#blaming it on the first draft dhsks

[carrotcakecrumble]

Loved the little snippets you’ve shared so far – religious Ralph, that is a deep, deep seam…..Dark Sandy?  Yes please!!

And you had to remind me of the Laurie letter fic, I know already I am going to love it and if you are going to tackle the *other* letter, OMG, I need that letter deconstructed, I’m too scared to do it myself.

So, let me see what I'd like more of.....for some reason Ralph rent boy is jumping out at me, can’t think why!

And I’ll have all your young Alec please, for purely selfish reasons.

I take it the rest of your Ralph diaries are not in your WIP folder because they are already in the ‘Ready to publish but going to tease RP a bit longer’ folder 😉

Hssjsg THANK YOU!!!

Ok So a little of the rent boy fic💅:

A black Austin. The letter instructed that if he didn’t know what an Austin was, he was to look out for the smartest motorcar to drive by. A few lines later, there was the more helpful advice to watch out for a motorcar that had ‘Austin’ welded in silver onto the grill. After a long and fretful wait, a car matching the description drew up beside him. With it‘s wheels kicking up a cobbled grey cloud, it gave a rather ghostly impression of emerging from a winter’s fog. A hearse, Dickensian almost, Ralph thought. The smartest hearse to drive by.

It parked, the breaks squawking and shivering away the blanket of smog it had created. Ralph approached stiffly and gave three soft knocks to the driver’s window. A fuzzy silhouette inside jumped, and then collecting itself, staggered the window open. Like an eye refocusing, the colours of the interior emboldened and focussed into what was recognisably the very neat and clean interior of a car. The silhouette, now revealed, became a smart, middle-aged man wrapped up in navy wools, leathers and velvets. He had a rather white face, wrinkled and placid, that looked like it had been knitted together with a few dropped stitches. His hands, whose fingers were creating soft, wave-like taps against the steering wheel, were covered in black driving gloves, the knuckles cut out to reveal the red, scabbed skin underneath.

“Ralph, is it?” A refined and tight voice asked, vaguely northern in vowels but otherwised well-docked into proper, gentleman’s English. It pronounced the ‘L’ in Ralph’s name like it was a hill to be gotten over.

“Yes. You’re—“

“I already know who I am. Get in then, Ralph.”

One of the pre-canon Alec ones👁️👁️:

“What is-s-s your name? If you’ll excuse my unmannerly persis-sis-sistance?”

The sailor glanced over, hard blue eyes framed inside water smoothed cheekbones. Someone like this would usually cost a few bob, easily. He could hardly believe his luck having come across it for free, and so willing, too. Alec pinched the braces onto his trousers, glided them up over bare shoulders and then dropped neatly, hands folded in his lap, onto the edge of the bed.

“Lanyon.” The sailor replied, almost shyly, very much different from how he had been the night before. “You’re a doctor,” he said, as though that was a name enough. Then he leant back against the bed frame, arms folded and spiked upwards like the teeth of a tiara, sliding behind his head, fair hair hinting at colour within the dark like a crown jewel.

“Sometimes. Sometimes I’m-m-m an Alec.”

“Sometimes I’m a Ralph.”

“Ralph. Wuh-well. Ralph, how long are you back on shore?”

Ralph turned his head towards the closed curtains, face split in half from the single streak of morning sunlight, “indefinitely.”

“Ah.” Alec pushed closer to him, “So does-s… that mean you’ll be fr-fr…free later today? For a m-m…meal, perhaps?”

A smile spread on Ralph’s face, slowly and jaggedly, “it might.” They sat for a minute, looking and smiling and looking and smiling. Then just as silently, Ralph bit his grin away, and stared down at the fidgeting hands in Alec’s in his lap.

“I’m not free.” He said, abruptly.

“Doesn’t have to be today—“

“No, I mean. I’ve got someone. A girl.”

“Oh.” Alec shrugged, “with her to-today?”

“No.”

“Then you’re free.”

And then a little alternative one:

“Who is that?”

“That’s— but no— Charlotte he’s with— you know her. Gill. You know her.”

“Oh.”

“Would keep a—“

“—gosh. a ten foot poll.”

“Well, exactly.”

“A shame.”

“Though, between us—“

“Oh, you are terrible!”

“—I’ve heard they’re not exactly Mr and Mrs enamoured.”

“No?”

“He’s a temper and she’s a button pusher. Both miserable and— of course, That’s just between us.”

Alec dropped the cigarette butt into his empty gin glass. If the hiccuped conversation over his shoulder hadn’t been enough, he knew when he was getting the look. Quietly, concealed by clammy pools of dancers, he approached the watching eyes. Whilst drawing near, he snatched a (as far as he could tell) untouched whisky off of a coffee table and gave it a little, revitalising swirl.

“Hullo.” He said, voice loud so as to be heard over the vibrant chatter and steady music, “I thought you looked like you needed—“ he offered out the whisky, watched it as he waited for the response.

“Oh. Thank you.” The drink exchanged hands, warm fingers brushing together.

“You’re with— Gill?”

“Don’t remind me.” The unnamed man threw back his head and downed the drink, at first slowly and with conscious grace, and then without warning, tipped it away with a whippy but firm movement that emptied the entire glass. He held it by his waist afterwards, obscuring a golden pocket watch draped over his waistcoat button. They’d met at half past ten, Alec noted.

“I always come alone to these things.” Alec said, looking up from the clock face into an equally obscured, equally as gilded human one.

“Gill dragged me along…” his face moved as though chewing, as though his thoughts were hard bits of gristle. “I’d like to bloody-well leave alone.”

This made Alec laugh, and on sudden impulse he offered his hand into the narrow gap left between their fronts.

“I’m Alexander. Alec. Just to mention.”

“Ralph.” Ralph smiled, “just to mention.”

(AND YES DW THE OTHER CHAPTERS WERENT INCLUDED because then the post would have genuinely taken 10 minutes to scroll through🧎🏻‍♀️🧎🏻‍♀️🧎🏻‍♀️ they do exist secretly maybe)