#⩩ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀( ✧˚ · . ༝༚༝༚ beckett threads. )

[lavendaers]

@rainbowmuses sophie beckett for benedict bridgerton

"sorry, but.." sophie trailed off before shaking her head, an awkward laugh falling from her lips. "never mind, that feels weird. i was going to ask if we knew each other because i had this strange sense of deja vu, but then i realized i would know if we knew each other."

[backmaskcd]

closed starter for @exmcrtis (beckett)

"Hey, kiddo." Gio viewed Beckett as something of a little brother, someone cut from a similar cloth. His grumpy demeanor wasn't anything that phased Gio, because he could see right through him. He was exactly the same. "Find any reasons to smile so far this week?"

[exmcrtis]

location: pete's garage

closed starter for: @ghostsbrokenbyfairytales (savannah)

there was a radiating pain shooting up beckett's leg, even as he sat at his desk, and it was making him grouchier than usual. his cane was leaning beside him,but as he caught sight of savannah walking into the shop, he forgot all about it as he shoved himself up to stand, forcing himself to push through that pain so he could approach her, doing his best to hide the very noticeable limp. "if you keep showing up here, we're gonna have to put you on the payroll, and i don't wanna do that. can you save your flirting for after hours?"

[ricardian-werewolf]

5. God save the queen/The fascist regime!

THAT SOUND FUN!

The walls of the Tower of London were made of stone. 8 centuries old, they had gone through several iterations. But Jane cared not. She dug her burning wrists into the silvered bonds and thrashed wildly, growling like a caged animal to be let out. Let free. 

Behind the bars of her prison, Lord Melbourne conferred quietly with Victoria, who smirked, and mimed something. In her hands was a canister of something, and her hands were gloved. Jane watched through slitted eyelids, feeling the throbbing ache of double black eyes, a bruised jaw and broken collarbone. She’d fought capture as much as a girl familiar with the feeling of being bent over by a man and brought to her knees could be - like some sort of canine beast who didn’t want to die at the end of the hunter’s gun.

I’m going to rip that woman’s neck open, and stick her head on a fucking pike. See how she likes getting her eyes pecked out by crows. Or maybe I should let her live, cast her into the Wastes and give her a hoe, so she can dig her own grave when the cataracts eat through her eyes, and her lungs corrode under the fluid leaching from her cracked lips.

Jane decided that the second option was much more deliciously awful, and settled back into her seat to keep watching her captors discuss something.

“... the gas should - kill her. At least from what I read…”

Jane swallowed, tried to not think about the ventilation in the walls.

“... if it doesn’t, we’ll do what we did with that bastard boy who’s Gloucester’s. Put her in Room 101.”

Jane’s fingers became clawed and she worked to saw through her bonds, but found them to be cutting her own nails. That plan thus abandoned, twisting her head from left to right, she noted the double-strength glass observation wall to her left, the silver bars behind it, and to her right, in front, and behind, the ventilated walls. 

They’d put her in here to die. 

You’ll die, you’ll die, you’ll die. All Nikolai will have to marry is a fucking corpse! Imagine that. You’ll meet your end, Jane. Just like how that fucked up, deformed thing you called your baby looked. As bloodied and ugly as it. Oh, he won’t make you into a bride. With luck, there won’t even be anything left to bury!

Not if I get out.

Since when have you ever got out of anything, Jane? Certainly not much, hmmm?

Shut up, Ruth. SHUT UP!

It’s a shame, you know. You never would’ve made a good mother, anyways. Always too pre-occupied with surviving, and protecting that freak, Augusta. I should’ve left her in that shell hole. And YOU! I should’ve taken my mother’s advice and aborted you while I still could.

Tears poured down Jane’s cheeks as she thrashed in her bonds once more. Hysterics in times of panic were seemingly an inheritable trait of the Becketts. Jane growled, imagining her mother as something very small, fragile, and easy to crush with the sole of her boot. A mouse.

She would kill her mother as soon as she got out of her bonds. Take her in the middle of the night with Nikolai’s knife to her throat, a line of red underlining her name. Dead, and burned in some corpse-pile on the Wastes’s edge. Or perhaps in their heart. Burned and buried in the town that had been the epicenter of an attack that’d made them all this way. Ruth didn’t even deserve a funeral, or much else. How could a woman who’d claimed to love her own daughter side with her rapist when push came to shove, had turned her back on Jane when she’d birthed her monster - her own minotaur who was dead from the moment it came into the world?

But you’ll die here. And good riddance too.

You underestimate me, Ruth.

No, I don’t. You play the fox, but you’ll always be the rabbit, tucked low to the ground, afraid. Any and all conflict has you running for the hills. It’s a miracle you lasted this long, anyways. If we’d ever ended up in that god-forsaken Nazi version of england who nuked us, I’d have turned you over and had them deal with you. Consider this penance for your sins.

Sins you straddled me with, by not helping me! 

Sins you deserve! Now, quiet, I hear a hissing noise.

Jane’s face drained of all color, and she frantically whipped her head from side to side, trying desperately to plug her nostrils, keep her mouth closed. The gas stung her eyes, making black spots dance in the edges of her vision. Screaming would do nothing - her lungs would fill with gas, kill her, and she’d die here, face frozen in some grotesque scream. So she fought vainly to live.

What she didn’t hear over the hissing of this nest of vipers was the sounds of screams,and swords clashing through the Tower’s halls. The ancient stone structure was being laid siege to by none other than some of Richard’s best soldiers. Amongst them was Cecily-Anne, burns and all, desperate to drag Jane out from under Melbourne’s grasp. 

None knew what awaited them underground. 

Jane’s vision began to swim alarmingly, as the black spots blossomed and she lolled back. Her lips parted, and a small gasp escaped her. Then, all faded out. ****

When she came too, Jane blinked twice. She expected to see the wooden beams and stone ceiling of the cell she’d become so intimately knowledgeable of. What faced her now was some sort of gauzy fabric made of cyan and edged in gold leaf and stars. A double-headed eagle glared down at her, flanked by a fox and a stout, and at their feet were White Roses and thorned fire-flowers.

Aware of a resounding pressure on her hand, Jane weakly turned her head to her side and found Nikolai’s eyes watching her, puffy with tears shed and smeared with blood. His knuckles were busted and broken. His fingernails were long, shadowed. He must’ve transformed.

For what?

“You,” he coughed, and Jane blinked again, then spoke, shuddering:

“Me?”

Nikolai nodded, and shushed her as she tried to speak again. “Your lungs are damaged, from the gas. You were nearly-” he bit his lip, and fumbled weakly for a handkerchief as tears splashed down his cheeks. Finding none, he wiped his eyes on his ripped and worn tunic sleeve. “Dead. If I’d been but a minute later…”

Who found me? She signed, coughing.

“Cecily. She has the instincts of a mother fox seeking its cubs when she’s in the right kind of mood. And what we found-” Nikolai choked, and reached with shaking hands for his canteen of water. Taking a sip, he gently helped Jane’s head up and let her drink her fill. 

“You’d destroyed the entire complex. From top to bottom. They’d gotten the gasses mixed up. It wasn’t Zyklon B - just Mustard gas. The Zykon was supposed to have silver flakes in it. The fabrikators are examining it now for disposal-” Nikolai rambled, but stopped at Jane’s widened eyes.

I destroyed it? How?

Nikolai peered at her, and noted her flinch when he reached to touch her fevered cheek. Withdrawing his hand, he gently kissed her knuckles, watching her reaction all the while. This was one of their safe touches. Kissing her hands, knuckles, palm, all were good. Anything else required more time, and for her especially to be in a better mental space. She doubted he’d ever bed her, or that she could ever stand to have a man’s hands on her like that, skirts hiked up.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears still came. Through her blurred vision, she caught Nikolai’s eyes watching her, and fell into his arms with a horrific, almost animalistic noise of fear and surrender. Her fragility felt wrong, felt alien.

Look at you. Going to a man like him. He’ll hurt you. They all do.

Jane’s eyes popped open as she stared past Nikolai’s shoulder, to the stone walls of the Tower’s inner keep. Ruth was wrong - she’d always been wrong. Nothing she’d ever said had been anything but a lie.

I’m done with you. Get out of my head. 

It’ll take more than that, Janie.

Jane closed her eyes again, rested her temple on Nikolai’s shoulder, and felt his fingers trailing over her jail-style chop. It’d grown ratty, needed a barber. She missed her braids something awful. She longed to grow her hair long again, for the intricate dos she’d wanted to do for ages and ages. She missed Cecily’s fingers in her hair, twisting her strands into intricate coils when all they had were bits of twine and ratty ribbons to make her into a princess.

Now, she’d be a queen.

Saints willing.

Where’s Cecily? Jane signed, using the sign for Cecily that was intimate to her - the sign for wolf. Nikolai’s grin returned, and Jane relaxed a smidgen. It was good to see him smile. She’d longed to see it, to see him. Ever since they’d bumped shoulders on accident in the York streets near the Minster, she as Cecily’s lady in waiting, and he as Richard’s son’s bodyguard, there was an almost nuclear level spark between them.

She’d been - days? Weeks? - out of a long tenure in London with Anne Neville, ferried north on the riverways and put into only a mere few inns. She was tired, anxious over Melbourne’s machinations to take Cecily back after she’d escaped Ives’s bloodied teeth and the cold of Fort Spencer. What she hadn’t needed then was a distraction in the form of A “First Army,” infantryman who’d risen through the ranks because he “cared,” for his people and was really a prince and a privateer. 

Now, she stared, hating, at the walls of the White Tower. The Princes weren’t dead - either somewhere between Shene and the border with Scotland, Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel had taken their Gyptian upbringing, and weaponized it. East Anglia was set to recover soon enough. Provided Richard went good on his promises to go into debt with the Americans. Richard had considered writing to the pope, then promptly decided that the papal state would be very interested in why England’s king was so suddenly the afore-named Prince killer, and refuse to recognize england as none other than a heretical state given over to loping monster-dogs and blood-sucking fops. 

Canada and the rest of the empire were off limits. Ravka was well recovered enough to give them loans priced amicably enough that the interest wouldn’t cause the stewards and Richard’s council to have aneurysms en-masse. That would be messy. And bloodsoaked. 

Jane would be the bride-price, a union between House Lantsov and House Beckett. Plantagenet. Jane corrected herself. She raised her head to look Nikolai in the eye and grinned again, showing her crooked and chipped teeth. He ran his hand through her hair and grimaced.

“She’s under our feet. It seems there’s a network of tunnels and cells and torture rooms, and-”

A missile silo, stocked with enough warheads to level America. She signed, watching Nikolai’s face like a hawk.

He swallowed nervously, and stilled his hand. “Prisoners?”

Dead, or some are alive. I know there was a scientist I was airmarking for Richard. Hopefully he wasn’t killed. Had a limp, you see. Sickly. Something in his lungs. He’s very good with something called Hextech.

“No idea what that means, though it sounds like what Fabrikators do.” Nikolai straightened, stretching his legs out to rest on an ottoman, and reached for a glass of tea. “Do you want anything? Tea? Kvas? Brandy?”

What I’d like is a nap. Jane thought, and rubbed at her head. There were bandages encircling her temples like a medical diadem, and she winced as her vision went spotty. Guess I was pretty banged up?

“You were nearly dead,” Nikolai replied, sipping his crystal-cut glass of tea. His eyes studied hers intimately, then cut away to stare at the soldier standing in the entrance to the tent, gripping his cap and wringing it between his hands.

[atrickrtreat]

@lcstinfantasy asked: ❛ are you ever going to choose me ? ❜ - from reign

"What are you talking about?" Mason was confused, tilting his head. "Pretty sure I did choose you - but if you're talking about serious, Reign, I told you that wasn't going to happen. I don't settle down."

[thickskll]

@rennisaturate continued from here.

cold. that was the first feeling he could register when neveah first approached him, it was a familiar feeling only reserved for when he suspected the other shoe would soon follow. she wouldn't look at him, a subtle yet obvious trigger that would always strike him right where he was most sensitive - the most raw parts of himself that he had tried to bury, because who needs a therapist to work through toxic learned behaviour stemming from childhood, right? her persistent unwillingness to look him in the eye poked at his deepest anxiety, something was wrong and one way or another he had to fix it.

for once, his reason for being at the same party was purely out of coincidence, he had taken the night off from riling her up and spent the evening with some old friends from college who were in town for the weekend. it didn't take much time for oliver to realise that these friends of his still had yet to grow out of their college frat boy phase, even though two of them were married and a third had a baby on the way...yet they were behaving as if it was their first night in a bar after their 21st. oliver looked out at the dancefloor, full of bodies...none standing out, all blending into one colourless blur, not seeing the reason for their boyish excitement.

that was until a fleck of colour pushed through the crowd, giving them no choice but to part like a body of water. oliver's eyes followed it until it became clear just exactly why she had caught his attention, neveah. he hadn't realised that he said her name out loud until his friends turned to him, anticipation and excitement filled their faces. oliver had no right to feel the deep twist of jealousy that curled around his gut, using his entire body to shield her from their view.

the questions were on the tip of his tongue, what is it? who was it? but none of that mattered. she came to him, whether his being there was just a case of good timing on his part, that fact alone was enough for his protective side to wrap her up in its hold. he removed his jacket and placed it over her shoulders. "alright, c'mon...let's go," with a firm arm around her waist, and a flippant wave to the group, he left the club with neveah in tow and helped her into the passenger side. the drive to her home was quiet, quick and uneventful - unusual for the two of them. there was no need to pull over as a result of their bickering getting out of hand or for other, more, heated reasons. just silence.

he escorted her into her home, his body still felt rigid and cold from the change in their dynamic but he tried to keep up the theatrics in the hope of prompting at least one insult from her. "home sweet home - keep the jacket, you are absolutely welcome to do inappropriate things with it" his voice fell flat toward the end as he watched her expectantly. "neveah, do you want to tell me what happened? or...or do you want me to leave?" his tone is much softer, sheepish even, his nerves almost besting him.

[ryanlockheart]

starter for @paintnaked​

      beckett donnelly was not known for being a romantic. the tabloids had written plenty about that already and his tumultuous string of affairs. what they didn’t care to note was that the rockstar had never quite found a person to actually suit his interests. the girls, the guys he’d been with before... sure maybe they’d been nice on the eyes, but they weren’t enough to hold his attention. kit bogart? he was a different story though. he was all beckett could think of now... even with their filming almost behind them. he didn’t know what was going to become of them after their film was wrapped. he didn’t know if they could even forge a life together... but he certainly wanted to. it was no wonder why he’d shown up at the boy’s hotel room unannounced, a bottle of champagne and a picnic basket in hand. of course, it was far too late at night to go out, but all beckett wanted was a night with kit. knuckles rapped at the movie star’s door. “surprise,” he announced his entrance, his voice low and husky. he lifted up the bottle of champagne, so kit could see he came baring gifts through the peephole. “thought we could have a nice night in together... you, me, champagne, some food... and maybe a little fun when we’re done,” beckett hummed. “whatever you want, mr. bogart!”

[inferrnos]

𐙚‧ "i like them unavailable...guess that's just me." she shrugged her shoulders as if what she said was a throwaway comment, but she was hurting more than she cared to admit. "talking about some girl while your hand's on my knee." gestured to the other's hand resting on her. "i want what i can't have, but so do you apparently." / @novemindie

[glimblshanks]

Is it just me, or has every main character in lower decks gotten an on screen emotional low point this season except for the one character who desperately needs to have one?

[ofwrxth]

+ FINN / CHARITY EVENT

"You know, when I said you could help out with security, I was assuming you'd actually, help." Beck notes dryly, seeing his brother at the bar. "Or is this part of your rounds?" He raises a brow, slightly amused as he accepts the drink his brother was being served. "You seen Jasper around? Guess it's a good thing we decided on more help, or you'd both be leaving me high and dry." But there's no ire in his tone as he takes a swig of the drink before handing it back to his brother, like a tax of sorts. @dxrkenedheights

[hauntedqt]

❛   i'm   heaven   and   hell   .   ❜ / @enemylines

[backmaskcd]

closed starter for @exmcrtis (beckett)

"Hey Bex," Milo grinned widely at his brother as he entered the space, holding out a paper bag. "So, I've been experimenting with cooking - I'm not bad at it, don't worry - but I made some burritos from what I would imagine they used at Chipotle. I made one special for you."

[exmcrtis]

location: bucky's diner

closed starter for: @backmaskcd (ridley)

"you're gonna lose if you make that move." it was an odd sight to see: two people sitting in a diner booth, playing a game of checkers. and yet it felt right for beckett and ridley, even if bckett was getting cocky about his win streak. "seriously if you...see? now i'm about to win. you never listen to me."

[ricardian-werewolf]

Oh, no, wait, it was supposed to be an ask, lol. Well, whichever you prefer. "Death Returneth" is my chosen title

Here you go! This was a wip of many disparate things.

Brocket Hall, 1866, January 9th.

**************

William Lamb - the Lord Melbourne - was a tricky vampire. Born in 1100, a bastard to a king, turned in 1144 by a Norman Queen. Now, he was a privileged man of letters, sciences, and war. As he sat, nestled in the cracked and worn leather of his armchair, he glared across the room at a man his own age. The man wore a high-collared cape of all black velvet and cotton and some, unknown, foreign, cloth. Finely spun, it made for him to play at being a king the same way William played at being a commoner when England came for his head.

“Aleksander.” Melbourne purred, glancing at the man the same way someone might an offending bug. The Darkling smirked. “Melbourne. It’s been… a while since we crossed paths. How are things?” He reached down to pick up his china cup of tea. Shadows swirled about his hands, plucking at the wooden coffer by his feet, tumbling across the faded and moth-hole riddled carpet. The shadows were sentient, of course, an extension of The Darkling’s will.

Melbourne twiddled his thumbs, shrugged. “England is under constant cloud-cover. It couldn’t have been better executed, Moi Soverenyi. I for one, am impressed you were able to summon at such a great distance. It’s been going better than I believed, in all honesty.”

“What did you expect to happen, Moi Korol? I never go for anything less than the most dramatic. And England needs to be taught a lesson.” he sipped his tea. The shadows yipped and writhed at his feet, the volcra, with their teeth and eyeless blob faces hovering about their master in the circle of shadow he cast.

Melbourne sniffed. “A lesson long overdue. My… Wife has seemingly mishandled the whole affair. She lets Burrows run wild, and while this is a good thing, it brings us no closer to finding the boar’s bastard of a farrow.

“I want to push north. Can you expand the darkness, perhaps? Not into Scotland or Wales, but… I want a more… physical division between our lands and the lawless northern holdings.”

“You wish for me to create a Second Fold. Splitting England in two.” the Darkling’s lips curled into a grin. “What is the price that I would pay for such a trickily done act?”

“A right to return to Ravka, reclaim the throne, find a cult who will follow in your example.” Melbourne dropped something onto the table between them, and rolled out a long stretch of parchment written in German. “This… is what will get you home.”

Both men crossed over to stare down at the long stretch of parchment, which was in reality a blueprint for some kind of arch powered by electricity. Except the energy it needed required a nuclear explosion to work, and required advanced calculations that made no sense to the mind of the Darkling, who merely traced a finger over the inscriptions.

“Using holes in space-time, the archway uses a massive explosion of power to reach across time and space to grab a specific hole of your choosing. It’s notoriously unstable. The Nazis had attempted to perfect it to invade this world, but their return necessitated a nuclear winter. It ultimately killed them.” Melbourne traced his fingers over the arch, looking at the Darkling’s profile the whole while.

“Hm.” the Darkling nodded. “I shall take your offer. It may doom England once again, but who really needs such a backwater? Plus, once we have that bastard’s pup, you shall be unstoppable, and Richard will be forced to bend the knee and kiss your ring. All, of course, before you relieve his head from his body.”

“I can barely wait for the day.” Melbourne rubbed his hands together. “Hopefully, it’ll come sooner than we expect.”

“Oh,” the Darkling grinned. “I believe it will. Once I resurrect the fold, the Midlands will capitulate and Northern England will be quite weakened by the lack of refugees… and people.”

Melbourne smirked. “Mm,” he muttered as he sipped his tea. “And with our little detour arranged for dear King Richard, no one will be any the wiser.” He settled back down with the blueprints and snapped his fingers. The record-player he’d stolen from a Nazi officer’s house at some odd spot - 10 Downing, had been reworked to run off of a little combustion engine. The record on the tray began to play as the needle ran down the groove.

“I travelled far and wide through many different times

What did you see there?

I saw the saints with their toys

What did you see there?

I saw all knowledge destroyed

I travelled far and wide through many different times.”

“Who’s the band?” the Darkling asked as he stared into his cup of whisky.

“Something northern. Depressing. They’re new, I think. Resistors music, funneling their schiesse down south through the smuggling routes.”

“Do they have a name?”

Melbourne shrugged as he picked up the album cover.

“ ‘Joy Division,’”. He quoted, looking sideways at the black paper with the white mountain-peaks. The vampire’s lips pulled back in a snarl, and he tossed the sleeve over his shoulder, into the crackling fire. Holes the size of tumors spread across the paper, eating through it greedily. Melbourne’s grin shifted, becoming crazed.

“I’ll make sure they never make another song again…” He muttered, getting to his feet. He slugged back the rest of his drink, and departed as swiftly as he could. The Darkling stayed where he was, turning the lyrics over in his mind as the shadows deepened around him.

________________________________

Sheffield, 1866. A week later.

Cecily-Anne’s eyes opened to the sight of their blown-open roof.

She glared up at the pre-dawn gloom, and coughed. Cocking her head to one side, she could faintly hear sounds of Jane Beckett rummaging around on the floor below. Sitting up, the girl peeled off her dingy, moth-eaten blanket, and crawled across the floor on all fours. Peering out behind the blinds - which was nothing more than an old sheet nailed to the window-rim to keep out the draft and fallout debris, Cecily-Anne glared out at the street.

Deathly quiet for a Sunday morning in the depths of winter, but nevertheless, a welcome relief. The quiet meant that no one was about to loot anything in walking distance. Most of the inner-city stores had been picked clean twenty years ago, but there was still one single place largely harboring food: the old storage facilities on the east side of Sheffield, nestled in amongst the disused factories.

However, there was a reason for why that food was untouched. It came down to who was guarding it. The army had been picked off years back, and eventually fell to the corruptive greed of human savagery when faced with nuclear eradication of the masses. But one person had somehow adapted like a particularly awful fungus to this harsh, inhuman climate.

George Burrows. Sometimes simply called “The Warden,” by the uninitiated to his holy terror, the man was an ex-traffic warden gifted emergency powers by the Sheffield City Council before the bombs dropped in 1983. A seemingly expansive wormhole had then opened and sent Sheffield, her dying populace, and the nuclear bombs back to 1848.

No one had since figured out how to reverse the bloody mess, and England herself succumbed to complete societal collapse. There was reason to believe civilizations survived in the North of England. According to the few, tattered and worn posters that generous Northerners posted on rickety fences and stone walls, the self-appointed King Richard III was acting as a buffer against Queen Victoria’s rampant aggression.

____________

Christmas Day, 1865. Liverpool.

The Volkvolny’s masts barely rustled in the still air as she cut through the waters of the Irish Sea like an arrow. At her helm, Sturmhond raked a hand through his tangled ginger curls. His eyes scoured the sea for signs of life, of fishing vessels, anything. Yet nothing caught either his naked eye or the view from the spyglass in his fingers. Tracing a finger over the amber lens, he caught himself grimacing. All morning, they’d been charting a course through the True Sea in hope of reaching Novi Zem before dusk. Yet, a freak storm had sent them…

Here.

Wherever here was, it didn't show on any maps that Sturmhond had. No atlas could be consulted. Not even Tolya or Tamar had an idea of where they were. No familiar landmarks, zilch. He chewed his lower lip, ran a ring-decked hand over his face for the third time in 20 minutes, and consulted his compass.

The needle was pointing north, to his left. While this was reassuring to know that the freak storm hadn’t affected the mercury of the compass, it still left him wary. Tracing a thumb over the words on the back, Sturmhond slid the compass away. He turned to see how the masts were looking, craning his neck up and head back.

Suddenly, a crash shook the whole boat. The Volkvolny, a beaut of a schooner with her triple masts, was not made for sudden and alarming crashes. He’d much rather have let this happen to the whaler Alina sunk to the watery depths of the Bone Road.

At once, a startled English voice cried out with a hearty yell: “Danae, land gently!” the man yelled. The crash was seconded by a hearty roar. Sturmhond caught sight of a wing here, a thrashing tail there, and lurched to the starboard side. Looking down with Tamar and Tolya, he was shocked to find his cabin’s beautiful fabrikated french windows little more than shards. And perched in his former cabin was a massive dragon, its scales navy blue, eyes sapphire. At her neck was a pale-faced midshipman, all harsh angles and dark eyes.

“Who goes there?!” Sturmhond yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Identify yourself!”

“Midshipman Horatio Hornblower!” the man replied calmly. He grabbed the rope thrown down by one of Sturmhond’s crew, and let himself be hauled over the side, onto the deck. Landing in an ungrateful heap, Hornblower barely had time to breathe before Sturmhond was pointing a pistol in the lad’s face.

“A-and who are you?” Horatio breathed, staring up into the privateer’s eyes.

“Sturmhond. Privateer, captain of the Volkvolny.” Digging around in his pockets, Sturmhond produced a thin piece of paper emblazoned with the sealed double-eagle. “Letter of Mark.”

“W-what language is this?” Horatio blinked at it. “You speak english… Yet this is…?”

Sturmhond blinked, shocked. “I believed us to be conversing in Ravkayash, Midshipman…” his gaze skirted to the twins, who looked as surprised as he did.

“English.” Horatio muttered. “I can understand you… how?”

[missdcalls]

open: m/f/nb

muse: hudson beckett. he/him. pansexual. bar owner.

"well, well, well," leans against the bar counter "-look what the cat dragged in."

[thickskll]

⸺ * | closed starter for ⎯⎯ @rennisaturate ⸺ * | continued from here.

“that’s gonna be your parting message to my dead body? be a man? don’t be anywhere near my eulogy preparations” he deadpanned before he cracked barely a few seconds later and grinned at her. whenever he was in neveah’s company, it didn’t take long before death, murder and some form of human torture was brought up - usually provoked out of her by him, which he believed didn’t take as much work but was still just as rewarding. when it came to his feelings for neveah, oliver wasn’t exactly sure how he would label it - there was a part of him that didn’t want to label it at all and just have every bit of herself that she would offer him and do the same in return. the attraction was definitely there but along with it came a duty of care toward her that he had tried to suppress enough before his older brother dropped him off on her doorstep, not that he required much persuasion. to put it simply, it was complicated. she irritated him, angered him even but she also amused him and had somehow - in her fits of rage toward him - enamoured him. who else would he have picked out an entire pyjama set for, sought out a matching robe and ensured their breakfast would be delivered? both of his brothers would highlight the lack of precedence to go by, there wasn’t anyone else before neveah whom he would autonomously do these things for, without any ulterior motive, and it grated on him. “i look forward to it,” he called to her, “although, i don’t tend to get much sleep whenever we share a bed anyway so i guess you’ll have to do it while i’m awake…but even then you’re hardly in the headspace to string a sentence together let alone commit homicide” his voice is innocent yet still came with that playful teasing that he often used to rile her up. “someone’s still grouchy after their sauna shower,” he observed with a mocking pout as he helped her step out. oliver didn’t even bother to be subtle about the way his eyes openly roamed over her figure, betraying his bold interest. the scent of her body wash evoked specific memories, drawing oliver’s attention to the lace material tucked in his pocket. the clatter of dishes and the arrangement of silverware snapped oliver out of his momentary reverie. “get dressed then come and sit with me at the table, you’ll feel a whole lot better once you’ve eaten something” his phone vibrated in his pocket, work always had a way of interrupting his fun. “you’ve got five minutes and then i’m coming to get you” he warned her then exited the bathroom again, leaving the door open once more and putting his phone to his ear, “what?”