#there's no sense to it!!! at all!!! “like maths my fucking arse .

[trenchcroats]

Litterally so easy to give up on crochet wtf it this bullshit I fucking hate granny squares kill me now fucking hell

[amethyst-art]

Quote book

(These will be updated as more come, & these will be out of context soooo enjoy :)"

"Humans went from worshiping the moon to walking on it"

"The 80's was full of sapphics"

"Ok Mom let's go watch traumatized children"

"The group of kids that are called...they don't have a name...& the science project"

"Because yoouu my dear bitch boy, are TRIPPING BAAAALLLLSS"

"Did you just slap me with that arm?"

"Haha, yeah, I'm not doing ok"

"If in doubt, use your mouth"

"Hands are for LOSERS, I like to use my mouth"

"Even if I slightly touch it, it'll pop up again"

"If in doubt, tits out"

"Get slurped IDIOT"

"You're the master sucker"

"Just swallow it"

"It's hard to swallow"

"6 is even longer than 10!"

"I'm a proud bottom!.... Set"

"Don't put it in your mouth!"

"It smelt good so it must taste good right?"

"I sucked all the cream out of it"

"I just shoved the whole thing in my mouth & started choking"

"If I had to choose between having sex or raping you-"

"I'M NOT DOWN BAD FOR THE ROBOT-"

"ROBOT KISSER-"

"I really wanna put it back in, but I'm afraid it won't come back out"

"Just shove your hand in there & pull out a calf/lamb"

"Fuck me with a fork & then shove it down my throat over making me do the math exam"

"You're down bad for the demogorgan, this is not ok"

"Go fuck yourself with a whisk & then choke on it"

"You! You with a finger up your arse-"

"I have balls in my mouth"

"I slurp de bawlls"

"Bigger isn't always better"

"Be careful, the big ones squirt"

"The bigger the better"

"Mine is short & fat, mine is long & thin... mine is just fat"

"Oral sex is more gay?"

"I choke... In a bad way! In a bad way"

"I wanna suck all of them"

"Why is it so small"

"Don't worry, you'll like cum when you're older"

"Eat your cum kids!"

"It's pretty small so I should be able to handle it"

"It's not that big so I should be able to get on top of it"

"There's only 2 things that are worth doing in this life... Making money & murdering ugly people~"

"I'M SO WET!!!"

"Money! Money & cum!~"

"I already gave you a squeeze!"

"You're with me babygirl~"

"I'm tonguen at the tip!"

"In, out, in, out, it's the best way to get all the tasty cream out!"

"I wanna see that long, hard length~"

"I love to suck~"

"I can't suck it well!"

"It's ok, I'm a masochist"

"I've got to stop putting the whole thing in my mouth, or I'll choke"

"A GIRL? WHAT'S A GIRL?"

"Maybe an inch is bigger than we thought?"

"I have no anger, only sadness"

"A knife you American wanker"

"Nothing is too funky"

"MY UTERUS IS COSPLAYING SANS & GIVING ME A BAD TIME"

"CRISPY, JUICY, NICE & TENDER, I JUST PUT MY NEWBORN SON INTO A BLENDER"

"OH BOY, I LOVE COCK"

"Wanna see my poo?"

"You gotta be careful with your wood"

"He did choke the chicken more than the average boy-"

"I'm like deliveroo except I'm GAY-"

"I can't- FUCK-"

"You ever just get smacked in the face by some wood & you just lose all sense of direction?"

"I need to- FUCK-"

"If you could call self-abuse absolutely smanging that thang as hard as he did, then yeah Father, I'd say he abused himself pretty frequently, in public & often-"

"Oh! yeah, he's hard-"

"I think.. I'm ready to come on the page-"

"You taught me I could be horny with my art-"

"I am selling dick pics online Miss. Baffy"

"Just pull it out"

"You know that his jaw hurt after that"

"I'm gonna fill you-"

"I'm gonna fill you with my British juices"

"This is the first time I've felt this way with a man!"

"C'MON, PUT YOUR FINGERS IN HER- I MEAN PUT YOUR FINGERS IN THEM"

"I didn't want them boiled alive, I wanted them raw!"

"Don't put it in your mouth, I've already put it in mine!"

"If I can't be a Siamang ape, then what's the point in anything?"

"I'm a feeble boy, there's only so much meat I can handle"

"Sorry about sending you the hot dragon from Shrek. Are you a communist btw?"

"I'm gonna flash you-"

"Mr.[name] didn't want it because it was too small"

"Everyone needs holes!"

"It feels like grating foot cheese-"

"I wish I could read-"

"Mmm yummy feet"

"Hi Alexander, I'm Carl-"

"CUMCUMCUM-"

"I'm a lesbian *in the tune of Jurassic Park*"

"Suck my Richard-"

"WHERE'S CUM?-"

"There's only 3 ingredients; chocolate, nuts & the virus-"

"This is my hole, this hole is mine, this hole was made for me-"

"I'm bricked up motherfucker-"

"*Holding a concrete block* this'll be a tool for later-"

"I'm crafting your cock-"

"That's right [name] I turned your dick into gun-"

I'm going to go masturbate-"

"UH, UH, CUMZINGA?"

"Tell me Gerald, do you prefer the four iron, or the foreskin?"

"We need to feed this meaty boy to the gooby gooby goobers"

"They call me the brick because I'm so hard"

"What are you doing stepbro?~"

"Yeah, just stick something in there."

"Sorry mate, I kidnapped her."

"I DONT HATE GAYS YOU BULGARIAN ASS WIPE, I DO IN FACT LOVE AND ACCEPT MEMBERS OF THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY, YOU COCKSUCKING DICKWAD!!!!!!"

"You just put your fingers in it."

"I'm a lamp post :D."

"I'll meet your mother later!"

"Bye, I'm kidnapping her-"

"*While wagging ☝* don't hump little girls!"

"Have you sex?"

"No I have not sex, that's a little bit illegal :D"

"You have lost you penis"

"Don't fuck moms at school!"

"This server was made for me- *dies immediately*"

"Be gay, do drugs, hail Satan"

"Hail gay, be drugs, do Satan-"

"P1: It's so long, P2: that's what she said-"

"P1: What's something you have that I want?, P2: divorced parents-"

"I'm in a cat"

"Oh by the way, do you want lead poisoning?-"

"I could drink your mom"

"I'm thirsty for your mom"

"I could drink 80% of your mom"

"I'm going to CHOKE you in a way you WON'T like"

"Oh I'm just milking you-"

"I'm throwing balls"

"Milk them tiddies~"

"I don't look at a 10 year old boy & go "heyyyy baby boyyyyy~" *while lip-biting*"

"You really showed me every inch, didn't you?"

"Last week you beat my meat, this week we're putting these nuts in your mouth."

"Go on my tongue, goddamit!"

"I woke up to banging"

"I woke up to my step-dad banging"

"I would never come"

"P1: WELL, I CAN EAT YOUR BALLS, P2: She doesn't have any, P1: THAT'S BECAUSE I ATE THEM, P3: give them back :("

"Last week I forced you to eat my balls, this week we're beating the meat."

"Don't talk, just suck"

"Get me some tissues, some paper towels & some lube-"

"I was pretty good I got a lot of head....... Shots."

"God, I'm gay for a femboy."

"You get a video of someone being inside you like you've never had before"

"I've lost the moon."

"I've got 3 fists & 3 feet."

"I've eaten all the silicone."

"[NAME] STOP EATING SILICONE!"

"That's another place where I lost my virtual virginity."

"I'm scissoring you."

"You guys are going to moan like crazy."

"Hide your balls."

"Damn fluttershy, looking THICK, smash"

"Ok guys, let’s take off our clothes so we’re ready for the next round."

[anthonysstupiddailyblog]

Anthony’s Stupid Daily Blog (395): Sun 16th Apr 2023

After work I threw the TV straight in and I was delighted to see that The Lakers won their first game of their first round series against The Grizzlies. The odds were certainly against them since the Grizzlies are number two in the Western Conference and the Lakers have played them four times already this season and never beat them. It also wasn’t looking good for a while as Davis suffered an injury early on and even mouthed to the doctors that he couldn’t move his arm. During the half time show a basketball pundit named Stephen A Smith (who you may recognize from the videos where he gets roasted by Kevin Hart) was giving out to David for injuring his arm like he did it on purpose. This cunt reminds me of the cunt I worked for at the call centre who put me on a sickness warning even though the gap between my first and second instance of sickness was almost a year. I’m guilty of getting angry when players seem to be more prone to injury than others but I’m also aware that it happens and there’s fuck all they can do about it. If Davis is deliberately getting himself injured in order to annoy this Stephen A Smith guy then I think it’s worth it. Luckily for the Lakers Davis eventually was able to move his arm again, returned to the game and the Lakers powered back and secured the victory! This is the moment that every NBA fan dreams of. The moment where every game becomes crucial. The time when all the boring games their team play during the early dark evenings of the Autumn and the freezing cold days of the Winter seem somehow worth sitting through. This is crunch time where their team works their arse off to have their moment in the sun. I’ll admit that I haven’t watched every single game this season and when I’d read the results and discover how badly the Lakers got thrashed the previous night I would question what the point was of even following them. However the fact that I knew I was going to see them live plus the small matter of me getting their logo tattooed on my arm made me feel compelled to tune in and cheer them on a regular basis. That’s actually a really good way of guaranteeing your commitment to something if you just get that thing tattooed on you and then you’ll have to see it through or else it will make the tattoo seem stupid. Maybe if I just get “I will learn math” tattooed on me then I will commit myself to learning how to do it so that the tattoo makes sense. Although once I did learn math the tattoo would automatically look stupid because why would I have a tattoo telling people I would learn math if I already knew math. Plus I’d probably give up very early and have the tattoo altered so it read “I will learn moths”. I’ve gone off track here but yeah I’m happy the Lakers won.

[garfieldsladybird]

your day sounds good!!! i’m still exhausted and i have a busy weekend but it’s almost half term :))

me and one of my friends are currently obsessing over taylor swift (it’s been a long stream of messages and proof for a single at midnight!!!!)

i feel pretty shitty and i got a crap grade on a bio test the other day (36% which is a 4 (a fail) so i have to retake it, but my teacher hasn’t told me when?!?!?) but i got my chem test back and i got 38/45!!! it’s a high 7 (an A!!!) (75%)

my heads hurting and i feel just a like i need a big hug 🫂

my english teacher asked me if i was okay, and so did my drama teacher and i think it’s because i’m quite chatty to them normally and i was literally dying in english since it was getting quite loud in the classroom and things were going wrong (i would skip a word while writing in my book, and normally that’s okay, but like 4 years ago in my old school i was moved down sets (from top set) and it’s taken until the start of this year to be in top set again, and i feel like i need to prove that of that makes sense - even though i’d like to think i’m really good with english.

my art’s going well!!! i’m just finished some work and then my portfolio will be done (minus final piece / build up to that via planning and the writing part :)(

i did loads of maths in class today - and i felt good since i don’t normally do anything 👀

i feel like i’m offloading - sorry this is so much to read <3

period talk below for a little bit

ngl i’ve cried like 4 times today and i’m on my period and it’s so fucking heavy (the purple tampons (the ‘super plus extra’ as they call them) was not enough for two hours.) it’s heavier in the morning and basically stops until evening after lunch but grrrrr… i have paleish pink/blue patterned sheets on my bed and if i’ve ruined them i’ll cry :(

my toes are cold as i’m typing this which isn’t very sexy :(

i’m going to ask my mum to pick up some crumpets from the shop so i can toast them at school :))))

oh my fucking god crumpets and marmite (with s little butter ofc) is actually heaven let me tell you

(i’ve been being tea in a flask, (the one that my dad dropped off) but i’ve ran out. NoOoOoO. (i still have an apricot and vanilla one that is essentially new, but i’ll miss my cranberry one (until i buy more (but i’ll have to order it and i can’t be arsed))

HUGE RANT OVER!!!!! i love you loads and hope all is okay xxxxxxx

okay soo going with taylor swift, midnights is coming out in like two days. it is the 19 today and it comes out on the 21!!! i cant wait, it’s going to be the first album by t.s. that i will get to listen to right when it comes out!!!

i hope you grades are getting better, or just the scores are going up!! but omg you got an A on a test!!! that’s amazing!! :DDD

i wish i could give you a big hug!! 🤗🫂

you dont have to prove that you’re on top. if you are stressing and you need like a break, it’s okay to take that break. —— i get the skipping over a word thing, i do that sometimes when taking notes and i need to catch up real quick. also i hate loud classrooms, like sometimes the kids just need to shut up. most of my classes are quiet tho but when they start talking, it can become loud. sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s not.

oooo!! are you liking art? what are you making? // what have you been making?

bro i’ve been paying attention in my math class and i’ve also moved to the front of the class so i’ve been doing my work and i understand the math we’re doing a lot more!! i like math though it depends. my math grade still sucks but hopefully i can get up!! i hope math has been good to youu!! :)))

nonoono, i like this! im really sorry i haven’t responded to this text. i’ve been busy and i hate it: me being busy. but yeah, no this perfectly okay!! if you need to do this more then go ahead! i hope we start talking more tho! since im not gonna be that busy but i still have school and so do you so yeah. but text me anytime you want!! :))

i hope the rest of your period days were better. i hope the days after your period was better too! period sucks. im supposed to start today actually but i haven’t yet and im so worried im going to start when im not home or have not bathroom to go into. im walking home today so thats what i mean by no bathroom to go into. but damn, your period sounds painful. mine isn’t so painful, (bc i said that, its going to most likely hurt when it starts.) but i dont usually get that many cramps is what i mean. and i also take pills so i dont feel it. but i honestly like it when my period starts bc then i can restart.

i hope you feet are warm bc mine are warm and i hope that is sexy 😼💪

ooo are crumpets good? they look yummy! — i just saw what else you said and i’ve never had marmite, i dont think the usa has that :( but all of that sounds yummy!!

i love tea! i want to drink it more. cranberry anything is really good!! also that’s really good when on your period! but i hope you get your favorite tea’s soon!! or have already gotten it!! :DD

I LOVED THIS RANT!! thank you so much for talking to me!! but i am sorry it’s taken forever to answer this. i love you loads too!! and im sending you lots of love!! <33333 xxxxxxxxxxxxx

[wannawritefast]

Whiplash: Ch. 2- The Proposition

A/N: Thanks for the lovely words of encouragement, you guys! I’m so glad you like it! This is a REALLY long fic that I am nowhere near finished with yet. But I finish classes this week so I should be able to bang the rest of it out.

Pt. 1

Pairing: Gwilym Lee!Brian May x Reader

Warnings: None... mild language, mentions of Stupid Men

You were running out of time. To be fair, you were far too busy to even pay any mind to the challenge you made with your brother, despite him reminding you every time you called home. Maybe you figured that if you didn’t think about it, it would just go away.

Even though Brian didn’t primarily practice astrophysics, you still took time to stay close friends and support him at his gigs when you could. The two of you got lunch on a regular basis. He was easily one of the people that knew you best in the whole world. Not to mention, Brian had pulled you away from projects more than a few times when you were dangerously close to a mental and emotional breakdown; all these years later, he was still your best friend.

“Brian,” you said, blowing on a spoonful of your soup. What James had said got to you more than you cared to admit. You shouldn’t have let it bug you so much but it did. And you had to know, “do you think I’m a pathetic stick in the mud?”

Brian coughed on his food and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Of course not! Why would you say something like that?” His hazel eyes twinkled.

You shrugged brushing it aside, trying to dismiss how much your brother’s criticisms had bothered you during that fateful dinner. “I don’t know…” You couldn't seem to look up at him. “It was just something James said-”

Brian put his hand up and rolled his eyes at the mention of your sibling. “I’m going to stop you right there.” It wasn’t the first time you had brought up an insecurity planted by your brother with him. “Why do you still listen to that prick?” Brian questioned. “He’s still living with your parents, yeah?”

“Just moved from his bedroom to the basement actually last week.” You explained.

“Ah… moving on up. Or rather down.” Brian joked. You laughed. “I’m serious though. James has no right to criticize you. And I don’t understand why he would. You’re successful! He should be proud. I know I am.”

Your heart swelled and you flushed a little at his words. You tucked a lock of your hair behind your ear. “I suppose he just isn’t very fond of me most times,” you laughed humorlessly.

“Well, I suppose he’s also fairly daft too.” You laughed for real this time. Brian joined in on the laughter. He pointed his fork angrily. “Seriously, his abuse has gone on long enough. Don’t listen to him.” You gave him a small grateful smile. “If it eases your mind, think of it this way: if I thought you were a stick in the mud, do you think I’d be friends with you?”

“Well… no,” you answered. You raised an eyebrow at him. “Would my dashing good looks not win you over enough, May?”

“You’ve got me there. Those eyes are trouble.” You suppressed the blush forming on your face and continued eating your lunch.

There was a comfortable silence that settled between the two of you for a few moments. “I cut you off there. Was there anything else he said?” Brian asked out of the blue.

“Well… not exactly,” You replied.

“How do you mean?” He lowered his utensil in suspicion. You swore he had a sixth sense for this kind of stuff.

“I may or may not have gotten myself into a stupid wager with him.”

He tilted his head ever so slightly like he knew it was going to bad. God, he was scary. Brian took a quick bite of his salad, before setting it down again, “What kind of wager?”

You were going to be sick. The more you thought about it the stupider it sounded. You took a deep breath and twisted the spoon in your fingers. You had literally been losing sleep over the stupid bet you made with James. He would never let you live it down if you didn’t follow through with your end and you were too bloody tired of him and his digs.

“It’s… uh. It’s nothing for you to worry about. It’s stupid.”

“It doesn’t seem very stupid to you,” Brian defended. “You actually look like you’re going to pass out.” He sat up a little straighter. “Are you okay?”

“I…” The frustration that plagued you earlier reappeared and was joined by serious fatigue from work and stress from the challenge. “It’s kind of embarrassing actually.”

Brian rolled his eyes. “I’ve seen you get basic math incorrect and you’ve been utterly mental after drinks on multiple occasions. It can’t be worse than anything I have seen already.”

You took a deep breath. “Basically my dad, brother, and grandfather were having a go at me for not being in a relationship and then Donna chimed in saying I’m in a relationship when I’m not because James took a comment too far and now my family thinks I have a boyfriend and I have to bring a fake one home for Christmas to prove James wrong and not be an utter disappointment to them for once and I can’t find anyone to date me for real so how could I possibly find one person who would pretend to?

“That sounded even more insane coming out of my mouth.” Brian looked at you with a blank expression for a moment, attempting to process what you had just word vomited. You awkwardly ate another spoonful and laughed through it. You had no idea what in the bloody hell you were going to do.

“So you have to find someone to fake date you for the holidays while you visit your family so they’ll be off your arse?” Brian asked. His fork sat limply in his hand.

“Precisely, yeah,” you answered.

And then it clicked. There it was. Your opportunity. By what divine intervention it was opened was beyond you. You quite literally stared it down in its hazel eyes. You couldn't ask that of Brian… could you?

“On a semi-related note-” you set down your spoon and steepled your fingers contemplatively “-what are your plans for the holidays?”

Brian visibly gulped. “I know what you’re going to ask me.”

“And?” You raised your eyebrows hopefully. Please say yes… 

“Really? Why on earth would you choose me?” Brian countered. “I’m, and I’ve said this before, a bloody idiot.”

“Because I know you and you know me and it would be so easy,” you answered. Why you hadn’t thought of Brian before was beyond you…

“I’m telling you, Y/n. You could do so much better than this buffoon.” Brian took a drink of water but sustained eye contact. “You need someone proper. Like a lawyer or something.”

“Bri, I want you!” you defended. Brian’s expression changed to startled. It was true… to an extent. Oh, goodness. You cleared your throat. “Besides… who’s to say you’re not proper. You’ve studied astrophysics. AND if you’re so worried about being proper, I don’t need someone proper. I just need someone who can pass as a significant other for two weeks and you’re perfect.”

“But I’m in a bloody rock band. I’ll disappoint them. I’m not really the type to bring home to mum and dad,” his voice was oddly brittle.

“Brian, of course you are,” you scolded. “You’re charming. They’ll love you.”

“No, they won’t.”

“Yes, they will.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Neither do you!” You set down your utensils. “And why aren’t you taking your own advice?”

He furrowed his brows. “What advice?”

“Remember when I had that mental breakdown at university when working on one of my first deadlines for my thesis?” You looked down at your lap sheepishly.

Brian shook his head and let out an amused quick chuckle before meeting your eyes. “Yes, yes I do.”

“Do you remember what you told me?”

Brian hummed to himself attempting to recollect his interaction. “‘It’s late. You’re gonna go bonkers doing all that work.’”

“No… Yes, but not that.”

“‘Brian May looks like an anthropomorphic poodle.’”

“True but no. Do you usually talk in the third person?”

“Brian does not wish to comment.”

“Bri,” you resisted the urge to laugh, “do you remember?”

He let out a huff. “‘Fuck them.’”

“And?”

“And… ‘don’t worry about what you think they’ll think.’”

“And if you’re worried about what they’ll think truthfully,” you reasoned, “why aren’t you taking your own advice?”

“Because!... Because it’s different this time!”

You crossed your arms and sat back. “And why is that?”

“Because you’re right, dammit,” he laughed and you joined in. “I hate when you’re right.”

“I don’t,” you quipped.

“Yeah, I know.”

You suddenly felt guilty. Like you were forcing Brian’s hand. Like you were pressuring him to help you. You took a deep breath and picked up your spoon once more. “Look, Brian. I don’t mean to push you. If you don't want to do it, you don’t have to. I understand. I’ll just get my ego in check and-”

“I’ll do it,” Brian answered.

“You’ll do it?” Your jaw dropped and your grip on your utensil faltered a little as well.

He nodded with a soft smile. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

“My god, Brian, you’re brilliant! Why the sudden change of heart?” You stopped yourself as Brian opened his mouth to respond. “Wait! Don’t answer that. Thank you! Thank you!”

You stood up abruptly, not caring how crazy you looked. You were simply overcome with relief. You all but knocked Brian out of his chair with the hug you gave him. He warned you gently to be careful as you walked back to your seat.

“We’ll do Christmas at yours and I suppose New Year’s at mine, that is if you want to come,” Brian elaborated. “I’m sure my parents won’t mind me bringing a girl home.” He chuckled nervously.

“I have no words to thank you enough,” you urged. “Seriously. Thank you.” Your brother was going to eat his words and your dad was going to not scold you anymore and your grandfather was going to get off of your arse about great-grandchildren.

Brian shook his head. “Don’t thank me,” he brushed aside. “You’re my best friend. I’d do anything for you.”

[tarajenkins]

Please no more Square, I am at my (character) limit lmao

"The Light will not be denied!" 

I really do still wonder how anyone who played through ShB could reach the conclusion that a child with no Blessing Of Light ever stood a chance against the will of a Lightwarden. And not just any child--a child the Ascians intended to use as a doorstop to prevent the First from being destroyed before the Rejoining could happen, a child whose own trusted parental figure was willing to gaslight and manipulate them for the sake of their own power. A child whose behavior would absolutely need to fit a certain mold to achieve their ends. 

The Light corruption of a Sin Eater is confirmed by Halric's arc to be a lot like Tempering. Repeatedly Tempering someone, like Loonh Gah's mother in the Amalj'aa questchain, destroys their sanity. Emet-Selch's own dialogue up there confirms that the Warden essences in the WoL would not only drive them to madness, but violence. Vauthry had the essence of a Lightwarden forced into him before he was even born, and he had no higher power to protect him. 

Selch puts it plainly: the corruption of a Lightwarden is absolute in time, even for the WoL. I have yet to hear a good reason why Vauthry’s corruption would have been the sole exception to this rule. The “half Sin Eater” bit is brought up sometimes, but that is just buying into the lies his father told. Vauthry was already an entirely Hume infant. He was never “half” anything. He was already complete. He was corrupted. Tempered, according to Halric’s arc--blaming him for not fighting it is like blaming Thancred for the Waking Sands. It’s not a thing anyone can fight.

There’s also Yoshi-P asking players to ask themselves if Vauthry was really a friend of the Sin Eaters, or was he being controlled by someone.

(On a side note, I could have sworn it was stated the Ascians can't handle Light well, or at all? How did Emet-Selch even do that in the first place? Bad Writing(tm) \o/)

Silence Is Golden:

In a world where everyone rightfully fears Sin Eaters, a world where Eulmorans had fought them and died to them for decades, where those corrupted by fallen Sin Eaters have to be put to death before turning themselves--how would the mayor of Eulmore even explain his son's "gift"? Explain his son having a second, Sin Eater face in his chest? Explain that he allowed his child to be corrupted by a rando in a cloak, with no input from his wife? How did he keep her silent? Besides Square not bothering to give her dialogue, of course.

(Also, there was at least one other Minifilia in Vauthry's lifetime. The Minis all fought for Eulmore, as per Moren's book. How did they miss the Lightwarden now residing in Mr. Mayor's child? Did Hydaelyn know?)

It's such poor writing on Square's part to have left the disturbing Echo of how Emet-Selch “made” Vauthry as a footnote, and even moreso to have Wrenden claim in the hilariously contradictory patch 5.1 that Vauthry's father was the "good old days" of Eulmore. A man that would agree to let that be done to his own wife and child, a man who vocalized such disregard for his own peoples' lives, that was the good old days, really? The mayor who had "unrest" and detractors "stirring up the citizenry"? THAT mayor?

This is how far the writers were willing to go to dehumanize a fat man who had absolutely no consent or control in his “destiny”. And, speaking of dehumanizing--

--Square couldn't be arsed to treat Vauthry's mother like a character and not a convenient and silent womb, so we have no idea what happened to her. (My money is still on the Obscenity theory.) But since Vauthry only mentioned "Father", it sounds like the mayor raised him alone. 

What did Former Mayor do when his son had challenging questions about his father’s plans for him, or when the child balked at the answers given? How did he explain whatever happened to his wife? Just how much did "Father" have to manipulate that child's world to maintain the lies?

It’s strongly implied Former Mayor kept his son in a state of isolation where neither his word nor the Ascians' will could be questioned until the child was thoroughly brainwashed to believe, and there would be no questions then. Whether intended by Square or not, Vauthry does display many signs of an adult who suffered extreme isolation as a child. 

An entire childhood, with his likely only trusted source of knowledge and solace being someone who was grooming him for a power grab--and all the while, he can’t escape the presence of a creature inside him that drives mortals mad.

One of “Father’s” directives stands out in particular between the lines during ShB, though we don’t know how it came about originally:

Don’t tell anyone what you really are.

Even though Vauthry was given a good reason “why he was born as man and sin eater both", it still leaves the impression he was born because Sin Eaters are bad, and Vauthry needed to stop them from doing bad things--plus hush, don’t tell, people would find his existence bad if they knew the truth of it. Kids ask questions. Kids wonder. Feeling like an outsider hurts, let alone an outsider made of the same stuff that everyone fears. If Sin Eaters are monsters, then what was he? 

The fact Vauthry asked his father why was he born that way in the first place indicates the child instinctively felt there was something wrong.

The in-game dialogues appear to back this up. Although Vauthry's "heritage" was supposed to be this amazing thing, the true nature of it was instead lied about and kept hidden his entire life. Seems unusual for a guy supposedly convinced that he is “perfection”, doesn’t it? The fact that Eulmorans never once referred to Vauthry as "half Sin Eater" or a "God" during twenty years of his rule, the fact he only mentioned it himself before the Warden was about to claim him entirely; all well and good his father obviously invented some lie to placate the masses (“born with miraculous and convenient power” was all it took), but how did maintaining that lie, hiding who he really was, read to Vauthry all those years? 

During ShB, he still seemed to keep to the isolation he likely always knew. He never left that room. The citizens came to him when they wanted something, but it was never implied or shown he sought social contact on his own. Nothing was scaled to him, utensils, glasses, plates, etc.--as though he refused to single himself out as different from everyone else.

He called the Lightwarden’s awakening a “trial” to be embraced during Crown Of The Immaculate. Odd that someone supposedly convinced of his godhood would ever think he needed testing--but it makes perfect sense in the context of someone who always felt they needed to prove that they were worthwhile.  

He was proud of his power to protect his people, and proud of the paradise he built for them, but he didn’t want Alphinaud to paint a picture of him, he wanted a painting of the city. There were zero paintings or other monuments to himself in Eulmore. Lot of people in the fanbase speak of him being vain, yet he seemed to not want to be seen unless he had to be--almost as though, even toward the end, even through all the bluster, he still read being “half Sin Eater” as wrong.

With that in mind, there didn’t seem to be much evidence to even tell Vauthry he was born because he was wanted. He was born because his ability was needed. If not for his father’s ambition, however sweetly that may have been disguised, then to defend Eulmore against the monsters he was a part of. His ability was needed, not even him specifically--and the Eulmorans, with all their wishes and dreams to be fulfilled, could easily enforce the belief on the child that who he was didn’t matter, what he may want did not matter, only what he could do for others mattered. And what he did for them wouldn’t matter if they knew the truth of him. What a terrible, conditional ”love”. It could explain why he was so cynical about human nature. (Even though his predictions about human nature in the face of a dying world 110% came to pass in the Black Rose timeline. 6_9 gg G’raha) 

Yet despite all this, Vauthry needed to be convinced he was doing good for the shattered world. He needed to be convinced what he was doing was right, despite having power enough to not care. If Amaurot was Utopia, then Eulmore reminded me very much of Ursula K. LeGuin’s Omelas--a paradise, at the cost of one child’s eternal suffering. 

Food For Thought (and Bad Writing(tm)):

A lot of people have a boner for the cannibalism implications of meol despite the bad math behind it, but fucking meol, how does it work? 

Sin eating historically was to cleanse one who has passed on of their earthly sins that they may find peace in the afterlife--this was done in different ways by different people, but one of the best known methods was ritualistically baking the sins of the dead into bread or cakes and consuming it. Yoshi-P has even said he thought of meol as a sweet bread. Quest text from the Unfulfilled Forager in Gate Town further backs up that meol is not meat-based:

(By the way, nothing was keeping this man from hunting a shit-ton of meat that was literally within walking distance.)

It suggests Vauthry could have been taught that by eating the sins of the world, a.k.a. Sin Eaters, a.k.a. meol (which in the Japanese version, was something he was apparently afraid of doing?) --he was saving someone’s soul. 

“And for thy peace I pawn my own soul. Amen.”

In reality, there would be a point Mr. Mayor would not know how to feed the Warden forced on his child. Humes don't have a natural method of feeding on "living aether", yet the Warden would not reach its full potency without it. Making meol could either involve an instinctive act on the Warden’s part, or it was taught--and that seems very much beyond his father’s area of expertise, OR Vauthry himself, so I’d almost wonder if the Ascians had a part in it.  But like mixing medicine in a favorite food, theoretically, the aether provided by meol would slowly build up. And as the Warden grew in power, it would need more, and more. It would explain that final “powerup” before Mt. Gulg.

Provided Sin Eaters have any living aether left. They never explained that bit. Sin Eaters have no bones, no blood, no meat, nothing but Light. We saw enough of them dissipate into the air, including in cutscenes. Even Tesleen, very recently turned, faded. There is nothing else to them but Light...and there should be nothing left but that “blank perfection”, the Eater would have ate the rest? So where is the “living aether” they require to survive?

Fresh-sliced sneater wing, empty as the plotholes of this arc.

I could buy him turning people into Eaters directly, but then what was the point of the bread?

That’s right folks, meol still doesn't make sense, surprise! Also: so many people in one city allegedly being "disappeared" over twenty years, from a stagnant population, to “feed” everyone every day--yet no panic, not so much as a hushed whisper about it? Eulmore is supposed to be the safest place anywhere -- no idea how it could gain that reputation with that theory. Square wrote Eulmore like it existed in a vacuum, no one knowing no one. The lack of depth is still jarring, three playthroughs later. Only one unreliable narrator of an NPC (Thoarich) even hinted this theory, to boot. 

Side note I thought was strange: you never see any of the normal food in Vauthry’s chamber actually eaten, it’s all untouched. I wonder if the Warden somehow eventually affected his ability to tolerate the food a Hume would normally eat.

That said, his “mind control” of the populace was laughably ineffective, so I wonder what even was the point of feeding them meol. Perhaps it was again the Lightwarden instinct to create more of its own kind. Nothing else seems to fit. “Oh no, this Eulmoran is staggering randomly around, muttering about Vauthry! How can we survive this onslaught?” Yyyyeah no, lol. Alphinaud confirmed the Eulmorans were acting of their own free will until that final showdown, so the mind control seemed to be a panic move--I wonder if it was even took conscious effort at that point, or just another instinctive SOS from the Warden. Given his father’s trouble with the smallfolk, I have to wonder if it was Former Mayor’s idea, if there was a real reason behind it. Not a reason that would make good sense, but nothing in this arc does make good sense, so.

The thing is, meol was an optional dish. No one was forced to eat it. So Vauthry must not have been relying on controlling or turning anyone.

But despite the fact meol defies their own game logic, Square really did seem to relish hinting at the dehumanizing, Austin Powers “haha fat guy eats people” trope anyway, and seriously. They could do better than that--I hoped they’d BE better than that. But here we are, the company that is supposed to go so hard against harassment takes an easy target and encourages a very specific negative response to it. This is the reason I believe Eulmore was such an inconsistent arc--they almost entirely depended on Vauthry’s appearance to carry the weak narrative, explaining very lttle of his actual motivations because that would ruin their weak-ass “gotcha” that he was the Lightwarden of Kholusia. Of course he’d be evil, just look at him! Right guys? Look! He’s fat! 

Just as they used nothing but thicc’qotes in the trailer to try establishing the evils in Eulmore. Thicc’qotes eating fresh fruit whilst having pleasant conversation is the root of it all in Square’s eye; not a noblewoman who tried to have her maidservant murdered, not the nobleman who pushed his bodyguard over the rails, or even that asshole on the balcony laughing about splitting someone’s head like a melon. No, fatness is the real wickedness. Square was full of shit for this one and it shows when looked at with even a little critical thought. I don’t know what I expected of someone who requested a human “Jabba The Hutt” to be the last-minute midboss, someone who looked at a heavier Lakshmi and said “that’s not cute”, or a jackass who told a cosplayer they needed to lose weight onstage at FanFest 2014.

Even more disappointing? All these questions here, all these inconsistencies? For the majority of the playerbase, “he’s fat” was good enough. The Ascians get a million thoughtful theories. One of their victims? The playerbase thinks he manifested from the womb as you see him in game. They don’t stop to think of what it implied, to be born corrupted and groomed as a tool not only for Ascians, but his own father. They avoid the fact the fandom darling directly violated a woman and child’s bodily autonomy even as they insist on Vauthry taking absolute 100% responsibility for everything he was made specifically to do. And there’s just one difference between him and literally every other villain in this game, aside from the fact he had no choice. Yeah. As much as some players hate to hear it, if Vauthry had swapped models with the fandom darling, we wouldn’t be hearing justifications for mass murder/dictatorships/skeevy noncon. We would definitely be hearing how Vauthry was used, though--and how tragic his story is.

Some players bring up Dulia-Chai as though she somehow counters all the bodyshaming bullshit elsewhere. It doesn’t. She was still in place along with all the other thicc’qotes as Square’s fucked-up shorthand for excess and indolence. I had to learn she kept books for the Stoneworks in optional dialogue. Maybe if she didn’t talk about cakes and such so much, but I mean, that’s what fat people do, right? 

So if you’re laughing at fat men, we fat women know you’re actually laughing at us, too. Git gud or stop embarrassing yourselves.

“Tyranny”, aka you keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means:

Whatever the Ascians did to make sure Vauthry’s "Ascension" was a time-release event, the "madness and fury" clearly had taken him when we met him in Shadowbringers. Punishments for those having broken the laws of the city changed from exile into vicious death sentences. Suddenly the God talk, where not even Alphinaud had heard that. It really makes a case that Vauthry was slowly declining into madness the longer he was exposed to the Warden--in fact, Thancred sort of confirms it, during the trailer: “This town certainly has changed, but not at all for the better.” He was only on The First for five years. 

Vauthry likely had no introspective dialogues because much of who he actually had been was already gone, and the player is left with his remaining drive to do “good” and “justify your existence” wrapped around the instincts of a Lightwarden.

Yet a lot of things remain that really contradict the "bones of the poor" narrative the writers were trying to push about the city, and many times I felt a real disconnect between what our party was saying and what Eulmore was actually doing. A lot of it implies that, despite the Warden utterly subverting Vauthry as per the hard rules of Tempering, there was benevolence at work, once. The Minstreling Wanderer said that he could not say whether Vauthry was wicked in his youth, and I take this as a sign he was not. 

First off, let’s just get this out of the way: The Crystarium also expected you to work for the city in some form if you were expecting to stay there.

”Layabouts”: a people who were the main line of defense against the Sin Eaters for all The First for eighty years, until the futility of it, and all the loss, broke their spirits entirely. Just another sample of how Square intended Eulmore be shown as fat=lazy, despite their own lore--until Square was lazy themselves and didn’t finish the thicc’qote models so Eulmore would be exclusively fat bodies as shown in the trailer. 

The narrative often fudged with writer omnipotence regarding the protagonists, pressing to cast Eulmore in a negative light because they’d given up hope, even though loss is so important in excusing the Ascians’ actions. Our party had the WoL, whom they knew not only had a good chance of defeating Lightwardens, but G’raha seemed to know the WoL could contain them. Your average native inhabitant of the First would not be far off the mark feeling hopeless about the world, though, because they didn’t know about these extraordinary circumstances. Most of their oceans were lost in the Flood, and that in itself, realistically, is a death sentence. It’s all well and good G’raha was so perky and hopeful, and all well and good the game contrived a convenient deus ex machina to fix the issue (they never really addressed the issue anyway), but none of the locals could know any of this. I can see why Eulmore would think the Scions were full of shit, because for 80 years after the Flood, Eulmore tried to stop the Sin Eaters and could not. Honestly, I expected more sympathy for the Eulmorans, because they had been the front line for so long and lost so much. But lol fatties amirite?

Now, Square tried to dabble in many other Enlightened Social Commentaries with Eulmore, but immediately contradicted themselves so many times I was constantly asking myself why Alphinaud was being so goddamn extra dramatic. Gate Town/The Derelicts:

Not at Eulmore’s hand, Alphinaud honey, you can’t solo farms or communities. The people who remained behind were borked over by the ones who left. What are you even trying to say here, Square, help me out. Generosity--”largesse”-- is bad? Abandoning what you have, all others  be damned, for something you were never given a promise of receiving....good? Sympathetic? Seriously, what is your point here, Square? How does this equal Eulmore being malicious? How does this not make the bulk of Gate Town hopefuls a bunch of dipshits? Wright is in sight from Gate Town, but no one ever thought going there might be better?

If Square meant for Eulmore to seem a prison for the “poor”, they did a shitty job of that, considering: 1) A big point about Gate Town was that the people staying there left viable homes, farms, and communities for a chance at getting in, a chance that was never guaranteed by anyone, and they refused any alternatives Alphinaud offered them, plus

2) No one was keeping anyone from leaving if they wanted to. No guards, no masked vigilantes, no rando singing Hotel California in your ear.

So ruthless a prison, there were not only invisible guards holding you against your will, there was an Amarokeep waiting in the Derelicts to whisk you away for 70 gil so you can pretend to make a daring escape, straight to the freebie Amaro that will take you to The Crystarium. Tell your friends! Tell Alphinaud! He will literally buy anything this expac.

- “Young Kai-Shirr” getting into Eulmore was never a “matter of life or death”, and I can’t tell if that was Alphinaud being pretentious again or the writing was just that bad. Kai-Shirr was offered work at the Crystarium and he refused it, “it has to be Eulmore”. How is that on anyone but him? (Plus why does no one ever question Kai-Shirr’s complete lack of caring for why Alphinaud wanted in, if that was true? Was Kai-Shirr then not dooming Alph to “death” instead when he robbed him? That’s not very cash money of him.)  

This isn’t “life or death” either.

Neither is this.

Nnnno. 

Considering Stilltide reported they have fish for all, and Wright’s trouble was not enough people, this is not only not “life or death”, but fucking creepy. Hopefully this better illustrates my confusion of what we were being told vs. what we were being shown in Gate Town/The Derelicts.  d( ᐖ )

- The citizens In Gate Town/The Derelicts were not at the mercy of a "contest" to be let in. It was shown to be literally a help wanted board with jesters, and the “contest” was “do you have this certain skill someone is looking to hire”. I guess the Crystarium will hire a fishmonger to do the work of a chirurgeon or something? 

The jongleurs were otherwise just "rule of cool", I guess--although the significant look the Red gave us, followed soon after by Emet-Selch’s lurking outside the Offer, made me wonder if they were not acting as monitors on Vauthry for the Ascians. 

- There was at least one person in the Derelicts from the Crystarium, looking to make a quick gil on the extravagant “refuse” of the city, and several locals were doing the same. I guess those “layabouts” inside the city had their uses after all, Katliss.

- Meol was not the only food given to those outside the city. Produce and such that was not “pretty” enough for the fussy free citizenry was distributed to those camping the outskirts. 

I’d have expected a “tyrant” to let that produce rot. Catty in Stilltide confirmed there was enough fish for everyone living there, and Zia-Bostt above seems to back that up. Game in the field was also aplenty even in terms of map mechanics--this was not some form of forced famine to hold the smallfolk in a state of dependence. Eulmore was still paying the villages for produce. 

So much for the exploitation of big, bad Eulmore! 

Again, Alphinaud himself bemoaned how the people were there of their own choice, and how they refused any and all alternatives he presented them with. The people in Gate Town wanted to wait for Eulmore, they left their own homes and farms freely for Eulmore, screwing over their neighbors in the process--and that is not Vauthry’s fault, that is on them? 

Hurricane Florence left my husband and I homeless a while. You do not fucking pass up sure shelter and work and food to wait instead for a nebulous chance at Hollywood or Las Vegas--and if you do, that’s all your own tomfoolery, that’s not “injustice”, no BONES OF THE POOR required. It’s common sense, Square, goddamn lol 

The Free Citizenry:

- The rich would not be permitted into the city if they did not give up their wealth  for the benefit of all living there. This was a condition for the rich only. There is zero indication those funds were being put into Vauthry's pocket; it ran the city, and both free and bonded enjoyed the results (there seemed far more bonded residents in Eulmore than free, to boot.). There's a policy that would never fly in at least two allied citystates, lol.

It raises the question, if Wrenden and Former Mayor were so damn equitable, how were there even rich to begin with? There’s an old noble in Vauthry’s Eulmore who apparently does not know how to tie his shoes without a servant--a.k.a., the idle rich existed before Vauthry even came into power. The dialogue of Vauthry’s father also made it seem that these were systems in place long before he his son was even born -- except Vauthry’s system did not allow their hoarding of wealth, and distributed it instead to the benefit of everyone in the city. It was also a system that was so satisfactory, both free and bonded citizens became loudly dissatisfied after he was gone. 

- The rich were the only ones guaranteed “Ascension”, and if you want to call that a perk I’m going to assume it’s because the entire system relied on their dosh--technically, they already did their “work” for the city. (”Buying a stairway to Heaven”, as it were.) So much for those "bones of the poor", Alph. Statistically, if bones built Eulmore, it was the bones of the rich.

Until Gaia, Ascension was only mentioned twice, but again, no real context was given. (jfc Square, we shouldn't have to buy an overpriced lorebook for this.) First time was the Weeping Warbler chain. Going by the quest dialogue, it sounded very much like something offered as mercy to terminal illness or otherwise impending death, as the Warbler's creepy patron lamented how he almost wished he could hasten his own to join her (btw, the right answer to that poor girl's fear that she'd be a burden more than a treasure was "YOU ARE MORE THAN YOUR VOICE”,  asshole. >:| ). Players at the time were legit “oh that poor old man, she’s like his daughter :CCCCC” Ahahaha oh my sweet summer children

Either way, "Ascension” was definitely implied to be entirely voluntary. It was implied there were even rules and conditions to be granted it. And Vauthry did not seem to push anyone towards the idea, it was just there. (If it was for terminal illness, though, consider the following: Thoarich seemed confident the Warbler would live, but may lose her voice. If you have to be terminal to be Ascended, ironically Vauthry may have refused her patron's request.) The second mention was from Vauthry himself, for his “trial” when the Lightwarden awakened--so he certainly, tragically, believed what he claimed it was.  The Bonded Residents:

- Even at his worst, there is no indication that the free citizens were encouraged by Vauthry to abuse their workers; in fact, the Amiable Maiden and her Ardent Attendant implied heavily that appreciation and respect for one's bonded was the ideal that was pushed by Eulmore, that "love for one's fellow man". 

At no time were the bonded residents “slaves” (a new accusation from Twitter). They were “bonded” to the patrons who hired them by a work contract, and they sought those jobs willingly. No one kept them from leaving Gate Town, only kept them from getting in without a work arrangement--again, a prerequisite the Crystarium also had according to Katliss. The bonded residents were paid, and apparently paid well. 

As the WoL, we were also bonded to the Chais, and were able to come and go later. It was like the writers knew they needed to sit the fence so the free citizens would be redeemable enough to help with the immersion-breaking giant Talos plot later, and so never pushed Eulmore to the evils they talked about but never showed--leaving behind the most disconnected, self-sabotaging arc I’ve ever seen from this MMO.

An evil slaveowner at work.

Alphinaud rewarded for being an agreeable yet melodramatic young boy.

- The bonded we met who fled Eulmore had fled their patrons, not Vauthry himself--even the Warbler thought Vauthry a “great man”. No one in Eulmore feared him.

- Tristol’s “grave sin” to be patronless and penniless was contradicted by Fathana, whose patron had died some time ago, and yet she remained in the city without one to help new workers--because her patron had been so kind to her. The clerk whom you first speak to upon entering Eulmore even says that if you are “fired” or otherwise lose your patronage, you can try to find another patron to remain in the city or work as a general laborer like Fathana until, presumably, you do find another patron. Or maybe you don’t even need a patron, and you are allowed to stay as your own boss at that point, she certainly was.

Since the Chais helped us leave the city, I’m not at all sure why they didn’t do the same for Tristol, especially if Vauthry’s violence was a well-known thing. It’s almost like violence from Vauthry wasn’t expected, and they’d never think that would happen. I mean, some recent time ago, Vauthry only exiled thieves from Eulmore.

(Hell, Square may have even fudged Tristol’s punishment, implying Vauthry had ordered him tossed off the balustrade of The Offer. Vauthry’s balcony appears to be the one directly above The Path To Glory, right above the gates into Eulmore. There doesn’t seem to be ocean nearby at any realistic distance or angle from that balcony. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

- Laws that we saw in effect were for the benefit of patrons and bonded citizens alike. There was nothing to suggest those laws were unreasonable, either. The punishment became fuck no unreasonable (though as I pointed out earlier, the punishments seemed to ramp up in violence the longer the warden was part of him, from exile to a literal pound of flesh, much like Titania went from a benevolent ruler to Jumpscare Prime). But fraud being a crime is sort of expected anywhere, and creeps at the Beehive should not touch dancers unless dancers consent, lest they get the bouncer. ( another strangely thoughtful law for a “tyrant”. )

- The bonded residents inside seemed much happier with their lot than Alphinaud’s dramatic assessment, which was also confusing as hell. 

-  Entire families were allowed to enter if one member was hired. Alphinaud was able to drag us along with a minimum of fuss as his “assistant”. Vauthry’s definition of how one “gives” to Eulmore was not based solely on traditional work.

- Bonded residents were not afraid at all to speak of bending rules for perfect strangers when offering drinks to us, so Vauthry wasn't out prowling for blood 24/7 like an Inquisitor trying to fill their heretic quota. Not only was Dulia-Chai not afraid to go calm him down at the height of his rage, Chai-Nuzz didn't freak out at the idea she'd do it. Nuzz. Wasn’t nervous. Yeah, let that one sink in 9_6

The only time Vauthry acted seemed to be when an issue was brought forward directly to him. Otherwise, it seemed like standard Lightwarden behavior: stasis, until presented with a real and immediate threat to itself, which in Vauthry’s case was a threat to the order of his city, or the ones killing Lightwardens.

For allegedly being aggressive against Kholusia's neighbors, Vauthry seemed to have taken the Crystarium's refusal of his offer to lead them back in the day really well, as in, he did jack shit in retaliation and accepted it. In fact, he was so warlike, Emet-Selch was surprised Vauthry would move that army, even for a very clear threat against fulfilling the false destiny Emet-Selch forced on him. 

While on the subject of aggression, the people in Amity have dialogue indicating they feared Vauthry would send the army after them--which he obviously never did, in all 20 years of his reign.  

- “No one leaves” except hey whoa there hi, Lue-Reeq, who comes and goes as he pleases. Plus that bonded resident who came to Wright looking for ale. Plus us, also bonded residents, because Dulia-Chai once again had nothing to fear from Vauthry.

Also anyone who was exiled previously. For supposedly wanting to keep people inside Eulmore, Vauthry sure was terrible at doing it lmao

GCBTW: I'd really love to see Square and Alphinaud be similarly vocal and insistent with the actual horrors our own Allied city-states commit without the corruption of a Lightwarden in play. The selective outrage/pearl-clutching is really immersion-breaking.

Ishgard: “Highborn” genuinely exploiting the “lowborn” every other sidequest to this day. Genocide of the Au Ra. At least two FATEs, one job quest, one lorebook entry, and one dungeon indicate Ishgard has fucking disgusting levels of rape carried out by figures of authority. Rent is being charged for people from the Brume--the homeless, destitute people in the Brume--to live in the Firmament, but they can arrange payment plans! And this was all talked about while one of them was shivering in the cold nearby. What, can't the highborn be arsed to share what they have? Eulmore is the height of wickedness because they couldn't cram an island full of people into one tower, but Ishgard's our pal even though they can't manage to make space in their mansions for one small area of one city. My God, Vauthry had FOOD in his chamber, shame!--but that's okay, Aymeric, you rock that extravagant dinner spread in the dating sim cutscene. Maybe the Brume can fight over the Ishgardian Muffin crumbs.

(Yes, I know, Vauthry had more food than that in his chamber. He’s also approaching fifteen-plus feet tall. Proportionally, the food in his chamber would be the equivalent of you or me living on cocktail peanuts and thimbles of water. Once more, Square was so fixated on fatphobia they didn’t do the fucking math.)

Doma: “Hey yeah look guys I know child trafficking is bad but let’s just smile and nod at this guy who did it to Yotsuyu and give him a different post, okay? Okay. Remember to be polite. We will never speak of this again.”

“Let me laugh about your beliefs and call them bullshit while I angle you into a war that isn’t even yours, Xaela tribes.” Gridania: Lets people straight up die if the “elements” tell them it’s okay. Exiling a child for stealing a bag of flower seeds is normal and totally not at all fucked up. Open and accepted racism against the Duskwights with no sign of Kan-E-Senna saying fucking stop that shit.

Ul’dah: Human trafficking. Child trafficking. Human lab rats. Using prisoners for blood sports. The Syndicate living it up in finery, giving exactly nothing to people living in the streets. Notoriously corrupt Brass Blades. More implications of fucking disgusting levels of rape. Turning away the Doman refugees when they literally had nowhere else to go and nothing left. We smiled and nodded when Godbert said people mustn’t be given charity, they must work for their own good.

Limsa Lominsa: Fucks over the “beast tribes” at every opportunity, then complains they summon Primals.

But remember, folks, it was Vauthry’s Eulmore that was the real evil we had to desperately move against. Not the newer, capitalist Eulmore that didn’t feed two guys from Wright because they couldn’t afford it, shoosh those “bones of the poor” don’t count. The writers tried to retcon a lot in 5.1, it seemed--suddenly, it was implied people were forced to leave villages, conscripted, etc. Except the people were still there to tell us otherwise in 5.0, and there was still no sign of any Eulmoran forces keeping them in Gate Town. We went from Alphinaud demanding the free citizens take responsibility for what they’d done in Eulmore to posthumously blaming Vauthry’s “bad influence” for everything up to and including a noblewoman’s attempted murder of her maidservant, because the noblewoman’s husband was creeping on the girl. 

Which leads us to another of my biggest peeves--all the while, despite “the truth” being so important when it came to Emet-Selch, the sins of Vauthry’s father and the suffering his wife and child endured because of Emet-Selch’s direct hand are left unspoken. We smile and nod silently to Eulmorans and then offer them up Vauthry and his “bad influence” as an excuse for their own misdeeds. I’ve never felt less a “hero” in this game as I did then. Yet Emet-Selch, who committed this atrocity on a child, was called a HERO because fandom darling, while the child is vilified and thoroughly dehumanized.

It’s really telling how much blind condemnation the fanbase dealt to Vauthry for reasons that were completely inaccurate, while the fandom darling of this expansion was 100% the founder of not one, but two civilizations based on domination, the most recent being a nation whose canon creed is  "No lands must remain beyond our grasp. Go forth. Conquer. Rule.", a nation whose people have a habit of calling all the “lesser races” they conscript “savages”. Fandom Darling was also hype af for Black Rose and called it worthy of his bloodline! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

It’s really telling that the fanbase will randomly accuse Vauthry of being a sexual predator with Sin Eaters based on exactly zero evidence (but a lot of projection on their part), while the fandom darling 100% canonly used the actual Solus zos Galvus’ enthralled body to sire a child with Galvus’ unwitting wife, and going by the dialogue--

--he’s done that before. No wonder consent was no big deal when he made that offer to Former Mayor. But this was played for sympathy because fandom darling and what do you know, the fandom bought it.

Square “both sided” actual authoritarian characters--actual colonizers, actual mass murderers of entire worlds, actual skeevy-ass characters who don’t care about consent because “not really alive”--called it “heroic”, even (the latter was called “moral relativism”, and it’s genuinely unnerving how many players pushed that as absolution or relatable)--but throughout the course of the main expansion and two subsequent patches,Square went all-in that the fat guy who had his agency and sanity stolen from him in utero to be used as a tool of destruction was the real tyrant. We the player were encouraged to buddy up with E-S while we were never once given the option to wonder if something was terribly amiss with Vauthry, if he may need help. They didn’t even spare us a “jfc that poor man, the Eaters got to him” when he blindly twisted his neck 180 to neither see nor hear us. He was still “evil” because reasons, a.k.a., he was fat.

TL;DR, the playerbase: 

I remain unconvinced the Ancients were not clever enough to suspect summoning the “Will Of The Star” may have an effect on their own wills, as their wishes for Zodiark carried an unspoken need for the Elder Primal to be granted control to achieve its end. Emet-Selch stated that Tempering was to be “expected”, even “natural”, though his appearance towards the end of 5.3 seems to contradict Tempering: has there ever been another instance that a Tempered being was able to act directly against the best interests of the primal that holds them in thrall? Elidibus sure couldn’t. 

Disclaimer: I actually have no issue with liking the Ascians, be it shipping, writing, art, porn mods, whatever. But if you come into my yard with nothing but shit talk for Vauthry on reblogs of my art, yet have all the praise for the one who made him, you’re going to hear in my personal space about why you’re a hypocrite. Often. With receipts.

The End.

First off, it’s popular in the fandom to say the Lightwarden was Vauthry’s real body because it’s just so damn inconvenient to the dating sim mentality that the fat guy was the default. Thing is:

That is Innocence’s head and its wings inside Vauthry’s split-open back during the pre-phase two “transformation”. Between that and the second face that appeared to cave in most of Vauthry’s chest (on the heart side, interestingly enough), the face whose eyes opened and glowed upon the Warden’s “awakening”:

It doesn’t look at all like it was a “transformation”.  It looks like the Lightwarden emerged and absorbed what was left of its host’s physical form while still retaining Vauthry’s broken mind.  (Notice the nose, much longer than Vauthry’s actual nose, eye spacing, the bit of smile. That second face was the Warden.)

Before his death, Vauthry did not say "well dang, the Ascians promised I would be all-powerful so I could be evil! Curse them for cheating me!"

He said "Father told me...that I am hope. That I am righteousness. That I am...a god... That is why I was born...as man and sin eater both...I kept the people safe!"

Those lines make no sense if Vauthry interpreted Father’s manipulations as "haha I'm a spoiled evil brat I can do what I want". A spoiled evil brat wouldn't need to be convinced what they were doing was GOOD, would they? Why would that even have been a thing, wouldn't they just not care? He had the power to not give a shit. Instead, he would see his peoples’ “dreams fulfilled, their wishes granted.” EDIT - Canon as of 5.3 appears to support this analysis! \o/ 

Spoken at the end by G’raha Tia on the subject of enduring hope, and additionally supported by the Minstreling Wander, who told us in the Immaculate EX unlock he could not say if Vauthry was wicked in his youth. ”Vindicate his existence”. Vauthry was never in this for the evil selfish lulz. He believed he needed to prove the “half Sin Eater” heritage forced on him did not make him a monster, that it was good, that he was good, and he did it by doing everything he was gaslighted to believe was good by his father--until the Warden finally broke him entirely. To the people who debated so strongly he was just evil because reasons, or refused to hold other characters to the same standards of damnation they set for him because reasons, hope your shoe tastes good. Your reasons were always really clear, btw.

This remains the story of a child who needed a hero that never came, and players choose to discard it, like the free citizens snub produce, because Vauthry isn’t pretty enough for them. A fat character’s stolen life simply isn’t worth the effort of contemplation because the one who made him makes players horny on main.

What happened to this character, with just the little information the game gave us, was straight-up abuse. Yet too many in the fanbase thought no further than juvenile fat jokes (so cool) or unquestioning contempt for a character who was clearly in a state of mental breakdown (unless it was the fandom darling, he’s allowed, even if it destroys worlds) --while Square readily had their characters ace detective enough to detect his weight, but not his unnatural height, his pointed ears, his fogged over eyes, his bendy-straw neck, his second freaking face. Oh, and he can control Sin Eaters. Wait, you mean the Lightwarden was in him the whole time!? Seems legit gais, what an unexpected turn of events! 

ᐠ( ᐛ )ᐟ

[lesdemonium]

My Heart

Rating: E Words: 9,118 Summary:

Things were different after the mountain.

For one thing, when Jaskier met up with Geralt again, it was with a refugee princess in tow. Somehow this wasn’t surprising, given the way Geralt’s life often went, but it did create a different dynamic.

Beyond that, though, Geralt was different. Softer, somehow. Like he was actively trying to smooth away his hard edges, and his face often constricted with the pain of it.

Jaskier didn’t quite know what to do with it.

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Things were different after the mountain.

For one thing, when Jaskier met up with Geralt again, it was with a refugee princess in tow. Somehow this wasn’t surprising, given the way Geralt’s life often went, but it did create a different dynamic.

Beyond that, though, Geralt was different. Softer, somehow. Like he was actively trying to smooth away his hard edges, and his face often constricted with the pain of it.

Jaskier didn’t quite know what to do with it.

--

Jaskier had broken a string on his lute. 

This wasn’t entirely unheard of. After all, with use, strings tended to break every so often. One spectacular time, Jaskier had stumbled while tuning his lute, and the string and snapped so suddenly that it whipped his face, splitting the skin of his cheek. The scar wasn’t truly visible anymore, but Jaskier still noticed it, and more importantly, Geralt still noticed it. Though the event happened years ago, it could still startle Geralt into the witcher’s version of giggles. At those times, Jaskier found himself both indignant over Geralt laughing at what had really been Quite painful, honestly, Geralt, and warm over the fact that Geralt of Rivia was actually brought to laughter over a memory involving Jaskier.

A string broke again, and luckily this time it happened without maiming his face, though poor Ciri was nearly a casualty. This time, however, Jaskier was dismayed to find that he had no replacements. He hadn’t had enough coin to afford more strings the last time he stocked up on materials and he had only replaced them recently, so surely they would last. They had, it just had been a very long time since the thought had crossed his mind.

Jaskier wasn’t pouting. Despite Ciri’s teasing, he was definitely not pouting, he was just a little… off, without the ability to play his lute. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, and they hadn’t planned on any stops in towns until they made it to Posada, where Geralt said Vesemir had sent him a note, which was still days away. Jaskier was a grown man, he could handle a few days of disappointment until they made it to Posada.

His mood was definitely soured, though.

Without his lute to play, he was quite a bit more observant. They should have turned right at that fork, but Geralt had led them to the left. Ciri hadn’t noticed, but of course she wouldn’t, she was still learning. Surely, though, Geralt knew that they had turned the wrong way.

“Geralt?” Jaskier asked. Geralt grunted in return. “Shouldn’t we have gone the other way at that cross section? We’re moving away from the river. You aren’t losing your sense of direction in your old age, are you? Oh, what a way to perish.”

Ciri giggled at Jaskier’s dramatics and Jaskier was sure Geralt had rolled his eyes. But even a minute later, he still hadn’t answered the question.

“Geralt?” Jaskier prodded.

“We have business in Lyria,” Geralt answered, finally. “We’ll stay the night there, then continue on to Posada as planned.”

Jaskier’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t press further. Geralt was taciturn at best and frequently elusive, but if Geralt wanted to tell them what their business was, he likely would have already told them. They weren’t far from Lyria, at least, so soon Jaskier would know what, exactly, was so pressing to make Geralt of Rivia change their plans without so much as a warning. So Jaskier bit his tongue and they continued on silently.

Jaskier found himself without words when Geralt pointed him toward the very same shop Jaskier had replaced his strings at all those years ago. There wasn’t a hint of humor on Geralt’s face, though Jaskier did notice his eyes glide over Jaskier’s cheek.

--

Finding themselves in Posada again was strange. It wasn’t the first time they had been back since their meeting, but every time held a strange edge. Posada felt both familiar, and like a brand new world to Jaskier every time, though the town itself rarely changed.

Vesemir’s note turned out to be inconsequential; it was merely a reply to Geralt’s announcement that Geralt would be bringing company with him to Kaer Morhen this winter. When Jaskier read it, he almost scoffed--that was what they had rushed here for?--but one look at Geralt’s face silenced him. Geralt had been tense the past few days traveling, leading Jaskier to believe this message was more important. Life or death, even. Now, however, the lines on Geralt’s face had finally smoothed away, and his shoulders dipped. Geralt was relieved. This wasn’t just an acknowledgement, this was permission.

Jaskier supposed it made sense. If they didn’t have Kaer Morhen, then Geralt had nowhere safe to take Ciri. And if the fort was as secretive as Geralt had led Jaskier to believe, then Geralt must have been legitimately concerned that Vesemir would deny them. Then what would they do? Hole up in a court for the winter with Jaskier? That seemed recklessly dangerous, what with Ciri being a wanted young lady.

“Well!” Jaskier said, handing the letter back to Geralt. “Wonderful news! I, for one, think we should celebrate by sleeping in a bed, don’t you?” He turned to Ciri, who nodded vigorously, as if she had never heard a more devine suggestion in her life. “And as we are rather low on coin, it sounds as if it’s time for me to earn my keep!”

And with that, he stood up, lute in hand, to grace the fine people of this establishment with his craft.

The concert went well for a long while. Jaskier hadn’t been counting, exactly--it was hard to sing, play an instrument, keep eyes and charm on the room, and do math in his head all at once--but it seemed as if there was enough coin in his hat to pay for not one, but two rooms. Poor Ciri could finally have a moment to herself, rather than constantly having either Jaskier or Geralt as her babysitter.

Jaskier’s audience was a beautiful one. As the wine and ale flowed, they danced with his jigs, they sang along with some of his more colorful tunes, and some of the women (and a couple men) grew a little teary eyed at his more maudlin ballads. They clearly had chosen a good tavern to set up in, because every so often patrons, heavy with drink from other locations, made their way inside and joined in the festivities.

He was about to call it a night and take his coin to the inn-keeper, when he decided to end on his claim to fame. This wasn’t the first time he had played the song that night--in fact, it was the only one he knew how many times he had played it, because all four times he had sent a wink to Geralt’s scowling face. This time, however, Geralt wasn’t paying attention. Instead, he was talking to some man, and the way they were bowed low together convinced Jaskier that this must be about some monster. It was disappointing, but Jaskier brushed it off quickly. It was easy to, when he had caught Geralt staring at him all night, looking less surly and more… captivated. No, surely, captivated was the wrong word. Geralt had hardly expressed any interest in Jaskier’s music before, aside from correcting Jaskier’s creative licenses. But there was something in his look that made Jaskier feel seen. Every time, he had quickly broken the eye contact, but he was living off the high it gave him.

That particular line of thought had Jaskier neglecting his duties to the room. His playing didn’t falter--he could play this song in his sleep without a single mistake, thank you very much--but he had definitely lost the crowd for a moment. When he came back with a cheeky grin and a wink at one of the women, he was too late to attend to the fist that hit him a moment later.

To say he was caught off guard would be putting it lightly. He stumbled, his cheek blooming in heat and pain, and nearly dropped his lute. Luckily, he caught the beautiful thing with a jarring twang of the strings, and for a moment there was complete silence before it felt like everyone started yelling.

“Shut the fuck up, witcher whore!” was the only piece Jaskier picked up as he attempted to catch up with his shocked, sluggish brain, before he was assaulted again; this time the fist went for his gut.

Jaskier was quicker this time in disengaging--the punch turned into more of a light tap as Jaskier nimbly stepped away from the angry drunkard. His moves were as slurred as his words, but still he pursued Jaskier with intent to hit him again. Jaskier wasn’t much of a fighter, especially not when he had nowhere safe to put his beloved instrument, but he was quick and lithe, especially when confronted with a man who had likely had drunk Jaskier’s bodyweight in ale. He only had to evade him long enough for the man to get tired or for someone else to step in and escort the brute out, and Jaskier had faced far more frightening foes than this.

Unfortunately, his space was extremely limited, what with the patrons scurrying around like they had been victims of the onslaught and their deserted furniture clogging up Jaskier’s path. So when the drunkard was yanked away from a very near second assault on Jaskier’s face, Jaskier’s breath came out in a cheered rush. It wasn’t surprising to see the witcher as his savior, and it was extremely satisfying to see the brute tossed out on his arse outside the door.

What was surprising, was Geralt immediately returning to Jaskier once the man was taken care of. His hands on Jaskier’s face had Jaskier gasping, and Geralt hesitated, moving fingertips away from the bruise. But it hadn’t been pain that caused Jaskier to gasp, rather it was the soft, gentle way Geralt was touching him.

“Are you alright?” Geralt asked, turning Jaskier’s face with a soft press of fingers on his jaw.

“I’m just fine,” Jaskier breathed, and he wanted to ask Geralt what he was doing, but he didn’t want to break the moment. Geralt’s fingers ghosted over Jaskier’s cheekbone, and Jaskier was sure he would have a bruise there tomorrow, but all he could feel now was the white-hot heat Geralt’s fingers were leaving behind.

They were there for hours, Jaskier was sure, as he catalogued the way Geralt’s eyebrows knit together in concern for him, but when the spell finally broke and they returned to the world, not even a minute had gone by.

Their rooms were lovely, and Ciri’s had been on the house, as an apology for the brawl.

--

Jaskier’s favorite thing to do, now that the three of them were together, was to watch Geralt teach Ciri.

There was a new lesson every night they camped. Whenever they stayed in inns, Ciri received a helpful reprieve of privacy, after that first night when she was in a much better mood the entire next week after having some time to herself. Turned out thirteen year old girls needed some alone time. Who knew? But when they made camp for the night, Geralt took the opportunity to give her at least one new skill.

Sometimes it’s survival related: which berries are safe to eat, how to pick the best firewood, how to set a trap for rabbits. Sometimes they sparred, and though Ciri never won, Jaskier could see her getting closer, the way her arms and legs were thickening with muscle, and how her hold on her wooden sword became surer every time. Tonight, the subject was apothecary related. Geralt spent the past half hour pointing out the plants around their campsite and the medicinal benefits of each one, both for humans and witchers.

Teaching seemed to come naturally for Geralt.. It was the most patient Jaskier had ever seen him, and usually Ciri listened with rapt attention. Every so often, she would interrupt to ask questions, and Geralt would stop, listen to her, and answer the question without any trace of annoyance. He always answered carefully and thoroughly, making sure she understood before he continued on with whatever he was saying.

Jaskier found himself playing and composing quietly, just so he could hear the two of them as they worked. It was the most peaceful Jaskier had ever felt. He was so peaceful, he almost didn’t notice the cold settling in around him, despite the fire. He didn’t notice he was shivering until Geralt abruptly stood up, peeled off his cloak, and draped it around Jaskier’s shoulders without so much as a word, before going back to Cirilla.

It happened so quickly, Jaskier didn’t have time to protest, only react. Even that he found difficult. He froze, glancing after Geralt, who just continued on his lesson as if nothing had happened. Jaskier waited a moment, trying to figure out if this was real, before he tugged the cloak closer with a small, private smile.

There was something particularly comforting about being surrounded by Geralt’s scent.

--

Sex hadn’t changed much. Over the years, being intimate with Geralt had been so varied based on the circumstances that there wasn’t really much of a “normal” to speak of. The main difference now that Ciri was here was that it was rare for Geralt to touch Jaskier under the stars. The only time they found release with each other was when they stayed at an inn, which only happened every now and then, since they were trying to make their coin stretch farther while Geralt was taking less contracts.

The way Geralt held him afterward, however, that was new. It wasn’t that Geralt had been cold or distant after they had lain together, he had accepted any tenderness Jaskier had initiated. Now, though, Geralt seemed to seek it out.

Once, Jaskier had gotten up immediately after they were finished to grab a cloth to clean them up, and Geralt’s eyes had seemed… wounded, almost. Geralt was completely rigid against Jaskier’s body as he pressed against Geralt’s side, and only relaxed when Jaskier pressed soft kisses along Geralt’s shoulder. After that, Jaskier made a point to prepare a cloth and some water before they engaged physically, so he never had to leave the bed. It was a little uncomfortable, wiping them down with water that was now cold--especially after sessions that lasted hours--but it was worth it for the way Geralt stayed pliant and open against him.

Tonight, Geralt had been particularly thorough. He had teased Jaskier for hours, drawing sounds from his lips that Jaskier didn’t even know he could make. Jaskier wasn’t as young as he had been when they started this, but Geralt had been singular in bringing Jaskier just to the brink of his breaking point. Now that they were finished, Jaskier was too worn out even to clean the spend from his chest. His arms and legs were boneless, and all he could do was catch his breath.

Geralt looked downright smug as he took over the task, though cleaning Jaskier’s body seemed to come second to mapping the planes of Jaskier’s skin with his mouth.

“I hope you’re not trying to start something again,” Jaskier mumbled fondly. “I have nothing left to give. You’ve finished me. I fear you and Ciri shall have to leave me behind.”

If the sharp burst of air from Geralt’s nose was anything to go by, he at least found this amusing, but he didn’t stop. His lips trailed their way along Jaskier’s body, pressing soft, intent-less kisses, mostly on marks Geralt had left behind, but on bare expanses of skin as well. Jaskier sighed into the action, feeling almost close to tears, and wouldn’t that be embarrassing if Geralt looked up only to see Jaskier crying? But he couldn’t help it. It was moments like these when Jaskier wanted so, so badly to tell Geralt he loved him, but knew he couldn’t.

But then Geralt was face to face with Jaskier again, pulling Jaskier close, allowing Jaskier to press his face into Geralt’s neck, and running his fingers up and down Jaskier’s bare back, and Geralt had to know. He had to know how affection bloomed in Jaskier’s chest, how every kiss he pressed to Geralt’s skin was a declaration of love.

I love you. I have always loved you. I always will love you, he kissed.

--

This wasn’t the first time Geralt had gotten hurt.

But Geralt was gasping for breath and Ciri’s eyes were wide as saucers with her barely concealed fear and Jaskier knew things were going south quickly.

The one respite was that both the drowners and the kikimore were dead. What wasn’t good was that Geralt hadn’t been expecting the kikimore, and witcher healing be damned, Geralt was hurt from the strike it landed on him before Geralt could kill it. Geralt had barely been able to pull his sword from the beast before he passed out into the swamp, and thank god Jaskier and Ciri had been there to pull him out of the water, or he would have drowned.

Now, though, he was going to die simply because Jaskier couldn’t find the right freaking potion.

Geralt was going to be annoyed when he came to and his bag was disorganized, but Jaskier could deal with that later, because right now he just needed to find that blasted vial of swallow. And then Geralt was going to get an earful about needing to pack the important potions closer to the top or, and here was a novel idea, in their own compartment.

It was after he pulled out probably the third vial of fucking bindweed that Jaskier finally, finally found what he was looking for, and he tipped its contents into Geralt’s mouth without even making a triumphant noise--that was how scared he was. Already, color was coming back to Geralt’s face and Jaskier breathed a sigh of relief before he could finally tend to the gaping wound in Geralt’s chest.

“He’ll be okay,” he had the presence of mind to say to Ciri, who immediately sat back and let out the breath she had been holding.

He and Ciri struggled to pull the dead-weight of the witcher, water-logged armor and all, to a nearby clearing, and Ciri set to work building a fire (thank you, Geralt, for making her so self-sufficient) while Jaskier tended to Geralt’s wounds. Taking off his armor and shirt wasn’t easy, but he managed it well enough. If Geralt complained of a headache when he woke up, Jaskier would insist that was due to the battle, rather than when Jaskier dropped his head on a log. He stitched up the gaping wound from where the kikimore had pierced him, and despite how badly his hands were shaking, he had to admit that his stitches looked fine. Not expert, by any means, and not even the best he had ever done, but Jaskier was at least convinced that they would do their job.

He was washing the blood off Geralt’s chest when Geralt came to, though Jaskier didn’t notice until the witcher’s hands wrapped around Jaskier’s. He looked up and let out a relieved, just shy of manic, laugh to see Geralt’s amber eyes looking up at him.

“Jaskier-” Geralt started, only to be interrupted by Jaskier.

“We are going to have words, Geralt of Rivia, about where you keep your fucking potions. I could have lost you just because it took me so fucking long to find the right one. You may have superhuman healing abilities, but you’re not impervious and you can’t just walk away from a kikimore trying to rip your heart out, you great, big-”

This time Jaskier was cut off by Geralt pulling him down into a soft kiss. It was effective, Jaskier had to admit. As soon as Geralt’s lips were against his, Jaskier stopped his tirade and just melted. Well, melted as much as he could without putting any weight on Geralt, who was still very much not healed. It didn’t last for long--they both found themselves short of breath quicker than usual, probably due to the physical exertion and Geralt’s injuries. But instead of pulling away, Jaskier rested his forehead against Geralt’s.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Jaskier whispered.

He took a moment to breathe before pulling away and getting back to work on cleaning Geralt up. Ciri rejoined them and dutifully asked questions about the kikimore, and Jaskier smiled as he worked. It was kind of her to let Geralt go back to a teaching mode, lest he be uncomfortable with Jaskier’s fussing.

It took hours for Jaskier to realize that was their first kiss outside of sex.

--

Jaskier was not sick. He couldn’t be. Jaskier didn’t get sick.

This was a stance he clung to the entire walk that day. Even though he was definitely slower than usual--Geralt often had to slow Roach so Jaskier could catch up--and Ciri looked at him pityingly every time he let out a nasty cough--but that was just the dirt from the road irritating his lungs. Every time he insisted that he wasn’t sick, that it was just allergies, or he didn’t sleep well the night before, Geralt rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue. 

By the end of the day, though, it was getting harder and harder to cling to this assertion. When they made camp, Jaskier dropped heavily to the ground, unable to even fathom helping with camp, but Ciri and Geralt had it under control anyway. His body ached all over. He felt like he would never be warm again, shaking as he sweat with such intensity he was sure he had sat right inside the fire.

“Come on,” Geralt finally urged him, helping Jaskier up--despite Jaskier’s protests that, Really, Geralt, I’m fine right here--and into the river.

The water felt like ice, and his entire body tensed as he wrapped his arms around himself to try to stave off some of the chill. Geralt was not far behind; he’d had to help Jaskier out of his clothes, and didn’t even laugh at a single one of Jaskier’s very witty sexual jokes. Once he was naked, too, he joined Jaskier in the river, and hardly even reacted to how cold the water was, the mutant. But Jaskier had to admit, the way Geralt washed him felt divine. It was completely unnecessary, as Jaskier reiterated to him every chance he got, but every time Geralt just hummed or shushed him, then went back to washing Jaskier’s hair. Eventually, Jaskier gave into it. He leaned into Geralt’s body and allowed himself to be taken care of; he even managed to doze a little against Geralt’s chest. 

Leaving the water wasn’t very nice, but the way Geralt led him with a hand on the small of his back was.

The potion, solution, stew, whatever it was, that Ciri made didn’t taste nice, but the way Geralt smiled at her and told her “You made it perfectly,” made Jaskier feel the warmest he had all day.

Soon, his body felt so heavy and his mind felt so cloudy that all he could do was lean into Geralt’s side. The witcher held him like it was the most natural thing in the world, like they had always done this, and carried on testing Ciri on the uses of various herbs and roots. Jaskier barely noticed drifting off.

When he woke--hours later, judging by how the fire had died down--he was on a bedroll, tucked tightly against Geralt’s body. Jaskier lifted his arm and draped it around Geralt’s middle, managing to press a kiss against Geralt’s temple before the clutches of sleep took him again.

--

Geralt was drunk and Jaskier was delighted.

It didn’t happen often. Geralt didn’t drink to excess unless he felt safe enough to do so, which was rare, especially since gaining Cirilla. But something about this town had, apparently, made him feel secure enough to let loose, because when Jaskier had come back from his performance, Geralt’s eyes were unfocused and he had a lazy smile on his face.

“Ciri, I thought I left you in charge,” Jaskier teased.

“And I did exactly what you taught me to do--arrange the situation to my advantage,” Ciri smirked back, and, ah, she did look a little hazy eyed as well. Sneaking drinks was much easier when Geralt was also drinking, Jaskier assumed.

He had to admit, though, he was very proud of her mischief. But now he had a very, very inebriated witcher on his hands.

“Well, I think the party is officially over. Let’s go upstairs,” he said, standing up.

Geralt’s gaze was lazy and fond, and it never left Jaskier. Although he also did not seem to be listening to Jaskier, because it took several tugs to get the witcher to stand up. Jaskier was relieved that Cirilla at least seemed to be more sober than his White Wolf, but that still meant that her steps were meandering as she, more or less, led the way upstairs.

“I don’t have to bar your door, do I?” Jaskier asked, turning a stern gaze on Cirilla, though he was pretty sure the impact of it wavered some due to the way Geralt was leaning on him and petting Jaskier’s cheek.

“The innkeeper stopped serving me about an hour ago anyway,” Ciri huffed. “And everyone fun already left. I’ll stay in, I promise.”

Jaskier narrowed his eyes at her a moment longer, as Ciri made a cross over her heart, then grinned toothily and slipped into her own room. Jaskier sighed fondly, before opening their door, which really would have been easier without Geralt nipping at his neck and earlobe the entire time.

“Geralt, honestly. You do make this difficult,” Jaskier whined, but he finally opened the door and all-but dragged the witcher through the threshold.

He barely got the door closed before Geralt was pressing him back into it. Jaskier huffed a laugh as he curled his fingers into Geralt’s gorgeous white locks, keeping Geralt’s head exactly where it was: sucking and nipping a mark into Jaskier’s neck.

“Not a very subtle location, darling,” Jaskier mumbled.

“Good,” Geralt answered. His leg shifted and his thigh pressed against Jaskier’s hardening length so deliciously, eliciting a gasp from Jaskier’s lips. “Then they’ll know you’re mine.”

A flush crept across Jaskier’s face. “Yours, hm?” Geralt hummed his affirmative. “It’s a pity you heal so fast. I can’t leave anything on you.”

“They know,” Geralt answered, pulling back to admire his handiwork. The grin he gave was downright wolfish, just moments before he leaned back into Jaskier’s space to kiss him so hard that Jaskier was sure his lips would be kiss-bruised tomorrow, too. He couldn’t find any will to complain. Especially not when, minutes later, Geralt continued, “Don’t need marks for everyone to know I’m yours.”

--

They were getting closer to Kaer Morhen.

Although Jaskier knew that was always the destination, and that Ciri and Geralt had to get there soon, he still wanted, more than anything, to stall them. Soon they would have to part, and Jaskier would have to find some way to grow used to sleeping alone again. He didn’t even know if he’d see Geralt again in the spring, like usual. Maybe he and Ciri would stay in Kaer Morhen for protection. The idea of a season without Geralt was enough to inspire Jaskier into a mournful ballad. The threat of longer had him feeling too empty to even pick up his lute.

He didn’t want to ask, but he had to. And it was easier at night, when it was harder to see Geralt’s face. Wrapped up as they were, he knew Geralt could still see his, so Jaskier only spoke once his nose was buried in Geralt’s neck. It was going to be hard enough to harden his body language--Jaskier didn’t think he’d be able to keep his face neutral.

“We’re very far north,” Jaskier began.

Geralt hummed. His fingers played with Jaskier’s hair at the nape of his neck, and it would have been so easy to just pause there, end the conversation, and let Geralt be tender with him. Only for Jaskier to continue to feel on edge as they got closer and closer to Kaer Morhen.

“We’ll be at Kaer Morhen soon.” 

Geralt only hummed his agreement again. Was he really going to make Jaskier ask? Jaskier waited a moment, but Geralt did not continue. Apparently he was. 

“Do I have another week? A few days?”

Geralt’s hand stilled. “Jaskier?” he asked, and he sounded so confused.

“Until we part?” Jaskier just barely whispered it. He didn’t want to will this into reality, but he had to know. He had to know how long he had left with Geralt and Ciri, until he had to make his own way.

Geralt was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke, he sounded pained. “You’re not coming to Kaer Morhen?”

A wave of ice rolled over Jaskier. He pulled back, suddenly very, very frustrated that he had waited until nightfall to have this discussion. He couldn’t see Geralt’s face, only his eyes that just barely shone through the darkness. Well, if he couldn’t see Geralt’s face anyway, then he might as well have the reaction his nerves felt like they needed. Jaskier sat up, looking incredulously at Geralt as he tried to puzzle this out.

“I didn’t--you never--” Jaskier sputtered, turning around to face Geralt. So much for schooling his expression. Jaskier was bewildered. He tried a few more times to speak, his mouth opening and closing over and over until Jaskier was sure he looked quite like a fish. When he finally found his voice, he sounded quite hysterical to his own ears. “I thought it was only you and Ciri going!”

Geralt slowly sat up, too. His hand was hesitant as he reached for Jaskier, but even with the hesitancy, Jaskier startled some when Geralt touched his hip. Geralt continued on anyway, tugging Jaskier closer.

“I thought you were coming, too,” he said, and his voice sounded as hesitant as his hand had been.

Jaskier stared at this man, this bewildering, reticent man before him, his mouth agape. “Geralt, you didn’t-” he started, then paused. Gods, his voice sounded wrecked. Jaskier knew he wanted to go, but he didn’t know just how much he wanted it until now. He tried again. “You didn’t ask me to. I-I thought. I thought I couldn’t.”

Geralt hummed, but instead of answering, he laid back down. After a moment, he hauled Jaskier down with him, pulling their hips flush and smoothing away Jaskier’s surprised squack with his lips. Jaskier melted into the kiss--he hadn’t found some way to mess this up. Though he still didn’t know where this left them.

“Geralt,” Jaskier insisted, finally pushing Geralt away with a hand on his chest.

Geralt hummed, tried to kiss him again, then let out a soft, breathy laugh when Jaskier’s hand stayed firm.

“Jaskier, come to Kaer Morhen with me,” he whispered, and a shiver went through Jaskier’s body. He was pretty sure nothing Geralt had ever said to him sounded quite as seductive as that, and he wasn’t even trying to seduce Jaskier now. “I want you there.”

Jaskier grinned, and leaned in for a kiss, but Geralt pulled back. Jaskier raised an eyebrow, confused, until Geralt nudged his hip against Jaskiers.

“Oh, you great, big--yes, darling. Of course. Of course I’ll come to Kaer Morhen.”

This time, when he surged forward to kiss Geralt, Geralt didn’t pull away. In fact, he wrapped his arms around Jaskier and tugged him on top of his body. Jaskier’s legs bracketed Geralt’s hips and his arms haloed his head as they kissed. He didn’t need to breathe anymore; Geralt had more than filled him.

“Can you please go to sleep?” Ciri asked after a while, and Jaskier had to laugh at how annoyed she sounded. “Gross.”

--

Jaskier was being good. Honestly, he was. If being good meant sulking in the corner of a tavern while Geralt and Yennefer discussed “very important matters” at the other end of it, then he was being a saint.

Geralt had only told them this morning that they needed to stop in Gelibol. Jaskier was excited; he was ready to have an actual bed to sleep rather than the cold, hard ground. Not to mention, Ciri was just as ready as Geralt and Jaskier were to get some time away. What Geralt had failed to mention was the fact that Yennefer was the reason they were in Gelibol, not because he was so overcome with lust for Jaskier that he just had to fuck and be fucked by him until they were both sated enough to finish the hard journey to Kaer Morhen.

Jaskier had stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the sorceress; Cirilla only just barely managed to stop in time to avoid a collision. Then he turned on his heel, leveling Geralt with a glare that Geralt, the absolute demon, shrugged off.

“She has information on Nilfgaard, Jaskier,” he said, stepping ahead of Ciri and leading Jaskier into the tavern with a hand on the small of his back. He brought Jaskier to a table and all but pushed him into the chair. Jaskier glared up at him, but allowed the manhandling. Damn him. “The more we know the better.”

“Can I talk to her, too?” Ciri asked, though Jaskier saw the hurt flash across her face for the briefest of moments.

Geralt must have seen it, too, because he shook his head. “Not yet. Watch Jaskier. Don’t let him do anything stupid,” he said, then paused a moment. “Or drink himself to death.”

Jaskier scowled at Geralt as he turned to the sorceress, and just barely managed to resist the temptation to mock him. He did, however, immediately order copious amounts of ale from the barkeep.

“You don’t like her very much, do you?” Ciri said, sitting down next to Jaskier so that she, too, could watch the conversation.

“Now, what gave you that idea?” Jaskier asked, before downing half his ale in one go, and immediately motioning for another.

The conversation between Geralt and Yennefer went on long enough that by the time Geralt returned to the table, Jaskier was well and truly drunk. And moody. But he had been moody before Geralt had left, so that wasn’t much of a change.

Geralt’s steps were wary as he approached the table. “I thought I asked you not to let him drink himself to death,” he said, looking reproachfully at Ciri.

“He’s still alive,” Ciri answered with a shrug. “And, really, what did you expect me to do when he’s like this? Scream at him?”

Jaskier snorted, but Geralt only pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yennefer wants to talk to you. I already bought our rooms. I’m going to take him upstairs.”

Geralt reached for Jaskier, but Jaskier threw up his hands. “I can walk myself, thank you,” he said, though he grimaced a little at how his words slurred together. Okay, maybe drinking as much as he had in such a short period of time wasn’t the best idea. But Jaskier was emboldened with righteous fury. And maybe a little jealous. And hurt. Mostly the emboldened with righteous fury part, though.

He slammed his hands on the table, loud enough that a few nearby heads turned, and pushed his chair out. Jaskier took a deep breath and stood up, swaying enough that Geralt took a step forward, but Jaskier waved him off. He wasn’t about to be carried out of here in front of Yennefer of Vengerberg. Even if, really, he probably needed it.

Jaskier managed to make it to the stairwell without too many issues, aside from nearly knocking over a stool as he rounded the corner of the bar. Yennefer hadn’t even said anything, except for whatever she had scoffed into her drink as he passed, but Jaskier hadn’t heard it and was too afraid if he wheeled to face her that he would eat the floor. He wanted to maintain some shred of dignity, thank you.

These stairs, however, were not happening. Jaskier stared at them hopelessly for a moment, then stepped up the first one, only to immediately stumble back down. His hands clenched into fists as he tried again, and this time he got four steps up, before he swayed dangerously back and had to be caught by Geralt.

“Geddoff,” Jaskier grumbled, pushing half-heartedly at Geralt. 

He pressed his hand against the wall and tried again. This time he got only one step and was attempting a second when Geralt sighed behind him and swept him up into a bridal-style hold.

“I can do it,” Jaskier insisted, feeling hot shame wash over him.

“Maybe by next week, but we don’t have that kind of time,” Geralt replied, and Jaskier sighed and allowed it--not that he really had much of a choice. The only thing fighting against Geralt would do now is land him very painfully on the floor, and Jaskier had zero intention of causing that kind of drama.

So Geralt carried him to their room, through the doorway, and dropped him unceremoniously on the bed. Jaskier groused to himself and rolled over onto his side, curling his body up on what could generously be called a mattress as he heard Geralt undress.

“S’where are you sleeping?” Jaskier asked. God, he sounded miserable. This wasn’t a good look, and he knew it, but he was far past being able to help it now. “Didn’t Yennefer get a room?”

“Stop it, Jaskier,” Geralt sighed.

Jaskier did stop. He didn’t say a word or move as Geralt’s boots landed heavily on the floor. The mattress dipped a bit as Geralt sat on the other side, and Jaskier could just barely feel the heat from Geralt’s body.

“What’d’you learn?” Jaskier asked.

“Nilfgaard is much farther south. They took a big hit a few months ago. They’re rebuilding and seem to have no idea where Ciri is. Yen thinks they’ll start looking again soon, but we have time until then. She didn’t have more information on Ciri’s powers, but she’s going to look into it, see if anyone can help her. She had some suggestions on how to help her harness it, though.”

Jaskier harrumphed. He was, somehow, more bitter at the fact that talking to Yennefer was useful. Of course it would be, though. The sorceress was brilliant. And had far more ability to do information digging than anyone in their party could. Honestly, Jaskier was surprised Geralt didn’t meet up with her sooner, and yet--

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He sounded petulant. He knew he did. He couldn’t help it.

“Is that what this is about?” Geralt sighed again. “I had a feeling you’d react poorly. Clearly I was wrong.”

Jaskier finally turned just enough to scowl at Geralt, then rolled back over. He grunted a reply back.

“Damn it, Jaskier. What’s the matter with you?” Geralt snarled, finally standing up.

Ah, there they were. It hurt, but a masochistic part of him wanted this. It was easier if Geralt at least had a reason to yell at him. Then Jaskier could control this.

“Nothing, Geralt,” he mumbled.

Geralt rounded the bed, kneeling to look at Jaskier’s face. Jaskier reared back and rolled away onto his stomach so he could turn his face to the other side, ignoring Geralt’s frustrated huff.

“You don’t wear jealousy well, Jaskier.”

Jaskier pushed himself up on his hands, turning his glare back on Geralt. “I’m not jealous, Geralt,” he exploded. He was, but that wasn’t what this was about. Jaskier would always be jealous of Yennefer, for having a piece of Geralt that Jaskier couldn’t have, for being the one Geralt chose over him, but that wasn’t what this was. “You didn’t talk to me. You didn’t tell me the real reason why we were here. Instead you hid it from me and-and-and-”

He didn’t know what else he wanted to say. He didn’t know what the and was. He pushed himself up fully, sitting on his calves, and pressed the heel of his hands into his eyes. 

“Is this it? Where you... Take back my invitation? She can offer more for Ciri, so now it’s time to yell at me and push me away? Because I’m jealous?”

“You pushed me away tonight.”

“Oh, so for once it’s me! Great! I’ll go tell Yen that this time it was me that drove you to her, at least this time I will have had warning before you go off--”

“Jaskier,” Geralt cut him off, and something about his tone made Jaskier quiet. Geralt scrubbed a hand over his stubble, and the room was suddenly so quiet that the sound was loud. “You’re drunk. And you’re spiralling. And you need to stop. You’re being an asshole, and still, I’m here. Not with Yennefer. With you. So will you shut up and stop this?”

Geralt had barely finished speaking before Jaskier was launching himself into Geralt’s arms. Bless witcher reflexes, honestly, because anyone else would have dropped Jaskier. Jaskier hugged Geralt tightly, pressing his face into Geralt’s shoulder. Half of him believed that if he didn’t throw his entire strength into it, then Geralt would still extract himself from Jaskier and leave the room. No matter how much a self-hating part of him had wanted that before, he desperately didn’t want that now.

“Are you going to tell me why you’re acting like this, then?” Geralt asked minutes later, climbing onto the bed when Jaskier showed no sign of letting go.

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier almost sobbed into Geralt’s shirt. Another reason why it was good Geralt was a witcher, with strengthened witcher hearing. Jaskier was barely understandable. Even if he had extracted himself from Geralt’s shoulder, he was weepy from the drink. “Last time-last time you went to her over me every time. And you sent me away. And you didn’t tell me she would be here. And I didn’t want you to go. But. But if you did, I wanted it to be my fault.”

Geralt sighed, his grip tightening on Jaskier’s back as he slowly rocked them back and forth, like Jaskier really was a child. He felt like it, now, just barely holding back tears from his tantrum. He wished he had stopped two tankards ago, so he could have had this conversation like an adult. There was little he could do about it now, though.

“I’m not going anywhere, you drunk fool,” Geralt said. “I should have told you. And you should have talked to me. What, you get a little insecure, and all of your bardic talents for endless speech fly out the window?”

He was teasing him, and Jaskier huffed out a relieved laugh. He hadn’t ruined things, no matter how much he had tried to. 

They stayed there for a long time, just holding each other as Jaskier calmed down. His face remained flush the whole time, though at this point, Jaskier wasn’t sure if that was from the drink or from the shame of his actions. The door to the room beside them opened and closed, and the footsteps must have been familiar, because he felt Geralt relax just slightly against him.

It was a slow process, but eventually they ended up laying in the bed, Jaskier’s body draped over Geralt’s, his arms looped under Geralt’s shoulders and Geralt’s arms drawing idly on Jaskier’s back. Jaskier was slowly drifting off to sleep when he finally spoke again.

“Why don’t I have a nickname?” Jaskier mumbled, but the words held no bite.

Geralt gave him a breathy laugh. “Jaskier is a nickname.”

“That doesn’t count, darling, you know it doesn’t.”

Geralt hummed, but if he replied, Jaskier didn’t hear him, because he was already asleep.

--

After Jaskier had ruined their stay in a town, it took a lot of needling to convince Geralt to make another stop before their ascent to Kaer Morhen.

“Please, Geralt? It will be so nice and cozy in a bed. And you’ll be able to have a bath. In something other than a frigid river. I could wash your hair.”

Geralt hummed. “We could have had a bath in Gelibol.”

Jaskier sighed. “I apologized a hundred times, Geralt. When will you stop punishing me for what I did?”

Geralt smirked, leaning in close to Jaskier’s ear to whisper, “It’s too bad. I had planned to have you on your hands and knees. I would have used my mouth to open you up until you begged me to fuck you. We had a whole night without contracts. Just you, and me, and complete privacy.”

Jaskier shuddered, then glowered at Geralt. “You punish me, Geralt.”

“Maybe in Yspaden,” Geralt answered, shrugging as he pulled away. “If you’re good.”

Jaskier recognized the offering for what it was--a chance for Jaskier to truly make up for his behavior in Gelibol. Though Geralt had insisted he wasn’t mad, Jaskier knew his witcher was as disappointed as Jaskier was that Jaskier had squandered a perfectly good night in an inn. And for all Geralt grumbled, he knew as well as Ciri and Jaskier did that they would need a final night in comfort before they stumbled their way in the frigid cold to Kaer Morhen. Yspaden was their last stop before facing the other witchers, assuming they also returned. 

The relief was evident on Ciri’s face, too. Surely she had dealt with quite enough of Geralt and Jaskier’s bickering after leaving Gelibol. Having such a disappointing, largely unresolved night had set both men on edge, and as such most things set them off into petty squabbles these days. Really, it was for the good of all of them that they stop in Yspaden for a night.

When they entered the town, it was like a spell had been cast over all three of them. Everyone’s shoulders relaxed and they found themselves drawn to an inn as if it was calling to them. They didn’t have much coin left, but there was enough for two rooms for two nights--the unspoken agreement being that they’d spend the following day replenishing their purse--and hot meals all around. They ate their food in silence, just barely managing to nod at each other before they retired to their rooms for the night.

The bath was still hot and steamy when Geralt and Jaskier entered the room, and Jaskier took Geralt’s belongings from his hands, urgently casting his eyes toward the tub before Jaskier set about staging the room exactly as Geralt always did. Swords close and easily accessible, but everything more or less hidden away.

By the time Jaskier turned back, Geralt had shed himself of his clothes and had climbed into the bath, and Jaskier lept to join him. Geralt’s clothes had been discarded in a somewhat organized fashion--they were at least all in one pile--but Jaskier’s garments trailed their way to the bath.

Geralt breathed out a laugh as Jaskier slid into the tub, straddling Geralt’s thighs.

“Who invited you?” he asked, his eyes lighting up with mirth.

“You did. It was written across your face,” Jaskier answered. 

He began washing Geralt, but in a lazy, slow way. Really, his attention was more on feeling Geralt’s body than strictly getting him clean, but judging by the way Geralt sighed and leaned into Jaskier’s hands, he didn’t seem to mind. Jaskier had only just barely started to move on to actual soap when Geralt’s hands started to roam.

“I’m meant to be washing you, Geralt,” Jaskier admonished as Geralt’s fingers trailed intently up Jaskier’s thighs. He gasped as, in response, Geralt pressed his thumbs into Jaskier’s inner thighs, dragging them deliciously toward Jaskier’s groin, only to pull away at the last second.

“So wash me,” Geralt answered, his grin so big his sharp canines showed.

It was difficult to wash Geralt when he was so insistent on being a menace but, somehow, Jaskier prevailed with as little stuttering as he could. It became more difficult, though, as Geralt’s insistent hands looped around Jaskier’s body, rubbing determined circles into the swell of Jaskier’s ass until he finally moved close enough to spread him open. 

Jaskier groaned, his hands stilling over Geralt’s chest as he doused Geralt’s flesh with water, trying to dispel the soap. Geralt’s eyebrow raised, and Jaskier had to resist hard not to kiss that smug look off his face.

“Problem?” Geralt asked, just as a finger began rubbing light circles over Jaskier’s hole.

Jaskier moaned, but shook his head. “N-no, no problem here,” he answered, though his lips remained parted and his breath grew more ragged. He was determined to finish his task, however, no matter how much Geralt wanted to tease him. And if he spilled a little too much water over Geralt’s face as he attempted to wet the witcher’s hair, well, that was only an occupational hazard.

“Dick,” Geralt growled, though the sound held considerably less bite as Jaskier heard a bottle of oil open behind him. 

Jaskier’s thighs tensed in anticipation as he massaged Geralt’s scalp. Geralt’s first finger was insistent upon him, pressing inside with very little resistance, as Jaskier threaded his fingers through Geralt’s hair, spreading the lather. As Geralt continued to fuck Jaskier slowly, thoroughly, every drag of his finger against him pressing deeper, Jaskier leaned forward, until he was supporting himself by his forearms pressed against Geralt’s shoulders. Still he washed Geralt’s hair, being perhaps a bit more exhaustive to the task than strictly necessary, but if it bothered Geralt, he did not speak it, only added more fingers, opening Jaskier up more for him.

Jaskier’s breath was coming out in noisy little puffs, just barely more substantial than whimpers, and he pressed his open mouth against Geralt’s shoulder.

“I thought you were washing my hair?” the smug bastard chided, and Jaskier could hear his smile.

Jaskier’s hands went back to work, now he carded his fingers through Geralt’s hair in the water. “I’m trying. You need to--ah--t-tilt your head back.”

Geralt obeyed him, and Jaskier set to work. He whined as Geralt removed his fingers from inside him, but then Geralt was pressing him forward with firm hands behind his thighs, and the way their hard cocks slid together briefly had Jaskier’s head falling forward, a moan wracking through his body. His job was forgotten, momentarily, as Geralt’s cock pressed against his entrance, and Jaskier pressed into it before the hand Geralt had kept on his thigh pressed him back up.

“You have a task, lark,” Geralt said, and Jaskier’s answering whine was breathy and weak.

Geralt didn’t move until Jaskier lifted his hands and returned to washing the soap out of Geralt’s hair. Even then, the pace he set was torturously slow, almost as if he wanted Jaskier to feel every inch, filling him up. And, Gods, wasn’t that a thought that had his breaths punching out of him.

By the time Jaskier was fully seated on Geralt’s cock, Geralt’s hair was clean. Still, he carded his fingers through Geralt’s hair, but now it was appreciative, loving, rather than filled with purpose. He pressed his mouth into Geralt’s shoulder, babbling at him, talking too fast for either one of them to really understand it, but likely some recognition would make its way through his hazy brain hours later.

When Geralt finally started to move, to fuck up into Jaskier, Jaskier was already overwhelmed in the best of ways. He lifted his head to speak into Geralt’s ear, though most of what came out of his mouth was “Geralt” and “please” and “more” and “yes” rather than actual coherent sentences. If Geralt minded, he didn’t say anything, only let his breath warm Jaskier’s shoulder as he sunk his teeth just over the bone.

His climax came to him slowly, and then all at once. Jaskier jumped straight from digging his nails into Geralt’s chest to desperately grabbing at Geralt’s hair just to have something to hold onto. Jaskier lifted his hips and pressed down in tandem with Geralt’s thrusts, taking him deeper each time, until Geralt was fucking hard against that spot inside Jaskier every time. He went from breathy whimpers and soft begging to loud, passionate moans, begging Geralt, though what he was begging for, neither one of them truly knew.

Geralt’s fingers dug into the back of Jaskier’s thigh, helping Jaskier keep the pace, and his free hand tugged on Jaskier’s cock, pulling him once, twice, three times, until Jaskier finished with Geralt’s name on his tongue and Geralt, biting hard enough to leave a bruise, came inside him only a few thrusts later.

Geralt’s hips slowed, but he didn’t stop fucking into Jaskier until Jaskier’s body fell limp against Geralt’s. Jaskier’s fingers threaded their way through Geralt’s hair again, reveling in the soft, silky locks just as much as he was reveling in his witcher.

They didn’t move again until the water had gone cold, and even then, it was only because Jaskier started shivering. Geralt tried to bundle Jaskier up, concern knitting his eyebrows, but Jaskier waved him off, instead toweling off the witcher, much to Geralt’s chagrin. Jaskier would not be fussed over, not now, not when it was so clearly Geralt’s turn. Jaskier didn’t let Geralt bundle Jaskier into his arms until they were warmly tucked into bed, the fire in the hearth letting off a faint light that illuminated Geralt beautifully.

“Lark?” Jaskier questioned, a playful smile at his lips.

Geralt laughed into Jaskier’s neck, his shoulders lifting abashedly. “You wanted a nickname, didn’t you?”

Jaskier hummed, considering this. “Technically, I believe it’s more like a pet name, darling.” Geralt let out a breath and Jaskier held back a laugh. “I love it.”

Geralt pulled away from Jaskier, lifting himself up on one arm and considering Jaskier. “It suits you,” he said, trailing the back of his fingers along Jaskier’s cheekbone. “My lark.”

Jaskier let his eyes flutter closed as Geralt caressed him. “My heart,” he mumbled in return.

And it was only fitting, only fair. Because Jaskier had given Geralt his own a long, long time ago.

[onthepageoftears]

A Humble Favor (Jaskier x Reader)// Witcher

A/N: This is another entry for @thewitcherbingo​! Also, I’m mostly writing these (and my other imagines) as a gender-neutral reader :) Enjoy!

Summary: Jaskier asks you to attend a banquet with him, but there’s a catch.

Bingo Square Filled: Fake Marriage 

Warnings: swearing!! slight angst??, fluffff, mentions of drinking

Word Count: 1,994

Please Don’t Plagiarize My Work!

Jaskier had asked you to do a lot of things. ‘Y/N, carry my Lute for a moment.’ ‘Y/N, see what Geralt is up to.’ ‘Y/N, tell me what rhymes with silver.’ ‘Y/N, fill my bath with water and add that special lavender you use.’

But this…this was too far.

“Are you fucking insane?” You could feel the veins pop from your skull, your face red from anger.

Jaskier held his hands up as if taming a rabid dog. “Now, calm down a moment—“

“You calm down Julian. You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“I assure you, I do not kid.”

“Oh, really? Because pretending to be your spouse feels like a big joke to me.”

“Fiancé.”

“Fuck off.”

At this very opportune moment, Geralt happened to walk in the room. He was fresh from a relaxing bath, clad in his newly cleaned witcher gear — though now, he walked into quite the shit storm.

He shifted his golden eyes between you and Jaskier, a grunt of impatience settling on his lips. “What’s this about.”

You settled on responding with a harsh glare and a clenched jaw. Geralt’s presence dialed down your anger, mostly because you knew if you tried to lunge at Jaskier he would catch you in an instant. Still, the fumes seeped from your veins, bringing your blood to a near boil.

Jaskier cleared his throat. “I humbly asked Y/N to attend the banquet with me this evening.” You forced a laugh. Geralt slightly lifted his brows, waiting for Jaskier to finish his statement. He didn’t.

“Jaskier.”

Jaskier dramatically sighed. “I need Y/N to pose as my fiancé. Happy?”

“Not even close.”

Geralt’s arm shot out as if to hold you back from attacking the bard. “And what’s in it for you?”

“Well, the pleasure of a friend’s company, is all.” He feigned a tight-lipped smile, then faltered under Geralt’s stare. “And the chance to woo some of the maids there.”

Geralt rolled his eyes and removed himself from the conversation. He sent you a look of understanding, as much as he could, and gave you the space to attack Jaskier if you wanted to.

Instead, you squinted at the bard, mulling over his stupidity. “Do you really think these maids you’re after will fool around with you if you have a fiancé?”

“Oh-ho-ho. It’ll only encourage them.” You stifled a laugh, making Jaskier scoff. “You doubt my romancing abilities?”

“How could I doubt something that doesn’t exist.” The words slipped through your gritted teeth, making Jaskier frown. You let out a dry laugh, “You do realize I have more important things to do than pose as the poor sap who might marry you. Like, I don’t know, working my own job?”

It was true. On any other given day, you might’ve said yes to posing as Jaskier’s fiancé, just for the hell of it. It would be a great story to tell at parties — if you had time for them. But Jaskier knew very well that recently you had been working your ass off at the local tavern — you didn’t dream of being a server, but it made enough coin to hold you over and have enough to save up. And saving up was essential for you to start your very own tailoring shop. It pissed you off that Jaskier didn’t even think of this, didn’t think of you. He was being selfish, like Geralt often said he was.

You retied your apron behind your back and stared the bard down like maybe your glare could burn holes in his skin. “You may be able to convince Geralt to attend your events, but I will have no part in it.” Your voice had a finality to it that made you seem more confident than you felt, but still, you stomped towards the door, hoping to not see his face for the rest of the night.

“I will pay you.” His voice reached your ear just as your hand touched the door handle. The bard ended his sentence with a sing-song voice, making your skin crawl. You didn’t mind Jaskier’s singing — in fact, sometimes you enjoyed it (though you’d never tell him that). What bothered you was that he knew he had you wrapped around his calloused, lute-playing finger.

You turned around. “How much?”

Jaskier’s eyes sparkled with a mischievous glint. “I just knew you’d come around.”

“I haven’t come around to shit.” You crossed your arms over your chest. “How. Much.”

Jaskier pursed his lips. “Twenty crowns.”

“Psh.” You rolled your eyes with a snort. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am most definitely serious.”

You squinted your eyes at him and walked further into the room. “How much are you making?”

Jaskier clenched his teeth. “Seven hundred—“

“You are making seven hundred crowns and you were offering twenty?”

“You are playing a small part in the night—“

“Small part my arse—“

“Geralt was my bodyguard and didn’t get paid anything—“

“But Geralt wasn’t hanging off of your arm like a piece of meat.” You shifted in your spot and lifted your chin. “I want four hundred crowns."

Jaskier’s mouth dropped open. “Fo-four hundred? That’s more than half!”

“So you can do math.” You pursed your lips and narrowed your eyes at him. “Three-fifty.”

Jaskier double-taked. Once he realized you were serious, he slammed his agape mouth closed and clenched his jaw. “One hundred.”

“Three-fifty.”

“One-fifty.”

“Three-fifty.”

“Fine!” Jaskier lifted his arms in surrender. “Two hundred. And—“ He held a hand out to stop you from complaining. “I will pay for your every alcoholic desire after the banquet.”

You quirked a brow. To be honest, you would have settled at a mere fifty crowns, but watching him sweat under pressure was too much fun. Plus, he’d be paying for your much-needed drinks after the shit-show that would undoubtedly be the banquet.

You gave Jaskier one firm nod and stuck out your hand. “Deal.”

“Oh, thank the gods.” Jaskier clenched a hand to his chest and breathed for air he didn’t know he needed. When he reached to take your hand, instead of settling on a firm shake, he began pulling you towards his dresser. “We are already running past schedule, come on.”

After that, everything seemed to move a mile a minute. Jaskier handed you your outfit and sent you off to wash up and get ready. Soon, you were freshly bathed and dressed and met Jaskier just outside the tavern.

He hesitated before helping you into the carriage sent by the royal family; you would be lying if you said you weren’t nervous. You had never gone to an event like this or worn an outfit like the one you had on. Your nervousness grew in your stomach the closer you got to the castle and only worsened when Jaskier nudged you to exit the carriage.

It wasn’t like you were the only nervous one. Jaskier was tapping his fingers against anything and everything, almost as if he was practicing the songs he would play for the night. He was still tapping his fingers as the two of you were guided further into the castle by the guards. You let out a low sigh and took his nervously fidgeting hand in your own.

He leaned closer to you and whispered, “Way to play it up.” You rolled your eyes at his wink, but the feeling in your stomach didn’t disappear.

As you two walked into the banquet, Jaskier placed his arm around your waist. You were surprised by his forward action, but then again, you weren’t. He was a very touchy person — just not often towards you.

You awkwardly smiled at the guests who made eye contact, hoping you didn’t seem too out of place. Lucky for you, Jaskier seemed more out of place than you did. He didn’t seem to know anyone there, which made sense, because they were pretty much all from royalty. It made you feel a bit better, though you still cringed at the lack of interaction you two had.

You leaned into Jaskier to whisper. “Some crowd, huh?”

He chuckled. “Once they drink some, it’ll be more fun. Trust me.”

You decided to believe him.

On the way to the area of the banquet hall where Jaskier had to set up his instruments, a guest of the banquet walked past you two; he stopped after looking at Jaskier. “Excuse me, sir. Your doublet. Where did you get it?”

Jaskier perked up at the question. “Actually, my lovely fiancé made it.” He gestured to you with a proud smile.

You stuttered at the sudden attention but managed to curtsy.

“Excellent craftsmanship.”

Jaskier practically gushed. “Isn’t it?”

You gave Jaskier that doublet after his favorite was ruined on a trip with Geralt. In your nervousness during the arrival of the banquet, you hadn’t even realized that he wore it to such a prestigious event. Your stomach flipped with a different kind of feeling, but you ignored it as you helped Jaskier set everything up.

Throughout the night, you watched Jaskier perform for the guests. He was right; as soon as people started drinking, the mood of the room shifted and people were dancing in no time. You even had a few laughs yourself, especially when Jaskier would wink at you during certain songs. At one point your face hurt so much from smiling, and you were afraid you might need permanent surgery to put your face back to normal.

After the banquet had ended, the two of you decided to walk back to the tavern, as it wasn’t too far. Anyway, the night was perfect for a walk. You held your shoes in one hand and looked up at the sky, which was sprinkled with stars brighter than any other night.

Your eyes turned back to Jaskier, who was plucking strings on his lute. It was amazing that even after a whole night of performing, he still had the energy and desire to play some music. You supposed that was how you felt about certain things as well, but it was something you particularly noticed in the bard.

“It wasn’t that bad, the banquet.” You surprised him with your words, making him look up from the lute. His eyes were warm, his smile even warmer. You looked towards the road ahead. “Pretending to be your fiancé didn’t make me vomit like I thought it would.”

“But there was a slight gag, wasn’t there?” You smirked and caught the glint of playfulness in Jaskier’s eye just before he turned to get something from his pocket. “Almost forgot your payment.” He pulled out a pouch full of coin and held it out for your taking.

“Right. Thanks.” You frowned as he placed the pouch in your hand.“This feels like more than two hundred crowns."

“You need it more than I do.” You raised your brows at his statement, but he only laughed. “For your shop.”

Your eyebrows shot up even further. You were surprised he had listened when you gushed about your dreams one night a while back. It was crazy to think that just this evening you were cursing his name at the thought of him being selfish. Now, you shook your head with a smile, trying to urge the blush on your face to go away.

But that smile soon turned to a frown as a thought entered your mind. “You didn’t leave with anyone tonight.”

“I’m leaving with you, aren’t I?” In the darkness, he couldn’t see your growing blush. “Besides, there will be other banquets.”

You nodded, letting a long sigh escape your lips. It had been a long night, and your feet were killing you, but the tugging feeling in your gut made you clear your throat. You turned to Jaskier and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I believe you promised me a drink.”

[silverlightqueen]

Mischief Managed: Slytherin Dungeons

Across the United Kingdom, millions of children attend school every day, studying Maths, English and Science, but deep in the Scottish Highlands, a lucky thousand schoolkids get to study Potions, Charms and Defence Against the Dark Arts. Whilst the rest of us learn names like Shakespeare, Avogadro and Fibonacci, they learn names like Goshawk, Bagshot and Scamander. Whilst we learn how to do algebra, how to analyse poems and how photosynthesis works, they learn how correctly use a Conjuring Spell, how to brew a Draught of Living Death and how to fly a Nimbus 2000. And naturally, school children will always find a way to misbehave, to get up to no good, to make mischief, but when you add spells, potions and magic into the mix? Let’s just say… they get up to more than just mischief. Welcome to Hogwarts.

hogwarts!au, Min Yoongi x reader - fluff, comedy

Rating: PG (profanity)

Word Count: 1.9k+

a/n: please check the masterlist before you read!! here is the third instalment of my hogwarts drabble series called Mischief Managed! I really hope y’all enjoy this, lmk what you think, I thrive off praise lmao x

silverlightqueen masterlist

Quietus (Quietening Charm)

Type: Charm

Pronunciation: KWIY-uh-tus

Description: Makes a target sound quieter. It is the countercharm to the Amplifying Charm, Sonorus

Etymology: Latin quietus, "calm" or "quiet"

Nox (Wand-Extinguishing Charm)

Type: Charm

Pronunciation: NOCKSS

Description: Extinguishes wandlight. It the countercharm for the Wand-Lighting Charm, Lumos

Etymology: Latin nox, meaning "night"

‘Merlin’s beard,’ I mutter when there’s a loud rumble of thunder, the coffee table before me shaking, and I shiver, bringing my knees up to my chest. I know it’s irrational, but storms are terrifying to me – I always fear they’re going to blow the roof right off, and take me along with it. Being down in the Slytherin dungeons isn’t as bad as, say, Gryffindor tower (losers) because at least we’re underground, and less exposed to the storm. But being in the dungeons, we’re closer to the Black Lake, and the Black Lake during a storm is even scarier than the storm itself.

The rest of the school tends to call it the Great Lake, but we Slytherins know that ‘Great’ is not enough to describe the lake, nor its inhabitants. One of the walls of the common room is made of an enchanted and reinforced glass, letting us see right into the lake, and all that live down there. It’s not a rare occurrence to see Grindylows or Selkies swimming past – some of them even stop to have a look in every now and then, and they’ve unsuccessfully tried break through the glass more than a few times. We even had the Giant Squid latch itself to the window for nearly a week. I saw Professor Snape down in the dungeons more than I ever had before during those few days, attempting to get the squid off – he even tried banging on the glass a few times when he didn’t think anyone was there.

But now? There are no creatures in view – they’re likely hiding at the bottom of the lake, out of harm’s way. Instead, the lake crashes against the glass in strong and brutal waves, the loud sloshing of the water and its collisions with the window echoing around the common room. There is no sign of the moon or stars tonight, the only light coming from the bright bolts of lightning that strike the water. The clouds are heavy and thick, and the sky is completely dark, the water raging on beneath it, rising in great angry mountains and crashing together unforgivingly. Watching the lake, I hug myself tighter as though if I let go, I’ll be dragged out amongst the waves, beneath the storm.

There’s a bright flash of lighting, quickly followed by a loud clap of thunder, the sound resonating within me, and I jump at the noise, unable to stop the gasp that slips out from between my lips. ‘Quietus,’ I hear a groggy voice let out behind me, and I jump again, turning to see Yoongi stood at the bottom of the staircase that leads up to the boys’ dorms, wand in hand. After his spell, the sound of the storm and the lake is considerably quieter, and I feel my fear dissipating, my body losing some of its tension as I loosen my grip on my legs.

‘y/n. What are you doing up?’ he yawns, bare feet padding against the cold floor as he heads over to me, arms stretched out above his head. ‘I… I’m a little scared of storms,’ I admit as he drops his wand onto the coffee table and sits down beside me, slouching back against the sofa with a chuckle. ‘I never knew that. That’s cute,’ he says with a grin, and I roll my eyes, completely distracted from the (much quieter) storm now. ‘Why are you up?’ I ask, and he glances at me amusedly before rolling his neck. The aura of sleep still surrounds him, his black locks messy and soft, his eyes blinking and unfocused, his skin radiating warmth that I can feel even from a few inches away. ‘The thunder was loud, so I thought I’d just come and do a quietening charm, and then I ran into you,’ he grins, voice husky and deep, and I nod, a little embarrassed I didn’t think of performing a quietening charm – I guess my fear made me lose my ability to think rationally.

‘If you’re scared of the storm, why would you come sit in the room where it’s loudest? And where you can actually see it?’ he asks amusedly, and I feel even more embarrassed now. ‘Sitting in my room and listening to it is scarier to me because I can’t see it. I can’t prepare myself for thunder because I can’t see the lightning, and I can’t prepare myself for the waves hitting the wall because I can’t see it coming. When I’m here, it’s like I can… brace myself?’ I say, trying to explain as best as I can, and Yoongi nods, his understanding behaviour making me feel… like I’m not stupid for being scared of storms.

‘Have you had any sleep?’ he asks as he rubs his eyes, and I shake my head. At the mention of sleep, I can feel the tiredness wash over me, and I try my best to stifle a yawn, Yoongi side-eyeing me. ‘Go to bed,’ he says, and I let out a gentle laugh, shaking my head. ‘I can’t – I won’t be able to sleep knowing what’s going on out there,’ I say, motioning to the window, and Yoongi raises an eyebrow. ‘We have Potions with Snape in around… five hours, and the storm doesn’t look like it’ll end any time soon. You really wanna tackle Potions with no sleep?’ he asks, and the prospect makes me want to cry, but I shrug. ‘I’ll be fine. I actually enjoy Potions, and I’m Snape’s favourite anyway – he won’t say anything if I have a little nap,’ I joke, and he lets out a deep chuckle.

‘Well, at least get a bit more comfy then. You’re putting me on edge sitting like that,’ he says, and I laugh as I take my arms from around my legs, relaxing my posture to sit back against the sofa with my legs curled up beside me. Yoongi adjusts his position a little too, getting more comfortable, and I turn to look at him confusedly. ‘Aren’t you gonna go back to bed?’ I ask, and he shakes his head, crossing his arms over his chest as he rests his head back on the sofa, grinning. ‘What kind of best friend would I be if I left you down here alone with the big bad storm?’ he teases, and I roll my eyes, holding my middle finger up at him as my heart warms.

‘Aren’t you cold in those skimpy pyjamas?’ he asks, motioning to my t-shirt, shorts and fluffy socks (in Slytherin colours, of course), my legs and arms completely exposed. The fire is raging strong in the fireplace, but it doesn’t radiate enough heat to keep me fully warm, and I nod, Yoongi rolling his eyes as he reaches for his wand. ‘Accio blanket,’ he murmurs, dropping his wand back onto the table again, just as a blanket (presumably from Yoongi’s room) flies through the doorway and lands on my lap. ‘Thanks,’ I say as I pull it around myself, and it’s still warm from when Yoongi must have had it in bed a few minutes ago.

‘You should’ve got one for yourself too. Aren’t you cold?’ I ask, looking him up and down. He’s dressed in a pair of loose pyjama bottoms and a thin t-shirt in Slytherin colours, arms and feet bare. ‘Move over this way, we can share,’ he says, and I shuffle closer towards him, moving the blanket so that it covers both of us. Yoongi reaches for his wand, whispering ‘Nox’, and the light above us dims completely, leaving us in the warm glow cast by the fire. We sit in a comfortable silence, both of us yawning, our bodies losing all tension as we lean on the sofa and each other, eyes drooping with tiredness.

But the position I’m sat in is uncomfortable – I struggle to fall asleep in my own bed at the best of times, so sat upright against a sofa designed for good back support (I don’t really know why – we’re at secondary school, not a care home) with my feet tucked beneath me, I’m definitely not going to fall asleep any time soon. ‘For the love of Merlin, can you stop fucking fidgeting?’ Yoongi murmurs, eyes closed, and I let out a soft laugh. ‘I’m uncomfortable,’ I reply, and he lets out a sigh. ‘For fuck’s sake, you’re such a pain in the arse, you know?’ he breathes out as he adjusts his position, bringing his legs up and lying down, his head resting on the arm of the sofa. I’m a little confused as to how this is helping me, and he lets out another sigh. ‘Lie down, stupid,’ he murmurs, and I let out a little ‘oh’ of realisation, slowly moving to lie down in the gap between Yoongi’s body and the back of the sofa.

Our legs are outstretched together and my head rests just beside his shoulder, my arms curled up at my chest, and I can feel myself beginning to drop off again, sat in this comfortable position. But after a few minutes, my arms become stiff, and I don’t want to move them and bother Yoongi again, especially considering he could be asleep in his comfy bed right now, with his own personal space. ‘y/n, you can move if you need to. I’m not going to murder you,’ he whispers amusedly, and I feel embarrassed again at him being able to sense my thoughts. ‘It’s my arms, but I haven’t got anywhere to put them,’ I whisper back, and he lets out another sigh. ‘I swear to God. It’s always something with you,’ he mutters half-heartedly, and I can’t help but laugh. He grabs one of my arms and pulls it across his own body, my limb now fully stretched out, and I feel much more comfortable already, moving my other arm behind me. ‘Thanks, Yoongi,’ I whisper after a few moments, already dozing off, and through my slumber, I hear his deep soothing voice murmur back, ‘You’re welcome, y/n.’

I awake after a couple hours of restful sleep, blinking in the light from the already lightening sky, and see that the storm has already calmed – it’s still raining, but the lake isn’t raging anymore, and I can’t hear any thunder either. I check my watch quickly, the time reading 5.28, which gives me two hours before I have to get up. I drop my arm back across Yoongi’s torso, closing my eyes again, before I realise that my head is on his chest, and my leg is also outstretched across his, as well as his arm being curved around me. And it’s nice – Yoongi would rather fight a troll than let me hug him, so I’m enjoying this rare moment of physical intimacy with him. I look up at his face, his features softened by slumber and his lips parted with a slight pout, and my heart warms at how cute he is. I get comfortable again, letting myself drift back to sleep with a smile on my face and my head on his chest.

[talesofstyles]

Mates

Hello! What have we got here? A best friend!H. Does it have smut? Yes ma’am. Have I ever written smut before? Absolutely not. Do I want to run and hide in the darkest deepest part of the earth after writing this? YES. 

Bless @waitingfortwilight (+for proofreading it!) and @all-things-fic because they’re most likely sick of hearing me talking about this in our group chat for the past few weeks, but hey it’s done now ;) also to @harrysdimplles for being excited with me!

Hope you like it and tell me what you think! xx

It was around six thirty in the morning when Harry woke up. He is one of the ten percent of the global population who are morning larks. He absolutely loves waking up early in the morning and almost never stays in bed past eight.

Meanwhile, you are the complete opposite. You are truly, definitely, utterly, completely, absolutely not a morning person. You hate waking up in the morning. You always set your alarm ten minutes before the actual time you need to get up so that you’ve got time to be pissed in bed because you have to wake up. Poor Harry made the mistake of waking you up early in the morning, thinking you’d join him for a morning run a week after both of you had settled into your new shared flat, and boy did he regret that decision. You’d given him a right bollocking, and sulked around like a stroppy child for the rest of the day.

You were never a morning person, so that was why Harry was confused when he heard sounds coming from the kitchen as he walked through to make himself a cup of coffee. He was looking down, rubbing the sleep away from his eyes as he entered the kitchen, so he didn’t realise the tall figure stirring coffee in the mug next to him wasn’t you.

“Morning mate,” greeted the man before he took a sip of his coffee.

Harry mumbled in response before it was cut with a yawn. “Mor- whoa,” he raised his palm to make a stop sign, and continued after he finished yawning. “You don’t live here.”

“Uh,” awkward silence filled the kitchen. “I don’t.”

“What are you doing here?” He knew it was a stupid question, but that somehow didn’t stop him from asking.

“Er, uh,” the guy looked down at his mug for a second before he answered. “Visiting.”

“Visiting what? My roommate’s uterus?”

The guy took a big gulp of his coffee and sat the mug down in the sink. “Uh, I’ll get going. Nice seeing you again, Harry.”

“Alright, bye bye now,” Harry said as the other guy disappeared from the kitchen, before muttering, “what a nonce,” under his breath.

Harry wasn’t usually mean. He was all about treating people with kindness, but apparently the motto didn’t apply to his roommate’s exes. It had nearly been a month since you broke up with Jamie.

Boy, was he fit. He’s still fit. He’s so fit. Legit ten out of ten. Was that the reason you keep getting back together even though you knew for sure that the relationship was toxic? Probably. But hey, you were a young woman in your early twenties; as young as a spring chicken, still naïve—and shallow, apparently—so nobody can blame you.

Jamie was your first serious boyfriend, because no—we are not going to count that nerdy bloke with glasses who used to do your maths homework in year 6. You were together on and off for four years, but you decided that enough was enough. It was your decision to end things in the first place, but that didn’t mean that you were okay with it. You did it because you knew it was the right thing to do—but deep down you knew you didn’t want it to end. Because controlling and guilt-inducing aside, Jamie was a nice bloke. He’s got a great sense of humour (unlike your darling roommate whose jokes tend to give you physical pain), and good Lord those lips always seem to know what you want to hear every single time. He’s romantic; such a good cook, and goodness gracious glory you, those abs. That face. Those green eyes that twinkle every time he talks about something that he is passionate about. He was a dream. But again, you knew ending it was the right thing to do.

You’d barely left your flat during the first week after your break up. You were so miserable, and Harry tried everything he could to cheer you up, but he didn’t have a lot of experience in helping girls get through a break up. All he knew about break ups was the fact that there were three phases (thank you Chandler) - phase one: sweatpants, phase two: getting drunk and going to a strip club, and phase three: picturing themselves with other people. He did offer to accompany you to a strip club incase you wanted to, but you threw one of the pillows on the couch at him for suggesting such a thing. So he just let you be. He threw away your healthy—re: shit—ice cream and swapped it with Ben and Jerry’s because he knew that you like to eat ice cream whilst watching Sleepless In Seattle or You’ve Got Mail, or basically any rom-coms that you decided to watch that night. He did the washing up for seven days in a row without moaning, and he even did some of your laundry too. He didn’t press you to talk it out, but he made sure that you knew that he was there for you.

You were so much better during the second week. In fact, you were too much better. Harry was surprised that it only took you a week to get over a four year relationship, but he was pleased to have his happy, bubbly roommate back. He was a little suspicious, but he brushed it off. He thought maybe you didn’t really love Jamie and that was why you were quick to get back on your feet. Or maybe you just had the emotional equivalent of a scavenging sewer rat. He’d never know.

Third week? You were back to square one.

“Well, well, well, look who’s up,” Harry greeted you as you appeared in the kitchen whilst he was beating the eggs and watching Gordon Ramsay as he did the same thing on his iPad. “Morning, love. Late night, eh? Y/N and Jamie sitting in a tree, K I S S I N G~”

“Morning,” you answered plainly. It was way too early for you to be arsed about his teasing remarks.

“So,” He paused as he added some crème fraiche into the pan. “Are you gonna tell me what happened last night? How that happened? You two getting back together?”

You sighed as you made your way to the counter where your nespresso machine sat. You put a capsule into the machine and turned it on because you needed some caffeine in your system before you could talk about it. Although you had a feeling by looking at Harry’s smirk that you were going to need a much stronger drink.

“Nah,” you replied and let out a yawn before you continued. “Was just a booty call.”

“A booty call?” Harry looked up from the pan at you. “Are you cool enough?”

“I am cool. The coolest I’ve ever been. In fact, I’m so cool that I’m gonna text him again for another booty call tonight. And maybe this time we can go out and have a booty breakfast.”

“You, my friend, are the furthest thing from cool. As the President of the casual sex society, local chapter—I call bull on your booty.”

“What?” You frowned. “It’s just a booty call.”

“Not with you it isn’t. You think that booty breakfast will maybe lead to a booty dinner, then maybe booty engaged and booty married, and have a couple booty kids and a booty retirement home, and then booty die together.”

“That isn’t true!” You protested.

“Yes it is! You know it is.” He went on. “You two keep going on and off you’re like Rihanna and Chris Brown, minus the punching and the duet.” Harry insisted as he put the eggs on two plates for both of you. “You were already doing so good last week, don’t go back there again.”

“Well, girls gotta eat!” you grumbled like a three year old whose candy had just been taken away, and Harry let out a chuckle.

“Go eat!” he stressed. “But don’t eat at the same restaurant.”

You huffed. “I don’t do one night stands.”

“So don’t stand. Lay down.” He grinned as he caught the cherry tomato that you threw at him in response. “Seriously, love, you need to get over him. He was a bellend.”

“You’re a bellend.”

“Oi! I was just trying to help!” this time he scrunched up a kitchen towel and threw it your way. “Listen, we’re going out tonight, yeah? S’gonna be fun.”

“I don’t feel like going out.”

“Alright, then. But remember, you can’t call Jamie again. I know it’s really not my business but you’re my best friend and I just don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“I won’t.” You reassured him.

Harry reached out his pinky finger. “Pinky promise?”

“Oh my God, what are you? Five?” You took a sip of your coffee before you gave in and reached out yours. “Fine, promise. Happy now?”

***

“Harry!”

He sighed at hearing his name being yelled again for the third time. You had been quite short with him somehow even though he did nothing wrong. You weren’t usually like that and he knew it was just because you were upset, so he gave you a dick pass.

“What?” Harry asked you as he stood up from the couch to find you. “What did I do now?”

“I just changed the toilet roll three days ago and it’s already gone! How dirty is your arse?!” You grumbled.

Harry looked at you in disbelief. “For fucks sake woman it’s three quid for nine bleeding rolls!”

“Aye! Sorry didn’t know we’re a Tory household now, splashing money around like we won the lottery.”

He raked his hand through his hair. “Alright that’s it. Let’s get you out of the house. You’re mean at home.”

“Hey!” You swat his arm in response to his remark. Then he ended up showing off the arm that you hit playfully and pointed at it to prove his point.

“See?! Come on, let’s go get changed. Spit spot. Move along now. You can go and get ready now voluntarily or I’ll just drag you out by force in your two days old pyjamas. The choice is yours.” He shrugged and opened his palms.

You huffed but you did what he told you to do anyway, because maybe he was right—you needed the change of scenery. You wanted to just get back in bed since it was Saturday and took a three hour nap, but you knew that pest of a roommate of yours wouldn’t let you, and you knew that what he said wasn’t an empty threat. So, you went to take a quick shower and get ready.

“Seriously, where are we going?” You asked Harry as you waited for him to start his orange Vespa scooter.

“Ah ah ah,” Harry shook his head. “What did I say before? No questions, just put your helmet on.”

“Are you gonna kidnap me?”

“We live together!”

“Yeah, but who knows? Maybe you’re after my kidney.”

“Oh my God woman just shush, put your helmet on and hop on so we can get going, yeah? S’gonna be fun, promise. No kidney stealing or some other dodgy stuff.”

You couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle for the first time in a while, and Harry grinned. “See? You’re better outside.”

After putting the helmet on, you hopped onto the scooter and you held his waist. But then you felt his hands reaching for your arms to wrap it around his tummy and rest it on his belly button, making you sit closer to him. Your front was nearly glued to his back, which you were sure they would be in a second when you hit the road because the slightest bump would shift you forward.

You weren’t sure what it was. You weren’t sure why you were feeling a little flustered being that close to Harry. For a second you thought maybe it was just because you had broken up recently and your emotions were out of whack. That wasn’t the closest you’d ever been with Harry. You were both—still are—massive cuddlers, so it wasn’t rare for you two to sit on the couch cuddling as you watched whatever it was on the telly. You tried to brush it off. Besides, Harry was fit—still is and forever will be—so you told yourself it’s normal and that you don’t need to fret about it.

After a million bumps and sudden brakes, you both arrived in Camden. You thought Harry was going to take you to the market, but he surprised you by stopping the scooter in front of a grey building.

“Alright, get down and wait for me here, I’ll be back in a tick, just gonna park there.” He said, and you hopped down immediately, handing him your helmet afterwards.

He was back with you shortly with a huge grin plastered across his face. “Ready t’av some fun?”

“Oh!” you exclaimed. “Is it one of those escape room thing? Oh my God Harry, we are both dumb—we’ll never get out!”

Harry protested. “Hey!”

You burst into laughter when you saw the look on his face. Neither of you had ever been to an escape room before, so you didn’t know what to expect. But you couldn’t deny that you were quite excited, although never in a million years would you admit that to Harry’s face.

It turned out that you were required to book the room beforehand, and obviously you hadn’t since it was pretty spontaneous. Fortunately, there was one room left available right away.

“We only have the Zen Room available for now, would that be alright with you?” The receptionist kindly offered you.

“Oh, what is it about?” Harry asked her.

“Basically your mission is to help an orphaned Japanese girl retrieve her priceless family heirlooms. Are you familiar with Asian culture? Also it’s not a requirement but if you can speak Japanese that would make it so much easier.” She explained.

“Well, I know a bit about the culture, yeah,” Harry nodded.

You lifted your eyebrow as you looked at him. “What do you know?”

“Well, I went to BLACKPINK concert once.” He gave a lopsided grin and the receptionist had a little chuckle.

“Oh my God.” You facepalmed. “We’re never getting out aren’t we?”

Harry insisted that it was going to be just fine and that it was going to be fun so you agreed to do it. The receptionist gave you a quick briefing before walking you to the end of the hall where the Zen Room was.

“There’s a screen inside and I will give you clues from time to time. Have fun!” she said as she opened the door for both of you. You thanked her and as soon as the door was closed, the light turned on and you scanned the room around you.

The room wasn’t big, but there was something like a sliding door that you were sure that would open at some point and there’s got to be another room behind that.

“Oh bollocks! Everything is in Japanese, I can’t read anything.” You grumbled as you began looking around for clues.

Harry mumbled nonchalantly. “I can speak Japanese.”

“What?! I didn’t know that.” You replied. Feeling a little relieved and for the first time you thought maybe you two were going to nail it.

He lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “You never asked.”

“Alright, say something.” You requested, curious about what would he sound like speaking in foreign language. He was shit in French but you thought maybe he was good in Japanese?

“Uh, konnichiwa. Arigatou gozaimasu.”

You shook your head. “No, not just hi and thank you. Say a proper sentence.”

“I can’t. That’s the only words I know.”

“THAT’S IT?!” you hollered.

“Hey, it’s still Japanese!” he argued.

“Two words don’t count!”

“Knowledge is a knowledge no matter how small!” he insisted.

You could go on but you realised that you had a more important task. You wanted to solve the mystery before the time ran out because they gave free ice cream if you manage to get out in under an hour, and you were willing to fight for free ice cream, so you told Harry to find as much clues as he could in one part of the room whilst you searched the other part.

Harry jumped up in surprise and tumbled when the telly suddenly turned on and the receptionist’s face appeared on the screen. You cackled, and the receptionist failed to stifle her snigger. “Sorry, are you alright?” she asked.

“Well, physically I’m fine.” He replied. “Emotionally, I’m bruised.”

You howled at his response and the fact that he was looking down at the floor in embarrassment made it even harder for you to control your laughter. The girl gave you the first clue and told you to try to open the wooden box in the corner of the room. You tried to move things around before you heard Harry squeal when he found a bunch of keys.

“Hey, look at what I found!” he beamed proudly.

“What?” You asked curiously. “What is it?”

He showed you the keys that he found and shook it to make a rattling noise. “Keys!”

“Aaah! Open it! Open it!”

He struggled to get the key into the keyhole. He had tried five different keys and none of them seemed to work. “It doesn’t fit!” He grumbled, but then giggled not even two seconds afterwards. “Hehehe.”

You looked at him in confusion. “Why are you laughing?”

“If I got a penny for every time I said that.”

You rolled your eyes. “I don’t think any of those keys will work. That’s too easy. There’s got to be something else.”

It was safe to say that you both sucked at it. You had been in the room for twenty minutes and so far both of you had only found two little coins, a silk hand fan and a bunch of useless keys. You had tried to open every drawer and looked at underneath the tables but you found nothing. But then the sliding door suddenly opened and both of you looked at each other in horror.

“Did- what- how?!” you gasped.

“I’ve got no idea! Do you think this room is haunted?” he deadpanned. He knew you were a wimp and he found pleasure from the look of your face.

You scolded him. “HARRY!”

He giggled and walked behind you into the other room. Actually, he knew why the door opened—because he opened it. He was moving some paintings around and as soon as he moved that painting of a fish on the wall, the door opened, but there was no way on earth he would tell you that. And being the pest that he was, he made some creepy, breathy sound of your name to wind you up, making you shudder in fear.

“Harry I swear to God if you don’t stop, the first thing I’m going to do the second we get out of here is to kill you.” You threatened him, and he howled in response.

There was a giant sudoku on the wall, a table with some antiques on top of it and an empty aquarium. Great. You were shit at sudoku and you were sure that Harry was even worse.

“Oooh! Sudoku!” Harry clapped his hands excitedly.

You glanced at him. “Do you know how to play it?”

“Of course! I’m really good at it. I’m the best. I’m the king of sudoku!”

“Have you ever played it?”

He shook his head. “Not once in my whole life.”

“Oh God, we’re never getting out.”

“Come on, let’s just put those numbers in the slot.” He suggested as he began to take the wooden numbers out of the box.

“That’s not how it goes.” You folded your arms and Harry tilted his head at you, his forehead furrowed.

“That’s literally how it goes!”

“I mean,” you licked your lips for a second out of habit before you went on. “There’s got to be some rules. We can’t just put random num- ah! I remember we can’t put the same numbers in one region!”

“You’ll find me in the region of the summer stars~”

You smacked your forehead with your palm when he started to sing. After knowing him for a year and a half and lived together for about seven months, you knew that he sings 24/7. Most of the times it’s nice because you couldn’t deny that he’s got beautiful voice, but sometimes it makes you want to tape his mouth shut.

“Shut your trap and just put it in!”

“I love it when you talk dirty to me.” He smirked at you as he put a nine and another nine but upside down next to each other in the slots.

You rolled your eyes. “That’s upside down you absolute spoon.”

You ended up doing the sudoku alone because Harry was shit at it. You weren’t much better, but you were better nonetheless. He decided to go and look for other clues. When you were done with the sudoku—re: gave up—you frowned when you looked around and couldn’t find Harry. You walked to the other room and you finally found the bloke sat on the floor in the corner of the room eating a Twix.

“What are you doing?” You asked.

“I need to gain strength. You want a bite?” He replied as he took another bite of the chocolate bars. Yes, he always took a bite of both of them at once because he didn’t want one of the chocolates to get lonely in his tummy.

You chuckled. “Mate we’re shit at this we haven’t even done much.”

“But still fun, right? You’re having fun?” His eyebrows waggled as he licked his fingers after the last bite of the chocolate.

“I am. But I give up.”

He cackled. “We can still get ice cream after this if y’want? Screw free ice cream.”

“You’re buying?” You grinned at him, and he nodded.

“You know what? I’ve got a better idea. We’ll go to Shake Shack after this for some burgers and frozen custard cause daddy don’t skimp.”

“Great!” you cheered. “Am starving.”

“I swear you’re either starving, freezing or fuming.”

“I want to deny but you’re right.”

“What? Say tha’ again, can’t hear ya,” he teased.

You just sat together until the time ran out and the door opened, accepting the fact that you were just shit at it but hey at least you tried. After that, Harry fulfilled his promise of buying you a burger and frozen custard.

“Oh the cow in the meadow goes moo~” Harry started to sing again as soon as you sat down at the table with your food.

“……”

“Oh the cow in the meadow goes moo~”

“……”

“Then the farmer hits him on the head and grinds him up and that’s how we get hamburgers~”

***

“Y’alright ya wee cunt?” You greeted Harry, who had some random bird’s mouth attached to his neck. You were sure it would leave a mark or two. “How you been deein’?”

Harry pulled his neck away from the bird as soon as he heard you. “For God’s sake mate how much you’ve been drinking?!”

“Eh,” you shrugged. “Just a couple.”

“A couple my arse! C’mon let’s get you home, yeah?”

“What about your b- wait Harry, your bird’s gone!”

“S’alright. Not important. Let’s just get you home before you start calling people cunts again.”

“Hey! I don’t call people that.”

“You literally just called me that!”

“Well yeah that’s my pet name for you but I don’t call other people that.”

“What kind of pet name is that?!” Harry said as he held your hand and began walking towards the door. But just a couple steps away from the door, Rolling in the Deep came on and Harry gasped. “Oh fuck!”

“Wanna stay for this one song?” You smirked at him and you knew he wouldn’t say no.

***

The next morning you woke up feeling like you had just been hit by a truck. Your head was in bits and the rain outside sounded more like gunfire to you. You didn’t remember much from the night before and you surely didn’t know how you got home since you weren’t sure how pissed Harry was last night, but the fact that you woke up alone in your own bed made you sigh in relief.

“Morning, love. Coffee?” Harry greeted as he spotted you in the kitchen.

“Ssshh, why are you yelling?” You grumbled as you covered both of your ears with your hands.

Harry chuckled lightly and whispered. “I’m not? But alright. How are you feeling?”

“My head’s in bits. How much did I drink last night?”

“Well, the club’s gone because you drank it.” He teased. “Also you called me a cunt three times so you obviously had tequila.”

“Did I try to call him?”

“Yes. And you ran to the loo when I tried to take your phone away.”

“Did you manage to take it?”

“That I didn’t because I didn’t want people to think I was snooping in a ladies toilet. They’d kick me out.”

“Oh fuck! I called him didn’t I?”

“Nah, you didn’t. After you came in, I peeked inside and shouted so everyone could hear that you were about to call your ex. There were a couple girls inside and they talked you out of it.”

You couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle, and you wished you’d remembered it because that sounded funny. “What would I do without you, H.”

“Hey, s’nothing. What do you want to do today?” He asked you as he poured some muesli into the bowls.

“Sleep.”

And that was what you did for most of the day. After you had breakfast you took a nap and woke up around two in the afternoon. It was raining cats and dogs outside so you settled on the couch watching Friends because you spent the last few weeks watching rom-coms and if you watched another rom-com you swore you would lose your shit. You were snuggling up to Harry’s side, his left arm wrapped around you as you laughed at Joey and Rachel bickering. There were some slices of pizza left on the coffee table because none of you could be arsed to cook, along with two cans of coke.

“Do you want to finish that?” You asked Harry, tilting your head to the box of pizza.

Harry yawned before he answered. “I’m full.”

“Alright, I’ll clean that up.” You said as you rose from the couch.

“I’ll help.” Harry immediately picked up the box and you put the drinks on top of the box before you bent over to wipe the coffee table. “Watch out!” Harry warned you, but it was too late. Your back bumped the box of pizza, making the remaining coke spill all over his Rolling Stones shirt.

“Oh God, I’m sorry!” You panicked because you knew that was his favourite t-shirt. You grabbed a couple tissues right away and began rubbing the stained part of the shirt hoping it would help take away some of the liquid before it was stuck to the fabric. “Harry, I’m sor-“

You weren’t sure how it happened, but the next thing that happened surprised you. His lips were pressed against yours all of sudden, cutting you mid-sentence. He broke the kiss for two seconds to put the box of pizza and the cokes back on the table before leaning back to you and pressing his lips against yours again. You’d soften up this time around. You knew that was wrong. It was Harry and he was your best friend, not to mention that you live together and that would complicate the shit out of things. But it just felt so right. You never thought you would actually kiss him and you thought it would be awkward, but it wasn’t. You parted your lips when he swiped his tongue along your bottom lip subtly, his hands moved from your back to cup your jaw.

You couldn’t help but let out a little giggle against his lips when you felt something poking you in the stomach. Harry pulled his lips away instantly as soon as he realised what made you giggle. The look on his face made it harder for you to stifle your snigger.

“Shit,” his breaths quickened. “Sorry. I- I didn’t know what came over me. We’ve never- I shouldn’t have-“

You laughed as you dropped to your knees, and you swore Harry looked like he’d just seen a ghost. His pupils were dilated and he took in a sharp breath. “Y/N what are you doing?”

“Hunting elephants.”

“I’m serious.”

“What do you think? Is it not obvious?” You asked.

“It is. Fuck, I mean- you sure? You’re gonna-“ he blabbered.

“Suck you off, yes.” You cut him short and nodded.

He was less tense by then, a grin creeping up on his face “Such a dirty mouth.”

“Well I’m about to put your dick in my mouth so I’m not really concerned about oral hygiene right now.” You rolled your eyes.

“Hehehe.” He giggled, and you looked at him in confusion.

“What?”

“You’re gonna see my willy.”

“I know.”

“I’ve got some hair there.”

“Okay.”

“Not a lot because I still shave a little to keep it nice and pretty but-“

“Harry,”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

“Okay, sorry.”

You didn’t know what came over you to make you want to do it, but it was a bit too late to chicken out, and frankly you wanted to do it. In four years of a relationship—yes, on and off but we’re going to round that up for dramatic purpose—you only gave Jamie head once so really, you didn’t know what came over you.

You knew he wasn’t small. You saw a glimpse of it a couple months prior when he forgot to lock the bathroom door, but you certainly didn’t get a good look of it. Little did you know that the next time you look at it, it’d nearly poke you in the eye.

His eyes widened when you looked up to him, muttering a series of profanities under his breath. You took a deep breath before taking it into your hand, and he choked on his breath as soon as your hand came into contact. He felt heavy in your hand. He was hard and you could see him already leaking from the tip.

“Give it a kiss, love. Please.” He begged, and you obliged. Kissing the tip lightly, before you began licking from the base to the tip. You weren’t really sure what to do, but the noises that he made egged you on so you thought maybe you were doing fine. His head lolled back when you gently sucked the tip.

The grunts and praises that kept flowing out of his mouth encouraged you to take it further into your mouth. It felt really heavy and you could just feel it weighing down on your tongue as he pushed past your lips. You took the rest of him in your hand and you began to work your hand and mouth around him in sync. You knew that there was a slight chance that both of you would regret what you were doing, but it didn’t matter in that moment.

You knew that he was close when he started whining. You let him go for a second to ask him before it was too late. “Where do you want it?”

You could hear his ragged breathing but he couldn’t form a sentence - that was how fucked up he was. You let him go again for a second. “Okay, aim wherever you like, just don’t get it in my ha- MATE YOU HAD ONE JOB!”

“Sor- sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He apologised as he fell down to the couch behind him, trying to even his breathing. “Love, that was, wow I- wow I can’t even speak.”

You chuckled. “S’alright. You’re welcome by the way.”

“You.” He shook his head in disbelief, still grinning from ear to ear. “Didn’t know you have it in you, babe.”

“I’m gonna take a shower then we’re gonna go out and play laser tag.” You smirked as you jumped to your feet.

“What?”

“What? You don’t want to play laser tag?”

“Well yeah of course I want to. S’fun seeing you curse at a bunch of eight year olds and make them cry.” He paused to take another deep breath before he went on. “But, uh, you don’t want me to reciprocate?”

“Nah, I’m fine. Maybe later.” You gave him a lopsided grin.

“Fine we’re going. But-“

“What?”

“Wanna snog again before we go and get ready?”

You nodded sheepishly. “Okay.”

-

bow chicka wow wow

[7deadlycinderellas]

no more math and history, ch2

Ao3 link

Ygritte’s alarm wakes the three of them twenty minutes before Reville.

Arya groans into her pillow, and Meera jumps up and starts pulling on her clothes.

“Quick!” she tells her, “Or all the good cereals will be gone!”

Arya groans again, but gets up and stretches.

No one who works activities has breakfast duty, so most of them leave bed before the campers in order to get first dibs on breakfast before they have to set up their activity areas for the morning.

Arya’s stomach growls and she ignores the smell of the cooking breakfast pizza from one of the stations to grab a box of Fruit Flakes from the buffet station. It’s always the same a pile of single serving cereal boxes and yogurt cups along with whatever the hot breakfast was that day.

She gets sidetracked by movement by one of the station windows. She grins at the sight of the curly hair atop it’s head, and she can’t keep her joy to herself.

“Hot Pie!” she yells happily.

Hot Pie is clearly not paying attention because he jumps and thumps his head on the top of the window.

He rubs his head and blinks blearily looking at her,

“Arry?” he asks. Arya chuckles. She wonders if he even remembers that’s not really her name.

He passes her a bowl and the milk pitcher and she eats her breakfast standing up while they catch up. There’s not too much to go over really.

When she tells him that she’d already seen Gendry the day before he had nodded.

“He always liked you better than the rest of us. Make sure to be nice, it’s been a hard few years for him.”

Arya’s surprised. That’s more wisdom than she thought Hot Pie had in his entire body. Maybe they’ve all changed a lot.

Hot Pie has to leave when he gets hollered at to come and help. Arya even smiles seeing the shaggy head and badly burned face of the man the meaner campers dared to call the Hound.

“Clegane, they still let you stay here?” she asks, spying the back of the old camp maintenance man’s head.

“Fuck off,” he says, without even a look to see who spoke.

After shoveling down her cereal, Arya leaves to help Ygritte at the stables. They feed the horses and muck out the stalls before running back to the cabin to change into their swimsuits and heading down to the waterfront.

The crowd has already begun to gather, boys and girls on opposite sites, counselors and CITs in back. Arya and Ygritte sneak into the line, next to Shireen, who looks somewhat apprehensive.

Gendry blows his whistle, and raises his voice until everyone can hear him.

“OK! Here’s how this works. Today you get your clip, you will wear this clip at all times here at the lake. If I catch you without a clip, I get to stuff you in an inflatable life jacket until you’re past the sand. Yes-”

He intones with a hint of humor,

“-This includes counselors too. The first test will be swimming to the first row of flags and back-”

He points out about twenty feet in the lake, where blue flags mark off the shallow parts of the water.

“Do this and you will get a blue clip, meaning you may swim freely in the same area. The second test will be holding your breath underwater for forty five seconds. This will earn you a yellow clip. You must have at least a yellow clip to use any of the camp’s canoes. Now the last test-”

He points out to the middle of the lake, where a rock can be seen. They call it the island, but it’s really just a large rock.

“You will swim to the island and back to shore without stopping. If you get tired and need one of us to come and get you, roll on your back and raise your right hand. If you complete this swim and earn your red clip, you may swim anywhere in the lake. But only when one of us is on lifeguard duty.”

He points down the sand to Lem and Tom, two of the other lifeguards.

He blows his whistle and motions for the boys to come and test first.

Arya watches Bran roll his wheelchair to the end of the pier while the other boys are wading in. He locks the wheels and lowers himself to the end of the wooden dock. Throwing his left leg over his right, he is able to get himself off the dock with a sort of twist and push.

Gendry’s watching him, Arya realizes, to wait until he gets in position with the other boys. It doesn’t take long, and she can see Bran whispering words of encouragement to the younger boys. And next to her, Shireen watches him too.

“He’ll be fine,” Arya assures her, “All of us Starks can swim. Our mother was a champion in secondary school and all of us could swim before we could walk.”

Her bathing suit still bears the black and blue logo of the Cerwyn Dolphins, the team she had swam for until this past school year. Bran had spent so many afternoons at the seven center pool, claiming that in the water it almost felt like his body was all his again. Mum had long claimed that all of them had Tully blood as much as Stark.

Shireen looks at her askance.

“You’re Arya Stark then,” she says, “Gendry told me yesterday. He said you used to be friends.”

“He did? We’re still friends,” Arya objects.

Shireen nods.

“I’m glad. He doesn’t seem to have many friends.”

Gendry’s already blown the whistle twice, and several of the boys have stepped out of the water and accepted their blue or yellow clips. Bran is not among them. When the long swim starts, Arya watches several of the younger boys watching Bran and whispering. When his hand slams onto the pier, Arya steps forward to congratulate him, and help him back to his chair.

“Mum would be proud,” she assures him.

“Blood of the fish, she always said,” Bran replied, as he took his red clip from Gendry.

“Where’s your unit off to this afternoon?”

“Sports field. I heard Grey Worm and Loras saying something about basketball today.”

“Hmm,” Arya muses, “Don’t let them know how good you are before you kick all their arses.”

Bran smirks and rolls off, and Arya returns to the line with the girls for her turn.

The test is barely a test. Arya got her red clip when she was ten years old. This year she’s the first back from the rock, Meera trailing behind her, and a surprise third, Shireen.

“Do you swim much?” She asks Shireen, when they’re towelling off and getting their clips.

“I grew up on the island of Dragonstone.”

Arya frowns, trying to remember.

“That’s that island down south where all the rich people rent houses for summer holidays right?”

Shireen nods.

“The place is packed with tourists in the summer, but there’s not a lot to do the rest of the year, so I swam. My father owns...owned, a lot of…”

Her voice trails off, and Arya knows not to push. She spies Gendry looking at them and changes the subject.

“Where’s your unit headed after lunch and quiet time?”

“Riding, all of the girls are really excited.”

“That’s great! That’s what I’m teaching. Have you ever ridden before?”

Shireen looks a little spooked.

“No, I mean, I’ve read a lot of books about horses, but I’ve never been on one.”

“That’s fine, we’ll teach you everything, it’s not something you can learn from a book..”

She can smell lunch from here, it’s apparently grilled cheese today, and she salivates. She doesn’t even stop to change before sitting beside Sansa, who’s polka dotted suit bears her own red clip. This is pretty much the only day that dress code isn’t enforced and swimsuits are allowed off the lake. After lunch Arya rushes back to the cabin to change out of her suit.

Quiet time is used for napping and writing primarily, and so no one throws up in the water right after lunch, so Arya skips out to go right to the stables, where her and Ygritte feed and water the horses, tack them up and lead them out into the ring.

Arya doesn’t even get the name of the unit counselor with Shireen’s group, though from the back of her head, she thinks she’s from Dorne. She understands, at least a little. If they stayed through activities, unit counselors would be on duty from sunup to sundown. This unit appears to be mostly girls between eight and ten. A good age for paying attention, but not always the most serious about the activity. When she had learned to ride all those years ago the rest of her unit had been mostly girls who were convinced horses were more like bicycles than real animals. Manure and hay and oats were disappointing to them, the manure neatly chasing off the prissier among them.

The first day with each unit always involves mostly covering the rules.

“I know it’s hot,” Arya starts, “But you cannot ride in shorts and sandals. You will have blisters like you’ve never had before, and your feet will slip from the stirrups and you will fall from your saddle. Long pants and boots with smooth soles are required here.”

“And don’t even think about taking off your helmets,” Ygritte interjects, “Or I will kick you out so fast your head will spin and you will have to spend the rest of the summer in other activities...provided word hasn’t already gotten out.”

As the CIT, the two of them have Shireen step forward to demonstrate how to check the saddle and the reins, how to put one foot in the stirrup and swing your leg over and how to position your hands and feet.

Shireen looks rather apprehensive through the whole deal, but she bucks up and does her best, and never utters a word of fear. She smiles and shouts encouragement when the two of them walk to help the other girls do the same.

When the period is done, and all the girls have mounted, dismounted and rode a single ring around the track at least, Shireen still looks ecstatic to be on the ground again.

“I never knew horses were so big,” she’d admitted while the rest of the girls were gathering their things to go.

“It’s not so scary once you get used to them. Horses aren’t the smartest of beasts, but they can sense if you are nervous or frightened.”

She pets Nan’s nose. She had put Shireen on her because she was one of the quietest and most sedate of the camp’s horses, and has never so much as stumbled with a rider on her back. She’s never travelled at faster than a slight trot either, but they can get to that when the time comes.

Her and Ygritte discuss the group as they’re taking down the horses, brushing them before re-taking for the next unit.

“Last year was worse. The same unit was full of girls who were hooked on that cartoon with the friends and the rainbows. Real horses were a huge disappointment to them.”

The two brush in silence for a while longer.

“I thought about writing Jon a letter last night,” Ygritte admits, “But every time I try, everything I write down sounds childish.”

Arya stays quiet. She understands. Jon was always her favorite brother, even though he’s only really her cousin. Ever since Dad had died and they’d all had to take on more responsibilities, all the things she used to go to him about seemed so small and insignificant. Fighting with Sansa, butting heads with Mum, things that used to drive her crazy suddenly made her feel like a baby to admit to.

And even though Ygritte was older than him, Arya gets how talking about bunks and campfires and patrols might seem childish to write about to someone who had just started basic training.

The unit after Shireen’s is pretty much the same.

Afterwards, when the rest of the campers are doing cleaning and inspections, Arya returns to the cabin to grab her soap and towel and take a quick shower. Most of the campers shower either after breakfast, during quiet time or right after campfire, so right now the stalls are blissfully empty. The cold water from the faucet still shocks her. She smiles, remembering how the first summer here, when the cold water had offended her enough that she spent most of her session refusing to shower at all. That might have explained why the rest of the Brotherhood dunked her in the lake so often.

It’s so hot in the Stormlands that by the time she’s thrown her jeans back on her cot and made her way to the mess hall in her shorts, she’s already completely dry.

She grabs her bowl of spaghetti and takes her place next to Sansa.

“Brienne says the zombie hunt this year is supposed to stay on land.”

Arya’s crestfallen.

“Is she tired of us Starks dominating it with our superior swimming abilities or something?”

Sansa presses her lips tight.

“Apparently they had a near drowning last summer. Pyp, one of the boys Jon used to hang around here. He had to be airlifted to the hospital in Storm’s End and didn’t come back the rest of summer. So the whole game’s land only now.”

Arya feels her stomach tighten. Something else on top of a beloved childhood memory. That feeling lingers through dessert and into campfire.

Even though it’s been a long, long first day, Arya still finds herself wandering to the pier after changing into her pajamas.

And Gendry’s right there beside her.

They’re quiet for a bit, when Arya notices what looks like a band aid poking out from under his shirt.

“What’s that?” she asks.

He chuckles.

“Nicotine patch.”

“You smoke?” she asks, aghast. They had both used to laugh at the way Polliver, the terrifying old maintenance man before Clegane had taken over, used to constantly have to duck out for a smoke every five minutes it seemed.

“I worked in a restaurant for a year. Never work in one if you can help it- the only people who get breaks are smokers lighting up. So I started, and then I couldn’t stop, and I hate it, so these will make me stop before summer’s over.”

“Yea,” Arya whispers, flopping onto her back, “I suppose camp’s good for breaking yourself of bad habits like that.”

There’s a long pause before she asks.

“So you’re not working there next year?”

Gendry scoffs.

“Gods no. Between last year and this gig, I have enough to pay my way at community college, only work part time if I want to. Not sure what I want to study though. I thought about taking up a trade apprenticeship, but Davos warned me that they can take a toll on your body really young.”

“Would he know?” Arya asks, wanting more information about his foster father.

“He worked at the docks since he was a boy, and only recently started managing his own crew.”

Gendry flops back beside her and swallows hard.

“I can’t imagine being in an office all day, but I don’t want to be one of those blue collar workers who looks down on education either.”

Arya smiles, remembering his stories about his mother studying over dinner every night when she was trying to go back to school. How she would have for sure, if she hadn’t gotten sick.

“You could study wildlife biology or environmental science, something that would involve spending all day studying things in forest or marshes or something. That’s what Meera wants to do. She can’t afford to go to university yet, so she joined the Conservation Corps, she’s going to spend the next two years building and maintaining trails way back in the sticks, she wants to join the park service eventually.”

Gendry furrows his brow in confusion.

“Aren’t they the one with the motto ‘hard work, low pay, miserable conditions and more’?”

“Yup, she’s super excited.”

They both explode into laughter.

Gendry leans on one elbow to look at her.

“I don’t know about that, but it’s a thought at least.”

They quiet again, gazing at each other in a way that makes Arya’s heart race again. He reaches out to touch her face and her heart nearly stops.

“Your earrings- I don’t remember, did you have those before?”

“Oh-” she reaches up to touch the studs, small silver wolf heads with tiny red rhinestones for eyes, “-no actually, my mom took me to get my ears pierced when I turned thirteen, later the last year you saw me.”

Her stomach sinks. She hadn’t wanted pierced ears, she had long proclaimed they were too girly, though mostly she was afraid of the pain. She had fought Mum so hard at first, insisting that they were stupid and she didn’t want them, only to finally relent when she saw how happy it made her mother. It was so soon after Dad had died, and there were far too few things, far too far in between that made Mum smile.

“I used to have to take them out at every gymnastics meet, every football game, every swim meet...but Mum told me I looked beautiful wearing them and I wanted so bad for her just to be proud of me.”

She reaches up and twists the posts in their holes.

“I leave them in all the time now, and sometimes I actually forget about them.”

Gendry’s face turns confused.

“You don’t swim or play anymore?”

“Seven hells, of course not!”

She chuckles.

“I left gymnastics after there was a scandal at our gym with one of the coaches. The facility just reopened, I’m planning to work there after school helping with the tumbling classes during the year. I left the football team after year 4, but Robb and Jon and I will still pick up a game at the park when we’re all together. And swimming-”

She swallows roughly.

“Bran swims at the Seven Center multiple times a week on his doctor’s orders- we both love it, so I take him. But I haven’t competed in over a year, not since before-”

She swallows again, the tears pricking at her eyes. Swimming always made her think of Mum. She remembers her face when she placed at her first meet, remembers her showing her all of her medals from her own champion years. She remembers that no matter how busy she was with church events or work fundraisers, she made every single event Arya competed in.

“I miss it,” she says, covering her face.

Gendry seems to have realized she’s become upset, but when he reaches out to hug her, Arya can’t handle it. She pulls away and stands.

“Goodnight. Thank you, Gendry.”

And she leaves him alone on the pier.

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

See! I promise I am doing the thing!

Caught in the sliding snow, the group found themselves falling, greedy over the ending so close, as they fell from the snowy cliff, they all landed in a thick field of green grass. Keith could only assume the game feared killed Lance too prematurely and had helped them reach the end ahead of schedule. Brushing themselves off, Pike was the only one who didn’t bother forcing himself up, instead laying with a hand on his belly as everyone else gaped at each other, before words started falling over each other, all in a rush to celebrate no more game outfits

“We’ve got our armour back!”

“My bow’s gone!”

“I miss staff!”

“I don’t miss you in robes. Holy quiznak, Dark, you look so weird in your amour!”

“You’re not a dwarf anymore”

“Are you sure? She’s still pretty short”

“Hey, all our weapons are gone”

They were. Keith felt for his twin blades, finding nothing on his back. Pike was the only one who still looked like a game character. His boyfriend hadn’t moved from where he laid, he didn’t see what the rest of the team saw, their chattering voices dying as they looked ahead. Moving over to his boyfriend, Keith held his hand out. Pike’s eyes widened as he recognised their armour

“Come on, we have to keep moving”

As Pike took his hand, his boyfriend accepted his help to stand. The fellinwere’s free hand still protectively splayed across his belly

“What the fuck is that?”

Keith had no answers. Massive walls of greenery stood between them and their way to whatever was on the other side. Pidge hummed, before declaring

“I think it’s a labyrinth. And I think on the other side is the castle”

“Like... a labyrinth, labyrinth?”

Pidge nodded at Hunk

“I think this might be the final boss before the castle. That has to be why we ended up here... but how do we get past the gates?”

The two golden gates that stood before them stretched high, nearly as tall as the walls which had to be at least 5 metres by Keith’s reckoning

“Maybe we should try knocking?”

Keith raised an eyebrow at Pike, who shrugged in return

“I mean, if everyone else is okay with it?”

“I think Pike might be onto something. I can’t see a latch on the gates”

It’d been so long since Shiro himself had worn his black armour, that Keith found himself staring. It’d been so long that any of them had, really. It was as strange to him as the clothes of a Barbarian had been initially. He felt out of place, almost uncomfortable. Had his armour always felt this tight?

“Pike, do you feel anything?”

“Nothing more than usual... fat, slow, like this is a bad idea but we have no other choice... you know, the usual... maybe a little left out”

“You’re not tired?”

“A bit... the pearl’s pulsing. It’s like it knows we’re reaching the end”

“Finally. I’ve had it with this game. Are we doing this, or are we standing here staring?”

The thick hedged walls couldn’t bode well for the imminent future. Keith’s instincts told him that it wasn’t just some grassy maze. With the size of the labyrinth, any number of beasts could we wandering it’s twisting paths... and now they were weaponless before it

“Babe?”

Pike’s stupidly blue eyes were focused on him. His boyfriend's eyes seemed to see right to heart of his worry

“I...”

Keith didn’t know what to say. These... this... this could be his last few hours with Lance. Selfishly he wanted to blow off entering the maze and run away from the obstacles before them

“We’re a team. We’ll get through this together, won’t we?”

“You... This could be the end”

Pike shrugged

“I love you. I have faith in you. I’ve always had faith in you. You just need to have faith in you”

“I don’t want things to end like this...”

“We don’t know if it’s the end... I’ve got your back, all the way. I always have. Let’s kick some maze arse”

“And then...”

“And then we figure out what comes next. I think... I think I’m not as angry as I was... I think I’m okay with whatever happens”

“Well I’m not!”

“Whatever happens” could mean the end of Lance and of Pike.

“Pike’s right. We were falling apart as a team. We’re still finding ourselves, even now, but we’re all in this together. Let’s do this together, as a team”

Hunk wiped at his eyes, Keith unable to find fault with Shiro’s words. They had come together as a team in a way that’d never been before. The others were now openly supporting Pike, accepting that they were wrong and finally seeing that Lance was the glue that kept the team together. Keith was the one dragging his heels, scared of what came next... maybe because he had the most to lose, but maybe because he was terrified of what came next. What came when they all woke up. What came as he and Lance tried to figure out their relationship while fighting and intergalactic war

“I’ll be with you, until the very end. I love you”

Keith pulled Pike up against him, nuzzling into his neck with a heavy heart

“Don’t go anywhere I can’t reach you”

“I wouldn’t dream of it”

“You two are being gross. Let’s kick this mazes arse. Then we can plot our revenge on this stupid quiznakking game!”

Pidge’s attempt to ramp up their spirits was sidelined by Hunk

“Group hug!”

Pidge glared, Shiro snorting in laughter as their group gremlin was hugged by Hunk, who then extended his arm towards Allura. Allura was happy to oblige, the group shuffling over to pull Shiro

“Come on guys, group hug”

Pike laughed, Keith finding himself between his boyfriend and his brother. His pack felt like a pack again, that they were meant to be together

“When I say “Vol-...”

“We say -tron!”

Pike dropped against him, Keith kicking himself for being swept up in the moment... but he hadn’t been the other one, Pidge remembering when Lance had tried to make it a group thing and finishing “Voltron”

“Whoa... okay. That’s enough team bonding for now. Is he okay?”

Keith nodded, Shiro the first of their friends to notice the game’s punishment, Pike groaned in response, Keith rubbing his back supportively. It was kind of unfair how cute Pike looked as he clutched at Keith

“Let’s wait a little longer before we break out the team spirit”

“Good plan. Pike, are you ready?”

“Yeah... gimme a tick and I’ll be good to go”

*

Standing the gates as group, Pike looked to his teammates. Keith holding his hand as he nodded to his boyfriend

“Go ahead”

Raising his hand to knock, the gates slid down into the earth. Pidge letting out a nervous laugh that they all felt. This felt different. All of them together and focused. They’d come together to fight the troll, but Keith had come in part way through the fight so the goal wasn’t a united front from the get go. Quietly, Hunk asked

“I guess we head in?”

Allura stepped forward, she seemed to have regained some of her brilliance now she was dressed in her pink armour

“I’ll take point. Gyro, then Dark and Pike, Meklavar and Block you take the rear. We don’t know what we’re facing inside the labyrinth. Try not to touch anything, we don’t know if these walls are stable”

Pidge shot Allura a mock salute

“Yes, ma’am. Okay team, we’ve got this”

They’d barely entered the maze before the walls seemed to close in on them. The entrance disappearing once they’d crossed the threshold

“Whoa!”

Pidge was right. It was pretty “whoa”. And Keith felt even more strongly that this was not about to be a fun time

“Don’t touch the walls”

Rolling her eyes at him, Pidge didn’t appreciate being told again

“Yes, dad. I heard Vala”

“I’m just reminding you. You do tend to be curious”

By curious Keith meant that she was constantly curious by things best left alone

“You mean she can’t keep her hands to herself”

Pidge flipped Lance off

“It’s you two who can’t keep your hands to yourselves... but I kind of want to touch it”

“Block, make sure Meklavar doesn’t touch anything”

Pidge crossed her arms

“I’m not going to touch it. If anything I bet that Block touches it before I do”

Keith shook his head

“I’m not taking that bet. We all know Hunk has a healthy fear of everything”

Hunk tried to defend himself

“Only everything that wants to kill us, which is basically everything...”

Shiro gave a “dad” sigh, before sounding so “dad” like that none of them wanted to disappoint him

“Alright. That’s enough. Meklavar promises she won’t touch any of the walls. None of us will touch the walls. Vala, if you’d be so kind to take lead, we need to get through this maze as soon as possible”

Within the maze time ran on its own agenda. They could have been walking for minutes or hours as they negotiated the twists and turns that took them to their first challenge. A tad too excited, Pidge bumped into Pike, who in turn bumped into Keith, Keith throwing out a hand without thinking, his palm landing against the leaves of the wall. A flash came, an image of their past. “Leave the maths to Pidge”. The memory came with a deep sense of hurt, Keith reeling backwards with a gasp, drawing the attention of the team. He’d torn Lance to shreds internally with his misworded attempt to comfort him

“Babe?”

Gritting out his words, Keith found tears in his eyes

“Don’t... touch the walls”

“What happened?”

“I saw... something. Fuck, Pike... I’m so sorry”

Pike wrapped his arms around him, Keith kind of feeling like he didn’t deserve such a sweet gesture. Pike mustn’t have seen what he did, despite holding his hand

“Babe?”

“It’s fine... just no one touch the walls”

“You look seriously spooked, what did you see?”

Keith shook his head at Pidge. She’d call him more than idiot for the way he’d dismissed Lance like that. How many times had he put Lance down while Lance carried on with a smile for all their sakes?

“Something I wish I could take back”

“It can’t be that bad. We’ve all made mistakes”

Pidge reached out, brushing her fingertips over the wall. She jerked back almost immediately, eyes wide with guilt

“Fuck... Pike...”

Wrapping her arms around herself, she seemed to shrink. Hunk wrapped her arm around her shoulder

“What did you see?”

“Us... we were joking and we made fun of his feelings... it was like the worst feeling ever. Pike, I never should have... I meant it as a joke, but I didn’t know how much it hurt you...”

Pike shifted uncomfortably. Keith wondered if he was wondering how many memories were in these walls... What if this whole maze was made of Lance’s insecurities and these walls were the physical manifestations on the walls he’d thrown up trying to protect himself? Keith felt even shittier

“Oh... um... thanks, but I think for now we should work on this puzzle in front of us”

Walking up to the podium in the middle of the path, the other border was the same green as Pidge’s armour. Allura stares down at the symbols in confusion

“I don’t know what this means. Is this a human thing? Block, Meklavar, do you know what this is?”

Pidge slipped between Shiro and Allura to look at the podium, the green Paladin letting out a groan

“It’s the code I was working on”

“I don’t recognise this”

“That’s because it was a side project. Do you remember when went after that trans-reality comet? With the super bad... people of the same race as Vala. There was that box on the back of their necks...”

“Meklavar!”

Pidge jumped, Hunk sounded outraged

“It wasn’t like that. I was thinking maybe we could counter engineer something in case we ever came across something like that again...”

“Oh, that makes more sense”

“And... I was thinking that maybe if we had team issues with our other sides... we could find a way to keep them all settled so that side didn’t get in the way”

“Meklavar!”

“I couldn’t help it... I wanted to understand how it worked!

“Alright. Let’s save that arguing for later, everyone. Meklavar, do you know what to do with this?”

The code was on tiles that looked made to slide, with one square missing

“There’s some pretty clear errors here. Maybe I’m supposed to correct them?”

Hunk pressed his fingertips together

“Um... Guys... Making a mind control device doesn’t sound like a good thing to do”

“I never finished the code... Prince Pin-dick showed up and I got distracted. It’s not like I was making it to control anyone’s behaviour”

“I think this puzzle if for Meklavar. The frame is green on the outside, like her armour. I think she’s the only one supposed to touch it”

Pidge turned to Pike

“That’s a pretty good guess... Block, try touching it”

“What? Why me?”

“Because you’re the closest, dah!”

Hunk reached a hand out, a barrier forming between him and the tiles. Shiro shot Pike a smile

“Good call. Right, show them how it’s done”

The rest of them could do nothing as Pidge moved the pieces around, they all quietly took a step back knowing how snappy she could get when she was in the zone. Keith was quietly proud that Pike had voiced his ideas, even prouder that they seemed to be on the same wavelength with the colour thing. Having only faced the first obstacle, they couldn’t say for sure until they saw the next one. When Pidge had the tiles in place, a small keypad popped out the bottom of the podium

“Now what?”

“You correct the code...?”

Pidge shrugged, before rolling her head and cracking her fingers

“I’ve got this”

She did. After a few very very long minutes of typing, there was a small ding and the keyboard slid back into the podium, before the lot slid seamlessly into the ground. Turning to Hunk, he high-fived her with practiced ease. Allura all smiles as if Pidge’s victory was her own

“Good job, Meklavar. Let’s keep going”

After the first obstacle the terrain turned harder, the ground uneven and their were places where they had to duck their heads to avoid the hedge walls. Not wanting to walk in silence, the conversation gradually turned to what did they think was coming next

“That was like super easy, why do you think they had a challenge like that in the game?”

“Fucked if I know”

Keith’s answer earned him a smack to the back of the head by Shiro

“Language”

Keith shot his brother a glare

“Really?”

“Yep. Someone has to keep you in line. If we assume the game wants us to solve problems based on our strengths, then we can expect that Block’s should be something to do with baking?”

“Or engineering? He’s kind of a bad arse engineer”

Pike didn’t get hit for his use of language, Keith quietly internally pouting as where Shiro hit him throbbed. Hunk looked the happiest he had since they entered the maze

“Thanks, man!”

“I’ve got your back, bro”

“Why was mine coding?”

Pike rolled his eyes at Pidge

“Because you’re the most bad arse coder even known?”

“Then what about Keith? What do you think his would be?”

Pike, Allura, and Hunk all looked at each other, synchronised as they said

“Stabbing stuff”

Keith huffed. It wasn’t his fault he was a natural with a sword, deflecting, he asked

“And Shiro?”

Pidge stood a little straighter, pulling her hair into the closest thing she could manage to Shiro’s

“Patience yields focus”

All of them laughed, except for Shiro who pinched the bridge of his nose

“Thanks for that”

Allura hummed

“What would my skill be?”

“Basically everything?”

Pidge clicked her fingers

“Diplomacy? Maybe you have to negotiate with mice over cheese”

Allura nudged Pidge, Pidge nearly tripping as she exaggerated the effect

“Hey, watch the walls. You don’t want to touch them”

“I negotiate bigger things than mice and cheese”

“I know. I mean that you’re really good at it”

“She’s good at other things too...”

“Aw, thanks, Pike. I don’t know if you should say that in front of Dark, he looked ready to stab me”

“I can do more than stab things...”

Pike kissed his cheek, smiling at Keith’s pout. He was pack leader, he could out pilot all of them, not to mention he’d gotten pretty at good at strategising

“Of course you can, babe”

“Thank you”

“You two are completely gross. I want this noted”

Pike snorted at Pidge

“I‘d like how you class this as gross. Dark’s really very sweet”

Pike wasn’t helping Keith feel less self conscious. He cheeks felt too warm. Being in his armour made the game feel less like a game and more like a step towards the real world. A step towards it being him and Lance, not him and Pike

“That’s what makes it gross. You both pretty much have hearts in your eyes every time you look at each other”

“Don’t forget Pike made them matching grass crowns”

“And he tucked that flower behind Dark’s ear”

“And he was crying because he really wanted to gift something to Dark”

“And Dark gave him that new headband, and a sword. That’s pretty much the courting out of the way. All that’s left is marriage and annoying the rest of us by being all lovey-dovey”

Now the whole team was teasing them, Pike nuzzled into Keith’s cheek

“I don’t come that easily. I want to be courted properly”

“I wouldn’t dream of calling you easy”

Pike leaned a little more forward to “whisper” in his ear

“I didn’t say I was easy I said I don’t come that easily. But if you say that again, I’m happy to cut you off entirely”

Keith surrendered, amending his words. It wasn’t exactly hard to fall in love with Lance once he’d stopped running from his feelings, but mentioning how easy it was to fall for him would only lead to more teasing

“Not easy. Not easy at all. I promise to court you properly”

“Good. Now, I love you, and I really need to sit down before I fall down... So no more getting flustered because we all love you”

“I’m not flustered”

“Babe, you’re ready to sink into the ground and you know it”

“Shut up”

“And there’s my cranky boyfriend. I hope you’re not so cranky you fail your task”

“As if. Just watch me”

“Oh, so manly. Makes me fall for you all over”

[robertdowneyjjr]

Okay gotta say props to this anon for being dedicated enough to send an essay into my inbox and being generally irritating as all hell but I’ll bite. Let’s unpack this.

I didn’t say that only white people are offended by him. I said that most of my POC friends didn’t have an issue with RDJ’s role in Tropic Thunder and that it feels like people who criticize him for that role are white people being offended on our behalf, which we didn’t ask for. Never have I spoken for all members of a racial group, but I, as a POC myself, am saying that I don’t need someone to come in here to speak for me either.

So RDJ publicly asked people to forgive Gibson. That’s not so different from Gibson personally vouching for RDJ at a time when he was uninsurable and thus unable to find work. RDJ never excused Gibson’s actions, did he? Nor did he claim that Gibson didn’t need to face the consequences of his actions. Gibson has hardly even been in the public eye for years now. How do you know if he’s changed or not by now? And anon, how shitty of a friend must you be, if you’re the type of person who believes in ditching someone who was there for you over a drunken mistake they made? Empathy must not be a concept you understand, because real human connections aren’t like social media. You don’t just unfriend or unfollow someone after seeing them make bad comments in a post and expect to wipe your hands clean of them. Gibson was there for RDJ in a time when no one else was. RDJ feels a sense of loyalty. There’s no fault in that.

Super convenient that they don’t have a link handy, but lucky for you, I do. Here’s the profile in question and if you don’t want to read the whole thing, here’s the quote: 

“I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since.”

Never once did he use coded language or outright state that he became politically conservative because of black people specifically. Read the whole article if you want. It’s an interesting piece.

You might remember when RDJ walked out of an interview a few years ago during the AOU press circuit because of a reporter’s inappropriate line of questioning. It was a huge deal at the time, and almost every entertainment news site and channel was reporting on it. That interviewer tried bringing up this exact interview about RDJ ~not being liberal~ and asked him to clarify what he meant. Before RDJ walked out, he said this:

"I could pick that apart for two hours and be no closer to the truth than giving you some half-arsed answer right now," Downey replied with a smile. "I couldn't even really tell you what a liberal is, so, therein lies the answer to your question."

Now, since RDJ’s two biggest crimes are apparently racism and conservativism, here’s another source to debunk such claims. In 2012, RDJ donated extensively to Obama’s campaign. He has a history of donating to the DNC and you can search for all of that easily here. I’d post screenshots, but Tumblr has a limit on the number of images I can add to a post, so here’s a quick exercise in simple math: in 2012 alone, he donated over $75K to the DNC. In 2014, he donated $32K to the democratic senate campaigns.

And if that’s not enough for you, here’s an entire expose that shows you a year in the life of RDJ during his time in prison. Not once, ever, did he say anything about anyone’s race, and when asked pointed questions about whether he was treated in any negative way (sexual harassment, fights, etc.), RDJ never put anyone on the spot and tried diverting the conversation elsewhere.

Learning more yet?

Never once have I ever said that people need tor forgive and forget what RDJ has done in the past. You’re free to dislike him all you want, hold on to grudges over his mistakes and use that as a reason to continue hating him. Whatever. I don’t give a single fuck what you think about him. But don’t go around harassing people who are clearly his fans with your age old receipts in an attempt to make them feel like shit about liking him. Right now, you’re basically acting like that Channel 4 reporter while I’m in RDJ’s position. So I’m going to follow in RDJ’s footsteps and walk out now, because quite frankly, you’ve wasted enough of my time already.

[tommyplum]

- i am but dust and ashes (the world was created for me) | tommy/alfie, taboo au   for @boundinshallows’ sholomons prompt fest 2019

The two of them are finding each other again, capricious, dishonest, possessive and desperate to affect the other. 

notes: the prompt was for a taboo au, with tommy shelby in place of zilpha as the half-sibling. my changes are that alfie’s mother is jewish and not first nations, and he went to the west indies instead of africa. content warning for half-sibling incest. - maggie

Looking at it from the outside, anybody would say that it's Alfie who took advantage of close quarters and easy access. Alfie who was the corruptor, who was the viper in the branches, who was the forbidden fruit of knowledge. Looking at it from the inside, Alfie just might say the same things himself.

Tommy knows better.

"That brother of yours--"

"Half brother."

Grace's mouth pinches for just a moment and then she sweeps on with her statement, determined to have her say before Tommy switches his focus to something else. The opium makes him tangential at the best of times and Grace knows, by now, to take advantage of anything in his eyes that approaches lucidity. "Half brother," she spits, and Tommy's lips twitch as he considers tutting at her, pointing out how unladylike her vitriol is. He doesn't do it. He raises his eyebrows and slowly tilts his head from one side to the other with exaggerated interest in what she's saying and Grace looks furious but she continues.

"Your half brother may intend to keep you from what you should have rightfully inherited but we are not without means through which to strike at him, Thomas, we are not as helpless as he would have you believe, with his solicitor and his evil looks and the way that he uses those rumors about what he did in the godless West Indies as his cloak and shield." Grace crosses herself and Tommy follows the motions of it in the air with the tip of his nose, kittenlike. It amuses him to give his more pixilated impulses their head when Grace is being avaricious, or pious, which tend to go hand in hand more often than not. Religion and money share a sacrament in her soul.

"You, Grace, would have made an extremely effective Popess." 

She makes a frustrated sound, one slender hand clenching along with it. "You want him to rob us, then?" Grace demands, nostrils flaring. "Is that what you want from him, Tommy? Or is it something else."

Calling him tommy is a signifier of how angry she is; Grace stopped calling him Tommy two days before their wedding, switching without reason, explanation, or discussion to only calling him Thomas. He'd almost not known who she was fucking on their wedding night when she kept telling this Thomas person to bloody well choke her properly. 

His skin's suddenly crawling and Tommy stands abruptly, chair scraping across the flagstone floor as he's dropping the last inch of his still-lit cigarette into his cold tea. "I'll pay him a visit, then, shall I?" he says as though it's just that easy to bring all of this to a satisfying resolution, as though all you need is to be Tommy Shelby and to ask, and Grace feels the dismissal. She doesn't show it, though; she reminds Tommy of who she is by answering with a small, marble-hard smile and says,

"--kiss your half brother hello for me, Thomas. Once you've done greeting him for you."

---

Polly's the one who greets Tommy at the door, all folded arms and raised eyebrows, and Tommy holds back a sigh as he sweeps off his hat and attempts -- vainly -- to peer past her into the house where he'd grown up.

"He's not in," Polly says, making absolutely no attempt to sell the boldfaced lie. Tommy can take it or shove it, but he chooses a third option:

"I've got nowhere else to be at today, Pol, ay, come on, Polly. At least give us a cup of tea to get the chill out, before you send me packing. I'll catch my fucking death out here." 

--Tommy pushes it. 

Because if there was anything that he and Alfie had learned, growing up with Aunt Polly, it was that she had a soft spot for the audacious, the bold, for those who took chances and even if they got caught or fell flat on their faces, still put on a brave front and tossed their heads, holding them high. Tommy holds his chin up as he steps forward and Polly swings open like a door to let him inside.

Back into the house of Alfie Solomons Senior: who is now buried in a grave as shallow as a butter dish, and Tommy feels the past engulf him whole.

===

it used to be

The attic was where they'd played as children for hours and hours, making every nook and cranny of the space their own. Tommy liked to wriggle beneath the window bench and with a thick lead pencil would draw star people (the five-pointed kind, head and limbs) to represent himself and Alfie and Aunt Pol and Father on the underside of the wooden seat, with one different star (the six-pointed kind, like Alfie wears on a chain around his neck) stuck into corners to represent Alfie's mother, The Mad Jewess. That was how she was referred to and Tommy never questioned it. He never used any star, ordinary or otherwise, to stand in for his own mother; she'd died as he arrived in the world and that was the last business he'd had with her in this life.

Alfie didn't bother to find out what his brother was doing those times, content to let Tommy be strange all on his own while Alfie pondered over new schemes and plans and games to entertain them both. His games were byzantine, daring, ritualistic, and even when they'd bothered to try and include other children, none of them had ever caught on. Only Tommy could be relied upon to fully commit to Alfie's wild cult of unfettered and hedonistic play.

And (to perhaps be expected), the games had evolved as they'd grown and their attic space became even more sacrosanct, Polly banished from it entirely with promises that they wouldn't let mildew fester and rats congregate. Because when they were teenagers and Alfie lay on his back on the floor, gazing up at the underside of the window seat and the dark strokes of Tommy's constellation of family while Tommy's dark hair drew strokes in the air as he bobbed his wet mouth onto Alfie's cock, the world belonged to the two of them and nobody else. 

"There's five of you, Tommy," Alfie said, his voice dragging and drowsy even as he kicked one heel along the floor to raise a hip, angling his prick against the inside of Tommy's cheek until his younger brother firmly shoved him back down again.  "I've counted, yeah, five of you of these star-people, and there's only three of me. Why is that, love?" He reached down with one hand -- the other still tracing along the galaxy that Tommy'd illustrated -- and wrapped his thumb into strands of straight black hair until Tommy tugged off, smacking his lips, annoyed to be stopped.

"What?" he demanded loudly, but then answered anyhow since he'd heard the question. "Five of me because I was the one drawing it, wasn't I? And as the autobiographer and artist, I got to represent myself as many times as I wanted." Tommy pinched one of Alfie's thighs, drawing a laughing rumble from his remorseless victim. "Three of you because even one is too much. One is more than enough."

"Three because neither maths nor diplomacy is your strong suit." Alfie shoved out from under the windowseat, sitting up, his thick rosy cock curving damply into the crease of his thigh as Tommy kneeled back to rest against his heels. "Come here, sweetheart. Let me teach you your numbers." 

Alfie's eyes, a sharper yet more shadowy blue than Tommy's, were stream-clear in the sunshine coming in through the big round window, his smile spreading the thick dark red of his lips across his face like raspberry jam. Tommy licked his own lips and moved forward on his knees, one hand wrapping around the length of Alfie's cock as he leaned in, wanting kisses; but Alfie grabbed Tommy's face in both hands and ... spat on him.

"Ah--" Tommy gasped, but then another hot gobbet of spit hit his face. And one more, against his open, suddenly ravenous mouth, before Alfie pressed his tongue against the frothing wetness and kissed Tommy, deep and hard, sucking and biting at him before pulling panting back. Still holding Tommy's face, Alfie groaned, 

"--three times, to keep you safe from the evil eye, remember that, Tommy.The magical properties of spittle and doing something three times over, which you already know somewhere in that flashing minnow brain of yours, because you drew me three times over, eh? Now --" Alfie let go and sprawled back onto the bare wooden floor, propped on his elbows as he parted his thighs, "--be a good boy, go on, and fuck me."

Alfie was in a mood to push that day, because he growled and groaned and shouted as Tommy climbed onto him and drove his cock into his half brother's arse over and over, whipcord muscles shaking with exertion and youthful arousal, desperate to come and at the same time wanting to hold out, draw it out for Alfie's sake. 

(And, oh, and his own; because Alfie was a sight to stir the senses when he was being fucked and filled, his succulent fat lips dark and swollen as he moaned, eyelashes spiked damp with sweat and salt, the column of his throat thick and strained, and no lover who Tommy Shelby was ever destined to have in his grown life would compare quite favourably to that.)

At the dinner table that night Polly's dark gaze travelled between them while she held her cup of tea in both hands, and said with waxen-heavy portentousness to Alfie, "--We've all noticed, Alfie, just how well you take care of your little brother. If you're not careful, others will start to remark on it. Hmmm?"

She didn't look at Tommy, only at Solomons Junior, and Alfie's throat worked soundlessly for a moment before he said, "Let them remark on whatever it is they think they know. I guarantee, Pol," Alfie cut with renewed vigor into his chop, smearing it lavishly with enough horseradish to make Tommy cough at the thought, "that the truth is somewhere far beyond their comprehension."

The braggadocio of this comment made Polly smile along the edge of her cup. But her expression went fixed, static, when Tommy tossed the last crust of his bread down on his plate and stood, saying with a casual coldness, "I'm the one takes care of him, only I never get any credit because I'm a second son. And it's thankless work. Let them mention that, when they talk." 

Alfie's silverware clinked down against his plate in Tommy's wake, and Polly's cup provided counter-harmony tinking down against her saucer, and Tommy smiled, flatly, as he mounted the stairs to his room and left them behind. He couldn't say why it felt so good to leave Alfie stranded on the shoals of ignominy alone, or why he kept right on screwing Alfie, opening his own legs for Alfie, only to then repudiate him afterwards and refuse to acknowledge their fevered sampling of each others' bodies. But Tommy did. He crashed into Alfie to begin with and then once it was over and their blood was cooling he retreated further every time, until one day -- it was Alfie who retreated.

All the way across the fathomless oceans to the other side of the world.

===

"There's your tea," Polly says, pouring the cup full to the brim where it sits in its saucer on the kitchen table. If she thinks that's going to wrongfoot Tommy Shelby, then she's assumed too much; he's not that far different from the strange child he'd been, especially when he has some of the poppy in his blood to ease the way and null social convention that might keep his instincts in check. 

He leans forward with his hat still in his hands and, stare fixed on Pol as hers is stuck on him, noisily slurps scalding-hot tea from the cup until it's not lapping at the rim anymore. And then Tommy points at the cone of sugar on the counter behind Pol and says, "Sugar, please, Aunt Pol, and milk if you've got it."

She goes still and her mouth purses, eyes flashing in indignation. "If we've got it! Yes, even here at the other end of the city and all society from their Highnesses Tommy and Grace Shelby, we do have milk in, now and again." 

"Only not at the moment."

Both of them turn their heads towards the stairs as Alfie comes down them, his head leaned back so Tommy can see the grey of his eyes, almost rolling beneath the broad brim of Alfie's black hat. He looks … Tommy can't say he looks good. He looks ploughed through and harrowed, thick bottom lip carrying the entire freight of all of Alfie's display of emotion, a long scar drawn over his left eye like a permanent tearstain. The thought is laughable. This man descending the stairs in a rolling heavy gait is a stranger to weeping, Tommy can tell that much.

"We've not got milk in, at the moment," Alfie repeats, walking over to stand at Tommy's shoulder -- or against Tommy's shoulder, is more it, and the knuckles of one hand drag a shiver down Tommy's spine. If Tommy just turned his head the right way, he'd be able to slant his mouth over the crest of Alfie's hip, through his camphor-smelling shirt. "Not for you, Tommy. Nor sugar, neither. You get enough of those things at home, don't you?"

"After your visits to the sugar cane fields of Barbados and Trinidad," Tommy says, turning his face up so he doesn't need to think about his tongue against the ridge of Alfie's hip, "I'd think that you'd be absolutely running with the stuff, Alfie. Hasn't it made you any sweeter?"

Polly gets up with her cigarette trembling between her fingers and leaves the room without another word, although Tommy can hear doors opening and shutting, retreating further and further into the house. Alfie hasn't moved, hasn't barely breathed, hasn't taken his seawater stare from Tommy.

"If you came here for … cream," Alfie says, rolling the word around his mouth before lacquering it further, "...and for sugar," he pauses to let weight and innuendo settle, toffeelike, "then I can offer them to you only if you ask, Tommy. Nicely." 

Tommy hrrrms in his throat and then opens his mouth, and Alfie puts his thumb against Tommy's lips to stop him. "On your knees, pet," Alfie says, "just like you used to."

"I'm a married man, Alfie," Tommy tries, just so he can say that he did. And perhaps so he can see the look of contempt snarl across Alfie's face briefly as he takes his hand back, there and gone, coiling into the hinge of one jaw where Tommy stares at that tension in fascination as he continues, "I've come to talk about this proper. Civilized."

"I lost all my civility somewhere in the kala pani," Alfie says, and if Tommy doesn't understand the unfamiliar words he does understand the deep ocean depths of Alfie's eyes, the haunting that floats to the surface to bob there, circling his irises. "Along with a great deal more. You don't want to know, Tommy. How dark and black it is down there. Enough to make all the stars you've ever seen disappear, forever."

"Alfie," Tommy says, and reaches up before he can help himself, to put one fingertip at the very corner of Alfie's lower lip and press, pull, disfigure. "What happened to you out there on the ocean? In those foreign lands? Why've you come back like this?"

Alfie's eyes map Tommy's face as Tommy says, very very quietly: "...why did you come back at all?"

Everything goes dead still between, around them, and Alfie says, "That, dear brother, is a very strange way indeed to entreat me for the inheritance you believe you are owed." He steps back. "It was Grace, yeah, who bade you come? Who spun you tales of terrible Alfie, wicked Alfie, sailing back from the gold-washed shores of tropical islands with riches lining his pockets and an eye to cheat you of what our father left to support you in this life, which is nothing, Tommy. He left you nothing. And my riches are not of the sort your Grace would welcome."

Alfie shoves his hands into his pockets and plucks at them like he's tearing feathers from a dead fowl, turning them inside out one after the other, and Tommy watches with his lip curling in a shudder as salt pours out of every one. Alfie used to carefully heap little piles of salt into the corners of rooms, warning Tommy not to disturb them, so that they could ward off demons and evil spirits. When Alfie had left on the tall ship that took him to his damned equatorial destination, Tommy had discovered some of those piles still remaining in secret corners where Polly hadn't found and swept them gone. He'd sprinkled bits of that salt into his food for three and a half months before it had run out. Some of the salt falling out of Alfie's waistcoat pocket showers along the table and into Tommy's tea and his mouth waters, instantly.

He stands up and gathers the folds of his long black coat around him, swallowing his saliva and the taste of acrid dust, nostrils pink-rimmed and flaring rabbitlike. "We're not without means through which to strike at you," he says, the parroting of Grace's words lending his voice a sing-song quality that causes Alfie's lips to curl in derision. He knows those aren't Tommy's words. He knows the inside of Tommy's mouth like nobody else ever has.

"Then strike, Thomas," Alfie murmurs, the taunt sensual and subterranean, and his fingers move much faster to unbutton the only two that are holding his waistcoat closed, to spread open the shirt below to expose his chest, where Tommy can almost see the thumping of his heart. Before he knows what he's doing Tommy reaches forward and gathers the cambric in his hands, bunching it, ripping it, leaving it hanging like old lace from Alfie's heavy shoulders.

"The next time I see you," Tommy says as he quicksteps away, circumnavigating Alfie's unmoving figure, "I'll be collecting my inheritance. All of what's owed me. You know what that is."

The shirt slips further down Alfie's shoulders and Tommy catches a glimpse of a strange scarred mark on his muscled back: a hand, fingers together, the thumb and pinkie curled stylistically. Blue ink casting it ghostly, frozen.

"I will see you before that," Alfie says. Ghostly. Frozen. Tommy tastes salt riming the sides of his tongue as he shuts the door.

---

The attic room is where Alfie's lived since his return, and Pol ventures up when she damn well feels like, now. It scarcely matters. If Alfie wants sex he gets it by his own hand, and Polly has a seventh sense for that sort of depravity (her sixth having been entirely used up and burned down by what her two charges had gotten up to in all their growing years, Alfie knows).

Alfie curls his freezing-cold toes as he leans closer to the fire, baring his charcoal-stained teeth at the flames as they leap blue-white, eating the treats of camphor that he flings into them. Half naked, he feels the tightness of cobalt jab molassie paint dried on his skin and lets a mouthful of thick sweet wine flood his mouth before spitting it out in a spray. 

His mother's face looms at the back of the fire, her posy lips reddened with the syrupy wine, her eyebrows dark wings over searching grey eyes. The blue in Alfie's eyes, the short wedged nose, the muscled set of his shoulders and hips, those come from the long lost Solomons Senior; far more than Alfie ever wanted to inherit from his father, and worth far less than what he'd rightfully expected. 

The fire spits back at him and Alfie leans into the sparks, letting them kiss searing against his skin. "I think I have your heart as well, Mother," he tells the flames and her face, her searching eyes that take him in and weigh him and find him wanting. "I have your heart but no soul to speak of, for He had none to give me, not before Bedlam and not after it."

Cackling, the fire dances against the back of the hearth and Alfie picks up his bowl and cradles it in both hands, turning it as his lips murmur aloud the Aramaic script that circles its wide mouth. The names of angels that he can only believe in if he thinks of them as magic rather than faith, the taste of clay and shockwaves of horror, an old old craft that his mother interred to his flesh before she died. "Be you bound, sealed," Alfie mumbles, "countersealed, yes, exorcised, hobbled, silenced…." 

His voice is an ugly croak like this, and Alfie can swear he feels hundreds of shedim climbing into his mouth past teeth and tongue to rasp at the insides of his throat to claw their way down through his entrails to make their homes there, searing little demons all seething and scrambling over each other, yes, scrambling and rattling their chains, crying out in foreign tongues, waiting in his belly to be vomited onto unfamiliar shores.

"I left you," Alfie says, doubling over so far that his forehead hovers only a few inches above the floor, heat of the fire making rings at the top of his scalp. "In Port-of-Spain, I left you, and I drank your chenopodium and I swallowed your semen and I wore your jumbie beads and your red thread around my throat and around my wrists, and that is where you belong, all you monsters and mazikim, that is where I left you. Buried below the tamarind trees with blue glass to keep you from rising again. You don't belong here."

His voice has ascended to a roar on the last sentence, reverberating through the attic rafters and back down and then the sound all sucks into the fireplace, rippling through the flames and turning them white-blue as the breath catches in Alfie's chest; the moment stretches, pulling out like ropes and ropes of intestine never-ending and gory and miasmic, and then oxygen hits him in the lungs and he wheezes, lips pale.

The fire is only a fire.

It is England.

He is himself. Motherless, fatherless, beset in every cell of his body by the gibbering of demons, but himself.

Alfie rubs his hand over his mouth and chin a few times, letting his beard and moustache prickle his palm. He makes sure his bowl is set aside safely, and then he begins a different ritual, separate from the one to quieten shedim. This one is even more personal than that.

---

The strokes of Tommy's pen are firm and sure as he writes his letter, at his desk, the cold sunlight filtering through the air against his paper. Their whole house is cold and everything that enters it turns chilled. Grace has decorated it in grey and blue-grey and lavender-grey and Tommy, bird bones to begin with, feels the grey in each one of them. The coals heaped in the indigo-grey tiled fireplace must still be giving off heat, though, because Tommy feels it against his hip. And slowly creeping up his side, and down along his leg, and then, he clenches his fingers on his pen because that heat is circling around his cock like a mouth.

"Alfie," Tommy groans. 

"Tommy," Alfie mutters.

He curls both hands into loose fists, stacked on each other, and rotates them like he's pulling on a rope or something else, something better, dipping his head to waggle his tongue into the tight circle of his fist. Licking and lapping, pushing and widening, tasting the heated skin, fucking his hand with his tongue. 

Tommy falls forward against his desk half-risen out of his chair, hands splayed out on the wood with his fingers in stiff claws, eyes wide and darting as if Alfie's form will materialize if he can only focus his vision properly. And he moans, sluttish protest, as his hips push closer to the edge of the desk and he spreads himself out, face pressed against the varnish as his legs spread wider. Tommy would pray, but he doesn't believe in Grace's God and has none of his own to petition. 

Finished with his work, Alfie squeezes his fists tight and then opens his arms, twisting them as he holds them out to his sides, muscles swelling and strained as he leans back, and back, hips canting forward--

--Tommy gives a hoarse yowling cry, bucking against the desk as he feels himself filled, pinned down, unable to do anything but take it. Hard and precise strikes that hit deep inside him, his own cock thick and needy; the whole desk rattles from the phantom force of it and the inkwell topples over, streaming down, the peacock blue that Tommy favours (so frivolous! So strange, for a man, Grace had bemoaned) streaking into the crow-black of his hair and painting along the side of his face, and

and Alfie grunts as the small of his back screams from the pressure of his posture on his knees on the floor, bent so far back that all he can see is the starlings in the rafters of his attic, heat corseting his hips as his prick slaps against his belly and he bites his lip, tasting blood as he baptizes himself in come and feels the 

heat and wetness as Tommy clenches down and shouts, open mouth dragging over blotting paper as it soaks up the damp, as his cock gives up its milk as well and Tommy can see that the coals in the fireplace are dead cold and dark, and he laughs once, sharply, before screwing his lips shut tight and doing the same with his eyes as he shudders out his completion. The heat retreats. The sunlight keeps touching him. It's still cold.

---

The next morning a letter arrives at the Shelby house from Alfie, borne to the breakfast table on a silver platter by the servant that Grace insists they maintain. Grace had declined to come down to breakfast.

"I can't look at you," she'd said to Tommy the night before. "All I see is damnation. And you courting it with open arms."

Tommy puts down his egg-spoon and the morning newspaper and opens the letter. It reads in its entirety:

 cream and sugar.

He throws it uncrumpled into the cold fireplace and carries on with his egg, dripping molten-soft yolk down the ball of his thumb as he eats. The side of Tommy's face is traced with the curled blue inkstain; stylized, frozen, ghostly.  He sprinkles salt like stars into the ocean black of his tea.

/end

[the-desolated-quill]

The Caretaker - Doctor Who blog (More Like The Piss-taker)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

An episode co-written by a sexist moron and a transmisogynistic arsehole? What could possibly go wrong?

It’s present day Earth and the Doctor needs to go undercover and pretend he’s human in order to lure out and defeat an alien threat. No it’s okay. You haven’t stumbled onto my review of The Lodger by mistake. This is actually believe it or not a completely different episode. Seriously, is this the only idea Gareth Roberts has got? It wasn’t even very good the first time around. I might as well keep this review short because I’ve basically already talked about this. If you want to know what I think of the premise, read my review of The Lodger again.

It all feels so half-arsed this time around too. I mean The Lodger stopped being scary after about five minutes, but the idea had potential. This is just pathetic. The Skovox Blitzer. What a truly rubbish monster. It’s so generic and completely non-threatening, spouting silly catchphrases and possessing worse aim than a drunken Star Wars stormtrooper. The humour too is incredibly painful. Mind you, The Lodger wasn’t very funny neither. It took Eleven’s goofy eccentricities and magnified them to such unbearable levels of obnoxiousness that by the end I just wanted to hit him on the head with a chair. But in The Caretaker, the humour is actually worse because it makes the same mistake Robot Of Sherwood made. This type of humour just doesn’t suit the Twelfth Doctor at all. I admire Peter Capaldi as a performer and he does the best he can with what he’s been given, but he simply can’t do this kind of comedy. But it would be unfair to lay all the blame at Capaldi’s feet because I honestly can’t imagine anyone making these jokes work. The scene where Clara tries to convince Danny that his encounter with the Blitzer was part of a surprise play was just cringeworthy to sit through because nobody would ever talk like that in real life. And some of the jokes don’t even make sense. Why is the Doctor insistent that Danny is a PE teacher? What makes him think he can’t do Maths just because he’s a soldier?

Which brings me to the main problems with the episode. Once again this is yet another episode that focuses entirely on the Doctor, which is not only starting to become incredibly boring, they don’t even do it very well. Moffat and Roberts want to convey that the Doctor is a trustworthy leader who may need to rely on his companions sometimes for moral guidance, but always cares deeply about their welfare. How do they go about showing us? By having the characters just flat out telling us this. This is writing at its most amateurish. If you want to define a character, let them actually do stuff and then let the audience work it out for themselves. Show, don’t tell. And why do we even need an episode reiterating shit about the character we already bloody know? Here’s an idea. The episode is set in Coal Hill School. You know? The school his granddaughter went to? Maybe this would be a good opportunity to dwell on that. The Doctor hasn’t seen Susan in centuries. How does he feel about that? Has he ever thought about going back to the 22nd century and paying her a visit? (assuming she’s still alive). What about her teachers Ian and Barbara? Did they ever make it back? What happened to them? Oh but that would require some original thinking on Moffat and Roberts’ part and they’re clearly not fucking capable of that. It’s much easier to just rehash the same old ideas and use references to Who’s past as lazy fanservice rather than actually doing anything with them.

And why for fuck’s sake are we going down the love triangle route again? No doubt Moffat thinks the lack of romantic interest on the Doctor’s part puts a new spin on it, but it actually doesn’t. How is Twelve/Clara/Danny any different from Ten/Rose/Mickey or Eleven/Amy/Rory? (Don’t forget before this series aired, Moffat said this was going to represent a brave new direction for the show. What? Doing the exact same shit over and over again constitutes a brave new direction, does it? Fuck off!) This doesn’t work for three reasons. 1) We’ve done this many times before; 2) I don’t give a shit about Clara or Danny; and 3) the writing is fucking atrocious. Remind me, why does the Doctor hate Danny again? Because he’s a soldier? (and part time circus acrobat judging by the way he flips over the Blitzer). What is with Twelve’s one note hatred against soldiers? We’re back to the same problem we had in Into The Dalek. Yes the Doctor has always felt slightly uncomfortable around the military, and Nine and Ten’s anger toward soldiers and guns could at a push be justified by their PTSD after the events of the Time War, but Twelve doesn’t seem to have any justification for his extreme hatred toward them whatsoever. The two soldiers he’s met (Journey Blue and Danny Pink) have given him no reason to hate soldiers at all as far as I can see. He just hates soldiers because the script says he does, and that’s just not good enough.

But what angers me the most about this whole love triangle is the underlying sexism to it. (Brace yourselves @prettycanarynoir and @thealmightytwittytwat because this is probably the one and only time you’ll ever hear me defending Clara). When Clara has finished explaining to Danny all about the Doctor and the TARDIS and everything, the Doctor then angrily says that she needs to explain to him why she’s going out with a soldier (because all soldiers are inherently evil just because). I’m sorry, why the fuck does Clara need to justify who she’s dating to the Doctor? Who the fuck does he think he is? And it gets worse when it’s revealed that the reasons behind the Doctor’s mistrust of Danny is because he wants to make sure Danny is good enough for her, which just comes off as really patronising. Clara doesn’t need the Doctor to vet her boyfriends. I’m sure she’s fully capable of making her own decisions, thank you vey much. Not that this lets Danny off the hook. In fact in this episode Danny goes from being a gormless nobody that I couldn’t give a shit about to being quite possibly one of the most hateful figures I think I’ve ever comes across in New Who. The scene in the TARDIS where he effectively throws his toys out of the pram and starts mocking the Doctor for his soldier-ness really soured my views toward him as a character. The episode tries to present it as Danny making these deep observations about the Doctor, except he’s only just met the Doctor, so he can’t really judge, and he comes across as a spoilt little shit having a temper tantrum because he’s suddenly not the centre of Clara’s life anymore. And then there’s the scene at the end when Danny and Clara talk about her continuing to travel with the Doctor. Not only does he threaten to dump her if she doesn’t tell him every single aspect of her life, he then goes on to say this:

“If you don’t tell me the truth, I can’t help you. And I could never stand not being able to help you."

Um... who the fuck asked you to Danny boy?

It’s disturbing because Moffat and Roberts clearly don’t see this the same way I’d like to think most sensible people would. They think this shows two fiercely protective men looking out for the woman they care for, whereas in reality it looks more like two selfish arseholes trying to assert control over ‘their’ woman as though she’s their property rather than a person in her own right. It’s legitimately disgusting to watch, and the sad thing is I’m not even shocked by this. I mean what did you expect? Gareth Roberts has already displayed his sexist side in The Lodger with Craig Owens. A character presented as a romantic everyman, but who is actually a hideous embodiment of male entitlement who throws a hissy fit every time his girlfriend shows even the slightest bit of independence because her plans don’t coincide with what he wants. And we all know by now how much of a sexist twat Moffat is, despite his repeated claims to the contrary. Put them together and you create a misogynistic neutron bomb.

As you can probably tell, I don’t like this episode very much. It’s unoriginal, uninspired, boring as fuck, painfully unfunny, and the sexism is just gross, end of. Can it get any worse than this?...

Yes. Yes it can.

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: A Beginning, Of Sorts

Summary: You know, I can’t even remember where this prompt came from but it cropped up in conversation after this fic involving Nick and Gloria roleplaying an escort and client. Some of us were talking about how terrible Rush would be as an escort, and someone else ( @woodelf68 perhaps?) said that they could actually see it working as a method for him to fund himself through college – minimal investment of time for maximum financial return.

Anyway, wherever it came from, this is the finished product. Nicholas Rush meets Gloria when she hires him as to escort her to a fancy party one evening…

Rated: M – fade to black, but adult themes.

=====

A Beginning, Of Sorts

Nick sighs, pushes his glasses down his nose to be able to rub the bridge, and readjusts them before looking again at the paperwork spread out in front of him, trying to make sense of it all.

PhD’s are fucking hard work. He loves maths, he loves physics, he honestly does, but right now there are numbers swimming in front of his eyes and he really doesn’t think that he’s going to get anything vaguely useful out of it tonight. With a grunt of pain from the ache in his neck, he leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, wondering whether to get some more coffee and try and plough on with it, or give it up as a bad job. He’s worked twice this week already so he thinks that he’s allowed to be knackered.

The phone, shrill and urgent and unrelenting, bursts into angry life and Nick rolls his shoulders before going to answer it. There’s only one person who’d be calling this number at this time, and he’s not entirely sure he wants to answer. Maybe he should let it go to answerphone and he’ll pick it up in the morning when he’s less tired. Maybe he should just pretend to be out, but unfortunately he’s not exactly known for being a social butterfly. Pushing these other welcome notions aside, he grabs the receiver.

“Rush.”

“Hey Nick, it’s Liz.”

He knew that it was going to be Liz. She sounds even more tired than he does. Liz isn’t her real name, he knows that much, but he’s never pried into what her name actually is.

“Hi Liz.”

“Diary says you’re available Saturday night, is that still the case?”

Nick looks down at his paperwork. Of course he’s available Saturday night, it’s not like he has a hot date with anyone except these equations, and they’re not exactly the best company. True, they’re quiet and they share all his own interests, as far as theoretical physics is concerned, but they don’t really make small talk and you can’t really wine and dine a sheaf of papers. On the other hand… He rolls his neck again, feeling the catch. He’s just so damned tired at the moment.

Still, any work is good work, and even scholarship students need to eat and sleep.

“Yeah, I’m still available.”

“Great. I’ve got a job for you.”

“When, where, who.” He doesn’t really waste on small talk with Liz. She’s calling to give him an appointment, and anything else in their interaction is somewhat awkward.

“Saturday night at seven-thirty, a young lady by the name of Gloria Miller. She wants to meet you at the Palace Hotel bar for a chat but then you’ll be going elsewhere, she wants an escort to a fancy family party out of town. Play at being the boyfriend, you know.”

Nick raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t usually get escorting jobs that involve actual escorting. He’s really not the most social person in the world, and he’s really not the most social person on Liz’s books. Sex he can do – very well even if he does say so himself. Interacting with other people… Not so great.

“Are you sure I’m the right person for this one?” he asks.

“Well, the only other guy I have available on Saturday is Danny and he’s even more of a no-go for social events than you are. Besides, she sounded nervous and he’d send her running for the hills.”

Nick has to give a snort at that. Danny caters for rather more specialised tastes.

“I can trust you with this one, can’t I? I think she just needs someone to prop her up for an evening in the face of disapproving relatives. Just be polite and attentive and keep her drink topped up, and neatly deflect any questions about when the two of you are getting married and having kids.”

“Yeah, ok.” Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult. He wonders why Miss Miller has felt the need to hire company for the evening, but decides that it’s really none of his business and he’s not paid to think about those kind of things. “I’ll be there. Dress code?”

“Smart, but not super formal. Suit and tie.”

Nick wrinkles his nose. He hates wearing ties and tries to get away without one as much as humanly possible. He only ever wears them when he’s working and even then, if he can go without he will. Unfortunately, Liz can read his silence.

“You’re wearing a damn tie, Rush.”

“All right, all right. Saturday, half-seven at the Palace. How long?”

“She’s paid up till midnight, thinks the party will be breaking up by then.” There’s a long pause at the other end of the line. “I know I don’t have to tell you this but take condoms and lube just in case. You never know.”

“Of course, Liz.”

“Payment like usual. Have fun.”

“Thanks, Liz.”

They say their goodbyes and Nick puts down the phone, staring at it for a few minutes before getting up and padding through to the kitchenette to make a fresh mug of coffee. If he’s sacrificing Saturday night to the tune of getting paid, he’ll need to keep working on these equations tonight.

X

The Palace Hotel isn’t the most expensive place his client could have chosen, but it’s certainly not the cheapest, and he wonders how old she is and how she came to be blowing her savings on hiring an escort and buying ridiculously priced cocktails in this bar. Nick readjusts his tie and takes a good look around the room, eyeing up the possible clients. He picks her out straight away. She’s sitting at the bar with a Margarita that she’s not drinking, and she meets his eyes as soon as he walks in. She’s the only one here alone, and Nick takes a moment to study her from afar before he goes over.

She’s fairly young, mid-twenties at most; his own age. That’ll make selling the fake relationship a bit easier. Long legs and soft curves encased in a classy, well-fitting little black dress. Honey-blonde hair pinned up, and pale skin. She’s very pretty, and Nick wonders again why she needs an escort for the evening.

Still, nothing to be gained by staring at her from the doorway, so he goes over.

“Miss Miller?”

She nods. “Please, call me Gloria. You must be Hamish. Thanks for coming.”

Nick admits that Hamish probably isn’t the best professional alias he could have chosen for himself, but since he’s so obviously Scottish, as Liz reminds him frequently, he thought that the best thing to do would be to play up that Scottishness. As long as none of his clients ask him to wear a kilt because he doesn’t actually own one and the last time he wore one, he was told that he looked terrible in it. When he first started in the job he had a terrible fear of being asked to wear a kilt and nothing else, because romantic fiction and ridiculous novel covers have a lot to answer for when it comes to the unnecessary objectification of Scotsmen.

“My pleasure,” he replies. He really hates parties. He hates most social occasions in general, but since this pays the bills and is earning him his PhD, he’s going to have to give in with good grace and be on his best behaviour during this one. Unless, of course, Gloria wants him to play at being an absolute arse in order to get her family off her back, the objective being that after him they’ll be happy with whoever she ends up with. Some of the more experienced escorts have had that kind of a job before, with clients who aren’t out to their parents. On the other hand, that might well backfire and lead to the awkward situation of her being put under even more pressure to replace the highly inappropriate ‘boyfriend’ and take up with someone better.

“Can I get you a drink?” Gloria asks.

Nick shakes his head. He doesn’t like drinking too much when he’s working because he likes to be fully alert and aware of his surroundings, and although he’s not been to all that many swanky parties in his time, he knows that there’s likely to be a lot of alcohol once they get there.

“Did the woman at the agency tell you what I wanted?” Gloria continues. “About the party, I mean.”

“She told me that there was going to be a party, but she didn’t give me any details.”

“It’s my grandparents,” Gloria elucidates. “They live about seven miles out of the city. They have a big pre-Christmas party every year, loads of family, friends, influential business people.” Her voice hardens on the last few words. “And every year so far since I moved out, I’ve turned up without a date, and my grandmother tries to set me up with any number of godawful would-be suitors, as if I only exist to be married off and continue the family line, and…” She breaks off. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be saying all this.”

Nick just shrugs. “You can say whatever you like, it makes no difference to me. I’m here for you, not any of your relations.”

“At any rate, this year I was determined not to turn up on my own and that’s where you come in.” She pauses. “I wanted to meet you here before so we could work out a reasonable cover story. I’m doing my Education Masters at the university, we met there.”

Nick nods. “Yes, that’s easy enough.” He wonders if their paths have ever crossed before. “What was your Bachelor?”

“Music. I play the violin; my aim is to get into an orchestra. Teaching’s a backup in case that dream falls through. You? I don’t mean in real life, obviously.”

“PhD,” Nick replies. “Which is technically the truth. You can pick the subject. Just nothing involving foreign languages, or I’ll be fucked,” he adds.

There’s a lot less nervousness in Gloria’s features now, and as she smiles, taking a sip of her margarita, her face lights up.

“Maths,” she says eventually. “You look like the mathematical sort.” She cocks her head on one side and smiles. “Am I even close to being right?”

Nick quirks an eyebrow. “That would be telling. Anything else I need to know?”

“My grandpa made his money in antiques, my dad carried on from him, and all the women in my family are professional wives.” She snorts. “They really want me to settle down, so there’ll probably be a bunch of questions about when we’re going to get married and how many kids we’ll have. If I can say one thing for my family, they’re very… eager.”

Nick just laughs. He thinks he’s going to get on with Gloria. They’re more alike than he thought would be possible, considering their vastly disparate backgrounds, but despite her obvious privilege, she seems grounded enough. He’s met enough of the other sort during the course of his ‘career’. Burning Daddy’s money away and coasting along through their classes.

“We should probably get going,” Gloria says, draining the last of her drink. “They’ll be expecting us soon.” She pauses. “I think you should know, before we go, that a bit of me is just doing this to spite my dad. He gave me a ‘dress allowance’ and told me to go and get ‘something pretty for the party’. So I did.” She pauses. “Sorry, that’s horribly insensitive.”

Nick shrugs. “It’s true, in the most brutal sense of the word.” Her frankness is refreshing, and so is her apology.

“Yes, but it’s still not a very nice thing for me to have said.”

“We’ll say no more about it. I’m flattered that you think I’m pretty.”

“Oh, you’re very pretty.” She slips her arm through his and they leave the hotel bar; there’s a taxi waiting. The drive to her grandparents’ house is quiet and awkward, but Nick’s sure that once they’re there, the uncomfortable atmosphere will dissipate a little as it will no longer be just the two of them. He’s going to be completely out of his depth, of course, but that’s par for the course, and as the newcomer to the family, no-one’s going to expect him to be the life and soul of the party in a hurry. At least, he really hopes not. As they pull up to the drive, Gloria begins to speak again and with the taxi idling outside the door, they work out a few last minute details so that they don’t end up giving all the relatives two subtly different versions of the same story. They don’t need to know everything about each other, this fake relationship doesn’t have to have been going on very long. There’s no need to fake true love and wedding bells on the horizon, just enough of a familiarity not to be suspicious. Although, Nick thinks as they walk in through the front door and he sees the vast amounts of alcohol around the place, he doesn’t think that anyone’s going to be in a position to call attention to anything suspicious any time soon.

“I’ll try and keep you close as much as possible,” Gloria says. “It would be unfair to leave you to be mobbed by all my relatives.”

She introduces him to everyone in short order, and Nick knows that he hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of remembering any names, so he just decides to be the arm candy that he was hired to be, keeping his mouth shut as much as possible and listening politely to all the conversations going on that he really doesn’t understand. People are talking about investments and banking on one side and probing Gloria for information about her future plans on the other side, and Nick can quite see why she needed an ally for the evening. It must be incredibly daunting for anyone to come here alone and be met with such a barrage of information and questioning from well-meaning family members who don’t really mean all that well. The main person that he has to fend off is Gloria’s grandmother, who seems to have taken quite a shine to him. Then again, from what Gloria’s told him, she would probably take a shine to any man that Gloria turned up with for the simple reason that he has the ability to get her granddaughter pregnant and produce some great-grandchildren.

“I’ve tried telling her at least sixty times that I don’t want kids, at least not until I’m thirty,” she mutters once they finally manage to extricate themselves from Grandma Miller’s grasp and are hiding out of the way of everyone behind the grandfather clock in the hall. Gloria’s on her third glass of champagne already and she knocks back the dregs. “I really hate these things. But I’m very glad you’re here.”

“I haven’t exactly done much,” Nick points out. “I’m just quiet and respectable boyfriend Hamish.”

“I know, but you exist tangibly which is the main thing, and I can always talk to you and block out everyone else. And I can complain about all my relatives to you and you won’t be offended.”

Nick laughs. “No, although you might be if I share my opinions of some of them to you. It’s all right when you’re complaining about your own family but it’s a different thing if it’s someone else doing it. It’s a bit like Scotland, I suppose. We all make disparaging remarks about various bits of our culture but as soon as someone south of the border makes those same comments, well…”

Gloria smiles. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” She glances back towards the living room where most of the party is gathered, and she sags in her high heels a little. “Do we have to go back in?”

Nick shrugs. “It’s your party and your time,” he reminds her. “I’ll just go along with whatever you do.”

Gloria looks at him sideways, twirling the stem of her champagne flute between her fingers.

“You don’t like these events, do you?”

“Honestly? No. I’m not usually first choice for this kind of thing. But I’m here.”

“Yeah, we’re both here and we’re both miserable. Come on, let’s hide. We’re both consenting adults and apparently in love, I don’t think anyone’s going to come looking for us.”

Gloria grabs his hand and leads him up the stairs; from some of the noises coming from behind closed doors, they’re not the only ones who have decided to leave the party and get up to no good. Although, Nick reasons, he doesn’t know what this particular little excursion with Gloria is going to lead to. She takes him into a small bedroom, a little bleak and sparse, no personal touches in it.

“It’s my room when I stay over,” she explains, opening the window to let some cool night air in and sitting on the windowsill, rummaging around in her little clutch bag and taking out cigarettes and a fancy lighter. “Do you mind?”

Nick shakes his head. “Not at all. I brought my own.”

Gloria laughs and pats the windowsill across from her, offering her lighter, and Nick takes it. The first drag is just what he needs after the tension in the party downstairs.

“Your name’s not really Hamish, is it?” Gloria asks presently.

“No. But I’d rather not tell you what it really is.”

“Fair enough.”

This moment here, sitting smoking in a room lit only by moonlight, is the most comfortable and relaxed that Nick’s been with Gloria all evening, and the silence that settles between them isn’t awkward like it had been before. There’s an unspoken understanding between them; he’s not really sure where it came from but it’s there and it’s nice. It’ll make the rest of the time go easily.

Gloria finishes her cigarette and leans back in the window, looking out over the vast garden beyond, and occasionally glancing back at him, her head on one side, considering him. Nick raises an eyebrow.

“What’s up?”

“I’m wondering whether it would be bad form to kiss you,” Gloria says frankly, and whilst Nick wasn’t sure what he was expecting, he’s fairly certain it wasn’t that. “Because you’re not at all how I was expecting and you’re very handsome, and I’d like to kiss you.”

Nick certainly wouldn’t mind if she kissed him. She’s certainly very lovely and his feelings towards her are positive, rather than the usual neutrality he tends to maintain with clients. He likes her.

“I’d be up for that,” he admits.

“I’m glad.”

She’s firm in her kiss, she knows what she wants, and she tastes of smoke and alcohol like so many women do. She smells expensive, like so many women do. But she’s different somehow. There’s a realness to her, which is ironic considering that the entire time he’s been with her he’s been playing a role. But there’s no pretence to her now, not like the bright, smiling, perfect daughter she had been downstairs. He likes her, it’s as simple as that, and that makes this experience so much more enjoyable for all the many, many times he has done it.

So he keeps kissing her, and she keeps kissing him back, and there’s a champagne brightness in her eyes when she pulls away, a brightness that Nick recognises all too well. It’s a good job that Liz warned him to bring condoms just in case.

X

“We should probably get back to the party.”

They’re sitting in Gloria’s four-foot single bed, Nick at the head and Gloria leaning against the wall, propped up on pillows, the ashtray on the covers between them. He doesn’t really have any desire to move, and he knows that whatever time they get back to the party, people are going to be giving them looks that immediately say that they know what they got up to whilst they were absent, but Nick really couldn’t care less about that, and to all intents and purposes, Gloria doesn’t seem to care too much about it either. But the clock is ticking down, and soon he’ll have to leave because her payment will have run out.

“Aye, we probably should.”

It’s with obvious reluctance that Gloria gets out of the bed and puts her clothes back on without self-consciousness and Nick follows her lead. Once they get back down into the main party room, it’s clear that a lot of the guests have already left. They get the usual looks, a mixture of disapproval from some of the elderly relatives and indulgent ‘they’re hot-blooded young things’ sentiment from the others. Gloria’s mother chastises her for skipping out on so much of the party and Nick listens to her deflect the veiled barbs in a wonderful display of passive aggression that he couldn’t have bettered himself. Finally, she manages to get him out of the door and into a taxi that’ll take him back to the Palace.

“Thank you,” she says as they part. “For everything. I’ve had fun tonight. Well, the bits when we weren’t at the party were fun. And the party was less awful than usual. So thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The taxi slides quietly into the night, and Nick glances back over his shoulder through the rear window at Gloria standing in the driveway, and he wonders if he’ll ever bump into her again.

X

It’s a new year and a new term and a couple of months have passed with Nick trying very much not to think about Gloria when he sees her suddenly, and suddenly, everything changes and he has no idea what to do with himself because he’s walking in one direction with his coffee and she’s walking in the other direction with her violin case and it’s inevitable that they’re going to meet in the middle of the street. She recognises him just before they collide with each other and smiles.

“Hello. How are you?”

Nick’s still somewhat stunned but manages to answer.

“Fine, thanks. You?”

“I’m good. It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?”

No-one would know that they were talking about an escorting appointment, but either way, it’s clear that they remember each other and they have been thinking about each other in the interim. Nick’s not the best at small talk, something that Liz has despaired of in the past, but they chat for a couple of minutes.

“Do you maybe want to get a coffee later?” she asks presently.

“I…” He really doesn’t know what to say to that because he does want to, but at the same time… “You know what I do in my spare time,” he warns her.

Gloria nods. “I do. It’s how we met, remember.” She shrugs. “It’s just coffee.”

Just coffee. He can do just coffee. God, he spends so much of his working life around the opposite sex that one would think that he’d know what to say to them when he meets one he knows in the street. He nods.

“All right then. That sounds good. Tuesday night?”

“Great. Although there’s one thing. I know you’re not called Hamish, but can I maybe get your actual name before we meet again?”

Nick gives a snort of laughter. “It’s Nick.”

“Pleased to meet you, Nick. I’ll see you Tuesday.”

It’s a beginning of something, Nick’s pretty sure of that as they continue down the road on their separate ways. It’s a pretty strange beginning, and he’s not sure what it’s the beginning of yet, but it’s definitely a beginning.