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amorgansgal · 3 years

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Light Into Darkness

RDR Rare pair Week Fanfic

Prompt: Darkness

Pairing: Arthur/Charlotte.

Warnings: Nothing major, mentions of injury/illness.

She’d always loved hearing the wind and rain of a storm. Even when she was a little girl tucked up in her bed, with her Nanny fretfully sleeping on the smaller bed in the room, Charlotte would listen to the howling gale and the torrential rain. She would sneak over to the bedroom window and watch the bright, white lightening slash through the dark night sky, while thunder roared overhead like some mighty dragon.

For all she’d heard that dragons were fearsome beasts who would gobble up whole villages and steal pretty princesses, she would often entertain herself by closing her eyes and imagining she was riding that storm dragon. The body and wings were dark, thick grey clouds, the rain it’s icy, sharp scales.

Tonight, her dragon was roaring with gusto. She even heard the shutters shaking against the wind and the rain drumming hard on the roof of the cabin. For all the comfort a storm usually brought her, for all the warmth her bed provided, she found herself wide awake.

She curled up in the blankets again, closing her eyes and willing herself to sleep, but it was like some small, bothersome gnat had made its way into her brain. No matter which side she lay on, how she fluffed her pillows, or tried to reason with herself that she had a huge number of things to do tomorrow sleep evaded her.

Finally, she got up. While the cabin was dark, her eyes had adjusted and she knew it well enough to not trip or stumble against anything. Charlotte made her way into the kitchen, debating about whether making herself a cup of tea would help soothe her back to sleep, but something about the closed door, that opened out onto the garden, called to her.

She slid back the bolt and unlocked the door, then pulled it open and stepped out onto the porch. The torrential rain thrummed heavily on the ground, a dark, silky wave of darkness swallowing up the surrounding trees. Sometimes on quiet nights she would hear the rush of the nearby river or the trains trundling along the tracks towards Bacchus Station. But right now, she couldn’t even hear the rustle of animals in the bushes or the hoot of an owl in a nearby sycamore.

As always, she felt the pull of slipping out into the garden and allowing herself to be drenched by the rain, to dance in the everlasting depth of night, the boom of thunder her music and lightening illuminating the ground beneath her feet. She had once done it as a child, or at least had tried to, until her Nanny had yanked her back indoors.

She was lucky that her father was home to tell her off, rather than her mother. Her mother would have probably given her a thwack over the thighs with a slipper and sent her off to bed without supper. Her father just gave an amused chuckle when Nanny told him what she had been up to, before sitting her opposite him and telling her that being electrocuted was a very unpleasant experience. He had seen several exhibitions on it while he had been in New York. Being hit by lightening could mean instant death.

‘So, no more dancing in the rain, my little witch.’

She had nodded fearfully, wide eyed and terrified that the lightening could snake its way into the house, find her and zap her.

Still the urge never really left her, even though eventually the sense of adulthood prevailed and she would usually just watch a storm from a safe distance. She risked placing her hand just outside the safety of the porch, the rain drizzling lightly on her fingertips. A sudden flash of lightening made her pull her hand back. For a brief moment the garden was lit up as though it were mid-morning, she could easily make out the neat rows of vegetables and herbs, the bowed heads of the flowers in the plant pots by the cabin and in the distance, coming up the road was a brown, misshapen lump of something.

‘Bear!’ her mind instantly thought with fear. But even with the rumble of thunder, that followed the bright flash of light, she heard a horse’s whinny of terror. She debated what would be the best thing to do in the short amount of time she had with the person approaching her house. There was no way she could grab her rifle and a lamp; it would have to be one or the other.

She grabbed the rifle from behind the door and nestling it snuggle against her shoulder, called out as bravely as she dared, ‘Who is it? I warn you, I am armed and won’t think twice about shooting you, if you cause me trouble!’

In the gloom, the horse ambled forward, and Charlotte placed her finger on the trigger. ‘I’ll give you to the count of three. One… two…’

But she never got to three and was instead interrupted by a low groan, as someone slipped from the saddle and landed on the ground with a low, heavy thud. She cautiously stepped a little closer, unfortunately all too aware of the tricks people could play on gullible, kind strangers.

‘Who are you?’ she called out again.

Lightening split the sky in two with a brilliant flash and she was able to see the stranger, though he was lying face first in the cold, dank mud of her garden. She could make out the brown leather jacket, a blue cotton shirt, heavy boots on his feet. His light brown hair was lank and plastered to his head.

Before she had even realised it, she was racing across the garden path and knelt down by his side, practically dragging the man into her lap and rolling him over. He let out a gasping wheeze as she did, but one of his hands lifted up, trying to cup her face.

His shirt was ripped and blood stained the material. His face was almost unrecognisable, bruises blossoming everywhere, his lips cracked and bloodied, his skin ghostly pale, eyelids closed over those sharp clear blue-green eyes that she had grown to know and love so well. He let out a few rasping breaths, then coughed, a terrifying, brutal cough that seemed to drain him of any energy he had left.

‘Trouble, ‘m trouble,’ he said, his words a scratchy whisper that could have easily been lost in the rain.

‘Arthur,’ she murmured, holding him, cradling him against her. She had so many questions screaming through her mind, ‘What happened, how did you get here, who hurt you, where have you been, why did you leave me for so long?’

Another racking cough seized his body and afterwards he let out another groan, before resting in her arms once more. ‘Can I come in?’ he muttered faintly.

She found herself laughing at the absurdity of the situation, that he would still ask permission to enter her home, even though he looked like death. He managed a wheeze and a painful smile, that looked more grimace than grin, but his fingers finally cupped her cheek and he gazed up at her as though he was glad to be there, as though he had found peace, as though he had found his way home.

#RDRRarepairWeek #arthur morgan x charlotte balfour #arthur x charlotte #arthur morgan #charlotte balfour #red dead redemption #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #rdr #that's the way it is #angst #fluffy angst #injury #illness

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jack-andthestalk · 6 years

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Stuck on you, See me, Chapter 16.

Thank you as always to @balfeheughleywed, for keeping this fic afloat. Moodboard cred to @balfeheughleywed. Sorry for the delay!

Our guests slowly trickled home in the early hours of the morning; only a few stragglers remained, whispering couples tucked into corners of the apartment.

Rupert was chatting up a girl in the kitchen who had bright red hair, possibly dyed, and a piercing in her nose and eyebrow that Rupert found ‘edgy’ his voice occasionally went up an octave as he came to the punch line of a joke.

Jamie and I were thoroughly enjoying eavesdropping from our vantage position in the hall, giggling at Rupert’s efforts. He had just told her he was a land owner, Jamie snorted “the garden at the back of his mother’s house doesna count”

There was a high pitched giggle from the red head and a rumble from Rupert before we could hear him mumbling “do ye ken that Scottish men are hung like horses?”

The red heads flirtatious voice murmuring is that so? There was wet kissing noises now and Jamie stuck two fingers down his throat mimicking a puking action. The kissing noises stopped and Rupert continued, “Aye that’s why we need kilts…we canna contain our cocks in breeks!”

I put my hand over my mouth to stifle the roar of laughter and Jamie rolled his eyes muttering “fucking idiot”

“Hey you shouldn’t knock Rupert’s tall tale it can only benefit you, you are Scottish too after all?” Jamie pulled me in close and raised his eyebrows questioningly “I will wear my kilt for ye again I hope?” an endearing boyish smiled crossed over his face and my heart tugged against my chest.

“Well I was always partial to your kilt….” I admitted.

Rupert emerged out of the kitchen a determined look on his face and we broke apart quickly, “Jamie man have ye a johnny?” I didn’t know which one of us was redder, but it certainly wasn’t Rupert, who stood by impatiently waiting. I glanced to the ground hoping to grant Jamie some privacy.

Jamie cleared his throat awkwardly “I dinna have one.”

Rupert gave him a look of utter disgust “tsk, what kind of a single man doesna have any condoms for fucks sake” and staggered off towards his bedroom purposefully.

I engrossed myself with something on the back of my hand to try and hide my smirk. When I looked back up Jamie rolled shook his head in disdain and I could still make out the lovely shade of pink coloring his cheeks.

I curled my arms around my middle and yawned unconsciously; Jamie reached out and touched my arm, “Ye should go to bed Claire… I am gonna head home.” I wanted to pull him to me and say “Stay, sleep with me.” The words wouldn’t come out instead I tilted my head and smiled tenderly at him, “Thank you for everything you were a great help”, Jamie rubbed the back of his neck, and looked down at the floor “aye well so were you.”

“um er…ok I don’t know what to say to that” I giggled nervously

“Och no I dinna mean that…I…oh Christ.”

I pushed him playfully on the chest, “c’mon I will walk you out.”

Jamie and I had started the day as friends and ended it with a mind numbing session on top of my bed with our hands down each other’s pants. Standing now under the streetlights the whole thing felt dreamlike, Jamie’s chin dipped down into his chest while he shifted awkwardly on his feet.

“Well goodnight then Jamie.” I said quietly, pulling at the sleeves of my cardigan nervously.

He raised his head to look at me, intensity in his eyes that made me feel giddy.

“this is akin to a first date Sassenach….well the nervous goodbye bit is anyway…should I kiss ye…will ye slap me?” his eyes were sparkling now.

“You’ve already kissed me tonight Fraser…and worse, have you forgotten already?” I teased.

“Not a chance, I remember, every fuckin’ second of it Claire.” His tone deepened, and he put his hand on my waist pulling me into him.

“so… can I kiss ye good night then?”

He stood hesitantly waiting for me to answer; I just nodded and walked into his lips, standing on tippy toe. My intention was a chaste kiss but Jamie wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, tilted his head took my whole mouth zealously. When we broke away Jamie’s lips hovered over mine barely touching, a slightly stunned expression on his face.

We both grinned stupidly at each other, Jamie’s hand roamed round and cupped my arse, and he rested his head against my forehead. He stood there for a minute or two before he shifted away slightly, looking for something in his pockets.

“Claire… I dinna have yer number?”

“what?” my eyebrows creased in confusion.

“Yer phone number?”

“Oh” I nodded and widened my eyes in realisation.

Jamie’s looked at the ground and he mumbled, “I ken ye dinna have the same one anymore….”

I didn’t need to ask how he knew; after I left he had tried several ways to get in touch when he failed to get through on my old number.

“of course” I said quickly not wanting to dampen the moment with reliving the path that led to me changing my number. He took out his phone punching in the numbers while I called it out giving me a lopsided grin when he was done.

“Goodnight Sassenach” he said taking a step backwards, keeping his gaze locked on me.

“Goodnight Mr. Fraser.”

A lot had changed in 12 hours.

A few nights later while watching Lamb swirl his wine around in a globe like glass, I contemplated how the hell I was going to tell him about Jamie’s resurgence in my life.

“Darling you look hypnotised, are you ok?” Lamb asked voice full of concern.

Lamb had been on a dig in India for the past six weeks and was back in London for a short stay before he flew off to his next project. Our customary catch up dinner was quieter than usual as my conscience battled over whether I should continue lying to him until I knew what was happening with Jamie and me, or come clean and tell him how I was allowing Jamie back into my life with gusto, resulting in a dizzy silliness that was embarrassing if nothing else.

I shrugged my shoulders and smiled briefly, “No sorry I am fine…I just am just out of it after the night shifts.” Lamb and I were sitting in rustic wooden dining booths, which lined the gastro pub walls back to back, there was a band setting up in the corner of the restaurant and I vaguely wished they would start to play so it would drowned out my attempt at excuses.

He nodded sceptically, making a sucking sound between his tongue and teeth to dislodge something stuck. “Good I was afraid yourself and Cathal were having a little trouble.”

Lamb was either more intuitive than I gave him credit for or guessing wildly, either of which was backing me up into a corner. Now I had to tell him about Cathal. I took a deep breath and decided weakly maybe it was enough for one night to break it to him about Cathal; Jamie was another night’s work.

“Actually Lamb…you’re not too wrong on that score…myself and Cathal you see actually have split up.” I smiled nervously, playing with the rim of my wine glass, “Just wasn’t to be I suppose”, I took a long deep gulp of my wine and avoided Lamb’s perplexed gaze.

“But before I went to India…you two seemed so happy? What on earth happened in six weeks my love?”

“I just needed space.” My face was burning up, it always betrayed me.

Lamb extended a hand and placed it over mine. “Claire…what is going on?”

My mind was racing trying to decide how much to tell Lamb, I was granted a quick reprieve when his phone rang suddenly.

He shuffled in his pocket and retrieved the phone, looking at the screen, “I’m sorry sweetheart” he gestured at the phone “I gotta take this.”

While Lamb left the table to take the call, I attempted to build up courage to mention Jamie’s name at least…maybe say he started working in the hospital?

Shit, no that wouldn’t do, I had just mentioned Cathal and I had broken up, too much of a coincidence that Jamie was now working with me.

Off course I could come clean? I could tell him the whole sorry affair.

And that was the other issue; I knew how Lamb would react. Well that and the whole affair almost seemed like it existed in my imagination as I hadn’t been able to see Jamie since the party three nights ago.

Our working shifts at the hospital literally on opposite ends of the clock. The only thing that made it tangible was the yearning and ridiculous giddiness when my phone lit up with a message from him at the beginning of my shift or the end of his.

The first of them had arrived the morning after the party.

Jamie: I tried being suave and aloof and I dinna plan on texting ye til at least 12 hours after I had scored yer number but I am a weak man when it comes to ye Sassenach...I canna seem to stop myself…

My jaws had almost cracked from smiling and the texts were coming hot and fast since then.

So distracted was I in remembering the flirty exchanges, I hadn’t notice the door of the pub opening, admitting Rupert and Jamie, shoulders hunched from the cold and rubbing their hands furiously. My jaw dropped slightly and a sickly panic feeling rolled down my back. Fuck.

I had arranged to meet Jamie sometime later that evening, vaguely mentioning I had dinner plans and would ring him when I was finished. I watched as he leaned over the bar, waiting for his drink, glancing down at his phone.

I sank further into my seat, hoping he wouldn’t see me. Lamb returned to our table and noisily started apologising for his absence. Jamie’s head snapped up when he heard the commotion, catching my eye in the process.

Jamie’s face lit up and he gave a little wave, Lamb was sitting the other side of the booth hidden from view. I smiled back weakly and quickly looked away again but it didn’t deter him, Jamie was already making confidence strides in my direction and my stomach was turning in on itself with stress.

“Hey” I could hear him say from above my head. I took a deep breath and before I said another word, I gave him an apologetic smile. “Hi”

Lambs slightly shocked voice cut through our reverie, “James?” he asked incredulously.

If Lamb looked shocked then Jamie’s expression was nearer to shook. His mouth fell slightly agape “Lambert…I dinna see ye there…” his breath shook slightly “it’s been a while.” Jamie outstretched his hand, lamb looked at it cautiously for a minute before taking it and with a coldness I had never heard from him before he replied, “yes it has”

“Lamb, I was just about to tell you that Jamie is working at the hospital, he is a qualified physiotherapist now…isn’t that great?” words babbling from my mouth nervously.

Lamb looked at me as if I was half mad and then returned his steel gaze to Jamie.

“You’re living in London?” He asked incredulously.

“Aye…only moved here a couple of months ago now” Jamie shifted away from the table slightly, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

“And what on earth would bring a scot like yourself to London?” Lamb shook his head in disbelief and widened his eyes dramatically. He was playing a game and it was obvious, I was only waiting on it to get progressively worse depending on Jamie’s answer.

“I…em…I wanted a change and …” Jamie was stuttering, Lamb gave him a cold stare and a detached smile. “And did your girlfriend move with you?” he interrupted. I shot Lamb a look, Jamie’s eyebrows creased in confusion “my girlfriend?” he asked slowly.

“Yes …your girlfriend…that is why you and my niece broke up? No? You had met someone else I think?” Lamb rubbed his chin contemplatively, pretending to think hard on the matter.

Jamie’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped, “Eh no sir that is not quite what happened…I dinna…”

“Oh well then” Lamb said rubbing his hands together happily, “it was just one big misunderstanding then?” Jamie’s gaze dropped to the floor. Lamb interpreted it as guilt, which it probably was, “I didn’t think so” Lamb replied flatly.

Jamie’s head snapped up and his eyes narrowed slightly, “Lambert I ken I did wrong by Claire…but I certainly dinna leave her for another lassie…I made a very stupid stupid mistake …and I have tried to explain myself to Claire as best I can…she has been….” Before he could continue Lamb turned to look at me, “Claire darling…I shall not interfere any further but I hope that while James was explaining”, he over pronounced ‘explaining’ mockingly, “that he understood what it was like for you also to live in the shadow of his mistake hmm?” Lamb busied himself putting his coat on and throwing cash on the table.

Jamie unfortunately interrupted “Lambert I ken what I put Claire through…I will be sorry for it forever…you must ken that?”

“Oh so you knew then? How when I returned from a Egypt, I found my niece so malnourished, she had to be hospitalized?...that she paused her soaring medical career because you had broken her….over a fling with a woman…I believe you acquired in a bar?”

“Lamb, stop it!” I snapped.

Lamb put his hands up in defeat, “I promise I will not say another word.”

He leaned across the table and kissed me on the cheek, “I love you darling, call me tomorrow.”

With one curt nod in Jamie’s direction, “Goodnight James” Lamb exited throwing his scarf over his shoulder gliding out of the door with a proud hold across his shoulders.

I turned to look at Jamie, a heartbroken look across his face, “I’m so sorry Claire…” he said softly.

#outlander fanfic #stuckonyou #the lallybroch library #lamb

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merryfortune · 6 years

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Fizzy Feelings

Fandom: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

Ship: Gold City/Yukino Bijin

Warnings: A bath bomb is eaten & characterization is based on the mini-comics but otherwise, it’s all fluff!

Word Count: 2.3k

Synopsis: Gold City takes Yukino Bijin on a grown-up city girl date and on that date, Gold City specifically takes Yukino Bijin to Lush.

Gold City’s heart was still hammering, and they were approximately already forty-five minutes into their date. That is if you added up all the minutes and seconds between here and leaving the dorm and that had taken quite some time due to Gold City’s regular morning hypotension. Regardless, they got there in the end and were able to leave together. They had taken the train to the inner part of the city; where the CBD was and where a shopping mall was. And that had been the most nerve-wracking experience of her life because as much as she loved and crushed on Yukino Bijin, the girl was bit of a ditz.

No. She was a lot of a ditz. But it was endearing and cute and gave Gold City a good excuse to hold her hand. After all, the country bumpkin couldn’t get lost if they were connected so tightly with interlocking fingers. But, of course, being exactly who she was, Yukino Bijin didn’t entirely get that Gold City was holding her hand as a romantic gesture. In fact, Gold City was beginning to wonder if this date was one-sided and that thought terrified her.

So, for now, she played it cool. And that was relatively easy for Gold City because she was most at peace when she could be in a crowd and as they got closer to their destination, the more people clustered them on the city streets; not even glancing past them at all despite the fact they were two Horse Girls quite far from the school at this point.

Yukino Bijin hummed a little tune under her breath as she held onto the strap of her purse and onto Gold City’s hand. She moved to the beat of her own drum, all of the time but it was nice for Gold City to have some clue as to what that tune was and, admittedly, it wasn’t all that great. It was a quirky little tune which showed that Yukino Bijin had no aptitude at all for music, but Gold City adored it nonetheless as they entered the underground complex.

“Where do you want to go first?” Gold City asked, breaking Yukino Bijin’s tune.

She blinked and mused thoroughly on the question. Her eyes glazing over as she weighed the pros and cons.

“I’m right for racing shoes, at the moment.” she said at long last.

Gold City laughed. “This isn’t a racing store; we’ll be lucky to find skirts or shorts with tail holes.” she replied and without thinking, she gave two flicks of her sandy-coloured tail.

“Oh dear,” Yukino Bijin said, “I was hoping to buy a new casual skirt… The city has so many more options. Back home I had to sew m’own. I know! Is there a sewing shop, we can go to? And what else? I want the bon-a-fide city slicker experience, Goldie.”

Gold City smiled. She hated it when anyone called her “Goldie” or “Goldielocks” and yet, somehow, she didn’t mind it when Yukino Bijin called her it. So, she smiled softly down on her companion.

“Well, I suppose we could visit a few luxury shops then.” She said.

“Ooh, for make-up and stuff?” Yukino Bijin asked.

“Exactly!” chirruped Gold City. “I know, why don’t we visit Lush?”

“Lush?” Yukino Bijin blinked owlishly and her face lit up with joy. “That’s the fancy sweets shop, ain’t it?!”

“Er, no… This is an, um, bath and body lotion and hair care product shop.” Gold City explained; she was surprised that Yukino Bijin hadn’t heard of it – or had maybe gotten her wires crossed at all.

“That sounds lovely. You have such pretty hair, Gold City. I would like my hair t’ be so silky too…” Yukino Bijin said.

“I will very happily buy you anything you want there, hon.” Gold City quickly told Yukino Bijin because she had Gold City wrapped around her little pinkie finger – and she didn’t even know it!

Yukino Bijin’s simple but adorable face lit up with joy. “Really?!” she exclaimed.

“Really.” Gold City confirmed.

“Then let’s rock’n’roll, Goldie! Let’s go shopping!” she whooped and hollered.

Gold City smiled and soon enough, Yukino Bijin was marching them both right through the shopping centre. They got lost a few times here and there but that was okay. It gave them time to peruse the other shops on the way to Lush. They weren’t able to find any shops with pants or skirts or dresses which accommodated their needs, but they were still able to try on the occasional shirt here and there. As well as other accessories such as scarves and purses. They also wandered through the insides of a technology shop for the latest music and movies. Though Gold City had already illegally downloaded the bulk of such trendy things and Yukino Bijin had more vintage and obscure tastes. Even learning that Yukino Bijin had an affinity for ancient, country music wasn’t enough to cause Gold City to rethink her crush on her.

Nonetheless, they were able to get where they were going, but they did stop for macarons and drinks first. An iced coffee for Gold City and an apple juice for Yukino Bijin. After that little pit-stop, the two Horse Girls continued on their way and eventually made it to their end goal destination and when they arrived, it was like Yukino Bijin’s eyes had been opened to the promised land. They utterly sparkled as she looked around the rather narrow and skinny little place that Lush resided in. Gold City didn’t quite understand the appeal but maybe it was because she was used to these sorts of things.

Regardless, they milled around the insides of the shop with a few other customers and the staff as well. The store smelt very strongly of all its different, all-natural products. It gave Gold City something of a headache but Yukino Bijin embraced it as she admired all the little knickknacks available on the shelf. Gold City followed after her, explaining the uses of all these different things.

Eventually, Yukino Bijin decided on some sort of leave-in shampoo and a body scrub but then, they got to the final frontier that Lush was known for and Gold City won’t lie, she had her reservations about it due to the type of idiotic girl Yukino Bijin was. She was very quickly infatuated with the baskets of bath bombs available. Her eyes widened over them as she inspected the different, crumbly spheres and she licked her lips.

“I was right,” she said, “they do sell lollies here.”

“N-No, they don’t,” Gold City said, “honey, these are bath bombs.”

But it was too late. Yukino Bijin was far too in her own head to want to listen to anyone else and with great gusto, she took a bite out of the bath bomb. She hummed as she ate it like one would eat an apple. White powder dusted her lips as she mused over the taste.

“Mm, crunchy!” she said, enthusiastically. “I like it.”

“Th-Those are bath bombs, sweetheart.” Gold City stuttered.

And it was in that moment, so awkward and embarrassing, that Gold City was truly able to confirm how far her feelings for Yukino Bijin ran. If her liking of dorky music couldn’t kill off the infatuation, then neither could her ability to eat bath bombs apparently because Gold City was swept head over heels for just how unique a girl Yukino Bijin was. She was so stupid and so cute all at once. Gold City’s heart thumped in her chest as she wished, quite dearly, to kiss Yukino Bijin on the lips; even if they were crumbed with bath bomb dust. It was a fizzy feeling which she genuinely enjoyed no matter the circumstance.

“Um, excuse me, ma’am…?” a voice, terrified and exasperated, appeared from behind them.

A chill was sent down Gold City’s spine as she turned around so that she may address the poor, beleaguered employee who had to deal with them. Meanwhile, Yukino Bijin was still enjoying her snack. Gold City awkwardly fidgeted with her hands; her ears twitched as she forced a smile.

“Don’t worry, I’ll, um, pay for that…” she said.

Yukino Bijin nudged Gold City then thrust the half-eaten bath bomb towards her. “You want some? It tastes really good. Mostly sugar though. Like a jawbreaker! But easier on th’ teeth.”

“I’m right, thank you, Yukino Bijin.” Gold City told her, brushing her off as courteously as she could.

Yukino Bijin shrugged. “Awright, if ya say so.” And then, she went back to blissfully tucking into her bath bomb.

“Yep, don’t worry… I’ll pay.” Gold City told the Lush employee.

“Thank you; this way then girls, I’ll – I’ll, um, ring you up.” She said.

“Not a problem.” Gold Citu said through gritted teeth.

She followed the employee and Gold City sighed dejectedly as she glanced back towards Yukino Bijin who was still purveying the wicker baskets of bath bombs. Thus, Gold City thought she would come to the counter prepared and got out extra money so that Yukino Bijin could buy another two bath bombs. Whether or not they would be for the intended enjoyment was a different story but honestly, as long as Yukino Bijin was happy then it was money well spent.

With that, Gold City had decided that Yukino Bijin had gotten up to enough rabblerousing in the big city and made the executive decision to send themselves both back home. That way, they could join the other girls in the dorm for afternoon tea; although the temptation to duck into a WcDonalds was present but Yukino Bjin absolutely did not need sugar in her system. Not after eating an entire bath bomb, anyway.

Still, despite the hiccups, Gold City had enjoyed her little quasi-date with Yukino Bijin. Together, with all their bags in tow, they stepped off the train and started to make their way back to the dorms at the school. They were slowly beginning to run out of conversation topics as Yukino Bijin had looped back to the same sort of idle musings that she had begun their morning together with.

As they walked, Gold City still found herself enamoured with her companion. She was so cute and stupid, how could she not have fallen in love with Yukino Bijin?

“Hey, Yukino…” Gold City murmured as they drew in closer to the school gates, breaking off Yukino Bijin’s reverie about the state of crops back home and how she didn’t mind the hot weather even if it was detrimental, but it made playing under sprinklers fun.

“Yeah, Gold City?” Yukino Bijin chirruped; completely blanking from all her previous trains of thoughts.

“Did you have fun today?” Gold City asked awkwardly.

“Well of course I did!” she beamed. “I feel like a real city girl today. Going to Lush an’ buyin’ make-up. It was great fun.”

“I’m glad.” Gold City murmured. “But, um, would consider what we went on…” Her cheeks began to go red and her heart pounded. “But would you consider it a date?”

“Huh?” Yukino Bijin stopped right in her tracks and her eyes went as wide as dinner plates.

Gold City stopped too, but only after taking a few regrettable steps forward because she hadn’t immediately noticed that she had stunned Yukino Bijin like that. Her palms began to sweat and her mouth dried. She worried upon worries that perhaps she had overstepped things and was now compromising her solid friendship with the wildly different Horse Girl.

“Y-You mean… This was a…? Well I’ll be… A sexy… A sexy city girl like you Goldie… wants to take me on a date?” she asked.

“Well, um, yes.” Gold City replied, and she was miffed by such words coming out of Yukino Bijin’s mouth; they didn’t quite suit her, but she was flattered, nonetheless.

“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle…” she murmured. “Yes! Yes, a thousand times yes, Goldie!”

“You’ll… You’ll be my girlfriend then?” Gold City asked.

“Abso-blinking-lutely!” Yukino Bijin cried out.

Gold City squealed in delight and she dropped her bags, without thinking, and pounced on Yukino Bijin with a great hug. She squeezed and squeezed and squeezed her newly crowned girlfriend until Yukino Bijin had to tap out due to not being able to breathe. Reluctantly, though with much panic, Gold City did let her go.

“Sorry.” She murmured, her face still red and she was vibrating with uncharacteristic excitement which was hugely endearing to Yukino Bijin.

“Aw, no skin of my teeth, Goldie.” Yukino Bijin told her flippantly.

“Do you want to, um, kiss, Yukino?” Gold City asked.

“Would I?!” exclaimed Yukino Bijin and before Gold City could even blink, Yukino Bijin took the iniative.

She went up on her tip-toes and planted a sloppy kiss on her girlfriend’s lips. Completely ruining Gold City’s lipstick but Gold City didn’t mind as she kissed back with just as much passion. She held onto Yukino Bijin’s tiny hands with her coarser than she imagined but she didn’t mind. She also didn’t mind how Yukino Bijin’s kiss very strongly tasted of soap and sugar and what might be blueberries.

Eventually, they broke from their kiss with shining eyes and emptied lungs. But their bodies were filled with this reverberating excitement, exchanged through colourful smiles and lovestruck glances. It was sweet, and Gold City felt very accomplished with herself. Yukino Bijin, feeling very similar as this cushy and sweet feeling swelled in her chest.

“We should go on another lush date soon, I reckon.” Yukino Bjin chirruped.

“I love you, but absolutely not. I’m so not letting you eat another bath bomb.” Gold City quickly scolded her, though her expression left much to be desired. It was more cutely amused than annoyed, after all.

#uma musume #uma musume pretty derby #yukino bijin (uma musume)#gold city (uma musume)#gold city x yukino bijin #yukino bijin x gold city #writing tag #the first fic started and finished in 2019 is femslash! a good omen!#also @ anyone wondering if i ever write stuff that's /not/ vr//ains: here is your answer #also this is peak morosexual and moron shipping

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agressivelyunfancynerd · 7 years

Text

What about us, part 2 (Bucky Fic)

Pairings: Bucky x Female Reader

Warnings: Swearing, angst that’s really about all

Word Count: 2,400+ holy shit, I just don’t shut up do I?

Blurb: A few weeks after the events of “What About Us” yours and Bucky’s relationship is still on rocky grounds. Part 1 here ----> https://irachyrooposts.tumblr.com/post/164095070911/what-about-us-bucky-fic

It’s been two weeks since you had decided to tell Bucky how you felt, only to find him having sex with some blonde bombshell, absolutely shattering your heart. In that time you had managed to avoid him altogether.

Nat was the first person you told of the whole situation, – mostly because she was a master at lies and seeing through them, so she got the truth from you fairly easily – and after you told her, she swapped rooms with you, just so you were further away from Bucky than you already were. It wasn’t much, in the grand scheme of things but you appreciated everything Nat was doing.

“Well, Y/N this is the last of your shit” she said heaving a bag of books up onto your bed.

“Thanks Nat, I really appreciate everything” you said, opening the bag and beginning to arrange your books on your shelves.

“Look, I’m no expert, but things will get easier. You just have to get back on the horse and get your mind off of Bu….. Him” she said, making sure she didn’t say his name around you.

“I know, I just, I feel so stupid Nat and –” you started before Steve interrupted.

“Hey Nat, I was wondering if …” Steve said stopping in the door way, “oh, um, sorry. Wait, what’s going on?” he asked, looking around the room puzzled.

“We’re swapping rooms, because Y/N wanted a bigger window for her reading and I don’t really care where I lay my head, so, we moved” Nat said smiling at you – shit she was a good liar, it was some silly, totally reasonable lie, and yet she pulled it off with such gusto – Steve just nodded.

“Well, okay then, don’t let me stop you; I just wanted to see if you wanted to spar later Nat” Steve said, arms folded, he took up the entire doorframe.

“No can do Captain, but Y/N would love to! She’s got plenty of shit to work through.” Nat said winking, before pushing past Steve and leaving. You cussed under your breath – the gym was Bucky’s favourite place, the last place you wanted to be. Steve turned to you, smiling.

“Great, meet me in the gym, one hour” Steve said turning to leave before you could protest. You finished unpacking until it was time to meet Steve.

***

When you got to the gym, you peered in just a little, checking the coast was clear. Steve was already practicing on the dummy, but there was no sign of anyone else. You entered, dropped your towel and water bottle on the floor and started stretching.

“Hey Y/N! Just let me finish this set and we’ll start” Steve called out.

“Okay dokey” you said, continuing your stretches. Subconsciously you kept checking around the room and looking over at the door, you hadn’t noticed Steve had finished and was standing in front of you.

“Y/N? Y/N?” he was waving his hand in front of your face and you jumped, snapping out of it.

“What? Yeah, I’m fine, let’s do this!” you were being overly excited; Steve just raised an eyebrow, before leading you onto the mats.

You started slow, minor hand to hand combat moves, a few light kicks, your mind still wandering to if he was going to walk through the door. Steve took advantage of you not paying attention and tackled you. You hit the mat with a loud oomph.

“Ahhh fuck!” you grumble lying on your back looking up at Steve who was now towering over you.

“Language” Steve teased, before stretching out a hand for you. You took it and he helped you up. You reset and started again. “Y/N? Is everything okay?” Steve asked between punches, “you seem a little distracted.” He lowered his hands just a little, and you pounced. You body slammed into him, wrapping your legs around his waist and judo flipping him onto the mat, before rolling over and standing above him, just as he did to you.

“I’m fine, and I swear the next person who asks me if I’m okay, I will punch in the goddamn throat” you growled. You lowered your hand to him and helped him up.

“Firstly, impressed,” he said, smiling at you taking your hand and getting up, “secondly, point taken, just know I am here if you want to talk” he said, and with that you two were back sparring. You were just about to start again, when the doors flew open and Bucky and his giggley blonde sauntered in.

They were playing with each other, tickling and touching. You made some god awful animal noise and Bucky looked up, not realising they weren’t alone.

“Hey guys” Steve chirped, waving to them.

“Hiya Stevie!” the blonde said, all the while wrapping her arm around Bucky’s waist and glaring at you. Stevie, who the fuck was she to call him Stevie you thought angrily.

“Hi” was all Bucky said, turning from you two and walking with blondie to the other side of the room.

You and Steve kept sparring for a while, but you were completely aware of Bucky behind you. Steve lunged at you, and you pivoted on the spot, stepping out of the way, which also meant you were now facing Bucky and her. He had his hands on her hips, her head leaning into the crook where his neck and shoulder met, he was showing her something, but she clearly wasn’t paying attention.

Before you knew it, Steve had grabbed you at waist height and flipped you over his back, you landed flat on your back and you were winded.

“For the love of FUCK!” you yelled, temporarily forgetting that there was anyone else in the room. Steve stood over you, looking down, to see if you were okay, and you could see in the mirror that Bucky was watching.

You slid your leg across the mat catching Steve’s feet and he fell hard just beside you. You rolled over on top of him, straddling his hips, pinning him down, his eyes went wide and he didn’t move.

“And that’s enough for me today Rogers.” You said, standing up, helping him up and then grabbing your shit and leaving the gym.

***

Later that night, after everyone else had, had their dinner, you wandered into the kitchen to grab your plate, which you knew Nat would’ve made up and put in the fridge for you. You opened the fridge, finding your plate and some extras in containers and turned to the counter, slamming the door shut with your foot.

You nearly screamed when Bucky came out of the shadows to stand in front of you.

“Jesus!” you seethed. “Give a girl a heartache why don’t you!” you pushed past him and set everything down on the counter, trying your hardest to ignore him.

“Can we talk Y/N? Please” he whispered.

“No” you said, not even bothering to look at him. He grabbed your wrist and turned you to face him. You snatched your hand out of his grasp, folded your arms across your chest and raised your eyebrows. Giving him the best ‘resting bitch face’ you could.

“You’re cute when you’re mad” He smirked.

“Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare Barnes!” you growled, “You don’t get to say things like that to me”

Before you could turn away from him, he grabbed your face and kissed you, hard, passionate, and needy, you moaned and he slipped his tongue in between your teeth.

You pushed away from him and slapped him right across the face – the whole room echoed with the sound. Your hand stung from the contact.

“I deserved that” he said, you could see his Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he swallowed, “I just, I needed to do that, I’ve missed you and I –”

“Don’t even finish that thought.” You yelled, just as Bucky started to speak again, “don’t, I’m serious! It’s not fair; I’m not some toy for you to play with Bucky.” you stepped away, putting more distance between you and Bucky. “You made it clear you didn’t feel the same way for me that I did for you, and what you’re doing to me now, it’s unfair. Besides, you have a girlfriend, one who you were getting hands-y with all morning in the gym, someone who clearly meant more to you than I did, so just, go away… Actually better yet, you stay, and I’ll go.” You put your hand up so he’d stop, and you turned and left the room. He called after you.

***

A few weeks went by since the kitchen incident. You had replayed it over and over in your head a million times, different endings, different things you could’ve said or done, what if you’d kissed him back and to hell with his girlfriend.

“Y/N! Let’s go!” Nat yelled, pounding on your door. It was Nat’s birthday and she invited all of the Avengers out to go clubbing with her. Tony had denied, something about he owed Pepper a date, Clint couldn’t because baby Nathaniel, and Vision didn’t want to go, but the rest agreed.

Your rag tag group consisted of Steve, Sam, Thor, Bruce, Wanda, Nat, you and Bucky. You were getting nervous about him being there, you knew Nat had extended the invitation for Bucky to bring a plus one.

“I’m coming!” you yelled, opening the door, revealing your outfit to Nat. She frowned.

“You are NOT going out dressed like that! Even my grandma would be ashamed to be seen in that!” Nat hissed, before barging into your room and rifling through your closet. You looked down at your outfit. Okay, so maybe baggy lounge pants and a hoodie wasn’t a good choice for clubbing, but what was the point? You couldn’t compete with Nat or Wanda or Bucky’s girlfriend.

“Put these on! Now” Nat barked, thrusting a tiny black dress with a deep V-neck and a pair of killer heels. You complied, as soon as you were in the dress and heels Nat rushed you, covering your face in makeup, painting your lips in a dark plum and giving you heavy cat eyes and making a nice smoky affect with the eyeshadow. “There, much better” she smiled at you. Before taking your hands in hers. “Relax, it’s my birthday, he won’t say or do anything, and I will make sure you have a good time and forget about him.” She gave your hands a squeeze before pulling you to the door.

***

The music in the club was thumping so loud you could feel the vibrations in your chest. You, Nat and Wanda had come together, and the boys showed up not long after, and Bucky wasn’t with his girlfriend.

Nat found a nice table, jammed in the corner, but close to the bar and dance floor. The first round of drinks came, then the second, then the third, and before you knew it you, Nat, Wanda and Sam were all up dancing. Steve, Thor and Bucky were playing darts or pool or something, you hadn’t really been paying attention and Bruce, poor Bruce; he was sitting in the corner, trying to look like he was having fun.

Nat sauntered off the dance floor and went to sit with him. You, Wanda and Sam kept dancing. Sam and Wanda sort of paired off, allowing one of the guys from the bar who’d been eyeing you all night to come over. You smiled and kept dancing.

His hands were on your hips and you were throwing your hair around, turning and laughing. You backed into him, grinding and swaying. He turned you until you were facing each other, a new song came on, and you kept dancing. You were so close to him, you could smell his aftershave and the whiskey on his breath. Your thoughts went to Bucky, and you looked over at him. He was standing in the corner, arms folded, and if looks could kill, everyone in the club would’ve been dead.

“God you’re beautiful” the man whispered, lowering his head until his lips were fluttering across the skin on your neck.

“Bucky…” you whispered. The guy pulled away, abruptly.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” he frowned at you.

“What, no, no one. I’m sorry!” you said, but he’d already started to wander off. You turned back to Sam and Wanda, they just shrugged at you. You wandered off the dance floor, plonking into the chair beside Bruce, so he was now boxed in between you and Nat. Without saying a word, she slid a shot in front of you. You slammed it down.

“To quote my good friend Thor, ‘this drink, I like it, ANOTHER’” you yelled, Thor smiling over at you, so happy you had quoted him.

“Yeah! DRINKS ALL AROUND” he yelled and the bartender brought another tray of drinks and shots.

You’re not sure how long you’d been in the club or how many drinks you had, had, but you were well and truly going to be hungover tomorrow. Nat announced it was some time after two in the morning, and that the bartenders were closing up and we had to leave. You all grumbled, and stood, grabbing your stuff and heading outside.

“There’s another bar down the street, stays open until four or five” Sam announced. Wanda clapped and gave puppy eyes to Nat, and one by one the Avengers started heading off down the street.

“I think I might head home” Bruce piped up. He gave Nat a peck on the cheek, told her she looked radiant and happy birthday and he started to walk away.

“I think I might too” you announced, giving Nat a look. She gave you a hug and whispered into your ear.

“It’ll get easier Y/N, I promise” before giving your hand a squeeze and leading the rest of the gang down the street.

***

Bruce and you arrived back at the tower, he said goodnight, and went down the hallway to his room. You headed towards yours. You got back to your room, kicking off your heels, your feet were killing you, and you headed for a shower. After you scrubbed your makeup off and washed your hair, you climbed out and threw on your shorts and baggiest hoodie and started walking to your bed, there was a bang on your door. And when you didn’t answer the banging got louder, more aggressive.

“I’m coming!” you snapped.

You opened the door; Bucky was standing there, panting.

“What do you want Bucky?” you grumbled.

“Y/N need you..... I love you..... and I’ve been such an idiot.”

End…

@debbielovesbucky @magellan-88

#bucky barnes #bucky #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x you #avengers #mentions of other avengers #steve rogers #thor #bruce banner #natasha romanoff #wanda maximoff #angst #sam wilson

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ratherhavetheblues · 5 years

Text

INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘WILD STRAWBERRIES’ “He’s on such a high level…”

I think the film, Wild Strawberries (1957), though quite aptly described to be a paragon of hard-won affection, contains a field of sophistication which has not been noticed and needs to be unlocked. In the absence of this factor, one would tend to overplay an outset of wrongness in order to amplify the change. (One of the challenges to recognize in this matter is the litany of hearsay about the protagonist, Dr. Isak Borg, being “cold” and monstrously aggressive, in the style of Scrooge, the protagonist of Charles Dickens’ famous melodramatic novella, A Christmas Carol [Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, 1843].) Onscreen he is nothing of the sort. His lacuna would be more to the point of befuddlement in reaching for an equilibrium between his serious career and his serious heart. (An instance, in flash-back, reveals the protagonist’s young girlfriend flirting with his brother. She thought to mention that the studious one was “cold,” thereby, on her reckoning, an inferior to be duped.)

We should begin our discovery by taking seriously the fact that our film today was, remarkably, the second production of that year! The earlier entry, was that primordial bat out of hell, namely, The Seventh Seal, packing the mainspring of the Bergman cinematic reflection, namely, death-defying acrobatics and “impossible” juggling. The Seventh Seal, itself, is rooted in the oracular iconoclasm of Smiles of a Summer Night(1955), its contrarian energies still a matter of nearly complete oblivion. In light of these proceedings, we would be on strong grounds to look to Wild Strawberries’ telling us something new and amazing—not, then, reporting a geezer’s finally feeling good about himself and the world. (The dowager/ oracle in, Smiles of a Summer Night, and Jof and Marie in, The Seventh Seal, do not trade in normal gratifications. Nor, for that matter, does the protagonist’s grandmother, in, The Magician [1958].) Charming little personal moments are not what Bergman is looking for. His métier, like those scientists and artists of the avant-garde over the past 200 years, want more than that, nothing less than a new world, however small a number might convene. As we look closely at the dynamics of our saga here, we should look for gold, wherever it may come to pass.

In direct correspondence to the dowager/ oracle of 1955, who paradoxically avers, “I am tired of people. But that doesn’t stop me loving them,” we have at the very outset of Wild Strawberries—now having elaborated the oracular audacity by way of The Seventh Seal’s portals of acrobatics and juggling—the protagonist of our film today, writing down in his study a more formal disdain than the dowager’s smack-down of her flakey daughter, being an indirect soulmate of the girl, Sara, who was quick to call young Borg “cold.” “In our relations with other people, we mainly discuss and elevate their character and behavior. That is why we have withdrawn from nearly all so-called relations. This has made my old age rather lonely.” Whereas the dowager was addressing her tiresome daughter, Borg was addressing us—an instance, therefore, of juggling, well along in his studies. He adds to this transaction, “My life has been full of hard work, and I am grateful [here he lights his cigar, and the flash of flames and the trail of smoke speaks in another form]. It began as toil for bread and butter, and ended in a love of science.” A bit later, he adds, “Perhaps I should add that I am an old pedant [he fusses with the composition of the material on his desk], which at times has been rather trying for myself and those around me.”

Then, as he lies down to sleep, he introduces us to the major area, “trying for myself…” “I had a weird and very unpleasant dream.” In a ghost town, our avowed science-lover has no answers as he becomes ambushed by the reality of death. (In The Seventh Seal, a skittish knight displays a roaring pedantry about surviving death.) As he crawls along in bewilderment, he notices a large clock on a wall which has lost its hands. He checks his own watch, and the result is the same, namely, the end of time as he is situated. A horse-drawn hearse comes by; there is a breakdown, the coffin falls into the street, opening the entrance, and the corpse’s hand is seen. Borg comes forward, the hand pulls him toward it; and he sees that it is his own corpse beckoning him. Though the confluence with the oracle essentially maintains for Borg another love, another gusto (acrobatic and juggling), which does involve a sense of death being far more courageous, on this occasion all he can do is shudder. On waking, that humiliation—that unfinished business—by a pedant who has slipped up (perhaps caught in an error as to pedantry itself), continues to rattle his day. But this is not the baseline of a ghoul needing supernatural guidance; instead, we have a person of considerable integrity, clawing himself back to notable equilibrium.

The narrative, thus shaken, embarks upon Dr. Borg’s travelling from Stockholm to Lund in order to receive an honorary degree to mark his fiftieth year as a medical practitioner and researcher. The plan was for him and his long-standing housekeeper/ fixer, Agda, to fly that day the 300 miles and then stay with his son and daughter-in-law there, for the duration of the festivities. But the incursion of the sense of terrifying death prompts him to announce, “Miss Agda, please prepare some breakfast. I’m taking the car.” This ignites the first of several angry attacks upon a far from blue-chip sensibility, seen intuitively by others to be a license to cut down to size a commanding force. Agda, who had counted on the prestige and easy timing, goes so far as to say, “Just give me the word and I’ll leave tomorrow [and never come back],” does settle for flying to Lund, alone; but a painful statement had been added to the relationship, which demands juggling. (How many such dust-ups had they endured?) The so-called giant had been heard to peeve, “Incredible, that I have put up with your bossing so long…” But he also found, within this second nightmare, the reservoir of his years of consideration with her, which translates to her packing his suitcase. “No one can pack like you, Miss Agda.” She asks, “Shall I boil you a couple of eggs?” Borg, coming a bit closer to himself, embarrassedly declares, “The faculty should have made me honorary idiot.” Trying to kick-start some fertile acrobatics as they refuse to budge, he reaches for his purchase upon a sterling track record. “I happen to be a grown-up.” That much said, that the celebrated benefactor had a way to go before he could seriously belong with the very best, is amply shown by his imagining that, “I’ll calm the old girl down with a present. I hate resentful people. I wouldn’t harm a fly, let alone Miss Agda,” belongs in a grown-up life.

His second, and far more venomous adversary, of this rather hellish but also blessed day, comes in the form of his daughter-in-law, Marianne, who had been visiting for a week or so. She joins Isak for the ride home; and for the opportunity to express in private how much she hates him. Her broadside commences with the claim that, “I would take the train if I could afford it.” The name, Marianne, rather odd in Sweden, denotes the Gallic lamplighter who leads the people to their fertile destiny. (Thus, from the get-go of this relationship, the quality of mood is paramount. Marianne’s smash-and grab campaign soon comes to light as also involving her independent wealth. Therewith, in the confines of Borg’s huge black sedan, we have a shaken and shaky life-long student of emotive logic, and an essentially dishonest opportunist, having settled for life to make do with cornball gratifications.) As the carriage, perfect for a funeral, heads for the countryside, there is also the matter of her husband, Evald (included in Borg’s orientation at his desk, with his large and probably loyal dog), also being a successful surgeon, hardly poverty-stricken. The optics of their take-off on the roadways of Stockholm—virtual emptiness, like the streets of his nightmare—set the stage for another setback. Borg and Agda were nonplussed about the hitch-hiker; and soon his nocturnal malaise reappears. Marianne, her presence persistently confrontational, begins to smoke a cigarette. Borg, unable to overcome this intrusion on the heels of his previous failures of the day, resorts to his socially dominant station and tells the supercilious guest, “Please don’t smoke. I can’t stand cigarette smoke.” She promptly butts it out, and remarks, being insulted, “I forgot…” Tasting some metaphysical blood in hopes of regaining the real powers he affords, he continues, “There should be a law forbidding women to smoke.” She posits, to this, “Beautiful weather” (the countryside now doing far better than the two self-styled forces in the front seat). He contradicts with, “Yes, but sultry.” (Isak wears several layers of apparel, including a winter overcoat, while all around him summer lightness prevails. Does he inhabit another world? Does his breakdown include, over and above the horror of obliteration, the second horror of facing billions of people fundamentally indifferent and hostile to his way of life?) In the confines of that hermetic vehicle, Borg, far from his best, thinks to disregard nuance and civility (juggling) in favor of squashing what seems to him in his face an instance of insectile scandal having overrun the planet. (His register, here, could be compared to Desiree’s Count, in Smiles of a Summer Night.) “No, give me a cigar anytime. That’s stimulating and relaxing. That’s a vice for men.” She retorts, “And what vices may a woman have?” He answers: “Weeping, giving birth and speaking ill of her neighbors.” To that she asks, “How old are you, really, Uncle Isak?” “I know why you asked,” is his grim non-pleasure—as we see the sunny day, the rich foliage and the stream of the road going by. Disregarding those tonics, he launches a wider offensive. “Don’t pretend. You don’t like me. You never have.” Her distemper—brilliantly covered by Bergman’s designated badass, Ingrid Thulin—expertly crafted, is, “I only know you as a father-in-law” [she having no curiosity about his work; and having no work experience, at all; and, for us, on the brink of seeing another idle rich girl, who bears scrutiny]. Hoping to put her in her place, he reminds her, “Evald and I are very much alike [a rather large misstatement, we’ll discover later]. We have our principles.” On to her comfort zone—money, and its prestige—and a loan Evald incurred, no doubt at her initiative—at the outset of their marriage. She needles him with, “It’s a matter of honor for [Evald] to pay back 5000 a year.” Borg, knowing more about this than we do, tells her, “A promise is a promise.” This shakes out the impudence, “For us, it means that we can never be free together and that your son works himself to death.” Being tripped up here about “your own income,” she, dead-eyes to the fore, adds, “Especially when one considers you’re filthy rich and don’t need the money.”

Though, by now, he’s been touched by the flow of the drive, the gift of respectful and stimulating colleagues and an uncanny shaft of light in one lens of his glasses (to be seen again in Damien Chazelle’s First Man), a motif also connoting being semi-blind—perhaps, in an instance of always darkest before the light—Borg loses his temper in being hounded by an entity not merely perverse but alien. “You’re utterly ruthless,” she whines, “and never listen to anyone but yourself. But you hide it all behind your old-world manners and charm… I had a stupid idea that you might help Evald and me.” Remember what you said [a glimpse of Borg’s rather chronic instability about first principles]: “Don’t try to draw me into your marital squabbles [this in face of her transparent predatory violence]. I don’t give a damn. You and Evald must make the best of it.” Hoping that this disclosure might bring him onboard (like the image of Marianne rounding up the faithful), Borg merely feels bad about his loose lips there, and gets on track to a course whom the one he’s temporarily stuck with will never know. “I have no respect for mental suffering” [knowing that everyone has to pretty much face the music alone, if depth is the question]. For a coda, he prescribes “a shrink” or a minister. “It’s in fashion, now.” (That, in hearing about his failings of composure, Borg can derive both shame and proof of transcending it, represents the dramatic versatility and depths of Bergman’s theatrical dialogues.)

Here we see the fine trees above the road, and here we see Isak’s experiment in reaching the wretched. “I have liked having you about the house.” Her wry response is, “A cat or a human being?” He counters with, “You’re a fine young woman and I’m sorry you dislike me.” But, there she goes, explaining that, “I feel sorry for you.” Hoping to get something moving beyond her fatuous statements, he swings into telling about his harrowing and now significantly recovered from, dream. Unsurprisingly, she has no time for agendas not of her making. “I’m not interested in dreams,” she brags. / “No, of course not,” he digs. And here hums a little tune. He turns off the (lost) highway, into a country road, and tells her, “I want to show you something…” He announces with gusto, “We lived here every summer during the first 20 years of my life.” Whereas, for him, the moments of special wildness are to be cherished and pondered, the stiff in the death-seat can only think to go for a swim, lacking, you can be sure, the riches of dynamics.

No doubt pleased to be rid of her for a while, he carries through his sanguine momentum by invoking, “the place where wild strawberries grow…” What could have been another assault in the contents of his bruising day, being hardly a piece of cake, rather magically shoots upward to disinterestedness and whimsy. The strawberry patch comes back to life, in a flash-back, as the site of Isak’s losing his fiancée to his brother, stunned but fun. The vignette covers the stalking opportunist, sweeping cousin Sara, the hitherto love of Borg, off her feet and causing to show, by way of his audacity (in small things), her pronounced cynicism and obsession with intercourse. Borg follows Sara into the house (in the spirit of reflection, not jealousy and resentment), where, after being teased (by peeping toms) for her disloyalty, she expresses her dilemma to the boys’ mother. As Borg overhears the tattlers of his candidacy, he revisits not merely a painful crisis of the past but a comprehensive survey of his being massively out of step with nearly everyone he encounters. Sara tells his mother, “He wants to read poetry [this whole film being a Nietzschean poem] and talk about the next life [the phantom which reared up and bit him the night before]. He’s on such a terribly high level, and I feel so worthless… But, sometimes, it seems to me that I’m a lot older than Isak. He’s a child… And Sigfrid [the brother so dissimilar] is so bold and exciting, and I want to go home… How unfair everything is…” Left by himself, he admits, “I was overwhelmed by feelings of emptiness and sadness… but was soon awakened by the voice of a young girl.

The “young girl” (played by actress, Bibi Andersson, who has also played the role of Sara; and has also played the role of Petra, the unsteady servant and even more unsteady metaphysician, in, Smiles of a Summer Night ) is also called Sara, in aid of x-raying the cycles of “a terribly high level.” With Marianne still off in the lake resisting mightily any rhythms of dynamics to sidetrack her Cartesian banquet, we come within the sprightliness of Sara-2 (Sara too), whose father owns the property and has provided for her a trip to Italy, the preamble of which is to begin that day. This Sara (and her two boyfriends, also along for the ride) introduces for Borg, now fully back to couth, a series of figures upon which to resume his (somewhat hidden) real career. With the rich and self-overrated Sara, he practices an interaction calling upon forbearance in hopes that not all will be lost. In referring to his long-ago tenure at the site and the vintage of his sedan, he quips, “… it’s antique, like its owner.” The girl, presuming to be an auditor of cool, praises, “So you have self-irony, too. That’s fantastic!” The local trio counts themselves fortunate to be going the same direction as Isak’s, who warmly welcomes them; and therewith a small treasure comes about. (Therewith, also, we have that rather ponderous black caravan becoming a portal of wisdom, on the order of Jof and Marie, in The Seventh Seal.) A template, of our protagonist’s working on the highway, surfaces, soon after the group departs. Sara, perhaps wanting to test the chauffeur as to having pure irony, thinks to shock him concerning her blazing modernity. She implies that both young men share her beauties. “Anders and I are going steady. We’re crazy about each other. Viktor’s in love with me too… I may have to seduce Viktor to get rid of him. I’d better tell you I’m a virgin. That’s why I’m so cheeky…” Smiling about that, he thinks to share that he’d once been in love with a woman called Sara. Good luck, getting her focused on his life! (Recall Marianne’s disinterest in his dream and his early days.) “She married my brother Sigfrid and had six children. She’s 75 now and quite a beautiful old lady.” (This finds the cheeky one suddenly troubled.) “I can’t think of anything worse than growing old.” Anders glares at her. “Oh dear,” she adds, “I have put my foot in it…” Borg laughs merrily. Welcome to a new logic. Sara strokes his cheek, and resumes sunniness. (Feel the strangeness. Feel the real irony.)

A while later they barely escape a deadly collision. More perversity. More chivalry. A Volkswagen (that godsend of the common man) bears down upon the polyglot assembly. The intruder is on the wrong side of the road. And the woman who was driving explains, “I was just going to hit my husband when that curve appeared.” Curves being the norm, what to do about them becomes an imperative, an imperative universally underestimated. “I have no excuse,” the husband explains. While Marianne turns her back on this complication, Borg organizes pulling the bug out of the ditch. The newcomers, being driven to the first repair stop, send up a non-stop clash between them, so venomous that Marianne, the regulator, kicks them out. (Sara also found the bad form unconscionable.) The girls may have had a point with pulling the trigger on those with “no excuse.” But it is Borg’s sang froid and an inquisitiveness which matters here. The wife, in the midst of her lostness, does find a correspondence in our student of irony. “Some people are unselfish [disinterested], though you [the husband] don’t think so…” One other gem from this hurricane, redounding to Borg’s recovery, is (apropos of hypochondria), “It happens when you catch a glimpse of death.” One more irony: in expelling the infidels, Marianne argues, “This may be sudden, but, for the children’s sake, will you please get out?” The “children” are college age and hard as nails. Her as yet unannounced pregnancy, and its ulterior motives, actually drives this bit of tidying up.

The next stage of the trip, now in the region where his 96-years-old mother lives, rains down upon the irony of Borg being seen to be a phony by Marianne and a basket-case by Sara-2. Marianne drives into a gas station, and the proprietor immediately recognizes Isak as, “the world’s best doctor… Let’s call the baby [his wife also on the job, and pregnant] after him. Mom and Dad and the whole countryside still talk about him!” The beautiful people are left inside the car, and it is the understated traveler who shakes things up. Of course, such a VIP would merit the gas without charge, despite Borg’s wanting to pay. “Don’t insult us, Doctor. We can do the proper thing too! There are things that can’t be paid back… We haven’t forgotten, ask anyone around here…” A cut to the driver finds the prosecutor with a bemused half-smile on her face. Such renown only stems from a uniqueness far beyond technical prowess and politics. How many such wonders of breakaway had he experienced in Stockholm, where science and its mountains and mountaineers alone counted. “They all remember your kindness.” This elicits from the big name, about to be enshrined, a thought that he had allowed himself to skimp upon his full calling. “Maybe I should have stayed here…” Characteristically, he dismisses the idea. “Let me know when the new son arrives, and I’ll be the godfather.” (The gas-jockey, sort of bucking a trend, has, however, skimped upon his sense of the sublime. “Isak Akerman—not a bad name for a prime minister.”)

Before the visit to Borg’s mother, including Marianne as only too well-known by the razor-sharp old skeptic (another appearance of the factor of the oracle, in Smiles of a Summer Night, and, to come, The Magician, where there thrives, under pressure, a woman of acuity and warmth) who nails that distant relative as a money-mad, decorative, sentimental twit, the party pauses for a late lunch at an outdoor café overlooking a fine vista which only the two “so worthless” females would fail to respond. In voice-over, Borg, braced by the adoration at the pumps, still can’t resist securing a big share of the limelight. “During lunch I was in good spirits and told the young people about my years as a district medical officer. My stories were quite a success… I don’t think they laughed merely out of courtesy.” He lights a (top-dog) cigar and the brief flames and smoke comprise a small, whimsical shortfall. Anders, the religious boy, a far less deranged version of Egerman’s son, in, Smiles of a Summer Night, recites, “Ah, when creation shows so much beauty, how radiant must be its source.” Viktor, the science zealot, headed for a medical career, complains, “Reciting poetry is against our agreement… How can anyone today study to be a minister?” (This contretemps implying the onus upon Borg’s commitment to some facsimile of a synthesis of both forces.) Anders pouts, “Your rationalism is dry as dust.” And the not very friendly friend replies, “I say modern man believes only in himself and his biological death.” The opponent lobs, “Modern man is a figment of your imagination.” The retort runs, “Once you believed in Santa Clause, now in God.” Sara adds, “How sweet they both are! I always agree with the one I spoke with last.” The boys want to hear Borg’s take, and he declares, “Whatever I said would be met with tolerant irony. So I’ll say nothing.” But, attending to the imperative of juggling, the only “modern man” in sight, recites, “Where is the friend I seek at break of day? When night falls…” [here he falters]. And Marianne, also conversant with the well-known poem, conversant in the style of a Jeopardy contestant, easily finds the words, without the meaning. “… when night falls, I still have not found him…” The theologian takes over: “My burning heart shows His traces…” Viktor, not liking the old man’s drift, asks, “Are you religious, Professor?” And Borg, ignoring the jargon, goes on, “I see His traces wherever flowers bloom. His love is mingled with every air…” Then, irony rampaging, there is clever Marianne: “His voice calls in the summer wind…”

The race to the ceremony is peppered with irony—sharp, but also dull. The oldest one, whose contemporariness needs love to notice it, remarks to the only plebian in the room, that one of her long-dead daughters would declare, “I’m going to marry Papa… Isn’t that funny?” And Marianne knows there she’s on a firing line the likes of which she’ll never again be so roundly despised. She’ll go on, during the resumption of the drive, with the three youngsters meandering during a break, to reveal to Borg her being pregnant and having to face down her patrician husband’s priorities being intent upon other developments. During their first volcanic displeasures (at a site beyond the town limits, a place like Sister Alma’s discovery of the treachery of Elisabet in Persona—Alma being played by Bibi Andersson, as a competent, though limited, career girl, implying that subtle resolve is well within the powers of blondes), she yells to him, “You’re a coward!” He informs her, “Yours is a hellish desire to live and create life…Mine is to be dead. Stone-dead…” On the cessation of this disclosure, Borg, not unmindful of the painful irony, quietly remarks, “If you want to smoke a cigarette, I don’t mind.” He goes on to ask why she has revealed this to him. Her response is that she had had a clear and terrible sense of the old lady’s “coldness, like ice” and therewith she had become ever more resolved that the newly recognized virtues of Borg might transcend the gesture of death. “All along the line, there’s nothing but cold and death. It must end somewhere… I want this child. No one can take it from me… I don’t want us to get like those two in the car today…” So easy to salute; but, in the world of Bergman, nothing is easy.

Prior to Borg’s getting presented with his son and daughter-in-law’s “marital squabbles” for the second time that day and the thorny irony of this day’s evolution finding him still unconvinced by either of the combatants, he, perhaps due to the poor sleep that night and the fine wine and liqueur at lunch, had fallen into a sleep seeded with nagging failures of resolve. The nightmare is introduced by a shrieking flock of blackbirds darkening the sky (a-la-Hitchcock’s The Birds). Then there’s Sara-one, putting a mirror into the face of aged Borg. “Have you looked into the mirror, Isak? Then I’ll show you what you look like [that is to say, you’re too slow for a lively heart like little-old-me]. You’re a worried old man whose going die, but I have all my life before me… We don’t speak the same language…” Borg smiles, and finds it painful. “As professor emeritus, you ought to know why it hurts… You know so much and don’t know anything…” On to more high heat, in a version of Kafka’s novel, The Trial. A prosecutor plays cat to Borg’s mouse; and the supposed verdict is, “You are incompetent, in addition to being old and ugly. Your wife has made the charge.” On, then, to Borg’s wife, having one of her affairs (with a totally unlikeable figure played by the same actor who shone in Smiles of a Summer Night and was about to shine in The Magician). She tells her paramour that Borg is a softy and a fake, and “cold.” (She being, like Marianne, unfit for fully serious endeavors.) The terrible dream, that is more than a dream, runs to, “Now I’ll go home and tell Isak. I know just what he’ll say—‘My poor girl…you mustn’t beg my forgiveness. There is nothing to forgive…’—Just as if he were God.”

Pulling himself together under hostile and massive fire, he struggles to deliver inspiring, powers closer than he imagines. Getting nowhere with the population, he’s doing quite well in another forum. Straggling into his son’s place, very close to the ceremonial church, Agda, having sensibly flown (but having missed quite a roller-coaster), takes over, and the scary patrician (one of a trio, here; but with only two on the site) regroups basking in punishing heights few ever notice. The three rich kids, now aware of a viral moment, see Borg in a different light, but still missing the real adventure. Sara-B gushes, “…a doctor for 50 years! We know you must be a very wise old man! You must know everything about life and have learned all the instructions by heart…” The smile on Borg’s face is both a juggle and a piece of acrobatics. Although the pomp and circumstance of the parade and the cathedral does take place (unlike the ending of the fantasy pomp and circumstance at the end of the imminent film, The Magician [1958]), and Borg fully plunges himself amidst his colleagues, such hullaballoo leaves him vaguely morose. (The highlight for him there has to be pulled out of the Latinate terminology of the citation: “experimentation.”) In a voice-over, he tells us, “It was this event that decided me to write down what had happened. In the jumble of events, I seemed to discern an extraordinary logic.”

In the jumble of events, Marianne and Evald civilly opt to do what they can. Borg gets nowhere in his outreach (juggle) for him and Agda to address themselves by their first name. The three new fans sing him a folk song as they depart. Sara-the-rich adds, ironically-Hollywood, “It’s you I really love, you know, today, tomorrow, always.” (This coincides with Marianne, the squirt, getting chewed up by Borg’s no-nonsense mother.) “Let me hear from you,” is Borg’s finding a register, about to be part of the jumble of events. (The protagonist, Victor Sjostrom, a former silent-film director whose main opus was titled, The Phantom Carriage [1921], and constitutes the major feature of caravans for Bergman’s career, died three years after the film was launched and constitutes a tribute to what can be done by film.) Marianne comes by and they say they like each other. Later that night Agda gives Borg his sleeping pills and he dreams of that summer place. Sara-1 tells him, “Isak, there are no wild strawberries left.” (He being a more remarkable exponent of wildness than of medicine.) He’s asked to find Papa and Mama; but they are nowhere to be found. Sara-1 disappears. He stops to see the quiet activity at the distant pier. There, with a harp motif, he finds a moment of vision at the heart of his life. His life of disappearances becomes a rare delight, in being consumed by the beauty of that moment by the lake, a beauty comprising a little bit of his own generous agility and a little bit of a generous cosmos.

A few weeks ago, I suggested that The Magician just might be Bergman’s best film. Does it hold a candle to Wild Strawberries?! What I was getting at, however, is the factor of enmity given a strong position in the former work. Wild Strawberries, surpassing in charm even the masterpieces of Yasujiro Ozu, is truly breathtaking. But its subtleties are very hard to manage, and its conflicts, though shattering, do not rise to the physical, persistent idiocy of traditional power. There is an almost Nietzscian poetic to Bergman’s theatrical dialogue here, somewhat foreclosing upon the communication of film. How fortunate we are, to ponder such a dilemma.

#ingmar bergman

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hoekage-chan · 6 years

Note

You should answer all the hella cute questions

yall about to learn so much about me

1. Who was the last person you held hands with? -uhh someone i went on a date w yesterday lmao2. Are you outgoing or shy? -im pretty outgoing, i only seem shy since i dont want to be cringey lol3. Who are you looking forward to seeing? -my friends ig lmao4. Are you easy to get along with? -yes! i love talking to people5. If you were drunk would the person you like take care of you? -probs not, but like im not close enough to ask that of them, and im gucci w that6. What kind of people are you attracted to? -stylish, confident, funny, good taste in music, seems like they would ruin my life7. Do you think you’ll be in a relationship two months from now? -bih i dont know i always find myself in something so maybe8. Who from the opposite gender is on your mind? -yee some guy i went out w friday c:9. Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable? -nope im an open book10. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with? -probably my friends lmao (shout out to the 24hr diner ty for letting us just get fries and soda everytime)11. What does the most recent text that you sent say? -BIH I KNOW OMG IM DEAD12. What are your 5 favorite songs right now? -glow like dat, faygo dreamns, killamonjaro, need you, love me13. Do you like it when people play with your hair? -yes omg easiest way to get me whipped lmao14. Do you believe in luck and miracles? -yes!15. What good thing happened this summer? -i met up w all my friends again16. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? -uhh some guy i went out w yesterday lol17. Do you think there is life on other planets? -yah the world is too big for it to just be us18. Do you still talk to your first crush? -nope! i dont even know what has happened to them19. Do you like bubble baths? -yes. bath life is the best life20. Do you like your neighbors? -i dont kno my neighbors21. What are you bad habits? -i respond rlly late to things22. Where would you like to travel? -japan, korea, places w good food23. Do you have trust issues? -yah lmao that shit gets thrown in my face24. Favorite part of your daily routine? -my makeup! only reason i get up25. What part of your body are you most uncomfortable with? -everything26. What do you do when you wake up? -regret having an 9am class or regret staying up lmao27. Do you wish your skin was lighter or darker? -uhh either tbh, i just dont rlly like the tone in general28. Who are you most comfortable around? -my friends c: i hang out w them for a reason29. Have any of your ex’s told you they regret breaking up? -lmfao nope 30. Do you ever want to get married? -kinda... i wouldnt mind it31. If your hair long enough for a pony tail? -yeeeeeee32. Which celebrities would you have a threesome with? -... michael b jordan for sure and uhh maybe chris hemsworth??33. Spell your name with your chin. -no34. Do you play sports? What sports? -i used to swim but i just lift now35. Would you rather live without TV or music? -tv omg ill die w out my playlist36. Have you ever liked someone and never told them? -ALL THE TIME 37. What do you say during awkward silences? -anything so they dont feel awkward38. Describe your dream girl/guy? -nice, big dick energy, good taste in music, warm in general lol39. What are your favorite stores to shop in? -f21, h&m, khols, target40. What do you want to do after high school? -well i went to college so theres that41. Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance? -sometimes they do, but if they hurt u rlly badly then maybe its best they dont42. If your being extremely quiet what does it mean? -im tired, high, thinking, or confused43. Do you smile at strangers? -yeee44. Trip to outer space or bottom of the ocean? -bottom of the ocean omg45. What makes you get out of bed in the morning? -the fear of failing another class46. What are you paranoid about? -my life in general47. Have you ever been high? -yes48. Have you ever been drunk? -yes49. Have you done anything recently that you hope nobody finds out about? -not really lmao50. What was the colour of the last hoodie you wore? -navy blue51. Ever wished you were someone else? -sometimes i do52. One thing you wish you could change about yourself? -uhh everything lol53. Favourite makeup brand? -juvias place54. Favourite store? -........... i actually dont kno lmao55. Favourite blog? -... imma be real i dont even kno who i follow anymore tbh56. Favourite colour? -green57. Favourite food? -spam58. Last thing you ate? -rice59. First thing you ate this morning? -water60. Ever won a competition? For what? -if i did it was a swim competition61. Been suspended/expelled? For what? -nope im a good noodle62. Been arrested? For what? -nope63. Ever been in love? -yah64. Tell us the story of your first kiss? -i inv my friend to come over, we chill at my house, he asks if we can do something friends dont normally do, we kissed and then we did other stuff >:)65. Are you hungry right now? -not rlly lol66. Do you like your tumblr friends more than your real friends? -nah lmao 67. Facebook or Twitter? -twitter68. Twitter or Tumblr? -tumblr69. Are you watching tv right now? -nope70. Names of your bestfriends? -i dont put names on the internet lmao71. Craving something? What? -spam72. What colour are your towels? -like a teal/sea green color72. How many pillows do you sleep with? -273. Do you sleep with stuffed animals? -yes 74. How many stuffed animals do you think you have? -5 for sure at my apartment and at least 5 back home75. Favourite animal? -sea otters76. What colour is your underwear? -blue/white77. Chocolate or Vanilla? -choloclate78. Favourite ice cream flavour? -chocolate or matcha79. What colour shirt are you wearing? -.......... 80. What colour pants? -........................81. Favourite tv show? -golden girls82. Favourite movie? -uhh i guess either to all the boys i loved before or the breakfast club83. Mean Girls or Mean Girls 2? -mean girls84. Mean Girls or 21 Jump Street? -mean girls85. Favourite character from Mean Girls? -all too iconic to choose from86. Favourite character from Finding Nemo? -crush87. First person you talked to today? -my snap streaks88. Last person you talked to today? -welp days not over yet so....89. Name a person you hate? -i dont rlly hate anyone rn90. Name a person you love? -my friends!! they deserve everyting91. Is there anyone you want to punch in the face right now? -dumbass bitches92. In a fight with someone? -nope miss me with that bs93. How many sweatpants do you have? -294. How many sweaters/hoodies do you have? -too many95. Last movie you watched? -into the spiderverse96. Favourite actress? -kiera knightly97. Favourite actor? -michael b jordan98. Do you tan a lot? -not anymore99. Have any pets? -i have a doggo back home100. How are you feeling? -fucking cold omg101. Do you type fast? -probably lmao102. Do you regret anything from your past? -yah but i try not to dwell on it103. Can you spell well? -NOPE LMAO 104. Do you miss anyone from your past? -nah lmfao105. Ever been to a bonfire party? -nope but it seems fun106. Ever broken someone’s heart? -probably i can be p distant so i wouldnt put it past me107. Have you ever been on a horse? -yeee108. What should you be doing? -studying109. Is something irritating you right now? -the fact im a bitchass lmao110. Have you ever liked someone so much it hurt? -a couple times111. Do you have trust issues? -yah like i answered eariler112. Who was the last person you cried in front of? -my friends (at the diner lmfao)113. What was your childhood nickname? -shark bait, mosquito bait114. Have you ever been out of your province/state? -yeee115. Do you play the Wii? -used too116. Are you listening to music right now? -heck yeah i got a 15hr playlist on rn117. Do you like chicken noodle soup? -not rlly118. Do you like Chinese food? -yeee119. Favourite book? -uhhh its basic but animal farm (or maybe to all the boys i loved before)120. Are you afraid of the dark? -not rlly121. Are you mean? -nah i cant do it, but i feel like some would see me being distant/roasty as mean tho soooo122. Is cheating ever okay? -depends on the context of everything123. Can you keep white shoes clean? -barely124. Do you believe in love at first sight? -yes125. Do you believe in true love? -yes! i believe everyone has a soulmate out there126. Are you currently bored? -kinda lmao127. What makes you happy? -cute things, blankets, music, food, my friends, cuddling128. Would you change your name? -nah, ive thought about it tho129. What your zodiac sign? -scorpiHOE130. Do you like subway? -its aight131. Your bestfriend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? -test the waters, you never kno what will happen132. Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with? -my friends (at the diner lmao)133. Favourite lyrics right now? - gusto ko lang naman ang lambing mo (i want to kiss you)134. Can you count to one million? probs in japanese but ill loose focus (esp in english omg)135. Dumbest lie you ever told? -too many to choose from (and i dont wanna expose myself)136. Do you sleep with your doors open or closed? -closed137. How tall are you? -5′7″138. Curly or Straight hair? -either or139. Brunette or Blonde? -ive been both soooo140. Summer or Winter? -winter (but i like summer style)141. Night or Day? -night all the way142. Favourite month? -november (my bday month)143. Are you a vegetarian? -nope144. Dark, milk or white chocolate? -dark145. Tea or Coffee? -tea146. Was today a good day? -it was ok (it wasnt bad but it wasnt good)147. Mars or Snickers? -either148. What’s your favourite quote? -getchu a mans that treats you like a queen in the streets and a slave in the sheets149. Do you believe in ghosts? -yah and i dont fuck with them150. Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page? -nope that shits a textbook and i dont want to look at it

damn that was a lot to type but uhh now yall know shit about me

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fredheads · 7 years

Text

hands over the ears of my heart (fred andrews/hermione lodge)

read on ao3

fandom: riverdale, dedicated to my horse mint @cherylxcx

pairing: hermione lodge/fred andrews, implied fredsythe and hermione/fp

word count: 2749

summary: Hermione sleeps over at the Andrews house, in the bed that used to be Mary’s. a/n: this is rough as hell im just gonna tell you that. i started writing this back post episode 7!!! and am only posting it now because i’m trash and we find out the murderer next ep and everything potentially goes to hell. so this takes place post ep7 and fremione is still a thing. it’s a rush job and you can tell but i hope its a good read regardless.

“I’ve got a favour to ask you, and I want to assure you I mean nothing sinister by it.”

Fred raises an eyebrow, setting down his pen. Hermione hovers at the end of his desk, hands clasped in front of her, construction hat askew on her head. “You’ve got my attention.”

“Ronnie and I need a place to stay overnight. She’s sleeping over with Betty, but I-” She spreads her hands out, palms up.

“Don’t want to spend a night with Alice Cooper.”

“Do you blame me?”

“No.” He searches her face, looking for the truth. “You need a place to sleep?”

“Strictly platonically.” She gives him a nervous smile, removing her hard hat to hold onto it with both hands. “Like I said, Ronnie’s staying with Betty, so it’s just me.”

“Last I heard neither of you were very welcome in the Cooper household. What changed?”

“Long story. But I’d still rather not have to ask Alice Cooper for a bed. Can I stay over, Fred?”

“I’d have to ask Archie.”

If the answer surprises her, she doesn’t show it. “I’ll crash on the couch, I won’t be a bother. You’ll let me know, right?”

“Sure thing. I’ll talk to him when I get home.”

Her eyes shine with praise. “Thank you! Thank you.”

He watches her seat herself neatly at her desk, hair bouncing with her movement, a single dark strand of hair clinging to the side of her neck, and wonders what the hell he’s got himself into. -

Despite his qualms, Hermione makes a terrific houseguest. She’s a welcome presence at his dinner table, somehow coaxing a open-mouthed laugh out of Jughead, who hasn’t cracked a smile in a couple days. She leaps out of her seat to clear the table, and Jughead and Archie gratefully make themselves scarce before Fred can rope them into cleanup. It’s almost nice to wash dishes with another person, although they descend into an argument halfway through about who should get the master bed and who should take the couch.

“You’re being ridiculous, Fred, I told you I’d take the couch -”

“You’re not going to take the couch, you're my guest.”

“I appreciate the chivalry, Fred, but I’m absolutely not putting you out of your bedroom.”

“Hermione-!” He stops short when he sees Archie standing in the doorway. Expecting the boys to be out in the garage, he hadn’t been paying attention to his volume. Archie averts his gaze, and Fred feels his heart clutch. Hates that Archie’s just walked into an argument exactly like he and Mary used to have before she left.

But Archie looks back up at him and his face is open and sure. “Hey, I-” He glances uncomfortably at Hermione, who quickly leaves to empty the dustpan in the garbage. “I don’t mind if you guys share a bed.”

“Archie..”

“I mean, if it’s not weird. I don’t know.” Archie inclines his shoulders, a barely-there shrug. “Jughead and I share a bed and it’s not weird. If … if you guys are just friends, right?”

Hermione re-enters the room and he finds himself sharing the kind of silent communication with her he only used to be able to pull off with Mary. Their eyes meet. She blinks. He lifts his chin. She nods almost imperceptibly. He nods back.

“I think we might. If you’re okay with it.” Fred says finally. “Very much as friends.”

Archie nods, saying absolutely nothing, and yet Fred somehow hears him loud and clear. “Cool. Jug and I are going to the park.”

“Have fun.”

Fred watches him go, wondering at what point Archie allowed the master bed to stop being Mary’s. Wonders when he did himself. If he has yet.

Jughead and Archie come back around ten, as Fred’s putting new sheets on the master bed. He hugs them both goodnight, Archie hugging back with a bit more permissive gusto than necessary, Jughead thin and almost breakable in his arms. When he comes back, Hermione has the bed fully made.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Hermione stretches her arms up over her head. “What time do you turn in? I’m exhausted.”

“Whenever you want. But me too.” He sits down on the bed to roll his socks off. “Long day.”

“One of many.”

As Fred gets up to close the door he notices Archie hovering in the doorframe of the room he shares with Jughead, eyes glinting in the semi-dark. Fred purposefully swings his door half-open and roots a doorstop in the crevice between the carpet and the door. He’s rewarded with a smile from Archie, who gives him a thankful nod and retreats back into his own room. Fred smiles to himself and moves back to the bed.

“Can you sleep with the door open?”

Hermione shrugs, shimmying neatly out of her shoes and pantyhose. “I’m not picky. Is anyone?”

“Jughead can’t. He needs it shut. Hey, hey-” He puts one hand up as Hermione moves to take off her shirt. “Bathroom down the hall.”

Hermione’s smile is fond. “I’d tease you that you’ve already seen worse, but I know you’re setting boundaries for Archie’s sake. And I respect that.” She undoes her watch and tosses it at him. “Back in a flash.”

He’s changed when she re-enters the room, makeup-free, dressed in expensive looking flannel PJs. He has a strange impulse to bury himself in her hair and smell it.

“Fred, I can still sleep downstairs.”

“No.” Now that they’re here he realizes he wants it badly, to sleep next to someone again. “Just no touching.”

“No touching.” She crosses her heart, a memory of an impulse from when they were kids. “Or may lightning strike me dead.”

He grins, amused. “A little drastic.”

She’s standing at the end of the bed without moving, and he realizes she’s waiting for him to assign her a side. No doubt knowing that one of them used to be Mary’s. It shouldn’t matter, and yet it does. He avoids her gaze as he climbs into bed. She doesn’t know he’s been sleeping on Mary’s side since the divorce.

She turns out the light.

And then it’s dark, and they’re lying in bed together, the room quiet.

“You know,” Hermione says softly, when they’ve both relaxed a bit, “when Veronica first came home and started telling me about Archie, I thought to myself, my god, another Lodge in love with an Andrews boy.”

He grins. “You’d think you’d have learned better by now.”

“Well, I could always tell her some horror stories, scare her out of it.” teases Hermione. “God knows, I have a few.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

She smiles, and he feels better all at once about everything. “So, Betty and Jughead?”

“Apparently. I think Archie’s still a little shaken up about it.”

“How so?”

“Well, it’s always weird when your best friends start dating each other. We would know.”

“Oh, god, would we ever.”

“Can I ask you something personal?”

“You’ve known me long enough, Fred, just say it.”

“Do you still have feelings for FP?”

“God, no.” She drags a long lock of hair out of her face. “That’s old, old history, Fred. Not at all.”

“Okay. I figured.”

She shakes her head an imperceptible amount against the pillow, mouth a straight, curious line. “Why would you ask that?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Fred.”

“What?”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you still have feelings? Is that why you asked?”

“No.” His voice is firm but he still hears himself hesitate just a fraction too long. “That’s long over. He’s not the person we used to know.”

“Neither are we.”

“It’s not the same. Not with the way he treats Jughead. Not after everything. We grew apart for a reason. He hurt me, Hermione, you know that. And yeah, I think I’ll always have feelings for him, somehow. I can’t help that. But I have no interest in opening that can of worms again, not ever. And not when Jughead needs me. Not when both my boys need me. And those feelings I have, I’ve learned to live with them. They don’t keep me up nights.”

“Then what does?

Fred looks at her, wondering if she’s moved closer. Her eyes seem very close in the dark. “I have nightmares,” he admits quietly, not moving his gaze from those eyes. “About the body.”

“What about it?” They’re talking so softly, like you would in a graveyard.

Fred shuts his eyes. “About it being Archie’s.”

Her hand finds his in the dark and squeezes. He holds it for a long time, feeling the weight of it, the solid warmth of her skin. He’s been alone in this bed for so long that the weight of another person is strange, yet unnervingly comfortable.

“You see too much good in people, Fred.”

He opens his eyes again. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. But you do. Always have.”

Silence settles between them as he tries to process this. Fred rubs her thumb in thoughtless circles. “Does that include you?”

“It’s just a bad time right now, Fred.”

“That’s… that’s fair.”

She drops her hand and he misses it. “I almost lost Ronnie over you. That wasn’t worth it.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“It’s a long story, Fred. Just take my word for it.”

Fred exhales, a long sigh. “Archie needs someone too much right now. Someone who can be there for him all the time. I can’t do that if I’m with someone.”

“What’s Valerie like?”

“She’s a great girl. Really fun.”

“Good.” Hermione brushes some hair out of her mouth, and he finds himself following the motion of her fingers. Door open, he reminds himself. Archie. “You know, when Veronica came home from school the first week, she thought Jughead and Archie might be…”

“Jughead’s his best friend. Always has been.” He meets her arched eyebrow with a shrug. “I don’t know how much he takes after me.”

“How is Jughead?”

The smile slowly dies from his face. “I’m worried about him.”

“Because of the investigation?”

“Because of everything.” Fred sits up, punches the pillow into a more comfortable shape, and lays back down. “That kid’s been kicked down so many times he doesn’t know which way is up anymore.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I dunno.” Fred sighs. “Archie’s second grade parent-teacher conference, this guy pulls me aside and says Fred, your son has great potential. His reading comprehension is a little shaky, he needs to work on his attention span, but he’s a good kid and a hard worker. But he’s close friends with Jughead Jones. And if he stays close friends with him, he’s going to end up in trouble.”

“What did you say to that?”

“If memory serves, I told him exactly how far I thought my foot could reach up his ass. But Jughead listens to those people, you know. I was talking to him about college the other day, and he says he doesn’t think he’s going. That he’s not good enough. You should see the things he writes, really good stuff. And he loves learning things, he soaks it all up like a sponge, he - And I know he has all this potential, but he doesn’t see it in himself, because people have always told him he’s from the wrong side of the tracks, he doesn’t have a future anywhere. Kids, adults, doesn’t matter. And it’s not fair to him.”

Hermione’s eyes are swimming with tears, and he stops abruptly. “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you-”

“No, it’s just - you're such a good person.”

“I’m really not -” He feels helpless. Hermione never used to cry.

“No, I mean it. I’m trying to imagine Hiram saying something like this. And I can’t.”

She wipes another tear away and he hugs her then, or she hugs him, and he can’t tell which only that he ends up with a hand smoothing through the back of her hair and it feels like they’re fifteen again, or younger.

“Sorry.” She’s pushing back out of the embrace, her hair leaving a soft perfume in the air where she’d been. “Broke the no touching rule.”

“It was more of a guideline.” She’s somehow managed to curb the flow of tears, but he still watches her anxiously. She smiles as if to dissuade him.

“Hey, Fred?”

“What?”

“Maybe we’re just meant to be really, really good friends.”

He smiles back at her. “Maybe.”

They lay in silence for a long while then, Fred turning onto his back to stare at the ceiling, Hermione still on her side, one hand under her cheek. The window is open and moonlight makes long shapes on their ceiling. It feels oddly safe, like the two of them are adrift on a boat out at sea. And yet the unsafeness outside his house remains at the back of his mind like a cold knife, pressing a gap between himself and sleeping, holding the comfort at bay.

Down the hall, Archie’s door is shut.

“How’d I get such a great kid, Hermione?”

He can almost hear her smile. “I ask myself the same thing. That baby shower was Veronica’s idea you know. Same with me taking Polly in.”

“God, I love them.”

“Sometimes I think we put pressure on our kids to grow into the people we couldn’t be.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Her voice is soft. “From what Polly tells me, Jason managed that. Being a better person than his parents.”

“Guess it’s not doing him much good now.”

“No.”

Fred winces. “God, that poor girl. Imagine being alone in that house with them. After losing Jason.”

“I know. God, I wish she’d stayed with me.”

“Hell, I’d take Cheryl. She could have one of the rooms down the hall.”

“Cheryl?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Polly. You didn’t know?” Hermione sits up a bit in bed, her long hair tumbling down over her shoulder. “She left. Went to Thornhill.”

“What?!”

“God, I know. I know! But what could I do? It was her choice.”

“She’s living with Cliff Blossom?”

“And Penelope. Both of them.” She nods. “Yeah. Alice isn’t happy.”

“God.” Fred sinks back down onto the sheets. “Why would she do that?”

“That’s not for me to say.”

“Wow.”

“I should have told you before.”

“There are a lot of things that fall into that category, Hermione.”

“We Lodges keep secrets.” Her hands are cool on his cheek. He smiles into the touch, but gently takes her by the wrist and moves her hand down.

“No touching rule.”

“I’m sorry.” She smiles sadly into the dark. “I feel like no one’s touched you in a long time, Freddy.”

“You might be right.”

The warmth of the bed is beginning to drag him into sleep, and he shuts his eyes against the pillow. This time the room goes so quiet for so long that he thinks she’s fallen asleep first. But he hears her voice again, as though from far away.

“I think small towns are scarier than cities.”

He keeps his eyes shut, mouth clumsy with sleep as he replies. “Hows that?”

“In the city you know there’s bad people. In towns like this, you want to pretend there aren’t. I guess.” The mattress dips as she turns over. “I don’t know.”

“Do you miss New York?” He thinks he must be half asleep. This feels like a dream. Being warm in bed with someone, impossibly more so.

“I miss having faith in people. But that’s not New York, that’s everywhere.”

He can smell her hair again. He has the half-conscious thought that he might not wash the sheets after, though fully awake, he would have slapped himself for thinking it.

“I lose faith in people a lot," she continues. "But you bring it back, Fred Andrews.”

“Don’t.” He’s suddenly wide awake. “Don’t do that.” “Do what?”

“Make me a hero.” He speaks softly, but his tone is hard as stone. “I watched them pull a seventeen year old out of the water and my first thought was ‘better Cliff Blossom than me’. That’s the kind of person I am.”

“That doesn’t make you a bad person, Freddy.” He knows if he’d let her she’d smooth his hair back right now. He almost asks her to do it. “It just makes you human.”

He swallows without speaking, and yet she understands. “Go to sleep, Fred.”

“You too.”

“Ssh.”

He sleeps then, and for the first time in a long time he doesn’t dream.

#hermione lodge #fred andrews #riverdale parents #riverdale fanfic

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