#artless confessions

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Artless confessions | Fyodor Telkov

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[fayes-fics]

When The World Is Free: Chapter 15 - La Vie En Rose

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Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x fem!reader, WW2 AU.

Warnings: 18+ smut, minors DNI, romantic vaginal sex, a brief reference to oral sex. Also features time jumps and the war coming to England.

Word Count: 2.4k

Author’s Note: Multi-chapter fic based on a request by the lovely @amillcitygirl. Please see the masterpost for a synopsis of this story. This is the last chapter, and our pair finally have their idyllic home together in Wiltshire. There will also be an epilogue for this story that will be posted shortly after this chapter. Thanks as always to @colettebronte for beta reading. Enjoy!

Wiltshire, UK, December 1939 - December 1940

The early December chill creeping under the hem of your wool coat instantly evaporates as your husband carries you over the threshold into your new home, warmth radiating from the roaring fires that blaze in each room.

“Welcome home, Mrs Bridgerton,” Benedict smiles, placing you gently onto your feet in the hallway, even as you do not relinquish the loop of your hands around his neck.

“Kiss me, Mr Bridgerton,” you appeal, pushing up onto your tiptoes and capturing his lips with yours.

Living in Aubrey Hall for the autumn was lovely, but a challenge to find privacy. Yes, time well spent as you were able to triage your friendship with Eloise, but tempered by a yearning to be with Benedict alone in your own home, impatient for the purchase to go through. It is three weeks before Christmas when you are finally able to take the last drive down to Wiltshire—this time for good rather than just a fleeting visit.

“I can't believe we are finally home,” you breathe happily over his lips, both of you breaking into matching grins.

“We are indeed,” he assures, withdrawing from your embrace to shuck his coat and help you out of yours. 

“Are we alone?” you whisper as he hangs both in the hallway cupboard.

“I told the two staff we have here to take the night off once we arrived, to return in the morning. They are in the little cottage down the lane, so yes, we are indeed alone, darling wife. What on earth do you have in mind?” He teases, sauntering back to you, that beguiling crooked grin tugging at the corner of his lips.

“I would like to christen our house,” you declare, raising an eyebrow suggestively as you slide your hands up his biceps and hook them around his shoulders, pushing your body into his, your intent more than obvious.

“Which room, my love?” his voice is like velvet.

“All of them, husband,” you declare, loving the way his pupils dilate and his breath hitches. “Absolutely every single one…”

—

Refracted flames dance across his glassy pupils as he moves over you, taking you with him, dewy skin from the heat of the fireplace you lay next to. The rug is a slight burn under your shoulder blades, not that you would ever ask him to stop, wanting marks on your body from this magical night, so long overdue.

“What are you thinking of, my darling?” 

His voice resonant as your nails scratch lightly along his spine, your toes running down his calf muscles, squeezing him between your thighs as he gently thrusts into your body.

“I am thinking…. I am thinking how free I feel,” you confess breathily, pushing your breasts into his broad chest, undulating your hips to meet his, wanting him so deep inside you are altered in some way. “I can scream your name like I have wanted to for months…”

He groans loudly, capturing your lips in an artless, open-mouthed, desperate kiss, his hands hooked around your shoulders, using his forearms as leverage to pull you into his rhythm. “Please do, my love, please do…. I have longed to hear you let go completely….” he admits stutteringly.

“I cannot believe I had to sneak around for weeks with the man I was married to,” you giggle, recalling those heady weeks in summer when all was a secret.

He huffs a laugh into your throat, kissing there. “And I cannot believe my wife had to sleep in a separate bed from me for so long…” After his proposal, admittedly, you had moved to sharing his bedroom, but seeing as it was right next to Eloise’s, it has been many months of quiet intimacy. The autumn night being too cold to spend in the unheated summer house by the lake. 

Your hands grab his shapely bottom and encourage his movements, harsher now, chasing that moment of bliss for you both.

“Never again….” you counter emphatically, twining yourself around him like a vine, never wanting to be separated from his naked body, for him to be inside you always, always….

“Never indeed….” he concurs, his voice gravelly and cracked with emotion as he spears deeper and makes you cry his name, the sound echoing up your living room walls.

—

As the winter months slip by, The Cottage, as you have both taken to calling it, is your constant refuge. And thanks to its smallholding farm, Anthony is able to pull strings and secure Benedict's status as exempt from military conscription, a relief you are thankful for every day.

Your home is a welcoming embrace when you step in from a rewarding but chilly day working in the drafty local village library—your insistence on wanting a job something Benedict never disputed. And his artistic career blossoms, too, each piece he completes becoming a hotly contested item at auction in London. A small conservatory attached to the back of the house transforms into his art studio, where he works most days crafting beautiful, lyrical landscapes that steal your breath with their scope and beauty.

And as much as your home is a place of peace, tranquillity and creativity, it is also filled with passion; many hours are spent in joyous lovemaking in any and every room of the house, the novelty still not wearing off for either of you, even months later. 

Indeed, your staff, a benevolent, older married couple who become more akin to family, soon learn to turn a blind eye to any amorous activities they may unintentionally encounter. Including one unseasonably mild and memorable evening when they returned from dinner to find you upon the lawn, screaming at the dome of stars above—your nails scraping across Benedict’s scalp as he feasted between your legs.

—

It is a cold February morning when you blink awake to the melodic trill of a robin outside the dining room window. Benedict is fast asleep as you lay cocooned in his embrace under a blanket, embers glowing ashy white in the fireplace beside you. You must have fallen asleep here after a rather vigorous late-night session on your sturdy dining table—a nightcap becoming so much more, two drained whiskey tumblers still sitting upon the gleaming mahogany.

You smile at the memory, then turn your attention to the man wrapped around you, following your compulsion to map the raised veins on the back of his hand in front of your face. Your tongue trails those contours to the constellation of freckles on his forearm that you kiss. He is so fast asleep that he does not even seem to stir…

“Maam, a telegram has just come for you,” a tentative voice calls from the doorway as you startle.

You look up to see Mrs Crabtree, sweetly averting her eyes.

“Thank you, Mrs Crabtree,” you breeze, trying to conceal your slight embarrassment at having been caught red-handed kissing your slumbering husband’s arm rather covetously first thing in the morning.

She politely bustles over and drops the envelope next to you before making herself scarce. You peel open the message, then emit a wracking sigh as a warm pair of lips slide across your shoulder.

“What’s the matter, my love?” Benedict queries, voice rough from sleep.

Wordlessly, you hand him the telegram, his eyes scrunching slightly, attempting to read it without his glasses. 

In it, your parents tersely remind you of the money outstanding to the vendors for your cancelled nuptials to Stanley and request you to send additional funds as soon as possible.

“You have been sending them money?” Benedict looks appalled.

“Yes,” you sigh, sheepish to confess to the one thing you have been keeping from him for a while now. “I have been using my income to wire back money in instalments.” 

“Darling, they should not be asking you to do such a thing!” he argues, getting slightly agitated. “They were plenty rich enough to pay for their daughter to travel to Paris a few months ago! This feels rather too close to extortion…”

“I do not wish to be beholden to them, Benedict,” you answer fiercely, “for anything.”

He sees the fire in your eyes, and his face softens, nodding in understanding, always your greatest advocate. “May I at least pay them instead?” he offers. “I am the reason you are not marrying that man after all,” he reminds you with a dry chuckle, nuzzling your cheek before twisting to discard the telegram into the fireplace.

“I knew I was not marrying that man the moment I dropped that damn shoe,” a light-hearted giggle bubbling up as you push onto your hands to hover over Benedict, recalling with perfect clarity the moment you first clapped eyes on the man lying beneath you now.

“You did?” he lilts, a demure smile claiming his handsome features, a hand landing warm on the curve of your bottom under the blanket, encouraging you to settle on top of him.

“Even if nothing had ever happened between us, I suddenly knew what desire truly was,” you concede, a nostalgic pang to return to Paris with him, to experience its beauty mirrored in his hazy eyes again.

He chuckles warmly, looking up at you with gentle, hooded eyes as you feel something swelling between your bodies. “It was love at first sight for me,” he confesses tenderly. 

“It was?” you gasp softly, smiling broadly, staring down at the man you cannot imagine your life without, touching his cheek reverentially. 

“As I said when I proposed, I would marry you a hundred times over,” he enunciates slowly, assuredly, every cell of his being radiating his sincerity and desire. 

“And I would to you, Mr Bridgerton,” you grin, leaning down to capture his lips and claim him for yourself, his breath a shocked staccato as he slides into your body for the first time without protection, so much heat and skin.

“Mrs Bridgerton,” he moans, his voice a symphony of wrecked and potent desire.

“Call me your wife,” you say breathlessly, pushing up to sit upon him, the blanket falling away from your back, your naked bodies glowing in the early morning light as you begin to move.

“Wife,” he calls, hands clamping firmly around your hips as you rise and sink upon him.

“Husband…” you call back and pull his left hand up to your face, sucking his wedding ring finger into his mouth as you stare down at him challengingly, knowing how aroused he gets when you use that word, the metal clinking against the ivory of your teeth as you shudder lightly around his stretching invasion.

This. This is all I want.

—

The following spring, May 1940, Paris is invaded. 

You manage to reach Solène and are grateful to hear she is well, the occupation for the most part peaceful, if not odd and jarring. Life for you in rural Wiltshire, on the other hand, is idyllic, spring bringing life to your gardens, a riot of flowers, herbs and vegetables growing, beehives buzzing with life—a wondrous time that is indelible in your mind, even in your later years.

But, as with all things that are perhaps a shade too good, that temporary peace is shattered a couple of months later, an air and sea blockade beginning in July, followed shortly after by the Luftwaffe bombing military targets on the mainland. A resolute but stoic fear gripping the nation as summer drew on, knowing civilian targets would inevitably be next.

At the end of August, Anthony commands the rest of his family to evacuate Aubrey Hall, the location far too close to the French coast for his liking, knowing as an insider that matters could escalate within a matter of days rather than weeks. You receive word that the family are moving to stay with Daphne and Simon further north in Yorkshire. Well, all except one key person. Eloise. 

Ever the rebel, she telegrams to tell you she has eloped with Phillip to Gretna Green, much to Anthony and Colin's (and now Benedict’s) chagrin, moving in with him defiantly, his home not far from Aubrey Hall. Instantly becoming a stepmother, too.

“Eloise, are you certain?” you implore into the telephone, September 4th, sitting in the office of the village library.

“About Phillip? Of course I am, you idiot!”

“Not that,” you wave an unseen dismissive hand. “I knew from that first night in Portsmouth you were as gone for him as I was for your brother…” you argue, her sneer at that evident even down the phone. “I meant remaining in Kent. It seems dangerous. Why don't you and Phillip come here to Wiltshire? At least for now? We have spare rooms, and you are most welcome to stay…” you appeal, chewing your cuticle nervously. 

Last night, you and Benedict had agreed she would more likely take up an invitation extended by you than him.

“I’ll talk to Phillip,” she sniffs, which is the closest you will get to a thank you for the offer.

Two days later, Eloise, Phillip and his twins are at your doorstep, and not a moment too soon as the period, latterly known as The Blitz, begins the following night. Their home in Kent is spared, but the village school suffers some damage the following week and even without her saying a word, you can see the gratitude on her face as she watches the twins play safely in your back garden.

—

“Here you go, Amanda,” you smile down at the little girl, handing her a shiny metal star to hang on the Christmas tree.

Her toothy grin is adorable as she places it on a branch, giving herself a round of applause before running off to crawl into Eloise’s lap, who is busy making festive paper chains.

It is early December 1940, and the Cranes have been living with you for four months now; you imploring them to stay as the Blitz drags on. There has been bombing all over the country, primarily larger cities, but rural Wiltshire feels as safe of a bet as anywhere, not under the Nazi flight path to London in the same way that Kent is. 

Strong, warm arms wrap around your waist from behind, and you smile to yourself as Benedict crowds into you, admiring your handiwork on the tree.

“It looks beautiful, y/n,” he opines sweetly, bussing a kiss onto your temple. 

“Thank you, my love,” you reply, swaying gently in his arms, watching the children giggle as they throw strands of paper in the air; Eloise’s appeal to them not to do so falling on deaf ears, her expression one of fond exasperation.

“I never thought I would see the day…. Eloise Bridgerton, a mother,” you chuckle quietly as he joins in.

“Believe me, as her brother, I feel sorry for those children every day,” he jests. “But even I have to admit she has taken to it better than any of my other siblings, to be honest,” pausing before pulling you tighter into his embrace. “And what say you to children, Mrs Bridgerton?” he queries, his lips brushing the shell of your ear, his voice suddenly silky, that tone that has a frisson running down your spine.

“I say maybe, Mr Bridgerton, just maybe…” you respond breezily over the strain of carol singers from the wireless Phillips flips on, feeling the lightness of hope in your being - that one day, just one day, this war will be over, and the world will be free again.

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[epiphainie]

hi hellooo! here with a bucktommy question for you. how do you envision their first “i love you” to be? ❣️

Hiiii,

Oh god, I don't know. I already have this post about Tommy saying it with no fanfare, frank and sincere and honest, after Buck says something self-deprecating. More of a statement than a love confession. But I'm a huge fan of more romantic - but still understated - first I-love-yous too. Like they're in the middle of something so mundane, even a little boring maybe, but they both feel so settled with each other and the moment feels right, and one of them says I love you with little to no doubt that the other one will reciprocate. I think Buck having a relationship like this would genuinely kill me - where he says it unwaveringly, decidedly, on a random Tuesday evening as if it's a universally acknowledged truth, the foregone conclusion, all the while he's confident Tommy will say it back.

BUT I'm also a huge fan of the desperate and frenzied I-love-yous in the immediate aftermath of an emergency. Where a moment ago they were in this uncertain, frightening place of not knowing if the other one was alive but now they're in each other's arms again and both their emotions are running high, and they feel like their hearts are in their mouths, and adrenaline is muzzling their ears, and maybe it's a bit too early in their relationship, it's probably unadvised, premature, uncustomary but their conscious mind is nowhere to be seen to be making any of that judgment, they just have to say it. So they do; the same way their hands are all clumsy as they pat each other to make sure they're whole, the same way their kisses are desperate, inelegant, artless. Just rushed, mutual, life-affirming love confessions.

[bethanydelleman]

Willoughby did love Marianne (but that makes him worse)

Every time I see discussions of Sense & Sensibility online, there is this implication that Willoughby is some sort of inhuman creature who is incapable of love. John Willoughby was in love with Marianne, which actually makes what he did worse.

Willoughby admits, during his super long soliloquy/confession to Elinor, that he went in meaning to trifle with Marianne but then fell in love with her, here is the important part in Ch 44: “To attach myself to your sister, therefore, was not a thing to be thought of; and with a meanness, selfishness, cruelty, which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even of yours, Miss Dashwood, can ever reprobate too much,—I was acting in this manner, trying to engage her regard, without a thought of returning it… Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless.” He also confirms in this chapter that he did mean to propose, but the Eliza/disinheritance thing happened first.

We might think Willoughby is lying, but Elinor who has a lot of time to think about it afterwards, believes him. Marianne wonders if she was deceived or if Willoughby actually did love her and Elinor assures her in Ch 47, with caveats: “It was selfishness which first made him sport with your affections; which afterwards, when his own were engaged, made him delay the confession of it, and which finally carried him from Barton.”

Moreover, we are told quite frankly by the narrator that Willoughby was in love and felt badly about how everything turned out in the end, Ch 50: “Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang… gave him reason for believing that had he behaved with honour towards Marianne, he might at once have been happy and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought its own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted;—nor that he long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret.”

As further proof, Willoughby would not have tried so hard to avoid Marianne in London if he had not been in love. He knew that his engagement to Sophia was going to devastate Marianne and he didn’t want to witness it. He also didn’t want to be reminded of what he had lost. Because he’s a coward, not a monster. As much as he pretends to think of Marianne’s feelings, he’s trying to spare himself from pain:

The next morning brought another short note from Marianne—still affectionate, open, artless, confiding—everything that could make my conduct most hateful. I could not answer it. I tried—but could not frame a sentence. But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day. If you can pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was then. With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman!

So to sum up, Willoughby did love Marianne, he did mean to propose to her the day that he left Barton, but his fear of (relative) poverty was stronger than his love for Marianne. Willoughby is selfish, he did mean to sport with Marianne’s feelings, and he did abandon the pregnant Eliza, but he’s not some inhuman monster who is incapable of feeling. He’s a rather careless and he took the cowardly, dishonourable way out: he leaves suddenly instead of telling Marianne the truth. He marries Sophia instead of retrenching and getting out of debt through patience and hard work. The fact that his love didn't overcome adversity doesn't mean it wasn't real. It just means that he is both capable of love and able to destroy the heart of the woman he loves.

His actions would be far less reprehensible if he was incapable of love.

[dirtyoldmanhole]

fluffy-ish gunter/corrin fic excerpt i'm exceptionally endeared to, and i think you all will like as well ~ post-possession, pre-final-anankos fight. gunter just had to debrief the royals on some of more personal anankos memories.

unedited

-

“Do you want company, sir?”

Corrin would never voice these worries to the dusty air, but his hands were shaking badly again.

“Please.”

The quiet answering rasp almost broke her heart in that stone-still moment, and so gently, she moved to daintily sit next to him on that half-broken stone wall. Equally as gently, she laid her head on his armoured bicep.

“Do you know why I don't drink, Corrin?” It was in a tone of a man confessing, and so she stayed silent, eyelids closed and savouring the warmth of his muscled body. She thought she felt the faintest rasp of a strained, self loathing chuckle between those clasped black gauntlets. “I would have been in oblivion the entire time, my love. Twenty years at this point, and then some at the bottom of a bottle with my despair. Krakenburg, as you know now, would have doubtlessly taken advantage of that weakness.”

The last line, she almost thought she did not hear at all.

“I never forgot. Not for one day.”

Heartbeats stretched.

It was many moments later before he shifted again, wearily rubbing fingers one last time through his lined face.

Very slowly, he stretched, exaggeratedly, and slipped off of the stone wall as surely as he shed off the weariness and into a newer mask. The transformation did not take long; he turned, and one moment he wore the weight of the world on his shoulders, and in the next he wore a lightly amused expression she recognized as her old lecturer, teacher, and mentor. 

She had never noticed how slinky her old man was. She had, however, realised with a new appreciation how artless of an actor he was. There was a sinewy grace about it that kept her watching. For the heavy black-armoured plates he preferred, he always moved with a dancer’s taunt precision. One of his hands flexed with a catlike stretch before he laid it against the stone wall.

A lone gauntleted claw of his began to sketch out a crude layout of the castle against the stone. Spindly light white lines began to lace each other as he scratched at the rough texture, and he drew the throne room that she was far too familiar with, and then a spider-webbed series of tunnels radiating outwards.

“Castle Gyges has many tunnels. You are familiar with some of them but it is with luck we have several routes to the surface.” The design was quickly taking on a complexity far beyond what she could keep track of. “Essentially, two main routes to take.”

“How do you know all of...” 

At her words, Gunter gave a crooked, sly glance back down; too haunted to be called a true smile, and with his raised eyebrow framed by the shadows—the answer hit her like a bolt of lightning smiting down from the heavens. Corrin suddenly felt foolish, afraid that it would send her lover back to much darker memories from when he was under the thrall of the silent dragon. 

“Oh.”

“Indeed.” He nodded back at the pictograph, thankfully too morbidly amused to care about her unintentional tactlessness. Gunter continued lightly in the odd intimate moment. “You might even say possession has its uses. Now, pay attention my dear. This inside ramp that you all took is likely to be structurally unsafe by now, with multiple levels prone to collapsing.” One of his armoured digits traced a line just inside the throne room, a spindly scratch ringing the room itself. 

He was far too attractive like this, with his other gauntleted hand bracketing his other hip. The worst part, she decided then and there, was the smug little swagger with his legs crossed.

“There is, however—” And this time he tapped at another line slightly further away from the innermost rectangular room. “—a little known tunnel that is a path straight to the surface and far less likely to collapse on us midway and send us to an earlier grave." He chuckled darkly, glancing back at her with an odd fondness. “It will take longer, and there are traps—mine of course—but I'll show you where and how we can disable those.”

Oh he was pleased, Corrin’s stomach gave a little wobble-flop upon hearing his husky purr laced with pride, and it was her turn to try very hard to resist a blink or any kind of reaction. 

He had been planning this betrayal for much longer than anyone had ever assumed, and she did not know how she would have responded to that knowledge, days ago. In the end, after a small huff, Corrin did not know what it said about herself that she didn't care, now. Only that they all arrived back with no more lives lost.

“You’re recommending the longer path, sir.” Murmuring with her chin across her arms, and knees tucked in, she swayed on the stone wall as she watched up at him back. 

Gunter nodded with a professor’s approval. “There is also the element of surprise. Anankos is expecting you to be frightened, to opt for the quickest, easiest route.” 

And for you to not give us help. Corrin thought. 

The walls suddenly rumbled again, severe enough that pebbles clattered and echoed worryingly along the stone floor that stretched into the dark gloom beyond.

Gunter straightened, bracing himself off the stone and shedding yet another mask from that warmly suave lecturer she was intimately endeared to and back into the distantly cold knight, yet one who was a black-armoured protector. Now, she could only see the creased worry in the lines of his eyes adding to the bags under his eyes. 

He stared upwards with a calculating look, restless gaze searching for any additional sounds or clues. The endless stone seemed even heavier and more threatening than usual, pressing down ominously. 

“We need to get out of here now, milady. The quicker, the better. I would not trust this place past an hour… his power is growing again, even with Azura’s mitigations.”

Corrin nodded, reluctantly pushing off of the stone wall, and lingered by his side. 

“… thank you.” 

It was not the right words, could never capture all the tender, complicated nuances striving in her heart towards her lover. Instead, she buried her face in the crook of his arm, that unarmored tenderness of his muscles where she could feel his warmth against the dark cloth and leather, and savoured his masculine scent.

I missed you, so much.

A gauntleted hand closed around the back of her hair, and slowly stroked the strands back as he had always done since she was a child. 

[films-on-a-plane]

to be watched list (movies)

# (500) Days of Summer (2009) 3 Generations (2015) 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) 12 Years a Slave (2013) 13 Going on 30 (2004) 27 Dresses (2008) 48 Hrs. (1982) 50 First Dates (2004) 50/50 (2011)

A A Bad Moms Christmas (2017) A Cinderella Story (2004) A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) A Happening of Monumental Proportions (2017) About Time (2013) Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995) Addams Family Values (1993) Adopting Audrey (2021) Aladdin (1992) Alice in Wonderland (1951) Almost Famous (2000) Along Came Polly (2004) Always Be My Maybe (2019) Amazing Grace (2018) American Psycho (2000) And Then We Danced (2019) Anger Management (2003) Another 48 Hrs. (1990) Another Cinderella Story (2008) Aquamarine (2006) Armageddon (1998) Artless (2019) Atonement (2007) Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

B Band Aid (2017) Bandits (2001) Barbie (2023) Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) Beauty and the Beast (1991) Beauty and the Beast (2017) Beetlejuice (1988) Before I Fall (2017) Before Sunset (2004) Being John Malkovich (1999) Being the Ricardos (2021) Beverly Hills Cop (1984) Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) Big Daddy (1999) Big Fish (2003) Big Momma's House (2000) Big Momma's House 2 (2006) Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (2011) Blind Ambition (2021) Booksmart (2019) Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2020) Bowfinger (1999) Brain on Fire (2016) Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) Bring It On (2000) Bros (2022) Bruce Almighty (2003) Buena Vista Social Club (1999) But I'm a Cheerleader (1999)

C Cadet Kelly (2002) Cake (2014) Can You Keep a Secret (2019) Capernaum (2018) Carol (2015) Casper (1995) Castle in the Sky (1986) Catch Me If You Can (2002) Center Stage (2000) Charlie and the Chocolate Factor (2005) Chocolat (2000) Chuck Berry (2018) Cinderella (1950) Cinderella (2015) Click (2006) Clueless (1995) CODA (2021) Coming to America (1988) Coming to America 2 (2021) Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004) Cool Runnings (1993) Coraline (2009) Corpse Bride (2005) Coyote Ugly (2000) Crazy Rich Asians (2018) Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) Cunningham (2019)

D Dara & Ed's Road to Mandalay (2017) Dead Man Walking (1995) Dear Zoe (2022) Death Becomes Her (1992) D.E.B.S. (2004) Destination Wedding (2018) Die Hard (1988) Die Hard 2 (1990) Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) Disenchanted (2022) Do Revenge (2022) Dream Scenario (2023) Dude, Where's My Car? (2000) Dumb and Dumber (1994) Dumb and Dumber To (2014)

E Easy A (2010) Echo in the Canyon (2018) Edward Scissorhands (1990) Eight Grade (2018) Elf (2003) Ella Enchanted (2004) Emily the Criminal (2022) Enchanted (2007) Enough Said (2013) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Evergreen (2020) Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) Everything Is Copy (2015) Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)

F Flee (2021) Flight Club (1999) Footloose (1984) Forrest Gump (1994) Frankweenie (2012) Friends with Benefits (2011) Four Good Days (2020) Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Fun with Dick and Jane (2005)

G Generation Um… (2012) Get a Clue (2002) Ghost (1990) Ghostbusters (1984) Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) Girl, Interrupted (1999) Glass Onion (2022) Godzilla (2014) Gone Girl (2014) Gone in 60 Seconds (2000) Grease (1978) Grown Ups (2010) Grown Ups 2 (2013)

H Halloweentown (1998) Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009) Happiness for Beginners (2023) Harriet the Spy (1996) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) Haunted Mansion (2023) Heat (1995) Heathers (1988) Her (2013) Hocus Pocus (1993) Hocus Pocus 2 (2022) Home Alone (1990) Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) Hope Springs (2012) Horrible Bosses (2011) Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017) How to Train Your Dragon (2010) Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

I I Care a Lot (2020) I Know What You Need (2023) I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007) I Smile Back (2015) I Used to Be Famous (2022) Identity Theft (2013) If I Stay (2014) I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) I'm Totally Fine (2022) Inception (2010) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) Inglourious Basterds (2009) Into the Wild (2007) It's Complicated (2009)

J James and the Giant Peach (1996) Jawbreaker (1999) Jennifer's Body (2009) Jojo Rabbit (2019) Joker (2019) Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) Juno (2007) Jurassic Park (1993) Jurassic Park III (2001) Jurassic World (2015) Jurassic World Dominion (2022) Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) Just Go with It (2011)

K Kiki's Delivery (1989) Kimi (2022) King Kong (2005) Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) Knives Out (2019)

L Lady and the Tramp (1955) Lady Bird (2017) Land (2021) Late Bloomers (2023) Legally Blonde (2001) Let Them All Talk (2020) Lethal Weapon (1987) Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) Léon: The Professional (1994) Liar Liar (1997) Life as We Know It (2010) Little Forest (2018) Little Miss Sunshine (2006) Little Women (1994) Little Women (2019) Live Free or Die Hard (2007) Lost in Translation (2003) Lou (2022) Love Actually (2003) Love, Rosie (2014) Luck (2022) Luzzu (2021)

M Maggie (2015) Maleficent (2014) Mamma Mia! (2008) Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) Man on the Moon (1999) Marry Me (2022) Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy (2013) Maybe I Do (2023) Me, Myself & Irene (2000) Mean Girls (2004) Meet the Parents (2000) Meet the Fockers (2004) Megamind (2010) Memento (2000) Mermaids (1990) Metro (1997) Mona Lisa Smile (2003) Monster House (2006) Midnight in Paris (2011) Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) Miss Congeniality (2000) Miss Sloane (2016) Mommy (2014) Monsters, Inc. (2001) Moonrise Kingdom (2012) Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022) Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) Mr. Wrong (1996) Murder Mystery (2019) Murder Mystery 2 (2023) My First Summer (2010) My Girl (1991) My Girl 2 (1994) My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

N Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994) Now You See Me 2 (2016) New York Minute (2004) Nanny McPhee (2005) Next Exit (2022) Now You See Me (2013) Not Another Teen Movie (2001) Notting Hill (1999) No Country for Old Men (2007) No Strings Attached (2011) No Sudden Move (2021) Nomadland (2020) Norbit (2007) Not Okay (2022) Now You See Me (2013) Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000)

O Ocean's 8 (2018) Ocean's Eleven (2001) On the Basis of Sex (2018) One Day (2011) One Life (2011) One Life (2023) Oppenheimer (2023) Out of Office (2022)

P Paint (2023) Peter Pan (1953) Phoebe in Wonderland Pieces of a Woman (2020) Pippi Longstocking (1969) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) Plan B (2021) Ponyi (2008) Poor Things (2023) Pretty in Pink (1986) Pretty Woman (1990) P.S. I Love You (2007) Psycho (1960) Psycho (1998) Pulp Fiction (1994)

Q

R Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Raise Your Voice (2004) Rango (2011) Ratatouille (2007) RED (2010) RED 2 (2013) Red Eye (2005) Remember Me (2010) Ricki and the Flash (2015) Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) Robot & Frank (2012) Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) Room (2015)

S Scary Movie (2000) Schindler's List (1993) Shallow Hal (2001) She Said (2022) She's All That (1999) She's the Man (2006) She's the One (1996) Short Term 12 (2012) Shotgun Wedding (2022) Siberia (2018) Sixteen Candles (1984) Sleeping Beauty (1959) Sleeping with the Enemy (1991) Sleepless in Seattle (1993) Sleepover (2004) Sleepy Hollow (1999) Slumberland (2022) Snatch (2000) So Undercover (2012) Something's Gotta Give (2003) Sound City (2013) South of the River (2020) Speak (2004) Speed (1994) Spider-Man (2002) Spirited (2022) Spirited Away (2001) Stand by Me (1986) Steel Magnolias (1989) Stepmom (1998) Suffragette (2015) Summerland (2020) Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) Sweet Home Alabama (2002)

T Tangled (2010) Tenet (2020) The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) The Accountant (2016) The Addams Family (1991) he Amazing Spider-Man (2012) The Big Sick (2017) The Breakfast Club (1985) The Connected Universe (2016) The Craft (1996) The Craft: Legacy (2020) The Devil Wears Prada (2006) The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) The Do-Over (2016) The DUFF (2015) The Edge of Seventeen (2016) The Estate (2022) The Fallout (2021) The Family Stone (2005) The Favourite (2018) The First Wives Club (1996) The Florida Project (2017) The Fundamentals of Caring (2016) The Girl on the Train (2016) The Godfather (1972) The Godfather Part II (1974) The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) The Half of It (2020) The Hangover (2009) The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) The Holiday (2006) The Incredibles (2004) The Last Song (2010) The Lion King (1994) The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003) The Lost City (2022) The Lost Daughter (2021) The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) The Lovely Bones (2009) The Mask (1994) The Matrix (1999) The Matrix Reloaded (2003) The Matrix Revolutions (2003) The Matrix Resurrections (2021) The Maze Runner (2014) The Mexican (2001) The Mummy (1999) The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) The Notebook (2004) The Notebooks (2021) The Nutty Professor (1996) The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) The Pez Outlaw (2022) The Princess and the Frog (2009) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004) The Princess Diaries (2001) The Proposal (2009) The Secret World of Arriety (2010) The Shawshank Redemption (1994) The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005) The Sound of Music (1965) The Spectacular Now (2013) The Switch (2010) The Virgin Suicides (1999) The Witches of Eastwick (1987) The Woman Who Ran (2020) The Worst Person in the World (2021) Thelma & Louise (1991) There's Something About Mary (1998) Thirteen (2003) Thumbsucker (2005) Ticket to Paradise (2022) To the Bone (2017) Toy Story (1995) Trading Places (1983) Transporter (2002) Transporter 2 (2005) Transporter 3 (2008) Twilight (2008) Tyger Tyger (2019)

U Up (2009) Uptown Girls (2003)

V

W Walk With Me (2021) WALL-E (2008) We're the Millers (2013) What a Girl Wants (2003) What Happens in Vegas (2008) White Chicks (2004) Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) Wild Child (2008)

X

Y Yes Man (2008) Your Sister's Sister (2011)Your Name. (2016) You're Ugly Too (2015) Yours, Mine & Ours (2005) You've Got Mail (1998)

Z Zodi & Tehu, frères du désert (2023)

[sugarpixie]

Anonymous said: What was your favorite subject at school?

sugarpixie:

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。

{✿} – ❝Oh! I didn’t go to school.❞ Pippin openly confessed, the happy-go-lucky smile that rested easy on his face a clear demonstration of his lack of embarrassment upon the revelation, his artless fingers enthusiastically undoing the wrapper around the double chocolate chip ice cream bar he had procured from the freezer. ❝My momma & poppa taught me some things when I was little, and then I just sorta learned the rest along the way by livin’ my life to the fullest and keeping an open mind!❞ The sugar pixie wore an eager grin, his pale blue eyes shimmering anticipatorily towards the ice cream bar that he was finding increasingly difficult to resist. He seemed contentedly oblivious to his own academic benightments, but at least he seemed to have gotten by so far despite lacking any kind of formal education. Although, sometimes his blatant illiteracy would occasionally cause him a small hitch from time to time. Pippin babbled, ❝And now I know lotsa really cool and interesting things! For example: did you know that fish can cough? Well, they can - !! Isn’t that neat?! I wonder what that would sound like underwater...!❞ He pondered this by tapping thoughtfully on his chin, completely overlooking that he was still holding the now-beginning-to-thaw frozen treat and was, in fact, spreading it all over his face as a result of this. He continued to talk nineteen to the dozen without missing a single beat, his physical energy just as easily matching the rapidity with which he spoke, stimming energetically in his seat. It was a wonder he was still sitting down! ❝Also, in the 1982 movie ‘Poltergeist’, they used skeletons from real corpses for some of the props! One of the actresses even swam with ‘em before she found out they weren’t made of rubber.❞ He announced this feature with the same childlike wonder that he had with reference to the run-of-the-mill fish fact, ❝Yeah...! I know lotsa fun facts.❞ He’s clearly incognizant to the morbidity of what he’s just said and how drastically it differed from the first “fun fact” he had chosen to share, rocking absentmindedly from forward to back as he, at last, gave into temptation and chowed down contentedly on his ice cream bar, unobservant of the incongruence between his statements. ❝You want another one? I’ve got hundreds...!❞

[bothsidesnow-plog]

Bitter rivals. Beloved friends. Survivors.

There is an audible rhythm to a Grand Slam tennis tournament, a thwock-tock, tock-thwock of strokes, like beats per minute, that steadily grows fainter as the field diminishes. At first the locker room is a hive of 128 competitors, milling and chattering, but each day their numbers ebb, until just two people are left in that confrontational hush known as the final. For so many years, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova were almost invariably the last two, left alone in a room so empty yet intimate that they could practically hear what was inside the other’s chest. Thwock-tock.

They dressed side by side. They waited together, sometimes ate together and entered the arena together. Then they would play a match that seemed like a personal cross-examination, running each other headlong into emotional confessions, concessions. And afterward they would return to that small room of two, where they showered and changed, observing with sidelong glances the other’s triumphalism or tears, states beyond mere bare skin. No one else could possibly understand it.

Except for the other.

“She knew me better than I knew me,” Navratilova says.

They have known each other for 50 years now, outlasting most marriages. Aside from blood kin, Navratilova points out, “I’ve known Chris longer than anybody else in my life, and so it is for her.” Lately, they have never been closer — a fact they refuse to cheapen with sentimentality. “It’s been up and down, the friendship,” Evert says. At the ages of 68 and 66, respectively, Evert and Navratilova have found themselves more intertwined than ever, by an unwelcome factor. You want to meet an opponent who draws you nearer in mutual understanding? Try having cancer at the same time.

“It was like, are you kidding me?” Evert says.

The shape of the relationship is an hourglass. They first met as teenagers in 1973, became friends and then split apart as each rose to No. 1 in the world at the direct expense of the other. They contested 80 matches — 60 of them finals — riveting for their contrasts in tactics and temperament. After a 15-year rivalry, they somehow reached a perfect equipoise of 18 Grand Slam victories each.

On some slow or rainy day, when the tennis at Wimbledon is banging and artless as a metronome or suspended by weather, do yourself a favor. Call up highlights of Evert and Navratilova’s match at the 1981 U.S. Open. They are 26 and 24 years old, respectively, honed to fine edges. It’s as if they were purposely constructed to test each other — and to whip up intense reactions from their audiences, the adorable blond American middle-class heroine with the frictionless grace against the flurrying Eastern European with sculpted muscles who played like a sword fighter.

Evert played from a restrained conventional demeanor, with ribbons in her hair, earrings in her ears. Yet she was utterly new. Audiences had never seen anything quite like the compressed lethality of this two-fisted young woman, who knocked off the legendary Margaret Court at the age of just 15 in 1970. She was a squinteyed, firm-chinned executioner who delivered strokes like milled steel.

She had mystique. And she refused to be hemmed in. As she held the No. 1 ranking for five straight years, she reserved the right to court romantic danger with a bewildering array of famous men, not all of them suitable for a nice Catholic girl, from the surly Jimmy Connors to superstar actor Burt Reynolds — and to put them second to her career. Her composure cloaked one of the toughest minds in the annals of sport, and her .900 winning percentage remains virtually unrivaled in tennis history.

Navratilova was her inverse, a gustily emotional left-handed serve-and-volleyer who challenged every traditional definition of heroine with an edgy militancy. Her game had an acrobatic suppleness that was also entirely novel — never had a female athlete moved with such airborne ease. Or acted so honestly. Navratilova was as overtly political as Evert was popular. Her defection from communist Czechoslovakia in 1975 was an act of unimaginable bravery, and her struggle to win acceptance from Western crowds was compounded by her defiant inability to censor herself or mask her homosexuality. Advised to put a man in her box at Wimbledon, she refused. Once, when asked whether she was “openly” gay, she shot back, “As opposed to closedly?”

More prideful generations can’t comprehend how in the vanguard Navratilova was when she came out in 1981 or the price she paid in lost endorsements. The New York Times that year announced that homosexuality was “the most sensitive issue in the sports marketplace, more delicate than drugs, more controversial than violence.” Male sportswriters fixated on the veins in her arms. Newsweek veered out of its way to accuse her of “accentuating some lifestyle manifesto.” She repaid them all by becoming the first female athlete to win a million dollars in prize money in a single year.

Small wonder Evert and Navratilova’s matches seemed like such colossal encounters. As they competed, the TV cameras zeroed in on their faces and found mother-of-dragons expressions, a willingness to play to ashes. That too was new.

It once had been considered “unnatural” for a woman to contend with such unembarrassed intensity. As Evert’s own agent said in 1981, female sports stars were expected to be “ladylike” and not too “greedy” in their negotiations, while their male counterparts could win “every nickel and feel quite comfortable about it.” Not anymore. Evert and Navratilova had established their common right “to go to the ends of the earth, the absolute ends of the earth, to achieve something,” Evert says.

By the time Evert and Navratilova retired from singles play, in 1989 and 1994, respectively, they had reached a mutual understanding. Not only were they level with an equal number of major titles, but the rivalry was so transcendent, it had become a kind of joint accomplishment.

After their retirements, they followed strangely similar courses. They were neighbors in Aspen, Colo., and Florida, at times living just minutes from each other. Evert’s longtime base is Boca Raton, while Navratilova has a home in Miami Beach as well as a small farm just up the road in Evert’s birthplace of Fort Lauderdale, where she keeps a multitude of chickens. “She brings me eggs,” Evert says. Each eventually went into tennis broadcasting, which meant they continued to meet at Grand Slam fortnights. “Our lives are so parallel, it’s eerie when you think about it,” Navratilova says.

They became the kind of friends who talked and texted weekly, sometimes exchanging black-box confidences deep in the night. And who could tease each other with a mischief they wouldn’t tolerate from anyone else. On Navratilova’s 60th birthday, she received a Cartier box from Evert. Inside was a necklace with three rings of white gold, signifying the two and their long friendship. “I guess I’m kind of the guy in our relationship, giving her jewelry,” Evert cracks.

The parallels were funny, until they weren’t.

In January 2022, Evert learned that she had Stage 1C ovarian cancer. As Evert embarked on a grueling six cycles of chemotherapy, Navratilova pulled the Cartier necklace from her jewelry box and put it on, a talisman. “I wore it all the time when I wanted her to get well,” Navratilova says. For months, she never took it off.

Only one thing made her remove it: radiation. In December 2022, Navratilova received her own diagnosis: She had not one but two early-stage cancers, in her throat and breast.

“I finally had to take it off when I got zapped,” Navratilova says.

On a late spring day, Evert and Navratilova sat together in an elegant Miami hotel, both finally cancer-free at the end of long dual sieges. Evert was just a few weeks removed from her fourth surgery in 16 months, a reconstruction following a mastectomy she underwent in late January. Navratilova had just finished the last session of a scorching protocol of radiation and chemo, during which she lost 29 pounds. She toyed with a plate of gluten-free pasta, happy to be able to swallow without pain.

They were finally ready to look over their shoulders and tell some stories. New stories but also some old ones that felt fresh again or came with a new frankness.

Evert recalled the day she phoned Navratilova to tell her she had cancer.

“She was one of the very first people I told,” she says.

Wait a second.

Is Evert saying that the rival who dealt her the deepest professional cuts of her life, whose mere body language on the court once made her seethe, was among the very first people she wanted to talk to when she got cancer? It’s one thing to share a rich history and be neighbors and swap gifts and teasing, but they are those kinds of confidantes?

And is the same true for Navratilova, that Evert — whose mere existence meant that no matter how much she won, she could never really win, who at one point dominated her with an infuriating superciliousness — was among the first people she called when she got cancer? Is that what they are saying?

Indeed, it is.

“When I called her, it was a feeling of, like, coming home,” Evert says.

Hang on, you say.

Go back.

Guts and glory, together and apart

They met Feb. 25, 1973, in the player lounge of a Florida tour stop. Evert, 18, was playing backgammon with a tournament official at a table by a wall. Though she had been a top player for two years by then, she was by nature shy and felt isolated by her fame and the circumscribing stereotype that came with it. Sports Illustrated would paint her as a “composite of Sandra Dee, the Carpenters, and yes, apple pie,” which she dealt with by cultivating a clamped, sardonic purse of the mouth.

Evert glanced up and saw a new girl approaching, pale and plump as a dumpling, with a guileless face beneath a mop of hair. “Hi, Chris!” she recalls Navratilova blurting.

From the 16-year-old Navratilova’s point of view, it was Evert who spoke first, giving her a sweet murmured “Hi” and a small wave. Oh, my God, Chris Evert said hello to me, Navratilova thought. Navratilova recognized Evert from the pictures she pored over in World Tennis magazine, one of the few subscriptions she could get in her home village of Revnice, outside of Prague.

Let’s stipulate that the greetings were simultaneous, the reflexive reactions of two girls who were the antithetical of mean, more sensitive than their other competitors ever realized, “both always underestimated in our empathy,” as Navratilova says. And who had the mutual desire to break the “taboo” of competition, as Evert once called it, that inhibited so many girls.

Later in the tournament, Evert spotted Navratilova again. “Picture this,” Evert says. Navratilova was walking straight through the grounds in a one-piece bathing suit and flip flops, oblivious to stares at her crisscrossing tan lines. It was Navratilova’s first trip to the United States; she was granted an eight-week leave by the communist Czechoslovakian government to try her game against the Western elites’, and she was determined to luxuriate in it. She’s got guts, Evert thought.

Their first match a month later, in Akron, Ohio, on March 22, 1973, is crystal to them both a half-century later. Though Evert won in straight sets, Navratilova pushed her to 7-6 in the first. “Five-four in the tiebreaker,” Navratilova says instantly, as soon as it’s mentioned, bristling, “And I actually had a set point.”

Evert had never faced anything like it. The curving lefty serve caromed away from her, and so did the charging volleys. “She had weapons that I hadn’t seen in a young player — ever,” Evert says. Two things gave Evert relief: Navratilova’s lack of fitness — she had put on 20 pounds in four weeks on American pancakes — and her emotionalism. “She was almost crying on the court in the match, you know, just moaning,” Evert says. Nevertheless, Evert had never felt such a formidableness from a new opponent and never would again. “Overwhelming” is the word Evert searches for — and finds. “More than any player coming up in the last 40 years.”

To Navratilova, it was equally memorable, for the simple reason that she had nearly taken a set off Evert. “For me, that was unforgettable. But, yeah, I made an impression. … I was pretty confident that I would beat her one day. I just didn’t know how long it would take.”

Friendship was easy enough at first — so long as Evert was winning. She won 16 of their first 20 matches. In their first Grand Slam final, at the 1975 French Open, she smoked Navratilova 6-2, 6-1 in the second and third sets after casually sharing a lunch of roasted chicken with her.

Evert was so utterly regnant and aloof in those days she seemed to Navratilova like a castle with a moat. She had a forbidding self-containment, a stony demeanor that one competitor from the 1970s, Lesley Hunt, likened in Sports Illustrated to “playing a blank wall.”

Navratilova could not fathom how Evert cast such a huge projection with such an unprepossessing figure. “I was like, ‘Holy s---, how does she do it?’ ” Navratilova remembers. Evert stood just 5-foot-6 and weighed a slim-shouldered 125 pounds. But she had a superb economy of motion — and something else. One day Navratilova watched fascinated as Evert practiced against her younger sister Jeanne Evert, who also played on the tour. Both Everts had two-handed backhands, and they wore skirts with no pockets. Which meant that to hit a backhand, someone had to drop the ball she carried in her left hand and it would bounce distractingly around her feet. As Navratilova watched, she realized with growing amusement that Chris was engaged in a subtle contest of will.

“It was kind of a mental fight,” Navratilova recalls. “Who was going to hit the first ball? Because whoever didn’t hit first would have to drop their ball.” Chris never missed the chance to hit first. “It was a small thing, but it took a steely determination,” Navratilova says. “And she never missed.” It registered. By the end of the session Navratilova understood that Evert’s greatest weapon was “her brain.”

Navratilova herself was so mentally distractible that she would follow the flight of a bird across the stadium sky. Her thoughts and feelings seemed to blow straight through her, unfiltered. Evert could not help but be disarmed by this openhearted, unconstrained young woman who seemed hungry to experience … everything. Pancakes. Pool time. Freedom. Friendship. Fast cars.

Evert’s urge to befriend Navratilova won out over her reserve. Evert invited her to be her doubles partner and even took her on a double date, with Dean Martin Jr., son of the entertainer, and Desi Arnaz Jr., Martin’s actor friend and pop-band collaborator. The teen idols squired Evert and Navratilova to a drive-in movie.

Evert and Navratilova traveled together, practiced together, even brunched before they met in finals. “I was a tough nut to crack,” Evert observes. “But she was so innocent and almost vulnerable when she was young, I trusted being safe with her.”

Over dinners and glasses of wine, Navratilova discovered the mutinous side of Evert, which expressed itself with an unsuspected saltiness. Evert delighted in telling Navratilova scandalously dirty jokes. The outward banality of the girl hurling herself off the pedestal compounded Navratilova’s outbursts of laughter. “The curtain would fall,” Navratilova says, “and the funny Chris came out. The filter was gone. The walls were gone. And that’s when I realized she just kept the cards close to her chest. But she was soooo mischievous underneath it all.”

By 1976, however, Navratilova began to score more victories over Evert. In that year’s Wimbledon semifinals, it was all Evert could do to hold her off, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4. “I was nipping at her heels,” Navratilova says. “I was becoming a threat.”

Which is when all the trouble started and they entered the narrowest part of the hourglass. Evert believed she had gotten too close to Navratilova. She broke up their doubles partnership. “She ditched me,” Navratilova says.

Evert did it politely, telling Navratilova she would have to find another partner because she wanted to focus on her singles. But it stung. And Navratilova knew the real reason. “Chris, by her own admission, could only be close friends with people who never had a chance of beating her,” Navratilova says.

Evert hated to play someone she cared about — hated it. “I thought, ‘God, I can’t be emotional towards these people,’ ” Evert says now. “… It was easier not to even know them.”

Evert’s on-court demeanor was a facade, developed to please her father and coach, Jimmy Evert, a renowned teaching pro at the public Holiday Park in Fort Lauderdale. Jimmy was a man of such rigor and unbending rectitude that he refused to raise his $6 hourly fee for lessons because of his daughter’s success. But he was not right about everything. He demanded that Chris commit to tennis to the exclusion of all else — friends were incompatible with rivals, he told her. “I was raised in a house that did not encourage relationships,” she says. And he brooked no dissent. “It was a fearful sort of upbringing,” she adds. The result was a young woman who beneath her stoicism roiled with insecurity and anxiety.

Navratilova observes that, in its way, Evert’s childhood was as stifling as her own had been in Czechoslovakia. “We are much more the same than different, really,” she says. “So much of it was imposed on both of us, one way or the other, with her Catholic, proper girl upbringing and me being suppressed by communism.”

Evert convinced herself that she and Navratilova had become too familiar with each other and that it cost her an edge.

So “I separated myself from her,” Evert says.

It was bad timing for Navratilova, who was feeling doubly cut off. A year earlier, she had defected. Czech authorities had increasingly expressed the ominous sentiment that Navratilova was getting too Americanized — partly thanks to her budding friendship with Evert — and she feared they were about to choke off her career.

Navratilova struggled with homesickness; concern for her family, whom she would not see for almost five years; mastering a new language (she studied English by watching “I Love Lucy” reruns); and the stresses of hiding her homosexuality. As she related in her autobiography, by the time Evert ditched her at the U.S. Open, “I was a walking candidate for a nervous breakdown.” She lost in the opening round to a grossly inferior player, Janet Newberry, and dissolved into sobs on national television.

But Navratilova emerged from the catharsis a firmer character. She watched with a mounting, gnawing dissatisfaction as Evert dominated the Grand Slams, challenged only by Evonne Goolagong. At one point, Navratilova heard Evert talk in an interview about how her rivalry with Goolagong was “defining” her.

Navratilova bridled at the statement. “I remember thinking, what about me?” Navratilova recalls.

When it finally came, Navratilova’s breakthrough — and the role reversal — was breath-snatching. By 1981 she had developed some armor. Training with Nancy Lieberman, the former basketball great, she dropped her body fat to 8 percent. Lieberman told her she had to get “mean” about Evert and showed what she meant by being intentionally rude to Evert in player lounges. Evert would start to greet them, and Lieberman would turn her back or say frostily, “Are you talking to me?” It quietly infuriated Evert. “They weren’t very nice to me,” Evert says. “I mean, Nancy taught her to hate me.”

From 1982 to 1984, it was Navratilova’s turn to be cold. She reached 10 Grand Slam finals — and won eight of them. In that stretch, she beat Evert 14 straight times, with an abbreviating serve-and-volley power that seemed almost dismissive. “She was in the way of me getting to No. 1,” Navratilova says. “So I kind of created that distance. She was my carrot when I was training. You know, I would imagine beating Chris. She became the villain, even though she really wasn’t.”

Evert struggled not to lose heart, especially when Navratilova beat her by 6-1, 6-3 in the 1983 U.S. Open. “It was not a good feeling to know that I wasn’t even in the game,” Evert says. About to turn 30, she had fallen behind in a variety of ways, from her fitness to the fact that Navratilova was using a graphite racket while she still used wood. She was also trying to sort her personal life and separated from her husband of five years, British player John Lloyd.

Navratilova paraded her triumph by whipping around in a white Rolls-Royce convertible, one of six cars in her garage. She won so much that by 1984 it made her generous again. She now trained with a more amiable tennis tactician named Mike Estep, and her partner, Judy Nelson, a former Texas beauty contestant, liked Evert and worked to repair the relationship. At Wimbledon that July, after beating Evert, 7-6 (7-5), 6-2, to even their all-time match record at 30-30, Navratilova was sensitive to Evert’s quiet devastation. Navratilova said sweetly into the victor’s microphone, “I wish we could just quit right now and never play each other again because it’s not right for one of us to say we’re better.”

“So does that mean she’s retiring now?” Evert said in a news conference afterward, wisecrackery intact.

Navratilova’s dominance of Evert that summer made her more of an antiheroine than she had ever been — and resulted in one of the most wounding days of her career. On the afternoon of the 1984 U.S. Open final, they had an interminably tense wait as Pat Cash and Ivan Lendl engaged in a five-set men’s semifinal that went to two tiebreakers and lasted nearly four hours. There was nothing to do but stare into space or chat. Evert became starving. Navratilova, who had a bagel, split it and handed her half.

When they finally took the court, they needed a while to find their form — and then they suddenly went into full classic mode. When Evert began to lace the court with passing shots as if she was running out clotheslines, taking the opening set 6-4, the crowd leaped to its feet and roared like jet engines.

But when Navratilova took the second set 6-4, there came a smattering of boos. As Navratilova turned the match in her favor, some grew surly. They began to applaud her errors and cheered when she double-faulted. When she won it with a knifing volley, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, there was a barely polite ovation.

Navratilova was unstrung by the rejection. As Estep gave her a congratulatory hug, she burst into tears in his arms. “Why were they so against me?” she asked Estep. The answer: Because she had won too much against Evert. It was Navratilova’s sixth straight Grand Slam victory — and the most ambivalent feeling she ever had. She buried her head in a towel, shoulders quivering.

One person knew how Navratilova felt that day: Evert. For years she had lived with the “ice maiden” label and frigidness from crowds that considered her too impassive. Goolagong, the wispy, ethereal Australian, had always been more favored by fans, to the point that on one occasion Evert came back into the locker room after a loss and flung her rackets to the floor and spat bitterly, “Now I hope they’re happy.”

Evert and Navratilova wanted to be appreciated for who they were. But it felt impossible with all the media caricatures of them as princesses, robots, “Chris America” vs. the foreigner, the delicate sweetheart vs. the bulging lesbian. “All that stuff hurt,” Navratilova says.

Evert refused to play into any of the tropes that day — or any other day. For which Navratilova felt deeply grateful. “Chris never did anything to make it worse, you know?” Navratilova says.

At some point in the wake of that difficult year, they struck a private agreement: They would not respond to the stereotypes or any egging on from the media or their own audiences. If either had a question about something, she would speak directly to the other, “so that we knew where we stand,” Navratilova says.

Early in 1985, Evert beat Navratilova for the first time in over two years, at the Virginia Slims of Florida. “Nobody beats Chris Evert 15 times in a row,” she deadpanned.

The renewal set up another masterpiece, the 1985 French Open final. The match is a fascinating revisit — and reveal. After they took the court, what’s striking is how they had borrowed from each other, forced the other to adapt. It’s Navratilova who wins some of the longest baseline rallies and Evert who presses the net first on some points. Navratilova has fully appropriated imperiousness, blond and bejeweled, diamonds in her ears, gold bracelets and rings. Evert is the one who is stripped down — her hair is shorn short, and there is nothing on her wrist but a sweatband. It’s clear she had gone back to work, developed ropes of muscle in her arms and stealthily broadened her game over those two seasons of losses.

Right hand against left, they went at each other like flashing sabers.

As their rallies wore on, they played with apparent curiosity. “There had been so many matches. How do you surprise one another?” Navratilova says. “How do you find something new or different? When you know everything already?” Sometimes, as the ball flew, one of them would just nod before it landed and acknowledge that it was too good with a “Yep.”

Evert would never be better; she found ways to wrong-foot the charging, slashing Navratilova. She always had been irritated by the shoulder swagger Navratilova could show after a great point, but she was fully capable of her own show of supremacy, and she showed it here, with the head tossing of an empress and a mincy little walk that could only be called a sashay.

A point-blank volley exchange at the net, won by Evert, had broadcaster Bud Collins screaming: “OHHHHHH! Eyeball to eyeball!” On one exchange, the force of Evert’s shot knocked the racket from Navratilova’s hand and sent her sprawling to the red clay. On match point, she lured Navratilova to the net with a short forehand, then pivoted to deliver an unfurling backhand winner up the line past a diving Navratilova, through an opening as narrow as one of her old hair ribbons. And it was over. Evert had won, 6-3, 6-7 (7-4), 7-5.

The embrace at the net is one of their enduringly favorite pictures. They threw their arms over each other’s shoulders, mutually exhausted yet beaming over the quality of the tennis they had just played. “You can’t tell who won,” Navratilova says.

It seemed as if they no longer were playing against each other so much as with each other. And that’s how it stayed. From then on, their locker room atmosphere became more than just companionable. It was … consoling. Someone would win and someone would lose, and the loser would sit on a bench, head dangling, and the other, unable to look away, would drift over and sit down. Sometimes, hours afterward, one of them would open her tennis bag and find a sweet note in it.

“We were the last two left standing,” Evert says. “… I saw her at her highest and at her lowest. And I think because we saw each other that way, the vulnerable part, that’s another level of friendship.”

In 1986, Navratilova was scheduled to return to Czechoslovakia for the first time since her defection to play a match for the U.S. Federation Cup team. “Will you come?” she asked Evert. “I don’t know how they’ll treat me.” Evert was nursing a knee injury, but she went. Navratilova was overjoyed to be teammates for a change. “We could be happy at the same time for once,” she says. Evert was rewarded with an extraordinary experience: She watched her friend get a standing ovation from crowds standing three deep while Czech officials stared at their shoes.

At Evert’s final Wimbledon in 1989, one more remarkable scene played out between them. Evert by then was flagging, her intensity worn thin. In the quarterfinals she was in danger of an undignified loss to unseeded, 87th-ranked Laura Golarsa. She trailed 5-2 in the third set, just two points from defeat. This isn’t how I want to go out, she thought grimly. Navratilova, watching on TV in the player lounge, stood up and dashed out to courtside. She took a seat in the grandstand.

“Come on, Chrissie!” Navratilova’s voice rang out.

Evert had just a moment to feel moved. Touched. Just then Golarsa delivered a volley. On a dead run, Evert chased it. Stretched out, pulled nearly into the stands, her backhand fully extended, Evert drove a screaming pass down the alley that curled around the net post and checked the opposite corner, a clean winner. Navratilova shrieked with the thrill of it like a little girl. Evert swept the rest of the set and won it 7-5, arguably the most astonishing comeback of her life.

“She’s got my back,” Evert says now. “I’ve got hers.”

‘Cancer makes you feel alone’

Friendship is arguably the most wholly voluntary relationship. It reflects a mutual decision to keep pasting something back together, no matter how far it gets pulled apart, even when there is no obligatory reason, no justice-of-the-peace vow or chromosomal tie.

Evert and Navratilova just kept finding reasons to hang on to the relationship. To the point that they became hilariously entangled in each other’s personal affairs. It’s a fact that Navratilova set up Evert with the man who remains the most important one in her life, Andy Mill. Toward the close of Evert’s playing career, Navratilova knew Evert was lonely and depressed after her divorce from Lloyd, which caused Jimmy Evert to briefly stop speaking to his daughter. Navratilova invited Evert to spend Christmas with her in Aspen. She took her skiing and to a New Year’s party at the Hotel Jerome, where she knew there would be good-looking men in droves. That night Evert met the impossibly handsome Mill, who the next day gallantly coached Evert down a steep slope, skiing backward and holding her hands.

At the end of the week, as Navratilova packed to leave for the Australian Open, Evert appeared in her doorway. “Do you mind if I stay on for a few days?” Evert asked. Navratilova arched an eyebrow and smiled. “Sure.” With the house to herself, Evert had her first tryst with Mill, causing the gentleman to exclaim the next morning, “My God, I’m with Chris Evert in Martina Navratilova’s bed.” Evert’s 1988 wedding to Mill marked the rare occasion when Navratilova wore a skirt. Years later, Navratilova was still teasing Evert. “I should have put that bed on eBay.”

In 2014, when Navratilova wed longtime partner Julia Lemigova, she did not have to debate whom to choose as maid of honor. Evert was by her side. “But of course,” Navratilova says.

Navratilova had never properly told Evert how much her unwavering support against homophobia had meant. Especially in crucial moments such as 1990, when Australian champion Margaret Court called Navratilova a “bad role model” for being gay. “Martina is a role model to me,” Evert snapped back publicly. As Navratilova put it, Evert was “gay-friendly before it was okay to be.” It made Navratilova’s public life incalculably more bearable. “It was more than nice,” Navratilova says now of Evert’s stance. “It was huge.” On matters of character, Navratilova says, Evert “underrates herself.”

Here’s where they stood when the cancers came. Evert had just finished rearing three adored sons to adulthood and was resolutely single again, after a psychological reckoning. Her long emotional containment finally imploded in 2006: She left Mill for former pro golfer Greg Norman; a terrible mistake, the union lasted just 15 months. Determined to know herself better, she went into counseling “to figure out what makes me tick and how I’m wired, why I’m wired the way I am and why I have made mistakes the way I have” and emerged with a piercing self-honesty. She reestablished a closeness with Mill and reinvested herself in her second calling as a mentor to young prodigies at the developmental tennis camp she founded, the Evert Tennis Academy. At over 60, she could still go for two hours on a court with women a third her age.

Just down the freeway from her, Navratilova had found her “anchor” with Lemigova, with whom she step-mothered two daughters and cared for an assortment of animals: donkeys, goats, dogs and exotic birds, including a talkative parrot named Pushkin. One of the most broadly read great athletes who ever lived, she absorbed tomes such as Timothy Snyder’s account of encroaching fascism, “The Road to Unfreedom,” with a lightning intelligence that could light up a hillside.

In February 2020, a funeral notice appeared in the Fort Lauderdale papers: Mass for Jeanne Evert Dubin would be said at 10 a.m. at St. Anthony’s Church. Evert had watched with mounting grief as her precious younger sister fought ovarian cancer until her arms were bruised by needles and ports and she wasted to less than 80 pounds.

Sitting in a pew was Navratilova, who would spend the next 12 hours by Evert’s side. She attended the graveside services, then sat with Evert and her family at home until 10 that night.

Nearly two years after Jeanne’s death, in November 2021, Evert got a call out of the blue from the Cleveland Clinic. Genetic testing that Jeanne had undergone during her illness had been reappraised with new study, and she had a BRCA1 variant that was pathogenic. The doctor recommended that Evert get tested immediately. The very next day Evert got a test — and she, too, was positive for the BRCA1 mutation. Her doctor, Joe Cardenas, recommended an immediate hysterectomy.

Evert called Navratilova and told her about the test and that she was scheduled for surgery and further testing. “It’s preventive,” Evert told her reassuringly. On the other end of the phone, she heard Navratilova exhale, “Ohhhhhhhhh,” a long sigh of inarticulate dismay. In 2010, Navratilova had been diagnosed with a noninvasive breast cancer after making the mistake of going four years without a mammogram. Her cancer was contained — but still. Navratilova wouldn’t feel comfortable for Evert until all the tests had come back.

“The first thing, the very first thing I thought of was, if I’m going to go through these trenches with anybody, Martina would be the person I’d want to go through them with,” Evert says. “Because she’s … strong. She doesn’t take any nonsense from people. She just gets the job done. And I think that’s the mentality I had.”

When Evert’s pathology report came back after the surgery, however, she felt anything but strong: Surgery revealed high-grade malignancy in her fallopian tubes. Evert would have to undergo a second surgery, to harvest lymph nodes and test fluid in her stomach cavity, to determine what stage she was. Jeanne’s cancer had not been discovered until she was Stage 3; “I knew that anything Stage 3 or 4, you don’t have a good chance,” Evert says.

For three days, Evert waited for the results with the understanding that they were life-or-death. “Humble moment,” Evert says. “You know, just because I was No. 1 in the world, it doesn’t — I’m just like everyone else.”

Evert got unfathomably lucky. The cancer hadn’t progressed. Had she waited even three more months to be tested, it probably would have spread. As soon as she was able, Evert would go public with her diagnosis to encourage testing. An estimated 25 million people carry a BRCA mutation, and like her, 90 percent of them have no idea. “I had felt fine, I was working out, and I had cancer in my body,” she says.

Evert still had a hard road ahead, with six cycles of chemo, but her chances of recovery were 90 percent. Her eldest son, Alex, moved in to support her daily care and even designed a workout regimen so she could sweat out the poisons. Mill took her to every chemo treatment and held her hand. Her good friend Christiane Amanpour, also diagnosed with ovarian cancer, sent her healing ointments from Paris. Her youngest sister, Clare, flew in monthly to nurse her through the sickish aftereffects, even climbing into bed with her.

But nothing can really make cancer a collective experience; it’s an experiential impasse. Everyone responds differently to the treatment and the accompanying dread. Late at night, Evert would be sleepless from the queasiness and a strange sense of small electric shocks biting into her bones. She would have to slip out of bed and walk around the house, by herself with it. “Cancer makes you feel alone,” Evert says. “Because it’s like, nobody can take that pain from you.”

Compounding Evert’s sense of aloneness was the abruptness with which she had toppled from a sense of supreme athletic command to feebleness. There was one person who could understand that. “What can I do for you?” Navratilova asked. They were in a room of just two, all over again. “I can tell her my fears,” Evert says. “I can be 100 percent honest with her.”

Navratilova came by the house and called regularly, but she also knew how to “lay back.” Sometimes she would call and Evert would answer right away. And sometimes it would take three or four days before she answered. It felt, in a way, like the old locker room days when she knew Evert was laboring with a loss. “I think because we were there for each other before, we kind of knew what to do or what not to do, instinctively, even though this was a first,” Navratilova says.

In the middle of Evert’s treatments, a gift arrived from Navratilova. It was a large piece of art. The canvas was lacquered with Evert’s favorite playing surface, red clay, and painted with white tennis lines, on which a series of ball marks were embedded, including one that had ticked the white line. The piece was by Navratilova herself, who in retirement took up art. The canvas was really a portrait — of Evert, of the exquisite, measured precision of her game. A tribute. Evert immediately hung it in a primary place in her living room.

After every cycle of treatment, Evert would rebound with a tenacity that astounded Navratilova. She would plead with her doctors, “Can I get on a treadmill?” Just days removed from an IV, she would start power walking again or riding her beloved Peloton bike until she was slick with sweat. She even did light CrossFit workouts with weights. “She’s an animal,” Navratilova observes admiringly.

By the summer 2022, Evert was healthy enough to go back to work as a broadcaster (although with a wig), and in November she joined Navratilova in a public appearance at the season-ending WTA Finals in Fort Worth. The pair went shopping together for cowboy boots and hats, strolling through the Fort Worth Stockyards historic district. And that’s when Evert delivered a piece of news that undid Navratilova. “I’m having a double mastectomy,” Evert said. She explained that her BRCA mutation meant she was at high risk of developing breast cancer on top of the ovarian.

Navratilova was so affected, she burst into tears. “It was such a shock to me because I thought she was done,” she says, and as she retells the story, she weeps again. She had watched Evert go public with her diagnosis and slug her way through chemo, and she hoped she was past it. Now she would face more months of convalescence. “I knew what she was going through publicly and privately,” Navratilova says, “and it just knocked me on my ass.”

Navratilova was still grappling with Evert’s news when she was floored by her own cancer diagnosis. During the Fort Worth trip, Navratilova felt a sore lump in her neck. She wasn’t taking any chances and underwent a biopsy when she got home. Evert got a text from Navratilova. Can you call me as soon as possible? I need to talk to you. Evert checked her phone and saw that Navratilova had also tried to call her. Evert thought, Oh, s--t. That’s not good.

Navratilova’s sore lump proved to be a cancerous lymph node. Like Evert, she had to undergo multiple lumpectomies and further tests, with a frightening three days waiting for the results, worried that it had advanced into her organs. “I’m thinking, ‘I could be dead in a year,’ ” she says. She distracted herself by thinking about her favorite subject, beautiful cars, and browsing them online.

Which car am I going to drive in the last year of my life, she asked herself. A Bentley? A Ferrari?

The verdict when the testing came back was a combination of relief and gut punch. The throat cancer was a highly curable Stage 1, but the follow-up screening also revealed she had an early-stage breast cancer, unrelated to her previous bout. She was so stunned she had a hard time even driving herself home. But by the time Evert reached her by phone, Navratilova was in an incredulous, fear-fueled rage. “I sensed that it really pissed her off more than anything,” Evert says. “She was mad about it.”

“Can you believe it!” Navratilova stormed. “It’s in my throat. And then they found something in my breast.”

For a minute, the two of them considered the bizarreness of both fighting cancer at the same time. Navratilova had always chased Evert, but she didn’t want to chase her in this pursuit. “Jesus. I guess we’re taking this to a whole new level,” Navratilova said.

And then they both started giggling.

“Because it was just so ironic,” Evert says.

But then Navratilova grew serious again. She admitted to Evert, “I’m scared.”

It was the same sudden whiff of mortality, the same you’re not so special after all jolt that Evert had gotten. “As a top-level athlete, you think you’re going to live to a hundred and that you can rehab it all,” Navratilova says. “And then you realize, ‘I can’t rehab this.’ So sharing that fear was easy — easier with her than anybody else.”

Navratilova’s cancer was not as dangerous as Evert’s, but it was more arduous. It required three cycles of chemo, 15 sessions of targeted proton therapy on her throat, 35 more proton treatments on the lymph nodes in her neck and five sessions of conventional radiation on her breast. Navratilova arranged to do it at Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital in New York, hunkering down at a friend’s vacant apartment.

Unbelievably, Navratilova chose to undergo most of it alone. She wanted to protect her family from worry over her. “You just keep it in because you don’t want to affect the people around you.” She also wanted to cultivate her former big-match mentality, to focus on the fight. “Even just answering the question when somebody says, ‘Can I get you anything?’ it takes energy,” Navratilova says now. “And it’s just easier to not have to think what you’re going to say or to deny help 10 times.”

The proton treatments were a series of slow singes. Her sense of taste turned to ashes, and swallowing felt like an acid rinse. As her weight plunged, she shivered on the cold medical tables, unable to get warm, to the point that she wore a ski vest to the hospital. She developed deep circles under her eyes from insomnia.

As the poisons mounted in her, it was as if she aged 50 years overnight. “Everything felt just wrong,” she says. This was a woman who had trekked up Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 54, reaching 14,000 feet before she was felled with a case of pulmonary edema. At 65, she could still do 30 push-ups in a row. Now she needed two hands to drink a glass of water.

Evert had an almost intuitive sense of when to check up on Navratilova. Just when she would be near despair, not trusting herself to drink from a glass with one quivering hand, the phone would buzz, and it would be Evert. “What stands out is the timing,” Navratilova says. “It was always spot on. Like she knew I was at a low point. I don’t know how she knew, but she did. It was like some kind of cosmic connection. Because it was uncanny.”

Evert would be briskly sympathetic and to the point. “Don’t tough it out,” she would say, then just listen. There was no need for question or explanation. There was just understanding. “It was always there,” Navratilova says. “So we didn’t have to, like, try to find it.”

Sometimes the only sound on the line would be two people breathing, wordless with mutual comprehension.

Evert says, “With all the experiences we had, winning and losing and comforting each other, I think we ended up having more compassion for each other than anybody in the world could have.”

Their finest rally

As Evert and Navratilova finish picking over lunch salads, their senses of renewal in the Miami sunshine make them seem almost radiant. Life feels clearer, “uncluttered,” Evert says. From a distance, they cut the figures of teenagers. Evert is as neatly trim as ever, an impression enhanced by her newly grown pixie-length platinum hair. Navratilova, too, is slender as a youth. Only up close do you see lingering creases of fatigue around their eyes and sense the scars beneath their clothes and the tentativeness of their confidence.

Evert admits she is “hesitant” to say her cancer is really gone. “It could come back. Look, it could come back. It’s cancer, right? It’s always peripheral.” Navratilova agrees. She compares it to waking up on the morning of an important match, a Wimbledon final, with the reverse of anticipation. For the first few seconds of semiconsciousness after opening her eyes she feels peace, and then the awareness of something important and pending seeps in. And then it hits her: cancer. “It’s always hovering,” Navratilova says. “You just put it out of sight. You go on with what you’re doing.”

The way they go on is as follows. They go public with their diagnoses and accounts of treatment because all those years that they were clashing over trophies, they also had a sense of a larger public responsibility, to “the game or women athletes or women,” as Navratilova says. A sense that it wasn’t enough just to be great; they also had to be good for something. “To help,” Evert says.

They work out as much as the doctors allow, maybe even a little more than they advise, at first provisionally and then with growing defiance, even though each of their bodies is “still fighting the crap that’s inside it,” as Navratilova says, in her case doing just two push-ups and going skiing before her radiation was done. (“Skiing! During radiation!” Evert crows in disbelief.) They lift weights above their shoulders though the sore scars in their chests aren’t entirely healed, and they hit on the tennis court, though in Navratilova’s case, the effort to chase a ball even two steps leaves her winded, and in Evert’s, it makes her feel clumsy-footed and angry, until she reminds herself, Chrissie, who do you think are? And then she calls Navratilova, and they both laugh at themselves in this companionable frailty.

There are statues of Arthur Ashe at the U.S. Open, Fred Perry at Wimbledon, Rod Laver at the Australian Open and Rafael Nadal at the French Open. The blazers who run the major championships have not yet commissioned sculptures of these two women, who so unbound their sport and gave the gift of professional aspiration to so many. Yet who exemplify, perhaps more than any champions in the annals of their sport, the deep internal mutual grace called sportsmanship.

But then, they don’t need bronzing. They have something much warmer than that. Each other.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/interactive/2023/chris-evert-martina-navratilova-cancer/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWJpZCI6IjIyMzAzMzIiLCJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNjg4MjcwNDAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNjg5NTY2Mzk5LCJpYXQiOjE2ODgyNzA0MDAsImp0aSI6Ijg3NjU5MWRmLTE5Y2YtNDZhZS1iNzZkLWNmMGNiMWFiMWZiOCIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9zcG9ydHMvaW50ZXJhY3RpdmUvMjAyMy9jaHJpcy1ldmVydC1tYXJ0aW5hLW5hdnJhdGlsb3ZhLWNhbmNlci8ifQ.ExafF0SDohGSQznY3dAmgzH4QCMvUA2eA2rk2KlOc_A&itid=gfta

[apparently-artless]

“I’ll tell you tomorrow that I like you."

[crepe-of-wrath]

Hymn to Beauty (Sebastian Michaelis x Fem Reader)

Part I of IV

Notes: minors DNI; relationship dynamics not desirable IRL; possible dubcon; lots of manipulation; Bassy is a user, but he's hot and good at sex and positive about your body

Summary: You are a lady's maid. As far as people of the "better sort" go, your mistress is better than average, which is why it is unfortunate that she is married to a man who, as far as the "better sort" goes, is decidedly worse than average. Through discreet conversation, you have learned that the Phantomhive butler, Mr. Michaelis, can be very...attentive to the needs of women like your mistress. Fortunately, she has been invited to the manor.

Your hand was quivering a bit and you knew you had almost pricked yourself on your trusty straw needle three or four times already. Not only was it difficult to work alongside Mr. Michaelis, who was indeed as devastatingly handsome as everyone had said, but you were almost sick with anxiety. What had you been thinking, essentially entering into conspiracy to help your mistress commit infidelity? If her wretch of a husband ever found out, you would be ruined. Genuinely, truly, forever-in-a-poorhouse ruined.

And all because you felt sorry for a woman who would have more than you ever would, even if her husband was a brute. You simpleton!

"Ah!" you cried out. You'd gotten yourself this time. Quickly, you covered your finger to ensure no blood got on the dress.

Mr. Michaelis, who was attending to the silver, paused and looked at you with an express that was simultaneously magnetic and disconcerting.

"Do you require something, Miss [Last]?"

"No, Mr. Michaelis, forgive my outburst. I was clumsy."

"And not for the first time today. The results of your needlework are far more impressive than your feckless fingers would suggest."

You tried not to flinch or blush. "You are kind to speak well of my work, Mr. Michaelis."

He didn't even respond. He was alarmingly cold, like a male Galatea who was well aware that he was surrounded by hapless Pygmalions willing to go to reckless lengths for even a hope of a skimmed hand on the shoulder or of lips brushing slightly too close to knuckles. You were having second thoughts: was this really what your mistress needed?

"Miss [Last], once again, do you require assistance?"

This time your face flushed: your hand was suspended in midair, on the road to nowhere.

"I confess I do not sleep well of late, Mr. Michaelis." Here goes nothing. "My mistress is not happy and I feel a duty to cheer her, if I can."

"What kind of maid would you be if you didn't?"

"Quite, sir. She is a fair employer and does not deserve to be in such distress." You lowered your voice. "Alas, with His Lordship so frequently out of the house, there are certain comforts and securities that she lacks." His little smile told you that you were being a bit too obvious, but he had the courtesy not to say anything.

"She lacks these things when he is out of the house?"

You knew your silence was as much response as needed.

The other lady's maids said that Mr. Michaelis had a special preference for wives who knew their husband's business, so you changed the subject and asked about Lord Phantomhive's holdings so that you could--not in completely artless fashion--drop little tidbits about HIs Lordship's own dealings. After all, Mr. Michaelis was clearly thoughtful enough to realize that if you knew a little, your mistress knew more.

When you were satisfied with the progress on the dress your lady would wear at the ball tomorrow night, you started to put your things away. You must have been more engrossed in tidying up than you thought, because you hadn't heard Mr. Michaelis walk toward you.

He was so close to you that if you leaned back just a little, you could have your own little stolen moment involving the sensation of his chest and shoulders against your back. It would be nice--something to comfort you on the many solitary nights that likely lay ahead of you in your mistress's service. When his arms came around, almost on top of your own, to help you fold the last of the gown, he leaned down and whispered, "I believe we could spend some time together in my quarters before your lady has need of you again." A little sigh escaped from you--you couldn't help it! He kept his lips close to the nape of your neck, but now he was was gliding his hands over your arms and shoulders and you could barely take it.

"You could tell me more about His Lordship while I provide you with Phantomhive hospitality. After all, what kind of butler would I be if any of our guests went wanting?" Your breathing had become ridiculously heavy. His lips got even closer to your ear, somehow. "Don't be a foolish girl. We both know you will never have another chance to give yourself to one as...attentive as I am."

Something in your mind cut through the fog of desire and now your gasp was one of panic. How had you bungled this so badly? No, he wasn't supposed to target you: he was supposed to want your lady!

"Mr. Michaelis," you said, "I--I pray every night and I am not wed, and I--I have spoken above my station. It is my mistress, of course, who knows things. I am just a servant. I am not worth your time."

It was deadly silent for a moment before his fingers dug into you and you made a small yelp. Fortunately, he allowed you to disentangle yourself quickly, but when you looked into his eyes, they seemed red with rage and you were terrified. You almost felt like your very fear was in your breath and it was hanging in the air in that terrible stillness.

Eventually, he spoke, and with every word, you could have sworn the room got colder. "Very well. Then I will go elsewhere."

Before he left your presence, he nodded. Manners, after all.

"Miss [Last]."

You nodded back.

"Mr. Michaelis."

You waited until you could no longer hear his footsteps before you walked away as fast as decorum would allow to attend to your mistress, to help her get ready for...for what? You were now even less sure than before about giving her to Mr. Michaelis, though a voice in your head told you that the butler knew his place and would be different with the titled ladies than with the likes of you.

Later that evening, with great reluctance, you had to walk past the butler's pantry one last time. Suddenly, there was a hand over your mouth and you were being dragged back into the room by a single, unexpectedly strong arm around your waist.

Instead of being afraid, your face was overheated with shame and lust. The hand over your mouth moved down toward your neck, and Mr. Michaelis wrapped his long fingers around your neck like they were strands in a choker of the damned.

"Don't fret, little mouse," he whispered into your ear. "You've done your duty and your sweet and delicate mistress sleeps sound and very satisfied. But now, now we must deal with you."

"I--don't understand."

"I offered you my body and you spurned it."

"I--you--aren't for me...for my mistress."

"How loyal. But still"--here his hands tightened around your neck, and you cried out a little, but it wasn't a cry of fear, it was sound you didn't recognize as having ever come from yourself before--"you told me no. No one has ever told me no like that before, and I don't think I like it."

"I'm sorry." His hand was so tight on your neck that it was difficult to talk. "I didn't want to."

He spun you around quickly and it did not take long for you to start losing yourself in his rich eyes, framed by those jet black strands of hair that, through some miracle, Lord Phantomhive had not ordered shorn away.

The hand that was around your neck loosened, and he began to stroke your neck and your chin. "I know you didn't, little mouse. I think you want to be an obedient girl," he said. "I think we should start over again, don't you?"

All you could do was nod.

"Shall we retire to my quarters?" He stroked one gloved finger down your cheek. "For conversation and other pleasurable things?"

All you could do was nod.

"What was that?"

"Yes."

He had one finger under your chin and drew your face closer to his. With his lips practically on yours, he said, "You are lucky that my desire not to waste further time outweighs my desire to deny you until you scream 'yes' so loudly that this whole manor can hear."

He gently turned you around again, keeping one arm around your waist and moving the other even further down until it was draped essentially over your décolletage. Before he began to walk you in the direction he wanted, he leaned down and whispered, "Good girl," low in your ear.

(Alucard smut will return soon, but I need to write a story with a manipulative and detached object of desire because apparently that's what I'm lusting for right now .)

[acrossthewavesoftime]

To you my heart I must resign, O choose me for your Valentine!

(x)

It's that time of the year again when one can post the first (surviving) Valentine's Day's missive in North America, sent by a certain John Graves Simcoe to Sarah "Sally" Townsend on 14 February 1779.

Simcoe, who adorned his poem with two bleeding hearts bearing the initials "J.G.S" and "S.T." pinned together by Cupid's arrow, clearly was in love with her, though, as the poem itself acknowledges, he was aware of the fact that a relationship between them would be difficult; the Townsends, who grudgingly quartered Simcoe, were sympathetic to the rebel cause, to the point the assumption persists that Sarah may have been an informant for her brother Robert Townsend, also known under his intelligence alias Samuel Culper, giving him information on the British she received by cultivating Simcoe's trust.

One such tale goes as far as to name Sarah as the informant who made the capture of John André possible. In the wake of André's execution in Tappan, she supposedly confessed her actions to Simcoe, feeling remorseful that she had helped bring about the death of his close friend. Simcoe, deeply hurt she had betrayed his trust and genuine intentions, is said to have lost interest in her romantically, but still kept her secret.

Of course, the story seems rather a bit over the top; what is known about Sarah is that she was a favourite with British officers stationed in the area, and that she kept Simcoe's poem until her death in 1842. She never married, which caused romantic speculation that Simcoe may have been the love of her life after all. Realistically, I think the sentimental value Sarah clearly felt Simcoe's poem had does not necessarily have romantic connotations; she may have decided to keep it because she felt flattered someone sat down to write a piece of poetry about her, and realistically speaking, how often in one's life does one receive an original, hand-written love poem?

But Sarah would not remain the only lady to treasure a poem written by Simcoe; his wife Elizabeth, an as far as I can tell not infrequent protagonist of his poetry, pinned one she clearly particularly treasured to the pages of her Canadian diary/manuscript which he wrote for her to commemorate their 12th wedding anniversary. If he ever wrote her any Valentine's Day-poetry, I can't tell, but he didn't need any specific occasion to compose some lines about making "my Eliza with true passion burn"- a lot saucier than the comparatively tame poem, which even invokes the virgin goddess Artemis by the epithet "Delia", written to Sarah Townsend (and, of course, he also features the most romantic of all things in the world, urns, as @copper-haired-cuddlebug in particular will be aware of):

Fairest Maid, where all is fair, Beauty’s pride and Nature’s care; To you my heart I must resign, O choose me for your Valentine! Love, Mighty God! Thou know’st full well, Where all thy Mother’s graces dwell, Where they inhabit and combine To fix thy power with spells divine; Thou know’st what powerful magick lies Within the round of Sarah’s eyes, Or darted thence like lightning fires, And Heaven’s own joys around inspires; Thou know’st my heart will always prove The shrine of pure unchanging love! Say; awful God! Since to thy throne Two ways that lead are only known— Here gay Variety presides, And many a youthful circle guides Through paths where lilies, roses sweet, Bloom and decay beneath their feet; Here constancy with sober mien Regardless of the flowery Scene With Myrtle crowned that never fades, In silence seeks the Cypress Shades, Or fixed near Contemplation’s cell, Chief with the Muses loves to dwell, Leads those who inward feel and burn And often clasp the abandon’d urn,– Say, awful God! Did’st thou not prove My heart was formed for Constant love? Thou saw’st me once on every plain To Delia pour the artless strain— Thou wept’sd her death and bad’st me change My happier days no more to range O’er hill, o’er dale, in sweet Employ, Of singing Delia, Nature’s joy; Thou bad’st me change the pastoral scene Forget my Crook; with haughty mien To raise the iron Spear of War, Victim of Grief and deep Despair: Say, must I all my joys forego And still maintain this outward show? Say, shall this breast that’s pained to feel Be ever clad in horrid steel? Nor swell with other joys than those Of conquest o’er unworthy foes? Shall no fair maid with equal fire Awake the flames of soft desire: My bosom born, for transport, burn And raise my thoughts from Delia’s urn? “Fond Youth,” the God of Love replies, “Your answer take from Sarah’s eyes.”

[theenderwalker]

I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations...I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?

“I am a MODEL CITIZEN and anyone that tells you anything else is lying and probably betraying absolutely everyone they’ve been in contact with—jesus christ... oh, my morals. My moral values. Oh god. They’re all gone. Oh, they’re all gone.”

I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.

DREAM IS THE REASON

[T]he relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios--the overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about--was still startling. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preemptive paranoia.

-"Sam..."

-"What?"

-"I need you to not let me into the prison."

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,

It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

"Can’t help but feel like it- it’s- it’s kind of- it’s kind of my fault."

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

"What if I put myself in, Sam? What if I did that? What if I put myself in the prison?!"

ranaltboo // Our Man in Havana, Graham Greene // Lost In The Crowd, Brent Jones // ranboolive // ranaltboo // The Fall, Albert Camus // Dream // ranaltboo // ranboolive // Adam Gopnik // theenderwalker // Ranboo and Awesamdude // ranaltboo // Hamlet, William Shakespeare // ranaltboo // ranboolive // The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde // Awesamdude, in Ranboo's memory book// Henry VI, pt III, William Shakspeare // Survivor's Guilt, Miles Johnston // ranboolive

on morals, loyalty, and guilt

[dribs-and-drabbles]

.....would you believe I found more costume design choices for bad buddy and of course it's all episode 5 because episode 5 is just That Good.

Pat starts off in pran's shirt - dark gray (plus, ink was the only person who kind of saw smth smth between the two of them, here she is calling them out on it wearing both the colours they're wearing)

all the way until the date with ink + oh moment (beloved) where he's in a dark grey shirt over a black shirt - realising his feelings but still in denial on the inside

which then becomes a white shirt over a lighter grey shirt as he talks to korn + tries to figure out if he's jealous (also, this shot of him in white surrounded by white light the moment pran says wai had slept in the same spot he slept where he was stunned into silence by just how jealous he was)

And then FRESHY DAY. This part got to me so bad. He's in all blue, but the solid blue of his overalls are falling off to give way to blue white tie dye mix which kind of looks like an explosion which,,,, yeah

And then he transitions directly into the hawaiian shirt which, what can I say about that that you haven't already said?

Plus fun little devastating bonus details:

Pran at the argument wearing blue with a orange (reddish?) collar because he may be on Pat's side but he has to put on a front for wai

And pat switching back into a darker shirt on the rooftop because he's afraid that after the argument he's messed up so bad that he doesn't know where they stand anymore

He then spends literally all of ep 6 in a series of white shirts before finally switching to light blue when they set up the bet

Hi! @grapejuicegay! I bet you thought I'd forgotten or ignored you 🙈 I'm sorry, I hadn't...I just haven't had the brain space to give this detailed and thought out ask the time it deserves. But now I do (mainly because I woke up early since the bed in the hotel I'm staying in is so bad I couldn't sleep...but whatever!)

So...I love that Bad Buddy is still giving. There's still so much to see and interpret and analyse and go feral over...as can be shown here. I have to be honest, it took me a while to understand and follow what you were pointing out here (because of my brain space not yours!) but yes, if we're looking at the darkness = troubled or something negative / light = happy or something positive scale then Pat definitely goes through a journey in episode 5 (which of course we know about)...and his clothes reflect that journey he goes on.

Pat starts off wearing the darker colours and gradually transitions to the lighter ones as he realises his feelings for Pran and investigates them...and then after the fight, when things look bleak between them, he's back to a very dark blue...so dark it could be black.

And I love your interpretation of his freshy day outfit - the blue and white tie-die looking like an explosion - because at this point his feelings are a mess. He's all over the place, thinking he still likes Ink and confessing to her but actually, when Pran is singing to him, his brain must be going a mile-a-minute thinking back over their history.

I'm not going to add more about the hawaiian shirt...because, yeah, I have already written a great deal on that!...but something I'll add about the shirts he wears in ep 6. Although they all have some colour or patterns on, as you say they're all white- or lighter-based...and this could reflect Pat's artlessness - the innocence and genuineness of his actions towards Pran. But then, at that point when they are finally meeting in the middle, they're both in bold versions of their colours. It's wonderful visualisation.

Ahhhhh...thank you so much for giving me another opportunity to gush about this show! And maybe you can see why it took me so long to respond now 😊

And I was going to add a screenshot of your addendum-ask here as well but tumblr won't let me, but what a great catch! It makes me want to look through the series to see if I can find more little details like that...but time...

[earlgreymon]

she is love

🎶 taichi + sora // [day 3] music (for @digiweek 2021) ok, i know it might be more appropriate to post this on day 5, but it's also about music and i have other ideas for day 5, so... been wanting to make a fic out of my digidestineds as camp half-blood's demigods (pjo universe) headcanon for a long time, so here it is. it's better if you read the headcanon first (part 1, part 2) before proceeding so you won't get confused about which one's the child of this or that god/goddess, or who's doing what. surprisingly, while i was quite in an agony for any other days, i wrote this in just one night. idk why, but most probably because it's taiora duh. however, the interactions that you'll see are more of taichi/mimi, and somehow in the middle of the way i decided that i wanted to write a long conversation between taichi/yamato. also, there's a faint hint of mimato; an appearance of koushiro, jyou, takeru, and daisuke; also a mention of hikari and miyako. (sorry ken and iori. next time.) i put the link of the song in the narration, even though i also add it on my taiora fanmix. happy reading!

___

“I’m going to confess to Sora.”

At first, it was a piece of information that only Koushiro knew after Taichi told him somewhere in the middle of June. However, the information then became available to some of the prominent figures in Camp Half-Blood, and it wasn’t because Koushiro couldn’t keep the secret. It was Taichi himself who actually went around and made a big deal out of it.

He went to the Camp Store as a start, where Jyou had his shift as usual, accompanied by Mimi who was doing her floral craft—currently the hottest item in the camp—on the back of the register. Taichi was wandering around searching for something that he could present to Sora as a confession gift, but it took him so long that Jyou finally spotted his bushy hair at one of the isles.

“Ha! Got you now, Yagami!” Jyou yelled; his left foot climbed the register agitatedly. “There’s no way I’m going to let you steal something today! Your lucky streak is over!”

“Relax, relax,” Taichi sneered half-offended, making his way to the register. “I’m not planning to steal anything today anyway. I’m looking for a gift for Sora.”

Jyou was not buying it. “And you think a freebie will be a perfect choice, huh?”

“No—geez Jyou, stop making me look like a bad person. There’s no way I’m going to give a stolen good for a confession.”

Mimi gasped, immediately stopped doing her crafts and jerked forward. “Tell me about that again!” Her pitch raised in excitement. “You’re going to confess to Sora?!”

“Yes, but—”

“Oh, for the love of Olympus—at last! Finally!” Mimi’s scream echoed through the entire store. Fortunately, there were only the three of them inside. “Thank you so much, my dear mother Demeter! I can’t bear any longer to see my soul sister waiting for this idiot to make a move!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Now, now.” Mimi knocked the surface of the register demandingly. “Tell me how you’re going to confess, young man.”

“Well, I’m thinking about keeping it simple. Just the two of us, probably later in the annual fireworks. I’m going to search for a secluded place and give her something thoughtful—”

“Stop it right there,” Mimi interrupted with no hesitation. “Hello? It’s too ordinary. You’re going to confess to the daughter of the love goddess. Do you think her mother will accept you as her suitor if you use such an artless plan?”

“Mimi, it’s Sora I’m going to confess to. Why do I need to care about her mother’s opinion? I’m not signing up for Aphrodite’s harem.”

“Oh, don’t talk as if you have a chance. Your charm doesn’t even reach a thousandth of Adonis’ finesses,” Mimi warned in annoyance like she was the biggest fan of that mortal lover of Aphrodite. “You need to make it as grand as possible, Taichi. Make it a confession she will never forget and worth to tell your future sons and daughters.”

He would never even dare to dream about it—they always said demigods were short-lived thanks to the monsters that would chase them endlessly for the rest of their lives. “Okay,” Taichi huffed. “So, what are you proposing?”

Mimi paused and looked up. She did glance at Jyou, only to turn away barely a second later as if she was sure a love pariah like him would not know the answer (and of course, Jyou recognised her suspicious little attitude and started to nag in protest). When an idea finally struck, her eyes and smile grew simultaneously wider. She even leaned forward to emphasise her enthusiasm.

“John Cusack,” she announced. “Say Anything.”

“Anything?”

“It’s a movie title—oh Goddesses, you’re still an idiot,” Mimi groaned, grabbing her cell phone and showed him a clip from the internet. “This! This is just a perfect, all-time classic but timeless way of professing your feelings! I know Sora’s heart is going to melt, and she definitely won’t say no.”

Taichi would never admit it blatantly in front of Mimi, but he actually liked the idea. That was why on the following day, he went to the storage hoping to find some sort of audio system. As if the universe blessed him with a ton of luck, he quickly discovered a boom box that looked exactly like the one in the movie. He immediately brought it to Koushiro for a quick fix, and right there in his workstation, Koushiro—with his ever-perfect rationale—finally asked the most critical question.

“Which song are you going to play for her anyway?”

Of course, Taichi—with his ever-perfect nonsensicalness—didn’t have the answer yet.

Shortly after, Taichi decided to see Yamato who was nesting with his guitar at his cabin’s front porch. After greeting him with the most original salutation (“You look like a broken-hearted emo guy waiting for a cupid to pass by, you know?”), Taichi explained his strategies from former to later, and instead of giving any supportive signals, Yamato squinted his eyes looking somewhat appalled.

“It’s a great plan, right?” Taichi was obviously oblivious to Yamato’s reaction because he kept blabbering without knowing how to pull the brake. “That’s why I need you and your outstanding musicality to provide me with a song.”

Yamato sighed, slowly turning his attention back to his guitar and trying his best to ignore Taichi. Little did everyone know, Yamato once had a feeling for Sora, so to help Taichi with his plan seemed to be a bit awkward for him—not that he was jealous or anything. “Why does it have to be a song?”

“Why not?” Taichi pulled out a reverse card. “That, or you have to lend me your other Apollonian knack of writing a poem. A super romantic poem, to be exact, with words that are so sugary and flowery—hey, wait, is that a flower on your guitar pick?”

It was indeed a flower—a pressed baby’s-blue-eyes encapsulated in a transparent guitar pick, to be exact. As soon as Taichi exposed him, Yamato got nervous all the sudden and threw the little thing inside his jeans pocket. A crease formed between Taichi’s brows after he managed to connect some tiny dots flying inside his head.

“…is that from Mimi?”

“Shut up.”

“Wait, are you guys that close? She doesn’t make a guitar pick for sale, I know that for sure.”

“You’re a pain in the arse, you know?”

“I prefer the term ‘strong-willed’, thank you very much.”

Takeru stepped out of the cabin afterwards, greeting them with such a bright smile. He carried a quiver on his back alongside a bow in one of his arms, which meant he was going to the Archery Field. Yamato found the moment as a perfect diversion, so he asked, “Oi, Takeru. Can you write a poem for Taichi? He wants to—”

“—send my mother a heart-warming birthday present!” Taichi immediately jumped in while trying his best to strangle Yamato. “But don’t worry, Takeru. It’s very kind of your brother to be my personal Shakespeare.”

He was never a prejudice to begin with, so Takeru just giggled at their bromance before went away. Yamato shook Taichi off, looking extremely pissed as he scowled at the son of Hermes. “The hell?”

“Takeru must not know about this. He’s going to tell Hikari.”

“Hikari doesn’t know yet?”

“I find it weird consulting my love life to my little sister.”

“Yeah? And when is your mother’s birthday really?”

“Uh… March thirtieth?”

“And you think Takeru isn’t going to ask Hikari right now on the archery practice when your mother birthday is? He’s going to find out that your mother’s birthday was in spring, and Hikari will be able to tell that you hide something anyway.”

Realising his stupidity, Taichi cursed low under his breath. Yet again, Hikari and Takeru should be his least priority for now, so he tried to resume with the main topic. “Whatever. Just give me the song already.”

In a half-hearted tone, Yamato finally gave an option. “You guys are best friend, right? Lucky, then. Jason Mraz and Colby Caillat.”

“I know that song from the radio. Man, that’s too mellow. She’ll never hear it even I put them in the highest volume. Give me a more upbeat one. Not a death metal upbeat, but not that slow.”

Yamato figured out he would never hear the end of this if he did not take the matter more seriously. Therefore, he went inside his cabin to pick up his iPod and started scrolling his music library. He let Taichi listened to each of his recommendations so it would be easier for him to settle on one song.

By the time Taichi finished his preparation, the initial information had turned into a rumour spread like a wildfire in the entire camp. Maybe someone heard Taichi, Mimi, and Jyou’s conversation back then at the store. Maybe Miyako saw Taichi visited the Hephaestus’ cabin when he was asking for Koushiro’s help. At this stage, it wasn’t impossible if Sora had gotten a spoiler of Taichi’s plan—especially knowing that most of her siblings had a reputation of being a tattle-tale.

Nevertheless, Taichi did not seem to care and remained focus on his plan.

It was the first day of July when he stepped out of Cabin Eleven and walked across the campfire to reach the front yard of Cabin Ten. The time was around seven in the morning, which meant roughly an hour before the cabin inspection. Sora had to be inside carrying her role as Cabin Ten’s Head Counsellor and supervising the cleaning.

Some people passed behind him, either giggling or whispering much to his ignorance. The boom box was tucked safely under his arm; thanks to Koushiro’s prodigal hands, the device was now fully functional, and Taichi only needed to press a single button to play the song in the right volume. And that was what he did before he raised the boom box above his head; exactly a mimic of John Cusack.

Soon, music blasted right from the pair of speakers. It was more of a pop-rock song and everything but hardcore. However, with a bit of twist from Yamato on the bass and treble, it came out quite nicely for such a beautiful morning like this. And indeed, it was loud enough to attract more attention as the number of passers-by who decided to stop and watch from afar grew.

It didn’t take more than one minute for his target to come out of her cabin. Her face looked more curious rather than irritated, and when Sora found out it was Taichi who stood there, her expression turned into an amusement instead. She remained unfazed, watching his sheepish grin as the song continued. The only move she did was covering her mouth in disbelief when she listened thoroughly to the lyrics.

The music came to an end after three minutes, and Taichi finally lowered the boom box. They exchanged a meaningful gaze and a sincere smile in silence—even the whispers around sounded loud enough to fill the dead air. Taking this as a positive sign, he decided to open his mouth.

“Sora,” he began. “Listen. I—”

“WHO THE HELL WAS PLAYING A MUSIC SO LOUD IN THIS HOUR, FOR TARTARUS’ SAKE?!” Daisuke suddenly stormed out of Cabin Twelve, just next to Cabin Ten, yelling like a mad man from the porch. “CAN’T YOU SEE THAT SOMEONE IS STILL SLEEPING? I WILL REPORT THIS TO MY FATHER, MARK MY WORD! HE SHALL BE THE BANE OF YOUR EXISTENCE, AND YOU WILL—”

He was still in his pyjama and his eyes were half-closed, so when then found out it was Taichi—the senior he respected the most—who caused the commotion, his eyeballs almost popped out of his skull. As he caught the sight of Taichi’s death glare, he realised he was the one who was going to be in very deep trouble.

“Oh, sch—naps. Gods. I’m an idiot. Dammit. Uh. Yeah.” Daisuke literally couldn’t help himself. “H, hello, Taichi! Good morning to you too, Sora! And all of you—how are you guys doing?!”

It was as if they were in a concert, except no one was really shouting back.

“I, I’m just going to return to my den. Don’t forget the inspection’s coming, guys!”

Daisuke took one last glance at Taichi in hope for a forgiveness, but seeing that the glare didn’t die down after his pathetic effort, he quickly flew back into his cabin.

“I’m so going to kill him,” Taichi grumbled as Sora approached him, stopping just a few centimetres in front.

“Well, I don’t know about that….” Sora hissed; her tones were rather playful. “If you kill him, Mr D won’t let you live long enough to see the fireworks. I thought you want to bring me somewhere secluded on the beach and give me something thoughtful?”

Taichi smirked. “Okay, now who’s telling you about that? Mimi? Jyou?”

“What if I said it was Yamato?”

“Then I have two heads to kill,” Taichi concluded. “Nevertheless, you’re still going to love me just like I love you, right?”

“Don’t put your words in my mouth, idiot.”

Because her mouth had its own way to give an answer: by leaning into his mouth for a kiss, leaving the entire camp gasping in unison.

[mahizli]

Tears of Steel (Satine & Obi-Wan, 20 BBY)

The art is not mine, but I confess I struggle with labelling the source correctly... This little fic is for Tessiete, because she loves Obitine and has taken the trouble to meet me here on Tumblr :).

Part 14 of ‘Sparks of Hope - A Star Wars Advent Calendar’

***

Rain was falling on the streets, drenching the Coruscanti pavement, hushing Satine’s steps as she was hurrying towards the theatre, face hidden under her garnet cloak.

She had learned to navigate the city, to enjoy the bittersweet secrecy in walking those streets alone, unseen and unknown – that city where she should have been closest to him but was only missing him more. Painfully and exquisitely.

Coruscant was his home, and the core of the war she fought against. The city where she defended neutrality, and where his Order resided, symbol of the Jedi and everything he embodied.

On Sundari, she could think of him. Here, it always felt like she was remembering him. Who he once was, and who he was now. What they had both chosen to be for each other.

A small harbour in a storm of iron and steel.

Satine knew she loved him, because she cherished even that – the unique feeling of loss and mourning for what could never be only he was able to stir. Refining her heart. Her mind. Her very soul.

Satine nodded to the Twi’lek scanning her ticket, and entered the performance hall, finding her seat and sitting down on the soft, worn velvet. She took off her cloak, folding it on the backrest, running a hand through her damp curls.

No eyeliner, no blush, no elaborate hair-dressing – Satine Kryze was no Duchess that night. She was just a woman, come to that somewhat out-dated, nostalgic Coruscanti hall, to listen to Old Twi’lek poetry. She had found the tract by accident, lying on the floor next to one of the Senate’s dustbins, and had decided she would go.

Because Ryloth had suffered – had lost homes and people to this war. And though the planet had chosen its side, only poets seemed to remember that some losses could not be replaced. A tiny voice in the storm Satine felt compelled to hear.

The room was small, but the seats were almost filled. Soon the lights went out, shadows throwing long lines on the walls, bathing the scene in soft, almost tender rays.

A grey-skinned, elder Twi’lek was sitting on a piano stool – and there was something in his eyes that instantly reminded Satine of her father. It was the same love for what was truly beautiful. For words. For what was right.

She was breathing out and choking at the same time, she was sitting here on Coruscant, and remembering storms on Sundari, where she had lost everything and rebuilt everything.

“And you walked smiling –

Artless –

Delighted –

Dripping wet in the rain -”

The Twi’lek was speaking the words softly, fingers caressing the keys, and Satine allowed tears to spring, falling silently on the ticket she was still holding.

“Remember that, my dear –

And don’t be angry if I talk to you –

I talk to all those I love –

Even if I’ve seen them only once –

I talk to all those who love –

Even if I don’t know them…”

 She cried for the people who could have said these words. For those who had protected poets, musicians and warriors alike. She cried for the love in those lines, for the ideal it embodied – that exquisite sense of loss that crushed and hurt and cleansed and honed.

 “Oh my dear –

What a senseless war –

What has happened to you now –

In this rain of iron – of fire of steel of blood –

And the one who held you in his arms –

Tightly, lovingly –

Is he dead, vanished, or maybe still alive…”

 She wept for Obi-Wan, who was still alive, whose arms still sheltered her in rare, precious moments – because he had been dead, had vanished only to return, telling her it was a lie, a ruse, another Jedi mission. Because the boy she had fallen in love with and who could have written these words was a warrior now. Willingly and despite himself – and she missed him.  

 “Oh my dear –

It is raining endlessly, like it rained before –

But it is not the same and everything is ruined –

It is a rain of mourning, terrible and desolate –

It is not even a storm anymore, of iron, of steel, of blood –

Just simple clouds that die like dogs –

Dogs that disappear, along the water -

And will decay, far away, far, far away from here –

Where there is nothing left.”

 Satine did not rise, when the song ended. She just sat, silent tears falling one after the other, on a ruined concert-ticket, and clapped her hands until her hands hurt. And the elderly, grey skinned Twi’lek kept singing, seemingly just for her, until Satine had no tears anymore.

Until she was breathing without choking, once more.

Because she could mourn and remember, yet move on and stand tall. As long as there were poets, and singers, and memories and rain.

She stayed seated even after the last applause, long after the lights returned, fingers tracing the edges of her ticket where the print had blurred. She stayed seated even when she heard soft footsteps behind her – because she was afraid to break that tiny link with the past.

With mourning and remembering.

She did look up, though, when gentle hands wrapped her cloak around her shoulders, when memories seemed to blur with the present, because he was standing just here, grey-eyed and auburn-haired. Crouching before her, and brushing a damp curl from her wet cheek in a tender gesture she recalled.

“You are not there”, she whispered, yet his fingers traced her cheekbones, and they were warm, and alive, with calluses she remembered and were so very him.

“But I am”, Obi-Wan answered – and it was his voice, it was his very smell, the warmth of his chest and the soft, tender skin of his neck under her fingers.

He let her bury her face against his heart, and she could feel it beating, could smell the plain Jedi-temple soap mingling with tea-leaves and him. He who was there, on leave or on a mission, Satine did not care, as long as he was there.

“I thought I was the only one sentimental enough to brave the storm for Old Twi’lek poetry, and yet…”

“Did you know I was there?”

She needed to know. Needed to know if he had seen her cry, sensed her sadness. Had been there all along, hiding once more.

“I was thinking of you”, Obi-Wan answered, quietly. “So I did not understand, at first. I thought the words had evoked you.”

“How long are you here…?”, Satine asked, voice broken, and Obi-Wan circled her back with his arms, drawing her against him.

“Long enough to see you home”, he answered, chin brushing against her hair.

Satine breathed out, for a few heartbeats more. And then she drew back, throwing a trembling smile at him, not caring for the trace of fallen tears.

“In the rain?”, she both quoted and asked.

And Obi-Wan brushed her cheeks and answered:

“Dripping water.”

She was smiling for real now, getting up, Obi-Wan raising with her in a fluid move, still holding her against him.

“Delighted.”, Satine whispered.

And Obi-Wan adjusted her cloak around her, and took her hand, leading her out of the room.

“But not artless”, he told her, softly.

Lovingly. Back in the Coruscanti streets, where the rain had stopped.

[starkerforlife6969]

Starker - Reward

It’s a world rife with magic and monsters. Full of fantasy and witches and fate.

Tony cares little for those. He’s an inventor. A mechanic. An artist. He hones his skill, his craft, every day for twenty years, and then another twenty years. Worn and scarred, fingers thick and nimble, tremble-less. He knows little of magic and monsters. Of fantasy and witches. Those things that change and shape the world.

He uses his craft and he earns his power.

He’s a court favourite. The King likes him well-enough. That’s as much as anyone really likes Tony. Well-enough.

“You’re too tough. Too sharp. People don’t like that.” His mother had warned, even as she smoothed her fingers through his hair.

He hadn’t heeded her advice. His eyes had been on her loom. “There must be a better way,” he had said, “for that to work. So you don’t have to weave the cloth yourself.”

There is little to be said of gallantry. Heroes who have slain monsters come into the golden halls. They show King Brock the latest head of some nymph, or some great, long lost treasure, but in the end they must go on other adventures.

Tony, a court favourite, has a place in the palace always. A little wing to call his own. When he asks for iron, he is given iron. When he asks for silence, people hush.

Of course, when Rumlow demands an invention, or a maze to house some monster, Tony has to stop the whirrings on his mind to tend to those whims. He does not fight that. HIs mother was right, he’s rough and sharp, but he is no fool.

So, when he’s summoned for the King, he sets down his welders tools and follows the guards. He chatters at them, trying to see them rile, but they only smile tightly. Something weighs on them.

“Stark,” Rumlow beams, too encouraging, “men, leave us.”

The guards disappear. Smoke in the wind.

“My lord.” Tony doesn’t get down on one knee. But he inclines his head and Rumlow lets him have it.

“I have a task for you.”

“Name it, sire.”

“Years ago, I was shipwrecked across the strait.”

Tony nods. A sea-farer, perhaps a boat, a new oar. He can design something. Plans start to form in his head.

“I was given refuge upon a tiny island. It housed a demi-goddess. I lay with her.”

Tony waits. It doesn’t click. He doesn’t understand.

“It has become apparent that she had a child. My son. His name is Peter. He is mortal, but his blood, I believe, carries some trace of the gods. Because of this, they give him favour. My heroes have not been able to slay him. The seas that should kill, full of sirens and monsters, give him way. I have sent assassins and witches, and they fall prey to his charms.”

“Magic?” Tony asks, intrigued and a little disgusted. The petty foulness, the ease of magic. The fact the King is trying to kill his own blood, that is of little consequence. There are at least a dozen princes and princesses that flit about the kingdom now. Bloodshed will come once Rumlow dies as they battle for the throne. One less contender should shorten the battle.

“I had hoped it was magic.” The King sighs. “I fear it is him. He is…” the King sneers. “Beloved. They fall to him. Pledge their allegiance as if he were already their King.”

“I don’t understand.” Tony confesses, a hardship. “What would you have me do?”

Here, Rumlow smiles. Like the monster that prowls beneath the palace. “I would have you kill him, Tony. Don’t you see? You’re the only one who could. Who would not fall for his doe-eyes or sweet words. You are hardened. Use your mind, that cunning tool, or any of your inventions, and slay him. I can promise you rewards.”

Tony nods, already exhausted. This is not his domain, but the sooner it is begun, the sooner it is done. “What about the ire of the gods? You said they have given him favour. Will this not beget their anger?”

“Gods are fickle.” The King waves him away. “I have a hundred lambs all ready to be slaughtered for them. Pilgrims ready to visit their temples. I have had a boat prepared for you to leave this evening. I have heard from Cleo that Peter dwells on an island off her shore. My men will guide you.”

Tony grits his teeth a little at the lack of control, but it is a familiar ache. “And what proof of his demise? His heart?”

The King laughs at that. “You speak like a solider, Stark. I do not need proof. I will trust your word and the darkening skies.”

It goes unsaid, of course, that failure means death.

***

Tony likes sea-travel. The allusion of freedom on that endless horizon. The rough work of rigging. The smell. He used to pour over his father’s atlases, used to dream of travelling the world.

He has made himself content with Rumlow’s palace. The golden walls. His inventions.

They reach the island swiftly. The seas are much calmer. It must be Peter’s presence.

“We can go with you no further.” The men say. “Rumlow forbids it. He believes Peter would affect our minds.”

Tony wades through the water to the craggy edges. Rocks black with wet, gulls screaming.

“Sailor, let me help.” Comes a voice, soft as a siren, and Tony looks up and sees- him.

For it must be. Gold eyes. Eyes of a god. Traces of that divine lineage, but so devastatingly mortal. And it’s devastating, because Tony knows he cannot kill such beauty.

There’s no magic, but it feels like it. Carved like one of Romanov’s marble statues. It’s hard to believe such a thing could be part Rumlow.

He takes the lily hand, bronzed with sun, and lets himself be pulled up.

It’s but a boy. Not old enough to command armies. Barely a man.

“Peter.”

Peter smiles at him. “It never fails to surprise how many know my name. Where do you travel from?”

“From your father.”

Peter nods. He helps Tony manoeuvre the slippery rocks onto the sandy beach. There, he stoops to collect perfect white shells. “He would see me dead.”

“Yes.”

“I do not desire his throne.”

Tony smiles a little at that. “I don’t think it much matters.”

“Maybe not.” Peter’s eyes appraise his form. Tony puffs like a bird. “You’re no sailor. What are you?”

“An inventor.”

“An inventor.” Peter breathes, looking up at him in awe. He says the word with sacrilegious reverence. “What a gift my father has given me. I have been searching for an inventor my whole life.”

Tony itches to touch him. His skin prickles with a strange desire to taste. He’s had lovers in the past, in the endless escapades of youth, but Peter would be the only one that Tony would remember. “Hardly twenty years then.”

Peter laughs like music. “Will you help me?”

“Do you command me?”

“Of course not.” Peter humms, his eyes sparkle. “The God’s command. King’s demand. I am neither.”

“You are both. Son of a king and a goddess.”

“Bastard son of a king, and of a demi goddess.” Peter bows his head. “For some reason people help me. I cannot say why. I appreciate it, but I do not expect it. Your king would have you kill me.” Peter looks up at him. Eyes glazed like honey. Lips like wildflowers. “Will you?”

Throat dry, Tony croaks: “No.”

“I would ask for your help. Will you?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.” Peter whispers, genuine, artless. He is pure, an unwilted flower. He could command strangers. Unite enemies. “I need a boat that would withstand the river of the underworld.”

Tony recoils from this. Unnatural. “I deal with inventions, not magic.” He spits. 

“They are one.” Peter insists gently, but sees Tony’s face. “You build. I’ll do the magic.”

“You can command magic?”

“Barely. Basic charms. The ingredients are kind to me.”

“As is all of life, it seems.” Tony quips.

Peter’s smile is indulgent. “If that were true, I would need no ship.”

“Who are you collecting from the underworld?”

Peter’s eyes scan over the horizon. In the distance, the boat Tony came on bobs. Peter tilts his eyes to the sky: the countless, silent, watching Gods. “Later.” He vows.

Tony believes him.

…

He seems older than his face suggests. In the same way Gods that saw the beginning of the earth have scarce a mark of time upon their face.

Tony wonders if it is his divine blood.

A ship to withstand the underworld needs to be very slim indeed. The rivers below are narrow, sharply turning. Tony cuts and shapes the wood, methodical in his work.

Peter, meanwhile, gathers roots and strange plants, grinds them into paste, spreads them onto the wood planks and whispers. They glow under his touch, seep into the wood. “Protection,” Peter will say after one, “courage,” after another, “safety”, “resistance”, “resoluteness”, “fierceness”.

In the evenings, Tony is led to Peter’s home. It’s a small castle, grand in it’s own right, teeming with treasures but empty of attendants. They sit before the hearth and Peter brings out salves, and rubs Tony’s hands; eases out the splinters and sprains of the day’s work.

“There is no need.” Tony insists, though the sight of Peter on his knees before him is one that will haunt him.

“There is every need. You do me a great kindness.”

“This is my reward?”

“No.” Peter hums, “this is my reward.”

His fingers unfasten the belt of Tony’s britches, the hot, wet mouth tight and stomach-lurching. It’s all Tony can do to breathe, jerking in his chair, sparking with pleasure.

When he’s finished, Peter tucks Tony away. Cleans him up. “Is there a deity you worship?” He asks, and Tony wants to say you but knows the gods would scorn him for it.

“Hermes is well-travelled.” He says instead.

“I will ask him to give you favour.”

“There is no need-”

“You say a lot about need.” Peter laughs, airy, nymph-like. “I suspect you understand very little of it. Your own are so tightly bound within you. I do not need, but would very much like you in my bed tonight. How is that?”

Tony’s throat is dry, blood already hot. “That is well.” He whispers.

*

A smarter man would delay the building of the ship. Spend more seasons with Peter on this island.

But the only thing that can rival Tony’s passion for the boyy, is his desire to work and invent.

As he sands the boards, he notes the cove they take shelter in. The shadows that hide them from the gods of the sky. “Who,” he says quietly, the waves lapping at their toes, “do you seek to bring from the Underworld?” A parent, who has died? A dear friend lost in battle? Worse- a lover. Tony almost could not bear it.

“I will bring an army of the undead,” Peter says, and Tony drops the block of cinder from his hand. It clatters to the deck. Peter continues to hum, binding rope with moss for strength.

Tony must be deceived. But there is no lie anywhere in Peter’s body. Just slim, muscled, beauty.

“Do not look so shocked, mortal.”

“Mortal?” Tony croaks.

Peter laughs. Musical. “I confess to you then. My mother was no demi-god. She was Zeus’ first born. I am no human. I’m more powerful than that.”

“You are not a god.”

“And grateful for it. Gods cannot go into the underworld.”

“You want war. Against who?”

“Rumlow. I will take his city. I will rule Attica.”

Tony laughs in disbelief, trembling with fear. He has been taken here for a fool. This is no kindness. This boy is vicious and cruel, like any God. “Attica cannot be united-”

“An army of the undead will unite them. The fates have written it. Led by me.”

Tony turns from him, shaking, eyes stinging. “I thought you good. I loved-”

Peter is before him, hands gentle on his face, smoothing through the inventor’s beard. “You love me with your mortal heart, dear sweet, Tony,” Peter whispers, kissing him. Melting into him, seeping into him, taking him over. Tony feels the eagerness against his thigh. Wants to jerk away but cannot bring himself to. He clutches Peter tighter. “I will reward you for it.”

Peter’s hand slips into Tony’s trousers. Tony is hard. Throbbing. But he resists. “I want no reward from you who brings such bloodshed.”

The boy, not a boy at all, laughs. Even as his hand works at Tony, spreading wetness, teasing, touching all the right ways. “This is not your reward. Your reward is much greater,” his teeth find Tony’s ear, nipping. “I will make you a god.”

Tony moans, Peter works him harder, he’s shaking, closer, trying to resist. “M-mortals cannot be made-” he gasps for breath, “-into gods.” He knows little of magic, but he knows that. Peter is pressed flush against him, hand moving between them.

“It must be written in Fate. I chose you, Stark. I had Rumlow choose you. I orchestrated it all. You are fated to be a God. Inventor who trapped the Minotaur, it is your destiny. You will be powerful and eternal and you will be mine.”

“I will be a god, and you not- you will die.” The thought is arresting. “I will have to continue without you.”

“There are tricks,” Peter grins, “Goddess of beauty is charmed by me. She will keep me young and beautiful forever. I will do a favour for the Underworld harpies. They will not take my soul.”

“What is this favour?”

“Do not fret,” Peter coos, licking Tony’s lips, grip merciless, taunting, Tony’s so close. Hips thrusting. “I have taken care of you now, have I not? I will give you all you desire. Every invention to make, all the means. I will care for you and not ask much in return. Let me do so for eternity. You can release, god.”

Tony cries out, does as he’s commanded.

An eternity. Ruled by Peter. A mystery wrapped up like a kindness. He’s hungry for it. He is no fool, Peter will ask for few, but terrible, things in return. Inventions that will turn Tony’s stomach. Wings of wax to trick a father and a son. A sea-spider to eat good sailors. A poison sword and arrow to destroy demigods. And he’ll make them all. Just like he’s made this ship. He’ll obey.

And if he’s good, Peter will reward him.