#Letter of absences

[novelcsanchez]

Applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain in UK? What do you need to prepare?

“Union Jack flying at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, UK” by Roy Tanck/ CC0 1.0 If you have been living and working in the UK for more than 5 years, you can now apply for “settlement” or “Indefinite Leave to Remain”. This is the next step before applying for British citizenship. ILR will allow you to live and work here in the UK for as long as you like! A lot of Filipino nurses, like myself,…

[polarsirens]

i am not at all caught up with fantasy high freshman and sophomore year but i’ve jumped into the middle of things and this today nearly made me bawl

life kinda sucks and i haven’t time to enjoy my comfort media but junior year’s been…. it’s really been a wonderful thing to have this to look forward to every week

[derangedrhythms]

Last night was hell; I feel completely paralysed, away from you; I’m not hungry; I can’t sleep; can’t read; can’t think. I’ll be all right, but not by recovering from missing you; only by learning, and it must take a good deal of learning, how to live with this huge whistling hole in my guts and heart. 

Sylvia Plath, The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I: 1940–1956 ⁠— Ted Hughes, 4th October 1956

[15minlatewithbatbucks]

"Sometimes I forget they're gone."

Bruce looks up from work - a crossword he's doing to pass time until the gas chromatography finishes - and over to where Tim is rolling back and forth in front of a secondary terminal. The steady squeak of his chairs back wheel was almost meditative in a way. He stared up at a blank screen, face only illuminated in profile by the gentle glow of Bruce's own terminal.

"Who is?" Bruce asked when Tim didn't elaborate. For all that this was functionally his home now, the boy had a tendency to occupy space in a way that made Bruce's jaw ache from biting his tongue.

"My parents." Tim stopped rocking and the Cave was as silent as a grave between them. One grave in particular. "Like, something happens and I think, oh, Mom would love to hear about this. Or Dad would get all huffy and rant over something silly and it would be fun to listen to."

Tim, who loved his parents and, arguably was loved in return. He spent most of his time in his room or the Cave, exploring other rooms in the Manor like his parents did archeological sites. Interesting to him, but not a place to be.

"Sometimes I pick up the phone and get as far as putting in their international number, you know?"

Tim, who was parented through phone calls and post cards. Tim, who spent so much of his life in boarding schools that an actual home looked more like a museum than a place to live.

"I'm sorry, bud," Bruce murmured. There wasn't much else he could say, aside from reminding Tim that his father was still alive. Comatose, hanging in limbo, but alive.

Bruce thought it would be easier if Jack Drake died with his wife. Bruce also hated himself for thinking those kinds of things.

"I just keep thinking about Mohenjo-daro," he continued. "We're learning about it in school this unit and I keep remembering- I keep remembering that Dad said he's been there. I can't keep the dates right in my head and he would have helped."

"I can give it a shot," Bruce offered even though he knew it was the wrong thing to do now just as it had been the wrong thing to do when he offered to find a Romani language tutor for Dick when he realized he was forgetting things.

It would solve one part of the problem, but it would never replace the help a father could give.

Tim turned towards him, pale face washed out in stark relief under the light from behind Bruce. He wondered if Tim could even see his face in the relative darkness and found a cowards courage knowing he couldn't.

"He told me a story about it once," Tim said. "I can't remember the ending. I can't remember what he told me. Why didn't I listen better?"

Bruce had no answer for him. He set his paper aside and opened his arms.

Dick would have thrown himself at Bruce, taking comfort where and when he could. Jason would have slunk over and did his level best to press close enough to cave in Bruce's chest and make himself a home.

He was, in hindsight, too good at that.

Tim always hesitated. Weighting the pros and cons? Overthinking a simple comfort offered freely? Bruce never knew.

Still, Tim slowly abandoned his squeaking chair. He let Bruce tug him in for a hug.

Tim was older than Dick had been, around the same age as Jason. Even so, in moments like this he seemed immeasurably younger. Tim, cast off in a prestigious boarding school, had lived comparatively untouched by life's hardest lessons. He signed up for the work, but he couldn't have known how hard it would be. Bruce never should have let him in, but what could he do now? Tim came to him when he needed a partner the most and he was so, so grateful even as regret threatened to choke him.

A beep, then. Bruce's eyes drifted upwards.

"The drugs we lifted from the Iceberg Lounge?" Tim asked against Bruce's neck.

"Yes."

"Show me."

Bruce let Tim out from the protective circle of his arms and did so. The moment lay broken behind them, like so many others.

[justaz]

merlin being forced to confront the fact that he’s failing his people bc he’s sitting idly by while uther slaughters them all and coming to the decision that he has to act to save them but that’ll make him camelot enemy no. 1 but technically he already was they just didn’t know it. merlin spending a week all morose but unwilling to talk about it and spending as much time with his friends as possible. on his last night in camelot, he goes to arthur’s chambers and the prince is confused on why he’s there. merlin drops a sealed letter on his desk before pulling arthur into a gentle and emotional kiss. they barely separate, their lips hardly a breath apart, and merlin asks for forgiveness. arthur, thinking he’s apologizing for the kiss, tells him there’s nothing to forgive and goes in for a second kiss but merlin pulls away, knowing that that one brief kiss was all he could handle. if he lets arthur kiss him the way he’s dreamt of being kissed, he won’t be able to do what he needs to do, he won’t be able to leave. merlin tells him good night and leaves before arthur can react. he’s gone by dawn.

[vickyvicarious]

I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here; it is like whispering to one's self and listening at the same time. And there is also something about the shorthand symbols that makes it different from writing. I am unhappy about Lucy and about Jonathan.

Secret code makes it easier to be truthful about your worries, perhaps? And yet, for all that she opens her entry praising this medium as a way to express herself, she does not linger on her unhappiness. She speaks about it right at the start, but after explaining why she is worried, she drops the subject (Jonathan) or shifts into dismissing it as not too bad, not worthy of such distress (Lucy).

Mina can't do anything about Jonathan's absence or his uncharacteristically short letter. All she could do by speculating too much would be to work herself up even more. So she avoids wondering why he would have written something like that at all. It sounds like she got his letter yesterday (perhaps after arriving back at the house after her cemetery entry?) so she spent a little while mulling it over before mentioning it as well. And even then, just a relatively brief mention.

As for Lucy, the situation is different. Not only can she take action right away, but she also has someone else who knows the situation - and whose more open/frantic distress allows Mina to take on the role of being the soothing voice of reason. In comforting Mrs. Westenra, she is perhaps able to talk down her own worries as well with lines like her closing one today: "I daresay it is the waiting which disturbs [Lucy]; she will be all right when [Arthur] arrives." At the same time, this means she doesn't get to express her own worries so openly; she has to hold them back in order to be more reassuring to someone else.

That final line is also striking because although Mina is ostensibly speaking of Lucy's sleepwalking, the same words could just as easily apply to her own fears for Jonathan. It's just the waiting so long that is bothering her. He's going to come home and be fine and then she will feel alright. So she just needs to be patient a little longer... it could be a veiled attempt at reassuring herself about him, again without ever giving voice to the exact fears she needs reassuring from.

[gayofthefae]

Sometimes I have these moments where I'm like. I just nerd out about how neat the execution is, ya know?

In 2019, The Duffers posted a blocked out letter signed "love" with the date Will went missing.

On May 26, 2022, signing a letter "love" was just an affectionate signature.

On May 27, 2022, signing a letter "love" was inherently romantic when done, only by Mike Wheeler.

The entire letter plotline is so satisfyingly simple in structure. When Mike loves someone platonically but not romantically, he does not sign his letters to them "love". Mike did not write letters to Will. On November 6, 1983, Will Byers went missing and the upside down froze in time.

I LOVE seemingly disconnected facts. And so, naturally, I love when 5 year old tweets say "they're connected...Figure it out."

[sciderman]

If you rearrange the letters in Tony Stark it's actually an anagram for Sex Toy.

that's factually untrue but i'll let you have it

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

There is something that cannot resign itself to your absence, it is my poor little body that stretches out in vain towards you, that writhes, that whimpers and cries after you, my sad little body that stunts from day to day and that asks unceasingly to blossom, to warm up, to beat, to quiver. Oh my beautiful, my dear love! Oh burning! O my sweet pain! O my life! Here I am filled with shivers, mysterious undulations, delicate and secret sounds. You wanted my letter to bring you a little warmth! It has awakened in me again all that dark and intimate zone that I love so much to feel just in my center, in my middle, that vibrating zone that moves me as much as the presence of a child in my belly, or even more, knowing it better. She has touched that tiny point in me, but which you know and love, and I tremble all over. Happy, oh yes, happy. Happy and overflowing with love, desire and tenderness. I am waiting for you every day. I run too; I run unceasingly towards you. The coast is coming to an end, my darling. Soon the sight of the sea, and then the beach and the waves.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, February 10, 1950 [#182]

[cherryjuicegf]

"Will you forget about it?"

She feels Jaskier's soft breath on her stomach and shivers as his lips curve on her skin. He shoots her a questioning look as though he's too occupied tasting the night off her body to hear her. "Forget about what?"

A sigh.

She closes her eyes for a moment. Swallows the pain down to her heart. It doesn't matter. It's the last night. "This." A twitch of her lips, and she doesn't dare look at him now. Instead, she looks out the open window. "Us. These past months."

At once, Jaskier stops paying all his attention to the poems he is stroking and looks at her, a frown between his eyebrows. He lays his head on her belly, and it's so warm, so heavy with tenderness. What will she do with all this tenderness, all this poetry?

His voice sounds a little hurt as he speaks. "How can I?" Before his certainty has time to echo, Yennefer's tongue turns again to blade, and she laughs.

"You're lying."

"Yennefer..."

"Don't."

Her body is tense under his head, his touch, but he doesn't move, as though insisting on the softness. And his eyes, huge and staring and, oh, the complaint. Did she already forget about the softness?

She keeps her lips from quivering, her voice from trembling. Shakes her head as though pleading. "You don't fool me, bard. We aren't in the keep anymore. You're leaving tomorrow." His hand is lying between her breasts, and she tries to rebuild the wall they had so desperately wrecked. "You will be sleeping around again. Never staying afterwards."

Jaskier is almost out of breath now, out of words, and until now she had never taken pride in stealing his voice with pain, only with pleasure. Something wet on her skin. His lashes brushing against it, she realises. But he can't speak. Not to say anything of importance, at least.

He knows she is right.

And yet he doesn't seem to admit it. A silent chuckle. "You know a thing or two about leaving, don't you?"

He means it as an insult. Still, Yennefer smiles and looks him in the eye, deadly. "As well as you do, bardling, yes."

"Why wouldn't I stay?"

"Because you can't." He parts his lips to speak again, but suddenly, oh, she is so tired. She lets herself slump and lets him look, and the sharpness in her voice breaks. He knows how it's supposed to go. There is no point in arguing over it. "Because I can't. I have somewhere else to be right now." Then, a whisper, a plea. "You know that."

Slowly, she threads her fingers through his hair, and as though she pulls loose a thread, he lets out a breath and closes his eyes. The line between his eyebrows now runs deeper. "I know."

He catches her hand and places a kiss on the inside of her wrist. Then he crawls up to her, up to her lips, like a worshipper who thinks he is forsaken by his god, while he himself has forsaken his faith. He kisses her.

He kisses her.

Then, he hides his face in the curve of her neck and breathes her in. "Can a heart forget a love?"

Can you pass by an empty room without remembering the time it used to be full of life? Does absence grieve for its present or its past?

A sigh, broken. "If it can't afford otherwise."

She feels his smile against her skin, his muffled voice. "You don't really believe that."

The breeze blows in the room, and the curtain shivers like an awakened ghost.

Yennefer shakes her head and softly, almost absent, she places a kiss on his hair. "It doesn't really matter anymore."

[asexualbookbird]

I love Seanan's pen names. Who's Mira Grant? Seanan McGuire. Who's A Deborah Baker? Also Seanan McGuire! Who else is Seanan McGuire? Who knows! Could be anyone! Could be you 🫵

*looking at mr binx in suspicion* she could be ANYONE you say,

[fawnaura]

What I am is alive in me because of you. I do not reinvent you at sadly cooled-off places you have left behind. Even your absence is filled with your warmth and is more real than your not-existing.

Rainer Maria Rilke, in a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé, Duino, late autumn, 1911, from A Year with Rilke, tr. and edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

[derangedrhythms]

[…] my whole sense of being is blasted by your absence […]

Sylvia Plath, The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I: 1940–1956 ⁠— Ted Hughes, 7th-8th October 1956

[wonder-worker]

Friendly reminder that Francesco Coppino and Prospero di Camulio, contemporaries who were literally getting their information from predominantly Yorkist circles, were both explicitly clear that it was Henry VI who decided to surrender Berwick to Scotland.

Camulio: "King Henry has given away a castle [town] called Berwick, which is one of the keys of the frontier between England and Scotland." Coppino: "[Scotland has] received from the same Henry the town of Berwick, on the frontiers of Scotland, which the Scots have long claimed as their right from the English, as the excellently well furnished guardian of their frontiers, and the place to which King Henry repaired as an asylum after the battle."

The idea that Margaret of Anjou was principally involved in the surrender, or that she was the one who actually made the decision, is based on nothing but assumption. Two direct contemporaries, both speaking of ongoing events as they unfolded, who were both getting information from Yorkist-held England, both clearly believed it was Henry who was responsible for this course of action. Neither of them mention Margaret. Sure, you can argue that it was merely rhetorical, and that they were simply automatically attributing such an important decision to the King rather than the queen - but rhetoric is nonetheless extremely important and helps us understand how historical figures were perceived at the time. Margaret's enemies would surely not have hesitated to broadcast her involvement had it actually been true, and Coppino in particular had shown no qualms about criticizing her in favor of the Yorkists before. If she was genuinely believed to have been responsible, and if the Yorkists were actually claiming that she was at the time, I see no reason why Coppino or Camulio would not have emphasized her role in their letters. What these samples instead indicate is literally the opposite: that their contemporaries - probably including the Yorkists who were putting out the information that Coppino and Camulio reported - actually believed that Henry was the one making the decision. I think it's a very large and very unnecessary stretch to go against actual evidence and claim otherwise by placing the responsibility on Margaret instead.

Additionally, these small samples may also reveal what people at the time - once again including the Yorkists - actually thought of Henry's role in the war on a broader level, away from direct Yorkist propaganda which would obviously and perhaps understandably seek to de-emphasize it: namely, that Henry was perceived as the one making decisions and deciding the courses of action for his own side.

Source: Excerpts from the Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Milan

[flowercrowngods]

🤍 also on ao3

The clock shows 3:27 when Scott wakes to an empty bed, and the sigh he lets out is familiar, if involuntary. He's not exactly a light sleeper, but these days he wakes up most nights, feeling like something's wrong. Every time, the bed beside him is empty, and every time, Scott worries.

Tonight, he gets out of bed.

He finds Wayne in the kitchen downstairs, sort of just staring at the counter, like he was in motion and then just stopped. Like he's trying to remember what he came down here for, like he's a bit lost with it.

Scott approaches him slowly, the gnawing worry inside his chest only increasing with each step that doesn't make Wayne look up.

"Hey, love," he murmurs, barely interrupting the silence of the room, but it's what finally gets a reaction from his man.

"Shit," Wayne says, running a hand over his face and looking around as if taking stock of his surroundings. "Did I wake ya?"

Scott shakes his head and comes to a stop beside Wayne, leaning against the kitchen counter, their shoulders touching. "I don't think you did. I just wake up sometimes when you're not there. Like my body senses that something's missing."

It sounds cheesy, but the analogy makes sense. Maybe his body does notice -- what do we know about sleep and the human subconscious anyway?

"Sorry," Wayne says anyway, like he doesn't wonder about sleep and the human subconscious, like the simplest explanation is always just talking the blame. It's something Scott has to pry away from his subconscious, gently and with care.

"You've nothing to be sorry for, love." He looks over at Wayne and even the darkness of the kitchen can't hide away the circles under his eyes or the slump of his shoulders. "Wanna tell me what's wrong?"

Wayne shakes his head, but it doesn't mean that he won't talk about it, just that he's busy fighting some kind of war against himself, breaking down his own walls brick by brick. Scott knows. So he waits, leaning against Wayne a bit more, sharing his warmth a little.

"It's the quiet."

The silence that follows this statement almost hits Scott in the face with how intense it is. Unfortunately, he doesn't really understand yet.

"What about the quiet?"

Wayne shrugs. "'M not used to it. I'm... I can't sleep."

Scott takes it in for a moment, connecting the dots, filling out the empty spaces, the little holes in the past nights. The fact that Wayne sleeps perfectly when they spend the night at the trailer park, rare as that is.

And his heart falls a little when he asks, just to be sure, "My house is too quiet for you?"

His house. His quiet. His bed that Wayne can't find a good night's sleep in. His guilt when Wayne nods.

"It's just... See, I never grew up in the fancy parts of town. There was always something going on, some car pulling up or speeding off, someone taking a walk around my walls that are thin enough to hear the grass growing. It was never quiet, growing up, and when i was a teen it was me walking on gravel paths, it was me pulling up or speeding off, it was me chasing the quiet away. And then Eddie. Y'know, I never used to sleep when he first... moved in with me."

They both snort at the notion of Eddie 'moving in' with Wayne like he wasn't twelve years old and abandoned, with Wayne as his only chance in life. It cuts into Scott every time he thinks about it, remembering the wild, unruly boy in middle school.

"He'll kill me for this," Wayne continues, "but he cried every night the first four months. That was a new kinda noise I had to get used to, and I did. I listened for it. Sat with him most nights, just to be there even when he wouldn't look at me. And then over time, the cries and sniffles turned into frustrated yelling at his homework. And then into self-taught guitar lessons and that music of his. And then into reading, because the boy loves to read out loud until late at night and then grumble about it in the morning. Still does, the menace."

A smile tugs at Wayne's lips and Scott mirrors it, determined to just listen and soak up all the information this man who captivates him so has to offer about himself.

"The trailer park, it's never quiet. They talk big game about cities that never sleep, but they ain't seen nothin'." A sigh, and Scott reaches out to take his hand. Wayne tangles their fingers and Scott hides a smile in his shoulder, feeling bashful in the middle of the night in his kitchen, where everything should feel out of place.

"And my house is big and has great insulation, and you hate it," he concludes, playful but only mildly joking.

"I don't hate your house, darling," Wayne counters, squeezing his hand and lifting it until it read against his cheek where he likes to nuzzle it. Something that never fails to make Scott feel about ready to melt on the spot. Something that makes him want to give his Wayne all the noise in the world if that means he's gonna sleep.

"But you sleep better at the trailer park. You sleep better in your bed."

At that, Wayne only nods. "I'm sorry, sugar. Think it's hard-wired into me or something."

"No, it makes sense."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah! I could tell you a little something about brains and 'wiring' if you want me to; but I don't think you do, so you have to trust me when I say it makes complete and utter sense, my dear."

Wayne looks up at him then, meeting his eyes for the first time tonight, and with the way they catch the light of the street lamp outside Scott almost things they're shining. He smiles, leaning in to kiss Wayne's forehead just because he can.

"Would it help you if i put on some music down here and we went back upstairs? Should easily reach your sensitive ears and provide background noise, but... Does music help?"

"It does with Eddie," Wayne shrugs.

"Well, love, I shall apologise profusely for the lack of heavy metal records." He grins and winds his arms around Wayne's neck, just to hold him close. "All I have to offer is some Johnny Cash, but I have it on good authority that you won't mind."

"Cash is fine," Wayne grumbles, like he's not obsessed with the man and his music. Scott chuckles and leans in for another kiss, this time to the man's nose, who only now seems to catch up with his plan. "Wait, are you sure you're okay with that? You're the one who has to get up at ass o'clock and function for, like, eight hours or something."

"I'll be fine," Scott reassures him. "Before you entered my life, my darling man, I used to listen to music to fall asleep almost every night."

"Really?"

"Yes. It was for an experiment if you will."

Wayne leans back in his embrace just to give him that Look. His certified You ridiculous man look. It makes Scott laugh and his heart flutter

"Will you come back to bed with me?"

Wayne nods, taking his hands from around his neck. "Yeah, let's go back to bed."

The music does help. Wayne is out like a light within minutes and Scott falls asleep with a smile. He wakes up with one, too, when he sees that Wayne is still asleep and hasn't so much as rolled around in his sleep.

They spend more nights at the trailer park after that. Some nights, when Wayne has a shift so early it should count as a night shift, Scott will read to him until he falls asleep. Most nights, there will be music.

Its a gentler kind of noise that even Scott soon finds himself unwilling to live without. He makes it his mission to explore that kind of gentleness and love, expressed in favourite records and slow dancing in their pyjamas and a book so compelling he reads the same chapter four nights in a row until Wayne finally catches all of it.

Wayne's apologies become rarer and rarer until "I'm sorry" turns into "I love you". The the gentlest noise followed by the tenderest quiet that is filled only with a matching heartbeat of two.

[pangolin-404]

as much as I know why Truant was too far gone to say yes, I think Truant should've taken up Thumper's offer for pumpkin pie, I think that would've fixed him