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thinking abt couples kissing in front of klimt's kiss

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The prompt was ‘detention.’

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Leander Mason, Prince of Chicago

Leander Mason is late. Which is not necessarily unusual, but for the fact that he’s late to his own engagement party. Which consequently has made you late to your own engagement party.

You wouldn’t normally mind, you swear. Honestly, this party wasn’t either of your ideas. It came about three months after Leander’s hurried late-night proposal, after which you’d both sworn to keep the news under wraps from your respective families, at least until you’d ironed out the important details of the wedding. The date, the venue, the catering—these were things you wanted to take care of yourselves, refusing to leave the door open for family interference of any kind. Naturally, though, an eagle-eyed uncle of Leander’s spotted your engagement ring in a photo his too-thoughtful nephew had sent alongside some holiday card or other, and then the entire Mason clan knew, which meant you had to tell your parents, and then the combined force of your two unhinged families became too much to bear and you buckled, both of you, allowing them this one concession in exchange for a (theoretically) peaceful wedding-planning process. So really, you wouldn’t normally mind if you missed a few minutes of this whole ridiculous affair, only it happens that Leander Mason is late because he procrastinated picking up his dry cleaning, neglecting to consider that the dry cleaner is closed on Sundays, and cannot possibly think of a better solution than driving all the hell over Chicago in search of a suit jacket that matches the trousers he plans to wear. He called you from a phone booth an hour ago to let you know. If you’d left an hour ago, you might have been a few minutes early. If you leave right this second, you’ll be twenty minutes late.

It’s not that you’re in any rush to fraternize with your estranged family. On the contrary, you’d rather never see them again. But being that they’ve invaded Chicago like cicadas and are unlikely to leave without torturing you for at least an hour or two, you think you’d better just get it over with.

The crash of a gangly frame through your front door sets you alert, and you’re met with Leander, haloed by the glow of the hallway light, panting from exertion. No suit jacket to be seen.

“Hi, darling,” he breathes, crossing the room to kiss you on the forehead, “I’m sorry, I thought I could make it, but then Saks was closed, and I hit every red light on the way here, and—my god, you’re beautiful.”

You can’t help the smile that crosses your face. You do look stunning, if you do say so yourself. “Next time you send yourself on a wild goose chase to avoid our families, take me with you,” you reply.

“Roger,” he says, smiling apologetically before he bolts into your bedroom. When he comes out, his hair is artfully tousled and his dress shirt is pressed within an inch of its life. “Ready?” He asks, taking your face in his hands and examining it as if for signs of regret or apprehension. Both of which you feel in spades, for the record.

“Ready,” you confirm in spite of yourself, unable to keep the nerves from your voice. Leander kisses you hard.

“No matter what happens tonight,” he murmurs, eyes locked on yours, “we’ve got each other’s backs, deal? You are my priority, Professor.”

“Deal,” you nod. And then you’re in the car, and then you’re in a small hotel ballroom with, like, one million rich Midwesterners and twenty or so of your own confused family members, most of whom (yourself included) have never experienced an opulence of this magnitude.

Leander sticks close to you as you enter the party, long fingers stretched across the small of your back. Where you have complete tunnel vision, he’s scanning the crowd like a hunter in search of game. “Come here,” he mutters suddenly, pulling you gently but firmly toward him with a nasty look over his shoulder. You glance behind you to see which of his family members he’s shielding you from, only to lock eyes with your own father. Jesus, here we go.

You turn fully to face your father, ignoring Leander’s insistent tugging and efforts to pull you away. “Dad,” you say, keeping your voice impressively neutral.

“Hi, sweetheart!” Your father beams, moving as if to hug you. You take a reflexive step back, feeling Leander’s hands on your shoulders as you do. He knows the hell your family has put you through; hell, he’s probably angrier about it than you are at this point. Your father’s smile falters for a split second, and you instinctively fear the rage that will follow if he’s made to look foolish in public. “This the man who’s stolen you away from us?”

“This is Leander,” you say, refusing to indulge his comment which, though delivered with the cadence of a joke, is certainly intended to bite. Cool, calm, collected. Measured and calculated, even.

“How do you do,” comes Leander’s voice, deeper than usual, as he leans into your back to extend a steady hand. Your father shakes it evenly, Pan-Am smile firmly back in place. Before he can say anything though, Leander speaks again. “Love, we’ve got a lot of people to greet, yeah? Let’s do a lap, maybe catch up with Dad later?”

“What are you doing?” You hiss as Leander sweeps you away.

“Trust me, Professor,” he murmurs in response, face carefully neutral as he navigates the crowd, “I know men like him. He’s angry, right? He’s miserable, he’s mean?”

“Sure,” you say.

“Then let him be angry with me,” he says. You’ve reached the corner of the ballroom now, his fingers gently circling your wrist as he attempts to maintain a facade of casualty. “Let him think I’m keeping you from your family, or whatever he wants to tell himself. Better me than you.”

You’re formulating a response, trying to decide whether you want to start an argument or fall into his arms and sob, when a bony, manicured hand lands on Leander’s shoulder. He spins to face the woman trying to get his attention, who you recognize after a moment as his aunt Livia.

“You two are just adorable!” she exclaims in a frankly impressive misreading of the situation.

“Thank you,” Leander replies, exasperated once again. You can see the frustration rising in him, as it so often does when dealing with his family, and suddenly you’re a fish out of water. Actually, you’re a fish in the razor-sharp beak of an eagle, and the eagle is soaring over the city at warp speed, and you knew it would be intense, but you couldn’t have predicted how completely overwhelmed you’d be when it really came down to it. His family and yours. Clueless and cruel, two sides of a really, fantastically stupid coin.

Jesus, girl, you think, you raised yourself better than this. So you roll your shoulders back, inhale (cigarette smoke, whiskey, heat) and exhale (pure unadulterated rage), and enter survival mode. If Jerry Cantrell was born to wail on the guitar and Leander Mason was born to be a (beautiful, wonderful) thorn in your side, then you were born to navigate the psychic minefield of family dysfunction.

The next few hours pass–or maybe they don’t–in a haze of “Good to meet you” and “Yes, we’re very happy” and “Sure, I’ll call more.” You can feel Leander’s anxiety spiking, too preoccupied with your own to do anything about it. And then, like magic, you’re back in his car. His forehead is on the steering wheel, his entire body curled forward in an impressive display of defeat.

“Leander,” you say softly, laying a hand flat on his back. His response is a low, guttural groan that you think wouldn’t be entirely out of place in a medieval torture chamber. “Want to run away to Iceland?” you ask, only half-joking. The poor man has been needled within an inch of his life tonight, by his family and yours alike.

He barks out a surprised half-laugh, righting his posture to look at you. “Yeah,” he says. His voice is raw. “But we’re not going to, right?”

“I mean, I don’t see why not.”

“Alright, give me your elevator pitch.”

You grin in spite of yourself. “You, me, and a little apartment on a river. No family to speak of.”

“Well, we don’t exactly need to go all the way to Iceland to have that, do we?” He asks, lifting your hand to his lips from where it rests on the center console. You raise an eyebrow. “If it’s a river you want, we’ve got a perfectly good one right here in Chicago.”

“And our families?”

“Fuck ‘em,” he says, eyes steady on yours, “You and me, my love. We’re more family to each other than all the people in that ballroom combined.”

You lean into your seat, letting your head fall back. “Yeah,” you say softly.

Part of you always sort of wondered if you’d eventually regret cutting off your parents the way you did. But wouldn’t it have happened by now? It’s been almost a decade, and you’re just as angry with them as you were at eighteen. The only person in the world who’s managed to make you feel sane about the entire thing is sitting beside you in the driver’s seat, and if that makes you both assholes then fine, you’ll be assholes together. God, fuck ‘em. You’ve got your family. And you’re definitely fucking eloping.

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do not forget the patron saint of these weeks that we celebrate ourselves proudly and openly in the streets

her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.

remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.

thank you, Marsha. we remember you.

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@lingerie_addict has a really cool thread on ancient fashion over on twitter.

Those source links are here

cambridge.org

Youtube

ucl.ac.uk

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There is absolutely nothing you could make up about American politics. Imagination is dead. It's useless.

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I think the hot new trends for this summer should be reading comprehension and critical thinking skills

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my unpopular opinion is that i hate tiktok because now people just publicly watch loud ass videos in public spaces with no regard for anyone else. 100% it was not this bad with youtube, it’s such a different thing with tiktok. put on headphones. you are grown.

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UN said: Gaza needs 70 years to be livable, at least 70% of the infrastructure is destroyed.. Gaza, the most beautiful city that I have ever seen in some before and after pictures that shows a little part of the destruction.

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last night like 4am I still couldn’t sleep so I wrote a song while tired as death. will probably take this down tomorrow when better judgement sets in.

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people are calling what happened today in gaza “the flour massacre”

the flour massacre

these people just wanted to get food for their families, something as basic as flour, one of the things that the very core of humanity is built on, and israel used it as a trap to murder them in cold blood

evil is not enough of a word. there is not a word to describe what they are doing to palestine. they are bleeding her out, they are torturing her and crushing her and hoping that nothing is left to remember her by when they are done. how can anyone stand and watch what is being done with indifference? how can you watch this level of human suffering, this crime against life and feel nothing, do nothing

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Good morning. This might be my last message from the city of Rafah. The occupation [Israel] is carrying out crazy fire. Violent belts. As you’re hearing, there are helicopters. Planes and gunfire from the vehicles. There’s a complete invasion of the city.

We don’t know what is going on in Rafah. The place that the occupation [Israel] claimed to be safe. This is happening all of a sudden; the people didn’t go out. They didn’t do anything. More than thirty targets were hit in just minutes. People were asleep. We woke up to the bombing, to the shooting from the helicopters. It was horrifying. Unacceptable. This might be my last message. Please relay it to the world.

— Hazem, journalist residing in Rafah; 02.11.2024

Rafah was Palestinians’ very last safe zone. There is quite literally nowhere else left to go. And now it’s being bombed with airstrike after airstrike.

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These dumb fucking fascists

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The media is complicit in the dehumanization of Palestinians with the language they continue to use. If they can’t even call children, children, then what do they truly think of them?

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