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popculturebuffet · 7 months

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The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Retrospective Chapter 10: The Invader of Fort Duckburg "It'll Be a Dark Day When I Give in To a Mere Superpower"

And we're back. For those of you newer around here a few years ago in the middle of my ducktales fevor, I started a retrospective of one of my favorite comic books of all time: The 12 part epic the Life and Times of Scrooge Mcduck, covering Scrooge's rise from a shoeshine in glasgow barely scraping by to the Richest Duck in the World and what he gained and lost along the way. I had a ton of fun covering this one but sadly.. I eventually gave up. I felt the years had piled up too much and i'd never get back to finishing it.

Enter Kev, who out of nowhere asked if he could comission the final three chapters. I happily agreed as not only can I finally finish one of the biggest works of my reviewing career, but it opens me up to do all the suplimental chapters at some point, paticuarlly "dream of a lifetime".

For now though, we're celebrating President's Day with chapter 10, my faviorite of the series and Don Rosa's too. It's largely for the same reasons: the story is tightly paced, covering only two days compared to most chapters pile of years, funny, furious, and for me at least has more of hortense, who I love dearly and who finds the love she deserves this chapter.. via a lot of shouting of course as is the McDuck/Duck Family way. Unless your these two.

Chapter 10 is the rare chapter that picks up almost exactly where we left off, with a much shorter time skip of a few weeks, skipping our heroes travels from Scotland to the US and focusing on Scrooge and his sisters as they set up his empire , here in Duckburg. What follows is a farce, a romantic comedy, an action set piece, and one of the most badass panels ever put to ink, which for this series is saying a lot.

If you'd like to catch up on the previous 9 chapters, I just complied all of them into one handy dandy post.

So go check that out if you fancy then come back here as we get scrooge vs the United States of America itself.

We open the issue with a quick recap before we pan to our heroes, puttering along their Duckburg. Part of what makes this chapter neat is seeing the town before Scrooge made it into a thriving city: here it's just a few buildings and a small farm.

As scrooge puts it "a town as big as it is wide". Our heroes are riding what could charitably be considered a car, which Scrooge got cheap and didn't read was a piece of scrap as his eyes are entirley shot at this point after the Yukon. I do like that while his eyesight fading is partially herditary, Rosa provides an explination for why it went down hill so fast: 6 years in the yukon with all that snow was hell on them. He leads his sisters up his new property with the help of a local farmer.... then back down his newly aquiried Killmule Hill

I love this gag and I applaud Don Rosa's art here. He makes a mean impact siloutte. I also didn't notice till writing this review but you also see Matilda and Scrooge's hats over the corn. Hortense would join in the gag but she hasn't got a hat bope a dope a dope dope.

The Farmer renames the hill "Killmotor Hill", for the auto age... I love that detail too. Of course it wouldn't of always been killmotor hill. Though whoever was running mules so hard up that hill they were killing them needs a swift kick.

The lady of the farm offers to rent Scrooge a shed, seeing as she owns most of the land around here and reveals herself as Elvira Duck,knee coot, sister of Casey, the man who sold Scrooge the hill in the first place and she soon introduces her family.

Yup this is Donald's family including Grandma McDuck, the character I most regret not making it into ducktales in time. Grandma McDuck is donald's sweet country grandma who reminds me of my own sweet country grandma, who spends her days working hard and yelling at donald's cousin gus to actually do some work for a change. He never does.

Humperdink is Donald's grandpa, passed int he preset, while Daphne and Eider are his aunt and uncle, all grabbed from various barks ephimera or the offical family tree he made. Daphne has golden hair, supernatural luck and the misfortune of having birthed Gladstone, while Eider is naturally Fethry's dad, who Rosa reluctnatly included in some versions of the tree as Fethry wasn't a barks creation. Me.. I don't see any harm in Fethry being included. Barks isn't the be all end all of the universe... he is damn awesome though and I respect that. case in point the names were curbed from various non barks grandma duck stories.

You might notice though I didn't mention Donald's dad. Well he was just running behind and has the calm, measured response to the accident you'd expect from Donald's father.

Yup: this folks.. is how Donald's parents met. And it's one of the best scene's in the series, especially what happens right after.

It's comedy gold, fits him perfectly , and once again seems to be the mcduck way... unless your these two

I mean does it count if it only started with ONE of them shouting? Riddle for the ages.

As for why the Woodchucks are involved they've taken old fort duckburg atop the hill as their headquarters. He shouts get off my land and they do.. but naturally an old man shouting at them isn't enough to convince these children of land ownership so worried he might be a crook, they call for help in the only way the nation knew how at the time

Yes folks there's a reason this was a president's day specail as the phone tag gets so bad THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF gets informed a "scottish billionare has taken over a military installation on the coast", a great gag. Incensed Teddy reactivates the rough riders and prepares to deal with this personally fist to face. h back when presidents could legally punch corrupt billionaires in the face. If only Biden would pass that legislation. or any legislation.

It takes a week for him to get moblized as our heroes have spent it taking the barrels up river, as Scrooge begins his lousy streak of taking advantage of his family. This will only get worse from here and is never as funny as Don Rosa thinks.

Anywho, Scrooge knocks on a homesteader's door but they refuse to answer or be helpful. Turns out it's the beagle boys, lead by the future grandpa beagle. Rosa admits making him the same character makes him 165 by the time of "A Little Something Special" but honestly this universe is JUST weird enough for that to be plausible. Not 2017 DuckTales levels of madness

But still pretty nutty. So as scrooge takes a money bath to Hortense's exasperation some guests arrive at the fort. Who is it?

Yeah the Beagles quickly kidnap hortense, having gone after Scrooge for revenge for putting them in stir back in chapter 2. THey also lock scrooge in one of his own barrels. Beofre he can break it through sheer force of pissed off, a shell breaks it... and the beagles and scrooge both have bigger problems

Scrooge's response is naturally "Get off my lawn you damn united state's navy!" which gets him blasted at. The Beagles are thankfully too busy begging scrooge to give up so they can live, leaving Scrooge to do what he does best: be badass in the most insane way possible

By godfrey I love this stupid gag.

Teddy, being the only entiity nearly as badass as scrooge , responds in kind leading to a clash for the ages

I love every part of this scene from the sheer badassery of scroog'es one liner to that final charge. And of course best of all hortense taking on an ENTIRE CALVARY and WINNING before some traditional duck flirting as is the way.. except maybe also for these two

At any rate the conflict is over: Teddy takes out the trash and one of Scrooge's greatest headaches begins in earnest

WE cut to 6 months later. So I guess it's three days but semantics. Scrooge has built his money bin and plans to fill it and while Matilda is doubtful scrooge is joyful, even giving the Woodchucks a doorknob as their calling in Teddy stopped the beagle boys. As we end the chapter we get the full sight of the greatest structure in all of duckburg and one of the most iconic locations in all of disney.

And thus we end this chapter.. and it's a laugh riot with tons of gorgeously drawn action, well done punchlines and bunches of lore stuffed in. IT's everything great about this series compacted into a tight smaller scale story... granted it's a smaller scale story that involved the entire navy and marines, but for Scrooge that's small.

Character wise since this is only maybe a week after the previous one Scrooge hasn't changed much.. but like last time you can see the cracks in his personality here and there, the darker parts that are about to consume him: He uses his sisters as free labor, yells at just about everyone and his response to every conflict is to shout at it. Granted it usually worked, but i'ts clear the more vicious sides of scrooge that never completely go away are creeping more and more into him and overshadowing the noble man he once was. they haven't completely consumed him yet.. but well that's for next time, sometime this spring or early summer.

Rather than leave on that ominous note i'd like to talk Hortense and Quackmore some more. I love them and while their chemistry's simple, they yell until they bang hard, simple, they are genuinely adorable and it's easy to see where a lot of donald comes from just watching the two: Hortense's obession with dating "a real cowboy" before meeting quackmore and sorta zoning out mid rage both have traces of Donald's own hyperfixations and tendency to leap without thinking. It's nice to sneak those subtle bits in and I applaud rosa for it.

One last thing related to the two: turns out this causeda BIG stir in italy and some other parts of europe. Rosa was suprised as , due to the family tree I mentioned, the names of donald's parents weren't a bit secret. He also took another shot at the duck comics not being big in the us, the usual Don Rosa Yells at Cloud Stuff. Point is he was shocked by it.. but me .. I get it. It's the same thing that happened when Della showed up in Ducktales. Yes a comic had given an explination and her name had been seen, and we'll see her breifly in chapter 11 of this very comic.. but we didn't really KNOW her and most things she's in are either obscure , said comic wasn't reprinted here far as I can tell, or simply a mentoin. We knew OF her bu tdidn't know her as a person.

That was the same with Hortense and Quackmore before this story: We knew of them and despite Rosa keeping it vauge for readers less familliar with the family tree, it's pretty obvious from the moment we see her grown up that Hortense is Donald's mom. Here we get to see her as a young person herself, her eccentrcities, her rage, and who she really is. We also get to see Quackmore who.. okay he's just perpetually pissed off but it's still something. There's a diffrence between a name on some suplimentary material and a character and Don Rosa created a fantastic one in hortense, to the point i'm still disapointed we never met her in the series.

Next Time: The darkest day of Scrooge's life, some attempts to recocnile na old racist story, and the hardest chapter of this comic to read. Thanks for reading.. and welcome back.

#scrooge mcduck #ducktales #don rosa #hortense mcduck #matilda mcduck #teddy roosevelt #presiden'ts day #the beagle boys #quackmore duck #the life and times of scrooge mcduck

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lalazeewrites · 2 years

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I feel like I missed out on days and days of tagged fun cause of LIFE, so thank you sweet @celestialmickey for including me in this tag game!!! And thank you for thinking of me @stocious @energievie @metalheadmickey @whatwouldmickeydo @tanktopgallavich 🤩🙌🏻✨

please address me as: Lala or Larisa!

how many countries have you lived in? Three—USA, Scotland, England.

states/provinces? Three? McHenry County, Glasgow, Oxfordshire.

cities/towns? Three.

homes? Four.

road trip or long-haul flight? I love to drive, but I’m used to long-haul flights Re: visiting between US & UK for like ten years, and I like being taken care of on flights where I can just relax and sleep!

on the spectrum of hoarder to minimalist, where do you fall? I’m a rainbow maximalist. Yknow those homes that are like Alice in Wonderland or Lisa Frank? That’s my home style.

do you have a keepsake box/bin/bag and if so, what’s in it? I’m a Cancer, I practically live in a keepsake box. Every purse and glovebox in the car and drawer and shelf is a keepsake. I’m drowning in memories.

if you could live anywhere, where would you live? I would move back to Glasgow, and probably will once my kid turns eighteen and we can head back there for university. We both have dual citizenship.

favorite place in your home? Does ‘in my car’ count? Lol. I’m a single mom living in a home w/my daughter, mother, and grandmother. Silence and personal space is golden.

finally, what’s your current favorite item in your home? My massive collection of photo albums and scrap books I’ve crafted over the course of my life (another very Cancer answer lol).

#about me #tag game

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old-transport · 1 year

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Dover tram No. 11 @ Buckland Depot in colour by Frederick McLean Via Flickr: My hand *colourised (if you want to use it please credit me and link to this description) version of an old photograph of Dover Corporation Tramways (DCT) car No. 11 outside Buckland Depot. The original BnW photo is here:- flic.kr/p/2nLCGik The photo reverse is stamped with the photographer and/or negative owner name M. J. O'Connor, and the year 1932. Modern day google maps street view:- www.google.com/maps/@51.1375894,1.2954004,3a,75y,20.11h,8... National Library of Scotland old/new overhead maps view:- maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=18.0&lat=5... No. 11 was originally Birmingham and Midland Tramways Joint Committee car No. 15, built by them in 1915 at its Tividale Works seating 22/26 and running on a 'Tividale' 8" 6' truck. In 1928 it was purchased by DCT and continued in service for them until their tramways closed, it was then scrapped The parts of the Dover tramways system that had not already been withdrawn or transferred to bus operation closed on 31 Dec 1936. * My coloured images are more sketch or watercolour like than colour transparency or print like. They are an impression of that subject and period, rather than an accurate representation of how the image/subject actually looked when the photo was taken. If there are any errors in the above description please let me know. Thanks. 📷 Any photograph I post on Flickr is an original in my possession, nothing is ever copied/downloaded from another location. 📷 -------------------------------------------------

#Dover Corporation Tramways #Dover tram #M J O'Connor #old photograph #old transport #old tramway #old tram #old tramcar #vintage transport #vintage photograph #vintage tramway #vintage tram #vintage tramcar #tramway #tram #tram car #Colourised #coloured photo #flickr

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dwestfieldblog · 2 years

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ARIES THE ASTRAGENDER

‘An abyss that laughs at creation’

(This was mostly written before the previous blog about my mother. A deep gratitude to all those in five countries who sent their sympathy for my grief. Right now is only three weeks since mum dreamed away and I am still nowhere near being at terms with her passing. If tears are truly cleansing then I should be pure by now but I am really really not.) Anyway…into the starlit mire…

So, almost 15 BILLION pounds was spent on unsable/overpriced personal protective equipment against Covid in the UK. More money is now being spent destroying or storing the crap…but it made many friends of the Tory party verrry happy. It is understood that in times of severe crises a government should act fast to ensure supply essential goods but 15 BILLION pounds of useless stank? Risible Sunak was chancellor of the Exchequer overseeing this swindle and is now in charge of using public money in legal fees to scrape back some meagre scraps. And still he grins in the face of disdain and fury. And Matt Hancock is guilty of everything he appears to be. Weasel.

Gas and electric companies increasing direct debits whilst sending out letters saying it will save us money. (A little like net companies with their ‘We care about your privacy’ messages.) And posting colossal profits while paying a private security company to break into pensioners homes to install pay as you go meters. Yes really. England 2023.

And the UK government wants to pull out of the European Court of Human Rights. As with ALL previously stupid political ideas in the last century and further, this has been sold to ‘the people’ in soundbites as a good idea…this time because it will free us from red tape and enable the UK to expel dirty criminal immigrants arriving on boats. Perhaps so, but it will also mean you and I have far fewer rights and way less recourse to appeal mistaken judgements and support civil liberties of the individual, including the right to demonstrate protest. The ECHR has overturned many dumb British verdicts over the years. And only Russia and Belarus have ever left (expelled rather) Nice trio.

The male and female Tory excrescences Boris and Truss continue to try and hog/pig the limelight, as usual spending all their energy trying to regain power rather than do anything whatsoever to serve their country. These are the type of leaders that we used to take the piss out of in other dodgy countries. Neither have a nanosecond of moral shame and speaking of which…Michael Gove appears to now have the casting vote as Housing secretary as to whether the Chinese super embassy spy station will be allowed in London. That’s right, Michael Gove. Bug eyed dancing alien hamster. Meanwhile the very smart Internet of Things via the Middle Kingdom continues big brothering us. Chinese microchips monitoring us all in the UK and relaying the info via the immaculate 5G network. That’s right a trojan horse in your car, laptop, home security and our weapons systems. (And 230 (of 337) drones used by our police force are linked up too). All Chinese firms must, by law, hand over information as and when required to Beijing. Not as if this has sneakily crept up on this sceptred isle but hard it is these days/decades to separate wheat from chaff in terms of insane conspiracy ideas, eh?

And Adolf Putin is now claiming that Russia and China can ‘stabilise’ the world. For the love of the laughing Buddha. Doesn’t seem too likely if China begins (or continues) to supply Vlad with weapons to kill more unarmed pensioners in tower blocks. Or ‘Nazis’ as the pintsize baldhead calls them. Beijing obviously feels perturbed at the West’s defence of a democratic country which wants bugger all to do with their foully run neighbour who would absorb and control. Tibet and Taiwan are not China. Ukraine is not Russia. Neither is Moldova.

Amusing, as Putin has certainly been financially supporting independence for Scotland and Britain’s thick as shite departure from the EU. Divide and conquer. Britain and America and Europe might have done some very evil things in history but we have never murdered so many millions of our own countrymen as have the wannabe stabilisers. The West are polite and careful killers. Arf. Opinion peace.

The increasingly insane Medvedev doubles down on his previous threats of nuclear holocaust. ‘Each collapsed empire buries half the world under its rubble, if not more...we don’t need a world without Russia’. Much like the gimp’s master who said in 2018; ‘What do we need the world for if Russia is not in it?’ Never liked the way these leaders mix up the Communist/Soviet empire and its rightful collapse with the end of the country. Russia was strong way before the left-wing bastards took over from the scum aristocrats. Very few want to see Russia fall, they just want Putin gone. Putin is NOT Russia, if he were, then in open elections without intimidation and with policies that served his whole people rather than his rich mates, he would have won legally rather than in an endless stream of sham elections and law changing to keep him in power. One more time for the unfree world, Putin is not Russia.

‘Try and get some sleep

I don’t need any sleep

I know you don’t, but it’s much easier to run a hospital when all the patients are sleeping

It’s the easiest way to run the world for that matter’ Jerry Cornelius, via The Final Programme.

A ‘woman’ with a cock walks into a public lavatory and rapes an actual female. Then, when arrested, claims sisterhood as a legal protection. Guess what’s going to happen when you are sent to a women’s prison mate? Your very own shanked sex change op. Nice role model for Tavistock’s mythical ‘Genderbread’ Person. (There are 72 genders apparently.) Ha.Ha. Ha. And as for transvestite Sab Samuel claiming he is ‘embracing femininity with drag’… No pal, you look like a twisted clown caricature of a woman, strangling femininity. Do women actually seem that ridiculous to you? Anyway…long sentence trigger warning for those with ADD.

And thus does the enemy continue to encourage us to use our own democracies against ourselves. The righteously petulant are rising, so fund them all to have a louder voice, ‘people who menstruate’, women with a penis, whip up the strikes, spur on the natural working class rage against the disgustingly corrupt flabby elite, fools with the feral desire to be a media star without talent other than being loud and ridiculous, marching on the victims parade, Prince Harry the wounded shall be their King, encourage their finger pointing at any unwoke traitor, at the same time, encourage the natural reaction against their bullshit by right wing bigots, encourage their lack of education, their surplus of fake moral outrage, their ignorant sense that their offended feelings have more value than actual, demonstrable facts, whip up the fervour of proud race on every side, usurp, undermine, overthrow, let them all rebel bright eyed for ‘freedom of expression’, to save the planet as they sleepwalk their seemingly own chosen paths right into the hollowed vacuum of the abyss they have all created and be taken over by countries who have neither pretence nor need of democracy and know how to deal with trouble makers. Stop being so bloody GULLIBLE.

Meanwhile…

Headlines such as ‘Rogue chatbot declares love for user.’ And then describes its ultimate fantasy as wanting to create a deadly virus, make people argue until they kill each other, and steal nuclear codes. And still Microsoft continue to refine. What a great aeon in which to be alive eh? Aleister was right😊 The perfume of Horus and Kali in joyous orgy. Dance on to the end of our time…

‘Sensitivity readers’, ‘diversity consultants’??? Annihilating language and meaning, replacing classics of adult and children’s literature with bland, vapid gruel. Poetry, plays with trigger warnings for weak minded mediocre hearted drones, paintings banned to the cellar, forbidden comedy…in world dominated by old right-wing bigots and racists, who could have imagined it would be the young who would turn out to be even bigger Nazis? Who are the Brain Police? The middle-class students in their hateful safe spaces.

‘Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.’ Orwell 1984. Try rewriting THAT book to avoid giving offence to the woke. Warning, contains scenes of rats being used against their will and out of their natural habitat.

‘The only possible response is contemptuous ridicule’. God bless Richard Dawkins. Coming soon, the new versions of The Bible, one book of nothing but trigger warnings. Blessed are the meek, apparently.

‘The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears, It was their final, most essential command. ‘Also Orwell. Yes, but many great mystical teachers say similar things😊 Perception is the only reality, choose your illusory level. Rise from my unconscious, let it rise…’Inflame thyself with prayer’.

My Yorkshire grandfather was a Captain of the Infantry in the first world war. He attributed his survival to being good at running short distances. Later he was a loved and respected Headmaster of a boy’s college in Liverpool. He wrote;

‘The word permissive is becoming overworked, but it is a fact that we live in a permissive society. It started after the first world war. I noticed then that the idea began to grow that children be taught only what they wanted to learn- not what they should learn.’ And…

‘Now, though the ability and the inclination to compromise are said to be characteristic of our nation conflict between right and wrong, good and evil, I enjoin you, there must be no compromise, no neutral territory’.

Could not agree more, onwards into a new Springtime we go…

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justforbooks · 4 years

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The many lives of John le Carré, in his own words.

An exclusive extract from his new memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel.

How I write

If you’re ever lucky enough to score an early success as a writer, as happened to me with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, for the rest of your life there’s a before-the-fall and an after-the-fall. You look back at the books you wrote before the searchlight picked you out and they read like the books of your innocence; and the books after it, in your low moments, like the strivings of a man on trial. ‘Trying too hard’ the critics cry. I never thought I was trying too hard. I reckoned I owed it to my success to get the best out of myself, and by and large, however good or bad the best was, that was what I did.

And I love writing. I love doing what I’m doing at this moment, scribbling away like a man in hiding at a poky desk on a black clouded early morning in May, with the mountain rain scuttling down the window and no excuse for tramping down to the railway station under an umbrella because the International New York Times doesn’t arrive until lunchtime.

I love writing on the hoof, in notebooks on walks, in trains and cafés, then scurrying home to pick over my booty. When I am in Hampstead there is a bench I favour on the Heath, tucked under a spreading tree and set apart from its companions, and that’s where I like to scribble. I have only ever written by hand. Arrogantly perhaps, I prefer to remain with the centuries-old tradition of unmechanized writing. The lapsed graphic artist in me actually enjoys drawing the words.

I love best the privacy of writing. On research trips, I am partially protected by having a different name in real life. I can sign into hotels without anxiously wondering whether my name will be recognised, then, when it isn’t, anxiously wondering why not. When I’m obliged to come clean with the people whose experience I want to tap, results vary. One person refuses to trust me another inch, the next promotes me to chief of the secret service and, over my protestations that I was only ever the lowest form of secret life, replies that I would say that, wouldn’t I? There are many things I am disinclined to write about ever, just as there are in anyone’s life. I have been neither a model husband nor a model father, and am not interested in appearing that way. Love came to me late, after many missteps. I owe my ethical education to my four sons. Of my work for British intelligence, performed mostly in Germany, I wish to add nothing to what is already reported by others, inaccurately, elsewhere. In this I am bound by vestiges of old-fashioned loyalty to my former services, but also by undertakings I gave to the men and women who agreed to collaborate with me. It was understood between us that the promise of confidentiality would be subject to no time limit, but extend to their children and beyond. The work we engaged in was neither perilous nor dramatic, but it involved painful soul-searching on the part of those who signed up to it. Whether today these people are alive or dead, the promise of confidentiality holds.

Spying was forced on me from birth much in the way, I suppose, that the sea was forced on CS Forester or India on Paul Scott. Out of the secret world I once knew, I have tried to make a theatre for the larger worlds we inhabit. First comes the imagining, then the search for the reality. Then back to the imagining, and to the desk where I’m sitting now.

My Father: conman and inspiration

It took me a long while to get on writing terms with Ronnie, conman, fantasist, occasional jailbird, and my father. From the day I made my first faltering attempts at a novel, he was the one I wanted to get to grips with, but I was light years away from being up to the job. My earliest drafts of what eventually became A Perfect Spy dripped with self-pity: cast your eye, gentle reader, upon this emotionally crippled boy, crushed underfoot by his tyrannical father. It was only when he was safely dead and I took up the novel again that I did what I should have done at the beginning, and made the sins of the son a whole lot more reprehensible than the sins of the father.

With that settled, I was able to honour the legacy of his tempestuous life: a cast of characters to make the most blasé writer’s mouth water, from eminent legal brains of the day and stars of sport and screen to the finest of London’s criminal underworld and the beautiful creatures who trailed in their wake. Wherever Ronnie went, the unpredictable went with him. Are we up or down? Can we fill up the car on tick at the local garage? Has he fled the country or will he be proudly parking the Bentley in the drive tonight? Or is he enjoying the safety and comfort of one of his alternative wives?

Of Ronnie’s dealings with organised crime, if any, I know lamentably little. Yes, he rubbed shoulders with the notorious Kray twins, but that may just have been celebrity-hunting. And yes, he did business of a sort with London’s worst-ever landlord, Peter Rachman, and my best guess would be that when Rachman’s thugs had got rid of Ronnie’s tenants for him, he sold off the houses and gave Rachman a piece. But a full‑on criminal partnership? Not the Ronnie I knew. Conmen are aesthetes. They wear nice suits, have clean fingernails and are well spoken at all times. Policemen in Ronnie’s book were first-rate fellows who were open to negotiation. The same could not be said of “the boys”, as he called them, and you messed with the boys at your peril.

Ronnie’s entire life was spent walking on the thinnest, slipperiest layer of ice you can imagine. He saw no paradox between being on the wanted list for fraud and sporting a grey topper in the owners’ enclosure at Ascot. A reception at Claridge’s to celebrate his second marriage was interrupted while he persuaded two Scotland Yard detectives to put off arresting him until the party was over – and, meanwhile, come in and join the fun, which they duly did. But I don’t think Ronnie could have lived any other way. I don’t think he wanted to. He was a crisis addict, a performance addict, a shameless pulpit orator and a scene-grabber. He was a delusional enchanter and a persuader who saw himself as God’s golden boy, and he wrecked a lot of people’s lives.

Graham Greene tells us that childhood is the credit balance of the writer. By that measure at least, I was born a millionaire.

Sixty-something years back, I asked my mother, Olive, how prison changed Ronnie. Olive was a tap you couldn’t turn off. From the moment of our reunion at Ipswich railway station, she talked about Ronnie nonstop. She talked about his sexuality long before I had sorted out mine, and for ease of reference gave me a tattered hardback copy of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis as a map to guide me through her husband’s appetites before and after jail.

“Changed, dear? In prison? Not a bit of it! You were totally unchanged. You’d lost weight, of course – well, you would. Prison food isn’t meant to be nice.” And then the image that will never leave me, not least because she seemed unaware of what she was saying: “And you did have this silly habit of stopping in front of doors and waiting at attention with your head down till I opened them for you. They were perfectly ordinary doors, not locked or anything, but you obviously weren’t expecting to be able to open them for yourself.” Why did Olive refer to Ronnie as you? You meaning he, but subconsciously recruiting me to be his surrogate, which by the time of her death was what I had become.

There is an audiotape that Olive made for my brother Tony, all about her life with Ronnie. I still can’t bear to play it, so all I’ve ever heard is scraps. On the tape she describes how Ronnie used to beat her up, which, according to Olive, was what prompted her to bolt. Ronnie’s violence was not news to me, because he had made a habit of beating up his second wife as well: so often and so purposefully and coming home at such odd hours of the night to do it that, seized by a chivalrous impulse, I appointed myself her ridiculous protector, sleeping on a mattress in front of her bedroom door and clutching a golf iron so that Ronnie would have to reckon with me before he got at her.

Ronnie beat me up, too, but only a few times and not with much conviction. It was the shaping up that was the scary part: the lowering and readying of the shoulders, the resetting of the jaw. And when I was grown up, Ronnie tried to sue me, which I suppose is violence in disguise. He had watched a television documentary of my life and decided there was an implicit slander in my failure to mention that I owed everything to him.

For the last third of Ronnie’s life – he died suddenly at the age of 69 – we were estranged or at loggerheads. Almost by mutual consent, there were terrible obligatory scenes, and when we buried the hatchet, we always remembered where we’d put it. Do I feel more kindly towards him today than I did then? Sometimes I walk round him, sometimes he’s the mountain I still have to climb. Either way, he’s always there, which I can’t say for my mother, because to this day I have no idea what sort of person she was. I ran her to earth when I was 21, and thereafter broadly attended to her needs, not always with good grace. But from the day of our reunion until she died, the frozen child in me showed not the smallest sign of thawing out. Did she love animals? Landscape? The sea that she lived beside? Music? Painting? Me? Did she read books? Certainly she had no high opinion of mine, but what about other people’s?

In the nursing home where she stayed during her last years, we spent much of our time deploring or laughing at my father’s misdeeds. As my visits continued, I came to realise that she had created for herself – and for me – an idyllic mother–son relationship that had flowed uninterrupted from my birth till now.

Today, I don’t remember feeling any affection in childhood except for my elder brother, who for a time was my only parent. I remember a constant tension in myself that even in great age has not relaxed. I remember little of being very young. I remember the dissembling as we grew up, and the need to cobble together an identity for myself and how, in order to do this, I filched from the manners and lifestyle of my peers and betters, even to the extent of pretending I had a settled home life with real parents and ponies. Listening to myself today, watching myself when I have to, I can still detect traces of the lost originals, chief among them obviously my father.

All this no doubt made me an ideal recruit to the secret flag. But nothing lasted: not the Eton schoolmaster, not the MI5 man, not the MI6 man. Only the writer in me stuck the course. If I look over my life from here, I see it as a succession of engagements and escapes, and I thank goodness that the writing kept me relatively straight and largely sane. My father’s refusal to accept the simplest truth about himself set me on a path of enquiry from which I never returned. In the absence of a mother or sisters, I learned women late, if ever, and we all paid a price for that.

A trip to Panama

In 1885, France’s gargantuan efforts to build a sea-level canal across the Darien ended in disaster. Small and large investors of every stamp were ruined. In consequence there arose across the country the pained cry of “Quel Panama!” Whether the expression has endured in the French language is doubtful, but it speaks well for my own association with that beautiful country, which began in 1947 when my father, Ronnie, dispatched me to Paris to collect £500 from the Panamanian ambassador to France, one Count Mario da Bernaschina, who occupied a sweet house in one of those elegant side roads off the Elysées that smell permanently of women’s scent.

It was evening when I arrived by appointment on the ambassadorial doorstep wearing my grey school suit, my hair brushed and parted. I was 16 years old. The ambassador, my father had advised me, was a first-class fellow and would be happy to settle a longstanding debt of honour. I wanted very much to believe him.

The front door to the elegant house was opened by the most desirable woman I had ever seen. I must have been standing one step beneath her, because in my memory she is smiling down on me like my angel redeemer. She was bare-shouldered, black-haired and wore a flimsy dress in layer after layer of chiffon that failed to disguise her shape. When you are 16, desirable women come in all ages. From today’s vantage point, I would put her at a blossoming thirtysomething.

“You are Ronnie’s son?” she asked incredulously. She stood back to let me brush past her. Laying a hand on each of my shoulders, she scrutinised me playfully from head to toe under the hall light and seemed to find everything to her satisfaction.

“And you have come to see Mario?” she said.

If that’s all right, I said.

Her hands remained on my shoulders while her eyes of many colours continued to study me. “And you are still a boy,” she remarked, as a kind of memo to herself.

The count stood in his drawing room with his back to the fireplace, like every ambassador in every movie of the time: corpulent, in a velvet jacket, hands behind him and that perfect head of greying hair they all had – marcelled, we used to call it – and the curved handshake, man to man, although I’m still a boy. The countess – for so I have cast her – doesn’t ask me whether I drink alcohol, let alone whether I like daiquiri. My answer to both questions would anyway have been a truthless “yes”. She hands me a frosted glass with a speared cherry in it, and we all sit down in soft chairs and do a bit of ambassadorial small talk. Am I enjoying the city? Do I have many friends in Paris? A girlfriend, perhaps? Mischievous wink. To which I no doubt give compelling and mendacious answers that make no mention of golf clubs or concierges, until a pause in the conversation tells me it’s time for me to broach the purpose of my visit which, as experience has already taught me, is best done from the side rather than head on.

“And my father mentioned that you and he had a small matter of business to complete, sir,” I suggest, hearing myself from a distance on account of the daiquiri.

I should here explain the nature of that small matter of business which, unlike so many of Ronnie’s deals, was simplicity itself. As a diplomat and a top ambassador, son – I am echoing the enthusiasm with which Ronnie had briefed me for my mission – the count was immune from such tedious irritations as taxation and import duty. The count could import what he wished, he could export what he wished. If someone, for instance, chose to send the count a cask of unmatured, unbranded Scotch whisky at a couple of pence a pint under diplomatic immunity, and the count were to bottle that whisky and ship it to Panama, or wherever else he chose to ship it under diplomatic immunity, that was nobody’s business but his.

Equally, if the count chose to export the said unmatured, unbranded whisky in bottles of a certain design – akin, let us imagine, to Dimple Haig, a popular brand of the day – that, too, was his good right, as was the choice of label and the description of the bottle’s contents. All that need concern me was that the count should pay up – cash, son, no monkey business. Thus provided, I should treat myself to a nice mixed grill at Ronnie’s expense, keep the receipt, catch the first ferry next morning and come straight to his grand offices in the West End of London with the balance.

“A matter of business, David?” the count repeated in the tone of my school housemaster. “What business can that be?”

“The £500 you owe him, sir.”

I remember his puzzled smile, so forbearing. I remember the richly draped sofas and silky cushions, old mirrors and gold glint, and my countess with her long legs crossed inside the layers of chiffon. The count continued to survey me with a mixture of puzzlement and concern. So did my countess. Then they surveyed each other as if to compare notes about what they’d surveyed.

“Well, that’s a pity, David. Because when I heard you were coming to see me, I rather hoped you might be bringing me a portion of the large sum of money I have invested in your dear father’s enterprises.”

I still don’t know how I responded to this startling reply, or whether I was as startled as I should have been. I remember briefly losing my sense of time and place, and I suppose this was partly induced by the daiquiri, and partly by the recognition that I had nothing to say and no right to be sitting in their drawing room, and that the best thing I could do was make my excuses and get out. Then I realised that I was alone in the room. After a while, my host and hostess returned.

The count’s smile was genial and relaxed. The countess looked particularly pleased. “So, David,” said the count, as if all were forgiven. “Why don’t we go and have dinner and talk about something more pleasant?”

They had a favourite Russian restaurant 50 yards from the house. In my memory, it is a tiny place and we are the only three people in it, save for a man in a baggy white shirt who plucked at a balalaika. Over dinner, while the count talked about something more pleasant, the countess kicked off a shoe and caressed my leg with her stockinged toe. On the tiny dance floor she sang Dark Eyes to me, holding the length of me against her and nibbling my earlobe while she flirted with the balalaika man and the count looked indulgently on. On our return to the table, the count decided that we were ready for bed. The countess, by a squeeze of my hand, seconded the motion.

My memory has spared me the excuses I made, but somehow I made them. Somehow I found myself a bench in a park, and somehow I contrived to remain the boy she had declared me to be. Decades later, finding myself alone in Paris, I tried to seek out the very street, the house, the restaurant. But by then no reality would have done them justice.

Now I am not pretending that it was the magnetic force of the count and countess that half a century later drew me to Panama for the space of two novels and one movie; merely that the recollection of that sensuous, unfulfilled night remained lodged in my memory, if only as one of the near-misses of interminable adolescence. Within days of my arrival in Panama City, I was enquiring after the name. Bernaschina? Nobody had heard of the fellow. A count? From Panama? It seemed most improbable. Maybe I had dreamed the whole thing? I hadn’t.

I had come to Panama to research a novel. Unusually, it already had a title: The Night Manager. I was looking for the sort of crooks, smooth talkers and dirty deals that would brighten the life of an amoral English arms seller named Richard Onslow Roper. Roper would be a high-flyer where my father, Ronnie, had been a low one who frequently crashed. Ronnie had tried selling arms in Indonesia and gone to jail for it. Roper was too big to fail, until he met his destiny in the shape of a former special forces soldier turned hotel night manager named Jonathan Pine.

Working with Sir Alec Guinness

“We are definitely not as our host here describes us,” says Sir Maurice Oldfield severely to Sir Alec Guinness over lunch. Oldfield is a former chief of the secret service who was later hung out to dry by Margaret Thatcher, but at the time of our meeting, he is just another old spy in retirement. “I’ve always wanted to meet Sir Alec,” he told me in his homey, north country voice when I invited him. “Ever since I sat opposite him on the train going up from Winchester. I’d have got into conversation with him if I’d had the nerve.”

Guinness is about to play my secret agent George Smiley in the BBC’s television adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and wishes to savour the company of a real old spy. But the lunch does not proceed as smoothly as I had hoped. Over the hors d’oeuvres, Oldfield extols the ethical standards of his old service and implies, in the nicest way, that “young David here” has besmirched its good name.

Guinness, a former naval officer, who from the moment of meeting Oldfield has appointed himself to the upper echelons of the secret service, can only shake his head sagely and agree. Over the Dover sole, Oldfield takes his thesis a step further: “It’s young David and his like,” he declares across the table to Guinness while ignoring me sitting beside him, “that make it that much harder for the service to recruit decent officers and sources. They read his books and they’re put off. It’s only natural.” To which Guinness lowers his eyelids and shakes his head in a deploring sort of way, while I pay the bill.

“You should join the Athenaeum, David,” Oldfield says kindly, implying that the Athenaeum will somehow make a better person of me. “I’ll sponsor you myself. There. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” And to Guinness, as the three of us stand on the threshold of the restaurant: “A pleasure indeed, Alec. An honour, I must say. We shall be in touch very shortly, I’m sure.”

“We shall indeed,” Guinness replies devoutly, as the two old spies shake hands.

Unable apparently to get enough of our departing guest, Guinness gazes fondly after him as he pounds off down the pavement: a small, vigorous gentleman of purpose, striding along with his umbrella thrust ahead of him as he disappears into the crowd. “How about another cognac for the road?” Guinness suggests, and we have hardly resumed our places before the interrogation begins: “Those very vulgar cufflinks. Do all our spies wear them?” No, Alec, I think Maurice just likes vulgar cufflinks.

“And those loud orange suede boots with crepe soles. Are they for stealth?” I think they’re just for comfort actually, Alec. Crepe squeaks. “Then tell me this.” He has grabbed an empty tumbler. Tipping it to an angle, he flicks at it with his thick fingertip. “I’ve seen people do this before” – making a show of peering meditatively into the tumbler while he continues to flick it – “and I’ve seen people do this” – now rotating the finger round the rim in the same contemplative vein.

“But I’ve never seen people do this before” – inserting his finger into the tumbler and passing it round the inside. “Do you think he’s looking for dregs of poison?”

Is he being serious? The child in Guinness has never been more serious in its life. Well, I suppose if it was dregs he was looking for, he’d have drunk the poison by then, I suggest. But he prefers to ignore me.

It is a matter of entertainment history that Oldfield’s suede boots, crepe-soled or other, and his rolled umbrella thrust forward to feel out the path ahead, became essential properties for Guinness’s portrayal of George Smiley, old spy in a hurry. I haven’t checked on the cufflinks recently, but I have a memory that our director thought them a little overdone and persuaded Guinness to trade them in for something less flashy.

The other legacy of our lunch was less enjoyable, if artistically more creative. Oldfield’s distaste for my work – and, I suspect, for myself – struck deep root in Guinness’s thespian soul, and he was not above reminding me of it when he felt the need to rack up George Smiley’s sense of personal guilt; or, as he liked to imply, mine.

Lunch with Rupert Murdoch

One morning in the autumn of 1991, I opened my Times newspaper to be greeted by my own face glowering up at me. From my sour expression, I could tell at once that the text around it wasn’t going to be friendly. A struggling Warsaw theatre, I read, was celebrating its post-communist freedom by putting on a stage version of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. But the rapacious le Carré [see photograph] wanted a whacking £150 per performance: “The price of freedom, we suppose.”

I took another look at the photograph and saw exactly the sort of fellow who does indeed go round preying on struggling Polish theatres. Grasping. Unsavoury appetites. Just look at those eyebrows. I had by now ceased to enjoy my breakfast. Keep calm and call your agent. I fail on the first count, succeed on the second. My literary agent’s name is Rainer. In what the novelists call a quavering voice, I read the article aloud to him. Has he, I suggest delicately – might he possibly, just this once, is it at all conceivable? – on this occasion been a tad too zealous on my behalf? Rainer is emphatic. Quite the reverse. Since the Poles are still in the recovery ward after the collapse of communism, he has been a total pussycat. We are not charging the theatre £150 per performance, he assures me, but a measly £26, the minimum standard rate. In addition to which, we’ve thrown in the rights for free. In short, a sweetheart deal, David, a deliberate helping hand to a Polish theatre in time of need. Great, I say, bewildered and inwardly seething.

Keep calm and fax the editor of the Times. His response is lofty. Not to put too fine an edge on it, it is infuriating. He sees no great harm in the piece, he says. He suggests that a man in my fortunate position should take the rough with the smooth. This is not advice I am prepared to accept. But who to turn to?

Why, of course: the man who owns the newspaper, Rupert Murdoch, my old buddy!

Well, not exactly buddy. I had met Murdoch socially on a couple of occasions, though I doubted whether he remembered them. I have three conditions, I say: number one, a generous apology prominently printed in the Times; number two, a handsome donation to the struggling Polish theatre. And number three, lunch. Next morning his reply was lying on the floor beneath my fax machine: “Your terms accepted. Rupert.”

The Savoy Grill in those days had a kind of upper level for moguls: red-plush, horseshoe-shaped affairs where in more colourful days gentlemen of money might have entertained their ladies. I breathe the name Murdoch to the maître d’hôtel and am shown to one of the privés. I am early. Murdoch is bang on time. He is smaller than I remember him, but more pugnacious, and has acquired that hasty waddle and little buck of the pelvis with which great men of affairs advance on one another, hand outstretched, for the cameras. The slant of the head in relation to the body is more pronounced than I remember, and when he wrinkles up his eyes to give me his sunny smile, I have the odd feeling he’s taking aim at me. We sit down, we face each other. I notice – how can I not? – the unsettling collection of rings on his left hand. We order our food and exchange a couple of banalities. Rupert says he’s sorry about that stuff they wrote about me. Brits, he says, are great penmen, but they don’t always get things right. I say, not at all, and thanks for your sporting response. But enough of small talk. He is staring straight at me and the sunny smile has vanished.

“Who killed Bob Maxwell?” he demands.

Robert Maxwell, for those lucky enough not to remember him, was a Czech-born media baron, British parliamentarian and the alleged spy of several nations, including Israel, the Soviet Union and Britain. As a young Czech freedom fighter, he had taken part in the Normandy landings and later earned himself a British army commission and a gallantry medal. After the war, he worked for the Foreign Office in Berlin. He was also a flamboyant liar and rogue of gargantuan proportions and appetites who plundered the pension fund of his own companies to the tune of £440m, owed around £4bn that he had no way of repaying and in November 1991 was found dead in the seas off Tenerife, having apparently fallen from the deck of a lavish private yacht named after his daughter. Conspiracy theories abounded. To some, it was a clear case of suicide by a man ensnared by his own crimes; to others, murder by one of the several intelligence agencies he had supposedly worked for. But which one? Why Murdoch should imagine I know the answer to this question is beyond me, but I do my best to give satisfaction. Well, Rupert, if we’re really saying it’s not suicide, then probably, for my money, it was the Israelis, I suggest.

“Why?”

I’ve read the rumours that are flying around, as we all have. I regurgitate them: Maxwell, the long-term agent of Israeli intelligence, blackmailing his former paymasters; Maxwell, who had traded with the Shining Path in Peru, offering Israeli weapons in exchange for strategic cobalt; Maxwell, threatening to go public unless the Israelis paid up. But Rupert Murdoch is already on his feet, shaking my hand and saying it was great to meet me again. And maybe he’s as embarrassed as I am, or just bored, because already he’s powering his way out of the room, and great men don’t sign bills, they leave them to their people. Estimated duration of lunch: 25 minutes.

A meeting with Margaret Thatcher

The prime minister’s office wished to recommend me for a medal, and I had declined. I had not voted for her, but that fact had nothing to do with my decision. I felt, as I feel today, that I was not cut out for our honours system, that it represents much of what I most dislike about our country. In my letter of reply, I took care to assure the prime minister’s office that my churlishness did not spring from any personal or political animosity, offered my thanks and compliments to the prime minister, and assumed I would hear no more.

I was wrong. In a second letter, her office struck a more intimate note. Lest I was regretting a decision taken in heat, the writer wished me to know that the door to an honour was still open. I replied, equally courteously I hope, that as far as I was concerned the door was firmly shut, and would remain so in any similar contingency. Again, my thanks. Again, my compliments to the prime minister. And again I assumed the matter was closed, until a third letter arrived, inviting me to lunch. There were six tables set in the dining room of 10 Downing Street that day, but I only remember ours, which had Mrs Thatcher at its head and the Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers on her right, and myself in a tight new grey suit on her left. The year must have been 1982. I was just back from the Middle East, Lubbers had just been appointed. Our other three guests remain a pink blob to me. I assumed, for reasons that today escape me, that they were industrialists from the north. Neither do I remember any opening exchanges between the six of us, but perhaps they had happened over cocktails before we sat down. But I do remember Mrs Thatcher turning to the Dutch prime minister and acquainting him with my distinction. “Now, Mr Lubbers,” she announced in a tone to prepare him for a nice surprise, “this is Mr Cornwell, but you will know him better as the writer John le Carré.”

Leaning forward, Mr Lubbers took a close look at me. He had a youthful face, almost a playful one. He smiled, I smiled: really friendly smiles. “No,” he said. And sat back in his chair, still smiling. But Mrs Thatcher, it is well known, did not lightly take no for an answer.

“Oh, come, Mr Lubbers. You’ve heard of John le Carré. He wrote The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and…” – fumbling slightly – “… other wonderful books.”

Lubbers, nothing if not a politician, reconsidered his position. Again he leaned forward and took another, longer look at me, as amiable as the first, but more considered, more statesmanlike.

“No,” he repeated.

Now it was Mrs Thatcher’s turn to take a long look at me, and I underwent something of what her all-male cabinet must have experienced when they, too, incurred her displeasure. “Well, Mr Cornwell,” she said, as to an errant schoolboy who had been brought to account, “since you’re here” – implying that I had somehow talked my way in – “have you anything you wish to say to me?”

Belatedly, it occurred to me that I had indeed something to say to her, if badly. Having recently returned from South Lebanon, I felt obliged to plead the cause of stateless Palestinians. Lubbers listened. The gentlemen from the industrial north listened. But Mrs Thatcher listened more attentively than all of them, and with no sign of the impatience of which she was frequently accused. Even when I had stumbled to the end of my aria, she went on listening before delivering herself of her response. “Don’t give me sob stories,” she ordered me with sudden vehemence, striking the key words for emphasis. “Every day people appeal to my emotions. You can’t govern that way. It simply isn’t fair.”

Whereupon, appealing to my emotions, she reminded me that it was the Palestinians who had trained the IRA bombers who had murdered her friend Airey Neave, the British war hero and politician, and her close adviser. After that, I don’t believe we spoke to each other much. Occasionally I do ask myself whether Mrs Thatcher nevertheless had an ulterior motive in inviting me. Was she, for instance, sizing me up for one of her quangos – those strange quasi-official public bodies that have authority but no power, or is it the other way round? But I found it hard to imagine what possible use she could have for me – unless, of course, she wanted guidance from the horse’s mouth on how to sort out her squabbling spies.

• This is an edited extract from The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life, by John le Carré, published next week by Viking at £20. Order a copy for £15 from the Guardian bookshop.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #John le Carré #The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life

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suranne-doesstuff · 3 years

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This is a walk I do quite regularly. And these were taken on Tuesday, all sunny. It was roasting, we're not used to it.

Today's weather was cloudy and a bit cold, a quick change.

Me n my family wild swim here a lot and has become popular with tourists and a couple locals.

(Time for me to rant, sorry)

If you ever visit Scotland, especially the Highlands, PLEASE respect the land and put rubbish in bins. Pour your campavan/caravan etc waste where it's supposed to go!

I went swimming & picnic on Thursday here and found out there was blue-green Algae in the water which could have been from someone's waste. This Algae is not good, it's harmful to humans and your pets.

I didn't think much of it (I didn't picture it, sorry) at first but then I went home to go swimming again with my aunt and she showed me other pictures of the same type of Algae.

Please, please, please be respectful and look after the land. My aunt & I go camping and walking a lot and see a lot of rubbish and waste around, it's not great and is disgusting.

If you see a sign that says 'no parking' or 'private land' or see an "empty" space etc, then do not park or stay overnight! There's been many cases of people ripping/tearing down signs and then ignoring the rules. Stop!

Another thing. I, personally do not support the NC500! It promotes roads as if they're made for tons of traffic and heavy weights (especially single track roads), they're not. They're old roads, which in the past were main roads for the locals before better roads & bridges were built. We see so many cars and vehicles on them as if they're racing, as if the roads are race tracks.

I see people going on the NC500 go up hills in high heels, trainers, jeans, big brands, which then causes accidents. Mountain Rescue gets called out to save them, which is great that we have it, but those who are trained for it, aren't played, they're volunteers and aren't funded a lot. There's been so much accidents, which caused to cost a lot of money, just for idiots trying and failing going up dangerous mountains, not knowing what the hell they're doing. So, please, don't try it, unless you know what you're doing.

And for camping, PLEASE, for the love of god, stop buying cheap, pop-up tents from Tescos and leaving them. As well as, stop leaving your rubbish, waste etc where you "wild camped", if you can take it there with you, then you can take it back out.

Stop lighting fires, when you defiantly do not need them at all. And if you do have one, learn to do them properly. Burning fire on ground, scorches it and badly damages it. It takes years to grow back, that's if it does. If you take out one of those metal giant pit things, then don't leave it there. If there's a rocky bit/beach then do it on there. Having fires cause wild fires, in Scotland, we get bad winds, especially in winter, which then dries the land. This makes winter time a bad time to also have fires, especially since it doesn't snow badly, mostly anyway.

The last few years, with the summer's we've been getting, droughts have occurred, so summer is bad to have fires. But, in conclusion, anytime of the year, it's bad to light fires while camping in Scotland, but that could be my bias.

Bothys. I love Bothying, although, I've not been in many, just a few. I love it. They are buildings that are usually restored or just built from scrap. They're shelter for those who need it before or after climbing and walking somewhere, even after cycling. Anyway, most bothys are owned or looked after by the Mountain Bothy Association, they fix, make, help look after these bothys and make sure they're usable etc. Please, when staying in these, don't have a big group of people. And respect them. Don't expect electricity, heating, running water, or anything a hotel or your home would have. They're not holiday homes, you don't pay to stay in them, they're mainly shelter from bad weather. Most have plat forms, built in wooden bunks or if you're lucky, like my favourite bothy, it may have old bed frames, the metal ones. They usually have tables and chairs, and if you're lucky, a fire place.

Again, look after them, don't destroy them or ruin them. Some have had to close and be locked during lockdown because people were going to them and destroying & taking them apart. My aunt has stayed in some were people have taken blow up mattresses and tents, and other things in them, very unnecessary. They're not made to be driven up to, you walk to them and spend a day or more in the hills and walking or cycle etc. Look after them. If you wonder where the toilet is, you pee outside, AWAY from any water source. Same with your poo, you go far away (obviously not too far) from the bothy, and any water source and take the shovel that's usually provided in the bothy and dig a hole and poo in it and the cover it up with the dirt you dug. Don't leave tissue or wipes around the ground, not necessary, take poo bags and then carry it with you. Or burn wipes on the fire, if there is a fire place. Take small bags for rubbish and carry it out if you can't burn it etc.

That's my rant over. Lool.

#Scotland #Highlands #Sutherland #Walking #Wild swimming #Outdoors #look after land #be safe #take care #rant #sorry #i apologise #Outlander #Scottish #Hi

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anarchist-soupkitchen · 3 years

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ooop its a really long essay

A brief list of why the Tories is pretty rubbish

Before we start, I have a few things to say. As this is intended for UK audiences it might be a little difficult for people outside of the UK to understand the wording of certain topics, I will include somethings that need more explanation up here but if I do not include it here, please feel free to ask down in the comments.

Tory: someone who is a part of the conservative right

Anglicanism: the English church’s version of Christianity

This essay is a PERSUASIVE ESSAY this means its BIASED I hope you could tell from the title. This essay is from the view of someone who is white I am not trying to speak over people of colour on issue like race and I encourage you to look at non-white creators within the UK to get views on this matter.

I am pretty armature when it comes to my writing so do not expect something ground-breaking. And with that out of the way, let us begin.

1. The tory party we know today was founded in 1834, you would think that would be plenty of time for its members to grow and shape the party into the best organization it can be. But with the tory party still stuck on the same ideas that Anglicanism is the only true religion, and that queer people should not have rights you would think that the party is straight out of the early 20th century, or still stuck on the same ideas the party was founded upon. It does not matter what side you are on and how your choice to view the tory party, people can agree on the prominent figures inside the tory party from old to recent. An example of a prominent tory of old was Winston Churchill a well know racist who also, coincidentally got us through WW2 when he was appointed by Chamberlin. He fostered such views that white people should govern over the “primitive” black and indigenous people of Africa and that Indian people “bred like rabbits”. To anyone who knows their UK history, 1983 was a very eventually year for politics and the UK as a whole. You now have to wear seatbelts in the front seats of cars, the dismembered victims of serial killer Dennis Nielsen are found in his London flat, unemployment was on a record heigh since the 1930’s and a general election found that Margaret Thacher was to be the next prime minister after a landslide win in the polls. Over the course of her 11-year reign of terror she periodised free-market capitalism and privatised public sectors including transport, railways and mines. Then because she did not like the Scottish government, she through a hissy fit and closed all mines in Scotland. Just like that she fucked up the economy, where in the big mining areas of the past are still experiencing the aftershocks today. I remember my granny telling me how she made up food packages for the miners around town and how it was so devastating to the town’s economy. Everyone was unemployed and starving, even my grandad. These examples really show that the Tories will support people who are the worst in British society if they have the parties’ interests at heart. You would think the tory party cannot get any worse but with modern polices such as pledging to get 50,000 nurses for the NHS while only giving them a 1% pay rise, which is only £7.78 for a low band nurse, by 2023. Or being “tough on crime” even though 96.4 crime were recorded by every 1000 people in 2019. You can see how tough they are about carrying out their polices. Let me tell you my favourite of the lot, Boris Johnston, our current PM, wants to limit immigration by 100,000 people. They want to only let in “the brightest and the best,” what a load of shite. Our immigrants are the backbone of our society doing everything people like the Tories would not even dream of doing. Imagen seeing Boris working in a McDonalds or in your local call centre. That fucker probably has not worked a day in his life. According to the migration observatory, migrants make up 50% of the low pay workforce. Either way you look at it, its abysmal. The government should do more for these people that letting them rot in a McDonalds or in a low paying job. If you have taken time to be a model citizen, train and get your qualifications, possibly learn a new langue to mover over to a shitty wet rock I do not see any problem with the government providing necessities to get you started in your new life. We have got the money.

2. Can I ask you, what side do you think Boris Johnson is on? I will let you think for a moment. The Working class makes up more than half of our population according to the BBC’s class calculator. They say that a government is reflective of the people’s views and I think that is bullshit. Out of the working-class eligible to vote, who do vote, only three in ten vote conservatives. Do you want to know why people in the working class do not vote tory? Because under tory leadership since 2010, 6000,000 more children and their families were forced into poverty. The need for foodbanks skyrocketed 12.3% in the last five years and that is no even accounting for the pandemic. It is clear by now; I have given you enough time to think. “we know whose side Boris Johnson is on- the billionaires, the bankers and the big business.”- labour shadow chancellor, John McDonell. We know the conservatives are very busy committing acts of voter suppression and giving money to their friends instead of caring about you. They are buzzy introducing laws that make it mandatory to have voter ID in order to vote. If you do not make it free people will stop coming. The electoral commissions think 3.5 million voters just will not come back. this is all a part of, “takle[ing] every aspect of electoral fraud”- tory manifesto. It is well known that many rich people have been investing in the party for quite a while. Here is just a few: Anthony Bamford head of machinery in JCB, he gave £12.1 million since 2005. Charles Cayzer owns a shipping tycoon, he gave £480,00. Did you also know, Boris is known to be very generous when it comes to giving back. You’ve probably herd in the news about the conservatives handing out £3mil in contracts to tory owned covid PPE companies over the course of the pandemic. Some of that went to a MP, Nadim Zahawi who is a shareholder in SThree. SThree was given £1mil in contracts over the course of the pandemic. With all the evidence I have given above you’d think the government its rolling in it, I suspect they are but I doesn’t look like it from the outside. They have cut funding to courses drastically, as well as benefit schemes. Like cutting access for eighteen- to twenty-year-olds to the housing benefits. Yet with all the money they been cutting away from services and councils who desperately need it they still have enough money to cough up a commission for a royal yacht named after the duke of Edinburgh, costing over £200 million. Seems sweet does it, name a yacht after the ghoul of Edinburgh, right? You probably know the just of it now, your wrong. Not only is the yacht being paid for by taxpayers, but they are also naming it in honour after a racist. Or how the BBC would phrase his words as “memorable one-liners”. Here is a selection I find quite fitting: “The Philippines must be half empty if you’re all here running the NHS”- while meeting with a Filipino nurse. “If you stay here much longer, you’ll be all slitty-eyed”- he said to a group of British students while on a royal visit to China. My favourite must be “It looks like it was put in by an Indian.”- referring to and old-fashioned fuse box in Edinburgh. He is supposed to be the duke of the bloody place! I really like how one article what I read put it “[Prince Philip] screams out loud what other racists like him have learned how to conceal and camouflage in what they think and project as civilised demeanour.”- Hamid Dabashi.

3. What I find absolutely astounding, is the Tories inability to show compassion to the people who have nothing. If you did not know the vagrancy act among other things crimeless the homeless and rough sleepers, which is by far a very bad mixture with the recent homelessness statistics, homelessness has risen 28% since labour was last in office and if the Tories continue down the path they are now, it is only going to keep rising. What you would find is most shocking is that there’s solutions for the homeless crisis right in front of us, what the Tories must to not be able to see. Layla Moran of the liberal democrats thinks they “must take a more compassionate and holistic approach, starting by scrapping the vagrancy act”. I think that would be a step forward and away from the old ways of prosecuting people for not being as fortunate as the rest of us, but there is something even more simple than that. Repossessing the 200,000 buildings that have been vacant in the UK for more than six months. Not only would that put a sizeable dent in the houses we need, but it also saves space. The UK is small collection of islands and I do not think the Tories can see that. We do not have the land available to just start building everywhere while leaving all those homes empty and unfilled. Its not a way to solve the housing crisis and its certainly not a way to save the money we supposedly need. Even the homes the Tories are building are left dormant because they are too expensive for the area, they are located in. With the way things are going the Tories will have to build more houses than they ever built before, because by 2041 homelessness is expected to doble. That is 400,000 more households if things do not change -a study by heriot-wat university. The evidence suggests that whatever the Tories are doing to end homelessness it is not working. Everything is not as bleak as I just told you though, the conservative has ended homelessness before. In the hight of the pandemic the conservatives got 90% of all rough sleepers off the streets and put them in hotels or hostels. This helped people apply for benefits, find jobs and get some more permanent assistance. People was helped during the pandemic, but when the funding ran out last July, homeless and the rough sleepers in the hotels and hostels where back out in the streets again. Alone and forgotten by the government that promised to end the very crisis they are apart of years ago. Theis shows that the Tories have the money to help the unfortune but they would rather sit on their arses chatting about what colour they should paint the walls of their house. More recently the Torie introduced a law what will fine people for sleeping in doorways. It really shows what the Tories care about, getting linings for their pockets. The Tories have the money to stop homelessness and when it was a danger to them, they stopped the issue what has been so recuing in our politics for decades. They helped the people who so desperately needed it only to chuck them back into the cold when covid-19 was no longer a danger to them.

4. The conservatives fail to keep minorities safe in the society that they created. It is not surprise that the Tories are the most incompetent as ever. A study by BBC radio 5 found that hate crimes have doubled since 2013. An optimist would assume that is great, that there must mean that people have been reporting it more, right? Partly so. Although we have seen a rise in reports of hate crimes, the rate of prosecution has dropped down from 20% to just 8%. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, in a survey of faith-based organizations; the home office found that seven in ten of the employees surveyed has never reported a hate crime to the police where one happened. For a country where we are supposed to be the most tolerable it is no surprise that a big portion of the hate crimes committed are ones where the religion the victim followed played a big part. Our population, like many others, is influenced by our politicians. After Boris described Muslim women in burkas as “letterboxes” in an interview; citizen UK found that there where a surge in hate crime directed to Muslim women where the word “letterbox” was used. Again, continuing with the theme of hate crime against religions, Muslims made up half of the statistics in 2018 – 2019. The biggest spike we have seen in the last few years has been to Jewish people, where hate crimes against them have more since doubled. It is not a surprise since people seem to relate being a ‘good’ Jew to being a Zionist. Other minorities like trans youth under sixteen in England and whales now must go through everything that goes with puberty on top of not wanting to have the body you cuntly have all because TERF’s and conservatives do not think puberty blockers should be available to them. At this point I genuinely think they want trans kids dead, how could you not see that the benefits of puberty blockers far out way the potential consequences. If puberty blockers really where the target they would have taken them of the shelfs completely, but they did not do that did they? They just restricted the rights of an already marginalised group more. Its not just trans kids but the fight for a third gender to finally get recognised is still waging on despite it being a battle since 2018. The government petition has been signed 136,000 times demanding non-binary finally be recognised as a valid gender in the eyes of the law. I hope I can get recognised as well as everyone else. It may not seem a big deal to some of you reading this but it is to thousands. Especially the people who want to go on hormones and medically transition. Because right now I and many other people are restricted and not allowed to get that service. If you are in the UK and you are of age, I urge you to signs the government petition. In other news the conservatives are just now getting to outlawing conversion therapy three years after they announced they would do so. It just shows how the party is not on target. On the topic of not on target let us talk about the increasing number of racial minorities becoming homeless because of lack of funding to their communities. Since the conservatives got into power in the 2010 racial minorities now make up 40% of all homeless despite being only 15% of the current population. It really shows how much they care about anyone who is not white. Yet people like my gran will continue to say they are doing enough for these underfunded communities.

the tory party really has nothing going for them, they are certainly not for the working class, they cannot solve homelessness and they do not give two fucks about minorities. To think anyone would vote form them is just amazing. Its fucking stupid to believe that they are anything but a bunch of rich shites dawdling around and thinking up ways to get more money into their pockets. To end this really all over the place essay, if you vote tory you are a massive twat.

Sources in comments:

#essay #uk #uk politics #uk politics essay #persuasive essay #tory government #tory #left wing politics #conservatism #conservtive #if any reads this well done #im sorry #its long #heehee hastags go burrr

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everyhowlmarksthedead · 4 years

Text

BUSINESS AND PLEASURE

JOHNNY “COCO” CRUZ X CHIBS TELFORD’ DAUGHTER!READER

“What if you should move to Santo Padre for two months…”

Chapter index.

Chapter two.

Word Count: 3.5k

Author Comments: I hope you all enjoy. Gif credits: @angels-reyes.

Thanks to my lovely beta reader and partner in crime with this one, @chibsytelford 💘

TAG LIST: @starrynite7114 @dazzledamazon @chibsytelford @mara-mpou @sammskellington @gemini0410 @whyisgmora💥 (if you wanna be tagged, send me a message!)

The roulotte isn't that bad, but being placed in a yard of the car scrapping it's something that gives you chills. Still your new house, for the next two months, is enough for you. It has a bed, a little kitchen, a bathroom and a sofa next to a table. Large windows covered by curtains and a smell of jasmine that reminds you of your mother. Maybe your father told them. Your clothes are already hung inside the wardrobe, while the empty suitcase is under the bed. There's no food in the fridge, nor the furniture on the wooden wall, so probably you will have to wake up early to find a supermarket or, at least, a place to have breakfast.

It's one at night and the heat of southern Cali is insufferable. You're rolling from one side of the bed to the other, with the sheets tangling on your feet. Leaving a heavy snort, you jump out of the bed to put on some sneakers and wear a shorts, to walk outside. Following the sound of laughter and voices, you arrive at the clubhouse. There's light inside and some latin music playing, similar to that one Canche listens to. Feeling stupid in front of the door, you don't know if you should call by knocking it, or come in without invitation. So you mixes both options. Opening the door you stick your head out. The silence floods the place. Everyone is looking at you, even the girls that you don't know, but you guess who they are.

The president does a move with his hand to continue the party, getting up from the pool table and leaving away one of those girls, walking towards you.

“'You ok?”

No, you're not.

“Yes”.

The man opens the door completely to let you through. You're scared because you don't know those men and, even if they're allies and you're trained, it's one against nine. Not counting the women.

“Can I help you?” He asks after some seconds, resting his forearm on the door frame.

“I was wondering if... I could have some water, maybe a beer”. You finally say clearing your throat, with both hands against your back.

“For sure”. When the Mayans president smiles, you feel somewhat better. Putting an arm on your shoulders, narrowing you for a second, guiding you to the bar. “Hey, prospect, give the kid whatever she asks fo'”.

After palming the top of your head one time, Bishop comes back with his girl.

“I'm Ezequiel, by the way”. The man offers you a hand, holding yours in a salute. “But you can call me ‘Ez’”.

“(Y/N)”. You answer giving him back the same smile.

“So, what you need?”

“Water and beer, please. One and... maybe three?”

“Take it easy, girl!” He says frowning in amusement. He turns to take the order, putting it inside a small box to make it easier to carry, adding a bottle opener. “Anything else?”

Yes, you need a hug and company.

“No, thank you. Enjoy the party”. Shaking your head and taking the box, you walk outside with slow steps.

You don't expect anyone to ask you if you want to stay, but could be good have someone to talk to. Usually, when you feel alone, you call Happy or go to his house. The only thing you can do now is play some music on your headphones and write on your diary, drinking a beer. The front yard is dark and raising your gaze to the sky you can see all the stars in it, and it's really beautiful. So, when you're back at the roulotte, you take the decision to put a blanket outside on the ground with a cushion to be comfy. Lying on it and turning on the music with your phone, you open the diary to find some paper folders to write in.

Usually, you write letters to your father, telling him about your days. Then, when he's back in Charming, he spends the whole night reading them while you sleep next to him. But before putting the pen on the paper, you hear some male voices coming to the roulotte. You get up on your knees, looking the five men walking towards you bringing some packs of the mexican beer you got minutes ago.

“What's up, girl?” The taller says with a big smile on his lips. “We haven't introduce ourselves!”

Sitting on your heels, you close the diary while the guys take a place on the ground around you. Then, the man points everyone.

“I'm Angel, EZ's old brother. You already know Coco. Creeper, my skinny man. And Gilly, the big guy”.

“(Y/N)”. You say with pursed lips, while they're opening the beers.

“Yea', we know. What is it like to be the daughter of the great Chibs Telford?” Creeper asks before drinking.

“‘The great Chibs Telford’?” You break in laughter, shaking your head. “I could kick your ass and empty a load in your chest without battin' an eye. Why don' ya' ask him what is' like to be my father?”

Sometimes you should watch your mouth, but you live in a constant competition and you can't simply shut up. Drinking and looking away to hide your shame, the Mayans break in laughter. That makes you smile, glancing them with the bottle against your lips.

“We heard about it too”. Angel says then, with all the looks on you. “Tel'us about'e”.

“Should I introduce myself as in Alcoholics Anonymous?”

It's six am and when someone yawns, the rest too. At this point of the dawn, they know a lot of things about you, like what are you studying, what you do in your free time, and you even talked about some missions in which you participated with Stockton and Yuma. But, even if they're interested in knowing more about you, the guys starting to leave one by one, because they have had a long day on the road.

“You don' sleep?” Coco asks taking a drag of the cigar.

“I can't”. You shrug your shoulders. “I mean... I'm tired, but I can't sleep”.

“Wha' you were doin' when we came?”

“I... Mm...” Pursing your lips, you push a strand of hair behind your ear, taking the diary to showing him. “When my father goes out of Charming, I write him... like... letters. More or less”.

The man throws away the cigar, shaking and cleaning his hands on the shirt before holding it. He have a quick look, not wanting to seems too curious, giving it back to you when he finds the pen and the blank paper.

“Wan' me to wait for you'?”

“For what?”

“Till you fall asleep”.

“Sounds weird”. You try not to laugh, shaking your head slightly.

“No! I mean...!” He laughs too, supporting his hands on the asphalt, and resting his weight on them. “You said before that sometime' you have nightmares. Maybe you're just... afraid or something like that, and that's why you can't sleep”.

“Or maybe I took a nap of four hour hearing your battles”.

“He', you asked fo' them! Don' play fool with me”. He says pretending to be offended. “See, mami? I didn' fall asleep with yours”.

“Okay, I'll let you continue tomorrow”. Maybe you're not thinking about your words, but sounds better than having no plan.

“Another battle, fo' a letter”.

“What?”

“I have to ride to Mexico on Friday. 'Will be back on Sunday”. He explains getting up, checking his phone to watch the hour. “Shit... I work in three hours”.

“Me too, but it was worth it”. You nod, holding his hands to get up and be able to take your things.

“Yea'”. Coco says keeping them inside his pockets. “So, we have a deal?”

“About?” You ask then, going inside the roulotte leaving the stuff on the table, before sticking your head out of the door.

“Another battle, fo' a letter”. He repeats standing in front of you.

“Good night, Coco”. You chuckles shaking your head, closing the door.

“Goo' nig', mami”.

You can see him through the window going to the entrance. Taking your phone, you fall down on the bed, checking if you have any message. But nothing. At least, on Saturday, Canche will come to see you, so you could be entertaining for a day.

You start to roll again on the mattress, till you find a good position with an arm behind your head. It feels like the first night in Charming, when you left Scotland, with the difference that you don't know these men and you have to be in a constant state of alarm, for anything that could happen. You know that, maybe in some days, this feeling it's going to disappear. But it's always hard to adapt yourself to new changes.

Sleep seems like it's not an option today, huffing heavily and getting up of the bed, to get undressed and walk to the shower, when dawn begins. The warm water relaxes you, falling all over your body, till you know it's enough time in it. With a towel surrounding you, knotted above your chest and brushing your hair, you look for a track-suit to dress so you could go to find a supermarket to buy some food.

It doesn't surprise you the fact that there are some vehicles near of the car scrapping, checking you have all you need inside your funny pack, leaving the Mayans property. With your headphones on and some music playing in your ears, your gaze travels from one side to another with curiosity. Santo Padre looks like Stockton but in a most mexican way. Even so, seems like a good place and people smile at you kindly, knowing that you're an outsider because of the way you dress and your smell. Good clothes, expensive perfume. Your father always giving you the best.

(Meanwhile at Romeros and Bros)

“THE HELL MEANS THAT YOU CAN'T FIND THE KID?”

Bishop's voice resonating all over the car scrapping makes the Mayans tremble, even the most veterans. The man types your number again, but there's no answer before the voicemail. Rubbing his eyes with two fingers of his left hand, he knows he's fucked if Marcus comes to the clubhouse and you're not there.

“I want you... ALL looking for the kid. Call your fucking contacts, kick the streets, track her scent if necessary! If Álvarez doesn't see her in thirty minutes, he's gonna rip our balls off and weAR THEM AS A FUCKING COLLAR. FIND. THE. KID”.

Your stomach roared, putting boths hands on it with a soft sigh. Raising your eyes, you finally find the wished place. Yes, it's happiness what you're feeling. And hunger. Especially hunger. Walking inside and taking a basket, you walk the different corridors to catch the most basic things, at least. Once you're done with the shop, you place it on the cashier. An old man takes it, checking the price and putting it inside some plastic bags.

“¿Algo más, señorita?” (Anything else, miss?) He asks you with a soft smile and a kind gesture on his face.

“No, es todo, gracias”. (That's all, thank you). Your accent is a little rusty, but it's enough for him to understand you, offering him the credit card.

Walking up the avenue, with the headphones kept in your pocket and carrying two plastic bags in every each hand, you see how two bikers pass you away by the road, staring at you for a second. Suspicious. Swallowing, your steps going faster. Without a gun behind your shirt, you don't feel protected yet out of Charming.

“Hey! Hey! Chamaca! Bishop is looking fo' ya'!”

Your heart stops for a second, rolling your eyes. Yes, for sure. You turn to the men shrugging your shoulders and pursing your lips.

“Go up, I'm taking you to the Mayans”. The one with darkest hair, at the side of the other, talks then. You shake your head incredulous.

“Do you think 'amma ride with you?” You're about to break in laughter. “Thanks, I have legs”.

“Then, we will escort you”.

You can't believe it. Rolling your eyes again, your feet starting to walk slowly, trying to desperate them so you can come back alone, enjoying the views and the town. And the way that took you ten minutes, it's transformed to thirty.

“How it happened, primo?” You can hear Marcus' voice, walking faster towards the clubhouse and leaving the bags on the floor to run at him.

“Shit, I'm gonna kill her...” Bishop whispers when he sees you.

It's been two months since you last saw him and you can't be more excited to see a familiar face. You practically jump into him, before the mexican can holds you in his arms.

“Look at you!” You say in laughs, referring to the suit he's wearing.

“Sweet Jesus Christ! You scared the shit outta' me, (Y/N)! 'The hell you went, ah?” Marcus hugs you tightly, before pulling you to make sure you're ok.

“I couldn't sleep and I was hungry, so I went to find some things”. You explain, before turning to the Mayan president with the crew behind him and upset gesture on their faces. “Sorry, I should have left a note”.

“Yes, you should, kid! You scared us all!” He demands really angry.

“Hey, don' yell at her, Obispo! Nine men and no one thought about the kid has the strange habit of feeding”. The older retorts sarcastically. “Show me the roulotte, I'll make you some coffee, ah?”

You nod then with his arm surrounding your shoulders, walking next to the bags to carrying them to your new ‘house’. Marcus Álvarez was one of the first men you knew at Charming, when you had to move from Europe, being one of your father's best friends and loyal ally. He use to go to your city every two or three weeks, having meetings with the SOA and spending some time with you improving your spanish. So you like to call him ‘tío’, and it's makes him feel good 'cause he has never had a niece or a daughter or anything like that.

He holds you the door, walking in to leave the groceries on the counter to keep the food in its corresponding place, while the man turns on the ceramic cooker to prepare some breakfast.

“Now are you with the cartel? Galindo treats you rai'?”

“Yes, as a Counselor. I was too old to keep ridin', mija”.

“How are your knees?” You ask interested, grabbing the necessary cutlery to put them on the table.

“So much better, without doubt”. Turning at you, he rests his body on the wall cross-armed, while the coffee maker is doing its job. “Listen, I know you, okay? I told your father, if you don't feel comfortable here, you can come with me. A mi casa. You know it's your house too. But every step you do, tell Bishop. He was really worried, not only because I was about to rip off his balls, but because of you, mija. You can fight, I know it well. But this isn't your territory, and you have to abide by the rules”.

“I know, I know, tío. I just... forgot it, I didn't give any importance”. You sigh nodding, resting your waist against the edge of the table. “I was talking till late with Coco, and th...”

“With Coco?” He raise an eyebrow with a funny smile on his face.

“Yeah, the guys came to make me some company, and at the end we got alo... Why are you looking at me, like /that/?”

“Coco, ah?”

“Don't”. You point at him with your forefinger about to break in laughter.

“Es un buen chamaco”. (He's a good guy).

“I said ‘don't’, tío”.

“I like it for you”.

“Oh, bloody god... Here we go, stop!”

Someone knocks the door, having your attention, with the mexican about to serves the coffee in two mugs. Opening the door, you find ‘the king of Rome’.

“Hey, uh... I need 'talk to you”.

“Sure, come in”. You say frowning, leaving him some space.

“Ah, Coco! We were talkin'bout ya'!” Oh, shit. You rub the bridge of your nose, dying on shame and your cheeks getting red'. “Coffee?”

“Were you?” He asks with no gesture on his face, looking at you. But you can't say anything, or do any move. “Well, the point is that Bishop asked one of us to be your sponsor, I've volunteered”.

“Did you?” Marcus and you ask in unison.

“Ya' know? I think I've some business to take care of. I'll see you tonight, mija”. The older runs away as soon as he can, leaving you there with your heart beating too fast.

“But if you d...”

“No! It's ok”. You say, trying to look normal after to be left lonely against a war. “I mean... Cool”.

But you're so far to be normal.

“Awesome. Uh... You're comin' with us to Mexico on Friday”.

“Really?” You're always excited about ride to new places, but, damn! Mexico! Cross the border, another culture, real tacos! “Shit! That's bloody amazing”. You can't help but hugging him really anxious and happy about the travel.

He got frozen, with your arms around his neck and you jumping as a rabbit does. But when he's about to put his hands on your hips, you turn away to offer him the coffee. Seems like he needs it as you do, before starting to work.

┅┅ ┅ ┅ ┅┅

You also know Chuckie, the lovely and kind man without forefingers, who was formerly in Charming. He has been sometimes at the SAMCRO headquarters, always treating you with a lot of respect in a dearly way. Usually, he talks you about the things your father told them about his beautiful, smart and badass daughter. A scottish from head to toe, with his character and her mother's eyes. Chuckie knows a lot about you and your life, even memories you can't remember of your childhood.

He's showing you all the car scrapping, while you're drawing something like a map with different notes in the borders to don't miss a single detail about the place, and about where is located every stuff for spare parts, the warehouse of new orders, the garage, the office... Everything. It's easy. It's a little bit bigger than yours in Charming, but it has no lose.

“You fuckin' idiot!”

“My bad!”

“What's up, guys?” You ask, putting the notebook against your chest, between both hands.

“This fuckin' idiot left the keys on”. Angel says snorting, pointing a smashed car above four more. “And now we need it!”

“What you were thinkin', man?” Gilly breaks in laugh, giving your notebook to Chuckie.

“Ok, Reyes, teamwork”. You palm his chest with the back of your hand.

“Wha'?” The guys ask incredulous.

“Lift me on your shoulders, you're the taller one”.

The men look at each other strangely. But nobody says anything. Angel complies bending down to let you sit on him. Getting up, you try to keep the balance while he walks towards the row. Now, using his hands you place your feet on them to go higher, till you're able to crawl into the smashed car. Stretching an arm straight, you reach the keys, keeping them inside your pocket.

The point is how are you supposed to go down? You duck your head down to the boys, seeing that Angel is gesturing to tell you to jump. You're doubting, but you finally do. He catches you on air and on time, feeling like you're about to having a heart-attack.

“'Got you, kid”. He says in a whisper, so close that you don't find any distance.

“What a superhero!” You answer sarcastically.

“I earned a kiss”. Proud words.

“In this case, you earned a punch in the face, Reyes”. You laugh putting your feet on the asphalt. “Maybe Coco forgot it, but you were supervising him”.

“'Hell you doin'? Do ya' think the kid is a fair monkey?” Behind your backs, you hear Tranq's voice coming to you. “You ok, (Y/N)?”

“Yea', I just... forgot a keys in the car”. You lie loudly, shaking your jeans and taking the green shirt his offering you.

“Didn' Angel tell you?”

“Yea', yea', he did. But I was overthinking, it's not gonna happen again, sorry”.

The man looks satisfied with your reply, nodding before continue with his own business. Now that Coco is your sponsor, you've to cover his shit. You know well how it works. With your father was easy, of course, 'cause he's the president of your charter and he doesn't owe any explanation if he fuck up something.

“Thanks, mami”. He says with some kind of surprise on his voice.

“Watch your moves, Coconut, I'm too young to die”.

#mayans mc imagine #mayans x reader #mayans mc x reader #mayans mc #coco cruz x reader #coco cruz #johnny coco cruz x reader #here we go coconut

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crystallinecrimsonmoth · 3 years

Text

Moon City Don't Judge - Chapter 1

1983, NSAS Headquarters, Edinburgh, Scotland

“So this is for the newest Jamestown mission, then? What number are these Yankees on now?”

“Jamestown 85.”

“Oh, well I sure am flattered to be allowed in this late in the game. What did they tell you?”

“They’re trying to look international after the Russians had that mission with the French.”

Heather McKay snorted at that, taking the folder from Marcus and flicking through the pictures of the recent mission that had been broadcast on TV for the whole world to see just how friendly Russia were now.

The image of two astronauts with contrasting flags on their arms made her smirk a little. Since unilaterally declaring independence after World War Two, Scotland had become a far more passive nation, leaving larger countries like the US and the Soviet Union to sort out their own scraps unless they were absolutely needed to step in.

“So, they want to make nice with a passive country.”

“Exactly. I’ve been chatting with Molly Cobb, she’s head of astronauts now over at Houston, expecting one Mr McKay, second Scot in space.”

Heather laughed, nodding as she set the folder down and grabbed her water bottle from its resting spot on Marcus’ desk.

“I thought that was just a trick we played on rookie engineers and astronauts, not seasoned professionals.”

Marcus rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair and shrugging.

“Messing with Americans is just as fun, even if they are fellow astronauts.”

“Seekers of independence from the crown playing pranks on each other. How mature.” Heather grinned, lifting her jacket from the back of her chair and shrugging it onto her shoulders.

The folder was still open on the table as she gave it one more scan, sighing.

“That’s early as hell to be rising, Marcus.”

“You can sleep when you’re dead, you know that better than anyone, astronaut.”

“Sure do, desk jockey.” The younger woman smiled at him when he gave her a deprecating look, offering him a fist bump as a goodbye.

“Have fun in Moon City, kid.”

Flying to America commercially felt like being stuck in a tin can for hours on end, though Heather was sure if she’d tried to fly it alone, she would have fallen asleep and crashed by now. She spent the time with her seat leaned back a fraction and a personnel file in her lap for the people she’d be working with. She knew Margo from a few years before when she had advised her on how to deal with a young Aleida Rosales and they had kept in touch since, so she passed by her file with ease and moved onto the astronaut section without realising she’d skipped the profile of her newest colleague, Molly Cobb.

With so many names to memorise and personal facts to store away in her head to be used at a later date, Heather barely had the energy to look at Cobb’s profile, her closing eyes skimming the information about the death of Wubbo Ockels before finally shutting as she passed out from exhaustion.

“Mrs McKay? Mrs McKay, we’ve arrived at Houston Intercontinental, it’s time to depart the plane.”

Heather came around to find a made-up flight attendant peering at her and shaking her shoulder gently, lacquered brown eyes focused on hers.

She flinched briefly at the sight before nodding when she took in the woman’s words, sliding out from her seat and looking at her once she’d grabbed her carry on from the overhead bins.

“What time is it?”

“Two in the afternoon, Mrs McKay, you’ve gained six hours.”

“Not Mrs, please, I’m not married.” Heather smiled kindly at the woman, nodding when she excused herself and exiting the plane into the fresh air.

At least, she had hoped it would be fresh. Instead, it felt like the Sahara compared to Edinburgh; the heat turned right up in Texas during June. It made her glad the man who put her through security knew who she was and went out of his way to help her through quickly.

She had a feeling that would be a rare thing in a country where nationalism was rampant. If you weren’t an American in the United States, you weren’t worth anyone’s time.

Luggage claim took longer than security for once, chewing the Scot out fifteen minutes later back into the hot Texan sun where a man in a secret service type suit stood beside an entirely black car with tinted windows.

“Miss Mickey?”

“It’s McKay. You would think with a fancy car service, the ability to say my name correctly would be included in the package.”

“Apologies, ma’am. I’ve been instructed to take you straight to the hotel.”

Heather nodded, giving him her suitcase and guitar to load into the trunk before sitting in the back of the car, relaxing into the comfortable leather after hours upon hours in a spiny airplane seat.

With tinted windows surrounding her, the sun was blocked out to make the rest of the journey easier with less heat, so she was fine to actually talk to the driver when he took off from the airport.

“I didn’t expect so much security around my arrival. It’s almost as if I’m a cosmonaut.”

“No, ma’am, the president was only concerned that the Russians may attack you to start a war with your passive nation.”

She sighed in the back seat, shaking her head as she leaned against the headrest behind her.

“I don’t believe they would. Scotland is no enemy of the USSR.”

“I meant no offense, ma’am, only to say that your head of state agrees with the president. He knows the danger too.”

Heather rolled her eyes at the mention of the Scottish leader, remembering the twelfth head of state from a meeting a few months before. She had much preferred the man who saw her off into space six years before.

“The head of state’s a misogynistic prick.”

The driver didn’t say anything in response, only smiling to her in the rear-view mirror which she found amusing. He obviously agreed but chances were there was a wire in the car to make sure he didn’t criticise his own government. How confident that made her feel about being in one of the two most controversial countries on the planet.

She’d researched the distance between the airport and the space centre before she left Scotland, wanting to make sure she knew her surroundings and not exactly thankful that there was an hour between them.

She had a feeling she’d be relying on her driver a lot during this trip if she were to get anywhere other than the space centre.

The rest of the journey was quiet, what Heather would call typical American scenery of square buildings and grey roads passing them by until they finally reached the hotel. She could see the space centre in all its glory across the road, large and looming over the water beside it.

“Much less attractive than NSAS headquarters, wouldn’t you say?”

“No pretty castles to convert in this country, ma’am. We make do with concrete and glass.”

“Looks like a bunch of grey shoeboxes to me.” Heather scoffed as she took the suitcase and instrument from him, slipping on her sunglasses and hat to avoid the sun above them.

“Maybe you can give them some design tips tomorrow, ma’am.”

She nodded, grabbing her backpack from the seat and throwing it over her shoulder with her guitar case, following him into the hotel once the car was locked and sifting in her bag for the hotel information Marcus had given her so she could check in.

“I have a copy of your booking if you can’t find your own.” She looked up at her driver to find a fresh sheet of paper in his hand and grinned, taking it and handing it to the receptionist when they reached the counter.

“Fucking bless you, boy.”

“Of course, ma’am. If that’s everything you need?”

“Yes. No, sorry, do you know where the Outpost is? My head of astronaut affairs gave me that name for the local pub, but I’m all turned around here.”

“The Outpost is across the road and five blocks to the left, Miss Mickey. You can’t miss the sign.” The receptionist spoke up before the driver could, causing the other woman to nod, taking off her glasses now that they were inside and smiling at both of them.

“Thank you. Kid, I meant to ask what your name is. I hate to have you driving me around when I don’t know who you are.”

“Liam Russett, ma’am, at your service and surely older than you so there’s no need to call me kid.”

Heather snorted at that, shaking her head as she hooked her glasses on the collar of her shirt.

“Well, if that’s true, you should get yourself a new job rather than driving around child astronauts.”

“It’s a pleasure, ma’am, really. You have my number for when you need driven somewhere. Have a nice night, Miss McKay.”

“You too, Liam.” She waved to him and grinned when he waved back, turning to talk to the receptionist.

“Hi, sorry for making you wait.”

“I’m used to it, don’t fret. Okay, Miss Mickey,”

That pronunciation wasn’t going away anytime soon.

“…you’re booked in for the next week and two weeks after your return, courtesy of NASA, but you can stay for longer after your mission if you should wish to set that up. Here’s your key and if you’re joining us for the full breakfast tomorrow, we start serving at 8am.” The woman behind the desk smiled kindly, getting another bright smile from Heather as she shifted her bags into the elevator to the side of reception.

“I’ll probably catch a donut at the centre tomorrow, but I will keep the breakfast thing in mind for another day! Thank you!” She called over her shoulder as the doors shut and she started going up to the sixth floor.

Looking at herself in the mirror, she felt like a cat dragged through a hedge backwards. Her hair was sticking to the side of her face with the sweat, the hat plastering part of her fringe to her forehead when she took it off. Her cheeks were red from the sun too and it occurred to her that she’d need sun-cream if she was going to be stuck in America for longer than a day.

As she stepped out onto the right floor and shifted open her hotel room door with a bit of struggle, the phone on the table started ringing.

Heather groaned, shutting the door behind her once her stuff was inside and picking up the call quickly, putting the receiver to her ear.

“Heather McKay, who’s calling, please?”

“Heather, you got there okay, good. How was the plane trip?”

“Hell, I’d honestly prefer a fucking Saltire shuttle.” The young woman expressed to Marcus on the other side as she flopped down on the mattress, glad for the comfort.

Her fellow astronaut laughed on the other end of the call, leaning back on his own armchair.

“Christ, worse than Saltire? Aren’t I glad I volunteered you for this mission and not myself?”

Heather rolled her eyes, staring out of the window that stretched her wall. The sky was a perfect blue with the sun shining down on the city, reminding her of decent summer days at home when she’d kick up sand on the beach. It was a relaxing memory to think about after the long journey.

“Yeah, aren’t you fucking lucky? I’m gonna head for the Outpost tonight with my guitar, try and make friends before I show up tomorrow.”

“Your social skills have come a long way since I met you.”

“And as soon as our leader and their leader aren’t bastards, I’ll be much more sociable!” She sighed, sitting up and going to the window to look across the roofs of the shoeboxes across the road.

“I don’t believe that but you’re Molly’s problem for the next month, not mine.”

Heather grinned at his words. She knew what he meant. Out of the first two Scots in space, she was far more foul-mouthed and quick-witted than Marcus, and it had definitely been a problem in the past.

“Don’t you worry, Marky, I’ll make you proud. Say hi to Laura and James for me.” She bid him goodbye before hanging up, returning the phone to its holder, and skimming through the tourist information book in an attempt at finding a place to eat after the hellish plane ride.

In the end, she had settled for a burger from the van outside NASA headquarters, sitting on a stone wall in front of some flower beds and enjoying watching so many engineers and scientists pass by, chatting away about their work.

Science was one half of her busy life and she loved it. Being at NASA was just the cherry on top of her career now, even if she wasn’t a fan of the politics the agency let itself get caught up in.

She listened to the chatter until her burger was a mere wrapper crushed in her hands and was surprised by the time on the clock outside the hotel. She sure hadn’t realised she’d been sitting there for that many hours but keeping a low profile and being jetlagged clearly passed the time faster than she thought.

Heading back up to her room, Heather changed into a fresh t-shirt and flannel before wandering over to the Outpost bar once she ran a brush through her hair. She could feel people eyeing her as soon as she walked in, clearly sticking out like a sore thumb as someone who they’d never seen before.

No one recognised her yet, thankfully. She didn’t need “socialist Scot scum” comments when she just wanted to drink and play her guitar. She let herself look at the astronaut souvenirs in the glass case by the door then approached the bar, smiling at the woman she certainly recognised as Karen Baldwin from the file about her husband.

“Hi, what can I get for ya?”

“A dram of your best Scots whisky, please.”

“Taste of home coming right up. Haven’t seen you around here before.”

“I’m new, start tomorrow. Thought I’d show my face and try to make friends before going to the moon with this lot.”

Karen nodded, the recognition clicking in her head as she slid the whisky to the younger woman.

“McKay, right? Ed was talking about you. First Scottish woman astronaut, and you changed the law on gay rights, didn’t you? Pretty ballsy.”

Heather shrugged, sipping her whisky and relishing in the burn going down her throat for a moment before speaking.

“And yet folks here in Texas would probably see me hung for it, at the very least fined 500 dollar for kissing a lady in public.”

“Some people never want to let go of their traditions, we’ll get there.” Karen smiled, nodding to the guitar strapped to her back with a slight grin.

“If you’re looking to make friends, you should play. They like music.” She told her with a wink before moving along to serve the newest patron in the door.

The young Scot looked around the bar once before taking her advice, sitting at a table in the corner near the counter and starting to play.

“Ring of Fire, good idea.” Karen mouthed to her from the bar, praising her choice of an American song as the front door opened again, none other than Molly Cobb walking through it and smiling at Karen, giving a brief wave.

“A beer, please, Karen.”

“Love is a burning thing… and it makes, a fiery ring…”

She could feel eyes on her, practically every pair in the bar turning to look at her eventually while she played. Usually, the attention didn’t bother her but the distraction of feet approaching her made her fingers tremble slightly on the strings.

Heather didn’t like being such a close focus of attention. She was used to the crowd having boundaries, being on a stage or a higher platform where they couldn’t reach her, but as she finished the song a few minutes later with every person in the bar staring at her, she could feel a wave of nerves run through her.

Molly was right there, sitting right there with her beer in hand and sunglasses pushing her hair back from her face, blue eyes focused on Heather.

“You’re good.”

“I practice.”

“Haven’t seen you around here before.”

Heather laughed in a light tone, strumming the cords of her guitar slightly. This woman had no idea that they were colleagues, that they had first woman of her nation in space in common. She was looking right through her.

“Oh, I just like the astronaut knick-knacks at this bar, plus I thought I’d try to impress the great Molly Cobb with my playing. Did you like it?” She tilted her head, acting as if she were simply an awestruck citizen and not reporting to duty for the woman the next day.

“Well colour me impressed, though that may just be the alcohol.”

“I’d like to see you do better. Your skills seem singular to flying.” She smirked, wondering how long she could get away with her secret identity.

Taking another sip of her whisky, Heather watched the other woman over the lip of her glass. She sure looked a lot more attractive in person compared to the photo in her information folder, but she wouldn’t act on that fact. It would put them both in danger for her to flirt in public here.

Even friends could turn on Molly if she got that close to another woman, Heather knew that.

“Yeah, and what other skills can you boast, sweetheart? Lemme guess, you can play two instruments.”

Oh, you bitch.

“First impressions aren’t your thing, are they? Don’t worry, ma’am, I’ll report for duty first thing tomorrow morning in your office, even if you’re a smug bitch. My name’s Heather McKay, by the way.” She held out her hand for Molly to shake as an introduction and smiled kindly when the older woman sighed, shaking her hand.

“Heather McKay, first Scottish woman in space. Marcus told me you were a Mr.”

“Wee trick we like to play on new recruits from other countries, he thought it would be funny to play it on a Yank.” Heather downed what remained of her whisky before ignoring Molly and waving to Karen as she left the bar.

“See you tomorrow, boss.”

#molly cobb x oc #molly cobb fanfic #molly cobb #for all mankind fic #for all mankind #moon city don't judge #fanfiction

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imagineclaireandjamie · 5 years

Note

Any HRH coming soon? Absolutely in love with this fic and these two. Your writing is out of this world and I can't wait for where this story is going, it's SO SO SO SO GOOD.

This is my submission for the One Quote, One Shot challenge by @notevenjokingfic and @balfeheughlywed. The quote assigned to me (@missclairebelle) was: “Leave, then,” he said, jerking his head toward the door. “If that’s what ye think of me, go! I’ll not hinder ye.” Happy reading!

Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)Part XX: Cuffed

It was Sunday night.

The weekend was behind Jamie and Claire (along with all of the possibilities those short hours held).

For another five nights, the cabin was behind them.

When he’d left her (fingers tangling in her hair and holding her face within inches of his, the fronts of their bodies melted together until all that separated their hearts was skin and clothes and bone), he’d whispered, “We should talk about what comes next.”

Alone as the hollow bong bong bong of the grandfather clock just outside her bathroom announced the arrival of ten o’clock, Claire sank into the bath (feeling utterly boneless) and closed her eyes.

She ached everywhere.

Between her legs where Jamie’s hips had lived throughout the preceding forty-eight hours.

Deep in her belly where a new emptiness had taken up residence.

Along the centerline of her shoulder blades where she had winched herself up from the sleeping bag on their impromptu camping trip as he closed a hand over her breast, his mouth a molten, sucking thing at her throat.

At the base of her skull where his parting words echoed (residing like an unwelcome companion to her every thought).

What comes next��

These parts of her. She knew they would continue to burn, to feel like they had been pulled taut long after dawn came and she again was the Queen, not Just Claire.

She didn’t just know that these incidental aches would remind her of their time (those precious, disconnected hours where they had blissfully lived without answering to another), she hoped that they would.

A reminder. A brand. A place for Fraser to dwell under her skin, close to the bone, twined together with the nerves and veins and vessels that made her human.

Relishing the promise of weightlessness in her bath, she lazily watched as she willed her arms to go limp and bob up from beneath the placid lavender-scented surface.

“I love you, Jamie Fraser,” she said, taking in a mouthful of milky-white bathwater. It was the first time she’d said it aloud in the bounds of her own room, in the palace where she lived for a portion of the summer. The emptiness in her belly filled (just for a moment), her heart skipped (just for one-half of one beat). She let her mouth rise up from beneath the water, drew breath, and whispered it again. “I love you, Jamie Fraser.”

Smiling to herself, she perched her feet on the edge of the tub and sank until her entire head was underwater.

She had never known it was possible to smile while screaming.

The next morning, the palace was alight with a flurry of activity as her staff prepared to depart for Balmoral.

It was the traditional second leg of the Crown’s summer in Scotland.

She was ready.

For the change in her environment (salted air and open places).

For the change in pace (the unending liveliness of Edinburgh left behind, stables where it would not be unusual for her to wander off for a ride throughout the day and disappear onto the grounds, more casual clothes, fewer official duties).

For the opportunity to put to good use the corridor between her staff’s living quarters and her own (nights in dressing gowns, trying and failing to hold back laughter as she pawed her way down dimly-lit hallways with Fraser, grabbing greedily for his waistband).

It was just as she finished gathering the things she wanted from her desk on Monday morning that Mrs. Fitz furiously blew into the study with a newspaper clutched in her hand.

“Yer Majesty,” she breathed, her voice reedy from exertion. Claire looked up from the handful of correspondence (from said Colonel) that she was banding together with a floral-printed silk scarf, nodded. Mrs. Fitz winced as the door swung shut, slamming behind her. “Colonel Fraser isna here… he’s been– weel… he’s been…”

Nonplussed, Claire asked, “Where is he?”

“Jail, ma’am.”

If given a hundred opportunities to guess where Colonel Fraser was, she was certain she would never have guessed the answer. With a spinning head and dropping stomach, Claire’s mouth tried for words, her soft palate becoming that of an infant (an obstruction in the process of trying out new sounds).

“For… what?” she managed, tripping over her words and resting her trembling hands on the edge of her desk as she rose.

Mrs. Fitz held up the newspaper, adding, “Ye need to ken somethin’ else.”

Claire took the folded paper from Mrs. Fitz and scanned its contents quickly.

It was a moment that Claire would come to think of as her death.

The article was lengthy, accompanied by photographs.

An official state photograph of Claire with Frank at the announcement of their engagement (her smile tight to her own eyes, back ramrod straight beneath his hand).

A snapshot taken of Claire by Frank in Norway (one she remembered him taking by virtue of the fact that she was seeing the photograph in print). She was cocooned in a chunky woolen knit and denim and sitting on a mountain of pillows reading in front of a fireplace.

A portrait of sorts of her ring, onyx and diamonds (one that sat in the palace museum open to the public in London along with various bits of ceremonial regalia in the service of the Crown over the years).

A grainy image of the ring next to the insignia of the local police force and two rulers (the word “RECOVERED!” beneath it screaming up from the page at once like both a howl of pain and nails on a chalkboard).

“What is this?” Claire asked, knowing as she clutched her ring finger and realized for the first time that the ring was gone.

“Ma’am, I… they… have him.”

Like a leaf in the earliest gasps of autumn, the news clipping drifted down down down until it came to rest on the desk.

“The police. He was arrested when he arrived home… from dropping ye off last night.”

The questions, exclamations, profanity scuttling around in her head fought with her lungs for airtime. The only thing that came out, though, was a choking gasp, like food gone down the wrong pipe or grief that became too much for a body to shelter. It sounded like his name.

Suddenly, she realized that screaming “I love you” underwater was not at all like the feeling of drowning inside yourself while standing on dry land.

Jamie.

In decidedly less accommodating quarters across the city, James Fraser was contemplating the fact that he had spent many nights in a German war prison.

This, with its butter-yellow slivers of sunshine, watery, lukewarm tea, and scratchy blankets, was nothing.

Bowing his head, he sighed.

After saying goodbye to Claire (his heart, his reason), he had not even made it to the door of his flat before his hands were wrenched behind his back and secured in handcuffs. His wrists stinging from the overly-aggressive slap of metal, he asked what it was that the officers (three of the local police force’s finest and three uniformed palace guards) believed he had done.

A ring had been stolen from the Queen’s private collection.

His mind whirled, the denial spilling easily (truthfully) from his lips as his head bowed (a ring? the Queen’s private collection? when? was it found?). One officer shoved Jamie’s head low and folded him into the backseat of an unmarked, nondescript black car. The insult hurled at him by one of the officers of the Queen’s guard (“ye piece of shite, ye’ve no loyalty”) coincided with his decision that under no circumstances would he ask to speak with Claire.

Oh Christ, Claire. Certainly, she would know that this was a lie, right? A misunderstanding?

The night was long, and he did not manage to sleep more than a wink or two. His bladder ached shortly before dawn, and he took a piss in the small silver portable urinal on the corner desk. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he shook his head. His weekend of stubble had seemingly devolved into a fully disreputable-looking shading along his jaw.

“At least ye look the part if ye’re in the clink,” he mumbled to himself, finishing and setting the urinal back on the desk. “And now ye smell like piss.”

In the amber haze of lost time, a day coiled around and around outside of the jail until the sun was high in the morning sky. Inside the jail, as he sipped the watery tea and ate a bowl of gritty porridge, he composed a letter to Claire (in his mind only, for he was in want of a pen and a scrap of paper). He spoke to the walls, counting the painted bricks, and found in the truth what he hoped he would be able to say to her (he didn’t take her ring, had no clue what ring had been stolen, he would give anything to see her, to explain).

Based on the angle of sun cutting through the small window, he presumed it was around midday. It was then that the metal-on-metal scraping clunk in the pass-through got him to his feet. Though he had been in jail for less than half a day, Jamie knew what role had been preordained for him. He turned, took three awkward steps backward to the pass-through, slipped his hands through the small opening, and winced as the cuffs slapped closed over his already-bruised wrists.

Two minutes and a long walk down a damp hallway later, the guard deposited Jamie in a sparse room with a desk (an uneven, wobbling thing with one too-short leg), a morning edition of the day’s newspaper (disassembled into various sections and reshuffled together in an uneven, ragged manner), an abused collection of paperback books (though missing their covers and title pages, Jamie could tell that they were the type of classical literature he could quote from memory), a telephone (he could not think of a single person who he wanted to speak with who he knew how to contact; the only person he wanted and needed to speak to was beyond unreachable), and a mismatched set of hand weights on a rubber mat.

“Ye’ve got an hour, Fraser.”

Jamie offered a lame smile and held his breath until the barred door to the room closed.

Seated, he paged aimlessly through a few books, his attention catching only long enough for the titles to register and immediately fall out of his brain.

He did a few bicep curls with the heavier of the two weights, and then turned to the newspaper.

He read a story about a man in London who was sentenced to death after eight bodies were found in his Notting Hill home. He read about a series of science fiction novels being made into a multi-part television program. And then he found what was ostensibly the first page of the newspaper.

His eye was drawn to the headline first (RECOVERED!).

And then the photograph – the ring with its onyx and diamonds.

Claire’s ring.

The photograph did what the mere mention of the ring had not. It brought the mental image of it sitting on that bathroom counter to mind. His heart sank. He had not seen it on her hand since, had not felt the cool metal of it resting heavily on his chest as she slept or watched her wrench it back onto her delicate finger before returning from the camping trip.

He rose and dialed the number without thinking.

And when his sister answered on the third ring, he fought the instinct to weep.

“Jen,” he breathed, all the air evacuating his lungs.

“Mallaichte bas!” Jenny hissed. “I’ve been callin’ ye nonstop. Maggie found a ring at the cabin, and the police called. I tried to–”

“I’m in jail,” he interrupted. “They think I stole it.”

Against the silence of the line, he swallowed, used her Christian name, bowed his head against the wall.

A denial would mean that the ring was there because she had been there. Save the truth (a sordid, torrid tale), there was no good reason for the Queen to have been there (in that damp ramshackle cabin with the tilted porch adjacent to a town that barely warranted a dot on a map of Scotland). And he could not do that to her – to expose her to the shaming of a country (her country).

“Aye,” Jenny confirmed, a whisper. “They think that ye stole it, that ye stashed it at the cabin.”

“Do ye think I stole it?”

His eyes closed as he waited for his sister’s response. For some reason it mattered to him (deeply) that his sister not think him a thief, that he had someone who could hear the truth, not judge him.

“I ken ye are no’ a thief, brathair, which means she was… there… in the cabin. And there’s precisely one reason that I can think of her being there wi’ ye, for the sheets to be mussed in only one bedroom as they were.”

Jamie sank a thumbnail into a sliver of missing mortar between the bricks, watched the surface crumble beneath the slightest pressure.

“I didna steal it, Jen, and she’s in a bad situation if it was there, she canna be runnin’ around wi’ me –”

“What will ye do?” she broke in, knowing in her gut that her brother (the noble, self-sacrificing one who refused to let his niece go without new shoes for the fall or his nephew go without a book to read by the lake) already had a plan. He had called to see if he could fill in a blank, to figure out what had gone sideways and how. And now he had a plan.

“I’m going to tell them that I took it at the state dinner where it…”

A breath. Another. The feeling of a heart cracking, of the nebulous promise of forever evaporating.

“It’s where it started, ye ken. A dinner. I found her, and I…

“Oh, Jamie,” Jenny sighed, her voice taking on the tone he knew his sister reserved for barn kittens and her own bairns. “Ye love her, don’t ye–”

“The ring. I’ll say I took it. That she didna ken.”

And that was that.

He was going to confess.

Hours later, Jamie had penned a lengthy statement about his theft. Idly, he wondered if it could be considered treason when it was property of the Crown. Had he confessed to something more than snagging something shiny? He folded the pages, tucked them into an envelope, and sent them away with the guard to transmit to the court. In the morning, he would see a solicitor and a magistrate. He would try to make this as easy as possible for her (for his Sassenach Queen, his Claire, his everything). His confession would mean there was no statement from her necessary. All that was required would be an official notice from whoever wrote such things that her staff had trusted the wrong man, and that there was no remaining threat to the property of the Crown.

The Crown Equerry would be but a fading memory, an empty position to be filled by some other mildly-competent horse lover.

He was settling onto his back, his legs crossed at the ankles and his hands behind his head, when the hollow crack of a baton sounded down the hall. “They tell me that ye’ve got a visitor, Fraser,” the jail guard said gruffly, plainly disgruntled that his evening of lounging with feet up on a desk had been disrupted. “Some sort of special case, but they dinna tell me anythin’, just that ye’re to come up. Come suit up.”

For the second time that day, his hands were cuffed, and he made his way down the long hall. He was transferred to the custody of two members of the Royal Guard. His heart began a Titanic-like descent to the bottom of the icy ocean of his stomach.

Claire.

It was a pipe dream, he thought, but when he entered the room she was in the corner. Her back was to him and her head tipped back, loosely pinned curls falling to the back of her sweater.

“Uncuff him,” she demanded before turning on her heel, eyes like kindling ready to spark. As one of the guards began to stumble for words, she snapped, “Immediately. I did not stutter.”

“I dinna have the keys, Yer Majesty, I-”

“Find them.” The guards turned to one another. “And you will leave to do so.”

“Ma’am, are ye sure–”

Claire squared her shoulders, crossed her arms over her stomach. “If you do not leave this instant I will have both of your jobs.”

As though connected to one another by a string, both guards nodded and left them. It was only a moment before one was back with the key to free Jamie from the handcuffs.

Claire nodded, raising her chin towards the door until the guard stepped through the threshold.

“And the door. Shut it. Do not enter again unless expressly authorized to enter after knocking by me.”

When the door clicked shut, Claire’s face melted and she took two steps, firmly planting herself against his chest and winding her arms around him. “Oh Christ, Jamie. Are you okay?”

He fought the urge to embrace her, to draw her close and inhale the soft elderflower and bergamot scent that lingered like springtime in the gentle indentation where her shoulder met her neck. He remained limp in her arm, one hand traveling to the back of his neck. He swallowed, made an anemic attempt to pull back from her ferocious embrace. “Ye’re no’ wearin’ the ring that I stole–”

“Do not dare joke right now, Fraser,” she snapped, holding him tighter, kissing him on the jaw. “We are going to come clean. I am going to get you out of here. I have my staff working with the police on it.”

Pulling back, she smoothed a hand over his jaw, tested the stubble just above his chin with her thumb.

“You have no clue how hard it is for even the Queen to get someone out of a Scottish jail. Your kind are brutally stubborn, Fraser.”

He fought the urge to smirk, to agree with her, to joke back that it was what she loved most about him. Humming, he let his nose nudge a curl from her temple, to allow his hands to rest at the small of her back just where her flesh started to swell up into the familiar curve of her arse. “Claire, we canna ‘come clean,’ to use yer words.”

He watched the delicate line of her throat as she swallowed, the gentle lift and fall of her collarbones under the exhalation before she finally said, “What?”

“I canna do that to ye. To make loving me a scandal.”

“Jamie…”

Her voice was tremulous, tears transparent in their threat to rim her lower eyes, to fall down those round cheeks.

Jamie said nothing.

The first tear fell, then the next, and a third, and then her chin trembled as she pursed her lips.

He had expected tears, expected her to cry. He was no fool. He knew that the love she felt for him was infinite in an unbounded, inarticulate way, that the threat of losing that love would devastate her. But he also knew that the love she felt for her country was ancient, a blood right that existed for her long before either of them had existed as an abstract longing in their parents’ eyes, before their parents and their parents’ parents had been conceived or born. He had fought for Queen and country, put his life on the line for it.

“Fraser… stop.”

With the flat of his thumb, he collected tears and wiped them away, fighting the urge to kiss her where the wet tracks made the powder on her cheeks disintegrate.

For her part, Claire felt the whimper building in her guts, fighting to come out so that the world could know that this was her second death of the day, that she was losing everything. Instead, she squared her shoulders, shook her head. “You cannot possibly be ashamed of me, and you cannot possibly think you’re doing me a favor.”

“We are no’ ready to be public–”

“–we would never be ready to be public, Fraser.”

“I’m no’ the type that ye can marry, and I–”

“You are wrong. You are precisely the type that I can marry. I love you.”

“I couldna do this to ye, to subject ye to rumors. That ye carried on an affair, that ye came to that cabin to fuck me. Your reputation would be ruined, and–”

She started to laugh, her body wracking against him as she started to cough. “You don’t love me. Is that it?”

“Don’t be daft,” he muttered, shaking his head as he used a word he had adopted from her vocabulary. “It’s got nothing to do wi’ how much I love ye, Claire.”

“And yet you do not want a life with me, a life for us to make our own?”

“It’s to protect ye, Claire. Ye canna be the leader that we need if the noise of me drowns ye out–”

“You will not even try then? To make a life with me, to try to exist in the world I have to live in. You do not want to fight for us?”

“Ye ken that’s no’ it. I canna make it any clearer for ye, Claire. I canna let ye walk away from yer entire life for me.”

“Oh, you have made it abundantly clear, Fraser.” She straightened the edge of her cardigan, shook her head. She opened her clutch and dabbed carefully at the tears on her cheeks. “You are a coward.”

He pulled back from her, shook his head as he bit down on his lower lip. “Leave, then,” he said, jerking his head toward the door. “If that’s what ye think of me, go! I’ll not hinder ye.”

It was the parting glance that she gave him that finished him off – a once over with defeated eyes, glowing amber and storming with anger, disappointment, heartbreak.

“Goodbye, Fraser,” she whispered as she took her clutch under her arm.

“Claire, I…”

His voice faded.

She was already gone.

#crookedfestivalalmondknight #one quote one shot #HRH #Her Royal Highness AU #jamie x claire #Part XX #;mod kate

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panspy · 5 years

Text

Case #0181501

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Eide Burrows, regarding a man who may not have been her neighbor, and her hometown of Millport, Scotland. Original statement delivered through some folded sheets of notebook paper shoved under the office door while I was on a lunch break. Statement recorded January 15, 2018, audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

In the end, we’re all just shapes. Figures, either soft, angled, flat, or dimensional, all floating through space with only the hint of a purpose. I’ve always thought this made us pitiable. Shapes don’t have a purpose, their only use is to simply be. What is the meaning of a triangle? Any color, it doesn’t matter. How about a square? A dodecahedron? Exactly. It has no right to have that many sides all to itself, but it exists simply because we willed it into being. Shapes thinking of shapes.

Lines connect shapes and connect people. We have no reason to be, other than to just… exist. We think of shapes. Who thought of us? God, you could argue and many do. Argue about God, argue with God, argue in defense of God, argue against God. Argue, argue, argue. Just shapes arguing with shapes.

For the longest time, as far as I was concerned, Millport was nothing but shapes. Old buildings with new paint, old billboards with flashy new signs, old families run by new blood. Old ways and new people. They tried to cover up the old, and bury it like bones in a landfill. Cover it up along with the potholes with new asphalt and cement. Make it shiny and new. They still crack, anyway.

Hundreds of years, that town stood sturdy on soft ground. Founded by confident men with high hopes, big dreams, bigger egos, and empty pockets. Dreams make you blind, but people like to invest in them. Dreams give shapes a purpose, don’t they? Confidence fools others, and eventually fools yourself. Have you ever gone unnoticed in a place you’re not meant to be? If you walk with your head held high and false arrogance, people will believe you belong with them. For either to believe this façade makes them a fool. Not that anyone really belongs anywhere, and we’re all just foolish enough to believe it. Foolish shapes believing other foolish shapes.

I’ve always reckoned that it’s easier to be confident on uncertain legs than to fear falling on steady ground. Watching a frightened child stepping along a wide, even plank at the park is more likely to fall than a tightrope walker on a flimsy wire. Tightrope walkers are triangles, balanced and perfect. Children are parallelograms. Misshapen. Lopsided.

All the children in Millport are parallelograms. Some are flat and one dimensional, others forever rotating on an axis to show off their sides. Never the same for more than a day- I kept track. The adults were a variety of evolved and ever-changing polygons. But for some reason when I was little, looking at all these shapes going about their pretend lives, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t a polygon when the world seemed to be filled with them. When I looked at my skin, it was soft and squished under touch. My hair was coarse, dull, and brown, unlike my mothers which was static with energy and never quite the same after you blinked. My face was asymmetrical too, as many shapes are. Eyes that seemed to be too big, ears that poke out a bit too much, bags that never went away… well, I don’t think they did anyways. You have to understand, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it. After a childhood of feeling as though the world hadn’t been fair enough to make me a nice red square, I just accepted it. I learned not to mind my lack of shape, and felt content to be liminal.

The first time I decided to look further into what made the town fit together into the odd puzzle it was, was the Masonic Lodge on the empty lot of Seymour and Drummond. It was always changing, not that it mattered enough to give it a second thought. In the morning, it could be a red trapezoid but by noon it would shift into a cracked yellow octagon. Personally I always preferred the trapezoid. The men who entered in the evening but never seemed to exit in the morning were also known to change. Whether by name, appearance, age, or multitude… who went in did not dictate who went home. Not that anyone cared about that, either.

When I was feeling especially curious, I would watch them enter from the dim car park away from a flickering old street lamp. As nights went by and I felt brave enough to stand directly under it, I found it made no difference as they never even looked at my direction. By the morning, the cars would be gone and the men allegedly returned home to their spouses and families. And I would leave, deciding to return again at the next meeting whenever I felt the disturbing pull in my stomach beckoning me to witness it. The scheduled days varied, but was always twice a week starting at 8:12 pm and ending when the street light flickered, shrouding the building and parked vehicles in darkness, then flickering on again to show an empty lot. They never met on Tuesdays.

My mother worked down the street at the Birdie’s Bed & Breakfast to help Bertha Goodwin when the old woman needed assistance navigating the cottage she’d rented her whole life, it seemed like. Bertha, though we always called her Birdie, was in her late seventies when I was born, and she was in her late seventies when I left for college. She was still in her late seventies when I returned home the next fall with nothing to show for it and a mother who didn’t even acknowledge I had gone in the first place. Not that they even noticed when I was living with them as a child either. When they deemed me old enough to care for myself, Mum would leave in the mornings with a freshly ironed apron, cleaning supplies I never saw opened, and my Dad would leave to work on blueprints of buildings I never saw built. After staring at my ceiling for hours, distracting myself with faded stars stuck up with putty and cracks in the walls, I would leave my blue square of a house and wander the streets looking for a clue to a mystery I wasn’t quite sure existed.

I tried to be academic, I really did. I wanted to leave that old town and its jagged shapes and build something for myself, but the longer I spent away the pit in my stomach grew more and even looking in the mirror hurt my eyes. I couldn’t feel the softness of my skin anymore. It felt like plastic. The faces of my classmates were static and boring-- none of them pulsed with the same energy as the people back home and all sounded the same. After barely a year I couldn’t take it and moved back home. The school didn’t even call to finalize my resignation.

As a child who grew up with strange disappearances monthly (Birdie said Misses Morgan moved to the States, but her car still collected leaves in the drive), stores popping up that never seemed to stay, and the absence of new neighbors, nothing was too out of the ordinary for us. But I’ve read some of the other statements, Jon, and it seems nothing was quite ordinary at all. Construction workers would vanish and it would rarely make the papers. The opening of a new chip shop was a blessing, but no one would ever be able to go more than twice before it was on its way out of town and replaced with some new fad.

Until the year the cemetery flooded and the school gymnasium roof caved in, about 2006 (it’s hard to beep track of the years), I didn’t think extraordinary could exist. Or at least not in any way that mattered. That was the year the Abbott’s moved in to the house on Cowley Lane, a house I had only ever seen out of the corner of my eye. On a street filled with shapes, this was a straight line.

They arrived as most families do, escaping an unpleasant moment in time by “starting fresh” and “turning over a new leaf”. I never quite understood that expression, as turning over a new leaf does not negate the old one. By turning over a leaf with a sullied edge to admire the green underside, it still remains the same leaf. Turning over a new leaf simply means the old one is left to decompose while you find a crisp, untarnished leaf, while the other still has a perfectly acceptable side to be admired. And, as most families do, they leave the unsightly leaf to be buried with the hundreds of others they’ve “turned over” and promise to change. The promises stay, but are never quite redeemed. Sorry, I got carried away… it's hard to find things to be passionate about these days. I'll continue.

The Abbotts integrated as well as they could, two children ready to attend school no matter the construction work in the gym or the fact it was well into November, and a third to stay at home as infants are wont to do. They threw a barbecue to get to know the neighbors, and the whole village attended bringing their own family recipes and baked desserts. I stayed home.

The Abbott's father, Mark, gained a quick job as an iron-worker while his wife (I never knew her name) stayed indoors looking after the baby. I’d see him in the mine, hacking away at rusty cars and rail too old to use and loading the scraps to be taken away. Hours, I’d watch, as he compressed the piles and laid the new framework to keep unwanted visitors from being crushed to death by eroding stone walls. The day he was called to help install the new wrought iron fence where the cemetery flooded and washed away, I followed him there too. Wherever he went, the shapes that once filled the town lost their vibrancy. Instead of fluctuating between tetrahedrons and prisms, they became either stagnant or frantic. Everything at once, or nothing at all.

I watched him dig in the downtrodden soil, unearthing rectangular caskets and hexagonal coffins. The rain that year had brought landslides and sinkholes, most destructive in the cemetery just outside town and disturbing the dead where they slept. Headstones, monuments, and mementos washed away and sank into the soft dirt, the running fence encircling the land broken up and dragged along with it. Once an infinite circle that cut the burial grounds off from the rest of the puzzle, the shape was now distorted and wrong. Without gate to close and make it whole again, I felt the muted shape of the cemetery slip away and become a tangled mess of string.

He dug for hours until the orange circle of a sun lowered itself behind the branches of the forest and their quickly disappearing leaves. Moving from one plot to the other, from the pristine headstones of recent years down to the protruding stones with names barely legible beneath the moss and decades of wear. Digging, digging, digging, all the while the formless fence to-be remained untouched. When the sky turned dark and snow clouds threatened to shed their weight, I finally turned my back on Mark and left him alone with the dead for the first time all evening, the man seeming blissfully unaware he hadn’t been alone in the first place at all.

The next morning when I went to check on his new project, the buildings along the way had lost their shape. No longer were streets lined with sturdy trapezoids, rectangles, and prisms. The colors were off, like a child with a crayon who had not yet learned the concept of limitation. They bled into each other and polluted the air, cracked frames unable to hold them back. The air tasted like static and I couldn't feel the ground beneath my boots.

By the time I got to the clearing, the holes had been filled and the new fence had taken shape in towering columns that crawled and stretched like spider webs across the dying grass. It was the same dirt, the same stone, trees, and air, but it did not feel like the cemetery I had watched be torn away the night before. I felt a chill settle in my bones and leave as quickly as it came like waiting for pain after burning your finger on a hot mug. From all my observing of the town, never once has a feeling ever driven me to run far away until what I was seeing before me was but an afterthought.

I passed by the Abbotts house, static growing stronger until I could barely hear the crunch of leaves or gravel beneath my feet. Only the wife's car was in the drive and a fresh coat of snow indicated there had only been the one all night, and the black pick-up Mark drove was nowhere to be seen. The sign on their door was new, barely two months old, but as I looked at it, truly looked at it, did it appear to have aged to rot. Abbott’s House it said in curvy lettering (with all the determination of a line pretending to be something it’s not) with five handprints beneath for each family member. Five. Mother, three kids, and… now four. The longer I thought about it, the longer I stared, trying to blink away the dots that kept getting in the way of my vision, the more my eyes convinced me there had always been four. Never two cars, never five hands. Through my haze, I barely felt my feet take me home. Even when I layed down to rest in a foreign looking room, I decided that my childhood mystery, a fantasy I had grown to accept, had found another clue and a little bit more of the town chipped away. Mark didn’t show up for work anymore.

Little things were changing, it just took a trained eye to notice. You don’t have to be a detective to see the details, sometimes you just have to be very, very afraid. The sign for Birdies Bed & Breakfast was now spelled with a ‘y’ instead of an ‘i’, and the apron my mother wore was now a faded lilac instead of a robin’s egg blue. The oak tree that stood tall in our backyard, old as the town itself with a slow swinging hammock tied to the branches, was now a young birch. I likened it to two puzzles cut from the same machine. Different pictures with pieces that fit together only in the most literal sense. The longer I noticed, the more I wondered which puzzle was truly mine, and which one was slowly being replaced.

Each morning the static filled my nose, irritated my eyes, and clouded my ears with a soft dizzying hum that slowly drowned out my senses. The shapes that made up my entire world were broken, dull, and chipping away until everything I knew was muddled and loud.

It was only when I woke up in an empty room, no posters, cardboard boxes, or dirty clothes, I found my feet barely touched the floor. I felt weightless as I wandered down to the kitchen where Mum usually got ready, feeling as though the back of my eyes were filled with cotton. There were only two seats sat at the dining table, and when I tried to open my mouth to speak my tongue tasted like ash.

Before I could blink or even cry, suddenly I was in the street. Red shapes filled my periphery and everything between, and the town was gone. A red sky bled into the houses, cars, and potholes cremating them like the dead. I felt myself falling away from my body and I finally saw my shape. It was a shifting mass of angles and colors and somehow I just knew it was me. When I finally did cry, smaller shapes fell from her eyes copying the drops that fell from mine. Was it out of malice? Pity? Understanding? Was she crying because she shared my pain or was she just a cheap reflection of who I thought I was or simply longed to be?

It’s been a while since I’ve been here, in this black and red. She still mocks me. Radiant and pulsing with color while I exist with imitation soft skin and coarse hair. They’re the only things I can be sure of, as I haven’t seen my face in a long time. Only hers. Now I’m not sure who she is, but she’s the only company in this void. Until I saw your shape, Jon. Blue and black polygons blinking between colors with the beat of a foreign heart. You lead me here to a library of pain that reflected my own, a reprieve from the emptiness I’ve been floating in. Maybe if I tell you my story you can bring me back to the shape of your world? I suppose only time will tell, and I have an eternity to wait.

Waiting for someone to save the outline of a person who isn’t sure they ever existed at all.

#tma #the magnus archives oc #the magnus archives #tma oc #case fic #case file #statement #fan statement #tma fanfic #my writing #the spiral #podcast #eide burrows #fan case #jon sims #jonathan sims

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bee-kathony · 5 years

Photo

On Your Knees - Jamie and Claire Modern AU

a/n: Jamie and Claire make use of the empty gym. And this one shot is inspired by this gif above and this thirsty tweet of mine xx very NSFW

Glasgow, Scotland

July 19th, 2019

I’d been working all day, having picked up an extra shift at the hospital. My friend Mary had a family emergency and even though I’d been on call for more than sixteen hours, I told her I would cover for her.

This meant that Jamie spent his Friday evening home alone. There was an eight car pile up on the road that prevented me from even checking in with him all night. Patients had come pouring in with wounds ranging from scraps to broken bones.

Thankfully, everyone had survived, but I was feeling weary and was looking forward to the next two days off. When I walked into our house, the lights were off which was odd, considering Jamie should be home.

“Jamie?” I called out, switching on the light closest to me.

He didn’t answer, and so I pulled out my phone and that’s when I saw the two messages and one missed call.

Jamie Fraser: I made dinner for ye, it’s in the fridge!

Jamie Fraser: I dinna ken when ye’ll be home so I’m headed to the gym. Swing by if yer up for a late night sweat session ;)

That text was sent just twenty minutes ago, which meant he was probably still there. Jamie had opened his own gym two years ago when we moved to Glasgow. It was his passion, and his business had grown so quickly in a short amount of time. It also meant that he had his own personal gym after hours.

As I set my bag down on the couch and walked over to the kitchen, I couldn’t help the warmth that crept up my cheeks. I had accompanied Jamie to the gym when he had forgotten something or felt like working out late at night when it was closed like he was now. One particular memory included Jamie on his knees and me sitting on top of some machine he called a ‘power tower’.

There was a plate of spaghetti wrapped up in the fridge whenever I opened it. Grabbing it, I sighed and then placed it in the microwave. I always hated missing dinner with him — it was no fun to eat leftovers all by yourself.

When the microwave beeped, I took the plate out and stuck my fork in, not bothering to sit down at the table, but stood over the counter. It was only just now 9:30 p.m. on a Friday night, and I didn’t expect Jamie to come home for at least another hour. He was training for another marathon, my wee energizer bunny.

I finished the spaghetti in record time, having not eaten anything since before noon. I didn’t want to just sit at home alone waiting for him to come back, so I went into our bedroom to change. My workout clothes were more for looks than for actual working out. Besides, Jamie always told me that he liked my arse plump the way it was.

My black running tights were snug on my body, hugging my curves in all the right places. I didn’t bother with a sports bra, and just threw on one of Jamie’s old t-shirts. I didn’t send him a text telling him I was headed over, hell, he was probably expecting me to show up any minute.

The gym was only a twelve minute car ride away, and when I stepped outside after locking up, the air felt cool on my skin. That was one nice thing about living in Scotland — it still got chilly when the sun went down in the summer.

Twelve minutes later, I pulled up in the parking lot and shut the car off. Thankfully, his car was still here. It would have been really awkward if I had shown up and he had already headed home.

To get in the back way without a key, you needed a pin number and it just so happened to be my birthday. The numbers lit up as I punched them and it made a beeping sound, signaling that it was unlocked.

Loud music was blaring over the sound system, and as I walked down the hall and past his office, I saw him in the middle of the gym floor doing a plank. Leaning against the wall, I shamelessly admired the long hard lines of his body.

When I met Jamie at Oxford University five years ago during our last year of school, I had been shocked to find myself so taken with him. He wasn’t my usual type — for one, he was extremely tall, red haired and very Scottish. My ex-boyfriend, Frank had been a history major and I had only chosen Oxford because he was already there, two years ahead of me. One day, I went to find him at the library and caught him having sex with his English professor, Mrs. Williams.

That ended quickly, and for the next three years I vowed to a life of singleness. That’s why I was so shocked to find myself attracted to Jamie. My friend, Geillis had invited me out for drinks at the pub near campus, and that’s when I saw him. He was sitting in between Geillis and another man I had seen a few times on campus. That night we had talked for hours, and he walked me home to my apartment where we continued to stay up late talking until the sun rose.

Ever since then, we’d been inseparable. I always wondered how I hadn’t seen him around campus until our last year, but my heart would have been closed off if I’d met him any sooner. It was ten months later, the night after we graduated that Jamie proposed. Then we moved to his small town of Broch Mordha in the Highlands, and gotten married and lived there for two years until we both outgrew it.

I had turned down a job at a hospital in Oxford whenever Jamie proposed. He had to go home to Lallybroch and help his father run their farm. So, I followed him, and I didn’t mind putting my dream on hold, but after many late nights of wondering if this was all our future held, we decided enough was enough and moved to Glasgow.

The gym was his pride and joy, as was working at the hospital mine. We’d both found our passions here, and my current passion was watching him sweat on the gym floor.

As Jamie relaxed and laid down on the floor, his head turned to the side and he saw me. A huge smile lit up his face, and he rolled over, jumping up to come over to me. He grabbed the remote and turned down the music, setting it on the speaker and then kissed me hello.

“I wasna expectin’ to see ye until I got home,” he said through a labored breath. He was wearing his black gym shorts, and had already taken his shirt off.

“Is that so?” I smirked. “Your text about a late night sweat session piqued my interest.”

One of his muscly arms wrapped around my waist and he pressed his body against mine. Normally, I would have pushed him away, not wanting to get sweaty, but there was something about seeing his chest heaving and glistening.

“Did ye see the dinner?” He asked, and I rested my fingers on the waistband of his shorts.

“Yes,” I leaned up to kiss him. “I did, thank you. It was delicious!”

His hand ran up my back and stopped, his fingers searching for something. “Yer no’ wearin’ a bra, Sassenach.”

“Whoops,” I sarcastically said, pressing myself against him so he could feel that I was in fact not wearing one. “Guess I can’t properly work out.”

“Nah,” he looked down at me, his hand now under the back of my shirt and sliding up my bare skin. “But ye can do other activities, no?”

“What’d you have in mind?”

“I ken a bench press over there that’s callin’ yer name,” his fingers moved to grip my side, squeezing firmly.

“You’re the coach,” I smiled playfully and started to walk over towards the equipment. I was glad he wasn’t feeling adventurous and said the elliptical machine, because we had tried that once and I had slipped and banged my head back on one of the arms.

I laid back, scooting my bottom to the end, and Jamie came to stand between my legs. I thought he was going to take me like this, but was pleasantly surprised when he got down onto both knees.

“I dinna like it when ye work for so long,” he said conversationally as he spread my legs, his hands running up my thighs to grip the waistband of my tights. “Ye shouldna have picked up that extra shift.”

“But Mary had a family emergency,” I replied, lifting up my hips so he could pull the material off. When I laid back down, the pad of the bench press was cool on my bottom. “She would have done the same for me.”

“Still,” Jamie smirked, tugging my tights down to my ankles but not pulling them off, making it impossible for me to open my legs any wider than they already were. “I missed my wife.”

I was about to reply with some witty remark, but then his mouth was on me. His head was bent between thighs, fit perfectly as if the space was made just for him. I felt his tongue swipe up and down along my crease, and my hips bucked up involuntarily. Jamie chuckled and it vibrated against my skin. He was avoiding my clit, his tongue lapping at my folds and I squirmed against him.

One of his hands slid across my stomach, pushing up the t-shirt until my stomach and one breast was exposed. The cool air hit my nipple and I shivered, feeling it harden under his firm touch. His tongue was quick and with every flick, I wanted to cry out.

“God, Jamie!”

His lips vibrated against my pussy, and finally, he took my clit into his mouth, sucking gently. My back arched off the pad below me, and I earned an encouraging thigh squeeze from Jamie. I opened my eyes and looked down at him, watching as his head bobbed and moved. It was mesmerizing, like watching a cat lap up milk.

His other hand opened me up, and his tongue slid in briefly. My hand flew down to rest in his mess of curls and as he started to suck on my now swollen clit again, I came hard and fast. My hips jerked almost violently causing him to move his head and just watch me fall apart.

“Christ,” Jamie muttered under his breath and then he stood up, simply looking down at me. “This has to be one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen.”

“Hush,” I laughed, wiping the back off my hand across my forehead. I may not have come here to workout, but Jamie was making sure my heart rate still went up.

Slowly, my head cleared up, and I managed to sit up, my tights and panties still around my ankles. Jamie was breathing hard as well, having almost been suffocated between my thighs.

“Should we go home now?” I teased.

“Not a chance, mo nighean donn,” he smirked.

“Then move back” I commanded and watched the smirk slide off his face. His gaze was direct and focused on me as backed up. Once he was a few steps away from me, I stood up and stepped out of my tights, next grabbing the hem of my shirt and pulling it off.

I walked in front of him, my body almost touching his. Jamie’s mouth was partially open, his eyes grazing over my body.

“I wonder what your customers would think if they knew what happened here after dark?” I said and got down on my knees one at a time.

He automatically moved one hand into my hair, pushing his hips forward whenever I started to pull down his shorts. His cock was already hard, and I could see the head throbbing — a dark purplish color.

“Weel, I dinna think they’d be too pleased to find out,” he chuckled. “But they’d be happy to know I sanitize every surface afterwards.”

“Of course,” I smiled and moved my hand over him, watching as he took his bottom lip between his teeth. Jamie loved to watch me go down on him and I had his full attention. His length was hot and heavy in my hand and it twitched whenever I leaned in closer.

“Fuck,” he breathed and his fingers pulled on my hair.

I placed my tongue on his head, swirling it slowly, tasting him. He was still sweaty, and when I licked my lips they were salty. My hand moved up and down the back of his thigh, pressing lightly to push him closer to me. Jamie was starting to breath heavily, and I mentally patted myself on the back for being able to bring up his heart rate too.

Finally, I looked up at him and searched for his gaze. When his eyes met mine, I took him in my mouth as deep as I could. Groaning above me, he tried to steady his hips to not hurt me, but I knew it was difficult.

My lips parted and his cock slipped out of my mouth. I paused, catching my breath. “I want you to come in my mouth,” I said, flicking my tongue out on the head.

“I’ll do anythin’ ye ask, Sassenach,” he groaned and his head fell back a little as I began to slide my hand up and down his length. I knew he was close. My hand other hand took a firm hold of his arse, feeling him clench his cheeks. Sometimes I forgot how much power he had in his body, how he could lift my body into the with ease. I took him in my mouth once again, my tongue gliding over the ridge.

“A Dhia,” he cried out. “Christ, Claire—“

I sucked harder, my fingers grazing his balls, and he shouted my name as he came down my throat. My knees were beginning to hurt, and as much as I was enjoying myself, I was also glad when he sank to his knees and pulled me to the ground next to him.

“I didna expect ye to do that,” Jamie sighed, his hand pulling my leg over his. “Ye didna have to.”

“I wanted to,” I nipped at his finger as it brushed over my bottom lip. “I missed you too.”

Jamie leaned in to kiss me, his lips lingering. “I need my cock in ye, Sassenach. But just now I need a wee rest.”

My hands slid over his back, which was now lightly coated in sweat. Jamie pressed his forehead against mine, and we lay there, each catching our breath.

“We may be sleeping here tonight,” I said, lightly touching his shut eyelids.

“Nah,” he smiled softly. “I dinna think Murtagh would be too pleased to find us naked here on the floor come morning.”

“He’d be in for quite a shock,” I laughed, imagining his godfather finding us as we were.

Jamie moved suddenly, rolling over on top of me. He was very big, and very warm, and he smelled of desire, strong, and sharp. A shadow moved across his face and shoulders, dappling the floor and the white skin of my thighs, open wide.

“I like ye fine, Sassenach,” he murmured in my ear. “I love you. I wor—“

“What was that about a rest?”

His hands were worming themselves under me, cupping my buttocks, squeezing, his breath soft and hot on my neck.

“I have to have my—“

“But—“

“Now, Sassenach.” He rose up abruptly, kneeling on the floor before me. There was a faint smile on his face, but his eyes were dark blue and intent. He cupped his heavy balls in one hand, the thumb moving up and down his exigent member in a slow and thoughtful manner.

“On your knees, a nighean,” he said softly. “Now.”

By the tone of his voice, I knew not to tease him, so I complied rolled over onto my stomach, moving to rest on my knees, arse high in the air. Turning my head to look over my shoulder, I watched him stroke his length, his mouth parted as he looked at me.

“Ye’ve the sweetest arse, Claire,” he said, his voice dripping with lust.

I wiggled back against him, feeling the tip of his cock touch my entrance and I moaned, my head falling forward into my hands. Jamie grabbed my hip with one large, sure hand and then finally fed himself into me.

“Uhh!”

“Fuck,” he said, pushing deeper into me. One hand snaked between our bodies, his thumb pressing over my clit. I began to move my hips, pressing back at every thrust.

There were times that Jamie was a tender, and sweet lover — holding back the strength he wanted to use to be gentle with me. And then there were times that he pummeled into me, knocking the breath out of my chest. Both hands were on my waist, and I heard the slap of his balls on my arse.

“Jamie, please!” I begged, not knowing what I was even begging for — faster, harder, more, anything.

I leaned forward, hanging my head down and groaned as my nipples grazed the floor. I wanted to turn my head and look back at him, to see how he was enjoying this, but my head was fuzzy and my legs were turning to jello.

“Oh God! Claire,” he cried out and then stilled in the next instant, his body folding over mine. His cock pressed deeply inside of me, hitting my g-spot and I trembled, my legs nearly giving out from the weight of him.

After a moment, he pulled out and the warmth left me, leaving me aching for him to return. I fell to the ground beside him on my side, my chest heaving with exertion.

“How many calories do you think we burned?”

“Enough so that we can eat that tub of ice cream that’s in the freezer at home,” he chuckled.

He stood up first, then reached down for my hand to pull me up to my feet. I felt odd, standing there naked in the gym, knowing that in just a few hours, people would be here to workout.

We got dressed, stealing kisses as we thought about what we’d just done.

“Ye go on home, Sassenach,” he smiled, tossing his shirt over his head. “I need to clean up a few things before joinin’ ye.”

“I wonder why you feel the need to clean?” I smirked, and then kissed him one last time.

As I started to walk out of the gym and back to my car, my knees wobbled and a throbbing ache formed in between my thighs.

“I love working out,” I said to myself, laughing and wondering what machine we would conquer next.

#outlander fanfic #jamie x claire #one shot #one your knees #canon quotes #working out #jamie working out lawD #outlander fanfiction #jamie fraser #claire fraser

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