms down.

“Okay.” He nods, picking up his bag from the floor, “get your stuff. I’ll start the car.”

YN bites down on her bottom lip hard, trying to suppress the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. 

“What?” He says once he realizes she still hasn’t moved from her place.

She shakes her head, “nothing” she says, “i’m glad I wasn’t too late.”

“You could never be too late” he smiles, and he hopes she knows he’d wait for her all his life if it meant having her beside him. 

[gregorovitch-adler]

My thoughts about The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes:

Let's start by summarising the movie -

No crime-solving happens in the first 34 minutes. The first act is all about Holmes and Watson's dynamic, exploration of the nature of their relationship with each other, etc. If you're the type of person who only watches/reads Sherlock Holmes for the cases, you'd believe this portion is skippable. Only the blink-and-miss detail about the "Midgets' case" is important as far as Holmes' detective work is concerned.

However, if you think exploring Holmes and Watson's interpersonal relationship and their casework are both equally important, like I do, the first act is GOLD. Most of the Tumblr gifs about this movie are from the first 30-35 mins lol.

1.) Holmes enters and they bicker like an old, married couple.

H: Oh, come now, Watson, you must admit that you have a tendency to overromanticize. You have taken my simple exercises in logic and embellished them, embroidered them, exaggerated them ---

W: I deny the accusation.

H: You have described me as six-footfour, whereas I am barely six-footone.

W: A bit of poetic license.

Not only is this whole scene just delightful in general but the theory about Watson being an unreliable narrator in ACD canon is actually being supported throughout the movie, starting right here.

--

W:It's those little touches that make you colorful...

H: Lurid is more like it. You have painted me as a hopeless dope addict - just because I occasionally take a five per cent solution of cocaine.

W: A seven per cent solution.

H: Five per cent. Don't you think I'm aware you've been diluting it behind my back?

This exchange was lovely. Way to slip in their closeness through a few words.

2.) Watson doesn't think it's odd to barge right in when Holmes is completely naked and taking a bath?

Also, why the hell does Holmes bathe with his bedroom door wide open?

And what's that thing he's taking a bath in called? Does anyone know about this stuff? Was this thing common in that timeline? It doesn't seem to fit a grown man like Holmes.

I have so many questions and I'm speechless at the same time. I'll just drop this here:

3.) Then Watson persuades Holmes to go to The Swan Lake ballet.

Watson enjoys that ballet, a little too much at that, mostly because he's staring at all the women on stage. (We'll get back to this later.)

Holmes on the other hand has dozed off. All he can admire about the most beautiful dancer, Petrova, is her strong arches. Which is... 🏳‍🌈

Then that whole scene about Nicholai and Petrova and Holmes in the dressing room. XD

Petrova offers a Stradivarius violin to Holmes in exchange for sleeping with her for a week, so that her child would be beautiful like her and brilliant like Holmes.

Holmes gets out of the situation by lying to both of them; saying he's in a relationship with Watson.

Honestly, that whole bit. Just look at the lines:

N: She has been dancing since she was three years old, and after all, she is now thirty-eight.

H: (gallantly) I must say she doesn't look thirty-eight.

N: That is because she is forty-six.

And:

Nicholai: (about Tolstoy) Too old --- Then we considered the philosopher, Nietzsche --

H: Absolutely first-rate mind ---

N: Too German --

Etc. They're all so funny. This whole scene is something else.

In fairness to Holmes, he did try to get himself out of the situation by lying about having hemophilia in his family, or saying that he's unromantic because he's English, etc but Petrova was having none of it.

Watson coming into the room all of a sudden gives so much clarity and calmness to Holmes. He just knows what to say to help himself because of Watson.

This unforgettable exchange:

N: You mean, you and Dr. Watson - He is your glass of tea?

H: If you want to be picturesque about it.

On a side note, I absolutely loved Nicholai's face journey throughout both scenes - in the dressing room, stuck in the middle of Holmes and Petrova's awkwardness, and later on when he asks about the alleged Holmes-Watson romance to Watson after having spread the rumour in the whole room.

I just loved his reactions a lot.

According to this movie-

Caprice of Mother Nature = Gay.

Half-and-half = Bisexual.

Watson comes to know about the rumour, after having had the time of his life with both men and women in the ballroom. Watson is pissed off, he goes home and confronts about the whole thing to Holmes.

They have a row at Baker Street, in which Watson is being extremely heteronormative again. Thinking too much about his reputation without stopping to question his own feelings and his weird fixation on Holmes' love life.

There's that famous line again:

W: Holmes, let me ask you a question. I hope I'm not being presumptuous -but there have been women in your life?

H: The answer is yes -- you're being presumptuous. Good night.

Awesome.

This marks the end of Act I.

The existence of these 33 minutes of the movie is proof that the writing team in this adaptation knows that exploring Holmes and Watson's characters and what they mean to each other is as important as Holmes' casework. Billy Wilder takes this seriously, even though there are some jokes here and there about it.

The whole of Act I is filled with raising questions about Holmes and Watson's preferences, etc. Does Holmes feel love or is he just a machine? Does Holmes feel love for Watson? Does Watson know about Holmes' feelings for him? Does Watson feel the same way about Holmes?

In my opinion, all the answers to the personal questions about Holmes are as clear as a day. What's really questionable is whether Watson knows and/or feels the same way about Holmes or not. Different viewers might draw different conclusions/inferences after watching this movie.

After this, the movie takes a turn because "Gabrielle" enters the picture, and the actual crime-solving begins from here. The tone becomes a bit more serious in this act.

A young woman, completely wet and in shock enters 221 B. Watson has to pay for her fare to the cabbie before he and Holmes take her upstairs to take care of her.

She can't remember anything at first, then from her wedding ring, Holmes gets to know her name: Gabrielle Valladon. Her husband's name is Emile Valladon.

She appears to have temporary amnesia because of getting hit on the forehead and almost drowning in the Thames.

She reveals info about herself that she's from Belgium, her husband was here in London for a job, they used to write to each other, and after some time, the letters from her husband stopped coming. She'd gone to the London police first after coming to this city. She says the police had advised her to consult Sherlock Holmes.

Now, this should make the viewer skeptical of her. Scotland Yard does consult Sherlock Holmes when they need him, but they aren't going to let him have the whole case if there's a situation like this.

Besides, that woman ending up at Baker Street specifically seems to be planned, anyway. Also, there's always this man who keeps waiting for her or someone else's signals on the outside.

I know what we see on screen comes from Watson's drafts on loose pages, but this movie's narration seems to be Third Person Omniscient POV to me. Where the viewer is privy to more information as compared to the characters.

The three of them keep looking for her husband's whereabouts, and she pretends to be helpless, needy, and fragile (to stroke the ego of the men around her, I believe. I mean that could be one of the reasons...) with temporary amnesia throughout most of the movie. Holmes and Watson don't suspect a thing about her as they keep working for her and she keeps sending cryptic messages to the "Trappists" (German government) with her parasol.

The thing I love about this act:

Ilse von Hofmannsthal aka Gabrielle Valladon is actually a competent character who happens to be a woman. We can see something shady is going on with her even though we don't know her real name, but one of the most brilliant people on the planet doesn't suspect anything. He thinks she's just a woman looking for her husband's whereabouts. He thinks her back story is real.

He keeps on thinking that until Mycroft basically tells him in the third act which is why we're able to see for ourselves that Ilse was genuinely able to outsmart Holmes. We don't have to be told by the narrative voice about Ilse's strengths (*cough* unlike BBC Sherlock and a lot of female characters written by Steven Moffat *cough*).

I, for one, felt respectful of Ilse or "Gabrielle" for real. It was quite refreshing to me after having watched some modern Holmes adaptations.

Holmes, Watson, and "Gabrielle" go looking for the cause of Emile Valladon's death after they've found his coffin in the graveyard, in the guise of having a picnic. Holmes and "Gabrielle" pretend to be a married couple - Mrs and Mr Ashdown, and Watson is their valet. The scenes after this point are delightful mainly because of Watson's reactions (which could be read as his jealousy over Holmes, too).

Also, me when Holmes calls Watson 'John' in an archaic Holmes adaptation:

Because of his sort of stupidity, Holmes takes Ilse, a German spy, right in front of the submersible (which he thinks is a mechanical 'monster' that lives underwater) in a boat, along with Watson.

Ilse was trying to grab as much information as she could about that secret project because she was working for her country. Who knew someone would show her the live version of that model so readily (albeit unknowingly)? :P

The three of them are obviously unable to find anything about Emile Valladon, so they go back to the inn room they're staying in.

That's when one of Mycroft's men comes to pick Holmes up and take him to his elder brother. Here's when the third act begins, I think.

Mycroft had warned Sherlock not to pursue "Gabrielle's" case any further during the second act. But Sherlock didn't listen, because a.) he's an empathetic man, and b.) Mycroft can't just order him to do or drop something just because. Sherlock is not a child anymore.

I know Mycroft was only trying to protect Sherlock, and that he couldn't have told him the real reason to stop him at that time, but still.

Either way, months of planning and testing the submersible have gone to waste because Holmes did not suspect at any point that his client, "Gabrielle Valladon" might have just been lying to him since the start. Can't blame Holmes for that. Ilse was meticulous.

Mycroft shows the model to the queen and she strongly disapproves of the model and curses it a lot. Personally, this seemed to be a shitty decision on her part, and I felt so frustrated and annoyed at her in that scene. She didn't even care to hear about its features. She just rejected it on the spot! :(

Mycroft decides to 'give the submarine' to the German government. It's implied that the Trappists were drowned along with the submarine itself in the deep waters. (That's what I gathered from that scene - correct me if my interpretation was wrong).

In conclusion, while Ilse is genuinely able to outsmart Holmes (unlike some writers forcing us to believe it in their adaptation because they told us so), the German government isn't able to go anywhere with the info they've gathered through Ilse because of Mycroft's last move. Moreover, the English government would have sent her to jail, if Sherlock hadn't suggested Mycroft send her back to her own country.

So, in the end, it's a lose-lose situation for all of them.

1.) Sherlock Holmes didn't know that Ilse was faking her name and her whole identity for a long time, so he unknowingly helped a German spy, thinking he was just helping an ordinary client. Ilse almost had him and the viewers could see for themselves that she'd outsmarted him.

2.) Even after Ilse von Hofmannsthal has got what she wanted for her government, as a spy, they aren't able to make use of that info because of Mycroft. And she has to get out of England anyway.

3.) Mycroft Holmes also fails, to some extent, because ages of effort to plan the submersible, hide the plans, and test the model in secret - all of it has gone to waste. The queen doesn't even want to hear him out in the end.

But even if it was a lose-lose situation, the battle was damn intriguing because of the high intellect on both sides - Holmes brothers and Ilse.

Months later, Holmes receives a letter from Mycroft about Ilse's arrest and execution by the Japanese government. Reading that, he's so moved that he can't even finish his breakfast. He gets up and asks Watson for his cocaine supply. Watson tells him, and then Holmes grabs the bag and goes to his room. Holmes shuts himself in, Watson gets up from the breakfast table too, sits beside the fireplace, and begins to write something on a piece of paper. Probably about the case, but for nobody to see.

End of Act III and the movie.

--

I loved the background score of this movie. It's quite touching and refreshing to listen to.

A lot of dialogue exchanges in the movie are so deep if you stop to think about them. It's unbelievable how much writers can convey through a few words. Some of them are quite funny too - particularly from Act I. There's a thin line between being funny and mocking, and TPLOSH didn't cross that. It was nice.

I love this portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. It's clear how deeply they've understood him from the original canon. Pretends to be dismissive and closed off but actually cares about everyone way too much.

I also liked Mycroft in this movie, even if he didn't have much screen time.

About Ilse von Hofmannsthal - I loved her. Seriously, this is how you write female characters, modern writers! People say ASIB is a direct adaptation of TPLOSH, which is true, but I'd prefer TPLOSH over that episode any day, and one of the reasons is the way the female lead has been written in the former. Not exactly a fan of how Moffat wrote her in his adaptation. He did her dirty, I'd say.

Characters like Ilse make me think that the writing team of this movie knew what feminism is. I can't say the same for the modern Holmes adaptation that has been heavily inspired by TPLOSH.

I loved the plot of this movie too. The case in itself was also pretty interesting and kept me hooked throughout. Even if it wasn't exactly resolved finally, and the ending was melancholic.

I wasn't expecting the movie to be this good. Which is why it took me so long to sit down and watch it.

I only have one complaint about this movie - Watson's characterisation.

I mean, Watson wasn't half as bad as I'd expected (I thought he was going to be horrible, based on the snippets of the movie I'd seen before), but still. I like how he doesn't fall into the bumbling idiot stereotype. As far as the casework is concerned, Watson is also quite competent and observant in his own right. He can handle the medical work too.

I've got problems with his heteronormativity, and the fact that when it comes to deducing what lies in Holmes' heart, he's dumb as bricks. It's annoying. Like, it's one thing if he doesn't feel the same way about Holmes, but he doesn't have to be so weird and homophobic about it. Also, I think Holmes should've told him about the truth related to Ilse and the 'mechanical monster'. I've had enough of 'keeping Watson in the dark for his own good', damn it! He should be more in the knowledge.

Watson's character was the only element in the movie that didn't receive justice from the writer. As a Watson-centric fan, I need this to stop happening in future Holmes adaptations. People should see more from his POV too, and stop to actually see where he's coming from, and properly understand his character in the next show/movie/whatever they make.

What I gathered from the movie about the characters and their interpersonal relationships-

Holmes is in love with Watson but doesn't admit it... for valid reasons this time. (side eyes at Watson's homophobia).

Watson is deeply attached to Holmes but sees him as a close friend. I wish he felt the same way about Holmes in this movie, but alas! Though if he doesn't feel that way about Holmes, why the hell does he seem so jealous of Ilse in Acts II and III? This is beyond me.

I think what they've tried to show is that Watson is too close-minded to confront his possibly repressed feelings for Holmes, deep within his heart? Maybe. It could very well be my wishful thinking lol.

But as far as Holmes' feelings for Watson are concerned, it's not even wishful thinking. It's just... right there. I wish the subtext about Holmes' pining were spelled out. I know why it couldn't (the Doyle estate was being a pain in the ass at that time), but still. It's quite clear what they wanted to write as far as Holmes' emotional side was concerned, but they dropped it from the scripts after Act I and decided to focus on the case instead.

Holmes is dismissive of 'Gabrielle' at first, but he becomes sympathetic for her after some time. He reaches out to help her with her situation, and as the plot moves forward, he grows affectionate for Gabrielle/Ilse, which is why he doesn't hold a grudge against her when he realises he's been outsmarted by this woman (even though his ego was mildly hurt for a while).

The way they maintained a balance between the plot and the characters is commendable. I love seeing well-written women in fiction and this movie showed me that.

I was surprised to see how good this movie turned out to be, as compared to my preconceived opinions. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes has officially become my comfort movie now. Miles ahead of BBC Sherlock, in my opinion.

Thanks to my discussions with @jamielovesjam in a previous post about this movie lol. I wouldn't have wanted to watch the movie if not for the long talk I had with them. Also tagging @gaypiningshit and @helloliriels for further discussion.

End of my unnecessarily long rambling.

[f0point5]

I’m not brave enough to go near f1 twitter and I think I might’ve said this before actually but there is no deep “narrative” in f1 especially with people like Max and Charles. As a fan it’s interesting to observe and draw connections but some people have taken it way too far lol

Like they drove together as kids.. so did 90% of the grid? They both had Spider-Man helmets!! Yeah boys tend to enjoy that massively known superhero 🤷🏻‍♀️ Motorsports is a small world guys they aren’t star crossed soul mates

Even like brocedes they’re just friends that fell out to me? I really doubt Lewis is at home pacing thinking about Nico and the childhood friendship he lost?

Spitting straight facts.

It’s fun to imagine this rivalry narrative because of that one Jos quote about how they’ll race together in F1 but um they were the two most talented ones in their European karting class I feel like it wasn’t exactly a premonition for Jos to say that?

Like, it could be a dramatic narrative and I have no issue with people taking poetic license to make art out of it but we all have to recognise that these kids ALL knew each other. Esteban karted with them too, so did Pierre. And then one category down there was Lando, George, Alex.

I love a narrative but the reality is definitely nowhere that deep.

I have to say I disagree with Brocedes. I think that did have a deep effect on Lewis’s psyche and how he saw racing. Because he really changed his vibes after that season. Definitely changed how he dealt with teammates. I also think it’s interesting how Nico won once, climbed the mountain and went back down, and walked away to what I would say a more fulfilling life while Lewis was just addicted to sitting at the top. I think because Nico and Lewis were genuinely friends and did value that relationship I’m more open to believing it was deep for them.

Whereas with Charles and Max…I don’t think these two think about each other.

But Idk I like a narrative.

I don’t think any of them are as poetic as people make out but I think a lot of them are interesting/fun to speculate.

[lickthecowhappy]

I struggled with this one so please be nice to me. I think the prolonged exposure to low grade sadness made me grumpy.

The French text in this poem is taken from Gustave Flaubert’s 1842 novela Novembre.

And for the record, I don't think Crowley is really this much of a sad sack, it's just artistic license.

Translated version is below the cut.

Deux Langues de Nous

Rhapsodies poétiques,  I stuttered and struggled- laid utterly bare- surrounded by the words of infamous poets,  all fleeing my grasp like timid prey. souvenirs de mauvaises lectures,  How desperate I was to recall any  soliloquy, monologue, or profession of love  crafted so carefully by the human heart. hyperboles de rhétorique,  I could not compare thee to a Summer's day,  nor my love to a red red rose; I only scrabbled for  any stale crumb of affection my mouth could offer. que toutes ces grandes douleurs sans nom,  We couldn't say it, unspoken all those years-  until I put a name to what could have been,  and took “Us” with me when I left. mais le bonheur aussi ne serait-il pas  une métaphore inventée un jour d’ennui?  Perhaps I was not created to be loved,  only to be used and discarded. Cast down  once Love, Herself, tired of me. J’en ai longtemps douté,  For one bitter moment I believed in my  withered soul that you might hold me dear.  How foolish I must have seemed in your eyes. aujourd’hui je n’en doute plus. You and I were speaking two different languages and you were never very good with French. I suppose we both learned that the hard way.

[Translation]

[Two Languages of Us]

[Poetic rhapsodies,] I stuttered and struggled- laid utterly bare- surrounded by the words of infamous poets,  all fleeing my grasp like timid prey. [memories of bad readings,] How desperate I was to recall any  soliloquy, monologue, or profession of love  crafted so carefully by the human heart. [rhetorical hyperboles,] I could not compare thee to a Summer's day,  nor my love to a red red rose; I only scrabbled for  any stale crumb of affection my mouth could offer. [all these great nameless pains,] We couldn't say it, unspoken all those years-  until I put a name to what could have been,  and took “Us” with me when I left. [But maybe happiness too, is a metaphor  invented on a day of boredom?] Perhaps I was not created to be loved,  only to be used and discarded. Cast down  once Love, Herself, tired of me. [I doubted it for a long time,]  For one bitter moment I believed in my  withered soul that you might hold me dear.  How foolish I must have seemed in your eyes. [today I no longer doubt it.] You and I were speaking two different languages and you were never very good with French. I suppose we both learned that the hard way.

Read more of my work here. This poem is also available on AO3.

[jcs-study]

So, Peter denies Jesus three times, and then according to the Bible, the cockerel crows, just as Jesus said. In all the recordings I’ve heard and the many performances I’ve seen of JCS, I’ve never heard a cockerel after the third denial by Peter. It’s in the Bible, so why not in the show? I’ve always thought that the fact biblical Jesus said “Before the cock crows three times you will deny me,” and then the third time Peter denies him, a cock crows, to be quite powerful storytelling.

Okay, well, I'll start with the most obvious answer: because it's a show, not a literal reenactment of the Bible. Yes, lines and actions taken from within the Bible occur during the show (and way more than fundamentalist Christians actually realize, as I've covered in these pages before), but there's also a ton of stuff that's flat-out made up. (After all, it's not as though Judas has a sung angsty monologue about how things are going astray and Jesus is letting fame go to his head in the Bible either…)

It's a creative work taking poetic license. Besides, Jesus doesn't even mention the cock's crow in the lyrics, just that Peter will deny him. You wish it was in the show? Take it up with Tim Rice!

Having said that...

Some productions do include the rooster. The Ivo van Hove rendition currently running in the Netherlands, I am told, is one example; there are probably more I don't know about. (Hey, I know a lot about JCS, but I don't know everything.)

As someone who has done a lot of historical research, I can tell you there probably wasn't a cockerel involved in the first place. According to biblical scholars who have delved into the historical Jesus (as opposed to the Christ of faith and literature), the keeping of fowls was illegal in Jerusalem, especially in the Temple complex, where loose fowl were not permitted for fear of their contaminating "pure" sacrificial animals with unclean creatures they might drag out of dung heaps; in reality, Peter would not have heard the cock crow… if we think of this in literal terms. However, the land of Judea -- and Jerusalem -- was under Roman control and customs. One such custom was the night "watches" when the trumpet was blown at each watch. The melody of the tune played changed with each watch, so the town would know approximately what time it was. A verse in the Gospel of Mark refers to all four, suggesting one was "at the cock-crowing." So, it's possible Jesus meant Peter would deny him "at the cock-crowing"; while he may not have heard a rooster, since none were available, the trumpet blast of the Roman "watch" would be heard throughout Jerusalem overhead. Some savvy JCS productions that did their homework have opted to reference this theory by having the brass and woodwinds play the "betrayal" theme Mary sings before she comes in, allowing for the visual impact of Peter realizing he has fulfilled the prophecy first. It's clever if you've done enough homework about the show and the story to catch the reference, and even more clever if the "watch" motif has already been established, using, for example, the intro to "Simon Zealotes." (For that matter, if you, too, subscribe to this theory, "in just a few hours" could refer to that "watch," but that's a heavy-handed interpretation I'm imposing on the lyric.)

I hope this answered your question!

[daniel-profeta]

hi, my name's daniel and I make music every now and again. It's a bad habit that shouldn't be encouraged, but it's cheaper than therapy so I keep doing it.

Recently I posted an npr tiny desk submission on youtube of this song, but I wanted to share my original demo for it somewhere. And no better place than within this gated asylum I've come to love so much.

This song is kind of a love song, and also fairly autobiographical. Some poetic license was taken however, such as: I was actually dropped on the head twice (true story).

So whether you like sad songs, angry songs, or hopeful songs, this song might be the song for you.

"The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now."

[blackbloodteeth]

Snippet Sunday? In front of my Reverb?

Hahahaha thanks for the tag @cannibal-nightmares and @silluuuu! I am once again back on my [content warnings] – Blood? Body horror? Death? – but, this probably isn't going to go exactly the way you think it will.

———

Don't start stories in front of mirrors. That's what I've been told. Well, this doesn't start here, it happened four years ago.

Where oppressive soot and metallic sting gripped my lungs, and the pain cracked my ribs right in half. Wasn't hollowed out just for that. Rust stuck to my sleeves, the blade I was trying so hard to dislodge while I could barely see, couldn't even think to call your name at the time. I did eventually, though.

The thought of how our fingers fit together, my hands flitting right over the piano keys, your hands sitting beneath my staff, that's what made it hurt so much. I could barely stand but there I was, fingers shaking to hell and back as I could feel your soul beating in my other hand. Straight out of the dead bastard's mouth.

I've never cried in front of you before. You know I don't like it when I do, couldn't stop myself this time. Couldn't see all that well but I knew it was you. No doubt about it.

Maybe I was mad then. Maybe I always was, just a little bit. Couldn't take it I guess. Had to make sure it never happened again, or something poetic like that. You weren't too happy about me shoving you between my ribs for a while.

I still remember it pretty clearly. It's like… absorbing a soul into yourself, except instead of making it yours you just keep it there. Like if instead of my chest being teeth, they're like fingers, an analogy, where I just hold onto you. It was… different. I remember that a lot.

You know how it's like when you hold onto my scythe form? I could feel your wavelength beating directly against mine, and it just felt so… strong, that the angry tears fell directly from my eyes. You weren't mad at me, not really, and I didn't want to really "make you mine" or do the unthinkable. But you know that already.

We were both upset for a long while, but you were still in tune with me at least enough. I could feel your body, not here with me, far, far away. They took your body from you, they took your body from you. Went on repeat as I went looking non-stop.

Wasn't ever gonna stop until I find it again.

His fingers and thumb run carelessly through his bangs, another snip of scissors taking off one last finishing touch before he looks himself over from every possible angle. A smirk pulls at the corner of his lips as a hum of approval radiates up his sternum.

Alright, what about the rest?

A disapproving huff rolls its eyes at the back of his mind, and damn if he can't help but tease her with a finger curling through the sides of his hair. He knows she likes it long, he knows he likes it that she likes it long, he doesn't really care otherwise other than getting annoyed by it consuming his face like an emo boyband middle-schooler.

The flat-end of the scissors tilt his chin up a little, a humming squint eyeing all the scruff having taken over. That bossy little pout weighs in that she likes his fuzzy coat of facial hair, thank you very much. He looks like a homeless stoner. It's endearing. And makes his face look good.

Also he pretty much is one already.

A hyena laugh barks out as he shines a grin of his fangs at his reflection, setting the scissors down while fussing with his disheveled head one last time.

Alright, you lead?

Her scoff shifts his eyes into a playful shade of green as she now brushes the renegade clippings off of the bathroom counter, letting him sit back and handle the mental checklist for this morning as she puts the scissors away properly. Gonna be one helluva day finally getting her a driver's license today.

[haggishlyhagging]

Sexuality is a very complex phenomenon. At once social and physical, "nature" and "culture," it defies categorization. Pagan religions saw sexuality as part of the natural order, part of the same generative force that ultimately resulted in fertility. Erotic attraction had an integral place in the workings of the cosmos. Sexuality could be sacred, part of the continuation of the cosmos, as in the Sumerian sacred marriage ritual. In this ritual, the expression of sexual emotions could be associated with the experience of divinity, and the songs and poems connected with the sacred marriage provided a religious setting for the expression and celebration of sexual desire. Even ordinary sex could be seen as godlike, for the stories of the sexual adventures and misadventures of the gods provided a divine parallel for sexuality. These stories showed that gods also felt these drives and performed these acts. Sexual behavior did not make people less like the gods; on the contrary, it reinforced their resemblance to the upper orders of being. The male gods could be models of male virility and sexual potency, their behavior paradigms of proper (and sometimes of improper) sexual activity.

Ancient pagan religion also portrayed the sexual impulse as a goddess of sexual attraction. Male gods, figures of potency, can express sexual activity; they cannot fully express sexual attraction in a predominantly heterosexual, androcentric society. The figure of Inanna/Ishtar provides a way to conceptualize the erotic impulse, a vocabulary to celebrate its presence, and an image with which to comprehend the human experience of sexual desire. Sexual desire comes from the presence of Ishtar. When she is absent,

The Bull springs not upon the cow, the ass does not inseminate the Jenny. In the street man does not inseminate young woman. The man lies down in his (own) chamber the woman lies down on her side.

Sexuality was part of the divine realm, most specifically of the female divine. Even when other functions of goddesses were absorbed by male gods, sexuality could not be absorbed into male divinity. Ishtar remained the representative and divine patron of sexual attraction and activity.

All of this religious dimension of sexuality disappears in biblical monotheism. There is no sexual dimension of divine experience. Instead of gods and goddesses interrelating with each other, there is only the one God of Israel. YHWH, moreover, is a predominantly male god, referred to by the masculine pronoun (never by the feminine), and often conceived of in such quintessentially masculine images as warrior and king. In the earliest biblical poem, the Song of the Sea, God is "man of war." God is also king, the prime metaphor of mastery. This, too, has a masculine connotation. But these masculine qualities of God are social male-gender characteristics. The monotheist God is not sexually a male. He is not at all phallic, and does not represent male virility. Biblical anthropomorphic language uses corporeal images of the arm of God, the right hand of God, God's back, and God's tears. God is not imagined below the waist. In Moses' vision at Mount Sinai, God covered Moses with his hand until he had passed by, and Moses saw only his back. In Elijah's vision, there was nothing to be seen, only a "small still voice." In Isaiah's vision (chapter 6), two seraphim hide Gods "feet" (normally taken as a euphemism), and in Ezekiel's vision (chapters 1-3), there is only fire below the loins. God is asexual, or transsexual, or metasexual (depending on how we view this phenomenon), but "he" is never sexed.

God does not behave in sexual ways. In the powerful marital metaphor, God is the "husband" of Israel. But this husband-God does not kiss, embrace, fondle, or otherwise express physical affection for Israel, even within the poetic license of the metaphor. Such reticence is not demanded by rhetorical usage, for in the other erotic metaphor, that describing the attachment of men to Lady Wisdom, there is no hesitation to use a physical image, "hug her to you and she will exult you, she will bring you honor if you embrace her." Wisdom is clearly a woman-figure, and can be metaphorically embraced as a woman. But God is not a sexual male, and therefore even the erotic metaphor of passion reveals a lack of physicality. God is not imaged in erotic terms, and sexuality was simply not part of the divine order.

God is not sexed, God does not model sexuality, and God does not bestow sexual power. God, who is the giver of fertility, procreation, abundance, health, does not explicitly give potency. God does not promise the men of Israel that they will be sexually active or competent. Biblical thought does not see sexuality as a gift of God. To the Bible, the sexual and divine realms have nothing to do with each other. Indeed, the Bible is concerned to maintain their separation, to demarcate the sexual and sacred experiences and to interpose space and time between them. God would not reveal godself or God's purpose on Mount Sinai until Israel abstained from sexual activity for three days. This temporal separation between the sexual and the sacred also underlies the story of David's request for food during his days of fleeing from King Saul. David assured the priest Ahimelech that his men were eligible to eat hallowed bread by asserting that they had been away from women for three days. Sexual activity brings people into a realm of experience which is unlike God; conversely, in order to approach God one has to leave the sexual realm.

-Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth

[titleknown]

HELLOWEEN #10: ACABUS

-ACABUS is a Constable of Hell with 3,921 Watch-Men and 42 co-signed laws to her name. She may be summoned to prevent entry and egress from contained spaces, produce sigils to command those in their wake, produce a cubic oubliette preventing all egress and cause injury to those who have broken contracts.

She appears as a knight with a long tower for a head with an eye at the apex, wielding a hammer in one arm and a telescope in another. She requires a contract for her services, do not sign it with your dominant hand or else you are doomed to damnation.-

As there are landlords in hell, there are also cops. And amongst cops, a decent sample is Acabus. Petty would be the word I use to describe her, but not for her own indulgence's sake (at least not overtly), but rather for the sake of the Law.

This was clear to me when I contacted her within an entire city block she had taken over due to a simple parking violation, barricated from every avenue of egress, automobiles and pedestrians alike crushed into cubes due to being complicit in the viscinity of the parking violation, all surfaces festooned with tickets like freshly fallen snow. 

Despite her pretentions, she is more or less a low-level traffic cop of hell, dealing with loitering, violations of driver safety, ticketing, and barricades amongst others. She really loves barricades. She waxed baroque of the art of making them as glorious yet painful and difficult to egress from as possible, and the ones in the location I had met her indeed seemed to bear an elaborate artisanship, albeit a grotesque one given the amount of twisted forms adjacent to humanoid and flame-belching skulls (conscious and unconscious alike) therein.

But, despite her low level, she was extremely proud of her work, saying that hell would devolve "like those filthy lemurs above," without her, her hatred of the souls of sinners and desire to punish as terrifying as it was sincere (despite being notably unhappy about her own limitations) and emphasizing to an almost suspiciously insistent degree that all she did was "by the book" unlike those who were here.

She did not seem to like most of hell either though, given the way the conversation (More a monologue on her part) escalated to her contempt for the hosts of hell, and I recall the line "Were I the ruler I would make Pandemonium itself a prison!" was uttered.

I quickly gave my leave after her comments on Pandemonium, heaven knows what she might do to me, but there was one other notable thing about her. 

She told me her proudest moment was being brought on for inducing a traffic-jam for participating in large-scale torture of souls, who had been released onto a 'street" in "cars" and told they were free. Not even the main torturer, just as an assistant, but to her it was the closest moment to pure justice in her mind.

Of course, the justice of Hell was never supposed to exist, because the justice of pain is a false one. But I didn't tell that to her out loud. God no.

-Xavier X. Xolomon , Monsterologist and Understudy to The Librarian Of Babel

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

This one's one of my favorite designs I made for this project, and I am at least sorta proud of the "small-name big-ego traffic cop" personality I gave her. 

The design's impetus was actually based on Road Rage from Ultimate Muscle, if anyone remembers that, and the love of traffic barricades is an Earthbound reference! 

And yes, she totally would fight a small child who wanted to get past one of said barricades, that is something she would enthusiastically do.

Also, Xavier's not just being poetic, in my setting, Hell was a gargantuan cosmic mistake, a maelstrom-wound that drives the wicked into its folds, but in a way that was never ever intended. So yeah, there's that bit of lore.

As per usual the whole descriptions, designs, ectcetera from this project are free to use as you see fit under a CC-BY 4.0 license so long as I; Thomas F. Johnson, am credited as their creator!

[nalyra-dreaming]

I love your blog. Unfortunately today I've had a stressful day. Loustat are my comfort and all I can think of is the happy ever after they get at the end of the books. Can you tell me any favourite passages of yours in the last book or favourite thoughts about Loustat when they get their HEA plse? :))

Hey dear!

Glad you like my little corner of the internet :))

Also - big HUG!! Hope the next days will be better!

Okay, I'll try to put a few down^^.

First one is one that does not seem much "them" at first, but ... is, so much, to me. It's Lestat introducing Louis in Blood communion.

And it was Louis’s outrageous lies about me, intentional and unintentional (some people should not be granted a poetic license), that prompted me to write my own autobiography and tell the secrets of Marius to the whole world.

Like... Lestat, honey. Lol. That jab at the poetic license. Still??? Can you hear the bickering between them? I can :))))

Obviously this passage is probably more what you expected, and it is indeed very cute imho (Louis to Lestat):

“I love you with my whole soul, and I will always love you,” he confided to me. “You are my life. I have hated you for that and love you now so much that you’ve been my instructor in loving. And believe me when I say you will survive this, and that you must for all of us. You will survive because you always have and you always will.”

I couldn’t answer. I knew I loved him more than words could say, but I couldn’t respond.

I also love how Lestat is acting as if blinkered when Louis is taken. Just... numb. "I was not thinking." Indeed. It says so much. (Lestat also calls himself Louis' lover there, when he muses about Louis.) And there is a lot unsaid once more when Louis is brought back, and Anne was a master in this, leaving so much between them unsaid, and forcing us to read between the lines... It's utterly vexing but also very in character for Louis not to want his private matters in Lestat's books, and... well. It fits. Unfortunately *laughs*

Last scene is this (of course^^):

“I have no gift for being miserable,” I said.

“I know,” he said. He laughed. Such a human face. Such a lovely face.

There must surely have been twice as many blood drinkers now in this ballroom as there had ever been, and I sensed that I had ought to stop having such a marvelous time and return to greeting newcomers as the Prince should. But not before holding Louis for a moment, and then kissing him and telling him low in French that I loved him and always had.

I really want us to get that scene... that inverted scene once more, with them dancing among the vampires.

Louis kissed Lestat in front of the mortals in the show, and Lestat then kisses Louis in front of the vampires.

After a dance.

After their dance.

(And I love the allegory they set up with that in the show, because their relationship is like a dance, too, sometimes apart, sometimes close together, with twists, and breaks, and twirls, and... I love it^^)

[grandhotelabyss]

—Kerry Howley, "Late Work"

If anybody wants to write in and Jorie-Graham-pill me, I'm as ready as I'll ever be after Howley's surpassingly designed and executed profile.

It's so well done I almost want to put my ideological questions on hold. If her father were the "art monster" who had hurled her across the room for defacing the canvas, would this primal scene prove so redemptive and generative in the profile's narrative? Or would we be treated to yet another recitation of Bishop reprimanding Lowell: "Art just isn't worth that much?"

(Aesthetics and ethics are separate, each absolute in its domain. Just as being an artist doesn't license abusing a child, the artist's having abused her child doesn't invalidate her art. Both are true.)

The only one of Graham's students whose voice we hear for more than a paragraph writes, we're told, about "Black pleasure," just in case we might be worried about what this privileged white lady teaches. What does she teach?

“There was a way of being in that classroom,” Schiff says, “where you never questioned: Is this endeavor important? Does this art form matter? These questions just were not posed.” Here was a professor, says poet John Beer, who taught poetry as a “site for the disclosure of truth,” not merely of self-expression or an investigation into the operations of language, with a conviction not even particularly prevalent in other poets. This was an ethic but also an inheritance.

No quarrel from me about spirit of the remark, though "site for the disclosure of the truth" is not English but Heideggerese. Who taught the poets to speak the abstract jargon of the philosophers? The rumination on how to achieve late work is moving: how not to get caged in your mature manner, how not to burn out.

In 1978, eight years after his suicide, she descended the Guggenheim’s spiral at a Rothko exposition; the paintings grew more recent as she went on. Once he hits Rothko, she thought, he does great Rothko. One could see Rothko becoming Rothko, and then … years of the same. At the beginning of the very Rothko Rothkos, it was as if a light exuded from the back and the sides, a bright window whose horizontal shapes occluded the light. But in the late-Rothko Rothkos, “there’s no light coming through anymore,” she says, “as if the blinds have been drawn. He knows he’s trapped spiritually. You can’t be trapped aesthetically and not also be trapped spiritually. If your work is your life, then if your life comes to a point where you’re trapped, you’re like any animal, if you can’t get out, you’re done. If you can’t move forward, you’ve been hunted into a corner, even if you’re the hunter.”

There were the poets who exceeded themselves when time ran short: Elizabeth Bishop, Keats (yes, Keats, at 24, knew the end was coming, the work grew late), and Yeats, especially Yeats, who “lifted off at the end.”

Graham's mother, though, planning even unto her last words her massive earth installation or whatever—I couldn't quite picture it—is the prime example. I will swallow my skepticism: "People had always misunderstood the nature of Jorie Graham’s privilege." I don't care about checking anybody's privilege, but the insiderness of this life may produce a poetics that could use some aeration, and not from the corporate-curated news feed her left-liberal guilt addicts her to.

I could say of my own inheritance in the class stratum below Graham's: my father was a commercial artist who worked for money, taught me to draw, and never beat me for interfering with his work. The moral of that story would be this: the kind of privilege that allows you never to question the importance of the endeavor is probably a dis-privilege: too much is taken for granted and too little in consequence risked. But where would this get us? Yeats was right: don't be personal.

I am too severe. This genre of writing doesn't get much better; even my ideological qualms pay tribute to its canniness. Yet Howley scarcely discusses Graham's poetry. I have a vision of the woman—walking barefoot in Iowa to feel the earth, dressed all in black, scolding the school board because they've dumbed down the multiplication table, helplessly transfixed by Ukraine and climate change and her mother's death on her phone—but not of the work. She wrote long lines and now, in her late phase, cancer-stricken, she writes short lines. This is what I come away knowing about her poetry.

I've read exactly one Graham poem closely, "Reading Plato," because it was in an anthology I was teaching from. I didn't like it, thought its self-serious un-musicality indistinguishable from any other poetry published in the New Yorker, thought its gently self-implicating inverted-Platonic critique of "men" for their mimetic separation from and aggression against nature predictable, safe. Rereading it now, I think, uncharitably: if you're going to write like this, you might as well have just kept your shoes on. This, as the article goes out of its way to tell us, is the heir to Dickinson and Bishop, is an admirer of Keats and Yeats. What am I missing? The question is not rhetorical; please Graham-splain.

[mayalaen]

Fandoms: Supernatural/The Blacklist Crossover/Fusion Pairings: Dean/Raymond/Dembe (in all combos) Word Count: 57k

SUMMARY: Dean Winchester, AKA The Mongoose and daddy’s little soldier, has found happiness in his new life with Raymond “Red” Reddington, doing what he does best under the safe umbrella of the FBI’s most wanted man and his extensive crime network. A world where demons and angels roam free is something Dean left behind a long time ago along with a father who told him nothing but lies and used him. Raymond never lies, but can he trust Raymond and Dembe when it means turning on everyone he ever knew and loved?

The concept of this fic has been playing in my head for years, but when I started writing it out over 2 years ago, it took on a life of its own.

I hesitated to post something that portrayed schizophrenic Dean jumping from an abusive situation to what might come off as another abusive relationship when my goal was to show him as choosing the healthier option, but still reveling in the dirtier aspects of it all. Hopefully I pulled it off.

As always with one of my schizophrenic characters in a fic, some experiences are taken from my own life (and what I've seen family members and friends deal with) and others are poetic license. Maybe I should put up a poll to see which aspects readers think were mine 😁

Oh, and with this fic, I've officially posted 2 million words to AO3 🎉

Please see the tags and read the spoilers if you need them.

[fatgirlgetsfitatlast]

It's a tiny bit windy today. I predict no bike ride in my immediate future. Biking is hard enough without gale force* winds in your face.

*some poetic license taken.

[nightshadow1607]

the hero’s gambit (october, 2021)

The funeral day was... for lack of better words, fucked.

If Shouta hadn't been in mourning for a student (a flame of hope extinguished from someone so young's eyes, just like--) he would have described it more concretely and appropriately.

But honestly, Shouta allowed himself to have a little less self-control, just today.

And, probably because of that, the rest of the day, after the ceremony, went downhill and became a shitty show.

The funeral was simple. Everyone was dressed in black and, funnily enough, Shouta could easily camouflage himself among those present, since, in Zashi's words, Shouta was always dressed as if he was going to a funeral.

Ha! Poetic cinema right there.

And, as if the world had lost its sun when the boy had succumbed, it had still been raining since that night.

The universe could be a painful motherfucker sometimes, Shouta thinks bitterly.

He had to hug all the girls in the class, who sought comfort from their teacher and he didn't judge them for that, he really didn't, but honestly, he was the worst person to do that. At least Kirishima, surprisingly Todoroki, Shoji, and Tokoyami provided comfort to the girls too, well not just them, as Sero and Kaminari burst into tears after a few minutes after things started. Kouda and Jirou supported each other, as did Iida, Asui, and Uraraka, who honestly looked the most desolate.

Bakugou hadn't even attended, and Shouta had a faint idea why. Todoroki was comforting Yaoyorozu, while said 'Bakusquad' was in a pile of hugs even without their 'leader'. Sato and Ojiro were trying to calm a hysterical Hagakure while Tokoyami and Shoji did the same with Aoyama.

The teachers were there too, minus Nedzu, Hizashi was next to Shouta, with his blond hair in a bun and no glasses, looking like he'd aged another ten years.

Shouta was probably the same helpless look, if not worse.

Gran Torino and Mirio were there too, but closer to Yagi, who was further away from the booth, and apparently (if his vision wasn’t failing him already because of his goddamn eye) Tsukauchi as well.

Eri was beside him, holding Shouta and Hizashi's hands, looking lost and oh-- so similar to the eyes before when they found her during the Overhaul raid.

There was no biological family from Midoriya anymore, just a found family, linked by traumas and bonds created in a classroom and dorms.

"Did he…did he really?"

Shouta opens his eye (even though he didn't realize he had closed it) and glances at Shinsou, beside him, with the same posture as always.

But Shouta would be a fool if he didn't notice the tension in his shoulders and the fists, most likely clenched, in his pants pockets, and the wetness in his tired eyes.

And isn't it strange how, all of a sudden, Aizawa Shouta hesitates to respond, either because of a lack of words or because of fatigue or because of the lump in his throat? Whatever it was, he takes a deep breath through his nose and nods his head slowly.

Once, Shouta was considered a person who was never at a loss for words, whether in brutally honest criticism or sarcastic comments and now look at him, once, finally, speechless.

Just the problem child to do that to him.

---

But of course, even after a funeral, he would have no rest.

Because obviously, the universe hated Shouta for some stupid reason and made a point of taking out the worst on him. From ripping Oboro out of his life and reintroducing him, years later, as a human experiment for a pet project, oblivious to everything about his past, to the attacks that have taken place since the beginning of the year, all of which have endangered his class so many sometimes, putting kids, who didn't even have licenses, to face S-rank villains. And then he lost another friend, and this time forever, and part of his own vision and a leg, and other co-workers in a war to the point of collapsing the society of heroes.

And then he lost a student.

Shouta has always been known for his high expulsion rate because he preferred to create ideal heroes for the future and not spend time with children without potential.

But there was always another reason.

There was a reason why no former Shouta students, already graduated heroes scattered across Japan, became death notices, because Shouta taught them not to die.

Shouta was always more rigid, cold, and demanding because Shouta wouldn't know if he could stand to see a student die, knowing it was his fault that he hadn't taught enough and, as a precautionary measure, he always kept emotionally detached.

Only, who knew trauma could connect people?

He let himself slip, and (his) children approached with smiles, achievements, problems, personalities, jokes, and admiration.

Perhaps that was his fatal mistake.

Because deep down, from day one, on the quirk assignment test, Shouta knew that Midoriya would die if he continued the same way he was, reckless and so kind for his own good.

But he saw determination, raw and sharp, refusing to drop even when more than half of his body broke as he felt the breath of death on the back of his neck.

Midoriya, the problem child, convinced him that he would not fall easily, not as long as he had people to fight for.

(he never fought for himself, only for others, and that was one of the great mysteries Shouta wanted to discover while he could, while Midoriya was breathing, in front of him)

Even with the police report, with the news, Shouta couldn’t understand how Midoriya was … gone

Hizashi says it was one of the stages of mourning, but Shouta is sure Tsukauchi didn't tell anyone when he broke the news.

And that's exactly what the Universe threw at him after the funeral.

He tried to ignore the feeling that something was wrong, that he just needed (again) to face the stages of grief and that all those annoyances would go away.

Until he passed the staff room and heard Yagi's voice echo out of the room.

"What do you mean there's no body?!"

Shouta's feet stopped automatically, and he stopped breathing.

"Toshinori--"

"You can't be serious. I saw him, Nao. I saw him on the ground..." Yagi's breath hitched, "I saw him dead. I saw the body, Nao."

"Toshinori, you have to understand, there is no body. The coffin is empty, and the drawer in the morgue too."

...

What the fuck?

"What do we do now that One for All is gone?" an older voice asks, and Shouta can't even get his thoughts straight because it feels like the ground has been ripped out from under his feet.

"Are you really asking this now?!" Yagi's vibrant voice was cold, sending shivers down Shouta's spine "Young Midoriya died! And is that what you're worried about?!"

The sound of a cane hitting something echoed in the empty hallway.

"Toshinori, control yourself! Yes, Midoriya died, and I am as devastated as you are, but you need to remember that Midoriya carried the power and duty that Nana gave to you!" the older voice continued "We need One for All to defeat All for One and...now that Midoriya is gone..."

"We need someone else to take over, whether we like it or not."

A pause.

"No."

"Toshi--"

"Midoriya was destined to be the ninth and last. Anyone else who takes over won't take it, it's a stockpiling quirk, and you know it. No matter how you train them, One for All will destroy their body the moment they use it."

"Izuku broke three limbs the first time," a younger voice said softly "Maybe if--"

"Whoever is next will die," Yagi said, resigned and resolute.

Before Shouta could stop himself, he was already opening the door and bumping into Yagi, Tsukauchi, Gran Torino, and Mirio. Toshinori got up startled, spitting blood.

"Young Aizawa--"

"No" Shouta may not use erasure anymore, but he still knows how to face people and make them shut up, "Don't come with 'young Aizawa' at me--”

“--From the fucking beginning I knew there was something weird between you and Midoriya, and I never pushed as much as I wanted because I cared about my student's privacy and because I know the importance of secrets. But now, I hear you and three others talking about something Midoriya owned that affects not only him but also Japan's biggest super villain and, consequently, the hero society.”

“So I give you two options, either you explain this mess willingly or I'm going to rip it off from you, and you aren’t going to like it."

"Did you just threaten me?" Yagi coughed painfully.

"This secret is not yours!" Gran Torino protested.

"This fucking secret cost a student of mine his life!" he raised his voice, "And that's probably why my students have been suffering since the start of the year. So, yeah, this secret is partly related to all my students and I."

And they were silent.

Yagi sat down on the couch, frowning, and sloppily pointed to the couch in front of him, where Tsukauchi was sitting. Shouta followed the suggestion and sat down, facing the blonde in front of him.

"My power... is called One for All," he sighs, "It's a stockpiling quirk that has been passed down from generation to generation. I'm the eighth holder, Nana, my mentor, was the seventh, and... young Midoriya was the ninth. The power was created by All for One, as a gift for his younger brother, the first holder, who at the time, was declared quirkless."

"Is being quirkless a requirement?" he asked, crossing his arms to hide his fingers digging into his own forearms.

"Not exactly, me and Izu-- I mean, young Midoriya were quirkless."

"Midoriya was quirkless?" he nods "Shit…we're going to get back to this. How was the power passed then?"

"Well, the first one wasn't really quirkless. He had a passive quirk. A quirk that allowed the transfer, and with that, he moved to the second holder and so on."

"And, with each generation, has One for All stocked the power of other holders?"

"Precisely."

"So that's exactly why Midoriya manifested four completely different quirks than One for All was the first time? Those four quirks weren't different powers but parts of the same quirk?"

"Yes," Yagi nodded, and Shouta sighed.

"Why the fuck did you keep this from me?"

"Young--" a glare made him self-interrupt, "Aizawa-san, All for One wants the One for All since his brother passed the quirk, and all past holders fought him. Imagine how many people he told this secret, to destroy the holders. Even though I thought All for One was dead, I didn't want to risk the safety of young Midoriya and his close people."

"That's exactly why Midoriya didn't get the help he needed!" he growls. "I was his homeroom teacher, I needed to know about this subject to protect him if that was the concern. You clearly didn't know what you were doing if the fact that Midoriya just learned to use One for All without breaking all of the bones of his body after the sports festival under someone else's tutelage didn't say enough. You said yourself that Midoriya was quirkless. He was in my class, with kids who had 10 years of control over their quirks. How long Midoriya had, a year?"

Yagi was silent, and the other two older occupants of the room tensed.

"Yagi, when did you give the One for All to Midoriya?" Shouta asked, in a low voice, veiled in anger.

"... on the day of the entrance exam."

Shouta pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. He then stared at Yagi deep in the eyes, and Yagi swore he saw a red light in the deep dark of Aizawa's eye. The room temperature dropped dramatically, and Shouta said--

"Tell me exactly how you met Midoriya and pray to god, Yagi Toshinori, that I don't choke you here and now."

the draft i mentioned in the end notes of ch66

basically it’s an au where izuku dies after the first battle (season 6) and aizawa finally finds out about some secrets, to only find nedzu is also hiding something

meanwhile, a new vigilante hits the streets of musutafu

(sorry for the bad writing :P)

[rokugenshiki]

Inspiration: The Willow Maid (Erutan), Hijo de la Luna (Mecano)

another old piece I wrote some time ago, possibly with a lot of poetic license. since I’m quite satisfied with how it turned out, though, there we go!

(still under the cut, since it’s long-ish)

It happened  a late afternoon.

Asra had spent a good deal of time speaking with Nadia, about both the investigation itself and to grant his fellow magician a deserved break. He had nothing against the Countess, but he knew she could be rather… demanding, sometimes, when she assigned a job. Badr didn’t fail to mention the “damned test” Nadia put her through, using one of their Arcana to see if she could follow magic traces with moving targets.

Still, Nadia was a nice host, really. Once she warmed up to a person, she wouldn’t hold back with gifts or shows of appreciation. An aspect that finally brought to the magician’s current predicament.

Taking a stroll around the castle with the ruler, talking about lighter topics. More or less.

“Asra, I must ask a… delicate question.” the Countess began at a point, an unexpected sigh leaving her lips. “Do you think Badr is bothered by my actions? It’s true that we didn’t exactly started with the right foot, but… I suppose I still haven’t redeemed myself?”

The magician looked at her curiously, a little taken aback from the confession. Then, he smiled amiably. “It’s not like that, Nadi. Badr is just horrible at expressing feelings.” he admitted, fondness as well as bluntness in his voice.

“You say that, but I fear I have… ah, offended her, with my last gift.”

The dress. 

Badr showed him the garment the evening before. It was a beautiful piece made with a soft, almost feather-like fabric that Badr herself defined “like a cloud”. Nadia had given it to her some days prior, if he recalled correctly, while Badr was just having a “bad” moment.

Shaking his head, he placed a hand on the Countess shoulder. Her gaze fixed in his almost immediately and he smiled once again, a honest and reassuring smile. “I know where the problem lies, Nadi, and believe me if I say it’s not as you think. She’s not always comfortable in dresses and, as you may guess, prefers slacks over skirts in general.”

As he finished his explanation, the pair passed by one of the large windows that granted them a clear image of the garden. Before he could continue, however, his eyes caught glimpse of something—or rather, someone.

“I’m well aware of her preferences, but her figure is—Asra?”

Nadia stopped herself mid-sentence, as the magician brought his right index to his lips, a secretive smile telling her to keep quiet. She followed him when he gestured her to, getting silently on the balcony that oversaw the garden.

There, oblivious of the audience she got, Badr was crouching on the ground, bare-foot, fixing her handmade anklets before standing up. She was wearing the dress Nadia gave her, much to the Countess’ surprise.

Before the two could say or do anything, the dark haired magician started to move, her eyes closed as she danced on inaudible notes. The dress’ ends fluttered around, each step and movement was executed fluidly, with an elegance so unexpected that Nadia could only observe the show with delight.

She knew there was more than the usual frown and sharp words, but now Badr’s reminded her of the willow tree in the maze, flexible and gracious, swaying at the wind.

“See? I think she likes it. She just wasn’t ready to wear it.” Asra’s voice was only a murmur and got a simple nod as answer.

*

Each step she took felt like growing closer and closer with the elements themselves. Even if the contact lasted only a few moments, she could feel grass and soil under her feet, a spark of life reverberating around her.

Earth was her mother and her home, her first prayer in the morning and last at night. If she focused enough, she could feel the light thrumming coming from the ground - life at its most natural, purest form - and that alone had always the power to make her relax, even after a stressing day in the city.

As much as Asra tried to teach her his element, water couldn’t just become as important to her as earth was since her birth.

It didn’t take long for her to notice the lingering stares from the balcony - her magic sensed the familiar presence of her mentor, together with one which she still wasn’t totally accustomed to. Her friendship with Nadia was still something she could work on, but nonetheless the endless kindness of the noble host was something Badr wanted to treasure. Not because of the gifts she received, but simply because she felt the woman’s honest and good intentions. 

People like her were hard to come by, in all times. Badr wanted to treasure their relationship.

Gulping down the embarrassment of being stared at in such a moment, she held out her hands to the two of them, an open invite to join her, much to Asra’s surprise. 

The three of them danced and danced and danced, with no real music guiding them other than the pace set from one and each of them. 

Badr couldn’t recall how much time had passed since they started, but soon enough Nadia excused herself to go back to her duties. Her mentor, Asra, followed like a few more minutes, after telling her to try and not exhaust herself too much--which was funny: after all that moving, Badr just felt even more energized than before.

Still barefoot, the Apprentice walked around and in the little maze surrounding the familiar fountain she used some time before to get in touch with Asra. She didn’t feel like going back inside ye. The energy she felt from the dance before, the vivid aura she could feel around her even in that moment, made leaving very difficult, after all. It still wasn’t like taking a walk in the woods outside Vesuvia where her dearest familiar lived, but it was something.

Luckily, even the obnoxious selfishness and the poor style the later Count had couldn’t completely erase the nature from the castle. That, or it was all Nadia’s merit. Unsurprisingly, Badr tended to the latter.

A chuckle left her lips - she felt no guilt in talking, or thinking, bad of Lucio. 

From what she heard and saw, he was not a nice person, nor one she could get along with. She’d rather punch him in the face probably, but that would have to wait anyways. 

For the moment, the Apprentice was rather satisfied with simply resting in her favorite element.

*

A few hours later, Asra went back to find her before it became too dark outside, only to find her leaning back on the willow tree near the fountain. Her aura, as he could see, still was saturated with natural energy: it thrummed pleasingly around her in such a way that he could see the surroundings echoing with it, albeit more silently.

He sometimes wondered if  Badr knew how strong her magic could become if she kept linking herself to the elements like she did that day. That is, if she knew what she was doing. It wouldn’t be the first time she pulled something like that, following the way her instinct and magic itself laid out for her, so it was a fair doubt he had.

Honestly, his dearest was either incredibly intuitive or unbelievably lucky sometimes.

That was his last thought before he walked up to her sleeping form, ready to wake her up.